I had a complicated choice to make, the people here already saw me making two 'clones' of myself but they didn't know that those clones each could take out a Tyranid Hive-Ship by themselves nor that they could morph into monsters more terrifying than the ones that were falling from the sky. I'd irrecoverably brand myself either the worst of heretics or some with even a semblance of intelligence would figure out that I wasn't a human.

I smiled weakly as shame and guilt bubbled over in my stomach, twisting it into a knot as I watched Orion start ordering the Shadows around to keep the bugs away from us for as long as possible. What did it for me was Selene's face slowly losing color and devolving into a desperate resolve. No.

"Selene," I called out, the woman snapping her head in my direction, "a word, please."

I smiled as the woman walked over, her previous facial expression mellowing out a bit as she looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Say," I ran my tongue over my lips, feeling a bit nervous, "you are a Rogue Trader so you sort of have closer ties with Xenos than most, right?"

"Yes," she nodded, a bit of uncertainty showing in the motion as she by now knew that I didn't care for that from the standpoint of an Inquisitor, "I have to hurry. What is it?"

"Well, I guess I'll just say it bluntly," I giggled a bit, trying to hide my nervousness under a smile, "I am not a human."

Her hand twitched for a moment, threatening to snap up her pistol and fill up my prone form with whatever that elegant pistol she carried around shot but she held herself back. The woman relaxed her posture forcefully; she closed her eyes as he breathed in and out once before opening them once again.

"Why tell me this now?" she asked with narrowed eyes, she might have had suspicions already based on how well she was taking it but me confirming it must have shaken her quite a bit.

"Because it became relevant," I shrugged, "I can keep the bugs away, mostly at least."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would you do that?"

"I quite enjoy your company, Selene," I smirked at the woman, "I might even say I've come to like you, so I'd be rather disheartened if you died here."

"I can't believe I was flirting with a Xenos," she murmured under her breath, and thankfully it was more astonished than disgusted, though that might have changed after she saw my next action, "We still need you to open that Gate, without that the Tyranids will overwhelm us."

"And I am doing just that," I glanced at the annoying thing, "as well as holding back their central Hive-Ship, I am in a one-person war up there. I could do it down here too, with the only problem being that I fear someone trying to put a bullet through my head and disrupting my lock-picking attempts."

"I see," she nodded. She understood my reasons instantly and was already working on solutions. She tapped a mechanical earpiece. "Orion, this is an order: no matter what happens from now on, nobody is allowed to do as much as touch or talk to Echidna. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Captain!" came the synthetic voice, my hearing catching it even if the earpiece transmitted it directly into the woman's ear.

"No one will attack you and no one will as much as talk to you while you work on that Gate, that I swear."

"Good enough for now," I shrugged half-heartedly, could be worse.

I extended one of my palms and held it a few centimeters above the floor, facing towards it. From it came forth a long tendril of white flesh, looking more like a long serpent than a tendril, and when it became around three meters long the serpent disconnected from my body. It was covered in smooth white scales for protection, but the inside was that of an eldritch drone, ready to unleash the same monsters as its counterpart was doing up in space.

"Do not destroy that," I warned the woman. "Let it reach the front lines and tell the soldiers to aim only at the enemies. I only have so much energy stored up."

"A-Alright," stuttered Selene, watching the serpent crawl away quickly and rushing into a tunnel with wide eyes. "What was that?"

"A mobile army," I said, my focus returning to the fight taking place far away from us. "I will need to focus now, sorry."

"Ah," she blinked once, "sure."

"One last thing," I said before the woman could leave, "I am deciding to save you, not them."

"What do you mean?" she asked with a frown.

"If you dare die here despite me doing what I will, I'm leaving the rest to die with you."

My cold side told me that wasn't the best thing to say to foster a healthy relationship, but it was the truth and the thought of Selene moronically dying here because she thinks this is some sort of heroic last stand is unacceptable. That was almost as bad as her feeling revolted at my revelation. I don't think I could have held back from killing her if the latter happened.

By now my mindscape was starting to look a bit cramped. Now the fifth huge floating pyramid joined the central one, each being many times the size of it. It'd make one think the larger ones would rebel or wrestle for control over the network but nothing like that happened, my control over them was absolute and unquestionable and even with the new Pyramids that were the mental representations of the massive minds housed inside my eldritch drones each of them floated below the main Pyramid submissively.

I didn't know the reason for this, but I was less than thrilled about the idea of my own Minds rebelling against me, so I welcomed it.

The war upon the Hive-Ship was coming to a close as all of the lesser bio-forms were destroyed and assimilated already. The Hive-Tyrant was still fighting but its end was near, it cleaved my drones in half, one with each swing of its mighty weapons but there were hundreds jumping on him ravenously and now without its minions to keep my eldritch drone in check it was expanding again. Tendrils crawled all over the walls, ceilings and the floor and before long, the only patch of space uncovered by them was where the Hive-Tyrant stood.

