Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

“Nothing?” Aun’Saal asked, a hint of worry making his heart beat out of rhythm. He hoped it didn’t show on his face, that would have tanked his reputation and standing with his men. 

“Correct, Great Aun,” the doctor said, bowing his head reverentially. “I can see no sign of anything being out of place. Every reading is well within acceptable parameters. You are in excellent health and wholly yourself; no parasites or anything of the sort have been detected in your body beyond a few new viruses you picked up from the new ecosystem. Fear not though, your enhanced immune system took care of them all easily enough.”

“Thank you,” Aun’Saal said, nodding gratefully as he stood up and straightened his clothes. Despite his nonchalant demeanour and easy smile, he felt true relief inwardly. It was one thing to die in the process of bringing about a great vision, and another entirely to have your mind twisted into something it was not, bent to accommodate the foul vision of another. “I appreciate it, doctor. I apologise for waking you in the dead of night, but it is always best to make doubly sure of these things when dealing with mind scientists.”

“Just so,” the doctor nodded in agreement. “Though I have little doubt that Gue’la could have circumvented your implant, Great Aun.”

“I won’t leave it up to chance, no matter how small.” Aun’Saal’s eyes narrowed harshly in reprimand. 

“As you say,” the other Tau bowed deeply.

Aun’Saal nodded at him, gesturing to the man that he was forgiven for speaking out of turn. The doctor straightened and then, with a final grateful nod, the Ethereal left. 

The door to the doctor’s private residence on the ship hissed shut behind him as the automatic doors detected his passing. With a pair of his honour guards forming up behind him, — only the pair because there was no more need to impress or defend against anyone up on his flagship — Aun’Saal allowed himself to breathe a shallow sigh of relief.

Echidna … that woman was more powerful than he thought, and it was by quite a margin too, though blessedly not in the ways he had feared. Or at least, that was what she would want him to believe if she was powerful in the ways of bending the minds of others to her will. 

It was unlikely, but he had to make sure. He knew those human mind scientists didn’t manifest more than one type of power, usually, but it was better to be safe than an unknowing thrall. 

That still leaves her confirmed powers to worry about. Aun’Saal thought with a frown. Her armour of light was no tougher than the weakest of Battlesuits, her conjured blade was also weaker than a plasma-sword by a reasonable amount and those conjured arms of hardened light of hers could also be replicated by aerial drones. Every ability in the power kit she had shown, the Tau could do better already and had countermeasures for. 

If an Ork’s shoddily built firearm could blow through the armour, a pulse rifle would go through it like it was made of paper and while nothing the Orks had shown managed to even slow her blade, Aun’Saal was confident the force-fields of Battlesuits could deflect it with little trouble.

Still, it was unnerving to see how an outwardly unarmed woman suddenly had powers comparable to a fully kitted Battlesuit pilot and how … unbothered she was by the end of it. Her lack of exhaustion or strain at the end, where she practically skipped back to the shuttle after slaughtering hundreds of murderous Orks, unnerved him more than anything else.

She appeared exhausted when she dealt with those strange rockets. And he had believed it at the moment, but now he had doubts. Doubts that told him he only saw a sliver of her true power, and it was a sliver specifically chosen to show him what he wanted to see, to lull him into an illusion of … power. To make him think she was a non-threat and easily handled if it came down to it. 

It was smart, were it not for her to stumble at the last step. A younger Ethereal would have believed in that illusion, maybe even one of his older colleagues would have too, who had not interacted with the outside world and thought the strength of the Empire to be superior to all other races. They would have dismissed their flaring instincts as baseless paranoia, assured of their superiority.

She wouldn’t be playing tricks and bothering with deceit if she was truly powerful, though. Aun’Saal was sure of that, he had seen her dislike for politics and had little doubt she would have preferred to just conquer her opposition through sheer brute force and order everyone to do as she wished. He saw no reason why she wouldn’t do that if she could. Which meant she feared the Tau Empire, to some degree.

He could work with that, and while he did, he would have to figure out just where the true limits of her powers lay. 

Gently. Now he felt a single misstep might cost the Empire more than it was worth. If he pushed her into a corner and she lashed out by killing him, and the Empire came for her, just how much would they lose to accomplish that goal?

Just yesterday, he was sure the answer to that question would have been ‘a few orbital missiles’. Now? Maybe more, maybe it was so much more. 

He had to know, and he had to keep her docile and cooperative while he did so. The first step towards that would have to be granting her ownership over that star system. 

He would have to call in some favours, pull some strings and perhaps bribe some people, but it would be done. There was nothing worth the trouble in the system beyond that strange world filled with deathly wildlife and fauna, seemingly bent around a singular malicious mind’s will.

Echidna could have it for all he cared, and while she was occupied with that, he would also have to swiftly organise a fleet to relieve that planet she had thrown into utter chaos. The anarchy that ruled the planet would prime it for conquest, but it pained him to know just how many lives were needlessly lost every minute that went by.

How many lives could have been spared if Echidna simply cared enough? 

*****

I’d seen the Tau off without receiving any firm confirmation or denial about my request, Aun’Saal having claimed he would need to both confirm my words about the human world primed for conquest, and he also had to rally support from his fellow Ethereals to grant my request. I felt like there was a good chance he was bullshitting me, considering an Ethereal should have had enough political pull to grant my request easily enough, but I let him go with a little gift. 

