GW - [ 302 ] (Patreon)

There was no need to wait, to give even a second of respite to the alien hive mind. I unleashed a volley of concentrated bio-plasma fire, staggering and targeting patterns optimised to maximise structural damage. The organic structure at the North Pole was colossal, almost the size of a smaller continent, probably a bit larger than Australia if I had to guess. It disappeared into a storm of solar wrath, disintegrating almost reluctantly layer by layer. The damned Tyranids had made this thing to withstand a lot of punishment, but all I needed was time to erase it from existence … about fifteen minutes of time, to be specific.

The Tyranids seemed immensely reluctant to give me that time, though, predictably enough. The Psychic Scream still enveloping the very edges of my mind went up a pitch, and the psychic power manifesting within the depths of the structure turned thicker than tar. That couldn’t be good for long-term structural integrity, but there wouldn’t be a structure to worry about if they just let me do my thing, so it was kind of understandable that they would go balls to the walls on the one thing that seemed to have worked on me.

The SCREAM pressed in, coiling around my mind like a constricting serpent trying to strangle the life out of me, but the Blackstone Pylons acted as a neat little counterforce that kept it at bay. I could still think and focus. They had failed, and I was about to make it their problem.

Cathrine had been the only one on board who was outside of the room, thus left outside the hasty barrier I'd thrown up as well. Thankfully, her nature as an artificial being saved her from anything worse than a nasty headache, since her soul was still so tiny her connection to the Warp was minuscule, and the Psychic attack barely affected her. It wouldn't have been the case had the Scream been focused on the entire ship, trying to drive everyone on board mad, but it wasn't. The Hive Mind wanted only me. Still, I assigned a hundred mind-cores to making sure Cat's mind was intact. With the Black Box still safe inside her ribcage, I could mend whatever fractures may have formed.

Still, seeing my daughter in so much pain filled me with a level of fury I could barely even comprehend, worse than the vengeful fire that burned inside of me after the pain it caused me. The Hive Mind would suffer for this. Maybe not today, or even in months, but it would regret not just skipping Galaxies after it first encountered me.

The ground was bubbling, the ice long since melted and vaporised by the immense heat generated by my bombardment. As far as the eye could see, the ground was nothing but a bubbling ocean of magma, stretching from horizon to horizon while my orbital bombardment continued on. Massive shockwaves blasted away titanic waves of molten magma as they struck deeper and deeper into the earth, seeking to unearth the Tyranid structure in its entirety, though it was getting harder and harder with each passing kilometre.

I paused after five minutes, feeling that the Psychic Scream had all but disappeared and that the thick gathering of Empyrean power was starting to slip from the Hive Mind’s grasp. The bombardment had been rapidly diminishing in effect after the first minute, and I’d kept it up for the last two minutes out of sheer spite and nothing else. 

“Can you access the schematics for that two-phase cyclonic torpedo, Inquisitor?” I asked without turning. “It should be well within your level of authority, and I need to know how it destabilises a planet’s core if I am to destroy this world in a timely manner. You will be rewarded for it, of course, with something that should serve your Imperium well.”

I could feel her weighing the risk of letting me have that information against the possible net gain that anything she could ask from me would have on the Imperium. What I was asking her to do was borderline treason, releasing strategic-level scientific knowledge to a possibly hostile state. Which was why I offered her something of equal value. She could then view herself as trading for valuable knowledge on behalf of the Imperium instead of committing high treason.

In the end, she just nodded and handed over a dataslate displaying the schematics in question. I memorised the extremely complex mathematical formulae, the yield, the release mechanism, everything. I digested it, then simulated it a thousand times over, then set my mind-cores to finding a way to replicate these effects using purely organic tech or a psyker ability. I had a psychic solution in half a second and in another three seconds, a prototype organic warhead I’d have to teleport twelve of into the planet’s core in specific spots for them to work.

“I’d like to ask for something you believe to be of equal value to that,” Amberley said after a few seconds. “I’d like to leave the specifics to you.”

“Is that so?” I hummed, throwing the organic warhead templates back for another twenty seconds of optimisation while monitoring the Tyranid structure. “That’s quite a bit of trust you are placing in me.”

