Tomb World, page 21
A crackling ball of energy gathers between the two prongs of its maw. As missiles launch and gun pods chatter from the many defensive stations, the bomber flies on.
The death sphere is ready, and Khemet wastes no time.
Sixteen minutes after Marshal Sinos leaves the astropathic sanctum, the mountaintop is erased from existence. Thousands of tons of rock are pulverised to dust. The sanctum within ceases to be. It is as though a god’s scythe has been brought down upon the mountainside.
Sinos watches from her Valkyrie, and utters the most fervent prayer of her life.
ACT 3
CHAPTER 1
They have walked for hours.
Many khet above them, night has turned to day since they first marched from the shimmering green gateway, but to the warriors striding across the seabed there is no difference.
More marked is their change in elevation. As they rise from the crushing depths, pitch darkness turns gradually to twilight. They pass through the domain of life that clings tenaciously to its niche. Placoderms and acanthodii, the genetic descendants of creatures every bit as ancient as the figures that move in their midst. Vast fields of kelp and macroalgae, bleached white as skulls by the ocean’s acidity. The occasional selachii, apex predators challenged only by the gradual destruction of the ecosystem they rule.
To those possessed of some semblance of a mind, the warm waters and their inhabitants might have been considered beautiful, or at least fascinating. But the warriors marching up from the deep knew little of beauty when they were alive, and the flames of biotransference permanently severed their capacity for curiosity.
The land beneath the waves grows steeper. Metal feet sink into shifting sand. Currents buffet metal bodies, first pushing them on towards their goal, then hauling them back. But with brute strength and tireless patience, they march onwards and upwards.
‘Another sherbet, sir?’
Lieutenant Colonel Hans Schraden opens an eye, just a slit against the glare of the morning sun. Standing above him is a man holding a silver tray. It is not one of his troopers, not a Mordian, but one of the many civilian attendants that seem to be everywhere on these islands.
The man bends at the waist. A small dish of the jaw-achingly sweet and potently intoxicating sherbet the locals have a fondness for sits on the tray, alone on an expanse of polished silver.
‘Why not?’ Schraden has yet to develop a taste for the stuff, but he hopes to have the opportunity to do so. Schraden’s regiment has been on Orymous for four months, but this is the first time his divisional commander has extended an invitation to join him on the islands.
Ostensibly, it is for wargames. Schraden and the staff officers of a dozen other regiments will spend much of the next week engaging in battle across a tabletop, shifting marker blocks back and forth while cogitators determine the outcome of engagements. But for the morning, those same officers are spread out for the better part of a mile along the shoreline, basking in the unfamiliar luxury of temperate heat, fine food and idle peace.
Schraden closes his eye and holds out a hand, waiting for the servant to give him the glass.
Instead he hears a whine and a brief pulse of releasing energy, followed by the sounds of choking and a silver platter falling to the sand.
He looks up. The attendant has dropped to his knees, clawing at his throat. A green phage crawls across his skin, burning all it touches to black ash. The man’s death is certain, but not swift.
Schraden does not recoil, but instead watches him die with something akin to mild concern. It takes a second volley to rouse him, to penetrate the fog of sherbets past, as a streak of green light flashes by his head to scourge the bark from a nearby tree.
Creatures are rising from the water. Metal creatures in the shape of skeletal men. Water droplets hiss and boil from the charging coils of their weapons. Surf breaks around their heads, and a vicious riptide pulls at their legs. As each monstrosity emerges from the waves, their ribcages suddenly blaze with a ghoulish green light, and the sea about them flashes to steam.
Under the bright light of morning, the former masters of Qeretesh rise to reclaim what was theirs.
Schraden topples from his sand chair. He reaches automatically for his sidearm, and touches only the blue flannel cloth of his absurd beachwear. Confusion, and not a little embarrassment, are the last thoughts that pass through his mind.
Lieutenant Colonel Schraden, proud commander of the 47th Mordian Guard, dies in the first minute of the necron attack. Alongside him are hundreds of others, casualties of an enemy they cannot name and did not know to look for.
