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Getting Warhammered - [Chapter 42]
🕑 Added 2023-09-10 20:17:12 +0000 UTCI was sitting with my palms pressed against the Gateway as one of my Mind-Cores went through the tedious process of breaking through the locks, I couldn't do it with brute force as that might irrecoverably damage the alien contraption so I was left with the slow process of lockpicking it if you could call it that.
I realized a few days in that if I changed my form the gate would reject my energy, even if I knew how I should mold my energy to go through a lock it wouldn't pass if I wasn't in the previous form. The answer was quite simple in hindsight, my body was based on the Eldar form as the foundation which was also used to channel my soul energy, this gave it some distinct Eldar 'flavor' if you will and the Gate could detect that.
Still, that barely required my attention anymore, my unfeeling Mind-Core could do more than well enough. My attention was focused on my two drones aboard the two Thunderhawks by now far away from the planet, each only had the minimum required personnel as they weren't going to have either enough time or fuel to return but they didn't need to. Their tasks were already completed as my two drones leapt out of the hulls and into the cold embrace of space to wait for our ravenous guests.
I gave a silent thanks to all the humans who personally volunteered for this task, the indomitable human spirit was warped but it was still a magnificent thing to witness in person. I'd have never done something like this, I'm far too selfish and self-preserving. I might help others if I had the leeway to as I was now — I didn't doubt my ability to hole up under a rock and wait out the end of the Tyranid invasion — but my survival would always come first, I was like this even in my last life I think but this new body enhanced it to the max and I didn't think it was a harmful instinct for once.
I had a weird set of goals for now which I could sum up as follows:
- Survive, this was paramount and every other goal would be sidelined or outright ignored to accomplish this, I'm not going back to being that helplessly floating soul from before, nor am I willing to disseminate into soul energy.
- My grand vision of a futuristic Sci-fi empire with a streamlined and efficient economy, architecture and ships. This was such a far-off goal that it was more of a guiding star for the foreseeable future to keep my decisions largely cohesive and working towards this one goal. I realized that I was far too whimsical with all this new power I got, without direction I'd just get swept around by the currents of fate.
- And lastly: Enjoy life, which was arguably my most important goal so far, seeing as I engineered my body to keep my emotions and such. It was my philosophy that life had no meaning if you didn't enjoy it. I was atheistic in my last life so I always believed that I had to make the most of my short life before oblivion claimed me but even with the new context of my reincarnation, I found that way of life appealing, maybe even more so now that I was in this shitty galaxy. What better way to spit in the face of everything and everyone here than to enjoy my life? (let's keep it in moderation though, some batshit insane rape-snake is taking 'enjoying life' a bit too far)
While that thought ran through my mind I watched the two landing crafts slowly swim through the void as each of my drones latched onto an asteroid in the equivalent of the Kuiper belt in this system, both drones morphed and took on my new Hunter Form which while still reminiscent of the lictor had both visible and hidden improvements. The most visible one was the distinct lack of my facial tentacles, I didn't need those to be flopping all over the place when it barely took a second to morph them into being. The rest were much less visible, I tried to integrate every upgrade I could from my mutant samples plus the Ambull which I all managed to varying degrees, the result being that this form had immunity to extreme temperatures as well as radiation, acids and corrosive agents even if the last two were more like a very high resistance instead of immunity.
The last improvement was quite noticeable, I felt the solar rays touch the drone's armored shell and hummed in satisfaction as the millions if not billions of microscopic receptors worked tirelessly to transform those radioactive rays into energy, bio-energy to be exact. I was over the moon when I realized that the energy the Ambulls used was compatible with my own, such a hidden-treasures those ugly space cockroaches were.
I tried to incorporate some Eldar neural systems and nerves into the Lictor but the two were just incompatible, Eldar was already hard to modify and edit as the Old Frog assholes perfected them to the high heavens while the Lictor was also uber-specialized and perfected bioform. Both were 'finished' in a way, I could add some stuff on top but it was complicated and combining the two was destined to fail. I might manage it in the future but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it for now.
