Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 30

His bike chugged along beneath him, making a sorry sound in his ears. Reddam heard the forlorn tones and knew the machine's spirit was ailing, missing its compatriots as he missed his. It had been a hard mission, the loss of Joffel and Kazao being a steep price to pay, but it had been unavoidable, the mission had demanded their sacrifices and no Astartes would flinch from the cost of victory.

Ahead of him the mountainside had formed into a plateau, a ledge set about half-way up its slope. To one side the ground fell away down a steep bluff, looking out over the great valley and to the other the slopes resumed, climbing ever higher. Ahead of him the ground rose in a sharp ridge and glumly Reddam followed the tracks of the Deathstrike over it. Revealed beyond he found the Deathstrike, set up on a coarse patch of ground, steaming vapours from the nozzles of the thrusters. Around it clustered knots of chattels, half of them hurriedly digging a trench and an earthen bulwark some way from the missile. Reddam pulled up and ordered, "Wait here and stand guard," then leapt off his bike and jogged over to the location of Nathanal.

The Artisan was wearing elaborate vestments and bore a control wand in one hand, he was supervising efforts to prepare the missile but saw Reddam closing and called "There you are!"

"Are you ready?" Reddam snapped wasting not a moment.

Nathanal gestured as he answered, "All fuelled and prepped. Target coordinates have been entrusted to the Machine Spirit and all supplications are complete."

"Not a moment too soon," Reddam exclaimed, "The order to fire could come at any moment."

Nathanal ventured, "Not too soon I hope, the Chapter Master doesn't want to be anywhere near that city when this beauty goes off. I only wish I could see the rebel's faces when…"

Suddenly Reddam heard a shout and he cut off Nathanal with a raised palm as Tebes yelled, "Perimeter contact!"

Reddam was instantly in motion, running back to the waiting squad and calling, "Identify!"

"Unknown, we have no visual yet," Tebes replied, "But we can hear it."

Reddam heard it too for it was echoing up the trail, a throaty roar that was rapidly coming nearer. Tebes hefted his mining pick saying, "The Heretics have found us!"

"No, it's too low pitched," Reddam corrected him as he skidded to a halt, "That's a promethium engine."

All eyes turned to the wide plateau and they waited in eagerness to see who was closing. Reddam checked his vox but heard nothing, yet in his mind he had already formed a suspicion as to which individual this could be. He was proved partially correct for in the distance a hefty bike appeared, moving shakily as its weary rider sought to cross the plateau. It was Joffel with his fatigues torn and blood splattering his carapace armour. Reddam had suspected who it would be but what he had been wrong about was that Joffel wasn't alone, for riding on the pavilion was Kazao, slumped over his comrades' back. Reddam started in surprise as the wounded pair of Amber Viper rode nearer then pulled to a halt. Joffel weakly set his bike to stand while the limp form of Kazao was pulled off his seat by the hands of Glord and Larus.

Glord checked his vitals and proclaimed, "He looks half-dead but he's still breathing!"

Meanwhile Joffel slowly placed a loose fist over his hearts and said, "Reporting for duty, Sergeant."

Reddam could hardly believe his eyes and gasped, "How?"

Joffel sighed loudly and Reddam heard the weariness in his tone but the lad was still an Astartes and answered, "I led the rebel scum a merry chase up and down the hills. They almost got me, more than once, but eventually I gave them the slip. I was on my way back here when I saw Kazao dropping off a cliff."

Reddam stepped closer and said, "You picked him up, why?"

Joffel shrugged, "I wasn't sure it was the best idea to move him in that state but I couldn't leave him there for the Heretics to finish off."

Reddam gazed firmly at the youth and pressed, "But why? Why did you save him?"

Joffel blinked in surprise then muttered, "I… I don't know… it didn't even occur to me to leave him. The Heretics were everywhere, our differences seemed trivial set against their treachery. Beside I wasn't about to let that scum claim the life of a fellow Amber Viper."

Reddam saw the nascent thought forming but he needed the lad to say it out loud and probed, "So, what does he mean to you?"

Joffel looked confused but then a light clicked in his eyes and he exclaimed, "It means… he's my Brother."

Reddam smiled broadly and hit Joffel on the shoulder proclaiming, "Yes, we're all Brothers, bound by blood and common purpose. Took you long enough to see it but you proved yourself today and I am proud of you."

A discrete cough came from the rear and Reddam turned to see Nathanal standing there saying, "If I may interrupt, we have received the launch signal."

Reddam nodded and waved the squad to carry Kazao into the camp. They set him down gently to let his body rebuild itself as Reddam asked, "Is the Chapter Master clear?"

"Confirmed," Nathanal replied, "We can launch at any moment."

Reddam nodded solemnly and said, "Then, by all means, fire."

Nathanal turned away and checked everyone was safely behind the earthworks and then he lifted his control wand and began chanting in High Gothic. Reddam was unfamiliar with the liturgy the artisan spoke but he assumed it was something arcane appeasement to the Machine Spirits. Then with reverent slowness Nathanal pressed a rune on his wand. Instantly a mighty roar erupted from the Deathstrike and a fierce light erupted beneath it. The chattels ducked and pressed themselves into the dirt but Reddam watched as the squat missile began to spew flames out of its exhausts. A fiercely hot wind hit Reddam in the face but he watched as the rocket lifted off the launcher, moving straight upwards. Its first motions were comically slow, seeming to sit upon a tail of fire but then it suddenly accelerated, shooting straight upwards into the sky.

