Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

300 – Yay, big round number!

Despite my fear that all this was just a stalling tactic from the Hive Mind aimed to slow me down, I remained as careful as I could be. I devoured the remains of the Tyranid Fleet that had come to destroy my flagship, only through Eldritch tendrils disconnected from my Avatar, and filtered the new information they yielded through organic cogitators similarly disconnected from myself.

Why? Because one of my annoying mind-cores poked me about the possibility of the Hive Mind having woven some mnemonic thought virus into the genetic sequence of one of its bioforms just to fuck with me. And now I can’t stop worrying about it, no matter how little the possibility of that is.

But there was nothing, just food and a nifty new template for the Ancient One and also a handful of other templates that I’d missed out on before, mostly for specific escort bioships and attackcraft. By the end of it, my reserves of bioenergy had reached an all-time high, climbing to nearly four times as much as I had before I entered the Freya system. I could have made an entire planet made of nothing but organic mass with that much bio-energy. Hell, I could have made more than one if I were smart about it, not that there was any reason to, but it sure put things into perspective.

There were still other bioships present in the system, some stationed around the Ice World and Freya, and some more scattered across the asteroid belt. After all, the force that faced me was at most half of the ships lingering between the fourth and the fifth planet’s orbits. The rest were too far away to reach me in time, but curiously enough, they didn’t even move, not to reinforce the Ancient One’s fleet, not to attack me as a second wave and not to fall back and regroup with the smaller fleets around Freya and the Ice World.

“I have half the mind to just blow the entire planet to smithereens ... and I just might,” I mumbled thoughtfully, then cast a glance back over at the peanut gallery gathered behind me. The looks on Cain’s, Amberley’s and Aun’saal’s faces were comically horrified, though that last one much less so than the two imperials. Probably because he was busy patting himself on the back for navigating his Sept into an alliance with me. “And reason I shouldn’t?”

“I can hardly imagine a planet more worthy of an Exterminatus order than this one,” Amberley said, sounding slightly disturbed. “Did you find something ... concerning?”

I waved a hand, throwing up a 3D projection of the planet Freya. The open Warp rift showed up in a crimson red and bled a tidal wave of smaller crimson figures onto the white surface of the planet’s projection. The Tyranids showed up in purple, practically covering every square metre of the planet, but I made their structures stand out in bright blue, visible throughout the semi-transparent projection. The dozens of titanic towers were one thing, but the two colossal structures reaching towards the molten core of the planet?

When depicted like this, the strange symmetry in the deliberate placement of these organic towers is also quite obvious, even to those who didn’t have my analytical capabilities. I didn’t know what the reason was for the alien geometry the Tyranids used, but considering just what the Necrons achieved by making use of fractal arrays and incorporating them into their architecture, I knew it couldn’t be a mere stylistic choice.

The imperial contingent gasped, and even the Inquisitor sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth.

“Is there anything even capable of destroying something buried so deep into the planet’s crust?” Cain asked, a slight tremble audible in his voice.

“Sustained orbital bombardment with some variant Exterminatus-grade cyclonic torpedoes can crack the planetary crust; that would probably work,” Amberley said. “A two-stage cyclonic torpedo would surely work. Maybe a Virus Bomb would also work if it were used perfectly ... but perhaps not; those are always a gamble with the Tyranids. Depends on how interconnected and cohesive those structures are. Parts of it sealed off from the rest might survive even if they are susceptible to the virus.”

“Do we have anything like that?” Selene asked, sounding the calmest of the bunch. I could feel her trust in me flowing in through our telepathic bond, which made my own confidence surge, and I sent her a small smile.

“Nope,” I said. “I could make a Virus Bomb, but it probably wouldn’t be up to standards. Not that it matters because I have alternatives.”

Like opening a portal to the core of the Sun, and aiming the other end of it at one of those weird Tyranid structures. The planet’s atmosphere would ignite instantly, and the downpour of plasma would incinerate everything. I could also, alternatively, exercise my psychic muscles in a dozen different ways to destroy this planet. I could churn up the molten core of the planet in some time, causing cataclysmic volcanic activity across the entire planetary surface. Maybe I could even forcefully crack open the crust like an egg, letting that magma burst forth in full force.

