A76jNNYg

1ELEVEN
2BY THAT POINT  we'd given up any attempt at maintaining a proper skirmish formation, advancing instead as a single group, huddled together for protection like the natives of some feral world scared of the daemons beyond the circle of firelight. The difference, of course, was that we knew the daemons were real, and that we were walking straight into their infernal realm. (And speaking as someone who's met a daemon or two in his time, I can assure you that the sensation was not at all dissimilar.)
3We had by some unspoken agreement left all the luminators apart from Magot's switched off, so that only a single beam of light preceded us down that narrow and forbidding passageway. As a result, the shadows closed in around us even more suffocatingly than before, despite the reflective qualities of the ice which still coated the walls, intensifying the sense of brooding menace surrounding us. Moreover, my tunnel rat's instincts told me we were descending slowly once again, ever deeper into the bowels of the planet, and the deeper we went, the closer the enshrouding gloom seemed to wrap itself around us, until the air against my face seemed thick and warm, almost choking in its closeness.
4Abruptly I became aware that the two phenomena were real, not psychological. The ambient temperature was gradually rising, and our single beam was reflecting less and less from the walls around us as dark rock began to emerge from behind its coating of translucent ice. The resultant humidity was making the air seem damp and thick, a faint mist rising from the floor ahead of us. It was still pretty chilly by any  normal measure, you understand, but compared to the  temperatures we'd been exposed to on the surface it began to  feel almost tropical. The Valhallans certainly seemed to  notice it, both women loosening their greatcoats and Jurgen  removing his thick fur hat, which he stuffed into one of the  equipment pouches he was habitually festooned with.  'Wherever we're going, I think we're here.' Magot  volunteered, after an indeterminate period of silence during  which we heard nothing apart from our cautious footsteps  which seemed to ring like thunder with every pace, echoing  all the louder in our ears for every pain we took to muffle  them. I nodded, my mouth dry. A faint humming was  discernable in the air now, hovering just on the edge of  audibility, and a faint acrid tang tickled the membranes of my  nose. All things I remembered only too well, and had hoped  never to experience again.
5'Move   carefully.'   I   warned   everyone,   completely  superfluously no doubt. I gestured to Magot. 'Kill the light.'  She complied, and with a sense of mounting horror I realised  that the darkness around us was no longer absolute. A faint  luminescence was visible from up ahead, percolating into the  tunnel, a sick, gangrenous hue which turned my stomach.  'Down that way.' There could be no doubt at all now:  whatever secrets the necrons had buried down here were
6waiting for us, and there seemed no way to avoid confronting  them.
7'I'll go first.' Jurgen offered, swinging the bulk of the melta up  into a firing position. 'This ought to clear a way for us if we
8
9need it.' Frankly I doubted it, where we were going no  amount of firepower would make a difference, but the  thought that he might at least buy us a little time was a  comforting one, so I nodded.
10'Good man.' I said, somehow finding the time to enjoy the  expression of perplexity on Grifen and Magot's faces. Jurgen  was an easy man to underestimate until you got to know him,  and few people ever bothered. I tried to look calm, but I'd be  surprised if I fooled them for a second, both women looked  almost sick with apprehension, and knowing what awaited us  I have no doubt my appearance was even worse. 'Ready?' I  asked.
11'Ready.' Grifen gave Magot's upper arm an encouraging  squeeze, and the redheaded trooper nodded.
12'As I'll ever be,' she confirmed, and snapped a fresh power  cell into her lasgun, more for the comfort the familiar action  afforded than because she needed to reload, I suspected.
13We emerged into a vast shadowy cavern, full of machinery of  strange design and incomprehensible function. Vast  geometric slabs rose into the gloom about us, leaking that  rancid illumination from vents and thick pipes of stuff which  looked like glass but undoubtedly wasn't, suffusing the whole  space with shadows and flat, directionless light. In the pale  green glow we looked like corpses, long dead and rotting,  and I found myself wondering how I had ever hoped to come  through this unscathed.
14We probed forward cautiously, scuttling from one deep  shadow to the next like mice on a cathedral floor, our minds  assailed almost to the point of physical nausea by the sense of
15wrongness everything exuded. This was no place for the  living, that much was plain.
16'Emperor protect us.' Grifen breathed. We had come through  a doorway high enough to admit a titan, hugging the walls of  that vast chamber whose roof rose up beyond sight, and  stopped short, our breath stilled by the prospect which  awaited us. For those walls were composed of niches, each  the height and width of a man, and in each stood a necron  warrior, the sickly light gleaming from its metal surface. As  we moved the shadows seemed to ripple across those blank,  inhuman   features,   imparting   expressions   of   utter  malevolence.
17For a moment we stood, transfixed by horror, until I realised  with a surge of relief that this apparent motion was an  illusion, and that each warrior stood utterly immobile.
18'They're in stasis.' I breathed, as though saying the words  aloud might alone be enough to wake them.
19'Then they're harmless?' Magot asked, clearly not expecting  the answer she wanted to hear.
20'No.' I confirmed. 'Just dormant. If they were to wake…' I  swept my eyes up and along that dizzying vista, seeing  nothing but metal bodies receding to infinity, and gave up  trying to calculate how many there were. Hundreds of  thousands, at the very least, in this one chamber alone. I tried  to envisage the havoc which such an army would wreak if it  were ever unleashed upon the galaxy, and cringed inwardly at  the scale of the carnage that would ensue. 'They have to be  destroyed.'
21'I think we'll need bigger guns.' Grifen said dryly, wrenching
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23her eyes away from that all but infinite legion, and hefting  her lasgun as though ready to fire. Nerves taut, we flicked our  gazes left and right, alert for any sign of movement which  might betray a threat, but the vast tomb seemed utterly empty  apart from us.
24'Then we'll get bigger guns.' I reassured her. Nothing in our  inventory would even come close to doing the job, but an  astropathic message to the nearest naval unit would bring a  task force here within weeks, and a flotilla of battleships  ought to be enough to level the continent. A couple of  barrages from their lance batteries would be enough to excise  this cancer, however deeply it was buried.
25Of course the planet would be rendered uninhabitable for  generations, but no one in their right mind would be willing  to set foot here once the necron presence was known in any  case, so the question was pretty moot. And if anyone were  foolish enough to demur, I had no doubt that Amberley  would bring the full force of the Inquisition to bear on the  objectors the moment I appraised her of the situation.1
26We pushed on cautiously, trying to keep the outer walls of  the cavern in sight as much as we could, if there was indeed a  way out of here I intended to find it. I simply refused to  consider the alternative, that the ambull tunnel we'd come in  by had been the only entrance left, as that way lay nothing  but madness and despair.
27'Movement!' Jurgen warned, melting into the shadows at the  base of some vast mechanism which hummed away to itself
28
291 He was not wrong in this assumption.
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31oblivious of our presence. The rest of us went to ground too,  finding what concealment we could. I crouched behind some  metallic outgrowth which looked both regular and organic,  and which felt warm to the touch. A moment later I saw it  too, harsh angular shadows at first, presaging our initial sight  of the necrons themselves as they rounded the corner of the  metal canyon in the depths of which we lurked.
32As the monsters themselves came into sight I could scarcely  suppress a gasp of pure horror. I'd seen terrors enough on  Interims Prime, but these monstrous creations exceeded even  those. At first I took them for ordinary necron warriors,  fearsome enough in themselves as I knew only too well, but  these were something far worse. Their fingers ended in long,  gleaming blades, smeared with a substance which looked  black in this pestilential light but which I had no doubt was  truly red. Most terrifying of all, their metal torsos were  hidden from view. For a second, as my appalled mind refused  to acknowledge the sight before it, I found myself wondering  why in the name of the Emperor these unfeeling automata  would have donned clothing against the cold, then the  realisation hit me, along with a spasm of nausea. They were  draped in the flayed hides of the dead orks we'd found. (If  one of them was wearing the ambull I failed to notice it,  which believe me was quite easy to have done under the  circumstances. If the Emperor Himself had tapped me on the  shoulder at that moment it probably wouldn't have  registered.)
33'Golden Throne!' Grifen breathed, unable to contain her  revulsion, and I froze, terrified that she might have been
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35heard, but to my unutterable relief the hideous apparitions  strode on oblivious,1  with the inhumanly fluid motion I'd  come to associate with all their forms, and after a moment  they slipped away down a wide boulevard between arcane  devices the size of a warehouse.
36'Should we follow them?' Jurgen asked, phlegmatic as  always, as though he'd seen nothing more disturbing than my  morning's messages, and I was instantly grateful for the  sound of his voice in my comm-bead. It was a welcome touch  of the ordinary which I seized on gratefully, and I felt my  shattered sensibilities begin to stabilise. I glanced across at  Grifen, who was breathing shallowly, her face pale in the  ghastly light, and Magot, who was muttering prayers to the  Emperor under her breath, all trace of her usual cockiness  gone. If I didn't do something to snap them out of it fast they  were likely to lose it completely, or go catatonic on me, and  neither was an appealing prospect at the moment. And  Jurgen's suggestion at least had the merit of keeping the  monstrosities in front of us, so I nodded.
37'Good a plan as any.' I conceded, then turned to Grifen.  'Sergeant. We're moving out.' To her credit she responded  almost at once, turning slowly to face me with wide eyes into  which I could see a measure of hard-fought self control begin  to return.
38'Right,' she confirmed, and reached across to take Magot by  the arm again. The trooper failed to respond. Grifen increased
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401 Despite decades of intensive study by both the Ordo Xenos and the Adeptus Mechanicus the sensory mechanisms  of the necrons remain a mystery. Sometimes they seem almost preternaturally able to detect an enemy, while at  others, as in this instance, they overlook targets almost literally under their noses. At this time the Inquisition has no explanation to offer for this paradox, and if the Adeptus Mechanicus has one they're not sharing it.
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42the pressure a little, forcing her to take a single step to retain  her balance, and after a moment she broke off her muttering  to look at the sergeant. 'Mari. Mari, we're going now.'
43'We shouldn't be here.' Magot said, an undercurrent of  hysteria too close to the surface for my liking. 'We have to  get out.'
44'That's just what we're going to do.' I assured her, with more  confidence than I felt. 'But we need your help to do it. We  need you alert, all right?'
45'Right. Yes.' She swallowed, incipient panic still bubbling  under the surface, but fighting it now. She took a couple of  deep breaths. 'I'm on it.'
46'Good. Because we're relying on you.' I said, in my most  sincere voice. 'If we stick together we'll make it, you have my  word.'
47'I won't let you down,' she said, a hair's breadth from  hyperventilation, and Grifen patted her on the shoulder, a  brief, supportive show of human contact.
48'I know you won't,' she said kindly. 'So get your arse in gear  and let's try to make it back before hell thaws out, OK?'
49'OK, sarge.' Whatever the bond between them it seemed to  outweigh the terror of the necrons, at least for the time being  so I signalled to Jurgen.
50'Move out.' I said.
51How long we followed those ghastly apparitions for I had no  idea, but it seemed like an eternity, time shifting and blurring  until it had no meaning, a phenomenon I'd also noticed in the  catacombs of Interims Prime. At times we passed through  forests of glowing tubes, uncannily reminiscent of plague-
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53ridden trees, and at others we scuttled along in the shadows  of blank-sided metal slabs the size of a starship. At least  twice we passed through more stasis chambers, as full of  dormant horrors as the one we'd first encountered, but  looking back I find my recollections hazy, as though my  mind was simply refusing to accept what it was seeing  (probably just as well for my sanity). Abruptly I became  aware of a fluttering of motion in my peripheral vision, and  dived for cover again, with a sibilant warning to my  companions.
54And just in time, too. A group of ordinary necron warriors  appeared from a side passage, which, like the one we  travelled, seemed more like a street than a gap between  warehouse-sized machines, and, turning as one with a  precision which would have left any Imperial Guard drill  instructor worthy of the name seething with envy had they  been there to witness it, followed their charnel brethren  towards whatever destination awaited them.
55As I looked closer I could see faint traces of combat damage on their shiny metal torsos, the dents and craters left by the weapons of the orks already fading as the metal seemed to flow together, healing their wounds by some sorcerous process I was at a loss to understand. 1
56From somewhere up ahead, at the end of that Cyclopean thoroughfare, we could now discern a glow brighter than the rest but no less repellent in its hue, and something about the
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581 An understanding which the Ordo Xenos would give a great deal to achieve, incidentally. It goes without  saying that whatever inroads the Adeptus Mechanicus may have made into the problem, they're keeping to  themselves.
59shape of the mechanisms surrounding us seemed vaguely  familiar. I began to feel a formless sense of recognition,  which hardened into certainty as we approached that vivid  corpse-light, and the source came into view in the centre of a  broad open space the size of a starport landing pad.
60'It's an active warp portal.' I breathed, making the sign of the  aquila by reflex. Not that I expected to invoke any additional  protection by doing that, of course, but believe me, under  those circumstances every little helps.
61'Are you sure?' Grifen asked, clearly awestruck at the  prospect. Feeling this wasn't the time for lengthy  explanations I simply nodded.
62'Absolutely.' I said.1  Ahead of us the flayed ones, as I later  learned the Inquisition classified the trophy-takers, stepped  into that eldritch glow and vanished, no doubt to some hell  hole elsewhere in the galaxy. I must admit to wondering, for  a panic-stricken instant, if they were merely teleporting to  some starship in orbit, but a moment's reflection was enough  to reassure me that no vessel could have emerged from the  warp early enough to be here already without registering on  the  Pure of Heart's  sensor array long before we set out on our  ambull hunt, what seemed like a lifetime ago now. (But  which my chronometer stubbornly insisted had been less than  a day)2   A moment later the warriors followed suit,  evaporating from our sight like the vestiges of a nightmare on
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641 Cain is almost certainly the only human in the galaxy to have survived a transit through a necron warp
65incident is elsewhere in the archive, and need not detain us further at this time. portal, during the adventures on Interitus Prime to which he has previously referred. His account of the
662 Cain is generally imprecise about the passage of time in his memoirs, it's usually possible to infer roughly
67how much time has passed between the incidents he describes, but this is about as specific as he ever gets.
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69waking, and the warp portal dimmed back to the level of the  ambient illumination.
70'Emperor on Earth!' Magot said, a faint trace of her old  bravado beginning to return. 'How's that for an exit?'
71'It'll do me.' Grifen said grimly. 'Especially if it's permanent.'  'Maybe the greenskins were too much for them,' the redhead  said hopefully.
72'I wouldn't count on it.' I said. 'This was just a scouting party.  They'll be back.'
73'How soon?' Jurgen asked, his tone, as usual, no more than  mildly curious. I shrugged.
74'Emperor alone knows.' I said. 'Long enough for us to get the  frak out of here I hope.'
75'Amen to that.' Magot muttered. I stole a glance at the portal,  which, though dormant now, seemed to pulsate with  malevolence, as though ready to vomit a tidal wave of metal  warriors across the planet at any moment. I thought briefly of  trying to rig up something to destroy it from our remaining  stock of explosives, but dismissed the idea at once. For one  thing, if it was as robust as the equipment I'd seen on Interims  Prime we'd barely be able to scratch it with what little we still  carried, and for another, the time it would take us to try  would be far better spent looking for an exit. (If I'm honest,  the thought of lingering for even a moment longer, certainly  for the amount of time it would take to set the charges, was  almost enough to start me running in panic, only the  realisation that such a course would probably doom us  prevented it.) And any attempt to interfere with the  mechanisms here would most likely draw attention to us,
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77which would be best avoided to say the least. Though many  of the machines around us appeared to be powering down  with the departure of the scouting party which suggested we  were alone down here now, there could be any number of  alarms or sensors an explosion might trigger, and necron  guards or their mechanical lackeys lurking in a corner  somewhere prepared to deal with us if alerted to our
78presence.
79'Which way, sir?' Jurgen asked, as though we were simply in  the middle of a park somewhere looking for the quickest way  back to the barracks. I hesitated. My instincts hadn't entirely  deserted me, however arcane our surroundings, and after a  moment's thought I pointed off to our left.
80'The mines should be over that way, if I don't miss my guess.'  Jurgen had been down enough holes with me to trust my  sense of direction underground, and even if he didn't it was  close enough to an instruction for him to follow without  thinking about it, so he nodded, and began to move off in that  direction. Grifen and Magot began to drift after him so I  picked up my pace and fell in between my aide and the two  women, feeling a little more secure (if that were even  remotely possible considering where we were) now that I had  armed troopers on either side of me.
