Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

156 – Upgrades for the whole family

“Oh, this is … disorientating,” Bob mused aloud, stumbling a little as a hand reached up to cradle his temples while the other reached over to grab onto Fae for support. “I can see. I can see so much … ”

“What’s wrong with him?” Fae asked in worry, turning back to look at me standing a few metres behind with an anxious frown marring her pretty face. 

“Nothing is wrong with him of course,” I said, crossing my arms as I nodded at the man. “He just needs a moment to get used to his increased mental capacities and all the new sensory information he is getting.”

I had also upgraded almost every single cell in his body, paying special attention to his brain, circulatory system and bone marrow. With how he was now, he should live for a comfortable five thousand years before his genes started to deteriorate.

Of course, I could just put them back to top condition if I was around, but if not … well, then I’d likely be far too dead to care what happened to Bob.

When I felt him going from freaking out to curiously looking around, testing his improved senses and the score of sub-brains I’d connected to his main one, I stepped over to him.

“Look at that wall,” I said, pointing off into the distance where the enormous hexagonal walls running around the eventual city limits rose up from the bushy green undergrowth. “Tell me what you see.”

He blinked, his eyes glazing over as I practically felt his thoughts crashing into each other before he wrangled the hundreds of thoughts coming from his sub-brains into order. I smiled, happy with my choice of giving these upgrades to the most stubborn human I’d ever met. If his will was strong enough to keep him alive for centuries, I was sure he could handle his mind getting a few add-ons.

Shaking his head a little, Bob narrowed his eyes and ran his gaze over the towering walls from left to right, his thoughts now working together like the thousand cogs of a great machine. 

He had sub-brains shaped to accommodate the mindset of various Mechanicus adjacent ideologies. Some more I’d personally crafted to think like architects of Earth would have thought in the 21st century and the last bunch he had modelled after Earth Caste Tau minds.

I had more upgrades prepared for him, but those would have to wait until I dragged his soul into my Realm. It wouldn’t do to give him psychic upgrades only for some enterprising daemon to latch onto the connection and eat his soul.

It was unlikely, seeing as the man had fought off daemon corruption before, but I was pretty sure those were just idle lesser daemons taking a shot at it out of boredom, not determined daemons of a greater calibre hellbent on doing at least some damage to me to please their masters. Nope, I was not going to risk it. 

I was reasonably sure some form of a Chaos retaliation was already on its way to my new world, probably in the form of a Chaos war-band from a nearby world controlled by them. There was a good number of those in the Jericho Reach, more than there were Tau-controlled Systems even.

Not that I was too worried. They’d have to drag a fully manifested Greater Daemon over here, one that would be more powerful than the pseudo-manifestation of Ka’Bandha had been. Maybe a Daemon Primarch. 

Anyway, I felt Bob coming to a conclusion and nodding as he turned to me with slight hesitance. I nearly rolled my eyes as I said, “Speak.”

“I see … imperfections,” he said, eying me like I was going to bite off his head for finding fault with my personal creations. I raised my eyebrow with an easy smile on my lips, which had the desired effect, and he relaxed, finally spitting out his reasons. “It is needlessly large for the sort of wildlife it is supposed to defend from, and it wouldn’t need to be even half as tall or thick to ward off even a dozen Astra Militarum regiments. The materials used should be more than enough in even half the quantities to stop most artillery equipment known to exist in their tracks too. Furthermore … I’d say the hexagonal design is needlessly specific and doesn’t make use of the natural environment around us, though I am guessing there is a reason for the design beyond just for it to look imposing?”

“It does,” I said, shrugging. “I’m not sure how much use it will be, but I have anti-daemon Wards engraved into the insides of that wall and the hexagon is what lends itself best for those kinds of protections. As far as I know, at least, I didn’t have enough time to really … pick the brains of the experts on the field I’d come across.”

“There are such experts?” Bob asked, then shook his head. “Of course there would be. I heard rumours about an Inquisitorial Order specialising in opposing the advance of daemon and eliminating their influence on mankind.”

“Yep, the Ordo Malleus, they’re called.” I grinned. “Though I was talking about their militant arm, the Grey Knights. Unfortunately, the squad I’d ‘come across’ got somewhat obliterated by the Daemon they’d been supposed to banish. I’ll have to find some other ones sometime … but until then, even if it's just superstition, I’ll keep the shape as it is. As for the wall being needlessly large, sure it is, but I have an abundance of energy at the moment and have more than enough to make the defences imposing rather than efficient.”

“I see,” Bob said, taking another look over the walls. “So you’d like me to lean more towards Imperial architectural styles? Make ‘em all imposing and gargantuan?”

“Just where it makes sense, military and state building,” I said, taking a moment to think about it. “When we have those sorts of things anyway. I don’t need regular residential stuff to be cumbersomely large. Also, I do not want the neo-gothic style the Imperium uses to as much as breathe the same air as my buildings. I want sleeker stuff, more similar to Tau styles of architecture.”

“Understood,” he said, looking back at the walls and the rolling hills between our spot right at the foot of the central fortress and said walls. “Am I to construct something of a transportation system? Residential buildings? What exactly am I supposed to build and more importantly how? I might have all these improvements, but it would take me centuries to build everything by hand.”

“I have something in mind for that,” I said, turning my eyes on the nearly fidgeting Eldar standing off to the side. Fae stiffened, her eyes widening momentarily as I stared into them before she bowed her head slightly. “If you are willing to work together of course. I’d link you up with the construction crew I’d built, but with Fae already being in my Realm and you not, it is safer to let her handle it.”

It would also give something to do to the Eldar, making her far less likely to start thinking up ways of her own to be ‘useful’ — ways I’d likely disagree with — which was almost as important as keeping the little mind-link safe from chaos corruption.

