ALL NOVEL 115 – Perspective
Selene Voss
“Hope it’s good though,” Echidna said as they watched the Astartes grapple down into the ravine before them. “The cost of making it was obscene.”
“I would hope so,” Selene murmured. If she understood it right, she had the skeletal and muscle structure of a Custodes and the nervous system of a Primarch with a bit of Eldar mixed in to let her psychic powers flow unobstructed.
If Echidna could have an army of soldiers just like her, mankind’s days might just be over.
“Worry not,” her lover chirped. “I’ll restock on energy down there. Should be enough to transform myself too.”
She said the last sentence in a whisper, but Selene caught it and gave the platinum-haired woman a long look. She was such a silly alien, giving away power so freely and before strengthening herself.
Not that Selene was afraid for her, of all people. The Emperor’s own damned son was in more danger of dying than the air-headed alien next to her. Still … that didn’t mean she wanted to see her hurt.
“Time to go,” Echidna said with a nudge, gesturing towards the towering form of the Primarch stepping over the cliff and plummeting into the dark depths. His faithful Astartes followed a second after him with their jump packs sputtering as they slowed their fall.
Selene gave back a nod, took a deep breath and as she let it out she commanded her armour to form her trusty bio-sword in her hand. She opted for a one-handed sword this time. Seeing as her armour cracked just from tightening her hand into a fist, she feared she would be going through the swords faster than she could remake them.
“Channel some of your psychic power into the blade,” her lover suggested. “With enough power behind it, that thing can cut through anything short of auramite. Should be the same with the carapace your armour is made of, but it’d just lock up like a shell. Couldn’t manage to fix that yet.”
“Alright.” Selene nodded, again. No more stalling. She pulled on that treacherous power, the very same she’d been taught to fear and loathe in equal measure all her life. The same power that now tasted like nothing but pure power and safety. Just getting a little sniff of Echidna’s elusive presence diluted in the energy surging through her body calmed her in a way nothing else would ever be able to.
She was no saint. Selene was a soldier before she was a Rogue Trader. She lived with all the vices allowed to her, like all her comrades in arms. Alcohol, drugs, sex, anything to take one’s mind off of the fact that she was gambling with her life on the line every single day as a guardsman.
But this? This was a drug sweeter than all the rest, and infinitely more addictive. Power the likes of which only the Emperor’s chosen could wield was waiting at her fingertips, begging to be used, unleashed on her enemies.
Selene gingerly kicked off the ground. The dried sandstone cracked under her feet, and she went shooting off with the speed of a bullet. Her armour cracked, shattered, and reformed once more as bio-energy flowed into it.
In just another two effortless leaps, she reached the edge of the cliff with her heart thundering in her chest. She was fast. And it was so easy to be fast, she didn’t even feel like she spent any energy.
Selene took a moment to glance back at Echidna, finding the woman grinning just a step behind her. Behind her, she saw two golden forms rushing to catch up. She ignored them and turned. She stepped forward and plummeted.
The harsh light of Baal’s sun grew dim as she fell further into the deep ravine until it was just a faint echo by the time she saw the bottom. She slowed her fall with a touch of telekinesis, not wanting to create a crater.
She wasn’t fat — though she knew Echidna would make fun of her for it — but her new form was dense. And weighed enough to crush a man into a paste just by laying on him. Good thing her lover was just as resilient as she was.
Her burgeoning aura reached out. It was a faint little thing, weak enough that just the presence of a stronger Psyker might push it back into her body, but Echidna had enough control to not do that.
Selene felt around the dozens of cave entrances, gaping maws of darkness echoing distant shrieks and bursts of bolterfire. She set off towards one she felt had less Astartes already in it. Echidna would later guide her down into the depths to catch up with the Primarch.
For now though, … Selene allowed herself a grin under her helmet. For now, she would thoroughly ‘test’ her new capabilities.
She set off in a jog. A jog that was just a bit slower than a civilian motorcar. Space closed in on her, the sandstone walls of the cavern tightening up around her as she rushed down into the darkness.
There was no light, but she could still see, her aura swept ahead of her and brushed against the walls and she could almost taste the ground she walked on through it. Not that her eyes couldn’t see just because there was no light, or that her ears wouldn’t have been more than enough just by themselves.
A shriek, dozens of scuttling feet. Claws chittering on rock, rhythmically thumping footsteps. Below a hundred kilos. Fifty metres ahead, just beyond a bend.
A second passed. She was there, crashing into a group of rippers and tearing them apart with just the momentum of her body, and then she lunged. Her sword vibrated with power, snapping out and taking the head of a termagant and tearing the neck out of another on its way back.
She ripped it out. The sword felt weightless in her hand. Even as she swung it around and carved a long gash through the tunnel’s walls before decapitating the other gaunt, she didn’t feel even a whiff of resistance from it.
For a single moment, she played out a mental battle: her, before meeting Echidna versus the same group she just slaughtered with disdainful ease. Maybe if she had a good weapon and enough distance to pick them out one by one she would have had a chance. Not in a confined space like this. She would have been slaughtered, ripped apart, and eaten before her remains would have been used to make new Tyranids.
Despite that, all she felt was … a touch of disappointment. They died so quickly. They were too weak.
