In Orbit

"Status." Ulrich demanded testily. The passing hours grating on his nerves.

"All three enemy ships are slowing. Navy cruisers Hammer and Anvil are both in position with the cobras in escort formation. The Ghostmaker squadron is in formation. System defence craft are all assembled. Assuming nothing changes we should have an additional 8 ships make the transit from the asteroid belt, the rest are massing at watch station Iota. If we can't win with what we have then they'll need every remaining ship together."

"Do we have any visuals on the necrons?"

"Long range from one of the watch stations. On screen Ensign Lloyd."

Against a starry background three grey blurs resolved. Two were asymmetric metal crescents flying with the crescent points forwards. They appeared to have a similar displacement to a destroyer, perhaps a light cruiser, though scale was hard to judge accurately from the image available. The third was much larger, it possessed a crescent that was twice the diameter of the others, behind it was a tri-winged superstructure as large again, with a long tail behind it that doubled its length.

"Classification confirmed. Two Jackal Raiders. One Scythe class harvester."

"Threat assessment."

"Lethal. We've never taken down a Scythe without a fleet and heavy losses. They have altered course and are heading straight for us. They don't consider us any sort of threat."

"How can you tell?" Ulrich asked without taking his gaze from the xenos craft.

"They could easily outrun or outmanoeuvre us. They could have accelerated to get here before our reinforcements did. They did not. They don't see us as a threat."

"Then you will have to educate them."

Captain Verod sat straighter in her command chair.

"Ensign put me through to the fleet." She paused and waited for a nod. "All ships. Enemy craft will be in range in 20 minutes. All shields up. Prepare weapons. Flank speed. The necrons think we are prey. We will teach them otherwise. The Emperor protects!"

Around the bridge any crewman with free hands made the sign of the Aquila. The mighty engines began to throb as the flagship moved to engage the enemy.

Hive Prime

Totiem settled to wait. It was never the part of his training that he excelled at. The kill, the hunt, he was acknowledged as a master of each even in the exalted company he had kept. But the waiting was... tedious. He fidgeted, fingers moving in silent rhythm on the grip of his rifle. His tutors would have upbraided him for that, maybe punished him. At least those few who professed not to be afraid of their student. He made minute adjustments to his sights. The windows of the Bastian were designed to be proof against snipers, but if you marked the coating with certain chemicals it became transparent to infrared. Of course they were still high, narrow and through thick walls so to get a good line of sight still required a vantage point high in an almost inaccessible part of a nearby hive tower. Almost.

From his vantage he could see Sal transferring data at the main cogitator. The most important of the Inquisition's findings had already been copied and stored in several places, including a small data slate at his waist. Should the necrons succeed someone had to survive and ensure that the appropriate actions were taken. There was a high chance that if either the fleet engagement or insurgency team failed to contain the necron threat then the Arbites headquarters would be a primary target. Probably rating slightly below the main Guard facilities and largest PDF bases. Unless Tarik was compromised, in which case the inquisitorial command post would be right at the top of the list.

His orders were clear, stay at a safe distance and, if things went wrong, get offworld to the closest safe Inquisitorial outpost to report. In the event evacuation was necessary then the first warning would be necron warriors appearing in the Bastion. They would kill Sal and destroy the equipment. He could not honestly say he liked the aloof savant. He did not like anyone much. But she was one of the few people who both knew what he was and still was not scared of him. For that he would ensure she died quickly, followed by several of her assailants before using remote charges to destroy the cogitators and carrying out the rest of his mission. It would mean using a hi-ex tipped round to take out the window and then following up immediately with corrosive rounds to ensure the hardy necrons actually went down. All fired from a distance of nearly two and a half kilometres in strong winds, adjusting for the differing flight profiles of the specialised bullets. It would be an interesting challenge. He almost hoped the necrons appeared. Almost.

Inside the Pillar

There were two reasons Tarik was the last to know what was going on. First was simply being at the back of the insurgent group. The second was due to his untouchable nature. In front the Astartes had frozen in place. Several stormtroopers seemed similarly immobile while another dropped his weapons turned and fled. Two more ripped off their helmets dropped to their knees and began throwing up. Tarik took a step forward before realising that Menalis was similarly incapacitated. There was the now familiar crack and green glow of a gauss blast and one of the Astartes fell, the majority of his torso simply gone.

"Menalis, Kryn, Syrano report." Tarik barked into his vox running forwards. Two of the frozen stormtroopers went down. Some of the others were firing back, but unlike the disciplined well targeted fire of earlier this was wild and almost unaimed. Marshal Kryn was clearly attempting to place careful shots, but her hand was shaking to the point many were going wide even though she was using her other hand to brace her wrist.

