Once matters outside had been settled, the closed-door meeting began.
After Bona opened the database on the Necrons that the Silent King had left behind, he could no longer keep his composure.
Now he finally understood why the Silent King had been so anxious. In his place, Bona would have been even more anxious.
Of the once-vast ranks of the Necrons, fewer than half could now respond to messages.
For the Imperium, if a planet repeatedly dared not to respond, the Inquisition would be sent straight over to bombard it with Cyclonic Torpedoes. There might be innocent casualties, but nine times out of ten, the judgment would be right.
For the Necrons, however, it meant something else. The more likely explanation was that they had died for good, erased by the relentless passage of time.
If the mindless, low-ranking Necron Warriors and their like were excluded, fewer than three hundred thousand Necrons remained capable of undergoing biotransference!
Good heavens, even the visibly doomed Aeldari had a population thousands of times greater than that of the Necrons.
Worse still, Szarekh's absence over hundreds of millions of years had left his already-contested position hanging by a thread, and a great many Necrons had now followed the Storm King Imotekh into rebellion.
It was obvious that, as a human, Bona would command even less trust than Szarekh. Another group of Necron Overlords might well defect to Imotekh.
As the new king, unless Bona crushed Imotekh, he would swiftly lose the trust of numerous Necron Overlords.
Still, Bona had gained the support of some Necron Overlords. A group of Szarekh's diehard loyalists, led by the Punishment King Amarkun, remained loyal to him.
Then the Necrons' war plan was laid on the table.
The Pariah Nexus.
Personally directed by Szarekh, this project called for the