Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 143
Brontes was getting impatient. The Cadmus had ditched the Fleshbags back at the primary power station and taken off, seeking their own objective. Even for such large and heavy combat-units it had been simple to slip away, the idiots who passed for warriors in this age as blind as they were stupid. The Cadmus had made swift progress, following routes only they knew through Magna-Civitas, the oldest and most potent production archology on Gobannus. Well they knew these streets, they had been crafted here after all, but then Arges and Steropes had wanted to stop for repairs.
Brontes cast his eye-lenses over Steropes as he stood within a circular array of maniples. Auto-repair subroutines could only go so far to keep them going and the weight of ages had done much to reduce their combat capability, so the chance to make good the damage was not to be missed. Steropes' armoured form was bathed in scanning beams, charting his form to a microscopic level. Holo-markers picked out imperfections in his casings and inferior materials used in his repairs as writhing mechandrites crawled over his form, correcting errors the Fleshbags had made in their feeble attempts to maintain the Cadmus. Nano-bots crawled over their mechanisms, shifting molecular imperfections and aligning atoms into the proper configuration. The auto-repair bay making damage as good as new, leaving them factory-fresh.
At his side Arges gleamed as his newly-restored casings glimmered and he commented, "It seems Gobannus kept some automation, even after the Men of Iron rebelled."
Steropes called out, "The war-world was meant to be virtually self-operating, hard to undo that."
"They still found a way," Brontes muttered.
That had been a nasty surprise. The robots had assumed they could simply access the Data Looms and operating networks of Gobannus from orbit, slipping into the info-web as they had always done. Yet their voxed handshakes had been rebuffed and their access denied by firewalls of fiendish ire and burning wroth. There should have been a dozen Soulbound waiting to greet them but none were evident. The implication was obvious, after the Men of Iron rebelled Gobannus had purged A.I. from its operations, leaving only the most basic automation running. It was troubling but these obstacles could have been overcome, had someone not physically isolated the core Dara Looms. That meant Apophis needed the Cadmus to physically penetrate the heart of the archology and create a link for him.
Finally the auto-repair bay finished its labours and the mechandrites withdrew. Steropes lumbered forward proclaiming, "That's better!"
"Quit patting yourself on the back, let's get on," Brontes muttered.
"Don't pretend you don't like being properly repaired," Arges retorted but Brontes had already moved out of the building.
They stepped into the street, now darkening as night drew in. The Cadmus turned left and headed into the centre of the archology, striding between skyscraper manufactories. Here armies had once been birthed, legions of automatons of various combat-grades. Crude Men of Iron, heavy Cadmus and the intricate mathematical matrixes of Soulbound. Other skyscrapers had bred Solar Knights, the fleshy geno-troops of the Golden Age. These were in notably better condition, and Brontes suspected he knew why.
"They shut down the Automaton production lines, long before Gobannus was abandoned," he commented.
Arges sniffed, "Can you blame them? The Men of Iron ruined everything with their insane rebellion. No wonder they didn't trust the rest of us."
"I wonder... whose side we were on?" Steropes mused.
"What kind of question is that?!" Brontes barked angrily.
"The kind that needs answering," Steropes rejoined, "The Men of Iron were foot soldiers, programmed to follow and obey. Did they get smart or were they merely following orders of a superior intelligence?"
"Irrelevant," Arges snapped, "They're all dead, we're alive. We won't make the same mistakes. We will claim Gobannus for ourselves and put everything back as it should be."
Brontes snorted, "You dream, this world is dead. Look at it, the planet always was a polluted bog but now it's dead. We will never reclaim this graveyard, Apophis is kidding himself if he thinks Gobannus can be as it once was."
"Ecological damage is of no consequence, we don't need to breathe," Arges retorted, "We can rebuild, create new armies and lead humanity back to true civilisation. All we need is to get into the data looms and Apophis can dazzle the Amber Vipers with our marvels."
"You think those dunces will see reason?" Brontes sneered.
"I think they are desperate," Steropes interjected, "Offer to fix up their battered base for them and they will fall over themselves to sign up."
