[Boom boom boom...]
[Two Contemptor Dreadnoughts are working a Necron defense pylon from the front, their weapons sustained and deliberate, each burst chipping away at the structure's living metal shell and the arcs of Gauss energy crackling from its emitter arrays. Behind them, Ultramarines in mark-series plate have taken cover behind metal barriers and are laying precise bolter fire on every Necron Warrior frame that moves into their sight lines.]
[These veterans predate the current era by thousands of years, sealed in Trazyn's collection since the Horus Heresy, and they fight like it: no uncertainty, no adjustment period, the full professional economy of warriors who had finished their development before most current Astartes were gene-seeded. They became your heaviest combat element the moment their stasis fields failed.]
[The target sector holds a small group of Salamanders. Trazyn has noticed the pattern now. More Necron units are moving to defend the sections of the museum that house Imperial forces, the Overlord adapting his deployment to your objectives. The resistance is thicker with each successive liberation. You have no better option available.]
[The pylons fall one by one under the Dreadnoughts' fire and the coordinated advance of the Ultramarine veterans. The stasis fields behind them fail in sequence.]
[Ten Salamanders. That is all Trazyn collected from that Chapter. They orient immediately and join without discussion.]
[More Necron forces converge at the sound of the fighting. You pull the entire group back into motion before the cordon can close.]
[The next location on your map is different in character from everything you have cleared so far. The space Trazyn has built here is larger than a corridor system: a full simulated battlefield, still incomplete in its construction, scaffolding of living metal at its edges where the museum's expansion has not yet finished. In the center of it, a regiment of Vostroyan Firstborn are engaged in a looping assault across the same hundred meters of ground, firing and dying and beginning again, the time-loop devices locking them into an eternal repetitive engagement they have no awareness of.]
[The Salamanders know what to do with the loop devices. They move through the space and dismantle the emitters one by one with a precision that suggests familiarity with exactly this kind of Necron technology.]
[The loop breaks. The Vostroyans stop mid-stride, their expressions carrying the particular confusion of soldiers who have just forgotten what they were doing and cannot account for any of the time that has passed.]
[Food supplies reach you almost immediately: the Vostroyans carry their own rations. You and Fulgrim's clone eat everything offered to you without ceremony or self-consciousness, going through the provisions at the rate that Primarch-scale metabolisms in sustained combat actually require. The Astartes watch in silence. The Vostroyan mortal soldiers watch with open mouths.]
[The combined force finds a defensible space and gathers to plan.]
[You sit with the Necron catalog and begin drawing from memory: the maps, the script notations, the graphic layout of sectors and containment areas. What you cannot reproduce accurately, you mark as approximate. The discussion begins around what you have drawn.]
[A Salamander steps forward from the edge of the group. Dark-skinned, quiet, the particular stillness of someone who spends more time reading than speaking.]
["Primarch." His voice is low. "I have been working through the Necron script on those maps. There is a location marked with notation that distinguishes it from everything surrounding it. Here." He indicates a point on your drawing. "They call it the World Nexus."]
[You stop what you are doing and look at the point he is indicating.]
[The discussion that follows is substantive. The World Nexus sits at a position in the Tombworld's architecture that does not correspond to any standard museum function. It is a control point of some kind, or a power junction, or something older than either. The Salamander has cross-referenced three different map sections to triangulate its location. You and Fulgrim's clone examine the evidence and agree: this is the target.]
[Time is working against liberation. Trazyn is actively defending the remaining Imperial prisoners now, and the window for expanding the force is narrowing. A direct assault on the most important location in the Tombworld changes the entire equation: whether you can take it intact or simply destroy what it does, the damage to Trazyn and his Necron force would be immediate and severe.]
[Preparations begin without argument.]
[The Salamanders move to a sealed vehicle bay three corridors over. With their technical expertise applied directly to the problem, five Leman Russ battle tanks that Trazyn had preserved in perfect working order come to life one by one, their engines cycling through ignition with the sound of machinery that has been maintained to a standard that would impress any mechanicus adept. Trazyn's perfectionism is genuinely inconvenient under normal circumstances. Right now, it is equipping you.]
[The assault formation assembles: the five Leman Russ tanks and the Contemptor Dreadnoughts at the front, Astartes from three Chapters moving on their flanks, the Vostroyan Firstborn in the body of the column. You and Fulgrim's clone take the advance.]
[The formation hits the Necron encirclement at full momentum.]
[Trazyn's deployment hesitates.]
[The change of objective has disrupted his read on your intentions, and the hesitation propagates through his Necron units as delayed responses in their positioning. You drive through the gap before it closes, the Leman Russ cannons clearing corridors ahead of the Astartes advance, the Dreadnoughts absorbing Gauss fire that would stop anything smaller.]
[The route takes you through the Eldar architecture sector again.]
[The same scene: Harlequins and Black Legion Terminators locked in engagement before the ancient palace. But this time you do not wait to assess.]
["Advance! Traitors first!"]
[The Leman Russ tanks roll into the Black Legion formation without slowing. Bolter fire from three Chapters converges. The Empathic Obliterator in your hand finds the command Terminator while Fulgrim's clone takes the left flank. The traitor Astartes who have survived centuries in Trazyn's collection do not survive the next two minutes.]
[The last Chaos Astartes loses his head to the Empathic Obliterator's edge.]
[The Harlequins hold position, weapons at guard.]
[A dozen of them. The same masks. The same unearthly stillness.]
[Their leader steps forward.]
["Primarchs of humanity." The Imperial Low Gothic is clean and unaccented. "This time you have understood our language at last."]
["If you had spoken plainly from the beginning," you say, looking directly at the mask, "we could have moved sooner."]
["A moment earlier or later would have cost the opportunity. Now is precisely right." The Harlequin's mask does not change. "The World Nexus. You are going there."]
["That is correct." You take a breath. "What is it exactly? The core control point of this Tombworld?"]
[The Harlequin is quiet for a moment.]
["Once you breach it, you will understand what must be done. Humanity's Primarchs: this is a narrow window. If all goes according to the thread, it will be your only real chance."]
["Speak plainly," you say. The patience in your voice has a definite bottom to it.]
[The Harlequin's posture shifts almost imperceptibly.]
["...Truthfully. We do not know what the Nexus actually is. We can only say that it is clearly of profound importance to the Overlord. Everything we told you before was our best attempt at a reasonable guess."]
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