“I object,” I said, arms crossed as I stared at the Tau faces before , taking up the entire wall like a hundred little floating heads. “I won’t stop you, but I want you to know that this is stupid. You have read the reports on Sebasticor Ebongrave, you’ve been fighting the man for decades. He had to have a detailed psychological profile built up by now. You should know peace with the Tau is anathema to him.”
“It would be against our philosophy to refuse an attempt at peace without even hearing the other side out,” Aun’saal said calmly. “It would be the height of hypocrisy if we refused him out of hand. But we are not foolish, analysts have determined, based on the latest intel we have from our intelligence operatives, that a few days wasted on faux peace negotiations will not be detrintal to our offence. Quite the contrary, since we have a stable supply line, and the Imperium’s forces in the Greyhell front don’t. Each wasted day brings them closer to widespread starvation, and subsequent riots, revolts and such.”
That was cold, but I had to admit it had strategic rit. I disliked it; it targeted civilians; it was distasteful, but I was willing to let it go. It was the Imperium’s fault that their supply lines were in shambles, not ours. It wasn’t my fault that their First Fleet decided to commit assisted suicide by attacking .
“As I said, go ahead,” I said with a shrug. “I reserve the right to point and laugh when they spit in the face of the parley and ambush you, though.”
“Noted,” Aun’saal said drily, though I had the feeling he was actually of the sa mind as . If I knew anything about him, he was working tirelessly in the background to minimise the damage such treachery could cause. “Do you have any other input before we send our agreent to the Imperium?”
“I want to be there,” I humd. “If only to see their faces when they see a human standing behind you. It should be entertaining, as would be crushing whatever plot that slimy twat is trying to pull. Also, I know I don’t have to say this, but give an honest shot at keeping the location sowhere defensible. Do not hold the eting in an empty system, that’s just begging for so third-party to crash the party.”
Naly, Daemons. Fucking Tzeentch.
“Noted,” Aun’saal said. “We will take your recomndations into account.”
*****
It took them an entire week to iron out the details of where, when and under what circumstances the Tau and Human delegations would et. Surprisingly, I found out — through so blatant ntal eavesdropping — that the Imperium seed to be wanting to hurry things up as much as possible. They weren’t delaying, not just playing for ti.
Either it ant Ebongrave was getting hasty, or they really had sothing nasty occupying their attention.
Or maybe I was just looking too deeply into it. In a galaxy where space travel was so slow, the fact that it took just a week was already incredibly fast from an objective perspective, I guess. Didn’t feel that way, though, which is why I suspected the Tau were dragging their feet to drag it out, despite having a hard-on for peace.
I spent the ti in between relaxing, checking up on Vallia, spending so ti with my daughters and dedicating the rest of my ti to experints. I optimised my hybrid Custodes templates, refined so of the most used variants and then experinted with refining the process for making Pariah-flesh, and also tried everything that ca to mind for making the most out of them. My null-bullets, missiles, grenades, and even spikes received upgrades, but I was hoping for so inspiration on that front.
I was hoping getting my hands on the tech Imperial Assassins of the Culexus temple used would give so breakthrough on that front, and honestly, I was sure an Inquisitor would be sending one to my doorstep sooner or later. I was a big bad Rogue Psyker, and the Culexus were the bane of Psykers. It was natural to think one would have an easy ti murderizing .
Other than that, I was waiting on Trazyn to call on for a task, so I could exhort him for knowledge on how to forge Blackstone, or if not that, other Necron technology. Having Blackstone Pylons of my own was still my best bet at keeping the nastiness of the Warp away from my territory without having to rely on my Tyranid Shadow.
Anyone with common sense could tell you that keeping tens of thousands of Tyranid synapse creatures imprisoned like animals in a zoo was destined to cause trouble further down the line, no matter the precautions taken. It was a stopgap asure, and worse, it was unreliable, the sa fault for which I disliked the idea of Machine Spirits. Knowing my greatest defence against Daemons was unreliable was like a permanent itch I couldn’t scratch.
Then the day of the peace summit, or whatever they decided to call it, arrived, and I felt my eyebrows rise despite myself the mont our ship entered the designated system. I felt a pair of familiar souls onboard the largest Imperial ship: Ciaphas Cain and Amberley Veil. Curiously, no matter how much I searched, I couldn’t find any blank spots in my perception that would signify the presence of a Pariah like Cain’s favourite aide. The few smaller ones I found, I knew were too weak to be Blanks, no, those were likely Null Rods or Psyk-Out munitions Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors loved so much.
What are they playing at? I wondered. I threw all my previous plans into the garbage in one go, I’d been perhaps working under false preconceptions, believing that Ebongrave just had to be the highest form of authority present.
