120 – Onwards, to Newer Shores
“As it turns out, navigating to the other side of the galaxy is sowhat challenging.”
Selene gave a sour look. She probably didn’t feel quite as ho in the dark void of space as I did. It didn’t help that I shrunk our new bio-ship down to the bare minimum so it could go faster.
It was still the size of a smaller house, but there were seven of us so it was a tiny bit … well, tiny.
“Where are we even?” Selene asked, staring out through the window. Which, by the way, is so translucent bone structure Zedev threw together in like an afternoon. Since then I had him splice together and grow other useful biological material.
The Tyranids might be fine with their ships being so … fleshy, but I was not. Solar punk ships. That’s the goal. Streamlined organic spaceships.
“Sowhere,” I started, then coughed as I felt her glare. With all that telepathic practice she’d been doing with Val since we left Baal behind, that glare could probably lobotomise a regular human. “I an, we are most likely sowhere around … where we should be, actually.”
I blinked in surprise. I an, I calculated our trajectory as best as I could while using the Eye of Terror — which I could see with little trouble if I opened up my soul senses — and the Emperor’s fancy flashlight. Still, I sowhat expected to sohow end up knee deep in so excrent either way.
Of course, we were still probably thousands of Lightyears away from our destination, but hey, at least I didn’t drive ourselves into the Eye of Terror by accident!
Now ca the harder part where I would have to get to the actual planet … which I didn’t even decide on. Hell, I would be happy with any fringe Tau worlds, better if they are at war with so outside force at the mont.
“aning?” Selene tapped her feet impatiently while the others acted like they weren’t listening in. It seed she got nad as their envoy to the great — though she acted more like a handler. “You didn’t even tell us where we are going.”
“Because I sort of don’t know yet?” I whispered. “BUT we are close. Only a handful of Lightyears away from the edge of Tau space!”
“So that’s our destination?” Selene asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Did I not ntion it before?” I rubbed my chin. “I’m fairly certain I did?”
“You know you think out loud sotis, it’s hard to know which of the things you say are important.”
“Oh, well,” I shrugged. “Say, what do you think about becoming rcenaries for a bit? Acting like we are regular humans while we worm our way up the hierarchy?”
“Why?” She asked, though I could tell she wasn’t really opposed to the idea.
“I want to take a bite out of an Ethereal.”
“You want to take a bite out of everything that moves,” she said amusedly. “And so things that don’t.”
I squinted at her as her lips twitched, barely holding back a grin. She could be speaking of anything, there is no reason to jump to conclusion-
“Make sure you don’t dry up like a desert this ti,” she said with exaggerated worry. Then leaned in and continued in a whisper. “Seeing you mummify in real ti was interesting, but I much prefer you with so curves on you.”
“That was one ti,” I rolled my eyes. Who knew that stupid water syphoning moss on Baal could drain every drop of moisture out of even my body. The experience also managed to make my sour mood after leaving Guilliman behind even worse. Stupid moss. “And the Ethereals aren’t known for mummifying people as far as I know.”
I’m so using that moss on the next enemy I stumble across. Let them suffer the sa fate as .
She felt Valenith’s aura wake, like a mighty beast aroused from hibernation. When she glanced over at the Eldar’s ditating form in the corner, his eyes were wide open and seemingly stared at a wall.
“We have company,” he said, his mouth twisting into a cruel smirk. His aura untangled itself like a blooming flower and reached into the distance. “A Necron Light Cruiser two thousand kilotres away.”
Before anything else, I let my power flow over and around the ship then covered it with the most powerful concealnt I could conjure up.
“That won’t hide us for long,” Val said. “Not from them.”
“It only has to keep them from shooting us before we wreck that ship, doesn’t it?” I asked back as my own aura followed Val’s lead and finally found the tombship.
It had the shape of a crescent moon, coloured a dull grey from the living tal making up its hull, and glowed with that eerie green light all Necron tech tended to.
