A Light Not Extinguished

Five Thousand Years: Part 3

Kathicia watched mutely as she was escorted through the doorways of the ship. There was a pair of psychic suppression manacles on her wrists, with two dark-clad figures next to her. They marched her into a room filled with a variety of measurements, and a fellow psyker dressed in the same black garb.

"I wasn't expecting more today." The interrogator took a seat before her. "Please remain still and do not resist. This is a procedure to gauge your psychic strength." He slipped on two needle-tipped gauntlets. "Please remain calm." Without warning, he stabbed the needles into the sides of her neck.

Kathicia carefully muted her soul, projecting a false, unassuming shell around herself while pouring phantom memories and personality into it, colouring it with a palette of trepidation, apprehension and confusion to appear as a befuddled psyker of middling power, letting the assigner run his senses over it. Carefully, ensuring that her activity would go unnoticed, she stole as much information as she could from the mind of the figure in front of her.

"She's Delta-Class. Place her in one of the standard stasis vaults." The Psi-Assigner said, retracting his arms after a good thirty minutes. Discreetly, or so he thought, one of the Black Sentinels pricked the back of her neck with a syringe. Kathicia let the drug take effect, her soul still secretly observing everything.

The Black Sentinels escorted her body on a stretcher to a massive wall of cells, before slotting her into one of them. Kathicia felt a stasis field take effect, time slowing around her like a gel. Kathicia left the fake shell of her soul in the cell while her real one slipped outside the bounds of frozen time, observing all that was happening within the ship and listening.

All around her were the frozen souls of her fellow psykers. There were a number of strong Blanks on the ship that were exclusively female for some reason, along with a contingent of heavily armored, exclusively male transhumans. The ones in black armor— 'The Black Sentinels' made up a good amount of the forces patrolling the ship, alongside scores of naval armsmen.

Kathicia noticed one of the psyker souls stirring, weakly pushing at the slowed time around her. Hurriedly, Kathicia cast an illusion around it that projected a facade of normalcy, before plucking the soul out of stasis and placing it in a temporary pocket of space inside the Warp.

"Well, hello there." Kathicia greeted. "And just what do you think you're doing, child?" The stray soul belonged to that of a female child, her age no more than seven at most.

The girl gave a frightened yelp and stumbled backwards. "Who- who are you?"

"Hush now. You could have gotten into real trouble if they noticed you poking around like that." Kathica had glimpsed at the backup cells filled with sedative drugs, isolation, discordant noise and strobing lights, things that reminded her of barbaric practices during Old Night. Kathicia conjured two chairs and a table. "Not many can stay awake in a stasis field, you know. Why don't we talk for a while?"

"Mom says I shouldn't talk to strangers! I don't even know your name." The young girl mumbled. With the strength to resist a stasis field, Kathicia gauged her to be at least a low Beta-Class psyker. Like Kathicia's current disguise, she was a pale-faced hiver too, with green eyes and black hair.

Kathicia hesitated. Right now, she could pluck the knowledge that she needed right from the child's mind. But maybe she could just talk to someone and pretend to be human for a few fleeting moments.

"My apologies for not properly introducing myself." Kathicia gave a disarming smile. "My name's Kelmah. Would you like some food? Anything you want."

"But you're not a cook! You don't have a uniform!"

Kathicia laughed. "Maybe I'm a cook in secret." She winked. "What's your favourite food?"

"Pastries!" The girl shouted. "The ones that taste yummy."

"Child, that's not very descriptive."

"Um, the ones that Mom brings home on Crusade Day!"

Kathicia read the surface thoughts of the girl that were triggered by mention of the food. "Alright then. Let me just..." She reached out behind the girl's ears and plucked a piping hot golden-brown pastry from thin air. "Something like that?"

The girl eagerly grabbed it from her hands, devouring it in two bites. "So," Kathicia cajoled. "What's your name, child?"

"My name's Lari!" Lari held out her hands. "Do you have more?"

This time Kathicia snapped her fingers, and an entire platter of the pastries appeared on the table. "Why don't you tell me about yourself?"

"Okay!" Her caution forgotten, Lari began to ramble about her life. The girl was apparently born to two Administratum adepts; she lived somewhere in the upper levels of one of the northern Hive Spires of a planet called Galaspur in the neighbouring system.

