Contents

Cover

The Silent King – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

purgation cohort

archmagos q-lint

rare prizes

On a desolate world, two armies faced one another across a field of rock. On the hills around the plain, a hardy lichen analogue grew in sufficient amounts to lace the atmosphere with oxygen. It was the sole life form. The world was so insignificant it had a numeric code string in place of a name. It was possible it had once teemed with life. Now it did not. A large, solitary moon stared down askance, mourning what might have been. Arid, remote, too expensive and too bare of resources to be worth colonising, the planet would have held no interest for the Imperium of Man were it not for the xenos ruins cluttering the northern hemisphere.

They were not really ruins. That they should be thought so was an assumption long disproved. A few hundred years ago the designation had some justification. Ruins like them were encountered across the galaxy, just another tomb complex of vanished species 19342q8756/Kappa. The ruins would have been catalogued and plundered by one arm or another of the Imperium, and that would have been that. Many similar sites suffered the same fate, and doubtless all of them would have eventually, had their occupants not begun to stir.

Slowly, the growing list of vanished expeditions to such sites began to tell. Notice was taken. Larger forces were sent. Necrons, the xenos were called. Alien androids from the distant past. They were added to the list of threats already faced by the Imperium.

Yet the designation of their artefact worlds remained the same for a long time: xenos ruins, medium interest, common type. Threat level: low. Bureaucracy changes slowly.

Archmagos Dominus Q-Lint SpaForrix3, commander of the Theta-19 (Explorator) Reclamator/Purgation cohort, knew the threat. Since before the opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum, Q-Lint’s role had been the discovery, exploitation and destruction of tomb complexes exactly like the one on this world. He had done so a great many times. He knew the xenos for what they were, as soulless, abominable intelligences, an affront to the Machine God. He despised them for it, and was efficient in their eradication.

On one side of the plain were Q-Lint’s forces, the cybernetic soldiers of the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars. They regarded the human species as the rightful rulers of the galaxy, as all humans, of whatever type, usually did.

On the other side of the plain, beneath a hemisphere of translucent green energy, stood a legion of necrons, recently revived. They also believed themselves to be the rightful rulers of the galaxy.

This made peaceful resolutions between the two species unlikely.

The humans regarded the necrons as abominations. Those necrons still capable of thought regarded the humans as inconsequential primitives. They stared with mutual hatred at one another across crumbled shale, through thin air hazy with dust, metal fingers upon triggers. Battle would start for certain, the only question was when. When it was done, one side would remain. The losers would be annihilated.

Neither side would admit it, but they were not so very different. Both were born from bipedal, bisymmetrical sentients of a roughly similar body plan. Both followed questionable gods. Both began by despising the weakness of flesh, and both followed, by different paths, a destiny that ended in the final replacement of flesh by machine. The necrons had completed that journey, the Adeptus Mechanicus were well on their way. Q-Lint could see the threat of the alien, but he could not see the irony that he was chasing their ultimate fate.

Deadly weapons hummed with pent-up energies. The humans outnumbered the necrons; the necrons were safe behind their power shield. Impasse.

For the moment, nothing moved.

It would not remain that way for long.

Archmagos Dominus Q-Lint SpaForrix3 looked out from his pulpit over the barrel of his abeyant’s eradication beamer at the army of necrons. They had been issuing from the small tomb complex for hours. Now they were utterly still.

Altogether chilling, Q-Lint thought. Soulless, devoid of will or direction, how completely they have abandoned their souls. Imagine, he thought with disgust, giving up all vestiges of your sacred being, and imprisoning your mind in cold, unfeeling metal. They had sold their souls for a fool’s immortality.

Q-Lint was taken with his musings. He felt a binary sonnet in the offing, so filed the thoughts away for later in the auxiliary mem-unit bolted to the side of the nine-legged abeyant.

<Prepare for data exchange,> he canted to his magi, marshal and others who made up his small but effective cohort command. Exploration-purgation did not suit hordes of personnel. He couldn’t stand the administration needed to manage a multi-tiered hierarchy. If your input was three tech-priests with a common goal, it was said, the output was fifteen disputes and a murder.

<Observation – enemy unresponsive to self-evidently high threat levels,> Eph-Eph-9-Sigma-9 responded, also in the binharic high speech.

Q-Lint’s forces were lined up as neatly as their foes. Skitarii vanguard units in the main, numbering several thousand, with the support of legged tanks and artillery, flyers and heavy servitor units. The usual complement for a mid-range purgation force, though he had a few little extras. He was particularly proud to count two dozen war automata of the Legio Cybernetica among his assets.

