From Skaven to God of War

Chapter 432, Deep Space

Passing through the bizarre subspace, a huge fleet successfully landed on the empty starry sky.

Qi didn't know whether it was right or wrong for him to take on this expedition. Standing on the bridge, his eyes fell into the distance. The last ratman reconnaissance ship that traveled back and forth on this route was indeed very diligent and did a good job.

At least when the flag appeared here through the subspace node, it would not be faced with the vast starry sky. The target could be observed even with the naked eye, a huge galaxy with two stars. But even so, it would take another 20 years for the First Expedition Fleet to successfully reach the target star field.

Considering the time required for the subsequent war of conquest, it might take Qi nearly a hundred years to complete this colonial war, and the history of the ratmen on the starry sky is only two hundred years. Even whether Qi's life can support him to complete this war is a huge question.

In order to return alive, to the Ratman Empire alive, Qi had to go into hibernation for a long time in the days that followed to preserve his life.

During the twenty years of sailing towards the colonized planet, he will enter hibernation for periods of ten years at a time. This long hibernation will last until the Ratman First Expeditionary Fleet actually reaches its destination.

Twenty years is enough time for the rat people to replace a generation. This is still the case even though the treatment on the expedition fleet is already among the best in the Rat Empire and the lifespan of the rat people has increased after entering the starry sky.

In fact, this expedition will probably take several generations of ratmen to complete. The young ratmen carried on this fleet will give birth to children and then grow old during this long process. Then their children will grow up and take over their jobs, and then grow old, and the cycle will continue like this.

Not all ratmen can enter the hibernation chamber. The ratmen’s warships are not intelligent enough to perform self-maintenance. A large amount of maintenance work will occur all the time, which requires the participation of a large number of ratmen.

Facing the black steel and the narrow room all the time, and having to work, such days do not seem to be good, but in fact, before departure, the places on the First Fleet are extremely scarce.

Perhaps staying on the First Expeditionary Fleet and heading towards the unknown is not a good life, but in fact, staying in the Ratman Empire may be even worse.

Even the guys who boarded the First Expeditionary Fleet and performed maintenance work were all ratmen from the Lower City. Although it was hurtful, in fact, those ratmen from the Lower City were not qualified to board such an expeditionary fleet. Even if it was maintenance work, the maintenance work on such an expeditionary fleet required ratmen with certain skills to be competent.

In fact, most of those who came to the First Expeditionary Fleet were the second sons of the ratmen bureaucrats and wealthy businessmen on the Fortress Star, those ratmen boys who had received a fairly good education but had no right of inheritance.

Having a decent education makes them unwilling to leave the Fortress Star for those desolate industrial planets or barren agricultural planets, and having no inheritance rights makes it difficult for them to move up on the Fortress Star, the capital planet of the Ratman Empire.

Among these guys, the lucky ones can get a sum of money or a simple job on the day they lose their inheritance rights, while the unlucky ones will be directly kicked out. A group of frustrated guys poured in in large numbers when the first expedition fleet was about to set off, perhaps because they felt that there were special things to be conquered and colonized in places far enough away.

In fact, this is indeed a glorious thing. After all, Qi attaches great importance to this matter. Their great imperial emperor attaches great importance to this colonization. During that period, almost all the rat people in the newspapers and media of Fortress Star were praising these young rat people who dared to travel far. This was an absolute correctness and enthusiasm. If it were not for those rat bureaucrats and rat media, those rat girls could really understand the significance of this expedition.

But because this is what their great Rat Emperor wanted, it is a shaped glory.

However, no matter how restless the atmosphere and how intoxicating the boasting is, it will not be endless. It will stop at the moment when the first expeditionary fleet sets sail.

After all, the empty universe is not a very interesting place. It is quiet, dead, and empty. But no one knows whether they are really ready to face all of this.

While Qi entered the hibernation chamber and began a ten-year hibernation, the spacecraft was taken over by Qi's deputy. Qi's two deputies would also be rotated, with a rotation period of five years to support this long voyage.

The long journey began.

Of course, the passage of time is not so obvious now.

The first expeditionary fleet of the Skaven, flagship, lower cabin, living area.

Perhaps it was due to the negligence of the ratmen engineers who designed the flagship, or perhaps this group of Chaos clearly did not pay enough attention to the living area of ​​the flagship. In a passage connecting the living area and the industrial area, the cooling pipes kept breaking repeatedly in a state that could be described as an incurable disease.

This made the young ratmen living in this area miserable.

As a last resort, two unlucky positions were specially set up, pipeline caretakers. Two unlucky guys were chosen to become the unlucky pipeline caretakers. This is a very leisurely but boring position. The job is also very simple, which is to stare at the cooling pipes in this passage every day. In order to avoid blocking the passage, two small stools were placed in the narrow pipe well.

What they have to do every day is to crawl into the narrow pipe shaft after getting up, and then sit inside bored. If the cooling pipe is broken, they will repair it. If the cooling pipe is working properly, they will ignore it and just sit there.

Today, it's time to work again.

A young rat man climbed up from the rigid metal window. It had been a month, and he still hadn't been able to completely adapt to the iron window that wouldn't deform at all. Every day when he climbed up, he felt a pain in his back and waist.

He held his waist with his claws and groaned in pain.

Every day it is a routine to greet the rat engineers from the Imperial Engineering Bureau.

