WARHAMMER 40,000: A Thousand Tiny Suns (40k/Exalted Crossover!)

You strode towards Amberly. You put your hand on her wrist, and looked into her eyes.

"Amberly," you said, firmly. "...I'm in charge."

"You!?" She asked.

"Yes. Me." You were silent for a moment. "I'm...I'm not going to let you kill the surrendered. The. The prisoners. They...we're not going to do that." You reached for some rational - something other than the rebellion deep in your belly. Amberly scoffed, lifting her chin, then jerked her hand from your wrist.

"I wasn't going to kill them!" she said, her voice haughty.

"...you were going to shoot me!" you exclaimed. "On some...some...some...incompetent orders!

"I don't recall it that way," Amberly said, sniffing as she lifted her nose into the air.

"But-" you spluttered. Amberly's cheeks flushed and she jerked her chin up again.

"It's something called...style, Krieger," she said, her voice full of arrogant condescension. "If I had simply said no, then the General would have called me an idiot useless lay about, or a disgrace to the name Cain, or...or other hypothetically hurtful things." She said, her eyes flicking away for a moment. You frowned under your mask. Hypothetical, huh? She continued over your thoughts. "So, I was going to make a show of being about to shoot you, then I would dramatically cast aside my weapon at the last moment, proclaiming a vision of divinity showing me I could not strike down one blessed by the Emperor, thus, melting the General's icy heart."

"You were, huh?" you asked.

"41..." Kit said, quietly, walking over to stand beside you. His voice was gentle. Don't keep poking Amblery.

You harrumphed.

"...wait, but we are going to kill him, right?" Amberly asked. "Poor civilians turned in desperation is one thing, but that yonder is none other than a member of the..." She narrowed her eyes at Thark-Thakunen. "...Thousand Suns!"

"Sons," you muttered.

"Sons, I said sons!" Amberly snapped. "That's what I said.

"41, come on," Kit said. "We have bodies to police and speeches to give."

You sighed.

"Wait, speeches!?" You asked. "No, I...can't I just...build a...build a big thing?"

Kit grabbed your arm and dragged you off.

The days after the battle and the capture of the habitat were quiet and eerie. Everyone seemed to be waiting for more war...but...the war here had ended so abruptly, so unexpectedly, and so completely that no one quite knew what to do. You gave a stuttering speech, mumbling to some half hearted conclusion, then instituted a rationing system, timed out to when you were going to upgrade the farms. The chaos tainted were split into those who were completely impure and those who weren't - but those who weren't were able to be handled by Kit. He had a kind of sense that let him sniff out the ones that were still good hearted, and the ones that were not. There were a few executions - but less than would have been required by most.

You?

You fell into a rhythm. You would wake, slap your mask on, shuffle to your tent's work station, thumb on a luminator, and start scrawling out plans. Your first few drafts were frustratingly inconclusive - but after a few days, you had realized the issue was sustaining the feedstock. And that was easier if you worked with the lifeforms, not trying to shackle them. You threw out some old designs, tossing aside papers and scribbling new notes, muttering mathematic equations under your breath. You would sometimes glance up and notice that several tech-priests were kneeling at the tent's entrance, their hands clasped together.

"...what are you doing?" you had asked, once.

"Beholding a miracle."

"Oh, no, it's very simple," you said, hurriedly. "See, the self replicating systems involved mean you only need minimal input and then...the, see, we...the just...shunt...you...here! See, look!" You had thrust diagrams at them, then went back to scribbling. The next day, you had found a shrine with the blueprints in it.

Kit, of course, did not simply sit idle. Every few hours, he would chivvy you away from your work, despite how often you had told him that you needed to focus, to get the job done. Instead, he made sure you walked around the camp, speaking to soldiers and civilians, overseeing small disputes - usually they were silliness you could solve with a grunt and nod - and then he would get you to the rations. You made sure to eat exactly the amount you had laid out, to make an example. Sometimes, Amberly would join you and you would both snipe at one another while Kit basked in your company, not Amberly's.

But on the third day, you had had enough.

'I'm a Krieger!" you said, grumping and crossing your arms over your chest. "I don't NEED to eat three times a day! I can eat one time a day. And I've been trained to operate on only four hours of sleep if needs must. ANd these walks! I don't need to walk! I need to work on my designs! So that's final. You cannot get me from this tent!"

