Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

My drones exploded into action, and I angled myself and the drones not yet engaged in combat to avoid the fighting. I needed to find the path forward, a way through these massive walls of reinforced metal so thick I couldn’t sense the other side of them at times. The Hollow Sun must have been massive, somewhat like Serenade, though instead of an artificial planet it was more like a spherical space station the size of a large planet that just so happened to be located inside the heart of a star. 

I avoided the Wraiths and the Tomb Sentinels as much as possible, not wanting to be dumped in the Ghostwind again so soon. I doubted they could catch me off guard again, but better safe than sorry. My drones spread out, the ones dancing around Lokhust Destroyer squads were leading the bloodthirsty Necrons around by the nose, and two of the floating horrors had already been destroyed. More and more approached, and I made another hundred decoy combat drones when I was reasonably sure that no one was watching me. They had to be closing in on me by then, so stealth would only go so far. Chaos would give me the opportunity to confuse and distract them, hopefully enough to give myself the time I needed. 

The next twenty minutes went by in an extremely high-paced game of cat and mouse. Dozens of my drones fell, but with me nudging them around to save them from making moronic decisions, they each took at least a handful of Necrons down before they fell. That number would have been much higher had the enemy been flooding me with Necron warriors, or even mortals, but they didn’t. Destroyers, Lokhust Heavy Destroyers, Deathmarks, Canoptek constructs and even the occasional Lychguard were the ones hunting down my scattered mob of drones, not the chaff. 

My Avatar managed to avoid any active engagements, but that was no longer possible. I found the bulkhead leading out of this level and up to the next. The map in my head looked like an onion, the killzone I’d escaped at its very core with layers built up around it, and only one gate — as far as I was aware — leading from one layer to the next. The problem was, there was a fuckoff huge gathering of Necrons gathered in the titanic chamber that ended in a monolithic bulkhead. 

I saw the Lokhust Destroyer Lord flanked by two Lychguards, and the legion of immortals gathered around the cavernous chamber, using the architecture to their advantage to set up a superb kill zone for anyone wanting to reach the bulkhead. Then there were, of course, the same weapons platforms as in the chamber I’d gone through previously, though in even greater numbers. Four massive pyramids rivalling those at Giza sat in the chamber, looking comparatively tiny compared to the titanic open space of the hall, and each had large glowing green crystals floating above their tips. Necron Monoliths, except these were much larger and immobile to boot. Canoptek Spyders, Stalkers and Sentinels scuttled around in the darkness, crawling along the walls and the monolithic buildings filling up the open space, and I was certain that there were dozens of Wraiths and Deathmarks as well waiting out of phase, ready to strike. 

On top of that, the other Necron forces scattered around, still hunting down my dispersed drones with more or less success, were also something to consider. They could collapse on my position from behind at any moment, and while they wouldn’t be able to cut off my path to retreat, I liked having some breathing room. 

But even all of that put together wasn’t giving me the same sense of danger as that strange cannon that tried to shoot me before I teleported out of the Cryptek’s Dimensional Sanctum. What the hell was that thing, even? The only thing I knew was that I could not get hit by it. Ever. 

I’d need chaos, confusion, and a lot of distraction. I’d let the enemy focus their fire on me in my previous ‘run’, but that was stupid. I had to divide their fire, especially because I couldn’t allow myself to take some of their weapons, even with every protection I had. So I had my speed to dodge and a … let’s go with five hundred fully operational combat drones as a distraction. 

Well, as much as they could be called a mere ‘distraction’ despite being fully capable of defeating almost everything I could see. Only the Lokhust Destroyer Lord and the Lychguard would be trouble, aside from the weapon emplacements. Still, with five hundred of them, I’d still bet on my drones coming out victorious.

I just had to somehow make them in a way that didn’t give away that I was the ‘real’ me. I was sure I was being watched, after all. Well, all I had to do was make it impossible to tell which one of the drones I was, which I had one or two ideas on. 

