Chapter 5D
Egg and the other girls in the crèche squealed and giggled hyperactively as Mum's wife Wendy tried to lead them in the somber ritual of family worship night. This happened every time the girls tasted the sacred body paint, it seemed to be almost entirely composed of what ever it was in foods that made children hyperactive!
Today was the sixth day in the 6 day worship week, the day of the week most sacred to Slaanesh. The worship calendar used completely different week lengths from the normal 7 day weeks that the ship used in everyday life, using a 6 day week calendar that ensured that the holy sixth day was always on a different day each "normal" 7 day week. It was confusing for making long term plans without a calendar handy, you never knew what day you had to keep free several months in advance.
Every 6th day the family would spend as much of the day as they reasonably could engaged in sanctioned religious activities, often determined by which particular week of the year it was. The children had simply grown up doing this, simply absorbing the religious beliefs of Mum the way that children do.
Egg herself had never really questioned the fact that she was a Slaanesh worshipper, it was simply the faith she was raised in and she had the simple pure unquestioning faith of a child. Egg was certainly not anything like an adult convert who chooses their own faith position, she just cheerfully believed whatever she was told to believe like an obedient daughter.
The ritual Egg and the other girls were currently engaged in would raise a lot of questions in almost any other culture about whether it was appropriate for minors. It was in a very dangerous grey area that was right on the line of being considered statutory rape but only just stayed inside the grey area.
This ritual was called the caress of tongues. It required exactly 6 participants, all of them completely covered in a sweet tasting body paint. The object of the ritual was to lick all the body paint off each other until their entire skin was paint free. Because some of the participants were underage they were doing the "child friendly" version of the ritual where they all wore 2 piece bikinis with the rule that anywhere the bikini covered was out of bounds.
The girls were getting extremely silly as they tried to lick each other, becoming ever more hyperactive from the food additives in the edible body paint. The room was currently a cacophony of giggles and laughter and Wendy was getting concerned that the girls were not taking this sacred ritual seriously enough.
Egg giggled ticklishly as Violet licked the paint off her sensitive sides and Violet made it worse with pokes to Egg's tummy! Liling was also in hysterics from Mandy trying to lick the paint out of her armpits and on the whole everyone was unable to hold in their giggles! Only Mum and Wendy were taking the ritual seriously, to the girls this was just a game.
"Stop being so silly! This is a worship offering to Slaanesh not a game!" Wendy chided them.
Egg and the girls made a halfhearted attempt to be somber but it was useless, you can't just get children and teenagers hyperactive on food additives and then expect them to take such a tickly task seriously! It ended up being just as hyperactive as before no matter how hard the girls tried to behave!
Egg felt her energy levels steadily rise as she licked the paint off Violet's back and she desperately wanted to just run around in a hyperactive blur to burn off the overwhelming energy levels! She wasn't setting out to be naughty, she was just too hyperactive to help it!
The ritual was meant to be slow and erotic, with the paint licked off gradually, but the 4 girls licked each other clean in a hyperactive frenzy long before the ritual was due to finish. They then mobbed Mum and licked her for the yummy paint (ignoring her slightly disturbing moans of pleasure from this) and then reluctantly licked the dismayed (but also disturbingly moaning) Wendy until all the available body paint was gone!
With the ritual over prematurely the children ran off to enjoy their unscheduled free time before the next ritual was due to start, leaving Mum and Wendy to fill in the time having sex.
The crèche girls whooped and laughed as they ran and skipped all through Wendy's palace-sized apartment on the ship, completely hyperactive and out of control. They were determined to have as much fun as possible before the rush from the body paint ended!
***...
Octavia the sex slave shook her head in amusement at her adorable silly girls. It was the moments like this that really filled her life with joy. She absolutely loved her silly children to death.
Wendy was looking annoyed at the racket that could now be heard all through the apartment, those girls always got hyperactive from the body paint. Hopefully they would burn all that energy off before the next ritual started, otherwise Wendy would tan their hides.
Octavia gazed at her beautiful perfect wife in adoration, she loved Wendy so much that it hurt, totally lovesick and smitten. Octavia didn't care if Wendy was a Chaos Champion or not, Octavia didn't care if Wendy was rich or not, when Octavia looked at Wendy she saw only Wendy the person. At the end of the day that was all that matters.
Octavia was a woman who was at peace with life. She had not asked to be kidnapped from the Imperium of Man and forced into brutal slavery, but she had long ago accepted the fact that this had happened and made peace with it. She had learned that things like empowerment and freedom were just fleeting things, as insubstantial as mist and completely impermanent. She had given up all will to ever be free and had instead focused on the things that really mattered in life.
Octavia had absolutely no say over what happened to her body, that is what it means to be a slave. Other people could just do whatever they liked to Octavia's body and she had to find a way to be ok with that. And so that is exactly what she had done. Octavia had submitted to Slaanesh in worship and Slaanesh had gifted her with enough raw lust to love all the nasty stuff that other people did to her body. If you love what you do then you will never work a day in your life as the saying goes.