The edge of my lips quirked upwards into a smirk that would have looked malicious to anyone who knew me. Up in the stars beyond my world, I felt the little bit of eldritch flesh I had left lingering behind in Aun’Saal’s body just passed the medical check-ups and remained undetected. 

It wouldn’t be doing anything at all to Aun’Saal himself, but it would transfer offshoots of itself to any Tau who Aun’Saal touched and who matched the template I had implanted into it. I wasn’t sure how touchy Ethereals were, or whether handshakes were a thing among them, but I hoped they were. Every Ethereal he touched would get a little eldritch parasite of their own, and while Aun’Saal’s didn’t do anything to him specifically, the others had tasks beyond mere propagation. 

Slowly over time, they would prune emotions and perhaps even kill those who had opinions problematic for my future plans. I had made them gentle, and resort to murder only in the most dire of circumstances since I would barely have any awareness or control over their actions from across the stars. 

I had tested the range, and while the modifications allowed me to communicate with the parasites from beyond the reach of my aura, they still escaped my reach when they were more than a handful of light-years away. 

With my pesky guests finally gone, I could finally go about handling my misbehaving Orks. Before that, though, I remembered the lone Fire Warrior scout who had been fighting for his life just before Aun’Saal arrived.

Much to my surprise, the Ethereal never once even alluded to knowing about the scout or asked about his fate. Nor did he ask for me to hand the guy over to him. 

I sent my awareness out towards the valley where he had last been fighting one of my Drakes. 

My eyebrow climbed up to my hairline as I found the Drake’s carcass and the remnants of a vicious battle. The scaled beast had been torn apart, scavengers having pounced on its remains, and I guessed their fights over the ownership of it added to the ragged look of its surroundings. 

There was no Tau corpse anywhere in sight though, but there were tracks. Not that I needed to follow them to find the interloper, as his soul, while tiny, was unique enough to stand out like a star among the tiny embers that went for bestial souls. 

I found him in one of my handcrafted stalactite caves, recreated from my memories of visiting one such cave in my previous life. It had always amazed me how beautiful some of the things nature inadvertently made were. 

There was also something unique about knowing that a pretty stalactite was built over tens of thousands of years. I suppose one could see every living thing as the final result of millions of years of evolution, but it never felt the same to me as knowing that a pretty rock I was touching has existed longer than humans walked the Earth. 

Hell, there were mountains on Earth that were older than trees. Like the Appalachian mountains.

On that note, the 60 million years that had passed since The War In Heaven, where the Old Ones and the C’Tan battled, wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things. 

Dinosaurs had just recently gone extinct at that time, and the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea was already breaking up into the continents I’d been familiar with. 

In contrast, multicellular life appeared on Earth about 600 million years ago, and the simplest forms of life appeared almost 3.6 billion years ago. 

On that timescale, even the ancient Necrontyr were recent. 

But a piece of rock I dug up from the Earth predated all of that, and there was just something special about that. To me at least. 

Anyway, side tangent over, this was not to mull over my love for pretty ancient rocks. I was going to decide what to do with my vagrant Tau squatter.

I focused on him, eyebrows once again climbing up my forehead as I saw the blue-skinned alien sit in the tattered remains of his bodysuit. He was seated on a larger piece of rock, a long spear carved of Drake bone held between his knees as he worked on sharpening the tip with a pocket knife. No, that was no simple pocket knife; it was a vibro-blade and one with a near-monomolecular edge. 

The Tau really did know how to arm their spec-ops guys. Unfortunately, it seemed like his more advanced pieces of weaponry had run out of ammo during his frantic battles with the violent wildlife I had sicced on him. That left his pulse rifle little more than a strangely shaped club.

Near him on an elevated, flat surface, I also saw the reason as to why he hadn’t been extracted yet. On it was what remained of his communications unit, carefully taken apart with every little component placed with great care. It was evident that the Tau had been meticulous in trying to get the damaged device working again, but I wasn’t sure how he hoped to fix the rather obviously cracked circuits. 

He had been granted the first reprieve since he had arrived on my planet in the last few hours, as I had made the silent promise to stop purposefully leading the wildlife to harass him if he survived until Aun’Saal arrived. Which he did, somehow. I would have to rewind my memory and review my mind core’s records sometime. It promised to be an interesting watch.

Now, though, what was I to do with him? Should I continue bullying him, or maybe just wordlessly teleport his ass back to the sender and see how they react? Maybe neither?

In my books, his life was mine to do with as I wished. This moon was mine, and he stepped foot on it without my permission, purposefully trying to slip under my notice to spy on me. I was pretty sure that would earn him the death penalty after a lengthy, torturous interrogation session on any Imperial World. Or on most other Xenos worlds, too, for that matter.

But that’s too boring, all the options are too boring. I thought, frowning in thought. Then I shrugged and decided I would go pick Selene’s brain about it, and maybe about the Ork situation too. Who knew, maybe Throgg notified her of the situation, and she thought a few tiny Ork tribes rebelling was beneath my notice. 

I could give Throgg the benefit of the doubt, I was strong enough that a mercy like that wouldn’t bite me in the ass. I could ask questions first and start shooting beams of death later, instead of doing it in reverse.

Shoot first and ask questions never was the way the Imperium operated, after all, and I was trying to be better than them.

And I will be. I promised myself. It wasn’t like it was going to be all that hard to be better than the literal parody of intolerance, religious zealotry and xenophobia.