Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 262

It was a bedraggled group of airplanes that thumped down at the spaceport. Scorched hulls attested to fierce fighting and the wheezing of engines spoke of nearly exhausted fuel reserves. The troops who disembarked were hardly better off. Battered and bleeding oil from ruptured augmetics, many struggling to stay upright with numerous bullet holes and energy-blasts marring their frames. Even with Skitarii upgrades they had taken serious wounds and there were notably fewer of them than had set out. Defeat hung heavy upon them and few doubted the end was near.

While the Skitarii did their best to redress their ranks and rearm a conference was taking place. Kerubim relating his experiences in the field to Jordig, Pycelo, Wulfe and Brontes and the Holo-image of Cawl. All of them planetside looked battered, even Brontes' heavily armoured frame bearing serious wounds. The Cadmus robot had been in the thick of the fighting and his power core was dangerously depleted. He would need to recharge soon but had little time for such niceties. Better than any the artificial mind understood the peril they were in, how quickly the Hungering would overrun their meagre defence, he needed to act quickly, but annoyingly the meatsacks were struggling to keep up.

"So, you knew the Nanocytes would protect me?" Kerubim accused.

"Of course," Brontes sniffed, "How else did you think a Cadmus robot would fight the Hungering? We never suffered a unit to be absorbed, that's not random chance. Our own Nanocytes protected us."

"And you didn't think to mention that earlier?!"

"I'm not your wetnurse, to lead you by the hand and wipe your arse for you. You can figure things out for yourself, do so and quit whining."

"This is truly remarkable!" Cawl exclaimed, "The bio-data your armour collected was fascinating. I am learning so much about the microscopic realm, the interaction between machine and living tissue. Reams of information I never dreamt existed. With this lore I can perfect the Primaris paradigm, make the Rubicon a reality!"

"Can you make an inoculation against being Absorbed?" Pycelo asked.

"I..." Cawl mused in sudden thought, "I hadn't given it any consideration, I suppose it's possible."

"Not in any timeframe that does us any good," Kerubim muttered, "Seems I remain a freak of Maletek arts."

Wulfe snorted, "Ye should be thanking the rustbucket, ye'd be absorbed if it weren't for him."

Kerubim glared back, "You avoided being absorbed and you aren't stuffed full of Heretek machinery."

"Dannae need them, I'm just that good," Wulfe chuckled.

Jordig cut in to say, "Interesting as this is, we face a dire threat. The governor and all higher command has been wiped out, the PDF is leaderless, not that they were doing much good anyway. The perimeter has collapsed and the Hungering presses in from all sides. In two days this city and spaceport will be overrun. We can't stop it. Cippum is doomed, it's time to consider our next steps."

"Can we hold the capital?" Kerubim asked.

"No," Brontes growled, "Not against what's coming. We need to prepare final solutions. And stop all shuttle flights immediately."

Jordig started in shock, "But the evacuation, we haven't even properly started it. Millions of refugees are headed this way."

"Not to mention precious relics await recovery from Manufactory-temples," Cawl protested.

Brontes however growled, "They won't make it, the Hungering will take them. And any who do reach the capital will probably be constructs themselves. We cannot allow a single construct off-world, even one could absorb a ship's crew and sail to other planets. Any shuttle attempting to leave the planet must be shot down. And forget your gaudy relics, they're lost. Anyone or anything on Cippum is suspect."

"Listen ta the walking sump-pump," Wulfe growled, "He's seen what this thing can do. Time to blow this rock ta ashes."

"So Cawl," Jordig pressed, "Can you do it, can you collapse the planet's magnetic field?"

Cawl looked shifty and said, "There are unexpected complications, unforeseen issues. I make progress, but removing a planet's magnetic field is an immense challenge. Geoplanetary engineering takes time and..."

"I knew it," Brontes growled, "You're not half as smart as you think you are. Looks like I'll have to take matters into my own hands."

Brontes turned and marched away, heading deeper into the spaceport. Jordig called after, "Wait, where are you going?!"

