A pair of Ultramarines rushed forward carrying melta bombs to bring the spire down with. The rest arrayed themselves to hold off the enemy. Allectius turned his attention to helping with the defence. A plasma blast scattered fragments of a warrior across several feet. His pistol coughed, its fuel expended once and for all. Reverently he holstered the ancient weapon and reached over his shoulder. Conciliator drew smoothly, the power field igniting in a flash of brilliant blue-white.
The pressure was only growing. A strange construct picked its way among the wreckage of the dead. It was tall, a smallish body mounted on great gangling legs. Grasping claws dangled before it, collecting shattered remnants. Silvery beams flickered from an orb on the abdomen. Everywhere they touched, destroyed necrons knitted themselves back together. They staggered to their feet and marched to rejoin the onslaught.
‘Reanimator!’ Allectius called, unable to reach it himself.
The Judiciar was there. Heedless of the mortal danger he was in, Bittrien cleaved his way through the enemy ranks. The sheer impact of his charge scattered warriors. A green beam plucked at his shoulder, dissolving armour and flesh at a go. The arm fell limp, but the warrior of the Reclusiam did not even slow. He forged ahead, tearing free of the mob to reach the construct. A mighty sweep of his greatsword hacked away two of the legs in a single strike. The body toppled, and Bittrien planted one foot on it before driving his blade in. The construct spasmed uncontrollably before going still.
A storm of catastrophic energy struck the Doom Eagle. One moment the grim champion stood, the next he was simply gone, disintegrated. Ash upon a bitter wind.
‘Vermin,’ sneered a cold voice that echoed over the battlefield.
That ravening power and the voice tracked to the same place. A figure had emerged from a nearby Eternity Gate. It hovered above the ground as if disdaining anything so mundane as walking, writhing coils under its torso projecting some strange field that held it aloft. Esoteric bolts arced from technomantic nodules on its back. It spun an eldritch staff, still burning with the energies that had destroyed the Judiciar, and glared about the battlefield with a single emerald optical orb.
‘Vermin,’ it repeated. It spoke perfect Gothic, in mechanised tones bereft of any hint of a soul. ‘Scrabbling little nothings, clawing at the works of your betters. You survive only so long as you escape our attention, and now you have it.’
Gnaeus felt that senseless terror well up in him even before he saw them. Warriors marched in rank, their gauss flayers held before them. The green beams were already flickering out, stripping flesh and life from the refugees as they desperately sought somewhere to run to.
A larger one walked behind them, even more heavily armoured and intricately decorated than the Immortals he had seen. There was something in the gleam of its optics and the way it carried itself that spoke of not just intelligence but personality. It carried a gauss weapon of its own, but held it up with an air of contempt, as if unwilling to waste its talents on such paltry targets. It seemed willing to leave its servants to slaughter the helpless humans.
For one eternal moment, the question of what drove him confronted him again. Amidst all these easy, scattering targets Gnaeus likely wouldn’t even draw attention. He could flee to the shuttle himself, demand they take off. Save himself. The other option, some desperate effort to save these battered souls, would likely only result in death. To sacrifice himself for a goal was one thing, but to die for nothing?
The Space Marines had asked them to be the blade, however. To make a stand, regardless of the cost.
‘Get on board the shuttle!’ Gnaeus roared. It startled him, as if it wasn’t even his voice.
It was enough to shake some of them from their terror, to get them funnelling towards the waiting hatch. They were still getting slaughtered, however. He had to draw the necrons’ attention. Even if only for a moment. Even if he only saved one life by doing so.
Gnaeus grasped his shotgun with both hands and blasted the nearest warrior. It staggered, and the second round put it on the ground. He switched to the next target as fast as he could, tearing off one of its arms with two shells before the third smashed into its torso and knocked it to the ground as well. The armoured one was looking at him now, eyes cold. He fired a shell right at it, a desperate act of defiance, sparks flashing where the pellets glanced from its plating.
The serf pulled the trigger again, and all it did was click. The last of his shells was gone, and the warriors were turning to eliminate this threat to their commander. He closed his eyes tightly and waited for the emerald flash that would end his life. If he was lucky, it would be quick.
It didn’t come.
He opened his eyes to find the necrons standing by, their weapons held low. Their commander was walking towards him, the relaxed pace of the supremely confident, one hand held up to the warriors in a staying gesture. The lesser forms seemed bound to its will. Seeing it had Gnaeus’ attention again, the leader motioned to him. It tapped its chestplate, a clear challenge. It held its gun out away from itself insouciantly, inviting him to strike first. He couldn’t help but stare at the strange glowing hieroglyphs that decorated its chest and collar. Where its servants appeared scuffed and lifeless, this one shone as though it had been burnished.