81Despite my growing conviction that we were unlikely to meet  any more of the metallic monstrosities unless we did  something to attract their attention I wasn't about to let my  guard down, you can depend on that. In fact the closer we  came to safety, or at least the promise of it, the more paranoid  I became, starting at every minute sound, real or imagined. I
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83scanned every shadow we passed, increasingly certain that  every crevice concealed a swarm of scuttling metal insects or  that a vast arachnoid construct lurked above our heads, but  every time my apprehensions proved to be groundless.
84'I can see the cavern wall.' Jurgen voxed, and we picked up  the pace a little, an unspoken agreement sparking among us  to quit this hellish place as quickly as we could. I began to  see patches of smooth finished stonework ahead of us  through the tangle of incomprehensible mechanisms and tried  to estimate how far away we were, but my sense of  perspective was confused by the strange geometries around  us and I was still taken by surprise when we slipped through  a grove of pipe-work the breadth of trees and found ourselves  up against naked bedrock.
85'It's completely smooth.' Magot said, running her hand along  it, a tint of wonder entering her voice. She was right, the  surface was sheer as glass, and I found myself trying to  picture how the work had been done with such precision. The  only explanation I could come up with was sorcery of some  kind, which fitted right in with everything else I'd seen here  since we arrived. I glanced to the left and right, hoping to  find some sign of a tunnel, but in this I was predictably  disappointed.
86'Which way now?' Grifen asked. I didn't have a clue, to be  honest, but I had a vague memory of the projected run of the  ambull tunnels on Logash's auspex being more numerous off  towards the right of where I estimated us to be, so I gestured  in that direction with all the authority I could muster.
87'That way.' I said. 'And pray to the Emperor for a miracle.'
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89'This whole place is a miracle, is it not?' a new voice asked. I  whirled, bringing up my laspistol, and froze an instant away  from pulling the trigger. The speaker sounded vaguely  familiar, and a moment later I caught sight of a human figure  in an emerald robe (which was actually white, of course, out  of that ghastly illumination), whose eyes flashed dazzlingly  green as they caught the light. 'All praise the Omnissiah,  whose bounty has been revealed to the worthy despite the  worst efforts of the unbeliever.'
90'Logash.' I said, not quite sure if he'd gone barmy or not. 'We  thought you were dead.' But he wasn't, worse luck, the  treacherous little weasel had given us the slip in the  snowstorm and come scuttling back here as fast as he could.  Emperor alone knows what he was hoping to achieve with a  couple of tonnes of rabble sealing the entrance to the tomb,  but fanatics are like that, no common sense at all, and our  stray ambull had solved the problem for him anyway. Of  course he took that as a sign from His Divine Majesty, or the  clockwork parody they worship, that he was intended to get  in here all along, and didn't he just crow about that.
91'The Omnissiah guided my steps,' he said, 'and the barriers  were thrown down ahead of me. All praise the Omnissiah!'  His voice rose, and I cringed inwardly, certain that he'd  attract unholy attention. I hushed him with a gesture, and  turned to find Magot's lasgun pointed straight at him.
92'How come the tinheads didn't get you?' she asked, her finger  a little too tight on the trigger for my peace of mind. Frankly,  the way I felt now she could have shot him and welcome, but  the sound of gunfire would echo around here like an
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94Earthshaker barrage and I wasn't prepared to risk it. I deflected her aim gently with a hand on the weapon's barrel.  Logash didn't seem to take offence, though, beaming broadly at the question.
95'The holy guardians failed to notice me, as I would expect given my unworthiness. There are mysteries here far beyond my abilities to fathom, but no doubt those of greater wisdom can commune with the machine spirits of this wondrous place.'
96'Assuming we ever manage to get out of here to tell them.'  Grifen chipped in sourly.'The Omnissiah will provide, you can depend on it.' Logash said, completely siggy beyond a doubt. (Even though with tech-priests it's often hard to tell.) I found it hard to credit that the necrons had simply ignored him, but I suppose it was a vast complex and it wasn't entirely unfeasible that they had simply failed to notice him as they had the rest of us, even though I had no doubt that he'd been wandering around in the open gawping like some hick up from the sump on his first trip to a guilder trade station instead of hiding like anyone with a micron of sense would have done.
97'They certainly noticed the orks.' Magot pointed out. Logash nodded eagerly.
98'Vile desecrators of these holy precincts. The guardians cut them down as they deserved.' There he went again, I thought, with a tingle of unease. Anyone who could use the word  ''holy'' to refer to this chamber of horrors had clearly become unhinged. I suppose the sight of all that technology lying around had overloaded his brain or something.
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100'Well that's good.' I said, a little too heartily, and prodded him  experimentally in the back. To my relief he fell into step  beside me. 'It'll still be safe when we tell the others all about
101it.'
102'Oh yes, we must do that.' Logash nodded eagerly, and pulled  out his auspex. It's probably a measure of how far gone I was  that I was actually glad to see it. The rest of us clustered  around anxiously as he called up the image of the ambull  tunnels we'd mapped before, the ones in red extrapolated  from the ones we'd actually walked.
103'Is there another tunnel near here?' Magot asked, raising  herself onto her toes to peer over the tech-priest's arm. He  nodded, pointing off to the left.
104'There should be another ambull run about two hundred  metres in that direction.' Luckily no one said anything to me,  although to be fair there did seem to be some other tunnels a  bit further away in the direction I'd originally chosen. This  wasn't the time to stand on my pride, however, so I nodded  and patted the tech-priest on his shoulders (which were hard  under the robe, and thudded dully under the blows).
105'Good.' I said. 'Then let's find it.'Editorial Note:
106secondary source again IDespite my understandable reluctance to resort to this 'm afraid it'Cain's narrative, which breaks off at this point only to resume s necessary to fill a gap in
107significance had occurred in the interim, despite the passage after some time has passed. No doubt he fed nothing of of several hours.
108assurance that readers with a refined appreciation for the As ever, my apologies for the style (or lack of it), and my Gothic language are perfectly at liberty to skip it.
109It is, however, mercifully short.
110Founding of the 597th, Extracted from  Like a Phoenix From the Flames: The 097.M42.         by General Jenit Sulla (retired),
111VITAL AS THE  task with which we had been entrusted undeniably was, it could hardly be described as challenging.  Once the miners had directed Captain Federer's sappers to the part of the workings where the flaws and stresses in the ice ensured our planned booby trap would work to best effect, there was little for us more practical soldiers to do other than fan out through the galleries to secure our perimeter against the remote possibility of infiltration by the orks. This we did, and although I have to admit that the task was a tedious one, to the credit of the women and men under my command they remained as alert after half the day had crawled by as they had at the commencement of our vigil.
112This was disturbed at length by a vox message from deep in the lower galleries, so attenuated by the layers of intervening ice that I could scarcely discern it, and a moment's perusal of the tactical slate was enough to confirm what I'd already
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114deduced. The source of the message was far deeper than the  most far-flung of our patrols.
115There could be only one explanation, and taking my  command squad with me I made haste to respond, finding as  we descended and the vox signal became clearer that my  suspicions were correct, this was indeed a message from none  other than Commissar Cain himself, returning with news of  dire import, and demanding, as soon as communications  became reliable enough, to be put through to Colonel Kasteen  at once.
116While my vox operator made haste to comply, his powerful  backpack transmitter easily able to boost the tenuous signals  of the commissar's comm-bead, I directed my troopers to his  aid as rapidly as I could. Though the conversation had moved  to a command frequency of a far higher level than those to  which I, as a lowly lieutenant, had access, it was clear from  the urgent tone of his voice that the tidings he brought were  of such importance they must be disseminated as rapidly as  possible.
117The carrier wave was enough to lead us to the commissar's  party, however, and I must confess to a moment of shock as I  beheld the bedraggled survivors of what must surely have  been a journey of epic endurance. Commissar Cain was, of  course, the very picture of martial heroism he always  presented, his bearing erect and eye steady, undaunted by  whatever horrors he had faced, although his companions all  too clearly showed the terrible ravages of the perils they'd  fought their way through. The commissar's aide, in particular,  looked as though he had come through hell, dishevelled in a
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119way I had seldom seen in a trooper still living.1  The other  soldiers with him stumbled with exhaustion, horror written  across their faces, and only the tech-priest at the rear of the  party appeared to be in good spirits, doubtless because his  augmentations had protected him from whatever had so  afflicted the others.
120'Help them.' I ordered, and my troopers made haste to obey,  providing much-needed support for all.
121It was only after I'd spoken that the commissar appeared to  recognise me, looking in my direction for the first time, and I  must confess to an overwhelming sensation of pride as he  spoke my name, quite overcome at the confidence he so  evidently had in my qualities as an officer.
122'Sulla,' he said, in a voice clearly meant for no ears other than  his own. 'Of course. Who else would it be?'
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1241 Sulla had clearly had little prior contact with Jurgen.
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126TWELVE
127As  YOU'LL READILY  appreciate, all I wanted to do when we finally made it back to the refinery was eat, sleep, and grab a hot shower (preferably aboard the  Pure of Heart  while it was heading for deep space as fast as its engines would take it), but events were moving too fast to allow any such luxury. I managed to get rid of Sulla, who'd picked up my increasingly frantic attempts to contact the surface and been predictably unable to resist sticking her nose in, by asking her to make sure Grifen and Magot got to the medicae as fast as possible  (which didn't hurt my reputation for taking care of the troops either, never a bad thing), and staggered off to meet Kasteen and Broklaw. At least I'd been able to get a tactical update from Sulla before she went, so I could concentrate on the immediate problem secure in the knowledge that the orks were still being held at our outer defensive line and the gargant was still too far away to open fire on us. For the time being at any rate.
128'You look like hell,' the major said cheerfully as I entered the command post, but he held out a mug of tanna leaf tea as he said it, so I let him live.1
129'You should see me from this side.' I told him, and dropped into a seat at the conference table. Now I was back in the warmth and relative safety of the refinery all the fear and accumulated fatigue of the last day or so bludgeoned me between the shoulder blades, and it was all I could do to keep
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1311 Cain is, of course, joking here. Probably.
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133my head from dropping onto the glossy wooden surface. As I  tilted my head back to try and ease the tension in my neck  something struck me as odd about the ceiling. 'Merciful  Emperor! Did the greenskins get in here?' Broklaw followed  the line of my gaze to the bolter holes filigreeing the  plasterwork above his head.
134'Just a small crowd control problem,' he said, smiling at some  private joke. Well if he wasn't too bothered about it neither  was I, and asking any more questions might complicate my  life even further, so I returned my attention to the matter at  hand.
135'You should get some rest.' Kasteen said, looking at me with
136evident concern. I nodded.
137'I should. Just as soon as we've dealt with the current  situation.' I drank deeply, feeling the cobwebs lift a little from  my mind as the tanna started to kick in. 'Did you get the old  survey reports I asked for?'
138'Right here.' She skimmed a data-slate across the surface of  the table. I glanced at it, but the charts and technical data  meant nothing to me. 'Scrivener Quintus has been remarkably  helpful.' Broklaw grinned and winked at me, but in my dazed  state I hadn't a clue what he was getting at.
139'What does it all mean in plain Gothic?' I asked. Kasteen  shrugged.
140'I ran it by a couple of the engineseers in the transport pool.'  That had been a calculated risk, they were cogboys, of  course, so their first duty would be to the Adeptus  Mechanicus, but they were our cogboys, and had fought  alongside the rest of us for long enough to feel at least as
141
142loyal to the regiment as to their tech-priest colleagues. So  long as we didn't force them to pick sides they'd tell us what  we needed to know, or so I hoped. 'It's not really their field,  but they seem to think you're right. There are other deposits  of refinable ice on Simia Orichalcae much richer than this
143one.'
144'Then why build the refinery here?' Broklaw asked. I  shrugged.
145The magos would undoubtedly reel off a dozen different  reasons why this particular deposit was easiest to process, or  the topography of the valley made construction simpler, or  why it was the will of this clockwork Emperor of theirs. He  might even believe it himself. But if it smells like a sump rat  and it squeaks like a sump rat…'
146'Someone in the Adeptus Mechanicus knew that tomb was  there.' Broklaw said. 'Someone placed highly enough to make  sure the mine was put on top of it.'1
147'But why?' Kasteen was aghast. 'Surely they wouldn't be mad  enough to think they could take on a planet full of necrons?'
148I thought of Logash, who'd been driven all but insane by the  desire to examine such a rich cache of archeotech, and tried  to picture a cabal of high-ranking tech-priests pulling strings  to set up the mine over so tempting a prize. It wasn't hard to  do at all. If they even suspected such a thing existed they'd  take any risk, however great, to get their sticky little  mechadendrites on it. I'd learned that much at least from the
149
1501 The identification of those responsible for the decision wasn't difficult, but, as Cain surmised, hard  evidence of conspiracy rather than an unfortunate coincidence continues to be elusive. Anyone with  information which may prove helpful in resolving this matter will find an interested listener in Inquisitor Kuryakin of the Ordo Hereticus.
151
152Interims Prime debacle.
153'They probably assumed the tomb was abandoned.' I said. It  wouldn't be the first time they'd made that mistake either, as I  knew to my cost.
154'The real point.' Broklaw said, 'is how many of the techpriests here we can trust. Whether or not there was a  conspiracy to start with, they all know what's down the  bloody hole now.'
155That much was true. If I'd had my wits about me I'd have got  Sulla to detain Logash as soon as she brought us back up to  the surface, but of course she ignored him (only a civilian,  and a tech-priest to boot), so by the time I realised what was  going on he'd already disappeared. No doubt filling Ernulph's  head with visions of sorcerous bounty unseen in millennia  even as we spoke.
156'None of them.' I said. My head was hurting, the grim,  relentless migraine that goes with utter fatigue, and I wasn't  looking forward to the next few hours at all.
157I  GOT THROUGH  them, of course, due in no small part to  Jurgen's skill at fending off unwanted interruptions. By the time Kasteen called a full meeting to discuss the situation I'd managed to grab a little sleep, a lot of recaf, and a hot meal  (just soylens viridians again, but for some reason I'd gone off the idea of retrieving an ambull steak), and was beginning to feel tolerably human once more. A bath would have topped things off nicely but sleep was even more urgent, and I just had to resign myself to the fact that I was probably beginning to smell as bad as my aide. Jurgen, naturally, looked no
158worse than usual, probably as a result of a catnap somewhere.  He accompanied me, partly to underline my status, and partly  to take the blame if my suspicions about my personal  freshness were correct. Of course I'd done a lot more than  take care of my personal needs. Even before I staggered off  to the mess hall and bed, in that order, I'd roused the  refinery's resident astropath and sent the most urgentlyworded communique I could to both the lord general's office  and the rather more guarded channels Amberley had  suggested I use if I ever came across something which  merited Inquisitorial attention. Well, a tomb full of necrons  definitely qualified if anything did, but to my vague  disappointment (though complete lack of surprise given the  time lag inherent in even the most urgent interstellar  communications) neither had responded by the time the  briefing was scheduled to start.
159The conference room was the most crowded I'd ever seen it as  I entered the command post, the babble of conflicting voices  almost loud enough to drown out the muffled explosions  from the battlefield beyond the large picture window. My eye  was drawn to it at once, searching for some sign of the  gargant, and despite the ever-present snow whirling against  the glass like a disconnected pict screen I was sure I could  make out a dark, hulking shape against the mountains in the  distance which hadn't been there before. Merciful Emperor, it  was almost close enough to open fire on us, a handful of  kilometres distant now. I thought of the havoc the massive  belly gun would surely wreak, blowing apart buildings and  storage tanks alike, and shuddered. Of course the greenskins
160
161would be trying to take the installation relatively intact, or at  least the vast reserves of refined promethium it contained, so  it couldn't really do its worst, but no one ever said orks were  rational. 1  If the ork princeps, or whatever he called himself,2 got over-excited this whole affair could end very loudly and  suddenly.
162'Commissar.' Colonel Kasteen looked up from her place at the  head of the table, and indicated a vacant seat next to her. I  dropped into it gratefully, while Jurgen went to find me some  more tanna tea, and exchanged a nod of greeting with  Broklaw who was seated on the other side of her. 'I'm pleased  to see you looking so much better.'