Kit had nodded, slowly.

Then he leaned over.

"So what if I took you out back, peeled off every bit of your clothing, one by one, and then slammed you onto your back and fucked your brains out?" he whispered in your ear.

You sat there, silently.

"Um..." you muttered. "K-Kriegers don't...uh..."

His lips started to do things to your throat as he nuzzled at you.

"Don't...um...uh..."

...you ended up getting less work done...that day...

Once the plans were done, you launched into construction. Here, you and Kit and even Amberly worked side by side - hammering out metal with your bare palms, digging ditches, and more importantly...working with plants. You needed to improve their functionality, and so, you tapped the Magos Biologis who had tended to Gitta, taking her chemicals and auspex systems, then working on the best survivable plants. After the first week, you had gotten the crossbreeds you wanted by breeding this plant with that, grafting this there, working on certain submolecular interchanges on the cellular level. Scu-Tau 41 watched with her optical dendrites boggling as you finessed the genetic structures you were trying to work with.

With that done, the next stage of work began.

"This looks a lot like riding your horse around," Amberly called from a ruined tank she perched on.

You were on Gita's back, taking studious notes as you used your knees to guide her left, right, her claws digging up furrows of mud. "It's very simple!" you called out. "The best kind of automated farm is a self replicating system - which means an ecosystem that grows over time. Now, we can't wait the time required, so, we're still going to be using the primary technological structure, but I want the surrounding reforestation to be processed, and we have a lot of large herbivores remaining, which means that I want to test how Gitta works - it'll be fine with hooves, but, claws do work better, so I may want to work on the other horses we have, and the Grox..."

"Do you have any idea what she is speaking of?" Amberly asked Kit.

"She's happy, which is what matters," Kit said, smiling.

"Bah!" Amberly said.

You rode Gitta past her - and felt a kind of fluid...connection with your mount. It was like you and her were one.

Gitta reared. Amberly squeaked - and then Gitta's clawed foreleg snatched her hat from her head and tossed it. You caught it and the two of you rode off as Amberly sprang to her feet. "You thief! You knave! You blackguard! You...you...you...scallywag!"

The quiet times, when the chemicals were bubbling and the crossbreeds were percolating, when Kit was patrolling and Amberly was sleeping, you went to Thark-Thakunen's cell. He may have surrendered, he might have agreed to the terms, but he was still not trusted by anyone else here. He was next to the General, who raved at you every time he got a chance. Fortunately, he also slept soundly.

"I can...almost remember the libraries, now," you whispered, quietly, in the darkness.

"My mentor told me about them. Gold and silver bookshelves, going as far as the eye could see. Visitors from across the imperium, eager to learn, eager to see what lore we've uncovered. Tomes stolen from the Eldar, from...other aliens..." He was quiet for a moment, leaning back in the darkness. "All burned."

"Yeah," you said. Then, grinning shyly. "I happen to have a photographic memory. It's just not my memories."

"Huh," he said.

"Well, it's not exactly photographic. I'm just able to...if i focus very hard, I can remember more details than I'd have thought possible." You were silent for a time. "If Kit's also of the Emperor, does that make our..." You waved your hands. "...like..." you were silent for a moment longer.

Thark chuckled. "No," he said. "Though this is the first time I've ever imagined the Emperor might be akin to the Chaos Gods - containing multitudes."

"How- I...tha..." you spluttered. "He...that...shut up!"

Thark chuckled.

The annoying thing was you were fairly sure he was right.

You harrumphed, then crossed your arms over your chest. "So, if you've never been to Prospero, how did you become a space marine? How...how does that happen?" you asked.

"Well," he said, quietly. "I was born outside of the Imperium. Not...on a traitor planet, or a renegade world. There are just worlds beyond your reach - planets with histories as long and varied as the Imperium that have never seen nor heard of it. Planets with their own gods, and their own ideas about how to live. I grew up on a world like that. The Thousand Sons would come to resupply and refit. They might not be able to get bolt shells from us, but they got space parts for the armor, repairs for their starships. In exchange, they used biomancy to heal the wealthiest of our citizens. It was...equitable. And every time they visited, they would take a single gifted child as a challenge. I was...running gambling scams and avoiding the Psi Corps - our, uh, inquisitors I suppose you'd call them - when they arrived in system. I killed three men and a Psi...an inquisitor to get to the proving grounds, and they sensed that dedication and sent the other students away. They took me." He sighed. "And...I was...changed. They had a gene-seed from one of their dead brothers, and I took his name...Thark-Thakunen."

