47: Chapter 47 Marcus believed the Blackrock Line was the Swarm's ultimate trump card.

The standoff on the bridge of the Wrath of the Emperor lasted until the seventy-second standard hour after the Blackstone Defense Line closed its loop. The Tech-Officers had grown accustomed to the steady arrangement of cold green light points on the star map—from Metallis to Talastra, from Hails to the outskirts of Griffin IV, a complete Blackstone quantum resonance dome tightly enveloped The Swarm-occupied zone. Marcus Aurelian stood before the command console, the fracture in his right arm aching faintly in the days of low temperatures. He had just finished approving the Griffin IV Orbital Platform watch rotation schedule submitted by the Third Assault Fleet and was preparing to order the last of the mobile reserves to the eastern channel junction.

A series of piercing alarms suddenly erupted from a Tech-Officer's console. It wasn't an enemy contact alarm, nor an anomaly in the resonance frequency of the blackstone engines—it was the scanners capturing something at the edge of the Ultima Segmentum that absolutely should not have appeared at those cosmic coordinates. A ship, its hull composed of living metal and devoid of any Imperial identification codes, was emerging with agonizing slowness from the quantum resonance layer of the Blackstone Defense Line. The rear half of its hull had lost power, and the green lights on the deck had dimmed to a final, faint layer of cold flame. High-level Necron warning glyphs were carved into the prow's ramming spur, which translated to just two words: "The Void."

"A Nephilak Shuttle," Marcus stared at the ship's silhouette on the main screen, his voice raspy. "It's back."

The Tech-Officer displayed the Shuttle's damage assessment point-by-point on the main screen. The quantum engine casing was shattered, the propulsion conduits had collapsed in multiple places, and the power bus was pierced by unknown Warp energy scorch marks; the entire ship had glided through the final leg of its journey into the Blackstone Defense Line on sheer inertia. Life signs inside the bridge were extremely weak but still persisting. On the bridge of the Eternal Echo, Canoptek-7 opened a quantum state link at the same time, and the voice of the Necron Technician spilled from the speakers like crushed metal powder: "The Shuttle is being guided to a landing by the Blackstone Defense Line. Defense systems, please do not attack."

"Recover the Shuttle. Have it land on the Eternal Echo." Marcus turned to the communications officer. "Notify The Swarm—we are recovering a wounded signatory of the covenant, not conducting a military maneuver. Don't let it trigger the Blackstone Defense Line's automated counterattack protocols." The communications officer sent this message simultaneously to the Blackstone network's quantum state interface and the acting captain of the Eternal Echo. Marcus then activated the War Council's holographic channel from encrypted standby, adding to the newly connected Ortron: "Griffin IV is to remain on maximum alert. We are going to receive a Necron Overlord now—bring him back alive."

When the hydraulic doors of the recovery bay slid open on the Eternal Echo's hangar deck, the edges of Nephilak's living metal cloak were still sparking with small ionizing flickers. His right shoulder pauldron had been corroded into a deep trench by some coarse Warp energy, and several pieces of shrapnel that had not yet fully cooled were embedded in the bronze alloy casing on the side of his chest. The cold green light points in his eye sockets were more than one energy level dimmer than when he left Metallis, yet he still walked out of the hatch on his own two feet, each step striking the living metal of the hangar deck with a firm and steady thud.

The Brood Queen larva sent to protect him followed closely behind, several burn marks on her carapace still oozing dark purple ichor. The final segment of the toe-blade on her left forelimb was missing, the stump sealed by chitinous gel she had secreted herself, the edges already hardened into a temporary carapace patch. Upon seeing the Brood Queen's main node in the Eternal Echo's hangar, she used her last bit of strength to swipe the creep recorder, synchronously uploading all combat logs from the journey, then curled up in a corner of the creep to begin restorative hibernation.

