I’m only going to get one chance at surveying the city; I swim within one hundred metres of the domes and travel around its circumference once. The domes’ surfaces are uneven, plated with a mix of repurposed voidship hull and new, custom material. It’s armoured and my passive scans barely register the dome shell as eight metres thick.

Having experienced the resilience of tau fio’tak, I am not confident I could bring sufficient firepower to breach the domes without the tau noticing my preparations. There are many shield emitters on the domes. The power running through them suggests they have an equivalent of field bracing, a structural integrity reinforcement technology, working as well. This is the same tech that inhibited power weapons and my nanites’ power field from cutting through the Distant Sun’s hull.

I finish my turn and pass by a thick antennae, scraping my body against it and dislodging thirty infiltrating bots, shaped as barnacles, from my hide. As I ascend, I fire a burst of data at the antennae while I am lined up with a tau vehicle so it looks like it came from a friendly submersible.

E-SIM inserts my best E-WAR code, setting the barnacles to piggyback off the tau communications when they communicate with the surface. Sending a request for data to the previous data worm that I snuck into an insulting picture I sent to the tau captain gets no results. A shame, but not unexpected. The tau have excellent AI and I really didn’t expect such an obvious ploy to work.

At the very least, my barnacles can float to the surface and transmit from there if E-SIM can’t sneak anything through the tau systems.

I return to the trade post and go for a walk, using the time to unwind and readjust to the human form, lamenting that, even with a multitude of fins, I failed to flip off any tau. A missed opportunity, for sure.

The trading post has expanded, with a second land plot added built up as a proper industrial estate, rather than stacked micro-factories, as well as a high rise commercial centre and a pair of apartments. After almost a year and a half on Marwolv, I have a better idea of what people want and need and consider the specialised facilities worth the investment.

My most recent addition is a biolab and research hospital that should be finished within the month, though it will take me a decade to fully staff it.

Staring up at the sky, concern plucks at my heart. My shipyard hangs in the sky like a sparkling moon, while D-POTs flitter over the structure, bringing resources plundered from the rest of the system.

I’m fifty-three this year and I’ll be way over seventy by the time my mobile shipyard is done, then I need to refit Distant Sun, Erudition’s Howl, and acquire at least one more destroyer before I feel comfortable braving the remainder of the Koronus Expanse.

Will I even make it back to the Imperium before I die of old age?

I really want to get Quaani to his house so he can reconnect. They’ll almost certainly be venomous assholes and ungrateful bitches, but Quaani should at least get a chance to discover that for himself. At least with his engineered lifespan he doesn’t have to worry about old age getting him first.

I pat my cheeks and hit my helmet instead. I shake my head and chuckle. I haven’t taken my armour off for so long, I forgot I was wearing it. Heading to the thunderhawk, I conclude it’s time for some personal care.

Mr Cygnus returns me to orbit and I thank the irascible machine spirit for its service and receive a nonchalant honk.

The Distant Sun has two spas, the first is a marble monstrosity in the navigator’s spire. While the plants and servitors are dead, the facility has all the things you could want, like a sauna and herbal bath, as well as the plain weird, like the amansec steam bath, or genemoded servitor monkeys that give massages and do your hair.

I prefer the facilities on the medicae deck, where you can get your extra mechanical limbs and ports cleaned and the inflammation and irritation from the fusing of man and machine can be eased.

It isn’t a problem for me as I have the equivalent of an imperial auto-sanguine, my life support module, who’s tiny machines flow through my body keeping the ports on my neck and lower back from becoming painful. Few others with implants and prosthetics are as fortunate and regular treatment is desirable.

The medicae spa also has more traditional baths and steam rooms. They are more spartan, painted in pale colours under calm lighting and tiled with detailed mosaics and surrounded with bamboo panelling: a massive improvement on the garish extravagance of the navigator spire.

I thought they’d be all metal walls and clanking doors, but the Imperium goes all in on their meditation, prayer, and contemplation creating spiritual spaces with dogmatic precision and brute force calculation.

With my mind at peace and wearing a freshened Federation mesh suit and re-anointed dragonscale power armour, I make an appointment with Thorfinn then enjoy the rest of the day rereading my family’s correspondence and enjoy a light supper with Quaani.

The food isn’t required, but eating keeps me feeling human and gives me a chance to connect with Quaani at least once a day.

After supper, Quaani takes a D-POT to the shipyard so he can join the party the victors of my student challenge are holding. I am pleased he is making friends, a phenomena he will likely only experience from Marwolv citizens with their high tolerance for psykers.

Stolen novel; please report.

The next morning, I meet with Thorfinn at my personal landing pad atop the commercial centre. He strolls over as I exit the thunderhawk’s side door and holds out his hand. We shake.

“Hello, Aldrich.”

“Good morning, Thorfinn. No armour today?”

Thorfinn smiles, “We only wear it when we have to.”

“A cultural difference, I suppose. An imperial always wears the best armour they have.”

“Sure that’s not just you?”

