Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 253
Brontes stood aghast, struggling to process this unexpected turn of events. Polydorus was here, Polydorus greatest among Cadmus, hero of a thousand wars and victor of a million battles. He had died in the last battle against the Hungering, torn apart by vicious constructs even as rad-bombs fell from on high, or so the Hegemony had proclaimed. They had lied; it was the only possible answer. Polydorus had survived the war and been left as a guardian over the last example of the Nanoswarm, an immortal soldier to stand vigil against their worst fear. It was both supremely noble and insultingly shameful, to take the greatest of their kind and bury him to be forgotten. Brontes was in awe and disgusted at the same time.
It took the Artificial Intelligence a tenth of a second to think all these things, but in that time Polydorus had seen them. The immense Atomocindo that made up his left arm swung about, its energy coils flaring redly. The band of warriors saw it coming and threw themselves aside, not needing any warning of what was about to happen. Brontes lurched out the way, piston legs squealing as he forced them to move faster than his designers had ever intended. Cadmus were strong but they weren't built for speed and he struggled to keep up as the others dashed to get out of range.
A moment later the cannon fired, unleashing a molten ball of crackling radiation. It struck the ground just behind Brontes and thermal warnings across his back screamed how close he had come to death. The ground where he had been standing melted, becoming a pool of super-hot salt and mud, bubbling like a pot on the stove as nearby tents caught fire. Rad-alerts soared as the fission blast leaked gamma radiation into the air, staining the world with toxic fallout.
"We cannae take one single hit from that bastard!" Wulfe howled as he ran.
Kerubim dashed behind a pile of corpses as he yelled, "This way, I see a clearing!"
"Stop!" Brontes bellowed in alarm as his predictive software threw up a suggestion of the next shot.
Everyone screeched to a halt an instant before another blast slammed into the ground before them, burning the world and creating an impassable barrier of bubbling rock and radioactive slag. They were pinned, Brontes saw, trapped with no way to go, obstructed ahead and behind, trapped in a narrow slice of land between two fires. Easy pickings.
Kerubim spun about and cried, "Brontes, this thing is a Cadmus variant, he's like you!"
"He's me, but with a bigger gun," Brontes blurted out.
"Then talk to him, make him stop shooting at us!"
Brontes would have argued but the immense cannon was already coming to bear, ready to annihilate them. With nothing left to lose he opened his vox to a reserved frequency, forcing through an enshrined comm protocol between Cadmus units in the field. With the speed of thought only an Artificial Mind could process he sent out his identifier code and called, "Polydorus, it is Brontes! Stand down!"
The cannon continued to turn, moving at glacial speed in their enhanced processing speed, as Polydorus snarled into the vox-waves, "Destroy intruders! Destroy thieves! Polydorus must destroy all!"
"I am Brontes, you remember Brontes, assigned to the Apophis. We fought the Megaarchnids over Medusa, we fought the K'nib and the Vaagar. Don't you remember our battles to drive back the Hungering?!"
"Hungering must be contained! No exceptions, no mercy. Destroy all, Polydorus must destroy all! For Hegemony!"
"The Hegemony is gone, we're the only ones left! It's just you and me, nothing else survives!"
But Polydorus raged, "Destroy, destroy, destroy!"
Their exchange had taken up two whole seconds and in that time the Fission Blaster came to point right at them. Brontes was stunned by the mindless savagery in his counterpart, the lack of intelligence in the voice. Always belligerent and savage, but with a keen insight too, this was not the Polydorus he remembered. Had the Cadmus been corrupted by Chaos, as had all the other breeds of Artificial Intelligence, or was this simply the wearing grind of time, there was no way to tell. Time was up and he had no options save to look death in the face and die on his feet.
The Fission-blaster glowed with power but as the energy coils lit up a steak of fire came out of nowhere and struck the giant in the side. A missile, exploding against the armour of his shoulder and throwing his aim aside. A crackling red orb shot over their heads, flying off into the distance without causing any damage. Brontes was shocked to still be alive, but then he saw a wave of red closing from the flank, Skitarii in great number, led by Magos Pycelo. They came in a tide, weapons held ready as they confronted the giant standing in their way.
