"We need a solution here," Null said from the engine area. "It appears that we need additional energy that we don't have to make a proper Warp translation and run. I have a suggestion."

"Null, I don't know what to tell you, the ship says that there's some external pressure keeping us here, and we don't have enough energy to jump to Warp. That's what the ship says," I said, watching the star-spangled Keeper of Secrets begin to walk quickly over the flooded waters with a bridge that materialized with each of its steps.

"But we do have additional energy," the tech-priest said, folding a pair of his metal hands together as he stared at me through the camera.

"What then?"

"The Chaos mutant psyker sitting on your bridge has enough power inside of him to feed the ship enough to make a translation."

Alberich jumped up from where he was sitting. "What, me? Don't kill me! I saved your life, Erika!"

"You're a psyker?" I questioned. I thought he just had a Chaos weapon!

"The life of a mutant is little compared to the life of a Traveler, and this priceless archaeotech we fly. Personally, I would sacrifice an entire Hive World to save this sort of artifact! It shouldn't be a difficult decision, Traveler." Null said coldly. I could tell that one of his hands was leaning on the glass coffin that held Tailsn.

"No!" Alberich cried out to the image of Null on the bottom right of the screen. "No, no!" he growled at me, his eyes both angry and afraid.

"Will the pull and it will happen, Traveler. The Golden Throne of Terra can easily pull a soul in close proximity, and so can this one. Do it, and let us survive!"

"No, wait, wait, wait," Alberich said looking from me and the window. Behind him, I saw Am'Erika clearing large amounts of ground with each step, her smile never leaving her face. "Null, Archmagos Nemo, whoever you are, tell me, how precious are those who came from other realities to you?"

"What does this have to do w-"

"Null, I was once a man and I traveled here! I was once a human man! Technically, that makes me a Traveler as well! I did not come from this reality! I came from a place named Earth, in a nation named Germany! I was a man of distinguished merit in my universe! Do not judge this form I wear against me, for the soul that moves this flesh is pure, and the mind within it holds secrets you likely do not yet know!"

I was absolutely shocked at hearing this, and my surprise actually caused the ship to fall, causing me to need to catch it once again. When I tried to bring it back up, I found that I could not. I was now stuck at roughly the same level as Am'Erika as she continued walking toward me.

"That is absolutely ridiculous! Travelers are as rare as pacifist orks! You can't expect me to believe-"

"Germany?" I turned toward Alberich, standing there with his military regalia and tall boots.

"Yes. Yes, I came from there, and a planet named Earth," he said, desperation in his voice, his eyes searching. "I tried to tell you after we fought those devils back at the farmhouse but there was a distraction."

My face evidently showed recognition, so the Tzaangor said, "You know of it, don't you?"

"Yes," I said, observing his uniform again. There was a reason I had had that chill listening to both his accent along with that uniform, so I asked the next question, praying that I wouldn't hear what I suspected I would. "What year, Alberich?"

"1945," he straightened his back up, and began to sputter a cascade of words. He pointed to his chest, "I was in the secret psychotronic research facility in Wewelsburg. You, you're an American, aren't you? Or perhaps with that surname, a Soviet agent, or maybe exiled royalty? Perhaps you are an occult scientist from the psychic research the Allies told us they weren't engaging in? Or maybe the American atomic program? It's of no consequence now, as I have learned to accept this universe and where fate takes me. I made a vow to you, and my honor is my loyalty! I intend to keep it, but I cannot if you use me as petrol!"

Oh holy shit, I was not having this right now. Was Alberich a fucking... Nazi occultist? No wonder he got steamed up when Null kept calling him a deviation from humanity's perfect template. Holy shit Tzeentch, fuck you!

I looked over Alberich's shoulders. Am'Erika continued walking toward us. As if sensing my worry, the ship brought up a small overhead map indicating where we were, and how fast the greater daemon was moving. Our icon was an eagle with spread wings, and Am'Erika's was an eight pointed star.

Ground speed, 51kph.

"He is trying to trick you with his chaotic psyker energies!" Null wailed. "He is lying! Whatever he is saying he is lying!"

"My honor is loyalty, please! I saved your life, Erika!" The Tzaangor actually then fell on his knees before me. "Meine Ehre Heisst Treue!" he pleaded in German. It was fucking true, wasn't it?

What the hell, man? I-I... what the fuck?

I looked back up toward the approaching greater daemon, its obscene American regalia causing me great discomfort. I tried to remember what the ship said it needed. It needed souls to power itself, that or concentrated Warp energy. But, what I had before me was a fucking war criminal from my own universe. One that had been conveniently thrown directly on my path by Tzeentch himself, and one that had saved my life. This was certainly a moral dilemma.

Again, I put my eyes on the greater daemon. While this thing was technically a possessed statue, it was still a greater daemon, and was probably an area of extreme Warp concentration. I remembered that the Retribution had been able to simply float above the area of broken reality where the vortex grenades had burst, and not only that, it had been completely buried for ten thousand years under over fifty meters of heavy debris, and it didn't have a scratch on it.

I decided to tune out Alberich's begging and Null's yelling, and asked the ship. "Divine Retribution, do you have any weapons online?"

"Lascannons offline. Power insufficient," it said. Well, there goes that idea. Maybe I could redirect some energy from the shield and put it into one of the lascannons the ship had somewhere? I thought about where something like that would be on this ship, visualizing the shape of its body and the contours of its wings.

