ushernet 170 – Accidental Conquest?
170 – Accidental Conquest?
170 – Accidental Conquest?
‘We may have a problem.’ Selene’s voice buzzed in my ears and I sat up straighter, ignoring the soldiers rushing about to pack their stuff for a moment.
‘Yes?’ I said. ‘What’s up?’
‘Well,’ Selene drew the word out, sounding hesitant. ‘It seems we might want to reconsider the initial plans. Whether they did it by themselves, or if there are some cultists influencing the media ... the citizens kind of loathe us ... or rather, the strange white-clad warriors that dropped from the sky and killed their Queen. I don’t think taking them in as your citizens would be doable in the short term.’
‘That’s not good.’ I mused, blinking despite myself as I processed the news. That would likely make them accept me as their new queen or whatnot, rather challenging. But that brought up the question of whether I even wanted that all that much? After thinking it through, I shrugged. ‘Well, it’s mostly whatever. If these people are too much of a pain in the butt, I’ll just dump them on the Tau’s lap. I’m not dead set on making citizens out of them.’
‘Really?’ Selene asked, a vague sense of surprise radiating through our bond. ‘But you were so ... I guess it doesn’t matter. It would have been nice to know though, I’ve been worrying over nothing.’
I listened to her grumble for a short while, a smile fluttering across my face. Still, no matter how much Selene’s want to help me in what she thought was my ‘plan’, I still felt guilty for the needless stress I’ve been unknowingly putting her through.
‘Sorry,’ I sent while transmitting my genuine feelings of guilt her way. ‘No need to worry about it though. If I can get a city’s worth of citizens, either from this planet or as immigrants from other Tau worlds, I’ll consider that a win. Not that we need citizens right now, the city won’t go anywhere and there isn’t much actual benefit to having citizens.’
I could probably tax them, then use the money to buy new fancy toys from the Tau, but that was about it. I could build better than them, was entirely self-sufficient with energy and I most certainly didn’t need them to serve in some PDF to protect me. Likely, getting actual citizens to take care of would be more trouble than it was worth, but if I ever wanted to bring real change into this galaxy, I would need to look beyond a simple cost-benefit analysis.
I came here because some shithead sent raiding Chaos cultists my way and I wanted to make sure they knew that kind of thing wouldn’t fly. I had done that and more, free citizens would have been nice, but maybe I could find something even more interesting if I stuck around with Cain.
Inquisitors were a rare breed. There were untold billions of humans spread across a million worlds, but only an infinitesimal fraction of those humans are Inquisitors. Their authorities were technically without limit, and they were only supposed to answer to the Emperor himself. The fact I had run into two in this last week was a statistical impossibility, almost.
There has to be something important here. I reaffirmed my perhaps silly decision to latch onto the retired Commissar like some lamprey.
‘I suppose there isn’t.’ Selene said after a few seconds of silence, a soft sigh reverberating across our bond. ‘Still, if you want, this situation might still be salvageable. I’m pretty sure if I asked Zedev, he could take control of whatever network governs the media of this planet. We could bend the rhetoric to favour us more ... it’d be a longshot without studying their culture first, but anything would be better than the fear-mongering currently being broadcast worldwide.’
‘Do you think it's worth it?’ I sent back, feeling curious about what she was actually thinking. ‘I mean, we have time. We could just go find another planet that isn’t actually worshipping a Chaos God in a top hat.’
‘It just feels like a waste not to try,’ Selene said, but sent the vague feelings of a shrug my way. ‘It’s your choice though. They won’t be my citizens even if we do manage to convince some ... well, you could force them to come, but I take it that’s not the way you want this to go?’
‘Nope.’ I tapped my lips in thought, considering my options. Well, there wasn’t anything lost by giving this a go. ‘Alright. I’m game. Let’s try and see how it goes and then we can decide whether to go through with it once we see some preliminary results. What do you need me to do?’
‘For one, could you at least make a drone somewhere where I can talk to you through it?’ Selene started. ‘This telepathic thingy is nice, but I’d like to see your face when I’m talking to you.’
‘That could be somewhat problematic with the Blank around here,’ I said. ‘My link to the drone could snap if I’m inattentive and the thing would go on a rampage.’
‘Maybe take the rampage contingency out of it?’ Selene suggested dryly. ‘Plus you never lost control of the combat drones down on the planet while hunting cultists. You’ll be fine. Also, I’d need some measure of control over those drones, if you won’t be directly controlling them.’
‘You can just ask the drone I’m about to make for you to order them to do stuff.’ I shrugged. ‘And you can ask me whenever. It’s not like I can’t multitask.’
