How did that saying go? ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman sed?’ I’d wager her came anywhere close to the fury of a Ne Dynasty with a prickled pride.

  If I rolled my eyes anymore, I was sure they’d fall out of their sockets. Still, the urge was strong. I let out a huff a my power flood through the ship’s psychiduits and then activated Blink.

  I’d have paid a fortuo see the Ne’s faces in the pursuing ships when I first did that. As it was now, I didn’t let up the elling and as soon as we arrived at our destination I Blinked a sed and a third time in a randomised zig-zag pattern.

  Leave it to fug Nes to predict my random teleports. There was a trio of Ne cruisers already opening fire on the sed location. Annoying, persistent fug Nes. Who knew bullying one ship would be like kig the hor’s ?

  Would I do it again? Of course. I had a new fancy Death Ray — that I ’t yet use because I don’t know how Ne tech works, but still — and some neis to experiment with. It was well worth it. Still, this was getting irritating. It had been two weeks since I got my on and they were still going at it with the same fervour.

  “We should be reag the edge of the Rift today,” I hummed thoughtfully. Would that deter them? Probably not, the Sautekh had a third of their territory oher side of the Great Rift. I doubted that abomination did more than fuckall to their unication tebsp;

  “How long you keep this up?” Val asked, face stoid back straight with his arms csped behind his back. If I didn’t remember him ughing like a lunatic while throwing around bolts of lightning like a disco ball I’d believe he was some honourable and wise a Eldar … actually, he could be both. It was expected that a few thousand years of life in this gaxy with an evil chaos god’s cws up your ass would loosen some screws.

  I checked my reserves at his question. I could Blink up to two or three Light Years, and I’d been doing that twice or thrice ever sihey started predig my destination a few days ago. My reserves were plummeting.

  “It’ll st another month at least,” I said. I wasn’t shy ba Baal, I ged myself on Energy. Even with how wasteful this manner of travel was, we could st until we reached the Tau Empire. “It should be more than enough if they don’t pull some nasty trick out of their robotic arses.”

  It also helped that when they ambushed us for the third time a little over two weeks ago, I devoted a siderable amount of braio streamline Blink as much as possible. The spell went through about twenty iterations sihen and its cost dropped siderably; it also stopped giving different body parts extra velocity during teleport.

  I had to heal up poor Bob after the first jump since his liver decided to meld with his kidneys. Oops. Anyway, he was good now.

  The rest were more hardy than the poor human, so they came out with only some minor cussions and such. Well, there was Zedev too.

  I g the Magos. He tracted his body into some sembnce of a resting position in one er and the only sign of his living status was his softly blinking meical eye and the faint whirling of his mae parts. He’d been like that since we came aboard.

  Zedev being in battery-saving mode or whatnot aside, we were closing in on what could be the most dangerous stretch of the journey. Crossing the Great Rift. Teically, it should be easier since we aren’t using Travel … but those were still some nasty Storms, and I really didn’t like the thought of putting myself in the sights of the big four just yet.

  Space grew especially fucky around Storms. What if it let a daemon just pop out and nab our ship, or if the storm just decided to chuck us a few thousand years into the future — as it did sometimes — or even worse, what if it just swallowed us a us in the deep . We would be royally fucked then. I’d have to abandon my Avatar the moment it happened and everything else on the ship. That was too big of a risk, even for me.

  Actually, I’d be the happiest little eldritch girl if I never had to so much as think about those four ever again. Stinky chaos gods and their revolting daemons could rot in hell for all I cared. Well, that’s what they are doing and they are supposedly enjoying themselves quite well in there.

  “Okay, pnning,” I turo the assembled members of our little gang — crew, maybe hangers-on, it is still yet to be determined what they actually are to me, aside from Selene — “I am pnning to circumvent that ugly patch of space by flying over or u. How viable is that?”

