40 Thousand Reasons

Back on board the Black Lament I had new guest.

Uninvited but welcome, Ferrus Manus stood in his Angel form on my bridge, silver hands sparkling with the Immaterium equivalent of necrodermis.

"Can you talk?" I asked a bit curious. Obviously, the Emperor considered my mission important enough to deploy a heavy weapon as back up. Ferrus Manus certainly qualified as such.

Dead eyes stared at me without an answer. Well, I didn't expect him to speak, to be fair.

It wasn't even the first time I have encountered a spirit Primarch. "Don't worry, my friend. We're going to see a goddess and have her restore you back to life." I explained in a patient tone, and gestured towards the plasteel block normally reserved for an Astartes bodyguard. Like Ludvaius.

And speaking of my old friend, it was probably too long since I've visited Meridian. I could stop there on my way, and check on Ludvaius.

"My lord, he is a Primarch! In the same room with us!" Darcy exclaimed in a reverent voice.

I sighed inward at her fan-girly way. "You can touch him if you want. Just don't stick your hands in his mouth." I answered with a snort, and Canis snorted in tandem.

Darcy watched the Angel sit on his pedestal and stare blankly at the viewing screen, her eyes wide in awe and hands trembling with excitement.

"You do have the most curious friends, Pef Lancefire." a xeno voice observed from the door.

I turned to nod towards Menmorach and his escort, Sister Stern. "I'm certain you've met Phoenix Lords yourself. Ferrus Manus is quite similar to your race's demigods."

The Solitaire raised a finger to comment, then lowered it sheepishly. "I guess they would seem similar to a human. Warrior aspects with dedicated followers." he admitted in with a shrug.

I began to nod when the Warp shifted, white clouds and pearly gates evaporating all around, the conference ended or perhaps moved someplace different.

The Eldar fleet departed without any word, splitting into a dozen smaller fleets each diving into different Warp currents.

I guess they didn't feel like saying good bye, or even good luck.

"I can Navigate the Black Lament, Lord Pef. Just name a destination." the Demonifuge proposed with a kind voice.

Should I have been surprised at her new talent? She was in fact a new Empress of Mankind, created in similar manner to the Emperor himself. Sure, the Emperor was given his powers by a thousand of shamans pooling their souls into a single entity in ancient times, but the Battle Sister also had 700 souls imbued into the fabric of her existence.

A new Perpetual, able to resurrect or destroy legions of demons with ease. And now, Stern was my new companion and concubine. I surely lucked out with her, even if she came with an Eldar Harlequin in tow. For a Solitaire, that guy was amazingly sociable.

Then again, I did have thousands of Blanks and Pariahs as companions, Lamenters and Silent Sisters with the same Null aura as he had. There wasn't much tolerance in the galaxy for people like us, especially not among the Eldar.

"Hive World Meridian" I declared while sending orders to the ships via the Manifold circuit, and calling the fleet to form up with the Blackstone Fortress.

The Alpha psyker smiled at me and vanished in a purple flash, to reappear in the Navigator quarters. Soon enough, we proceeded on our journey, with the new Navigator pathing our way though the nebulous Warp currents.

Just like Janice, Sister Stern did not need a third eye to steer the ship through the Warp.

Anyways, I was quite busy during the journey with repairs and new STC blueprints. I might have accidentally acquired a hundred data-stacks filled with archeotech data from Mars and Jupiter, and entire vaults of ancient machinery which I rescued from their inevitable destruction at the hands of the Chaos, Ork, Dark Eldar and Necron invaders.

Sure, eventually the crisis was also solved and the Sol System didn't get destroyed, but nobody could say it hadn't been close. I even mapped a part of the Noctis Labyrinth on Mars, just to have something of value to trade to my special friend.

I was a Rogue Trader by birth, wasn't I?

To my right, the dead Primarch seemed to approve, as he observed my efforts on the STC templates upgrades with a stone-faced expression.

Sadly, the vast majority of the valuable templates refused to load at all on the cogitator, locked under complicated algorithms and anathema-class overrides and the few that did open were horribly defaced or decayed.

The techpriesthood of Mars guarded their secrets well, even innocuous technology like solar powered rechargers or vox transmitters.