Syrano dropped to his knees, reached for his helmet and cast it aside before clutching his head in his hands. Beyond him the first of many figures could be seen, bone white and subtly different in proportions to the necrons they had faced earlier.

"Report!" Tarik repeated.

"Can't... the terror..." Kryn stammered.

"Pariahs." Tarik spat and deactivated his collar. As he approached Kryn her shaking stopped and her shots became the fluid routine of acquire, aim, fire that all highly trained marksmen developed.

"Close protection, threat to life!" Tarik yelled.

The Inquisitorial code words broke through the paralysis. Deeply conditioned responses drilled and reinforced over decades kicked in and the stormtroopers instinctively moved to protect their Inquisitor. The field of terror projected by the pariahs was replaced with the disquieting sense of Tarik's blank nature. But by comparison it was blessed relief. The stormtroopers now returned to their disciplined fire patterns. Multiple shots hitting each target in turn. And these necrons, while tough, appeared much more vulnerable than the warriors they had fought earlier. Tarik ran forward as return fire took down another three of the stormtroopers. The necrons ignoring the frozen Astartes for the moment. That was an error for as soon as they came into Tarik's aura they burst into life, Gottries screaming in fury and charging into the middle of the xenos, Xistos dropping to one knee and firing controlled bursts into the fray.

Not sparing a glance for the fallen form of Baelin Tarik went straight for Syrano.

Tarik ran to the prone Librarian, Kryn following closely not wanting to lose the protection of the blank's disruption field. As they reached the fallen psyker he turned and Kryn was dismayed to see tears pouring down the space marine's cheeks. Somehow the horrors of the necrons were less terrifying than the sight of one of the Imperium's mightiest warriors reduced to this. Another stormtrooper went down to the keen edge of a necron's halberd. Cormack had wandered over to examine a fallen pariah apparently oblivious to danger. Two stormtroopers grabbed a shoulder each and ran him back into cover as a third tried to cover them only to bear the brunt of a strike from a virulent green gauss blast.

"They're all dead." The Librarian sobbed. Tarik paused for a heartbeat, stepped out of the way of a gauss blast without apparently seeming to notice, then kicked the fallen figure hard enough to scuff the ceramite of his armour.

"Get to your feet initiate! You have a hand, a bolter and the Emperor's enemies in front of you." He snarled, an octave below his usual pitch. The sound was inflected with the snarling static that the vox of a suit of power armour applied to its wearer's voice.

Syrano's head snapped up, eyes cold and furious. His hand snapped out grabbing Tarik round the neck and he surged to his feet lifting the Inquisitor without visible effort.

"You worm. I am a Librarian, you will address me as such!" He snarled nose to nose with the Inquisitor, spittle flying.

"Act like one and I might." Tarik snarled back. Syrano dropped him like a hot coal, turned and drew his bolt pistol firing three times and sending 3 pariahs to the floor. Gottries gave an inarticulate cry of fury and threw himself at the necrons. They had long halberds with blades that would cut through any armour the Imperium possessed, but at such close range they became clumsy weapons the Astartes berserker stepping inside the xenos' guard and ripping into them with power fists. He grabbed one and ripped it bodily in half holding up the shattered still twitching remnants in triumph for a brief moment before one of the halberds smashed through his spine and out through his stomach. He looked down, as if in shock, as the blade ripped its way clear, skin, bone and power armour proving equally little resistance to the alien edge. As he fell Gottries grabbed the shaft of the weapon pulling it and its wielder down with him. He landed face up on top of his killer, then somehow twisted and got his hands around its neck. The metal that held it together twisted and warped. The expression on the necron's blank face becoming almost mobile before the glow in the eyes faded.

Few of the pariahs still stood, and those that were left were quickly cut down by bolt round or hellfire shot. While minor wounds were ignored or quickly repaired themselves head or chest wounds appeared to be kill shots more often than not. Without the supernatural resilience of the warriors the necron lack of instinct or grasp of battle tactics became a fatal weakness. Still they fought to the last, heedless of losses and the numbers of stormtroopers were reduced further as the necrons appeared to make a conscious choice to target the weakest of their opponents leaving the remaining three Astartes to efficiently end them.

Menalis walked to the remains of Baelin and dropped to one knee. He took a small object from a pouch in his belt and placed it in Baelin's hand before walking over to Gottries and repeating the process. Cormack wandered close enough to scan and find the objects were apparently nothing more than small sea shells before returning to his interrupted examination of the fallen pariahs.

Unlike Menalis Tarik ignored the imperial dead and knelt by one of the necron pariahs. Its head turned and its remaining arm pawed ineffectually at him then fell still. Bolt shells had reduced the torso to a series of craters, the deepest pooled with blood.

