“I object,” I said, arms crossed as I stared at the Tau faces before me, taking up the entire wall like a hundred little floating heads. “I won’t stop you, but I want you to know that this is stupid. You have read the reports on Sebasticor Ebongrave, you’ve been fighting the man for decades. He had to have a detailed psychological profile built up by now. You should know peace with the Tau is anathema to him.”

  “It would be against our philosophy to refuse an attempt at peace without even hearing the other side out,” Aun’saal said calmly. “It would be the height of hypocrisy if we refused him out of hand. But we are not foolish, analysts have determined, based on the test intel we have from our intelligence operatives, that a few days wasted on faux peace negotiations will not be detrimental to our offence. Quite the contrary, since we have a stable supply line, and the Imperium’s forces in the Greyhell front don’t. Each wasted day brings them closer to widespread starvation, and subsequent riots, revolts and such.”

  That was cold, but I had to admit it had strategic merit. I disliked it; it targeted civilians; it was distasteful, but I was willing to let it go. It was the Imperium’s fault that their supply lines were in shambles, not ours. It wasn’t my fault that their First Fleet decided to commit assisted suicide by attacking me.

  “As I said, go ahead,” I said with a shrug. “I reserve the right to point and ugh when they spit in the face of the parley and ambush you, though.”

  “Noted,” Aun’saal said drily, though I had the feeling he was actually of the same mind as me. If I knew anything about him, he was working tirelessly in the background to minimise the damage such treachery could cause. “Do you have any other input before we send our agreement to the Imperium?”

  “I want to be there,” I hummed. “If only to see their faces when they see a human standing behind you. It should be entertaining, as would be crushing whatever plot that slimy twat is trying to pull. Also, I know I don’t have to say this, but give an honest shot at keeping the location somewhere defensible. Do not hold the meeting in an empty system, that’s just begging for some third-party to crash the party.”

  Namely, Daemons. Fucking Tzeentch.

  “Noted,” Aun’saal said. “We will take your recommendations into account.”

  *****

  It took them an entire week to iron out the details of where, when and under what circumstances the Tau and Human delegations would meet. Surprisingly, I found out — through some btant mental eavesdropping — that the Imperium seemed to be wanting to hurry things up as much as possible. They weren’t deying, not just pying for time.

  Either it meant Ebongrave was getting hasty, or they really had something nasty occupying their attention.

  Or maybe I was just looking too deeply into it. In a gaxy where space travel was so slow, the fact that it took just a week was already incredibly fast from an objective perspective, I guess. Didn’t feel that way, though, which is why I suspected the Tau were dragging their feet to drag it out, despite having a hard-on for peace.

  I spent the time in between rexing, checking up on Vallia, spending some time with my daughters and dedicating the rest of my time to experiments. I optimised my hybrid Custodes temptes, refined some of the most used variants and then experimented with refining the process for making Pariah-flesh, and also tried everything that came to mind for making the most out of them. My null-bullets, missiles, grenades, and even spikes received upgrades, but I was hoping for some inspiration on that front.

  I was hoping getting my hands on the tech Imperial Assassins of the Culexus temple used would give me some breakthrough on that front, and honestly, I was sure an Inquisitor would be sending one to my doorstep sooner or ter. I was a big bad Rogue Psyker, and the Culexus were the bane of Psykers. It was natural to think one would have an easy time murderizing me.

  Other than that, I was waiting on Trazyn to call on me for a task, so I could exhort him for knowledge on how to forge Bckstone, or if not that, other Necron technology. Having Bckstone Pylons of my own was still my best bet at keeping the nastiness of the Warp away from my territory without having to rely on my Tyranid Shadow.

  Anyone with common sense could tell you that keeping tens of thousands of Tyranid synapse creatures imprisoned like animals in a zoo was destined to cause trouble further down the line, no matter the precautions taken. It was a stopgap measure, and worse, it was unreliable, the same fault for which I disliked the idea of Machine Spirits. Knowing my greatest defence against Daemons was unreliable was like a permanent itch I couldn’t scratch.

  Then the day of the peace summit, or whatever they decided to call it, arrived, and I felt my eyebrows rise despite myself the moment our ship entered the designated system. I felt a pair of familiar souls onboard the rgest Imperial ship: Ciaphas Cain and Amberley Veil. Curiously, no matter how much I searched, I couldn’t find any bnk spots in my perception that would signify the presence of a Pariah like Cain’s favourite aide. The few smaller ones I found, I knew were too weak to be Bnks, no, those were likely Null Rods or Psyk-Out munitions Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors loved so much.

  What are they pying at? I wondered. I threw all my previous pns into the garbage in one go, I’d been perhaps working under false preconceptions, believing that Ebongrave just had to be the highest form of authority present.

