Phaeron Rahkaak shook with a fury as rare as it was all-consuming as she looked at the destruction wrought upon her domain.
There is no death too terrible to pay for this, she thought as she gazed at the symbols daubed onto the walls in blood and feces. So they shall not die. No, they shall live as long as we live, suffering eternally for this transgression. Nothing less could compensate for the crime of smearing her walls with shit.
The content of the messages was almost superfluous, given the material used to make them, but she did understand their meaning. Aeldari runes of victory and celebration, but done in a rather peculiar style. And annotated in ways that were crude insults to the dead. If she'd still had teeth, Rahkaak would have been grinding them.
"Phaeron, I have completed my investigation," Simokh, her head Cryptek, said tonelessly. It was a jarring disparity from the jovial tones Rahkaak remembered from before the Great Sleep. Hopefully his personality engrams were merely slow to recover, not lost entirely. "The only survivors are those from the Great Crypt. They number three thousand common warriors, two hundred Immortals, ten Deathmarks, twelve Lychguard and nine Cryptek's in addition to myself." Yes, that was her personal – wait, what?
"That is all?" Rahkaak, shaken so deeply that her rage nearly vanished. It was replaced with a coldness in her flux, that became all the colder as she understood what had happened. "They couldn't penetrate the seal on the Great Tomb." They'd tried, curse the organics, but the seal on her personal tomb was maintained by the power and malice of a shard of the Star Gods. (she resolutely refused to think of which one) "That seal wasn't…" Wasn't meant to protect her from outsiders. It had only been meant to protect her from internal treachery, if one of her nobles happened to rise too early and attempt to take her place. "How?" Rahkaak breathed, shocked beyond measure that their defenses had been penetrated and the tomb world pillaged. How had the damned Aeldari done it?
Shaking away the shock, Rahkaak centered herself. The situation was… was horrendously bad, but she could not let herself give way. For all she wanted to scream, even to weep, she was to be the pillar of stability in this storm. Turning to look at Simokh, she saw only a blank faceplate and green, glowing eyes. True, their faces were always blank, but normally Rahkaak could see the tiny hints of body language. Simokh had this way of rolling his shoulders that was absent now.
Fortunately, by his side was another Cryptek and this one was actually fidgeting. Rahkaak turned her attention to him gratefully.
"Nuhkes, what have you discovered?" While Simokh was a master of engineering, Nuhkes had great knowledge of xenobiology. A study not well thought of, perhaps, but still useful and particularly in this situation. He answered instantly.
"Great Phaeron, this planet has been rejuvenated." Had it now? "I did warn you that the water we left behind could possibly be used to accomplish this." His tone was faintly reproachful and she nodded, accepting the faint criticism. It was fair enough, after all. "It appears to have occurred largely naturally." Really? That was actually mildly surprising, but 60 million years was a long time and life was persistent. They had eradicated even bacteria, but maybe some had arrived on rocks, frozen from some alien world. "There is even humanoid, bipedal life on the world."
"The aeldari?!" Rahkaak could not help the eagerness in her voice, that made her think of a hunting hound straining the leash, even though she knew it was wrong. Sure enough, Nuhkes flashed a signal of negation.
"No Phaeron. These are creatures similar to the aeldari, but lacking their perfection. I believe them to be naturally evolved, even as we were." Hmm, interesting but hardly unusual. A bit surprising this planet managed to produce them, though, after the scouring. "I have gone to the trouble of securing one."
"Have you! And it is implanted with one of your devices?" Rahkaak had only the vaguest idea how the things worked. She only knew they could be used to prevent any aggressive action and also to translate the alien warblings into a broken form of the necron language. Apparently they didn't even need to know the language in question, as they somehow translated it via the impulses of the brain? Truly, it was all beyond her, as much as leading a dynasty would have been beyond Nuhkes.