163'Thank you.' I said, as Jurgen materialised behind me with a  large steaming bowl of the fragrant liquid. I glanced up and  down the table, seeing all the faces I remembered from the  previous meeting, and a lot more besides. 'Shall we get  started?'
164'By all means.' She nodded to Broklaw, who cleared his  throat loudly, and to my astonishment everyone shut up and  looked at him expectantly.
165'Thank you for coming at such short notice,' he began, with  barely a trace of sarcasm. 'As most of you are no doubt  aware, the commissar's scouting trip has uncovered a much  greater problem than the orks.' At this point he glanced  meaningfully at the little knot of tech-priests clustered around
166
1671 Actually there have been a few xenologists who argued precisely this, claiming their actions make perfect sense
168in the context of their own barbarous society, but such views are generally considered eccentric at best.
1692 Probably some variation of ''Nob'' or ''Boss'' which appear to be the only major signifiers of rank and
170status their language possesses.
171
172Ernulph. Logash was sitting next to him, still wearing the imbecilic grin he'd been sporting ever since we found him in the tomb below our feet. I'd invoked my commissarial privileges to unlock some highly classified files, so that everyone who needed to would know precisely what we were up against, but now the seed of suspicion had been planted it was hard not to wonder if the magos had known most of it already.
173'How sure are we that it's a problem?' Ernulph asked, an edge of eager acquisitiveness in his voice. 'If the necrons are in stasis we can surely concentrate our efforts on repelling the immediate threat.' Meaning let the poor bloody Guardsmen keep the orks off their backs while he and his cronies pillaged the tomb, of course.
174'They are the immediate threat.' I said, as mildly as I could. I sipped my bowl of tea while the sudden flare of apprehension in my gut at the very thought of those mechanical killers subsided. 'If we were up to our armpits in orks, with a side order of kroot and eldar backing them up, I'd turn my back on the lot of them to take out a single necron. I've fought them before, and they're the biggest single menace in the entire galaxy.'
175'Surely you exaggerate.' Pryke said, looking at me sternly, as though I was making the whole thing up. 'I've accessed the records of previous encounters with these… whatever they are, and reports of them are practically non-existent.'
176'That's because they hardly ever leave any survivors to report anything,' I rejoined, feeling my hand begin to tremble as old memories came rushing back. A small gobbet of tea escaped
177the bowl to pool on the polished wooden tabletop, and Jurgen  leant forward to mop up the spillage with a handkerchief that  left the surface even grubbier than before. 'Everything else in  the galaxy fights for a reason, whether it's for territory,  honour, or souls for the dark gods.' I heard a satisfying intake  of breath at that, having deliberately invoked the most  shocking image I could think of to wrong-foot any objectors.  'Necrons don't. They exist purely to kill, and they know we're  here now.'
178'Are you sure about that?' Ernulph persisted. 'They certainly  know about the greenskins. But you escaped unscathed, I  gather.' He glanced at Logash for confirmation.
179'The Omnissiah guided our steps,' the young tech-priest  declared, 'so that we might claim the bounty prepared for us.'  'The only preparation you'll get from the necrons is if one of  them fancies your skin as a waistcoat.' I said, having the  slight satisfaction of seeing him blench for a moment before  his fanaticism kicked in again.
180'The commissar is convinced that the party he encountered  were simply scouts.' Kasteen said, determined to keep the  business of the meeting moving. 'And while the warp portal  remains active down there we can expert a full-scale  incursion at any time.'
181'What I don't understand.' Morel declared, cutting through the  subsequent babble of consternation, 'is why now? They've  been down there for Emperor knows how long. What got  them so stirred up all of a sudden?'
182'I think I can answer that.' As everyone turned to look at him,  Quintus cleared his throat a little nervously.
183
184'If you can make any sense of this mess I'd like to hear it.'  Kasteen prompted after a moment. Quintus flushed even  more, and stood, grinning nervously at the colonel. He  produced a data-slate from the recesses of his robes, and  projected a page onto the main hololith, which still jumped  annoyingly as I tried to make sense of what I was looking at.  'These are the sensor logs from the traffic control system,' he  began, before Ernulph interrupted.
185'Those are technical documents which fall under the purview  of the Adeptus Mechanicus. You have no business dabbling  in theological matters!'
186'I think you'll find.' Pryke rejoined, equally forcefully, 'that  they are archive material, and therefore clearly the  responsibility of the Administratum.'
187'Their care and maintenance, possibly.' Ernulph persisted.  'But interpretation and consultation are the business of those  appointed to commune with the numinous, not some jumpedup inky-fingered quill-pusher!' Pryke seemed on the verge of  responding in equally trenchant tones, when Broklaw cleared  his throat again. The room went suddenly quiet.
188'Might I remind everyone.' Kasteen said mildly, 'that I'm in  charge here and I decide who does what. And I want to hear  what the scrivener has to say. Are there any objections?'  Surprisingly there weren't, which might have had something  to do with the way both officers had a hand resting casually  on the butts of their bolt pistols, I began to suspect they'd  been hanging around me a bit too much lately. She smiled at  Quintus, who looked quite flustered for a moment, and  nodded judiciously. 'Please continue.'
189
190'Ah. Right. Yes.' Quintus cleared his throat again, and pointed  to something in the middle of the display which looked like a  stain of ackenberry juice. 'This is the flare of warp energy  released when the greenskins' space hulk emerged into the  materium.' Ernulph harrumphed disapprovingly at the young  scrivener's use of the technical term, and a faint, fleeting grin  appeared on Quintus' face just long enough for me to realise  he'd done it on purpose to irritate the magos. 'And there was  another one almost as strong when it dropped back into the  warp.'
191'We already knew this.' Ernulph said dismissively. 'Our  instrumentation was practically overloaded. It's how we knew  they were coming in the first place.'
192'Precisely.' Quintus said. 'And because of the strength of the  flare we missed that.' He pointed to something else with an  air of triumph, undermined a little by the almost total  inability of anyone else at the table to see what was hidden by  his finger.
193'Could you magnify it a little?' Kasteen asked. Quintus  flushed,   and   complied,   revealing   another,   almost  imperceptible ackenberry stain. A murmur of voices rippled  around the table, and Ernulph at least had the grace to look  surprised.
194' We  missed that,' he admitted grudgingly.
195'Quite understandably.' Kasteen assured him diplomatically.  'But can you tell us what it is?'
196'I can guess,' the magos admitted reluctantly. Then he  grimaced, as though biting into a bitterroot pasty someone
197
198had assured him was filled with sweetbriar, 1  and gestured to  Quintus to continue. 'But I'm sure the young man has worked  it out already. He seems quite bright for a bureaucrat, and  we'd never have noticed this anomaly at all if it wasn't for his  diligence.' I suppose for all his bluster he was a fair-minded  man, but it must have pained him to swallow his pride like  that. His colleagues looked positively dyspeptic, and Pryke  was gazing at him in open-mouthed astonishment. Kasteen  just nodded coolly.
199'Thank you magos. I'm glad to see we all seem to be on the  same side at last. Quintus?' For some reason the young  scrivener became flustered all over again as she looked in his  direction, and stuttered for a moment before resuming.
200'Well it's outside my realm of expertise, as the magos pointed  out, but it seems logical to assume that the flare of warp  energy somehow activated the dormant portal in the tomb.'  Ernulph was nodding in agreement.
201'That would be my interpretation,' he conceded.
202'Of course!' Logash butted in with the single-minded  enthusiasm of the obsessive. 'That's how the ambulls got  down there! They came through the portal, and dug their way  out of the tomb! That explains the anomalous habitat…' He  trailed off, suddenly conscious of how very much nobody  else in the meeting cared.
203'And somehow the necrons noticed that it had reactivated.'
204Broklaw nodded. 'So they sent a scouting party through. That makes sense.'
205
2061 Cain was evidently still hungry at this point, judging by the sudden flurry of culinary metaphors, hardly
207surprising given the amount of energy he had expended over the last couple of days.
208
209'But where from, though?' Pryke asked, anxious to establish  that her department was fully involved in things.
210'Could be anywhere in the galaxy.' I said. 'Somewhere with  ambulls, by the look of it, but that doesn't narrow it down  much.'1
211'That's not really the question at the moment.' Kasteen said,  dragging everyone back to the point. 'What we need to decide  now is what we do about them.'
212'There's only one thing we can do.' I said, as calmly and  decisively as I could. 'Evacuate the planet, while we still have  enough time to get clear.'
213'Evacuate?' Kasteen echoed, clearly stunned. I nodded,  conscious that I was risking my whole fraudulent reputation,  but that it was precisely that reputation for heroism which  might just do the trick now. I adopted an expression of  barely-contained frustration.
214'I know how you feel. I've never run from a fight yet.' (which  was not entirely true, of course, but no one needed to know  that), 'and it goes against the grain to start now. But there are  wider issues at stake here. The necrons in that tomb
215outnumber us by hundreds to one, and that's assuming we  could disengage from the orks cleanly enough to take them  on in a stand-up fight.'
216'They'd still know they'd been in a scrap.' Kasteen said  grimly. I nodded again.
217'I don't doubt the fighting spirit of anyone in the regiment.  But if we stand and fight now we will all die. That's a plain,
218
2191 Indeed not. As yet the world or worlds at the other end of the necron portal remain unidentified, despite
220the best efforts of the Ordo Xenos.simple fact. They'll overrun us in a matter of hours.' More  like minutes, if the ones I'd seen before were anything to go  by, but if I told her that she'd never believe me. 'And that's  just the start.'
221'The portal.' Kasteen said, the coin dropping. I nodded again.  'Hundreds of thousands of them would be let loose on the
222galaxy. We simply can't allow that to happen.' I paused for a  moment, letting the implications sink in. 'We have to call in  the Navy to sterilise the whole site from orbit. It's the only  way to be sure.'
223'You can't do that!' Pryke and Ernulph both shouted at the  same time, then broke off to boggle at one another,  completely taken aback to find themselves in agreement for
224once.
225'I can, and will.' I contradicted them. 'This facility is under  martial law, which means the commissariat is the final arbiter  of what can or cannot be done.'
226'Have you any idea of the economic value of this  installation?' Pryke asked, recovering first.
227'None at all, and I care even less.' I said. 'So far as I'm  concerned it's not worth the life of one soldier.' The soldier I  had in mind being me, of course.
228'But the archeotech!' Ernulph spluttered. 'Think of the  knowledge, the spiritual advancement of mankind that you'd  be sacrificing…'
229'All we'd be sacrificing if we left that tomb intact is our lives.'  I rejoined. 'Not to mention the millions of others who'd be  slaughtered if the necrons down there revive and escape  through the portal.'
230
231'But they're in stasis,' the magos persisted. 'While they're  dormant we can safely examine…'
232'We don't know that.' Kasteen cut in. 'For all we know they're  up and about by now. And even if they aren't, their friends  could be flocking through the portal from somewhere else.  We simply can't risk sending anyone back down there, and  that's final.'
233'On the contrary.' Ernulph replied. 'I don't think you can risk  not sending anyone back.'
234'Explain.' Kasteen said, although in a sudden agony of panic I  realised what the magos was driving at. The worst of it was  that he was right, damn it, and the spasming of my bowels  told me who was by far the most likely candidate to get stuck  with the job.
235'You said it yourself,' he said triumphantly. 'The portal's still  active. Even if you called in your naval strike it would be left  intact and functioning for months before a flotilla could get  here, possibly even years. The necrons would be long gone.'  'Emperor's bowels, he's right.' Broklaw looked more shaken  than I'd ever seen him. 'We have to blow the portal before we  pull out.'
236I felt every pair of eyes at the table lock on to me like the  targeting auspex of a hydra battery. The air grew tense with  expectation, while my mind whirled frantically, trying to find  some plausible reason why this was a truly terrible idea. But  inspiration had, for once, deserted me. At length I nodded,  my mouth dry.
237'I can't see any alternative.'
238'Neither can I.' Kasteen turned to me, solemnly pronouncing
239
240what I truly believed to be my death sentence. 'Can you lead
241a team back down to the tomb, commissar?'
242
243THIRTEEN
244OF COURSE  I couldn't refuse, could I? Not in front of all those people. I'd been neatly impaled on my own rhetoric, and pulling out at this stage would have ruined the reputation I didn't deserve. More to the point it would have lost me the respect of the troops, which was probably the only thing I had left capable of preserving my miserable hide. So I made a few appropriately modest comments about appreciating everybody's confidence and hoping I wouldn't let them down before sinking into a torpor of absolute terror which, as luck would have it, was generally mistaken for fatigue.
245As a result the rest of the meeting went by in a blur so far as I was concerned, and if anything else of consequence was discussed I must have missed it. 1  I did rouse myself for long enough to listen to a progress report into some suicidal scheme for disabling the gargant, which Broklaw assured everyone would be effective if the orks in command of it were spectacularly stupid enough to blunder into an obvious trap, but given the intelligence of the ones I'd encountered before in my chequered career this seemed like a safe enough bet. Other than that I took no interest in anything apart from my bowl of tea, which Jurgen, attentive as ever, refilled at intervals.
246So it came as something of a surprise when all the civilians stood up and filed out, the quill-pushers and cogboys predictably butting heads at the door over which of them had
247
2481 Quintus's minutes of the meeting are singularly unhelpful in filling in this gap, concerned as they are
249chiefly with the way the overhead lighting struck highlights from Kasteen's hair.
250
251precedence while Morel and the miners guild delegation  sailed serenely past them, and finally the room fell quiet.
252'That went well.' Broklaw said, clearly not meaning it.  Kasteen nodded.
253'They've agreed to the evacuation, anyway. Not that they had  a choice, but at least we won't have to waste any manpower  herding them onto the shuttles at gunpoint.'
254'Don't count on it.' I said. 'Once they've had time to think it  over the tech-priests probably won't go without a fight.' At  least most of the miners and Administratum staff had already  gone, which only left a couple of hundred civilians still  planetside. A couple of shuttle flights, no more than that,  although lifting the regiment would be a lot more time  consuming when the time came for us to pull out.
255'Then they can stay and fight the necrons.' Kasteen said. 'I'm  not putting any of our people at risk if they start playing silly  frakkers.'
256'Glad to hear it.' I said. Not that it would make any difference  to me, with my molecules scrambled by a necron gauss gun.  And that would be if I was lucky, I thought of the other  monstrosities in their coats of ork hide, and hoped fervently  never to meet them again. I turned my thoughts in more  productive directions with an effort. I wasn't dead yet, and by  the Emperor I didn't intend to be if I could find the slightest  chance of weaselling out of the suicidal assignment I'd  backed myself into. 'What's the tactical situation?' We hadn't  discussed that in front of the civvies, of course, they were  best being jollied along with vague generalities, and a  resolute avoidance of phrases like ''we're frakked'' which
257
258would only upset them.
259By way of an answer Kasteen activated the hololith again and  Mazarin appeared at her station on the bridge of the  Pure of  Heart,  bobbing slightly in the current from a nearby air vent.  'None of this makes a lot of sense to me,' she admitted  cheerfully. 'But you're the soldiers. What do you think?'  Kasteen, Broklaw and I stared at the latest sensor downloads  from the orbiting starship. The ork advance had unmistakably  faltered, breaking against our battle line, and pulling back in  places to cluster on their left flank. Broklaw frowned.
260'The gargant's veered off,' he said. Well, thank the Emperor  for that, I thought, at least I wouldn't have to worry about the  booby trap they'd laid for it bringing the whole mine in on top  of me while I was down there in the dark facing the necrons  again… My hands began to tremble slightly as I thought  about that, so I stuffed them into the pockets of my greatcoat  and studied the hololith grimly. Something about the  redistribution of the ork forces was nagging at my  subconscious, and I felt my scalp prickling as I finally  realised what it was.
261'The tunnel entrance we found was about here.' I said,  indicating a point on the opposite flank of the mountain from  the valley we were so successfully defending. The bulk of the  greenskin forces were moving in that direction, the gargant's  unexpected diversion merely a part of the general drift. And  there was only one obvious reason why the orks' attention  would have been distracted from the ongoing battle with us.  'Frakking warp!' Kasteen breathed, coming to the same  conclusion. 'The tinheads are attacking the greenies!'
