40 Thousand Reasons

Chapter 132: Perseus

Much later, I entered my shower to wash off the sweat and tend to the scratches on my back. Lady Adrielle had been really starved, for decades maybe.

Then again, she was perhaps too paranoid about genestealers. It wasn't like they really were everywhere, even if I did find...well they kinda were everywhere, in fact. Even on Illevar, with that cult of theirs.

Might need to ask Trazyn for a genestealer detector of some kind.

Leaving the good Inquisitor to rest, I headed towards the teleport room, and entered the Pharos with Ludvaius at my side.

A stern woman with a ponytail and a dozen men in her retinue were busy interrogating Zarhulash, using some arcane device of possibly xenos origin and a robed psyker with gouged eyes, glowing with bluish tendrils of warp-lightning.

Beside her, a pair of Deathwatch Astartes reacted instantly and one drew a grav-gun to hold me at respect, while the other moved to protect the Inquisitor Lady.

"Intruding on an Inquisitor is a capital crime, Lord Lancefire." Inquisitor Ezu warned me in a glacial voice.

I just shrugged and kept walking, ignoring the feeble threat. "We are not in the Imperium here, my lady. Out here in the Fringe, you need a Warrant of Trade to speak with Emperor's Voice. Or just have overwhelming power on your side." I explained politely,

walking past the menacing psyker and through his lightning cloud, until I stood face-to-ankle with the huge humanoid shape of the C'tan.

"Pef Lancefire, you have my gratitude! And you may gain a small favor, if you stop that annoying psyker from electrocuting me..." Zarhulash proclaimed in a slightly pained voice.

"I do not command the Inquisition, Mighty Zarhulash. Tell me about planet Icnarus, it should be in your vision range." I ask in a level voice. My astropaths had picked up a distress call, warning of a being of light and immortal robots.

The C'tan glanced at the Inquisitor then back at me. "They are waking, and have deciphered the engrams controlling their C'tan slave. Only that one is not like me, but a hundred times stronger. A single Knight still stands, protecting the spaceport in futile bravery. The world is lost to your Imperium anyway."

I sighed inward at the news. A Transcendent C'tan would be impervious to any normal weapons, so possibly only a Vortex warhead might work.

So I turned towards Lady Ezu Ghraile and held a finger up. "I will need an hour to deal with that mess." I explained politely while vanishing her retinue inside me tesseract, and bringing out the Sounding Board and a Vortex missile.

"What are you doing? How..." the woman demanded, walking beside me curious and suspicious.

"I'm quite certain the exact details of this installation are classified and sealed, by the Inquisition and a certain Primarch. If you don't know already, then you were not told on purpose, my dear." I whispered while locating the Icnarus world, where a pair of Cairn-class Tomb Ships were slowly emerging from deep underground, while shuttles filled with refugees were struggling to reach the last departing transports.

A wing of Necron interceptors sped by and struck, blowing up the slow transport shuttles and ending the hopes for the remaining citizens stuck on the surface. Already the merchants and transport ships were speeding away from the planet, hoping to reach the Warp limit with whatever refugees they had on board.

Guardsmen and PDF troopers were being overwhelmed at the spaceport's edge, and that Knight was still fighting, an arc lightning weapon striking everything in front, melting and blowing up dozens of Necron Warriors with each shot.

It was futile anyway. There were millions of those infantry troops, and behind them there were Necron Monoliths and anti-grav tanks, advancing slowly but inexorably.

"Go and support the Knight, Ludvaius. I'll try to locate the C'tan." I said softly, twisting space and relocating Ludvaius on Icnarus, just beside that Knight. It didn't have any House markings, so it must have been a lonely Freeblade, ostracized or fleeing his old House. I could use that pilot, and his Knight as well.

Using Ludvaius as an empathic anchor, the Pharos connection became much stronger, and hundreds of those soldiers and crying refugees behind them vanished from Icnarus to reappear in the Pharos, then instantly got sent into my labyrinth.

As expected, it took an hour to rescue the remaining survivors, and then the Knight and Ludvaius appeared beside me, just as the horizon lit up with a green glow.

The Vortex missile detonated right underneath the floating energy being, sending it into the Warp in a hundred pieces, while demons poured out from the purple Warp rift. It was a waste to destroy such a potent weapon, but at the same time I did not have the means to control it.

"You're safe now, Freeblade. Now, let's see about those Necrons and their Tomb Ships..." I spoke gently as the Knight locked on me observing me with a raised weapon, while the gouges and cuts on its armor were slowly repairing by themselves.

That was possibly an archeotech device called a Blessed_Autocimulacra, using forgotten technologies to repair a machine to functionality, which would be tremendously useful, as well as the anti-necron arc weapon housed in the right arm.

Another weapon materialized next to me, this time a Cyclonic torpedo. Simply burning down the place would not be enough, as those Tomb Ships were rather durable, especially if their shields were active.

Then I just took out my Rosette and began the activation sequence, glowing codes and runes lighting up on the cyclonic warhead, while my guests just stared at me with indifference or gritting teeth.

"Where did the Exterminatus torpedo come from? Who is this Knight?" the Inquisitor demanded in cold outrage.

