Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 106

Kazao pulled himself up the black stone wall. Another handhold presented itself and he rose again. Then he shifted his footing and pushed up the wall once more. He had been doing this for an hour, climbing vertically up the outside of the tower. Thankfully the wall was festooned with ridges and odd bulges making the ascent possible, but not easy.

The Aberrants were below, climbing steadily in his wake. Zasio and Nazrik had blessedly stopped bickering, saving their breath for the climb. Marko was clinging onto Hasak's shoulders, brought up like a sack of ammunition. Finally there was Torfa, who seemed to be having the worst of it. His spine was hunched like an animal's and climbing vertically forced his body to stretch in ways his aberration wouldn't allow. It was obviously paining him but he refused to admit it and persisted in his climb, determined to reach the top.

Kazao lifted his hand once more and felt empty air above him. Surprise ran through him and he nearly lost his grip with his other hand but clamped down on the impulse and forced himself up. He emerged on a ledge, running around the circumference of the tower. Used for observation, maintenance or some other purpose he didn't understand. Still it seemed a good place to rest so he pulled himself onto the flat surface and rolled over, gasping for air.

In moments the other aberrants joined him, all flopping onto the cold dark stone with lungs heaving. The ledge was wide enough to drive a Rhino along so there was plenty of room for them to rest. They were Astartes, with endurance beyond mortal understanding, but even for them a free-hold vertical ascent was challenging. An hour of relentless climbing, without rope or crampon, had taxed them and they flopped down to rest with weary sighs. Kazao winced as he rolled onto his rifle and reached back to pull it from between his shoulders. The others were equally tired, even Marko who had been holding their meagre collection of knives and saws to free the other's hands.

Torfa was panting like a mastiff as he asked, "Hw mch fthr?"

Zasio rubbed his head as he looked up and sighed, "We're only about a third of the way up, so another couple of hours."

That brought groans from all as they contemplated the climb to come. Wearily Kazao rolled onto his side and peered over the edge. Wind should have torn at his face at this altitude but there was nothing, no movement of air at all in this unnatural environment. What he beheld was a dizzying drop, one that made his palms tingle with vertigo. The tower fell away in a lethal plunge, straight down to a vast plain of metal. Across that plain ran silver trains, emerging from scores of glowing green portals and all converging on the tower. Beyond them the Dyson Sphere stretched, thousands of kilometres visible ahead and behind and vast walls rising about a hundred kilometres away to left and right. It was a marvel of engineering, one any Tech-Priest would have waged a war to study but Kazao's only concern was escape.

The Aberrants had been brought to the tower by their damaged train and swiftly determined there was nowhere else to go. The trains only seemed to be heading one way and there was no cover in any other direction. Still they hadn't been foolish enough to ride their conveyance into the waiting maw of the lower levels, where escaping notice would have been impossible. So they had jumped off just short of the tower and then closed to the walls on foot. Kazao wasn't sure what they hoped to find in the tower, but they had run out of other options.

It was then he heard Zasio saying, "We can't keep going like this."

Nazrik scoffed, "Giving up?"

Zasio lifted his head to snap, "Not I, but Torfa's not going to make it."

"M' cn tk whtvr g cn," Torfa snapped.

"Don't be an idiot," Marko retorted, "You're not built for climbing and I'm dead weight."

Nazrik growled, "Astartes never give up!"

However Kazao interjected, "They're right but not for that reason. Tactically this is foolish, we're easy targets out here, if we're spotted we will be picked off in one volley. We must have bypassed whatever security this place has, it should be safe to sneak inside."

"You guess," Nazrik snorted.

"Got a better idea?" Kazao snapped, "No, then let's find a way inside."

Wearily the Aberrants got to their feet, Marko clinging to Hasak's back. They collected their meagre weapons and set off along the edge, looking for a doorway to let them inside. Zasio glanced over the plain and muttered, "What do you think those trains are bringing?"

"Unknown," Marko replied, "But there sure are a lot of them, I estimate a train must be arriving every minute. Whatever they're doing here surely requires a staggering commitment of resources."

