Voidbringer glanced at Sahtah with disdain. ‘I need no help.’
Sahtah was an outcast in necron society, a noble who had become little better than a beast. Proximity to other lords was strictly forbidden, the possibility of infection real and abhorrent. None amongst the royal house wanted to be cursed as a flayer.
Ankh drew Tahek’s gaze. ‘Focus on your task,’ he said. ‘Bring the night.’
The necron’s eyes narrowed, a pair of tiny flames inside two pools of abject night. ‘I obey,’ he rasped, his voice disappearing into the shadows, as did the Voidbringer himself.
Ankh turned to Sahtah in the image-cast. ‘Your servants await you,’ he said. ‘Follow them. They will lead you to the surface.’
Sahtah looked around at the disembodied voice in the chamber. His confusion was forgotten when he saw the other flayed ones approaching.
‘So ripe,’ the Enfleshed marvelled, regarding a pair of hunchbacked necrons skulking into the wan light of the catacombs. He reached out for their capes of skin but retracted his claws – the mirror of their own – not daring to touch, shamed by his own rotten rags. ‘So fresh. A slave’s attire should not eclipse that of his lord.’
The flayed ones bowed to him.
‘So, renew your robes,’ uttered Ankh, adding resonance to the voice that Sahtah was hearing, ‘with the flesh of our enemies.’
Like a hound let slip from its master’s leash, the Enfleshed leapt from his revivification casket and scurried after the slaves as they went to hunt.
The image phased out and Ankh put the crystal away.
‘I long for proper sentience again,’ groaned the Undying.
Now he and the Architect were alone.
Ankh considered the motions of the scarabs and tomb spyders, perceived the ethereal presence of his wraiths as they patrolled the deeps of the tomb. More and more cells were awakening. With the first hierarchy at full strength, the rest of the royal house and with them the entire legion would not be long in waking.
‘Our numbers multiply. It will be soon, my lord.’
‘I long…’ the Undying moaned again, trailing off when his mind fell into oblivion again.
‘We are legion,’ said Ankh, partly to himself. With a gesture, he summoned a column-shaped node from the resurrection chamber floor. When his skeletal fingers closed on the icon inscribed at its apex a tiny coruscation of lightning fashioned a web-matrix between them and bathed Ankh in its light.
On the surface, several levels up, projection nodes churned into position; the activation runes delineating display dais lit up.
The Herald spoke and his graven image was broadcast to all who still lived on Damnos.
Adanar felt as hollow as the clanging of the western gate when it was shut. He heard the flat reports of the commissars’ pistols as they brought down the deserters. He closed his eyes when he thought of the four hundred who’d left the Courtyard of Thor. He doubted they’d last long against the necrontyr but someone had to go and get Rancourt – the administrator-turned-acting governor was the closest thing to Imperial authority left on Damnos. Not including the Space Marines, of course, but theirs was a different remit.
Adanar doubted he’d ever even meet them. What consequence was he to them? What were any of them? The Emperor’s Angels were as cold and aloof as the necrons. The only difference was the Space Marines weren’t trying to eradicate them.
The people needed a figurehead – Zeph Rancourt, loathsome as he was, had to fulfil that role and bring some sort of stability to Damnos. Kellenport was the last city on an unremarkable world, but it had to have unity if it were to survive.
Adanar recalled cheering at the sight of the azure arrowheads streaking through the heavens. People were praising the Emperor for their deliverance, for the saving of Damnos.
The Space Marines were formidable. They could do what no ordinary man could. They could turn certain defeat into victory, but these creatures… they were even a match for the Angels of Death. And all the while the emerald artillery barrage went on unabated.
‘Send four battalions down to the Courtyard of Thor to replace our losses,’ he said to the air. He’d forgotten Sergeant Nabor was dead, slumped in a pool of his own brain-ooze.
Adanar raised Corporal Besseque and gave the order down the vox. He also tasked him with getting another sergeant to help man the walls and relay instructions to the other officers.
‘And get a message to Acting Lord Governor Rancourt. A force is on its way to bring him back to Kellenport.’ Adanar had wanted to add, and the safety of its walls, but couldn’t bring himself to lie that heinously. He was about to request a status report when a hololithic image materialised in the smoky haze over the battlefield. Adanar recognised the voice of the Herald of Dismay.
