Commander Dante was in an understandably stormy mood, even with the looming relief of an incoming crusade fleet.
“The recon squad is dead,” said one of his officers.
“From what?”
“We do not know. They couldn’t report back before they were killed.”
Dante, try as he might, couldn’t ignore the Chief Librarian’s judging glare forever. It was like an icy pinprick burning into his flesh even through his mask.
“Did they report on finding anything before they fell?”
“The cavern was empty, not even the dead remained, only their empty power armour with large slashes cutting them in half reminiscent of the wounds high-tier Tyranid melee weaponry leaves.”
“This is a farce,” said Mephiston. “It was her doing. Did they find the girl?”
“No,” said the officer. “They didn’t get even halfway down before the signal was lost.”
Dante only took a moment to collect himself. He … misplayed. He underestimated his foe and overestimated her attachment to the human woman. Well, maybe not overestimated it, but underestimated his own capacity to keep said woman hidden and secure.
The Xeno didn’t even let them make their threats before she attacked, which showed she was already perfectly confident in rescuing the woman. Afterwards, even in her rage, she didn’t kill any of his men in the command room, only putting some of them into a deep slumber.
That wasn’t the case with the veteran men he stationed as the captive’s wardens. Those were as dead as they got.
Moreover, the only reason Dante himself was alive was … a whim. Yes, a whim, he reckoned. He never in his life felt so helpless as when her psychic might coiled around him like a constricting serpent. Not even his mind was able to think clearly as his very being felt trapped, shackled.
“Mephiston, is it possible to shield the Fortress fromher teleportation?”
“It is already shielded from it,” the Librarian said. “As was the cavern used to hold the captive. Any more shielding and all psykers would be hampered in their ability to draw on the Warp, we cannot give that edge to our enemies. We do have to hold out against the Swarm for a day at the shortest and without four of our strongest combatants.”
Dante felt his face twitch. He remembered the moment the Human Psyker the Xeno brought with herself appeared in the command room, gave him a disgusted sneer, and placed his hand on the Magos.
Then, they were gone in a blink, just like the Xeno woman hours later.
It took almost an hour for the remaining tech priests in the fortress to rid their systems from the destructive viruses the Magos left behind with his passing, which told him everything he needed to know of his allegiance.
It was a disaster and Dante knew the worst of it had yet to come.
The mysterious Regent’s order was to secure a strange psyker and protect them from any who might want to harm them, even if that might be a Custodian.
The order was vague. A ‘strange psyker’ that might be capable of doing a variety of feats strange feats that were listed in the transmission as: Shapeshifting, healing, flesh-mending, creating flesh-drones, and much more.
Dante and Mephiston decided only the xeno woman fit the description, and the once Rogue Trader to a much lesser extent.
Still, the order did say to tread carefully, and under no circumstances were they to kill the target. Dante had been rather vexed ever since he received the transmission and poured over his options.
He remembered the xeno once telling him of the Macragge’ Honor coming to relieve them. He dismissed the claim, of course, as either a bluff or a deliberate ploy to give him some misguided hope.
Now that he knew for certain that she was right, that she knew what would happen in advance, he had to tread carefully … that was his initial thought. A thought he quickly dismissed.
If the xeno was a farseer, or something similar, the only way to be a step ahead of her is to do something unpredictable, erratic even. It was a gamble, he knew, a gamble he lost spectacularly.
Still, if there was a xeno doing as she wished by the time the relief fleet arrived, and one as powerful as this one, he would be putting the entire fleet in danger. She had to be reigned in, controlled.
“The Shadow is gathering once again,” said Mephiston. “It is vague and hard to grasp, but it is growing stronger. Another full-force assault will be upon us before the week’s end.”
Dante had the urge to curse. Mephiston told him he felt he had a two in three chance of beating the xeno in a duel if it came down to it and Dante was confident the threat of that would dissuade the alien from acting like she had.
Well, that obviously wasn’t the case. She might not have won against Mephiston, but she was more than capable of killing everyone else while running from the Chief Librarian.
