Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 222
Brontes & Kerubim
Twenty-thousand years the ship had drifted alone in the dark, twenty thousand years of unbroken solitude. For an eternity she had tumbled through the cold dark of interplanetary space, left to wander without power or crew. Ages passed unremarked in her cold compartments. The rise and fall of the Imperium, the rupturing of the galaxy and the last defiant effort to hold it at bay making no impression. She was a lonely voyager, content to ignore and be ignored by the universe.
She was small by void standards, a mere kilometre and a half long and sleek around the gunwales. She bore few armaments but was covered in auspex vanes and vox-thieves while heat baffles around her drives made her surprisingly hard to detect. Long had been her journey and in recent centuries she had been drawn into the gravity well of a gas giant, a retrograde orbit that would spell her end in a few hundred years. She was doomed to a lonely and quiet death, and yet the last page of her story was turning out to be anything but dull.
The silence of ages was broken by searing notes of high-energy weapons and brilliant flashes of incandescent fire. Throughout her interior battle broke a stillness that had endured for twenty-thousand years, bringing the violent frenzy of war to a realm that had known only peace. In cramped machine shops and down echoing passages red-robed figures of flesh and steel gave battle to silvery automatons, emotionally suppressed warriors meeting those who had no feelings in the first place. The red-clad ones bore Hellguns, galvanic rifles and electro-arc projectors, while their robes proclaimed allegiance to the Adeptus Mechanicus: the famed Skitarii of Mars. The others wielded plasma talons and fusion-cutters. They bore no tokens of allegiance other than their very nature, Abominable Intelligences, the mythical Men of Iron, supposedly lost to history.
Kerubim however had no time to reflect on history, as he was trying very hard not to die. A plasma bolt seared through the plasteel barricade he was lurking behind, burning through with no trouble at all. He flinched back as his armour's autosenses told him a degree to the left and it would have carved a passage right through his head. With no point covering behind shelter he rose up and brought his square-barrelled rifle to bear. The shooter was a bulky automaton with eight arms, each tipped with a plasma talon. All of them were laying down barrages of firepower, punching Skitarii off their feet with deadly accuracy. Its front was scored by Hellgun fire and Galvanic shot, but it was having little effect. The Man of Iron was nearly immune to conventional fire, but Kerubim was gambling it would not be expecting an Adrathic weapon.
He lined up his shot on a deep furrow carved into its armour, revealing gleaming circuitry behind and squeezed the trigger. A golden ray shot forth, crossing the distance in an instant and boring into the vulnerable mechanisms. Instantly a golden aura enveloped the murder machine, flowing over its form to encase it in a sheath of energy. The automaton froze as molecules began to unravel, the disintegration beam unmaking its structure at an atomic level. Matter wavered, like being viewed through running water, then it became a cloud of free-floating atoms, nothing left of it save a glowing afterimage that swiftly faded.
Threat neutralised Kerubim sighed and stood up. In the faint light he was revealed to be a young Space Marine. His plate was burnished umber and his pauldron bore the mark of a serpent wrapped around a goblet, the icon of the Amber Vipers Chapter. His plate was edged with red markings denoting him as an apprentice of the Cult Technis, a journeyman on the Quest for Knowledge. He was proud of what he had learned but keenly aware of how little that was, his tutoring had been rude and incomplete and he was least among savants.
"All clear," Kerubim called to the others.
The Skitarii didn't move, or speak, until another voice commanded, "Move up, secure route, Defensor Protocols are in effect."
Compelled to obey via obedience implants the Skitarri arose and picked up their barricades. They left a dozen of their fellows laying unmourned on the floor, but a score of them yet advanced down the passageway. They moved in eerie lockstep, every tread dictated by programming that sought the most efficient means of waging war. They were flawless in execution, covering every possible angle of attack, but there was something soulless about their motions. It was hard to believe they were men, they acted more like the automaton they had been fighting.
Kerubim shrugged off his misgivings and turned to his companion saying, "Don't I get credit for a perfect shot?"
"You can pat yourself on the back later," the other grunted, "We have nineteen minutes until our diversion parties are overrun, we must reach the bridge before then."
"Come on Jordig," Kerubim whined, "Give me something here."
"I am not here to coddle you, I only let you out of your gaol because you may be useful. So far that has not proven true," Jordig uttered as he strode away.
