Shal’el L’vesh knew what he was doing was impossibly risky. The crazy Gue’la witch who had kidnapped him was more powerful than his mind cou

Shal’el L’vesh knew what he was doing was impossibly risky. The crazy Gue’la witch who had kidnapped him was more powerful than his mind could comprehend, and yet, here he was.

The hallways were empty; they almost always were. He didn’t know why this ship was as large as it was, when at best he’d seen a few thousand beings onboard, and those still left the majority of the vessel empty.

These hallways, though they looked more like tunnels with how each edge was instead a curve, were a mess. A labyrinthine complex of twisting and turning pathways that only someone with a map could hope to navigate properly.

Alas, he had no map, but he wasn’t going anywhere far. In her hubris, the Gue’la had placed him a mere few hundred metres away from the Aun onboard.

L’vesh had to get to the Aun. Inform him, and report to him. The original mission had been a bust, and as ashamed as he was for his failure and getting captured, he’d still accomplished his task.

He had scouted out the moon, he had learned secrets, dangerous secrets, terrifying secrets. The Aun had to know, even if he was risking his life by so much as thinking about going behind that woman’s back.

She was gone, though, if he had heard the whispered mutter from her consort right. For how long, he couldn’t know. Now was the time for action, and he’d never been one to fear death when duty needed to be fulfilled.

It felt like hours, jumping at every creak, every distant footstep — who even was making all those footsteps? He should have been alone on this level with the Aun and the consort — but he made it. Before him rose the doors leading to the honoured Aun’saal’s accommodations.

L’vesh raised his hand, his spine straightening and his face warping into a dutiful visage with an appropriate level of grimness to it.

He knocked, feeling his hackles rise and the tension in his body build with each second that went by without an answer. Was he caught? Was this a trap? Was the Aun even here, or was this just a trap laid out for him? Was the Aun on the ship at all, or was he just an illusion conjured up by that impossible gue’la?

The door opened, and Aun’saal Kel’tau peered down at him with a smidge of interest and some amusement shining in the depths of his enlightened gaze.

The Ethereal looked left and right, then grew even more amused when he found the hallways empty. His gaze returned to L’vesh, and he felt himself straighten.

“Shas’el L’vesh, My Lord,” he introduced himself, bowing with the decorum he’d learnt in his lengthy career in the military. “I was sent to scout out Vallia Prime by the order of my Captain. With him having departed the system, I’d thought it’d be best if I reported the results of my mission to you.”

“Come on in,” the Aun said, stepping back and gesturing for the Fire Warrior. L’vesh obeyed, humbly stepping into the Aun’s rather spacious accommodations. “Take a seat. We have as much as a week until we arrive, and little need for strict military discipline at the moment. You’ve been through a lot, Shas’el.”

L’vesh took a deep breath, then began talking, delivering his report with the stoicism expected of a veteran commando like him. He talked of the Orks he found on the moon, their villages, their weaponry, their attempts at building spacecraft, which were immediately and ruthlessly crushed by the Orks more directly under the gue’la’s command, and then he spoke of the animals.

He even dared voice his suspicion, a conjecture put together from evidence and gut feeling.

“I think she was directing the beasts,” L’vesh said, feeling a bit foolish even as he said it, no matter how much sense it made in his head. He felt the need to clarify himself, to put forth his reasons so the Aun wouldn’t think his mind had frayed to lunacy from stress. “Their assault was relentless. I know I hid myself perfectly at night. I concealed my scent, put up the noise suppression field and used the camouflage projector. I dissected a beast later; they had no extrasensory organs that should have been able to sense me, and yet it did. Herbivores, carnivores and omnivores worked together to harry me every minute of every day for almost a week. They worked together like a cohesive unit, almost like the Tyranids, but made of creatures that seemed to be a hodgepodge mix of whatever was nearest at the moment. Then, when they finally allowed me some rest, after all my equipment had long been thoroughly broken, that gue’la just … snatched me up with some sort of teleportation tech and asked my opinion about the arsenal of an invading Imperial fleet like I was some tactical advisor, and it was only natural."

