"Is this just a game to you?" Lox slowly turned around and examined the alien that had phased into the human command center with his naked eyes.
"You killed my guards?"
Veteran Space Marines remained at Lox's side for protection. Even though Barabas Dantioch and Hill had already joined the battlefield, several Iron Hands Astartes still never left his side.
"Of course not. I merely... made them quiet for a while." The unusual Necron spoke in a flippant tone, and Lox could hear the teasing in its vox-grille.
"You're different from those shoddy metal skeletons."
At Lox's words, the Necron burst into laughter as though he had heard a joke.
"Little one, you have quite a talent for deadpan humor. I—Trazyn, Necron Overlord of the glorious Nihilakh Dynasty, curator of the Solemnace Gallery—am naturally not the same thing as those crudely made Necron Warriors."
Lox nodded. Speaking with this self-proclaimed Necron Overlord, he could almost forget that the other party was an alien metal skeleton.
Lox had assumed all Necrons were alike: flesh-and-blood beings converted into metal bodies, stripped of emotion, until even speaking became a luxury.
But clearly, that was not true for the upper ranks of the Necrons.
Lox could not make heads or tails of this Necron calling himself Trazyn. He was not difficult to communicate with... if anything, he was remarkably familiar.
Especially since he seemed extremely familiar with humanity.
At that moment, Lox glanced out of the command room and saw the Iron Hands veterans frozen where they stood.
They were caught in the posture of turning back. Leman's Ear had detected an abnormal sound, and their bolters and plasma weapons were already being raised to aim, yet everything had been frozen in that instant.
Farther away, the battlefield where the 199th Company and the