Pyramid Scheme: A Leagues of Votann Story (Part One)

This is a Warhammer 40K fan story, written by Neal F. Litherland and Samuel Furlano.

The jungle was an unbroken sea that stretched from one horizon to another. The canopy swayed in the breeze, a thousand shades of viridian moving in waves beneath the pattering rain squalls. Birds called to one another from the treetops, their cries echoing across the vast, green emptiness. Life teemed beneath the branches, stalking, shifting, climbing, and crawling as life and death in all their myriad forms ran in their short, endless circles. A growl reverberated through the trees, and the denizens of that place halted, raising their heads and listening. It came again, an unnatural sound filled with the gnashing of steel teeth, and the guttural growl of a low-velocity turbine.

The trees burst apart, and a mechanical chimera trundled through the gap. The thing was thick and squat, with heavy, spiked treads along the sides to drive it forward, and a single, lighter tread under the almost piggish nose. Clear seam lines marked where multiple vehicles had been cannibalized and welded together, but there was a strange beauty and artistry to them; almost like tattoos left on the transport’s metal skin. The front of the trike also bore a heavy plow blade that smashed aside stones and shrubbery alike, while also acting as a shield for the vehicle’s front gunner. The driver was positioned behind the gunner, and there was a cargo area behind the driver, with another weapon mount and gunner position on top of the vehicle’s rear.

The crew of the vehicle was just as strange and hodgepodge as the armored transport itself, but they had the same, mismatched unity to them. Each of them was wildly different than the others, but at the same time they’d been fused together into a single unit, and a single purpose. Just like their assault trike, the Ironbeards were far greater than the sum of their parts.

“You bring us to the nicest places, Fixer,” Greaser grumbled over the comm link, raising one, thick arm to shield his face from a low-hanging branch before returning his hands back to the HYlas rotary cannon mounted on the transport’s roof. “What was it you said when you sold us on this run? An untouched, tropical paradise, ripe for the picking?”

“Where’s the lie?” Fixer retorted from inside the rear bay of the transport. He had his back against the wall shared with the driver’s cab, his eyes fixed on their rear trail to make sure nothing snuck up on them out of the jungle. “Humidity and temp readings confirm this moon is definitely tropical. No one replied to our comm hail when we came into the system, and we haven’t seen anything I’d call organized resistance, aside from some of the old growth trees.”

Fixer was clearly working himself into a roll, his speech falling into the familiar drawl he used whenever he was trying to smooth out wrinkles when what he’d promised them didn’t quite measure up to what they found when they got boots-down on a planet. Before he could build up any real momentum, though, a double chirp came over the wire; their eyes in the sky had something to say.

“Go ahead, Rat Trap,” Spector said, his deep voice silencing the chatter on the line.

“I did another pass over the destination,” the dropship pilot said. “Ran a spectrum analysis to try to get a look at what’s below the treeline. Bounce back told me there are dozens of vehicles surrounding the place, along with three dozen isolated instances of rare metals, and unique rad signatures.”

“Tinker, you want to translate that for the rest of us?” Spector asked, pulling on the handlebars and dragging the trike to one side as the vehicle dug a furrow along the side of the path, narrowly avoiding a boulder jutting out of the ground.

The old kin wheezed slightly. It was a sound that always preceded Tinker’s thoughts, and the crew had come to think of it as the technical engineer’s brain getting up to speed. As the trike jounced over a particularly hard root, Tinker snorted, and grunted. “Send me the scans you took, Rat.”

“Sending now,” the ratling said.

There was silence on the line for a long moment as everyone waited for Tinker’s analysis. Fixer felt the weight of that silence, knowing that what the old man said next could break this entire endeavor before they even got properly started. The engine rumbled, and the trike’s front blade sheared through several smaller trees, bulldozing them out of the way as the kin trundled on toward either fortune, or certain doom.

“The vehicles are definitely there,” Tinker said, sniffing and blowing out a breath as he tried to get his mustache out of his mouth. “Judging from this, none of them are active, and several of them look to be in pieces. The rare metals would take more time to identify, but I don’t think they’re a threat. The radiation signatures… those concern me.”

Razor grunted from his seat behind the plow, but he didn’t say anything. Fixer touched his tongue to his lip. He’d known Tinker long enough to know that concern wasn’t the same as worry. It wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination, but it might not be disastrous. Fixer waited a beat, seeing if anyone else was going to prompt the geezer, before he spoke up.

“What’s the concern?” Fixer asked. There was a chorus of drawn breaths, but before anyone could tell Fixer to shut up, Tinker cleared his throat.

“The signatures around the structure, those are nothing,” Tinker said. “Expended munitions, leaking cores, nothing that will cause us a problem if we’re careful. But this here… there’s a low-grade signature coming from the structure itself.”

No one had anything to say to that. They drove on in silence for nearly a minute, slamming down several trees, and uprooting an entire patch of bushes that were foolish enough to get between the trike and its destination. The double beep came again, and Rat Trap’s voice came back over the channel.

“You’re about thirty five seconds out from your destination,” he said. “If you want me to swoop back in for an emergency pickup, this is last call.”

