[M36.246.05]
I stepped into the observation room, just four metal walls, extensive wards and a heavily reinforced glasscrete window which looked into a small room below. The room, closer to a prison cell, was even smaller than the observation room, a small bed in one corner with a table and chair in the other.
The space station we were on didn’t exist on paper. It was right at the edge of the inner planets, in a large geostationary orbit around the sun. Placed in such a way that it never came close to any of the other celestial bodies in our solar system. I knew without looking that the walls lining the cell were filled with explosives, ready to go off at a moment's notice.
The station itself was tiny, if over engineered. It had just enough space for a few hundred identical cells, staff quarters, armouries and the powerful Gellar Field emitters. That was it.
Realistically none of us should be anywhere near it but that was hardly a problem these days.
Nearby there was a far larger station, military bases, that housed many of the void craft protecting the solar system, including their wharfs. It was also the main base of operations for the PDS with the admiralty's HQ. But that wasn’t why I was nearby.
I passed Katra standing guard by the door and my bodyguards, whom Kellen had assigned me, doing the same.
As I passed her, I nodded, smiling. She gave me a weak grin in return. Tilting my head questioning at her, I slowed down, about to stop and ask what was wrong. She shrugged and shook her head, so I carried on, but I would find her later to see what was wrong.
I was happy she was up and about again. It had taken a few months longer than I had planned, but she was back on gang duty. She'd had some complications and I was far more thorough than I would have been with most others, which added a few weeks to her recovery.
Patting her on the shoulder when I passed her, I stepped up to look through the one-way glass, falling in line with Selina and our new governor.
"Selina, Morwenna. How goes it?"
"Aleric." Selina said distractedly, turning and giving me a brief smile. Morwenna just nodded before turning her attention back to the room below.
I paused a moment to inspect the single occupant inside the room. Nothing more than a boy really, 14 years old, thin and scared, curled up on the bed, his knees pulled right up to his chest.
"When was he found?" I asked.
"A few months." Morwenna said. "He was buried under other reports, so we only just discovered him."
"Do you have any idea when the Black Ships will arrive to take him away?"
"No definitive timelines. Especially not with how the warp is. According to records, they should have already been through 6 months ago. But who knows? They come and go as they please." Morwenna said with a shrug.
I hummed thoughtfully.
There was little known about the Black ships. Deliberately so, I could only assume. Not even the Mechanicus had detailed records on them. They noted the vessels, they provided them after all, but that was the extent of it. Most of the information would be in the Sol system not on a random forge world if there were any records at all.
"Do we know how strong a psyker he is?" Selina asked.
"Not sure." Morwenna said. "Not too powerful if he's here. According to the Arbites records, if he were truly powerful, the process would be to execute him on the spot. There was one millennium ago that disrupted the entire hive world."
"You have records going back that far?" I asked, surprised. I hadn't seen them. Although to be fair, I hadn't looked too closely at them. Most of the ones I read were little more than the author fellating themselves or their bloodline. Not something I had any interest in reading.
"There are some accounts in the old libraries. The scribes have huge vaults of them."
"Interesting, I might have to read through them." Although if they were all in paper as I expected them to be, maybe it wouldn’t be worth the time.
"Be my guest." Morwenna said. "Anyway, not too powerful Selina. And locked in there, he is of little threat. There are—"
I zoned the other two out as they chatted away and stared intently at the young boy. He was unremarkable in every way, right up to when he'd set a rioter on fire when they attacked his family. As was protocol, he was immediately moved to these cells and treated as a dangerous lunatic. Ready to be transported to Terra and to whatever horrors awaited him there.
He didn’t look like a killer, just a scared child. But who knows? He could be a lunatic killer, corrupted by chaos.
Unlikely, but it was possible.
"I want to meet him." I said. Interrupting the others.
"That’s not possible. He is—"
"I can get around that." I said, waving it away. "I want to meet him."
"Aleric, I'm not sure…"
"I will take all precautions; he won't be a threat."
Selina and Morwenna exchanged a look. One I ignored. This would be an excellent opportunity, and not one I wanted to miss out on. When else might I get access to a psyker?
