Inside the merchant vessel Gift of Mercy, Klein and Vanessa disembarked from the transport shuttle and boarded a high-speed rail toward the bridge.
Klein hadn't exactly wanted to bring Vanessa aboard, but resisting her was near-impossible. Her presence was like a gravitational pull on weak minds, and everyone who encountered her fell under the subtle sway of her psyker powers, making it nearly impossible to refuse her requests.
The effect wasn't overt domination, more like a gentle realignment of intent, as if compliance simply felt easier than disobedience.
Even the more stalwart minds aboard the ship, those trained to resist psychic intrusion, found themselves unusually compliant in her presence, their will smoothed over like waves against a rock worn by time.
Klein could feel it even in himself: a pressure behind the eyes, a soft weight in the chest, a constant sense that any argument with her was somehow pointless.
As the two entered the bridge, every crew member present immediately stood and saluted Klein.
Klein nodded silently, then gave his order:
"Set course for the Talon System. Prepare for translation," he said.
The bridge crew moved swiftly. Interfaces flickered to life on contact with bare skin, responding to genetic imprints and neural pulses rather than crude manual input. Displays showed not just star charts, but gravitational harmonics, dimensional-temporal flux predictions, and threat assessments in an alien script adapted only partially to High Gothic.
Some crew broadcast the dimensional jump announcement shipwide, while others prepped the engine rooms and monitored the core systems.
"Take me to the engine room. Please?" Vanessa asked sweetly.
"…No," Klein said flatly. Yet despite himself, he found his feet moving in that direction.
He didn't decide to obey. He just... did.
The engine room was located just behind the command bridge.
Passing through layers of security checkpoints, Vanessa followed Klein until she laid eyes on the heart of the ship: a massive, 100-meter-wide sphere, humming with raw energy, crackling with blue lightning across its surface. It hovered in defiance of gravity, suspended by shimmering rings of force that emitted low, harmonic tones like a choir singing through machine code.
Around the sphere, there were no servitor-pits or cogitator banks as one would find in Imperial reactors. Instead, autonomous drones, smooth, mantis-like constructs of polished chrome, glided silently through the chamber, adjusting minute components with mechanical grace and impossible precision.
The core emitted a deafening thrum as it charged for the dimensional jump.
Vanessa approached the observation window, looking out into a factory-sized deck. The vast hall, nearly five thousand square meters, was dominated by power regulators and reactor systems, with more than eighty percent of the cavernous space dedicated solely to energy supply systems.
"What is this?" she asked, eyes gleaming with curiosity.
"I don't know…" Klein began, but then something compelled him to answer, the truth, "…A fusion reactor. Self-sustaining. It uses common elements to generate power ten times greater than that of a standard generatorium in the Imperium. And it never needs to be shut down. It's not just efficient, it's eternal."
"Ohhh…" Vanessa nodded thoughtfully, her gaze drifting across the chamber as though she were trying to memorize every unusual detail.
Before she could ask another question, the shipwide vox system crackled:
["Distance to Talon: one hundred twenty-one dimensional jumps. Initiating first jump."]
Outside the viewport, a shimmering blue veil of energy formed around the hull.
Stars distorted, not as streaks but as swirling spirals collapsing inward, gravity singing as the ship tore a wound through the fabric of space.
The ship shuddered violently. Vanessa felt her own body tremble. No, split. For a moment, she could see her own form twice, translucent and flickering.
Her heartbeat stuttered as unfamiliar sensory input flooded her mind, the faint whispers of the warp, drained of their usual malice, replaced by a cold, mathematical emptiness.
When she turned toward the viewport and gazed at the stars, she glimpsed the threads of reality themselves, lines of energy forming an endless tunnel through realspace.
The next instant, everything returned to normal. They had emerged into another star system.
Nowhere near a Mandeville Point, but deep within the gravitational well of a local sun. No Geller Fields hummed. No daemon-haunted echoes lingered. The jump had been... clean.
["First jump complete. Thirty minutes until next jump."]
The reactor rumbled as it recharged. Tiny sparks of azurite lightning danced between the stabilizer rings, shedding the last remnants of warped space-residue.
Vanessa stood in awe, her mouth slightly agape for several seconds before she could form her next question.
"What kind of tech is this?"
"Go fuck yourself," Klein snapped. And yet, as before, he found himself compelled to speak honestly. "I've spent my whole life either fighting wars or trading goods. How the hell would I know how a dimensional engine actually works?"
"Oh! So it's called a dimensional engine," Vanessa said with a bright smile. Her tone was airy, but the curiosity in her eyes was razor-sharp.