Silence rolled back over kin, each of them waiting for one of the others to speak first. Fixer held his breath, knowing that all it was to take to end this job before it really began was an objection from one of the others. Greaser burped, and coughed. Tinker spit out the ends of his mustache again. Razor, as was his usual, said nothing. He said it unusually loudly, though.

“Stick to the plan, Rat Trap,” Spector said after a moment. Fixer let out his breath slowly, doing his best to be sure he wasn’t heard over the channel. “The warning is appreciated, but we aren’t going to let a little radiation stop us. Everyone check your seals, make sure you’re safe.”

Everyone checked their power armor, each of them confirming safety levels. Just as Razor grunted his affirmative that he was ready the trike broke through the treeline, and they found themselves at the top of a small ridge. Spector hit the brakes, and the trike snarled to a stop. For a moment the kin just sat there, and took in what lay before them.

Past the dense, jungle foliage reared a colossal structure. The massive ziggurat was taller than anything else on the feral moon, save for a handful of mountain ranges, and even though it looked to be made of ancient stone, the crystalline structure revealed by the scans suggested it was actually forged of some kind of bizarre metal. The structure was so dark it seemed to drink the light, refusing to give back so much as a photon to the kin’s eyes. Surrounding that shadowy monolith was a scorched no-man’s-land, filled with the wreckage of hundreds of vehicles. There were tanks that had been sheared in half, war wagons that had detonated into a dozen pieces, and heavy dozers and diggers that lie broken like toys in the hands of an enraged child. Ragged scraps of faded banners waved in the breeze, and through the creeping vines trying to reclaim the scrap the kin could still make out the markings on the transports. Ork tribal stamps, eldar craftworld sigils, and the caste marks of tau vehicles could be seen, but greater in number than all the others put together was the winged skull of the imperial guard.

“What was that you were saying about ‘untouched’ again, Fixer?” Greaser asked as he surveyed the remnants of the forgotten battlefield.

“Oh, stuff it,” Fixer said, the corners of his mouth turning down as he leaned out of the rear hatch to get a better look at what was before them.

“Eyes up, kin,” Spector said as he revved the engine. “We aren’t here for a fight, and we aren’t here to be heroes, you understand?”

They all gave Spector the affirmative, and once they’d all agreed, he started the trike trundling toward the temple of blackened steel. With every meter they covered, the kin crawled inside themselves. The light ribbing and casual banter that had marked their trek out to this place dried up like water in the desert as each of them settled their fingers on their triggers, and watched in all directions for something, anything, to emerge from hiding to try to ambush them. The fact that nothing came only seemed to make them more tense, though, instead of less. They circled the structure twice, most of the kin scanning the unbroken wall of black steel with their eyes, while Tinker gave several commands to the upper operator arms attached to his engineer’s suit. His instruments scanned the structure up-close, and when the readings hit a spike, he tapped Spector on the shoulder, and gestured at the wall. It seemed no different than any other part of the ziggurat, but Spector nodded, slowed the trike, and then reversed and turned so that the rear cargo area was pointed at the wall. Once he had the vehicle in place, Tinker pulled himself to his feet, his operator arms lifting him out of the trike’s extended rear cab like he was a particularly bulky spider.

“What does the scanner tell you Tink?” Fixer asked as he half-stepped out of the trike’s cargo bay.

“It tells me that you should use my full name, or keep your mouth shut,” Tinker grumbled as he walked over to the wall. His armor hummed as he moved, his usual shuffling, stuttering steps transformed into a confident stride by the suit’s servos. “In fact, keep your mouth shut anyway. Let me focus.”

Fixer had his mouth open to say something, but he thought better of it. Greaser tried to hide his snicker, but it came over the comm all the same. Tinker ignored them both, activating even more of the instruments in his suit to take up-close readings. Two of the mechanical arms attached to his pack reached over his head, scanning the wall first vertically, then horizontally. When the scan was complete, the initial arms retreated, and a third deployed, holding a vibrational measuring instrument. Moving with surprising dexterity, the robotic arm tapped the instrument against the wall, producing a sound that was so high-pitched that the kin couldn’t actually hear it, even if they could feel it in their teeth. Tinker pressed a button, and a holographic projection of the analysis hovered above one wrist. He looked at it, muttering to himself. He even reached up to stroke his beard, forgetting for a moment he still had his helmet on.

“So what’s the word, Tink?” Greaser asked, stretching in his seat. “We gonna have to plant charges? Or should we have brought cutters to get into this place?”

“Neither,” Tinker replied, waving off Greaser’s questions with one hand. “Just stay back, and let me work.”

The working arms of Tinker’s array leaped back into motion, the grabbing hands re-configuring into a sonic array. The arms adjusted themselves, flickering red lines appearing on the wall as they marked out a specific distance, and the joints shifted as the mechanism reinforced itself. Tinker set his feet, raised a hand, and pressed a button on his gauntlet. The instruments started vibrating, pulses of sound piercing through the air. The pitch grew higher and higher, pushing outside the realm of audible hearing for the kin. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the kin all heard a deep, rolling rumble. It echoed through the earth, making the trike rock on its treads, and causing the ghosts of the old wrecks all around the ziggurat to groan and shift. Green light bloomed across the wall, sigils opening along the expanse of black steel like sleeping eyes coming awake. A crack opened in the wall, and parted to either side. It opened a dozen meters, and then stopped. Once it was open, the rumbling ceased, and the sigils died one by one. A moment later, there was no way to tell there had ever been a solid wall there at all, except for the deep trench cut through the earth in front of it.

