The Twice-dead King: Reign, page 3
‘Very well, Razor,’ he said at last, letting glyphs of cold ambiguity coat the message. ‘You will present yourself to the dynast’s chamber at once, where your king will question you, and reveal what other weaknesses in the fleet you have surely failed to spot. Then, perhaps, I will hear your suggestions, and the new dynast of Ithakas will finally address his subjects on the matter of their crownworld to be.’
Yenekh sent nothing in return but glyphs of profound obedience, arranged with an immaculate balance of humility and flare. The fact the sequence could also be read in an obscure homeworld dialect from before biotransference, in which it would translate as ‘took your fly-blown time’, was surely an artefact of chance.
CHAPTER TWO
A GRAND INHERITANCE
‘You know, I never truly appreciated the size of this old monster,’ said Yenekh, as they marched through the catacomb stillness of the royal decks beneath the sanctum, ‘until I walked the breadth of it for the first time. You can know a ship’s mass down to the atom, but there’s no replacing the feel you get from pacing its deck.’
‘And have you had much cause to pace these extremely forbidden decks, over the years?’ probed Oltyx, allowing the very faintest edge of playfulness to shine through the threat in his tone, despite himself.
‘No, my king,’ Yenekh admitted rapidly. ‘It is all… entirely novel to me.’
Like the Cairn-class ship its design had been scaled up from, the Akrops was wider than it was long, taking the form of a flattened crescent, with a heavily armoured hull that hung back from its widest point. The ziggurat of the command citadel, where Yenekh’s bridge and personal suite sat, rose from the very rear of that hull, and its highest tiers were the royal decks, reserved for the use of the dynast, and capped with the sanctum where the throne sat.
‘I forgot how much space there was up here, truly,’ continued Yenekh, as they descended a cavernous stairwell, the clank of their footsteps echoing from the khet-high statues of former dynasts flanking it. Whereas the admiral usually spoke with the same vigour he strode around with, both his gait and his words were needlessly cautious up here, as if he was a trespasser. He craned his neck to look up at the shadowed faces of kings from the time of flesh, and Oltyx saw there was a hesitance in the set of his oculars.
‘What did the shipwrights expect you to do with all this space?’
‘Own it,’ said Oltyx darkly. ‘Same as the rest.’ Yenekh’s nodes flashed to suggest he was about to speak – no doubt to compliment the magnificence of it all – but the words never came. That was understandable: for all its grandeur, there was little to enjoy about this forlorn, dingy museum of gods.
They walked silently, after that. The initial comfort Oltyx had felt from Yenekh’s presence had dried up soon after the admiral had arrived in his sanctum. Yenekh had made a few suggestions for potential courses to plot, but everything he had proposed, Oltyx had already considered and dismissed in his own consultation of the ship’s orreries. The admiral had continued to list world after world, but after a while, an ugly shadow had loomed over the conversation. They both knew, after all, that there was little point in talking together about the future, without also discussing the fate awaiting the Razor.
In the end, the increasingly stilted exchange had calcified Oltyx’s resolve to move forward and establish leadership of his exile court. He had been no more eager to face the gathered survivors of the dynasty, but the prospect had at least become more favourable than the exponentially increasing sadness involved in trying to speak with Yenekh. So he had sent summons for all nobles of sufficient rank to assemble on the Akrops, and had brought his lychguard forth to escort their king to his court.
The broad-shouldered warriors moved ahead of their king in a wedge formation, ceremonial spears casting deep shadows to either side as they passed through the statue-haunted colonnades. The dynast of Ithakas had, by tradition, been accompanied by twenty lychguard. But service to a decaying mind had taken its toll, even on these stalwart warriors, and only twelve had made it through the long madness of Unnas’ reign to be inherited by Oltyx.
They were clad, like all the dynasty’s troops, in the mirror-silver plate of Ithakas, while each bore a slim crescent of gold on their brow, just below their plain cranial crests, to denote their status as royal protectors. To Oltyx, they were all identical, except the larger figure leading the wedge – a formidably armoured fighter barely a palm’s span shorter than the king himself, and armed on this occasion with a heavy stave.
