The Reanimation Protocol finished; and ancient codes and slumbering machinery whirred to life with baleful emerald lights. The earth shook, slumbering marvels and horrors of technology slowly rousing from their slumber. Eons-old procedures and instances activated, trillions and trillions of terabytes' worth of data processed, reviewed, and approved within mere nanoseconds. Impossibly old sensors and analysis programs scanned the surface of the Tomb World and immediately discovered the source of the disturbance, alongside the mortals who initiated the Reanimation Protocol to begin with. An invasion, it seemed to be, by the Rangdan, an ancient race of upstarts, who were once driven to the edge of the galaxy by Those Who Came Before; they've returned, it seemed, after a hundred thousand solar cycles.
Ah, son of a bitch... just when the sleep was getting good. He hadn't dreamed. He couldn't. Sleep was dark and silent, but not restful. But there was always that feeling that, if he slumbered for long enough, it'd actually start to feel good. But, no, he figured, that sensation was just a remnant, left behind by the Old Gods, a final curse to try and spite them – very petty, but also understandable.
When was the last time he had to wake up to save these guys? Oh, right, his calendar indicated that it was approximately five hundred solar cycles ago, equivalent to about four hundred years in Terran Time, when he'd arisen to save these people from the Men of Iron rebels, who wanted to exterminate them for something. He wasn't too sure about that; his memory banks at the time hadn't fully integrated the shattered consciousness and, thusly, he couldn't quite remember everything accurately. What he did remember was that, after he drove off the Men of Iron and shielded these people, a bunch of alien races came and attacked, forcing his hand once again. It became so bad that he was forced to marshal his forces from other Tomb Worlds just to completely drive off the invaders; the one silver lining was that the Drukhari hadn't made a grand entrance and that the humans were fairly grateful for his help, which was honestly quite nice.
He appreciated that, honestly.
Most of the alien races he'd saved from extinction across the eons mostly ended up being ungrateful little rats – or, at least, that's what his memory banks told him, but he wasn't entirely sure, since he'd been barely awake during those days and the very idea of the Integration of Consciousness, a higher form of Bio-transference that ultimately failed in a very complicated but mostly spectacular way, had not even been conceived yet. But the people of this planet were different, which was precisely why he'd granted their leaders a means to awaken him if the need was dire, the Reanimation Protocol – a severely altered version of it, at least, one that would activate a bunch of sensors and algorithms to determine if the need was, in fact, dire.
Looking at the humans now, Phaeron Khoteph concluded that, while the need was not nearly as dire as it had been during the rebellion of the Men of Iron, the people of this world could still use some help against the Rangdan – of all things. Tsk, those slaving locusts should've just stayed in their dark, dank little corner and disappeared. Because, now, he was gonna have to exterminate them for even daring attack his territory – and for threatening this cute little race that had once been his people. And, even now, after the Consciousness Integration, he still thought of himself as one of them, even if that thought was distant and unsettling, even if no one else believed him – or, at the very least, a part of him still thought of itself as distinctly human.
After all, he'd been human, once – or, at the very least, his disjointed and scattered memories seemed to indicate that fact. It made sense too; otherwise, he saw no real reason to have any sort of empathy for the hairless bipeds or he would have no memories of being a Mechanical Engineer for the Outworld Mining Company for the United Terran Republics.
But... his memories were muddled, shattered, and fragmented. Who he used to be no longer mattered. Phaeron Khotah no longer existed and neither did Joseph Thurman; Koteph was the amalgamation of both minds, neither human nor Necron, but greater and infinitely more creative than both. With his mortal mind, ingenuity, and curiosity, merged and melded fully with Phaeron Khotah's knowledge, understanding, and wisdom of Necron Technology, Khotaph began experimenting with whatever he could get his hands on, which led to his first creation, the Dragons, built in the image of Terra's mythological dragons, but made entirely of Necrodermis, operated by eldritch mechanisms, and powered by impossibly efficient and powerful plasma cores.
The Dragons were also failures, since he gave their minds, made and governed entirely by a rudimentary AI, a little too much freedom than what was strictly necessary; he could override their minds if necessary, of course, but the Dragons otherwise behaved like wild beasts, even hunting and ingesting prey when there was simply no need to do so. His Cryptek suggested their total destruction, but Khoteph was attached to them in a way he could not quite understand. So, he ceased their production, but released what he'd created out into the wild.
Right, enough reminiscing, he told himself. Khoteph did not need to rise from his throne or even summon his mightiest and deadliest servants. No, the Rangdan were relics of a bygone era; a single legion would be enough to curb their little invasion and save the planet. The difficult part, he mused, would be keeping the Rangdan out. For all their cowardly tactics and abominable practices, they were good at one thing in particular and that was surviving. The buggers were like super insects; no matter what the Necron did to eradicate them, there were always a bunch of them who survived, multiplied, and eventually formed their own empire.
The buggers probably already had a new home planet too. So, exterminating them would be a very costly venture. More than that, it'd take the combined might of his entire dynasty to actually counter-invade the Rangdan. Now, Khoteph was a Phaeron, a Phaeron of the Sulekh Dynasty, known among the Ancient Necrontyr as the Philosopher Lords, Explorer Kings, and Inventors, which meant the totality of the forces that he could summon was rather sizable, with over fifteen Lesser Lords beneath his command, further bolstered by legions upon legions of Canoptek Constructs. However, rousing his sleeping lords from their slumber would be too much of a headache and, ultimately, dealing with the Rangdan was not worth the hassle of his dynasty's internal strife.
