‘Mistress, the Tau are asking to e aboard and for us to provide them with your expedition’s camp down on the p.’ I heard Valenith’s rather irritated voice buzz through the telepathik the moment it ected to my mind. ‘What do you wao do with them?’

  ‘Please notify the good Captain … whatever his name is, that he is her my superior nor does he have any authority over me.’ I sent back, my face twitg slightly at the gall of that blue-faced moron. He likely wahe achievement of getting his hands on a human artifact to be on his file and not on his superior’s. ‘While you are at it, do notify the ander of this Sector that the Captain is obstrug us. That fellow was quite pragmatid with a Magister on its way, he’ll likely leave us be until the Ethereal hahe situation. Also, tell the Captain of all of this once you’re done.’

  ‘Uood, Mistress.’ He said, his voice still tense. ‘I’ll do as you and.’

  ‘Don’t doubt that you will.’ I said, smiling. He probably wao pull the Tau’s spi through his asshole, but had to hold himself back. ‘I trust that you will hahis diplomatically, yes?’

  ‘Of course, Mistress.’ He said, sounding mollified by my trust in him.

  With that, the li dead and for a bit I watched on as he did my bidding. I had eyes on the walls ihe Tau Captain’s ship of course, so I could watch how he went red iime and how he gritted his teeth once Val gave his exempry performance.

  Hell, even I almost believed he was truly feeling dreadfully sorry for not being able to help the captain, and I could feel his loathing for the lesser alien radiating from him.

  Still, it seemed my diplomatic muscles were still in the baby phase and would need some time to grow into something dependable. I watched as the Tau Captaied with himself, trying to decide whether to pull bad py it safe or to risk his superior’s wrath for some faries on his record.

  Just as he was tilting dangerously towards taking the gamble, I reached out with an infinitesimal soul energy and gave him a tiny nudge. I was careful, treating his flimsy mind like it was more fragile than a thi of ice. I didn’t even give him any thoughts, didn’t impnt anything new, I didn’t do anything other than dampening his bravery just a tiny bit and making his cautions nature fre up.

  “Pull back,” he ordered after a moment, leaning bato his and chair as he narrowed his eyes at the s before him. “Keep the ship in orbit for now and look for the expeditionary camp on the p. Also, prime onry in case that human vessel turns its ons on us, but do not engage.”

  I smiled as I pulled my mind away from my little fly on the walls of his and ded snapped bato my avatar. Standing up, I cracked my ned tasted the air again. “Suffitly not deadly for the phase!”

  A few extremophile species I had were already happily ambling around the p, but I’d found one major problem. Water. We barely had any damned water on this dead ball of rock. I’d dug up every single clump of ider the surface, but it was still barely enough to fill up a sea the size of the Caspian Sea.

  That was not enough, not nearly enough for the ecosystem I nning to foster here. Slowly, the many geed pnts were w oing oxygen and hydrogen, along with nitrogen and a whole lot of their useful gasses and minerals. A few even made water straight up, but that would take time.

  Meaning, I had to rely on fauna that didn’t care overly much about getting to drink all that often. My first choice was, of course, Ambulls. Those things could live is, gciers, and jungles. Hell, I’d only know whether they’d survive getting thrown into the sun oried it. My mind-cave back a 0.000000000001% ce of them surviving, but I mean, that’s not zerht?

  After that, I went about looking for species that fit the bill in my tempte library that also wouldn’t be too troubled about living in a forest. Scorpions, millipedes and a slew of is were the easiest answer, so I had a number of them made. Of course, most of them were of the gigantic variant, with scorpions tall enough that their stingers would work as spear tips.

  came some reptiles, iguana-like things, and others that looked more like Komodons. Then, of course, I made a few of my newly yoinked dragons into the mix too. I made vast cavern and tunnel systems already, so it wasn’t much trouble to make an expawork of magma-filled world just for my little beauties.

  Though these are the smaller variants ons … hmmmm, they’ll need a o differentiate them from the huge fire-breathing variant. I mused, watg as the first couple dozen dht into kes of magma kilometres beh the surface. I guess I could go with ‘Drakes’ for the small ones and ‘Dragons’ for the big ohat spit fmes. Sounds good.

  So, now that the Drakes were having fun, I also made a handful of the Dragon variants and pced them all around the phese things were hardy animals, having survived in the nohable and highly sulfuric atmosphere of Vulis so I wasn’t too worried about them.They just needed scorg heat and some rocks to chew on and they were happy as fiddles.

  “Magos Zedev,” I said, catg a flicker of the meical man’s attention. “How goes the work with those emptes I asked for?”

  “Some of the requested gees are within optimal parameters.” Zedev spoke, and I just k was his not-AI I eaking to and not the man himself. Rolling my eyes that he let a subroutine of his mind deal with me while he poked at the dirt, I magnanimously fave him. He had goodies to give after all. “Not all items on the list are within those parameters yet though. Do you wish to request the data of the pleted oransferred over, or of all prototypes?”

  “Just give me what you feel is good enough,” I said, shrugging. I could always rather swiftly repce outdated materials if my whole base was really going to be almost entirely anibsp;

  Grinning as he stored the data-packet in that small partition in one of his sub-brains designated for as my ‘pick-up-point’, I quickly snatched the data out of there.

