I smiled at Lady Elixa and she vanished in my labyrinth. We will resu the conversation in a different setting.
"Any more surprises I need to know about, Brothers? Maybe a dozen Inquisitors, like that idiot who tried to arrest your Primarch, back on Sotha?" I asked to make sure, and also checked the ships for hidden compartnts filled with bombs or assassins.
Didn't find any, but the ugly face of the Imperium was already showing its true face.
Unlike the trades with local Forges, which were based on mutual interest and lots of gifts made in good faith...this new shipnt arrived from the Solar Segntum, the largest hive of scum and villainy in the galaxy, possibly even worse than the Eye of Terror.
These entitled Nobles would smile and invite you to dinner, just to dismber you and drain your brain of useful information. Or have their defense batteries fire in a targeting error and blow you up.
Or any other scenario that ended with you dead, and they gaining so advantage.
At least in the Eye of Terror, you could shoot back.
However, my experience in that shadow realm of the Mandrakes had taught that even the tesseract labyrinths had limits, especially when dealing with the Warp. Things might not be solid enough to be stored in stasis, or the stasis not strong enough to hold them. Or more probably, you needed a C'tan to power up the abilities of that labyrinth.
The Crimson God was still impaled by a sort of .
All Rogue Traders risked their ships, life and sanity exploring beyond the borders, fighting xenos of a hundred kinds, or aided in Crusades, much like I did. It was ti we got our own voice, in this case my own voice.
Though I would most likely send a representative, just like the Navigators or the Inquisition did.
Still, this would an making contact with so other famous Rogue Trader Dynasties, and convince them to work together. That would be fun, even if they will see the imnse benefit of having soone defend their wealth and Warrants of Trade in the highest Imperial court. And more importantly, it would allow certain regulations to be imposed on the scummy Traders. Too often they sold out the Imperium or restricted technologies for a quick sale.
"Sounds great, Captain Khan! I might even accept that Noble rank. I'll have to ask my clan if anyone dares to approach that planet though, I hear it's infested with corrupt officials. About as bad as landing alone in a middle of a Tyranid invasion, I expect."
I replied in a less amused voice, then turned towards my next scheduled destination.
My brave children, getting tortured in implantation sarcophagi by the Sanguinary Priests. Not fun at all, and in fact terminally dangerous for any single one of them.
Sure, I updated the procedure as much as I could, even bringing a hundred Biologis tech-priests to oversee the machines and repair them, but the gene-seed technology was really advanced and pretty much nobody knew enough to make it safe.
Luckily, there was a newly arrived Forge Antax tech-priest available, who did work on the Blank genes projects for a few decades.
My hopes were on him, as he struggled to adjust the coffins to produce live subjects and not biologic sludge or malford creatures.
"How does it seem, Magos Eleven?" I asked via an implant ssage.
Voice didn't quite translate well with chanicus specialists, as the Cult's techno-lingua had too many attributes of esoteric anings.
And specialists had too little patience with moron humans too. Explaining delicate genetic and soul transfiguration to a normal person was pretty much impossible, just as 5-dinsional Warp manifold mathematics were beyond most tech-priests ability to comprehend.
That was why Vortex warheads were so rare and precious. Maybe a thousand people in the Imperium understood the procedure well enough to create those weapons.
The Astartes genetic code was probably just as complex, due to bloodline reverberations and stigmatic imprints caused by the death of Sanguinius. Adding the problem of Blank genes into the mix solved so problems and created others, with less logical solutions.
Everyday, I would co to the Sanguinary ward and commune with my sons, via my MIU implant, entering their ntal landscapes and reinforcing their will and ntal resistance.
Speeches, mantras, canticles and simply being here beside them helped. The Black Rage did not manifest at all, and that was great. Mutations were also stopped at the source. Flesh might be weak against the Warp, but Blanks were immune.
However, that psychic stigmata caused by our Primarch's wound, and the Red Thirst...that was bad.
I also had to suffer that pain beside them, and it wasn't fun at all. Maybe I should punch Sanguinius in the face after I got him resurrected.
Fucking vampire thirsty for blood!
"Continue your duty, Astartes. Your daily efforts are working, and we might not lose a single Lanter recruit. Which is not normal at all!" Magos BD/ANT/J8NN11 explained in a techno-lingua transmission of his own.
Who cares about normal, damn cultist! How is it normal to lose a hundred children for every Astartes?
Sure, because my boys are rather older than normal Astartes, they have a stronger soul and will, which helps them withstand the horrible process better than so 10 year old farm boy, thrown into a dark coffin and told to pray.
They will lose a tiny bit in strength and speed, because the body is grown and less malleable, but they will survive. As for strength and speed, they will have the best power armor and mind implants.
In my view, that mattered more than a few kilograms of extra strength. Ogryns were even stronger, after all.
And about that, in a sealed wing of the Starfort, we had Ogryns being implanted with Red Scorpions gene-seeds.
I didn't want more muscles on their already gigantic muscles. I wanted to give them able minds, like all Astartes had.
However, this plan didn't work as I hoped, not at all. Should have rembered the Dark Eldar.
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