Your saviours are not angels sent to deliver you. There is no deliverance. We, the necrontyr, reclaim this world. Your saviours cannot stop us. We are not creatures of flesh and emotion, but of circuit and reason. We are the machine, and the machine will not be denied.
The hololith, rendered in grainy emerald, crackled and faded. It left a pall of despair in its wake. Adanar could almost sense the collective groan of the men under his command.
Hope, so cruelly given, was being snatched away. He could feel it.
‘What have I to be thankful for?’ he asked, remembering the premature celebrations while the artillery barrage raged all around him. He regarded the fire-blackened streets, the shattered plaza, the collapsed towers and ruptured domes of his city. ‘What have any of us?’
Smoothing the thinning hair of his greasy scalp, Rancourt paced the floor of the medi-bay for what felt like the hundredth time. He had wanted position, power and all that came with it, but not in these circumstances. He was lord governor in everything but name, a de facto potentate, but of what? A rock, a fegging rock soon to be extinct or declared excommunicate xenos by the Imperium.
‘Am I not a dutiful servant?’ he asked the recumbent form on the medi-couch next to him. The room was bare and stank of sanitation fluid. It was tiled, and besides the couch, contained a single chair that Rancourt had yet to sit in. A chrono on the wall above him no longer functioned. Wouldn’t matter if it did; he’d lost all sense of time. Ever since the mine, ever since…
He crushed the thoughts, not wishing to relive the days after that, the bitter struggle for survival in the ice wastes.
‘Oh, Throne…’ he murmured, pressing his hands hard against his forehead in an effort to push out the memories. ‘If you’d have seen what we had to do. If you’d–’ He stopped suddenly when his gaze met that of Lord Governor Arxis, laying on the medi-couch. ‘You… you bastard! Leaving me with all of this. I don’t want it, I tell you. I don’t, but I can’t give it back, can I? Can I?’ He tossed the chair and it cracked several tiles when it landed, bending a leg.
Rancourt’s fists were clenched and he was about to pound on Arxis when he stopped and caught his breath. His arms, so full of nervous anger just moments ago, fell to his sides. Instead of lashing out, he leaned in and spoke softly into the lord governor’s ear.
‘Help me,’ he pleaded. ‘Tell me what I’m supposed to do.’
A knock on the door made Rancourt start and he straightened, wiping away the tears on his face. ‘What is it?’ he snapped, turning to face Sergeant Kador who’d just entered.
‘We’ve just received confirmation that we’re moving you to the Kellenport wall, my lord.’
Rancourt shrank back as if stung. He stopped when he touched the medi-couch and could go no further. ‘Is it safe?’
‘Safer than the Capitolis at this time,’ answered Kador a little ruefully. ‘The Space Marines are here, my lord, and they are reclaiming the outer defences, including this bastion.’
‘Then I should stay, shouldn’t I?’ Rancourt was nodding. It looked like he was trying to convince himself. ‘If the Adeptus Astartes are my protectors.’
‘They won’t be staying. Once we have the outer walls, Commander So
nne has vowed to garrison them again so our saviours can press the assault and liberate our world.’ Sergeant Kador outstretched his hand. ‘You need to accompany me, my lord.’
‘Very well,’ Rancourt replied, not entirely sure. ‘What of Lord Governor Arxis? How do you plan to move him?’
Kador frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s very simple, sergeant,’ Rancourt replied in exasperation. ‘How do we get him from the capitolis to Kellenport?’
‘We don’t. He’s dead.’
Rancourt was about to protest when he looked around. The room was bare. All the equipment, the life-preserving machines were gone… because they were no longer needed. The lord governor hadn’t survived his injuries in the Proteus bunker.
‘Of course… Yes, I will leave now. Lead on, sergeant.’
Iulus wiped the sweat off his brow with a heavy hand. Despite his advanced physiology, the wound he’d sustained in his shoulder was slowing him. Ahead of the squad, Agnathio led the line. His armoured bulk bore the worst of the intense gauss-barrage. A fusillade of beams staggered the Dreadnought and Iulus willed the venerable one to endure it.
