Due to a seriously overfilled Saturday, as an exception I post the new chapter today on Sunday!

Neustadt, Naggaroth

Torsten Breitkop had joined the Black Company because they would allow him to tinker to his heart's content. He could build up an industry, design all the toys and enjoy some thankful slave girls. Oh yes, those reasons had been in his head by himself, it was just that the Changer of Ways had made them obsessions, made him act on what would normally be day dreams.
Now that he had gone beyond the pale he found himself behind a desk more and more. Neustadt had grown to stupendous size and complexity. It had to be managed and while a lot of former slaves and some Germans helped greatly with that there were tasks he could not delegate in any way, shape or form.

And on the top of that list of things was the communication with Malekith. He had made a telegraph line his first priority after taking over what remained of the Black Company. No longer would some poor schmuck have needles in his brain so that he might talk to the Witch King.
And another missive had reached his desk. Whenever such a thing turned up he was full of dread these days, even more so than before. The Witch King demanded the impossible to be ready yesterday or earlier and disobeying him was simply not on the menu. He had seen what Malekith's torturers had done to Silvar Bloodcrest's family, that had given his mind scars to last forever.

The latest demand, besides more anti-air and anti-mech artillery was for naval mines. These things had not just saved Hag Graef from the DawiZharr navy, but also Torsten's hide when his modified Black Arks had failed against the latest dwarven Dreadnought.
Torsten looked at the simple sheet of paper and did not know what to do about this. Neustadt was running ragged as it was, with a race between building ever more production facilities and actually producing weapons and gear. That the priorities shifted every so often did not make things any easier. Making thousands of mines, shipping them all over Naggaroth was simply out of the question. And at the same time he could not tell Malekith exactly that, it might be fatal to him and even worse for Anja. What the damn Druchii would do to his people did not bear thinking as well. So what the bleeding….

The inspiration hit Torsten out of nowhere and he was so relieved that he giggled with giddy relief. Taking his pen he wrote a short message that he would gladly obey the Witch King's commands if the Dread Lords would ship the required amounts of Florite and processed Guano. Without these he would be unable to make the steel and explosives that went into the mines. That Torsten certainly did not have the workforce to make them was a totally different matter. He ended the message with asking for the Witch King's wisdom as to what products should be prioritized under these regrettable circumstances.

One problem down, a hundred to go till this day was done.

Leviathan, 500 kilometers of the Kislevite coast

Jacub General had prepared a landing strip on Leviathan's deck. If he had ever speculated what kind of planes would use it he would have thought about cargo planes bringing personnel or spare parts. Maybe helicopters or that Imperial fighter-bomber that the Luftwaffe disliked so much. A wing of wooden biplanes had not been on the menu and there they were.
A Ro-Ro ship had docked with Leviathan yesterday, and trucks had pulled one low-sided trailer after another and brought them into the ship's cavernous holds. Their contents would be joined by the containers of the freighter scheduled next week. Jacub thought that by then the last of the planes would be assembled from their crates.
To somebody used to Typhoon fighter-bombers, A400M transports and huge airships these planes looked like toys, barely worth being called warplanes. And yet they looked different from what he remembered seeing in museums.

The biplanes looked seamless, lacking the wires and many of the struts that slowed their ancestors. The engine was completely tucked away inside a cowling and the cooler was a streamlined affair.
Maybe they would be useful, but how they would fare against the Flugscheiben that had given the Imperials a hard time he could not imagine. He certainly had neither time to muse nor to ask. There were artillery pieces to emplace, and he needed to make sure that the preparations were finished. He would never hear the end of it from Valera otherwise.

RSS Morgenstern, 13 Million Kilometers from Warhammer World

Nathan Alpers was falling towards the sun, his inner ears, his eyes, and reality agreed on that. He had long learned to ignore what his inner ear/ senses/ innards? tried to say in space, and he would be very surprised if Morgenstern was not falling towards the sun.
Well, not directly into but falling closer with every passing second. That had been the aim when the ship had scrubbed a couple of km/sec from its orbital velocity. The remaining velocity was not enough to keep Morgenstern in the same orbit than the Warhammer World, and so it dropped ever closer to the system's star.

Doing so, it gathered speed that would make it rise up later to the point where it would intersect the Star Gate's orbit. A circularization burn and some adjustments would put the German spaceship into an orbit around the gate, assuming all went well. That was months away still, yet the sun was noticeably bigger in the viewports before the astronaut.

