Another Time Another place
"It is a 'Decree Absolute'. That should end the matter."
"This was not the situation the Emperor had in mind when it was made."
"To claim to know the mind of the Emperor is coming close to heresy."
"Do you believe that?"
"Many in the Inquisition do. Be very careful."
"Is to ask exactly what the Emperor actually stated in his decree heresy?"
"If it is for the purposes of subverting the Will of the Emperor, yes."
"So now you claim to know both my mind and his."
"Point. But no, I am more wary of the others who would act on the mere supposition. Both the Mechanicus and the Officio Assassinorum have their spies circling. I'm pretty sure the Arbites would execute immediately, but they seem unaware. For now. But with all of them if they do not know what is happening yet, they will soon. We can only keep them in the dark so long."
"And when they know how will they respond."
"I do not know. And the official position of the organisation may means much less than which particular individuals make the discovery."
"And that is why I need to know the exact wording."
"You think a loophole will deflect an assassin's bullet?"
"It won't be me they will be gunning for, at least initially. But the fallout afterwards..."
"I will send you the full text. I would say I hope you find what you are looking for, but I genuinely do not know if that would be for the best. "
"We have the scapegoat in place should it come to the worst."
Present Day
The flash briefly lit up the cavern as though a new sun had arisen. Sharp black shadows painted by the teleporter's flare. Then the gloom swept back. Kryn choked back vomit and blinked trying to get half remembered images out of her head. She brought her shotgun up in a combat pose, but the way her vision swam she was glad there was no immediate threat. Several of the stormtroopers seemed even worse affected by the teleportation. The Astartes were in perfect combat poise flawlessly checking their assigned sectors while Tarik seemed no more troubled than if he had strolled out of an aircar. As her stomach settled Kryn took a proper survey of her surroundings, a cavern vaster than she had expected. The Imperials were in the centre of what appeared to be a roadway, immense beyond understanding. A vast sculpture dominated, three glossy black stones, each a perfect cuboid three times as long as it was wide. They were stacked in what looked like a primitive doorframe, inside the frame was a hole. The light dropped in and vanished. Nothing was visible through the frame.
"It's at least 3km away." Cormack noted. There was no debate about what it was.
"How tall is it?"
"You could march half a dozen Imperator Titans through at once." Kryn shuddered at the thought. What alien machinery was needed to build such a monument, let alone use it.
Flanking the massive gate were smaller imitations. Each with identical proportions, each with a light swallowing interior. Some of the closer ones were not much larger than a standard doorway, but in a troubling inversion of perspective the further away they were the larger they got, going from person sized to being large enough to let vehicles pass, then armoured columns, then whole battalions.
One nearby gate was different, the black stone lintel lit by a dull green light that shone from looping circles and lines arranged in an alien scrawl that could as easily have been mathematics or poetry. Though the idea of the creators of these black monoliths writing poetry seemed almost beyond imagination. The interior of this was not black but a dull silvery sheen like mercury. Every few moments as if in answer to the tread of some giant ripples formed, swept out from the centre then vanished at the edges. Disconcertingly the ripples were all at right angles to what the body insisted was down. The Cyber skull that had been sent first hovered protectively near this doorway over a small white disk.
"Well this is where that Necron arrived. But where did he go?" Tarik asked, half rhetorically as they looked around. Past the roadway and monolithic structures the scale of the place dwarfed the intruders. A plane rolled away endlessly, curving up where there should be a horizon then continuing to curve up until it became sky, the dull grey stone leading the eye up to a central column that floated in the air. Green lightning crackling soundlessly and constantly along its length providing what illumination there was. At this distance it appeared slender, pipes and strange alien machinery wrapped around a central lightning filled core. Cormack had obviously done the calculations already.
"The outer wall of the pillar is just under 5km thick, I'm getting very muted LIDAR returns from the stone on the other side and nothing from that core in the centre it just swallows any signal." Cormack wandered out to the centre of the road staring upwards. "I don't see how something hollow could have the mass to generate gravity or the structural stability to hold planets together."