As for if all else fails, I can throw my Whitestone planet at it, taking a page out of Abbadon’s book and use my superadvanced marvel of futuristic technology and psychic marvel as a club. But the last time I had that thing in realspace, the fabric of reality started to come apart at the seams, so that was my last resort.

“What’s a ‘two-stage cyclonic torpedo’?” I asked, not recalling what that specific variant did.

“They have two-stage warheads,” Amberley said, hesitating a little as she cast an annoyed glance at Aun’sall, clearly reluctant to reveal such information to a Tau. Then she shook it off. “The first stage consists of an unusually powerful melta charge that turns through the planetary crust all the way into the planet’s core. The second stage is a modified cyclonic plasma charge which destabilises the core and causes the planet to explode from the inside out. We usually use those types of warheads against atmosphere-less or biologically-void worlds. Most often Necron Tomb Worlds.”

“I don’t suppose you have one of those hidden away in your back pocket?” I mused, and Amberley shook her head with a snort. “Well then, I’ll need to get ... creative, because I doubt the Hive Mind left in no countermeasures. Still, might as well throw down a budget Virus Bomb as a housewarming gift.”

The Sovereign swept past the Ice World, not even getting close to the planet itself as we passed through its orbit and made straight for Freya. That frozen hellscape had some of those towering structures, too, but fewer in number, and it also distinctly lacked those massive spikes burrowing towards the planet’s core that Freya had, so I decided to make cleansing that world a low-priority task. The planet itself was far away, besides, and I’d have had to make a six-hour detour to reach it without teleporting, which was a no-go.

To start things off, I made a Virus Bomb: the life-eater virus, housed in a condensed gaseous form within an organic shell, ready to burst and spread through the atmosphere. With a flick of my wrist, it disappeared and snapped back into existence in the higher reaches of Freya’s atmosphere, where its bio-plasma thrusters roared to life. It plummeted towards the ground, where Tyranids swarmed across the earth in a horde so thick they covered the surface in their chitinous mass of bodies. Then, when it was just a kilometre off, it burst.

“How long do you think it’ll take for it to spread through the planet?” I asked curiously. I recalled that when Horus bombed Istvaan 3 — or was it Istvaan 5? Fuck me if I knew — it took mere minutes before the entire human population of the planet was dead. Something like 16 million people, dead in minutes. Or was it 16 billion? That would make more sense. I also knew that a well-placed Virus Bomb could make the atmosphere flammable, ready to be ignited in its entirety to burn away whatever flicker of life remained after the life-eater virus had done its job.

That’s how the verdant Jungle World of Tallarn turned into an inhospitable Desert World. But that case also proved that Virus Bombs were far from foolproof, since enough locals survived by hiding in underground bunkers to repopulate the planet afterwards.

I watched as the aerosolised life-eater virus spread through the atmosphere, stretching like a murderous, invisible cloud that gravity slowly began to drag down to the surface. It stretched out, unfurling with the wind currents and the cloud of death had dispersed enough to span kilometres from end to end by the time it finally fell upon the unknowing Tyranids.

“Why doesn’t the Imperium just use Virus Bombs every time on the Tyranids?” I asked.

“They adapt,” Amberley said, her eyebrows raising as I threw up an illusory screen and showed the horde of Tyranids under the cloud of death start to melt. “I’m honestly surprised these ones hadn’t ... there were numerous records where launching a Virus Bomb seemingly did nothing, only for the Tyranids to start spitting acid that held properties of the life-eater virus a few days later. I’d have assumed Hive Fleet Dagon would be immune.”

She was right. The statistics started coming in, and about one out of every five Tyranids seemed entirely unaffected by the virus. Which was weird, I’d have thought that if they had an immunity, then all of them would have it ... was this really some hodgepodge horde made up of parts of multiple Hive Fleets? Their colourings were all over the place, but I knew not to trust in that entirely to identify Tyranids. I’d need to eat a few and analyse their genetic makeup to be sure.

