noveltune 182 – Triumphant Return
182 – Triumphant Return
182 – Triumphant Return
My consciousness was split a million ways, which wasn’t too unusual. However, what was distinctly new to me was using my primary consciousness to monitor all those split thought streams, each controlling a single drone stationed somewhere around the planet. I’d done similar things before, but never to this extent. Even when I was exterminating cultists, I only jumped between the minds of a hundred drones, cycling through them.
It was ... straining. But also good practice.
Not only did I have to manage so many thought streams at once without letting myself get lost in any single one of them, but I also had to filter out all the rather intense emotions I could feel from the people around my drones.
Despair, fear, dread, hope, and admiration were some of the most common emotions among the people gathering, but I could also feel hatred and anger mixed in with the other darker emotions. I had to pay careful attention to those people. Some dipshit in the capital decided it would be oh-so-smart to throw a grenade into the gathered crowd, who were the ones willing to take me up on my offer and come with me. I almost missed it too, with how thin my attention was spread.
Now I had a thousand mind-cores helping me, each double checking for any similar troublemakers.
“Ex- Excuse me?” A young man asked one of my drones, looking like a terrified rabbit that might bolt at the first sign of aggression as he shuffled in place. “Where would you be taking us?”
“To my planet,” I said, the answer almost automatic and subconscious as I was giving it to hundreds of people every minute.
They had been scared and too afraid to approach any of the armour-clad drones at first, but after I failed to bite off the heads of the first few braver and more inquisitive of their group, they all grew bolder.
“Do I have to pack winter clothing?” An older woman asked. “And are there pollinating trees around? I can’t live near plants like that with my allergies. Is there a sea nearby? My doctor has been saying I should move to somewhere with fresh sea-air to help with my allergies ... “
But the most common question I was getting overall was: “When are we leaving?”
By my count, I’d been asked that a thousand times just these last ten minutes with the runner-up being the “How are we leaving?” Question.
Honestly, I was a bit surprised by how many people were willing to jump ship and come with what was essentially an invading alien force with unknown values. Hell, for all they knew I’d be eating their flesh or just forcing them to become slaves.
On the other hand, I suppose I did save a lot of them from murderous cultists and kept the chaotic aftermath somewhat orderly by cracking down on any violent warlord or gang leader.
I was counting around fifty million people from all over the planet. Even with the overall global population being somewhere around three billion, that was a sizable amount at least to me.
It was a miniscule number compared to most Imperial worlds, especially Hive Worlds which were home to trillions of humans. Not to me though. I was already worrying about whether Bob had completed enough of the city to house even a fraction of their numbers.
I’ll have to help him out. Having my new citizens live in tents-camps out in the ork-infested jungles would be a pretty atrocious first impression and a good way to make them despise me, especially if some of them ended up as unfortunate victims of the moon’s rather nasty collection of flora and fauna. I’ll need to construct another few dozen cities like my eventual capital.
Food would be easy to handle, and while water would be a bit more challenging — seeing as I still couldn’t conjure it out of thin air — it shouldn’t be too hard. Worst-case scenario, I snuck back onto the local Deathworld and stole a few billion gallons of water. A portal at the bottom of an ocean would do it, I could open the other end in some underground reservoir from where I could channel the water through my network of tunnels.
Springs. I could make a million beautiful springs all around the planet, and underground lakes, limestone caverns ... yep. I love this idea.
While I was busy growing my ramshackle void ship into something actually capable of transporting these people to my moon, I was also doing something a bit more interesting.
A pair of my drones were currently busy looking through the vaults aboard Amberley’s yacht as it raced towards the borders of the system. Much to my disappointment, no artifact could be found in there that could have paired well with the one I’d already examined.
I wasn’t left empty-handed though, I found an assortment of Necron weaponry stashed away in those vaults. War Scythes, flayers, and even the mangled remains of what I was pretty sure had to have been a Lychguard once.
There was also a huge assortment of various imperial weapons, but they all had icky machine spirits in them so I left them behind. The Necron stuff would be nice to have and might prove to be crucial in understanding how to replicate their weapons with my own necrodermis, while the Lychguard’s remains would bolster my reserves of the living metal.
“That’s not the same as what you gave me, is it?”
“No, no it isn’t, and it never will be,” I said, then leaned in and placed a lingering kiss on her cheek. “I reserve the right to spoil you with all the best of what I have. The rest will have to make do with the scraps.”
Selene remained silent, but I could feel her worries dimming—not quite going away, but covered by a happy haze.
