Chapter 65(orphan)

The warp storm was howling more violently than ever outside the ship as Franklin desperately held the tempest at bay. The entire ship was shaking and rattling with terrible energy, the warp storm was now the worst Franklin had ever seen it, the power was increasing markedly, worse even than right after Lavender Furnace!

The entire bridge crew was holding on for dear life as the ship bucked and thrashed about like a floatation device in a hurricane sea! By the Emperor the noise and fury hitting the hull of the ship was incredible, even WITH Franklin plus the Gellar fields!

The ship shook again, and bikini clad bridge crew were hurled sliding across the hard floor!

"We are SO close to the rendezvous now! Just a little bit further!" The corrupted heretic female navigator bellowed loudly over the tempest from her secure seat belts in her navigator throne.

Franklin was hurled from his feet by an especially powerful jolt as the ship slowed with sudden deceleration, he was flying through the air!

A roar of demonic jump pack wings sounded, and a huge hand snapped out and grabbed hold of his scout uniform shirt, saving him from slamming into a wall!

Franklin looked in surprise to see his brother Augusta flying against the terrible inertia with his raptor wings, gripping his shirt tightly. Augusta had just saved him!

Franklin noticed a rather shocked looking Liling Sevenson gripped by Augusta's other hand, having saved her from hitting a wall too.

Other people were less lucky, and slammed into the front wall with sickening force, including all of his nuns!

Franklin roared in horror at his precious nuns in danger, they might be DEAD!

The Nightmare Asylum had decelerated so much that the front walls were now the new "floor", the ship was decelerating furiously, hitting some awesomely powerful force in the warp. Augusta flew cautiously "down" to the front wall, protectively not letting go of either of them even when he "landed".

Franklin was frantically struggling to reach his nuns, but Augusta was far stronger than he, and Franklin couldn't pull free.

The bodies on the "floor" moaned in pain and/or pleasure, and to Franklin's relief all of his nuns emerged shakily from the compressed pile of people. Phew!

The Nightmare Asylum was still decelerating from its earlier huge inertial motion, but seemed to be getting very slow now. The deceleration "gravity" was getting weaker now.

Augusta suddenly took off into the air again before the "gravity" disappeared, and hovered carrying Franklin and Liling in the middle of the air inside the room, matching the changing momentum to stay in the same position.

The Nightmare Asylum's normal artificial gravity suddenly reasserted the direction of "down", and everyone on the front wall slid down to the floor in a heap.

Augusta carefully lowered to the floor in a plume of demonic fire from his wings, holding Franklin and Liling well clear of the flames as he landed. The floor under Augusta was very hot from the jump pack flames, and he sensibly walked a good distance away before lowering his passengers to the cooler floor.

Franklin ran off to his nuns as soon as Augusta let go, and lifted bikini women out of the pile until he found every single one of his nuns. They were all hurt but none of the injuries were more serious than a few twisted ankles. Thank the Emperor for His divine mercy on Franklin's beloved nuns!

Franklin protectively fussed over his nuns as everyone else in sight got up and got their bearings. The Nightmare Asylum was now completely stationary in the warp, Franklin had no idea what could have slowed them to a halt like this?

Strange music suddenly filled the speaker systems of every cogitator and announcement system on the ship. What was going on?

A horribly familiar voice began to sing, but not cheerfully, the voice was filled with a terrible sinister malice and threat...

"Guess who's back, back again,

TigerLily's back, tell a friend,

Guess who's back, guess who's back?

Guess who's back, guess who's back?

Guess who's back, guess who's back?

Guess who's back?..."

The singing trailed off, leaving a feeling of unmistakable danger in the silence that followed.

Franklin sighed in relief, it was just the daemon thing his father was "married" to. Thank the Emperor!

Franklin and everyone else looked at every cogitator monitor that was closest to them, as each screen lit up.

In the nearest screen Franklin saw TigerLily, wings spread wide, blazing with terrible power as she flew in the rolling warp storm surrounded by other daemons of Tzeentch. To Franklin's surprise he noticed that TigerLily had stripped out of her usual white arcane robes, wearing instead a bright yellow string bikini covered in little black polka dots. She was apparently joining in with the bikini wearing fad of the other Sevenson women.

Franklin was astonished by how sexually attractive TigerLily's body was under her normal robes. Her feathers only covered her limbs and neck it turned out, her entire torso underneath was covered with smooth and supple pale blue skin, with surprisingly pleasant curves and figure...

