84 – Bug Bullying

84 – Bug Bullying

I dashed to the side, letting the giant Mawloc — an overly-large worm with far too many teeth and a far too wide mouth — sail past me as it burst out of the ground I stood on just a moment ago.

My sword vibrated with energy as I slashed at its body, a sharp force field a dozen meters longer than the sword itself slashing right through anything but the spine of the beast.

I sent my body flying further away as the large beast came back down with an enraged screech of pain, smashing down on one of the approaching hive Tyrants.

A Telekinetic wave diverted two other of the Tyrants coming at me from behind, sending them smashing into each other instead of me. It didn’t do any damage to the hardy monsters, but the sight of it was worth it.

The third Tyrant, I smashed my knee into as I turned, ignoring as its claws and scythe-like limbs scratched my armour.

I didn’t have the weight, mass or whatever to really kick a Hive Tyrant weighing tonnes away with a single kick, butthe speed I was moving at made up for the mass I was lacking.

The Tyranid didn’t appear too wounded, but it still went rolling head over heels away from me before it managed to stop itself by stabbing its scythes into the ground.

I touched down, soul energy rushing out of my feet to turn the already hard ground under my feet into stone as dense as the Fortress’ walls, which another stupid worm smashed into and learned why you don’t do that.

I held my footing in place with my Telekinesis even as the worm-thing smashed its skull open on the under-side of it, then I stomped down. Sending the plate of rock through the length of the beast.

The first worm still struggled to move, but the Tyrant it buried underneath it cutting its way through it with little consideration for its wounded comrade finally pushed the beast through the doors of death.

The four Hive Tyrants converged on me, circling me like predators would a prey.

The Serpents at the perimeter turned dark, all of them disregarding biomass preservation in favour of letting nothing else through to intrude on my playtime with my new friends.

I eyed them as I thought over which of my weapons should I test on these four. If I’d gotten any better, all four should be little effort to beat into the dirt.

Sword, Body, TK, and something.

My body flickered away, leaving behind only an afterimage as bio-energy surged through every cell of my being. I appeared next to one of the Tyrants and my sword pierced through its armour before it ever realized I wasn’t where it was looking.

The sword wasn’t really up for the task, piercing through the carapace only with effort, but I made up for it by pure force. With my enhanced strength behind the piercing attack, the sword plunged into the Hive Tyrant’s body, cracking its carapace as it did so.

Just as the beast was about to turn and rip my sword out of my hand, I ripped the sword not back out, but to the side. The bio-sword protested but with my strength behind the slash, it came out of the beast's body, leaving its torso only half attached to the rest of its body.

I smashed my fist into it and sent it flying with a frown down at my sword as it quickly repaired itself; it was bent, scraped and more than a bit fucked in all the ways it mattered. I really need that bio-sword upgrade from the Swarmlord. Focus on decoding that first.

[Acknowledged. Task Priority updated.]

The sword dissolved in my hand, the bio-energy making it up seeping into my body.

I saw a bit of my overcharged body’s capabilities just now, but let’s see how much damage I can do with no weapons.

I flickered again, appearing above the wounded Tyrant as the other three were rushing at my previous position and smashed my boot into its skull. It didn’t get pulverized as I hoped it would, but I tore the skull off of its neck with the force of my well-angled kick.

I snorted to myself, not pulverizing one of the strongest Tyranid bio-forms with a single kick was making me disappointed.

Soul energy joined bio-energy in my body, pushing it further beyond what was possible. Bio-energy was a miraculous thing, but it was an energy of realspace, a part of the physical universe and it worked inside its rules even if those rules were rather bendy in this weird galaxy.

Soul Energy didn’t care. My mind sped up, my vision cleared and time seemed to slow down. With bio-energy, my mind could barely keep up with the speed at which my body was moving, so I had to rely on my instincts to work faster than my mind when I truly pushed my body to the limit.

‘Are you alright?’ I sent to Selene, just to be sure. I could tell she wasn’t injured or anything, but it couldn’t hurt to check in.

‘Yes, what is it?’ She sent back.

‘I’m going to look around for a bit,’ I said. ‘I want to see how many of these bugs there are, if there is anything I’ll be back in a blink.’

‘Be safe.’ She sent, and I couldn’t help, but smile. Sure, she was trying to tell me to shut up and let her focus on the combat, but I could feel the care in those words too.