This meant that my humanoid, or Eldar Form became my go-to Psychic Form so to speak. At least it had a functionality other than looking pretty which tickled my eldritch instinct's need for efficiency, it turned from subconsciously guiding my emotions like before to a little soundless voice in the back of my head berating me for doing useless things like working on my silky smooth skin or the perfect placement and tilt of my eyes. I could ignore it by now but it was like scratching an annoying itch when I complied with it, better than before at least but it was still helpful in some instances... I think.
I returned to the then and now, a single thread of my mind running a quick calculation and giving me an estimated ten more hours to break through the gateway. Like some cosmic joke the galaxy was playing on me this was also the moment when my further away bio-drone's most accurate sensors detected gravitational anomalies closing in on it, as the asteroids shifted I looked through its eyes and saw a mass of giant forms gently floating through the void. I couldn't see all of them but the spearhead-like Narvhal and the humongous bio-ships were visible even from there, hundreds of kilometers away.
The thread pinged my main mind again with a new calculation, the Tyranids would arrive at the planet in eight hours, two hours sooner than I could open the Gateway.
I waited, my bio-drones sat cloaked in every form of camouflage and invisibility I could throw out as I strained all of my senses to track the enemy creep closer and closer with every agonizingly long second. My mind was running on overdrive, flooded with both of my energies and my perception of time was so warped that if I still had a human brain it'd have been unable to keep up with it, luckily Eldar were beings of agility and speed so their reaction speed and cognitive processing was far beyond even superhumans.
I dared not check how long I spent like that until a calculation suddenly returned positive, I could reach them. Still, I held myself back. I wanted the perfect opportunity to do the most damage possible to them and gain all that I could from these aliens.
The moment came when a Narwhal drifted temptingly close to the asteroid one of my drones hid on, I took the opportunity and took full control of the drones. My tightly coiled muscles released and I flashed through the empty space without the aliens catching sight of me, I flew between the hundreds of smaller bio-ships orbiting the Narwhal with carefully calculated precision and landed on the exterior of the monster, my landing dampened by telekinesis.
My second drone didn't stay idle, it also launched itself but not at the narwhal, while the first's goal was to get me the Tyranid's FTL travel method the second was going to be the main distraction. It landed on a large bio-ship at the edge of the fleet but it didn't stay on it for long, it jumped between them, carefully avoiding the detection of the swarm of lesser Tyranids as it crept closer and closer to the center of the fleet. The concentration became denser and denser towards the center as the locust-like bioships the size of houses swarmed around protectively the enormous Hive-Ships that were the heart of any Tyranid fleet.
I didn't know if the original Lictor could have gone unnoticed but my improved one did, light itself bent around its form to hide it, its body was the exact temperature of its surrounding void and the slight effect it had on the weave of space-time was silenced by my forceful use of Psychics. I found my target not half an hour after as an especially large Hive-Ship came into sight in the center of the whole formation, I could practically feel its weight on the Warp itself as the enormous pressure of the alien Hive-Mind extended from the center of it. I had no doubts about the Norn Queen of this fleet being on that one ship.
My perfected muscles strained as my soul energy flooded the drone to give it that extra push with telekinesis. The drone vanished and not a moment later crashed through the dense swarm of lesser bio-ships, all semblance of stealth gone as it bore through them like a ravenous horror before impacting the outer hull of the central Hive-Ship.
Large tendrils burst out of its body, covered in the strongest carapace I could make but as it impacted the hull of the ship the eldritch white flesh underneath was revealed as it dug into the living ship.
Biomatter melted and the alien material that the Tyranid depended on to protect itself became fuel for the drone. In less than five seconds the hull was already being repaired behind the drone to keep out the rapidly closing in locusts, with it inside the Hive-Ship I could see a large shadow below my Soul in the Warp become active as the ancient sentience known as the Hive-Mind readied for War.
For a single fleeting moment, I glanced into my Mindscape, the representation of my mind and saw two smaller pyramids orbiting the large central one, connected to it by cords of brilliant white energy. Both pyramids crumbled as each multiplied and the two became six, each of which connected in a weblike network with the central Pyramid overbearingly observing them from the distance.
Back in realspace right after both drones bore into the fleshy inside of the ship bio-energy rushed through their still-existing tentacles as two more forms grew out of the white material. They didn't take on any sort of humanoid shape, one went on a single-minded eating spree as it consumed and expanded without any higher thought guiding it while the other consumed and assimilated in a controlled manner, aiming to dig into the center of each bioship and disable it before consuming it all.
