Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Salamander

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Firedrake

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

Nocturne

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Epilogue

Tome of Fire

Hell Night

Fires of War

Fireborn

Prometheus Requiem

The Burning

Only Ash Remains

The Firebrand

Emperor’s Deliverance

Rebirth

Dramatis Personae

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Epilogue

About the Author

Legal

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

‘In war, a Space Marine has no equal. He is the epitome of the warrior, a martial specimen of vast strength and dauntless courage. The Space Marine does not feel pain as other men do, he does not experience fear. He is master of both. But such inviolability must be honed, refocused before every campaign. It is here in battle-meditation that he girds himself, here that he finds the warrior spirit within.

In isolation do we find our true strength. Through self-sacrifice and endurance beyond all others do we become inviolable. These are the credos of the Promethean Cult; these are our tenets; these are our laws. From the fires of battle are we born, brothers. Upon the anvil of war are we tempered.’

– attributed to Tu’Shan, Chapter Master of the Salamanders

Prologue

Tsu’gan screamed as he plummeted from the stone parapet towards the temple floor below.

‘No!’ The word was wrenched from his throat.

He heard rasping laughter as he fell.

Nihilan had planned this doom. He had fooled them all. It was this, the cold realisation of his failure, which sat like ice in Tsu’gan’s gut.

He remembered the armoured shadow, closing in from where he should have been; where, as a loyal Salamander, he should have stayed sentry. Hubris and arrogance had impelled him to disobey. Tsu’gan had believed glory was worth the risk.

The world passed by in a blur as Tsu’gan traversed the short distance to the ground. In his maddened urgency, he’d lost sight of the ambusher who was closing on Kadai. His captain was alone, standing before the pooled remains of the warp creature he had just vanquished, and he was weakened…

Blinding light ripped into the darkness like a jagged knife, careless of the damage it wreaked. Tsu’gan kept his balance, a few seconds extending into lifetimes as he followed an incandescent beam searing through the gloom. He saw Dak’ir glanced by it, his battle-helm corroding, his pain at the beam’s malign caress emitted as a wail of agony. The force of it, surging from the multi-melta, spun him away from certain death. Undeterred, the beam sped on and struck Kadai. The captain’s body was lit up like an incendiary. Terrible light engulfed him. Kadai screamed and the wrenching sound echoed Tsu’gan’s own as he landed in a crouch, shattering rockcrete beneath his Astartes bulk.

Heart thundering in his chest, Tsu’gan was on his feet and running, heedless of the danger presented by the shadows around the edges of the temple. The distance to his captain seemed so impossibly far, the chances of Kadai’s survival so remote. Yet he hoped.

It was only when he closed and he saw Kadai’s armour fold in on itself that he realised his beloved captain was dead. He skidded to a halt, not wishing to touch the corroded remains, and slumped to his knees. Tsu’gan hung his head, even as he heard the cries of N’keln and his battle-brothers returning to reinforce them. Only, they were too late.

‘Salamanders! Slay them!’

Barking bolter fire brought a crescendo of noise. Tsu’gan was dimly aware of the bucking forms of dying cultists – the followers of the debased cult that had brought the Salamanders to this graven place – as N’keln and the others tore them apart. He felt hollowed, as if a dagger had been thrust into his gut and all of his innards carved away. Physical agony, more painful and invasive than any torture, spread through his bones to his very core. It was as if he had ceased to exist in the world and merely watched as it revolved around him.

A solid shot spanging off Tsu’gan’s pauldron brought him to his senses. Grief and denial became rage. Shaking hands became fists grasping his bolter. Tsu’gan was on his feet again. He looked to the dark, but Kadai’s murderer had fled.

A cultist came at him, seen from the corner of his eye. The wretched creature’s stitched mouth prevented a battle cry. He wielded an eviscerator in bone-thin fingers. Ragged robes flapped around a withered body like a corpse.

He would have to do.

Tsu’gan ducked the clumsy swipe of the chainblade, hearing the churning teeth as they raked over his head. In the same motion, he brought up his fist into the wretch’s stomach, felt ribs crack and then the soft meat of his belly. With a bestial roar, Tsu’gan ripped out a fistful of viscera and finished the cultist with a heavy blow from his bolter stock.

Tsu’gan barely registered the skull collapsing beneath his wrath when he turned and drilled three robed figures fleeing off into the dark. The muzzle flare from his bolter lit up their escape and they danced like doomed marionettes before the ammo storm. He found another, snapping its neck with a blade-like hand. Two more fell to his weapon’s retort, their chests exploded as the volatile rounds did their gruesome work; another crumpled beneath an elbow strike that shattered her neck and left it sagging.

Green-armoured forms were moving around him too – his battle-brothers. Tsu’gan was only vaguely aware of them as he killed. He never moved far from his captain’s side, maintaining a cordon of protection that none would breach and live. The cultists were many and he revelled in their slaughter. When his bolter ran dry, Tsu’gan cast it aside and lifted the still whirring eviscerator, torn from the dead cultist’s grasp.

A red haze came upon him. He cut and cleaved, and rent and slashed, and gored and sundered until a grisly wall of body parts surrounded him. When the cultists thinned at last and the final few were chased down and executed, Tsu’gan felt the strength in his mighty legs fail him. He fell again, once more to his knees, in a pool of enemy blood. With the tip of the eviscerator’s blade, he carved a long groove into the stone floor so the tainted vitae would not touch his captain. Tsu’gan then closed his eyes and despaired.

‘Brother-sergeant,’ a voice came to him through a grief-filled fog. ‘Tsu’gan,’ it insisted.

Tsu’gan opened his eyes and saw that Veteran Sergeant N’keln stood before him.

‘It is over, brother. The enemy are slain,’ he said, as if it was any comfort. ‘Your battle-brother will survive,’ he added.

Tsu’gan looked nonplussed.

‘Dak’ir,’ clarified N’keln. ‘He will live.’

Tsu’gan hadn’t even realised he was there. Kadai was all that mattered. Tears were streaming down his face.

‘Kadai…’ said the brother-sergeant, his voice barely a whisper. ‘He is dead. Our captain is dead.’

Chapter One

I

The Old Ways…

Dak’ir stood above the lake of fire, waiting to let his captain burn.

What was left of Ko’tan Kadai’s corroded power armour was chained to a pyre-slab along with his half-destroyed body. Lava spat and bubbled beneath it, wafts of flame igniting in it before being consumed, only to flare to life again in another part of the molten flow. The black marble of the pyre-slab reflected the lava’s fiery glow, the veined stone cast in reds and oranges. Two thick chains were piston-drilled to one of the short edges, and the rectangular pyre-slab hung down long-ways. Ceramite coated its surface, so the pyre-slab would be impervious to the magma heat. It would take Kadai on his final journey into the heart of Mount Deathfire.

Inside the vast cavern of rock, Dak’ir recalled the slow and solemn procession to that great volcanic peak. Over a hundred warriors, marching all the way from the Sanctuary City of Hesiod, had made the pilgrimage. The mountain was immense, and tore into the fiery orange heavens of Nocturne like the tip of a broken spear. Ash drifts had floated from the crater at its peak, coming down in slow, grey swathes.

Deathfire was at once beautiful and terrible to behold.

But there was no pyroclastic fury, no belligerent eruption of rock and flame this day, just lamentation as the mountain took back one of her sons: a Salamander, a Fire-born.

‘Into fire are we born, so unto fire do we return…’ intoned Dak’ir, repeating the sombre words of Brother-Chaplain Elysius. He was speaking rites of interment, specifically the Canticles of Immolation. Despite the Chaplain’s cold diction, Dak’ir felt the emotional resonance of his words as they echoed loudly around the underground cavern.

Though ostensibly rough rock, the cavern was actually a sacred place built by Master of the Forge T’kell. Millennia old, its artifice and functionality were still lauded in the current decaying age. T’kell had fashioned the vault under the careful auspice of the progenitor, Vulkan, and had been amongst the first of his students upon his apotheosis to primarch. These skills T’kell would impart to future generations of Salamanders, together with the arcane secrets learned from the tech-adepts of Mars. The Master of the Forge was long dead now, and others walked in his mighty stead, but his legacy of achievements remained. The cavern was but one of them.

A vast reservoir of lava dominated the cavern’s depths. The hot, syrupy magma came from beneath the earth and was the lifeblood of Mount Deathfire. It was held in a deep basin of volcanic rock, girded by layers of reinforced heat-retardant ceramite so that it pooled briefly before flowing onwards from one of the many natural outlets in the rock. There were no lanterns in the cavern, for none were needed. The lava cast a warm and eldritch glow. Shadows flickered, fire cracked and spat.

Chaplain Elysius stood in the darkness, despite his prominence on an overhang of rock that sat on the opposite side of the cavern to Dak’ir. A spit of lava threw harsh orange light across the overhang. It was long enough for Dak’ir to see Elysius’s ebony power armour and the ivory of his skull-faced battle-helm. It was cast starkly, the light describing the edges of its prominent features. Eyes glowed behind the lenses, red and diabolic.

Isolationism was a fundamental tenet of Promethean creed. It was believed this was the only way a Salamander could find the reliance and inner fortitude he needed to prosecute the Emperor’s duties. Elysius embraced this ideal wholly. He was insular and cold. Some in the Chapter reckoned in place of his primary heart, the Chaplain had a core of stone. Dak’ir suspected that might actually be true.

Even though Elysius was often distant, in battle he was completely different. His barbed zeal, as tangible and sharp as a blade, as furious as a bolter’s voice, brought his battle-brothers together. His fury, his fierce adherence to the Promethean Cult, became theirs too. Countless times in war, the Chaplain’s faith had dragged hard-fought victory from bitter defeat.

A symbol of devotion hung from his weapons belt, a simulacrum of a hammer. It was Vulkan’s Sigil and had once been carried by the famed Chaplain Xavier. Long dead now, like so many heroes, the legacy of Xavier as keeper of this badge of office had passed to Elysius.

There in the highest echelons of the cavern, the Chaplain was not alone.

Salamanders from the 3rd and 1st Companies were watching too from a ridge around the edge of the cavern, where they stood to attention in darkened alcoves, their red eyes ablaze. This ocular mutation affected all Salamanders. It was a genetic defect brought about by a reaction to the radiation of their volatile home world. Together with their onyx-black skin, it gave them an almost daemonic appearance, though there were none amongst the Emperor’s Astartes more noble, more committed to the defence of humanity than the Fire-born.

Chapter Master Tu’Shan observed the ceremony from a massive seat of stone. He was flanked by his bodyguard the Firedrakes, warriors of the 1st Company, his company. Honour markings covered Tu’Shan’s noble countenance, a physical legacy of his deeds writ into his ebon flesh. They were the branding scars that every Salamander had, in keeping with Promethean ritual. Few amongst the Chapter, only the most distinguished veterans, ever lived to have them seared upon their face. As Regent of Prometheus, Tu’Shan wore a suit of ancient power armour. Two pauldrons sat upon his hulking shoulders, wrought into the image of the snarling fire lizards from which the Chapter took its name. A cloak of salamander hide, a more venerable and honour-strewn version of that worn by the Firedrakes, was draped across the Chapter Master’s broad back. Tu’Shan’s bald pate shone with the reflected lustre of the lava, the shadows of its undulations creeping up the walls like fingers of dusk. His eyes were like captured suns. The Chapter Master brooded, chin resting on his fist, as inscrutable as the very rock of the mountain itself.

After acknowledging his Chapter Master, Dak’ir’s eye was drawn to Fugis. The Apothecary was one of the Inferno Guard, Kadai’s old retinue, of which only three now remained. He had removed his battle helm and clasped it in the crook of his arm. It was stark white like his right-side shoulder armour. His sharp, angular face was haunted by lava-shadows. Even through the rising heat shimmer emanating from below, Dak’ir thought he saw Fugis’s eyes glisten.

Ever since Dak’ir had won his black carapace and become a battle-brother, throughout his forty years of service, he’d felt Fugis’s watchful eye. Before he became Astartes Dak’ir had been an Ignean, an itinerant cave-dweller of Nocturne. That fact alone was unprecedented, for no one outside the seven Sanctuary Cities had ever been inducted into the vaunted ranks of the Space Marines. To some it made Dak’ir unique; to others, he was an aberration. Certainly his connection to the human side of his genesis was stronger than any the Apothecary had ever known. During battle-meditation, Dak’ir dreamed. He remembered with unerring clarity the days before he became superhuman, before his blood and organs and bones were reshaped forever into the iron-hard cast of the alpha-warrior. Biologically, he was a Space Marine like any other; psychologically, it was hard to tell just what potential lay within him.

Chaplain Elysius had found no taint in Dak’ir’s spirit. If anything, the Ignean’s strength of mind and purpose was remarkably pure, to such a degree that he had achieved the rank of sergeant especially swiftly given the slow and methodical nature of the Chapter.

Fugis, though, was curious by his very nature and unshackled by the extreme views that afflicted the Chaplain. Dak’ir was an enigma to him, one he wished to fathom. But the Apothecary’s watchful eye did not scrutinise him this day. His gaze was turned inward instead, mired in grief-ridden introspection. Kadai had been Fugis’s friend as well as his captain.

Unlike his brothers, Dak’ir wore the garb of a metal-shaper, the nomadic smiths who worked the iron found deep beneath the mountains and sweated over heavy anvils. The vestments were archaic, but then on Nocturne they still believed in the old ways.

In the earliest millennia of civilisation, when the native tribes of the planet lived in caves, worshipping the fire mountain as a goddess and its scaled denizens as objects of spiritual significance, metal-shaping was regarded as a noble profession and its masters were tribal leaders. The tradition held thousands of years later, after the development of primitive technologies and the nascent art of metal shaping became forging, after the coming of Vulkan and when the Outlander had taken him away again into the stars.

A pelt of salamander skin covered Dak’ir’s loins. Thick sandals were lashed about his feet. The Astartes’s bare chest shone like lacquered ebony, onyx-black and harder than jet. In his hands he clasped one of the thick chains that held Kadai’s corpse steady above the lake of fire.

Promethean tradition demanded that two metal-shapers would guide the passing of the dead. Across from him, standing upon a plinth of stone that jutted out above the lava much like Dak’ir’s own, was Tsu’gan. He too wore a similar garb. But where Dak’ir’s Ignean heritage was obvious in his rugged and earthy face, Tsu’gan’s noble bloodline, passed down from the tribal kings of Hesiod, made his countenance haughty and cruel. His glabrous skull was fastidiously shorn, and he wore a narrow crimson beard like a spike. It was as much a statement of his arrogance and vainglory as it was simple affectation. Dak’ir’s hair was dark, characteristic of subterraneans like the nomads of Ignea, cut simply and close to the scalp.

Accusation and thinly-veiled contempt burned coldly in Tsu’gan’s gaze, when their eyes met briefly. The fiery gorge between them spat and bubbled in sympathetic enmity.

Anger rising, Dak’ir looked away.

Tsu’gan was one of few amongst the Chapter that found Dak’ir’s singularity deviant. Born into comparative wealth and affluence, as such were possible on a volcanic death world, Tsu’gan had found himself instantly at odds with the idea of Dak’ir being a worthy candidate for the Astartes. The fact of his humble birth, his lowborn origins, and the levelling effect of them both as Space Marines, vexed Tsu’gan greatly.

Heritage was merely the undercurrent of acrimony that ran between them now. The bitterness that divided the two sergeants so cruelly had been set in motion as far back as Moribar, their first mission as neophytes, but its colour and acerbity had changed forever with the recent undertaking to Stratos.

Moribar… The thought of the sepulchre world he had visited over four decades ago unearthed bitter memories for Dak’ir. It was there that Ushorak had lost his life, and that Nihilan’s vendetta had been born.

Nihilan who had…

Old memories surfaced from Dak’ir’s subconscious like pieces of sharpened flint. He saw again the looming dragon, its red scales glistening like blood in the light of the temple to false gods. The melta flare filled his vision like an incandescent star, angry, hot and unstoppable. Kadai’s cries smothered all of his other senses and for a moment there was only blackness and the sounds of his accusing anguish…

Dak’ir snapped to. Sweat laced the grooves of his enhanced musculature; not from the lava heat, Salamanders were resistant to such things, but rather from his own inner pain. His secondary heart spasmed with the sudden increase in respiration, fooled into believing the body was entering a heightened state of battle readiness.

Dak’ir fought it down, mastering his own capricious biology with the many mental and physical routines he had been conditioned with as part of his rigorous Astartes training. He hadn’t endured a vision like that since Stratos. By Vulkan’s grace, it had lasted only seconds. None amongst his gathered brothers had noticed him falter. Dak’ir felt the impulse to suddenly cry out, and curse whatever fates had led them down this dark path to this grim moment of mourning and sorrow, this grief for a captain beloved.

Kadai’s death had stained them both. Dak’ir wore his openly, a white patch of scarification from a melta flare that covered over half his face. He had seen it again in his vision, the self-same blast that had ended Kadai’s life so grievously. Tsu’gan, however, carried his wounds inwardly where they ate away at him like a cancer. For now, their feud was kept hidden so as not to arouse the suspicion or displeasure of either Chaplain or, indeed, Chapter Master.

Brother-Chaplain Elysius had almost completed the ritual and Dak’ir shifted his focus back to his duty. It was a great honour to be chosen, and he did not wish to be found wanting under Chapter Master Tu’Shan’s fiery glare.

At last the moment came. Dak’ir had carried the weight of the pyre-slab for several hours. His shoulders did not even feel this exertion as he fed the chain down slowly, hand-over-hand. Each of the vast links, twice as large as an Astartes’s fist, was etched with the symbols of Promethean lore: the hammer, the anvil, the flame. Though the chain links would not dissolve when they touched the lava, they were still red-hot from the rising heat. As each link fed through his palm, Dak’ir gripped it and felt the symbols being slowly branded into his flesh.

Steam issued from every grasp. Dak’ir did not even flinch. He was focused on his task and knew that every link in the chain must be gripped in precisely the same way so that the three symbols were burned into the same place on his palm. Any mistake, however slight, would be obvious afterwards. The ruined mark would be scoured away by brander-priests, shame and disgrace left in its stead.

Though they never made further eye contact, Dak’ir and Tsu’gan worked in concert, passing the links, one over the other, in perfect unison. The metal chain clanked from its rig hoisted in the penumbral dark of the cavern’s vaulted ceiling, and Kadai was gradually lowered into the lava. The pyre-slab was soon submerged. The captain’s armour and the remains of his body were quickly ravaged. The intense heat would render the last vestiges of him to ash. Then he would sink, returning to the earth and Nocturne.

The scoured pyre-slab came into view again as the chain was hauled back up. Its mortal cargo was gone, its surface steaming. When the slab had at last reached its apex, the rig above was locked off and Dak’ir released it, his duty done.

A votive-servitor shambled forward. The part-flesh, part-mechanised creature was bent-backed from the weight of the massive brazier it carried. The dark metal cradle was fused to the servitor’s spine, filled with the gathered ash of offerings. As it approached, Dak’ir plunged his hand into the ash and with a thumb daubed a skull-like symbol upon his right arm.

Turning away from the creature, Dak’ir smacked his hands together allowing the flakes of burnt skin from his palms to cascade into the lava below. When he looked back he found a pair of robed brander-priests in the brazier bearer’s place.

Even without his armour, the Astartes towered over the serfs. Heads held low, they carried burning staves and used them to sear fresh honour-scars into Dak’ir’s skin. The Salamander accepted the heat, scarcely acknowledging the pain it caused, but embracing the purity of it all the same.

The silent exchange with Tsu’gan was distracting him. Dak’ir barely noticed the brander-priests as they withdrew. Nor did he see at first the three serfs that came after, carrying a suit of power armour between them.

Remembering where he was, the sergeant bowed as the serfs proffered his MkVII battle-plate. He took each piece of armour in turn, slowly re-donning it, casting off the mantle of metal-shaper and becoming Astartes again.

A deep voice issued from the dark when Dak’ir had almost finished.

‘Brother-sergeant.’

Dak’ir nodded to the armoured Salamander that emerged, the serfs scurrying past him and back into shadow. The mighty warrior, almost two heads taller than him, was clad in the green battle-plate of the Chapter, a blazing orange salamander icon on his left shoulder pad against a black field denoting him as a battle-brother of 3rd Company.

‘Ba’ken.’

Trunk-necked and slab-shouldered, Ba’ken was a fearsome sight. He also held the rank of Dak’ir’s heavy weapons trooper, and was his most trusted comrade.

Ba’ken’s arms were outstretched. In his gauntleted fists he clasped an ornate chainsword and plasma pistol.

‘Your arms, brother-sergeant,’ he said solemnly.

Dak’ir mouthed a silent prayer as he took up his weapons, relishing the familiarity of their touch.

‘Is the squad in readiness?’ asked Dak’ir. He gave a side-glance to Tsu’gan across the lake of fire, as he too was re-armouring. Dak’ir noticed that Iagon, Tsu’gan’s second, had dressed his sergeant. ‘Beneath you, is it?’ His muttered words were edged with venom.

‘3rd Company await only you and Brother Tsu’gan.’ Ba’ken kept his expression and tone neutral. He had heard his brother-sergeant’s veiled remark, but chose not to acknowledge it. He knew well of the discord between Dak’ir and Tsu’gan. He also knew of the approaches Dak’ir had made in an attempt to ingratiate the other sergeant and the fact of their falling on deaf ears and a closed mind.

‘When I was in my youth, a mere neophyte,’ Ba’ken began as Dak’ir sheathed his chainsword and holstered his plasma pistol, ‘I forged my first blade. It was a gleaming thing – sharp-edged and strong – the most magnificent weapon I had ever seen because it was mine, and I had made it. I trained with the blade constantly, so hard it broke. Despite my best efforts, the hours I spent in the forges, I could not repair it.’

‘The first blade is always the most precious, and the least effective, Ba’ken,’ Dak’ir replied, intent on mag-locking his battle-helm to the weapons belt of his power armour.

‘No, brother-sergeant,’ answered the hulking Salamander, ‘that is not what I meant.’

Dak’ir stopped what he was doing and looked up.

‘Some bonds, they cannot be made however much we want them to be,’ Ba’ken told him. ‘The metal, you see. It was flawed. No matter how long I spent at the anvil, I could not re-forge it. Nothing could.’

Dak’ir’s expression darkened and his red eyes dimmed in what might have been regret.

‘Let’s not keep our brothers waiting any longer, Ba’ken.’

‘At your command,’ Ba’ken replied, unable to keep the hint of melancholy out of his voice. He had neglected to mention that he had kept the blade, in the hope he would one day restore it.

‘Or our new captain,’ Dak’ir concluded, stepping off the plinth and stalking away into the darkness.

II

Grief

Dak’ir passed down a line of warriors, Ba’ken in tow, until he reached those of his own squad. Several of the other sergeants of 3rd Company acknowledged him with a nod or mutter of approval – Salamanders like Lok, Omkar and Ul’shan, Devastator squad leaders who had shared in the tragedy of Kadai’s death on Stratos.

He briefly locked eyes with Battle-Brother Emek, who clasped his shoulder with a reassuring hand. It was good to be amongst his brothers once more.

Others were less genial.

Tsu’gan had many supporters. In every sense, he was Promethean perfection: strong, courageous and self-sacrificing. Such warriors were easy to like, but Tsu’gan had an arrogant streak. His second, Iagon, was no less conceited, but his methods were entirely more insidious. Tsu’gan glowered from across the opposite side of the temple. The glances of his partisans were no less scathing. Dak’ir felt each and every one like red-hot daggers.

‘Brother Tsu’gan still protests.’ Ba’ken had followed the other Salamander’s eye line, and whispered the remark to his sergeant.

Dak’ir’s reaction was pragmatic.

‘He is certainly fearless, defying the will of the Chapter Master.’

It was no secret that the appointment of Captain Kadai’s successor had not been met with universal approval. Some amongst the sergeants openly contested it. Tsu’gan was the chief detractor. He and others like him had been silenced by Tu’Shan. The Chapter Master’s decree was law. His eyes and ears, however, could not be everywhere.

‘Doubtless, he expected his own name to be called,’ Dak’ir continued with a trace of rancour.

‘It’s possible. He regarded Kadai as highly as you, brother-sergeant. He may not think his heritor worthy,’ said Ba’ken. ‘There’s talk that Iagon has begun to gather support for his patron amongst the other sergeants.’

Dak’ir jerked his head towards Ba’ken abruptly.

‘He would challenge the leadership of the company before Kadai’s replacement is even sworn in?’

A few heads amongst the gathering on Dak’ir’s side turned as he spoke a little too loudly. The sergeant lowered his voice.

‘If enough of the sergeants support him, he could argue for Tu’Shan to make him captain instead.’

‘It’s a rumour. It may be nothing.’

‘He wouldn’t dare.’ Dak’ir bristled at the thought of Tsu’gan’s lobbying for power. It wasn’t that the sergeant was unworthy. Dak’ir acknowledged Tsu’gan’s prowess and courage, his tactical acumen. But he was also a glory hunter who sought advancement aggressively. Ambition was laudable, it drove you to excel, but when it was at the expense of others… Moreover, Dak’ir was annoyed because he had heard no inkling of this. Unlike Ba’ken, he was not so well liked. In many respects he was the outcast that Tsu’gan described. He could inspire his men, lead them into battle, and they would die for him as he would for them. But he lacked Ba’ken’s common touch, his broad empathy with the warriors of 3rd Company. Sometimes that left him on the periphery where internal politicking was concerned.

Dak’ir felt his ire for the sergeant anew, his burning eyes echoing his belligerent mood. Tsu’gan caught his gaze and returned it, proud and imperious standing amongst the Firedrakes and Tu’Shan himself.

Something sharp and insistent pricked at Dak’ir’s senses and he averted his attention from Tsu’gan to search for its source.

Clutching the hilt of his sheathed force sword, Librarian Pyriel regarded Dak’ir intently. A student of Master Vel’cona, Pyriel was an accomplished Epistolary-level psyker. Arcane power armour, accented by green robes and esoteric sigils, encased his body. The circlet of a psychic hood arced around the back of his skull. Tomes and scrolls were chained to his battle-plate, which was deep blue in the manner of the Librarium, and he wore a long drakescale cape. A faint trace of psychic resonance crackled cerulean blue across his eyes as Pyriel’s gaze narrowed.

Whatever his interest in him, Dak’ir found the examination unsettling. Perhaps Pyriel had taken up Fugis’s mantle as watcher, given the distraction of the Apothecary’s grief. Determined he would not be cowed, Dak’ir stared back, inwardly squirming beneath the Librarian’s intensity. In the end it was Pyriel who relented, smiling thinly first before looking away.

Dak’ir followed his eye to a long narrow walkway above the ridge of stone where he and his brothers now stood. A robed figure was standing in the centre of the dais at the end of the walkway, his features shadowed by a heavy cowl. Only the fire in his eyes was visible. From the darkness behind him, a pair of brander-priests emerged silently. As one, they gripped the rough fabric of his apparel and pulled it to the ground.

Veteran Brother N’keln stood before them, head upraised. He was naked apart from the tribal sash preserving his dignity. Fresh scars were burned into his bare skin; they were the marks of a captain, seared onto his chest and right shoulder by the brander-priests.

The dais was not merely as it appeared. A disc was sunken into the rock, the internal circuitry within it concealed behind stark grey metal. As the serfs retreated, a pillar of fire erupted from the dais, engulfing the ascendant completely. The inferno lasted seconds, and as the flames died away N’keln was crouched on one knee with his head bowed. Smoke rose from his coal-black body but he was not burned, rather he shimmered with inner strength.

Chapter Master Tu’Shan stirred from his throne and stood.

‘Through elemental fire is our mettle gauged and our devotion measured,’ he declared. His voice was deep and resonant, as if it had come from the soul of the earth. It held a molten core of inspirational passion, and carried such power and authority that all who heard it were instantly humbled. ‘Endurance and fortitude are the tenets of our lore and creed. Sacrifice and honour are the virtues we Fire-born uphold. With humility do we guard against hubris and our own vainglory.’ Tu’Shan focused all of his attention on N’keln, who had yet to lift his gaze.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ the Chapter Master began, thumping his plastron with a gauntleted fist and making the sign for the hammer.

N’keln looked up for the first time since his fiery baptism.

‘With it, I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ he concluded.

Tu’Shan smiled broadly, and its warmth spread to his blazing eyes.

‘Brother-sergeant no longer…’ he intoned, brandishing a massive thunder hammer in one huge fist. ‘Rise, brother-captain.’

The Vault of Remembrance was all but empty. Echoing footsteps reverberated off the walls from solitary Salamanders going about their rituals or serfs performing chores. From the catacombs below came the sound of forges, as anvils were struck and metals honed, travelling through the rocky core of Hesiod’s Chapter Bastion as a dulcet ring.

Hesiod was amongst the seven Sanctuary Cities of Nocturne. These great colonies, their foundations bored deep into the earth and rooted in the hardest bedrock of the planet, were based on the seven settlements of Nocturne’s tribal kings.

Each of the seven Salamander Chapter Bastions resided in one of these cities. Devoted to the seven noble companies, they were austere and hollow places.

Gymnasia provided for the rigours of the Astartes’ daily training regimen, and a Reclusium, presided over by the company’s Chaplain, saw to their spiritual needs. In the lower levels were the solitoriums, little more than stark oubliettes used for battle-mediation and honour-scarring. Dormitories were sparse and mainly inhabited by serfs. Armouries held weapons and other war materiel, though these were mainly for neophytes – seasoned battle-brothers often maintained their own arsenals, situated at private domiciles amongst the populace of Nocturne where they could better act as their custodians and protectors. Refectories provided repast, and in the great halls rare gatherings could be held. An Apothecarion saw to the wounded. Oratoriums and Librariums were the seats of knowledge and learning, though the culture of Nocturne stressed greater importance on the experience and the tempering fire of the battlefield.

Catacombs ran through a vast undercroft where the emanating swelter of the forges could be felt, the soot of foundries and the hard metal stench of smelteries absorbed into every pore. The great forges, temples of iron and steel, where an anvil not an altar was the pillar of worship, were ubiquitous across all of Nocturne. The hours of devotion spent in the cloying heat, through the lathered sweat and thickening smoke, were as crucial to a Salamander as any battle-rite.

It was in the highest echelon of the Chapter Bastion that two warriors in green battle-plate chose to reflect and offer supplication, in the Vault of Remembrance, in memoriam for their slain captain.

The temple was a vast, echoing space. The harmonies of phonolite-chimes echoed off its darkened walls. Hewn from volcanic aphanite, they rose up like geodesic intrusions and tapered off into a craterous aperture that lay open to Nocturne’s fiery-orange sky. Black and fathomless obsidian formed a hexagonal expanse, serving as the massive chamber’s floor. Stout columns of deep red felsite buttressed the half-ceiling, shot through with veins of fluorescent adamite.

The rare volcanic rocks and minerals used to fashion the magnificent temple were harvested after the Time of Trial, and the stark and frigid winter that followed in its wake. Such artefacts of geological beauty could be found throughout Nocturne. The most precious were protected within the stout walls of the Sanctuary Cities and their void shield generators.

Iron braziers around the chamber’s edge gave it a fiery cast, flickering in the lustrous faces of the polished rock. It appeared luminous and abyssal in the light’s reflection – a diabolic temple raised from the bowels of the world. At its nexus a giant pillar of fire roared, tendrils of flame spilling and lashing from a core of white heat. The two warriors knelt at it, insignificant before the conflagration.

‘As Kadai passes, so does N’keln ascend,’ Dak’ir uttered solemnly, his onyx skin tinged in dark amber by the memorial flame. In his gauntleted fist he clutched a votive offering that he threw into the fire. It ignited quickly, and he felt the heat of its immolation briefly against his downcast face.

‘History will remember him,’ Ba’ken replied in a reverent voice, burning his own tribute.

The ceremony of Interment and Ascension had ended with N’keln accepting his captain’s battle-plate. Tradition held that whenever an old captain died and another took his mantle, the ascendant would wear the previous incumbent’s armour. Ordinarily, the slain Salamander would be incinerated in the pyreum, a massive crematoria forge beneath the mountain. According to Promethean lore, the essence of the departed would be passed on into the armour when his ashen remains were offered up on the pyre-slab and he was returned to the mountain. Ko’tan Kadai had met his end before a traitor’s multi-melta. There had been little left of him to salvage, so his armour was given unto the mountain instead. It seemed a fitting offering. N’keln’s armour then was forged anew, an artificer suit fashioned by Brother Argos, Master of the Forge.

After N’keln had been reborn from fire as captain and clad in his battle-plate, the congregation of Salamanders had disbanded. Tu’Shan and the few Firedrakes that had been present for the ritual boarded Thunderhawk gunships idling on the Scorian Plain beyond the mountain. Tearing into the sky, they were bound for Prometheus and the fortress monastery stationed upon Nocturne’s sister moon where the greater matters of Chapter and galaxy were Tu’Shan’s chief concern.

For the others there was the slow pilgrimage back to Hesiod and a return to their duties.

3rd Company had earned a brief respite from campaign until their next mustering. Tempering of spirit and the remoulding of purpose was needed in the battle-cages, chapels and at anvils. Before the resumption of their training routines, Dak’ir and Ba’ken had come to the Vault of Remembrance. Like many others of 3rd Company, they did so to pay their respects and honour the dead.

‘These are grave times.’ Ba’ken appeared morose. It was unlike him.

A hot wind was blowing off the northern Acerbian Sea, bringing with it the stench of burning ash and the acrid tang of sulphur. Eddies swirled the blackening parchment Ba’ken had placed before the flame, slowly pulling it apart and turning it into ash. It reminded him of the deep fractures within their company left in the wake of Kadai’s death.

‘As one life ends, another begins. As it is before the forge flame, metamorphosis is existence in transformation,’ a calm and thoughtful voice answered. ‘Where is your Nocturnean pragmatism, Sol? You led me to believe you hailed from Themis.’

Ba’ken smirked away his melancholy.

‘Pragmatism, maybe, but the sons of Themis are no philosophers, brother,’ he offered dryly, a flash of fire lighting his eyes as he craned his neck to acknowledge Emek. ‘We are warriors,’ he added, clenching his fist in mock machismo. Themis was another of the Sanctuary Cities, well-known for its warrior-tribes and the tall, wide stock of men it produced, a trait augmented through the genetic process of becoming a Space Marine.

Emek smiled broadly showing his teeth, stark white against his onyx skin, and knelt down beside his brothers.

‘Would you prefer a verse from the Promethean Opus, instead?’ he countered.

Brother Emek, like his late captain, hailed from Hesiod. He had a noble, slightly studious bearing. His hair was carmine red and shaved into thin chevrons that extended across his entire skull and arrowed down to his forehead. Younger than Ba’ken – who had served almost a century in the Chapter but had no ambition for advancement – and even Dak’ir, Emek had an eternal look of curiosity in his eyes. Certainly, he possessed an impressive capacity for learning and an even greater desire. His knowledge of Promethean lore, its philosophy and history, and the culture of Nocturne, was lauded even by the Chapter’s Chaplains.

‘As worthy an account as that is, brother,’ replied Dak’ir, ‘I think that now is not the time for a recitation.’

Chastened, Emek lowered his head.

‘My apologies, brother-sergeant.’

‘None are necessary, Emek.’

Adopting an attitude of penitence, Emek nodded and cast his own offering into the fire. For a few moments, the three were joined in silent reverie, the crackling of the votive flame a chorus to their solitude.

‘My brothers, I…’ Emek began, but whatever he was about to say caught in his throat when he looked past the flame to the figure standing beyond it.

‘Kadai’s death has hit us all hard, brother,’ Dak’ir told him, having followed Emek’s gaze, ‘Even him.’

‘I thought his heart was cut from stone.’

‘It would seem not,’ offered Ba’ken, mouthing a silent litany before rising to his feet.

‘This enmity with the renegades has exacted a heavy toll. Do you think this is an end to it?’

Dak’ir was interrupted before he could reply.

‘Not for us,’ snarled Tsu’gan, his belligerence unmistakable.

Dak’ir got to his feet to face his fellow sergeant, who was stalking towards them across the obsidian plaza.

‘Or for them,’ Dak’ir added, eyes narrowing when he saw Iagon following behind, the ever faithful lackey.

Iagon was gaunt and slight, his face etched with a perpetual sneer. He blamed this affectation on an encounter during the Gehemnat Uprising on Kryon IV when, during the cleansing of a genestealer infestation, a brood creature’s bio-acid had severed some of the muscles in his face, leaving his mouth permanently down-turned.

Dak’ir thought it appropriate for one such as Iagon. He kept his gaze on the two approaching Salamanders, vaguely aware of the immense presence of Ba’ken at his back.

‘This retribution is old, Emek,’ Dak’ir told the other battle-brother. ‘It goes back to Moribar when Ushorak died. I don’t think Nihilan or the Dragon Warriors will easily lay the death of their captain to rest. I doubt even Kadai’s destruction would have slaked their thirst for vengeance. No,’ he decided, ‘this will end when one of us is dead.’

‘Annihilated,’ added Tsu’gan unnecessarily, by way of elaboration for Emek’s benefit. ‘The entire Chapter – them or us.’

‘Are you expecting a long war of attrition then, Brother Tsu’gan?’ Dak’ir asked.

Tsu’gan’s lip curled in distaste.

‘War is eternal, Ignean. Though, I would expect no less from one of your craven ancestry to desire eventual peace.’

‘There are many upon this planet and others across the Imperium who would welcome it,’ Dak’ir returned, his ire rising.

Tsu’gan sniffed his contempt.

‘They are not warriors, brother, like us. Without war, we are obsolete. War is my clenched fist, the burning in my marrow. It is glory and renown. It gives us purpose. I embrace it! What would we do if all the wars were to end? What use are we to peace?’ He spat the last word, as if it stuck in his mouth, and paused. ‘Well?’

Dak’ir felt his jaw tighten.

‘I shall tell you,’ Tsu’gan whispered. ‘We would turn on one another.’

Silence followed, charged with the threat of something violent and ugly.

Tsu’gan’s smile was mirthless and goading.

Dak’ir’s hand went almost of its own volition to the combat blade sheathed at his hip.

The smile turned into a malicious grin.

‘Perhaps you have some warrior’s blood in you after all, Ignean…’

‘Come now, brothers.’ Iagon’s voice dispelled the red haze that had settled over Dak’ir’s vision. He spread his arms in an expansive gesture, ever the ostensible conciliator. ‘We are all kin here. The Vault of Remembrance is no place for recusation or rancour. The temple is a haven, somewhere to absolve one’s self of guilt or self-recrimination, isn’t that so, Brother-Sergeant Dak’ir?’ He added the barb with a viper’s smile.

Ba’ken bristled, poised to act, when Dak’ir extended a steadying hand to placate him. He had already released his grip on the combat blade, seeing the act for what it was – a simple taunt. Emek, uncertain what to do, merely watched impotently.

‘It is more than that, Iagon,’ Dak’ir replied, side-stepping the snare Iagon had laid for him. He turned his attention back to Tsu’gan, making it clear that the lapdog was beneath his concern.

Dak’ir drew close, but Tsu’gan held his gaze and didn’t flinch.

‘I know what you are doing,’ he said. ‘N’keln is a worthy captain for this company. I warn you, do not besmirch Kadai’s memory by opposing him.’

‘I’ll do what is best for the company and the Chapter, as is my right and duty,’ Tsu’gan returned vehemently. Stepping closer still, he snarled through clenched teeth, ‘I told you once I would not forget your complicity in my brother-captain’s death. Nothing has changed. But question my loyalty and devotion to Kadai again, and I will cut you down where you stand.’

Dak’ir knew he’d gone too far with that last remark, so capitulated at once. Not out of fear, but shame. To challenge Tsu’gan was one thing; to call his fealty and respect for their old captain into doubt was unfounded.

Satisfied he’d made his point Tsu’gan backed down too and went to move around his brother.

‘How long has he been here, like that?’ he asked, looking beyond the memorial flame. There was the faintest trace of sadness in his voice.

The Vault of Remembrance was laid bare to the elements at its north-facing wall. An archway of white dacite engraved with the effigies of firedrakes led out onto a long basalt promontory that overlooked the sun-bleached sands of the Pyre Desert. Silhouetted in the evening glow was Apothecary Fugis, as motionless as a sentinel.

‘Since we arrived,’ said Dak’ir, and felt the spark of belligerence between them ebbing, if only for a few moments. ‘I haven’t seen him stir even once.’

‘His grief consumes him.’ Emek had turned to watch the Apothecary too.

Tsu’gan’s face creased into a disdainful scowl and he looked away. ‘What use is grief? It affords us nothing. Can grief smite our enemies or protect the borders of our galaxy? Will it resist the predations of the warp? I think not.’ With barely concealed contempt, he nonchalantly cast the votive scroll he had clutched in his fist into the memorial fire. It slipped and fell out of the flame’s caldera where the rest of the ash gathered, only half-burnt. For a moment, Tsu’gan almost went to retrieve it but then stopped himself. ‘I have no use for grief,’ he muttered quietly. Then he turned and left the Vault of Remembrance, Iagon following in his wake.

When Tsu’gan’s back was turned Dak’ir did it for him, mouthing a silent oath of remembrance as the parchment was consumed.

Fugis stared out across the vastness of the Pyre Desert. He was standing upon an overhang of dark rock that was often used as a natural landing pad for the Salamanders’ gunships and other light vessels. The strip was empty today, apart from the Apothecary, and Fugis welcomed the solace.

To the north beyond the arid desert region was the Acerbian Sea. Fugis saw it as a dim black line where the tall spire of Epimethus, Nocturne’s only ocean-bound Sanctuary City, jutted like a dull blade. It was surrounded by other, much smaller satellites, the numerous drilling rigs and mineral harvesting platforms that raked the ocean floor or mined its deepest trenches for ore.

Out on the barren sands of the Pyre, he witnessed a sa’hrk, one of the desert’s predator beasts, stalking a herd of sauroch. The lithe, saurian creature slithered low across the desolate plain, scurrying from the scattered rock clusters to draw close enough to its prey to strike. Oblivious to the danger, the sauroch herd ploughed on, their bulky, gristle-thick bodies swaying as they marched in file. The sa’hrk waited for the end of the cattle trail to reach it, then pounced. A bull-like sauroch was wrestled bodily to the ground, hooting plaintively as the predator levered aside the bone-plates encasing its neck to reach the soft flesh beneath. It gorged itself quickly, tearing strands of bloody meat with its iron-hard jaws and chugging them down its bloated gullet. The rest of the herd mewled and snorted in panic. Some of the cattle-beasts stampeded; others merely stood petrified. To the sa’hrk, it mattered not. It took its fill and merely sloped away, leaving the carcass to rot in the sun.

‘The weak will always be preyed upon by the strong,’ uttered Fugis. ‘Is that not correct, brother?’

Dak’ir stepped into the Apothecary’s eye line. Carrion creatures were already flocking to the dead sauroch, stripping it of whatever sustenance the sa’hrk had left them.

‘Unless those with strength intercede on behalf of the weak, and protect them,’ he countered, turning to regard his fellow Salamander directly. ‘I didn’t realise you were aware of my presence.’

‘You’ve been standing there for the last fifteen minutes, Dak’ir. I was aware. I merely chose not to acknowledge you.’

An uncomfortable silence followed, filled only by the low, insistent thrum of Hesiod’s void shield generators. Those of Epimethus to the north and Themis to the east added to the dull cacophony, audible even across the expanse of the desert and the shelter of the mountains.

‘On Stratos, we were weak.’ Fugis couldn’t keep the spite out of his voice, as he said it. ‘And the strong punished us for it.’

‘The renegades were not strong, brother,’ insisted Dak’ir. ‘They were cowards, striking from the shadows whilst our backs were turned, and cutting him down–’

‘Without honour,’ snapped Fugis, turning on Dak’ir before he could finish, a mask of rage drawn over his thin countenance. ‘They slew him, as that sa’hrk slew the sauroch, like swine, like cattle.’

The Apothecary nodded slowly, his anger usurped by bitterness and fatalism.

‘We were weak on Stratos… but it began on Moribar,’ he rasped. ‘I curse Kadai for that. For his weakness then, that he did not see and end the threat Ushorak presented, the loyalty he had instilled in Nihilan, when he had the chance.’

Dak’ir was taken aback by Fugis’s reaction. He had never seen him like this before. The Apothecary was calm, clinical even. It kept him sharp. To hear him speak like this was unsettling. Something had died inside him, burned along with Kadai’s remains on the pyre-slab. Dak’ir thought it might be hope.

Fugis closed on him. It was the second time that one of his battle-brothers had approached him like this today. The brother-sergeant didn’t care for it.

‘You saw it, brother. You dreamed of this danger for almost four decades.’ Fugis gripped Dak’ir’s pauldrons intensely. The Apothecary’s eyes were wide, almost maddened. ‘I only wish we had known then what we know now…’ Fugis’s voice trailed away. Whatever grief-fuelled vigour had seized his body ebbed with it, as he let his arms fall back to his sides and faced the setting sun.

‘Perhaps you should visit Chaplain Elysius. There is…’ Dak’ir stopped talking. Fugis wasn’t listening to him anyway. His eyes were glassy like rubies as he stared across the desert.

‘Brother-sergeant.’

Dak’ir exhaled his relief at Ba’ken’s voice. He turned to see the burly Salamander standing a few metres away.as if he had been there a while, not approaching out of respect.

‘Brother-Captain N’keln is here in Hesiod,’ Ba’ken continued. ‘He wishes to speak with you.’

‘Stay with him until you are called,’ Dak’ir husked beneath his breath on his way back into the Vault of Remembrance, with a half-glance in the Apothecary’s direction.

‘Of course, brother,’ Ba’ken replied and waited on the Thunderhawk platform for his sergeant’s return.

Surrounded by darkness, Tsu’gan bowed his head and beckoned the brander-priest with an outstretched hand.

‘Come,’ he uttered, voice echoing inside the close confines of the solitorium. The reverberation faded, swallowed by the stygian black and the shifting of fire-wrapped coals beneath Tsu’gan’s bare feet.

Iagon had already removed his power armour, securing it in an antechamber where he awaited his sergeant’s return.

Tsu’gan stood bare-chested, wearing only a pair of training fatigues borrowed from the Chapter Bastion gymnasia. Steam cascaded off his body in waves, diffusing the blood-red gleam from his eyes. Fresh scarification throbbed against his seared skin where his brander-priest had already applied the rod. Still, Tsu’gan beckoned for more.

‘Zo’kar!’ he snapped, gesturing agitatedly with his hand. His voice came out in a harsh whisper. ‘Burn me again.’

‘My lord, I…’ the brander-priest quailed hesitantly.

‘Obey me, serf,’ Tsu’gan hissed through clenched teeth. ‘Apply the rod. Do it, now.’ His tone was almost imploring.

The Space Marine’s mind was in turmoil. He regretted not going back, on seeing to the offering he had so casually discarded into the memorial flame. Kadai was worthy of his reverence, not his scorn, however it might be directed. He recalled the moment in the temple on Stratos when he had confronted Nihilan.

You fear everything…

The remembered words were like cold steel rammed into his flesh. For in some hollow of his heart, some hidden vault the Dragon Warrior had uncovered and cruelly opened, Tsu’gan knew them to be true. He hated himself for it. He had failed his lord and thereby realised his greatest fear. Purgation was the only answer to frailty. Kadai was dead because…

Pain filled his senses, together with the stench of his own tortured skin. It was clean and pure – Tsu’gan revelled in it, sought solace in flagellation by fire.

‘Scour it away, Zo’kar,’ he husked. ‘Scour it all away…’

The brander-priest obeyed, afraid of his master’s wrath, searing again the lines of the Salamander’s old victories and past achievements. It had gone beyond ceremony. There was no honour in what Tsu’gan was deliberately subjecting himself to. This was masochism; a shameful act brought about by his guilt.

By the time Zo’kar was finished and the rod had almost cooled, Tsu’gan was breathing hard. His body was alive with agony, the heat of the brand’s attentions coming off him in a haze. The entire chamber was redolent of burning, and scorched flesh.

Masochism was becoming addiction.

Tsu’gan saw again the moment of his captain’s demise. Watched his body immolated by the multi-melta’s bright beam. His eyes hurt at the remembered sight of it.

Dragging air into his chest, Tsu’gan could only rasp.

‘Again…’

In his half-delirium, he didn’t notice the other figure in the room watching him from the secrecy of shadows.

Dak’ir found his captain in one of the Chapter Bastion’s minor strategium chambers. It was an austere room, bereft of banners, triumphal plaques or trophies. It was hard-edged, practical and bleak, much like N’keln himself.

Leaning over a simple metal altar-table, the captain scrutinised galactic maps and star-charts with Brother-Sergeant Lok.

Lok commanded one of 3rd Company’s three Devastator squads, the Incinerators. A Badab War veteran, he carried black and yellow slashes on his left kneepad to commemorate the armour he had worn during the conflict. Lok was hard-faced and grim, two centuries of war calcifying his resolve. A long scar ran down the left side of his face from forehead to chin bisecting the sergeant’s two platinum service studs. This he had received fighting a boarding action on an Executioner’s battle barge, Blade of Perdition, during Badab. The bionic eye on the opposite side of his grizzled visage was implanted much earlier after the scouring of Ymgarl when he was only just a full-fledged battle-brother. Lok had been 3rd Company then, too, assigned as part of a small task force to assist 2nd Company who were mustered for the campaign in their entirety.

Lok reminded Dak’ir of an old drake, its skin chewed by the ravages of age, and as tough as cured leather. To see his dour expression, one might think he felt like one too.

The veteran sergeant’s left arm was encased in a power fist. Lok rested the cumbersome but brutal looking weapon on the altar-table as he attended to matters of tactics with his captain. What campaign or mission they might be masterminding, Dak’ir didn’t know. Many in the Chapter believed Lok should have been promoted to the 1st Company by now, but Tu’Shan was wise and knew that he was more valuable to 3rd Company as an experienced sergeant. To Dak’ir’s mind, that decision had proven an astute one.

Lok looked up at Dak’ir as he entered and gave a near imperceptible nod of his head.

‘Sir, you summoned me,’ the sergeant said to his captain, after bowing.

Disturbed from his planning, N’keln appeared distracted at first. As he straightened, the captain’s full panoply of war was revealed. Close up, the artificer armour he wore was rarefied indeed. Encrusted with the sigils of drakes and wrought with super-dense bands of adamantium that bound its reinforced ceramite plates, it was a masterpiece. A gorget lay discarded on the altar-table, evidently a portion of the suit N’keln had removed for improved dexterity in his neck. The battle-helm rested next to it, traditional MkVII in style but sleeker with the mouth grille replaced by a fanged drake snout. A mantle of salamander hide, the armour’s last concomitant element, was hanging reverently in one corner upon a nondescript mannequin.

‘Thank you, Sergeant Lok, that will be all for now,’ said N’keln at last.

‘My lord,’ Lok replied, adding, ‘brother-sergeant,’ for Dak’ir’s benefit on his way out.

N’keln waited until Lok was gone before he spoke again.

‘These are inauspicious times, Dak’ir. To assume such a heavy burden as this was… unexpected.’

Dak’ir was lost for words at the sudden frankness.

N’keln went back to his charts for a moment, searching for a distraction.

Dak’ir’s gaze strayed to the sheathed sword at his captain’s side. N’keln caught the look in his sergeant’s eyes.

‘Magnificent, isn’t it,’ he said, drawing the weapon.

Master crafted, the power sword hummed with an electric-blue tang rippling along its gleaming face. Consisting of two separate blades, conjoined at points along each inner edge, it was unique. The hilt was masterfully constructed with a dragon claw guard and drake-headed pommel, plated in gold.

As august as the power sword was, it was N’keln’s right and privilege to take up his old captain’s weapon too. Dak’ir’s understanding was that Kadai’s thunder hammer was repairable. He wondered why N’keln had refused it.

‘I confess, I prefer this.’ After sheathing the blade and setting it back down, N’keln patted the stock of his worn bolter, lying opposite. A great many kill-markings were etched along the hard, black metal of the gun and the skull and eagle hung from its grip on votive chains.

‘I know of the discontent amongst the sergeants,’ he said suddenly. His eyes were flat as he regarded Dak’ir. ‘Kadai’s legacy casts a long shadow. I cannot help but be eclipsed by it,’ he admitted. ‘I only hope I am worthy of his memory. That my succession was justified.’

Dak’ir was taken aback. He had not expected his captain to be so forthright.

‘You were Brother-Captain Kadai’s second-in-command, sir. It is only right and proper you succeeded him.’

N’keln nodded sagely, but at Dak’ir’s or his own inner counsel the brother-sergeant could not tell.

‘As you know, Brother Vek’shan was slain on Stratos. I am in need of a Company Champion. Your record, your loyalty and determination in battle are almost peerless, Dak’ir. Furthermore, I trust your integrity implicitly.’ The captain’s eyes conveyed his certainty. ‘I want to promote you to the Inferno Guard.’

Dak’ir was wrong-footed for a second time. When he shook his head, he saw the disappointment on N’keln’s face.

‘Sir, on Stratos I failed to protect Brother-Captain Kadai and that mistake cost his life and damaged this company into the bargain. I will serve you with faith and loyalty, but with the deepest regret I cannot accept this honour.’

N’keln turned away. After exhaling his displeasure he said, ‘I could order you to do it.’

‘I ask you not to, sir. I belong with my squad.’

N’keln regarded him closely for a few moments, making his decision.

‘Very well,’ he said at last, chagrined but willing to concede to his sergeant’s request. ‘There is something else,’ he added. ‘The other sergeants will hear of this soon enough, but since you are already here… I wish to heal the wounds in this company, Dak’ir. So, we are returning to the Hadron Belt. There we will scour the stars for any sign of the renegades. I mean to find them and destroy them.’

The Hadron Belt was the last known location of the Dragon Warriors. There it was that the Salamanders fought them on Stratos, or rather were ambushed by them and their former captain assassinated.

‘With respect, sir, our last encounter with Nihilan was months ago. They will be far from there by now, likely returned to the Eye of Terror.’ Dak’ir looked down at the maps on the altar-table and saw the dense and expansive region of the Hadron Belt. ‘Even if, for some inscrutable reason, the Dragon Warriors still linger there, the Belt is a vast tract of space. It would take years to search it all with any certainty.’

N’keln allowed a brief pause, deciding if he should say anything further.

‘Librarian Pyriel has been probing the star clusters out in the Belt and detected a resonance, a psychic echo of Nihilan’s presence. We will use that as our marker.’

Dak’ir frowned.

‘It is a slim hope to find them on such evidence. This remnant Brother Pyriel has found could be weeks old. What makes you think they will still be lurking in-system?’

‘Whatever was begun on Moribar with Ushorak’s death, it continued with the assassination of Kadai. Both planets are part of the Hadron Belt, which suggests that the Dragon Warriors have some lair situated there, from which they can launch their raids. Without the Imperium and the forges of Mars to sustain their war materiel, the renegades will need to get it from somewhere else. Piracy and raiding is the only way.’

‘A slim hope – yes, I agree,’ added N’keln. ‘But a solitary flame when kindled can become a raging conflagration.’ The captain’s eyes flared with sudden zeal. ‘It isn’t over, Dak’ir. The Dragon Warriors have cut us badly. We must strike next and without restraint, so we are not blooded again.’

N’keln’s final words before he dismissed Dak’ir sounded slightly desperate, and did nothing to assuage the brother-sergeant’s own burgeoning doubts.

‘We need this mission, Dak’ir. To heal the wounds of this company and restore our brotherhood.’

Dak’ir left the strategium feeling uneasy. The meeting with N’keln had unsettled him. The captain’s candour, the admission of his own failings and deep-seated doubts, though masked, was disquieting, for no other reason than he now believed that despite his arrogance and vainglory Tsu’gan might be right. N’keln was not ready for the honour that had already been bestowed upon him, and he was brother-captain in name alone.

Chapter Two

I

Dragon Hunting

The dream had changed.

Blood soaked the walls of the Aura Hieron temple, giving off an abattoir stink. It was copper and old iron tanging the tongue, and something else, something just beyond Dak’ir’s reach…

Silence, as deafening as an atomic storm, filled the empty pantheon devoted to false idols. Dak’ir thought he was alone. Then in the distance, a span that seemed impossibly long for the small temple, he saw him.

Kadai was fighting the daemon-spawn.

And he was losing.

Lightning thrashed around his thunder hammer, streaking from its head and roiling down the haft. It coursed over Kadai’s armour in a rippling wave, but was curiously quiescent. The daemon-spawn was indistinct, the edges of its reality blurred into a tenebrous void of clawed tendrils and raw malice.

Dak’ir was running noiselessly, crossing what felt like kilometres, when the thunder came. Faint at first, it built as a tremor until eventually it shook the heavens and sound rushed back in a cacophonous crescendo.

Through the conceit of hallucination, Dak’ir reached Kadai in time to see him smite the hell spawn down. Lightning arcs blasted its repugnant form until its grasp upon the material realm slipped utterly and it was claimed back by the warp.

The feat had taken its toll. Kadai was hurt. Breath wheezed in and out of his lungs, the genetic augmentation of his body failing to restore him. Armour, rent and torn in dozens of places, hung slack like shed skin about to crack and fall away.

‘Stand with me, brother…’ Kadai’s voice was like gravel scraped over rock. There was the faintest gurgle of blood in the back of his throat.

He held out a trembling hand.

‘Stand with me…’

Dak’ir went to reach for him when the stench of something on a sudden breeze pricked at his nostrils, making them burn.

It was sulphur.

A feeling, alien and inchoate, gnawed at the back of Dak’ir’s mind.

Fear?

He was Astartes. He did not feel fear. Dak’ir quashed it beneath a resolve of steel.

Something was moving at the periphery of his vision. A sound like cracked parchment and worn leather filled Dak’ir’s senses. Twisting, he saw a shadow slithering low and fast through the dark alcoves that surrounded the temple. An impression pressed at the fringe of his mind… incarnadine scales, a long serpentine body.

Dak’ir spun, trying to follow the spectre’s path. A barbed tail – huge, like that of some primordial lizard – disappeared from view.

A crackle of embers, the reek of burning from behind him made Dak’ir turn. A spit of flame died: a silhouette of something large and monstrous lurking in the alcoves faded with it.

‘Stand with me…’

Kadai had to heave the breath into his lungs to speak. He had slumped to one knee, using his thunder hammer as support. Blood eked from the cuts in his armour, staining it an ugly dark red. Still he reached out for his battle-brother.

Dak’ir’s gaze flicked back to the creature. He felt its malice like a tangible thing, tracked its position from the shifting shadows and the reek of its foul breath, like old blood and decay.

He cried out –

‘You shall not have him!’

– and rushed in to face it.

Chainsword whirring, Dak’ir barrelled into the darkness, tracking the monster’s forbidding shadow. It shifted slightly as he came at it. There was the suggestion of a maw, blade-long fangs, settling wings…

Then it was gone.

White heat flared in his mind and Dak’ir turned, knowing in his heart that he was already too late.

The monster was behind him, looming over Kadai who was still reaching, seemingly oblivious to the danger.

Red scales shimmered like blood, immense membranous wings unfolded like old, dark leather. A thickly muscled body squatted slovenly, its barrel-chest expanding with a wheezing, sucking breath. Thin plumes of smoke trickled upwards from a long snout, its maw filled with sharp and yellow fangs. Hot saliva dripped from the beast’s mouth, a slowly widening crack as its jaws parted, splashing against the ground with an acidic hiss.

Dak’ir ran, desperate to put himself between this monster and his stricken captain.

The dragon opened its jaws fully and Kadai was engulfed by an inferno, a blazing wall of fire thrown up in Dak’ir’s path.

Through the haze Kadai and the beast became rippling heat shadows, dark brown and indistinct. Slowly the silhouette of the dragon changed, becoming humanoid. It was now a vast armoured warrior, a fallen Angel of Death, a renegade, and the raging flame was the incandescent beam of a multi-melta.

Kadai roared in agony and Dak’ir’s anguished cry joined it, merging into a unified bellow of pain.

‘Nooooooo!’

Dak’ir ran on – at least he would claim his vengeance – but found he was encumbered by his armour, so slow and heavy that the ground gave way beneath his feet and he fell…

The temple bled away, replaced by darkness and the sensation of crippling heat against his face. His skin was burning, alive with fire. The pain was intense, tearing at the left side of Dak’ir’s face. He tried to cry out but his tongue had become ash. He tried to move but his arms and legs were blackened bones. As the last vestiges of his mind gave in to agony, he realised he was on Kadai’s pyre-slab with the fire raging around him. He was sinking into the river of lava. The pain was almost unbearable as Dak’ir was fully submerged below the surface. Utter blackness swallowed him.

Then nothing. No heat, or fire, or pain. Merely silence and the absence of being.

A slash of red, the rancid whiff of decay in his nostrils. Kadai’s face flashed before him, bloody and gaunt, half destroyed by the melta’s beam.

His ghastly eyes were shut; his ruined mouth pinched as if stapled.

Kadai’s voice emanated from the gloom, assailing Dak’ir from everywhere at once, yet his ragged lips did not part. ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter…’

Then the dead captain’s eyes flicked open, revealing hollow sockets. His jaw gaped, as if the muscles holding it shut had been abruptly cut.

‘Why did you let me die?’

Dak’ir jerked awake. Cold sweat veneered his face behind the hard plate of his battle-helm. Blinking, he caught fragments of his surroundings through his optical lenses.

Biological data, relayed from his power armour’s internal systems and linked to his Space Marine physiology, materialised on his helmet display. Grainy crimson resolution revealed heightened breathing, accelerated blood pressure and a spiking heart rate. Myriad screens of diagnostic information flickered by between Dak’ir’s slowing heartbeat, his ocular implant absorbing it all and storing it subconsciously.

Engaging a series of calming routines, hypno-conditioned for automatic and instinctive activation, Dak’ir fought his body back to equilibrium again. It was only then that he realised where he was.

The cool darkness of the Chamber Sanctuarine enveloped him. Re-scanning the battle-helm’s data array, he accessed mission schemata and encoded briefings through a series of sub-vocal commands.

Dak’ir was aboard the Fire-wyvern on long-range reconnoitre in the Hadron Belt. The strike cruiser Vulkan’s Wrath was several hours behind them in the gulf of realspace.

Engine noise of the gunship crashed back into being. Impelled by the on-board fusion reactor, the raucous din of turbofans assailed the Salamander’s auditory canals. Dak’ir filtered out the worst of it via his Lyman’s ear implant until he had readjusted a few seconds later. He was now fully aware. The dream-vision faded like dispersing smoke, though he caught fragments still – the dragon and Kadai’s ruined face lingering like dirty splinters embedded in his subconscious.

Secured in a grav-harness, Dak’ir saw he was surrounded by his battle-brothers. Their eyes glowed faintly in the gloom like hot coals. Fully armed and armoured, the Salamanders’ green armour shone dully. Bolters and blades were secured alongside them in reinforced steel racks. The heavier weapons – multi-meltas, flamers and heavy bolters – were stored in the Thunderhawk’s armoury locker.

Nocturne was months away. Brother-Captain N’keln had assembled his sergeants, just as he told Dak’ir he would, and outlined his plan to return to the Hadron Belt. Librarian Pyriel had been present, explaining to the officers of 3rd Company that he had detected a faint but distinct psychic echo out amongst the debris and star clusters of the system. Brother-Captain N’keln conveyed his belief that this would lead them to Nihilan, the Dragon Warriors and a much needed victory.

Dak’ir remembered the look of disapproval on Tsu’gan’s face as the mission was described. Though he kept his feelings well guarded from N’keln, Dak’ir knew that his fellow brother-sergeant thought the captain’s gambit was desperate and a waste of time.

Tsu’gan hadn’t decried him openly this time; his objections to N’keln’s captaincy had already been heard twice over and rebuked by the Chapter Master on both occasions. No: despite his misgivings, Tsu’gan was loyal to the Chapter and ultimately respected command. Any reservations he had were kept to himself, for now.

From the collective mien of some of the other sergeants, notably those of the Tactical squads, barring Dak’ir’s own, it was clear that Tsu’gan was not alone in his displeasure either. Dak’ir had thought again of the rumours to discredit their nascent captain, impeach him before Tu’Shan himself and sue for another to be installed in his place. Tsu’gan’s ambition was voracious; Dak’ir was convinced that he did indeed covet command of 3rd Company.

‘Restless, brother-sergeant?’ inquired Bak’en, as if penetrating his thoughts, shifting slightly in his grav-harness to turn in Dak’ir’s direction. Two blazing ovals of deep red loomed above him.

Deep space transit required that they wear their battle-helms at all times in case of a hull breach, their enclosed power armour suits combined with their mucranoid gland enabling survival in the vacuum of space until they could be recovered.

‘I am, brother.’ It wasn’t a lie. Dak’ir simply didn’t elaborate further. He’d caught Emek’s attention too, the Salamander’s gaze burning behind his ocular lenses as he regarded his brother-sergeant closely. ‘Restless for combat,’ he said to them both. ‘There is no cause for concern.’ Now Dak’ir lied.

The dream-visions had at first only surfaced during battle-meditation. They were rare, occurring once or twice every few months. Usually he dreamt of his childhood, of his life on Nocturne before becoming one of the Emperor’s Astartes and venturing into the stars to bring flame and retribution to mankind’s enemies. Many Space Marines didn’t remember their existence prior to donning the black carapace. Recollection was often fragmentary and clouded, more a series of impressions than any distinct or ordered catalogue of history. Dak’ir’s memories of his humanity were lucid and could be recalled with absolute clarity. It awakened a yearning in him, a sorrow for what he’d lost and a desire to reconnect with it on some fundamental level.

Occasionally he would remember Moribar, and his first mission. With the passing of years, these remembrances grew ever more frequent, violent and bloody. They were focused on death, but then Moribar revelled in the certainty of death. Mortality and the veneration of the fallen were its stock in trade. Dak’ir had been merely a scout back then, one of 7th Company. The grey sepulchre world had stained the Salamander somehow, a patina of grave dust coating him like a veil; it had wormed its way under his skin like the parasites consuming the rotten flesh of those buried beneath Moribar’s dark, forbidding earth. The deeds wrought on that terrible world had tarnished him deeper still, and like the unquiet dead they would not rest.

Nihilan would not rest.

At the thought of Moribar again, Dak’ir looked directly in front of him to where Tsu’gan was harnessed. Iagon was alongside him staring intently, his thoughts inscrutable. For once his brother-sergeant seemed far away and unaware of the brief exchange in the Thunderhawk’s troop compartment. Twenty battle-brothers filled it, two squads of ten. Though the Fire-wyvern had alcoves for five more, they went unused. Venerable Brother Amadeus took up the advanced positions in the gunship’s forward hold. The massive Dreadnought rocked quietly in his scaffold, subconsciously reliving old victories.