‘You too.’ With that, I let the telepathic link dim and pushed it into the back of my mind for a mind core to monitor.

I sent out an order to my swarm of diligent little butterflies still fluttering between the horde of alien monsters to collect as much bio-energy as possible before hiding somewhere.

If I keep this up until the fleet arrives, I should have more than enough bio-energy for the foreseeable future ... unless I want to pop out an army of clones or something. Bio-energy production was a problem I’d been ruminating over for a while, but I decided that until I settled down somewhere for any substantial amount of time, absorbing biomass was the way to go.

I could build a swarm of satellites around a sun, or farm Orks, but all that would need time and a lot of free space without prying eyes to be worth it. Calculations showed that a full Dyson Sphere would net me the equivalent of a single Carnifex consumed each day on average.

Bio energy was more about genetic potential energy than any sort of real physical quality biomass had. Sure, I could convert some from sunlight, but eating a Hive Tyrant would always be more worth it in the time and effort department.

I was also considering building some sort of stationary neural center that I could connect to telepathically, but as with a Dyson Sphere or Swarm, Baal wasn’t the place for it. I only had a week at most here before I had to either make a hasty exit before they torpedoed my ass, or just move on.

I knew I had what the big blue man wanted, but there was a doubt in me about my ability to convince him of that. Primarchs are supposedly all instinctual master tacticians and geniuses ... supposedly. You couldn’t tell that based on how they acted, though I guess high IQ doesn’t mean they can’t be an idiot. *cough* Magnus.

Soaring just a dozen meters above the ravenous horde with jaws and claws trying to rip into me every, I scanned the Tyranids. I could feel some of the stronger bio-forms already rushing towards me, but I was faster, they wouldn’t catch up.

I crested over dunes, slapping away any unlucky little bugger with a mental wave as I spread my senses towards the horizon teeming with aliens. The ground was barely visible and the sky was dotted by the flying counterparts of the little monsters.

I considered going invisible for my scouting run, but I promised a lot of dead aliens to Dante, so murder it was. I lamented the fact that despite being the perfect infiltrator — with me being able to take on the face of anyone while also being quite good at using illusions — I was only ever killing and destroying things outright.

Next time. I promised to myself.

Psiflames burst to life, covering my whole body before spreading to both of my sides like a pair of huge wings that let fire and death rain down on the unfortunate Tyranids below. With a thought, I formed the flames into the image of a gigantic bird made entirely of flames with me at the center. I hope they are watching. Doing this when nobody sees me would be ... pretentious.

My senses picked up faraway explosions in several directions, the Astartes were still going on regular excursions to take down anything that could threaten their fortress it seemed, but most of them seemed to be pulling back. So they are watching me, us? Good.

I needed them to understand our power, I needed to plant a seed of fear and respect into them. Xenophobia was hard-wired into these damned Space Marines, negotiations with Xenos only ever happened when killing them would not be worth the effort.

I wasn’t delusional enough to think I could take down the incoming fleet alone, maybe if I spent months infiltrating each ship and planting explosives, but even that wouldn’t ensure I could actually win. Space Marines were some of the best warriors in the galaxy, and the fleet was led by a blood and flesh Primarch, in all his fate-bending glory. I didn’t want to fight them, I probably couldn’t, no matter how smart, sneaky or powerful I was.

That only left negotiation, deception and maybe a bit of respect. I knew Guilliman respected Dante, and I saved him, hopefully that would lend me some respect too. Even if he is no less Xenophobic than the rest of the Imperium, he at least knows when an alliance or trade is more beneficial than a battle to the death.

I slowed to a stop, paying little attention to the inferno left in my wake. As I flew, Psifames fell in burning droplets that sent infernos spreading through the mindless hordes.

A smirk spread on my lips. So that’s how they are doing it.

The landscape changed a fair bit from the barren sandy dunes, morphing into a maze of sandstone mesas with steep little gorges separating them, some of which even had the smallest streams flowing in them.

That wasn’t the object of my curiosity though, it was the hundreds of cave openings hidden in the deepest parts of the valleys and gorges. They opened up like gaping black maws spewing out rows of screeching aliens non-stop, each of them sporting not even a scratch on their shiny carapace. Newborns.

Curious ... let’s explore a bit.