Why did she leave us alive? That was what haunted him. Surely it wasn’t out of fear for retaliation on their part or out of mercy, the xeno was downright livid. Livid, but controlled, hardly alike to his kin when falling to the Black Rage.
She had to have had a reason. Was it to torment him? To let him see his men die one by one to the Tyranids? Or to her?
Would she let him see the Imperial fleet? Show them a glimmer of hope before tearing it away? Was that what she wanted? Torment them, both physically and mentally?
Dante realised he didn’t know. He didn’t know anything about the xeno. Not her race, the true extent of her powers, her origins, the values she held, or her goals. Nothing. He only had some vague ideas of them, but nothing certain.
Now she was out there, somewhere, plotting, scheming, and planning her bloody revenge.
A single miscalculation might have just cost him everything.
“Now,” I hummed, walking in small circles around an increasingly fidgety Selene. “The question is what do you want to be? There is no need for you to get a clone of what my own body is. Do you want speed, bulk, muscles, toughness, stealth — I could give your skin optical camouflage even.”
The options were endless. She was a blank slate and just briefly letting my aura wash over her; I was made more than aware of how shoddily designed the human body was. Well, evolution did its best, but it was hardly a master flesh-smith with a clear goal in mind.
“What does yours have?” she asked. “It looks human.”
“Aside from these,” I flicked my pointed ear. “It does look human, but that’s just a facade. I don’t have a single cell in my body that can be found in a human. I went for human looks, combined mostly with Eldar physiology focused on agility and speed, along with psychic conductivity. Though I did use various Tyranid parts where it felt appropriate.”
“Really?” she looked me over like she’d be able to spot a stray patch of chitin on my skin.
“The skeletal structure was Tyranid for example, before I upgraded to soulbone instead. Tyranids have nice tough, strong, and bendy bones, though they are not as light as Eldar ones.”
“I … think I’m not cut out to be a psyker.”
“Yet,” I said. “Sure, your soul is hardly the brightest — yet — but just by giving you Eldar physiology, I could catapult your psychic powers up a few leagues.”
“I think I should play for the strengths I already have,” she said. “A more physical combat with some psychics to give me a further edge. It’d take decades to learn how to wield psychic powers effectively. Decades I don’t want to waste.”
“If you say so,” I nodded. “Well, we can revisit this later. The body I’m making you is hardly the final product. My own is also ever-changing, so there is no reason for you to stick with the one I make for you today.”
“You’re changing your own?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Yesss,” I grinned. “No reason to let a perfectly fine Custodian template collect dust in some corner of my mind. That thing is a masterpiece.”
“I think … that could work,” said Selene. “IF you can make this new body look just like the current one. I don’t want to be a ten-foot-tall mass of muscles, even if that’d be more … optimal.”
I smirked. A girl after my own heart. There was making pragmatic practical choices, and then there was staying in the form of a flesh-eating alien because it provides better combat attributes. Or, in this case, the form of a golden demigod.
“Of course.” Not that I’d agree to turning you into a Custodian replica. I shuddered. My beautiful Selene stuck in the body of a ten-foot-tall masculine mass of muscles? Nope. Not happening. Fuck pragmatism, it can shove a cactus up its ass. I was having none of it. “That should be easy enough. Anything else? If any Tyranid has any ability you might want, I can put it in there. Danger Sense, Psychic shields, acidic blood?”
“Tempting,” she hummed. “But what I want is something that is an overall upgrade to what I have already, though maybe some of that psychic conductivity enhancement could help.”
“That might be the only thing I might be unable to do,” I said. “Custodians seem to have such a rigid physical structure that it almost obstructs the flow of immaterial energy. This makes them very hard to psychically mess with, but it also curb-stomps whatever psychic potential they might have otherwise had.”
“Won’t that be bad for you?” she asked. “You are more of a psyker than a fighter.”
“It would,” I acknowledged. “But what I want to use from the Custodians is only their circulatory system. I fear using their nervous system just yet too. Who knows what genetic backdoors were left in there or whether they are biologically made to be loyal to the Emperor? I’m having none of that in my head until I can be sure I purged all of that.”
“That sounds time-consuming,” Selene noted.