I paused behind the last bend, keeping ten drones near me while I sent the rest ahead, though I did poke them once. The expendable decoys exploded forth, their speed tripling as they burned their internal bio-energy to boost themselves. In half a minute, they’d turn to ash or at least dessicated corpses, but they just needed to take the Deathmarks’ attention off of me for a blink. 

Ivory white Eldritch flesh erupted from my body, throwing up a dome of organic mass in an instant, layers upon layers of psychoactive chitin settling upon one another before the first unliving green beam of energy struck it. A layer disintegrated, but slowly, over the span of long seconds during which it ate up a dozen more shots. Soul energy and bio-energy flowed through them, turning each layer as durable as Astartes Power Armour. A Synaptic Disintegrator firing somewhere behind me made me perk up in curiosity, even as I stepped aside to dodge it in case it penetrated the dome.

It didn’t. My body wasn’t connected to the dome through anything other than tendrils of Eldritch Flesh snaking through the air, and the cascading synaptic disintegration energy found no purchase on it even as it bypassed the energised chitin. Whether it was the potent bio-energy roaring through the tendrils or just its atypical nature, it stopped the attack from reaching my avatar. Good to know. I just needed to keep a thin layer of Eldritch flesh under my own chitinous power armour to become immune to Synaptic Disintegrators.

And then I got to work. A hundred of my own Draugr, my most advanced and powerful combat drones, and then three hundred more drones fashioned after a variety of Tyranid organisms. Lictors, termagants, hormogants, rippers, tyranid warriors, carnifexes, hive tyrants and of course at least fifty bio-forms to serve as artillery just because. The last hundred — for now — were a wide variety of stealth drones I cooked up, using different types and combinations of organic cloaking technology. If I wanted to go unnoticed, I needed to know what kind of stealth could fool the Necrons’ sensors. 

The five hundred drones exploded into the titanic chamber, and the Necrons wasted absolutely no time laying into them. Wall-mounted Gauss Cannons fired in tandem with the hundreds of immortals settled in their perches high up on balconies protruding from the walls. Down on the surface, the legion of Lokhust Destroyers moved as one, the Heavy Destroyers and the Destroyer Lord leading the charge with all the fury of a machine that abhorred the very existence of organic life.

For now, I waited and watched, taking active control of every drone and controlling them not unlike a pseudo Hive Mind. Their implanted natural instincts and bio-computers running basic combat algorithms were the basis for saving me from having to micromanage everything, allowing me to focus on guiding them and arranging them into a cohesive swarm.

My standard Draugr let the Tyranid-copies rush on ahead and tank the lounging beams of entropic green energy. Numbers were the best counter to Necrons. Their Gauss Flayers were slow, and didn’t kill instantly, not Tyranids at least. Even the gaunts could take a handful of steps after being struck, even as their bodies disintegrated more and more with each step. The problem was with more powerful weapons, like the Gauss Cannons of the Lokhust Destroyers, or the even worse Enmitic Exterminators or Gauss Annihilators carried by the Heavy Destroyers. Those things were nasty, the first one unleashing a pulse that broke apart atomic bonds by making every single atom repel every other atom in the struck target. The result was a rather swift and explosive death. The other one was just a Gauss weapon taken to the extreme, but even that one vaporised targets in an instant. 

Not that it mattered when there were so few of them. Each Enmitic pulse came once every few seconds, exploded a handful of Tyranids, then powered down for a few seconds. The Annihilator was worse; the Heavy Destroyer swung its arm from left to right in the one second it was active, which tore through the ranks of my drones. At least that one was easier to dodge, being a slower beam weapon and all. 

Then the two sides crashed into each other, the Destroyer Lord not even slowing as it tore whatever came its way apart with its Warscythe, even as bits and pieces of its metallic body were torn away in return for each kill. 

 The main problem was with the Immortals. My current lineup had no hope to climb up the smooth walls of the chamber, or scuttle up the pillars to take out the Necrons taking potshots from up there. I made another fifty of every currently deployed drone type to replenish their rapidly diminishing numbers, then let loose a hundred Purestrain genestealers — because those were the best climbing Tyranids I knew — fifty fliers, a mix of gargoyles, harpies and even a harridan. 