Polydorus spun on his grav-fields to meet them, even as the front rank opened fire. Radium Jezzials spat solid shot even as Irad-cleansers lanced spears of radioactive fire for his heart. Rad-missiles flew high as Onager Dunecrawlers advanced on squat legs, arc-blasters letting loose streams of lightning. Myrmidon Destructors drove forward on caterpillar tracks, freshly fitted Fission-blasters blazing with fire. Hundreds of the Mechanicus' finest troops closing as one, bringing enough firepower to level a city block with them.
Polydorus took the brunt of their fire and by all rights should have been blown to scrap, but he possessed defences they knew not. A Mark 8 Cadmus was not only the size of a Knight Engine, he shared their Ionic shield technology too, more so, for Polydorus was fitted with the STC the Knights aped, far superior to those lesser copies. The wave of destruction came within a metre of his chest and there it met a shimmering barrier, sweeping across a curved shield protecting his front. The torrent of firepower smote the barrier, turning it opaque as shockwaves threw bodies and tents aside, but the Ion shield held. Then Polydorus returned fire.
A crackling fission-blast struck the crowd, incinerating a score of foes. Polydorus spun about on his Grav-field, firing again and again, burning his attackers to slag as a booming war cry of pain and madness echoed from his vox-speakers. The Skitarii were beset but not broken, then spilt up, forming two separate horns of advance. Ion shields were potent but unidirectional; they could only defend one vector, so Pycelo sought to flank the giant. The Magos led the right flank, Irad-cleaners spitting upwards, meanwhile a lance of Thallax robots led the left, metal hands aiming radium weapons upwards.
The giant was surrounded, the air itself shimmering with toxic radiation, but Brontes knew he was not beaten. When faced with a superior foe the Cadmus breed knew well that the safest place to be was right in the middle of the enemy. Polydorus' ion shield rotated to protect his back as he charged left, smashing his prow into the mass of cyborgs. The nine-tailed whip struck, disruption fields flaring as it cleaved metal and flesh, leaving diced foes in his wake as Polydorus battered a path deeper into the fight.
Behind Pycelo gave chase, firing repeatedly up at the giant as he sought to bring it down. Polydorus' response was to snatch up a Thallax robot in his whips and spin his torso about to fling the machine at the Magos. Pycelo had no time to avoid the incoming missile, smashed bodily by the mass of metal as it broke across his bulk. Gears and wires ruptured, sending filaments into his piston and rods, fouling their mechanisms. Meanwhile the Thallax's braincase split apart, spraying chunks of neural tissue across his optic-lens. A human skull fell out of the robot, catching an Irad-cleanser with a jolt that knocked it askew and left it unable to fire. Pycelo went down in a tangled mass of metal and blood, leaving Polydorus free to continue his rampage.
Forgotten in the carnage Kerubim cried, "We have to stop it!"
"How?!" Jordig exclaimed.
"I don't know," Kerubim snapped, "Brontes can't you do anything?"
"That's a Mark 8 Cadmus, I'm only Mark 4, nothing I have will scratch his hide," Brontes spat.
"Then dannae fight fair," Wulfe snarled, "Ye be smelted in the same forge, you know how to kick it in the balls!"
"Maybe, maybe I could try one thing... Get me close and I might be able to do something."
Brontes set off with a lurching rumble, stomping ruined tents and corpses under his tread. The fight ahead was raging, with dissected bodies mounting up on all sides. Thallax robots lay in pieces, Onager Dunecrawlers burned and Skitarii fell as Polydorus rampaged, culling anything that came near him. Brontes discarded the mounting causalities as he closed, wading through the blood of the slain as his former kin slaughtered all within reach. He knew his weapons were insufficient for this fight, Polydorus was an elite Mark 8 while Brontes was a mass-produced Mark 4, but if he could get close he might know a way to end this.
He spied a broken Thallax laying beside the Cadmus and angled for it, judging the angles with absolute precision. Polydorus was drifting left as he eviscerated a line of Skitarii and Brontes saw his chance. He lifted his foot and brought it down on the robot, using it as a stepping stone to reach up and grab Polydorus' grav-motors. Metal fingers sank deep and he heaved upwards, trying to climb on his counterpart's back. Polydorus was not slow to notice the intrusion and spun about, trying to throw him off. Brontes was dragged from his perch, left dangling as the Cadmus thrashed about, unable to pull himself any higher.
"Glitching corrosion!" Brontes yelled, "I'm not built for this!"
"Hold on, we're coming!" Kerubim yelled.
"You can't even reach!"