“What in the black void is that?” Fixer asked, his voice several octaves higher than it had been.

“The front door,” Tinker said, pushing another button on his gauntlet before he turned back to look at the trike. “I don’t like the look of this.”

“Does it confirm your hypothesis?” Spector asked. Tinker made a non-committal sound in his throat.

“Yes and no,” he said. “The energy signature and trigger is in keeping with a necron tomb. But the way the metal just shifts and changes almost like a responsive thing… it shouldn’t move like that.”

A visible shudder went through the kin at the mention of the xenos species. The creatures of living steel and unstoppable will whose weapons were like nightmares from another age were not unknown to the Ironbeards, and speaking their name aloud this close to this gigantic tomb felt almost like tempting fate. Fixer touched his chest, right above the spot where his lucky medallion rested. Greaser made a warding motion with one hand, as if trying to strike the sound of the name from the ancestor’s record. Razor’s jaw tightened, and the rest could hear his teeth grind over the comm link. Only Spector seemed unfazed.

“Rat Trap, we’re heading inside,” Spector said as he killed the trike’s engine. “Tinker found us a way in without any heavy ordnance. Monitor the emergency band, and keep to the flight plan we agreed on.”

“Aye, Sir,” Rat Trap said. Before he could kill the connection, his cyber monkey added several of his chirping, simian sounds to the line. “Howler says good luck.”

“Our thanks,” Spector said before he terminated the comm link.

The remaining kin disembarked from the trike, each of them taking turns covering the others as each of them went through last second gear checks before getting into formation. Fixer checked his HYlas rifle, as well as his HYlas sidearms, before stepping toward the gap in the structure’s base and standing to one side of it. Razor hefted his weapon, a massive, twin-linked heavy bolter he’d affectionately named Guts and Glory, and took up position on the other side of the entryway. Spector holstered the threatening, stubby EtaCarn pistol that rarely left his side, and slid his hands around his bolter. Greaser unslung his power ax, holding it in a loose grip as he strolled over next to Tinker. Tinker’s fingers were running over his control panel, reconfiguring his assistance arms into something more aggressive. The sparking, whirring machinery withdrew into the power pack, shifting and snapping as additional components were added. Spector cleared his throat, but Tinker just waved a hand without raising his gaze, signaling he was ready to proceed whenever the younger members of the team were. Spector turned to the others, tapped the side of his helmet twice, and then pointed into the gap with two fingers. They all nodded, and moved into the gap, switching to dark sight mode as they left the bright sunshine behind.

The kin expected to find a ruin when they entered the great structure. The ziggurat was located on a feral moon the ancestors-only-knew how many light years away from anything they would consider civilized, and it had been abandoned for untold millennia aside from the attempted incursions. As they delved deeper into the huge building, though, they found themselves inside pristine hallways polished to a glossy shine. Ancient depictions of the masters of this place covered the walls, showing great wars, the ascent of kings, and more. They passed arching structures and tall doorways that had a delicate, otherworldly beauty to them, but which were strong enough to support an untold number of tons without the slightest strain. Impossible examples of bizarre art hung suspended in the air seemingly of their own volition, slowly turning and spinning to show every facet of their alien geometries. The air inside the place was old and stale, as well, but it was also significantly cooler than the clammy, cloying heat outside.

“Mark turn,” Fixer said quietly as they came upon a cross breeze. “Turning south.”

Fixer turned the corner, bringing his rifle down to cover the hallway. He scanned side to side, then up and down, carefully examining the smaller hallway before him. After a moment he raised a hand, and gave the all clear sign. Razor followed, careful that the twin barrels of his weapon never pointed at Fixer even for a moment. As they advanced, Spector followed behind them. Greaser and Tinker brought up the rear, leaving more than enough space between them and the others that the whole squad couldn’t be caught out by explosives, chunks of falling masonry, or even a moderately-sized ambush.

The kin took a dozen more turns, and Fixer called each one as they went. They marked the location and direction on their internal detection systems, ensuring each of them had a synchronized map they could easily follow out should the need arise. The side hallway emptied them into some kind of grand entryway filled with galleries and mezzanines, and into what felt like an ancient banquet hall where row upon row of places were set along tiered platforms, the tables waiting silently for the diners, and the feast they were to consume. They moved through pristine living quarters that looked like they’d never held a single living soul, and they wandered cathedrals full of bizarre architecture wrought in praise to things they had no names or words for. Every sight was stranger than the last, disorienting their senses and leaving them relying on their instruments to figure out where they were, and how they got there.

“How much further?” Greaser asked over the comm link, his breath rasping.

“Quit complaining,” Fixer said, swiveling the barrel of his weapon from side to side as he walked. “Your exo is doing all the heavy lifting. And believe me, Grease, there’s a lot of it to do.”

“Why don’t you walk back here and say that to me?” Greaser growled through the comm.