“Interesting,” I humd. “Aun’saal, do we have a list of the proposed delegates they are sending?”
“We do,” my favourite Tau said, tapping at his tablet before handing it to . I ran my gaze down the list of nas and huffed. “Anything we should be concerned with?”
“Take all my previous suggestions and objections with a grain of salt; they’d been made while missing crucial information,” I said, shaking my head as I tapped one na in particular: Amberley Veil. “I believe whoever’s facilitating this is not Sebasticor Ebongrave. His na is on the list, yes, but I believe he is at best an unwilling puppet or a mouthpiece. Amberley Veil is a highly influential Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, and I assu you know of Ciaphas Cain?”
“We have read the accounts of Quadravidia, yes,” Aun’saal replied. “His presence here was taken as a sign of the veracity of the Imperium’s intentions for actual peace. He is known for being honourable and a man of his word. It is partially why your warnings of treachery or a trap went largely unheeded.”
“The man’s a trouble magnet, I wonder what kind of horror he is bringing to our doorstep now,” I mused. “Hmm. Last I saw him, he seed intent on departing the Sector as fast as humanly possible. Sothing must have forced him to stay.”
“His heroic spirit is well known among the humans, even this far out of his usual battlefields,” Aun’saal said. “He was a favoured propaganda piece of the now-dead Lord Militant Tetrarchus, so his na is well-known among both the populace and the Imperium’s troops.”
What could have forced his hand? I thought. The distasteful possibility of so ridiculous eldritch horror popping up in the near future was higher than ever. Cain was a Plot magnet and had a massive plot armour too. His presence all but confird that sothing was going to co out of left field.
I wouldn’t know what, but I could prepare so I could roll with the blow when it ca, instead of taking it on the cheek.
The star system we were in was a contested zone, having traded hands a dozen tis over the course of the Achilus Crusade, so it was the hope that neither side would have had ti to build up anything crazy, and that if anything nasty was sleeping in the system, it would have been woken by the fighting long ago.
The peace negotiation itself would take place on a small space station dropped an equal distance away from both the Imperium’s and the Tau’s fleets.
It wasn’t a foolproof idea by itself; they could send assassins in the place of diplomats, or just fakes who they wouldn’t mind blowing to shreds with their lance batteries. But I made it foolproof. I would know if Cain and Veil weren’t in the shuttle flying towards the space station.
Surprisingly, they were. Sothing was wrong; they were too forthright, almost desperate. As they could blow the station to shreds, so could we. How could they justify sending an Inquisitor, the Hero of the Imperium, and the Lord Commander of the Canis Salient all together? It was super fishy. My spidey senses were tingling … or maybe that was just my paranoia, considering I hadn’t been bitten by any radioactive spiders as of late.
Thankfully, I had an easy way to figure out what was going on without any Nulls around to protect the Imperial delegates’ minds. It might have been a bit paranoid, but I maintained that it was just prudence, not paranoia, if they really were out to get you.
I started with Ebongrave, the least likely to have any resistance to telepathy out of the three. Curious. The man was a ball of resentnt and impotent rage; he had been browbeaten into submission by the massive hamr of Amberley’s Inquisitorial authority. He had the air of a man walking to the gallows. He had objected, repeatedly and loudly, to ‘trusting’ the Tau to honour a parley, but he’d been ignored, and then commanded to co along so he couldn’t make a ss of things while Amberley wasn’t breathing down his neck.
I did not like the obvious parallels between him and . Not at all. I supposed I wasn’t browbeaten, just ignored, and coming along had been my own initiative. At least the Tau seed to have taken my warnings into consideration. We weren’t the sa … but it still left a sour taste in my mouth.
Next ca Cain, and the mont I poked my taphorical nose into his mind, I felt my eyebrows climb up my forehead until they almost touched my hairline. His mind was a chaotic ss, a total opposite of the confident smile and composed aura he outwardly projected. He was imagining the hundreds of ways this eting could end with his death, then considering whether he could sohow turn the shuttle around before it reached the space station.
Those speculations always ca to a stuttering halt, the image of a golden giant with a severe frown banishing them all in an instant. I recognised that frown, that face.
“Oh, my,” I humd, a smirk tugging at the edge of my lips. I’d found the ‘mastermind’ of this little play, and found myself relaxing. There was no eldritch monstrosity, no Necron armada, no Tyranid Hivefleet. “Just an ambitious little Custodian.”
Long ti no see, Octavian.
Then I tensed right back up when my brain caught up with . Custodes weren’t stupid, and this specific one had tried to kill before — however unsuccessfully — so it wasn’t unreasonable to expect the sa once more, no matter what he told Cain. Octavian knew I could read minds, didn’t he? He wanted to see him profess his honest intentions for peace between us in Cain’s mind. The optimistic part of wanted to believe that was just his way of showing his peaceful intentions without exposing himself.