Crackling static fought for dominance over the thrumming of the Thunderhawk’s engines as the internal vox-link attached to one of the gunship’s bulkheads came to life.

‘Brother-sergeants, report to the flight deck immediately.’ Librarian Pyriel’s silken voice was clipped, but unmistakable even above the din of rocket boosters. ‘We have found something.’

Tsu’gan responded immediately. Unlocking his grav-harness by punching the release clasp, he levered the frame above his head and moved through the crowded chamber in the direction of the access stairs to the flight deck. He said nothing as he passed Dak’ir, who had just released his own harness with a hiss of escaping pressure.

Dak’ir wasn’t about to question his brother’s taciturnity. He was glad of the respite from Tsu’gan’s choler. Instead, he followed swiftly in the brother-sergeant’s wake and met both he and Pyriel in the upper forward section of the gunship.

The Librarian had his back to them, the clawed tips of his long salamander cloak just touching the floor. The curve of his psychic hood was starkly apparent above the generator of the power armour that dominated his upper back. Skeins of wires protruded from the arcane device and fed into the hidden recesses of his gorget. It reminded Dak’ir of the Salamander’s exceptional talents and the precarious line that psykers, even those as accomplished as Pyriel, walked when they communed with the unknowable forces of the warp. The Epistolary’s earlier scrutiny of Dak’ir during the ceremony of Interment and Ascension came to the forefront of the Salamander’s mind. Had he been communing with the warp then, using his prodigious abilities to know his thoughts? There had been recognition in Pyriel’s eyes when Dak’ir had met his gaze. Since that moment, and confronted with him again, the sergeant’s sense of unease in the Librarian’s presence hadn’t lessened.

‘It is incongruous,’ said Pyriel, staring at something visible though the Fire-wyvern’s occuliport.

The cockpit itself was a small space, made smaller still by the presence of the Librarian and two sergeants. Four Space Marine crew worked at the vessel’s controls: a pilot sat in a grav-couch situated in the Fire-wyvern’s stub nose; a navigator carefully monitored sensor arrays and complex avionics; a co-pilot and a gunner filled the other two positions. Each wore power armour but with their back-mounted generators removed – all of their suits’ internal systems were maintained by the Thunderhawk’s reactor.

Tsu’gan and Dak’ir came forward together to stand either side of Pyriel to see what had caught the Librarian’s attention. Though still distant, but closing all the time, the sheer size of Pyriel’s discovery almost filled their view. It was a ship, not a small fighter like the Fire-wyvern but a vast cruiser, akin to a floating city of dark metal.

The ship was evidently of Imperial design: long, but bulky like a long-hafted mace and with a slab-ended prow like a clenched fist. There was obvious damage to the hull, charred and laser-blackened as it was by munitions fire. Several of its numerous decks were breached. Ragged wounds in the metal were like the bites of some insect that had become infected, the vessel’s flesh sloughed away by the contagion. Dormant weapon systems still held a threat, however – vast banks of laser batteries bowed down as if crestfallen along its ruined flanks. Auto-turrets, forward-arc lances and much larger ordnance made up the rest of the ship’s guns. It was a fearsome array, but one laid low by some unknown enemy.

Clusters of factorum and munitoria comprised the vessel’s hard-edged core, and gargantuan foundry-engines filled its belly. Deep crimson and black, and displaying the symbol of the cog, the cruiser had clearly originated on Mars. It was an Ark-class forge-ship, a vessel of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

‘No energy signature from the shields or engines. No radiation reading from the reactor.’ Pyriel’s voice sounded tinny and echoing beneath his battle-helm. He exhaled a long breath, as if cogitating what might have befallen the stricken ship.

‘The ship is dead.’ Tsu’gan’s tone betrayed his impatience.

‘For some time, judging by the damage sustained to its port and aft,’ added Dak’ir.

‘Indeed,’ Pyriel replied. ‘But no enemy in sight, no plasma wake or warp signature. Adrift in realspace for us to find.’

‘Have we tried hailing it?’ asked Tsu’gan, clearly suspicious.

‘No response,’ Pyriel told him flatly.

‘And is this the source of the psychic resonance?’

‘No,’ Pyriel confessed. ‘I have not felt that for some time. This is different entirely.’

Tsu’gan’s reply was pragmatic.

‘Whatever the cause, vessels of that size don’t simply appear in realspace crippled and without power. It’s possible whoever did this is still lurking in-system. Pirates maybe?’

Dak’ir was only half-listening. He’d stepped forward to get a closer look.

‘There is something on that ship,’ he muttered.

The slight incline of Pyriel’s head in Dak’ir’s direction betrayed his interest.

‘What makes you say that, brother?’

Dak’ir was taken slightly aback, though he kept the reaction from affecting his body language; he’d not realised he’d spoken out loud.

‘An instinct, nothing more,’ he confessed.

‘Please elaborate.’ The Librarian turned his scrutinising gaze upon him fully now. Dak’ir felt it like probing tendrils peeling back the layers of his subconscious, trying to get at the veiled secrets of his mind.

‘Just something in my gut.’

Pyriel lingered for a moment, but then seemed content to leave it there and turned back to stare through the occuliport.

Tsu’gan’s tone suggested a scowl.

‘My gut is telling me we should not waste our efforts further. The Dragon Warriors are not here on this drifting husk. We should move on and let the Vulkan’s Wrath decide what to do with her.’

‘We should at least search for survivors,’ Dak’ir countered adamantly.

‘To what end, Ignean? The vessel is nothing but a floating tomb. There is no time for this.’

‘What time do you think we need, Brother Tsu’gan?’ asked Pyriel with a slight tilt of his head in the sergeant’s direction. ‘It has been weeks since we translated in-system, a few hours exploring this vessel won’t–’

‘Archimedes Rex…’

Pyriel turned slowly at the interruption.

‘What did you say?’ Tsu’gan snapped.

Dak’ir was pointing through the occuliport.

‘There,’ he said, as if he hadn’t even heard his brother’s words. He was indicating the vessel’s port side as they slowly came abeam. The vessel’s designation was stamped there in massive letters. ‘It’s the name of the ship.’

Tsu’gan was nonplussed as he turned on his battle-brother.

‘What of it?’

‘It’s… familiar.’

‘Meaning what, exactly – that you’ve seen it before? How is that even possible?’

Pyriel broke the sudden tension, evidently having come to a decision.

‘Return to the Chamber Sanctuarine and prepare your squads for boarding.’

‘My lord?’ Tsu’gan could not see the logic in that, his pragmatism allowing him to put his issue with Dak’ir aside whilst he dealt with this latest concern.

Pyriel was disinclined to explain it to him. ‘It’s an order, brother-sergeant.’

Tsu’gan paused, chastened. ‘Should we not at least wait for the Vulkan’s Wrath and deploy via her boarding torpedoes?’

‘No, brother-sergeant, I want to breach the Mechanicus ship quietly. Sensor arrays have discovered an open fighter bay, we can dock there.’

‘I see no need for caution, Brother-Librarian,’ he pressed. ‘As I’ve said, the ship is dead.’

Pyriel’s penetrating gaze fell on Tsu’gan.

‘Is it, brother?’

II

Archimedes Rex

The Fire-wyvern’s landing stanchions extended as the gunship came to rest in the darkness of the forge-ship’s fighter bay.

Winking emergency lighting was strobing up and down the massive lozenge-shaped hangar, washing it blood-red. Squadrons of small vessels were revealed in the sporadic, visceral light.

The Salamanders deployed quickly, the rear embarkation ramp engaging as soon as they had docked. It hit the steel deck with a resounding clang, followed by the thunder of booted footsteps as the Space Marines dispersed. Mag-locks on the soles of their boots allowed them to traverse the plated floor in the absence of gravity, albeit in slightly syncopated fashion, and assume defensive positions. The manoeuvre was done by rote, but proved unnecessary. Aside from the host of dormant Mechanicus fighters, the hangar was empty. Only the echo of the Salamanders’ approach, resonating off the stark, buttressed walls and up into a high, ribbed ceiling, gave any indication of life in the massive expanse.

‘Leaving their fighter bay open and unsecured, someone must have fled in a hurry.’ Emek’s voice came through the comm-feed in Dak’ir’s battle-helm. The two squads and the Librarian were synched with it in order to stay in constant contact.

‘I doubt it,’ growled Tsu’gan, already inspecting the many rows of small vessels. ‘There looks to be a full complement here, all in dock. Nobody left this vessel. Or if they did, they didn’t use any of these craft to do it.’

‘Perhaps they were in the process of leaving,’ offered Ba’ken, standing alongside one of the fighters. ‘This glacis plate has been disengaged.’

It wasn’t the only one. Several of the fighters had the glacis shields of their cockpits left unsecured; some were even wide open. It was as if the pilots, getting ready to launch, had left their posts and marched away to only the warp knew where.

‘No pilots, no flight crew of any description,’ added Dak’ir. ‘Even the control consoles are empty.’

‘It begs an obvious question–’ Bak’en’s query was left unspoken, as he was interrupted by the front embarkation ramp of the Fire-wyvern opening and easing to the deck with a metallic clunk.

Pounding footfalls announced the armoured form of Venerable Brother Amadeus. The Dreadnought was an imposing sight.

The mechanised exoskeleton that framed the armoured sarcophagus of Brother Amadeus was fraught with ribbed piping, cables and whining servos. Two broad and blocky shoulders sat either side of the Salamander’s casket. Brave beyond measure, Amadeus had fallen at the siege of Cluth’nir against the hated eldar. Such were his deeds that the wreckage of his mortally wounded body was taken from the battlefield and interred within a suit of Dreadnought armour, so that Amadeus might fight on in the Chapter’s name forever.

Looming over five metres in height and almost as wide, it wasn’t just the sheer bulk of Amadeus’s cyborganic body that made him formidable – both of his mechanised arms carried a potent weapon system. The left was a massive power fist that crackled with electrical discharge; the right bore a multi-melta, its barrel nose scorched black.

Ba’ken shifted uncomfortably at the sight of the Dreadnought, though only Brother Emek noticed it.

‘In the name of Vulkan,’ Amadeus boomed in automated diction, having only recently been awakened.

The Salamanders saluted as one, rapping their plastrons with clenched fists to show their veneration and respect.

‘What is your will, Brother Pyriel?’ added Amadeus, stomping over to the Librarian. ‘I live to serve the Chapter.’

Pyriel bowed.

‘Venerable Amadeus,’ he uttered, before straightening again. ‘Your orders are to remain sentry here and guard the Fire-wyvern. The Archimedes Rex is obviously damaged. There will likely be little room for one as mighty as you, brother.’

‘As you command, sire.’ The Dreadnought clanked back towards the perimeter of the gunship, weapons whirring into position as he adopted overwatch.

‘Sergeants, form up your squads,’ said Pyriel over the comm-feed, facing his battle-brothers, ‘and follow me.’ He was walking towards a pair of immense bulkhead doors at the far end of the hangar when he intoned. ‘In the name of Vulkan.’

Twenty voices echoed back.

The hangar led into a smaller, but identically shaped, airlock. Emek, who had disengaged the bulkhead and then sealed it back behind them, worked at the room’s only access terminal, setting the entry protocols in motion. Oxygen flooded the chamber, amber warning beacons rotating whilst it was repressurised. The Salamanders stood stock still and silent until the process had finished and the icon on the far bulkhead door turned from red to green.

Upon interrogating the Archimedes Rex’s maintenance logs and ship schemata, Emek was able to discern that much of the Mechanicus vessel’s structural integrity was still intact. Deck by deck scans revealed that there was also still limited oxygen on board, the admittedly weak atmosphere perpetuated by reserve life support systems.

Most of the damage the Salamanders had seen outside during their approach appeared to have only affected the ship’s ablative armour. Internal puncturing of the hull was restricted to only a few locations, and those areas had been sealed off.

With ponderous momentum, the vast bulkhead doors split and opened into the Archimedes Rex proper.

A wide and gloom-drenched hall stretched out before the Salamanders. The Space Marines switched on the luminators attached to their battle-helms. Several grainy, white beams strafed outwards like lances to alleviate the darkness. Scads of expelled gases clung to the deck plates in a roiling, artificial smog. Recessed columns ran the entire length of the hall. They were linked by sepulchral arches that framed stygian alcoves, seeming to go on forever as they disappeared into the thickening shadows ahead.

Pyriel gave the order to advance, invoking a faint glow in the blade of his force sword.

‘No life signs,’ uttered Iagon through the comm-feed after a minute had elapsed. He glanced down intermittently at the auspex clutched in his gauntlet, scanning for bio-signatures.

‘It’s deserted,’ rasped Tsu’gan, combi-bolter held at the ready, stalking along one side of the hall in front of his dutiful brother.

‘Like a tomb…’ hissed Brother Ba’ken from the other side, adjusting the weighty multi-melta he held, unknowingly echoing Tsu’gan’s earlier words on the flight deck.

‘Let’s hope it stays that way,’ Dak’ir muttered, taking point opposite Tsu’gan.

After several minutes, Brother Zo’tan articulated what they were all thinking. ‘Feels like we’re heading down.’

‘We’re in one of the ship’s entry conduits,’ offered Emek, flamer low-slung as he panned it back and forth with smooth sweeps. He had been promoted to special weapons trooper after the campaign on Stratos. The previous incumbent, Brother Ak’sor, had died during the engagement. He had been one of several Fire-born lost on that world. ‘It leads into the bowels of the Archimedes Rex,’ Emek continued, using the data he’d accessed from the ship’s schematics and then stored in his eidetic memory to ascertain their exact location. ‘At this pace we should reach the end of it in approximately eight minutes.’

Eerie silence resumed with only the dull thud of the Salamanders’ footfalls disturbing it.

The empty sockets of a Mechanicus skull glared at them when they reached the end of the conduit, another massive bulkhead door impeding the way ahead.

‘Brother Emek,’ invited Pyriel, a brief flare erupting along the blade of his force sword as he readied his power.

Emek allowed the flamer to loll against its strap as he went to the bulkhead’s control panel and prepared to engage the access mechanism. Behind him, all nineteen of his battle-brothers took up battle positions. ‘Disengaging locks,’ he reported, and fell back quickly to join them.

A crack split the immense door, hermetically sealed from the outside, dividing it into two. Shrieking mechanisms were immediately smothered by an intense clamour spilling out from the chamber beyond, filling the conduit with raucous noise. After the silence they had just experienced, the din was like a physical blow and the Salamanders reeled as one. Only Pyriel was unfazed.

Adapting quickly, the Salamanders filtered out the crashing wall of sound, just as Dak’ir had done aboard the Fire-wyvern. Maintaining vigilance, they awaited the slow, inexorable process of the bulkhead opening.

Massive forge-engines loomed in the next chamber, banks and banks of pistons, foundries, kilns and smelting vats filling an expansive machine floor. Conveyors chugged with monotonous motion, steam spat in sporadic intervals from pipes and vents, unseen gears churned noisily.

It was a hive of industry, a slow-beating heart of metal and machines, oil and heat. Yet, for all its labours, the forge-engines had achieved nothing. The vast machineries were merely turning over and over, going through their production cycles bereft of raw materials. Spent bolts piled up on the floor beneath an array of heavy-duty riveting guns, their ammunition long spent; hammers pounded the vulcanised rubber tract of a running belt, their concussive force impotent without plating to beat; oil spilled across the deck and seeped down through cross-hatched grilles, no joints for the empty needle-dispensers to lubricate.

With no independent servitors in sight, no adepts to instruct them, the many and multifarious apparatus continued in their various indoctrinated routines uninterrupted. The only creatures in the forge were those servitors attached physically to the machines, but they too merely worked by rote, implementing their protocols like automatons. There was no evidence of crew or even skitarii armsmen or Martian praetorians, either – wherever the inhabitants of the Ark-class vessel were situated, it was not here.

‘Tiberon,’ barked Tsu’gan into the comm-feed, ‘shut it down.’

The Salamander saluted and broke from formation, bolter held low and ready. He disappeared briefly amidst the forge-machines. A few moments later the machines slowed and began to power down, the din receding gradually into silence.

Brother Tiberon returned and rejoined his squad.

Dak’ir tested the reaction of a slaved servitor with the tip of his chainsword, watching it slump back as if its invisible strings had been cut by the weapon’s teeth.

‘We must find out what happened here.’ He looked to Pyriel for some guidance, but the Librarian was still and appeared pensive.

Instead, Dak’ir looked around and noticed a console independent of the forge-machines.

‘Emek, see if you can access the onboard maintenance logs. Perhaps it will provide some clue as to what happened.’

Emek went to work again, using the surplus power available from the shut-down forge-engines to activate the console. Dak’ir at his shoulder, the other Salamander brought up more ship schematics, this time with maintenance logs appended alongside. He read quickly, assessing the information display and absorbing it like a savant. Emek’s capacity for knowledge and aptitude at applying it was impressive, even for a Space Marine.

‘Records are incomplete, possibly as a result of the damage sustained to the ship,’ he said, whilst reading. Touch sensitive screens allowed Emek to call up specific decks and areas, digging deeper for answers as he zeroed in on the salient information the vessel did still possess. ‘There’s an alert for a minor hull breach to the aft, starboard side.’

‘We entered via the port side,’ muttered Dak’ir. ‘How close to our current position is it?’

‘Several decks – potentially an hour’s travelling through the ship, assuming a clear route and walking speed. It’s too small to be weapons damage.’

‘An internal explosion?’

‘It’s possible…’

‘But you don’t think so, brother?’

‘This ship has been drifting for a while, any incendiary reaction from inside would have occurred before now,’ Emek explained. ‘There is a fading heat trace associated with this breach, which suggests it’s recent.’

‘What are you telling me, Emek?’

‘That the breach was caused by external forces and that we are not the only ones exploring this ship.’

Dak’ir paused to consider this then slapped Emek’s pauldron.

‘Good work, brother. Now find us a route through the ship that will take us to the bridge. We may need the Archimedes Rex’s log to ascertain what tragedy befell them.’

Emek nodded and began examining the ship’s layout in detail relative to the Salamanders’ position in its bowels and the bridge situated in the upper decks.

‘Brother-Librarian,’ Dak’ir said to get Pyriel’s attention after he left Emek to his task.

Pyriel faced him and his eyes crackled briefly with psychic power.

‘So it seems we are not alone, after all,’ he said.

Dak’ir shook his head.

‘No, my lord, we are not.’

The Salamanders proceeded with caution, following the route established by Brother Emek and inloaded to Brother Iagon’s auspex. They passed through cargo zones, abandoned crew quarters and vast assembly yards fed by the forge-engines from below decks. The further into the ship they travelled, the more frequent the discovery of servitors became. Unlike those on the foundry floor in the bowels of the Archimedes Rex, these automatons were independent of engines or other machineries. Some lay slumped against bulkheads, others hung slack like wretched cybernetic dolls over benches or cargo crates, many were simply frozen stiff, locked in whatever perfunctory task they had been performing when the ship had been attacked. Whatever had crippled the Ark-class cruiser had acted swiftly and to devastating effect.

Despite its disrepair, the iron majesty of the Mechanicus still came through and intensified the deeper the Salamanders went in the ship. Symbols of the Machine-God were wrought into the walls, the holy cog of the Martian brotherhood prevalent throughout the upper echelons of the Archimedes Rex. Alcoves recessed into the walls punctuated regimental lines of bulkheads and were minor chapels of devotion to the Omnissiah. Incense burners hung from chains looped under the vaulted ceilings, emanating strange aromas reminiscent of oil and metal. Designed to appease and mollify the machine-spirits, these lightly smoking braziers were ubiquitous throughout the Archimedes Rex’s many upper halls, chambers and galleries.

Skulls set into the walls were mistaken as some form of reliquary at first, but the circuitry and antennae jutting from bleached bone exposed them as cyber-skulls, the sanctified craniums of pious and devoted servants of the Imperium. The entire ship was a monolith of religio-metallurgic fusion, the spiritual alloyed with the mechanised.

Tsu’gan stooped over the collapsed body of a servitor. There appeared to be no external damage, and yet it was lifeless and unmoving. Its staring eyes, milky orbs of glass, were bereft of animus.

‘No putrefaction, no decay of any kind,’ he reported from the head of the group. Brother Honorious watched the dingy route ahead of his sergeant, flamer at the ready.

The ship’s corridors had narrowed, becoming almost labyrinthine, devolving into a myriad of tunnels, conduits and passageways like the multitudinous neural pathways of a vast mechanised brain. Only Emek’s route to the bridge had kept them on course. The Salamanders had to advance in pairs, one squad at the fore, the other guarding the rear. Tsu’gan had been quick to establish his dominance, eager for action, and taken the lead. Librarian Pyriel had seemed content to let him, occupying a position at the centre of the two squads. The longer they spent on the ship, the more seldom Pyriel spoke. He interrogated his psionics constantly, trying to ascertain some thread of existence of the other intruders on the vessel, but the machine presence on board, though slumbering or inert, was hindering his efforts.

‘These creatures are not dead.’ Tsu’gan got back to his feet. Though the majority of their bodies were mechanised, even servitors required biological systems to maintain the integrity of their human flesh parts and organs. Without them they would not be able to function. ‘It’s like some kind of deep hibernation,’ the brother-sergeant added.

‘A defence mechanism, perhaps?’ offered Emek, alongside Dak’ir who was just behind Pyriel.

Tsu’gan didn’t have time to answer before Iagon spoke up.

‘I have a life form reading, two hundred metres east.’

Looking in that direction, Tsu’gan grunted.

‘Weapons ready.’

Together, the Salamanders followed the quietly flashing signal on Iagon’s auspex.

Two hundred metres east led the Salamanders to a large Mechanicus temple. Octagonal in shape and with an archway leading off from each of its eight sides, here the blending of machine and religiosity was even more prevalent. There were iron altars, burning brazier pans and devotional statues; cyber-skulls wound around the temple’s ambit like eternal sentinels. An inscrutable sequence of ones and zeros, doubtless some esoteric equation relating to Mechanicus science, filled the plated floor. Huge, bulb-headed battery units spat arcs of electricity across flanged conductor fins fixed to a thin torso of metal. The ephemeral sparks filled the chamber sporadically, illuminating it in a harsh white glare.

In the centre of the room, encircled by the cog symbol itself, a robed figure knelt in supplication.

Tsu’gan was the first to enter, Honorious and Iagon at his back with weapons drawn. The figure seemed still to the brother-sergeant, though after he’d stared at it long enough he detected the slightest tremor of movement as it rocked back and forth. As it faced away from them, hooded by a heavy cowl, Tsu’gan was unable to discern its features or physical disposition. Combi-bolter readied cautiously, he battle-signed for his fellow squad members to fan out around him. In a few short seconds, the entire complement of Salamanders was in the large room and poised for immediate assault.

‘A magos, by the look of it,’ uttered Pyriel. His eyes flashed cerulean blue behind his helmet lenses and then died again. ‘I see nothing,’ he added in a hollow voice, ‘Nothing but mental static. It is as if its mind is shut off somehow, or merely waiting for some trigger to ignite it.’

The Librarian looked to Brother Iagon, who was adjusting the auspex trying to get a more detailed reading.

‘The biorhythms appear normal, all circadian functions are perpetuating as expected. Heart rate, respiration, they are consistent with a deep sleep.’

Brother Emek shook his head. ‘It isn’t sleeping, as such,’ he observed, his curiosity coming through via the comm-feed. ‘Its movements are acute, but exact and repeated, as if locked in some kind of holding pattern or mechanised catatonia. It is irregular.’

‘Explain, brother,’ Dak’ir returned.

‘Magos are sentient: they are unlike servitors, dependent on doctrina wafers or pre-programmed work protocols. Cold and inhuman, certainly, but they are not slavish automatons. Some trauma must have afflicted it in for it to behave in this way.’

Tsu’gan had heard enough. He levelled his combi-bolter, taking careful aim.

Dak’ir put out a hand to stop him. ‘What are you doing?’ he snapped.

Though he couldn’t see Tsu’gan’s eyes behind his battle-helm, Dak’ir felt the heat in his fellow sergeant’s glare.

‘Listen to your battle-brother. It’s a trap,’ he growled, looking over at Dak’ir’s gauntlet on his bolter stock. ‘Step aside unless you want to lose your hand, Ignean.’

Dak’ir bristled at the slight. He had no issue with his lowborn heritage, he only objected to the way that Tsu’gan used it as a derogatory barb.

‘Desist,’ he warned him, through clenched teeth. ‘I won’t allow you to shoot a man in cold blood. Let me approach him first.’

‘It’s not a man, it’s a thing.’

Still Dak’ir would not yield.

Tsu’gan’s finger lingered near his bolter trigger for a few seconds more before he lost the battle of wills, lowered the weapon and stepped back.

‘Proceed, if you wish,’ he growled. ‘But as soon as the creature turns – and mark me it will – I shall fire. You’d best be out of the way when I do.’

Dak’ir nodded, though the gesture went unheeded so was scarcely necessary. He glanced behind him at Ba’ken, who gave an acknowledgement of his own, though this one indicated that he was watching his sergeant’s back. Before he turned away, Dak’ir noticed Pyriel looking on. The Librarian had observed and, doubtless, heard the entire exchange between the feuding sergeants but had said nothing. Dak’ir wondered then whether Pyriel’s presence on this mission was more than merely simple command. Had Master Vel’cona, at Tu’Shan’s bidding, instructed him to assess how far the enmity between the brother-sergeants went and act appropriately or even report back? Or perhaps there was another imperative guiding the Librarian, one related to his careful observations during the ceremony on Nocturne? Now was not the time to consider it. Dak’ir slowly drew his chainsword and approached the magos.

His bootsteps sounded like thunderclaps through his battle-helm as he walked tentatively towards the centre of the temple. As Dak’ir moved he panned his gaze slowly back and forth, interrogating the deeper shadows lurking in the recesses of the room. Cycling through the optical spectra afforded by his occulobe implants and combined with the technology of his battle-helm’s lenses, Dak’ir felt certain there were no hidden dangers.

Within an arm’s length of the kneeling magos, he stopped. Listening intently, he made out a susurrus of meaningless sound seeping from the supplicant’s mouth. Close up, the tremors in the magos’s body seemed more pronounced, though whether this was merely proximity or the fact that it had somehow detected his presence, Dak’ir was uncertain.

‘Turn,’ he said in a low voice. It was possible the magos was in some kind of trance or deep meditation. Perhaps he had lost his mind and was fixed in some catatonic state as Emek had suggested. In any case, Dak’ir had no desire to alarm him. ‘Have no fear,’ he added when a response was not forthcoming. ‘We are the Emperor’s Astartes, here to rescue you and your crew. Turn.’

Still nothing.

Dak’ir took a firm grip on his plasma pistol, still holstered for now, and reached out with the tip of his dormant chainsword.

The blade had barely brushed the crimson robes, when the magos turned, or rather its torso rotated as if on a gimbal joint, and it faced the intruder defiling the sanctity of its temple.

‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter…’ it barked, the chattering phrase it had been repeating made audible at last and vocalised in a grating, machine dialect.

Kadai’s words in the dream came back at Dak’ir like a hammer blow and he almost staggered.

The phrase continued in an uninterrupted loop, speeding up and increasing in pitch and volume until it became an unintelligible whine of noise. Dak’ir brought his chainsword up into a guard position and retreated one step.

The sound of tearing cloth followed as the magos’s robes flared out in shreds at his back and two mechanical arms sprang out like the pincers of some insect. A chainblade affixed to the end of one of the arms roared into life; on the other a vibro-saw shrieked. Pale, gelid skin, sutured with wires and metal, possessed no life. Sightless eyes held neither pity nor anger, only a simple function: eliminate the intruders. A nozzle protruded from its mouth like an obscene tongue forcing its way from the cold, dark crevice. It was the tip of an igniter, and spat a thin column of flame.

Dak’ir used his free forearm to shield himself, and intense heat washed over him. Radiation warnings spiked in his battle-helm’s display. In the same movement, he parried the sudden dart of the vibro-saw blindly with his chainsword. Powerless to stop the magos’s chainblade, it churned against his left pauldron hungrily. Spitting sparks, it retracted and came about again.

Bolter fire thudded behind him and Dak’ir half expected to feel the shots penetrate his suit’s generator and then his back, but the aim of his battle-brothers was true and he did not fall. Instead, he felt the crackle of electricity and detected the stink of ozone in his nostrils. A secondary flash lit up his battle-helm, lenses struggling to compensate as the blades whirred towards him again. Dak’ir realised that the magos was force-shielded.

‘Hold your fire!’ barked the voice of Tsu’gan behind him. ‘Encircle it, find its shield generator and destroy it.’

Dak’ir was aware of movement in his peripheral vision as his brothers sought to open their trap. Between searching blows, its mechanised limbs lightning fast, the magos reacted to the threat. Servos whining, its robed form began to rise on cantilevered legs until it loomed almost a metre over Dak’ir. Its mouth widened like the rapidly expanding aperture of a pict-viewer as a second and third flamer nozzle took their place alongside the first. Panning its head left and right like a scope, it spewed white-hot fire around the fringes of the room, keeping the Salamanders back. Molten deck plates and iron altars rendered to slag were left in its wake.

Dak’ir caught the vibro-saw as it came at him again, and cut it off with a brutal sweep from its chainsword. The magos’s own chainblade struck the Salamander’s generator on his back and found itself at another impasse. Dak’ir swung around, dislodging the weapon with his momentum, and hacked down the piston-driven arm two-handed. Issuing a metallic screech, the magos recoiled, the severed chainblade arm spitting oil and sparks. Exploiting his advantage, Dak’ir ripped his plasma pistol from its holster and blasted a hole through the magos’s torso. Something within the voluminous folds of its shredded robes flared and died. Still, the firestorm cascading from its distended mouth continued, keeping Dak’ir’s battle-brothers at bay, their only avenue of attack blocked by the brother-sergeant himself.

A flash of metal registered briefly in Dak’ir’s restricted vision. Pain lanced his armoured wrist, forcing him to drop the plasma pistol, and he looked down to see a churning drill trying to impale his arm. Wrenching himself free, he gripped the twisting tendril fed from the magos’s robes that had impelled the weapon towards him. Dak’ir was about to cut it off when a second mechadendrite sprang from the creature’s torso, sporting some kind of mecha-claw. Dak’ir blocked it with the flat of his blade and pushed it down. Locked as he was, and acutely aware of the battle-brothers behind him, he started to try and manoeuvre his body to the side.

‘Ba’ken!’ he cried, seeing the vague form of the hulking Salamander in his peripheral vision.

‘Hold it steady,’ a booming voice returned.

It took almost all Dak’ir’s strength to force the magos around and keep him steady as Ba’ken wanted.

Intense heat and blinding light filled Dak’ir’s senses. His ears rang with the shriek of expulsed energy and he fell. For a fleeting moment as the radiation of the fusion beam stroked his battle-helm and power armour, Dak’ir was thrust back to Stratos and the instant of Kadai’s death. The jarring impact of iron-hard deck plates against his body brought him quickly back around. The dull report of sustained thunder echoed around the room as the rest of the Salamanders unleashed their bolters. Sporadic muzzle flashes lit up the magos like some macabre animation, its body jerking and twisting as it was struck and demolished.

The munitions fire died and with it so did the magos, clattering to the floor in a disparate melange of wrecked machine parts and biological matter, the components of his former existence scattering across the deck like metal chaff. Oil slicked it, reflecting the dim light of the brazier pans like iridescent blood.

Bizarrely the head remained intact, rolling from its eviscerated body until coming to rest next to Ba’ken. The end of his multi-melta still exuded vaporous accelerant created during the chemical reaction engaged to fire the heavy weapon. He looked down at the decapitated head, his body language suggesting repulsion. The flamer nozzles had since retracted into the thing’s lipless maw. Ba’ken shifted uncomfortably as a stream of binaric, the machine language the Mechanicum primarily used to communicate, barked from it like a torrent of ceaseless profanity.

Without waiting for orders the Salamander brought down his booted foot and smashed it to pulp and wires.

Dak’ir, now back on his feet, nodded his appreciation to Ba’ken, who immediately returned the gesture. Once the chattering had ceased, he turned to Tsu’gan who was making sure no life existed amidst the wreckage of the magos.

‘I owe you a debt of gratitude, brother.’

Tsu’gan didn’t even look up.

‘Save your thanks,’ he returned flatly. ‘I did it for the good of the mission, not your well-being.’ He was about to turn away, when he paused and looked Dak’ir in the eye. ‘You’ll doom us all with your compassion, Ignean.’

Dak’ir knew Tsu’gan was right to an extent; his desire to save the magos had endangered them, but he was adamant given the same situation again, he would make the same choice. The Salamanders were protectors, not merely slayers. Let other Chapters revel in that dubious accolade. Dak’ir wanted to enlighten his brother to that very fact, but the steady voice of Pyriel prevented any riposte.

‘The battle is not over.’ The Librarian’s eyes flared cerulean blue behind his helmet lenses. ‘Fire-born, prepare yourselves!’ he called as one consciousness became many.

The dull sound of movement echoed from the corridor ahead as something shrugged itself awake.

‘Multiple heat signatures,’ reported Iagon as his auspex lit up a moment later. ‘And rising,’ he added, securing the device away and hefting his bolter. ‘All entrances.’

The Salamanders spread out, covering ingress into the temple.

‘Something comes…’ shouted Brother Zo’tan. ‘Servitors!’ he added, the glare from his luminator casting one of the lumbering creatures starkly.

A lobotomy plate was riveted to the servitor’s roughly shaven skull. It was dressed in dark labour overalls, scorched by fire and muddied by oil and grime. Its skin was grey as if swathed in a patina of dust or merely bled of all life and left to wither. One of its arms was curled up into a rigor-mortised fist, and fixed to a torso bloated with wires and fat, ribbed cables; the other arm ended in a mechanised pincer, puffs of hydraulic gas ghosting the air as it flexed.

Dak’ir recalled the slumped automatons they had encountered on their way to the temple. He could not be accurate, but he knew there had been hundreds.

‘Another here, second right!’ yelled Brother Apion.

Dak’ir heard Brother G’heb bellow after him.

‘Targets spotted third left corridor.’

The Salamanders had formed two semi-circles, one per squad, with Librarian Pyriel as the link between them. Each faced outwards, one or two bolters levelled at an opening. Flamers took one portal each. That left Ba’ken’s multi-melta and Brother M’lek, from Tsu’gan’s squad, carrying a heavy bolter. Dak’ir hoped the combined firepower would be enough.

Brother Emek was standing to his left in their battle-formation.

‘The death of the magos must have been the catalyst for some kind of activation code,’ he said over the comm-feed, testing the igniter on his flamer with a short spit of fire.

‘How many could there be?’ barked Tsu’gan, itching to destroy this new foe.

‘On a ship this size… thousands,’ Emek returned.

‘It matters not.’ Ba’ken’s deep voice was like dull thunder, on his brother-sergeant’s right flank. ‘We’ll send them all to their deaths.’

Dak’ir only half heard him, having already picked up on Tsu’gan’s line of thought.

‘Wait until they’ve closed to optimum lethal range. Short controlled bursts,’ he ordered over the comm-feed. ‘Conserve your ammunition.’

Pyriel’s force sword burst into cerulean flame, reminding the brother-sergeant of the Librarian’s potency. His voice took on an unearthly timbre as an aura of power coursed over his armour in miniature lightning storms.

‘Into the fires of battle,’ he intoned.

‘Unto the anvil of war!’ his Salamanders replied belligerently.

The servitors emerged from the gloom with slow, monotonous purpose, like a horde of mechanised zombies. Their pallid faces were vacant masks, their only compulsion to execute the intruders on the ship. They were armed with the tools of their labours: chainblades, pneumatic drills, hydraulic lifter-claws, even acetylene torches burning white hot, heralding their advance from the darkness.

The Salamanders waited until the first wave of the servitors had made its way into the temple before unleashing hell.

Blood, oil, flesh and machine-parts cascaded in a visceral miasma, the automatons punished with the wrath of the Salamanders’ weapons. But like their slayers, these creatures of melded skin and metal felt no fear; they experienced no emotion, and came forward implacably. Where one fell, another two servitors took its place, funnelling from the depths of the Archimedes Rex like a tide.

Drone-like, they flocked to the temple and the interlopers within. As their numbers increased, so too did they begin to close on the Salamanders; for despite their prodigious abilities, the Space Marines could not maintain an unbroken wall of fire to hold the servitors off. With every metre gained, the fury of the Salamanders’ response intensified and Dak’ir’s earlier conservatism had to be abandoned.

It wasn’t long before this desperate approach took its toll.

‘Down to my last rounds,’ voiced Brother Apion.

His report spurred a slew of others over the comm-feed as, throughout the squads, Salamanders started to run out of ammunition.

‘Flamer at seventeen per cent and falling… Switching to reserve weapon… Ammunition low, brothers…’

The circle of fire was failing.

‘I’m empty,’ replied Brother G’heb, the hollow chank of his bolter starkly audible as it ran dry.

Dak’ir reached across and shot a drill-armed servitor with his plasma pistol while his battle-brother drew a reserve weapon. Bolt pistol bucking in his grasp, G’heb nodded his gratitude.

‘Endure it, brothers!’ yelled Pyriel, impeding a servitor’s mecha-claw with his force sword as it sought to remove his head. The automaton was one of the few that had made it through the bolt storm. The Librarian opened his palm. With gauntleted fingers splayed he engulfed the servitor in a blast of psychic fire from his hand, burning out its eyes, rendering its flesh to charred hunks and scorching machinery black.

Crushing the smoking husk of the servitor with a blow from his force sword, the Librarian moved out of formation, a hot core of crackling fire building inside his now clenched fist. Battle-brothers S’tang and Zo’tan covered him as Pyriel went down on one knee, head bowed, focusing his power.

The servitors converged on the Librarian but S’tang and Zo’tan kept them back with the last of their ammunition. They had enough for Pyriel to raise his head, his entire body now swathed in an aura of conflagration. It sped from his hunkered form in a violently flickering trail, its head that of a snarling firedrake that arced around the Salamanders, encircling them as the elemental swallowed its own fiery tail.

‘Brothers…’ Pyriel’s voice crackled like the deepest magma pits of Mount Deathfire, ‘…go to your blades… Now!’ he roared, and the wall of flame exploded outwards with atomic force, the nuclear fire burning all within its path to ash. The servitors became darkened silhouettes in the haze, only to disintegrate like shadows before the sun.

Dak’ir felt the prickle of Pyriel’s psychic backwash at the edges of his mind, and he smarted at the unfamiliar sensation. He holstered his plasma pistol, which was down to its last energy cell, and drew his combat blade, wielding both it and his chainsword in either hand. Several of his battle-brothers had done the same, some preferring bolt pistols; others with no choice but to unsheathe their short blades.

Pyriel’s unleashed holocaust had drained him, and Brothers S’tang and Zo’tan maintained guard as the Librarian returned to the cordon of green battle-plate in order to marshal his strength. Scorched metal, the forlornly dripping remnants of votive chains and the ashen corpses of servitors littered the ground around the Salamanders allowing them time to adopt fresh tactics.

The conflagration had been devastating. Hundreds of automatons were dead. It provided but a few moments’ respite.

‘They come again!’ hollered Ba’ken, the booming laughter that followed echoing loudly around the vast chamber. ‘They come for death!’ He had stowed his multi-melta via a mag-lock on the back of the heavy weapon’s ammo rig. It was cumbersome, but Ba’ken was strong enough to bear it without much deterioration of his close combat abilities. In its place he wielded a piston-driven hammer of unblemished silver, a weapon he had fashioned himself, all hard edges and promised destruction.

‘Restrain your bull, Ignean,’ snapped Tsu’gan, releasing a gout of fire from his bolter’s combination flamer. There was only enough chemical incendiary for one shot, so the brother-sergeant used it to gain a few extra metres in order that his fellow battle-brothers could see him.

‘Head for the bridge,’ he declared, ripping out his combat blade and letting his combi-bolter hang by its strap. ‘We’ll use the narrow cordon to our advantage, deny them their numbers.’

Pyriel was still debilitated from his psychic exertions and could only nod his assent.

Moving off in pairs, the Salamanders made for the exit that, according to Emek, would lead them eventually to the bridge. As they fell back, snap shots executed the first automatons to come from the other seven portals.

Already, their exit was clogged with servitors, emerging from unseen maintenance hatches and hidden access conduits.

Seeing the danger that the plan might fail before they had even gained the corridor leading off from the temple, Dak’ir sped over to the conductor array still throwing off flashes of electricity.

‘Hold, brothers!’ he bellowed, just as the first pair of Salamanders, Apion and G’heb, were about to start cutting with their combat blades.

Obeying through conditioned reflex, they arrested their advance as Dak’ir crashed his chainsword against one of the conductor pylons. The first batch of servitors was emerging through the portal as an unfettered lightning arc erupted from the shattered conductor array. Dak’ir was thrown back by the resulting blast, as the bolt of electrical energy earthed into the servitor forms, exploding circuitry and burning through clumps of wiring. The arc spread, leaping from body to body, hungrily devouring the automatons who jerked and shook as the artificial lightning wracked them.

Smoking corpses and the stench of charred meat and hot metal were left in the wake of the electrical storm. Apion and G’heb rushed into the void it had created, crushing husked bodies with their booted feet and clearing a path for their battle-brothers.

Dak’ir was hauled up by Ba’ken, who then turned surprisingly quickly given the weight on his back, and crushed the skull on an oncoming servitor with his piston-hammer. When he turned back, tiny ripples of electrical charge were slowly dispersing over Dak’ir’s power armour.

‘Ready to move out, brother-sergeant?’ he asked.

‘Lead the way, brother.’

Fully half the Salamanders had entered the portal and were chopping through the hordes of automatons coming at them from deeper in the ship. As Dak’ir entered the darkness of the narrow corridor, he wondered briefly whether there was a vast factorum at the heart of the Archimedes Rex churning out entire battalions of the creatures in an unending cycle.

‘Emek, what’s the status of your flamer?’ asked Dak’ir through the comm-feed. The battle-brother was one of the last out of the temple, with only Tsu’gan lingering behind him intent on taking on the entire horde himself it seemed.

‘I’m down to six per cent,’ Emek replied, between short roaring bursts.

‘Hold the rear of the column as long as you can, brother.’

‘At your command, sergeant.’

Tsu’gan revelled in the act of righteous slaughter. He killed with abandon, seeking out targets even before he’d despatched the last. Every servitor that came within reach was cut down with ruthless efficiency. He decapitated one with his combat blade, a spinal column of wires and rigid cabling left protruding from the servitor’s ruined neck. Another he gutted, tearing out a handful of lubricant-wet wires like intestines. Tsu’gan used his fist like a hammer, brutally pounding bone and metal with every wrath-fuelled blow.

Let the Ignean flee, he thought, derision creasing his face behind his battle-helm as he glanced in Dak’ir’s direction, I expect it from one such as he.

A ring of carnage was rapidly growing around him, his combat blade so slick with oil and blood that it was almost black. These soulless creations were as nothing matched against the mettle of a Fire-born.

But for all his slaughter, the attacks did not abate and the servitors kept on coming.

A heavy blow rapped his pauldron, forcing him to step back. Tsu’gan cut his assailant down but was struck again, this time in the torso before he could get his guard up, and he staggered. Certain victory suddenly bled away, replaced by the prospect of an ignominious death. Tsu’gan craved glory; he had no desire to perish in some forgotten mission aboard a Mechanicus forge-ship.

Another thought crept into his mind, this time unbidden.

I have over-extended myself, cut off from my brothers…

Tsu’gan tried to fall back, but found he was surrounded. He balked at the realisation that his bravura might have doomed him.

A spear of flame erupted to his left, singeing the edge of his pauldron and setting warning icons flashing on his helm display. Tsu’gan was half-shielding his body when he saw the servitors engulfed by the blaze, slumping first to their knees and then collapsing in a smouldering heap. He recognised Brother Emek, releasing his flamer as the last of the promethium was spent. Tsu’gan also saw that the way to the corridor was now clear.

‘Call your trooper back, Dak’ir,’ he snapped down the comm-feed, outwardly lamenting his scorched armour, ‘Unlike you, I don’t want my face burned off.’ He grunted a reluctant thanks to Brother Emek as Dak’ir returned:

‘Then retreat with your fellow Fire-born. You overstretch yourself, brother.’

Tsu’gan took out his frustration on a servitor that had strayed ahead of its pack, pummelling the creature with a blow from his fist. Inwardly, the brother-sergeant gave a sigh of relief – he knew were it not for Dak’ir’s contingency, he would probably be dead. That admission alone burned more than the thought of perishing unheralded on the Archimedes Rex. Tsu’gan was determined that the debt would not last.

Storming through the tightly-packed corridors of the Mechanicus ship, the Salamanders fought in the way they were made for – up close and eye-to-eye. Though they had exhausted both flamers, their zeal and wrath more than compensated for it. Blood and oil ran thick as they held their lines and won metre by gore-drenched metre, the tally of dead servitors in the hundreds. Tenacious and unyielding, they epitomised the Promethean ideal – they were Fire-born, Salamanders. War was their temple; battle the sermons that they preached with bolter and blade.

Their violent efforts took them as far as a wide gallery, possibly an inspection yard given the ranks of assessment tables lining either side. Stout metal columns etched in binaric and the sigils of the Omnissiah punctuated each of the empty bays where armour, weapons and other materiel would normally be logged, examined and approved by inspection servitors. The barren bays were overlooked by broad steel gantries that hung fifty metres up. Any details were lost in shadow, but they were supported by angled stanchions enabling them to take a considerable mass.

Servitors spewed from blast doors that were opening in three locations around the yard. Tsu’gan, who had slashed and bludgeoned his way to the front, met them with a furious battle cry. He clove the arm off one automaton, spilling fuel and releasing sparks as Dak’ir bifurcated another from sternum to groin. A clutch of wires slopped from the ragged wound like intestines as the brother-sergeant swept past it looking for another foe, before Ba’ken followed in his wake and crushed the stricken wretch with his piston-hammer.

An organised retreat had turned into a melee. The Salamanders fought in groups of two and three, watching their brothers’ blindsides as they brought fire and fury to the relentless enemy. Only Pyriel fought alone. None dared approach the Librarian, his force sword carving irresistible death arcs through anything it touched. Psychic fire spilled from his eyes like an optical laser, tearing through a line of servitors and severing their mechanised torsos. A clenched fist, and the summoned firedrake roared into being, the elemental burning down automatons as it swept over them in a fiery wave.

‘In the name of Vulkan, repel them! Fire-born do not yield!’ Pyriel bellowed a rallying cry as the servitors closed inexorably.

With their ammunition all but spent, many of the Salamanders had turned to close assault weapons. Some carried the traditional combat blade, akin to the Ultramarine spatha; others wielded hammers in homage to the blacksmith, and Vulkan’s adopted father, N’Bel or in tribute to the primarch himself who had first taken up the weapon to defeat the xenos plaguing Nocturne and liberate the planet.

Honour, for all its noble intention, meant precious little as the Salamanders were slowly enveloped. At distance, the servitors were no challenge. Bereft of ranged weapons, the automatons could be vanquished with ease. At close quarters, they were a different prospect. Though slow and cumbersome, their claws and drills and hammers were deadly, easily capable of chewing through power armour. Attacking in such numbers with no sign of respite; unless something changed, the Salamanders could not hope to prevail…

The rash of fatalism flashed across Dak’ir’s mind as he put another servitor down. Despite his training, the many hours of drills, the constant honing of his skills and building of his endurance, the brother-sergeant was beginning to tire. They’d sustained casualties. Brother Zo’tan was limping; S’tang had a fierce dent in his battle-helm that had probably cracked his skull; several others nursed shoulder or arm wounds and fought one-handed.

Tsu’gan raged against the inevitable, easily killing twice the servitors of any of his battle-brothers. Even Pyriel, with all his psychic might, was hard-pressed to keep pace with the rampant brother-sergeant’s tally. Fatigue, to Tsu’gan, was an enemy just like the automatons. It had to be fought and bested, denied at all costs. It was little wonder he carried such sway amongst the other sergeants of 3rd Company. But even Tsu’gan’s will had its limits.

Something hard and heavy struck Dak’ir across his unguarded left flank. White heat flared behind his eyes as he felt his rib plate crack. Blood was leaking down the side of his power armour, black and thick like the oil of their adversaries. Darkness clawed at the edges of his vision. As he fell back, he saw the face of his killer – pitiless eyes stared back at him from above a mouth obscured by speaker-grille, framed by skin with a deathly pallor. Dak’ir thought of the robed figure in the temple as his body met the ground, his inevitable death playing out in slow motion.

With its final, indecipherable words the magos had damned them all.

Muted thunder brought Dak’ir around. He’d been out for a few seconds before his body’s physiology staunched his wound and clotted the blood, repaired his bones and sent endorphins to his brain to block the pain. He wasn’t dead, and with that realisation others followed.

Muzzle flares lit the gloom in the vaulted ceiling above, the thud-crack of bolter fire emanating from the gantries. Something heavier accompanied it, a dense chug-chank, chug-chank of a belt-fed cannon, the grind of tracks rolling against steel and the creak of metal stanchions pushed to their limits.

Dak’ir was back on his feet before he had even told his body to rise, and in the killing mood. His chainsword hadn’t stopped churning even as he fell, and the teeth found fresh flesh to chew as the Salamander fought.

Through snatched glimpses in the melee, Dak’ir caught the flash of yellow and black armour, the snarl of a painted skull, predator’s teeth daubed down the edges of a coned battle-helm. As the barrage of enfilading fire continued from either flank, ripping up servitors, a further epiphany materialised in Dak’ir’s mind.

Their saviours were Astartes.

Caught between such forces, the servitors finally began to thin out and fall back. Not out of fear or even any remote sense of self-preservation; they did it because some nuance in their doctrina programming had impelled them to. Emek would later theorise that the casualties the combined Space Marines had inflicted were such that they endangered the minimum output capacity of the forge-ship and this protocol, entrenched in one of the Mechanicus’s fundamental paradigms, overrode any others and resulted in capitulation. The machines simply lowered their tools, turned and retreated. Some were slain as they retired from the fight, the last vestiges of battle-lust still eking out of the blood-pumped Salamanders. But the majority left intact, shuffling back to slumber until they were called upon by their masters to engage in their work routines once more. It was an order that would never come – for Dak’ir was certain now that the magos in the octagon temple had been the last aboard the Archimedes Rex.

As the bolter fire of the mysterious Astartes died, so too did the light cast by their muzzle flares and they were thrown back into obscuring shadow. Dak’ir considered utilising his optical spectra to penetrate the gloom and get a better look at them, but decided to wait as they marched heavily down the gantry. A pair of lifters stationed at either end of each one brought the Space Marines down to yard level, where the Salamanders could see their allies clearly for the first time.

Dak’ir was right; they were indeed Space Marines – ten of them, broken into two combat squads reunited when the lifters hit deck-plate, plus a Techmarine who manned a battle-scarred mobile gun platform. The war machine rumbled on steel-slatted tracks, cushioned on a bed of vulcanised rubber. Its design was narrow, ideally suited to the close confines of the Mechanicus ship that had prevented Brother Argos’s much-needed, as it transpired, inclusion in the mission. The STC used to construct the gun, a pair of twin-linked autocannons with a modified belt-feed, looked post-Heresy but pre-Age of Apostasy. Similar in essence to the Space Marine Thunderfire cannon, the platform also bore the hallmarks of a Tarantula-cum-Rapier-variant mobile weapons system – something the Adeptus Astartes hadn’t used in either form for many millennia. The example before the Salamanders was evidently based on archaic designs.

The Space Marines themselves appeared to be just as archaic. Most wore MkVI Corvus-pattern power armour, stained yellow with a black cuirass and generators, the left pauldron studded with fat rivets. The armour’s plastron was bereft of the Imperial eagle, and carried only an octagonal release clasp, unlike the modern suits of the MkVII Aquila-pattern. Every suit amongst them, bar none, was patched and chipped. The rigours of battle were worn proudly as marks of honour, in the same manner as the Salamanders’ branding scars. It was armour that had been made to last, not in the sense of its superior forging or exceptionally durable craftsmanship; rather, it was battle-plate that had seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of victories and been strung back together and hammered into shape by any means necessary in order that it saw another.

Bolters were no different. Lengthened stocks with the extended shoulder rest were an antiquated version of the Godwyn pattern MkVb carried by the Salamanders – albeit with Nocturnean refinements. Drum-fed and carrying sarissas – a saw-toothed bayonet-style blade affixed to the gun’s nose – the bolters hefted by the yellow-armoured Astartes were the sorts of outmoded weapons best left to museums.

But these warriors were hard-bitten veterans, every single one. They didn’t have the forges or the technological mastery of the Salamanders. They were seldom re-supplied or their materiel restocked or replenished. They knew only war, and fought it so relentlessly and without cessation that their equipment was battered almost to destruction. As the leader of the Astartes stepped forward, his honour markings indicating he was a sergeant, and proffered a hand, Dak’ir was struck by a final revelation:

These were the other intruders aboard the Archimedes Rex.

‘I am Sergeant Lorkar,’ the yellow-armoured Astartes spoke in a grating whisper, ‘of the Marines Malevolent.’

Chapter Three

I

Malevolence

‘Brother-Sergeant Dak’ir, of the Salamanders 3rd Company,’ replied Dak’ir, who found he was facing Sergeant Lorkar. After a moment’s hesitation, he gripped the other Space Marine’s forearm in a warrior greeting and nodded his respect.

‘Salamanders?’ said Lorkar, as if seeing them for the first time, ‘Of the First Founding? We are deeply honoured.’ The Marine Malevolent bowed, then stepped back to remove his battle-helm as his battle-brothers looked on.

There was a strange manner about them, Dak’ir thought. The Marines Malevolent appeared edgy. All of Lorkar’s ostensible bonhomie, his deference, seemed faked, as if they had not expected company and now they had it, resented its presence.

With the gorget clasps disengaged, Lorkar lifted off his battle-helm and cradled it under one arm. Like the rest of his armour, it was chipped and scratched. Much of the yellow staining had worn away, revealing bare ceramite beneath. Black hazard markings striped the metal, which Dak’ir assumed indicated veteran status. Lorkar’s grizzled visage clinched that suspicion.

Two platinum service studs were drilled into the Marine Malevolent sergeant’s skull. His skin was dark and rugged as if the centuries of battlefield dirt and enemy blood were ingrained in it. Scars crosshatched his chin, jaw and cheekbones, a veritable map of old pain and remembered wars. His hair was shorn short, but done so crudely as if by shears and without care or the assistance of a serf. But it was his eyes that struck the most – they were cold and empty, as if inured to killing and bereft of compassion or regard. Dak’ir had seen flint with more warmth.

Not wishing to cause offence, Dak’ir removed his own battle-helm, mag-locking it to his weapons belt. A tremor of surprise ran across Sergeant Lorkar’s face, which then spread to his cohorts, as he regarded the Salamander’s visage for the first time.

‘Your eyes and skin…’ he began. For a moment, Dak’ir thought he saw Lorkar’s hand straying to his bolter, hanging on its strap by his side. The gesture was instinctive. Clearly the Marines Malevolent had never seen an Astartes with a melanochromatic defect before.

‘As our primarch made us,’ Dak’ir responded evenly, aware of his own brothers’ restiveness around him, and meeting Lorkar’s gaze brazenly with his burning red eyes.

‘Of course…’ The look of thinly-veiled suspicion in Lorkar’s face suggested anything but placation.

Tsu’gan’s voice broke the uncomfortable silence.

‘Marines Malevolent, eh? Do you find malice to be a useful tool on campaign, brother?’

Lorkar turned on the Salamander sergeant, who was obviously goading him.

Tsu’gan decided he didn’t like the way their new found ‘allies’ looked at Dak’ir. Their manner smacked of disgust and repellence. His intervention was not for the Ignean’s benefit, Tsu’gan’s contempt for him went deeper than the flesh, it was because the Marine Malevolent’s slight tarred all of Vulkan’s sons and that was something he could not abide.

‘Hate is the surest weapon,’ Lorkar replied with all seriousness. So vehement was his stress on the first word that if the sergeant had had the power to kill with it then Tsu’gan would have keeled over in his power armour there and then. ‘You are the commanding officer here, Salamander?’

‘No,’ Tsu’gan answered flatly, taunting having now turned to outright belligerence.

‘That honour is mine.’ Pyriel stepped forward from the throng of Salamanders, authority and certainty never more evident in his voice and manner.

‘A warp dabbler!’ Dak’ir heard one of other Marines Malevolent hiss. He carried a twin-linked combi-bolter and wore a beak-shaped battle-helm made to look like a shark’s mouth with painted fangs either side.

Lorkar interceded before Tsu’gan’s promised violence was enacted.

‘Excuse Brother Nemiok,’ he said addressing Pyriel, who exhibited no reaction. ‘We are unaccustomed to Librarians in ranking positions,’ Lorkar explained somewhat thinly. ‘The Marines Malevolent still adhere to some of the tenets laid down at Nikea.’

‘An outmoded set of edicts some ten thousand years old, fashioned by a council arraigned before your Chapter was even formed,’ countered Tsu’gan, his mood still truculent.

‘Communion with the warp is perilous,’ Pyriel intervened. ‘I can understand your Chapter’s caution, Sergeant Lorkar. But I can assure you that I am master of my abilities,’ he declared, to defuse the situation and suspend the trading of insults before they devolved into threats and then violence. ‘Perhaps we have lingered here long enough?’

‘I agree,’ replied Lorkar, with a dark glance at Tsu’gan before he replaced his battle-helm. He paused a moment, bowing his head slightly, and seemed to be listening intently to some private instruction. ‘We should continue on together,’ he said at last, surfacing from whatever discreet confabulation he had been engaged in. ‘The servitors in this section of the ship are dormant now, but we can’t know how long that will last and what other defences we might face.’ Lorkar then turned on his heel, his warriors parting like a yellow sea to allow him through.

‘Worse than Templars,’ muttered Ba’ken to Emek, who was grateful that his battle-helm masked his amusement.

Dak’ir saw nothing humorous in it. The encounter with the Marines Malevolent had put him on edge. There was an air of frustrated superiority about them, suggesting they thought themselves uniquely worthy of the appellation ‘Space Marine’. Yet here they were faced with a progenitor Chapter. Such evidence was difficult to refute, for even the most zealous-minded. They had an agenda, of that Dak’ir was certain. And if that conflicted with the Salamanders’ mission, violence would surely follow.

The route deeper into the Archimedes Rex was conducted largely in silence. Before they had headed out after the Marines Malevolent, Brother Emek had examined the wounded Salamanders using what rudimentary medical craft he possessed and declared all injuries minor, and the recipients fit for combat. Mercifully, there had been no further encounters with the forge-ship’s guardians. For now, it appeared that Lorkar was right – the servitors had returned to slumber.

Dak’ir sat beside an iron bulkhead in some kind of expansive storage room. The room contained numerous metal crates, caskets and munitions cylinders – all of which had already been ransacked. Dak’ir was sitting on one of the empty crates, methodically engaged in weapons maintenance rituals. He glanced up sporadically at the Marines Malevolent’s Techmarine, who was using breaching tools and a promethium torch from his servo-harness to prise open a sealed blast door impeding their further progress into the forge-ship. It was the first barrier of its kind they had discovered which wouldn’t open through a console or operational slate, suggesting the heart of the ship lay beyond it.

The other Salamanders were locked in similar routines to the sergeant. Once the room had been made secure, many had removed their battle-helms, taking the opportunity to be free of their stifling confines if only for a few minutes – for the Marines Malevolent’s part, any reaction to the Salamanders’ facial appearance was kept hidden. Pyriel was silently meditative, eyes shut whilst he channelled the reserves of his psychic energy and shored up his mental bulwarks to guard against daemonic possession. Tsu’gan paced impatiently, waiting for the Techmarine to complete his task. Dak’ir had learned the Astartes’s name was Harkane, though that was all the taciturn Techmarine had disclosed.

They had already deviated from Emek’s route. Sergeant Lorkar insisted that he and his combat squad had already tried that way and it was blocked. Harkane had mapped another course, and it was this which they now followed. Tsu’gan had been the most reluctant to accede. Pyriel’s order had made it impossible for him not to.

‘We are heading away from the bridge,’ Emek whispered to Dak’ir, one eye on their battle-brothers in yellow. Brother Emek was the only one not engaged in weapons maintenance, instead using his time to conduct brief examinations of his wounded brothers. He had lingered by Dak’ir on his rounds in order to converse without drawing too much suspicion. ‘Whatever they are here for, it is not to find out what happened to this ship, or to search it for survivors, either. I thought you should know, brother-sergeant,’ he added, before moving on his way to check on the wounded.

Battlefield surgery was one of the Salamander’s many skills, useful in the absence of Fugis. Seeing Emek work reminded Dak’ir of the Apothecary and their last exchange before departing for the Hadron Belt and his assignment to reconnaissance aboard the Fire-wyvern. Fugis had remained with the rest of 3rd Company on the Vulkan’s Wrath. Though his place was with N’keln, it was unlike him to eschew frontline duties. Dak’ir wondered if Fugis had lost more than just his captain when Kadai had been killed; he wondered if the Apothecary had lost a part of himself too.

The hot glare from Brother Harkane’s plasma-cutter spat suddenly, arresting Dak’ir’s reverie. The Techmarine made a slight adjustment and the intense beam returned to normal, the light it cast flickering over Dak’ir as he checked and reloaded his pistol’s last energy cell. Despite the Salamanders’ obvious paucity of ammunition, the Marines Malevolent had neglected to supplement them. The fact that their guns were so antiquated that neither the drum-mags nor the individual shells would have been suitable for their bolters made the point moot.

‘Their weapons are practically relics,’ whispered Ba’ken.

Dak’ir masked his sudden start – he hadn’t even heard the bulky Space Marine approach. Ba’ken eyed the Marines Malevolent warily as he set his multi-melta rig down, enabling him to sit with his brother-sergeant. The Marines Malevolent showed equal distrust, swapping furtive glances and watching the Salamanders through the corners of their helmet lenses.

‘The old drum-feeds are prone to jamming,’ Ba’ken continued. ‘I’m surprised one hasn’t misfired in their faces before now.’

‘They are certainly not wasteful,’ agreed Dak’ir, ‘But aren’t all our weapons relics to one degree or another?’

Ba’ken was one of those who had removed his battle-helm during the brief abeyance and his lip curled up in distaste.

‘Aye, but there are relics and there are relics,’ he said, obliquely. ‘These guns should have been stripped down for parts and re-appropriated years ago. A warrior is only as good as his weapon, and these dogs with their patchwork armour and archaic ideas are ragged at best.’ He paused, turning to look his brother-sergeant in the eye. ‘I don’t trust them, Dak’ir.’

Dak’ir agreed, reminded of Emek’s suspicions, but was not about to voice the fact aloud. Whether they liked it or not, the Marines Malevolent were their allies for now – tenuous ones at that. Any comment that supported Ba’ken’s views would only foster greater dissension between them.

‘I wonder what their purpose aboard this ship is.’ Ba’ken concluded his line of thinking during his brother-sergeant’s silence. Again, he echoed Emek’s unspoken thoughts.

‘I suspect they would ask us the same thing,’ said Dak’ir.

Bak’en was about to reply when he noticed Sergeant Lorkar approaching and kept quiet.

Lorkar waited, battle-helm clasped beneath one arm, until invited by Dak’ir to sit down with them. He nodded gratefully before setting his helmet on an adjacent crate.

‘The earlier hostility,’ he began, ‘was regrettable. We acted with suspicion and without honour. Such behaviour is beneath fellow Astartes. Allow me to make amends.’ It was an unexpected move. Certainly not one that Dak’ir had foreseen.

‘Unnecessary, brother. A misunderstanding is all.’

‘Even still. Our blood was up and things were said not befitting one Astartes to another.’

‘Apology accepted, then.’ Dak’ir nodded. ‘But we were as culpable as you.’

‘I appreciate your magnanimity, Brother…’ Lorkar leaned forward and tilted his head slightly as he searched for the name, ‘…Dak’ir?’

The Salamander nodded again, this time to indicate that Lorkar was correct. The Marines Malevolent sergeant eased back, perpetuating a mood of camaraderie, but it was strained and false.

‘Tell me, brother,’ he said, his tone leading, and now Dak’ir knew he would get to the motivation behind Lorkar’s sudden contrition. ‘There is no campaign in the Hadron Belt, what brings you here?’

Lorkar was cunning. Dak’ir couldn’t tell for certain if the sergeant’s enquiry was merely to idle away time and build confidence or if something deeper lurked behind his words. He wanted to say that his timing was uncanny, but kept it to himself.

‘Retribution,’ returned Tsu’gan, his voice like a blade as he approached them. Evidently tired of his pacing, the Salamander sergeant had fixed upon the conversation between Lorkar and Dak’ir. ‘We seek assassins, those who slew our captain in cold blood – renegades who call themselves the Dragon Warriors.’

‘A matter of legacy. I see.’ Lorkar rapped his plastron. ‘This section of plate came from my dead sergeant’s armour. I wear it to honour his sacrifice. Two of my slain brothers once wore this vambrace and pauldron–’ He held up the pieces in turn ‘–before my own were shattered beyond repair.’

Tsu’gan stiffened at some unseen slight, but allowed Lorkar to continue.

‘Do you bear your dead captain’s armour still?’ he asked.

Dak’ir weighed in on his fellow sergeant’s behalf. ‘No. It was incinerated, rendered to ash in keeping with our native customs.’

Lorkar looked nonplussed. ‘You destroyed it?’ His tone suggested consternation. ‘Was the battle-plate entirely beyond repair?’

‘Some could have been salvaged,’ Dak’ir admitted. ‘But instead it was offered to the mountain of fire on Nocturne, our home world, so that Kadai could return to the earth.’

Lorkar shook his head. ‘My apologies, brother, but we of the Marines Malevolent are unused to such profligacy.’

Tsu’gan could restrain himself no longer. ‘Would you have us bastardise our captain’s armour instead, as you do?’

The Marine Malevolent glared back at him sternly. ‘We only mean to honour our fallen brethren.’

Tsu’gan straightened as if stung. ‘And we do not? We pay homage to our slain heroes, our lamented dead.’

The churning report of the blast door finally prising open prevented any caustic reply from Lorkar. Instead, the sergeant merely got to his feet and went to his Techmarine.

‘And what is your business here, Sergeant Lorkar? You haven’t told us that,’ said Dak’ir as the Marine Malevolent was leaving.

