101 – Back to Space

101 – Back to Space

I needed that. I sighed, taking care not to wake the little beauty snoring with her cheek on my shoulder and legs intertwined with mine. She thoroughly exhausted herself, and while some bio-energy would have given her a second wind, I decided that some sleep would do her good.

I only now realised she might not have taken being beaten, kidnapped, and drugged as well as she’d shown. Some peaceful rest was more than deserved. Not that I disliked her soft skin, almost melding with mine under the blanket.

It was bliss. Not as much as what came before *cough*, but it was like a calming balm to my aching soul and mind. Having her so close made me feel more like myself and less like some alien eldritch horror.

Her presence and closeness were the magic keeping me myself. And she was magical in more ways than one.

Despite myself, I felt my cheeks flushing as my rebellious thoughts pulled up memory after memory of what we’d done. It was different from any experience I had before, this wasn’t sex, that was too base a descriptor for it.

It was ... it was something else I had trouble grasping. It made any previous experience I had back on earth feel bland and grey, lifeless. Those were, at most, flings, acts of pleasure.

What we had done involved our minds and souls just as much as our flesh and blood bodies. I could feel her mind brush against my own, her emotions, feelings, and sensations twisting and twirling around my mind and sinking into it as if I was the one feeling them and it wasn’t a one-way thing. For a moment, we might have just become one with the other. It was ... nice.

Enough about that, I decided as my body started tingling again. Selene was sleeping. Stupid horny aliens had to be well-behaved and stay still to not wake her up. Especially the one she was using as a body pillow.

The pragmatic part of me was a touch embarrassed at having ‘wasted’ almost two hours, but that part of me was stupid and I’d beat it up if it had any thoughts like that again.

Still, the fact remained that I now only had at most a day until the big blue man touched down. A while ago I felt layers upon layers of veil-thin psychic shielding go up all around the building we were in, so at least Dante and his lackeys shouldn’t be bothering us until then.

They weren’t the problem. What I needed to know going forward was what was the stance of the fleet, what they planned to do here, and what they knew about me. Dante and Mephiston were clearly ordered to keep me alive and safe. Even if they went about it in a heavy-handed way, the fact remained that the ‘Regent’ — Guilliman — ordered them to keep me alive and protect me even from the Shadowkeeper.

Why? What does he know? I mused. Did he meet with Eldrad before coming here? Valenith’s nosey master was someone I knew he worked with at times. If my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me, Guilliman should even have his personal Farseer onboard as a courtesy from Eldrad.

Maybe that fucker saw something in the currents, or maybe the Shadowkeeper worked together with them before going rogue. I had to know what motivations were at play, and what goals the big blue man had concerning me to even come up with a viable new game plan.

That meant doing some reconnaissance and information gathering. For once, luck was on my side. The drone I sent out to scout the fleet was still chilling in the inner asteroid belt which the fleet should have just passed through not too long ago.

If I had it burn bio-energy on overdrive for a bit, it’d quickly catch up with the fleet. Blinking was out of the question for now, especially on a drone that was damned far away. My poor mind needed to be left to rest and recover if I wanted myself to be in top condition if needed tomorrow.

Some Illusions and such were in the pack, but nothing batshit crazy like the stuff I was favouring nowadays, such as giant explosions, psychic fireballs, or anything similar. Just some harmless Illusions.

In the meantime, I had most of my mind cores work on Selene’s and my own upgraded Forms. She wanted to be a human-sized female Custodian basically, with the ability to continue using psychics woven in between physical attacks and I just wanted to upgrade everything I could with Custodian organs without messing with my monstrous psychic conductivity.

With the drone busy swimming through the void of space, paddling at space itself to catch up with the fleet, I let my conscious mind wander. I had the template of a Custodian. A Custodian.

As soon as it sensed the ships, still astronomically far away, I engaged all of its stealth capabilities. Lictor carapace flowed over the outer shell and the camouflage quickly flickered on to hide the drone from any long-range ... stuff. I just now realised I barely knew how scanners and radars worked in this galaxy, something else I would have to pry out of Zedev’s head.

No matter. Tyranids routinely managed to sneak up on Imperial ships, especially small crafts, and Lictors could sneak onboard voidships rather regularly — though I only remembered that being the case for civilian merchant vessels, and not battleships.

A veil of invisibility wrapped itself around the drone, hopefully tilting the odds in my favour. I designed it to cut off any electromagnetic radiation from the drone and to deflect any coming at it from the outside to the sides.

That should take care of the infrared heat radiation from the body ... and hopefully, fool any active radars they have. I was running off of assumptions, assumptions of how futuristic sci-fi tech was imagined working back in the 21st century. I was a nerd back then, arguably I still was, and so I was somewhat familiar with a bit of the physics involved in such stuff.

If there was some bullshit pseudo-tech sensing the gravitational waves, my drone generated or other such technobabble bullshit that worked in this galaxy because of course it did, then I would be in a bit of a pickle.

I crossed my fingers as the drone gained ground, or well, space, slowly closing the remaining distance. The fleet went from an array of distant blackish dots gleaming in the dim light of the Baal system’s red sun to the colossal monstrosities that they were in reality.

No gunfire, missiles, or fighters came to intercept the drone, but I didn’t let my focus grow lax. Fooling the long-range sensors would be the easiest part of my impromptu mission.

I couldn’t help but gape a little as the drone finally caught up. As it slowly swam along between the titanic battleships, I just looked around. All around me — the drone to be exact, not that there was much of a difference — were these things that people decided could be called battleships.?

They were idiots. I knew the sizes of these things; I read the wiki at times, but god damn. When you saw a building extending on for almost two kilometres languidly float along with another thousand of its kind as the only backdrop in the darkness of space, that was very different from reading dimensions online.

The ships had no right to be as huge as they were. Somehow, I wasn’t this shocked by the size of the Tyranid Bioships, but the alien nature of those somehow desensitized me to their gigantic size. Or maybe it was the rush to kill them and get the battle over with back then.

I had time now, not all the time in the world, but more than enough to just take in these architectural marvels that also worked for galactic travel. The one to my side was mostly of a gleaming greyish colour, with a central brick-like shape ending in what could only be described as a ... battering ram? It also somewhat reminded me of a cowcatcher that they used to mount on the front of a train to kick aside anything that shouldn’t be in the way of the train.

The fact the thing looked scraped and dented all around spoke of the dubious ramming tactics beloved by the Imperial Navy. I held back a grimace at the thought. They had missiles and artillery that could hit things further away than the human eye could see, why they so loved to get into melee in space was one of the great mysteries of this universe.

Oh well, that was hardly the weirdest part of the ship. The damned churches and gothic cathedrals lining both the top and bottom of the craft easily took that place. No, I won’t even bother going into the use of those, aside from looking mildly cool.

I gave it a mental shrug. Being cool was the point of most things existing in the setting. If I had a coin for each stupid, useless, nonsensical thing that existed in this galaxy, I’d have a planet-sized hoard before long.

I decided that my first target would be one of the ships further towards the centre of their formation, where I suspected the flagship would be. This close up it was hard to really take in the entire fleet, so I mostly just guessed.

The idea was that stronger ships would guard the perimeter and even stronger ones accompanied the flagship at the centre like some honour guard. Meaning, that the weakest ships with the shoddiest voidsmen and guards on them should be somewhere halfway between the two.

With no sign of anyone having noticed my drone, I navigated it between the ships until I found one that’d fit my needs. A little ship with an outwardly battered hull and some of the buildings on it broken off in places.

It would do.