262
263'In some force, too, judging by the number of reinforcements  moving up.' Broklaw said, studying the display in more  detail. That wasn't necessarily the case, of course, orks will  gravitate naturally to wherever they expect the fighting to be  fiercest, but it was certainly suggestive.
264'Perfect!' Kasteen said, to my absolute astonishment. 'You  know what this means?'
265'Nope.' Mazarin shrugged in the corner of the hololith, her  image shrunk to the size of my hand. 'Not my department.'  But of course Kasteen hadn't been talking to her in any case.  'It means the bloody necrons are awake!' I said, a strange  mixture of terror and relief dancing down my spine. 'We  haven't a hope in hell of getting to the portal now.' I tried to  feign disappointment, while wondering how best to ensure I  was on the first shuttle up to the freighter.
266'Not necessarily.' Mazarin chipped in, and the flare of hope in  my chest withered and died. Luckily it was only her image in  the room with us, or I'd probably have throttled her with my  bare hands. (Not that it would have done me much good, I  suppose, given the amount of metal she seemed to have in  what was left of her body.) 'If I'm reading these energy spikes  right the portal's being activated roughly every seventeen  minutes.'
267'Which means what, exactly?' Kasteen asked, taking far too  much interest in what the bisected woman had to say for my  liking. Mazarin shrugged, unless it was the air conditioning  behind her kicking up another notch and bouncing her  around.
268'The necrons here are probably still in stasis. The ones
269
270fighting the orks are being shipped in from somewhere else.'  'Securing the tomb before they wake the others.' Broklaw  said. Kasteen nodded.
271'Sounds plausible.' She looked across at me. 'And they still  have no idea we're behind them. You can be in and out before  they even know you're there.'
272'Lucky me.' I said, clenching my fists in my pockets until the  nails drew blood.
273'I'M NOT GOING  to lie to you.' I said. I felt a vague sense of  disconnectedness after that, the reason for which continued to  elude me for a while, until I realised that contrary to the habit  of a lifetime the subsequent statement was actually true. The  harsh arc luminators of the main staging area just inside the  mouth of the mine flattened the colours of the scattered  equipment around us, including the power lifter against  which I leaned in what I hoped was a casual manner rather  than revealing the weakness of my knees. 'Our chances of  coming back from this assignment are practically nonexistent. But it's also no exaggeration to say that the lives of  everyone else on the planet, not to mention uncountable  others, hang on whether we succeed or not.' I flicked my eyes  along the impassive faces in front of me. Not one of them  blinked. I ploughed on, feeling vaguely wrong-footed. 'I think  you're the best team for the job, which is why I asked for you.  But I'll only take willing volunteers. If anyone wants to pull  out you have my word there won't be any disciplinary action  taken or a word about it on any of your records.' Because I'd  be too busy being dead to worry about it… I forced the
274
275thought away. 'We're up to it,' the storm trooper sergeant said,  the unlit cheroot in the corner of his mouth waggling  disconcertingly as he spoke. I gathered that it was some kind  of tradition in his squad that he wouldn't light it until the  mission was completed. The little knot of men behind him  nodded in silent agreement. Not one of them broke ranks,  which I would have found astonishing had I not spent a  couple of hours combing the records for the most aggressive  and disciplined squad in the entire regiment.
276And Sergeant Welard and his squad were it: old school storm  troopers (quite literally, they'd been together since the schola  progenium assessors back on Valhalla had decided they were  natural born cannon fodder). They were, accordingly, one of  the few teams to have remained single-sex following the  amalgamation of the two former regiments which now made  up the 597th, since there was no point rotating in  replacements for the casualties they'd taken on Corania1  and  wherever else they'd fought before. Schola-raised storm  trooper squads generally fight better than most because  they've been together so long and know each other so well  that they share an instinctive rapport no outsider can ever  fully share, but the downside of that is that once their  numbers drop below a handful they become pretty much  useless, and I've never understood why the Guard persists  with the tradition.2  Right now though, men who'd follow
277
2781 The system where a tyranid attack had decimated the imperial defenders, necessitating the amalgamation
279of the 296th and 301st to create the 597th in the first place.2 Because the real reason for the practice is to provide properly indoctrinated foot soldiers for the
280don't make the grade to be palmed off on the Guard.Inquisition. Of course fewer than five per cent reach the exacting standards required, leaving the ones who
281
282orders without thinking were precisely what I needed, and  Welard and his team fit the bill nicely.
283'I'm pleased to see my confidence wasn't misplaced.' I said.  Apart from Welard there were five regular troopers left out of  the original ten, so they were on the verge of falling below  the critical threshold at which they would cease to be an  effective fighting unit. Nevertheless, they would do. Numbers  wouldn't help us on this mission, our only hope was to move  fast and stealthily, and that, I knew, was something they were  bound to be good at. (In the constant round of rivalries and  practical joke playing between the different factions in my  days at the schola the storm trooper cadets were by far the  most adept at sneaking into the other dorms and common  rooms to make mischief, and always set the most inventive  booby traps, although I still maintain we had the edge over  them on the scrumball pitch. In fact the only team that ever  regularly beat the commissar cadets were the novitiates of the  Adepta Sororitas, who seemed to think the point of the game  was sending the greatest number of opponents they could to  the sanitorium rather than scoring goals.)
284'We'll get the job done.' Welard said, moving the cheroot to  the opposite corner of his mouth, and the quintet behind him  nodded in unison. Their silence was unnerving, but I suppose  it was a natural consequence of the rapport they shared. Not a  word or a gesture was wasted, to the point where, swathed in  their greatcoats and hats, their faces partly obscured, they  seemed almost as emotionless as servitors. Or the necrons  themselves. An aura of almost palpable lethality played about
285
286
287them, which I began to feel almost comforted by, until I  remembered the odds stacked against us.
288'Any questions?' I asked. Answer came there none, so I drew  myself up, straightened my cap, and tried to sound confident.  'Good. Then let's go.'
289THE EVACUATION WAS  well under way as we set out for the lower levels, a steady flow of miners, Administratum drones and tech-priests walking towards the landing pads with the tense not-quite trot of barely-contained panic, lasgun-wielding troopers guarding the tunnels they thronged through. We strode against the tide, which parted almost miraculously in front of us, each step further from safety seeming like walking on knives to me. A babble of voices surrounded us like syrup, battering the eardrums but overlapping so much that individual words and phrases were indistinguishable.
290'Comms check.' I said, more to distract myself man anything, and Welard and the other storm troopers sounded off one by one, although truth to tell, and I ought to be ashamed of it, I was so busy battling my own apprehension that none of their names registered with me. Everyone's comm-bead seemed to be working, though, so I nodded briskly. 'Very good.'
291'General order.' Kasteen's voice cut in. 'Anyone in sight of  Magos Ernulph report now.' There was an irritable pause, broken only by a faint hiss of static. 'Anyone with an idea of his whereabouts?' Another pause. 'Anyone seeing him, report at once.'
292Great. It seemed the tech-priests weren't about to leave their
293
294prize behind after all, and were going into hiding until we'd  left. Just so long as they stayed out of our way, though, it  wasn't my problem.
295The passageways we strode through were getting narrower  now, the air cooler as we entered the mine workings  themselves, and I told myself the shivering which seemed to  be gripping my body was simply a result of the falling  temperatures. Before long the walls around us were filmed  with ice, and shortly after that there was nothing for the ice to  coat, we were in the mine itself again.
296Ahead of us a cavern opened out, harsh with the glare of  luminators mounted on poles around its perimeter, the dark  mouths of the main tunnels puncturing the walls at intervals.  Equipment and storage crates littered the floor, and I  recognised it as one of the main utility areas we'd passed  through on our ambull hunt, little guessing the horrors we'd  find in the depths below. Beyond this point our journey  would truly begin.
297'Movement.' One of the troopers raised his hellgun, and the  others melted into the industrial detritus around us with
298breathtaking speed, leaving me feeling uncomfortably  exposed. A lone figure was lurking at the mouth of the tunnel  ahead of us, half hidden in the gloom beyond. After a  moment to recover my composure, as the rational part of my  mind kicked in to remind me that orks or necrons wouldn't be
299bothering with concealment, I strode forward unconcerned  expecting to find some stray miner or tech-priest finishing off  a last-minute job prior to joining the evacuation. As I got  closer to the solitary figure I felt my spirits inexplicably
300
301lifting as I caught the faint whiff of a familiar odour.
302'Jurgen.' I called out. 'What the frak are you doing here?' My  aide stepped fully into view, and the storm troopers emerged  from the cover they'd taken, looking mildly sheepish. 'I  thought you were stowing our kit on the shuttle.'
303'All taken care of, sir.' He produced a thermal flask. 'I thought  you might like a bit of tea for later. And a sandwich.' He  burrowed in one of his pockets for a moment. 'It's in here  somewhere…'
304'I see.' I said, silencing the barely audible snickering from a  couple of the storm troopers behind me with a quick glance  before turning back to Jurgen again. 'And the melta?' He  shrugged, the heavy weapon slung across his back shifting as  his shoulders moved.
305'I couldn't let you carry your own provisions, sir. Wouldn't be  fitting.'
306'Quite.' I said, astonished yet again at the depth of his loyalty.  For the first time I began to feel that I might actually get out  of this ludicrous expedition in one piece after all. 'I suppose  you'd better come with us, then.'
307'Very good, sir.' He saluted as smartly as he ever did, which  wasn't very to be honest, but more than made up for that in  enthusiasm, and fell into step beside me. I motioned Welard  and his men to the front and we set off into the darkness,  towards the terrors which lay in wait for us in the frozen  depths below.
308
309Editorial Note:
310As the attentive reader will readily appreciate, the overall tactical situation was now becoming increasingly complex.  The unexpected necron attack on the orkish flank had thrown the greenskins into disarray, but, typically, they responded with the single-minded aggression of their Kind, flinging  Be described as enthusiasm. The resulting carnage can themselves against this new and deadly foe with what can only barely be imagined.
311Valhallans was undoubtedly of great benefit, enabling the However, the lessening of the pressure on the beleaguered unhindered, especially as most of the front-line units had evacuation of the Imperial forces to take place relatively hiring the gargant into the now abandoned booby trap.already been given their orders to disengage in preparation for extract from SullaAs to the fate of this formidable war machine, the following 'her best efforts to render it unreadable. s memoirs may prove illuminating despite
312Founding of the 597th, Extracted from  Like a Phoenix From the Flames: The 097.M42.         by General Jenit Sulla (retired),
313NOTWITHSTANDING THE FLOOD  of rumours which had swept the regiment, most of them contradictory, but which all agreed in the main particular that Commissar Cain had discovered some new and potent threat in the bowels of the mine, I held fast to my duty and resumed my post at the front line. Whatever the truth of the matter I had my orders, and as a loyal officer that was enough for me. No doubt those better placed to evaluate the intelligence the commissar had so heroically gathered would inform us of whatever we needed to know to meet and overcome this latest vile stain on His
314Glorious Majesty's blessed dominions in the fullness of time, or so I told my subordinates, and until such information was furnished wild speculation about daemons, tyranids, or
315
316walking metal statues was merely a waste of time. This last  flight of fantasy would, of course, turn out to have more than  a grain of truth in it, but in the closing years of the forty-first  millennium, with the true horror of the necron menace still  unknown to all but a few, such talk seemed naught but the  most febrile of fantasies.
317My platoon had resumed its position in the forward line, with strict instructions to fall back at the specified time to draw the gargant into our carefully laid trap, and we had been engaging the main bulk of the greenskin army with a gratifying amount of success. So much so, in fact, that I began to fear that we were thinning them out too quickly, and that we would be forced to engage the towering war machine ourselves before the time came to disengage. The shadow of that grim colossus was falling across us as we gazed in awe at it, the shrieks of thousands of tonnes of unlubricated metal sliding across one another as it tottered forward on unfeasibly stubby-looking legs setting the teeth of every woman and man among us on edge, and I found myself comparing it most unfavourably to the swift darting elegance of the eldar walkers and the majestic nobility of our own blessed titans. 1
318I was on the verge of ordering those fortunate enough to be manning the forward trenches to engage those members of its crew who could quite clearly be discerned scurrying about on the main hull when the vast cannon nestled in the constructs
319belly spoke, the concussion sufficient to drive the breath from  our lungs and cause cracks to appear in our stout
320
3211 Most unlikely, as at this point in her career she had yet to see either. Unless you count holopicts, of
322course.fortifications even at this distance. I turned my head,  expecting to see the most grievous havoc wreaked among the  precious buildings of the refinery, only to see instead the  distant gout of a vast explosion somewhere among the slopes  of the mountains surrounding this vital outpost of the  Imperium.
323'It's veering off!' my communications specialist yelled,  angling his head so I could read his lips, for the awesome  sound of that titanic explosion had left my ears still ringing,  and to my astonishment I beheld the truth of his words. It had  clearly faltered, almost on the point of engaging our forward  line, and was now turning ponderously towards the looming  peaks it had so inexplicably attacked.
324At that moment we received our orders to withdraw, so I  cannot be sure of what I witnessed next, seeing it as I did at  an ever-increasing distance in short, snatched glances over  my shoulder as we ran, and through a curtain of falling snow.  However, it seemed to me that the terrifying construct was  surrounded by small structures, no higher than its knee,  which had appeared by sorceries so arcane I was at a loss to  explain them. Blank metal pyramids they were, dully  reflective, and surrounded by a crackle of lightning which  blurred their outline still further, sorcerous lightning without  a doubt, for it lashed forth to scourge the hull of that  mountain of metal, striking sparks so bright they hurt to look  upon. Chunks of metal larger than Chimeras fell lazily to the  snow, and the burning bodies of its luckless crew pattered  down around them, so that I cannot for the life of me  conceive how it could ever have prevailed. But whether it did
325
326or not I cannot truly answer, for the snow whirled in around
327that epic confrontation, and I saw no more.
328
329FOURTEEN
330ONE THING  I have to say for Welard and his storm troopers, they were as fast and stealthy as I could have wished for.  Jurgen and I had to work hard at keeping up with them even though they advanced as cautiously as though the enemy were already in plain sight. Two or three of them covered the tunnel ahead while the others darted forward to conceal
331themselves in crevices or patches of shadow before taking up  the duties of guardians themselves to allow their comrades to  move forward in their turn. They did all of this with an eerie  precision apparently unhindered by the bulk of the melta  bombs they carried, communicating only by hand signals and  eschewing the use of the comm-beads, for which I was  grateful, starting in dread at every superfluous sound which  might call attention to us. But as we hurried on, following the  route which had etched itself indelibly on the synapses  responsible for my ability to navigate underground, we saw  none of the signs I so dreaded. No gleam of metal in the  darkness ahead, no green charnel glow forewarning us of the  presence of death incarnate.
332We advanced in semi-darkness, our luminators shrouded, so  that the dazzling highlights which had been struck from the  ice surrounding us on my previous trip into the depths were  almost entirely absent. Now, instead of the refulgent  background glow I'd grown used to, the walls threw back no  more than a slick, almost organic-looking sheen, as though  we were passing down the gullet of some warp-spawned  leviathan. The thought was hardly a comforting one, and I
333
334shuddered from more than the cold.
335At length we reached the dead-end passage where Pen-Ian had fallen, revealing the existence of the ambull tunnels below the mine, and we paused to regroup.
336'This is it.' I warned everyone. 'From now on our chances of meeting a necron are greatly increased.' What I meant was  ''practically inevitable'' but I shied away from pronouncing those words. Not out of deference to the feelings of Welard and his men, who I had no doubt would have responded with the same lack of emotion that they had displayed thus far, but because I didn't want to face that thought myself. Welard waggled his cheroot, which had by now acquired a thin scum of frost over the tightly-packed tabac leaves it was composed of, and which crunched irritatingly between his teeth as he spoke.
337'We'll be ready for them.' He gestured with his left hand.  'Hastur.' One of the troopers stepped forward to cover the hole with his hellgun while the rest rappelled down into the darkness with display team precision. I heard a couple of clicks in my comm-bead, almost as if it were picking up some stray interference from somewhere but which I knew was the signal from the advance party confirming that it was all clear down there, and the sergeant grinned at me. For the first time it struck me that he was actually enjoying this.  'Coming?' he asked, and disappeared down the hole after his
338men.