"Mom says I'm going to be a good clerk someday! The bestest!" Lari said proudly. "Do you think I'm going to be a good clerk on Terra? The big soldiers in black coats said I was going there! Mom and Dad say it's the best place in the galaxy!"

"Really?"

"Yeah! It's all big and gold, and the Emperor works there all the time! They were sad when the people in black took me away though. Dad was crying lots."

"Your mom and dad didn't come with you?" Kathicia frowned, while grabbing a pastry and nibbling on it.

"I don't know, the soldiers didn't tell me." Doubt appeared on Lari's face. "They probably came on the ship, right?"

Kathcia cast out her aethersight. They weren't. "I don't think so, child. The ship is very cramped." Tears began to pool in Lari's eyes. "How about this?" Kathicia quickly interrupted. "I'll make sure they come to Terra, alright? There's plenty of ships going there, I'm sure they can catch one."

"Really?" Lari blinked. "Are you someone important, Miss Kelmah? Dad says only the very important people can tell the ships where to go."

"Well I... used to be. I used to work with these shiny robots, see? But then they all burned down and I couldn't work with them anymore. I had to break some of them myself." Kathicia tried to smile to hide the pain. It came out more as a grimace.

"Ooooh! Just like the silver people in their red robes!"

"...yeah, exactly. Like them."

"But you said 'used to', doesn't that mean you don't have a job anymore?"

Kathicia gave a bittersweet smile. "I'm still plenty strong. I'm sure I can make the important people all change their minds."

"...sorry." Lari ducked her head.

"What are you apologizing for, Lari?"

"You look sad about losing your job. Dad says I should be more careful asking other people questions."

"No, you don't need to do that. I've had... a lot of time to get over it." Kathicia gave a forced laugh. "Why don't you ask me about something else?"

"Um, then what are you doing here, Miss Kelmah?"

"Well I'm... not from around here. I came on this ship because I want to go to Terra. I have an old friend there I want to see."

"But Terra's so big! How will you find your friend?"

The psyker chuckled. "Well, I dont think I'll have a problem with that. He's very... shiny."

At the same time, Kathicia continued to listen to every conversation ongoing in the ship. Then she paused as she heard something that she didn't like. Four months to reach Terra? She didn't have that much time. She didn't know if she could tolerate being stuck in a stasis cell for so long. Not after being trapped for five thousand years—

"Miss Kelmah?" Lami asked, watching Kathicia furrow her eyebrows. "Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not." Kathicia said after a long moment. "Listen, child. I have to go now." The stasis field around her physical body failed, a single leg kicking open the shelf door as her body floated out. Alarm klaxons began to blare on the entire ship while the suppression manacles popped off her wrist, soldiers running towards the breach point. "Good talk. Remember, don't let them know I was talking to you, all right? You could get in big trouble. Promise?"

"Promise!"

"Good girl. I'll see you later when this is all over." Kathicia tapped the girl's forehead, sending Lari into a deep sleep as her spirit stepped back into her physical body. She flexed her arms, the suppression manacles popping off as she reverted back to her true appearance.

A squad of Black Sentinels had already surrounded her— twenty of them, all armed.

"Renegade psyker! Stand down and comply with Imperial law!"

"No. I don't think I will." Without ceremony, Kathicia shedded her disguise, reverting to her original form while casting away the false spirit-shell of hers. A figure armored in onyx who seemed to be commanding the squad at the back screamed, falling down to one knee as his eyes began to weep blood, faced with the sudden appearance of a newborn star in the Warp that radiated cold lightning, looming over the entire ship. Every psyker that wasn't locked down in the stasis holds of the Black Ship convulsed, unable to handle the raw, unfiltered presence of humanity's second strongest psyker.

To his credit, one of the warriors at the front only hesitated for a moment, before his Neuropathic Spear swept up and jabbed at Kathicia.

"Don't!" Kathicia shouted. "You'll hurt yourself—"

The spear stabbed into her gut. Neuropathic Capacitor-Spears were designed to absorb a psyker's energy, depowering the target while storing the energy for a few seconds so the user could redirect it as a blast. Stabbing it into an Alpha-Plus psyker was like having a fuse box being struck with a lightning bolt.

The entire spear flared bright before detonating in a white-hot nova. The Void Sentinel was sent flying back, his entire left torso blown off.

The rest of the Black Sentinels opened fire, lascarbines at full auto with no chance of missing in the tight corridor. One of them had a plasma gun, adding searing bolts of plasma to the volley.

