305 – Ahhotekh
Ahhotekh paused for all of a nanosecond as a strange new flood of data reached his core matrices and leaned forward slightly. Verify, the command snapped out, and he rechecked the sensor arrays, then leaned back when the same result came back.
The ship he’d come all this way to hunt down was … multiplying. Where there was but a single sizable ship a moment ago, now a dozen loomed next to each other, and in another second, their numbers doubled, then tripled and showed no sign of stopping.
Ahhotekh would have frowned if he still could, but his static metal mask of necrodermis didn’t allow for it. He tapped his finger on the armrest of his throne, the metallic clang carrying far across the cavernous command deck. It was like watching an organic disease under a microscope, its cells splitting and multiplying at a rate that was almost astonishing, even for him.
He fed the data to his Crypteks and had them analyse it. He himself was meant for command, not for churning and optimising data. He received a workable theory a few seconds later, correlated by an extensive set of data gathered in previous engagements, both against his own ships and the organic menace this ship had seemingly come to exterminate.
The ship ate organic biomass, both as fuel and to ‘reproduce’. Splitting itself and rapidly multiplying like some single-celled organism must have been a defence mechanism of sorts. Which meant it was exhausting both its fuel reserves, ammunition, and the energy it would have used to heal itself by multiplying. It was a gamble, but perhaps the most logical step it could have taken. Hunting down a thousand organic ships would be a hassle if they fled in different directions.
His grip tightened on his armrest before he forcefully relaxed himself. A hassle. A single alien ship was about to make him chase it around for what might turn out to be stellar months if he wanted to exterminate all of its offspring. A hassle. When he was going into battle aboard the Star Reaper. Absolutely inexcusable. It would be utterly humiliating, and worse, a lengthy deployment would strain both him and his Crypteks beyond their limits.
He couldn’t allow it to happen under any circumstances. They couldn’t be allowed to run and flee. Did this strange kilometre-long amoeba-like creature somehow know that his fleet was severely understaffed? Did it know that some of its offspring might actually escape his wrath if enough of them were fleeing in every direction and kept him occupied for long enough to exhaust him? It felt too unrealistic, which meant it had to be targeted. It had to be a plot; a rival Dynasty must have created that abominable creature just to humiliate him. To exhaust him.
Most Necron Dynasties would hold themselves to their codes of honour, but Ahhotekh knew there were some who only wielded words like ‘honour’ as weapons whenever it suited them, and then discarded them the next moment when it no longer served their goals to be honourable. The Chernovok Dynasty was a prime example, the ancient, hated rivals of the Suhbekhar, and the most likely cause of the Crimson Scythe’s current maddened state.
He snapped out another analysis order, and the result came back as an undeniable ‘yes’. It wasn’t a natural creature; it was too perfectly designed, too symmetric; it was almost certainly an artificial creation. A living biological weapon, aimed right at him … perhaps it wasn’t the Chernovok after all. Necron were extremely unlikely to use organic weaponry; that was more up the alley of their ancient foes, the Old Ones. But the last of them had been slain in the War in Heaven sixty million years ago.
A contingency, perhaps? A final unfinished weapon worked upon by an Old One before its death and finished by one of their creations? Either the Krorks or the Aeldari could have succeeded with enough time and surviving instructions. Of course, they would unleash it upon the Suhbekhar. Even sixty million years couldn’t wipe away the many defeats they had lavished upon them under the Crimson Scythe’s command. Of course, they would find the thought of a crippled Suhbekhar Dynasty under a weakened Regent’s command an irresistibly tempting target. It was only logical to strike at your enemies when they were weakened. He would have done the same in their shoes.
Ahhotekh relaxed back into his throne, his stress and fury fading in favour of vicious focus and more than a bit of vindictive thrill. They thought him a foe worth eliminating before he grew strong enough. A threat great enough that they sent some ancient weapon from their long-dead masters at him. It mollified him somewhat. That made all these humiliations he’s faced much more palatable. Even the Crimson Scythe had suffered defeats against the Old Ones and their mighty weapons of war.
