‘Send the canopteks swarms to clear the place.’ Imotekh's words were sent on a wide carrier wave across his ship. The noises wouldn’t have reached anyone in the cold, nothingness of space.
Osirok was sitting quietly behind him.
Obedient.
The Inevitable Conqueror was sitting in the orbit of Syndrosus.
The planet in front of him burned.
The primitive contraptions that the humans inhabiting this world built to extract and refine the reaction mass were an attractive target for the gauss blasters.
The explosion that followed soon engulfed the planet’s surface. It has been burning for three solar days. Enough time for Imotekh to deal with the orbital and space reinforcements.
Now the dwindling flames were reflecting in his oculars. A dying ember.
It would still be of use to the Sautekh’s empire and its Phaer-
He stopped the thought as something tightened up in his engrams.
‘Another planet has been reclaimed.’ His words felt cold as he broadcast his speech. ‘Another world has been cleansed of the touch of those opposing the Infinite Empire. Now it is cradled under the Sautekh Dynasty’s protection.’ He tried not to think about how many subjects could still understand his words. ‘May my words be carried by the solar waves across this galaxy.’ A glyph of conquest of the same colour as the burning planet was projected. ‘To those still in their stasis sarcophagi. To those hidden in their sanctums and interdimensional seclusion.’ His vocal transduces seem to react without his input, the words pouring out it, the same words someone else uses to hold after every one of his conquests, only change slightly to fit the present better. ‘To those fighting both the usual enemy and their own inner ones. May those words reach those who are hiding, the cowards who abandoned the Infinite Empire, condemning it to the fate of a mountain faced with the river of time. The Sautekh Dynasty reclaim another, and it shall do so, again and again, until the Infinite Empire shall be unified. Not by treacherous words, not by shackling algorithms, but by the Glory and Might.’ Imotekh turned towards the Eastern Fringe of the Galaxy, watching the cold expanse of the universe. ‘Glory to the Sautekh Dynasty!’ He declared as he ended the message with the glyph of the dynasty.
It was quiet for a microsecond.
A flood of congratulatory and renowned vows of loyalty flooded Imotekh’s interstitial feed.
All the nobles and Overlords were ready to affirm their dedication to the Sautekh’s cause. To Imotekh’s cause.
He felt bitterness emanating from his vocal actuator.
A long time ago, when he was but a soldier, blinking away the sand in his eyes, he would have spat the bitterness and got on with his day. But now? Now he couldn’t. He was stuck like this, forever and after, with bitter words that he could not utter, in fear that they were truthful.
He activated the translation protocols, watching as the swarm of scarabs descending upon this world became brighter and brighter. He could hear the distorted steps of his bodyguard as Osirok got closer to him before initiating his own translocation sequence.
The world materialised in front of his oculars.
The bitterness was choking him as he stepped towards the throne in the command room of his ship.
His olfactory receptors picked up the faint smell of wax in the room’s faint atmosphere. It was a remnant from its previous owner, leaving the waxy substance slowly sublimating and coating the inhabitants with its waxy, strong smell. He used to joke that it was meant to prevent rust formation. Imotekh felt like his engrams were about to melt through his ocular sockets. If he were to raise his hands, he could hold the spilling engrams in them.
His cryptek advisors flanked both sides of the throne room.
Navgran and Orikan both bow their heads in his presence.
Navgran’s deep and heavy with loyalty, and Orikan’s short and shallow, backed by confidence.
Imotekh walked to the Phaeron’s throne, staring at it grimly.
‘I desire to be left alone.’ The words were cold as steel. ‘Leave.’
‘Understood.’ Navrgan said as he turned around.
‘Your will is my own, my Phaeron.’ Osirok bowed deeply, his knees touching the ground, before he raised himself and ushered the rest of the lychguards with him.
The noise of the footsteps leaving the room was not enough to fill his cognition buffers.
Imotekh almost rushed to scan through the congratulatory messages he received after his speech.
The words that held various degrees of loyalty, and the many ways they can be interpreted, took on an embarrassingly small part of his computational power to analyse.
He stopped at Zahndrekh’s message.
The chrysoprase green glyphs meant little to him. The words were just as empty as all the other letters, but Zahndrekh has always been loyal to Imotekh. A wise and eccentric old general, the Nemesor now bore Imotekh’s old title, the one bestowed upon him by Phaero-
His head jerked, as if he was trying to stop his body from collapsing.
His core was reaching the critical cycling speed, even if he was stationary.
‘My Lord?’ Orikan’s voice was cold, unusually patient.
