Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

173 – Testing and some Sneaking

Before jumping at the rail gun, a thought popped into my head that had my curiosity in thrall: what would that pulse rifle do to a human?

Thankfully, that was a rather easy thing to test, and the answer was quite predictable honestly. Humans had even less natural defences than a humble ripper, so the plasma bolt went right through. When I switched over to the quick-fire mode that shot bolts about a tenth as powerful as the big ones — with the added benefit of shooting them in full auto and not melting the barrel after two shots — I had a much more interesting, yet gruesome answer.

The bolt this time didn’t have enough power behind it to go right through and stopped on the spine of my target dummy. Now, what happens to a human body if it has a glob of plasma hotter than some industrial furnaces lodged deep within the body?

The answer was still sizzling at my feet, in a melted heap of flesh and skin with a few charred bones poking out of it. The smell was atrocious, somewhat like grilled pork mixed with the smell of melting rubber and hair. It was enough to make anyone who couldn’t control their own bodily impulses vomit after a whiff. 

It would also be an excellent weapon to horrify my enemies with. By my estimations, the enhanced power cell — which was also a brainchild of my deranged primate drone — could hold enough power in it to fire about 150 regular bolts if slotted into an unmodified pulse rifle, 20 big ones with and about maybe 100 of the little ones on full auto. 

The regular pulse rifle could ruin your run-of-the-mill Space Marine’s day something fierce, this new one could probably do the same to Terminators and maybe even Dreadnaughts and lighter APCs. Damn, I’ll have to give that monkey a raise … 

Well, since it was technically a part of me with it being one of my drones, I’d have to give myself a raise. Hmmm. 

“Hey?” Selene poked her head into my testing chamber, taking a moment to glance at the slug that had once been a human, with her nose scrunched up. “What are you doing?”

“Testing my new toys,” I said, disintegrating the smelly remains with a thought and sweeping the lingering scent away from us. “I have some rail guns still needing to be tested. Wanna help?”

“I should really keep track of how things are going on down on the surface,” she said, though her hesitant voice and her gaze lingering on my slew of guns said otherwise.

“I’m keeping watch.” I grinned at her, levitating the original rail gun over to her as she fully stepped into the room. “If anything unexpected happens, I’ll tell you. You more than deserve a little break.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Selene mused, grabbing the floating gun. She ran her fingers over it, along its sharp edges and the length of its barrel, her fingers finding their way over to the trigger underneath before she shouldered it and took aim at a wall. “I do deserve a break. Can I just shoot it at the walls?”

The rail rifle looked downright comical in her hands. Selene was a petite woman, and the gun was taller than I was. Hell, if I placed it down with its stock on the ground, I would have had to stand on my tippy toes to tap the top of it.

“You could,” I said, then snapped my fingers and the lumbering form of a Tyranid Tyrant Guard grew out of the floor. “Or you could shoot that guy. I’m keeping it still, but it’s just as tough as a regular Tyrant Guard. Also, once you’re done with that gun, you can try the enhanced rail gun on something that’ll actually stand up to it.”

Tyrant Guards were specifically grown for being tough. They were the apex of their little niche. Which was being a meat shield, and they were damned good at it. These things were what would surround some more important Tyranid units like Hive Tyrants and Zoanthropes. Meaning, they were the perfect shooting targets for testing the penetrating power of a weapon. If something went through the armour these things had, it would blow holes into Dreadnaughts and Baneblades.

“This is a Tau Rail Rifle, isn’t it?” Selene asked distractedly as she fiddled with the weapon and set her stance to withstand the kick that she no doubt expected a weapon of that size to have. “Never seen one in person before, only shitty holograms and crappy picts.”

“Yep,” I said, standing at her shoulder and scanned the weapon along with her. It was based on a simple concept — one even humans back in the 21st century had shitty prototypes for — but the Tau had elevated that simple concept into something outstanding. Really, I knew Necron tech was leagues and bounds above the Tau stuff, but I could actually grasp the base principles these weapons used to function. Meanwhile, Necron stuff might as well be magic to me.

After a few more seconds, Selene took in a deep breath, set her shoulders and aimed the rifle right at the centre of the Tyrant Guard’s torso. The rail rifle hummed with power, its length lightning up as electricity gathered along its barrel and then let loose with an echoing thrum. 

The projectile it fired was a dart tipped with some exotic meta-material, not that any human would have even a smidge of hope of catching sight of it mid-flight with the dart travelling at hypervelocity. A thousand metres per second crossed. 

The Tyrant Guard slammed into the wall, the sheer force of the dart having not only punched right through its armour but also sent it flying. It crumbled to the floor, and I walked over to inspect it, flipping it over and grinning as I found a deep hole punched into its chest. 

It didn’t go the whole way through, but that was to be expected. These Tyrant Guards were thick slabs of corded muscle covered in carapace that was inferior only to a Swarmlord’s natural defences in a Tyranid army.

“Nice,” I said out loud, grinning as I turned back to Selene. “Alright! Time to try the new one!”

“The one your weird monkey made?” Selene asked hesitantly, glancing at the other weapon. There was little outward difference this time, though it did look somewhat sleeker once more, but not to the extent the enhanced pulse rifle did. “Won’t it blow up in my face or something?”

“I’m … pretty sure it won’t,” I said encouragingly, continuing to grin as she glared at me. “But hey, even if it does, I’m sure you’ll survive it!”

“And if we don’t count it survival if you have to fish my soul back out of that realm of yours and stick it into a new body?”