He was proud to say that he had mostly managed to keep his initial stoicism throughout the report. ‘Mostly’ was the operative word there though, since he was breathing a bit raggedly from speaking the last few sentences in a single breath.

But if his eyes were a bit wild, the gaze knowing his superior would think him a madman for telling the truth, he’d claim that was just exhaustion making them bloodshot.

“Thank you,” the Aun said, leaning back in his own seat with a thoughtful look. He nodded to himself, then refocused on L’vesh. “That confirms things I’ve suspected, or been told by our host. Alas, I’m afraid I can’t take your word for it as the sole supporting evidence, as memory-manipulation is one of the known abilities of a Psyker such as her.”

L’vesh didn’t know how to respond to that. The Aun believed him … and yet, also not? He was compromised, just on the mere basis of having come in contact with the gue’la?

“So,” he finally managed. “What am I supposed to do now, my Lord?”

The Aun put a hand on his shoulder, patted it commiseratingly and then gave him a look. “What you’ve been doing until now. Echidna requested that a Tau strategic advisor be assigned to her. Congratulations, Shas’el, you’ve been promoted to strategic advisor. I know you will do the T’au’va proud.”

L’vesh just sat there and stared.

“Huh?”

*****

“Heh,” I chuckled, shaking my head at the silly Tau byplay happening on my ship, then returned my attention to the war beneath me.

The next six days flew by quickly, and I made sure to keep my meddling to a minimum. Nothing that would have any overarching consequences, just satisfying my curiosity.

I even found out the reason for one of the things that’d been nagging me. Why does the Imperium only use their ‘teleportarium’ technology to board enemy ships?

Anyone with half a brain cell would sooner or later ask that question of themselves while they were watching the Imperium wage war. Luckily for me, the Imperial flagship in the system was outfitted with a teleportarium, so I could poke around a bit.

I found out that, rather obviously, teleportation was easily blocked by an active Void Shield, and also by Gellar Fields. There were also purpose-made anti-teleportation technologies, which were put into place around crucial areas of a spaceship, like the bridge and the engine room. So teleporting straight there, even once the Void Shields fell, was all but impossible.

Now, you might ask, what use was teleporting onboard a ship if you could only do it once the Void Shields fell? Couldn’t you just blow the now defenceless ship into space scrap from afar without risking the lives of your elite strike force?

Well, yes, but also no. Apparently, Void Shields could be finicky, and sometimes they were overwhelmed for all but a single second, which opened a window to insert a boarding party faster than a missile could reach the target.

Also, sometimes you needed stuff from the enemy ship, or didn’t want the enemy ship to be destroyed, just the people currently using it. Ships were expensive, after all.

All that made sense to me. Which left the last question: why not teleport a super nuke onto the enemy ship when the Void Shields faltered, instead of a squishy human strike team?

I had mentally nudged a human Engineseer to bother the Magos in charge of taking care of the teleportarium with that question.

The response he received needed heavy filtering to get to a somewhat real answer. There was a lot of talk about displeasing Machine Spirits, defiling Holy Munition by teleporting it onto unsanctified ground, the wrath of the Omnissiah, the destabilising effect of the Warp, and corrupting innocent Machine Spirits.

I came to the conclusion that probably the answer was that the Teleportarium had the side effect of destabilising delicate and very explosive weaponry.

It didn’t make any sense. The strike team had a belt full of Krak grenades on them, and the Astartes who regularly used the tech wielded Bolters, which fired guided missiles.

Why didn’t those explode in transit if the teleportarium destabilised explosives so much?

In the end, I put it down to religious idiocy, and maybe the Imperial Machine Spirits getting pissy. Maybe the Spirit inside a missile wanted to fly, so it exploded prematurely out of spite if you wanted to take that away from it by teleporting it to its destination. Fuck me if I knew. It could be the opposite, and the Machine Spirits inhabiting the gear of people making use of the teleportarium were just tougher cookies and kept stuff working despite the Warp’s best efforts to the contrary.