"I understand that and I can organise it." Morwenna said carefully.
"Good. I have everything I need on my shuttle."
"Now?" Morwenna said, surprised. Although I wasn’t sure why. Why else would I have travelled to the middle of nowhere but to inspect the kid? It certainly wasn’t to go to their meeting with the admiralty, which was why they were out here.
"Yes, I want to run some tests."
"Be careful." Selina said. "We can't risk drawing the Black Ships wrath. I have heard stories from noble houses who did. It didn’t end well for them."
"That’s fine, the tests are non-invasive and would risk the boy."
I turned my attention back to the boy as the two left, once again glad I could avoid the pointless meetings. The new admiral was already making a nuisance of himself. A vain, pompous man who liked the sound of his own voice, but it was too soon for anything to happen to him.
He was too much of a stabilising factor in the navy.
When it stabilised… well, let's just say I already knew there were some plans in place.
I would need to deal with him eventually, or whoever took over his position. I was designing some prototype void vessels for the Navy's use. They were only patrol craft, as I wanted the designs to be as simple as possible. So things like the warp drive and Gellar fields were out.
The reasons for that were two-fold. First, in the name of producing them in system, and second, they were merely a test bed for me. Anything too advanced would need the forge world to produce or couldn’t be made in large enough numbers to be worth producing.
I would already need to convert several manufactorums to create the components, but when that was up and running, everything the craft needed could be produced in system and more to the point, in decent volume.
They would be small, nothing larger than 800 metres long. But they would be without much of the finery many ships had. The designs would be ergonomic. I wanted to see how my ideas would compare to what was already available. It might also be a way to introduce some changes if they were seen as effective.
I just had to be careful not to cross the line. But if I could make a cheap and cost-effective patrol craft, it would increase the security of not just the hive worlds, but all inhabited worlds.
Or that was the hope, at least for the long term. The early ones were experimental.
Currently I had two variants.
One was a faster, more manoeuvrable and would fill a scouting role. I hoped one day to incorporate Drukhari tech within them. That was obviously a long way off, but I had been making slow and consistent headway with them. I was starting to understand the mechanics if not the processes behind their technology. The stealth field was a long way off of course, and even if I had cracked it, the patrol craft wouldn’t have received it. The plan was to make a fragment STC, or at least what appeared like one anyway, and distribute a far-reduced version. Mostly to make it harder for augers to lock onto them.
The vessel had little in the way of offensive weapons, mostly point defences, torpedo and missile pods.
The second type had a similar chassis but was outfitted for direct combat. The efficient design meant smaller crews, which allowed the ships to have far thicker armour than was to be expected, giving them a deceptive amount of staying power. My piece de resistance I was working on for them was to have the ability to link their shields and point defences together, in an effort to make the resulting bubble stronger than the sum of its parts. It would also give them a degree of redundancy, so if one shield fell, it would be overlapped by several others.
Unfortunately, I was far from the final product. The void shields were fighting me on it. But it would come. This did mean more of the power was going to the armaments, taking it away from the sensors and engines. So it would end up slower than the scouting variants.
The scraping of metal boots pulled me from my thoughts.
Looking behind me, I grinned as I caught sight of Katra. "Off the job?"
I had been expecting her to follow Selina and Morwenna.
"Yeah got a new squad but Victoria can take over. She was the original squad leader and will do a far better job than I can."
I chuckled at that, expecting her to join in. When she didn’t, I scoffed, realising she was serious. "You know that’s not true."
She just grunted at me and came to stand next to me, looking at the kid.
Now concerned, I asked. "You okay? No trouble with your bionics or healing?"
"No, you have done a bang-up job on that." She said, shaking her head.
"That’s good to hear, so what's the problem?"
"Ahh, nothing..."
I bumped my shoulder into hers. "Come on Katra, lay it on me."
She almost brushed me off again, but after a long, long pause. "I keep thinking about what I could have done differently. I keep seeing flashes of them in the final moments. You know—never mind. I'm just tired. Besides I'm not sure I want to lead another squad. What if I fuck it up again?"
