by Nick Kyme
I wish I was dead. The digging sound was getting closer, it became a wet scrape and a hard rasp of metal chipping into ice as the hole widened and her world lightened with every stroke.
Why can’t I will my body to accept that I am dead?
Her fingers trembled, and she realised she could move them. They seized the pick half-frozen to her belt and leg.
If I am alive, then I will fight…
The edges of the hole collapsed as they were torn away by sharp metal blades and her dark world expanded exponentially.
Then you’ll be the dead one.
She tried to shout, but her larynx was dry and frozen stiff, so all that came out was a choking rasp. In her mind, her fingers freed the pick and brought it down on the creature’s head, buried it in its skull. But her arm didn’t respond. All she could do was grip the haft, and that wasn’t nearly enough. She couldn’t even fight. She could only submit, and it was this that bothered her the most. When the blades were done, the shadows of them loomed over her, blotting out her newly-risen sun. Faced with the sheer terror of it she found her voice, and screamed.
Jynn awoke.
The chamber was bathed in a sickly emerald glow. The light came from channels and conduit lines describing esoteric runes, sigils from an elder age lost to history. It limned bulky sarcophagi and weather-grained tombs, rubbed to mirror sheen by the action of the elements. They had been underground for a long time. Sleeping. They didn’t know what imperative had woken them, what pre-programmed scenario had activated the resurrection protocols of the tomb spyders, but they were conscious again – the long dream was over and vermin were abroad in their dominion.
The Undying sighed, though he had no breath to expel from his mechaorgans, nor did his fleshless torso heave. It was affectation, a piece of extant learned behaviour that persisted in the cold existence of the now. He had trouble remembering that, differentiating between what is and what was. They all did; all except the Architect.
‘Your logic-engines are functioning without imparity.’
It was a statement of machine-fact, not a question. The Undying did not question, he did not need to. He was knowledge, aeons and aeons of it. He was pre-eminent but he was also still in a pseudo-torpor. The scarabs refashioned his beautiful mechaorganic body, re-attaching his limbs and re-energising his weapons, while the tomb spyders tended to his revivification casket.
The Architect made a slight bow. The sound of shifting servos and gears within his unseen workings testified to it. ‘You are still weak, my lord. Your strength is returning, though.’
‘The others are waking too.’ The Undying’s machine-voice was deep and resonant, but not on account of the resurrection chamber. His baleful eyes narrowed to fiery slits as they regarded each of the four portals that led to the upper echelons of the tomb in turn.
‘We live,’ said the Architect. ‘Do you remember me, master?’
The Undying nodded slowly. ‘So many lives,’ he muttered.
‘We have awoken to interlopers infesting our sacred realm.’
The Undying’s reply was a bellicose rumble. ‘Excise them.’
‘I am waking the rest of the royal house. We shall be one again soon.’
‘I desire to move, to command the legions. My sky-chariot–’
‘Has long since turned to dust and memory,’ the Architect interjected. He did not touch the Undying, for that was to invite his overlord’s wrath, but his tone was conciliatory. They had all lost so very much to gain so very little.
Our flesh for metal, our veins and blood for circuits, our very being sacrificed for the machine.
Some felt it more than others, which was the real reason why the Architect was in attendance. The Undying would not fully awaken for several hours, but other, lesser lords would.
A flash of translocation lit the grand tomb chamber. When it abated, the Architect was in a different room. Using his chronomancy, he had descended several levels in a nanosecond. The catacombs were dank and sealed. It was fear. Fear of contamination that drove the necrons to such lengths. And for good reason.
A shriek of anguish broke the silence in the catacombs but none of the insects toiling slowly and methodically gave it heed. The Architect merely looked towards the sound, his long lamellar cloak fashioned of bronze sigil-ingots clanking as he moved.
Another revivification casket had opened behind him. Now he faced it, he saw the awakened lord within. This one was ripe with putrefaction, the decaying flesh that swathed it long since turned to rot.
The Architect glared. His real name was Ankh the Herald of Dismay, a title self-appointed. He would need to cow this one. Rabid and disillusioned, he would need to direct him quickly and forcefully if he was to be of any use. Unlike the Undying and the other dynastic nobles, Ankh did not fear the flayer disease. He had many arcane items to protect him. Caution was still wise, though – he took a step back.
