Devourer - Joe Parrino Read online

  The creature struggled, desperate and panicking. Something tore in the hinges of its jaw and Anrakyr continued to pull. The head came apart, ripped down the centre. Wriggling worms fell from within and more acid-blood sheeted over the overlord. But there was no respite, yet more creatures already careening into the necrons.

  More of the scrabbling, blade-armed organisms sprinted forward, jumping at the last second. Anrakyr skewered one of the mewling beasts, sending ichor erupting out of its chitin-armoured back along with his spearhead.

  Great creatures, amongst the few tyranids that seemed capable of independent thought and decision making, marshalled their lesser brethren. They stood amidst the swarm, smaller creatures breaking around them like a sea of flesh and bone.

  Destroyers targeted these, bracketing the great beasts with concentrated fire, catechisms of hate spewing from their mouth speakers. The nihilistic necrons cast their spite towards the largest synapse monsters. Armenhorlal led the destroyers.

  Beetles fired from flowing schools of tyranids bounced off their necrodermis, smacking with chitinous crunches from the metal. One of the beetles hit something vital in a destroyer, chewing through the necron’s spine. Critical explosive failure followed as the drive skimmer core separated from the commanding section. Shards of metal studded out, thudding into the other destroyers floating around it. Incapable of experiencing pain, none of them even noticed, continuing to fire into the advancing swarms.

  A monolith exploded in the sky. Green lightning expanded in a ball, eliminating the flapping tyranids that had proven the construct’s doom. Anrakyr watched it all, noting everything, watching the ebb and flow of the battlefield. His warriors were holding, but barely. While their metal bodies and tireless forms were proof against much of the tyranids’ wiles, they were outnumbered. With every passing second warriors were being pulled beneath shrieking waves of dead-eyed horrors.

  Warriors to either side of Anrakyr were torn down by claws and, in horrific squeals of stressed metal, rent asunder. Some stood seconds later, green lightning playing about their joints as the metal that formed their bodies repaired itself. But most never stood back up, buried under a wave of flesh, reanimation protocols unable to activate.

  The tide of tyranids receded. Blasted creatures that towered over their lesser kin locked eyes with Anrakyr, and then scuttled back into their ranks. The eyes were appraising, considering. Anrakyr met them.

  Marks of green light flickered over the larger creatures’ heads as deathmarks stained their targets.

  A new sound arose alongside the shrieking and baying of the tyranids, a deep whuffling noise, followed by rhythmic shudders of earth and stone. Rock cascaded down from the sides of the defile, crunching into unwitting necron warriors. Dust rose and pebbles bounced and danced beneath Anrakyr’s feet.

  A number of hulking tyranids came screaming down the defile. Their throats were massive sacs of swinging flesh. The creatures stood nearly as tall as the ravine itself. Anrakyr struggled to divine their purpose, what the tyranids meant to accomplish. He understood, seconds before it was too late.

  ‘Block the mouth! Kill the creatures!’ he screamed.

  The remaining three monoliths arced down, anti-gravitic fields straining as they crashed into the ground, blocking the monstrous beasts from Anrakyr’s view.

  A great retching sound filtered through to the necrons, then a steaming hiss as viscous liquid spilled forth. Smoke began to rise from the monoliths almost immediately. A tide of bio-acid spilled around the flanks of the slab-sided constructs, filling the defile in a great, hissing flood. Entire phalanxes of warriors dissolved beneath the slurry, denuded down to nothing.

  Displacement field shielding erupted belatedly as crypteks stepped into the air and added the weight of their science to the conflict. More and more were streaming away from the digging project to reinforce Anrakyr’s failing line.

  With the monoliths down, the skies were left unprotected. Spores fell from overhead bio-ships, landing behind the necron line. They erupted with a sickening vent of gases and the reek of scorched flesh. Tyranid warrior forms made straight for the necron line.

  ‘Retreat!’ Anrakyr rumbled. Synaptic relay processes enacted in the dull minds of the embattled warriors. More autonomous constructs, necrons that had survived biotransference with a degree of sense and sanity intact, began to stream back.

