[Crossover Fanfiction, Complete] Specialists

[Urist]

By the time the group had gone through the stories of their childhood, one after the other, a faint pressure was starting to build behind Fireblade’s eyes. A familiar pressure… and one that warned of much greater discomfort if not soon addressed.

With a brief sending to both Tempo and Flint to let them know that she would be temporarily distracted, Fireblade kicked off of the floor — well, originally it had been the ‘wall’ of the compartment, when the shuttle’s artificial gravity was working — and alighted atop one of the storage crates bolted to the original floor of the compartment.

She ran her hands down the seams of her armor, undoing the latches and carefully piling each segment neatly in its place in front of her. After several cycles in the hard-shell armor, it was liberating to be back to her flexible — and much lighter — undersuit.

Her helmet stared up at her from the floor, visor faintly reflecting her face. As if irritated to be separated from the amplifier built into the helmet, her implants throbbed painfully where they slipped under the skin above her ears. She massaged each in turn, thankfully quelling the ache.

{Hey, stop distracting the human!} sent the younger tenoin, a playful note in her sanzai.

Fireblade glanced quizzically back at the group over her shoulder… and met Attache Jardin’s wide-eyed stare in return.

With a grin on her face, Talon leaned in to the alien’s shoulder and asked “See something you like?”

So much for her brief moment of relaxation. At the reminder of just why it was important that she remain ready to deploy her powers, Fireblade reached into a pocket and withdrew her standalone amplifier. Carefully sliding it into position over her forehead, she closed her eyes at the familiar brief pinch when it connected with her implants.

She quickly ran through her checklist to test that the amplifier had made its connections properly. While the younger warriors drew the alien back into their wandering conversation, she held out her calibrated strip of metal inside its clear vacuum tube. Focused on it.

The metal glowed brightly, and the thermometer attached to the device reported that the thermal intake was close enough to a match for how much power she had fed into her pyrokinesis. Good – the amplifier had connected correctly.

Even more fortunate, the young paset arrived right then with warmed bottles of noillir. Just the thing to take the edge off of the reduced — but still present — pulsing inside Fireblade’s skull.

For several solon, the compartment descended into satisfied quietness as all within relaxed with their drinks. This was eventually broken by a rather unsettling revelation about human dietary preferences, which then led into a discussion about the various Sister Worlds of the Union. A conversation that Fireblade was content to ignore, until…

“—Even you must have some fond memory. We’ve played; now it’s your turn.”

{It would be useful if you could recount some happy memory.} Tempo sent privately to Fireblade. {If my reading of his body language is correct, Attache Jardin seems to be more relaxed than he has been previously been when in our presence. The communal exchanging of food and stories seems to be as effective in establishing personal connections for his people as for ours.}

{Very well. Then perhaps...} Fireblade wracked her memories for something to share about Deinar, without being too detailed about her training at the Teidar academy to be meaningless to the alien.

Ah. The view out over the city from the old citadel itself, at evening just as the sun dipped over the horizon and all was lit only by the reflected glow from above. A sight whose beauty and serenity had always entranced her, doubly so in her first year there. Right after leaving Seren and being ‘cleared’ to re-enter loroi society, having been examined by doranzer and mizol specialists who deemed her earlier years in a Hierarchy laboratory not to have made her into a threat to the Union.

The first time in her life that she could remember being both safe and alone for even a few bima at a time: no threat looming over her, no constant drive to seek out the next day’s shelter or food.

She was no listel, but still she could close her eyes and be immediately transported back to those happy days. Her life ever since had seen even happier moments, of course — each crunch of a Shell’s exoskeleton under the hammer of her powers was a balm for her soul, every Hierarchy warship that disappeared under Tempest’s guns a remembrance candle to the fallen victims of Seren — but her evenings gazing out over a warm Toridas sunset were the more relaxing ones.

Little of her detailed memories could be squeezed down into the packaged thoughts of sanzai — one could not remotely send ‘images,’ after all — but she hoped that her sendings would describe the peaceful elegance of the moment fully enough for her fellow warriors.

And perhaps even the alien, if Tempo could translate the elegant thoughts of sanzai into mere spoken words.

Her moment of openness was interrupted — because of course — by the alien’s glib remarks, the conversation having evidently wandered afield while she was lost in her memories. “...Ah, Seren. That was our earlier destination before the Hierarchy attacked, yes? I guess the family visit will have to wait.”

A pulse of anger, unformed sanzai that carried only raw emotion, escaped her mind before she could rein it in. If the alien wished to see her murdered creche-sisters, he needed only to keep speaking so lightly of them and she would soon send him to meet them!

The other loroi in the room exchanged nervous glances. Tempo sent {Fireblade...}

Some detail of her thoughts must have been readable by the mizol. Fireblade closed her eyes and looked aside. The alien could not have known the impact of what he asked… not that it made her feel much less insulted. {I will relieve Flint on watch.}

Bunching her legs under her, Fireblade leapt ‘up’ to the hatch and out of the suddenly-stifling air of the compartment. Distance ate away the conversation behind her until it faded to nothing.

Much better.

///////

That… was unexpected. Alex had been all but giddy at his success – he had definitely received a broadcast image from the previously-unreadable teidar! A view of a great natural ring of debris arching above a planet, its reflected sunlight illuminating the harbor below and the city crowded around that watery inlet. A xenos city, yes, which somewhat marred the beauty… but not by as much as the Ecclesiarchy would insist. And a clearly-younger Fireblade crouched atop the worn stone walls of an ancient castle, itself much like an old remnant lost amidst the transition of a Feudal-world into a Civilized-world.

Just, of course, with xenos taking the place of good Imperial citizens. A difference whose importance he forcefully reminded himself of.

Regardless, he had learned only too late that Fireblade had much sadder memories of her youth as well. “So she is a survivor of a massacred planet. No living blood-family.” He nodded in understanding… and sympathy. He had no early-childhood memories left of his own birth-parents, killed during a routine Warp journey as the House Trask trade cruiser Scion of Halburg in whose vast hulls they had lived suffered a malfunction of its ancient Gellar fields.

The enginseers afterwards said that the fields had stayed down for less than a tenth of a second.

The daemonic infestation took weeks to clear from the vessel’s three decks which they had overrun.

Including the habitation cluster where one young infant was found amidst the wreckage, the sole survivor. Captain Hadrian Trask (born ‘Jardin’ but adopted into the main branch thanks to his talents) had led the clearing operation in that sector personally, and as he recounted later was downright ecstatic to have found a live psyker… with no living family members or neighbors to have reported his nascent powers. In the perfect situation to be adopted into the Family, molded into a potent hidden tool for the House.

A quite decent upbringing, from the perspective of those who lived aboard the vast and ancient voidships of the Imperium. Life as a valued son — adopted or no — of a House of Trade was far better than that of a mere crew-serf, and especially than that of a psyker delivered to the Black Ships.

It was a… deeply strange feeling to find himself sympathizing with a xenos. Yet he could not help but compare Fireblade’s past to his own. Then again, strong-willed human girls recovered as war orphans would have been sent to the Schola Progenium, often as not emerging as flinty-eyed and unyieldingly-pious Sisters of whichever Order they were drawn to.

Although the few Sororitas whom Alex had ever met — usually visiting one of the House compounds or ships on Family business far beyond his knowledge — had been battle-worn veterans with long-healed scars written across any skin not under armor, quite unlike the unblemished and smooth face of Fireblade. Their hulking armor and ornate robes shared little in common with the teidar’s low-profile armor or skin-tight suit which left so little to the—

He pinched himself, almost hard enough to draw blood.

Pictured the irate, jowled face of his Friday-school Preacher glaring down at him as if he could see the passing heretical thought which had flitted so unwisely across his mind.

“Attache Jardin? Are you well?” Beryl asked.

Searching urgently for a response that would distract him from his earlier thoughts, his mind latched onto the first image that came up: a glimpse from Fireblade’s shared images that came closest to looking the part of a scarred Sororitas. “Is, uh, that what happened to her eye? An injury in battle?”

Tempo and Beryl exchanged a glance. The mizol spoke first “An eye injury? I do not recall one.”

Beryl added with a frown, “Fireblade did not mention one. Perhaps you are tired from not enough sleep? The doranzer said that the biochemistry of your species seems to require more frequent rest periods.”

“That, uh, yeah. That’s probably it, just... tired.” Alex blinked. Sure, he indeed felt the first waves of exhaustion lapping at his mind, but he had definitely seen a scar crossing Fireblade’s shut eye in the image she’d shared.

Why would these other loroi pretend otherwise?

He couldn’t see any angle that they could be pursuing with such blatant falsehood. Then again, the Ecclesiarchy had always warned of the inherent duplicitousness of xenos; perhaps they were drawn to such behavior for its own sake even when it gave them no benefit?

Mind awhirl, he grabbed the purloined seat cushion that he had selected to be his pillow and glanced around the compartment. “There’s not, uh, much room to spread out.” He turned back to see four loroi each looking at him. And just out of the corner of his eye, he caught Tempo giving a single short nod to Beryl. “Uh…?”

Beryl spoke, even as Talon pushed herself closer on his left side. “We cannot say for certain how long we may be trapped aboard this shuttle until rescue arrives. It seems wise to conserve heat however possible, even at the expense of social mores.”

A small corner of his mind saw its opportunity to raise one single point that the greater bulk of his consciousness had carefully suppressed ever since he was picked up by Tempest: Each of the loroi in the small — and feeling smaller still by the minute — compartment appeared to be female. For what little that meant with xenos, of course (as he sternly informed that rebellious corner of his mind). But still...

His eyes snapped from one loroi to another, as they slowly approached him. Now he knew how a lost sand-beetle felt when cornered by a cat — or four! — deep in one of Tallarn’s underground cities. “I, uh… I see.”

And he wasn’t left much of a choice: Beryl did have a point. Which meant that the last thing he wanted to do was irritate these xenos by insisting on sleeping separately. Even if his entire childhood of teaching by the Ecclesiarchy screamed at him: what more extreme violation of ‘abhor the alien’ could one imagine?

Well, he could be—

Alex quickly squelched the suggestions that his mind came up with.

Yet he found that he could not voice the refusal that he knew he should.

So he found himself reclining, skin crawling underneath his robes where the xenos rested against him. His own hands reached across his chest, defensively forming the Aquila. Letting that small bloom of familiarity soothe him amidst these trying circumstances.

Hopefully the Emperor would still appreciate the intent of that pious gesture, even with a xenos clinging to each arm.

///////

{That went more smoothly than expected.} Tempo mused, as the alien half-disappeared underneath a pile of loroi. {I had anticipated more resistance to extended physical contact.}

Fireblade gritted her teeth. Beryl was one of the closest ones to Attache Jardin now, and Fireblade knew better than to think the listel wouldn’t try to pry into the alien’s mind once sleep had presumably reduced his defenses.

Hopefully she would come to no harm… but there was little that Fireblade could do to protect her now.

{What would you have done if he had objected?} Flint asked.

{Accede to his demand, of course.} Tempo replied immediately. {It would not have been worth arguing the matter — we would have other chances to test his mental defenses at moments of likely weakness later.}

Fireblade turned to the junior soroin next to her. The mizol had put her plan into motion — like it or not — and so now it was time for a teidar to step in and arrange the more mundanely-martial issues. {You and I will take first watch, followed by the two tenoin, and then Reed and Tempo. That will allow more-than-sufficient resting time for each of us.}

{Acknowledged.} Flint replied, leaning forwards to better look into the sleeping compartment. Two fingers drummed idly against the stock of the carbine still hanging against her thigh. {Will be a bit tricky working our way into that pile once off-watch, though.} She glanced back at Fireblade. {Do you want to be on the alien’s right side or his left, then?}

{I will sleep alone.} Fireblade emphasized.

{You sure? Parat Tempo’s got a point that the alien can’t keep up his semi-lotai all the time. Don’t you want a better look inside his head?}

{I enjoyed my first glimpse little enough.} Fireblade sent back. Although to be fair, the fact that the lifetime of intolerant teachings which she had seen inside Jardin’s mind earlier had not seen him refusing even such close proximity as this could mean that his indoctrination was less than she had thought.

…

Perhaps the next night, then. There would be time.

///////

Four long, dull cycles later, and Fireblade watched as Flint carefully took up the spot vacated — with noticeable reluctance — by Talon. Fireblade shook her head even as she laid down against the floor plating, the hard metal rendered much less of a discomfort thanks to the greatly-reduced ‘gravity.’

Besides, a teidar who had not learned to make herself sleep in absolutely any location was a teidar who would not have graduated from the Academy. Fireblade had dozed off in many far more uncomfortable places... and especially back on Seren.

The harsh memories of that long-ago time welled up even as she worked through her well-practiced mental exercises to bring her mind down to sleep, the two opposing forces fighting each other where they met. But teidar discipline won through in the end — as always — and displaced her memories of shattered Serenid cities and hidden survivors elsewhere, as a sort of hazy distancing clouded into her mind.

The welcome embrace of sleep took her.

///////

The sunlight glowed, painfully bright even through her closed eyelids.

Fireblade sat up, hot sand displacing under her hands. She glanced around.

Empty desert stretched off to the distant horizon in each direction, not so much as a single cloud in the sky.

Ah, Mezan.

Climbing to her feet — no easy task, when the sand slid aside under her boots — she reflexively checked that her helmet seals were intact and her oxygen supply available. One could breathe unassisted on Mezan’s surface… for a while.

That only left the question of where to go from— ah. A cloud of dust rose over a nearby dune, perhaps half a thousand mannal distant.

As good a goal as any.

She was halfway up the great pile of sand when the first traces of sound reached her ears, carried over the thin air.

Metal creaked and groaned; loud, mechanical roars echoed forth that could only come from large engines.

She shrugged, even as the slope turned steep enough that she now had to use her hands to assist in her climb.

Reaching the top, she beheld a grand vista below:

Half-buried below the yellow sand, a colossal great ring was being uncovered. Black as the starless void, it sat unblemished in the all-seeing sunlight. Perhaps six-hundred mannal across, if her well-trained eyes had the size right, twenty tall, and half that in thickness.

Well, it wasn’t entirely uncovered, not just yet. Less than a hundred linear mannal still lay below the sand, near where Fireblade stood atop the dune.

But not for long. A dozen large machines labored ceaselessly, engines spewing black-gray smoke high into the sky as their gleaming metal planes crudely shoved sand aside. Lined tracks wider than Fireblade was tall were left behind them, but only for a short while before the next machine backed over and scraped yet another layer of sand away.

Fireblade frowned — the machines each had a glass-fronted cabin, twinkling brightly as their motion caught the sunlight. None of them were the camera-covered AI-managed dirtmovers that she had seen used by gallen combat engineers to improve a position on the few planetside battlefields she had been deployed to.

It seemed an odd choice to use on Mezan, whose permanent inhabitants were few… and almost all listel. Certainly putting someone with as much curiosity and irrepressible energy as Beryl behind the controls of a bulldozer would be a—

Then it hit her. Beryl!

