Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 89
The way lay before him, open, inviting and unguarded. Nothing barred the approach of the flotilla, they could sail into the warp-gate with only his word. All their ships hung in geosynchronous orbit, maintaining a relative distance of ten-thousand kilometres. They were ready and alert, committed to the moment and awaiting the order to engage, yet the word did not come. For the first time in his life Coluber was hesitating.
On the bridge of the Wyvern Coluber stood on a Command Dias and stared into the Hololith. Around him hundreds of chattels worked in orderly rows at their consoles, filling the length of the bridge with productive noise and industrious activity. The bridge was bigger than a blockade runner's but yet small and spartan compared to a naval Cruiser's, bare of adornments or iconography. The crew were tending to their duties with due diligence but they cast occasional glances at the Chapter Master, wondering why he delayed.
Coluber didn't see them, his attention fixed solely on the Warp-gate. Outwardly he seemed calm but inside he wrestled with the enormity of what he was about to do. He was about to plunge his Chapter into the unknown, taking everything they had built into enormous danger. He did not doubt that one slip would spell the end of the Amber Vipers, as it had the Ghost Crusade. Mightier armies than his had traversed that gate and failed to overcome whatever lay on the other side. A full Chapter of Space Marines had sailed through and never been seen again, an order of Astartes who wielded more power in one ship than he boasted in his entire flotilla.
He was risking throwing everything away, one mistake ending the Amber Vipers once and for all. Everything he had built over the last decades would be erased and it would be as if they had never existed. The prize was a worthy one, not only material assets but the chance to bestow pride and dignity to his order, but the odds were farcical. For decades he had walked a perilous line between honour and pragmatism, glory and survival. He had carefully husbanded his might, spending his Brother's lives like a miser and calculating every engagement in terms of the blood lost against material gain. This reckless action ran counter to every policy he had established. He should not even be contemplating this action; he was a fool to be chasing so ludicrous a dream.
Perhaps the alternative was not so awful. Retreat and withdraw, go back to making grubby deals with governors and stealing outright what they could not trade for. The Chapter could continue to grow, increasing in number slowly. More ships could be acquired, more industrial capacity added to their logistics. Perhaps in time even pacts with Forgeworld could be sworn, granting them access to the finest of wargear. It was a safer course yet it lacked honour. The Chapter would never grow into the proud and resplendent band of noble warriors it should be. They would remain base and contemptible for the rest of his life. Then when the last of his generation passed the Amber Vipers would forget there was any other way, they would be comfortable with their ragged lifestyle and slovenly attitude.
Coluber wrestled with these thoughts for long moments, trying to decide whether to commit fully or play it safe. He dwelled long and hard on the matter, citing the Codex Astartes in his mind and other doctrines, but none gave him solace. Then at last a memory stirred, a passage he had read in Maru Kysoto's treatise and his resolve hardened. The warrior-poet had demanded total commitment in all things, without thought of safety or reserve. The prolific philosopher had written, 'Engage in battle fully accepting of your death and you will be truly alive. Dwell upon your return home in the midst of war and you are already dead. If you enter the drop-pod thinking of your return you shall be lost, but set forth determined not to return and you will see the way'.
His mind made up Coluber ordered, "Full power to the drives, take us in."
The bridge sprang into flurries of activity but behind him Ferrac asked, "You don't want to send the Peregrine in first? Schwift should know what's on the other side."
Coluber replied without looking around, "No, we are committed to this course. If we are to proceed let us do so with our heads held high."
From the bridge consoles Nathanal called, "There's some sort of gravity flux surround the gate, energy readings are erratic but growing. It doesn't look at all stable but it's doing something."
From the other side of him Shrios muttered, "It's waking up."
Coluber lifted his chin and declared, "Open the Oculus, let us see it with our own eyes."
At the far end of the bridge armoured louvres slid back over an armourglass window, revealing the warp-gate. It was a tiny dot in the distance but as the thousands of kilometres shrank to hundreds Coluber saw its lumpish form shimmering. The strange icons still defied translation but the cogitators were working on it, though the warnings were obvious. Motes of blackness were gathering in its middle, forming a cloud of shade that filled the ring. It billowed like a curtain before an open window, swaying forward and back at random. It seemed to be straining to hold together, its instability palpable and the sight made many chattels clutch devotional tokens and pray for deliverance.
