By the ti they reached Larkspur Haven again, the return had already turned into more work than rest.
Aurelian had spent most of the trip reviewing the archived data tied to the sealed vessel in the bastion, and the more he looked, the more his interest slowly turned into mild curiosity about the ship.
At first glance, it had only been a large warship held back inside an old shipyard, but once Astra managed to pull more complete records from the damaged archive layers, it beca clear that it was not just another heavy hull waiting to be powered on.
It belonged to a class he had never seen in any of the records they had until now.
That alone was sothing he had never expected
The design lineage was old, but not crude, and it did not fit neatly into the categories he knew.
It was larger than the cruisers currently under his command, but it still fell short of a true line battleship in mass and overall bulk.
It occupied an awkward middle space, though the more he studied its structure, the less awkward that space seed.
The ship had not been built as a compromise. It had been built for a role of its own.
According to the recovered files, its class designation translated imperfectly into the language that the Human Alliance uses, but the closest aning Astra could produce was "Waywarden".
Aurelian read that na twice, then kept going.
The Waywarden-class was described as a long-range territorial response vessel, built to cover large regions without depending entirely on fixed gates or static defense grids.
It had the firepower to suppress smaller fleets, enough onboard craft to scout and project force beyond visual range, and enough endurance to remain on patrol for long stretches without needing constant support.
It was not the strongest ship in a direct fleet engagent, and the archive did not even go in that direction when it was being built, but that was not its purpose. The whole design was built around flexibility.
"It really was being kept for a reason," Lysara said, leaning over one side of the display once they were back inside the command center at Larkspur Haven.
Aurelian nodded.
"Yes."
She read a few more lines, then let out a quiet breath.
"This kind of ship would be a nightmare for a frontier region."
"For the people defending it," Aurelian said, "or the people attacking it?"
"For anyone who thought distance would protect them."
That was close enough to his own conclusion that he did not bother correcting it.
The ship’s biggest advantage was not its guns, though it had more than enough of those. It was not even the mixed launch capacity in its internal bays, useful as that would be. What set it apart was its transit system.
The Waywarden did not rely only on standard warp movent, and it did not require a stargate either.
Instead, it carried a short-form transit core capable of opening a controlled corridor through folded space, allowing the vessel to jump directly across extrely long distances, provided a calibrated marker had been placed at the destination first.
Without that marker, the transit would be unstable to the point of being suicidal, so it was not a system that could simply be used on instinct. But inside the territory that had already been prepared, it changed everything.
Aurelian looked over the jump constraints in detail, checking for hidden costs.
Energy demand was high, but not unreasonable for a vessel of its scale. Cooldown intervals existed, though they were far shorter than what he would have expected from technology of that kind.
Fleet transport was impossible, which ant it could not replace a stargate network, but that had never been its intended role.
The Waywarden was built to move alone, reach places quickly, hit hard, and hold a line until heavier support arrived.
It was the kind of ship that made frontier defense less stressful and more manageable in areas with constant friction.
And in a region like this, that mattered.
Larkspur Haven was still weak; the bastion was only half integrated, and the territory under his control was nowhere near secure enough to support the kind of infrastructure he ultimately wanted.
A fixed stargate network was still the long-term answer, but stargates took ti, material, labor, and the confidence that the location would not be overrun before construction was complete. A ship that could bypass part of that problem had obvious value.
"If you had three of these," Lysara said, still reading, "you could answer threats all across a whole frontier chain before most enemies even finished forming up."
"If I had three of these," Aurelian replied, "I would also need enough support to maintain them, rearm them, crew them, and actually exploit the response ti instead of wasting it."
She glanced at him.
"That ans yes."
Aurelian didn’t answer, just showing a defeated smile as he nodded.
Lysara smiled faintly and said nothing after that.
The records continued.
The vessel’s armant was broad enough that it would have looked excessive on a smaller fra, but here it made sense.
Heavy spinal batteries were supported by secondary energy arrays, kinetic broadside groups, layered point defense, missile cells, and a hangar system large enough to give the ship both reconnaissance reach and independent strike options.
It was not specialized in any one direction, which in a strict doctrinal sense might have been considered inefficient, but Aurelian could see exactly why it had been designed that way.
A ship ant to patrol remote space could not afford to be narrow. It needed answers for a wide range of threats because it would not always have ti to call for sothing more suitable.
The further he looked, the more satisfied he beca.
He had expected an impressive relic.
What he had found was a ship that solved problems he actually had.
Even so, that did not change the imdiate reality.
He still could not bring it online yet.
There were limits to how many ship-girls he could contract before the strain beca inefficient, and while he was not at the absolute edge, he was close enough that adding another high-grade vessel now would only make the rest of the structure less stable.
A stronger fleet did not help him if the chain of support behind it remained unfinished. It would just beco another demand layered on top of everything else.
That was why, once the ship finished docking and they crossed back into Larkspur Haven proper, Aurelian did not head straight for a ritual chamber or begin making preparations to awaken the Waywarden.
Instead, he reviewed his own fleet structure again.
Then he reviewed it a second ti.
The answer did not change.
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