They tried to flank me, the Tyranids I’d left behind in the preceding twenty minutes all converging on my position from tunnels leading to the intersection I’d plopped myself down in. I needed something to stand up to sustained Gaussfire, which couldn’t be organic … I’m so stupid.

I yanked every fallen Necron towards myself, grasping them with a bit of telekinesis as I altered my plans. While I was at it, I sent a few Immortals flying off their balconies and gathered their remains as well once they fell and shattered. Once I had the heaps of scrap near my little dome, I extended Eldretch tendrils to gather them up. I couldn’t absorb necrodermis or turn it into bio-energy, but I could shape it, mould it to my liking. So around my dome grew a new layer made of living metal, covering the organic structure and leaving only a single gate on one side free, leaving the surface of the chitinous dome uncovered in that small section. That will do for now. 

I sent out a hundred more drones, of all types, to hold back the Necrons coming at my position from behind while I focused on analysing the effectiveness of the different stealth drone designs. Meanwhile, I kept up a rough stalemate against the Necron forces in the chamber ahead, though I did reorient a few smaller groups to try to destroy the weapons platforms, with more or less success. I didn’t want those Monoliths to activate, nor the Lightning Arcs, Gauss Flux Arcs, or whatever else they had lying in wait. They remained dormant for now, for some reason, which could be both a good or a very bad thing. Time would tell. 

Deathmarks took potshots at my stealth drones, picking some of them off despite them being invisible and cloaked from most standard avenues of detection I knew. I noted every fallen drone, their design, how long they lasted and how on-target the Deathmarks were with their shots. The ones that got hit with the Deathmark’s namesake energy signature were written off as failures, their designs either dismissed or thrown back for improvement. 

Drones died, Necrons fell, the sounds of war echoed far in the cavernous architecture, and all the while I waited, I learned, and I-

Got stabbed in the brain by A Canoptek Wraith. Again.

“Goddamnit!” I groaned, my fist already buried in the metallic serpent’s body. My other hand lashed out, clawed fingers burrowing into the creature’s metal skin, gripping it tightly. It twitched, the massive blade at the tip of its serpentine tail lashing out fast as lightning, aiming to bisect me at the waist even as I tore the worm’s body in half. 

I swatted the tail and its blade aside with Atiesh, noting that the Wraith failed to phase through it like it could bypass my chitinous armour. I yanked the scythe out of my skull, the wound mending instantly. Annoying, I thought my psychic barriers, combined with the energised chitin that was the equivalent of Power Armour, would have kept these damned things away. Alas, no such luck. My lips, however, did pull into a grin when a Canoptec Tomb Stalker, one of those massive worms, charged at my dome. It phased through the necrodermis layer around it, but the energised chitin stopped it cold in its tracks, leaving the stupid thing with a broken head and its body phased halfway into my dome. Sucks to suck.

That stupid Wraith had just passed right through my barriers, even when they were anchored to the Storm Ward. Was it the Phase Tech or the Gloom Prism? That latter one was supposed to disable psychic powers in a 50 metre radius, though I barely felt the effect on my barriers, so it was probably the Wraith’s advanced phase-tech. I really needed a counter for that, but what? How? 

I shook my head and refocused, forming a dozen bio-processors inside the dome to further anchor my consciousness here. I also threw up some decoys so the next Wraith wouldn’t know for sure which one to ambush, since there were ten of me standing around. Meanwhile, my avatar melted into the Eldritch Tendrils snaking across the floor, and my soulbone skeleton, in turn, was embedded in the innermost layer of the chitinous dome. 

Alright. So far so good. Which is, of course, when the weapon emplacements in the chamber ahead started to simultaneously power on. Well, fuck. I guess they stopped playing around … hmmm, some of the stealth prototype designs are still alive and seemingly undetected. Okay, I can work with this. 

All that was left to do was break through the bulkhead and then fake my death. Then I could go see about hunting down the Cryptek that’d hurt Selene, and then the Regent after him. Yeah, that sounded like as good a plan as any.