They find the humans at peace, inattentive and at rest. At the Meande airfield, the ground crews wait for the first flyers of the day to arrive from the mainland. On Plakid Major, Lord-Militant Salvastari, governor of Orymous in the name of the almighty God-Emperor of Mankind, is taking a late breakfast while reading the latest reports from his logisticar adjutants.
The first shriek of gauss punctures the humans’ torpor. Hundreds die to the first volley.
Chaos takes hold. Bodyguards – the few that were thought necessary for the idyll of Imperial life on Orymous – swarm their wards, giving their lives to shield their superiors for a few precious seconds. Generals wearing terry cloth and sand towels abandon their dignity. Commissars throw away their authority. Nobles discard any thought of bravery. All run, fleeing up the beaches and away from the monstrous killers that have appeared from their nightmares.
The legion advances, dividing into cohorts and heading inland towards the objectives Khemet has painstakingly selected for them. From the first moment she learnt of the humans’ island retreat, Khemet has known this would be the opening blow of the true war. The Imperials, in their arrogance, have obligingly gathered the pinnacle of their martial hierarchy in one place. She would be a poor nemesor indeed not to capitalise on their hubris.
Corporal Tallisen Jynse of the Third Orymousian Life Guards is asleep when the war begins. He was on duty the previous night, standing watch over a revelry that had occupied the greatest portion of the lord-militant’s estate. He has earned, through a pristine uniform and a carefully unobservant eye, the right to a morning’s sleep.
Jynse is unceremoniously hauled from his bunk, waking in the brief moment before he hits the ground.
‘What the hells?’
‘Get up, and get to your squad.’ Sergeant Luthen Merker hauls Jynse up by his collar and throws him out of the barracks door.
Morning light stabs his eyes, and between the tramp of boots and Merker’s yells it takes Jynse a moment before he hears the clarions wailing. Rote-learned actions kick in, and Jynse is running with his hellgun in hand before he is fully aware.
‘The commandant picked an evil day for a drill!’ he yells to Merker as they head for the platoon’s quartet of Chimeras. Files of troops are waiting their turn to enter each personnel carrier.
‘It’s no drill! Get them moving!’ Merker calls ahead to his other squad leaders, and the first soldiers duck beneath the metal lintels of the Chimeras.
Jynse is the last inside, hauling the rear hatch closed behind him. The driver has the engine running, and the Chimera leaps away before the corporal can even find his seat.
‘What the hells is happening?’
No one inside the transport knows, and when Jynse remembers to hook his helmet into the company vox-link none of his fellow squad leaders know either. Ten minutes of alert clarions sounding, and no word has been passed down from the regimental command except to muster and rally on the lord-militant’s palace.
‘It’s a drill,’ says Trooper Resten.
‘They’d say if it were a drill,’ says another.
‘It doesn’t matter!’ shouts Jynse. ‘We’re the Life Guards. We’re called, we come. Weapons live, and ready for anything.’
The squad give a ragged, half-hearted cheer that is cut short when the Chimera suddenly grinds to a halt. Jynse, still standing, is thrown from his feet. His helmet clangs off the forward bulkhead.
‘Corporal!’ the driver calls, rare panic in his voice.
‘What?’ Jynse stumbles up to the bulkhead, and slides back a shutter to look through a porthole.
Something is hovering above the road, less than a mile ahead. It is insectile in nature, rows of cage-like ribs hanging from a long spinal column. A short scorpion tail rises at its rear, beneath which stands a skeletal figure, metal hands clutching the controls. Hung from the interior of its ribs is a weapon, its length glowing with bilious light.
‘Enemy contact! Go at it! At it!’
The driver guns the Chimera’s power plant, and floors the throttle.
The Doomsday Ark’s plasma beam engulfs the Chimera and its inhabitants while they are still half a mile away. Corporal Jynse, like so many of his compatriots, dies entirely unaware of what killed him.