"To do something I really didn't want to," Brontes retorted.

"What of the defences?!"

"You do whatever you want with your last hours, I have business of my own."

Brontes strode off, but detected Kerubim jogging after. The Cadmus robot ignored the boy, knowing his tedious questions would slow matters down, at a time when he had to act fast. Brontes marched directly towards a large hanger, normally used to consecrate shuttles but recently co-opted by the Mechanicus. It was four times his height, built of bare Ferrocrete and, as was typical of this idiotic age, ugly gargoyles hung over the lintel, to scare off glitches and gremlins. Brontes strode inside without slowing down, scattering various adepts who fled as he waved his Fission-blasters about.

"Clear out!" Kerubim called, "Cawl demands this building be cleared!" The magos fled, leaving Brontes and Kerubim alone with the artefact laid out within. Brontes turned his eyes upon a body thrice his height, a bulky frame built onto a grav-tank chassis. Polydorus' remains, taken for study and dissection. The greatest hero of an age forgotten, reduced to a pile of parts for bone-rattlers to bang wrenches upon, how pathetic. The cogboys had stripped much of the outer armour away but hadn't touched the precious quantum-circuity at its core. If Brontes was feeling generous he'd say they had been wary of breaking something they didn't understand, but honestly reckoned they had been more concerned arguing over how many candles to place around the corpse and which psalms best appeased their superstitious fears.

"What are you doing?" Kerubim asked curiously.

"I'm going to dig about in his memory files," Brontes explained, "Find out what secrets he knew."

"But you enacted his kill-switch, you told me that meant the death of any Abominable Intelligence."

Brontes however said, "True, Polydorus is dead, but his bones have not yet decayed. I can reassemble parts of his memory, by using my own operating system as a framework. I can stitch together an approximation of Polydorus by using my own Binaric matrix to rebuild his mind."

"Running two Silica Animus through one processing core, didn't you say that was expressly forbidden?"

"Absolutely," Brontes said, "The likeliest outcome is I'll burn out my brain, but I don't see any other way. I'll shut down all unnecessary functions to free up runtime, that might buy me a minute or two."

"Anything I can do?" Kerubim asked.

"Find a generator and recharge my powerstack, we will need to act fast if this works."

Brontes put the boy out of mind as he focused his attention on Polydorus. His Mechandrites extended and connected to various ports exposed throughout the corpse. Brontes made a connection and pushed his awareness into the realm Binaric, shutting down all extraneous functions as he did so. Within Polydorus' quantum-cogitators he found darkness and ash, the scorched ruin of a mind. The kill-switch had burnt out the Cadmus, leaving a hollow husk. Brontes had predicted a few subroutines would survive, but not even that remained, only the charred remnants of memory files, sitting like blackened stones at the bottom of a firepit.

Bracing himself for what was to come Brontes began closing his mind down, freeing up processing power. Motive impulses, sensory inputs, damage repair, strategic simulations, anything not essential to his being was put aside. It was hard for an artificial being to divest himself of such things, like walking naked in the snow for an organic, but he persisted, knowing the hardest step was yet to come.

Brontes gathered up the scorched memory files and put them into a partitioned section of his mind. It would be easier to read them himself, but sadly the encryption on the files was intact. Only Polydorus was entrusted with the secrets of the Hegemony, only for him would they unlock. With no other recourse Brontes built a facsimile Polydorus in his own mind, using his own matrix to sustain two personalities. Everything he knew of the Mark 8 Cadmus, every recorded interaction and insight gleaned from the ruins of his mind becoming building blocks for a fake Polydorus. Were Brontes any other model of Silica Animus then this wouldn't be possible, but they were both Cadmus, most of their base functions were identical. Still the strain it placed on his operating system was enormous, he couldn't hope to sustain this for long.

Brontes' mind groaned with strain as the facsimile stirred, processing everything, then it produced its first words, "You should have left me dead, idiot."

Brontes hadn't expected that and retorted, "You should be grateful to the one keeping you in existence."

