Chapter 143: Call Reinforcents! Now!
At first, they thought this was rely so undiscovered native species.
A dense swarm of insects erged from the fissure, aimlessly flooding the wasteland.
The first machine-servitor to encounter them didn’t even manage to send a brief warning. It simply disintegrated—reduced to a pile of iron- and carbon-rich tallic sludge.
"It seems we've encountered so local fauna," Tech-Priest 78 remarked. This was a common occurrence—probably just so subterranean creatures disturbed by the excavation.
From a nearby makeshift base, the Skitarii Rangers of the chanicus' holy guard marched out in formation, their rifles crackling with arcs of energy.
"Iron forms our bodies, iron forms our will!"
The warriors of Graia shouted their battle-cry as they opened fire. A hailstorm of bullets rained down, cutting through the insect swarm. The creatures scattered, their numbers visibly dwindling.
Sothing felt wrong.
Morarg frowned. His voice was low but firm.
"Prepare to retreat," he ordered the Death Guard recruits behind him. The observation platform they stood on was hastily assembled, flimsy, and uncomfortably close to the front lines.
"Tech-Priest, sothing isn’t right," Morarg stepped forward, pointing toward the battlefield.
"They're underneath us."
Before he could finish speaking, tallic Canoptek Scarab burst from beneath the Skitarii ranks, swarming the nearest Rangers with a furious hum!
A brutal lee broke out as the Skitarii fought against the tide of chanical scarabs, but the swarm was overwhelming. One by one, the Rangers were being consud.
Tech-Priest 78’s signal array flickered.
Fire erupted.
A relentless barrage of artillery roared from the distance, screaming through the sky before striking the battlefield with pinpoint accuracy.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The smoke cleared, revealing utter devastation.
Another squad of Skitarii stord out of the base. Marching over the fallen bodies of their predecessors, they echoed the sa war-cry:
"Iron forms our bodies, iron forms our will!"
With clinical efficiency, they resud the purge of any remaining scarabs.
"It’s over," Tech-Priest 78 muttered without looking up, already moving on to prepare the next mining machines.
Morarg’s battle-hardened instincts told him otherwise.
And a bolt of green lightning proved him right.
A savage erald beam lanced out from the fissure, striking a Skitarii dead-on. Bright green arcs flickered across the soldier’s crimson armor as his body convulsed and disintegrated.
Tech-Priest 78 snapped his head up, eyes locked on the battlefield.
This was not sothing a natural species could evolve.
Then, the reports flooded into his neural interface.
The scarabs were all made of tal.
Then ca the sound.
Clank. Clank. Clank
tallic footsteps echoed from the depths.
A skeletal figure, guntal gray, erged from the fissure’s shadow.
Its body was adorned with symtrical patterns of glowing green circuits, forming rings and straight lines along its limbs. Rust and dirt clung to its fra, but beneath the filth, it was pristine.
A gaunt, expressionless face, hollow and devoid of life.
In its hands, it clutched a sleek, cylindrical firearm—its core writhing with barely contained erald energy.
Among those present, perhaps only Tech-Priest 78 could truly comprehend what this tallic being represented.
The barbarians of Barbarus would never understand.
Tech-Priest 78’s mouth opened slightly, then shut.
[ALPHA-LEVEL ALERT: SECTOR 03.]
[Repeating: ALPHA-LEVEL ALERT, SECTOR 03.]
[Contact the Forge World. Call the Magos.]
From the shadows, more tallic skeletons stepped forward.
Identical.
Except for the rust and the dirt.
The undead erged from their crypts, chanically seizing their weapons to defend their overlord.
Another barrage of artillery streaked across the sky as Tech-Priest 78 called for another round of fire support.
Despite his fascination with their tallic bodies, Tech-Priest 78 quickly realized that the enemy’s combat capabilities were not particularly formidable.
It seed unnecessary to request reinforcents.
He hesitated.
Should he rescind the alarm?
In the end, he did not.
That decision saved their lives.
Beneath the surface, at the heart of the Great Necropolis, a slow-burning fire was igniting.
Through the Reanimation Protocols, the fallen Necron Warriors were rising again.
They were the very sa warriors who had just “perished” in combat against the Skitarii.
But thanks to the Reanimation Protocols, their remaining consciousness was retrieved and transmitted back into their bodies.
They rose once more.
However, not all of them could return after falling. Over the eons of their slumber, small deviations had accumulated. The system was flawed—minor errors had crept in.
It wasn’t catastrophic.
But it was no longer perfectly precise.
Deep within the tomb world, the Necropolis Intelligence pondered.
It calculated.
Recognizing that the currently active forces were insufficient to repel the invaders, it authorized an escalation—more units were awakened from their slumber.
Elsewhere, Hades sat at his desk, calculating Barbarus’ latest contribution to the Death Guard’s supply reserves.
His work was abruptly interrupted by an ergency transmission from Morarg.
"What now?"
Hades grumbled.
He had been so close to finishing his calculations. Getting interrupted at such a crucial mont was frustrating.
Most likely, it was so dispute with the local Cogboys over supply allocations. Bureaucratic bickering, no doubt.
Then, he read the short ssage—
"Guntal-gray skeletons spotted."
