+++Warfleets+++

Each of the five warfleets serves within one of the Segmentae Majoris and is responsible for protecting shipping within it.

Most space battles take place around installations or planets, most of which can he defended efficiently by means of sub-stellar craft and planet-based defences. Even so, it is impossible to provide total defence for every Imperial world. The warships of the Imperial Fleet are highly mobile and extremely potent weapons, able to gather to meet large threats where necessary.

Warship captains are Imperial servants like their merchant brethren. However, all warship captains are appointed by the administrative officers of the Segmentum, and have no rights of ownership regarding their vessels. The organisation of the fleets is far more rigid than that of the merchant fleet, with a hierarchy similar to that of the land-based armed forces of the Imperium.

BATTLEFLEETS

Imperial space is so vast, with so many star systems and areas of Wilderness Space to be patrolled, that even the many thousands of spaceships in the warfleets must he spread thin, with individual ships and squadrons set out on their own assignments. The Imperium cannot maintain permanent fleets ready to respond to invasion or rebellion. Nor would it make sense to do so - it would take so long for a fleet to get from its base to the war zone that the enemy would surely have moved on by the time it arrived.

Instead, temporary battlefleets are gathered together whenever they are needed. Warships within a relatively small area are summoned to join the Battlefleet. It is rare for ships more than 50 light years from the battle zone to be included in the fleet and more commonly only those within 10 or 20 light years are summoned. Even with ships this close to the battle, it will take at least days and more often weeks for them to arrive.

Only during the very largest of wars, lasting for many decades, does the Imperium bring battlefleets together and dispatch them en masse to a warzone. Such a war is currently underway in the galaxy's south-eastern spiral arm. Here the Tyranid Hive Fleet Kraken is inexorably advancing, conquering and consuming the planets in its path. A massive campaign involving millions of men, thousands of ships and whole chapters of Space Marines is being fought against the Tyranid invasion. Fleets are being mustered in all the Segmentae to begin the long journey to the warzone. The journey will take decades in some cases and many of the crew will never see the battles they are heading towards - but the Imperium knows all too well that in mere decades the Tyranid threat will be as strong as even

ENEMIES OF THE IMPERIUM

The battlefleets of the Imperium must combat many enemies -Ork raiders, Eldar pirates, the Tyranid Hive Fleet and other alien invaders. It must also fight forces from within the Imperium itself. Most of these battles are small-scale and involve only sub-stellar craft in skirmishes with smugglers, brigands and rebels. But occasionally larger conflicts occur when whole systems or groups of systems must be brought into line. Sometimes these systems- have their own fleets and the Imperium must send its largest battleships and cruisers to crush the enemy. In these circumstances an Imperial Battlefleet will be facing an enemy containing ships exactly like its own - the enemy will also be using ships like Gothic Cruisers, Firestorms, Dictators, Cobras and so forth.

These rebellions most often happen when an area of the Imperium is cut off by a warpstorm. Warpstorms are common occurrences and systems frequently lose contact for a few years - when the storm passes, contact is re-established and little has changed. Sometimes storms last for decades, even centuries, and systems that are cut off for this long can stray far from Imperial authority. Once the warpstorm has died down and travel to the system is feasible again, the Imperium may be rebuffed by an independent federation or find itself in the midst of a local war. A Battlefleet will be assembled to return the system to Imperial control and Imperial spaceships will find themselves facing ships that perhaps once served alongside them in other wars.

SPACESHIPS OF THE IMPERIUM

Most spaceships are old - open space, the most hostile environment to man, preserves the plastics and metals that spacecraft are made from. Space gives them with the power to endure through generations of men. The Imperial fleets number many thousands of ships, the majority of which are at least a thousand years old. Some are as old as the Imperium itself, a full ten thousand years. A very few claim a pre-Imperial origin. It is difficult for those born under the claustrophobic sky of a planet to appreciate the great dignity which is inherent in all old spacecraft.

The spaceships of the Imperium are vast constructions that take many decades to build. Each craft represents a huge investment of time and resources. But once completed, fitted out' armed and commissioned, a spaceship continues in service for centuries, even millennia. After that, it may be refilled. modernised, reconstructed and live on practically indefinitely. Barring a major accident or destruction in battle, a ship is immortal like a great city, its population and fabric existing in a constant state of decay and renewal.

Throughout this time there is a constant process of rebuilding and renewal. Hulls are damaged by battles, asteroid storms and the ravages of the warp. Mechanical parts inevitably wear down. Electrical components fuse. Engine housings crack or melt under the immense pressure and heat created by plasma and warp drives. To combat this constant process of decay, every interstellar spaceship has a maintenance crew of hundreds or thousands of dedicated craftsmen, continuously striving to repair and refit the ship. Inside a large Imperial warship there are factories and workshops, huge forges and plasma furnaces, even small refineries and ore smelting plants to provide raw materials for the work of reconstruction.

Interstellar spaceships are powered by plasma and warp drives. Plasma drives are used to move through star systems at sub-light speeds. They burn with the fierce energy of a star, converting their fuel into a super-heated gas plasma to create the immense thrust needed to propel these gargantuan craft through space. As a large interstellar spaceship moves out of orbit towards the edge of a star system ready to jump into the warp, the fiery arc it traces across the night sky can clearly be seen from the planet it's leaving. It appears to be a great comet streaking through the heavens - on many worlds, the arrival or departure of a spaceship is read as an omen, a divine harbinger of joy or doom.

Warp drives are altogether more esoteric and terrifying understood by few even among a spaceship's crew. When the spaceship reaches the jump point at the edge of the star system it's leaving, its plasma drives are turned off and its warp drives engaged. These hurl the spaceship out of real space and into warpspace, propelling it through the warp to a destination light years away. If a spaceship's warp drives were switched on while it was still within a star system. the huge rent in the very fabric of space that they create would be catastrophic for the population and planets of the system. The spaceship itself would be torn apart as the massive pull of the star's gravity reacted unpredictably with the energies released by the warp drives.

Fully one-third of a spaceship can be taken up by its engines with their huge thruster ports, cavernous combustion chambers, generators surrounded by massive protective cladding and the miles of pipes, tunnels, corridors and ducts needed for the control mechanisms, fuel supply and access by service crews.

The living areas of a spaceship contain the thousands, often tens of thousands, of men that serve aboard. These areas are often built up from the ship's hull into huge domes and spires that rise hundreds of metres into space. On some ships, they seem like the heart of a mighty city, immense towers rising to touch the stars, their sides glittering with lights bridges spanning the void between them. On others they resemble a gigantic cathedral, the towers colonnaded and sculpted. Vast carved figures of legendary heroes recede into the darkness of space - huge horned gargoyles leap and leer from the highest pinnacles in mockery of the tenors of warpspace - golden domes blaze with the light of stars.