  Everyone gave me dubious looks, and I suddenly had the urge to pout. e on, it wasn’t that bad of an idea. Well, not Fae, who was looking thoughtful, but her aura told me she thought I asked a silly question on purpose to test them.

  Don’t pout. You are a big bad eldritch alien.

  “You do know that the gaxy is about three thousand Light Years across vertically even in these ses, right?” Selene asked, some non-verbal agreement among the crew somehow always ending up with her telling me all the bad news. “And the Storms of the Great Rift are at least twice that, both vertically and horizontally.”

  “This ship should be able to cross it in a week if I didn’t have to bother dodging Nes every twelve hours,” I grumbled. “Two weeks if we are being safe and want to put some extra distaween us and the storms.”

  And that was true too. It was mind-boggling, holy. Assuming they were somewhere in the middle vertically, they’d o fly up about two thousand light years, then move forward to cross over the rift, then back down awo thousand. That was at minimum six or seven thousand light years to cross and I’d cimed it’d take no lohan a week or two.

  This ship, made of flesh and bone and other alien ans, iece of teology so far above anything humanity came up with in the 21st tury that it wasn’t even funny.

  Retivistic spaceflight was but a dream back then, still in the realm of sce fi instead of real physics. And this piece of alien goop took a colossal shit on all that, made a gravitational subspace for itself, and flew faster than the rules of the universe should allow it to.

  Selene and Val looked at each other for a moment, like two parents trying to decide who gets to tell their kid they ’t go to the theme park today, then back at me. This time, I did pout at their gazes. What was with them anyway? It erfectly good idea.

  “That would take us into deep space,” Val started. I waited. Then I looked back at him and blinked in fusion.

  “Aaaaand?” I drawled, unimpressed.

  Four sets of eyes stared at me, seemingly uo answer. Bob opened his mouth, then Fae’s hand cmped down on his face like a d kept him from making a sound.

  Val was frowning mightily, like my question was some profound mystery he had to devote his entire mind to unravel, while Selene just worked her jaws, opened her mouth, then closed it with what looked like a lost expression.

  “Huh,” she blihen shook her head a little. “Right. I guess that … works?”

  She g Val, but he was long lost in his thoughts so she poked him in the side.

  “Yes?” He asked. “What was the question again?”

  “Why are you two ag so weird?” I crossed my arms and gred at them, feet tapping.

  “Well,” Seleurned bae. “I suppose it’s just that deep space is … well, mostly outside of both of our reaches. The Astronomi’s light barely reaches the Gaxy’s edges and any ship venturing further out would be lost to the .”

  “The Webway also ends where the Gaxy does … going beyond would be arduous without its gateways and help,” he rubbed his thoughtfully. “Aeldari voidships ot travel faster than light without the Webway. We have some rudimentary Travel capabilities from the bygone age, but only the most desperate of us dare to ehose hellish realms just to travel faster.”

  Now the both of them looked slightly embarrassed, though that amouo Val frowning and staring at the ground and Selene sp a slight blush. It was adorable — the sed one — so their doubt in me was thus fiven.

  “Alright,” I grinned. “With that out of the way, any further objes or we be on our way? I am getting tired of these skirmishes.”

  The worst thing was that the damned Nes were good, not only ieologiartial way, but tactically too. Their one failing ride, but I’d taken a colossal shit on that, so now they took me seriously. Still, they were a miserly bunch, so they calcuted the bare minimum force required to give me no hope of victory in a straight fight only after three ambushes.

  Three light cruisers, as it was, filled with Death Scythes — their fighters — was just that. Their firepower was just too much, and even if I got in some good hits, it at best fluffed up my ego with no other be.

  I hadn’t mao nab a single molecule of neis sihe first fight. Any ship I hit with anything close to a dangerous blow slunk back behind another one a up its Quantum Shielding, only taking potshots at me.

