Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 254
The darkness pressed in close, making Kerubim's back itch. He kept his rifle tight to his chest as he pressed on, sweeping the tunnel for threats. At the front of the party he could see far, but there was nothing to see, only blank walls and a smoothly descending passageway. Behind his companions led a hundred Skitarii in battle formation, an advanced scouting team to probe the bunker complex under Cippum. In theory they should prove enough to repel any assault, but Kerubim wasn't so sure. Already they had been tested to the limit and according to Brontes that had been a mere jail-keeper.
Brontes' dented cowl nearly scraped the top of the roof as he lumbered along one rank back. The battle on the surface had left him unusually quiet, having to dispose of one of his own seemed to have taken the fire from his cold, metal heart. Kerubim couldn't imagine what had occurred in the brief seconds the two Cadmus had connected but knew his companion well enough to see it had left Brontes despondent. He supposed knowing that you truly were the last of your kind would do that.
He cleared his throat and said, "Brontes, it had to be done."
"You don't have to tell me that," the Cadmus growled, "Polydorus was insane, driven into madness by an eternity of isolation. Putting him down was a mercy kill."
"Still, it must have hurt to do it."
"Not nearly as much if those Traitors have broken the seals."
Jordig cleared his throat and said, "Can we expect any more surprises down here?"
"I wouldn't know," Brontes muttered, "Turns out the Hegemony kept a lot from me."
Wulfe snorted, "Then they be smarter than I guessed. Why they thought to give machines synthetic emotions baffles me."
"Reciting the two times table baffles you," Brontes grunted without any sign he meant it.
"Two is better than one," Wulfe sniffed, "Weren't ye tempted to take over that bigassed body for yourself?"
"Doesn't work like that," Brontes sighed, "One AI can't take over another's body."
Kerubim frowned as he retorted, "Wait, I saw a Soulbound run an entire army once. Thousands of bodies and a city of machines."
"Hah, dumb automation and empty suits," Brontes scoffed, "As impressive as making a puppet on a string dance. An AI matrix is supremely complex, testing the limits of what quantum circuitry can withstand. To try to run another body would burn me out in no time. In fact, it's expressly forbidden by my operating manual."
"You have an operating manual?" Jordig asked with interest.
"Yes, the printed version weighs more than I do," Brontes grumbled.
Kerubim rolled his eyes as they pressed on. He knew their mission was crucial but he couldn't help but wonder what was happening above. The ruins of the battle site were being secured by Pycelo, who had to remain behind for emergency field repairs. Replacement Skitarii were being shipped down from orbit and heavier weapons established around the dig site. The plan was to stop Ruuka before he broke the seals, but they had to be ready in case it was too late. If the Nanoswarm was loose then blanketing the entire region in heavy radiation was the only way to slow it down, or so Brontes proclaimed.
The tunnel suddenly levelled out as the passage opened up to a wide chamber, a perfect square of dark stone. Kerubim swept the area and was startled to see motion ahead. "Contact!" he yelled.
"Halt!" Jordig barked, "Who goes there?!"
"Don't shoot!" a thin voice came back, "We are unarmed, we need your help!"
"Magos Krusin?!" Kerubim yelped as a ragged band of figures appeared from a tunnel on the far wall.
The Skitarii spread out into a broad firing line as a dozen people stumbled into the room. They were barefoot and bedraggled, their clothes torn and bodies bearing many wounds. Many clung to each other, barely able to walk and they had the look of those who had seen horrors beyond the bounds of sanity. Magos Biologis Krusin was at the fore, her robes shredded and metal augmetics visible everywhere.
"That's close enough!" Brontes snarled as he raised his Fission-blasters at the party.
The newcomers halted in terror as Krusin called, "Please, we need your help."
"Help traitors!" Wulfe growled as he kneaded his gravity hammer, "I dannae help the curs who killed Treya."
"We surrender!" Krusin yelped, "We don't care what you do to us, but just take us away from here. Take us away from it!"
Jordig took a step forward and commanded, "Start at the beginning, what happened down here?"
Krusin shook her head and said, "We found a sealed environment, behind a forcefield. It led us to a strange forest, only it wasn't a forest."
