Necron: Warhammer 40,000 Short Fiction

                



                Kyrk and I stared across the swaying cornfields, deep into the evening and towards the smoggy silhouette of Alcheria City. Spires and chimneys reached out to the horizon, scratching for the usually empty heavens above.

                But it wasn’t a usual evening, and the heavens weren’t empty.

                The shapes had begun hovering above the city in the late afternoon, increasing in size and quantity at seemingly random intervals. Now, the sky was turning pink, and there were seven of them in total. A few were shaped like crescent moons, partially eclipsing the failing sun. A couple others were more akin to triangles, their flat bases parallel to the horizon. The rest were more abstract, harder to easily describe in Low Gothic.

                When the first two (the crescents) had arrived, Kyrk and I had taken a peek through his binocs. The local Imperial Office had handed them out to all the nearby farmers, but that had been nearly forty years ago, and now they were orange with rust, scratches obscuring much of the glass. Had they been in perfect condition, the shapes would’ve been still difficult to make out, though; they were nestled behind thin stretches of evening cloud, green veins running across their surfaces like the tiny roads that separated Kyrk’s fields. Up until we’d noticed that glowing, we’d assumed they’d been of Imperial machination. But the Imperium had never deployed ships like that, not in our lifetimes, anyway.

                By the time the third shape had appeared, Kyrk had loaded his laspistol. In his youth, he’d killed a small number of rampant livestock with it, and as far as the local office has told them, that was all they needed to fear. There were no aliens or daemons—the posters outside the city said so; there were only stray cows and the occasional mutant. The farmers had no worry but farming, and those in the city were to turn their produce to the ships that left to the heavens, to Terra. That’s all life was; that’s all life needed to be.

                ‘Come on,’ he said at sundown, turning his gaze away from the shapes. ‘Let’s get to bed.’

                In the end, I was the one who ended up in bed, while he stayed up. He spent another hour on the vox, sending out short messages to those in the city, and once accepting there was to be no response, he turned his comms to the other farmhouses in the area. They all reported the same shapes lingering above the city, but no one claimed to have any more insight than anyone else.

                At midnight, I felt Kyrk join me, and so, we prayed together to the God-Emperor, put our son’s Aquila talisman beneath our pillow and settled into a nervous sleep.

 

                My husband woke me early in the morning. That wasn’t dissimilar to our usual routine on the farm, but there was an urgency in his voice which I hadn’t heard in years. He practically dragged me out of bed and to the window, morning sun casting harsh streaks of amber across my vision.

                Once my eyes adjusted, I found my gaze shift to find the shapes in the sky. A couple of them had changed positions a little, but other than that, there was little change. I didn’t react, so absorbed, naive, until my husband lowered my eye-line down to the horizon.

                I reeled back in shock. The city had crumbled; half the spires and chimneys had collapsed, untamed fire and smoke flickered from the largest buildings, and the whole city glowed with a sickly, green radiance.

                ‘Kyrk,’ I cried, ‘Kyrk!’ I slunk into my husband’s arms. ‘What do we do? What do we do?’

                He steadied me and smoothed back my hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘All the comms channels are dead static.’ He looked longingly back to our bedroom—our bedroom which had housed a thousand loving nights and a hundred arguments, each spent staring into his hazel eyes and twirling his fading, hazel hair. None of that glamour was there anymore. It was no longer more than its components, the sum of its wood and iron and rot.

                ‘I can fit ten days food and water into my satchel,’ he said. ‘If we follow the river far enough, I think that’ll get us to Bridgelle. There will be people willing to take us in there.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know how this happened, my love. I didn’t hear a thing in the night. The whole city—gone in a silent flame!’ He threw his hands up in frustration—or fear, perhaps. ‘But I don’t care how.’ He was lying. His face always did the thing when he lied. ‘Get the essentials. Five minutes, we’re leaving.’

                It was difficult containing the summation of my life into a bag in five minutes. It reminded me of the age-old question: what one thing would you bring to a desert planet with you? Difference being, with that question, you knew where you were going. I didn’t know where this path was to take us.