Phaeron Rahkaak waited patiently as the creature was dragged in front of her by an emotionless warrior. It was a feeble thing, skin as dark as a targu nut and hair sparse and thin. There was even a lump on its arm that brought her unpleasantly back to her living days. Rahkaak had to suppress the urge to touch her own throat, to reassure herself that there was no lump there, as there had been just before she'd walked through the furnace to give up her flesh. Shuddering internally, she put it out of mind. If that lump was going to kill the thing, that was the way of things. They would have long enough to get the information they needed from it.
"Do you know what this is?" she asked with feigned pleasantness, pointing at the symbols on the walls. The creature glanced at the walls and its skin seemed to change, gaining an odd shade of grey. Between the alien nature and her long divorcement from flesh, she could not understand most of its body language, save fear.
"Drukhari fatherless sons of ***" The translation scarab had trouble with the final word, but then substituted in a slimy little bug from the necrontyr homeworld. Ah, so the captive was insulting the ones who had done this, interesting. Then he was grinding his teeth together and that gesture, Rahkaak DID understand.
"Tell me what has happened here," she commanded and the creature obliged, although there were many pauses to clarify. It seemed a long time ago – how long, he was vague on – these creatures called humans had arrived on a colony ship. They had been thrown wildly off course in a warp storm, ending up on a near-barren world circling a truly ancient star. With no energy left and a ship barely functional, they'd made use of what was left to coax life from the world and settled in. The world was almost devoid of metals – that amused Rahkaak, she knew precisely where they had gone – so it had been a very simple existence for them.
Until the Drukhari had come.
"These Drukhari, they are?" Rahkaak inquired before projecting the image of a beautiful aeldari, fit in form and graceful. The human looked at the image and contorted his face. What did that mean?
"Some are like that. Some are very ugly." Really? Something had happened then, but she'd suspected as much. Painting in blood was like the aeldari but with her anger cooled a little, Rahkaak knew they should have balked at the idea of using… feces. "They hunt us, like ***" again the translation had to struggle but then substituted in a small prey animal from the ancient homeland. "For sport." The human spat the word and Rahkaak hummed quietly to herself. This was all fascinating.
"Tell me more about your people." The human obliged, not loathe to talk even without compulsions from the scarab. Rahkaak formed an image in her mind of a formally pastoral people, forced to become militant in their efforts to keep the Drukhari at bay. They had scavenged what little metal there was, and even mined the asteroid belts, in an effort to build more and better weapons of war from something called an "SCT". It all availed them nothing, as the Drukhari seemed to delight in their efforts but Rahkaak was seeing a possible use for all this.
Once she'd gotten everything from him she could, she turned to Nuhkes.
"Can that instrument be used to erase all its memories of this meeting?" She inquired and he sent a glyph of affirmation. "Then do so and return it to where it was acquired." Knowing Nuhkes, he'd taken this one away from all others. He sent another glyph of affirmation, along with obedience and obeisance, before indicating to the warrior to drag the creature off. Simokh cocked his head.
"We will not purge the human filth from the surface of our illustrious world?" He sounded like he was reading the words by rote and Rahkaak wanted to hit him. She held herself back, although it was tempting.
"No, you broken fool!" She snapped and regretted the words instantly. Surely he was not truly broken? But he was still idiotic. "These accursed Drukhari have insulted us in the vilest way imaginable. Vengeance must be done upon them, or our dynasty might as well swim in the muck they have pasted upon our walls!" Simokh's eyes burned and she knew there was at least a bit of drive left within him. "The Drukhari regularly hunt these humans. If they are gone, they will know something is wrong, but if they come all unsuspecting…" If Rahkaak could have she would have smiled, a cruel, cruel smile. As it was she could only flash the glyphs for satisfaction and revenge.
"Do we have the strength to exact our revenge?" Simokh asked and that was an excellent question, to which she did not yet have an answer.
"We must determine that. Your next duty: Find what starships are operational, then select the lightest and quickest. We must see what other tomb worlds have survived." Surely something in her empire still lived. Surely Rahkaak could pull together what remained of her empire and ambush these wretched half-aeldari creatures when they thought they hunted mere humans.
Surely.