Timestamp: 6.086.998.M41

Location: Somewhere in the warp, between the Markayn Marches and the Golgenna Reach, Calixis Sector

Situation: Shipboard life on the sprint trader 'Maiden of Golgenna'

Body: Voidship travel is a strange beast. Imagine a planethugger asking a voidsman - 'how far is it from Solomon to Scintilla?' The voidsman would shrug and was - 'what do you mean, how far?' How far in materium lightyears or parsecs? Dunno, never measured. How far through the Immaterium? Dunno, try asking the Navigator.The planethugger sighs and asks instead - 'how long does the journey take then?' The voidsman rolls his eyes and say ' 'what do you mean, how long?' How long for me or how long for you? Total time or warp-transit time? The planethugger bows his neck and walks away, vowing never to look up at the stars again!

Voidship travel is usually divided into three distinct parts. Departure leg - Warp leg - Arrival leg:

First is the departure leg, wherein the ship accelerates away from the planet it is orbiting using realspace drives. Ships can only engage their warp drives when well away from a strong gravity well, such as that created by a star or large planet. For a system like Sol most commercial starships would go out beyond the orbit of Uranus (20 AU) before making the transition. Military vessels and certain civilian ships regularly make the translation at less than this distance,  even down to the orbit of Saturn (10 AU), but this requires great precision. In an emergency it is possible to push it even further, but doing it inside the orbit of Jupiter (5 AU) is hazardous at best - there is a good chance the ship will be torn apart . Smaller stars have smaller gravity wells, bigger stars have larger wells. Simple. Planets also have gravity wells, but these are much smaller. Take Terra for example - leaving the Terra-Luna orbital system might take only a few hours for a fast ship, but the ship is still deep within the well of blessed Sol. Thus it is only in the far outer system that the mass of the planet really matters - if you are orbiting Uranus you need to travel to a safe distance, even if you are already outside Sol's gravity well.

How long the departure leg is depends on the realspace acceleration of the voidship. A fast ship, such as a Navy frigate or a sprint freighter  could make the trip from Sol to safe distance in a week (taking into account that they also can translate closer to Sol). A lumbering bulk freighter could easily take a month to reach the orbit of Uranus. The very largest megahaulers, the ones carrying precious navigator cadres on board, never venture insystem at all. They translate well outside the safe distance cutoff and unload their cargoes in the deep dark void, using system-bound barges to ferry their cargo to and from.

Next is the warp leg of the journey. The ship translates into the Immaterium, taking a bubble of reality with it, maintained within the Geller field. The ship now maneuvers the currents of the warp using methods understood by few. If the ship has a navigator he can greatly enhance the speed and range of a  starship traveling through the warp. If there is no Navigator aboard the ship must make do with pre-plotted courses and course changes, having limited ability to determine its own position both within the warp and relative to realspace. Sometimes a ship has to do multiple warp legs. If the journey is long, there is no navigator, or the warp is very turbulent frequent stops might be required. A starship like the Maiden could, with a skilled navigator aboard, cross the distance between Solomon and Scintilla in a week using a single warp leg. And old Chartist trader without a navigator could be forced to do the trip in five legs and using five times longer (or more).

At this point things get even more interesting. For during the warp transit shiptime is no longer the same as realtime. Within the Immaterium, even aboard a spaceship, time flows differently. For shorter trips the time distortion effect might be around 2 to 1, meaning that while a week passed for the Maiden, two weeks went by in realspace. For longer or faster journeys the distortion could be three, five, even ten times. And that's not taking into account weird occurrences, ships arriving before they left and such.

All voidships, those with navigators included, greatly prefer to use well-charted warp routes. These invariably go from settled system to settled system. So on a multi-translation journey ships will go from one system to another, rather than enter and exit the  warp far from any system (exceptions do exist of course). This has an added benefit - security. The Imperium maintains listening posts and outposts in many otherwise uninhabited systems, and Navy patrols will frequent areas where trade routes exists. And should a mishap occur, then help is usually near (relatively speaking).

Last is the arrival leg. It is much the same as the departure leg, only usually a bit longer. Warp navigation is not exact, and to be on the safe side most ships calculate a larger margin of error - the orbit of Neptune (30 AU) would be typical for a freighter arriving in the Sol system for example. Ships carrying navigators can cut down on this safety margin, as the Navigator has a much greater capacity to determine realspace correlation than do navigational cogitators. It goes without saying that the closer you translate, the short the transit time in-system will be.

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The change of pace from those hectic days on Solomon to the regular rhythm of ship-board life is very marked. Compounded by a certain lack of things to do - especially for Parsifal and Jebediah. Eight days insystem under plasma drive. Then two days ago your translated out of the materium and into the Immaterium. If all goes well you should leave the warp in five to seven days according to your navigator, Erasmus (no connection to the Haarlock of the same name). Then ten to twelve days before you dock with a geosynchronous orbital over Hive Tarsus. Fast, but not pushing it. Not for the Maiden.

The obvious:

Haxtes is (justifiably) suspicious about the loyalty of Glodus' cadre. He's go more than his share of paranoia that one. One the other hand he hasn't gone with his natural impulse - to shoot you and toss you out the airlock. So maybe he really means it when he says he thinks you might be ok, but he's not risking it. Once on Scintilla all will be revealed, eh? Haxtes otherwise feels fine. A little bruised and battered, but that will fade. The same cannot be said for the lashing wounds given him aboard the Martyr. They seep colorless fluid, sometimes a little blood. At night he is often running across a barren landscape, sightless birds overhead, and someone at his heels. Many psykers have a hard time during warp transit.

Maxi is being his usual self. Trying to make everyone dislike him. Its like he can't stand the thought of anyone actually liking him. Even a bit. For a while. His way of talking to people mostly takes care of that. And if it doesn't then the fact that he has informants everywhere certainly does. You've come to appreciate the fact that the man has built of a web of little informants on the Maiden. People rating on each other about every little thing. It all ends up on Maxi's desk, to be lovingly shifted through and entered into the dockets he keeps for each and ever person on board. At night he gets little rest - whenever he falls asleep he feels like he is being suffocated or drowned.

Parsifal has retreated into his little shell of faith, and doesn't come out very often. He's a very decent sort, but he's not great company when he's like that. A man should have more inside than just faith. It's also annoying to see him leaf through that book of his at all hours, nodding at some unseen sage advice found inside.

Jeb is sullen and drunk a lot of the time. He's finding Haxtes' ways ever more difficult to live under. He's a free soul really, and under Globus and Castilas he was allowed a great deal of freedom and initiative. The ends mattered more than the means. Not so anymore. Perhaps it will get better. Otherwise he needs to speak to Globus and get a different assignment.

The not so obvious:

When you were debriefed Maxi took down all that you said about the xenos threat and put it in his report that Haxtes sent to Marr. But how much have you spoken about the rest? You can all sense that you've become netangled in something momentous, involving Haarlock's last will, the Inquisition, and God-Emperor knows what. Do you speak of it to each other? Or do you keep your distance and your secrets? And even if you do talk about it, how much weight does it carry?