'This would be the midway point of the zone. And they are guarding the place, as expected.' Zath pointed at the large Necron fleet holding station near a magma world that used to be a Mechanicus mining facility, formerly housing millions of serfs and servitors from Forge World Ixas .

Some of their cogitators still transmitted data, but it was mostly static nonsense. The human noosphere was intrinsically linked with nerves and neurons of human origin, mostly as to avoid the Mechanicus proscription of AI. On the other hand, a single Knight suit from House_Krast was fine, although the pilot was long dead. Probably guarding the mine against raiders and pirates, when the soul-death happened.

Once I retrieved the abandoned walker, I could have my knight pilots and tech-marines data-mine the cogitator and interrogate the Machine Spirit about the condition on the ground. Thanks for the gift! It was only a Knight Helverin pattern, the smaller kind, called Hate's Requiem. Also armed with arm autocannons and a carapace Melta gun.

Slowly, the history of the place revealed as the Knight's Machine Spirit decanted its secrets, with the Knight itself eager to jump into the fight right away. I wasn't a red-hot bloody Imperial though, so we will not. Not until I had all the knowledge of these enemies.

'The Necrons are constructing a strange installation on this planet called IX-331, a circular bore lined with blackstone pyramids.' I told the C'tan who just nodded like a wise wolf.

'It's a Dolmen Gate, meant to breach your Imperial Webway and pour their troops inside. I say we let them finish, and take it from them after. It is quite difficult and expensive to build an interface port, even for a Necron Dynasty.' Zath said, with a sneaky plan in mind.

'Hmmm. Their fleet will be lacking troops to prevent our boarders if they all jump into the Webway. And after we take the fleet, we can strike their army from behind, while they are engaged with the Imperials. Clever!' I noted with a wide grin.

'Even better. The resurrection protocols will not work if the Necron troops are stuck inside the Webway, away from their resurrection hubs. Although we should still blow up the resurrection forges just to be safe.' Lash added with a giant grin.

That was indeed good news. It was likely my luck striking again, catching the enemy with their pants down, not that these Necron robots even wore pants. So uncivilized!

Even the Knights and Titans of humanity wore sacred tabards hanging from their waist.

We had time to prepare, and allocate the boarding Astartes per ship size, while my C'tan friends provided expected schematics of those ships, as well as critical points to target like energy conduits, reactor power sources, and the important resurrection forges too.

So we conducted a hundred training exercises on mock-up and captured Necron ships, although without real Necrons to shoot at.

While my family trained, I managed to finish the damned combi-gun for the Centurions, and replaced the remaining multi-lasers with tungsten autocannons for the Blank Auxilia. Even the new Helverin Knight got upgraded and joined the ranks of my Lancefire House, keeping one autocannon and gaining a twin-Ion Beam on the right arm.

Then we waited for the Necrons to step inside the trap, all eager for a good fight.

The plan also worked flawlessly, until it didn't. These Necrons were much smarter than the demented genocidal maniacs I was used to, and they also had access to C'tan Shards and tesseracts. Because of course they did. I got my own ones from the Necrons too.

If I was a normal human, things would have gone badly.

"It's a trap!" Laur yelled as the walls fell from the corridor of the Tomb Ship, the Necron battleship type, and a million soulless robots opened fire from both sides.

I drew a deep Breath, and the star of IX-331 dimmed for a microsecond. Time flicked back a single minute, returning my troops on board the fleet, while the energy build up from the star enveloped the Necron Fleet and the poor magma planet as well. It wouldn't get more flowing rock and metal on the planet much, but for the Necrons it was a disaster still.

The Dolmen Gate was clogged with molten rock, trapping a large portion of the Necron army on the other side of the dimension gate. Then our Blackstone Forts began to fire their weapon batteries and Nova Cannons, a thousand Nova Shells blasting the Necron fleet and eliminating the smaller escorts and light cruisers directly.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Sadly, the heavy cruisers and battleships of the Necrons still remained, a bit scorched but otherwise functional and ready to kill us all.

Only a hundred such big ships though, after 3000 of their lighter ships exploded into chunks of blackstone and necrodermis.

I could deal with this fleet even without cheating now, but I was a bit angry at getting tricked.

'There are 14 Necron Dynasties here. I wonder how they managed to gather without killing each other.' Zath observed in a curious tone, just as several C'tan Shards bound with living stone chains emerged from the larger Tomb Ships.

Oh well. Time for plan B.

Our Immaterium beams began to fire on the C'tan Shards, while Zath and Lash were indexing names and allegiances for later. Maybe we could salvage the disaster somehow if we could liberate a few friendly Shards. But if not, even a dead enemy was a good deal.

Noosphere markers appeared on my implant, red, yellow and blue as to reflect target priority for our soul-killing beams.

Then, as our beams focused fired three red-marked targets, Zath and Lash jumped outside to provide compliance incentives to the yellow targets.

I sighed inward and jumped outside the ship too, then skipped through my space fold ability near a green-colored Shard with tentacle flails, and drew out Drach. This was the last red mark, and my own choice to consume.

'Eat him!' I commanded the daemon lance, and the thing lit up with red runes and elongated into a flaming lance to impale the Deceiver C'tan Shard.

I felt the daemon drain the Shard, and its own pain from the manifestation inside the Zone Mortalis, but I was willing to let it endure the pain without worry.

It was only growth pains, after all.

'Go free the blue targets already!' I heard Lash inside my mind, as the two blue-marked Shards were resisting the Necron Yoke with their last strength.

Two boarding groups from the Space Pirates and the Astral Pirates Chapters displaced near the Tesseract vaults holding the C'tan prisoner, with a few Centurions and Armed Sentinels from the Auxilia to act as cover units.

It took a long minute for the Deceiver Shard to die and get consumed by the lance daemon, but in this time another yellow-mark shifted to blue as Zath convinced him to join.

Another boarding action to liberate the now-friendly Shard, the Void Pirates this time, while Zath and Lash each blocked two more yellow targets from reaching my fleet.

So I moved next to Lash, and held out Drach Lancefire like a menacing club. "Freedom or get eaten by the Lancefire. Choose fast!"

The bound C'tan glared at me with hate for a second, before letting its shoulders slump and turned blue, while his scythe vanished inside the folds of his necrodermis robes.

The Nightreaper was a proud sort of C'tan, but he could see the writing on the wall too.

I sent Laur and Athena to rescue the important Shard, while Zath's target turned blue just as I looked at it. I did carry a long club though, so it wasn't a peaceful conversion.

'Eat all! Grow!' the daemon yelled just as I stored it back into its coffin.

One by one, the blue-marked C'tans appeared in battle formation beside my C'tan wolves, now free and eager for revenge.

"Go have your revenge then." I allowed them with a nod at the Necron fleet.

Served cold, but a gentleman could wait 60 million years for their revenge.

Sadly, only four Tesseract Vaults were recovered intact in the engagement, only those housing red-marked thus undesirable C'tan marked for death by their own brethren.

The rest were blown up to allow the friendlier C'tan to escape and help in the battle, and the following massacre.

I walked behind the revengeful Shards, while my wife joined me in her phased form to observe stuff for her Ordo Xenos and the Emperor himself. Sometimes we got weird glances from the Shards, myself even more than my half-real wife.

I guess there wasn't every day a human helped a C'tan prison break on this scale. Or at all, to be fair.