My aura couldn’t pierce the Tomb Ship’s shields; it couldn’t even approach the ship, held back kilotres away by so invisible field that seed to unmake my aura whenever it got any closer. It was an … interesting experience.
“If the Regent isn’t on that ship, I’m gonna eat my hat,” I vowed, a smirk slipping onto my lips as my gaze narrowed on the distant form of the Tomb Ship. Those plasma pulses had cost quite a bit of bio-energy, but it was still negligible, sowhere around a hundredth of a single per cent of my reserves.
“Which one?” Selene asked playfully, and I just made my wide-brimd floppy witch hat appear atop my head, along with a cute little ribbon. “That’s a big hat.”
“h.” I shrugged. I could just turn it into candy or sothing. On a much more serious note, the spaceti suppression field this Tomb Ship released was roughly a hundred tis stronger than what the smaller ships from previous ambushes had … which ant I wasn’t entirely confident in bruteforcing my way through it unless I took so drastic asures. Sothing along the lines of punching a hole straight through the Fabric of Reality, which I was obviously reluctant to do when that’d be like throwing open the doors and kindly inviting a horde of Daemons right into my house.
In another part of the galaxy, my other Avatar interrupted Trazyn’s enthusiastic speech about the historical and cultural significance of Necrotyr pottery that’s been going on for the last two weeks. It’d only been interrupted when my avatar fell on its face not so long ago, while I was a bit distracted due to the Tyranid Psychic Scream pouring liquid agony straight into my mind. Thankfully, I recovered quickly and shook off Trazyn’s questioning look with an ‘I got distracted, sorry, do go on’.
“Yes?” Trazyn asked, sounding more than a bit miffed that I’d interrupted him, but when I threw up an illusion of the Necron fleet I was fighting he just leaned forward in interest, a finger tapping his tallic chin. “Oh dear, what have you done to annoy them so?”
“They kept ambushing as I went about eradicating a Tyranid infestation near where I believe their holdings to be,” I said. “I destroyed a handful of ships across a few weeks and four ambushes. This is the largest group yet. Am I right to believe that the Tomb Ship leading them is … unique?”
“That’s the Star Reaper, the flagship of Phareon Ahmontekh,” Trazyn said, walking around the illusion to view it from all angles, humming appreciatively as he did. “A magnificent and terrible vessel fit for the Crimson Scythe’s reputation. It was fad and feared in equal asure during the War in Heaven for its unique ability to lock down spatial, ti and gravitational phenona across an entire star system. Aeldari Webway Gates closed, Old One Empyrean teleportation fizzled out, and even the Krorks found it impossible to breach into FTL despite their strange abilities.”
“I see,” I humd. “That sounds accurate. I don’t think I’ll be able to break through the suppression without doing sothing drastic, sothing I’d really rather not do. Anything else I should know about it?”
“I am almost certain it is powered by a C’tan shard, though which Star God it may be from, I cannot tell,” Trazyn said. “That ship was Ahmontekh’s pride and joy, the Phareon adored having a ship that proclaid by its re existence that the Suhbekhar Dynasty was the most technologically advanced Dynasty of them all. Thus, attrition would be futile. C’tan shards can generate energy ad infinitum, but even their output is limited. A single catastrophic attack is your only hope of overwhelming the shields.”
“I see,” I humd. “Thank you. Anything else I should know? Other super weapons it might have onboard?”
“Don’t ntion it, and no, I don’t believe so. The Crimson Scythe preferred more personal battles, and for those, his nasake weapon always sufficed; the ship was just a ans to keep his prey from running away so he could engage them in battle,” he huffed. “Oh, where was I- Ah yes, the cultural significance of the Kamish pottery … “
My focus returned to my primary Avatar, my eyes narrowing in thought as I threw up another cloud of chaff to halt a volley of anti-matter beams. Those things were nasty, but linear and not as fast as true energy beams. It was technically a particle beam, which I suppose the na ‘Particle Whip’ made abundantly clear.
