It did take two weeks of daily hard work, until I knew I had something solid with these two, including an agreement to aid me in my personal quest for a Blank humanity and other common goals like eradicating corruption and xenos wherever it was possible.
And from this goal, we began sharing tiny secrets, like my daughter's exploits on Newseam or gifting them each a Bone staff to keep their minds safe from intrusion.
"A Speaker for the Rogue Traders...that would be a powerful tool indeed. My mentor, Hezika_Carmillus has often found Rogue Traders involved in heretical and heretek deals. Especially those operating around the Hadex Anomaly." Adrielle said in a hesitant voice, then bit her lips in deep thought.
"As it happens, I have some rumours of a coven of techpriests working to close the Anomaly. The only success I know of, was the Rapidity rift at Medusa V, and a partial one with the Anomaly. Their other trials with the Eye of Terror and the Maelstrom were not worth mentioning, so I doubt any of them survived." I whispered to them in fake secrecy.
Ludvaius knew better, but he didn't show any sign of protest, just patting his vambrace which contained a Null Wand now. Made him immune to psykers and the Black Rage, but sadly those amazing devices were in very short supply.
"So you have an informant among the techpriests...might it be a Magos Lady with a weakness for flesh pleasures?" Lady Ezu asked with a teasing voice, and offered me her breasts to be suckled.
It was a different kind of interrogation, but also effective. I enjoyed the flesh pleasures for a few minutes, then drew her under me for another round. She wouldn't get more pregnant, but her teasing had to be punished.
Thus, I stopped just before her release, and offered my spear to Adrielle who smirked and then swallowed her prize in victory.
"I need to start preparing my officers for combat, so the fun times are over, dear ladies. There are still a million Tyranid bioships heading this way, if the Silence didn't warn you enough." I explained while entering the shower to make myself presentable.
I saw with my spy-cam Ezu pouting like a young girl, then pinching her colleague in revenge. Adrielle shared a kiss, and probably more, as Ezu seemed a bit more content as I emerged from the shower.
"How do you even have two battleships and five battlecruisers in your private fleet? Plus all those cruisers and carriers...it is too much for a Rogue Trader Dynasty." Adrielle asked me while observing the fleet deploying in defense of the Aegida.
I shrugged and began dressing myself. "Captured from Space Hulks and pirates, or from Orks and returned to service. We only had a light cruiser when I was young, the rest was paid in lives."
"I was beside the Captain during most of his campaigns, starting from the Battle at Antax. It is completely true." Ludvaius announced with a stern voice, daring anyone to contradict him.
Adrielle sighed and measured me with a discerning eye. "There are many Rogue Traders, but no one is that lucky." she complained and entered the shower while shacking her head.
The other Inquisitor smiled sweetly and joined her, teasing me with an enticing sway of hips.
Fuck it. Another round in the shower then.
It would take a month for the Tyranids to arrive anyway. Damn slow insects!
Of course, I didn't simply wait to be overwhelmed, instead sending the Lancefire cruisers and battlecruisers armed with Nova Cannons on hit-and-run attacks on the Hive Fleet, conducted a dozen drills and organized the Scythes' fleet for better coordination in battle, upgraded the forts and the fortress with extra weapons and blackstone armor...anything I could do to gain an advantage.
Having these three Inquisitor Ladies supporting me in this operation was a great boon as well, while scouting the lower decks of the Astartes ships with a group of astropaths produced a couple more Blanks and thousands of new gun-servitors to be used as disposable crew on the defense forts.
Sadly, the conditions on those lower decks were so bad that the poor men were irradiated and sick, and even with my techpriests injecting them with anti-rad medication and rejuve cocktails, they might only live a few decades and still remain sterile.
These Blanks would serve as portable defense in the Inquisitors retinues, clad in Purity Armor and wielding only an adamantium staff. I was pretty certain they would be mentally indoctrinated to obey all commands like skitarii, probably using the same Mechanicus devices.
The Hive Fleet arrived famished, and there was nothing to eat here, except ships containing warm bodies, so the bioships soon began chasing after food in hunter packs. Made it even easier to defeat them in detail, as my ships were many times faster on their realspace engines, or they could micro-jump from one end to the other of the star system to engage a new target.