It was also rather small. If it flew next to the Macragge’s Honour, it would have looked tiny in comparison.
Still, it most likely had what was arguably the most advanced tech in the galaxy on board, so size wasn’t as much of a tell of its strength as it usually was.
“What do you suppose they’re here for?” I humd, glancing at Val since he seed more familiar with the space skeletons.
“They must have sensed us,” he said. “And we must be deep into their territory if they bothered to send a Cruiser.”
“Hmm.” This was certainly interesting, and sowhat thrilling. The only void battle I took part in was against bioships which weren’t much of a challenge. Necron ships though … “How the turns have tabled.”
It was a ssed up rock, paper scissor scenario where Necrons dunked on both and the Tyranids and I dunked on the Tyranids. Shitty balancing, is what I say.
Anyway, let’s see what Necron tech is capable of.
“Any reason I shouldn’t strike first?” I asked, already compiling a prototype template in my head and readying the ship to produce it.
“They probably think they are just swatting a bug as of now,” Val said. “But if the ‘bug’ destroys a ship, they will co swarming. They can’t live with provocations and hurt pride.”
“So we will have to get the hell out of here once it’s over,” I grinned. “Got it.”
“Are you sure making an enemy out of them is a good id-“ Selene closed her mouth mid-sentence as she threw a glare. Her senses were coming along nicely, she could even tell I already dispatched a trio of fighters while we were talking. “Really?”
“If we are where I think we are,” I shrugged. “This is the territory of the Sautekh Dynasty. One of the most warmongering sub-factions of the Necron race.”
“Indeed,” Val piped in, his face morphing even further into so strange mixture of glee and amusent. “And one of the strongest, too. Especially since they were united under the Storm Lord.”
Is it their long lifespans or just the nature of the Aeldari that they still hold a grudge against the Necrons even after sixty million years? I mused inwardly as the three drones shot off in three different directions. They were only about as large as a car, but all three were covered in Camouflage and had a single bio-plasma cannon that fit onto them.
I knew fighter warfare was almost non-existent in this galaxy, but I wanted to see how viable it was. Sure, it was more of a Star Wars thing, but maybe it had so rit. It certainly beat the go-to tactics the Imperium employed.
Well, technically at least. Ramming — of all things — and getting up close and personal before loosening a devastating broadside barrage like so old-school pirates fucking worked against the Tau. The very sa tau who had so of the most advanced technology and had a military doctrine most similar to what I was familiar with from my ti on 21st century Earth.
“Wanna watch?” I asked, half-distracted as I coordinated the three fighters to take up positions around the tomb ship. One went right and up, one went left and up, and the third slid under the ship to box it in.
I noticed Fae perking up at my question, but it was at most a minute twitch in her expression and a hopeful glint in her sapphire eyes. She turned her gaze at Selene. How a century-old Eldar could bring herself to make puppy eyes at a human was quite sothing, though.
The woman in question sighed and gave a nod.
Four illusory projections popped up around the room, one for each ship and one for our own transport, which continued to stealthily drift further away from the cruising Necron spacecraft.
Probably the only reason we weren’t being fired upon yet was that our ship used gravitational propulsion exclusively and that left zero heat signature behind — aside from the temperature of the ship itself, but I could cloak at least that much with so Tyranid Camouflage biotech. A rocket engine burning at 3000 Celsius though? Even a blind man with an archaic infrared sensor would catch that with the frigid dark backdrop of space, making the heat signature even more apparent.
“Fire,” I whispered with a childish grin, and the three fighters obeyed even before I finished the word.
Even though I expected it, I was still slightly disappointed when the three globules of bio-plasma smacked up against the void-shields of the Necron ship and did just about nothing. The shields seed to tremble and shiver for a brief instant, but after that, I could basically feel the ship’s actual defences co online to complent the passive ones they had on.
