297 – Begin the Offensive
Knowing that my perfect stealth run was a bust, I connected to the Sovereign, spreading Eldritch tendrils out through its organic structure. I remade it into its original battleship version, then yanked the Whitestone skeleton back out of my Realm and re-inserted it into the ship’s structure.
The cloaking field faded away, and with a thought, I deployed a massive Ward around the ship in its place. No more hiding, just pure defence. I tied it to the Whitestone, anchoring the Ward to the miraculous material to maintain it in perpetuity. Whitestone was absolutely busted like that. I loved it. It would have felt like cheating in any other fictional setting I knew of, but Fate sent my unlucky soul into this dump and if you weren’t cheating your pretty little ass off in Warhammer 40k, then were you even really trying?
I got done just in time to see the closest of those Tyranid wannabe-asteroids reach the ship, its bio-plasma thruster flaring like a massive torch in the cold, dark void of space. It struck the Ward, which was a metre-thick layer of condensed soul energy infused with my understanding of Defence and Protection, both as pure concepts and in a more physical sense. It sat on top of the real hull and held strong even as the Tyranid emerged from within its shell, four clawed limbs trying and failing to latch onto the smooth Ward while it poked at it with its pointy beak.
It was a horrid mix of an octopus, a hermit crab and a turtle, but most of all it reminded me of those small saboteur droids in Star Wars, just much bigger and fully organic.
The point defence turrets pushed themselves through the Ward, emerging on the other side and opening fire. Larger weapons batteries mimicking Imperial Macro Cannons, Lances and Plasma Cannons, all of them the size of hab-blocks at the smallest and some the size of skyscrapers, followed a moment later. They stood on elevated towers that pushed them above the Ward, and they too opened fire, spitting a hail of organic missiles, lances of bio-plasma the size of buildings and thick beams of energy at larger clusters of approaching Tyranids. The PDTs took care of the ones already crawling across the Ward, while the largest weapon on the ship, the titanic cannon fixed to the prow and mimicking a Nova Cannon, started charging up.
If sneaking through was impossible, I might as well blast my way through. I grinned, looking out through the thick window of the observation deck, my heart swelling with glee as I watched the darkness of space light up like a Christmas tree as millions of bolts of plasma and beams of pure energy ripped through it seeking their targets. All of it was silent, the sound of explosions, of hissing plasma and roaring Tyranids all swallowed by the void of space. It was beautiful. A silent concert of vibrant colours and violence on a scale no one from home could have ever seen, and I made it. Me. Just little old me. Sometimes it still struck me, in moments like these.
The Tyranids fired back, surprisingly enough. Some of those asteroid cosplayers unfolded to reveal upscaled versions of Biovores, the Tyranids' primary artillery bioforms. They spat back thick globs of bio-plasma, while some launched organic missiles filled with some very nasty acid and venom. Nasty enough that if those hit the hull of an Imperial ship, they would have eaten through it in moments, rotting away building-sized chunks of the thick armour plating.
My Ward, thankfully, had an anti-grav effect — or rather, a directed kinetic repulsion field — which just chucked the few payloads that ended up splattered across it back into empty space. A single one managed to hit one of my macro cannons, eating through the entire thing in a second before the acid started burrowing deeper, trying to eat its way into the Sovereign by going through the tower that held the weapons battery above it. I quickly detached that tower and shut the Ward behind it, letting the acid have that small chunk.
That acid was really nasty. I wanted it. So I got it, grabbing a handful of those acid missiles by conjuring portals before them and sending them crashing into thick spheres of soul energy on the other side. That earned me five globs of acid, floating before me and encased in hollow, spherical barriers. From there, stealing it was a matter of slurping it up with a tendril of Eldritch Flesh … which I first detached from my body and controlled remotely, because — despite evidence to the contrary — I wasn’t stupid.
I half expected the brave little tendril to melt into a pool of goop that then proceeded to melt through three floors before I grabbed it again. Instead, it seemed my Eldritch powers deemed it suitably organic or some shit and slurped it all up without trouble, delivering me a nice little stream of bio-energy combined with the template of this nasty acid.
I repeated the same trick a few more times, using my aura to pick out missiles loaded with new types of acids, bio-plasma, toxins and venoms. Each of the above-mentioned categories had at least twenty different variations. Aside from bio-plasma warheads, which had only two versions, and even those only differed in the organic casing that kept the plasma stable right up until it didn’t need to be anymore. One managed to keep the plasma at a higher density and thus yield, while the other could direct the plasma upon impact much better, focusing it into a cone instead of letting it just explode all over the place.
Some of the ‘acids’ weren’t even really acids as the definition of such things went, but really powerful bases — alkaline agents — that did nothing against my Ward, nor would they have worked on a metallic armoured plating … but would have liquified a sizable chunk of the organic parts of the ship if I failed to catch it in time.
The Hive Mind was experimenting, and wasn’t that a horrifying thought for everyone who wasn’t me … hell, even I was starting to feel wary of whatever else it could have cooked up even with my ridiculous natural advantage. My Eldritch bullshit was the perfect Tyranid counter, but the Hive Mind had seen me use it before. A lot. I think I had every right to be worried, but still, I didn’t even think about turning back. I didn’t know what the Tyranids were building here that had them cover five entire star systems’ worth of planets in their organic structures, but I knew letting them continue would be bad. Possibly even for me. Hell, it had to be near cataclysmic if the Four Cunts were actively working together to thwart it.
My ripoff Nova Cannon finally finished charging, having gathered, heated, agitated and condensed a massive amount of bio-plasma. The cannon’s power fields snapped online, electromagnetic fields working as intended and ready to shape the unleashed plasma into a concentrated lance of pure destruction.