  The mindless warriors retreated in slow lockstep. Many were lost beneath the slavering claws of the tyranids, pulled down and gnawed upon by mindless beasts that were yet to realise there was no bio-matter to be had from them. The ripped-fabric sound of gauss weaponry grew ragged and inconstant.

  A necron retreat was a measured thing, devoid of panic and mindless fear. While Anrakyr’s higher processes may have been capable of approximating such biological responses, he had long since disabled any debilitating emotions.

  Instead, the Pyrrhian overlord was filled with rage. His eyes flared while the axe blades on his head quivered with subtle vibration. Lights pulsed all up and down his chassis. Anrakyr raised his left hand, fingers outstretched into the gesture of hesitant decision and anticipation. His body deactivated as power was siphoned to a small weapon embedded in his wrist.

  Sentient necrons wailed in sudden terror of what was to come, while the triarch praetorians stationed themselves before the Traveller. Green lightning played about his gauntlet. Then a tiny object, a sliver of Anrakyr’s own necrodermis, launched from his wrist. Part of Anrakyr, a tiny fragment of all that he was, flew with it, leaving a curious buzzing sound in its wake.

  Reality itself shrieked as it was violated. But this was no phenomenon born of the warp, like the unearthly powers of the eldar or a crude human starship travelling beyond celestial bodies. This was necron science at its finest, the laws of physics and the material universe exploited to their utmost.

  The tachyon arrow gathered mass to it like a thunderclap, manufacturing matter from the air in an alchemical transmutation. It hit the tyranid front, slicing through several of the larger creatures before impacting with the ground. The world broke. Rocks fell. Tyranids died in their hundreds. His own warriors were ripped to pieces or buried beneath tonnes of rock.

  Anrakyr saw none of it. His systems were momentarily offline, drained of all power by the needs of the tachyon arrow. They rebooted as he was being thrown back by the blast.

  Something felt wrong. Something always felt wrong after the tachyon arrow’s deployment. It was a last resort weapon, a choice only made in the direst of circumstances.

  A fraction of him was missing, nearly as intangible as the sliver of his necrodermis used to form the tachyon arrow. A fraction of what made Anrakyr the Traveller, of what drove the great necron overlord, had been denuded away and lost to oblivion. It ached, the void, but he could not identify what was gone.

  The prospect of losing himself terrified Anrakyr, the idea that he might lose his personality, become as blunt and worthless as Armenhorlal, or, horror of horrors, a lobotomised drone like one of the warriors that marched in his legions.

  Dust drifted, while tyranids hesitantly crawled over the gently glowing fused-glass wreckage of the tachyon arrow impact. They sickened rapidly, broken by the unnatural radiation leaking from the site.

  But more were pouring across, hesitant and confused. The tyranids seemed aimless, as if the guiding intelligence that governed them had been weakened. It was a start.

  Chapter Six

  Alien organisms whirled and left Valnyr’s fleeing party alone, focusing on the larger threat of the flayer-touched. Whatever intelligence motivated them, whatever shreds of cunning and cleverness worked away behind their dead-black eyes, knew enough to recognise a greater menace. The creatures shrieked as one and moved forward, as eerily coordinated as the marching necrons.

  Flesh hit metal as the party left the tide behind them. More alien creatures were shrieking their way into t
he fray, some fanning out to infiltrate deeper into the tomb world.

  A scattered few of the beasts followed, hissing and drooling. Light stabbed from Valnyr’s staff, obliterating the aliens. Her vision dimmed as her internal power source was temporarily drained.

  Then they were moving again. Two of her lychguard peeled off at a narrowing in the processional. Her last sight of them, peering over her shoulder, was of the two hunched necrons crouched with shields and warscythes ready.

  The surroundings gradually grew more ornate the deeper into the tomb world they fled. The walls were no longer cut obsidian, but burnished metal as well. The carvings moved with clockwork precision, telling of the glories of the Kehlrantyr Dynasts.

  One room displayed a colossal hologrammatic galactic map. Every tomb world was marked and spun about in its orbit. Through some lost science, the map updated in reaction to events out in the universe. Valnyr saw how far things had come in sixty million cycles, how many tomb worlds had been lost, how decrepit the once great empire looked.