This was Pakhet, he had learned, the phalanx’s praetor. Most lychguard were identified only by an interstitial signifier-glyph, of course. But Pakhet had the rare honour of a name granted in the noble tongue, in recognition of her prowess in service. She certainly looked capable, Oltyx thought: her nodal arrays pulsed with ever-ready aggression, and scanning the shadows from the deep cupola of her clavicle collar was a long faceplate capped with a bifurcated crest and set in an expression of permanent, raptorial vigilance.
That faceplate turned to him now, seeking instruction, for they had arrived at the stone portal which sealed the sanctum from the command citadel it nested on. From here on in, they would proceed down through the tiers of the ziggurat, and then forward along the spine of the Akrops, until they reached the point where its vast wings met. There, inside a sphere of extradimensionally braced godsteel, sat the synedrion. It was where Oltyx had once convened his council of misfits during the strange years of his exile on Sedh, and so it seemed fitting that he had now decreed his new court to meet there, too.
Once these gates were breached, Oltyx knew, his people would see their king for the first time, and form their opinion of him. And while their obedience was guaranteed, their respect was not. It certainly would not do simply to translate in with the cheap flourish of a conjurer, and so he signalled for his lychguard to advance and open the gates by hand. Pakhet inclined her brow, and obeyed.
She made it five paces towards the portal, before Yenekh raised his hand in meek objection, and Oltyx halted the praetor with a wave of his hand. Then, he turned on Yenekh with oculars dimmed to the very coolest smoulder, brimming with the threat of the business they had not yet discussed. The look did not go unrecognised.
‘Believe me, great dynast, when I say I make this statement purely out of loyalty, and without any forgetfulness of your freedom of will–’
‘But,’ prompted Oltyx.
‘But… I wish to remind the king he no longer need even raise a council, should he not be inclined. His word is law over all matter, after all, by nature of his divine heka. Whatever opinions that rabble in the synedrion may hold need never pollute his aural buffer – they will obey, no matter what.’
Oltyx wanted to respond with vicious indignance, as he knew a king should, when questioned. But Yenekh’s meaning was clear – he had seen Oltyx’s trepidation, and was trying to spare him the ordeal. It was kindness. And to his own surprise, Oltyx found himself rewarding it with truth.
‘The king wishes to raise a council, Yenekh,’ said Oltyx dolefully. ‘Because the king, as you may have inferred from our conversation in the sanctum – and in an admission which shall never be repeated – has no idea what to do next.’
Yenekh’s next words came frayed at the edges, as he was clearly distressed at such an unfathomable idea being presented so bluntly.
‘It will come in time, Oltyx, surely? And you have time. The eyes of the enemy are crude – we are well hidden from them here. And it will take time for the ship’s drive to be coaxed back to proper function. If you wish longer to refine your choice, you have every reason to delay. You owe no explanation to these lords, and you certainly owe them no haste.’
‘No, admiral. But I owe them a future. Djoseras told me, once, that to lead well means being able to serve, as well as rule. I owe them a king who is seen from time to time, too. Ithakas has been ruled too long from behind closed doors. Let us get this over with.’
With that, he nodded to Pakhet, who had waited with hands braced on the doorway throughout the conversation. Shoulder-plates rippling with obedience-patterns, she leaned forward to heave against the noctilith slab, and the doors were opened.
After traversing the sombre caverns of the royal decks, the halls of the command citadel seemed bright as daylight, and almost in a state that could be described as busy. After millennia operating with a severe crew shortfall as the ill-favoured Akrops had languished at Sedh, its decks were once again trodden by Immortal deck officers, maintenance canopteks, and nobles bedecked with the ornamentation of a dozen different worlds.
‘Have you the wits of warriors?’ barked Yenekh, at a group of Triszheni shipmasters who stood in their path, consumed with their jealous inspection of the Akrops’ interior. ‘Your envious perusing obstructs the dynast’s path! Scatter, dust-specks! You may kneel – from beside the royal procession.’