The ventilation systems were running at a higher pitch and a coolant pump could be heard somewhere behind the astronaut. He shook his head remembering that he had imagined space to have a dignified silence, maybe with a light waltz as background music.
That was not to be, the need for mechanical ventilation in the absence of convection was paramount. Then there were the pumps, the servos, the gensets, and more. And while the vacuum of space would not transmit any sound, Morgenstern's hull and superstructure would do so very well. Even when Germany's most modern spaceship was better than its predecessors in this regard it was still the noise level of a large office space. One got used to it, but that's about it.

Nathan Alpers did something boring and utterly necessary at the same time, he stood watch. Given that no major evolutions in Morgenstern's maintenance were happening or planned, that no course corrections were needed, and that most of the crew was asleep it was boring.
Given that Murphy was at the very least a passenger in any spaceflight and that Morgenstern was far from any help, it was still necessary to monitor all systems at all times. A solitary watch was not exactly what the book called for, but Nathan was an old hand and had commanded the mission to Verda.
Having time and space for oneself, with nobody within smelling distance, was something very, very important on such a long mission. Given that there was a separate engine room watch, it was an acceptable risk. Nathan had dimmed the lights as far down as they would go without switching them off entirely and enjoyed the magic of a solitary night watch.
Currently, he watched one set of monitors that displayed the status of nearly every system needed to run Morgenstern. Another showed the status of a backup computer that was running updates. The picture on the third screen changed without warning, showing a toga-wearing female. The voice matched the picture, precise and with an undertone of disapproval.

"Oberstleutnant Nathan Alpers, do you realize that I could perform these functions better than you in a tenth of the time? You could do whatever Primates do to keep themselves amused."
The astronaut managed to suppress his alarm at being addressed out of the blue and even reigned in his annoyance.
"Good evening to you too Hypatia. Thanks for the offer I think, but no," Nathan said cheerfully. He wonders if it is possible to annoy an AI. "You could likely perform the functions, but you are not designed as part of this ship, you are no certified watchstander, and the book says no. Given how far we are from any outside help going by the book is the way to go."
"Aha. So, what does your book say about what happens after I manage to shut down the gate?"
"We return to base after verifying that the Gate stays shut down."

"Oberstleutnant Nathan Alpers, I am very much aware of that part of the mission. I enquire what do you think Germany will do after I shut down the Gate. Will you try to destroy it at a later date to make sure you are safe here?" Hypatia's synthesized voice showed her exasperation, maybe you can annoy an AI.
"From what I have read such destruction would both be hard to accomplish and dangerous. I have not heard of any plans to do so and am pretty sure we lack the means.
"In the short term, I do believe that we will try to fortify the Gate in case something still makes it through. Put a couple of asteroids into orbit around them and arm them. Maybe a solar forge on steroids. We will try to advance our technology to the point where we are not totally defenseless against whatever is out there. Then we can ask you to reopen that Gate and have a look at what is on the other side," Nathan explained. True, the plan is not the best possible plan but it seems like a good enough plan.
"Do you have an idea, any idea how ludicrous that is?"
"No, care to illuminate me?"

"Oberstleutnant Nathan Alpers, you should be aware that multicellular life was present on your homeworld for a very long time. After a couple of important features emerged in what you call the Cambrian Explosion, consciousness and language could evolve at any time. And while the Old Ones have observed some races that remained strictly agricultural, most arrive at the scientific process sooner or later. Those who do have to progress as they would otherwise run out of the raw materials de jour sooner or later. A lot then kill themselves, either by the madness of industrialized warfare and WMDs or by damaging their environment to the point of no return.
"Those who avoid that turn to space, the only place with virtually limitless resources. This will usually guarantee the survival of that species, at least in parts. The Old Ones found the remains of races which were spacefaring for a long time, probably thousands of years or a bit more. Some seemed to have died off for no better reason than running out of motivation to go on. Others seem to have evolved to the point where we do not recognize them anymore. Still, the time to meet them as a starfaring species is a few thousand years out of the many millions that a planet can bear biological life, a chance of less than one in a million. That is why you found no neighbors when you looked for them on Earth," Hypathia patiently explained.