What matters in life is not being free from slavery, plenty of people who had freedom were far more miserable in life than Octavia was. What really matters in life is the people you love and being able to give love to those people in your life. It didn't matter if those people were chaos champions, psychotic space marines or Alpha Plus psychic super weapons, they were all still people in need of love and affection, and THAT is all that Octavia saw when she looked at them.
Octavia deeply loved everyone around her and treated them thusly. And the more that she treated people around her like cherished loved ones, the more those people responded in kind and became emotionally invested in her. It was Octavia's secret to success, the reason that Wendy had fallen in love with her. Any slave can make love to your body, but very few can make love to your heart the way that Octavia could.
Octavia loved her life and the people in it. She had wonderful children, she had an intoxicating romance with her owner/wife Wendy, she had love in her life and her sex life was fulfilling to her Slaanesh fuelled libido. What more mattered in life? So what if she was a slave?
Octavia beamed happily, grabbed Wendy's hips passionately and hungrily put her tongue deep inside Wendy. This really was a great life she had, Octavia thought as Wendy moaned.
Things were really starting to heat up when without warning a red alert siren blared deafeningly throughout the ship.
Wendy forgot about her orgasm and instead sat bolt upright and raced with supernatural speed to a communications system. Wendy talked on the system for a moment and then ordered Octavia and the crèche to go to the armoured panic room, clearly this was serious!
***...
The Royal family combined fleet took up defensive battle positions fearfully as a fleet of over 2000 Iconoclast class destroyers approached them.
Individually the destroyers would not have posed any sort of threat and would have been either ignored or shot down depending on the mood of the Night Lords at the time, but in a swarm of thousands these tiny ships and their combined firepower posed a threat even to the mighty Nightmare Asylum itself. The Night Lord fleet could still defeat this swarm, but not without gruesome casualties.
The Night Lords fleet sent out radio signals to the unknown fleet of destroyers, proclaiming who they were and asking to know the business of the other fleet. For long tense moments there was no reply, until finally a message came through.
"We are but a few of the ships of the Iron Warriors Legion, the TRUE Iron Warriors loyal to Perturabo, not like those Steel Brethren traitors you have in your ranks. The legion demands to know your business in the Maelstrom, what are your intentions and why are you here?" The fleet of destroyers demanded over the radio.
The Night Lords sent a reply back:
"We already told you who we are. Our business does not affect you, the Steel Brethren of this particular detachment provoked our wrath and we pursued them here to the Maelstrom. We then conquered them and they now serve as part of our war band. We had no desire to come here in the first place and we will be leaving as soon as we conduct some trade deals. You are welcome to trade with us if you wish"
The fleet of destroyers was silent after this, simply following the Night Lords fleet without any aggression and observing them. It unnerved the Night Lords fleet immensely but all they got in reply to queries was icy silence.
***...
Night Lords Chaos Lord Luke Sevenson and Steel Brethren Warsmith Victus Ironboot stood together on the bridge of the Nightmare Asylum anxiously as yet another score of Iconoclast class destroyers silently arrived and joined the ever bigger Iron Warriors destroyer fleet. The Iron Warriors seemed to be rolling them off a production line and sending new ones every few hours!
"Fuck this, we should leave the Maelstrom before that fleet gets any bigger!" Luke said uneasily.
"When you're right you're right, this is not a confrontation we can win. Warsmith Gustaf BitterHeart has a clutch of planets nearby that do nothing else but manufacture those things, he will grind us down with attrition if we don't flee." Warsmith Victus Ironboot agreed nervously.
Luke cursed and ordered his ships to set a course out of the Maelstrom as quickly as possible.
In the face of this mutual threat to both of them, Luke and Victus put their usual hostility aside. This was no time for petty disagreements, they needed to work together to have the best chance of surviving this.
The giant manoeuvring thrusters roared into life as they pointed the nose of the ship in the right direction. Technically the Nightmare Asylum was "upside down" relative to the surface of the nearest planetoid, but such concepts were meaningless in outer space, and it was a waste of fuel to be the "right way up" so long as the nose was pointed in the right direction. With sadness the entire fleet blasted it's way towards the end of the Maelstrom at maximum acceleration.
They would just have to take their chances in the real space regions of the galaxy.
***...
Inquisitor Horatio Hoffman watched eagerly as the astropaths received news from informants in the Night Lord fleet, the fleet had just left the safety of the Maelstrom and they had the Alpha Plus with them! This was excellent news!
Horatio soon received confirmation news from Inquisitor Eduardo Garcia and immediately summoned the Ordo Hereticus fleet taskforce he had assembled while the Night Lords were hiding in the Maelstrom, ordering the entire fleet to follow the chaos fleet's every movement.
He had them now!
***...
Hapela Theta Rho was a miserable star orbited by even more miserable planets. For the last 9 million years no life of any kind had gone anywhere near the place. Even mechanical beings shunned this place, for it was hellish to all.
Hapela Theta Rho was a highly radioactive pulsar star, blasting it's surroundings with lethal x rays and gamma rays ever since it went supernova 9 million years ago. It had once been surrounded by rich planets of all shapes and sizes, from massive gas giants to small rocky planets, all of breathtaking beauty. All was gone now, blasted away by the supernova explosion.