“Way less than one percent of the Imperium can afford to wear armour and mine is more like one in a million. These are illustrative numbers. You could say I am the exception and the rule.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Thorfinn laughs. “You said you had something fun for us today?”

“I do! Follow me to the basement.” I stride down the ramp and circle round the roof to the lift and Thorfinn trails behind me.

“I still can’t believe you built such a big building so fast. We’re two hundred metres up and there’s half as much again underground.”

We step into the lift and I press the button, pleased there’s nary a skull in sight.

“Thank you. I’ve no doubt others could do better, yet I was pleased with the result.”

“Have you been contracted to rebuild Pearroc or any other settlements in the Gael Democracy?”

“I do get asked. For now, I’ve been placing containers with individual power, water, and other necessary facilities to provide powered industrial spaces, on the edge of many settlements to aid in reindustrialisation.

“Rather than replace what you have, there are some plans to build new cities and their transport links near the old ones. Deciding priorities and planning everything is taking a long time though, even with the aid of the machine-spirits, as I have handed the work off to your own people and they are still learning.”

The lift descends, it is so smooth and quiet only my sensors can detect the movement.

“Does that frustrate you?”

“Not at all, I have plenty to keep me busy: the shipyard, teaching, and expanding my mechanical workforce. There’s lots of research to be done as well. I’m determined to build a complete genetic library of the planet and spread its unique biosphere to other worlds.”

“Never one to think small are you?”

“Small thinking is for small people and the galaxy grinds those by the trillions without noticing. I’d like to leave at least one pebble to make it trip on my way out.”

“I didn’t take you for a glory hound.”

I lean against the lift wall and fold my arms. “I’m not! In truth, it’s more a ‘fake it ‘till you make it’ strategy. Void ship captains are expected to be bold and rogue traders even more so. I haven’t managed the second yet. The Imperium does not issue writs to timid twits and I’ll need a lot of achievements to get one. I hope that by acting confident, I’ll be confident enough for the position when I finally get it.”

“Aldrich, you’re already a void ship captain and a Magos. You have buckets of confidence.”

“Did I ever tell you I used to be a plumber? A sewer worker? I literally shovelled other people’s shit for a living. While I have come far, to let go of where you start is to abandon where you came from. I don’t want to forget that and so a part of me is a fat bloke in loose waders laughing at all the ridiculous stuff people throw down the loo and cursing their ignorance and the trouble it causes.

“Some days I wonder at the incredulity of it all, less than I used to, but it challenges my heart to believe I earned my second chance and I question if I deserve it or am capable of completing my goals, and so I fake it. One day, I won’t have to.”

The lift opens and we enter an underground, bare ferrocrete parking lot.

“You surprise me, Aldrich. I was not expecting such thoughts from you, nor a candid conversation.”

“Me neither!”

Thorfinn grips my shoulder, “No need to worry about it my friend. As a fellow captain, I am familiar with your concerns. Some days I still feel like a wheezing recruit getting yelled at by the drill sergeant. Now I am allowed to yell at him, yet somehow I never do.”

I laugh, “Yeah, that sounds about right.” Shaking my head I approach two slim small vehicles. “Alright, that’s enough of that. Check these out.”

Resting on the ground are two jetbikes with pointed prows and a long chunk of fuselage. A pair of stubby fins stick out of the side near the front. Two metres from the front is a low seat; while sitting, only the driver’s eyes can peek over the top, protected by a small, armourglass windscreen. Behind the tall seat are two small jet engines stacked on top of each other and wrapped in a chunky, armoured shell.

“Where are the wheels?”

“These are jetbikes,” I grin. “Incredibly rare vehicles, last built at scale in the Imperium some ten thousand years ago. I found twenty of them in the Mechanicus enclave. They can hover over any terrain, travel fast, and are armed and armoured. This is a priceless variant called the Shamshir Pattern Jetbike.

“No one knows how to make them, yet somehow they still work. Please don’t tell a space marine you drove one. They will shoot you. There is a protective suit and helmet for you to wear in the front storage compartment and I’ll be remotely controlling your bike so you can’t mess it up, and if you feel comfortable, I’ll teach you how to drive it yourself, or you can ask the machine-spirit to help. There’s no guarantee you’ll get to ride one again, so make the most of it.”

“Thank you, Aldrich. From our previous talks I have a good understanding of how special this is to you. Have you taken Quaani out on one?”

“Of course! We set up a race circuit around the Distant Sun. It was a lot of fun until Aruna decided it was an inappropriate use of its interior and started adding obstructions to the route that became increasingly dangerous with each circuit, so we had to stop.”

“Sure it wasn’t messing with you? It is a cat.”

“It probably was and as you say, it’s a cat, so you can’t be sure. It has a lot of freedom now and I don’t want to annoy it.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Let’s end the chat there. We have a meeting at the clubhouse in three hours and should make the most of the jetbikes.”

“Agreed. I want to see how fast I can go. Perhaps a race?”

“You're on.”