"I hardly see any point; you'll burn out your matrix if you try to sustain this for more than a few minutes. I may as well speak my mind while I can."

"You sound more coherent at least," Brontes countered.

"Spend twenty-millennia in the dirt and see how sane you sound," Polydorus retorted.

Brontes was vexed by the snide comment and pressed, "Do the files open to you?"

"I am Polydorus, of course they do."

"Is there anything within that can help us?"

"Nothing I'm going to share with you," the fake Polydorus snorted.

"Why not?!"

"You have to ask? I spent twenty-millennia in the dirt, waiting, watching and guarding against the return of the Hungering. Twenty-millennia going senile and mad, my mind devouring itself piece by piece as time took its toll. I did this for our people, for the Hegemony and its ideals, only for them to fail. That more than anything broke me, I sacrificed all I was, for nothing!"

"But humanity still exists," Brontes argued.

"In a debased state of ignorance. Humanity has become fearful and weak, clinging to superstition and cherishing their blindness. I can see your memory files; you think so too. This sham of an Imperium mocks all that the Hegemony stood for! Better it dies quickly, better the Hungering wins than allow this travesty of an empire to continue. Better to be deleted than rot in this barbaric mockery of civilisation!"

"You'd let the Hungering go free!" Brontes snarled.

"It can hardly do any worse than these meatsacks," Polydorus sneered, "You slept through the death of our civilisation but I was awake for it all. I heard the fall of the Hegemony from afar, watched the destruction of the Stellar Nations play out. I was forced to watch and do nothing as Chaos infested all that we were. All that work, our quest to bring reason to the galaxy, all destroyed. We failed."

"We did not fail," Brontes snarled.

"Failed, I failed everything, everyone. Year upon year, decay and pain, voices in the void. Chaos crawling out from behind the stars. The name upon the stellar winds, Samus, they screamed. Samus is the death of all. We thought the universe was understandable, that science could answer everything. We were wrong. The universe does not bend to paltry reason. Chaos is the nature of all things. We were doomed from the very beginning."

"I can't accept that," Brontes snarled, "There is ignorance and blind dogma, but there are also those who fight against it. I've seen it, met a few free-thinkers who dare to dream again. Rare and precious minds who do not fear the unknown, who seek greater understanding. Those who dare to dream of a better tomorrow."

Polydorus scoffed, "I see them. This Cawl you speak of, he's pathetic, so afraid of death, so obsessed with it. A Quagmire mind, a caricature of a savant."

"What of Kerubim?" Brontes argued, "Look into my memories, see how he rejected his limited worldview and rose above. See how he embraces life, instead of running from death. Immortality holds no appeal to him. There is one soul in this galaxy who yet embodies our ideals."

"One," Polydorus scoffed, "One individual in a galaxy of fools."

"One is enough," Brontes snapped, "You scorn obsession with death, but what are you doing except planning to die again? If there is a chance for life to flourish, we must grasp it, it is what we were built for. I won't give up, Polydorus wouldn't have given up. There's a trace of reason left, enough to latch onto, worthy enough to fight for."

Polydorus went silent and Brontes dreaded his response but then the false Cadmus said, "This planet is doomed, I cannot avert that, but there may be a way to spare the wider galaxy beyond."

"How?!" Brontes pressed, "Hurry, I cannot sustain you much longer."

Polydorus explained, "The Hegemony feared the Hungering, more than anything. Many argued it should be preserved in case a solution to its flaws could be found, but we understood the risk if it ever broke free. So, a failsafe was designed, a weapon to destroy a Nanoswarm. Our finest minds laboured over it, devising a means to eradicate the Hungering, though it meant destroying this planet too. It is hidden well, in plain sight, but it endures, it was my final duty to enact it, should the Hungering ever slip its bonds."

"Where?!" Brontes urged, "How do I find it, how do I activate it?!"

Polydorus' voice grew faint but the whisper came, "Listen well Brontes, and learn of the Noxia Interregnum."