Memories flooded back into her mind: the battle, the alien, the shuttle.

She was dreaming.

But at least now she knew it.

Only… why Mezan? Fireblade had only visited it once, and that was quite some time ago.

Was this perhaps not her dream? Then whose was—

Of course. Beryl again.

Yet it was a difficult and rare thing to share another’s dream. The sort of bandwidth that that required implied physical contact, and Fireblade’s own… ‘issues’ controlling her mind’s power when asleep meant that few other loroi ever wished to slumber even near her, nevermind outright contact.

Had Beryl moved over to Fireblade’s side while the teidar slept? It was a touching gesture — literally — but unnecessary.

While she thought, the strange manually-managed excavators had continued their work. Fireblade would have to ask Beryl about them later; was this a memory of some archaeological find judged too fragile to leave to AI-run dirtmovers? But then why—

The last waves of sand were shoved aside, and the very final grains trickled down.

The Ring moved.

Contracted in a brief spasming pulse, as if its midnight-black mass was one ring of muscle.

Its featureless surface was suddenly alive with embossed figures, loroi-shaped beings crowded close together.

The figures moved.

Danced, writhed, intertwined and separated.

Split apart, then joined together.

Always moving.

She turned her eyes aside. The visuals were… obscene. Their smiles not quite ‘right,’ too sharp and leering. Their eyes ever searching, probing—

Fireblade paused, a realization striking her. She was a hundred mannal away from the nearest point of the Ring… how could she ‘see’ the figures with such detail?

She turned back just in time to see the Ring erupt.

A cacophonous blast of purple light surged forth from the empty center of the Ring, even as the structure itself pulsed once more. No, ‘throbbed,’ as if its great bulk were suddenly living flesh.

And the figures who had danced across its surface now stepped out onto the desert sands.

Spindly beings, they no longer resembled loroi. Limbs too long, ears too sharp, skin too pale…

And the chitinous claws that a few sported in place of one hand were a particular giveaway.

The dirtmoving machines that had been thrown from the Ring when it came alive were the fortunate ones. Their hatches spilled open amidst bursts of dirty-black smoke, terrified operators fleeing into the desert.

They didn’t get far.

Even as the few machines that had remained perched atop the Ring sank into it — no, were swallowed by it— the not-loroi surged forth after the fleeing operators. Great loping bounds carried them forth, narrow feet not deigning to sink into the sand beneath them.

The machine operators were cut down by the dozens, red blood arcing high into the air behind each claw-stroke… and confirming something whose strangeness had almost faded into the background of the entire bizarre scene.

These operators were also not loroi.

...Humans?

One of the few remaining survivors scrambled up the dune near Fireblade. Ripping the cloth headwrapping from his face, the alien stared at her with wide, bloodshot eyes. His open mouth gibbered at her, language unintelligible.

“[Flee, you fool! Call for the PD— oh, Throne preserve us!]” He turned to run down the hill that she had earlier climbed.

And froze, as a red-stained claw burst forth from his gut.

Crimson blood surged from the alien’s mouth as he stared down at his death-wound for a moment, before stilling forever.

The creature which dragged itself up onto the dune’s crest flicked its chitinous limb, the corpse sliding off to thud into the sand.

It then turned to Fireblade, head tilting to one side and then the other.

Fireblade shook herself. Dream or no — and she now truly hoped that this nightmare had not come from poor Beryl’s mind — her instincts as a teidar could tell when a fight was coming.

She balled her powers, hurling them forth to cast the strange new alien back down the slope.

It didn’t move.

A forked tongue darted forth, wetting purple-black lips as the monster took one step forwards.

Fireblade tried again.

Nothing.

Her powers, the strength of mind and soul that had sustained her through the grinding horror of Seren, had gone.

Well, that left her one option.

Her opponent slashed down with its chitin-claw, and Fireblade’s own arm rose to meet it with a careful blow to the side. Deflected the descending limb into the sand beside her.

She stepped into the attack, her left hand forming a fist that she drove into her attacker’s stomach.

The creature doubled over, retching as its too-wide mouth spat glistening black blood.

Fireblade brought her knee up under the being’s chin, snapping it back amidst a spray of shattered teeth. Her foe slumped lifelessly to the ground, unmoving.

She nodded sharply, satisfied. Toridas Academy taught its graduates never to rely upon their psychokinesis alone. And—

Her only warning was a high-pitched shriek behind her.

Then razor-sharp teeth sunk into the weak points at the base of her helmet, stinking breath choking her even as agony slammed into her neck—

///////

Fireblade jolted upright.

Arms snapped out ramrod-straight, shoving her up off the metal plating of the shuttle’s compartment even as her nose stung from where her convulsion had slammed it against the floor.

The shrieking noise from her nightmare persisted, however.

The proximity alarm.

///////

Author's NoteShow

This was a fun chapter! First, I got to write the ‘shuttle’ scenes from Outsider but largely from the loroi POV, having fun with some of the fan theories that have been thrown around as to what exactly the loroi in general (and Tempo in particular) are up to under all the ‘innocent’ story-swapping.

And then I get to write Fireblade ‘enjoying’ a nightmare rather akin to canon-Alex’s own. For anyone interested, the scene depicted there is canon to 40k (well, aside from there being one very confused teidar watching the disaster unfold) and marked the beginning of a major episode in Tallarn’s backstory. Of course, the significance of the event to this crossover tale will only be revealed a good while later...

[dragoongfa]

Tell all you want about Fireblade; few would go into hand to hand combat with a Daemon even in a dream. Those few being spacemarines, adepta sororitas or irate guardsmen from particularly militant planets.

And yes, the 'Ring' is a canonical portal into the warp built and left behind by the Eldar.

EDIT: The small disconnect between Alexander wondering about Fireblade's eye and the lack of scars is interesting. See in the Imperium scars and cybernetic implants are badges of honor and status; the Imperium does have the technology to repair such damage despite what most assume, the issue is that the people do not want to have them repaired. For one cybernetic implants are clear signs of favor by the Omnissiah/Emperor and the Mechanicus loves to make those as mechanical as possible. If they wanted they could easily make them seamless but their doctrine is to emphasize the superiority of the machine over the flesh so they don't readily do such procedures. Also every Magos Biologis worth of their rank could easily regrow biological organs and limbs but they won't do that for just anyone nor without a price and there are few people in high society who would prefer to be fully organic when they could showcase favor with the Mechanicus by getting cybernetic implants.
So for the average mindset of the Imperium it has been settled that those who have been injured to such a degree would either keep the scars or get a cybernetic implant, they would not go to the extreme and vain length to get a full organic treatment to be healed with no scars to show for their status.

[Cthulhu]

Just a small issue, there are perhaps too many recaps for my liking. They stick out and disrupt the story's flow.

Tell all you want about Fireblade; few would go into hand to hand combat with a Daemon even in a dream. Those few being spacemarines, adepta sororitas or irate guardsmen from particularly militant planets.

Melee combat against Daemonettes? There are worse ways to go.

Anyway, the RIng of Alganar was found on Tallarn, right? So Fireblade merely assumes that this is Mezan?

[dragoongfa]

Anyway, the RIng of Alganar was found on Tallarn, right? So Fireblade merely assumes that this is Mezan?

For the average Loroi 'sand' equals Mezan in probably the same way that 'sand' equals Sahara for Europeans.

[Urist]

Fireblade had chosen not to relay her bizarre dream to any of her fellow warriors, not even Tempo or Beryl. As unsettling as it had been, it was clearly the product of a tired mind constructing scenarios from whatever strange facts drifted to the fore of its attention. Another nightmare, as usual… but at least this one had not featured Seren’s scarred landscape or the faces of friends long dead.

And besides, between the sudden boarding of the shuttle by the Shells, then the ambush of the single hardtroop unfortunate enough to stick its sensor-stalk where it didn’t belong, followed by the seemingly-endless wait for the right moment to strike… Fireblade had been rather distracted.

The opportunity to crush Shells had a way of driving all lesser concerns from her mind.

Although Beryl’s unwise decision to arm their human prisoner had almost managed to mar Fireblade’s eager anticipation of the upcoming fight. But to countermand the listel’s decision would both upset Beryl and make the loroi appear disorganized in front of the alien, so she let the choice slide.

Thus it was that several thousand solon after waking from the nightmare she found herself in a much happier place. Sprinting forth through the corridors of a Shell warship, alternating between using her powers to boost her own speed in the low gravity and using them to paint the walls black with the insides of the miserable Shells unfortunate enough to fall within her range.

And the hated enemy were finally detectable to sanzai once more. Whatever artifice had shielded them from loroi detection, it had been disabled or otherwise rendered ineffective.

She had already swept through the Engineering spaces, leaving the critical machinery intact but wiping those compartments clean of Hierarchy life.

The central magazine was next in line, its small crew eliminated in passing.

Third had been the ship’s barracks, where most of the crew not needed for present duties had rested. They would ‘rest’ forever, now.

Her last objective was the ship’s bridge itself, which should be coming up soon. The winding paths through the warship hid the actual close proximity of each of the critical compartments to one another, each ensconced within the central hull of the Hierarchy warship. She could sense each of the other loroi in their boarding team, from Beryl leading her pet alien towards the magazine just one deck above to Tempo following in Fireblade’s own bloody wake.

More sparks of life danced ahead at the edges of her awareness, becoming clearer by the solon as she neared her target. The Shell command crew, just beginning to recover from the jump sickness that all inferior species were subject to.

She denied them the opportunity to regain their senses.

It was with a broad, fierce grin that Fireblade stepped into the command center, now the only living being remaining nearby.

And froze, her helmet craning back to stare around the bizarre sight that greeted her.

///////

“What exactly did Tempo say that she had found?” Alex asked between breaths.

Beryl stayed ever ahead of him, running fast and yet infuriatingly unbothered by her exertion as she responded “It is ‘complex.’ She wishes you to see directly what may be there and then say what you yourself observe.”

Great, right when he’d started getting used to loroi honesty the xenos flipped right back to opaque non-answers.

“Great. And what happened to ‘securing the magazine’?” He puffed, pushing off from a corner in a futile attempt to catch up with the listel.

“Talon and Reed are moving to take our places.”

Which noticeably didn’t explain why the aliens had suddenly changed their attack plan at literally the last second. “And how does that make things any—”

The rest of his protest died on his lips as he followed Beryl around one last corner.

A brief image flashed before his eyes, of a large space, brown-empty walls spattered with black blood.

But a brief image, as he slammed his eyes shut.

After all, the blood streaks painted across the walls had formed sigils.

Ones that hurt his eyes, all three of them: his normal human eyes ached, but his inner eye screamed.

“Fireblade reports that she— Attache Jardin?” Beryl uncharacteristically cut herself off mid-sentence. “Are you following?”

He stepped slowly into the room, one arm thrown across his eyes while the other groped blindly in front of him. His ‘non-standard’ training as a psyker — the reason why he still had two healthy eyes to begin with — had not allowed for the constant low-level use of one’s powers that allowed most sanctioned psykers to ‘see’ the world around them even with the two burned-empty sockets that fronted their face.

And he was not going to open his eyes again inside this cursed room, not unless He on Terra directly willed it. “Yes, I saw more than enough. This room is unclean.” He hunted through his acquired knowledge of Soia Trade for the right adjective. “Unhealthy, impure, tarnished, polluted!”

“Then you see the markings that Fireblade reported are present?” Beryl asked with infuriating calmness.

Throne Above, who couldn’t see those awful runes? They were— oh. “You can’t?”

“Only Fireblade can see anything. Well, and you as well. She finds this to be most alarming. But then you are certain that you indeed see something? Your eyes seem to be shut.”

It would have been difficult and awkward enough for him to attempt to explain the mechanics of a psyker’s interaction with the Immaterium to a xenos at all, let alone one who evidently had such a lack of connection to the Warp that she could not even perceive its vile intrusions into realspace.

“It is both painful and dangerous for me to look upon them. Maybe you could, uh, describe them?” That should be safe enough, and give him a way to learn what particular variety of foul ritual was being carried out in this chamber. Alex was far from being ‘trained’ in identifying the various works of the servants of Chaos, but he had been taught enough to survive as a psyker.

Barely.

“That seems to be most difficult. Here, let me take your hand and— oh.” Beryl paused. “Or let Fireblade take your hand and guide it, then.”

Indeed, the vice-grip that clamped around his left wrist certainly did not seem like it would have matched the small listel. His hand was roughly dragged up to the surface of a nearby wall, and then moved along in a complex pattern.

Which… didn’t mean anything to him. Fortunately for the state of his soul, perhaps.

What was surprising was that while his hand felt uncomfortably hot with close exposure to such diabolical scrawlings, it did not burn with agony as he expected it would.

“That shape, I don’t recognize. How, uh, many more are there?”

“There seem to be a great many. Do you know the purpose of these… signs?”

“Nothing good, I can guarantee that. But beyond that—”

“What,” croaked a rough voice at his shoulder, “does it mean!?” Wait, who was that—

His eyes snapped open in shock, meeting Fireblade’s glare from only inches away.

…

His eyes were open!

The glowering — and suddenly talking, apparently — teidar faded out of focus as the sharp-lined sigils scrawled across the wall behind her leapt to the forefront.

But they didn’t burn.

He blinked. Then again. No change — the very etchings of Chaos had ceased to intrude upon his mind and senses, instead sitting placidly along the wall as if they were merely a child’s scrawlings! Well, a rather determined child; some of the markings went all the way up and onto the ceiling! Why, just above one corner there was—

He took a step back, eyes widening in yet-further horror.

In red — not Hierarchy blood, but human; it could be no other — two perfect circles had been inscribed, one directly above the other. Circumscribed within them was an eight-pointed star.

He did not know much about heretical ceremonies, but he knew a summoning circle when he saw one. Praise the Throne that the loroi’s attack must have interrupted it, or something; else who knew what would have emerged from that vile drawing?

As if she could not see the otherworldly signs surrounding her — which appeared increasingly certain — Tempo stood by a control console of xenos make, glancing up at Alex occasionally.

Fireblade’s glare faded to more of a frown, and she turned to glance in the same direction that his eyes were locked upon. Her rotation pulled his hand out of her grip.

Immediately, the agony returned.

Like a quiet room suddenly flooded with cacophonous noise, the Chaotic drawings burned in upon him once more. Burning symbols charred themselves into his eyes; a thousand tongues whispered foul temptations into his very soul.

He flinched back with a whimper, arms rising to cover his face in a reflexive gesture.

A second later, and the armored-glove hand of Fireblade again grasped his. Just like—

Just like earlier, immediately before the vile etchings had somehow ceased to trouble his mind.

He risked a glimpse out of one slitted eye.

No pain. The sigils were calm once more.

Now he opened both eyes, meeting Fireblade’s gaze once more. But where earlier there had been accusation, now only a searching look came from the teidar. Perhaps even a hint of outright confusion, certainly a match for his own bewilderment.