  It was mighty irritatiremely so. After getting over my initial — sizable — annoyance, I took to memorising everything they did. Their style of fighting and tactics were honed over a war that tore the gaxy apart, they fought fug Gods and won. If there was a race from which I could learn how to fight well, it was the Nes — when they bothered to fight seriously that is.

  Plus, I sort of sidered beiremely annoying to fight, my thing. Annoying stuck-up assholes was a balm to the soul.

  “No,” Val answered betedly, shaking his head. “I have no objes. It seems I must reassess my way of thinking and make it fit with our current capabilities … what an iing drum.”

  With that, he wandered off to the er and plopped down. I felt his aura calm to a serene ke before his bum even hit the floor.

  Selene just shook her head, still looking slightly embarrassed.

  “Good,” I smiled. “Let’s go then. Hopefully, that damned rift keeps these senile Nes from unig with the other side as much as it does us.”

  It was doubtful, but one could hope. We’d still have a week’s worth of Sautekh territory to get through before we reached the edges of Tau space by my estimations. Maybe two if I fucked something up.

  I reached for that set ans deep within the ships and cast my sehrough them and out into the infinite expanse of space. I reed a human mind would have broken after a sed of being bombarded by the endless stream of data ing as little mental nudges arical bursts.

  This was how Tyranids travelled without the , how they found star systems. Space was mostly empty, despite what most sce fi shows wahe watcher to believe, and if one flew in a straight lihrough the Milky Way, they were more likely to e out oher end without hitting a single phan not.

  First, I felt a nearby asteroid, only fht Years away and about the size of a rger ti. Then my senses went further and further, reag across trillions of kilometres. I felt gravity bend and dip, an asteroid belt, a p, a star, and a bck hole. Each had its own distinbsp;taste to my new, Narwhal-sourced senses. My aura had no hope of ever matg the scope of my pilfered senses, not for a long time, but I'd have to do with the minor amount of information I could get back from the Narwhal gravitational-well sensors.

  I mentally zoomed out, redug each blip of pary gravity to a tiny dot. I zoomed out and out until I saw space ftten. When I felt nothing with any substantial gravity for the st five thousand Light Years in one dire, I smiled and altered our course.

  It seemed going under would be preferable, as we were only about a thousand Lightyears away from the bottom, while there were still star systems two thousand Light Years upwards.

  Upwards. I shook my head in amusement. There was no ‘upwards’ in space, but my silly human-sourced mind had a much easier time uanding it that way. The proper definition would be … what? I suppose it didn’t matter back when I lived as a human.

  Gactic up and down would have to do.

  This minor detour would probably be the most b few weeks of my life since my rebirth here, but oh well, it beats taking a trip through hell and being jumped by an endless swarm of daemons.

  Just a few more weeks, then I bully some silly tau … how should I do it? Speedrun it and go for ahereal first? Copy their mindfuckery and take over a world? Do it all sneaky and worm my their society? Go undercover? Act the merary in some war to gairust? Or just quer them, full on, with force. They have no Psykers, no hope to stop me if I really want to fuck their civilisation up.

  But I didn’t want that. I wanted … an empire. A little slice of space where I could make something he Tau … they had something quite nice going on, even if I didn’t include the Ethereal’s soft-ind-trol. I don’t want to destroy that. I should work to make it better.

  I squashed the sadistic little goblin jumping on my shoulder, whispering into my ear that the poor au would just be so fun to bully. So fun to break. But no. I promised Selene I would be good and keep myself from inflig needless suffering.

  With my obnoxious shoulder-devil banished for the moment, I felt my heart lighten. There was somethiirely different, but simirly addig about prevailing over my baser instincts.

  Selene gave me such a pure look. I could feel she roud of me. She felt what I went through and watched as I prevailed. It didn’t matter that I did it effortlessly. That only made her happier, more relieved. She en book when she wanted. Our bond made sure of that.

  And her feelings surging through that bond at that mome a blush rushing up my fabsp;

  For once, I didn’t bother to trol my body and hide it. Instead, I just smiled at her.

  P3t1