Within the under-hive Necron tomb, Heydrich likewise looked down at the data-slate in his hands.
As for the war raging in the hive, he was aware of it, yet awareness alone was useless—he possessed no power to scour a planet clean.
He was but a frail human; though he could tear a Helbrute apart with his bare hands, he could not single-handedly carve his way through an entire battlefield.
And so he had to borrow some other power—the space Necrons, for instance.
“Great sage, you may not be entirely clear on what to do next.
The program-cores of the space Necrons are extraordinarily complex; not even that Fabricator-General on Mars could crack one open.”
Glancing at Heydrich before him, Akel could not help but offer a word of caution.
Heydrich had given a rough account of his own history—how, in the 30K era, he had been escorting an excavated space Necron core, only to fall into the Warp.
When he emerged, ten thousand years had passed and everything had changed beyond recognition, so it was only natural that he held many distorted notions about the Imperium.
Take these space Necrons, for example: they had only awakened in great numbers within the last thousand years or so.
“Little one, do you know how many Primarchs the Emperor created?”
?
Hearing Heydrich’s words, everyone—Akel included—froze.
But Heydrich gave them no time to ponder, pressing on instead:
“And do you know there was one who vanished…..”
“We already know!!!”
At that very moment Akel reacted with remarkable speed, cutting straight off Heydrich’s incantation.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk…”
Hearing this, Heydrich shook his head helplessly; it had spoiled his plan to share a little secret.
Since the other party was unwilling to listen, Heydrich would say no more of it.
He then laid his hand upon that ornate sarcophagus, and immediately his expression turned very strange.
“Trazyn….”
The Path of Enigmata could rewrite the settings of the written word, so he could still pry out a glimpse or two of these technological contraptions.
Then Heydrich rather lost his composure, for he discovered that the energy core of this Tomb World seemed to have been carried off by Trazyn.
That was precisely what had left the core-less Tomb World to be eroded utterly away by time, which was why their entry into it had been so very easy.
“This fellow has another good thing—a pocket dimension.”
Rummaging this way and that, Heydrich lifted a peculiar device from beside the Phaeron within the sarcophagus.
It was an enormous pocket dimension—and Trazyn, astonishingly, had not taken this one.
“This Necron Phaeron has slumbered far too long as well, so it’s about time….”
At this very moment Heydrich began to activate the power of his Path, attempting to invade the memory-core of this Phaeron, who could practically be said to be sleeping like the dead.
Had it been a living being with a soul, or a Necron Phaeron with a complete consciousness, Heydrich could never have altered it directly—but this one clearly fell into neither category.
“You are loyal to the Imperium of Man, you are the inheritors of the planet Kuent…..”
As Heydrich attempted to fabricate the memory-code, the body of the Phaeron before him trembled ceaselessly.
Bang!!!
But soon, accompanied by a crisp explosive sound, Heydrich withdrew the power of his Path.
“Still no good—it’s far too complex in there.
The Path of Enigmata alone isn’t quite enough.”
A trace of helplessness crept across Heydrich’s face.
To directly rewrite this fellow’s complete consciousness, the Path of Enigmata alone fell a little short; after all, the Path of Enigmata was neither Harmony nor Erudition.
So almost in the very next instant, Heydrich simply crushed this Necron Phaeron’s core in his grip.
?
Seeing Heydrich’s action, the whole group tilted their heads in slight confusion.
Then Heydrich directly took up the cores of every Necron Warrior and Canoptek Scarab in this tomb and began rewriting their underlying code.
“Loyal to your Necron Phaeron.”
As he worked, he then directly reactivated all the remaining units still capable of movement.
And in that very instant, Heydrich’s body underwent another transformation.
The Alpharius of before vanished, replaced by that very Necron Overlord who had been lying there.
From this moment on, he would play the part of the Necron Phaeron!!!
Click-clack!!!
Witnessing this, everyone save Akel almost out of sheer bodily instinct chambered a round in their weapons.
“Stop!!!”
In that instant Akel restrained his battle-brothers, and instead knelt devoutly upon the ground, gazing up at Heydrich.
“Great sage, has your mastery of our Alpharius-given power reached such a degree?”
