Ahhotekh remained still as a statue, his unliving tallic form becoming one with the unchanging architecture of the Star Reaper’s command deck. The twin orbs of lifeless green light burning in his tallic skull were dim, yet focused on the images playing out before them.
He had run, retreated and withdrawn. Scurried away like a rat. Escaped like a beaten mutt.
He had given the order just monts ago, re monts, and despite his mind being a suprely advanced computer able to process data at an imnse pace, he couldn’t quite co to terms with it.
He had run. From a single ship- No, from a single creature. He pulled up the image captured by the visual sensors at the prow of the Tomb Ship, just staring at the … what kind of creature was that? It had two legs, a torso, two grasping upper limbs with opposable thumbs and a head. It looked vaguely similar to an Aeldari, even if its facial structure was off and its form was a bit too short and stocky. A mutant? No, there was no way the Aeldari would mutate; the Old Ones weren’t that sloppy with their creations.
Whatever it was, it showed up on the Empyrean energy sensors as an extrely high-density, high-potency signature. The analytics ca in, and based on ancient data from the War in Heaven, the Crypteks placed this creature’s danger level sowhere on the level above a powerful Aeldari Warlock but below their make-believe ‘Gods’.
And yet its blade tore through the Tomb Ship’s energy shield like it wasn’t even there. How was that possible? The Star Reaper had withstood direct assault from Star Gods! Ahhotekh knew for a fact it had been there when the Burning One fell and was torn apart. It had been there when the Void Dragon had been sundered, and it was also present when the Deceiver finally received its couppance.
How did a single creature less outwardly powerful than a weak Aeldari God born of that make-believe realm tear through that? How!?
The eerie screech of tal on tal echoed in the deathly silent hall as Ahhotekh’s fingertips dug grooves into the armrests of his throne, liquid fury overwhelming his core matrices for a mont.
How dare that creature!? How does it dare take what was HIS by RIGHT!? His ships, his precious, mighty ships! Gone! Barely half of what he’d taken into battle returned. Half. How!? It was impossible, incomprehensible, unacceptable. It shouldn’t have happened. It never should have happened. Why didn’t it just die like it was supposed to? Why? Why? Why?
His ships were gone, so many of them erased in an instant, and there wasn’t even anything to recover. But worse than that was the loss of Crypteks; he had so precious few of them, just a few dozen across the entire Hollow Sun, and he’d lost fifteen of them.
If only he had at least managed to kill that creature, erase the threat it posed, maybe then- … it didn’t matter. That was why he’d stayed even when that ridiculous Empyrean superweapon unleashed that energy beam and tore apart so many of his ships. The threat that the enemy ship posed had been made abundantly clear then, and he wanted- No, he needed it gone. It had to be erased even if it cost him every ship in his fleet besides the Star Reaper. It would have still been an outrageously costly endeavour, but it would have been worth it in the end.
Then it cut through the Star Reaper’s shield, and suddenly, he wasn’t so sure about his victory over the enemy being inevitable. He had … panicked. He couldn’t lose this ship; it was his greatest weapon. He just couldn’t.
“Overlord-Regent.” One of his Crypteks stepped forward, bowing lowly before his throne. Nehet, one of Ozkan’s many pupils, was left in his care for this excursion while the Codifier remained behind to make sure the crownworld continued operating on optimal paraters while he was away. “What is to be done about the infiltrator?”
Ahhotekh paused. Infiltrator. What infiltrator!?
His senses swept out, pouncing on the pile of unread alerts that he had ignored in his frothing rage. He tore through them in his mind and paused, going deathly still again as he found the reports detailing the infiltrator’s actions and advance. It had slipped in through the gap made by that psyker that tore through the shield, but it wasn’t the psyker itself.
Whether that was a blessing or a curse, he couldn’t rightly tell with the data he had on hand. He was back in the Hollow Sun, the Tomb Ship docked inside the artificial planet’s massive dockyards. There was no escaping from here without using a Doln Gate … but a powerful enough saboteur could easily cause massive damage to the still mostly slumbering crownworld if it managed to slip away and disappear into its labyrinthine hallways and tunnels. Ahhotekh did not have the manpower needed to do a thorough sweep of the entire world, not even close. He might never catch this creature if it slipped out of the Star Reaper.