Nathanal called, "There's some form of gravitational incline forming, it's pulling us in."
Ferrac muttered, "It wants to eat us."
Coluber however only proclaimed, "Have no fear men, face the unknown with cold hearts and fast blades. Here we go."
In moments the warp-gate swelled from a mote in the distance into a vast stretch of stone and billowing darkness. It filled the Oculus with its sheer enormity, a gaping maw ready to eat them whole then they plunged into the veil and disappeared from realspace. Coluber blinked furiously as his sight faded to nothing, leaving him and everyone else blind. Men cried out in alarm but in seconds their vision as restored, leaving them gazing into infinity,
Before the Oculus stretched a vast tunnel, wide enough to hold their entire flotilla with ease. It was curiously organic, swelling and shrinking with graceful curves that looked to have been grown in some fashion. The walls were a pale yellow colour, shimmering with internal light yet it was sickly and weak, flecked with black spots and patches of gloom. Some instinct told Coluber they should be a glorious golden hue, fit and healthy, but this was decayed and withered like a diseased limb surgically removed from the rest of the body.
"Some form of wormhole?" Shrios speculated aloud.
"Whatever it is it defies all Auspex scans," Nathanal muttered, "According to the surveyors there's nothing out there."
Ferrac asked, "Did Schwift say how long the voyage takes?"
Coluber replied, "He said it varied, the outgoing journey took seconds, the return trip days. Given how unstable the gate appeared it may prove…"
His words were cut off as the tunnel flared into a burst of light then vanished, leaving them somewhere else. Coluber blinked as the tunnel disappeared, leaving behind a vista of unknown stars. Space, clear and untroubled by nebula gases or eldritch phenomena lay before him, serene and untroubled. It was breathtakingly clear and pristine, a refreshing change after weeks staring into the turgid mass of the Masio Silentium.
Every face turned to stare at the Oculus but Coluber was already shouting, "Look alive! The moments after translation are the most vulnerable. Raise shields, run out the guns and make active auspex sweeps of local space. Tell me what's out there!"
The crew sprang to obey but Ferrac called, "Defences active, shields up."
"All ships accounted for," Shrios stated, "The flotilla is right where they should be. We appear to have emerged from another Warp-gate, a partner to the first one. It's falling behind as we sail on."
Nathanal sounded vexed as he spat, "Cogitators are going crazy. The Machine Spirits claim we have no navigational markers to triangulate our position; these stars match nothing in Imperial records. We must be a long, long way from known space. We may have left Segmentum Tempestus entirely."
"Contact the Navigator, ask him to seek the Astronomican, that should give us a rough idea where we are," Coluber ordered, "What of local space, what's out there?"
Ferrac moved to inspect a series of consoles and relayed, "Auspex is picking up mass-shadows but no power emissions. Hulks, lots of hulks, looks like we found Schwift's graveyard."
"Let me see," Coluber commanded.
The Hololith flickered and then icons began to appear. Surrounding the flotilla was a massive graveyard of dead hulks, ships of all scales and sizes drifting lifelessly in the void. There were massive battleships and proud cruisers, sleek frigates, wallowing troopships and bulbous mass-haulers. Not only human vessels but alien ones too, of a bewildering variety of origins and classifications. Silhouettes Coluber had learned to hate drifted alongside vessels from species he had never heard of, perhaps no human had ever heard of. Some looked recent kills, others were unspeakably old, but they were all dead. Sundered by the most fearsome of wounds and not a single ship was left intact.
Coluber passed an eye over a readout and recited, "Ork Kill Kroozers, an Eldar Void Stalker, Fra'al Etherskippers, Nicassar Dhows, a Kroot Warsphere, Demiurg Tradeships. There are so many, more than the surveyors can tell, they stretch well beyond our auspex range."
Ferrac pointed out, "There's a Retribution class Battleship."
Coluber read the ident, "The Swiftsure, flagship of Warmaster Drake himself. Looks like we found the Ghost Crusade but where were they heading, what target did they think to find here? Push the surveyors to maximum, I want to sweep the system for planetary bodies. There must a world out there somewhere."
