Xandra winced as a sparking las-welder touched the new augmetic spine implant she was getting, sparks spraying up and skidding along the leaded surgical apron she wore. She laid on her belly, and by looking up, she could see Yolanda, beaming as if she had invented women themselves, standing next to the Interrogator. Xandra had to admit, she was a tasty looking thing - and she saw the faintly unfocused look of the fresh implantation in her purple eyes, and smirked slightly.
"You did cover for her, right?" she asked.
"Of course i did!" Yolanda said, brushing her hand through her hair, while the Interrogator looked at Xandra, her brow furrowing, her lips pursed. Seeing that, Yolanda chuckled. "Don't be so put out, my love. We had to rescue Xan-Xan."
"Don't call me that," Xandra said, as the door to the surgical chamber rapped. A voice came through.
"M'lady, we have the first reports from Krull's people."
"Bring it in, I'm almost done in here," Xandra called out, while the three armed doctor who was working on her scowled and lowered his las-welder.
"You do know this is still surgery, right?" he asked, his voice dripping with acerbic irritation, while the door opened and one of the Cult entered. He was a newly inducted member of the former Orbtz, his body whipcord lean and vicious, with angular features and bright gold-brown eyes. He was dressed in flak armor with the sleeves cut off, a common affectation in the interior rooms of Thedias thanks to the stifling heat that managed to creep into even the drophab's massive structures. He paused, seeing the Interrogator - she looked quite out of place in her carapace armor and gleaming, sorcerously endowed accoutrement. The man blinked again as the Interrogator licked her lips, looking at him with a hungry croon, rising animal like up out of her throat.
"What is it, Menk?" Xandra asked.
"We have the Skavz gang that'll be a good feint picked out - I've been drilling the team on how to make the firefight look good while not risking us too much," Menk said, not quite tearing his eyes from the Interrogator.
Yolanda giggled. "Thank you!" she said. "Say, do you want to knock an interrogator up?"
Xandra snorted, while the Interrogator made a squeak and jerked a bit. "I can control myself!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, but it'd be more fun to not," Yolanda crooned. "And as a biokinetic, you can extend the time it takes to grow as long or as little as you want, hmm? So, just be happy knowing there's a baby in there and you can focus, without anyone being any the wiser." She moved up close behind her, purring. "Come on, Shexia, you know you want a baby in you...they'll be glorious. A future magus. Maybe even three armed too." She caressed along Shexia's armored sides - the touch somehow sensual and erotic, despite slipping over armor plating, teasing against pouches filled with plasma-bottles and monowire grenades. Shexia, her cheeks growing as red as her hair, stammered.
"I-I came for a reason, not...not to..."
Xandra felt the whisper of Yolanda's telepathic communication and smirked, shaking her head. It might seem frivilous, but Yolanda - as ever - had her eye on the long term goal. Another Magus would aid the cult immensely, and ensuring that the interrogator had every mother's instinct burning inside of her to keep herself and her baby safe would ensure no...relapses. She had never heard of a relapse before, but if anyone was going to do it, a biokinetic telepath working for the Ordo Xenos was going to be the one to
do it.
"Well, you can talk while Menk is doing his cultic duty, isn't that right?" Yolanda asked, giggling. "C'mon, Shexia, it's not as if you want to say no...right?"
Shexia bit her lip, her hands touching together. Menk, for his part, was standing very still and looking rather alarmed. "I-I'm gay," he stammered, clearly trying to pick a way between various risks and dangers. Yolanda blinked, somewhat, while Xandra barked out a laugh.
"Y-You allow...such..." Shexia hesitated - confused.
"Well, when the Day of Ascension was in our future, there were some...strategic choices we had to make," Xandra said, then hissed as she felt nerves surge and tingle through her legs. THe doctor pulled away, nodding and giving her a triple thumbs up. SHe swept her blankets off and stood, completely bare and shameless, stretching her arms behind her back as she enjoyed the total return to her former mobility. She enjoyed Yolanda and Shexia's eyes on her. "Breeding is important - but so is rearing. A cult child needs just as much caring for as a normal human infant - more in some cases, depending on how the genetic blending has worked. Some have such terrible trouble with claws, it's so easy to cut yourself." She clicked her tongue. "The Star Children assisted us in maintaining the right balance of breeders and caregivers - and since...to be blunt...
fucking is what keeps us together as a species, the Star Children were quite eager to adjust sexualities as needed. When we needed more caregivers, some would find themselves attracted to their fellow sexes, and when we needed more breeders, then the more Imperially approved-"
"Actually, uh, it's...it depends on which world," Shexia said. "Thedias' opinions on same-sex love is heavily influenced by your founding as a prison world - but in at least three planets in the subsector, there's no issue."
Xandra frowned. "Really now?" She shook her head. "Well, either way...since
you killed the Star Children and made our lives much harder-"
"I did...n...why...damn it, why do I feel guilty about that!?" Shexia hissed.