The beams travelled at relativistic speeds, as expected of Necron weaponry, but while I wasn’t fast enough to react to them and put chaff in the way without teleporting, I was fast enough to react to them powering up. Those shields might have hidden them from my aura, but I had a wide array of sensors of a myriad different types, able to sense just about every type of energy or disturbance. So yeah, I could sense the mont those Particle Whips neared being ready to fire and always dispersed a cloud of chaff, then dragged the nearest cluster into the beams’ paths with telekinesis.
It was crude, but it worked, and it showed that my Barrier could still use so work. At least, having it anchored to Whitestone made it just as immune to attrition as the Tomb Ship’s source of infinite energy made it, if not more so. After all, those shield generators might be strained under heavy, continuous bombardnt, forcing them to channel energy at maximum throughput for longer. The energy had to reach the shield generators sohow, then be converted into shields, and I was pretty sure those generators would be the first to give out.
My own Barrier might have been weaker overall — for now, I was already brainstorming on ways to make it tougher and more durable without requiring a larger Whitestone structure — but they had no such weakness. The Whitestone wouldn’t give way unless an attack got past the Barrier and disrupted the structure, and the Barrier was just … there. Permanent, so long as the anchor remained.
“Uhm,” Cat spoke up nervously, squirming a bit as I held her in place, seated firmly on my lap. “Am I not distracting you, Mom? You can let go, I’ll be fine, you know? I don't feel weird or anything anymore, and my headache went away ages ago!”
“Nuh-uh,” I said, my arms tightening a bit around the adorable ball of fluff that she was. “The Necrons are using so fucky super weapon with a psychic effect. A … Sepulchre, right, that thing. I am not letting you out of my sight, even though I am holding its effects off for now.”
It was annoying, like a constant suffocating mass of beasts nipping at the protective bubble I’d put around the ship. It required constant maintenance and a fraction of my focus to hold it up and counteract the Sepulchre’s invasive field. I kinda felt like Atlas, holding up the world, except if I dropped it just a bit, the Sepulchre could press further in. If I sohow got knocked out? Then its effects would wash over the Sovereign like a tidal wave, and while the Psychic Scream had been unfocused, I doubted the Necrons used anything substandard.
I wasn’t sure about what its exact effects would be on the people under my protection, but I didn’t want to find out.
“You are welco to distract any ti you want,” I humd, patting her head and gently scratching behind her ears in a way that had her go cross-eyed and purring up a storm. Adorable. “I’m not so limited that I can leave a fraction of my mind here, focused on making doubly sure the two of you remain safe while I duke it out with the space skellies.”
“Mhmmm,” Cat humd, lting into as I continued petting her. I had gone through her mind with a fine-toothed comb half a dozen tis over the last few weeks, making use of her blackboxed mories in places where her mind was … frayed. Maybe it all would have healed in ti. Maybe. Or maybe that weakness would have been what a Daemon used to possess my daughter and eat her nascent soul.
As powerful as I was, I couldn’t remake a soul that’s been eaten and digested by a Daemon. It was gone, and anything I could make would just be a copy, a perfect copy perhaps, but a copy nonetheless. I would always know the real Cat died in horrible agony as a Daemon chewed apart her very soul.
As that thought settled into my head, I vowed to myself that I’d make a beeline back to Vallia Pri and erect the newest version of my complete Blackstone Pylon array on the moon. I couldn’t leave my daughters undefended, as I want them gallivanting around the galaxy. Preferably, I’d always have an Avatar on Vallia Pri to keep an eye on things, but I felt like that was still months, maybe years away. My soul was growing, but it was slow going. All in due ti. Step by step. My steps might have been large, crossing star systems with each stride, but the galaxy was larger still.
The ships still under my protection, saved from the Star Pulse Generators’ wrath, were turned into little more than mobile artillery platforms for a truly ridiculous amount of weapons batteries and torpedo launchers. They were little more than a propulsor and a platform stacked with weapons, but they served their purpose, launching an unceasing barrage of plasma, missiles and even acid at the Necron fleet.
The Lightning Arcs lashed out as our distance dimd, beginning a relentless assault interspersed with the occasional Particle Whip barrage. So of my dozen smaller ships fell, but the Sovereign spat out two new ones for every one that got destroyed. Those Particle Whips had a charge-up ti. I didn’t.