You were silent for a while. "How...normal."

He chuckled. "The strangeness came later."

He didn't elaborate that night.

On the fifth week, you slept in.

Kit actually poked you awake. You grumbled, turning your face against the pillow in the darkness of your tent, your sleep mask crumpling slightly against the pillow. "Mmmphmmm..>"

"Don't you have work to do?" his voice was amused. You lifted one arm, waving your hand.

"S'done."

You heard him shift in the darkness.

"It's done?" he asked.

"mmmph...bumble..."

"how can it be done? You haven't turned anything on," he said.

"Just wait, I'm sleeping..." You curled up and, thankfully, Kit let you sleep.

When you emerged, it was with a big yawn and a stretch. You slid your mask on, then emerged outside - and saw that you were right. The auto-farm was operating at full efficiency. The central building was mostly unchanged, whirring quietly as the hydroponics operated. The real complexity was in the surrounding landscape. The complexity came in the system of servo-skulls you had set up. They'd only run for one, two centuries, but once they were finished, their jobs would be done. They skirted by the muddy fields and sprayed out the seeds, as they'd been doing for the past week once you had gotten the new breedlines built up. Now, flowers were beginning to bloom, and trees were shooting up, growing bit by bit - fertilized by the fine ash that made up most of the landscape. Vines started to spread along ruins, and you smiled as you saw that everything was on track.

Kit sniffed at the air. "It smells...alive," he said.

"This area can't really support more than our army," you said, nodding. "mostly using the building proper. The spreading plants are gonna be arable in...soon. Ish." You blushed, not wanting to say a few centuries. BUt still.

Felt good.

Kit sighed, quietly. "Do you have a plan after this? Now that food's not going to be an issue."

You considered.

---
What is your plan?

[ ] Wait and see!
[ ] Write in


Health: Fine
Anima: Glowing
Willpower: 5/5
Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
XP: 0 | Solar XP: 2
Major Projects: 0/5
SXP: 4 | GXP: 17 | WXP: 6

You paced back and forth before Kit, rubbing your chin. Thinking spilled out of your mask. "We're not the only ones out there, Kit, so unless Amberly can pull an astropath out of her as-, er, um, hat! I said hat! We're going to have to ether build or find a starship so that we can find out how much of the Imperium is left. In the meantime we have a lack of supplies outside of food and little transportation besides the horses so building a manufactorum or two would be good and there may be other survivors out there so we should send out more scouts (if that hasn't been done yet) and build a vox station to see if anyone is transmitting or listening and expanding food production to handle any increases in numbers those may result in...also the broken orbitals need to be salvaged and while I'm sure 871-Kappa and the other techpriests can handle it I want to build a shuttle to go up to orbit to see if anything up there can be saved." You sighed, then slumped slightly. "There's just so much that needs to be done."

Kit nodded.

You squared your shoulders and lifted your head. "I guess I mean to say that we need to expand... a lot!"

"Mmhm," he said.

Then he grabbed your arm and dragged you off as, overhead, a glittering shooting star streaked through the sky - a bright pinprick that foretold of a future that seemed nigh infinite.

It was a time to work.

It was late night and you were out getting rekaff. You were still working on the basic outlines for the new manufactorum that would have to go up to support the launch operations for orbital salvaging and you needed just that little bit of extra juice. As you walked into the large building that had been thrown up to be the center of food processing and distribution - and was now called the Caff by pretty much everyone in the makeshift hive city that was growing around what had once been an army base - you were quite pleased to see that the place was nearly empty. No one to gawk at you, or worship you or...worse, talk to you. You walked over to the kaff machines and slotted your cup into them. You waited as the sludge driblled and slurped out - then noticed something.

There was a strange, soft, sniffling noise in the place.

You looked left and right - then blinked as you saw that you had missed Amberly, sitting by one of the tables, her face mashed against the metal tabletop. Her shoulders were shaking and it looked like tiny droplets of water were leaking from her eyes. It was an autonomous response humans had to clear their eyes of irritants, and it was sometimes triggered by emotional or physical distress. Fortunately you, like most Kriegers, had been conditioned to not cry unless under the most intense extremis.