Marcus entered the hangar accompanied by Bern and two Terminator guards. The Necron Overlord and the human Inquisitor locked eyes on the hangar deck for several seconds. Nephilak offered no pleasantries, no complaints, and no explanation for his injuries. He simply spoke in a voice that sounded like living metal rubbing against itself:

"The Overlord Council vote results: The Core Matrix has ratified the void covenant by a majority of more than two-thirds. Under the framework of the agreement, The Swarm's right to use the Blackstone network and its stewardship over occupied Blackstone assets have been formally recorded. Your Brood Queen retained a minimum buffer zone clause for the Empire in the protocol's addendum—this is something you humans should thank her for." He paused for a very brief moment, the cold green light points in his eye sockets refocusing on the dense clusters of Blackstone nodes on the Ultima Segmentum star map. "But as I homeward bound with the original draft of the agreement, I detected a full activation signal from Talastra—you have not only utilized the secondary key from the Hails Altar, but used it to open that thing at the lowest level of the Talastra Main Tomb."

"That door." Marcus's cybernetic eye suddenly flared. "When Sebastian's strike team was lost in the tomb, the Blackstone Cerebrate was opening a door. The door's energy signature doesn't match any known blackstone engine—we have yet to identify where it leads."

"I have identified it." Nephilak projected a segment of quantum state data into the air of the hangar deck. It was a complete cross-section of a Tomb-class Blackstone Great Gate; the doorframe was woven from living metal and pure Blackstone resonance crystals, with the oldest Necron warning glyphs carved into every seam. "You do not recognize it because it has never been in the databases of carbon-based civilizations. Its construction predates the war between the Necron Dynasty and the Old Ones; it is among the first batch of blackstone engine arrays forged by the Dynasty's pioneers at the dawn of the Milky Way's formation. What you have opened is a Blackstone Great Gate—in the archives of the Necron Dynasty, they are collectively known as the 'Void Gate'."

Nephilak brought up a simulated projection of the energy dimension behind the gate. In the projection, an endless space partitioned into a regular grid by cold green light patterns contained countless ancient Blackstone creations still in operation—each more sophisticated than the anti-psionic weapon platforms he had taught The Swarm, and each possessing its own independent quantum resonance signature. "Beyond the gate is not a Necron hell, nor the Warp, nor any dimension you humans understand. It is the final batch of Blackstone prototypes sealed away by the Necron Dynasty before its fall—never tested, never safety-cleared, and deemed by both your Adeptus Mechanicus and our engineers as something that should never be activated. And now, your Swarm has used the Talastra Master Key to open it."

Bern stepped forward from the hangar's flank, his psionic talisman still a dull, dead grey. He glanced at the projection of the Void Gate, then turned to Marcus. "It's not defense. After all the blackstone engine defense lines were running steadily, it intentionally brought out the Void Gate from the deepest part of Talastra. It's not trying to intimidate us; it's preparing for the next round of war—against enemies who have yet to show their faces."

Marcus turned to Nephilak, his question as sharp as a blade. "Estimated threat level."

Nephilak fell silent for a very brief instant. For a Necron Overlord to pause before answering was, in itself, the weightiest of answers. "Your Swarm Overmind has always favored offense as defense in siege warfare. I will not stop him from opening the Void Gate, because behind it lies a prototype sufficient to become the only weapon capable of protecting the Ultima Segmentum against a Void-class threat. If he uses all the adamantium-chitin currently produced by Metallis to build it—the Empire's Forge Worlds once used similar materials to build Warlord-class Titans, but what you are about to see will far exceed the concept of a Warlord-class."

He threw the design schematics for the prototype labeled "Titan-Eater" into the holographic projection. It was an insectoid war machine even more massive than a Hive Lord, its entire body covered in adamantium-chitin bone plates. Its limb extremities were designed as extremely long adamantium monomolecular bone blades, its thorax and abdomen embedded with seven independent sets of Blackstone quantum resonance chambers, and at the center of its head carapace sat a Void-class Blackstone core extracted from the Talastra Main Tomb—its size and energy density exceeding the sum of all previously known Blackstone cores.

"Titan-Eater." Marcus whispered the name. There was no need to ask its purpose; he knew better than anyone what kind of weapons humanity feared most. The Empire's Titan Legions had already been traumatized by The Swarm on the ground over the past year—and what was locked behind the Void Gate was the ultimate version that would amplify that fear even further. He turned and gave an urgent order to Oldenburg: "Notify Griffin IV—new threat level. It's not that the defense line has been breached; it's that the defense line is no longer the thing we need to worry about most."