My first salvo failed to even penetrate the shields they had to stave off space junk on their leisurely cruise. It was the slightest bit … irritating.
Then the weapons ca online. First was a pulse of energy blasting outwards from the ship in all directions, it reached the three fighters just a second later even though I had them retreat the mont they fired.
The fighters spun around as if hit by a shockwave, but they were mostly unhard, aside from that. Unfortunately, that was enough for the Necrons to find them and lock onto their position as a mont later, a trio of energy beams blasted my three prototype fighters to bits. They just about evaporated.
The pulse of energy didn’t reach our main ship, but they were looking for it now. Unless I portalled ourselves to the other end of the system — as in, we ran with our tails between our legs and didn’t look back — it was only a matter of ti before they could turn those beams on us.
‘The Star Pulse Generator, it’s hardly the most dangerous Necron weapon, but it gets smaller crafts close to them off of their backs,’ Val sent, dumping information relating to the weapon into my head, along with his ssage. ‘The beams were probably Death Rays, usually used by their Doom Scythes for ground support and dispatching other smaller craft. Though a ship this size should also have a Particle Whip and a Lightning Arc at the very least.’
Telepathy was great. Getting the equivalent information of an hour-long lesson about Necron Spacecraft weaponry dumped into my head along with comntary took just about one-quarter of a second. Though most humans would have their brains dripping out of their ears if they had to absorb this amount of information this quickly.
As the Necron ship started pulsing with energy again, with strange whips of so almost imperceptible energy also moving through space like searchlights, I had the second variants of my fighters ready for testing. These were the size of trucks and packed much more firepower.
By the end of this scuffle, I wanted to have a viable star-fighter template that wasn’t limited by the Tyranid’s limited production capabilities. I didn’t want ships I could grow from egg-sacks for the optimal amount of energy. I wanted the best I could do with my power.
Second round of testing, begin.
*****
Hakonut
The ancient Necron Lord was fuming. Not only was he the one who’d been sent to investigate sothing as minor and insignificant as a gravitational anomaly, but said anomaly even dared to attack his personal ship.
The crypteks aboard buzzed as they worked their techno sorcery to scry out the source of the anomaly. The consensus had been that it was likely either so cut-off bio-form of those strange ‘Tyranid’ creatures or a ploy by a rival Dynasty trying to make a stealth craft appear like such.
Well, or a rival Overlord, but that would be impossible to prove even if he sohow managed to capture the pilots of the enemy ship before they either self-destructed or phase-shifted back into their tomb world.
He wasn’t even going to try, anyway. Every second spent on this excursion and every little drop of energy used up to power the ship was a monuntal waste, in his opinion.
“New fighter crafts approaching,” one cryptech reported, its chanical fingers waving around a globe of erald energy as its one eye stared into it as if it held the secrets of the universe. “Cloaking remains subpar, yet enough to slightly disrupt short-range sensors. Exact numbers are impossible to tell.”
Hakonut tapped his arm and the cryptechs all gave off a minute twitch as he let his unimpressed gaze wash over them. He had a full cadre of twelve of them, a quarter of that specialised in scrying, and they couldn’t even locate the fighters. To say his already glacial mood was further soured was underselling how close to beating their tallic heads into the wall he ca when none of them offered to correct the initial report with an accurate number.
“Find the main ship,” he said tersely. “Destroy the fighters. Preserve energy. You will pay back every wasted drop of energy with dividends.”
His voice was barely off-tone, but all who heard it knew not to push him. They quickly went back to work while the Lightning Arcs powered up to make short work of the new wave of fighters.
Announcent
This will count as the chapter for next Wednesday. That is 07.03.
Why? Because I'm apparently as smart as a basketful of kitten shaped rocks and couldn't do a 118 1 = 119 addition in my head. Which is why I posted chapter 120 instead of the actual 119th chapter.
Soooooooooooooooooo. See you guys in a week?
User Comments
0 comments from readers