You walked towards Amberly, about to tell her that you were much better at not crying when you noticed she wasn't...just crying.

She was crying crying. Her face was scrunched up and her hands were balled against her head.

You blinked slowly. "Um..." you said, quietly.

Amberly jerked her head up. She sniffed and wiped with her hand against her nose, leaving a big gleaming smear on her gloves. She sniffed again, then stammered. "W-What? Oh, good morning, 41, nice...ceiling...we're having!" She blushed - and even with her impressive ability to settle herself in remarkable time...she still had puffy red eyes from tear irritation. You sighed, then walked around and sat down across from her.

"I don't like you," you said.

Amberly scowled at her. You realized that might have been the wrong first sentence.

"I-I mean...that is, I don't...like you! But, uh," you said. "That is, I mean...I was going to say-"

"Yeah, I know," she said, standing up, chair scraping on metal.

"No, wait!" you said, blushing behind your mask, shoulders slumping. "I...damn it, I...when Kit talks, he has this thing where he'll sometimes start on one...tack then, i'd...he'd switch around to another, and like, it makes everything all good in context and...and just..." You sighed. "I don't want you to cry and be sad. So, um, t-tell me what the problem is, and I can fix it!"

She blinked at you.

"You're terrible at this," she said, then sat back down.

"W-Well, I...they don't teach this in basic..." you muttered.

"Heh, that's the first thing they taught me," Amberly said, sniffing. "Important daughter, sent to the Schola Progenium, earmarked to be a commissar..." She cupped her hands together. She looked sad. "I studied every course. I took every note. I memorized every lesson I was taught. How to spot heresy and mutation, when to execute an officer, how to communicate between people. I learned three languages, and four dialects!" She blushed. "I...I just...I just had to be...to be...to be..."

"Like your father?" you guessed, unsure. Could that be her motivation? It felt strange. You never had such an overwhelming impulse to follow an impossibly idealized fantasy - it must be a non-Kreiger thing. Kriegers, after all, were quite able to accomplish their fates in the field of battles without much chance of failure, beyond cowardice.

"Yeah," Amberly said, quietly.

You nodded, slowly. "And how did you do?"

She blushed, then looked down at her cup. "V-Very well, thank you."

You remembered some things you had heard. The way the high general talked. You shifted in your seat. "Okay, but did you?"

Amberly ducked her head down. Her shoulders hunched. "I, um...I tried..." She whispered, softly. "And it didn't...exactly go how the lessons say. And my Dad...my father...his first mission ever, he saved an entire planet. I...I couldn't even talk my general out of killing one." She ducked her head forward. "A-And everyone else was nodding along, and it just...my father wouldn't have done that."

You blushed behind your mask.

"But it's worse," she said, quietly. "N-No one...recognizes me anymore."

"Huh?" you asked.

"Every day, people just...stop noticing me. No one remembers a Commissar Amberly Cain. They remember my father. But they don't remember me. Kit remembers me. Y-You do. I checked. But..." She sighed. "I can reach into minds and make them think of me as anyone but myself. And h-how far does this go? Does my mother remember me? Does my father?" She gulped. "W-What if I...I do everything to be as big a hero as he is, and he doesn't even know it's me?"

You were silent for a while. "Doesn't it matter more that you did good, Amberly? Like...real, material good - not just stuff that makes you popular?"

She was silent as well, looking down at her hands. "I...think it does." She smiled, a bit weakly. "A-And you're right." She perked up, then. "And you're a genius! You can make a thingy that makes people remember me!"

"I, uh, am not sure-"

"That sounds great to me! Thanks 41!" she said, springing to her feet. Her hands went to her hips and she lifted her chin. "Commissar Amberly Cain rides once more to valorous victory!" She beamed with pride at this image, then started to walk off.

"But wait, I don't-"

SHe leaned over and kissed the top of your head.

"Thank you," she said, then turned and headed off. You almost thought she meant for what you said said.

Then her words drifted back to you.

"In advance!"

You scowled. And blushed. Hard.