“And do all the work for you?” Fixer said, snorting. “Why don’t you come up here and do something about it?”

“Contact,” Razor said.

The kin went silent, and scattered. Fixer threw himself behind a steel column, before leaning around one side, his finger on his rifle’s trigger. Razor was across the wide hallway, down on one knee, both barrels of his weapon pointed forward. Greaser, despite his complaining, hoofed out of the hall to one side, screening Tinker’s body with his bulk. Spector went the other way, his wary eyes seeking a target.

“What is it?” Spector demanded.

“I see it,” Fixer hissed. “70 meters, single figure. Tinker, need your expertise on this one.”

Tinker frowned, the extra lenses in his helmet whirring as he peered out from behind Greaser and eyed the location Fixer had marked. After a moment he stepped out into the hall, and began tromping closer. Greaser tried to grab him, but the old man shook off the mechanic’s hand.

“Eyes up, but fingers off your switches,” Tinker said, waving one hand in the air as his pack’s arms readjusted themselves. “You wait till I give the all clear before you slag this thing, hear me?”

There was a chorus of grunts, but no one took their eyes off the thing Razor had spotted at the end of the hall. As they focused their gazes, they could see it had two arms, two legs, and one head, but other than that it was all wrong. The proportions were too thin, and the features jutting and skeletal, making the figure look uncanny. The figure held a weapon, but it was at rest rather than ready for combat. It stood completely motionless, blending in with the wall behind it where it had stood at attention for who knew how long.

It wasn’t the first necron the kin had seen, and they knew how quickly it could go from the state it was in to a dire threat.

Tinker walked right up to the thing, his scanner running over it and determining everything about it down to the atomic level. He came within an arm’s reach of the thing, and the rest of the kin collectively held their breath. When it didn’t move, and nothing happened, they let out a collective sigh of relief. Tinker snorted, and turned his back on the thing, scanning the walls near where it stood guard. Finally he found what he seemed to be looking for, and he pressed a hidden panel on the wall. It slid away, revealing a set of lights that glowed a poisonous green.

“What’s going on, Tinker?” Spector asked. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“Found a lift to take us below,” the old kin said, touching a set of hieroglyphs. “That’s where you said this thing we’re looking for is, right Fixer?”

“That’s what my source told me,” Fixer agreed.

“All right then,” Tinker replied, touching a last button as an entire portion of the wall moved. Much like the exterior of the building, there was no track, no grinding of machinery, no hiss of hydraulics, or hum of electricity. The steel wall just retreated silently, revealing an elevator large enough to move several companies of soldiers, as well as a dozen vehicles. “Come on, daylight’s wasting!”

Fixer was the first to step out of cover. He kept his weapon pointed at the necron warrior, but it remained as still as a statue. Razor went next, his jaw visibly tightening as he turned his back on the thing guarding the hallway. Greaser huffed his way forward, and Spector came last. Once everyone was inside, Tinker withdrew a tiny metal cylinder from his pack, pressed a button, and slipped it inside the waiting figure’s armored torso. Then the old man joined them inside the lift, and revealed a secondary panel. This time he pressed a single sigil. There was no shivering of machinery, no clack or clangor to signify gears and chains grinding into motion, but all of them felt the chamber they were standing in move as it lowered them into the earth. As they moved, only two of the walls moved with them… the others remained stationary, their blank faces soon giving way to something none of them had expected.

The kin stared as they descended past deep carvings depicting a building just like the ziggurat in ancient days… but it was wrong. Instead of lush jungles, the land in the images was a sun-scorched waste. A man holding a staff of power and bearing robes marked with what looked like symbols of rank or authority stood atop the building, defiantly staring into the sun, even as it sucked the life from his bones, bending his back, and aging him far beyond his years. Those who stood around him had youthful faces, but their bodies were twisted, the life being pulled from them by the sun that filled most of the carved sky.

“Tinker, what the hell am I looking at?” Greaser asked. The old man didn’t say anything, but he grunted and waved a hand for silence. He kept his helmet pointed at the carvings, recording every detail in high definition for a later time.

The carvings continued. Instead of the deadly sun, it showed the same, bent-backed man inside what looked like some kind of laboratory. There were similarly diseased men being lowered into stone caskets, and strange, glistening figures rising from them. Their proportions were wrong, and they looked more like monsters than machines, but as the carvings continued, their designs grew and changed. It was like they were evolving as the sickened and dying king tried to save his subjects. It wasn’t until the final stage, where he was preparing to enter the chamber himself, that another man of even greater stature entered. He took the king, and his steel bodyguards, to an empty place beneath the stars, and where a sky filled with a thousand, staring eyes looked down onto a glistening steel mountain. The lord was forced in, and he emerged in the next carving. He looked similar to the strange guardians he had forged, but greater, and more detailed. They bowed before him, and he placed his hands upon their bodies. It was a pose that suggested both sorrow, and a promise.

