Tomb World, page 25
Khemet has no fear of these warriors. She has beaten them before.
There is an oddity about their craft. It does not conform to the templates that she remembers. Electronic noise screams from its arrays, blanketing the space around with interference. It is evidently a form of blinding technology, which Kamoteph has set himself to undo.
‘Weapon arrays are locked, my lord.’
‘Open fire.’
The human craft’s shielding is impressive; it takes almost a full minute before it collapses under the sustained barrage the Hepherentes deals. Explosions bloom as coils of lightning lick across the vessel’s armour. But still it comes.
‘A sturdy craft,’ offers Lord Lehnk. Hekasun’s court has gathered, sensing the moment for what it is – the last gasp of the humans upon Qeretesh.
‘For only a little while longer,’ replies Hekasun, sensitive to any perceived slight to his flagship.
‘They are attempting to board us,’ announces Kamoteph, as one of the Adeptus Astartes’ ventral weapon arrays erupts in short-lived flames.
‘What?’
Kamoteph’s voice declares true surprise. ‘I have defeated their blinding. There are several minor craft approaching our starboard launch bays. I believe they mean to board us.’
The court dissolves into snide humour, but Khemet does not share their amusement. Her attention has not left the scrying feed since the slab-sided craft began its suicidal approach. Now, with their intention made clear, she watches their bulky, ungainly craft burn through the void, bringing their warriors to her.
Their craft take the most direct route towards the Hepherentes’ hull, as would be expected. There are half a dozen ships in the formation, but only the lead holds the weight of life that Khemet expects. Presumably the rest are decoys. It is in keeping with the humans’ arrogance that they believe their crude technology can deceive the scrying of a vessel that was sailing the void when their ancestors had yet to master standing upright.
Hekasun waves a hand. ‘Swat them from the void.’
‘Why not allow them aboard?’ asks Kamoteph.
Hekasun scoffs. ‘For what possible purpose?’
‘These are Adeptus Astartes. The humans’ best. Breaking them will weaken further resistance on the surface. Is that not so, praetorian?’ Kamoteph is staring across the deck at Khemet, the challenge abundantly clear.
‘Smiting them from existence will surely achieve the same effect.’ But Hekasun too is watching Khemet. He looks between her and the cryptek, and malicious understanding dawns. ‘What say you, praetorian? Are you adequate to the task?’
Khemet meets Kamoteph’s gaze.
‘Let them come.’
The Blackstar roars into the hollow space the auspex scans of the Blessed Vengeance identified as a landing bay. It is a cavernous chamber, made of oppressive black stone and lit by ghoulish lines of green irradiance. Its dark roof is hung with a dozen of the crescent-shaped killers that had made such murder of Orymous’ orbital defences.
Sinos’ heart is in her throat, her breathing loud in her helmet. Trantor had cautioned her to delay rising from her harness until the Adeptus Astartes were clear of the hold, but there is little chance of the trampling he had feared. They are free of their restraints and thundering towards the opening ramps in the blink of an eye. The matching snarls of power armour are eclipsed by the howl that the Space Wolf Tlomec lets loose from his helm, a haunting and deafening cry across the communal vox that chills Sinos to the bone.
On the far side of the ship the auxilia are swifter than Sinos, running in pairs with hellguns levelled. But Sinos is only marginally behind, her power maul and pistol in hand.
‘For the Emperor!’
The words burst from her lips, the pain and fury of two years of war expelled in a single cry. In the few hours she has had, Sinos has made her peace with meeting her end upon the alien craft. But in the sight of His most able servants, she will take some of His enemies with her before her death.
The xenos meet them as they land, emerging from a pair of tall archways that are cut with geometric precision into the black walls.
The necrons advance as they always do, slow and implacable behind their horrific beam weapons. Half a dozen armsmen are pulled apart by the first volley. In reply bolters hammer their shells into their front rank. Metal craters and detonates. Into the shrapnel charge the Adeptus Astartes, blades and hammers and axes flashing blue among the sickly xenos glow.
