Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]
205 – Divine Scare

“What in the Emperor’s Holy Name is happening!? REPORT!” roared Solomon Tetrarchus, his hands clutching the armrests of his command-chair until his knuckles turned white. Alarms, warnings and just about every single sensor that should stay silent were blaring and ringing, glowing in a hue that sent a shiver down his spine. Did the Warp-Drive go into emergency shutdown? No, it never does; we’d all be specks of dust floating in the Warp if it failed. Then what? The Navigator? Did he lead us off the beaten path? The helmsman? Did someone sabotage our engines? The Gellar Field? What in the Warp is going ON?!

His fingers twitched, snapping to grasp at his plasma pistol always held at his side as his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He eyed the helmsman, the guards, the Deathwatch Astartes and the Engineseers. Which one of them betrayed him? Who was to blame for this? Who did he have to execute?

I knew these parasites were hungering for my title, but which one of them betrayed me at last? These rats are just the implements of their treachery; they wouldn’t have acted without help … or perhaps the Tau infiltrated my general staff so deep that they managed to sneak some saboteurs onto my ship? Feasible. If it were cultists, we would never have left the Warp, and their accursed demonic masters would be feasting on our souls. But we are in realspace-

“S-Sir! We are nearly on top of our destination!” One of the navigators — not capital N Navigator, just a regular human managing the sensors and reading the star charts — spoke up. “The Vallia system is only a few light years away!”

“Sir! The psykers and the Navigator are all going raving mad,” the head of his personal guards said, listening to a report of his own from a comm-bead in his ear. “Whatever Warp anomaly we’ve stumbled into, it left them all in various states of indisposition. Some are unconscious, some are terrified and speaking like lunatics, and some have gone into a rage, attacking everything in sight.”

“Don’t we have those damned collars on them to prevent that from happening?” Tetrarchus growled, linking himself into the ship’s systems. He was the ship’s Lord, and so the Machine Spirit allowed him access. He cast his awareness out, peering through cameras and listening to sound sensors. 

“No … I’m not here … it doesn’t see me,” one psyker mumbled, curled up in a fetal position in his personal quarters, arms wrapped around his head. “It can’t find me … please … Emperor protect me … “

That pathetic sight was one of his most powerful combat psykers, a man who could melt tanks to slag with a thought, a man who usually wasn’t allowed inside densely populated areas because if he ever lost control, he would be taking a city block down with him to a fiery grave. 

And now he was sobbing like a little girl.

Tetrarchus snapped his attention over to a much more immediate problem.

“WAAAAAAAAAAGH!” Roared the tiny teenage girl just out of the Scholastica Psykana, her voice echoing with an inhuman timbre as her eyes shone with a crimson rage. Despite only having touch-based telepathy among her powers, she charged at the men charged with guarding her with her little fists cocked back. 

Tetrarchus eyed the large iron collar around her neck, which should have fried her brain the moment her mind had been broken by the forces of hell. It sat inert, its usual arcane lights now dim. He snapped his attention to his next target as lasbolts tore the maddened psyker to shreds, leaving behind something that could only be recognised as a human by the geneticists of the Mechanicum. 

As it should be. Tetrarchus thought scornfully. The other Psyker was also in a pitiful state, but he at least retained his awareness enough to invoke the Emperor’s name and ward off whatever malady infected his less experienced kin. 

He quickly swept his awareness through the rest of the ship, focusing on spots where the Machine Spirit was screaming in either pain or rage. 

“Get AWAY FROM ME!” A young psyker roared, clutching his head as the air warped and twisted around him, sending bolts of lasfire and other objects thrown at him soaring to the side. The hangar he stood in had been home to a squadron of fighters once, now they were little more than scrap as they tore apart along with bits of the floor and ceiling as the young man built something of a metal dome around himself and lashed out with circling bits of sharp metal at anyone trying to get close. “STAY AWAY! It’s in my head … it’s laughing … STOP LAUGHING!”

With a thought, Tetrarchus had the hangar’s grand gate open and the forcefield keeping the room pressurised dissipate. As the young psyker and the little castle of scrap he’d built were torn out, sent flying into the vast darkness of space, he put it out of his mind. 

