Shelbi nodded and held out her hand. “Use your blade and show me what you are looking at.”
The same lines of force, whitish-silver in color, snapped up, and Captain Donnal belatedly recognized them as a diffused mindblade. Shelbi’s hand closed over Mar-c’s, adding a layer of gold to the mindblade, which again played over the abused armor, focusing on several areas which didn’t look any different to his eyes.
“Huh. Would you look at that,” Shelbi mused, turning back to glance at the captain, who just looked on. “Captain, you want to look at this?” she asked casually, as if it was to be expected.
“I am not a psion,” he replied calmly... and she blinked. She looked at Mar-c, who looked back at her, and they both looked at him again.
“Captain,” she said warily, “I don’t want to belabor the obvious, but the bloodline that makes you a Legionnaire comes from the Emperor, who is the almightiest psion who has ever existed in the human race. There is 100%, absolutely no way, you are not psionic.” She indicated the armor. “This suit is designed to be worn by a being with psionic potential. Do you really think that is a mistake, when it is a standard AMT pattern?”
It was Captain Donnal’s turn to blink. That certainly sounded both logical... and impossible. “I was tested before I became a Legionnaire, and found to have no psionic potential,” he stated firmly.
“And after?” she asked archly.
He started to reply, and stopped.
“Right,” she said, still staring at him and nodding. “Well, fuck that. Stone!” she turned and called out.
A big Ancient casually carrying in another damaged prop by hand, instead of using a forklift, looked up from halfway down the crude hangar. “Wassup?” his deep, rolling voice sounded back, carrying easily despite the distance.
“I need you to key this Legionnaire!”
“No shit?” He took a few more long strides, was waved away by the repair crew waiting there, and headed over, almost bouncing despite his height and heavy build.
Captain Donnal was not surprised to see the Ancient was a couple inches taller than he was, with bulging muscles and thick bones, the pronounced cranial ridge, flat nose, and broad chin... and pale green eyes darting about with clear intelligence.
“Captain,” the Ancient saluted him, showing a sergeant’s rank on his cheek tats. “What’s this now, Shelbi?” he asked curiously.
“I could do it, but,” she held her hands out, one above the other, “might be a bit awkward.”
“Hah! Alrighty.” He reached back into his thick hair, and brought out a flat crystal, turning back to Captain Donnal. “Captain, this is a standard psicrystal, nothing funny about it, you’ve probably seen lots of them.” The Marine just nodded at him. “I’m going to use it to set up a projecting telepathic bond. No mind-reading involved, just sending out thoughts. This whole process should take no more than thirty seconds. All you have to do is imitate what I am doing, and this will get done quick.”
Captain Donnal nodded warily, but the body language of the Ancient was so casual about it, it couldn’t be faked. Truly, this was not a big issue for him.
Stone calmly reached out and pressed the flat crystal to the forehead of the alert captain. “No need to drop any defenses, I’m just broadcasting.” Stone closed his eyes, and Captain Donnal could feel the beaming thoughts coming in at him.
They were incredibly strong and tempered, flexible, alert. The mind of this Ancient was as formidable as his body, if what he was feeling was any measure...
Stone took a step and set his stance. Feeling the broadcast motion, Donnal replicated it, resetting his own feet. Stone lifted his arm slowly, and Donnal mimicked the motion, the flexing of the arm to bulge the muscle, opening the hand and closing it, and then reaching out and twisting and –
It was a jolt, like a muscle, only inside his head, turned and twisted and flexed in a sudden shock of pain. Captain Donnal jumped five feet back in reflex even as he swore, blinking away his relaxation, instantly ready for a fight.
Stone glanced down at the captain’s hand, nodded. “Worked fine.” He snapped off the golden claws around his own hand, and completely ignoring the captain’s expression and body language, headed back to work.
Donnal stared at the humming sapphire blade in his hand, crystal-sharp and ready for use, looking almost identical to the first tactical knife he had ever used, sixteen inches of cutting edge along one side.
“Definitely a psion. Mindblade instead of mindclaw, see.” Shelbi flicked up her own golden claw, while Mar-c materialized a less defined white blade.
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“Sergeant Stone!” Captain Donnal called out, and the Ancient paused and looked back curiously. Captain Donnal gestured to the members of his squad, waiting nearby in their armor, watching all this with suddenly wide eyes. “Can you do that with all of them, Sergeant?”
The Ancient looked a little confused. “Sure, it’s not like it’s hard, Captain!”
Captain Donnal turned his eyes back on the nymphal Shelbi. “There is no chance otherwise?” he confirmed, his eyes hard.
“It is IMPOSSIBLE,” she affirmed. “His bloodline is just too damn strong.”
He nodded, turning back to his men. “Get out of your armor and go through this keying process with Sergeant Stone here!” he ordered calmly, and the men moved quickly towards the hanging racks which would support the armor as they unlocked and removed it, while the techs moved quickly to assist them.