‘My orders stay within the Chapter,’ he replied tersely, ramming on his battle-helm and rejoining his battle-brothers.

‘It is more than protocol that stays his tongue. They are hiding something,’ muttered Tsu’gan, before turning away himself, a dark look directed first at Lorkar and then Dak’ir.

Once Tsu’gan had gone, Dak’ir whispered, ‘Keep your eyes open.’

Ba’ken’s gaze was fixed on the departing yellow-armoured sergeant. He nodded, releasing his grip from the piston-hammer.

A thin mist drifted over the deck of the cryogenic vault like the slow passage of a tired apparition. A gaseous amalgam of nitrogen and helium combined to produce the chemical compound that would catalyse the cryogenic process, it rolled languidly off a series of semi-transparent tanks situated at one end of a large metal room. A high ceiling still carried the ubiquitous censers and there were small Mechanicus shrines set into alcoves in the walls. Exposed hosing, cables and other machinery were also prevalent. It was as if they were the excised innards of some mechanical behemoth, and this room was part of its mech-biology. The dense agglomeration of pipes and wires extruded from the room’s perimeter and fed to a series of cryo-caskets that dominated a pair of raised, arc-shaped platforms in the centre. Both platforms were approximately two metres off deck level and reachable via a grilled metal stairway on two sides. A deactivated lifter plate was also evident, delineated by a rectangle of warning chevrons. The natural passageway between the two platforms led to the vault’s only exit, a huge blast door sealed shut by three adamantium locking bars.

Brother Emek wiped his gauntleted hand across the thick plexi-glass of one of the cryo-caskets, breaking up a veneer of hoarfrost.

‘No outward vital signs,’ he muttered after a few moments. ‘This one is dead, too.’

The liquid nitrogen run-off pooled around the Astartes’s armoured boots, curling around his greaves. It spilled off the edge of the platform where Emek was standing to hang a few centimetres above the lower deck of the vault like a ghostly veil.

At the aft-facing end of the room Harkane worked at releasing the blast door, the low hiss of his plasma-cutter a dulcet chorus to the machine-hum of the stasis tanks. Half his Marines Malevolent battle-brothers were clustered around him – Lorkar’s combat squad – intent on the Techmarine’s endeavours as if whatever lay beyond the door was of profound interest to them. The brother-sergeant was locked in almost constant conference with his battle-helm’s comm-feed now. Whoever he was getting his orders from was issuing regular instruction and demanding progress reports. The rest of Lorkar’s troops were silently guarding the forced entry point and, unless Dak’ir’s instincts were off, watching him and his battle-brothers.

The Salamanders’ first concern was the possibility of survivors. The Marines Malevolent’s disregard in this had not gone unnoticed, but was left unchallenged. Whatever the other Astartes’ mission, the Salamanders were not privy to it and it was not the place of one Chapter to question another for such flimsy reasons when all the facts were not known. Pyriel was determined it would not affect their own rescue efforts, however.

Two groups of five Salamanders, chosen from each of the two squads by their respective sergeants, were tasked with investigating the forty cryogenic chambers. Emek led one group; Iagon the other. Two ranks of twenty dominated the raised deck space, situated opposite the blast doors against either wall. Within were human adepts. Some had amputated limbs, fused stumps trailing insulated cables and wiring; others had hollow eye sockets, ringed with pink scar-tissue and tiny puncture marks where the installation pins had gone in and then been retracted. The crew’s constituent mechanical components – bionic eyes, arms, mechadendrite clusters and even a half-track for a double leg amputee – were locked away in transparent armour-plas receptacles, stamped with the Mechanicus cog and fastened to their individual cryo-caskets. So far, eighteen of the forty were dead.

For one the freezing process had malfunctioned, atrophying his body, ice crystals infecting his lifeless skin like a contagion; another had simply drowned in the solution that had failed to catalyse when the casket was activated, the adept’s eyes wide with frozen panic, a forlornly beating fist held for eternity stuck to the inner-glass. The others had succumbed to cardiac infarction – possibly brought on through shock during the cryogenic process or at the separation of their mechanised limbs and augmentation – hypothermia or other, unidentifiable, mortalities.

One thing was clear. The steps taken to preserve the crew, what few still lived, had been conducted in haste.

‘Brother-Sergeant Dak’ir,’ Emek’s voice came over the comm-feed in his battle-helm.

‘Go ahead, brother,’ Dak’ir returned. He was standing on the lower deck alongside Brother Apion who was trying to raise the Vulkan’s Wrath through a ship-to-ship comm-device set up in the room. Thus far he’d had no success – the strike-cruiser was obviously still out of range.

‘I need you to see this, sir,’ Emek replied.

Dak’ir instructed Apion to continue. A self-conscious glance at Tsu’gan revealed his brother-sergeant to be intent on Lorkar and his warriors at the blast door. A cursory examination of the Salamanders’ other forces showed that Pyriel was similarly engrossed, though Dak’ir suspected the Librarian’s awareness went far beyond that of his fellow brother-sergeant. Those battle-brothers not engaged with checking the cryo-caskets were keeping sentry. The Salamanders mixed with the Marines Malevolent directly and the tension between them was almost palpable. Ba’ken, in particular, caught Dak’ir’s attention positioned next to a Space Marine who was almost his match in sheer bulk. The Marine Malevolent bore a skull-faced battle-helm, the beak nose sheared off and sealed in order to promote the cranial analogue. Not like a Chaplain’s, masterfully wrought to resemble bone, the battle-helm’s decoration was painted on. He also carried a plasma gun, and held it with the sureness of a warrior born. The two massive Space Marines were very alike, but stoically refused to acknowledge one another. Dak’ir hoped it would stay that way as he reached the top of the stairway and the cryo-caskets.

Emek was a third of the way down the sub-group of four he was analysing when he saw his sergeant approach. Evidently, it was slow going.

Most of the associated instrumentation of the cryo-caskets was damaged, so there was no way to tell how long the stasis-sleep had lasted. It also retarded the assessment of vital signs, but the Salamanders engaged in that duty did so exhaustively and methodically. The majority of the bio-monitors situated beneath the caskets were no longer operating, either, or were simply too encrusted with ice to be readable. From the corner of his helmet lens, Dak’ir noted Iagon using his auspex to ascertain life signs in certain cases. The battle-brother acknowledged him from across the small gulf between the platforms, and Dak’ir felt his guard go up instinctively.

‘Sir,’ said Emek with a slight nod, once his sergeant had reached him.

‘Show me, brother.’

Emek stepped back to allow Dak’ir to move in and get a better look.

‘See for yourself, sergeant.’

Emek had smeared away the rime of ice crystals obscuring the view through the casket’s plexi-glass frontis. Dak’ir peered through the ragged gap in the frost and saw the remains of the adept inside. It was difficult to discern at first: the nitro-helium solution was tainted with blood, lots of blood. Other things floated in the tank too, held fast in the stagnant liquid.

‘Flesh,’ Emek said from behind him. ‘Bone chips too, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘Mercy of Vulkan…’ Dak’ir breathed. His voice was made even hollower through his battle-helm.

‘Self-mutilation, sir.’ The explanation was hardly necessary. Deep lacerations ran down the adept’s torso, arms and legs, four-pronged as if dug by fingernails. The stark evidence of the adept’s hands supported that theory – they were stained with blood. Three of the nails had been ripped off, revealing the soft red membrane beneath; the rest were clogged with shreds of flensed skin.

‘This one had ocular implants?’ Dak’ir asked.

‘No, sir.’

The eyes, then, had been torn out. Gore streaked from the ruined sockets that were deep and red and visceral. Dak’ir regarded the abomination sternly.

‘Assessment?’

Emek paused, weighing up his words, until his sergeant faced him to demand an answer. ‘I believe the ship turned on itself, though I don’t know how or why,’ he said.

Dak’ir remembered the view of the Archimedes Rex through the Fire-wyvern’s occuliport; in retrospect, the weapons damage was strange. It was possible that the ship’s crippling had been self-inflicted. It might also explain why they had encountered one single magos – he was the last standing, having killed the rest. The cryo-vault was sealed, not against foreign invaders, but to keep the rest of the ship’s inhabitants out.

‘What about the servitors?’ Dak’ir followed his line of reasoning out loud.

‘They aren’t sentient like the magos and the other adepts. Perhaps they weren’t affected in the same way.’

Dak’ir took one last look at the mutilated adept in the tank. His salvation had come too late. Sealed in the cryo-casket, and with nothing to attack, he had evidently turned on himself.

‘Keep looking for survivors,’ he said, turning, glad to avert his gaze from the gruesome spectacle.

As he walked back down the access stairway, Dak’ir’s comm-feed crackled to life. It was on a closed channel with himself and Tsu’gan.

‘Brother-sergeants…’

Dak’ir looked over at the sound of Pyriel’s voice. The Librarian maintained his vigil over their dubious allies. The cause for his words was obvious. The Marines Malevolent had opened up the blast doors. When he reached the Librarian, Dak’ir saw inside the chamber the other Astartes had been so fixated on. It was a massive storage room, akin to the one they’d discovered earlier only much larger. Also unlike the smaller munitions store, this one had a vast cache of manufactured arms and armour: MkVII battle-plate hung in suits from overhead armatures; bolters sat in racks like parade soldiers, pristine and unfired; ammo crates brimming with sickle mags for the guns were piled in pallets of a hundred, a thousand clips per crate. Materiel spanned the hangar-like room in an unending slew of grey-black.

The Marines Malevolent were already emptying it, positioning guns, ammunition and power armour directly outside the chamber within an invisibly delineated area.

Dak’ir then realised what Lorkar and his battle-brothers were doing on the Archimedes Rex. The fledgling weapons were the perfect replacements for their arcane militaria. The Marines Malevolent were re-supplying; appropriating the materiel cache from the forge-ship for their own purposes.

One of the yellow-armoured warriors, the shark-helmeted Brother Nemiok, had been in brief concert with his sergeant and afterwards removed something from a large belt pouch. It was a bulky device, hoisted into position atop the centre of the small arms cache by a thick handle, and consisted of a narrow-necked tube with a lozenge-shaped tip that contained a beacon, appended with small pistons that powered a ribbed compression cylinder.

Though crude and out-dated, Dak’ir recognised it at once. It was a teleport homer. En route to the Archimedes Rex, the Salamanders had neither seen nor detected another vessel. Dak’ir could only assume the Fire-wyvern’s sensor arrays lacked the range to discover it, for he was sure now that the Marines Malevolent had a cruiser nearby, its teleportarium primed for the stolen Mechanicus haul.

Tsu’gan stormed towards the ring of yellow-armoured Astartes that had formed just in front of the teleportation zone.

‘What do you think you’re doing, brother?’ he growled, ignoring the others and addressing Lorkar directly.

The sergeant was directing two of his battle-brothers hefting the equipment out of the storage room and didn’t look at Tsu’gan when he answered.

‘What it looks like, Salamander. I am re-supplying my Chapter.’

‘You steal that which is not meant for you,’ he countered, clenching his fists. ‘I did not realise the Marines Malevolent were honourless pirates.’

Now Lorkar turned, and his previous nonchalance crumbled away.

‘We are true servants of the Emperor. Our integrity is beyond reproach. We seek only the means to prosecute His wars.’

‘Then honour the pact made between He and the Mechanicus. We Astartes have no call to pillage and ransack the stricken ships of Mars. You are no better than carrion snapping at the flesh of a corpse.’

‘What concern is it of yours, anyway?’ Lorkar returned, a slight tilt of his head suggested a glance at something behind the Salamander. ‘Stay out of it.’

Tsu’gan felt the lightest pressure on his pauldron when he turned swiftly, seizing the wrist of the Space Marine attempting to surprise him and twisting until the bones snapped and he forced his assailant to one knee.

‘Attempt to rise and I shall shatter your kneecap,’ Tsu’gan promised, addressing the skull-faced Marine Malevolent with the plasma gun. Despite the obvious pain he was in, the yellow-armoured Astartes looked to his sergeant before he would relent.

Ba’ken stirred from his sentry position, as did the other Salamanders on overwatch, together with those manning the cryo-caskets.

‘Remain where you are.’ Pyriel’s curt command arrested any further escalation.

Ba’ken seemed about to press anyway, when a glance from Dak’ir warned him off and he merely watched instead. Of the Marines Malevolent, only Brother Rennard had broken ranks, doubtless in response to an earlier directive from his sergeant.

Lorkar’s fists were clenched as he considered what to do next. It was as if time had frozen. The tension in the room was strained; a little more pressure and it would break out in bloody violence. Dak’ir noticed that Harkane had switched the gun platform from dormant to active, the red targeting matrix hazing in the cryo-gas.

He thought about disabling the Techmarine. He still had enough charge in his plasma pistol for a wounding shot. It took less than a second for Dak’ir to decide against it. So delicately poised as the situation was, any unexpected move could be disastrous. Tsu’gan had the lead for now and he had to be content with that. A degree of insurance would be prudent, though, and it was with this in mind that Dak’ir issued the sub-vocal command into a closed channel of the comm-feed.

‘Do you really want to do this?’ Tsu’gan still had his back to Lorkar, glaring down intently at the Marine Malevolent under his control.

Lorkar exhaled slowly and released his clenched fists. ‘Brother Rennard, stand down,’ he ordered reluctantly, and the skull-faced Astartes relaxed. Tsu’gan let him go, facing Lorkar again, an awkward stand-off in prospect.

‘These weapons can either gather dust on this wreck or be put to use destroying the enemies of mankind. We will not abandon them.’

Pyriel’s voice invaded the deadlock. ‘You are wrong. They will be returned to the Mechanicus for proper allocation,’ he said. ‘You are outnumbered by a superior force. Neither of us wants a conflict here. Relent at once or face the consequences.’

Harkane shifted, about to do something he would later regret, when he staggered a little as if stunned.

I would collapse your mind before your finger squeezed the trigger!

Dak’ir heard the psychic impel that was meant only for Harkane, and it chilled him.

Lorkar, who had not been privy to the mental threat, continued undeterred, nodding with assertion. ‘The weapons and armour are leaving this ship–’ he paused mid flow, slightly bowing his head again as instructions were relayed through his comm-feed.

‘Let us all hear your orders, Malevolent,’ Tsu’gan growled contemptuously. ‘Or is the voice on the other end of that comm-feed too craven?’

Rennard had got to his feet and was supporting his broken wrist, when he spoke up. ‘You disrespect a captain of the Astartes!’

Tsu’gan turned on him next.

‘Show me this captain,’ he demanded. ‘I hear only a whispering coward hiding behind the pauldrons of his sergeant.’

Ba’ken loomed suddenly behind the belligerent Rennard, who was slightly crouched with his injury and wise enough to make no further move, merely seething behind his macabre battle-helm.

Dak’ir nodded to the bulky Salamander, who returned the gesture.

‘Well then?’ Tsu’gan pressed, focused on the Marine Malevolent sergeant. ‘Where is he?’

Lorkar stalked forwards, the ring of armour parting to let him through as he unhitched an item from his belt and came face-to-face with Tsu’gan. Going to his fellow brother-sergeant’s side at once, Dak’ir noticed Pyriel making a similar move as Lorkar whispered:

‘As you wish…’

Brace yourselves!

II

Purgatory

It was the last thing Dak’ir heard as the cryo-vault disappeared in a brilliant magnesium flash. Then came pain, so raw and invasive it was as if his organs were twisting inside out, as if the very molecular structure of his being was breaking down in a nanosecond, atom by atom, reforming and disintegrating again a moment later. Sulphur and cordite wreathed his nostrils, so overwhelming he couldn’t breathe. The acrid taste of copper filled his mouth as all notions of time and existence bled away into a soup of primal instinct, like being born. The tangible gave way to the ethereal as all meaning fled from his senses.

The light subsided as an image slowly resolved around Dak’ir. The actinic stench remained, as did the blood lining his teeth and in his mouth. He saw metal, felt it concretely beneath his booted feet. A sensation of nausea followed, supplemented by a bout of sudden vertigo making Dak’ir stagger as the corporeal world re-established itself.

He was on a ship. The device in Lorkar’s hand had been a homing beacon, through which he’d teleported them aboard.

‘The nausea will pass,’ a grating voice Dak’ir recognised as Sergeant Lorkar’s assured them.

Dak’ir was standing in a large circular room. It had a vaulted ceiling that led away into unfathomable darkness, and was poorly lit by sodium simulacra-lamps. Around its vast circumference, the room was papered with cloth banners describing numerous victories with rubrics daubed in High Gothic script, yellow-and-black armoured Astartes holding skulls and other grisly talismans aloft to the adulation of a horde. A hundred campaigns or more were arrayed across the chamber’s ambit, each devoted to the Marines Malevolent Chapter’s 2nd Company. The Marines Malevolent were not a First Founding Chapter, they had not fought in the Great Crusade, bringing thousands of worlds into compliance, but on the evidence of their laurels, one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

Accenting the self-aggrandising banners were other trophies – the actual macabre totems depicted on the cloth. Dak’ir saw the flayed skulls of xenos: orks, their jutting jaws and sloped brows unmistakable; the tyranid bio-form he recognised from the Chamber of Remembrance on Prometheus and the wing devoted to 2nd Company recounting their exploits on Ymgarl, when they cleansed the moon of a genestealer infestation. The bleached cranium of a hated eldar also sneered down at him, its countenance as haughty and disdainful in death as it was in life. The graven battle-helms of the Traitor Legions were also present, hollowed out and staring balefully. Disturbingly, he caught sight of a battle-helm that did not bear any Chaotic hallmarks he could discern, though it sparked a pang of remembrance in him. It was difficult to tell in the gloom and he was still fighting off the unpleasant lingering sensation of the recent teleport, but it appeared to be stygian black with a bony protrusion punching through the apex of the helmet like a crest.

‘Idiot – you could have killed us all with that stunt.’ Tsu’gan’s voice arrested Dak’ir’s attention. His fists were bunched as he directed his wrath at Lorkar. The Salamander sergeant was shaking, though Dak’ir couldn’t tell if it was with anger or if he too was still acclimatising to their sudden transition from the Archimedes Rex.

Tsu’gan was right, though. Teleportation was a dangerous and inexact science. Even with the benefit of a homing beacon, the chances of becoming lost in the warp or translating back as a gibbering morass of fleshy blubber as your insides became your outsides were still uncomfortably high. To engage in teleportation when those translating had not been primed or were not wearing Terminator armour to protect them from the physical rigours of the process was even more hazardous.

‘I did it to make a point.’ The voice was hard like iron, full of power and self-confidence. It echoed from the edge of the room where the gloom gathered, and the Salamanders followed it to its source.

Bisecting the circle of glory was a steel dais holding up a black throne upon which sat a figure in the manner of a recumbent king. Only the tips of the figure’s boots were visible, together with the suggestion of a yellow greave cast in the corona of light issuing from a nearby simulacra-lamp. His identity was swathed in shadow for now.

He was evidently a student of war history. Above the throne were numerous maps of ancient conquests and crusades. There were weapons, too: esoteric firearms, blades of unknown origin and other strange devices. The throne room was a proud boast, designed to promote the captain’s obvious sense of vainglory.

‘I am Captain Vinyar and this is my ship, the Purgatory. Whatever control you think you have here, you are wrong. The Mechanicus vessel is mine, I lay claim to all its contents.’

‘Lay claim? You may lay claim to nothing, and will release the Archimedes Rex to our charge in the name of the Emperor,’ said Tsu’gan.

‘Cool your temper, brother-sergeant,’ Pyriel warned in a low voice, a spectator until now. ‘You are addressing a captain of the Astartes.’ Dak’ir noted that unlike him and his brother-sergeant, the Librarian showed no outward signs of discomfort from their enforced journey.

‘You are wise to rein your sergeant in, Librarian,’ said Vinyar and leaned forward into the light in order to show his face.

The captain’s countenance was as adamantine as his voice. Callous eyes glared out from an almost square head sat on broad Astartes shoulders. Bald, apart from the sporadic tufts of closely-shaven hair infecting his scalp like hirsute lesions, Vinyar had a stubbled chin with a jaw like a hammer-head. Three platinum service studs punctuated a line across his brow above a blood-shot left eye.

Vinyar wore the yellow and black battle-plate of his brothers. Both pauldrons carried chevrons, the veteran ‘hazard’ markings of the Marines Malevolent, and a ragged cloak of black ermine unfurled from his shoulders like old sackcloth. His left arm ended in a power glove, though the fingers looked to be fused, indicating they could no longer be opened. Dak’ir sensed that Vinyar had no use for gripping with it anyway, and needed it only as a hammer with which to brutalise his enemies.

A trace of amusement curled up his top lip in the approximation of a smile, but there was no mirth in it. If Lorkar was grizzled, then Vinyar was positively leaden by comparison.

Dak’ir noted that the hard-faced captain did not bother to ask Pyriel’s or, indeed, any of their names. The fact was evidently unimportant to him.

‘He makes a valid point, though, Brother-Captain Vinyar,’ Pyriel asserted, stepping forward as Lorkar was dismissed by his superior.

‘Oh yes…’ invited Vinyar.

Dak’ir noticed armoured figures lumbering in the penumbral shadows at the edge of the throne room, just beyond the walls of victory banners. He recognised the forms as Terminators, but wearing an ersatz variant of the modern Tactical Dreadnought Armour. It was bulky with raised pauldrons surmounting a sunken, box-shaped battle-helm that had a rudimentary mouth-grille. The armour was much less refined with restricted dexterity, though it carried a fairly standard weapons array consisting of a power glove, but with a twin-linked combi-bolter in lieu of the more usual storm bolter. Despite their archaism, the Astartes wearing those suits were still deadly.

Pyriel went on undaunted.

‘That you will leave the Archimedes Rex at once and render the forge-ship to us.’

‘You are welcome to it, brother.’ Vinyar grinned. Dak’ir likened it to the expression a shark might make if ever amused. ‘I only desire its contents.’

‘Which you will also yield to us,’ Pyriel replied, not rising to Vinyar’s facetiousness.

Vinyar leaned back and was lost to shadow again, evidently tiring of the game he was playing.

‘Bring it up on the screen,’ he said into the ship’s vox-link, situated on the arm of his throne.

A small antenna poked its way up insidiously from between the cracks in the deck plate a short distance from Vinyar’s throne. Once it had reached two metres in height it stopped and expanded into three metre-length prongs at its apex, between which a holographic image was revealed. It showed the Archimedes Rex, or rather a close up view of a section of its generatoria unseen from the Fire-wyvern’s angle of approach. The pict threw off grainy blue light, and cast Vinyar macabrely in the half-dark.

‘The generatoria you see in the holo-cast provides power to the forge-ship’s life support systems, amongst some others.’

The image panned out swiftly, showing the end of a scorched cannon turret. ‘One of the Purgatory’s many,’ Vinyar revealed. ‘Master Vorkan, do you have a firing solution?’

A disembodied voice replied from the vox-link.

‘Yes, my lord.’

Vinyar turned his attention back to the Salamanders.

‘A single lance salvo will critically damage that generatoria, destroying the life support systems and with it any chance of rescuing any survivors aboard.’

Tsu’gan bristled with barely contained rage. Dak’ir felt his knuckles crack as he subconsciously made fists. Such an act was unconscionable. To treat human life with such flagrant disregard; it made him sick to the stomach, so much so that his objections came out in a grating rasp.

‘You cannot mean to do this. To appropriate arms, to steal from a crippled ship is one thing, but murder?’

‘I am no murderer, brother-sergeant.’ Vinyar’s eyes were dark hollows pinpricked by tiny spots of malice as he regarded Dak’ir. ‘Murder is an assassin’s bullet or a hiver’s blade in the back. I am a soldier, as are you. And in battle, sacrifices must be made. I act out of necessity, in order that my Chapter should prevail. It is your hand that forces mine, not the other way around.’

‘Do that and I will have no other recourse but to order my Astartes aboard the Archimedes Rex to take custody of yours, the outcome of which would not end favourably for you,’ said Pyriel, re-entering the fray. ‘Would you condemn your warriors to that fate?’

The holo-pict shut off, killing the light as the broadcast antenna retracted.

Vinyar leaned forwards again, scoffing. ‘Of course not, they would be extracted before the attack even took place.’

‘How?’ Tsu’gan’s tone was scornful. ‘Even the Raven Guard couldn’t perform such a manoeuvre.’

Vinyar turned his attention to the brother-sergeant. ‘In the same way we extracted you. Teleportation is much easier going out than coming in, hence the reason I favoured boarding torpedoes for our initial breach.’

The arrogant captain allowed a pause. In it, his mood of vainglory seemed to gloss over for a moment, replaced by a veneer of sincerity.

‘We Astartes are brothers. We should not come to blows over this. There is no malice here; it is only war. I have fought in over a hundred campaigns, over hundreds of worlds and hundreds of systems. Xenos, traitors and heretics, witches and daemons of all forms – they have died by my righteous hand. Humanity owes a debt of gratitude to my Chapter, as it does all the Chapters of the Astartes. It is by our will and strength of arms that they are kept safe, ignorant of the terrors of Old Night.’ He made an expansive gesture with his arm as if to suggest the universe was contained in his very throne room. ‘What are the fates of a few balanced against a galaxy of trillions?’

‘Bad deeds are bad deeds,’ countered Dak’ir. ‘There is no scale upon which they can be weighed against your victories, brother-captain, no measure that can account for monstrous acts.’

Vinyar held up his hand, his voice never more serious.

‘I am no monster. I do what I must to serve the Emperor’s light. But make no mistake…’ And like a harsh wind blowing away the ash from a smothered fire, his plaintive demeanour came away. ‘I am the master here. And it is I who shall dictate what–’

The crackling of the vox-link on the arm of his throne interrupted him.

‘Yes.’ Vinyar hissed with impatience.

‘My lord,’ the disembodied voice issued from some other unknown part of the ship, ‘a vessel is hailing us.’ There was a short pause before the voice continued. ‘It is an Astartes strike cruiser.’

Vinyar raised an eyebrow as he turned to regard the Salamanders. The exchange between them remained unspoken, and as he suddenly felt his dominance slipping away like earth from a sundered hill, he issued a reluctant command.

‘Broadcast it into my throne room.’

The link was cut and a new rain of static began as the ship’s communications patched in from another source.

‘Yours, I presume,’ Vinyar muttered with bitter disdain.

Pyriel didn’t even have time to nod as Captain N’keln’s voice rang powerfully throughout the room from concealed vox speakers in the walls.

‘This is Brother-Captain N’keln of the Salamanders 3rd Company, aboard strike cruiser Vulkan’s Wrath. Release my men at once or face the consequences.’

Dak’ir smiled behind his battle-helm. Evidently Brother Apion had managed to establish contact with their ship.

‘You address Captain Vinyar of the Marines Malevolent, and we do not respond to demands.’ Vinyar was bullish, despite the precarious position he was in.

‘You will respond to mine,’ N’keln replied curtly. ‘Escort my men back to the Archimedes Rex. I will not ask a third time.’

‘Your men are free to go when they choose. It was they that requested an audience.’

‘You will also hand over the forge-ship to our authority.’ N’keln pressed, ignoring what the other captain had just said.

Vinyar scowled, clearly not liking where this was going.

‘The ship is ours,’ he hissed, his expression dark as he surveyed the three Salamanders before him, foisting all of his anger upon them in lieu of their absent captain. ‘I will not relinquish it.’

There was another pause before the vox-link crackled again and the disembodied voice from before issued out.

‘My lord, we are detecting weapons priming on the Vulkan’s Wrath.’

Vinyar whirled to confront the vox-link as if it were an enemy that could be threatened or intimidated to change its report.

‘What?’ he snapped, flashing daggers at Pyriel. ‘Confirm: the Salamander ship is bringing weapons to bear?’

‘A full broadside of laser batteries, yes my lord.’

Vinyar hammered the arm of his throne with his power fist and crushed it. With the remnants of shattered circuitry and other detritus dripping to the ground from his fist, he glared at the invaders in front of him.

‘You would fire upon a fellow Astartes vessel, but rail at me for threatening to execute a gaggle of human serfs?’

The Salamanders remained stoic in their silence. The confrontation was all but over now; they only needed to wait it out.

Vinyar slumped back heavily in his half-demolished throne, all arrogance and superiority having bled away from his expression and his body language – in its place was seething annoyance. The air was charged, and for a moment it seemed as if the Marine Malevolent captain was debating whether or not to engage the Vulkan’s Wrath anyway and slay the interlopers aboard his ship. In the end, he relented.

‘Take the vessel, if you must. But mark me: this misdeed will be remembered, Salamanders. None who raise arms against the Marines Malevolent do so without consequence or reply.’ Vinyar turned away from them then to quietly brood in the shadows. When he did speak again a few seconds later, his voice was little more than a hate-filled whisper.

‘Now, get off my ship.’

Not wishing to risk the capriciousness of the Purgatory’s teleportarium or its captain’s spite, Pyriel transported the errant Salamanders back aboard the Archimedes Rex by psychically opening a gate of infinity into the immaterium. Invoking such power was not without risk, but Pyriel as an Epistolary-level Librarian was accomplished in his craft. The three Astartes arrived back in the cryo-vault aboard the forge-ship without mishap.

Though still uncomfortable, Dak’ir found the experience much less disconcerting as the metal walls of the room slowly resolved around him. An eldritch storm heralded their arrival as the veil over the material realm was peeled back to allow the Salamanders through. Re-emerging into reality, they found themselves encircled by their battle-brothers, weapons ready in the event of something unnatural coming across with them, seeking access via the breach in the fabric of reality that Pyriel had torn in order to effect their crossing.

Upon transition back aboard the Archimedes Rex, and after the dispersal of their vigilant battle-brothers, Dak’ir noticed that the Marines Malevolent were gone. Vinyar had evidently made good on his promise to haul his warriors out of the ship. But that wasn’t all that was missing. The modest cache of arms the Marines Malevolent had piled up ready for teleport was absent too.

‘When did this happen?’ Tsu’gan demanded to know as soon as he’d realised the weapons and armour were missing.

‘Upon extraction, no more than a minute before your arrival,’ offered Brother S’tang, ‘Men and materiel fled as one.’

S’tang was one of those keeping sentry and who had reacted upon his errant sergeant’s return.

Tsu’gan shook his head in disgust and turned to Brother Apion, who was stationed farther away by the ship’s vox-link. It was he who had re-established contact with the Vulkan’s Wrath.

‘This cannot stand. Raise Captain N’keln at once. We must chase these curs down and take back what they’ve stolen.’

‘With respect, brother-sergeant, Captain N’keln has already been informed.’

Tsu’gan’s wrath was stayed a moment.

‘And what is to be done?’

‘Nothing, sir. The captain is content that we have the ship and the bulk of its arms. He does not wish to press the issue with the Marines Malevolent any further.’

‘For what reason?’ Tsu’gan asked, his anger abruptly returned. ‘They are pirates, tantamount to renegades in my eyes. Vinyar and his whoresons must be brought to account for this.’

Brother Apion, to his great credit, was unflinching in the face of the sergeant’s ire. ‘Those are the captain’s orders, sir.’

‘Given without explanation?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Iagon’s voice insinuated its way into the debate.

‘I am certain the captain would have had his reasons, brother-sergeant. It is likely he did not wish to risk the lives of any potential Mechanicus survivors.’ He had not been amongst the sentry party, and was standing just below the raised platform having recently descended following his duties and cast his gaze over the cryo-caskets. ‘Few as that may be. The company is also sore from its previous campaign. We are still licking our wounds. He may not have favoured conflict with another strike cruiser bereft of the element of surprise.’

‘You should hold your tongue, Iagon, forked as it is.’ Ba’ken loomed over the other Salamander. ‘The captain’s orders are not for you to discuss.’

Iagon tried not to balk in the face of the massive warrior’s presence. He merely made a plaintive gesture and backed away a step, before feigning interest in cryo-casket readings patched in to his auspex.

Dak’ir took up the baton for his heavy weapons trooper.

‘Captain N’keln is wise enough to know any fight with a fellow battle-brother, albeit from a Chapter as arbitrary as the Marines Malevolent, is a foolish and futile one.’

‘Your opinion is neither warranted nor asked for, Ignean,’ Tsu’gan replied darkly. The mood around the gathered Salamanders was becoming strained. It was as if the Marines Malevolent had never gone.

‘Let it rest, brother-sergeant,’ Pyriel’s voice was as stern and uncompromising as an anvil. A faint aura of power was dying in his helmet lenses, and Dak’ir assumed the Librarian had been telepathically communicating with their distant brothers. ‘The Vulkan’s Wrath is already en route to us. We are to regroup in the fighter bay where we’ll be met by a Thunderhawk. The survivors and their cryo-caskets are to be made ready for transport.’

Tsu’gan was ready to object, clearly incensed at what he saw as capitulation in the face of an enemy. Pyriel steered him back on target.

‘You have your orders, brother-sergeant.’

Tsu’gan’s body relaxed as he found his composure.

‘As you wish, my lord,’ he returned and went to organise his squad.

Dak’ir watched him go, seeing the anger linger upon him like a dark stain. Tsu’gan was poor at hiding his feelings, even behind the ceramite mask of his battle-helm. But Dak’ir sensed his displeasure was not directed at the Librarian, but at N’keln instead. Suddenly the ugly spectre of dissension with 3rd Company loomed once more.

Trying to put it out of his mind, he focused on the other Salamanders who were now busy securing the cryo-caskets for immediate evacuation and transit, disengaging them from the ship’s onboard systems and allowing the internal power source of each to maintain it. A risky procedure for sure, and one not without casualties, but it was the only way any of the still living adepts were going to make it off the Archimedes Rex. Much like the initial assessment of the cryo-inhabitants’ condition, careful extraction from the forge-ship was a slow process. Gradually though, Emek and Iagon – who had subsequently returned to his original duties – led their teams to work through each and every casket. The report at the end of it was bleak: only seven survivors.

It seemed small recompense for such an arduous journey. Dak’ir was reminded again of the doubt expressed in N’keln’s judgement in insisting on this mission. The fallow results aboard the forge-ship could only serve to justify that doubt. He wondered briefly how many more of these cryo-vaults were situated around the ship and if it was even possible for the Salamanders to reach them and secure additional survivors. Those seven that still lived, when brought aboard the Vulkan’s Wrath when it eventually reached them, would need to be taken to a nearby Imperial medical facility until the Mechanicus could recover them. That was assuming the Martians were even interested in collecting them. Whatever the case, upon revival and restoration, they would be pressed back into the service of the glorious Imperium.

‘Glad to see you’ve returned to us in one piece, with your entrails inside your armour and all limbs attached,’ said Ba’ken in a low voice, intruding unknowingly on Dak’ir’s thoughts.

‘Your relief is second only to my own, brother. Vinyar, their captain, was like no Astartes I have ever met. He was utterly ruthless – the antithesis of a Salamander. It is good to be back amongst my Chapter. It set me thinking, though. Whether or not we are too compassionate and if it is the very fact we value human life, perhaps more so than any of our brothers, that hampers our effectiveness as warriors.’

Ba’ken laughed quietly and without mirth. ‘Chaplain Elysius would tell us that Astartes do not experience doubt, that they are sure in all things, especially war. But there is a difference between dogma and reality, I think. Only by questioning and then knowing the answers are right can we truly obtain certainty. As for compassion being a weakness… I don’t think so, sir. Compassion is our greatest asset. It is what bonds us as brothers, and unites us towards a righteous and noble purpose,’ Ba’ken replied, as sure and steady as the rock of Mount Deathfire itself.

‘Our bond feels strained of late.’ The implication at the discord in 3rd Company was obvious by Dak’ir’s tone.

‘Aye, and this latest mission will have done nothing to alleviate it.’

As those dark thoughts were churning through Dak’ir’s mind, some unknown imperative at the edge of his subconscious made him turn towards the gaping blast doors that led into the storage room. The Marines Malevolent had escaped with only a meagre percentage of the materiel within, but Dak’ir felt compelled to see what they had left behind anyway.

‘Brother-sergeant?’ Ba’ken’s voice invaded the sudden introspection.

Dak’ir looked back at him.

‘Is something amiss?’ Ba’ken asked.

Dak’ir hadn’t even realised he’d started walking away from him. As if drawn by a siren’s song, he had drifted towards the storage room and was almost at its threshold when Ba’ken had hailed him.

‘No, brother.’ Though truthfully, Dak’ir did not even know. ‘The remaining arms cache must be inspected before transit; that is all.’

‘Then let the serfs do that upon our return to the Vulkan’s Wrath. It is no task for an Astartes, let alone a brother-sergeant.’

‘A cursory examination only, Ba’ken.’ Even to Dak’ir, his explanation sounded weak. He felt oddly detached, like when the teleportarium had wrenched them from the material realm and returned them aboard the Purgatory. Only this was somehow different, almost ethereal as if a layer of fog had manifested over the world around him, giving some sensations clarity whilst dampening others, and heightening his awareness.

‘Do you require assistance? I can assign G’heb and Zo’tan.’

‘No, Ba’ken, that won’t be necessary. I can do this alone.’ Just before he turned back, Dak’ir added as an afterthought, ‘You are wise, Ba’ken, and would make an excellent sergeant.’

‘Ah, but some are meant to lead and some are just meant to fight, brother,’ he replied. ‘I know I am of the latter.’

If he could have seen his face behind his battle-helm, Dak’ir felt sure that the heavy weapons trooper would be smiling. And then, unable to resist the pull any longer, Dak’ir entered the storage room as Ba’ken and the rest of his battle-brothers were lost from sight.

The vast chamber of materiel seemed larger within than it had without. A small army could be outfitted from the ranks of guns, armour and ammunition inside it. As Dak’ir paced slowly down its length, at least a hundred metres from end to end, he noticed racks of heavy weapons stored amongst the bolters: missile launchers sat together in foam-padded crates, their incendiaries snug alongside them in clusters of three; heavy bolters arranged on separate weapons racks looked bulky and full of violent potential, belt-feeds coiled up in drums next to them; rows of flamers, igniter nozzles pristine, rested beside cylinders of volatile promethium. Dak’ir noticed the suits of power armour, too – all dark metal, waiting to be baptised in the colours of the Chapter for whom they were intended, for the artisans and Techmarines to add insignia and the sigils of honour.

All were as shadows as Dak’ir passed them. They seemed dull and monochrome like a room washed in low light. The keening call, his siren’s song, was a buzzing in his ears now, an insistent throb at the base of his skull like a slow-beating heart. Nearing the back of the long chamber, the throb became faster and faster, the noise in his ears more high-pitched. Just when Dak’ir thought he might cry out, the sound stopped. He saw a simple metal chest nestled at the very back of the room, incongruous amongst all the munitions. It was a small thing; Dak’ir could have held it in one hand. Rectangular in shape, it had hard edges that reminded him of the head of an anvil, and something was inscribed on the flat lid.

It was only a chest, an innocuous vessel for some unknown item, yet Dak’ir hesitated as he reached for it. Fear wasn’t the emotion that stayed his hand, such things were beneath Astartes; rather it felt like awe.

‘Dak’ir…’

Dak’ir reacted to the voice behind him, turning quickly then relaxing when he saw Pyriel, but only a fraction. The Librarian was looking at something at waist height on the brother-sergeant.

Dak’ir followed his eye line and saw the chest was cradled in his gauntlets. He hadn’t even realised he’d picked it up.

‘I found something, Brother-Librarian,’ he offered thinly.

‘I see that, brother. Though I am amazed you even discovered it.’ Pyriel gestured over the other Salamander’s shoulder at something behind him.

Dak’ir looked behind him and saw upturned crates, piles of munitions strewn across the floor, weapons racks cast aside in his unremembered fervour to locate the chest.

‘You were not quiet in your search,’ Pyriel told him.

Dak’ir faced him again, something like disbelief affecting the sergeant’s demeanour.

‘The ruckus was what alerted me to your presence, brother,’ the Librarian continued, and Dak’ir felt that same burning gaze – assessing, gauging, deliberating.

‘I…’ was all the Salamander sergeant could respond with.

‘Let me see it.’ Pyriel reached out with an open palm and took up the chest reverently as Dak’ir handed it over.

Now he turned that omniscient scrutiny upon the artefact held in his hand.

‘This is Vulkan’s mark,’ he uttered after a few moments. ‘It is his icon, a unique brand borne only by the primarch and his forgefathers.’ Pyriel’s fingers traced subtle grooves and engravings now suddenly visible on the chest’s surface, touching it delicately as if it was fragile porcelain, despite the fact of the chest’s hardy metal construction. ‘It is sealed,’ he went on, although now it appeared he was speaking to himself. ‘No skill I possess can open it.’ The Librarian paused, as if unlocking some clandestine facet of the chest. ‘There is an origin stamp…’

Pyriel looked up, as if struck dumb.

‘What is it, brother? Where does it come from?’

Pyriel uttered a single word, as if it were the only sound that could pass his lips at that moment. It was one that Dak’ir knew well, and held the heavy weight of prophecy.

‘Isstvan.’

Chapter Four

I

Unto the Anvil

‘Is Pyriel certain?’ asked Ba’ken as they waited for the cryo-caskets to be secured aboard the Spear of Prometheus. The Thunderhawk had been waiting for them upon their return to the fighter bay. So too was the Fire-wyvern, together with its capable guardian, Brother Amadeus. The Dreadnought was now secured in his grav-scaffold as the Salamanders made ready to depart the Archimedes Rex. They could not linger in-system, especially given Dak’ir’s discovery. A beacon had been set on the stricken forge-ship matched to Mechanicus frequencies and numerous astropathic hails sent out in the hope that a Martian carrier or Imperial reclamator crews would hear it. Other than that, there was little else that could be done. The ship might never be found or left to drift for centuries, colliding with other crippled vessels until the conglomeration of ruined metal became a hulk and was inhabited by such creatures who found succour in the cold and dark.

Several kilometres distant, the Vulkan’s Wrath loitered having laid anchor, small bursts of its hull engines preventing it from drifting in the gulf of space. The materiel cache from the storage room next to the cryo-vault was already aboard and being catalogued by serfs. Though the cryo-caskets and their inert cargo were too precious to risk, the arms and armour were not and so were teleported to the strike cruiser’s storage bay in short order.

‘Yes, he is certain,’ answered Dak’ir, his attention only half on the skeleton crew from the Spear of Prometheus. The servitors were part of Brother Argos’s retinue and assisted in transporting the suspensor-lofted cryo-caskets up the embarkation ramp into the gunship’s otherwise barren hold. The Master of the Forge kept a watchful eye over proceedings. In order to ensure the Chamber Sanctuarine, where the caskets would be housed, was as empty as possible he had shed his servo-harness and wore only a basic Techmarine’s rig. He still looked formidable – Argos had lost the left side of his face whilst fighting alongside the 2nd Company on Ymgarl. He had only been a Techmarine then, a mere novice of the Cult Mechanicus and recently returned from a long internship on Mars where he had learned the liturgies of maintenance and engineering, and mastered communion with the machine-spirits.

Fighting side by side with the now Brother-Sergeant Lok of the 3rd Company Devastators, an encounter with a broodlord had robbed him of his face but not his life, Argos severing the creature in half with his plasma-cutter whilst Lok had applied the kill shot to its bulbous cranium with his bolter.

A steel plate concealed his injuries now, augmented by a bionic replacement for the eye that he’d lost. The image of a snarling firedrake was burned into it, tail coiled around the optical implant, as an emblem of honour. The numerous branding marks that swathed his skin in concentric vortices of scarification came much later – proud sigils of his many deeds.

Like many devoted to the Omnissiah, Argos had forked plugs punching from the flesh of his bald head, with a nest of wires and cables that wormed around the back of his neck and into his nose. His armour was old, an artificer suit but not in the same respect as that worn by another veteran of the Chapter. Festooned with mechanical interfaces, tools and power arrays, it was utterly unlike any power armour, relic or otherwise. It carried the cog symbol to show his allegiance to the Mechanicus, but this was married up with the icon of his Chapter displayed proudly on his right pauldron. A device on his gorget translated his hollow, metallic speech into binaric as he directed the servitors.

‘The origin stamp was very clear,’ stated Dak’ir as the first of the cryo-caskets was brought aboard the Spear of Prometheus. ‘It came from Isstvan.’

Ba’ken exhaled deeply as if trying to mitigate a heavy burden.

‘Now that is an old name, gratefully forgotten.’

Dak’ir said nothing. The fell legend of Isstvan need not be spoken aloud. All of the old XVIII Legion knew of it.

The Isstvan system was notorious in the historical annals of the Astartes. It held perhaps no greater resonance than that felt by the Salamanders Chapter. Though now the substance of myth and ancient remembrance, it was during the Great Betrayal when the Warmaster Horus lured Vulkan and his sons into a terrible trap and almost destroyed them. The Salamanders had been a Legion then, one of the Emperor’s original progenitors. Turned upon by those who they thought were their brothers, the Salamanders, together with two other loyal Legions, were devastated on the planet of Isstvan V. In what was later recorded as the Dropsite Massacre, thousands were slain and the sons of Vulkan pushed almost to extinction.

What miracle transpired, allowing them to avoid that doom, was a mystery some ten thousand years old, as was the fate of their beloved primarch who, some believed, never returned from the battle. Verses were still sung of Vulkan’s heroism that day, but they were the stuff of conjecture and halcyon supposition. The truth of what happened during that disaster was lost forever. Yet the pain of it remained, like an old wound that would not heal. Even replenishing fire could not burn it from the Salamanders’ hearts.

‘So the mission into the Hadron Belt is over?’ asked Ba’ken as the last of the caskets was brought aboard the gunship and the Salamanders started making ready for their final departure from the Archimedes Rex.

‘For now,’ Dak’ir replied.

The two Salamanders were apart from the rest of their battle-brothers who stood in discreet groups of two and three, dispersed across the fighter bay, watching proceedings, staying vigilant and awaiting the order to embark.

‘And we are going back?’

‘Yes, brother. To Nocturne.’

Dak’ir felt ambivalent about a return to their home world. Like all Salamanders, his planet was part of him and to be reunited with it was cause to rejoice, despite its volatile nature. But to come back so soon… it smacked of failure and only made Dak’ir’s concerns about Captain N’keln’s leadership deepen. ‘Pyriel wants to bring the chest before Tu’Shan and have him consult the Tome of Fire.’

‘What do you make of it?’ asked Ba’ken as Dak’ir’s thoughts were steered back towards that moment in the storage room when he’d found the chest with Vulkan’s icon upon it.

‘The chest? I don’t know. Pyriel was certainly unsettled when he ascertained its provenance.’

‘It seems strange to have been amongst weapons and armour,’ said Ba’ken. ‘How did you even find it amidst all of that?’

‘I don’t know that either.’ Dak’ir paused, as if admitting the next part would confirm the reality of it, one that he was unwilling to face. The fact that the two Salamanders were engaged in private conversation and that he trusted Ba’ken like no other was the only reason he spoke up at all. ‘I thought the artefact was in plain sight. It was as if I homed in on it, as if a beacon was attached to the chest and I had locked in to its signal.’

Dak’ir looked at Ba’ken for a reaction but the bulky Salamander gave none. He just stared ahead and listened.

‘When Pyriel found me, I wasn’t even aware I had picked it up. Nor did I remember ransacking the munitions crates to unearth it,’ Dak’ir continued.

Ba’ken remained pensive, but his body language suggested he wanted to say something.

‘Tell me what you are thinking, brother. In this I am not your commanding officer and you my trooper – we are friends.’

There was no sense of accusation in his posture as Ba’ken faced him, no distrust or even wariness – only a question. ‘Are you saying that the chest was meant to be found, and by you alone?’

Dak’ir nodded almost imperceptibly. His voice came out as a rasp. ‘Am I somehow cursed, brother?’

Ba’ken didn’t reply. He merely clasped his battle-brother’s pauldron.

It would be several days before Tu’Shan and his council emerged from the Pantheon. The chamber was one of few in the Salamanders fortress-monastery on Prometheus. Though, in truth, the bastion was not much more than a space port linked to an orbital dock where the Chapter’s modest armada of vessels could be refitted and repaired. An Apothecarion saw to the outfitting of new recruits and their genetic enhancement as they became battle-brothers. Trial arenas were sunk into the basement level. It was here in these pits that initiate and veteran together could undergo tests of endurance and self-reliance, as was in keeping with the tenets of the Promethean Cult.

Walking across hot coals, lifting massive boiling cauldrons, enduring the searing pain of the Proving Rod or bearing red-hot iron bars were just some of the labours expected of the sons of Vulkan to show their faith and will. There were dormitories and relic halls, too, though again relatively few in number. The most prestigious of these was the Hall of the Firedrakes, a vast and vaulted gallery hung with the pelts of the great salamanders slain by the warriors as a rite of passage, and from which the hall took its name.

The Firedrakes, of which Tu’Shan was captain as well as regent, were barracked on Prometheus along with the Chapter Master himself. These venerable warriors were almost a breed apart; the transition they made to the vaunted ranks of the 1st Company changing them in myriad ways as they embraced the full evolution of their genetic encoding. Unlike their fellow battle-brothers, the Firedrakes were seldom seen on the surface of Nocturne where the other Salamanders would readily cohabit with the human populace, albeit often as part of a solitary lifestyle. Their rites were ancient and clandestine, conducted by the Chapter Master himself. Only those who had undergone the most heinous of trials and endured hardship beyond imagining could ever hope to aspire to become a Firedrake.

Akin to that sacred and revered order, access to the Pantheon was also restricted. Dak’ir for one had never seen it, though he knew it was a small deliberation chamber located at the heart of Prometheus.

Only matters of dire import or of profound spiritual significance were ever discussed in the Pantheon. It had eighteen seats, representing their original Legion number – a fact that remained unchanged during the Second Founding, an act in which, due to their debilitated strength, the Salamanders had been unable to participate.

The head seat was reserved for the Chapter Master, an honour that had been Tu’Shan’s these last fifty years or so. Thirteen were for the other masters: six to the captains of the remaining companies; one each for the Apothecarion, Librarius, Chaplaincy and Fleet; with a further three devoted to the Armoury and the Masters of the Forge, an unusual triumvirate but necessary given the Salamanders’ predilection for weaponscraft.

Three of the seats were for honoured guests sequestered by the Chapter Master himself and by dint of the rest of the council’s assent. Praetor, the Firedrake’s most senior sergeant, often assumed one of these seats. Dak’ir knew that Pyriel now occupied another. He wondered if the Librarian would be unflinching before the Chapter’s hierarchy, particular under Master Vel’cona’s gaze. The last position had remained empty for many years, since before Tu’Shan had even assumed the mantle of Regent of Prometheus. Its incumbent was a figure of much veneration.

Here the Masters of the Salamanders would sit and consult the Tome of Fire. This artefact was written by the hand of the primarch himself in ages past. Though Dak’ir had never seen it, let alone perused its pages, he knew that it was full of riddles and prophecies. Rumours purported that the words themselves were inked partly in Vulkan’s blood and shimmered like captured fire if brought up to the light. It was not merely one volume, as the name suggested, but rather dozens arrayed in the stacks around the circular walls of the Pantheon. Deciphering the script of the Tome of Fire was not easy. There were secrets within, left by the primarch for his sons to unlock. It foretold of great events and upheavals for those with the wit to perceive them. But perhaps most pointedly, it contained the history, form and location of the nine artefacts Vulkan had hidden throughout the galaxy for the Salamanders to unearth. Five of these holiest of relics had been discovered over the centuries through the travails of the Forgefathers; the locations of the remaining four were embedded cryptically within the tome’s arcane pages.

So Chapter Master Tu’Shan and those masters still on Prometheus had convened and would pore over the Tome of Fire in the hope of unearthing some inkling that pertained to the discovery of the chest. The artefact’s origin stamp had already ignited something of a fire within the Chapter. Some proposed that it meant the return of Vulkan after so many millennia in unknown isolation; others refuted this, claiming that the primarch was not lost on Isstvan at all, but had returned already at the breaking of the Legions and whatever the chest contained it could not relate to that; more still remained silent and merely watched and waited, unwilling to hope, not daring to suggest what apocalypse might be about to befall the Salamanders if their progenitor had fated a reunion. Patience, wisdom and insight were the only true keys to unlocking the Tome of Fire, and with it the chest’s mystery. Like tempering iron or folding steel at the foot of the forge’s anvil, any attempt to try and unravel its enigmas had to be approached slowly and methodically. It was, after all, the Salamanders’ way.

Dak’ir exercised these credos in the swelter of one of the workshops deep in the undercroft of Hesiod’s Chapter Bastion.

The Vulkan’s Wrath had returned to Nocturne several days earlier. Of the seven Mechanicus adepts in the cryo-caskets salvaged from the Archimedes Rex, none had survived the journey. Their bodies had been incinerated within the pyreum. It rubbed salt into already bitter wounds as more questions were raised about the viability of the mission into the Hadron Belt and Captain N’keln’s decision to undertake it. Such objections were spoken in whispers only, but Dak’ir knew of them all the same. He saw it in the looks of discontent, the agitated postures of sergeants and heard it in the rumours of clandestine meetings to which he was not invited. Ever since 3rd Company had made landfall, Tsu’gan had been waging a campaign of no confidence against N’keln. Or at least, that was how it appeared to Dak’ir.

Promethean lore preached self-sacrifice and loyalty above all else – it seemed that the loyalty felt by some of the sergeants towards their captain was being stretched to its limit.

The only shred of exculpation for N’keln was the chest discovered in the storage room. 3rd Company’s strike cruiser had barely landed on Prometheus when Librarian Pyriel stalked down the embarkation ramp, eschewing all docking protocols as he went in search of his Master Vel’cona who could press for an audience with the Chapter Master. The council in the Pantheon had been arraigned in short order. Their verdict and the announcement of it would not be so forthcoming. The rest of the Salamanders aboard the Vulkan’s Wrath had disbanded, waiting to be recalled by their liege-lords at the appropriate time.

Dak’ir, like many others, had returned to the surface of Nocturne.

Classified a death world by Imperial planetary taxonomers, Nocturne was a volatile place. Fraught with crags and towering basalt mountains, its harsh environment made life hard for its tribal inhabitants. Burning winds scorched its naked plains, turning them into barren deserts. Rough oceans churned, spitting geysers of scalding steam when they met spilled lava.

Nocturne’s settlements were few and transient. Only the seven Sanctuary Cities were strong enough to serve as permanent havens to a dispersed populace eking out an existence amongst rock and ash.

However arduous, it was nothing compared to the Time of Trial. Being one half of a binary planetary system, Nocturne shared an erratic orbit with its oversized moon of Prometheus and great strife befell the planet every fifteen Terran years whenever these two celestial bodies came into proximity. Molten lava would spew from the earth, and entire cities would be swallowed by deep pits of magma; tidal waves, like foaming giants, would smite fishing boats and crush drilling rigs; clouds of ash, belched from the necks of angry mountains, would eclipse the pale sun. Massive earthquakes shook the very bedrock of the world below whilst above, the skies would crack and fire would rain. Yet, in the aftermath rare metals and gems could be reaped from the ash. And it was this which promoted Nocturne’s culture of forgesmithing.

After a few short hours since their arrival in-system, Dak’ir alighted from the Fire-wyvern on the Cindara Plateau. Several of his brothers went immediately to their training regimen or summoned brander-priests for excoriation in the solitoriums; others made for their respective townships or settlements. Dak’ir chose the workshops and spent his time at the forge. The events aboard the Archimedes Rex, in particular his discovery of Vulkan’s chest, had disturbed him greatly. Only in solitude and through the purging heat of the forge would he find equilibrium again.

The crafting hammer pounded a steady rhythm that matched the beat of Dak’ir’s heart. The Salamander was in total synchronicity with his labours. He wore leather smithing breeches and was naked from the waist up, his branded torso marred by ash and soot. Sweat dappled his ebon body, rivulets following the grooves of his muscles. It came from exertion, not from the heat.

The forges of the undercroft were excavated down to Nocturne’s very core and ponds of lava gathered in the cavernous depths providing liquid fire to fuel the foundries and scalding steam to impel bellows. There was a strange anachronism about the sweltering forges, the way they blended the ancient traditions of the first Nocturnean blacksmiths and the technologies of the Imperium.

Adamantium blast doors, strengthened by reinforced ceramite, marked the entrance to the chamber where he toiled. Bulkhead columns, the foundations of the Chapter Bastion, plunged down from a stalactite ceiling and bored deep into the rocky earth below. Mechanised tools – rotary blades, bench-mounted plasma-cutters, belt grinders, radial drill presses – stood side by side with stout anvils and iron-bellied furnaces. Intricate servo-arrays and ballistic components were racked with swages, fullers and other smithing hammers.

The air was filled with heady smoke, turned a deep, warm orange from the lambent glow of the lava pools. Dak’ir drank in the fuliginous atmosphere as if it were a panacea, soaking his every pore with it. And like the metal on the anvil before him, the impurity in his troubled soul was gradually beaten out with each successive hammer blow.

Dak’ir was gasping by the end, a reaction to the purging of emotional trauma rather than physical exertion. As the last ring of the anvil echoed into obscurity, he set down the forging hammer and took up a pair of long-handled tongs instead. He had tempered neither blade nor armour but something different entirely, its glow slowly fading. Gouts of steam rushed off the artefact when it breached the water’s surface in the deep vat alongside the anvil. When Dak’ir withdrew it, pinched between the iron fingers of the tongs, it shimmered like molten silver. Captured light from the lava flows blazed over its contours like a fiery sea.

It was a mask – the simulacrum of a human face; his face, or at least half of it. Dak’ir took the newly forged item in his hands. The metal had cooled but it still seared his fingers. He barely felt it as he trod silently to a plane of hammered silver, around a metre wide and three metres high, resting against the wall of the forge. Dak’ir’s image was reflected in it. Burning red eyes set into an ebon countenance stared back at him. Only the face was actually half black; the other half was bleached near-white. Its normally black pigmentation, the melanin defect that marked all Salamanders, had been burned away. Apothecary Fugis had told him the scar would not heal, that Dak’ir’s defacement was damage caused at the cellular level.

Dak’ir touched the burnt skin and the memory of the melta-flare on Stratos rekindled in his mind’s eye. Kadai’s death pulled at his gut. As he raised the mask to his face, flashes of remembrance like slivers of ice on calm water floated to the surface of his mind: rock harvesting in the depths of Ignea, hunting sauroch over the Scorian Plain, dredging on the Acerbian Sea – all deadly pursuits, but the formative memories of Dak’ir’s pre-adolescence. The images faded like smoke before a cool wind, leaving a pang of regret. Some part of Dak’ir felt sorrow the loss of his old life, the death of his former existence before he was ‘battle-brother’, when he was just Hazon and his father’s son.

As the years passed, filled with war and glory in the Emperor’s name, with cities burned and enemies slain, the vestiges held by Dak’ir of those old memories eroded replaced by battles, a baptism in blood.

The pull towards his old life – one, in truth, that had scarcely begun – confused him. Was it disloyal, even heretical to have such thoughts? Dak’ir couldn’t help wonder why the memories plagued him.

‘I am no longer human,’ he admitted to his reflection.

‘I am more. I am evolved. I am Astartes.’

The mask covered his ebon visage, leaving the burned side of his face, the flesh-pink tissue, exposed. For a moment he tried to imagine himself as human again. The attempt was a failure.

‘But if I am not human, am I still capable of humanity?’

The bass retort of the blast doors opening intruded on Dak’ir’s reverie. He hastily pulled the mask away and threw it into the open grate of a nearby furnace, immolating it in fire. The silver ran like tears down the half-face of the mask, which held its form only briefly before sagging against the intense heat and becoming little more than molten metal.

‘A rejected blade, sergeant?’ said Emek, from behind him.

Dak’ir shut the furnace grate and faced his battle-brother. ‘No, it was just scrap.’

Emek seemed content to leave it at that. He was fully armoured, the green battle-plate turned a lurid violet in the reflected lustre of the lava ponds. He held his battle-helm in the crook of his arm and his eyes flashed suddenly with zeal and vigour.

‘We’ve been summoned to Prometheus,’ Emek said after a few moments. ‘Our lords have consulted the Tome of Fire and have divined an answer regarding Vulkan’s chest. Your armour is waiting for you in the next chamber, sir.’

Dak’ir wiped his sooty body down with a length of already blackened cloth and began putting away the tools he had been using.

‘Where are we to meet?’ he asked.

‘The Cindara Plateau. Brother Ba’ken will join us there.’

Emek lingered in silence as Dak’ir finished securing his forging equipment.

‘There is something else on your mind, brother?’ asked the sergeant.

‘Yes, but I do not wish to appear insubordinate.’

Dak’ir’s tone suggested his impatience. ‘Speak, brother.’

Emek waited while he marshalled his thoughts, as if choosing his next words with great care. ‘Before we departed for the Hadron Belt, back in the Vault of Remembrance, I overheard Brother-Sergeant Tsu’gan say something about your complicity in Captain Kadai’s death.’ Emek paused to gauge the reaction of Dak’ir’s, who gave none, before continuing. ‘Most of us were not present when Kadai was slain. There are… unanswered questions.’

Dak’ir thought about admonishing his battle-brother – to question your superior officer, however delicately couched, was grounds for punishment. But he had asked for honesty from Emek, and that was what he had given. He could hardly take him to task over that.

‘The truth is, brother, that we were all culpable when it came to the tragedy of Kadai’s death. I, Tsu’gan, all who set foot in Aura Hieron had our parts to play, even the captain himself. There is no mystery, no dark secret. We were outmanoeuvred by a cunning and deadly foe.’

‘The Dragon Warriors,’ Emek asserted in the following silence.

‘Yes,’ Dak’ir replied. ‘The renegades knew we were coming. They were ready for us, and laid their trap for us to fall into. Theirs is an old creed, Emek – an eye for an eye; a captain for a captain.’

‘To plan such a snare… it borders on obsession.’

‘Obsessive, paranoid, vindictive – Nihilan is all of these things and worse.’

‘Did you know him?’

‘No. I met him only at Moribar during my first mission as a scout in 7th Company. Nor did I know his captain, Ushorak, though he schooled his protégé well in the arts of deception and malice.’

‘And it was he who died on the sepulchre world.’

‘In the crematoria forge at Moribar’s heart, yes. Kadai thought Nihilan was dead also, but unless a shade confronted us on Stratos he survived well enough, driven on by hate and the prospect of revenge.’

‘And he was once…’

‘One of us, yes,’ Dak’ir finished for him. ‘Even the sons of Vulkan are not without stain. The capacity for betrayal exists in us all, Emek. It is why we must constantly test ourselves and our faith, so that we are girded against temptation and selfish ideals.’

‘And Ushorak?’

Dak’ir’s face darkened and he lowered his gaze as if in remembrance, though in truth he only knew of the deeds that had led to Ushorak’s bloody defection; the act itself was many years old, he had not witnessed it first hand. ‘No. He was of another Chapter, though the shame of it is no less galling.’

‘Nihilan did all of this just to avenge his lord… He must be very embittered. Is there no way to rehabilitate him and the renegades in his charge? It’s not unheard of for forgiveness to be given and penance granted. What about the Executioners?’

Dak’ir shook his head, sadly. ‘This is not Badab, Emek. Nihilan and his followers have entered the Eye of Terror, there is no way back from that. His last chance, Ushorak’s last chance, was on Moribar. They didn’t take it, and now they are our enemies, no different to the nameless horrors of the warp. But I do not think there was only vengeance on Nihilan’s mind when he ambushed us on Stratos. There was something more to his plan.’

‘What makes you say that?’

Dak’ir looked his brother in the eye.

‘It’s just a feeling.’

II

Crossroads

Tsu’gan staggered as a spike of pain seared up his side, forcing him to reach out with a shaking hand. The black marble of the wall felt cool to the touch as he steadied himself. After a few moments he was able to continue. Through a haze of barely checked agony, Tsu’gan failed to notice the steaming handprint he left in his wake as he toured the Hall of Relics.

Like many of the sergeants, he had stayed on Prometheus to await news from the Pantheon. Speculation was rife as to what the chest discovered on the Archimedes Rex might mean. There was a thread of belief that, given the inauspicious times, it might pertain to the location where the primarch had sought solitude following the cessation of the Heresy. Tsu’gan doubted that greatly. He was a pragmatist, certainly too level-headed to indulge in such remote theories. He believed in what he could see, what he could touch. Tsu’gan knew of only one way to resolve a crisis: meet it head on with determination and resolve. With that in mind, while he awaited the Pantheon’s findings, he had convened a meeting of his own. Several sergeants had been present, colluded by Iagon, impelled by Tsu’gan’s shining Promethean example and the respect afforded to him by his contemporaries. They were there at his request, after all, to address a ‘serious concern’ within the company. The subject of the secret assembly, conducted in one of the fortress monastery’s few, and barely used, dormitories, was N’keln. Tsu’gan recalled it now, the guilt of the union merging with that he associated with Kadai’s death, as he walked down the black marble corridors of the gallery.

Tsu’gan awaited them in the half-dark of the chamber, its halogen lanterns dulled, with just the ambient light to illuminate the bare room. One by one, they entered: Agatone and Ek’Bar were the first, dour and long-serving; quiet and pensive respectively. Both were Tactical squad sergeants like Tsu’gan. Then there came Vargo from one of the Assault squads, a campaign veteran. De’mas, Clovius and Typhos followed a short time after. Last of all was Naveem, who seemed the most reluctant to have been summoned. These Astartes, great Salamanders all, encompassed five Tactical squads and both Assault squads of 3rd Company. Only the sergeants of the Devastators were not present, those that had fought alongside N’keln on Stratos. Of course, Dak’ir was also absent. He had made his feelings very clear on the subject of the captain’s recent ascension.

The brother-sergeants present had each removed their battle-helms – in fact Clovius and Typhos generally did not wear one – and the lustre of their eyes glowed deeply in the gloom. Tsu’gan waited until they were all settled, until the mutual greetings and respectful acknowledgements were done, before he began.

Do not think me disloyal,’ Tsu’gan said, ‘for I am not.’ He regarded each of the assembled sergeants intently as he panned his gaze around the room.

‘Why are we here then, if not to speak of disloyalty, to renege on the vows we all made before the Chapter Master himself?’ Naveem’s anger was evident in his tone, but he kept his voice down all the same.

Tsu’gan raised a placatory hand, both to mollify Naveem and arrest any reprisals from Brother Iagon, who watched from behind his sergeant in the darkness.

‘I seek only what is best for the company and the Chapter, brothers,’ he assured them.

‘If that is true, Tsu’gan, then why have us skulk in the shadows like conspirators?’ asked Agatone, his hard face wrinkled with discontent. ‘I came to this meeting to discuss the discord in our ranks, and the way we might mend it. All the talk I have heard prior to this gathering has been of dissension and of N’keln’s unsuitability for the role of captain. Tell me now why I shouldn’t just turn on my heel and go to Tu’Shan?’

