“Nope,” I said with feeling, appearing before the other Psyker girl and flig her forehead. Bio-energy surged into her body, tearing apart whatever sludge had been pumped into her bloodstream before my psychic grasp slipped iween the girl’s mind and the weird metallic hood thingy she had around her head.

  That’s some nasty archeotech … a Psychic Hood. Aren’t those supposed to help the Psyker and protect them from mental attacks?

  Well, this one was clearly ade for doing the por opposite. I had a … less than a kind impression of this violet-eyed Psyker thanks to Mara’s fragmented memories that I’d viewed, but now that I took a moment to really look at her … she really was just another victim.

  I figure out how willing of a victim she was. I decided, but knowing the Imperium fed any psyker who wasn’t receptive to their indoation and brainwashing to the Golden Throne, I didn’t hold out much hope. Still, the girl o be both alive and not brain dead for me to do that.

  Why did I give this girl a sed ce that I’d dehe stormtroopers, you ask? Well, she hadn’t attacked me yet, and even if she was going to do so had I not intervened, it was very clearly not of her own free will.

  Now, if she — mind-fucked and likely brainwashed as she was — did the same while I was fighting someone like Mephiston, Guilliman or Ka’Bandha, I would have bsted her into smithereens without a sed thought. There would have been no time for even a heartbeat of hesitation in fights like those, but the good Inquisitor frozen mid-air was about as much of a dao me as an ant.

  Meaning, I had enough leeway to be merciful.

  Slowly, ever so gently so as not to crack open the girl’s mind like an egg, I pried the weird Psychic Hood off of her head while I protected her fragile mind ierim from any blowback.

  Once I had it off, I smashed up the scrap metal into a ball with a Telekiic grasp and then chucked it over my shoulder, making it bounce off of the Inquisitor’s head.

  My Orkish peanut gallery burst out in cackles at that, but I shushed them with a wave as I watched the Psyker girl e back to herself.

  “Hmmmm,” I rubbed my thoughtfully as I leaned down to be eye-level with the colpsed girl sitting on her butt. She stared at me, dazed violet eyes wide in awe and horror in equal measure. She had really geous eyes like swirling nebus, those were the kind of eyes I could get lost in for hours … as, I was already taken. Still, I could appreciate beauty even then. “Zara, was it? I’m afraid you were only ever referred to as ‘that purple-eyed whore’ in little Mara’s memories.”

  “H-how-“ she croaked, then coughed and swallowed to wet her dry and abused throat. “You know my name?”

  “Some cursory surface level mind reading,” I said, smiling cheerily and ign the pale-faced horror etg itself across her angur features. Telepathy usually didn’t work like that, requirireme focus and targeted, heavy-handed mind-probes. The fact I had plucked her of her thoughts without much effort or her notig terrified the little telepath. “Don’t worry, I didn’t look further. I think we have a nice versatioo clear everything up, no need for me to dig around in your mind, right?”

  “Y-yeah?” Zara asked, not daring to move while held in my gaze and I could feel her fear as a physical sensation washing ay skin.

  Uh Thrace’s though, I was decidedly not enjoying this rush of feelings surging through my passive Empathy.

  “No worries.” I patted her fuzzy head, flig her loosely braided light brown hair off her shoulder. “If you aruthfully, and I don’t find you as repulsive as that shitstain in human form behind me, no harm will e to you … from me anyway. For now sit tight, I have an Inquisitor to ‘fight’.”

  Her hands snapped up to her neck, then to her head the moment I took my eyes off of her, and I saw the woman’s stoic tenance crumble to dust as a sob reverberated through her body.

  “You have a skill for making women cry, Inquisitor.” I knocked on the back of his power armour a a mix of my twin energies into it to wreak havoot a momehe power field surrounding it quaked and buckled, then colpsed. The armour itself followed suit a quarter of a sed ter, molecules breaking apart and the armour returning to its po atoms as a soft breeze blew it off of the man underh. “You are makie you more and more, Inquisitor. That’s not good for your tinued good health. Not at all.”