  It threw it at my mind-cores, letting them look it over and go over it just in case they somehow found something the turies old Magos Biologist missed.

  They actually made some small adjustments. Zedev was a master of getting things effit and potent, but my mind-cores shared my intimate instinctual uanding anic matter and mao blend the jigsaw mix of genes a bit better into one tinuous stream.

  I think I’m going to hunt down a Jokaero when I get the ce … actually, ’t I just ask Trazyn to give me ohat miserly Ne still didn’t pay me for that st outing.

  It wasn’t that I bmed him too much, my avatar practically melted and spttered across his metallic carapace from the exhaustion back there at the end. He was likely only going to take it back out of his Tesseract when he was ba Solemnace.

  Not that a sieonkey is going to be enough payment after all that bullshit I went through to get his toy.

  I had every iion ing Trazyn out like a wet towel for every st gee he had up his back pocket.

  Fulgrim e, a peak Aeldari Warrior, a Krork, a Khrave … maybe even a Watcher? Trazyn had a whole lot of goodies I still very much wanted.

  By the way, how is that Emissary Bone Sword deciphering going?

  ‘Efficy has been improved upon sihe st query by: 120%’

  While that still e more than terraf five ps like I’d doh this moon, that was still quite good. With all the excess bio-energy I had, I could make an actual great sword out of the new material without bankrupting myself.

  Plus, ohe p and running, my bio-energy stores would start going up again. Especially if I could somehow get away with building up a Dyson Swarm around the star of this System, but sadly I had no idea how to do that with an er Tau breathing down my neck.

  My mind-cores pinged me with a hat said Zedev’s emptes were done being reviewed and streamlined. With a small smirk, I looked through the list.

  So basically I have my anic equivalent of crete, ferrocrete, psteel and ceramite. I also have wood in various colours that’s as tough as the tter of those and a prototype metamaterial mesh as a rept for Adamantium.

  Adamantium was a weird metal, said to be ‘iructible’ and supposedly a metre thick yer of it was all the armour pting Imperial warships o be ‘invincible’. Fact was though, Imperial ships blew up all the damime and their armour ierced like … by every other fart-gun aimed their way.

  Could be because all those ships are like, ten thousand years old and every armour pting is just a haphazardly welded together mesh of scrap taken for previous ships. Or the Admech are being miserly and only use a coating of Adamantium?

  Alternatively, it was also quite likely that the metal was far less imperable than it was rumoured to be. Still. I had something with apparently simir qualities to it thanks to Zedev.

  The anic versions Zedev came up with were all slightly … off. Of course they were, it would have been too much to ask a single Magos to make a product rivalling something the entire Admely got thanks to their STbsp;

  The chitin-like repts for psteel and ceramite were, for example, pretty expeo make. Alternatively, they were practically free to maintain uhe Tyranid chitin of a simir quality that would have taken exorbitant sums to keep w.

  I was sure that if I had a Fe World at hand, it’d be leagues cheaper to just strip mine a few asteroids and make the Imperial standard materials and use them for my base and spaceships.

  As, I wao be a special little snowfke with my own style, so that was a no-go. For my headquarters and main ships it was, anyway. Once I had to transfer over ter scale, efficy would trump everything … but that was well into the far future.

  For now, I had to worry about being able to keep this p and not the logistiy future gactic armada.

  With a small huff, I jumped to my feet and floated up into the air. Damn did it feel good to be exerg my psychic muscles again without having to worry about running out of power.

  I tried using some of the little tricks and teiques Val shared with me on our journey here, trying to minimise energy wastage. I’d asked him when we were so low on energy I didn’t even dare lift my mug of coffee with telekinesis lest we don’t have enough energy to Teleport the ship away in a bind.

  He was all too happy to help me optimise my psychic powers a bit. I was still apparently quite wasteful with it, but I wasn’t in the horrendously bad category at least. When I was b to use those teiques, anyway.

  I let them go now, just freely drinking in some of that power aing it flow through me, energise me. It was awesome.

  Rising into the air, I closed my eyes a my awareness out through the work of tendrils to every single living thing on the p. I searched for a pce, a right pce to build something great.

  Pins of swaying grasses, deep jungles, rolling hills covered in moderate forests, tundras up north, mountain rahat would make the Himayas blush. There was everything on this p one could need.

  Aside from os and a prid, but anyway! Those would e with time.

  I have these wood-like and chitinous materials, where would an absolute monstrosity of a building look good built out of those materials?

  My sub-brains and mind-cores pi that thought. The diplomatic sub-brain urged me to choose a pce that could be the tre of aual city, my seat of power. The strategid of the warrior sub-brain instead urged me to selee pce defensible, to make my fortress impregnable and care not for how it would look.

  My mind-cores in tur me a list of pces that fit both ideas and even took into sideration my preening need for my base to look awesome and picturesque.

  Hmmmm. I hope I finish this up in time. Would be cool to receive the Magister in a newly built base. Would go a long way to establish that I really ‘do have trol over’ the ‘artifact’.

  I retty sure even ahereal would be impressed by the whole p’s ecosystem following my will.

  P3t1