"The torpedo was given to me by Primarch Khan. As for the Freeblade Knight..." I answered only half-attentive. Here, my own tesseract could see and control everything, and thus I could see the pilot, an elderly woman with a cruel slash marring her face, body near death and kept together only by willpower.

"You're sending that torpedo to Icnarus, my lord?" the pilot asked in a cold rage.

Everyone seemed to have opinions these days.

"It is a Necron Tomb World, my dear. Millions of them in the galaxy as well, though few contain C'tans and Necron fleets. Only the crownworlds of their dynasties, I suspect." I replied in a patient tone, while running a final check on the humming weapon.

"Good then! Burn the xenos and send them to hell!" the lady pilot muttered and collapsed in her command throne, possibly exhausted and tired to death.

Don't die on me, pilot!

I vanished the woman into the labyrinth, keeping her in stasis until I could fix her aged body.

A bit later, I began a new mind-chat with Lord Trazyn, finding him away from his homeworld and instead on board the Blackstone Fortress, with a retinue of Crypteks and techpriests and a couple of Jokaero orangutans, running complex code tests on a giant cannon with living stone wires leading to a half-human inside an egg-shaped control room, filled with blue liquid.

That must be the Blank pilot of the Psi-titan, and the weapon itself.

"Congratulations on your success, Lord Trazyn. May I propose a small trade until our weapon is ready to fire?" I asked with a wry voice.

"I should have known you're observing me...with whatever means you have, stranger. I know you're not using the Celestial Orrery, because I just did, for a huge price. So what is there for me?" the Necron asked rather irate.

"A new dynasty has awoken, on Icnarus. Perhaps, I can arrange a small accident for them?" I proposed as the Exterminatus torpedo began humming under my hand.

Trazyn took out a green cube and rapidly located that world using some obscure engrams and a datawand.

"Oh yes! The Atun_Dynasty! It would be quite a boon, especially if you can also remove their transcendent weapon. I also have those Tau technologies repaired and your Titan rescued." Trazyn exclaimed, holding out another Nexus Arrangement device, and a pair of bone wristbands, which were totally not mind control devices.

He stored them into the Nexus and let it fall, certain it would not reach the floor. And it didn't. I held my own Titan in my hand, and it even included its Heresy-era Princeps, a woman named Dae_Vergos.

Now, this was a massive deal...for my future plans.

So I focused on Icnarus and launched the Exterminatus, and watched the planet ignite and detonate, shattering the underground vaults and the Necron armies and fleet. It was still draining and tiring, but I couldn't let that small fact stop me.

Then I checked on the Necron World of Sarlok, to find it covered in a trillion hungry Tyranids. Oh well, an incendiary torpedo will be enough then, if the defenses had failed. It only took a dozen years, damn slow Tyranids. Move faster!

Seeing me priming the next Exterminatus-grade weapon, Lady Ezu glanced at the silent Knight suit, then at the wall where the C'tan was observing me curious.

"I take it the world of Icnarus is no more, Exterminated from such a great distance. No wonder so many enemies attack this burned Sotha planet and our Fortress. You can even send and recover people from distant worlds, at your whim." she deduced while measuring me for another purpose.

I nodded wisely, while releasing the last safeties on the incendiary torpedo. "This baby is going to Sarlok, another Necron World covered with the feeder elements from three tendrils of Hive Fleet Kraken. Nothing much to eat there, except dead robots and now a small ray of sunlight." I said softly as the torpedo vanished to ignite the atmosphere and incinerate about one third of the remaining Tyranid fleet.

The rest of the bioships in high orbit escaped and began moving away, while their brethren screamed and boiled alive as the sky rained fire.

The Tyranid were learning to be cautious, it seemed. But avoiding planets would starve them too.

"And now Sarlok is gone too. Any other enemy you want eaten by Tyranids, Lord Trazyn?" I asked in faint amusement.

The Necron Overlord checked his galactic map for a minute. "Who else? Who else? So many enemies, so little time...Perhaps the Charnovokh Dynasty on Bardic? Phaeron Thoekh was always so high and mighty."

I scanned the void for a suitable Tyranid tendril, and located Hive Fleet Perseus on a direct course for Macragge. Someone was really sending enemy after enemy on those poor Ultramarines.

Not anymore, not if I could help it. Focusing my mind on the Sounding Board, the beacon shifted on the Necron World of Bardic, thus directing any nearby Tyranids towards the potential food source.

Then I began instructing Ludvaius via the brain implant, before sending him back on Illevar to bring back the Lancefire Dynasty's private fleet.

The warp-less engine voidships could arrive in a week or two, depending on their starting position, while the torpedo destroyers could travel on the Warp engines and arrive behind the Tyranid fleet approaching Sotha.

Until then, I still had nine Vortex torpedoes and a hundred Nova Mines to destroy the largest Hive Ships and clusters of smaller bioships, right from inside the Pharos.

Should have known that the Tyranid Hive Mind would also deduce the source of the constant attacks, and would send a punishment fleet to end this threat to their race.

Soon, the Pharos and its entire homeplanet would need world engines and begin to move, or no defenses could hope to save it.

That will take some work.