Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 339
The Seventh Circle, Imperium Nihilus
Coluber stayed at his post for the entire duration of the voyage. Three days and three nights, of shipboard time did he stand in the command centre while shifts of Chattels came and went. Power readings slowly trickled down and all the while the Ghostwind remained silent, an inky blackness that kept its secrets veiled. If there was anything out there in the infinite dark it stayed well away from the Serpens Rex, or maybe there truly was nothing out there save a hollow void. It was hard to tell which prospect was to be feared more.
Coluber drifted in a Catalapsean Node slumber, letting portions of his brain rest in sequence. He noted his companions changing several times, but it had all the significance of a branch shaking in the wind to his perception. Troubled thoughts were harder to ignore. The Corposant's power levels were steadily decreasing, the only indication they had that the Nest was moving at all. The prospect that all energy would be exhausted before they returned to Realspace was a constant worry, none wished to remain in this nowhere place for the remainder of their lives. On the first day Coluber had asked Kerubim if it would be possible to recharge the Corposant midflight with more sacrificed Psykers. The Techmarine said he would go look into it, but the look on his face as he departed was answer enough.
A clatter jolted Coluber awake. He was instantly alert, with the speed only Transhumans could enjoy. He instantly saw he was among friends, Maru and Ferrac standing slackly at his sides, the rest wandering off during the voyage. They had stayed by his side but it was not they who had made the noise. It was Nathanal, and the weary mortal grumbled as he bent low to pick up the dropped data-slate.
"What was that?" Coluber barked.
"Nothing," Nathanal grumbled, "I just slipped."
"You've been doing that a lot," Ferrac sniffed, "Bloody fingers Mcfuddle for days."
"I'm tired," Nathanal snapped back.
Coluber took pity, "Maybe you should rest."
"I've tried," Nathanal groaned, "I can't sleep in this void, dreams just won't come."
"How long since you last dreamt?"
Nathanal rubbed his eyes, "I don't recall a single dream since we initialised the Corposant."
Maru spoke up, "Dreams and the Warp are inextricably linked, for we skim the surface of the Immaterium with our unconscious minds. To a Psyker sleep is a dangerous time, when our defences are idle. We must train vigorously to safeguard our dreams, but even blunts like you touch the Warp in your sleep. Nonspace is so remote from the Empyrean that you cannot find it. No man dreams in the Ghostwind."
Ferrac muttered, "That's more than I wanted to know about the Warp."
"Do not mock," Maru chided, "Dreams are no passing fancy. They are part of the human condition, as essential as breathing. Without dreams the mind struggles to function."
That was concerning and Coluber asked, "Do any others report similar troubles?"
Nathanal sighed, "No reports from your lot, I guess Space Marines don't dream the same way as we do. But my work-gangs are wrung out. Efficiency is dropping and tasks go undone, or get done three times over. The strange part is some of the crew are hale, if tired, but others are sleepwalking into walls. It seems to be affecting everyone differently."
"The sooner we get out of this cesspool the better," Ferrac spat.
"I can't argue with that," Coluber agreed, "Once we return to realspace I think we should pause and let the Chattels rest. A day or two to check the Serpens Rex suffered no ill effects will allow shifts to sleep, before we make the next jump."
"I think you're in luck," Nathanal replied as a pict-screen flashed, "The Corposant is cycling, I think we've completed our first jump."
Loud chimes rang across the Nest, bringing all crews to alert. The Chattels on the bridge redoubled their efforts, communing with the Machine Spirits in eagerness to depart this strange dimension. Exiting the Ghostwind would be as novel an experience as entering it, no man knew if it would be smooth or a calamity in the making. Coluber braced his legs as various screens began flashing a countdown, then they hit zero and the Serpens Rex ascended back to reality.
A slight shiver, a warm flush over the skin and the sudden absence of a headache Coluber hadn't realised he was nursing. The exit was as smooth as silk, but what came after wasn't. The floor lurched as the Nest hit a gravity incline, throwing the massive starfort off kilter. Chattels screamed as the deck tilted forty-five degrees, sending those not quick enough to grab a console skittering across the mirror-sheen floor. Men slid helplessly across the surface, till they hit the far wall with the crunch of broken bones. More fell on top of them, crushing those below in a suffocating heap.
Coluber grabbed the rail, "Compensate, compensate!"
Nathanal was falling off the command pyramid but Ferrac hand snatched at his tunic and held fast as the Battle-Captain yelled, "We're in a gravity well!"
"From where?!"
"Unknown, we haven't seen outside yet!"
