Chapter 88:

Chapter 88: Divine Meddling and Missions often come one after another.


Most species do not understand what being a Polytheistic species means, for it does not mean we are ruled by multiple gods, not only that at the very least, but that each and every single part of our existence is governed by specific gods and mentalities.

Eldar will have a specific mentality when building things, another when fighting and another when raising a family and healthy Eldar societies will allow us to change which we use at any given time and how exactly they are expressed, as said expression depends entirely on our people's understanding of the Divine. In short this means that what it means to be a warrior changes depending on how you understand the existence of Khaine or Asuryan or the other gods directly involved in the military stories of our people and the role you wish to take.

In the averted timeline the Dark Eldar would have gotten stuck on a particularly unhealthy form of the Murder Logic of Khaine with some elements from Kurnous, thus turning themselves into animals that can't choose how to think, among other things, and they considered that a good thing and would turn their children from people into animals in a twisted attempt to help them.

On the other hand, the Craftworlders were still people, but Asurmen's Path System had a great flaw that most healthy Eldar civilizations do not have and that is the fact that it is inflexible. Eldar under Asurmen's Path system are forced to have the same thinking for a long period of time on every single aspect of their lives and while they can change them, they can only do so rarely which creates issues when the change happens and social instability if Path changing becomes more common.

Adults choosing to subject themselves to such is fine, provided they had a childhood that prepared them for the Discipline of doing so or they have actively chosen this when given other options, but to be raised as a child in such circumstances or worse have your parents become another individual entirely while you are a child is not only unhealthy, but actively harmful to their development.

Eldar children need three things: stability, predictability and explicit social molding at the songs of their parents. A child needs a stable home, the things they experience needs to be explained in advance and they need to be prepared for them before they experience them and their future. They also need to be explained what their parents wish of them when they grow up so that they can make preparations whether or not to live up to their parents hopes of them or not.

Both philosophical systems are unhealthy to child rearing, but Asurmen's Path system at least relies on multiple gods to help mold society and thought, which while still unhealthy in the long term tends to mitigate the damage not being able to adapt to the needs of your children properly or worse turning into an entirely different person as they grow up as a person and after.

This is because the Gods help us with various issues by teaching us how to think in specific circumstances, each of them serving as a frame of reference for our place in life and it is why our language continues so many references to our mythology. It does not contain them because we like making confusing and hard to learn languages, as we would have made them so without that element regardless, but because those references help instruct us on how to think on a wide variety of topics.

Yes, our language itself teaches us how to think and it is one of the reasons we consider other languages crude and unrefined. It is hard not to call them that, when other people's language serves as merely a way to transfer information and not as a way to approach it as well.

This limitation that the priests of the New Divine wish to impose upon us is one among many reasons that we call the priests of the New Divine Vermin too, for Vermin are creatures that you have some tiny connection to and that just like Mon'Keigh also need to be exterminated but they are not aliens and vermin can't be anything but vermin.

Slaanesh is dangerous even without being Chaos Corrupted or a carrier for Boredom for a single reason, she will create a single frame of mind for us to live in, a single way of thinking and worst of all a single way of existing. And she'll do all that while also destroying this galaxy by breaking the Rituals of the Old Ones and our own and thus turn us back into Singing Swords with little to no chance of actually turning back to the Children of the Stars. We would have no Legal infrastructure to abuse to regain person-hood, no way to reinterpret our natures, no other way of thinking than hers and the worst of all, we would not even be what we wanted to be while we suffered all of that.

This is why the only good vermin is a dead vermin in my opinion, much to the disagreement of my peers who think the creatures may have some use. I personally would have burned Commoragh and killed Vect and the other claimants to its throne but Cegoragh and the rest of my peers decided that they would serve as our last contingency.

Unlike my third apprentice and his kernel of animals, the Vermin in system are not protected by the dubious claims of usefulness of my peers, no, the six ships that want to hunt me down are protected by something worse. My own inability to hunt them down like the animals they are.

"We can't take on six ships Bessar." My Younger Sister tried to plead with me.

