Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

162 – Geneva Suggestions

“HMMMMMMMMM.” I hummed strongly, letting the sound reverberate through my chest like a growl. In my hands was a Tau-made pulse rifle, the standard infantry weapon of their military force.

I was looking at it with three pairs of eyes to survey it, plus I opened up an additional Navigator eye on my forehead just for the sake of making sure I didn’t miss anything. There was nothing psychic in the weapon's nature, and I also blessedly saw not a single sign of a pesky machine spirit inhabiting it. Thank … actually, fuck the gods of this galaxy. I’m not going to be thanking them for shit.

Shaking off that thought I glanced over at my newly made drone with my main body’s eyes. It was, well, an overgrown orangutan. I wasn’t sure yet which part of the Jokaero gave their kind their weird tech-savvy instincts, so I just made a perfect carbon copy and linked its brain up with my mind through a telepathic bond.

I was noting and recording every flare of neurons, examining every flash of thought and every leap in logic. I was looking for patterns, logic and some actual factual knowledge behind those instinctive thought streams that made little sense all by themselves.

At the moment, the main cause of my annoyance was that I couldn’t for the life of me tell why the damned thing wanted to change out the stock for something made of a rubbery polymer. 

There was no logic to that thought, my tech-monkey clone just felt like doing so would be satisfying. Which, by prior experience, meant it would improve upon the weapon in some way. It was like the monkey had tech-Tourettes. The urge to fiddle with the weapon just came to it without any rime or reason, and it annoyed it to no end if it ignored that urge.

Even now, my drone was practically vibrating with anxiety as I kept it from jumping at the poor pulse rifle. Where it thought it’d get the rubbery polymer it needed to upgrade the weapon, I had no idea, and neither did I know how it would actually make the new stock.

My other drone, outfitted with a pair of eyes that could see the whole electromagnetic spectrum and process it all was watching on and documenting everything the monkey drone was doing from an outside perspective.

I released the mental control I had over the Jokaero drone and watched it pounce on the rifle like it was its long-lost lover. Its long limbs snapped out, dexterous fingers working on the stock already as the small stash of mechanical tools it had compulsively made for itself before anything else were snatched up and put down one after the other.

In less than ten seconds, it had detached the stock and chucked it over its shoulder before bounding off to who knew where with the remaining weapon cradled in its arms. My other research drone followed after it in a hurry just like I’d instructed it. It’d send me a mental ping if the monkey started taking apart stuff it shouldn’t. For now, I was happy to leave it to its devices and let it run wild. Hopefully, I’d have a much-improved pulse rifle on my hands and with some luck, the blueprint for how to make it en masse too. 

Taking in the other three experiments going on at the same time with my aura, I let the updates from the dozen research drones watching over the first experiment surge into my mind.

A grin spread on my face as I Blinked over and felt the success. It was an unmistakable feeling for any Psyker who’d experienced it before, an utterly revolting sensation that nobody would want to experience twice in their lives, but I was still gleeful to feel its suppressive force pressing down on me.

The Blank experiment finally produced a success after … 4532 deaths. 

I looked at the final test subject, squinting as I tried to figure out just what made him so different from the more than a few thousand failures.

Checking the update packet I’d just snagged, I saw that he had been a part of what I’d called the ‘quantity has a quality of its own’ batch. Meaning, I just implanted the Blank genes into two thousand people and waited to see what would happen.

I had other batches, in some I took the implantation slowly and did it in stages, in others I looked for test subjects with specific qualities and in others, I did mostly random things and winged it. 

Honestly, I was expecting success from either the small batch of specifically selected younger test subjects — don’t judge me, becoming a Chaos cultist firmly disqualifies anyone from being viewed as a kid. I’d butcher a newborn baby if it started chanting ‘BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!’ at me. — or the gently implanted batch. Not the randomly picked bunch.

Male. Around twenty. Had minor levels of Chaos taint. Hmmm. Why did he even get picked up, that level of taint should be well under the threshold I’d set? I checked my memories and found the dude had been … enthusiastically beating a poor teenage girl — a young maid apparently serving his ‘illustrious’ noble family — and he didn’t look like he’d be stopping there.