"Have you spoken to Selina? Maybe you can get shifted as part of a squad rather than leading one for a while? At least in the short term?"
Katra grimaced. "It will still be the same. People won't give me orders and look to me for guidance. And I won't follow stupid orders."
"What about moving up to a desk?" I asked, already knowing the answer to that.
"Naa fuck that. That would be worse. It's silly, I'll get over it. Ignore me." She said, waving her hand.
I chuckled at a thought. "Well, I could always use my bodyguard back."
She froze at that, before twisting to stare at me intently for a moment, her eyes alight with something I couldn’t place.
"Like you need that. I have seen the people you have guarding you. That tech priest Kellen is far better than I ever could be."
"Well, now I know you are fucking with me." I said, nudging her. "Sure, he is skilled, but he has nowhere near your experience or instincts. And lots of that strength is the bionics he has been given."
"Bullshit. You said you gave me the best you could make."
"Yes and no."
"No?" she said sharply, her eyes narrowing at me.
"Don’t give me that look. It is some of the best of the imperium. Hand on heart for that. But they were more rugged as I expected you to stay here, so I wouldn’t be able to replace or monitor them. If you are with me…"
"Hmm." She said thoughtfully. "Would you really want me to have your back again?"
I blinked, processing that. Before realising she was deadly serious. I took her shoulders in my hands to look at her directly in the face.
Huh… I was taller than her. Even when I left, she was taller.
Pushing that aside for now. "Katra, there is no one I would trust more to have my back. I truly believe you are the only reason I have made it this far, and I would love you to be my bodyguard once more."
She actually blushed, looking away. "Thanks." She muttered, then she cleared her throat. "I will talk to Selina. See if she will let me go."
"If she doesn’t let me know and I will have a word." I said, laughing softly. I was aware enough to know there was no way Selina would or could refuse me.
"What are you going to do with the psyker?" Katra asked, waving her hand at him.
I let her change the topic, turning back to the window and the boy in question. "I have some sensors and tests to run. Firstly, to see if I can find a better way to detect him. Both in a larger population and in his effects on the world. I have several patterns I want to test to see which has the best efficacy. Then there is some tech I want to try that should cut him off from using his powers and others that do the opposite. And other stuff like that."
I had so many ideas I needed to test. A big one was my Self knowledge. I wanted to see what it did to his mind and connection. I knew what it did to me, but what about someone who had a much stronger connection to the Great Ocean?
I hadn't decided how I was going to go about it yet, but I was pretty committed to trying.
I needed to be careful, but it wasn’t the end of the world if I had to kill him off for any reason. It might actually be a nicer fate than he would experience if I did. I knew enough to have some idea what would be ahead of him. I just needed to hide my tracks if I did so.
---
The door buzzed, sliding open on squeaking cogs. Stale air and body odour wafted through it, and the boy started away in the cot. When he did, I felt the familiar tingle washing over my skin, the hairs on the back of my neck and arms standing on end.
At the same time, I felt the weight pressing down on my mind. Barely noticeable it was so weak, but definitely there. Nothing compared to some I had met, the Lady Inquisitor sprang to mind.
I paused at the doorway, taking him and the feeling in, before pushing back with my Will and moving into the cell.
The pressure came in fits and starts, like a thready pulse.
"Wh—, who are you?" The boy babbled. "I am faithful to the Emperor and not a demon. How are my family? I didn’t mean to—."
I cut him off by raising my hand. "By the sounds of it, they had it coming. But that’s not why I am here. As for your family, they are safe. And if you help me, I can help them further."
I left the door open and stepped into the room. Out of sight, my guards were ready to change in if it looked like I was in danger.
Not that I would need the help, I was quite capable of taking him down by myself, thank you very much. My bionics were no worse than Kellens and Lysa's after all. I also had far more combat experience than them, particularly with my fragments.
With them I didn’t expect to meet many who could out skill me. Well, expect the monsters like Astartes or some xenos.
I placed my bags on the table before sitting.
The boy was still curled up on the bed, knees to his chest. Up close he looked far younger, and that wasn’t just the poor food and nutrition. Although that would likely be a contributing factor. It was the hopelessness and despair on his face.