Even if it wasn’t some Hive Fleet coalition forced together by whatever weirdness was going on with those structures, they had to be from different Splinter Fleets, some of which had faced Virus Bombs before and had thereby adapted to it.

Sure enough, some groups of Tyranids were almost entirely made up of bioforms immune to the virus, but some were helpless as flesh melted off their bones. The life-eater virus spread like wildfire, with more than enough Tyranids falling victim to it to allow it to propagate exponentially. There had to be billions of them, maybe trillions, and by the time the virus reached all across the globe, two in every three Tyranids were dead ... but all the structures were entirely unharmed.

Worse, a new massive wave of Tyranids was surging forth from the depths of the earth, gigantic burrowing bioforms carving tunnels up to the surface, and thousands upon thousands of Tyranids poured out of them. It was as if the world itself were bleeding from a million wounds, and its blood was Tyranids. Some of the new ones crumbled and melted into a puddle, but it was less than one in twenty now.

“Does it need anything special to ignite?” I asked. “How does bio-plasma not set it off if it is?”

“If I had to guess, the strain you were using is one of the ... safer ones,” Amberley said. “Or maybe it’s not flammable at all, but if I had to guess, then it probably needs something on the level of a nuclear fission bomb to ignite.”

How did that work? Shouldn’t bio-plasma be hot enough? Did nuclear fission have some other aspect that the life-eater virus could propagate?

I had no nuclear bombs on hand — shocking, I know — and I had no damned idea how to enrich uranium either. I could probably figure it out with some time, but it’d be easier to yoink the knowledge from a tech priest who knew, though it was probably highly restricted.

Just to be sure, I tried a few types of fire I could conjure while Sovereign crashed through the small Tyranid fleet orbiting Freya and came to high orbit above it. Nothing worked, and the atmosphere persisted in its refusal to ignite.

Okay, fuck this planet then, and especially fuck the Tyranids. Orbital bombardment it is, and if that isn’t enough, then I’m going to deploy a tactical Sun.

A mental warning reached me: a slight buildup of psychic energy has been detected in the structure at the North Pole. I focused, my aura sharpening into crystal clear clarity as I peered into every last cell making up that thing. Third eyes opened across my body, and I glared into the Warp.

A massive shadow covered in a million eyes, large and small, glared back with naked hatred and infinite hunger. Teeth clicked, claws and chitin shone in the darkness. The psychic buildup spiked, roaring into the Materium and the northern megastructure lit up like a Christmas tree with a cataclysmic amount of psychic power.

I drew on the power of my Realm deeply, yanking soul energy into my body and throwing it into the Wards around the ship, fully enclosing it. Then I took out my Storm Ward amulet and made another barrier only around the four of us, but a thousand times more potent for its lesser size. The concept of Protection flowed into it as the spherical psychic shield slammed into reality just in time.

A billion jagged maws opened wide, jaws distending as malicious eyes shone in the darkness. Then they SCREAMED.

The psychic shockwave rippled through reality and the Warp both and reached us in a nanosecond; hate, pain, hunger, and liquid agony all rode on it. My shields stopped the psychic shockwave, but not entirely. Those emotions slipped through, picked up by my passive psychic empathy-

Someone screamed, a sound of raw, unadulterated agony so primal it was never meant to be made by a human throat. It took me a moment to realise that the source of the scream was me. Another warning mental ping reached me, and I went ignored as my Avatar collapsed on the ground, undulating as Eldritch flesh rippled, reabsorbing parts of my body as I spasmed. I think my mind-cores were screaming at me, but I’d never given them the ability to actually control my body or circumvent me, so they could do nothing beyond that.

Something struck the Sovereign, the psychic feedback of something crashing against my Barriers jolting some semblance of focus back into me. I latched onto it like a woman drowning, managing to push the liquid agony assaulting my mind slightly to the side with a task at hand. Something to do.

Power surged back into the Barrier just in time for another blow to crash into it, once more failing to pierce through but again feeling like a hammer blow tearing into my skull.