"I didn't know they bled." Kryn had walked behind him unnoticed. Where the necron warriors were thin, alien and skeletal with proportions that set the teeth on edge these were almost worse. The skeleton was overlaid with ivory wires and plates that mimicked flayed muscle and the proportions were entirely human. The fusion of xenos technology into a parody of human form left her nauseous.

"Most necrons don't. They are machines. Living machines, at least in some sense of the word, but machines. These 'pariahs' are different." He ran his fingers over the face as if searching for something. Not finding it he brought out one of his paired blades and gently cut around before levering off the front. Inside was an unmistakeably human skull. In one eye socket was a series of cables that connected to the front plate that Tarik had removed. In the other was a eye. Bloodshot, infected but definitely human. The iris a watery blue.

"Was this a human once?" Kryn asked, not really wanting the answer.

"A blank. The necrons harvest them and turn them into these things." He confirmed, before putting a final shot through the eye. He stood and gestured to the pods that surrounded this particular chamber. Many were empty, but those that were filled contained a mixture of the xenos pariahs and various unholy hybrids of human flesh and necron technology.

"Inquisitor." The voice behind them was low and Kryn stiffened recognising Syrano, though she realised if he intended harm they would both already be dead. Tarik continued his contemplation for a moment before standing and turning with a smile.

"Syrano."

"My actions were..." The psyker seemed hesitant. It was not a natural state for an Astartes.

"The result of a psychic assault. The Ordos Xenos don't understand the technology behind these pariahs, but we do understand the effects. Are you fit continue tracking their commander."

"Give me a few minutes. I would rather not tempt the warp with unbalanced humours." Syrano admitted, the revelation of weakness obviously costing him. Tarik nodded and moved over to Cormack.

"Analysis."

"Preliminary. As assumed: a human brainstem, basic circulatory system interfaced with machine." He stood and gestured to the pods in the room. "I would require confirmation but this appears to be some sort of research station. If you assume a standard algorithm for choosing pods." His hand extended and a bright beam of laser light flicked from pod to pod in what to him was obviously a logical pattern but appeared totally random to Kryn. "Then these are the oldest."

He walked to one corner of the room. The first columns of pods contained humans. Some dead, others frozen in moments of agony or terror. All were naked and most bore heavy surgical scars.

"The initial subjects, presumably the first few pariahs, maybe some baseline humans for comparison. We assume that the necrons were once a flesh and blood race that transferred their minds into machine bodies."

"Like you?" Kryn asked unthinkingly and was shocked by the venom as Cormack span and all but spat the words at her.

"Like us? No we preserve the brain in a mechanical body! We are nothing like them. They take the mind and make a metal copy. An abominable intelligence that does not know it is no longer alive."

"My apologies Magos, I did not understand." Kryn took a step back flustered.

"Accepted." Cormack's eyes flared and then he shook his head. "I know no offence was intended. You, like most of the Imperium, do not understand us. Be careful. Others of my kind are less forgiving."

"Assume?" Tarik asked as if the interruption had not happened.

"Machines would not take humanoid form. It is inefficient so it is most likely to be a facsimile of an original biological body. So the next experiments were likely to be transferring the blanks into warrior bodies." He gestured. While initially the next pods appeared to contain typical necron warriors many were suffering from grievous unrepaired wounds.

"They look self inflicted." Kryn observed. Numerous hours at crime scenes giving her a strong insight.

"Everything we know of blanks, which is not a lot, suggest a biological component to the effect. I suspect the necron instinct was to remove it." Tarik observed.

The next few that Cormack indicated were human, but often with additional xenos technology implanted. The occasional modified warrior form with extra equipment bursting from heads like monstrous metal cancers. These then became frames, humans with metal arms and legs and implants where the eyes should be, the frames developed, put on bulk and gradually shifted to become the awful familiar form of the necron pariah.

"Presumably trial and error, reducing the amount of organic material to a minimum and armouring what was left."

Tarik walked over to one of the pods. In it was a slightly distorted but recognisable pariah body. The head was a mix of the familiar blank metal surrounding a living human face. Frozen forever with a look of loathing, whether for what it had become or the beings that had done it. Kryn reached out a hand and touched his shoulder with a rare flash of empathy despite the waves of revulsion that continued to spread from the blank.

"That isn't you."

"No. They had no choice." Tarik turned away suddenly all business. "Syrano, are you ready to continue?" The Psyker had been sat in a corner. Eyes closed. Reciting litanies of defence against the warp. In one smooth movement he stood and nodded. Tarik reached to his collar and activated it.

