Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

Rahkoz, the newly ascended Royal Cryptek of the Suhbekhar Dynasty, stared at the unavoidable result of his handiwork. A quarter of the command centre was gone, erased from existence, but that was just the start. A yawning hole stretched over the wall, and a bit of the floor and the ceiling, too. The destruction didn’t stop, boring through wall after wall, hallway after hallway. He could see for miles upon miles as he stared through the hole in the wall. 

He held still for a moment, then received confirmation that his calculations had indeed been correct, and the destruction stopped a few hundred meters short of harming the technology keeping the stellar core at bay. Had he miscalculated, there would now be a hole in the side of the Hollow Sun, and the star around it would be flowing in through the gap. He could have been the architect of the Crownworld’s destruction even as he finally eliminated the greatest threat to its existence. 

All of this was Ozkan’s fault, that bloody fool. Rahkoz now understood why his old rival had hesitated to use the Hypercannon during his final battle with the invader, but clearly, he could have suppressed its power use sufficiently to avoid harming any of the crucial machinery. After all, Rahkoz had just managed it, and he only had a few days to study the weapon.

A Hypercannon. How in the name of the Stars did that bloody fool get his hands on a Hypercannon? These things were the absolute apex of Necron weaponry, the secret weapons constructed by the Silent King’s very own Crypteks in absolute secrecy. These were the same weapons that had once been responsible for shattering the C’tan when they were at their strongest. The Silent King had never let anyone else gain control of them, and it had been believed by Necron society at large that they had all been destroyed after the last Star God fell.

Well, clearly not. Rahkoz’s mind worked swiftly as always, his perception of time slowed to a crawl as he analysed the data he had. The fact that it meant pushing back the inevitable rant of his Regent for as long as possible was just a side effect, though a much-welcome one. 

Phaeron Ahmontekh, the Crimson Scythe, had been said to be one of the closest confidants of Szarekh, the Silent King. They might even have considered each other friends. Much to his annoyance, Rahkoz hadn’t been trusted much during those times, never as much as Ozkan had been, and so all he had to go on were rumours and hearsay. All he knew was that the Silent King had visited the Hollow Sun on occasion, and that he’d spent time in private with the Phaeron, supposedly conversing at length about something. 

Likely, the Hypercannon had been a gift to the Crimson Scythe; hopefully, the only Phaeron the Silent King had trusted with a weapon of such horrible power. Since Ozkan was the most trusted advisor of the Phaeron, it made sense he would be the one to be tasked with the weapon’s maintenance in secret. Rahkoz stumbled upon the weapon whilst trying to make sure his erstwhile rival’s Dimensional Sanctum wouldn’t crash into the Hollow Sun after his ignoble and idiotic death. It had been there, sitting in the middle of the patched-together Dimensional Sanctum, ready to be used again. 

“What is the meaning of this!?” Overlord-Regent Ahhotekh exclaimed, apparently done processing the fact that Rahkoz had just created a miles-spanning gorge inside the Hollow Sun. Apparently, seeing the level of collateral damage caused had made him forget about nearly getting cut straight down the middle by a would-be assassin. “Rahkoz! What have you done!?”

“I handled our infestation, likely in a permanent fashion,” Rahkoz said, wiping away all emotional modulation from his vocalizer, but he doubted that would have masked his true thoughts. Not from Ahhotekh and not in their entirety. “If that assassin was connected in any way, in either a mundane or an atypical manner, to the primogenitor of this hivemind species. The same species that kept infiltrating our Crownworld, then I can say with certainty that it is thoroughly taken care of. If it were an autonomous unit, then I merely succeeded in thwarting an assassination attempt on your person, Overlord-Regent.”

Rahkoz had absolutely no doubt about the Hypercannon’s effectiveness. It had shattered Star Gods, and even they managed to avoid utter annihilation only because their very existence was supported and maintained by the fundamental forces of the universe. Creatures like the Void Dragon, the Nightbringer, the Burning One and the Deceiver were all just as much constants of the physical universe as was the speed of light. To destroy them, one had to permanently harm the structural integrity of the fabric of reality as a whole. Llandu’gor the Flayer had been the only one that had been truly killed, or at least it had been the one C’tan so reviled that a true attempt had been made to destroy it utterly. 