“It does,” I grimaced. “I have so many things I need to be doing, and so little time to be actually doing them. It’s vexing.”
“Couldn’t you just make one of your drones think about this while you do something else?”
“If it was only that easy,” I sighed. “A single drone would take centuries to muddle through the template of a Custodian’s nervous system, if not more.”
“Just make a thousand of them,” she shrugged. “Or more, you’ve been eating up all the dead on Baal, I doubt you are lacking in energy.”
“Hmmm,” I tapped my chin. “But I’d have to leave them around here, somewhere. They would need telepathic surveillance, and I’d need to come back to collect them before we leave.”
That was too much bio-energy to just leave behind once their purpose was fulfilled, and what if we needed to bolt before they were even done? That much energy thrown out the window would make me cry myself to sleep. This was why I wanted to have a stable base before I started with both my bio-energy farm project, the Dyson-sphere project, and anything similar to what Selene was describing. A brain server farm wasn’t a new idea, even if this was the first time Selene brought it up, it’s been sitting in my head for a while.
Leaving them behind could be disastrous, in more ways than one. What if the Imperium got their grabby hands on what I left behind? Or someone even worse.
“What if you have them in that realm of yours?” asked Selene. “It’s safe, connected to you and nobody could steal it from you, as far as I know.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my lips together. The fact that my mind was my Achilles heel was made evident once again, even if I had hundreds of parallel lines of thought, each working thousands of times faster than a human mind, I was, as I just now discovered, an absolute moron.
“Echidna?” Selene asked, utterly oblivious to the shocking reveal still sending waves of shame through me. Or maybe she wasn’t. There was a tilt of worry in her voice, smothering me with affection.
I wrapped her up in a hug, giving her a quick juicy kiss on the cheek. “Why are you so damned smart?”
“Oh?” she smirked, throwing her arms around my neck. “Am I?”
I just smiled as she squinted up at me with that adorable smirk playing on her lips.
“And beautiful,” I added. “The perfect combination. You are just perfect.”
“Yet here we are,” she whispered. “Talking about what to improve.”
“Everything can be improved,” I huffed. “Perfection is an illusion, a trick of the mind, an unachievable goal. What matters is that to me, you are perfect as you are. You always will be.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Unless you want me to turn you into a three-metre tall wall of muscle. That’d be a quick turnoff, I’m afraid.”
She rolled her eyes, eyes twinkling with amusement. “I could see the appeal of it … being stronger than you for once, if only physically.”
“Do you now?” I smiled. “What use would you have for that, I wonder?”
“I have some plans.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Hmmm,” she tip-toed, raising her face so close that our noses touched. “I have some plans for that silvery tongue of yours too.”
“Do enlighten me.”
She gave a soft snort before closing the remaining gap between us, her lips closing in on my own. And enlighten me, she did. I could feel the hunger in her, even with all the strength I had and how I physically loomed over her with my height, I felt like this adorable girl would eat me whole if I wasn’t careful.
Not that I cared. I was far past caring about that. I let her do as she wished, enjoying the intensity she brought to bear more than I thought I would.
She stopped at times, only for a moment to suck in a deep gulp of breath before re-initiating her assault. That could be fixed with the upgrade. Human shortcomings, like having to breathe, were easy to fix.
By the time we separated for good, she was flushed and gasping for breath. I wasn’t much different, she really was intense today, and I very much enjoyed it and all the things that did to my body.
“I think,” she said, those steel-grey eyes staring at me intensely. “Those upgrades can wait a bit.”
I felt a thrill run down my spine at the husky tone of her voice, at the ravenous way she looked at me. Goosebumps spread on my arms and down my legs as a grin slowly tugged on my lips.
Fleets, Dante, Mephiston, Gulliman, and a thousand other worries slipped from my mind as with a flick of thought, the doors snapped closed and a psychic layer spread over them. Nothing would go in, or out without my permission, not even sound.
“You have better plans, do you? Hmm?” I licked my lips, my arms still around her waist.
She gave me a ferocious grin, one I found myself mirroring a moment later as she closed back in.
Life was good. The shitty galaxy could wait a few hours. I’d deal with it after I deal with more pressing … matters.
