Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

“I don’t suppose you would know why we have missiles flying towards us?” Aun’Saal asked mildly, and I took a moment to calm myself from the near livid fury that had consumed me. 

I stared at him. This would have to be a balancing game, making me appear powerful enough to deserve respect and a healthy amount of fear, but not powerful enough to threaten the stability of the Tau Empire, or even its smaller regional province in the Jericho Reach.

A challenge. I liked challenges, especially the kinds that didn’t have horrendous repercussions on failure and, all things considered, a fallout with the Tau was nowhere near the worst possible things that could happen to me. A falling out with a single ethereal, even less so. Worst-case scenario, I clone him and send back a fake. 

“I’m not particularly sure, but I can take a wild guess,” I said in the same carefree tone he used. I leaned back and crossed my legs lazily for added effect. “One of the small-time Ork war-bosses that had popped up while I was away had the grand idea to make some trouble for me. I am terribly sorry that you’ve gotten swept up in it, and apologise for the inconvenience. Your shuttle should be able to handle a pair of orkish missiles easily enough, shouldn’t it?”

“Would it surprise you if I said it couldn’t?” He asked mildly, like there weren’t two crackling missiles packed with more explosives than common sense would demand racing right toward us. 

“It would,” I admitted easily enough. “I’m surprised you don’t have a more expansive protection detail too. But I magnanimously took it as a sign of your trust.”

I suspected he was suicidal, or such a fervent believer of his own philosophy that he was willing to die for it. Either he was right, or he died for being wrong, which would help his comrades back home grow through natural selection. It was the same thing in practice, just in different flavours.

Or maybe he had some super-tech hidden away somewhere on the shuttle that he trusted his life with, something he thought could protect him from both me and any threat on the planet. Or was it on his person? Some personal shield generator? A personal teleportation beacon?

I scanned his person again with my aura, but I couldn’t figure out what half of the trinkets on his body did besides the fact that they were clearly technological in nature and more than they seemed.

The thin silver bracelet on his right wrist, I understood parts of, some parts of it seemed vaguely familiar from my study of their technology. I knew it to be some holograph-projector and the tactile sort, so with how his guards used similar wrist-mounted communication devices, I assumed it was some version of that.

A brooch in his chest also had some strange, crystalline tech inside I’d come to expect from hard-light tech. There was also some strange disk in a pocket, all the damned buttons on his clothing and the numerous invisible implants hiding underneath his misleadingly unblemished skin.

The implants were leagues above most of his other, more visible technology, besides the palm-sized disk in his inner pocket. While the rest had a rather simple set up, with only my overall lack of knowledge of Tau technology keeping me from understanding their functions at a glance, these were more advanced and miniaturised. They also seemed to have been built with countermeasures in mind, being twisted and strange with a design that seemed overly complicated on purpose to keep anyone trying to break into them from understanding it without lengthy study.

“It seems like we are going to die then,” he stated calmly and I almost giggled at the dramatic flare he put on, shaking his head theatrically. “A shame. There is so much still needing to be done, so much work left unfinished.”

I squinted at him, trying to figure out whether we were playing some strange variation of ‘chicken’ here, or of this idiotic Ethereal had truly given up on life. My Empathy was not all that useful, only telling me that he really was feeling regretful and felt some mild dark amusement.

“Do you have any regrets?” Aun’Saal asked, seemingly loosening the tight grip he had on his own tongue and expressions in the face of certain death. I was not buying it, not one bit. His men weren’t panicking, not a single shout and not even the naked terror others would have felt in the face of death. Had I not been able to feel their emotions, faint as they were, I’d have thought it was the usual, soldierly grim nihilism that had them remain calm and collected. “Thing you would have done differently, besides ordering an orbital strike on the location of our soon-to-be killers?”

“I should have spent my final hours with my lover, preferably in a bed without clothes instead of boring myself to death on this diplomatic excursion,” I said, smiling amusedly at him. “You?”

“I regret that our cooperation will never bear fruit, with both of us expiring to a pair of stray ork missiles of all things.” He sighed dramatically, and I rolled my eyes, feeling the missiles closing in.

“Ten seconds,” the technician said matter-of-factly and I saw Aun’Saal eyeing me speculatively, lips twisted into an amused smile. Well. It wasn’t like I was trying to hide how unconcerned I was, but I was pretty sure he knew by now that I was not at all afraid of the missiles. We both knew the other was bluffing, but who would blink first?

It all came down to just how crazy this fucker was, which I still couldn’t quite tell. Did he really have some secret trump card up his sleeve, or was he truly willing to risk death just to tease a ‘trump card’ out of me? 

His far too-calm guards also made me think of the former, but … he was not entirely ignorant of the powers Psykers wielded. Did he suspect I could read minds and emotions? Did he purposefully implant emotional inhibitor implants into his guards to trick me?

Was he crazy enough to do something like that? I wasn’t entirely sure the answer was no. I couldn’t be sure. Which made me hesitate to really just sit back and let things play out without interfering. 

His really ending up here could make my plans going forward far more complicated than they need to be. I still wasn’t sure whether the Tau had any reliable way to detect psychic meddling, or my own flavour of biomancy. I wasn’t sure sending back a cloned copy of Aun’Saal would go unnoticed. I wasn’t even sure altering his mind a little would go unnoticed. Those damned Tau had managed to make some fucky super-tech in one of the books that let them delve into the mind of a captured Space Marine, was it that much of a stretch that they could examine the mind in great enough detail to detect manipulation? 

No, no, it wasn’t.