"Even your upgraded firepower is not enough Bessar." The navigator also claimed now far more alert than she should have otherwise been after five hours of sleep.

The second woman hasn't had much time to sleep but I am currently keeping her awake through an infusion of psychic energy.

Both of them were in my core room and stood in the chairs I made for them. Both of them were also using the screens I provided to look over the fleet in question and my estimations of their weaponry, but Geinna Mara said she wanted to do some calculations and so I redirected some of the computational power of the ship to the terminal and she started interacting with math that makes me murderous just looking at it.

I cut off that part of myself with the same ease I wish I could stop being aware of what happened in my crew cabins, but I am still not able to do it and I blame divine nonsense for that. Cutting a console from my mind but not body is the exact same thing as cutting off a room but for some reason I still can't do it.

Both of them overestimated the fighting capabilities of Vermin and I zoomed in on two ships frigates that smashed into the other… intentionally by the looks of it… I also showed them their weapons loadout which is far less than what Craftworlder ships have in both number and strength.

They separated from the other shortly but the prow of one of them had another singing skulls singing in ecstasy on it.

"Yes, very frightening." I replied my voice thick with sarcasm.

My broadside had as much firepower as all of their prow guns combined but the only thing that saved the vermin from extermination was the fact that there has to be more ships in hiding and the fact that my soul is still tender, so a single psychic attack aimed at it can knock me out of the fight.

"All I need to do is cause their capital ship and hidden escorts to reveal itself and they'll shatter, they aren't military ships or even the para-military ones of craftworlders, but poorly armed civilians. Assuming they'll even fight to the last, all I need to do is kill their leader and they'll crumble." I explained.

My annoyance was as thick as the skulls of the idiots piloting the six things pretending to be frigates, but I can't attack the fools by myself. It is so, because I am a ship with a crew and this means that my crew gets a say in what I am about to do and when your entire crew says no on something you can't do that. The crew of the ship decides what it does, not the ship itself after all.

The ships belong to a Mind Cult judging by their insignia of a slit eye inside a vagina, and that bunch of failures won't even resist as a concept belonging to Slaanesh once she is born as they fit Tzeentch more. They represent the aspect of Slaanesh meant for long term planning and like all parts of her, they go overboard with contingencies, plans within plans and overthinking things and so on. If they weren't drugged and killing each other as they made those plans they would probably be scary, but as it is they are just one more showcase of the failures of Chaos and Slaanesh.

The six ships move in a clearly haphazard manner and are incapable of keeping an area of concentrated fire for long, but despite all of that they maintain the same speed which leads me to believe that there's at least one more ship directing them and possibly five others lying in wait because cultists think in numerology and are thus limited in what they do.

Smart ones learn to get creative with their limitations while stupid ones die fast and are easily found and killed and this bunch does not look very smart. They can't even maintain formation right, their weapons look under-powered and haphazardly made and to my sensors they don't look like much, even if whatever stealth technology they use to keep themselves hidden is impressive.

My crew was not convinced by my words and sensor feed and so I had to continue trying to figure out what was wrong and convince them otherwise.

"Elaborate on your misgivings about my desire to attack, both of you. Laciena, you can do so first, Geinna Mara second." I instructed.

That is the order they've imposed among themselves, but it is good to formalize such things early. Same as wearing their uniforms, it's never a bad thing to wear armor, especially when it helps tell your comrades who you are and what you're doing.

As soon as I will manage to assuage the worries of my crew I can then go to cut down the vermin and bathe in their screams.

"I believe your soul damage is making you act too much like Khaine and it's also making you disregard the danger we are in."

I had to do a double take, she should know better than that… she should know better than that, and I smell trickery because she does know better than that.

Khaine is the final fail safe to us going crazy, for he turns our souls Violent tendencies into Murderous tendencies and keeps the Small Singing Swords asleep, but I am a priest and too aware of that bit of trickery to work on me, so Khaine can't help me and she should know that.

Oh… oooh… she does know better than that.

I should probably be more scared that I am returning to factory standards thanks to a combination of turning into a ship and the shock of channeling Divinity, but my mind is focused on not letting my navigator learn of what is really going on.