Sinos does as she has been commanded, following the auxilia away from the Blackstar to take up a position on the flank of the fight, hard up against the chamber wall. The stone is brutally cold to the touch, even through Sinos’ armour, and she flinches away.
They must escape the insertion point swiftly. The plan of battle, such as it is, calls upon Sinos and the auxilia to break into the bowels of the alien craft and drive as far as possible into its interior. A pair of serfs, guarded by a whole squad of auxilia, carry a heavy box between them, its surface aglow with complex mechanisms. This is their charge, a vox-beacon attuned to the sensors of the Blessed Vengeance. Waiting atop the arcane mechanisms of the ship’s teleportation platform is a single Deathstrike warhead, brought aboard with Sinos’ embassy to the Deathwatch.
All Sinos, and the platoon of humans with her, must do is survive until their payload can be delivered into the enemy ship. Each of them is oathed to that purpose, sworn to it by Trantor himself.
The watch captain and his brothers are doing all they can to make it possible. Sinos has seen dozens of pict feeds from battlefields over the past months, and she has never seen the aliens die so swiftly. Inhuman strength cleaves their limbs and bursts their chassis. Bolt shells shatter metal skulls. From their flank, the auxilia rain las fire into the alien ranks, turning joints to slag and bursting the glowing hearts in their chests.
Trantor leads the Adeptus Astartes, driving through the necron ranks. The watch captain is a ceaseless blur of motion. His power sword is a blaze of righteousness, carving through the enemy. Skeletal xenos swing cumbersome, axe-topped rifles at him, and Trantor throws them aside. He moves with consummate purpose, no swing wasted, no step taking him back. A stream of green light rakes the edge of his armour and he wheels about it, then cuts his attacker in half.
But the xenos have their own champion.
It lurks at the back of the chamber, unmoving. Sinos sees it, bigger, taller, bulkier than its kin. Sinos aims a shot at it, but a line warrior jerks in front of her shell as if commanded. And then it is gone, moving with more speed and purpose than any of its brethren.
Tlomec dies first. The alien champion emerges from the press of warriors, a tall staff held before it. The Space Wolf has his back turned, his axe crashing through the shoulder joint of one of the necron elites. The staff’s great head erupts with power, and Tlomec ceases to be.
Two of the Crimson Fists are alive to the sudden threat and close on it from either side. But the champion shows itself a coward, stepping back into the ranks of its warriors. Tlomec’s Deathwatch brothers charge into them, and are pulled down by a dozen alien hands.
‘Kill it, in the Emperor’s name!’
Trantor roars the order over the vox. Bolters and hellguns track the necron champion as it darts between its kin. Half a dozen xenos fall, but the aliens are indifferent.
One of the Howling Griffons, the beast on his pauldron lit by muzzle fire, punches massive shells from a heavy bolter held low at his side, while his Chapter brother cuts down a phalanx of the scythe-wielding xenos troops. Sinos loses sight of both as more necron warriors emerge from a side passage into the hangar bay, cutting off the path she and the auxilia had been aiming for.
Atakan, the Silver Skull, wades into the centre of their formation, staff blazing with warp fire. A monstrous wave bursts from his body, throwing flat the closest xenos. Lines of power arc out from his armour, earthing themselves in the fallen necrons.
And then the champion is there, dropping from above with its staff outstretched. A jade beam bursts from its tip, coruscating fire that peels the armour from Atakan’s face. His helmet breaks away, and his skull is flayed to the bone. He makes no sound as he dies.
Sinos has been a servant of the Imperium for her entire life. She learnt her letters by reciting the catechisms of the Imperial Creed. She serves His law with diligence and rigour. But when she sees Watch Captain Trantor charge the xenos champion, she realises that she has never truly had faith.
He strikes the alien leader like an angel of merciless destruction, an avatar of the Emperor’s wrath. A broadsword is in his hands, electric power alight along its edge. In three short seconds Trantor has struck five blows against the warrior, who moves its staff like quicksilver to parry them. It tries to escape, leaping into the air on some kind of gravity pack, but Trantor’s blade catches its hip. The edge bites deep, and the xenos is hauled back to the deck.