"Implore the gravity generators for aid!"
Nathanal flailed at a runepad, he missed on the first attempt but his second triggered the Machine Spirits. Artificial gravity generators reset their vectors, aligning the Serpens Rex's internal orientation with the gravity well. The floor suddenly returned to being under their feet and Coluber breathed easier. Crying Chattels hugged themselves but Coluber ignored them as he cast about for answers.
Maru had stood immovable throughout and declared, "We are in orbit of a moon, it is… strange."
"How do you know?!" Ferrac spat.
"I am a Psyker, and I see danger on all sides."
Nathanal limped from pict-screen to pict-screen, "He's right gravity surveyors say we're in low orbit of a moon. Too close for my liking, we could have emerged inside solid rock. Astrogation is trying to discern our location but the Stellar scopes are picking up nothing but static, some interference I can't isolate. Radiation auspex, vox, mass spectrometers are all fried. External temperatures… wait, that can't be right… "
"Nathanal?" Coluber asked.
"External temperatures are rising, twelve hundred degrees, fifteen, two thousand…"
"We're on fire," Maru interjected.
"What?!" Coluber exclaimed, "The Serpens Rex is on fire?!"
Ferrac blinked, "That is impossible, fire can't exist in a vacuum!"
"And yet it is," Maru asserted.
"The local star exploded?" Ferrac ventured.
"No," Maru corrected, "We bathe in fire, this stellar system is aflame. The firmament of reality is burning, worlds glow like coals and the vast stretches between are nothing but pools of flame. The local star is but a brighter spark, in a fiery lake ten billion kilometres wide."
Coluber knew of only one thing that could produce such an effect, "The Warp! The Corposant didn't clear the great rift. We've emerged inside the Cicatrix Maledictum!"
"Negative," Nathanal refuted, "We covered too much distance, we're in Imperium Nihilus!"
Ferrac barked, "Says you! You don't know where we are!"
"I'd stake my life on it," Nathanal hissed, "Hold on… maybe… the auspex feeds are blinded by excess energy but if I apply Mechanicus protocols for surveying stellar coronas… Yes, the Machine Spirits can compensate… Logic Engines are ruminating… there we can see!"
Coluber looked up as the Hololith fizzed into being. Grainy images, awash with static, but allowing them to see outside. The Serpens Rex indeed hung over a burnt coal of a moon, glowing from pole to pole. As far as the surveyors could detect seething pools of fire roamed the wastes between dead planets. Deeper in some places, thinner in others, but there was no place in the system that was not on fire. Raw vacuum, devoid of oxygen or fuel, burning impossibly. Coluber had no words but it was true. What madness was this?
"If this isn't the warp, what is it?" Coluber asked.
"I have no theories," Nathanal gulped.
"I have a better question, what are those?!" Ferrac spat.
In the Hololith icons were rising from the moon, swimming through the flames like shoals of aquatic predators through an ocean. The Auspex could not discern if they were ships or missiles, some defence mechanism by unknown intelligences, or a feature of this unnatural realm. All Coluber knew was they were increasing speed and heading this way.
"Kerubim," Coluber voxed, "Tell me how long it takes to restart the Corposant."
"My lord?" the Techmarine voxed from the Corposant, "We have no idea, we haven't even begun to run the data from the test-flight. I'm working over the relic, but installing fresh psykers takes time."
"How much time?!"
"Six hours…" Kerubim guessed.
"You've got five minutes!" Coluber barked, "We're about to come under attack, get us back into the Ghostwind immediately!"
Coluber cut his vox as he barked, "Raise shields, run out the guns, prepare all sections to repel boarders. Stand ready for anything." The Chattels hastened to obey and the Serpens Rex made ready to fight. Turrets opened to expose macroweapons and point defence arrays stirred to life. Flames crawled over every surface but the Nest was built to rebuff stellar radiation and withstood the eerie flames. The void shields were another matter and frantic calls arose from the sections dealing with the projectors.
"Shields aren't responding!" Nathanal spat.
"Frak that, get them up or I'll go down there and beat the Chattels to death with their own hands!" Ferrac hissed.
"Threats won't help, they aren't meant to operate while being on fire!"
"Too late, here they come," Coluber snarled, "Shoot everything we've got!"