Whether the perpetrators had succeeded or not was still up for debate. After all, many considered the Flayer Curse and the Flayed Ones themselves not to be some final sorcerous curse laid upon the Star God’s slayers … but merely the diffused essence of the C’tan. What if each and every Flayed One was a tiny Shard of Llandu’gor? 

Rahkoz terminated that line of thought after a moment, not wanting to dwell on that topic as it tended to lead him around in maddening circles. Instead, he reviewed his memory banks and quickly absorbed the information detailing just what his Regent had been giving a heated rant about in the last few minutes Rahkoz had spent lost in his thoughts. 

“How did you even detect that abominable creature when nothing else had perceived it?” The Regent fumed. “No sensors caught it. None of them! How!?”

“There is nothing I can’t see, my Regent,” Rahkoz lied without hesitation, though not without shame. Oh, how he wished that his professed omniscience was the full and honest truth. It would make his life oh so much easier. Alas, even the greatest marvels of chronomancy, aided by his own prodigious talent in that field of techno-worcery, weren’t quite enough to even begin to approach the realm of true omniscience. “I foresaw your death at its hand and acted to spare your life and eradicate the threat in one fell swoop.”

Now that, at the very least, was the truth. He did indeed foresee his Regent’s death, though only because his own tactical acumen told him that would be the optimal move for any infiltrator that had managed to slip through the net Ozkan had laid out. He hadn’t known for sure whether there even was an infiltrator back then, since the agreed-upon assumption was that all of them self-destructed in a final act of petty spite.

Deep within the portions of the Hollow Sun turned over to Rahkoz were vast engines which generated forms of power entirely anathema to any known branch of science.

It was through his mastery in manipulating these incomprehensible energies and through his ability to influence events at almost any point in the space-time continuum that he rose to his current level of power and influence. None but the famed Orikan, the Diviner, could claim to be his equal in the field of Chronomancy. 

So, of course, when he turned his attention to his Regent’s immediate future, he could see how all possibilities suddenly cut off within the span of a few hours. He easily divined the cause, though he had failed to locate it, and worse, had failed to avert the fate he foresaw without acting directly. 

None besides himself knew exactly how, and how efficiently he could use his powers to affect events across the span of the spacetime continuum, and the fact that he was much more limited than he claimed in public remained a secret known only to him. Still, usually, he could act in a subtle way. He would have much preferred to locate the infiltrator himself and take it out without anyone even noticing it had been there in the first place. 

The fact that he had to lay a trap using the Regent as bait and act overtly would do great harm to his reputation, but having his Regent die on his watch would have been much worse. He was the court chronomancer, and now, with Ozkan’s passing, the royal cryptek as well. The death of the Regent would have been blamed on him almost as much as on the Lychguards tasked with his protection.

“And you are certain it’s gone, Rahkoz?” The Regent demanded. “Absolutely certain?”

“There is no longer an immediate threat to your life, my Regent,” Rahkoz said. “Of course, I am certain. The interloper had been destroyed; now the Hollow Sun is truly free of infiltrators.”

If only Rahkoz could be as certain of the truth of his words as he made sure he sounded. Alas, all he could do was hope he would catch any other surprises before they could become active problems. In the worst-case scenario, if this assassin had been fully autonomous and disconnected from its creator, the primogenitor organism would still be out there somewhere. Rahkoz had to find it and destroy it before it became a problem again … but first, he had to make absolutely sure nothing else lingered on the Crownworld … and there was also his actual work, which had been interrupted by this entire mess. 

Someone was opposing his efforts to advance the interests of the Suhbekhar in the sector; he didn’t know who or what, but he had to figure it out. For all he knew, this infiltration attempt was just another play in this secret shadow war of theirs, an attempt to distract him from an operation somewhere else. The Stranger was out there. He knew they were. What could they have achieved by distracting him? What were their goals? What did he miss? What was he still missing? 

He didn’t know. He hated not knowing. He hated how the Stranger made him feel so blind, like some lesser creature stumbling in the dark. He hated it. Loathed it. Feared it. It terrified him. 

The Stranger. It was always the Stranger. For decades, they, he, or she, or it, or whatever else, have been opposing him. Stifled him. It was inexcusable, but what infuriated him even more was that he still had no clue who or what they were. He had to know. It was crucial. Yes. Crucial. He would find them. 

“You are dismissed,” the Regent said, and Rahkoz sluggishly focused, hastily banishing the cognitive clatter that’d occupied his core matrices. He’d gotten lost in thought again. Annoying. 

