Tales of the Amber Vipers 208

Steering through the surveyor hash of the ion storm was hard enough for a full-sized ship, for a tiny fighter it was next to impossible. Grey Avenger jostled constantly as the machine spirit tried to cope with errant power surges and wild gravitational inclines. The plasma thrusters kept flickering in troubling ways and the servitor in the rear seat chattered ceaselessly as its feeble mind struggled to grasp the complex environment. Reddam was irked by the disturbance and in the end had overridden the controls, trusting Transhuman reflexes to deal with the interference over faltering Technoarcana.

He held the stick steady as he spun right and thrust away, feeling his way through gravitic knots on pure instinct. He was leading his squad on a CAP patrol, circling the fleet and keeping a wary eye out for dangers. He wasn't expecting anything to happen, but only a fool would leave the fleet defenceless so a patrol must be maintained. His eyes drifted right and his autosenses picked out the lumbering civilian vessels, their hulls scorched by radiation and encrusted with ice-impacts. The score of transports had been laying low the whole time and the mewling civilians within hadn't stopped complaining since they arrived, but that wasn't Reddam's problem. Around the edges of the fleet Wyvern, Jormungandr and Carmilla hung, watchful and ready. The warships bore numerous scars and distressing wounds, testaments to the harsh battle. Crewmen had done their best to patch them up, welding armour over open wounds and replacing damaged components, but without access to a proper dockyard there was only so much they could do. They were weak and vulnerable and it showed.

Reddam's vox crackled as Tebes commented, "The damage was worse than I thought."

Reddam sighed, "The battle was fierce and bloody, such wounds are inevitable."

Joffel mused, "Do you think they have the grit to fight off the Revenge?"

Reddam was frank in his reply, "No, not against the Revenge."

Larus sounded perplexed as he asked, "Do you not teach that a man defeated in his own mind is already dead?"

Reddam answered, "In any other circumstance you would be right, but the Codex Astartes warns against pointless last-stands and reckless charges without purpose."

Joffel made a rude noise over the vox and scoffed, "Who gives a frak about the Codex?! We never have before. May I remind you its author sent us out here on this blood-soaked mission."

"We may chart our own path but do not be so quick to discard its wisdom. There is much to be admired about the Codex, even if we do not bind ourselves to its strictures. By any analysis a fighting withdrawal is our only option."

Another turn came and went and Reddam led the squad over the dorsal vector, coasting along the perimeter in a lazy cruise. Ships wheeled in his sight and Kazao declared, "Look there, the Fire ships!" Reddam squinted and made out three sacrificial hulks, cargo vessels that had been emptied out and refilled with explosives. For a void-farer they were fearsome sights, deceptively helpless but holding devastation in their holds equal to a Nova bomb. Since the earliest days of mankind's explorations on the waters of their homeworld the fire ship had been feared, a weapon of ill-repute and dark whispers. The concept had evolved into airbourne sacrificial planes, then missiles and finally come full circle once more in the void of space. As was the way across the galaxy, war had returned to its most basic principles.

"That is a sight to stir the hearts," Joffel crowed, "I can't wait to see them go off!"

"Do you think they will be enough?" Kazao enquired.

Reddam retorted, "Surely they must, three fire ships going off will melt the side of a Battlebarge."

"They'd better hurry, the civilians are growing panicky," Larus commented.

Tebes replied, "Shouldn't be too much longer, a few more shipments of explosives from Wyvern and Jormungandr and we're set to go."

"I only wish Arcaka was here to see it," Reddam sighed.

That brought a sudden silence as all cheer evaporated. The loss of the veteran sergeant had cast a pall over the Amber Vipers. To lose a Sergeant was harsh enough but to see one of the Old Seventeen pass was a blow to the soul. Time and war were claiming the original band of Astartes who had founded the Amber Vipers and all knew the day was coming when none remained at all. Reddam mourned the loss of his old comrade keenly but did not let that slow him, his grief was a weapon, one he would ram into the enemy's heart given the first opportunity.

His introspection was interrupted as Tebes yelped, "What the hell?!"

"Report!" Reddam barked as his eye fell to the glitching auspex, "Did you see something?"

"No," Tebes replied in confusion, "No enemy, but I got pinged by a powerful vox-beam."

"I don't detect anything," Joffel replied.

"It was very tightly focused," Tebes elaborated, "I must have flown straight through it and out the other side."

A cold suspicion crept through Reddam and he ordered, "Reverse direction and head back, I want to investigate this. Wyvern control this is Reddam, we are stopping to explore a possible contact."

"Confirmed," the distant mortal countered, "Shall we alert Battle-Captain Ferrac?"

"Do so," Reddam confirmed, "It may be nothing but best keep him apprised of the situation."

The wrath fighters spun on their axis and burned hard, shedding momentum to reverse direction. Long seconds passed as Reddam's eyeballs squeezed into the back of his skull and then they were flying back along their previous course. Reddam set his vox to wide-band, searching for the errant signal as he flew along.

Kazao spoke up, "Brother-Sergeant, what are we doing?"

"Looking for trouble," Reddam spat, "A signal in the dark bodes nothing good."

"You suspect one of the civilians has a broken vox?" Larus asked.

"That would be the best case scenario," Reddam muttered grimly.

