Victory Pointless

“FOR THE EMPEROR!”

Posthuman warriors clad in gold and blue boiled out of the ruins in a gaudy tide.  A squad rushed towards Farreskh, their swords and shields and skull-faced leader feeling like a crude mockery of her own Lychguard.  A Canoptek Wraith sailed overhead on an intercept course, but more marines were right behind and slammed into them from the other side.

The last time she’d faced these ‘Celestial Lions’ her bodyguard had just barely held them back.  But this time both the numbers and ferocity they faced were too great.  For each marine felled by a hyperphase blade two more stepped over the body to avenge them.  She had a sudden insight into how the Necrons’ enemies must feel.

The shields of her Lychguard were knocked aside and she found herself surrounded by a swarm of golden astartes.  Chainswords spat sparks as they ground off her hardened necrodermis.  She did the best she could to fend off their attacks, but there were just too many.  Damage notification cartouches covered her vision.  One strike lopped her left hand off at the wrist.  Another bit into her hip and severed the control actuators.

She lost balance and fell, landing heavily on the blood-soaked dirt.  She rolled and crawled her way out of the scrum, dragging her useless leg behind her, until her repair systems managed to re-establish a connection and she got the mangled limb back under her.

She’d half-risen before she looked up and saw the skull-faced marine champion looming above her, Executioner’s sword held high.

“Oh, kh-” she managed before her head was cut from her shoulders.

***

“-ertt!”

She awoke with a start, clawing at her neck and gasping for air she could not inhale.  No lungs to breathe.  No skin to feel.  No throat to cut.  No blood to spill…

She hauled herself out of the repair sarcophagus and stood shivering for a moment before her conscious mind could reassert control over her obsolete mortal instincts.  She stopped shaking.  She stood straight.

That had been a particularly bad one.  But at least the system had worked and phased her back to the ship successfully – it had been developing strange faults recently, often at inopportune times.  She had a suspicion that it had been to her advantage that this had been a surprise attack by the Celestial Lions and not an encounter Klotophis had planned.

Her necrodermis crawled with a coat of miniature scarabs.  Now that they had finished repairing her body they were cleaning off the grime and blood splatter of the battle.  She had an insane urge to command them to stop for a moment, but it passed as swiftly as they did – their work complete they took flight, forming a roiling cloud that dissipated in a dozen different directions as they moved to their next task.  The metal flesh they left behind was smooth, gleaming, unblemished.  Her new hand was indistinguishable from the old.

Her body was restored completely, but she worried about her mind.  Every time she was rebuilt from death she felt somehow lesser, as if some memory or part of her psyche had been lost forever.  She took a mental inventory.  There did not seem to be any new holes in her memory, but then, how could one be sure?

Her Lychguard occupied a row of alcoves nearby.  Their repair came at a lower priority than her own and was not yet complete.  She left them to be reassembled and walked out of the resurrection vault.  They would be fully restored by the time she was ready to return to the surface, but while she was on the ship she might as well do something useful.

She set out heading for the royal apartments on the upper deck of the ship, but paused in the transit corridor, finding herself strangely reluctant to move forwards.  Some other quirk of her troublesome subconscious.  Instead she moved towards the rear of the vessel and found a small workshop which looked as though it had been unused for millenia.

She activated the chamber’s terminal globe and connected the data vessel she had filled in the lost tomb.  She partitioned off a section of the ship-mind – partly a precaution against contamination and partly because she did not want anybody else – particularly Klotophis – to have this data yet.

Her mental projection swam through the fields of swirling information.  Mostly, it told her things she already knew.  This world had been – amongst other things – a research post.  In the time of flesh the main object of inquiry had been biotransference.  Then, later, after the C’tan had handed them a solution to that particular problem, how to reverse it.  They had failed.  But, some of the finest Engramancers in the Infinite Empire had been here, working on the problem of how to restore a degraded Necron mind to its original state.  They had built… something.  Did it work?  It seemed unlikely.  Could it cure the Destroyer madness, as Klotophis claimed?  She was skeptical, but there was nothing to either confirm or deny the suggestion here.

She accessed the power network map she had found before.  It was a schematic diagram with only indicative node positions but by cross referencing scan data of the planet’s surface and studying the energy depletion rates of each conduit she was able to work backwards to distances and triangulate the positions in real space until she had built a complete map of all Necron facilities on Sangua Terra.  Then, one-by-one, she began to cross them out.

Too small.  Insufficient power capacity.  Too close to key infrastructure.  Destroyed.  She chiselled away at the mass of information like a sculptor with a block of stone, until at last the shape of her masterpiece was revealed.

She stood back from the terminal and opened an interstitial channel to Klotophis.  His ghostly hologrammatic projection appeared in the air in front of her.  By the way he was slithering, ducking and casting frequent glances backwards he appeared to be running from something.

“Ah, Lady Farreskh.  I’m… relieved to see you safe but I wonder if we might-” He dived away from an unseen attack “-defer this conversation until a later time-period.  I am rather preoccupied at present.”

She ignored the impertinent suggestion.  “Klotophis, how is it progressing?”

“Uh- the prognosis-” A bolt shell deflected from his shoulder and exploded just behind it, pattering his carapace with shrapnel. “-is less than favourable.  After their initial ambush with which you are familiar we staved off an attack on the rear of our column and I myself lead an encircling maneuver, but I regret to-”

“Not the battle.  The search for the device.”

“Oh…  Apologies… madam, I… misunderstood.”  He dodged through a fresh hail of bullets with a reaction speed that she doubted possible without time manipulation.  The back of his head appeared to be glowing with heat.  “I fear that fares little better.  Our investigation of the last site was interrupted, but I managed to deduce that it was not the archive we were looking for… Regrettably that puts us almost back where we started.  We will have to continue searching, but at present we do not have a firm lead on the location of the device.”

“I do.”

“You DO?” Such was the Chronomancer’s astonishment that he neglected to evade a power-armoured fist that caught him on the side of the head.  The transmission dissolved into fractal swirls of subspace static.

It was a few minutes before contact was re-established.  Klotophis now had a fresh dent on his cheek and appeared to be hiding under a toppled column.

“You do?” He repeated, in a whisper.

“Yes.  I have come into possession of a map of Necron structures on this world and have identified the most likely candidates.”

“How?” He hissed. “Actually, never mind that for now.  I stand by to receive your transmission of the coordinates.”

“No.”

Klotophis drew himself up and attempted to affect as superior an air as was possible while cowering behind fallen masonry.  “Your Majesty, must I remind you, again, that the Phaeron has entrusted control of this operation to me?”

“I am aware.  But I am also aware that the Phaeron couldn’t care a Scarab’s fart about our little treasure hunt.  I am also very aware, thanks to your frequent reminders, that I am a civilian, and have no place in the military hierarchy.  Either up, or down.  I don’t take orders from you, Chronomancer.”

“Your Majesty… we both want the same thing – to find the device and use it to restore King Barrakhad to his former… perspicacity.  It gains you nothing to oppose me. Is that not so?”

“Of course.  And I will be more than happy to guide you to it.  Or perhaps I should say, lead you to it.  Shall we discuss the terms of our new partnership?”

+Nachmund Gauntlet Strike Force Crusade Battle+

Mission: Stranglehold

Forces: Necrons (Awakened Dynasty) vs Celestial Lions (as Black Templars)

Result: 7:6 to the Celestial Lions