Getting Warhammered - [ 192 ] (Patreon)

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Aun’Saal.” I smiled, and it was maybe a bit too fake, just enough so that his eyes could catch it. “And so soon too, you must have missed me.”

“You requested my presence, if I recall correctly?” He raised … the skin above his eye. Tau didn’t have eyebrows, but he was still mimicking the human expression. 

“I suppose I was.” I shrugged. “Care to come in? I got part of it furnished and I think I’ll be able to get some refreshments.”

We stood on an elevated landing pad on the fifth floor down from the top of my fortress — the massive building at the centre of the capital — and I gestured at the open space revealed behind a glass wall. Unlike the arcologies, this building didn’t have floors large enough to house skyscrapers and still leave some space between their top and the faux-sky, so we were hundreds of metres off the ground.

Coldstone nodded, though he did wait until his honour guards had the both of us encircled before gesturing forward to lead the way. I just smiled, hiding my amusement at the futility of his actions. It didn’t matter what ambushes his guard could stop this way when he had the most dangerous being on the planet walking beside him.

I led him to a cozy office close to the landing pad, one I most certainly didn’t just throw together five minutes ago. 

“Take a seat,” I gestured for him to sit on a brown leather sofa facing a mirror image of it across a small coffee table. 

His guards tapped at their fancy wrist-mounted holopads and I felt flashes of some kind of a sensor washing over the room. I just raised an eyebrow as most of them failed to penetrate the walls developed to eat up most electromagnetic waves.

“I assumed you wanted to keep the meeting private?” I said by the way of an explanation as one of the guards whispered in Aun’Saal’s ear about barely any of their sensors being able to scan the building. “Once that door closes sounds won’t escape the room either.”

“Who do you wish to keep our conversation a secret from?” Coldstone asked in apparent curiosity as he settled into the sofa. “I was under the impression only those loyal to you lived in this building.”

“You never trust an Ork.” I shrugged as if that explained it all, but in reality I just wanted to test their technology and how well my sensor-eating walls faced up against them. “They have no word for loyalty or love in their language and that’s for a good reason. The closest thing they have for love roughly translates to a favoured enemy they like to fight. ‘Rival’ would be the closest translation, I suppose.”

“Fascinating creatures,” Coldstone mused, though his voice was laced with disgust. “But we can discuss their culture another time. Before much else, I feel it prudent to inform you that my transponder still functions and is sending periodic pings up to our voidcraft. I’d recommend not disrupting its working, even if you can, since it’d make a very trigger-happy captain in orbit think I have been murdered.”

“This fortress could withstand any orbital bombardment that voidship is capable of unleashing,” I said, leaning back in my own soft facing the Ethereal. “But you may rest assured, I have nothing of the sort planned. Our cooperation is still in its infant stages but I think there is much to be gained from it for both sides.”

“That is good to hear,” Coldstone said with a smile. “Willing as I am to give my life for the Tau’va, I still have many decades of my life remaining. It’d be a shame to cut it short.”

“I suppose it would be.” I shrugged, ignoring the dozen guards armed to the teeth spreading out around the room and taking up posts along the wall. “Since you seem to be in a hurry today, let’s get onto the main topic. I suppose you’re interested in my report about pirates?”

“I am,” Coldstone said. “The Captain could neither confirm nor deny the validity of your report, and the only proof we have is the freighter you’ve taken possession of.”

“There is plenty of proof to be had, and so much more if you hurry,” I said absently, my brain working furiously to calculate a way to accurately describe the location of the planet I’d raided and slaughtered the cultists on. I was sure the Tau had some standardised galactic coordinate system, but I wasn’t aware of its details, plus had some doubts about its viability. Things didn’t stick around fixed in space, they moved. Asteroids, planets, stars, star systems and even the ‘arms’ of a spiral galaxy spun around the galactic core. To accurately describe the position of a planet, I’d have to take a suitably stable point in space and set it as a fixed point in my relativistic system. The galactic core would work for that. That could be my (0:0:0) coordinate. Next, I’d have to put together a formula which described the most likely future path the planet would take, with so many celestial objects affecting the drift of everything they can with their gravitational pull, the final formula would always be imperfect, but I only had to make it good enough to be accurate for a few years at most so the Tau could find it. “The invaders came from a somewhat isolated human world about four parsecs away from here. I found out their Queen was a Daemon Prince, and that a sizable cult had entrenched itself into its population after I arrived. If you play your cards right, that planet could be effortlessly incorporated into your Empire.”

Fuck me sideways, I’m dumb as shit. I wanted to facepalm as a dusty memory nagged at me from the depths of my mind. I let my buzzing mind-cores fall silent and terminated the complex calculations trying to come up with the formula I was thinking about. The Voyager-1 had a nifty pulsar map on it. I should be able to replicate one easily enough. 

While the pulsar map on the Voyager would have been faulty by now, seeing as planets drift apart in space and forty thousand years is a long fucking time, it’d work now as I’d already told Coldstone the planet was just a handful of parsecs away. They wouldn’t have been able to find Earth based on that pulsar map even if they found it just a few decades after it left the solar system, since while pulsars were dependably accurate when it came to their orientation and radiational frequency, there were billions of the damned things in the Milky Way. 

I selected the thirty closest pulsars observable from the planet and depicted the relative orientations, distances, and pulse timing frequencies. The end result was a deceptively simple drawing with forty lines of various lengths extending from a central point at seemingly random angles.

“A ‘Daemon’?” Coldstone asked, and for a moment I was stunned at how slow his mind was. I’d spent months worth of calculations in my head after I’d finished speaking and went through more work than he could have in years before he opened his mouth. I didn’t even feel amazed at myself, instead it was just … jarring. Shaking off the disturbing feeling, I focused on the present. “What you call ‘Daemons’ have been deemed incompatible with the Greater Good, I doubt incorporating a planet ruled by one into the Tau Empire would be as simple as you say … but then again, Orks too share that designation and you seemingly have them under control. Did you manage to do the same to a Daemon perhaps?”

