A Coincidence?

After the Macragge's Honour had rolled and bucked violently for a while, the black hole spat it back out, returning it to space.

The twenty-six-kilometer-long Gloriana-class Battleship tumbled out of the Warp like a marble thrown into a washing machine drum.

The Gellar Field was intact, showing no signs of having been attacked. It was just that every inertial compensation system aboard had overloaded.

For those few dozen seconds, the millions aboard the ship had all been tossed about like rolling gourds. One moment they had been standing on the floor; the next, the floor had become the ceiling, and then the ceiling had become a wall. Everything unsecured in the corridors had been flung everywhere. Some precision instruments could be scrapped by a single bump, and the losses were not insignificant.

The Macragge's Honour spun through space like some poor bastard swatted eight hundred meters away. Its Machine Spirit was probably so furious inside the hull that its throat was about to split.

Fortunately, with the inertial compensation systems failing, the collisions had lost some of their force in the weightless environment of space.

Techmarines staggered toward the systems rooms and carried out emergency repairs. They finally managed to stabilize the flagship before it could capsize.

The inertial compensation systems came back online, artificial gravity stabilized once more, and the clutter in the corridors clattered back onto the decks.

?

The team of Navigators in the command room crawled to their feet, dizzy and disoriented, and immediately looked out through the portholes.

Ordinary people could not look directly into the Warp. Only Navigators could.

They had to confirm their current location at once.

The elderly lead Navigator was helped up by his guards. One hand braced against the edge of the navigation console while the other rubbed at his