As the Thunderhawk Transporter docked within the cavernous, almost hyperbolically vast hangar of the Ark Mechanicus, Belisarius Cawl immediately descended from the gunship's assault ramp. Behind him, his mechadendrites rose high, hoisting his massive Omnissian Power Axe.
"Toll the Great Bell! Awaken the Divine Machine!"
The energy requirements of an Ark Mechanicus were monumental. Upon reaching its destination, the colossal vessel, a leviathan whose displacement far exceeded even that of a Gloriana-class battleship, had entered a low-power standby mode. Now, with the Necron threat imminent, the primary power systems had to be re-engaged and all weapon banks brought to pre-ignition status.
Cawl's command was executed with binharic speed.
Deep within the hull, a gargantuan golden bell was struck. The resonant boom of the tolling metal reverberated through every bulkhead and corridor of the Ark. At their designated stations, throngs of Tech-Priests immediately directed the servitors under their thrall to begin the rites of reactivation.
Levers were thrown, pistons groaned into motion, and massive quantities of promethium fuel were pumped into the primary reactors.
The second tolling of the bell echoed.
The Priests depressed sanctified activation studs, ignited the main engines, and flared the turbines, breathing machine-life back into the ship.
As the third toll lingered, a chorus of Tech-Priests raised their voices in a binary canticle, singing hymns of praise to the Omnissiah.
By standard protocol, the awakening of a Divine Machine required exhaustive preparatory rites. However, this was Cawl's Ark Mechanicus. As an Archmagos, Cawl was not bound by the same rigid dogmatism that stifled his peers; he summarily excised the redundant litanies.
The Xenos foe was at the threshold. Even the Omnissiah would not find fault in the omission of ceremony during such a dire hour. To serve the Emperor was to serve His avatar, and to remain loyal to the Emperor was to labor for the Machine God himself.
A gargantuan roar ascended from the ship's depths. Torrential floods of energy surged through the vessel's power conduits. The weapon systems of the Zar-Quaesitor began their warm-up cycles, weapon arrays sliding out from beneath heavy armored plating. Dense banks of lance batteries began to flicker with lethal intent.
As the energy signature spiked, the Necrons naturally took notice of this over-engineered behemoth.
The Necrons, however, held little regard for the vessels of the Imperium. No matter how exaggerated their dimensions, the undying legions possessed absolute confidence in the superiority of their own chronomancy and science. Green energy trails from inertialess drives streaked through the void like malevolent ribbons of light. A Necron Tomb Ship fixed its gaze upon the Ark, perceiving it as a bloated, ponderous target.
Phase shields shimmered, making the Tomb Ship appear to exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously; the vessel flickered in and out of reality, a ghost of living metal. As energy coalesced within the Tomb Ship's core, a thick torrent of green light, a deluge of molecular deconstruction, surged toward Cawl's Ark Mechanicus.
Almost simultaneously, the Ark's prow-mounted Nova Cannon achieved full charge. A beam of searing orange-red energy erupted, hurtling toward the Tomb Ship.
Greater scale meant greater power. As the two beams crossed in the void, the sheer magnitude of the energy fluctuations warped their trajectories. The green Gauss ray grazed the Ark's flank, bypassing the Void Shields before dissipating into the vacuum. Conversely, the Nova Cannon's shell tore past the Tomb Ship's phase shields.
The resulting energy displacement caused the phase shields to partially destabilize, locking a section of the Necron hull into realspace and leaving behind glowing, heat-scarred marks. The residual blast of the Nova Cannon continued its path, slamming into a trailing Dirge-class Raider that had been harrying an Adeptus Mechanicus battleship.
The Nova Cannon's impact instantly overloaded the Raider's phase shields, crippling the vessel. The Mechanicus battleship, previously unable to penetrate the Xenos defenses, immediately unleashed a punishing volley. Its lance batteries fired thick, concentrated beams, detonating the crippled Necron cruiser into a fireball of brilliant green flame.
Cawl was well aware that standard Void Shields offered poor protection against Necron Gauss or arc weaponry. Though his Ark possessed dual-layered shielding, the inner thermal shields were significantly weaker than the outer Void Shields. They might withstand one or two direct hits from an enemy flagship, but a sustained bombardment would surely tear the Ark Mechanicus asunder.
A series of explosions blossomed against the Tomb Ship's shields as more space torpedoes, trailing brilliant exhaust, closed in. Nearby, the Retribution-class battleship Dawn of Fire deployed its broadside macro-cannon arrays. Its prow torpedoes had been launched first, arriving at the Tomb Ship just as the massive macro-shells caught up.
Phase shields were exceptionally effective against such kinetic impacts. Despite the blinding glare of the explosions, when the light faded, the shimmering Tomb Ship remained virtually unscathed. The high-explosive macro-shells were absorbed by the shields, and the torpedoes were picked off by rapid-fire Gauss defense turrets.
The massive, tombstone-like structures atop the Necron ship pulsed with a blinding, emerald radiance, as if drawing from an infinite well of power. A shockwave erupted outward, sweeping across all nearby Imperial and Mechanicus vessels.
The continuous fire from the Imperial ships seemed to hit a "stop" button, falling silent as crews were overcome. The Mechanicus ships, however, maintained their assault. The Necron fleet seized the opening, accelerating their rate of fire and venting several Imperial hulls into the void.
The Dawn of Fire, positioned at a safer distance, remained unaffected, its macro-cannons and lances continuing their rhythmic bombardment. But Cawl's Ark Mechanicus was not so fortunate; a quarter of the ship was caught in the emerald energy wave, including the massive Nova Cannon and a section of the lance arrays.
Scores of Tech-Priests, mortals, and thralls shrieked in terror. Driven by horrific hallucinations, they began to lash out at phantom terrors with whatever tools were at hand. Yet, the lobotomized servitors and heavily augmented combat units, lacking independent consciousness, ignored the psychic trauma. They continued to execute their last programmed orders: load ammunition, charge weapons, calculate firing solutions, and depress the firing studs.
However, as the panicking thralls, Priests, and even Skitarii began to slaughter one another in the grip of the visions, the servitors were caught in the crossfire, and casualties mounted rapidly.
Cawl sat deep within the ship upon his personal mechanical throne. A torrential flood of data surged into his mind. Though portions of the Ark were descending into anarchy, Cawl, aided by the ship's Machine Spirit, could still remotely command the weapons in those sections.
The momentarily halted fire began to spew forth once more.
Its precision had even increased. A dense barrage of lance fire slammed into the prow of the Necron Tomb Ship, followed immediately by a devastating slug from the Nova Cannon.
This relentless, high-precision bombardment, coupled with the Ark's over-calibrated energy output, pushed the Xenos phase shields to the point of fracture. Cawl did not yet know that his strikes had brought the Tomb Ship's defenses to the brink of total collapse.
Aboard the Tomb Ship, the Necrons felt a rare flicker of unease. They could not comprehend how a vessel caught in the wake of their "tombstone" pulse could possibly maintain its combat effectiveness.