Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 138
The silence of space surrounded him, pressing in on his helm with its frigid darkness. The only noise was the sound of his own breathing, the whir of his oxygen recycling systems and the thrum of his backpack. All else was absent, a stillness not found on any planet. There was almost no light, not this far out into the stellar system and only his stablights and autosenses let him see. Alone he advanced, save for his automaton companion. Kerubim, the lay-adept, walking through the vacuum of space far from the warmth of his comrades.
Kerubim was marching over a shattered buttress, climbing steadily as his mag-boots locked and unlocked in rhythm with every step. It was necessary, the Serpens Rex only had artificial gravity in a tiny portion of its interior while the vast sweep of its bulk remained cold and powerless. No life stirred here, no warmth or motion disturbed the loneliness of the ages. This part of the station had not seen life in thousands of years, until now.
Kerubim doggedly climbed the shattered spar, determined to reach the top. Behind him paced Bane, the faithful Vorax following its master wherever he went. He had never come this far out from the inhabited sections and was pushing his boundaries, and his authority. Nathanal would scold him for taking an unauthorised spacewalk but Kerubim pushed on anyway, called by the lure of the unknown. Kerubim had long since surpassed his teacher, sucking up all he knew and left unsatisfied. There was a vast ocean of knowledge out there, things Nathanal couldn't show him, and he yearned to grasp it. So Kerubim had elected to take his education into his own hands.
He crested the buttress and beheld magnificent desolation. Kerubim was standing on one of the shattered defence bastions, its broken guns pointing to the cold stars. Before him stretched a city of smashed buildings and ruined towers, interspersed with great chasms that cut deep into the decks below. Ruined workshops and fragmented comms-arrays lay at his feet, mixed with the smashed remains of shuttle hangers and transitways. A fallen lance turret lay across the rubble of this quadrant, its length cutting across the devastation like a fallen tree through underbrush. Everything was ruined, nothing was as it should be and from here the Serpens Rex's wounds were laid bare to his eyes.
Kerubim beheld the damage done to the starfort and sighed. He slowly turned about and looked back the way they had come. Behind lay a narrow band of light and warmth, a thin corridor connecting the lonely command tower at the hub to the single docking pier the Chapter had restored. From here it looked so small, so pathetic. Years of labour and so little to show for it, when set against the scale of the tasks yet to be completed.
Kerubim knew his Brothers dreamed of restoring the Nest to its magnificent splendour of yesteryear, but he understood they were kidding themselves. They could swell their numbers, harvest asteroids and build training grounds and forges but they would never have the resources or technical skill to restore this starfort to its proper glory. Systems were broken that they couldn't name, let alone consecrate, vast swathes of irreplaceable machinery lay shattered and none lived who knew how to restore them. Perhaps the Adeptus Mechanicus could undo this damage but the last time the Chapter approached them the Tech-priests had sent them scurrying with bared guns and threats of dire retribution. Baring an alliance with a Forgeworld the Amber Vipers would always be squatters in a ruined fortress, primitives building campfires in the decaying palaces of kingdoms long expunged.
Kerubim shook his head and called, "Come Bane."
The Vorax blared a squawk of Binaric protest via Vox but Kerubim retorted, "Don't panic, its hours till we make Translation to the Warp. We can explore for a bit, we'll be back inside long before the Nest reaches the jump-point."
Kerubim turned and looked over the wasteland, trying to find a way down. His eye was struck by a large domed structure further along the buttress, opened to the void by a perfectly circular hole in its roof. Seeing nothing more interesting nearby Kerubim turned towards the building and clomped nearer, his mag-boots clanking as he walked. The building swelled in his eyes, becoming a five-story edifice with thick walls. Kerubim suspected it was a missile battery or torpedo silo and he eagerly placed his foot on the wall, walking up the surface effortlessly in zero gravity until he reached the hole.
He leaned over and poured his stablight into the darkness, keeping his Adrathic rifle close, it never paid to be careless. What he beheld surprised him. A sweeping marble floor, golden railings and graceful pillars, etched with litanies of fealty. A high altar stood at one end, facing the round space and the walls were hung with frozen banners and void-chilled frescos. Its beauty was startling, preserved perfectly by the vacuum of space and the shade of the thick walls. The magnificence of it filled him with awe and he could picture it in its prime.
"A templum," he breathed in wonder, "Maru never mentioned this." He stowed his rifle and positioned himself at the rim of the hole and then deactivated his mag-boots, pulling himself down to skim across the interior with perfect grace. His hands touched the floor and he pivoted, bringing his boots down. The mag-lock connected with a thunk, power armour being able to grasp a multitude of surfaces, and he stood upright to take in the space.
Closer up he found a number of corpses lining the interior. Mortal priests and clerics, tending to their chancel even in the midst of battle. They must have died quickly, the air ripped from their lungs when the roof was blown open and had fallen to the floor clawing at their necks, fighting to draw in a breath that would not come. Thousands of years they had laid in state and Kerubim had no interest in bothering them.
There was a whine above as Bane peered down but Kerubim called, "Stay there, I'll look about a bit." He stepped over a corpse and peered at a statue of a Space Marine in flowing robes. His face seemed regal and his features noble and brave.
"I wonder who you were," Kerubim sniffed as he stepped past and looked at a painting of warriors standing in a field of victory with their faces to the sun. "This is old and the subject even older. Mark II armour, I didn't know they were still using that after the Heresy. Come to think of it we don't know how old the original Vipers were, guess they were older than we thought. Purple eyes the lot of them, white hair on every head, must be a gene-seed quirk. Maybe they should have called themselves the Purple Vipers. Haha."
