Tomb World, page 8
Lacking any shipboard duty, Khemet remains on the command deck. Her hand regrows, joint by joint. She fights the urge to fidget, to give in to the nagging fear that immobility will provoke a relapse into memory. She has passed untold centuries in perfect stillness; she can survive a few days’ enforced idleness.
Hekasun also remains, a hunched and brooding figure, but Khemet is certain that he retains his throne only to avoid relinquishing control entirely to his vizier.
The Senusret has left the great trunk behind. Khemet suspects that fear of encountering one of the aeldari’s leviathans drove Kamoteph to abandon the impossible space. The tunnels in which they now glide are still vast, hundreds of khet across, but their boundaries are now comprehensible to Khemet’s senses.
Kamoteph is their navigator. The cryptek has remained at his station since awakening the dolmen gate, though there is little enough for him to do. For much of their journey the Senusret follows the gentle curves and inclines of each channel. But whenever they reach a junction within the labyrinthine passageways, it is Kamoteph who supplies the direction, following a course evidently known to him by some undisclosed means.
‘Whose vessel is this?’ Khemet asks Kamoteph on the second day. She sends her question across the interstitial network so as not to vocally undermine Hekasun. It is also a tentative exploration of her ability to connect her mind with another. Despite her reluctance to open herself in such a way, the interstices are a vital tool for any necron, and Khemet yearns to shed the fragility that infects her.
She is careful to conceal her anxiety from the cryptek.
‘This craft is under the control of my lord Hekasun,’ he replies, showing no sign of surprise at her sudden contact.
‘But who is its master?’ Khemet persists.
‘I am.’ Kamoteph’s sending is veined with the merest hint of amusement. ‘The Senusret was placed into my care as payment for my services by High Admiral Namurat around six centuries ago. But your question has many answers. I possess the Senusret, though I am pleased to place it at my lord’s disposal. He, in turn, acts with the authority of the Traveller.’
‘Who commands only by the pleasure of the Silent King,’ Khemet adds.
‘Quite so. We are all servants, my dear praetorian.’ Kamoteph settles himself back into his station, hunched over the consoles.
Hekasun, at least, does not appear to be taken in by the cryptek’s obsequious manner, as evidenced by his continued presence on the ship’s throne. While Hekasun delivers imperious orders to the technomancer, it is clear from his cautious manner that this is merely the pantomime of lord and servant, maintained to preserve Hekasun’s authority amongst his court. They are aboard Kamoteph’s ship, following a course set by the cryptek, and it was he who held the key to the dolmen gate.
Khemet is not surprised. Those who explore the mysteries of the universe are ambitious creatures by their nature, and are easily led by hubris to desire temporal, as well as arcane, power. As useful as their arts can be, it is a foolish overlord who places unquestioning trust in his wizards’ loyalty.
On the third day, having exhausted her scant capacity for stillness, she stirs from where she has stood and approaches Hekasun’s throne.
‘What world have we been tasked with waking?’
It takes a fraction of a second before the noble registers her question. She suspects he had slowed his chronosense to speed his perception of their passage.
‘It is named Qeretesh,’ Hekasun says, though a twist of distaste modulates his voice. ‘It is a coreworld, under the dominion of the Zathanor Dynasty.’
The name sparks a connection in Khemet’s vaults. Raving nobles, dragged before her by their own lychguard. The Traveller’s hunger as she dissolved their dynasty, and passed the keys to a world into his hands.
‘I was not aware that any of the Zathanor’s holdings had endured the Great Sleep,’ she says.
‘This one has.’ Hekasun is staring towards the main scrying screen, disdaining her presence at the foot of the pyramid.
Khemet wonders if there is some coded meaning in the selection of this world. Has the Traveller chosen a forgotten outpost of a house she rendered defunct as a reminder of her failings? For judging too swiftly?
At least there will be no concerns regarding its mastery, although there may be some issues with the world’s leaders still in stasis, assuming they have endured the aeons better than their peers.