As the pack of lesser lords scrambled to clear the way, Oltyx was reminded once again of the state of the dynasty’s decline, even before the humans had invaded. Their joints ground and their limbs spasmed, and one corroded captain who failed to move fast enough was toppled by the butt of Pakhet’s stave, landing on his side with a dull clatter. Oltyx passed them by without a glance, and without having said a word.
As they moved through the common decks between the ziggurat and the synedrion, they became genuinely crowded. Clearly, a great deal of those necrons with the autonomy to do so had translated aboard after rumours of the king’s appearance had spread, and the Akrops probably held more of their people now than it had carried even in its heyday, at the peak of Szarekh’s great war. Many of the new shipmates were old acquaintances, thrown together now after aeons of isolation. Before the bow wave of Pakhet’s phalanx, Oltyx saw ancient rivals arguing, former comrades locked in either glee or despair as they reminisced on wars long won or lost, and even a grudge about to be settled by phase blade.
All these encounters, however, fell still as the king approached. Even before the clanking lockstep of the lychguard reached their auditory transducers, the nobles felt the golden pressure of Oltyx’s interstitial shadow on the edges of their perception, and fell to their knees. It was as if a bubble of silence and stillness had broken free of the royal sanctum, to cocoon Oltyx as he moved through the ship.
Within that bubble, however, beyond the perception of all they passed, Oltyx and Yenekh – with some ease returned to them by their immersion in the life of the ship – had begun attending to matters of state. In practice, given the state of Ithakas had been reduced to a cluster of forlorn voidcraft, this meant a review of ships, conducted either by shared ocular scry, or by projections in the air ahead of them, coded only to their optic buffers, while they spoke in the blinking code.
‘It’s a miracle we’re moving at all,’ admitted Yenekh, as a projection of the Akrops loomed above the heads of the advancing lychguard. Seen from the outside, it was in a bleak state. Plasma trailed in slim green threads from a galaxy of punctures, and the hull was clouded in places by thick swarms of repair scarabs, as the ship’s vast, sullen autonomous spirit deployed its megaton matter reserves to shore up ruined armour.
‘I am surprised it did not fare better,’ Oltyx replied.
‘My king, the ship flew into the heart of an armada that took your crownworld in a matter of days, and then broke free through the enemy flagship, on the bow wave of an artificial nova. I think the old thing fared passably, given circumstances.’
‘This ship was designed to wrestle with gods,’ Oltyx reminded the admiral.
‘Yes, my king. And it still bears the scars. Some fights, you can never fully heal from.’
‘Very true, Yenekh.’
The Razor took a few moments to reply to that, and when he did, he changed the subject swiftly, sweeping away the Akrops to cast fresh projection protocols in the air before them.
‘Still, we do not stand alone,’ he began, and a procession of ships began to materialise down the length of the central arcade, as if on parade. ‘Djoseras was clearly persuasive in his missives to the coreworlds. We have, to my knowledge, now consolidated every vessel still loyal to the dynasty under the Akrops’ shroud. And although they are not many, they are – on the whole – fine ships.’
‘Come then, admiral,’ said Oltyx. ‘Reveal these glories I have inherited.’
‘I can begin with good news. The Cairn-class battleship Godcutter, damaged but still comparable with the Akrops in power, is inbound from Geb-Ismenth. It comes captained by Duamehht herself, who is–’
‘I know very well who she is,’ said Oltyx sharply, as he was not sure if this was good news at all. Duamehht was head of the line of Erebur, Ithakas’ most powerful subordinate house, whose worlds lay far to the north-west. They were the last of Ithakas’ vassals he would have expected to send help, having grown more and more distant from the crownworld since the Great Sleep. But then, Duamehht was hard to predict.
He had known her, back in the time of flesh. When Oltyx had been young, Duamehht had spent a year studying bladecraft at the palace on Antikef. It had been while Oltyx had been suffering the blood-sickness which had withered him for years, and she had taken every opportunity to persecute him for his weakness. In her bullying, just as in everything else, she had excelled, for Duamehht was tachyon-fast in combat, and viciously intelligent.
