Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 7

A temple was before him, its walls scorched and blackened, pock-marked with blast marks. It was an ugly building, half covered in creeping moss and the Aquila over the doorway was green where the brass had oxidised. Yet it loomed over the village, far grander than the lowly one-story hovels the locals called home. It was an unimpressive place for a last stand and yet here that was its current role.

Arbet leaned out of the cover, lurking in the doorway of an emptied home and eyed the building. Within its thick walls the militia defending the village lurked, clutching their las-locks tightly. Arbet didn't even know this place's name and he hadn't been expecting a fight but the militia had reacted with surprising swiftness, firing wildly at the approaching Devilfish then retreating into the temple. Since then they had fired at any target they could see but thankfully their enthusiasm was no compensation for decent aim and they had failed to kill any of the Brownshirts.

The rebels for their part had been content to lay down suppressing bursts of pulse rifle fire, keeping the locals trapped. Arbet had been in no rush at first, far more concerned with the prospect of a Space Marine counter-attack, but this stalemate had carried on for three hours now and his patience had run out. Through a window Arbet spied a tall man with fiery hair and an Aquila tattoo on his forehead, unmistakably an Imperial preacher. He was leading the resistance and probably was responsible for this whole village's pro-Imperial stance. Arbet saw the man strutting up and down and whispered, "C'mon, take the shot, do it."

Suddenly there was a crack of pulse rifle fire from a rooftop from trooper Ganneth who had been waiting for a clear shot. The micro-burst of plasma hit the preacher and blew him over, killing him instantly. There were shrieks of alarm from within but Arbet yelled loudly, "Surrender! Surrender and we promise no harm will come to you!" There was a minute of argumentative shouting and then men and women began to appear, hands high and rifles discarded in surrender. The people were despondent and defeated, about two score of them, the bulk of this village population. They were made to kneel by the Brownshirts, Trooper Jonas taking the opportunity to kick one man hard with his boot.

"Stop that, we do not abuse prisoners!" Arbet snapped at him then faced the people saying, "You have a made a wise choice and will be well treated. A transport will come and collect you, to take you to a safe place until this war is over. You will be fed and clothed and when the war ends you will be allowed to join us in a free Maraha."

One elderly woman jerked forward and spat on the Lieutenant's boot. She was quickly subdued by here compatriots, who urged her not to provoke their captors. Arbet left them under guard and sighed to himself, why were these people so determined to cling to an Imperium that cared nothing for them?

Arbet wiped the spittle off against a rock then found Sergeant Egar overseeing the search for lingering resistors. The Lieutenant came to stand with him and said, "Any more?"

"Don't think so Sir," Egar replied, "Looks like we got them all. Any word from the reserve?"

"Nothing," Arbet informed him sadly, "I was hoping this would draw out the Space Marines, but there was no sign of them. Looks like I was wrong."

Egar looked unconcerned as he said, "Maybe they left the area already?"

Arbet thought upon it and said, "Perhaps… we can only hope that one of the other platoons has more luck."

Egar nodded, "At least we took out one more Imperial strongpoint."

"I'd hardly call this a strongpoint," Arbet muttered, "Barely more than a few families clinging to old ideas. I'd wager none of these people has ever been to the cities, they don't know what life is like under the Governor's rule."

Egar pointed out, "We'd have to have come round them up sooner or later, people like this would keep fighting till the end. No matter if we kick the Imperials off the planet and string up Nugga, they'd still fight us."

"We can only be patient until they see sense," Arbet responded distractedly.

He was about to inquire as to how long it would take for the summoned transport to appear but then Trooper Harvee jogged over. He pulled up before them and made a salute, somewhat awkwardly given the cumbersome pulse rifle in his hands and said, "Sir, something's wrong."

Arbet straightened up and barked, "Well don't just stand there, out with it man."

Harvee hastily reported, "One of the perimeter patrols has gone quiet, we've lost contact with Piranha three."

Arbet's palms began to itch and he felt a thrill of anticipation run through him as he said, "Have they been attacked?"

"Dunno," Harvee stated, "There was no sign, they missed their scheduled check-in and just fell silent."

"You think it's… them?" Egar interjected.

"It might be," Arbet stated, "Pull everybody back to the Devilfish and tell them to be on guard. Alert the reserves, we may need them at a moment's notice."

His orders sent the troopers into a flurry of activity, hurriedly coming back to their transports. In a few minutes they were all assembled and ready to go, minus five men he left to guard the prisoners. With a whoosh of anti-gravitic force the Devilfish's took off, racing over the landscape with eerie smoothness.

Minutes crawled by as the Devilfish soared on and the troopers looked distinctly nervous. Arbet tried to look confident, but in truth he was sweating under his collar. Everybody knew they were facing the prospect of encountering Space Marines, the mythic demi-gods of Imperial history. Their whole lives they had heard magnificent tales of the Adeptus Astartes, stories of impossible victories over unbeatable odds. Arbet could only hope those stories were exaggerated and that their Tau guns could tip the odds in their favour. In a few minutes the Devilfish ground to halt and the squads piled out, emerging into the grey daylight. They seemed to be at the head of a shallow valley, the two Devilfish floating with their burst canons pointed up the dip between two hills. Arbet surveyed the ground and saw little cover, the ground was low and free of boulders but the valley bent before them, obscuring the far end.