“Fire,” I whispered to myself, grinning as the containment field opened on one side, letting the extremely pressurised plasma burst into the barrel the size of a smaller voidship.
For a moment, it was like a new star graced the dark outer reaches of the system, illuminating everything around it as the titanic lance ripped forth. Asteroids and swarming Tyranids evaporated even before the lance itself truly reached them, vaporised by the sheer heat carried within. Only some chunks of smouldering, molten rocks remained bubbling away despite being in the frigid cold of space.
“Awesome,” I whispered, giving my ship an affectionate pat. “Well done, you beautiful beast.”
It wasn’t intelligent, but I was starting to heavily consider giving the Sovereign a mind of its own. It was supposed to be just a prototype I’d throw away when I wanted to make a new ship, but I just kept upgrading it, modifying it, and I could be honest and admit I was getting attached to my first true battleship. Maybe later, though, I didn’t need new unknown variables making a mess of things. There was a reason I disliked Machine Spirits, and that reason was unreliability. If I gave my flagship a conscious mind, I’d make sure it was perfect for the purpose and would always remain reliable.
The thrusters flared to life, going from a slow, careful pace meant to keep the ship’s exhaust plume non-existent to full throttle. The gravity engines that had propelled it so far shut down; they were only usable out in deep space, away from a star’s gravity well, or for low velocities where you didn’t want to have an exhaust plume that lit up on every infrared radar like a supernova. I didn’t need them anymore now that stealth was no longer an option.
A brilliant plume of plasma flared to life behind the ship, and it burst into motion, its velocity tripling, then doubling that, and then it continued to climb and build momentum until it left all the Tyranids that survived the onslaught behind. It raced through the gap opened by the prow-mounted cannon, weapons batteries constantly swinging this way and that to take out the few approaching enemies that had a chance at intercepting the Sovereign.
Thirty minutes later, the ship cleared the asteroid cloud, slipping deeper into the system’s gravity well. The inbuilt sensory organs got to work, perceiving more than they should have been physically capable of due to being drenched in a steady inflow of bio-energy and being forced into overdrive.
Eight planets orbited the local star, two of which were dwarf planets in irregular orbits, and three were gas giants, with one rocky planet being far too close to the star to be inhabited. That left two more planets, both of which I knew to have been inhabited before the Tyranids swept through the system.
Freya itself was the second planet from the star, and had once been an unusually Earth-like planet, but there were a lot of those in this galaxy despite the statistical impossibility of it. I blamed the Old Ones and their terraforming. Now it was a wreck ravaged by millennia of relentless mining and then the anarchy that had consumed it during the Age of Shadow when the Imperium pulled out of the Jericho Reach.
The records said the planet fell to constant wars between gangs, techno-barbarian warlords and maddened Chaos cults. Then the Tyranids came and wiped it clear of life, the results of which had been witnessed by a Deathwatch vessel that came to investigate, and was subsequently jumped by a pair of Tyranid drone ships hiding behind Ferya’s moons.
The other planet was a nameless Ice World, its official designation lost to Imperial bureaucracy, a bit further away from the star than Mars was from Sol, and covered in freshwater glaciers. It had been inhabited many, many millennia ago, but not widely, and it was never resettled.
Now it wasn’t just a measly two drone ships that were lying in wait, and nor were they hiding. Both the Ice World and Freya itself were covered in an absolute buttload of lifeforce that I could feel even from afar.
There was also a fleet of bioships, an actual fleet with dozens of cruiser-sized ships and nine battleship-sized Hive Ships, along with escorts, drone ships and everything in between. I even spied a single monstrous Hive Ship nearly larger than the Sovereign, eclipsing the other Hive Ships lingering near it. I had no idea what the fuck that thing was, but I doubted it was only for show, and it wasn’t the only bioship design I failed to recognise. Some of the designs missing from my list of templates I found instead in the mental library of data I have scavenged from Imperial cogitators, got from Zedev or bullied Octavian into giving me. Some I didn’t.
This was a major Splinter Fleet, probably a sizable portion of the entire armada Hive Fleet Dagon had under its aegis. But it was merely to slow newcomers, or at least I assumed so. That gathered fleet could contest Tetrarchus’ First Fleet, the Fist of the Achilus Crusade and the Lord Militant's personal armada, but not me. Not for long anyway.
It was nothing to scoff at … but I felt like the actual danger awaited me on Freya and the nameless Ice World. The Swarmlord was there, so were daemons, and Doombreed would also be showing his ugly mug for sure, and while I could beat him in our spars more often than not despite his natural advantages, he could get troublesome when I also had to deal with a planet full of Tyranids.
The Sovereign continued inwards on a trajectory set to crash into the strongest part of the Tyranid fleet gathering in the asteroid belt just after the third planet in the system. It swam past the other planets, like some great sea beast. The ship’s sensors and my own aura scanned the planets as we passed them, finding not a hint of life, just some derelict space stations still orbiting the gas giants long after their crews’ corpses had turned to nothing but dust and bone. Harvesting stations, an old shipyard, nothing unexpected.
A part of the Tyranid fleet broke away from the asteroid belt, moving to intercept the Sovereign at a steady pace. It was a small force, just a single Hive Ship and a trio of Battle-Cruiser Class bio-ships surrounded by two dozen smaller ships, primarily Cruisers and Light Cruisers. I was almost offended at the sight. Was the Hive Mind distracted? Did it not see me cut through the outer asteroid cloud and its trap there? Did it not remember the Sovereign from previous battles across the Orpheus Salient? The number of Splinter Fleets I had crushed so far was in the double digits by now. I’d destroyed Tyranid fleets twice the size of the one coming to intercept me.
“I suppose I’ll have to make it take me seriously. Those Demons are far from your biggest problem.”