All of it was held back by raw force as Kathicia strode forward, pulling the commander's torso to her and jamming a hand into his guts. Being an anti-soul, Void Sentinels, while not as potent as Sisters of Silence in terms of nullification, were still highly resistant to the workings of the Warp. It ultimately didn't matter, Kathicia forcibly regrowing the missing bone and muscle with his body fighting every step of the way, leaving him fully healed before setting him down on the floor.

Kathicia looked at the squad's direction, the suspended lasbolts in the air transforming into steel chains that sprung forwards and bound every Black Sentinel. Without pausing, the psyker began to walk in the direction of the ship's command bridge. Doors simply evaporated into white mist in front of her; Solar Auxilia blacked out in her proximity, the psyker giving their souls the equivalent of a light tap and momentarily disruption the connection between the body and spirit.

The way to the command bridge was blocked by a set of heavy adamantium blast doors. Kathicia waved a hand, and they simply melted into slag, revealing the dozens of Sisters of Silence and Astartes that were arrayed in a half-circle with all their guns pointing towards the doorway, with the command crew and scores of naval armsmen.

Without need for a command, all of them opened fire at the same time. A storm of bolter shells and psy-null bullets filled the space between them, with every projectile dissolving into sand the nanosecond they came within an inch of Kathicia's body.

The woman took slow, leisurely steps forward. Dimly, she noted that three hooded male transhuman warriors in the back were attempting to interfere with her defense; a quick scan with aethersight revealed that their armor had signal beacons and was void sealed. She took another step forwards, and the three Librarians were teleported across the entire solar system into empty space. More information was taken from their minds. These were Astartes, the angels of this 'Imperium'. And like the Men of Iron milennia before them, they knew no fear. Adam always did like to repeat his greatest successes.

Roaring bloody howls, the Astartes pulled out force weapons and charged her. Kathicia tilted a head, and every single synth-muscle in their power armor turned to solid rock, all of them unanimously crashing to the floor.

Behind them were the Sisters of Silence coming at her with Executor Greatblades, only for the ground to open up and swallow them, trapping their legs in solid steel. Every other soul in the room met the same fate as well, walls and ground enveloping them in their cold embrace.

The sole Oblivion Knight among them didn't hesitate, grabbing the Psyk-out grenade hooked to her belt and hurling it at Kathicia. Packed with the cremated ashes of fallen Sisters of Silence, these incredibly rare relics possessed an unparalleled potency against individuals with psychic abilities. They were renowned for their ability to bring swift and decisive ends to those of lesser psychic prowess, extinguishing their life force in an instant. However, their impact on those of higher psychic grades was equally profound, rendering them instantly insensate, stripped of their formidable powers.

The grenade detonated with a sound that wasn't a sound. The Astartes and Sisters stared in incomprehension. Kathicia looked curiously at the explosion in her palm that was no bigger than a golf ball, frozen in place by sheer telekinetic might. "The remains of Blanks? Crude, but effective. You just need one a few million times bigger."

She blew on it, and the anti-Warp matter was transmuted into a stark white dove that flapped its wings, settling on the Oblivion Knight's helmet. Another flicker of thought from Kathicia, and the ground reached up to bind their arms as well.

Kathicia finally reached one of the ship's command consoles, gently laying a palm on it as her eyes glowed bright. The entirety of the ship's cogitator databanks was copied and converted into psychic matter before Kathicia devoured it all in a single second. The psyker closed her eyes, before opening them and looking at the world with all the knowledge that a high-ranking Imperial military officer had.

Behind her, one of the Astartes gave a feral howl, muscles bulging and fur erupting as he broke free of his locked armor and leaped towards Kathicia, only for him to be suspended in midair right as his elongated claws were about to touch Kathicia's bare neck.

"What is this?" Kathicia muttered without looking back. The Legionary in his newly-awakened, animalistic state strained in her telekinetic grasp, spitting and swearing, but it was all for nothing. "A flaw? ...No, an intended feature. He always does the most unorthodox things." She turned to face the Space Marine fully. "Regardless, I don't think that's healthy for you." She tapped his now-elongated snout.

In a feat that even the most skilled biomancers of the Arcanist Legion couldn't perform, Kathicia casually shut off the entirety of the Vargaz organ subsystem in two seconds, forcibly reverting the Astartes back to his normal form as a cloud of shedded fur settled on the floor, bestial features vanishing. The psyker gently laid him on the floor, the process having knocked the Legionary out.

