NOVEL WEB 148 – First Mission
“What benefits?” Coldstone asked with what I wagered was cautious optimism. He wanted to be convinced, but wanted to take back enough benefits with him to convince every one of his fellow Ethereals too.
“I have both long-term and short-term ones, let’s start with the latter,” I said, running my hand over the roots making up my chair as I thought of an answer rapidly. The question wasn’t whether I could give him something to convince his friends to leave me well enough alone, but how much was I willing to give. More accurately, what was the lowest I could give to them that would have them off of my back and wouldn’t at the same time be empowering possible future enemies. “Let’s start with the easy one, I can and am controlling this entire planet. From the smallest blade of grass to the tallest tree. The whole world is mine, and will fight for me should anyone invade it. That makes this planet nearly impregnable short of a planet-busting weapon.”
“Like you’ve extended to me the grace not to take my well-meaning words as a threat, I shall do the same for you now,” Coldstone said. “But do elaborate please, it would set my heart at ease.”
“It is just how it is,” I said, shrugging as I gave a superfluous wave of my hand and a trio of trees bowed to me at the trunk like courtiers greeting their queen. “I could also extend my control over Vallia itself, if you allow me to and supplant the malicious mind supposedly controlling its ecosystem with myself. With time, the whole System could be under my control.”
“Trees and grass hardly make for much of a foe for modern weaponry,” Coldstone said evenly, glancing over to his guards wielding plasma rifles.
“Make them shoot the white tree,” I said, pointing over at a smaller tree whose bark I’d just changed over to the pseudo-Adamantium-like material. “Let’s see how that mere tree stands up to a plasma rifle.”
After a nod from the Ethereal, one of the guards took stance and shot off a single bolt of plasma dead centre into the trunk. It melted, searing a fist sized hole into the white-black structure, but even that left most of them stupified under their masks. Plasma bolts could bore through heavy tank armour, and a random tree only got a small crater blasted out of its side.
“If you remember,” I said, pulling the Ethereal’s attention back to me. “The material that covered that tree was the same one that made up the outer shell of my still-growing fortress.”
“Would you be willing to trade that material?” he asked, an edge of excitement in his voice.
“Unfortunately,” I said, sighing mournfully. “It loses most of its toughness when its source plant dies.”
As I said that, the struck tree withered, branches curling up like a dead insect's legs as its vibrant crown of green leaves turned dark and dead brown. It’s bark flaked off, turning into ash-like dust as it fell and revealed the soft flesh of the inner trunk.
It was 99% theatrics and 1% reality. Sure, the material only worked perfectly when it was alive, but it had nothing to do with that random tree. It didn’t even have a source, it was an entirely bio-engineered substance that I never bothered to make sure could survive on procreate in the wild. Only I could make it, with the gene-template in my head.
Also, it wouldn't turn to dust even if it died, it would just turn less coherent and about as malleable as regular steel. Nothing as extreme as turning to dust.
“And the source plant can’t be extracted?” he asked, a suspicious squint in his gaze.
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “Only my power, linking this planet up into a single weave with the help of the artefact I’d subsumed into it, allows the specific plant to live. Onto happier subjects though, I can, eventually, perform the same terraforming I’d done on this moon on other planets without the need for my lingering presence and careful control. In time, I can make Seeds that would turn previously uninhabitable planets into paradises in a matter of months.”
“Under your control?” Coldstone asked, the cunning negotiator taking the lead from the amicable conversationalist that he’d been a moment before. “You hand us poisoned fruit and expect us to eat it, despite knowing the risk, just because it looks delicious?”
“I wish,” I said, sighing again. “I’m afraid my power can’t extend beyond a single System from the place where the artefact has been initially used. I can — eventually — make these Seeds that would work without my supervision, they’d only have enough power to terraform a single planet and then they’d wither away and leave the planet with the new ecosystem behind.”
That was also bullshit of course, even if I really went through with making those Seeds, they’d stay alive and go into a sleeper mode while sustaining themselves off of the host planet’s warmth. If I ever flung by and wanted said planet to, I don’t know, shed off its surface like a moulting snake, I could just activate the slumbering seed and let it grow.