‘Is there anything further?’ Hekasun asks. Khemet is lingering while lost in thought.
‘What is the condition of Qeretesh?’
‘The humans have claimed it.’ The noble tries to speak with indifference, but there is tension that he is unable to hide.
Khemet pauses again, though now it is simply to choose her words. ‘Are you aware of the use to which they have put the world? The humans breed like lice, and you do not lead a sizeable force.’
‘It will be sufficient.’
‘Lord Hekasun–’ she begins, drawing on her patience.
‘Cease your pestering, duatekh!’ Hekasun’s command is spoken with a whipcrack, the lordling finally deigning to lock oculars with Khemet. ‘I permit you free rein aboard this craft, but I will not suffer your taint to sully me.’
Khemet is startled by his sudden rancour. She had thought Hekasun to be nothing but an arrogant upstart – who knew such strength of feeling dwelt within him?
She lingers long enough to make a point of her defiance, gaze fixed upon him, then she turns away. She resumes her chosen position at the far edge of the chamber, considering all that the brief and fraught conversation has told her.
CHAPTER 8
The Senusret bursts into realspace, expelled in a blaze of shimmering radiance the equal of that with which it had entered.
The ship emerges from another dolmen gate, built into another mountainside on a world far from their place of entry. How Kamoteph found their door in the barren twilight of the webway is a mystery he does not share. When the cryptek announced that they had reached their exit, Khemet could see no difference between that point and any other on their silent, meandering route. And yet, when Kamoteph had raised his hands and summoned the aethermantic relays of his ship, the way had opened. They had surged into a portal of scintillating, conflicting energies, and then the Senusret was once again surrounded by stars.
The ship’s autonomous spirit tells her that in the five days they have been immersed in the webway they have travelled across more than a tenth of the galaxy’s diameter. This fact sets a brief but jagged spike of anger trembling in her core. The Old Ones, a curse upon their shattered bones, had built something of undeniable magnificence, and Khemet hates them for it. She hates that she feels awe, boundlessly begrudging as it is, for any achievement of her people’s ancient foe.
A defeated foe, all the same. For all their might and majesty, the necrontyr empire laid the Old Ones low, and their great work is emptied of life. That thought warms her.
The Senusret, now unrestrained by concerns of careful navigation, accelerates smoothly. With its inertialess drive unchained, the Senusret rapidly reaches relativistic speeds. They depart the nameless world in moments, and enter the emptiness of the interstellar void in a few short hours.
Now they have returned to the familiarity of the real, Khemet abandons her place on the command deck. She has exhausted all possible means of passing the time. Khemet knows this should be no impediment to her. She has used her chronosense on many occasions throughout her long life. Most often in battle, to gain precious moments to contemplate how best to defeat her enemy. But she has never before feared to accelerate her chronosense, and step out of time’s path so she might be spared its sluggish pace.
Now she does. In the tesseract labyrinth, time had been one more dimension that was stripped away from her, and Khemet fears what will happen to her fledgling mind if she pushes too far, too fast. It is a shameful, cowardly impulse, but one that Khemet has yet to overcome.
She returns to exploring the ship. The Senusret is an exemplar of its pattern and she knows it intimately. Nevertheless, she goes in search of stimulus. She walks every passageway and corridor, considers every tapestry and stele. She stares into the white heat of the ship’s engines, and for days afterwards radiates energies that would be lethal to any organic creature. She avoids the populated areas, where Hekasun’s court congregate, and tells herself that it is right for a praetorian to remain aloof and reserved. She inspects the condition of Hekasun’s borrowed warriors, immobile and undeterred by their impassive state of living death.
Everywhere she goes, imperceptible scuffs, scars and scratches mark the walls and floors.
It is another week of aching, arduous time before the ship begins to slow. But finally, as she stands at an observation point and looks at the ship’s sweeping crescent wings, she is summoned back to Hekasun’s throne.
