NationStates Jolt Archive

The Imperial Necrontyr Province of Delta Zeta Four was one of the more overlooked parts of the C’tani empire by many. It wasn’t surprising really, annexed some years or decades ago in a textbook ‘short victorious war’ the planet and its small number of inhabitants, presently a few hundred million, had been fairly quiescent and pliant since, used as they had been to authoritarian rule.

The governor of the planet, a young Necrontyr man, a decision made in no small part to emphasise his closeness with the distant colonial overlords, by the name of Sharan Tauraórë, had been responsible for several interesting initiatives, not least the re-establishment of a local military, with upgraded (if still far inferior to that of the C’tan Empire) technologies and tactics.

One of the major and distinctive features of Delta Zeta Four however, was its rampant slew of tremendously formidable and almost diabolically effective predators. If ever there had been an argument for intelligent design, the native inhabitants of Delta Zeta Four were it. Of course, they were also an argument for malevolent design.

This had been the greatest factor causing the limited population of the planet, which traditional population-expansion models would have at around four billion. As it was, even now, though the colonialists had expanded the area around, seeking arable land, somewhat the population remained in one city. But at last, growing overcrowding had forced Sharan to decide that it was time, at last, to build another.

Thankfully, the Elenaran, as the former Emperor now styled himself, had agreed with the decision, and much of the overseas aid budget for many years had been set aside for such construction. Additionally, as on distant Mars, another nation was building a ‘megacity’ with some C’tani input, a similar design was considered and eventually decided upon for Delta Zeta Four.

That was of course, only the beginning of what had to happen before it could be built. An area around fifty kilometres wide would have to be cleared, and more for farmland to increase the population’s self-sufficiency. Then the area would need to be defended against the local wildlife while construction was underway. A mammoth task, and one which would seem to be the biggest task undertaken on the planet since the initial construction of the first city…

Gray armor clad figures shifted nervously in the pre-dawn light. The familiar death's head glinted on collars and cuffs but the soldiers were deep in unfamiliar territory. Deep shadows grew deeper as eyes attempted to probe the depths of the nightmare jungle that surrounded them. Hands clenched tightly on rifles when the occasional low rumble drifted over the small encampment and eyes drifted back to where -they- stood.

"Zir..."

One of the new members of the platoon, straight from the soft duties of an armory guard, had his eyes firmly fixed on the squad of glinting black horrors that stood motionless behind them.

"Corporal... Keep your eyes forward. What is it?"

Young eyes went back to the ancient jungle and it's tangled undergrowth and the question was asked.

"Zir, why are we here if they are here?"

The question was a valid one and quickly answered as a pair of reapers - the iron clawed and hided predators that the natives ironically called 'the national animal' - silently leapt from the shadows. Troopers scattered except for their target who died instantly as one of the creatures plowed it's ravaging maw into his chest cavity in search of the warmth it sensed there. Pausing for food cost it dearly as a trio of energy blasts tore it and the body of the dead trooper apart in a brilliant flare of light.

The sergeant - combat instincts leaping to the fore - rolled to his feet and brought his rifle up in an instant. Rapid shots from his rifle followed the remaining reaper across the clearing as other troopers came to their feet and began to fire. With a single leap it was on one of the necron - the greatest threat - and slashing away with claws. Claws that would tear a man limb from limb skated along the hard metal surface and it howled in frustration.

A howl that was answered by a half-dozen others from the jungle around them. Shots tore into it as the troopers zero'ed in and it tumbled across the clearing. Rifles swung outward again just as more reapers jumped from the undergrowth. Again the clearing lit up as two blew apart in flashes of brilliant energy and those that remained crossed the distance in a heartbeat.

There were of course, several reasons why they were there. Firstly was that although there were a great many necrons, the great majority were deployed elsewhere. Those that were on DZ4, from the now overgrown starship that had landed them, were all engaged in various activities around the site of the future city, from guarding the perimeter of the affected areas to destroying tracts of the forest with high explosives and gauss flayers, especially those on the larger tank like ‘Monolith’ constructs.

Some where engaged in geological surveys, erecting crackling fences of electrical and more exotic forms of energy intended to harm anything that tried to breach them and others, the elite immortals, bigger and more powerful necrons, supported by their flying brethren were hunting down more threatening traces of movement in the brush – one of the many rules they’d discovered about this planet was that whenever you thought the predators were terrible, you would find something worse not too far away.

In places, work done by the necrons was quickly underway, creating temporary barriers of compacted soil as they worked on baring and reinforcing the bedrock of the area, as well as slicing, using devices akin to their weapons, dozens of taps to the water table.

In the immediate area, one of the rare weaknesses of the necrons was demonstrated. They were fairly easy to dismember with blunt force. One of the necrons was taken apart with a hefty blow from the maw of one of the reapers, an arm flying in a different direction from the rest of it. The metallic skull glanced down at its missing arm, and seemed, well, annoyed, raising its weapon to point at the predator, only to have its weapon knocked away as the beast landed on it, driving its head to the side with hammer-blows from clawed arms.

