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Chapter 4: Strange alliances

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Part 1

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Necron Command Center

Thur'Abis Plateau

Kronus

Even Necron technology wasn't fully proof against entropy and sixty five million years, give or take a few thousand, was an eternity by anyone's standard. The Lord in charge of the Necron installations below the surface of the world known as Kronus by its current primitive squatters was painfully aware of that fact. Systems all over the complex were damaged, often beyond repair. Even his data-banks weren't spared by the countless eons that passed while he slept, awaiting for the galaxy to heal enough to sustain life once again. In fact, he should have awoken millions of years ago, after the warp-storms caused by the final defeat of the Old Ones subdued and the abominations spawned by them either starved out or retreated back to the abyss that spawned them.

Finding himself awoken by a group of primitives pocking through his domain, naturally resulted in a predictable violent reaction that saw all but one of the intruders neutralized in a short order. Only their apparent leader was preserved as an intelligence asset, while recon units were dispatched to scout the situation on the surface and secure the entrances to the complex. That was a simple standard operational procedure carried automatically by the now obviously demented caretaker intelligence of the complex, while it busied itself with awakening him. In this particular case, the fact that said intelligence wasn't fully self aware and particularly intelligent turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Even in his diminished form, the Necron Lord could very well imagine the catastrophe of a proper command intelligence going demented and having unobstructed access to the complex, to him.

The current state of affairs was bad enough, as the reconnaissance units placed in its charge testified with their very appearance. The Necron Lord wasn't sure what he found more disturbing, that the first batch had returned wearing the flayed skins of primitive beings just like those who intruded upon his domain, or the fact that it took him this long to notice and conclude that there was something wrong with said picture. Truly, he was currently a shadow of his former self.

The first thing he did upon that revelation was to execute all error checking programs and hardware build into his towering frame. While said maintenance and repair subroutines did their job, the Necron Lord peered at the blood splattered automatons. There was something disturbing in their appearance that scratched at his incomplete data-banks. Their presence felt wrong for a lack of better word. He set up some cycles to keep an eye on them and any others like them, before shifting most of his attention to the Command Intelligence. The state of its data-banks and programming was even worse than his own – that was probably the best explanation for what the examination revealed. A data entity like the Command Intelligence wasn't supposed to experience emotions, no Necron was supposed to have retained their own, even if the Lord himself was a proof that truth was anything but absolute. Yet, there it was – an amalgamation of corrupted code and damaged hardware leading to unintended consequences. The Command Intelligence had been "enjoying" itself by ordering its automatons to hunt down and butcher anything and everything that found its way within its domain. It was either a stroke of luck or a glitch that forced it to comply with the contingency directives, keep a captive for intelligence purposes and awake him in the first place. That was something it should have done thousands of years ago when the first of those primitives had stumbled upon the Necron tunnels, instead…

It was a testament to how much he had degraded that the Command Intelligence could surprise him at this stage. By all means, it shouldn't have been bright enough to suspect what the Lord intended to do, much less do something about it. He was about to cut the Command Intelligence from the complex and bind it safely within its data-banks for study at a later date, when the activity within its running code spiked. It knew, it felt fear and it struck.

The four automatons present in the small chamber where the Necron Lord currently resided moved as one, acting much fast than their appearance suggested possible. Within moments they surrounded him and struck as one, flensing blades slashing through stale air.

The Necron Lord moved even faster, demonstrating that even in its current diminished state he was still a power to be reckoned with. Four pairs of blades met empty air, another one merely sliced through his tattered cape, while the rest met the unyielding alloy of his staff. He might have lost much in the endless eons of slumber and decay, many of his memories, his purpose, even his name, all in the name of preserving his combat capabilities first, his tactical and strategic acumen distant second. While the order of those priorities might have been flawed, for once, the execution didn't leave much to be desired.

