The ravaged hull of the Emaciator shuddered as it passed through the atmosphere and down towards the dusty and barren surface, the rapid descent straining the integrity of the sleek vessel, its creaks and moans an audible protest at the pain and indignity it was being put through. Shipmaster Eli Tahl had left the bridge and was stalking through the shattered decks of the engine compartments. Three whole sections remained inaccessible due to the decompression. Crew that had survived the blast in these areas would have by now suffocated or been dragged out and plummeted to their deaths. They were with She Who Thirsts now. The stink of burnt metal and oil was always strong here, but now it was tainted with fear and shock, not something the children of Commorragh were used to. She found Vizer, newly made Chief Engineer, hunched over an access hatch and snapping orders to two crew below.
"How bad is it?" Tahl asked before Vizer had had a chance to straighten up and court bow. She was in no mood for formalities. "We're hurting, but it could have been much worse. Comms cables are sheared so no two systems in this compartment bank are talking to each other. That's what these two" he gestured below "are allegedly working on now. We won't know the extent of the hull damage until we get outside to look, but internally nothing has been damaged so badly that we can't fix it, given time."
"Time might be something we don't have. We don't know what shot at us, how many of them there are, or even what race they are."
"I can tell you who they weren't." Vizer waved over a mechanic with a dried blood on his face and tunic and clutching a jagged piece of metal swaddled in a rag. Vizer took the shard and wordlessly dismissed the crew member before walked Eli Tahl to a corner of the room, the closest thing he had to an office and privacy on a crippled ship. "This is a shard of one of the projectiles that struck us" he whispered and pulled back the fabric, revealing a half meter strip of silvery metal, clearly a casing or housing for a missile. "It looks like a normal shell fragment, but notice the lack of scorch marks" he slowly rotated the chunk of cold metal, looking for some sign of heat damage. "I've held this over a naked flame, and sure enough it burns, but take it away and the marks disappear. It's as if the metal...heals itself."
Something twinged in the back of Eli Tahl's mind. I dim spark of memory. Living metal. Where had she heard that before? She pushed the germ of the thought aside, having no time to indulge whims of the mind. "Can we test the material? Have you seen anything like this before?"
"No. Nothing. It's only rust holding the Imperium together and the Orks wouldn't know technology this elegant if they belched it up. It might be something from the Warp, some Chaos trickery? The Tau can't do this, and it's not Wraithbone. We can test it but it means taking crew off repairs and there's no guarantee we'll even get anything useful from it. We have no Haemonculi aboard either." Not for the first time today, Tahl was torn. She needed to know who she was fighting, but every pair of hands was needed if they were going to get out of this mess. "Fine. Put one of the wounded crew onto it, one who can't be any use elsewhere but knows how to punch instructions into an analysis slate." Vizer nodded half in agreement and half in acknowledgment of an order.
To the South East pistons hissed as the Viceroy's primary and secondary cargo hold doors eased open like coffin lids, grey and weather battered, though ignoring the strong winds that swirled around the ship. In the largest of the holds thousands of scarabs raced to make tiny adjustments and repairs to the legion of undead and their war fighting tools. The air below the Ghost Arks shimmered, the rib cage shaped vessels held aloft by ancient technology, the silence of the engines adding to the air of spectral menace. From above an observer would see the dim light of the bay pierced by row after row of green rods of light, each a meter in length, the gentle hum of Gauss energy housed in warrior's rifles. Sitting motionless in their transports, they could operate without food, without rest, without water, without atmosphere. The order to move would come soon, but they were in no hurry. Anticipation, like joy, sorrow, fear, mirth and loss had long been stripped from them. Emotions were price of immortality.
The Emaciator slowed as it neared it's hastily chosen landing zone. The winds dropped, broken by the featureless mountains to the east. The valley below would provide a sheltered environment for work crews, and the foothills would provide vantage points for the picket defence Eli Thal would deploy around her ship as it healed. Dark Eldar we're unused to fixed defence, being primarily pirates and raiders, but needs must. Their keen senses and quick reflexes would be essential in the coming days. In the armoury deep within the ship, master-at-arms Jan Lit was frantically drawing up shifts and deployments as alien to boarding parties, her usual job, as it was possible to get. Jan Lit had been a Senior Kabalite Warrior for many years under Eli Tahl and saw this role as the next logical step in the journey to her own ship. By Eldar standards she was thin and short, traits that had led many to underestimate her fighting prowess. Growing up in Commarragh you got strong quickly or you got dead quickly, and Jan Lit had no intention of meeting Slaanesh any time soon. Her presentation to the shipmaster was due and it was far from ideal but it would do. Venom skimmers would patrol in pairs in overlapping circles as far as the terrain would allow, with a squad of Hellions attached to each pair to provide flanking support and carry messages back to the ship. Six teams of Kabalite Warriors would set up temporary lookout positions far from the ship, two in the foothills and four on the plains below. The final line of defence were two lines of redoubts in front of the most damaged sections of the hull. A reserve would be held back within the vessel.
As Jan Lit and her officers relayed their plans to Eli Tahl, Necron Wraiths glided towards the landing site, Spyders and Scarabs swarming in their silent wake.