  “Interesting,” I hummed. “Aun’saal, do we have a list of the proposed delegates they are sending?”

  “We do,” my favourite Tau said, tapping at his tablet before handing it to me. I ran my gaze down the list of names and huffed. “Anything we should be concerned with?”

  “Take all my previous suggestions and objections with a grain of salt; they’d been made while missing crucial information,” I said, shaking my head as I tapped one name in particur: Amberley Veil. “I believe whoever’s facilitating this is not Sebasticor Ebongrave. His name is on the list, yes, but I believe he is at best an unwilling puppet or a mouthpiece. Amberley Veil is a highly influential Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, and I assume you know of Ciaphas Cain?”

  “We have read the accounts of Quadravidia, yes,” Aun’saal replied. “His presence here was taken as a sign of the veracity of the Imperium’s intentions for actual peace. He is known for being honourable and a man of his word. It is partially why your warnings of treachery or a trap went rgely unheeded.”

  “The man’s a trouble magnet, I wonder what kind of horror he is bringing to our doorstep now,” I mused. “Hmm. Last I saw him, he seemed intent on departing the Sector as fast as humanly possible. Something must have forced him to stay.”

  “His heroic spirit is well known among the humans, even this far out of his usual battlefields,” Aun’saal said. “He was a favoured propaganda piece of the now-dead Lord Militant Tetrarchus, so his name is well-known among both the popuce and the Imperium’s troops.”

  What could have forced his hand? I thought. The distasteful possibility of some ridiculous eldritch horror popping up in the near future was higher than ever. Cain was a Plot magnet and had a massive plot armour too. His presence all but confirmed that something was going to come out of left field.

  I wouldn’t know what, but I could prepare so I could roll with the blow when it came, instead of taking it on the cheek.

  The star system we were in was a contested zone, having traded hands a dozen times over the course of the Achilus Crusade, so it was the hope that neither side would have had time to build up anything crazy, and that if anything nasty was sleeping in the system, it would have been woken by the fighting long ago.

  The peace negotiation itself would take pce on a small space station dropped an equal distance away from both the Imperium’s and the Tau’s fleets.

  It wasn’t a foolproof idea by itself; they could send assassins in the pce of diplomats, or just fakes who they wouldn’t mind blowing to shreds with their nce batteries. But I made it foolproof. I would know if Cain and Veil weren’t in the shuttle flying towards the space station.

  Surprisingly, they were. Something was wrong; they were too forthright, almost desperate. As they could blow the station to shreds, so could we. How could they justify sending an Inquisitor, the Hero of the Imperium, and the Lord Commander of the Canis Salient all together? It was super fishy. My spidey senses were tingling … or maybe that was just my paranoia, considering I hadn’t been bitten by any radioactive spiders as of te.

  Thankfully, I had an easy way to figure out what was going on without any Nulls around to protect the Imperial delegates’ minds. It might have been a bit paranoid, but I maintained that it was just prudence, not paranoia, if they really were out to get you.

  I started with Ebongrave, the least likely to have any resistance to telepathy out of the three. Curious. The man was a ball of resentment and impotent rage; he had been browbeaten into submission by the massive hammer of Amberley’s Inquisitorial authority. He had the air of a man walking to the gallows. He had objected, repeatedly and loudly, to ‘trusting’ the Tau to honour a parley, but he’d been ignored, and then commanded to come along so he couldn’t make a mess of things while Amberley wasn’t breathing down his neck.

  I did not like the obvious parallels between him and me. Not at all. I supposed I wasn’t browbeaten, just ignored, and coming along had been my own initiative. At least the Tau seemed to have taken my warnings into consideration. We weren’t the same … but it still left a sour taste in my mouth.

  Next came Cain, and the moment I poked my metaphorical nose into his mind, I felt my eyebrows climb up my forehead until they almost touched my hairline. His mind was a chaotic mess, a total opposite of the confident smile and composed aura he outwardly projected. He was imagining the hundreds of ways this meeting could end with his death, then considering whether he could somehow turn the shuttle around before it reached the space station.

  Those specutions always came to a stuttering halt, the image of a golden giant with a severe frown banishing them all in an instant. I recognised that frown, that face.

  “Oh, my,” I hummed, a smirk tugging at the edge of my lips. I’d found the ‘mastermind’ of this little py, and found myself rexing. There was no eldritch monstrosity, no Necron armada, no Tyranid Hivefleet. “Just an ambitious little Custodian.”

  Long time no see, Octavian.

  Then I tensed right back up when my brain caught up with me. Custodes weren’t stupid, and this specific one had tried to kill me before — however unsuccessfully — so it wasn’t unreasonable to expect the same once more, no matter what he told Cain. Octavian knew I could read minds, didn’t he? He wanted me to see him profess his honest intentions for peace between us in Cain’s mind. The optimistic part of me wanted to believe that was just his way of showing me his peaceful intentions without exposing himself.

