Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 256
"Why don't they come?" Kerubim asked nervously.
"They will come," Wulfe growled, "They will come."
"I don't like this. What's it people say, the waiting is the worst bit?"
Brontes snorted, "Only idiots say that. The rending and the tearing and the blood flying, that's the worse bit."
Kerubim shook his helm at the rebuke, knowing the truth was unpalatable but real. He had fought in battle before, he knew the blood-soaked carnage of war, he was conditioned for it, but to stand and wait for an enemy to appear, that was troubling. All around an army of Skitarii stood vigil, not moving a finger as they stood in perfect formation. Red tech-guard were arranged in serried ranks, Thallax robots in broad echelons and Onager Dunecrawlers were dotted about like pillboxes. Even the least among them bore Radium Jezzails, while heavy weapon troopers and gun servitors carried rad missile launchers and Fission-blasters while the robots and vehicles bore bulky Irad-Cleansers. Several thousand cyborg warriors, spread in a broad circle around the burned campsite, waiting for an enemy who did not appear.
The race back to the surface had been harrowing, Kerubim convinced the Hungering was on their heels every step of the way. Yet they had made it back unmolested and found Pycelo arranging a killing ground. The Magos Explorator had been busy repairing himself but also had organised an impenetrable defence. Of Poldorus there was no sign, no doubt the corpse taken away for study. Kerubim was impressed, he could not see how an attacker could break out of this killbox, which was worrying. This looked easy, far too easy.
"It can't be that dumb," he muttered.
"Explain," Jordig said.
"The Hungering," he elaborated, "Surely it won't just walk into the teeth of our fire. It will get slaughtered."
Brontes however said, "The Hungering has infinite numbers and no concern for losses. It could spend a million constructs for a metre of ground and still come out ahead. It will send everything it's got at us, I've seen it before, all the people we've lost and those taken in my age. It retains everything it took from the Hegemony."
Kerubim glanced up and said, "It... it won't send Cadmus robots against us, will it?"
"It's smart but not that smart," Brontes snorted, "No Cadmus ever fell to the Hungering."
"Blew plenty of ye ta scrap though, didn't it," Wulfe scoffed.
From behind a mechanical grind announced Pycelo closing, the lumbering machine-man thoroughly repaired. Kerubim noted blessed unguents dripping from his frame and fresh purity seals adorning his joints, while the brain in a jar bobbed in a fizz of amniotic fluids. Pycelo had taken the news of his clone-son's death stoically, not speaking of the traitorous cur again but he seemed curious as to what they faced now.
"Explain again what you saw," Pycelo pressed.
"It was a twisted perversion of the Universal Laws," Jordig said, "A blasphemy against the purity of the Machines Spirits. The very worst Maletek Incarna, worse than the Men of Iron or Brontes. The Cadmus is, of course, an abomination but at least he is one we can see and understand."
"Better an abomination than being a wet-nosed mongrel," Brontes growled.
Pycelo ignored that as he asked, "Radiation stops it?"
"Slows it down, interferes with the bonds between Nanocytes," Brontes stated, "It takes rads enough to sicken a man to slow it, enough to kill to halt its advance."
"Wouldn't..." Kerubim asked hesitantly, "Wouldn't that affect me too, I have Nanocytes."
"Deep within your body, your skin should provide a temporary barrier. It's the same reason the Hungering doesn't become a cloud and sweep across planets, too diffused and exposed, it takes a dense cohesion of Nanocytes to survive anything more than the slightest spike in background radiation."
Pycelo accepted this and asked, "And can we achieve such levels with the weapons we have here?"
"Barely," Jordig sighed, "And only in a small area. If the Hungering breaks out of our containment, then we do not have the means to raise an entire planet's surface radiation to the required levels. Our own plasma technology is clean-burning, no fallout is produced and Zar-Quaesitor lacks enough fissionable material to produce the effect."
"Cawl is working on it," Pycelo announced, "He believes there may be a way."
"I'll believe that when I see it," Brontes muttered.
"Shut it," Wulfe growled.
"Don't push me, hairball."
"Seriously trashcan, be quiet. Cannae ye feel that?!"
Kerubim frowned as he cast about, seeing nothing untoward. He looked high and low but saw no sign of danger and said, "I don't see a thing."
Wulfe however, gripped his gravity hammer tight and said, "Rotundus know the feel of earth moving under our boots. Something be coming, something..."
His words proved prophetic for a lance of energy shot out of nowhere, spearing an Onager with a bolt of darkness. Gravity contorted as the world bent askew, flat ground becoming a treacherous slope. Skitarii stumbled and fell down the incline, toppling over themselves in the unexpected shift. A sudden wind blew up, the air drawn into the pulsing mote of dark as daylight became a lurid purple, light itself bending out of true. For a single heartbeat everyone was yanked towards the blast, then as suddenly as it began it snapped out, leaving the world as it was save for a tangled ball of metal that had been an Onager.
Kerubim picked himself up from the dirt and cried, "That came from behind!"
"Turn and address!" Pycelo bellowed, "We have been outflanked!"