What the Alpharius were most renowned for was infiltration; their gene-seed carried the innate functions of mimicry and cognitive interference.
Yet at most he could disguise himself as a Chaos Space Marine—whereas the present Elder could even imitate a xenos.
What manner of strength and forceful vigor was this, sheesh!!!
“Then let us directly activate the entire tomb.”
Though Trazyn had carried off the main core, there remained here a slightly more cautiously hidden backup.
These higher Necrons with complete consciousnesses could not preserve their selves under the lowest tier of energy supply, but for those Necron Warriors and Scarabs it was just right.
So now Heydrich used the power of Enigmata to rewrite the underlying code of those space Necron Warriors, then drew upon the special ability of his fabricated Alpharius gene-seed, along with a bit of his own reckoning and the assistance of Enigmata.
He thereby successfully replaced this Necron Phaeron’s position within these Necrons’ underlying code, so that he could now command them.
The pocket-dimension device grew faintly hot in his palm, as though answering some command-echo that had crossed sixty million years.
He was well aware he was playing with fire—layering his own loyalty-code atop the underlying protocols of the space Necrons using the power of the Path of Enigmata.
The sheer absurdity of the operation was roughly equivalent to writing a brand-new set of permission protocols in Classical Chinese inside a supercomputer’s operating system—and somehow having it actually run.
And now what he had to do was drag every metal frame in this tomb still capable of moving out of here and hurl them into that endlessly bleeding meat-grinder of a hive.
But….
Click-clack!!!
In the very instant Heydrich moved, the surrounding space suddenly split open.
Then several more sarcophagi descended, and at the sight Heydrich’s brow gave a twitch.
“Necron Overlords hidden within rifts in space?”
Seeing those several Necron Overlords, Heydrich felt his scalp prickle for a moment.
This was something he had not anticipated; clearly Trazyn’s technique was masterful, and he himself had, in the end, fallen one move short.
At the same time several Astartes and Irena almost simultaneously drew their weapons and trained them on the several sarcophagi, whereupon several towering space Necrons stepped out from within.
Only they did not attack; instead their gazes swept rapidly across the several weapon-bearing Astartes.
Then those eerie green eyes began to flicker wildly—clearly they too had fallen into confusion.
Soon a look of envy surfaced upon them, which left everyone but Heydrich utterly baffled.
“Your skin is so lovely.
Might I ask where you bought it?”
?
??
???
Watching the space Necrons react like this, everyone but Heydrich was left dumbfounded.
Only he had the urge to bury his face in his hands.
“Oh hell, the Flayer Virus.
Never mind, it’s no big deal—the plan is what matters.”
Muttering a couple of lines in his heart, Heydrich then spoke in a tone of righteous solemnity:
“The laws of the Imperium forbid the buying and selling of skin and organs.”
Hearing Heydrich’s words, the eyes of the several Necron Overlords flickered with disappointment.
“At present our sacred planet is being invaded by filthy xenos and heretics, and so……”
Looking at the Necron Overlords before him, Heydrich was a little uncertain whether the command he had just written had truly transmitted to them, yet he pressed on, gritting his teeth somewhat:
“Our sacred Imperium is under attack, and so…..!”
As Heydrich’s impassioned voice fell, all the Necron Overlords seemed to have something activated within them.
The green light flickering uncertainly in their eye-sockets abruptly steadied, becoming a unified, rhythmic pulse, as though some ancient protocol had finally completed its handshake.
The Overlord at their head bowed its head and, in that synthetic voice peculiar to space Necrons—utterly devoid of tonal variation—slowly spoke, every syllable like metal plates grinding against one another, yet the content it uttered left every Imperial subject present convinced they might have rattled their brains loose in the earlier explosion: “For the Emperor, drive out these filthy xenos and heretics one and all, and restore to Kuent an azure and crystalline tomorrow!!!”
This time, before Heydrich had even finished his words, the whole crowd of Necron Overlords grew instantly excited.
As for the few others present at this moment……
ʕʘ̅͜ʘ̅ʔ
____
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🔥 New history: A Martial Arts Master Will Never Be Humiliated
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