Nazrik hissed, "That must make it important to them, maybe it's something we can break."

Zasio paused then and asked, "Are we here to fight or to find a means of escape?"

Kazao sighed, "Until we see inside there's no way to tell. Maybe we can find a conveyance capable of taking us away or a transmitter to call for aid. But we have nowhere else to go, this is the end of the line for us. If there's no way out then we'll try to find something we can break, that way we can at least hurt the Necrons before they kill us."

Torfa snarled, "Nt gng bck t dt lbrtrm."

"Agreed," Nazrik stated, "Better to die fighting than be dragged back like an animal."

Suddenly Hasak rumbled, "Door." Everybody looked to see where he was indicating and sure enough an opening presented itself, a wide aperture leading inside the tower. Kazao led them to the edge and peered around, but saw no guards. Cautiously he moved through the opening only to pull up short when he beheld what was inside.

The tower appeared to be hollow, nothing but an empty shell standing upright on the plain. Instead of solid floors the interior was a vertical plunge, falling away into the depths of the Dyson Sphere and rising high until it became a tiny dot of blue over their heads. The edge of the interior was lined with complex machinery, devices that pulsed with blazing green energies and smooth ramps and catwalks in a dizzying array of tangled paths.

Yet the strangest thing was the object hanging in the middle of the tower. Suspended inside the tower was a complex mechanism of rods and spheres and supports. It was as big as a frigate, three kilometres long that he could measure and its far end disappeared into the darkness below where Kazao could no longer see. It was hanging in mid-air with no visible means of support, suspended by forces beyond human understanding. It pulsed rhythmically, the various chambers glowing greenly before passing their charge onto the next in a sequence that made it look like a heartbeat. Kazao didn't understand what this thing was, nor why the Necrons went to such efforts to protect it, but he knew it was important.

"What is that thing?" Kazao breathed warily.

Zasio replied, "I don't know but it looks like this facility was built to house it. This whole tower is nothing but a silo for... whatever that is."

Nazrik mused, "Whatever it is it must require enormous resources to service. Think about how many trains we saw coming and how much material they must carry. If the Necrons are willing to commit such resources to this one object it must be important."

"We should break it!" Zasio cried.

"Are you stupid?!" Kazao yelped, "We have no idea what that thing is, touching it could blow up everything for a thousand kilometres."

Yet Nazrik hissed, "Even more reason to do it."

Kazao was about to argue but suddenly Hasak spat, "Big rifle."

Everybody paused and Kazao frowned in confusion, then he saw what the Aberrant meant. Turning his focus ninety degrees let him see the object was broadly similar to the rifle he still held, the one that liquefied brains. It was far vaster in scale and contained many components he didn't recognise but the placement of the firing chambers and connections was a match for his weapon. It was a ship-sized version of the rifle, stood on its end to rest upright.

"Fang-rot," Kazao breathed, "That is trouble."

"Dt's shtstrm 'f crp," Torfa muttered.

"Too right," Marko concurred, "We can't let it stand, we have to do something about that. We saw what one of those rifles did, imagine what a macro-scale version could do."

"Sadly we aren't going to see anything standing here, let's move higher up and see what we find," Kazao stated.

Slowly the Aberrants moved off, climbing ramps and catwalks in an attempt to find something useful. They circled the interior of the tower as they ascended, ever watchful for guards or workers. Kazao kept his eyes peeled but saw nothing save floating Canoptek Spyders and smaller scarabs, tending to the arcane mechanisms. Kazao knew little of Xenos ways but he suspected these were like Servitors, mindless drones dedicated to their role and unresponsive to other stimuli. Why the Necrons hadn't covered this place in guards was a mystery: arrogance, ignorance or some other factor no human could grasp perhaps.

Suddenly Marko yelped, "Look! A control lectern!" Kazao saw a crescent-shaped pulpit, hovering above the floor. It was covered in green crystals and columns of light projected shimmering displays into the air. If it wasn't some form of control station then Kazao couldn't imagine what it was. No attendants laboured over it but it did not seem to need them, it flickered in odd patterns, completing its labours without any outside intervention.