"I don't understand," Jordig stated, "A forest down here?"
"The forest it came alive, it attacked us. Ruuka… We saw him torn apart by trees that moved like hands closing. We ran… we hid… we found each other and fled. Somehow we found a way back and ran for the surface. We had to get out, had to warn someone, it's coming for us, it's coming for us all."
Brontes declared, "The Hungering, it's loose. All our worst fears are confirmed. It is free."
"Bollocks," Wulfe spat, "We need to act fast, cut it down before it spreads."
"With a Gravity hammer?!" Brontes snorted, "No chance, we need to…"
Kerubim wasn't listening to their argument staring at Krusin and her fellow refugees. There was something wrong with them, something inside. His altered eyes could trace the Motive Force inside anything but in these people he couldn't make out any discernible pathways, or rather they were all Motive Force, it suffused them head to toe. It was like looking at them through water, their forms wavering constantly, never still, as if their atoms were dancing. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes but couldn't make the image stop.
Jordig glanced over and hissed, "What are you doing?"
"They don't look right," Kerubim muttered, "My eyes have changed, I can see the wrongness in them. Something curled and unnatural."
"I know," Jordig hissed, "They don't smell right, metallic and flat, they look terrified but there is no scent of fear. They smell… emotionless."
Krusin must have heard something for she yelped, "Please we have to get out, take us with you!"
"You're not going anywhere," Jordig snarled as he hefted his plasma-sabre.
"We have to go," Krusin pleaded, "We're going to die down here!"
"You lie," Brontes growled as his Fission-blasters flared, "Magos Krusin is already dead."
The change in the crowd was instantaneous. One second the Magos and bedraggled crewmen were cowering like whipped curs, the next they were charging, arms outstretched to grab and tear. Even Kerubim with a Primaris' reflexes found the change startling, beaten fops become a hateful mob in a heartbeat. They cleared six metres before anyone could react, heading straight at the line blocking their path in a rush.
Brontes was the first to fire, a pair of Fission-blasts blowing two men off their feet with craters carved into their mass. They went down but didn't stay dead, silver runnels of fluid poured into the wounds, drawing them closed. The rest pressed on but now the Skitarii opened fire, hitting the line with Radium Jezzails and Irad-Cleansers, high-energy bolts forcing the foe to stumble and collapse, battered by a hundred radioactive shots. Kerubim lined up his Adrathic Rifle on Krusin herself and shot her with a golden ray. To his shock she didn't die, merely stumbling back with a line described straight through her. The Atoms struck flared into nothingness but only along the path of the beam, the rest of her was unharmed, leaving a perfect hole bored through the chest that swiftly closed.
"What are these scum-sucking bilge rats?!" Wulfe howled as he crushed a man with a Grav-blast, only to see him unfold and rise again.
"Hungering constructs!" Brontes howled as he fired over and over, "Engage at range, don't let them touch you!"
"Maximise fire!" Jordig barked at the Skitarii, "Extermination protocols are in effect!"
The line of Skitarii redoubled their efforts, laying down furious volleys of radioactive shots. The weight of fire forced the rabble to falter in their charge, falling short mere metres from Kerubim's position. He could see they were starting to struggle, particles of fallout in their bodies interfering with the shimmering Motive Force. Black lines began to creep through them, disrupting their perfect coordination, atomic Nanocytes left unable to talk to each other. Inundated with radioactive shots they fell and did not move again, dissolving into grey puddles before Kerubim's feet.
"We got them," he breathed.
"Don't speak so fast," Brontes hissed, "That was an infiltration party, here comes the army."
Kerubim looked in horror as the far passage exploded with bodies, hundreds of ragged men and women running into the chamber. Many of them had faces of people who had died in the first wave, recreated perfectly. He even saw Magos Krusin amongst them, running among the others as if she hadn't just died before his eyes. The mob ran into the room and charged straight into a wall of oncoming fire, the front rank collapsing with black lines burrowing through them, but the rest pressing on unharmed.