Her aethersight flickered, and Kathicia felt rather than saw the escort fleet around the Black Ship open fire at it. Someone must have alerted them as to the compromised state of the Black Ship, and now they would do anything at it. Already she could sense the first salvo of macrocannon shells hurtling towards the ship she was on, due to impact in seconds. Even with the comparatively advanced technology of the Black Ship, it was still only one ship. The sheer volume of projectiles would easily blow it apart into shreds.

"No escape for you, witch." The leader of the attackers growled. "You'll pay for desecrating the sacred rite of the Draugr!"

Kathicia sighed and waved a hand. Warp rifts opened up to swallow every projectile headed towards the Black Ship, while at the same time every escort ship in the fleet lost all power except for the life support systems, shown on the command bridge's auspex displays. An apprehensive silence filled the room; although it was said that a Space Marine felt no fear, they could be aware of when a foe was utterly beyond their caliber.

+I cut off the power supply to the fleet's weapons. Everything including your bindings and armor will be back to normal in... ten minutes. Please remain calm.+ Kathicia announced, her voice reverberating psychically across the entire fleet. +I'll be on my way soon enough.+

"You won't escape." The Astartes snarled. "The entirety of the Black Ships will be looking for you. The Silent Sisterhood. The Primarchs—"

"Escape? Who said anything about escape, Thayn Askald?" Kathicia Jorenn turned to face him, eyes now glowing a brilliant cobalt blue. "No, you seem to misunderstand my intentions. Why would I run away? The Emperor and I have unfinished business, and now I know he is on Terra."

Kathicia reached out and drew a short vertical glowing line in the air with a finger, which expanded to become a rectangular gateway into the Warp. "I have so much to tell him, after all." The Alpha-Plus psyker stepped into the portal and vanished, the rift sealing shut behind her.

/-/

True to her word, the bindings vanished after ten minutes.

Eirar Askald, Thayn of Wild Hunt wasted no time, immediately sprinting over to the Ship's master vox and punching in the relevant commands as the ship descended into terrified anarchy. "Lex-master. Lex-master, status report!"

"The light..." A wizened voice mumbled. " Bright. Too bright. Funerary star of a dead Age..."

"Lex-master! Pull yourself together! The Imperium's fate depends on it!"

That seemed to shake the Astropath out of his stupor. "I... yes, Thayn."

""I am initiating Protocol Exigent Call. Send a warning message to Primarch Rogal Mauer and Captain-General Valdor at the highest strength possible, then to the Silver Knights and the other defense forces until the Lex-Array burns out completely. Terra must be warned."

"At your command." A note of steel entered the old Astropath's voice.

"Thayn!" One of the Astartes under him shouted. "Our Wyrd Callers are alive! On the other side of the system, but still alive!"

As Eirar Askald listened to vox-communications over the data feed, it quickly became apparent that the ship had suffered no casualties at all. The psyker had even healed an Onyx Sentinel who had suffered a catastrophic weapon malfunction. Which made absolutely no sense, because when he had glimpsed those burning eyes, he had known deep down with absolute certainty that the witch could have destroyed the entire fleet and left no survivors behind.

So why didn't she?

Oblivion Knight Jalan Kerrius stood next to him, reaching up to where the dove was still sitting on her head and crushing it to a bloody pulp in her head. Something like that should not exist. She signed.

The Astartes turned to her. "You are more experienced than me in matters of witch-hunting, Sister. Has any psyker ever done that before?"

No. The strongest I participated in capturing does not even come close. To entirely cancel a fleet's salvo like that without even a hint of stress... that is beyond the bounds of the Assignment Scale entirely. Jalan pulled off her helm to reveal a troubled face. I only know of three individuals who can do such a thing.

Eirar felt something very close to fear slither up his spine as he realized the immensity of the threat headed towards Terra.

/-/

Encrypted Lex-Signal dated M31. 378.

Priority level: Alpha-Primaris

Target: All authorities in charge of defending the Sol System

WARNING

RENEGADE PSYKER HEADED TOWARDS THRONEWORLD

ALPHA-PLUS

TARGET HAS DISPLAYED FULL CONTROL OF PSIONIC CAPABILITIES AND COMPLETE IMMUNITY TO PSY-NULLIFICATION

THREAT LEVEL: EXTREMIS-OMEGA

ALERT THE EMPEROR

ALERT THE EMPEROR