Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

175 – Playing with words, playing with prey

Infuriatingly, no one dared ask the question I could almost taste hanging over them all — the bunch of cowards. I considered puppeteering one of them to ask it. Even without my telepathy, I could do that much just by manually controlling a human body with a swarm of invading strings of my eldritch flesh.

Alas, the controlled person would know instantly, and I doubted I could mimic their entire demeanour — I would have to manually control every single muscle fibre and nerve firing — without extensive practice and access to their thoughts. Having a Blank breathing down my neck was just so very … inconvenient.

There was a much easier option though: getting rid of the annoying Blank.

By that, I mean, make him sod off. I didn’t need to kill anyone, I just needed him a good twenty metres away from me. After a few seconds of consideration, I shrugged and decided to go with the first, stupid, idea that came to mind.

A tendril thinner than hair, invisible to the naked eyes snapped out and lunged into the unsuspecting Jurgen’s body. He didn’t even feel it, and it wouldn’t even leave a wound either, I just need to poke a few nerves, tug on another bunch of receptors … aaaaaand done.

Jurgen stiffened as I pulled back my tendril, then almost mechanically ambled out of the tent with only a mumbled apology. The poor thing was probably mortified. I felt some pity for him, but oh well.

Worst-case scenario, he popped a blood vessel trying to take a shit that wasn’t there. Yep, that’s what I did. I made him feel like he was having the shits. Genius, I know. My non-violent problem-solving skills were a thing to be studied.

Curiosity was burning in all of them, they were all just dying to know what the gem they had been working and fighting for did. I selected the person whose curiosity was least tempered by a healthy respect for an Inquisitor’s authority and a matching amount of fear for what said Inquisitor might do if they poked their noses into her business: Cain.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t fear or respect the Inquisitor, just that he also knew a simple question wouldn’t get him in trouble. Not after all the two of them had been through together. It was simplicity itself to nudge that curiosity over the edge now that I could use my telepathy unimpeded.

“Are we allowed to know what that oversized gem does?” Cain asked with a quirked eyebrow.

“I’m afraid not,” said Inquisitor Vail, her glance at Cain conveying equal parts admonishment and an unsaid apology. “Not with this little toy. Maximum secrecy and absolute confidentiality on this one.”

Interesting. I mused, my mental tendrils tasting the unnaturally few surface thoughts slipping past the Inquisitor’s mental fortifications. The fact her mind was so ordered and so protected — well, by regular human standards — was curious by itself. I didn’t notice anything similar with Thrace, though maybe I had been too distracted to do so back then. 

Now, do I push it now or do I just wait? I tapped my chin in thought as the group went back into discussing the logistics of them leaving. Apparently, the beacon they would use to call the escape shuttle down was a finicky piece of equipment that would only work if placed up a mountaintop where nothing for a few hundred metres on either side was level with it. That appeared to be the cost of stealth. Regular Vox traffic would have been unquestionably caught by the ‘mysterious Xeno technology that took control of the planet’s communication systems’. Or so they think.

I could confront them now, tease what I want to know out of the Inquisitor. Or I could play with them some more …. I shook my head. I had shit to do. This had to be over with today, I couldn’t travel off to some far-off planet, hiding away in the Inquisitor’s ship.

 “-ich is why we need to hurry this up. We need to be off-planet yesterday. I’ve gone through the databases and found no clue as to what faction or Xeno race the ones who’d wiped out the cultists here were from. What I do know though is that we can’t allow anyone to claim this … artifact … “

She trailed off, her finger still pointing at the empty table where the artifact had once laid with her eyes widening in panic. To her credit, she barely took a second to issue her next order.

“Close down the camp!” Vail shouted, jolting all the soldiers into action but her next words stopped them. “No one leave this tent. I don’t know who, but- “

“There is no need for that,” I said aloud, my voice low and lazy as I held the artifact in my palm. When everyone turned to stare searchingly at where they heard my voice from, with Cain’s face showing a sign of blossoming recognition, I let my cloak drop. I swung the gem around on the chain linked to it like a fiddle toy. “Your toy is still here, safe and hale.”

“Put down the artifact and identify yourself!” the man I took to be the commander of the soldierly types in the room barked, a plasma pistol levelled at me with all his seven men in the tent, following just a moment behind. Next tithing I knew, I was staring down seven open barrels and another few as Inquisitor Vail and Cain to pulled out their weapons.

“Rude,” I murmured, making an entirely unnecessary grasping motion with my hand as I tore all of their weapons out of their hands. My hand tightened into a fist and all weapons crumpled into balls of junk. “Very rude indeed. Though I guess I deserved that, sneaking into your camp and all.”

My actions painted a mix of horror and determination across their faces, with the prior finding its way onto Cain’s face predominantly. I saw recognition in his eyes, and of course I did. I didn’t bother to change my face since our last meeting. 

“Hi, Ciaphas.” I gave him a dainty wave with my fingers, sending an exaggeratedly flirty smile his way and giggled as his face went pale. Then I turned my gaze at the woman of the hour, Inquisitor Amberly Vail. “I find I’m running into your kind far too much for my liking, Inquisitor. Alas, I suppose it was my fault this time … but in my defence, you had such an interesting toy with you. It seems it was worth putting a tracker on your boyfriend after all.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

If a man ever wanted the earth to swallow him up to end his misery, it was Ciaphas Cain in that very moment as the Inquisitor sent a piercing stare his way. To her credit, she didn’t start questioning him or anything of the sort. 