Normal Eldar learning our souls are built for war and that we are actively going against our natures to not constantly be killing everything we see never tends to go down well.

"I can see why you would think so but I can assure you that that is not the case, but I will take precautions." I replied with the same sense of confidence I had before.

It's not something I'm holding now but that's not important.

"Geinna Mara?" I addressed the woman

She continued manipulating the eldritch mathematics that involved things I do not want anything to do with. The calculation of multiple ships moving at speeds where relativity becomes a factor, and taking into consideration their firing speed, reaction times, the time before something happens and they notice and the time for their lasers and munition to reach me and more are things that need to be taken into consideration in void battles and more and unfortunately I cannot handle any part related to time manipulation and relativity.

The rituals and oaths I have taken on scream at me each time I so much as try to look at temporal mathematics and I know better than to ignore them. Not doing so will turn my peers and family against me and I truly would rather not have that happening.

I love them too much for them to become my enemies or to betray them like that.

"I don't care about whatever Divine nonsense you two are talking about but this is a trap, please make my view screen visible to everyone here."

I did as she asked and made sure to keep my soul and mind away from the temporal mathematics. What she wanted me to see was the enemy fleet's flight paths, only it wasn't six ships but thirty-six. Six were certain but the other thirty were blurrier for a lack of better term for they were estimates more than something measured.

"What am I looking at Geina Mara?"

I can take six ships with ease, I can even take another six of similar make or even a larger ship or two with my spinal shuriken canon. I can't take thirty-six ships at once, even if all of them are just like the ships I can detect.

Not without a proper plan at least.

"A mad trick I've been on the other end of as part of my time in the fleet. Their movements looked too familiar and so I had to do some calculations as I wasn't sure at first, but I can confirm now that they are using a star-hook maneuver where they leave a small number of ships easily visible to our sensors for us to look for weaknesses while the other ships lay in hiding and maintain a full firing coverage." She said.

She showed the assumed firing arcs, the way the wobbles and occasional collision can all be explained and accounted for by ships running with low emissions and stealth systems up.

My initial estimation of the vermin was off if she is correct, as it seems I am not dealing with random vermin but experienced crews or at least idiots with someone half-way competent and powerful in charge.

"How certain are you of this?"

"Almost completely so, it took me some time as we did a three by twelve in the fleet while they do a six by thirty but the math checks out Bessar."

My focus narrowed and I could feel her soul looking smugly at my core even as her body remained the picture of professionalism. She wanted to be on half name basis and considering she managed to spot an obvious trap I'll have to grant it.

I'd pray to the gods to stop throwing such women at me, but they'd take that as a challenge to throw more of them at me if I dared. If you want something from the Gods or anything related to them asking them to not do something will be treated as a challenge and the more they like or hate you the more creative and hard working they'll get and the last thing I need is the gods getting serious.

I'll have to admit defeat on this front too.

"Excellent work Mara, and if you are correct then this changes my plan, but not the fact that I still need to destroy those ships." I admitted defeat with grace.

"Why?" The two women asked as one.

My younger sister's song was filled with concern and curiosity, but my navigator did not bother hiding her smugness, even if she too felt curious as to why I wouldn't just run.

If I didn't know better I could have swore they were sisters, and if the two had their way they might become such.

"Assuming I manage to run, please tell me what stops them from following us? I currently hold a tactical advantage in them not knowing that I am aware of their strategy but if I run they will follow me and come with another plan we might not be able to see or counter."

The two women remained silent at that.

My sister managed to make me notice that I am spiraling and my navigator made it obvious that we are in a trap but it did not change what I had to do and that is exterminate the vermin but for that I needed a plan.

"Mara, based on their current trajectory would you say that they are aware of my current location?"

The vermin know I am in system, I can't do anything about that, but they need not know where I am. Eldar ships don't have engines, we have sails and so we do not leave plumes of flames and heat to tell people where we are and holo-fields while not meant as actual stealth systems but ways to spoof of targeting systems they can still make it more difficult to be seen, especially when I lower my already low emission.