Oh well. There were a million more where that group came from.
She shot off again, now pushing herself even as cracks spread over her armour like cobwebs. Her sword tore through group after group of the aliens. They had no chance. Melee bio-forms were too weak and too slow to touch her, and ranged ones couldn’t even aim their weapons before she barreled into them, their curving tunnel system working against them.
After maybe the twentieth group, her aura brushed up against a larger opening and she turned to dash towards it. She felt, heard, and sensed the ambush coming early enough to stop a dozen times. She ignored it.
The moment Selene stepped into the cavern, where the tunnel opened up into a spherical room that was probably an intersection among the many tunnels, six Tyranids stronger than any she faced today pounced on her as hundreds more swarmed out of the dark tunnels.
Four Lictors and two Hive Tyrants, and in the distance she noted a Neurotyrant — the apex psychic bio-form — hiding behind a rock with power surging in its bulbous body. The rest she didn’t care to count or identify.
She reached for that sea of power once more, pulling stronger than ever before, and the energy came surging. She pulled and pulled until she felt her soul straining.
Selene shuddered for a moment as the intense energy swept through her body. A part of her screamed in horror, knowing full well that much energy would have torn her previous body apart in a moment and left her mind ravaged. She hoped that part would learn from this experience.
She twitched her left hand, and the power came running, then leapt off her fingers in a bolt of brilliant lightning. Where there would have been a delay before, the energy now followed her instructions at the speed of thought.
The casting was quick and effortless, though not as strong as it could have been. The bolt crashed into one of the Hive Tyrants and reversed its momentum, sending the towering monster crashing into the distant wall with a resounding explosion.
Not focused enough to kill one of those. Selene thought as she dashed into the opening she created, her sword swiping behind her in an arc, tearing through the chest of a Lictor. Not yet.
She spun around and threw her sword, another already forming in her hand even before it plunged into the side of another Lictor, the beast having dodged a head-on collision at the last minute.
Selene tugged on it, telekinesis tearing the sword out and pulling it back into her outstretched hand.
Then the other three were upon her. Scythes flashed out, drawing ragged lines across her armour, but not touching flesh as the full weight of the car-sized aliens crashed into her.
Claws tore at her, kicks landed and cracked armour as the beasts tried to pry off her shell. Selene waited only a second, grinning internally at the armour that cracked just from her moving keeping these monsters at bay.
With a wicked grin, she sent a small stream of energy into her swords and both buzzed and flared to life as a plume of orange flames wrapped around her blades. Then she tore into them with abandon.
A small explosion of psychic power gave her enough of a gap to lunge at one Lictor. Her leg strained, her tendons and muscles coiling then releasing as she moved. One flaming sword impaled the alien through the gut while the other tore into its tentacle beard and through its skull.
She flared her power and watched for a moment as the flames burned the beast from the inside out. Then tore them out, one to the left and one to the right, leaving the Lictor a ravaged, charred mess.
She spun, just in time to deflect a scythe flashing towards the back of her neck. Her other sword lashed out, a small blast of flame searing a duo of aliens jumping at her. She let go and her fist flashed forward.
The Hive Tyrant before her tried to deflect, but like with its first strike, her strength won out. Its clawed hand shattered, and another scythe scraped off her shoulder as she kicked off and put her entire weight behind the punch.
The creature let out a screech and another psychic blast behind her gained her just enough time to grab her with a mental hand and plunge it into the monster’s side a moment before her fist cracked into its chest.
Carapace broke, and her fist sunk into its iron-hard flesh. She opened her palm inside, pulled on her power, and released a cascading storm of bolts inside its lungs.
Octavian Gaius
There were very few things that could leave a man as learned and gifted of mind as Octavian stumped. The tiny female human he knew had at most some minor bio-enhancements tearing through the swarm of Tyranids that would have given Astartes veterans a run for their money was now on the top of that list.
He thought his mission was simple. Find the target. Secure the target. Protect the target.
It should have been simple … and yet.
Octavian gave a glance to the ‘target’ he and Flavius were supposed to be protecting. She was dressed in nothing but a set of silky white robes and looked like a normal human.
Unlike with the ex-Rogue Trader, he knew she was not. He didn’t know what she was, but ‘not human’ was obvious, and even she acknowledged it. Finding that out was part of his confusion. The Emperor never once gave dreamers targets to protect who weren’t human.
What is she then? He wondered for what felt like the thousandth time. She held no fear, not a single flicker of it appeared on her face even when she faced down the Primarch or when he and his brother started shadowing her minutes ago.
She even ignored them. Not a blink of attention. Nothing.
He was more confused than offended by the fact. Another little smidgen of information that only worked to deepen the mystery that was Echidna.
Did that relic really give such power to her? Was this even her real body, or just a flesh puppet she made with the relic and controlled from afar? How did she learn to use it so efficiently and quickly when it was said even the Emperor had to spend years to work out its kinks?
Only a psyker could control the relic. How powerful must she be if she could somehow empower that woman only after having it for a few months?
We’ll get to see the depths of her power soon, he mused, glancing into the darkness. There, somewhere miles down below them, hid a monster that required the only living Primarch’s full attention. If that thing doesn’t push her to show all of her cards, nothing will.