What is a Blank?
Anyone who knows what psychic power is should understand that so-called "Untouchables" are psychic nulls.
In other words, people who "can't use psychic powers"?
No. That's not it.
Even across the vast Imperium, those who can use psychic powers are rare.
The overwhelming majority of the Imperium's citizens are ordinary people, and they can't use psychic powers either.
But ordinary people are not psychic nulls.
So what's the difference?
Generally speaking, most sapient beings—humans included—have a consciousness that touches the Warp. Their imprint in the Warp is usually called a soul.
A psyker's soul is bound far more tightly to the Warp, which is why they can draw on Warp energy and perform superhuman, downright impossible feats.
In humanity's ancient history, the ones called witches who wielded sorcery, mages who cast spells, Daoist adepts who used mystical arts—anyone who could use supernatural power—would, in essence, be a psyker.
A Blank is the opposite.
They have no connection to the Warp at all. For reasons no one can truly explain, their brains somehow block the Warp and drive it away from realspace.
The result is that a Blank suppresses any psychic phenomena, and any power tied to the Warp, within the area around them.
For a psyker—someone tightly connected to the Warp—being near a Blank is agony. Pure torment.
As for normal people, their reaction isn't as violent as a psyker's, but they still feel wrong. Unnatural. Uncomfortable. Their unease and hostility are easily stirred.
A Blank is like a bottomless black hole. It's as if they are slowly devouring the souls of everyone around them.
That's why almost no one can stand them.
So most Blanks end up pushed to the margins of society, living as the lowest of the low.
And among those who even know Blanks exist, many believe their birth is caused by "scum-blood" genetics—so Blanks are treated as scum themselves.
Now back to the immediate question: why did someone suddenly execute two soldiers and claim they'd been bewitched by daemons?
Because daemons are Warp entities.
Under normal circumstances, they can't enter realspace in a true physical form. Most often, they act in reality by clinging to a human host.
Human consciousness connects to the Warp. The soul, as a human's Warp imprint, can attract daemons.
But in most cases, an ordinary person's soul simply isn't "bright" enough to draw a daemon's attention.
That changes when the Warp and realspace press close together. In those places, daemons can more easily whisper into human minds.
They lure. They incite. They seep into hearts, nurture malice, and in the worst cases, replace the person entirely—taking the body for their own.
There's another situation where daemonic intrusion becomes much more likely: when humanity needs high-speed routes across the star-sea, it must use the Warp as a shortcut.
So when a warship translates into the Warp, it draws daemonic eyes.
Even though ships have Gellar Fields to protect the crew from the Warp itself—or whatever lives inside it—anyone whose will is weak can slip into disorder.
And if the Gellar Field fails while in the Warp, it's almost always a death sentence.
Right now, the true face of the enemy humanity is fighting is exactly that: daemons. They are invading realspace.
They are difficult to kill. At best, you destroy the human vessel they're riding, and the daemon is driven back into the Warp.
And because daemons are Warp entities, they too react violently to a Blank's presence.
The two soldiers who were executed had been noticed as "wrong," and were put down before whatever had latched onto them could act.
Which is why the man who did it—Lance Plaine. Correction: his real name was Kain—was tense from head to toe.
Like someone who had wandered into a wolf pack's territory, he knew that one misstep would get him mobbed and torn apart.
Damn it all.
He'd only just crawled out of the ground after more than a week of tunneling like an underhive sump-rat, finally finding what he'd come for: an STC.
A relic from humanity's Dark Age of Technology.
A Standard Template Construct system (STC), storing the manufacturing knowledge for specific products.
With it, you could replicate ancient high-technology designs that had already been finalized and standardized.
And using it wasn't difficult. As long as your brain worked and you could follow instructions, you could produce things in a foolproof, step-by-step manner.
If you had a complete STC system, it could provide every construction detail needed. Even with zero expertise, you could use whatever local materials were available and build what you wanted.
For example: if an STC held the template for a voidship, you could land on a feudal, medieval-level planet and, by following the STC's guidance, organize the locals to manufacture components. In a few years, the ship could be launched.
That was the kind of absurd black tech it represented.
Warp-drives, Gellar Fields—many of the technologies that currently keep the Imperium functioning trace back to STC knowledge.
Which meant the value of an STC was beyond price.
And Kain had only just dug one up and returned to the surface when he ran into this mess.
Utterly ruined luck.
Maybe, just maybe, the thing in his hands could become the key to surviving.
There were people fanatically obsessed with excavating STCs. If they learned he had one, they would bring a fleet down on this place in short order.
They'd also issue orders that the STC must be protected at any cost—up to and including letting the entire planet die—as long as the STC survived.
Of course, that required getting the information out first. And Kain had no intention of handing over what he'd found, which meant he definitely couldn't expose that he personally possessed an STC.
Still, even if he couldn't reveal that he owned it, he could reveal that this world had an STC and let those oil-stinking maniacs come running.
But first, he needed to read the situation. Escaping on his own was best.
He'd only just surfaced from deep underground when a soldier from this company spotted him.
Before the man could make a sound, Kain dropped him, stripped his gear, and blended into the unit wearing the dead man's equipment.
Then he pieced together the chaos on the vox, and what he learned was grim.
This hive city had been hit by a Chaos incursion.
The lower hive had already collapsed inward, shrinking back toward the core.
At this rate, the hive's fall was only a matter of time. He had to get out, fast.
Suddenly, his ear twitched.
Behind him, a massive mechanical rumble rose—if he wasn't mistaken, the elevator leading out of the underhive was locking down.
No time.
He couldn't stay here.
And right then, a bizarre vox request—out of nowhere—seemed to slip straight into his ear.
[Soul waveform match confirmed. Initiating connection to the cross-dimensional channel.]
(End of Chapter)
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