The cynical part of thought it was a facade. An attempt at lulling into a false sense of security so I’d let my guard down, thereby giving him the opportunity he needs to ambush . Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to ally with the Shadowkeepers, no matter his previous claims of them being at odds with each other.
Is there a worst-case scenario more disastrous than getting jumped by a squad of Shadowkeepers all decked out in Echidna-killing gear? I thought furiously, my perception of ti slowing to a crawl as my brain — and the connected web of neural computers making up my mind-cores — almost itched from how hard I was pushing them.
I couldn’t find any scenario like that, not one that Octavian could facilitate by himself. Sure, Tzeentch could chuck another handful of Greater Daemons at in the middle of the ambush, or maybe shit out a Warp Storm on top of my head. Maybe the surveyors missed the fact that the planet below was a Necron Throne World, and we’d get a whole Necron Fleet out to murder us.
I checked for the latter and sighed inwardly when I found the planet bereft of any murderous space skeletons.
No. Worst-case scenario was Shadowkeepers all prepared and ready for , with a slew of purpose-made relics aid to counter specifically. I scoured the System, leaving no rock unturned, tasting every scattered atom, running my ntal fingers over the fabric of space. I scanned the system from end to end, then scanned beyond, both in the Warp for any Imperial fleets waiting in ambush, and in realspace, but only found the empty void of space between stars and the tumultuous waters of the Warp.
I teleported tiny infiltration drones on board all Imperial ships and sent them surveying any spot blanked out of my auric perception. Tiny flies cloaked in Lictor-grade cloaking investigated every spot, and I catalogued everything they found. There was not a single mber of the Adeptus Custodes in the system, there were no hidden teleport beacons I could see, there were no spatial warpings signifying soone hiding in a pocket space, and there was nothing in the Warp making suspect an ambush. It was eerie.
I peered into the distance, my eyes piercing the distance with ease as I thought, arms crossed under my chest, as my fingers tapped idly at my opposing wrist.
“What’s wrong?” Selene asked with a tinge of worry in her voice, perceptive enough to pick up on all my cues, or maybe just familiar enough with to know what to look for.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “There is sothing fucky going on, but I can’t, for the life of , figure out what.”
I shared my observations with her through our telepathic bond, what I’d found out, and my theories and worries about what it ant. Selene frowned and humd thoughtfully.
“We can either cancel this eting, change the location last-minute with your portals, or we can walk right into this supposed trap with our eyes peeled wide open,” Selene said, tapping at her lips, deep in thought. “The Tau would bitch and whine, but it doesn’t matter. You think a Shadowkeeper kills quad could be a threat to you?”
“Yes,” I said easily. “You never know what sorts of ssed-up relics they have sitting around in their vaults. Sothing in there can for sure ss up my life, if not kill .”
“Can you track down this Custodian?” Selene asked. “I know your aura-thingy only covers a star system, but you can teleport over interstellar distances. If you could extract his location from one of the delegates’ minds, you could portal him here for questioning.”
“Custodes have minds tougher than diamonds, I doubt I could get quick answers,” I said, considering. “But I might still get sothing worthwhile out of it. They, too, have body language, and I can read that instead.”
I’d beco ridiculously good at cold reading people, what with my being consciously aware of every single molecule in a person’s body, and having the ntal processing power to actually make use of all that information. But that was just hardware; the Tau Ethereal template gave the software for it, and it synergised disgustingly well with the rest.
I didn’t use it, not unless I needed to. It was fine for political etings, but it felt distasteful to use it on Selene or my daughters, so I didn’t. Yeah, I know, I could read their emotions through their auras anyway, which was arguably much more invasive of their privacy, but it felt different from my end. It put in a different mindset, and I didn’t like it; I didn’t like looking at my family mbers with the compulsive need to dissect their psyche and understand what made them tick.
But it was a useful tool for when I didn’t want to, or couldn’t use telepathy to get information out of soone.
“Could be a trap,” I said, humming. “The Deathwatch kill-team managed to latch onto one of my teleports when they were trying to ambush . Still, I can take precautions knowing that’s a possibility. I think I’ll go with that suggestion.”
“Be careful,” Selene said. “We can always pull back, or lay a trap of our own to bait them out. Send in two of your flesh-crafted drones to look like us. That is, if there is an ambush or trap at all.”
“Point,” I said, slumping a little. “Can’t be too careful in this shithole of a galaxy. I’ll be as safe as I can be, promise.”
“Good luck then,” Selene said, leaning in to give a small peck on the lips before pulling back with a grin. “Have a good hunt.”
My answer was a grin mirroring her own. It was ti for a reunion.
User Comments
0 comments from readers