NOVEL WEB 135 – Grand Prize
Por’Ui Alvash
“A thousand of each infantry weapon, ten Cruiser class Railguns, two dozen railgun batteries and about fifty different Battlesuit armaments along with … about a hundred types of various infantry, special unit and battlesuit equipment?” Alvash found himself astonished at the woman’s sheer audacity to just hand the list to him with a simple smile before going back to lounge on her sofa.
“You are asking for my ship’s Warp Engine and Gellar Field Generator,” she said, throwing one leg above another. “You are asking to let me tear out the beating hearts of my ship. Two pieces of technology worked out by the Priesthood of Mars dozens of Millenia before your civilization learned how to make fire. You are asking me to spit in the face of my ancestors, and give away the most sacred technologies, technologies no one even knows the workings of anymore, to you.”
Alvash stared at her, an unreadable expression on his face. The Captain was a strange one, a mystery unto herself that he was having trouble even beginning to unravel. For one, while he didn’t mention it, he had a feeling her choice of a dress for their meeting was a slight. Or, rather, it would have been a slight to any within her own society.
She wore the same manner of a silky garment that would have been counted as an undergarment in Tau society on her lower half, and a simple piece of the same smooth cloth on her torso.
Perhaps appearing in less … official garments is a show of burgeoning trust? He reasoned, though he doubted it. Mostly, because the feeling he got was that the woman had been sleeping just minutes ago and just refused to bother clothing herself properly for their meeting. Indeed. Those do seem like comfortable wear for sleeping. I suppose, that still could be a show of trust? That she doesn’t feel the need to put up the metaphysical barriers of proper clothing when meeting me.
“And I did just that. I gave it up to you, willingly, even knowing changing the core of my ship would undoubtedly compromise its structural integrity. I offered it up to you. Thousands, upon thousands of years of technological evolution just fell into your lap. What I’m asking in return is measly in comparison. I’m sure you can understand that.”
“I do,” he nodded, even if he didn’t, not really. He was a diplomat, he couldn’t know the true worth of such technology like his Earth Caste brethren, but from the way their eyes glimmered in excitement at taking it apart, he was leaning towards agreeing. “But I’m not sure the Governor would feel it appropriate to hand over so many powerful weapons to a new member of our Auxiliaries. Perhaps … at least cutting the diversity in half, could calm him enough to agree?”
“Ask your Scientists, this,” the woman huffed. “Have they ever tried pushing their FTL drives beyond what should be reasonably expected of them? What happened? Did the crewmen go mad? Did they just disappear, along with the ship? Did they find remains of destroyed vessels used in such testing centuries later? I assure you, the answer to all those questions will be a resounding ‘YES’ if they look into their archives deeply enough.”
“I see?” Alvash was taken aback. Was there such a danger when using their FTL drives? If there was, why didn’t he know of it?
“You do not,” she smiled at him without warmth. “The answer to why those accidents happened is not something I can share, but avoiding them is the purpose of a Gellar Field generator. You are throwing the ship into a storm whenever you use those engines of yours, and your regular shields are far from enough to protect them from the forces at play.”
“I will relay that to the Head Scientist,” said Alvash, blinking in surprise as he filed away all that information and started writing a detailed report of the Captain’s words in his mind. “But … might I ask, why would you be willing to give up that shield generator if that was the case?”
“I have a back-up,” she waved him off. “It’s not up to par with the primary generator, but Zedev should be able to make it work for a short while. Now, Envoy, please get to it. I want to be on my way as soon as possible. My men are starving for some action, and honestly, so do I.”
“I will make sure the proper procedures are done with all due haste,” Alvash nodded, realising then that the Captain’s men ‘starving for some action’ might have been much more literal than he first thought. They were Orcs, after all. “I will be on my way. May the Greater Good shine your path.”
“Yes, yes,” said the captain, waving him away. “Goodbye Envoy.”
*****
“Well, that went better than yesterday’s heist, didn’t it?” Selene asked snarkily, rolling out of the bed behind me and flopping over the backrest of the sofa to land with her head in my lap. I unconsciously started weaving my fingers through her tangled mess of hair, trying to put some order back into those unruly locks still sticking to her skin from our play session earlier.