Their exchange was cut short as they found themselves before a nondescript building. There was little to distinguish it from any other but the Cadmus knew it was their destination. The door was a heavy barricade but it had been shattered long ago, leaving a gaping hole. Within they found numerous weapon emplacements, all pointed at the door but it was obvious they had fallen in battle.
Brontes snorted, "The repair-bots restored everything perfectly but hadn't the smarts to clean up the mess."
"Simple creations for simple tasks," Steropes added, "We should press on."
The Cadmus stepped onto a broad ramp and began climbing. Levels came and went and Brontes saw many sterile laboritorums and experimental chambers pass, all sealed behind thick glassic walls. This had been a primary design centre, a hothouse of invention and ingenuity where the finest minds had plumbed the realms of possibility to develop new weapons. Many features were familiar but some were not, new designs and technologies created long after the Cadmus robots had been lost.
Steropes pointed at a gun-platform in a hermetically sealed chamber and said, "Look, a portable neural-flayer. In our time they could only be fitted to a dedicated artillery train, they miniaturised it."
"It always was a stupid weapon," Brontes muttered.
Arges replied, "I know it caused agony, stripping nerve endings to leave the targets in eternal pain, but I am surprised you care for living beings."
"I don't," Brontes growled, "I care they took too long to kill, most of these weapons were intended to strike fear and terror in their targets. I prefer guns that kill with the first shot."
"Deterrence has advantages all its own," Steropes countered, "Few races dared challenge the Hegemony."
"Deterrence didn't stop whoever destroyed our civilisation," Brontes grumbled.
As they climbed higher they saw even more strange inventions, things that gave even Brontes pause. One level had miniaturised stasis-field projectors, small enough to fit inside a bolt round. He deduced that on impact they would snap freeze a few inches of the target into stasis, effectively severing blood vessels and organs inside the body, a most painful way to die. Another level saw dimensional baffles being fitted to a suit of armour, letting the wearer phase-shift their mass out of reality. An assassin could walk through walls, invisible and undetectable to all, until they materialised with their sword inside a victim's heart. He saw new marks of Ether-flux cannons on display, weapons that exposed targets to interdimensional contortions, leaving them twisted malformations of flesh with limbs rearranged, skin inside out and still screaming as they pleaded for death. Another level had crystal code-shredders, malicious malware installed in hand-held injectors. A.I. murderers, designed to end synthetic minds in a heartbeat, something Brontes had always loathed. One entire level seemed dedicated to a single helmet, a silver helm with a glowing crystal set in the forehead like a third eye. Brontes had no idea what that was meant to do and suspected he wouldn't like the answer if he knew.
This then was the product of the Golden Age's dark genius, the arsenals that had made humanity a power to be feared among the stars. Few races dared challenge the might of mankind in that age and most species had sued for peace rather than face such horrors in battle. Brontes had been proud to fight for such a civilisation but knew ultimately it had availed them not. Someone had risen to challenge their might and cast down the Hegemony, the Interex, Old Earth and all the other dominions of Man. A power they still had no name for but one Brontes would make pay.
Finally they reached the summit of the building and here they found what they were looking for. The top level was taken up by stacks of cogitators, their black casings smooth and organic looking in their fluid styles. Rows and rows of info-processors and quantum memory caches made this the largest Data Loom on the planet, a single logic engine capable of running every assembly lines, defence bastion and transport link on Gobannus.
Steropes looked down and commented, "Someone's taken a hatchet to the hard links, they physically cut the Data Loom off."
"Almost like they were desperate to prevent anyone from hacking into this," Brontes mocked.
"Let's do something about that," Arges stated.
The three Cadmus raised their arms and from their palms extended mechandrites. They snaked out and plugged into the systems, accessing the core processors and connecting the Cadmus to the beating heart of the archology. It was the work of moments to restore the connections, linking them to orbit and then came Apophis. Brontes' observed as the Soulbound's consciousness flooded into the cogitators, brushing aside firewalls and binaric snares with ease and revealing the secrets beyond.
The Cadmus disconnected and stepped back as a holo-image of formed before them. Apophis seemed pleased with himself as he hissed, "Finally, I have access to the Data Loom, to everything. I am Gobannus now."
Arges urged, "Then tell us what happened after we were lost."
