Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

122 – Annoying Skeletons

How did that saying go? ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?’ I’d wager neither came anywhere close to the fury of a Necron Dynasty with a prickled pride.

If I rolled my eyes anymore, I was sure they’d fall out of their sockets. Still, the urge was strong. I let out a huff and let my power flood through the ship’s psychic conduits and then activated Blink.

I’d have paid a fortune to see the Necron’s faces in the pursuing ships when I first did that. As it was now, I didn’t let up the channelling and as soon as we arrived at our destination I Blinked a second and a third time in a randomised zig-zag pattern.

Leave it to fucking Necrons to predict my random teleports. There was a trio of Necron cruisers already opening fire on the second location. Annoying, persistent fucking Necrons. Who knew bullying one ship would be like kicking the hornet’s nest?

Would I do it again? Of course. I had a new fancy Death Ray — that I can’t yet use because I don’t know how Necron tech works, but still — and some necrodermis to experiment with. It was well worth it. Still, this was getting irritating. It had been two weeks since I got my cannon and they were still going at it with the same fervour.

“We should be reaching the edge of the Rift today,” I hummed thoughtfully. Would that deter them? Probably not, the Sautekh had a third of their territory on the other side of the Great Rift. I doubted that warp abomination did more than fuckall to their communication tech. 

“How long can you keep this up?” Val asked, face stoic and back straight with his arms clasped behind his back. If I didn’t remember him laughing like a lunatic while throwing around bolts of lightning like a disco ball I’d believe he was some honourable and wise ancient Eldar … actually, he could be both. It was expected that a few thousand years of life in this galaxy with an evil chaos god’s claws up your ass would loosen some screws.

I checked my reserves at his question. I could Blink up to two or three Light Years, and I’d been doing that twice or thrice ever since they started predicting my destination a few days ago. My reserves were plummeting. 

“It’ll last another month at least,” I said. I wasn’t shy back on Baal, I gorged myself on Warp Energy. Even with how wasteful this manner of travel was, we could last until we reached the Tau Empire. “It should be more than enough if they don’t pull some nasty trick out of their robotic arses.”

It also helped that when they ambushed us for the third time a little over two weeks ago, I devoted a considerable amount of brainpower to streamline Blink as much as possible. The spell went through about twenty iterations since then and its cost dropped considerably; it also stopped giving different body parts extra velocity during teleport.

I had to heal up poor Bob after the first jump since his liver decided to meld with his kidneys. Oops. Anyway, he was good now.

The rest were more hardy than the poor human, so they came out with only some minor concussions and such. Well, there was Zedev too.

I glanced at the Magos. He contracted his body into some semblance of a resting position in one corner and the only sign of his living status was his softly blinking mechanical eye and the faint whirling of his machine parts. He’d been like that since we came aboard. 

Zedev being in battery-saving mode or whatnot aside, we were closing in on what could be the most dangerous stretch of the journey. Crossing the Great Rift. Technically, it should be easier since we aren’t using Warp Travel … but those were still some nasty Warp Storms, and I really didn’t like the thought of putting myself in the sights of the big four just yet. 

Space grew especially fucky around Warp Storms. What if it let a daemon just pop out and nab our ship, or if the storm just decided to chuck us a few thousand years into the future — as it did sometimes — or even worse, what if it just swallowed us and left us in the deep Warp. We would be royally fucked then. I’d have to abandon my Avatar the moment it happened and everything else on the ship. That was too big of a risk, even for me.

Actually, I’d be the happiest little eldritch girl if I never had to so much as think about those four ever again. Stinky chaos gods and their revolting daemons could rot in hell for all I cared. Well, that’s what they are doing and they are supposedly enjoying themselves quite well in there.

“Okay, planning,” I turned to the assembled members of our little gang — crew, maybe hangers-on, it is still yet to be determined what they actually are to me, aside from Selene — “I am planning to circumvent that ugly patch of space by flying over or under it. How viable is that?”