“I couldn’t have known they would have that good security,” I said, sounding a touch pouty even to myself. “Who puts military-grade sensors on a random mansion.”
“Well, Tau Ethereals,” Selene said, smiling blissfully as I worked on her scalp. “Apparently. Better luck next time.”
“At least we get the toys,” I hummed. “Then we can finally be on our way. I’m getting bored out of my mind here.”
“You’re just spoiled,” Selene said, taking the opportunity my closeness provided to play with a lock of my hair. “I’ve spent months just crossing a tenth of the distance we travelled in under a single month with The Wanderer. But I guess I get it, a stable base we could actually defend would be nice to have with however many enemies you have out there.”
*****
Octavian
Three months, or has it been four already? Perhaps even five? Octavian couldn’t be sure. Time lost meaning when one travelled through the Warp for extended periods. Not that he would have kept track of the days even if he could. They blended together as he waited, mind trying to get answers to questions that had been plaguing him since the day that scorching portal closed right before his face.
‘What do you want me to do, My Lord?’ Octavian thought, sending the question out into the aether with a desperate need for an answer. Yet, like Every. Single. Time. Before. He received no answers.
The slight mental nudges, the absolute certainty he had before that he was on the right track to fulfilling his Lord’s will, evaporated along with that flaming portal back on Baal. He failed, and in an atrocious manner at that. He knew, yet he couldn’t help but wish for a second chance to make things right.
The one little thread of hope he still had was in the certainty that his Lord was willing to give him a second chance. It took Octavian some time, weeks, to feel it, but the slightest echo of that driving force that guided him to Baal was still there, lingering.
His Lord didn’t abandon him. He’d not given up on Octavian just yet. Not entirely. His assistance went from a clear and unmistakable trail set up for him to walk on to a tiny nudge in the back of his mind, but it was still there, and that was all that mattered to the downtrodden Custodian.
“Lord Octavian, we have arrived at the designated location,” a muffled voice announced through the shut door of his office.
“Wait for my orders, halt all operations, keep our position stable.” Octavian didn’t move, merely sending out the orders as he sunk into deep meditation and focused on that slightest indication of a direction that lingered in the back of his mind.
His arm moved almost by itself, locating his own position on the star-chart and recording the vague directional nudge he felt. He took a minute to second check, trying to be as precise in recording the nudge’s guidance as possible. Then he opened up his eyes and took in the galactic map spread out before him.
“Zoom out,” he said, as he rose to his feet. His gaze lingered on the newly recorded floating point and the line expanding out of it into the distance. As the map continued to expand, another point just like it joined the first and finally even a third and a fourth.
“Expand to full galactic map,” he ordered, and the map did so. “Add a 10% margin of error to the directional vectors, expanding exponentially the further they reach from their point of origin.”
The four lines turned into cylinders and intersected. In reality, he’d only need three points to triangulate a location in three dimensions with the nudge in the back of his mind, but he did a fourth, just to be sure.
“Outline the space in which all four cylinders intersect.”
Octavian frowned. This was the first time he was seeing it, so it was no wonder he was a bit surprised when the location outlined on the map was on the other side of the galaxy and in Imperium Sanctus no less.
“Zoom in on the outlined region.”
Octavian stepped closer to the map, his gaze taking it all in and processing it in under a second. “Ultramar? She is in Ultramar?”
That was surprising. And worrying. Was Echidna angry enough of the Primarch’s rather rude dismissal of her that she travelled all the way over to Ultramar to take some sick revenge on the Primarch’s home?
“That would be petty … but perhaps not out of the question for her,” Octavian mused, frowning deeply as he thought. Still, he doubted that woman would waste so much time with petty revenge, she seemed much more result-oriented than that by his evaluations. Perhaps he was not thinking about this in the right way. There were other things out there besides the Imperium. “Show any known Xeno worlds, or prominent locations in the highlighted region.”