There were dozens more who went mad, but very few were powerful enough to survive the kill squads, who were otherwise their honour guards, firing upon them with impunity. 

Most of his psykers seemed to be merely unconscious, though he couldn’t be sure. Maybe they were the ones who had been at risk of hosting a daemon in their bodies, and the collars did their work, rendering them comatose and dead to the world before it could happen. 

If that was the case … he would have to make do with only a tenth of the psykers he had originally had under his command. And even that tenth would be in a dubious state, seeing as all of them were scared witless, sobbing or staring blankly into space. This was a disaster.

What he did not find, though, were cultists or infiltrators trying to escape from the engine rooms. The machine spirit also helpfully confirmed to him that both the Warp-Drive and the Gellar Field were functioning at optimal parameters, and that neither had been subject to attacks. 

A freak accident, then? Tetrarchus thought, eyes narrowing. He did not believe it. The Warp may be chaotic and unpredictable, but to dump him right on top of his target ahead of time? He would have thought it was the Emperor smiling upon him, had his psykers not gone mad, the psykers supposedly holding fragments of his blessing. The Navigator could be responsible, leading us into a Warp anomaly … 

His mind went to his Navigator, an ageing woman named Ursula who thought she was the Emperor’s gift to the world and that her mere presence was a blessing upon all those who were subjected to it. Tetrarchus loathed the arrogant old hag, but she was self-preserving and selfish, if nothing else. The only way he could see her leading them into a Warp anomaly that would undoubtedly risk her well-being was if she fell under the thrall of some daemon. 

The old crone wouldn’t. She’d spent centuries warding off those monsters, I heard her paranoia was well-known even among her own strange kind. 

Nothing made sense. 

Freak accidents also didn’t dump you at the doorstep of the supposedly extremely dangerous rogue Alpha Psyker. This wasn’t an accident, but he also couldn’t help but think that if someone could redirect his fleet to here, they could have also redirected it into the nearest star. 

So why didn’t they? 

It didn’t make any fucking sense, and it was driving him mad. 

“The Lady Ursula is dead, my Lord,” someone reported, snapping Tetrarchus out of his thoughts as he whirled on the younger officer, piercing him with an intense stare. “We have also re-established rudimentary communication with the rest of the fleet. Every Navigator is dead.”

Tetrarchus dove right back into the ship’s systems, now piercing the barriers keeping the catty old bat’s personal quarters from the rest of the ship. She would have annoyed him to no end about it, but she was in no state to tire his nerves anymore.

Tetrarchus grimaced despite himself, finding the woman who had been guiding his flagship for the better part of a century scattered across the spacious room. An eye here, a leg there, a chunk of intestines over there, and blood everywhere. It looked like someone shoved a frag grenade down her throat right before it exploded. 

Not that anyone was allowed to carry weapons of that calibre into her quarters. 

“All in the same way?” Tetrarchus asked, his visage grim.

“It seems so, my Lord,” the man confirmed. “The Astropaths shared a similar fate. It seems anyone who had the ability to perceive the Warp in any detail ended up sharing a similar fate. Many of the more sensitive Psykers are also reported to be bleeding from every orifice on their bodies, and medics suspect heavy brain haemorrhages have made them all catatonic, or mentally hampered.”

“Execute them,” Tetrarchus said. “The last thing I need is daemons using their catatonic bodies as skinsuits and wreaking havoc on my ships. Execute every psyker that doesn’t show the ability to still understand and respond to orders.”

We will have to face an extremely powerful Psyker without Psykers of our own. Or with so few, and in such a diminished state, that it won’t matter. Tetrarchus thought, rapping his fingers on the armrest as he mentally surveyed the ship, making sure his orders were getting carried out as they should. We still have a fleet and a dozen squads of Astartes specialising in hunting Xenos. Not optimal, but we still have the advantage. That creature will fall. I will make it so, so I swear in the name of the Emperor.

*****

“Well, I guess that means we are going to war,” I said absently, letting out a snort of disbelief at what just happened. Gork and Mork, the twin gods of all Greenskin and the most powerful beings of the Warp by far just played a prank on me.

By prank, I mean they dumped an Imperial Fleet on my doorstep and pumped the already rowdy orks on my planet full of super drugs, and sent them all into a roid rage. 

Great. 

