Rathmarius was the ancient Necron name for a large aquatic world in the Cygnus Arm, which served as one of their minor Tomb Worlds within the Milky Way Galaxy. This planet was largely ignored by the Imperium of Man due to certain unexpected complications while building any number of human habitats upon its surface because of the world being entirely covered in water, and possessing a rich nitrogen-chlorine atmosphere. This metallic and organic plant life unfriendly environment typically limited most forms of human necessary ecological plant growth excluding certain base forms of algae, thus leading all settlement attempts into failure until eventually all future plans were permanently scraped by the Adeptus Administratum Divisio Auditea in the 41st millennium.
Unbeknownst to the Imperium of Man, this backwater world also held a very dark secret. The Necron Tomb of Rathman sat hidden deep under the green chlorine surface waters, forgotten, and undisturbed for millions of years, just waiting to be activated, and wreck havoc within the Segmentum Obscurus.
However, fortune favored the humans and this tomb world suffered greatly from its patron planets toxic environment. This was because the naturally occurring Nitrogen-Chlorine plant life and highly degenerative if not outright corrosive environment that had greatly damaged the Tomb World thus leading to chaotic system crashes which unintentionally murdered millions of sleeping android warriors. It was this twist of fate that allowed the Necron hybrid Yum Cimil to usurp control through the blessing of the Tomb Worlds AI Overwatch. Those warriors who had so unfortunately been lost in the Great Sleep now served a much more… interesting purpose.
Yum Cimil walked through the dank, darkened, corridors of the Rathman Tombworld with the heels of her silver metal boots tapping into sticky chlorine puddles seeping through hairline structural cracks and dripping upon the omni-metal/stone floor as metallic silver scarabs rolled over the walls tending to micro stress fractures and structural repairs throughout the vast metal and stone temple fortress.
"My lord," addressed a typical Necron scout stomping behind her large black wings with his own uniquely heavy robotic footsteps, "We have reports regarding the Tomb Worlds current status."
"Show me," she replied through her biometal black lips without showing any signs of emotion, for machines possessed no emotions unlike those sickly diseased human vermin that infested most of the universe. Such pathetic creatures, worthy only of pity, those crude fleshy things that bent to the whims of their hormones, driven to abhorrent acts of physical phenomenon possessing such crude emotions, such was the folly of humans.
Instantly, no sooner than she had spoken, than a vast text of data scrolled over her eyes blending over the environment like sonar but serving also as a visual absorption of millions of tetra bits of raw data. A normal human mind whether it be one of flesh or crude mechanical augmentation like those human Martian cultists would have been incapable of comprehending much less absorbing the Necron data burst, but her mind was different. It was formed of biomental, living yet at the same time fully mechanical. Yum Cimil absorbed the total data file of information and its context in 1.3 seconds, an eternity for a machine.
Apparently, the Tomb World of Rathman had seventeen severe structural faults which occurred from the infestation of Chlorine based plant life that had unfortunately breached the tombs heavily armored exterior. Ten sections of the complex were additionally flooded and 3,561,258 of the 4,000,000 Necrons stored within the facility were terminated beyond repair. Their bodies could be recovered, but the raw base data necessary for the Necron identity and mechanical operation was lost. In short, their bodies could be fielded as dummy drones, but nothing more. Sure, most Necrons were barely above drone status, but despite these faults they still held some lingering fragments of sentient individuality. Unfortunately, precious few of this Tomb Worlds occupants consciousnesses remained, and truly such a loss of such ancient and wise creatures was a saddening affair. Still, in death they served yet another far more important purpose.
Both Yum Cimil and the lumbering Necron Scout marched into a vast open chamber lined with suspension tanks being tended to by uniquely designed Men of Iron sorting through millions of decapitated human heads. This was her prize, data, raw genetic information farmed from millions of humans caught within the proper development period of their lifespans as to provide something of value from their stable genetic and physical developments. So it was that these Men of Iron, whom possessed no weapons or armor and were mere drones, sorted through this fleshy filth for suitable genetic samples compatible to the primitive human geenseed augmentation process and Necron biomechanical fusion.