Analytic reports streamed into his mind, colossal amounts of data being compressed into a more digestible form by his Crypteks. The enemy wasn’t fleeing; the now hundreds-strong fleet of organic warships spread out, but they weren’t scattering. They weren’t advancing towards his fleet either. Just … waiting. Good. Good. A trap. He wasn’t sure what form it would take, but he had seen more battles and wars than some species in their entire existence. He knew a trap when he saw one. It was obvious, which in turn made him suspect that no one was actually commanding this bio-weapon; they had just let it loose and pointed it towards his holdings. Or maybe it was some inexperienced Aeldari seer stumped by their inability to perceive the Star Reaper in any of the futures they saw.
Time crawled by, and then they were finally in range. “Activate the Sepulchre. Engage the Energy Drain, focus it on the smaller ships for now.”
He didn’t place much hope in the Sepulchre; it was a weapon designed to make the rabble and weaklings among an enemy force rendered harmless. It released an omnidirectional field of psychic energy that assaulted mortals' minds. Anyone weak of will would be consumed by visions of horror and thrown into a destructive berserk rage aboard the targeted ship, often causing riots or even outright sabotage. The records stated it was also statistically proven to diminish the combat capabilities of even powerful wielders of the Empyrean, so it wouldn’t be a waste of energy to keep it powered even if the enemy had no such rabble onboard the ship for the Sepulchre to latch onto and compromise.
As for the Energy Drain? It was a massive weapon capable of siphoning energy from hostile ships, leaving them as lifeless husks floating in place. It worked equally well against the Aeldari’s psychic technology and the Krork's war machines, or even other Necron warships. He had no previous record of it being used on a purely organic foe, so he wasn’t sure how effective it would be either.
Not that it mattered. Particle Whips had been recorded to be able to wound the mother-ship, and nearly half of his ships had one or more of those potent anti-matter weapons onboard. The analytics also showed that the ship couldn’t fire its weapons while it was being assaulted by Lightning Arcs.
The ship had to resort to using large-scale Empyrean channelling to escape the Lightning Arcs during the first engagement. Would it be able to replicate that feat while under the assault of the Sepulchre’s effects? It demanded to be tested, either way, a dozen plans began to form within the ancient mind of the Regent, each growing more defined with the constant inflow of reports and data about his enemy.
“Begin charging the Star Pulse Generators, wait for my signal,” Ahhotekh ordered, already feeling the thrum of energy flow into the massive superweapon. Only Tomb Ships and their primary escorts, the Scythe Class Harvest Ships, had these magnificent pieces of Necron technology mounted upon them. The name was quite apt, in his opinion, since for an enemy to survive its assault, they would have to be able to withstand the direct impact of a massive solar flare.
A single Star Pulse Generator could eradicate a smaller enemy armada all by itself and cripple the fleets of more advanced lesser species. If he were to assume this foe to be a final weapon of the Old Ones, he could hold nothing back. Six of his ships had a Star Pulse Generator, the most powerful of which sat on his own ship. He wasn’t pressed for energy, not with a Greater C’Tan shard of the Burning One serving as the primary energy source of the Star Reaper.
“Give me a targeting solution for the Particle Whips, aim half of them at the mother ship and spread out the rest, two for each smaller ship.” He leaned back, the targeting array pinging in his mind a moment later. He had to see how tough those lesser ships were. He waited until they reached optimal distance, ignoring the primitive bio-plasma lances and fissile warheads flying towards his ships. “Particle Whips, Fire.”
He tapped his fingers, a part of his mind watching the visual sensor feedback while a much larger fragment poured over the constant inflow of data. He watched the antimatter lances flash through the void and slam into the ships. The smaller ones were utterly obliterated by the resulting explosion, regular matter and antimatter meeting in a cataclysmic blast as they annihilated each other, releasing a massive shockwave of energy.