Franklin got a sinful erection!

TigerLily began to sing again, a different song this time.

"It was an itty bitty teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini, that she wore for the first time today, an itty bitty teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini, so in the warp, she wanted to stay, two, three, four, now she has to kill you all..."

The ship suddenly vibrated with awe striking force as TigerLily fired a bolt of warp magic at it!

Alarm sirens echoed through the ship and people screamed in terror!

More bolts hit the ship, and Franklin had to channel more of the Emperor's power than ever before just to hold a fraction of the terrible energy of each bolt at bay!

TigerLily was trying to destroy them!

"(Squawk), MUMMY PLEASE!" Hyacinth begged on her knees in front of a nearby cogitator.

TigerLily smiled sadly, and paused from hurling another lethal bolt at them.

"Sorry to do this beloveds, but Tzeentch is my god, and Tzeentch wants you to be destroyed. You cost Tzeentch trillions of worshippers on Lavender Furnace, you were supposed to CAPTURE the planet with its worshipper population taken ALIVE, not NUKE it to oblivion you FOOLS!" TigerLily said with bitter regret.

"Drop out of the warp right now!" Liling suddenly ordered the bridge crew in a tone of desperation while TigerLily was distracted by the conversation with Hyacinth.

Franklin agreed with this tactic, and struggled with all his might to protect the ship as it feverishly struggled to exit the warp in an emergency drop.

A warp rift opened in front of them, and the ship immediately flew through it.

The superstructure groaned deafeningly as the gravity forces of such a sudden emergency drop threatened to rip the entire ship apart.

The Nightmare Asylum was quaking terribly as it was twisted and deformed by the gravity of a nearby planet, they had dropped out right inside the danger zone of the planet's gravity well!

Women screamed shrilly, pandemonium reigned, and the sounds of tortured metal slowly subsided as the ship supernaturally began to heal its own crumpled damaged superstructure.

Sirens wailed but the ship was now safely in real space, fairly close to a planet...

The planet sure was growing at an alarming rate... Golden THRONE!

The Nightmare Asylum's inertia and velocity had been completely stationary relative to the rate of motion of this planet when it exited the warp, and didn't have enough relative velocity to hold any sort of orbit! They were FALLING!

The entire crew was screaming as the planet, a massive ringed gas giant, got steadily closer at a frightening rate!

The Nightmare Asylum engines fired at full speed, accelerating directly TOWARDS the gas giant on purpose! What were the heretic crew playing at?!

Franklin held all of his nuns in his arms, readying his soul for the Emperor as the ship hurtled at full acceleration towards the planet. This was the end!

The Nightmare Asylum entered the upper atmosphere with terrible speed, the window showed the blinding light of reentry!

The searing-light bathed bridge was getting TERRIBLY hot!

Fire sprinklers in the ceiling drenched them all in ice cold water, cooling them enough to avoid being cooked!

The whole world was filled with nothing but noise and fire and fury!

The noises and heat stopped! Could it be!

The Nightmare Asylum had merely grazed the side edge of the uppermost atmosphere, and had gained enough speed from falling combined with the engines, to actually achieve escape velocity to fly back out of the atmosphere!

The Emperor delivers!

The engines were now building up their speed, carrying them higher and higher in the orbit in a rapid widening spiral orbit according to display diagrams on one of the cogitators.

The ship was safely flying away from the danger, travelling through real space as the supernatural hull kept on gradually healing itself.

Franklin sighed in relief, and grovelled before his nuns in worshipful gratitude of their survival.

TigerLily's psychic roaring of murderous malice could be faintly heard in every mind, she had deliberately tried to crash them into that planet!

The ship sped on in the direction of the distant set rendezvous point of the Angels of Brutality and Marines Malevolent fleets, wisely travelling only in real space this time.

A terrible foe now hunted them all...

***...

The mood was tense and afraid as the Nightmare Asylum FINALLY reached the rendezvous point two weeks later. Travelling through real space when hindered by the speed of light as an uncrossable speed limit was SERIOUSLY slow! It was just lucky that the rendezvous point had been a few short minutes warp travel away outside the same solar system they were already in, so it had only taken a "mere" two weeks.

TigerLily was still stalking them in the warp, trailing their every move in her Tzeentch commanded quest to kill them. Warp travel was absolutely suicidal at the moment, and would remain that way, until the far off much talked about "Sevenson Matriarch" Daemon Princess finally sacrificed enough innocent souls to Tzeentch to stop the attack. Franklin had no idea how long that might take.

