Taking the drukhari ships was messier than Itolyx anticipated.
The first problem was, paradoxically enough, the Sepulchre. The dark eldar had already been somewhat insane and the Sepulchre had taken that to intense heights. While that had kept them from firing effectively on the necron vessels and caused them to turn on each other for a short time, it also seemed to make them behave like maddened pack animals. When the necron warriors boarded their vessel, the drukhari turned on them viciously. It wasn't a major problem, the recalls were working fine, but it did make the whole process uglier than usual.
The second problem was the drukhari's minions. Itolyx was dismayed by the reports of the wretched bug like things lurking all over the vessels. Similar to Canoptek scarabs but with a higher degree of animal cunning, they were exceedingly annoying. They would hide in tiny crevasses in the ship and only attempt to ambush the necrons when they had formed a large hoard. There was virtually no way for the necron forces to completely remove them from the ships. Itolyx hesitated before sending a message to the surface.
"Manric, we are having issues cleansing the drukhari ships. Do you have any advice on how to exterminate the insect like creatures?" Itolyx asked, hoping Manric would be able to answer. He might be busy with the land battle. Fortunately, a response came back immediately.
Oh, those things? Sorry, I assumed you wouldn't bother with them… just vent the ships to vacuum, that will make them hibernate. We'll do the rest. Ah, that was a relief. We've captured plenty of them and studied them, we know how to handle it. Question though… I almost hate to ask but out of a scale of 1 to 10, how disgusting are the drukhari ships? Hmm.
"Seven. Possibly eight." They COULD be more disgusting, Itolyx supposed. The drukhari hadn't actually been smearing shit on the walls. But they were filled with torture chambers and organic residue from the dark eldar amusing themselves on trips. The sleeping chambers weren't much better and Itolyx didn't understand, or want to understand, what had been going on there.
Well, that's not welcome to hear, but about what I expected. Thank you for the information. Itolyx blipped an acknowledgement before closing the connection. Then he ordered his warriors to vent the ships when all opposition from the drukhari was crushed. They would need these ships.
The tentative plan, unless something about the dark eldar ships proved impossible, was for the humans to take the ships as the first start of their fleet. They were technologically inferior to the necron vessels, and these ships in particular seemed old and worn, but they possessed waste management systems that necron vessels lacked. While it was possible to retrofit the necron ships, and they might do that in the future with the ones they did not have enough necrons left to crew, it was difficult and inefficient. It would be far more desirable to just seize ships with the correct facilities.
Even more tentatively, Itolyx and Manric hoped they could use the dark eldar ships to complete a sneak approach on the eldar base. They would have to analyze the data from the ships, and hopefully crack whatever security systems they might have, to determine if it was feasible.
Itolyx had to wait then. As the commander, it was not his place to engage in a boarding action. Commanders DID take the field at times… Imotekh was notorious for it… but that was for exceptional circumstances, not the rule. Itolyx reflected to himself that this would take a great deal of adjustment. Yet, now that he'd had his first real engagement, he found he enjoyed the taste of it. And this was what Phaeron Rahkaak truly needed of him, so that was good.
Itolyx would always do his best for the Phaeron and the Dynasty.
Cleaning the drukhari ships, and repairing them, took almost an entire month.
Manric was actually pleased with that time frame. Dark eldar raids on their world could run from one month to as long as six. The longest recorded had been an entire year, but that had been the incident that had almost led to planetary population collapse and the drukhari had seemed to take a lesson from that. But it meant that a month was well within the time frame they needed.
The reason it took so long, though, was not the insects. They handled those by flushing the vessels with a neurotoxin that was incredibly lethal to them. Not great for humans either, but then they flushed it again with a neutralizing agent, to get rid of any residue. No, what took so long to get the ships ready was the simple state of them. Manric had anticipated it and engaged all of the forensic cleaning crews he could requisition, but getting it all cleaned up and then gutting the rooms to remove the… apparatus… had eaten up most of the time. And repairing the outside, of course, but the crypteks like Simokh were handing that part.
While the vessel was being cleaned, the crews trained by the STC familiarized themselves with the task of using a spaceship. They had some rather heart stopping moments as the controls were tested and translated, but it helped that over time they had built a serviceable lexicon of the drukhari language. And then when the hull was adequately repaired, they started experimenting with their knowledge.
Please do not run into the moon, Itolyx's voice came over the interstitial network as Manric quietly swore and his crew tried frantically to correct their course. One thing they had done with the drukhari vessel was outfit it with Necron communication technology. It was just better and worth the effort.
"Wouldn't that be ironic? Survive almost thirty years of warfare, kill seven dark eldar champions, die hitting a moon because we couldn't figure out how to maneuver the damn ship," Manric replied, which proved to be a bit of a distraction.
"Thirty years? How old are you sir, if you don't mind me asking?" One of the men asked and he DID mind, but they seemed to actually have corrected the heading, so he deigned to answer.
"I'm forty-eight. And yes, I'm unnaturally spry for my age." That was something he'd noticed and had a suspicion about. His physicals seemed to support it but without actual DNA testing, which might be inconclusive, he couldn't be sure. But Manric thought his aging might have stopped the instant he'd taken the spear from a drukhari corpse. If anything, he was only improving with time, like a fine wine. Other men his age had to be retired but he was still going strong.
"That's incredible! You don't look a day past twenty-five!" Yes, he'd been twenty-three when he'd claimed the weapon.
I know nothing about such things, but you are drifting off course again. Damn it!
