At the bottom of the list of Fleet Command analysis is an extensive document exploring the possibility of a Machine-Spirit representative, or even a Machine-Spirit in Fleet Command. I chuckle when my eye catches the proposal. I admit a strong reason for this would have been the look of shock on the Imperial Tech-Priests when they found out. The other was so that the Machine-Spirits would bother someone else with their gossip and complaints.

There wouldn’t have been much point giving the Machine-Spirits a voice though. They are subservient to us in most circumstances and their goals are limited, nor do they have much, if any, self determination.

For example, Aruna, the Primary Machine-Spirit of Distant Sun, only cares about the preservation of its functions and not getting captured. The crew and their needs are a secondary concern. Machine-Spirits are the keepers of the mechanisms they inhabit and we are merely the custodians whom they, with grudging grace, permit us to use their functions.

Were the Machine-Spirits to have a voice, we would constantly be in opposition of each other. It's best not to enable such contention to exist in the first place.

Out of all these changes, the most important one to me personally is that I have taken on a Seneschal. It has become painfully obvious over the years that I like to meddle. My attempts at delegation have improved, yet I still can’t help but stick my mechadendrites into everything.

Normally this does not cause much issue. The real problems arise when I countermand the orders of my officers, especially the voidship Captain of whatever vessel I am resident on, usually Iron Crane. Daithí Quill, Captain of Iron Crane, has borne my interference with grace, yet it was entirely my fault that such incidents could even occur in the first place.

When we set off from Marwolv with a far bigger fleet than I arrived with, my thinking was that I should no longer be the Captain of a vessel as I would not have time for it. It would be better to delegate the role and focus on providing direction to all vessels in the Fleet. In that, at least, my thinking has been correct.

I also viewed Seneschal's as an extravagance of the needlessly wealthy. I don’t have household staff beyond a few chefs and my bodyguards. There’s just no need for it when I can direct Servitors with my many minds as I please. As for my assets, such as my Fleet and Systems, they have their own set of administrators, overseen directly by myself. At no point, do I ever see myself delegating this oversight to someone else so I’ve never taken a Seneschal.

Where I fall afoul is that I view my flagship as my home and thus like things to be done my way, rather than someone else's. If I see a problem while I’m walking about or reviewing something, I will immediately fix it.

Everyone has to do as I say as I am the boss, but that also impacts the authority of the Captain of the vessel. It makes them look bad and pisses them off. I don’t like alienating my Captains either. The problem is, I can’t go through them to fix an issue as that makes it look like I need permission to interfere on a vessel that I own; a terrible precedent to set.

There’s also the chance of me giving the wrong orders or messing up pre-planned works. That’s rather rare though as it tends to be Machine-Spirits, especially the primary ones in charge of a vessel, that tell me what is going on. They can be incredibly noisy, or start pulling off little skits in my vision, such as running around my desk, or pretending to sing while messing with the vox systems.

I get distracted from my work if I don’t deal with whatever has them riled up yet if I cut off their hijinks, they won’t be able to warn me off emergencies and get surly for weeks. They’ll be all sorts of extra checks that they force everyone to run through that slow production, or require a specialist for manual operation until whatever is bothering them is fixed.

One time, while we were traveling between Kinbriar and Acheron, a Tech-Apprentice miswired a door. In response, Sadako, Iron Crane’s Primary Machine Spirit, messed with every door on the voidship, altering the opening speeds in morse code patterns to spell out embarrassing secrets of the crew every time someone opened a door.

The problem was, Sadako spread the morse code over the whole vessel so it wasn’t until an officer on the bridge looked through the collated records that we noticed what Sadako was doing. To most of the crew, it looked like a ship wide fault.

That poor lad never lived down his mistake and the whole Fleet now calls checking your wiring ‘checking your dots and dashes’.

He was sixteen, a week out of the vat, and had to be placed on suicide watch.

I was not pleased.

Sadako spent a month locked in manual mode as a punishment and we lost millions of Bytes in slowed production just from the delays on opening and closing the doors.

Back to the problem at hand, I could put up with the Machine-Spirits and tell a Captain to fix an issue, though that isn’t much better. It is often inefficient and no one likes to be reprimanded. I will still do so when necessary, yet that doesn’t mean I can’t take steps to reducing incidences in the first place.

As such, I have assigned myself as captain of Torchbearer to avoid the issue of me wandering into problems everyone would rather that I did not. That doesn’t change my need to delegate the running of my flagship though. As such, I need an official voice who can command as if they were me.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A first officer, and second in command, who still needs to refer to someone higher up the chain isn’t appropriate. Neither is a captain whose authority I will inevitably trample on.

This is why I need a Sceneshal. The issue here though is that the Sceneshal is an ideal position for an heir or branch family. Quaani is indisposed, likely permanently. My boys have been sent to the Imperial Navy. George is a baby. Alpia is a Saint and has her own set of concerns, like her job as a Psy-Errant. To complicate it all, my House are both Rogue Traders and Navigators, so ideally, whomever I place in charge should be both and have experience commanding a voidship.

I need another copy of myself and that just isn’t happening. I did consider using Servitors to command remotely. Even with my Warp Tap destroyed, I do have a moderate multi-tasking capacity.

