Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

174 – Average Stalker Behaviour

High rolling hills covered in verdant green forests spread as far as the eye could see, some sowed lingering sins of having sported vibrant flowers just a week ago, but most have long shed their spring looks. I stood up on a mountaintop, one of the smaller ones near where the two groups were converging in the valley below. 

Looking around, one might mistake the scenery to be one back on Earth until they looked closer. The trees were strange, their trunks more groups of petrified vines twisting together to form a solid core before spreading out into branches a few metres up to form a canopy than a normal tree. Their few flowers attracted not bees or other insects, but strange creatures most similar to squirrels that sported grasping tails twice as long as their bodies, which they used to swing about the canopy and to launch themselves into the air by coiling it up like a spring. 

In the air flew not birds, but scaled creatures that reminded me of pterodactyls from prehistoric Earth. The more I looked, the less familiar the sight became. Maybe even that initial impression was just due to a treacherous bout of nostalgia and homesickness. 

There were some things I liked about my new reality in this grimdark future, my near god-like power and beautiful girlfriend being the main ones, but the list of things to dislike about it was endless. 

I just have to find the silver linings. I mused, turning my face upwards to the pale yellow sky and squinted to find the pair of moons lumbering across it. They were tiny when compared to Earth’s moon, so I doubted a regular human would have been able to see them without a telescope, but they were still there, a sign of the infinite expanse of space beyond.

I loved space. Maybe it was because I was now some strange alien that could exist in it almost as easily as I could in a breathable atmosphere, or maybe it was due to the infinite possibilities it hid. Out there were planets, cultures, aliens and things I couldn’t even imagine. 

And I had all the time in the world to explore it all. 

That would have to come later though, far into the future. Maybe there were good things out there, or maybe there weren’t. It could be true that the Tyranids had consumed all life outside our galaxy and that we were the last bastion of something better than the hungering space bugs. 

If it was, it was even more important that I built something for myself, something substantial. The disparate Necron Dynasties might come together to do something about the Tyranids and Chaos, but I doubted they would do so before all else went to shit, or that anyone would be happy with the solution they came up with. The Pariah Nexus would have worked to mess Chaos up after all, but it would have also ruined every single civilisation relying on Psykers and the Warp to function.

The Eldar were nearly useless as they were. Maybe the Dark Eldar would pull out some horribly overpowered ancient weapon from their vaults when they felt threatened enough, but I doubted it’d amount to more than a blip in the grand scheme of things. They would run out of both the weapons and the Psykers to power them before the Tyranids were even mildly inconvenience. That was if Slaanesh didn’t eat all of their souls before they could do even that much.

The Tau weren’t even worth talking about, and while Guilliman was working tirelessly at pulling the Imperium back into some semblance of functionality, I doubted it’d be enough without some huge twist of fate turning things in their favour. 

Be the change you want to see in the world. I hummed, then and there deciding that I was going to begin worming my way into the Tau Empire once I got back from this excursion. The Tau were weak, backwards and knew little of how the galaxy worked, but I could change all of that. More importantly, they didn’t have spite practically ingrained into their genes like all the other races did. Humans, the Eldar and Necrons had been at war for so long, had murdered and been murdered by each other so much they were just so jaded I doubted I could make a worthwhile change to their society. 

They could be helpful later, but they couldn’t be the foundation of what I wanted to build. 

‘Alert: Group 2 is approaching, ETA: 2 minutes.’ My mind-core set to keep track of both parties pinged me and I rose to my feet, patting down my butt for any of the misty moss that stuck to it rather than to the large rock that had served as my seat. 

I didn’t know what brought about my depressing musings, or the rather philosophical brooding before it, but I shoved it all into the back of my mind. None of those problems I’d been thinking about could be solved in the short term, making even the tiniest step in the right direction would be a work of years.

I just need to get the snowball rolling down the hill and in time, it’ll turn into an avalanche. 

I clad myself in the best mixture of optical camouflage and conjured invisibility I could make. For all regular observers, it’d be impossible to notice me. Alas, one of the groups down there had a Blank that would at the very least shamble my invisibility, if not break it outright if I came too close to him, while the other had a Psyker who might be able to sense my presence.

I had two options on that front. Either I could wrap my aura up around myself like a cocoon and hold it in, hopefully preventing the Psyker from sensing it if I wasn’t up in their face. Or, I could spread it so thin they’d mistake it as some sort of ambient fluctuation or fail to notice its existence at all.

My soul was challenging to detect for regular Psykers, that I knew. It was easy to find powerful souls near you in the Warp, but since I wasn’t in the Warp, that didn’t apply to me.

The downside of that was that I of course couldn’t use people’s souls as a way to attack their bodies in realspace like other telepaths and such could. It was a shame, but it kept me mostly safe from prying eyes, which was much more important. 

After some thought, I decided to go with the thin aura option. It’d allow me to attack at a moment’s notice if I had to and without having to resort to getting up close and personal.

Sure, the people near Jurgen would be safe from that, but his Blank null-field only covered a small area around him. From what I observed while near him, it was a sphere with a radius of about ten metres of heavy nullification and another twenty of mild discomfort. 

With that, I descended from the mountaintop, dashing like an invisible wraith towards the area both groups seemed to be converging on. My body was light as a feather under my telekinetic touch, making it nearly effortless to leap dozens of metres across tall branches. My surroundings quickly turned from the sparsely forested, droll grey mountaintop to a thickly forested valley filled with ancient vine trees, the largest of which towered over the sea of green, like monoliths, taller than even Californian redwoods. 