Coldstone was rightfully expecting me to pull something exactly like that, so I might be forced to make the first couple of the Seeds actually work how I described them to. It wouldn’t be a huge loss, so I wouldn’t mind if it got me some fancy stuff from the Tau in return.
“I see,” Coldstone said, nodding. “I’m afraid we’ll have to … verify that, before making any more long term agreements on the matter. But that is a decidedly long-term benefit, what about more … immediate benefits?”
“I can grow just about any organic material if you give me a source to replicate,” I said. “I can keep alive any plant, even ones that wouldn’t find the place hospitable. I could also still serve as an auxiliary for your military with my men, especially if you allow me some time to … fix-up that old relic of a ship.”
“Don’t you need to remain on the planet?” Coldstone asked, clearly fishing for information, but I was willing to let him have what he might think was valuable information if it meant the Ethereals thought I was willing to play along.
“I can leave once the terraforming is done and the planet can sustain itself naturally,” I said. “This planet is the core, the entirety of it has been turned into the Artefact and while I need to be here to actively control and guide it, once the planet’s ecosystem is up and running, I can let it handle itself without interfering. Taking part in a battle or two every now and then shouldn’t be a problem.”
“A battle or two every now and then,” the Ethereal repeated. “Isn’t that a price far below the worth of what you’ve received? A moon the size of a planet to make your own.”
“A desolate clump of rock with an atmosphere less hospitable for life than the gullet of a Tyranid,” I retorted, giving him a derisive snort just so he knew what I thought of his kind’s generosity. I asked for being allowed to set up a base on Vallia, not even the whole planet, and they instead gave me this shithole from where I could watch the planet I supposedly wanted. “Point me at a planet, one close by that you want to rid of enemies. Preferably non-human ones. Let me show you what having me fight for a battle or two for you is worth.”
*****
“Aaaaaaand exit,” I said, the gravity engines of the retrofitted ship dialling our velocity down to physics-abiding levels. The light of distant stars that’d been nothing more than blurry streaks through the bent space tunnel around us, snapped back into place and cleared up. “What are we looking at?”
“Initial sensor readings show signs of intense void-battles having taken place throughout the System. The freshest heat signature is 1.456 AUs away from the System’s Star. Approximately thrice that far from our current location.”
I nodded at Zedev’s dreadfully bored-sounding report, promising inwardly to give him some new toys for doing his job without complaint even if I so evilly dragged him away from his newest obsession: integrating some ‘immortality organ’ into his dream body template.
“Look for any voidships,” I said, mentally reaching for the gravity sensors spread out around the hull of the ship. “I want to know where every voidship in the System is, along with the relative locations of all celestial bodies, primarily … Calthor IV.”
I finished once I'd managed to dig up the name of the desolate, frozen piece of rock I was supposed to help some sorry excuse for an Admiral dislodge the Imperials from.
This was my first mission, a test from Coldstone that we agreed on after a short back and forth.
He wanted me to show my ironclad loyalty towards the Tau Empire and the Greater Good by taking part in an active battle against my supposed erstwhile nation. I, in return, told him I’d really rather not take part in glassing an Imperial planet filled with billions of largely innocent citizens.
As a compromise, we agreed on this glacial hellscape. Calthor IV was a shithole with hailstorms throwing around spikes of ice nearly horizontally so fast that they’d turn anyone not wearing power armour into swiss cheese.
As a result, it wasn’t settled. But it had a sizable garrison and even a few voidships both in orbit and patrolling the System. Why?
Because, of course, it was the predominant source of promethium in the subsector and promethium was what voidships, farmers, meltaguns and who knew what else used as fuel. It was the 40k version of oil, and the Imperium wanted every last drop of it.
The plan was simple. Batter around the Imperials, blow the half a dozen mining bases up to the high heavens and then sod off before reinforcements arrived.
If all went well, it could be the perfect opportunity to test out my new precious little baby- *cough* I mean my new ship.
It was a slender beauty covered in a pure white carapace-like outer hull with hardly any straight lines and all the gentle curves you’d expect from some futuristic luxury spaceship.
I was loving it, even though it was the first iteration of the prototype. It had Voidshields, a gravity engine, gravity sensors and a whole slew of weapons batteries from the goodies I got from the Tau for my ‘Warp Engine’.