“I’d be glad to be of help,” she said, sending a subtle glance at her human. “Especially so if it meant staying near him.”

“Stellar.” I clapped my hands with a grin. “Give me a hand.”

She did, placing her hand into my outstretched palm with the care that would make you think my hand was made of glass and she thought it’d break from a harsh tug. I sent a surge of bio-energy into her, quickly forming a tiny psychic node near her brainstem and linking it up with her mind.

“I’m going to link your mind up with the workers,” I said. “Tell me if you can’t handle the mental strain. I can lessen it by giving you a sub-brain to act as a buffer, but I’m afraid that would make the link much more … removed and detached from your main consciousness.”

That would have been the way I’d do this if Bob was my subject, but Fae was an Eldar, and a fairly powerful psyker by human standards so I had higher expectations of her mental prowess.

“I can handle it,” Fae said with something far too close to worship shining in her eyes.

I narrowed my eyes, making her go stiff as I spoke. “Tell me if you can’t handle it. That was not a request or a superfluous nicety. I want to know if I have to make modifications to it for you to do what I ask you to do with maximum efficiency. Understood?”

“Yes … “Fae said, looking down with a strange mix of shame and rising adoration for me. The latter almost made me facepalm. “I’ll be sure to speak of any trouble I’m facing with utilising your blessing.”

“It’s not a blessing,” I said, keeping my tone level. “It is an organic addon that I’m going to remove once this is done. You are an Eldar and as such, already biologically as close to perfection as possible. Me adding my little additions to that would likely hold you down. This is merely temporary.”

“I understand,” Fae said resolutely. “What must I do?”

“Wait a moment,” I said, my eyes going distant as I teleported over my pre-made bio-forms made specifically for construction work. There were hundreds of them, with various functions built into them all. I reached out to them, creating a web of psychic power linking up with the psychic nodes I’d placed in them all. I set the hierarchy as I’d wanted it, separating them into scores of different teams and setting leaders for them all before slowly braiding the links, pulling them towards the node I’d placed in Fae. “Ready? This might be disorientating … or perhaps even painful. I’ve never done anything like this on an Eldar so I have little in the way of a dataset to predict how it’ll go.”

It shouldn’t hurt her, and I was pretty sure it would not kill her, even if I royally fucked it up somehow. If she was alive, I could fix just about anything short of her mind getting obliterated, but I doubted that’d happen. Just brushing up against her mind was enough to tell me that Eldar had much more robust minds than humans. 

It made sense. After all, no Eldar has ever fallen to Chaos as far as I knew, not unwillingly at least. Hell, even the Drukhari were just doing what they had to keep themselves alive and not out of any sort of worship for the Prince of Pleasure.

A human mind might as well be a ball of crumpled paper compared to the steely hardness of an Eldar’s mind.

“I am ready,” Fae said and I could feel her mind roiling with glee before she scrunched it up and firmed its boundaries in preparation. 

I nodded and as gently as I could manage, linked the telepathic web up with her node and set her as the highest authority in it. She wobbled a little, her eyes closing as she turned her entire focus towards the mental link now banging on the door of her mind.

She cracked open her defences and let in the tiniest trickle of it, letting a mental link of her own braid itself into the mixture before locking it down firmly and not letting it link up to more than she allowed. It seemed almost instinctive to her, like how humans closed their eyes when something came towards it quickly, or how they snapped up their hands to dampen the force of a fall. The Aeldari really were built differently. 

When her eyes fluttered open, her gaze jumped around for a bit aimlessly before her head snapped to the side where a hundred leaders of the construction teams stood. They ranged between anything from the Tyranid equivalent of trucks, excavators, bulldozers and just about every shape and for every function me and my mind-cores could come up with. Though a good half of them were more humanoid, with builds mode similar to Astartes, and three pairs of dexterous hands and even a tail I’d made to mimic the functions of a mechadendrite. Those last ones would be the all-purpose builders while the rest would be the ‘equipment’.

I felt a pulse flash out from Fae’s node, race along the braided link and split to head for five of the humanoid bio-forms. They stepped forward, and I watched on with a growing grin as they started something similar to a stretching routine as Fae tested her control over them while also simultaneously getting a grasp of their power.

Soon, they were clawing through the dirt with large, clawed hands acting as shovels while the more dexterous hands worked to grab rocks and lift out boulders to wave them around. I’d given them about as much strength as a regular Astartes would have and Fae was just getting started on getting a grasp on them.

Best of all, while I could feel a strain building up on her as she directly controlled five different bodies at once, it was minor at best. That was good. I had given brains to each worker which would allow them to have some autonomy, leaving Fae to only give them orders, but taking over could be a good way to teach them how to do things better.

Also, once everything was running smoothly, she could just sit back and order around the leaders of the teams, letting them relay her orders to the workers under them and spare her even just this much mental strain.

“Those will be your workers,” I said in a near whisper, nudging Bob with my shoulder as I watched Fae reach for one of the excavator-like bio-forms and make it dig. “Think they’ll be good? Also, if you have any ideas for new types of models, just give me a list with any specifications you have in mind and I’ll make them.”

“These will be perfect,” Bob said with some awe and a lingering sense of underlying queasiness at the sight of something so clearly alien entering his tone. “I … already have some ideas, if these ones are examples of every ‘model’ I’ll have access to?”

“Well, don’t be shy.” I raised an eyebrow. “I’m all ears. Better ask for them now while I’m near and largely without anything more important for me to do than later.”

“I’ve been thinking of something large that could be used to burrow underground and speed up the construction of any tunnels we’ll need to build,” Bob started, his eyes glazing over as the grand machinery that was now his mind spun. “I’ll also have to ask for something that can elevate some of these workers into the air for the more gargantuan buildings … perhaps something like arcane, or perhaps a flying platform if either is possible and … “