The group with the Psyker woman in it, the one I suspected to be Inquisitor Vail’s entourage to be, came to a halt. I thought they might have detected me somehow, but a quick look and eavesdropping with my aura revealed they’d just reached their destination. I altered my course and headed towards them.

It only took me a few minutes, but by the time I was perched on a high-up branch hanging over the small clearing they’d stopped in, they had a dozen tents large enough to house a score of people bunking together raised with the beginnings of a campfire starting in the middle. 

They were also no slouches as far as protection went. A platoon of ten armoured vehicles outfitted with off-road tires and automated autocannons atop them, constantly swinging about and questing for targets, was spread out around the encampment. 

Of actual people, I counted at least a hundred gathered down there, mulling about with another ten or so hidden in a larger, more elaborate tent in the middle of the clearing. Inside, I could clearly feel the Psyker’s presence, erratic and in constant turmoil. Whoever that Psyker was, she was one of the less sane Psykers, I could practically feel her jumbled thoughts jumping around in her head with little rime or reason.

You met up here to leave the planet, didn’t you? I mused inwardly, my eyes narrowed, and I searched for how exactly they could accomplish that. I was certain they had no space-capable shuttle waiting nearby with my aura spread around me for miles, and I also saw no sign of one in their encampment.

That meant either Cain had one stashed away in his back pocket, or one would come to pick them up. Really, it was almost assured to be the latter. So I turned my gaze skywards and tried to peer through the yellowish veil. I saw our ship clearly, its stealth capabilities were disabled, so its biological functions lit it up in my thermal vision like a Christmas tree. I cycled through all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum before letting out a huff as I found nothing. 

Even if they could hide away a shuttle, I was certain they couldn’t hide a Warp-capable voidship on the planet. Meaning, they had stealth that hid them from my cursory inspection. Not at all deterred, I decided to cheat a little and tapped into the enormous gravitational sensors on our ship. With it being parked up in high planetary orbit, the sensitive sensors could pick up individual satellites, a whole ass ship with its millions of tonnes of mass pressing down on realspace took all of twelve seconds to find. The planet’s gravitational well messing with both the sensors and the other ship’s own gravitational pull was the only reason it took even that long, and was not found in a matter of nanoseconds instead.

It was tiny by Imperial standards, though maybe my perspective was skewed a little. My only experience with voidships beforehand had been the Necron cruisers harassing us and the obnoxiously large armada Guilliman had assembled, led by his stupidly enormous flagship.

It was also hovering almost exactly above my present location, at an altitude of a few thousand kilometres. It was probably a ship built for stealth and speed, not a slugging fest that most other Imperial ships were, though I had little doubt an Inquisitor’s ride would have some nasty weapons on it too that would have made most war crime-level weapons on Earth look like toys in comparison.

Not willing to risk that Psyker detecting my presence, I stayed put and listened. I could see and hear enough from where I was. Not five minutes later, just as I was listening in on the woman who I suspected to be Inquisitor Amberly Vail mutter curses about Cain being late again, the long-awaited group’s line of vehicles rumbled down a beaten dirt path and rolled to a stop near one of the outermost jeeps. 

After a short exchange in which everyone confirmed that both sides were who they said they were—even though they were in the deep wilderness, with the closest village twenty kilometres away and the nearest two thrice that—the groups merged together. The soldiers all took up watch or worked to finish setting up the encampment while the leaders slipped inside the central tent. 

With Jurgen inside the tent too, likely shadowing Cain, I was left to rely on my hearing to spy on them. Which was, of course, when something interesting finally happened.

“So that’s the artifact you’ve been looking for?” Cain asked, equal measure curiosity and wariness evident in his tone. 

“Doesn’t look like much,” Jurgen murmured under his breath. 

“Yes,” Inquisitor Vail replied with clear satisfaction in her tone, though she sounded exhausted and I could almost see the tired smile on her lips. “Now we can finally get off this Emperor forsaken rock.”

“I take it the artifact isn’t as dangerous to handle as the last one you had me fetch?” Cain asked. 

“No, it’s as dangerous as a blunt rock,” Vail said with a chuckle. “Not at all unless someone smashes your skull in with it, or without a powerful Psyker to operate it.”

Left unsaid was the fact even that would be largely impossible with Jurgen standing so near it. Now that I was sure my primary target was down there — unless they knew I was here and the sole purpose of the conversation was to bait me into acting, something I severely doubted — I saw little reason to keep myself from taking action. I’d kept myself from taking any risks so far, but that had to end here and now.

Without a sound, I tilted forward, dropping from my perch and falling towards the tent's entrance. My Psychic invisibility trembled, quaked, and then dissipated around me as the distance thinned, but my Lictor-sourced camouflage held strong. With the lone Psyker having run away from Jurgen, I doubted anyone would detect me. 

My feet touched down without a sound, light as a feather and a grin stretched across my face as nobody reacted. With no one the wiser, I slipped in through the gently lapping flaps and took in the tent’s interior. My eyes quickly taking in everything and everyone before landing on the table standing at the centre, or to be accurate, the artifact resting atop it. It was a gem the size of my fist held in gilded claws, hanging off a thick golden chain.

It was also so drenched in the powers of the Warp that even under the nullification-field of a Pariah, I could feel its power brimming with potential, begging to be let loose. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om