I'd like to think it felt dread as the whole room of twisting, writhing tendrils collapsed upon him. He could fight drones and could outrun my Tendrils but they couldn't fight against this. It was like finding yourself at the bottom of the ocean in a tiny pocket of air and trying to run from the entire mass of water collapsing upon you. The only difference was that at the moment, the water was a ravenous alien monster that was eating through its carapace to absorb its body. There was no escape. The alien thrashed and swung wildly, rending white flesh wherever its sword and claws touched, but the tendrils were endless, ever-healing and relentless.

Not ten seconds later, the assimilated template of the Hive-Tyrant engraved itself into my mental library, joining all of its kin in my collection.

I quickly ran through what all of my drones were doing.

The first batch had control of the Narvhal, and the whole ship was already consumed. By now they reintegrated into a single Hunter Drone and were dashing through space to latch onto another ship to feast upon before I detonated them. The ones in the Hive-Ship were either busily absorbing biomass from the ship itself or the leftover bio-forms that now rushed mindlessly into them in a futile attempt to slow their advance or boring through the hull to reach the Norn-Queen. Speaking of which, one of them just did so and was hiding around the huge alien in a Hunter Form.

The last batch was just now engaging the Tyranids that made planet fall. The serpent perched itself into a well-protected hallway before it started making drones one after the other, but it also tried to keep them distinct from the invading Tyranids. This resulted in subpar drones as it didn't have the weeks to perfect the Forms like I had with the Hunter or the Combat one but either way, it was proving to be effective as humanoid beings with scythe-like arms drove headfirst into the swarm of aliens and took the focus off of the Shadows.

Zedev was fiddling with whatever toys he liked ever since we found him here, he was walking all around the gate and the ruins, inspecting and recording, but since I started working on the gate he gave up on his own attempts to get it working. I doubted he even heard me talk to Selene even with his mechanical ears or whatever he had instead of them for hearing.

Three things happened in the span of the next single lengthy second. One, my Mind-Cores tasked with cracking the Crotalids ability to seamlessly slip into the Immaterium pinged my Main-Mind with an alert that they were successful. Two, the last lock on the Gateway clicked open and my Soul Energy started circulating faster and faster through the Gateway and reality started shimmering in the center. And third, the Norn Queen noticed my drone and was now flailing around to smash it apart. The thing was big and clumsy but strong as a titan, so it was smashing through walls and demolishing stuff all around itself.

"ZEDEV," I shouted to catch his attention. "It's open. Do you know if we need to do anything else?"

The arachnoid Magos scrambled over as quickly as he could, observing the now shining Gate and the shimmering fabric of reality in the middle of it.

"Energy, increase it until it is fully working. It needs more energy."

"Alright," with a grimace I slowly increased the amount of energy flowing into the Gate, I could have just opened the floodgates but I was wary of actually breaking the delicate arcane machinery by overloading it, "Tell me when you think it's enough."

"Acknowledged."

In the meantime, I was experimenting frantically, trying out how the Crotalid thingy worked and whether I could use it before we escaped from here.

The answer was yes; the process was extremely complicated, but it was easy to dumb it down once understood why and how it worked. All of it was based on something I was already interested in. Some shapes, forms, words, and sounds had an effect on reality in this universe.

Examples of this were Wards, ones that bound Warp entities and weakened them and others that did the same with Psykers. These pentagonal and hexagonal shapes somehow reinforced realspace or weakened the Warp, respectively. Then there was Enuncia, the ancient language that could bind demons with a single word or cause all sorts of weird phenomena, even if the person speaking the words was the most normal human in the galaxy. And lastly, something I'd also put in this corner were the Zodiacs and various Sigils that Necron Cryptechs used to bend the energies of reality to their will.

When a large group of crotalids came together and were starving, they each released some sort of hormone that pushed the others around them into a specific state. While in this state all of the Crotalids brainwaves, heartbeats, breathing patterns and other bodily functions synchronized and formed an enormous orchestra which somehow weakened the veil between realspace and the Immaterium to the point where by the end of their 'song' the Crotalids found themselves in the Warp.

What my Mind-Cores were so busy working on was turning this whole process into a more effectively usable form, a Ward for instance or a Word of Enuncia or anything similar so I didn't have to summon up hundreds of giant crocodiles to do the thing. What they came up with was specific sounds played in the form of a song, with each sound being played at a specific frequency.

I glanced at the flailing Norn Queen through one of my drones as my priorities rapidly rearranged themselves. Insignificant. I thought dismissively as my drones sang in perfect synchrony, the bio-ship resonating along with them.

Reality and the Immaterium intersected for the briefest fraction of a second and all of my drones were gone without a trace, leaving a broken shell of a Hive-Ship and a Queen without any of its servants around it to help as it fell through the void of space.

Not the ones on the Narwhal though, I didn't have the time or concentration to do that thing again, so with a weary heart at all the lost biomass I commanded the drones to do what I planned to do with all of them. I didn't hear anything. I was half a star system away, of course I wouldn't. The last thing I received through my connection was the last bit of biomass evaporated into condensed bio-energy and one didn't need to be a genius to guess what happens when you throw a fuck ton of uncontained chaotic and condensed energy into the middle of a bio-ship.

