Therefore, the right move is to increase caution somewhat, internally, and otherwise proceed as you would have otherwise.

Which is, or course, exactly what I want.

Additional caution will, after all, make you actively worse at dealing with Cherry.

You didn't think it was a Slaaneshi dream, did you? It was all diplomatic negotiations and reasoning, and no seduction or pleasuring at all.

It was pretty obviously a Tzeentchian dream, and I am not going to do anything in particular about that for now.

Atta boy!

Now, for the contents of the message...

Oh, she's just sending me that she's close to arrival. Right. She should proceed.

"Proceed"? Roger that! 

The helicopter now reaches the approximate location of Cherry.

"Hello!" Xanthoceras transmits, once the plane is fairly close. "Are you the person I'm meeting for the demonstration?"

She is tempted to fly up and meet them, but for one thing she'll probably need seawater for reaction material, and for another she's worried that would spook them. Again. Which she is, actually, trying to avoid.

So instead she just sits on her incongruous ocean pool floatie and waves.

"Affirmative", Mikresu replies. "I am activating my scanning equipment."

And, a few seconds later, she transmits a schematic.

Two schematics, actually.

One is a crude but complex sculpture made of various assemblages of iron, carbon, sodium, nitrogen, and other materials found in dirty water and atmosphere, arranged like wires and rods and foil and knots and random three-dimensional mathematical functions. It's hastily thrown together.

Another one is a schematic of a circuit for a cogitator. It's rather simple, if fine in structure. It requires rare-earth elements that you can't find in quantity in the middle of nowhere.

Hmm. Well, she only agreed to do one schematic, but it's obvious what they're trying to check — and it is hardly any extra effort. More importantly, she doesn't recognize any of the same Warp-active components that she got a scan of with the handcuffs. That doesn't mean that there aren't any, but it's probably safe enough.

"Received," she replies. "Give me a second to do the file format conversion ... and okay, here:"

People are often fairly incredulous the first time a fixity field just makes an object appear, with no fanfare. So she has it construct the schematics slowly — that is, over about a tenth of a second. The first schematic would be possible to put together by dredging the water and atmosphere, but nucleosynthesis is just so much simpler, so she uses it for both schematics.

The water is mostly hydrogen and oxygen, with some other trace elements. The schematics are mostly made of heavier elements. So the fixity crystal has plenty of protons and electrons to work with, but not enough neutrons. That's fine — it just makes the synthesis a two-step process. The crystal disassembles the required mass of water, and places some protons and electrons in extremely close proximity, pumping energy into them until one of the proton's up quarks emits a W boson, converting the proton into a neutron and the electron into an electron neutrino.

Then, once there are enough neutrons, it assembles the heavier elements. The difference in binding energy (both nuclear and chemical, although the nuclear binding energy is by far the larger amount) is shunted into the fixity crystal's stores.

The heavy elements are slotted into place with atomic precision. Then, as a finishing touch, their momenta are slightly randomized, giving the assembled structures the same amount of average kinetic energy as the surrounding atmosphere, to avoid a temperature differential.

To someone watching with human eyes, the two items seem to simply grow from nothing, floating in the air a bit above Xanthoceras in the general direction of the plane. To someone watching with a fixity crystal, the deliberately choreographed movements would be obvious, the location of every particle (and therefore the changes made to their locations) immediately apparent.

To someone watching with mysterious "scanning equipment" that operates on some principle unknown to Xanthoceras ...

This is, as suspected, not the universal fabricator of old STCs - a sludge of nanobots pushing matter around and configuring it into shapes.

This is the face of God.

Mikresu just stands there for a moment.

Then stares into a few screens with her own two physical eyes, forgetting even to be appropriately disgusted by that. 

Then, she prostrates herself. (Since she's in a helicopter, it's mostly not visible from the outside, and the Omnissiah sees all anyway, and Weeping Cherry isn't too far off.)

There's a new message, confirming Cherry's capabilities.

Welp. This is our life now.

Either that, or this is a new turn in the ongoing deception.

Either way, Lupa quickly starts the process of notifying the Inquisition.

The helicopter hovers in one place. The person inside is kneeling and not particularly saying anything.

Can she technically see inside the helicopter? Maybe, depending on what it's made of; techniques for seeing through walls with radio are not anything new. But it's currently outside her range, so it is not completely trivial. And she's not in the habit of looking through walls when talking to people.

She's expecting a moment of awe. She was not expecting it to be so lengthy. After a moment she speaks again:

"I know it's a lot to take in," she says in a gentle voice. "But ... you can see why I want to help, now, right? I look at this planet, and I see thousands of things that could easily be made better. If I had come with one of the big universal fabricators that cover the whole inner solar system of my version of Earth, I could already have helped everyone ..."

"As it is, it will take time. And it will go much more smoothly if we can work together. Please, help me help you?"

"O-of course, in the name of the Omnissiah, I will do everything in my power!" is something Mikresu does not immediately say. She's serving as a personal Inquisitorial aide, and thus she is is not the kind of person to exert initiative simply because reality appears to be arranged in a way that makes exerting initiative seem useful.

Instead, she rebroadcasts the message to her master and waits for further orders, and keeps kneeling.

These things cover all of her solar system...

Solar systems are big. They are very, very big.

You might think that a planet is big or that a star is really big but these are peanuts compared to a solar system.

This is insanity! This is without precedent! Etc, etc, etc.

Okay, we knew that already. How does one ensure the survival and benefit of Humanity* amid all the insanity, is the question?

*Imperium

Is it by immediately throwing in with Weeping Cherry, an abomination who arrived here a couple days ago? Obviously not.

Is it by ignoring her presence and refusing to communicate and waiting until she starts covering solar systems in fabricators matter-controllers? Probably not.

It's going to be something in between.

It's gonna need a measured approach.

He'll need to think more about all of this.

For now, though: "Acknowledged. I have previously shared with Cherry the protocols for defending from Warp that work for humans, eliding the exact nature of threats, and promised that you would share the protocols valid for machinery. Confirm your observations, note our need to think about decisions, then proceed with that."

(And while this conversation is taking place, a small fleet of Space Marines is traversing the Warp on course to this system.)