“WAAAAAAAAGH!” The orks roared in unison, and I felt goosebumps cascading down my back as I heard it reverberate through the Warp and be echoed by millions of Orks all over my little moon. 

“What just happened?” Selene asked, a trace of worry in her tone, and I glanced at her. She had her combat armour on, her sword in hand and held at the ready as she eyed our ork visitors who practically vibrated with bloodlust and murderous intent. She sent me an uncertain, questioning glance. “Echidna?”

She didn’t feel it? I was surprised, but … it made sense. She wasn’t as sensitive as I, and her soul was safely tucked away in my Realm. The two green twits were throwing their massive dicks around down in the Warp, so she wouldn’t have felt it. 

“Gork and Mork decided to dump an Imperial Fleet on my doorstep,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “It seems they didn’t want Throgg and his boys to … grow bored.”

Selene stared at me blankly, probably trying to decide whether I was messing with her. She’d figure out I wasn’t the moment she remembered she could reach out and feel my tumultuous emotions roiling just below the surface, if only she reached out for them. 

I’ve been feeling powerful lately, having fought some of the strongest Greater Daemons to a standstill. My powers had been growing by leaps and bounds, their extent widening, my toolkit expanding. 

I knew, intellectually, that I was not a big fish and that the pond I was playing in was a vast ocean in truth. I knew, but I never felt it, never knew it. I could stomp as many greater daemons, slaughter as many fleets as I liked, and I would still be an ant to them. Just a bigger ant that could terrorise other, smaller ants. 

It wouldn’t save me from getting stomped on if I wandered underfoot. 

If the Chaos Gods could just grab me, they would have done so already. I thought to myself, pushing down the wave of helplessness that almost overwhelmed me. I couldn’t allow myself to think I only lived because the four colossal cunts down below couldn’t be bothered to reach up and drag my ass down into their Realms. I couldn’t. The paranoia, the helplessness and the sense that nothing I did would ever matter would crush me. I would give up, or wallow in paranoia, hoping I wouldn't get stomped if I stuck my head into the sand.

Assholes. I huffed, my face twisting into a snarl as my emotions calmed and I could think things through with a clearer head. Their power reached the surface of the Warp and echoed in realspace, which was what I felt. They didn’t touch me, didn't even reach for my Realm. I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn’t sense it or reach it. 

They were mighty, impossibly so, but they were not omnipotent or omniscient. They were not God, just … gods, manifestations of belief and concepts. Like the Big Four or Emps, though the latter was a weird case. What mattered was that they all had their limits, their weaknesses. 

Even gods bleed. I thought fiercely, glaring down into the now still waters of the Warp. And that means they can be killed. Not that I’ll be able to manage as I am, but I can make a nuisance of myself, cause them trouble and make their lives just as miserable as I can.

Why would I do such a thing? Something so obviously dangerous and risk their wrath? 

To prove I could. To prove they could rage and scream, but couldn’t reach me. To prove to myself that I was safe, no matter whose toes I stepped on. To prove my initial assumptions were correct. 

Well, the Plague Wars are right around the corner. There won’t be a better chance to take a dump in Nurgle’s cauldron … so to speak. The weirdo would probably be happy about that, less so if I managed to nab his elven girlfriend. With Emps setting his garden on fire, there won’t be a better chance, and I was sure I could use an Eldar Goddess for something. 

“Selene, be a dear and please grab Val, Alpha and … Zedev too, I suppose,” I said, pushing myself to my feet as I stared down at the orks before me. “Oh, and that Zara girl. She might have felt what happened, and I doubt it was any more pleasant for her than it was for me.”

“What are you plotting?” Selene asked, eyes narrowing as she felt my strange mixture of emotions, no doubt. I’d probably be worried too if I felt her swing from fatalistic nihilism over to smouldering rage and then into cold, calculating malice tinged with hope and determination. 

“Nothing much,” I said, giving her my best innocent smile as I batted my eyelashes at her. “Just a war.”

On the parasites thinking themselves Gods. 

I might be an ant now, but I can grow still, and who isn’t terrified of an ant that can chomp your head off in a single bite? An ant the size of a van? An aircraft carrier? A star system? 

I may be an ant, but I will make them fear me like they made me fear them.