Nothing moved. Nobody spoke. Machines hummed. The wind blew.

<Observation logged,> said Q-Lint. <Widecast statement – less obvious data inputs welcome.>

<Xenos shield at one hundred per cent,> canted Marshal Tol. <Barrier impenetrable. Hard power field.>

<Primary task – remove xenos energy projection.> Q-Lint data-pulsed the Onager dunecrawlers that made up his back line.

The walker tanks obeyed immediately. High-energy neutron lasers burned through the air, making it crackle. Solid munitions slammed into the shield after them. The shield flared bright. He let the bombardment go on for over a minute.

‘That should do it,’ he said aloud, in the Lingua Technis, from the voxmitter in his chest. <Cease fire!> He widecast the order.

The attack ceased. Smoke blew away in ragged sheets. A line of glowing rock marked the boundary of the power field. Steam that smelled of burnt minerals rolled back towards the Adeptus Mechanicus lines.

Q-Lint had a profligate number of handsome ocular implants. He ran them up to maximum magnification and linked their feeds. A composite image formed in his mind of near-supernatural acuity.

Ancient, thin lips pursed. Nothing had got through. The necrons stood unaffected. No damage. Q-Lint’s leathery tongue poked out, and he grinned. Tol was right, it was a challenge, but Tol only saw things in military terms. It was also a fine prize. A hard power field of that size and impenetrability was rare. There were human examples, from the Dark Ages, though there were not many left at all. He had never seen one on a necron world.

He longed to get his manipulators on it, see how it ticked. His claws itched, literally itched. A residual synaptic illusion, since he had replaced his hands long ago with superior bionics, but the sensation was real enough.

<No penetration. Enemy still unresponsive.>

‘Yes, yes, thank you for that, Sigma-9,’ Q-Lint muttered. A few of his command cadre gave out beeps as they recorded the scene for posterity. An autoquill scratched over a scroll somewhere at the back of the group.

Q-Lint upped magnification further. The enemy seemed in poor repair, he thought. Many had slumped, crook-backed stances, their thin metal arms almost dragging on the ground. The glowing lights associated with necron technology were out on some of their weapons, suggesting malfunction. Some of the warriors missed jaws or hands. All were corroded.

Another sign of necron inferiority, he thought. Not the shield, that was an impressive example of transdimensional technology. The inferiority was the mismatch of high technology guarding such broken-down automata. Tragic, really. They must have been a powerful race once. He almost pitied them.

He neglected to recall the ongoing war that gripped much of the Martian empire, the tombs waking under their feet, the endless legions of alien dead pouring into Adeptus Mechanicus facilities. The broken incursion into the Pariah Nexus. He put out of his mind that the Adeptus Mechanicus were losing in the Nephilim Sector and in all the sectors around it. He was obsessive, like many magi, focused on his small part of the picture, seeing only his successes on these far-out sentinel planets. He had his task; he would succeed, because he always did. He was proud of that. He forgot pride could be a double-edged sword.

His vision stopped upon the gate into the chief pyramid of the complex. The complex buildings looked natural, having been softened by the tides of time so that their forms were all but lost, and the glossy black of their finish abraded to a dull grey that looked no different to the rock of the world they had been built upon. But they were not native. A simple scan revealed that. Necron presence minor, it read. By his reckoning, the machines on the plain represented the whole of the garrison. This was a good target. He looked forward to the xenotech plunder it would yield.

<Necron forces show no sign of heightened response witnessed recently,> said Sigma-9. His specialisation was in higher-dimensional auguries, making him a useful fellow to have around.

Q-Lint’s tactical prognostications ran:

<THREAT LEVEL: MINIMAL>

One after the other.

<THREAT LEVEL: MINIMAL>

<Habitual necron response to tomb world invasion is unthinking aggression.> He input new variables into his supplementary cortex. His cybernetic cogitator, also huge, sweating oil, and attached to the side of his carriage with large, unsightly bolts, hummed with effort. <Hypothesis – deterioration of command protocols. Provide state of enemy carrier wave.>

<Carrier wave strong and steady. Protocol efficiency unclear.>

<Provide scan of potential dimensional breach points,> Q-Lint commanded. <Provide scan of higher-form manipulation of carrier wave.>

Sigma-9 was quiet for a significant sliver of a second. ‘Undetectable,’ he said aloud. He sounded unsure. Transdimensional mechanics was an uncertain discipline. The Adeptus Mechanicus were familiar with the warp, and to a lesser extent with the webway which existed between the materium-immaterium, but the strange intra-dimensional non-places the necrons exploited were a frightening mystery. Even the mathematics that underlaid them was capricious, as if they were alive and responsive somehow, praise the Machine God for the richness of His Great Work, Q-Lint thought. He initiated an auto-prayer cycle to atone for his lapse in respectful awe. Such puzzles were the Machine God’s way of testing the faithful. He had no right to be irritated by them.