Commander Dante was in an understandably stormy mood, even with the looming relief of an incoming crusade fleet.
“The recon squad is dead,” said one of his officers.
“From what?”
“We do not know. They couldn’t report back before they were killed.”
Dante, try as he might, couldn’t ignore the Chief Librarian’s judging glare forever. It was like an icy pinprick burning into his flesh even through his mask.
“Did they report on finding anything before they fell?”
“The cavern was empty, not even the dead remained, only their empty power armour with large slashes cutting them in half reminiscent of the wounds high-tier Tyranid melee weaponry leaves.”
“This is a farce,” said Mephiston. “It was her doing. Did they find the girl?”
“No,” said the officer. “They didn’t get even halfway down before the signal was lost.”
Dante only took a moment to collect himself. He … misplayed. He underestimated his foe and overestimated her attachment to the human woman. Well, maybe not overestimated it, but underestimated his own capacity to keep said woman hidden and secure.
The Xeno didn’t even let them make their threats before she attacked, which showed she was already perfectly confident in rescuing the woman. Afterwards, even in her rage, she didn’t kill any of his men in the command room, only putting some of them into a deep slumber.
That wasn’t the case with the veteran men he stationed as the captive’s wardens. Those were as dead as they got.
Moreover, the only reason Dante himself was alive was … a whim. Yes, a whim, he reckoned. He never in his life felt so helpless as when her psychic might coiled around him like a constricting serpent. Not even his mind was able to think clearly as his very being felt trapped, shackled.
“Mephiston, is it possible to shield the Fortress fromher teleportation?”
“It is already shielded from it,” the Librarian said. “As was the cavern used to hold the captive. Any more shielding and all psykers would be hampered in their ability to draw on the Warp, we cannot give that edge to our enemies. We do have to hold out against the Swarm for a day at the shortest and without four of our strongest combatants.”
Dante felt his face twitch. He remembered the moment the Human Psyker the Xeno brought with herself appeared in the command room, gave him a disgusted sneer, and placed his hand on the Magos.
Then, they were gone in a blink, just like the Xeno woman hours later.
It took almost an hour for the remaining tech priests in the fortress to rid their systems from the destructive viruses the Magos left behind with his passing, which told him everything he needed to know of his allegiance.
It was a disaster and Dante knew the worst of it had yet to come.
The mysterious Regent’s order was to secure a strange psyker and protect them from any who might want to harm them, even if that might be a Custodian.
The order was vague. A ‘strange psyker’ that might be capable of doing a variety of feats strange feats that were listed in the transmission as: Shapeshifting, healing, flesh-mending, creating flesh-drones, and much more.
Dante and Mephiston decided only the xeno woman fit the description, and the once Rogue Trader to a much lesser extent.
Still, the order did say to tread carefully, and under no circumstances were they to kill the target. Dante had been rather vexed ever since he received the transmission and poured over his options.
He remembered the xeno once telling him of the Macragge’ Honor coming to relieve them. He dismissed the claim, of course, as either a bluff or a deliberate ploy to give him some misguided hope.
Now that he knew for certain that she was right, that she knew what would happen in advance, he had to tread carefully … that was his initial thought. A thought he quickly dismissed.
If the xeno was a farseer, or something similar, the only way to be a step ahead of her is to do something unpredictable, erratic even. It was a gamble, he knew, a gamble he lost spectacularly.
Still, if there was a xeno doing as she wished by the time the relief fleet arrived, and one as powerful as this one, he would be putting the entire fleet in danger. She had to be reigned in, controlled.
“The Shadow is gathering once again,” said Mephiston. “It is vague and hard to grasp, but it is growing stronger. Another full-force assault will be upon us before the week’s end.”
Dante had the urge to curse. Mephiston told him he felt he had a two in three chance of beating the xeno in a duel if it came down to it and Dante was confident the threat of that would dissuade the alien from acting like she had.
Well, that obviously wasn’t the case. She might not have won against Mephiston, but she was more than capable of killing everyone else while running from the Chief Librarian.
