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Da 'Ole Of Death Chapta 24 | |
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Chapta 24 |
Error.
Intrusion. The necron mind’s attention was suddenly diverted away from the forces under its control and instead to the structure in which it was housed. One of the doorways to the spire had just malfunctioned and opened in the same way as those which the intruders to the complex that it had been seeking had been able to do twice already. They are
here. There were no guards in the building, and the mind had just despatched another large force to join the attack on the walled city. There were other units active, those that had been involved in the hunt for the intruders, but they were mainly maintenance units or destroyers that could not enter the building, and were scattered across the complex in any case. There was only solution left to the necron mind. Download. The metal body that the necron mind had once inhabited, the one that it had been awarded by its god when it gave up the flesh that once held it, still rested here in the spire, and this body remained fully functional. The necron mind began the preparations to revive the body and inhabit it once more. It would deal with the intruders itself. Before separating itself from the complex’s control system the mind sent a transmission to tell its army to change to independent control. “Well dat was unexpected,” Drazzok said as the entire necron army assaulting the city stopped, and most the command post’s occupants moved to the front wall for a better look. Every metal skeleton, flying machine and pyramid had halted its advance and ceased fire. For a well disciplined army this would have been an opportunity to annihilate a large portion of them, but even the best ork armies could not be described in such a way, and while some orks did take their chance to attack while the necrons were not defending themselves, most instead just cheered and claimed victory, firing their weapons only into the air in celebration. “Wot is dey doin’ now?” an ork nob said. “Maybe Hazug did it,” Sophie said, “Maybe he’s stopped them.” The respite did not last. After less than a minute the army began to move and fight once more, and the orks who had emerged from cover, standing high on the ramparts of the city walls to get a better line of fire, were the first to feel their wrath. The flesh of hundreds of orks melted away as the green lightning from the necron weapons struck them. “’E aint stopped ‘em yet,” warboss Zhalrad said, “We is goin’ to ‘ave to do dat ourselves.” Behind the doorway lay a corridor leading directly towards the centre of the spire. “Right den,“ said Hazug, “Ghukil and Gobnok, I wants ya to wait ‘ere and watch dis door. Ratish stay with ‘em an all. If any of dem metal lads show up den I wants ya to come and warn mew while dem two ‘old ‘em off. Goddit?” “Yes master, Ratish stay ‘ere.” “Good. Now da rest of ya lets go.” Hazug moved slowly down the corridor, followed by the remaining three orks he had not instructed to remain at the door. The corridor had no turns, junctions or doors to either side, it was just a straight passageway that lead to another doorway at the far end. Upon reaching this doorway Hazug activated the device he had taken from Castus’s corpse once again and the door melted away. Beyond the now open doorway was a large circular chamber with four doors including the one Hazug had just opened equally spaced around it. Between the doors the chamber was lined with strange alien machinery that pulsed with the green light that was typical of their technology, while in the centre of the chamber a spiral staircase led both up and down. “Do we plant da bomb ‘ere boss?” Nizz said as he stared at the machinery all around them. “No lad, not ‘ere. I want it next to somethin’ vital just in case it aint powerful enough to destroy everythin’, and dis stuff just doesn’t look important enough to me,” Hazug replied, “So da real question is do we go up or down?” “I reckon important stuff would be ‘eavy,” Ubgrub said, “and who’d carry ‘eavy stuff upstairs when dey could go down instead?” “Good point lad. Down it is den.” Before the orks descended the staircase ahead of them, Hazug leant over the edge and looked to see how far down the stairs went, aiming his rifle over the edge as he did so just in case there was something there for him to shoot. The stairs went down beyond where the light from machinery around them reached, but Hazug estimated that there were at least three stories worth of steps descending beneath them. Cautiously, with his rifle still at the ready he led the way down into the darkness. The necron lord felt the motion of the platform on which its body had rested for countless millennia as one end was raised to bring the lord to a standing position. The process of transferring its consciousness from the core of the complex to this body was now complete. The lord could still receive information from the core and issue orders via it, but the process was now far slower and less efficient. The lord stepped away from the now vertical platform and reached out its arm. At the same time a mechanical arm extended out from a nearby wall. This arm held a long bladed weapon identical to the one the lord had observed the leader of the intruders carrying while still merged with the core. The lord took the warscythe and then, for the first time since it had been tasked with control of the complex, it began to walk. The city gates exploded, sending burning debris flying into the buildings nearby. Some of these promptly caught fire also, and panic stricken gretchin ran to and fro to extinguish the blazes while the orks continued to fight. The necron troops advanced towards the hole where the gates had been, seeking to enter the city, but for once