“What in His Holy Name is going on, here?” he wondered aloud.

To one side, Beryl glanced back and forth between the two of them, a deepening frown on her own face as well. “It seems that this is indeed most perplexing. Perhaps if you—”

Both loroi suddenly whirled towards the entrance to the compartment.

Alex’s shoulder twisted painfully as his own tight grip on Fireblade’s hand wrenched him after her, but he was not letting go of the xenos again. Not until he understood what was happening.

Less than a second later, his concerns were shoved aside as a clanking flood of Hierarchy hardtroops boiled into the compartment.

///////

Fireblade hurled herself forwards into the teeth of the Shell attack, yanking her hand from the human’s fearful grasp. The open floor of the command compartment gave little cover against weapons-fire… meaning that Beryl was stuck in the middle of the open.

And the human too, she supposed.

Still, the most worrying thing about it all was that she had only sensed the Shells once she could actually hear them as they neared the corner.

They had somehow turned invisible to sanzai... again.

Three hardtroops in the front of the column slammed back against the rank behind them, stalling the assault for a few solon just inside the doorway.

A blaster bolt from behind her took the head off a hardtroop attempting to crawl over its comrades’ shattered bodies.

{Seek cover.} Fireblade sent forcefully. {I will hold them in the doorway.} More out of hope than any expectation of success, she briefly focused her powers to tug at the bulkhead itself to either side of the narrow entrance.

Metal creaked and groaned, but did not move. A pity, but it had been a bit much to hope for that she could have blocked the enemy’s access to this chamber that easily.

Of course, there were other building materials at hand…

Two more hardtroops were scooped up and thrown back into the growing pile near the entrance. More and more Shells stormed forwards every solon, but they were finding it increasingly difficult to clamber past their fallen.

Another died to her powers, thorax crumpling under a telekinetic blow.

And a second crumpled as its feet splayed out from underneath it.

And—

And—

And this was too easy.

Most of the hardtroops piled haphazardly in front of her carried — well, ‘were installed with’ — blaster cannons. Those weapons, near-impossible for even a teidar to block once they lined up on a target, sat quiet. Unused.

The Shells had attacked with their usual complete disregard for their own worthless lives, yes… but they were rushing onwards with claws extended.

Reaching for her.

Clattering what were doubtlessly war-cries.

But not shooting.

What were they thinking?

Whatever it was, it hadn’t worked. The mindless creatures pressed their attack even as bodies piled high in the entrance, yes, but that only made Fireblade’s job easier. It would have taken far longer to sweep the ship and hunt them down normally; they did her a favor by coming to her.

It was brave of them, but it was not war.

It was slaughter.

Fireblade stepped forwards, closer to the pile of bodies that was being shoved into the bridge by the sheer weight of the oncoming hardtroops behind them.

It was becoming difficult to see where one hardtroop ended and another began, really. They were mashing their fallen together, armored carapaces seeming to blend together in a mess punctuated by sensor-stalks and twitching arms.

Which also blocked her vision of what remaining Shells may be behind the blockage, shoving ever forwards.

Standing on tiptoe to see better, she dented one head that she saw through the forest of dead limbs. And behind it—

A searing heat bit at her left ankle, and Fireblade leapt aside.

She jerked her head down to see an armored claw that had reached out from the pile of bodies shatter under a laser blast, its half-slagged serrated edges snapping shut right where her foot had been a moment before.

She glanced back, to see the human less than ten mannal behind her, pistol held in a hand which only then began to shake. The alien’s eyes bounced from Fireblade to the destroyed Shell, and back. After a moment, he lowered the muzzle.

{Relay my thanks.} Fireblade sent, turning her attention back to the Shells. No more motion came from behind the pile of corpses, the macabre assembly cooling in the ship’s thin air.

While Tempo spoke behind her, Fireblade took a step closer once more — this time careful to crumple aside any Shell claws that sat near her path. It was difficult to estimate their threat, now that she could only with difficulty tell the dead from the merely neutralized. {I think that was the last of them. But what were they thinking?}

{I think...} Beryl said, her footsteps drawing in next to Fireblade, {… I think they are singing.}

{...What?} Fireblade looked down.

Indeed, the twitching of half-crumpled arms and the tapping of deformed hardtroop claw-feet against the floorboards had settled into a… rhythmic pattern. The few heads which she could see clacked their mandibles together to the same beat.

This was bizarre.

Fireblade turned to look at the human, to see if he looked as confused as she felt, and froze.

The alien glyphs and symbols which had covered the floor, walls and ceiling were gone. But underfoot—

Black blood pooled from the stilling bodies, spreading across the floor.

No, not ‘pooled.’

Wrote.

The black, viscous liquid poured into new shapes of its own, as if painted by an invisible brush.

Attache Jardin kicked and stomped at it, his face frantic. But the blood continued to flow around or even over his boots, in spite of his increasingly-hysterical efforts.

{I’ve seen enough.} Fireblade made her decision. From the wall-writing to the human Attache intermittently clutching at his eyes and now this. Whatever was going on, she saw no reason to remain on the bridge any longer. Tempo had had her time to work her mizol tricks with the ship’s systems. {We are leaving.}

She pointed to the maintenance tunnel access hatch to one side of the now-clogged doorway. It was far too small for hardtroops, being barely sized to fit the ‘normal’-sized Hierarchy forms. Which meant that there would be enough room for the loroi, even if the handholds would be difficult to climb with only four limbs.

Beryl nodded at that, wide eyes lingering on the chittering mass of Shells for a moment before she turned and led Jardin away, even as he babbled “We must leave, now! They come!”

The alien seemed to have agreed with her decision. Good. Fireblade took up the rear, keeping one eye on the slowly-stilling enemy until she entered the tunnel and they left her sight.

Whatever was going on here, she had a bad feeling that it would continue.

///////

Alex had emerged from the vertical tunnel with its strange wide-spaced ladder and was most of the way along the corridor one floor below when he felt them arrive.

Not Beryl, who had preceded him and now jogged a few feet behind him.

Not Tempo, who was the third down the ladder and waited near its base.

Nor Fireblade, whose boots only now clanged on the metal floor grating.

Them.

Two vile signatures emerged into the Materium, cutting their way through a Veil thinned by the blood spilled in the prepared chamber right over his head.

They hungered.

They hunted.

They saw him.

Alex turned, one hand grasping at the wall near the corner-end of the corridor as he threw a glance back at the two loroi behind him. Xenos or not, they had saved his life from those much worse xenos above. And they clearly knew nothing of the Warp or its dangers, let alone the sort of creatures which had now been loosed into the same ship as them.

He owed them.

And their weapons seemed strong enough; if they only had time to regroup, then perhaps—

He crushed the thought, even as the pounding of clawed feet echoed down from above. ‘Hope was the first step on the path to Despair,’ as the Ecclesiarchy taught. It was no substitute for Faith.

“Emperor Protect Me.” he breathed. Was he really going to do this?

He drew on the memory of his favored childhood hero, the man whose exploits had been made into uncountable novels, pict-videos, vox-plays and every other form of media allowed for civilian consumption (and a few that weren’t). What would that rock-jawed Hero of the Imperium do, in circumstances like these?

Alex lunged for the door, pushing the raw psychic hunger radiating down from above to the back of his mind. Pulled himself out into the corridor beyond.

Shouted over Beryl’s surprised exclamation, calling “Do not await me! I will distract them while you regroup!” He tried not to think of how high-pitched his voice sounded in his ears just now.

And then he was around the corner. Sprinting, now, turning from one xenos corridor to another at random, simply attempting to put as much distance between himself and the two recently-arrived daemons as possible.

Even with his inner eye firmly shut, he could feel their bemused laughter as they languidly stalked after him, one deck above.

After all, he was trapped on this vessel and had nowhere to run, in the end.

The hunt was on.

///////

{Now what?} Fireblade asked irritably, turning just in time to see Attache Jardin sprint out of sight, shouting some more nonsense as he fled.

{I am not certain.} Beryl replied, confusion thick in her sanzai. {Do you know what ‘them’ he might be referring to? I cannot imagine that he refers to any remaining Shells that may still be aboard this vessel.}

Fireblade shook her head, running past Beryl and beating the listel to the door at the end of the corridor by a solon. {I have no idea.} Her fellow loroi were the only minds she could detect aboard the vessel, but then again the Shells which had attacked earlier had been invisible to her mental senses. {But whatever he meant, I can’t see him from here; he’s truly run off.}

She closed her eyes, counting to four. Hammered one fist against the doorframe.

Her frustration with the sheer chaos of the day’s events remained, albeit lessened slightly. But now that the high of combat — the joy of gleefully hurling her powers against the hated Shells — was draining away, she found that her tolerance for the alien’s antics had also run dry.

Tempo’s sanzai came levelly, despite the situation {The others report no Hierarchy counterattack; it seems that the enemy concentrated solely on the command center. But we cannot assume that the rest of the ship is indeed safe. Fireblade, would you—}

She didn’t need to finish her thought; Fireblade was already running down the corridor where she thought the human may have fled to. {I go.} After all, if the alien got himself killed by the Shells, then Fireblade would not get her dearly-wanted answers as to what in the Azerein’s good name was going on.

And, in an admission which she carefully shielded from leaking into her sanzai, the alien had saved her from having her foot amputated by that sanzai-invisible Hardtroop. Frustrating or not, she did owe the human something more than to meet his death at a Shell’s claws.

///////

Really, he should have been happy that he had lasted as long as he had.

After all, he still had no idea how he had survived the psychic encounter with the daemon during the voidship battle earlier. By all rights, he should have met his doom then and there.

Instead, it looked like death would catch him here, in this central magazine.

His efforts to pull the colossal door closed after himself had met with no success, and as the giggling warp signatures of the two daemons drew closer he had abandoned it to flee inside.

Clambered behind some of the xenos torpedoes stacked high within, and suppressed his own mind-signature as best as he could. He would be as near-invisible to Immaterium-based senses as possible. He had also found a canister of some sort of oil — presumably used by the enginseer-analogues of the Hierarchy to anoint their machines — and poured it over his void-rated House uniform.

A desecration of the clothing which brought him such pride, but it should hide his scent from the daemons as well.

Which should buy him perhaps as much as a few minutes, before the end.

An end which he was determined would not come at the hands of the vile entities stalking him. The loroi energy pistol was held tightly in his shaking grip, muzzle tucked underneath his chin.

Let the daemons waste their time searching through the magazine for him. They would not find a living toy to tortu—

A metaphysical chill settled over the room.

They had arrived.

///////

In hindsight, she probably should have brought one of the other warriors with her. But they were needed at each other’s sides, as spread out as the tiny boarding team was within the questionably-secure Shell warship. Even the Shells with their blunt mass-assaults could overwhelm a single loroi without too much difficulty.

That said, the inability to vocally call out after the fleeing alien was hampering her pursuit. Her earlier shock had ripped spoken words from her mouth, true, but she would not repeat that embarrassment.

Fireblade arrived at another corridor junction. For the first hundred solon, she had followed the sounds of the human’s decidedly non-stealthy footfalls. But those had fallen silent: had he halted, collapsed, or hidden himself away somewhere?

Whatever strange motivations had led the human to flee, Fireblade could not guess at.

Grinding her teeth, she glanced between the three available routes ahead of her. Which one had the wayward Jardin chosen? There was no evidence available to guide her. No distant sounds in the alien warship, no boot-prints marring the patchwork of flash-dried Shell blood that stained the floor.

Nothing.

Well, as her Academy instructors had oft taught their young pupils, ‘sometimes an instinctive decision can be better than no decision.’

She closed her eyes, picking between the three at random.

Which turned out to be the way to the Shell warship’s torpedo magazine. That would be the logical place for the human to go, retracing his steps to the compartment that Beryl had first led him to.

That realization must have made it to Fireblade’s subconscious, and in turn must have been why she had ‘randomly’ chosen this route. That seemed plausible, and after the day she had had it was reassuring to see that the universe was properly making sense once more.

Stalking through the wide-open armored door of the magazine, she cast her eyes around. With the strange alien still invisible to sanzai, her tools for searching were limited. No sound save for the faint rumble of life-support machinery underfoot pierced the silence of the chamber.

Tall stacks of Shell torpedoes split the vast compartment into many narrow corridors, but still it should take her only a few hundred solon to properly search. And that was even assuming that Jardin had truly attempted to hide himself away for whatever reason.

///////

“—out to play! This place is so boring and quiet; come join with us and we will enliven it!” the lilting voice seared at his ears.

He grit his teeth, hardening his mind as best he could against the daemon’s honeyed words.

Their clawed feet clacked against the floor as they stalked to and fro.

Slowly drifting ever closer to where he hid, pressed between two xenos torpedoes.

One eye had just enough room to see out through a gap in the metal, watching for when they would draw near.

It would not be long, now.

A shadow swept in front of him, and his finger tightened on the trigger of the pistol pressed under his chin.

But did not tighten entirely.

Gray armor and a shock of red hair — what was she doing here!?

Why had she followed him, instead of regrouping with the other xenos soldiers as he had instructed?

Worse still, she might draw the daemons to him! How she had evaded their notice thus far was an utter mystery, but it could not last long.

But how would he warn her away, if any noise he made would surely attract his Warp-spawned hunters?

Mustering what powers he had and focusing on the memories of his attempts (mostly non-successful) to mind-speak to the Eldar during his months-long stay aboard Prince Yndrael’s vessel.

{Get away from here! You will be seen!}

///////

Fireblade froze mid-step as the message lanced into her mind. The thoughts were clear enough, but it was like no sanzai she had ever received. It was entirely devoid of directional or identity tags: not coming ‘from’ anywhere or anyone.

She paused, head turning one way and then another in the silent magazine. Saw nothing, heard nothing.

Although sorely tempted to call out vocally, she suppressed that urge. It was embarrassing enough to her honor as a teidar that the shock of the ghost-runes in the command center earlier had caused her to blurt her thoughts aloud; she would not repeat that lapse in caste traditions.

Which left her few options.

{Where are you? Why do you hide?} she broadcast, to anyone close by who would receive.

Or ‘could’ receive.

There was only one person who could have possibly sent that pseudo-sanzai, of course. And while she had seen earlier that the human had some abilities of the mind — having pulled Beryl’s name and even how to speak vocal Trade out of a touch-conversation — this was unexpected. Had he deceptively chosen not to speak in honest sanzai this entire time?

{Pallan?} came a confused sending from the entrance to the compartment. It seemed that pideir Reed had arrived. {Parat Tempo ordered me here, to secure this room. Who are you sending to?}

Before Fireblade could respond, the same pseudo-sanzai came again {Go away! You will lead them here!}

{Did you receive that?} Fireblade sent directly to the pideir, brows furrowing.

{… I sense nothing, pallan. Have you received a head injury in the fighting earlier?} the younger warrior’s honest concern only fanned the flames of Fireblade’s building temper.