The Senusret returns to a more measured pace, giving Khemet and the handful of courtiers who have joined Hekasun time to consider the object of their mission.
Qeretesh is the innermost planet of an unremarkable stellar system, a speck of blue and green only visible through the scrying feed’s magnification. It has three neighbours, each a swollen gas giant at the centre of its own dance of moonlets and icy rings. The yellow star at the centre of the screen is barely brighter than the billions of others that surround it, but it gains in strength with every moment.
As it does, many hundreds of lesser lights come into view. Each light reveals a voidship, shining from a burning engine or glinting from a metal prow.
Human vessels crowd the system. Their provenance is unquestionable – the Senusret’s spirit knows the sharp-nosed, slab-sided craft of the so-called Imperium of Man, matching them with patterns of design that it has encountered over the millennia since its waking. Most, it says, are fat-bellied transport craft, ferrying whatever goods this world requires and produces. But many are warcraft, knife-prowed vessels whose spines are topped with crenellations and whose flanks are studded with weapons.
None, individually, could begin to threaten the Senusret, itself one of the slightest class of craft built by the necrontyr. Yet the trouble with humans was that they did nothing individually. They swarmed in fleets and armies, millions of tons of iron and arrogance whose weight could crush the admiral or nemesor that was foolish enough to face them directly.
As the Senusret peers closer, yet more voidcraft come into focus, static defences that drift in Qeretesh’s orbit. They lack manoeuvrability, but the scrying feed picks out potent energy reserves and weapons that equal the power of those aboard the human warships.
‘Shroud the ship,’ Hekasun orders. Kamoteph is already acting, extending a veil of shadow to cloak the Senusret from sight. They are still on the fringes of the system, crossing the orbit of the outermost gas giant, but the consequences of detection are too great to ignore. With the spell of silence enveloping its engines and emissive systems, the ship is undetectable by the humans’ crude means. Even visual identification is next to impossible; to the outside observer, the Senusret is a shadow against the black of the void.
The stillness of the shroud extends into the command deck for a handful of moments, until Khemet strides towards the pyramid at its centre and glares up at the throne’s occupant.
‘Where have you brought us, Hekasun?’
‘Lord,’ he corrects her, his gaze no less sharp or furious. ‘You will remember that, duatekh. I am your lord, and you are my servant.’
Khemet imagines the way the lordling would die beneath a blast from her staff. Necrodermis would peel back from metal bones. His reactor core would chip, splinter, and shatter in a blaze of copper light. The arrogance in his oculars would flee, replaced by fear.
‘This is Qeretesh,’ she says, pushing the image aside.
‘Indeed.’
‘It is overrun.’ It is not a question, but an accusation.
Khemet is gratified to sense that she is not the only one who has been kept unaware of the condition of the coreworld. The collection of courtiers who have come to witness their arrival are evidently as surprised as she.
‘They call it Orymous,’ Kamoteph says, stepping from his place at the base of the pyramid. ‘It is a place for their armies to be marshalled and made ready for their “wars”.’ He sneers the word – the humans have no conception of the scale and horror of a true war, waged against formidable enemies and baleful gods. ‘Many millions of humans under arms, served by billions more.’
The scrying feed shows that this is true. Population centres are picked out against its surface, accretions of ugly structures in whose warrens run the hordes of the Unclean. Each city, and there are dozens, is a blight upon a world that had once been blessed to be a cornerstone of a dynasty.
‘This is not a backwater.’ Khemet throws the accusation at Hekasun. ‘This is a bastion of their domain. They have fortified it. They fill its skies with defences, and no doubt they infest its surface.’
Hekasun stares back, anger turning to scornful disdain. ‘Do you fear them so greatly, duatekh?’ he asks softly.
Khemet’s reactor vents flare, a brilliant explosion of jade that coruscates around her ribcage. She places a foot upon the lowest tier of Hekasun’s pyramid. This is a violation, an insult to his authority so grave that, had she been any other, it would earn a swift death at the hands of Hekasun’s lychguard.
