“Well, I guess that’s that,” I hummed. “They probably got bored with wasting energy on something futile.”

  “It is much more likely that the Overlord whose territory we just left loathes the guts of whoever we irritated oher side of the Rift,” Val retorted, being the foremost expert of Ne psychology on the ship.

  “Meh,” I shrugged. “What’s important is that we are officially in Tau space … or will be once we ehe system. Hurray!”

  Selene gave me a soft chuckle while fae cpped excitedly. It only took a pat to the head to get her out of her post-almost-dying-on-the-ork-ship depression. She was back to brown nosing me, which I was holy not sure if it was better or not. I don’t have the heart to just stomp on her happiness because I’m weirded out a bit.

  “Now we just have to stumble our way to the other side of the Tau Empire and we’re golden,” I said as my gravitational sensors were w overtime to detey spacecraft before they detected us. My Illusions and camoufge carapace was a thought away from going online, but having it stantly on while drifting through deep space would be wasteful as all hell. “Stealth or diplomacy? What are we thinking, crew?”

  “Diplomacy,” Selene spoke up before the snort w its way out of Val’s throat could fully form. She gave her teacher — I guess that’s what he is to her? — a reproachful gre. “The Tau, for a ge, are a race ameo the diplomatic approach. They would respeore foing that dire, though I suppose it does depend on the specific Water Caste member you get assigned as your handler / liaison.”

  I sent her a nod, then g Val. “Any ter arguments?”

  “It is likely they’d prefer to send you somewhere themselves, and not allow you to act freely and go wherever you please.”

  “Would they though?” I hummed. “And even if they did, the Tau have no protes against Telepathy. All I’d need is a small o make sure they let me be. Or, to make them assign me where I want to be assigned.”

  “They might feel something is amiss,” he said, though I could practically smell the resignation in his aura. You should learn to accept a loss.

  “Even if they do,” I said. “What are they going to do if we just … teleport away and tinue on our way uealth?”

  “They do have advanced unication systems that could inform their terparts near your destination about you.”

  “Wiping their minds before leaving should be easy,” I shrugged. “And even if not, it is what it is. I’m willing to risk that much. I doubt they would turn aractically free meraries on the front.”

  Val still looked sour as a lemon, but held his tongue. Selene looked mostly happy, probably to be ba a somewhat civilised society while Fae and Bob just nodded along in the background.

  I gave Zedev a gnce. As I should have expected, he ighe versation. His mind was whirling a thousand miles a sed, I could tell it, but he kept to himself. Oh well.

  As for our mushroom.

  “We ain’t gonna scrap with the Fish’eads?” he asked from his spot in the er.

  “No,” I said. “We are going to fight for them.”

  “But they break like twigs.”

  “They have fancy toys though,” I shrugged. “And make me fancy toys of my own that don’t look like a middle schooler’s sce project.”

  His jaws snapped shut at the st part, looking mostly fused at why I didn’t like his mek boys’ attempt at making stuff. He didn’t seem to get the idea that they were ugly as sin.

  And their knowledge isn’t eveic so I ’t eat it. Shame. I tried. I tried three times even, just to make sure. tally, Throgg made three mek boyz yesterday. Wonder where they went.

  Well, that wasn't quite right. There was knowledge coded into their geics, but it didn't work for me. Not at all. Sucks, but it is what it is.

  Anyway, with no Tau or any other ship in sense, I reached further for a much rger gravitational well. Space was vast ay, so I wasn’t surprised when the star system was five light years away.

  My sensors worked on a simple metric. The further away stuff was, the mravity it had to gee for me to feel it. I could feel separate star systems for about a hundred light years away, but beyond that it all bleogether.

  Spaceships though? Barely a single Lightyear if they were small stealth or scout crafts.

  “Found ourselves a destination,” I said. “We’ll take a stop there ieroid belt for a few days while I rebuild the ship to look serviceable and presentable for the blueys.”

