‘Avenge our brother!’ Nem­etus bellowed, kicking hard at the alien’s damaged limb, fending off another crackling blade attack to drive his remaining pauldron into the leg.

Letting go of his sword with one hand, he wrapped his arm about the shining metal, feeling a strange resistance to his grip. He dropped and rolled, twisting the leg from its joint as he did so. Nem­etus crashed to the floor as the necron commander sprawled backwards, blade and cannon impotently flailing to retain balance, tripping over the supine lieutenant to slam into the hard floor.

Like the true-scarabs that the canoptek constructs had been modelled upon, the enhanced human warriors descended upon Zozar’s collapsed body. Rather than burrowing at dead flesh with mandibles, they hewed at the living metal of his form with rapacious blows of gleaming blades. The skorpekh lord tried to rise, hardening his cortical shield against their assault, arms assisting his remaining two legs in the attempt.

It was impossible to defend against every attack. A blow hammered at the back of Zozar’s head, splitting it to the neck. With growing detachment, he watched part of his skull drop down his torso and clang to the floor.

The greater cortical network was awash with convulsive signals. There were no protocols, no automated translocation programs to remove heavily damaged vessels from the battle. His retrieval broadcast went unanswered, drifting out into the empty void of space.

He was utterly alone.

Zozar closed off his sensors, cocooning himself against the continued blows raining down upon the outer shell of his being. It was a body; one he had modified continually in his quest for efficient lethality. It mattered even less now that it would not be replaced. Death was imminent.

Death.

The cessation of life. His mission had been to serve death, an uncompromising killer in pursuit of an orderly universe without the anarchy of sentience.

He had no regrets. It was too late for that.

Power supply was almost diminished, expended trying to repair wounds that could not be healed, warding off blades out of instinct, removed from any conscious desire to remain alive. His cortical field retreated to the core nexus, a particle-cluster in the heart of the engine he had created for killing.

In absence of all other stimuli, a singular image imposed itself upon the last vestiges of awareness. A face, beautiful, lit by the red sun of Zozar’s world. It was rife with lesions and scabs, balding and radiation-burnt, but it was still smiling.

She was gone and his rage had tried to extinguish all life to mask the pain. He had not succeeded and in the last instant of cogitation Zozar admitted his failure.

Yes, life was persistent.