The first line of defence for any voidship would have been the le sensors, which I seemingly mao slip past by. would be the point defeurrets, though even those o somehow deteing projectiles, and seeing as nothing tried to fry my hide just yet, that yer proved iive too.

  Third was the void shield. I had no idea how exactly these worked — something that would have to be rectified ter, my ck of teological knowledge was starting to be a problem — but I knew from diving into the minds of some lower-raech priests that they had one major weakness.

  They only stopped objects travelling above a pre-set static speed limit. Meaning, that it would stop missiles and such, but not a slow-moving asteroid or my drone as I slowed my speed to only marginally be faster than the void ship’s velocity.

  The shield itself was invisible to human eyesight, but my drone could see a much wider range of colours than the human eye on the eleagic spectrum. Still, it remained just a semi-translut veil in the shape of an egg around the titanic ship.

  I gingerly reached out with a cwed limb, flying only metres away from the shield, and touched it. I heaved a mental sigh as the limb passed through. When no missiles or sers homed in on me as I kept my limb halfway through the shield, I promptly dove through the shield, making sure to go no faster than my arm had when it passed through.

  The feeling of passing through the shield was a strange sensation, like an itch washing through every cell of my body in a wave. I resisted the urge to shiver, not out of fear, but disfort. Let me tell you, the insides of your bog was an utterly revolting experience.

  There were theories among the tech-priests about what exactly void shields did to intercepted objects from gravitational energies obliterating them to the object getting thrht into the .

  None of which was something I wao personally experience. Especially since if the drone was terminated, I’d lose my one ce of getting the upper hand. I o know what the fleet’s — and Guilliman’s — iions were ing me. I had to know.

  The sensation passed as soon as I was through.

  With no ohe wiser, the drone dashed towards it and tched onto the hull.

  It’s well past time I figure out what the hell is going on. I thought as I went to search for a pce to burrow through the hull.

  For now, I stayed away from the upper part of the ship with all the ostentatious cathedrals and gothic architecture, where the supposed higher-ups of the crew were located.

  If some psyker or navigator in there noticed me now, I’d be in quite the pickle. It’d take only a few Thunderhawks and fighters ing out with a willio blow holes into the hull with stupidly powerful torpedoes.

  Let’s see what you are made of. I thought as a cwed limb phased into the outer yer of the hull. The material was slightly pushing back against me, instead of the usual ease with which my body usually phased through things, it felt like I ushing through a mire.

  With a mental grimace, I ripped the limb back out, taking with it a handful of the material. Then, I tried abs it. Well, more like breaking it down into molecules and seeing what exactly this thing was.

  The only things that mao somewhat obstruct my phasing so far were all psychi some manner, like the carapace of a Hive Tyrant, but I found even power armour had some slight pushback, though not anywhere close to a Hive Tyrant’s carapace.

  As my mind cores worked on reverse engineering the material, I shifted the drone’s limb into my inal eldritch material. The cwed bck limb came apart at the seams, a thousand hair-thin white tendrils disentangling from each other before merging into a single whole that plunged bato the tiny hole I made before.

  There was still some resistahere, but my eldritch flesh pushed through with ease. Just as I thought, that phasing thingy was some i ability of my inal body, and the shapeshifted forms I took only gained a downgraded version of it.

  The moment the tendril found a rge enough open spa the other side, I pulled myself through with my oldest trick. The drone colpsed upon itself and the energy rushed into the tendril, quickly rebuilding a more pact Hunter Drone oher side and pulling the remaining phased-out tendril bato itself.

  Camoufge and Illusions activated, my mind quickly located the closest human mind, and the drone was off. The inside of the ship was disgustingly unprotected, especially this far down into the ship where, with the -Core’s close proximity, only mutants and the fueling crew dared to venture.

  A handful of unfortunate, mind-raped voiders ter, I had a somewhat solid uanding of these lower yers of the ship. Making use of it, I quickly went up and up, tinuing on with mind-diving into the minds of some sorry sod whenever I got lost.

  For a moment I let myself wonder about what I was doing. The ease with which I decided to grab the first human I found and pluo their mind, ravaging it for the information I needed and leaving them behind as drooling, mind-dead shells of their former selves.

  This … robably something immoral. The ey humanity told me it was disgusting, that I should be disgusted with myself for my as. But … I didn’t care that much.

  This was a matter of survival, of life ah. I needed knowledge and I was going to get it the quickest, easiest ossible. Afterwards, I could ruminate over the morality of my as ter, now it wasn’t time to worry about methods.

  For now, I would make the most of these kills.

  After telepathically going through their memories and st them in some er of my mind, I shifted one of my limbs inte maw filled with serrated teeth and took a bite out of each dead human with it.

  Before that flesh got transformed into bio-energy, the weird Space Marine an thingy that somehow got memories out of bio-matter went to work on it. The results were less than stelr, sometimes earning me randments of memories not even correting to anything important.

  From others, I got the location of their homes, how many friends they had, if they were in gangs, where the bases of those gangs were and so on and so forth. It was intriguing as more often than not, the fragments of memories would be of immediate tactical use to me if I wao eradicate the groups these puys beloo.

  How in the nine hells that an mahis was something I couldn’t fathom even after having watched it a dozen times, havi it work and the memories seep into my mind.

  The bites I took were imes out of ten, not even from the brain, so how did this thing work? I was rather sure the feet of that one human did not store the memory of where he hid his secret stash of money.

