‘Did you hear me? You would make a… You are not listening to me, brother. Is it the warp effect dulling your thoughts?’

‘Can you see that?’ Praxa­medes asked, lifting a finger to point out of the great arched window. ‘That light.’

Nem­etus looked, scanning quickly across the stars until he saw what Praxa­medes was indicating. A bluish globe.

‘Some kind of dust lensing?’ suggested Nem­etus, though his hearts started beating a little faster.

‘After-warp mirage?’ said Praxa­medes, with equal lack of conviction.

Nem­etus looked carefully, trying to see with his eyes, not his hopes.

‘Too regular to be a star or other stellar phenomenon. It’s a station,’ said the lieutenant, hearts speeding. ‘A star base of some kind. Outer system Mandeville defence, perhaps?’

Praxa­medes shared a glance and the ghost of a smile. ‘I guess we won’t need these any more,’ he said, lifting his dataslate.

‘I will keep mine,’ Nem­etus replied. ‘You should report this to the captain.’

‘If it’s an Imperial station, that would be almost a miracle.’

‘Maybe those prayers of the Navigators did some good after all,’ said Nem­etus.

Praxa­medes nodded and hurried away.

Nem­etus turned his attention back to the window and wondered what new challenges were coming. There was no way it could be an Imperial facility. That would be far too convenient for a ship of Fleet Quintus.

Closing with the seemingly dormant space station, the Ithraca’s Vengeance was a shadow of its former power. Only one bank of void shields was operational, and those only available if they ran on power diverted from the engine array. The ship could have top speed or energy shields, but not both. Similarly, augurs and long-range communications were both crippled by the crash-drop from warp space – translating from the unprotected warp to the crushing reality of realspace had overloaded nearly every sensor spine and vox-circuit. Reactor power was steadier than before, but only eighty per cent of normal operational capacity. Red-robed tech-priests were all over the strategium, the fragrance of their incense burners and holy lubricants almost blotting out the stale sweat and bodily fluid odour of monotask servitors and sleep-deprived armoury attendants.

Aeschelus was aware that he was not at full capabilities either. The flattening of the warp that had stranded the ship worked both ways, shielding realspace from much of the warp’s interaction. The Navigators had tried to explain the interconnectivity of the two realms but Aeschelus had got lost in the analogies, unable to twist his thinking to the dimensionless properties of warp space whilst thinking about physi­cal beings. The short, crude version was that the lack of texture in the warp had a similarly dulling effect on the minds of sentient creatures, including the crew.