Stranger Things on Heaven and Earth

"Oh yes..." She whispered. "Malik."

Her voice was as hungry as it had been earlier -- hungry for me to fuck. And my body listened. My hands slid to her hips, stroking the softness of her cutie mark tattoos, then squeezing her flesh. I started to thrust into her, fucking her against the floor with a lewd pap pap pap sound, my balls bouncing against her perfect butt. Twi's head rolled back and she looked up at me through slitted eyes. Her mouth opened into a perfect O as another orgasm rocked through her. Her breasts were bouncing in nearly perfect circles, her nipples drawing arcs in the air as she laid back and took everything that I gave her.

"Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh Celestia, yes!" she gasped.

I leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth as I felt my own climax rush through me. I slammed into her, feeling the slickness of her cunt splashing against my thighs as my balls clenched and I flooded Twilight Sparkle, the princess of friendship and nominal pony, with my cum. I closed my eyes, lost in the pleasure of her pussy, and the closeness of her body. She clung to me and gasped quietly, her whole form quaking with the after effects of her own orgasm.

In a day that had included Nazis at high school, a lightsaber duel between Obsidian characters, and being tutored by Tali from Mass Effect, I think I could put "losing my virginity to Princess Twilight Sparkle" at the top of the list of weird ass shit.

"That..." Twi gasped, then laughed. "Was...educational."

And Festina Ramos had to ruin it all by flinging open the door to the bathroom, her eyes narrowed, and stop short on seeing us. "Jesus fucking Christ!" she exclaimed, flinging the door shut. Muffled, her voice came through. "Get your own room! Y-You...fucking teenagers!"

***

Twilight Sparkle and I adjusted our flight suits with the same expressions. Tracer, who looked far too comfortable in the sleek black leather with skull shoulder pads and arcane series of knobs, levers, dials, and assorted brickabrack, smiled at us. "You want to make sure these nozzles connect to this part." She said, pointing. As she leaned close to adjust one of my nozzles, she whispered in my ear. "You dog."

"What!?" I exclaimed.

"He didn't do anything!" Twilight squeaked.

"You cheating on your boyfriend isn't what matters right now, Twi," Festina said, scowling slightly as she looked us over.

"He's not...I..." Twi shut up, her cheeks as red as I had ever seen them. I felt a guilty spin in my gut. But...Flash was a shade, right? So that didn't make it cheating? Right?

Festina tossed her head in annoyance. "What matters is we need to know what the fuckers are up to out there. I'm not going to risk taking a few hours to translate back to Earth without being sure we're secure."

I nodded. Okay, I thought. Now I just need to figure out how to tell her about the Shadows, without letting the Shadows know that I know that they know that-

"So, take this..." Festina gestured to the massive shuttle that the shades who populated the crew of the Normandy were getting ready to go. "And check on the Harbinger. Don't get into a shoot out, don't engage, don't do anything stupid. Just translate out, then translate back."

I nodded again. No brilliant idea sprang into my brain pan.

Festina looked me square in the eyes. "This is also a dry run on you starting to get more responsibilities on this ship. So, do everything Tracer tells you, and keep your brain working." She tapped her temple -- the motion jarring the impressive cap that she wore as the ship's Lord-Captain. With a third nod, we were ushered onto the shuttle herself. The bridge had three seats -- four, if you counted the chair that had a slowly rotting corpse literally wired into the computer systems of the shuttle.

Warhammer 40k, everyone!

I took the seat next to Tracer's. Twilight settled in the seat that was normally taken by a tech-priest, and started to flick switches and adjust dials.

"How do you two know how to work this stuff?" I asked.

Tracer grinned. "Well. When you translate, you get some basic primers on equivalents. Like..." She snapped her fingers. "Like language. We all know how to speak a language, so when we translate, that stuff gets turned into speaking whatever local lingo the natives are speakin'." She smiled at me. "I'm RAF. But right now, I couldn't fly a Sopwith Camel if you chucked me in one. But I know exactly how to fly this hunk'a'junk."

She slapped the console affectionately.

I grinned. "And since I know nothing..."

"You getta learn the hard way," Tracer said. "But if ya pick up how to fly this, you can fly anythin' from an X-wing to a Starfury."

"Swag!" I said.

"Assuming you translate!" Twilight added quickly. "Also, Lena, we're ready to go." She shot me a serious look and then mouthed the word 'Shadow' at me. I nodded back to her.

