“She inserted her braid into a datajack without even thinking it was unusual, and started immediately pulling up general galactic history texts. I did not press the issue, wondering if it was due to her being a Null Psion,” Philius reported.

“Hmmm. An interesting note. Also, did she say whether this Null Psion discipline could be taught to others?” the Coronal Duke asked.

Philius and Dorval looked at one another, and both sighed at the same moment. Philius held up a data stick and handed it over. “Only copy, sirs.”

Both men looked curious. Duke Parablum plugged it in and reviewed the small amount of contents with his counterpart.

Duke Rimval was dead silent. Duke Parablum stared. “By the Emperor...”

“Can this be proven?” Duke Rimval questioned, his voice deadly calm.

“Only by trying, sir,” Philius offered. “Mutations of various sorts in psionics are not unusual, as you know, nor are odd Wild Talents. However, she has no track of psi-active genetics at all, at least as we commonly understand them, and her arguments are concise and agree with commonly accepted basic psionic theory. It is simply that no one has ever arranged the details in such a way as to create a Path like this.”

“Wherever she is from has a psionic foundation of the highest caliber,” Duke Parablum stated with utmost gravity. “If this is true, it could shake the Empire!”

“It is more than that. It is hope against the Great Enemy,” Duke Rimval murmured. That he and Parablum had swapped observational viewpoints nobody commented on.

Any human strong of body and heart can be a Null Psion, if they are not Psionic...

The implications were huge. Psi-actives were a mere tithe of the population, and even those with the genes didn’t always become active, and sometimes were simply mentally incapable of controlling their gifts. On the other side, random mutations, Warp energies, alien sciences, and worse could spur the psionic gift out of nowhere, usually to disastrous effect.

But... if any person with a strong enough physique could become this Null Psion, gather a Nimbus, manifest a mindclaw?

The numbers of potential psions was unthinkable...

And... they weren’t susceptible to the Warp!...

Only copy of the file, indeed...

“I trust she has been warned not to spread this information?” Duke Rimval inquired coldly.

“Emphatically, sir. She didn’t seem to think it was very important, but she agreed.”

The two Dukes were silent with their own thoughts, looking at the standard table format and explanation of the Path of the Null Psi, written down in common language, very easy to understand.

“She comes from a place where Null Psions are common,” murmured Duke Rimval. “Could the Warp even reach such a place?”

“Would they even allow it to?” Duke Parablum responded, getting more to the point, and everyone fell silent again.

At last Duke Rimval stirred. “Let us assume that something hostile to the Warp dropped her here. The Curse upon her is a seal upon her knowledge, so that it might not be so easily sensed, or spread, and her age further a way of disguising her status and position. If she is able to access that knowledge, the benefits she could bring to the Empire are incalcuable.”

“Victory over the Great Enemy?” Duke Parablum nodded.

“However, there is no way we can concentrate attention on her. The Enemy lives in the Warp, and is supernaturally sensitive to the ebb and flow of human thought. If we start focusing the attention of the Empire on her over this matter, action will be taken to eliminate her at all costs.”

Knights and Umbrans looked at one another. ‘At all costs’ went way, way up the scale...

Duke Parablum pulled out the datastick, glanced at it, and it fell to powder in his hand. He punched a button, and the datacore of his computer rose from his desk. With a tap, it was gone, too.

“Assume that Duke Rimval and I are being watched passively by forces whose subtlety is beyond us. We cannot guard our thoughts properly against such forces.

“The two of you, on the other hand, are not being watched, as junior members of what is, in the end, minor houses of our Orders.” The Coronal Duke’s face was iron cold as he spoke. “Duke Rimval and I will delete any portion of this knowledge from our minds. That will leave the two of you as the only two members of our Orders who are aware of the potential of what this girl might represent.

“Raise her up. Give her what training she wishes, access to what she needs. Let her know the implications of what she knows. If she is a Null Psion as she says, her thoughts cannot be read, she is invisible to the Warp. She can manifest changes that the entities of the Warp cannot anticipate nor see.

“Be her friends and mentors, and save the Empire.”

Both of the young men in front of him swallowed, despite themselves, then steeled themselves. “Yes, sir. And if what she spoke of is not real?”

“Then we have lost nothing but some nonsense and a few files I didn’t need, anyways.” Which was true enough.

---------

The two Dukes, one live and one on holo, watched their Juniors leave, and sighed together.

“You didn’t dare to Read anything, did you?”

“Given the risk of where the information would come from? No. I merely have a gut feeling of the clues for this case... or perhaps, the various facts only fit together a certain way.” Rimval did not like relying on his gut, and was infamous for his detached ability to analyze a situation. “On what did you base your assessment?”

