They detected them almost as soon as the fighters entered withiy kilometres of the ship. I mused. The sed wave had five fighters, all armed with bio-ship grade psma ons, not the tiny ones ground artillery units had.

  Three of them got off a shot before arcs of electricity s them and fried them from the i.

  The three bolts of psma themselves impacted the ship. That’s when the previously imperceptible Quantum Shields coating the hull phased into reality for just long enough to deflect the attack.

  After that, they were gohout a trace. Well, I could still faintly sehat something fucky was going on with space around the ship, but only because I ko look for it. Otherwise, it would have been almost impossible to detect.

  Ne tech really was more magical than real space magietimes. But it seems it ’t pierce my Illusion … and those fighters only had the Tyranid Camoufge to hide them. We should be safe for now. Still, let’s make a few decoys just in case.

  Our ship split in two, both parts quickly repairing themselves before the one we weren’t sitting in — the decoy — tinued splitting and multiplying until there were half a dozen of them.

  All of these had the psycho-active Tyranid skeletal structure with Eldar bone as the core to allow me some leeway for elling some psychic powers through them.

  I o get much more effective with my energy usage … I waste so much of it; it strains my vessels far too much. That was something Val made crystal clear throughout our tinued spars and training sessions. I was gettier, but most of my spells were still 80% brute ford only 20% finesse.

  If my spells could cost half as muergy, I could el twice as powerful ohrough the weaker duit drones.

  Well, through my Avatar too, but it wasn’t really g in the power department at the moment. I would need much more versatility and trol in the near future.

  Anyway, I slowly pulled our and ship a good fifty kilometres away aled it to be just ‘above’ the Ne ship while the rest fanned out to surround the ship. This way they would have more trouble trag back the in of the fighters.

  Let’s hide that I el psychic power through the fighters for now. Nes supposedly loathe psykers, right? I wasn’t sure if that was right, but I remembered reading about a certain grumpy diviner swearing up a storm about how the Imperium’s psychic bullshit fucked up all of his predis.

  Nes used the energies of the universe, somehoing into a hidden web of incredible power that had zero e to the . The best diviners could use that web to struething simir to Lapce’s Demon which could predict the future with unerring accuracy — that is, if psykers don’t spit into the equation.

  My presence by itself probably threw a sizable wrento that mae. Oh well, I enjoyed being annoying. Especially when the ones being annoyed were stuck-up demigods and prickly teo liches.

  Back to work. Stupid overactive brain, stop wandering. I gave my cheeks a mental sp and forced my focus bato our test subj- *cough* unfortunate oppo.

  That silly phase shield — the Quantum Shield, Val called it in his memo — could apparently be overwhelmed by suffit firepower or by a sustained barrage. Though most Nes would retreat long before their shields were even close to faltering, each ship lost was a moal loss to the Nes, so they protected them fiercely.

  What else could we do though? Punch through it too quickly for them to react? Maybe some sort of spatial attack? … could I finally try whether I tear space apart a bit?

  [Don’t.]

  I rolled my eyes. Killjoy mind-cores. If only their reasons for trampling on my fun weren’t so … reasonable.

  I went through my rather limited options — who would have thought Tyranids weren’t really built for spabat — Bio-psma, pyro-acid, spore cysts, bio-ons, venom ons, and -screamers.

  Most of those names were self-expnatory, aside from the st, which disrupted enemy systems a a wave of dread through the crew.

  The sed effect is worthless … though the first might still work, worth a try. Especially if I bi with a heavy salvo.

  The decoy ships rapidly ed some of the stored bio-energy and produced a new wave of fighters. These also shared some enhanced psychiductivity and were loaded up with one of my avaible ons.

  came a slew of -screamers, but with even more enhanced psychiductivity so I could shem closer to the tombship uhe cover of an illusion.

  The fighters fanned out introups, each targeting a differeion of the ship, then waited. The -screamers dashed in, now several yers of illusions joining their camoufge in hiding them.

  I held my breath as they crossed the twenty thousare mark. They zipped past and raced towards the i ship, sg tendrils of energy sliding off of the fighters.

  I grihen refocused as one of the searg energy threads a fighter brushed against paused and split. It expanded from the point of tact with a dozen new questing threads.

