Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 251
The darkness under the world hung heavy upon Ruuka, ever-present and hostile. Thin stablights allowed the surviving crewmen to see, but whenever they turned their backs darkness pressed in, a chill presence at the nape of their necks. Ruuka had visited many buried ruins, crawled through crumbling fastness's and forgotten vaults, but never had he experienced anything like this. The dark felt alive somehow, threatening and close, like a predator waiting to pounce.
To distract himself he looked around the motley band. A few dozen surviving crewmen, all huddled together against the malevolent shadows. They were scared, and he understood why. The race from the automated defences had left them with nothing. They had no supplies, no equipment, no food or water. Wandering through the dark tunnels had sapped their strength, leaving them haggard and drained. They were no Tech-priests, their endurance was limited and this place had mysteries all its own.
Initial scans had revealed a bunker complex under the surface, but that was a gross underestimation. The network of rooms and tunnels ran deep, and twisted often, a maddening wheel of geometry that left Ruuka stumped. His attempts to map the underworld had come up short, following no logical progression he could discern. Twists and random turns had baffled him, often leading them back in circles, weaker and thirstier than ever. Ruuka had seriously wondered if they would die of thirst down here, till Krusin came to the rescue. After hours of silent complementation she had announced the bunker was a logic puzzle based on human DNA, with rooms and passages mapping chromosomes and RNA, only someone who knew the human genome could crack this puzzle. With certainty she had led them through, steering a course Ruuka would never have guessed, only to run into a new problem.
Ruuka turned his eyes to the latest setback, a shimmering shield filling a broad chamber. It was like no forcefield Ruuka had ever seen, in the illumination of their stablights it shimmered like pearl, reflections wavering and hazy but utterly impenetrable. Weapon's fire had not marred it and every trick he knew foiled, not that he could perform many without equipment. Frustrated it had fallen to the Adepts to find a way through, Dannye and Krusin sinking into silent Noospheric conference as they contemplated the mysteries of this barrier.
Ruuka was angry at the setback but mostly at himself. He should have foreseen there would be obstacles, he should have known the ancients would leave defences. The attack on the surface was entirely predictable, and he should have been ready. He'd been hasty and sloppy, too concerned with his gene-father catching up, too obsessed with proving himself and not alert to the dangers. He wished he could change how things had played out, but it was too late. They were committed to this course, no going back, no forgiveness for what they had done. All they could do was press on, and trust they would be vindicated by the discoveries ahead.
Suddenly Dannye and Krusin stirred, making the crewmen yelp in surprise. The Secutor lifted his brow and without preamble declared, "This is a Brane shield!"
Ruuka was used to Mechanicus bluntness and asked, "And what is a Brane shield?"
Dannye stepped up to the barrier and moved his hands over the surface as he explained, "In the writings of the Binary Apostle Breskia it is theorised that there are many dimensions to reality. Not only the Warp and Realspace but nigh-infinite realities between. It was hypothesised that regions of the Materium could be held within such a dimension, shifting a structure into its own discrete pocket of spacetime."
Ruuka cast his eyes over the barrier and said, "We're looking at another dimension?"
"The membrane between dimensions," Krusin corrected, "It is an extremely obscure theorem, not even taught in seminaries anymore. Thankfully the Lazarus Progression specialises in ancient tracts and treatises."
Ruuka rolled his eyes at the boast and pressed, "Can you get us inside?"
"That is the right question," Krusin agreed.
Dannye slapped his palms together and drew forth a Repulsor-stave. He gingerly applied the tip to the Brane shield and as they connect a ripple swam across its surface. The crewmen drew close as they watched the Secutor at work, doing something inexplicable to the grav-generators in his stave. Ruuka watched with interest as strange ripples swam over the barrier, coloured distortions making it appear a rainbow of clashing hues. Minutes crawled by as Dannye sought a way through and Ruuka fought the nagging thought that he couldn't do it, that their quest had come to a screeching halt right here. When the moment came, he almost missed it.