"I take it nothing has been explained to you?"
"N, N, No."
I took a moment to review his record through the noosphere. I had collated everything I could find, as limited as it was, as soon as I heard about a psyker. To be honest, I kind of expected there to be more of them. If there was a reason there was only one. I had no idea.
Maybe it was the solar system's location so it received a fairly regular visit by the Black Ships, so the number can never build up. Or it could have been the recent cults. Depressingly it was likely the cult.
The boy had little interesting about him. One of billions growing up in the hive. The only thing of note were his surprisingly wholesome family.
If things had carried on as they were, he would be part of the PDF defending the planet. But that was no longer possible.
"You are a psyker."
"N—no I can't be. I worship the Emperor." Mathew said, starting to panic. I could feel the charge in the air.
I flared my Will, pushing it back. "Be calm. Psyker doesn't mean a daemon. It merely means you have a deeper connection to the warp and can make use of it. You will be taken by the Black Ships to Holy Terra, where you will undergo training so your skills can be put to use for the Imperium."
"So not evil…" He said hopefully.
"No. The powers can lead you to evil if not respected, but the faith in the Emperor will provide some protection."
If that was true, I had no idea. It was something I wanted to test, although how to go about that was another story. Still, there was no harm in giving the kid hope.
"So why are you here?"
"I want to run some tests."
"Tests?" He said fearfully. "But you can help my family?"
"Yes tests. I have some auspex I want to see if I can detect your connection to the warp. And yes, if you help me I will make sure your family are looked after."
"O—okay. What do I need to do?" He said, trying to put on a brave face.
I smiled, in what I hoped was a reassuring way. By his face, I don’t think I succeeded. No matter. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice, but a willing subject was far easier than one who fought me every step of the way.
"Why don’t you sit here. While I set up my instruments." I said, standing up and indicating the chair.
I turned away from him, but all my auspex were focused on him. Now would be the time for him to show his true colours. My back turned and the door open…
But he didn’t even look twice at the open door and shuffled to sit in the chair without complaint.
"Good." I said, when the last of my scanners were carefully laid out on the table. "First, put your arm in this."
Still hesitant, but the boy complied and held his arm out, allowing me to strap it into the device.
"I will be taking a small drop of blood."
As I went about my work, the boy seemed to settle down somewhat. I connected several cables and sensors around his body as well as a full helmet stuffed with auspexes. If I were going to see anything, I assumed it would be in his brain. Once in place, they started to take a full body scan, while I took a full pint of blood. I would need to make sure the kid got a proper meal after this.
A pint should be more than enough to run some other test in my lab in Atlantis. There were several machines I was hopeful for. I could always come back for more later if I needed to. I likely would, as I wanted to see how it interacted with glyphs. I would need to be careful, but I had so many questions.
Like were glyphs more effective with psyker blood or did it make no difference? How would it interact with my Will? These and dozens of other questions would be answered. Not to mention now I wasn’t on a ship traveling though the void and had no oversight, I needed to practice and test them.
Once I had the blood and the base scans were done, I pumped him full of some contrast. With the contrast, I once more took detailed scans looking for anything that might stick out. I cycled through different contrasts and scanners, testing for different outcomes.
I would need to properly analyse the data when I got home, but somewhat disappointingly, from my glances, nothing stood out. I had hoped there would be a noticeable difference in his brain, but it looked 100% normal. That went for the rest of the scans as well. There was no physical characteristic that indicated he was a psyker.
My last hope would be genetics. Hence the blood.
I was almost sure I would see something there. My biological knowledge didn’t have anything on psyker genes, but it hinted at the possibility.
Still, even if I hoped to see something, I wasn’t surprised. All the information I had pointed to psykers gaining their strength through their soul and its connection to the Immaterium rather than the body. Although if there was a genetic component, then there must be some feedback mechanism.
Several hours later, I stepped back. "Thank you."
"Are we done?" Mathew asked, almost reluctantly.
He'd become more comfortable in my presence as time had passed. He was still nervous but no longer scared. I think part of that was just something happening rather than being stuck in a cell with nothing to do.
