Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

301 – Cruise

Just as I was about to zone out and brainstorm about how I could ruin the Hive Mind’s day without using my psychic powers, the gorgeous bundle in my lap spoke up, dragging me back into the here and now.

“So what’s the plan?” Selene asked, looking perfectly content using me as her rightful throne and not showing even a hint of an intention to move.

“Orbital bombardment,” I said with a shrug. “I’m going to set my mind-cores to developing some better orbital missiles. It seems like I’d overlooked that capability so far, so this looks like the prime time to fill it and make it the Tyranids’ problem.”

As we talked, I felt another Warp Blast slam into the Barrier, but I was now conscious and in control. I reinforced the section about to be struck, then set my colossal processing capabilities upon the tidal wave of incoming data. In a bit, I’d have a thorough analysis of what aspects of my Barrier were getting the most stress, and then I’d selectively reinforce those some more. A few more hits and the Sovereign wouldn’t even feel those psychic blasts anymore. I can adapt too, and much better than you, stupid intergalactic Eldritch horror. I’m gonna fuck you up.

Was I angry? Oh, I was furious deep down, but fear was the primary emotion roiling in my gut. Something had gotten to me again, and I had to be lent a hand by Jurgen, of all people. Urgh. How long would it have taken me otherwise to get some semblance of control back? Would I ever have managed? Would the Warp Blasts have eventually broken through?

The scenario played out in my mind: the Barriers falling, the Psychic Scream reaching Selene and my guests, fracturing their minds with an ungodly amount of agony no human could ever endure, slamming into their minds. I was cheating with my ridiculously powerful soul; they couldn’t. Would I ever have been able to rebuild Selene’s mind? Would she ever have been the same? Would I ever have been the same after failing her like that?

This horrible, grimdark galaxy is trying to drag me down to its level again and make me as miserable as the rest of its inhabitants.

I took a deep, shuddering breath and pulled Selene in for a crushing hug, receiving only a small squeak before she melted into the embrace and returned it.

“We are fine, you did good,” she whispered into my ear, soothingly running her fingers through my hair. “I am fine, you are fine, we are both fine. You protected us. It's okay, everything is okay.”

Gods, I love her so much. With just a few simple words and whispered sweet nothings, she drained the majority of my stress and anxiety right out of my body, leaving me with a happy, fluttery emotion in my heart. I don’t deserve this angel.

“You do,” Selene whispered firmly, arms tightening around me. She pulled back, steel-grey eyes glaring into my own. Ah, did I think that too loudly? “You deserve to be happy, you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and the same goes to all the people whose lives you made better.”

I slumped, just enjoying the moment as I melted into her arms, burying my face in the crook of her neck. My mind-cores were working overtime, and I was making subconscious adjustments to the Barriers based on their findings, so I could allow myself this moment.

‘I love you, you know that,’ Selene’s voice poured into my mind, followed by the accompanying fluffy, delightful emotions.

“I love you too,” I whispered, my voice muffled a little. I was afraid that if I used telepathy now, I’d let a bit too much of my emotions slip through, and she’d get overwhelmed, so regular old primitive vocal communication it was.

Another Warp Blast slammed into the ship while we were talking, but instead of rocking it and throwing everyone on their asses, all it did was send a small rumble of discontent through the colossal ship.

“I got work to do,” I sighed, giving my lover a squeeze, but before I could say any more, she leaned forward and captured my lips. I was startled, but returned it after a moment with much enthusiasm. It was a gentle, slow thing filled with emotion, and I could practically feel Selene pour her affections for me into it, communicating it all through her lips.

The silly girl didn’t know that this only made me even more terrified of losing all this. I could never let that happen.

Selene pulled away, a pleased smile on her lips as she huddled in, her head resting on my shoulder, apparently unwilling to stop using me as her rightful throne. Oh well, I could live with this. I could totally live with this. I’m going to obliterate those fucking Tyranids while cuddling with this little minx of mine. Was there anything more disrespectful than that?

I started with the tried-and-true method of planetary annihilation: orbital bombardment. My missiles were designed for void combat, but I was sure I’d have ample opportunity to collect more than enough data to refine a variant optimal for orbital bombardment for each type of torpedo I had in the very near future.

A million small holes less than a metre across opened up on the belly of the ship, and a volley of missiles shot out of them, four subsequent waves of them, before the Barrier slammed shut again just in time to negate yet another colossal Warp Blast.

