Chapter 162: Earlier Prototypes Of The Waywarden Class Ships

The trip back from the dead world was quiet.

No one really felt like talking, and that was fine. Aurelian stayed silent for most of the way, and Rhoswen didn’t push him to say anything either.

The place they had just come from stayed in his head the whole time, not in a negative way, but with a bit of second-guessing about whether leaving them there was the right call.

Before, those four cruisers had been nothing more than a clue, something the system pointed toward, something useful but still distant. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Now they weren’t just an idea anymore. He had seen them. Broken, buried, half-lost in that dead space, but still there.

And that changed how he thought about them.

Not enough to change what had to happen first, because priorities were still priorities, but enough that he couldn’t treat that ruined field like some optional thing he might deal with later.

It had moved from "maybe" to "real," and that alone gave it weight in his planning, whether he liked it or not.

By the time they reached Larkspur Haven again, everything was already moving forward like it had been before they left.

The March didn’t stop just because he stepped away for a short operation. Lysara was still in Mournveil, sending back route updates at steady intervals without being asked.

Astercourt was tightening things on the back end, making sure nothing slipped through while attention was elsewhere.

Astra had Haven and the bastion link stable, keeping the foundation solid while everything else shifted around it.

Solenne was preparing for the deeper strike they had already agreed on, and Neris was adjusting stockpiles and support chains so nothing would fall short when the time came.

Everything was still pointed toward the raid.

That hadn’t changed.

What had changed was that Meridian now had enough information to do more than just say the cruisers could be recovered.

She could tell him exactly what they were.

So not long after returning, Aurelian called her into one of the technical planning rooms and had the full scan data from the ruin field brought up.

The room dimmed slightly as the projections came to life, layers of structural maps, excavation scans, and internal reconstruction models spreading out across the table in front of them.

Meridian didn’t waste time on anything unnecessary. She stepped straight into the work, as she had already been going over it in her head the entire way back.

"I’ve finished a preliminary reconstruction of the class," she said.

Aurelian stood across from her, watching the display while Astercourt worked quietly off to one side, already comparing the data with existing records.

Rhoswen leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, acting like she didn’t care much about the details while still paying attention to everything being said.

Meridian brought up the first model.

The ship rotated slowly above the table, no longer shown as a damaged wreck but as a full design, rebuilt from what remained and filled in using what she understood from the structure itself.

"It’s a heavy cruiser line," she said. "About twenty-four hundred meters long. Big enough to sit firmly in that category."

She shifted the display to show the internal layout.

One section of the hull had been given over to a hangar system, not large enough to make it a full carrier, but still more than most cruisers of that size would carry.

It had space for drones, smaller craft, and support units, enough to give it options in a fight instead of forcing it into one role.

Rhoswen pushed off the wall slightly, her interest showing now.

"So it’s trying to do everything at once."

"Yes," Meridian said. "And it almost manages it."

She kept going through the systems, laying everything out clearly.

Kinetic weapons for direct impact.

Energy weapons for sustained pressure.

Heavy torpedoes for larger targets.

Drone systems for support and control.

Frame deployment for close-range work.

Signal disruption tools.

Warp-denial support.

By the time she finished listing it all out, even Rhoswen had stopped commenting and was just watching the model, clearly interested now.

Aurelian looked at the design and understood why the system had pointed him here.

It made sense.

This wasn’t just any cruiser line.

It was an early attempt at something bigger.

No wonder it had been connected to the Waywarden line in the bastion records.

You could see it.

Not in size or refinement, but in the idea behind it.

This class had been trying to solve the same problem the Waywarden line later solved better: how to build a ship that could handle different kinds of threats, operate across wide frontier regions, and still survive without being tied to a single role.

Meridian seemed to pick up on that without him saying anything.

"It’s an earlier version of the same idea," she said. "Less refined, but not poorly made. Whoever designed this knew what they were doing."

Astercourt looked up from her side of the table.

"And the problems?"

Meridian didn’t hesitate.

"It tries to do too much in one hull," she said. "The internal space is tight, maintenance access isn’t ideal, and the armor is weaker than it should be for a ship this size. The engine is strong, but that is to be expected; otherwise the ship wouldn’t be able to support all the systems it carries."

Rhoswen frowned slightly as she looked at the ship with a curious gaze.

Aurelian pulled up one of the Waywarden records from the bastion and placed it beside the reconstructed cruiser model.

The difference was clear.

The latter design had more space, better balance, stronger structure, and less strain on its internal systems.

It had kept the flexibility but removed some of the pressure points that the older design struggled with.

Meridian studied both models together, then pointed to a section inside the newer ship.

"There," she said.

Aurelian followed her indication.

"Reserved internal volume," she explained. "For a heavier system. The older class doesn’t have it, but the newer one was built with something stronger in mind."

Rhoswen looked between them. "How strong?"

Meridian paused for a moment, then answered simply.

"Strong enough to match a battleship-level main weapon, or close enough that the difference wouldn’t matter in a fight between cruisers."

That made the room go quiet for a second.

They all understood what that meant.

The Tier V warship sitting in Helion Bastion Twelve was more dangerous than it first appeared.

Aurelian didn’t stay on that thought for long.

It mattered, but it wasn’t the problem in front of him right now.

"What’s the fastest useful path forward?" he asked.

Meridian shifted the display again, highlighting the four cruisers as they currently existed in the ruin field.

"The split hull first," she said. "It looks worse than it is. Structurally, the damage is cleaner than the others. If I go back with proper support and enough materials, I can bring that one to an operational state faster than the rest."

Astercourt immediately saw where that was going.

"One ship first. Not all four."

"Yes," Meridian said. "One. That gives us an active protector at the site, another capable unit, and a more direct understanding of the class. After that, I can continue working on the others while March focuses on more urgent priorities."