339Why I simply didn't shake my head and run for the surface, intent only on making it to the next shuttle out, I'll never know. There was still my fraudulent reputation to consider, of
340
341course, double-edged weapon though that had become in the  last few years, dragging me into these ghastly situations  almost as readily as I was able to turn it to my advantage, but  even now I found myself reluctant to surrender it. And it  couldn't be denied that my chances of survival would be  marginally better with a screen of storm troopers between me  and the necrons instead of wandering around these catacombs  alone. I glanced round the narrow chamber, steeling myself,  and met Jurgen's eyes. The sight of him was instantly  reassuring despite his usual unprepossessing appearance, a  visible (and olfactory) reminder of all the perils we'd faced  and bested together. He grinned at me, and hefted the bulk of  his melta.
342'After you, sir,' he said. 'I'll watch your back.' A task, I have  to say, which he performed admirably throughout our years  of service together. I forced a smile to my face.
343'I don't doubt it.' I said, then before I could change my mind I  seized the line and slithered down into the bowels of hell.
344I landed heavily, but retained my footing, and was able to step aside as Jurgen lurched down the rope behind me. The storm troopers looked mildly disdainful at our performance, the awkwardness of which was underlined a moment later by  Hastur's descent, which he managed with the dexterity of an acrobat.
345'Where to?' Welard asked.
346'This way.' I indicated the right direction and waited while the  storm troopers went through the gap first, falling into place  behind them. With every step we took the knot in my  stomach wound itself tighter, the memory of where we were
347
348going insinuating itself into my forebrain, inextricably  intertwined with images of the massacre I'd witnessed on  Interims Prime. This would be different, I kept telling myself.  I wasn't fleeing in panic through an unknown labyrinth this  time, I was heading for a known location, which, by the  Emperor's grace, I had already entered before and escaped to  tell the tale. Kasteen was right, the necrons would be  concerned entirely with the greenskins, they didn't even know  we were here…
349'Found something,' the pointman said, snapping me out of my  reverie and back to the claustrophobic confines of the ambull  run. We closed up, the faint light from our shrouded  luminators glinting from some detritus on the tunnel floor.  'What do you make of that, sir?' Jurgen asked, his feeble  beam picking out something only he had noticed. Apart from  myself, he was the only one of our party who had walked  these narrow tunnels before, and would be able to notice any  changes. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, something  that happens in popular fiction far more often than it does in  real life, and which I can assure you is a remarkably  uncomfortable sensation. My aide was shining his luminator  down a narrow cylinder punched into the ice lining the  tunnel, about the width of my forearm and deep beyond the  strength of the lamp he carried to pick out the end.
350'They've been here.' I murmured. The only possible  explanation was a stray gauss flayer shot striking the tunnel  wall. I looked about us, finding several more of the sinister  indentations.
351'Then who were they shooting at?' Jurgen asked. That was a
352
353good question. If the orks had made it this far into the tunnels  our job was about to get a great deal more complicated. I  moved up to join Welard and the point man, who were  staring in perplexity at a small mound of metal objects  embedded in ice, ominously streaked with red.
354'What do you think these are, sir?' he asked, the air of  unassailable confidence taking a dent for the first time since  I'd met him. I looked at the assemblage of tubes and wires for  a moment, then the bile rose into my throat as I realised what  I was looking at.
355'They're augmetics.' I said, swallowing heavily. 'They've been  ripped out of someone.' So that was where Ernulph had  disappeared to. These might not be his remains, of course, but  it was carrots to credits he'd led whatever foolhardy  expedition this pathetic revenant had been a part of. I  wondered vaguely if we'd find traces of any other victims, or  if they'd all simply been vaporised.
356One thing was certain, though. Thanks to these idiots the  necrons would know there were humans on Simia Orichalcae  now, and were most likely waiting in ambush ahead of us.  This was just getting better and better.
357Well, there was no point in standing around worrying about  it, time was most definitely of the essence here, so I got  everyone moving again and dropped back to walk beside  Jurgen.
358'Be ready.' I warned him, 'things could be about to get—'
359I was interrupted by the dying shriek of our point man as he  flared and dwindled to nothing in the necrotic glow of one of  those hellish gauss weapons, and then the metallic warriors
360
361whose appearance I'd so dreaded were upon us.
362'Place your shots.' Welard said calmly, and the surviving  storm troopers unleashed a hail of hellgun fire against our  attackers. The glare of the lasbolts impacting on the leading  necron dazzled my eyes, then its chest gave way, seared and  blasted by the precision volley, and it tumbled to the ice-slick  floor revealing a fresh target behind it, already levelling  another gauss flayer.
363Credit where it's due, Welard and his men certainly knew  their stuff. As I've mentioned before, the ambull tunnels were  narrow, forcing the hideous automata to come at us almost in  single file. But the storm troopers' discipline was excellent,  and with the death of our first casualty they'd dropped into a  practiced routine, the men at the front falling prone, those  behind kneeling, and the ones at the rear standing up so that  the whole squad was able to concentrate their fire as one. The  second necron lost its head, quite literally, and fell heavily  across the first with a sound not unlike someone kicking a bin  full of scrap metal. As I watched it fall I realised, with a thrill  of horror, that the first metallic warrior we'd all thought  destroyed was rising slowly to its feet again.
364'Jurgen.' I called, and my aide stepped forward levelling the  melta. The storm troopers slipped easily out of his way,  keeping up a barrage of hellgun fire to cover him while he  aimed, and shielding their eyes as he squeezed the trigger.
365The flare of actinic energy stabbed my retina, even through  my closed eyelids, and the roar of ice flashing instantly into  steam echoed all around us. The air against my face was  suddenly warm and wet, as though I'd been teleported into a
366
367rain-forest somewhere. As I blinked my vision clear I could  see nothing but puddles of molten metal surrounded by  grotesque lumps of statuary, some of which still twitched,  freezing almost at once into the rapidly-reforming ice. Then,  in an instant, they faded away as though they'd never been,  leaving behind nothing but drifting vapour and some oddlyshaped indentations in the tunnel floor.
368'Clear.' Hastur called, taking the place of the disintegrated  point man, and leading us on into the darkness. Welard  nodded at Jurgen, an almost imperceptible tilt of the head as  he passed my aide, the closest I suppose he could come to  expressing thanks to an outsider, and jogged along in the  wake of his men. I couldn't help contrasting the reaction of  Grifen's team to the loss of Lunt with the storm troopers'  matter-of-fact dismissal of the loss of one of their own, and  mentioned as much to the sergeant.
369'The mission comes first,' he said, his face hard, and that's all  he would say on the subject. I wasn't exactly in the mood for  idle conversation either, so I let it drop, and resumed  straining my ears for the slightest sound which might indicate  the approach of more of those monstrous guardians.
370Luck or the Emperor must have been with us, though, as all  too soon I beheld the baleful glow which forewarned us that  we were about to reach our goal. We flattened ourselves  against the ice-covered bedrock of the tunnel wall as we  approached the entrance to that mighty cavern, through which  I'd escaped only a few hours before, and strained our senses  for any sign that we had been discovered.
371All seemed quiet, except for that damnable humming and the
372
373artillery barrage pounding of my heart, so we crept out into  the chamber I had so fervently hoped never to see again. My  scalp crawled with apprehension, and I had to exert every  micron of self-control I possessed to appear calm in front of  Welard and his men. They kept their weapons trained on  every patch of cover, every green-tinged shadow in the lee of  those towering and incomprehensible mechanisms. If they  were at all disconcerted by the sheer sense of wrongness  surrounding them they gave no sign of it.
374'Which way?' the sergeant asked, and I indicated the direction  of the portal. He nodded. 'Move out.'
375We scurried through that vast space as Jurgen and I had mere  hours before, still sticking to the shadows of the towering  machines, that ghastly charnel light bathing everything in a  sheen of putrescence. Some of them were marked with the  peculiar stick and circle hieroglyphics I'd seen on Interims  Prime, and you can be sure the memories the sight of them  stirred up did little to calm my fears. By this time my nerves  were stretched tighter than harp strings, and it was probably  this sense of heightened paranoia which let me hear an almost  inaudible sound, a faint scraping which reminded me of  scuttling vermin. I signalled the sergeant.
376'Five metres, two o'clock. Behind that… Whatever the hell it  is.' Welard nodded, and gestured a couple of troopers to flank  the gleaming tangle of green-glowing pipes. The rest of us  closed up, ready to face whatever the threat was, and I drew  my laspistol and chainsword. Not that I expected the latter to  be much good against metal rather than flesh, but it had  served me well on many occasions before now, and the
377
378weight of it felt comforting in my hand.
379'Contact. No threat,' said one of the storm troopers, his voice  slightly attenuated in my comm-bead, and fell silent again. I  hurried forward to join them, cursing their taciturnity.  'Explain.' I said, equally terse, and afraid of transmitting for  long enough to be triangulated on. If the trooper was  surprised he gave no sign of it.
380'It's a cogboy,' he explained flatly.
381Not just any cogboy, of course, the Emperor has more of a  sense of humour than that. Even before I joined them I had a  sense of foreboding which was amply justified as I looked  down at the quivering bundle trying to wedge itself under the  largest pipe.
382'Logash.' I said. The young tech-priest must have recognised  my voice, because he turned and looked up at me. Though his  metal eyes made any expression hard to read, a sense of  recognition began to surface through the expression of stark  terror suffusing his face.
383'Commissar Cain?' His voice trembled, wavering in pitch like  a boy in early adolescence. If he wasn't bonkers before, I  thought, he certainly was now. 'You were right, you were  right. We were unworthy to trespass on the sacred mysteries  of the Omnissiah—'
384'Where are the others?' I interrupted, squatting down to his  level, and keeping my voice calm. I haven't had that much  experience with madmen, give or take the odd Chaos cultist,  but I've seen enough cases of combat fatigue and his  symptoms seemed similar, overwhelmed by the horrors he'd  witnessed he'd simply retreated inside himself. 'Where's Magos Ernulph?'
385'Dead,' he moaned, his blank eyes roving aimlessly, 'struck down by the guardians for our hubris. We should have listened to you, we should have listened…'
386Resisting the temptation to say ''told you so'', albeit with some difficulty, I raised him to his feet as gently as I could manage. (Which wasn't very, to be honest, he was all but catatonic, but I succeeded in the end.)
387'You're bringing him with us?' Welard asked, in tones which left me in no doubt what he thought of that idea. I nodded.  'We can't just leave him here.' I said. The sergeant looked dubious, and for a moment I wavered, thinking our mission here was hanging by a thread as it was, and adding a babbling lunatic to our number wasn't likely to help any. Then again,  Logash had been down here longer than any of us, and might have information which could save our lives, or at least help us blow up the portal. As so often in my life it was an almost impossible decision to make, and one which no one else could, but that's why I get to wear the fancy cap. I pulled on the tech-priest's arm, reminded of Grifen's attempt to snap  Magot out of her stupor not far from this very spot. 'We have to go.' I said. To my relief Logash nodded, and fell into step beside Jurgen and myself.
388'I take it Ernulph asked you to guide him down here?' I asked, and the tech-priest nodded.
389'I remembered the way. The Omnissiah guided—'
390'Yes, quite.' I interrupted. 'Then what happened?' His face twisted.
391' We  entered the temple, and the guardians fell upon us. Some
392
393were cut down where they stood, in the very act of making  obeisance to the machine god, while others fled. But the  guardians pursued them without mercy.' That explained the  remains we'd found in the tunnel anyway, a few of them must  have made it that far out of here before they were cornered.  Logash turned a pinched, anguished face to me. 'They were  swift and terrible,' he whispered, 'and shrouded in horror.'  Well that sounded pretty much like every form of necron I'd  ever encountered, and I dismissed his words as a figure of  speech at the time, although I was soon to discover how right  he was.
394'Contact.' Hastur said, and opened fire. The other storm  troopers followed suit, and I dived for cover, dragging  Logash into the shadows with me. A moment later an acrid  odour of unwashed socks indicated that Jurgen had joined us.  I levelled my laspistol, seeking a target, and was gratified to  see that the storm troopers were doing sterling work in  engaging the advancing party of metallic warriors. They were  the skin-hunters we'd seen before, or identical copies of them,  advancing with terrifying speed, their long blades whispering  through the air as they swept back and forth. Instead of ork  hides, though, the leading ranks were swathed in human  skins, still wet and leaking, thin runnels of blood turned black  by the corpse-light, which illuminated everything here,  veining the metal torsos beneath. As I tracked the leading  one, placing a las bolt squarely in the centre of its forehead, I  realised with a shudder that the obscene covering it wore still  had the vestige of a face, a face, moreover, which I  recognised.
395
396'Ernulph!' I whispered, revulsion twisting my stomach, as the  creature inside his skin staggered backwards. I made sure of  it with a flurry of follow-up shots, then turned my attention to  the monstrosity behind it. The magos had been a pompous  fool, it was true, but no one deserved a fate like that.
397'They're behind us!' Hastur warned, before his voice rose in a  throat-rending scream. I turned just in time to see him borne  down by one of the razor-wielding automata, eviscerated in  seconds, his blood left streaming down the sides of the bulky  metal cabinet from behind which, a heartbeat before, he had  been pouring hellgun fire into the main body of our vile  assailants. A moment later the flayed one rose from a crouch,  the still wet skin of the deceased storm trooper clinging to its  metal torso by the stickiness of its own blood.
398'Frak this!' I shouted. 'Jurgen!' On cue my aide unleashed  another blast from his melta into the centre of the group,  cutting a swathe through them as efficiently as before. Once  again the necrons caught by the full force of the blast were  simply annihilated, flashing into vapour as thoroughly as the  victims of their own terrible weapons, while the ones at the  fringe of that ravening burst of energy staggered, limbs and  torsos seared and softened like candle wax. For a moment I  expected them to rally, restoring themselves in that unnerving  fashion I'd seen before, but the survivors simply vanished  into thin air. For some reason Hastur's body went with them,  but why they would want it was a mystery I was sure I would  never want to know the answer to. 1
399
4001 Presumably for the same reason their harvester fleets abduct the populations of isolated colony worlds.
401Whatever that is.
402
403'How far to the objective?' Welard asked, as the surviving  storm troopers regrouped. Beyond a single glance at the  coating of blood on the metal surfaces marking the spot  where Hastur had died he seemed utterly unperturbed by the  terrible fate which had befallen his comrade, and the rest  seemed equally focussed on the outcome of our mission,  scanning the halls around us for any sign of renewed necron  activity. I was grateful for their vigilance, but I was  beginning to find their complete lack of emotion somewhat  unnerving.
404'About three hundred metres.' I said, forcing my mind back to  the issue at hand. Welard nodded, and waved to his  remaining squad mates to move out. Jurgen and I fell in  behind them as before, although I was now acutely aware that  an attack could come from any direction, and you can be sure  that I scanned our surroundings with even more diligence  than before. I got Logash moving again with a relatively light  tug on the arm, and he trotted along with us, apparently  perfectly happy to follow whatever orders I gave now I'd  been proven to be right about the inadvisability of being here  in the first place.
405After a few moments I caught sight of a bright glow from  beyond the concealing bulk of one of those vast machines,  and indicated it to the sergeant.
406'That's it.' I said, watching it pulse like the beating of a  diseased heart, and fighting down the surge of dread which  suddenly suffused me. 'The portal.' The glow intensified for a  moment, with an accompanying thunder crack of displaced  air which rumbled and echoed through that city-sized cavern as though presaging a tropical downpour. 'And it's active.' I  tried not to think about how many reinforcements had  suddenly arrived, rather too many, judging by the amount of  air that had been elbowed out of their way as they  materialised.
407'Not for long.' Welard said, his confidence apparently  undiminished by the loss of a third of his squad already.  'Movement,' one of the troopers cut in, as blandly  unemotional as before. 'Eleven o'clock, thirty metres.' We  turned to face this new threat, the quartet of storm troopers  raising their hellguns, while Jurgen lifted the melta into a  firing position. Logash was trembling violently.
408'Omnissiah protect thy circuits,' he mumbled, 'let this  unworthy relay speed the electrons of thy great computation,  preserving us from burnout…' and other tech-priest gibberish.  I glanced back at the storm troopers, and was astonished to  see them quivering almost as badly.