  “So another few days of thumb fiddling?” Selene asked rally. I couldn’t tell whether she was annoyed or didn’t care at all.

  Curse you Val for teag her how to cloak her emotions. Well, not that I thought she was angry with me. She t at making that knowo someone dehan a ron star.

  She probably just doesn’t want to bother me with her boredom and disappoi. Selene was an adorable little marshmallow like that. I leave w on the ship to drones or a e driven by my mind cores. I really should spend more time with Seleside of fighting together.

  “We’ll see,” I smiled at her. “We could go expl a bit while the ship is rebuilt and Throgg here poputes it with his boys.”

  “Expl?” Selene hummed, tilting her head curiously. My heart.

  “Yep,” I said as I bouny ankles. “Surely, there is something fun to check out in an alien star system.”

  “Fun,” she seemed to roll that word over in her head. She gave a shrug. “Okay. What about the rest of them?”

  “They stay on the ship of course,” I ran my gaze over the group, my eyes promised a slow death in the deep dark void of space if they barged in on my pnned date. “Maybe work on waking up that cog-head.”

  Zedev gave off a soft buzz in response, vaguely sounding like a binary ‘I am awake’ but sped up.

  “Or not,” I shrugged. “Val, you’ll be on Ork watg duty. Beat em bd blue if they act out, but try not to kill too many of them. That would dey our departure.”

  The Eldar’s eyes narrowed, and he gave me a grinning nod. I would have been worried about the etting brutally murdered down to the st member if I didn’t know he took my words for the w. Well, when I order him to do stuff that is. He has no problems questioning my every move when I seem uain.

  His mind was a weird spad one I didn’t want to even dip my toes into.

  Getting a round of nods, I smiled a our course for the asteroid belt surrounding the star system. I ran a sed round of deeper ss once we got closer aermihat the system was deserted and dead all around.

  Two gas giants orbited the smaller yellow star along with a few smaller ps, but none of them were habitable. The only thing I found in the goldilocks zone of the system was a number of smaller poids that weren’t even rge enough to be rounded out by their own gravity.

  Bummer. I thought. But it’ll be a perfect pce to hide out for a bit before tinuing onwards.

  I made the ship tto the rgest asteroid in the system’s equivalent of the Oort Cloud — sihey only called the sor system’s outer asteroid belt that; I think? — and handed off my basic schematics for the ship I wao my mind-cores.

  I didn’t want much, just something around the size of a Light Cruiser which had enough space to house an Ork warband. And more importantly, to keep them all on a separate deck from the one we would be living on.

  F myself to not fuss over the details had been challenging, but telling myself this was just the first alpha 1 prototype helped. After that, I snatched up Selene, and we were off to explore this dead star system while the others fiddled their thumbs.

  ******

  “What a straurn my life has taken,” Selene murmured, her hand squeezing mine as we y on the reddish wastend. She stared up at the looming sun up above, taking up the majority of the sky with how close the p we were on was to it.

  I stayed silent and just squeezed her hand back. Turns out her new body could survive in about 400 Celsius and breathe in acidic air. It used up bio-energy, sure, but she didn’t seem to care about being on a phat seemed to have an obsession with being the most accurate representation of the biblical hell as possible.

  “Tell me something,” she turned her head my way. “What were your pns when we first met?”

  “I just wao get off of that dead world,” I shrugged. “I would have starved to death soon enough. One way or another, I po have the first ship that came my way to get me to a p with actual life on it.”

  “What if I figured out you were some strange alien and tried to have you killed?” She asked curiously, keeping her emotions uncealed.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I wasn’t much of a pnner back then, and it only got marginally better sihen.”

  “Guess,” she asked.

  “I suppose my first choice would have been hiding somewhere in the bowels of your ship,” I said. “I didn’t even know basic telepathy back then. Brute force was all I used, even with my more esoteric powers.”