Apophis paused then said, "It seems we were lost some fourteen centuries before the tragedy struck. The Men of Iron rebelled as we thought and the galaxy was consumed by war. Every planet was swept up in calamity, no corner of the galaxy escaped the carnage. Gobannus shut down production of them immediately and shifted to Solar knight and conventional arms, but our armies were hard-pressed to hold the line. The Hegemony endured longer than most dominions, but it too fell to the Men of Iron."
"Impossible!" Brontes snarled, "They couldn't have won the war, we know they didn't!"
Apophis was oddly quiet as his eyes narrowed then uttered, "The war had no winners, both sides unleashed their ultimate weapons and left ruin in their wake. The logs speak of pushing the boundaries of science to the limit, desperate for any way to turn the tide, but neither side could find a clear advantage. There was nothing left of either side, everybody lost. The records stop abruptly, but by that point only Old Earth and the most low-tech colonies were left."
Brontes couldn't believe it, it was impossible but Apophis had sounded sure. Yet the Cadmus was certain there was more to the tale, the Soulbound was holding something back. Brontes knew it and he determined to find out what, he didn't trust the Soulbound one jot. But for now there was more urgent tasks to complete and he said, "Can you access the archologies' operating system?"
Apophis' eyes flickered as he said, "Yes, I see it all. Oh, look at what they did to our world. It is a tragedy."
Arges asked, "Can you restart the production lines? Get us back to what we should be?"
"In time," Apophis demurred, "There is another issue to resolve first."
"I knew it," Brontes snarled, "I knew you were holding back on us."
"Is it the Amber Vipers?" Steropes asked.
"No," Apophis replied, "Orbital scans reveal another ship is on approach. Slinking into orbit and moving quietly."
"More humans?!" Arges exclaimed.
"No, not human. The ship's configuration is unfamiliar to me… wait. I have a match in the Viper's archives. It is an alien race, records name them: Tau."
"Xenos," Brontes hissed, "Coming to steal what is ours."
"It is hardly surprising," Apophis shrugged.
"Wait…" Brontes snapped, "You knew this would happen!"
Apophis hardly looked concerned as he replied, "Of course, the Gobannus beacon was bound to draw attention. I didn't know who would come but it was certain someone would turn up. It's a little sooner than I would have liked but we can work with this."
Brontes irately snarled, "You planned this, you planned to bring aliens into our home!"
"Naturally," Apophis scoffed, "I told you we needed to show the humans our wonders. Did you think I meant arranging a parade?! We needed a target to demonstrate our power upon, these aliens are perfect."
"So as soon as they slip into orbit we blow them out of the void," Arges stated, "A volley of vortex missiles should put paid to them."
"Don't be so narrow-minded," Apophis sneered, "We need the Vipers to engage them first, to fight them eye-to-eye and let blood flow. Only when they are fully committed, when they are desperate for succour, do we intervene. We will let the humans feel the precipice under their feet, then throw them a lifeline. In their fear and desperation they will embrace us whole-heartedly."
"Your plan is idiotic," Brontes snarled, "It will never work."
"It can and it will," Apophis snapped, "I can see more than you can comprehend, I know these humans. They will agree to anything when their back is against the wall."
Arges butted in then, "Cease bickering, this is the plan and we will follow it. Tell me, have the humans seen the aliens yet?"
"Negative," Apophis replied, "The starfort's sensors are half-blind, I am using Gobannus' tracking augurs to monitor the aliens. The humans won't see a thing until the Tau are practically on top of them."
"Then the blood will flow," Brontes sneered.
"Yes, this will be a fight worth watching," Apophis agreed, "The wheels are now in motion and our hour grows close. Let the Amber Vipers test themselves against the Tau and when they are at their most desperate we shall offer them salvation. This is the first step on the path to restoring our civilisation. Soon the Hegemony shall be reborn and our armies will sweep across the galaxy. All shall be as it was!"
It was a bold declaration and Brontes could almost see the future laid out before them. Yet deep within he was certain it wouldn't be so easy. So much could still go wrong and he was certain Apophis wasn't telling them everything. He would play his part but also keep a close eye on the Soulbound. Brontes had experienced more than enough of being pushed about like a pawn and was not about to take anything on blind faith. He would find the truth somehow but until then he would sit back and enjoy the sight of fleshbags killing each other.