Trantor lifts his sword for a killing blow, but metal bodies pile into him. He turns the thrust into a sweeping cut, bending low to sever the encroaching xenos at the waist. Half a dozen fall but more are behind, reaching out with knife-tipped hands. Daggered fingers punch into the ceramite of his pauldrons. A warrior traps Trantor’s blade in its body, inhuman in its deathless grip, and more xenos fall upon the watch captain.
The weight of metal upon him forces Trantor to his knees. Sinos can hear herself screaming into the vox, denying the evidence of her eyes. But despite the hail of las the servants of the Deathwatch unleash, they are powerless.
The champion stands over Trantor, its bladed staff held low. The watch captain’s voice comes over the vox once more. ‘Suffer not the alien–’
The staff sweeps low, slicing through the armour across Trantor’s midriff.
Blood pours in a sheet, a deluge, through the ruined plate. Trantor staggers, reaching out to grasp his nemesis before he falls. The creature deprives him of even that, stepping out of reach. Trantor follows, gauntlets outstretched. He takes one step, two, and then crashes to the deck, entrails spilling from the horrific wound.
Sinos hurls herself at the necron warlord. There is no thought to it, just a pure streak of rage that comes from the very centre of her being. She abandons the auxilia, surrendering the opportunity of a few more moments of life for the chance to avenge Trantor’s death.
A xenos warrior, malice glowing in its eyes, sees her coming from ten yards away. The creature spins, casually striking her with the back of a fist, and the world turns black.
Something hits her everywhere at once, a chill and awful smoothness. She is on her back. Her head is a mass of blinding agony. There is blood in her eyes. It’s possible she only has one eye; her helmet has crumpled in on her skull.
Sinos is shaking. What had she been thinking? She is an arbitrator, not a warrior.
She raises her head through nausea and blinding pain. She is alone. Through some fluke of alien malice, she is the last one alive. She tastes the blood in her mouth. Her teeth are loose. She will die, that is certain. All that remains is the manner of her death.
The necrons’ murdering champion is in front of her, watching Trantor’s final moments. The watch captain is on his knees, held up by the xenos with his arms outstretched, in the manner of the Imperial aquila. He is not yet dead. They are toying with him, observing how much pain and humiliation the Adeptus Astartes can endure.
Sinos clutches the icon of the Adeptus Arbites on its chain. She grips it hard, the sharp edges digging through the pad of her gauntlet.
‘Faith… is my shield.’
She rolls onto her front, getting her hands beneath her chest.
‘Contempt is my armour.’ She climbs to her feet, both hands gripping the maul to use its head as a crutch.
‘Vengeance is my sword.’
Sinos throws everything she has, every fibre of her being, into the swing. The crackling head of the power maul arcs up and over her head, trailing sparks of power.
The champion catches the maul by its haft. Alien metal clamps down on Sinos’ hand, trapping her grip around the weapon. Revulsion floods through her as the thing leans its face close to hers, and speaks.
‘They will avail you not, little human.’
Something punches into Sinos’ chest with the force of a scattergun blast.
She groans, and her chin drops into her chest. Five knife-like fingers are embedded up to the knuckles in her armour. Red wells over black, over the xenos’ vile metal and the icon of her office.
She is held upright only by the talons in her chest. Sinos’ head lolls, and she finds Watch Captain Trantor beside her. His eyes are blank, the life drained from them. Sinos is glad that he is not witness to her failure to avenge him.
The alien pulls back its hand, and Solome Sinos slumps to one knee. Each breath is bubbling agony. She counts them, clinging to the impossibility that while she counts, she will not die.
The xenos kneels down beside her, head cocked in what a human would take for curiosity. It reaches out and lifts the icon of the Adeptus Arbites from Sinos’ armour. Sinos groans, fighting with ebbing strength to lift her hand, to pull away.
The creature holds the scales of justice up in front of Sinos’ face, ensuring that she has it in her sight.
Its metal fist clenches, and the scales are broken to fragments.