Everyone gave me dubious looks, and I suddenly had the urge to pout. Come on, it wasn’t that bad of an idea. Well, not Fae, who was looking thoughtful, but her aura told me she thought I asked a silly question on purpose to test them.

Don’t pout. You are a big bad eldritch alien.

“You do know that the galaxy is about three thousand Light Years across vertically even in these sections, right?” Selene asked, some non-verbal agreement among the crew somehow always ending up with her telling me all the bad news. “And the Warp Storms of the Great Rift are at least twice that, both vertically and horizontally.”

“This ship should be able to cross it in a week if I didn’t have to bother dodging Necrons every twelve hours,” I grumbled. “Two weeks if we are being safe and want to put some extra distance between us and the storms.”

And that was true too. It was mind-boggling, honestly. Assuming they were somewhere in the middle vertically, they’d need to fly up about two thousand light years, then move forward to cross over the rift, then back down another two thousand. That was at minimum six or seven thousand light years to cross and I’d claimed it’d take no longer than a week or two.

This ship, made of flesh and bone and other alien organs, was a piece of technology so far above anything humanity came up with in the 21st century that it wasn’t even funny.

Relativistic spaceflight was but a dream back then, still in the realm of science fiction instead of real physics. And this piece of alien goop took a colossal shit on all that, made a gravitational subspace for itself, and flew faster than the rules of the universe should allow it to.

Selene and Val looked at each other for a moment, like two parents trying to decide who gets to tell their kid they can’t go to the theme park today, then back at me. This time, I did pout at their gazes. What was with them anyway? It was a perfectly good idea.

“That would take us into deep space,” Val started. I waited. Then I looked back at him and blinked in confusion. 

“Aaaaand?” I drawled, unimpressed. 

Four sets of eyes stared at me, seemingly unable to answer. Bob opened his mouth, then Fae’s hand clamped down on his face like a claw and kept him from making a sound. 

Val was frowning mightily, like my question was some profound mystery he had to devote his entire mind to unravel, while Selene just worked her jaws, opened her mouth, then closed it with what looked like a lost expression.

“Huh,” she blinked, then shook her head a little. “Right. I guess that … works?”

She glanced at Val, but he was long lost in his thoughts so she poked him in the side.

“Yes?” He asked. “What was the question again?”

“Why are you two acting so weird?” I crossed my arms and glared at them, feet tapping. 

“Well,” Selene turned back to me. “I suppose it’s just that deep space is … well, mostly outside of both of our reaches. The Astronomican’s light barely reaches the Galaxy’s edges and any ship venturing further out would be lost to the Warp.”

“The Webway also ends where the Galaxy does … going beyond would be arduous without its gateways and help,” he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Aeldari voidships cannot travel faster than light without the Webway. We have some rudimentary Warp Travel capabilities from the bygone age, but only the most desperate of us dare to enter those hellish realms just to travel faster.”

Now the both of them looked slightly embarrassed, though that amounted to Val frowning and staring at the ground and Selene sporting a slight blush. It was adorable — the second one — so their doubt in me was thus forgiven. 

“Alright,” I grinned. “With that out of the way, any further objections or can we be on our way? I am getting tired of these skirmishes.”

The worst thing was that the damned Necrons were good, not only in the technological or martial way, but tactically too. Their one failing was pride, but I’d taken a colossal shit on that, so now they took me seriously. Still, they were a miserly bunch, so they calculated the bare minimum force required to give me no hope of victory in a straight fight only after three ambushes.

Three light cruisers, as it was, filled with Death Scythes — their fighters — was just that. Their firepower was just too much, and even if I got in some good hits, it at best fluffed up my ego with no other benefit. 

I hadn’t managed to nab a single molecule of necrodermis since the first fight. Any ship I hit with anything close to a dangerous blow slunk back behind another one and kept up its Quantum Shielding, only taking potshots at me.

