by Darius Hinks
It was no use – the numbness was thicker than ever down here in the necron tombs.
Another idea occurred to him. Perhaps the Sleepless Mile could aid him? He was yet to understand its complexities and limits but Lord Dragomir said it would be his path when he was lost.
He whispered the mantra and looked deep into his own thoughts. To his delight, Antros’ subconscious showed him the necropolis. It was not like any psychic projection he had deployed before. He seemed to be dreaming his way through the fortress. He had no way to know if he was seeing truth, but as he hauled his physical self out from beneath the rocks, he let his mind soar away down the Sleepless Mile.
Antros’ consciousness sailed into the lower levels of the necropolis, gliding through chamber after chamber until it floated into a huge mausoleum, crowded with rows of caskets. He moved across the room, then halted, noticing that one of the sarcophagi had been overturned. There was a trail of green chemicals smeared across the floor, leading to a large skull-shaped structure on the far wall. Somehow, Antros knew that Mephiston was waiting for him on the far side of the skull. The Sleepless Mile was speaking to him with all the conviction of prophecy.
As he neared the skull, Antros’ vision began to fade. Even the power of the Sleepless Mile was nulled by Morsus’ psychic wards. Antros’ anger flared as he realised he might not reach Mephiston after all. With every few feet the vision grew weaker. He would soon be back in his own body. He had to find some way to anchor his thoughts, something to pin his mind to.
He looked around for anything that might help. Next to the door in the skull was a corpse. Its dripping hand print was on the door’s activation rune – it looked as though this grotesque thing had admitted Mephiston to the next chamber.
A craven, inner voice asked Antros why a necron would grant Mephiston access through these chambers. There could have been countless explanations but it was as though someone were whispering venomous thoughts into Antros’ ear. He tried to rid himself of the poison. Mephiston was his lord. He would find him quickly and explain the secrets of the Sleepless Mile. Then they could explore its mysteries togaether. Mephiston had always treated Antros as a trusted advisor. Now Antros would show him the trust was well placed.
The vision had almost entirely faded and Antros sensed his time was nearly up. He noticed, with distaste, the corpse was moving slightly, clawing at the floor, perhaps not dead at all. He wondered if he could possess it, but the idea was far too obscene to seriously consider.
As the scene fell away, Antros saw a frail, robed figure drifting above the caskets on mechanical wings. It was no bigger than an emaciated child and it wore a blood-splattered, porcelain mask that almost, but not quite, hid the mass of oily cables and butchered flesh behind.
Vidiens, thought Antros, recognising the Chief Librarian’s servant. What could be easier to borrow than the tiny, butchered mind of a servitor?
With seconds to spare, Antros whispered an oath and hurled his mind into the servitor’s head. The force of his power caught Antros unawares and Vidiens’ consciousness collapsed beneath his psychic fury, extinguished like a snuffed candle.
The necron ignored Mephiston and rushed across the laboratory, dropping to its knees beside the shattered prisms it had dropped when Mephiston had spoken. ‘They were priceless. Quantum phase shifters. The very finest. Made by Syptakh himself.’
Then, with a visible jolt, the necron finally registered Mephiston’s presence. It reached into its robes and drew out a small mirrored cube.
‘Who are you?’ demanded the necron, looking over Mephiston’s shoulder to see if anyone else had entered. Then it looked back at Mephiston, its anger replaced with confusion. ‘What did you say?’
Mephiston wondered if the necron was deranged. It should have been attacking him, or triggering alarms. But it had the distracted air of a lunatic. There was a droning torrent of numbers coming from its motionless mouth and its head twitched slightly as it looked him up and down.
‘Earlier. When you entered.’ The necron stepped warily around the casket with the mirrored box held before it, like a weapon. ‘You said something. What was it?’
Mephiston’s fingers itched to draw his pistol and silence the xenos. The dead stared at him in warning, though. Silently, they willed him to stay his hand. More of them were seeping into the chamber with every minute. Llourens was there again. Her face had been torn apart by the blast that killed her, but along with the others she was staring at the metal casket.