Tsu’gan met his fellow sergeant’s intense glare with honest contrition. ‘Because you know as well as I that N’keln is not fit for this post.’

Agatone opened his mouth to respond, but clamped it shut in the face of indisputable fact.

Turning his attention back to the assembly as a whole, Tsu’gan spread his arms in a conciliatory gesture.

‘N’keln is a fine warrior, one of the best amongst the Inferno Guard, but he is not Kadai and–’

‘No one is,’ scoffed Sergeant Clovius, shaking his head. His squat body, thick-shouldered and broad of back, made him seem as intractable as an armoured rock. The sergeant continued, ‘You cannot hold a man to account by another’s memory.’

‘I speak only of his legacy,’ Tsu’gan returned, ‘and of his ability to lead us. N’keln needs a steadying hand, the support of a captain himself. He is like one component of an alloy; strong when bonded with another, but left alone–’ Tsu’gan shook his head. ‘He will surely break.’

Muttering from around the room intimated his audience was less than convinced. Tsu’gan merely pushed harder.

‘N’keln inherits a fractured company, one requiring strength to rebuild. It is strength he does not possess. How else would you describe the folly of returning to the Hadron Belt?’

‘Had we not, we would never had discovered the chest,’ countered Vargo, his deep voice reluctant.

Tsu’gan faced him, his own voice an impassioned rasp.

‘A fluke: one that very nearly added to the tally of ignominious dead and indebted us to mercenaries.’ He spat the last word as the memory of the Marines Malevolent loomed in his mind. To deal with such honourless curs left a bitter canker in Tsu’gan’s mouth.

‘Another of N’keln’s failings,’ Tsu’gan went on, ‘allowing Vinyar and his dogs to steal weapons and armour destined for another Chapter. No better than thieves, these Astartes in name only. Yet N’keln lets them go without pursuit or so much as a harsh word.’ He paused, letting his damning rhetoric sink in.

‘Do not think me disloyal,’ he repeated, experiencing no small measure of satisfaction from the realisation dawning on the sergeants’ faces. Even Naveem seemed to thaw. ‘For I am not. I serve only the will of the Chapter. I always have. I am proud to be Fire-born and I will follow my brothers unto death. But what I will not do is stand idle as a company is brought into ruination. Nor will I participate in baseless missions where a reckless death is the only reward. I cannot do that.’

Agatone articulated what the rest were already thinking.

‘So what would you have us do?’

Tsu’gan nodded as if in approval of the decision he had garnered here.

‘Ally with me,’ he said simply, ‘Ally with me in going to the Chapter Master and suing for the removal of N’keln as captain.’

After a few moments, Naveem spoke up.

‘This is madness. None of these acts you’ve mentioned are charges enough for the captain’s dismissal. Tu’Shan will punish us all for this conspiracy. We’ll be up before Elysius and his chirurgeon-interrogators, our purity in question.’

‘It is not conspiracy!’ Tsu’gan snapped, then, composing his frustration, lowered his voice. ‘I will bring our concerns to the Chapter Master, as is our right. He is wise. He will see the rifts in this company and have no choice but to act for its betterment.’

‘And who will he install as N’keln’s successor?’ asked Agatone, meeting Tsu’gan’s gaze. ‘You?’

‘If the Chapter Masters sees fit to appoint me, I will not reject the responsibility. But I don’t seek to usurp N’keln, I want only what is right for this company.’

Agatone looked around the room, evidently undecided.

‘What of Dak’ir and Omkar, Lok and Ul’shan? Why are they not at this meeting to relay their grievances?’

Tsu’gan maintained his imperious air, despite his fellow sergeant’s pertinent questioning.

‘I did not summon them,’ he admitted.

Naveem leapt on the confession.

‘Why, because you knew they would never agree to this, that they could not be trusted to keep their silence?’ He waved away Tsu’gan’s imminent protest. ‘Save your answers, brother. I am not interested. Out of loyalty to my fellow sergeants I will keep my silence, but I cannot be a party to this. I know you think you act out of genuine concern for the company, but you are misguided, Tsu’gan,’ Naveem added sadly and left the room.

‘Nor can I, brother,’ said Agatone. ‘Don’t speak to me of this again, or I will have no choice but to go to Chaplain Elysius.’

In the end, Sergeants Clovius and Ek’Bar went the way of Naveem and Agatone. The others pledged their allegiance to Tsu’gan’s cause but without a majority, it stood little chance of succeeding. They left soon after their disgruntled counterparts, leaving Tsu’gan alone with Iagon.

‘Why can’t they see it, Iagon? Why can’t they acknowledge N’keln’s weakness?’ He slumped down on one of the austere pallet beds that hadn’t been used in decades.

Iagon moved slowly from behind Tsu’gan and into his sergeant’s eye line.

‘I do not think we have failed, sergeant.’

Tsu’gan looked up. His gaze was questioning.

‘True, we have only three brother-sergeants allied to our cause, but that is all we really need.’

‘Explain yourself.’

Iagon smiled, a thin empty curling of his down-turned mouth bereft of warmth or mirth. Here, in the shadows of the empty dormitory, his true nature could express itself. ‘Take your grievance to Elysius. Ensure that N’keln is within earshot when you do, or at least hears of it soon after.’ Iagon paused deliberately, inwardly applauding his own cunning. ‘N’keln is a warrior of profound conscience. Once he knows about such a vote of no confidence amongst his own sergeants–’ his narrow eyes flashed ‘–he will stand down of his own volition.’

Tsu’gan was suddenly torn. He sighed deeply, trying to exhale his doubts.

‘Is this right, Iagon? Am I doing what is best for the company and the Chapter?’

‘You are taking the hard road, my lord. The one you must travel if we are ever to be whole again.’

‘Even still–’

Iagon stepped forward to emphasise his point.

‘If N’keln were worthy, would he not have taken up Kadai’s thunder hammer? It gathers dust even now in the Hall of Relics, forgotten and dishonoured by one who is wary of the mantle he assumes by claiming it.’

Tsu’gan shook his head uncertainly. ‘No. N’keln rejected it out of respect.’ He didn’t sound convinced.

Iagon adopted a look of absolute innocent neutrality. ‘Did he?’

Tsu’gan had left the dormitory in silence, a slave to his own thoughts. Pain would settle his troubled mind. He had made for the solitoriums at once. And there in the darkness, with the eyes of his secret voyeur looking on, he had indulged in his addiction again and again, hoping, in vain, that with the next strike of the rod his conscience would be eased. It had not, and the guilt gnawed at him still as he trod the long passageways of the Hall of Relics, dressed only in a simple green robe.

Honours and memories of heroes long-past filled the austere gallery of black marble. The hue of the rock, its smoothness and density, promoted a sombre mood, one entirely apt given the reverence felt for this hallowed place. There were shrines to Xavier, Kesare, and even ancient T’kell, chambered in anterooms or deep alcoves regressed into the rock. Artefacts, too precious to be burned, too venerated to be bequeathed, rested within them along with purity seals, medals and other tributes to their legacies. Reliquaries were made of the leg bones Brother Amadeus had lost in the Siege of Cluth’nir. If the mighty warrior should ever fall, they would be burned to ash with what was left animated with his sarcophagus and offered to Mount Deathfire. Tsu’gan passed them all, every step a painful reminder of the damage he had self-inflicted. It paled to the anguish in his mind and failed utterly, despite his sternest efforts, to assuage it. He wondered briefly whether he had urged the brander-priest too far this time. Tsu’gan crushed the thought.

Bowing his head, he stepped into one of the hall’s anterooms and was swallowed by darkness. The stygian surroundings lasted only seconds as a votive flame erupted into incandescent life on one of the walls and threw a warm, orange glare across a sombre altar. It was shaped like an anvil, a pall of salamander hide draped across the flat head. Resting on the hide were the shattered remains of an ornate thunder hammer.

Tsu’gan was gripped by a profound sense of loss as he approached the altar and knelt before it in supplication.

‘My captain…’ The words were barely whispered, but conveyed his longing. He went to speak again, but found he could not, and closed his half-open mouth without further sound. Silence followed, deafening and final. Tsu’gan remembered anew the sight of Kadai’s destruction. He recalled gathering up the remains of the beloved captain with N’keln. Warring with a sense of sudden grief and impotent rage, Tsu’gan had looked into the veteran sergeant’s eyes and seen clearly what was held there.

What now? Who will lead us? I cannot assume his mantle. Not yet. I’m not ready.

Even then, through a fog of despair, Tsu’gan had witnessed the truth in N’keln’s heart. Duty would not allow the veteran sergeant to refuse; prudence should have made him refuse. But it had not, and the lingering memory stung like a barb.

The brother-sergeant could bear it no longer and, averting his gaze from the solemn tribute to Ko’tan Kadai, he hurried from the shrine-chamber.

So consumed was Tsu’gan with his own troubled thoughts that he didn’t notice Fugis coming the opposite way, and collided with him.

‘Apologies, brother,’ Tsu’gan rasped, wincing beneath the cowl of his robe as he made to move on.

Fugis held out an arm to stall him. Like the brother-sergeant, the Apothecary wore robes.

‘Are you all right, Brother Tsu’gan? You seem… troubled.’ Fugis’s hood was down and his eyes were penetrating as he regarded the sergeant, some of his old sagacity returned.

‘It’s nothing. I only seek to honour the dead.’ Tsu’gan couldn’t keep his voice steady enough as the jabs of pain from the branding wracked him. He went to move on again, and this time Fugis stood in his path.

‘And yet you sound as if you’ve recently been in battle.’ His thin face accentuated a stern and probing expression.

‘Step aside, Apothecary,’ Tsu’gan snapped, gasping through his sudden anger. ‘You have no cause to detain me.’

Fugis’s cold eyes helped formed a scowl.

‘I have every cause.’ The Apothecary’s hand lashed out. Debilitated as he was, Tsu’gan was too slow to stop it. Fugis pulled back the sergeant’s robes and cowl to expose the hot, angry scars upon the lower part of his chest.

‘Those are fresh,’ he said, accusingly. ‘You have been having yourself rebranded.’

Tsu’gan was about to protest, but denial by this point was beneath him.

‘And what of it?’ he snarled, teeth gritted both in anger and to ward off his slowly ebbing agony.

The Apothecary’s expression hardened.

‘What are you doing, brother?’

‘What I must to function!’ Tsu’gan’s rancour swiftly waned, replaced by resignation. ‘He was slain, Fugis. Slain in cold blood, no better than the wretches that lured us to Aura Hieron.’

‘We all feel his loss, Tsu’gan.’ Now it was Fugis’s turn to change, though rather than soften, his eyes seemed to grow cold and faraway as if reliving his own bereavement.

‘But you were not there at his end, brother. You did not gather the remains of his body and armour, wasted away and beyond even your skill to revivify in another.’ Tsu’gan referred to the destruction of Kadai’s progenoid glands. These elements of a Space Marine’s physiology existed in the neck and chest. Harvested through the skill only an Apothecary was schooled in, they could be used to create another Salamander. But in the case of Kadai’s tragic demise, even that small consolation was denied.

Fugis paused, deciding what to do.

‘You must come to the Apothecarion. There I will tend your wounds,’ he said. ‘I can mend the superficial, brother, but the depth of the hurt you feel is beyond my skill to heal.’ For a moment, the Apothecary’s eyes softened. ‘Your spirit is in turmoil, Tsu’gan. That cannot be allowed to continue.’

Tsu’gan tugged his robe back across his body and exhaled raggedly. A tic of discomfort registered below his left eye as he did it.

‘What should I do, brother?’ he asked.

Fugis’s answer was simple.

‘I should go to Chaplain Elysius, make you confess to him what you have been doing, and leave you to await his judgement.’

‘I…’ began the sergeant then relented. ‘Yes, you are right. But let me do it, let me go to him myself.’

The Apothecary seemed uncertain. His searching gaze was back, as his eyes narrowed. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘But do it soon, or you’ll give me no choice but to act in your stead.’

‘I will, brother.’

Fugis lingered a moment longer, before turning his back and heading towards the anteroom where Kadai awaited him.

Tsu’gan went the other way, unaware of another figure tracking him in the darkened corridors of the Hall of Relics, the very same that had watched him break down at the foot of the anvil shrine and followed him from the isolation chamber.

Pain, grief, shame – they all dulled the brother-sergeant’s senses as he came to a fork in the corridor. The light of the brazier-lamps seemed to cast it in an eldritch glow that Tsu’gan failed to notice. East led eventually to the Reclusium, where he would await the Chaplain and purge his heavy soul; west took him back to a small armoury where his battle-plate rested. He was about to turn east when he felt a light touch on his shoulder.

‘Where are you going, my lord?’ asked the voice of Iagon, ‘Your armour is the other way.’

Tsu’gan faced him. Iagon was enrobed too. The hood was pulled far over his face so that only his sharp, angular nose and down-turned mouth were visible. The Salamander’s slight form was exaggerated without his armour. It made him look small in comparison to his sergeant.

‘I cannot, Iagon,’ Tsu’gan told him. ‘I must seek Elysius’s counsel.’ He tried to continue on his way, but Iagon reasserted his grip, stronger this time.

Tsu’gan winced with the pain of his earlier injuries.

‘Release me, trooper. I am your sergeant.’

Iagon’s face was a dispassionate mask.

‘I cannot, my lord,’ he said, and increased his grip.

Tsu’gan scowled and seized the trooper’s wrist. Despite his wounds, he was still incredibly strong and now it was Iagon’s turn to betray his discomfort.

‘I am not strong enough to hold you, sergeant, but let me appeal to your better judgement…’ Iagon pleaded, letting his brother go.

Tsu’gan released him, the scowl reduced to a displeased frown. It bade Iagon continue.

‘Go to Elysius if you must,’ he whispered quickly, ‘but know that if you do, you will be stripped of rank and made to suffer penitence for what you’ve done. The chirurgeon-interrogators will probe and incise until they lay you bare. Our Brother-Chaplain will learn of your deceit–’

‘I have deceived no one, save myself,’ Tsu’gan snapped, about to turn away again, before Iagon stopped him.

‘He will learn of your deceit,’ he pressed, ‘and act against all of your brothers who were in that room. Any chance of replacing N’keln will be gone, and the prospect of healing our divided company with it.’

‘I don’t want to replace him, Iagon,’ Tsu’gan insisted. ‘That is not my purpose.’

‘If not you, then who else will do it?’ Iagon implored. ‘It is your destiny, brother.’

Tsu’gan was shaking his head. ‘I am broken. When battle calls, it is easier. The cry of my bolter, the thunder of war in my heart, it smothers the pain. But when the enemy are dead and the battlefield is silent, it returns to me, Iagon.’

‘It is just grief,’ the trooper replied, leaning forward. ‘It will pass. And what better way to expedite that process than in the crucible of battle, at the head of your company?’

Tsu’gan’s mind wondered at that. The recently slumbering coals of ambition in his heart started to rekindle. He would heal the rift between his brothers, and in so doing make himself whole again.

The words of Nihilan, spoken to him on Stratos before he had leapt down into the temple to witness Kadai’s death, came back to him unbidden.

A great destiny awaits you, but another overshadows it.

A traitor’s testimony was not to be trusted, but there was a germ of recognition in that statement for Tsu’gan. He told himself that this was his own conclusion, that reasoning would have brought him to a similar epiphany given time. The image of Dak’ir arose in his mind, going to his captain’s aid just before the end. The Ignean was something of an outcast, but a strange destiny surrounded him too. Tsu’gan could feel it whenever he was in his presence. The sensation was dulled by his loathing, but it was there. If he did not assume the mantle of captain, then Dak’ir would surely do it. No Ignean was fit to lead an Astartes battle company. Tsu’gan could not allow that to stand.

His eyes and posture hardened as he returned Iagon’s attendant gaze.

‘Very well,’ Tsu’gan growled. ‘But what of Fugis? The Apothecary has sworn me to go to Elysius.’

‘Forestall him,’ Iagon answered simply. ‘Our brother is so caught up in his own grief that he will not press this at first. By the time he does, N’keln will step down with respect and you will ascend.’ Iagon’s eyes flashed with unbridled ambition. At Tsu’gan’s right hand, as he was, he would cling to the trappings of his lord, a beneficiary of his newfound power and influence, and ascend with him. ‘By then, Fugis will not speak out. He will see you are master of your feelings once again.’

Tsu’gan stared at something in the distance: a glorious vision conjured in his mind’s eye.

‘Yes,’ he breathed, though the words did not sound like his own. ‘That is what I will do.’

He looked again at Iagon, fresh fire burning in his blood-red eyes. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘I must don my armour.’

Iagon bowed, smiling thinly as his face was eclipsed by shadow.

Together, they took the west corridor. The east remained the path untrodden.

Iagon was pleased. He had managed to restore his sergeant’s mettle and conviction. Ever since they had returned from Stratos, he had been carefully shadowing him. Every dark desire, every tortured secret was his to know and exploit. He came to realise, as he looked on from the darkness, he would eventually need to act. Iagon merely had to wait for the opportune moment. The intervention in the corridor of the Hall of Relics was indeed timely. A moment’s hesitation and Tsu’gan would have gone to Elysius, undoing all of Iagon’s careful planning and torpedoing any chance he had for borrowed power.

Though still an Astartes, with all the boons and potency that brought, Iagon was not gifted with brawn like Ba’ken. Nor did he possess the psychic might of Pyriel or the religious fervour of Elysius. But cunning, yes, he had that. And determination, the unbendable will that Tsu’gan would be captain and that he, Cerbius Iagon, would bask in the reflected glory of his lord. Nothing must stand in the way of that. Despite his rhetoric to the contrary, Fugis presented a problem.

As Iagon and Tsu’gan arrived at the armoury, a final thought occurred to him.

The threat of the Apothecary must be dealt with.

Ba’ken and Master Argos stood at the foot of the Cindara Plateau, their heavy booted feet sinking slightly into the sands of the Pyre Desert. They were watching a distant procession of Nocturnean civilians making their way to the gates of Hesiod.

Sanctuary City – the name was apt.

During the Time of Trial, the Sanctuary Cities threw open their gates and offered shelter to the people of Nocturne. A primarily nomadic race, much of the planet’s populace dwelt in disparate villages or even transient encampments ill-suited to resist the devastation wrought by the earthquakes and volcanoes. Vast pilgrimages were undertaken that trailed the length and breadth of the planet, as Nocturneans travelled great distances seeking succour.

Stout walls and robust gates wrought to be strong and resilient by Nocturne’s master artisans were the Sanctuary Cities’ bulwark of defence in the earliest years of colonisation. Tribal shamans, latent psykers – before such genetic mutations were demystified and regulated – had been the first to establish the safest locations for these settlements to be founded. They did so via communion with the earth, a bond that the people of Nocturne still recognised and respected. Later, there came the geological pioneers who advised on the construction and development of the nascent townships that would eventually become cities. But as the ages passed so too did these cities evolve. Technologies brought by the Master of Mankind, He who was known only as the Outlander, provided stauncher aegis against the capricious will of the earth. Void shields stood in the path of lava flows or pyroclastic clouds; adamantium and reinforced ceramite repelled the seismic tremors or sweeping floods of fire.

These havens and their defences were all that stood between a race and its eradication by the elements.

Ba’ken hailed Dak’ir, his voice deep and strong. ‘Brother-sergeant.’

Dak’ir nodded in return as he approached, Emek alongside him.

‘The exodus has begun, it seems,’ said Brother Emek.

‘The Time of Trial is imminent,’ Dak’ir replied. He caught Argos surveying the long, trailing lines of pilgrims through a pair of magnoculars.

‘Aye,’ said Ba’ken, resuming watch with a brief nod to acknowledge Emek. ‘The nomadic tribes are gathering in their droves, and the Sanctuary Cities fill, just as they do every long year.’

Emek went unhooded, and appeared wistful as he regarded the long line of refugees.

‘There are always so many.’

The civilians came from all across Nocturne: tradesmen, merchants, hunters and families. Some walked, others traversed the sands in stripped-down buggies or fat-wheeled trikes, dragging trailers of belongings or racks of tools. Rock harvesters and drovers wrangled herds of sauroch and other saurian beasts of burden, the cattle-creatures pulling flat-bedded carts and wide-sided wagons. The pilgrims carried what they could, their meagre possessions wrapped in oiled cloth to keep out the dust and grit of the dunes. They wore hardy clothing: smocks, ponchos and sand-cloaks with their hoods drawn up. No one ventured forth without a hat. Some even had thin scarves wound around their heads and faces to ward off the solar glare.

Across the final kilometre approach to the open gates of Hesiod, Dak’ir picked out the green battle-plate of Salamanders dispersed along the snaking line of civilians. It was the task of 5th Company, the only other besides 3rd and 7th still on the planet, to aid the civilians and usher them safely within the city walls.

Bolters trained on the heat-hazed distance, the Salamanders were ever vigilant. They watched for predators like sa’hrk or the winged shadows of dactylids as they circled above in search of easy meat.

‘The lines of refugees are thin,’ said Argos, mildly refuting Emek in his metallic timbre. Assessing the groups of civilians through the magnoculars, he had extrapolated a brief calculation. ‘Many will suffer outside the walls of our Sanctuary Cities.’

Tremors rumbled like thunder in the far distance, coming from the direction of Themis, one of Hesiod’s neighbours. There had been minor volcanic eruptions already. En route to Cindara Plateau, Dak’ir had heard that three outlying villages had been destroyed, claimed by earthquakes, vanishing without trace. On the horizon, Mount Deathfire loomed. The great edifice of rock and fury spat gouts of flame and lava in preparation for a much larger and more devastating eruption.

Argos lowered the magnoculars, his face dark.

‘Ours is a stubborn race, brother-sergeant,’ he said to Dak’ir by way of greeting.

‘And proud,’ Dak’ir replied. ‘It’s what makes us who we are.’

‘Justly spoken,’ said Argos, but his grim expression didn’t lift as he went back to looking at the long train of civilians. For most, life expectancy was short on Nocturne. That statistic would only worsen with the coming season of upheaval.

Dak’ir turned to Ba’ken.

‘I see you have been busy, brother.’ He indicated the heavy flamer rig attached to the bulky Salamander’s back.

‘To replace the one I lost on Stratos.’ Ba’ken’s rejoinder came with a feral smile as he showed off the weapon proudly. The flamer’s previous incarnation had been destroyed when its promethium fuel supply had reacted with a volatile chemical amalgam released by the cultists on the world of loft-cities. Ba’ken had been injured into the bargain, but the hardy Salamander had brushed it off as a flesh wound. The heavy weapon rig he had so fastidiously constructed did not survive. ‘Blessed by Brother Argos himself,’ he added, gesturing in the Techmarine’s direction. Argos was walking towards the edge of the circular plateau, outside of the metal disc in its centre.

‘Are you not accompanying us, brother?’ Dak’ir asked of him.

‘I will join you later, after inspection of Hesiod’s void shield array is complete.’

Dak’ir looked to the turbulent fiery orange sky and his eyes narrowed, searching. ‘Ba’ken, where is the Fire-wyvern to take us up to Prometheus?’ he asked, noting that Argos was consulting a small palm-reader.

‘Bad news about that, sir,’ said the heavy weapons trooper. ‘The Thunderhawks are being prepped for imminent departure. We are to be teleported to the fortress-monastery instead.’

Dak’ir recalled his all too recent experience aboard the Archimedes Rex and the subsequent translation to the Marines Malevolent ship, Purgatory. Inwardly, he groaned at the prospect, realising now that Argos was setting coordinates for a homing beacon.

A huge tremor shook the desert plain, seizing Dak’ir’s attention. Pyroclastic thunder boomed in the depths of the earth, deep and resonant. It came from Mount Deathfire. A vast cloud of smoke and ash exuded from the craterous mouth at its tip, boiling down the giant volcano’s rocky flanks in a grey-black wave. Civilians were already screaming as a gush of expelled magma plumed into the darkening air. Streams of syrupy lava carrying archipelagos of cinder issued down the mountainside in a sudden flood.

The thunder deepened further as a huge quake rippled across the dunes, setting civilians wailing in terror as they hurried faster in their lines. Draught animals bayed and mewled in despair, struggling against their panicked handlers and added to the chaos. The rising tumult beneath the earth became a cacophony as an immense beam of crimson light tore from the bowels of the mountain. It reached into the heavens, a coruscation of radiant fire, spearing the gathering clouds and tainting them with its passage until it was lost from sight.

The manifestation of natural fury lasted only seconds. In its wake the cries of the populace strung out across the still trembling dunes intensified. The lava flow ebbed and pooled, the clouds of ash rolled away and dissipated into thin veils. The volcano was dormant again, for now.

‘Have you ever seen anything like that?’ Dak’ir’s primary heart was racing as he watched the Salamanders stationed down the line quickly restoring order.

Ba’ken shook his head in awe and wonder.

‘An omen,’ breathed Emek, ‘it has to be. First the chest and now this… It doesn’t bode well.’

Dak’ir’s face hardened; he was not about to submit to hysteria just yet. ‘Brother Argos,’ he said. The sergeant’s tone invited the Techmarine’s opinion.

Argos was using the magnoculars to survey the emergence point of the beam.

‘A phenomenon the likes of which I have never seen.’

‘What could have caused it?’ asked Ba’ken.

‘Whatever it was,’ offered Emek, ‘it portends ill.’ He pointed up to the sky. The fiery orange hue had turned the colour of blood, bathing the lightning-wreathed heavens in an ugly red glow.

Despite the apocalyptic respite, the civilians were moving faster. Dumbstruck and gesturing towards the sky in fear, some Nocturneans had to be goaded forwards. The battle-brothers encouraged the line to pick up the pace, their movements urgent but still controlled. The refugees were streaming through the gates of Hesiod now. But many, those whose wagons had floundered during the tremor or who were too afraid to move, were beyond the reach of the Salamanders and at the mercy of the harsh elements.

Moved by the plight of the civilians, Dak’ir stepped out of the portal disc. ‘We must help them.’

‘Return to the circle, brother-sergeant.’ The hollow voice of Argos reined the other Salamander in. ‘Your brothers have their task, so too do you, sergeant. There is nothing more we can ascertain here. Tu’Shan will have answers.’

Reluctantly, Dak’ir resumed his position within the teleporter.

‘Let us hope the news from the Pantheon is good,’ he muttered, gritting his teeth as Argos initiated teleport. The metal conductor plate under the Salamanders glowed like magnesium and filled the sergeant’s world with light.

Teleportation was instantaneous, and the confines of the receiver pad resolved around them. It was one of ten such translation points within the teleportarium in the fortress-monastery on Prometheus. Ethereal warp vapours rolled off the hexagonal plate, which was large enough to accommodate an entire squad of Terminators, let alone three battle-brothers in power armour. Crackling energy sparked then dissipated across three conductor prongs that arched over the pad like crooked fingers. Warp dampeners, psychic buffers and other safeguards were in place on the remote chance that anything should go wrong.

Dak’ir adjusted to translation quickly this time. Forewarned, he had steeled himself, and with Nocturne’s stable teleporter array the process was smooth. Automated servo-gun systems powered down, having not detected a threat, as he stepped off the teleporter pad and headed for the docking bay where Salamanders were already assembling.

The docking bay was vast, and accessed through an open blast door. The Salamanders who had already made the translation to Prometheus, or perhaps had never left, mingled in small groups, discussing the ramifications of what the Pantheon had uncovered in excited murmurs. Some readied weapons, checking and loading with methodical precision. Others knelt in solitude as they took oaths of moment, an icon of Vulkan’s hammer pressed to their lips. The primarch’s name was spoken everywhere.

In a large hangar section, eight Thunderhawks idled with landing stanchions extended. Directed by Techmarine overseers, crews of servitors and human engineers readied them for take-off. Huge pipes that chugged fuel into the gunships’ tanks were trailed across the deck; operational scenarios were run on the fusion reactors; tons of munitions were trolleyed on massive tracked lifters, heavy drum mags slammed into ammo cavities or the vast power batteries of the nose guns charged to capacity. Techmarines incanted liturgies to the machine-spirits, flocks of votive servitors and cyber-skulls assisting them with their pious labours; troop holds were cleared and inspected by human deck teams; the instrumentation panels that ran the cockpits were assessed and put through exhaustive activation protocols; turbofans were ignited on low-burn to test performance; and every square centimetre of the gunships’ structural integrity was checked and secured.

A strange atmosphere pervaded the docking bay – part parade ground solemnity, part campaign assembly deck resolve. Due to their dispersal across Nocturne, aiding villages and minor townships in preparation for the Time of Trial, the Salamanders did not arrive together. They appeared sporadically, after venturing to whatever sacred teleportation site was nearest. Squads were forming quickly though, filling up the docking bay with their armoured bulk, getting ready to receive their Chapter Master.

Tsu’gan was already present with much of his squad. Others too had started to assemble in ranks.

As he panned his gaze around the room, Dak’ir saw N’keln’s Inferno Guard, Kadai’s former command squad, waiting for their captain. Fugis stood amongst them, his head low in remembrance. The others fixed their eyes ahead. N’keln had yet to appoint his Company Champion, the role which Dak’ir had rebutted. Nor had he replaced his own vacated post of veteran sergeant – Honoured Brother Shen’kar acted as the captain’s second-in-command for now – so the Inferno Guard numbered only three, the last position filled by Banner Bearer Malicant. The Assault squads of Vargo and Naveem assembled on the flanks, strapped up with their bulky jump packs. It could have been Dak’ir’s imagination, but he thought he detected some tension between them. Likely, it was just anticipation of whatever was about to be imparted from the Pantheon council. Brother-Sergeants Agatone and Clovius were also present, together with the Devastators of Lok and Omkar.

Watching his fellow sergeants reminded Dak’ir of something he had asked Ba’ken to do before he returned to Nocturne.

‘Have you spoken to Agatone and Lok?’

Ba’ken nodded darkly, as if reminded of a bad memory.

‘Tsu’gan has approached the sergeants, those of Tactical and Assault at least.’

Dak’ir slowly shook his head in disbelief.

‘His arrogance is boundless. I can’t believe he still persists with this.’

‘Agatone says several of the other sergeants will support him.’

‘So, he moves against N’keln blatantly.’

‘There is nothing blatant about it, far from it. Iagon’s ways are subtle and oblique. There is no actual proof that Tsu’gan wants the captaincy.’

‘No, but he is pressing for N’keln’s dismissal. At best it smacks of misconduct, at worst it is treason.’ Dak’ir paused, marshalling his anger. ‘However couched, this cannot stand. Something must be done.’

‘But what?’ Ba’ken asked a fair question. ‘Bringing it to the attention of the Chaplain is not an option at this point. Agatone made an oath of silence.’

Dak’ir faced his heavy weapons trooper. His expression was severe.

‘I am not Agatone, Ba’ken. Nor am I bound to his oath,’ he said sternly. ‘This dissension must stop.’

‘There is no choice,’ Emek decided, entering the exchange for the first time since it had begun. ‘Brother Elysius must be told.’

Dak’ir shook his head.

‘Discord and division are rife as it is. An investigation by the Chaplain and his interrogators will only exacerbate that. N’keln wants to heal the wounds in this company. He will need our backing, and the backing of others, to do it. Forcing the sergeants to comply, making examples of the disaffected, will only deepen any resentment that already exists. Only by earning the sergeants’ respect will N’keln gain their confidence and establish his authority,’ reasoned Dak’ir, feeling his desire to act ebbing. ‘Though it pains me to admit it, Tsu’gan is not a discontent for the sake of it. I’m not even certain he wants to replace Kadai at all. He wants someone he feels is worthy of Ko’tan’s mantle. Once he believes N’keln is that person, he will capitulate.’

‘Are you certain of that, brother?’ asked Ba’ken.

Dak’ir’s answer was frank.

‘No. The fires of battle will temper the captain. He will burn or be reborn, that is the Promethean way.’

‘Spoken like a true philosopher, brother,’ said Emek wryly.

Dak’ir turned to him – a massive gate set into the far end of the docking bay was opening. It led to the inner heart of the fortress-monastery and the Pantheon. Tu’Shan and the council were coming, so Dak’ir kept it brief.

‘Spoken like your sergeant,’ he corrected. What came next included Ba’ken, too, ‘Whose order will be followed.’

Both Salamanders nodded their understanding. The rest of Dak’ir’s squad had joined them. The time for talking was at an end. The gate ground open. The Chapter Master entered.

Tu’Shan strode at the head of the Pantheon council, arrayed in his full panoply of war. His voluminous drakescale cloak writhed like a living thing as he walked and his deep eyes burned with all the inner strength of Deathfire’s core. 3rd Company was fully assembled. Even Veteran Brothers Amadeus and Ashamon were present amongst their fellow Salamanders. The pair of Dreadnoughts stood stern and unmoving alongside the foremost Tactical squad led by Agatone. Brother Ashamon was an Ironclad. His seismic hammer rippled with electrical discharge, a meltagun appended to its haft, and the igniter flame from the flamer affixed to his claw-like power fist flickered dormantly.

Flanked by a squad of Firedrakes, clanking loudly in Terminator armour, Tu’Shan led the council down a wide aisle. It divided the squads in the company into two equal hemispheres, and was afforded for the ten 1st Company veterans, who were accompanied by Praetor himself. Behind the Chapter Master was Vel’cona, Chief Librarian and Pyriel’s direct superior. The Epistolary walked alongside Elysius and N’keln, falling into lockstep with the Firedrakes on either side of them. The other Masters were either occupied on Nocturne’s surface or prosecuting missions in distant systems.

Dak’ir’s attention was fixed on Elysius in particular as the retinue of warriors past him to alight in front of 3rd Company.

The chest of Vulkan was in the Chaplain’s hands.

Chapter Five

I

Solar Storm

‘Welcome, brothers.’ Tu’Shan’s voice echoed powerfully around the expansive docking bay, reaching every corner and commanding absolute attention. Even surrounded by the Pantheon council, some of the Chapter’s finest warriors, he looked immense and forbidding. The strength and passion of Vulkan blazed in the Chapter Master’s eyes, together with the primarch’s wisdom and presence.

‘The council has consulted the Tome of Fire, and there are tidings from its hallowed pages,’ he concluded sombrely. There was no further preamble. Tu’Shan was inclined towards action, not rhetoric, and bade Elysius forward.

The Chaplain bowed curtly and advanced in front of his Chapter Master, so he would be visible to the throng of Salamanders before him.

Elysius appraised them all in silence, allowing the gravitas of the occasion to build, letting his brothers know that he was ever watchful. To show impurity of spirit before the Chaplain was dire folly. He was fond of branding and excoriation to establish a warrior’s piety. Chirurgeon-interrogators, servitor drones he had modified himself, assisted him in his work. Not all who entered his Reclusium came back. But to endure at the hands of Elysius meant you were above reproach… at least for a time.

He was but one Salamander. Yet without exception, every battle-brother that beheld the Chaplain then felt his presence like a brand of cold steel, just waiting to be ignited.

‘When the sky runs red with blood and the Mountain of the Forge gives up its sons, Vulkan will show us the way,’ Elysius quoted. His voice carried a hard edge like the hot barbs of his confessional tools.

He scoured the faces before him intently.

Purity seals festooned the Chaplain’s cobalt-black power armour. Votive chains hung from his pauldrons, plastron and gorget. They were even pinioned to his battle-helm; effigies of hammers, drakes and the Imperial eagle.

‘The sky is bloody,’ he went on, ‘Deathfire has given up its sons.’ He clenched a fist to emphasise his zeal. ‘These are the scriptures of the Tome of Fire, as left to us by our primarch. And in this,’ he brandished the chest found on the Archimedes Rex in the other hand like a holy icon, ‘he has shown us his way.’

Elysius lowered the chest and unclenched his fist.

‘Galactic coordinates, buried within encrypted symbols found in the casket, speak of a stretch of space,’ the Chaplain explained, his zeal traded for pragmatism. ‘There, at the cusp of the Veiled Region in Segmentum Tempestus, is a system benighted by warp storms, closed off from the Emperor’s light for millennia.’ His eyes flashed behind his skull-faced visage. ‘We shall shine the torch of enlightenment upon it, brothers. The storms have cleared and the way is open once again. Look to the skies of Nocturne!’ The mercurial Chaplain sprang into animation again without warning, thrusting his hands down to indicate the planet below. ‘A blood-red haze blots out our baleful sun. It matches a constellation of stars in this very system. At the heart of this celestial arrangement is a single planet, one lost to Imperial record for over ten thousand years – Scoria. I need not explain the import of that.’

Murmurs of disbelief rippled around the room. Elysius did nothing to dissuade them. Rather, he seemed to revel in the growing fervour.

Dak’ir was as shocked as his battle-brothers. Had they somehow discovered the fate of Vulkan himself? That was what the Chaplain had implied. It was only supposition, but even still. Tu’Shan’s face was unreadable at the potentially monumental revelation. Dak’ir had later learned that the beam of light emitted from the mountain had refracted with the dust particles from the recent eruption, creating the pseudo-celestial representation that Elysius spoke of. Certainly, the phenomenon was unprecedented. It was taken as a sign. Of a great discovery, or an imminent doom, Dak’ir was uncertain. He did know, however, that if there was even the remotest chance of finding Vulkan, or ascertaining his fate, then the Salamanders would take it.

The rest of Elysius’s words were brief, and spoke of endurance and the cleansing fire of war. Zealously delivered, Dak’ir knew them all by rote. His mind was reeling with what had transpired and what was to come. When the Chaplain was done and N’keln stepped forward to address them, the brother-sergeant knew exactly what that would be.

The captain’s face was stern as rock. ‘3rd Company, we are going to Scoria to reclaim the progenitor of our Chapter, should that be his whereabouts.’ There was intensity in the brother-captain’s eyes, as if he realised the import of this undertaking and the opportunity it presented to reunite the company. Dak’ir suspected Tu’Shan knew it too.

‘Regardless, we go there with open minds and cautious eyes,’ N’keln continued. ‘All of us,’ he added, nodding sagely. ‘Scoria has been out of contact with the Imperium since the 31st millennium. A death world, like our own, it should provide no impediment to our mission. Deep space augurs have revealed the small system it inhabits is a volatile area, wracked by solar storms. This too,’ he told them, ‘we will overcome. There is no way to tell what we will find when we reach the surface. But enemies or no, we will discover why our primarch sent us there. Nor will we be alone.’ N’keln gestured graciously behind him. ‘Brother Praetor and his Firedrakes will accompany us.’

The veteran sergeant of 1st Company barely moved as the eyes of 3rd Company alighted upon him. He was an imperious warrior and a peerless tactician, save for the Chapter Master. Like all of the Firedrakes, he was aloof, living and training on Prometheus in the fortress-monastery. A long cape of salamander hide hung from the back of his Terminator armour, his shaven head like a hard, black bolt between the immense pauldrons. Laurels wreathed his doughty form, and a long-hafted thunder hammer was clasped in a gauntleted fist, a circular storm-shield attached to his back.

Praetor’s inclusion in the mission raised certain questions. It was a great honour to serve alongside Tu’Shan’s company: each one was a warrior-king, an inspiration to their battle-brothers around them. But it also threw N’keln’s authority into doubt. Dak’ir was certain it would only add fuel to Tsu’gan’s argument. He had lost sight of his fellow sergeant in the muster. It mattered not; Dak’ir would see him soon enough as N’keln brought the assembly to a close.

‘No more words then; words will avail us nothing. Fire-born! To your gunships! The Vulkan’s Wrath waits to take us to Scoria.’

3rd Company donned battle-helms and disbanded at once, sergeants barking orders as they broke up into their squads and marched quickly towards the embarkation ramps of their Thunderhawks. Dak’ir rallied his Salamanders together and made for the Fire-wyvern. From the corner of his helmet lens, he noticed the Firedrakes stomping towards Implacable, their own gunship. They were travelling with Brother-Captain N’keln and the Inferno Guard. Chaplain Elysius accompanied them. The docking bay was quickly evacuated, leaving Tu’Shan and Vel’cona alone.

To Dak’ir’s dismay, Pyriel joined them aboard the Fire-wyvern. The Librarian levelled his piercing gaze at the brother-sergeant briefly before assuming his position in a grav-harness in the Chamber Sanctuarine. Tsu’gan acknowledged no one as he led his squad in, consumed with introspection. It seemed many of the Salamanders were lost in thought. The prospect of discovering their primarch, or some clue as to his fate, had silenced them all.

Whining turbofans drowned out the exterior noise as the servitor deck crews retreated. As the Fire-wyvern achieved loft, second behind Implacable, its landing stanchions retracted. A roar of flame erupted from its fully-ignited engines, and the gunship sped upwards. Spear of Prometheus tore right behind it. The gunships Inferno and Hellstorm followed in the aerial convoy. A trio of Thunderhawk transporters brought up the rear, bearing four Rhino APCs and the Land Raider Redeemer, Fire Anvil.

The blast doors in the hangar roof churned open, revealing the gulf of realspace above. Attached to one of the space port’s docking claws was the strike cruiser, waiting to take 3rd Company to its destiny.

The Vulkan’s Wrath was plying its final passage through the empyrean, on its last jump until they translated into the Scorian system. Many of the Salamanders were engaged in battle rituals, in preparation for the coming trials. Some were training fastidiously in the strike cruiser’s gymnasia; others spent their time in solitude, reciting the catechisms of Promethean Lore. Tsu’gan, descending into a subdued malaise, had chosen the solitoriums again in a vain attempt to burn away his inner guilt.

Iagon watched Tsu’gan stagger out of the isolation chamber from the shadows.

Steam came off the sergeant’s self-tortured body in swathes, ghosting the cooler air around him. Smothering it with a robe, Tsu’gan made for the antechamber where Iagon had left the sergeant’s power armour just as commanded.

‘Astartes,’ a voice emanated from the darkness.

It took Iagon a moment to realise it was directed at him.

The wiry form of Zo’kar, Tsu’gan’s brander-priest, shuffled into view. His priest’s apparel was limned in the deep red light of fettered lume-lamps as he approached the Salamander.

Iagon’s primary heart pulsed like a war drum in his chest. In his sadistic desire to witness Tsu’gan’s self-flagellation, albeit via the branding rod of Zo’kar, he hadn’t realised he’d leaned forward and revealed his presence. It was fortunate that Tsu’gan was so drunk with pain that he didn’t notice, otherwise, it could have thrown Iagon’s careful machinations into jeopardy. The bond of trust he had cultivated with his sergeant was vital; without it, Iagon had nothing.

‘You should not be here,’ Zo’kar pressed. He had set his iron rod aside and already banished the votive servitor. ‘Lord Tsu’gan is very strict about privacy.’

Iagon’s eyes narrowed.

‘And has that been impeached, serf?’

‘My orders were clear, Astartes. I must inform Lord Tsu’gan of this trespass immediately.’ Zo’kar made to turn but Iagon reached from the darkness and seized him by the shoulder. He felt bone beneath the brander-priest’s robes and through the parchment-thin skin, and exerted a little pressure – just enough to command Zo’kar’s attention, but not so excessive that he would cry out.

‘Hold…’ Iagon used his strength to turn the brander-priest, so he faced him. ‘I do not think Brother Tsu’gan is in any condition to hear of this, right now. Allow me to explain it to him.’

Zo’kar shook his head once beneath his cowl.

‘I cannot. I obey Lord Tsu’gan. He must be told.’

Iagon fought back a sudden pang of rage, a desire to inflict pain on the insignificant thing in his grasp.

Even as a child, he had been cruel. A dim recollection, obscured further by the fog of his superhuman rebirth, fluttered like a wisp of smoke at the edge of Iagon’s consciousness. It was a half-buried memory of staking lacertids on the dunes of the Scorian Plain. In the shadow of a rock, he had waited for the scorching sun to sear the diminutive lizards then watched as the larger draconids came to devour them. Through determination and cunning, Iagon had passed the trials required to become a Space Marine and been inducted as neophyte. The dark urges, which back then he did not fully understand, had been channelled onto the battlefield. With his sharp mind, made sharper by Imperial genetic science, he had advanced, always keeping the blackest recesses hidden away; far from the probing tendrils of Chaplains and Apothecaries. Iagon found through this secrecy that he was adept at subterfuge. He coaxed the black spark within, using his training and his superior intellect to coax it into a flame. It had roared into a dark conflagration of desire, for power and the means to exact it. No screening process, however rigorous and invasive, was perfect. Amongst the untold billions of the Imperium, every populace, every creed harboured the pathological. These aberrations often moved unnoticed, seemingly normal and pious, until the moment came for their deviancy to surface. But by then of course, it was often too late.

Now, Iagon was the draconid and Zo’kar a lizard staked at his mercy. The Salamander drew closer, using all of his height and bulk to cower and intimidate. When Iagon spoke again, it was in the breathy cadence of thinly-veiled threat.

‘Are you sure, Zo’kar?’

‘More weight.’ Ba’ken grunted and relaxed his shoulders. The hefting chains attached to the black exertia-mitts he was wearing went slack. The Salamander’s back was like a slab of onyx, hard and unyielding, as he slowly lowered the immense weights being hoisted by the chains. He squatted, the legs in his muscles bunched, sinews like thick cables. Wearing only training fatigues, the musculature of his ebon body was largely exposed.

Dak’ir smiled wryly. ‘There is no more, brother,’ he said from behind him.

‘Then I shall lift you, brother-sergeant. Step upon my shoulders.’ Ba’ken’s gaze remained fixed, and Dak’ir couldn’t be certain that he wasn’t actually serious.

‘I shall have to decline, Ba’ken,’ Dak’ir replied with mock disappointment, checking the chrono mounted on the gymnasia’s wall. ‘Translation in-system is close. We must prepare for planetfall on Scoria.’

Easing the mitts off his immense hands, Ba’ken set them both down with a clunk. ‘A pity,’ he said, getting to his feet and towelling the sweat off his body. ‘I shall have to ask the quartermaster for more weight next time.’

Dak’ir returned the exertia-mitts, akin to massive chunks of smooth-hewn granite, back to the holding station. All around them warriors of 3rd Company were still training hard.

The gymnasia was a vast space. At one end stood ranks of fighting cages, currently at capacity as battle-brothers duelled one another or simply recited their close combat weapon disciplines; others took to the expansive gymnasia floor, which was dark like black granite and filled with all manner of training apparatus. It possessed an ablutions block, and the darker recesses harboured fire pits where Salamanders could build their endurance at the mercy of red-hot coals or burning bars of iron.

Dak’ir’s attention was on the ballistica where Ul’shan and Omkar guided their troopers through their targeting rituals. Lok was not present and the two brother-sergeants had divided the veteran’s squad members between them for instruction and accuracy assessment. Segregated from the rest of the gymnasia for obvious reasons, the battle-brothers within the ballistica’s bullet-chipped confines were still visible through a sheet of transparent armourcrys.

Dak’ir had his back to him when Ba’ken spoke again.

‘So, what did you see?’

Prior to his arrival at the gymnasia to guide his squad’s battle-training, Dak’ir had spent several hours in the one of the strike cruiser’s solitoriums. During meditation, he had experienced another dream. This one was different to the recurring nightmare of Kadai’s final moments and Dak’ir’s futile efforts to save him. It was not remembrance that he had imagined in his mind’s theta state, rather it felt more like a vision or even prophecy. The thought of it chilled him to such an extent that Dak’ir had sought succour from the counsel of the one Salamander he knew the best and trusted the most.

Bak’en’s face held no trace of suspicion or agenda as Dak’ir faced him. He merely wanted to know. The bulky Salamander was one of the strongest warriors he knew, but it was his honesty and integrity that Dak’ir valued most.

‘I saw a lizard with two heads prowling in the darkness of a barren sand plain,’ said Dak’ir. ‘It was hunting and found its prey, a smaller lizard, alone on the dunes. It cornered the smaller creature, swallowing it down its gullet. Then it slipped away into shadow, until it too was swallowed, but by darkness.’

Ba’ken shrugged.

‘It’s just a dream, Dak’ir – nothing more. We all dream.’

‘Not like this.’

‘You think it portends something deeper?’

‘I don’t what it means. I am more concerned with why I am dreaming it at all.’

‘Have you spoken to Apothecary Fugis?’

‘He knows of it, and until Kadai’s death, had watched me like a dactylid watches prey. Now, it seems, Pyriel has been appointed my watcher.’

Ba’ken shrugged.

‘If it was a concern, Elysius would be your shadow and not our Brother-Librarian, and you’d be having this conversation with the Brother-Chaplain’s chirurgeon-interrogators.’

His eyes grew warm and earnest.

‘Perhaps it was destiny that you found that chest on the Mechanicus ship, perhaps your vision of the two-headed lizard was for a reason. I know not, for I don’t believe in such things myself. I know only this: you are my battle-brother, Dak’ir. Moreover, you are my sergeant. I have fought at your side for four decades and more. That is the only testament I need to your purity and spirit.’

Dak’ir pretended that his mind was eased.

‘You are wise, Ba’ken. Certainly wiser than I,’ he said with a humourless smile.

The hefty Salamander merely snorted, rotating his shoulder blades to ease out the stiffness. ‘No, brother-sergeant, I am just old.’

Dak’ir laughed quietly at that, a sound that smacked of rare, untroubled abandon.

‘Gather the troops,’ he ordered. ‘Armoured and on the assembly deck in two hours.’

Already, the other brother-sergeants were bringing their troops into line. Arming serfs were poised and ready for those who had divested themselves of their battle-plate to train.

‘And you will be?’ asked Ba’ken.

Dak’ir was pulling on his bodyglove, over which the electrical fibre bundles, interface cables and internal circuitry of his power armour would be placed and conjoined. ‘On the bridge.’ He ignored Ba’ken’s slight impertinence by dint of the respect he afforded the heavy weapons trooper. He knew Ba’ken’s inquiry was an honest one, bereft of any insolence. ‘I want to speak with the brother-captain before we make planetfall.’

‘What happened to the “Promethean way”?’

‘Nothing. I want to know what he thinks we’ll find down on Scoria and if he believes this mission is the boon we all hope it is.’

Ba’ken seemed satisfied with the answer and saluted, heading off towards the scalding steam jets of the ablutions chamber.

Dak’ir donned the rest of his power armour in silence, staring ahead at nothing. When the arming serf was done, the brother-sergeant thanked him and left the gymnasia. He was determined the long walk to the bridge would clear his head. The memories of the earlier dream gnawed at him parasitically as he tried to discern its meaning.

Any introspection was marred by the sudden appearance of Fugis. He had rounded the corner in the same section of the ship. Dak’ir was reminded again of their exchange outside the Vault of Remembrance in Hesiod. The melancholy shroud had not left the Apothecary then, it had merely spread.

When Fugis looked up, he gazed through Dak’ir at first and even after that recognition was delayed.

‘Are you all right, Brother-Apothecary?’ asked Dak’ir, his concern genuine.

‘Have you seen Brother-Sergeant Tsu’gan?’ Fugis snapped. ‘He has eluded me since we embarked and I must speak with him at once.’

Dak’ir was taken aback at the curt tone in the Apothecary’s voice but answered nonetheless. ‘I last saw him headed for the solitoriums, but that was almost six hours ago. It’s very unlikely he is still there.’

‘I rather think it is highly probable, brother,’ Fugis snarled and stalked off, without further word or explanation, towards the solitoriums.

The Apothecary had always been cold; Dak’ir had regularly been on the receiving end of his innate frigidity, but never like this. The darkness had beset him now, strangling hope and smothering optimism. Dak’ir had seen it as they’d surveyed the Pyre Desert. He saw it again as Fugis’s diminishing figure was swallowed by the shadows of the long corridor.

Dak’ir gave it no further thought for now. He had business on the bridge that was best unfettered by concern for his grief-stricken Apothecary.

The blast doors to the bridge parted after a biometric scan ascertained Dak’ir’s presence. A diminishing hiss of hydraulic pressure escaped into the air as the brother-sergeant passed through the portal to the command centre of the Vulkan’s Wrath.

The lume-lamps surrounding the bridge were kept low. The semi-dark promoted an atmosphere of apprehensive silence, in keeping with the gloom. It was always this way when traversing the warp or during battle. The scant, reddish light hugged the outer walls of the hexagonal chamber, bleeding into penumbral darkness. Most of the illumination on the bridge came from strategium tables and overhead pict displays that monitored the ship’s multitudinous systems. The raft of icons upon the various screens was green. It meant the Geller fields that proofed the ship against the predators of the warp were holding.

A semi-circle of consoles filled the forward arc of the bridge. Like all Astartes vessels, the crew of the Vulkan’s Wrath was primarily made up of human serfs, ensigns and shipmasters, servitors and tech-savants, all toiling before the operational controls. Thick shielding had been rolled over the bridge’s view-ports to protect them, for even to look upon the warp was to be damned by it.

The warp was an immaterial realm, a layer stretched over the real world, akin to an incorporeal sea. Time moved differently along its waves; portals could be opened in it and routes travelled that allowed ships to move across great distances comparatively quickly. Its dangers were manifold, though. Abyssal horrors and soul-hungering entities plied its depths. The warp was insidious, too; it had a way of creeping into a man’s mind and making him do and see things. Many space-faring vessels had been lost this way, not claimed by daemons, just destroyed from within.

Despite his arduous psychological training, his genebred mental toughness, Dak’ir had felt a prickle of unease ever since they had entered the immaterium.

He was glad they would be free of it again soon. The warp unsettled him. It tugged at the edge of his awareness, like cold, thin fingers massaging away his resolve. Throbbing insistently, the half-felt presence of the warp was like a lost whisper filled with malicious intent. Dak’ir could ignore it well enough but it briefly cast his thoughts back to the Dragon Warriors, how they had willingly submitted to this other-reality of dark dreams and darker promises, even embraced it. As a loyal servant of the Emperor, he could not imagine such a thing, the motivation that had driven them to this desperate act. Nihilan and his renegades were indeed beyond redemption now. His mind drifted to Stratos and the reason the Dragon Warriors were there. Vengeance had always seemed a petty motivation for one such as Nihilan; or, rather, it didn’t seem enough of one.

Dak’ir considered it no further. He had reached the rear of the bridge and was standing at the foot of a staired platform where Brother-Captain N’keln sat upon his command throne. N’keln’s mood was idle and restive as he watched his Brother-Librarian guide them by the Emperor’s Light through the vagaries of the warp. Pyriel was forward of the command throne, on a lower part of the platform. He was encased within a pseudo-pulpit, standing bolt upright. It was not for the purpose of preaching that he was so ensconced, rather his psychic hood was connected integrally to the pulpit’s internal circuitry, augmenting his abilities.

A series of tactical plans and schematics, deep-augur maps, blind-sketched by the ship’s astropaths, were arranged on a strategio-table to N’keln’s right hand. The captain glanced at them absently, while Brother-Sergeant Lok, standing beside the command throne, posited potential landing zones and approaches with a stylus. Evidently, the embarkation plans for Scoria were already in progress. It was all theory until they entered in-system, but Salamanders were nothing if not thorough.

Veteran Sergeant Praetor was nowhere to be seen. Dak’ir assumed that his bulky Terminator suit precluded his presence on the bridge and that he remained with his Firedrakes, locked in whatever clandestine rituals the warriors of 1st Company performed before battle. Perhaps Chaplain Elysius was with them, for he too was absent.

‘Brother-sergeant,’ N’keln’s greeting held a tone of inquiry.

Dak’ir saluted, and took it to mean he was allowed to approach.

‘Preparations for our landing are already underway?’

‘Since before we left Prometheus, brother.’ N’keln’s gaze had shifted to the plans that Lok was annotating with arrows and battle-symbols.

Dak’ir noticed the military aspect to the icons the veteran sergeant was scribing.

‘Are we expecting trouble, brother-captain?’

‘I neither expect nor doubt it, sergeant. I merely wish us to be prepared for whatever is down there.’

N’keln looked up from the strategio-table when Dak’ir fell silent.

‘Impatient for answers, Dak’ir?’

‘My lord, I–’

N’keln waved away the nascent apology.

‘You’re the third officer in the last hour who has visited the bridge,’ he said. ‘I should admonish such restless behaviour, especially for a sergeant who ought to be with his squad, but in this case I shall make dispensations. It is not every day that a Chapter like ours gets the opportunity to discover the fate of its primarch.’ It seemed to Dak’ir that N’keln’s expression grew slightly wistful. ‘I have seen artistic representations, of course,’ he said, his voice reverent, ‘rendered in stone and metal, but to see…’ He emphasised the last word with heartfelt vehemence, ‘…and with my own eyes. Our father, ten thousand years since his fabled disappearance… It would be like myth come alive.’

Dak’ir’s mood was less ebullient.

‘I hope you are right, brother-captain.’

‘You do not think we will find Vulkan on Scoria?’ N’keln asked plainly. There was no agenda, no careful probe in his words. Perhaps that was why he struggled at the political side of leadership.

‘Truthfully, captain, I don’t know what we’ll find there or what any of this will amount to.’

N’keln’s eyes narrowed and in the pause in conversation, Dak’ir felt the imminence of what was to come like a stone collar around his neck. The captain’s gaze was searching.

‘It is more pertinent for you than most, isn’t it, brother. You found the chest in the Archimedes Rex, did you not?’

Dak’ir gave his unneeded confirmation. Even though they faced away from one another, he felt the eyes of the Librarian boring into the back of his skull at the mention of the chest.

‘You’ll have your answers soon enough, brother-sergeant,’ the voice of Pyriel interjected, as if summoned by Dak’ir’s thought. ‘We are about to emerge from the warp.’

There was a pregnant pause, as all those aboard the bridge waited for translation back into realspace.

‘Now…’ hissed Pyriel.

A massive shudder wracked the Vulkan’s Wrath, a sudden shock wave ripping down its spine. The bridge shook. Dak’ir and several others lost their footing. A deep roar filled the hexagonal room. It sounded like fire, but it howled as if truly alive, searching voraciously for air to burn. The human crew, besides the servitors, covered their ears whilst trying to stay upright. The ship was bucking back and forth, tossed like a skiff upon a violent ocean. Consoles exploded, spitting sparks and going dead. Klaxons whined urgently, their warning drowned out by the raging tumult battering the Vulkan’s Wrath from outside.

‘Alert status crimson!’ N’keln bellowed into the command throne’s vox, gripping the arms tight to stay seated. ‘All hands to emergency stations.’

Lok had fallen to one knee, braced against the deck with his power fist whilst his other hand clutched the strategio-table.

‘Pyriel…’ N’keln’s face was slashed by the intermittent strobe of emergency lighting as Dak’ir pushed himself back up from where he had fallen at the base of the stairs. Still groggy, his gaze went to the Librarian. The pulpit was a mess of sparking wires and scorched metal. Pyriel punched his way out of the twisted wreckage, his mood black.

‘We must have translated into a solar storm,’ he growled loudly, seizing the ragged edge of the shattered pulpit for balance as the ship was smashed again. Helmsmen in front of the Librarian desperately tried to steer the ship, whilst simultaneously fighting to stay on their feet.

The din of churning servos fought against the fiery thunder assailing the vessel, as the blast shields covering the view-points started to retract. It was an automated system that kicked in as soon as the Geller fields powered down and the ship re-entered realspace.

Dak’ir felt the danger before he saw a thin line of ultra-bright light creeping into being at the bottom edge of the shielding.

‘Shut th–’

Horrified screams smothered the brother-sergeant’s warning as multiple shafts of super-heated light reached into the bridge. An ensign nearest the view-point spontaneously combusted as the deadly solar energy washed over him. Others at the consoles suffered a similar fate. A shipmaster spun, crying for the Emperor’s mercy, the left side of his face a blackened ruin. A naval armsman, with enough presence of mind to hunker down behind a console, pulled his laspistol and administered a killing shot between the poor bastard’s pleading eyes.

Dak’ir felt the heat against his armour tangibly. It was like wading through a wind tunnel as he fought to reach the blast shield’s emergency override lever. Not wearing his battle-helm, the view for Dak’ir shimmered through a heat haze. His naked skin was untroubled by it, though he saw a blistering servitor less resilient to the solar flare. It ravaged the inner walls, setting cables aflame and burning out circuitry.

Pyriel threw up a force dome around the crew, who crawled into it on their hands and knees. The blinded and the burned were dragged, mewling, into the psychic sanctuary whilst the dead were left to crisp and blacken, their bodies becoming human torches in the blaze.

The crack in the shielding was only centimetres thick when Dak’ir reached the override panel and threw back the lever. Agonisingly slowly, the armour plates rolled shut again and the hellish light was cut off.

Pyriel ended the force dome and sagged. His face was beaded with sweat, but his eyes conveyed his gratitude as his gaze met Dak’ir’s.

The smoking ruins of men lay all about the bridge, their charred corpses like dark shadowy husks on the scorched deck.

‘Medical crews onto the bridge now,’ Lok spoke into his gorget, linked in with the ship’s communication systems. The edges of his pauldrons were black, as if filmed with a layer of thick soot, and heat emanated off his bald pate.

‘Master Argos,’ N’keln barked into the throne vox. The fiery roar of the storm had not relented, making it difficult to convey orders. ‘Damage report.’

Static filled the bridge’s vox-emitters. The Techmarine’s voice was strained as it fought to be heard through the interference. Background clamour from the Enginarium deck where Argos was situated impeded the clarity further.

‘Hull engines are non-functional, aft thruster banks three through eighteen are showing sporadic power emissions. Shields are down and decks thirteen through twenty-six are showing critical damage, possibly an integrity breach.’

It was a grim report.

‘What hit us?’

‘The port-side of the ship was struck by a light beam from the solar storm. It burned through our outer armour, took out our shields and strafed most of the sun-side decks. Entire sections were ripped out. The worst hit areas were totally burned. Everything there is ash. I’ve shut them down already.’

‘Vulkan’s mercy…’ breathed N’keln.

Somehow, perhaps through his augmetics, Argos heard him.

‘Imagine a melta gun at point-blank range against a suit of ceramite.’

Dak’ir found he had no desire to.

‘Give me something positive, brother,’ said N’keln, interrupting the sergeant’s bleak remembrance.

The Techmarine’s response was unintentionally dry.

‘We are still aloft.’

The captain smiled without mirth. He was distracted for a moment as the blast doors opened and medicae teams spilled through to tend to the injured and remove the dead. Lok directed them for his captain, as N’keln continued to speak with his chief Techmarine.

‘How long will that be the case whilst we are breached?’

There was a delay as the crackling retort of the vox-emitters blighted Argos’s reply.

‘Not long,’ he said at last.

N’keln looked Dak’ir in the eye, his face assuming a stern cast. The breached decks would have to be purged and sealed. Hundreds, if not thousands, of human serfs worked in those areas of the ship – N’keln would be condemning them all to death.

‘Alone, they cannot survive,’ stated Dak’ir, already knowing his captain’s mind.

N’keln nodded.

‘That’s why you’re going to gather your squad – Lok, you too–’ he added with a side glance, ‘and assist in the evacuation. Save as many as you can, brothers. I will order the decks locked down in fifteen minutes.’

Dak’ir rapped his pauldron, and he and Lok ran from the bridge, the din of their armour clanking urgently behind them.

II

Sinner and Saviour

Iagon was pitched off his feet as a violent tremor rippled across the solitorium. Zo’kar yelped in pain as he was torn from the Salamander’s grasp. A low rumble echoed through the chamber, followed by the sound of tearing metal and a crash of steel. Something fell from the ceiling and the brander-priest was lost from Iagon’s view. Heaving himself up from his prone position, filtering out the sudden roar invading his senses, Iagon staggered through the half-dark until he came to a pile of wreckage. The ceiling of the solitorium had collapsed. Zo’kar’s pitiful face, the hood cast back in the fall, could be seen beneath it. Feeble arms pushed against a thick adamantium rebar crushing the brander-priest’s chest. Blood was leaking from a wound concealed by his robes, a dark patch spreading over the fabric as he struggled.

‘Lord… Help me…’ he gasped, his tone pleading, as he saw Iagon standing over him.

‘Rest easy, serf,’ said the Salamander. With his Astartes strength, he could lift the rebar and drag Zo’kar out. He wedged his gauntleted hands beneath it, testing his grip. But before Iagon took a proper hold he lifted his head, and his face became an emotionless mask. The Astartes reversed his grip, instead placing his hands on top of the rebar, not under it. ‘Your pain is at an end,’ he concluded and pushed down violently.

Zo’kar spasmed once as the rebar broke his ribs and pulped his chest and internal organs. A gush of blood erupted from his mouth, spattering his face and robe in dark droplets. Then he slumped down, his dead eyes staring glassily.

Something had struck the ship and continued to assail it, that much Iagon knew as he leapt over the wreckage and fought his way into the outer corridor. Alert sirens were blaring and the vessel was plunged into emergency half-light. The upper deck was evidently badly damaged. The destruction had spilled over into its counterpart below, where Iagon was now standing, bringing down struts in sections of the ceiling. He heard N’keln’s voice coming over the vox, broken by static interference. All Astartes were being ordered to decks thirteen through twenty-six, whichever was nearest. The ship was breached and needed to be locked down. N’keln was trying to save the crew.

‘Noble, but futile,’ Iagon muttered, rounding a corner to find a group of human armsmen huddled around a spar of metal piercing the deck grille. As he got closer, Iagon saw a warrior in green battle-plate was pinned by it. He recognised the face of Naveem, one of Tsu’gan’s main opposers. He’d torn off his helmet – it lay discarded nearby – likely to aid his breathing, judging by the sergeant’s ragged gasps for air. The metal spar had impaled his chest. Going on the sheer size of it, Iagon reasoned that most of Naveem’s internal organs were already ruined. The sergeant was hanging on by a sinewy thread.

‘Step aside,’ Iagon ordered, stalking up to the armsmen. ‘You can do nothing for him.’

Buffeted by an unseen blow, the ship bucked again, throwing one of the armsmen to the ground and drawing an agonised moan from Naveem.

Iagon steadied himself against the wall.

‘Go to your emergency stations,’ he said. ‘I will deal with this.’

The armsmen saluted then sped off uncertainly down the corridor.

Iagon loomed over the supine Naveem. The sergeant’s mouth was caked with expectorated blood and dark fluid leaked from the copious cracks in his power armour.

‘Brother…’ he rasped upon seeing Iagon, spitting out a film of bloody vapour.

‘Naveem,’ Iagon replied. ‘You chose the wrong side,’ he added darkly.

The sergeant’s expression was nonplussed as Iagon leaned in, taking both edges of the metal spar in a firm grip…

‘Iagon!’

Whatever Iagon was about to do was arrested by Fugis’s voice.