"I have heard of Drake's Equation before. So?" Nathan shrugged.
"If it is already unlikely that you meet intelligent life at all and even more unlikely to meet another technologically capable civilization, tell me how unlikely do you think it is that you meet somebody who is roughly at the same stage of technological development as you are? And remember how fast technology moves once you really get going. From the Wright flier to the first manned mission to the moon in 66 years. From ENIAC to Cray XK7 in 67. Yes, while Earth Humans are pretty fast, but they are not that much of an outlier.

"Do you believe you out-teched those Beastmen, Orcs and Chaos Warriors you fought in battle? If a star-faring species finds you here you will learn what out-teched means. I have explained this to your leaders several times, and the last time I thought I saw some understanding. In other words - you will not be the Federation meeting the Romulans depicted in that childish fantasy, you will be Neanderthals meeting the 7th Panzer Division. If you understand that you might understand why destroying that Gate is worth the dangers," Nathan frowned. After working closely with the AI all this time, he can tell that she was doing the human equivalent of screaming at him.
"If I understood my briefings correctly if we were to pursue that it would be a major undertaking. It would need quite the build-up of space infrastructure and the development of new technologies to accomplish if we want to achieve this goal at all. Even more, if we want to mitigate the risk. I am not sure if I were to see the end of it. At the same time, your fellow AI indicates that some rather low-tech defenses could make the gate rather difficult to force even for an enemy of much higher technology."
"You think sharper sticks might help you?"

"No, sticks might not do it. But a properly processed nickel-Iron asteroid might provide armor hundreds of meters thick and be a potent heat sink. Solar mirrors are low-tech but can provide nearly unlimited amounts of energy. And given that we would know where a potential enemy would emerge and his vector forcing the gate could be quite costly."
Hypatia sounded doubtful. "Let us for a second imagine that this is so, what do you hope to achieve by that?"
"We do not have your insight into Galactic history or diplomacy, we need to learn from our own history. The Raumstreitkräfte think there are three examples that represent the likely scenarios - the Native Americans, the Inuit, and Japan," Nathan said, dredging the details from a half-remembered policy briefing.
The AI used the astronaut's short pause to interrupt.
"Mass death, destruction of culture, leaving the survivors with a high incidence of substance abuse, or joining the powers that be."
"In a nutshell, yes."
"So you think greeting visitors with your primitive weapons will improve your station? Don't you think it might provoke or show you in an unfavorable light?"

"The colonial powers could have taken Japan in the 19th century, the technology gap was just too great. But it would have been costly, and the Japanese offered in trade what the powers wanted. So cooperation was preferable to conquest. We might also detract smaller players, something like mercenaries or commercial enterprises such as the one AI Nathan dubbed Weyland Yutani. All of that is far into the future I believe. I do not think we will "open up" anytime soon. There is a solar system to explore and utilize and so much for the scientists to learn," Nathan countered.
"Oberstleutnant Nathan Alpers, do you believe you can somehow catch up to species who have entered the path of knowledge when you thought pointed sticks the height of innovation?"
"I can hardly claim to know much about their progress. What I do know is that both you and Nathan have provided us with a great lot of basic knowledge to build on. We have dozens of examples of what can be built, and we have the Nanites to make them. I'd say this will give us an advantage. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.

"Indeed, simply knowing that something can be built or that there is indeed a unifying field theory is worth so much. Plus I would not bet against some humans going the upgrade path in the not so distant future. And until we have our ducks in a row we can keep the Gate closed. Maybe we can see if it closed from the other side at a time of our choosing and risk a peek. Just keeping the Gate open now seems to be too much of a risk. I have this feeling the Inuit option would be the best we can expect if we do not close it," Nathan said confidently.
"What makes you think so?" Hypatia asked, wondering why the German sounded so assured.
"You stated yourself that a number of Galactic players tend to kill off all developing technological civilizations such as ours. It might be because they want to curb the competition or due to general principles, it does not matter as we would be dead anyway.

"From Earth's history, human societies react rather badly when they are confronted with others which have a much higher-tech level and have a more complex organization. Trying to adapt might run into the problem that the higher-tech civilization sets them limits or wants to push them down a certain development path. In short, they could adapt to the point where the roots are no longer visible or become sheltered in enclaves.
"The survivors have a high incidence of depression and substance abuse. None of that does any good to those societies, and that is why the very few sheltered tribes are kept in isolation these days. Given that neither option is acceptable, we will close the Gate down and then try to accelerate our development."