The Angels of Brutality and Marines Malevolent had been in heavily encrypted radio contact with them for almost all of the last two weeks, and had already given very clear instructions of everything they expected long before the ship arrived.

Franklin's nuns were all being very carefully hidden away inside psychically warded hidden rooms aboard the maze like ship, the locations secret even from Franklin's knowledge. The so called "loyalists" were demanding that the nuns be dead, not wanting any witnesses that the Ecclesiarchy and other Imperium authorities would actually listen to.

The Night Lords were claiming that the nuns were already dead and flushed out an airlock back in the warp, but the loyalists were not stupid and would doubtlessly board and search every inch of the ship with their psychic librarians. The only ones who now knew the location of the nuns were the Sevenson Slaaneshi psyker bird-like mutants, having erased the memories from the minds of all other witnesses to their location, and these Slaaneshi psykers were immune to having their own minds read unbidden.

Franklin himself was keeping himself largely out of view, hanging out with his psychic mutant sister Violet inside the relatively sparsely populated, and highly restricted, inner sanctums of the Nightmare Asylum librarium.

He was currently sitting next to his somewhat reluctant sister Violet at a table, peering at a giant cogitator screen that showed various surveillance camera angles through a checkered mosaic of different footage.

The room Franklin occupied was large, occupying almost half of an entire vast star-scraper floor a few tens of floors below the primary bridge on top of the rear of the ship, and filled mostly with many many rows of giant bookshelves, that were mostly empty of books to save weight for treasure after Lavender Furnace, but with still a few bookshelves full of heretical blasphemous books. Interspersed among these bookcases of blasphemy were reading areas, equipped with tables and chairs and cogitators.

Franklin and Violet were currently sitting side by side in separate chairs in front of one of the cogitators in one of these sheltered reading areas. A few other mutant psykers, all of them apparently his "siblings" by Luke and the formerly mortal TigerLily and still merely young apprentices, were also sitting apprehensively around the reading area in front of other cogitators.

Franklin was still less than thrilled by the mere existence of mutants in the Emperor's universe at all, but he had by now learned to be in the same room as them without attacking them. He didn't like to say that he "tolerated" the continued existence of these mutants, as "tolerance" was a sinful vice according to the holy scriptures, he preferred to think that he had merely "delayed" the act of killing them to an unspecified future date. It just sounded less sinful when he worded it that way.

Franklin looked at his many mutant "siblings" with deliberately suppressed disgust, trying his best not to offend them with his natural Emperor given hatred of witchcraft and mutation. All of them looked like a strange mixture of human and bird, with feathers of various colours for hair and the feet of birds.

They were a mixture of male and female among their number. The females all wore bikinis like all the other Sevenson females currently did, whilst the males wore mostly uniforms in the colours and heraldry of the Night Lords, with the odd colourful ribbons in remembrance of the "bikini atrocity".

Franklin took especial notice of the boys. They were all Franklin's half-"brothers", sons of Luke Sevenson by his consort TigerLily, but all of them had been too mutated to be compatible with a gene seed. Of all the Sevenson males, these alone were not turned into space marines, instead relegated to the humiliating "female" role of being psykers. They were as submissive to females as any other Sevenson males were, but lacked any of the perks of getting to become space marines.

Franklin couldn't help but pity these mutant boys, in the Sevenson culture it was considered DEEPLY shameful for a boy to not become a space marine. Heck even one of the Night Lords who continually wore dresses and called himself "Mary the transsexual", even THIS most unmanly of Sevenson men had still become a Night Lord!

Franklin's mutant brothers were unable to receive a gene seed, their flesh too mutated and inhuman, and as a result they were lower than even the transsexuals in the Sevenson hierarchy of "manliness"! In the Sevenson society, (and really it was a "society" level organisation if not a "tribe" at the very least), not only was manliness synonymous with being a space marine, but being a psyker was considered a highly "feminine" occupation. These poor boys might as well be wearing dresses right now!

"(Squawk), fuck you... Franklin you... (Squawk)... Smug asshole!" One of the boys squawked at Franklin indignantly, able to read his thoughts.

"Shut up and get over it, I'm trying to focus on the cogitator screen," Violet snapped at their brother dominantly in her own slightly bird like voice.

"(Squawk)... Yes Mistress... Violet... (Squawk)." The mutant boy said with complete submission, as helpless to female authority as any other Sevenson male.