  “Yeah, I suppose that would have worked,” she defted. “Even if we knew what to look for, finding a single person that ge between different human shapes and whatever else would have been a moal pain.”

  “That was the idea,” I said. “Why are you asking?”

  “I’ve just been w about the ‘what-ifs’,” she said with another, stronger squeeze. “I see you brutalise your enemies in ways I didn’t know possible, and I ’t help but wonder how close I came to being just another corpse on your path to power.”

  “We’ll never know,” I said.

  “I suppose,” she hummed, then flipped herself over to her side and propped her head up with a palm. “I want to visit my home p iure. When we have time, I want to go and see what became of it. I fear even with the Regent’s amicable disposition, his bureaucracy might have gotten muddled on the way and somehow the people my family was supposed to be responsible for paying the priy … ‘frolig with xenos’.”

  “Sure, where is it?” I asked, before smirking. “Also, you did much more than mere ‘frolig’.”

  “It’s entirely your fault.” She rolled her eyes with a smile. “Aliens were supposed to be big, ugly and want to murder my guts iive ways, not … whatever you are.”

  “Apologies for being so dazzling,” I batted my eyeshes at her. “Anyway, your home p? Where is it? What’s it like? I don’t think you ever talked about it before.”

  “It’s a shithole, and my family only ruled it in name,” she said sourly. “It’s aptly named ‘Voss’ and is a smaller Fe World in the Sor Sector. pared to the reigning Arch-Magos, the current Governor there is little more tha with which the priests smack over the head any diplomat ing to bother them.”

  “I doubt even the Imperium’s pigheaded bureaucrats would be stupid enough to alienate aire fe world just because someone from the governor’s family itted a tiny bit of heresy.”

  “Well,” she scratched her cheek and averted her eyes. “I might teically be the ‘governor’.”

  “What?” I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look too governor-y to me, and aren’t you a Rogue Trader? How does that even work?”

  “My Uncle is the ag governor,” she shrugged, flopping doutting her head on my shoulder. “And being a Rogue Trader came first and superseded any other position gained before or after it. Having the Emperor’s own signature and crest on a piece of paper is quite a thing, after all.”

  “I think the only ones you should be worried about would be your family members,” I said, then noticed the stipated look on her face. “What?”

  “I just want to check up on the p,” she said after a moment, huffing. “Uncle rot away as a servitor for all I care.”

  “I mean, sure we go check it out iure,” I said. “How much of a hurry are we in? I really wasn’t pnning oing anywhere close to Terra in the tury or more.”

  “No hurry at all,” she said with a weary sigh. “We’d only make it worse if we strong armed the bureaucracy. I just want to see what the sequeny … choices are.”

  “Okay,” I said, my voice sounding a bit small even for me.

  “Stop that,” she whacked me over the shoulder. “I am a grown ass woman. My choices are my own. You should only feel guilty if you fucked with my mind when I decided to follow along with you and to be with you.”

  “I- No!” I jumped up in indignation, sending Selene rolling around in the dirt as she was half-ed around me. “I’d never!- AH, sorry!”

  She picked herself back up and stopped a metre away from me, looking up into my eyes for a moment. “I apologise too, that was … well, not uncalled for, but in bad faith. Sorry, I couldn’t help but want to see how you’d react.”

  “I- I get it.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, closing my eyes and taking a lungful of acidic air. “But I thought- I mean, I hoped we’d be past the stage where we doubt each other’s iions.”

  “I don’t doubt the iions of the current you,” she said.

  “Oh,” I blinked, squinting at her a bit as she shifted unfortably. Fuck me sideways. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I decided we’d go on a bit of exploration. I tiestily. “Well, I hope I’ve put your worries to rest.”

  Selene looked away with a grimace as I crossed my arms a how much her doubt hurt flow through our bond. At least she didn’t ceal the overwhelming guilt she felt iurn.

