Massed translocation beams slipped down to the surface. Zozar turned, sensing the congregating particles of hundreds of necrons in the colours of the Szarekh lords. A quintet of monoliths arrived first, establishing the transference field across a large swathe of the outer defences. From their portals a cohort of warriors marched silently at the centre, flanked by a myriad of canoptek servitors, from scarab clouds to plasmacytes and gangling reanimators. Doomsday arks and annihilation barges drifted out of the dimensional stream, attended to by more canoptek functionaries. Overhead, he felt the cortical cries of Doom Scythes and Night Scythes, pitching groundward at high speed from swirling jade sub-dimensional portals in the upper skies.

With them came the full force of the overnull. Even though Simut had not yet placed the resonator, the soul-deadening effect was extended by his minions’ presence. Like a chilling wind it passed over Zozar. The effect on the defenders was almost immediate. Those trying to hold the breach were struck numb, their actions sluggish, their fire rapidly diminished.

The end was near. Zozar could feel it.

Long ago he had passed beyond elation, beyond the revelry of victory, but he sped forwards with renewed anticipation for the slaughter to come. He leapt up the broken masonry with long strides, fuelled by the thought of drawing one step closer to fulfilling his mission of galactic oblivion.

Though it was her translocators that carried her across the void, Ah-hotep still recoiled at the presence of Simut’s protocols driving the dimensional shift, as if his hand was upon her, propelling her across the stars. The translocator beam targeted the centre of the station’s mass, avoiding the obvious energy spike of a circle of reactors at its heart. Material­ising into corporeal form once more, thoughts compressed back into her cortical field, Ah-hotep flexed her arrays, lapping at her environs with tendrils of sensitive green energy. Dozens more warriors and her personal guard of twenty Immortals arrived an instant later.

They were somewhere in the upper portion of the immense hemispherical station. The chamber had a low ceiling, unlit by conventional light, the pipes and cabling running through it emitting low levels of heat and electromagnetic resonance.

Most importantly, she read no bio-forms in their immediate vicinity; nothing bigger than vermin, she corrected herself as her sensors picked up various warm-blooded creatures and a sizeable number and ­variety of arthropods in the walls and under the floor. With no immediate threat, she was free to strengthen her energy tendrils, latching onto the nearby wiring. Electricity coursed back to her body, arcing down into the bulbous accumulators arrayed along her spine, lighting them with a pale green as she gathered more and more energy. The taste of it was like nothing she had ever experienced as a living being. It was physical nourishment and cosmic attainment in one.