Thanks to the nearly suicidal advancement style of these Perditia Ogryns, a hard-fought battle originally expected to take hours or even longer was pushed to the core area in a mere thirty minutes.
These big guys had absolutely no concept of "minesweeping." Their only tactic was to face-check the tall grass and step on the mines with their feet. As long as their legs weren't blown off, they kept running; if a leg did snap, the brother behind would hoist him onto a shoulder and keep charging.
Soon, this mixed assault team reached the core of the Necron battleship—the final line of defense leading to the bridge command hub.
Blocking their path was a giant living-metal door, twenty meters high. Eerie green energy circuits flowed across the surface, and complex tomb runes flickered on the panels, radiating an aura of hopeless durability.
"Halt!"
The Space Marine Captain raised his boltgun to signal the team to stop, then looked to the Tech-Marine beside him. "Prepare melta bombs, or use the multi-melta to burn right through it."
"Understood, brother."
A Space Marine carrying a multi-melta stepped forward. The barrel began to preheat, emitting a heart-palpitating hum. This heavy weapon, designed for armored targets, was the best means of dealing with Necron structures, though it might take some time to melt through this thick layer of living metal.
Just then, an impossibly large hand suddenly reached out and pressed down on the scorching melta barrel.
"Don't need that. That's too slow," said the one stopping the Space Marine—an Ogryn player. He shoved the bewildered Space Marine behind him like a mother hen shooing a chick. "Let me do it. I get this."
Every Astartes present froze.
You get this?
Before the Space Marines could react, the Ogryn had already swaggered up to the door radiating deadly green light.
He extended a finger thicker than an ordinary man's arm and began to doodle casually across the complex energy rune panel.
Three circles to the left, three circles to the right, a cross in the middle, and then a connecting line.
The movement looked exactly like a toddler scribbling on a foggy window.
One Space Marine was even about to open his mouth to stop this meaningless behavior, but in the next second, what happened made him swallow his words.
"Vroom—Click!"
Accompanied by a crisp beeping sound, the green runes on the once-shut Necron door suddenly turned from green to gold. Immediately after, the heavy metal panels receded to the sides like melting wax, revealing a wide corridor.
A deathly silence fell over the Astartes squad.
"This—how is this possible?" For the first time, the Captain's voice contained unmistakable instability. "What just happened?"
He couldn't comprehend it. This was beyond the Imperial Truth; it was beyond his understanding of the universe. An Ogryn draws a turtle—or whatever hellish scribble that was—with his finger, and he cracks the core door of a Necron battleship?
But the Ogryns clearly weren't going to give them time to daze out.
"It's open! It's open! Charge! For the Emperor!"
"Steal the kills!!"
For these Ogryns, who were "players," this was nothing more than a characteristic mini-game. Since the door was open, the rest was just a carnival.
The Ogryns let out bursts of excited, strange cries, like a pack of starving wolves seeing a buffet, and poured into the bridge in a heap.
"Sir?" The warrior beside him looked at the Captain, at a loss.
The Captain took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the ten thousand "whys" in his heart. He raised his power sword again and roared, "Forget it! This must be the Emperor's divine power! Full squad, assault! Follow those—follow those ogryns!"
As the last Space Marine entered the vast command hall, the hub of this Necron battleship was completely exposed to the Empire's fury.
An eerie green glow illuminated a massive, stepped pyramid structure. Seated upon the blackstone throne at the highest point was the master of this ship—a Necron Overlord. Its towering frame was draped in living metal armor adorned with the heraldry of the Mephrit Dynasty, and its hand gripped a Staff of Light radiating an aura of destruction.
When it saw this group of humans—especially the group of Ogryns still shoving each other and shouting, "It's huge in here" and "Where's the boss?"—the cold, dead air seemed to freeze for a moment.
Even though the Necron's skull-like metal face had long since lost the ability to make expressions, every Space Marine present could read the alien Overlord's current feeling of utter disbelief through those frantically flickering visual sensors.
"What... did you just do?" The Overlord's voice came through the translator with a dry, mechanical grinding sound and deep confusion. "That was a Tritanium-grade phase encryption lock. Even a technician specializing in this field would take ages to crack it. How did you open my door?"
Its gaze was fixed staring at the Ogryn player who was currently picking his nose with his finger, as if trying to discern some ultimate cosmic truth from that abhuman head.
The Captain's hand tightened on his power sword.
How was it opened?
I want to know how the hell it was opened, too!
But his pride as an Astartes would never allow him to show weakness before a xenos, let alone admit he had no idea what his subordinates were doing. Thus, the Captain gave a cold snort, pointed his power sword at the high platform, and responded arrogantly: "What is there to say to a dying xenos like you? Is the Emperor's wisdom something you could possibly understand?"
The Necron Overlord fell silent for a moment. The green fire in its eyes flickered, seemingly re-evaluating the threat level of the enemy before it.
"Very well. It seems I must admit you have some tricks, humans," the Overlord said, slowly standing up. Its tone held less contempt and more gravity. "Perhaps you are not as primitive as we first believed. That seemingly random scribbling actually contained some kind of high-dimensional mathematical logic. No wonder that fool Bryce lost so quickly on the surface."
It seemed to have fallen into a logical feedback loop of self-rationalization: "Using the crudest appearance to disguise the most profound tactics to make us lower our guard... truly a most cunning race."
The Captain's mouth twitched slightly under his helmet. He felt that if this alien kept analyzing, it might eventually conclude that Ogryns were some lost technological creations of the Dark Age of Technology. There was no way to engage in this conversation; the more they spoke, the weirder it became.
"Enough! Don't listen to its nonsense!"
The Captain waved his hand sharply, interrupting the Overlord's contemplation. He roared into the comms channel: "Go! Don't let it escape! Chapter Master Huron wants to personally execute it and take its head back as a trophy!"
"For the Emperor! For the loot!"
The Ogryn players, who had long been unable to restrain themselves, let out ear-splitting roars.
The Necron Overlord did not step down personally. With a wave of its staff, rows of tall figures holding hyperphase swords and dispersion shields stepped out from the shadows on both sides of the throne—the Necron's most elite guard, the Lychguard.
"For the glory of the dynasty, purge the vermin!"