CHAPTER 9
The bridge of the Hepherentes is silent. All those with the capacity for attention have turned it on the scrying feeds, absorbed by the spectacle of the praetorian and her rage.
‘The Unclean have been purged,’ Khemet reports across the interstices.
‘You are mistaken,’ replies Kamoteph, hands dancing over a console. ‘The Hepherentes reports that many of their auxilia have fled towards the stern. I suspect they are intent on sabotage.’
Khemet does not immediately respond. ‘I saw none escape.’
‘I will believe the evidence of the ship’s sensors over your testimony, praetorian.’
There is the slightest delay. ‘Very well. I will pursue them.’
This is the moment of greatest danger, yet Hekasun and his allies show no awareness at all.
The nomarch of Qeretesh sits his throne, as ever, with the scions of the Zathanor around him. They speak in interstitial whispers, as is their habit, no doubt plotting how they will carve up dominion of the world now that the champions of the humans have been dispatched.
Kamoteph abandons his place at the console, and stumps over to the base of the throne’s ziggurat. He stops beside Mandulis. He gives the most minute inclination of his head, a grand display of respect for the stolid vargard.
‘Victory, Kamoteph,’ says Hekasun, indulgent in success.
‘It was never in doubt, lord.’
Kamoteph spins, the bladed head of his staff blazing with jade energy. It describes a perfect arc of green light before it hits Mandulis in the side. The blade carves up through the vargard’s torso, emerging from the far side of his chestplate. Mandulis topples to the deck, reactor core bleeding copper-orange smoke.
In the moment the vargard hits the deck, canoptek wraiths burst through the throne room’s walls. They phase into being beside the lychguard who stand watch over the chamber, and grasp the deathless warriors in razor-edged jaws. Three fall instantly, severed at the waist. Wild beams of gauss fly about the chamber as others are thrown from their feet by the enormous constructs.
More canoptek creatures rush through the chamber’s archways, scarabs and spyders and wyrms of every size and description. They throw themselves onto the prone lychguard, gnashing mandibles clamping around limbs and struts. A scarab pierces the gauss coil of one warrior’s weapon, unleashing an explosion that paints the chamber in a ghostly green glow. The blast immolates the construct and the lychguard in an inferno that even their god-forged metal cannot withstand.
As his beasts pour in, Kamoteph hurls himself at Hekasun, leaping Mandulis’ bisected body with his staff outstretched, lunging for the nomarch.
Hekasun catches the blow, his sickle blade rising at the very last moment. The glowing edge of Kamoteph’s staff bites a thumb’s width into Hekasun’s faceplate before it is knocked back, leaving a brutal scar across the lord’s face. The noble responds with a kick that throws the cryptek back down the ziggurat and over the closest console.
Battle erupts at the heart of the Hepherentes. Nobles arm themselves only to be swarmed by iridescent carapaces. Beams of gauss crisscross the chamber as Hekasun’s warriors and brethren fight and die. On the far side of the chamber, Ptah throws back the swarm with thunderous blasts of light and sound. Hekasun contends with buzzing acanthrites that cut through the air, coiled tails alive with cutting lasers.
In the depths of the console pit, Kamoteph the Crooked straightens.
The cryptek rises from his bent-backed hunch. The overlarge segments of his spine shift, the necrodermis flowing down and into his arms and legs. The hood that casts his faceplate into shadow melts away, adding power and heft to his shoulders. He rises, no longer the stooping cripple but a forceful, dynamic paragon of necrons. He stands before Hekasun, his staff throwing out a blaze of energy that illuminates the farthest reaches of the deck.
Hekasun draws a second sickle, the twin weapons aglow with the same copper anger that burns in his chest.
‘So much for Kamoteph the Crooked.’
Kamoteph rolls his newly sculpted shoulders. ‘I have always despised that name.’
They come together in a flurry of blows. Hekasun leaps from his ziggurat, curved blades carving the air. Kamoteph knocks them both aside and counters with a vicious slash at the noble’s face.
As they duel, every necron in the chamber feels an absence in their minds, a void that sets many of the lords of the Zathanor to flight.