Thirty minutes later, the second jump commenced.
By now they had returned to the bridge. An Ogryn bodyguard beamed as he offered Vanessa a slab of gore-ox jerky and a cup of tea.
She accepted both gracefully: "Thank you!"
Clearly, Vanessa's psychic aura was still smoothing over every interaction; nobody aboard the Gift of Mercy perceived her as a threat, only as a close friend.
Not even the ship's cogitators flagged her movements. She didn't trip security markers or proximity alerts. It was as if, to the ship's AI, she belonged here. She moved through the vessel like a favored passenger, not an anomaly.
Klein couldn't take it anymore.
"What is it that you want?" Klein finally demanded. "How did you escape the fortress? And why do you want to see the Governor now?"
Vanessa answered calmly. "I have always acted under guidance. I helped you kill the Genestealer Patriarch. I protected Creed. I did all of it because the voice told me to, a being that shelters my soul within the warp. In return, I serve, as I should."
She spoke without fear, then turned to the holographic starmap at the bridge's center.
It showed a plotted route back to Talon.
"Delete this route," Vanessa commanded, stepping up to the console like she owned the ship. "From now on, we follow my path."
She smiled.
"And when we return, your Governor will have the Astartes he asked for."
....
Five months later.
The Gift of Mercy docked at the Talon System's Orbital Spaceport.
Finding Creed and delivering the letter hadn't taken long.
The return journey? That was another story entirely.
Under Vanessa's constant guidance, the ship made strange, indirect jumps, sometimes covering great distances to far-off systems, other times forced into violent skirmishes.
Klein hadn't understood why… until they started finding Lamenters.
Astartes, scattered survivors of the Lamenters Chapter drawn toward their lost brothers.
Some wandered alone through pirate-infested regions, others fought hopeless defensive actions on worlds forgotten by the Imperium. A handful drifted in cold void aboard damaged strike vessels, half-derelict but stubbornly clinging to life.
All of them carried the same haunted look, warriors who had seen their chapter die piece by piece.
Only then did Klein realize Vanessa's "guidance" had been about gathering the broken warriors.
Now, over a hundred Lamenters marched with them, equipped with teleport beacons, heading toward the underhive of Hive World Tyrone.
They waited only a short while in the great hall before Qin Mo stepped out.
He didn't look pleased.
"…Klein?" Qin Mo forced a smile, eyeing the rogue trader and the group behind him.
"Ah, it's you. I figured something was wrong. I thought maybe… a psyker had arrived."
After saluting, Klein gestured to the Lamenters.
"These are the brothers I found during the journey back."
One Lamenter immediately stepped forward, asking anxiously, "Is our Chapter Master truly here, on Talon?"
The warrior's voice trembled slightly, a rare display of vulnerability from an Astartes.
They had seen the proof already handwritten letters, video recordings, and photographs of Chapter Master Phoros. But seeing was different from believing.
"See for yourself," Qin Mo replied, glancing over the Astartes. His gaze lingered on their armor, on the tired but determined posture each one carried.
Then he turned to Klein. "Phoros and the others are stationed at Lower Hive Sector 19, Military Camp Gamma. Take them there."
"Yes, my lord." Klein saluted, but hesitated. "…However, there's… someone else I brought back."
As Klein spoke, Vanessa stepped forward from the group like a ghost, bowing with formal grace.
"We meet again, Lord Commander… or should I say, Lord of Talon."
Qin Mo's smile vanished instantly.
"I'm sorry!" Klein scrambled to explain. "I couldn't… control—!"
Qin Mo silenced him with a wave of his hand.
He knew, Vanessa had manipulated Klein, just as she had once twisted Grote's mind. She was here by force of will, not invitation.
The air around Qin Mo shifted subtly, as though the environment bowed to his displeasure. The faint lights flickered, responding to an unseen pressure.
"Take the Astartes to Phoros," Qin Mo commanded.
Klein saluted again and led the Lamenters away.
As the door shut, Qin Mo turned to Vanessa.
With a single thought, he wrenched her across the ten meters of distance, yanking her before him as if Space itself obeyed his command.
Vanessa's smug smile cracked, just a little, with fear.
Qin Mo looked the same, tall and composed, clad in the austere robes of a system governor. His eyes, once merely piercing, now burned with a deep, unnatural blue, like cold stars buried behind layers of thought too vast for mortals to fathom.
"Speak," he commanded, his voice cold as ice.
"Why have you come, psyker?"
.....
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