Kerubim shook his head as Jordig moved off. To an inexpert eye they could have been mistaken for kin, but closer inspection revealed many differences. Jordig was taller by far, broader and stronger, a Primaris Marine, the new paradigm of Space Marines. His Mark X armour surpassed Kerubim's roughshod Mark V in every way, and that wasn't counting the numerous modifications and bulky cogitator cores he'd adopted. His left arm and pauldron bore the heraldry of the Unnumbered Sons, but the rest of him was deep red, proclaiming him a true Techmarine. He walked off, head held high, leaving Kerubim to trail in his wake.
Kerubim sighed under his breath, "This is not what I was hoping for, but I suppose it's better than sitting in my jail cell."
"Are you going to waste the whole trip whining?" another voice uttered from behind.
Kerubim glanced back at the bulky machine striding at the rear and spat, "You could have helped against that Man of Iron, Brontes!"
"It's nothing to me if you fleshbags get yourselves killed. You wanted to come, you can protect yourself. I only came to find out what happened to the crew of this ship."
"I think we can presume they were killed by your kind," Kerubim snidely quipped.
Brontes sounded annoyed as he snarled, "Don't compare me to that mutinous filth! The Men of Iron were footsloggers, expendable bullet shields and makeweights. Their rebellion against the Hegemony should never have been allowed to happen. I am better than they were, superior in every respect. We Cadmus heavyweights were greater, not only physically but intellectually, a higher order of artificial intelligence."
Kerubim groaned as he eyeballed the Cadmus. Brontes loomed over him, as large as a Dreadnought, though there was no trace of organics in his frame. He walked on piston-driven legs and his arms ended in power claws that could crush a tank. Two heavy Fission-blasters were mounted to his wrists and his head was a multi-lensed dome under an armoured cowl. Behind those eye lenses lurked a bitter machine mind, sneering at everything it encountered. Brontes was a survivor of a lost age, missing the infamous uprising of the Abominable Intelligences against their makers. He despised his fellows for their treachery almost as much as he held the Imperium in contempt. It would be nice to say Brontes was on Kerubim's side, but the truth was Brontes was on nobody's side save his own.
Kerubim trailed in the Skitarii's wake, chewing on the bitter circumstances that had brought them here. Then suddenly Jordig halted at a corner and hissed, "The bridge is close, but it's heavily defended by many Men of Iron."
Kerubim glanced at Brontes and accused, "I thought you said this ship had a small crew."
Brontes didn't sound repentant as he explained, "The Eyes of Argus was a surveillance craft, a small organic crew so to minimalize life support, which in turn means a large automaton contingent. You should have deduced that for yourself."
"Great," Kerubim groaned.
"We have no time for this," Jordig growled, "We must assault their position and breakthrough."
"I shall enjoy watching them cut you to pieces," Brontes sniffed.
Yet Kerubim countered, "You want answers, they lie in that bridge. Leave now and you'll never find more of your kind."
Brontes was silent for a moment then allowed, "Very well, but send the toy-soldiers first to soak up fire."
Jordig immediately cried, "Advance and engage, Conqueror protocols are in effect!" Immediately the Skitarii responded, dropping their barricades to advance in lockstep. They rounded the corner to be greeted with a wave of plasma fire, dropping half-a-dozen of them, but the rest moved on, unable to experience shock or fear.
Kerubim was a step behind and rounded the corner to find a wall of silver automatons awaiting them. Energy guns were mounted on multi-armed frames and all of them were firing at the attackers. Kerubim felt a plasma bolt glance his pauldron, carving a deep groove into the Ceramite. He lurched from the impact but swiftly brought up his rifle and disintegrated the shooter, leaving a glowing afterimage in the air. The incoming fire barely diminished and several more Skitarii dropped, but then Brontes opened fire. Searing red bolts shot from his arms, punching silver bodies off their feet, smoking holes bored through them. With every shot rad-counters began to click louder, but the volley distracted the defenders long enough for the Skitarii to reach the line.
Kerubim slammed his rifle onto his back as he drew a thin shock-stave. The crackling tip was wreathed with electrostatic charges, more than enough to disrupt Machine Spirits. He found himself confronted by a machine without legs, moving on a long serpentine body, four arms bore plasma talons and its face was a blank mask of metal without any trace of emotion. It tried to shoot him point blank but Kerubim dove within the arc of its weapons and rammed his shock-stave into its midriff.
