In the Necron Lair
For a moment there was silence.
Rychek watched the necron vessels vanish. He had been bent over his tactical display unmoving for the duration of the conflict. Short by the usual standards of space battle he had still remained a statue for many minutes. Now he stood. Shook his head briefly and turned his full attention back to his paralyzed captives.
"Your losses were substantial."
"But replaceable." Tarik replied, the easy tone undercut by an increasing rasp in his breathing. "I take it they were your masters coming to collect more pariahs?"
"The Phaeron sleeps still. I have no master." Rychek marched over to Tarik and bent down to look him in the eye. "You understand so little of us. You are so pitiful I could have wiped you out a hundred times over, or had you dragged here in chains. But activating the troops to do it might have triggered the Phaeron's guards to investigate."
"So you do have a master. And from what I understand he would not approve of your actions."
The necron drew itself to its full height, the crest on its head overtopping even the astartes.
"My fellows they see a universe they wish to rule. Stone is strong. Iron is strong so they build monuments of stone and wear bodies of iron. But stone wears, iron rusts. Biological life, so fragile, so breakable yet so resilient: adapts. And lasts. It is a tool to be used. Their stones stood on the world you called 'Cadia' they were worn down. So they look to make new stones to put in their place. We need an alternative."
"Are you really a necron?"
"Some say not." Flickerings of passion touched its tone. "We don't even have a word for it. For the first time in millennia they had to borrow a term from an inferior race's language. Heretic they called me."
The necron seemed to deflate a little. While the emotions were alien, they were undoubtedly present. It went on almost talking to itself.
"The warp powers were always hard to deal with. Tools of stone and metal had limited effect when they could be shattered, altered, disrupted, by powers that did not respect logic or science. I theorized that if biologicals could tap into and amplify the warp, others might disrupt it. And so I found you. Humans. Weaker than the Kork, lacking the technology and wisdom of the Aeldari, certainly none of the power of the Old ones... yet with the seed of something."
"So you turned that into pariahs?"
"Eventually. The bio-transference process destroyed what I believe you call the 'untouchable' effect. Taking the humans to the battlefield in cages was inefficient and made them easy targets. The Pariah Project was a compromise. Better armour, self mobility. But still fragile compared to a warrior. A life span measured in mere decades so they must rest in stasis between battles. Vulnerable to madness and controlling them well enough to ensure obedience without destroying their fighting instinct is difficult. And now our leaders felt that preserving alien life with our technology was so abhorrent, so against everything we fight for that they wrote them out of our history and pretended they never existed."
"But some radicals would see the use for a weapon. Where ever it was found and however it was made." Tarik murmured as if rehearsing an old argument with himself.
"Phaerons demand impossible victories. Overlords can give them those victories or suffer the consequences. For many a phalanx of pariahs can turn the tide. For others..." he reached to his belt and drew out a small white triangle. "Being able to direct the appearance of Flayed Ones is a risk worth taking. But our leaders claim both are impossible, to avoid having to say that neither matches their view of what a necron should be."
"And now circumstances change again. The tyranids advance, the Ork rise and the rift tears the galaxy in two. They will need your pariahs." Tarik gave a grim nod of understanding.
"Sooner or later they will. Taking a handful to a nearby system and leaving them to be picked up was fine for small engagements and the low ranking Overlords who wanted them. As soon as a sizable force is required the gates will reopen. And then the Phaeron will awake. "
"And your freedom of research will end." Cormack volunteered. The necron turned as if having forgotten he existed.
"Maybe you do understand. The Phaeron will accept the new forces if others do and their use is proven. As they have been written out of history that becomes problematic for now. He might see them as a useful tool. He is as likely to destroy any evidence that they existed. That would be a waste of millenia of careful research. And the construction of this system."
"So the necron fleet was not your ruler noticing."
"Hardly. If he awoke this planet and every human world for leagues around would be drowned in a tide of blood. Your destruction of the recovery force will have been noticed, but not by those with the power to strike back."
"So we have the basis for a deal, continued non-interference for a supply of blanks." Tarik asserted.
"This has been the case for millennia, are you less informed than I thought." the necron's staff dimmed, a black almost fluid darkness collecting around it.
"The universe has changed, so must the deal. You have seen the rift." Tarik continued, tone still even. "Can you speed up the process?"
"You wish a greater harvest.
"You found the pariah gene?"
"Gene? You have so little idea. it is partially genetic, but even genetically identical siblings may not develop it at all. The right genetics certainly increase the probabilities. But the upbringing, the removal of nearby psyionic influence. All interacts and the process is still... biological." The last given the emphasis a ganger would give a gutter insult.
"But there are ways to speed it up?"
"The active psycher potential is now all but gone so the program of elimination nearly over. The odd mutated reversion might spring up but even hunting them down openly would not have a material impact. Fully sterilising the population and limiting all breeding to approved matches would increase yield by about 20% per generation, at least according to estimates."