Franklin turned his attention to his rather attractive stepsister "Violet Smith", she was TigerLily's eldest child, born to a different father named Mr Sigmund Smith before TigerLily divorced Mr Smith and married Luke Sevenson. Franklin knew virtually nothing about this poor divorced "Mr Smith" beyond his name and the fact that Violet got her surname from him.

Violet was tall and slender, with obvious signs of plastic surgery to unnaturally increase the size of her breasts. She was by far the prettiest of the mutants and also the least mutated, she had been born back when the mortal Tzeentch Chaos Sorceress TigerLily had relatively fewer mutant "gifts" from Tzeentch, when TigerLily was only just beginning to badly mutate, so was the most "human" of all of TigerLily's spawn.

She had bright blue feathers for hair, quite long resembling a woman's hair, and her colourful bikini pattern complimented her blue hair quite strikingly. Her quite nice breasts were barely contained by her string bikini top-

"Yes I am aware that I have big boobs!" Violet suddenly snapped, also able to read his mind!

"I am trying to pay attention, this is more important than my boobs! Later I will happily even let you touch them as I torture you if you wish, but for now STOP distracting me with your thoughts!" Violet snapped impatiently.

Franklin nodded awkwardly, trying to silence his wandering mind whilst simultaneously willing down the erection he now had from her body and words.

Franklin focused on one of the rectangular images in the mosaic of footage that filled the large screen. The image showed the distant waiting space marine fleet in orbit around a roughly spherical minor ice body.

Franklin counted at least eleven spacecraft in the magnified footage image, but knew that the actual number should be eighteen. Most of these eighteen were a variety of relatively small escort vessels, the currently visible ones barely more than dots on the screen, but he also saw the large shapes of much larger vessels.

As the Nightmare Asylum got closer Franklin made out two relatively large dark crimson spacecraft in the foreground, recently arrived strike cruisers in the angry scab colour of the Angels of Brutality heraldry. As well as these two newly arrived strike cruisers, the original two bright urine yellow strike cruisers of the Marines Malevolent that had survived the space battle were also present.

Most conspicuous however were a pair of massive cargo ships, one scab red and one urine yellow, both bigger and longer than the strike cruisers. These were clearly civilian heavy transports of Imperial Merchant Navy design. Franklin had dark suspicions about how the two chapters had acquired them.

The heavy transports were huge things, and were currently the designated "treasure ships" of the two chapters for this current mission. Each had the raw cargo capacity and engines to comfortably carry half of the huge treasures from the Nightmare Asylum, and would carry these spoils of war away to their respective home worlds. The Nightmare Asylum had orders to dock between both of these heavy transports and offload all remaining treasures aboard.

Franklin was absolutely disgusted by the priorities of these traitors! He had been reading about both of these chapters, and had learned that both were currently experiencing disciplinary funding cuts to reign in their deplorable behaviour. Rather than bettering themselves they were simply using Sevenson gold to make up for the lost funding! What ARROGANCE!

Franklin turned his gaze to another image, and saw his heavily shackled mother Wendy with a pair of bolt pistols to either side of her head. She was covered all over in the delicate scar-words Octavia had carved into her skin all those months ago, and was still wearing the same bikini top from the pool over a month ago. Her current hygiene state was rather lacking...

The "loyalists" had been continuously broadcasting around the clock footage of Wendy like this for the entire last two weeks. Wendy had space marines of both chapters holding her at gunpoint in round the clock shifts, always one on each side holding a gun to her head. She was hanging from her wrists in heavy shackles, and now had almost two months growth of brown armpit hair that grew a bit longer each day...

Wendy was fed and watered twice daily but wasn't toiletted, the marines had merely removed her bikini bottom so that she went to the toilet on the floor, from her standing position like an animal! She had quite an impressive bush of messy brown pubic hair by this stage and looked utterly miserable and bored, but strangely not at all humiliated.

With their "captain" Wendy being held captive like this, the Nightmare Asylum would obey the abductors every command. It was completely "checkmate", the Night Lords and their twisted servants onboard would do nothing to put Wendy's life in jeopardy.

Franklin was completely disgusted that the so called loyalists were not simply using this power to force the heretics back into the Emperor's light! They could do SO much good with this power they now had, but were instead focused solely on personal gain and treacherous vengeance against TRUE heroes of the Imperium!

Franklin simply couldn't hate these traitors enough! They were most certainly the "greater of two evils", which was completely crazy considering that actual NIGHT LORDS were in the mix!