Kerubim looked up and saw the horizon filling with foes, no, they were rising from the dirt, born anew from the matter of Cippum. They rose spilling dirt from their arms and shaking salt from their eyes, an army appearing from nowhere mere kilometres behind the Skitarii. How such a thing was possible, Kerubim did not know, all that mattered was the fight had begun.
Skitarii spun on their heels and let rip with energy blasts and missiles, showering the foe with rads. Fission-blasters discharged, flinging rising men off their feet with black lines furrowing through them. Crackling bolts of Radium lodged in new flesh, poisoning bodies and explosions above rained toxic filaments. Hundreds were mowed down by the first volley, but it was a mere drop in the ocean. More foes than Kerubim could count were appearing and now they were ready to return fire.
A wave of black bolts shot forth, creating miniature gravity sinks that crushed tanks and yanked Skitarii into pits of oblivion. These were followed by crackling arcs of lightning that played across the line, leaving convulsing cyborg warriors thrashing on the ground, howls of Binaric pain escaping their vox-grilles. Sonic waves rolled over the front line, blowing aside red warriors as lashes of particle-whips tore men apart, bisecting whole platoons in a moment.
The noise of battle was deafening, even with autosenses, light and dark strobing like a broken lumen orb, and Kerubim's guts churned as pulsing gravity shifted his innards like a boat on an ocean swell. Kerubim had to cling to Brontes' leg to avoid being sucked into a pulsing black hole as he howled, "We've been ambushed!"
"What are they hitting us with?!" Jordig shouted over the din, "I've never seen the like!"
"I have!" Kerubim yelled over the thunder, "Singularity Drivers, Neural-flayers, sonic guns, weapons of the Hegemony!"
"Did you know they had these?!" Wulfe spat.
"Yes," Brontes hollered, "But I thought they lacked the raw elements to make them!"
There was no more time for talk as the singularities winked out, leaving a dishevelled mess. The Skitarii line was in ruins, troops flung everywhere by the gravity waves. They had been out of position to begin with but now were hopelessly disorientated. They milled about, struggling to reform their lines and present a viable defence. It was too late, the horde had broken free of the earth and now charged forward, laying down waves of firepower as they advanced across the plain. Their movements were swift but precise, no mad rush of frenzy this time, their formations could have been taken from a Skitarii primer, they probably had if the Hungering had been rummaging about in Dannye's mind.
Kerubim saw the wave closing and knew if it came to close combat they were done for. The constructs would consume anything they touched, absorbing everyone into the Hungering. The only chance was to hold them at bay and soak the area in rads, but how. His Adrathic rifle was useless against this foe and his paltry grenades would make scant difference. Brontes was already hammering away with Fission-blasters, but Kerubim was a mere observer in this battle, helpless to intervene. Then he saw it.
Instantly he was in motion, leaping a crushed Onager to grapple with a toppled tracked unit, bearing an Irad-cleanser. The operator lay thrashing upon the ground, in unspeakable torment. Hit by a neural-flayer, which stripped nerve ending raw, he would know nothing but agony for the rest of his short life. It was not the weapon of a warrior but a sadist, invented by minds that enjoyed seeing their victims suffer. To kill him would be a mercy, but Kerubim had no time to spare. He grabbed the toppled weapon and heaved it onto its tracks, the long barrel ringed by energy projectors and heavy cables.
Kerubim grabbed the controls and cursed as he found the tracks gummed with salt, left unable to turn on command. He overcame this with the expedience of Transhuman strength, physically hoisting the rear end to swing it about. He gulped to see how close the construct army had come, closing the distance with terrifying speed, but lined up his shot with cool precision. A pair of facsimile men were closing, lugging sonic rifles in their hands. Kerubim waited a moment for them to cross his sight then pulled the trigger. A stream of charged particles shot forth, crossing the distance in an instant. The brilliant ray smote both men as one, tearing them apart and leaving molten blobs of silver sprayed everywhere. They oozed for a moment then fell still, radiation sinking deep into the remains. Two down, but a hundred thousand yet remained.
Kerubim didn't have to re-target as more foes crossed his vision in a moment, more than he could count. He pulled the trigger again and again and again, sending out more streams of energy, blowing constructs apart in twos and threes and fours, till his weapon shrilled from overheating. He kept up the pace, risking explosive overload, trying to stem the tide. Others joined him, firing streams of Fission-blasts and Radium shots, punching foes off their feet but barely slowing the mass of enemies closing. And all the while Singularity Drivers and Nerve-flaying lightning rained down from afar.
Wulfe was letting off blasts of Gravitic force from his hammer as he yelled, "Them frakkers move like a mining shift heading for the pub!"
"Rad-counts are at 75 Roentgens and climbing!" Jordig yelled.
"Not enough!" Brontes yelled as he fired over and over, "Not nearly enough!"
Pycelo fired twin Irad-cleansers as he cried, "I'm calling in air support, they will rain down rad-bombs and drown the whole area!"
"Better move fast," Kerubim spat, "We won't last five minutes!"
He put his head down and fired again, making his gun glow white-hot. He was risking his life with every pull of the trigger but dared not slow, knowing as soon as the horde made contact the fight was over. Then he saw them, striding through the bedlam with sword and repulsor-stave held high: Ruuka and Dannye, recreated in all their traitorous glory. The instigators of this madness had come to finish what they started.