40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 622 8. Pest Control (Part )

Khalil had already lived through four years in this dark fortieth millennium, and would soon be in the fifth year. Four years was neither long nor short, but the way he traveled was enough to make the breadth of this journey extremely exaggerated.

He has dealt with all kinds of people, from decent but arrogant and inflexible descendants of nobility to a group of prisoners about to be sent to the Penal Corps.
These people come from all over the galaxy, and their minds are filled with all kinds of thoughts and experiences, and it is not difficult to dig them out.

Usually, it only took a meal or a few words for Khalil to successfully engage them in a conversation, and he learned many things that he had never had the opportunity to know before, and these things together revealed a common understanding.

Water is very precious.

More than one person had said this to him, or expressed it unintentionally.

The descendant of the nobility would hold the reflective fork in his hand at the dinner table and mention with a smile a pure water he likes to drink, describing its taste, which seems bland but is actually sweet, mellow and refreshing.

The prisoners would jeer and use vulgar language, and one of them, a man named Cage, who was being beaten with a powerful stick, told Khalil that he had only drunk stinky recycled water in his life and that he no longer expected to drink normal water in the future.

If these are two extremes, then the imperial civilians in the middle - those who live in hardship but can still fill their stomachs - told Khalil that if they want to drink water, they must find the Water Purification Guild.

Yes, a guild, a guild that specializes in controlling various water sources within the hive city, from the upper hive to the lower hive, from recycled water to precious pure water, every drop of water is under their jurisdiction.

No one would want to offend them unless that person wanted to die of thirst. As a planet that would be transformed into a hive city within the next century or two, Banjo-1 already had people from the Water Purification Guild stationed there.

Their workplace is located on the edge of the city, in a huge water tower that is almost as big as a mountain, and this is only the part that is exposed above the surface.

It will hold billions of tons of water in total and will be directly connected to the water recycling system already connected to most of the homes on Banjo-1.
But the Genestealers have broken in.

Khalil frowned and looked at a huge gap at the foot of the mountain from afar. Suddenly, all ten fingers twitched.

Crouching with him on a giant air purifier, Lion El'Jonson—or Leman Russ—let out a deep sigh.

"It didn't even take us three minutes to get here," said the Fenrisian.

Khalil shook his head calmly. "This is their efficiency, a top-down Gestalt mind, constructed by hypnosis, psionics, and innate mental networks. Let's go, Russ, time waits for no one."

He opened his arms and jumped down. Russ bit the spear in the same way as a lion and jumped down from the heavy machine on top of the tall building.

When he landed, Khalil was gone. The residents of Banjo-1 were fleeing, but the Department of Justice, who were supposed to respond quickly, didn't respond in their usual style by driving their hovercraft through the sky.

Standing among the crowd, accepting people's fear, worship, screams and collapse, Rus took a deep breath.

He suddenly exerted force, but as soon as he started to take a step, he was already running at a mad speed, and the distance of hundreds of meters was reached in the blink of an eye.

The power that erupted from Lion El'Jonson's body, which had never slacked off in a hundred lifetimes, even surprised Russ a little, but he quickly adapted to this feeling that he had almost forgotten.

His long, faded light golden hair swung wildly, and the Spear of Dionysus pierced through four purebloods at once as he laughed wildly. A wild killing skill that was different from that of a lion instantly blossomed among the insect swarm.

The laughter of the Fenrisians was continuous, and together with the neighs and roars of the purebloods, they formed a unique song of killing. Russ captured it accurately, and then sang - or roared - out loud.

The cadence of Fenrisian is heard from between fangs and teeth, the mane dances, the spear drinks blood
Two minutes later, the dancing stopped, and the purebloods at the entrance stopped coming forward.

Ruth looked at them with a smile, tilted his head, and suddenly said: "Hey, Leon, you should know what we are going to do, right?"

He blinked, and his expression suddenly changed, like the lion returning silently. He relaxed his fingers, letting the Spear of Dionysus hang naturally, and it trembled and made a buzzing sound, as if it was urging him to the next killing.

The lion was indifferent, just taking a deep breath, and slowly straightening his back. He raised his left hand, tore off the blood-stained knight's robe, sneered and threw it at his feet, and at the same time, the spear drew a line. Not long, but deep.

"Much more clear than you do." Lion El'Jonson whispered calmly as the purebloods charged.

He got an amused chuckle.
-
The interior of the water tower is almost indistinguishable from a maze. It is not like what people imagine, where you can see a huge source of water stored in huge glass tanks as soon as you enter the door.

No, that's not true, water is precious.

Therefore, the Water Purification Guild has installed a large number of security measures on each of their water towers or similar buildings, and dispatched heavy troops to guard them.

But now, the former has been destroyed by the hybrids, and the latter has long been killed by the insects. They may be elite soldiers, but they can never deal with a large group of gene stealers without intelligence.
So they all died.

In the darkness, Khalil stared at their bodies and continued on his way.

Countless voices cheered his return, and then offered more things to be judged. One said it caught a thief, and the other said it caught a robber.
Khalil listened to each one patiently, then again gave his word: a fair trial. This had to be a fair trial, and while it was true that some crimes were unforgivable, theft or robbery without harming life was another matter.

Following their voices, Khalil went down, ignoring all security measures and terrain differences, and reached the deepest part of the water tower.

Then he stepped out of the darkness.

A huge object turned around quickly.

It was very tall, even taller than the original bodies. Two of its four strong purple arms had transformed into sharp bone blades, and the remaining two were even more cruel claws. Its entire body was covered in a thick chitinous carapace, and its streamlined swollen head was inlaid with two shining black eyes.
It had almost no emotions, but Khalil still "tasted" the dangerous creature's confusion from the mental network: it didn't understand what Khalil was.