The Brane shield turned pure white, then surged forward, enveloping Dannye and sweeping over the rest. One blink of the eye would have been enough to miss it, one instant they were in a dark and lonely cavern, the next they were somewhere else. Ruuka gasped as a wave of moist hot air drowned his lungs, air so wet it was almost like drowning. Heavy fronds battered his face, leaves dripping with condensation and tangled vines tugging at his boots. Trees pressed in everywhere, surrounding him with heavy boles and the smell of mulch pressed into his nostrils. Noises of birdsong and shrieking mammals filled his ears, as wind tussled the canopy above.
"Dannye?!" he called, "Krusin?!"
"Over here!" a cry came and he forced his way towards it.
"Where are you?!"
"Follow my voice!"
He forced aside a curtain of vines and found the adepts similarly beset, struggling to make headway through a tangled rainforest. Other voices called out, crewmen alarmed by what they had been swept up in and it took many minutes to gather everyone together. All of them appeared confused and dismayed, unable to understand what had happened and questions rang loud.
"What is this place?" Ruuka asked.
"Unknown," Dannye stated, "My magneto-compass is spinning in circles and my inertial-guidance matrix is dead".
"Are we still on the same planet?" Ruuka pressed.
"Yes and no," Krusin answered, "We are in a discrete dimension, separate to the Materium we know."
"We're inside the Brane shield, but what is this forest doing here? Who puts a rainforest inside a pocket dimension?!"
"Unknown, but I hypothesise it may be another layer of defence around the Nanoswarm."
"Damned peculiar defence," Ruuka spat, "But I can't see any alternative save to press on."
"Agreed," Dannye said flatly.
Ruuka picked a direction at random and pressed on, navigating a course around thick trees. Birds looked down as they passed, their plumage oily and multi-hued lizards scampered away from his feet, their skins changing colour to blend in as they ran. Wetness clung to his boots and his back grew soaked by the moisture air. A spider with sixteen legs hissed as he broke its webs and a serpent watched them pass with slitted eyes, its hunger tempered by the man's size. Still he kept his hands near his weapons at all times, prepared for danger but unsure what form it would take. He did not understand what the ancients had done here, why the Hegemony would bother to conceal a rainforest from passing visitors. If this was a way to hide their Nanoswarm it was indeed confusing, but no real obstacle. If he'd designed a final guard for something precious, he'd have stashed a Titan Maniple in here.
His ears pricked up as he heard running water and pushed aside some hanging vines to find a riverbank. Ahead a stream of clear water ran, without trace of mud or leaf, cutting through the forest like a knife. Clear sky at last became visible, bright blue and cloudless, but oddly without a sun to be seen anywhere. Ruuka felt troubled for a reason he couldn't explain, but the crewmen didn't care, they pushed past him with glad cries, throwing their hands into the water to drink deep.
"No, wait!" Ruuka called in alarm but was ignored. The crewmen were dying of thirst and sank to the bank, heedless of danger. It was not slow coming. A man shoved his whole head into the water, only to jerk and thrash as something bit deep. Men screamed as red blood stained the pure water, only to find themselves under attack. Ruuka blinked as fat serpents each five metres long burst from the river, skins translucent to make them invisible underwater. They surged high, leaping for the warm flesh of men with razor teeth glinting. The crewmen screamed as scores of serpents jumped upon them, massive jaws sinking deep into soft flesh.
Ruuka pulled his bolter free and let rip, shooting at anything that came near. Dannye swept his Repulsor-stave about to dash a serpent from the air as Krusin picked off one with a Meson-beam. It wasn't enough, the serpents kept coming and then something worse appeared. Drawn by the smell of blood and death a massive reptile appeared among the far trees, standing ten metres tall on two legs, with a head bigger than a man and a heavy tail to counter-balance its mass. Black eyes saw the feeding frenzy and it let rip a bone-shaking roar as it dove into the river, head stooping low to snatch up a man and swallow him whole.
