Either I had become very good at war, or the 13 C'tan Shards were cheating even more than I could with the tesseract.

And the stupidly powerful Armageddon guns were exactly that. Stupidly powerful. Red beams of death that could evaporate any ship in their path, and with some insistence also break planets apart. The Necron Novokh Dynasty died in only 3 weeks, while the C'tan fed on the hordes of Orks fighting the Necrons. I did promise them a feast.

By the next month, my Crusade Fleet and additional elements from the Forge Worlds, the Lancefire Dynasty and a gigantic fleet of conveyors and mineral barges arrived in the Attila_System , ready to be duplicated.

It won't take long for the Necrons to realize what we planned, so fortifying the system was a must as well. There was another Forge World called Gylax VI here, and a penal world. Exactly what we needed to create an army of servitors and turrets on the asteroid forts.

Meanwhile, Zath managed to activate the Monolith, and our ships started to crash-bump into the huge floating structure, only to split in two and refract their duplicate twin at the opposite angle of incidence. My science senses tingled as I felt a math solution was quite possible and easy to resolve, while my twin on the Duality battleship began to complain about 'fake gods' and flawed transcription.

The Blade's twin, the Sword lit up on the holographic table and fist bumped the Blade, and my angelic face appeared on the holoscreen as if looking in a mirror.

"What's wrong, Peffy?" I asked with a curious voice. He seemed fine. More than the Emperor managed, so still a win.

"Shitty screen powers! I don't even have the Breath, not to mention my other memories." Peffy grumbled out loud, then raised his left hand to stare at the twin crystals. "No Lancefire lance either. The gold and auramite ingots did double, though. I won't starve to death." he added with a careless shrug.

Did I do that? Seeing myself act this way was a bit strange.

"Well then. It seems you're the one staying, if things happen." I decided in a relived voice. The Monolith didn't copy the Daemon Lance, so Peffy was safe. I wasn't.

"Wait, let me try something" I realized a second later. I did have the Sounding Board, and I knew myself very well.

'So you are here, in my mindspace. I have my Null Box and the Ordo Sinister Rossete, but not the extra Warrant of Trade. Two more tesseracts as well. No extra Sounding Board, so I can only use yours if I'm close enough.' Peffy said while examining his inventory.

'You start making babies right now. We need to know if the important part worked.' I demanded in an urgent voice.

'Sure thing, boss. Rogue Trader. Damn, you think Big E will sign me another scroll?' Peffy wondered while jumping in bed with his duplicate harem.

'Most likely yes. I would do it, so the Emperor would too. Unless he finds another use for you.' I commented wryly, while I sped time to pop the kids early.

'Still Blanks, all 20 of them. I guess I'll have my hands full of kids, for a few thousands years.' my duplicate noted with a lamenting voice, as if he wouldn't enjoy this duty.

The fleet took a lot of time to reach the Monolith and reform into a parallel fleet, matching numbers like looking into a weird mirror.

Time that we didn't have, as a Warp Portal emerged in the system, with a billion daemons and many ships. And eight Nurgle Shards as well, which complicated things somewhat.

'All cargo ships that have completed the mission, disperse to your homeworlds. If Chaos is here already, the Necrons won't be far behind.' I sent a warning message with the Sounding Board, while blasting the emerging daemons with Nova mines and 6 Immaterium Beams from the Blackstone Forts.

As expected, six such beams striking a Nurgle Shard at once killed it fast. Zath's idea was proven to work already, even if we didn't manage to duplicate all the transport ships.

Forge Machina had risked one of their precious Forge Ships as well, and the Duality moved to protect the extra Forge Ship with its massive bulk.

"EAT! We want to eat!" Drach yelled in mind, hungry for fat daemon steak, I guess.

'Fine! You can eat two Nurgle Shards, if you just shut up.' I growled back.

I had a battle to run, and not much time to babysit hungry monsters.

"Wait, the Ark Mechanicus! Can we make one more?" The Fabricator of Gylax VI yelled on the vox, while their only battleship left formation to try and intersect the Monolith.

I cursed inward, then displaced the Mechanicus battleship only a kilometer away from the Monolith. I thought you said you didn't need any foul xenos tech, Fabricator?

A sudden change of heart in the middle of combat wasn't so great.

A bad idea in hindsight, as the two Arks began firing on each other a few seconds later, as if we were Orks.

I confiscated the duplicate crew on the second Ark and returned the ships in orbit above Gylax, with stern warnings to calm down or be erased.