“Permission granted to direct half of my Lichguards into battle,” Ahhotekh said, his voice deathly still in a way that all who knew him would know ant he was absolutely livid inside. “And ten Deathmarks as well, along with a regular legion of Immortals. Find this creature, kill it, and send its corpse to Ozkan for study if possible.”
It should have been a simple affair; from what little he saw of the infiltrator on sensors, it was so manner of organic war-beast with bodily proportions similar to a Necron, just made of weak flesh and bone. It had no ranged weapons and wielded only its claws as lee weapons, or bludgeoned the occasional patrol it ran into with its limbs. A single proper hit from a Gauss Flayer would have killed it, and even a grazing hit should have crippled it long enough to get a few proper hits in, even if the shooter was a mindless Necron with only targeting algorithms to guide their aim instead of a thinking mind. A single grazing hit, that was all he needed. He’d dispatched his elite assassins and bodyguards, along with the Immortals. He should have received word of the infiltrator’s death within minutes.
He did not, in fact, receive word of such a thing coming to pass, even as the minutes flowed by and an entire hour had gone by. The infiltrator was running around, leading its pursuers on a wild chase across the Tomb Ship. The fact that Ahhotekh had barely enough Necrons onboard to even call it a skeleton crew once again ca back to haunt him as the fast-moving irritant easily moved through the unoccupied parts of the ship without anyone there to contest it or cut it off.
He didn’t even have that many troops on board, and why would he? What use were Immortals or Destroyers in a void battle?
He considered giving in to his base impulse, letting his rage control him and do as it implored him to do: go out there and strangle this vermin with his own two hands.
Alas, the absolute indignity of an Overlord-Regent having to chase around a single trespasser himself eclipsed that of having the trespasser run circles around his troops. Worse, what if he failed to catch it in a speedy manner? What if he were forced to give up? Oh, the indignity of the re thought of that happening to him filled him with so much rage and sha in equal parts that he just simred in those emotions for a while. For as long as Ahhotekh could rember, he had always detested having to get his own hands dirty. He was an Overlord, a commander, not so lowly warrior to wade into battle and swing his Warglaive around.
So he pressed that urge to rush out and do exactly that into the furthest reaches of his mind, regaining so focus by sheer will. Ahhotekh had not been so no-na Overlord from so inconsequential planet conquered by the dynasty, no, he had been a part of Phareon Ahmontekh’s court since before Biotransference. His rivals in the court had been nurous back then, and he’d been just a lowly vizier. By the ti the War in Heaven was concluded, he was Phareon’s most influential courtier, second only to Ozkan the Codifier, the ancient Cryptek who was the only one the Crimson Scythe tolerated criticism from.
He was no military genius, not when compared to the Phareon, but his mind had beaten so of the dynasty’s best and brightest in centuries-spanning gas of deception and scheming. He used all his experience to craft traps and herd the infiltrator where he needed it to be for ambushes, all of which escalated in complexity as the vexatious creature kept either evading them or breaking straight through them.
By the ti the fifth hour passed with the infiltrator still at large, Ahhotekh felt like he was about to fall to the Flayer Virus or the Destroyer Curse from sheer rage and frustration any minute now. But of course, that was when he received another piece of news.
“The dinsional corridor subversion array has triggered, My Lord Regent,” the sa Cryptek as before inford him, head bowed low. Ahhotekh wasn’t listening, already looking into the matter. He had received an alert the mont it happened, but he needed a few seconds to grasp the implications, to understand what it ant. “The would-be trespasser has been rerouted to the eradication zone- Correction: it successfully slipped free and displaced itself to appear in the hall next to the eradication zone.”
The eradication zone in question was on the Hollow Sun proper, but thanks to the Phareon’s perfectionism and foresight, it didn’t rely on a single line of defence. Even if a trespasser sohow escaped the room, the subversion array should have dumped them in; the entire area around it was built like an extrely defensible containnt zone. Almost like a fortress with three different circles of walls around it that defended against sothing trying to break out from the innermost part, instead of the other way around, like regular forts. The enemy was still boxed in and prid for an ambush.
