Captain Donnal stared, and subconsciously glanced back in the direction of the Warp Zone. “They can manifest a mindclaw, but not psychic powers?” he asked specifically.

“A mindblade is a transpsionic discipline. As it can exist even in an anti-psionic field, it is not purely psionic. Furthermore, a Null can manifest a Claw, but not a blade. It has to remain within an inch or two of their skin, as I was told.

“It is these sisters and brothers of hers who are actually driving her rise to power, as they are finding and unleashing more of these Null Psions among the people.

“As for the militants she has been training, many of them are being specifically trained for service in both of our Orders, and although they are young, their service and resistance to psionic or Warp subversion has been exemplary.

“We have been backing her rise, and are waiting to see where it is going. As she is not a psion, she would not be able to thrive properly in our Orders, so we have been following her career... and taking advantage of her talents.

“We believe that the Legions not taking advantage of her talents is a true failure of the Empire. The chance for one to do so has fallen into our laps, and we are taking advantage of it,” finished Duke Parablum.

“I believe if you sat down with her for a discussion of where you might take a new company or nine of yours, Captain, you would find the discussion interesting. While there have been Battalions whose Legionnaires have had special gear and lavish attention foisted upon them to become truly effective at what they do... the rest of the Army, Fleet, and Legions are still using the same wargear from five thousand years ago, and for some reason, our military situation is no better now than it was then.”

Captain Donnal was going to say something about faith and duty, and then remembered to whom he was speaking. These were not men to sugarcoat reality... their job was to stare it in the face and defy it. Perhaps they had not seen as many battlefields as he... but he could not be sure, and their battles were constant and never-ending skirmishes in the dark and the light, not just warzones.

“I will consider your words and have a reply for you within three days,” he promised calmly, daring to take the Coronal Duke at his words.

“Excellent. In the meantime, any requests for resupply or repair, simply run through any of the Agents or Squires on the ground, and we will take care of them for you, “ Duke Parablum finished without any hint of leverage. “Are there any specific requests we can take care of for you at this time?”

“Are your artificers capable of repairing our armor?” he asked calmly.

“There will certainly be Mechanists with access to the technology. If you don’t wish to leave the Zone, there are a large number of psions that Colonel Rantha has included who can engage in fairly sophisticated circuit repair. It should not be difficult for them.”

“Noted. Good day, Your Graces.”

“Captain.” Both men rose as he did, saluted, and the hologram slowly faded.

---

Captain Donnal rose to head for the Disk Train that would run him back to his men. He passed by the tunnel being bored quickly through the stone with psionic power, forming a sealed passage that was being laid with tracks to run an electric train back and forth for these supply situations. The progress displays showed it was ninety percent done and should be online within a week. The locomotives and cars were already in place and ready to start being used.

Being two heads taller than an average human, he had no difficulty surveying the area.

Like the fighting zone, the first thing that struck him was the relative youth of the majority of the people moving or waiting around him. Those who were older stuck out, because they were often dressed specifically to designate their positions as lesser psions, complete with the geometric tattoo that indicated their Level.

In his very long career, he had never seen one of these lesser psions with a hexagon, but now he saw several of them... and a very confident, energetic Septagon looking very much like an old man having lost forty years would, pleased and enthusiastic about life.

There were several Ancients visible, the least of them a head taller than most of the humans, and always the obvious center of another large group of fighters coming and going. The nymphals shouldn’t have been so easy to pick out, but his eye inevitably came to rest on them as he scanned the crowd, as most of them were also in command positions and making no bones about it.

These were virtual children in his eyes, eager to run off to battle and die. He didn’t know whether to be impressed at their courage or scornful of their ignorance.

He would see soon enough.

---------------

“You realize she has completely suborned our Orders,” Duke Rimval sighed over their dedicated link.

“Indeed. Were other Chapters to learn of her influence in our halls, it would likely be grounds for treason,” Duke Parablum agreed, but there was no remorse in his voice.

His duty to his Empire and humanity was untouched. His obeisance to the Emperor... had been harmed, that was certain, and he knew it.

He glanced at the Door in his mind, and what lay on the other side of it, terrifying in its power, glory, and ability to change the world for the better.

He could defy many things, but hope was not one of them.

“Agreed.” Duke Rimval had been defeated as well. They had not come to their jobs merely to endure and to resist. They had hoped to achieve things, to make a difference, to raise humanity out of its stagnation towards a brighter end. Resisting someone who seemed to have all the tools to do that was impossible.

They could, of course, doubt and question all they wanted to. She was encouraging it, after all. The last thing she counted herself as was someone who knew it all. She was mind-blowingly intelligent, the both of them could sense it and feel it, but there was absolutely no feeling of omniscience, of all-knowing certainty.