As the last of the carved scenes slid away, the stone throat itself opened, revealing a breathtaking, underground vista. A vast cavern stretched below the ziggurat, built of the same strange, glistening, metallic material. Structures filled the space, some of which looked familiar, but others which were wholly alien in their design and purpose. Banked lights lit the place like a radioactive dusk, and tracked streets crisscrossed the space in a perfect grid pattern. The place was uncanny, and it made the skin between the kin’s shoulder blades and across the backs of their necks tighten. The city looked organic, but the longer they looked, the more they could see the underlying patterns that governed its design. It was like a machine that had dreamed of being flesh, but it awoke before it could truly remember what that meant.

“Son of a bitch…” Fixer said, his voice so soft his mic barely picked it up. He raised one hand, pointing a single finger at the streets below. “Look.”

The kin looked, and in a moment they saw what Fixer had seen. Though they’d seemed pristine from on-high, the streets of the underground city bore the marks of battle. Impact craters dotted several of the structures, and they saw places where the steel ran in melted rivers; a testament to the use of heavy plasma weaponry. In addition to the discharge, they could also see the puddles of slag that marked where several of the weapons had overloaded.

“Looks like we aren’t the first to make it this far,” Greaser said.

“All right people, focus,” Spector said as he pointedly checked his weapons before lifting his bolter once more. “We can gawk at the footage later, after we get out of here. Our goal remains unchanged. Fixer, where did your contact say the crystal was?”

“He said the decavane was in the central tomb complex,” Fixer said, giving himself a shake and licking his lips. “He didn’t draw me a map, but if I had to take a guess, it’s probably that big one in the middle.”

“That would make the most sense, wouldn’t it?” Tinker said. He bent his knees slightly as the platform settled onto the ground. The old kin needn’t have bothered; despite being thousands of years old, the elevator slid into place without so much as a creak of metal, or a puff of dust. Tinker returned to the panel, pressing several symbols before closing it once more. “Keep your eyes open. This place smells like a trap.”

They waited long enough for Tinker to translate the footage they’d seen from above into a grid map, marking their location, and the fastest route to the central structure; a smaller version of the ziggurat above. Before he was completely finished, the old man withdrew a small disc from his armored backpack, and pressed a button. It shifted and whirred, a pair of fans coming into view as the observation bot came online. Once it synched up, Tinker directed it above them, ensuring they had eyes watching from above, and taking in sights they couldn’t readily see.

The kin took up the same positions they had while exploring the ziggurat above, doing their best to maintain their silence. When they did speak, calling out distances or directions, it was in quiet, clipped voices. The Ironbeards knew that all it took was a moment’s distraction in situations like this for something to go catastrophically wrong, and they didn’t want to end up as another pile of scrap in this place’s growing heap. As they turned a corner into a boulevard that thrummed with the sound of power conduits, Fixer and Razor froze.

“What is it?” Spector asked.

“Redcloaks,” Razor said, managing to squeeze both contempt and caution into that one word.

Tinker flew the drone over the alley, muttering under his breath as he observed the carnage that filled the connecting street. An armored troop transport had been cut into pieces, the steel and ceramite of the hull sliced to a mono-molecular edge. The remains of shattered steel stilts jutted up from where they’d fallen, and expended shell casings and charge packs littered the ground. A bisected battle standard lay on the ground, showing the two halves of the skull carried by the fanatics of the Martian machine cult.

“Where are the bodies?” Fixer asked. “Where are their weapons?”

“Judging from the hieroglyphics we saw, they’re probably in the lord’s lab complex awaiting dissection and investigation, or his trophy room,” Tinker said, his armor whirring as he started walking forward. He fished two more small cylinders off his belt, placing them against the power core of the broken troop transport. “And if we don’t want to end up there ourselves, we’d best get a move on.”

“You heard the old man,” Spector said. “Faster we get in, the faster we get out.”

The kin quickened their pace, foregoing stealth and caution in favor of speed as their armored boots clanged off the black steel roads. They came across the burnt-out wreck of what looked like ork speed wagons, their red paint nearly charred to nothing, and the machines fallen to scrap without their riders to keep them going. They found the remains of eldar speeders, the shattered hulls and broken wings somehow elegant even in death. It was the drab green vehicles of the Imperial Guard who had made it the furthest, though, the shattered hulks of their boxy tanks and ungainly walkers somehow defiant even as they lay smashed and broken at the very feet of the prize they’d come to claim.

“Same?” Greaser asked, his breath coming in great gasps despite the aid of his armor’s servos.

“Same,” Fixer replied. His breathing was more managed, but he blew droplets of sweat off his nose. “No sign of the bodies, and no sign of whatever killed them.”

“Doesn’t matter what killed them,” Spector said, looking around the foot of the underground ziggurat. “All of you, catch your breath, but stay alert. Tinker, send your eyes up top. I want to make sure what we’re looking for is there before we head up all those stairs.”

Fixer took a knee behind one of the broken tanks, his HYlas slowly tracking over the nearby structures as he looked for any kind of movement. Razor put a shoulder against the same vehicle, standing watch over Fixer. Greaser crouched down, his power ax across his knees, his hands never leaving the weapon’s grip. As the flier rose into the air, slowly circling the ziggurat, Tinker moved from one downed vehicle to the next, placing more of his small, magnetic cylinders with care. The old man had nearly completed his task, when he straightened suddenly, and touched the keypad on his gauntlet.

“You all need to see this,” he said, tying the others into the data stream coming back from the little scout machine.