It was unable to analyze; the data and knowledge it had obtained from deep within its genes after leaving the mother nest did not include the part about the creature before it.

It then tried to use its all-powerful psychic powers to hypnotize him, but to no avail.

Khalil ignored the ridiculous attempt and just looked up. Behind the patriarch, he saw a huge machine with countless pipes and cables, beating like a heart.

It had been cut open by the Patriarch, and Khalil knew what it was going to do—it was going to put its modified genetic material into it and change the operating rules of the machine.

The patriarch is not just a cold killing machine as he appears to be, he is more than that.

This creature is very good at learning and is good at digging out what it wants from the human mind. One after another, the people controlled by it and the people killed by it provided it with how to use this machine.

At this point, it only needs to tap a few buttons with its claws to allow its genetic material to be transferred through pipes throughout Banjo-1 to any working faucet within the next thirty minutes.
It originally did not want to do this because it believed that its clan was not yet ready to face the defense power of the planet, and its clan had not yet reached the point where it could call on the mother nest to come for a feast.

However, starting from last night and continuing until today, several underground gathering places where hybrids were located were attacked, which made it alert. It knew that its tribe had been exposed, so it immediately decided to speed up the progress.

Khalil narrowed his eyes, chewing on the creature's thoughts carefully, and felt a rare impulse - he wanted to kill it right now.

But he suppressed the urge. Killing the patriarch alone might cause the remaining purebloods and half-bloods to collapse for a while, but they were still alive and in urgent need of being cleansed.

Moreover, he has a permanent solution.

Although he didn't tell Leon and Ruth, he was sure that the latter might have guessed it.
In the mental network, Khalil began to draw on psychic energy, but his purpose was not to kill, and he was even very careful to hide this idea.

The gathering of spiritual energy caused his thoughts to spread, and also allowed him to briefly "see" the mental network, a large lavender network that was spread all over the bulb like synaptic cells, but with blood vessel-like things wrapped around it.

The clan leader was at the top, followed by the guards, bishops, nobles, mixed-bloods of superior status or outstanding abilities, and a group of pure-bloods. Below the net were humans who had just been infected by hypnosis, and some mixed-bloods who had mixed into human society.

The spirits of these two are not yet alienated enough to be integrated into the spiritual network, and the same is true for their bodies, so they cannot be directly controlled by the clan leader like other gene stealers.
It doesn't matter.

Kalil brought his psychic energy and consciousness close to the patriarch's position in the mental network, came into contact with it, and eroded every detail of its existence in a place where it could not detect. He had never done this before, so he had to face it to be sure of success.

The patriarch knew nothing about this. Time in the real world had not even begun to pass, and its consciousness was also sluggish, enduring Khalil's "chewing".

Then, he began to recall a creature, a creature that he had fought on Sosa, and the huge shadow looming above the creature's head. His consciousness began to become colder and colder, until there was no "human" part at all.
Until it was indistinguishable from the Hive Mind—at least it looked the same.

Time in the material world passed quietly, one second, just one second passed, and his consciousness quietly climbed to the top of all synaptic points in the mental network.

His authority was recognized.

Khalil opened his eyes and saw the chief kneeling tremblingly, his long scarlet tongue sticking out of his fang-filled mouth, leaping non-stop. The Zerg had no emotions at all, they were directly commanded by the will of the hive.

The Patriarch is different. It is disconnected from the hive mind and goes to each world as a separate creature to serve as a pioneer. It has basic emotions, but not many. Now, its emotions are joy and the desire to return.

There is no such thing as 'return' here, and you don't deserve to feel happy.

Khalil took a deep breath, then raised his right hand and slowly clenched his fingers.

The patriarch's body stiffened for a moment, and then he swung the bone blade and sharp claws without hesitation and stabbed his own head.

Its head turned into a pool of paste, with skull fragments flying everywhere. Before they hit the ground, they were controlled by psionic power and crushed into harmless ashes.

A huge headless corpse fell to the ground with a loud thud, causing a little vibration that should have disappeared, but the vibration caused a violent tremor in a net.

From the purebloods who were facing Lion El'Jonson, to the Pope who was preaching a doctrine to the poor masses, or the nobles who were smiling at the banquet, at this moment, they all began to execute an order at the same time.

suicide.

The pureblood pierced his own head with his claws. The Pope drew out his guard's automatic gun without hesitation and pulled the trigger at his chin. The noble who was tasting the wine suddenly screamed and jumped onto the banquet table, drew out the ceremonial sword from his waist and pierced his temple.
This sudden death spread from the water tower on the edge of the city to the mansions of the dignitaries, and then all the way down to a huge cave.

Here, the Dark Angels watched in amazement as monster after monster committed suicide.

Outside the water tower, Lion El'Jonson sighed.

"We all know who Caril Rohals is," Leman Russ whispered in his ear.

"Yes, we all know." The lion sat down holding the spear, his long light golden hair becoming more and more faded in the afternoon sun of Banjo-1.

Ten seconds later, a quiet sound of footsteps came from behind him. The lion did not answer, but remained silent. A breeze blew, but it failed to blow away the strong smell of blood, nor did it make the lion turn his head. Ten seconds later, he finally spoke.

".So what price did you pay this time?" he asked dully.

No one answered him, only a hand was placed on his shoulder. However, that hand was not as cold as a dead person as he remembered, but was very warm.

The lion turned around in shock.

Khalil winked at him, smiled and shrugged: "I said, I'm just an ordinary psychic now."

He opened his windbreaker, looked down at the big hole on his chest, and suddenly stopped smiling.

"By the way, Leon, do you have a doctor on board? I might need medical attention."

A drop of blood slowly flowed out from the hideous wound.

(End of this chapter)