                Still, in my nervous sweat, I decided on my mother’s stopwatch, our son’s talisman (still beneath the pillow) and a stack of canned rations I’d forgotten until now beneath the bed. I found Kyrk in the hallway, embraced him, and headed quickly outside, onto the porch.

                I realised then, how heavy my heart was, and how loudly it was beating through my chest. I didn’t realise it could get heavier, though—not until I’d spotted a new shape—only a hundred metres away and gliding towards us through the cornfields.

                I looked to Kyrk for an answer. He looked to the shape and then to me.

                ‘Get back into the house,’ he said at last. ‘Get back!’

                I considered running, but I realised quickly that there was only so far that canned food could’ve got me. Certainly not all the way to Bridgelle. I looked to him again, and then back to the shape, closer now, revealing itself: a silver-plated drone hovering above the ground, a nest of spindly arms, metal entrails and four pincer-like legs trailing into the cornfields.

                And as I scoured the cornfields, transfixed by the horror, I found that the shape wasn’t alone. Another of its kind drifted wearily behind, and on the ground beneath them, sunken into the fields, I spotted a rusted man marching, that same green glow from the city surrounding his frame.

                Before I knew it, I was back in the house, and from the window, I watched as Kyrk drew his laspistol. He didn’t level it, but his hands were shaking in anticipation. I could almost feel the round in my throat as I swallowed.

                He stood there for a few moments as the shapes drifted closer, cornfield blowing in the wind, Alcheria City burning in the background.

                And then, the rusted man shambled out from the corn; I couldn’t tell where its limbs ended and weapon began as its hide crackled with green electricity. It was missing half a leg, and its metallic body resembled a skeleton, its limbs long and wiry as if it were a horrific sculpture of bones rearranging itself. Had it not been coated with rust, I would’ve wagered it was in fact bone.

                ‘Kyrk,’ I whimpered, and then louder, ‘Kyrk!’

                My husband wasn’t listening, though. He levelled his pistol across his left arm, visibly shaking. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, all his calmness gone. ‘Get away from my home!’

                The rusted man continued forward, half-gliding, half-striding. There were more of them in the distance, I realised, and that drone was quickly approaching, too.

                ‘I’ll try one more time; stay silent, and I shoot,’ Kyrk threatened. ‘What do you want?’

                A pregnant beat struck through the air. The city blazed. Kyrk was rewarded with only silence.

                A shot rang out—a las round. It met the rusted man, searing a hole through its face, black and smoking. Like a tower of neatly arranged ceramic, it shuddered and then collapsed back into the corn, green sulphur rising from its carcass.

                There was silence for an instant as Kyrk went about reloading his pistol. I almost wanted to cheer.

                But neither of us had realised before it had reached him: that spindly, hovering drone was barely a few feet away.

                ‘Get away!’ Kyrk screamed again, another shot ringing out—but this time, not from my husband’s pistol.

                The light from the weapon was green, and it was coming from what I had thought to be an antenna on the drone—and now it was tearing through my husband’s chest, poisoning his veins, flaying his skin.

                Before I could comprehend it, I’d ran back outside and scurried to cover my husband, not daring to look on his remains, for inside of me I knew it was too late.

                Curiously, though, the constructs above did not turn their fire on me, but instead, reached their tendrils and pincers towards my husband. Before I knew it, his charred body had been ripped from the soil and towards them. I thought the things had been speaking to one another, but I couldn’t tell between my cries.

                So, once my throat had tired, I simply watched; I watched as behind the veil of corn, the twin shapes began rearranging their limbs like intricate seamstresses at their worktables, prodding and tampering and reorganising my husband and the remains of the rusted man together.

                A moment later, there was a whirring, and I cried for Kyrk, half-expecting the impossible. But instead of my husband, the rusted man was standing above me; it had been entirely repaired, save for its head, where Kyrk had put a las-round. In its place, there was open circuitry feeding into a blackened, human skull, scraps of flesh still clinging to it, as well as a tuft of fading, hazel hair.

                I sunk down into the corn as the rusted man turned his crackling, green weapon towards my neck. I felt soil beneath my knees as I waited in the darkness behind my closed eyes, waited to see Kyrk again.




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