ZEDEV

The last month has been hectic, to say the least, and if he didn't have his emotions chemically suppressed Zedev calculated he'd have had a high chance of dying from stress induced heart-attack. First comes an Inquisitor right out of the Ordo Xenos who are most likely to cut him down where he stood if they caught the slightest whiffs of what he's been doing in his hidden laboratory but that turned out to be a surprising positive in a series of tragedies.

The Inquisitor turned out to be a woman of similar interests to himself, he could tell it when she laid eyes on his expansive collection of samples, she wanted it all. He could respect that, he knew the only reason he still had his head on his metallic shoulders was his knowledge and capability to provide the Inquisitor with rare samples. Now, with that moron betraying the captain he lost all of his samples, his fury nearly overtook his suppressors but they fulfilled their tasks in the end, and his fury was kept suppressed.

Finding the ruin and the Inquisitor managing to open it was the silver lining, if he lived he could restart his experiments, like any Magos worth their weight all of his most important knowledge was stored only in his head and with him not being on the ship his secret laboratory would implode on itself after a week. He didn't waste pity on the tech-priests unfortunate enough to be near it when it went off, security was a priority.

His gaze never left the peculiar Eldar walking a few steps in front of him, Zedev had dissected dozens of Aeldari corpses and even a few that were still alive but this one was different, he could tell. The Xeno had an ethereal quality to him and his buried instincts told him not to fight him, to hide or run if he wanted to live.

Zedev disregarded those, he learned that those instincts while useful were animalistic, and bestial. He'd include them in his calculations but not rely solely on them. Another thing in his calculations was the anomalistic battle prowess of the Inquisitor, he'd been rather distracted back in the ruins but all communications were logged and he had time to review them during their walk.

Biological drones, shapeshifting, bio-armor of such a quality that even the Tyranids couldn't pierce it, regeneration, psychic powers channeled through the drones and the intelligence most of those 'drones' showed as they fought. Zedev had never heard of such a thing before and while he knew some Inquisitors were capable of mystical feats, the records spoke of them, but this was a bit much, especially coming from an Inquisitor he'd never heard of before.

You shouldn't mistake his re-evaluation of the Inquisitor for suspicion or fear though, Zedev was a being beyond those 'human' emotions, he only saw his objectives and the people around him as either obstructions or useful tools to reach his goals. With the re-evaluation the woman known as Echidna quickly rocketed in importance, he placed her survival as a main priority only behind his own.

Zedev recounted all the readings he got from the bio-armor the woman gifted to the ex-captain, it gave similar readings to a Hive Tyrant sample he once had the fortune of studying together with some of his fellow xeno-biologists. The woman has shown the capability to recreate absorbed or studied biomaterial and to his knowledge she shouldn't have had the capability of replicating a hive Tyrant. Was she fooling him during their negotiations? Could she have had that material even back then? Then why did she need such menial samples that he gave her? The Ambull was somewhat interesting but the rest should have been useless in the face of a Hive Tyrant.

Another possibility came to him, even if the assigned probability of it was small he still considered it. He remembered the woman asking for two of the Thunderhawks to escort two of her drones deep into space.

Then, she had the capability to replicate the armor of a Hive Tyrant not long after.

'Assign presumed danger level Alpha+ to individual Echidna.'

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I felt a shift in Zedev's behavior, the arachnoid Magos carried himself with a calculated alertness while before he'd been rather laid back as he eyed our guide up and down. Doesn't matter, I shrugged. I didn't even bother pushing into his mind and start trying to break through his encryption. He'd lost his one leverage over me and in the Webway he was just another loose Magos, I could easily make him disappear without the Mechanicus ever suspecting a thing.

He was a smart man, thing, I had to admit even if I was reluctant to give any praise to the technophiles of the Mechanicus. To me he was a perversion of science, they all were, they hoarded knowledge and valued an individual based on the size of his hoard like damned dragons from a fantasy book. For a moment I wondered whether that was the influence of the Void Dragon, their oh-so-precious Machine God. I shook my head a bit. It doesn't matter.