Letting out a dejected sigh, I decided to forfeit our game of chicken. I ‘blinked’ first, but that didn’t mean I was willing to give them anything other than another mystery to wrack their brains over.

I waved my hand, conjuring an ethereal white glow to cloak it like a glove. Outside the shuttle, a gigantic construct of psychic energy took shape. The gigantic hand of white light descended from above like a hand of God and slapped the pair of sputtering missiles out of the air, causing them to explode prematurely on impact.

The shuttle shook, the explosion reaching the hull as a wave of scorching fire reached it. I clenched my hand into a fist, the psychic replica mirroring the motion outside and all the fire and shrapnel spun about to gather in its grasp. The light faded from around my arm — because I dismissed the entirely superficial Illusion around it — and the conjured hand disappeared along with it as I slumped in my chair in ‘exhaustion’. 

“Uuuuh … the missiles are gone?” the technician said uncertainly, and I could feel befuddlement and utter lack of understanding for what he was witnessing radiate off of him. 

“Confirm that,” the guard captain barked, while Aun’Saal watched me with a strange expression on his face. He looked curious, and relief overwhelmed all other emotions coming off of him. 

Why the fuck are you relieved? I thought sourly, barely stopping myself from glaring as my suspicion that he’d been ready to die here grew. But … not quite. His relief did not have the ‘holy shit I’m still alive’ vibe, it was more like he’d been spared of having to make a sacrifice. 

“Confirmed,” the technician said after a moment, fingers working in a frenzy as he leaned close to a holographic monitor on the wall. “Both incoming missiles had been destroyed utterly. The danger they pose is nil.”

“I suppose you’ll be plenty alive to remedy your error of spending the day in my dreary company,” Aun’Saal said with a smile I never would have been able to tell was forced without my Empathy. “Your lover should be pleased you live to see another day.”

“Oh, she will be,” I said in clear disinterest, acting weary and drained. Still, I made to look like I was quickly concealing it, putting on a strong front as I straightened my spine and tightened my lips into a thin smile. “I can’t believe you didn’t even put an energy field generator on your personal shuttle. Doesn’t that border on the suicidal?”

“This was a diplomatic mission.” Aun’Saal shook his head. “Which is why I chose to take my civilian shuttle with all its afforded luxuries, instead of the maximum security shuttle I’d have used in an active war-zone.”

“A mistake I hope you’ll not make again,” I said, giving him a disappointed look. “I’m honestly amazed you are still alive if you take your personal security that lightly.”

“The Tau Empire is a peaceful nation, away from the border regions,” he said with a sad shake of the head and I suddenly found myself on the receiving end of a pitying gaze. “There is no danger a handful of my well-trained Fire Caste guards cannot handle, and I am no slouch in combat either if the need truly arises. Having military grade weaponry in the hands of insurgents on a Sept world would be unthinkable, the worst I’d be up against would be perhaps a smuggled out plasma rifle.”

“Must be nice,” I said, and was surprised to find I meant it. It was a fake, a lull in the storm that allowed their fragile peace and stability to exist in which they could grow so complacent, so horribly naïve. Still. I wished sometimes I could live in blissful ignorance of the galaxy-ending threats approaching just beyond the horizon, that I could live out a happy mortal life with Selene on some boring agri-world tending to plants and crops. It never lasted.

Ignorance was no shield, it was a blindfold that made you unaware of the tiger charging at you to tear your throat out. I’d much rather be a tiger myself, and see the threat coming head on to have a hope of coming out victorious. I’d never choose to stick my head into the sand, willful ignorance and denial were not my thing. 

“I’d agree,” Aun’Saal said. “But I don’t think the meaning behind your words was as pure as I would have liked.”

“Blissful, willful ignorance.” I shrugged. “I won’t begrudge you, it is not fun to know. Still, I expected a bit more from an Ethereal.”

I meant every word, but they were still the results of careful mental calculations and lengthy consultations with my more politically minded sub-brains. In essence, I was trying to goad him into revealing his secret gadget, which I was increasingly sure would have somehow ensured his survival—but only his. 

Not that I felt like his guards knew that. 

It was just a conjecture, but it made sense in my head. It looked like he was going to retort just as I’d hoped, with anger and indignation flaring in his flimsy soul before they slammed into a wall built of his willpower and self-control. Halting, he pulled his mouth into a thin line and squinted at me. 

Damn. I didn’t even get the opportunity to throw some fuel on those flames! It would have been risky, but gently prodding some emotions in others, goading them to grow or dampening them was just about the least intrusive and hardest to notice applications of my abilities. 

Was it better to keep his secret, while leaving me to think him an idiot, or reveal a trump card? I could taste the question on the forefront of his mind as he thought it through. 

“My life was never in danger,” Aun’Saal said with absolute certainty, staring me right in the eye. “Let’s leave it at that. Some secrets are meant to remain secrets.”

I let the silence stretch until it was starting to become uncomfortable, my penetrating gaze holding his eyes. My passive telepathy was peering in at his surface thoughts with an even greater intensity. I was examining every echo of a thought that had even just the slightest ripples spreading through his iron-hard mental fortress. 

Nothing. People usually thought about the things they were speaking of, so I had hoped he would picture this secret gadget of his when he mentioned it. 

He did not.

I clicked my tongue in annoyance, crossing my legs with a huff. “Fine then, keep your secrets.”

I couldn’t do anything more without resorting to something far more intrusive, which would also send the likelihood of it being detected skyrocketing. It wasn’t worth it.

Not even if Aun’Saal was convinced this secret gadget of his could protect him from me.