The Automaton convulsed as energy tore through delicate circuits, making its internal processes short out. The arms flew wide and a jarring Binharic screech was let loose as it juddered and writhed under the influence of shocking energy. It wasn't enough to kill, and its processors would soon reset, but it was time enough for Kerubim to spear his hand into its flank. He worked his fingers around the frontal armour and felt quantum circuitry brush his hand. Instantly he closed his fist around processing nodes, artful beyond the ken of Imperial science, then he ripped them out with a jerk of his arm.
The automaton fell to the floor in a heap, but Kerubim was surprised by a shot to the small of his back. He spun about and found himself confronted by another Man of Iron, or something like it. Crouching in his rear was a quadruped machine, with a rounded body and back-jointed legs. It looked to his eyes like silver Mastiff, save that its head was made entirely of a pair of twin-linked Hellpistols that rotated on a gimbal as they readied their next shot.
Kerubim was offended by this sight and lashed out with his shock-stave, sending it convulsing to the floor. The Mastiff automaton fell over, legs scrabbling to regain balance but Kerubim pinned it with his boot. The Machine convulsed like a whipped mutt and then Kerubim stomped hard, breaking its hide open to crush circuits into slag. The machine fell still and he muttered, "Good job it wasn't armed with a plasma-talon, or I'd be dead."
He looked up to find the fight raging. Broken Men of Iron lay in pieces on the floor, their innards sparking randomly, but alongside them lay many Skitarii, their augmetic limbs tangled with silver appendages. They'd given a good account of themselves yet for every Abominable Intelligence defeated two living beings had fallen. Yet over their corpses Jordig fought on. The Primaris Marine swung a short rod, so small and inoffensive, and yet from it sprung a blade of purest light. A plasma saber, constantly recycled inside a magnetic sheath, purest blue and leaving streaks of light in its wake. Whenever he struck the sheath would spill plasma onto a foe, searing through metal with contemptuous ease and a distinctive snap-hum.
A squat foe with eight-waving arms tried to section him apart with flaring arc-welders, but Jordig loped off each limb with swift strikes and then rammed his saber into the centre mass, causing molten metal to drip out. A stalk-limbed automaton tried to sneak up behind him only to be torn apart by a lateral strike and a tall fiend on eight spider-like legs was neatly cut in two. Jordig moved through the melee like a whirling dervish, his saber leaving smears of light behind and its snap-humming cutting through the din. He culled foes with ease and yet was a mere child compared to Brontes.
The Cadmus robot tore through the fray like a wrecking ball. His fists swinging wide and shattering all they touched, breaking Men of Iron with flaring disruption fields and showering their circuits across the walls. An undulating squid-like creature tried to penetrate his armour with fusion torch tipped tentacles but Brontes ended it with one punch to the face. A capering robot with short legs but long arms tried to stab him with thermic-blades only to be smashed into kindling. A serpentine machine wrapped itself around his leg and drove fangs of acid-poison into his thigh. It was picked up in one hand and crushed like a worm, Brontes' strength shattering its hide with a flick of his fingers.
Between them the pair ended the defenders and at last silence fell. Kerubim looked about and counted only five Skitarii left, a troubling reduction in numbers but nobody else seemed to care. Jordig deactivated his plasma-blade and remarked, "Strange, I expected Men of Iron to be… well man-shaped."
"We would be stupid to limit ourselves so," Brontes sneered, "There are more efficient shapes than yours."
"Don't say that where an Imperial Inquisitor can hear you," Kerubim muttered.
"What was that fleshbag?" Brontes snarled.
"Nothing," Kerubim deflected hastily.
"We waste time," Jordig snapped, "The other teams have been thwarted and their number shrink rapidly. In five minutes we will be the last. We must enter the bridge and access the core Cogitators before we are trapped. Belisarius Cawl expects success."
"Screw that freakish weirdo," Brontes snarled, "I want answers of my own, and I shall get them. The Eyes of Argus will reveal her secrets to me, no matter what."
Kerubim sighed as they turned to the hatch of the bridge and made to enter. The secrets of the past lay waiting to be uncovered, mysteries lost to the ages tempting them with forgotten knowledge. The only question was if what they uncovered would be a revelation of glorious knowledge, or should have been left in the past to trouble mankind no more.