Chapter 38 – The Battle Begins
Five Days after the Arrival of the Throne
The first wave of his ships had engaged the necron fleet.
He decided to test his theories about the comparability of his technology and theirs. He divided his fleet into two halves, each around fifty-thousand ships strong, a mix of Legate, Centurion, and Legionnaires. He sent the first half to engage in direct, ship-to-ship combat, the standard method of void warfare with the fleet the Necrons had sent, which numbered around five thousand ships of various sizes. He kept his moons back for the moment. While he could always build more, the resource sink was enough that he couldn't just toss them away like chaff.
Across hundreds of thousands of kilometers of empty space, his and the necron's ships danced like fireflies in the darkness. From afar, massive lances of energy and plasma appeared as thin as needles, while arcs of green lighting that melted shields and hulls alike were nothing more than momentary flashes of viridian against the inky background of the void.
He was losing.
It was not as one-sided as it once had been, but his ships could not compare to those of the Necrons, even with a ten-to-one advantage. Oh, he got in a few kills, usually when he managed to isolate an enemy vessel and swarm them, even destroyed a few of their crescent-moon shaped battleships. And yet, for every vessel he destroyed, he was losing twelve or more of his own. Their destroyer-sized ships were as strong as his cruisers, to say nothing of those battleships that he could only take down with at least twenty of his own. It was disconcerting that the necrons had not even sent their entire fleet to deal with him, merely ten percent of what his sensors could perceive they possessed in orbit of their two tomb worlds.
What was worrying him the most were the twelve strange ships that the necrons were keeping in the back. They looked like their battleships, but larger and they possessed some kind of weapon affixed to their center. His sensors could somewhat manage to pierce whatever shielding those ships had, but they were blinded by the energy readings. Some of his smaller ships that had initially tried had nearly fried themselves. The only time his energy readings got blinded like that were when he tried looking at the core of a star or a black hole…
They had not yet moved in to engage his ships, but he wasn't so sure that was a good thing. Were their losses not sufficient to warrant a response from their larger vessels? Or were they waiting for something? Perhaps his second fleet?
Or his moons.
That would be… very bad. It meant the necrons had multiple weapons that could at least damage a celestial body. While not so surprising, it meant his largest vessels might not be sufficient as a last resort in case he needed to give up the technology and destroy the tomb worlds to save himself. He'd hoped they only had one of whatever that monolith had been equipped with, that way if the worst came to pass he could at least try throwing two or more of his moons at them and hope they'd be unable to stop them all.
The ships he had sent to fight were starting to dwindle. It was clear to him that engaging in a massive battle was not the way to go. He would try to spread out his ships, use his numbers to his advantage, and try to isolate the enemy's craft. To do that, he needed more ships. The largest portals on the surfaces of his moons crackled to light and his second wave fleet began to emerge. He'd kept them on the periphery of the system, but with his attack moons being closer, he could shorten the distance greatly.
That was when the strange ships made their move.
They parted into groups, three apiece, darting towards each attack moon, all accompanied by a quarter of their remaining fleet. He sent the remnants of his first wave to engage them, try to hold them off until he had enough ships to swarm them, but the Necron ships were fast and deadly. Where they could run his slapdash blockade they did, but when he managed to get them surrounded they would just rip right through. All the while, his more indirect sensors were reading an energy build-up within each of the lead ships.
He tried ramming his ships into them, to slow them down, but the other necron craft intercepted his attempts. While many craft were destroyed in mutual explosions, the twelve ships were undeterred.
His attack moons entered into combat range with their lesser weapons and opened up upon the enemy craft. They were far deadlier than even a fleet of Legates and they tore apart many Necron ships. Yet, like before, the twelve were protected from his wrath by smaller vessels blocking his fire. Only a few shots managed to get through that were largely ineffective.
Then, they returned fire.
A massive spike in energy fried all sensors except visual that were directed at those vessels. From those that remained he could see the energy manifest at the end of the main weapon of each ship. Space was ripped apart and reknit by the crackling power that grew larger and larger by the nanosecond. Then, in a moment, that energy was at him.
Three lances of starfire streaked down towards each moon. When it struck, dozens of kilometers of the metal surface cracked and buckled even while it melted, the matter shoved away by the force of the attack and even the moons seemed to wobble and shift in the void.
In less than a second, his moons had gone from fully-functional to half-melted, with almost every facility and system unresponsive, including the weapons, portals, and engines. In the face of such devastation, Rex could only think a single thing:
I want one.
And with that thought, the portals of every one of his Legate ships crackled to life and endless swarms of a special new kind of missile emerged. One based off the Whistling Locusts, but far larger and faster. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions emerged, all heading straight for the twelve star-wielding ships.