  I’d be doubting my knowledge of human biolht about now if my eldritption of humans did not e together with a rather detailed uanding of the subject. An uanding that correted to what I knew beforehand, meaning, the feet were not made to house memories. What a shocker.

  Stupid Warhammer sce. Stupid gaxy. Nothing made sense. Nothing ever made sense.

  There was some fuckery going on and I wasn’t even sure if it was fuckery. Ah, well, who was I kidding? When in doubt, bme the . Maybe the memories left some sort of a spiritual imprint on the flesh that my eldritch senses couldn’t catch due to their entirely physiature?

  Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a hurry, so I couldn’t stop to meditate over a corpse to check for any such imprint that did not make itself obvious to my casual iion. If it was obvious, my aura sense would have caught it already.

  I tinued going up and up. Humans fell and slowly, my mental map of the ship started filling out. I was close to the space where officers lived and reag the and deck should be only minutes away.

  My ast slowed a bit as I put a touch more care into keeping myself hidden. By now I khis ship was manirely by regur humans — as regur as these void-mutated humans could be — and not by Space Marines, furthermore, no one I mind-dived had known of even a single Psyker being on the ship. That meant I could rex a bit.

  I prowled the upper deck, sending only quick probes into the minds of passers-by to not rouse suspi. I could have murdered a hundred mutants down in the belly of the ship and no one important would have noticed, but I suspected a single dead officer would get all of their panties in a twist.

  The first officer whose mind I read even had some impnt that would send a silent alert should he die, or fall unscious and though the handful didn’t have su impnt — or hid it too well for me to notice — I didn’t want to send the whole ship into some emergency lockdown or something.

  This was but the first step. I o, no, I had to remain ued.

  I hummed in my mind, imagining myself to be a super spy as I crawled across the ceiling, unseen by the humans below. The and deck wasn’t far now, and the first target of the day — the Captain — should be inside.

  My path is, of course, barred by shut doors and even a heavy bulkhead, the st of which is the st remaining thiween me and my quarry. The other doors, I could pry open easily enough and without even leaving visible marks of the doors being forced open with some careful application of telekinesis.

  The regur doors did use biometric identification on these upper doors, but the meism that kept them locked was entirely meical and as such, could be bypassed with only telekinesis and no need for deeper teological knowledge.

  That wasn’t the case for the final bulkhead. The thing was locked ih a dozeromagic locks and safeguards against tempering that were obvious even to my amateur eyes.

  I’d have to bst through it if the only trider my sleeve was telekinesis. Fortunately, it was not, and even more fortunately, the tech-priest oher side of the bulkhead w as a glorified security guard didn’t have the mental protes Zedev had.

  Well, fortunate for me and unfortunate for him. The bulkhead groaned and hissed, then it slowly parted in the middle and slid to the side with an anguished screech. Waiting a few moments for it to e to a stop, I stepped through a a sed order to the poor priest to close the door behind me and keep it that way until told otherwise.

  The meical part of his mind tried to fight si was the part I couldn’t strong-arm quite so easily, but the meicus’ paranoia of the abomielligeaking over their minds proved to be his undoing as hundreds of shackles held his artificial mind from doing anything worthwhile.

  The sight that greeted me was about what I expected, whily made it more amusing. A dozen sguns and a handful of more exotic onry found themselves poi my invisible form, more because of the still screeg bulkhead behihao them having somehow seen through both my illusion and camoufge.

  The poor tech priest whose mind I hijacked already had a thick hand around his throat and curses flying at his unresponsive form while the remaining unarmed officers watched on with a mild mix of curiosity and apprehension.

  Now, how to go about this? I could go with either the bombastic route or the stealthy mind-rapist route. The obvious choice would have been the first one any other time. I did have a nasty habit of gloating and pying with my enemies, but today would be different.

  Without further ado, I plunged right into the Captain’s mind who looked down on the whole debacle with a bored, gzed-aze from his and throne. He was an ugly fucker with half his face repced with brutish grey cyberid most of his skull repced with those weird cable-hair thihat ected him to the ceiling and the ship.

  His mind artially merged with the very mae spirit of the ship, so once again my finesse aerity with telepathy were put to the test, as the alien mind would have quickly noticed any of the brutish telepathic attacks I usually used.

  I searched selectively, instead of just browsing through more than a few lifetime’s worth of memories — the man looked arguably fabulous for being over 300. In short order, I had what I was looking for, more or less. The prevalent paranoia in the Imperium meant even a Captain knew very little of the overarg tactical pns of the fleet, only being told what he had to do and informed of what the and thought was the bare minimum he had to know.

  He didn’t know about me — of course, he didn’t — aher did he know all too much about what would happen ohe fleet reached Baal. What he did knohere exactly Guilliman’s ship was, which ships were manned by Astartes, which ships had skilled Psykers onboard, and other suformation.

  I grinned inwardly as I strode forward at the first part of my quest being a success, all that was left was the extra part of it.

  I strutted betweeill fused humans, invisibility cloak still hiding me from their sight and walked up to the panorama window at the end of the deck. It was stupid, idiotid illogical to have the and de the top of a tower on top of the ship and with only reinforced gss separating the most important personnel from the void of space, but I just gave it a mental shrug as I gently phased through the gss.

  I shot off into the darkness, man myself tet the tre of the formation with the help of my new mental map. Let’s see what one of the Astartes Captains knows .

  P3t1