Why did she leave us alive? That was what haunted him. Surely it wasn’t out of fear for retaliation on their part or out of mercy, the xeno was downright livid. Livid, but controlled, hardly alike to his kin when falling to the Black Rage.
She had to have had a reason. Was it to torment him? To let him see his men die one by one to the Tyranids? Or to her?
Would she let him see the Imperial fleet? Show them a glimmer of hope before tearing it away? Was that what she wanted? Torment them, both physically and mentally?
Dante realised he didn’t know. He didn’t know anything about the xeno. Not her race, the true extent of her powers, her origins, the values she held, or her goals. Nothing. He only had some vague ideas of them, but nothing certain.
Now she was out there, somewhere, plotting, scheming, and planning her bloody revenge.
A single miscalculation might have just cost him everything.
“Now,” I hummed, walking in small circles around an increasingly fidgety Selene. “The question is what do you want to be? There is no need for you to get a clone of what my own body is. Do you want speed, bulk, muscles, toughness, stealth — I could give your skin optical camouflage even.”
The options were endless. She was a blank slate and just briefly letting my aura wash over her; I was made more than aware of how shoddily designed the human body was. Well, evolution did its best, but it was hardly a master flesh-smith with a clear goal in mind.
“What does yours have?” she asked. “It looks human.”
“Aside from these,” I flicked my pointed ear. “It does look human, but that’s just a facade. I don’t have a single cell in my body that can be found in a human. I went for human looks, combined mostly with Eldar physiology focused on agility and speed, along with psychic conductivity. Though I did use various Tyranid parts where it felt appropriate.”
“Really?” she looked me over like she’d be able to spot a stray patch of chitin on my skin.
“The skeletal structure was Tyranid for example, before I upgraded to soulbone instead. Tyranids have nice tough, strong, and bendy bones, though they are not as light as Eldar ones.”
“I … think I’m not cut out to be a psyker.”
“Yet,” I said. “Sure, your soul is hardly the brightest — yet — but just by giving you Eldar physiology, I could catapult your psychic powers up a few leagues.”
“I think I should play for the strengths I already have,” she said. “A more physical combat with some psychics to give me a further edge. It’d take decades to learn how to wield psychic powers effectively. Decades I don’t want to waste.”
“If you say so,” I nodded. “Well, we can revisit this later. The body I’m making you is hardly the final product. My own is also ever-changing, so there is no reason for you to stick with the one I make for you today.”
“You’re changing your own?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Yesss,” I grinned. “No reason to let a perfectly fine Custodian template collect dust in some corner of my mind. That thing is a masterpiece.”
“I think … that could work,” said Selene. “IF you can make this new body look just like the current one. I don’t want to be a ten-foot-tall mass of muscles, even if that’d be more … optimal.”
I smirked. A girl after my own heart. There was making pragmatic practical choices, and then there was staying in the form of a flesh-eating alien because it provides better combat attributes. Or, in this case, the form of a golden demigod.
“Of course.” Not that I’d agree to turning you into a Custodian replica. I shuddered. My beautiful Selene stuck in the body of a ten-foot-tall masculine mass of muscles? Nope. Not happening. Fuck pragmatism, it can shove a cactus up its ass. I was having none of it. “That should be easy enough. Anything else? If any Tyranid has any ability you might want, I can put it in there. Danger Sense, Psychic shields, acidic blood?”
“Tempting,” she hummed. “But what I want is something that is an overall upgrade to what I have already, though maybe some of that psychic conductivity enhancement could help.”
“That might be the only thing I might be unable to do,” I said. “Custodians seem to have such a rigid physical structure that it almost obstructs the flow of immaterial energy. This makes them very hard to psychically mess with, but it also curb-stomps whatever psychic potential they might have otherwise had.”
“Won’t that be bad for you?” she asked. “You are more of a psyker than a fighter.”
“It would,” I acknowledged. “But what I want to use from the Custodians is only their circulatory system. I fear using their nervous system just yet too. Who knows what genetic backdoors were left in there or whether they are biologically made to be loyal to the Emperor? I’m having none of that in my head until I can be sure I purged all of that.”
“That sounds time-consuming,” Selene noted.