I shook my head as I threw my arm over Selene's shoulder, going through the myriads of new genetic templates and cataloging them while also picking out the useful ones was such a chore but it had to be done, I needed some time for my mind to recharge.

"So all this walking is getting kinda boring," I said as she raised an eyebrow at me, "tell me something interesting," I started twisting one of her midnight black locks around my fingers on my left hand.

"Alright fine, stop that," she said as she shrugged my arm off of her shoulder but I didn't fail to notice a tint of reluctance slipping into her aura as she did so, "what do you want to hear about?"

"Hmm," I put my index finger on my cheek as I thought hard about her question, "Have you met the Tau before? Weird blue Xenos with a slit across their face instead of a nose?"

"Yeeeees," she drew it out, my prompt must have freshened up some uncomfortable memory, "I did meet them a few times, they are one of the easiest to trade with and they are close by."

"Mhmm," I nodded, "funny little things," I smiled.

"Funny?" she arched an eyebrow.

"Did you know they tried to negotiate with the Tyranids?" I raised my own eyebrow, leaning in to whisper into her ear, "Not once, not twice but three times."

"You are pulling my leg," she looked at me incredulously but with a smirk on her lips.

"I'm not," I smirked, "I heard there was one whatever caste diplomat who learned Orkish so he could finally establish peace with the Orks, he even went to them with a nice bundle of weapons, as a gift."

Now she looked at me like I was making shit up, I pouted like a kid at her. I was telling the truth, it wasn't my fault that the Tau were the naive moron archetype in this galaxy.

"Well, my story is for sure less interesting than that but I guess it's better than walking in silence," she shrugged and my pout was wiped off my face as I smiled at her, "so we were out our way to trade with this one world at the edge of the Imperium..."

She talked and I listened, sometimes I asked into it but all in all, it was mostly her talking and me decompressing to her melodious voice. Gods knew I really needed some decompressing after all the shit that happened to me.

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BOSS ZOGGA BONECRUNCHA

"Boss, me and me boiz found som Humiez sniffin' round the place," Rokk said with a wide smile on his toothy lips.

"How many?" Boss Zogga asked back as he stared adoringly at a weird dakka in his hands.

"Don' 'now, four?" Rokk shrugged, "One of em was all metal and stuff, the others were tiny fleshy things."

"Go beat 'em up," Zogga said offhandedly, "get me some of em kickin, this new dakka needds testin."

"Sure boss," Rokk nodded and then he was off, shouting all over the place to collect a hunting party and get into some good krumpin. Even if their enemies were only a few Humiez it couldn't be worse than those spiky Eldar that'd been annoying them for a while now.

"Oi," Zogga shouted, his grizzled eyes locking in on a Gretchin running around the hall, "come 'ere you little shit."

The gretchin froze up and slowly ambled towards him, fear and subservience clear in its jagged movement.

"Boss?" it asked once it was at the foot of his throne, its head bowed deep.

Zogga didn't answer, he raised his new dakka and levelled it at the Gretchin. It was a long thing with most of it being clear metal and strange markings, but he almost grimaced at the unnatural green colored lights coming off of it.

He pulled the trigger and the green light condensed into a beam and struck the gretchin not a blink later, the wretched thing screamed as his body dissolved molecule by molecule, atom by atom. Zogga watched on with a widening grin on his face, it didn't take long but by the end of it the gretchin screamed like never before up until nothing but a pile of atomized ash remained.

Zogga has lived his whole life in this shitty Eldar temple. He started out as a lowly grunt but it only took him a few years until he beat the previous boss to death and took his throne. He lead his group of Orks on many hunts throughout the mazelike halls of this place, the hunted spiky chaos boiz and the Darkies that annoyed them so much.

Still, the one hunt zogga was especially proud of was when they beat a group of Tin Headz to scrap and took their stuff before it could go to fuck knows where like their dumb metal corpses.

His new dakka was the single working dakka they found among the scrap, Zogga had to bash in some headz to get it but it was more than worth it.

Zogga was itching to test how Humiez sounded when they got shot with it.