I ying with my newly mined minerals, trying to make use of my newly gained Meicus knowledge. The ways to make psteel, ferrocrete and even ceramite were in there in my head, I just had to make use of them.

  Which was a bit challenging, seeing as I wao cut out all the unnecessary parts of the process. Like saying prayers, ting in binary and spraying holy oil on stuff every other minute.

  I cked the heavy maery and tools the tech priests used, but most were easy to replicate with my powers.

  Anyway, I was doing that when I felt Val’s psychic power extend from the ship and like a serpent questing for prey slithering up to me.

  ‘Mistress, the captain of the Tau ship above Vallia wishes to speak with you,’ he said. ‘They have noticed your … terraf of the p and are a touch put off by your aplishment it seems.’

  ‘’t you tell them to sod off?’ I sent back irritably. I had iing stuff to py with. My ferrocrete was already done and to 70% of the quality the Meicus set as the baseline. Which made it my best attempt yet.

  Then my new Water Caste sub-brain nudged me, telling me I was being an idiot.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said quickly before he could reply. ‘Hent did the guy sound?’

  ‘Very,’ Val said with a hint of a sneer in his voice. ‘I believe he suspects you have a powerful artefact you kept hidden from the Tau so far or something of the like.’

  ‘He’s n,’ I mused, thinking of ways to expin away what I’d done. ‘Not that I io tell him that. Would you be so kind as to send a … what was it called? Pict-caster? Down to the surface?’

  ‘Of course,’ Val said, and I practically felt his subservient bow through the telepathic el he kept up. ‘I’ll do so now. May I portal it dowo you?’

  ‘Sure,’ I shrugged, then closed off the telepathik with a wave of my hand. Still, I felt a final surge of thrill from Val at the prospect of being allowed to indulge in using a portal.

  With my soul energy reserves being as it were, and with all of us having to share, we’d been forced to ration the energy for emergencies and only using the bare minimum.

  It was torture to all three of us psykers, but it had to be done. I’ll fix it soon. Hopefully. If my pn works out how it is supposed to.

  A short moment of wait ter, a glowing blue portal flickered ience before me and only stayed in pce long enough to dump a rge pieaery down on the grass.

  It looked like some sort of a podium, with a rge, circur foot. It was also an authentic piece of holo-tech, which would never not be cool. I mean, sure I would do holograms with Illusions, but this ure tech.

  Not moving from my sitting position, my five fingers extended and split into a dozen tendrils that quickly went to work. In just a few quick seds, they had the pict-caster up and running.

  Muy dismay, I still couldn’t escape having to spit some mae oil into one partment and shooting a quick trill of ones and zeros in binary.

  It was the part of the startup sequence, for whatever ungodly reason. The st receptors inside and the audio sensors out in the front could be circumvented, but only with far too much effort.

  This thing before me came from an STC, so it was borderline perfect for what it did. It was also much better at proteg itself from cyber attacks than modern Imperial tech.

  I ected the thing up to the ship up in orbit, thes long distaranspoo link me up with the Tau captain.

  His blue head popped up above the le, floating there with a gre, rger than life if only because the damned pict-caster couldn’t be scaled manually.

  “Greetings, Captain.” I gave a slight nod, as a captain of an auxiliary ship should to any Tau captain of the Air Caste.

  “Captain,” he returned a hesitant nod, then unched into a tirade. “What have you doo the p? Our sensors are going haywire and showing signs of extreme terraf. Have you used some illegal artifauggled out of that Gue’ Empire of yours? If you’ve failed to report its existence wheering Tau space, you’ve broken the fifth addendum of the third- “

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, Captain,” I said ily.

  “Don’t py coy with me human,” he barked. He wasn’t hateful to me just because I was a human, but he viewed everything not blue and fishy like him as a lesser. It wasn’t racism, or xenophobia, as much as it was extreme narcissism. “There is no way you could have achieved what you’ve doo that moon without using up some a artifact of your kind. That … ‘teo-sorcery’ you humans use. Hand it over. By the decree of the Ethereals, all such equipment is to be fiscated upory into our Empire. Our ship is on route already, ready yourself.”