And now, here she was with a Cairn. And Oltyx was king. Perhaps, he dared to hope, circumstance might have made a rival into a powerful ally. And then, with a dark lurch of his flux, he considered the alternative. Or Erebur has chosen its moment to seize the throne.
‘What else?’ he prompted Yenekh.
‘Six Scythe-class cruisers are to be our mainstay, my king. Three – the Handtaker, Bitterdraught and Reedstalker – arrived in the last solar cycle, from Teppihuk in the north, plus we have Scorn and Reckoning, which escaped Phyloskh as its defence collapsed. And then, there is a… modified vessel called the Failed Harvest, from the fringeworld of Karkh on the southern border.’
‘Karkh?’ said Oltyx. ‘You must be mistaken – that world was lost during the Great Sleep. They cannot have sent a vessel.’
‘Indeed, my king. Djoseras and I were both surprised, as such, when the Harvest responded to the summons. And now it has arrived, without a single necron aboard.’
The Failed Harvest rotated before them, its running lights pulsing to a strange rhythm as it hung on the outskirts of the fleet. Like all Scythe-class craft, it bore the shape of a polearm, with a crescent blade affixed to its drive complex with a long, haft-like hull. But all along that haft were unusual accretions of necrodermis – spires and mounds which merged with one another, and protruded at strange angles.
‘Another haunted vessel,’ flashed Oltyx, as he studied it. ‘Outstanding.’
‘Only by canopteks, thank the Founder’s sun – they’ve formed a weak gestalt with the vessel’s autonomous spirit. Witless as a stock-beetle, of course, but it’ll fight well enough under proper command.’
‘I’ll take it. And what of Sedh’s defence fleet, Razor?’
‘Sundered in the course of breaking the orbital blockade for the Akrops, alas, save for the Koptas and the Buhto, my king.’
‘Those relics?’ protested Oltyx, as projections of the two hammer-headed, Henet-class ships lumbered overhead. ‘They’ve been in service since the First War of Secession, by the Triarch – what use are they to us?’
‘More than I expected, in truth. Though they were retrofitted for Szarekh’s war, they remain configured to the ancient style – all armour and no sophistication. A fool’s idea of a battleship, in short. But against barbarians who still fire chemical rockets, it transpires, they perform admirably. We shall be glad of them.’
The rest of the fleet was unsurprising. Seventeen light cruisers swooped overhead – Khopesh, Cartouche and Sekhem-class ships, mixed in with older variants – followed by two-score support ships, from assault raiders to shadow-hulled scout craft, and a hundred or so flights of scythecraft.
At the tail of this procession came a collection of oddities, varying in utility. The industrial worlds of the Thrassonos Cluster in the east had sent a pair of world-drills and a vast, skolopendriform mining canoptek, which made Oltyx wonder whether the lords of Thrassonos had fully grasped what aid was being requested of them, while the decrepit tomb-colonies of Bu-hennen had sent only a lone Shaddh-class light freighter between them, good for little more than storing raw materials for the repair canopteks.
The Tyrant of Barrahyx, a universally hated vassal dynasty, had managed to make his contribution into an insult. He had sent a vast scythecraft carrier called the Forty-two Judges, but had first taken care to strip all but a single flight of Night Shroud bombers from its bays. Oltyx took only faint pleasure from having watched Barrahyx razed, just hours previously.
‘And that’s all that remains of Ithakas, is it?’ Oltyx asked, as the projections faded.
‘Not quite. When the Akrops came to evacuate the moons of Reppyt, we found them long fallen to orks. But there was one Taweret-class light assault carrier still operational in orbit, and so Borakka took it for the barracking of its… contingent.’
Oltyx stopped in his tracks, so shocked that his thoughts went straight to his vocal buffer and came out aloud.
‘Borakka? Szarekh’s bones, Yenekh. The Destroyers came with you?’
‘Those which could be prised from hammering the remains of the orkish incursion flat, yes,’ said the admiral, transducers hushed, as every lord along the corridor’s length had turned their heads to their king’s sudden outburst. ‘Which is to say, not many of them. And while Borakka came of its own accord – the Red Marshal still at least recognises something of hierarchy – it took a battery of stasis projectors to compel the others.’
