After spilling my gene-seed into Lady Gemma's vitae-womb, I finally got a spare moment to hide away and tesseract into the Pharos, joined by a giant wolf named Canis.
My C'tan friend seemed to be rather anxious for my return, eying my third tesseract gem with greed. "You got him?"
"You doubted me? My heart is bleeding!" I quipped with a relaxed voice, while tapping the Lamenter sigil on my armor.
"Release him already!" the ancient creature demanded, shaking his chains.
"And when he instantly attacks me, I will be forced to kill him, my precious trade ruined. You don't want to know what the devious Necron Lord forced me pay." I said in a calm voice.
"I watched you trade with the Necron before, Pef Lancefire. I also know what happens to your enemies. I even helped at Commoragh, didn't I?" Zarhulash pleaded in a more quiet voice.
. Well, then. Let's see if a century of indoctrination really worked on the C'tan. With a flick of my fingers, I brought out the spare shard, while my other hand held a Necron trans-dimensional beamer, just in case I was wrong.
A giant statue-shaped being emerged beside Zarhulash and tugged gently at his chains. "You can't leave unless we remove the heart, brother." the second C'tan spoke in a sad voice.
"You have a chosen name, shard?" I asked curious.
The being glanced at my green-glowing beamer, then froze as Canis growled in a low tone. "So, it is true. We are in deadly danger around you, Pef Lancefire." the C'tan shard observed in a cautious voice. It seems Trazyn was right, the Potentate was indeed a coward.
"Very well. Your name will be Lash. Like a smaller brother to Zarhulash." I added in a careless voice, then stored away the useless beamer. If I had to use it now, I had already lost.
"You seem to have designs for my future, human. Nobody names something unless they do." Lash observed with a smart inference. Then again. C'tan.
"For now, you will produce Phase blades for my children. But to travel the galaxy at my side, you will need a disguise..." I muttered in deep thought. There were too many tech-priests and Ordo Xenos Inquisitors around, and they have practice detecting xenos.
"The wolf will make a good shape to take, little brother. And if you need to fight, Canis is actually rather formidable already, even before you upgrade his weapons and shield." Zarhulash proposed from his wall.
"...This isn't the freedom I was promised!" Lash grunted while kneeling beside Canis to begin upgrading his shield collar and retractable claws.
"Patience, Lash. The Rogue Trader is right. We need to acquire the rest of our shards, and the galaxy is filled with humans, Aeldari and others. I will provide overwatch support with the Pharos." Zarhulash spoke in a more confident voice while nodding towards me.
Stepping back, Lash shapeshifted into a Fenrisian wolf, almost identical to my Canis. There were subtle differences, or maybe I was too used with my wolf not to notice. "Canis, point him out the markers which make him alien.You would know best how a wolf should feel." I added in a softer voice.
Canis looked at me for a minute, perhaps testing if I was joking. Then he began circling the fake wolf, sniffing and clawing at wrong things, while growling softly. It took a long hour until Lash began to resemble a real wolf, even to my tesseract's senses. "Wooof Wooo!" Canis howled loudly, then poked the fake wolf to copy him. "Woof Woo!" Lash tried, and got a giant paw slapping his head. Again.
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More work to do. "So, you certainly had time to search for the Demiurg, right?" I asked with a tired voice.
"Most of them have gathered at Tenebrae_9-50, in the Octiss System. The rest have returned to their origin place, in the galactic center." Zarhulash explained as he centered the Pharos view on the system. Millions of mining drones were busy exploiting the asteroid minerals, while a hundred strangely shaped voidships held station near the sun.
And inside the ships, short and bulky humans wearing different types of Void armor and human-looking weapons or devices, if clearly more advanced. Perhaps more advanced than the Mechanicus had.
Jackpot! These guys surely had their own STC, and perhaps not a single one, seeing what they have done to the Tau.
"Their tech looks human enough, perhaps Federation level." I muttered to myself, as the Pharos gently shifted the viewpoint to show me the inside of their engines. Warp engines, but small and advanced ones. And the Geller fields looked even stranger. Everything looked polished and clean, although the ships were clearly old, thousands of years old at least. Curious.
"If your Speranza would truly help, you could have the same toys." Zarhulash pointed out with a wry voice.
Pushing my mind strongly, I space-dragged a small dagger hilt and brought it into my hand. A plasma blade lit up the inside of the Pharos, making the wolves fall silent. Pretty much the best tech of the Mechanicus, among some lost human miners in the middle of nowhere. Miners that have upgraded the Tau to a minor power in a couple of centuries.
"You have gotten stronger, Pef Lancefire. Before, you couldn't have ported a single coin from so far away, not unless you had someone there to provide you an emotional link." the C'tan said in a slightly surprised voice.
Straining myself even harder, I began stealing more small items and brought them back. Pens and dataslates, bolter rounds, even the glove of a void suit. My head began to swirl in a daze, and I decided to stop. I could steal everything once I entered that system in person, and without even a headache.
"Let's test your disguise, Lash. If you get your head blown off by the first Inquisitor, don't blame me!" I demanded in a wry tone, then stored Canis away and moved onto the Machine Forge, where the new Titans were getting lots of oil and love from the resident tech-priests.
"My lord, I hope you did not steal the God-machines from Forge Venatoria. Although, I doubt they ever had anti-grav plates able to support a Warlord Titan." A ranking Magi intercepted me, as I stared at the floating Titan being tested by Zeta, my darling Princeps.
"Not stolen, but not quite legal either. It was a trade for a favor, to a certain person." I explained with a wink.
"I see, my Lord. We will make haste to scrape the old markings then, and anoint the machines to our Deus Ex Machina Legion. The Ominissiah's Favor comes in many forms, after all." the Magi answered after he failed to wink back with his mechanical optics.
Lash walked at my side in the wolf form, pretending to be a smart wolf. Nobody seemed to notice the difference, so everything was fine.
'Incoming, angry female!' the C'tan sent on my Manifold Circuit, proving the thing was very much not impregnable to malicious outsiders. Or at least those of C'tan ability.
I turned and hugged my Princeps wife before she could start screaming. "We can't give every Titan grav wings yet, my love. This heretic managed to modify a dozen, before he was chased away. I saved the poor Titans, but the schematics will take time to recover." I explained in a low voice, as Dae_Vergos slowly calmed down.
"You better make it happen, absent husband. My room, tonight!" she demanded as she ran away to climb into another floating Titan.
Marriage saved, again!
"Now, who could save my life and help me give my wife floating Titans?" I muttered to myself as I walked away, heading towards the Noble Knights in the next base.
Lash threw a knowing look at the floating Titan and ran beside me. 'Making the grav plates would be difficult with your low tech, human. And what are those horrific teeth swords on these walkers?' the C'tan asked in a repulsed voice, as we stared at a Knight-sized chainsword hanging above us.
'Our version of a chain blade. You should hear the sounds they make, as the adamantium teeth bite into tank armor!' I quipped in a joking tone. They sounded quite horrific, I admit.
'I rather not. Wolf ears are very sensitive. I could give them real blades...' the C'tan offered by himself. Well, I couldn't say no to a few hundreds of Imperial Knights wielding Phase blades, could I?
That Eldar cruiser I gave to Trazyn was already paying off for itself.