{Just take position outside of the armory and ensure that the human does not flee past you; I will search him out.}

The teidar once more scanned her surroundings. Jardin’s strange sendings were impossible to trace back to their origin point, but by his clear agitation she must be close-by.

A control console, stacks of crates higher than she was, torpedoes sitting ready in their racks...

{Go away!}

There!

And what was he holdi—?

Fireblade struck in an instant, her telekinesis reaching out ahead of her lunging hand.

Knocking the laser-pistol that Beryl had so foolishly loaned to him from his hand. Probably not breaking anything in his fingers, but the alien nevertheless yelped at the blow.

And then her grip fastened around the front of his ridiculous — and oil-stained? — robes, yanking him out from his hiding place between two torpedoes.

Fireblade glared down at the human, whose eyes had shot wide open in entirely-appropriate terror staring back at her from only a palm’s width away. Now with a target, she sent with as much force as she could muster {Answers. NOW.}

///////

It had all gone wrong.

The red-haired xenos’s eyes burned into his, heedless of the approaching clatter of clawed feet.

“We have to go!” Alex hissed, even knowing it was no use.

The foolish xenos ignored his warnings, instead dragging him with her back towards the entrance to the compartment.

His only consolation was that he had managed to grab the alien energy pistol with his left hand after it had been knocked out of his right.

But that only settled a weight even deeper in his stomach, as heavy footsteps approached.

And laughter.

“Who are you speaking to, little prey? Another friend?”

///////

{Parat, I have found the alien. He hid himself away in the magazine.} Fireblade sent, pulling the person in question behind her. Well, more like 'dragging'; she was tempted to use her powers to force him along. But with her… ‘imprecise’ control over her own telekinesis, that would risk damaging the fool further.

{Most strange. Do you know why he fled there?}

{No. But—} Fireblade’s thoughts died mid-formation; how did she explain the human’s sudden display of sanzai so focused that even Reed did not detect it at such close range? She neared the end of one narrow corridor through the stacked munitions, turning to shoot a glare at the duplicitous human over her shoulder. {But I think that he has been—}

And bumped into something.

She whirled in place, ready to strike down whatever-it-was. Another of the sanzai-invisible Shells?

No, worse.

It was one of the creatures from her nightmare!

Smooth light-purple skin, only partly clad in mismatched metal armor.

An arm that ended in a jagged, chitinous claw.

A face whose pitch-black eyes blinked as if in matching surprise... and a too-wide smile that turned to a snarl as the creature turned its gaze on Fireblade.

She pulsed her powers without conscious thought.

Unlike in her dream, this time it worked: this new alien went flying back to slam against the bulkhead with a resounding crash.

Yet the blow that would have shattered a hardtroop only seemed to stun this being.

It flung itself up from the floor, gangling limbs unwinding in a convulsive movement.

Fireblade threw it into the ground this time. Glanced aside, judging the weight of one of the Shell torpedoes racked on a shelf.

After all, whatever this new creature was, it seemed to require a bit more inventiveness to deal with properly.

With as much precision as she could bring to bear, she slammed the skull of her target into the heavy armament rack twice in quick succession.

That should stun it for long enough.

If the creature heard the grating shriek of metal-on-metal as the torpedo slid from the storage rack, it didn’t react.

Tens of thousands of pilo slammed home with finality.

Finality and a crunch.

Yet the shrieking sound remained.

Coming from behind her.

As did a pistol shot.

{Pallan! Do you require assistance?} Reed sent with alarm.

Fireblade spun around just in time to see Jardin continuing his terrified scream as he fired another bolt.

At a second nightmare-creature coming from behind them both, nimbly dancing ever-closer between the shots with a laughing sneer on its elegant lips.

One razor-sharp claw sliced towards him.

With both muscle and mind, Fireblade threw the human aside.

The blow that should have decapitated him instead ‘only’ bit deep into his neck, a spray of deep-red blood spattering Fireblade’s visor.

A searing-hot wave of agony raced through her own neck; in sympathy, perhaps?

And then the creature was upon her.

The outstretched claw scratched at Fireblade’s chest armor as she almost leaned out of the blow entirely.

Fireblade rolled with the impact as she had been trained, giving her target’s velocity a telekinetic boost as the enemy’s inertia pulled it past her.

It soared down the corridor, limbs spreading wide… until both clawed feet slammed into the fallen torpedo.

Linear velocity suddenly became rotational, and the creature whirled around its own axis four times before smashing to the ground.

Fireblade made to roll the torpedo onto this second being as well, and then paused.

Focused on it.

And confirmed her suspicions.

Was every shredded alien on this ship utterly invisible to sanzai, now!?

A wet gurgle from behind her, Alex’s hand slipping from her grip as he collapsed to the floor.

Blood poured from his neck, from what could only be a severed artery.

Fireblade reached for the trauma kit at her waist, then froze.

Eyes snapped to the latest alien — was it still a threat?

Its head lolled bonelessly, rotated more than a quarter-turn from upright and resting now below its shoulder.

Yet the leering smile only grew, and one claw — still glistening with red human blood — rose shakily to its cracked lips.

A long, forked tongue emerged.

Licked the blood from its limb, even as the being’s eyes bored tauntingly into Fireblade’s.

She blinked away the disturbing sight, just as Reed sprinted over. The pideir did not so much as glance at the broken-necked alien but instead vaulted the torpedo, boots clanging against metal less than a finger’s-width away from the first fallen alien. Shouldered her blaster carbine, scanning the corridor ahead.

Her eyes darted from Fireblade’s blood-speckled visor to the bleeding-out human. Widened in shock. {What happened?}

Where could she even start? {See to his injury. A severed artery – seal it. Hopefully his species has two such in the neck, like us.} In the moment, she couldn’t remember that particular detail from the earlier medical scans.

While the younger warrior saw to the wounded human, Fireblade stepped over to the claw-creature. Its eyes tracked her approach, but it made no other movements. Even the red-flecked claw had slumped to the ground, motionless.

Indeed, every passing solon the alien seemed to… ‘soften:’ the sharp edges on claw and armor dulling, skin paling, eyes slowly closing.

Still, Fireblade stayed outside of lunging distance for now, holding her powers ready at a solon's notice.

What are you? She wondered.

There was one way to find out. {Parat Tempo, I have been attacked by two unknown aliens in the magazine. One is dead, the other wounded. Are you ready to carry out an interrogation?} After all, Jardin had also had no detectable mind-signature before they had attempted physical contact, and yet Fireblade and her two caste-sisters had been able to pull at least some information from his mind.

Although neither Razorthorn nor Mothwing had reported as much success in that search as Fireblade, come to think of it.

{New aliens?} The puzzlement in Tempo’s sanzai was clear. {I am on my way. Forty solon.}

Although she might not have forty solon. With every beat that Fireblade stared down at her crippled foe, the creature became harder to see.

Indeed, its lower limbs were growing outright translucent — Fireblade could see the grille-pattern of the Shell floor plates right through the being’s leg!

Then she’d do this herself.

The creature's body shifted as Fireblade’s powers pinned it to the floor.

A safety precaution to hold it in place, as Fireblade removed the finger-tip of one armored gauntlet and reached in to place one exposed pad of skin against the alien’s tilted forehead.

Her enemy shuddered at the approach, eyes widening. Anger? Hatred?

Fear?

Perhaps instead ‘defiance’, for only a few solon after Fireblade’s finger made contact did the being’s eyes roll up inside its head. The barest hint of a mind-signature that she had felt under her finger tore itself apart.

Fortunate timing on its part, or some deliberate method of suicide?

Body now fully limp, the alien slumped over.

Fading from her view by the solon.

This was most strange. Keeping her eye on the fallen foe, Fireblade took a few steps backwards towards where Reed knelt at Jardin’s side. With each booted clang against metal, the creature in her sight became more… ‘whole.’ Less faded. And yet when she paused in her movement, it returned to its slow decay towards invisibility.

Stepping to the side — no closer or further from Jardin — also saw the dead alien continue its fading.

{The auto-stent at least thinks it has found both ends of the severed vessel.} Reed reported, as she heaved Jardin’s lower feet up higher, bracing them on the torpedo. {He’s unconscious and has lost a lot of blood, but I think he may live.} She shrugged, glancing up at Fireblade. {I’m not a doranzer, though.}

{Good.} He may have evaded her earlier demand — by virtue of having his neck nearly severed — but eventually he would tell her what was going on here.

She had to know.

{What happened, anyways?} the pideir asked. {Did he... attack you?}

Fireblade frowned, her eyes flicking back and forth between the questioning warrior and the steadily-fading clawed alien still crushed underneath the torpedo… well within a hand’s reach.

Ah.

Of course. This day had been one irritating strangeness after another; what was yet one more after all?

{Please confirm a suspicion of mine: can you see ‘anything’ pinned underneath that torpedo?} Fireblade asked, an ache developing in her temples which had nothing to do with her earlier deployment of her powers.

{...no?} Reed responded, now with her own frown as she turned and crouched low to peer underneath the Shell munition. Her helmet almost touched the creature, only a finger's-width away. {I thought it was wedged in its cradle, but now that I look at it, it’s sitting on… ‘nothing.’}

At least that was some sort of proof that Fireblade wasn’t losing her mind.

She kicked the fallen enemy whose mostly-translucent corpse suspended the torpedo. To reassure herself of its presence, of course; certainly not to vent her anger.

It didn’t work, anyways.

As if on cue, the creature at her feet finally faded from view entirely.

The torpedo crashed down the last two hand-spans, Reed flinching back at the sudden — to her — movement.

{Fireblade?} came Tempo’s sending, from the entrance to the magazine. {Where are these new aliens you mentioned?}

Fireblade only leaned back, resting the back of her head against the metal of the Shell ordnance-rack behind her as she stared at the empty space where her fallen foe had been only moments before.

Where to start!?

[dragoongfa]

Hard Troops acting like Khornate cultists and Daemonettes being summoned immediately after?

Seems like Chaos Undivided has come out to play. Either the Shells have been coerced or they have decided to damn the whole Hierarchy after a mere 25 years of war, proving once again how insidious and dangerous Xenos are.

On an other note, Fireblade goes on the forefront as best girl for the fic.

EDIT: Forgot to ask, is the 'Hero of the Imperium' Commissar Ciaphas Cain?

If so, someone should tell him that Cain would not have issue being 'very friendly' with the Loroi, especially if he realized their 'Anti Chaotic' potential.

Before anyone says otherwise the Imperium has several 'canonical' Heroes, Sly Marbo and Commissar Yarick both being considered as such.

[Urist]

EDIT: Forgot to ask, is the 'Hero of the Imperium' Commissar Ciaphas Cain?

Yup! Hence why Alex goes to think "What would Ciaphas Cain (Hero of the Imperium!) Do? Oh, right: advance rapidly in an unexpected direction, leaving his allies behind, and thus be steered by the Emperor into a sudden victory!"

And it /did/ kinda work out... mostly thanks to Fireblade, but still.

[Cthulhu]

And it /did/ kinda work out... mostly thanks to Fireblade, but still.

Well, Cain had his most loyal adjutant, Ferik Jurgen, who also happened to be a psi-blank. Fireblade would be even better, since she has a built-in melta. And better body odor.

Anyway, I gotta ask, was this writing style intentional? It feels like you're superimposing your own (fanfic) comic pages on top of the original ones. It's not even a continuous replacement, you seem to switch out just a few pages at a time, and skip the ones in between, relying on the reader's ability to remember the plot by themselves. Granted, it enables you to focus on the action sequences, but the jumps between the scenes are quite jarring.

[Urist]

Yup, it was intentional. An experiment to see if I can 'parallel' canon for a few chapters, only fully writing those scenes that differ noticeably from their canon equivalent. On the plus side for you, that ended with the first part of this last chapter: the rest of the story is more 'normal' writing in style, with fewer jumps between scenes.

[Cthulhu]

Yup, it was intentional. An experiment to see if I can 'parallel' canon for a few chapters, only fully writing those scenes that differ noticeably from their canon equivalent.

Well, it wasn't that bad, my only issue was that the jumps weren't smoothed over. You simply did a hyper-jump from one sequence to another. It felt kind of rushed.

On the plus side for you,

On the plus side, this was a good opportunity to reread the last two chapters.
On the minus side, I inevitably ran into the TBC screen, and it made me sad.

... that ended with the first part of this last chapter: the rest of the story is more 'normal' writing in style, with fewer jumps between scenes.

Yes, please.

-edit-

SpoilerShow

By the way, will you reference any stuff from the Patreon-only chapters?

[Urist]

-edit-

SpoilerShow

By the way, will you reference any stuff from the Patreon-only chapters?

SpoilerShow

For reasons of strong corporate dislike, I don't use Patreon and don't plan to change that, so I don't have access to those pages.

[Snoofman]

Finally caught up! I must admit I don't know much about Warhammer 40K lore as I was never drawn to it, so my knowledge is noob at best. But I like that Fireblade entered Alex's dreams for a change. And the monsters she fought on the cruiser certainly adds to the mystery. Now that the monsters have disappeared, I wonder how she is going to explain her actions to her comrades considering Alex has been severely wounded.

[Cthulhu]

SpoilerShow

For reasons of strong corporate dislike, I don't use Patreon and don't plan to change that, so I don't have access to those pages.

SpoilerShow

Fair point, and I have to agree.

SpoilerShow

Especially since Patreon didn't seem to have any positive effect on this comic's update frequency.

SpoilerShow

Maybe even the opposite?

[Urist]

At this point, Alex’s half-dreaming mind knew to read the red-golden glow in his peripheral senses as a harbinger of wakefulness. It was not the Emperor’s holy aura, but… another’s. The first small part of his conscious mind to properly awaken tried to raise the alarm at how wrong this all was, but it was swiftly overruled by the more sedate depths of his psyche. They were… ‘comfortable’ with this glow-presence.

And so he did not bolt upright, did not so much as open his eyes. Not even when the memory of the daemon’s claw at — in — his neck came flooding back.

“I’m ali—?” he began to murmur, before the sharp pain in his throat abruptly halted any thoughts of speaking.

{You are awake.} A thought intruded into his mind, slipping past his half-slumbering defenses as if they weren’t there.

He recognized that mind. Its… ‘pattern.’

Alex’s eyes snapped open.

His head wouldn’t move.

{The doranzer placed your head in a suspension device, so that your neck may heal uninterrupted.} Fireblade projected into his mind, standing at the side of whatever bed he found himself in. Just barely visible, in the corner of his eye.

She, of all people — of all xenos — was speaking directly into his mind!

{How can I hear you?} he focused on the thoughts, pushing them to the fore of his mind as the Eldar had tried to teach him to do all those months ago.

But unlike then, it seemed that now he succeeded.

{How can I receive you?} the teidar echoed. Her eyes narrowed. {You deliberately concealed your sanzai ability, earlier.}

{I did not have this power earlier!} Alex retorted. He had never properly been trained in mental communication as a psyker, only gleaning what knowledge Yndrael’s condescending cohort ‘gifted’ to him.