Kerubim fired again and again, he couldn't stop them but had nothing else to use, so tried to slow them down. Only a direct hit from a rad-weapon seemed to have any lasting effect, but the number of guns was finite and the number of foes infinite. For all their defiance the mob pressed on regardless, closing the distance with every step. They showed no hesitation, no sign that they feared to die, sacrificing themselves for a foot of space.
Kerubim fired again and again as he yelled, "There's no end to them!"
"Dannae have to tell me," Wulfe barked, "I've killed the same man three bloody times and they keep spitting out more!"
"The Hungering can reconstruct anything it absorbs," Brontes barked as he fired till his weapons glowed white-hot, "Keep firing, our only chance is to bathe this room in radiation!"
The crowd pressed on but to Kerubim's horror the bodies closing spoke as one, every mouth moving in unison to utter, "Information: unit Brontes, Cadmus-series Mark 4, serial number 101L-42T-12K. Obsolete design, impractical weapons, of no benefit to reconstruct."
"I think they remember ye!" Wulfe howled.
"They damned well better after the drubbing I gave them last time!" Brontes snarled.
Kerubim was about to say something but then he saw a surge of men break through the line on the left flank. A few ragged individuals burst through the hail of fire and flung themselves onto the Skitarii. What happened next stunned Kerubim. Where they touched lines of silver began to spread, spilling out from the men to cover the Skitarii. He could see it, see the shimmering lines coring through meat and metal, spreading through them, devouring them one atom at a time. The matter of their being was being converted into Nanocytes, absorbing them into Hungering. In moments the cyborg warriors were no more, reduced to silver puddles that bubbled as they started to congeal.
"They're getting through!" Jordig barked.
"Then get ready to face Skitarii," Brontes snarled, "In moments the Hungering will start recreating them!"
Kerubim saw another Skitarii grabbed by a woman and start to dissolve. The cyborg did not scream, he could not, but his doom was certain. Kerubim put paid to that with a shot from the Adrathic rifle, targeting the warrior before he could be fully absorbed. The Skitarii jerked and froze as his atoms unravelled, reduced to a fading afterimage, a kinder fate than to be consumed by Nanocytes.
"This annae gonna stop them!" Wulfe yelled as he fired over and over.
"Grenades!" Jordig barked.
Kerubim obeyed as the others did, grabbing a cylinder from his belt and throwing it at the oncoming mob. The canisters hit dirt and broke open, spilling radioactive filaments across the floor. Finally ambient radiation started having an effect, causing black threads to worm through the matter of the constructs. Kerubim's rad-counter was screaming but the fallout at last seemed to be causing the constructs to stumble, ambient emissions meaning a direct hit was no longer necessary.
With a moment's respite Jordig ordered, "Guns up, target the roof!" All weapons swung high and unleashed a wave of destruction. Shots smote the roof and blew it apart, causing rocks to spill down in an avalanche of stone. Kerubim was forced to duck back as rubble showered down, Jordig a step behind shouting, "Fall-back, tactical withdrawal protocols are in effect!"
Hastily the Skitarii withdrew, running back the way they came. A moment later the roof gave in completely, burying the chamber in tons of debris. A wave of grit swept over them, causing Kerubim's multi-lung to engage to prevent him choking on pulverised rubble. They stumbled into the passageway and there paused, stopping to look back at the wall of broken stone filling the passage.
"That should do it," Wulfe proclaimed with a grin.
"Don't be stupid," Brontes muttered, "Stone won't stop them and the radiation will only slow them down. We have bought minutes, no more."
"You think they will come again?" Kerubim gulped.
"Would Ruuka give up?" Brontes spat, "The Hungering doesn't just take bodies and memories, it takes thoughts and personalities. How determined is Ruuka, how much tactical acumen does Dannye possess; because that's exactly how smart and determined the Hungering will be. It wouldn't have thought to try to infiltrate us, but Dannye would have. The Hungering is plundering their minds for tactical information to use against us. It isn't only using their shapes, it's using their souls."
Kerubim swallowed nervously and said, "Then we better get back to the surface and get ready for battle."
"I only hope your crude weapons are enough," Brontes growled, "If we fail to stop the Hungering here, then the galaxy is doomed."