I had a plicated choiake, the people here already saw me making two 'es' of myself but they didn't know that those es each could take out a Tyranid Hive-Ship by themselves nor that they could morph into monsters more terrifying than the ohat were falling from the sky. I'd irrecoverably brand myself either the worst of heretics or some with even a sembnce of intelligence would figure out that I wasn't a human. I smiled weakly as shame and guilt bubbled over in my stomach, twisting it into a knot as I watched Orion start the Shadows around to keep the bugs away from us for as long as possible. What did it for me was Selene's face slowly losing color and devolving into a desperate resolve. No. "Selene," I called out, the woman snapping her head in my dire, "a word please." I smiled as the woman walked over, her previous facial expression mellowing out a bit as she looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "Say," I ran my tongue over my lips, feeling a bit nervous, "you are a Rogue Trader so you sort of have closer ties with Xenos than mht?" "Yes," she nodded, a bit of uainty showing iion as she by now khat I didn't care for that from the standpoint of an Inquisitor, "I have to hurry, what is it?" "Well I guess I'll just say it bluntly," I giggled a bit, trying to hide my nervousness under a smile, "I am not a human." Her hand twitched for a moment, threatening to snap up her pistol and fill up my prone form with whatever that elegant pistol she carried around shot but she held herself back. The woman rexed her posture forcefully, she closed her eyes as he breathed in and out once before opening them once again. "Why tell me this now?" she asked with narrowed eyes, she might have had suspis already based on how well she was taking it but me firming it must have shook her quite a bit. "Because it became relevant," I shrugged, "I keep the bugs away, mostly at least." "Why?" "Why what?" "Why would you do that?" "I quite enjoy your pany Selene," I smirked at the woman, "I might even say I've e to like you so I'd be rather disheartened if you died here." "I 't believe I was flirting with a Xenos," she murmured under her breath, and thankfully it was more astohan disgusted, though that might ged after she saw my a, "We still need you to open that Gate, without that the Tyranids will overwhelm us." "And I am doing just that," I g the annoying thing, "as well as holding back their tral Hive-Ship, I am in a one-person there but I could do it dowoo, the only problem being that I fear someorying to put a bullet through my head and disrupting my lockpig attempts." "I see," she nodded, she uood my reasons instantly and was already w on solutions, she tapped a meical earpiece "Orion, this is an order: no matter what happens from now on nobody is allowed to do as much as touch or talk to Ea, am I uood?" "Yes, Captain!" came the syic voice, my hearing catg it even if the earpiece transmitted it directly into the woman's ear. "No one will attack you and no one will as much as talk to you while you work on that Gate, that I swear." "Good enough for now," I shrugged half-heartedly, could be worse. I extended one of my palms and held it a few timeters above the floor fag towards it, from it came forth a long tendril of white flesh, looking more like a long serpent than a tendril and when it became around three meters long the serpent disected from my body. It was covered in smooth white scales for prote but the inside was that of an eldritch drone, ready to unleash the same monsters as its terpart was doing up in spabsp;"Do not destroy that," I warhe woman, "Let it reach the frontlines ahe soldiers to aim only at the enemies, I only have so muergy stored up." "A-Alright," stuttered Selene, watg the serpent crawl away quickly and rushing into a tunnel with wide eyes, "What was that?" "A mobile army," I said, my focus returning to the fight taking pce far away from us, "I will o foow, sorry." "Ah," she blinked once, "sure." "O thing," I said before the woman could leave, "I am deg to save you, not them." "What do you mean?" she asked with a frown. "If you dare die here despite me doing what I will, I'm leaving the rest to die with you." My cold side told me that wasn't the best thing to say to foster a healthy retionship but it was the truth and the thought of Selene moronically dying here because she thinks this is some sort of heroic st stand is uable. That was almost as bad as her feelied at my revetion, I don't think I could have held back from killing her if the tter happened. By now my mindscape was starting to look a bit cramped, now the fifth huge floating pyramid joihe tral one, each being many times the size of it. It'd make ohink the rger ones would rebel or wrestle for trol over the work but nothing like that happened, my trol over them was absolute and uionable and even with the new Pyramids that were the mental representations of the massive minds housed inside my eldritch drones each of them floated below the main Pyramid submissively. I didn't know the reason for this but I was less than thrilled about the idea of my own Minds rebelling against me so I weled it. The on the Hive-Ship was ing to a close as all of the lesser bio-forms were destroyed and assimited already. The Hive-Tyrant was still fighting but its end was near, it cleaved my drones in half, oh each swing of its mighty ons but there were hundreds jumping on him ravenously and now without its minions to keep my eldritch drone in check it was expanding again. Tendrils crawled all over the walls, ceilings and the floor and before long the only patch of spacovered by them was where the Hive-Tyrant stood. I'd like to think it felt