Forward planning cabin of the Ark cruiser Sol Invictus

Brother Captain Lucius Celar

The captains of the three exploration ships in the fleet stared at the two imposing figures standing on the far side of the meeting room. They’re standing, thought Captain Lixon of the Dawning of Orion, simply because they wont fit into any of the chairs in the room.

The bulkhead door opened and Van Eck and Captain Aronvold entered the cabin. Aronvold actually stopped mid stride and gaped at the two Space Marines. He then turned, open mouth to Van Eck. “Captains, may I present Brother Captain Lucius Celar, commander of our detachment of the Steel Confessors and their Apothecary Brother Sergeant Julius Novas”. To Aronvold he said “these gentlemen are the ‘later’ or at lease two of them” The two Space Marines simply nodded to the acknowledgements.“We can make full introductions at a later time, right now we have more pressing issues” said Van Eck.

“Most immediate issue is that we are, for all intents and purposes – stranded”. As to where and when we are stranded, I’ll leave to RSN Lieutenant Caspian to explain. “Lieutenant?”

“Thank you my Lord.” Caspian felt the weight of all the eyes in the room organic or otherwise, on her as she brought up the holomap. “Captains, most of you know the overall situation as we have been working closely with all your navigation teams to establish our exact location, and we are confident we now know where we are.”

“Here” Caspian zoomed in on the holomap. “We have identified we are galactic north, north west of the Ultramar sector, in this relatively unexplored piece of space bordering on the Damocles Gulf and a sector called the Perdus Rift. “Let me rephrase that, a relatively unexplored piece of space in our time.” Caspian paused, then said “while the charts in the navigational banks of this section of space are, being generous, vague, we believe we have re-emerged from the rift in the mid to late 41^st Millennia

.

No one spoke, just exchanged glances, except for the Space Marines who just stared at Caspian in stoney silence. Arland suspected that the ship captains had all come here hoping to find that the previous briefings they had all received from their ships navigators, have been wrong. Captain Janus Kroc from the Neptune’s Tide was the first to speak.

Brother Sergeant Amos Deckard.

“Without our Astral Navigators, how are we supposed to get back to the Imperium or at leased, where we should be?” Kroc asked.

“Getting back to the Imperium was never our first concern” said Arland. As it stands we have , thanks to the ministrations of Magos Biologist Mercy and brother Sergeant Novas, a total of one recognised psyker across the fleet, and he is a librarian not a Astral navigator, thus making void travel impossible. “So as an exploration fleet, we have decided get on with our primary function, that of exploring”

“The first priority must be to establish a base of operations.” “Fortunately the fleet carries enough pre-fabrication to construct a small Forge World, which is exactly what I intend to do.” said Arland. “The Lieutenant believes, from the maps contained in the navigational codutators, that there are a small number of star systems containing planets within STLT, and we believe one or two of these will prove suitable.”

“We have dispatched probe drones towards these systems.”said Aronvold. “And I propose to move the fleet towards the most promising of these systems, Zeta Tau 44947 Omega, as soon as you are back on board your ships.” “The trip is expected to take around 6-7 months subjective ship time.”

“What makes the Zeta Tau system so promising?”asked Lixon.

“The Mechanicus exploration ship, the Land’s End, indicated that the scan of two planets in this system showed promising results for high levels of various minerals and ores.” answered Arland. “The Land’s End is the reason we know anything at all about this section of the rim.” Now I’ll let captain Aronvold issue you your directives and we shall get underway.