You were sitting on the green hill that overlooked the army camp - on grass that was growing at a remarkable rate - and tapping a pen against your mask's seal when a stranger came walking towards you. He was a handsome stranger, but still...you didn't recognize him. His skin was the most remarkable shade of dark-brown, with rich highlights that only human skin tones could have. His hair was short and curled and his eyes were warm and purple. Familiar, even. You frowned as he approached and beamed at you - then frowned harder and cocked your head. Something about him was so darn familiar and you couldn't place your finger on it.

"Hey," he said, and despite his voice sounding different, the tone and the way he said it was-

"...Kit?" you asked.

His skin melted and shimmered with silvery fog. When it was gone, Kit was standing before you, his eyes gleaming with delight.

"Neat, huh?" he asked.

"How did you do that?!" You asked.

"Hunted him," he said. "Asked permission first. It was an instinct."

"I...what?" you asked.

"Well, i noticed...if I hunted, say, one of these..." He stepped - and silver flowed. Between blinks, he smoothly turned into one of the razor bladed, sleek, long beaked avians. Fire flashed and he stood before her as himself again, grinning down at her. "I can become it. So, why not with men? Well, I didn't want to kill, so I focused on that, learned a...a different route. I go through the whole hunt like it's practicing firing, with the lasguns set low, so they only singe. Like that."

"Fascinating..." You said. "Whats it like? Being another man?"

"Interesting," he said. "but...less different than you'd think. The Emperor did make us all." He was silent for a moment. "What are you working on?"

"Oh trying to solve the pipeline issue in the manufactorum designs," you said, sighing and grumbling as you glowered down at your documents. "The issue is the essence flow through the crystallic manifolds - I could use Adamant, but all known sources of purified Adamant crystals is orbital, and we can't even begin to make an orbital infrastructure for, like, years at this rate." Your hands went to your hood, yanking it further down against your head. "Auugh. They call me the Warpsmith and I can't even figure this out! It's impossible! I'm...I'm failing the Emperor!"

Kit nodded. "I know how to help."

"How?" you asked, lifting your head. "And don't-"

He did.


And, by the time the moon was overhead, and you were hoarse, he slumped back, panting. Warm steam whistled into the air, two twin thin streams of moisture. Kit regarded his handiwork, tail swishing.

"How was that?" he asked, sounding like he hadn't just been using the most vigorous exercise in the galaxy upon your poor body. Barely able to move, you lifted one arm, and gave him a very, very, very weak thumbs up.

He grunted happily.

You reached out and tried to grab your discarded notes - but before you could scrawl one half-legible equation, his arm looped around you, he hauled you up, slung you over his shoulder, and started to swagger over the hill, cockily naked as if he owned the planet. The only thing he did before starting down towards the camp and your tent was firmly hook your mask back on with one clawed hand.

You, Amberly and Kit sat together around the heavy auspex while 871-Kappa touched his dendrites together.

"M'lady," he said, humbly. "I apologize once more for-"

"It's not your fault, Magos Kappa," you said, hurriedly, your hand going to make sure your mask was settled firmly on your face. It had been a rambunctious morning - Kit had been frisky - and your plans still felt only half done. But this was important. "You were right to call us here."

"I see not why," Amberly harrumphed.

"It's a detected ship in system - approaching our world on a full burn," you snapped.

"It's probably either the Imperium or it's one of our foes - either way, simplicity itself," Amberly said, cockily.

Kit snorted. "I think a lot of the imperium isn't going to be happy with us." He slid his hands into his pockets, his brow drawing in. "But if it's aliens, or Chaos..."

You sighed, then leaned over to the auspex. It was hooked to all the sensoria that the Tech Priests had managed to scrounge together. You considered your options. Considering what you had gotten done...


---
What have you gotten done? Pick two!
[ ] You've refurbished the manufactorum (your soldiers are better armed)
[ ] You've collected the survivors into a single city and provided homes for them (you have more soldiers)
[ ] You've refurbished the surviving orbitals, including long ranged sensor satellites (you have orbital defense/better intelligence)
[ ] You've built a very basic monitor - non-warp capable voidship (you have a voidship capable of flying around in the solar system)

Health: Fine
Anima: Glowing
Willpower: 5/5
Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
XP: 0 | Solar XP: 2
Major Projects: 0/5
SXP: 4 | GXP: 17 | WXP: 6