dread as the whole room of twisting, writhing tendrils colpsed upon him, he could fight drones and could outrun my Tendrils but they couldn't fight against this. It was like finding yourself at the bottom of the o in a tiny pocket of air and trying to run from the entire mass of water colpsing upon you. The only difference was that at the moment the water was a ravenous alien mohat was eating through its carapace to absorb its body. There was no escape, the alien trashed and swung wildly, rending white flesh wherever its sword and cws touched but the tendrils were endless, ever-healing aless. Not ten seds ter the assimited tempte of the Hive-Tyrant engraved itself into my mental library, joining all of its kin in my colle. I quickly ran through what all of my drones were doing. The first batch had trol of the Narwhal and the whole ship was already ed, by now they reied into a single Hunter Drone and were dashing through space to tto another ship to feast upon before I detohem. The ones in the Hive-Ship were either busily abs biomass from the ship itself or the leftover bio-forms that now rushed mindlessly into them in a futile attempt to slow their advance or b through the hull to reach the Norn-Queen. Speaking of whie of them just did so and was hiding around the huge alien in a Hunter Form. The st batch was just now engaging the Tyranids that made pfall, the serpent perched itself into a well-protected hallway before it started making drones oer the other but it also tried to keep them distinct from the invading Tyranids. This resulted in subpar drones as it didn't have the weeks to perfect the Forms like I had with the Hunter or the bat o either way, it roving to be effective as humanoid beings with scythe-like arms drove headfirst into the swarm of aliens and took the focus off of the Shadows. Zedev was fiddling with whatever toys he liked ever since we found him here, he was walking all around the gate and the ruins, iing and rec but since I started w oe he gave up on his own attempts to get it w. I doubted he even heard me talk to Selene even with his meical ears or whatever he had instead of them for hearing. Three things happened in the span of the single lengthy sed. One, my Mind-Cores tasked with crag the Crotalids ability to seamlessly slip into the Immaterium pinged my Main-Mind with ahat they were successful. Two, the st lo the Gateway clocked open and my Soul Energy started cirg faster and faster through the Gateway ay started shimmering in the ter. And third, the Norn Queen noticed my drone and was now filing around to smash it apart, the thing was big and clumsy but strong as a titan so it was smashing through walls and demolishing stuff all around itself. "ZEDEV," I shouted to catch his attention, "It's open, do you know if we o do anything else?" The araagos scrambled over as quickly as he could, the now shining Gate and the shimmering fabric of reality in the middle of it. "Energy, increase it until it is fully w. It needs more energy." "Alright," with a grimace I slowly increased the amount of energy flowing into the Gate, I could have just opehe floodgates but I was wary of actually breaking the delicate are maery by overloading it, "Tell me when you think it's enough." "Aowledged." In the meantime I was experimenting frantically, trying out how the Crotalid thingy worked and whether I could use it before we escaped from here. The answer was yes, the process was extremely plicated but it was easy to dumb it down onderstood why and how it worked. All of it was based on something I was already ied in, some shapes, forms, words, and sounds had an effe reality in this universe. Examples of this were Wards, ohat bound entities and weakehem and others that did the same with Psykers, these pentagonal and hexagonal shapes somehow reinforced realspace or weakehe respectively. Then there was Enuncia, the a nguage that could bind demons with a single word or cause all sorts of weird phenomena even if the person speaking the words was the most normal human in the gaxy. And stly, something I'd also put in this er were the Zodiad various Sigils that Ne Cryptechs used to bend the energies of reality to their will. When a rge group of crotalids came together and were starving they each released some sort of hormohat pushed the others around them into a specific state. While in this state all of the Crotalids brainwaves, heartbeats, breathing patterns and other bodily funs synized and formed an enormous orchestra whiehow weakehe veil between realspad the Immaterium to the point where by the end of their 'song' the Crotalids found themselves in the . What my Mind-Cores were so busy w on was turning this whole process into a more effectively usable form, a Ward for instance or a Word of Enuncia or anything simir so I didn't have to summon up hundreds of giant crocodiles to do the thing. What they came up with ecific sounds pyed in the form of a song with each sound being pyed in a specific frequenbsp;I g the filing Norhrough one of my drones as my priorities rapidly rearrahemselves. Insignifit. I thought dismissively as my drones sang in perfect syny, the bio-ship resonating along with them. Reality and the Immaterium intersected for the briefest fra of a sed and all of my drones were gohout a trace, leaving a broken shell of a Hive-Ship and a Queen without any of its servants around it to help as it fell through the void of spabsp;Not the ones on the Narwhal though, I didn't have the time or tration to do that thing again so with a weary heart at all the lost biomass I ahe droo do what I po do with all of them. I didn't hear anything, I was half a star system away, of course I wouldn't. The