“No shit?” She was vaguely impressed. “Well, that sounds fairly ominous...”

“Here’s our racial advancement template.” I activated the Band she’d slipped on her wrist in imitation of my own, the holo came up, and she scanned it quickly, eyebrows rising quickly.

“That is so damn bloody overpowered. Six times Karma...” She shook her head despite herself. “Do we wear big red S’s on our chests, too?”

“Hope’s Curseline does.” She rolled her eyes, and grinned despite herself. “Diana prefers the eagle WW.” I pointed at the chart. “You need to get to Rantha Six and your Regeneration as quickly as possible. It’s kind of a real priority for us, not having to fear being blown apart by a stray tank round and stuff.”

“That sounds like a remarkably good idea,” she said agreeably. She looked around pointedly, then at the Band on her wrist as we entered the rest of the living area. Two other teenaged Ranthas in different outfits, hair, and faces looked up, and waved at her. She blinked and waved back.

“So, techworld?” I nodded. “Erm, what kind?”

“I would love to say Star Wars or Trekkie, but we got the shit end of the spectrum.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Grimdark? Ugh.”

“Our mission is to clean up the galaxy and tear down the Warp Gods.”

“Well, we’ve definitely got something to occupy our time then,” she accepted without batting an eye. “Uh, just how many of us are there?”

“We’re closing in on a hundred thousand.”

She almost stopped in place. “Uh, a hundred thousand of us? With that Stat line? Are you serious?”

“Totally. Several thousand are Tens already, and the vast majority are beyond Six. Only the noobs less than a year old aren’t at Six.”

She nodded. “Okay, understood. You have a decent spot for rapid Karma?”

“Yes, and you’ll have sisters and Briggs Brothers around to help you Level. You can start taking some risks after you hit Six, but be careful before then.”

“Got it.” She thought about it a minute, and if her eyes got a little excited at the mention of Briggs, I didn’t notice, truly. “Anything else that I should be aware of?”

“We’ll have to test it, but I’m pretty sure that you’ve got a Knowledge/Lore Talent for technology that will have your sister eggheads hissing in jealous fits.”

“Seriously?” She wrinkled her nose. We were all action junkies, so finding out your Secondary Talent was not one that made you a combat god was low on the enthusiasm scale.

“Yes, but there’s no need to focus on it until you reach Rantha/10. You’re going to need ALL the Stat boosts. Your Expert Ranks should basically be reserved for Tech Skills. Other than that, go nuts. Pilot and Mecha-driver are probably suitable, you’ll need them for design help,” I noted, and her eyes lit up at the thought of piloting a giant robot, or an X-Wing.

“How fast?” she had to ask.

“For you...” I looked up at the sky. “Don’t go Deep. You need to reach Ten and fast. You’re not going to have time to indulge in all the side stuff. Your Rantha Levels give you tons of crap all by themselves, and are soooo pricey. You can side-dip, but if it slows you down reaching Ten, don’t.”

“Damn.” She considered the implications of that. “So, Expert and Melee straight to Ten? Buying the side Classes with full Karma?”

“You’re going to be too busy to indulge much. That said, you need to get to Ten, get your Curseline set up, and the galaxy will be yours to explore!”

Her smile grew wider. “We really do think alike. Er, do I call you Sama? Feels kind of weird?”

“Everybody just calls me Mom, although there’s actually no genetic ties between us.”

“Right, Hag Curse. Mom.” She laughed under her breath.

“Also, I’m an Exemplar Lite, and you’re an Advanced Hag. Enjoy the +4 to all Stats, your kids will only be natural Atlanteans with +2.”

“Ex Lite?” She sucked in a breath, looking at me. “So jealous!”

“Meh, your Talent still means you are better with tech. I’ll just be better at everything else, and I heal faster.” I made a brush-off gesture. “The Rantha racial bonuses are the huge things.”

“Right. What about Marks?”

“Noobs aren’t allowed to form a Markspace with one another. You’re just a Templated person right now, you’ve really got no ‘Ronnie’ identity. You match up with another Rantha, you’ll resonate and end up one person, two bodies.”

“Ah. And this goes away?”

“30 Charisma, or Level Eight. Most use the time to build their own private support organization before joining the greater Markspace, and use the Quanta for communication, and/or mix in Marked from other teams to help with communication.”

She wrinkled her nose again. “I have to Level,” she agreed eagerly, lights flashing in her dark eyes. “What are you up to?”

“Thirteen Racial, Eleven Melee... no, Twelve. Leveled up a few months ago fighting a Tekron.” That seemed to amuse her for some reason.

“I’m guessing post-Ten Levels don’t come easy?” she inquired.