Chuckling at his own joke Kerubim moved to the altar. Bane whined louder as he walked but he ignored the Vorax as he stepped onto the lectern and surveyed the panorama. "Big enough to host a Battle Company, five, maybe even ten. What would they say at such assemblies, what lessons did they learn?"
He peered at an open book on the lectern, its pages too fragile to touch but the ink perfectly intact in the chill void, "Huh… that's odd. No words but some form of mathematical formula. What would they… oh… no, its music. This is a songbook. The patterns are elegant, the notes… let me try this out."
Reading the music came easily to one versed in the Linga Technis, the mathematical flow similar in nature. He hummed a few notes and found it beautiful and serene. The tones blended gracefully into a harmonious melody and he was amazed by the pulsing ebb and flow of it. There was an onus within that music, a purpose, and he tried to imagine a hundred Transhuman voices lifted as one to sing, a thousand. It must have been wondrous, uplifting and empowering, charging spirits for the fight to come yet honing their emotions into a razor-sharp blade of zeal rather than a frothing cauldron of spite. Power, purpose, control and dominion over the self, he found it all in the music and he was stunned by the beauty of the composition.
Suddenly his reverie was interrupted by a blaring alarm from Bane and his head snapped up to snarl, "I said keep…." His voice trailed off as his eyes went wide and his throat closed. Beyond the hole in the roof was a swirling vortex of multi-hued energy, floating in space above the Serpens Rex. It resembled a whirlpool in the void, impossible and yet real. The sight filled him with dread for he recognised this all too well. A jump-point, growing steadily as the Nest powered towards it, intending to enter the Empyrean with Kerubim on the outside of the walls.
Blind terror surged in his hearts but his feet were already moving. His mag-locks disengaged and he surged upwards. He flew across the interior and grasped the edge of the hole, swinging his legs about to clamp on. He wasted not a breath to call Bane as he hurried away, racing to get back inside before they dove into the Immaterium. He moved as fast as he was able, regaining the buttress and hurrying along its length but his pace was slow. His boots could not keep up with a running Transhuman had he had to walk slowly, lest he fling himself into the void. So he clomped along, cursing under his breath with every step.
He had screwed up badly, miscalculating the time until Warp Translation. He hadn't let anyone know he was going outside either, none would have thought to alert him that the timetable had changed. If he was caught out here he would be dead, or worse. The Gellar Field covered the whole station but he would still see into the depthless horrors of the Ether, the abode of Daemons and the Realm of Chaos. No spacefarer in his right mind desired such a thing, all starships sealed their viewportals and observation bays before making a jump, lest a careless glance allow Daemons entry into the mind of the viewer. Better to die than suffer such a fate.
The vortex overhead grew until it covered the whole vista and he knew he only had minutes until they entered the Empyrean. Sweat coated his back and his breath heaved as he hurried, wishing for a morsel more speed. If he dared he would have disengaged his mag-boots and coasted along by hand but he knew that was idiocy, one missed grip and he'd be dead. So he plodded along, trudging down the side of the buttress back to the airlock he had left open.
The vortex was nearly upon him now, a maw yawning wide to swallow him whole. He felt its heat upon the back of his neck, impossible as that was and knew he wasn't going to make it. He was about to die and nobody would ever know his fate. He would simply disappear, leaving the Chapter to wonder if he'd fallen down a shaft or been crushed in an accident. None would think to look for his corpse on the exterior, surely nobody would be dumb enough to take a spacewalk during a Warp Translation.
Suddenly he saw it, the airlock waiting for him. A brilliant square of light welcoming him inside. He redoubled his efforts to reach it but then yellow alarms began to blink, warning it was automatically sealing itself. "No!" he cried, "No don't leave me out here!"
The door ignored his entries and began to slid downwards but suddenly there was a blur of motion. Bane, the Vorax leaping ahead of him. Clawed feet punched into the hull and propelled it forward, bounding ahead of the labouring Astartes. Kerubim hadn't ordered this, the Vorax was acting on its own initiative, sensing danger to its master and acting to prevent it. The robot dashed into the aperture and braced as the airlock door hit its back, legs bending under the strain as it fought to keep the hatch open.
Red lights began to blink but were drowned out by the shimmering aura overhead and Kerubim raced for all he was worth to get inside. Bane was practically bending to the floor but the faithful Vorax refused to move, straining to keep the door open. Steps came and went, so slow, so cumbersome but then he was there, ducking under the lintel and falling within. There was a whine in the vox and Kerubim saw Bane was stuck, crushed by the weight of the door and backlit by impossible colours. Instantly Kerubim reached out and grabbed the robot, heaving backwards to pull Bane inside. Metal screeched on metal as friction held it firm then suddenly Bane popped out of the gap and fell down.
Kerubim rolled back and had a last glimpse of a wave of sheening light sweep over the Serpens Rex and then the door slammed shut. A moment later the whole station fell down an infinite well, while accelerating like a rocket as his guts were squeezed into his toes and his brain fizzled. Warp Translation, they were in the Empyrean.
Kerubim sagged back and gasped, "That was too close." Bane edged nearer and put its head on his pauldron, looking like a sorry Mastiff. Kerubim reached up and patted it affectionately as he said, "Next time you warn me of something I'm going to pay closer heed. You saved my life and to think I was going to reboot you, I'd be dead if I had."
Bane clonked its head against his hand and Kerubim flopped back, drained by his experience. Outside the gossamer bubble of the Gellar field enveloped the station, holding back writhing tentacles and fanged maws that smothered it in ravenous hunger. Tidal waves of probability swept over the tiny bubble and vistas of potential futures bloomed in their path but they were blocked out, leaving those inside blissfully unaware that they were diving into a realm madness. So the Serpens Rex entered the Warp and began its journey, blind and ignorant of the future to come.