“Who are you?” she asked, her own emotions almost perfectly hidden but I heard her racing heart thundering in her chest like it was trying to break out of her ribcage as clear as day. 

“Good question,” I mused, my masquerade of clothes copied from the locals shifting and melding until I was covered from the neck down in a battle-armour they would all be familiar with. I even added the same silvery filagree Selene had on her own armour during the planetwide announcement. “The name I had given your pocket Commissar over there was Emilia, I suppose it’ll do for now.”

The soldiers were calling for backup through some low frequency radio, but I didn’t bother doing more than send an amused glance their way. There was nothing in this encampment that was even just mildly threatening to me. Maybe the Inquisitor had some big no-no toys hidden away in her back pocket that would prove to be a bother, but I was watching her like a hawk for any such thing. If she made a move, I’d be a dozen kilometres away with a drone taking my place in a nanosecond. 

It also helped that only she herself had some measure of control over her mind. The rest, while in possession of a sturdy mind forged in hundreds of battles, were not so adept at counteracting telepathy. I’d be able to tell when they were about to move.

Like the soldier behind me, who tried to tackle me to the ground. The soldier, who, unceremoniously dropped to the ground the moment he took his first step towards me. 

“Naughty,” I mused, not even turning as I sent a disarming smile at the rest of them. “Don’t attack me please. It’s rude. I have no intention of harming any of you.”

“What about him then?” Vail asked before the furious commander of the fallen man could, her voice much more measured than his would have been. In way of an answer, the fallen soldier started snoring like a chainsaw a moment later, gurgling a little with his face planted in the muddy earth. I kicked him over to the side so he wouldn’t suffocate.

“Taking a nap.” I shrugged. “Should help him calm down. It seems your other soldierly types are a bit agitated too, do they by chance also need calming afternoon nap?”

“They might need a breather,” said Inquisitor Vail searchingly, likely looking for some disapproval on my face. I had none, answering with a mild smile as I nodded. “That might be for the best. Though that would leave the rest of you alone with me.”

“It would alert the rest of the camp of your presence,” Inquisitor Vail answered with nonchalance that barely seemed forced. Those Imperials really made their Inquisitors of sterner stuff. A random, strange woman popped up in her secret camp, stole her fancy artifact, Psykered their weapons into balls of junk than made a man fall asleep without as much as glancing at him. Regular humans would either be running away in fear, would have broken down or would be shouting sweet nothings like ‘DIE HERETIC’ as they rushed at me with their fists. She did none of that, acting like we were having a genial conversation. “There are hundreds of armed men and women out there, ready to come to our rescue.”

“It’s adorable you think they would be of any help,” I said with a half-lidded smile that made Cain shudder. I wiped it off my face a moment later, snapping my fingers. With that, a round table with a handful of chairs around them appeared out of thin air, shocking the people in the tent. “Come and sit. I had just come to figure out what fun toy attracted an Inquisitor like you onto this far-off rock, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a nice talk. I even have some tea for you, much better than that atrocious thing Ciaphas made me drink.”

Why was I calling him by his given name? I don’t really know. But it was amusing to watch him jump every time I did, and how the Inquisitor’s lips twitched minutely in tandem with it. 

I sat down in a chair of my own, placing the artifact down on the table and smiled genially at the Inquisitor and the few members of her inner circle arrayed around her. 

After a moment, Inquisitor Vail elegantly slid into the chair opposite to me after stealthily poking and prodding it, testing whether it was real. It seems someone had been pranked by an Illusionist one too many times. 

The twig-like man who’d been standing in the back was next to sit down with curiosity and eagerness burning in his eyes. Then, with visible reluctance and a wistful glance towards the flap of the tent where the soldiers were mechanically streaming out of the enclosed space, he sat down too. The last two people, a pair of assassins of some kind, a male and a female respectively, stood behind the Inquisitor. They eyed me, both of their eyes dark and searching, looking for weakness and their bodies coiled up like a spring. Unfortunately for them, their crumpled weapons would be of little help, though both had some smaller sidearms and melee weapons stashed around their bodies. 

“What do you want for returning that artifact?” Inquisitor Vail asked without preamble. 

“Its functions for one,” I said mildly. “Curiosity drove me to come here, but a healthy amount of paranoia never hurt anyone. With the way fate works, this artifact could be a weapon capable of killing me. You unquestionably have many more hidden away in secret vaults, but most of them would take time and soul-crushing bureaucracy to extract from some obtuse order of Space Marine Chapter’s vaults.”

“Many things are capable of killing a human,” Vail said. 

“True,” I said, not elaborating as I gave them a humorless smile. “I’ll answer a question of your own truthfully if you give me an answer to my prior question. How does that sound?”

Why do I always resort to this trading of questions when I’m negotiating? I wondered silently. Was it to make up for my shortcomings in a proper negotiation? Because I knew I couldn’t really glean as much as others could from veiled small talk? Or was it just that I liked the simplicity of it? Maybe a bit of both. I’d need decades of experience and tutoring to catch up with people like Inquisitor Vail in diplomacy and duplicity. But I also liked being straightforward, or appearing like I was anyway.

“Very well,” Inquisitor Vail said, nodding hesitantly. “The artifact is supposedly capable of protecting the soul of those who wear and infuse it with their own power.”

“Fascinating,” I mused, my eyes narrowing. What she’d said wasn’t a lie, not quite, but it stank of one. Either a lie by omission, or a half-lie. Curious. What is she hiding that’s worth lying in front of a Psyker who’d shown herself capable of as much as I had? Very curious indeed. “Ask your question.”