There was hope in his voice, and I just stared at him for a long moment with my mouth hanging open. 

“No,” I said finally, shaking my head with a snort. “Not in a million years. I had the Daemon Prince killed and her cultists exterminated across the planet. Daemons are a plague, a sickness that has wormed its way into the depths of the galaxy’s soul. There is no treating with them, no negotiation with a Daemon will ever end in your favour. They need to be killed with extreme prejudice wherever and whenever they appear if you want to keep some semblance of peace in the life of those you rule over.”

Coldstone sat back, shoulders slumping as he levelled a disappointed glare at me. “I had thought you would have put the Imperium’s teachings behind you, seeing as you now work together with Orks, and Eldar and us without an apparent prejudice. It seems I’ve been wrong.”

“The Imperium has many faults, it does a lot of things wrong,” I said, a smile that might just have a hint of a sneer in it on my lips. Daemons. This fucking moron was disappointed I hated daemons. I wanted to laugh at his sheer stupidity. It was a damned wonder the Tau haven’t been wiped out yet with leaders like him. “It’s stance on Daemons and Chaos is not one of them. They are a scourge, you will learn that in time. I just hope your Empire will survive the lesson and be stronger for it, I truly do.”

Aun’Saal stared at me weirdly, and I gave him an honest smile. I had been sincere, though I had no intention to leave whether they survive that lesson up to them or fate. Not long from now, the Death Guard and an army of Nurgle will invade them, charging through some finicky space-magic portal thingy which would disgorge them right into the heart of their Empire. 

I’ve spat in the face of Tzeentch, Slaanesh and Khorne up until now. It’s only right that Nurgle has his turn next. If I could even find the time to head over to Ultramar when the Plague Wars came about, I was pretty sure I’d be quickly shooting up to the top of Nurgle’s shitlist. Curiously, I feared him the least out of the quartet. Khorne could sink his teeth into my battle lust and anger, Slaanesh could use my pride and vanity, while Tzeentch … I had little doubt he could worm his way past my defences if he truly wanted to. I had weaknesses each of those three could make use of. I was reasonably sure Nurgle would have a much harder time finding a crack in my armour.

My only truly dependable way of protecting myself from those three was remaining under the growing Shadow I had over my little moon. Not that such a thing was plausible if I wanted to achieve anything. Oh well, I just had to be careful and obliterate every Greater Daemon I came across with extreme prejudice and hope they wouldn’t have enough time to breach my mental defences. No talk, just killing. Like I’d said to Coldstone. Talking to a Daemon would allow it to work its corrupting tendrils into my mind.

I should put nabbing a few Grey Knights up on my list of priorities. Having some more advanced anti-Chaos and Daemon charms than my own barely useful ones would put some of my fears at ease for sure. Unfortunately, Grey Knights were sneaky bastards and likely not the ones who’d be coming to have a go at killing me. I should have taken one of those Trazyn let out of his Labyrinth. What a waste. Maybe I could convince him to let me mind-read one of his captured Grey Knights the next time around … damn it, I wanted to ask for Necron tech lessons for whatever mission he had for me next. Maybe I can get him to give me both if the mission is nasty enough. 

“I suppose there must be some reason, or a kernel of truth, to every belief or tradition,” Coldstone said, sounding thoughtful. 

“Do you know why Mankind loathes the alien races?” I asked, tilting my head at him.

“I’m afraid I do not,” Coldstone said stiffly. “You mean there is a reason?”

“Of course there is.” I shrugged. “Humanity is the youngest faction of importance besides the Tau and the Tyranids, but the latter don’t count for our discussion. Your Empire’s rise to prominence was basically a miracle without a single stumble, no civil wars, no serious infighting, no rebellions. You are the exception. Mankind’s emergent empire first fell crumbled when their automata rebelled and plunged their empire into chaos, then again when the Eldar birthed their new God into existence and … made faster than light travel impossible for everyone in the galaxy for a few centuries. During those centuries, Orks, the Eldar, the Drukhari and a hundred other opportunistic races plagued mankind. I know you’ve had similar experiences with the Orks and the Drukhari, now imagine how isolated human worlds would fare. Those centuries where humans were nothing but prey remains ingrained into their collective psyche even thousands of years later. The hate and loathing remained and festered, growing into the ugly thing that it is today.”

Aun’Saal seemed to be considering my words thoughtfully, though it was clear he was intrigued by my story. The Tau were a young race and most of what I spoke of happened before his kind learned how to make fire. Well, the rest of his kind. No one really knew where the Ethereal caste came from, as they just appeared before the barbaric, stick-wielding Tau of long ago out of nowhere.

“I suppose that would be understandable,” Aun’Saal muttered, rubbing his chin. “Our first meeting with the Drukhari has been … unfortunate, and caused a somewhat similar response from our kind.”

I could feel some of his guards were utterly appalled at the Ethereal finding similarities between mankind and the tau. 

“Indeed,” I said. “Some prejudices exist for good reason, the Drukhari for example, more than deserve all the loathing they get. The same goes for the Tyranids and the Daemons, if I am being honest, the Orks have also done more than enough to deserve their reputation as a scourge upon the galaxy.”

“Be that as it may,” Aun’Saal said, seemingly shaking himself out of his thoughts. His eyes focused on me and narrowed. “This planet you’ve gone to, the one you’ve apparently assaulted and deposed the Queen of … even though she might have been a Daemon. I’d appreciate to hear all about it.”

“Very well.” I sighed. “Where do I begin … ?”