That was fine. Expected, even. What was not expected was the seven Particle Whips lunging at the mother-ship to explode prematurely. Two detonated hundreds of kilometres away, and the last one was a mere three kilometres from the target. Chaff, they must have thrown up a cloud of chaff faster than his sensors could catch, perfectly positioned to be in the path of the antimatter lances. The same lances that flew at relativistic speeds. Fascinating.
“Lightning Arcs, fire at will at the lesser ships,” Ahhotekh ordered, his focus staying on the mother-ship. “Scythe-4, fire the Star Pulse Generator. Scythe-5, prepare to follow up with yours if the enemy fleet survives.”
He needed to get rid of the chaff first. The mother-ship was the only true danger; the rest wouldn’t prove much of a threat unless he allowed them to unleash their weapons on his fleet with impunity. With the enemy’s aversion to being economical with their energy reserves, some of their smaller ships might have their shields overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of attacks contained in that barrage. Not the Star Reaper, though; a battle of attrition was not something he had to fear with a C’tan fuelling his ship with nigh-infinite energy.
The weapon fired not a second later, an expanding wave of destructive plasma washing over the Necron ships and racing towards the enemy fleet. From what he saw, only the mothership had an energy shield, and the smaller ones relied on a tough, regenerating hull combined with innumerable point defence turrets. Perhaps suitable for engagements when they only had lesser species as foes with their primitive weapons, but against the might of Necron weaponry?
The power of a star crashed into them, condensed, energised and wrathful plasma moving unperturbed by the rapidly firing turrets and latching onto the hulls. No regeneration would be good enough to withstand that, and the sheer heat combined with the destructive energy infused into the plasma would overcome any regular material, no matter how tough or durable.
Just to be certain, he sent the signal for Scythe-5 to fire its own Star Pulse Generator just to make sure the sizable mass of alien organic ships was little more than space debris. His focus remained on the mothership, where his sensors detected a sudden and large spike of Empyrean energy bleeding into reality. It was as if a massive yet invisible sphere was covering the mother-ship and the nearest few dozen lesser ships under its aegis. Telekinesis? It had to be; space or mass manipulation would have been picked up by his sensors. That mothership must have had either an entire cadre of Aeldari psykers onboard, or some arcane structure that empowered the bio-weapon’s own capability to channel the foul energies of that unnatural dimension.
The way the follow-up pulse of kinetic energy that blasted the plasma away from the mother-ship seemed almost flippant. Like it was a blow delivered with a careless flick of the wrist. He could almost feel the mockery in it.
If he still had lungs, he would have taken a calming breath. Mockery. As if it were him who deserved mockery after he obliterated hundreds of his enemy’s ships within the first minute of their battle. Foolish.
“Particle Whips, focus fire on the mother-ship, ignore the rest,” Ahhotekh ordered, his emotionless metallic voice ringing through the command deck. It was mere theatrics, as he’d sent the command ahead in a much more concise form than a vocal order the moment before he started speaking. “Fire the remaining Star Pulse Generators, staggered.”
The unspoken order included a detailed summary of the firing sequence he wanted, staggering each pulse far enough from the last so that they wouldn’t interfere with each other. He wanted to see how powerful that psychic creature truly was while suppressed by the Sepulchre. He needed to find its limits, then exploit them. The mother-ship still hadn’t used that Empyrean energy beam in this engagement, and according to previous data, it could tear through the energy shields of even a Scythe Class Harvest Ship. It might also be able to hurt the Star Reaper. That was a worrying thought, but risk was a given part of war, and this was war. He wasn’t sure with whom, but it was war. Someone had come here, intending to harm his dynasty, to destroy what was his.
Oh, he would give them war indeed. He would show them what happened to those who forgot the might of the Suhbekhar Dynasty.