I. Want. One.
The necrons tried to stop their newest attackers, but they had lost too many ships and were isolated from one another. Even with all their weapons firing constantly, even with the flimsy materials of his missiles giving away to even indirect shots, even with every burst of energy destroying dozens of missiles, they just didn't have enough weapons to deal with the swarm. He'd ensured the swarm within each one was disconnected from the others, something he hoped would prove a countermeasure against whatever the necrons had done to destroy his swarms before.
I. WANT. ONE.
Just a few more kilometers, his missiles had nearly reached them. He'd planned to hold these in reserve until he got forces on the ground, so he could further increase the number of variables for the necrons to deal with as he robbed them blind of their tech, but that plan was out the window now.
GIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMME!!!
Then, the twelve ships teleported away.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
One Hour Later
` Initially, he'd been livid enough about the loss of the twelve ships and their juicy, delicious technology that the rage produced could probably ignite a few stars. He still was, but less so thanks to his conciliatory prize.
Specifically, quite a large amount of necron tech and necrodermis. Around five thousand ships worth that were incapable of teleporting like those other ships had.
Oh, those necrons still functional aboard had fought hard to protect their ships that even then were still repairing themselves. However, necron soldiers could do little before his swarms and, to his delight, no necron lords were teleporting around destroying them this time. He had quite gleefully ripped them apart with swarms and his new Mandoa'ade units performed quite well, despite the close quarters.
His locusts couldn't fully get the tech within the bodies of the necrons themselves, unfortunately. Whenever he had devoured more than their outermost shell of necrodermis, they always teleported away. He'd likely have to deal with whatever was teleporting them back first to get their internals. However, their ships and machines, like the canoptek scarabs, were an all-you-could-eat buffet.
And it was delicious.
Necron tech was, to put it simply, beautiful to behold. He'd gotten a sliver of understanding through the Gauss Rifle, but that was like comparing a regular laptop to an entire supercomputer. Technically the same technology, but on such massively different scales that the comparison was entirely unfair.
Lightning Arc Batteries, Particle Whips, hyperphase weapons, shields beyond what he used, phase shifters, disintegrators, gravitic manipulators, inertialess drives, a different kind of Portal to what he used that, while having a vastly shorter range of only a few thousand kilometers, didn't require a portal linked on the other side to function! And there was so much more, so many little things beyond weapons that could improve the efficiency and power of every one of his units from his Legate-class ships to his Mando'ade and even his mineral extractors and generators. Things that could manipulate the synapses of living creatures in ways he had never even conceived of. However, there was one thing that surpassed all others in his mind.
Psychic weaponry.
It had taken him moments, what felt like an eternity for his accelerated thinking, to process the implications of the Sepulchre weapon equipped upon the Cairn-class battleships. It made sense. The necrons had fought the old ones, entities of immense psychic power. They would, naturally, have created weapons to either diminish or counter that power. That was why he was here, to get that kind of counter.
Yet, he had not expected them to have managed to utilize the Warp itself given their status as fully machine. He had expected them to be more like him, incapable of it.
The technology used in the Sepulchre was complex, even more than anything else he had found. It was majestic, divine even, as hesitant as he was to use that term to describe anything in this galaxy. And every single piece of it made complete sense to him. He could… he could perceive the Warp!
To some degree at least. When he built the sensors the Sepulchre was equipped with back on Rikers using a bit of his harvested Necrodermis, he found that he could perceive something like lights within each person. Some were brighter, others were dimmer, while the Tau had the dimmest of all to the extent that he could barely perceive them. The only one he couldn't perceive with the device was Kira, likely due to her status as a blank. Unfortunately, he could perceive the souls of those he had placed the blank gene into. While it had only been a short while, he had hoped they would have changed into blanks by that point. He likely needed a better understanding of the Warp to affect souls in such a way, which only increased the value of this new sensor.
One of, if not the biggest blind spots he had had at last been covered.
By finishing the Sepulchre weapon, he found he could reach out and affect the lights he saw in a variety of ways. While the standard use of the weapon was to inflict terror and fear, he could do other things as well. He reached out and sent a calming, content wave out across the planet. The effects were immediate. It was like everyone had suddenly had a massage, with many breathing sighs of relief. He could note their emotions, with many being confused by the sudden feelings or by the fact that several groups had all sighed simultaneously, but they didn't seem scared. The wave had even affected the Tau to a degree, though it was less effective.
He could use this, he realized. If he were to apply this on a wider, galactic scale, he could pump every person full of 'content' and reduce the power of Chaos! He'd have to be careful to maintain a healthy balance of emotions, but if he could calm the Warp, the galaxy would be an infinitely safer place.
Part of him said that manipulating the emotions of countless trillions was morally questionable at best, but it wasn't like he was making them suffer or anything. They would be happy, so it would be fine. That same part of him was still concerned, but he just ignored it.
Until he had found a method to produce necrodermis of his own, these ideas were just ideas. He had managed to harvest a massive amount from the necron fleet along with their tech, but it was still a finite resource. He wanted to be able to make everything he had out of the stuff.
Still, that didn't mean he couldn't make a few prototypes.