Despite the profusion of command staff – those who were able to escape the murder on the beaches – it takes over an hour before any semblance of order is imposed on the scattered Imperial forces. By that time, several of the Plakid Islands are entirely overrun. The humans that remain are utterly scattered, prolonging their lives by running or hiding.
But finally directives emanate from the lord-militant’s palace. Far out to sea, the warden line of off-shore gun batteries are levered around, and the first volleys of shells crash into the beaches. Each one gouges a trench in the golden sands before detonating, sending great red-and-yellow fingers of fire and sand reaching into the azure sky. A few shells strike true, their blasts catching the last ranks of warriors to pull themselves from the water. A direct strike will pulverise an unfortunate warrior to shrapnel, but most rise, their necrodermis cracked and cratered but otherwise unimpaired. Oblivious to their impotence, the gun captains fire on.
Group Captain Mina Salvastari grips the control column of her Oneros transport plane so hard she thinks either her fingers will break, or the sculpted leather will.
She should be up there. The youngest sister of the lord-militant’s extended family had earned her wings in Avenger strike fighters, running ground-attack missions for the Jovinan Liberation, and before that Orymousian-made interceptors. While she hasn’t flown a sortie for almost thirty years, she was an air warrior through to her bones. To be sitting in a transport while a battle rages around her is more than she can stand.
‘Come on, get them in!’ She half-stands from her flight seat, hampered by the pressure suit bundled around her legs, and roars at the flight crew on the pad below her. The last of her brother’s court are running, all dignity abandoned, from a covered hangar to the Oneros. Her role is not to fight, but to fly all that remains of her family out of the combat area.
Fredrich, her cousin’s idiot husband, is the last to disappear from sight beneath the transport’s nose cone. Half a minute later, a voice barks over the vox that all are aboard, and the indicator lumen for the Oneros’ rear door flicks to green.
The engines are already idling, the fuel tanks topped off. Salvastari’s copilot voxes a terse message to the airfield’s controllers, then cycles the vector ducts down for take-off. Mina gives her indicator panel a final check, then throws the throttle forwards.
The Oneros rises slowly, the scream of jet thrust eclipsing the shriek of gauss that has been growing closer by the hour. It is a whale of a craft, a pair of wings at the front and back of its distended hull. Salvastari wrestles with the control column, forcing its nose down so the vector ducts can propel the craft up and forwards into flight.
Something rips overhead, its wake strong enough to rock the Oneros on its axis. Salvastari swears, fighting to correct the sudden drift.
Three seconds later, a bolt of energy brighter than the rising sun hits the transport in the centre of its mass. The Oneros folds like a paper plane, crashing to the landing pad in a fireball of burning promethium.
With the beachhead secured, and with the leading lychguard reporting no sign of the humans’ heavy weaponry, the first Doom Scythes burst from the waves. They hammer over the aerodromes, sowing discord and terror in their wake. Imperial transport planes erupt in flames as arcs of electricity ignite their fuel pods. Others are cut apart by blinding rays that carve ragged lines through asphalt and armour alike. Any Imperial craft that manages to rise from its stand is struck from the sky.
There is no escape from the Plakid Islands.
Khemet watches the massacre – for it cannot, by any reasonable observer, be called a battle – through the eyes of its perpetrators. With the tomb world’s aid she skips her consciousness from warrior to warrior. She races through the skies with the Doom Scythe pilots, gutting the fat-bellied human flyers as they struggle to lift off. She climbs up the sands and trudges through the pleasure gardens, hunting the humans’ chattel creatures who seek to hide rather than fight. Through the data gathered by the gestalt senses of the advancing legion, Khemet sees the noose tighten around each island, the humans penned in by closing cordons of warriors. The Imperials find their courage when they realise they have no way out, and Khemet rides the minds of Immortals who advance without flinching into a hail of small-arms fire.
She watches Lord-Militant Salvastari die.