The view was not what they’d anticipated. The chamber was wrought from gold, silver, platinum, and a dozen other precious metals that would have fetched a fortune on the open market. Fine tapestries hung from between the exterior pillars, each a perfectly preserved work of art that was untouched by the centuries that had passed over this place. Coffers of gems and strange, elongated coins stood around the room, almost as if they were there more as decorations than as testaments of wealth. In the center of all this opulence was a body swaddled in wrappings, and dressed in the trappings of the lord they had seen depicted in the hieroglyphics during their descent. And floating above that figure, giving off a pale, blue light, was the decavane crystal the kin had come all this way to reclaim.

“Lost stars,” Greaser said, his voice filled with awe. “That’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen!”

“A crystal that size could power an army,” Tinker said. “Or an armada.”

“The wealth of an empire,” Spector said, more to himself than the others. He shook his head slowly, before regaining his focus. “Tinker, keep your eyes on the chamber. If anything so much as shifts I want notice. Meantime, now that you all have your wind back, let’s finish the job and get off this rock!”

With a cry of enthusiasm, the kin got to their feet and headed for the ziggurat. They raced up the stairs, using the powered systems in their armor to take several steps at a time. Even in the chaos of their swarming rush, though, they never lost that singularity of movement. Every one of the kin knew where every other member was without having to crane their heads, or check their map readout. And though each of them expected some automated defense system to spring into life, or to catch some glimpse of the forces that clearly protected this place as they rose to the structure’s summit, nothing happened. Nothing stopped their progress, and the kin reached the sacred chamber sweating and panting from their rapid ascent, but otherwise unhampered. As they stood on the threshold, the treasure they’d come all this way for right in front of their eyes, a note of caution bled into the Ironbeards. Greaser moved to step forward, but Razor put a hand on his shoulder, and shook his head.

“Tinker,” Spector said, his gaze tracking around the room as if he were looking for any cover that could conceal an assailant. “What does your readout say?”

“Not a damn thing,” Tinker said, disgust creeping into his voice as he pressed several keys on his gauntlet, and grunted. “We’re too close to the crystal. The whole damn place could be a killing floor, but the energy signature is too high.”

None of them said anything for a long moment. Their prize was in sight, suspended above a dusty old corpse, but the battles that had come before had never reached this far. There were no wrecked vehicles, no blast marks, nothing to indicate where dangers might lie. It was possible the ancient necrontyr had been arrogant enough to believe that nothing would ever reach the very heart of this citadel… but one did not maintain the position this being had held for that many centuries by taking foolish risks. After that moment ended, Fixer tipped a two-fingered salute toward Spector, and then stepped into the chamber.

The kin held their breath as Fixer’s boots came down on the gold filigree floor, and he dashed across the space, his head on a swivel as he looked for any kind of security system response. No blast panels went off, no autonomous drones released from ceiling hangars, and no hidden doors opened to reveal any kind of bodyguard. The mummy lay still on the slab, and above it the crystal floated placidly in its energy field. Fixer, looked back at the others, shrugging, but the relief in his voice was palpable when he spoke.

“Well, what are you all waiting for?” he asked.

The kin moved, each of them falling to tasks as Spector called them out. Razor stood on overwatch, the twin barrels of his weapon constantly shifting as he sought a target. Fixer had his rifle slung, snatching up the trinkets, bars of rare metals, gems, and other grave goods left on display and sliding them into his spare hard case pack. Tinker and Greaser took up positions on either side of the corpse, their eyes directed upward at the decavane crystal as they began the process of extracting it from the field it rested in. Spector tried to raise Rat Trap, but this far below the ground there was no way their signal was going to reach the ratling even if he was in range of the hail.

“How’s our progress looking?” Spector asked.

“Do you really want to rush me on this?” Tinker asked, the support arms from his pack unit waving like the legs of a perturbed arachnid as he measured and mapped the field holding the crystal in place. “One wrong move, and this is the last conversation that will ever take place on this sodding moon.”

Spector nodded, and joined Fixer in his looting. He wasn’t as discerning, or as fast, but it kept his hands busy and his nerves calm while they waited. Razor peered back the way they’d come, his eyes sweeping the grounds. His frown somehow found a way to grow deeper, and he slid his finger onto the trigger. Fixer was already moving, sliding his pack into place and bringing his rifle back into his hands as he joined Razor at the room’s entrance. Razor pointed, and Fixer brought his weapon up, peering down the scope.

“What is it?” Spector asked, securing his own loot before taking up his bolter again.

“Movement,” Fixer said, frowning. “It’s fast, whatever the hell it is.”

“Did it look like our friend upstairs?” Spector asked.

“No,” Fixer said, but the word came out slowly. “Yes. Sort of. I can’t really explain it.”

“Tinker, we’re out of time for delicacy,” Spector said. “I want that crystal.”

Tinker didn’t reply. Neither did Greaser. The two of them merely narrowed their eyes, looking into the swirling field surrounding the crystal. The mechanical arms from Tinker’s tech pack slid into a complex array, and sparks flew from their tips as they ignited an unseen matrix. The color flared, and the pattern grew more and more intricate, until it hurt the eye to follow. The air grew heavy, as if there was a storm coming. None of the kin took cover… if something went wrong now, they’d need to be in orbit to be a safe distance away from it.