“Sorry for distracting you from work,” Selene said after a few seconds of pleasant silence. She wiggled in my grasp, likely wanting me to let go, but I just squeezed her tighter.
“You can distract me whenever you want,” I murmured gently, then reluctantly let go of her. “Especially when something’s worrying you. You’ve always been there for me when I needed you the most, I’d be happy to do the same for you. That’s what being partners means.”
“Thank you,” Selene said with an embarrassed smile on her lips. It wasn’t because of any of the affection I’d showered her with — she could take any amount of that with a grin and a blush — but more so that she’d shown herself vulnerable. I felt she thought I was supposed to be the vulnerable one in our relationship while she took the role of the steady pillar for me to lean on, at least emotionally. “I’m fine though, it was just a moment of ... weakness?”
“I wouldn’t call it weakness,” I said gently. “Maybe a hint of self-doubt, but that’s to be expected. I’m asking much of you and that’s after upending your entire life and worldview. You are handling yourself extremely well, you should be proud. I am proud of you.”
Selene huffed, though I could see the edge of her lips quirking up as she spun around and turned to watch my atrocious creation that wouldn’t have been out of place in a space horror movie. Bio-punk was a very niche genre and a pretty nasty one in my opinion, the few books I've read in it, or artworks I'd seen were ... unique, to say the least.
My half-done ship would have fit in perfectly with the worst of it as tendrils of meaty red flesh grew and coiled around each other.
Slowly, it was starting to take shape. The insides were mostly done and only needed to be filled with breathable air, plus some accommodations for my passengers. It lengthened, taking on a largely ... well, phallus-like shape.
Was there something wrong with me that I couldn’t come up with a better descriptor? ... Anyway. After some final touches, adding in the carapace and the under armour, the gravitational sensors and engines, along with some bio-cannons across its length for good measure, it would be done. As the pearlescent white carapace formed over the bare, meaty flesh, I finally smiled. The ship finally looked more like a proper futuristic spacecraft and less like some Eldritch monstrosity’s wet dream.
“That ... actually doesn’t look that bad,” Selene said absently. “Your style is still so very bare, don’t you want to at least add some colour to them? Maybe a heraldry? Larger weapons batteries? I know you probably hid some horrid weapons just under the skin of that thing, but it doesn’t hurt for intimidation purposes if some of that’s shown to your enemies.”
“This is supposed to be just a carrier,” I said, shrugging. Despite that, I did add visible anti-missile lasers and a dozen much meaner-looking bio-cannons that could spit out condensed globs of plasma. “Think that isn’t too much?”
“It’s just right,” Selene said with a satisfied smile. “Heraldry? Colours? Maybe ... I don’t know, some skulls? You can’t go wrong with skulls.”
“I’d need to make a heraldry, or at least some symbol for myself, which I won’t just come up with on the spot,” I said wryly. “And I’m vetoing skulls, no skulls.”
“But-”
“No. Skulls,” I repeated, then as a compromise added, “What colour do you think would look nice with the current pearly white carapace? Blue or silver?”
“I can see crimson working, maybe even gold?” Selene said, squinting at me like she was trying to decide whether to hold a grudge over my instant dismissal of skulls as a form of decoration. “But silver would fit you better. Blue would go well as a third colour too, and you really need to get your brain working on coming up with a heraldry. You’ll probably have a few million citizens by tomorrow, you’ll need to give them an identity. Country name, planet name, city names, sigils, flags, and that’s ignoring the further work you’ve just signed up for. We’ll need to build up a new culture for them that’ll suit your needs, a government if you don’t want to do everything, and a million other things.”
“I’ll ... do my best?” I said with a shaky smile, suddenly feeling like maybe leaving the planet without the people gathering around my drones might just be the play. That sounded like so much boring work.
Don’t be lazy. You can finally do some actual good in this shothole of a galaxy. I chided myself. Plus, I can just delegate most of the boring work to some dutiful mind-cores and only worry about the bigger picture. Even better, I can find myself a slew of useful new citizens who can handle most of the work, like copycat High Lords of my own. Yep, that sounds more like it.
If I was lucky, I could even get the Tau to give me some Earth and Water caste minions to help out with the worst of it. The Ethereals might take it as a stellar opportunity to send some surveillance to my germinating little nation.
I’ll have to talk with that stuck-up Captain again and have him request another meeting with a nearby Ethereal. If I don’t send some Tau to come around and spread their Greater Good a bit, this planet I just liberated might just nuke itself back into the Stone Age.