  The cynical part of me thought it was a facade. An attempt at lulling me into a false sense of security so I’d let my guard down, thereby giving him the opportunity he needs to ambush me. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to ally with the Shadowkeepers, no matter his previous cims of them being at odds with each other.

  Is there a worst-case scenario more disastrous than me getting jumped by a squad of Shadowkeepers all decked out in Echidna-killing gear? I thought furiously, my perception of time slowing to a crawl as my brain — and the connected web of neural computers making up my mind-cores — almost itched from how hard I was pushing them.

  I couldn’t find any scenario like that, not one that Octavian could facilitate by himself. Sure, Tzeentch could chuck another handful of Greater Daemons at me in the middle of the ambush, or maybe shit out a Warp Storm on top of my head. Maybe the surveyors missed the fact that the pnet below was a Necron Throne World, and we’d get a whole Necron Fleet out to murder us.

  I checked for the tter and sighed inwardly when I found the pnet bereft of any murderous space skeletons.

  No. Worst-case scenario was Shadowkeepers all prepared and ready for me, with a slew of purpose-made relics aimed to counter me specifically. I scoured the System, leaving no rock unturned, tasting every scattered atom, running my mental fingers over the fabric of space. I scanned the system from end to end, then scanned beyond, both in the Warp for any Imperial fleets waiting in ambush, and in realspace, but only found the empty void of space between stars and the tumultuous waters of the Warp.

  I teleported tiny infiltration drones on board all Imperial ships and sent them surveying any spot bnked out of my auric perception. Tiny flies cloaked in Lictor-grade cloaking investigated every spot, and I catalogued everything they found. There was not a single member of the Adeptus Custodes in the system, there were no hidden teleport beacons I could see, there were no spatial warpings signifying someone hiding in a pocket space, and there was nothing in the Warp making me suspect an ambush. It was eerie.

  I peered into the distance, my eyes piercing the distance with ease as I thought, arms crossed under my chest, as my fingers tapped idly at my opposing wrist.

  “What’s wrong?” Selene asked with a tinge of worry in her voice, perceptive enough to pick up on all my cues, or maybe just familiar enough with me to know what to look for.

  “I’m not sure yet,” I said. “There is something fucky going on, but I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what.”

  I shared my observations with her through our telepathic bond, what I’d found out, and my theories and worries about what it meant. Selene frowned and hummed thoughtfully.

  “We can either cancel this meeting, change the location st-minute with your portals, or we can walk right into this supposed trap with our eyes peeled wide open,” Selene said, tapping at her lips, deep in thought. “The Tau would bitch and whine, but it doesn’t matter. You think a Shadowkeeper kills quad could be a threat to you?”

  “Yes,” I said easily. “You never know what sorts of messed-up relics they have sitting around in their vaults. Something in there can for sure mess up my life, if not kill me.”

  “Can you track down this Custodian?” Selene asked. “I know your aura-thingy only covers a star system, but you can teleport over interstelr distances. If you could extract his location from one of the delegates’ minds, you could portal him here for questioning.”

  “Custodes have minds tougher than diamonds, I doubt I could get quick answers,” I said, considering. “But I might still get something worthwhile out of it. They, too, have body nguage, and I can read that instead.”

  I’d become ridiculously good at cold reading people, what with my being consciously aware of every single molecule in a person’s body, and having the mental processing power to actually make use of all that information. But that was just hardware; the Tau Ethereal tempte gave me the software for it, and it synergised disgustingly well with the rest.

  I didn’t use it, not unless I needed to. It was fine for political meetings, but it felt distasteful to use it on Selene or my daughters, so I didn’t. Yeah, I know, I could read their emotions through their auras anyway, which was arguably much more invasive of their privacy, but it felt different from my end. It put me in a different mindset, and I didn’t like it; I didn’t like looking at my family members with the compulsive need to dissect their psyche and understand what made them tick.

  But it was a useful tool for when I didn’t want to, or couldn’t use telepathy to get information out of someone.

  “Could be a trap,” I said, humming. “The Deathwatch kill-team managed to tch onto one of my teleports when they were trying to ambush me. Still, I can take precautions knowing that’s a possibility. I think I’ll go with that suggestion.”

  “Be careful,” Selene said. “We can always pull back, or y a trap of our own to bait them out. Send in two of your flesh-crafted drones to look like us. That is, if there is an ambush or trap at all.”

  “Point,” I said, slumping a little. “Can’t be too careful in this shithole of a gaxy. I’ll be as safe as I can be, promise.”

  “Good luck then,” Selene said, leaning in to give me a small peck on the lips before pulling back with a grin. “Have a good hunt.”

  My answer was a grin mirroring her own. It was time for a reunion.

  P3t1