Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 11
"Faster," Arbet desperately urged, "We have to go faster!"
"We're going as fast as we can," the driver snapped back with irritation.
Arbet clamped his jaw shut and fell back on his seat. The Devilfish was buzzing loudly as its anti-gravs and thrusters propelled it across the ground, hurtling at speeds no tracked vehicle could dream of matching. Despite the frantic pace the ride was effortlessly smooth, the skimmer untroubled by the rise and fall of the ground. In other circumstances it would have been enjoyable but Arbet couldn't stop fidgeting.
Mere minutes earlier a frantic distress call had come in from a local airbase, it was under attack and needed help. Arbet had been horrified when he realised that the base was well behind the rebel's line of advance. For days they had been hunting the elusive Astartes, only for the Space Marines to double-back and strike at their air support. Arbet had instantly realised that most of the rebel army was too slow to intervene; only his platoon with their skimmer transports could hope to reach the base in time.
The Lieutenant sank back fought the urge to fidget, it wouldn't do for the men to see him looking nervous. Unfortunately they seemed to be winding themselves up without him. Harvee was kneading the barrel of his pulse rifle and muttered, "Are we really going to do this? Face down Space Marines?"
Jonas had gone very pale and he whispered, "This is insane, I don't want to die."
The men looked unnerved at his pronouncement, the reality finally settling in that they were going to confront the legendary Angels of the Emperor. But Arbet stamped down hard on the worries barking, "Stop that talk! We've driven the Imperium out of our cities and sent them running. We're winning this war and we can win this fight too!"
"But…" Ganneth chimed in.
Thankfully Egar spoke up then, slapping his Pulse rifle and saying, "These beauties will even the odds. Nobody takes a hit from one of these and walks away from it!"
Faint smiles arose as the men gripped their weapons, they'd all practised with the alien guns and been astonished by their power. A few men had even voiced the opinion that gifts like this made joining the Gue'vessa worth it. That maybe the Tau weren't so bad after all.
Suddenly the Devilfish coasted to a halt, surprising Arbet, he had no idea they would cover the distance so rapidly. He urged the squad out of the doors and stepped into a world of devastation and confusion. TheLieutenant saw flames and destruction, everywhere the airbase having been reduced to ruins. Bodies laying scattered about, torn apart by the unmistakeable detonations of bolter rounds. Nothing was left undamaged, everything had been smashed.
The Browncoat's platoon was spilling out of their transports, some fifty or so men, all alert and scanning for a threat. Arbet took reassurance in their weight of numbers, not to mention the five Devilfish with their burst cannons and the three Piranhas. He briskly sent the squads out to search the base, well aware that the perpetrators could still be lurking anywhere.
Egar paused to duck and touch a body and announced, "Still warm, he died mere minutes ago."
"Keep alert," Arbet ordered, gripping his Pulse pistol with both hands.
He led his own squad forward, trying to find anything that was left intact. Beside him Ganneth hissed, "Look at that, they got the planes too."
Arbet saw that he was right, the precious planes had been destroyed. Lightnings, Thunderbolts and Marauders were precious machines to the Browncoats, Maraha was a designated Agri-world and its ability to manufacture aircraft did not extend beyond a handful of squadrons. But the Tau machines were a terrible loss, incapable of being replaced by any manufactory on the planet. Arbet put it from his mind and pressed on, he'd already seen too much loss to be stunned by such sights. He was just about to reach a burning hanger when there was a flurry of Pulse rifle fire and he heard cries of "Contact!"
The Lieutenant spun about and saw bright flashes of light coming from the base of the control tower, followed by the unmistakable thudding of a Heavy Bolter. "Close in!" Arbet roared, "All squads form up on the tower!" Barely had the words left his mouth when a fast-moving machine shot into sight. It was a large bike that moved with surprising speed for such a doughty machine. Attached to it was a sidecar, within which sat a gunner, who was twisting a Heavy Bolter back and forth, laying down suppressing fire in short bursts.
The machine flashed past his sight and ducked behind a line of broken dormitories, but in that moment he saw the crew and they were not what he was expecting. Of course he had seen images of Space Marines; every templum was filled with statues and murals of them in all their glory. But these warriors bore not the Ceramite armour and oversized pauldrons of lore, instead they wore some form of carapace plate. Perhaps it was lighter gear for fast attack units, Arbet thought, but even without it they were deadly nonetheless.
"Form up!" Arbet roared, "Squads, ready your aim, Devilfish sweep behind the buildings and flush them back to us!" Despite their shock the platoon responded, forming up long lines and presenting their guns. The transports cruised behind the buildings, trapping the bike between the hammer of burst cannons and the anvil of the Pulse rifles. Arbet nervously scanned the burning buildings, wondering which avenue the target would emerge from. There were a dozen possibilities and every one presented a unique chance to kill this foe or be killed by it. It was a sound strategy, yet the Space Marines were not bound by such conventional thinking.
Suddenly one of the dormitories exploded outwards, its prefab plasterboard walls shattering as the bike smashed right through them at top speed. The Astartes hadn't been stupid enough to drive between the buildings, instead they had ridden right through one. The rebel squads were a fraction of a second too slow to bring their long rifles to bear and the bike fired first, sending out a spray of rounds that strafed their lines and obliterated two men from the other squads.