The serf could see people boarding the shuttle now out of the corner of his eye. It bolstered his courage. He discarded his fear and charged in, reversing his grip on his shotgun to swing it like a club. There was a terrible presence to the xenos. It beat at him like a physical force as he drew close, trying to drive him to his knees. He gritted his teeth and forced his way through it, swinging with all his might.
It was a dead-on strike. The alien made no attempt to avoid the attack. The butt of the shotgun caught directly on its sculpted jaw, with a dull ringing sound. The impact made Gnaeus stagger backwards, his arms numb. The only result otherwise was the necron’s head turning slightly with the blow. Slowly it shifted to focus on him again, emerald optics gleaming.
Desperately he swung again. It caught the shotgun this time with its free hand. The movement wasn’t fast so much as preternaturally efficient and timed perfectly. The serf struggled to retrieve his weapon from that grasp, but he might as well have been trying to pry it out from under an autocarriage. It swung the blade mounted on the underside of its gun, a swift stroke with that same precision.
Gnaeus snatched his arms back and stumbled back a few steps. For a split-second he thought he’d been fast enough. Then he saw his hands still gripping the gun, and the pain of the amputations hit him. He looked down and saw his truncated wrists spurting blood, and a cry of anguish tore its way free of him.
The kick caught him in the side and hurled him to the ground, knocking the air out of him. He coughed and wheezed, trying to roll over, but a cold metallic foot planted on his chest and pinned him in place. He was staring into the emitter of the necron commander’s energy weapon. Its little diversion was clearly over.
There was no heroism in this moment. All he could do was sob in pain, beating at the weapon with his maimed limbs in an effort to move that terminal aim.
Allectius had seen reports of the twisted crypteks that were the masters of the blasphemous technomancy of the xenos. This one must be of their ilk, though it blazed with power unlike any description he’d encountered. Strange thralls loped into battle all around it. They looked like necrons of a sort, but altered. Their lower bodies seemed normal enough, but their heads and arms were twisted by a silvery overgrowth. The faces had been restructured into dull orbs, perhaps in mimicry of their master, and their arms now ended in scythe blades suitable only for slashing.
The cryptek swept its staff over the assembled necrons, and emerald energies boiled over them. Even with the reanimator destroyed, their wounds began to close faster. Damage that should have felled them instead sealed and allowed them to fight on. Allectius put his power sword through the chest of one and kicked it off the spire’s dais, only for it to rise and spear at him with the blade on its gauss weapon. The sharp tip scraped from his armour. Another blast of plasma roared from the necron technomancer’s staff, obliterating a nearby Bladeguard with contemptuous ease.
‘Demolitions team!’ snapped the lieutenant into the vox.
‘We are ready, brother!’ came the reply after a strained moment. ‘Brace for detonation!’
Allectius and his brethren steadied themselves as instructed. For one brief second the world was divided into black and white, hot air washing over them in a rush. The necrons, not forewarned, stumbled or fell as the ground trembled.
‘That is impossible,’ said one of the brothers on the vox, sounding shaken in a way that Space Marines rarely were.
The laughter of the cryptek pealed over the battlefield as Allectius dared a look back. The ground around the base of the spire had been reduced to molten lava, glowing red-hot. The shaped blasts had ballooned outward, carving a crater out all around and revealing the structure sunk deep into the planet. Yet the blackstone obelisk itself was untouched. The melta bombs had done nothing to it.
‘Emperor on the Throne,’ breathed the lieutenant. Space Marines were still dying all around him. Their numbers were thinning fast. Calvus tried to drag a wounded Intercessor back to treat his wounds, and received half a dozen gauss blasts for his trouble. They tore him apart in the blink of an eye. Great swathes of his armour evaporated under the first beams, leaving him vulnerable to the next few that devoured huge chunks of his body.
Those who remained were desperately fighting for their lives.
‘Ship-captain,’ Allectius said fiercely into the vox.
He parried the sweeps of one of the blade-armed thralls. It followed up with a blast of energy from its eye which he caught on his shield before riposting right through the orb, destroying its head.
‘I see you, my lord,’ came the despairing reply of the serf leader on their strike cruiser.
‘If we could drop the quantum shielding–’ he began.
Damasippa cut him off, a startling breach at any other time. ‘To drop it fully you would need to be able to search the area for what is powering it, and destroy it. There is no time or…’
‘What is it? Speak!’ he demanded as she trailed off.
‘There is an odd augury marker in the area. Individual-mass, but the power signature is extremis. The tech-priests believe it could be interfaced with their power supply on some level.’
Plasma arced into Veritas and drove Allectius back a step with the impact. The shield held the devouring energy away from him. He glanced past the bulk of it to see the hovering cryptek. There could be little doubt which individual among the enemy was drawing that much power. Sergeant Fulgentius fired a spray of bolt shells at the enemy leader, which were deflected by a shimmering field at the last second. One of the cryptek’s thralls used the chance to put both blades through his chest. His biologis feed vanished in an instant, the wound too grievous even for a Space Marine.
