The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction

[jseah]

part 6.5 RT - continued

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Week 3
The Rogue Trader has completed repairs and both ships are now mechanically spaceworthy, although massive crew shortages are hindering function on the Lunar. He has continued negotiations while enroute to a Hive World to employ new crew.

We have put forward our requirement that he not leak the technology to the IoM or Chaos, fearing destabilization of their society and technology leakage to Chaos. The Rogue Trader has agreed to this, but demanded that we aid him in any further military actions and Golden Goose agreed to do so, but only at extreme range and without any direct contact.
We also refused to attack anyone other than Tyranids or Chaos.

We also stated that he is not to attempt engaging Chaos under such unfavourable conditions again, and that we most certainly did not want to see Chaos armed with a hyperspace drive or worse, the nanobots. He agreed to this.

As he began to apply the nanobots to repairing the two ships under his command, using the construction plans for the parts, the negotiation turned to future actions.

He demanded, for each confirmed kill of a Chaos ship, that we provide a major technological breakthrough, on the level of his nanobots. Eventually, we negotiated to give him one significant technology per warband engaged, regardless of the result.
Given the IoM aversion to even simple autonomous AI, we offered to provide automation and performance refinements to all his major equipment along the lines of the IoM technology base. This is estimated to increase his effective range by 30%, reduce gridpower and manpower requirements by nearly 60%.
A down payment of the construction plans for all IoM frigates and light cruisers we had come across, as well as an asteroid mining platform was agreed to.
Construction plans for antimatter containment and propulsion for missiles was rejected. He did not wish to take on any more "xenotech" apart from the hyperdrive. We appear to be constrained to working within IoM technological principles. Nevertheless, we are optimistic that favourable odds can still be obtained if we could devise method to develop a scanner that could obtain a lock on targets while the Rogue Trader's ships remained in hyperspace.

While we are certainly not going to provide him with so much technological advances for each combat, he is unlikely to meet many Chaos warbands in the near future. And bringing up his access to advanced technology would more allow him to engage Chaos ships more effectively.

This a fine balance to strike. We cannot afford to continue bribing him so extravagantly, but at the same time, a repeat of this disastrous battle would be extremely unfavourable. We had only one safeguard, the Golden Goose destroying the Firestorm directly, before Chaos might have gotten a working hyperdrive. The lack of need to use the final option was mere chance.
This level of risk, while understandable for a first attempt at striking against Chaos, is unacceptable for the long term.

We are of the opinion that Golden Goose should immediately provide him with optimizations to his standoff weaponry, namely lance batteries and torpedo launchers, to prevent such a disaster. In particular, methods to increase his striking range or ideally, to attack from hyperspace, should be made if we do not wish a repeat of this.
We await a more in-depth analysis from the main fleet since there is no rush in this matter.

A more functional working relationship to ensure his continued cooperation in hunting Chaos warships without requiring such large technological transfers (particularly after all the technology he requires to field his own fleet is given) would be ideal.

And that's the end of the RT arc for part 6. Man, alot of time is spent going places rather than doing things.

So, Aisha barely avoids getting Eye'd (which is still in the offing if/when he decides to scram), and the Culture are paying through the nose for his next battle. Paying with a promise to develop IoM technology along IoM lines to avoid crossing beyond archeotech, aka, we do your research for you.

The RT might see fighting Chaos as a way to redeem his honour, if only to himself (Warrants don't go away, like ever). But he's probably never going to be this reckless again.
And probably would make it a condition that he not fight except on stupid levels of advantage. Hyperspace drive alone is not enough.


What are his possible reactions now that he has time to think about the Culture? (they have given him a background on how their society operates)

How much will he trust an unknown xeno's combat capability? Especially if they refuse to tell him about it.
-- me thinks, probably not at all. It was just something he demanded in exchange for doing what the Culture tells him that he was already going to do anyway.

Now knowing a bit more about how much the Culture want a standoff militant arm, how likely is he to accept?


How is Khorne going to react to a bunch of IoM ships zipping around with tactical FTL? And that mystery xenoship his guys couldn't see.

How are the Eldar going to react to a fight over an Exodite world? Or are they going to just go "mon-keigh doing mon-keigh things"?