For a moment they drifted along and then suddenly Reddam's vox lit up with a screech. He spun about and thrusted to brake, hovering in the path of the beam as his vox drank up the pulsing throb. It took him a moment to assess it and saw this was no stray transmission, no random message gone astray. The signal contained no words or information, merely a pulsing trio of beeps, repeated over and over again.

"Fang-rot, I can't make out any words," Joffel cursed.

"Because there aren't any," Reddam growled, "This is no message; it's a nav-beacon, one being directly into the storm."

"A beacon?!" Kazao yelped, "But that could only be coming from inside the fleet itself. Who would do such a thing?!"

"I don't know but I intend to find out," Reddam growled, "We have to warn Wyvern that…"

Reddam's tirade was rudely interrupted as the storm parted. He was looking dead ahead at the moment so saw the flickering darkness swirl and shift, then from it dove gull-winged craft on tails of plasma exhaust. They came in with weapons hot, lascannons and plasma cannons armed and ready. Deathbirds, dozens of them closing on an attack vector.

"Break!" Reddam roared as they opened fire. By all rights the enemy should have blown the Wraths from the void, sitting as they were on an idle drift. Yet merely human reflexes took seconds to react as they cleared the interference and a handful more to lock on and fire. In those precious moments Transhuman reflexes went into action, throwing open throttles and yanking sticks about. Reddam was slammed into the side of his cockpit, gravity squeezing his bones inside his armour as Grey Avenger threw itself away, a heartbeat before a dozen las-shots burned through the space it had been occupying.

Reddam yanked his stick to and fro in a desperate evasion as he cried, "Subitis, subitis, subitis! We are engaged by hostile bandits!"

From afar Wyvern control responded in confusion, "Sergeant come in, we can't make out what's happening from here. Did you say hostiles?"

Reddam cursed the merely human vox-operator, who was struggling to process the changing situation, and bellowed, "Yes I bloody well did, enemies are all over us!"

Shock, denial, fear these human frailties delayed the man's response by precious moments as he stammered, "But… but that can't be, they can't find us in the storm."

"Tell them that!" Reddam hollered, "We are getting frakking mobbed out here! Launch the alert fighters, launch everything and bring the fleet to battlestations!"

There was no more time for talk as a Deathbird cut across his vision, angling to attack a wallowing cargo ship. Reddam gritted his teeth and spun to follow, burning hard to catch up. The gull-winged craft was pushing hard but the Wrath was faster, closing into weapons range in a moment. His auspex painted the target and Reddam let loose a missile with a cry of "Stake one!"

The tiny warhead streaked away and he expected a kill, but to his dismay the machine spirit was befouled by ionic interference and veered off target, shooting away into the void harmlessly. The Deathbird was nearly close enough to fire, its plasma cannon glowing wickedly as it targeted the cargo ship's drives. Reddam bit down a curse as he pushed harder, switching to lascannons as he set the foe in his sights. A squeeze of the trigger sent flurries of deadly energy into the void and he surrounded the Deathbird in a cage of light. The pilot jinked hard to avoid being hit but too late, he veered right into the path of las-shot and it punched straight through his primary power junction. Engine plasma billowed out, consuming the craft in flames and turning it into a streaking comet of fire, then it detonated with a fiery corona that lit up the void.

"Mortus!" Reddam cried at the kill.

A moment later Tebes cried, "Sergeant, break right now!"

Reddam's hands were responding before his conscious mind even knew what was happening. A plasma bolt nearly took his left flank off, passing so close the magnetic bottle ripped panelling off the side of Grey Avenger. A Deathbird swung past his eyes, already spinning to target him with its lascannons. Reddam threw himself into an evasive roll, tumbling wildly through space as he fought for a morsel of life. The enemy didn't let him go so easily however, giving pursuit at maximum thrust. In desperation Reddam veered towards the cargo ship, trusting he could cut across its bulk and lose his pursuer but to no avail, it stuck to his rear like a burr, firing ceaselessly.

Reddam jerked frantically aside as he cried, "He's on me!"

Joffel's voice cut back, "I see you, vectoring to assist. On my mark go vertical… mark!"

Reddam heaved back and Grey Avenger's nose rose as the drives shot him out of the horizontal. From below came Joffel, closing rapidly with his lascannons flashing. The Deathbird's pilot was a true ace, spinning and rolling away in a brilliant evasion. In open space it would have worked, but unfortunately for him they were mere metres from the cargo ship's bulk and his instinctive reaction saw him nose-dive straight into its hull. Cargo ships were no warships, their drives and airlocks lacked armour, but they were still designed for the nightmare of the warp and metres thick metal plating met flimsy strike craft and barely quivered at the impact. The Deathbird was left a smear on the side of the ship as the pair of Wraths pulled away, seeking to rejoin the fight.

"Mortus!" Joffel cried.

"An unorthodox kill, but still a kill," Reddam allowed, "Let us trust…"

He trailed off as his eyes went wide. Before his nose the swirling dogfight raged, Wraths hopelessly outnumbered by Deathbirds but that was not what caught his attention. From the ion storm emerged a pair of prows, wreathed in corposant and trailing electromagnetic whiskers of static discharge. Like deep aquatic creatures breaching the surface of an ocean they emerged, one prow pointed and sharp as a dagger, the other a broad sledgehammer of armour and torpedo tubes. Echidna and the Revenge burst from the storm with their gun points open and set their eyes upon the scattered and beset Imperial fleet, wallowing in confusion and distress. The Heretics had found them indeed and their blood lust would not be sated until all had fallen.