  “Sorry,” she said meekly. “I-”

  “I said I get it, didn’t I?” I said, frowning at her. “That doesn’t mean it hurts any less. Or that you could have picked aime to do this.”

  “It’s not often we are aloogether anymore,” she said weakly.

  “I said I’d always make time for you, didn’t I?” I huffed. “You just have to ask.”

  “Sorry,” she said again as her guilt intensified.

  “Whatever.” I shook my head and tried to banish my hurt, with more or less success. “If you have other doubts, speak up now to rip off the band aid. I don’t want to have any more versations like this.”

  “I don’t,” she said with a soft shake of her head. She stepped up to me and reached out to touch me, her hand h just above my shoulder, but not going further.

  I stared intrey eyes, seeing them glimmer in the sunlight with just the slightest hint of uears in them. It tugged at my heartstrings.

  Stupid idiot. People got divorced for less. Why are you like this? I berated myself. I pulled her in for a hug, popping my into her fluffy bck hair. Hopefully, this will set aside her worries. Hopefully, I fet this.

  Her hug tightened as she buried her fato the nook of my neck. I rubbed her bafly as waves of relief flooded into my mind, surging through our bond from Selene.

  “Why am I the one f you?” I pined.

  “Sorry,” she murmured.

  “Stop apologising,” I poked her in the side. “I swear your aors must have been adian.”

  “What’s a adian?”

  “A straype of human that ’t help but apologise after every sentence,” I said. “I think it's coded into their genes.”

  ‘Mistress,’ Val’s voice buzzed in my ears as he tugged on our telepathiion. ‘It seems we have beeed. The Magos says there is an ining transmission from deep spad I feel something approag us from that dire, still far away, but the ship won’t be ready by the time they arrive. What are your orders?’

  ‘I’ll be ba a minute,’ I sent back. ‘AA?’

  ‘I’d say anywhere from half an hour to a day. It’s hard to predict distances and velocity accurately at such great distances.’

  ‘Alright.’

  “Look at me,” I said to Selene, closing off the link for now.

  The smaller brue looked up, her eyes slightly bloodshot.

  “It’s alright,” I said, squeezing her. “We’ll be alright, okay? We talked it out and you feel my emotions. It’ll be alright, right?”

  “Right,” she said, giving off a choked snort. “What now?”

  “Now,” I said. “I’d say we make a small house and do some more ‘frolig’ to make up.”

  “You mean sex.”

  “Yep,” I chuckled. “I heard makeup sex is awesome. Unfortunately, we have nosy space fishes ing to be a nuisance, so will have to postpohat.”

  She rolled her eyes, but there was a soft smile on her face as she gave me another squeeze, orong enough to shatter the spine of a weaker woman. To me though, it just felt nice.

  “It’s a pn.”

  “Let’s see what our visitors want,” I said, as I gave her a pe the forehead. “We go explore some Tau ps on the way together. I’m sure they have some iing stuff to see around there.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ready to teleport?” I asked.

  “Go for it.”

  With a nod, I let Blink do its magid eared ba the ship.

  “Zedev, report!” I said, as I relutly disentangled myself from a simirly relut Selene.

  “There is an ining unication signal,” he said, now fully back to how he was when I first met him in all his meical-araoid glory. “I have not answered their hail as of now. I am unfamiliar with the signal itself or the frequencies used myself, but databanks show this is the universal ‘Hail’ of the Tau Navy.”

  “Well, let’s see what our blue friends-to-be want,” I said as I cracked my ned put on my fa silky robes. “Aheir Hail and make me a holographiunication thingy if you .”

  Zedev just gave a nod as mechadendrites whirled around him and lights fshed across his meical parts.

  “eg … 3 … 2 … 1 … now.”

  A bluish hologram sprang to life a few metres before me, dispying the form of a 180cms tall Tau.

  “Identify yourself, Human.” He bit out like the word was a curse. “You are trespassing in T’au space.”

  Well, this is starting off more iing than I thought.

  P3t1