Captain Donnal, his face extremely grave, still clutching the blade of force in his hand, turned back on Shelbi once more. “Tell me, Sergeant Shelbi, why this fact was not made known to us?”
It was a foolish question. How would she possibly know such a thing? But finding out he had psionic ability... that ALL Legionnaires had psionic ability, was a heavy blow. Such an incredible thing, of paramount importance, was not revealed to them. The difference it could have made in their battles...
“Meh.” She treated the question with an indirect contempt that was not aimed at him. “First possibility, they didn’t know. Which sounds almost impossible, until you think how infallible they consider themselves, not even questioning if you could suddenly become psionic after your treatment. Two, they forgot, which, if you consider how they simply replicate technology instead of knowing what it actually does, isn’t out of line, either.
“Third, they did not want you to know, for reasons of their own, but very probably revolve around limiting your power and the threat level you possess after the example of the Primogenitors.”
She blinked, looked away, and then back at him thoughtfully. “Captain, I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but Keying all your men might get you in trouble at the very highest levels of the Empire.”
Captain Donnal stared into her dark eyes, almost able to feel her thoughts racing, considering, weighing, balancing, just like his own.
These Rantha nymphals were all very, very dangerous, he realized, because he realized she was speaking the absolute truth. He could not believe that his Battalion’s Commander, or the Legion’s General, was complicit in withholding such knowledge from their men. The difference it would make in their fighting prowess was too great.
He turned his eyes to his armor. “How did my armor reveal this to you, Sergeant?” he asked calmly.
She turned back to his breastplate immediately. “Captain, you’ve got several types of psionic circuits woven into this armor. One of them is for expending psionic power to reform the armor itself, which means it would not need Mechanists to repair it with technology. It would still require some fine-tuning, especially if there is widespread circuit damage, but this armor is designed to be self-maintaining at its core.
“The second aspect is that this is Psychic Armor, Captain. Do you know what that entails?”
“I know that Psychic Weapons channel psychic power, Sergeant,” he responded immediately.
She held up a finger. “Incorrect, in a subtle manner, Captain. Channeling psychic power means you are moving energy through the weapon, i.e. you are expending PP to create some effect. A Psychic Weapon, or Armor, REACTS to and resonates with a psychic Reserve, the amount of PP its wielder possesses. The greater the Reserve, the more power the item has. Nominal ratings of equipment are from I to V. A mechanically-made Psychic Armor rated at IV is a TL 12 piece of equipment.” She rapped her knuckles on his breastplate. “This is a Captain’s armor. I can only presume that a Lieutenant’s, Sergeant’s, and trooper’s armor are at III, II, and I, respectively, while a Commander’s or General’s would be at V... which would be TL 15, and likely not possible outside a Core Forge World.
“It would also account for just how damn expensive and rare armor of this quality is. Not putting down your technology, Captain, but just the base tech of this armor isn’t above TL 10 at all. We can probably arrange for you to get base armor just like this without a problem. But the Psychic Circuits, made just mechanically... no, the lowest order of that is TL 11, we don’t have access to that tech yet. We could replicate it with Psicrafting... the effect would be identical, but it would deviate from AMT.
“This psionic circuitry is why your armor is hard to find and hard to make. The raw materials have to be at QL 32, and the demand for Energized stuff at that QL is through the roof.” Her head turned slightly, and her eyes narrowed. He followed her gaze to his heavy laser carbine and fusion pistol, both sized for Legionnaires, and felt his jaw clench. “Captain, if I may?” she asked shortly.
“Yes, Sergeant,” he allowed, letting her step past.
She hoisted his heavy carbine without apparent effort, her golden claws flickering up like crystalline gloves over her hands, and she ran them up and down the four-foot length of the weapon slowly and surely.
“Alright, there’s a genetic lock on it, probably keyed just like a normal signature weapon to the Emperor’s bloodline, or it would be responding to me.” She glanced at his hand. “Let go your mindblade, and resummon it a couple of times, just like it came out the first time, Captain.”
He looked down at the mindblade in his callused hand, and released it. The force structure instantly fractured into psychoplasm shards and dissipated.
As he had the first time, he wrenched at a muscle that wasn’t there, replicating the sensation perfectly, and it snapped back into existence in his hand. He repeated the effect three times, failing once.
She handed him his carbine as he let the mindblade fade again. “This time, bring it up around the rifle, Captain.”
He accepted his weapon in his hands, closed his grip upon the familiar weight and heft, taking it in a proper stance. Instead of flicking his hand as if he were flourishing a weapon, he tensed and moved as if he were bringing it to bear and ready.
Psychic energy surged through the structure of the weapon. He could feel Rune elements of its construction light up at the flow of energy passing through, responding familiarly to his touch and power, and he realized they had always been there, helping and aiding him, but he simply hadn’t been able to touch or feel them.
He stared at the sapphire lights glinting at the corners and seams of his carbine, impressing the sight into his mind.