‘Hypothesis – are they malfunctioning?’

‘Perhaps they are waiting,’ Sigma-9 suggested.

‘For what?’

‘Unknown.’

‘Necron constructs do not wait,’ said Q-Lint. ‘They attack and purge, as we attack and purge. That is what they always do, unless there are higher forms present to provide alternative orders. I query again, are there higher forms?’

‘Unclear. They must be under obscure programming.’

‘Unsatisfactory, Sigma-9.’

‘My data is unclear.’

‘Then get me better data!’

‘Magos.’ Q-Lint’s translexer, Rovol, spoke up.

Q-Lint turned his head towards him. The gears of his neck mounting clicked unhappily. This was an unpleasantly dusty place.

‘There is a blanket hold-signal keeping them in place, but it has the characteristics of an automated broadcast, not sentient control. There is none of the complexity associated with the xenos noosphere when one of the higher forms is in the field.’

‘Interesting,’ Q-Lint said. ‘See, Sigma-9, Rovol performs your function better than you do.’

Rovol emanated a microwave burst of satisfaction.

‘This is a puzzle, and no mistake,’ said Q-Lint. ‘However, I judge the situation suitable to begin attack. Marshal Tol, please ensure maximum fire overlap is established. Power up the frame stabilisers. If there are hidden gates here, the enemy will not be using them. Additionally, the threat of denial of inter-dimensional transit should provoke the garrison, and they will drop their shield to attack our position.’

‘The frame stabilisers only have forty-two minutes of operational time before burn-out,’ Sigma-9 warned.

‘Query-suggestion – perhaps we should withdraw until Magos Hiax has completed his task? Primary goal remains acquisition of xenotech.’

The whole of Q-Lint’s command cadre turned to look at Rovol.

The lexmechanic was perturbed by this sudden attention.

‘I only mean to say we may be better allowing Hiax to complete his task in peace, then you may dispose of the abominations at your leisure, exalted one. Why provoke them at all before the vault is open?’

‘You are too timid,’ said Q-Lint. ‘The Machine God is with us. It is our holy duty to obliterate the xenos and return their constituent elements to the Great Work, so that they might be made anew into something less… distasteful. We annihilate them now.’

Numbers and designations scrolled through the portions of Q-Lint’s imagination co-opted by his memcores. He was growing more certain that there was nothing tricky here. The soulless ones had arranged themselves in diamond phalanxes, as if they were preparing to fight a battle of spear and shield. Larger creations stood between them, multi-limbed islands in a sea of metal, but these were only the necrons’ tomb guardians and maintenance automata, none of their dedicated war engines, and they were as run down as the warriors.

‘Hiax can work just as well while we fight,’ Q-Lint said dismissively. ‘Sigma-9, signal FD-10 and order him to prepare the fleet for sub-orbital bombardment. He has to get in close. It has to be accurate.’ Q-Lint did not use FD-10’s rank or any of his many honorifics. It was widely agreed Q-Lint held other magi in contempt.

At that moment, the wave fronts of the frame stabilisers overlapped around Q-Lint, then the field spilled across the plain, slow as cold oil. Harmonic patterns established, the field strengthened. When it reached the shield, it provoked the enemy as Q-Lint had hoped.

The shield winked out of existence. The line of battered machines lurched into motion. A rhythmic crunching began as they marched across the friable rock in sinister, exact lockstep.

‘Begin the attack, Marshal Tol,’ Q-Lint commanded.

‘As you command, most favoured among sapients,’ Tol said.

‘Sigma-9, signal Hiax. Tell him to be quick.’

‘Now?’ Sigma-9 asked. ‘I shall have to divert cogitator resources from deep-scan interpretation to break through their noospheric cage in order to deliver the–’

‘Yes, now! Do it now!’

‘As you command, master of motive forces,’ Sigma-9 muttered.

Sigma-9 made sorry whoops and pings as bits of himself were retasked. Down the line strode Marshal Tol, his data-squirts picked up by his accompanying signum-accantae and blurted via widecast to the army of cyborgs.

Now it was the turn of the forces of Mars to take a unified step forward.

Machine spirits, glutted with power and desperate for release, screamed with ecstasy as their firing mechanisms were given permission to unleash their energies into the ranks of the necrons.

The aliens were swift in responding.

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A Black Library Publication

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