Metal clashed with metal, he hefted his staff and pushed away two of the defective automatons, sidestepped a swipe for a third and kicked the fourth in the chest with enough force to cave it in and send it into the solid metal wall of the room. He struck the butt of his staff into the ground and released a pulse of raw energy that cascaded all around him, washing over the assailants and more importantly, slamming into the chassis protecting the Command Intelligence's core. The discharge stunned the automatons and instead of going after them, the Lord levered his staff at the data-core and blasted it to slag. With that threat hopefully dismantled, he returned his attention to the rogue Necron warriors. Two of them were on the ground, shaking as raw energy overloaded their frames. The third one phased out of reality only to appear behind the Lord and do its best to skewer him. The Necron leader let go of his staff and twisted around impossibly fast. He caught his assailant by what passed for its wrists and squeezed, leveraging the superior strength and construction of his own frame to crush the joints. He slammed its metal forehead into the face of the automaton for good effect then planted his right foot on its chest and shoved, thus tearing its arms off. He threw them away, pointed his right palm at the crippled automaton and melted a hole through its head with the weapon built into said hand.

The time it took him to dispatch that attacker gave enough time for the other two to recover from the overload and find their feet. They charged him, one coming straight at the Lord, while the other one phased out, preparing a sneak attack. For its trouble, the first automaton received a point-blank blast that decapitated it, however the second one was more successful. The Necron Lord caught its left wrist, yet it managed to slam its other arm under his armpit. Flensing blades perfectly able to slice through any known living being with pathetic ease found little purchase into the necrodermis of the Necron Lord. He found the blunt impact a larger inconvenience than the thin blades causing shallow cuts into his metal hide. He grabbed the head of the offending machine, ignored its flailing and melted a neat hole straight through its cranium.

If he could, the Necron Lord would have sighed in exasperation, which merely underlined how far he and the facility technically under his control had fallen. While there was a lot of data left intact pertaining weapons, vehicles, even space travel, little useless things like the devices needed to communicate verbally were lost, at best stored into corrupted archived in need of thorough repair and data recovery. It was embarrassing really, considering that one of the devices malfunctioning on his frame was his voice caster.

He made sure that the four automatons were dismantled for good, then did the same for the Command Intelligence. That done, it was time to take direct control of the facility, fix himself and recover as much of his memories as possible, while figuring out the state of the planet and what must be done about it. While thinking about it, the Lord recalled that he had a captive slatted for interrogation, which might no longer be the case given the Command Intelligence's proclivities. A query to the sub-routines monitoring the facility revealed the fate of said captive. For some arcane reason the Lord wasn't sure he wanted to ponder, the Command Intelligence had decided that it was good idea to strip the flesh off from the primitive and replace it with necrodermis while doing its best to make sure said primitive retained its mind… and had been awake and aware during the whole process, which had taken much longer than it should.

By the C'tan and the Silent King, just what had been wrong with that thing?! He sent a query to the new unit placed in the corner of the facility's network designated at Tomas Macabee and to his utter lack of surprise, the primitive was on the edge of going completely insane.


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Part 2

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Necron Command Center

Thur'Abis Plateau

Kronus

A quick and dirty interrogation of the captured Intelligence Asset combined with what little reconnaissance assets were currently available and responding to orders, confirmed that while the tactical situation hadn't quite gone to the Krork, it was heading there fast. A nearby peninsula was busy falling in the hands of Warp Abominations and their thralls, the Aeladari had an expeditionary force present on the surface, which was in the process of establishing a forward operation base. They were busy stirring the so called Orks – a fortunately devolved Krork strain, which needed purging before it could evolve and become a credible threat. Next came the primitives – the Intelligence Asset's species, now designated Humanity, were supposedly the dominant power both on the planet and if the Asset could be believed, across the galaxy too. The Necron Lord needed independent confirmation on the later point, from what little he could detect, the humans on the surface might be numerous, yet they appeared to be the most technologically stunted species running amok on the Tomb World. Last and arguably not the least, were the so called Tau, the blue skinned primitives. Recent events, namely a large scale engagement between the available Human, Ork and Tau forces pointed towards the fact that cooperation with the former would preclude cooperation with the later.

That state of affairs was less than ideal. All preliminary projections pointed at a defeat being statistical certainty if the available Necron forces had to engage the various squatters by themselves. The Tomb World had suffered too much damage, putting it back into a semblance of order would take too long even without Aeldari raids, which were a given the moment those pests figured out how weak the Necron position was. Then there were the Abominations as well, which needed to be exterminated with extreme prejudice.

Analysis complete, the Necron Lord made up his mind and returned his attention to strengthening his position. He needed to reasonably secure the complex, fix himself to an acceptable state, including a way to communicate directly with the primitives and only then he could afford to approach one of the two somewhat palpable factions. He had to deal with the rogue reconnaissance units killing indiscriminately everything in sight too, before they made any chance of an alliance a moot point too.

