Jokaero

At the same time, without leaving the study of libraries and even dropping in on Maximus from time to time, I found out a number of rather curious things. For a start, I fulfilled my intention and found out what rotten xenos were hacking into the imperial informatories.

I read it and cried, with uncontrollable laughter - I began reading the description with the attempts to "put the lousy xenos into the Imperium's service" in the form of reports. But first things first.

So, the Jokaero are a rather small race of primates, and the most natural orangutans. I'm no zoologist, but males of a hundred kilos or more and a meter and a half in height, in my opinion, are the standard for these hominids. Externally, there are no differences at all. And then the fun begins. These monkeys are a rather peaceful (though better not to be touched) race, with no planet, traveling in their own handmade (all four of them, yes) interstellar ships. Navigating through warp is fine, by the way, and doesn't need the three-eyed mutant navigators of Navis Nobilite. Other xenos don't need them either, but orc warboys or weirdos are great at navigating, and other xenos don't go to warp. Perverted Eldar use the Ancients' web exclusively, fearing for their breathing and pissing holes, which Slaanesh claims. However, it sometimes catches them in the web as well, according to rumor, but never mind that. The Technocrats-Tau are all dumbed down and have very little interaction with warp, so they fly on some sort of technical (conditionally technical, given the topology redesigned by immaterial) FTL engine. Quite slow, but, understandably, perfectly safe.

In general, the monkeys are universally oriented in warp, spit on all sorts of demons, and most importantly, according to all sources, have no speech. No speech at all. Lives a family of twenty individuals monkeys in their own hand-assembled of stolen metal junk (no kidding) starship, technologically a head above the Imperium's existing and, at a minimum, without having a Heller field, and fly around the galaxy. And speechless, as it were. And at the beginning of contacts, a certain magos-biologist (dismantled by monkeys for parts) dissected primates and by studying the brain determined that these creatures can have neither abstract thinking nor speech.

And to top it all off, these primates performed technological "miracles" that were unattainable by other races. In quotes, because neither warp nor "mechanical energy," which the mechanicus pumped into their creations with sacred vessels, chants, and sacred fat, were used by the Jokaero. Pure, honest technology, inferior to anyone else, made from shit and sticks. And they can't talk, either. I'm a big believer, I said with a grin.

But that the monkeys are to some extent my "colleagues in transmigration", I'm almost sure. The fact is that the navigational web of the ancients was gradually breaking. Apparently, it was not intended to work in the topology changed by the breakthrough of the Awe Eye, but had some "safety margin", that is broke "in small doses" and gradually. And from the breaking points came out all sorts of things, sometimes fierce and nasty, obviously not tied to warp, or in general to this galaxy. Quite possibly from some parallel worlds.

So my "hit" might well have been the result of such a "break". Moreover, I got in a body, only... the topology in which I was formed is different. Perhaps there are empires in my universe, I don't know, but we have no "breakthroughs," so the world is "material," just like me.

And here everything is ... part-imaginary, as paradoxical as that sounds. No, not puppets and not imaginary, but the very nature of the galaxy soaked in warp energies is such that it is no longer quite matter, in all its manifestations. Accordingly, I don't give a shit about warp. For me it is some extraneous energy that I can see and change with my imagination (which is much more "imaginative" for warp, unlike the locals' imagination). However, this is a theory, not necessarily true, but it may have a place to exist.

Accordingly, monkeys simply and trivially see the "light and wind of the immaterial", can command it, and can move in areas where not only demons, not even islands like mine can exist. And the warp is not aggressive towards them, they are "out of it.

Well, and communicate, respectively, in the "wind-light" range, as I did with Laginia, with no problems with communication. And the psykers who wanted to understand them, just did not perceive such "deep warp" as communications. At least, that's what it looks like, based on the knowledge I have. And with monkeys we should try to meet and, on occasion, establish a dialogue.

And the reason for my laughter is this. At the dawn of the encounter with the Jokaero, humans naturally wanted to destroy, enslave, and hire them... and so on down the list. There are anecdotes, how in a dozen hours a shackled monkey built a working (and sometimes armed) starship out of shackles, a camera, parts of a ship, etc., and made a thing out of the enslavers. In the case of the vivisectionist biology magus and other similar jocaero-unfriendly personalities, the monkeys did some spectacular nastiness and mischief in the process of leaving their confinement. From the comical, like an inverted sewer, to the downright frightening.

The monkeys, however, were... well, not particularly well disposed, but they did make contact with humans, unlike the spiky-eared perverts and mushroom warriors, the jokaeros. Mechanicus on them, though, were scraping with special scraping mechanodendrites - boorishly, without the heresy of warp, at that, on the principles of imperial technology, and it works. Well, and small pranks, in the form of landing a gioacaero on some random Forge World for spare parts, should not be forgotten. They knock out the attacked Servitors and augmented Skitarians with some analog of EMP blast, gather everything that's not nailed down, take what's nailed down, and fly away on their monkey business.

So, in spite of the obvious aversion to the Mechanicus, the apes were generally on hand, sometimes even bartering, and several ships and their families worked for the Inquisition quite voluntarily, for tasty treats and spare parts. It is true with the output quite arbitrary, but the rings with weapons (improbably destructive), spy devices on apparent nanotechnology and a number of other highly sought-after products these "fatteners" riveted almost no accidents.