“Brother Fares,” voxed Brother Venris of the Deathwatch. “Xenos flyer overhead. Fifty six degrees north-northwest.” He aimed his bolter out of one of the half-ruined bunker’s firing slits, and, with the split second precision only an Astartes could manage, fired three shots in quick succession. Three bolts exploded inside three of the nearest metal xenos as Brother Venris ducked back to avoid the inevitable counter-fire from the Necrons.

“Acknowledged,” came the voice of the Black Templar, now Deathwatch Space Marine, Brother Fares. “Moving to intercept.”

Brother Venris rolled out the bunker’s rear exit while its face was pounded by shot after green shot from the oncoming Necrons. Using his old training as a Scout for Imperial Fists, he kept low and poked around the side of the rapidly-crumbling Imperial bunker just enough for his armor’s autosenses and his own to locate the attackers. He aimed and fired five more bolts at the enemy before hurriedly rolling into the cover of a hab-block. Space Marines feared nothing, but Necron weaponry had proven effective against even their power armor, and Brother Venris had no intention of dying without doing as much damage as possible.

Venris’ keen hearing picked up the sound of a rocket engine going off, followed shortly by explosion. “That will be Brother Fares.”

“Xenos flyer directly hit. Kill confirmed,” came his brother’s voice over the squad vox a moment later, confirming what Venris already knew. Brother Fares had always been an excellent shot with the missile launcher.

“Status?” a different voice enquired.

“Skitarii unit 0257 confirmed KIA. Xenos advance 38 meters beyond facility perimeter. Minimum two hundred hostiles. Vehicular ground support. Combat servitors dead. Menials dead,” Brother Venris duly sounded off for Brother Nixios of the Angels Sanguine Chapter, the Deathwatch Sergeant.

Brother Fares was next. “Combat servitors at one-half strength. Xenos advance 18 meters beyond facility perimeter. Estimate four hundred hostiles. Five enemy vehicles KIA. Menials dead.”

“Skitarii unit 0419 at one-third strength. Xenos 21 meters beyond facility perimeter and closing. Estimated one hundred and thirty hostiles, three vehicles. Several breaches in outer defenses. Menials evacuated,” replied Brother Havelock of the Salamanders.

“Skitarii unit 0135 confirmed KIA. Xenos have overrun the perimeter. Unknown distance. Estimate three hundred hostiles. Totally surrounded. Multiple armor punctures. Left arm missing. Estimate twenty-two seconds before death,” said Brother Jarr of the Iron Hands, his mechanical voice sounding surprisingly impassive at the subject of his own imminent demise.

Brother Venris winced even as he retreated a few meters back and hurled a grenade into a cluster of the metal xenos. “Two battle-brothers dead or soon to be. Grave losses.”

“Odds of successful withdrawal?” asked Brother-Sergeant Nixios.

“Zero percent,” replied Brother Jarr. “Attempting to detonate promethium stockpile.”

“Acknowledged. Emperor be with you, brother.”

“And with you, Sergeant.”

“Skitarri units 0439 and 0276 have engaged the enemy. Xenos 51 meters from facility perimeter and advancing. Minimum two hundred hostiles. No visible vehicular support,” the last member of the squad, Brother Atellus of the Ultramarines, chimed in.

“Reports acknowledged,” Sergeant Nixios curtly replied.

A loud, sharp bang resounded above even the remorseless advance of the Necron army, the crack of weaponry, and the screams of the dying. Brother Venris did not turn his head. His hearing was more than enough to tell him what had happened. “Emperor protect your soul, my brother,” he prayed silently.

“Perimeter defenses untenable. Withdraw to secondary battle line.” Sergeant Nixios voxed in a moment later.

“Acknowledged,” said Brother Havelock.

“Acknowledged,” came Brother Atellus’ voice.

Brother Fares was next. “Acknowledged.”

Brother Venris backed up further, much as it offended his pride. “Acknowledged,” he voxed sourly. The Deathwatch Astartes retreated, abandoning yet more ground to the relentless Necron advance.

Twilight took a few steps past the now-familiar double doors, folded her right leg across her chest, and bowed her head. “You summoned me, Lord Inquisitor?” she said, looking up at the old man behind the desk.

For once, Lord Inquisitor Rovini looked directly up from the tome he was studying and made eye contact with the lavender alicorn in front of him. His eyes, Twilight noted, were slightly bloodshot, and had bags underneath them. “Acolyte. Good. Your men are assembled, I trust?”

Twilight bit her lip and nodded. “They are, sir.” Her ears flicked repeatedly, and she pawed one hoof along the hard floor.

“That is good. You have confidence in them?”

Twilight chewed her lip for a moment before answering “I think I’ve done all I can in the time allotted, sir.”

“That is not an answer, Acolyte.”

“Sir?”

“As you have no doubt noticed,” Rovini gestured to his face, “I have been somewhat pressed for time recently. I therefore do not have any inclination to play word games with you. Are you confident in this team you have assembled or are you not?”

Twilight’s hoof pawed the ground some more. “My Lord… frankly speaking I think they have a long way to go before they meet my old squad’s standards. More than one is likely to die on whatever this assignment is, perhaps even all of them.”

“And?” The Lord Inquisitor’s face was utterly expressionless. “I am informed you killed two of them yourself for insubordination.”