"Troopers Jonas and Harvee take the drones and scout ahead," Arbet ordered, "Everybody else advance in pairs, cover each other and for the love of sanity don't stand in front of the burst cannons."

The squads obeyed, moving up the valley with their rifles clutched tightly. The two designated Troopers jogged ahead, followed by the dish like devices that had detached from the Devilfish. They disappeared around the bend and Arbet waited with bated breath as the rest followed slowly behind, wary of what they would find.

After a minute Jonas reappeared and yelled, "All clear, but you should see this. We've found the missing Piranha."

Intrigued Arbet increased his pace and came about the bend. Before him the valley ended in a steep slope but before that floated the skimmer, sitting forlornly on its own, floating on its anti-gravitic cushion. Arbet crept closer, tightly gripping his pulse pistol but he could tell at a glance that the drivers were dead. The squads spread out but Egar joined him and peered at the bodies saying, "Troops Nahab and Candar, looks like they were taken by surprise."

Arbet shoved his distress into the back of his mind and examined the bodies saying, "Somebody jumped them, stabbed them in the neck before they could react."

Egar glanced at the ground and muttered, "Scant cover here and they were no fools, whoever took them was good, inhumanely good."

The pair shared a significant look but then Trooper Harvee called, "Look sir, tracks!"

Arbet stared ahead and did indeed see tracks, the same wide treads he had beheld at the outpost. There were many more of them this time, a medley of overlapping marks that made numbers impossible to guess.

Egar touched one of the bodies and said, "Cold already, this happened a while ago. Must have happened while we were fighting in the village."

"Bescumber," Arbet cursed, "That's a three-hour window. They could be a hundred leagues from here by now."

"Maybe our air cover could still find them?" Egar suggested.

"Possibly," Arbet said with no real hope in his voice, "Jonas, get the Devilfish to vox back to base and report a possible contact. Egar, we should bury these bodies and assign the Piranha a new crew."

Egar assigned a couple of troopers to the task and then turned back saying, "It's odd they would risk killing one patrol but leave the rest of us alone. Why would they do that?"

Arbet was eyeing a trail of mud and broken bracken headed up the steep slope and he said, "I don't know, but I intend to find out. Follow me."

With that the pair began to climb the hill before them. It was hard going for the ground was damp with the ever-present dew and the leaves of the planets were wet and slippery. More than once Arbet had to double over and use his hands to pull himself up while his boots skidded on the slick mud. In no time at all his uniform was splattered with dirt but he persisted, following the trail of broken vegetation step by step.

Thankfully the hill, while steep, wasn't too high and in a few minutes they reached the end of the trail and emerged onto the summit. Arbet cupped his hands around his eyes and peered into the distance, surveying the landscape. The Devilfish had brought him further than he had realised, travelling over the rolling moors with surprising speed but in the distance he could just make out the village they had overrun.

"They were watching us," Arbet exclaimed in shock, "They were right here, watching us attack an Imperial village and they did nothing."

Egar straightened up and brushed the mud off his hands and said, "They left without firing a shot, that doesn't sound right. The legends of Space Marines say they're sodding Imperial heroes. Always charging to the rescue at the last minute, defending the helpless, fighting the monsters to protect the righteous, all the usual Imperial propaganda."

Arbet felt a worm of doubt creep into his mind and he pondered, "Not all the legends say that. The Ecclesiarchy tried to suppress them but there are some stories that paint a far darker picture."

"Oh?" Egar responded in surprise, "I've not heard those ones."

"It's not the sort of thing the officer corps like to spread about, bad for morale and all that," Arbet admitted, "But there have always been rumours. I heard tales that when the Disciples of Caliban fought on Meridian they abandoned the defence against the Tyranids to go haring off on some mission of their own. The Marines Malevolent shelled civilian camps when Orks got past the wire on Armageddon. I even heard, when the Angels Sanguine fought in the Morgall Crusade, whole towns would go mysteriously missing."

Egar shook his head saying, "Rumour and gossip, that's all this is, you know how tales grow in the telling. I hear plenty of stories of the Ultramarines, they aren't like that."

"I don't think we're dealing with Ultramarines," Arbet confessed with a worried tone.

"Right," Egar stated, "What are we to do?"

Arbet thought about it and ordered, "Go and get the squads to mount up, we'll have to keep mobile. Contact high command and tell them we need more aerial cover and to forward any and all distress calls to us, sooner or later these Space Marines will show their hand. If we move fast enough we may catch up."

Egar saluted and began making his way back down the hill, leaving the Lieutenant to gaze out across the moors. He tried to look calm but in his heart he was worried, now he was facing the prospect of confronting the Space Marines himself the bright and rosy picture of Astartes he had grown up with seemed childish. The darker legends suddenly appeared far more realistic and likely to be true, in which case he and his men were in serious trouble. Anxiously Arbet leaned down and touched the damp ground where these warriors had been and hoped against hope that he was wrong about what kind of monsters stalked this world.