158 – Blissful Ignorance
I woke up with the dim light playing across my face and with a deeply satisfied smile on my lips. The bed was divine, and the naked form of Selene curled up around my own bare body was even more so.
A warm breeze blew through the window and with a thought I cooled it into a refreshingly chill gust that ruffled my hair and made Selene snuggle in even closer under the blanket.
Adorable. I thought, barely restraining myself from squeezing her with a squeal like so overly cute kitten.
The girl needed so rest after tiring us both out so thoroughly. I let the marks of yesterday linger on my body even as I shifted my body back to my Psyker Form without rousing my lover.
Today was a good day.
Vallia itself was … a curious beast. I couldn’t really put a finger on it as I’d expected I would, but that just made it all the more interesting.
I had thought wrestling control of the malicious mind commanding Vallia would be child’s play, after all, it was just a budget hive-mind made of regular beasts’ intelligence, but while it couldn’t hold a candle to the Tyranid Hive Mind, this one was tenacious if nothing else.
Also quite sneaky, like a thin mist as compared to the all-pervasive darkness that the Shadow of the Hive Mind is.
Not that any of those things stopped from finding it and poking at it in fascination. It was strange, alien in a way I’d never seen before and it was honestly making want to study it.
Its most interesting property thus far had been how I could prod and poke, even blast bits of it to shred with psychic attacks, only for it to bounce right back to perfect health.
I had thought that destroying the mist around would have had the surrounding flora back in realspace connected to it wither in monts, but that didn’t happen. My current standing hypothesis was that the Mist — as I was going to call Vallia’s malicious hive mind — ca from the flora and fauna and not the other way around.
Attacking the mist was like trying to kill soone by stabbing their reflection in a mirror. Taking control of it would be more difficult than just cracking open the ntal defences and injecting so control constructs like Val had taught to do with regular humans.
No, I suspected if I wanted to make any permanent changes to this Mist and its workings, I had to modify the entire ecosystem spread over Vallia to do so down to the genetic level.
I had to find what exactly made plants and animals here different, what made it so they were all linked up in this psychic web.
Alas, that would have to wait for later. The gravitational sensors back on my moon — which I really should find a better na for than the Imperial Vallia Primus — just notified that a slew of voidships have breached the outer asteroid belt of the Star System.
Now what could this be? I mused, taking a glance down at the softly snoring Selene in my arms. Question was, would this new problem be worth getting out of bed and waking my adorable lover over? Nope, it’ll take a week at least for them to reach us at the speeds they are going at. I’ll let her sleep.
*****
“Any guesses?” I asked, a hint of psychic power flowing into my voice making it so it travelled through the void of space as if it were air. “I’m thinking … pirates!”
“Pirates?” Selene raised an eyebrow with an amused quirk of her mouth, then turned to look back at the half-dozen dilapidated ships ambling through space a few thousand kilotres away from us. “Whatever could they be wanting from a System that’s known to house nothing but a single Death World in it? I’m saying they are the bottom-of-the-barrel Chaos Worshippers so Warlord is throwing at you to test the waters. Look at those pointy bits and bobs sticking out of every corner of the ships, if that doesn’t scream Cultist, I don’t know what does.”
“You make a good point,” I said, scratching my chin in thought as I ignored the weary sigh coming from Valenith on the other side of . The ships indeed looked as if soone had taken so half-serviceable rchant ships, slapped so weapons batteries onto them and then built the appropriate amount of pointy spikes and such onto them to make the floating scraps they called ships look mildly terrifying to a regular Imperial citizen. “But that would an this is going to be boring as hell. Val, any ideas?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to agree with the Lady, Selene,” Val said, shaking his head in mild admonishnt at my taking this attack in jest. “At the sa ti, it might just be a veil to hide the true intent of the attackers. Or the true attackers themselves, even. I’d recomnd thoroughly scouting out the assets and capabilities of this outwardly dilapidated force before taking any further steps.”
“You think there is sothing nasty hiding on those flying garbage bins?” I mused, simplifying his speech and I caught a satisfying twitch on Val’s brows.
“In essence,” he said. “Yes.”
“Well, seems like the prudent thing to do,” I said, tilting my head as I squinted at the ships. My eyes might not have been able to pierce the thick hulls and the still-functional Void Shields around the ships, but my more esoteric senses washed over the small flotilla like the protections weren’t even there. “Hmmmm. Those ships stink of the taint of Chaos, and I think I’m even feeling so Sorcerers onboard … nothing too nasty though. Do they even know we’re here? I’d assud so Daemon trying to be smart urged them to co our way for shits and giggles, but perhaps not?”
“We may craft theories all week, but the only way to know for sure is to scout out the ship and ask the leaders of this pathetic force ourselves,” Valenith said, lips pulling back in a toothy snarl as he watched the ships like a wolf watching a herd of sheep.
“I really don’t feel like getting into close quarters with Chaos worshippers,” Selene whispered, shuddering slightly. “You never know what lengths they’ll go to for survival. I say we crush them with quick and overwhelming power … well, you crush them Echidna, I don’t think either or Val is powerful enough yet to crush twelve ships with any speed. Not yet … maybe not ever.”