“Steady,” Tinker said, holding both his arms aloft like a conductor as his eyes traced the forming pattern slicing through the air. “Steady… now!”

Greaser swung his power ax, giving it every ounce of strength his thick shoulders and servo-driven fiber bundles could bring to bear. There was an impact in the air, like thunder without sound, and a flash of brilliance so bright the kin’s helmet displays immediately darkened to try to save their eyes. The hum of the underground city, which the kin had barely been conscious of, stopped. The lights dimmed even further, and the entire underground city was thrown into a twilit darkness. The decavane crystal hung in the air for an impossible moment, and then tumbled into the waiting grip of Tinker’s servo arms.

“Got it!” Greaser said, grinning. He had his mouth open to say something else, but all that came out of him was a scream.

The mummy’s right hand had latched around Greaser’s ankle, the fingers digging into the reinforced armor of his boot hard enough to begin crushing it. Greaser tried to yank his foot out of the thing’s grasp, but it held tight, and the sound of groaning metal filled the chamber. Greaser brought his power ax down, aiming squarely for the gauze wrapped head. The wrappings went up like kindling, burning to ash in moments to reveal the gleaming metal of the figure beneath. A creature of alien dimensions with an angular head, its luminous, hateful green eyes stared up at the thief it held in its grasp.

Before the others could do more than recognize the situation had changed, Greaser brought his weapon down again, and again, and again. He was still screaming, but it was with fury rather than fear. The power field of his ax flared every time it made contact with the living metal of the entombed necron lord, the blade biting deep into the creature’s inner workings. He severed the arm at the elbow, crushed the thing’s ribcage, and then finally drove his weapon into the space between the neck and shoulder. Sparks flew from each wound, and the mummy went limp once more, falling back onto the slab it had occupied for so many thousands of years.

“You all right, Grease?” Fixer asked.

“Nah,” Greaser said, kicking the gripping hand free from his boot. He looked over his shoulder at the others, his beard split by a huge grin. “But you should see the other guy!”

The kin all laughed at that; an uproarious sound that seemed alien in this long-abandoned place. Just as their laughter reached its peak, though, another sound filled the massive, underground chamber. It was a low, rolling groan, like the belly of a god that had slept for millennia and woken up ravenous. The kin’s mirth died as their heads turned as one, staring at the city as it began to stir all around them.

“What in the black is that noise?” Fixer asked.

“I don’t want to find out,” Spector said. “We have what we came for. Ironbeards, show me what fast looks like!”

Fixer didn’t need to be told twice. He was over the lip of the pyramid, leaping from step to stair with abandon before Spector had even finished giving the order. Razor went down next, and though he lacked what Fixer had in grace, he was a rolling rock that wasn’t going to stop. Tinker followed them, balancing himself as best he could with his autonomous systems occupied with keeping the crystal locked down against his chest. Greaser was making to join the others when the necron lord’s eyes flared back to life, and it made to stand once more. Spector’s hand moved faster than thought, and a bright bolt of plasma lanced across the room, slamming into the hole in the thing’s chest and exploding.

“What was-?” Greaser tried to ask, but Spector was already shoving him toward the stairs.

“Go!” he shouted, reholstering his pistol. “Go, before it gets back up again!”

By the time Greaser and Spector rejoined the others, it was clear what the noise was. Doors were opening all across the subterranean complex, belching forth battalions of metallic figures in rank-and-file. They were swathed in red, the robes looking sickly in the green light that bled from their eyes, and emanated from their weapons. Fixer was choosing his shots, squeezing the trigger and sending blazing bolts of energy out into the enemy, each round taking them in the head. Razor joined in soon after, the twin barrels of Guts and Glory spinning up to speed before letting forth a stream of hellfire and hate. Bolts of energy crackled through the air, lancing toward the kin. The volley from the gauss weapons impacted the broken-down vehicles, and vaporized chunks of the street, but ultimately missed the Ironbeards. That kind of luck couldn’t hold out forever, though.

“Where does your overwatch tell us to go, Tinker?” Spector asked, firing his bolter at the flank. “We need an exit strategy, here!”

“We aren’t going around anything, Spector,” Tinker said, giving the captain a smile. “We’re gonna go right through them.”

Before Spector could ask how, Tinker pressed several buttons on his gauntlet. That was when the miniaturized mining charges he’d planted on the downed vehicles detonated in the midst of their foes. The flash was blinding, and shrapnel whistled through the air, tearing at anything in its path. The reverberations from the explosion hadn’t even faded before Greaser charged into the choking smoke of the dust cloud, roaring as he swung his power ax with abandon at anything that moved.

“Keep going!” Spector yelled, a laugh warring with desperation in his voice as he haranged the others. “We stop, and we die!”

The kin ran forward, running through the hole left open in the tide of living metal before it could pull itself together again and put up a real fight. Occasional blasts of green energy flew toward them, but it was always answered a barrage of firepower until it stilled. They were just about to reach the turn down the narrow alley where they’d found the downed Martian vehicles, when Fixer cried out and went to a knee. Greaser grabbed Fixer under one arm, half dragging and half carrying him behind cover while Razor sprayed the narrow alley with bolter fire. Tinker plodded up to them, his mechanical arms already shifting. Without a word, Greaser mag locked his ax, and held out his arms to take the burden of the crystal.