Data bombarded the Necron Lord from all sides, constant updates from numerous genetic scans and possible candidate viability, preparation for biomechanical augmentation with host genetic structures, and vast streams of command prompts. The information was chaotically vast yet neatly organized through scrolling text prompts which covered every surface of the chamber as turquoise scrolling streams of orderly numerical font. It was oddly beautiful, so she thought, an odd reaction, but understandable for a sentient machine.
"Our current project viability shows seventeen viable genetic samples. Should we begin mass production of the new units?" asked the scout as he forwarded another data packet to his Lord. This time she absorbed the information in .026 seconds, blinking rapidly as the information disseminated into her synced runtime.
"I see, all that is now required is a base sample from my genetic memory components. Very well, we shall proceed." Spoke the Necron Lord as she stepped forward into a data convergence within the chamber. This glowing blue blob of numerical font convergence, for the lack of a better term was like a fountain to which all the scrolling text was flowing and mashing together in order to be streamed and processed by the AI Overwatch for future usage.
Her escorting scout stood to the side as several silver scarabs rolled over the floor and onto her body, ascending her armored physique and coming to rest over her exposed flesh at nineteen separate locations. Here, they inserted long sharp needles deep into her grey biometal flesh in order to extract genetic samples from her installed progenoid glands. For a normal human, all fleshy and weak willed, such a deep incursion into ones physical body would have been immensely painful, but for a machine… she felt nothing.
Once the genetic samples had been acquired the silver scarabs withdrew from their master without leaving a single wound upon her feminine physic, as Yum Cimils biomechanical flesh instantly self repaired leaving neither blood stains nor needle marks. These tiny, lesser machines went back to their repairs and prep work for the Necron manufacturing pods as the Tomb Worlds AI rapidly processed the vast gene data collected from the data convergence.
This process took twenty minutes, as the vast human gene memories were quickly compressed down into a sizeable data file and prepared to be disseminated across numerous next generation Necron soldiers. To lesser fleshy creatures such computational capabilities were impossible, but Necrons were not silly beings limited by neural electrical prompts, they were machines and as machines they were capable of much more rapid thought and data processing.
"Begin producing our new models," Commanded Yum Cimil, "And, in the meantime I shall progress forward with our other plans."
Yum Cimil started to walk away, down the length of the chamber, past the stripped down skeletal frames of Necrons as they were placed inside the suspension chambers with preselected genetic samples from the captured human minds. Almost instantly biomechanical grey flesh started to grow around the Necron frames creating crude, bulky, but most certainly humanisk bodies. Silver scarabs rolled over the numerous pods like ants, occasionally repairing minuet faults in the suspension chambers as they processed the gene data into useable humanoid machines.
In life, Fabius Bile had created a truly perfect being that surpassed both man and machine, and in death his creation had figured out a way to reproduce itself in vast numbers. The first batch of new model Necrons was due to roll off the assembly line in one week, three million undying unbending biomechanical soldiers leading an unstoppable Men of Iron Army. And, speaking of that mechanical army of cruder machines, Yum Cimil had a meeting to attend to.
Green wisps of warp energy erupted into the reproduction chamber of the Tomb World as the Necron Lord stepped forward into a green iris portal that aptly closed behind her. In an instant she was transported into planetary orbit aboard one of the four captured Martian manufacturing vessels.
The first thing that greeted her senses was the vision of blood. The deck plates were caked in large amounts of red vita that aptly covered her boots thus causing several stylish red footprints as she marched forward through the winding crude metal corridors. Dead humans, both servitor drones and normal crewmen littered the ground alongside spent ammunition casings and sizzling hot oil leaking from numerous ancient pipe ducting.
The crews had been slaughtered in mere minutes by the Necron incursion prior to the ships being captured and transported back to Rathmarius for refit. There were no survivors, for her machines were perfect and exceedingly thorough. Everything and everyone had already been accounted for in both the routine internal scans of the ships, and through the usage of facial recognition software which cross referenced the ships crews against existing manifests… one tattered rotting corpse at a time.