"So stasis fields also retard the null warp effect." Cormack observed before falling into line. A bare handful of troops were combat effective alongside the three remaining Astartes. Two crippled by the recent action, were left with medical gear and hellguns to fend for themselves. If the mission was a success they would be retrieved later. If not they might well end up outlasting the rest of the insertion team.

With the psychic link restored Syrano led the way through half a dozen more of the bleak chambers. Most now held pariahs, though few were full and in many there were nothing more than a handful of necron forms in row upon row of empty pods. In one chamber Cormak suddenly emitted a burst of binary, and ran forward towards a stack of boxes.

"Monotask haulage crates!" He touched the first reverently, moving the large box with a gentle push and started a brief prayer to the Omnissia as he examined the archaeotech in detail.

Kryn failed to see the fascination, but made her own examination.

"Look like the boxes that the gang members described." She looked around at the few remaining pariahs in the nearby stasis chambers and back to the boxes.

"Seems likely." Tarik acknowledged. He opened the nearest box and in one motion grabbed one of his blades, activated the power field and stabbed down. He reached in and brought out the head of a pariah. "So that's what was being transported."

"Cormak." Kryn put enough urgency in her tone to get the attention of the enraptured tech priest. "If this is archaeotech why does it look so new."

The priest began to speak, then abruptly stopped and examined the box closely. "Interesting query. Necron stasis technology is highly advanced and could have preserved artefacts from the pre-heresy era in pristine condition or..."

"Or?" Tarik asked an edge to his voice.

"This is a necron copy of Imperial technology. But that is unheard of."

"Is this relevant to the current mission?"

"Well it could indicate that..."

"I'll take that as no. Move out." Tarik ordered.

Syrano nodded and moved them through another two chambers then turned and led them through an engraved archway into a longer corridor that led to an area of the complex very different to that they had walked through.

Syrano and Xistos strode ahead into what appeared to be some sort of control centre. While the technology was xenos the form could have been any command post for any human organisation. Seats and consoles surrounded a central raised dais similar to that found in any number of Imperial warships. Green text scrolled down black screens that hung in midair without any apparent support, but fulfilled the same function as a console display. A rotating image of the Tetran system moved gently over a table at the centre of the dais where a bank of alien controls suggested the ability to select parts of the image. The walls were triangular and slanted and the high ceiling came to a point directly above the table. A single green laser beam shone from the tip of the room to the centre of the model illuminating the surroundings with odd shadows as the planets of the system occluded it in their random movements. Machinery of uncertain purpose lined the edges of three walls. On the forth was a throne. High and metallic with controls and lights set into each armrest. It distained such human comforts as padding and would have been too large for a normal human and too narrow for an Astartes. The five remaining Stormtroopers split. Two moving forwards with Syrano, three hanging back with Menalis who continued to bring up the rear.

There was a crack like localised thunder and the walls either side of the entrance turned from black to shimmering silver. A lychguard stepped out of each. Taller, wider and better armoured than their warrior brethren each was armed with sword and shield. They moved with a fluidity and purpose quite at odds with that of the necrons the insertion team had encountered to date. With a single thrust the nearest trooper was dispatched and the shield used to bludgeon a second backwards into Syrano even as he turned to fire. The second moved to the rearguard. Menalis placed three shots that exploded from the shield before the sword swung cutting another trooper in half. Xistos was sent flying backwards by a swipe from the shield, bolter skittering across the floor. The remaining two stormtroopers put themselves between the necrons and the specialists. Both Tarik and Kryn fired a barrage, but neither bolt nor laser blast could penetrate the shield and the few shots that got past it were absorbed by the necron's self-repairing armour. One trooper leapt forward grabbing onto the sword arm while the other threw a loop over the necron's neck. Contemptuously the necron simply smashed his forearm against the nearest wall crushing the ribcage of the impetuous trooper then reached for the impediment at its neck. At that point the first of the grenades in the bandolier exploded, setting off the rest. The necron simply ceased to exist from the waist up, the shield clattering to the ground as apparently impervious to the explosion as anything else. The sword landed point down and cut deeply into the stone of the floor, only the handle, now red hot and twisted, protruded.

The blast also killed the second trooper while the last trooper was no more fortunate, all but bisected by a clinical attack. Now Syrano was engaged in frantic hand to hand with the last of the lychguard. The blade of the necron moved as quickly as the Psy-enhanced sword of the Space Marine. They seemed near equal in strength and speed. Blows rang off the necron shield, while Syrano dodged killing strokes and fired what bolt pistol shots he could. Menalis moved up bolter at the ready attempting to flank, Tarik, Kryn and Cormack ran after ready to add their meagre firepower in the hopes it might tip the balance.

At that moment the trap was sprung.