the orks had an advantage. As the necrons reached the open gateway they were pelted with grenades hurled from the walls and rooftops around them. One after another the grenades exploded among the necron warriors just as they were crowded into the opening, and the mix of the blasts and the lethal fragments each grenade produce brought many of them down. Even as their internal systems attempted to repair the damage from one blast another grenade went off and caused even more damage to them. Not one necron warrior got back to its feet this time, and every one that had tried to storm the gates faded away as the damage inflicted upon became too much for it to repair in the field. Just short of the city walls the necron army halted again, though it continued to fire at upon the orks defending the walls. “Dat’s ‘ow its done!” warboss Zhalrad shouted from his command post towards the necron lines, “Me boys aint givin’ up!” Then he ducked instinctively as the floating pyramids turned their powerful weapons upon the city walls. As the light given off by the machinery in the circular chamber above began to fade, Hazug became aware that there was more light entering the stairway from below. Once again it was green, but a much darker shade that did little to provide illumination. “Right lads,” he said, “we’ll ‘ave to use our torches from ‘ere on. Light ‘em up.” Apart from Ubgrub who needed both hands to wield his heavy weapon the orks all produced torches from their backpacks and lit them using the flints they carried. For the first time since arriving in the underground city the orks were able to see by a light source that didn’t have a green tint to it. Now using just one hand to hold his rifle, Hazug continued to lead his troops down the stairs to whatever was producing the light below. As the orks got further down the stairs they heard something that they had not heard from any of the necron technology they had encountered thus far, the sound of running machinery. The sound began a s a soft hum, but by the time the bottom of the stairs became visible it was a much louder, pulsating sound and the light given off by the equipment in the room located here increased and decreased its intensity in time with the pulsing sound. “Wot is dis place?” Ubgrub said as the orks all looked around. The room was larger than the one at street level, and the staircase was located at one side next to the wall. The machinery here not only lined the walls but was also dotted about the room in small clusters. Pipes and wires sprouted from the tops of each piece of machinery ran up to the ceiling and crossed it to link all the machines together. Only the equipment at the centre of the room was not connected in this manner. Here was a large featureless box made not of the metal that was the primary material used in the construction of the other necron machinery, but of the green crystal material that augmented it. Unlike all of the other crystal that the orks had seen however, this did not glow. “I don’t know wot any of dis stuff does,” Hazug said, “but I reckon its dead important. We’ll plant da bomb in ‘ere.” “But where in ‘ere boss?” Nizz asked, “Dis place is ‘uge.” “Where else lad?” Hazug responded, “Right dare,” and he pointed towards the box at the centre of the room. Ratish was the first to spot movement between the buildings adjacent to the spire. “Look!” he said loudly, pointing towards where he had seen something move. Both Ghukil and Gobnok raised their weapons and pressed themselves to the side of the doorway for cover. As they watched a swarm of the metallic insect machines they had fought in the tunnel beneath the city streets came flying towards them. Ghukil fired slightly sooner than Gobnok, and a stream of bullets passed through the oncoming swarm into the shadows beyond, where a shower of sparks indicated that they had just bounced off something made of metal. The sheet of flame from Gobnok’s flamethrower was more effective however, whereas the bullets had passed through the swarm without striking any of the insect machines the sheet of fire produced by his flamethrower consumed them all and burning debris fell to the ground in front of the orks. The thick liquid fuel continued to burn, and it illuminated the shadow beyond where Ghukil’s burst of automatic weapons fire had hit something. There the orks saw one of the large spider-like machines that had attacked the warband the first time they had seen the city from the ledge up above. The spider machine’s two clawed arms were in motion; it had dug through the stone of the street below and was pulling out pieces of the alien metal and crystal from below. It was then using these materials to produce another swarm of the tiny insect machines. “Let rip!” Ghukil shouted, and he fired his automatic weapon once more. This time firing a longer burst deliberately aimed at the spider machine. “Ratish go tell master!” Ratish yelled before running off down the passageway to the chamber at the far end. He stopped suddenly when he reached the open doorway, his keen gretchin hearing having detected the sound of metal on stone. He crouched just outside the chamber and peered around the edge of the doorway to see if he could see the source of the sound, and there on the spiral staircase he saw a figure descending from the floor above. The figure was alone, though it was clearly one of the aliens who inhabited this place, in one hand it carried a long bladed weapon identical to the one Hazug had taken from a necron leader the first time they had fought with the aliens. Ratish watched as it came down the spiral staircase and continued down the same way Hazug had earlier gone. Pulling his small pistol from where he had tucked it into his belt, Ratish crept after the alien.
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