  Unfortunately for them, the screamers were fast and well outside of their range by that point. Though I adjusted them to dodge the tendrils as much as possible.

  The moment screamers reached within range, I felt the surface of the vibrate around them as their voices, drowned out by the void of space, struck at the ship as a single bitack.

  Not a sed ter, all the fighters opened fire. The quantum shields, probably somewhat affected by the screamers, were a moment too te to activate, and the vicious salvo tore into the Ne ship.

  My mind-cores whirled into a, rec every smidgen of data the various sensors on my drones caught before doting and analysing every siail down to the tihing. Which on did the most damage? How quickly did the shields e back up? Did the shield have the same strength as before? Could the ship mend the damage done, and if it could, how quickly?

  Those questions and a hundred more popped up and were sent to the mind-cores as queries. A sed of real time ter, I had my answers. Well, the answers I was going to get from this quick test.

  Venom was almost useless, spttering against the reinforeis hull and doing little else. If there was air to make a sound, it would have been sizzling as it tried to eat through the meta-material, but as things were, it was a waste of bio-energy.

  Spore cysts and bio-ons joihe venom isters in the garbage bin. The first did just a little better than the venom, but it was aimed at destroying anic material, not metal. The tter was just g pared to the st two, even if I loaded most of the ons with explosive ammunition.

  That left the pyro-acid, which was still busily eating through the enemy ship’s hull, and the bio-psma I inally attacked with. Holy, those two were about the same in terms of results. One fought off whatever automatic self-repair the ship had, while the other did more devastating instant damage and charred whatever tech stood in its way.

  Those two will do.

  The ship was still burning in spots when the on systems on it shed out. Death Rays burst from rotating ons around the hull and opened fire. I realised then that the Nes were far from taking the fight seriously up until now. They went for low-powered bursts that hit with unerring accuracy.

  Now though, they fired wildly. Particle beams lit up the void of space as they swept across the apparent nothingness in a frantic attempt to hit something, anything. A hit they did. After only a sed, only three of my fighters remained fully funal as the rest got caught.

  They would have survived grazing hits, but theombships' rger ons opened up and bsted them to smithereens. Arcs of lightning and artificial green beams snapped and punched like vipers.

  Just when one of the stray rays hit one of my decoy ships, I uhe wave, now letting loose a bit more. Fighters swarmed out of the ships in the dozens, reag the triple digits in moments, and would have reached the thousand mark in a few more if the Ne ship didn’t retaliate just that moment.

  The gigantic green prism held by an even rger on vibrated with power before a beam of energy far rger than any of the measly Death Rays burst forth and swept across the swarm of approag fighters.

  The beam was targeted at the decoy ship; it was easy to tell that much, and while the hundreds of fighters in its way slowed it down for a fra of a sed, it was far from enough. The Particle Whip — for that was the only Ne on I knew of that fit — decimated anything it came in tact with. The fighters it touched were gone, annihited down to the st atom.

  I pulled at the decoy, pushing its drive to fire up and evade. I eves psychiduits to pull it out of the beam’s way with some TK. The beam was faster. Almost instantaneous.

  The decoy ship was there one moment and half of it was just gohe . The remaining half followed suit as it imploded, turning into a tle firework.

  My face twitched for a sed. That was a lot of bio-energy they sent into oblivion.

  Still … those ons are awesome. If I didn’t have firm trol over my bodily funs, I might have drooled just a bit. Sure, I had bio-ships and stuff like that, but thatwasafugantimatteron. Like holy shit. I want it. I want it so much.

  The moment passed, and I calmed down, the whirliions dimming, but never disappearing. Intellectually, I khe ce of getting my hands on any of those ons was slim at best, but still … awesome. Who wao spit burning goop at their enemies when they could dematerialize them with an antimatter on? I sure as hell didn’t. anic ons were a bit icky, even if they were my greatest advantage. I wouldn’t ever not use them because of that … but if I had better alternatives.

  I’d have to somehow disable the phase-tech or they would just easily run away … I have no idea how to do that. The -screamers might have had some middling success, but it just deyed the tech’s activation, not disabled it. It was a shame, but I probably wouldn’t be getting my hands on Ne onry today.

  It would be worth a try though. Let’s overcharge some screamers and bombard these fuckers into oblivion. It’s not like I don’t have bio-energy to spare after Baal.