Octavian stepped back as a large orange blob, rivalling Ultramar’s blue popped into being on the map, quickly followed by smaller sections of sickly green and finally even some darkened spots here and there with Chaos’ six-pointed star floating above them.
“The Tau Empire,” Octavian read out the name of the orange-coloured region, then the green ones. “Necron Space.”
Those two were the most prominent, but Orks, Chaos and even the Tyranids had a prominent foothold in the region. Octavian could see almost any of those being the targets of Echidna’s. The Artifact needs biomass to function and to bring its powers to bear. If maximising its potential is her goal as I suspect it to be, she’ll head for a species with unique and powerful mutations.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Octavian mused. There were Tyranid worlds, even entire hive fleets with known locations much closer to Baal and furthermore, some of the Deathworlds he was initially suspecting to be her targets based on her requests to the Primarch were also much closer. “Why would you go all the way over there?”
Perhaps his Lord wanted him to collect something else, and he’d been under the misunderstanding that he was still hunting Echidna all along. But that felt … wrong.
The familiar feeling of his Lord’s psychic nudge made Octavian’s eyes widen. He must have been on the right track if his Lord saw it fit to spend some of his energy on dispelling his misunderstandings.
“No matter,” Octavian said, shaking his many hypotheses out of his head. He had his target’s vague location. Once he was closer to it, he could make a more accurate scrying. He was close to Terra at the moment, having taken one of the two stable gateways through the Great Rift a few months ago. The trip to the location his nudges were indicating was a couple more months of travel away if he pushed the ship to its limits.
Unfortunately, that was a non-option. His current ship was a loan from the Primarch, and was running on fumes. Both the crew and the fuel tanks were severely exhausted and in need of a refill.
Perhaps commandeering a new vessel is in order. Octavian thought. Yes. I’ll head back to Terra and have a newer Cruiser. Furthermore, perhaps it is time I made use of some other assets at my disposal, since I’ll be in a race with the Shadowkeepers to claim Echidna.
Octavian might have resolved himself to a much more heavy-handed approach with the strange Xeno, but the fact that he needed her alive and somewhat willing to cooperate didn’t change. Which meant the Shadowkeepers, who wanted to rip the Artefact out of her corpse, were his rivals in this mission.
I believe I’ll make use of the Inquisition, and perhaps a few squads of the Officio Assasinorum. If she is indeed hiding in Xeno space, I’ll need people more fit for blending in to pinpoint her location and set up an ambush she can’t possibly escape from.
Octavian doubted she’d be hard to find once he was close enough. He didn’t take the woman for one to hide overly much. If his suspicions were right, half the System would know of her by the time he reached his destination.
“Set course for Terra, I want to be there by the week’s end.”
“Yes, Lord.” Came a muffled voice from behind the door, a different one this time.
Octavian relaxed. Things were finally starting to work out, and a plan was forming in his head. He could see the path ahead once more.
The Lord wants her alive; I am certain. The Artefact is a large part of why he is interested in her, I believe, but Shadowkeepers failed to understand why exactly he wants her. He wants both the Artefact and its user, together. Alive. Possibly as a servant.
That last bit would resolve itself. Octavian hadn’t met a psyker who could refuse the Emperor once they were made to kneel before him. He wasn’t aware of the exact procedure, but they all either perished screaming or came out as devoted servants of the Emperor, no matter how much they loathed him beforehand.
She’ll be the same. I’ll make sure of it. She is an exceptionally powerful psyker, but all of them can fall when faced with the proper countermeasures and preparation, and unlike the Shadowkeepers, I won’t be underestimating her. Only once I’ve made her kneel before my Lord can I rest. His will be made manifest. His vision is eternal, and I will bring it one step closer to fruition.
***
Not one hour later though, Octavian stumbled as the guiding nudge in the back of his mind went haywire. Then it split, jumping between two entirely separate directions and not stopping for the next five minutes.
It only calmed an hour later, when both nudges went vague and weaker. But they kept stable. Fortunately, the new direction was close, very close, close enough that Octavian felt it move ever so slightly. It seems I have no time to prepare after all.
