"You may go, Lady Rosalia." The Emperor spoke in a mild voice, making the Lord Inquisitor bow and then run out of the room in a flash.

Janice Lancefire sighed, and threw him a glare. "What purpose does it serve using your Glamour on my dear mother? Shoot the messeger too, next time." she asked in a colder voice, and holding her palm on his original teak desk crafted from the scavanged remains of a long-lost dreadnought from the first planetary wars.

"I am not upset about that new Iron Korps, my love. Instead, I am quite sure they will become a force to scare our enemies off, much like the Death Korps do today. I just.." the Emperor said while glancing away with a guilty face.

"...It was not your own idea, was it? The Sisters of Battle were not one either. So you merely accepted us, at your side." Janice mused with a hurt voice.

The two psychic giants stared at each other for a second.

"Stop trying to guilt me, woman! I have suffered enough, on that stupid psy chair. And speaking of it, I heard a few hints about Omnicopaeia . If we can recover it, then the chair could be repaired, maybe even upgraded." The Emperor of Mankind revealed with a meaningful voice.

Janice pinched her fingers, and traced the future for a minute. "An STC for psionic tech, right inside the Maelstrom? We could take my Fortress and smash our way through. Just the two of us, and maybe a few of your Companions. We can do it."

The Emperor sighed deeply. "I see you ignored other candidates, like my Primarchs. Or the Grey Knights."

"They would likely fail, and miserably too. That bird would play them like toys, and spit out their bones. So, it's either my way or..." Janice said with a careless shrug.

"I'm sorry, dear Janice. I cannot leave Terra yet, not without losing the planet, and then the rest of the Imperium. So it will need to be your father. He managed to deal with Exnihilo quite easily too." the Emperor whispered while holding Janice in his arms.

"One day soon, we will have to leave this planet. You know that." Janice answered with a sad voice.

"I am already evacuating the non-critical population. But moving so many people to new worlds takes time. Even if a thousand Forge Worlds can take a trillion people each, that only make a single quadrillion. About 5% of the total number. I hope to save at least a third." the Emperor offered with a grieving voice.

"You would make a decent Lamenter, with that bleeding heart. Anyways, even my father is not certain to succeed. His Crusade Fleet only has two damn forts." Janice quipped in a lighter voice, then went to pour herself some priceless hand-made wine. Or was it feet-pressed wine? Expensive and tasted great, that's what all she cared about right now. But they better had washed those feet, or else.

The Emperor's armor shifted subtly, gaining the Lamenter red heart icon on the shoulder, while a dragon's mouth apeared on his chest. The Salamanders and the Lamenters were the only Space Marines which came out right. Defenders of Humanity, and not bloody butchers and heartless oppressors.

"You shouldn't worry about Pef Lancefire, my dear. His first seal has already broken. A higher danger will only make him even stronger, maybe even break the second seal. And Canis will be there to eat what's left of his enemies' souls." The Emperor noted in a slightly amused voice.

"Canis better not get hurt. I'll break your damned desk, and make you a collar from your Lisa painting." Janice growled in warning while eying the precious relic on the wall.

Mona Lisa smiled enigmatically back at her.

-----------------------------------------------

"What's wrong with my damn prediction engine?" I growled out loud, at the T-engine failed to predict another flanking move from the Hive Fleet.

Canis raised his wise eyes at me, then glanced at the other wolf.

'The Hive Mind is ever-adapting, Lord Captain. While not as strong as the Old Ones, its psychic power is still growing. Planets are being devoured every day, somehwere in the galaxy.' Zath explained in a callous tone.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

'The Hive Fleet has been reduced to half already! The largest Hive Ships are blown apart. And yet the Shadow in the Warp still counters my Tempormortis. I am getting aggravated!' I grunted back,

focusing my mind on the tesseract.

Displace more bio-titans into the sun, spread out more Nova Mines, move my ships out from encirclements and ambushes. It was getting hard, at least in the space battle.

On the ground and the orbitals, my Primaris Astartes, the tech-marines and the Lorica cyborgs were having a field day, while our Titans could still pierce and kill Hive Tyrants and Carnifexes with every shot. The Auxilia didn't fare quite as well, but then they weren't meant to defeat the bugs by themselves. Only hold them in place, until larger guns were available to finish the job. And we did have a few very big guns.

The Eternal Lament fortress opened fire with the purple Immaterium beam, scouring entire squadrons of bio-ships of life and soul every second.

A bit later, the Black Lament opened fire as well, removing the flanking tendril from existance. Much better.

I scanned the ground for a second, recovering wounded soldiers and sending them to medical to be patched up, flesh borers removed and bio-plasma burns covered up.

Anyone else beside me would have needed to abandon the orbit and retreat underground, then fight an attrition war with the landed Tyranid bioforms.

Maybe we would still need to do that, if my prediction powers failed too much.

And then, while pushing hard agaisnt the torrent of bioships and Tyranid bugs assaulting Forge Lucius, time began to slow down. Almost like I was caught in a stasis field, but I wasn't the victim. I was the one creating the effect. Even Zath struggled to lift his metallic head, a thousand times slower than he could.

'Another hermetic seal? And this time is a chronoleptic one. I'd guess your small T-engine works properly again?' the C'tan wolf asked me with a printed message on the Manifold circuit.

I glanced at my right arm, where the nine dots of the T-engine lit up in clear green diodes. At my will, the stasis field sped up and slowed down with ease, making two dots shift towards red and blue.

'When you say chronoleptic, do you mean a Doppler effect? Light moves away faster than lightspeed itself?' I guessed with my pretty decent brain. Galaxies shifted towards red the faster they moved away, right?

'...Errr. Not lightshift, no. Even regular humans can already distort light in many ways. This is about spatial expansion from the birth of the universe. The tesseract anchor just deccelerates this time/volume below the normal expansion speed. Also, not something a human should survive doing.' Zath said in a rather impressed voice.

I had no idea what he said, but it sounded rather cool and important. But if it worked like he said, I could turn back time, right?

'Don't try to turn back time, human! Where will you discharge the energy of this star? A single year of stellar emission can feed a C'tan rather well.' Zath warned me just as I began turning the star back on its axis.

Luckily, I did have my Breath of the Gods to use an hour of stellar output for something. Like say, fire. Hot, plasma hot fire. Directly inside the Tyranid ships converging on my fleet.

We returned exactly to the moment when my T-engine began to malfunction. And the Tyranid ships were all burning like fat candles.

Well, I guess I found out why my temporal vambrace didn't work right. Some idiot was playing with timelines without any idea what might happen.

'Chronoleptic powers are quite nice, right Zath?' I asked the surprised C'tan.

The C'tan nodded cautiously, and measured my right arm with worried eyes. 'Congratulations on achieving Cosmic Fire, Lord Captain.'

I nodded back. It will take some time getting used to my new cosmic powers.

Right then, Darcy ran onto the bridge, glowing with the special golden glow of an Imperial Saint. "Captain, we have a new mission!"