With the others close around him, Zozar reached the shelter of one of the large ground transporters that had been parked across the entryways. Adjusting his mass-profile, he started to scale the slab side of the tracked machine, still firing as he clambered past the driver’s cab and onto a lower roof. His skorpekhs followed, copying their lord as they unleashed a new barrage of fire from their higher vantage point. More missiles and bullets swept down into them, thinning their numbers by two more, the mangled remains hurled from the transporter by the explosions.

Resistance was fiercer here than Zozar had been expecting. He suspected that one or more of the fiery orators was located within, bolstering the nerve of the defenders and intercepting the overnull field. He leapt at the wall, claws digging into the porous material to secure his vertical advance. Now directly below, his skorpekhs fanned out along the wall to either side to clear each other’s fields of fire; the necrons were a far harder target for the men and women at the windows, and virtually hidden from the roof-dwellers.

The flanking force at the lifter station was almost in position. A secondary delivery gate was located at a right angle to the main attack, providing a perfect opportunity to break into the facility and attack the defenders from within. Zozar was about to order them forward when sensor feedback from the skorpekh node-leaders demanded closer attention.

Skorpekh Amehon-destruct: Receiving input signalling from orbital craft.

Skorpekh Photorion-decimate: Enemy presence detected. Incoming craft have entered atmosphere.

Skorpekh Amehon-slaughter: Trajectory estimates place landing point at our location.

Skorpekh cluster-thought: Continue kill-sequence. The living must be exterminated.

Reaching the lowest of the windows, Zozar focused his primary field on his immediate surroundings. His phase blade lopped the protruding hand and weapon from the nearest human, an instant before the skorpekh lord heaved his bulk into the interior, glass and wooden frame exploding around him. His momentum carried him forward, metal claws skidding on a tiled floor, the body of the human falling beneath his bulk. Defenders were turning their weapons on Zozar, but this left them defenceless against the other skorpekhs bursting into the broad hall from both sides, guns stripping their foes down to nothing, blades cutting with the precision of surgeons.

+KILL THEM ALL.+

Zozar stabbed a foot into the chest of a charging human, living metal sharper than any blade honed by hand or machine. The human stared in disbelief while lifeblood spurted from the wound, slipping without friction along the silvered sword-limb that transfixed her. Zozar slid his claw free and beheaded the human with a swipe of his phase blade, its edge a shimmer as it dimensionally shifted to ignore the hardened breastplate collar that protected his victim’s neck. The head rolled sideways, her body hitting the floor at Zozar’s feet.