Macroweapons thundered as all quadrants lit up. Enormous shells flew away, exploding amid the closing hostiles. Turbolasers blazed, plasma annihilators flashed and grav-cannons spewed contortions of spacetime. Firepower enough to split a fleet poured into the hostiles, but they kept coming, seemingly untroubled. As they closed the Hololith discerned they weren't solid objects but groupings of billions of smaller things, breaking apart when hit, but flowing around the detonations without issue. Point defence turrets went to work, blitzing at the blizzards of targets, but if they had any effect Coluber couldn't see it.
"What are they?!" Coluber snarled.
"You don't want to know," Maru growled.
"Frak your mysteries, this is no time to be dicking about!" Ferrac snarled.
"This is no time for you to be driven insane," Maru retorted, "Trust me, we need to go before they get inside."
Chattels hollered to each other below, "Macroweapons are having no effect! That's not possible! I'm telling you we hit nothing! They've touched the hull… turret one-one-seven-three has stopped responding… airlocks across the Widdershins quadrant report attempts to breach… Shuttlebay one-nineteen has gone dark… seal it off, seal that section now or we lose the Quadrant!"
Coluber could only stand and watch as the unknowns crawled over the Serpens Rex's hull. They bypassed the defences with ease, seemingly impervious to anything the defences could throw at them. Already he could imagine the airlocks buckling, runnels melting as the mysterious intruders sought to break inside. If they did then the Nest would be filled with fire, he and all the Amber Vipers would burn.
Nathanal paused, "Picking up a signal… it's not vox… this is an audio feed."
"Let hear it," Coluber ordered.
"Don't," Maru warned, "This you do not need to know."
But Coluber directed, "I want to hear what they have to say."
The vox-horns squealed for a second then erupted into a chatter of voices, all yelling over each other. The vast majority were raw screaming but Coluber picked out individual words and his stomach plunged, "It burns, it burns! Save us, someone save us! God-Emperor why won't it end?! Get inside, just get inside! Water, please water, give us water! Give us death! Take us with you!"
Nathanal gasped, "Are those… people?"
"They were once," Maru lamented, "Mind, body and soul transmuted into new and stranger forms. Condemned to endless suffering, they burn without end. Flames of damnation cannot be eternal if they consumed anything."
Ferrac growled, "Whatever they are now, they certainly aren't human."
"We have to help them," Nathanal implored.
"We can't help anyone, all we can do is leave."
Coluber hit the vox again, "Kerubim?!"
"Shouting at me won't make it go any faster!" Kerubim snapped back, his formality fraying in the pressure.
"Don't wait for my order, the second you're ready just go!"
The Chattels continued to shout back and forth as the Serpens Rex was inundated by transmuted people, trying to claw their way inside. The hull was built to withstand ship to ship fire and the hatches were thick, but nothing was impenetrable. Coluber felt icy chills down his spine as the seconds crawled by, knowing there was no way to fight back. All they could do was flee, drop back into the Ghostwind and run for their lives.
The tension was mounting second by second but then Maru spoke, "I see a Daemon-king rising from a throne of iron. His brow crowned by flaming thorns, in his palm burns the inferno of transmutation and he reaches forth to claim us for his own."
"You useless bucket of bolts, I have had enough of your crappy metaphors!" Ferrac snapped.
"Metaphor?!" Maru retorted, "I am being entirely literal!"
Coluber spied a new icon in the Hololith, one so vast it eclipsed the outer edges. Something was closing on the Serpens Rex, something bigger than a moon. Coluber tried to paint a picture based on Maru's description, shoulders broader than continents, talons the size of mountains, and a face as vast as a hurricane. There was no conceivable way the Serpens Rex could withstand such a foe. Even raising the Gellar field would do nothing. When the Daemon-king reached them, they would all die.
Suddenly the vox awoke as Kerubim called, "Corposant is charging, power levels rising, vectors inloading!"
"Make haste," Coluber urged, "Throne sake, be quick."
"Charging…. charging… charging… come on you worthless heap of scrap!"
Coluber saw the Hololith blanking out as the Daemon-king reach for them, seconds away from taking the Starfort in his grasp. Doom was a hairsbreadth away, but then a cold shiver ran down his spine: the Corposant stirring to life, dropping them into the Ghostwind once more. The Hololith whited out as the ocean of fire was left behind, plunging them into the dark underbelly of reality. The transmuted were left behind, condemned to suffer eternally under the gaze of their burning king, all hope of escape dashed as the Amber Vipers dropped out of the material universe.
Coluber sagged in relief, never having felt so helpless in the face of an enemy before. This was but their first step into Imperium Nihilus and it was worse than he could possibly have imagined. As the Serpens Rex left one circle of hell behind he could not help but wonder what horrors the next jump would bring.