The Star Pulse Generators fired in sequence, quick, undeniably powerful and sohow more than they seed. That plasma they released had no right being that vicious, that difficult to halt, or so dangerous. It must have been so strange Necron science, infusing the flas with the concept of destruction or entropy or so other technobabble nonsense. It didn’t matter. A lesser Psyker might have faltered, but with Atiesh in my hand, they never even got close to overwhelming . Still, they were yet another thing I had to split my focus and psychic power to counteract, leaving less to focus on counterattacking. The Regent seed intent on keeping from getting any breathing room.
Too bad, he should have tried harder. I grinned, Atiesh spinning at my side idly before I grabbed it, poured a tide of raw power into it, and let it rip forth. I didn’t need much focus to just aim my staff in the direction of the enemy fleet. With enough power behind it, Eldritch Blast turned into a ‘whover it may concern in that general direction’ type of attack. Good thing the Tomb Ship was fifteen kilotres across, it was hard to miss even with just a agre amount of focusing.
A small star blood to life ahead of the Sovereign’s prow, a tiny dot of brilliant light that hung there for a mont, and then it ripped forth. All the power I’d gathered and was still pouring into it exploded ahead with all the annoyance, frustration and hate I felt, widening into a beam of crackling energy prid to erase all that stood in its way by the ti it reached the Scythe Class Harvest Ship floating in front of the Tomb Ship. It happened in a fraction of a nanosecond, and the ship’s shields held out for a respectable full second before they popped, generator fried by the overwhelming power they had to contend with.
The beam swallowed the ship whole, then continued on unabated, crashing into the Tomb Ship like a battering ram. I saw its shields quiver, then hold and then even out in a mont, probably because more power was being channelled into the shield generators. It held, and I humd, then grinned and swept Atiesh sideways.
The titanic beam of energy followed the motion, slipping off the Tomb Ship and tearing through space. Another Scythe caught a grazing blow, and a third of the ship was utterly unmade, then the beam continued on, tearing through three smaller ships before I cut off the power with a gasp.
“Mom!?” Cat asked, squirming around to look at with big, worried eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, panting slightly as I hid a wince. One of my Soulbone bones had cracked, and my body was falling apart at the seams from the magnitude of energy I forced through it. So of the pain reached before I cut off my connection to my pain receptors. “I’m perfectly fine, though I may have gone a bit overboard.”
“You sure?” Cat asked, squinting at suspiciously, but I just grinned and rubbed her head playfully, ssing up her hair. “Mwuh? H-hey!”
“You don’t need to worry about , Cat,” I said, patting her affectionately. “Though it is very much appreciated.”
“Anything permanent?” Selene asked telepathically.
“I’ll need to replace one of the bones in my forearm, nothing serious,” I replied without letting anything show on my face. Of course, Selene sohow saw through .
“They are not retreating,” Selene said thoughtfully, peering at the holographic command table depicting the two battling sides.
“It’s probably a sunk cost fallacy kind of thing,” I humd, the majority of my mind focusing on optimising the firing solutions of my endless number of weapons batteries. “Or just ego. Their pride can’t let them run away after I’d destroyed so many of their ships.”
“You would think, being as old as they are, the Necrons would have learned to live today to fight another day,” Selene said.
“Oh, they have, long ago,” I said. “Their phase tech is evidence of that. I’m not sure whether any of the Necrons I’ve killed are down for good. Most of them are probably already being remade in the depths of their Tomb Worlds. Besides, winning a war against a race of God-like beings, then enslaving your own Gods does earn them the right to be prideful, thinks.”
The closer we got, the more an outing their Lightning Arcs beca. Only Scythes had Star Pulse Generators, and even Particle whips were only present on every other ship. But Lightning Arcs? Those even the smallest Light Cruisers had in spades. They were so fucking annoying.
A Particle Whip slipped past my defences, we were too close and that fraction of a second I had to react had shrunk down to basically nothing. A deep gouge had been torn out of the Sovereign’s side, a sizable crater left behind where the beam first hit. Then two more, then a third and a fourth. Each took large chunks of the Sovereign with it, the worst hit erasing a whole tenth of the ship and making pull my command desk, along with every living creature on board, into the depths of the ship.
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