If they don't know at which of the system's seven worlds I'm hiding then I can use that.

"Based on my estimations they think you're either at the second or third world of the system as the two are close by currently and will continue to remain so for several months."

I am at the fourth planet and it's many moons, albeit many moons is relative, as all but one of the planets in this solar system are gas giants with many moons except the fifth which is on the other side of the system and has more in common with a popsicle than the other worlds in the star system.

"So, by the time they reach there I will still be in front of their formation." I observed in annoyance.

If I were to be able to get an Alpha strike from behind I might be able to cause panic among the vermin but as they can 'see' me in their front when I attack they'll be bolder, for eldar do like it when their enemy is in front of them as it gives us courage to face them.

Especially when you're laying a trap for them.

"Can we pretend to open the Webway gate and have them chase us there? If we can have them follow ghosts then when can get them off our backs as we continue where we need to go." Laciena asked.

The Webway gates in system are in the upper atmosphere of the first planet and the north pole of the fifth and there's one hidden away two light days away from the star. We are not in a position to get to them, let alone pretend to use them.

"We are in no position to get to them undetected." I observed.

I let the other things wrong with her plan unsaid as they were far less important than that single glaring flaw.

I felt her deflate at that as I continued to think about what to do. My soul injuries should be fully healed in a year and the ships should finish their pass on the two worlds in a month at most and by then I should be safe enough to resist some light soul attacks.

"Why aren't we running back to Anaen? It doesn't matter if they catch us there, the battle fleets can handle them, then we can take some circuitous route to wherever we need to go if they decide not to engage." Mara asked.

I considered her question, it stank of cowardice but I could admit that it was a pertinent question from her point of view.

"If I return to Anaen then it's entirely possible, no it is expected that other events of similar magnitude to my previous stay will happen. Your home is lovely Mara, but I would rather not experience such again there." I informed plainly.

I also left our next destination unsaid as I truly did not know where to go. The ship made my previous plan of finding ground based human civilizations to get to join the Imperium ahead of time in the dust and I still need to make sense of what the Gods wanted out of me when Gea blessed me.

More tools are not rewards, but a demand for a new show and I need to figure out what Gea wants from me now. The Priesthood of Hoeth hides precisely because of that and I currently have the most blessings because I am the worst at it from among our number.

The woman winced, and yet I felt not a shred of regret in her. She truly craved danger and loved me for shoving her in the thick of it and not trying to coddle her up in safety, but it seems that having her face the Divine was a bit much for her tastes. It's a reasonable enough limit that I will ignore if needed be, but that made me like her more because unlike the vast majority of axe bitten thrill seekers in the Empire the woman actually has a limit to the dangers she's willing to face.

The talk of returning to Anaen died and will hopefully not return, now how do I deal with this nonsense? My instinct is to cut down the vermin until it dies but that's the thinking of a sword and I can't let myself be a sword now, I need to think like a priest and failing that like a ship.

Let's see what I do have available, a modified ship with 4 pulsar canons on each side and each broadside firing on a ship once should be able to kill them, a shuriken canon that can one-shot anything they do have but that I can only fire once an hour, some 30 odd torpedoes, the element of surprise, and a growing psy-amplifier. Also two cute crew members that are unfortunately not something I can risk in a boarding action.

"Mara, assuming that the ships are up to craftworlder standards, how fast would they be able to accelerate towards us? Give me an estimate in hours taken to reach us not gravities please, I have an idea."

I could see her smile at the song my voice sang to her and it was as viciously sweet as mine.

"Five hours until they reach the outer moons, four until they are in the optimum scanner range thanks to the interference of the magnetic field of the moons and gas giant." She replied after some light calculations

Five shots assuming I want to use my shuriken cannon.

"I've decided that I will the most unexpected thing I can do, and so I will whisper them some sweet lullabies!" I said with as much grandeur as I could fit in my voice

My crew were not amused, but the silly women knew not what I meant, for while the Priests of Hoeth are in the greatest danger when they sleep, diplomats are at their most dangerous when they speak and sing, and my words and voice are that of Khaine and both of them bring Death.