Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 234
Brontes came over the lip of the pit far too slowly, the coarse wires whining with tension. He fumed as wan daylight spilled into his optic sensor,s revealing a battleground. Down the shallow slopes darting blue shapes harried retreating Skitarii, flitting to and fro as they tore into the backs of running Tech-Guard. Further out larger Grav-skimmers closed, bringing overwhelming force to bear. He calculated the result in a microsecond, the humans were about to be smashed, unless he did something about it.
"Get us out of this sodding contraption!" Wulfe yelled beside him. Reaching hands grabbed at their frames and heaved them to solid ground, while Brontes set his vox to a private link and spat, "Glittering freaks, they dare attack us!"
Kerubim struggled out of his own harness as he asked, "I take it they weren't this dangerous in your day?"
"Those glass-spindles were cave-dwelling primitives when the Hegemony found them. They didn't even know what the stars looked like. We raised them up, taught them to live on the surface, gave them gifts of science and technology and this is how they repay us!"
Wulfe snorted, "That's what you get for marching into someone else's home and telling them they have to do things your way."
"So we may have made them throw up a statue or two of us, that's nothing. They should remember us with gratitude!"
"Not with the way your lot ended," Wulfe muttered cryptically.
Finally the last clip was pulled from their frame and Kerubim cried, "We have to get in there!"
"Stay behind me and try not to die," Brontes growled as he stepped forth to give battle.
With a sweep of his optics Brontes assessed the fight and his artificial mind ran strategic simulations at rates the finest savant of Mars would have been awed by. This is was what he was built for, the reason the Cadmus existed. Men of Iron had been expendable foot-soldiers, Soulbound commanded grand campaigns from on high, they were made to fight wars but Cadmus were made to end them. In a flash of cogitation Brontes concluded the Skitarii would be cut down before they could reform their defences, they needed time to regroup. The most optimal path presented itself to his mind and he judged the armaments of himself, Kerubim and Wulfe were sufficient to the task, so with a loping stride he took off down the slope.
Racing tech-guard dashed past, lugging heavy bolters and multi-lasers to new firing positions. Others stood their ground and formed a rearguard, shooting at darting shapes with Galvanic Rifle, Hellgun and arc projector. They were beset by darting wedges, with twisted crystalline Xenos riding on high, keeping the pressure up with hit and run raids. Many had fallen already, but not enough to turn the tide. The Jathyr were winning, but they had yet to face Brontes.
The Cadmus robot lifted his arms and let loose a crackling red orb of destruction. Atomocindo, Fission-blasters as the mangled tongue of this age daubed them, were powerful weapons and his aim was nigh-perfect. The red orb slammed into a blurring Grav-skimmer and blew the rear end clean off, sending the trio of riders spinning out of control to slam into the ground in a fountain of crystalline body parts. A fraction of Brontes' consciousness noted the Jathyr appeared to have evolved in the past twenty-thousand years, larger, bulkier and denser than previously encountered. A subroutine began running speculations on possible warrior-caste breeding cycles, but the greater part of his awareness was tasked to war.
Brontes strode down the slope and fired again and again, Atomocindo glowing cherry red as repeated firings tested their limits. Crackling red orbs struck Grav-skimmers from the sky. A few at first, then half-a-dozen, a dozen, a score. Brontes' kill count mounted rapidly, increasing with every shot as did his rad-counter. His weapons were designed to obliterate foes, not only physically but down to the cellular level. With every shot he polluted this world, ensuring the ground would be tainted for decades to come. When the Hegemony built Cadmus robots they had meant to ensure whatever enemy they destroyed stayed dead.
A golden ray of light disintegrated a Grav-skimmer's rear end and Kerubim cried, "We're holding them!"
"Not for long," Brontes snarled, "Here come the rest."