"Becuase you're one of us now, my love!" Yolanda said, chuckling, then whispered in her ear. "You now see them as beautifully as we do. I bet you want to meet a male Pure and-"
"No!" Shexia said. "Yes! Maybe!" She hissed. "I came to tell you of something important, damn it all. The Star Children are not what you
think."
Xandra frowned. "This again? Those lies exist to-"
Shexia frowned, then closed her eyes. "Read my mind then. Take it from me. My shields are down."
Xandra glanced at Yolanda, then rubbed her chin.
***
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Shexia gasped, her body rocking in time with the brutally powerful thrusts of the miner Jansen, his hips and hers slapping together as they rocked the table. Across the room, gathered around one another, were the four Magi, their backs half turned from the third male to take his shot at knocking the interrogator up. Trilla shook her head slowly. "I..." She hesitated. Yolanda was wringing her hands.
"What do we do?" she whispered.
"I don't know," Xandra said, looking from Yolanda and Trilla to Liliand. Liliand was always the quietest of the group...but when she spoke, her decisions were final, concrete, and focused. She frowned as she rubbed her finger along her ever so slightly purple jaw. Her eyes narrowed to thin slits.
"Oh Star Children!" Shexia's moan was shocked - she had alternated between crying their names despite herself and sometimes moaning out the Emperor's name when orgasm rocked her. Yolanda, who had smiled at first at such words, bit her lip instead. She felt her stomach flip, slowly.
"Maybe she was lied to too?" Xandra said, softly.
"No," Trilla said.
They had all seen the images now. No. Seen was too small a word. Shexia had opened her mind to the Magi, with the pure trust only one telepath could show another. They had swept into her and filled her with their own soul, the connection deeper and more profound than even sex - and instead of the joy and communion that the Magi were used to...they found horror. Betrayal. A shocking, alarming betrayal, deep, deep inside of their very genetics. The Star Children...the Hive Mind...it saw them as nothing but semi-autonomous tools, drones to be disposed of and recycled once their task was complete. The Pure would have turned upon them in a single moment of agony and confusion, tearing them down into shreds to complete their...Day of Ascension.
"T-The children, we almost let that happen to the children," Yolanda whispered, her hand going to her mouth.
"So, we're stuck between
two Imperiums," Trillia said, quietly. "I mean, the St...the hive mind would reprocess us - but what is a servitor?"
They all considered that.
Liliand spoke. "We have to learn what the Pure think."
Everyone looked at her.
"O-Oh Emperor...ah...I didn't know I could take that much cum...fuck...I think...oh Star Children, oh Emperor, oh..."
Everyone glanced back at Shexia, who had slumped half off the table, looking quite dizzy.
Everyone looked back at Liliand. She frowned, intently. "The Pure are a part of us - but they are also one step closer to the Tyranids. They have also been disconnected from the hive mind - and they follow our orders for now. BUt we need to know what their goals are. Do they wish to stay free, with us? And if not...can we convince them? If we can convince them, then what is our goal then? The Child...can she be turned to our new aims, or shall she be abandoned?"
Trilla nodded, slowly. "Our immediate goals remain the same, though. Freedom. Liberty. The Stars." She smiled, slightly. "We'll worry about the Hive Fleets at the same rate as the rest of the galaxy."
"M-Maybe we can be the...thing that turns the tides?" Yolanda whispered. "What if we can do to other cults what has been done here? Imagine if every genestealer was freed from the hive mind!"
Everyone looked at her this time. Liliand reached out, placed her hand on her shoulder, squeezed...and gave her a sad, sad smile.
"Oh, I know the Imperium would still try and kill us, but it was at least an idea..." Yolanda muttered, grumbling as she crossed her arms over her chest.
Trilla patted her head. "Why don't you go lick up Shexia?"
Yolanda stuck her tongue out at Trilla, teasingly.
Then she went to do just that.
***
Interrogator Shexia Af-Baru returned to work after her short excursion as secretly as she had left - but few people noticed much difference in her character, save for a driving energy that pushed her into efforts to clean up the cult and its leftovers. No one in her staff knew that when she was alone, she rubbed her belly and smiled warmly, thinking of the corrupted, xeno-twisted child growing within her. The implanted genestealer organelle that threaded into her body like a fibrous mesh worked into her nerves and pulsed her brain with warm, maternal happiness, protective urges, and a deep sense of peace. She knew it was artificial...and yet, it felt so good. After a lifetime of brutal dedication and cold, unfeeling detachment, she was swallowed by love. Yolanda sometimes brushed against her mind telepathically, and she felt years of torment easing within her with every day.
This drove her to be...
Most thorough.
Getting the data-slate to her lover and her sisters in the cult was actually fairly difficult, considering the sensitivity of the information and how grave Annaelsa, her sage, and Lot considered it. She didn't mind admitting that she agreed with them entirely - even as a new member of the Sisterhood, she found what she had discovered quite alarming.
It seemed that the enemy of an enemy was also, sometimes...
An enemy.
"The
Marks!?" Xandra exclaimed, reading the data slate. "How did you miss this, Yolanda?"
