Hammer and Anvil

by James Swallow

  The Sororitas all nodded their agreement, but Verity’s attention was elsewhere. Miriya grabbed her arm. ‘Sister…’

  ‘Do you feel that?’ said the hospitaller, pulling up an auspex unit from where it hung at her belt. ‘In the air? Like a… An electric charge…’

  Miriya opened her mouth to say no; but then she did feel something. A faint tingling on her bare skin, a fresh scent of acrid ozone.

  ‘It’s like the air after a storm passes,’ muttered Kora.

  Danae was raising her meltagun. ‘We should not be here!’ she grated

  A flicker of light caught Miriya’s eye and she saw a glimmer in the depths of the nearest glass pane. Faint green sparks, like fireworks bursting in the sky observed from a great distance.

  Verity’s auspex gave off a sudden clicking sound and the tingling over Miriya’s face became a crawling, itching sensation. Loose votive chains clicked and moved of their own accord, pulled gently towards the nearest of the shimmering panels.

  Then a sudden throbbing pulse of viridian light bloomed in the cavern, each pane glowing bright like slow sheet lightning.

  Ferren moved with his troops, a laser carbine modified for his personal use mounted on the largest of his servo-arms. He kept in the middle of the pack, surrounded by his best skitarii. The tech-priest wasn’t about to deny himself the chance to engage some of the Battle Sisters first hand, but he was no fool. He had only middling combat prowess beyond the reams of match-move data he had downloaded from the central processing matrix of his warrior squads, but it was likely that he might be able to step in at the final moment and deliver a coup de grace to one of the intruders before she died. Ferren wanted to see how that event train would feel, to examine if it would stir any extant emotions in him. It would make an interesting experiment, and a fine way to show Tegas that he was not the null unit the questor considered him to be.

  He wondered if he should feel remorse for such thoughts; after all, the Sisters were servants of the Imperium just as he was. They were not the arch-enemy.

  Ferren dismissed the thought. The logic process here was clear. The women had discovered something they should have not. They could not be allowed to relay that information to their kindred. Murder was the most effective means of silencing them. A simple and effective process.

  They were close now. The scouts leading the search party down the tunnels were beaming back their targeting data to the rest of the group. Sound sensors cut a picture out of the gloom, listening for the motion of boots on stone, the whine of power armour, even the thudding of human hearts. The Sororitas had entered the main chamber, the area that one of Ferren’s adepts had named ‘the hall of windows’ in a moment of uncharacteristic whimsy.

  The panes of glassy material, as much as they resembled fused silica, were actually some kind of extruded metallic crystal with a tensile strength greater than steel. In months of examination, none of Ferren’s explorator team had been able to uproot them or gain insight into their functionality. And while they were proof against all but the most powerful ballistic rounds, the Mechanicus expedition had learned early on that they were transparent to las-bolts. If the Sisters were going to use them as cover, they would have an unpleasant surprise to face–

  Ferren’s train of thought was halted by a sudden surge of new inputs from the sensing palps at the tips of his mechadendrite cluster. A spike in exotic radiation came from nothing, spent neutrinos and quark-flux particles creating an invisible mist that could only be perceived by one with the eyes of a machine.

  The tech-priest beamed an interrogative to the communal data pool and found he was not the only one detecting the same variance. Even as he communicated with his minions in microsecond-swift binaric pulses, comparing readings and building a theory, he began to register another effect. The local background level of electromagnetic radiation was rising exponentially, decay rates and backscatter patterns indicating the epicentre of the anomaly was out there, in the chamber.

  Specifically, it appeared to be emitting from the windows themselves.

  The electromagnetic force did not diminish; it became uncomfortable for the skitarii and the other adepts, causing misfires in their neural implants and stutters across the interface of their brain-augmentation connections. Ferren took an involuntary step backwards, his accelerated thoughts cycling, becoming glitchy as the energy discharge grew stronger. He tried to engage his tempest shields, but the force was strong, overwhelming them. His deep logic cores began to auto-deactivate in order to protect vital data such as his persona matrix and his primary memories.