The pain vanished, from one moment to the next, it was gone, and most of the soul energy I was channelling went out of whack, dissipating into thin air. I gasped with my entire being, body inhaling air and information in a split second, mind-cores rapidly analysing everything. I could still hear the SCREAM, but it was just beyond the borders of my mind, like a noisy neighbour shouting from beyond the fence.

A tendril lashed out, wrapping around a stinky bundle of obtuse annoyance in human shape and dragged it in. I hugged the damned thing close to my body and felt the SCREAM dim even further, slipping into a distant screech.

My body snapped back into proper shape, and I stared into the wide, distinctly uncomfortable and slightly disturbed eyes of my human-shaped psychic shield.

Jürgen stared back like he hadn’t the faintest idea what was happening. I breathed a sigh of relief, not even caring about the pungent stink of wet socks crawling up my nostrils. He wasn’t a powerful enough Pariah to shut down my psyker powers, but usually ... but my passive empathy and my unfocused, flailing attempts at reinforcing the barriers? That, he could do.

I quickly updated my mind-cores, allowing one to make my Avatar lock up and stop flailing around wildly if I was incoherent. Then quickly made sure I hadn’t hurt anyone in my impromptu rampage. Cain and Amberley were pressed up against the furthest corner of the small spherical Barrier, Aun’saal was standing nearby, looking disturbed and confused, while Selene was-

“What happened?” Selene asked, looking torn. Her fists clenched and unclenched, face flip-flopping between murderous, worried and deathly afraid. She looked like she wanted to hug me one moment and then like she wanted to murder something with extreme prejudice the next. “Echidna-“

I could feel a matching, chaotic storm of emotions radiating off her in waves. She had never seen me like this, never had to feel worried for me ... and an intense sense of guilt welled up in me at having worried her so.

“I’m fine,” I said, manually controlling every muscle in my body to stop it from quivering from the ripples of phantom agony still cascading through it. If it were in my nerves, I’d have healed it, but it was in my mind, and that meant it reached my very soul. The latter was sturdy enough to withstand it and shrug it off, my mind ... was not. “That just ... surprised me.”

Fucking passive empathy bit me in the ass again. Why can’t that stupid shit be turned off? God damn it.

Without letting go of Jurgen, I connected to the Sovereign purely organically and dragged one of the perfect Blackstone Pylons up from storage, then another three, and set the four of them up around me. They were close enough that I could just barely step in between them after I released Jurgen and then sank down, feeling the stupid SCREAM dim even more into a faintly audible mirage in the distance.

“What happened?” Selene asked, plopping herself down in my lap without ceremony and cupping my face gently to stare into my eyes. “Honey, talk to me.”

“Stupid passive empathy,” I whispered so low only she could hear it. “The emotions somehow bypassed everything else and slipped into my mind. It was a Psychic Scream ... just altered to induce horrible pain directly in the target’s mind instead of mere terror. Whatever that structure is, it boosted its range and potency to a horrifying degree.”

It was like a mix of Psychic Scream and Paroxysm from the Tyranid’s psychic ‘Discipline’.

“And the other thing?” Selene said. “The ship was rocking.”

I blinked, then quickly received what my mind-cores knew, and my eyes widened. “The South Pole structure launched two Warp Blasts at us once I was ... indisposed.”

And it was charging up another attack, making me all but growl. I should have just smashed the entire blasted planet open with my pocket Serenade. Or did the Sun Be Upon Thee trick?

But now I couldn’t. Not with me having to sit here, my psychic powers all but entirely locked away by the four resonant Blackstone Pylons. If I stepped out, the SCREAM could reach me again; it was still there, still lurking around beyond the borders of my mind like a predator circling its prey. I could just barely push enough soul energy through to reinforce the Sovereign’s Barriers whenever they were about to be hit. Thank fuck I anchored the Barriers themselves to the Whitestone, I didn’t have to waste my focus on actually supplying the energy to power the Barriers themselves, the Whitestone made the permanent.

However, with the Blackstone Pylons around me, I couldn’t really do anything psychic that would be powerful enough to reach the planet from this far away. Which meant that if I wanted to get back at the Hive Mind for this stunt, I’d have to get creative. I’d have to adapt.