His lords were loyal, but they bickered and fought each other like a bunch of petty children and, unfortunately, the old laws allowed them the opportunity to step on each other how many times they wanted for as long as they wanted; the only thing his lesser lords weren't allowed to do was invade each other's tombworld. Everything else was fair game.
It also did not help that his subordinate lords did at all care about humans or any other 'lesser race' as they often said. So, while they'll definitely follow his command, they'd do so maliciously and without any regard, whatsoever, to human life; instead, what would happen is that they viciously and single-mindedly attack the Rangdan, while destroying and killing just about everything else that happened to be in the vicinity or kind of stood in their way, just to get it over with so they could return to their internal feuds.
No, a single legion of Immortals, Warriors, Destroyers, and Awakened Monoliths should do the job. It was probably a little overkill, really, but the Rangdan were being annoying at the moment and he was feeling quite generous. And, as far as his memory banks were concerned, the Rangdan couldn't even defeat a single, weakened lesser Dynasty the last time they ran around the galaxy and made a nuisance of themselves. More than that, Anti-Rangdan strategies and tactics were already available for auto-maneuvering, allowing his legions to act almost autonomously, with built-in commands.
That should make things easier for his forces to dominate the ground. The real challenge would be dominating the air and the void. For that, Khoteph needed to personally command his fleet. Or, if didn't feel like it, wake up Lord Zhutar, the Skylord, also his nephew, to do it for him.
Hmm... with a mental command, the Reanimation Protocol to awaken the greatest naval commander of the Sulekh Dynasty activated.
Yeah, no. The old Phaeron hadn't been much of a commander; Khotah was an administrator, philosopher, scientist, and artist – not a warlord, weirdly enough. In his wisdom, Khotah delegated the necessary tasks to his council, comprised of his direct descendants who'd undertaken the Biotransference and became Necrons. He was fortunate, then, that all of them were relatively competent at what they were supposed to be doing – and any screw ups they did have were easily fixed by Nazdrathara, his most esteemed Cryptek and fellow nerd.
Khoteph turned his attention to the scanners and observed.
Already, a few pockets of humanity found refuge in the primary entryways into the Tomb Complexes, which normally would've garnered the attention of the Canoptek Spyders and Wraiths if he hadn't reprogrammed the rudimentary machines to completely ignore and, if possible, defend any and all humans from any direct harm. Amusingly, a few Rangdan Mimics attempted to enter by wearing the guise of humans, only to find themselves ripped apart and reduced to dust by the defenders. That was good, Khoteph mused, it meant he could rain destruction upon the Rangdan without worrying too much about collateral damage.
Many of them were fighting back, however, and were even winning in some places, using the very same weapons he'd once collaborated with human scientists to build and design. One, particularly effective weapon, was the Gauss Rifle, which he'd modeled after the Necron Warriors' standard Gauss Flayer and modified so that the person shooting it wouldn't get flash fried each time they pulled the damn trigger.
Khoteph ran a predictive algorithm and found that, while the humans seemed to have a surprisingly solid chance at pushing back the Rangdan and claiming some form of victory over the annoying aliens, such a victory would, at best, be pyrrhic. The other possibility was that the Rangdan won and enslaved everyone on the planet. Not good enough. A pyrrhic victory was no victory at all. And, besides, the human elders went through the very troubling ordeal of activating the Reanimation Protocol, because their people needed help. And, thusly, Khoteph concluded, help would be given.
And so, with a simple mental command, Khoteph unleashed a single legion, each and every single unit bound to his will. His consciousness became one with his army and the entire planet shook as the various tomb complexes at the heart of the world sung the song of awakening. And then, Khoteph's consciousness expanded, his sense of self spreading into the millions of Necron Warriors, Immortals, Destroyers, and Awakened Monoliths – Mind Integration, a potent ability that only the Necron Lords of the Sulekh dynasty had access to. It was almost as jarring as the first time he'd done so, but his will was greater and far more powerful than the soldiers that served his dynasty. The sensation of becoming a million entities at once was surreal.
By his indomitably cold will, Khoteph's legion marched forward and annihilated all that stood in their way. It wasn't a battle – not really. If nothing else, Khoteph figured it was closer to an insect extermination than a battle. The Rangdan Slaves and Warriors lost ground immediately, the baleful flashes of Gauss Flayers ripping through their ranks and rending even their strongest warrior-forms to dust.
This would be easy.
And then, his sensors sent forth a jumbled mess of code, which was the Necron equivalent of confusion. Khoteph sent a sliver of his consciousness to view the sensor and to figure out what exactly it had detected.
The middling alien fleet, comprised of thousands of vessels, hovering right above the planet's orbit, precisely the reason why he'd woken up his nephew, Zhutar the Skylord, was suddenly annihilated – torn apart on a level that would've taken an unimaginable amount of energy to do, a cascade of death and ruin, vessels torn and shredded apart into ribbons of burning metal bits as though they were nothing. Something had to have been moving dangerously close to the speed of light to achieve that level of destruction.
Khoteph blinked.
What the fuck just happened?
AN: Da Iron Boyz are finally revealed. Anyway, a few advanced chapters on my (pat)reon!