Which did lead to the interesting question of just when this newfound ability had first surfaced. He took a breath to calm himself — though a stinging pain in his throat sapped much of that benefit — and continued {Look. When did you first… ‘hear’ me?}

{In the magazine, shortly before those two aliens attacked us.} Obviously-irritated or not, Fireblade answered him immediately. {You sent to me, attempting to warn me away.}

That… was a problem. He had tried to mentally speak to Fireblade’s unwanted presence at first, yes, but after that hadn’t appeared to work he had mostly had only repeated to himself — or so he had thought! — his fervent wish to delay his inevitable discovery and death for another few minutes.

Although it appeared that that ‘inevitability’ had been misjudged. {You fought off the daemons?} the awe-tinged thought slipped out of his mind before he could stop it. Hopefully it was not quite heretical to admire — no, fear — the fighting ability of a xenos? Surely that was but one more reason to deal with them as little as possible.

Fireblade’s face did not shift, but he ‘felt’ the surprise straight from her mind. {Those were ‘daemons’?}

He nodded.

{I killed them.} Her ‘tone’ — for lack of a better word — was matter-of-fact. But then shifted into wary confusion. {Which is what you will tell me about next. Why did they disappear?}

Alex blinked. {They’re daemons.} he blurted out.

Which was clearly not an explanation, as far as this loroi was concerned.

{What I mean is, once their projection into the Materium is disrupted enough by injury or psykery, a daemon is pulled back into the Immaterium.} He had heard of other ways to banish a daemon, but overwhelming firepower was the most reliable tool available to Humanity.

{And this ‘Immaterium’ is their… homeworld?} Fireblade asked.

Well, she wasn’t entirely wrong. {It is the Warp. The Sea of Souls.} No sign of recognition. Unsurprising, given that the loroi appeared to be blanks, unconnected to the Warp. And yet Fireblade was speaking to his mind in what could only be a demonstration of psychic ability. {It is the psychic realm which blankets the known universe, linking all beings with souls together.}

Much to the misfortune of many of those peoples, especially Humanity.

{And these daemons have made their home in this ‘Warp’?} Fireblade rephrased her question.

{They are of the Warp. They are what it is made out of.} That was as much of it as he had ever wished to know; there was a reason that virtually all Imperial scholars who had delved deep into the metaphysical knowledge of the Immaterium ended up meeting their ends at the hands of the Inquisition.

And for most of them, death had been a mercy at that point.

Fireblade did not answer immediately. After several seconds, she only said {This Warp must be an unpleasant place.}

The matter-of-fact observation of such a great understatement tore a laugh from his lips.

At which point his partly-healed throat lodged its shrill complaint.

Grimacing against the pain, he made to massage his neck.

Which was when he discovered that — once again — his hands were secured at his sides, able to move only a few inches.

Great.

And while his limited range of motion did tell him that a soft blanket had been draped over him, it also confirmed that his robes had also been removed once more.

He held his mouth shut, but inside the privacy of his own mind he swore darkly to himself.

For Throne’s sake! He was spending more time naked on his back than a Dasra City whore.

Fireblade blinked at him, eyes widening slightly.

She grunted her own laugh, a rough sound as if rarely-practiced.

{What?} he asked sullenly, carefully checking that he had not ‘sent’ his earlier dark thought.

{What is ‘Dasra City’?} the teidar asked.

{Major trade port on Tallarn.} he answered before thinking. Then his blood ran cold. {You heard that?}

{You sent it.} Now her eyes narrowed as they peered down at him, a calculating look entering her gaze. {You truly are untrained in controlling your sending.}

So much for the ‘privacy of his own mind.’

Fireblade nodded. {Yes, exactly.}

He clenched his jaw, teeth creaking with the strain. {I see.}

Truly an intolerable situation. He was surrounded by xenos, utterly unshielded from them at both the physical and mental levels. Stiffly, he asked {I must request that my clothing be returned to me.} At least he could reclaim some semblance of the dignity due to him, even if mostly symbolic.

After all, the importance of ‘symbols’ was well-known to any Imperial citizen.

Fireblade’s eyes darted aside for a moment. {They are folded at the other end of the room. I shall retrieve them.}

It would have been even better if she could just leave the room. Of all the xenos here, this one had seen too much of him already.

{On that we agree. But I cannot.} she sent irritably, stepping out of his limited view.

Ah. Of course. {I am under guard once more.} he confirmed, mostly to himself. Not that the loroi had ever left him without at least one of their soldiers nearby ever since he had awoken aboard their vessel, but at least he had been able to move by himself for a while.

{We are both under guard.} Fireblade sent back. {You for these newly-revealed powers that might have something to do with the Shells’ recent advances, and I for being exposed to you.}

With a rustle of cloth, she ripped the blanket from him. His House garments rattled as they were tossed onto the bed beside him.

The familiar scent of his House uniform’s elegantly-trimmed lacquered grox leather — cleaned of oil, evidently — failed utterly to reassure him, under the circumstances. It seemed that he and Fireblade had each been ‘exposed’ to each other now. Although thank the Throne that the red-haired xenos still had her own clothes on.

She did not respond to his last thought — had he finally managed to not ‘send’ it?

Mostly to distract himself from the deeply-unpleasant sensations of being dressed like a child, he asked {Where am I, now? And how long has it been since the… attack?}

{You are aboard the transport vessel Zephyr, four jumps out from Deinar. You have been unconscious for four days.}

That would make sense, given what he remembered about the blow he had taken to the throat. The pain hurt… but even more irritating was the fact that he now owed this red-haired xenos his life.

{You owe Soroin Pideir Reed as well. She performed the actual field treatment.}

Even worse. Now he owed two xenos his life. Reed was the one with the braided blue hair, yes?

Fireblade nodded, draping his coat reversed over his chest. As dressed as he could easily be, with his hands restrained. And—

And he hadn’t actively ‘sent’ his question about Reed. So much for his earlier hope. His grimace deepened at the reminder that this alien could literally see into his mind.

He could do little other than reinforce what mental defenses he had; for now there was a bigger issue. Xenos or not, he did owe both Fireblade and Reed a life-debt… and while House Jardin had only settled on Tallarn a few Solar centuries ago, they had very quickly adopted the traditions of that planet.

Among them, that one never forgot a debt.

{Then I thank you… and her.} Alex forced the regrettably-honest thoughts into position, his eyes catching Fireblade’s.

The teidar had that calculating look in her eyes, again. He was beginning to miss the scowling indifference that she had displayed earlier.

{‘Earlier’ was when you were a single unknown alien male, of no particular threat. But now that you have demonstrated hidden telepathic powers, you are deserving of more… thought.}

Something in the back of his mind was certain — ‘hopeful’? — that she had about to think ‘respect,’ there. Which was only slightly better, anyways: xenos should fear humanity, not ‘respect’ them.

Fireblade rolled her eyes, but thankfully stepped back from him and replaced the sheet over his now mostly-clothed self.

For more than a minute, neither said anything. Unfortunately, it was difficult to keep thoughts entirely private while one had exactly nothing to do. Held in place on his medical cot, Alex felt his mind wandering to topics that he especially did not wish Fireblade to see.

To shift his own focus elsewhere, he blurted out {So, ‘Deinar.’ That is one of your homeworlds, if I recall correctly.}

{Your ability to remember information clearly presented to you less than half a nanapi ago is impressive.} Mental or not, he recognized sarcasm when he heard it. 'Received' it.

Whatever.

Two could play that game. {Your adoptive homeworld, in particular.} He stressed one thought in particular. Just because he owed her a life-debt did not mean that he would hold his tongue as if amongst the honor-culture of Tallarn.

She snorted. {Your homeworld’s obsession with personal slights would prepare you well to be amongst Deinarid loroi, if you would only be wise enough to heed such training. Even if your world’s deserts that I glimpsed in the interrogation earlier seem more akin to—} The xenos’s voice in his head cut off and her eyes widened slightly, staring through him.

The nerve of her, comparing good Imperial citizens to alien rabble! {The people of Tallarn have endured for millennia despite the worst that—}

Her voice returned, ‘louder’ than before. {This homeworld of yours. Was there ever a… ‘massive black ring’ uncovered in its deserts?}

Alex’s heart stopped. How could she know?

She grimaced, nodding. {How do I know?} the alien glanced aside for a moment, before returning her full attention to him. Glaring. {You planted that dream in my mind.}

{I did no such thing! To sully my soul, by… touching your mind so directly!?} He paused. {What dream?}

{A great black Ring, hundreds of paces across, uncovered in the desert. And then these… ‘daemons’ emerged from it.}

One of the darkest moments in Tallarn’s history. Yet also the cause of the ancient alliance that had seen Alex sent as emissary to Yndrael in the first place.

Which eventually led him to here. It truly was a curse upon the people of Tallarn, even that world’s adopted sons.

{The Cursus of Alganar.} he intoned. {An ancient artifact of the corrupt Eldar, a portal to the Immaterium.}

{A teleporter, then.} Fireblade confirmed.

{You have such machines, yet know nothing of the Immaterium?} It seemed utterly improbable, but then again there were all sorts of ancient xenos — and human — artifacts strewn about the galaxy; perhaps the loroi had stumbled upon one before?

{No, although not for any lack of effort from the Union’s engineers. It is believed that the Soia made use of such devices. Gallen have long sought a way to recreate these machines, but their experiments have not yet been successful.}

A weight settled in Alex’s stomach, accompanied by a rising wave of resignation. {Your enginseers attempt to devise new machines.} He suddenly felt much less safe aboard this alien voidship — what other unwise acts inviting only disaster would these ‘gallen’ attempt? {Fools.}

Come to think of it, why did he feel ‘safe’ at all, even for a moment? He was aboard a xenos voidship, and locked immobile in a room with a xenos directly! He quickly squashed the heretical emotion, replacing it with good, honest contempt.

Much better.

Fireblade gave him another unreadable look. {Your people evidently have the technology to travel the stars. Yet you fear… ‘innovation’ itself?}

{Of course.} Alex was no tech-adept, but much of what the Martian Priesthood taught was common-sense enough to be universally known by all Imperial faithful. {Invention and change only invite disaster. It is far wiser to stay close to what is known already and has been proven safe by thousands of years of sanctified service. To seek new knowledge is as foolish as to consort with aliens or delve into the Immaterium.}

One thin, red eyebrow crept upwards fractionally. {Yet you do both of the latter.}

Alex pulled back his shoulders… a gesture which meant little when he was restrained. {I speak with xenos; I do not ‘consort’ with them. And while I use my abilities of the mind in service of my House, I at least recognize that by doing so I am measurably shortening my life-span.} For that matter, being in the company of xenos as he was here would surely leave its permanent marks upon his soul; hopefully it would be worth it.

Or at least survivable.

{You take such a ‘burden’ upon yourself?} Her mental voice was tinged with some emotion that he could not recognize.

{Of course.} He repeated proudly. {It is my duty.}

For several seconds, his mind was refreshingly silent and devoid of the thoughts sent by the xenos witch.

A silence which was broken by a brief hissing sound. Then that of boots clanging against metal. Someone had entered the compartment?

He tried to turn his head to look, but was still held back against the bed.

Then the new xenos entered his sight, another loroi stepping up to stand on his left side. Unlike Fireblade, this one wore her helmet and was fully-gloved, her void-suit apparently sealed. But against what?

Light-blue paint adorned her yellow-white armor. One of the alien medicae, then.

He focused on her as he had Fireblade, sending his thoughts {Medicus. I must demand that I be freed from these restraints. I am healed enough; they serve no further purpose.} Of course, he was only guessing on the ‘healed enough’ part, but it would be a great balm for his worries if he was instead choosing to remain supine and unmoving rather than forcibly kept so by alien restraints.

And he especially didn’t want to think on what other ‘purposes’ the xenos could have for keeping him immobile.

The alien medicus ignored him, instead waving a hand-held machine of unknown purpose back and forth over his body.

{I repeat: these restraints are no longer necessary, and must be removed.} He put as much force as he could into the thought, buttressed by his remaining pride. It helped that he was now dressed in his robes, rather than being literally exposed to the xenos. Well, he was in his first layer of clothing; he would later have to teach Fireblade how the other layers work—

He crushed the thought. Wrists banged against their restraints as they reflexively moved to form an Aquila, to ward off the foolish thought. Only two types of people dressed a full member of a House of Trade: trusted servants, and close family. Fireblade was neither.

No, he would dress himself. With a reprimand to the corner of his mind which even entertained the notion of permitting the teidar to lay hands on him again, he prepared to repeat himself a third time.

{She can’t receive you.} Fireblade’s thoughts echoed once more within his skull.

{What?}

The alien medicus paused, glancing down between Alex and Fireblade.

Who continued {She reports that she has not received you sending anything to her. Can you receive anything from her?}

{I have heard nothing.}

There was a pause. Then, {Most strange. You obviously can receive me well enough, and I you.}

Unfortunately.

{Agreed.} Fireblade nodded, and then narrowed her eyes at him. {I can even receive some clearly unformed thoughts.} She dropped his gaze, looking up at the medicus for a few seconds. {The doranzer reports that your healing is still progressing, and should soon reach a stage where you can be safely released. But for now, the restraints will remain.}

He grimaced, feeling the padded bands around his forehead and neck all the more. If demanding his freedom had not worked, then his only option left would be to request it.

And he would not beg.

To change the topic, he asked {Why is the medicus in sealed armor? Is this voidship likely to enter combat soon?} Possible, depending on how the loroi’s method of star-travel worked.

{All of Zephyr’s warriors are to keep their armor sealed when exposed to you, until we understand how your mind-powers work.}

He gurgled another painful laugh at that. Xenos, worried about being contaminated by exposure to a human? The idea would have been preposterous, if it hadn’t been even more funny. And besides, {Yet you do not wear your helmet.}

{By the fact that we are having this conversation, it is evident that I have already been affected by whatever contamination this is.} Fireblade grumbled. {Which is why I have demanded that I also be isolated in this compartment pending further examination.}

He raised one eyebrow — about the limit of what gestures were available to him right now. If one set aside the exact details of the situation, it was admirable for any soldier to order their own containment if they believed themselves to have been exposed to some malign influence. So if Fireblade chose to expose herself to him—

Alex paused.

That was not a mental image which his confessor would approve of.

He ignored the way the teidar’s nostrils narrowed as she stared down at him, and continued his soul-searching.

So if Fireblade chose to isolate herself from her fellow soldiers — xenos or no — that was something he could respect. Surely it was not heresy to recognize when an alien demonstrated some shred of resolve or bravery?

In any case, it made him feel a little less uneasy at the thought of being stuck in this compartment with a xenos present around-the-clock. Especially since it sounded like he would remain so for several more days.

At least it wasn’t as bad as the heat-huddle aboard the shuttle, earlier — Fireblade hadn’t threatened to physically touch him, aside from his request to be dressed.

Yet.

He couldn’t forget his interrogation at her hands, now days ago. Letting the conversation lapse, Alex turned his thoughts inwards. Rebuilding his mental defenses.