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Meanwhile, the Deathwatch and the Scythes began using their teleport rooms to beam warheads instead of strike teams, as did the Aegida Fortress.
We even had the fleet of Eldar battleships lined beside the defense forts, using captured Eldar to fire their lances on the Tyranids or get eaten alive.
They may have been Corsairs, but without Soul Stones their fates would be rather...grimdark. So they manned their weapons and fired, with techpriests and Silent Sisters keeping watch over them.
Well, I had the tesseract anyway, in case of rebellion.
And to capture more Narwhals too, for the Celestial Carriage project.
By the second month, my Lancefire destroyers that were available arrived to strike at the back of the Tyranid fleet, adding 9000 torpedoes and many lances and point defense batteries to our forces.
Did I cheat and resupply the torpedo cells as needed? Hell yes!
Did anyone mind? Possibly.
Leading a Crusade gave me a lot of leeway for what munitions I could requisition, and there were plenty torpedoes left to fill my pocket.
Anyway, the heavy bright lance batteries of the Eldar battleships did most of the damage. Compared to my own battleships, the Eldar ships were three times stronger, and they had numbers too.
Even when combined with the firepower of all the battlecruisers and battlebarges present, the Eldar still came out on top by a dozen times.
Damn Eldar. If only they could be turned against a real enemy.
After the battle was over, I continued implanting the captured Narwhals with Trazyn's control harnesses, then fed them some corpses of their brethren.
And then, I called Lady Velayne for a meeting...and after a passionate victory celebration in my bed, I began laying down my plan.
I think she was rather surprised. "It is a completely insane and heretical plan, Lord Pef! Would it work?" the Inquisitor asked after a long minute.
I nodded gently and kissed her in thanks. "We'll drag the planet on a south-west course, roughly towards Sternac, but aimed at a dead star system. Some place with billions of metal asteroids to craft a constellation of orbital defenses. It will be grand!"
I explained while drawing a line on the galactic holomap, placing the destination way above the galactic plane, and thus having half of the upper hemisphere clear of potential enemies.
This new galactic position was also increasing the inward range for the Pharos by a thousand light-years, reaching a bit inside Segmentum Tempestus, while also bringing it closer to the Lancefire domain.
Of course, there could be no witness to the heretical plan, and thus my ships were ordered back home, the Scythes sent away to patrol the Fringe, and I had the rest folded inside the Tesseract.
Leaving me with three Inquisitor Ladies and a couple of STC containers to serve as habitation blocks during transit, deep inside the Pharos caverns. It was like a picnic in a cave, if you think about it.
Ludvaius and Canis mostly resided in the tesseract, as they ate a lot, both of them.
In case you did not know, every planet is a spaceship, since it does travel through the void. But now this planet-sized spaceship was being sucked into a gravitational tunnel by the Tyranid Narwhals, stolen from its sun and carried away.
As we moved farther and farther from Sotha's sun, our speed increased, crossing the light-speed barrier and going higher.
The auspex sensors were unreliable now, and constant impacts with matter particles peppered the planet with new craters. The planet's magnetic field helped a little, as did the layers of melted rock above the living rock bunker.
But I had the mental connection with the bioships, and the Pharos itself as a navigation device and that was enough.
Only a year passed for us, as the gravity tunnel distorted the passage of time relative to the objective universe, barely enough time to have my new lovers give birth to a few kids, two Blank boys for Velayne and Adrielle and a normal girl for Ezu.
But when we arrived at our destination, a dozen years have passed, and Velayne's first boy was already enjoying his harem on Illevar, and exploring his new psyker powers under the watchful eyes of his sister Janice and her mother.
Lady Kalistradi and Amberley had also visited and left, and a certain new Inquisitor was interrogating the Lamenters on the Starfort.
Must be Inquisitor Carmillus then. Easy to check, simply by asking Victor or Decima. It was her.
"Your mentor has been looking for you, I think. She is now pestering the Lamenters and nosing everywhere." I told Adrielle with a faint smile. The woman nodded a bit worried.
"I will fix the problem, lover of mine. But I will need that special staff now." Velayne declared and laid her boy back to sleep in his crib.
This will take a bit of work, but it was doable.