The missiles raced towards the surface, spreading out to cover a stretch of land the size of North America. Plasma bombs, acid bombs, pyro-acid bombs, toxic bombs, base bombs. I wasn’t holding anything back; thousands of each kind were falling upon the planet like rain. Some burst mid-air as artillery bioforms unleashed their wrath on the hail of death, some more detonated when aerial bioforms flew into their path, but four-fifths struck true.

The Sovereign started its slow approach, swimming towards the north pole of the planet. If I could blow that stupid structure still SCREAMING into my mind to hell, I’d be able to leverage my psychic powers again. I just had to disrupt it enough to stop it from working.

Everything died in the stretch of land my orbital bombardment landed on. Some of the tougher beasties survived the first volley, but then came the next three, and I made sure to divert at least a handful of missiles to every Tyranid that somehow survived the first blow. Maybe they were Carnifexes with more luck than the rest, a Lictor that managed to hide behind cover at the edges of two explosions, a Bio-Titan that was just built differently. Even the luckiest ones didn’t survive unscathed and fell when they came under concentrated fire.

Overwhelming firepower, take that. I might not have any trump cards using solely my Eldritch powers, powerful enough to contest some of my more ridiculous psychic tricks, but there was a quality in overwhelming quantity, too. And would you look at that? My bio-energy reserves were at an all-time high. Those four volleys cost me barely a fraction of a percentage of my total reserves.

The Daemons were doing something too, but I’d made sure that the Warp rift was on the other side of the planet, so I’d just keep an eye on it for now. I didn’t feel like dealing with that while unable to use most of my psychic powers.

I need to build in safeguards. A teleportation spell tied to a Whitestone Pylon? Could I even anchor a more ‘active’ spell like that to Whitestone? Maybe I could make a teleportation beacon sort of thing out of Whitestone and another trinket with a ‘Recall’ function.

I didn’t know how I’d make sure it could be operated even if I was, for some reason, unable to use my psychic powers entirely, or I was otherwise in no state to even focus on activating it. I would need to think some more about it and experiment even more than that afterwards, but it was a worthwhile endeavour. I didn’t like the thought of having no routes of escape.

I twitched in annoyance when I sensed my regular murderous playmate emerge into the Materium on the other side of the planet and announce his existence. The roar carried far, rippling through the Immaterium and reaching the ears of everyone with even just a little psychic potential.

“What was that?” Cain asked, then took a hasty step toward Jurgen. His face blanched, and he started breathing through his nose, but he looked determined to be within hugging distance of his aide. Smart.

He had been the one to shove Jurgen at me when I was having a ... 'seizure’ too. Damn it, I’m going to have to reward them for that. Let it not be said that I’m a miserly bitch who can’t recognise a favour owed.

“Doombreed,” I said, scrunching up my nose. “Nosy fucker can’t just wait for his turn at getting his ass whooped. On another note, I owe you a favour for your aide’s ... help. What is it you truly desire?”

He blinked slowly, then answered in a bit of a daze. “Safety.”

“I can do that,” I said, my lips peeling back into a toothy grin. “What do you say about a total genetic and biological makeover? I will make you into a Custodian, just a regular human-sized one. Unaging body, perfect memory, strength, toughness, endurance, intelligence, agility and reflexes eclipsing that of an Astartes. I could even weave in something a little extra, granting you a healing factor derived from Primarch Fulgrim’s uncorrupted genetic template. Did you know he once survived getting shot in the head by a Vindicare’s sniper rifle? Or if you want safety in the more abstract sense, I can give you a private mansion on Vallia. Anything that wants to reach you there would have to go through the defences I’ve erected to protect the heart of my little empire.”“Huh?” he said intelligently, staring at me as if I’d just grown a second head — launching the next volley, same yield, upgraded template, same numbers, optimised flight patterns and target selection algorithms — and I snorted.

“Will he get dissected by a Magos Biologis after getting convicted of super Heresy by an Inquisitorial conclave if I actually do that?” I asked, turning my gaze on Amberley.

“Not if it’s endorsed by Lord Octavian,” Amberley said after a few seconds of careful consideration, looking ... miffed. “Officially endorsed. It would also help if it were known that you used the same ... Archeotech was the Emperor when he made the Primarchs. Some would still consider it extremely heretical, however.”