“A sixteen-year old Seven with a pure Gold sword.”

Duke Rimval laughed drily. “I should have known. Shall we?”

“Mmm.” Both men closed their eyes, going inside their own minds. The room was silent for several minutes, neither man nor holo moving, and then Duke Parablum grunted and opened his eyes.

He swept them over his desk, noting the two piles of dust, one larger than the other. He thought for a moment.

“We just wiped ourselves of something, didn’t we?” Duke Rimval’s dry voice spoke up.

“We did.”

“Well, let’s hope it was for a good reason,” Rimval’s raspy laughter sounded, and Duke Parablum smiled sternly in agreement as he cut off their connection.

==============

My Vajra hummed in my bones as I bent over, grasped the bar firmly, wrapped my fingers around it, and rose, bringing the bar and its variable-mass weights to my thighs.

I snapped it up and over, bringing it to shoulder level, and slowly pushed it up over my head. I held it there for a ten-count, feeling the hum in my spine as my bones creaked, and then lowered it down, unflipped it, and bent back down to set it gently on the ground.

The tester pursed his lips, and Philius and Dorval looked rather impressed. Watching a young woman snatch and lift a thousand pounds wasn’t something you saw every day, especially without any signs of psi-boosting.

Granted, even a basic suit of power armor could do the same, but it was still impressive.

“Obviously not your top weight, but your ability to handle the weight steadily is impressive. Any difficulties?” Sir Dorval asked me.

“No.” High gravities demanded overall improvement of the physical body, including strength, power, reaction time, precise movement, and overall health and vitality of the body. Although being able to lift a lot was a part of it when in normal Tellus-level gravity, it was far from the whole picture... and a very nice way to cover for my physical buffs, as it were.

I was never going to be a bodybuilder, given my nymphal build, but I could be extremely toned... and my connective tissue was stronger than steel cable, my bones likewise hardened and more elastic to endure the force of things as simple as walking in multiple gravities.

“Jump. No boosting.”

I nodded, crouching down and shooting upright.

The ground receded nicely. I did the splits and a somersault just because I could, I definitely had the legs to show off, and then fell all the way back to the ground, hitting with knees slightly bent and taking the shock of impact.

“Five meters,” Philius said, making something of a face. “I can do that if I boost to it.”

“Or you could fly,” I spoke up, and he smiled despite himself. “Or shadow-jump, or something similar.” I waved my hand. “Don’t be envious of my being able to hop around when you can blink to the other side of the room.” I waved at the end of the training chamber beyond, a hundred yards away.

“It does not make it any less impressive in its own right.”

“Okay, so 99.9 to the nth percent of people can’t do the same, I agree.” I looked back and forth between them as we walked away from the tester. “It looks like you two have something to say, and so do I.”

They looked at one another, and then at me. “Please,” Sir Dorval deferred to me.

“I think you should have me go undercover.”

They both visibly blinked. What? Undercover required the sort of appearance that blended in anywhere.

“I can go undercover exactly once in my life, and that is now. ‘Girl recovered from site of warp incursion; intended sacrifice released after assessment’. You can stick it right in there, and in doing so invent a history for me.

“Can’t fake age. Obvious that I’m not a spy with this thing. The fact I was involved with a Warp incursion should be actually attractive to certain parties interested enough to look. My scant background should be, as well.

“You also couldn’t fake your interest in Null Psions. That is not unexpected. However, the first requirement to be a Null Psion is that you must be a Null!

“This is a choice that must be made when you are young, and have not set your heart on a Path... or it can be undertaken by a human who has reached Seven and undergone his racial evolution twice, but has no psionic ability!”

I looked back and forth between them. “Undoubtedly you have operators and special teams with non-psions who might qualify. That is fine. Opening them up and setting them on the road is not an issue, and once they are Open, the training is only a more focused version of training a Psion, focusing on Nimbus techniques of all sorts instead of use of psi.

“But the easiest way to raise up a force of Null Psions is to grab them young, and grow them naturally, beneath the radar. Doing that in the Castle here will attract all manner of attention, and the sheer numbers that you need will not fit here, and make it and them a target.

“I can start that process, and I can be an unbooked agent in the field, capable of doing things that neither of you want attributed to either of your organizations.

“The only support I’ll require from you is a lot of reading material and a way to communicate. Oh, and some officially issued ID as a penniless rugrat, of course.”

The two men looked at one another in astonishment. Philius cleared his throat. “Actually, your thoughts are remarkably similar to our own. We should discuss the details further?”

“That would be an excellent idea.”