‘Over here, Apothecary,’ he bellowed with feigned concern, relaxing his grip. ‘Brother Naveem is wounded.’

Fugis reached them in moments, narthecium in hand. His attention was fixed on the stricken form of Brother Naveem – he barely acknowledged Iagon at all.

Crouching over the bloodied sergeant, the Apothecary made a quick assessment. His thin face grew grave. Carefully disengaging Naveem’s gorget, he took a stimm from his narthecium kit and injected a solution of pain-regressors into Naveem’s carotid artery.

‘It will ease your suffering, brother,’ he said quietly.

Naveem tried to speak, but all that came from his mouth was near-black blood, a certain sign of internal bleeding. His breath became more ragged and his eyes widened.

Fugis pulled his bolt pistol from its holster and pressed the barrel to Naveem’s forehead. An execution shot to the frontal lobe, point blank, would kill him instantly but leave both progenoids intact. Since the sergeant’s chest was all but destroyed, that only left the one in Naveem’s neck.

‘Receive the Emperor’s Peace…’ he whispered. A deafening bang echoed off the corridor walls.

‘There was no other choice, brother.’ Iagon’s tone was consoling.

‘I know my duty,’ Fugis snapped, going to the reductor mounted on his left gauntlet. The device consisted of a drill and miniature chainblade, designed to chew through flesh and bone to get to the progenoids buried in a Space Marine’s body. A syringe, appended to a pre-sterilised capsule, would extract the necessary genetic material once the outer bone wall had been breached.

Fugis moved in, his reductor drill whirring as it bit into Naveem’s dead flesh. The Vulkan’s Wrath was shuddering badly, jolting with severe force every few seconds or so. The Apothecary fought to keep himself steady, knowing that any small mistake would see the gland destroyed and Naveem’s legacy ended, just like Kadai’s.

Kadai…

The unwanted memory of his captain surfaced in Fugis’s mind. Suddenly, the concern he felt at the bucking ship outweighed his caution and he began to rush, fearing a sudden tremor. In his haste, he slipped. The syringe missed the progenoid and the drill sheared the gland in half, spilling it into the dead Salamander’s exposed throat.

‘No!’ Fugis emitted a breathless cry of anguish, thumping the deck heavily with his fist. ‘No, not again,’ he rasped, and hung his head despairingly.

Iagon leaned in.

‘It was an error, brother. No more than that.’

‘I don’t make errors,’ Fugis hissed, his fist clenched. ‘My mind is too troubled. I am no longer fit for this,’ he confessed.

‘You must do your duty,’ Iagon urged him. ‘You are needed by this company, Brother-Apothecary… as is Brother-Sergeant Tsu’gan,’ he added.

Fugis looked up after a few moments when he realised what Iagon was implying. If he would turn a blind eye to Tsu’gan’s masochistic affliction, then Iagon would not speak of the Apothecary’s apparent frailty. Fugis was caught in a moral web of his own devising, but laid by Iagon.

Anger contorted his features.

‘You bastard,’ he spat.

‘I prefer pragmatist,’ Iagon answered smoothly. ‘We can ill-afford to lose two officers.’

He offered his hand, but Fugis ignored it.

‘How many more will die if you are not there to minister to them, brother?’ Iagon asked him. He looked down at his still proffered hand. ‘This is what seals our pact.’

‘What pact?’ Fugis snorted, back on his feet.

‘Don’t be naïve,’ Iagon warned him. ‘You know what I mean. Take it, and I will know I have your oath.’

Fugis wavered. There was no time to consider. The ship was being ripped apart.

‘Your brothers depend upon you, Apothecary.’ Iagon’s tone was coaxing. ‘Isn’t the preservation of life your credo? Ask yourself, Fugis – can you really turn your back on it?’

Fugis scowled.

‘Enough!’

He knew he would regret this compact, yet what other choice did he have? Stay silent about Tsu’gan’s indiscretion and compromise his ethics, his sense of moral rightness, or speak out and relinquish his position in the company? He could not allow his brothers to go into battle without an Apothecary. How many could die needlessly as a result? Hating himself, he took Iagon’s hand.

Why does it feel like I’ve just made a deal with Horus…?

Dak’ir and Lok parted company at the first intersection after leaving the bridge. Both sergeants had contacted their squads via the comm-feeds in their battle-helms. Salamanders were rapidly dispersing across the stricken decks, rescuing those who were trapped, quelling panic or opening up escape routes. The Vulkan’s Wrath was well outfitted with lifters and deck-to-deck conduits, and though the strike cruiser was vast, reaching the crisis areas had been swift.

Reaching deck fifteen, Dak’ir was greeted with a scene of utter carnage. He ranged along darkened corridors lit by fire and filled by the screams of the injured and dying. Twisted metal and collapsed ceiling struts made progress slow and dangerous. Torn deck plates bled away into the darkness of the lower levels, pitch-black pitfalls that he discerned through his battle-helm’s infra-red spectra. Leaping across the miniature chasms, Dak’ir tried not to think how many bodies might be lying beneath him in mangled heaps.

Through the gaseous haze of a split coolant pipe, Dak’ir saw Brother Emek crouching by the slumped form of a wounded crewman. Liquid nitrogen was gushing everywhere, freezing whatever it touched. Crushing the pipe either side of the breach and cutting off its supply, Dak’ir effectively sealed the leak. When he reached Emek, his brother was already closing the slumped crewman’s eyes for him.

‘Dead…’ His voice held a trace of sorrow. ‘But there are more who still live. In the corridor beyond,’ he added. Another survivor was strapped up to his back. The man’s legs were a red ruin, crushed to paste by falling wreckage. Clinging on to Emek desperately, he whimpered in pain like an infant.

‘Ba’ken is ahead,’ he said, and got to his feet.

Dak’ir nodded and moved on, as Emek went in the other direction. Sparking terminals lit the way. They showed hollow-eyed crewmen, those who were still able-bodied rushing from the damaged deck. Continual reports from the Enginarium and Brother Argos issued through Dak’ir’s battle-helm. More and more areas of the ship were being sealed off as entire sections of deck fragmented under the solar storm’s baleful glare.

The trickle of fleeing crewmen became a surge. Lighting was more sporadic, until it failed completely and even the fires couldn’t alleviate the darkness. Dak’ir ushered on the men as he went, telling them to cling to the edges of the corridors and watch their footing. He didn’t know if they all heard him. Panic gripped them now. Something approaching that emotion spiked in Dak’ir’s mind as he realised that fifteen minutes were up. Thunderous sirens shuddered noisily, communicating the fact that the deck was locking down.

Descending into steadily worse carnage, he started to run. Through his advanced hearing, Dak’ir detected the distant sounds of bulkhead doors slamming shut and zoning off the compromised sections of the ship. He tried not to think about the men that might still be trapped inside them, hammering on the doors with no hope of escape.

Rounding the next corner, barging his way through a flood of crewmen, Dak’ir saw the massive, armoured form of Ba’ken. He was wedged between a bulkhead door and the deck. It pushed down at him from the ceiling as it fought to seal off the section. Swarms of serfs rushed past him as Ba’ken urged them with curt commands. Strong as he was, the Salamander couldn’t fight the power of a strike cruiser and hope to prevail. His legs were starting to buckle and his arms to tremble.

Dak’ir went to him at once, getting under the slowly descending door and adding his strength to his brother’s.

Barely arching his head to see, Ba’ken caught Dak’ir in the corner of his eye and smiled through a grimace.

‘Come to join me, eh, sergeant?’

Dak’ir shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I just come to see if this is enough weight for you, brother.’

Ba’ken’s booming laughter vied with the lockdown siren for supremacy.

All the while, more and more crewman streamed – limping, running, even carried by their comrades – between the two Space Marines holding the way open for them a little longer.

‘There must be thousands on this deck,’ Dak’ir growled, already feeling the strain of the pressing bulkhead door. ‘We can’t hold this open long enough to save them all, Ba’ken.’

‘If we only saved ten more, it would be worth it,’ snarled the bulky Salamander, as he gritted his teeth.

Dak’ir was about to agree when the comm-feed crackled in his ear and a familiar voice issued through.

‘Need assistance on deck seventeen…’ Tsu’gan’s tone was strained. ‘Respond, brothers.’

Static reigned. All the Salamanders dispersed across the decks must either be out of comm-range or they were already engaged in evacuation operations they couldn’t leave.

Dak’ir swore under his breath. Ba’ken was the stronger of them. Without him, Dak’ir could not hold the door himself. He would have to be the one to go to his brother’s aid.

‘Go, sergeant.’ Ba’ken spoke through gritted teeth.

‘You can’t hold it alone,’ Dak’ir protested, knowing the decision was already made.

Dak’ir sensed a presence behind him, the clanging retort of heavy footfalls echoing steadily louder as they closed on his position.

‘He won’t need to,’ said a gravel-thick voice.

Dak’ir turned and saw Veteran Sergeant Praetor.

Close up, the Firedrake was even more formidable. In his Terminator armour, Praetor towered over them both. His bulk filled up half the corridor. Dak’ir saw a fire burning in his eyes, unlike that of his brothers. It seemed deeper, somehow remote and unknowable. Three platinum studs ringed Praetor’s left eyebrow, attesting to his veteran status, and the immensity of his presence was almost tangible.

Dak’ir stepped aside, allowing the awesome warrior to assume his vacated position. Praetor lumbered beneath the bulkhead door and took the strain with arms bent like a champion weight lifter. The lines of exertion on Ba’ken’s face eased at once.

‘On your way, sergeant,’ grunted the Firedrake. ‘Your brother awaits you.’

Dak’ir saluted quickly and chased back the way he had come. Tsu’gan needed him, though he suspected that his fellow brother-sergeant would be less than pleased when he saw the identity of his saviour.

The Ignean… The thought was a bitter one as Tsu’gan regarded Dak’ir across the gaping chasm of twisted steel and fire. It wasn’t enough that he had to capitulate and admit he needed aid; his rescuer was the one Salamander he desired to see the least.

Tsu’gan scowled through the swathes of smoke billowing up from below. He hoped Dak’ir got the message that he was disgruntled. The brother-sergeant was on one side of a huge pitfall some ten metres across. The deck plates had been ripped away as the ship was ravaged by the solar storm. A lifter, torn from its riggings and punched out of its holding shaft, had plummeted through the metal like a hammer dropped through parchment. It had come to rest several decks below, collapsed in a ruined heap, creating a new hollow that was fringed with razor-edged steel and sharpened struts that jutted like spikes.

Fire emanated from where the lifter had crushed an activation console. Sparks flicked from the trashed unit had lit flammable liquids pooling from pipes shorn during the lifter’s rapid descent. It was building to a conflagration, the flames so high they licked the edges of the ragged deck plates where Tsu’gan was standing. Smoke coiled upwards in black, ever-expanding blooms.

‘Here,’ called Tsu’gan, when his fellow sergeant didn’t see him straight away. He watched as Dak’ir made his way to the end of the corridor and the junction where Tsu’gan was crouched with fifty crewmen in torn, fire-blackened uniforms.

Dak’ir gave a forced nod of acknowledgement as he reached the other Salamander.

‘What do you need, brother?’ he asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

‘Down there.’ Tsu’gan pointed into the fiery shaft.

Dak’ir crouched down with him, peering through the dense smoke.

‘You see it?’ Tsu’gan asked, impatiently.

‘Yes.’

There was a section of the original broken deck plate hanging into the chasm. It was long enough to span the ragged hole but would need to be hoisted up and held in place in order for anyone to cross.

‘The bulkheads have not been engaged in this part of the ship, yet,’ said Tsu’gan, ‘but it’s only a matter of time. That way,’ – he gestured past the chasm to the darkness on the other side; there was a faint pall of light from still active lume-lamps – ‘leads to the lifter and salvation for these men.’

‘You want to bridge the gap for them to cross, so they can reach it,’ Dak’ir concluded for him.

Tsu’gan nodded. ‘One of us has to leap across and take up the other end of the deck section. Then we both hold it in place,’ he explained. ‘Armsmaster Vaeder will guide his men across.’

One of the deck crew, a man with a gash across his forehead and a makeshift sling supporting his right arm that had been fashioned from part of his uniform, stepped forward and saluted.

Dak’ir acknowledged him with a nod, before turning his attention back to Tsu’gan.

The other brother-sergeant was back on his feet. He held up his hand before Dak’ir could speak.

‘If your question is who will make the leap?’ he asked without making eye contact. ‘I will do it.’

Tsu’gan spread his arms.

‘Step back,’ he ordered, meaning Salamander and crewman alike. Tsu’gan leant back a little by way of gathering some momentum and then launched himself over the chasm. Fire lapped at his boots and greaves as he flew across the metal-wreathed blackness, before he landed on the opposite side with a heavy thunk.

‘Now, Ignean,’ he said, turning to face Dak’ir, ‘take up the fallen deck section and lift it to me.’

‘Are your men ready, Armsmaster Vaeder?’ Dak’ir asked with a side glance at the crewman.

‘Ready to leave this ship, my lord, aye.’

Low rumblings from deep within the vessel gave Dak’ir pause as the corridor shook and creaked ominously.

‘We move now, Ignean!’ snapped Tsu’gan, seeing no reason to delay. Don’t coddle them, he thought. Survival first.

Dak’ir crouched down, once he was certain of his footing, and grasped the hanging deck plate by pushing his fingers through its grilled surface. The metal would normally be latticed with several overlapping layers but those had since fallen away, so only the uppermost level remained, enabling the Space Marine to get his armoured digits through the gaps. Ensuring his grip was firm Dak’ir lifted the ten metres of plate, its twisted metal beams screaming in protest as he bent them back almost straight.

Tsu’gan watched the deck plate rise, frustrated at Dak’ir’s slowness. He reached down and took it as soon as he could, hoisting the metal up by the ragged edge that didn’t quite meet the end of what he was crouching on.

‘Secure,’ he growled.

Armsmaster Vaeder had organised his men into ten groups of five. Each ‘squad’ would take it in turns to cross the makeshift bridge so as not to put too much pressure on the metal or the Salamanders bearing it. Just before the first group was about to muster across, a huge plume of flame erupted from below as some incendiary in the depths ignited and exploded.

Tsu’gan felt the heat of the fire against his exposed face as he was utterly engulfed by it. Smoke billowed up in swathes, obscuring Dak’ir and the crewman from view.

‘Send them now,’ he bellowed, fighting against the roar of the flames. ‘We can afford to wait no longer.’

After a few seconds, the first of several figures started to emerge. Tsu’gan felt the weight of their passage in his arms as he strained to keep the deck plate aloft. One slip and anyone crossing it would fall to their certain deaths. He had no desire to add that to his already troubled conscience.

A thought came unbidden into his mind at that, and he forced it down.

Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast, he intoned in his head to steady himself. With it, I shall smite the foes of the Emperor. Tsu’gan clung to the mantra like a lifeline, as tenuous and jeopardous as the fragile bridge he clutched between his hands.

The first of the ‘squads’ made it across without incident, hugging jackets over their heads to ward off the fire and smoke now issuing through the grille plate. A second group wandered through after them, their footing wary because of the poor visibility. All the while, the Vulkan’s Wrath quaked and trembled as if it was a bird fighting against a tempest.

Too slow, too slow, thought Tsu’gan as the third ‘squad’ reached the other side, choking back smoke fumes. The ship was tearing itself in half; they had to pick up the pace and get off the deck.

Dak’ir had realised the danger, too, and was ushering the crewmen across in larger and larger groups. He shouted at Armsmaster Vaeder, urging him to take the last of his men across. Screeching and shuddering, the deck plate held just long enough for the last of the crew to reach safety, before buckling and falling into the fiery abyss below.

‘Now you,’ Tsu’gan bellowed, getting to his feet as Dak’ir nodded in understanding. The Ignean took two steps back and was about to launch himself when a fierce tremor gripped the deck, knocking the humans off their feet. Dak’ir got caught up in it and misstepped, stumbling as he made his jump. He fell agonisingly short. Tsu’gan leant forward and outstretched a hand when he saw what was happening. He grasped Dak’ir’s flailing arm and the weight of him dragged Tsu’gan to his knees. He hit the deck with a thunk of metal on metal, felt it jar all the way up his spine.

‘Hold on,’ he growled, fire still lapping around him – the edges of his armour that were exposed to the flames were already scorched black. He grunted and heaved – it was like hauling a dead weight with all that power armour – pulling Dak’ir up so he reached the lip of the jagged deck and dragged himself up.

‘Thank you, brother,’ he gasped, once he was safely on the semi-stable side and facing his rescuer.

Tsu’gan sneered.

‘I do my duty. That’s all. I wouldn’t let a fellow Salamander die, even one that has not the right to bear the name. And I pay my debts, Ignean.’ He turned his back, indicating it was the final word, and focused his attention on the human crew.

‘Get them to the lifter, armsmaster,’ he said sternly.

Vaeder was on his feet, barking orders, hoisting men up, kicking those who thought to wallow. In a few seconds, all fifty were trudging towards the faint light and the solace represented by the lifter.

Tsu’gan went after them, aware of Dak’ir following behind him. Again, he cursed at being shackled with him of all his battle-brothers. He hated being in the Ignean’s presence. It was his fault that Kadai had died at Aura Hieron. Wasn’t it Dak’ir that had sent Tsu’gan after Nihilan and exposed his captain’s flank? Wasn’t it Dak’ir that saw the danger but failed to reach Kadai in time to save him? Wasn’t it Dak’ir that… Or was it? Tsu’gan felt the weight of guilt upon him like an anvil strapped to his back whenever he wasn’t spilling blood in the Chapter’s name; that guilt multiplied tenfold whenever he saw Dak’ir. It forced him to admit that perhaps the Ignean wasn’t solely responsible, that maybe even he…

Armsmaster Vaeder was raking open the lifter’s blast doors with the assistance of two of the other crewmen. The raucous screech of metal was welcome distraction. It didn’t last long, as the Ignean spoke again.

‘We need to get these men to a flight deck, abandon ship with as many hands as possible.’

Tsu’gan faced him as the humans were clambering aboard the lifter. Though large, the lifter reached capacity quickly and they would need to make several trips.

‘It’s too late for that,’ he answered flatly. ‘We must have entered Scoria’s upper atmosphere by now. The ship will be at terminal velocity. Any escape would be suicide. We get them to the upper deck.’

Dak’ir leaned in and lowered his voice.

‘The chances of these men surviving a crash are slim at best.’

Tsu’gan’s response was cold and pragmatic.

‘That can’t be helped.’

The lifter was coming down again, chugging painfully on overworked cable hoists. Ten metres from the deck it lurched ungainly, emitting a high-pitched scream, until finally churning to an uneven stop.

Something approaching despair registered in the eyes of Vaeder and the ten crewmen yet to ascend. Compounding their misfortune, an orange glow lit up the Salamanders’ armour from a rolling wave of fire spilling up from the chasm and over into the deck where the humans cowered.

‘Meet it!’ roared Tsu’gan, and the two Astartes formed a wall of ceramite between the brittle crew and the raging flames. Heat washed over the Salamanders, but they bore it without flinching.

When the backdraft had died down, sucked into the chasm like liquid escaping through a vent, Dak’ir turned to Tsu’gan again.

‘So, what now?’

Tsu’gan eyed the crewmen in their charge. They were huddled together, crouched down against the recently dissipated blaze. Steam was issuing off the Salamander’s armour and face, his view filtered through a heat haze.

‘We are going to crash in a vessel that is not meant to land, deliberately or otherwise, on solid ground. We shield them,’ he said. Wrenching metal resonated loudly in Tsu’gan’s ears, as forbidding as a death knell. ‘And hang on to something.’

Chapter Six

I

Planetfall

The chitin-creature died amidst a welter of exploded bone-plates and shredded mandibles. Grey, sludge-like blood oozed from ragged wounds in its carapace. In its death throes, it flipped onto its armoured back, insectoid legs spasming once and then curled up to remain still.

‘Death to the xenos!’ spat Brother-Chaplain Elysius, unleashing a storm from his bolt pistol. ‘Suffer not the alien to live!’

The Vulkan’s Wrath had struck the surface of Scoria like a meteorite, its hull still burning from its rapid re-entry into the planet’s atmosphere. Impelled by its momentum, the strike cruiser had dug a massive furrow into the earth, hull antennas, towers and engines ripped apart as they met against unyielding bedrock. Hundreds died in the crash, smashed to paste and broken as they were bounced against barrack rooms and hangars in the massive ship. Fires broke out instantly, burning those unlucky enough to be in their path to ash. Some were crushed as the fragile sinews holding up vast sections of damaged upper decks and ceilings capitulated, sending tons of metal debris crashing down onto their heads. Long swathes of armoured shielding had punched inwards, pulping hapless crewmen when the corridor they were clinging to became a single sheet of beaten metal. Others were tossed into chasms of fire and darkness, ripping open like yawning mouths in the deck and swallowing them whole.

In the aftermath, chainswords and cutting tools buzzed into life, the smoke and dust still clinging to the air in a veil, as crewmen sought to cleave escape routes through the bent metal. Hydraulic steam vented in a wave as saviour portals were opened in the hull in a staccato chorus of disengaging locking bars. Survivors spewed out sporadically, some carrying the injured, others forlornly dragging the dead. The Salamanders, who had sustained casualties of their own, organised the evacuation from the worst affected areas and soon a large body of men and servitors had gathered on Scoria’s ash-grey soil.

The crash had lasted only minutes, yet they had stretched into hours, even lifetimes, for those aboard praying to the Emperor for deliverance. The furrow ploughed by the strike cruiser’s prow ran for almost a kilometre and had disturbed something lurking beneath the ashen surface of Scoria.

The creatures came from the below the earth, whorled emergence holes presaging their arrival. Screams from crewmen dragged under the ash plain were the first indication that they were being attacked. Hordes of the things came on after that, shaking their squat, solid bodies free of clinging ash before wading in with bone-pincers and clicking mandible teeth. Thirty-five crewmen died, swallowed into the earth, before the Salamanders mounted a counter-assault.

Brother-Chaplain Elysius led the Fire-born and he did so with zeal and unrestrained violence.

‘Purge them!’ he bellowed, his blood-curdling voice amplified by the vox-emitters in his battle-helm, ‘With bolt, blade and flame, eradicate the xenos filth!’ Barking fire erupted from his pistol, raking a chitin-beast’s torso and blasting away one of its mandibles, before the Chaplain advanced and rammed his crackling crozius into its body, gutting it. Grey viscera flecked his skull-face, anointing him in the blood of war.

The bizarre, crustacean-like beasts reminded Dak’ir of the tyranid, as he slew them alongside his Chaplain. He imagined them as the product of some errant spore cluster vented by a stricken hive ship, only to drift into Scoria’s orbit and infest the planet. Generations old, they were now an outmoded bio-form that had simply not evolved, but rather stagnated and propagated.

Dak’ir’s squad, together with three others, had mustered to their Chaplain’s side when Elysius had issued the call to battle. The Salamanders had adopted a wide perimeter, surrounding the horde of chitin-beasts and slowly corralling them with sustained bolter bursts. The creatures were big, almost as large as a Rhino APC, and their bony carapaces were hard, but not impregnable. Their bulk made them awkward, though, and they possessed a limited field of vision. By encircling them, the Salamanders attacked their blind sides and vulnerable flanks. The xenos reacted with confused and impotent aggression as they sought to attack a foe that was everywhere at once.

‘Ba’ken,’ yelled Dak’ir, as he vaporised a chitin-creature’s bone-claw with a bolt of plasma, ‘cleanse and burn!’

The hulking Salamander trudged forward as his sergeant retreated and sent a swathe of ignited promethium over the stricken xenos-beast. It keened and clicked in agony as the flames washed over it, the air trapped within its bone-plates escaping in a hissing scream.

Elsewhere, staccato bursts of sustained bolter fire became ever more clipped, indicating that the battle against the chitin-creatures was drawing to its end. The last of them had been enclosed within a circle of green battle-plate that was slowly tightening like a noose. Occasional, desperate assaults from the cornered beasts were met with explosive rounds that punctured alien bodies, rupturing them from within and sending gouts of sludge-viscera spitting from flapping mandible mouths. Flamer bursts harried the wretched creatures further, and they keened and clicked before the hot glare, evidently afraid of fire.

Finally, with only a half dozen remaining, the xenos burrowed back into the earth, away from the armoured giants who brought bellowing thunder and fire from the heavens.

Tsu’gan observed his distant battle-brothers with envious eyes. Behind him, the crash-landed strike cruiser loomed like a canted cityscape, bizarrely off-kilter. Even partially sunk into the ashen ground as it was, the Vulkan’s Wrath was huge. Its span was the width of several hive blocks and it took several Astartes to guard it at kilometre intervals. The many decks, towers, platforms, superstructures, hangars, bays, even temples and cathedrals stretched like a dull green metropolis slowly smothered by grey falling snow.

As the battle raged, Techmarines, servitors and human labour crews toiled over the ship’s storm-lashed surface. The solar flares had scorched fresh battle-scars down the old strike cruiser’s flanks, and punctured its armoured skin with fire-fringed, meteor-sized apertures. Aboard grav-sleds, the worker crews made detailed reports of structural damage. Sparks cascaded from the ranks of heavy-duty welding rigs, fusing plates from ancillary sections of the ship over the most heinous of its wounds. A few areas were so bad that the wreckage had to be sheared away with cutting tools and patched over like an amputated limb.

It was demanding work, but Tsu’gan was concerned with other matters as he watched the combat with the chitin-creatures from afar. Blood pulsed in his veins as he lived the battle vicariously. His fists clenched of their own volition. Inwardly, he cursed his fellow sergeants Agatone, Vargo and Dak’ir. Had he not been ordered to remain with the bulk of the company to discuss tactics and set up a command post, he would have rushed joyously into combat. The chitin-beasts presented no challenge, of course, but after months without battle Tsu’gan was eager to shed blood in the Emperor’s name.

‘The Vulkan’s Wrath has sustained major damage, my lord.’ The metallic voice of Argos brought Tsu’gan back.

He was standing with the Techmarine, Brother-Captain N’keln and several of his fellow sergeants in a makeshift command post, attempting to impose some order and stability after the crash.

The command post itself was a prefabricated structure, little more than four walls, a canted roof and a hololith-projector slab displaying in grainy blue resolution what the sensorium and deep-augur probes had ascertained about the lay of the land. What they knew so far was precious little – Scoria was primarily flat, comprised of ash dunes and some basalt mountain ranges with an indigenous hostile life form akin to a giant Terran crab.

Beyond the command bunker, other prefab structures were being erected. In the main, these were medical tents to which the injured were ferried on stretchers and joined the system of triage set up by Brother Fugis. The Apothecary ministered to both human and Astartes, though the latter were few in number, and was ably assisted by Emek, loaned from Dak’ir’s squad as a field surgeon. Human medics, those that had survived the crash, worked diligently alongside the Salamanders, but all had their work cut out for them. Fugis had also tasked rescue teams, comprising Salamanders and able-bodied serfs and servitors, to search the damaged areas of the ship for survivors. Though slow at first, as the ruined decks were gradually re-opened, more and more of the wounded flocked to the medical tents. The dead were also abundant. The pyreum was in constant use, shovel-handed servitors heaping piles of ash into huge storage vats for later interment.

‘Can we achieve loft, Master Argos?’ asked N’keln, his brow furrowed as the hololith switched to a rolling schematic of the Vulkan’s Wrath. Red areas made up around sixty per cent of the total image and indicated damaged sections.

‘To be brief: no,’ the Techmarine replied, using a stylus to zone in on the lower portion of the strike cruiser. The image shifted again, this time incorporating Scoria’s geography and the ship’s relative position in it. A side view cutaway showed a large area of the Vulkan’s Wrath below the earth-line, sunk deep into the planet’s outer crust. ‘As you can see, the ship is partially submerged within the ash plain. Basic geological analysis reveals that Scoria’s surface is a mixture of ash and sand. The intense heat of our re-entry reacted with it, resulting in an endothermic metamorphosis. Essentially the ash-sand crystallised and hardened,’ he added by way of explanation.

‘Surely our engines are strong enough to pull us free,’ offered the gravel-voiced Lok.

‘Ordinarily, yes,’ Argos returned. In addition to the repair crews, the Techmarine had already tasked excavation-servitors and human labour teams with digging out the sections of the ship that were buried deepest. ‘But we are down to three banks of ventral engines. An operational minimum of four are needed to achieve loft.’

‘What of our thrusters? Can we shake ourselves loose?’ asked Brother-Sergeant Clovius, his squat form diminutive compared to the towering Praetor, who observed proceedings in silence.

‘Not unless we want to burrow to the planet’s core,’ replied Argos without sarcasm. ‘Our prow is angled downwards. Any thruster burst will simply push us further in that direction. The Adeptus Mechanicus did not build vessels such as this to take off from a grounded position.’

N’keln scowled, displeased at the developments.

‘Do what you can, brother,’ he said to Argos, switching off the hololith.

‘I will, my lord. But without the components I need to repair and rig a fourth ventral engine, we will not be leaving this planet in the Vulkan’s Wrath.’

‘We should reconnoitre,’ offered Tsu’gan in a low voice. ‘Try to ascertain the technological level of the planet and if it has indigenous human life. It’s possible we’ll be able to commandeer the materials we need to repair the ship,’ he said, to Praetor’s nodded approval. Tsu’gan went on, ‘The prophecy brought us here for a reason. Securing our method of escape should be our secondary mission. Finding Vulkan or whatever the primarch may have left for us here is of paramount concern right now.’

‘I’ll warrant our near-destruction to a solar storm wasn’t part of Vulkan’s vision,’ growled Lok. The veteran sergeant had sustained a gash to the forehead during the crash, adding to his numerous scars.

‘And lo, they will be struck down by fire and their eyes opened to the truth.’ The voice of Chaplain Elysius sermonised as he entered the command bunker. Dak’ir and Agatone were in tow. ‘So speaks the Tome of Fire, Brother Lok.’

‘This was predestined, Brother-Chaplain?’ asked N’keln.

Elysius nodded solemnly.

‘A pity then, we could not have been warned,’ grumbled Lok.

The Chaplain turned his bone-visage back on to the veteran sergeant.

‘Destiny, if forewarned, ceases to be destiny at all,’ he chided. ‘We were meant to crash upon this world. It is merely an element of a much grander design, to which we are not privy. Such things should not be interfered with, lest the balance of destiny itself be thrown out of kilter.’

‘And what of the lives of those lost?’ Lok countered. ‘How are we to balance that?’

‘Sacrificed in the fires of battle,’ Elysius returned. A cold light burned behind the lenses of his battle-helm. The Chaplain did not like to be challenged, especially on matters of spiritual divination.

‘It was no battle,’ Lok growled, but under his breath. Scowling, he let it go, nodding his assent in spite of his outward disapproval.

‘So be it,’ said N’keln. ‘We will follow whatever path has been laid out for us. Brother Tsu’gan is right. Fate has delivered us, and so we must seek out whatever is hidden on this world. To that end, scouting teams will assemble and conduct a long-range survey of the surrounding area. Population centres, military or industrial installations are our objective.’

Tsu’gan stepped forward. ‘My lord, I wish to lead the scouting force.’

‘Very well,’ N’keln conceded. ‘Gather whatever troops you need. The rest will stay here, protect the injured and consolidate our position. Argos,’ he met the cold gaze of the Techmarine, ‘establish a perimeter around our camp. I want no further surprises from the chitin-creatures. Deep frag mines and photon flares,’ he added, glancing outside, where the yellow sun of Scoria was dipping below a grey horizon. ‘It’ll be dark soon and I want fair warning of any encroachment.’

The Techmarine bowed and went to his duties. The rest of the sergeants were dismissed soon after, saluting as they left the command bunker. Only Praetor and Lok remained, poring over the reactivated hololith and the cold resolution representing the barren plains of Scoria. No matter how hard the captain of the Salamanders stared, he could not discern the mystery beneath them that had brought them here.

‘Reminds me of home,’ offered Iagon, his gaze on the long dark horizon line. Something was building in the east. A faint glow, not caused by the dipping sun, painted the sky in hazy red. The chains of volcanoes on Nocturne exuded a similar patina across the heavens when they were about to erupt. Tiny tremors registered below the earth, too. They were deep, so deep as to emanate from the core of the planet and represented a fundamental shift in its tectonic integrity. Even as the seconds ticked by, Scoria was changing. Iagon felt it as surely as the bolter hung loosely in his grasp.

The Salamander had regrouped with his brother-sergeant after leaving Fugis following the crash, confident that the Apothecary would not speak of either his or Tsu’gan’s indiscretion. He didn’t mention this to his sergeant, who assumed that Fugis had taken him at his word and would say nothing more of it.

The scouts had left the camp behind an hour ago. Argos’s bomb-laying servitors established a perimeter of sunken fragmentation grenades in their wake that was patrolled in turn by a pair of Thunderfire cannons the Techmarine had liberated from the hold of the Vulkan’s Wrath. The tracked war machines, not unlike the mobile weapon platform that the Marines Malevolent had employed on the Archimedes Rex, were ideally suited to dissuading further assaults from the indigenous chitin-creatures.

Combat awareness filled Tsu’gan’s mind now, as he crouched on one knee and allowed the dark Scorian ash to filter through the gaps in his half-clenched fist. He cast about, but all he saw were grey dunes stretching in every direction.

‘It is more like Moribar,’ he countered, scowling as he stood up and reached out a hand to Brother Tiberon, saying: ‘Scopes.’

Tiberon handed a pair of magnoculars to his sergeant, who took them without looking.

Tsu’gan brought the magnoculars up to his eyes and swept them around in a wide arc.

‘De’mas, Typhos – report,’ he ordered through the comm-feed. It was no great surprise that Tsu’gan had selected two sergeants who had previously sworn fealty to him in the event of a leadership challenge to N’keln.

Both came back curtly with negative contacts. Tsu’gan lowered the magnoculars and exhaled his frustration.

Night was drawing in, just as N’keln had predicted. Chill winds were skirling across the ashen desert in low, scudding waves, kicking up swirls of ash that rattled noiselessly against the Salamanders’ greaves. Besides the evening zephyr, the plain was deathly quiet and still.

‘Yes,’ Tsu’gan muttered grimly, ‘just like Moribar.’

‘There,’ Tsu’gan hissed. ‘You see it?’

Iagon peered through the magnoculars. ‘Yes…’

A fine smirr of grainy dark smudged the horizon, barely visible over a high dune. The two Salamanders were lying flat on an ash ridge. Brothers S’tang and Tiberon were either side of them, while the rest of the squad acted as sentry below.

‘What is it?’ asked Iagon, handing the magnoculars back to Tiberon.

‘Smoke.’ Tsu’gan’s tone suggested a predatory grin behind his battle-helm.

It was the first sign of life they’d seen for several hours. On route to the ridge, they’d passed structures that might once have been the edges of cities. Whether ruined by war or merely dilapidation, it was impossible to tell under the ash fall that furred the buildings in grey.

In his marrow, Tsu’gan felt the sign spotted above the dune was significant. Through the rebreather mounted in his helmet, he detected trace amounts of carbon, hydrogen and the acrid stench of sulphur dioxide, carried towards them on the breeze – in other words, oil. It meant several things: that the chitin-beasts were not the only creatures on Scoria, and that these cohabitants had the technological ability to both mine and refine oil; not only that, but use it in a manufacturing process.

Tsu’gan opened up the comm-feed with De’mas and Typhos.

‘Converge on my position,’ he ordered, then switched the link to his own squad. ‘Battle-speed to the edge of that dune, dispersed approach.’

Pushing himself to his feet, Tsu’gan jogged down the ridge and then headed towards the next dune, his battle-brothers behind him in an expansive formation. He drove on hard, eating up the metres despite having to slog through the shifting ash underfoot. Widening his stride when he got to the base of the next incline, Tsu’gan powered up the dune until he had almost crested the rise, then slowed. Battle-signing, the sergeant instructed his brothers to match him. Together, they reached the edge of the second ash ridge and peered over it into a deep basin below.

Tsu’gan’s breath caught in his throat when he realised what sat in the basin. He felt his anger rise.

‘Abomination…’ he growled, taking a firm grip on his bolter.

II

Ash and Iron

The plaintive cries of the wounded bled into one doleful dirge as Dak’ir toured the medical tents, looking for Fugis.

So great was the toll of dead and injured that the tents were arranged in ranks, patrolled by a combat squad of Salamanders to ensure the safety of the wounded. The stench of blood was strong beneath the sodium-lit canvases, pallet-beds stacked side to side and end to end. Medics swathed in ruddied smocks, mouths shrouded by masks, busied themselves between the slim conduits that linked the beds in a lattice. Through a plastek sheet, steam-bolted to one of the larger tents’ struts, was a makeshift operating room, a rudimentary Apothecarion. It made sense that it was here Dak’ir found Fugis.

The half-naked body of Brother Vah’lek lay on a slab before the Apothecary. Blood, still dark and wet, shimmered on Vah’lek’s black flesh. It was exposed where the front of his plastron had been torn away and the bodyglove beneath sheared with a sharp blade. From there his tough skin had been cut open, his ribplate cracked and levered wide to allow access to his internal organs. All effort had been made to save him; but all, sadly, in vain.

Fugis sagged over the cooling corpse of Brother Vah’lek, his head bowed. His gauntleted hands were covered with Astartes blood, and his armour was spattered in it. Medical tools lay about the Apothecary on metal trays. A small canister like a capsule that could be inserted into a centrifuge sat alone from the rest. Fugis’s reductor lay next to it. Dak’ir knew that his dead battle-brother’s progenoids nestled safely within the canister. At least his legacy was assured.

‘He was one of Agatone’s,’ said the Apothecary wearily, dismissing the serfs who had been assisting in the surgery.

‘How many of our brothers have we lost, Fugis?’ Dak’ir asked.

The Apothecary straightened, finding resolve from somewhere, and started to unclasp his blood-caked gauntlets.

‘Six, so far,’ he replied, left gauntlet hitting one of metal trays with a resounding clang as he let it drop. ‘Only one sergeant: Naveem. All killed in the crash.’ Fugis looked up at the other Salamander. ‘It is no way for an Astartes to die, Dak’ir.’

‘They all served the Emperor with honour,’ Dak’ir countered, but his words sounded hollow even to himself.

Fugis gestured to something behind him, and Dak’ir made way as two bulky mortis-servitors lumbered into the room.

‘Another for the caskets,’ intoned the Apothecary. ‘Take our brother reverently, and await me at the pyreum.’

The hulking servitors, bent-backed and all black metal and cowled faces, nodded solemnly before hauling the slab, and Brother Vah’lek, away.

‘Now what is it, brother?’ Fugis asked impatiently, attempting to clean his gauntlets in a burning brazier. ‘There are others who require my ministrations – the human dead and injured number in the hundreds.’

Dak’ir stepped farther into the tent and lowered his voice.

‘Before the crash, when I met you in the corridor, you said you were looking for Brother Tsu’gan. Did you find him?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Fugis answered absently.

‘Why were you looking for him?’

The Apothecary looked up again, his expression stern.

‘What concern is it of yours, sergeant?’

Dak’ir showed his palms plaintively.

‘You appeared to be troubled, that is all.’

Fugis seemed about to say something when he looked down at his gauntlets again. ‘A mistake, nothing more.’

Dak’ir came forward again.

‘You don’t make mistakes,’ he pressed.

Fugis replied in a small voice, little more than a whisper. ‘No one is infallible, Dak’ir.’ The Apothecary pulled his gauntlets back on and the coldness returned. ‘Is that all?’

‘No,’ said Dak’ir flatly, impeding Fugis as he tried to leave. ‘I’m worried about you, brother.’

‘Are you at the beck and call of Elysius then? Has our beneficent Chaplain sent you to gauge my state of mind? Strange, isn’t it, how our roles have reversed.’

‘I come alone, of my own volition, brother,’ said Dak’ir. ‘You are not yourself.’

‘For the last five hours, I have been elbow-deep in the blood of the wounded and dying. Our brothers search in vain amongst the ruins of our ship for survivors. We are Space Marines, Dak’ir! Meant for battle, not this.’ Fugis made an expansive gesture that compassed the gory surroundings. ‘And where is N’keln?’ he continued, gripped by a sudden fervour. ‘Poring over hololiths in his command bunker, with Lok and Praetor, that is where he is.’ Fugis paused, before his anger overtook his good sense again. ‘A captain must be seen! It is his duty to his company to inspire. N’keln cannot do that locked away behind plans and strategium displays.’

Dak’ir’s face became stern, and he adopted a warning tone to his voice.

‘Consider your words, Fugis. Remember, you are one of the Inferno Guard.’

‘There is no Inferno Guard,’ he countered belligerently, though his ire had ebbed. ‘Shen’kar is little more than an adjutant, Vek’shen is long dead and N’keln has yet to appoint a successor to his own vacated post. That leaves only Malicant, and our banner bearer has had precious little reason to unfurl our company colours of late. You yourself refused the mantle of Company Champion.’

‘I had my reasons, brother.’

Fugis scowled, as if the fact meant little to him.

‘This mission was supposed to heal the rift in our company, a righteous cause for us to rally around and draw strength from. I see only the dead and more laurels for the memoria wall.’

‘What has happened to you?’ Dak’ir let his anger be known. ‘Where is your faith, Fugis?’ he snapped.

The Apothecary’s face grew dark as all the life that was left there seemed to leave it.

‘I was forced to kill Naveem today.’

‘It’s not the first time you’ve administered the Emperor’s Peace,’ countered Dak’ir, uncertain where this was going.

‘When I went to extract his progenoid gland, I made a mistake and it was lost. Naveem was lost – forever.’

A brief, mournful silence descended before Fugis went on.

‘And as for my faith… It died, Dak’ir. It was slain along with Kadai.’

Dak’ir was about to speak when he found he had nothing further to say. Wounds ran deep; some deeper than others. Tsu’gan had chosen rage, whereas Fugis had actually given in to despair. No words could counsel him now. Only war and the fires of battle would cleanse the Apothecary’s spirit. As he stepped aside to let his brother pass, Dak’ir hoped they would come soon. But as Fugis left without word, the brother-sergeant feared that the Apothecary might be consumed by them.

Leaving the medical tent shortly after, Dak’ir caught up to Ba’ken who he had asked to meet him outside.

‘You look weary, brother,’ observed the giant Salamander as his sergeant approached.

Ba’ken was standing alone, bereft of his heavy flamer rig. He had left it in one of the prefabricated armoriums, guarded by Brother-Sergeant Omkar and his squad. Duty rotation meant that the Salamanders moved between the search and rescue teams, digging crews and sentry. Ba’ken was preparing to join the crews trying to excavate the Vulkan’s Wrath. He was looking forward to the labour, as the plains were quiet and sentry duty was beginning to numb his mind. He had purposely met Sergeant Agatone on the way.

‘Not as weary as some,’ Dak’ir replied, the truth of the remark hidden.

Ba’ken decided not to press.

‘The sergeants are restless,’ he said, instead. ‘Those not involved in sentry duty are digging out the Vulkan’s Wrath or tearing apart its corridors only to find the dead. We are at company strength, but kicking our heels with no enemy to fight.’ He shook his head ruefully, ‘It is not work for Space Marines.’

Dak’ir smiled emptily.

‘Fugis said much the same thing.’

‘I see.’ Ba’ken was wise enough to realise that it was the Apothecary that his sergeant had been referring to with his earlier remark. He remembered watching him on the gunship platform outside the Vault of Remembrance at Hesiod. In the entire time he’d waited for Dak’ir, Fugis had neither moved nor spoken a word. With characteristic pragmatism, Ba’ken put the thought aside and focused on the matter at hand.

‘Agatone is one of the most loyal Astartes I have ever known,’ he said, changing tack. ‘Besides Lok, he is the longest serving sergeant left in the company. But he lost one of his squad tonight.’

‘Brother Vah’lek, I saw him,’ said Dak’ir. ‘Fugis just sent the body for interment.’

‘So unto the fire do we return…’ intoned Ba’ken. ‘If this mission comes to nothing, Vah’lek’s death will be meaningless,’ he added, and lightly shook his head. ‘Agatone won’t stand for that.’

Dak’ir’s voice was far away as he looked out in the endless grey plains.

‘Then we had best hope for better news soon.’

It was then that N’keln appeared, striding meaningfully with Lok and Praetor in tow. The brother-captain and his entourage strode right past them.

‘Lok, what is happening?’ Dak’ir called out.

The Devastator sergeant turned briefly.

‘We are preparing for battle,’ he said. ‘Brother-Sergeant Tsu’gan has found the enemy.’

A long wall of grey, rusted iron stretched along the nadir of the ash basin. It was festooned with spikes, and grisly totems hung on black chains from battlements crested with spirals of razor wire. Sentry towers punctuated the high, sheer wall that was shored up by angular buttresses. The abutments were fashioned of steel, but torn and jagged-edged to dissuade climbing. Static gun emplacements, tarantula-mounted heavy bolters trailing feeds of ammunition like brass tongues, sat menacingly behind the tower walls. Fat plumes of dense, black smoke coiled from chimney stacks behind these outer defences, hinting at a core of industrial structures within the fortress itself.

Sigils bedecked the walls, too – graven images that made Tsu’gan’s eyes hurt just to look at them. They were icons of the Ruinous Powers, hammered like a penitent spike in the forehead of an unbeliever. Streaked rust eked from where the icon had been pressure-bolted and it made the Salamander think of sacrificial blood. For all Tsu’gan knew, it was.

At the gate – a slab of reinforced iron and adamantium, crossed by interlocking chains, that looked solid enough to withstand a direct hit from a defence laser – was stamped the most prominent of the idolatrous symbols. It boasted the fealty of their Legion and left the identity of the warriors inside the fortress in no doubt.

It was a single armoured skull with the eight-pointed star of Chaos behind it.

‘Iron Warriors, sons of Perturabo,’ hissed Brother-Sergeant De’mas, with obvious rancour.

‘Traitors,’ seethed Typhos, clutching his thunder hammer.

Upon sighting the fortress and contacting his fellow sergeants on the scouting mission, Tsu’gan had then immediately raised N’keln on the comm-feed. Distance and ash-storm interference gave rise to rampant static, but the message was relayed clearly enough.

Enemy sighted. Traitors of the Iron Warriors Legion. Awaiting reinforcements before engaging.

Tsu’gan had wanted to charge down into the basin there and then, to unleash his bolter in a righteous fury. Sound judgement had tempered his zeal. The Iron Warriors were no xenos-breed, ill-equipped to face the might of the Emperor’s holy angels. No: they were once angels themselves, albeit now fallen from a millennia-old betrayal. Peerless siege-masters and fortress-builders, except perhaps for the loyal sons of Rogal Dorn, the Imperial Fists, the Iron Warriors were also fierce fighters who possessed devastating ability at long-range or protracted warfare. An all-out assault into their jaws, without numbers or heavy artillery, would have ended bloodily for the Salamanders. Instead, Tsu’gan chose that most Nocturnean of traits: he chose to wait.

‘The Iron Warriors were at Isstvan, where Vulkan fell,’ added Typhos, with a sudden fervour. ‘It cannot be coincidence. This must be part of the prophecy.’

The three sergeants were atop the ridge, looking down on to the traitors’ territory below. Their squads were nearby, hunkered in groups, surveying the surrounding area for enemy scouts or merely guarding the flanks of their leaders.

De’mas was about to answer, when Tsu’gan cut him off.

‘Settle down, brothers,’ he growled, gauging the fortress defences through a pair of magnoculars. ‘We can assume nothing at this stage.’ Tsu’gan observed the Iron Warrior’s bastion carefully, but didn’t linger too long on any one structure so as to mitigate his discomfort. The gate was the only way in. Perimeter guards patrolled the walled battlements, though the muster was curiously thin. Sentries stood stock-still in the towers, almost like statues, presiding over autocannon emplacements. In one of the towers, a searchlight strafed the ash dunes in lazy sweeps. Moving his gaze farther back, Tsu’gan counted the roofed redoubts that filled the no-man’s land in front of the wall. Again, they seemed quiet and he could detect no movement from within. The fortress itself was angular, but its ambit was bizarrely shaped. Tsu’gan tried but couldn’t seem to pin down how many sides it possessed, the number of defensible walls. He cursed, recognising the warping effects of Chaos. Averting his gaze, he handed the magnoculars back to Tiberon and muttered a quick litany of cleansing.

‘Nothing is certain,’ he asserted to the other two sergeants, when he was done warding himself. ‘Vulkan’s fall, or otherwise, at Isstvan is immaterial.’

‘It is significant,’ argued Typhos, a truculent tone entering his voice.

‘You expect the primarch to come striding out of the dunes, thunder hammer in hand? It is a ten thousand year old myth, brother, and I will hear no more of it,’ Tsu’gan warned.

‘Tu’Shan believes in it,’ pressed the other sergeant. ‘Why else send an entire company on such a spurious mission, if it were not in fact a holy quest!’

‘The Chapter Master does what he must,’ Tsu’gan replied, his temper fraying. ‘He cannot ignore the possibility of the primarch’s return, or even the chance to unearth the facts of his demise. We, brother, are not so shackled that we must believe what our eyes cannot see. This,’ he said, brandishing his bolter, ‘and this,’ he slapped the pauldron of his armour, ‘even this,’ Tsu’gan took up a fistful of ash, ‘are real. That is what I know. Allow blind zeal to guide your path and it will end up leading you to your doom, Typhos,’ he added in a derisive tone.

‘Afford me some respect,’ the other sergeant hissed through gritted teeth. ‘We are of equal rank.’

‘Out here on these dunes,’ Tsu’gan told him, ‘I outstrip your “equal rank”.’

A brief, charged silence descended, but in the end Typhos was brow-beaten into submission.

Perhaps, Tsu’gan considered, it was not wise to aggravate another sergeant when he desired to impeach the captain of the company, especially one that had previously sworn his support. But I need to demonstrate strength, thought Tsu’gan, and knew by asserting his will he had only cemented Typhos’s allegiance.

‘For siege-specialists, it is a poor location to build a bastion,’ remarked De’mas, ignoring the slight altercation. ‘Within the basin, the view it commands is restricted.’

During the Heresy, Tsu’gan knew the Iron Warriors had fortresses across all the segmentums of the galaxy. Often these bastions were isolated, single-squad outposts. Despite the paucity of troops, he also knew these bastions were almost impregnable. This supreme defensibility was a result of Iron Warrior tenacity, but it also depended on where the Legion chose to raise its walls. De’mas was right – the fortress before them had no vantage, no high ground to observe the approach of an enemy. It was counter-intuitive towards siege strategy. But then perhaps holding ground was not the traitors’ main concern.

‘They built it here to hide it,’ Tsu’gan realised, a thin smile splitting his face at his deduction. ‘Anywhere else would be too conspicuous.’

‘To what end?’ asked Typhos. ‘What could the traitors have to hide here, on this backwater?’

Tsu’gan’s expression hardened, as he looped his bolter around his pauldron on its strap.

‘I intend to find out,’ he said, and made his way back down to the base of the ridge.

Tsu’gan’s battle-brothers surrounded him as he outlined his plan. With a combat knife, he drew a rough sketch of the fortress in the hardened ash.

‘That looks like an assault strategy,’ muttered De’mas, standing at Tsu’gan’s shoulder.

‘It is,’ said Tsu’gan curtly.

‘I assume I don’t need to remind you, brother, that the Iron Warriors are siege-experts in both attack and defence?’

‘You do not.’

Typhos scoffed. ‘Then you’ll also know that such an assault with thirty men and negligible heavy guns is–’

‘Suicide,’ Tsu’gan concluded for him, as he looked Typhos in the eye. ‘Yes, I am aware of that too, which is why we are attacking the redoubts and not the walls, brother-sergeant.’

‘Explain.’ Brother-Sergeant De’mas’s interest was apparently piqued.

‘Four combat squads,’ Tsu’gan began, sketching arrows of approach in the dust, ‘one per redoubt. Blades and hammers only, flamers standing by as backup. Tactic is silent and stealthy. We enter the redoubts undetected, kill any sentries we find and then occupy their positions. There we will wait until Brother N’keln arrives and then launch a surprise attack, storming the gate and rigging diversionary charges.’

‘You mentioned four combat squads?’ voiced Typhos.

Tsu’gan nodded, fixing the sergeant with a stony glare.

‘I did. You will stay behind in command of our rearguard. You are tasked with apprising the brother-captain of the situation upon his arrival.’ Tsu’gan moved his gaze to encompass the entire force, ‘All long-range heavy weapons will report to Brother-Sergeant Typhos. You will be our support in the unlikely event of our discovery. De’mas,’ he added, switching his attention to the other sergeant. ‘Gather the ten best stealthers from yours and Typhos’s squads then join me and the rest of my men at the eastern side of the ridge-base.’

Tsu’gan marched away, leaving Typhos no time to protest and only Brother M’lek with his multi-melta in the brother-sergeant’s charge. The rest of his squad followed him.

De’mas made his acquisitions quickly and quietly. The rearguard, then, would be an amalgam of the three squads. It was unconventional, but it also demonstrated the strategic flexibility of Tactical squads and the reason why the Astartes were warriors supreme.

The Salamander assault force divided into four five-man squads wordlessly. Battle-sign between each of the squad-leaders ensured total clarity and efficiency as the Astartes made their way around the lip of the vast dune and approached the enemy bastion from an oblique angle. Rubbing ash onto their battle-plate, even smothering their blades so a glint of light would not betray them, the Salamanders moved like invisible phantoms across the dark plain. Even the burning fire in their eyes was extinguished, hidden by battle-helm lenses set to maximum opacity like one-way glass in an interrogation chamber.

Traversing the open dunes in a crouching run, his widely-dispersed squad slowly converging, Tsu’gan reached the edge of the first redoubt. Even in the dark, his keen eyes picked out the silhouettes of sentries lurking within. The sergeant took care to remain out of their direct eye line, his movements low and fluid so as not to arouse suspicion. The Iron Warriors had, up to that point, not moved, so he assumed his advance had gone undetected.

Creeping around the edge of the redoubt, using its bulk to hide his position from the lofty walls of the fortress several hundred metres back, he listened intently.

Only the wind and the faint clank of booted feet on the battlements above came back at him.

Tsu’gan edged further, sliding the tarnished blade of his close combat weapon from its sheath in preparation for the kill. The redoubt wasn’t gated at the back and could be accessed freely through an open doorway in its rear wall.

That was good. It would make creeping behind the sentry that much easier. He considered briefly how it might affront the martial pride of some Chapters to sneak up on an enemy in this way. The Salamanders, though, had always been pragmatic in the ways of war. They believed its fires could cleanse the soul and purify the spirit, but they also adhered to the end justifying the means, and victory at all costs.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tsu’gan saw more dark phantoms sweeping silently through the night as the other combat squads moved into position. His own cadre of warriors arrived at his back. Brother Lazarus was foremost amongst them and nodded to indicate his readiness. S’tang was right behind him. His battle-helm, like his brothers’, was swathed in camouflaging ash. Honorious and Tiberon guarded the entrance, ensuring no enemy escaped. Silently, the other three Salamanders entered the redoubt.

Two sentries waited within, Iron Warriors both, with their backs to them. S’tang would hold back, only intervening if needed. The traitors were standing stock-still, surveying the dark dunes beyond the redoubt.

Death is upon you, brothers, Tsu’gan thought bitterly, noticing a battered but razor-edged storm shield leaning against the wall inside. His sheathed his blade silently, deciding not to sully the weapon with traitor’s blood, and took up the shield.

Lazarus was poised to strike, his jagged spatha held in a reverse grip so he could strike downwards, aiming for the slim gap between gorget and cuirass.

Tsu’gan was ready too, and battle-signed the order to attack.

He leapt forwards, resisting the urge to roar a battle cry, and battered the Iron Warrior to the ground with a fierce, two-handed smash from the shield. The momentum of the strike carried Tsu’gan forwards. He dived on the prone traitor, pinning his arms with his knees and ramming the razor-edge of the shield into the Iron Warrior’s neck, cutting off his head.

He turned to Lazarus. The Salamander was withdrawing his blade and wiping off the blood, which seemed oddly sparse. Tsu’gan put it down to the low light impeding his vision, but when he looked at his dead sentry he knew that something wasn’t right.

There was almost no blood.

He had severed the bastard’s neck; there should be blood – lots of it. Yet, there was almost none. Tsu’gan tossed the shield aside and lifted up the sentry’s decapitated head, inspecting the wound. It was dark and viscous, but didn’t flow. The blood was clotted. The Iron Warriors had been dead before they’d even entered the redoubt.

‘The guards were already dead,’ he hissed into the comm-feed, patching in all combat squads and breaking vox silence.

A slew of similar reports came from the other four assault groups. Each had entered their respective redoubt undetected and killed the sentries inside, only to discover the enemy was deceased.

Tsu’gan rasped a reply.

‘Go to bolters.’ The brother-sergeant scanned the dark through the redoubt’s firing slit and then the open doorway. Inwardly, he cursed. The Iron Warriors had drawn them in like neophytes, exposed their position. Racking his bolter’s slide, preparing to unleash death if he was to meet his end, he crouched down so he presented a smaller target. Then he waited.

Several minutes passed in the silent blackness. No assassins came creeping from the dark; no kill-teams closed the elaborate trap they had set.

The expected counter-attack did not materialise, was not going to materialise. For some unknown reason, the Iron Warriors had manned their redoubts with the dead.

‘They weren’t trying to lure us,’ Tsu’gan realised, keeping his voice low. ‘They were deterrents.’

‘Sergeant?’ Brother Lazarus hissed.

Tsu’gan waved away the question. He had no answer to it. Yet.

‘We hold here,’ he said. ‘We wait.’

Chapter Seven

I

Besieged

Billowing ash clouds were dissipating slowly on the grey horizon. It was the last evidence of N’keln’s muster from the Salamanders’ encampment. Brother Argos had managed to release the land vehicles from the hold of the Vulkan’s Wrath. N’keln had taken the Land Raider, Fire Anvil, with the Firedrakes, his Inferno Guard and Chaplain Elysius aboard. Even Fugis made the journey. The Apothecary had considered staying behind to tend the wounded, but his place was by N’keln’s side and his brothers would likely need him in the coming battle against the Iron Warriors, so he had ventured back to the front line for the first time since Stratos.

The rest of the Salamanders’ vehicles comprised four Rhino APCs that conveyed all three squads of Devastators and Brother-Sergeant Clovius’s Tactical squad. The captain had selected his task force according to firepower. He intended to breach the fortress walls at distance, rather than storm them. Devastators were well suited to that task, and since Clovius boasted both missile launcher and plasma gun in his ranks, he was an ideal fourth squad choice and occupied the remaining Rhino.

Vargo and his Assault squad were the final element to the task force. His troops would make their way on foot, using bursts from their jump packs to keep pace. Once the walls were breached, Brother-Sergeant Vargo and his troops could quickly exploit the gap.

Dak’ir was left back to maintain vigil over the encampment. Though he would rather have joined the task force, he knew his duty and respected the will of his captain. The other squads continued with their rotational duties of excavating the Vulkan’s Wrath, guarding the medical tents and searching for survivors. Naveem’s old squad spent most of its time within the battered confines of the ship, opening up sealed areas and exhuming the dead from their metal, airlocked tombs. Brother Gannon had taken temporary charge, though he was untested as a sergeant. Agatone was content to remain behind. There were the observances of ritual cremation to be conducted for Vah’lek, and he was keen to be present for them.

These thoughts tumbled through Dak’ir’s mind like flakes of ash drifting from the far off peaks of Scoria’s volcanoes. As he stared into the grey void, the vista before him seemed to blend and shift…

…once distant mountains loomed suddenly large and immediate, arching over Dak’ir’s head like crooked fingers until they touched and formed a canopy of rock. Ash, so ubiquitous before, drained away as if escaping through the cracks of the world to flee certain doom, and left solid rock beneath Dak’ir’s feet. He was in a cave. It reminded him of Ignea. A tunnel led down, down into the heart of Scoria where promised fire lurked, flickering against the walls like dancing, red spectres. They took him deep, these imagined apparitions, to the nadir of the earth where lava ran thick in streams and shimmered with lustrous heat. Pools of liquid fire threw murky, joyless light that seemed to cling and conspire instead of illuminate. And there, dwelling within a vast cavern and surrounded by pits of flame like balefires, the dragon uncoiled. Scales shimmered like spilled blood in the lava-light, its sulphurous breath overwhelming the reek of the mountain.

Dak’ir was standing across from it. A tall pike was gripped in his gauntlet, and the lake of fire separated them. Hunter and beast eyed each other across the flaming gulf that ignited in empathy for their mutual anger.

‘You are my captain’s slayer.’ The voice sounded distant and strange to him, but Dak’ir knew it as his own. It was a much a promise as an accusation.

Rage lent strength to his body that he didn’t know he possessed, as Dak’ir leapt across the massive lake of fire to land crouched on the other side.

Challenge given and accepted, the dragon came at him, a bestial roar ripping from a fanged mouth wreathed in black fire.

Dak’ir cried out for Vulkan, and the primarch’s vigour steeled him. As the beast came on, its footfalls shedding rock and cracking stone, Dak’ir took the pike and drove it like a lance into the dragon’s belly. It screeched and the cave shook. It was a cry so full of wrath and agony that it levelled mountains and opened up the roof to a grey sky that was steadily turning red.

Clawing, rending deep grooves into the stone, the dragon struggled. Dak’ir pushed. He drove it to the lake of fire, heaved it flailing over the edge and let it burn as the heat rose up to consume it.

The dragon died, and in the haze and smoke of its conflagration it changed to become a man. His armour was red like scale, his mouth was fanged like a maw and he wore the defiled livery of a former angel who had turned his back on duty and loyalty, to embrace corruption. The body broke away, naught but bones and ash, a frugal meal for the lake of fire. Then the world broke away with it. A great tremor wracked the earth and Scoria split. Columns of fire erupted like bursts of incendiary exploding from under the ash, and the mountain was swallowed beneath the earth. Dak’ir witnessed a world die, consumed by itself. Then the fire came to him, and he was burning too…

‘I sense doubt in you.’

Arrested suddenly from the dream, Dak’ir flinched. He kept the reaction small, though, and barely noticeable. Until that moment, he had thought he was alone.

‘It’s not doubt, Brother-Librarian,’ he replied coolly, shrugging off the remnants of his vision as Pyriel came to stand beside him.

They were a hundred metres or so from the edge of the encampment, looking out across the dunes past the relentlessly pacing Thunderfire cannons and the hidden grenade belt beyond them. ‘More a lack of resolution. Something I can sense, but beyond my reach.’

It wasn’t a lie. The instinct had been there throughout the dream, just subdued by his subconscious mind.

‘That there is something here, beneath the ash, that we are just not seeing,’ stated the Librarian.

‘Yes,’ said Dak’ir, looking for him to extrapolate, uncertain why he himself was so surprised at Pyriel’s prescience. The Librarian kept his gaze on the horizon, inscrutable as rock.

In the absence of further explanation, Dak’ir decided to go on.

‘Ever since we made landfall, after the crash, I felt as if I was… being watched.’

Now Pyriel turned to regard him. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Not the ash creatures that attacked us,’ Dak’ir explained. ‘Not even an enemy as such, just something… else.’

‘I have felt it, too,’ admitted the Librarian, ‘A glimpse of a consciousness unknown to me. It is not the mind of a xenos that I feel. Nor is it the taint of Chaos exhibited by the traitors Brother Tsu’gan has found. It is, as you say, “else”.’

The Librarian stared at Dak’ir a little longer, before turning back. ‘Look out there,’ he said, gesturing to the grey horizon. Dak’ir did as he was told. ‘What do you see?’

Dak’ir opened his mouth to speak, when Pyriel raised a hand to stop him.

‘Think carefully,’ he advised. ‘Not what there is, but what you see.’

Dak’ir readjusted and looked hard. All he saw was ash and spires of distant rock crested by dark clouds, and a grey horizon smudged with umber and red where the volcanoes vented.

‘I see…’ he began, but stopped himself to truly open his eyes. ‘I see Nocturne.’

Pyriel nodded. It was a small movement, near undetectable, but expressed his satisfaction elegantly.

‘That is what I see also. Beneath the layers of ash there is rock. The volcanoes have been venting for so long and so continuously that the grey flakes have made this place a grey world, with darkling skies, bereft of life. The oceans, for I believe the deep basins in the ash deserts were once large water masses, dried up long ago. Underground tributaries might still exist, but I doubt they’re enough to support significant life. Scoria, I suspect, was once much like Nocturne, only more advanced in its geological cycle.’ Pyriel stooped and placed a hand against the ground. He beckoned Dak’ir to do the same.

‘You feel that?’ the Librarian asked, closing his eyes, shutting out smell and sound, focusing purely on touch.

Dak’ir nodded, though he had no way of knowing if the Librarian had seen or realised his affirmation. There was a tremor running through the earth, faint but insistent like a pulsing vein.

‘Those are the last heartbeats of a dying world, brother.’

Dak’ir’s eyes snapped open and he stood. The recent vision came back at him, and he wondered briefly if somehow Pyriel had seen it, had looked into his mind and perceived his very dreams.

‘What are you saying, Librarian, that Nocturne will suffer the same fate?’ The question came across more petulantly than he would have wanted.

‘All worlds end, Dak’ir,’ Pyriel answered pragmatically. ‘Nocturne’s demise might be millennia from now, it might only be a matter of centuries. I wonder if our progenitor brought us here to see something of our home world’s fate.’ His eyes flashed with cerulean fire. ‘Is that what you’ve seen, brother?’

Seismic thunder erupted from the crash site before Dak’ir had to answer. Both Space Marines, even several hundred metres from the quake, were staggered by it. Then they were running, heading for the swathes of ash pluming into the air as the Vulkan’s Wrath shifted and sank. A hundred metres from the ship and the Salamanders were engulfed by a grey cloud that struck their power armour in a gritty wave.

Dak’ir had rammed on his battle-helm, snapping on his luminator as he cycled through the optical spectra to best penetrate the murky explosion of ash. Pyriel needed no such augmentation. His eyes blazed like blue beacons in the darkness, more piercing that any lume-lamp.

‘There,’ he said, barely raising his voice and pointing towards the dark shape of the strike cruiser’s hull. Dak’ir heard him perfectly, and saw vague silhouettes through the ash storm. Some were moving about, others lay huddled with their heads down.

‘Ba’ken, report,’ the sergeant shouted into the comm-feed.

Crackling static returned for a time, but as the billowing grey wave began to disperse, the bulky trooper’s voice came back.

‘A seismic shift, brother-sergeant. The entire ship moved with it.’

‘Casualties?’

