Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

“He didn’t, huh?” I mused darkly, glancing into the distance. My gaze pierced the walls and space itself until I had Throgg’s towering figure before my eyes as if he stood metres away from me, and yet he was halfway across the moon. If he had one thing going for him, it was that I detected no space-faring vessel being built anywhere near his camp. Another was that he was in the process of murdering his way through another Tribe that had. “Hmmmm. I suppose you’re right, I’ll hear him out. It seems … I might have overestimated his abilities … or underestimated the difficulty of keeping a horde of Orks in line.”

“I’d wager it’s the latter,” Selene said, though she did not look too certain herself. “Or perhaps you overestimated the abilities of a single Ork. They are not the best at anything that doesn’t involve destruction, murder or war. You had forbidden him from doing that one thing that could probably keep that disorderly lot together.”

“Sailing off into the stars, looking for war?” I asked.

“Precisely,” Selene said. “They are Orks. Do you really want to bother keeping them? You could probably get a regular human army outfitted with your weapons and organic kit that would work better than an Orkish army ten times its size.”

“That’s worth consideration,” I said absently. “Though not in the near future. Let them settle in, and let’s foster some loyalty in them before giving them murder toys. Also, I sort of promised I wouldn’t need them to serve in my military, did I not? It wouldn’t do to go back on my words.”

“Let them volunteer then,” Selene shrugged. “First, just to explore the moon, make them into some explorer order. That should show you how viable they would be as an arm of the military.”

“Let’s put a pin on that,” I said, then plopped down into a chair that grew out from the floor underneath me. We were in an empty, circular room at the very top of the fortress of my soon-to-be capital city. As the chair slowly morphed into a majestic marble throne lined with silver and golden motifs, I let my gaze pan around as I customised the room’s decor. The walls pulled back, shrinking into Greek-inspired pillars that held up the domed cupola atop, while between them, see-through glass panels stretched from pillar to pillar, granting a glimpse of the scenery outside, and what a scenery it was. From so far high up as we were, I could see the moon’s surface from an eagle-eye view all the way over to the horizon where the moon’s curvature hid the rest from regular sight. “I have an Ork to question, and while it might not have been fair to expect him to succeed, he never once made note of just how far out of hand things were getting. That by itself deserves some reprimand, if nothing else.”

“You’re the one running this ship,” Selene said, shrugging nonchalantly as she wandered over to the windows to peer outside. I couldn’t help but chuckle at her awe as she pressed her face up against the nearly invisible glass panel. “I’m just … actually, what am I? I mean, besides your lover, of course. Do I have a title or role in your burgeoning governing body, besides maybe Consort?”

“Don’t fancy the idea of putting thoughts into my head with your seductive whispers and making me do as you wish with your feminine wiles?” I batted my eyes at her, earning a short, playful glare thrown over her shoulder.

“Too much work,” Selene huffed. “I’d much rather have it straight and simple; plus, it keeps work out of the bedroom. I don’t like to use my brain too much while having sex. It’s for fun, not for plotting the downfall of my enemies or whatnot like most Nobles seem to believe.”

“I’d have guessed it would be an obligation to most Nobles,” I mused, hopping off my fancy new throne and strolling over to wrap my arms around my lover’s waist. “To pop out as many pompous little brats with the stick up in their arse coming pre-installed as possible.”

“Marital obligations and the uses of sex are two very different things,” Selene said, like she was explaining something dreadfully simple she couldn’t believe I didn’t know. “Nobles like to use everything to further their political ambitions; everything's an opportunity, every conversation, every shared glance, every tryst and every promise. They are all lies made to further their ambitions. Do you think they wouldn’t use the pleasures they could give to another with their body as a bargaining chip? You would be wrong.”

“Huh,” I said. “I suppose … my preconceptions about hereditary nobility and their values are a bit outdated.”

“Outdated?” Selene asked with mild curiosity.

“By about 42000 years, yes.” I nodded.

“Maybe a bit,” Selene said in amusement.

“I could name you my Hand or something like that,” I said, thinking aloud. “If Queen Consort doesn’t satisfy your wants. You could be the Malcador to my Emperor.”

“One, you’d have to properly marry me before you start calling me Queen Consort, and no, don’t even think about daring to skip over that step.” Her steely grey eyes glared at my reflection in the glass window, giving me an unmistakable look. “Secondly, I want to wipe that last sentence from my mind. It was horrible, and you should feel horrible.”

“I thought it was kinda romantic,” I said with a playful giggle.

“Back to the topic at hand,” Selene said, rolling her eyes with an amused smile tugging at the edge of her lips. “Or rather, onto a new one, I should remind you of. You’ve been neglecting that poor Zara girl, and if you don’t give her some task or make her do something, I think she’ll stress herself into an early grave. Zedev will be fine, but I’m not sure that leaving him to his experiments in the basement for another month without any supervision will have good consequences. I know what you said about science and experimentation, but there is a reason the Priesthood of Mars forbids it. Too many times had their initial experiments and tech-heresy go horribly wrong, and only so many times can you excuse it as a coincidence. I’ve heard your speech to the Tau about there being a kernel of truth underneath all the prejudiced practices and beliefs of the Imperium, you should take your own advice. I think.”

“Right,” I said with a distasteful grimace. As much as the tech-priests’ idiotic aversion to the mere notion of the scientific method, their fear of advancement and innovation, there were reasons for it. Maybe not good reasons, certainly not good enough to justify the extremes they had gone to. Still, I couldn’t deny that relying entirely on re-discovering STCs from humanity’s golden age was safer than any of the alternatives, and safety was a thing that was dreadfully hard to come by in this day and age. “You’re right, and I know. I’ll make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, but he is locked in the basement for a reason. Even if he makes the next super-virus or breeds some new self-propagating horror, I can lock it all under thousands of tonnes of hard rocks and stone with a thought. Put a pin on that, though! … our green friend finally finished his thing, so it’s time for him to answer some pointed questions.”