9 million years later all that orbited Hapela Theta Rho was blasted remnants, the solid cores of the biggest gas giants, their atmosphere blown away by the supernova. These cores had once been far bigger but the supernova had vaporised the outer layers until only the innermost iron cores remained.
For 9 million years these miserable shells of once mighty gas giants had maintained vigil in orbit of the dense pulsing neutron core of the once massive star. They were cold worlds, so terribly cold, yet they still blazed with sterilising radiation ensuring that no life of any kind could survive here.
Hapela Theta Rho 1 was the most deadly of all these life destroying planets, the closest to the star and the most heavily irradiated. It was a ball of almost entirely iron mixed with tiny amounts of other trace elements.
Despite it's proximity to it's star, Hapela Theta Rho 1 was bitterly cold. The pulsar was steadily losing heat in the form of useless neutrinos and every year it emitted less heat than the year before. If the planet had had an atmosphere then it would have frozen into ice by now, it was just so desperately cold.
The planets performed their soulless orbits as they always did, oblivion given form, mindlessly obeying the laws of physics as they spun around the blaring cold radioactive pulsar. All was as it should be except for a small magenta flash at the far edge of the star system.
A cluster of metallic "somethings" moved on an interception trajectory for Hapela Theta Rho 1, propelled by artificial plumes of plasma at brutal acceleration. This was something completely new in 9 million years of icy loneliness.
But the oblivious planets didn't care. They COULD'NT care. Everything in this place was utterly dead, utterly in oblivion. Sterilised meaningless hunks of dead matter doing nothing at all.
It was a long journey to the innermost planet, even at the high acceleration of the artificial objects. It had been chosen precisely because it could not be approached safely from the warp, the gravity and radiation of the star made warp travel close the the star system impossible. The ONLY way that anyone could approach this planet was by traveling for days at the very least in real space from the very edge of the star system, giving a lot of advanced warning.
The metal things were chaos ships of the Royal family and Steel Brethren fleet, and they were absolutely TEAMING with life! For the first time in 9 million years life was returning to this sterile place!
The ships were less than halfway to the planet when an even bigger Inquisition fleet exited the warp at the edge of the system behind them and followed them into the system. There was no element of surprise here, no possible way in this environment but equally no chance of escape. This place was a last stand for both sides, none could enter none could leave.
The planets were utterly indifferent as the Inquisition fleet fired endless salvos of high speed torpedoes at the chaos fleet. The planets were indifferent of the chaos fighters frantically shooting these torpedoes down in flashes of exploding fuel, and equally indifferent as some of the torpedoes found their marks and dealt horrific damage.
Lasers shot back and forth between the two fleets, dealing gruesome damage, but the planets didn't care about this either. The planets simply didn't care about anything as battle raged around them.
Hapela Theta Rho 1 did not react as chaos construction slaves landed on its nighttime side and desperately burrowed deep defensive emplacements and bunkers into it's cold surface with industrial grade melta guns. It also didn't react as the Inquisition fleet nuked these emplacements with cyclonic torpedoes.
The chaos fleet scattered to every planet in the system and desperately made fortifications and very deep bunkers to escape the atomic bombs, and the planets didn't care. The Inquisition fleet ignored the split up ships and focused only on the ship harbouring Egg Sevenson, and even STILL the planets didn't care.
But then something happened that the planets finally DID notice, something so completely supernatural that the very planets themselves were given temporary awareness so that they might contemplate such terrible glory.
They witnessed the full power of an Alpha Plus Psyker!
***...
Egg Sevenson reached out with a tiny spacesuit gloved hand and focused her mind on the Imperial battle cruiser that was trying to obliterate her entire family. The power of the warp flowed through her mind like the fiery birth of an entire universe and she bent this terrible power to her will.
With a tiny movement Egg closed her small gloved hand, and the mighty battle cruiser crushed inwardly into a perfect cube like an automobile in a car compactor!
These people had messed with a partially trained Alpha Plus, and now it was time for them to pay the price!
Egg roared with rage in her tiny child's voice, but in the warp her roar was a deafening bellow of an angry god! Psykers for light years around her quaked and stumbled in the face of her terrible power and even the Emperor's faithful realised that they had made a terrible mistake provoking the wrath of this little girl!
Imperial warships tore in half all around the tiny psychic super weapon as she obliterated them with screams of rage! Entire battalions of fighters and bombers erupted in fireballs as the little girl annihilated everything that threatened the safety of herself and her family!
Lasers shot at her but the deadly beams of light supernaturally bent around and shot back at the firers, with an extra kick of power from Egg herself so that they burned right through the imperial warships as though they were made out of paper!
"LEAVE AND NEVER COME BACK!" The godlike psychic voice of Egg blasted through every mind in the star system, driving several imperial psykers mad.
All around Egg was wreckage that had once been a fine Imperial fleet, most of it destroyed by Egg alone! The imperial death toll was absolutely catastrophic and none could stand before her might!
Realising their defeat the imperial fleet pulled back from the inner planets, licking their wounds in orbit of the outermost planet they had captured. This war was not over, but for now at the very least, this one battle was lost.