P3t1

  “As it turns out, navigating to the other side of the gaxy is somewhat challenging.”

  Selene gave me a sour look. She probably didn’t feel quite as home 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 some translut boructure Zedev threw together in like an afternoon. Sihen I had him splice together and grow other useful biological material.

  The Tyranids might be fih their ships being so … fleshy, but I was not. Sor punk ships. That’s the goal. Streamlined anic spaceships.

  “Somewhere,” I started, then coughed as I felt her gre. With all that telepathic practice she’d been doing with Val since we left Baal behind, that gre could probably lobotomise a regur human. “I mean, we are most likely somewhere around … where we should be, actually.”

  I blinked in surprise. I mean, I calcuted 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 fshlight. Still, I somewhat expected to somehow end up knee deep in some excremeher 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 act!

  Now came the harder part where I would have to get to the actual p … which I didn’t even decide on. Hell, I would be happy with any friau worlds, better if they are at war with some outside force at the moment.

  “Meaning?” Seleapped her feet impatiently while the others acted like they weren’t listening in. It seemed she got named as their envoy to the great me — 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 mention it before?” I rubbed my . “I’m fairly certain I did?”

  “You know you think out loud sometimes, it’s hard to know which of the things you say are important.”

  “Oh, well,” I shrugged. “Say, what do you think about being meraries for a bit? Ag like we are regur humans while we worm our 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 ahereal.”

  “You want to take a bite out of everything that moves,” she said amusedly. “And some things that don’t.”

  I squi her as her lips twitched, barely holding back a grin. She could be speaking of anything, there is no reason to jump to clusion-

  “Make sure you don’t dry up like a desert this time,” she said with exaggerated worry. Then leaned in and tinued in a whisper. “Seeing you mummify iime was iing, but I much prefer you with some curves on you.”

  “That was oime,” I rolled my eyes. Who khat stupid water syphoning moss on Baal could drain every drop of moisture out of even my body. The experience also mao 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 enemy I stumble across. Let them suffer the same fate as me.

  She felt Valenith’s aura wake, like a mighty beast aroused from hibernation. When she gnced over at the Eldar’s meditating form in the er, his eyes were wide open and seemingly stared at a wall.

  “We have pany,” he said, his mouth twisting into a cruel smirk. His aura untaself like a blooming flower and reached into the distance. “A Ne Light Cruiser two thousand kilometres away.”

  Before anything else, I let my power flow over and around the ship then covered it with the most powerful cealment I could jure 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 crest moon, coloured a dull grey from the livial making up its hull, and glowed with that eerie green light all Ne tech teo.

  It was also rather small. If it flew o the Macragge’s Honour, it would have looked tiny in parison.

  Still, it most likely had what was arguably the most advae the gaxy 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 hummed, gng at Val since he seemed 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 iing, and somewhat thrilling. The only void battle I took part in was against bioships which weren’t much of a challenge. Ne ships though … “How the turns have tabled.”

  It was a messed up rock, paper scissor sario where Nes dunked on both me and the Tyranids and I dunked oyranids. Shitty bang, is what I say.

  Anyway, let’s see what Ne tech is capable of.

  “Any reason I shouldn’t strike first?” I asked, already piling a prototype tempte 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 e swarming. They ’t live with provocations and hurt pride.”

  “So we will have to get the hell out of here o’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 me a gre. Her senses were ing 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 warm sub-fas of the Ne race.”

  “Indeed,” Val piped in, his face morphing even further into some strange mixture of glee and amusement. “And one of the stro, too. Especially sihey were united uhe Storm Lord.”

  Is it their long lifespans or just the nature of the Aeldari that they still hold a grudge against the Nes even after sixty million years? I mused inwardly as the three drones shot off in three different dires. They were only about as rge as a car, but all three were covered in Camoufge and had a single bio-psma on that fit onto them.