"All right, boys n' girls!" Tracer grabbed onto the yoke. "Lets see what forty thousand years of technology can give us."

The engines roared to life and I yelped as the shuttle rocketed out of the massive hanger bay of the Normandy at what felt like a million miles an hour. I looked back out the side window, to see the Normandy rapidly turning from immense mountain of guns and metal and stained glass windows to a tiny dot. As that dot faded to a star, Tracer leaned back in her seat, swinging it around to face me. Her smile was infectious.

"Lets start with the easy stuff, luv," she said.

"Wait, we have time for a tutorial?" I asked.

"It's going to take this ship approximately..." Twilight paused, tapping a few switches. "Five hours to reach the edge of the recursion."

"Five hours?" I asked, my eyes bugging.

"Say what'cha will about 40k," Tracer said, shrugging -- her leather flight suit creaking ominously against the motion. "They, at least, seem to realize that space...is big."

"Then we have time to bring up the Shadows," Twi said, nodding.

"Shadows?" Tracer asked, her brow furrowing.

Twi and I explained -- fumbling over one another: "So, like, I think that the Harbinger fired a chunk of Shadow tech at us, that's how Sion got onboard-" "-and he's been hearing their noises-" "-and if we tell Festina, they'll rip her to pieces!"

Tracer nodded, slowly. "Well, that is a sticky wicket..." She shook her head. "Give me a bit to ponder on it, luvs." She grinned. "But while we do, why don't you...get to practicing?" She nodded. "Just in case."

The next five hours were more fun than I expected. Tracer pointed out the controls and showed me how to work the throttle, the cold gas thrusters, adjust the bottle on the plasma reactor, and other fun things. She skipped a lot of prayers and benedictions to the machine spirits, but everything still seemed to work all right. What was neat was I even got to do some maneuvering -- spinning the ship to new headings and burning in one direction or another. Since space had no friction, the burn that Tracer had put us on at the start wasn't getting messed up by me fiddling a bit.

But after the fifth hour, we were drawing closer and closer to the edge of the recursion and I was getting more and more nervous. What if we came out into a bunch of turbolaser fire?

Well.

That was why we were in a 40k shuttle. By comparison to Star Wars, even a shuttle from the 40k universe was armed to the teeth. This one had two lascannons on the front and a pair of quad-linked vulcan bolter cannons on the roof and the belly. The heavy armor plating was apparently pretty darn swoll too. But despite reminding myself of that again and again and again, I couldn't help but tighten my fingers around the secondary controls that a co-pilot got to take hold of. My knuckles whitened as Twilight counted down.

"Recursion edge in five...four...three..."

I could see the supposedly distant stars getting closer and closer, as if we were flying towards a vast, painted wall.

"...one!" Twilight said.

The nose of the shuttle hit the vast wall -- which stretched with the impact. It drew taut...then snapped as we popped out into the strange, confusing mass of the Strange. I blinked slowly, looking out at the chaos as Tracer tapped at the controls, bringing us to a slow stop.

"Where's the Harbinger?" Twilight asked. "It's not on the auspex."

"Holy balls!" I shouted. "What the fuck is that!?"

The two other girls swung their heads around to where I was pointing. Out the window, I could see the bulk of the Harbinger. It was burning towards the recursion -- but it wasn't. It was going at an angle, so it would fly right over the recursion. But that was because it's glowing tractor beams were connected to a second recursion. One that it was literally dragging through the Strange like a vast silvery bowling ball. And it was heading right for 40k.

"Back! Back! Back!" I yelped.

Tracer hit the retro-rockets and we rocketed backwards into 40k. As we shuddered back into that reality, I scrambled from my chair.

"Where are you heading!?" Twilight shouted.

"The vulcans!" I snapped. "Let mr guess: If two recursions mash together, they mash together, inconsistencies be fucking damned?"

"That's about right, luv!" Tracer said, her hands on the controls. I felt the gravi-plates under us groan with pressure as she swing the shuttle around. "Get strapped in and I'll burn like a bat outta hell!"