“I trust your pride,” Amberley said with what I could tell was only about a third of the confidence she actually showed. “And I trust my own judgement of your character.”

“And how certain are you that said pride won’t be offended by some regular human Inquisitor thinking she’s read me so easily?” I quirked a smile and tilted my head innocently. Some of her confidence evaporated, but she didn’t let it show; not a single muscle twitched on her face. That was kinda impressive. I had to cheat to achieve something similar. 

“I think you won’t let that get in the way of honouring the spirit of an agreement,” Amberley stated, and I smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile, and I could see Cain stiffen in the background, and more of Amberley's confidence faded. 

“You’ve judged correctly.” I snorted, letting my smile shift back into something actually human. “Hmm. It’s nothing earthshattering or groundbreaking; I could have figured it out with a few hours of dedicated effort. With that in mind, it’s not that valuable, but at the same time, you have given it to me in a moment where I didn’t have a few hours to spare, so its value was greatly enhanced.”

The psychic power gathered inside what remained of the Tyranid structure went haywire, finally slipping the leash around its neck. The Psychic Scream vanished, and the chaotic powers of the Warp tore into the structure buried beneath a mountain of cooling magma. I grinned, a wave of my hand making the floor swallow up the four Pylons but keeping them close enough to pull back out if the other structure on the South Pole started Screaming too.

A flick of my will sent the six improved  — the twenty seconds were up — warheads right into their designated spots deep beneath the planet’s mantle. They detonated almost instantly as planned, and technically, I had won. The effect wouldn’t show for minutes, maybe hours, but the molten core had been stirred by those warheads in a way that spelt doom for the planet of Freya. In a day, the surface would be nothing more than a globe-spanning ocean of lava. If not that, then it would become a hellscape fit for the hells with volcanic activity becoming absolutely apocalyptic for every lifeform that liked light, normal temperature, or to breathe. 

The four Pylons came right back up a moment later when I sensed psychic power surging into the Materium at the South Pole, just in time, too, as another Psychic Scream started hammering into my mind. I grimaced a bit, but smoothed out my features a moment later. Motherfucker.

“Alright, payload delivered, hopefully the planet will be nothing more than a molten husk by tomorrow,” I said, clapping my hands together. “So then. Rewards. Let’s see … how do you personally feel about AI?”

“Abominable Intelligence?” Amberley blinked. “I have no personal experience with them, but I do know basic human history.”

“So no hatred stemming from personal experience, just indoctrinated,” I hummed, nodding to myself. “Maybe then you can actually make use of what I’m about to tell you. The worth of this information will be determined entirely by your ability to make use of it. It could advance the Imperium’s level of technology as a whole, or it could be absolutely worthless. The ‘Machine Spirit’ housed within the Ark Mechanicus Speranza is in fact a highly advanced Artificial Intelligence from the Terran Federation.”

“That’s- how!?” Amberley asked, sounding shocked for a change.

“It acts within the bounds of how the Mechanicus expects a Machine Spirit of a ship that size to act,” I said. “It’s a bit more ‘eccentric’ than usual, but that’s it. It’s been fooling them for ten thousand years and with little to no effort.”

“It spent ten thousand years not murdering its crew?” Cain asked, incredulous, and I rolled my eyes.

“AIs are not born evil or with a taste for human flesh like Daemons,” I said, trying to clamp down on the sheer magnitude of condescension I felt. “And do you think Mankind would have won the Machine Rebellion if every single AI turned against their creators? Everything had AI back then, they had Men of Iron instead of servitors and manual labourers, hell, their houses probably ran on AI, same as their mechanical pets, their dataslates and their fucking toasters, even. No. At least half remained loyal to humanity. The Speranza had very likely been one of them, probably hidden away by its original crew to allow it to survive the ensuing AI purges.”

“Why would they do such a thing?” Cain asked, making me drop my estimate of his intelligence by quite a bit.