409'Emperor be with us,' the closest was muttering under his  breath, 'protect us with the shield of thy will…'
410Something was seriously wrong I thought. After everything  they'd already shrugged off it was hard to credit that they  would be spooked so badly by a single group of warriors who  barely outnumbered us. But Willard's jaw was clenched,  bisecting the cheroot, most of which had fallen unnoticed to  the floor. The hellgun jittered in his hands, wavering almost  too wildly to aim, and he was muttering too, one of the  catechisms of command which had evidently been drammed  into him by the schola tutors, and rather more effectively than  it had been with me judging by his demeanour up to this
411
412point.
413He began firing wildly at the approaching warriors, and as if  that were a signal the others opened up too, badly-aimed lasbolts detonating all round the necrons with barely a single hit  scored, almost as inaccurate as orks. There was something  about these warriors which was different from the others we'd
414seen, a more resolute, self-aware quality, which sent shudders  down my spine as I took in more of the details of their  appearance. Less skeletal than the others they seemed  composed of ceramics as much as metal, and with writhing  pipes and cables corded around their metallic bones which  flexed like living muscles as they moved. Thin tendrils of  despair seemed to wrap themselves around my very soul as  they approached us, bringing not mere death but annihilation  in their wake. Fear I was used to, could master and control at  least to some extent, but this was different, a primal terror  which rose up from somewhere deep within me, and  threatened to swamp my very sense of self. Levelling the  laspistol in my hand, and ironically grateful for the augmetics  which steadied my grip in spite of the treachery of my own  body, I fired at the leading one, gouging a neat crater in the  centre of its forehead.
415'The horror! The horror!' Logash was going foetal on me  again, clinging to my ankles, and the storm troopers were  breaking, fleeing in all directions with cries of terror. 'The  horror returns!'
416'Jurgen, get him off me!' I yelled, restrained from following  only by the dead weight of the gibbering tech-priest. I fought  against that rush of primal emotion, feeling my very sense of
417
418self under threat in a way I hadn't experienced since the  Slaaneshi witch tried to sacrifice my soul to her perverted  deity on Slawkenberg over a decade before, and shooting  entirely by instinct now. The green lance of a gauss flayer  beam missed me by a couple of centimetres, and punched a  neat hole through the smoothly-sided cabinet beside me. I  shot back, taking my assailant in the chest, and making it  stagger for a moment before resuming its unhurried advance.  'Come along, sir.' My aide was at my side now, prising  Logash's fingers away from my boot, which wasn't easy  given that they were closed by a rictus of terror and augmetic  into the bargain. The pressure against my soul eased abruptly,  as though cut off by the slamming of a door. I hustled Logash  to his feet, and moved behind Jur-gen as he aimed and fired  the melta.
419Once again the powerful weapon did its work, taking down  our most immediate assailants, but this time there was to be  no reprieve from them teleporting out to lick their wounds.  The group had scattered to hunt down the fleeing storm  troopers, and we only got a couple of them. As I looked  around for some sign of our erstwhile companions I saw two  of them taken down with gauss flayer shots, screaming into  vapour even as I watched. Welard was backed into a corner  between two blocky structures the size of Chimeras, eyes  unfocussed, his mind clearly gone, hellgun hanging forgotten  from his hand, babbling incoherently. He was still crying out  to the Emperor for help which never came when the leading  automaton swung the heavy blade of its polearm-like weapon  and took his head off cleanly with a single sweep, spraying
420
421itself with a thick coating of his blood.
422'Come on.' I said urgently. 'We have to get out of here!'  Logash was beginning to recover whatever was left of his  wits, and shook his head slowly.
423'What happened?' he asked. I was beginning to understand,  but there was no time now for lengthy explanations, and at  our last meeting Amberley had impressed on both lurgen and  myself the paramount importance of not revealing his gift to  anyone, so I just grabbed him by the arm to get him moving.  'Stay close to Jurgen.' I instructed, and we went to ground  between a blank-faced metal cabinet about three storeys high  and a loop of conduit which resembled a glowing green  intestine. A faint shriek, abruptly cut off, confirmed the loss  of the last storm trooper.
424With pounding pulses we stayed put for some time, as  Logash had undoubtedly done before, while those ghastly  apparitions began what had every appearance of a methodical  search for us. To my relief, however, they seemed to become  mildly disorientated every time they approached our hiding  place, veering off before they had come within a handful of  metres of us, a deliverance I could only attribute to Jurgen's  peculiar qualities. 1
425At length, when everything seemed quiet again, I decided it  was time to move. The evacuation must be well under way by  now, and I meant to be on a shuttle and safe aboard the  Pure  of Heart  before anything else had a chance to go wrong.
426
4271 Perhaps correctly. The aura of terror projected by necron pariahs appears to be at least partly a psychic  However, since no other record exists of a blank coming into such close proximity to a group of pariahs, phenomenon, so it's quite reasonable to assume that a blank would repel them and mask the effect.  conjectural. and they're far too rare and valuable to risk in deliberately testing this hypothesis, it must remain
428
429'What about the portal, sir?' Jurgen wondered aloud. I  shrugged.
430'Nothing we can do about it now.' Which was actually true, as  the storm troopers had been carrying the melta charges which  were the only things which might have stood some chance of  destroying it, and they'd been vaporised along with the  soldiers. 'We'll just have to call in the Navy after all.' Tough  luck on the galaxy, of course, but it's a big place, and even a  necron army couldn't put that big a dent in it. I hoped. So we  made our cautious way back to the tunnel we'd come in by,  scurrying from cover to cover as we had done before, and  freezing into immobility at every sign of movement.
431To my immense relief we encountered no more of those  terrible apparitions, catching sight of the more common  warriors only at a distance. The aperture left by the ambulls  was unguarded, to my delighted surprise, and I regained the  sanctuary of the ice tunnels with a lightness of spirit which  was almost intoxicating.
432It was too good to last, of course, and inevitably it didn't.
433
434Editorial Note:
435As Cain began to make his way back to the surface, things were beginning to take an unfortunate turn there too. The tech-feared, drawn their attention to the existence of the human priests
436'  incursion into the necron tomb had indeed, as he colony above their heads, while the orks, outmatched as they weakened or abandoned altogether as they fell back. Not were, had begun to break only to find the Valhallan defences unnaturally many of the routing greenskins took advantage of the new fine of retreat thus opened up, and began to threaten the began to falter. 'Even though almost two full companies had refinery itself. Under this renewed pressure the evacuation thus far been ferried up to the orbiting starship the converted civilian shuttles aboard the Pure of Heart simply weren't up to hours. As the following extract from Captain Durantthe challenge of embarking an entire regiment in a matter of 'makes clear, the loss of well over half the men and women s log deployed just a few days before seemed almost inevitable.
437+++ Vox-log record of Captain Durant,
438Merchant fleet freighter  Pure of Heart,  651.932 M41.+++
439STILL STUCK IN  orbit around this miserable iceball. At the last
440count we had most of the civilian staff and their families  stowed away somewhere, only a couple of hundred still  cluttering up the corridors with their carcasses and personal  effects, but Bosun Kleg has promised to sort that out so I'm  leaving him to it.
441The Guardsmen have started arriving back up here too,  although at least they've got somewhere to bunk. The officers  are having a hard time keeping order, as most of them seem  concerned about the majority still stranded planetside. Can't  say I blame them, as Mazarin says there's no way our shuttles  can get many more runs in before the refinery's overrun by  the greenskins or these metal creatures, or possibly both. She
442
443keeps checking the sensor net and calling the surface with  updates, but so far she says the gropos1  keep losing ground,  and I can't see any way of stopping that.
444But then I'm only a starship captain, thank the Emperor, so  what I know about soldiering you could write on the back of  a holocard. I told Mazarin not to worry, that colonel looks as  though she knows what she's doing and their commissar's  supposed to be some kind of hero, but I can tell she wasn't  convinced…
4451 A contraction of ''ground pounders'' a Navy term for the Imperial Guard units sometimes billeted aboard
446time the Pure of Heart had been pressed into service as a fleet auxiliary. their warships. Less common among merchant crews, Durant's use of it here implies that this wasn't the first
447
448FIFTEEN
449AFTER MAKING OUR  way through the ambull tunnels without so much as a sniff of the necrons I began to think we might just be lucky enough to rejoin our comrades without further incident, and I must confess to a sensation akin to euphoria as we scrambled up the rope to emerge into the lower galleries of the mine itself. After the cramped ambull runs the high ceiling and the wide tunnels of the man-made workings seemed as broad and open as a city boulevard. We made good time back towards the surface, proceeding in line abreast at a rapid trot. Logash seemed to be a little more rational now we'd left that hive of the damned behind us at
450last, although being a tech-priest that was only relatively  speaking of course, and he kept up with Jurgen and myself  without any obvious difficulty.
451Jurgen and I had set our luminators to full refulgence now we  were back on what I fondly imagined was safer ground, and  the beams were lighting our way some considerable distance  in front of us. The surrounding ice was bouncing the light as  it had before, throwing back the photons in the shimmering  blues and star cluster sparkles I remembered so well, so it  was a second or two before I realised that the gleam up ahead  had come not from the walls but from a reflective metal  surface.
452'Kill the lights!' I shouted as the coin finally dropped, and  twisted to the side as I did so, a reflex which undoubtedly  saved my life. A bilious green beam cut through the space in  which I'd been standing an instant before, illuminating for an
453
454instant the darkness which now enshrouded us, Jurgen having  followed my lead, and throwing the three of us into sharp  relief before it vanished again, evanescent as lightning. The  situation was as grim as any I'd faced, to remain where we  were would make us sitting targets as the necrons advanced,  whereas the slightest glimmer of light would betray our  position. A couple more dazzling green flares flickered past  us to emphasize the point. Fleeing blindly down the tunnel  would merely ensure we were shot in the back, if we didn't  simply slip and fall on the icy surface. Our only option  seemed to be to stand and fight, although judging by the  positions of their weapon flashes the metal warriors were too  spread out to make an obvious target for Jurgen's melta,  negating the only advantage we had.
455I had just drawn my laspistol, preparing for a bit of  speculative fire myself in the no doubt vain hope that the  necrons would think twice about rushing us (from what I'd  seen of them before they didn't strike me as being easily  intimidated), when I felt a light tap on my arm.
456'This way.' Logash whispered, and I heard the faint scurrying  sound of rapid crawling movement to my left. A moment  later I heard the same murmur from somewhere in Jurgen's  immediate vicinity (which wasn't hard to pinpoint, as my  sense of smell was still unimpeded), and I realised with a  thrill of hope that the young tech-priest's augmetic eyes were  somehow able to function in the darkness which enveloped
457us.
458Having nothing to lose I crawled rapidly in the direction of his voice, guided by occasional murmurs of ''straight ahead'',
459
460and ''left a bit… No, the other left, I meant mine…' until I  found myself against the frozen surface of the wall. I was just  about to ask what now when a gloved hand accompanied by  Jurgen's unmistakable odour reached out to seize my arm.
461'In here, commissar,' he whispered, giving me the full benefit  of his halitosis, and I found myself squeezing through a  narrow crevice in the ice. After a few metres it angled  sharply, concealing us completely from the main shaft, and  we held our collective breath as a clatter of metal feet echoed  past our hiding place.
462'Well spotted.' I said, when I was sure it was quiet out there,  and adjusted my luminator to minimum refulgence. My  companions' faces emerged out of the gloom, Logash's pale,  and Jurgen's as impassive as ever. The tech-priest nodded.  'Praise the Omnissiah for our deliverance…' he began, and I  hushed him quickly.
463'Yes, good, thanks very much.' I said. 'Any idea where this  goes?' It wasn't on the chart I'd seen before, but that was  hardly surprising, showing as it did every sign of being a  natural fault rather than having been dug. 1  Logash pondered a  moment.
464'It seems to be bearing towards the main processing area,' he  said at last. 'Assuming it doesn't just peter out.' Well that was  a risk I was willing to take, since the alternative was be  facing Emperor knew how many necron patrols. I hoped they  were simply scouting the mine rather than invading it in  force, but I wasn't keen to hang around and find out one way
465
4661 How Cain came to this conclusion he doesn't bother to explain, it was probably something to do with his
467affinity for underground environments.
468
469or die other. At least this way we stood a better chance of  avoiding them.
470An hour or so later I was beginning to think we'd have done  better taking our chances playing tag with the necrons. The  fault was narrow and jagged, so we were climbing up slopes  or slithering down them more often than we were walking  and chunks of ice kept catching at our feet or projecting from  the walls at heights and angles calculated to bruise or worse.  On several occasions we had to crawl, as the ceiling  descended too low for us to walk, and once we were forced to  worm our way forwards on our stomachs as the passage  became too constricted even for that. Jurgen's bulky melta  became wedged with monotonous regularity, requiring some  laborious chipping away of the ice with our combat blades  before we could free it. (My chainsword would have done the  job in a tenth of the time, of course, but in that confined space  one of us could all too readily have lost a limb by accident, so  it remained in its scabbard.) Each time it happened I  considered simply abandoning the cumbersome weapon, but  it had proven its use too often to be lightly discarded, so I  simply gritted my teeth at the delay and carried on.
471My sense of direction was no less sure down here than in any  other underground passageway, so at least I had the  consolation of knowing that we'd come almost a kilometre  from our encounter in the main gallery and were moving in  the general direction of the centre of the complex, when  Logash paused. He was continuing to lead us simply because  the passageway was too narrow for any of us to change  position, which had left me trailing in Jurgen's wake,
472
473uncomfortably aware that if the metal warriors found the  entrance to the cleft and came after us I'd be the first one to  know about it. The thought was an unpleasant one, producing  an itching sensation between my shoulder blades, so I tried  not to dwell on it.
474'What's the matter?' I asked. The tech-priest shrugged.
475'Dead end,' he said. I could have throttled him, but fortunately  Jurgen was in the way. I shook my head, unwilling to believe  it.
476'It can't be.' The words were a reflex denial, but as I said them  I was sure that I was right, all of my tunnel rat's instincts told  me so. I wondered for a moment why I was so sure, then  realised I could feel a faint current of air on my face. 'There's  a draft in here.'
477'The passage seems to continue.' Logash agreed. 'But it won't  do us any good unless you can get through a five centimetre  gap.' That really was hard to believe. The passage had  constricted before, of course, but that it could narrow so  much, so fast, went against all my experience in such an  environment. I said so, possibly a little more forcefully than  necessary, and Logash squeezed against the ice wall to let me  see for myself. Our way was indeed blocked, by a regular  convex surface which curved down to just above the floor.  Something about the shape struck me as familiar, and then I  realised that it was the lower part of a vast cylinder some  three or four metres in diameter.
478'What the hell's that?' I asked. Logash thumped it with his  hand, producing the unmistakable dull thud of thick metal.  'One of the main extraction pipes,' he said. 'Runs up to the
479
480processing plant on the surface.'
481'And what's in it at the moment?' I asked, an idea so  audacious I could barely acknowledge it beginning to form  even as I spoke. Logash shrugged.
482'Nothing now the plant's shutting down…' His voice trailed  off as he evidently came to the same conclusion as I had. I  reached an arm out towards him, past my aide.
483'Can you get behind Jurgen?' I asked.
484'I can try.' It wasn't easy, I can tell you that, but after what  seemed to be an eternity of wriggling and swearing he and I  were crouched behind what little cover we could find, and  Jurgen was aiming the heavy weapon at the pipe. As before  we were engulfed in a roar of steam as he fired, so it was a  moment or two before our vision cleared enough to show us  the metre-diameter hole he had successfully blasted in the  wall of the conduit.
485'That'll have to be logged for the repair crews.' Logash  remarked conversationally, as if the place would ever be back  in operation now the necrons were here, and after a moment  to let the metal cool Jurgen hoisted himself through the hole  and into the pipe.
486I followed suit, the tech-priest bounding up ahead of me, to  find myself in an echoing metal tube at least twice my own  height floored with rapidly-refreezing slush where the metal  had conducted the heat of the melta blast away. Stalactites of  ice descended from the curved ceiling, where the uniform  coating of rime had been disturbed by our blazing entry.
487'This way.' I said, taking the lead again, and moving as  rapidly up the gentle slope as I could manage on the
488
489treacherous surface. Jurgen had no trouble matching my pace,  of course, having been born to conditions like these, and  Logash apparently had some sort of augmetic balance  enhancer, as he seemed as sure-footed as the Valhallan.  Despite my tendency to slip unnervingly from time to time,  and the faint curvature underfoot doing nothing to make the  job any easier, I found the wide, unhindered passageway  almost exhilarating after the cramped confines of the defile  and set a good pace if I do say so myself.