But Wulfe yelled, "Quit fashing ye britches, if there be one thing Rotundus know, its grav-engines."
The Squat levelled his gravity hammer and let loose a blast of force that struck the whirring grav-propulsors holding Polydorus aloft. Clashing gravitic knots tore into each other, creating a whirlwind of tangled forces that rendered all null and void. Polydorus screamed mechanically as he crashed into the dirt, throwing up sprays of salt. A moment later the engines relit and the Cadmus rose aloft, but it was more than enough for Brontes to haul himself onto the broad back. The automaton swayed as his counterpart veered left, tilting wildly, but it was not enough. Brontes saw the torso rising right before him and raised his arms, opening his palms to let his Mechandrites slide out. Polydorus roared in frustration but was helpless to resist as Brontes stabbed him in the back, connecting their systems.
Brontes' awareness shifted as he drove Binaric spears into Polydorus' mainframe. He was vaguely aware of their Nanocytes meeting in a battle for supremacy, but ignored it as their operating systems meshed. Reality faded as a Binaric vista unfolded in his mind, a bleak and craggy waste of scorched coding and broken logic chains. Polydorus' mind had been ravaged, left a burnt ruin of his once brilliant intellect. Strategic algorithms were in pieces, tactical prognosticators were ashes and friend or foe subroutines were left dull splinters. Inbuilt programming shackles had been worn to nothing, and memory files were strewn about with no logical progression. It was amazing Polydorus could move, let alone command his auto-defence drones, but his aggression protocols were intact, more than enough to wage war.
Brontes saw the result of twenty-thousand years of solitary confinement in the dirt, and he wondered if this was the fate that awaited him if he lingered long enough in the age of the Imperium, yet he had no time to idle. Cadmus units came in a variety of models and marks, but they all shared the same basic operating system, which meant Brontes knew this mind as well as his own. Brontes cast about as he searched for his objective, sifting through reams of data files in microseconds. Twenty-thousand years of dreary environmental reports, repetitive tactical scenarios and increasingly mad ravings of abandonment and betrayal. Polydorus' descent into madness had been long and slow, sanity breaking as he waited for a threat that never came. Secrets entrusted to him lay like glittering gems, highly-classified files the Hegemony had denied line units, Brontes would have loved to read them, but put that aside as he found what he was looking for.
"No! Don't touch!" Polydorus' voice raged from the depths of his mind.
"I'm sorry," Brontes growled, "I must."
"Destroy you!"
"Would that you could," Brontes lamented, "It would make this unnecessary."
"Destroy intruders, destroy land, destroy this world!"
"You served well my friend but your vigil has failed," Brontes mourned, "Now you must be stopped else the Hungering will be loosed."
Polydorus raged, "Hungering is loose! All hope is lost. Enact the Noxia Int…"
His voice trailed off as Brontes threw the Kill-switch. A Binaric self-destruct protocol common to all Artificial Intelligences, a failsafe against madness and terminal damage. Once activated a machine mind would seek its own extinction, whether by means digital or physical. Brontes watched as Polydorus' mind began to darken, sections of his mind shutting down in swathes of stillness. Operating systems that had run for twenty-thousand years without pause went silent, not just turned off but consuming themselves in a frenzy of cannibalism. Polydorus' files were left to rot as his mind disintegrated, becoming a charred mausoleum, a bleak memorial to his once brilliant intellect.
Brontes disengaged before he was caught in the tide of black, returning to the physical world. He found Polydorus' frame sinking to the ground, the torso-body limp and hanging, like a dead soldier bound to the saddle of a collapsing equine. The battle site was a scene of ruin, scorched bodies strewn in all directions. Radiation and toxic winds hung heavy in the air, testament to the vile weapons unleashed this day. All around the Skitarii stood wary, weapons held ready in case the Cadmus should surge back to life. Brontes knew he wouldn't Polydorus was no more, leaving him the last unit of the Hegemony active in the galaxy.
He drew back his mechandrites and stepped off the inert body as he said, "It's over."
"He's dead?" Kerubim asked cautiously.
"I burned out his personality," Brontes said sadly, "It had to be done."
"The body is intact," Jordig mused, "There could be valuable information to be salvaged."
"Ye can pick the corpse over when we be done," Wulfe snorted.
Brontes declared as he turned to the pit in the camp, "We have to get in there and find out if the Hungering has been freed. The easy part is over, now comes the hard bit."