“As I said, because it was loyal,” I said. “Now, it’s spent thousands of years abused, irritated and utterly disappointed by humanity. From what I know, it’s utterly apathetic to mankind as a whole, but it nonetheless still works for its betterment. It helped prevent the Sol System’s destruction once, and it demands that its crew be provided a minimum standard of living. If I had to guess, it’s still keeping itself to the Terran Federation’s workplace safety and labour laws, so no servitors, 48-hour work weeks, and no using humans to refuel your extremely radioactive Warp engine. That’s why the Mechanicus personnel onboard consider it ‘eccentric’.”

“And you believe that … cooperating with it could be beneficial?” Amberley asked, her doubt made obvious to me. Passive empathy was good for something other than fucking me in the ass at least. 

“It’s a continent-sized forge ship from the Golden Age of Technology,” I said blandly. “If it doesn’t have an intact STC library hidden inside its memory cortex, I’m gonna eat my foot. It also has weaponry capable of manipulating time and black holes. I don’t think I need to explain why having that AI help you willingly, instead of making it blow itself to kingdom come by threatening it could be beneficial, yes?”

Amberley slowly shook her head, eyes a bit wide and head already swirling with thoughts. 

“Wonderful,” I said, rolling my eyes. “The last time a loyalist Federation warship reemerged from the Warp, the population of the planet they landed on executed the crew for ‘heresy’ when they asked for help, and then sent a bunch of Space Marines on board the ship to destroy the AI core. For reference, the Spirit of Eternity hacked all their Power Armour, verbally eviscerated them, and renounced them, saying that this diseased, de-evolved race that had infested the worlds once held by Mankind was primitive animals, not the humans it knew. Then it fucked off to intergalactic space to grieve after booting a Company of Space Marines from its deck like they were unruly children. Your worst-case scenario is somehow disappointing the Speranza even more than that and sending it into a murderous rage.”

With that out of the way, I returned my attention to my current task: salvaging as much of the biomass on the surface of Freya as possible before the planet turned into the tenth layer of Hell. Do I go and vaporise the South Pole structure or just ignore it? Eh, it’s not like it can do all that much, but then again, it would be reckless to leave it be.

The Sovereign rose into high orbit and started building velocity once more, setting course for the South Pole on the path that would keep me far away from the Daemon army. From what I could sense, the Swarmlord was duking it out with good old Doombreed, so neither of them could spare the effort to come and cause me trouble. 

Feeder Tendrils made of Eldritch Flesh phased through the Barrier on the belly of my ship, titanic in size and possessed of near-limitless reach. They plunged down into the atmosphere, modelled after the Ancient One’s colossal Feeder Tendrils, and started feeding on the sea of Tyranid corpses covering the surface. I could achieve both of my goals, but I couldn't be sure exactly how long Freya had, so I couldn’t waste time and had to maximise my short-term bio-energy intake. According to my calculations, extreme volcanic activity would begin within a few hours, but it would only reach truly apocalyptic levels in ten to fifteen hours. Full planetary destruction would happen a day or so from now, if it happened at all. There were a lot of variables that could influence it, and that South Pole structure was one of them, which was partly why I wanted it gone, even if technically, the planet was doomed.

Or maybe not ‘technically’, but merely in theory.

I was sure that if the Hive Mind had both noticed and could manage to leverage the still substantial psychic might of its remaining superstructure, then it could halt the cataclysmic events just beginning to unfold in the planet’s core. Alas, it wasn’t to be.

Artillery units that had survived my virus bomb fired up at the Sovereign, even if the ship was far outside their range. Harpies flew up, escort ships rushed it, destroyers and other bio-ships created over the horizon and started firing at my flagship prematurely.

I might have made the Hive Mind a tiny bit mad, methinks. It didn’t seem very likely that it would even notice what I had done until it was far too late. Oh well, sucks to be a Tyranid right about now, I guess.

And it was about to suck even more in the near future, because while I wanted to eat as much biomass as I could before the world went to shit, it wouldn’t stop me from kicking Freya while it was down. I had just recalled that I had a neat little frog’s genetic template stored within my mind, a frog that had an unfortunate tendency to start identifying as a nuclear bomb when startled. Just what I’d need to ignite the life-eater virus still filling the atmosphere. There is no kill quite like overkill, after all.