‘I said that this is an orchestrion,’ said Mephiston, deciding to buy himself time until he could understand what his ghosts expected of him. ‘I have never seen one before, but I have studied its workings. It would be simple enough to activate it.’
The necron stumbled as though it had been punched. It lowered its mirrored box and stared at him. ‘You could make it work?’
Mephiston was about to reply when something tugged at the edge of his consciousness. He felt as though someone were calling him, or watching him. He tried to reach out with his mind but the haze that had blinded him for months was stronger than ever in this chamber. He looked at the orchestrion. This is it, he realised. My blindness stems from this box.
He stepped closer to the orchestrion. ‘I can make it work,’ he said, not noticing that, behind him, Vidiens had drifted into the room.
For the second time that day, Antros felt as though he were being crushed alive. The space that had been inhabited by what passed for a servitor’s mind could not contain even a fraction of Antros’ growing consciousness. Almost as disturbing was the sensation of being in Vidiens’ wasted little body. He could feel the crooked, emaciated limbs and the heavily mechanised mess of the servitor’s face. It was like being encased in a rotting spider.
Antros calmed his revulsion in the same way he was controlling everything else – he kept his mind on the path shown to him by Dragomir and the Sons of Helios. The crushing claustrophobia faded as he pictured their cool, healing light.
Once he had achieved a calm state, Antros thrashed Vidiens’ wings and flew into the chamber, excited for countless reasons to finally reach the Chief Librarian. Soon, he would see his lord cutting down the vile xenos beings that had invaded Morsus. Soon, he would have proof that his doubts were unfounded.
‘I can make it work,’ said Mephiston, as the servitor flew into the chamber with Antros staring through its eyes. The Chief Librarian was standing beside a necron noble and they were both looking at a metal box that dominated the centre of the room.
Antros had just fought through dozens of necrons to reach this chamber, and here was his Chief Librarian chatting idly with a xenos monster about how to activate a war engine. The doubts he had been trying to quash returned with renewed fervour. Perhaps he had misunderstood something?
As he fluttered closer, he noticed something familiar hanging around Mephiston’s neck. It was the oval locket he had seen in his disturbing vision – the one handed to the Chief Librarian by the daemon. At the sight of the locket, questions exploded in Antros’ mind.
He flew away from Mephiston as anger and confusion threatened to consume him. The madness he had battled in the Great Rift locked around his mind, and his consciousness began to slip from Vidiens’ body. He panicked, then recalled what he had learned from the Sons of Helios. We dream, dreaming, dreamed, he thought, stifling his rage with the calming mantra. He managed to regain some control, but the fury was still growing. He flew from the room.
His mind full of light and visions, he flew Vidiens straight into one of the caskets outside, snapping one of the servitor’s wings and landing in a crumpled heap.
As Antros lay there in the servitor’s mangled flesh, dazed with blood loss and shock, his mind lurched between the mausoleum, the Sleepless Mile and the incredible visions he had seen in the Great Rift.
Pain sliced through his chest, then faded as he fell back into his own bod
y. He clambered to his feet, shrugging off more rubble as he found himself back in the chamber miles above the one where Mephiston was conversing with a xenos machine.
‘I have to leave,’ he gasped, suddenly unable to separate madness from reality. The walls of the chamber altered as he tried to focus on them, becoming the fierce, bestial faces he had seen in the warp. He gripped the mirror Dragomir gave him and raced back into the shadows, muttering furiously as he disappeared from sight.
Chapter Fourteen
Rhacelus knelt beside Brother-Lieutenant Servatus, both of them firing into the advancing necrons.
The passageway was like a tunnel carved into the sun. So many plasma blasts and gauss beams sizzled through the air that they had combined into a single, white-hot furnace, shearing armour and flaying flesh everywhere he looked.
To Rhacelus’ left was a single pair of Blood Angels – all that was left of the Hellblaster squad. Both carried serious wounds, but neither would back down, despite the corpses of fallen battle-brothers that lay all around them.