The disordered pattern inherent to a human mind recently awoken from prolonged unconsciousness was again reformed into a veritable castle. The outer fields left strewn with those thoughts and memories judged of little value, while a sturdy wall encircled the citadel containing the things which he actually valued. And—

He froze.

And there was a gap in his defenses. One that had not been there before.

Across the flat and undifferentiated plains of raw consciousness, there now existed a ‘road.’ Paved, rolled flat, and several lanes wide, it led arrow-straight out from the citadel of his mind. The carefully-trained wall that he had erected was pierced through with a new gate through which the road entered.

And however forcibly he focused his efforts, neither the gate nor the road would reform as he commanded. It stretched defiantly onwards to the horizon, the now-familiar red-gold glow in the distance an unsettling portent of just what this vision meant.

It had been amusing for the xenos to recount how she had been corrupted by exposure to Alex; it was far less so now that he saw with his inner eye just how his soul was clearly marked by its exposure to Fireblade.

He sagged in his bed.

The Ecclesiarchy had warned him how contact with aliens would leave its mark. But he had hoped that it would not be quite so… ‘obvious.’

///////

Fireblade slowly rotated one shoulder, working the ache out of it as she sat in silence. The last day had passed with drawn-out slowness, as the alien in the room with her alternated between morose silence and rapid conversation. At least he had finally slipped into the depths of sleep several cycles ago, leaving her to her own thoughts mercifully uninterrupted by his thoughts, intentionally-sent or not.

It was still most disturbing that she could feel his thoughts as often as not even before he sent them. Most of the time only fragments, but occasionally entire threads came through. And all of it without any physical contact. Usually such mental closeness was only accomplished through skin-to-skin touch, but there were stories of arms-sisters who had fought alongside one another for decades being able to skim one another’s minds in this way.

Yet the now-slumbering alien upon whom her wary gaze rested had been recovered by Tempest barely a single transit ago. Had been conscious for only days, given how repeatedly he managed to get himself grievously injured.

Or rather, ‘wounded.’ A warrior who falls out of a tree is ‘injured;’ one who only narrowly escapes decapitation by a foe’s strike is wounded. And Alexander Jardin was a warrior, male or not: he had fought against three of these ‘daemon’ foes of his already, wounded each time.

Had fought alongside Fireblade, in the latest fight.

She idly rubbed the thumb and forefinger of one hand together, thinking back to her brief glimpse into the mind of the ‘daemon’ that she had touched. A roiling, repulsive mix of hunger, thirst, and raw lust that had thankfully faded away with an agonized mental shriek as Fireblade hammered into the alien’s mind.

A thoroughly unsettling and strange creature.

Yet Alexander Jardin had fought it as best he could, devoid of telekinesis or even proper armor. He had been screaming in obvious terror the entire time, of course, but what else would one expect of a male forced into close combat against such a foe?

Fireblade let out a long, slow breath as she slouched into the padded chair. One advantage of being sealed into the room was that she had a few cycles where she didn’t have to maintain the image of the tireless, fearless Teidar. And could let herself be exactly what her weary mind felt like: an exhausted, confused warrior who had become caught up in events well beyond her understanding.

She did wish that she could have kept her amplifier, however. Its familiar, comforting weight atop her brow would have been even more welcome than its boost to her powers. But given that no loroi understood just what this mental connection to Alexander and her perhaps-associated visions of things that no other loroi could see meant, she had had to consider herself compromised.

Which meant no weapons.

No amplifier.

With a gesture, she dimmed the lights. Having two cycles of silence to herself while the alien slept had been nice, but now her own eyelids had begun their own unstoppable march downwards. And with the only available bed in the transport’s small medical bay being taken by the alien, that left this small padded chair as her sleeping spot.

Although there was room on the medical cot for two…

She brushed the unbidden thought aside. Even though proximity to Alexander did not seem likely to make her unknown condition worse, she did know what his response would be if he awoke to such a situation. The alien male had already clearly stepped beyond the strict rules of his bizarre cult — and recognized that himself, by the occasional self-chastising thoughts that she detected — but there were surely still limits to what he was willing to put up with.

Her eyes drifted closed. Fireblade leaned back in her seat, working her shoulders to try and find a truly comfortable position in the chair that had not been designed with such use in mind. But unfortunately the Zephyr had begun his life as a civilian freighter before being pressed into military service; the medical bay was designed to cater to all prominent species of the Union, rather than solely loroi warriors. Which meant that besides the Barsam-scaled medical bed and the pair of Neridi-sized cots stowed against one wall, the chair was her only option.

Sure, a warrior could sleep anywhere — and she in particular had dozed off under some especially trying circumstances, in her childhood — but there was no reason not to wish that something better were available.

She drew in a deep breath, working through her practiced mental routines. She was a long, long way from her specially-built sleeping capsule aboard Tempest, and the crew quarters of Zephyr were quite close-by to the medical bay. She would do her best to keep any nightmares from leaking out over sanzai to disrupt the transport’s own slumbering warriors, but decades of experience had warned her about how her mind tended to… ‘wander.’

She let out the breath, slowly, deflating her way deeper into the mediocre padding of the chair. Well, she had done all she could to prepare.

Sleep took her.

///////

Above her, shadows danced.

A looming presence, all teeth and claws and needles.

Metallic tentacles burrowed into the back of a laughing skull, lit from below by an ominous red glow.

Knives cut deep, pain’s lancing blow driven away by icy numbness.

The night sky turned black, as the stars went out one-by-one.

A desolate city-scape devoid of light, scuttling creatures coming ever closer—

{Fireblade? Fireblade!} a mind-voice sounded insistently.

{What?} She snapped, jerking awake and lunging upright. Fought her pulse down, and wrestled the fleeting images of her nightmares under control before continuing with outwardly-calm sanzai {Beryl. What is your message?}

Fireblade carefully removed her pale-knuckled hands from their death-grip on the armrests.

{...Are you well?} the listel asked carefully.

Fireblade closed her eyes, massaging them with one hand. Beryl had tried to keep her sanzai limited, but enough of the younger warrior’s emotions came through for Fireblade to practically taste her worry.

Which meant that Fireblade’s nightmares had leaked into a sanzai broadcast.

Again.

{I apologize for any disruption.} she sent, feeling the mind-glow of the listel one deck below them pulse with further anxiety. {A nightmare, nothing more.} The images of that half-remembered vision were already dissipating out of her mind, like water leaking from cupped hands.

{It was more… intense than any that I have received from you before.} Beryl added. {Some of Zephyr’s crew were becoming concerned.}

That Beryl herself had been even more worried went without saying, but it was exactly her friend’s obvious unease that bit deepest into Fireblade’s conscience. {I will redouble my exercises before returning to sleep.} There didn’t seem to be any better option.

{But then you still won’t find a peaceful rest for yourself!} the listel fussed.

A warm smile broke out on Fireblade’s face, despite herself. {I will be fine. A warrior faces worse things than an occasional sleepless night.}

Several solon crept past without an answer. And then {During the days after the battle at Naam, while you watched over Liaison Jardin in Tempest’s medical bay none of the crew reported any nightmares.}

{Your point?} Fireblade frowned. She had spent days and nights there as well, although that posting had been because of the unknown threat that Alexander’s newly-demonstrated mental powers could have shown to Tempest and his crew. Fireblade hadn’t then known the dangers of exposure to the alien.

{All despite your isolation chamber not being present.} Beryl noted.

That… was an interesting observation. And the medical bay aboard Tempest had been smaller than this one... {You think that proximity to Alexander Jardin — Attache Jardin — might conceal my nightmares?} And now that she thought about it—

Beryl reached the same point {And did you have any nightmares, during those days?}

No, no she hadn’t. Fireblade nodded thoughtfully to herself. Not until the one that had been apparently a glimpse into Alexander’s mind, to glimpse an event apparently long-past in his homeworld’s history.

She peered across the dimly-lit room at the slumbering human. This alien truly did keep coming up with surprises. Few of them deliberately, it seemed. But at least this one was perhaps a positive for once. {I will try moving my chair closer to his bed.} She stood and turned to lift the chair.

For the crew’s comfort, of course.

There came the sensation of Beryl exchanging focused sanzai with a third party, and then the listel asked innocently {Is there not room on the bed for two?}

Fireblade paused, chair now held in her arms. Closed her eyes, smirking. {Who is awake with you?} She knew Beryl, and such an idea was beyond the adorably-innocent listel.

{...Arrir Talon. And most of the rest of Tempest’s party, — Tempo still slumbers — but Talon was the one to suggest the idea. Why?}

Fireblade shook her head, carrying the chair across the compartment while careful not to make a sound.

Tenoin.

Although really, Mezan-raised loroi as well were entirely too comfortable with physical touch. Especially for the social mores of a teidar from famously-conservative Toridas. {I will tell you when you’re older.} She couldn’t resist a little teasing of Beryl.

{I am fourteen years of age and a veteran of combat!} the listel sent back indignantly. {There are few things that— oh.}

Knowing Beryl, one of the tenoin had had to explain the joke.

Probably with hand-gestures.

Honestly, sometimes one wondered just how Beryl had ended up bearing the son of whom she was so proud. Whichever male had guided the young listel through her post-diral encounter must have been an especially patient fellow.

{The chair will suffice.} Fireblade sent with a faint smile, basking in the glow of Beryl’s mild embarrassment.

She set the light furniture down one foot at a time, as quietly as possible.

...Although really, there was room on the bed for two warriors, recovering after battle. Nothing more than that.

Shaking her head to clear away the unbidden thought clearly brought on by her exhaustion, Fireblade instead returned her weight to the lesser padding of the chair. This would be more than enough, if the experiment worked.

All to shield the other loroi from leaking nightmares, of course.

She leaned back, interlacing her hands in her lap and letting her head rest on the extra padding of her hair.

…

Come to think of it, a bit of extra security couldn’t hurt.

She carefully shifted her left hand to softly rest atop Alexander’s shoulder. That much he would surely not object to especially strongly, and it should guarantee that the other sleeping loroi got a good night’s rest.

It was all for the other warriors, of course.

[Tamri]

It was funny, but sweet.

Alex, your purity is in danger!..
...in perspective.

[dragoongfa]

Fireblade's nightmare is eerily similar to a Dark Eldar Homunculus operating on a victim with a brief glimpse of Commoragh added on top.

Which is ominous when considering that a lot of the Homunculi are the most ancient Eldar in existence, being ancient even when the Eldar Empire still stood; with skills and abilities that can revive someone from a single hair (if they are able to pay for that service). It wouldn't be a stretch that one of the highest ranking Homunculi was part of the project that created the Loroi.

Someone must give poor Alex Cain's memoirs when this is over; poor Caiaphas went through far worse and did some heretical things and still ended up becoming a Hero of the Imperium AND even got a small cult on Tallarn itself venerating him as a saint.

EDIT: I would find it funny if Alex's view on technological innovation is what the average imperial thinks as to why technology has 'stagnated' for them. Random ecclesiarchy dumbfuckery aside, the Imperium does have several valid reasons to be the way it is. The primary one being the rebellion of the Iron Men which brought down the 'Human Federation'; it cannot be understated how disastrous that was for humanity of that time. AI and technology was so ingrained into human society that it was impossible for any government and state apparatus to function without them. Them to suddenly turning against humans at that stage of integration should have resulted into an extinction event which humans avoided by the introduction of servitors, essentially organic robots unable to be hacked in the traditional sense of the word.

This rebellion did result in the first 'collapse' of the SCT libraries, with the rogue AIs devastating the databases at will; the only archives that survived being those held as hard copies (books and etc) or in isolated servers. The Mechanicum rose from these ashes, forming their own religious and societal dogmas as a result and then the second 'collapse' happened when fully half of the Mechanicum joined Horus and launched their own campaigns of mass sabotage on the surviving archives before they could be stopped.

The came Chaotic attention and the necessary measures to counter its ever encroaching corruption. Despite all this the Imperium is still able to build and maintain technological marvels which allow it to remain standing while each Forge world takes extreme measures to protect and insulate its own technological archives.

[Cthulhu]

So Fireblade got herself the honor of an extra gate and even a paved road? Nice.

And while the Inquisition would not approve of such conduct, the Rogue Traders do not care. There's a reason why they are called rogue, after all.


Hand-signs? Poor, sweet, innocent Beryl.

[Urist]

“This is a Capital world?” Alex asked, staring in utter confusion out at the alien landscape from the top of the shuttle’s ramp.

And it was a landscape, not a cityscape.

No hive towers, spires, or even proper civilized-world urban sprawl. The evening twilight let the dark and untouched mountains loom over the built-up valleys below, elegantly-curved alien hab-blocks barely a few dozen stories tall girding the mountain bases.

He had heard of agri-worlds with more development than this!

“It seems to be the city of Toridas, capital of the Union!” Beryl helpfully explained. “Over there you see the—”

“’Old Stone Watcher citadel.’” Alex interrupted. His eyes played over the ancient — by loroi standards, of course; it was surely young by human standards — fortification. A structure that he recognized, despite never having visited this entire system before.

So that had indeed been an accurate vision plucked from Fireblade’s memories, more than a solar week ago aboard the first shuttle.

And the view out over the city was just as he remembered— no, as Fireblade remembered it. Perhaps the loroi had arranged the timing of his flight down to their city in an attempt to impress him with its undeniable beauty.

An expected tactic, to soften him up for any future negotiations.

He would not allow it to affect him.

Forcing his gaze away from the cityscape, he met Fireblade’s own boring into him. Her piercing green eyes briefly flicked aside to the old fortification, then back to him. Her ever-present frown deepened slightly.

“Indeed so, Attache Jardin.” Beryl’s voice kept its positive note, but by the way she glanced between him and Fireblade she was obviously aware that something had gone between the two. “It is here that we will await the chosen speakers for the Union.”

Right. Chosen ‘speakers.’ Who coincidentally would meet them at the xenos military academy which had produced Fireblade and her ilk… the ones who had interrogated him when he had first 'met' the loroi.

He had a bad feeling about this.

But he also had no choice in the matter.

Closing his eyes, Alex focused his Sight internally. Peered into his own future as best as he could, given his limited training. But even a few minutes’ advance warning should help him prepare for whatever was to come.

He cast his sight outwards, hunting for the constellation of soul-lights that should cover the surface of even a sparsely-inhabited planet such as this one.

…the world was empty. Even the wildlife that surely must be present on a planet’s biosphere was hidden from him. The utter lack of any warp signature for the loroi around him left his own presence alone save for the red-gold glow of Fireblade.

And the Astronomican itself, of course; the alarming proximity of this xenos world to Holy Terra left that ancient and most holy of beacons as a mighty circle of pure-gold flame, impossible to miss. Shrugging aside his outer observations, he turned his Sight inwards to look to his own future.

But as for his own personal augury, he saw… nothing. No matter how much he focused himself, he could perceive nothing out of the dancing skeins of probability in front of him.

Had he lost his talent? Or was the situation simply that unpredictable?