  Massive gates of metal barred their way, inscribed with gently glowing runes describing the names and deeds of all of Kehlrantyr’s Dynasts stretching back to the Time of Flesh and the emergence of the necrontyr. The gates loomed large, towering into the darkness. Time-etched facial features showed how the Dynasts had once looked.

  Green light flashed from the open mouth of the founding Dynast, scanning them from feet to head. Grinding noises sounded from deep within, followed by a rhythmic clunking. The scarabs ceased their scuttling and flowed into the gate’s joints as it rumbled open, splitting down the middle of the largest carved face. Light shone from the revealed chamber, the largest they had yet seen.

  Valnyr was assailed by memories of the time she had spent sealed away in the ancient city-within-a-city. Forbidden to the masses of necrontyr – and later necrons – only the favoured of the Dynasts were allowed to walk its depths.

  She had once conducted experiments within. Yet while her status within the hierarchy of the tomb world had been high, it had not been enough to warrant her entombment within the rarefied depths of the dynastic palace chambers. Even despite her mandate to awaken the Dynasts, she was forced to suffer the processional as a symbolic reminder that she lacked the former genetic grandeur and the splendour of a dynastic name.

  The group entered through the yawning portal. It slowly slammed shut behind them, cutting off the shrieking xenos and the awakening tomb world.

  The necron warrior phalanxes continued marching backwards in lockstep. The defile narrowed as they retreated from the tyranids. Rock walls crowded in, dun-coloured and stratified, testament to the ages that had passed while the Kehlrantyri slept. Soon their backs were to a rock wall, cut and carved by working necrons and their constructs. Already Anrakyr could see threads of obsidian lacing through the stone of Kehlrantyr’s crust.

  Anrakyr left the battlefield front behind, sweeping towards the furiously working crypteks. ‘Where are my legions?’ he demanded.

  ‘We are still digging, my lord,’ the lead cryptek answered.

  ‘The tyranids come on my heels. They will be running over us soon. “Still digging” is not an acceptable answer.’

  The lead cryptek bowed, knowing better than to respond further, too wise to offer excuses to Anrakyr the Traveller.

  A green flash split the sky and an immense noise rumbled through the cloud layers. Tyranid vessels, sickening blends of meat with mechanical purpose, erupted into expanding clouds of flame. Internal combustion gases must have been touched off. The green flash signified something deeper to Anrakyr. His ship, his fleet, dying in the void, destroyed by the tyranids. A setback such as he had never before faced. How many resources had he just lost? How far had this set back his dreams of a reunified Necron Empire?

  His ships, his legacy, destroyed. He swayed on his feet, internal processes struggling to compensate for the sudden surge of negative emotion. Dampeners kicked in, settling his psyche. They were burst nanoseconds later, drowned beneath an ocean of spiralling darkness. Desperation spooled in Anrakyr’s central processes. It gnawed at him, ticking away at his thoughts. A screaming whine built in his vocalisers, a petulant hiss of escaping sound vibrations. Anger and rage joined the sound. Behind it lurked the certainty that some core aspect of himself was missing, shed along with the tachyon arrow.

  Personality, memory, the knowledge that some indefinable portion of himself was gone, shivered at his centre. This was the true reason why he rarely fired that weapon, though its efficacy was undeniable. Anrakyr had contemplated mounting it on one of his subordinates in the past, but could not bring himself to place such a massive level of trust in another being.

  Intelligent necrons were sent scrambling, redoubling their efforts at an unspoken command. None wished to stand before the Traveller now. None wished to become the object of his wrath. They would rather face the tyranids.

  Chapter Seven

  A calm machine voice broadcast across the Golden Promise as violent tremors afflicted the venerable frigate. ‘Stand by to repel boarders,’ it stated, repeating every thirty seconds.

  Red lights and alarm klaxons flashed across the bridge. Servitors mumbled damage reports and sparks showered from blown-out consoles, broken by feedback and sympathetic damage.