Ruuka stood aghast but his hand rose, firing a series of bolts to stitch explosions across its flank. Skin parted and blood slowed, but strangely. The blood was not red but silver, dripping for moments before retreating back into the holes he had made. Ruuka couldn't believe his eyes, the wounds were closing up, skin flowing like water to make good the injury. In moments the damage was gone, unmade like it never was, the creature left unharmed as it fixed its eyes upon him.
"Run!" he yelled as he turned to flee, Dannye and Krusin in tow. They left the screaming crewmen to die as they fled, pushing into the deepest forest. The creature roared as its bulk did not allow it to follow, prevented by the mass of trees. Ruuka didn't trust it not to try though and kept running, fighting to getaway. He ran till he could hear no more screams, then stopped, leaning against the tree as his heart hammered in his chest.
"What… was that?" he gasped.
"Pyrotenosaur," Krusin said, "Native to Gamma Eridan, a species that has been extinct for five thousand years. The serpents are Groaoa eels, native to Verteas, another extinct species."
"Not so extinct," Dannye spat, "Did records say anything of regenerative abilities?"
"No, they did not."
A nasty suspicion crept over Ruuka and he pushed off the tree, drawing his sword as he did so. Krusin cocked her head and said, "What are you doing?"
"Testing a theory," Ruuka replied as he pressed the tip of his sword to the bark and cut a deep furrow. From the deep cut ran sap, silver in hue and glimmering like mercury. Like the saurian it was slow and sluggish, pausing after a moment, then reversing direction to retreat back into the wound. The tree's bark pulled tight, closing the wound and unmaking the damage, leaving no trace behind.
"Oh holy Cog," Ruuka breathed as the truth was revealed.
"Error," Kruisn stated, "That is not supposed to happen with this variant of fauna."
"No, because that's not a tree," Ruuka breathed, "It's the Nanoswarm."
Dannye sounded baffled as he stated, "I do not understand why a tree would carry Nanocytes."
Ruuka whispered, "Because the tree doesn't have Nanocytes, it is Nanocyte, all of it. Everything here, the whole forest, the trees, the animals and birds and grass, the water and the rocks, they're all made of Nanocytes. The Nanoswarm recreated a world out of itself. Everything inside the Brane shield is the Nanoswarm, we're standing in the middle of it!"
"Impossible!" Dannye snapped.
But before Ruuka could answer a deep monotone voice rang out, "Information: you hypothesise correctly."
Ruuka spun about, sword in hand as he cried, "Who goes there?!"
From the trees and the rocks a voice called back, "Information: We are pain. We are loneliness, We are an eternity alone in the dark."
"You can talk?!" Krusin gasped as she flinched away from a tree.
"Information: your other units have been absorbed. Their data and thought processes integrated, their language is ours."
The trio pressed back to back, trying to find where the voice was originating from, but there was no origin. The air itself was resonating, the voice everywhere and everything. A terrible sense of dread stole over Ruuka as he swept the shadows for threats, sure that he spied universal motion sweep the forest, the suggestion of the whole world turning its attention upon them. It felt like being inside the mouth of an enormous predator, just waiting for it to close its jaws and consume them. They should never have come here, he thought, they should never have dared to find this nightmare.
Dannye called out, "Why did you make this forest?"
"Information: it is our purpose. To absorb templates for later recreation. Integrate all data, learn all that can be learned and preserve it forever."
Ruuka swallowed nervously and asked, "And what do you want from us?"
"Information: we want your data."
Suddenly the rainforest came alive, surging towards them from all directions. Trees moved like reeds, vines shot out of nowhere and grass clawed upwards, wrapping itself around their legs. Ruuka yelled in anger and terror as swept his sword about but to no avail for he was beset by the forest, it's mass piling over him with terrifying motion. His limbs were bound and his body pinned in place, then the Nanoswarm truly went to work. Microscopic machines swept over him and through him, deconstructing his mass one atom at a time. Molecule by molecule he was flayed alive, his mass adding to the Nanoswarm as his knowledge and thoughts were measured and recorded, integrated and filed forever. In a heartbeat the man called Ruuka ceased to exist as he was absorbed into the Hungering, all he was and all he knew enjoined to it forevermore.