“It does,” I grimaced. “I have so many things I need to be doing, and so little time to be actually doing them. It’s vexing.”
“Couldn’t you just make one of your drones think about this while you do something else?”
“If it was only that easy,” I sighed. “A single drone would take centuries to muddle through the template of a Custodian’s nervous system, if not more.”
“Just make a thousand of them,” she shrugged. “Or more, you’ve been eating up all the dead on Baal, I doubt you are lacking in energy.”
“Hmmm,” I tapped my chin. “But I’d have to leave them around here, somewhere. They would need telepathic surveillance, and I’d need to come back to collect them before we leave.”
That was too much bio-energy to just leave behind once their purpose was fulfilled, and what if we needed to bolt before they were even done? That much energy thrown out the window would make me cry myself to sleep. This was why I wanted to have a stable base before I started with both my bio-energy farm project, the Dyson-sphere project, and anything similar to what Selene was describing. A brain server farm wasn’t a new idea, even if this was the first time Selene brought it up, it’s been sitting in my head for a while.
Leaving them behind could be disastrous, in more ways than one. What if the Imperium got their grabby hands on what I left behind? Or someone even worse.
“What if you have them in that realm of yours?” asked Selene. “It’s safe, connected to you and nobody could steal it from you, as far as I know.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my lips together. The fact that my mind was my Achilles heel was made evident once again, even if I had hundreds of parallel lines of thought, each working thousands of times faster than a human mind, I was, as I just now discovered, an absolute moron.
“Echidna?” Selene asked, utterly oblivious to the shocking reveal still sending waves of shame through me. Or maybe she wasn’t. There was a tilt of worry in her voice, smothering me with affection.
I wrapped her up in a hug, giving her a quick juicy kiss on the cheek. “Why are you so damned smart?”
“Oh?” she smirked, throwing her arms around my neck. “Am I?”
I just smiled as she squinted up at me with that adorable smirk playing on her lips.
“And beautiful,” I added. “The perfect combination. You are just perfect.”
“Yet here we are,” she whispered. “Talking about what to improve.”
“Everything can be improved,” I huffed. “Perfection is an illusion, a trick of the mind, an unachievable goal. What matters is that to me, you are perfect as you are. You always will be.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Unless you want me to turn you into a three-metre tall wall of muscle. That’d be a quick turnoff, I’m afraid.”
She rolled her eyes, eyes twinkling with amusement. “I could see the appeal of it … being stronger than you for once, if only physically.”
“Do you now?” I smiled. “What use would you have for that, I wonder?”
“I have some plans.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Hmmm,” she tip-toed, raising her face so close that our noses touched. “I have some plans for that silvery tongue of yours too.”
“Do enlighten me.”
She gave a soft snort before closing the remaining gap between us, her lips closing in on my own. And enlighten me, she did. I could feel the hunger in her, even with all the strength I had and how I physically loomed over her with my height, I felt like this adorable girl would eat me whole if I wasn’t careful.
Not that I cared. I was far past caring about that. I let her do as she wished, enjoying the intensity she brought to bear more than I thought I would.
She stopped at times, only for a moment to suck in a deep gulp of breath before re-initiating her assault. That could be fixed with the upgrade. Human shortcomings, like having to breathe, were easy to fix.
By the time we separated for good, she was flushed and gasping for breath. I wasn’t much different, she really was intense today, and I very much enjoyed it and all the things that did to my body.
“I think,” she said, those steel-grey eyes staring at me intensely. “Those upgrades can wait a bit.”
I felt a thrill run down my spine at the husky tone of her voice, at the ravenous way she looked at me. Goosebumps spread on my arms and down my legs as a grin slowly tugged on my lips.
Fleets, Dante, Mephiston, Gulliman, and a thousand other worries slipped from my mind as with a flick of thought, the doors snapped closed and a psychic layer spread over them. Nothing would go in, or out without my permission, not even sound.
“You have better plans, do you? Hmm?” I licked my lips, my arms still around her waist.
She gave me a ferocious grin, one I found myself mirroring a moment later as she closed back in.
Life was good. The shitty galaxy could wait a few hours. I’d deal with it after I deal with more pressing … matters.