Arbet flashed his pistol up and let off a spray of fire, the immense recoil dissipated by strange compensator devices built into the barrel. Achingly bright micro-blasts of plasma shot forth, setting the air itself alight as he tried to hit the speeding bike. Yet the driver jinked the heavy machine about like it weighed nothing at all and the rounds pranged off its cowling without doing any lasting damage. Then the bike roared past, leaving the bewildered squads in its wake and Arbet heard the gunner hollering, "You missed us!"
The squads wheeled about, trying to draw a bead but before they could line up the Devilfish hurtled by, burst cannons letting off streams of fire. Deadly flashes chewed up the Ferrocrete road, chasing the jinking bike as it fled at break-neck speed. The Devilfish pursued, barrelling past the milling squads, tracking the retreating bike as the gunner fired backwards roaring, "Come and get us Heretic filth!"
"Go after them!" Arbet yelled and the squads rallied, but too late he realised the bike was merely a distraction, deliberately trying to lure them away. From the base of the control tower four more warriors emerged, running on foot straight into the rear of the milling squads. Arbet gasped to see them emerge, falling upon the rebels with a variety of weapons.
At the forefront charged a grizzled warrior with a long spear, he swung it wildly, sending a man falling with blood arcing high from his slashed chest. Behind him came another pair of warrior's bearing swords and hammers, they piled into the mob, knocking men down left and right. The surprise attack was like a bomb going off, shattering the Brownshirt's lines. The fighting went from a long-range shooting match to a close quarters brawl in a heartbeat and the rebel's long rifles were useless.
Arbet saw the Astartes knocking men down and breaking bones, yet few actually died. The Astartes were merely rebuffing the men, seeking to knock them aside rather than killing them outright. Suddenly it struck Arbet that the Space Marines hadn't planned this assault, they were as surprised as the Brownshirts were. The Astartes weren't looking for a fight, not with the odds so heavily stacked against them. Instead they were headed somewhere, the rebels were merely in the way. The one with the spear broke through the mob of men and ran off, the others trailing behind but Arbet saw one lagging behind. A lone warrior was skirting the fray, bearing a hand-held grenade launcher and an enclosed helm.
Arbet raised his pistol and ran at the warrior, crying his defiance aloud. The Astartes saw him coming and turned to meet him but Arbet fired wildly and a pulsing plasma shot struck the helmet, sundering the side of it. Arbet was caught up in the rush of adrenaline and as the Astartes staggered he threw himself at the giant, roaring angrily, "Aaargh!" They clashed bodily into each other and it felt like hitting a brick wall, the heft and mass of the Transhuman beyond anything Arbet had expected. Such an impact would surely have made no impression except that the Space Marine was already struggling with his shattered helmet and so was off balance.
Arbet managed to stagger the Space Marine and make him fall back a pace. The Lieutenant tried to get his pistol in to finish the warrior with a point-blank shot. Unfortunately the Astartes, while disabled, wasn't dead yet and his hand shot out, knocking the pistol sideways just as it discharged. The blast seared across their vision and the repercussions shook them to their bones… and shook loose the disintegrating helmet. For the first time Arbet saw his opponent's face and the sight made him freeze in horror.
The Astartes' face was nightmarishly inhuman for his skin was covered in scales. For a heartbeat the Lieutenant thought it to be some tattoo or adornment, but then he saw the scales shifting as the warrior breathed and he understood this was his actual skin. It was not like some scabby disease, but rather perfectly formed scales of iridescent colours, gleaming like a snake's skin and moving perfectly over each other as the muscles twitched. His eyes were worse, red and with a vertical slit where a pupil should be. Arbet had heard countless tales of the Astartes but never had he heard of such an abomination, the being before him was more alien to decent folk than a Tau. Arbet gasped in horror as his voice decried, "Mutant!"
The deformed warrior snarled in anger and his hand shot out, knocking Arbet to the ground. The Lieutenant frantically scrambled for his Pulse pistol but the warrior did not intend to finish him off. Instead the mutant turned and ran into the dirty smoke, disappearing after his comrades. Arbet staggered to his feet but before he could give chase there was a roar of engines and squadron of bikes shot away, racing into the distance, chasing after the one with the sidecar and leaving confusion in their wake.
Arbet gasped for air as his heart thundered from the rush of the fight. He tried to understand what he had just beheld, the impossible sight of the deformed mutant he had uncovered. The Lieutenant couldn't square reality with what he had been told of Astartes. Everything he thought he knew of them asserted that they would annihilate such freaks on sight.
He heard boots closing and turned to see Egar racing up crying, "They got away!"
Arbet realised he had been the only one to behold the horror and instantly decided to keep stumm. Instead he deflected by asking, "Any casualties?"
Egar swallowed and stated, "Four dead, including Harvee. but a lost of injuries They beat us worse than my old grandmother did."
"No, they didn't beat us," Arbet rebuked him, "They ran from us."
"But…" Egar stated.
"They ran from us," Arbet declared, "They took us by surprise but we still had numbers and firepower on our side. They knew that if they stayed to fight we would have won."
"So what do we do?" Egar queried doubtfully.
Arbet drew in a breath and said, "Recall the Devilfish but keep the Piranhas in pursuit, we will give chase and run them to ground. They can't run and they can't hide anymore. No matter what it takes we will catch up and then obliterate those unclean monsters from the good face of Maraha."