From the bottom of the hill flew larger grav-skimmers, bulky barges carrying scores of Jathyr. Trilling shrieks rose in challenge as Fractal-blades waved threateningly. A subroutine offered a translation but Brontes preferred to respond more directly. He swung his arms about and put two fission-blasts into the prow of the nearest craft, blowing it apart and sending broken bodies spilling to the ground. The Jathyr didn't like that, a wedge of prows slewed about and came to halt, letting glassy warriors jump to the ground and bring their weapons to bear.
"Get behind me!" Brontes roared to the others as he charged straight at the Jathyr. Interference guns flashed and Brontes' frontal armour rang with explosions, but his plate was thick and soaked up the fire. He hit the line of crystal warriors like a wrecking ball, smashing into them with his fists swinging. Lightning wreathed fists slammed a Jathyr bodily away, its form shattering to spray shards across its fellows. A swing to the left broke a pair to jagged bits and a punch sent one sailing high, raining its innards across the field. The trilling fiends closed in, trying to sink Fractal-blades into his joints but Brontes met them in kind, always driving forward, always attacking. He showed no respite, forcing them to meet him in battle, where he broke them with his mighty strength.
Kerubim was a few steps behind, picking off survivors with his Adrathic rifle, leaving glowing afterimages in his wake. Wulfe however was right at his side, gravity hammer a constant swirl of hazing distortion. The Squat wielded it with both hands, slamming it into the massed ranks of foes with wild abandon. The Gravity field flared at every contact, imploding foes into crushed balls of dense crystal. He swung it at a pair of Jathyr and the field caught them both, compacting two living beings into a space smaller than a human hand. Another tried to stab him in the flank but Wulfe brought his weapon's head about and let loose a blast from its tip that compressed it into a tiny ball. He never looked twice at them, that was the strange thing about him, he never checked his kills. He destroyed anything in his path and moved on; sure he'd dealt with the threat utterly.
Wulfe slammed a Jathyr in the spine, killing it with one blow as he roared, "Unbreakable, unyielding, unstoppable! That's how the Rotundus fight!"
"You're very brave so long as they have their backs to you," Brontes sneered, "Just like the ambush at Beraiu!"
"It was you lot that ambushed us!" Wulfe snarled, "And we broke your trap over your dustbin heads!"
"Can we kill now and argue later?!" Kerubim howled as he shot another Jathyr.
Brontes laid into the foe, crushing everything within reach. The Jathyr wavered in the face of his onslaught, their advance faltering as they swirled around his mote of resistance. Brontes judged the trio had stalled the advanced with their counter-charge and bought the Skitarii time to regroup, but his reasoning was proved flawed. From the rear came a quintet of Grav-skimmers, heavily loaded with strangely curved crystal monoliths.
The Jathyr pulled back as the sleds slowed and their rears dipped to drop the lumps onto the ground. Brontes paused as he tried to calculate what was happening, but then the monoliths shimmered oddly and began to move. The largest monolith quivered as the other four rolled over the ground towards it, attaching themselves at the end and mid-points. His strategic assessments came up blank as he tried to grasp what was happening, was it a weapon, a defence bastion, some form of bomb, he did not know. Then the smaller monoliths flexed smoothly, bending around the joints and he perceived what it was: a war machine, one that rose on two stout legs and stretched arms wide. A War-Golem, bigger and heavier than Brontes himself.
"Frak…" Kerubim breathed in dismay.
Yet Wulfe yelled, "Ugly speck of grit, I'm gonna line my hall with your guts!"
The War-Golem let loose a deep and reverberating shriek and threw itself at them. A golden ray clipped its shoulder as Kerubim tried to shoot it, but a mere handspan of crystal flashed into nothingness. Brontes knew ranged fire would not work so went to meet it head-on, fists swinging for the centre mass. They met in a clash of metal on crystal, blows ringing loud in the thin air. His fists slammed into the bulk and crazed the crystal front, but in return an energised blow to his side fractured his armour plating. Interference blasts, somehow generated by the ends of its arms. His armour crumpled under the blow, making his circuits jar with distortion.