After another few hours of near-chaos, Manric called a break and had them park the ship in orbit. As they all took a breather and spent a bit of time just examining the drukhari runes, the other ship took their turn wandering around. Manric was dismayed by how clumsy they were, but he was grimly sure his own ship hadn't done any better.
"It's just the first day," Manric reminded himself. "And it's all in another language. We'll figure it out." The STC's training had focused on human controls under the assumption they would be closer to the drukhari ships than necron tech. That was probably true, but they were painfully finding all the differences and sometimes it just didn't make sense.
You have three months. If there is not significant progress after one month, you can worry. Itolyx was right. It was painful to feel this incompetent, but they'd figure it out.
Then alarms suddenly blared and Manric almost jumped out of his own skin.
"I'm sorry sir! I hit the wrong button!" Manric wanted to snarl but held it back as his crew managed to stop the ship from firing a weapon. The necron ships had moved ever further away from them, he noticed.
"Itolyx, maybe you should go check out the asteroid belt or something," Manric said, resigned to their incompetence. There was the buzzing sound of a laugh.
We'll be fine. But try not to fire on us. They would definitely try not to do that. Three months, three months.
Hopefully they would all be ready in three months.
My name is Ahmakeph. I am Overlord of the Sautekh Dynasty. I will not break. I will not bow. I will prove my worth to Imotekh!
Ahmakeph repeated the words like a mantra, aware he was in danger of losing his mind. It would be all too easy to become just a speck floating on a sea of pain, to lose everything, even his name. He had to cling to those things that were dearest to him. The one thing he completely discarded were thoughts of Zahndrekh. Purely instinctively, Ahmakeph sensed that if he concentrated on nothing but hatred, he would fall into another form of madness. So he focused instead on the leader who truly inspired him, the Phaeron he had worshipped long before he ascended to head the Sautekh dynasty.
He was so focused on his mantra, so concentrated on managing the pain, that he almost missed the sounds of combat and the screams of pain, the sound of bolters and gauss flayers. But he vaguely caught it, wondering if his mind was playing a cruel trick on him. Surely it was not real? But then he very clearly heard a voice.
"What is that horrible noise?" Ahmakeph had to struggle to understand. It was the language humans called "high Gothic" but spoken with a very strange accent. Normally he wouldn't have tried, Ahmakeph had only picked up the tongue incidentally when interrogating Mechanicus priests, but deciphering the alien babblings actually took his mind off the pain.
"It sounds like a broken alarm – OH MY GOD!" Could you worthless creatures please just kill me? "Dersha, can you go run down that Immortal patrol we just passed and tell them we've found a necron who needs medical assistance?" ….What?
"Yes sir!" There was the sound of pattering feet, that was clearly audible over his voice. That was because his vocal modulator was failing, though, and his scream had degraded into a high pitched whine.
"Have they been torturing him?" Yes, you fool! "How though? I thought they didn't feel pain."
"How would we know?" That human sounded irritated with the first speaker. Ahmakeph damned them all to a thousand deaths, but a small part of his mind remembered that they had said Immortals. Surely they didn't mean his fellow necrons? But why would necrons be cooperating with humans to take this pesthole of a base? The Sautekh dynasty could annihilate these vermin as easily as breathing!
"I am here." That voice was one of his own kind, but speaking the high Gothic. But then it switched to the necron tongue as Ahmakeph felt someone kneeling beside him, necrodermis tinking on the stone. "I am not a cryptek, but I will see if I can relieve your pain. Please hold still." I can't move, idiot!
Despite his irritation at them all, Ahmakeph felt pathetically grateful as cold fingers touched his body, moving with the knowing that came from being a necron. They found whatever had been shoved into his pain relays and withdrew it, allowing Ahmakeph to snap them shut. His vocalizations stuttered to a halt as pure relief went through him.
"Who are you?" Ahmakeph asked, his voice a broken whisper but audible.
"I am Immortal Imum of the Uhnashret Dynasty." He'd never heard of it, so it had to be small or remote, or both. "The humans are serfs in service to our Dynasty, sworn to obedience." Actually using humans as warriors? And they trusted them? That was insane, desperate, or both. "But I will…" There was tugging on his limbs. "What is this?"
"Looks like he's glued down, sir." One of the humans supplied and Ahmakeph noted that meant this particular human understood the Necron tongue. How long had they been working together?
"Glue. Glue? What method of restraint is that?" Imum sounded baffled and if he'd still had eyes, Ahmakeph would have rolled them. For an Immortal, this Imum was very articulate, but he clearly had limits. Then another voice spoke, clipped and cold.
"A sadistic one. If you glue down anything with skin, you can force them to skin themselves alive." That sounded highly typical. Before they'd taken his eyes, Ahmakeph had seen what these filth enjoyed. And after his eyes were gone, he'd been forced to listen to it. "I once saw the aftermath when they took a village and glued all the children down in the schoolhouse, then set it on fire." Ahmakeph normally had little feeling for humans, but after his captivity, he found it all too easy to feel a bit of empathy for the organics.
"Nevermind that. There's a solvent for this…" After a bit of searching, the humans located the solvent and they all began applying it to his body as Immortal Imum stood guard. Ahmakeph could feel someone carefully freeing the wires taken from his body and gently placing them against him, as carefully as they could. "Now, try to lift him… ah, we missed a spot over there…" After a few more tries, his body was freed.
"Good. I will carry him. Guard me as I take him to the Syloth." There were a few quick 'yes sirs' from the humans and while Ahmakeph was very grateful for the rescue, he knew he was deeply in their debt. A debt that, one way or the other, would need to be repaid.
Hopefully he would be able to repay this debt before returning to the Sautekh Dynasty.