  I knew fighter warfare was almost ent in this gaxy, but I wao see how viable it was. Sure, it was more of a Star Wars thing, but maybe it had some merit. It certainly beat the go-to tactics the Imperium employed.

  Well, teically at least. Ramming — of all things — aing up close and personal before loosening a devastating broadside barrage like some old-school pirates fug worked against the Tau. The very same tau who had some of the most advaeology and had a military doe most simir to what I was familiar with from my time on 21st tury Earth.

  “Wanna watch?” I asked, half-distracted as I coordihe three fighters to take up positions around the tomb ship. O right and up, o left and up, and the third slid uhe ship to box it in.

  I noticed Fae perking up at my question, but it was at most a miwit her expression and a hopeful glint in her sapphire eyes. She turned her gaze at Selene. How a tury-old Eldar could bring herself to make puppy eyes at a human was quite something, though.

  The woman iion sighed and gave me a nod.

  Four illusory projes popped up around the room, one for each ship and one for our own transport, which tio stealthily drift further away from the cruising Ne spacecraft.

  Probably the only reason we weren’t being fired upo 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 some Tyranid Camoufge biotech. A rocket engine burning at 3000 Celsius though? Even a blind man with an archaifrared 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 fihe word.

  Even though I expected it, I was still slightly disappointed whehree globules of bio-psma smacked up against the void-shields of the Ne ship and did just about nothing. The shields seemed to tremble and shiver for a brief instant, but after that, I could basically feel the ship’s actual defences e oo plement the passive ohey had on.

  My first salvo failed to everate the shields they had to stave off space junk on their leisurely cruise. It was the slightest bit … irritating.

  Then the ons came online. First ulse of energy bsting outwards from the ship in all dires, it reached the three fighters just a sed ter even though I had them retreat the moment they fired.

  The fighters spun around as if hit by a shockwave, but they were mostly unharmed, aside from that. Unfortunately, that was enough for the Nes to find them and loto their position as a moment ter, a trio of energy beams bsted my three prototype fighters to bits. They just about evaporated.

  The pulse of energy didn’t reaain 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 s and didn’t look back — it was only a matter of time before they could turn those beams on us.

  ‘The Star Pulse Geor, it’s hardly the most dangerous Ne on, but it gets smaller crafts close to them off of their backs,’ Val sent, dumping informatioing to the on into my head, along with his message. ‘The beams were probably Death Rays, usually used by their Doom Scythes fround support and dispatg 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 Ne Spacecraft onry dumped into my head along with entary took just about one-quarter of a sed. 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 Ne ship started pulsing with energy again, with strange whips of some almost imperceptible energy also moving through space like searchlights, I had the sed 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 wao have a viable star-fighter tempte that wasn’t limited by the Tyranid’s limited produ capabilities. I didn’t want ships I could grow from egg-sacks for the optimal amount of energy. I wahe best I could do with my power.

  Sed round of testing, begin.

  *****

  HakonutThe a Ne Lord was fuming. Not only was he the one who’d beeo iigate something as minor and insignifit as a gravitational anomaly, but said anomaly even dared to attack his personal ship.

  The crypteks aboard buzzed as they worked their teo sorcery to scry out the source of the anomaly. The sensus had been that it was likely either some cut-off bio-form of those strayranid’ 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 somehow mao capture the pilots of the enemy ship before they either self-destructed or phase-shifted bato their tomb world.

  He wasn’t even going to try, anyway. Every sed spent on this excursion and every little drop of energy used up to power the ship was a moal waste, in his opinion.

  “New fighter crafts approag,” one cryptech reported, its meical fingers waving around a globe of emerald 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 she sensors. Exaumbers are impossible to tell.”

  Hakonut tapped his arm and the cryptechs all gave off a miwitch as he let his unimpressed gaze wash over them. He had a full cadre of twelve of them, a quarter of that specialised in sg, and they couldn’t even locate the fighters. To say his already gcial mood was further soured was underselling how close to beating their metallic heads into the wall he came 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.

  P3t1

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