"Done. Job finished."
Anna's posture, taut as a bowstring a moment before, instantly relaxed.
She even stretched lazily, luxuriously, like an ordinary person finishing a bout of intense mental work.
Then she turned, silver hair sliding over her shoulders, and looked at Lorgar with a mixture of smugness and mischief. Beside her, he still held his combat stance, muscles tense, his psychic senses sweeping like radar over the silent behemoth ahead.
"I bypassed its ancient firewalls and biometric authentication protocols, forced my way into the core control layer, then activated the Highest-Priority Emergency Hibernation Protocol." She spoke briskly, as though describing how to switch off a noisy radio.
"And there you go. One little 'click,' and I cut its power. So? Pretty efficient, wasn't I?"
As she spoke, she blinked, her inhuman eyes gleaming as though she had just pulled off a prank.
Lorgar slowly released a breath that had all but frozen in his chest, the tense line of his shoulders easing slightly.
He withdrew his extended psychic tendrils. The hand that had been poised to sweep down and give the order to fire instead gave Anna a thumbs-up.
His usual solemn expression had not entirely faded, but his knitted brows relaxed, and the corners of his mouth even lifted in an almost imperceptible smile.
"Impressive." Brief and to the point, but coming from Lorgar, it was high praise indeed.
At his approval, Anna's smile brightened. Then, as though remembering something, she followed his still-appraising, thoughtful gaze toward the now "dead," planet-sized silver-white behemoth outside the viewport.
She followed his gaze, then glanced at the Primarch's contemplative expression, as though he were weighing whether he could drag this enormous creation back to his own warehouse. Her face immediately took on a look that said, You're hopeless.
"So, can we