Nathanal stooped to obey but Shrios put his hand to his ear and said, "Repeat that. You're serious? No… that's impossible."
"Shrios?" Coluber asked.
The Apothecary looked up and said, "The Navigator has fixed our position but it's nonsense. According to the Astronomican we're no longer in the Milky Way galaxy. We've left known space completely."
"We're in another galaxy?!" Coluber gasped in shock.
"Not quite," Shrios explained, "According to him this star system is located in the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroid, a satellite galaxy orbiting the Milky Way. We're about seventy thousand light-years from Terra, straight up from the galactic plane."
Ferrac muttered, "Let us trust nothing happens to the Warp-gate or we face a long, long trek home."
Coluber's head was swimming with the very idea but then Nathanal exclaimed, "Holy Throne!"
"What else?" Coluber barked in bewilderment.
"You won't believe me if I told you", Nathanal replied, "You need to see this for yourself."
Coluber looked into the Hololith and saw it shift into a representation of the stellar system. The local star appeared, a red dwarf considerably smaller than Sol but still massive. No planetary bodies had been sighted yet but there was something near to the star, a tiny thread as thin as single hair in the image. It took Coluber a moment to compensate for the scales of interplanetary dynamics, then he realised to show up on the Auspex it had to be breathtakingly enormous.
Detailed readouts popped up on various consoles and he saw it was a construct of lines and nodes, encircling the star. It was formed of the same dark stone as the warp-gate, leaving no doubt that whoever made that portal had also built this artefact. Each tiny thread must be a hundred kilometres wide and ten thousand long, connecting to each other at nodal junctions. Surveyors could only reach a fraction of it but the curvature of the parts they could see told them enough to extrapolate the rest and the results made Coluber's knees weak. The construct was not only circling the star but stretched out in all three dimensions, encompassing the star in in a sphere of black stone.
Ferrac growled, "That's unexpected, Schwift didn't mention that."
"I suspect there's a lot he didn't tell us," Shrios concurred, "But what is it?"
"A Dyson Sphere," Nathanal exclaimed in wonder, "I've heard of the idea but no man's ever seen one. As far as I knew no race in history has boasted the technology to build a Megastructure on this scale."
"Why would they?" Ferrac asked, "You'd have to reduce a thousand planets to rubble in order to get enough raw material to build that. What's the point of it?"
"Limitless energy," Nathanal explained, "The output of a single star is immense, even a small Red Dwarf like that. If this thing is collecting even a small percentage of the star's emissions then it is producing more energy than the sum total of every planet in the Imperium of Man combined. "
Ferrac looked wary as he said, "We really don't want to tussle with whoever built something like that."
The words brought Coluber back to the moment and he knew he had to focus. Whoever had built that structure had likely killed all these ships, vessels that were much more impressive than his own. Hanging around staring was a spectacularly bad idea and he determined to find his objective and get out as fast as possible. He drew himself up and said, "Reset the Surveyors to local space, concentrate on the nearest wrecks. Find me the densest concentration of human ships, that's likely the vector the Ghost Crusade lies in. If the Serpens Rex is anywhere, it's there. Move quickly before…"
Suddenly a cogitator started beeping loudly and all eyes turned to stare as Shrios yelped, "Are we being scanned?!"
Nathanal hurried over and hastily replied, "No, it's the translation cogitator. The Machine Spirit is letting me know it has found a match for those glyphs on the warp-gate. Someone's seen them before it seems. Give me that data-slate and let's see what you've got for me… oh… Oh no, oh Throne no."
"Nathanal," Coluber asked in concern.
"We are so Frakked," Nathanal breathed in dread.
"Speak to me!" Coluber barked.
In response the mortal passed up a data-slate. Coluber's eyes fell upon the text and he eagerly devoured it, only to have his stomach clench in wariness. The cogitator had indeed found a match for the glyphs, from a burgeoning threat that the Imperium had learned to fear and dread in equal measure. A power from the dawn of time, rising to sweep aside all who had come to think of the galaxy as being theirs.
"What's going on?" Ferrac asked in bewilderment, "Who is it?"
Coluber's mouth went dry and he croaked, "Necrons… We've just stumbled into a bastion of the Necrons."