The Tau fleet arrived first, an hour before the last hour of the sixth day since my departure was up. It was just as well; they’d be useful to explain to the Tau forces in-system what was going on. Still, the cunts were about as stealthy about their arrival as a drunk elephant. Already, I could see the Imperial troops digging in deeper and their naval assets gathering up in firm groups to hold out for as long as possible.

I even eavesdropped on a few conversations — my aura was unbothered by most anti-eavesdropping countermeasures, and the few ships that were properly warded, I threw a drone onto serve as a relay and that solved the issue — where the Navy suggested withdrawing while the ground troops went to ground and waged a guerrilla war. It was a stupid idea, the Kroot would run circles around them before eating their corpses, but these were Admirals and the like, sitting in comfy lounge rooms up in space, not jumping at shadows down in the jungles.

Astropathic messages went out, calls for reinforcements and warnings of a new Tau offensive, but they were staying put for now. They thought they could hold out even against these odds for long enough to be relieved by reinforcements.

The arrival of my ship half an hour later disabused them of that silly notion, and when Aun’saal’s following squadron of ships arrived ten minutes after mine, they were hurriedly gathering up for another strategy meeting. They had the time, after all, we were at the far edges of the system. It’d take hours, if not days, until we reached the planet itself.

I was a bit disappointed, I mean, this was the Imperium of Mankind we were talking about. They had been fighting tooth and nail for every metre of ground gained on this inhospitable shithole for centuries, out of principle, more than anything. Sure, it could serve as a gateway into the Velk’Han sept’s holdings, but I had thought they’d exhibit the same bullheaded stubbornness I’d read so much about.

They are hesitating. I mused, acting like a fly on the wall in every meeting room. Their shields couldn’t keep my aura out. Ah, they’ll be shot for ordering the retreat. Cowardice is a sign of treachery in Ebongrave’s court, even if all his men's trusted officers seem to be exhibiting signs of it.

And so began the game of all the highest ranked officers trying to play each other, scheming to somehow shift the blame off of themselves onto someone else. They needed a dupe to order the retreat. Of course, these talks didn’t include the suicidally fanatical few who were in contrast, planning a last charge against the Tau.

I even spied a Captain who was preparing a Cyclonic Torpedo in the spirit of ‘If we can’t have this planet, then nobody can’. So petty. I could almost respect it. That is, if this planet wasn’t to be mine. I poked a tiny hole into the Warp near the torpedo, which, as I’d so recently learned, quickly destabilised the warhead.

The ship went up in a ball of fire, cracking and melting in the middle as its two ends drifted apart from the force of the explosion that was meant to crack the mantle of the planet.

The rest, I left alone. Though I made sure to throw an infiltrator drone onto every ship that was planning to retreat. They were then commanded to sabotage the Warp-Drives, or more preferably, the humans in charge of operating them. If all went well, those ships would have only their subluminal engines operational, so I could just head on over to mop them up once I took care of their friends.

An hour later, they were split into three groups. The retreating cowards, the ground troops who either remained behind because the Navy didn’t want to waste time extracting them, or out of fanatic zeal to bleed the Tau in a final stand, and finally, the suicidal parts of the Imperial Navy now burning fuel to reach our incoming fleet.

I guided my ship, the Sovereign — creative, I know, I stole the name from Mass Effect — to the front of our formation. The Tau spread out behind me in a wedge formation, their own flagship, which had the Ethereal command onboard, safely sheltered behind mine. They were only too happy to have me weather the brunt of the Imperial offensive, so there was no resistance to me leading the charge.

They were also confused about the apparent wariness of the Imperials, since their force wouldn’t have been enough to warrant such a response. I heard the whispers, though, the mutters about the massive size of my ship, and that only the mythical Gloriana class battleship was more menacing.

Silly Imperials, my ship was bigger than those.

They had a healthy respect for colossal machines of war, though, a respect absent in most Tau’s economic mindset and ‘common sense’.

Maybe I should let one or two ships escape, just in case the Astropathic messages don’t arrive, or are not believed. Witnesses talking about how the Imperial forces here were decimated might earn me a bit more resistance on our next stop.