‘Just minor injuries. I pulled back the excavation crews when I felt the vessel beginning to move.’ There was a pause, as if Ba’ken was gauging what he should say next. ‘You’re not going to believe what it’s shaken loose.’

The grey dust had all but cleared, settling as a veneer across the plains as if it had never been disturbed, though the serfs bore the evidence of it on their overalls as did the Salamanders on their armour. The silhouettes through the ash proved to be Ba’ken and one of the excavation crews. Coughing and spluttering, the humans lay on their backs and gasped for air. Servitors stood alongside them, impassive and untroubled. Ba’ken left them and went to meet Dak’ir and Pyriel as they approached him.

He was stripped out of his armour and wearing labour fatigues. Sweat-dappled muscles were still bunched from his efforts, and he carried a flat-bladed shovel in one hand.

‘Brothers,’ he said, snapping a quick salute across his broad, black chest.

‘Just like being back home, eh, Ba’ken?’ said Dak’ir.

‘Aye, sir. It puts me in mind of the rock harvest after the Time of Trial. Though it’s usually snow and ice, not ash, that I’m digging through.’

‘Show me what you’ve found,’ ordered the sergeant.

Ba’ken led them to where the Vulkan’s Wrath had clearly shifted during the geological event. A deep, seemingly fathomless chasm had formed between the edge of the strike cruiser’s hull and the surface of the ash plain. Languid drifts, motes of grey, trickled into it and were quickly lost from sight in the darkness. The chasm was narrow, but not so acute that a warrior in power armour couldn’t squeeze down it.

‘I can feel heat,’ said Pyriel, peering over the edge into the darkness. ‘And the consciousness I experienced earlier, it is stronger here.’

‘You think there is something down there, brother?’ asked Dak’ir, moving to stand alongside him.

‘Besides the chitin-beasts? Yes, I’m certain of it.’

‘How deep do you think it is?’ Ba’ken leaned over to get a better look but the chasm was only lit by the ambient light for about fifty metres before the blackness claimed it. Even Astartes eyesight couldn’t penetrate much further. If Pyriel had any better knowledge, he was keeping it to himself.

‘It could run to the core of Scoria for all we know,’ Dak’ir replied. ‘Whatever the case, I mean to find out.’ He turned to Ba’ken. ‘Don your armour, brother, and meet us back here. I want to know what lurks in the darkness beneath our feet. Perhaps it will provide some answers as to why we are here.’

The lumbering forms of a vehicle convoy ground to a halt at the peak of the ridge. Exhaust fumes pluming smoke, their engines growled like war-hounds straining at the leash. N’keln and his warriors had arrived.

Tsu’gan watched them from the redoubt, his view enhanced through the magnoculars. The sergeant had switched to night-vision, rendering the image before him into a series of lurid, hazy greens. Embarkation ramps in the Land Raider and Rhinos slammed down in unison, the squads within debussing as one coherent unit. Tsu’gan watched the Salamanders deploy in a firing line along the ridge, and cursed.

‘Close up,’ he hissed, inwardly bemoaning N’keln’s apparent over-caution. ‘Your guns are outside effective range.’

A few seconds lapsed before the firing began. Iridescent beams from the multi-meltas stabbed into the gloom in lances of red-hot fury. Missiles spiralled from the ridge, buoyed along on twisting contrails of grey smoke. Gun chatter erupted from the heavy bolters, pintle mounts and secondary arms. The heavy chug-chank, chug-chank of the Fire Anvil’s forward-mounted assault cannon joined it, building to a high-pitched whirr as it achieved maximum fire-rate. Blistering and bright, the storm of shells and lashing beams torn apart the darkness like a host of flares.

Throughout the fusillade, the Iron Warriors hunkered down. Unwilling to commit themselves, they stayed out of sight, content to let the fortress walls weather the assault.

The barrage persisted for almost three minutes before N’keln, a distant figure in the lee of the Land Raider’s rear access hatch, ordered a halt to allow the firing smoke to clear. It revealed little: just patches of scorched metal and the odd ineffectual impact crater. No breaches, no dead. The gate was still intact – the assault had failed.

‘Vulkan’s teeth, bring them forward!’ snarled Tsu’gan, unwilling to vox in case the Iron Warriors were monitoring transmissions, overheard him and discovered his guerrilla force staked out in the redoubts.

Even in the lull, the traitors didn’t act. Only when N’keln gave the order to withdraw and re-advance did the Iron Warriors show their strategy.

Seemingly innocuous at first, a single hunter-killer missile emerged from behind the battlements on an automated weapons platform. Escaping incendiary choomed loudly as the missile’s booster ignited and coiled off towards its intended target at speed. It fell short of the reforming Salamanders by several metres and for a moment Tsu’gan thought its homing beacon must be out. That was until a chain of explosions tore across the ash ridge from a field of hidden incendiaries.

Grimacing at the sudden burst of fire, Tsu’gan turned away. He adjusted quickly and when he looked back he saw the ridge collapsing under its own weight, the foundations pulverised in a single blast of explosives. Cries echoed from the gloom as the Salamanders foundered in it. The ground was disintegrating beneath them and their bulky power armour was dragging Tsu’gan’s battle-brothers along with it. Flailing and cursing, they tumbled down the diminishing ridge, barely coming to rest before a raft of tracer lights knifed into the dark and illuminated the fallen Salamanders. Sporadic bolter fire replied but it merely pranged off the armoured carapace of automated defence guns churning into position across the length of the wall. Chugging thunder erupted from above Tsu’gan as heavy bolter and autocannon emplacements started to eat through their ammunition belts.

Crying out in rage and anguish, Tsu’gan saw three of his battle-brothers threaded by munitions fire. Power armour was tough; tough enough to withstand such weapons as these, but the sheer rate of shells increased their potency threefold.

Unfortunately, in Tsu’gan’s eyes at least, N’keln had not been one of those caught in the ash slide. Barking swift commands from what was left of the ridge peak, he attempted to restore some coherency to his forces. Pinned down in the basin, though, the stricken Salamanders were getting slaughtered.

‘Use the transports as armoured cover,’ Tsu’gan implored. ‘Bring them down into the basin. Our brothers are dying, damn you!’

Igniting columns of smoke spilled out across the ridge as Vargo’s Assault squad took to the air. It was an act of desperation, an attempt to alleviate the relentless volley targeting the warriors in the basin and force the enemy to split its fire.

Vargo landed a few metres short of the wall, ahead of the redoubts, just as Tsu’gan knew he would. Chainswords whirring, primed melt bombs winking in their mag-locks, the Assault squad made ready to jump again.

Chained detonations erupted down the length of the wall, engulfing Vargo and his squad in exploding frag. It was a first-strike deterrent, designed to stun and weaken an impatient attacker who sought to sack the bastion in his first foray. Smoke and flame died away to reveal the casualties of that ill-conceived strategy. Brother-Sergeant Vargo was on his feet but dazed, his armour blackened and cracked at the edges. Three of the Assault squad were down, unmoving. Four more carried obvious injuries, limping and cradling arms as they tried to drag their prone brothers next to the wall and outside the firing arcs of the sentry guns stitching lines of ammunition into the area where they had faltered. Jump packs looked shot to pieces, their turbines shredded or full of frag.

Tsu’gan was ready to abandon his post, when at last the vehicles came roaring down the half-flattened slope.

‘Hellfire,’ he snarled into the comm-feed, the order reaching all four combat squads. ‘Execute!’

Brother S’tang hammered the switch on a palm-sized detonator taken from his combat-rig and flung himself to the ground along with his squad.

Explosions rippled across the edge of the redoubts, sending thick clods of dirt spitting high into the air amidst clouds of smoke and flame.

The Salamander assault force had been prepared for this, thanks to the careful instruction of Brother-Sergeant Typhos. Using it as a distraction, the beleaguered Space Marines managed to regroup.

Tsu’gan was first out of the redoubt. Debris from his grenade line was still falling as he raced towards the wall, bolter blazing. Behind him, the mobile armour of the vehicles had slewed into position and was taking fire. Another missile-launcher choomed overhead and one of the Rhinos went up in a ball of flame, flipped onto its back and burning. Astartes crawled out of the wreckage, using what was left of the hull for cover as the inevitable shots rained down at them from the walls.

‘Combine fire!’ Tsu’gan cried, skidding to a halt and dropping to one knee to steady his aim. Through his bolter sight he found an autocannon sentry gun, its muzzle lit by barking munitions. It jolted and collapsed as Tsu’gan brought his wrath to bear, Brothers Lazarus and S’tang adding to the fusillade that destroyed it.

Once the killing was done, Tsu’gan ordered the squad to move on, making it as hard as possible for the automated guns to track them. ‘Advance!’ he yelled. ‘We have their attention now.’

Tiberon was picked off by an accurate bolter shot. It took him through the joint at his knee, crippling the Salamander instantly.

‘S’tang,’ said Tsu’gan as he saw Tiberon fall, ‘to your brother.’

S’tang obeyed at once, jinking as he doubled back the short distance to Tiberon and dragged him into the cover of a crater cut by the grenade line.

Whickering fire came down at Tsu’gan and the other combat squads in earnest, as the Iron Warriors realised the more immediate threat in their midst. Tsu’gan didn’t have time to take out another sentry gun before he was forced to move on lest the remote weapons platforms draw a bead and shred him and his squad.

The sound of rumbling adamantium offered a solution as the Fire Anvil, using the momentum from the ridge ramp, bulldozed through the recently vacated redoubts, smashing them into rubble and slewing to a stop in front of the brother-sergeant.

The other combat squads took the initiative and rallied to the formidable assault tank. A missile whooshed overhead and struck the Land Raider’s roof, spilling fire and shell debris like rain. Smoke dispersed quickly. The Fire Anvil was left unscathed and started to rotate on its tracks, one side locked whilst the other churned it into position.

‘Flamers!’ yelled Tsu’gan as he realised what was coming next.

Brother Honorious and the other special weapons troopers came forwards, bodies pressed against the Land Raider’s rear armour.

‘Cleanse and burn!’ Tsu’gan roared as the Fire Anvil’s flamestorm cannons erupted gloriously. At the same time, Honorious and his brothers stepped from behind the Redeemer-pattern battle tank and added their own fire to the conflagration.

Roaring promethium scathed the walls, spilling through murder holes and firing slits, invasive and consuming. Muffled cries rewarded the blitz attack, and Tsu’gan smiled. The traitors were burning.

The rear embarkation ramp of the Land Raider slammed down and out stomped Veteran Sergeant Praetor and his Firedrakes in full Terminator armour, wielding crackling thunder hammers and storm shields.

All around them, the Salamander heavy weapons had been revivified. Heavy bolters raked the ramparts, splitting sentry guns apart in showers of metal; multi-meltas drawn up to lethal range burned into the walls, stripping away ceramite; missiles zoned in on the towers themselves, blasting the stoic bodies within to fragments.

‘Concentrate fire on the wall guards,’ bellowed Tsu’gan into the comm-feed, tactical-band, so it reached all fighting forces. Advancing upon the fortress, the brother-sergeant had realised something that had been staring him in the face since the redoubts.

‘My lords,’ he said, turning to acknowledge the Firedrakes.

‘I am at your disposal, brother-sergeant,’ boomed Praetor, his squad behind him like silent green sentinels.

‘Break the gate and we break this siege,’ Tsu’gan told him. He released a melta-bomb where he’d mag-locked it to his battle harness. Sergeant De’mas did the same, whilst some of their battle-brothers palmed krak grenades. ‘There’s enough explosive here to rip down three gates,’ Tsu’gan boasted, eyeing the stretch of open ground between the Land Raider and the wall. ‘I just need you to get me there and finish the job.’

Praetor nodded, though whether he saw Tsu’gan’s plan or simply trusted him implicitly, the brother-sergeant didn’t know.

Another missile strike lit up the flank of Fire Anvil this time, even as the flamestorm cannons continued to spew burning death from their battle-scorched maws.

‘We advance under the blaze.’ Tsu’gan had to bellow to be heard.

‘Into the fires of battle then, brother…’ The voice came from the shadowy confines of the Land Raider. It was harsh and filled with steel. Chaplain Elysius emerged into the half-light, though it was as if the gloom of the tank’s hold clung to him like a shroud. The grinning skull mask of his battle-helm made him macabrely jocund.

‘Unto the anvil of war,’ Tsu’gan concluded. ‘I am honoured, Brother-Chaplain.’

Elysius swung his crozius arcanum loose from its strap and impelled its power field into a vivid coruscation. He bade Tsu’gan go on.

The brother-sergeant turned back to Praetor. ‘Can you make a mobile shield wall, brother?’

Praetor’s loud laughter sounded like thunder. With well-executed precision, he and the Firedrakes formed a barrier wall with their storm shields, warding the front and flanks of Tsu’gan, De’mas and seven other battle-brothers. Elysius stepped outside of the protective cordon.

‘Shoulder them, brothers,’ Elysius bellowed with stentorian conviction. ‘The Emperor and the will of Vulkan is my shield.’

Praetor wasted no further time. ‘Forward, assault pattern Aegis,’ he boomed, and the Firedrakes began to move.

Heavy weapons fire hammered against the Terminators and their upraised storm shields, but fell away harmlessly against their locked defence. Elysius strode alongside them, matching their ponderous pace, hurling canticles of faith and the litanies of the forge at the traitors like barbed spears.

‘…and lo, upon the anvil did Vulkan smash the heretics, his hammer like a comet that falleth from heaven. Into the blood of Mount Deathfire are they consumed…’

Rosarius field flickering with every blow, the Chaplain did not once relent.

‘…quail, base traitors, and receive the promised price of your perfidy. Burn, malfeasants, burn! Flayed in fire before the Emperor’s glory!’

A rattling chorus of staccato gunfire joined Elysius’s diatribes and was heard by Tsu’gan from within the protective shell of the Firedrakes’ storm shields. Four Terminators formed the brunt of the armoured wall, shields locked in a seamless barrier. The energy fields generated by the shields crackled and spat with their joining, throwing off azure sparks and the reek of ozone. Two further Firedrakes guarded each flank, their shields held up and combined to configure a makeshift roof with the storm shields of two of their brothers that bisected the front line of four and acted as the spine of the formation.

The power-armoured Salamanders, crouched low and clutching their grenades, were interspersed between them, five Space Marines either side of the ‘spine’, each led by a sergeant with a Terminator at both flanks.

Tsu’gan counted fifteen steps, the weapons fire intensifying with every one. Outside his mobile redoubt of reinforced ceramite, he heard the shuddering reports of the Salamanders’ guns and felt the heat from the venting flamers blazing overhead.

‘…and slay the enemies of the Imperium with bolt and blade…’ Elysius continued. His voice, normally cold like iron, burned with a zealot’s passion now. The caustic rhetoric was amplified by the vox-emitters in his battle-helm, and his fiery sermons rang with the clarity and force of a loud hailer.

‘…commit their vile forms to the flames of purgation…’

Ten more steps.

‘…hurl the wretched into the abyss to be torn asunder by claws of iniquity…’

Five more.

‘…and the tainted shall burn within the pit, smote from the earth…’

Three.

‘Heed me traitors and tremble!’

The gate was before them.

Praetor’s shield wall broke. An aperture in the barrier of ceramite was forged to allow Tsu’gan and his commandoes through. The line divided into two, storm shields facing outwards, the Terminators drawing as much fire as they could from the remote guns.

Hunter-killers emerged from concealed firing slits, triggered by proximity. De’mas took out one, the incendiary in the rocket exploding in the wall, spitting out debris like iron hail. The other released; its target, the Chaplain who had stalked forwards to join his brothers at the gate.

Elysius disappeared amidst a cloud of fire and shrapnel. Tsu’gan fully expected him to be dead but when the dust cleared the Chaplain was down on his knee but very much alive, his Rosarius field flickering intermittently around him. The hunter-killer had retracted, only to return seconds later with a fresh payload.

‘Dare bend me to my knee, craven tool of heresy,’ spat Elysius, standing straight. ‘With the fury of Prometheus, I smite thee!’ His bolt pistol roared with the voice of damnation and the hunter-killer was no more.

Returning to the squad outside the gates, the Chaplain unlocked his own melta-bomb from his belt.

‘Let the tainted be purged,’ he intoned, tendrils of smoke rising off his armour from where the missile blast had breached his shield of faith.

Standing before the gate, Tsu’gan felt the baleful influence exuding from its central icon as tangible as heat. It was raw defiance and aggression, promised destruction and bloody threats. Brother-Chaplain Elysius smothered it with his mere presence, though it was an act of will to defy the malignity imbued within the symbol of iron. Tsu’gan and his brothers were emboldened by the Chaplain’s example, drawing on their own inner belief to overcome the terrible gate. One conviction was left in their minds: the fortress must fall.

Together, the Salamanders attached their grenades and bombs, priming the charges for a three-second delay before retreating back behind the Terminators and their storm shields as they closed around them again.

The blast wave was like a baptism. Tsu’gan revelled in it washing over him and began to laugh, deep-bellied and loud.

‘What is so amusing, brother?’ asked Sergeant De’mas, the incendiary vapours dissipating from around the gate.

Tsu’gan’s eyes burned like hellfires behind his battle-helm, aglow despite the darkness of his lenses.

‘War at last, brother,’ he intoned. ‘Only war.’

Though, incredibly, the gate still stood, it was bent and crippled. Tsu’gan could see the inner fortress beyond it through fist-wide cracks as the Terminators parted slightly.

‘Are you ready to face the traitor garrison, brother?’ bellowed Praetor, the wild glint of anticipation in his eyes.

Tsu’gan matched it, grinning ferally behind his battle-helm. ‘It’s a small matter. But let us see, lord Firedrake.’

Praetor smiled, a thin fissure cracking the hard stone of his countenance, and brandished his thunder hammer.

‘Bring it down!’ he roared, and the Terminators before the gate struck as one.

II

Prisoners

‘I will lead,’ asserted Dak’ir as he tested the weight of the steel cable spooling from the winch-rig. One of the Salamanders Techmarines had set up the climbing device and each of the six Fire-born standing at the threshold of the chasm that had opened next to the Vulkan’s Wrath was hooked to it. Threading the thick cable through loops on their battle harnesses, each Salamander made ready for a descent into the unknown.

Ba’ken had returned quickly after his sergeant had dismissed him to re-armour. He carried the weighty rig of his heavy flamer upon his back, insisting that the bulky weapon would fit through the narrow crevice that led into the depths of Scoria. Brother Emek joined him, having left the remaining medical operations to the human chirurgeons of the strike cruiser. His surgeon-craft was limited to field wounds; he didn’t possess the necessary skill to conduct complex procedures. In any case, a Space Marine’s time was better spent than languishing amidst the injured and dying.

Brothers Apion and Romulus were also from Dak’ir’s squad, and hand-picked by the sergeant for their battle experience. The final place in the small expeditionary team went to Pyriel. The Librarian would follow after Dak’ir, tracking the psychic thread he had discerned emanating from below like a bloodhound.

‘Luminators on. Vox-silence until we reach the bottom and know what we’re dealing with,’ Dak’ir ordered, the lume-lamp attached to his battle-helm stabbing into the blackness of the chasm below. Taking the strain of the cable, he plunged into stygian darkness.

Sensors in his battle-helm attenuated to the planet’s atmospheric conditions registered a slight increase in temperature as Dak’ir descended. The reading glowed coldly on the inside of his lens display. Deafening silence filled the narrow space, only broken by the dull drone of the spooling winch-rig above. Sharp crags from the chasm’s internal wall scraped against Dak’ir’s armour. Gusts of steam, vented from the strike cruiser’s partially submerged lower decks, passed over him and filmed his battle-plate with condensation. Soon, the solid adamantium of the ship’s outer armour gave way to abject darkness. It was like delving into the bowels of an otherworld, one that fell away endlessly.

After an hour of painstakingly slow descent, Dak’ir’s lume-lamp threw an oval of light that touched solid ground. Alighting at the bottom of the chasm at last, the brother-sergeant voxed his discovery through the comm-feed. Disengaging the cable from his battle-harness, Dak’ir stepped aside to allow space for his battle-brothers and drew weapons as he surveyed the pervading dark around them. The luminators on his battle-helm revealed a corridor of bare rock, terminating at the edge of the lume-lamp’s effective range where the light was swallowed by blackness.

‘The tunnel appears to be manufactured,’ Emek reported down the comm-feed in a subdued voice. He drew his gauntlet lightly across the wall, interrogating its surface under the glow of his luminator.

Ba’ken had been the last to reach the bottom of the chasm. Determined to get through with his heavy flamer rig still attached, he had damaged his battle-helm on a jutting spike of rock. The sporadic interference plaguing his lens display as a direct result of the collision had driven him to distraction. When he reached the ground he removed the helmet, hooking it to his belt. The hulking trooper had acknowledged Dak’ir’s look of reproach with a grunt, adjusting the promethium tanks on his back.

After exploring a few hundred metres, Brother Emek leading with flamer readied, the squad of Salamanders had stopped to surround him when he’d discerned a variation in the tunnel’s structure.

‘It’s cambered and smooth, as if ground by tools or digging equipment,’ he added.

‘Must be quite some rig to cut an opening this large,’ replied Ba’ken, his back to Emek as he guarded the way they had come. Brothers Apion and Romulus trained their bolters forwards, moving to the head of the Salamanders’ formation whilst Emek examined the wall.

Dak’ir agreed with Ba’ken. The tunnel was easily wide enough to accommodate all six Astartes abreast and so high that even Venerable Brother Amadeus could have marched along it without needing to stoop.

‘Definitely machine-hewn,’ Emek concluded, reassuming his position at point.

Pyriel said nothing. His eyes were shut, and his expression was focused.

‘Brother-Librarian?’ Dak’ir asked.

Pyriel opened his eyes and the cerulean glow faded.

‘Not the chitin-beasts,’ he whispered, still surfacing from the psychic trance. ‘Something else…’ he added.

When it was clear the Librarian wasn’t about to elaborate, Dak’ir ordered them on.

Split down the middle by a thick blade, the Iron Warrior’s battle-helm broke apart as Tsu’gan nudged it with his armoured boot. The face beneath was contorted in its final death throes, a dark and ragged wound bisecting it. Nose shattered beyond recognition, puckered flesh – festooned with chains and graven sigils – semi-parted to reveal yellowed bone; whatever had killed the traitor had done so long ago.

‘This one is no different,’ said Tsu’gan, letting the body loll back into a prone position.

The Firedrakes had brought the gate down with successive blows from their thunder hammers, its structural integrity weakened by the grenade blasts. Within was not the traitor garrison that Praetor had predicted. Instead, the Salamanders found corpses, arranged in positions that parodied the Iron Warriors’ former duties. Those traitors not pitched off their feet during the assault remained at sentry, or crouched by now silent gun emplacements. It was exactly how the warriors in the redoubts had been set up: dead, but maintaining the illusion of numbers and protection. Only five of the slain Iron Warriors had been fresh: the rest were necrotic husks, decaying in their armour.

Five Chaos Space Marines and an array of automated defence guns had kept out a force of over eighty. Three of the Salamanders had been slain during the ill-conceived assault; two of those had come from Vargo’s squad. The third was the driver from the destroyed Rhino. Space Marines were not easy to kill: the Assault squad troopers had been almost rent apart, taking the brunt of the heavy explosion, whereas the APC driver was shredded by shrapnel and shot through the skull as he tried to stagger from the vehicle wreck. Their progenoids had been secured by Fugis whilst under fire, and were safe within his reductor’s storage casket. Several more were injured, and the Apothecary was tending to them as the rest of the task force secured the fortress.

‘Dead before we even attacked…’ N’keln’s voice held a trace of annoyance to it as it came from behind Tsu’gan.

‘They were dead a lot longer than that, my lord.’ The brother-sergeant’s diction was clipped. He blamed the needless deaths of his battle-brothers on his captain for his trepidation and unwillingness to commit their forces properly when the Salamanders had initiated assault.

‘Five Astartes to man an entire fortress,’ N’keln thought aloud. ‘What were they doing here, brother-sergeant?’

‘Annals recount that during the Great Crusade, the sons of Perturabo occupied many frontier bastions such as this,’ said Praetor, his mighty physical presence moving implacably into Tsu’gan’s eye line. ‘Squad-strength garrisons were not unusual, but for them to still exist over ten thousand years later…’ The Firedrake’s voice trailed off. His fiery gaze went to the fortress of iron’s inner keep, a squat structure of broad bulwarks and grey metal. Chimneys, venting smoke, sprouted from its flat, crenulated roof. Another gate barred entrance to the inner keep. Sergeant De’mas and his squad were rigging charges to blast it in.

Tsu’gan felt a keen sense of apprehension as he regarded the secondary gate. Even just standing within the expansive inner courtyard, surrounded by Iron Warrior bodies, a pall of unease seemed to wax and wane as if already probing his defences.

A flame burst seen from the corner of his helmet lens arrested his attention. Brother-Chaplain Elysius was ordering the corpses rounded up and burned. Flamer teams, sequestered from the Tactical squads, doused the mangled pyre in liquid promethium.

‘Whatever killed them, did so with brute force and outside these walls,’ Praetor’s voice interrupted Tsu’gan’s thoughts, the veteran sergeant of the Firedrakes having followed his gaze.

‘So they dragged the bodies back inside after a much earlier battle?’ offered N’keln. ‘They must have been victorious, though I can see no evidence of enemy dead.’

‘The Iron Warriors burn their foes too, brother-captain,’ said Praetor, ‘An anachronism of old Legion custom that some warbands still adhere to.’

‘They are ash,’ spat Tsu’gan, struggling to rein in his anger, ‘as our slain brothers soon will be.’

If N’keln felt the barb, he didn’t show it. Nor did Praetor seem about to reprimand.

‘Victory is correct, brother-captain,’ said the Firedrake, ‘but at what cost, and against whom?’

‘Those xenos we encountered at the crash site are not foe enough to trouble Astartes,’ Tsu’gan asserted. ‘I have seen no other encampments, no evidence of vessels or an army’s movements.’ He eyed the burning pile of corpses again: some fifty or so Iron Warriors. Renegades, yes, but still Astartes once fashioned by the Emperor; still formidable warriors slain up-close and brutally. An enemy like that didn’t simply disappear. It didn’t lie down and die, either.

Tsu’gan’s voice was low and forbidding. ‘I think something other than the chitin lurks in the earth beneath us. It brought death to these traitors.’

Three hundred metres farther into the darkness and the tunnel became a labyrinth. Several corridors branched off from the main passage like a lattice within a giant hive. It put Dak’ir in mind of the chitin, but throughout their exploration of the underground network they had yet to encounter the creatures.

Ba’ken scoured each and every opening, the igniter from his heavy flamer casting a weak glow into the shadows. The Salamanders kept to the central tunnel, Dak’ir reasoning that it must lead to some nexus or confluence.

Ba’ken moved to the next junction. Panning his heavy flamer slowly and steadily, he started when an object skipped out of the darkness and rolled towards him.

‘Contact!’ he snapped smartly, preparing to douse what he thought could be a grenade in roaring promethium. The appearance of a diminutive figure scurrying into his firing arc stopped him.

It was a boy, and the ‘grenade’ was a rubber ball.

Ba’ken lifted his finger off the release bar of his weapon just in time. A tiny spurt of flame spilled from the nozzle like a belch, but didn’t ignite fully.

Grinding to an abrupt halt, the boy stared at the green-armoured hulk that brandished fire in his hands. In the ephemeral spit of flame, Ba’ken saw that the dark-skinned youngster was dressed in coarse grey fatigues. The clothing was patched, as if amalgamated from several different sources, and the boots strapped to his feet looked a few sizes too big for him. Terrified, the boy’s eyes widened as Ba’ken came forward, lowering his heavy flamer.

‘Have no fear,’ he intoned, his voice deep and resonant in the narrow side-tunnel. Stepping into the darkness as he extended an open hand, the burning red blaze in the Salamander’s eyes flashed casting his onyx-black skin in a diabolic lustre.

A whimper escaped from the trembling boy’s mouth and he fled, leaving the ball behind.

Ba’ken’s hand dropped and a tic of consternation afflicted his face.

‘A child…’ he said, acutely aware of Dak’ir arriving behind him. Ba’ken turned to face the sergeant. The rest of the squad had gathered at his sudden warning. Emek stood next to Dak’ir, whilst Apion and Romulus surveyed the shadows behind them. Librarian Pyriel stood a few steps back from the rest, his eyes smouldering with power.

‘Human.’ It was a statement not a question, but Ba’ken answered anyway.

‘Yes, a boy.’

‘Follow,’ ordered Dak’ir in a low voice. ‘Eyes open,’ he warned, remembering the last time they’d encountered a human child in similar circumstances. It was back on Stratos, and the boy had led them into a trap. Dak’ir still recalled the crump of detonation and the skeins of shrapnel slewing across his visor.

He hoped this would not end the same way.

A vast iron hall was the first room the Salamanders encountered upon demolishing the inner keep’s gate. It was bare, but much deeper and wider than the outer structure had suggested. Doorway yawning open, reinforced plasteel slabs hanging off their hinges, a pall of displaced dust rolled across the plated floor as Praetor entered. The other Firedrakes followed closely behind their sergeant, storm shields raised, a poised electrical charge rippling across their thunder hammers.

Recently reformed, the three Tactical squads followed in the wake of the Terminators. Issuing clipped orders, the sergeants dispersed their squads swiftly to reconnoitre. Negative contacts came back from De’mas and Typhos, who had been tasked to clear the alcoves and immediate anterooms. Brother-Captain N’keln and the Inferno Guard joined the rest of the Salamanders in the hallway soon after.

Lok’s Devastators maintained guard at the inner keep’s broken gate, whilst Brother-Sergeants Omkar and Ul’shan patrolled the battlements. Fire Anvil and one of the Rhino APCs blocked the main fortress gate. The dead from Vargo’s squad and the slain driver were laid reverently in a second personnel carrier, parked further back in the courtyard. The third Rhino was kept idling. As soon as the Salamanders had ascertained what the Iron Warriors had been doing, it would go back to collect Argos or one of his Techmarines in the hope they’d be able to plunder and sanctify some of the traitors’ technology.

‘This room is secure, brother-captain,’ said Praetor as N’keln entered the hall to stand alongside him, ‘but there are further chambers that should be scoured leading off from this main hall–’

Praetor was interrupted by the sudden reappearance of Tsu’gan, back from reconnoitring. ‘There is more than that, my lords,’ he said, stalking towards them. Tsu’gan’s tone was laced with animus. It suggested the Iron Warriors burning in the courtyard were not the only ones garrisoning the fortress.

N’keln’s jaw hardened as old enmity surfaced. The Iron Warriors had been at Isstvan. ‘Show me.’

Keeping pace with the fleeing boy wasn’t easy. He moved nimbly and took the Salamanders on a winding path through darkened tunnels strafed by their luminators. Grainy white beams criss-crossed, cutting frantic sweeps through the gloom with the urgent movements of Dak’ir and his squad.

‘Stay vigilant,’ he warned, voice low over the comm-feed.

Pyriel was on the sergeant’s heels. Emek followed closely with Apion and Romulus keeping a few paces distant deliberately, in case of an ambush.

Despite his prodigious strength, hefting the heavy flamer rig was slowing Ba’ken down, especially in the close confines of the tunnel complex. The hulking Salamander brought up Dak’ir’s rearguard.

Dak’ir lost the boy from sight as he emerged from around a tight corner into a much wider cavern. He slowed to a cautious tread, checking out the debris left either side of a steadily narrowing channel. Piled rocks, steel-bucketed mining carts, metal crates, discarded lume-lamps and other detritus flanked the Salamanders as they formed a single file.

Detecting movement to his right, Dak’ir was about to order his squad to repel ambushers, when Pyriel stopped him.

Let them come, he warned his brothers psychically, and keep your weapons low.

Dak’ir wanted to protest, but this was not the time. He had to trust his squad to the Librarian’s instincts and hope they weren’t flawed.

‘Follow Brother Pyriel’s lead,’ he ordered quietly over the comm-feed.

Emek’s voice replied in a whisper.

‘Five targets to the left, tracking us.’

Apion chimed in after him…

‘Four more, static, in my fire arc.’

…then Romulus…

‘I detect another six slowing to envelop.’

…and finally Ba’ken.

‘Threats spotted, ten of them to our rear.’

Dak’ir knew there were five more up ahead, lying in wait at the tunnel’s junction. The Salamanders could have neutralised them in seconds.

Within fifty more metres, the watchers lurking in the shadows sprang their ‘trap’. Concealed light rigs blazed into life around the tunnel, throwing off a harsh sodium glare. Groups of men, armed with archaic-looking lasguns and solid shot rifles, emerged from hiding places behind crates and under dusty tarpaulins. Each of the Salamanders covered an enemy squad, though the humans’ formation was anything but uniform. They were organised, their ambush-craft rudimentary though not beneath a well-drilled PDF regiment, but their movements suggested well-trained amateurs not soldiers. Dressed in coarse grey fatigues that were patched and worn like the boy’s had been, they were hard-looking men with dark skin, who lived even harder lives if Scoria’s harsh environs were anything to go by. Some carried anachronistic armour plates over the rough material: dull steel pauldrons and plastrons. Every man wore a pair of photo-flash goggles, evidently hoping to disadvantage their opponents by blinding them with the sudden light glare. They had not reckoned on facing Space Marines, whose occulobes reacted instantly to the shift in conditions.

A pair of what appeared to be mining engines rumbled into position on thick track-beds either side of the tunnel, effectively blocking it. Tripled-headed drilling apparatus comprised much of the front facing of the machines, with thick armour-plates and plastek glacis shielding the operators from view.

‘Stand down and relinquish your weapons,’ a stern voice echoed. ‘You are surrounded and outnumbered fivefold.’

Dak’ir followed the source and saw a figure step forward out of the group of men in front of him. The human was attired like the rest, but he also wore a short, ragged cloak that felt oddly familiar to the Salamander. Thick, ribbed boots almost went up to knees that sported rounded metal plates. He carried a lasgun low-slung with the ease of a man who knows his troops are watching his back for him. When he lifted the goggles from his face, Dak’ir saw the man was in his middling years. Wrinkles eked from his eyes and gave him a perpetual frown. Rock dust smothered his close-cropped hair, but much of the grey patina was his own. Despite his age, the human leader possessed undeniable presence and his muscles were still taut, his body and jaw solid.

‘Remove your battle-helms, too,’ he added. ‘I want to see if you all look like this one.’ The human leader gestured towards Ba’ken, who glowered at him.

We could disarm them with minimal casualties, thought Dak’ir, hesitating to consider the next course of action.

Pyriel intruded on his musings.

Do as he asks, brother-sergeant. Stand down your squad.

Dak’ir heard the grip of his chainsword tighten as he squeezed it impotently.

‘You can’t be seriously suggesting we yield to this rabble?’ he hissed through the comm-feed.

‘That is precisely what I’m suggesting. Do it now, before they start to twitch.’ The Librarian turned his head slightly to regard the brother-sergeant. ‘We must earn their trust.’

It went against his instincts and his training, but in the end Dak’ir gave the order to stow weapons.

The Salamanders obeyed instantly, despite their obvious misgivings, following suit as their brother-sergeant removed his battle-helm.

‘I am Brother-Sergeant Hazon Dak’ir of the Salamanders Chapter, 3rd Company,’ Dak’ir told the human leader, who smiled without it reaching his eyes.

‘Sonnar Illiad,’ he replied, gesturing to another of his group, a tall man with a blunt-looking head, facial scars and a pepper-wash of stubble colonising his broad jaw and pate. ‘Overseer Akuma and his men will take possession of your weapons.’ The tall man and four others came forwards warily.

Ba’ken bristled behind his sergeant.

‘No Astartes relinquishes his weapon unless it is prised from his cold, dead hand,’ he snarled through gritted teeth.

From the demeanour of his battle-brothers, it was clear that they agreed with him. Throne, Dak’ir agreed too. Pyriel had insisted they stand down, and stand down they had. This he would not accede to.

‘You may take my blade and pistol, as a gesture of good faith,’ Dak’ir told the one called Illiad. The overseer stopped at once, looking back to his leader for guidance. A battle of wills was begun, between Dak’ir and the human. It played across Sonnar Illiad’s face as clear as a plasma flare.

‘Very well,’ he conceded at last, before motioning to the one called Akuma. ‘Take them.’

Dak’ir unsheathed and unholstered his weapons, proffering them to the overseer.

‘Treat them reverently,’ he warned, ‘For I will be taking them back very soon.’

Akuma tried not to let his fear show, but was obviously intimated by the red-eyed Salamander and was swift to back away once he had his weapons.

The brother-sergeant then faced the man who called himself Illiad.

‘We surrender,’ he said. ‘What now?’

Tsu’gan battle-signed for his squad to surround the trapdoor concealed at the back of the giant hall. Forged in thick iron, the gate looked sturdy, unashamedly designed to keep things out… or in. Dust-clogged and veneered in rust, it was invisible to a cursory examination of the area. Empty ammo crates and munitions tubes had been piled on top of it, draped over with a ragged tarpaulin. The fact that the stores of ammunition were exhausted revealed much about the Iron Warriors’ desperate defence. They had used up almost everything they’d had to repel the attackers. Tsu’gan didn’t doubt that the belt feeds and drum mags wedged in the sentry guns were their last.

He held up a fist, ordering his squad to wait.

Praetor and Brother-Captain N’keln were close by with weapons drawn.

Auspex was wretched with interference, bio-signatures seemingly appearing and disappearing like smoke on a stiff breeze, so Tsu’gan had ordered Iagon to shut the device off for now. Instead, he used his own senses to discern the presence of his enemies and found them when he detected the faintest clank of metal on metal through the iron door.

Pointing to his ear, Tsu’gan indicated that very fact to the others. He made a chop and pull motion with one hand – the other gripped his bolter. Brothers S’tang and Nor’gan heaved the gate open, its locks sheared by a plasma-torch from one of the Rhinos’ equipment bays. Scraping back the entrance to the lower level as silently as possible, the two Salamanders moved aside quickly to allow Tsu’gan and the flamer-wielding Brother Honorious to cover the now gaping portal.

The din of striking metal grew louder but there were no enemies lurking in the shadows, only a steel-runged ladder extending into blackened depths.

Tsu’gan made his hand into a flat blade, giving the all-clear, then splayed his fingers and made another fist. Half of his squad would accompany him into the darkness; the rest would remain on the surface and protect the exit. Praetor and N’keln would remain too; the Terminator too bulky and cumbersome to fit into the tight confines suggested below, the captain too valuable to risk on a scouting mission into the unknown.

Extending two fingers, Tsu’gan chopped down twice in rapid succession. Tiberon and Lazarus, waiting at the periphery, took the ladder one-by-one and plunged below. Once the two Salamanders were down, he raised one finger, made a fist, and then raised two and chopped down twice again. Tsu’gan descended next, knowing that Honorious and Iagon would follow as rearguard.

Keeping luminators snuffed, the Salamander combat squad moved slowly down a tight corridor that reeked of dank and copper. A strange pall pervaded the air: invisible but tangible, as if a second skin was forming over their battle-plate.

Tsu’gan followed the clamour of metal, still persisting, but seemingly farther away than when he’d first heard it in the hall above. Though his optical spectra were set to night-vision and then infra-red, the dark was oddly impenetrable as if subsuming any and all ambient light. Only sound guided him and his squad as they ranged cautiously through cloying shadows.

‘Sire,’ hissed Honorious.

Tsu’gan whirled around to face him, incensed that he had broken vox-silence.

The flamer trooper had stopped dead and was aiming his weapon down a sub-corridor branching off from the one the combat squad was traversing.

‘You break vox-silence at my command only, trooper,’ Tsu’gan snarled in a low voice.

Honorious turned, nonplussed.

‘I didn’t speak, sergeant.’

‘Sire,’ rasped Tiberon.

The battle-brother was at point, intent on the way ahead and seemingly oblivious to the fact that a large gap was developing between him and the rest of the squad.

A reprimand formed on Tsu’gan’s lips, but he didn’t give it voice.

‘Squad halt,’ he said into the comm-feed, instead.

Iagon’s auspex blazed into life, multiple signatures plaguing the hazy screen at once.

‘Contacts!’ he snapped, swinging his bolter around to aim at shadows.

‘I have movement,’ hissed Lazarus.

‘Over here…’ whispered a voice that Tsu’gan didn’t recognise. He trained his combi-bolter in its direction, finger poised over the jet-release for the weapon’s flamer.

‘Sire,’ Honorious’s voice came again, far away this time, but the battle-brother was crouched right next to him in a ready-position. There was no way he could have actually spoken and it sound that distant.

‘Sir, multiple contacts closing…’ said Iagon, jerking his bolter back and forth as he sought targets.

The reek of dank and copper grew stronger.

Tiberon was still going. He was almost lost from Tsu’gan’s sight altogether. For a moment the brother-sergeant gave in to something approaching fear, filled with a deep knowing that if Tiberon was swallowed by the darkness, he would never come back and they would never be able to find him.

‘Hold, brother. Hold!’ Tsu’gan cried, but his shout was smothered by the maddening din of hammered metal and the warnings of his squad.

‘Over here…’

Clank!

That voice again; the one Tsu’gan didn’t know…

‘Enemy movement! Engaging!’

Clank!

Tiberon fading into the darkness ahead…

‘Contacts closing, no target!’

Clank!

His mind spinning…

‘Sire…’

Clank!

The sudden compulsion to make it stop…

‘Sire, help us…’

Clank!

The bolter in his hands, pressed against his temple, tool of his salvation…

Clank!

The only way to end it…

‘Please, make it stop,’ Tsu’gan gasped. The muzzle felt cold against his sweat-drenched forehead. The sound of the slowly squeezing trigger was as deafening as thunder.

‘Vulkan’s fire burns in my breast,’ a powerful voice intoned, eclipsing the beat of hammered metal. ‘With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor!’

Sensation, vague and indistinct at first, returned to Tsu’gan. He was faintly aware of a reassuring presence nearby, a lodestone to which he could anchor himself.

‘For we are the Angels of the Emperor, servants of the Golden Throne, and we shall know no fear.’

Tsu’gan caught hold of the voice, stentorian and commanding, grasping it like a rope of salvation. A refulgent figure stood beside him, a crackling stave held in his outstretched hand.

‘From the fires of battle are we born.’

No, not a stave – the warrior, sable-armoured with a face of death, held a hammer.

‘Upon the anvil of war are we tempered.’

A blazing aura roiled from it like a fiery wave, chasing down the darkness and burning back the apparitions that tried to clench to them like parasites.

‘Speak the words!’ Brother-Chaplain Elysius snapped. ‘Speak them and find your courage, Salamanders!’

Tsu’gan and his squad uttered the words as one, and the fog of insanity lifted.

The Chaplain smacked a reassuring hand against Tsu’gan’s pauldron.

‘Good enough, brother-sergeant,’ he said. ‘I will take the lead from here. Restore your battle-helm and follow me.’

Tsu’gan looked down at the battle-helm cradled in his grasp, agog. He hadn’t even realised he’d removed it. Wiping away the sweat that was very real, he set his helmet back on and obeyed. The rest of his brothers had come to their senses as well, and followed with weapons ready. Even Tiberon had stopped. He let the Chaplain catch up to him before falling in behind.

Elysius had secured Vulkan’s Sigil to his belt, though the artefact still glowed faintly with remembered power. Undoubtedly, the Chaplain had saved their lives. Whatever malfeasance preyed upon these lower catacombs had very nearly forced Tsu’gan and his squad to turn their guns on themselves. A few moments more and they would have done.

‘Heretics are close,’ Elysius rasped, his crozius arcanum igniting like a flaming torch in his mailed fist.

Tsu’gan realised that the heavy metal clank had returned to normal. It was still loud, and emanated from a sealed hatch ahead of them.

A few steps from the hatch, the Chaplain brought up his bolt pistol.

‘Steel yourselves,’ he warned.

The strange malaise affecting the tunnel returned but lingered at the periphery of Tsu’gan’s thoughts as if unwilling to press further. The brother-sergeant gripped his bolter for reassurance, running a gauntleted finger over the flame icon embossed on the stock. Muttering a litany of warding, Tsu’gan opened his eyes and saw that the Chaplain had stepped aside from the hatch.

The entrance was locked and barred.

Tsu’gan beckoned Tiberon and Lazarus, who came to the front of the squad with krak grenades primed. After affixing the explosives with a dull, metallic thunk, the two Salamanders fell back. Honorious moved ahead of them, but kept low and at a safe distance. Tsu’gan pressed his body against the wall. He noted the Chaplain did the same on the opposite side, trusting to solid steel rather than his rosarius this time.

Squad in position, spread either side of the tunnel and outside the blast funnel, Tsu’gan drew his hand across his gorget in a slashing motion.

Aiming down his bolter’s targeter, Iagon fired a single shot into one of the mag-locked krak grenades. A second later the hatch exploded.

Smoke and fire surged down the corridor in a plume, sending pieces of shrapnel brushing against the Salamanders’ armour.

Stalking through the dirt cloud, Chaplain Elysius was the first to enter the room beyond the hatch, Tsu’gan close behind him. They emerged into a metal-bound vault, dimly lit and filled with the stink of copper and iron. Rust streaked the walls like blood. Barbed hooks embedded in the metal resonated with remembered agony. Pitted manacles dangled slackly like hanged men.

This was a place of death and horror.

Crunching servos heralded a sudden attack by a quartet of ghoulish drones. Grey-faced, skin webbed by livid red veins, the automatons were an analogous but twisted variant on the servitors from the Archimedes Rex. The wretched parodies screamed in agony as they came at the interlopers, as if their bodies were still in pain from the invasive techno-surgeries employed to fashion them. Pain synapses flared with every motion, fuelling a terrible rage, only leavened by the shedding of blood and the rending of flesh.

Swollen with grotesque musculature, the monstrous ghoul-drones were the size of ogryn. They barrelled for the black-armoured warrior suddenly in their midst. Elysius ignored them, bent on an ironclad figure toiling over some device at the back of the chamber, apparently oblivious to the fight.

Tsu’gan only caught flashes of the mysterious artificer between the gaps in the Chaplain’s body as he moved: a servo-arm attached to the generator on the figure’s back; the colour of the dirty steel; yellow and black chevrons framing the armour; gilded greave plates fringed with rust around the bolts; pipes and cables, serpentine and alive; hydraulic gases venting and spitting like a curse.

Evil emanated from this being. Every blow from its incessant hammering was like the beat of a fell heart. Even as he closed, Tsu’gan couldn’t tell what the Warsmith laboured at so furiously, smothered as it was by thick shadows and an even thicker sheet of coal-black plastek.

A bolter flare lit up Tsu’gan’s left flank as a ghoul-drone was torn apart in a welter of oil and viscera. His battle-brothers were covering him as the sergeant shadowed his Chaplain, knowing that he couldn’t leave Elysius to face the Warsmith alone.

Another ghoul-drone was destroyed, engulfed by Honorious’s flamer. Its biologically unstable frame collapsed hideously in the intense heat. It muscles cooked and burst in blood-red torrents. A third beast dragged lengths of saw-toothed chain from the stump of its arm. Hot bile rose in his throat as Tsu’gan realised the chains were actually part flesh, part sinew and that some of the teeth were human bone. Boltgun roaring, he sundered the abomination and stamped over the remains. Punching a fourth, he knocked the creature aside to try and stay in the Chaplain’s wake. Gore and charred meat peppered Tsu’gan’s armour in a grisly spray. Maintaining momentum, Iagon had punctured the ghoul-drone’s cranium with a bolt round that exploded it from within and obliterated the eight-pointed star branded onto its face.

The ghouls were all dead, but their hellish master endured still.

At last, the Warsmith seemed to realise his peril and reached for a combination melta-bolter on a work-slab alongside him. Lightning arcing from his crozius arcanum, Elysius severed the clutch of cables linking the weapon to the Iron Warrior’s fusion generator. Undeterred, the Warsmith spun about, revealing a reaper cannon morphing from the constituent parts of his right arm. It glowered evilly as the long-gun corporealised, a hot yellow line searing from the vision slit in the angular battle-helm encasing his head.

Elysius swung again, but the Warsmith swatted the blow away with his left arm, a bionic limb like one of its legs – this thing was more machine than man. Pistons heaved, spewing gaseously as power was fed to the augmetic. The arm ended in a razor-edged claw that the Iron Warrior used to split the Chaplain’s battle-plate.

Gasping in pain, Elysius brought up his bolt pistol only for the servo-arm, curled over the Warsmith’s right pauldron, to snap down viperously. The Chaplain screamed as his wrist was seized and slowly crushed. All the while, the reaper cannon was slowly resolving. Coagulated flesh and iron blended into solid, dull metal. Inner mechanisms were forming, the hellish strain of the obliterator virus rapid and pervasive. If fully forged and allowed to fire, that weapon could shred the Salamanders into flesh and chips of battle-plate.

Determined that wouldn’t happen, Tsu’gan reached Elysius and waded into the melee with a roar.

Unloading a full clip into the Warsmith’s body, he watched between the sporadic flash-bang of explosive rounds as the Iron Warrior bucked and jerked against the fusillade. The transmutation halted, the need for self-preservation briefly outweighing the desire to kill.

Elysius staggered, dropping his pistol as his wrist was released. Battered, the Iron Warrior fell back, howling in pain and fury. The sound resonated metallically around the vault. There was something ancient and hollow about it, images of jagged metal and age-old rust surfacing in Tsu’gan’s mind. The brother-sergeant followed up, ramming in a fresh clip as he moved, and was about to issue a lethal head shot when Elysius stopped him.

‘Hold!’

Tsu’gan’s blood was up; he wasn’t about to relent. ‘The traitor must be executed.’

‘Hold, I will not be merciful if you disobey,’ the Chaplain retorted. Dark fluids were running down a gash in his plastron, flowing more vigorously as he staggered forwards, and his wrist hung limply at his side. ‘Lower your weapon, brother-sergeant.’ Though laboured and rasping, Elysius’s tone made it clear this was an order as he approached the supine Warsmith. The Iron Warrior’s breastplate was wretched with holes and scorch marks. Inert and unconscious, he was barely alive. ‘I want to interrogate him first,’ the Chaplain added, ‘To find out what he knows about this bastion, its purpose and what happened to the garrison.’

Tsu’gan stood down, aware that behind him his squad had the room secured.

Elysius spoke into the comm-feed.

‘Brother-captain, have flamers brought down to the vault. We need to scour the taint from its walls,’ he said, spitting the last remark. ‘And I need my tools,’ he added. ‘The prisoner and I have much to discuss.’

Chapter Eight

I

Those Who Lived…

There was something strangely familiar about the human settlement under the earth. It was based on a series of honeycombed chambers of varying height and depth, resembling a shantytown in part, replete with hab-shacks, corrugated work sheds and lived-in tubular pipes appended to some of the larger chambers, the makeshift structures layered upon each other like the strata of some half-developed world. Exposed metal and plastek peeked out from beneath calcified layers of rock and decades, perhaps centuries, of ingrained grit. This melding was incongruous, much like the attire of the humans that led Dak’ir and his brothers through the settlement’s main thoroughfare.

Staring at the green-armoured giants from the shadows of humble dwellings, behind the corners of bucket-carts and atop sturdy-looking towers were men, woman and children. Like Sonnar Illiad’s ambushers, they were dressed in coarse grey fatigues, patched and shabby from the rigours of daily use. Some, the bold or stupid, stood in open defiance of the newcomers, challenging with their upright postures. Dak’ir noticed they stood in large groups, these men, and that the boldness did not extend to their eyes where fear dwelt instead; and that they took an involuntary half-step back as the Salamanders passed them.

Flanked by Illiad’s troops, Dak’ir wondered again at how easy it would be to subdue these humans and take the settlement in a single attack. Lesser Chapters, those with a bloodletting bent and a shallow disregard for innocent life, might have slaughtered them. Salamanders were forged from different stock. Vulkan had taught them to be stern and unyielding in the face of the enemy, but he had also encouraged compassion and the duty in all Fire-born to protect those weaker than themselves.

Only now, watching the scared faces flit by as he considered that calling, did Dak’ir start to understand Pyriel’s rationale in surrendering. By capitulation, the Salamanders had showed they were not a threat, or at least that they did not intend to pose one. Proud and possibly noble, Illiad’s people might hold the key to the fate of Vulkan and the significance of Scoria to the primarch. The Salamanders would not discover that through intimidation and duress, they would only learn of it if given willingly.

Sadly, not all his brothers shared in Dak’ir’s epiphany.

‘To give up without a shot fired, it is not the way of Promethean lore,’ Ba’ken growled. He kept his voice low over the comm-feed, now coming to Dak’ir through his gorget since he had removed his battle-helm, but made his discontent obvious by his body language.

‘This isn’t Nocturne, brother.’ As he gave voice to the rebuke, Dak’ir paused to acknowledge the truth of his remark, conceding that Scoria was actually extremely cognate with their home world. Even the settlement, bunker-like and rendered in stone and metal, contained an almost atavistic resonance. ‘Nor will we learn what we need to from these people with fiery retribution.’ He looked to Pyriel for support, but the Librarian appeared oblivious, locked in some half-trance as he trod automatically through the numerous dwellings and holdings.

‘But to be cowed like this…’ muttered Ba’ken.

‘I believe our brother’s warrior spirit is offended, sir,’ offered Emek, who seemed intrigued by the presence of the humans, scrutinising every structure as the Salamanders passed it, and analysing the subterranean populous that lived in them.

Dak’ir smiled thinly to himself. Ba’ken was wise, but was warrior-born, a native of Themis, whose tribes valued strength and battle prowess above all else. For all his great wisdom, once Ba’ken was affronted his view became myopic and intractable. It was a useful trait in combat, one Dak’ir likened to attempting to shift a mountain with one’s hands, but at peace it bordered on cantankerous.

Romulus and Apion held their tongues. Their silence suggested an accord with Ba’ken.

‘Show humility, brothers. This is not the time to act,’ Dak’ir warned. He turned to Emek, then gestured to the Salamanders’ human escort. ‘What do you make of them?’

‘Brave,’ he said. ‘And afraid.’

‘Of us?’

‘Of something like us,’ Emek replied. ‘These people fled into the darkness for a reason and have stayed here for many years.’ His eyes narrowed, as the tone of his voice changed to become more speculative. ‘When we removed our battle-helms, they didn’t seem shocked or even perturbed by our appearance.’

The domestic dwellings, the pseudo-caves of rock and metal, started to thin and fade away as Illiad then led them to another structure that loomed large ahead. A pair of grand blast doors, at least they might once have been grand, framed by ornate designs but buried under caked dirt and encrusted grime, stood before them like weary bronze sentinels.

‘They may have seen Salamanders before,’ Dak’ir ventured, unable to suppress a tremor of anticipation. If they had, it could mean…

Pyriel’s voice intruded on his thoughts.

‘I suspect the answers lie within.’ He was indicating the bronze blast doors.

A few metres from the entrance, Illiad stopped the column with a gesture and went the rest of the way alone. All the while, the one called Akuma watched the Salamanders vigilantly, readjusting his grip on his lasgun every few seconds.

Rapping on the blast doors three times with his gun stock, Illiad then stepped back. Grinding gears broke the silence moments later as an ancient mechanism was engaged. Dust poured from the inner workings, dislodged with their sudden activation. The blast doors parted shudderingly and within yawned a barren chamber, more metal and calcified rock, but with thick buttressed walls and no exits.

‘You mean to incarcerate us, Sonnar Illiad?’ asked Dak’ir as he was confronted by the hangar-like dungeon.

‘Until I can decide whether you are friend or foe, yes.’

Ba’ken stepped forward upon hearing this, the muscles in his neck bunched, fists clenched.

‘This, I cannot abide.’ His tone was threateningly level.

Apion backed him up.

‘Nor I, sir.’

Dak’ir turned to regard Romulus.

‘Are you of the same opinion?’

The Salamander nodded, slow and evenly.

Glaring down at Illiad, Dak’ir knew the time for indulging the humans was at an end. To his credit, the old man didn’t flinch. He kept his warm, dark eyes on Dak’ir, staring up to him as a child might an adult. Yet, he did not appear diminutive. Rather, it only enhanced his stature.

‘I am in agreement with my battle-brothers,’ Dak’ir concurred.

Illiad matched his gaze, perhaps uncertain what to do next.

‘How many are in your colony, Illiad?’ the brother-sergeant asked him.

Akuma came forwards quickly, his mood agitated.

‘Don’t tell them, Sonnar,’ he warned. ‘They seek to gauge our strength and return with numbers. We should seal them in the vault now.’

Illiad looked at his second-in-command, as if considering his advice.

Ba’ken turned on Akuma, who retreated before the Salamander’s bulk.

‘How though, little man, will you do that?’ he growled.

Akuma raised his lasgun protectively, but Ba’ken snatched it from his grasp. It was met by a frantic bout of lasguns priming as the human guards prepared for a fight. None of the Salamanders reacted, not without word from their sergeant.

Illiad raised his hand for calm, though Dak’ir could detect the increase in his heart rate and see the lines of perspiration beading the side of his head.

‘Just over a thousand,’ Illiad replied. ‘Men, women and children.’

‘This settlement you have fashioned for yourselves, it was once a ship, wasn’t it?’ said Dak’ir, the pieces falling into place as he spoke.

A Space Marine’s memory was eidetic. It was a useful trait when reviewing battle plans or on long-range reconnoitre to ascertain the lay of the land or an enemy’s strategic positions. Dak’ir used that flawless recall now to form accurate pictographic memories of some of the human dwellings they had passed, those where the extruding rock had crept over metal to obscure it. Examining details in his mind, cycling through images in milliseconds, interpreting and cross-analysing, Dak’ir stripped away the calcified rock. Clods of dust fell away in his mind’s eye to reveal metal corridors, barrack rooms, minor strategiums, deck plating, defunct lifters, extinct consoles and other structures. Broken apart, forcibly disassembled, it was a ship nonetheless.

‘One that crashed long ago,’ said Illiad. ‘Its reactor still functions and we use its power to generate heat, purify the air and water. The sodium light rigs are kept burning through the conversion of fusion energy.’

‘And this, a sparring hall?’ Dak’ir had stepped out of the column to approach the frame around the blast door. It had sunk into the rock; or rather the cave had grown around it. He tore at a section of it, gauntleted fingers prising off a layer. Grit and dust came with it and an origin stamp became visible beneath, fusion-pressed in blocky Imperial script.

154TH EXPEDITIONARY

Dak’ir shared a meaningful glance with Pyriel. The shattered remnants in which the human colony had made its home had once been a vessel of the Great Crusade fleet. He tried not to consider the ramifications of that discovery.

‘I cannot say for certain,’ Illiad replied. ‘All we really know are legends, passed down by our ancestors.’

‘Sonnar, don’t–’ Akuma began, but Illiad scowled and cut him off with a sharp gesture.

‘They could have killed us in the tunnel, or at any point from there to here,’ he snapped, ire fading into resignation as he turned back to Dak’ir.

The sound of a commotion echoing from the tunnels behind them interrupted Illiad. A young boy, Dak’ir recognised him as the one who had fled from Ba’ken earlier, ran into view. He balked a little at the sight of the armoured giants again – Ba’ken’s posture seemed to relax upon seeing him – and was panting for breath.

‘Chitin,’ he rasped, forcing out the words between gulps for air, hands pushed down on his thighs as he fought to compose himself.

‘Where, Val’in?’ asked Illiad, concern creasing his features.

The boy, Val’in, looked back nervously.

‘In the settlement.’ Va’lin’s eyes were wide with terror and filling with tears. ‘My papa…’

Las-fire echoed down the corridor in sharp cracks of noise.

Screaming followed it.

‘They don’t stand a chance,’ said Emek, his voice low.

Dak’ir’s expression hardened as he looked behind them into the half-light.

‘Then by Vulkan, we’ll even the odds.’

‘We have fought the chitin-beasts for generations,’ growled Akuma, with a half-glance at the green-armoured warriors running alongside them. ‘What do we need them for?’

‘I doubt we could stop them even if we wanted to, Akuma,’ answered Illiad.

Dak’ir saw that the old man’s face was grave at the sounds of carnage just ahead of them. The Salamander felt the human’s pain, and his anger boiled at the thought of the settlers’ suffering.

The weak will always be preyed upon by the strong. He remembered the words of Fugis many months before, outside the Vault of Remembrance at Hesiod. The words of his reply then came swiftly to his lips now, like a catechism.

‘Unless those with strength intercede on behalf of the weak, and protect them.’

Emek turned to the sergeant as they were nearing the invisible boundary line of the settlement. The crack of las-fire and the flat bangs of solid-shot rifles were like a discordant chorus to the shrill of terror, ever rising in pitch and urgency.

‘What did you say, sir?’

Dak’ir kept his gaze ahead as he answered.

‘We must save these people, brother. We must save them.’

Akuma’s voice intruded suddenly as they ate up the last few metres. He was addressing his men.

‘Once we reach the settlement, break into squads. Surround them and aim for the eyes, between the plates. No chitin will ever…’ The words died on Akuma’s lips as they emerged into the open and saw their home.

Chitin swarmed from emergence holes, dragging screaming settlers to their deaths. Bloodied bodies, mangled by bone-claws or rent with razor-sharp mandibles, were strung out over the ground, or slumped in the archways of once peaceful dwellings like butcher’s meat. There were women and children amongst the dead, as well as armed men. Some were so badly mutilated that it was impossible to tell either way.

A sudden tremor wracked the ground, pitching a man sniping off the roof of a hab-shack. He screamed as a chitin scuttled over his prone form with surprising speed. It severed his torso with a snip of its claws and the screams were abruptly silenced. In his wake came a woman carrying a shotgun who’d managed to hold on. Scurrying into his place, she started firing.

Two men and a lean-faced youth fended off a chitin with long, spiked poles. Screeching, the xenos creature rolled back onto its hind legs as its soft belly was pierced and its blood spilled out in a grey morass. The victory for the humans was short-lived as two more chitin took its place, one smothering a pole-wielder with its bulk, before the second gouged another with a snapping bone-claw. The youth fled in terror only to be lost from view in the desperate battle.

A woman brandished a flare like a spear, thrusting it towards the eye of a chitin intent on devouring her and the two children she protected. The flare, like the life of her and her children, was slowly fading.

Everywhere, the humans fought. Some only had spears or crude ineffectual rifles, and they were badly outnumbered, but these were their homes and families, so they battled on regardless.

‘I have never seen so many…’ breathed Illiad. He staggered as another tremor rippled through the cavern, sending chunks of rock and dust spiralling from the roof. Each time, the chitin hordes increased, pouring from their emergence holes like vermin. ‘The quakes must have disturbed them.’

‘That or they were driven here,’ Dak’ir muttered darkly. ‘I’ll take my weapons back now, Illiad.’

The old man gestured to Akuma who had the chainsword and pistol in a heavy pack on his back. He unveiled them swiftly and returned them begrudgingly.

Dak’ir nodded grimly to him, testing his grip on pistol and blade before turning to his brothers.

‘The preservation of human life is priority. Do all that you must to protect the colonists. In Vulkan’s name.’

Dak’ir raised his chainsword, the dim light reflected off its ancient teeth as if relishing the blooding to come.

‘Into the fires of battle!’ he roared, leading the charge.

‘Unto the anvil of war!’ his brothers replied as one.

‘This place reeks of death,’ snarled Tiberon, sifting through the wreckage of the Warsmith’s tools.

The captive Iron Warrior was gone. The ghoul-drones had been removed too, and burned upon the same smouldering pyres as the slain Iron Warrior garrison.

Chaplain Elysius had already left, going to his duties. Tsu’gan and his squad had remained behind.

Another flamer burst lit up the outer corridor as Honorious and his brothers continued to purge the walls and alcoves where Tsu’gan and his warriors had almost met their demise. Cleansing by fire had quietened the voices, but not engulfed them completely. The brother-sergeant was grateful this would be a short stay. Their mission was to search amongst the wreckage for anything that might shed light on the Iron Warriors’ presence on Scoria and stand guard over Techmarine Draedius.

The Mechanicus adept had been sent from the Vulkan’s Wrath, at N’keln’s behest and Master Argos’s concession, to examine the device the Warsmith had laboured over so manically. It was a cannon: forged of dark metal with a long, telescopic barrel and angled towards a blast door mounted in the ceiling. Though hidden in the metal floor plating, the weapon was obviously elevated into position via a pneumatic lifter. Its intended target, however, remained a mystery.

Tsu’gan knew artillery and he likened this one to the Earthshaker cannon most commonly employed by regiments of the Imperial Guard. Few Astartes Chapters had need for such a static bombardment weapon. Strike cruisers and Thunderhawk gunships provided all the long-range support a Space Marine army needed. Surgical strikes, swift and deadly, that was the Astartes’ way of war. Patient, grinding shelling went against the Codex, but then the Iron Warriors followed no such tome. Tsu’gan knew enough of the Traitor Legion to be acquainted with their use of long-range artillery. Siege-specialists as they were, the sons of Perturabo preferred to employ such weapons to crush their foes from distance, before closing in to apply the killing stroke.

Only cowards feared to attack and finish an enemy before it was already beaten. Tsu’gan felt his rancour for the Iron Warriors deepen further.

‘It is more than just death that pervades the air in here,’ replied Brother Lazarus with obvious distaste.

Tsu’gan scowled.

‘I smell cordite and sulphur.’ It was more than that. The stench was redolent of a memory, an old place just beyond reach that Tsu’gan would rather not revisit.

‘Here, my lord,’ called Iagon from across the chamber. ‘I may have something.’

Tsu’gan went over to him and knelt down next to the crouching trooper who gestured to a dark stain seared onto the floor.

‘The metal is fused,’ said Iagon as his brother-sergeant traced the edge of the stain with his finger. ‘It would take a great amount of heat to do that.’

‘Looks old,’ Tsu’gan wondered aloud, ‘and shaped like a boot print. What’s this?’ he added, smearing a fleck of something with his finger. He tasted it and grimaced. ‘Cinder.’

The grimace became a scowl.

‘The Iron Warriors are not the only traitors on Scoria.’

The voice of Techmarine Draedius intruded on Tsu’gan’s thoughts.

‘There are no shells, no ammunition of any kind for this cannon,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘It is powered by a small fusion reactor.’

‘Nuclear?’ asked Tiberon, who was closest.

Draedius shook his head.

‘No. More like energy conversion. I’ve found several receptacles containing trace elements of a fine powder I have no records of.’

Tsu’gan looked up. The sense of unease that permeated the lower deep of the fortress had still not abated.

‘Retain a sample but hurry with your work, brother.’ A blast of fire from the purging that continued outside threw haunting shadows over the side of the sergeant’s face. ‘I don’t wish to linger here any longer than is necessary.’