He just … had to swiftly transport so troops there because his awake and cognizant Necron foot soldiers were on the other side of the artificial planet. Troubleso. At least he still had three legions of Immortals standing guard there, along with a single legion of Destroyers. He also had a few legions of regular Necron warriors, but they were … pitiful, not even a sliver of sentience to be found in their minds. They were mindless automatons in truth and required the direct attention of Tactical Crypteks or Technomancers to be able to put up much of a fight against anything that was a true threat.
Considering how irritatingly fast the first infiltrator was, no mindless automaton was ever going to hit it, or the second group of trespassers, even if he threw hundreds of them at the targets. Immortals at least had a chance, however small, but it was Deathmarks that he was trusting to finish them in the end.
“That is-“ Ahhotekh said, wishing he could breathe so he might sigh. Alas, his tallic ribcage failed to expand, and his body had no lungs to draw air in with. “Quite vexing. Two infiltrators in a single day.”
Ahhotekh paused, a brief glimr of glee shining through his core matrices as a part of his prodigious mind watched as the first infiltrator finally fell. Just as he had expected, it was a Deathmark that delivered the final blow, though it took so rather complex planning to push the aggravating creature into a corner and force it to take the damned entropic beam in the chest. Still, it was just a single trespasser, and he now had to deal with two more. But he had experience now, he had data, he knew what to expect; these new annoyances would fall much more quickly.
“It would appear the second one had been using the first one as a targeting beacon to aim an artificially manifested Empyrean teleportation phenonon,” the Cryptek said. “It would also appear to be that this new uninvited guest is the sa one who had attacked the Star Reaper.”
Suddenly, Ahhotekh wasn’t so sure that the four legions he had standing guard would be enough to keep the trespasser contained, even though they had the absolute terrain advantage.
*****
“They are coming,” I said as my primary thought-stream slowed back down to sothing rely superhuman. I turned to Selene, finding a small grin tugging at her lips despite the focused look in those beautiful steel grey eyes of hers.
“Then let’s kill them,” she replied, her voice nearly a purr or maybe a growl. Still, it sent a delicious shiver down my spine.
I nodded with a grin at her sagely advice, my own power armour unfolding around and lding with my body. I didn’t need skin, just extra muscles connecting to my Avatar and an armoured carapace above it. The surface of my carapace separated into layers, leaving microscopic films of air between them. According to my experints, that would keep the Gauss Flayers from affecting my entire body at once, instead attacking layer by layer.
We exploded into action as one; our telepathic link was deeper by now than catching re surface-level thoughts we projected at each other. Intent was what we exchanged through it now, and we exchanged it freely, moving as one as we dashed down a bend and ca upon a marching line of Necron Warriors in the cavernous hallway.
We didn’t slow down, quite the opposite. Bio-energy burned in our bodies as we turned into twin missiles, blades infused with psychic power, slashing out around us. Green beams of death lashed out, a deep resonant thrum filling the space, echoing off the tall walls. Blades moved like flowing water, from one motion to the next, as we danced through the mob of enemies.
They were so slow, so simple; each of their movents was robotic, all their actions predictable. We twisted and dashed around each beam, tearing through their ranks, only stopping once all that remained in the hallway was scrap tal.
We didn’t stop, Selene following along as I rushed ahead, giving her a bit of a ntal tug to urge her to hurry along. We needed to be quick if we wanted to break out of this encirclent. I could feel heavy weaponry moving all around us, and I didn’t want to get boxed in by a bunch of desperate Necrons.
The mont they started to feel cornered would be the most dangerous. I knew Necrons had so nasty tricks, ancient relics that could do so ridiculous things. Like the celestial orrery that could detonate stars from across the galaxy, the miniature rings that held the power of a supernova inside them and so on and so forth. The Regent needed to die before he could authorise the use of so of the more extre toys the Crimson Scythe must have had lying around in his vault.
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