The Hunter Drones stood on standby, rushing forward to slay the strongest bio-forms that dared to come close to it or either of its wards. The Narwhal was as good as lost to the Tyranids, it was less armored and it didn't transport many lesser bio-forms on it as its function was fulfilled as soon as the fleet reached the edge of the system, from then on it was just a useless mass of biomass floating through the void.
The Central Hive-Ship was another story entirely, corrosive acid bathed all three drones as Tyranid bio-forms flooded them and clawed, ripped and tore whatever they reached. The somewhat dangerous acid was banished with explosions of Pyrokinesis so my two eldritch drones could eat without worry as my Hunter Drone leapt into the fray and ripped apart dozens of Termagants and Hormagaunts in its way, soon enough the greater bio-forms came to stand in its way but I wasn't playing around now like I was with the Patriarch.
The first was a Carnifex and an armored tentacle impaled it before it could as much as scratch the Hunter, the great being that could terrorize battlefields across the galaxy folded upon itself as the Hunter consumed it from the inside out. The Hunter wasn't alone either, my uncontrolled eldritch drone was on a rampage, not differentiating between energy coming from the fleshy walls of the ship and the various moving bio-forms rushing at it as they sunk into the expanding mass of flowing white tendrils.
Tyranids were pulled kicking and screeching into the ravenous alien that invaded their ship, I wondered for a moment how terrifying what I was doing to them would look if our places were to be switched but I shook it off. Terror was the one weapon that'd never work on the Tyranids and I had a faint instinct that neither would it work on me, even if someone managed to break down my mind all they'd find underneath was an unfeeling and calculating monster that wanted to eat them for their biomass if someone ever managed to break me so much that I couldn't even rebuild my mind that would be the day a monster even more dangerous than the Tyranids was birthed into the galaxy.
I doubt anyone could manage that though, hopefully.
The Narwhal fell surprisingly easily, I even stepped in to control the rampaging eldritch drone and tasked a mind thread to guide it to assimilate information more effectively.
The second, third and twentieth Carnifexes were felled just as effortlessly as the previous ones as the titanic wave of lesser Tyranids mindlessly leaped into the bottomless abyss that was the eldritch drone. My heart ached as I felt the drone's stores of Bio-energy easily overtake mine and leap into gigantic heights, just a single one of them had hundreds of times the bio-energy than I had at the moment and knowing that I couldn't go and recollect those titanic stores of energy hurt.
I just didn't have time to fetch the drones containing the energy and I just couldn't shift energy between my main body and the drones, I was controlling them psychically which wasn't a 'real' connection as far as my eldritch body was concerned.
The Carnifexes were switched up by Warriors and my Hunter form shifted into my Combat form at last as the juiced-up drone based on a Broodlord went toe to toe with the Warrior. I didn't let my urge to test myself against the infamous alien beast stop me for long as when I managed to slip the drone beneath the guard of the Warrior two tendrils burst out of its chest and went through the Warrior effortlessly.
This continued for a good while, I worked on lockpicking the infuriating Gate as a part of my Mind was incorporating everything my drones were learning of the Narwhal while another was cataloging everything my drones on the Hive-Ship were absorbing. My library of templates was expanding rapidly which was a slight consolation seeing how much bio-energy I was going to lose, I sent enough of the stuff with my two drones to regenerate their whole bodies three times over which was already a heartache to my energy-grubbing self but this was just a bit too much.
The Hive-Mind seemed intent on making my mood take a nosedive as it started switching up all of the melee units with ranged ones as the Synapse creatures also started going from Carnifexes and Warriors to much more troublesome and insidious ones.
The battlefield was the by-now halfway bored out Hive-ship with half of it covered in twisting white tendrils and the other in a rapidly retreating swarm of Tyranids. On the far edge, a new swarm of bio-forms came into view, Termagants armed with abnormally large weapons lined the still-standing walls as their larger brethren which were no more than bio-cannons on legs ambled onto the battlefield and wasted no time before they unloaded the only thing that inconvenienced me so far, penetrating rounds of explosive acid and corrosive agents.