…
"Holy fuck. It’s the Necrons."
Hades nearly jumped out of his chair.
They were just supposed to mine so Blackstone, and sohow, they had dug up Necrons instead?!
The Necrons—one of the undisputed overlords of the galaxy.
Their history stretched back to the most ancient of tis, an era when the Milky Way was still a peaceful place.
Back then, the Necrons were known by a different na—the Necrontyr.
They did not have tal bodies. They were creatures of flesh and blood.
The Necrontyr developed an advanced and highly materialistic civilization, spreading across the stars with terrifying efficiency.
But their existence was marred by a tragic flaw—their short, fragile lifespans.
Each individual’s fleeting existence stood in stark contrast to the grandeur of their civilization.
And their society did not advance as rapidly as their technology.
The Necrontyr had a rigid caste system, with an aristocratic elite at the top. The noble dynasties waged endless political feuds, constantly vying for supremacy.
To deflect internal tensions—and driven by jealousy—the Necrontyr turned their hatred outward, declaring war on the undisputed rulers of the galaxy at the ti:
The Old Ones.
The War in Heaven erupted.
The cosmos burned.
The very stars trembled.
Entire galactic empires were reduced to ashes, re collateral in this war of unimaginable scale. An incalculable amount of resources was thrown into the conflict.
And for the Necrontyr, the war ended in catastrophe.
They were utterly outmatched.
Desperate and on the brink of annihilation, their leader—the Silent King—listened to the whispers of The Deceiver, a cunning and treacherous C'tan (Star God).
The Necrontyr were offered a solution—immortality.
A chance to shed their frail, decaying flesh and be reborn as sothing stronger.
They accepted.
Through the horrific process known as biotransference, the Necrontyr were converted into Necrons—soulless, undying warriors of tal.
But in forsaking death, they had also forsaken life itself.
Their bodies were eternal, but their souls had been devoured by the C’tan.
When the Necrons realized they had been deceived, they turned their unparalleled technology against their false gods.
They shattered the C'tan, imprisoning the broken fragnts of these cosmic beings and bending them to their will.
With their newfound power, they waged war against the Old Ones once more.
As the trembling of the galaxy gradually subsided and the smoke of war faded into darkness, both sides of the battle that had torn through reality and shaken the Warp had vanished.
The Old Ones were gone.
The Necrontyr had beco the Necrons.
The Necrons, now fully aware that their race could no longer truly continue, fell into despair.
Thus, they built slumbering tomb worlds across countless planets, entering hibernation as an entire species.
They sought to sleep through the ages, waiting for a ti when all other alien species had vanished, so they could reclaim the rule of the galaxy.
In summary: a ridiculously powerful race had been in hibernation.
And now, the Tech-Priests that Hades had planned to cooperate with… had bombed them awake.
Ordinarily, dormant Necrons are not disturbed by human activity.
If they awaken prematurely, it is usually due to planetary geological shifts, massive tectonic activity, or cosmic anomalies.
So exactly how many explosives did these chanicus Priests bury?!
Hades felt utterly defeated.
During the Great Crusade (30K era), the Imperium had encountered a few minor Necron Dynasties.
Back then, the Legions treated them like just another xenos species—easily purged, barely worth reporting.
As a result, most branches of the Imperium had no real mory of the Necrons.
But Hades did.
His lips twitched.
He could only hope that this was a small dynasty.
Even better—one that hadn’t fully awakened.
Or, best case scenario—a dynasty that had slept so long it had turned senile.
After all, these beings functioned like coded programs.
The vast stretches of ti had introduced countless system errors—corruption, glitches, malfunctions.
If they encountered a bugged-out Necron dynasty, things would be manageable.
In that case, the Death Guard and a single Forge World’s chanicus forces would be sufficient.
But if this was a major dynasty?
Then there was only one option—retreat.
Or call the Emperor himself.
Realistically, the best way to deal with the Necrons was an Exterminatus.
But there was a problem.
That planet belonged to the Graia Forge World.
Hades wasn’t sure if the chanicus Magos would be willing to give up an entire mining world.
He hesitated for a mont.
Technically speaking, the only request he had received was from Morarg’s personal transmission.
The Forge World itself hadn’t sent out an official distress call to the Death Guard.
But…
The chanicus garrison in that region—if this was even a small Necron Dynasty—might not be enough.
Hades figured that Graia would inevitably call for help soon.
After all, the only available Astartes forces in this sector were his Death Guard troops stationed on Barbarus.
His instincts told him not to wait.
He opened the map of the sector, highlighting Warp travel routes.
Then, he started writing deploynt orders.
He instructed the bulk of the Galaspar fleet to leave behind only necessary forces and imdiately redeploy the rest.
As for the official reason in the paperwork?
He simply wrote: "Supply Fleet Operations."
Mortarion would approve.
At the sa ti, Hades revised Morarg’s mission orders.
Their primary objective was no longer the mining operations.
Instead, they were to observe and assess the full scale of the Necron forces erging from Graia-106.
Better to be prepared than be caught off guard.
And sure enough—
Before the Galaspar fleet had even completed half of its redeploynt procedures, the Death Guard received an official distress call from Graia Forge World.
The war had begun.
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