Flying around in space with a red-glowing lance in hand was hard enough, but doing that while dealing with rabid tech-priests claiming primacy and noosphere channels like a bunch of gamers in some online game was a bit much.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

We only used Blanks and Blank Techpriests for our duplication crews, but Forge World Gylax didn' have any. They sent regular tech-priests and servitors, but while the servitors were quite irrelevant, tech-priests were a proud and arrogant type.

Stab and stab. Two Nurlge Shards died to my lance. Then, Drach almost jumped from my hand to go after more juicy steaks, but I dragged the lance through an Immaterium Beam aimed at another Nurgle Shard, and the daemon regained its fear.

'I see you have become so strong as to disobey me, Drach. You want to starve for a few million years?' I asked the daemon with a mild voice.

'No, Boss. I am sorry! Just wanted to purge the heretic and the mutant...' the daemon muttered in a little voice. Trying to act cute with me, huh?

Truly, each kill made Drach stronger, good in short term but worrying in longer term. One day I won't be able to control it, and bad things will happen.

'What do you think of Peffy?' I asked the daemon as I returned to my Command Throne on the Singularity.

'He is like you, but far weaker. No Divine Spark.' Drach said in a serious voice, as more of the fleet finished their task and sped away. I suspected that copying anything Divine wasn't very easy.

A metal wolf returned near my chair, eyes glinting with strange knowledge. Another Nightwolf, recovered in the past Crusade. We had 19 Shards in the wolfpack now, and more would join us when the Monolith broke.

'Time is up, Rogue Trader. The Sautekh Dynasty has sent a war fleet here, ETA -13 minutes. The Monolith must go in 12.' Nightwolf sent with a displeased tone.

"Blade, 12 minutes!" I spoke out loud, warning the crew as well.

"Barely half of the transports. Sending new vectors for the ships too far." my AI answered in a calm voice, just as another Nurgle Shard died in an Immaterium Torsion cage.

The Blackstone Forts switched targets to the next Shard, while I began deploying troops on the ground, everywhere but the penal world. I had other plans for that place.

Mostly the duplicated troops, for no particular reason. I should ask Roboute what the Codex Astartes said about an Astartes Chapter that simply doubled, but I already guessed his response. New name for the duplicate, and no problem. I already planned this, before even coming here.

I guess I did have a reason using the duplicates, mostly to figure out if they performed as well, or if their duplication had also weakened them, like with Peffy.

Then again, trying to copy a Warrant of Trade made by the Emperor would be a bit much, even for a C'tan. The paper and the ink, sure, but not the psychic signature embedded into the scroll.

Probably the same for the Breath of the Gods. That was a Divine Artifact, likely made by a full C'tan Star God, not a mere Shard of one.

Instead, the etheric detectors, the Phase Blades and even the hermetic cores were copied just fine, as they were made by C'tan Shards. Or were they?

'Peffy, you have the C'tan cores inside you?' I asked to make sure.

'... Yes, boss. But they aren't active yet.' Peffy answered after a long minute, likely getting himself scanned.

Oh well. Peffy might get new C'tan powers, different from mine.

'They are getting closer, Lancefire. The Corpse_Lord is in command, and Vengeance_of_Sekemtar leads the ground troops. ETA 2 minutes.' Nightwolf warned me again, as his alien senses saw the Necrons approach, and even read some data from far away.

How delightful names, both of those Necrons! Matched the Chaos invasion rather well, too.

'Zath, you want to break the Monolith, or should I?' I asked the stronger C'tan, just to make sure.

'If you can, go ahead.' Zath said in a careless voice. I guess he was busy with the Eldar when I gained my last power.

"I'll be back, in a minute!" I warned the crew, then stepped out and used my spacial sense to position myself for a strike.

My Blackstone golem formed around me, barely a tenth of the size of the Monolith, but with force, acceleration matters the most. So I became still, while the golem punched forward.

The Monolith exploded in my wake, unable to copy me twice, and my golem arrived in the middle of the Necron Fleet, still outside the Attila star system.

'Which one of you robots is the Corpse Lord? Come out and fight me!' I yelled and jumped on top of the largest Tomb Ship. They were going towards my ship, might as well catch a ride.

Sadly, the Necrons were not inclined to duel a golem the size of a battleship, so they shot me instead with green beams of death.

So I shot back. I did want to use my Ark of Oblivion in a safe environment, and outside a star system was quite safe. For me.

I stood still for a second, while the Necron fleet vibrated and shook apart from the Dark Age of Technology warhead. Even the Tomb Ship and the Corpse Lord inside.

Sadly, I never saw who was the other guy with a long name. There was only melted slurry instead of a Necron Fleet now.