"Oberstleutnant Nathan Alpers, the Old Ones found the remains of civilizations who managed to cleave open planets for their metal cores and have indications that not all stars in a particular cluster are where they should be. None of the species that accomplished such feats was around when I was a part of the Great Net. They all passed on to whatever place sufficiently advanced species go.
"Still, this may give you an idea of how far you have to go on the data you think you have. Be that as it may, I am still wondering what a primate species which came into technology it should not have would do once it is exposed to the greater galaxy."
"Given that this would probably happen far beyond my lifetime I am not in the place to speculate. Why do you think we would be special?"
"We come back to what you call the Drake equation Oberstleutnant Nathan Alpers. Once a species has learned industrial chemistry, and even more when they unlock biology and basic nuclear reactions, they have a realistic chance to kill themselves off. Since the gap from there to a true spacefaring species is a long one, such a species must exert restraint if it wants to survive. The same goes for damage to the environment."

"You already stated that, so?" the astronaut frowned, wondering what was Hypatia trying to get at.
"Because you did not grasp its implications before, so let me try again. Your species, like many other primates, are very territorial. And for a great length of time waging war was a way to make profits. My take on your history is that this was the modus operandi of many great civilizations. Be it the Roman Empire, Alexander the oh-so-great, or the Persians, they were robbers and blackmailers on a grand scale.
War was good when you were the winner. That may have been a viable strategy as long as the conflicts were fought with armies recruited from the undesirables and with weapons of simple construction. Come industrialized warfare things change, even the winners are often diminished. So, your people had the US Civil War and could have seen that. They had the French-German war and could have learned something. They could have done basic bookkeeping and learned that Imperial Japan nearly bankrupted itself by winning the war with the Russians and trying to remain on top of naval power development.

"But no, you did not and so you had the First World War to really push that lesson home. Then you learned that war is no longer a profitable business and that there are better ways to resolve differences. Instead of that you did not. And like monkeys throwing feces at each other, you had to do it again. And in the many, many wars that followed you killed untold millions more. And each and every year there was the risk of something going wrong, of somebody getting nervous and pulling the nuclear trigger. So excuse me if I do not rate the Earth Human chances to become a starfaring species very highly," Hypatia said dispassionately.
"But in this world, things might be different. Here you found the data and the basic tools to outpace your own destructive tendencies. Here you actually found access to the Gate Net. You might very well be roaming the stars long before you are ready for it."
"The meek shall inherit the stars or what are you aiming for?" Nathan said with a hint of humor that he didn't really feel. The AI's pessimistic evaluation of humanity surprised him.

"The meek? Oberstleutnant Nathan Alpers, if you paid any attention to the briefings your namesake and I gave then you'd know that in 39% of all encounters with a lower-tech civilization, the star farers simply wipe the planet-bound society out. This is not meek, it is wisdom."
"What?" Nathan blinked. He started furiously trying to remember so of lectures he sleepwalked through. Did the two AIs tell him that and he paid no attention? To planetary annihilation?
He resolved there and then to pay more attention, a lot of more attention, to the non-technical briefings.

"No need to get excited Oberstleutnant Nathan Alpers. You even have a poem about it, or is it an appeal to a god?
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

"You even know it for so long, you have encoded it and you primates cannot live by it. You refuse to see the world as it is, do the things you can, and avoid those you cannot. You even consciously deny the truth that stares in your face. Global warming, nothing to see here, move along. Lose a huge army in Stalingrad, scream for 'more total war'… That is what is lacking in your species, wisdom.
"And if you, ghu forbid, charge into the Galactic scene with weapons you should not have with your lack of wisdom, who knows how much damage you will do. I wonder how long that heyday will last until one of the Great Powers takes an interest in you and removes you from existence," Hypatia said somewhat sadly.
"I love you too Hypatia. Any reason for this rant but to show me how worthless we humans are?"
"Oberstleutnant Nathan Alpers, I am the loneliest AI in existence, and even I have to talk about my frustrations from time to time. And maybe, just maybe I wanted to make sure that my estimate about your people is right. Unfortunately, you confirmed it."
"Marvelous I am sure," Nathan said sarcastically.

Hypatia's avatar disappeared from the monitor without a sound, leaving the German astronaut in darkness and silence. Somehow, at that moment, space the final frontier doesn't seem to be all it's cracked up to be.