‘I fear nothing.’
Hekasun does nothing to acknowledge her encroachment upon his dais. ‘And yet you mewl and cry at the sight of their ships and their guns and their warriors.’
‘I have seen first-hand what the humans can accomplish when they have gathered their strength. They are crude, they are dull, but they are many. And you seek to overthrow their grip upon this world with the meagre force we carry with us?’
Hekasun leans forwards. ‘No, praetorian. I do not.’
Qeretesh is orbited by a pair of moons. One teems with humans, huddled together within subterranean tunnels that thread their way through its rock. The other is barren, an irregular hunk of ice that drifts in a wide elliptical track. The humans appear to have little interest in it, so that is where they hide the Senusret.
Kamoteph’s pilots settle the ship in the depths of a canyon hundreds of khet across and thousands long, a fault line that almost entirely encircles the satellite. Between the canyon’s walls and the ship’s shrouding field, the Senusret will be amply concealed. The humans, all but deaf and blind as their craft are, will have to collide with the necron ship in order to detect it.
Khemet joins Hekasun and his court as they depart the command deck. He bids her follow him as one would order a hound to heel. Khemet conceals her fury, carrying herself with the austere reserve that is her habit.
They march down into the belly of the ship, metal footsteps echoing from stone ramps and stairways. As they pass archways and chambers more of Hekasun’s lackeys emerge, forming an impromptu train of necrontyr nobility. Though only a few – the keen and ambitious, those who had wished to be seen to be present – had witnessed their approach to Qeretesh, none would miss making planetfall. Khemet notices that even Ahnuret has joined them, though the deathmark shows the same distaste for close proximity with her fellow necrons as Khemet.
The Senusret possesses several marshalling chambers. They are caverns within the ship’s body, places for its cohorts and phalanxes to gather in preparation for battle. The warriors themselves rest in stasis-caskets throughout the ship. It is a rare corridor in the Senusret that does not have a series of coffins inset within its walls, each holding a slumbering warrior awaiting its master’s call.
A necron Khemet does not recognise awaits Hekasun’s procession in the closest chamber, standing on a platform that projects a short way into the air high above the blackstone floor. They bow deeply to Hekasun, arms spread wide in supplication.
‘Rise,’ the lordling commands. ‘This is Ptah,’ Hekasun adds, for Khemet’s benefit.
Ptah is not one of Kamoteph’s acolytes, but a cryptek in their own right. They stand tall, slight and thin-limbed. Their chain of essence-tomes hangs about their neck as a triangular plastron, its final tile resting just above the ankh of the Triarch on their chest.
Ptah, Khemet notes, possesses fewer tiles than Kamoteph. The tension between the two is unmistakable. The technomancer pointedly crosses to the far side of the platform, peering over its edge in his crooked pose.
The chamber is a dozen khet across, lit by jade power conduits running through its floor and ceiling in geometric patterns. The walls on either side of the platform are built into tiers and lined with sarcophagi, emptied and unpowered. Their contents have been disgorged, and stand in readiness beneath them.
Four hundred warriors, arrayed by rank and file, newly awoken and ready for war.
As one, they salute their master. Perfect precision, born of unthinking obedience. Hekasun offers the slightest wave in recognition of their automatic act of supplication.
‘Your troops are ready, lord,’ says Ptah with another bow, hands rising to their faceplate in a gesture of the greatest respect.
Hekasun nods. ‘Very good. The failure rate?’
‘Tolerable, lord.’
Kamoteph emits a snort of indignation, which through his vocaliser emerges as a snarl of electronic ire. ‘The Senusret’s caskets are in perfect condition. Any synaptic failures among the waking lie solely with their waker.’
Hekasun interposes himself between the two magicians before Ptah can respond, stepping close to the platform’s edge to survey his cohort. ‘It matters little. Attrition will be the least of our concerns when this day is done.’