  I let him go, his lightning cws and heavy fmer crashing to the ground without the power armour to support them. I watched the man, now dressed only in the ragged remains of his Inquisitorial attire.

  He whirled on me, eyes bloodshot and wide in annoyingly little terror and far too much spunk for my liking.

  So I baded him, sending him spinning around and smag face first into an Ork’s chest who looked down at me like a puppy handed a brand new chew toy, asking for permission to py with it.

  It seemed my regur beating up of their ten stro fighters as I honed my bdework and brawling skills on them had beaten into them a healthy amount of respey power. Well, or whatever went for resped ‘a healthy amount’ for Orks’ that is.

  ”You know what?” I asked just as Thrace jumped away from the Ork like he’d been burned by merely toug its green skin. “I think I’ll let them py with you. Boyz, the Inquisitor is on the menu, make it hurt. The rest of you go and clear out the rest of the ship.”

  The Orks were notably uhused by the idea of fighting a single unarmed human, the most of them just rushing past me with roars as they looked for a fight that I hadn’t spoiled for them yet. A dozen of them stayed though and started kig Thrace around like a ball while giggling like preteen schoolgirls and his grunts and curses.

  I felt fear creeping up on him, closing in like a skulking predator that he tried to fend off with increasingly frantic attempts. What crushed the st hint of hope in him was when I tore whatever artefact hidden on his belt he was trying to activate. When I tore what I thought was some mobile translocator — a teleporter, essentially — into shreds, his dread turned into real terror and the Orks could smell that.

  They grinned, ughing as they crushed him bit by bit, ever so slowly and made him regret ever being born. His screams of pain were drowned out by their ughter, the wet cracks of bone eg ial ste room.

  While they were at it, I nabbed his Inquisitorial Rosetta. Which I followed up by sampling the t, sihe damhing apparently had aremely well-made biometric ser.

  “Well.” I cpped, ign the Orks pying ball and turning to Selehat went about as well as be expected. Do you think we find any super no-no Inquisitoodies stashed around somewhere on the ship?”

  “Maybe,” Selene said, shrugging as she took a moment to ihe Psyker girl passed out cold o us on the floor. “What are you going to do with her?”

  “I’m going to have an ho versation with her,” I said, mimig her shrug. “In which I’ll find out whether I like her enough to allow her to join our little crew, or if she’s eveive to the idea.”

  “If she’s not?”

  “Then I kill her,” I said evenly, not even b t. “That’s what the Imperium would do with her if we let her go back to them, I’m sure of it. I’d just be speeding up the process, and if she’s the type to go back to the Inquisition after having to put up with that t over there for years, I don’t think I’ll find it in myself to spare her life.”

  A flicker of my attention stayed on the Inquisitor, then when his body finally gave out I sidered just letting his soul slip into the Immaterium, be torn apart by the scores of lesser daemons following me like vultures waiting to devour my leftover scraps, but residered.

  Did he deserve a death that quick? Even if it would be agonizing?

  There were worse fates out there, but without doing anything personally, this was the worst I could think of. I’ve sidered prolonging it, healing him back up for the Orkz to start again, or just smag him in the face with a hypersensitivity and hyperity enha from my Biomancy, but both would be well over the line and into the territory of torture.

  I promised I wouldn’t torture people, and being the good girl that I was, I kept my word.

  So instead, I grabbed his mind and while he still barely ted as alive, I shoved it into a small housing. It was just a human brain forced into a a inside a carapace that kept it funal, but that would do.

  It’ll be a good gift to Mara … or Zara if she turns out to be salvageable. They’ll do something much worse to him than I’m willing to, I’m sure.

  There was some poetic justice to allow his victims to do with him whatever they wished. If none wahough, I could alway just throw him to the daemons.

  After that, we went on to tinue our little excursion but without holding back as much. That man had ruihe mood in a way even his death couldn’t salvage, so I had decided to be petty. Meaning, I raided his stash of no-no Inquisitorial toys while my Orks rampaged through the ship.

  The fact that their rampaging storm of WAAAAGH! energy wasn’t affeg my thinking, was a testament to my weeks of practid improved mental fortitude.