Of course, I did have working templates already stored from different Forge Worlds, and even some xeno-based blueprints from the T'au and other technological races. I could compare and then design a missing piece with a similar function, even if it wasn't an ideal device. Some efficiency or reliability would be lost through my meddling, but then it wasn't all bad.

If the result was different enough to warrant a separate pattern name for this solar charger, then I could trade the new pattern without worry. "Ferrus Pattern solar charger. Discovered in an ancient facility by Trader Lancefire. Techpriests and enginseers are advised to use with caution, due to age degradation." I wrote as a final note.

Then I saved the blueprint and reached for my recaf mug, only to find an Angel hand hovering over the mug.

"You want some caf, my friend?" I asked in suprise.

The Angel turned to stare at me like I was silly. Possibly not his point though.

"You don't like the name? I thought you'd be honored." I deduced with my genius brain.

That wasn't it though. The Primarch's left hand morphed into a cogitator port and he simply plugged himself in, then re-opened the template to look over it with a curiously interested look on his statue face.

No wonder the Iron Hand Astartes all had a knack for using bionic limbs and repairing their own weapons or armor. It was genetic.

In mere minutes, the Angel repaired the damaged STC template then began upgrading it with subtle shifts in placement and materials, replacing gold connectors with platinum or enlarging some capacitor banks while reducing another.

When he was finished, he added a few steel pins along the spine, and the template folded into a much smaller size, more compact and protected by the outer casing. Then the diagrams unfolded once more, and the text changed to remove the warranty warning.

I patted his back in excitement, since this new device would be actually valuable, even for my own troops when deployed in the field. Perhaps as backup sources for the Tarantula turrets as well, even those mounted on the hull of spaceships. Every solar system had a sun, after all. Plenty of energy to collect. "You're pretty bright, for a dead guy!"

The Angel turned and nodded towards me with a stony face.

"Is it dinner time already?" a certain lazy Assassin asked from under the bed.

And no, I wasn't cruel to Vaedrax. He just preferred not being stepped on, it seemed.

Perhaps being kicked by accident, sometimes.

"Last meal together, Vaedrax. We'll arrive at Meridian sometime tomorrow, and you'll resume the escort mission on Lady Cassandra." I explained as I raised and stretched my back, working out kinks induced by hours of focused effort.

Useless effort as well, considering what the Angel Primarch had just proven. Still, I didn't envy his dead form.

And on that note, a giant Angel escorting me around would raise eyebrows, perhaps even start some sort of zealot rage among the Imperial citizens. The crew of the Black Lament wasn't the type to get overly excited over a Primarch, especially not ours.

The Battle Sisters and some techpriests were still impressed, but not to the degree normal Hive citizens would be.

As Vaedrax crawled out and stretched as well, I began taking out various power armors and even dreadnought suits to compare them with the size of the Angel. Too small though.

"Wait, are you trying to fit the Angel into a suit of armor? He is more durable than a cruiser!" the Culexus Assassin exclaimed with a laugh.

Ferrus Manus turned towards me and nodded, agreeing with Vaedrax's point.

"Nothing like that. But he is too obvious and might cause popular revolts or upheavals wherever we go. Primarchs are myths among the populace." I explained patiently as I extracted the golden armor once worn by poor Brother Arkio at Forge Shenlong. The same place where I first killed a Primarch, and then an Inquisitor. Good old days, right?

Only this time, instead of stopping a delusional Astartes who dressed as a Primarch, I was dressing a Primarch to look like a delusional Astartes.

"And is he going to walk or fight in that armor? He doesn't have a Black Carapace..." the Assassin countered with a pretty logical argument.

But, he was asleep during the latest developments.

Ferrus Manus simply became a vaporous cloud and moved inside the armor, then plugged himself in the armor's control circuits with his necrodermis plug. A second later, he found the wing ports and stretched his wings out through the flaps, and hovered in mid-air with a satisfied face.

"You were saying?" I asked rhetorically while retrieving and mounting the helmet over the armor.

"...Nobody will suspect a thing. Until he has to speak, I guess." Vaedrax muttered in a lower tone.

"The armor has a vox box. You were saying?" the Angel asked with a metallic voice.

I glanced at the Assassin and we both sighed. Primarchs were pure bullshit.