Behind Rhacelus was Argolis. The ogryn was slumped against the wall, weak with blood loss, but Rhacelus deflected every necron blast that lanced towards him, swinging his force sword in blinding, graceful arabesques as Servatus fired into the fray with calm precision.
Rhacelus stood up, knocking away another blast with a backhanded slash. With each deflection he cried a word of power, igniting runes along Lucensis’ blade. He gestured for his other two battle-brothers to come to his side, but the gunfire was so fierce he had to bark an order over the vox-network before they responded.
‘No word from Mephiston,’ he said, as they moved into position, huddling next to him, their incinerator guns kicking superheated plasma into the enemy ranks. ‘I’m going to try something else. Give me covering fire.’ They nodded, firing another dazzling barrage.
Rhacelus strode away from them, still deflecting shots with Lucensis as he grabbed a book chained to his armour and flicked through the pages with his other hand.
A shaft of green energy, much larger than the others, shot towards him with a fizzing, tearing sound as it burned through the air. He leapt aside, barely dodging the blast as it screamed down one of the other passages leading away from the intersection.
He steadied himself, lifted the book again and incanted one of the lines of neatly printed text. A dozen feet away, a few ranks deep into the necron troops, a chasm opened in the floor. Some of the androids slipped and fell, forced into the gap by the momentum of the necrons behind. Others managed to steady themselves but had to cease shooting as they teetered at the edge.
The pause in gunfire gave Servatus and the other two Blood Angels a chance to fire with even more accuracy than before, demolishing the necron spearhead and scattering troops in every direction, hurling more of them into the crack opened by Rhacelus.
As the necrons stumbled, trying to adjust their attack protocols, Rhacelus ran towards them, his psychic collar blazing as he read another line from the iron-bound book. A second chasm opened, a dozen feet behind the first, causing another confused scrum as necrons toppled into each other or fell into the gap.
The Blood Angels rose to their feet, blasting necrons into hot shrapnel as they tried unsuccessfully to return fire, staggering across the uneven floor and struggling to stay upright as the rest of the phalanx pushed inexorably forwards.
Rhacelus intoned the third line in his book and the ground between the two chasms fell away, sending dozens of necrons tumbling out of sight and leaving an impassable gap before the rest.
‘Fire at the walls!’ boomed Rhacelus, drawing his pistol. He shot gouts of plasma at the wall above the sheer drop he had created, causing an explosion of rock and dust.
The other Blood Angels did the same, and after a few seconds they had created a wall of rubble at the edge of the chasm.
The front rows of necrons climbed the mound of rocks, finding themselves trapped on the other side with a wall behind them and a drop ahead. They clambered back the way they had come, only to be mercilessly cut down by the Blood Angels’ gunfire and the coughing shots of Argolis’ drill as he staggered to his feet and rejoined the battle.
After a few seconds of this brutal slaughter, the necrons fell back and the shooting ceased.
‘Mephiston,’ said Rhacelus, opening the vox again. ‘Are you there?’
The only reply was a static hum.
‘Mephiston,’ he repeated. ‘Can you–?’
His words were cut off as a loud, clattering sound filled the passageway.
The necrons stepped aside, making way for an armour-plated war machine. The vehicle was similar to the scythe-shaped aircraft they had encountered on the planet’s surface, but this one was as wide as it was tall, its broad, circular base formed around a command rail, behind which stood a necron noble. He was clearly different from the ranks of automata that surrounded him. The noble leaned forward across the rail, pointing his warscythe directly at Rhacelus. Everything about him radiated majesty and outrage. The whole vehicle pulsed with malevolent green light, all centred on him. His armour plate seemed barely able to contain the emerald furnace at his core. His skull was crowned by a metal mohawk and his armour was swathed in robes.
‘Lord Mephiston,’ he said, his booming, sepulchral tones reverberating around the passageway, amplified by a speaker array at the front of the vehicle. ‘You have trespassed on the sanctity of these royal chambers and destroyed works of great antiquity. You have proven yourself to be a liar and criminal. I am Lord Suphys, and as herald of the phaeron I have sent word to his majesty, informing him of your treachery. Expect your star craft to be destroyed within minutes. You may beg forgiveness as I execute you.’