I scrambled up a metal runged ladder into a ball turret mounted at the middle of a spider-like collection of immense bolters. I strapped myself into the criss-crossing harness that was for gunners and grabbed the controls. I muttered: "Machine Spirits, please, please, please work for me, I know I didn't pray properly earlier, but please-"

The world shuddered. I felt it deep in my bones, as if my soul was screaming in pain. Then the vastness of space behind the shuttle rippled and popped like a soap bubble. Rather than looking out at empty space, I was now looking at a vast war-fleet of flying saucers. The huge, brown-gold saucers were rotating around their central axii as they floated out in a curving C formation. As I watched, a vox crackled through my ear-piece.

"This is SDF command to unidentified ships. State your point of origin or be destroyed."

The voice that came back -- broadcast in the clear -- made my blood turn to ice.

"WE DO NOT NEED TO EXPLAIN OURSELVES TO YOU!" It was loud and mechanical -- but despite sounding like it came from a robot, it was twisted with rage and pain and hatred. A deep, fierce, fanatical hatred.

I flicked the safties off on my vulcan bolters.

"You have one chance before we smite you in the name of the Emperor," the SDF admiral sounded cold and calm and utterly ignorant.

"YOUR. EMPEROR. SHALL. BE. EXTERMINATED! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"

And the hovering ships unleashed a vast, glittering swarm of Daleks, soaring towards the Imperial battlefleet...and us. I leaned slowly back into my seat. Then I picked up the thick, bulky vox-speaker that was mounted inside the turret. I flicked it on.

"Tracer," I said.

"Yeah?" Tracer asked.

"Add Russel T. Davis to the list."

"W-"

"Not for the Daleks," I said. "Just Love and Monsters."

CHAPTER THREE: Strange Strategies

The Daleks swooped towards us. There had to be dozens of them in the first wave, flying forward without thrust plumes or any other signs of propellant. That didn't phase them. Nor did it stop them from opening fire the instant they came within range of our shuttle. Beams of pale white, killing energy reached towards us like the fingers of furious gods. Then Tracer started to dance. She didn't pilot -- that would have been like calling Mozart or Beethoven at the piano just 'plinking away a bit.' The shuttle spun into a corkscrew that sent my head almost smashing into the edge of my turret. My vision blurred and the entire shuttle groaned. But in the end, we were planted right behind the Dalek swam.

The lascannons opened up and three Daleks exploded into flares of orange light. I whooped and triggered the Vulcans and, for a second, I thought that we might be okay. Then the stream of bolt-shells came within a few meters of the Daleks and simply vanished. No explosions, no secondary blasts, no shattered alien war-machines. Just nothing. I groaned.

"Their shields are- urk!" I grunted as Tracer flipped, burned, and shot us down on a completely different incline. Death-rays shot after us.

Once we were level again, I spared a glance around the rest of the battle. Explosions were starting to fill space -- Imperial shells filling the vastness of the void between Dalek UFO ships. None were seeming that damaged. I gulped and saw other 'tendrils' of Dalek swarms, shooting towards distant Imperial ships. I didn't need to see the images or hear the voices to imagine Daleks by the dozens, Daleks by the hundreds, cutting into Imperial starships and slowly trundling through narrow corridors. Humans -- xenophobic, bigoted, racist, asshole humans, yes, but still humans -- would face them with flashlights and shotguns and they'd get slaughtered. By the hundreds. By the thousands. By the hundreds of thousands.

"We're bugging out!" Tracer said, her voice filled with relief. "The Normandy is making a break for us while the two asshole fleets are slugging it out."

"We can't!" I exclaimed.

Conversation became impossible for a few moments as the shuttle was put into a new corkscrew of insane maneuvering -- I swore I could hear the machine spirit crying out through the hull.

"Why not?" Twilight broke into the conversation.

"Scintilla Prime has a canonical population of twenty five billion people. If even a tiny fraction of a fraction of them are Sparks, that's hundreds of thousands of real people who are about to be...well...exterminated!" I gulped, looking out at the slow motion genocide being carried out above an alien sky. I licked my lips. "I have an idea."

Twilight hissed. "I hope it's a good one, Mal"

"Tracer!" I said, leaning back in the turret seat. "Take us out of the recursion, then back. We're going to go full heresy."

"Full heresy?" Tracer asked.

"Maximum. Heresy."

"Well, bugger me...that sounds kinda fun!" Tracer laughed. She kicked on afterburners that I was pretty sure were never supposed to be actually used. The shuttle raced outwards, leaving Daleks behind it, death-rays buzzing past my armored turret. I closed my eyes. I tried to not think of the Daleks. I didn't think about the danger. I didn't think about my fictional nature. I just thought of a single thing. Something that would justify exactly what was going to happen.