Ankh stretched to his full height, making the most of his cryptek’s skull panoply and brandishing his rod of office like a threat. His appearance was that of a skeletal, metal-skinned sorcerer. There were devices about his person, amulets and speculums, star-compasses and fathomless orbs. A vial of liquid adamantium attached to his belt by an ornate chain contained his predecessor; the mirror of the speculum trapped another of his would-be usurpers a nanosecond out of synch with the rest of reality.
‘Do you remember who you are?’
This one gibbered, hunched as if broken, as it looked on with fervent eyes. For a second, Ankh thought the tomb spyders had revived him too early and that the scarabs would need to deactivate him again. The doubt passed when the lord spoke.
‘My robes,’ he said, holding up the flaps of skin draped about his metal frame, ‘they are wretched. Where is my tailor?’ He paused, staring at his bone-that-was-not-bone limbs and blood-stained torso. ‘Where is my flesh! My skin!’ He wailed, then just stopped.
Ankh glared, patient. Revivification was not easy.
‘Wait,’ said the other. ‘Wait…’ A deep melancholy affected his voice, though it was still the timbre of the mechaorganic. ‘Waaaaiiiit…’ he rasped, almost like a sigh. ‘Oh, how I miss the flesh.’ He caressed the putrefied skin layering his body, pulled down the flesh-mask over his rictus countenance. Emerald orbs of hateful desire burned through the ragged human sockets.
‘You are Sahtah, the Enfleshed,’ Ankh told him.
‘Am I a butcher, a skin-surgeon?’ Sahtah asked, looking up and brandishing the razored talons that replaced his fingers. Inadvertently, he’d snipped several pieces of skin from his grisly mantle and they hit the floor of the chamber with a soft thud.
Ankh’s eyes flared brighter. They were like fire-tempests of sudden excitement.
‘Yes.’
The forbidding tones of the Undying echoed inside his skull from the mind-link to the grand tomb chamber. ‘The fourth is due. The royal hierarchy is incomplete.’ He was saying it by mechanised rote, still not fully lucid, but even in his millennia-spanning dementia, the overlord was right.
Ankh shifted back. He arrived and scrutinised another part of the chamber where the shadows were darkest.
‘He comes…’
The darkness shifted, coalescing like the formation of a black hole into something of substance. It came with a susurrus of sound like air vacating the lungs of a corpse, only much longer and louder. Flaps of parchment, pieces of old cloak materialised on an unfelt breeze. A figure stepped from the penumbra, whole and imperious. It clanged the butt of its staff against the metal floor and with each percussive blow stepped forwards until a lord of metal and night-shrouds was revealed.
Where the Architect’s jaw was angular, almost pointed, this one’s was square. His brow was heavy and he bore an icon stamped to his forehead. Ankh could not recall its meaning. Though less than the others, he too had lost much during transition.
/> ‘Why am I summoned?’ the arrival demanded. ‘The fleshed are reinforced with their armoured saviours, the genebred ones.’
‘Flesh cannot prevail against metal,’ droned the Undying in a moment of slow-returning lucidity. ‘Hearts and minds of mortals cannot endure against the machine.’
‘As you can see,’ said Ankh, gesturing to their overlord, ‘our master is waking. So too are the other cells. The royal house must form, Tahek.’
The shrouded lord snarled. ‘Address me as Voidbringer, cryptek.’
‘Tahek Voidbringer, you are summoned,’ said Ankh with unnecessary ceremony. He fed a crackle of power through his staff but failed to goad the other lord. ‘An enemy has arrived on our world. It fills our resurrection chambers with the plebeian and thins our scarab hive.’
‘They are in my midst?’ asked Voidbringer.
‘Plotting to eliminate our pylons and gauss-obliterators. I theorise they plan to deploy further reinforcements from the vessel we struck in orbit.’
‘I will slay them, then.’
Only the voice of the Undying stopped Voidbringer from turning and merging with the darkness. ‘No.’
Ankh took over again, herald in every way. ‘You will continue with your primary mission. Defend our artillery.’ His eyes narrowed, partly in pleasure at the rage emanating from Tahek, partly in anticipation of what was to come. ‘Sahtah the Enfleshed will hunt them down. He has need of a new skin.’
From a small black crystal attached to his body, Ankh projected an image of the lower catacombs where he’d been a few seconds ago.
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 of 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 it if 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 Sonne 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.’