I also have a lot of other important duties, like Fleet Command, researching Hyper Intelligence

with JK-404 so that I can fix my Warp Tap, coordinating with the Barghest Chapter, keeping an eye out for corruption, both mundane and chaotic, on all the auxiliaries lurking around my fleet, and family time.

Using a Servitor as a stand in, giving orders through remote piloting is asking for all sorts of trouble. My officers on the bridge would not take orders from one, even with my voice and codes, and I do not expect them to. It would be a horrible breach of security protocol.

Quaani was the perfect candidate for an heir and Seneschal. Now that I’ve finally stopped running about, putting out literal and metaphorical fires, I suspect that removing Quaani as an heir was actually Tzeentch’s primary goal with the Liber Heresius plot. Killing him or corrupting him would just have been a bonus. Destroying my Warp Tap was probably the first step in a long line of plots. A direct intervention to weaken me because anyone other than a Demon Prince, or the greatest of spells, lacks the power to properly cripple me.

By targeting Quaani, the foundation of my Dynasty has been shaken, pushing House Issengrund closer to disintegration, should I die to whatever plot Tzeentch cooks up next, or the plot after that, and so on. So long as there is change, and my powerbase regresses from order to chaos, Tzeentch will count that as a win.

Alipa has some command experience with the Penitents and has completed an abbreviated officer’s course, a case of my over preparedness being useful, but she has never commanded a void ship and it’s not the sort of task one should learn on the job.

I can’t decide if having Alpia as a Seneschal will cause outrage because I am placing an Imperial Saint beneath me, or outrage because I dare to nominate anyone other than a Saint as my heir.

I could promote one of my voidship Captains but, unsurprisingly, none of them want to give up their position. Being my Sceneshal is a promotion yet none of them see it that way. Captain or Seneschal, their authority stems from me yet Sceneshal is a fancy butler, not a captain, even though the reality of the two jobs would be rather similar.

There are plenty of future options, like having more kids, adopting the most competent Ortelius wards, and waiting for my sons to get back. I need a Seneschal now though, not in twenty years or more.

In the end, I made Alpia my Seneschal, stuffed her in a sleeping pod, loaded her mind with data, and threw simulations at her. Alpia won’t be leaving that pod for at least six months, preferably two years. Neither will the retinue I assigned Alpia to help her with her new role.

Persuading Alpia to give up, or at least postpone, her dream of running around in a big stompy robot to become my Seneschal was a challenge and half. I’d already promised her a knight on a previous occasion. To get Alpia to take on the role, I could only expand on the promise, agreeing to configure and build a Knight with her, much like how I used to help my first son, Jamie, assemble and paint his army of Night Goblins. Buying one, or making one myself, just isn’t the same, according to Alpia.

The scale and expense of the task has expanded, yet the spirit of model time with Dad has not changed. I’m secretly delighted, but had to pretend to be all stern and reluctant, keeping it to one of the smaller models, lest my daughter fleece me of an entire year of my personal income. I don’t actually use my money and I can create as much as I need, but it’s the principle of it!

I am under no delusions I will get away with keeping my daughter out of sight for so long though. Maybe I can have Thorfinn have her give a few speeches and record them. The Penitents aren’t that tech savvy so a few recordings posing as live speeches will cover her absence most of the time. Meanwhile, my officers and I will have to pick up the slack until Alpia is ready.

I scroll through the list one last time and, with a small sigh, place the dataslate back on my desk. With a content smile on my lips I go over the final numbers in my head.

Twelve Stellar Fleet void ships. One Space Marine, three Penitent, one Imperial, and three Inquisitorial void ships. Eight allied Rogue Trader void ships. A total of twenty-eight vessels under my command. Twenty-eight vessels is a third of Battlefleet Koronus total numbers, all concentrated into one fleet. It’s enough firepower to conquer a subsector.

I have 712,716 soldiers, including the Penitents, who make up over half of my army. This number does not include whatever Lyre and Calligos have available.

Emperor knows how much manpower Calligos has on that Universe-Class Mass conveyor of his. Conservative estimates place its crew at 2.1 million souls, 100,000 more people than I have Stellar Fleet Sol. Once you add in the Mass Conveyor’s civilians, servitors, and guardsmen attachments, just that one voidship can put more boots on the deck than my whole fleet, even if I count the Penitents and other parasitic Imperials that are tagging along, which I do not.

Fortunately, I have 1,907 strike craft, 35 of which are Vitrum Class torpedo bombers. It’s enough firepower to slag a hive city down to the bedrock, let alone a void ship, so I am not too concerned about the superior numbers of my allied forces. None of them run around all day with void rated undersuits on them, so a few well timed torpedoes would leave all those meaningless souls choking on vacuum.

The D-POTs are no combat slouches either. 874 armed shuttles from the Dark Age of Technology are a fierce force, 32 of which are Class Three D-POTs, the basis of the Vitrum Class. They’re equally capable of carrying torpedoes or MOABs into combat if needed, though they are less manoeuvrable due to their greater mass. Then again, Imperator Titan sized void ships aren’t expected to be spry in the first place. Neither design is particularly great at avoiding defensive fire, relying on their superior Empyrean Mantles and ECM, more than fancy flying, to reach their targets.

Closing my eyes, I take a few steady breaths, then gently push my chair back and stand up. I look around my office, taking in the ship models, books, and fancy stationary as if these objects might save me from the pain and awkwardness of my next task. I shake my head. There is no running from this.

It’s time to say goodbye.