“Then- … hmmm.” I tapped my lips with an exaggerated thoughtful expression worn on my face. “I’d give it a confident … maybe. Nothing the monkey made so far blew up!”

“Did it make anything beyond that one rifle you were testing when I came in?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, you can blow yourself up by testing this thing then,” Selene said with a huff, crossing her arms under her chest and giving me an impatient look. 

“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes as I pulled the weapon into my hands with a telekinetic tug. It snapped into place, its stock pushed firmly into the nook of my shoulder just as the Tyrant Guard stood back up with its wounds mending and its carapace snapping back into place with a sickening crack.

I pulled the trigger, gently pulling it in and taking a moment to appreciate the rapid buildup of power in the gun. Electricity crackled inside it, the dart was already slotted and all I needed to do to let it loose was to release the trigger.

The moment I did, I watched a basketball-sized chunk of the Tyrant Guard’s torso disappear. Behind it, even the wall had a similar-sized hole in it, showing me a brief glimpse of an empty room on the other side before it mended itself.

The kick I expected never came, whatever the monkey had done, it eliminated almost all of the recoil. 

Then there was the tiny little uptick in the damage done to the target. A well-placed shot with this damned thing might even take down an Imperial Knight. 

“Holy- Wow,” Selene exclaimed, slack-jawed as she stared at the obliterated Tyrant Guard flopping over. “And you can mass produce that thing?”

“Not a clue,” I said, looking the weapon over more thoroughly this time. There were bits and pieces I understood, but the workings of the majority of them escaped me. “Probably not. Not by myself anyway, but that’s a problem with an easy fix to it. I’m sure a few Tau Earth caste scientists who usually work with Rail weaponry would be able to reverse engineer it.” 

“You’d have to have some Earth caste scientists willing to work for you first.”

“It’s a work-in-progress idea,” I huffed. “Anyways! I also have a pulse rifle. Wanna try that one out too?”

“Sure, why not?” Selene said with an eager smile. 

*****

The days went by in a blink. While I played around with Selene and the fruits of my newest experiments, the situation down on the ground had developed further. 

I maintained partial oversight of most happenings, my drones were hidden beneath Lictor camouflage and outfitted with the best auditory organs I had on hand having proven their use beyond doubt. 

Their calming pheromones were also an addition I had patted myself on the shoulder over. Sure, it wouldn’t fly back on 21st century Earth to drug civilians, but I wasn’t on Earth and this planet had been a breeding ground for cultists for possibly centuries. So fuck them. It wasn’t like they’d get hurt, just … well, the pheromones made them sleepy and boosted their serotonin levels. 

All in all, it was far more ethical than shooting the protesters and rioters with autocannons in my humble opinion. Though I did still permanently remove anyone who tried to set up some sort of violent resistance group. Those warlord types would have to wait with their little plots and coups until I hauled my ass away from this System, if any still remained by that time. 

Who was I kidding? The planet was full of humans; it was practically a certainty that they would devolve into some manner of infighting the moment I left. Oh well, the Tau would deal with that once I let them know there was a human planet left undefended and in dire need of their help. 

In terms of media censure, I now let most things fly. The only news networks that caught a surprise power out had been the scarce few radicals calling for armed resistance to anything alien and advocating for the ‘shoot first, ask questions never’ approach,

I hoped the censure wouldn’t be glaringly obvious to the locals. It’d work best if they thought there was no actual censure after all. Humans loved to do the one thing they were told not to do.

Selene had managed to calm her nerves somewhat. Shooting things and watching things explode as a result had a therapeutic effect on her, just as it did on me. By now she’d gone back to watching over the proceedings on the surface through the quick surveillance network Zedev had thrown together without a word.

Val was still busy meditating on … stuff. I could feel his emotions having stilled and gone calm a while ago, at least. Now he was likely just resting and perfecting his control. 

Meanwhile, I had a much more interesting event coming up. Through the telepathic nodes I’d left behind, stuck to various members of Cain’s entourage, I kept track of their movements as they travelled across the sparsely populated countryside. The 48th hour was coming right up in just another twenty minutes and soon I’d get sights on that Inquisitor. 

I guess where she was, what with only one Psyker being down on the planet at the moment and me knowing she had one in her entourage, but I hadn’t actually spied on them yet. They had been keeping to villages and small towns, ones that had no cultist uprisings in them, and as such, hadn’t earned the attention of my initial counterstrike.

They probably think I have none of my drones there. I mused, amused at the severe underestimation of my abilities. I was swimming in bio-energy, and the stealthy anti-riot/surveillance drones I had spread around didn’t cost even a fraction of the proper combat drones. Every single settlement with a population above two thousand had one of them watching over it from the shadows.

With everything else in order and nothing requiring my immediate attention, I Blinked and appeared a kilometre out from Cain and co. Another five kilometres out, deep into the forested mountains, I felt the other Psyker’s presence. Soon, the two groups would meet and I’d hopefully get an answer to the nagging question of ‘what exactly urged an Inquisitor to travel beyond the borders of the Imperium, and to this planet in specific?’

And some fun. Yep. Having some fun, likely at the expense of everyone else involved, was also a tiny little part of why I even bothered with this farce. I could have kidnapped them all and extracted everything I wanted to know from their minds, reducing them to slobbering vegetables as a result.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

But I didn’t want to. Cain was pretty close to being a good person, and I hoped his Inquisitor girlfriend wouldn’t turn out to be a gender-swapped version of that asshole Thrace. From what little I remembered of her, I was pretty sure I wasn’t in for even more disappointment.