“They generally require accomplishing some pretty epic shit, and the Racial Levels especially. But since the Racial Levels drive the Stat bonuses, gotta get them. The optimal thing is you getting to Ten Racial, and then shooting your Expert Levels to the moon as fast as possible so you can get all that high TL technology for us with that monster Talent of yours.”

“Expert.” She rolled her eyes again. “Why me?”

“’Cause half the cost of a PC Class?”

“And I’m racing you to Twenty with an NPC Class?”

“Epic technology discoveries are a good way to advance your Rantha Class Levels,” I pointed out. “Full Attack Bonus with them. You may lose out on some Melee bonuses, but you’re not going to fall behind in general combat effectiveness, like, oh, shooting megacannons, or something.”

“Ugh, Natural Swordswoman, so wasted on a born geek.”

“And the top end +16 Strength mod isn’t?”

“I’m not giving either one up!”

“I wouldn’t, either.”

------

What to do next, what to do next...

Briggs was lagging me by a Level because he was reliant on the tech curve. He didn’t want to launch the Tribute until we hit TL 15, and given the amount of work that had to be done, that was fine. Once he launched, he could start about being the only fleet that could cross the Rift by flying outside the galaxy and coming back in, and then see about claiming the Duke Corunsun heritage.

In the meantime, the Celestial Tribute was also our most advanced ship production facility, and it was probably no coincidence that the inside of the Warpzone turned out to be chock bloody full of Energized ores. If the Mekkers had known how bloody productive turning worlds into Warpzones were, there would be no stopping them from trying to replicate what had been done here.

Happily, it gave the kids tons of stuff to work on, and a factory making factories that could make mobile diggers and refineries was in full production by now. The total production of stuff being pulled out of the ground, vivified to remove Warp taint, and processed equaled the production of the whole rest of the planet by now, mostly because the environment wasn’t so hostile once everything native to it was dead. We also didn’t have to be circumspect, although the scale of our mining efforts around the exterior had definitely been long noticed, and the powers-that-be were gnashing their teeth over their desire to cut in on our profits.

We did enter some joint contracts for salvaging some of the destroyed necropoli, basically just to keep them happy, with cities being torn apart for their durasteel and other components, and repurposed elsewhere. If they didn’t have Rantha Corps enthusiasts guarding their sites and tended to suffer more from remnants of the dead, Axiomites, random xenos and ‘vores, and Warp Events happening distressingly often, well, hey, that’s why they were making the money, right?

There was a huge upturn in banditry, brigandage, and piracy first-timers, mostly because of the lack of those living to be second-timers and telling them it was a bad idea. The annoyed lads, upset at people shooting up their stuff, followed the money back to some wealthy corporate and noble interests, and soon their successors decided that the consequences of such minor actions coming home so violently wasn’t how they wanted their days to end. There was also hefty amounts of extortion and blackmail going on, employees transferred to undesirable locations, wild share price manipulations, and soon coldly smiling Ranthas were ensconced in several board rooms where they weren’t wanted... followed by the removal of several board members the kids didn’t want there.

Just corporate politics at its finest, everything done in good fun; bury the bodies in the shadows, sue them with their own money and take all of their stuff, and if they were really annoying, cashier them into the Planetary Guard and send them off to fight some goblins somewhere and die in the Emperor’s name, all for love of profit.

The Phlo charts of The Map were expanding every day, as were the charts of the Underweb, and the coordinates of world after world new Ranthas were arriving at and setting up Rift Foci some of our Beacon psions could latch onto and direct a Riftcut to, since having a Ten at every new planet we arrived at was still an impossibility at this point.

Every new planet was also a place to set up the Green and Gold, and Rantha Corp production facilities, and for kids to start pacifying.

Or, as it usually turned out the first time, to fight tooth and nail against rebels backed by rogue psions, Warp Cultists, alien infiltrators, religious zealots, raiding drow, marauding goblins, random horrors from the void, necromantic plagues, rampaging sentient machines, or the like.

To be sure, not all the planets of the Empire were warzones. Only a small fraction of them, actually. But the ones the kids in the Imperial Marines were sent to definitely were, and the ones we were visiting in ships of our own tended to be highly populated, with all the violent strata that existed in mega-cities and provided so many growth opportunities for us.

They were all Sixes, which meant very, very hard to kill. Pretty much all of them had planetary control in mind when they started setting up shop, and if the locals didn’t like it, well, that’s why they started low.

There were dozens of Alias-class scoutships out there now, expanding the Phlo charts to each and every one of the local stars, finding the pathways between them, and making a roadway across the galaxy. A specific set of them was working on finding a route around the Rift, with a lot of stars in the way.

The explorers had run across Dark Matter entities out there in the void between stars, things the size of major planets not made of normal matter... perhaps made of madness wasn’t too far off things. These things didn’t seem to react when ships zipped by in the Phlogiston Rivers, but if they were just racing through the void, these things... stirred.