  It was hard to concentrate. The pulse was like blades being drawn across the cords of the tech-priest’s cerebral implants. But one element did seem clear. The pattern of the energy resembled something similar, a configuration that Ferren had detected emitting from the iron scroll during his examinations, but on a far more diminished level.

  He had just enough time to wonder about the connection between these two things before the discharge topped out and sent every one of the Mechanicus reeling. The cyborgs gave off static-laced screams that resonated down the stone tunnels as they went blind, toppled over, and fell into stuttering restart cycles.

  Green fire filled every one of the glass panes to their brim, sparks of photonic discharge glittering for brief moments around their blade-sharp edges. The depths of colour and hard light twitched, and in defiance of what seemed real, they extended into themselves. Like a mirror looking into a mirror, corridors made of infinity spiralled away. Energy flowing in watery puddles sent out ripples; and then, as if they were doors cut into the air itself, from within the spaces metal claws reached for the edges and drew outwards.

  Some of the panes were broken, by rock falls or the destructive actions of Ferren’s explorators, others were blocked by drifts of sand that trickled away, sucked into some nowhere space. Those that were open and clear became doorways spilling sickly light.

  Shapes moved in that light, lensing it around them. Skeletal shapes, things stamped out of ancient machine-shops on worlds long since consumed by dead suns. They walked with solemn purpose, stirring from aeons of sleep. Pitiless and with perfect focus, summoned by the unwary, the spindly forms of necron warrior-mechs stepped back onto the sands of Sanctuary 101.

  Verity’s heart hammered in her chest as the glassy portals poured out more and more of the machine-xenos, ranks of the bony steel figures striding silently from out of nothingness. One after another, they formed into precise cohorts, groups of five taking up wedge-shaped patterns as if they were soldiers engaged in a parade ground drill.

  She had never seen a necron with her own eyes before. What the hospitaller knew of them came from vague rumours and half-heard stories that were more supposition than truth. To look upon them now drew up powerful emotions in her: fear and terror, indeed, but also a kind of revulsion that sickened Verity to her stomach. The machine-things seemed to radiate an ephemeral sense of something ancient and callous. They were utterly inhuman in a way she could not find the words to describe.

  Each of the necron warriors mimicked the structure of a humanoid skeleton, spun from dull chromium, spindly limbs ending in clawed hands that clasped weapons made of pipes and glowing emerald rods. Elongated death’s-head skulls were animated by cold fire, casting this way and that as they entered the cavern. Most chilling of all was the way they moved without noise.

  Verity’s hands were frozen around poor Xanthe’s bolter, her breath caught in her throat as if to utter a single sound would be to shatter this horrible moment.

  Miriya, Danae and the others were ready, poised to fire. ‘Eloheim?’ Verity heard Kora hiss at the Sister Superior, the question in the word. But Imogen said nothing, her face pale with the same shock, petrified in the moment and unable to speak.

  In the next second the necrons were advancing. They marched forwards, out of the circle of glowing panels and on towards the assembly of Mechanicus skitarii dithering at the entrance to the great cavern. The red-
robes seemed to be in some disarray, but there were dozens of them, with many weapons in their grasp. The greater threat? Verity wondered. Is that what these things see in them?

  The question became moot as some of the tech-guard gathered enough of their wits to fire on the warriors. Crimson light flashed, las-bolts threading from the barrels of beam carbines and into the arrowhead formations of the necrons.

  A few of the machines stumbled and faltered, ignored by their companions. The others raised their weapons in perfect concert and returned fire.

  Emerald flame, eldritch and crackling, engulfed the closest group of skitarii and began the work of disintegrating them. Verity’s mouth dropped open in shock. Where the tech-guard troopers had organic flesh, their skin and nerves, their meat and bone were flensed apart and flashed instantly to puffs of ash. The pure cyborg parts of them, the implants and the biomodules, became blackened pieces of slag, spilling onto the dusty floor as they collapsed and perished.