“What the hell happened?” Spector asked, peering around the corner. All he could see was chemical clouds and smoke. Something whirred past his head, and he ducked back around the corner just as a swarm of projectiles impacted the metal barrier where his helmet had just been.

“This,” Tinker said, wrenching something out of the shoulder joint of Fixer’s armor. It was a long, thin metal projectile, honed to an impossible edge. He held it up between his thumb and forefinger, and Spector peered at it.

“Shuriken cannons?” Spector asked, incredulity in his voice as he turned and fired down the alley. He wasn’t sure if he’d hit anything, but he wanted to keep the enemy on their back foot. “Why would a necron force be using eldar weapons?”

“Because they are eldar,” Tinker grunted, one of his backpack’s whirring arms administering anesthetic and skin patch to Fixer’s wound, the other putting a lock seal over the hole in his armor. “Weren’t you paying attention to the hieroglyphics?”

“That’s what I have you for, Tinker,” Spector said. He caught sight of movement from his peripheral, and fired off a burst of bolter rounds. The figure was fast enough to dodge the first two, but the third caught it beneath the arm, burrowing in before detonating. It went up in a fireball of molten metal and energy discharge, but before it lost its form completely, Spector saw the elegant form of an eldar warrior, rendered down to its bare bones before being encased in a steel cage.

“The necrontyr lord whose acquaintance Greaser made was experimenting with consciousness transfer and body augmentation before his own remaking,” Tinker said. “If I had to place a wager, I’d say he’s been refining the process beyond his own kind.”

Across the way, Razor snatched a grenade off his belt, thumbed the detonator, and hurled it. The canister bounced off the wall, barely avoiding being cut to pieces by more shuriken rounds before it detonated. The explosion hadn’t even faded before Razor was firing bolter rounds into the enemy, raking the alley with a storm of deadly fire.

“Guess now we know what happened to the bodies, huh?” Greaser said.

“That’s comforting,” Fixer said, holding up a hand. Tinker hauled him up, and Fixer tested his arm to see how well it worked. He slung his rifle, and pulled one of his pistols with his good hand. “We got a plan?”

Greaser glanced over his shoulder, and a sly grin split his beard. He crouched down, setting the decavane crystal on the ground next to Tinker. He blew a sharp breath out of his nose, and ran back the way they’d come.

“Hold them,” he called. “Buy me ten minutes!”

(To see the thrilling conclusion of the Ironbeards' story, check out Pyramid Scheme Part Two!)

More Stories From Neal Litherland

If you enjoyed this tale, then please consider leaving a comment or a like, and sharing it with other readers! This is the latest installment of my Table Talk series, and if you wish to help me keep putting out new stories then consider becoming a Patreon patron, or just buying me a Ko-Fi as a way to put a tip in my jar for a job well done!

But if you're in the mood for more of my stories, check out some of the following examples!

- Old Soldiers: The Hyperion Conflict devastated the planet, but humanity survived. So, too, did the Myrmidon; genetically-engineered shock troopers who stood on the front lines of the war. Pollux has been trying to escape the horrors of that war for a decade, now, and he may be able to do so... until a shadowy conspiracy makes a move on him. Reassembling the remains of his old squad, he prepares to do what he was made to do, but there is a question in the back of his mind. Is this really happening, or is it all in his head?

- Where The Red Flowers Bloom: When Japanese forces sent a small garrison to an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, none of them expected to so much as see the enemy before the end of the war. But there is something on the island... something more dangerous than an entire fleet of American warships. Something that bullets simply will not kill.

- Broken Heroes: Rann was sent out to retrieve a lost weapon, but now he and the squad who came with him are surrounded by the colossal, insectoid creatures that claimed the forest. When a brave act crashes him through the ground and into an ancient bunker, he finds something far more potent than he could ever have hoped for... something that wants to finish the fight it started so long ago.

- Field Test: When Inquisitor Hargrave came to the world of New Canaan a few days ahead of an ork rok, she promised them a weapon that would destroy the greenskins. When that weapon was unleashed, though, none could have predicted just how powerful, or how dangerous, he truly was.

- Beyond The Black: The Emperor's Hand: Gav Smythe has fought daemons and traitors in the Emperor's name all his life... but this may be the greatest challenge the ogryn has yet faced!

- Gav and Bob Part V: Faith and Martyrs: The Imperium's bravest ogryn sits down to talk with a canoness confessor of the Adeptus Sororitas. She will weigh his sanity, and his soul, and Gav may just find some of the peace he didn't know he was seeking.

- Waking Dogs- A World Eaters Tale: For my fans of Warhammer 40K, this is a story I felt compelled to tell about one of the infamous World Eaters remembering who he once was.

- Broken Chains- A World Eaters Tale: The sequel to Waking Dogs, we see that Crixus is taking his personal crusade seriously. Word is beginning to spread of his deeds, and his old sergeant Atillus realizes that the time may have come for him to pay for the decisions he made so very long ago.