Coruscating fire ripped from Pyriel’s fingertips in blazing arcs. It lit the cavern in smoky shadows and burned a ragged hole through an advancing chitin. The xenos swarming the human settlement reacted to the sudden threat in their midst. They faltered, losing purpose in the face of such fury. In contrast, the settlers were galvanised, redoubling their efforts as the spark of hope became a flame.

Dak’ir took the blow from a chitin’s bone-claw on his pauldron, where it dug a jagged groove in the ceramite. He lunged with his chainsword, forcing it into the creature’s abyssal-black eye up to the hilt. As he wrenched the weapon free, the chitin-beast screeched. Fluid spurted from its ruined eye socket, painting Dak’ir’s armour in watery grey. The Salamander moved inside its death arc, weaving around retaliatory strikes, before severing a champing mandible and burying his blood-slick chainblade into the chitin’s tiny brain. Shuddering, the creature shrank back and died. Dak’ir sprang off its hardened carapace as he vaulted over the chitin, its insectile limbs spasming still, and flung himself towards another enemy.

The boy, Val’in, was running again.

He’d followed Illiad and his warriors after the Salamanders had charged, and now found himself in the midst of the fighting. Clutching a shovel in trembling hands, he came face-to-face with a chitin. The creature’s blood-slick mandibles chattered expectantly as it scuttled towards him. Val’in backed away but with a hab-shack suddenly at his back, could retreat no further. Tears were streaming down the boy’s face but he held his shovel up defiantly. Rearing back, the chitin chittered in what might have been pleasure before an armoured hulk intervened between the creature and its kill.

‘Stay behind me!’ Ba’ken yelled, grunting as he held back the chitin’s bone-claws that it had thrashed down upon him. He couldn’t risk the heavy flamer – the blast would have torched the boy too. Instead, he had stowed the weapon in its harness on his back and went hand-to-hand instead. Back braced, his legs arched in a weight lifter’s stance, the Salamander heaved. Furrows appeared in the dirt as the creature was forced back, scrabbling ineffectually with its hind legs as it tried to regain balance.

Hot saliva dripped from the creature’s mandibles as they snapped for Ba’ken’s face. Finding purchase, the chitin dug in and pushed. Its body closed with the Salamander. Ba’ken scowled as the stench of dank and old earth washed over him in a fetid wave. The chitin was about to bite again, aiming to take off the Salamander’s face, before Ba’ken spat a stream of acid and seared the creature. Squealing, the chitin’s mandibles folded in on each other and retracted into its scalded maw.

The beast was tough, with the bulk and heft of a tank. Ba’ken felt his strength yielding to it and roared to draw on his inner reserves. His secondary heart pumped blood frantically, his body adopting a heightened battle-state, impelling a sudden surge from the Astartes’s muscles.

‘Xenos scum,’ he spat, using hate to fuel his efforts.

A second chitin, just finished gnawing on a settler, emerged on Ba’ken’s left flank. The Salamander saw it scuttle into his eye line.

Unarmed, there was no way he could fight them both.

The ragged corpse of the half-devoured settler slumped from the second chitin’s maw. Stepping over it, bones crunching under the chitin’s weight, the creature advanced upon Ba’ken.

Rushing into its path was Val’in. He swung his shovel madly from left to right in a vain effort to slow the beast.

Ba’ken’s face contorted with horror.

‘Flee!’ he urged. ‘Hide, boy!’

Val’in wasn’t listening. He stood before the massive chitin bravely, trying to defend his saviour as he had defended him.

‘No!’ cried Ba’ken, distraught as the chitin loomed.

Explosive impacts rippled down the creature’s flank, tearing up chips of carapace and punching holes through flesh. The chitin was spun about from the force of the bolter fire thundering against it. Screeching, grey sludge drooling from its shattered maw, it slumped and was still.

Apion drew close and fired an execution burst into the creature’s shrivelled head.

Emek appeared alongside him, smoke drooling from his flamer. ‘Cleanse and burn!’ he bellowed, then, ‘Down, brother!’

With a supreme effort, Ba’ken shoved the creature he was wrestling with. It rolled back onto its haunches as the Salamander dropped into a crouch and fiery promethium spewed overhead. Ba’ken felt its heat against his neck, and couldn’t resist looking up into the flames that consumed the chitin. His eyes blazed vengefully as the creature was incinerated, its death screams smothered by the weapon’s roar.

Ba’ken scowled at the beast, unhitching his heavy flamer before turning and unleashing a torrent of fire into a shambling chitin. Stomping over to a hab-shack, he checked inside and saw several settlers cowering within. They shrank back at the Salamander’s sudden appearance.

Ba’ken showed them his palm, his deep voice resonating around the metal dwelling.

‘Have no fear,’ he told the settlers, before turning to address Val’in. ‘In here. Come now,’ he said and the boy obeyed, clutching the shovel to his chest as he scampered inside. Ba’ken closed the tin door after him, hoping it would be enough to keep them safe.

In the distance, war was calling. Ba’ken’s warrior spirit answered and he hurled himself, flamer blazing, into the fight.

All across the settlement, the Salamanders were gaining the upper hand. The heavy thunk-thud of bolters filled the air. The chitin were blasted apart in the storm, chased down by rampant settlers descending murderously on their stricken and wounded attackers.

Illiad was fearless as he led a group of men, Akuma at his side, driving back the creatures with determined las-salvos. Though not as deadly or decisive as the Astartes, they accounted an impressive tally.

Against the combined might of the Astartes and Illiad’s well-drilled troops, the chitin did not last long. Unprepared to face such an implacable foe as the Salamanders, what was left of the horde fled into their emergence holes bloodied and battered.

Dak’ir was wiping grey chitin blood from his powered-down chainsword when he saw Akuma spit down one of the emergence holes. Anger was written indelibly on the overseer’s face. It turned to despair when he surveyed the destruction around him.

Blood soaked the thoroughfare now and hab-stacks lay crushed or torn open. As Illiad gathered teams to begin collapsing the emergence holes using explosives, a mournful dirge was struck up by the wounded and the grievers for the dead. Wailing infants, some of them now orphans, added their own sorrowful chorus.

One hundred and fifty-four had died in the chitin attack; not all men, not all armed. Another thirty-eight would not live out their injuries. Almost a fifth of the entire human population killed in a single blow.

Silently, the Salamanders helped retrieve the dead.

At one point, Dak’ir saw Brother Apion looking down emptily at a woman clinging to her slain husband. She was unwilling to let go of him as the Salamander tried to take the body and set it upon the growing pyres. In the end she had relinquished him, sobbing deeply.

Illiad lit a flare and ignited the pyres as the last of the dead were accounted for and set to rest. Dak’ir found the custom familiar as he watched the bodies burning and the smoke curling away forlornly through a natural chimney in the cavern roof. The cremation chamber was already blackened and soot gathered in the corners.

Val’in was at the ceremony too, and approached Ba’ken who watched solemnly alongside his brothers.

‘Are you a Fire Angel?’ asked Val’in, reaching out towards the massive warrior.

Ba’ken, almost three times the boy’s height and towering over him, was surprised at the sudden upswell of emotion as Val’in’s hand pressed against his greave. Perhaps the boy wanted to make sure he was real.

A part of Ba’ken was deeply saddened at the thought of this innocent knowing something of the terrors of the galaxy, but he was also moved. Val’in was not Astartes: he did not wear power armour or wield a holy bolter; he didn’t even carry a lasgun or rifle. He’d had a shovel, and yet he was brave enough to stand in the path of the chitin and not run.

Ba’ken found an answer hard to come by.

‘I…’

Dak’ir spoke for him, but to Illiad and not the boy.

‘What does the boy mean when he says “Fire Angel”?’ he asked.

Illiad’s face was set in a look of resignation. The flames from the pyres seemed to deepen the lines on his brow and throw haunting shadows into his eyes. He looked suddenly older.

‘I must show you something, Hazon Dak’ir,’ he said. ‘Will you follow me?’

After a moment, Dak’ir nodded. Perhaps it was at last time for the truth of why the Salamanders had been sent here.

Pyriel stepped forwards, indicating that he would accompany them.

‘Ba’ken,’ said Dak’ir, facing the massive warrior who still found himself daunted before the boy but managed to look up.

‘Brother-sergeant?’

‘You have command in my absence. Try to establish contact with the Vulkan’s Wrath and Sergeant Agatone if you can, though I doubt you’ll get a signal through all of this rock.’

‘Don’t think we need your protection,’ snapped Akuma, having overheard the conversation.

Ba’ken turned on him.

‘You are stubborn, human,’ he growled, though his eyes betrayed his admiration for Akuma’s pride and die-hard spirit. ‘But the choice isn’t yours to make.’

Akuma grumbled something and backed off.

After he’d checked the load of his plasma pistol and secured his chainsword, Dak’ir rested his hand on Ba’ken’s pauldron and leaned in to speak into his ear.

‘Guard them for me,’ he said in a low voice.

‘Yes, sergeant,’ Bak’en answered, eyes locked with the recalcitrant overseer. ‘In Vulkan’s name.’

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ Dak’ir echoed, before departing with Pyriel and following Illiad as he led them away from fire and grief.

II

Angels and Monsters

Illiad took them back down the winding tunnel road to the blast doors of the massive chamber they’d visited before. The bronzed portal was closed again now, its ancient mechanism engaged as soon as they’d left to join the battle.

Dak’ir recalled Pyriel’s words as he stared silently at the gate again. The Librarian, standing alongside him, was characteristically inscrutable.

Answers lie within.

Illiad opened the gates once more and this time stepped inside, without waiting to see if the Salamanders followed.

Dak’ir passed through the threshold first, slightly tentative. But all he saw on the other side was a vast, barren room. He watched Illiad approach one of the walls and wipe away the layers of dust and grit that swathed it. Slowly, images were revealed, not unlike cave paintings but inscribed upon bare metal. The renderings were crude, but as Dak’ir approached, drawn inexorably to them, he discerned familiar shapes. He saw stars and metal giants, clad in green armour. Humans were depicted too, emerging from a crashed ship the size of a city. Flames were captured in vivid oranges and reds. In each subsequent interpretation, the ship was slowly being swallowed up by the earth as ash and rock buried it. Beasts came next, the visual history of the colony spreading down the massive walls. First were the chitin, easy to discern with their bulky carapace bodies and claws; then came something else – brutish, broad-backed figures, with dark skins and tusks. The humans were depicted fleeing from them as the metal giants protected them.

‘How did you survive down here for so long, Illiad?’ Dak’ir’s voice echoed, breaking the silence.

Illiad paused in his unearthing of the colony’s ancient lore.

‘Scoria has deep veins of ore. Fyron, it is called.’ He wiped the sweat of his labours from his brow. ‘We are miners, generations old. Our ancestors, in their wisdom, realised the ore was combustible. It could be used to keep the reactor running, to charge our weapons and maintain our way of life, such as it is.’ His face darkened. ‘It was this way for many centuries, so our legends tell us.’

Dak’ir indicated the wall paintings.

‘And these are your legends?’

‘At first,’ Illiad conceded, changing tack. ‘Scoria is a hostile place. Our colony is few. One in a generation has the duty to record that generation’s history in a log, though much of its formative years are drawn upon these walls. Long ago that task fell to my grandfather, who then passed it on to me after his son, my father, was killed in a cave-in.’

Illiad paused, as if weighing up what to say next.

‘Millennia ago, my ancestors came to Scoria, crash landed in a ship that had come from the stars,’ he said. ‘We were not alone. Giants, armoured in green plate, came with us. Most who now live don’t remember who they were. They call them the Fire Angels, for it was said that they were born from the heart of the mountain. This is why Val’in addressed your warrior in this way.’

Dak’ir exchanged a look with Pyriel and the Librarian responded with a slight widening of his eyes.

Fire-born, he thought.

Illiad went on.

‘After my ancestors crashed, the Fire Angels tried to return to the stars. Our history does not say why. But their ship was destroyed and terrible storms engulfed the planet. Those that ventured into it, taking the ship’s smaller vessels, did not return. The rest remained with us.’

‘What happened to these other Fire Angels?’ asked Dak’ir.

Illiad’s face became grave.

‘They were our protectors,’ he began simply. ‘Until the black rock came, and everything changed. It was thousands of years before I was born. Brutish creatures, like tusked swine and who revelled in war, descended upon Scoria in ramshackle vessels, expelled from the black rock. It eclipsed our sun and in the darkness that followed, the swine made landfall. The stories hold that the Fire Angels fought them off, but at a cost. Every few years, the swine would come back but with greater and greater hordes. Each time the Fire Angels would march out to meet them, and each time they were victorious but less and less of them returned. Inevitably, they dwindled, falling one by one until the last of them retreated underground with my ancestors and sealed themselves in. The last Fire Angel took an oath, to protect my ancestors and pass on the tale of him and his warriors if others like them ever returned to Scoria.

‘The years passed and the fate of that last Fire Angel was lost to history, the warriors from beyond the stars committed to mere memory… until now.

‘We didn’t venture above the earth after that, and the surface of Scoria became lifeless, inhabited only by ghosts. The swine did not return. Some reckon it was because there was no further sport to be had.’

Dak’ir’s brow furrowed as he listened intently to Illiad’s story.

‘You stayed like this… for millennia then?’

‘Until several years ago, yes,’ Illiad replied. ‘The storms that blighted our planet lifted for no reason other than they had run their course. Soon after, the Iron Men came.’ Illiad’s expression darkened at this memory.

‘“Iron Men”?’ asked Dak’ir, though he thought he already knew to whom Illiad referred.

‘They came from the stars, like you. Thinking they were akin to the Fire Angels, I led a delegation to meet them.’ Illiad paused to take a steadying breath and marshal his thoughts. ‘Sadly, I was wrong. They laughed at our entreaties, turning their guns upon us. Akuma’s wife and son were slain in the massacre. That is why he is so distrustful of you. He cannot see the difference.’

‘You say you led the delegation, Illiad. How did you escape from the Iron Men?’ asked Dak’ir, keen to learn all that Illiad knew of the Iron Warriors and their forces, for there could be no doubt that it was the sons of Perturabo who had perpetrated the massacre.

Illiad bowed his head. ‘I am shamed to say that I fled, just like the rest. They didn’t give chase and those who eluded their guns stayed alive. We watched them after that from hidden scopes bored deep beneath the earth.’

Dak’ir remembered the sense of being watched he’d felt outside the wreck of the Vulkan’s Wrath, and assumed this must have been Illiad or one of his men.

‘They built a fortress,’ Illiad continued.

‘Our brothers have seen it,’ Dak’ir told him, ‘out in the ash dunes.’

Illiad licked his lips, as if slicking them so the words wouldn’t stick in his throat.

‘We kept a vigil on it at first, as the walls and towers went up,’ he said. ‘But the men keeping watch began to act erratically. Two of them committed suicide, so I put a stop to it after that.’

‘Your men succumbed to the taint of Chaos,’ said Pyriel sternly.

Illiad seemed nonplussed.

‘Do you know what the Iron Men are doing in the fortress?’ Dak’ir asked in the lull.

‘No,’ Illiad answered flatly. ‘But we encountered them again, this time at the mine where we used to extract the fyron ore. We never got further than their sentries and though they must have known we were there, they seemed disinterested in slaying us.’

Pyriel’s silken voice interrupted.

‘They come for the ore, and are drilling deep to get it,’ he said. The Librarian turned his cold gaze onto the human. Illiad, despite his obvious presence and courage, shrank back before it.

‘Where is this mine?’ Pyriel asked. ‘Our brothers must be told.’

‘I can take you there,’ Illiad answered, ‘but that is not why I brought you here. The legends of the Fire Angels are just tales to protect our young and placate the ignorant. I alone, know the truth.’ Illiad turned to Dak’ir. ‘You are not the first Fire Angel I have seen. There is another living among us.’

That got the Salamanders’ attention. All thoughts of the mine and the Iron Warriors faded into sudden insignificance.

‘The duty of recording our history was not the only thing my grandfather passed on to me,’ Illiad told them. He moved to the back of the chamber. Dak’ir glanced over at Pyriel but the Librarian’s gaze was fixed on the human. ‘Wait there,’ Illiad called back to them, working at a dust-clogged panel in the far wall.

Dak’ir saw the faint glow of illuminated icons as Illiad pushed them in sequence. A deep rumbling gripped the chamber, and for a moment the Salamander sergeant thought it was another tremor. It was, but not one caused by Scoria’s fragile core; instead, it came from the flanking wall.

Stepping back, the Salamanders saw a recessed line emerge in the encrusted metal, spilling out tracts of dirt as a portal formed within it and opened with a hiss of pressure. Old, stale air gusted out from a darkened chamber beyond.

‘Until my grandfather showed me this place, I thought the Fire Angels were just a myth. I know now they are very real and lived by a different name,’ said Illiad upon reaching them. ‘Now, I am the old man and I’m passing on the legacy of my ancestors to you, Salamanders of Vulkan.’

Chaplain Elysius never got his gauntlets dirty during an interrogation. He was fastidious about this, to the point of obsession. This was an Astartes who knew how to inflict pain; agony so invasive and consuming so as to leave no mark, save the one in the victim’s psyche.

Watching the partly dismantled Warsmith in the flickering half-light of the cell, Tsu’gan fancied that Elysius could even wrest a confession from one of the tainted.

After the brief battle in the torture chamber-cum-workshop – for Tsu’gan was convinced it was a union of both – the half-conscious Warsmith had been dragged above ground and taken to an abandoned cell in the upper level. There he lay now, as Tsu’gan watched, chained to an iron bench and bleeding from the wounds the Salamander sergeant had given him.

The tools the Chaplain had requested included a pair of chirurgeon-interrogators that he’d had stored in the Fire Anvil’s equipment lockers. The creatures, servitor-torturers, had unfolded from their metal slumber like the jagged blades of knives extending. Wiry and grotesque, the interrogators’ mechadendrites were fashioned into an array of unpleasant devices, excrutiators, designed to inflict maximum pain. Elysius had constructed the servitors in part himself – at least, he had taken the Mechanicus stock and modified them for his own purposes.

‘Is this butchery strictly necessary?’ asked N’keln, looking on from the shadows.

Since the battle to take the fortress and Tsu’gan’s squad’s near miss in the catacombs, the brother-captain’s stock had depleted further. Though no one spoke of it openly, his disastrous command at the gates of the iron fortress was viewed with ever more critical eyes. Tsu’gan could feel the discontent building like a wave, whilst his own standing had been greatly increased, especially in the eyes of Veteran Sergeant Praetor. The Firedrake had commended the brother-sergeant several times for his valour and strategy. Undoubtedly, it was Tsu’gan that had prevented further deaths and restored parity in the battle.

‘I can break him, brother-captain,’ Elysius replied. The Chaplain stood back, directing his chirurgeon-interrogators expertly.

‘Have you even asked him anything yet, Brother-Chaplain?’ said N’keln.

The Warsmith’s bionic arm had been removed and dismantled, bloodily. His right arm had been severed and the wound cauterised so that he wouldn’t fall unconscious from blood loss. Nor would he be able to morph a weapon from his flesh. Stripped of his body armour, the injuries Tsu’gan had dealt him were visible as a dense patch of welts and purple bruises. Elysius had allowed the Iron Warrior to keep his battle-helm on, for it was his belief that none should look upon the face of a traitor. Let him hide it in shame.

‘I am about to,’ the Chaplain hissed, a little strained under his captain’s scrutiny. After Elysius had issued a sub-vocal command, the chirurgeon-interrogators retreated, taking their blades, their wires and their torches with them. The stench of burned flesh and old copper wafted over to Tsu’gan and the other onlookers, which included Captain N’keln and Brother Iagon.

Tsu’gan’s second had requested he be allowed to observe the Chaplain’s techniques. Most within the company, like N’keln for instance, found Elysius’s methods distasteful, at the same time acknowledging their necessity. Iagon, it seemed, did not, and since Tsu’gan saw no reason to prevent him, he allowed the battle-brother to bear audience with him.

The shadow of Chaplain Elysius fell across the traitor like a deathly veil.

‘What precisely were you constructing in the vault?’ he asked simply.

Burned copiously, the vault had been resealed again following Techmarine Draedius’s analysis. He had yet to ascertain the exact nature of the weapon.

Something fell and evil lurked in the darkness below their feet. Tsu’gan had felt it all the while he was down there and had no desire to reacquaint himself with it. More than once, he had fought the urge to take out his combat knife and press it against his flesh. He knew whatever malign presence lurked in the fortress’s lower levels was just preying on his inner guilt and the manifestation of that guilt in his addictive masochism.

The Iron Warrior laughed, breaking Tsu’gan’s reverie. It was a hollow, metallic sound that echoed around the small cell like a discordant bell chime.

‘What did it look like to you, lapdog of the False Emperor?’

It was a small gesture – like the twitch of one of Elysius’s fingers – that brought one of the chirurgeon-interrogators forward. Something happened, hidden by the servitor’s body, and the Iron Warrior shuddered and grunted.

‘Again,’ ordered the Chaplain in a low voice. There was a pause and the Iron Warrior shuddered for a second time. Smoke issued from his flesh, though Tsu’gan couldn’t see its source. The Iron Warrior laughed again. But it was pained laughter this time and when he spoke, his voice was cracked and hissing.

‘A weapon…’ The breath wheezed in and out of his lungs.

‘We know that.’ Elysius went to order the chirurgeon-interrogator for a third time.

‘A seismic cannon…’ gasped the Iron Warrior.

Tsu’gan knew of no such weapon. Had this warband somehow acquired knowledge of an undiscovered standard template construct? It seemed impossible. Still thinking on it, the brother-sergeant detected the faintest tremor of movement in the Chaplain. The chirurgeon-interrogator retreated.

‘How long have you been on this world?’ Elysius asked, deliberately altering the course of his questioning to try and disorientate the prisoner.

‘Almost a decade,’ the Iron Warrior rasped, as if his breath were raking against his throat.

‘Why are your brothers dead?’

‘Killed in battle, of course!’ Sudden rage gave the Iron Warrior strength and for the first time he struggled against his chains.

Bonds of loyalty and brotherhood were still strong, Tsu’gan considered, even in traitors.

Elysius struck the Iron Warrior’s ruined chest with the flat of his palm. It was a hard blow that pushed the air from the traitor’s lungs and smashed him against the bench.

‘By what or whom?’ demanded the Chaplain, patience thinning.

The Iron Warrior took a few seconds to catch a ragged breath.

‘They will come again, the ones that bested my brothers,’ he said, his yellow lenses flashing maliciously. ‘Very soon, much too soon for you to save yourselves…’ A clicking sound scraped from his mouth, growing steadily faster and louder. The Iron Warrior was laughing again.

Elysius was about to send the chirurgeon-interrogators forwards when Sergeant Lok interrupted them. The veteran was in command of the outer defences and the wall, and had rushed in from outside.

‘Captain,’ he uttered sternly, his face grave.

N’keln gestured for him to give his report.

‘It is the sun, my lord,’ Lok began.

‘What of it, sergeant?’

‘It has been partially eclipsed.’

N’keln was taken aback.

‘By what?’ he asked.

Tsu’gan felt fresh tension suddenly enter the cell. Lok’s tone suggested he had seen something that troubled him. For a veteran of Ymgarl, such a reaction was not to be treated lightly.

‘A black rock, as large as the sun,’ he said. ‘Parts of it are breaking off. Many parts.’

‘Explain yourself, Lok,’ demanded N’keln. ‘Are they meteors?’

‘They are moving erratically, and at different speeds. More and more fragment each minute.’

N’keln scowled, reaching for his bolter instinctively. They all knew what was coming next.

‘Whatever they are,’ said Lok, ‘they’re headed for Scoria.’

‘And with the dark comes a swarm of war, and beneath it the sun shall die,’ Elysius intoned, now facing Lok.

Grating laughter issued from behind him.

‘You’re too late,’ croaked the Iron Warrior. ‘Your doom has come…’

Illiad stepped away from the recently opened portal, bowing his head in reverence.

It was difficult to see within; the gloom was thick and a pall of disturbed dust hung in the air like a grey veil. Dak’ir was aware of his primary heart thundering in his chest. It was not because he was about to go into battle; it was excitement and something approaching fear that gripped him as he stood before the threshold to the room. He turned to look at Pyriel.

‘Your lead, brother-sergeant,’ he said, a faint cerulean glow limning his eyes as he used his witch-sight to better penetrate the half-dark.

Dak’ir muttered a litany to Vulkan and stepped forwards. A few metres into the chamber and he saw musty-looking consoles, veneered by dirt. Cables hung down from the ceiling like the tendrils of some unseen sea plant. Brushing them aside with careful sweeps of his hand, Dak’ir half expected to be stung. His entire body seemed numb, yet electrified at the same time. The pounding cadence of his heart smothered the echoing report of his boot steps against the metal floor. He was only dimly aware of the presence of Pyriel behind him. The Librarian kept at around a metre’s distance, surveying the murky surroundings slowly and cautiously.

It was like descending into a dream.

At last, the hanging cables gave way to a metal esplanade. Dak’ir recognised the symbol embossed in its centre. Though weathered and evidently damaged during the crash, the icon of the Firedrakes was discernible.

A set of stairs led off from the esplanade. Dak’ir followed their trajectory with his gaze. There, at the summit, his eye alighted on a command throne and the figure sitting in it.

Half-shrouded in shadows, details were hard to see, but the armour the figure wore looked old and massive.

Dak’ir reached out a hand without realising. His heart had actually stopped beating for a second of time that felt like minutes. When he spoke, his voice was little more than an awe-struck whisper and he felt an overwhelming compulsion to sink to knees.

‘Primarch…’

Chapter Nine

I

Black Rock, Green Tide

Tsu’gan joined Lok and the others on the wall. N’keln was handed a pair of magnoculars by the veteran sergeant and he peered up at the dark shape blighting the sky.

An almost penumbral cast had engulfed Scoria, the ash deserts made supernatural in its eerie lustre. The sun was all but gone, little more than a dwindling sickle of yellow light swallowed in the maw of something black and massive. An odd sense of stillness had fallen and Tsu’gan felt that niggle at the back of his mind again, as if he was down in the lower levels once more.

He detected the same tremor of unease in his brothers standing alongside him on the wall. Only Chaplain Elysius had stayed in the cell, intent on his prisoner. The rest had followed Lok outside to bear witness to the coming of something terrible.

Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

Dark slivers were peeling off the black object steadily blotting out the sun, gradually forming a cloud that arrowed towards the planet.

N’keln handed the sergeant the magnoculars.

‘See for yourself,’ he replied grimly.

Though the magnoculars didn’t have the range to penetrate beyond the planet’s outer atmosphere, they did reveal the black shape to be a massive asteroid. The dark slivers, like fragments of its body, were in fact ships. Details were hard to discern but Tsu’gan managed to make out the ramshackle design of the nearest vessels. They moved at speed, spilling plumes of black smoke, engines roaring fire. There could be no mistaking the nature of the enemy closing on them.

Tsu’gan scowled as he lowered the magnoculars.

‘Orks.’

A rush of activity greeted Tsu’gan’s revelation. Extrapolating the sheer numbers of greenskins heading towards them from the ships breaking off from the black rock, N’keln had ordered the fortress to be re-fortified at once.

Techmarine Draedius set about constructing a makeshift gate that would be further reinforced by the Land Raider and one of the company’s Rhinos. All Salamanders were mustered at once and squad sergeants barked clipped orders to their troopers, who assumed defensive positions along the wall. Some undertook their oaths of moment, swearing muttered litanies as icons of the hammer and the flame were pressed to lips.

Though the ramparts were chipped and in varying stages of ruination from the Salamanders’ earlier battery, they were still defensible. The automated guns had all been destroyed. It mattered little. Despite their pragmatism, no Salamander would ever turn to the weapons of the Traitor Legions for deliverance. Instead, N’keln ordered the three Devastator squads to occupy the chewed-up gun towers. With four towers in total, the last post went to Clovius and his Tactical squad due to the nature of their weaponry. The towers provided a serviceable vantage point, even though a long-range view was impossible due to how the fortress was situated in the ash basin.

Sergeant Vargo’s depleted Assault squad and Veteran Sergeant Praetor’s Firedrakes were kept in the outer courtyard just beyond the gate as reserves. The Terminators were too bulky to climb the shallow stairways leading up to the wall, so had to content themselves as guardians of the inner keep. That left two Tactical squads, those of Sergeants De’mas and Typhos, strung out across the wall with Captain N’keln and two of his Inferno Guard, Shen’kar and Malicant. The company standard bearer unfurled his banner proudly and it snapped in the growing wind. It seemed a long time since it had last been upraised, but it instantly lifted the spirits of all who saw it. The last of the troops on the wall were a combat squad, led by Battle-Brother S’tang. The other half of the combat squad were operating outside of the fortress, climbing the ridge that would allow them to see much farther across the ash plain and report the enemy’s movements back to their brother-captain.

An arid wind was blowing off the ash desert, kicking up gritty drifts that painted the Salamanders’ armour a dull grey. The view through Brother Tiberon’s magnoculars was grainy in the building storm, but Tsu’gan could see the approach of vehicles by their spewed smoke and the displaced ash gusting away from them. The cloud was massive, hugging the horizon in a dense, black pall. The air that came with it was redolent of oil, dung and beast-sweat.

‘Must be hundreds of vehicles amidst all of that,’ offered Lazarus, lying flat on his stomach on his sergeant’s right.

‘More like thousands,’ Tsu’gan corrected, muttering. He handed the magnoculars back to Tiberon on the opposite side of him.

‘Anything yet?’ Tsu’gan asked Iagon, who was in a slightly more advanced position scrutinising his auspex. He had set it to its maximum wave band and the widest possible area array. The signals coming back were intermittent and hazy.

‘No accurate readings,’ he reported through the comm-feed in a clipped voice. ‘Could be environmental interference, or there could simply be too many for the device to calculate.’

‘There’s a sobering thought,’ replied Honorious, crouching just behind his sergeant and trying to keep the grit out of his flamer’s igniter nozzle.

Tsu’gan ignored him and looked back over his shoulder. It had taken around half an hour to cover the distance from the fortress gate to the summit of the ridge, over uneven ground and on foot. Encumbered in power armour and fully armed, Tsu’gan reckoned they needed to leave at least twenty minutes for a return trip. He planned to mine part of the ridge, using all of the frag grenades he had left. It might not slow the greenskins to any great degree, but it would give them a sting they weren’t expecting.

Above them the yellow sun had become a pale, convex line. In the conditions of the partial solar eclipse, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact time of day. Tsu’gan’s rough calculation put it at around late afternoon. Judging by the speed of the approaching dust cloud, he reckoned the orks would reach them in less than an hour. Around an hour later and the sun would have set and total darkness would engulf the desert. He resolved to wire some photon flares and blind grenades amongst the redoubts before they returned behind the fortress walls.

‘No way through that,’ said Tiberon, interrupting Tsu’gan’s thoughts, peering through the magnoculars. ‘I hope to Vulkan that Agatone isn’t facing a similar horde.’

The troops left guarding the Vulkan’s Wrath were neither as numerous nor as well-defended as those at the fortress. They were also hindered by masses of injured crewmen. It left them and the strike cruiser vulnerable to attack. Tsu’gan had wanted to lead a band of reinforcements to bolster his brothers, but N’keln had forbidden it. All they could do was warn them to expect the enemy. It was scant consolation.

‘Whatever augurs the orks use will draw them to the crashed ship,’ Tsu’gan answered Tiberon. ‘But they’ll be scavenger warbands, hoping for easy pickings. The bigger bastards will be coming here. Orks go where the best fight is. They’ll remember the bloody nose given to them at the fortress and will return to it, eager to settle the score. Even if it’s against us and not the traitors.’ He turned to look straight at Tiberon. ‘Don’t worry, brother,’ Tsu’gan added in a feral tone. ‘There’ll be plenty for us to kill.

It wasn’t Vulkan who sat upon the throne before him.

Dak’ir realised this as he approached the recumbent Salamander, having climbed halfway up the stairs. But the Fire-born sitting there was old, ancient in fact. His armour harked back to the halcyon era of the Great Crusade, when all Space Marines had been brothers in arms and a new age of prosperity and oneness was in prospect for the galaxy. Those dreams were as dust now, just like the ashen patina that veiled the old Salamander in front of Dak’ir.

The venerable warrior bore the Legion markings of a trooper. His antiquated power armour was a deeper green than that of Dak’ir’s. It had a Mark V Heresy-pattern design with its studded pauldron and greaves. The helmet was similarly attired and sat next to the Salamander’s boot where he had set it down but never reclaimed it.

A glow behind Dak’ir, emitted psychically from Pyriel’s hand, revealed the old Salamander’s leathery skin, his battle-weathered face and thinly cropped hair the colour of silver wire. His eyes, where once a fire had burned with the fury of war, were dulled but not without life. He faced away from both Dak’ir and Pyriel, visible in side profile. He also appeared to be staring at something concealed from their view by the bulkhead columns of the dilapidated bridge, for there could be no doubt that this was the part of the ship where they now found themselves.

Dak’ir wondered briefly how long the Salamander had been sitting like that. It seemed to him a desolate charge that the ancient had undertaken.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Dak’ir followed the seated warrior’s eye line and felt a slight tremor of shock.

The wall of the bridge had broken away, presumably destroyed when the ship had crash-landed, to reveal another chamber through the ragged tear in the metal. Though it was dark inside, Dak’ir’s occulobe implant utilised all of the ambient light to discern a natural cavern. Within he saw row upon row of Astartes battle-plate. Salamanders all, these husks of former Fire-born were arranged in serried ranks. There were fifty in total, ten files and five Space Marines deep. The armour was empty and supported by metal frames so that the warriors stood to attention proudly in parade formation. Each one matched the style and age of the old Salamander’s battle-plate and was gouged and battered.

Dak’ir noticed that one or two of the suits had toppled over, due to the rigours of time or the capriciousness of nature. He saw a helmet landed on its side, resting near the boot of its owner. Here and there a bullet-holed pauldron had slipped, to sag forlornly near a suit’s elbow joint.

Looking back at the old Salamander, Dak’ir was filled with a tremendous sense of sadness. He had watched his brothers stoically for millennia, keeping vigil until such a time as someone else took up his mantle or he could perform his duty no more.

‘How is this possible?’ hissed Dak’ir, unsure if the old Salamander was even still cognisant enough to be aware of their presence. ‘If his ship is indeed from Isstvan, he must be thousands of years old.’

‘A fact we cannot be certain of,’ Pyriel replied. ‘Obviously, he has been here for some time. Whether that period extends to millennia we cannot know. The armour is old, but still worn by some in the Chapter today. The ship itself could simply be a reclaimed Expeditionary vessel, re-fitted and re-appropriated by the Adeptus Mechanicus.’

Dak’ir faced the Librarian.

‘Is that what you believe, Pyriel?’

Pyriel returned a side glance at the sergeant.

‘I don’t know what I believe at this point,’ he admitted. ‘The warp storms could have affected the passage of time. But it’s also entirely possible that this Salamander is simply many years old, longevity being a benefit of our slow metabolic rate. Such a thing has never been tested, given that most of our number invariably meet their end in war or, if death is not forthcoming and age arrives first, by wandering out into the Scorian Plain or setting sail on the Acerbian Sea to find peace. It is the way of the Promethean Creed.’

Pyriel shone the corona of psychic fire around his hand a little closer so they could get a better look at the old Salamander. The light reflected off the warrior’s eyes, turning them a cerulean blue.

The old Salamander blinked.

Dak’ir almost took an involuntary step back, but marshalled his sudden shock as the old Salamander spoke.

‘Brothers…’ he croaked in a voice like cracking leather that suggested he hadn’t spoken in some time.

Dak’ir approached the old Salamander.

‘I am Brother-Sergeant Hazon Dak’ir of the Salamanders’ 3rd Company,’ he said, before introducing the Librarian. ‘You have been on watch duty for a long time, brother.’

Dak’ir knew he needed to be careful. If this ancient warrior before them really did hark back to a time before the Heresy, if he was a survivor of the Dropsite Massacre, then much had changed that he would be unaware of. They needed answers but any unnecessary information might only serve to confuse him at this point.

‘Brother Gravius…’ The ancient Salamander tailed off, his precise disposition within the old Legion deserting him. ‘And yes,’ he started anew, seeming to recall that he had been asked a question. ‘I have been sitting here for many years.’

‘How did you come to be here on Scoria, Brother Gravius?’

The venerable Salamander paused, frowning as he dredged through old memories. ‘A storm…’ he began, the words starting to come easier as he remembered how to articulate himself. ‘We… withdrew from battle, our enemies in pursuit…’ Gravius’s face hardened and drew back into an angry snarl. ‘Betrayers…’ he spat, before lucidity failed him again and his features slackened.

‘Was it Isstvan V, brother?’ said Pyriel. ‘Is that where you journeyed from?’

Gravius screwed up his face again, trying to remember.

‘I… see fragments,’ he said. ‘Impressions only… disjointed in my mind.’ He seemed to look past the two Salamanders in front of him.

Dak’ir thought Gravius was gazing into space, when the old Salamander slowly raised his arm from the side of the throne and pointed a finger. Dak’ir turned to see what Gravius was gesturing at. It looked like an old pict-viewer, some kind of ancient data-recording device half smothered by millennia of dirt.

Exchanging a glance with Pyriel, the brother-sergeant descended the stairs and went over to the pict-viewer. Dak’ir knew that many ships kept visual logs as the basis for battle simulations or to chart the progress of a campaign for future reference. Gravius had indicated that this device might contain the log of his ship and with it some clue as to its provenance.

Though it had been broken apart, Illiad and his men had fed power to some areas of the vessel. Dak’ir hoped that this was one of them. Even so, he expected nothing as he activated the pict-viewer and lines of snowdrift interference appeared on the dust-swathed screen.

Using his gauntlet, Dak’ir smeared the worst of the grime away just as an image was resolving in the small square frame. There was no sound; perhaps the vox-emitters no longer functioned, or perhaps the audio was not recorded along with the visuals. The point was moot.

Though the image was grainy and badly marred by constant static, Dak’ir recognised the bridge, as it must have been before the crash. The scene was frantic. Fire had taken hold of some of the operational consoles – Dak’ir looked over to them as they were now and saw a hint of heat-blackening underneath their grey veneer – and several crewmen were lying on the deck, presumably dead. They wore grey uniforms that bore an uncanny resemblance to the attire of Illiad and the settlers. Most were shouting – their voiceless panic, the half-realised terror in their faces, was disturbing.

Dak’ir saw Salamanders, too. The throne was shrouded in shadows, but the bulk of the armour was clear, the flash of fire and warning lights illuminating it just long enough for the brother-sergeant to make the connection. Several of the Astartes were injured too. The image was shaking badly, as if the bridge itself was being subjected to a fierce ordeal. No one addressed the recording, and Dak’ir assumed, with a fist of lead in his stomach, that the captain of the ship had ordered it switched on to capture the last moments of him and his crew. He had not expected to survive the crash.

There was a particularly violent tremor and the screen went blank. Dak’ir waited to see if there was any more, but there the recording ended.

A grim mood had settled over the ruined bridge, quashing the earlier excitement and optimism that Dak’ir had felt. Another tremor rocked the chamber, sending a pauldron crashing nosily to the ground and shaking the brother-sergeant out of his dark introspection.

He exchanged a look with Pyriel.

If the quakes did indeed presage a cataclysm that threatened the planet itself, as the Librarian had predicted, then Brother Gravius and the battle-suits needed to be moved, and quickly. Perhaps, upon returning to Nocturne and under the Chapter Master’s guidance on Prometheus, the secrets within Gravius’s shattered mind could be unlocked. If this was what the Salamanders had been sent to find – their prize – then all efforts must be made to recover them intact. Not only that, but Illiad and his settlers would need to be rescued too. The pict-recording of the ship’s final log had cemented in Dak’ir’s mind that the ancestors Illiad had spoken of were in fact the ship’s original crew and he and his people their descendants.

The revelation was remarkable. Against all the odds, they had endured, creating for themselves a microcosm of Nocturnean society here on ill-fated Scoria.

The visions Dak’ir had experienced earlier, just before the tectonic shift had revealed the chasm into the subterranean realm, came back to him. On a strange, almost instinctual level, it confirmed to Dak’ir that Scoria was doomed and that its demise was soon to be at hand.

Yes, all would need to be delivered from the fires of the planet’s inevitable destruction. There was just the small matter of the Vulkan’s Wrath half-buried in the ash desert, and without the means to break free of it. If this was the primarch’s will, a part of his prophecy etched in the Tome of Fire, then Dak’ir hoped that salvation would present itself soon.

The brother-sergeant’s gaze flicked over to Gravius.

‘Can you arise, brother?’ Are you able to walk?’ he asked.

‘I cannot,’ Gravius answered with regret.

Pyriel touched a hand to the venerable brother’s greave and shut his eyes. He opened them a moment later, the cerulean glow still fading.

‘His armour is completely seized,’ said the Librarian. ‘Fused to the throne. His muscles have likely atrophied by now, too.’

‘Can we move him?’

‘Not unless you want his limbs to break off as we attempt it,’ Pyriel replied grimly.

‘This is my post,’ Gravius rasped. His breath reeked of slow decay and stale air. ‘My duty. I should have died long ago, brothers. If Scoria is to expire, become dust in the vastness of the universe, then so must I.’

Dak’ir paused, as he tried in vain to think of some other solution. In the end he clenched his fist in frustration, Pyriel looking on patiently. His tone betrayed his anger and frustration to the Librarian.

‘We return for the armour, and report back our findings to Brother-Sergeant Agatone. We must be ready when we have a way to leave this accursed rock.’

Tsu’gan returned to the battlements of the iron fortress just in time to see the first explosions tear into the orks.

A series of fiery, grey blooms rippled in a line before the greenskins’ advance, chewing up footsoldiers and wrecking their ramshackle vehicles. Implacably, the orks marched over the debris of bodies and twisted metal, the carnage only seeming to increase their lust for battle.

Through the magnoculars, Tsu’gan saw several of the greenskins pause to kill off their wounded brethren and remove their tusks or strip them of wargear or boots. ‘Filthy scavengers,’ he snarled, regarding the massive horde of green.

Inwardly, he cursed the fact their forces were divided before such a massive host. Consolidation was needed now, not division. Yet, they could not simply abandon the Vulkan’s Wrath, nor her crew. At any account, there could be no envoys sent to the rest of their brothers – nothing could get through the green tide arrayed against them and live.

The creatures mobbed in indistinct groups that the brother-sergeant likened to rough approximations of battalions or platoons. Each mob was led by a massive chieftain, usually riding a battered wagon, buggy or truck; all bolted metal, hammered plate and the bastardised components of enemy vehicle salvage. Tsu’gan assumed the beasts’ ships, the ones that had brought them to the surface, had landed farther off in the ash dunes and were beyond the reach of the magnoculars.

At least the falling slivers, peeling off the black rock like bullet-nosed hail, had abated.

Fights broke out intermittently amongst the orks. Their diminutive cousins – cruel, rangy creatures known as gretchin – lingered at the periphery of such brawls, hoping for scraps, an opportunity to defile the loser or simply to hoot and bray for more carnage. Often these lesser greenskins would be seized during the indiscriminate and seemingly random affrays and used in lieu of a club to bludgeon an opponent with bloody consequences for both.

Orks were a breed of xenos that lived solely to fight. Their behaviour was largely inscrutable to the Imperium, for the creatures possessed no discernible method that any tacticus logi or adeptus strategio had ever qualified. The aliens’ predisposition towards battle was obvious in their musculature and build, however. Trunk-necked, their skin as tough as a flak jacket, they were hard beasts to kill. Broad shouldered with thick bones and still thicker craniums, they stood as tall as an Astartes in power armour and were also his match in strength and raw aggression. The ork’s only real weakness was in discipline, but nothing focused a greenskin’s mind like the prospect of a fight against a hardy foe like the Space Marines.

Judging by the sheer mass of green approaching them, Tsu’gan knew this would be one battle not easily won.

Discipline and loyalty, Tsu’gan reconsidered. The greenskins have no loyalty to speak of; they possess no sense of duty to guide them. Yes, ‘loyalty’ – that is our strength, that is our… His thoughts tailed off.

‘How many?’ asked Brother Tiberon.

Ever since they had fallen back in good order from the advancing greenskins, the horde’s numbers had increased. Tsu’gan had related his best estimates to the forces in the iron fortress, but suspected they were now wildly conservative.

Brother-sergeant and combat squad had rejoined the rest of their battle-brothers on the wall, two sections down from where N’keln and his entourage were positioned. Iagon caught Tsu’gan’s errant gaze as he looked away from the magnoculars to regard his brother-captain.

This battle will either forge or break him, was the unspoken exchange between them.

Brother Lazarus seemed to pick up on the vibrations between Iagon and his brother-sergeant. All in Tsu’gan’s squad shared their leader’s desire to see N’keln no longer at the head of 3rd Company.

That is not disloyalty, Tsu’gan told himself, still unsettled by his previous thoughts, It is duty – for the good of the company and the Chapter.

‘If he falters,’ said Lazarus in a low voice, ‘then Praetor will step in. You can be sure of that.’

Then the way will be clear for another…

It was almost as if Tsu’gan could read the thoughts in Iagon’s earlier expression.

Tsu’gan had his battle-helm mag-locked to his harness, preferring to feel the growing wind on his face and hear the bestial roars of the greenskins without them being distorted through the resonance of his armour. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to fathom his captain’s demeanour.

‘Let the fires of war judge him,’ he said in the end. ‘That is the Promethean way.’

Tsu’gan turned to Tiberon, the deep-throated bellows of the greenskins growing louder by the second.

‘There are thousands, now, brother,’ he uttered in answer to Tiberon’s earlier question. ‘More than my eye could see.’

In the wake of the dissipating smoke from the hidden grenade line, the orks stopped. Night was falling across the ash desert, just as Tsu’gan had predicted. The infighting amongst the greenskins ceased abruptly. They were intent on the killing now, on the destruction of the Salamanders.

In the fading light, the orks began to posture, slowly stirring themselves up into a war frenzy.

Chieftains jutted out their chins, like slabs of greenish rock. Their skin was darker than the rest and swathed in scars like that of their minders, who roamed protectively around them. The darker an ork’s skin, the bigger it usually was and the older and more dominant. Irrespective of their brutish hierarchy, the orks began to beat their armoured chests, clashing fat-bladed cleavers and axes against scale, chain and flak. They hollered and roared, discharging their noisy guns into the air, creating a pall of rancid smoke from the cheap powder.

Tsu’gan could feel the energy within the creatures building. He was no psyker like Pyriel, but he still recognised the resonance of its effects. Orks generated this energy when in large groups and it was magnified when they fought. It prickled at the Salamander’s skin, made his teeth itch and his head throb. Tsu’gan put on his battle-helm. The time for soaking in the coming battle’s atmosphere was over.

The orks began to roar in unison, and Tsu’gan sensed an end to the savage ritual was near. Though their brutish tongue was virtually unintelligible, the brother-sergeant could still discern the meaning in their crude, bellowed words.

‘DA BOSS! DA BOSS! DA BOSS!’

Flurries of ash came spilling down the ridge as if fleeing, disturbed by the passage of something large and indomitable.

Through the ranks of green, a huge ork emerged. It battered its way to the front of the horde, clubbing any greenskin that dared get in its way with a clenched power fist that rippled with black lightning. Unlike the Astartes’ power fists, this orkish device was akin to a massive, plated claw and bore talons instead of fingers. Not only was it a deadly weapon that left any greenskins it struck bludgeoned to death, it was also a sign of prestige, as limpid as any rank insignia or Chapter honour a Space Marine might carry.

The beast wore a horned helmet with a curtain of chainmail hanging from the back and sides. Its armour looked to be some form of mesh-carapace amalgam, daubed with glyphs and tribal tattoos, though Tsu’gan thought he caught the glint of power servos in the ork’s protective panoply. Its boots were thick and black, dusted by ash that collected in the armoured ribs of metal greaves. Grisly trophies dangled from its neck like macabre jewellery: bleached skulls, gnawed-upon bones and the chewed-out husks of helmets. Dark, iron torques banded its bulging wrist and arm; the other was taken up with the power claw. A thick belt girdled the ork’s even broader girth and was heavy with a bulky pistol and chained-toothed axe.

Miniscule eyes, pitiless and red, held only menace and the promise of violence.

Tsu’gan felt his face tighten into a scowl. He would only be too happy to oblige the beast in that regard.

Satisfied that its presence had been properly noted, the giant ork threw back its head and roared.

‘WAAARRRGH BOSS!’

‘The beast establishes its dominance.’ Brother Lazarus’s voice had a sneering tone to it as he watched the display.

‘No,’ Tsu’gan corrected him, ‘it is a call to war and blood.’

II

The Last Redoubt

Photon flares blazed into the steadily thickening night like forlorn beacons in a black sea. They threw a red cast over the slow march of the orks that tinted them the colour of blood. Magnesium bursts followed as the blind grenades Tsu’gan and his combat squad had set up went off. The orks howled and bellowed in pain as their eyes were flooded with harsh, angry light. Those who were closest stumbled into their brethren – some were slain by their belligerent cousins, others struck out and killed the greenskins in their path, swiping in wild agony.

The disruption was minimal. Many orks, upon witnessing the effects of the blind grenades, drew down bug-eyed goggles or simply shaded their eyes with a meaty hand.

Confusion wasn’t the only purpose for the bank of flares; the Salamanders used the percussive glow like a search light. Ork clan leaders were identified in the pellucid bursts and executed with accurate bolter shots. Brief internecine skirmishes broke out until another ork established its dominance, but it gave more time for the heavy bolters to reap a bloodier toll. Lead vehicles were pinpointed and destroyed by multi-meltas or missile launchers, causing fiery pileups in those following in column behind them. Trucks and buggies mangled together in a twisted metal embrace, as their dazed crews were shot dead crawling from the wrecks.

The greenskins responded in kind. Random fire came from their long range weapons but to no effect, save chipping rockcrete or kicking up clods of ash. Orks were not built for shooting, their efforts were half-hearted at best. They did it more to hear the guns go off, the thud-bang and the stink of expelled smoke, than to actually kill anything. Orks preferred to fight close up, where they could smell the blood and fear.

The beasts will find little of the first and none of the second from us, Tsu’gan thought.

The orks were close now and the brother-sergeant knew the order to unleash a firestorm was close too. Crackling static in his ear over the comm-feed gave way to Captain N’keln’s voice, and Tsu’gan realised that order was at hand.

Salamanders were pragmatic, not as given to lofty speeches and rousing rhetoric as some of their distant cousins, such as the Ultramarines. The fact made N’keln’s speech comparatively epic.

‘Sons of Vulkan, Fire-born all, this is our last redoubt. There is no line beyond this wall, no further gate to defend or keep to garrison. This is it. I have but one edict: None shall pass.’ He punctuated each and every word. ‘Into the fires of battle!’ cried N’keln, as his voice became many. ‘Unto the anvil of war!’ the Salamanders chorused.

‘Let them close,’ uttered Tsu’gan to his squad. Across the battlements, sergeants were priming their troops in the wake of the captain’s speech.

Sighting down his bolter’s targeter, Tsu’gan felt a presence behind him and turned to see Elysius appearing on their section of the wall.

‘You have missed the start of the battle, brother,’ Tsu’gan offered wryly.

The Chaplain snorted with derision.

‘I have missed the parlay, you mean, brother-sergeant.’ By his tone, it was difficult to tell whether or not Elysius was serious. Tsu’gan would find out later if his idle remark had been taken in jest.

‘The xenos are a stain upon the galaxy,’ the Chaplain intoned, zealotry affecting his timbre as he lowered his voice. ‘Let them burn in the fires of retribution.’

Eyes flashing with hate, Elysius ignited his crozius and pointed it in the direction of the onrushing horde.

Tsu’gan sighted down the targeter again. ‘Unleash hell!’

It was as if all the sergeants were somehow synchronised or linked by empathy as weapons fire erupted across the wall in unison. Muzzle flashes ripped down the battlements of the iron fortress in a fiery wave, the resultant din like thunder. Greenskins were torn apart in the brutal bolter salvo, the explosive shells wreaking terrible havoc even amongst creatures as tough as orks. Exhorted by threats and the bellows of their captains, the beasts weathered it, trudging over the chewed-up remains of their kin implacably and without remorse. Some fled – those whose nerve had broken, or who’d lost their captains to enemy fire or infighting – they were met mercilessly with a cleaver or axe upon reaching the line of green still poised at the apex of the ridge. For this was just a first wave.

‘Bolter fodder,’ growled Tiberon, over the comm-feed. It was difficult to be heard above the roar of gunfire, though Chaplain Elysius managed it with his scathing diatribes and xenophobic tirades. Pistols and flamers were still out of range, as the orks had yet to close, so he directed each caustic utterance like a bullet aimed to kill.

The side of Tsu’gan’s battle helm lit up as Brother M’lek fired his multi-melta. The hungry beam burned a hole through an advancing ork truck, cooking its engine and turning it into a white fireball that engulfed several foot sloggers rushing alongside it.

The brother-sergeant paused to commend M’lek’s fine shooting, before addressing Tiberon.

‘That is why we must break them, brother, and maintain our strength for the real fight to come.’

Tsu’gan gunned down a chieftain’s armoured bodyguard, turning its skull into bone fragments and red vapour as the bolter round entered its eye and exploded outwards. He saw only one ork battle leader in the midst of the fighting, and judging from the clan markings of the greenskins barrelling towards them, this was its tribe. Perhaps the claw-armed warboss on the ridge was letting his subordinates take turns at trying to crack open the iron fortress.

‘Let them come,’ Tsu’gan hissed belligerently. He took aim again and executed the chieftain itself, who had strayed too close to the fight. ‘They’ll die by my hand,’ he concluded grimly.

With the death of their tribal leader, the orks faltered. A bloody killing field had materialised in the no-man’s-land before the wall; the greenskins in the first wave, despite their efforts, having been unable to get close enough to launch a meaningful assault upon it.

Seeing this, up on the ridge, the warboss bellowed his anger. Sweeps of his brawny arm sent the other tribes forwards, one after the other. Orks in their thousands charged at the Salamanders. Their tribal chieftains hooted and roared, eager for their clans to be the first to reach the enemy. The swell of the greenskins’ brutish voices rose into a clamour.

Tsu’gan felt the dull nagging at the back of his head again, the sensation of being in the tunnel below the iron hall. The feeling of cold metal against his forehead where he’d pressed the bolter’s mouth returned. Nascent psychic energy from the orks was building. Perhaps it was somehow fuelling whatever lurked in the darkness beneath the fortress.

Elysius’s voice responded to it, became the anchor once more to keep the Salamanders grounded. In their multitudes, the orks had got beyond the killing field and were readying for a first assault against the wall. The Chaplain used the bark of his bolt pistol to punctuate his spite-filled sermons, whilst all across the battlements flamers spewed with promethium fury.

‘Cleanse and burn!’ roared Honorious, as his faceplate was lit by his weapon’s fiery glow.

Despite the Space Marines’ strategic acquisition of targets, and their spoiling tactics, the sheer mass of greenskins meant a close-up battle was inevitable. That suited the Salamanders well.

‘Here is where your mettle shall be tested,’ cried N’keln, his voice clear as a silver spear thrown in sunlight, resonating through the comm-feed. ‘Be the anvil, become the hammer!’

The effect was galvanising.

‘Judged in the fires of battle…’ remarked Lazarus with genuine admiration.

Iagon stayed silent, focused on slaying the approaching orks with angry bursts of his bolter.

‘Hold them here,’ snarled Tsu’gan, steeling his squad as he knew his brother-sergeants would be too. ‘We knew this was coming,’ he added, as the first of the ork grapnels clanged and found purchase against the battlements. He blasted apart the thick chain dangling off it, waiting for the line to become taut before he fired. Muffled screams from the unseen greenskins once climbing up the severed chain, now falling to their deaths, made Tsu’gan smile beneath his battle-helm.

Three more grapnels followed it. Brother S’tang took out one, before another five rattled onto the battlements, biting deep.

Brother Catus mistakenly hacked at a chain with his combat blade before leaning over to strafe the orks below with his bolter. He lurched back with a cleaver lodged between his neck and clavicle, spurting blood. S’tang dragged him aside, putting a bolt through the cranium of the ork that dared be the first to poke its head up over the rockcrete lip of the wall.

Ugly greenskin faces emerged en masse after that. They were attached to brutish bodies carrying cleavers and saw-toothed blades.

Chaplain Elysius brained one of the orks with his crozius, electricity still coursing through its shattered frame as it fell back in the morass of warriors below, before jamming his bolt pistol into the maw of a second and reducing its head to shredded meat. A red haze spattered his skull-faced visage, anointing him in blood. Yet as deadly as he was, Elysius could not kill them all.

‘Honorious!’ yelled Tsu’gan.

The battle-brother swept his flamer around from pouring gouts of promethium down the wall and sent a searing blaze over the greenskins trying to outflank the Chaplain.

‘Burn in the fires of perdition, xenos!’ spat Elysius, as the orks were consumed and plunged, flailing, into the mobs amassing at the foot of the wall.

Tsu’gan wiped a swathe of blood from his visor and took a moment to look around the battle site. Sporadic skirmishes had erupted all across the wall. The Tactical squads bore the brunt of the attacks, allowing the Devastators in the higher, less accessible towers to continue wreaking carnage amongst the greater horde that swelled beyond in the ash basin like a green slough.

Many sergeants had broken their warriors up into combat squads; those that fought hand-to-hand or to disengage the grapnels, and those that maintained a ranged fusillade.

In the brief seconds of assessment he allowed himself, Tsu’gan also noticed ork vehicles prosecuting suicide runs against the walls. He saw a bulky wagon, festooned with plates and brimming with orks, rammed headlong in the wall. Shot apart by heavy bolters and multi-meltas, the wagon was a wreck, but now the greenskins were climbing up its tower-like pulpit and using the debris to gain the battlements. Missiles choomed overhead, super-heated beams crosshatched the night obliterating the ork suicide runners before they could close, but couldn’t stop them all.

An impact against the lower part of his section almost knocked Tsu’gan off his feet. The tremor rippled up through the metal and rockcrete. A blast wave of heat washed over the sergeant and his squad, as the vehicle that had collided into the wall ignited and exploded. A few seconds later, scrapes and clanks could be heard as the orks scrambled up the makeshift siege tower.

‘Grenades!’ ordered Tsu’gan, knowing that he was out, but that half of his squad could oblige him. Frag grenades bounded down the wrecked carcass of the vehicle, pulped and burning against the wall, and exploded in a series of dull percussions. The scraping and clanking ceased.

‘Glory to Prometheus!’ he yelled, exultant in this small victory.

Then he saw the force approaching the Techmarine Draedius’s gate.

A mob of heavily armoured orks advanced under fire towards the fortress’s only ingress.

Something moved amongst the larger ork bodies. Tsu’gan caught the glint of metal, a spherical object daubed in jagged iconography, akin to a mine…

‘Concentrate fi–’

A concussive blast erupted from the gate below, cutting the sergeant off before he could issue the order to try and stop it. The Salamanders occupying the section of wall directly above it were thrown off their feet. Out the corner of his eye, Tsu’gan thought he saw Shen’kar pitched off the battlements. His vision was marred by coiling smoke and exploding debris, so he couldn’t be certain. Brother Malicant stumbled and the company banner fell. Only Captain N’keln kept his footing, snatching the banner in defiance of the fire crawling rapidly up the wall, lashing tongues of flame devouring everything they touched.

‘Tank bombers,’ said Tiberon, groggily. The squad had felt the blast wave like the full force of a hammer blow. ‘Must’ve cracked open the gate…’

Greenskins swarming into the dust cloud billowing from the gate confirmed Tiberon’s theory. The Salamanders still standing aimed through the murk, trying to take out the ork assault force that had seemingly appeared from nowhere. Ork commandos returned fire, and Tsu’gan saw another of his brothers fall; a lucky shot through his gorget disabling him.

The heavy-armoured brutes also returned, obscured by the grey fug of smoke and churned ash now swathing the battlefield. The throaty rumble of revving chainblades could be heard through it, anonymous and forbidding.

The orks converged on the gate and the brother-sergeant was powerless to stop it. He cursed his position on the wall, wanting desperately to be where the fighting was fiercest. A bright plume of fire, its roar so loud it eclipsed the chugging chorus of mechanised blades, tore through the smoke and murk below, devouring the assaulting horde with voracious hunger.

Fire Anvil had unleashed its flamestorm cannons and the orks tasted the Land Raider Redeemer’s fury. Howling in rage and pain, the greenskins fell back. Enflamed bodies stumbled from the ruined gate, before sinking to their knees and collapsing in charred heaps upon the ground. No Salamander put them down; they just let them burn.

Three consecutive bursts and the conflagration ebbed, leaving scorched earth, edged by fire, in its wake.

‘In Vulkan’s name and for the glory of the Chapter!’

Praetor’s stentorian timbre thundered across the comm-feed like a rallying bow wave. The Firedrakes had filled the breach.

‘In Vulkan’s name!’ echoed N’keln, standing tall amidst the dying flames wreathing the battlements before him. Brother Malicant was down, but the captain held aloft the company banner in his stead. The coiling drake depicted on the sacred cloth snapped and snarled in the wind as if alive within the fabric. The edges of it were burned and blackened, but that only added to its belligerent allure. N’keln became a beacon, forged as steel upon the anvil of war at last.

‘None shall pass,’ he roared, and the firedrake upon the banner seemed to roar with him.

Tsu’gan found a smile was curling his lip.

The orks were doomed.

In desperation, the last of the tribal chieftains had assaulted the wall up one of the wrecked wagon towers. It gained the battlements, bloodied but unbowed.

Elysius, just finished dispensing with one of its lessers at the end of his bolt pistol, rammed his crozius through the foul beast’s chest as it appeared. It snarled, only for the Chaplain to head-butt it with his battle-helm, shattering a tusk and then snapping off the other with a savage pistol-whip from his still-smoking sidearm. He tossed the weapon aside, seizing the dying chieftain in his gauntlet, the other hand gripped tightly around the haft of the crackling crozius, and lifted the ork into the air.

In a stunning feat of strength, or faith, Elysius raised the flailing ork above his head and flung it, screaming, onto the ground far below.

‘I cast thee out, abomination!’

Coupled with the Fire Anvil’s fury and the wrath of Praetor’s Terminators, it proved a decisive blow.

The orks fled en masse, back across the killing field and up to the ridge.

Their warboss took their capitulation badly. Every one of the fleeing greenskins was slaughtered by the hordes that still remained.

A strange lull descended. It was punctuated by a deep throbbing in the back of Tsu’gan’s skull, like the Salamander could feel the ork warboss’s rage. So potent was the beast’s fury that it had manifested physically, a distinctive pulse in the greenskins’ natural psychic overspill.

In the absence of battle, the sense of despair from earlier returned. Tsu’gan lurched forward to grip the lip of the battlement for support.

‘Sire?’ hissed Iagon, leaning conspiratorially towards his sergeant.

Tsu’gan held up his hand to show he was all right. He gripped his bolter for reassurance. Guilt flooded his body pervasively like a cancer, and he longed for the brander-priest’s rod and the pain that dulled the ache inside him.

‘There is evil here…’ he heard himself slurring, as low as a whisper.

It was eking out of the stones. In his delirium, Tsu’gan almost imagined he could see it: a thin, trailing mist of utter black.

‘Hold together, brothers,’ Elysius girded him, ‘and we shall smite the alien.’

The baleful effects of the iron fortress ebbed. It was not yet strong enough to overcome the Chaplain’s fervour. Tsu’gan straightened again, gritting his teeth.

‘Let’s finish this.’

The warboss bellowed, reasserting his dominance. The orks charged again.

Dak’ir emerged from the chasm to a different world than the one which he’d left previously. An eldritch darkness blanketed the ash dunes now. A black shape, like a moon or planetoid, smothered whatever celestial body of Scoria should have held prominence in the night sky. This then was the black rock of which Illiad had spoken; the carrier for the orks. Its orbit had brought it close enough to the ashen world for the greenskins to launch an assault. As time passed, Dak’ir knew it would only bring them closer.

The strange milieu brought other sensations with it, too – the sounds and smells of battle. The bulk of the Vulkan’s Wrath, still high as an Imperial bastion’s defence tower even though it was partly sunken into the desert, obscured Dak’ir’s view but he could still see a warm orange glow tinting the darkling sky. There was something serene and beautiful about it, despite the distant crump of explosions and the whiff of smoke and promethium wafted on a hot breeze.

The comm-feed in his battle-helm crackled, like life breathed back into a corpse, and he heard the voice of Brother-Sergeant Agatone.

‘Marshal your forces, brother,’ he snapped, clearly perturbed that they’d been out of vox contact for so long. The inquest would come later. ‘We are about to be under attack.’

Dak’ir didn’t question it. Instead, he ran around the half-submerged prow of the Vulkan’s Wrath and climbed up to the summit of a small dune. What he saw there quickened his heart to a state of combat readiness.

‘Pyriel,’ said Dak’ir. The Librarian had been right behind the sergeant and followed him up the shallow dune. ‘When you said there were no oceans on Scoria…’

Before their eyes, still distant but closing, there boiled a belligerent green sea.

‘I was wrong,’ Pyriel replied simply.

The voice of Illiad intruded.

‘Swine-tusks…’ he uttered, hoarsely.

The rest of the combat squad had positioned themselves around him in battle formation. They’d all heard Agatone over the comm-feed.

‘The swine-tusks have returned,’ rasped Illiad, gaping in terrified awe at the grotesque spectacle swarming the dunes. ‘The slayers of your brothers are back to kill us all.’ Dak’ir hadn’t heard fear in the human before… until now.

The main swell of the greenskin horde was far off at the iron fortress, yet still their masses could be seen by the defenders of the Vulkan’s Wrath, spreading across the land like a dark stain. A tributary had peeled off from the major force and was surging towards the stricken strike cruiser.

Do you feel them, Dak’ir? Pyriel asked psychically.

Dak’ir nodded slowly. Yes, he felt it.

‘Such rage…’ he muttered.

The orks were not that far away now. Dak’ir could make out the crude and jagged forms of their vehicles and see their brutish weapons as they discharged them into the air. He discerned the snarled visage of the barbarous greenskin and his fist clenched. These were the spore of those beasts that virtually wiped out his ancient brothers. Here, upon the same ashen fields, the battle would be refought – Salamander versus greenskins. Dak’ir was adamant that this time, the orks would not be back.

The comm-feed spat static for a few seconds and then cleared again.

‘Sergeant,’ growled the voice of Agatone. ‘I need your forces now.’