The human overlord’s image has been implanted in the minds of the lychguard who lead the attack, and he is identified swiftly as he flees into his palace. It is a vast complex, the equal of so many similar edifices the humans have crudely heaped together atop Qeretesh’s sacred soil. To Khemet, whose appreciation for aesthetics has been honed over aeons, they are the gravest sin, cumbersome monstrosities that aspire to grandeur but show only hubris.
The humans offer as much resistance as their meagre arms can provide. Hundreds of troops battle from outworks surrounding the palatial grounds, but they are not prepared for what assails them. Khemet’s warriors fall, but each absorbs a weight of fire that cannot be sustained. For each Immortal that succumbs, ten humans die. It is a rate of loss no troops could bear, and yet they remain at their posts, dying by inches as their enemies advance. They even manage a doomed charge, rising from their trenches with bayonets fixed, following a general of the Cadian 67th.
The lord-militant dies with a weapon in hand, within the poor tomb of a rockcrete bunker to which his bodyguards had dragged him. He dies screaming, ribcage peeled open by the twin beams of an Immortal’s blaster. That is the death every Unclean deserves.
The Plakid Islands are the first soil of Qeretesh to be reclaimed for the necrons, but they will not be the last. Their cleansing will take several hours to complete, but Khemet’s warriors are patient, and thorough.
CHAPTER 2
While Khemet murders the humans’ leadership class – a necessary task, and one appropriate to her station – Hekasun makes ready for a far grander work. He sits upon the throne of a vessel ancient even by the standards of the necrons, tense with anticipation.
The Hepherentes. At his father’s feet, a young Hekasun had learnt the tales of its victories. It is the flagship of the Zathanor fleet, the greatest of their craft. It, even more than Qeretesh itself, is what he came to this world to claim. The tomb world is a bastion, a stronghold whose vaults hold the last of the Zathanor legions. But the Hepherentes is the means to project that recovered strength. From its decks he will forge the renewal of his house, claim the renown that is his due, carve out a new dominion for his dynasty across the stars.
But first, he must win the world.
Ptah is close at hand. The cryptek has spent months surveying the harvest ship’s functions, rousing its somnolent spirit in preparation for Hekasun’s call. He bows deeply, both arms spread wide in his favoured form of obeisance. ‘All is in readiness, lord. We await your command.’
Hekasun leans back in his throne, indulging in the moment. This is all he has worked for. His lies, his patience. His immense tolerance for the indignities heaped upon him. They have all been necessary to bring him to this point.
A tremor of potential passes through the ship, the first stirrings of the chained star god at the ship’s heart. A shard of Og’driada, appropriately called the Arisen, has been woken from its slumber. The barbed chains that bind the hateful creature have been sunk deep into its cosmic flesh, ready to siphon its immense power into the ship’s veins.
Hekasun touches a hand to the Zathanor glyph, proudly returned to its place upon his brow.
‘Let us rise.’
In the abyssal depths of the earth, a leviathan moves.
In Verongyl, a seismograph’s needle twitches, steadies, then starts to violently dance. The Mechanicus acolyte whose duty it is to monitor the instrument conveys the readings, encoding them with runes of the utmost urgency, to her superior. But the warning is lost in the tumult of conflicting information that assails the enclave’s datasphere. By the time any adept of sufficiently advanced rank takes heed of the seismograph’s warning, it is far too late.
Beneath the black abyss of the deepest ocean, blackstone gates open. The rock that has concealed the tomb world’s extremity for millions of years shifts, cracks, and finally bursts apart, yielding to a strength that once ruled Qeretesh as unquestioned sovereign.
Cavitation bubbles emerge and collapse as the ocean rushes into the sudden void. The power of two thousand fathoms of pressure roars into the breach in the planet’s crust. But when the first foaming wave reaches the roof of the tomb complex, its strength is turned aside by a shimmering barrier of jade energy. Rock is pulverised by the redirected force, smashed to powder that is swept away on the churning currents. But the chamber in which the Hepherentes has waited through the aeons remains inviolate.