I tested it before and even just detonating one of my arms caused an explosion that'd put some grenades to shame, so I imagined that ship would be vaporized by now. Foooocus, idiot.

The shimmering Gate solidifying into a single image took my attention away from my soul, which was now accompanied in the sea of souls by my titanic drone.

"ENOUGH," Zedev shouted, his synthetic voice coming out panicked despite the impossibility of it.

I stopped supplying the Gate with energy and stared in awe at the portal. I'd seen many crazy shit since reincarnating but a magical portal was still awe-inspiring.

"It is open," Zedev said, hesitating a moment before he stepped through the portal.

I looked around, quickly finding Selene sitting around restlessly as she stared towards the tunnels leading towards the battlefield.

I ran up to her and placed a palm on her shoulder, making the woman wearing half-a-ton heavy power-armour jump in surprise.

"It is open," I said as I turned her a bit to look at the Portal.

"But the others," she stared into the tunnels.

"Call them," I said. "My drones can hold back the Tyranids for a few minutes."

I glanced through my drones to command them to do so, but my eyes widened as all the information coming from my drones came in, "Shit."

What I saw was a massacre on both sides. Barely any Shadows were still standing as Carnifexes and Warriors rushed through the tunnels and engaged my by-now Tyranid-looking drones in deadly melees. A quick query with my Mind Cores controlling my swarm easily, the question gnawing at me, Why didn't they report that the Shadows were getting overwhelmed? How could this happen?

'The loss of the human combatants didn't impact the outcome of the battle in any significant way.' That was the answer I got back. Fuck, I did only order them to keep this place clear of Tyranids and not to protect the humans.

"Don't wait for us, Captain," came Orion's voice through Selene's earpiece as the woman's lips pressed into a thin line, "We will give you time."

"The portal is open Orion, you don't have to. Just retreat."

"The tunnels are collapsed behind us dear Captain. That was the first thing I did when the fifth of those giant monsters barrelled into here."

"Idiot..."

"I suppose I am," the man chuckled, the sound feeling both forced, "If it's any consolation, I enjoyed serving under you much more than in the Guard. Good luck Selene and may the Emperor guide you!"

The sound turned static as Selene stared listlessly at the ground, her fist clenching and unclenching.

"Can you save him?"

I focused my drones to search for the suicidal Arch-Militant and grimaced once I found him, one leg missing and a large puncture wound going through his chest. One of my drones dashed up to him and I quickly tried to use my powers to heal him, but a hand in my drone's face stopped me.

"Don't touch me," he said through gritted teeth, "I'd rather die than have my body tainted by your foul magic, Xeno."

"Your captain asked me to heal you," I stated, my voice coming out like claws on a chalkboard through the haphazardly made vocal cords.

"Tell her I'm already dead," he spat out a mouthful of blood. "It's not much of a stretch."

My drone morphed and took on my humanoid form as I kneeled down next to the man, my other drones and the last of the Shadows still fighting all around us to hold back the endless swarm of ravenous aliens.

"Last chance," I narrowed my eyes at him, "Nothing I'd do would leave any mark or taint you in any way."

"I don't care," he wheezed, "If you want to help me so much, give me my lasgun, let me take a few more of your kind with me."

"They are nothing like me," I said, but I still fetched him a gun.

"I don't care," he expertly checked the gun over once before shooting a single round through a Termagant's skull behind me, "Scram, before I try it out on you, too."

"So be it," I said dispassionately, my drone morphing back into the Hunter template and leaving the dying man to himself in his last moments.

"He refused," I said, my eyes finding Selene's as the woman stared at me. "He didn't want my 'foul magic' to heal him."

"You could have forced him," she bit her lips.

"He'd have rather blown himself up than let me, Selene," I grimaced. "I'd rather not."

"Fuck," she whispered, "Fucking hell."

I turned to survey our surroundings. I was starting to hear claws striking stone through the tunnels leading here.

"We need to leave," I said, my eyes catching sight of the first Ripper rushing into the large room, "NOW."

I grabbed Selene, pushing my body well beyond mortal limits as I lifted the disgustingly heavy powerarmour and dashed towards the portal. The lesser Tyranids were streaming into the room by now and I was blasting them away with flicks of Telekinesis or Eldritch blasts for the larger ones.

I threw Selene through the portal first as I quickly wondered how to best fuck up the Gate after I passed through. Ah fuck it, let's hope it closes from the other side.

I leapt through the Portal too, skidding to a halt a few meters away on damp ground as I snapped my gaze back at the Portal and the swarm closing in on it behind.

"Protect yourselves!"

I saw Zedev raise a huge war axe, a weird mesh between a cog and a curved blade at the end of a two-meter-long pole.

The weapon descended and struck the Gate.

Soul energy exploded in a white burst as the Portal flickered out right before the first Ripper could jump through. The explosion sent Zedev flying a few meters before he crashed into a wall heavily and even Selene went spinning along the ground in her heavy armor, but I held my ground as I knelt and conjured up a Psychic Shield.

"You alive, Zedev? Selene?"

"Positive."

"Yes," came a groan from the ground.

"Great."