The Necron Lord consulted the ravaged data-net of the facility and headed towards the closest stasis vault containing Scarabs and the parts to build more of those useful automatons. It was high time to put his domain in order.

In the mean time, repair subroutines kept working upon the decayed parts of his memory, struggling to recover even the tiniest scrap of information.


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Victory Bay
Kronus

Note to self, charging Orks in general, and Ork Bosses in particular, while riding a Chimera and waving a sword like a maniac is a bad, bad idea. I had the metal to prove it – a large part of my right side was now bionic, either because the Orks mauled it, or the Tau and their Emperor damned Kroot fucked it up. Now that the painkillers were out of my system, the bionics itched something fierce, not to mention the parts where they connected with flesh, bone and worst of all, my nerves, hurt like son of a bitch. That was normal too, at least according to the Cog-boys. Filling me with more painkillers would numb the pain, however it would also significantly increase the time it would take for the bionic's Machine Spirits to get comfortable where they were and learn to work in concern with me. Or something in that vein, I wasn't paying too much attention at that point, I was too busy trying to restrain myself from strangling the smug Cog-boy lecturing me with his mechadendris.

My consolation prize for getting mauled nearly to death and crippled, was that the plan worked, more or less. For the time being the Orks were too busy running or fighting among themselves and we shouldn't be suffering concerned attacks from that corner until they managed to get themselves a new Warboss – which would be never if we had anything to say about it. That in turn gave us some breathing space to deal with the other threats on Kronus. The Chaos and traitor incursion on the Deimos Peninsula was the primary threat and we had to purge it as soon as possible. Figuring how to do it with the assets available would be the topic of a meeting I would be having with General Alexander and Captain Thule in less than an hour. Unfortunately, we would be unable to throw everything we had against the Chaos forces – doing so would beg for either the Tau or Eldar to back-stab us and if that wasn't bad enough, there was confirmed Necron presence on Kronus, which was an existential threat as well.

Given the circumstances, the last thing I needed were painkillers that might mess up my judgment even further, which needless to say, made me particularly irritable. On the other hand, the way the common troopers treated me ever since I awoke at the makeshift Apothecarium was a mixed blessing. Everyone who saw me straightened up and stared, looking with wonder and awe, instead of the ill disguised fear and apprehension that I knew would meet an Inquisitor walking in the open. It took me a bit too long to connect the dots and figure out this was all because of my crazy stunt against the Orks. The poor bastard were looking at me as if they expected that I would be repeating that particularly insanity as a matter of course.

That was something I had no intention of doing ever again if I had any other acceptable alternative. The stabbing pain in my side at every movement was a grim reminder of the price such heroic deeds extracted from those brave, or insane enough to attempt such stunts.

"Inquisitor, I'm glad to see you back on your feet!" A deep jolly voice exclaimed behind me and made me jump, which predictably felt like an angry Ork just buried its Choppa in my side.

Anteas' armour clad figure materialized behind me like from thin air and he peered at me. I sensed him give me a curious once over through the Warp before reigning in his power. "It could have been much worse, all things considered. Are you all right?"

"Considering that I should be very dead right now? I'll better than I have any right to be." I answered quietly.

"Nonsense, you acted in the best traditions of the Imperial Guard, and most importantly, it worked." The Librarian smirked.

"If it was dumb and it worked, then you were lucky and the Emperor looked out for you." I shot back.

"There's that too." Anteas nodded sagely. And just like that, the levity he surrounded himself with vanished. "I'm glad you're all right, Inquisitor. We've got a situation requiring your expertise." He stated gravely.

"My expertise?" As far as the command staff of either the Imperial Guard, the Blood Ravens and what little Imperial Naval assets we had in orbit went, I was among the most junior and least experienced, my status as an Inquisitor notwithstanding.

Anteas clearly heard the incredulity in my voice but disregarded it and motioned me to follow him.

"Considering the situation, the opinion of the Ordo Xenos is going to be vital, Inquisitor. Please follow me. I'll explain once we're at General Alexander's HQ."

"I don't like the sound of that, Anteas."

"Don't worry, Inquisitor, you'll like it even less once you know the details." A hint of grim amusement found its way in the Librarian's voice.

What in the Emperor's name did I do to deserve this?!