It roared in annoyance as it was caught in a green blast of light that enveloped it, snout to leg, before a hissing blast of released pressure blew the nearby foliage into the air as the creature was flayed apart, the necron under it, along with its dismembered arm faded to nothing, returning to the ship.

Elsewhere, flying transport vehicles skimmed overhead, along with necron air platforms. A of the latter broke off to join in the effort at repelling the reapers, as the transports skimmed off towards a large and solid outcropping of stone being systematically cleared of life by the majority of the necrons.

"And that, Corporal, is why we are here. Now make sure you cinch that torniquet down tight. If I pass out on the way to the field hospital I'll beat you to death with my remaining arm."

"Yes Zir..."

----

Erik von Strubhausen was a researcher. A pest control researcher. On a planet where most pests could cause decapitation he had plenty of scars to show for his work. He was also a pro-democracy sympathizer who had managed to fly under the radar of both Her Highness and the new ruler, Sharan Tauraórë, by being very careful about who he talked with about what. This was his chance to strike a blow for freedom even if it was likely to be his last.

During his many years of work he had tried to create pheremones that would warn the local predators away from the walls but that research now lay abandoned. His last project had been the opposite - a lure to attract various beasts. 'To attract them for study, capture, and extermination' had been his stated purpose but he had found another.

Now he wandered the building site with a platoon of soldiers following him closely watching as he set out a variety of traps. He was building up a catalog of the local creatures, so he claimed, but if he was right the concentration of pheremones contained in them would be powerful enough to pull some of the larger predators in to attack the project.

"We'll come back to check these in twenty four hours or zo. Let's return to the city - my wife is expecting me for dinner..."

Sharan Tauraórë for his part, was actually nearby on one of the various flying vehicles, accompanied by his long-time lover, Miriel nos Fëanor, dressed in a light white dress and wide brimmed straw hat, she found Delta-Zeta-Four warmer than Sharan did. Both were listening to another off-worlder talking about the project, “Anyway, the idea is that the whole thing will be around fifty kilometres across, with a massive outer wall two point eight clicks high and around one thick, though with a lot of internal space for defensive structures.

“It’s reminiscent of Minas Tirith, so there’s various rising circles of defences. So far the idea seems to be that the outer circle should be the industrial and defence based, then commerce, and then various layers of residential zoning, terminating in the administrative districts, last layer of defences, and spaceport in the center.

“We’re still not sure what we’re going to do with the spike on the original design to make it work as a spaceport, though we’re thinking of opening it up to suggestions.”

Miriel leaned over the side of the open-topped vehicle, “What’s going on there?” she asked, reaching for a pair of field glasses. Somewhere off in the distance, near the area where stone was being cut, a number of large beasts were pushing through the undergrowth, and various spots of gunfire could be seen. Despite the carnage doubtless underway, it looked fairly peaceful from the air.

Both of the others leaned over, “Now that looks bad,” said the advisor, and Sharan nodded, “I wonder what could have made them get so active, there’ s not usually that many of them,” he added, reaching for a communicator device to order more forces to be deployed to the area. With nothing better to do as they drifted over the jungle canopy, Miriel took the opportunity to seat herself in the vehicle’s unoccupied rear-gunner seat, experimentally firing off a few shots at the various chemically attracted beasts.

Hours later, in a white tent pitched in one of the more secure camps established on the site, after the effect seemed to have abated, and the governor was listening to a disturbingly long report of the casualties inflicted during the beast attack from a tall, ceramic-white necron lord whose torn robes were the only indication of the recent attack. The necron’s report was made more disturbing by the fact that its minions had come to the conclusion that the attack was artificially instigated using some form of pheromones.

Sharan nodded, “Have the city guard find out who planted these, and bring him here,” he said, “I wish to speak with this… terrorist.” He frowned, the word was ugly, and the necron nodded with a curt ‘I obey,’ and disappeared from sight as a strange shadow fell over it.

Sharan looked out over a model about a foot wide, from a prominence within what would be the walls of the new city. A single gleaming obelisk now soared out of the jungle’s treetops like an arrow through the heart of darkness. It was a formidable construct; part of what would become the perimeter wall. Dozens of two kilometre structural supports were already under construction in space, some of them already in orbit. Prefabricated structures, they were transported to Delta Zeta Four in one piece by several massive giga-lifters.

Then they had to be broken up to be landed, piece-by-piece, and re-assembled. The perimeter wall, he knew, would consist of over a hundred and fifty such massive pieces of metal, linked by curved pieces a kilometre long between them. When that first stage was finished, it would resemble nothing so much as an ancient henge monument. Between that, a hexagonal honeycomb of both scaffolding and structural supports would provide the basis for further construction.

Each cell of the honeycomb would be able to serve as a (very slow) means of transport, with four hatches and ladders built into its side. It was somewhat impractical, but they would be used later to allow construction of hollow sections inside the walls. For a hundred meters at the base of the outer wall however, there was planned to be no such structure, instead, the honeycomb would be filled with building material to shore its structure up where burrowing creatures were most likely to be found.