Yep, that’d do it. 

All of my tiny embers of guilt I’d felt as I watched his dead gaze and the drool dripping down his chin evaporated into thin air. 

He seemed catatonic, though I didn’t know exactly how brain-dead he might have been inside his head. His Blank aura might have been significantly weaker than the Blank Guilliman had men take his source sample from, but it was enough to make mucking about in his mind … challenging.

Still, I was mildly hopeful. This guy’s aura was like a wet towel on my face when compared to the waterboarding the man who the Blank Genes I’d taken from and even he was like a harmless kitten when compared to the dreadful aura the Shadowkeeper’s black skull had.

I had managed to use my powers in the presence of the last one; I was reasonably confident in absolutely crushing this wet blanket of a Blank before me and turning his mind inside out.

Still, I had to temper my expectations. As far as I knew, only the Emperor himself could actually affect Blanks with his psyker voodoo. Was I really just being super egotistical in thinking myself capable of something only he’d ever managed, or was it just a healthy amount of confidence in my own abilities, built upon reason and prior experiences?

Bad Echidna. Leave the perfectly good Blank alive for something more useful than bolstering your ego. I chided myself, imagining Selene whispering the words into my ear for added effect, and stepped back with a hint of reluctance. To say the need to prove myself to be a Psyker comparable to the big golden boogeyman of the galaxy was easy to ignore would be the understatement of the year, but I managed. 

Huffing in lingering annoyance, I slapped a nice little mixture of organic drugs into the guy. Blanks might nullify even my psychic powers when used on them directly, but my bio-energy and whatever weird eldritch fuckery made my body work seemed to work just as well on him as it did on anyone else. I couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t just faking the catatonic state he seemed to be in, but I sure as hell put him into a drug-induced torpor with all the stuff I’d loaded him up with.

“Away with him,” I waved over one of the research drones, only speaking out loud to not feel too insane by speaking to my other bodies. “Stick him up on bio-energy life support and put him into a coma.”

The drone took him away without any fuss and my gaze followed him until he left the spacious room. Having a pocket Blank ready whenever I needed it would be pretty nice for both experimenting further with coming up with countermeasures and training up my mental defences against his kind. I had been able to power through that black skull’s aura; I knew I could do it again, but I was sure it’d become easier if I practised. It’d have been a monumental waste to break the guy’s skull in half just to pat myself on the shoulder afterwards for being awesome.

I was just about to head over to check up on my Hrud & Khrave experiments which the memory packet indicated was a moderate success when I felt Val’s presence blip up to the ship. I almost smiled before I felt the repulsive presence of the Daemon Prince vomit its foulness into my aura.

I Blinked over to him, a frown on my face as I looked at his self-satisfied expression then down at what might have once been a somewhat humanoid figure.

“You did quite a number on this thing,” I mused, then looked up at him. “Why is it still alive?”

“I was of the mind that it would be more beneficial to have you remove this creature from the Great Game once and for all, Mistress.” Val bowed.

“Would it?” I hummed, crouching down at the creature letting out wet grunts and sounds no living thing should make. My aura washed over the Daemon Prince and felt its fading power, its form starting to break and give way. If I so much as looked at it too harshly, I was sure it’d get banished back to the Warp. “Hmmmmm. I was curious how well anti-daemon Wards would work on anything more powerful than a few lesser daemons anyway.”

Saying so, I poked the mangled thing before me and infused it with some soul energy. Its form lurched, almost instinctively trying to latch onto the source of the energy like a starving hyena. I held it down with just a hint of TK as I thought about how to go ahead with this. 

I had nabbed a few lesser daemons I’d found hidden around in secret places on the planet, and I knew the Wards worked on them at least. Engraving the wards into their flesh worked best, with covering the walls in wards and infusing them with soul energy being the second most effective use of them. Both weakened the daemons considerably, though the first banished the weakling lesser daemons outright nine times out of ten and left them in a state similar to the wretch at my feet in the last one instance.