"With my initial test? Yes. Now I want to strap this on." I pulled out what looked like a thick collar.
The boy leaned forward to make it easier for me. "What's that?"
"This will hopefully disrupt your connection to the Immaterium."
With some help from my mechadendrites, I secured it around his neck. I double checked everything was ready and then turned it on.
Mathew gasped. "The whispers… they're gone." He said in a quiet, awed voice.
"Whispers?" I asked sharply. That couldn’t be a good sign.
"Yes, ever since the… the… that day, I have been hearing whispers. I could never make out what they were saying, but they came in waves. Sometimes louder, other times almost silent. But they were getting louder, more insistent over time."
I spent a few minutes grilling him on the specifics before moving on.
"Interesting. What happens when I do this?" I asked. My mechadendrite snaking out and manipulating the collar, changing the frequencies.
"They're back again."
"And now?"
"Still there, but it's like they are far off in the distance."
I tested each frequency the collar could generate to block connections to the Great Ocean. Some worked better than others. With nothing to compare it to, I had no idea what that meant, but it gave me a solid foundation to work from.
Some had more extreme reactions than others. Most actually seemed to cause him pain, like there was something missing or taken from him.
I also changed how much power the collar used in conjunction with changing the frequencies. The results were mostly the same, but several of the frequencies that had performed very badly did much better when there was more power passing through it.
This did drain the battery rapidly but with my mechadendrite connected to it, I could recharge it from my own internal power supplies.
"I have one final experiment and then we will get you fed and some amenities."
"Okay."
I pulled out several tablets. "This is a hallucinogen."
"A what?"
"A drug. It will make you see things. And this one," I said, pulling out a smaller tablet, "will cause a reaction." That was an understatement. It would actually make him terrified. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. I wanted to see what happened if he was especially emotional.
I particularly wanted to have scans of him while using the warp. I had the collar so could disrupt his connection whenever I wanted, and I had another drug that would flush the compounds from his system.
I would stop before it caused any harm.
"Here." I held out the first tablet.
He looked unsure, but after a moment of hesitation, swallowed both tablets. I made sure the hallucinogen was active before he took the second one, then stood back. The collar was powered off and my auspex were going so I moved to the doorway… just in case.
It took 15 minutes for the drugs to kick in, but when they did, it was dramatic.
The boy's entire body went rigid, eyes wide in terror. "No. No it wasn’t me. Stay away from her. Stay away." He reached out with his hand to bat away an unseen enemy. From his outstretched finger tips, the air rippled and shimered. My sensors went ballistic, not just from the heat, but my bionic eyes could track another kind of energy.
The Immaterium.
The other auspex around the room picked up the same faint readings and automatically started cycling through their settings to try to create a stronger signal. All the while saving the raw data they were recording for analysis at a later date.
The superheated air coated his hands for a moment longer before a gout of flame erupted across the room. I took a reflective step back but didn’t retreat any further, waving my guards away.
It splashed into the wall, chewing through it with surprising ferocity. Maybe I had underestimated his strength. I cancelled the automatic failsafes in the room, which would have seen everything inside it vaporised and watched, the readings still flying in.
The tingle across my skin was far more pronounced now, and the pressure, or itch in a place I couldn’t scratch, had become obvious. With practised ease, I strengthened my shields, brushing away the boy's warp presence.
While my eyes and auspex did detect the warp, it wasn’t nearly as clear as I had hoped for. I would need to go back to the drawing board and redesign them. I manually took control of the auspex to try to increase the fidelity of the readings, but it was to no avail.
But it had given me a direction. If I was fast, I should be able to use him to keep testing them until I nailed it.
By now, the kid was having a full-blown panic attack.
I winced as one of my sensors was consumed by the red-hot fire and had to duck as the flame washed over where I had been standing only moments ago. It stuck to the wall, dancing to unseen currents. Hesitating for a moment, my rational mind telling me how stupid I was about to be, but unable to help myself, I waved my hand near a cluster of the still-burning wall.
I could feel the heat through my bionic arm, but also the tingle of the warp. It wasn’t nearly as clear on my bionic arm as it was to my biological one, but what was important was I could still feel it. Taking a deep breath, I shoved my hand into the fire.