We broke from the recursion.

A turbo-laser shot past the prow of our ship, fired by the Harbinger.

Tracer spun us around. I almost blacked out with the sudden G-forces that slammed me back into my chair. Then she hit the afterburners. Despite the pain, despite the pressure on my chest and face, despite the fear, I thought of one.

Fucking.

Thing.

I thought of my goddamned Warrant of Trade. Signed by the Emperor his goddamn self, granting me the same power as an Imperial Governor, or Space Marine Chapter Master.

The shuttle translated back into the dubious reality of the merged recursions and when I opened my eyes, I was seated next to Tracer, not in a ball turret. A startled Twilight Sparkle squeaked, while Tracer looked around herself, her eyes wide. I grinned and looked down at my glittering, medal bedecked flight suit and bottle green jacket. A red sash crossed from shoulder to hip, while a priceless power sword was strapped to my hip. And, true to my conception, I had a very fancy hat.

Yes. It was fancier than Lord Captain Festina Ramos.

And there were some other little tricks I had slipped in. Rogue Traders were very rich, and thus, I had the fictional justification for a lot of bullshit. A lot. Like, it's fucking unfair.

But the ship I was seated in looked nothing like the ship I had been in before. Gone was gunmetal gray and rivets and wood panels. In its place was smooth wraithbone -- psychoreactive building material of the hyper-advanced Eldar. Which was why Tracer currently had almond shaped eyes and ears that came to delicate, beautiful points. She was dressed in a Ranger's outfit -- the kind of outfit that a wandering Eldar loner would wear if they were the kind of Eldar who might work for a Rogue Trader.

Most Imperial citizens would sneer at the idea of even talking to an Eldar.

Most Imperial citizens wouldn't be rich enough to get away with owning a Darkstar space superiority fighter that had been modified by a heritech versed in forbidden alien technologies and equally forbidden ancient human technologies.

"What the bloody 'ell is this!?" Tracer asked, looking at the controls.

I grinned. "Those are for the star-lances. That's for the modded vortex torpedoes. And that's the volkite array."

Tracer gaped at me.

"As I said," I said, tipping my hat backwards. "Maximum heresy."

"I'm purple again!" Twilight exclaimed.

"Yes, you're my illegal psyker," I said. "Get us some psychic buffs. Please don't summon any daemons by accident. Tracer. Go nuts!"

Tracer -- who, I hasten to add, looked fucking amazing as an Eldar -- grinned a sharp toothed, wolfish grin. She took hold of the wraithbone controls, her eyes half closing as she established her psychic link to the ship. The engines fluttered and kicked slightly as she started to figure out how to fly. Then the Darkstar shot towards the Daleks who had decided that we weren't worth chasing. Those Daleks were starting to turn as I leaned back and put up my feet on the dash and grinned the biggest shit eating grin the Warhammer 40k universe had ever seen.

Tracer started us with the volkites. They were basically the heat-ray from H.G Wells War of the Wars, but on steroids because this was 40k and they stole things from other fiction then bolted menacing spikes of skulls onto them. At this range, they merely needed to flick across the Daleks to turn dozens into burbling slag. Then the starlances opened up and Tracer weaved left, right, upwards, then corkscrewed away, leaving almost fifty Daleks as nothing more than expanding clouds of debris.

"The cavalry's here!" Tracer whooped.

Twi, meanwhile, had her fingers pressed against her temples, her eyes closed. "Come on, come on, come on, come on."

Tracer seemed to know exactly where to put the fighter -- sweeping her extended compliment of long ranged energy weapons through formation after formation of Daleks. Soon, the fleets of Daleks that were rushing for Imperial ships were retargeting on us.

My feet were still on the dash. I was actually only half paying attention, since I was trying to really get used to my other new toys. The ones I had mentioned earlier. Remember?

"SDF Command to unidentified xenos vessel!" A booming voice came from one of the speakers -- a speaker so perfect and well designed that it sounded as if the arrogant human voice was coming from a real person standing right there. "Identify yourself or you will be targeted and destroyed."

"This is Rogue Trader Malik Fong," I said, grinning. "And, sir, if you need to see my warrant, then I will smack you in the face with it after I'm done saving your planet. Which, I believe, may need to be renamed to Fong Prime. That has a bit of a ring to it, doesn't it?"