I was just about to send my Combat drone into the fray to trim their ranks a bit before I expanded the eldritch drones to absorb them when a last bio-form came into view, leading a smaller group of hulking creatures behind it that made the Warp itself tremble around them. I zoomed in and right as I thought that was a Hive-Tyrant but the ones behind it were even more annoying.
As the Hive Tyrant rushed at my much smaller combat drone the ones behind it split into two groups, large hulking monsters that I identified as Maleceptors rushed in alongside the Hive-Tyrant as the psychic powerhouses that were the Zoanthropes placed themselves strategically along the field and started to bombard my eldritch drone with disturbingly powerful Eldritch Blasts or something similar.
Each of the new Synapse creatures were psychic monsters capable of demolishing any human Psyker with little effort and if I remembered correctly a single modified Zoanthrope took down a whole damned Eldar Craftworld. Fucking Tyranids, if you won't become food obediently I'll have to tenderize you first.
My Eldritch drone retreated a bit as its flesh morphed and hundreds of new Combat Drones just like the previous one, if without the soul energy juice that one got, were rushing at the enemy lines. I wanted to cleanly absorb the whole ship initially with as little energy loss as possible so the planned 'bang' at the end would be larger but if these Xenos wanted to fight that much I'd give it to them.
Each and every one of my combat drones was more than a match for the Psychic creatures as I once again tapped into the Warp and flung Eldritch Blasts, Psychic Flames and Telekinetic blasts left and right using each Drone as a conduit for my power. I drew on the Warp again as I did many times since the Shadow coated the Warp, it was much easier like this as all the annoying demons were sluggish and slow to react to my siphoning.
Even if I didn't get the abundance of bio-energy I could store up on a sizable amount of soul energy. Silver linings I guess.
My Combat Drones were not too effective against the Hive-Tyrant as the large monster was just as fast as them even if I juiced them up on energy and whenever a Tendril tried to poke at it the large alien jumped back like I did when I found a spider on my pillow back in my last life, it was rather comical if I was being honest if a bit morbid when I thought about that yes, that tendril was the most dangerous thing in the world to that Tyranid.
Tyranids were the masters of attrition warfare, they could reuse both their own and the enemy's fallen as reinforcement for themselves or ammo or anything they could want. No other force in the galaxy could come close to them other than maybe the Orks when they were super juiced up on their WAAAAAGH! Or at least they were before I came into the picture, my drones regenerated at visible speeds, healing slashes and tears barely took energy and when fleshborers ate into them all it did was give them the energy to heal themselves and a bit more.
Whenever the Tyranids managed to off one of my drones for good by tearing it apart so much that its stores of bio-energy ran out the drones would consume their own biomass to give a final 'fuck you' to their enemies as all of the energy gained from them exploded in a sudden burst of flames and bio-lightning. A hefty little trick I found when playing around with trying to do Biomancy with my bio-energy.
I was winning, the enemy forces were dimming visibly and my second eldritch drone didn't stop eating through the hull for even a moment as the other was forced to tackle with the Tyranids. I didn't know if the Norn Queen was going to be challenging to fight or if it had a Norn Emissary (which I highly doubt ) but the drone was getting close and there was nothing the Hive Tyrant could do.
Yeah, the Hive-Tyrant was slaughtering my drones left and right, even a nick of its large bio-swords was enough to maul my drones and take them out of a fight for a few seconds it took them to regenerate. My forces were also getting killed even if much less than the enemy forces were but new drones were climbing out of my writhing white drone every second. I was winning so far.
I checked over my mind taking care of lockpicking the Gate.
One lock remaining, around twenty minutes and we can get out of here.
Still being here when the psychic backlash of the Norn Queen's death reached the planet wouldn't be good for our health so I'd have to time it perfectly.
What was I forgetting? I knew I was forgetting something, somehow.
"CAPTAIN THE BUGS REACHED THE PLANET, WE HAVE ENEMIES INCOMING IN FIVE MINUTES."
Fuck.
Comments
Duke of Coffee
Echidna: "You shall be assimilated." Hive Mind: *Angry Screeeching*
Alpenmann
Thanks for the chapter. Let's hope the nids don't get a gene sample of her.