For that matter, had his exposure to Fireblade and whatever this cursed link of his to the teidar affected his own ability to self-perceive?

Casting his sight outwards once more, he ignored the two golden glows pressing in upon him. There were no life-signs, true — not even those of primitive animals — but there was… ‘something.’

His head rotated, coming to bear upon the faint-but-steady signal. It was not a living creature, but still it… called to him.

“Attache Jardin.” it was Tempo’s flowing voice rather than the eager, rushed speech of Beryl that called to him now. He opened his eyes to find himself staring straight at the ancient fortified citadel ahead.

What was it that those heavy stone walls concealed? “Yes?” he answered, perhaps somewhat distractedly.

“The diplomatic party awaits you inside.”

He blinked, shaking his head slightly to refocus his attention here in the Materium. It was only now that he noticed the gate which had opened at the base of the citadel walls, and the two guards who had taken up posts at either side. Waiting for him.

Both heavily armored in beige-bronze, a broad black stripe with white trim running diagonally across their chests.

More teidar… as expected.

“I see. Then I will follow you.” Not that he had much choice.

But then again, the loroi hadn’t attempted any further forced entries into his mind, not since that first day. Perhaps they would not do so now, even if more specialists of theirs dwelt within this fortress-academy?

...or more likely Fireblade’s ability to read stray thoughts out of his mind may have simply rendered such blunt methods superfluous.

Their party stopped just outside of the gate, waiting while the two guards conducted what was evidently some telepathic conversation with Tempo. The armor of these new soldiers was more ornate than that of the loroi he had met thus far, decorative metalwork dancing around joints and across their neck-pieces.

Elite troops, then. Unsurprising, given his apparent proximity to the capital of their ‘Empire,’ as small as it was.

An idle thought contrasted these guards — imposing, yes, with their steely eyes and height-accentuating armor — to those that would be found in the real interstellar capital upon Terra’s holy soil. He had never yet made a pilgrimage to that most august planet himself, but he had seen enough pict-captures. Add all the xenos around him together, and they would likely not match the sheer imposing bulk of a single one of the Emperor’s own bodyguards: mountains of crimson and gold, each one a direct extension of His own divine Will. Now those were truly—

A pointed aura of condescension emerged behind him, as the two guards gestured for the team to enter.

Alex did not need to so much as turn his head to sense the presence of Fireblade at his back, or to feel her eyes burning into the back of his skull. {The Azerein’s guards do not need simple height or mass to perform their duties. They are Teidar.}

She sent the last thought as if mere caste identity and some witchcraft were enough to match the Emperor’s own direct handiwork.

{They are more than enough.} Fireblade sent again, the weighty finality of her thought echoed a moment later by the gate booming closed behind them.

{Pray that you never get to see how wrong your estimation is.} Alex replied, keeping most of his attention focused on maintaining the external image that was right for a House Trask representative: shoulders back, head high, each step measured as he followed Tempo deeper into the xenos structure.

///////

Their path lead them to a part of the old Citadel that Fireblade had never been to, before. She stepped aside and took a post against the wall once their party had entered the negotiations room. A post directly behind Alexander Jardin, the location of a guard keeping a particular target under watch.

And found herself receiving an insistent glare from the two Imperial Guard teidar that had followed them in. The senior one in particular, as Fireblade was standing in the spot evidently preferred by that Teigo Niberadi. But Praetorian or not, the caste’s traditions were clear: within the ancient walls of Stone Watcher Citadel, all teidar were either instructor or student. No other ranks or seniority entered into the equation.

{My orders are to watch over the alien.} Fireblade pointedly sent, nodding towards the back of Alexander’s head as he stood by his seat at the table in front of her. {This position is therefore mine.}

She understood well enough that the other teidar doubtlessly had orders to watch over her in much the same way, but they could do so from off to the side well enough. And while Fireblade would doubtlessly soon be subjected to medical and mental examinations by the senior caste masters found here in the Imperial city, she had already confirmed to her own satisfaction that Alexander’s effects upon her own mind posed no threat to the Union.

In the several days of Zephyr’s journey here to Deinar, she had taken the opportunity to peer further into the human’s mind. While he was asleep, and unable to offer any resistance or distraction.

And while her distaste for the alien’s culture and beyond-zealous upbringing — which made even the most devout Barsam seem downright sane, by comparison — had only grown, she had seen enough to know that he truly had no idea whatsoever how his newfound mental connection to Fireblade worked. Indeed, the thought of it clearly unnerved him even more than it did her.

However, the rest of what she had gleaned about the society he hailed from, this ‘Imperium of Man,’ was certainly alarming. Which meant that Alex was a threat to the Union, but because of the threatening alien empire he represented rather than any risks posed by him personally.

If it had been up to Fireblade, he would never be allowed to leave Deinar.

With any fortune, the Imperium vessel that had carried him here had been destroyed in the clash which had seen Alexander ejected. The less that the Union interacted with that Imperium, the better. Her findings — and opinions — had been shared with Tempo and forwarded to the senior officers who would be speaking with the alien.

Those opinions had been overruled, it seemed. Else why promise to hold this 'negotiations meeting' at all?

Hopefully, the mizol and torrai knew what they were doing. Most of the discussion of the strategic-level state of the War which Fireblade had overheard after being recovered from the Shell warship had gone over her head, but surely it couldn’t be that dire for the Union? They were loroi, after all: they were going to win, in the end. It was their destiny.

Were they truly so desperate that they would actually negotiate with the sort of insane society that she had glimpsed in Alexander’s memories?

“So, uh, will your people be here soon?” the human asked Tempo.

“It seems that they are late compared to the schedule. I apologize for them; it is possible that they are still reviewing the preliminary messages we had sent outlining the situation.” answered the parat.

“Then I will wait.” The human said, even as his mind grumbled More likely they’re deliberately making me wait to prove a point. Sub-sector governors are all the same, even if they’re xenos.

Fireblade rolled her eyes as Alexander’s thought wafted across her mind. The human’s paranoia was tiresome… although given that this meeting was supposed to be held with mizol diplomats, he might actually be right.

A barely-perceptible movement of his shoulders revealed the alien’s grudging acceptance of the situation. His head then drooped slightly, in a movement that Fireblade now recognized.

Not this again.

{Must you do that now?} she sent, irritably. {Every time you focus on your powers like that, I receive a migraine headache.}

{...a migraine.} Alexander repeated. {Really?}

After all these days, holding a sanzai conversation with an alien had started to feel almost ‘normal.’

Almost.

{Visual distortions, pressure around the head, light sensitivity.} One of the advantages of this strange completely-private sanzai was that Fireblade could be much more open with Alexander than with her fellow warriors. After all, she did not need — did not want — his respect.

{That is… interesting.} the alien replied, half-present thoughts flitting through his mind too quickly for Fireblade to follow. But he didn’t hold back from pulling on his powers. {Where are these distortions?}

She closed her eyes, careful so that her sigh of frustration would not be visible to the other loroi in the room. The earlier days when Alexander sent to her warily and infrequently were behind them; over the long nanapi of their trip here to Deinar locked together in the medbay it seemed that that distaste had been eaten away by sheer boredom.

{There is a blood-purple whorl to one side, and a bright yellow light off to another.} she replied, with little else to do besides humor the alien. {But they mo—}

{There?} Alexander asked, turning his head to nod towards one wall.

Fireblade’s temples ached as the visual distortions spun aside. {As I sent, they move. And—} she paused, frowning now with thought more than with pain. {Turn your head one-quarter turn to the right.}

As long as the human was no longer being standoffish, she may as well take advantage. And Alexander did rotate his head as ordered, even if a beat later she received his grumbling thoughts at being so commanded. But after one-too-many rude remarks in the medical bay earlier, Fireblade had demonstrated to him why wise aliens feared being locked in a room with a teidar. The concentration required to heat his emptied metal drinking-cup to a white-hot glow had been taxing without the aid of her amplifier… but the wide-eyed look on his formerly-smug face had been entirely worth it.

Her internal smile at the memory slid from her face as the visual distortions rotated one-quarter turn to the left. {Now look up.} The human did as ordered, the flare of irritation again coming only after he had immediately acted.

And again, Fireblade ignored it. It seemed that these visual blurs might not be some headache induced by Alexander’s mental powers, at least not directly. They… ‘were’ something.

The pause in her sending must have given the human some guess as to what she was thinking. {You still see them?}

{Through your eyes, it seems.} Fireblade sent, narrowing her own eyes as she stared through the far wall, deep in thought. Now the two of them were definitely beyond any form of sanzai that she had heard of, to be sharing sensory input to such a degree.

Well, two loroi could establish such a strong connection, but that required an extreme level of physical intimacy… which meant that it normally only occurred when the two loroi in question were focused on a particular set of physical pleasures.

She forced her thoughts back onto the topic of importance. {What are they?}

{One is the Eye of Terror, and the other is His Holy Presence, the Astronomican.}

That explained nothing, although the traces of emotion that accompanied the sending indicated that one was ‘good’ and the other very definitely ‘bad.’ {Which is which?} Purple was the color traditionally associated with the title of the Azerein, but one could not safely assume that that would hold with aliens and their own emperor.

Colors whirled as Alexander spun in his seat to glare incredulously at Fireblade.

Before he could send anything, Tempo’s familiar presence messaged her first. {Fireblade? You are communicating with Attache Jardin?}

{Yes. I am having him explain some further visual phenomena to me.}

The senior Guard Teidar behind her asked {And you trust his answers?}

{Of course.} Fireblade responded, before pausing her thoughts with a frown. The strange pseudo-sanzai of Alexander’s messages lacked the full… ‘depth’ of normal such communication. She had not ‘overheard’ any fleeting thoughts of his that indicated duplicitousness, but should she still be more cautious in assuming his honesty? {He does not seem to have any reason to lie on this topic, and he has displayed no ability to hide his internal thoughts from me.}

{That will be for the mizol to determine.} the Guard Teidar responded. {Parat Tempo, do you agree with Pallan Fireblade’s reasoning?}

Tempo held Fireblade’s gaze for several solon, and then nodded. {I trust that she understands the risks posed by Attache Jardin’s unknown effects on her. If Fireblade states that she has the situation under control, then I trust her judgment.}

Completely ignoring the sanzai conversation that he evidently really could not receive, Alexander blurted out loud “’Which one is which?’ One’s a giant Holy Space Beacon, and the other is the bleeding afterbirth of a Dark God!”

{That still does not help me tell them apart.} Fireblade deadpanned.

The two Guard teidar exchanged a look. The younger sent {I think maybe we are all happy that it is only you who has to see these unpleasant ‘phenomena.’}. Her caste-sister nodded emphatically.

Alexander’s hand shot blindly out to one side, Beryl ducking out of the way just in time. His pointing finger came to rest unerringly in the direction of the yellow glow even as his eyes remained locked on Fireblade’s. “THAT is the God-Emperor.” His extended arm swept over to the off-purple haze. “THAT is the Eye of Terror.”

Fireblade raised one eyebrow at his wide-eyed zealotry. Unsurprising, perhaps. {Now that that has been clarified, what are those signatures?} She gestured to a small constellation of blurred lights, below and in front of her. Which, it seemed, meant ‘below and in front’ of Alexander, and therefore actually behind Fireblade.

Her headache was back.

{I… don’t know.} He stared thoughtfully past her. Aloud, the alien asked “You say that your people know nothing of psychic phenomena beyond your own limited powers, yet there is a room containing psy-active artifacts one level below this chamber?”

“I am not aware of any such items in the Union’s possession.” Tempo quickly said, shooting a quizzical glance up at Fireblade.

The teidar shook her head. This section of the old Stone Watcher Citadel was not one that she was at all familiar with — the training areas were in a distant wing of the ancient fortress — but even the amplifier-fitting chambers were not in this central citadel. And those were the closest that she could think of to ‘psy-active artifacts.’

Not that this seemed to reassure the junior of the two Guard Teidar at her back. {You have been explaining Caste artifacts to this alien?}

{I do not know of any ‘Caste artifacts’ beyond the amplifier I was issued.} Fireblade retorted with perhaps more acidity than was called for. But between her mounting headache, the revelations of the alien in front of her, and the hostility of the caste-sisters behind her she was increasingly tired of it all.

At least the senior of the two guards seemed to be wiser than the junior. {None of your rank would, no. And yet this alien has ‘seen’ them within a few hundred solon of entering the Citadel. Most intriguing.} the Niberadi mused.

‘None of your rank,’ she had sent. Was there truly that much of a gulf between the nominally-equal Pallan and Niberadi ranks of their shared caste, besides the broad black stripe diagonally across her chest?

{What are they, then?} Fireblade asked. If it was genuinely above her own seniority, then she would simply not be answered.

{Soia objects whose purpose has not yet been ascertained, that have been held in secure storage for some time until they may be judged to be non-dangerous.} the Niberadi answered after a pause, her head tilted slightly to one side as she regarded Fireblade. {More than that, you do not need to know.}

Unfortunate. And ‘Soia artifact’ was a very broad category on Deinar, littered as it was with the relics of those ancient ancestors.

Tempo spoke aloud once more “It seems that there are indeed such items, although we were unaware of their ‘psy-active’ nature, as you termed it.”

Despite herself, Fireblade’s brows rose slightly at the truthfulness in Tempo’s sanzai signature alongside her vocal speech. She truly had not known of any such Soia objects, any more than Fireblade had.

The mizol flicked her eyes slightly aside from Alexander’s, meeting Fireblade’s gaze with an amused glint. {I was entrusted by my caste to watch over Lashret Stillstorm, yes, but I am still not among the most-informed and senior members of the mizol.}

Fireblade shrugged, armor creaking faintly under the minute movement. {Their loss.}

“I.. see.” the human replied haltingly, before continuing in a much more serious tone “Then I will warn you that such objects are often extraordinarily dangerous in ways that your people cannot so much as begin to comprehend. I suggest in the strongest way that you have a trained psyker examine these artifacts and determine what threat they may pose.”

{A transparent attempt to gain access to protected information.} the Guard Sezon sent. {It seems that he is the only ‘psyker’ available to the Union.}

Although from what Fireblade had seen, Alexander might not call himself ‘trained.’ {But it is known that the Shells now make use of this ‘Warp’ technology, as well as enlisting mercenaries skilled in that field. Shouldn’t we have him examine these caste artifacts, in case there is some danger in them that we are truly not aware of?}

{Such a decision would be beyond the authority of any within this room.} Tempo noted. {How soon until—}

{Now.} came a strong sanzai from the mind-signature which suddenly bloomed into existence outside of the chamber door. A signature which Fireblade recognized, her spine straightening and shoulders pulling back in reflex at the mental contact.

Teidar Rozerrei Togileneda strode in through the opening door, orange eyes sweeping the room. Paused for a moment on Fireblade, holding the much younger teidar’s gaze briefly before stepping past. In her wake the two Guard teidar now stood in identical poses to Fireblade, at rigid parade-attention as if they were each young academy cadets once more.