‘If I can fell it?’ he panted into the vox.
She sounded anguished, to the verge of tears. ‘It might only be a temporary disruption, my lord. A single macrocannon shell would not suffice, even if we managed a direct hit. Which I cannot guarantee.’
‘A standard shell,’ he said. ‘We have Exterminatus-grade weaponry aboard.’
‘Yes,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It should not be used unless authorised by crusade leadership, and there is no way to get you out of the–’
‘We are dead, ship-captain.’ His words were matter of fact. There was no joy in the declaration. There was only a duty to be fulfilled. ‘You will obey my order in this matter. You have no right to refuse the commander of the company, and that is what you will tell the crusade when they ask.’
There was sorrow in her voice, but to her credit she did not hesitate. ‘I hear and obey, my lord.’
‘You will have one shot at this, ship-captain. Do not fail us.’ Allectius switched his vox to the company net. ‘Brothers! The cryptek must fall!’
It was all the lieutenant had to say. No one stopped to count the cost. They were Adeptus Astartes. They were Ultramarines. If this was the end, they would see it through with strength and honour. They surged forward, abandoning all defences for their final charge.
They bought yards with blood and bolt shells. The first to lunge into the teeth of the enemy horde were hurled back, broken. That bought room for those on their heels to come to grips with the enemy. Allectius hacked and cleaved his way forward. Gauss beams plucked at him, but he paid them no mind. A thrall leapt for him, blades gleaming, and he smashed it from the air with his shield. The power field tore it apart and spat forth the remnants.
A Destroyer, larger than any the lieutenant had seen, swept towards his side. Sisenna lunged into the gap. The Chaplain met the charge with a swing of his mace, and sparks flew under the impact.
‘Onward! Onward for Guilliman! Onward for the Emperor!’ thundered the Chaplain, and then he was lost to sight in the havoc of battle.
The cryptek could see him coming now. It drove its staff towards him, and terrible power washed forth. It split on the field of Veritas, but Allectius could feel even the storied relic heating under the onslaught. It saved him from annihilation, but the very edges of that devastating power were enough to burn his arm right through his armour, flesh cooking and boiling. He drove on into it, like a man into the winds of a hurricane.
He was there.
Allectius leapt, his blade raised. The necron technomancer had only enough time to throw its hands up in a desperate last defence, then his power sword was plunging through. Conciliator sheared through living metal and arcane workings alike, erupting from the xenos’ back in a burst. They fell together, Astartes and alien, tumbling back to the ground.
Waves of power erupted from the mortally wounded alien. They tore at the lieutenant, ripped his shield away and left him bare to the dangers all around. He bore down with all his strength, driving the necron into the dirt. The cryptek thrashed and screamed, a mechanical howl that wavered from bone-rattling depths to ear-piercing heights. It was done. It lay still, and the unholy green glow all around flickered.
The enemy fell upon him, a methodical destruction from which there would be no escape. It did not matter now. Allectius pulled his sword free with the last of his strength and held it high, gleaming and proud.
A star fell to meet him.
A bolt-round struck the xenos in the chest. The detonation sprayed Gnaeus’ face with hot shards of metal, slicing his cheeks and brow. It caught the necron off-guard and sent it staggering back a few steps. The serf desperately tried to use the moment to scramble up and run, boots slipping in his own blood.
A powerful hand seized the back of his shirt and hurled him bodily towards the shuttle. He hit the ground rolling.
‘Get him aboard that shuttle!’ boomed a stentorian voice.
Smaller hands collected Gnaeus and half dragged, half carried him towards the waiting hatch. More of the refugees. They were the ones bringing him now. He looked back and saw the massive form of one of the Space Marines. His helmet was red, a sharp contrast with the blue of his armour, and he carried a pistol and a roaring chainsword.
More of them, blue-armoured blurs, were smashing into the warriors. The crimson-helmed sergeant turned back to face the xenos commander and pointed at it with a sword.
‘If it is a challenge you seek, alien, you have found it.’
That was the last Gnaeus heard of him as he was dragged aboard the shuttle and the hatch hissed shut behind him. The world was blurry and grey. Desperate hands were squeezing his wrists, tying them. It should have been agonising but everything was getting numb and cold. They draped a blanket over him as the world began to shake.
He could see a viewport from where he lay. Cassothea was falling away, the grey of the evening sky fading to a star-speckled black. The curve of the world came into view. Even as he watched, a brilliant light flashed on that surface, dazzling to his eyes even so far away.
It was beautiful, and he tried to tell the others about it. No one seemed to listen.
Darkness took him.