I looked up and glanced at the time. Oh no! It's too late!

There was no time to make any preparations, and the young rat man just ran out of the room.

Even in this huge flagship, except for the industrial area that allows the movement of goods, the roads in other areas are not wide. Of course, it is enough for the rat people.

However, this young ratman who had been pampered on the Fortress Star was also dissatisfied with the road that required him to lower his head to travel normally. Since the ratmen no longer built cities underground, the narrow road design habit was also abandoned. However, the fact that he could make such a complaint actually showed the birth of this young ratman. After all, only the super cities of the ratmen could have such wide and bright roads.

Walking along this narrow road and rushing to the right, the young ratman came to a huge open cabin. At this point in time, there were quite a few ratmen in this open cabin.

"Finally caught up!"

He heaved a sigh of relief and squeezed into the densely packed queue. Soon it was his turn. On a shiny metal tray was a dry and hard energy block and a bowl of sticky mushroom porridge and broth. This was his breakfast today. Admittedly, it was not bad, but the rat youth was still not satisfied.

But he was no longer on that fortress planet, and a month was enough for him to understand some things clearly.

In the corner of the cafeteria, the young rat man found his co-worker, another unlucky guy. The two guys sat opposite each other and started complaining about the food in their hands.

In this huge cafeteria, the two of them huddled in a corner.

The rat people's habit of sticking together has not changed even in this interstellar age, especially in this unfamiliar and uneasy environment, but even sticking together has a threshold.

The rat people who live in the same area stick together, and the rat people who work on the same thing stick together. But he, the unlucky guy, just happened to get the job of watching the pipes. No rat circle was willing to accept him, so he could only show concern for the other unlucky guy who was sent to watch the pipes.

The two guys started chatting with each other, but the topic of conversation was always about what happened on the Fortress Star. The rats around them left one by one, until the cafeteria became empty, they stood up reluctantly.

Their work is extremely easy, as long as there is no problem with the freezing pipe, they can do whatever they want.

While talking, they arrived at the workplace, opened the hidden door on the silver metal passage, climbed up the stairs, and squeezed into the narrow pipe shaft, where two stools were quietly displayed.

The desire to talk gradually faded, and the two guys sat down in their respective seats, with the constant buzzing sound of the pipes in their ears and the almost unchanging other person in front of them.

Gradually, he became sluggish.

How long will this situation last? Will he keep sitting here? Day after day, in a daze, the young rat man began to have wild thoughts.

This was not the kind of life he expected. Even if you asked him to tell you what he was expecting when he boarded the First Expeditionary Fleet, he would stammer and be unable to say it.

But what is certain is that he regrets it now.

Time passed day by day, and there was almost no change in the days. This voyage was not so easy. In the first year of the voyage, big problems arose in the planting area. An insect plague broke out. Those damn rat merchants sold them nutrient media that had not been strictly disinfected. Those pests germinated in a very short time and almost destroyed the fleet's food supply system.

Fortunately, the industrial zone had sufficient raw materials. After a batch of production lines for cleaning fluid were converted to produce pesticides at an extremely fast speed, the insect plague was suppressed.

During that period, the fleet's food supply was almost halved, and all the ratmen were left with only a dry block of energy for each meal. This difficult situation continued until the planting area was operational again. But fortunately, apart from this insect plague, the First Expeditionary Fleet did not encounter any major emergencies and was able to be described as being in good order.

Of course, this is for the First Expeditionary Fleet.

A year is neither long nor short, but it is enough to make a once energetic young rat man become numb and sluggish.

He climbed up from the hard metal bed in a trance. In this year, he, the guy guarding the cooling pipes, had completely become a marginalized person. He no longer cared about them unless the cooling pipes broke again.

He left the room numbly, rushed to the ratman cafeteria, lined up, received his breakfast, sat down in a familiar corner, waited for everyone to leave, then returned to the narrow pipe shaft and continued to guard the cooling pipe that might burst.

Just like that, a day passed, and he felt like he seemed to have forgotten something, but when he thought seriously about what he had forgotten, he couldn't come up with an answer.

He walked towards his room in a trance until he heard a commotion beside him. He stopped and turned around. In an open cabin, he saw a familiar figure, his colleague, the other unlucky guy.

Only now, this guy was hanging quietly in the room.

He finally realized what he had forgotten during these days. His colleague was gone, and that other unlucky guy just left.

Soon, a team of rat-man medical personnel in white robes arrived and took away the hanging rat-man corpse.

He watched all this unfold and finally came back to his senses from his trance. His gaze fell on the small window in his colleague's room that faced the vast starry sky. When he first boarded the flagship, he was extremely looking forward to getting a room with a window. He didn't expect that his colleague, who was equally unlucky, was luckier than himself.

He really regrets it now, really regrets it, but it's a pity that he can't go back, he can't go back anymore!
This expedition will require the participation of more than one generation of ratmen, and most of the ratmen may not even live to see the day when the fleet reaches its destination.

It's strange to say, the constant leakage in the living area has repeatedly tortured many ratmen's cooling pipes, but it has never leaked again after two special people were looking after it. It is unclear whether this is a design error by the ratmen engineers or some other reason for the leakage.

However, the assigned position has not been replaced. Even though it is unclear what the use of this caretaker is, he should still be left there. If he is replaced and there is a leak again, it will be troublesome.

(End of this chapter)