Slamming a fresh clip into his bolt pistol, Iulus released a tightly controlled burst. The hulking necron in his sights bucked, sparks cascaded off its armoured body, but it came on undaunted. Galvia and Urnos added their bolters to their sergeant’s barrage, but to little effect.
Still firing, Iulus levelled his chainsword at the seemingly invulnerable necrons. ‘Throw up a wall, brother.’
Aristaeus opened up his flamer, bathing the front line with a wave of super-heated promethium. Implacable, the mechanoids just ploughed through it, their bodies trailing with tendrils of fire and smoke.
‘Oath of Hera,’ breathed Galvia. ‘They are unstoppable.’
Somewhere in the distance las-beams stabbed into the flames, but they were as insect stings to the monstrous automatons.
Iulus realised the Guard had engaged the enemy, but discounted the humans as an asset almost immediately. The Second were alone. He was determined they would triumph. It rested on the necron elites. Break them and the plaza was won.
Iulus grunted. ‘Tough, but not inviolable. Close the gap and intensify.’
His Immortals advanced in Agnathio’s shadow, crouched low and widely dispersed, but stalled as the warrior eternal faltered. His armour, his mighty sarcophagus that had endured for centuries over countless campaigns, was slowly being eroded.
‘Venerable one. We need to move!’
Agnathio levelled his multi-melta and sent a blast into the necron elites. It cut one of the mechanoids in half and it phased out.
Iulus rallied his warriors. ‘See! They are not indestructible.’
A second necron lost a limb but, incredibly, self-repaired, its living metal reflowing and its wires re-stitching before Iulus’s very eyes.
‘Mercy of the primarch…’
Agnathio was not to be denied and strafed the line. The wounded mechanoid was only partway through its regeneration cycle when a salvo of mass-reactive shells from the Dreadnought’s storm bolter tore it open. Balefires dying in its eyes, the necron phased out.
‘I serve the Chapter eternally!’ Agnathio was about to advance again when a plume of fire exploded from his motive servos. Haemorrhaging smoke and machine-fluid, one of his trunk-like legs seized.
A cry was ripped from his vox-emitter as a raw, burning line jagged up his sarcophagus. Visceral matter was leaking from the wound and Agnathio’s agony resonated around the plaza.
Iulus felt a tremor of disquiet. He had never seen the Dreadnought hurt before. A small part of him hadn’t thought it was possible that he would ever witness such a thing.
‘Brother-sergeant.’ Agnathio’s speech was broken and fizzed with static, in part from the damage done to his vox-emitter and in part from the pain he was enduring. He even had to fight the din of the gauss-assault to be heard. ‘You must take… the gate alone, brother. I can go no further.’
The gate? Then Iulus realised. Agnathio was back at Chundrabad, where he had fallen over five millennia ago when he was a mere battle-brother.
Iulus had no time to reply. A piece of armour plate was ripped from the Dreadnought’s shoulder, flung shrapnel embedding in the sergeant’s pauldron. Agnathio turned in the direction of his aggressors, unleashing a salvo from his storm bolter. It was to be his last as the weapon attached to his power fist burst apart in a cloud of exploding ammo. Like a pugilist that had taken too many beatings, Agnathio jerked and rocked as the blows rained down.
Iulus had seen enough. He pressed the comm-bead in his ear and spoke into his gorget vox-grille. He might have lost his battle-helm and with it the retinal display, but he could still command.
‘Brother-Sergeants Tirian and Atavian, bring hell and fury!’
A barrage hammered from either flank. The sharp tracers and missile contrails blended together furiously as the Devastators concentrated fire on the hulking elites.
A storm of hot frag exploded in the necrons’ midst but they came on implacably. Their numbers had thinned but they merely closed ranks and drove at the Ultramarines, laying down an emerald curtain of fire. Some of the casualties were rising, picking up their slowly reconstituting bodies and rejoining the rear echelons.
The Ultramarines had to get close, make certain of their kills. Iulus tightened the grip on his chainsword.
‘Immortals! Hand-to-hand. Engage and destroy!’ He ran headlong at the necrons, ignoring the gauss-beams glancing off his armour.
On his right shoulder, Urnos was struck in the chest and pitched off his feet. Iulus lost sight of him in the rush. ‘Low and fast.’
