"Beyond the weapons I ntioned, I also carry a full complent of industrial machine tools and power generation equipnt. The Great Ivan's cargo bays hold approximately four million cubic tres of volu. Fill them with qualifying premium food product — solid content no less than seventy percent — and everything aboard is yours."
The Captain took another asured pull of vodka and waited.
Kian did the arithtic. Four million cubic tres. Four million tonnes, roughly. The primary livestock on this world was the guana-beast — a gene-optimised poultry variant with exceptional at yield, roughly equivalent to five standard chickens per animal, producing around six kilograms of usable flesh. Account for packaging, oils, and seasoning in the finished can, and the number ca out to approximately four hundred million animals.
Four hundred million.
Kian sat with that number and felt sothing behind his eyes.
"To do this deal," he said carefully, "I'd need to source four hundred million guana-beasts."
The Captain shrugged with the ease of a man who had been waiting ten years and found the experience acceptable.
"I've been here a decade. I don't mind continuing. The counterparty is less important than the transaction. Honestly, I'd be reasonably pleased if the rebels overthrew the Governor — it would simplify the negotiation considerably."
With the business side established, Kian shifted to a different subject — one he'd been thinking about longer.
"Captain — your ho world is an industrial world. Do they build warships there? Is it possible for soone like to reach the stars the way you do?"
The Captain produced a sound that was technically laughter.
"The void calls to n of ambition. I understand it completely. But I have to give you an honest answer, and it will sting.
Unless you were born into an ancient and extraordinarily powerful lineage, a planetary Baron — which is what you are — cannot own a warship. Not realistically."
"It's not sold to private individuals?"
"It's not that it's unavailable — it's that the barrier is not the price. Do you know how many shipyards orbit my world? How many vessels are under construction simultaneously? Three hundred. Ships of every class. So of them have been under construction for a full millennium and remain unfinished. So have been in progress for two centuries and have only the keel laid.
I won't even go into the resource requirents. The construction tiscale for a warship — a proper one, two to three kilotres in length — is asured in centuries. If a private individual commissioned one, he would be dead before delivery. His children would be dead. His grandchildren might see it completed, if the shipyard survived."
The chanicus built to last. Their product was excellent — durable, powerful, precisely engineered. But a culture that treats every rivet as an act of worship and every coat of prir as a sacrantal act tends toward extended tilines.
Warship transactions happened on thousand-year planning horizons. rchant dynasties that wanted to add a capital ship to their fleet had to assess whether their organisation would survive long enough to take delivery, and whether the shipyard would survive long enough to complete the work.
"You could go another route," the Captain continued, warming to the subject as the vodka worked through him. "Find sothing unfinished and take it over. If a patron commissioned a warship nine centuries ago and their organisation collapsed in the eighth, you can step in, cover the remaining construction costs, and receive a new vessel in a century rather than ten.
You could also capture one — though I would caution against underestimating what even a freighter's defensive armant looks like up close. With a shuttle and a few dozen soldiers you are not boarding a warship successfully.
There are also derelicts. Void ships drifting in empty space, so of them in surprisingly good condition — occasional cases where restarting the engines is sufficient. Though derelicts tend to have residents of a kind you'd rather not encounter."
A bottle and a half of vodka had lowered the Captain's filters considerably. Information was flowing freely. Kian absorbed it all.
He moved to one more question.
"Captain — I understand that operating between star systems requires authorisation. How does that work?"
"Correct. Without a warrant you're a pirate, and pirates find that most ports refuse to service them and so actively shoot at them.
The Imperium is vast and the authorisation structures are varied, but I organise them into four categories.
First: the Bilateral Warrant. Authority to operate between two specific worlds, nothing further. The Great Ivan holds one of these. My route, my only route.
Second: the Sector Warrant. Freedom to trade across a sector — dozens to nearly a hundred worlds. Typically issued by a Sector Governor. Rare and valuable.
Third: the Multi-Sector Warrant. The right to operate across multiple sectors, potentially thousands of worlds. These belong to the ancient Rogue Trader dynasties — the ones that have been operating since before most of us can rember. The authority to grant them cos from very high indeed.
And fourth—"
He paused for effect, and poured the last of the second bottle.
"The Golden Warrant. There is no comparison. Every other form of wealth becos trivial beside it.
Carry one and you are a jewel in the Imperium's crown — the Imperium itself would be diminished by your absence.
These are written by hand. By the God-Emperor Himself, or by the Regent Macharius. They co accompanied by a fleet, an army capable of crushing any opposition, ownership rights to planets or entire star sectors, and the absolute freedom to travel anywhere in the Imperium's domain as though it were your own private garden.
The power attached to a Golden Warrant is beyond any other authority a mortal being can legitimately hold."
[End of Chapter 234]
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