Sharan himself had pointed out the risk of these honeycombs harbouring unwanted intruders, and it was agreed that over time, each should be filled with building debris from later phases of construction.

The inner walls would not necessarily be so filled; instead, the narrow spaces of honeycombs would be converted to internal clean-water reservoirs, sealed and accessed only by a network of pipes.

Another addition to the city’s underside, aside from deep columns for access to the water table beneath it, and an underground network of tunnels for distribution of water, was a massive bunker complex, planned to be accessible only from the central circle of the city, and intended to be able to hold, for short periods, the entire civilian population.

It wasn’t, as one might expect, intended to survive war. Instead, the bunker complex was intended to survive infestation by the planet’s multitudinous threatening life forms.

One of the interesting problems and potential security flaws, was how to provide adequate water for the city. Because of the high density of the intended population, the area directly underneath the city could not provide sufficient water. Instead a spider’s web of pipes would lead to other fresh water sources for hundreds of kilometres. Walls would of course, be for nothing if the ‘critters’ gained entry via the water supply.

There was a simple enough answer to that. The water would be, as crude oil was, distilled in a singularly huge distillation column. Fearsome as the predators was not believed that they could endure being boiled under great pressure. From this, the purified steam would rise, with other useful elements such as salt being split off and sent to be used elsewhere, into the honeycomb condensers inside the inner walls, where the sudden drop in temperature would render it back to water, with the heat itself being conducted out into the barracks training rooms, armouries and even housing in the surrounding rock.

Though, like its Martian cousin, the city was intended to be powered by a necron power node, a pulsing heart of a massive power grid that flowed with the life-blood of all things – energy – conducted from the vastness of space beyond, it was also to use such hydrothermal energy for convenience.

Throughout the city, effluents and nutrients taken from the impure water would be used to fertilise agricultural terraces. Though only around two hundred thousand hectares, these endless rows of greenhouses would, thanks to the boons of genetic manipulation and superior indoor farming, yield enough to feed the present population of Delta Zeta Four, and more importantly, in the long term, the total population of the new city.

To say that Sharan, a born organiser with the cultural love of all things constructive inherited from both his necrontyr ‘ancestors’ and his Quendi adoptive parents, enjoyed all this planning and construction would be a supreme understatement.

For a moment there he had contemplated killing himself. A martyr to the cause of democracy on DZ4. Then he had realized, to his chagrin, that he had nothing readily at hand with which to end his life.

'A last stand with a slice of toast and a butterknife?'

Kneeling on the ground he carefully put the slice of toast in his mouth and continued to munch on it as the City Guard troops first pounded on his door then broke through with the sudden spang of metal stressed beyond it's limits. He continued to munch on it as they poured through the door and rushed around the house until they came to the kitchen where he lay passively. This position had been 'taught' to the people by the Empress' stormtroopers and it wasn't wholely uncomfortable.

"Erik von Strubhausen, you are under arrest. Do not resist."

He knew that there were likely several weapons pointed at him and he had witnessed the effects of the new weapons in the jungle. Thus he simply lay there eating his toast. After a moment he felt hands grab his arms and manacles swing shut around them and he was hauled to his feet. The last corner of toast fell and landed on the floor, butter side down. A pity, but he doubted he would ever return to clean it up.

----

"Well? Are you going to answer the charges against you?" The handsome young man - Sharan - snarled at him as the troopers looked down on him dispassionately. Erik had been trying to decide on a speech of some kind to make before they executed him but the intensity of the questioning hadn't left him much room for thinking. His only statement would have to be short and meaningful then.

"Live or die I will not bow to an unelected authority! I will not speak until all our people has the right to decide their own government!"

----

The door slide shut behind him with the clang of finality as he looked around his new home. It was small and spartan - nothing more than a eight by eight cell with no window, a concrete bed built into the floor, a foam pad and blanket, and a hole in the corner with a faucet of some kind that poured directly into it.

A political prisoner - he thought he could get used to it - but it would certainly be a miserable existance as long as it lasted. Until his people were free.

Sharan for his part, found the whole incident to be disturbing. The Necrontyr Empire’s policy on terrorism was quite harsh. Officially, the sentence for this crime was to be equal to the number of deaths in the attack counted as murder, and the number of wounded counted as assault charges. Sharan suspected that this would stack up to a custodial sentence of a few thousand years.

However, he was slightly lenient, it had to be said. He had debated making arrangements for the family of Herr Strubhausen in the absence of the husband’s pay. What’s more, he had already taken the time to reject a demand by the Imperial Security Agency for a prisoner transfer, on the grounds that treating Erik von Strubhausen as a terrorist was not the way to handle his crimes. He’d even be allowed visitors – at least, he probably would, if Sharan ever got around to reforming the local prison system.

For all that Erik though of his status as a political prisoner, it could have been much, much worse for him.