Nearby, a terrible thunder shook the frost-caked earth as Ultracius joined them. A spew of assault cannon shells ripped a ragged hole in the elites, interrupting their fire pattern and allowing Iulus and his squad the precious seconds they needed to close the gap.
His first swing was like striking the bulkhead on a battleship. Sparks churned into the air but the blow left little more than a scar against the necron’s torso. Up close the elites were even bigger, dwarfing even the Space Marines. Iulus ducked beneath a swing of its gauss-blaster. There was strength in the attack and even used as an unconventional bludgeon, the weapon was potent. A burst of fire raked the sergeant’s left side but it only stripped away paint and surface armour. He rammed his bolt pistol into the creature’s neck cavity and pulled the trigger.
Spitting shards of metal opened up a dozen shallow cuts on his face but the necron’s head came away, leaving behind a sheared spinal column. Iulus kicked it over with an exultant roar before it phased out.
‘Taste the fury of the Immortals!’
A savage blow to his solar plexus cut his victory short. He felt his armour plastron crack and struggled to breathe before his multi-lung kicked in to take up the slack of his collapsed organ.
One of the hulking necrons regarded him curiously. ‘You are not immortal, flesh-thing. They are before you. They are your doom.’
Chainsword screaming, Iulus swung, but the mechanoid blocked with its arm and butted him.
Groggy, he shook it off.
Around him, he was acutely aware of his squad fighting hard with bolter and blade. Somewhere in the dense throng of the necron elite, Ultracius was avenging the crippling of his fellow Dreadnought. A heavy necron form was tossed into the air before landing back down into the melee and disappearing.
Ultracius was relentless. ‘Guilliman watches over us. Do not be found wanting in his hallowed sight!’ The assault cannon shrieked and a half-dozen mechanoids were ruined, their shattered bodies flung into the closing mist.
Iulus took a blow against his wounded shoulder and felt the bone crack. His guard was split in two and fell away uselessly. He brought his chainsword around for another swing, this time ramming the blade where the necron’s innards should be. The creature pulled the blade away, losing skeletal fingers to the chain-teeth, and brought its gauss-b
laster up one-handed. With a feral shout, Iulus severed the weapon where it was conjoined to the necron’s wrist and rammed the sword in again.
Iulus rejoiced as he drew out a modulated scream from the monster, but it came on undeterred.
‘Desist. Your efforts are futile.’ Bereft of its gauss-blaster, the hulking mechanoid smashed the Ultramarine’s shoulder repeatedly with its wrist-stump. The other hand closed around Iulus’s throat with three clacking digits. Its grip was incredible and the sergeant felt his trachea being crushed immediately. Without his battle-helm, the seal between it and his gorget was compromised and his throat was exposed. The necron had analysed this weakness and exploited it.
Mag-locking his bolt pistol – its clip was spent and he had no room to insert a fresh one – Iulus took a two-handed grip on his chainsword and drove it deeper. His sight was darkening as his air supply dwindled to a trickle.
He spat a last, defiant breath. ‘Die, you soulless dog.’
Then the darkling world closed around him and Iulus felt his fingers slipping on the chainsword, losing their grip on the haft and his life.
Falka was in charge. He didn’t know how, but he was. At least fifty men, most of the paltry survivors from the four battalions, were looking to him for orders. They’d left the flattened ruins behind them and had made it to a second line of broken-toothed defences. From here he’d formed the fifty into a firing line and got them to man the still-operational heavy guns behind the barricades and in the hollowed-out pillboxes. The bunkers and walls were prefabs, set up by Commander Sonne just before the Nobilis was destroyed and their hopes with it. They hadn’t lasted long; the garrison behind them a few seconds longer. Now, what was left provided scant cover but it was better than nothing.
‘Keep your head down and your lasgun charged,’ Muhrne had said during basic training. Falka missed the tough old bastard already. His bones were ash by now. It didn’t seem a just fate for such an honourable man.
‘Feed the cannon,’ he shouted at a heavy stubber team down the line, ‘and watch for jams. Keep the barrel cool,’ he bellowed at another working a tripod-mounted multi-laser. ‘Don’t let it overheat. It overheats, and you’re dead.’
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 109