"They did suggest the symphony of pain idea, but it was couched entirely in imperial ideology, I had no idea," Yolanda said, shaking her head.
"They did hide it well," Liliand said, her voice soft. "No disappearances, no murders, no sacrifices. I think they are biding their time even better than we were." She considered. "We did have more of a dead..." She trailed off - wincing. Clearly, the idea of the Day of Ascension being a
deadline hit differently now that they knew.
Trillia shook her head. "How did Shexia find this out?"
"Some minor telepathic scans, attentive paperwork, all part of her cover for trying to find us - she also found her sage, Annalese investigating the three dead Skavtz gangers to make sure that their deaths lined up. Apparently, the sage got it into her head that the firefight was not entirely plausible, but Shexia was able to talk her out of it without too much trouble." Yolanda said, smiling brightly.
"We should turn this sage," Xandra muttered. "If she's that smart."
"...I mean...she is cute in a kind of...sheltered academic way, you know?" Yolanda murmured.
"Focus, sister," Trilla said. "We-"
The door burst inwards. A shouting voice, a commotion. The sisters lifted their heads - as Krull and Ophelia came into the room, flanking a terrified looking slender woman in red and black. She was a ganger, with short cropped hair, goggles, and several burns across her arms and shoulders, and a bleeding cut on her cheek. She pointed. "I fuckin' knew it!" She said, panting. "Do whatever you want to me, just help!"
"What?" Xandra asked, frowning, while Ophelia - her belly no longer swelled as she had given birth three weeks before - and Krull grabbed onto the woman.
"Tent, you Skavtz bitch-"
"Help me, I need fucking help!" Tent shouted, kicking and struggling.
"She burst in through a vent, I think she saw one of the orgies too," Ophelia said.
"Do whatever Chaos shit you need to do to me, just help!" Tent said, her eyes blazing behind her goggles. Xandra flicked her finger and Liliand stood, then walked to her. She took Tent's goggles off, lifted her chin with one delicate finger, and looked into her eyes.
"Calm..." the Magus whispered, and Tent's whipcord lean body tensed, then relaxed. She looked faintly dazed, sagging in the strong arms of the two cultists holding her. "Now, start from the beginning. And do not, ever, infer that we worship
them." She said, her lip curling in distaste. Tent whimpered, nodding. Her voice had the quiet drone of someone who had been well and truly hypnotized.
"We was doing collection...then a...yellow giant came into the hab. Walked right up to us and started to give us orders. Senti told him to frak off...the giant killed him. There were two others. We shot at them. Didn't work. They just...they just gathered up the whole...the all of us...I ran. I hid. They took em all..."
The magi exchanged looks.
***
"You went to the surface, why?" Shexia asked, frowning at the vox pict of Captain Helgastram.
"Slaves," Helgastram said.
"...slaves..." Shexia said, slowly.
"Yeah, why? Do you want some? Get your own, then," Helgastram said.
Shexia felt the strangest kind of...double vision. It was like she was seeing two images of herself - the one that would have seen this as utterly normal, and now the one that had been infected by something far more pernicious than even the urge to be mounted and bred by a xenos creature as if she was a mare in heat.
People shouldn't be slaves. You can't just take them from their...homes?
"What are you using the slaves for?" Shexia asked.
Helgastram, who had not removed his helmet, didn't even sign off.
Shexia frowned, leaning back in her seat. The only reason they'd want slaves was for armsmen and logistics operations - the Marines Malevolent were even less healthy about their sexualities than Iron Fists. She rubbed her temple with her finger.
They're going to extract everything from Thedias they can, then leave, aren't they?
She frowned.
Great.
---
Ruh roh! One gang is down - and you didn't even do it!
[ ] Attack BLANK (Might + Treasure VS Might + Territory)
[ ] Being Informed (Influence + Soverignty vs Diff 1)
[ ] Spying on BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Influence BLANK to do BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Increase your Sovereignty (Territory + Treasure vs Diff [Current Sovereignty])
[ ] Police BLANK (Might + Sovereignty vs Influence + Might)
[ ] Rise in Stature (Sovereignty + Treasure vs Diff [Current Influence]
[ ] Train and Levy Troops (Sovereignty + Territory vs Diff [Current Might]
[ ] Unconventional Warfare (write plan in)
[ ] Wait and Recover
Also, there's a SPECIAL VOTE!
[ ] Talk to Pure (roll Sov flat, modified by plan. Success = the pure join whole heartedly! Fail = CIVIL WAR????)
[ ] Leave off, for now (no roll)
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE LEVITHAN
(Cycle 1, Month 3 - the Month of Scampering)
MIGHT: 2 | TREASURE: 5(4) | INFLUENCE: 4(3) | TERRITORY: 1 | SOVEREIGNTY: 4
Shexia's Lackys
MIGHT: 2| TREASURE: 3(2) | INFLUENCE: 3(1) | TERRITORY: 0 | SOVEREIGNTY: 4(3)