  “I’m afraid you caught me Captain, but it is gone,” I said, smiling still as I listeo what my Water Caste sub-brain was whispering in my ears. “I’m afraid the artefact merged with the moon already. There is nothing to be handed over.”

  “Then its that moon that’ll be fiscated in its stead,” he said through gritted teeth, likely thinking I was just gloating over having pulled a fast one on him.

  “The moon will wilt away and die if I’m to leave it,” I said evenly. “The artifact ected me to the moon under my feet. It’ll die and go back to being as it was just days ago. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”

  “You-” His blue face probably went red in answer, but I sadly couldn’t see colours over the pict-caster. Its transmission came in all-blue only. “The Magister will hear of this!”

  With that, the li and I sat back down with a smile. Jackpot. He invited over someone who has some actual power and I egotiate with. They’ll try to kick me out and go ba the promise to let me have this p, but … well, worst-case sario, I really let it die. Would be a whole lot of wasted time and effort, but not a huge loss overall.

  I chuckled at the image of the faces the Tau would make as the world rapidly wilted around them. Now that would be a power move.

  It was a gamble, a fairly risky one, but I was willing to risk it. I wahis home base, and with the new dangers I’d learned were out there, waiting to sink their fangs in me I wanted a safe base more than I wanted good diplomatic retions with the Tau.

  This pn had the highest ce of actually w out well for me.

  The Tau ship slowly drifted closer to us, but it was still hours away, so I went back to occupying myself with more work. The atmosphere has grown suffitly livable that I could start introdug the more extremophile fauna I had in mind. Plus, I could also start assembling the base itself once I was certain the nosy Tau Captain wasn’t going to shove an orbital strike down my throat.

  Now, onto fixing my little Daemon and soul energy problem! I hummed, sending tendrils to carve out tunnels deep beh the surface. My mind-cores assembled a weave, a grand array that would fit my needs perfectly.

  Tendrils burrowed through rod earth, shifting everything to the side before reinf the walls of the tunnels with weaves of my specifically made new bio-materials. It wasn’t anywhere near p-steel pting hard, but it would keep the sort of stuff I was going to throw into those tunnels ihe tunnels.

  It was starting to all e together in only another hour and when I projected a hologram of it above my palm; it looked like one of those airless basketballs, like a spherical beehive. But instead of hexagrams, it had pentagrams, and each pentagram had a five-poiar inside.

  I wasn’t sure whether it would actually work, but I hoped it would at least help ward off some daemons. I meaagrams supposedly had some esoteriti-daemon qualities in this universe, so why not give it a try?

  I sure as hell was going to make my base the same way, sort of like if the pentagon was a star fortress. That was the base idea at least. But that was for ter, first I went about extending a tendril down into every interse iunnels and created a perfect Tyranid Warrior e.

  I didn’t leave anything out, and ged nothing about them. Not even their mother would have been able to tell they hadn’t crawled out of some birthing pod. Which was the point.

  Tyranid Warriors were the weakest synaptic creatures of the Tyranid species I had on hand, so they would be the ones I’d used for my first test. I had each locked up tightly, half melded into the walls of the tunnels in a way that they couldn’t even twitch a muscle and then watched as they came to themselves.

  They were feral at first, trying to snap at my retreating tendrils like rabid beasts but slowly, I could see them ect up with each other. Synaptiodes reached out, creating tiny webs, tiny webs brushed against each other and bined into bigger s and so on and so forth until every siyranid Warrior down there art of the same synaptietwork.

  I grinned, as I felt the around the p, ing and roiling as it was from one of Ka’Bandha’s test tantrums calm ever so slightly. It was slow, barely noticeable, and happened on such a small scale that I doubted aher than me would have noticed, but the Shadow of the Hive Mind slowly started f up.