Which was why it worked. She was a Null, and didn’t have the tools to DO that, and she never would. However... those who did have those tools, couldn’t perceive her with them!

She was a mortal, working against immortals... and hiding the work of other mortals from them.

And now, she was hiding them!

Duke Parablum looked up as Vala Rantha stepped to his side, putting her hand on his shoulder. The force of their Bond lit up, and he sighed and clasped her hand despite himself.

Completely suborned...

She had made an inquiry after he expressed interest in the services of one of her Rantha sisters. The conditions had been... titillating, taken about eight hours, cost him ten Levels and three days of Restoring them while being able to do literally nothing, and he could still picture them when he went to bed at night.

Mostly because Vala was right there beside him now. The Rantha born from the energy she had drained from his soul.

She was part of the third set born, and he knew the Ranthas matured quickly, her mid-teens flowered in but two years to her early twenties. Very tellingly, she didn’t look like him, and she didn’t have his Talent.

Her pseudo-genetic forebear was Duke Rimval, whose Talent was Rational. So Vala was dark-haired, dark-eyed, extremely analytical... and her soul was part of his own, and she was fully aware of it.

They had Bonded on that first handshake, when she was sent over by Sama after reaching Six. Instant, complete, natural.

He was a Psion, she was his Null. All was right with the world.

Duke Rimval, of course, had Bluma Rantha by his side now. Her Talent was Steadfast Heart, her eyes were grey, and her hair had gone silver early, like her ‘father’. Duke Rimval had also spent eight hours with Sama Rantha, of course...

He and Duke Rimval were Twelves, likely the highest-Level humans on the whole planet. Tapping the raw talent and ability of the Ranthas was still an eye-opener. Vala had more raw intellectual ability than he did on all facets of her mind, although he had spiritual strength and the depth of life experience that she did not.

This neither intimidated nor awed her, for she was Dauntless, and had no fear of him whatsoever. Driven by the resonance of their souls, they could poke into one another’s thoughts at will, see with the other’s eyes, and experience the world through them.

If she peeled back the wall of reincarnation and directly joined their souls, they’d end up as one person.

This didn’t frighten her at all, either. She was completely looking forwards to it at some time in the future, probably if something happened and one of them died, and was eagerly and rapidly working to get the Levels of her own so she would be a worthy and equal fusion with him.

Every Inquisitor and Knight on Janus Prime now had their own Rantha Bonded to them, although they weren’t born like Vala was. None of them wanted to give them up, either...

Suborned, indeed...

-------

“Can you fix it?” Captain Donnal asked, sitting there while two of the soldiers toweled him off with scented cotton towels. He was surprised at how ready they were to do this, but he didn’t forestall them, merely holding out his arms and letting them gently spray him down and be about their task.

His armor was de-locked and in several parts, hanging on racks while a couple of the Beacon psions with experience in artifice repair looked it over with fascinated expressions. Lines of force were extending gently from their hands and playing over the armor, lingering on the gouges, holes, scrapes, rents, dents, and contusions from a lot of fighting.

“Um!” the older of the two, a woman, replied forthrightly. “The answer is yes and no. Yes, because we have the raw power to do so, and there’s self-repair circuits built into the armor to restore it. No, because we don’t know what we are actually doing, other than serving as psionic batteries. So, the subtler repairs are actually beyond us at this point. Of course,” she mused aloud, “they’re probably beyond almost anyone who fixes it. I imagine that’s why the armor is so modular, so they can just hook it up to a piece of equipment and pretend they know what they are doing.”

She turned around, ignoring the watching captain, and yelled out, “Hey, Shelbi! Got a live one for you!”

“Be right there!” a woman’s voice called back. There was a crunch and creak, and Captain Donnal looked over, seeing a nymphal standing atop the fuselage of one of the prop fighters, one with lines of bullet holes down the length of it. Her hands flashed golden, and then she grunted and jerked, and without too much apparent effort, hauled up the engine of the fighter, which was actually bigger than she was. He blinked at the sight of a slender human female shouldering the huge mass of metal, and then she jumped ten feet down to the ground, taking the impact with barely bent knees, and deposited the engine on a gurney right there far too deftly for someone that size.

Those nymphals were obviously all far, far more dangerous than they appeared...

Shelbi shook her dark hair, and as he watched, it tied itself up into tight braids, knotted together in a bun, and hung down the small of her back as she kicked off and glided in their direction across the stone of the floor. Like most of the nymphals, she eschewed proper footwear, and it didn’t seem to bother her or anyone else.

Shelbi glanced at the towering Marine, then at the psion. “What’s up, Mar-c?”

Mar-c indicated the surrounding armor to the younger-looking nymphal. “I think this is a TL 12 set of equipment. It looks like a bunch of auto-repair circuits, but there’s major complexities I’m not sure of.”