Wait a minute. The sharp contours of its wings. I remembered that the leading edges of the wings on this ship were razor sharp. A good hit from a wing could be like getting hit with a sharpened butcher knife bigger than a football field. If I couldn't translate to the Warp on my own power, maybe I could chop a piece of Am'Erika off and eat that? It would only be fair, since that bitch stole parts of my soul anyway. This idea sounded pretty crazy, but this was the Warhammer 40k universe and wacky stuff like this gets written into it all the time.

"Hey listen, stop!" I yelled at everyone, surprising myself with the resonance of my own voice traveling over the entire ship. Alberich stood up, and backed away from me, and Null stood looking at the camera. Behind both of them, I noticed that the Keeper of Secrets was now slowly picking up speed, as its marker now displayed 60kph. The land was continuing to bend and shift around us into a mess of unnatural pink colors as the area around Alys began to destabilize.

Warp Interference, 45% I saw the ship display. We needed to do something right now, and not fucking argue.

"Null, how strong is the shield on this ship? Does it have a Gellar field?"

"It has void shields but no proper Gellar field, but it does have something that is called a 'Parson shield' which may be similar. But what I can tell, there is a Warp-protective energy skin over us right now."

"And how tough do you think the outer hull of this ship is? You guys couldn't cut into it at all, right?"

There was a pause as Null came to realize what I was considering doing, sputtering a little in shock. "Just drain the damn lying mutant! Don't do what I think you're thinking of doing, Traveler!"

I thought back to the tech-priest's bragging about how they had tried everything in order to get into that ship, and everything had failed. Well, all the things they had with them had failed. Null said they were going to cut it up eventually. It just meant that they couldn't cut into it with the standard equipment offered by a normal Mechanicus fleet. It was probably, because of that, extremely tough.

"Divine Retribution, turn around, face the daemon directly."

"What in blazes are you doing!? This is madness!" I heard Null complaining again. "I cannot agree with this insane course of action! A safe solution exists for us Traveler you simply n-"

I cut off the feed to his room. I didn't need his shit right now.

"Thank you for not killing me, my leader," Alberich softly said on the bridge next to me.

"We're going to have to talk later, but I'll tell you one thing right now. Where I came from, the Nazis lost."

The Tzaangor composed himself, and straightened up. He silently went and sat down on the chair to my right without another word. Maybe I should drain him, I thought, focusing on the greater daemon as I faced it directly. It had actually stopped, and the distance between us was now a scant 19 kilometers.

"Not running anymore? I know you don't have any weapons in that turkey, seeing as how you would've already tried to use them. It appears your little magic ship doesn't have any power to run away either. I get to have my playtime even sooner than I imagined. I'll make sure not to kill you immediately. I will only cripple your little bird, drag you out of it, and make you beg to serve me as I savor each and every sensation I can wring out of you!"

Fuck you, bitch, I thought. Am'Erika isn't killing me here. I briefly flashed back to the vision I had with Tzeentch in the cafe. The old madman had yelled that I was going to "kill America!" Well, maybe he was right in a roundabout way?

"Divine Retribution, transfer all shield power to the leading edges of the wings," I said, taking a deep breath. I sure hoped this worked. I strangely wondered if doing all this would somehow put me on a watch list back home. Did the NSA have eyes into different universes? From what Alberich had just revealed, probably! I laughed. It honestly didn't matter. I was probably on a mountain of watch lists from all the trouble I had gotten myself in to the point of getting myself a code name at this point. Go big or go home, I thought. I kept laughing.

I willed the ship to advance slowly, looking Am'Erika in the eye. I couldn't rise any higher due to whatever Warp magic was pressing above. Despite where Alberich had come from, I wasn't going to absorb the person who saved my life and offered me an oath of servitude. It still wasn't right. The morality of it was wrong, and I wouldn't allow it, despite his origin. Worry about it later, not now.

As I floated slowly forward, I knew I was gambling against fate here with this decision, but I also knew that Tzeentch thought I was very entertaining. Maybe the deck was stacked in my favor, being one of Tzeentch's mortals of interest? Would he let one of his cool fun playthings die this way?

Well, it was pretty funny, I thought. Fuck.

Warp Interference 50%. Danger! Warp disjunction detected! Distance, 79 kilometers due south from present location.

Am'Erika noticed I was still flying directly towards her. An impossibly huge smile filled with sharp teeth broke her golden face.

"Oh," she laughed, artfully waving her red flaming sword around like a light sabre. "You're approaching me? Instead of running away, you're coming to me?"

"If I don't come closer I can't kick your ass," I replied, willing my voice to project outside. Fuck yeah, I have a voice amplifier on this thing!

"Divine Retribution, on my mark accelerate to maximum airspeed with current fuel capacity."

"Warning, fuel capacity will be drained 225% faster"

"That's okay."

This was pretty cool, I thought. Maybe I was brave because of whatever drugs Null had given me? I realized I was still a little messed up from what I had been injected with by the tech-priest earlier. I started laughing again for a second until I saw the daemon abruptly stop messing around and break into a full sprint toward me, her sword blazing with energy.

It was almost said as a reflex. GO!, I told the Divine Retribution.

I felt a brief feeling of G-force as I felt the ship blaze with life and begin moving rapidly. I looked up at the greater daemon, this tawdry twisted mockery of America, and saw that it was now moving so fast that it seemed to almost blink in time, crossing gulfs of space in instance. Oh, right, yeah. I had forgotten the part in the lore that said that daemons of Slaanesh are absurdly fast, I realized too late. Within an eye blink, she was nearly upon me.

"Not too late for me, dearest," a familiar voice called out beside me. The world had frozen again.

I turned my head, and there he was again, the smiling man in the black suit.