  The necrons advanced to the sound of their killing, feeding into the mouth of the tunnel.

  For one long, giddy second, Verity held on to the hope that somehow the xenos machines had missed the presence of the Sisters, that perhaps they would ignore the women seeking cover behind the rocks; but then the last two squads of the warrior mechanoids came to a smart, point-perfect halt. They turned on their heels and reversed their march.

  Verity saw the chilling glow in their eye slits as the metal faces turned to glare down on the Sisters.

  The moment broke Imogen’s hesitation, and she screamed. ‘Fire!’

  Ferren cannoned his way down the twisting tunnel, the ululating sound of the alien gauss flayer beams rebounding all around him. Green lightning flashed off the dark stone walls, reflections of kill-fire preceding the execution of his precious skitarii.

  His mind was in a chaotic state, on the verge of a cascade breakdown. Memory stacks full of data carefully stored and collated over the last few months had been broken open by the electromagnetic burst and the shock of this sudden invasion. The tech-priest tried desperately to understand what was going on, to reason out the course of events as they transpired.

  The explorator team had been inside the caverns for so long, they had done so much, and yet Ferren and his cohorts had been unable to find anything more complex than a dormant tomb spyder in a stasis cowl. All the time they had been here, and he had come to be convinced that whatever Sanctuary 101 had represented to the necrontyr before, its value had become nothing. For whatever reason, the execution of the original Sororitas colony had marked the end of necron interest in this world – and who was there who could disagree with that hypothesis? The ways of aliens were, well, they were alien! Unfathomable by even the sharpest of human minds!

  The necrons had swept over this planet more than ten years earlier, made their kills, and then moved on. This was fact. Ferren was certain of it. This was fact. There was nothing here but the relics, a rich seam of remains to be mined and information to be gleaned.

  The necrons had moved on. In the months he had been in command of this secret expedition that certainty had become almost like a mantra for Ferren. But now he realised that the truth was not as he had wanted it to be. What the tech-priest could not face, the grotesque emotional reality he kept denying, was that he was afraid.

  Afraid that the Mechanicus had sent him to this place to die. Afraid he would never be able to advance beyond his present rank. And more than anything, afraid that the pitiless machines were still hiding beneath the sands, waiting for the moment to come and kill again.

  His fear was real now, and Ferren cursed it as he listened to the dying screams and frenzied cries for aid from his tech-guard.

  He emerged into the main passage, the open area in the throat of the caves where the smouldering wreck of the Venator still sat, wreathed in grey smoke. Gun-servitors, cut off from command-and-control inputs by the electromagnetic surge, had reverted back to base programming and were taking up defensive positions, drawn to the sound of the alien attackers. Ferren pushed past them and staggered towards the mouth of the cave, fighting down the sickeningly human sensation of panic that threatened to overwhelm him. He concentrated on the terms of the sacred equations, part of his braincore chanting them in order as a calmative, while another level of his intelligence was weighing his combat options.

  His last command had been to fall back, and the skitarii were attempting to follow it. The necron foot soldiers were unwilling to let them go, however, matching the pace of their escape and cutting down anyone foolish enough to show their back to the maws of their gauss guns. A dozen more life-sign indicators winked out in the shared data pool, their connections severed by the sudden termination of all cerebral function.

  Ferren calculated how many troops he had already lost and the figure was deeply troubling. In a matter of a few minutes, the necrons had emerged – from where? he wondered – and cut a swath through the tech-priest’s elite. The punishing, inexorable numbers made the situation clear to him.

  Raw information streamed through the communal pool in painful jags. The explorator team were totally outmatched. Conservative estimates reckoned that the xenos machines would complete full extermination of everyone in the encampment within less than ten solar minutes, should they exit the cavern.

  Should they exit the cavern. The qualifier sounded in his thoughts, and Ferren cast around, even as the skeletal constructs emerged behind him, wading into the teeth of the gun-servitor lines. Heavy cannons crackled and chugged, and necrons fell; but there were more in the ranks behind, each stepping up to seamlessly fill every vacated space.