st thing I received through my e was the st bit of biomass evaporated into densed bio-energy and one didn't o be a genius to guess what happens when you throw a fuck ton of untained chaotid densed energy into the middle of a bio-ship. I tested it before and even just detonating one of my arms caused and explosion that'd put some greo shame so I imagihat ship would be vaporized by now. Foooocus, idiot. The shimmering Gate solidifying into a single image took my attention away from my soul which was now apanied in the sea of souls by my titanic drone. "ENOUGH," Zedev shouted, his syic voiing out panicked despite the impossibility of it. I stopped supplying the Gate with energy and stared i the portal, I'd seen many crazy shit since reinating but a magical portal was still awe-inspiring. "It is open," Zedev said, hesitating a moment before he stepped through the portal. I looked around, quickly finding Seleting aroulessly as she stared towards the tunnels leading towards the battlefield. I ran up to her and pced a palm on her shoulder, making the woman wearing half-a-ton heavy power-armour jump in surprise. "It is open," I said as I turned her a bit to look at the Portal. "But the others," she stared into the tunnels. "Call them," I said, "my drones hold back the Tyranids for a few minutes." I ghrough my droo and them to do so but my eyes widened as all the information ing from my drones came in, "Shit." What I saw was a massacre on both sides, barely any Shadows were still standing as ifexes and Warriors rushed through the tunnels and engaged my by-now Tyranid-looking drones in deadly melees. A quick quarry with my Mind Cores trolling my swarm easily the question gnawing at me, Why didn't they report that the Shadows were getting overwhelmed? How could this happen? 'The loss of the human batants didn't impact the oute of the battle in any signifit way.' That was the answer I got babsp;Fuck, I did only order them to keep this pce clear of Tyranids and not to protect the humans. "Don't wait for us Captain," came Orion's voice through Selene's earpiece as the woman's lips pressed into a thin line, "We will give you time." "The portal is open Orion, you don't have to, just retreat." "The tunnels are colpsed behind us dear Captain, that was the first thing I did when the fifth of those giant monsters barrelled into here." "Idiot..." "I suppose I am," the man chuckled, the sound feeling both forced, "If it's any sotion I enjoyed serving under you much more than in the Guard, Good luck Selene and may the Emperuide you!" The sound turatic as Seleared listlessly at the ground, her fist g and ung. " you save him?" I focused my droo search for the suicidal Arch-Militant and grimaced once I found him, one leg missing and a rge puncture wound going through his chest. One of my drones dashed up to him and I quickly tried to use my powers to heal him but a hand in my drone's face stopped me. "Don't touch me," he said through gritted teeth, "I'd rather die than have my body tainted by your foul magibsp;Xeno." "Your captain asked me to heal you," I stated, my voiing out like cws on a chalkboard through the haphazardly made vocal cords. "Tell her I'm already dead," he spat out a mouthful of blood, "It's not much of a stretch." My drone morphed and took on my humanoid form as I kneeled dowo the man, my other drones and the st of the Shadows still fighting all around us to hold back the endless swarm of ravenous aliens. "Last ce," I narrowed my eyes at him, "Nothing I'd do would leave any mark or taint you in any way." "I don't care," he wheezed, "If you want to help me so much give me my sgu me take a few more of your kind with me." "They are nothing like me," I said but I still fetched him a gun. "I don't care," he expertly checked the gun over once before shooting a single round through a Termagant's skull behind me, "Scram, before I try it out on you too." "So be it," I said dispassionately, my drone morphing bato the Huempte and leaving the dying man to himself in his st moments. "He refused," I said, my eyes finding Selene's as the woman stared at me, "he didn't want my 'foul magic' to heal him." "You could have forced him," she bit her lips. "He'd have rather blown himself up tha me Selene," I grimaced, "I'd rather not." "Fuck," she whispered, "Fug hell." I turo survey our surroundings, I was starting to hear cws striking stohrough the tunnels leading here. "We o leave," I said, my eyes catg sight of the first Ripper rushing into the rge room, "NOW." I grabbed Selene, pushing my body well beyond mortal limits as I lifted the disgustingly heavy powerarmour and dashed towards the portal. The lesser Tyranids were streaming into the room by now and I was bsting them away with flicks of Telekinesis or Eldritch bsts for the rger ones. I threw Selehrough the portal first as I quickly wondered how to best fuck up the Gate after I passed through, ah fuck it, let's hope it closes from the other side. I leapt through the Portal too, skidding to a halt a few meters away on damp ground as I snapped my gaze back at the Portal and the swarm closing in on it behind. "Protect yourselves!" I saw Zedev raise a huge war axe, a weird mesh between a cog and a curved bde at the end of a two-meter-long pole. The on desded and struck the Gate. Soul energy exploded in a white burst as the Portal flickered ht before the first Ripper could jump through. The explosio Zedev flying a few meters before he crashed into a wall heavily and even Sele spinning along the ground in her heavy armor but I held my ground as I k and jured up a Psychic Shield. "You alive Zedev? Selene?" "Positive." "Yes," came a groan from the ground. "Great." P3t1