Everyone rushed over and Marko was set down so he could peer at it as he muttered, "Power levels... energy controls... system initiation sequencers."

"You can read this stuff?" Zasio asked in surprise.

Marko replied, "No, but a power graph is a power graph in any language. I don't know what scales the Xenos use but this thing is drawing energy in an expositional growth curve. It's radiating emissions like nothing I've ever seen, it must be visible from half the Stellar system away."

"Can you overload it?" Nazrik asked.

"Not a chance," Marko demurred, "I wouldn't know where to start… but I wonder what this button does?"

He reached out and pressed his palm on a large green hemisphere and then all the lights started flickering. Kazao looked about in amazement as the light in the walls flickered erratically and the graphs in the projections dropped significantly. Marko snatched his hand away and said, "It appears to disrupt the local energy flows."

Lighting returned to normal as Zasio spat, "Don't do that again."

Yet Marko looked thoughtful as he pondered, "Actually I think I will."

"Are you mad?!" Kazao yelped.

"No I'm coming up with a plan," Marko refuted, "I said this thing is radiating energy, so if someone were to disrupt it in a deliberate pattern that would be obvious to anybody watching."

"A pattern… like say a Chapter distress code?" Zasio guessed.

"A crude one but yes," Marko stated, "Using on and off, I can make a simple call-sign in tap-code."

Kazao was amazed at his ingenuity but ventured, "Won't the Necrons notice that and come running?"

Marko lowered his head and whispered, "Yes they will, which is why you are going to leave me here to send the signal while you move to the top of the tower."

Kazao's breath caught as he protested, "We can't leave you."

"You must," Marko affirmed, "Someone has to stay here to send the signal and I'm crippled."

"Stop playing the martyr," Zasio spat, "You've been trying to off yourself since you lost that leg."

Nazrik concurred, "We don't even know anybody is out there watching."

But Marko argued, "If there isn't we're all dead anyway. We can't survive much longer and thinking we can hurt the Necrons in any significant way is a fantasy. The only thing we can do is get out and warn the Chapter of what we've found, that is our only objective. This plan is a fool's hope but it's all we've got. Someone has to send the signal and whoever does so won't make it out. I'm the right choice for this, you know it. You've already shown true Brotherhood towards me, now it's my turn."

Kazao swallowed as he said, "Remember our creed: Cold hearts, fast blades and unbreakable in our loyalty to each other… that cuts both ways. He's right, for the good of the unit someone has to make this sacrifice and we have to let him."

Heads hung low as Zasio said, "Goodbye, you'll be remembered."

Nazrik declared, "There is no finer Brother in the Chapter."

"M' prd t hv knwn g," Torfa snarled.

"Stand proud," Hasak intoned.

Marko accepted their praise and said, "Thank you, now go. I'll give you five minutes then I'm sending the signal."

With heavy hearts the five Aberrants turned and walked away, leaving Marko behind to die. Kazao's hearts were heavy but he knew it had been the only choice. The cruel necessities of war were implacable and unforgiving. For five to live one had to die. Kazao swore he would never forget Marko's sacrifice, he may have no genic legacy but the Aberrant had found a worthy death, the kind of ending they all dreamed of.

Slowly they ascended, climbing towards the top of the tower. After five minutes the lights started flickering, on and off and on again in a crude distress call. Kazao knew the signal would be clear and unmistakable, now they could only trust someone was out there to hear it. If not then all this was utterly pointless.

For several more minutes they continued to climb but then Zasio hissed, "Ware below!" Kazao glanced down and saw a billowing cloud spilling into the tower, filling it with shimmering blackness. It swirled about once then dove straight for the control lectern, like an arrow sprung from the bow. A surge of darkness engulfed the level where they had left Marko and there was a faint scream, filled with the agony of one whose flesh was being flayed from their bones. Terribly it echoed, but then fell silent, leaving no doubt that Marko was dead.

The cloud fell back and began swirling once more, probing the tower as if searching for something and Nazrik gasped, "They've found us."

"Make haste," Kazao barked, "We have to get to the top of the tower before it catches us and trust in the Emperor that someone is coming to rescue us!"