490After a while I became aware of a faint susurration in my ear,  and realised that my comm-bead had come within range of  the regimental vox net. We were closer to the surface than I'd  realised, and a flood of relief almost knocked the breath from  my lungs. If someone was still here I wasn't too late to get a  shuttle out.
491Not that they'd wait if they all thought I was dead, of course,  so I lost no time in contacting Kasteen and passing on the  status of our mission.
492'Commissar!' She sounded surprised and pleased in almost  equal measure. 'We were beginning to think you hadn't made  it.'
493'I nearly didn't.' I admitted. 'They were waiting for us. We  never got close to the damn portal.'
494'I see.' Resignation tinged her voice. 'How many survivors?'  'Just me and Jurgen.' No point in going into lengthy  explanations now, so I glossed over Logash's presence. 'The  necrons are moving through the mine. Have they broken out  onto the surface yet?'
495'No.' Her voice faded for a moment, as she presumably turned
496
497her head away from the voxcaster to talk to someone else,  then returned with an edge of urgency. 'Wait one…' The link  went dead.
498Absorbed in my conversation with the colonel I'd hardly noticed that the pipe had come to an apparent dead end. As I craned my neck and shone my luminator upwards, I could see that it had made an abrupt turn to the vertical, soaring away out of sight.
499'What now?' I asked. Logash grinned, and indicated a set of metal rungs protruding from the frost, slick with a coating of ice. 'You have got to be kidding.'
500He wasn't, of course. He just grabbed a bar and started climbing sure-footed as a Catachan up a tree, and after a moment I shrugged and went after him. Jurgen followed, as always.
501'Why are these here?' he asked.
502'The maintenance servitors use them when the pipes shut down.' Logash explained. 'There should be an access panel up here somewhere…'
503Concentrating only on maintaining my grip on the treacherous, ice-slick rungs I was startled by the sound of  Kasteen's voice suddenly in my ear again. I almost slipped, hanging on purely by the Emperor's grace and the strength of my augmetic fingers.
504'We've lost contact with two of the pickets in the middle levels,' she said. 'We're reinforcing…'
505'No!' I cut in, a little too loudly. 'Pull everyone back out of the tunnels! It's the only chance they have!'
506Bottled up in a confined space, unable to concentrate their fire, they'd be picked off easily. I'd seen that all too clearly  before. 'Cover the entrances with everything you've got, and  engage them as they emerge.' It probably wouldn't do us any  good in the long run, but at least that way they'd be the ones  held up by the bottleneck. I tried not to think about their  ability to teleport, or move through walls…
507'Acknowledged.' Kasteen said, clearly willing to defer to my  greater experience with these hideous foes, and cut the link. I  considered what she'd just told me, not liking the conclusions  I was drawing. It was obvious the necrons were moving  through the mines in considerable force if they'd been able to  take out two of our squads before they even managed to get a  vox message off. Maybe the ones in stasis were beginning to  revive, and join the new arrivals…
508'Found it.' Logash said above me, unnaturally cheerful under  the circumstances, and began scraping the covering of frost  from the wall, sprinkling me with a light dusting of powdered  ice as he did so. He evidently knew what he was doing  though, extending a thin metal probe from one of his fingers,  and prodding hopefully at an indentation in the side of the  pipe. 'Ah. That should do it…'
509A section of the wall next to his hand withdrew suddenly,  with a loud hum that set my teeth on edge, letting a blast of  light and warm air into our frigid enclosure. The tech-priest  vanished from sight, and after a moment of scrambling  upwards I followed gratefully, heaving myself out onto a  metal mesh floor illuminated by a dim electrosconce in the  nearest wall. Despite its feebleness the yellow glow seemed  incredibly welcoming as I turned to reach down and haul
510
511Jurgen up after me.
512The chamber we stood in was small, barely large enough for the three of us, and glancing around I realised that it was merely a landing on a vast metal stair-case which rose dizzyingly above us as well as descending to a vertiginous depth below. Logash glanced at some runes stencilled on the outside of the access panel we'd exited the pipe by, and nodded in satisfaction.
513'Good,' he said.
514'What is?' I asked suspiciously. Given his level of mental  stability that could have meant just about anything by this  stage. The young tech-priest indicated our surroundings with  a casual wave.
515'We're in one of the primary maintenance shafts. We should  be able to get into the main control shrine a few levels up.'  'Best news I've had all day.' I said. 'Lead on.'
516IT WAS MORE  than a few levels, of course, we must have been climbing for almost half an hour before Logash stopped at another access panel in the plain metal wall, and I'd lost count of how many flights of stairs we'd climbed. My knees hadn't though, and ached abominably, but it's surprising how motivated you can be with an army of murderous automata at your heels and I kept going. Jurgen, of course, showed no sign of strain or discomfort, even lugging the heavy weapon.  'This should be it.' Logash hesitated, and I noticed the door was larger and more elaborate than any of the ones we'd passed on the way up, decorated with the cogwheel symbol of the priesthood.
517
518'Good.' I said. 'Then let's get out of here.'
519'I'm not sure I should open it,' the tech-priest said slowly,  eyeing Jurgen and myself with a speculative expression on  his face. 'This is a holy place. Only ordained and sanctified  personnel are permitted beyond this point…'
520'Fine.' I said. 'We're on a mission for the Emperor. Can't get  much holier than that, right?' Logash looked confused.
521'That would be an ecumenical matter,' he said. 'I'm not sure  I'm qualified to judge…'
522'Don't worry.' I said. 'I am. Now are you going to open the  frakking door or will Brother Jurgen do it?' My aide stepped  forward, raising the melta, and Logash hit the activation rune  with almost indecent haste.
523I'm not sure what I expected to find inside, but my first impression was one of overwhelming technological sophistication. Unlike the necron tomb below us, though, whose incomprehensible sorceries pulsed with palpable malevolence, this was a shrine suffused with the benevolence of the machine spirit, harnessed for the good of humanity and blessed by the tech-priests who normally worked here. I made an automatic gesture of obeisance to the large stained glass window depicting the Emperor (in His aspect of the  Omnissiah, of course, but the Emperor still for all that) which spilled patches of colour across the serried ranks of dark wood and polished brass lecterns, each one inlaid with a pict screen displaying some aspect of the plant's function.
524'Try not to touch anything.' Logash warned, brushing past  Jurgen, who was making the sign of the aquila, his jaw even slacker than usual. No fear of that, I thought, shying away
525
526from the nearest lectern, when my eye was caught by the  image on the pict screen. It showed a blurry, flickering image  of what looked like one of the mine galleries, and to my  horror the unmistakable shadow of a necron warrior passing  swiftly out of sight. A moment later another of the metal  monstrosities appeared, then a third.
527'Logash.' I called. The tech-priest left off genuflecting to the  alter in the corner with every sign of annoyance and ambled  over to join me. I indicated the pict. 'Where's this?'
528'Sector five, level fourteen,' he said after a moment spent  consulting some runes on the lectern. He adjusted the  controls, and the picture changed, showing another gallery.  After a moment the leading necron appeared there. 'Moving  towards sector three.'
529'Can you see the whole mine from here?' I asked. He nodded.  'The rituals of focusing are very similar to those of your  hololith. You may use this lectern if it will help.' After a few  moments of instruction, the lighting of an incense stick, and  muttering a few prayers over me he left me to it with an air of  evident relief.
530The picture I started to build up was grim, to say the least. It didn't take me long to establish that the lower levels were crawling with necrons, hundreds at least, and that they were systematically combing the tunnels, moving ever higher as they went. I voxed Kasteen.
531'By my estimate we've got about half an hour before they reach the surface.' I said. 'If we're lucky.' At least the few troopers I'd found were already in the upper levels and pulling back, so she'd heeded my earlier advice. An external
532
533pictcaster had shown me the landing pad, already crowded  with hundreds of our men and women, not to mention  vehicles, waiting patiently for their turn to board one of the  shuttles. With a sudden sinking feeling in my stomach I  began to realise that the vast majority of them would still be  there when the necrons emerged.
534'We'll be ready.' Kasteen promised, but I already knew how  hollow that promise was. They'd be massacred, no doubt  about it, and more to the point I'd never make it to the safety  of the starship either. There had to be something we could do  to hold them off, if only I could think of it…
535'Logash.' I called, but this time he ignored me, intent on some  task at one of the other lecterns. I walked over and seized his
536arm. 'Logash, this is important.'
537'So is this,' he said, a trace of irritation in his voice. 'The  stabilisation rituals for the storage tanks have to be performed  every six hours, and are already overdue. You must realise  how volatile refined promethium is…'
538'Oh yes.' I said, an idea so audacious I could hardly credit it  myself beginning to form. I glanced past the glowing glass  Emperor to the complex outside, where the huge storage  tanks squatted, bulky as hab blocks. 'How much is in the  tanks at the moment?'
539'Roughly eight million litres,' he said. 'Since the tankers can't  land with the orks about it's built up rather. But still within  acceptable safety parameters, I can assure you.'
540'I was rather hoping it was unsafe.' I said, and if he had any  eyebrows I'm sure he would have raised them at that point. I  pointed to the tangle of pipe work around the storage tanks.
541
542'Do any of those pipes connect directly to the mine?'
543'Not directly, no.' He looked at me quizzically. 'Why do you
544ask?'
545'Because if we could dump all that liquid down the shaft it  should really give the necrons something to worry about.' I  said. A slow smile began to spread across the tech-priest's  face.
546'It would mean overriding a number of safety rituals,' he said,  considering the idea. 'But it can be done.'
547'Excellent.' I said, feeling a flare of optimism returning at last.  'Then you'd better get to it.'
548'Indeed.' He huddled over the lectern, muttering gibberish,  and what sounded suspiciously like an occasional highpitched giggle, as he manipulated the controls. The chance to  strike back at the creatures who had massacred his friends  was obviously stirring up a lot of emotion, and I began to  wonder if his fragile sanity would hold for long enough to  implement our plan. Still, there was nothing to do but watch  in silence while the minutes dragged by, and the automata in  the pict screen moved ominously closer to the surface.
549'Tanna tea, sir?' Jurgen materialised at my shoulder,  proffering the flask he'd brought as a transparent excuse to  join the expedition, and I took the fragrant liquid gratefully,  suddenly aware of how tired and hungry I was.
550He still couldn't find the sandwich he'd stowed somewhere, to  my barely-concealed relief, so we contented ourselves with  the standard ration bars which tasted reassuringly of nothing  particularly identifiable.
551'Ready!' Logash said at last, another giggle rising to the
552
553surface. His face was preternaturally flushed, and his fingers  trembled over the controls of the lectern, the first time I had  ever seen augmetics do so. I nodded.
554'In the name of the Emperor.' I said solemnly.
555'In nominae Ernulph!' The tech-priest squeaked vindictively,  and flicked a switch.
556For a moment nothing seemed to happen, then I became aware of a low rumbling sound which seemed to suffuse the complex. Runes on several of the lecterns began to glow red, and a powdering of snow dislodged itself from the rim of the window outside. Then, for interminable moments, nothing seemed to happen at all.
557'Look, sir!' Jurgen pointed to the pict screen, which I'd left tuned to one of the upper levels. A torrent of liquid became momentarily visible, filling the width of the gallery, sweeping all before it, tearing chunks of ice the size of  Baneblades from the walls as it came and tumbling them casually ahead of itself. Then the pictcaster was ripped from its mounting, and the screen went dark. I switched to another just in time to see a party of necron warriors, far closer to the surface than I would have thought possible, trapped by the onrushing tsunami, picked up and thrown around like so many rag dolls. If I believed them capable of emotion I might have thought they stood dumbstruck before it before turning to flee, but it engulfed them all the same. I wondered if they'd fade away, smashed to pieces by that irresistible tide of pure promethium. Much good would it do them if they did, their tomb was at the lowest point of the tunnel complex and would surely flood in time, even though Logash had
558
559calculated that it would take the torrent around twenty  minutes to seep down that far. Not that they needed to  breathe, of course, but at the very least it should stop them  using the portal until they found some way to pump the  chamber out, by which time with any luck the Navy would be  here to sterilise the planet. All in all, I felt, a rather satisfying  result.
560I  WAS STILL  feeling pretty pleased with myself as I joined  Kasteen and Broklaw on the landing pad a short while later, so buoyed with euphoria that for once I didn't even mind the bone-biting cold. The plain of ice was swarming with activity, Chimera engines rumbling as the engineseers marshalled them for embarkation and commenced the services of mothballing, and platoons marshalled by squads ready to take their place on the outgoing shuttles. A blur of motion in the corner of my eye resolved itself into a Sentinel, trotting eagerly round our flank, keeping an eye out for hostiles.
561'Well done, commissar.' Broklaw shook me firmly by the hand. 'I don't think anyone else could have come close to achieving what you did today.'
562'Well the next time we run across a necron tomb you're welcome to try.' I told him. He grinned, taking the remark for a joke, but any reply he made was drowned by the scream of a shuttle engine as one of the utility vessels from the  Pure of  Heart  rose into the sullen air. Kasteen gestured at it as it howled over our heads and began to diminish into the leaden sky above.
563
564'That was the fifth one,' she told me, raising her voice slightly  over the ringing in our ears. 'Two full companies embarked  already.' Which still left well over half our number, around  six hundred troopers, stranded on the ground. Another half  dozen flights still needed. I estimated the time that would  take, and didn't like the answer. Even if the necrons had been  dealt with, there were still plenty of orks around…
565'What's the situation with the orks?' I asked Broklaw, but  before he could respond a titanic explosion detonated among  the refinery buildings, reducing the main Administratum  block to rubble in an instant. Debris pattered down around us,  mixed with chunks of ice and what looked uncomfortably  like fragments of human tissue.
566For a moment I was at a loss, my ears still ringing, and cast  around for some sign of damage to the storage tanks,  convinced that something must have touched off the leaking  promethium. Then I saw it, tall as the building it had just  destroyed, lurching forward through the rabble. Its hull was  seared and breached in a dozen places, its main gun gone, but  at least one of the secondaries was evidently still capable of  wreaking havoc. Despite being delayed by the necrons, the  gargant had arrived at last.
567
568SIXTEEN
569So  HORRIFYING WAS  the sight of that gigantic war machine, battered, scarred, but still lurching forward almost unstoppably, that for a moment none of us noticed the ant-like scurryings around its feet. Only as the ear-splitting cry of  'WAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!' forced itself through the echoes of the explosion still fuzzing up the inside of my skull did I become aware of the horde of greenskins racing across the frozen ground ahead of it. They were afoot mostly, with just a handful of bikes and trucks bouncing forwards to pull clear of the main pack, and I was pleased to see our Sentinels peeling off to engage the light vehicles. Their lascannons cracked repeatedly, punching holes in the crudely welded armour, and a gratifying number of the ramshackle vehicles slewed to a halt leaking smoke.
570But my attention remained fixed on the gargant, which loomed over everything like a shadow of doom. Despite the great rents in its metre-thick armour plate and the fused wreckage of its primary armament it still looked unstoppable, lurching forward uncertainly with a shriek of tortured metal, the left leg dragging slightly as though limping from its wounds.
571'Fire at will!' Kasteen roared, suiting the action to the word,  and hundreds of lasguns crackled repeatedly, sending echoes  booming like surf from the structures still standing. The orks  replied enthusiastically, but, praise the Emperor, no more  accurately than usual, so our casualties remained light in  comparison to the scores who were falling and being
572
573trampled underfoot by their comrades.
574'Target the gargant!' Broklaw ordered the Chimera crews, and  dozens of heavy bolters began to hose down the looming  tower of metal which continued to plod towards us, cracking  the ice of the landing field under its weight with every  tottering step. They didn't seem to be bothering it much, but  at least they were keeping the crew's heads down, and the  open galleries on its shoulders clear of the heavy weapon  crews who would otherwise have been adding a hail of  supporting fire to its own formidable armament.
575'They're consistent at least.' Kasteen muttered at my elbow.  True to their nature the orks were attacking us directly across  the landing field, sweeping down the length of it parallel to  the line of storage tanks, now shimmering behind a haze of  promethium vapour from their rapidly-draining contents. At  the sight of that wavering shroud my blood ran even colder  than it already was. It would only take one stray round  landing next to them for the entire complex to be engulfed in  an explosion almost impossible to imagine. And us along  with it, of course.