Brontes roared as he swung again, slamming fists into it over and over. Crystal crazed with cracks but would not break and in return those dread fists pummelled his frame, battering him senseless. Being hit by a wrecking ball would be less damaging and Brontes' systems wailed as blows rained down, matching his furious assault in kind. He tried to find a weak spot but it didn't have any articulated joints, no exposed wiring or pistons to break. It was as durable as a boulder and never stopped attacking him.
A blow to his hip made his motive systems falter and he fell to one knee, arms raised to fend off blows. Armour was hanging off him in tatters and power levels dropped rapidly, the probability of survival was low. Brontes was about to lose this fight. For a second he considered activating his kill-switch, he could cause his power core to overload and take this monstrosity with him, but then another force intervened.
From behind Wulfe charged, gravity hammer swinging for its back. The War-Golem lurched to one side at the last moment and the weapon caught the join of two monoliths. A thunderous crack rang out and one arm dropped off, hitting the ground and rolling away. It rolled several metres, then came to a dead halt, before reversing course and heading back to rejoin the greater mass. Brontes however saw the opening and took it. He surged upright and wrapped both arms around the vulnerable War-Golem, slamming his chest against its bulk. The remaining arm drove into his side, crumpling armour but Brontes hung on tight, squeezing for all he was worth. The Cadmus tried to crush the alien war machine in his grip, exerting every pound of force he could, but the crystal would not shatter. They were deadlocked, neither able to break the other and in moments the lost limb would return and this fight would be over.
Brontes rode the battering as he looked for any chance to change the outcome and then he saw it. Deep within the War-golem, under layers of murky crystal a vague form could be seen, a domed head crowned by twisted antlers. A Jathyr, buried deep inside the war machine. This thing had a pilot, which meant it could die.
Brontes braced himself and then heaved upright, lifting the War-golem off the ground as he roared, "Hit it in the back!"
"I cannae reach that high ye useless rustbucket!" Wulfe shouted.
Brontes slammed the Golem back down with a mighty heave and shouted, "You can now!"
The pilot within reeled from the impact, only to be stunned as a Gravity Hammer slammed into the rear. The War-golem lurched forward, only to be met by Brontes' fist slamming into the front, making the crystal crack even more. Another blow, another. Gravity hammer to the rear, disruption wreathed fists to the front, smashing the war machine from both sides.
"Break ye filthy scunner!" Wulfe roared as he drove his weapon into its back.
"Die you glittering freak!" Brontes snarled as he smote it with his greatest blows.
The War-golem was falling apart, crystal shards flying with every blow. Then both hammer and fist struck together and the matter of it came apart. Crystal flexed too far, cracks ran too deep and with a mighty boom the War-golem shattered, spraying fragments like a cloud of mist. The pilot was left exposed in the ruins of its machine, only for Brontes' fist to catch it and reduce it to a spray of crystal. The War-golem was defeated at last.
Brontes lurched back, damage inputs screaming in his mind. Self-repair routines were already in motion, nanocytes racing to the damaged areas to rebuild at an atomic level. But he knew it would be too slow, the battle was not over yet. He staggered about and found his worst fears confirmed, Jathyr, hundreds of them, ringing the combatants on all fronts. Every direction was filled with foes, every avenue of advance or retreat cut off. They were alone in a sea of enemies.
Brontes looked at the surrounding hordes and grunted, "I think we can take them…"
"You take the three thousand on the left, I'll take the five thousand on the right," Wulfe spat.
"We only have to hold until the Skitarii rally," Kerubim gulped.
"They're not coming," Wulfe hissed.
Brontes turned one eye lens up the hill and saw it was true. The Skitarii were in full retreat, not even trying to rebuild their defences. The Tech-guard had abandoned the fight, racing to reach the shuttles over the crest of the hill. They had left the trio to die, leaving the battlefield to the Jathyr. Kerubim, Wulfe and Brontes had been left to die. Brontes calculated their chances of surviving were zero and yet refused to admit it. He set his arms and charged both Atomocindo as he growled, "Well then, death it is, but let's make sure these glittering freaks never forget how many we killed before the end."