“Val is well on his way to that level of power,” I said, squinting at the now preening Eldar as my soul observed his for a mont. It was by far the most powerful thing in my Realm beyond my own soul and it wasn’t even close. He had not only reclaid all the stifled potential Slaanesh had kept under her thumb, but grown beyond that … sohow. I shook my head, my thoughts snapping back to the haunted look Selene had on her face and I turned to her with a hint of worry. “You t Chaos cultists before? Of course, you can sit this out if you want.”
“I have … “ Selene shrugged. “My ship and crew had been … “ she hesitated, gulped, then shook her head with a scowl on her face. “I don’t need to care about her orders anymore. My crew and ship had been asked to assist an Inquisitor in rooting out a Chaos cult on Viridia. The mories of what I’d seen there stayed in my nightmares for years.”
“I see,” I said softly, floating over to her and giving her a gentle hug. “It’s fine. I’ll handle them myself … I can teleport you back to the fortress right this instant. I heard Bob just finished the bathhouses I’d asked him to make! Making the thermal water reservoirs had been a pain in the butt, but it’s done now. Wanna go there after I’m done here?”
“I’ll stay and at least watch,” Selene said, huffing in amusent as she glanced up at with adoration dancing in her grey eyes. “I’m not a fragile flower pot you need to treat with mitts. Just don’t needlessly drag this out, is what I wanted you to take away from what I’d said. If you give them ti, the Cultists will whip out the most abhorrent ritual they have even if only to spite you.”
“Alright,” I said, feeling her lack of actual fear and resolve shining in her aura and through our Bond. Stepping back, I patted her shoulder gently before turning a narrowed gaze on the ships. “So if we scout, they can’t know we are doing so.”
“That should be beyond easy,” Val said haughtily. “The few Sorcerers on board are pathetic weaklings. The only way they could prove to be a nuisance or cause you trouble, Mistress, would be if they took to attacking not your physical well-being, but your ntal one with so daemonic ritual. I know they are capable of more than one that transmits the dread, horror and torturous agony of a sacrificial victim into the minds of all who’s near.”
“Why?” I asked, frowning as I didn’t know whether to be curious or worried. That would be the exact kind of ritual that’d take advantage of my inability to completely shut down my passive Empathy. I’ve been getting much better lately, being able to ignore the constant stream of Orkish WAAAGH! Energy and glee practically dripping from the air around Vallia Primus, but I wasn’t sure I could just as easily ignore the kinds of emotions Val was speaking of. Selene’s suggestion of crushing them quick and fast was making more and more sense by the second. I still had one hangup though. “What use is a ritual like that? Doesn’t it affect their own troops too?”
“It does,” Val said with a scowl towards the ships. “But the debased degenerates only draw power from the suffering, especially if they are minions of She Who Thirsts. For them, the otherwise debilitating emotions only serve as a source of supernatural and nearly unending power.”
“I see,” I mused, thinking. “Well. Fuck that, let’s just throw so bio-ships at them. I wouldn’t want to dig around in the deranged minds of those lunatics anyway.”
“It would be prudent to learn why exactly they chose this system though,” Val said. “Is this just an advance force, or the whole warband? We might learn sothing useful from just listening in.”
“Alright,” I said, glancing at Selene who just gave a shrug of agreent. I turned my gaze back to the ships and started working on a makeshift prototype for what I’d need. “Let’s throw so Lictors at them then. Once we know enough, I’ll let a few bioships loose. Three or four should be enough to handle this ramshackle force.”
“You could try out your new Tau weaponry,” Selene suggested, but I was already shaking my head.
“It’d be a waste,” I said. “I have limited ammunition for those and these few ships are really not worth spending them.”
“Fair enough,” Selene muttered, shrugging as she kept a watchful eye on the ships like she was half expecting a Greater Daemon to co tearing its way out of one at any mont to turn our insides into outsides.
“Well then!” I clapped happily, the quickly thought-up blueprint materialising into a template in my mind as my palms spat out small spheres of writhing eldritch flesh one after the other. “Let’s begin!”
*****
“A hull breach?” Jed mouthed sourly, sending a scowl towards his idiotic ‘commander’.
“Get going already!” the commander said, his voice a near screech as he glanced over at Jed and his ‘squad’. “I have things to do! Fuck off already.”
“Yes commander,” Jed said with non-existent enthusiasm, sending a lingering glance towards the nude slave tied to the commander’s table with half its arm flayed clean of skin. A euphoric shudder ran through Jed at the delicious agony still flickering in the man’s glazed-over eyes. Maybe I’ll get a slave if we get this ‘job’ done quickly.
“Boss?” Marv asked from behind, tugging at Jed’s shirt roughly with his wiry hand.
“Yes, yes,” Jed said, turning quickly to tear his gaze away from the half-dead slave only kept alive and sowhat conscious by the thick mixture of drugs pumped into its veins. His mood bolstered by the hope of getting so fun of his own, Jed strolled off, breaking through the mob of his underlings with a spring in his steps. “Co. We have a hull breach to check.”
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