  Ferren dove through the layers of information in the data pool and found something he could use, buried in the memory of a minor adept involved in the geophysical survey works. His piston-legs spitting as he ran, the tech-priest dodged through glancing flickers of green fire and found a workshack module nestled close to the cavern wall. It was a hardened capsule protected by secure hatches, but its primitive machine-spirit recognised Ferren immediately and opened all locks to him.

  The odour of harsh chemicals, of hexogene rings and complex nitrotoluene clusters, assailed his sensing pallet. Inside, there were racks of metal cylinders, each marked with warning trefoils and warding runes; geo-mag charges of various explosive potentials, used to crack the recalcitrant rock during excavations and deep digs.

  Had there been time for finesse, Ferren would have downloaded a stream of datum to a functionary like the surveyor adept and had them carry out his wishes, but the moment was now, and the tech-priest understood that he would need to do this himself. Before it was too late.

  More icons faded from the communal network as he found and encoded a detonator spike. Ferren ignored the screaming and activated the charge. As the timer bar began to shrink, he dropped the unit and fled. In his thoughts, he ran a simulation of the detonation effect. It was a crude and poorly-placed alternative, but it would be enough to bring down the cavern mouth and seal it off from the rest of the encampment. The necrons would be contained, and while that meant a sizeable number of sacrifices among his skitarii – the ones still fighting back there, ignorant of what the tech-priest was doing – it also meant that the expedition proper would survive.

  More importantly, it meant that Ferren would survive. He applied maximum motive energy to his augmetic limbs and sprinted across the stone floor towards the yawning entrance.

  The glancing energy bolt swept over him and severed the tech-priest’s right leg at the hip, throwing Ferren into a headlong tumble that was arrested only by a collision with the stub of a half-buried boulder. He doused all pain receptors the moment he was struck, but it was too late to stop the initial surge of agony. Ferren scrambled, a mess of torn, dirty robes and spindly iron-black limbs, flailing around like a swatted insect unable to right itself.

  The shot had been random, a miss that had taken him instead of its intended target, but it mattered little. Ferren’s mechadendrites and arms splayed out,
stabbing at the dusty ground, trying desperately to pull him away towards the cave entrance.

  But it would not be enough. Not nearly enough.

  Ferren released a furious roar of scrap-code, putting all his sudden and very human anger into a last eruption of noise.

  The explosion drowned him out.

  The necron warriors attacked the Battle Sisters with a precision and a focus that was beyond any enemy Miriya had faced on the field of conflict. No motion they made was wasted, every footstep and aimed shot was perfectly calculated and deftly laid.

  Gauss fire shattered the rocks they had chosen as their cover, driving them out to duck and run among the glittering panes of glass. Miriya was wary of the strange portal-panels. No more warriors had emerged from the doorways beyond them after the initial invasion group had come through, but there was no way to know if more were on their way.

  Danae moved and fired with the meltagun, shooting from her hip, panning it about in a sharp arc that engulfed the glass panes and the machine-forms alike. The panes she hit slagged and misted, the fires within dying, but they did not shatter. Miriya could not help but wonder what kind of exotic matter could resist the sun-hot power of a melta blast.

  The necrons returned fire with their own weapons, laying down fields of coruscating green energy that soured the air and sounded shrieks across the echoing chamber. Miriya executed a shot from half-cover and placed a three-round burst of mass-reactive bolts in the chest of an advancing warrior. The steel skeleton was blown back off its clawed feet and it crashed to the ground in a ruined heap. It gave no cry of pain, no utterance or curse against her as she cut it down. The silence, the eerie cohort of stillness that surrounded the necron attack, was as chilling as the blank horror of their skull-faces.

  And then, to her shock, the thing Miriya thought she had killed rose again. The grievous wound across its torso was shrinking, the metal plates there flowing like mercury, what could only be splines and wires beneath knitting back together to undo the injury. The necron strode towards her, raising its flayer high to present the curved axe-blade across the bottom of the muzzle, an executioner stepping up towards the killing block.