Warnings flashed as the heat washed over my bionic arm. Uncomfortable, but nowhere near hot enough to damage it and I could dull the senses coming from it so I ignored it for now. It was the burning hunger, pressing down onto my arm that had my attention, trying to consume all in its path.
With a flex, I imposed my Will upon it. Rejecting the flame's reality and pushing that hunger away. It was clunky at first, like when I pushed my Will through others. Which made sense, it was a metal bionic and not my actual hand. However, as I practised, it became more and more natural. But still not smoothly.
It was the same problem I had been for a while now. I had hoped it would point to a solution. As I added more and more bionic to my body, it had been harder and harder to use my Will upon it. The defences of my soul were fine, but it was harder to enforce my Will on my body.
I stopped, pulling my hand back.
Wait. For a moment, my Will flowed much smoother through the bionic limb. Eager, I put the bionic arm back in the fire. But the moment had passed and it was fighting me once more.
What had made that difference…
Wait. My hand.
I focused on believing the hand was mine. Not just a bionic I had, but a part of my being. The effect was instant.
My Will flowed through the limb with the ease it did for my biological parts. At last. It made sense in hindsight. If I didn’t see the bionic as a part of myself of course my Will would react differently.
The red flame still danced on my hand, trying to consume it, but found no purchase and I could hold it off with ease. It was barely using up any of my huge surplus of Will. All that crafting with it had clearly made the difference.
A clang drew my attention back to the kid, who was now thrashing on the floor, many of my sensors knocked over as well. Those that had survived the fires that was.
That was enough.
Reaching out, I reactivated the collar.
The boy slumped to the floor, still scared but no longer terrified out of his mind. The dancing flames burning on almost every surface of the room sputtered and went out. The warp fulling them running out.
The reading dimmed from the few auspex that survived the carnage. The boy's presence vanished as well.
Striding over to him, I injected the antidotes, cleansing it all from his system. As the chemicals left his system, he passed out, his mind shutting down. None of my auspex picked up anything wrong with his vitals, which were stable, except for the lump on his head where he hit the floor on the way down.
That was an oversight and one I should have expected. I hadn't wanted to harm him more than necessary.
Otherwise, he was just tired and rest was all he needed.
---
We were in another cell, what with the original one trashed, the boy on the cot, with the paper-thin sheet over him. My equipment was cleared up and stored back on my shuttle and I was itching to be back in my labs.
But I wanted to make sure the kid was okay before I left. Physically he was, but I wasn’t so sure about mentally.
A stimulant had been injected so he should wake up any moment now.
Right on time, the boy stirred. Perfectly timed.
He came awake slowly and incredibly groggy. Blinking, he looked around the room, confused. "Was it a drea—" he cut off as he caught sight of me, flinching.
"How are you feeling?"
"Okay? I can't feel the whispers."
"No, I have left your collar on. If you are up for it, I will have them bring in your food and some books." I knew he could read and write from his files. A rarity and thanks to his mother.
"Yes please."
---
PointsImperium: Hive Cities Scavenger (Tier 2) - IIWarrior (Tier 4) - XImperium: Hive Cities Danger (Tier 2) - IIIHuman: Hand to hand (Tier 3) - VTerra Federation: Technician (Tier 3) - XTerra Federation: Software (Tier 4) - IXSharpshooter (Tier 4) - VIIISelf (Tier 4) - XVIIReverse Engineering (Tier 4) - IX > XImperium: Canine Handling (Tier 2) - IVAkashic Throne (Tier 1) - IBlade Mastery (Tier 4) - IXPhysics (Tier 2) - XXIIIGlyphcraft (Tier 3) - IIIBlueprints (Tier 3) - IIIActing (Tier 1) - IMathematics (Tier 2) - XIIBiology (Tier 1) - XTeaching (Tier 2) - IIMachine Spirit (Tier 3) - VIIChemistry (Tier 1) - VIIIEngineering (Tier 1) - VIIBionics (Tier 4) - XXIICrafting (Tier 4) - X