Clouds of dirt were blown into Reddam's eyes by the backdraft and he coughed as fine grit coated his throat but he waved his hands to clear his vision and stared upwards. The rocket had already become a tiny dot, retreating fast and growing ever smaller as it did so. Nathanal stood up and coughed loudly then said, "A successful launch."

Reddam was still staring upwards and said, "How high will it go?"

"Only a few miles," Nathanal answered, "It will be back in a minute."

Glord leapt to his feet and yipped, "Hurry up; I want to see it hit."

Hastily the party moved over to the bluffs, even the chattels not wanting to miss this. They gazed out over the valley below, seeing everything laid out before them. Yet Reddam's eyes were fixed upwards, tracking the tiny dot in the sky. Nathanal's mortal eyes couldn't see it anymore but he checked his control wand and said, "The Machine Spirit is seeking the target, it will be turning… now."

Indeed the tiny dot was changing direction, falling rapidly towards the ground. Gravity tugged it downwards but the rocket engines pushed it far faster and in moments it was hurtling at incredible speed. Reddam tracked its course, tracing its movement across the sky yet it was Larus who commented, "Wait… the trajectory is wrong."

Tebes concurred, "It will miss the rebel army entirely."

"We're not aiming for the Heretics," Reddam informed them briskly.

"We're not? Then what are we…" Glord began to say but then everybody's eyes tracked the missile's course and their gaze fell upon the unmistakable destination.

"The dam!" Joffel yelped in alarm, "It's going to take out the dam!"

"But… but why?" Glord asked in surprise.

Sternly Reddam growled, "One vortex bomb could not take out the whole rebel army on its own, but there was another way."

Suddenly Nathanal shouted, "No time to chat, here it comes!"

Far above the glowing ember of the missile was swelling in size, its speed was phenomenal, turning from a minuscule speck into a black slab-sided missile that ripped the sky asunder as it dropped at supersonic speeds. It fell from the heavens like an avenging thunderbolt, all the power of an orbital bombardment with none of the inevitable drift. Nobody had time to speak before the missile plummeted into the neck of the valley then it struck its target and detonated.

The missile was travelling so fast that it passed a hundred metres below the lip of the dam, flashing past the crenulations and watchtowers in a blur, before the detonation had any visible effect. Within the warhead's casing an obsidian flask broke open, a tiny vessel that contained a raw spark of the Immaterium. Creating this spark had required arcane sciences, whose mysteries stemmed from the Dark Age of Technology, and a dozen sacrificial Psykers. Through eldritch arts the spark had been summoned into the material universe, a feat that had cost the Psykers their lives to accomplish. Once made manifest the spark had been instantly bound with supremely complex wards and stasis barriers, to keep the unnatural energy separate from the real world. Detonating the warhead was therefore astonishingly easy; one simply had to break the wards.

The instant the wards failed the spark expanded outwards in all directions, spilling raw Warp energy into the Materium. Effervescent colours bloomed in a rainbow of unlight, but there was no beauty to this. They were turgid and vile, a stain that made one nauseous to look upon. Reality itself quivered as the polluting filth of the Warp was let loose, natural laws writhing in protest to create a storm of distortions and anomalies. Reality met unreality and there was only one possible result: spacetime tore, ripping like an old curtain and in the wake a rift formed. A sphere of pure darkness snapped into being, two hundred metres in diameter, a doorway to the Warp itself. Anything that touched the event horizon was pulled out of the Materium and spat into the Empyrean. Nothing escaped its hungry grasp; air and water, Ferrocrete and plasteel, light and heat, space and time, all were sucked into the yawning abyss that lay underneath the universe. While from those depths echoed the insane chittering of mankind's darkest nightmares made manifest.

For a single second the rift existed and then the laws of reality slammed back into place, erasing the rift as if it had never been. Normalcy returned except that now everything had changed. The great length of the dam suddenly had an immense hole in its flank, a perfect circle, two hundred metres wide drilled into the Ferrocrete of its structure. Such an edifice could have shrugged off an Atomonic explosion but the vortex bomb had cored through it like an old apple and from that gap burst forth a violent deluge of water. A vast outpouring of water breached structure of the dam, a torrent that spat out into mid-air and dropped away in a mighty waterfall. The sheer power of it was incredible, a mighty cataract that ripped apart anything it touched. Ferrocrete crumpled and ripped away in ever greater chunks, making the hole bigger and bigger. Unable to withstand the forces at play the structure of the dam began to give way, torn apart piece by piece as the vast reservoir found an unexpected release.

Far below tiny figures of men began to frantically run away, but those charged with maintaining the dam could not avoid what was coming. Vast cracks ran through the Ferrocrete surface, huge sections shattering to move freely as forces beyond those it was designed to endure ripped it apart. Then in one vast avalanche the centre of the dam collapsed, unleashing a moving mountain of water into the world beyond. Four trillion cubic feet of water burst out of confinement and thundered into the valley, a tsunami of earth-shattering force whose roar shook the foundations of the world.

High above Reddam's lips pulled back over his teeth as he watched the man-made catastrophe unfold and he whispered, "May you look upon our deeds Heretics and know this was done by our hand. Behold, your doom approaches and it shall teach you the meaning of despair."