Tempo nodded politely in recognition of the centuries-old teidar as the new arrival took her seat across the table from the human. “Attache Jardin, this is Teidar Rozerrei Ironsoul, the officer in command of this facility and the Union representative with whom you will be negotiating.”

‘And the unquestioned top master of mental combat within the entire Union.’ went unsaid. Such knowledge would likely frighten the human — as it should.

“A teidar? An… unexpected choice for a negotiator, from what I have heard.” Alexander said. Fireblade could not see his face from her position standing behind him, but she could feel his wariness.

And he was right: teidar were not known for their skill in such matters. Especially not—

“But judged necessary, from what I have heard.” Ironsoul responded, hard voice betraying nothing of her advanced age.

“I was told that teidar did not normally speak aloud.” Alexander replied, head beginning to turn back towards Fireblade.

Ironsoul jabbed one finger at him, holding the alien’s attention on her. “Only to those whom we view as a threat. And until I am satisfied that you pose no further danger to any more warriors of the Union, that will remain your classification.”

Not that any teidar alive today would even think to chastise Ironsoul of all people for speaking aloud.

“I see.” Alexander replied, and a reflected pulse of… ‘humor’? … drifted through Fireblade’s mind. What exactly did the alien find so amusing about the situation? Then his humor was suddenly submerged in a rising tide of resignation. “Another interrogation.”

“Yes.” Ironsoul inverted her age-wizened hand, holding it out palm-up. “I am told that your culture already makes use of a hand-holding gesture as a form of greeting?”

“It usually does not precede an interrogation.” Alex replied. Quietly, he muttered in an alien tongue “[Usually the Inquisition isn’t that polite.]” But after several solon he hesitantly reached out to grasp the teidar’s wrinkled hand all the same. “Very well. If I must.”

An electric shock coursed across Fireblade’s brow and she flinched back, frowning.

Was her strange connection to Alexander so strong that she felt his mind being probed? That had not happened during that first interrogation aboard Tempest; had this strange mental connection simply not been established at that time?

More conventional excitement raced along brief, wordless sanzai between each of the loroi in the room. Waiting to see how their champion of mind-combat fared against this peculiar alien. What would she find?

Several solon elapsed.

Eight.

Sixteen.

Twenty-four.

{Nothing.} Ironsoul blinked, drawing in a breath. Her eyes flicked up to hold Fireblade’s gaze. {Pallan Fireblade, you have peered into this alien’s mind before?}

{Affirmative, Rozerrei.} The response left Fireblade’s mind before conscious thought. The stronger-than-was-polite sending of the academy master reached straight into her subconscious and pulled it to attention.

Battle-hardened veteran or no, in a heartbeat she was the short-haired teidar cadet once more: standing at attention besides her future caste-sisters on the exercise fields as their terrifying instructor prowled up and down the assembled ranks.

By the faint gleam of amusement in the corner of Ironsoul’s eyes, the Rozerrei was likely used to that response. {Then here.} still holding the alien’s hand in the vice-like grip — which Fireblade still remembered — of her left hand, the elder teidar extended her right hand to Fireblade. {Show me how you did it.}

Fireblade’s frown deepened, even as she reached out to grasp Ironsoul’s offered limb. Did the instructor wish to see what technique Fireblade had used… or was she truly having difficulty reading the mind of a single young alien?

Leaning forwards, Fireblade rested her other hand on Alexander’s shoulder.

A bright flash of light behind her eyes, and she was yanked into the ongoing battle of wills.

It was a one-sided battle.

{I have not seen mental defenses such as these for many, many years.} Ironsoul commented, her mental representation sparring with Alexander’s. A much younger presentation of her: without wrinkles, ears not yet poking through the back of her hair. Nose not yet grown to the glare-enhancing beak that Fireblade was familiar with.

Yet for every jab she threw, every darting punch too fast for the eye to see, Alexander batted it aside or twisted away from the blow.

None connected.

In this mental realm of direct, maximal sanzai any shade of dishonesty was impossible. And so the sheer smugness in the human’s mind came through with painful clarity. {All faithful are trained to shield their souls from the encroachment of foreign minds.}

All the same, Fireblade could sense… something behind his words. Some emotion that she could not read, not without engaging directly with the human’s mind. And if he had verbally acquiesced to the interrogation, why fight it now?

{I speak not of ‘training,’ child; your defenses are instinctual. I can see your thoughts: they have little to do with it.} The rozerrei’s mind whirled closer to Alexander, one hand whipping out quicker-than-thought to dart under the human’s raised arms, fingers extending to touch his exposed skin.

Yet at the last moment, he melted aside.

It was indeed not a conscious move, Fireblade recognized.

{I see what you mean, rozerrei.} she sent, her own mental projection getting closer. {But there is a pattern, here—}

{If there is, I cannot perceive it. Human, you truly cannot lower this defense?}

{I—} Alex began, halting. Then a thought slipped out, palpably forced through by the forced honesty of such mental contact. {I cannot un-build this castle any more than either of you could open your own mental gates.}

The two loroi exchanged a mental glance. ‘Castle’? ‘Gates’? What was the human thinking of—

Oh.

It seemed that an alien mind perceived the battle of wills inherent in a mental intrusion ‘differently.’ Rather than the sparring of one warrior against another, he seemed to imagine… ‘fortresses’ perhaps?

{But there is—} the human then thought, before cutting himself off with a narrow-eyed glare at Fireblade.

With a mental shrug, Fireblade took Ironsoul’s place, standing opposite from Alexander in the formal pose of a hand-to-hand training drill. {The pattern seems strongly present to me. I will demonstrate.}

Even if the human modeled the contest differently, Fireblade still gave him a proper nod as was due to a sparring partner, before stepping in closer and jabbing her left fist at his right shoulder.

As she had observed before and now expected, the human — or his mental model; she would leave the debating over philosophical implications to the Nedatan — shifted aside.

Which left him temporarily off-balance, as Fireblade pivoted on one foot and whipped her right hand forwards.

Alexander’s mental arms batted at her approaching strike, but like a creche caretaker reaching through an infant’s flailing limbs to tickle the squealing child’s belly, Fireblade struck home.

The human froze at her deep mental touch as if electrocuted. As if his actual, physical jaw rather than this mental projection were also stuck he hissed {I will thank you to come up with a different analogy than… that.}

Fireblade frowned, reviewing her thoughts. Ah. Then concentrated on an image of Alexander incongruously dressed as a loroi infant, albeit still an adult himself. Swaddled in cloth and placed in a rocking-cot sized for his grown frame… although the deep scowl remained.

Pushed the thought forcibly into his mind, through the direct link that she had just established.

{Then you will have to bolster your defenses.} she sent. That was how the rules of mental-sparring practice went: the forcible intrusion into the mind of the defeated and the erasure of her privacy was meant to embarrass. It would encourage the warrior to strengthen herself for the next bout.

And besides, that image did make the male look downright—

Fireblade blinked, flinching backwards at the unbidden thought. Made to pull her mental hand back, end the contact.

Only for Ironsoul’s own projected hand to close over hers, firmly holding it to Alexander’s side. {Fascinating. Such mental closeness, between a loroi and an alien?}

{I assure you, neither of us wished for this.} Alexander sent.

Fireblade nodded.

{And wise you are in that choice, for mental ties of such breadth are a curse. Upon the individuals involved… and the social groupings in which they dwell.}

Fireblade finally organized her thoughts enough to send {You have seen this before? I have not heard of its like… between aliens.} She carefully steered away from the closest similar situation that she had heard of; this case was clearly entirely different from that, after all. And if Ironsoul did have some understanding of how Fireblade’s mind had become tied to Alexander’s, then hopefully the rozerrei could help end that association.

Which would be quite the relief to Fireblade, after—

{Yes. I have occasionally been called to aid certain high-ranking Torrai — or a close family member of theirs — with… ‘distancing’ their mind from that of a male to whom they have become unhealthily bonded.} Ironsoul described, before pausing and staring at Alexander with narrowed eyes. {Your mind is a strange one indeed, to draw that thought out of mine.}

Her mental model glanced aside at Fireblade, then back to the alien. {Neither of you will mention that bit of knowledge to another.} The order rang out with the force of a blaster-shot.

{Yeah, sure.} Alex replied with forced lightness, before adding in a faint thought likely not meant to be shared {Aristocrats pulling in favors, as always.}

For her part, Fireblade had had her newly-organized thoughts scrambled by the rozerrei’s revelations. {Bonded mates!?} she exclaimed, before wrestling her incredulity under control.

Well, mostly under control. Both she and Alexander glanced reflexively at each other, for only a beat before both turned to Ironsoul. {You can fix this, though?} Fireblade asked. Not ‘begged,’ she told herself.

{I can.} the elder teidar intoned.

Fireblade’s mind sagged with relief. Beside her, Alexander’s mimicked the exact same motion.

{But I won’t.}

{What.} Alexander was the first to send. {But she is an alien!}

{Precisely.} Fireblade agreed.

{I sent that it was akin to the bond of a paired couple. I make no such assumptions about the two of you.} Ironsoul clarified. But then a playful smile broke out onto the mind of the ancient, imposing instructor who had haunted Fireblade’s nightmares as a young cadet. {Unless you choose to make it—}

{No.} Alexander sent, forcibly enough to briefly approach the mental strength of the battle-honed rozerrei. {No. But… why?}

{Because I have been sifting through your mind even as we converse just now, thanks to the opening in your defenses spotted by Pallan Fireblade.} In a flash, the ill-fitting amusement projected by the senior teidar vanished, replaced by harsh, blunt honesty.

Much better.

{And so I make this decision because she is a ‘xenos,’ as you and your people would term her.} Ironsoul’s mind jabbed one finger at the human. {My duty called me to this interrogation to determine if you were a threat. And you are a threat, or rather this appalling ‘Imperium’ from which you hail. A nation more cult-like than the Barsam, more arrogant than the Mannadi, more treacherous than the Tithric… and more single-mindedly supremacist than the Hal-Tik.}

Alexander’s mind flared at each pronouncement, building to a corona of righteous indignation that burned around him like a flame. And yet Fireblade was untouched as the mental flames surrounded her, as was Ironsoul.

{Intriguing. You know the truth of these statements, despite what your indoctrination has attempted to beat into your mind. This is not the first time you have seen how your degenerate culture is viewed from the outside.} Ironsoul leaned closer to the frozen human, orange eyes peering into the strange brown-colored irises of the alien. Then nodded to herself. {‘Eldar.’ What strange creatures the galaxy holds.}

Alexander glared back at her, managing to grind out {There never were going to be actual ‘negotiations,’ were there?}

{No.} Ironsoul confirmed. {Pallan Fireblade saw and reported enough for us to know to keep as much distance from your Imperium as can be managed.} She kept her right hand clasped over Fireblade’s against Alexander’s side, but her left hand rise to wave one finger in the alien’s face. {But we are not the monsters that you have been made to expect. We cannot allow you to return to your nation, but we see no reason to kill you.}

{Even if I desire it?}

{Especially if you desire it.} the rozerrei echoed. {The Union is at war, and we will not throw aside any tool which falls into our hands. And—} Her thoughts halted, although not before Fireblade caught a glimpse of some of the worries foremost in Ironsoul’s mind.

Her heart plummeted. So the Union leadership really were that concerned about the eventual outcome of the war.

Ironsoul’s projected head snapped aside to pin Fireblade with a glance, conveying without conscious thought that Fireblade was not to let even the slightest sliver of what she had gleaned be shared with anybody.

Well, besides the alien whom the two of them were mentally holding at blaster-point.

{You know, we can—} Alex began.

{And if you convince us — convince me — sufficiently of your personal trustworthiness,} Ironsoul’s forceful sending trampled whatever Alexander had been about to send, {then we will see about making your life here on Deinar comfortable.}

{Among xenos?} Alexander scoffed.

Ironsoul’s eyes flitted aside to Fireblade for a brief moment before returning to Alexander. {I have peered deep into your mind. You know of the thoughts to which I refer.}

The human did not pursue that topic further… for which Fireblade was thankful. {And you think that I will help you, while held as a prisoner?}

{You have seen enough to know that the Union is no threat to your Imperium.} Ironsoul held up one hand to cut off the half-formed objection being prepared by the alien. {Look past your dogmatic fears for but a moment. I have seen that you can do so. We do not stand astride the galaxy like your degraded nation, we do not command legions of ‘battle-angels,’ nor do we boast armadas of warships the equal of yours. This we acknowledge.}

Then she closed the distance to Alexander, two minds heaping scorn upon each other from great proximity. {It is for those reasons that we wish no contact whatsoever with your people. I see what inevitable fate awaits us there. But just because the Union seeks no ‘agreement’ with the Imperium does not mean that the Union cannot negotiate with Alexander Jardin. You have talents and knowledge which we lack, and I see that you know that no aid which you could provide to us could transform us into a threat against your people.}

She grimaced, taking one step back. {Nor could it transform us into a power able to withstand your people, or else we would pull the knowledge from your mind with or without permission.}

{I… ‘appreciate’ your honesty.} was forced out of Alexander’s mind, clearly against his will.

{We are not monsters, but neither are we fools. Which is also why this mental tie between you and Fireblade — however it came to be — will remain. Her new-found duty is to be your overseer.} Ironsoul removed her hand from atop Fireblade’s, breaking the deep connection between her mind and the human’s. With a signal to Fireblade, her mental projection disappeared.

The three of them opened their eyes, now back in the meeting room deep inside Stone Watcher Citadel.

Ironsoul ignored both the two Guard teidar now standing at her shoulder and also the four more who had crowded into the room, blasters held in tense hands. Ignored the concerned sanzai that must be bombarding her as it did Fireblade.

Fixed her steely gaze on the alien in front of her. “So, Alexander Jardin. Do we have a deal?”

[Tamri]

"You think the Imperium is bad? You just don't know about those who make it so"

Seriously, of all the neighbors, only the Tau and Eldar can be said to be good, and even then - with big reservations. It's better not to meet other players on the Galaxy map except in nightmares. And with some - even in them. Yeah, Chaos, I'm looking at you.

Unfortunately, being cut off from the Warp can protect you from the least dangerous guys, and Chaos has obviously already trodden a path here. I suspect this anomaly won't save you from the Necrons, and nothing will save you from the Tyranids at all - these bastards look for targets and travel in completely different ways.

Paradoxically, it seems that it was precisely the proximity to Terra that has protected the loroi and their neighbors so far - the Imperium protected them, ensuring the safety of the capital.

But sooner or later such a neighborhood will turn from an advantage into a disadvantage. Not soon, but inevitably.

[Cthulhu]

So the Loroi wish to be neutral? A very wise choice...

...which they don't have. As any other faction in WH40 universe. And since Chaos already knows where the Union is, Alex isn't their prisoner. He's their only hope. That's the deal he should offer. Whatever plans the Prince behind this conflict has, it will spell doom for the Loroi, and plain good ol' death will be the "best" possible option.