Imotekh looked at him, before his legs folded under him, like the Stormlord was only a mere puppet.
He felt his knees slipping sideways as his back gave up. He kept trying to extend his thorax, trying to relieve the pressure, but it was suck in the breathless position of a statue.
This was the only time Imotekh felt like suffocating.
This was not alright.
Things could never be proper again.
The missing piece of his engrams was almost vital. The death of the Phaeron ripped away a part of him. He was incomplete. He was missing a key point.
His oculars kept resetting, blinking on and off into existence. After another reset, he noted that the world seemed to be lying on its side.
He was on his side.
He collapsed. Orikan seemed to be near him. He was speaking, but Imotekh couldn’t hear him.
The missing piece inside of him was growing, a gaping blackhole of wrongness, threatening to swallow him whole.
Hands started to drag him upright.
The emptiness hurt.
It hurt.
The pain was so excruciating.
Hurt.
He was unable to let out a single gasp, or whimper.
Orikan dragged him back up, sitting next to him on his knees.
The cryptek’s ocular served like a light in the dark, guiding the agony out.
Imotekh was shaking, his hydraulics smashing in their chambers, jerking painfully. All of his pumps are moving in their own rhythm, trying to rip each other apart. Trying to join the former Phaeron in his grave.
Former.
Imotekh struggled to push through his vocal actuators a heavy whimper.
The sound itself seems wet, splashing heavily into the weak atmosphere.
Orikan was hugging him.
Imotekh pushed himself.
He tried crying.
The tears wouldn’t come outside.
He was suffocating in them as he tried to sob again.
Another broken sound escaped his immobile lips.
He tried crying again.
Orikan was petting his back.
Imotekh’s hands felt like they were made out of dead lead. He couldn’t lift them.
‘- ease, do not give up.’ Orikan’s voice was filled with concerned glyphs.
The Stormlord pushed into him, a desperate attempt to hug and cling to the cryptek.
The storm inside his engrams was dying as he listened to the astromancer’s words.
‘ Hypnos, right ascendant of the galactic north pole, at 17 hours and 46 minutes, 40.0409seconds, −29 degrees, it fell after releasing the technophagic virus against the unclean ones called Adeptus Mecha-‘
Imotekh felt himself getting lost in the endless astronomical coordinates. Orikan was just reciting his previous conquests.
He let the number fill his engrams. The need to sob, although suffocating, was slowly dying.
‘Jorokh, compared to the South Galactic pole, at 24 hours –‘
His core was starting to slow the cycling rate. He could feel it rattle against his still thorax.
He finally had the strength to raise his arms, hooking his fingers onto Orikan’s vertebral spines.
The astromancer was new, compared to most of his subjects, yet Imotekh trusted him more than he trusted his oldest confidants. Experience has taught him that everyone was your friend until they weren’t. Opportunists, and soldiers of fortune, we were all born.
Imotekh wouldn’t have doubted that Orikan wasn’t the same if not for his history.
Orikan left the Royal Court of the Silent King himself to seek shelter under Imotekh’s wing.
Such a lucrative role.
No cryptek could ever dream of such great honour, maybe only being part of the triarchy itself.
Orikan’s clawed hand rubbed circles on the hard metal of his back.
No one would run if it weren’t for someone whose word cannot be denied.
Szarekh the Last of the Silent Kings.
Green acid bile bubbled in Imotekh’s conduits. The Silent King’s name was like a curse, whispered shamefully by necrons with enough dignity to understand his betrayal.
Imotekh did not have to be a brilliant strategist to deduce the reason why Orikan came under his protectorate, why he supported the Stormlord, even if he had to bite his acid tongue. Why was he the only one who witnessed Imotekh’s fragile psyche almost shattering.
The Phaeron’s hands were imitating Diviner’s hand motion, rubbing circles into Orikan’s shoulder pieces.
The passing of the Sautekh Phaeron in his sleep left deep injuries in Imotekh’s partitions.
Still bleeding wounds, unable to ever close.
Imotekh gathered his legs, pressing them into Orikan, as he shook slightly when pressing closer to him.
The gauss fire inside his engrams chased the bitterness away.
The diviner never asked, never question, and always helped Imotekh get over his … episodes. He was the only one Imotekh would tolerate to show his weakness.
He hugged Orikan tighter, as the cryptek continued to whisper numbers and coordinates to him.
Oh, how the anger bubbled inside him.
A welcome blame to all of his problems.
‘I shall make you pay.’ Imotekh swore.
Orikan hugged him tightly as well. He did not need to ask who Imotekh was referring to, he already knew.