  Let’s give it some juice. I suppressed a giggle, sending out droves of lesser tyranid bio-forms into the tunnels. Nothing dangerous, and nothing that could burrow or create any more of itself. her any that could festation pods or Recmation Pools. They were to remain iunnels and maintain my Shadow in the , not create more of themselves and under no circumstances would I allow them to start trying to experiment and make a new bio-form capable of breaking through the walls of the tunnels.

  As their numbers grew, going from a few thousand to well into the hundreds of thousands with rippers and all kinds of gaunts running around, the ’s currents started to still. Seeing that it was still a bit too slow, I added in a score of Hive Tyrants to the weave, pg them intic locations. That sent a surge of power through the entire synaptiet and the Shadow grew de an increasing pad even I felt that characteristic chill of it go down my spine.

  Waves died down, a growing Storm died in its infand the Daemed, but could do nothing. They were sharks used to deep waters suddenly finding themselves in a mangrove, with the muddy earth and roots obstrug their every a as eveer itself that sustaihem grew harder, denser, less livable.

  Perfect. I hummed and decided to be a little petty. It was time to boot out the squatters making a mess of my immaterial real estate. Titanidrils of soul energy woven together with my own psychic power reached down from my Ream and pierced into the dark waters below. The Daemons, likely seeing these new, pure pathways as an easy way out rushed towards them.

  They were slow though, oh so sluggish and even the big bad Greater Daemon struggled to reach for the one closest to it. But unlike before, I wasn’t just there to drink in the energy of the to replenish myself. No.

  The tendrils split and twisted, each hardening and glowing with a silvery gleam as they darted for a daemon. Smite-iendrils struck out like vicious serpents, pierg daemon after daemon like a spear, and strung them up like shish kebabs.

  Ka’Bandha himself earhe rgest one, and I made expert use of his sluggishness in the denser waters. His strikes that had once been almost impossible to reay spears of light evaded with ease and ran circles around him, poking at him all the while and obliterating tiny, almost insignifit ks of his very being with each hit that ected.

  His lesser kin were much less fortunate. Eae struck by my tendrils died either on the spot, or writhing in agony as I sucked them right up into my Realm. They were disgusting creatures, and it made my soul roil in disgust to have them so close to it, but they were also dense clumps of Energy. Aka, nutritious food for my Realm once broken dourified.

  The Bloodthirster struggled for what felt like hours, shattering dozens of my tendrils and gobbling up the dissipating energy he left behind just like I was doing to his own kin. But he wasn’t dumb, no, maybe he was, but he had an unnatural feel for bat due to him being one of the chief servants of the God of War, Blood, Skulls and edgy character design. So, he got the message that he was losing pretty fug badly.

  With a roar of defiance, he turned, sending a final vengeful strike that sundered aire rge tendril ing down my Realm and then he fled. I watched him go cooly, a part of me wanting to chase after him and annihite his very being, but I khat would end … less than well for me.

  As the surface of the was the best battleground for me, the depths of it favoured the Daemons. The deeper I extended my tendrils into the waters, the easier it would be for them to cut it all down at the stem or to swarm me with numbers I couldn’t hold babsp;

  Still, that’s a huge win. I thought, taking in a lungful of still acidic air as I felt the repulsive power of the flood my Realm. I pulled the tendrils back up before long, unwilling to risk taking in too much of that twisted energy.

  Sure, my soul could purify it, but it would be a damruggle if I had more energy in my Realm than soul energy. That’d likely meaing that twisted thing run rampant in the fledgeling little worlds floating around in there. So I kept myself from getting greedy and stopped right wheio of to Soul energy was at 2:3.

  With my budget Shadow in the , and the nosy daemons chased off for the foreseeable future, my soul energy problems would sooirely solved. I’d get a deep gulp of energy, wait for it to get purified, then take in an even rger gulp and purify that too. Repeating that, my stores of soul energy should grow expoially. Now, all I have to make sure of is that some asshat Tau doesn't try to bomb me into oblivion or throw me of my new p- or moon, or whatever this is.

  All in all, things were looking good at the moment.

  P3t1