It was mighty irritating, extremely so. After getting over my initial — sizable — annoyance, I took to memorising everything they did. Their style of fighting and tactics were honed over a war that tore the galaxy apart, they fought fucking Gods and won. If there was a race from which I could learn how to fight well, it was the Necrons — when they bothered to fight seriously that is.

Plus, I sort of considered being extremely annoying to fight, my thing. Annoying stuck-up assholes was a balm to the soul.

“No,” Val answered belatedly, shaking his head. “I have no objections. It seems I must reassess my way of thinking and make it fit with our current capabilities … what an interesting conundrum.”

With that, he wandered off to the corner and plopped down. I felt his aura calm to a serene lake before his bum even hit the floor. 

Selene just shook her head, still looking slightly embarrassed. 

“Good,” I smiled. “Let’s go then. Hopefully, that damned rift keeps these senile Necrons from communicating with the other side as much as it does us.”

It was doubtful, but one could hope. We’d still have a week’s worth of Sautekh territory to get through before we reached the edges of Tau space by my estimations. Maybe two if I fucked something up. 

I reached for that set of organs deep within the ships and cast my senses through them and out into the infinite expanse of space. I reckoned a human mind would have broken after a second of being bombarded by the endless stream of data coming as little mental nudges and electrical bursts.

This was how Tyranids travelled without the Warp, how they found star systems. Space was mostly empty, despite what most science fiction shows wanted the watcher to believe, and if one flew in a straight line through the Milky Way, they were more likely to come out on the other end without hitting a single planet than not.

I felt a nearby asteroid first, only a mere four Light Years away and about the size of a larger continent. Then my senses went further and further, reaching across billions of kilometres. I felt gravity bend and dip, an asteroid belt, a planet, a star, a black hole, each had its own distinct taste to my new, Narwhal-sourced senses.

I mentally zoomed out, reducing each blip of planetary gravity to a tiny dot, and out and out I zoomed until I saw space flatten. When I felt nothing with any substantial gravity for the last five thousand Light Years in one direction, I smiled and altered our course. 

It seemed going under would be preferable, as we were only about a thousand Lightyears away from the bottom, while there were still star systems two thousand Light Years upwards.

Upwards. I shook my head in amusement. There was no ‘upwards’ in space, but my silly human-sourced mind had a much easier time understanding it that way. The proper definition would be … what? I suppose it didn’t matter back when I lived as a human. 

Galactic up and down would have to do.

This minor detour would probably be the most boring few weeks of my life since my rebirth here, but oh well, it beats taking a trip through hell and being jumped by an endless swarm of daemons.

Just a few more weeks, then I can bully some silly tau … how should I do it? Speedrun it and go for an Ethereal first? Copy their mindfuckery and take over a world? Do it all sneaky and worm my way up their society? Go undercover? Act the mercenary in some war to gain their trust? Or just conquer them, full on, with force. They have no Psykers, no hope to stop me if I really want to fuck their civilisation up.

But I didn’t want that. I wanted … an empire. A little slice of space where I could make something nice. The Tau … they had something quite nice going on, even if I didn’t include the Ethereal’s soft-core mind-control. I don’t want to destroy that. I should work to make it better.

I squashed the sadistic little goblin jumping on my shoulder, whispering into my ear that the poor naïve Tau would just be so fun to bully. So fun to break. But no. I promised Selene I would be good and keep myself from inflicting needless suffering.

With my obnoxious shoulder-devil banished for the moment, I felt my heart lighten. There was something entirely different, but similarly addicting about prevailing over my baser instincts. 

Selene gave me such a pure look. I could feel she was proud of me. She felt what I went through and watched as I prevailed. It didn’t matter that I did it effortlessly. That only made her happier, more relieved. She was an open book when she wanted. Our bond made sure of that.

And her feelings surging through that bond at that moment sent a blush rushing up my face. 

For once, I didn’t bother to control my body and hide it. Instead, I just smiled at her.