“None can ever meddle with the Omnissiah’s own work, to even think you can ever improve it is the height of hubris, and super-tek-heresy besides, and all that bullcrap?” I rolled my eyes. “Stupid cultists. Did you know that the Emperor planned to dismantle the Cult Mechanicus after the Great Crusade? He absolutely loathed religion, and he was a scientist himself, perhaps the greatest scientist humanity ever knew. I think that’s why he kept Kelbor Hal as Fabricator General, he wanted them to overreach and give him a reason to go to war after the Treaty of Mars.”

My analytical mind-cores and my Ethereal political instincts all agreed with me on that. Big E had plans upon plans for the future, a dynamic step-by-step master plan that would have seen his vision for humanity realised. A psychic race of humanity, free from the threat of Chaos and ruling the galaxy in perpetuity in a semi-democratic state. Everything he did during the Great Crusade had been temporary, just meant to hold his Empire together until he finished the Webway project and could turn his attention to nation-building.

Then the Horus Heresy happened, then Magnus happened to his Webway project, the Schism of Mars happened when he wasn’t ready for a war with them yet, and then he ended up as a dessicated corpse acting as an eldritch battery while his patchwork mess of an empire that was meant to be a temporary thing evolved outside his control into something slowly growing further and further away from what it was intended to be.

Another continent-sized landmass was obliterated, scorched clean of life by my subsequent volleys. 81,5% increase in effectiveness despite using the same quantity of bio-energy as previously. Acceptable. The firing solutions could still use some work, and the missiles were still working sub-optimally in the atmosphere. Some more work was required. I predicted at least another 50% increase in the next volley.

“I wouldn’t know,” Amberley said neutrally, carefully choosing her words. “Can you truly do that? Make someone a ... Custodes?”

“Yes,” I replied with a roll of my eyes, then gently patted Selene’s head as she leaned into me. “Selene here currently has everything I’d just described. Biologically, she is a Custodes with a bit of Primarch biology woven in here and there.”

Plus some extra additions I wasn’t about to divulge, like the mental black box holding her memories or the things I added in to enhance her psychic potential. Those were friends-and-family-exclusive modifications.

The look Amberley gave Selene, who was still acting like a pleased feline on my lap, was half-horror, half something else. Greed maybe? Jealousy? Outrage? It was hard to pin down, mostly because it was vague, and she slapped it away in a blink.

“Well, Cain? What will it be?” I hummed, then paused. It felt weird saying his name. “Did you know that your family name is the same as the name of the first murderer? The same first murder that gave birth to the Daemon Drach’nyen, the one which nearly killed the Emperor during the War in the Webway and was later bound to a sword, which the Despoiler wields to this day?”

Why was it so fun dispensing random, unasked-for trivia on people? I just couldn’t help myself ... again. Was this becoming a problem? Nyeh. It didn’t hurt anyone anyway, so why should I care? It was endlessly amusing to watch them blue-screen every time; it never got old.

“That’s true?” Amberley asked, sounding somewhere between horrified and incredulous.

“You have some files locked up in your Inquisitorial vaults, don’t you?” I grinned. “Drach’nyen, the Echo of the First Murder, the End of Empires. It is an independent Chaos Daemon that grows in power as more human blood is shed; every murder committed in cold blood against a fellow man feeds the echo, and as Mankind’s Empire grows larger, so does its inevitable End. Neat, isn’t it? And Abbadon is using that thing as his toothpick.”

Actually, that paranoid fuck having Drach’nyen is probably the only reason that vile demon hasn’t done anything worthwhile since shanking the Emperor ten thousand years ago. Did he plan it to happen like that when he stabbed the sword into Ra Endymion and told him to run? I wouldn’t put it past him to use Abbadon’s paranoia to keep that daemon from realising its true potential.

Actually, that’s pretty convenient. I know where I have to go to obliterate that thing out of existence before its conceptual bullshit starts to make it ramp up in power even more, because I am building my own little empire. It needs to die or be sealed properly at least. Emps failed to kill it, so maybe sealing it is a more realistic goal.

“Actually, shelve that thought, whatever you are about to say,” I said, making a zipping motion with my hand as I turned away. The Sovereign reached the optimal spot to unleash hell upon the Tyranid structure burrowing in Freya’s North Pole. “Give me a moment to focus, I’m gonna go murder something real quick.”