Out of the corner of the Necron Lords eye, she saw a silver scarab repairing a hairline structural fault to a rusted pipe. Thus, out of curiosity, Yum Cimil blinked her eyes, using that brief split second to pull up a data display of the human vessel and the three hundred thousand scarabs performing maintenance work upon the decrepit manufacturing ship. Yes, they had made great progress, reported her data prompts, listing all the repairs and structural stability reports.
So, she checked the other ships in orbit to see if their poorly maintained hulls ha d also made such progress towards acceptable space worthy restoration. As expect, their work was satisfactory.
The Necron Lord opened her eyes and continued towards the command deck of the Martian Tech Priest ship. On her way she noticed that several Men of Iron had taken to the task of piling up the human dead and jettisoning them out the nearby airlocks like cluttered debris. She quickly checked their systems, yes; the command prompt had been given by the scout that she had appointed to lead the vessel, but why?
Quickly, Yum Cimil checked the ships logs. Yes, apparently a Man of Iron had slipped on a wet sticky human corpse thus requiring that the poor machine be repaired. Those repairs and loss of productivity had resulted in the need to deal with the human dead. Yes, such ideas were distinctly machine. Productivity suffered because of the problems associated with the decaying human corpses thus now and only now did the dead fleshy things require any direct attention.
There was also an interesting data report showing how the decomposing organic matter from the human corpses could have unnecessary corrosive effects upon the ships interiors, yet another reason to deal with dead humans. Yum Cimil's curiosity had been satisfied… machines had done their duty for logical reasons… as was expected.
It was now that the Necron Lord entered the command deck of the Martian manufacturing vessel to discover her scout standing upon a raised platform in the center of the chamber with his hand linked to a control console. It was clear that his consciousness was desynced to the reality actually surrounding him.
Her eyes in response flashed with ghostly blue energy as she scanned the room with a ripple of blue numerical code. Pysker energy, she smiled, a new talent gained by the Necron people. This scan quickly satiated her suspicions regarding her surroundings. This command deck was not as empty as it appeared.
So, the female Necron found the nearest ships console and hovered her hand over the digital button prompts. Bits of grey skin stretched forward like tendrils from her feminine flesh thus making contact with the display terminal. There was a flash of blue prompt data over her eyes and then the rest of the bridge assembled into clarity through a thin ghostly white mist.
Yum Cimil blinked, and that blink was all that was required to load her surroundings as a construct inhabiting a digital realm. The bridge was shaped the same, but now contained several featureless, humanoid shaped, black shadows moving rapidly as blurs from console to console. The Necron Lord checked her interface, data packet processing at 30 tetra bits per second vs the digital realms 60 tetra bits per second. She quickly adjusted the quantum coding to compensate, thus the black blurs shifted to become steady paced individuals performing mundane system checks.
These were run programs installed by the Necron scout, sound and efficient, better than the crude humans that normally manned the ship. Furthermore, the Scout had noticed her once she synced fully to his runtime, and quickly turned his attention away from the command decks data displays in order to face his Lord and Master.
This entire episode occurred within the ships digital realm, processing at double the normal speed of traditional human interaction time. So it was that the scout and his master conversed within the white fog of the digitally reconstructed bridge. A conversation that would normally take hours reduced down to mere seconds.
"If we are to expand our hold in this galaxy then we will require additional military equipment," stated Yum Cimil, "as well as allies willing and capable to live under our rule. Are there any strategic areas of interests that you have discovered which accommodate this philosophy?"
The scout skimmed through his data archives of the region and came up with an excellent first target, "Yes my Lord. There is an Eldar Craftworld nearby that serves as a major trading hub for this area of space. Acquiring it as an asset would be ideal."
"Tell me of this station…"
"Of course my Lord," replied the scout with a hint of amusement, "The Craftworlds name is Yme Loc…"