Speaking of, that thing should be turning to dust right about now. I felt the urge to giggle and cackle like a loon bubbling up but I suppressed it. I’d have lived to see their faces when it happened, alas, we’d crossed the entire Tau Empire since then, and the distance separating us was significant.
“Found them,” I said, the gravity sensors detecting the telltale signs of a dozen voidships clumped up together within just a few tens of thousands of kilometres of each other. “Set course and prepare the boys for a fight. I’ll be launching a lot of them onboard to have a nice fight and see how they fare.”
This ship was smaller than the fake Imperial light cruiser I had before — not that it was any weaker or less dangerous for that, quite the opposite — so I couldn’t fit all 15000 Orks now under my command so I just dumped all but the ones on the top three floors on my new moon to play around. The best ones though, they got to come along with me for a good old scarp.
I’ll see how well they do without too strict of an oversight or one of my crew hanging over their shoulders.
Plus, sending in even just Fae with her burgeoning psychic abilities would have been overkill for any one Imperial battleship. Okay, maybe not Fae, but Selene or Val could eviscerate them in minutes.
Settling in to watch the stars as we coasted over to the battlefield and then to watch over the fight, I hung back in my comfy command chair.
“Did anyone pack popcorn?”
*****
Zara repeated the breathing technique beaten into her very bones at the Schola, her Psychic Hood tamping down on her uncharacteristic lapse in focus as her rebellious power tried to flare up.
It didn’t help keep her focus in the moment when Inquisitor Thrace glanced back at her, the thrice-damned hood — that doubled for her slave collar — likely alerting her ‘owner’ of her lapse.
She kept her face from as much as twitching, the man was like a bloodhound when smelling weakness and would have torn into her with the ferocity of a Carnifex if only she gave him a reason to.
Zara refused to show weakness, she refused to be his next victim. It was a pipedream, she knew. Inquisitor Thrace went through the Psykers assigned to his retinue like they grew on trees, none of the previous ones having lasted more than five years.
She remembered the day she first met the man, how he sat on his high throne with his previous Psyker prostrating on the floor next to him.
Zara still remembered the vacant, empty expression in the older woman’s eyes. There was no life in them, no intelligence for both had been burned out of the woman following one tiny failure on her part by the very same Psychic Hood Zara had inherited from her.
“Serve well me as you are now,” the man had said, his voice cold with a hint of malicious mockery barely veiled beneath its surface. “Or you’ll serve me as she does, like a mindless dog. Prove to me that keeping your mind intact is worth the effort. Prove to me that you are better than this failure.”
Zara had been terrified, watching the Inquisitor yank the chains wrapped around the poor woman’s neck like she was a dog.
That was her fate, an inevitable fate that befell so many of her kind. Still, Zara fought and struggled, never failing, never letting her focus wane. She would beat the odds, she would outlive that Emperor damned monster in human skin. That was the only victory allowed to her as a Sanctioned Psyker of His Majesty’s Most Holy Inquisition.
If she was especially lucky, she might even be able to play her cards well enough to survive the fallout of the Inquisitor she was supposed to guard with her life dying.
Unfortunately, luck was out of stock at the moment, and it seemed the both of them would find their end soon as torn apart chunks of flesh floating through the void.
”Tau reinforcements have entered the System,” the cog-head fiddling with some holographic star chart said with only a hint of the panic Zara felt at his words. “ETA … what?”
“Speak,” Inquisitor Thrace ordered, leaning forward from his command chair. “Now.”
“It makes no sense Sir,” the cog-boy said, sounding entirely unbothered by the Inquisitor's rising wrath. Or maybe he just couldn’t see it as well as Zara could after spending three years with the man, she’d more than learned which twitch of his facial muscles meant what, and the man was livid at the moment. “They are approaching us at interstellar speeds, far faster than any Tau ship I’ve seen had the gall to use inter-System.”
“Double check the sensors,” Inquisitor Thrace said, leaning back and appearing mildly mollified. “If it’s the same, give me the damned ETA, I want to know how long we have until we are overwhelmed by their reinforcements.”
“ETA 23 minutes.”
“Fuck,” Inquisitor Thrace said with feeling, and for once Zara agreed with him. “Prepare to pull away, if we can’t handle the lot we are landing on the planet and try to get lost in the mine shafts until the eventual Imperial counterattack arrives.”