  I felt I only used up about 5% of my eores in this fight so far. Baal had been kind to me, even if Guilliman made sure that little adventure ended on a sour he knowledge that I sort of maybe devoured 90% of the dead Tyranids on the p and about half of the inal ecosystem made it sting much less. So it was kind of whatever. I’d just have to track down the Lion. No biggie.

  New screamers swarmed forth from the remaining decoy ships, now with the best Eldar bones used as psychiduits in them. Which gave me some leeway.

  A dozen screamers disappeared as my power surged through them, then popped bato reality, ging to the ship’s hull. Then they screeched, the shuddered as if in revulsion, then the barrage ing from the fighters impacted the ship.

  Three hundred and thirty-seven bolts of bio-psma smashed into the Ne ship with a vengeand two hundred and forty-five globs of pyro-acid followed suit, ravenously tearing into the livial.

  The ship pulsed with energy, the same it used initially to send the close-by fighters scrambling back as wrecks. It did little to the psma, as its job was long plete by that point, but it evaporated the burning acid before it could do too much damage. Psma it is.

  Rept fighters armed only with psma ons tireaming out of the ships, rapidly burning through their bio-energy reserves.

  I teleported dozens of screamers up to the ship every sed, trying to keep their disruptive influence going even as wave after wave of them were shredded by the pulses of energy ing out of the Star Pulse Geor.

  The Particle Whip struck out two more times, obliterating wide swathes of my swarm of fighters. That’s when I felt realspace weaken and bend around the ship. It was simir to the faiion I got when the Quantum Shields turned on, but it was a wildfire pared to the embers the shields geed. They were trying to phase out of reality. They were … running? Would a Ne really run?

  I focused in on the ship, and couldn’t help the grin that was f. The psma pierced through the hull at a single spot, revealing an inner room. Scraps of actual Nes, warriors, or whatever else were scattered around before the psma scrapped them.

  I let my power explode through my avatar for the first time in the fight and instantly felt the sg tendrils — probably cryptech diviners or something w overtime — twitch toward me. They didn’t stop the phasing process though, and I let my screamers all let loose ohey couldn’t attack.

  Energy flooded out of me, flowing into psychic threads that wove themselves into the weave of reality. The space that was shuddering and bending to the Ne’s will, empowered by my power, resisted. It wasn’t enough to send the ship crashing bato realspace, but slowed them.

  They were still partially in realspace, still partially subservient to its will, even if their now overclocked Quantum Shielding shrugged off the frantic barrage of psma my fighters were b them with.

  I felt them slipping, overp space, even through my efforts.

  Oh, no you don’t. I snarled inside as my avatar shuddered from the surge of energy flowing through it. I’m not letting you go without at least getting a trophy.

  My eention zeroed in on a single pt on the ship’s side and all of my collected energy instantly bsted forth in the single most devastating Eldritch Bst I’d ever cast.

  The Bst burrowed into the ship, tearing through neis with only some middling effort. My will reasserted itself over the wild arcs of energy ahem, guided them. Instead of attag like wild animals, they all acted in tao aplish my will.

  I let out a grin as the pt, along with a bit of the livial hull, detached from the ship itself and floated off. The fighters stopped firing so as not to damage my prize, then the Ne ship was gone.

  I could faintly feel the wrinkle in realspace where the ship supposedly hid in some sub-dimension — or phased out of reality? I didn’t really uand phase tech yet — race off and disappear beyond the range of my perception in moments.

  “Well. Hi geous,” I giggled as a squad of fighters pulled the Death Ray up to my ship. Then I got smacked on the bay head. “Ow.”

  “Humph,” Selene shough I could see the pyful smirk on her lips. “Didn’t know you were into … ons. I suppose I should have expected you to have … straerests as whatever you are. Should I be worried?”

  “Maybe.” I rubbed my thoughtfully, gng at the floating on. “Look at those curves on that beauty, and those green crystals. Hmmmm.”

  She giggled at that, feeling my amusement through our bond. Though that was in rge part because I felt genuine doubt in her aura. She really thought for a moment I found that on sexually appealing. I couldn’t help but mirror her mirth.

  Yep. Life was good.

  P3t1