When I felt the Daemon Prince’s presence stabilise and its form instinctively using its newfound energy to heal itself, I didn’t bother with anything short of drawing out the Ward design that’d worked best before on its stomach area. The creature screeched, howling in a sound I felt more with my soul than my mundane ears, but the Ward was done and I removed my blood-stained claws.

“Seems to be working,” I mused, watching the creature writhe on the ground, its barely recovered body now devoid of strength as the Ward flared on its stomach and made a nasty hissing sound. Its presence turned inward, collapsing upon itself as the Ward’s suppressive force didn’t allow it to run rampant and pour its repulsive aura into the surrounding space. “Good to know. Hmmm. Still, you know you might have just landed me in deep shit with this stunt, right?”

“I- “ Val’s overly pleased demeanor shifted, his tongue stumbling over his words as he stared at me. “I thought- removing a Daemon Prince from the world should surely be worth whatever complications arise as a result … shouldn’t it?”

“Well, if that thirsty god of theirs was angry at me for spiriting away your and Fae’s soul from her, she’ll be apoplectic at me destroying one of its newest toys.” I stared down at the groaning and moaning Daemon in distaste. I wasn’t sure how much it saw or could process of what was going on around it, but I was pretty sure all of it was being transmitted right back to the Dark Prince like some Warpy streaming service. “Banishing it would be one thing, not much of a loss, but obliteration?”

I shook my head and scrunched up my face. What irritated me most was that the choice had been made for me. Up until now, I’d only destroyed Khornite Daemons and the maybe-fake-changeling. I wasn’t too happy about so quickly adding Slaanesh to the list of people passionate about seeing be destroyed.

“Well, I can’t do shit now, can I?” I said, sending a glare at Val. “With this thing writhing at my feet, I can neither just let it go nor banish it. That’d be a sign of weakness their kind pounces on. You have forced my hand, Val, and I’m not too pleased about it.”

When Val looked suitably chastised, I returned my gaze to the Daemon Prince and clicked my tongue. A flick of my wrist lifted it mid-air, suspended as I’d come to like having my defeated enemies for some final gloating. … maybe I should stop doing that. Someone will inevitably use it against me to strike when I let my guard down, midway through my evil monologue. Hmmm.

“Well, sucks to be you I guess.” I muttered and then lunged forward without any more preamble. My hand rippled, a chitinous gauntlet with claw-like fingers covering it as I sent my appendage right into the writhing creature’s chest.

I let my power run rampant, releasing a devastating torrent of Smite-infused power right into the centre of its chest. It was already weak, so in moments it started attempting to break away and flee back to the Warp.

The Ward stopped it, forcing it to uselessly throw its last embers of power against it as I snuffed out more and more of its existence with each moment. When it was suitably weakened, I stopped my attack, but didn’t retract my hand.

The creature seemed to heave a premature sigh of relief before I sucked it right through my soul-tunnel — the thread connecting my Avatar to my Soul — which dumped the weakened Daemon Prince right next to my soul. I doubted it would have tried resisting even if it had the power to, daemons only ever seemed far too happy to jump into my purifying Realm, but this one didn’t even have that choice. In as little as a real-time second, my Soul’s purifying power snuffed its remaining existence and transformed it into soul energy which joined my ocean of the stuff.

That done, I returned my gaze to Val who looked like a puppy who’d been kicked around relentlessly by their owner and didn’t even understand why they were mad at him. I wanted to sigh, but suppressed him. We clearly had much different priorities between the two of us, and I’d have to set them straight if I was to ever trust him with doing tasks for me again.

“I want an after-action report about how your fight had gone down with the creature,” I ordered him, snapping him back to attention as a new task had been placed before him. “I also want you to tell me everything you’ve learned about this planet, its citizens, culture and how challenging turning them into my own citizens will be.”

I could check with my aura and letting loose my mind-cores on reading the surface thoughts of a few thousand citizens, but I wanted his opinion first. It’d be a good way to feel out what he actually felt was valuable information or worth mentioning.