‘I am not Lord Mephiston,’ replied Rhacelus, striding out before the vehicle. ‘But I will gladly give you his reply.’
He brought his force sword round in a broad swipe, hurling glittering runes through the air. They hit the vehicle with a roll of explosions, tearing through its hull and rocking it back on its axis.
Suphys staggered, barely managing to clutch the rail. Fire enveloped the vehicle as he regained his position and hurled a command at his pilots. Runes were still flashing across the war machine, detonating as they went, ripping the hull into jagged shards, but the pilots managed to launch it across the chasm, aiming for Rhacelus. It hurtled towards him, trailing plumes of smoke and flame.
Rhacelus brought his sword back round and unleashed more of the burning runes. The war machine exploded, becoming a fireball as it crashed into him.
The other Blood Angels were thrown back as flames and debris rolled down the passageway. When the blaze dimmed, Rhacelus was still intact, standing calmly at the heart of the fire, sword raised and head bowed as flames tumbled from his armour. He was surrounded by wreckage and the dismembered pieces of the two pilots, but the noble was nowhere to be seen.
As he turned back to face the other Blood Angels, the noble lurched from the broken vehicle and leapt at him. The necron’s warglaive sparked as it rushed towards Rhacelus’ face.
Rhacelus ducked. The blade missed his face, but sliced through his psychic hood, shearing wires and ceramite. Pain exploded in his head as cables tore free from his skull, spitting blood and electricity. He staggered backwards, clutching his blood-drenched head and losing hold of the book.
Lord Suphys landed behind him in a crouch, flipped backwards and sliced the glaive through Rhacelus’ Achilles tendons. Rhacelus’ legs gave way, but as he crashed to the ground he brought Lucensis up to meet the necron’s next strike.
The impact jangled through the necron’s metal arms and jolted the glaive from his grip, sending it clattering across the floor in a shower of sparks. Lucensis followed, bouncing out of Rhacelus’ gauntlet and landing a few feet away.
Rhacelus was almost blind with the agony of his severed neural implants, but as the necron staggered aw
ay from him, he lifted his pistol and fired, hitting Suphys square-on, tearing a hole through his chest.
The necron slammed into the wall. Rhacelus tried to fire again, but his pistol only spat fumes and flashed warning runes, finally overheated.
Suphys grabbed his warglaive from the ground and sprinted back towards Rhacelus, blithely ignoring the hole in his chest. Rhacelus halted him with a punch, slamming his fist into the necron’s skull. As his fist connected it exploded with warp fire, smashing through Suphys’ face and deep into his head. He wrenched his fist free and punched again, pummelling the necron to the ground with another flash of psychic energy. He dropped to his knees, punching until he was still.
Back down the passageway, the necrons had spanned the chasm with a column they had cut from the walls and they were now marching forwards in the same perfectly regimented blocks, their gauss weapons trained on the Blood Angels.
Rhacelus leant against the wall, exhausted, then staggered back into the fight.
Chapter Fifteen
Mephiston stared at the designs on the orchestrion, trying to understand why his ghosts had led him here. Did they show him the device simply so that he could destroy it? With the orchestrion gone, his warp sight would return. He could continue on his way, leave the Revenant Stars and resume his stalking of the daemon, but he sensed that more was expected of him.
He looked at the sea of patient, mutilated faces that surrounded him. Surely that is not what you intend, he thought. I do not believe you want me to leave these people to their fate. He thought of Rhacelus and the others, back in the upper levels of the complex, trying to buy him time so that he could… So that he could what?
The necron was watching him from a few feet away, adjusting one of its devices.
‘Who taught you to speak my language?’ it asked.
Every cell in Mephiston’s body screamed at him to tear the thing apart. He had been bred for exactly that – to protect mankind against the predations of a cruel galaxy. But he left Vitarus in its scabbard. The dead wanted more of him today, more than this single necron head.