Twilight swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“Remember what I taught you, Acolyte: the mission comes first. Beyond that, well... our Imperium has a great many soldiers.”

“Of course, my Lord.” Twilight bowed her head in acknowledgement.

“So, have you confidence that you can achieve your objectives with this squad or no?”

“Pardon me, my Lord, but I don’t even know what my objectives are yet.”

Rovini blinked, then rubbed his eyes. “Ah, yes. Of course.” The Lord Inquisitor bent down and rummaged around in his desk for several moments before sitting back up with a worn-looking dataslate in hand. He extended his hand in offering, and Twilight floated the little machine over to her face. Rovini continued as she hurriedly read through and absorbed the briefing, using skills learned in Equestria and honed to perfection in the service of the Imperium. “This is not the original mission I had planned for you, but as is the nature of this line of work, unexpected events require our intervention.”

“Sir…” Twilight said, cautiously, as she finished taking in the document. “This is not something I’d expect to be assigned to such an untested formation…”

Rovini’s face hardened. “And I feel that your special talents will be most gainfully employed in this work. Kindly do me the favor of not questioning my judgment when I have not asked for it.”

Twilight bowed her head again. “Yes… Yes, of course, my Lord.” She looked up. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

Rovini’s eyes had already returned to the musty tome on his desk. “Yes. See that my next visitor is brought in.”

“Yes sir,” Twilight mumbled as she turned to leave, somehow feeling like an unwanted intruder already.

The Lord Inquisitor’s voice interrupted before she could leave the chamber. “Oh, and Acolyte?”

Twilight turned her head back. “Yes, Lord?”

Lord Inquisitor Rovini’s face softened a bare fraction. “Emperor be with you.”

“And with you,” Twilight intoned as she exited.

Trazyn the Infinite stood motionlessly on the rocky, polluted soil of Denton III. To a lesser, organic being, his position would have been quite untenable. The air was laced with toxic fumes from the hive cities and the remains of Adeptus Mechanicus technology alike. His right foot was in a small puddle of mildly acidic slime, which ate away at the rock underneath at a glacial pace. The strong winds whipped at his metal frame, even managing to move his heavy blue scale cape slightly. But the undying necrodermis shell Trazyn’s mind had inhabited for more than 60 million years weathered the storm without ache or complaint.

Trazyn’s mind was elsewhere, wondering how best to arrange the prize he was soon to acquire with the ones he already had. A suitably dramatic pose during capture would of course aid the process, but subjects were so very rarely cooperative.

“I do the ungrateful fools of this galaxy a great kindness in preserving what few pieces of their histories have meaning for all eternity, and they call me thief, butcher, and fiend. Bah! Short-sighted mortal peons, all of them, unable to see past their brief, petty lives. If it weren’t for me they would crumble away and be forgotten in the dusts of time. They should be begging to be taken!” Trazyn mentally grumbled to himself for what might well have been the actual millionth time, more for lack of anything better to be doing as he waited for his chosen prey than any real belief that complaining about the universe’s unfairness to collectors like him would do anything to change it.

The skull-faced Immortals around him stared blankly, their faces just as expressionless as their master’s though their minds were no doubt less active. Outside of combat, the black-bodied, white-faced elite of Trazyn’s warriors had little in the way of sapience or anything worth saying. Still, they had been proper soldiers in the Time of Flesh, not mere civilians like the more common Necron Warriors, and as such had retained more of their old selves. Enough so that they could be trusted to actually take something their Overlord wanted alive in one piece. With the lesser Warriors, mindless vaporization of a desired artifact had been a reoccurring headache since the reawakening of Solemnance.

Hours passed idly as the ancient machines simply stood still and waited, like patient spiders awaiting the arrival of a juicy fly. And if there was one thing the Necrontyr could be said to excel at, it was patience. The sun, or what little could be seen of it through the murky planetary atmosphere, was beginning to set by the time that one of the metal aliens spoke.

“Sir,” came the voice of Tyrentekh, one of Trazyn’s Immortals. “Our scans are detecting Imperial craft on an approach vector for our position.”

“How many?” was Trazyn’s reply.

“One, sir.”

“Class?”

“Transport. The Imperials dub it Valkyrie.”

“Signal the Deathmarks,” Trazyn gestured authoritatively. “Assume designated positions and await my signal. And remember,” he looked Tyrentekh in the eye, more out of unconscious habit than any practical reason. “I want the lavender alicorn alive and intact at the end of this. Is that absolutely clear to you, commander?”

“Yes, my Overlord.”

Trazyn nodded. Another old habit from his days in a mortal body. “Good. Kill any others.”

“It will be done, my lord.”

Trazyn gestured again, and Tyrentekh and other Immortals stoically assumed their planned formation around the ruined Mechanicus facility. The Overlord himself vanished in a flash of green light, reappearing much deeper inside, next to his temporary throne. Seating himself, he called up the tactical display and waited.

Minutes passed in empty silence as the predator awaited his unsuspecting prey. Finally, the video feed showed a Valkyrie touching down some distance from the site of the base. Its side doors opened to release passengers.

Trazyn could have sworn he felt his mouth watering. Which was ridiculous, considering that he had no mouth.

Trazyn signaled his Deathmark snipers. “Target the aircraft’s engines, and fire.”