Selene shrugged, seemingly satisfied with my intentions as I strutted back over my throne and perched myself atop it. One knee over the other, chin resting on my palm as I leaned on an armrest.

“Do I look regal?” I asked, a pulse of bio-energy rushing through my body to fix my hair into place, shifting every last strand to be picture perfect. At the same tile, a soft touch of telekinesis washed over my clothes, banishing all the tiny creases and dust.

“You look elegant,” Selene said, eyeing me with an evaluating gaze that nonetheless held more than a hint of appreciation. Though I was reasonably sure the latter had to do with how tightly my clothes hugged my figure and how my current pose accentuated my hips. “Though more like a rebellious princess playing at queen than a true sovereign. You lack the … severity, I suppose.”

“Nothing much I can do about that,” I said cheerily. “I refuse to be a dour moon sink, even if the galaxy is slowly and surely going to shit. I’ll just have to rely on my power to grant me that gravitas I lack … or maybe you could make up for it? You’re good at radiating authority when you put on your ‘noble face’.”

“People might think you’re just a brutish figurehead if we go with that,” Selene said thoughtfully. “That you’re our leader only because you’re our strongest Psyker.”

“Would they be wrong to?” I mused. I didn’t have any other rights to rulership besides power, not that I needed any. Power was not quite all that mattered, but it was certainly one of the most important parts, maybe even the most important part.

“Yes,” Selene said, hiking up the steps to stand next to my throne. “Power by itself only allows you to rule through tyranny and fear, and while that goes for the Orks, it does not for your human subjects. Power is a part of it yes, but it’s more how you use it, not that you have it. They might not see it yet, but they will.”

I shrugged, not all that invested in making them see me as a benevolent ruler. They would either see me as one in time or they wouldn’t. All it changed was how many of them I had to kill for rebelling. With them all being separated into fifty arcologies, any such effort would be highly localised and fragmented.

Plus, I didn’t particularly see myself as benevolent either. Sure, I wanted to be better than the Imperium and the others, but they were all on the ‘asshole’ end of the scale to the extreme. There was a whole lot of space between them and being some enlightened absolutist ruler.

Maybe I should put a little bit of effort into it. I thought, feeling a little uncomfortable at the sheer trust and conviction Selene was radiating next to me. She truly believed I could be good at this ruling thing, not just ‘better’ than the worst of the worst. Sure, I could feel she knew she would have to help me, mould me a little to help me keep on the right path, but she was convinced I had something worth nurturing.

I didn’t want to disappoint her, even if she only felt that way because of the rose-tinted glasses she wore while looking at me. Maybe I’d fucked the common-sense out of her. Who knows. Happy wife, happy life, or so they say. Must keep the wife happy … though she is not quite that yet. Marriage. How the hell am I supposed to go about handling that without making it weird? I sure as hell won’t go with the go-to human vows to the God Emperor, but neither do I want to resurrect Christianity, even if I was nominally a Catholic in my last life. Maybe a hippie wedding? 

I did not want to even pay lip service to any gods, least of all to the God of Christianity. I knew my soul was powerful; just even a fraction of me truly believing in his existence might make it so and birth a new Warp God shaped by those beliefs into being.

I had been forced to read the Old Testament, I was not going to risk that, even if I could slap a newborn Warp Godling out of existence with reasonably little effort. Probably.

Just vows to each other and a private wedding just for the two of us. Nothing else matters besides that; no one else’s opinion or support matters. I most certainly won’t drag my ass over to ask her parents for permission to marry their daughter. 

“Alright. Let’s handle this orky business,” I muttered, shaking my head to put that line of thought to the back burner. We can only get married once, so it would have to be perfect and special, and it would be a memory that would stick with us through the ages. It is not something to plan while distracted, and it is most certainly something to be half-arsed. “Ready?”

“Yep,” Selene said, putting extra emphasis on the ‘P’ with a small, playful grin before her emotions drained away from her features. I took a moment to appreciate just how gorgeous she was, that cold beauty and noble grace she radiated. Smiles fit her well, but she was the very picture of a cold beauty at the moment and I couldn’t help but stare a bit. She noticed me staring, a tiny smirk flickering at the edge of her lips before it disappeared like a mirage. “Whenever you are ready, oh Great Silver Lady.”

I raised an eyebrow but just shrugged instead of questioning it. I’m gathering titles like they are trading cards … or Pokémon. Damn. I should try to make some Pokémon, just to see if I can, if for nothing else. 

Idly, I snapped my fingers, and about thirty circles of light appeared spread out before the foot of my throne. Halfway across the planet, Throgg and his lieutenants were panicking, strange circles of light having sprung into existence under their feet before tendrils of light pulled them inside. The circles swallowed them all, then dumped them before me.

One after the other, towering, somewhat scared and confused Orkis warriors were dumped on their asses.

Throgg was quicker on the uptake than the rest, having frozen stiff the moment my psychic tendrils locked around his ankles. I had felt recognition flare in him, followed by acceptance and resignation.

He stared at me now, rising to his feet and puffing out his chest like a warrior steadying himself before a final stand he knew he had no hope of winning.

“Hello, Throgg,” I said, my chin still resting on my palm as I sent a thin smile his way. “I have some questions that are in dire need of answering. You’ll be a dear and help me out, won’t you?”