Yet another offence that he laid at the feet of The Stranger. Was this their plan? To drive him mad with their ceaseless schemes? Was it? It could be … it could be …

*****

My entire being recoiled in equal parts dread and shock, my Realm quivering and then collapsing back into a single coherent mass of soul energy around me as the gaping wound vanished. And yet, the soul energy was gone, and so was a chunk of my soul. A chunk that could have fit Valenith’s soul — the largest and most potent soul I was currently giving shelter to in my Realm — a dozen times over, if I were to look at souls through the extremely reductive lens of ‘size’ and ‘density’. 

The cold realisation came to me a moment later as I floated there, feeling numb: I had almost lost — nearly — everything that mattered to me. A part of me blamed the Necrons, but I couldn’t control what they did. What I could have controlled was myself. I could have detached my Avatar, cut it loose and escaped retribution for my supposed transgressions. But I hesitated. I got greedy. 

The guilt gave way to relief, an immense, sudden surge that washed away everything else. I’d almost lost Selene, again. Ozkan could have shot her with that thing in his Sanctum, and if her soul was in the way of the shot that hit my Realm, she would be gone. 

What the fuck was that cannon anyway!? Weren’t the Necrons supposed to be largely ignorant of how to harm creatures of the Immaterium? 

I got lucky. Really, really lucky, and not for the first time either. I would like to claim I reacted calmly and rationally to that realisation, I would like to … but it would be a blatant lie. I cobbled together a new Avatar, which I launched back into the Materium, breaching into realspace by following Selene’s soul-thread. The Crotalid hymn faded away, replaced by Selene’s own humming of the song, and I wrapped her up in a hug. 

Without waiting, I chain-Blinked the entire stupid space bunker she had been hiding in all the way over to the Sovereign, ignoring the rather significant dip in my soul energy reserves said act caused. 

“Shhh, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Selene whispered, softly caressing my hair as I very maturely buried my face in her chest. “We’re both fine. Did those stupid Necrons bully you?”

“Yes,” I mumbled into the fabric of her shirt, my voice coming out muffled. Meanwhile, the Sovereign was rapidly twisting itself back into battleship mode, and the gravity engine was kicking into gear. In a few minutes, we’d be cutting through interstellar space back towards the Iron Halo. “I got greedy. I think … fuck, I think I might have died there if I was- I don’t know. Slower? Less lucky? I’m still not sure why I survived that.”

I didn’t know how that cannon worked. Did I survive it because the Avatar was just a part of me? Because it was obliterated before more entropic power could flow into my soul through the Avatar? Maybe it simply wasn’t tuned to souls as dense or strong as mine, and some energy-saving measure stopped it from ‘wasting’ too much firepower? Maybe it was simply not made to be wielded against soul-based beings, and the effect against my soul was merely a side-effect? I didn’t know, but that thing terrified me. 

Selene just held me, lying down on her meditation mat, letting me snuggle up to her as she continued to play soothingly with my hair. 

“How much immediate danger are we in?” Selene asked after she felt like I’d calmed down sufficiently. Thank you, Mind-Core, for informing me of that analysis. It was very helpful.

“Minimal,” I said after a moment, running everything I knew about the Necrons and these Suhbekhar ones in specific through a thousand simulations at once. “They likely used the Dolmen Gate and the Webway through it to ambush us before. They would need to locate the Sovereign again first, then find a Webway exit that would allow them to intercept us. None of that is quick … but I will throw in the occasional teleportation just to throw off their calculations. I also need to figure out how to mask the gravitational disturbance our FTL drive causes because it’s probably like a massive ‘Here I am’ sign for them in its current state. I will need to tap the Warp to replenish my soul energy. That final hit … It cost me much. It almost tore off a third of my Realm. It almost erased your soul along with the stretch of empty Realmspace it did hit. It almost nicked you-“

“But it didn’t,” Selene said sternly, squeezing me a bit. Other than a brief flicker of panic she quickly suppressed, she took the news of her close brush with that remarkably well … then again, this would hardly be the first time she’d almost died if she had served in the Imperial Guard, then as the Rogue Trader Captain of her Family’s ship. “Both of us are still here. There is no use in thinking about ‘might have beens’. Instead, tell me what you’re going to do differently to avoid this … mess-up from happening again.”