‘You get weird when I do that.’ Selene shuddered. ‘It’s like talking to a robot.’
‘Yeah ... well, nothing I can do about that. It’d be even creepier if I gave my mind-cores fake personalities. Cause those are what’s controlling my drones when I’m not doing it manually.’
“So,” Selene continued, eying the floating mass of water I was levitating above my palm as it started bubbling from the heat I was channelling into it. “What did you mean by ‘for now’?”
“I left a handful of trackers and bugs on the bunch I was with,” I said, smirking as I felt the dozen mental signatures of the little beads I had attached to various stuff the troopers took with themselves. Some dimmed occasionally, even going fully dark for a bit before coming back online, likely from close proximity to Jurgen. But they worked, and let me keep track of Cain’s bunch. “I’m going to check up on them before they leave the planet. Or if they stumble upon something interesting. Inquisitors are supposed to gravitate towards weird or interesting stuff, no?”
“And you think following that Inquisitor will let you nab whatever interesting thing they are after?” Selene raised an eyebrow, a slight smirk tugging at her lips as I gave an eager nod. “What makes you think that inquisitor didn’t come here just for the daemon prince?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, mentally controlling the leaves to swirl around in the boiling water for a bit. “They are supposed to have some sixth sense for strange stuff.”
“If they do, it will go haywire the moment that inquisitor comes anywhere near you.” Selene mused. “I don’t know of any ‘stuff’ in this galaxy that’s stranger than you.”
“You would be surprised,” I said, images of some of the most horrifying beings supposedly inhabiting this galaxy flashing across my mind’s eye. “Also, that was a horrible attempt at flirting, if it was intended as such. I prefer being called hot over ‘strange’.”
“Your head is already big enough.” Selene rolled her eyes good-naturedly, then smiled. “You need me to tell you how ‘hot’ you are?”
“You have a way with words when you want,” I said in an exaggeratedly dreamy tone as I swept the finished tanna into the newly made mug with a flick of my wrist. “Is it so bad that I love to hear you praise me?”
“It isn’t,” Selene said, her hand reaching out to intertwine her fingers with mine over the table. Her voice dipped to a mock stern tone as she continued, “but if you want praise, you’ll have to work for it, young Miss. Sitting there and looking pretty just won’t do.”
“I’m good at it though.” I grinned, feeling the by now familiar warmth in my chest spread even at just her slight admission of my beauty.
“You are.” Selene rolled her eyes, then took a tentative sip of the drink I had made for her. The moment the liquid touched her tongue, I watched her face go stiff as the amused quirk of her lips curved down in distaste. She placed the mug down, then looked up at me. “That was horrible. Where did you find it?”
“Apparently, it is a popular drink on the planet of Valhalla.” I shrugged. “They were serving it in the cafe.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever taken anything that sour into my mouth,” She said with a grimace, then poked me in the side. “I was working on writing up an announcement speech for you when you popped back up. I am going to get back to writing that, and while I’m doing that, you can make up for the crime you’ve committed against my tastebuds by giving my legs a much needed massage.”
“Announcement?” I raised an eyebrow even as I was already looking for a nice comfy couch to steal for Selene to lie down on. If the adorable cutie-pie wanted a leg massage, a leg massage she would get.
“Yes, announcement.” She said, her face twitching towards the fake leather sofa that popped into existence with a thud. “What’s that?”
“A sofa,” I answered in an equally helpful manner, then swept her up into a princess carry and carried her over to our newly procured sofa. I doubted the ‘Eternal Queen’ would be needing it, seeing as she was pretty dead at the moment. “Will I have to read the announcement or something?”
“No,” Selene said, taking being hoisted up and dumped back down on the sofa with all the grace one could manage while smiling all the way. “I think it’d be better if I did it. It’d give the impression that you are some greater figure, above the lowly task of giving speeches to the citizenry of a conquered planet.”
“We didn’t ‘conquer’ the planet,” I said, frowning a little as I pried her legs out of their boots and the pants covering them. “We just ... “
“Killed their sovereign, killed her loyalists and now we are staking claim to the citizens,” Selene said, then cut my next words off with an amused look in her eyes. “‘But we were rescuing them from demons.’ Is that what you were going to say? Because that’s what every conquering power does, they ‘rescue’ the conquered. Either from barbarism, the wrong religion, corrupt rulers or whatever else.”
“But we did actually save them from a damned daemon prince?” I said.
“It doesn’t really matter.” She shrugged, leaning back with a blissful smile on her face as my thumbs started working the knots out of her right calf. “Would you be a dear and give me the holopad? The sooner I’m done with the speech, the better.”
“Sure, one holopad coming right up!”