"But you would have to move openly to do that." Cormack added, obviously working out the logistics in his head.
"Your predecessors gave 8% as the maximum infertility rate that could be reliably ignored. Higher and it would be discovered."
"And if we guaranteed the Imperium would back away from the system what could you offer in terms of blanks and troops."
"20 blanks per year, rising to between 30 and 50 by the fourth generation with a spread of 75-100 in the six generation following. The process still has a surprising amount of variability to it. Long term the yield should be in the hundreds."
"And troops."
"I would have no use for males once they had been harvested for seed."
Now that Rychek's attention appeared fully on Tarik Kryn tried to adjust her aim. Letting the shotgun slowly slide from her shoulder had been a painstaking process during the space battle but it was now lying apparently randomly across her legs. It was loaded, and she would be able to fire one handed. But with the damage to her ribs and left arm racking the next shot would be painful to impossible. Given the shocking speed of Rychek she doubted she would get that second shot. Added to that the armour Rychek wore had proved thick enough to deflect bolt rounds. The armour piercing shells she had loaded into the shotgun before embarking on this mission might penetrate, but given the necron ability to self repair there was a very small chance of a single shot actually incapacitating the cryptek. The gun turned, the metal scraping against the ceramite of her armour.
"Out of curiosity how are you doing this?" Tarik asked loudly, covering the sound. Somehow he had registered Kryn's attempts, given the angle his head was locked at most likely via sound or a convenient reflection. "Cormack assured me there was no way for my body's motor functions to be controlled by an external source."
"A modified faeron field." Rychek replied. In a tone that, in a human, might have been considered smug.
"How? We have tested the technology and while it is effective on unshielded servitors we have never made it work on something EMP hardened, like power armour." Cormack's curiosity overcoming his fear of the alien, or worry about the perilous situation they were in.
Krychek paused, either unwilling to share secrets with a xenos race or simply trying to simplify the concepts to a level that humans could understand.
"The basic technology yes. But this is my own modification that bypasses external hardening."
"Like psychic control for machines?" Tarik asked.
"Interesting simile. But then I suspect you have a bias towards ideas of that nature." The necron appeared to become bored with the questions.
"Is that why you had to kill Syrano?"
"Syrano? Oh that thing?" The necron glanced over at the body of the fallen Astartes and Kryn took her chance. The shot was startlingly loud. The riot control weapon was designed for intimidation by volume and appearance as much as stopping power, though it had plenty of the that. The penetrator round smashed through Tarik's shoulder, narrowly missing his head as it exited and the Inquisitor was sent tumbling to the floor.
The necron's head snapped round, took in the fallen Inquisitor and Kryn's feeble attempt to one handedly pull back the action before a stream of bolts clattered into his torso sending him staggering backwards. As he tried to regain his balance he saw Tarik lurch to his feet, the remains of his collar clattering to the ground, shattered crystal and torn wiring marking the passage of Kryn's shot. The uncanny effect of his untouchable nature as disruptive to the modified faeron technology as any psyker. He reached for his pistol with one hand, the other spasming as though some internal connection was shorting out randomly.
The necron tried to bring its staff around before a trio of bolts removed its left arm at the elbow. The staff clattered away and another bolt hit it in one eye. For the first time the humans heard a necron emit something like a cry of pain as it reached for the damage with the missing arm. A sharp click indicated an empty clip and as Menalis reloaded Xistos continued the fusillade. Another set of well aimed shots fractured a leg at the thigh and the Cryptek finally crumpled and fell to the floor. Xistos advanced putting aimed shots anywhere the damage seemed to be being repaired. As his clip emptied Menalis took over again.
Unwilling to leave the battle totally in their hands Kryn forced the butt of the gun on the floor and pushed herself up racking the gun as she staggered to her feet. Ribs protesting, another gasp speckling the inside of her visor with bright blood from her pierced lung. She nonetheless made her way to the fallen necron. The two marines paused as she levelled a blast at the necron's face. The steel like mask shattered revealing some sort of crystalline interior. A mix of prosaic wiring and xenos technology. Despite the damage the necron continued to move, remaining hand scrabbling towards the dropped staff.
"I have seen a hundred empires like yours fall."
Tarik snorted.
"I wasn't fighting to preserve those empires. Xistos end it."
The marine stepped forward and brought a heel down hard on what had been the head of Rychek. The crystals shattered. The body shuddered once then became nothing more than inanimate metal wreckage.
"Memoriae Ganthar Sentus, Battle Brother, 4th Platoon. Thou art avenged tenfold. Rest easy brother."
The staff emitted a cloud of black smoke then seemed to melt into the floor. Kryn staggered and only a supporting arm from Menalis kept her upright, both the anger and adrenaline that had kept her going running out simultaneously. He gently lowered her to the floor, back against the central dais.
Cormack stepped carefully around the pool of blackness where the staff had been and began collecting the shards of Tarik's collar.
"OK then." Tarik said, half to himself as he gazed around the xenos command hub. "Now what?"