576'Keep our fire directed away from the storage tanks.' I  cautioned, and she nodded grimly, perceiving the danger too.  Not that it would make a lot of difference in the long ran, I  thought. The gargant was swinging its remaining gun around  to target the centre of our formation, which of course meant  me along with the senior officers, and I began to think we  only had moments left if that. The ork advance seemed  almost unstoppable, for every greenskin that fell another  dozen continuing to charge forward slavering with bloodlust.
577
578'Shuttle three requesting landing co-ordinates.' A new voice  cut into the comm-net, and I became aware of the roar of a  powerful engine becoming audible even over the din of the  ongoing battle. A flare of hope rose within me…
579'Shuttle three, abort your approach.' Mazarin's voice cut in  abruptly, shattering it, her tone calm and authoritative. 'The  greenskins are all over the pad.'
580'I can still make it,' the unseen pilot argued, and the blocky  shape of the shuttle suddenly appeared over the refinery,  banking sharply round to run in over the main bulk of the ork  army. Something about his voice sounded familiar, and I  wondered if it was the same one who'd got us down here in  the first place. Sporadic small arms fire bounced off his hull,  and I stilled my breath remembering our abrupt arrival here,  but the orks didn't get lucky this time and he came in low  over our heads, his landing thrusters screaming. A few of the  troopers waved and yelled, but most kept firing grimly into  the onrashing horde of blade-waving barbarity. Another  couple of moments and they'd be on us. I drew my  chainsword, preparing for the shock of impact, and continued  spitting las-bolts into the wall of screaming ork flesh bearing  down on us almost as fast as the tidal wave of promethium  still scouring the mine beneath our feet.
581The gargant lurched forward again, and impelled by panic or  instinct I finally noticed the deep gash in its leg. It was a slim  chance, but…
582'Target its left leg!' I yelled, and the Chimera crews switched  their aim, pouring a concentrated barrage of heavy bolter  rounds against that single, vulnerable spot.
583
584For a moment I thought the desperate gamble would fail, but as the torrent of explosive fire chewed away at the torn and overstressed metal the towering leviathan began to sway alarmingly The damaged limb seemed to seize up entirely, then failed altogether with a crack of rending metal which echoed like thunder between the encircling hills, audible even over the din of battle surrounding us.
585Abruptly it lost its equilibrium entirely, toppling absurdly slowly at first, then faster and faster as more of that titanic bulk neared the ground. The orks around it scattered in panic, like ants beneath a descending boot, and a gratifying number of them failed to make it.
586The impact shook the ground beneath us, cracking the ice for hundreds of metres around the huge wreck, swallowing almost a third of that vast bulk and opening chasms which engulfed the vast majority of the fleeing greenskins. From deep within that mountain of metal the dull thud of secondary explosions going off echoed like bronchitic coughs, and the lurid red glow of spreading flames began to join the smoke  I'd seen earlier.
587'Finish them off!' Kasteen ordered, and the Valhallans  responded with a will, surging forward to engage the stunned  survivors. After a short exchange of weapons fire it was all  over, the few remaining orks fleeing beyond the effective  range of our lasguns and Kasteen reining in the more  enthusiastic platoon commanders who seemed on the verge  of going after them with a display of profanity verging on the  pyrotechnic. I'd expected Sulla to be leading the charge, but it  turned out her company was the first to have been shuttled
588
589back up to the ship, so for once she didn't have the chance to  do something stupid, which made a refreshing change.
590'I think we should board as soon as we can.' I said, feeling our  luck had already been stretched far thinner than we had any  right to expect, and Kasteen nodded.
591'I think you're right,' she said. 'Simia Orichalcae's rather lost  its charm for me.'
592'You and me both.' Broklaw agreed, and hurried off to  organise the next stage of the embarkation as the incoming  shuttle grounded at last.
593I have to admit that the surge of relief I felt as I hurried up the  cargo ramp and heard the comforting clang of metal beneath  my boot soles once more left me almost giddy. Nevertheless I  couldn't shake a strong sense of foreboding which intensified  with every extra minute we remained on the pad, and  continued to hover by the open hatch as a steady stream of  Guardsmen and women made their way on board. Kasteen  joined me there after a while, her face pensive.
594'Looking for something?' she asked.
595'Hoping I don't see it.' I admitted. 'It'll take more than a bath  to see off the necrons if I'm any judge.' All the time we spoke  I kept an amplivisor trained on the edge of the complex,  dreading the sight of a flash of moving metal. Kasteen  nodded ruefully. 'Shame you couldn't blow up the portal,' she said. I echoed  the gesture.
596'Shame you never got the chance to blow up the gargant.' I  echoed. We looked at one another, the same thought  occurring to us both simultaneously, and went to find Captain
597
598Federer.
599'WE WERE GOING  to detonate it by vox pulse.' Federer  confirmed. He was a thin-faced, dark-haired man, whose  enthusiasm for problem-solving was matched only by his  lack of social skills. Rumour among the regiment had it that  he'd once aspired to become a tech-priest but been expelled  from the seminary for his morbid fascination with  pyrotechnics, and he certainly seemed to have an almost  instinctive understanding of the arcane technologies of the  combat engineer. If the rumours were true, the Adeptus's loss  was very definitely our gain.
600WE FOUND HIM  in the shuttle's main cargo bay fussing over the stowage of the small amount of equipment he'd been able to salvage, under the circumstances Kasteen had decided to abandon our vehicles and stores and use the space we saved to bring up another couple of platoons at a time. Riding back here would be hideously uncomfortable, but far better than still being around if the necrons stirred again.
601'So you could still set the charges off from here?' I asked, raising my voice slightly to carry over the babble of voices from the troopers beginning to file in to the echoing hold. A few of them had evidently been in a similar situation before, unfurling their bedrolls into improvised acceleration couches as they settled. Federer nodded. 'Oh yes. You'd just need a sufficiently powerful transmitter. You could even do it from orbit if you wished.'
602'That might be safer.' Kasteen suggested. 'After all, it's going to be a pretty big bang.'
603'Oh yes.' Federer's face lit up with what I can only describe as  unhealthy enthusiasm. 'Huge. Massive in fact. On the order of  gigatonnes.' His eyes took on something of a dreamy quality.  'We didn't place anything remotely that powerful.' Kasteen  said, looking vaguely stunned. 'We'd have blown ourselves to  pieces along with the gargant.' Federer nodded, his voice  taking on something of the quality of Logash discussing  ambulls.1
604'That was before the commissar flooded the mine with  promethium,' he explained. 'The liquid will have settled to the  bottom levels by now. That means the upper galleries would  be full of vapour. In effect you've created an FAE bomb  several kilometres wide.'2
605'Assuming the explosives you placed weren't washed away by  the flood.' I said. Federer shook his head.
606'We anchored them pretty firmly. We were expecting a  gargant to tread on them, don't forget. We allowed for  stresses in the region of…'
607'Never mind.' I said, cutting him off before he could get  properly started. Once enthused, as I knew from experience,  he was hard to bring back to the point. 'If you say it'll work  I'm sure it will.'
608'Oh yes,' he said, nodding eagerly.
609
6101 This is the last time Cain mentions the tech-priest in his account of these events. His subsequent career in  the Adeptus Mechanicus can best be described as unspectacular, rising to the rank of Magos without doing anything further to draw attention to himself. His last known assignment was at the Noctis Labyrinthus  mine complex on Mars.
6112 Fuel Air Explosive, a type of bomb which releases a volatile gas before detonation to magnify its power
612and area of effect.
613
614I  MUST CONFESS  that, despite the uneventful journey back to the orbiting starship, I didn't feel entirely safe until I heard the docking clamps engage at last and felt the reassuring solidity of the  Pure of Heart's  deck plating beneath my feet.  'You're back, then.' Durant greeted us as we arrived on the bridge. It was much as I remembered it from our last visit, except that the hololith was now showing a panoramic view of the snowscape outside the refinery. From the height and angle I judged that the pictcaster was mounted somewhere above the main hull of the last shuttle to leave that benighted place, the final few pickets withdrawing to the safety of its cargo hold even as I watched. The refinery complex still seemed as deserted as ever, but I kept an apprehensive eye on the distant line of structures nevertheless.
615'You seem pleasantly surprised.' I said. Durant made the almost-shrug I'd noticed before.
616'Yes, well. The Munitorium might have argued about our charter fee if we'd left you behind,' he said, a little too gruffly to have meant it.
617'Shuttle one preparing to lift, captain,' a junior officer called  from a lectern somewhere to our left, and a palpable air of  relief swept the whole chamber.
618'Good,' the captain said. 'We've been sitting next to this  damned planet so long I'm beginning to put down roots.' He  gestured to Mazarin, who was huddled over her workstation  with Federer, deep in discussion about something. 'Take us  out of orbit as soon as they dock.'
619'Aye aye, captain,' she responded, and hummed across to
620
621another console, where she busied herself with the rituals of  engine activation.
622'Better make it fast.' I said. As I'd feared, a glint of moving  metal had appeared among the refinery buildings, moving  rapidly towards the pictcaster. As it got closer I was able to  discern a squadron of speeders, each one with what looked  like the top half of a necron welded to it. All of them had a  heavy weapon apparently incorporated into their right arm,  and as I watched, dazzling green beams of malevolent energy  lanced out to strike the hull of the slowly-rising shuttle.  'They're scratching the paintwork!' Durant roared, outraged.  Truth to tell they were doing rather more than that, scoring  visible channels in the metal. They were a long way from  actually breaching it, shuttle hulls are sturdy to say the least,  but the fact that they were able to inflict any damage at all  spoke volumes for the power of the weapons they carried.  'They're going after the shuttle.' Kasteen said, her eyes on the  skimmers which began to rise after it, wheeling about the  slowly-climbing slab of metal like flies round a grox. They  were growing in number too, I noticed with a quiver of  unease, more and more of them rising to the join the swarm.  'They're not going to make it.' I said, alarmed. The pilot was  making what evasive manoeuvres he could, but the craft was  built for durability rather than agility, and several more of the  deadly beams struck home. It could only be a matter of  moments before something vital was hit…
623'Don't be too sure.' Durant said. A moment later the main  engines flared into life, vaporising any of the skimmers  unfortunate enough to be behind the craft in a burst of
624
625superheated plasma, and lifting it cleanly away on an escape  trajectory.
626'They're falling behind.' Mazarin confirmed, and the  projection obligingly rotated to show the remaining skimmers  tumbling aimlessly in the wake of the shuttle's passage. A  few moments later the image showed the reassuring refuge of  our docking bay, and everyone breathed an audible sigh of  relief. (Except for Mazarin, possibly, who may have had her  lungs augmetically replaced.)
627With our shuttle out of danger Durant had retuned the  hololith to the aerial view of the refinery complex which he'd  treated us to when we first made orbit.
628As he magnified the tangle of buildings and storage tanks,  now reassuringly far below us, my breath caught in my  throat. A glittering tide of moving metal was emerging from  the mouth of the mine, more warriors than I could count,  blurring into a single amorphous entity which flowed  between the buildings like flood water.
629'They've woken!' I gasped, a spasm of fear gripping my  bowels. They'd prevented the tide of promethium from  flooding their temple, Emperor knew how, which meant their  portal was probably still active…
630'Broklaw!' I yelled, blessing the hurry that had left the commbead still in my ear. 'Stand to! Prepare to receive boarders!'  Everyone looked at me as though I'd gone mad. 'They can  teleport, remember?' I snapped, and Kasteen nodded grimly.  'They can swim, too, by the look of it.'1
631
6321 More likely they simply waded through the flooded levels until they broke the surface.
633
634'Federer!' I called. 'Now would be a good time!' The sapper  grinned happily, exchanged a few more words with the  hovering tech-priest, and prodded a rune with his finger. All  eyes remained fixed on the cluster of buildings in the  hololith. Nothing seemed to be happening.
635'It didn't go off…' I began to say, then a gout of ice erupted  from the plain at the mouth of the valley. Mazarin did  something to enhance the clarity of the image, and in front of  our eyes a vast, growing crater spread to engulf the nearby  metal warriors. They tumbled into it like broken toys, more  and more of them as the ground crumbled away faster than  they could flee, and Federer punched the air as though he'd  just scored the winning goal of a scrumball match.
636'That would have seen off the gargant,' he said cheerfully.  'That it would.' I agreed, awestruck at the amount of  devastation he'd wrought. But that had only been the prelude.  Deep in the bowels of the pit a sudden flare of light erupted  as the promethium vapour trapped in the caverns below  ignited. A gout of flame fully a kilometre in height burst from  the rupturing ground and raced across the snowscape at the  speed of thought, melting the fleeing warriors in an instant,  throwing blazing fissures ahead of itself as it went.
637There were other explosions now too, the entire surface of the  valley erupting like pyroclasts, vaporised rock, ice, and  necrons forming a low, looming cloud riven with  thunderbolts as electrostatic discharges of incredible power  jumped between the particles. The refinery disappeared,  sliding into the hellish inferno below, and vanishing as  though it had never been…
638
639'Brace for impact!' Durant called out, as though this were just  a minor inconvenience, and the  Pure of Heart  was suddenly  picked up and shaken like a child's toy by the titanic  Shockwave as the very atmosphere of the planet bulged under  the force of the energies released. Even the crew grabbed for  handholds, and I found myself bracing Kasteen, who had  fallen back against me (something I had no complaints about  at all).
640'Just a minute.' Mazarin called, playing the controls in front  of her like the keyboard of a forte, and the shuddering  gradually ceased. She grinned again, and I began to suspect  she enjoyed the chance to push the limits of her engines.  'Lucky we were so high. If we'd been down where the  atmosphere's thicker it would have been a bit trickier.'
641'Is that it, then?' Kasteen asked, her eyes riveted on the scene  of destruction below. Even from orbit the dust cloud could
642still be seen staining half the planet, and in spite of all the  horrors I'd endured down there I couldn't help feeling a spark  of regret at the scar across the face of the pristine world I'd  first looked upon from this very spot a few short days before.  'I hope so.' I said, although the twist of apprehension in my  gut didn't fade entirely until we'd dropped back into the warp  and were well on our way back to the safety of the Imperium.  Although, of course, where the necrons are concerned  nowhere is ever remotely safe, as we now know to our cost.  At least that particular nest appears to have been dealt with,  even if no one can ever go back to check, the first thing  Amberley did when my message finally caught up with her  was to place the whole system under Inquisitorial
643
644quarantine. 1
645If there was one bright spot in the whole affair it was that I  got to spend a little free time with her, after the interminable  debriefing sessions were finally over and she'd finished going  round every trooper in the regiment who'd seen or heard  anything of what we'd found on that miserable iceball and  threatened them with the wrath of the Emperor if they ever  breathed a word of it again. Or the wrath of the Inquisition,  which, trust me, is even scarier.
646AMBERLEY WAS IN  an uncharacteristically sombre mood on the last night we spent together, the occasional table in her hotel suite covered in data-slates as she collated all the
647witness reports, and looked up with a wan smile as I entered.  'You were damn lucky,' she said, the blue of her eyes clouded  with fatigue. I nodded, and stood aside to let the room  servitor trundle in with a tray of food. She saw it and raised  an eyebrow.
648'I took the liberty of ordering.' I said. 'You seemed busy.'  'Thank you,' she said, stretching, so I wandered across and  massaged some of the tension from her shoulders as the  servitor set out dishes and cutlery on the dining table. She  smiled as the covers came off.
649'Ackenberry sorbet. One of my favourites.' That hadn't been  hard to remember, so I smiled in return.
650'You did say you'd live on the stuff if you could the last time  you ordered it.'
651
6521 Subsequent examination of the site showed no signs of an active necron presence, although if anything
653for one would not be at all keen to start digging holes to find out for sure.was left of their installation it would have been buried far too deeply to have left much trace of anything. I
654
655'So I did.' The smile widened as the main course came into
656view. 'What's that?'
657'Ambull steak.' I said. 'I think they owe me that much.'
658[Cain'since it only covers personal matters of no interest to anyone s narrative continues for several more paragraphs, but
659else I've chosen to end this extract from the archive right here]