  Jatiel’s warriors stood with weapons ready and girded their souls for imminent conflict.

  The walls of the spaceship, hidden by paintings of grand Naval warfare, popped open on steam-driven hinges. Shotguns and low-beam lasweapons waited, shiny and wrapped in plastek. They had never been called upon before, still sitting pristine in their original packaging.

  Non-essential crew were gearing up, grabbing reinforced armour and assorted weaponry. Ratings brought rifles to enthroned officers, who were engrossed in the battle that they still fought, in order to destroy as many of the tyranid boarding pods as they could before they could breach the Golden Promise’s hull.

  ‘Your gunnery crews have reaped a fearsome toll on the aliens,’ said Jatiel. ‘That is a worthy achievement. You have my compliments, shipmaster. We could not have asked for more.’

  Korbel accepted the praise stoically. Her face was pale and etched with stress. ‘It has been an honour, sergeant,’ she said. Finality undercut every word.

  Jatiel knew that the situation was dire. He could see it on every one of the screens within the bridge. The Golden Promise’s primary batteries were still culling the tyranids that reached for them, but the swarm was everywhere. Point defence guns, smaller turrets mounted on the hull, spat at approaching tyranid organisms.

  His hearts pounded, pulse beating behind his eyes. It formed almost a migraine, a painful pressure that mounted and mounted. Four drums thrummed in time with the beats of his hearts. His mouth was dry and yet thick with acidic drool, the prospect of battle bringing the Red Thirst to the fore.

  His warriors, all four, watched the oculus screens. Emudor spotted it first. ‘They will break through amidships,’ the Space Marine calmly announced over the inter-squad link.

  The ship endured a manic bout of shaking. Gravity generators failed and the mortal crew locked themselves into their seats. Jatiel watched them shoot nervous glances towards the massive adamantine doors that guarded the bridge.

  ‘Shipmaster,’ Jatiel said. He cocked his bolter. ‘We will repel the xenos from this vessel.’ His words were not impassioned. They were delivered with a resigned tone. ‘Cassuen, you will guard the bridge.’

  The young Blood Angel nodded his assent, the gesture nearly imperceptible.

  ‘Shipmaster Korbel, die well,’ Jatiel said.

  The high tombs of Kehlrantyr’s ruling Dynasts displayed the forgotten glory of necron civilisation. The decay so evident throughout the rest of the tomb world was nowhere to be found here. It was pristine. Perfect.

  Gold warred with obsidian and other precious substances. Rippling curtain
s of chained metal partitioned the great chambers, forming complex runes announcing the majesty of the sleeping occupants. Glorious sights, beautiful reminders of the technology and mastery her race possessed, but rendered mundane by their familiarity.

  Necron constructs swarmed everywhere, filling the tomb in massive numbers. Scuttling motion broke the great silence as the mechanical creatures conducted their tasks with mindless diligence. Gravitic pulses removed accumulated dust while swooping scarabs snatched the offending particles from the air.

  The chamber itself was long, shaped like the runic symbol for Kehlrantyr, an announcement of mastery that was not lost on Valnyr. Complex and perfect, the same symbol adorned her chassis and those of her lychguard, making the same declaration of ownership that this chamber did. The message was clear: they belonged to Kehlrantyr, which, in turn, served at the pleasure of the ruling Dynasts.

  One long corridor with many branches swooped out to either side. Each led to the resting niche of the ruling family. Subtle green lights ran through the walls, flashing in arrangements of runes that spelled the planet’s history. Gaps showed where devotionary words had once spoken the praises of the c’tan. They had been excised, but not neatly.

  The lesser chambers crowded towards the gate, the most easily accessed. Carved first, when the tomb world had still served as a necropolis to house the truly dead, these chambers lacked the impossible artistry of the others. They betrayed an earlier, cruder age. These were the tombs of the false necrons, the beings whose personalities had only been approximated with artificial intelligences, rather than converted. Advanced programs mimicked them as they were said to have been. Bodies had been constructed, made of the same living metal that Valnyr and the true necrons used for motive functions. But no real intelligence motivated them. Only artificiality acted behind the eyes.