  I’d also teleported that Zara girl back to our ship after I made sure she’d stay asleep while I was out looting her erstwhile boss’ stash of goodies.

  It calmed my still simmering fury to be looting the asshole blind, especially when I imagined how furious he’d be if he knew a ‘filthy Xeno’ ying around with his toys.

  But I found something surprising when I opened up the vault.

  “Well, hello there?” I murmured, and watched as the miniature utan gnced up at me for a moment, blinking in surprise. “Whatcha got there?”

  It looked down at its hands, one cyberic just like its right eye and just went back to fiddling with it. By my meagre uanding of the futuristic te this gaxy, that thing should be some sort of a mini-ser shooter fitted into the shape of a ring.

  It ignored me, seemingly fully absorbed with its tinkering and I didn’t feel the o interrupt it beyond nabbing a bit of its fur with a hair-thin tendril.

  Guess that’s ohing I have to trade with Trazyn for. I thought, putting assembling a plete tempte out of that sample as the highest priority task for my mind-cores. Jokaero tech wasn’t ily superior to human or Tau tech, but the little monkeys had an instinctive knack for taking something in front of them, making it both better and turning it into a miniature version of itself.

  Getting the Jokaero’s geic sample had already put me in a good mood, but that only got better as I looked through the stash of ons lining the wall. I gleefully absorbed ks of neis, teleported a score of gauss fyers and even a pair of hyperphase swords and a give over to my own vault on my ship. But this stash of goodies just kept on giving.

  Dark Eldar agonizers and splint ons, and even a siau Honour Bde. I pocketed them all, making a o hand in that Honour Bde — a on that’s ade for every Ethereal — back to Coldstone for brownie points once I finished up with this excursion.

  Holy, Honour Bdes weren’t good ons, not really, they were just spiritually signifit, so I lost no sleep over losing it. Even the Inquisitor seemingly only kept it as some sort of trophy if my guess was right. A single hyperphase sword could have cut it in half with little trouble after all, and he had more than one of those.

  There were some other stuff I couldn’t name, weird little bits and bobs that I couldn’t evehe use of and some that I could only guess at. Daggers that had their bdes made of psma, weirdly proportioned guns, melee ons and who knew what else.

  I pocketed them all, only leaving behind the few stuff that felt Chaos-touched and far too icky for my liking. I had ne goodies to loot, why would I look twice at a Khortleaxe that was trying to jump out of its shackles — it was ed to the wall, because of course it was — with those around?

  There were even a few stuff I just straight up atomised, then burned with every kind of psychid normal fme I had on hand. Like a damned Sught parasite. A part of me wao sample it, maybe get my hands on its weird, parasitid-bending abilities just in case, but my instincts screamed at me not to do it. So I plied and bur till not even its stituent atoms remained.

  What I did try my hand at abs was a bit of what was titled the Obliterator Virus. Sadly, like everything else only held together by Chaos infusion and -fuckery, the whole thing came apart at the seams once I mae the taint from it and the physical virus part of the thing just … didn’t work. It was a mess, jumbled up to hell and back with little rime and reason so I was forced to abandon that avenue.

  About an hour ter, I received a telepathic message from Val telling me about the remaining Imperial ship’s surrendering and the Tau us too to pull back. I shrugged and told him that we’d be back soon-ish.

  “Shouldn’t we deal with those Space Marines you’d felt before?” Selene asked arg her o gnce over my shoulder at the psma piston I’d suspected to be from the Leagues of Votann.

  “We , if you wan-” I started, then stopped as my aura failed to find the ten of the superhuman soldiers on board. I looked again, and found two of their corpses in one hallway … he escape pods. “They ran away.”

  “Oh,” Selene mumbled, sounding disappointed. “Well, that’s a bummer.”

  Saying so, she id her on my shoulder and hugged me across the waist. Making me gnce back at her ahe mischievous look in her eyes before she started nibbling on my nape in a way that had shudders running down my spine.

  It seemed she was determio get her blood pumping, one way or another, and I was only too happy to help her.

  P3t1