The Night Lords on the Nightmare Asylum had not actually been up to anything particularly sinister this past year in the scheme of things. They had been trying to retrieve one of their lost children and then simply return home peacefully, understandably benign enough as motives went.

Franklin himself had caused the huge detour into the Eye of Terror, and lack of fuel to get home had forced them to fight on Lavender Furnace in exchange for fuel plus a share of the massive spoils. The wrath of the chaos gods over the Lavender Furnace genocide debacle had then led to making little warp hops home with the help of Franklin.

Franklin's saintly powers had then persuaded many thousands of the heretic crew to convert to worship the Emperor, resulting in a near mutiny that culminated in the havoc that was Wendy's disastrous wedding to Adolf. This dangerous mutiny had then in turn forced the Night Lords to attack the penal world 92/EHY/55 to gain enough new recruits to survive any further mutinies.

Nothing done up to this point had been an "evil plan" of the stereotypical villain, it had been mere pragmatism in the face of unavoidable circumstances. The Night Lords only wished to get home safely to their holdings in the chaos hells in the Maelstrom, and maybe get some hard won treasures home too for all their troubles. Not really very "evil" at all.

The Marines Malevolent and the Angels of Brutality were NOTHING like these hapless Night Lords. The two chapters had deliberately attacked the Night Lords simply to rob them and enact a sinister, properly villainous "evil plan" to destroy the sacred home world of the heroic Salamanders chapter! They didn't "need" to do this evil act like the Night Lords arguably did this past year, it was villainy plain and simple!

It was utterly disgusting that the Night Lords were "the lesser of two evils" in a situation that involved LOYALISTS as the second actors! It was in fact so completely against all the rules of nature that Franklin could hardly believe it was happening!

Imperial forces were the BAD GUYS in a war against CHAOS SPACE MARINES!

Franklin was suddenly aware of all the mutant psykers in the reading area looking at him and nodding gravely in absolute agreement with his thoughts. They all looked at Franklin with actual respect for once, in complete agreement with him.

"There is no curse in any language to sum up the despicable treason and actions of these loyalist scum. We were just minding our own business heading home, but they viciously attacked us." Violet said gravely and continued.

"I was in that pool during the bikini atrocity, I was tied up with the others, so terrified that I wet myself! It was only by luck that I wasn't one of the ones who were finally taken at the end, it could very easily be ME chained up in my own filth with guns to my head!"

"We were just women harmlessly swimming in that pool, we were no threat to anyone and didn't have any way of defending ourselves. The loyalist attack was absolutely unforgivable!" Violet finished.

"And now the ship will be attacking the Salamanders," Franklin added.

"We would never attack their home world if poor Mummy Wendy wasn't being held hostage. The Salamanders have fought our warband once before, they fought with honour, they even captured a few of Mummy Wendy's sisters during the war, but treated them very humanely and chivalrously released them unharmed to us at the end of the war like perfect gentlemen! Ever since then we as a warband have NEVER attacked the Salamanders, and we retreat if possible if they enter a theatre we are fighting in, out of respect for them." Violet admitted.

"Warn the Salamanders. You are a psyker, send an astropathic message to their astropaths and librarians, tell them absolutely everything," Franklin implored Violet with sudden inspiration.

"The scum chapters would shoot some of the hostages if they ever found out that we warned the Salamanders," Violet replied apologetically.

"You HAVE to warn SOMEONE," Franklin insisted.

"We already have informed the Matriarch about absolutely everything in our daily reports, using daemonettes as messengers like we always do. The Matriarch knows everything and she might decide to inform others if she sees fit." Violet reassured him.

"But your Matriarch is EVIL, she won't do the right thing," Franklin dismissed.

"Don't talk about her like that! You don't even KNOW her!" Violet shouted in fiery outrage, like most of the family being extremely protective against any negative words against their Matriarch.

"She's not just "our" Matriarch, she's also YOUR Matriarch! Her blood runs through your veins, you even have her nose! You are one of her descendants!" Violet added angrily.

Franklin dropped the issue and returned to the much worse problem of the attack against the Salamanders.

"Look Franklin, we are mere minutes away from docking with those treasure ships. One problem at a time. At the moment we can't go anywhere with my birth mother TigerLily trying to kill us, that buys us time to think of a solution." Violet reconciled with him.

Franklin nodded reluctantly, and watched as the loyalist fleet began to form up around the Nightmare Asylum.

This was the moment of truth..

***...