Kryn remained silent. The scale terrified her, and the fact a disciple of the Omnissia was apparently distressed by finding new technology was potentially worse. Her helmet hid her expression and she looked round, checking her weapon as though watching the perimeter. Behind the largest structure the plain simply ended. A black featureless wall swept up from the ground, meeting the central column.
"That would help explain why previous teleportation attempts failed." Tarik voxed seeing where she was staring. "There's a thousand km of pillar above ground, thousands more beneath. Even a few hundred caverns this size would be almost impossible to find by chance."
He switched to an open channel.
"Syrano can you get any sort of trace on the Necron."
"Very little." With the potential for action approaching the formerly surly Space Marine seemed more at peace, he gestured to the open portal and the white disk in front of it. "The backwash from the locator is too strong here."
"OK lets head that way. Green, Davies – watch our backs. Syrano I assume your team want to take point."
Without reply four of the Marines strode away from the structures and the wall that blocked off everything beyond them.
"Mustering ground." Baelin muttered a few minutes later over the open channel. Kryn engaged the magnification functions of her visor to see what the Space Marine's eyes had picked up. Other roads ran parallel to this one, though none of the others ended with the portal structures. They were approaching a massive cross road that ran apparently all the way around the entire pillar, though the central axis made it impossible to tell if the left and right hand roads actually met.
"You could stack 3 or 4 planetary invasion forces in this space." Agreed Xistos. "Just keep marching them towards the portal ."
Ahead of the recon party was a wall similar to that behind the portals, but in this one there seemed to be some sort of entrance way where the road terminated. Ominously either side of the roadway were a series of pyramids.
"Monoliths." Hissed Cormack causing the humans in the group to stop. The Astartes carried on undeterred.
"Dormant." Came the response from Syrano.
Reluctantly Kryn restarted hiking after the Marines. Though they seemed to move cautiously, watching all angles, the length of their stride left the humans having to double time to keep up. Kryn had seen references to monoliths in the rare highly classified briefings on necrons that the Arbites were privy to. At present they seemed small black pyramids. As they approached odd architectural flares and details became visible, undoubtedly alien in origin, the shapes and proportions screamed xenos and the stormtroopers held more tightly to their weapons. Kryn knew that the structure at the top surrounding a huge green gem could flare into life and lash out with a beam that would obliterate the entire party in a single hit. Lower powered weapon arrays on the side would still individually have the firepower to annihilate them as they ran for cover, but worst was the portal at the front, now inky black, that could at any moment shine with greenish light and release untold hoards of undying warriors. For now the alien war-craft were unmoving and could have been monuments. But at the corner of her eye shadows moved and she kept turning, trying to catch a glimpse.
"Relax Marshal, the core above us is flickering." Tarik reassured over the vox. Kryn was relieved that it was a private link. She looked up and saw he was right. The core flared as she looked, great machines, made tiny by distance, shuddered and moved with a eerie silence. Though she was unsure whether the lack of sound was due to their noiseless operation or simply that they were too far away to hear. She looked back at the nearest monolith. Intellectually she knew the portal was large enough to accommodate Necron warriors, but now as she approached it became more apparent just how massive the rest of the construction was. As a building it was imposing on the plain but would have been dwarfed by the least of the Hives on the surface. But trying to see it as a vehicle capable of movement, even flight if the reports were correct, that was staggering. The only thing remotely comparable she had ever seen was a Baneblade leading a triumphal procession and even that would have seemed almost toy like next to the structure in front of her. Closer still there were signs of old battle damage. Part healed dents and scars, scoring from energy weapons and the craters characteristic of missile blasts. Other sections were pristine as though millions of years passing meant nothing. Above the portal and mirrored by each of the other monoliths was an odd symbol, a double helix in a circle with a single line through the centre. Chased in gold it obviously had some special significance but it seemed unlikely that anyone living would be able to discern it. She looked forward, ahead the road continued towards the blank wall and the even darker entrance. She nerved herself and marched on.