‘On our way,’ Dak’ir returned and cut the feed. He ordered his combat squad to move out. They left the dune swiftly, Illiad in tow, and went to liaise with Agatone and the others.

Rounding the vast bulk of the Vulkan’s Wrath, Dak’ir saw that the medical tents were already emptying. The injured that could walk or be moved safely were trailing out in ragged groups.

Battle-Brother Zo’tan – from the other half of Dak’ir’s squad – had taken charge of the armsmen and able-bodied human crew, forming them into auxiliaries. A quick head count revealed almost three hundred troops, divided into six fifty-man battalions, assigned squad leaders and commanders. The auxiliary had started to assume strategic positions around the medical tents. They were the last line of defence, there to protect those still festering in their pallet-beds. Even though the badly wounded probably wouldn’t survive, the Salamanders would not leave them to be butchered.

Brother-Sergeant Agatone was stalking towards them. Sergeant Ek’Bar remained behind where they had been discussing a holo-chart, and waited patiently.

Agatone dispensed with any preamble.

‘We have three Tactical and one depleted Assault squad,’ he began. ‘Venerable Brothers Ashamon and Amadeus have also been roused from slumber by Master Argos.’ The doughty forms of the Dreadnoughts loomed in the distance, prowling the extremity of the defensive cordon designated by Agatone.

As he looked, Dak’ir noticed acting Sergeant Gannon also up ahead. He was kneeling upon a high dune, his Assault squad gathered around him, surveying the orks through a pair of magnoculars.

Agatone was interrupted abruptly by the comm-feed. The sergeant pressed a gauntleted finger to his gorget, as his battle-helm was mag-locked to his belt.

‘Go ahead,’ he instructed.

Gannon’s voice came through.

‘I estimate four thousand enemy,’ reported the acting sergeant, ‘with assorted vehicles and bikes. Armament is mainly automatic chain-gun and solid shot rifles and pistols.’

‘Good work, sergeant. To your positions. In Vulkan’s name.’

‘In Vulkan’s name.’

Gannon secured the magnoculars and stood up. A second later he and his squad took to the air, jump pack engines screaming as they ignited, and trailing smoke and fire.

Agatone gestured to the middle distance, where the Thunderfire cannons had patrolled earlier. There was no sign of the tracked heavy guns now, or their Techmarine operators.

‘The grenade line is still untouched,’ he told them, ‘and we’ve added additional explosive payloads. Our stratagem is to funnel the orks into it, launching a full assault into their vanguard when they’re scattered, hurting and confused.’

Dak’ir regarded the greenskin splinter force as Agatone relayed his plan. The xenos had forged some distance between themselves and the parent horde; the latter was just a dense black line cresting a far-off high dune now. He also noticed that the splinter force had become stretched in its eagerness for a fight. A vanguard of bikers, trucks and the faster orkoid elements ranged ahead of a much larger body of greenskins comprising foot soldiers and rumbling half-tracks.

‘See how they are spread?’ said Agatone. It was wide, widening all the time as the speed-obsessed orks raced and tried to out do each other. Dak’ir was put in mind of a giant maw slowly opening as it prepared for its first bite. ‘We need them to become a dense column.’

‘Corral them,’ said Dak’ir, seeing the potential at once to manoeuvre the fast, but brittle greenskin advance forces.

Agatone nodded, a slight hint of irritation in his manner. ‘It is already in place.’ He pointed to distant flanks, just beyond the Dreadnoughts. Dak’ir saw something moving there, obscured by the eerie half-darkness.

‘Thunderfire cannons,’ he thought aloud.

‘Just so,’ Agatone replied. ‘Subterranean blast shelling will commence as soon as we’ve got the orks’ attention. The tremors will force them into line. Any that don’t will be dealt with by the Dreadnoughts.’

Dak’ir’s eyes narrowed as he pictured abstractly the full realisation of Agatone’s plan.

‘We need bait to draw them in.’

The other sergeant nodded.

Dak’ir checked the load of his plasma pistol, then secured it in its holster again.

‘I’ll take a combat squad only,’ he said. ‘Where should we deploy?’

‘Five Astartes is all I can spare, Dak’ir,’ Agatone replied. He gestured to a patch of rocky ground about two hundred metres shy of the grenade line. ‘That’s your squad’s position.’

It was as good a staging point as any. The rocks provided some cover and the ground was set into a small depression the Salamanders could use like a crater to hunker down in if necessary.

‘Five Fire-born to engage a horde of about five hundred,’ said Ba’ken, his tone sardonic. ‘Good odds.’

‘And the rest of the force – what will you do about the ork reserves?’ asked Dak’ir.

‘Argos is working on something,’ Agatone replie looking slightly uncomfortable for the first time during the impromptu briefing, ‘We just need to give him some time. Stall the greenskins.’

‘How much time?’ Dak’ir asked levelly.

Agatone’s expression was stony.

‘As much as we can.’

It didn’t take an anthro-linguistic servitor to realise that Agatone’s obvious misgivings were grave. The sergeant went on.

‘Once the vanguard is eliminated, fall back to the second line. You’ll see it because I’ll be stood at it with the rest of our forces.’

‘And after that, if the orks get through?’

Agatone snorted in mock derision. There was a sense of pathos to the gesture.

‘After that it won’t matter.’

Chapter Ten

I

Into the Dragon’s Mouth

Dak’ir cradled the bolter in his gauntleted hands, feeling its heft and running his fingers down its stock. He muttered litanies of accuracy under his breath as he familiarised himself with the holy weapon.

The Vulkan’s Wrath carried several additional Astartes armoriums aboard. It was well stocked with surplus bolters, ammunition and other materiel in the event that the company should require it. During his scout training, when he was just a neophyte and not part of the 7th Company, Dak’ir had been instructed in the use of the bolter by the stern-faced Master of Recruits. Old Zen’de was dead now but the lessons he had imparted upon Dak’ir lived on.

All of the Salamanders crouched in the shallow depression, the rocky outcrop to their fore, advancing orks glimpsed over the jagged tips of these crags, had a bolter slung to their sides. Bursts of sporadic fire, at range, were intended to attract the attention of the onrushing greenskin vanguard. The squad would then stay visible but hunkered down so as not to present an easy target. Only Ba’ken and Emek, bearing their flamers, wouldn’t be so armed.

Dak’ir’s five had also become six with the addition of Pyriel. He too hefted a bolter, his force sword and pistol remaining sheathed for now. The Librarian had not been swayed by Sergeant Agatone’s arguments when he had insisted he stay with the main force. His talents, he surmised with a tone that brooked no further discussion, would be best served aiding Dak’ir.

Illiad was another matter, of course. With no time to explain what had occurred beneath the surface right now, Dak’ir had merely expressed how important the human was to them and that if they survived the fight with the greenskins, Illiad would need to be brought before N’keln immediately. As it was, the leader of the settlers was determined he would stand with his distant Nocturnean kin and so joined one of the battalions. The human could fight and had his own lasgun, so Agatone saw no reason to oppose him. Dak’ir would see him protected, of course, but supposed that standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fifty other armed men was about as safe as it got right now.

‘A thousand metres,’ Apion reported, keeping sentry on the orks’ approach with a pair of magnoculars.

‘Weapons ready,’ snapped Dak’ir. His tone was clipped and precise as he brought up his bolter. Each Salamander occupied a section of the outcrop, snug in makeshift firing lips rendered by the natural permutations in the rocks. A staccato of arming sounds disturbed the heavy silence before the air was still again.

‘Eight hundred…’

Dak’ir sighted down the bolter’s targeter.

‘Seven hundred…’

Dull percussions from the Thunderfire cannon salvo were rippling across the dunes. Clustered explosions plumed in fiery grey, slowly pushing the greenskin vanguard together.

‘Six hundred…’

‘In Vulkan’s name!’ Dak’ir roared and the bolters roared with him.

Muzzle flares ripped into the darkness followed by the flash of explosive rounds tearing up the leaders of the motorised ork vanguard. Bikes spun front over end, chewed up by the brutal fusillade coming from the Space Marines. Trucks flipped as their fuel tanks ignited, turning them into rolling fireballs. Spitting shrapnel shredded those outside the heart of the bolter storm, forcing bikes to slew into others and trucks to veer widely and crash as their drivers were cut to pieces.

The frenzied ork advance slowed momentarily as the ones that followed on picked their way through flaming wreckage, and as the greenskins at the periphery were forced into a cordon by the distant bombardment of the Thunderfire cannons.

Bellowing curses like wielded blades, the orks regrouped and found a focus for their anger – the six Salamanders blazing away at them from an outcrop of rocks. Like a hot spear-tip the orks came together. In truth, the bolter fire had barely scratched them, but the bloody nose they’d received was stinging.

Errant bullets from the greenskins’ chainguns and solid-shot cannons chipped at the rock wall. A shard spanged against Dak’ir’s pauldron but he barely felt it. The spatial display on his right helmet lens told him the orks were just three hundred and sixty-five point three metres away.

In less than a minute they’d be hitting the grenade line. Then there would be two hundred metres between them and the horde.

‘Reloading,’ shouted Dak’ir, ducking back behind the rocks to expel the partially spent magazine and ram home another one. The process took less than three seconds. As he returned to the firing lip to resume the fusillade, Brother Apion ducked back in his sergeant’s stead, cycling through the ammo replenishment strategy Dak’ir had devised. This way, the Salamanders could maintain a barrage of uninterrupted bolter fire with little deterioration in intensity between reloads.

At the head of the greenskin pack, a howling ork biker was suddenly kicked up into the air, riding a blossoming fireball. It tore out the vehicle’s undercarriage, blasting off its rugged wheels, as well as shredding the ork’s legs and abdomen. The beast was still raging until it struck the ground with a wet crunch. Others followed it, shooting up into the air in a macabre, pseudo-pyrotechnic display. Explosions from the grenade line churned up ash in a dense cloud, causing further carnage and confusion. Riderless bikes trundled through the fog aflame, slowly succumbing to inertia without their throttles opened up. A truck barrel rolled out of the murk, its hapless passengers battered to death as they thrashed continuously against the ground. It settled into a mangled heap, a pair of ork bikers blinded by their ash-smeared goggles, colliding into it and exploding after the impact.

The damage was horrendous, the densely-packed greenskins, precisely corralled by the Thunderfire cannons and impelled by Dak’ir’s ‘bait’ squad, suffering badly in the grenade field. Momentum carried the greenskins behind into deadly debris and the remnants of the sunken grenades yet to be disturbed. They couldn’t stop; their maddened fervour, coupled with the undeniable instinct to go faster, wouldn’t let them. The orks piled on through and kept on dying.

Two hundred metres became a hundred and fifty in Dak’ir’s helmet lens. With so many orks in the vanguard, it was inevitable that some would make it through. But the brother-sergeant had made contingency for that too.

Raking a slide of his bolter, he switched the gun to rapid fire. They’d burn through ammunition much faster this way, but the punishing effects of such a salvo would be irresistible. Loosing his fury, Dak’ir saw the muzzle flare at the end of the bolter expand into a knife-edged star of fire. The oncoming orks became a haze before it, rendered into steaming flesh and bent metal.

The orks, more tenacious than a plague, rolled on into the firing line, scarcely fifty left in the vanguard from the five hundred who had broken off from the slower element of the splinter horde.

Solid shot struck his elbow, finding a spot between the plates, and bit. Dak’ir grimaced, another deflecting off his left pauldron as the orks got close enough to be partially accurate with their return fire.

Ignoring the bullets skimming off his power armour, some punching small holes but stopping at the layered ceramite, Dak’ir rose to his feet. His brothers followed him.

‘Purify!’ roared the sergeant and the flamers opened up at last.

A curtain of fire swept over the last of the orks. Super-heated promethium cooked engines and melted tyres to rubberised slag. The greenskins bayed as they burned, crumpling down as they were engulfed by the intense wave.

Caught between the twin storms of bolters and flamers, barely a score of orks remained. Roughly half staggered, bereft of their vehicles, dazed and enraged to within a few metres of the outcrop when Dak’ir let his bolter hang lose on its strap and unsheathed his chainsword. His voice buzzed like the sound of the blades churning with their sudden activation.

‘Charge!’

Dak’ir led, bounding over the rocks with his brothers on his heels. A flash of cerulean blue in his limited peripheral vision told him that Pyriel had drawn his force sword.

The Salamanders descended on the battered remnants of the ork vanguard.

And tore them apart.

It was over in seconds, and as the dust finally cleared the greenskin dead were revealed, littering the ground. Orks possessed strong constitutions; they were hard beasts to kill. Amongst the carnage there’d be those that still lived, but none posed a threat to the Salamanders at this point. Beyond the dissipating smoke and ash, the rest of the splinter horde was closing. It was a sobering sight that dispelled the heady battle-euphoria of their recent victory.

Over a thousand orks: more heavily armed, more resolute, more wrathful.

Whatever Argos was planning, Dak’ir hoped it would be ready soon and powerful enough to level a small army.

‘Fall back,’ he ordered, ‘and recover any partially spent clips. We’re going to need every single round.’

They arrived at the main Salamander deployment almost at the same time as the Thunderfire cannons and Dreadnoughts.

Agatone had ordered the withdrawal of the heavy guns as soon as the ork vanguard was in the ‘dragon’s mouth’, as he would later refer to it. Dak’ir’s troops had fallen back a short time after that, but the better foot speed of the battle-brothers had averaged out the head start fairly equally.

The brother-sergeant seemed distracted. As Dak’ir approached him, he realised it was because Agatone was listening intently to the comm-feed in his ear. He nodded curtly, his face grim.

‘A much larger horde of greenskins has amassed against the iron fortress. Captain N’keln is currently under siege,’ he announced.

‘How large a force are we talking about, here?’ asked Dak’ir, aware that the main horde they would soon face numbered in the thousands.

‘Estimations are hazy,’ Agatone replied. ‘They reckon tens of thousands.’

Dak’ir shook his head ruefully, before pointing to the lunar eclipse. ‘The black rock up there orbits this planet, and when it closes the orks will increase in number again.’

Agatone looked up to the ghastly planetoid, like a baleful black orb, and frowned darkly.

‘We must reunite our forces,’ he decided. ‘Find a way to get to Captain N’keln and our brothers before they’re worn down by the siege.’

‘We are in no position to lift it, Sergeant Agatone,’ Pyriel interceded, displaying a cold pragmatism normally associated with their Chaplain. ‘Our brothers will be measured against the anvil, as will we all.’

Agatone nodded at the Librarian’s wisdom, but said in a low voice:

‘Let us hope it doesn’t break them.’

After that he summarised the troop dispositions one final time and went to rejoin his squad, leaving Dak’ir to do the same. With Zo’tan leading the human auxiliaries a few hundred metres back from the line of Salamanders, Dak’ir would have been a trooper down if not for Pyriel appending himself to his squad.

The Librarian had taken a keen interest in Dak’ir; for good or ill, the brother-sergeant did not know. The only certainty was that Pyriel would not let him out of his sight.

A rugged defensive line of metal storage crates, partially broken down prefab bunkers and empty ammo drums was strung out for the Salamanders to take cover behind. Battle-Brother G’heb raised his fist to indicate to his sergeant where they would be stationed. Dak’ir could feel the questions in his burning gaze, reflected in the eyes of all the Salamanders, of what happened below the earth and who this human was in their midst. Discipline let them compartmentalise the desire for veracity; survival and the protection of innocent human life overrode it for now.

Answers would come if they lived out this next battle.

Dak’ir was reticent to leave the armour suits, the settlers and especially ancient Brother Gravius behind, but was afforded little other choice. He reasoned that they had survived this long without intervention, and so they were as safe as anywhere could be on Scoria. At least while the orks’ attention was fixed on their foes on the surface, they would not decide to probe any deeper.

A rhythmic chant pervaded on the breeze, interrupting Dak’ir’s thoughts. The orks were marching in time to beaten drums. They saw an outnumbered foe, out of tricks, who had shown their hand and was now in the open. It galvanised them. Dak’ir felt their belligerent confidence as an intense pressure at the front of his skull. He put a hand to his forehead in a vain effort to ward off the discomfort. The others seemed affected to, but not nearly as badly.

Stand straight, sergeant, Pyriel’s voice was little more than a whisper in Dak’ir’s mind. It is the subconscious psychic emanation of the greenskins that you can feel.

It was crippling. Dak’ir felt like his head was about to explode with it. He gritted his teeth, unaware that he’d stooped, and straightened up.

‘Dak’ir…’ Ba’ken, on the other side of his sergeant to Pyriel, reached out to him.

‘I’m all right, brother,’ he lied. The noise in his head was deafening and blood tanged his mouth.

Ba’ken edged closer to his sergeant; the Salamander lines were packed so tightly they were almost shoulder-to-shoulder anyway.

‘Lean on me until the fighting begins,’ he breathed, lowering his heavy flamer slightly and using his free hand to support Dak’ir surreptitiously beneath the elbow.

Dak’ir found he had no voice to respond. Was this another vision, but manifesting in some physically debilitating way? The approaching ork horde blended into a single note of raucous white noise that eclipsed everything else. Hot, angry green light burned like sunspots before Dak’ir’s eyes and he lost focus. Rage: gratuitous, boiling rage filled his mind, and he felt his fists clench in defiance of it. Something primal within him was waking, and Dak’ir fought the urge to cry out and hurl himself at the orks. He wanted to tear into them with his bare hands, to rip their flesh apart with his teeth, to beat upon their bodies until there was nothing left but bone splinters and viscera.

Through the haze of mindless anger that descended, the world was tinted an ugly green.

Listen to my voice, Dak’ir. It was Pyriel again. Remember what you are.

He clenched his fists tighter. Blood flowed into his mouth as Dak’ir bit into his lip.

Fire-born, said Pyriel.

Fury like chained lightning wracked his body and it began to tremble against the strain. Synaptic warning icons behind his helmet lens that were slaved to his body’s biorhythms started spiking. Heart rate was nearing cardio infarction levels, Dak’ir felt it like a frag grenade going off continuously in his chest; breathing intensified; red, flashing icons warned of imminent anaphylactic circulatory collapse; blood pressure was rising, bordering on extreme hypertension.

Fire-born, Pyriel repeated.

Dak’ir felt again the heat of Mount Deathfire. He recalled ranging through the caves of Ignea, plying the Acerbian Sea and the long climb to the summit of the Cindara Plateau.

The green haze filtered away until his vision was red-rimed once more.

‘Fire-born,’ uttered Dak’ir. His voice was in unison with the Librarian’s psychic casting inside his head.

Dak’ir moved away from Ba’ken to show he no longer needed his brother’s support. The unspoken exchange between them said more than any words of gratitude ever could. The bulky Salamander merely nodded his understanding and reaffirmed his grip on the heavy flamer.

The Thunderfire cannons were booming at either end of the defensive line. Unseen, they pummelled patches of advancing greenskins with clusters of surface detonations. It was like dropping a bullet into an ocean. The orks parted briefly before the explosions then closed up again, the ripples short-lived and ineffectual, the slain crushed underfoot and forgotten.

‘Merciful Vulkan…’

Dak’ir heard Emek over the comm-feed.

‘Never despair,’ said Dak’ir to bolster his troops. The blood caked against his teeth tasted like copper. ‘Never give in. Salamanders only go forward.’

Bolter fire erupted down the line as the orks came into range. The greenskins weathered it as before, but no longer marched; they had broken into a run.

‘This is it. For Tu’Shan and the Emperor,’ declared Dak’ir. ‘For Vulkan and the glory of Prometheus!’

Forty against three thousand.

Dak’ir had looked into the primitive psyche of the orks. He knew, on an almost cellular level, their fury and aggression. Unless something changed to even the balance, many Fire-born would not live out this fight. Dak’ir vowed that he would not submit to the pyreum easily.

A dense throb built at the back of his skull. For a moment, Dak’ir thought it was the ork rage returned, but as the sound started to resonate across the ash plain he realised it was from a different source.

The massive capacitors in the Vulkan’s Wrath’s guns were charging. Huge upper-deck turrets swivelled into position with the churning retort of metal. The air crackled with slow actinic discharge, magnetising the metallic elements in the ash and grit particles, statically adhering them to the Salamanders’ boots and leg greaves. The throb built to a high-pitched whine and Dak’ir saw a nimbus of electrical energy spark and fork around the mouth of the guns.

An instant later and they were unleashed.

A blast wave, so heavy and powerful it put the Salamanders on their knees, rippled across the ash plain. Concave slashes of grey scudded in the wake of the turret guns’ lethal discharge, swirling mini-vortices of displaced ash and dirt.

The barrage lasted a few seconds but the greenskin horde was left devastated by it. Strike cruiser guns were intended to be fired at extreme ranges in the depths of space against massive, heavily-armoured and void-shielded targets. The firepower they could bring to bear was insanely destructive. Argos, in his genius, had only activated a small portion of the guns. The laser battery was enough to atomise vast chunks of the greenskin army, slaying hundreds in a deadly las-cluster. Several thousand super-powerful blasts had emitted from the guns, but at such frequency and velocity that they appeared as one continuous beam. Those not caught directly in the beam were burned by it. Several hundred greenskins were already ablaze; some wandered about aimlessly amongst the scorched earth, others were just charred husks. The rest were crippled by shock and disorientation, blinded and deafened by the terrible assault.

Dak’ir was getting to his feet when Agatone, his voice cold and menacing, came over the comm-feed.

‘The greenskins are down. Close in and finish them. Salamanders attack!’

A roar of thrusters ripped into the air as Acting-Sergeant Gannon and his Assault squad surged upwards on contrails of smoke and fire. Their blades were drawn, eager to taste ork blood.

The foot troops barged over the makeshift barricade together, bolters flaring. Flamers tramped alongside them, whilst the heavy static guns stayed behind and pummelled the decimated greenskin horde from distance.

From the flanks, the Dreadnoughts closed the deadly trap and in the resulting carnage the ork splinter force was destroyed utterly.

Greenskin blood swathed Dak’ir’s faceplate and he removed his battle-helm so he could better see. Execution teams roamed through the smoke coiling across the dunes. Anonymous bursts, sharp and sporadic, occasionally broke the eerie quiet of post-battle as greenskin wounded were finished off.

Looking above the carnage, Dak’ir saw the horizon and imagined the greater horde still out there laying siege to the iron fortress. He also wondered how they could hope to break such a massive force with the troops at their disposal. Defenders would have to remain with the Vulkan’s Wrath. It was their only way off a planet that was slowly breaking apart. The tremors were almost constant now, the distant volcanoes erupting with ominous regularity. Even without the eclipse, Dak’ir reckoned the skies would still be grey with falling ash.

‘Like Moribar,’ he muttered to himself, unaware that he’d just echoed the earlier words of his rival, Tsu’gan. At the back of his mind, Dak’ir felt that the dark legacy of the Dragon Warriors was interwoven with the fate of 3rd Company somehow, particularly that of him and Tsu’gan. He even sensed their clawed caress on this distant world.

Agatone emerged through the murk into Dak’ir’s eye line. He was wiping greenskin blood from his power sword as he approached.

‘The orks are slain,’ he said with finality.

‘If they return, we’ll have Master Argos engage the Vulkan’s Wrath’s guns again.’

Agatone shook his head.

‘No we won’t. Argos has told me he can only fire them once. The recoil might collapse the bedrock holding up the ship and bury it for good. He won’t risk it.’

‘Then our reprieve is short-lived,’ said Dak’ir.

‘Precisely.’

‘Any word from Captain N’keln?’

‘We’re trying to raise him now, but there are other matters I wish to attend to first.’ Agatone’s cadence was leading.

‘The human settler?’ Dak’ir asked, already knowing the answer.

‘Precisely,’ Agatone repeated. ‘What did you find below the earth?’

Dak’ir kept his tone level, so his brother-sergeant would be sure of his sincerity.

‘We found Nocturne.’

Agatone’s face betrayed his incredulity.

‘Let me introduce you to Sonnar Illiad,’ said Dak’ir. ‘There is much you should know, brother.’

II

Death by Guilt

The dull report of explosions rumbled through the walls of the keep, manifesting physically as dust motes spilling from the ceiling. The siege was in its second phase as the greenskin warboss threw his seemingly inexhaustible forces against the Salamander-held wall. Thus far, the casualties had been few. Brother Catus had needed his neck patching up before he could return to battle and Shen’kar had received several broken bones from his fall, but those had been swiftly righted and the Inferno Guard was back at his captain’s side.

There were more severe cases. Two Salamanders were currently laid out, supine, their sus-an membranes having shut their bodies down in response to the grievous wounds they’d received during the first ork assault.

Other more minor injuries – severed hands, gouged eyes, punctured lungs – appeared more frequently. Gauntlets drenched in blood, Fugis was glad of the work, but he was also glad of the solitude of the keep. Ever since Naveem and his much-maligned pact with Iagon, the Apothecary had begun to doubt himself. An excuse to stay behind the lines, away from the thunder of battle, was ready-made with the need for him to monitor the two comatose Astartes.

It was anathema for a Salamander, for any Space Marine, to shirk away from combat like this. Fugis knew it, and it preyed upon his thoughts destructively.

He allowed his gaze to wander out of the open-doored cell, one of many in the keep – this one had been cleansed by Chaplain Elysius and a flamer team, and reappropriated for use as an Apothecarion, though Fugis doubted the Iron Warriors had used it for such a curative purpose – and alight upon the shadowed confines of the torture chamber. It was close by, and the doorway to the cell was concealed by a black curtain of plastek. The traitor prisoner was inside, secured upon one of the Chaplain’s devices, his chirurgeon-interrogators acting as dutiful but deadly lapdogs outside.

It felt odd to Fugis; a place of torture and a place of healing in such close proximity. On reflection, though, perhaps the two were not so disparate.

An internal chrono-icon flashed up on the Apothecary’s medi-gauntlet display, reminding him that the monitoring cycle for the stricken warriors in his care was due. Fugis gripped the edges of a mortuary slab and bowed his head.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ he began, in an effort to steel himself.

Footsteps approaching before him arrested what was next in the catechism. Fugis started to look up slowly and saw first the green of a Salamander’s battle-plate.

‘Brother…’ he started to say, when he noticed the ragged hole in the Salamander’s plastron and found the dead eyes of Naveem glaring back at him.

‘Brother.’ Naveem’s words were slurred, but as if there were a second voice laid over the first. His breath was rank with decay and a strong stench of old blood wafted from his wound, as stinging as the irony in Naveem’s tone.

His face was set in a rictus sneer.

‘You’re dead,’ Fugis asserted ludicrously. He reached for his bolt pistol, recognising an emanation of the warp. It seemed the Chaplain’s blessing had not been stringent enough and the flamers had failed to purify completely.

‘Thanks to you,’ replied Naveem, in that same dual voice. He didn’t move, but just stood there, radiating malice and accusation. ‘You killed my legacy and me, brother.’

Fugis’s anger swelled at the apparition’s mockery. He felt the reassuring solidity of the bolt pistol in his grasp.

‘You cannot kill me twice, brother,’ said Naveem.

‘You are not my brother, denizen of the warp,’ Fugis countered and levelled the pistol.

‘I am your guilt and your doubt, Fugis,’ it said.

The Apothecary faltered. What good would a bolt pistol do against a figment of his mind? The weapon wavered in his grasp.

‘Now,’ it said. ‘Put the gun to your forehead.’

Fugis’s face creased defiantly, but he found himself slowly turning the pistol around. He did feel guilty for what had happened to Naveem. It gnawed at his soul, and weighed down his spirit. Fugis wanted to succumb to it, to be drawn down into the darkness there and to never resurface.

He closed his eyes.

The bolt pistol’s muzzle was hard pressed against his skull. He hadn’t even realised it had got that far.

‘Do it now,’ the apparition’s voice insisted. ‘Pull the trigger and sink down, down to where the darkness calls, down to silence and peace.’

Fugis’s grip was tightening. He thought of Naveem and the ignominious end he’d condemned him to, and Kadai – he had failed him, too.

A sudden pressure exerted itself on the bolt pistol’s barrel, slowly but firmly easing it away from the Apothecary’s forehead.

…with it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor… a familiar voice echoed in Fugis’s mind.

‘Ko’tan…’ he rasped, opening his eyes again.

Naveem, or the thing that wore his image like a ragged cloak, was gone. The sense of something at the very edge of Fugis’s vision was dissipating too. He didn’t try to find it, for he knew it could not be seen. The remnant of green gauntlets, of a thunder hammer reforged and a captain reborn, stayed with him, though. It was there just long enough for Fugis to activate the comm-feed.

‘Brother Praetor,’ he said, knowing the 1st Company sergeant was held in reserve at the broken gate. ‘I am evacuating the keep at once. All injuries will be treated at the battle front from this point.’

‘They’re evacuating the keep,’ stated Tiberon.

Iagon nodded absently as he saw Apothecary Fugis emerge through the doors. A pack of servitors followed with a pair of collapsible medi-sleds for the two unconscious battle-brothers.

The chirurgeon-interrogators of Elysius came a few moments later, the captive Iron Warrior in tow. The Chaplain was on hand in the courtyard to survey proceedings keenly. The prisoner would be moved and secured within one of the Rhinos until such a time as Elysius was done with him. Judging by the Chaplain’s demeanour, Iagon thought that might be soon.

Techmarine Draedius sealed the doors behind them with his plasma-torch.

Iagon cared little for the others. His attention was on Fugis alone. Though some fire had been undeniably restored in him, the Apothecary was still an ersatz version of his former self. Iagon saw these things; he saw weakness as clearly as a clenched fist or a drawn blade. His compact, the one he had sworn to protect Tsu’gan, was still intact.

A lull had fallen over the almost constant fighting with the Salamanders’ defeat of the ork warboss’s second assault. The Fire-born were tenacious, it was just their nature; Nocturneans had to be in order to survive a death world. Though perhaps ill-suited to a static defence, much preferring to engage the foe at close quarters and burn them aggressively from the face of the earth, they gritted their teeth, dug in and made every ork assault a suicidal charge into death and fire. Yes, they were winning the war of attrition it seemed. Though the orks spread out into the distance, the lapping green tide was slowly being dragged in and smashed against the Astartes’ breakers. The warboss had even pulled his forces back, out of the range of the Salamanders’ long guns. Orks were stubborn creatures, but even they would stop smashing their skulls against a wall if it showed no sign of capitulation. At least those with rudimentary intellect would.

Iagon imagined the beasts on the summit of the ridge conversing in low cunning, trying to devise a strategy to open up the fortress. Or perhaps they were simply waiting, waiting for the black rock to weep its dark splinters again and replenish the orks’ dwindling hordes. Too many to engage in the open, not enough to force a breach in the fortress and exploit it – the two old foes found themselves at an impasse.

The recently risen sun was a shallow ring of broken yellow behind the ominous black rock. In the few hours since the last assault, it had grown larger. Whatever this thing was that had brought the greenskins to Scoria, it was closing.

‘It’ll be the walls next,’ grumbled Sergeant Tsu’gan, appearing alongside them. He’d removed his battle-helm again and his face was grim. It was like he wore a perpetual grimace, as if a heavy weight dragged down on his features invisibly.

‘Sergeant?’ asked Tiberon.

Tsu’gan’s attention was caught for a moment as he saw the keep being shut up for good, when he turned and peered out idly into the orks amassed at the ridgeline.

‘Can’t you feel it, Tiberon?’ he asked. Ever since the break in the fighting, Tsu’gan had slumped gradually into a miserable stupor. They all felt it, and he guarded it keenly, but Iagon saw the effects of it in his would-be patron more severely than anyone else.

‘We all do, sire,’ Iagon responded. The Salamander’s tone was carefully measured as he recognised the hint of mania that had entered the sergeant’s voice. Tsu’gan was Iagon’s route to power and influence. He must not falter, not now. A glance over to the gatehouse revealed N’keln deep in concert with Shen’kar as they sought to stymie potential breaches and reinforce. Eventually, it would not matter. Iagon knew they couldn’t stay here. They all felt the baleful effects exuding from the Chaos-tainted stone and metal of the iron fortress. No fire could burn that away, no voice of faith, however ardent, could quash it. No, sooner or later they would have to abandon this strange haven, or be consumed by it.

For now, Iagon needed to bolster his sergeant. Support for Captain N’keln was growing by the hour. He had endured the fires of war and so far emerged unscathed, even re-forged.

The troops were spread thinly across the walls, and large gaps had to be tolerated by virtue of the fact that there simply weren’t enough Salamanders to defend every inch of it. Iagon carefully manoeuvred Tsu’gan away from Tiberon, so that they might gain a modicum of privacy. If the other Salamander thought anything of the clandestine exchange, he didn’t show it. Instead, he peered through the magnoculars at the massing ork horde readying to attack again.

‘Sire, you must stand firm,’ Iagon hissed.

Tsu’gan had a feral look in his eyes as he stared down at the ruddy plated-iron of the parapet. The metal looked darker, as if stained with blood. He shut his eyes to block it out and thought again of the knife and the need to use pain as a way to escape his feelings.

‘This fell place is affecting us all,’ Iagon pressed, desperate for some acknowledgement from his sergeant. He gripped Tsu’gan’s pauldron tightly. ‘But we cannot let it deter us from securing the future of the company, brother.’

Tsu’gan looked up at that. His gaze was hard.

‘What are you insinuating, Iagon?’

Iagon was taken aback by Tsu’gan’s sudden harshness and couldn’t hide the fact.

‘Why, your leadership and petition to be captain,’ he answered, easing back a little as if stung.

Tsu’gan’s face formed an incredulous frown.

‘It is over, Iagon,’ he said flatly. ‘N’keln has been judged in the fires of war and found worthy. I have found him worthy.’

For a moment, Iagon was lost for words.

‘Sire? I don’t understand. You still have supporters in the squads. We can rally them round. If enough dissenting voices speak out–’

‘No.’ Tsu’gan shook his head. ‘I was wrong, Iagon. My loyalty was always to the company and my battle-brothers. I will not contest N’keln, and nor should you. Now to your post,’ he added, his resolve and purpose returning. ‘In Vulkan’s name.’

Tsu’gan turned away, and Iagon’s hand fell from his pauldron. A great void had opened up within him, and all of Iagon’s desires and machinations were plunging into it.

‘Yes, sire…’ he answered, almost without knowing he had spoken. His gaze went to N’keln at the gatehouse, the captain reborn who had somehow torn Iagon’s plans from beneath him. ‘In Vulkan’s name.’

Brother-Sergeant Agatone listened to Sonnar Illiad’s story, his expression impassive. Dak’ir and Pyriel flanked the diminutive human in the gloomy confines of a pre-fabricated command bunker.

Following the victory over the ork splinter force, the Salamanders had returned to their previous duties: searching the ship for survivors, excavating the worst buried areas of the hull and defending the perimeter from further attack. In the wake of the battle, the medi-tents were re-established and surgeons told to put down their borrowed lasguns and get back to work. Several of the critically wounded were found dead in their cots upon the return of the medical staff. Either shock or simply inevitable death had claimed them in the absence of continued care. They would be burned with the rest and interred later.

Though the Salamanders went to their duties earnestly, each and every one was ready to muster out at Agatone’s order. They all knew he intended to lead an assault to liberate their embattled brothers at the iron fortress and lift the siege; they merely needed to means and the stratagem to do it. Reports had filtered in sporadically over the last few minutes of urgent need for the besieged Salamanders to quit the fortress. It seemed there was something unholy about it, a malicious presence that had already tried to claim some of the Astartes, a presence that was growing in strength with every moment. This imperative was part of the reason Dak’ir had insisted Agatone have an audience with Illiad, so that he could learn what the leader of the human settlers knew.

Agatone took it all in, processing the information without emotion. Immediately afterwards, Dak’ir had divulged what he and Pyriel had seen on the former bridge of the old Expeditionary ship that the settlers were partly living in. He spoke of the antique power armour suits, the pict recording and of the ancient Salamander, Gravius.

Agatone nodded as he listened, but it was as if Dak’ir had told him he was about to conduct a weapons drill, rather than the fact that possibly the oldest living Salamander in the Chapter resided beneath their feet, a potential link to Isstvan and their lost primarch.

‘I’ll send word to Argos, have him requisition servitors and a Techmarine to secure the armour,’ Agatone replied with almost tangible pragmatism. He didn’t need to see the chamber and the stony-seated Brother Gravius. He had other matters to attend to, like the rescue of Captain N’keln, and took his brothers at their word. ‘We’ll need Apothecary Fugis to move our ancient brother, and we cannot have him until the siege has been broken at the iron fortress,’ he added, moving the conversation swiftly on to matters of strategy.

‘We cannot breach the orks’ lines with the forces we have,’ said Dak’ir.

Immediately after the battle, Agatone had sent out scouting forces beyond the perimeter of the encampment to spy on the greenskins, to ascertain numerical strength and forewarn of any further incursions. For now, the orks were focused on N’keln only but their forces were vast. The reports that came back from the reconnoitring troops were bleak.

Agatone considered a hololith projector that showed as accurately as the Salamanders knew the greenskins’ dispositions and numbers. It looked like a grainy, dark sea lapping against a tiny bulwark on the strategic imager.

‘A lightning attack would be our best option,’ he said. ‘If we could get amongst the orks before they knew of our presence, kill their leaders and power base, it might be enough to overcome them.’

‘The dunes are mainly flat on our approach,’ returned Pyriel, ‘and offer a clear vantage point to the ork sentries and pickets. I doubt we would get close enough to launch a surprise attack before even the dull-witted greenskins spotted us.’

Agatone scowled, continuing to scrutinise the hololith as if an answer might present itself miraculously.

It did, but not through the means the brother-sergeant had expected.

‘Use the tunnels,’ a voice said behind them.

The three Salamanders turned to see Illiad, who had yet to take his leave.

‘Go on,’ coaxed Agatone.

Illiad cleared his throat and took a step forward.

‘Throughout this region, there are subterranean tunnels. Some are manmade. We dug them to expand our settlement or seek new veins of ore. It’s perilous on account of the chitin and the fact that the Iron Men took up residence in our mine. Some are hewn by the chitin themselves, often deep and wide for their burrows or whilst hunting for food. All the tunnels are linked and they go as far as the iron fortress.’

‘To the surface?’ asked Dak’ir, pointing upwards as he said it. ‘Have you mapped them, Illiad?’

Illiad licked his lips. ‘Some do breach the surface, but they are not mapped. Please understand, we have lived in these tunnels for many years, generations even, and all the cartography we will need is up here.’ He put a finger to his forehead. ‘And not just me,’ Illiad added. ‘Akuma and several others know the routes intimately too.’

Agatone nodded, his mood improving.

‘We can utilise the tunnels to attack the orks directly, even in their midst.’ His approving gaze fell upon Illiad. ‘Your men can lead us?’

The human nodded. ‘I ask only one thing,’ he said.

Agatone’s silence bade him to continue.

‘That you let us fight.’

Dak’ir was about to protest, when Illiad raised his hand.

‘Please hear me out,’ he said. ‘I know this world faces its last days. I have seen it in your faces and heard it in the tone of your voices. Even without that evidence, I have known it for some time. The tremors worsen, and they are not because of the chitin or the overmining. It is because Scoria is slowly breaking apart. Its end nears and I would have my people die fighting for it, rather than huddled in the darkness, waiting for the lava or the earth to claim them.’

Agatone came forwards – his shadow engulfed the human before him – and laid his massive hand on Illiad’s shoulder.

‘You are noble, Sonnar Illiad, and you will have your wish.’ Agatone held out his other hand, offering it to the human settler. ‘The Salamanders would be proud to have you at our side.’

Illiad took Agatone’s hand, though it almost swallowed his, and sealed the pact of honour that was offered.

‘If we can save your people and leave this planet, we will,’ said Agatone. ‘You shall not be abandoned, left to an ignominious death. We, human and Salamander both, will live or die together. On that you have my word.’

The moment passed and Agatone released the human from his grasp and was all business again.

‘How many flamers do we have in the armorium?’ he asked Dak’ir.

‘Enough for two per squad.’

‘Take them all, arm those who are trained to use them,’ said Agatone. ‘All static heavy weapons are to be stowed. We will burn these greenskin down,’ he asserted. ‘Then gather the squads together. We’ll need every one, even the sentries.’

‘Are we leaving the Vulkan’s Wrath undefended?’ asked Dak’ir.

Agatone’s face had never been more serious.

‘Every one, brother-sergeant. If we fail here, there’ll be nothing for the Vulkan’s Wrath anyway. We’ll set up the auxiliaries again and have Argos command them. Our Master of the Forge will not leave his ship, so he can watch over it instead.’

‘We will still need a distraction,’ suggested Pyriel. ‘Something to occupy the greenskins before we launch our assault.’

‘Vox Captain N’keln,’ Agatone told Dak’ir. ‘Tell him of our plan and ensure that he is ready for it. Our brothers in the iron fortress will have to be our distraction.’

Illiad’s voice invaded the war council for a second time.

‘There may be another way.’

Agatone looked down at him.

‘You are full of surprises, Sonnar Illiad,’ he said, hinted humour breaking his stoic resolve. ‘We are listening…’

Chapter Eleven

I

The Beast Comes…

War drums pounded on an arid breeze, increasing in intensity as they signalled another ork assault. The warboss thumped its muscle-slabbed chest with a drawn chainblade, bellowing and roaring its warriors into frenzy. The greenskins’ chants built with a rhythmic cadence, reaching a natural peak when they charged again. This time the warboss entered the fray itself and committed all of its tribes to the attack. Like a dark green tsunami, the greenskins rolled off the ridgeline and down into the ash basin. As they hit the bottom, the orks overcame inertia and barrelled headlong towards the wall at speed. They moved as one, the faster trucks and wagons slowing to the pace of the greenskin foot sloggers, denying their urge to go faster in favour of shielding their brethren behind the mobile barricades offered by the vehicles. Even the reckless bikers held their nerve, impelled by the warboss who rode amongst them on a massive, smoke-spewing trike.

Bolter fire barked from the walls, lighting up the gloom of the unnatural eclipse. Missiles sped outwards on streamers of white smoke, whilst the incandescent beams of multi-meltas speared the darkness and caused blossoms of fire to erupt in the shadows. The orks absorbed the terrible punishment and just kept going. Hundreds died in the punitive barrage, but thousands struck the wall and the iron fortress seemed to groan with their sudden weight.

Captain N’keln raised his gore-drenched power sword for all to see. It was a weapon wielded by a hero and a rallying symbol. N’keln understood that now and had accepted his heavy mantle, just as Tu’Shan knew he would.

‘Fire-born,’ he called across the comm-feed, a few minutes before the orks struck. ‘Stand ready. The beast comes. Now we shall remove its head!’

Cheers echoed into the courtyard below, where Tsu’gan waited impatiently at the gate. Techmarine Draedius had repaired it from the orks’ earlier assault and a cohort of almost forty Salamanders clustered behind it.

Tsu’gan was on one flank of the Fire Anvil, just behind the Land Raider’s deadly side sponson. Though he couldn’t see them with the massive assault tank in the way, he knew Praetor and the Firedrakes waited on the opposite side. Tsu’gan could feel the electricity of their thunder hammers charging the air. The scent of ozone prickled his nostrils and he focused on it in order to clear his thoughts. Soon they would be free; free of the traitor bastion’s malign influence. For Tsu’gan and his squad, it couldn’t come soon enough. Each was as eager as their sergeant to leave its confines and embrace true battle on the field. Only Iagon appeared subdued.

Upon ending contact with Agatone at the Vulkan’s Wrath, Captain N’keln had thinned down the troops on the walls. Tsu’gan’s and Typhos’s squads were redeployed with the other reserves in the courtyard. Though any details of the plan with Agatone were kept to N’keln himself, it was obvious to Tsu’gan that they would soon be sallying out.

Chaplain Elysius thought so too. He was standing next to Tsu’gan, having joined his squad, and ignited the crozius arcanum clenched in his black, gauntleted fist.

‘This day we anoint the ash with greenskin blood,’ he snarled, ‘and scourge the taint of xenos from Scoria.’

The sounds of close combat filtered down to them from above. The orks had met the wall and were assaulting. Nothing came from the gate, save for the muffled din of explosions and battle cries. Fire Anvil’s flamestorm cannons rotated meaningfully before it. Tsu’gan guessed this was the reason for the greenskins eschewing the main route into the fortress.

‘You’ll still burn,’ he hissed beneath his breath, and listened to the static crackle down the comm-feed.

N’keln’s order would unleash them into the enemy.

‘Come on…’ Tsu’gan muttered, gripping his bolter as if it was an ork’s neck.

Dak’ir crouched in the darkness of the tunnels. Ahead of him came the echoing screech of the chitin-beasts, followed by the roar of Ba’ken’s heavy flamer. The flare of fire lit the Salamander’s imposing silhouette, roughly fifty metres in front, as he corralled the creatures with careful bursts.

Illiad hunkered down beside Dak’ir with fifty of his men. He huddled a lasgun close to his chest and watched the driven chitin intently as they became lost in the darkness.

The scent of something sharp and acerbic bit at Dak’ir’s enhanced senses. It was pungent, sulphurous and held the trace of a lingering memory. It put him in mind of smoke and cinder…

‘How close are we to the mines from here?’ he asked Illiad.

Illiad shook his head. ‘Not very,’ he said. ‘The mines are much closer to the core and several kilometres distant.’

‘Distant enough so as not to hear the battles above us?’

‘Definitely. The rock face is shored up by reinforced struts and metal plating to keep out the chitin. It also insulates the mining chamber against ambient sound. In any case, they are far from here.’

Yet the acerbic tang remained.

Illiad’s expression suggested he craved an answer.

Dak’ir wasn’t about to give it to him. Instead, he signalled the advance.

The Salamanders at the Vulkan’s Wrath only had four squads at their disposal. The Thunderfire cannons were ill-suited to close assault warfare and so stayed behind in a small concession by Agatone to help protect the crash site. The rest were divided up into combat squads; with injuries some were only four men strong. Settlers accompanied them, both as guides and reinforcements. With their help, the Salamanders had found the chitin burrows swiftly and set about stirring their nests.

As Dak’ir moved, he heard the ruckus of battle above them like muted thunder. It was getting closer all the time.

The wall was in danger of being overrun. Even the Devastators, aloft in the high towers, were coming under pressure. They targeted the orks assailing the fortress directly now, going to their bolters and ignoring the distant wagons and trucks that jostled their way from the back of the horde. Desultory cannon fire from the far off vehicles carrying most of the greenskins’ heavy guns occasionally raked the parapet but was mercifully ineffective.

A rocket exploded overhead, showering Tsu’gan’s armour with debris. He half-glimpsed snarling ork faces through the tiny fissures in the makeshift gate. Still they refused to assault it. All their efforts were bent against the wall. The pressure there was building to breaking point. Tsu’gan’s battle-brothers were holding on tenaciously, heaving orks bodily into the green surf pounding against the foot of the wall below. The bite of chainswords ringed the air in a churning chorus. On the opposite side, the wrecked corpse of a Salamander crashed down into the courtyard. It was Brother Va’tok, his power armour cloven, battle-helm staved in by an ork mace. The dead Salamander’s fingers were still twitching in his gauntlets when Fugis rushed forwards to extract Va’tok’s geneseed.

Tsu’gan raged at the death. It took all of his willpower not to turn around and climb up to wall to vent his fury.

‘Vulkan’s blood!’ he snarled, forcing as much venom as he could into the invective.

Elysius felt it too, rotating his crozius in small arcs to keep his wrist loose and muttering spleenful litanies under his breath. The Chaplain would wait for the opportune moment to give his canticles of hate full voice.

‘Raise shields!’ Tsu’gan heard Praetor cry out to the Firedrakes from the other side of the Land Raider. The clank of metal resounded in the courtyard as the Terminators’ storm shields met their pauldrons and locked in place.

The order from N’keln was imminent.

Crackling static in Tsu’gan’s battle-helm gave way to the captain’s steely voice.

‘Unto the anvil, brothers!’

The gate came down. A long burst from the Fire Anvil’s flamestorm cannons burned clear the immediate area beyond it.

Led by Praetor, the Firedrakes were the first out, tramping onto scorched earth, smoking husks of orks crushed in their sudden charge. Thunder hammers filled the air with flashing discharge from their power generators. Trying to respond, the greenskins hurled themselves at the Terminators but found an unyielding rock against which they were smashed.

The Firedrakes were devastating, and Tsu’gan almost found himself agape at their fury. They moved amidst the greenskin horde, pummelling with their shields, crushing skulls with their hammers. Praetor extolled the glories of the vaunted 1st Company as they killed, his sheer presence impelling his warriors to even greater efforts. Tsu’gan saw the veteran sergeant’s plan at once. He had his sights set on the ork warboss.

‘To the fires of war!’ roared Elysius, once the Terminators had cleared the threshold.

Tsu’gan ran with him, closing the gap behind their 1st Company brothers swiftly. Close-ranged bolter fire tore into the orks, as Tsu’gan ordered ‘weapons free’, and blasted the greenskins apart.

Expulsed promethium merged with the stink of burning ork flesh as Honorious unleashed his flamer. To the rear of the assault group a combat squad made a staggered advance, allowing M’lek to loose his multi-melta. A brutish greenskin, two heads taller than Tsu’gan, its body an armoured shell of plates and whining servos, had its torso liquidised to visceral slag by the multi-melta’s beam. It fell back into a steaming heap, crushing two of its smaller brethren.

Tsu’gan heard the bass tones of Sergeant Typhos as he sang a Promethean battle anthem, describing bloody arcs with the rise and fall of his thunder hammer.

As the three squads slowly converged, forming into a spear shape with Praetor and the Firedrakes as its burning tip, the ork attack on the wall was stymied. Without constant reinforcements, the greenskins already contesting the fortress were left isolated. It allowed the defenders to cleanse the parapets.

Overhead, the warriors of Vargo’s Assault squad soared on wings of fire. Plunging down amidst the greenskins, they released bolt and blade with a zealot’s fervour, small bursts from the squad’s flamer adding to the carnage. They were the last element of the Salamander assault force, and in their wake the Fire Anvil rolled into the breach left behind by the fallen gate. The tank’s bulk easily filled the blackened arch. Sporadic spears of flame from its sponson guns kept the orks at bay. When the initial shock of the Salamanders’ attack had waned, they found themselves locked in a deadly melee. Ork bodies pressed on every side, raw aggression lending the beasts the impetus they needed to get back on an even footing. Only now, wading in the belligerent sea of green, did Tsu’gan fully appreciate what they were up against. Between bolter bursts, he heard a muffled cry and saw what he thought was one of Vargo’s brothers falling into the morass of orks. The Salamander didn’t resurface. Another, Typhos’s special weapons trooper Urion, took a chainblade to the forehead. The exultant ork was shredded by return fire from the dead Salamander’s battle-brothers, and the body was left quivering with the still churning blade that the greenskin had lost its grip on wedged in the wound. Soon Urion was swallowed up by the ork horde too.

They gained about three hundred metres from the gate when the Fire Anvil’s engines stirred into life. The assault tank barrelled into the killing field, barging greenskins aside with its hull or mulching them beneath its grinding tracks.

This was ‘hammer’, the second phase of N’keln’s assault stratagem. The captain was embarked in the Land Raider with the Inferno Guard and the Tactical squad of Sergeant De’mas. Filling the void left behind by the tank was Clovius and his squad. They would hold the gate, whilst the Devastators, utilising the respite bought by Praetor’s and the assault force’s bravura, would abandon the towers and defend the walls in the absence of the Tactical squads. Lok assumed command position over the gatehouse and was charged to hold the iron fortress in case N’keln needed to order a retreat.

Even as ork blood spat across his visor, Tsu’gan knew there would no such retreat. The Salamanders were committed now. It was a simple matter of do or die.

A cleaver rang against his pauldron, spitting sparks, and he staggered. The ork assailing him lunged forward, strings of spittle punched from its maw on stinking breath. Tsu’gan rammed his bolter’s muzzle into the beast’s mouth and pulled the trigger. Blood and brain matter burst out the back of the ork’s head, mixing with skull fragments.

Tiberon came in from the left and smashed the greenskin corpse aside, allowing Tsu’gan to drive forward. Iagon and Lazarus followed, maintaining pace with the implacable Firedrakes.

Praetor was battering his way to the ork warboss. Seeing prey and the prospect of a good fight, the immense leader of the greenskins spurred its biker-mounted entourage forwards. A thickening horde of orks still lay between it and the Terminators.

Assault cannon whining, the Fire Anvil scythed down a first rank of orks spilling from the throng with blades raised. More greenskins came in their stead and Tsu’gan met them with a bolter storm from his troopers.

Praetor exploited the slight gap, crushing the dead and wounded underfoot, as something huge lumbered into view. Orks scattered before it, bellowing and roaring for more carnage. A steel-plated machinery loomed. Trunk-bellied, resembling a can festooned with weapons and two razor-edged power claws, the greenskin war machine thundered forward on piston legs. One of the Firedrakes charged into its path, hammer aloft and crackling lightning. The machinery punched the warrior aside. Swinging its power claw, the crude creation clove a storm shield in two, overloading its force field and smashing its bearer to the ground. Buoyed by its own infernal momentum, the machine, with the band of orks following, drove a wedge into the Salamanders’ spear formation. The Firedrakes’ tip fragmented apart. Praetor, desperate to close with the war machine, was engulfed by greenskins. Capering gretchin, heedless of death, clung madly to his arms and legs in an effort to slow the hero of Prometheus.

Honorious bathed the sergeant of the Firedrakes with his flamer, burning the diminutive greenskins off him like they were an infestation.

The ork war engine was rampaging still. Its pilot was obviously deranged, so fuelled by the psychic energy of the orks that the machine was almost unstoppable. It turned and fought in every direction, battering at the Firedrakes who surrounded it, but couldn’t close.

Tsu’gan went to Praetor’s aid, rushing on even as the flames from Honorious were still dying, and forging a bloody path with the rest of his squad. The pressure on the Firedrake sergeant lessened and he broke free, ramming an ork aside with his storm shield as he approached the ork machine that had scattered them.

In the distance, something was happening. A thick cloud of dust spewed into the air and Tsu’gan swore he saw a cluster of orks disappear below the earth. Bestial screams followed swiftly as the greenskins reacted to something in their midst. On the opposite side of the battlefield, another dust plume spiralled upwards, then another and another. Grey columns of ash were erupting all across the dunes and orks were sinking down into an unseen mire.

Behind him, the clang of the Fire Anvil’s frontal ramp announced N’keln’s arrival on the battlefield. Tsu’gan turned briefly to witness the company banner unfurled by Malicant and his captain leading a fresh charge into the enemy with the rest of the Inferno Guard and Brother-Sergeant De’mas.

Turning his attention back on the greenskin machinery, Tsu’gan went in support of Praetor. The Firedrake sergeant faced off against the manic war engine, rebounding a blow from one its power claws with his storm shield. The ork pilot had overreached itself and was off balance. Praetor shattered the claw arm with a blow from his thunder hammer, before stepping in heavily to shoulder barge it. The ork pilot flailed at its controls, emulated by the machine itself. Tsu’gan, blindsiding it, ducked beneath a madly swiping claw and attached a melta-bomb to the war engine’s body. Throwing himself backwards, Tsu’gan felt the heat of the explosion wash over his armour as the machine burst apart. Chips of debris fell like steel rain, a steaming pair of ruined legs holding up an abdomen of sloughed metal all that remained of the machinery, collapsing onto the ash.

Praetor had withstood the blast and drove on almost instantly, whilst Tsu’gan was still getting to his feet. The intensity of the ork assault was lessening. The guttural cries from those greenskins seemingly swallowed by the dunes were much closer now. At last he saw the cause.

Swarms of enraged chitin were rampaging amongst the horde. The orks hacked away at the carapace bodies of the subterranean creatures, their silt-blood mingling with the ash dunes in a grey soup. Sink holes devoured greenskins by the score, the soft earth, churned up by the chitin, no longer supporting the weight of the orks.

Familiar forms followed in the ash clouds, surging from the emergence holes bolters flaring. Agatone and the Salamanders from the Vulkan’s Wrath had joined up with them, driving the chitin before them like cattle to dig their assault tunnels.

Flame bursts spat through the murk, burning down orks in a fire-tinged haze of grey.

Through the dissipating ash cloud and the rampant pull and thrust of warring bodies, Tsu’gan saw an Assault squad crest the edge of a fresh emergence hole. They took to the air immediately, jump packs screaming. Orks were set ablaze in the violent discharge; one stumbled blindly into the gaping chasm made by the chitin and was lost from view.

Then he saw Dak’ir amongst the reinforcements. The Ignean came out fighting, gutting an ork on his chainsword whilst vaporising the snarling head of another with a shot from his plasma pistol. Tsu’gan felt his jaw harden. He was determined not to be outdone. He caught sight of Chaplain Elysius going after Praetor and the Firedrakes. They were headed towards an inexorable confrontation with the ork warboss. Smiling darkly, Tsu’gan followed.

II

Be the Anvil. Become the Hammer

Islands of open ground were appearing in the green sea as Dak’ir led his combat squad up to the surface. Orks still thronged the ash dunes, just as Agatone’s scouts had reported, but a single mass had become isolated knots. The coherency alloying the greenskins together was breaking. Survival instincts were overthrowing the desire for conquest, and tribal rivalries, once quashed by their overlord’s brute menace, had begun to surface. Infighting ravaged groups of orks at the fringes of the battle, sensing the turn in fortunes and staking early claims of leadership.

‘Stay with me, Illiad,’ shouted Dak’ir, the flare of his plasma pistol dying down as a headless ork crumpled away from him and the humans reached the surface.

Sonnar Illiad merely nodded. His rugged face was pale, his muscles bunched tight as he gripped his lasgun harder than he needed to. The other settlers were the same. To their credit, they were organised and steadfast, but they had obviously never fought in such a conflict before. For a moment, Dak’ir regretted not opposing their role in the battle in front of Agatone. When a lasgun salvo shredded a mob of onrushing orks, he changed his mind. A man fighting for his home will do so to the death and with all of his resolve. Dak’ir wouldn’t deny the settlers that.

Even as the orks broke, Dak’ir saw N’keln bringing the disparate forces of the Salamanders together.

Be the anvil. Become the hammer.

The captain’s words returned to him.

‘Cleanse and burn,’ Dak’ir barked into the comm-feed.

Ba’ken was the first forward from his sergeant’s right shoulder, spewing a carpet of fire into the greenskins.

A second burst erupted from the heavy flamer of Venerable Brother Amadeus, who had lumbered from the chitin emergence hole behind them.

‘Cleanse and burn,’ echoed the Salamander Dreadnought. The tinny resonance of its vox-emitter boomed above the roar of the conflagration engulfing the orks.

Scorched earth was all that stood between Dak’ir and the Inferno Guard once the flames had died. Ashen husks broke apart under booted feet as the brother-sergeant sought his captain’s side. N’keln was cutting his way through the greenskins with his power sword. Behind him, the company banner was providing a glorious backdrop upheld by Malicant behind him. Fire Anvil ground slowly after them, spitting out plumes of fire and stitching orks with explosive rounds from its assault cannon.

Reunited with his captain again, Dak’ir levelled his chainsword as more orks came at them.

‘Forward!’

As more Salamanders fought their way to N’keln, a nexus of strength started to gather.

The anvil was slowly forming. Next would be the hammer.

Dak’ir saw its target through a fiery heat haze.

The greenskin warboss ignored the bickering hordes, intent on the ‘tin men’ who had just destroyed its orkoid war machine.

Slewing to a halt, barely a hundred metres away from the advancing Salamanders, the beast bellowed out a challenge. Sitting up in the bucket-seat of its wartrike, the warboss thrust its chin at Praetor.

Tsu’gan reached the veteran sergeant’s side in time to hear his order to the Firedrakes.

‘Kill it,’ he growled.

Praetor was a hero, a veteran of countless battles and campaigns. His personal roll of honour in the Firedrakes was long and distinguished with many kill markings. But he was also a pragmatist and not given to grand gestures. Vainglory simply didn’t appeal to him. Let the scribes and remembrancers write what they would. Praetor just wanted the green bastard dead. So, he’d level everything he had at it.

The Firedrakes came forward as one, an imposing wall of armour.

Annoyed that the tin man wasn’t responding to its goading, the warboss sent its biker squadrons ahead of it. A mob of its own clan orks followed, more heavily armoured and better disciplined that the other tribes.

Tsu’gan’s world shrank to a single combat – his squad with Elysius and the Firedrakes versus the warboss and his brood.

‘Take them down!’ he roared. The onrushing bikers were engulfed in a bolter storm.

Jagged white daggers seared behind Dak’ir’s eyes and he felt blood on the side of his head. He’d lost his battle-helm. Maybe he’d wrenched it loose, he couldn’t remember. The ork swung at him again. He could smell the stink of blood on its cleaver as it missed his face by centimetres. Swiping low, Dak’ir chewed up the beast’s leg with his chainsword. Brother Zo’tan put a bolt through its brain before it struck the ground.

Three more greenskins came howling at them from the side. A wave of heat rippled there for a few seconds as Ba’ken torched them with his heavy flamer. Dak’ir gave a curt nod of thanks and drove on.

The battle was far from over.

Orks were everywhere, and though many had died in the shock assault or were fleeing, fighting amongst themselves or finishing off the chitin, there were hundreds of others still intent on killing the Salamanders.

Illiad’s settlers had taken the worst of it so far. Easy meat, the orks must have decided. Of the fifty that had joined Dak’ir’s squad, only twenty-three remained. The Salamanders had tried to shield them, but with foes coming at them from every direction it was an impossible task.

Blood and death were ubiquitous on the killing field. As a Space Marine, Dak’ir was able to assess and regulate every combat, carefully compartmentalise it and, in his enhanced battle state, prosecute the Emperor’s justice with efficiency and focused fury. The humans had no such resource and simply fought what they could and tried to stay alive.

‘Stay with the captain!’ Robbed of the comm-feed in his battle-helm, Dak’ir was forced to shout the order to his combat squad.

N’keln was several paces ahead of them, long strides taking him into the thick of the greenskins where his power sword flashed like an angel of judgement. The lead only increased as he killed, slaying the orks with utter impunity. The spirit of Vulkan was with him now, the indomitable will and matchless strength of the primarch. Even the Inferno Guard, his retinue, were struggling to keep up.

Dak’ir saw Fugis lagged the farthest behind. He was cradling Brother L’sen, one of Dak’ir’s troopers, part of the second combat squad – he hadn’t even witnessed him fall. Badly wounded, his chest opened up by an ork cleaver, but still alive, L’sen fired his bolter one-handed and shot the legs out from under a charging greenskin, whilst Fugis, bolt pistol bucking violently in his grasp, destroyed the face of another.

Illiad and the humans stayed with them as Dak’ir’s group caught up. They adopted a circle formation and issued a standing fusillade of las-fire into the approaching orks.

Dak’ir couldn’t protect them any longer. He saw the warboss looming in the distance. The Firedrakes were about to engage it.

N’keln would reach the warboss after them. Dak’ir upped his pace, determined he would face the beast at his captain’s side.

Torquing the throttle of his wartrike, the ork warboss tore across the dunes and straight at the Firedrakes.

The spoiling force the ork had sent ahead was all but destroyed. Bikers lay in mangled heaps, entwined with the wreckage of their mechanical steeds. The Terminators had hit them like a battering ram. Any orks that survived the suicidal run, through either fluke or cowardice, were cut up by Tsu’gan’s and his squad’s bolters.

Chaplain Elysius took great pleasure in despatching the riders, scything them down as they sped past, screams of glee turning to horror and ultimately agony as he shattered bones and severed heads with his crozius. Every ork death was punctuated with a different tirade. The clan orks still endured though and they barrelled after their leader in a raging mob as the warboss surged ahead of them.

Meaty fists clenched around the fat triggers of the trike’s chainguns, the warboss cackled, the throaty sound emulating the cracking report of the front-mounts. White muzzle flashes lit up the beast’s snarling visage as the cannons barked loudly.

A hail of slugs rattled against the armour of the Terminators ineffectually, little more deterrent than an insect swarm. Hastily, Praetor ordered them to form a shield wall to block the ork’s charge. The Firedrakes locked together and presented a stout barrier of ceramite.

This only seemed to drive the beast into a greater frenzy, hooting and bellowing as the hot air rushed past it, spittle drooling from the corner of its mouth in a long stream.

Tsu’gan smiled grimly when he saw the warboss commit to the charge.

It’ll be smashed into oblivion.

Then he noticed the mass of incendiaries packed around the trike. His smile turned into a horrified grimace. Sticks of dynamite were strapped around the frame, other more volatile explosives piled up in lashed-together canisters and dull grey packets.

The wartrike was a giant, moving bomb.

Insane chuckling from the warboss preceded a gout of fire erupting from hidden boosters below. As the beast was launched into the air, Tsu’gan noticed the crude endeavours of orkish science; the warboss’s legs were largely mechanical and a single-shot rocket burst was fashioned into them that lifted it free of the trike, igniting the incendiaries at the same time.

The sergeant didn’t even have time to shout a warning as the explosives went up in a huge mushroom cloud, tearing the trike apart in a maelstrom of fire and frag. The blast wave alone smashed Tsu’gan off his feet. He and his squad were flattened by it. Pain, like white fire, engulfed them.

Even the hardy Terminators staggered, appearing as vague silhouettes through the dirty cloud that expanded outwards voraciously.

Several orks died in the blast, those at the head of the charging mob. They were spun into the air like sticks and landed gracelessly in broken heaps. Amidst this orkoid rain, the warboss came down too. It landed heavily, a tremor rippling outwards from its impact on the densely-packed ash dunes, as the rocket fuel in its boosters bled away to extinction.

Though still groggy from the explosion, Brother Namor of the Firedrakes came at the landed warboss, thunder hammer swinging. He’d lost his storm shield, severed in two halves by the destroyed ork war engine. The warboss laughed, and smacked Namor’s blow aside, before tearing a hole through his Terminator armour with its power claw. Despite all its proofs, the venerable suit was badly rent, and Namor with it. The Firedrake was spilling blood and intestine as he fell forwards into the ash and lay still.

Brother Clyten charged in from the opposite flank, hoping to catch the beast off-guard. Reacting to the destruction at different speeds, the Firedrakes were attacking piecemeal. The oath of vengeance on Clyten’s lips died abruptly when the warboss lunged forward and head-butted him. The blow was so powerful it cracked open the Firedrake’s helmet and he too fell.

A cry of anguish ripped from Praetor’s mouth when he saw his brothers falling. He tried to marshal his remaining warriors and close with the beast but by now the ork mob had caught up. Greenskin bodies swamped them, a multitude of crude blades, cudgels and chains flashing out at the Firedrakes. It was like using a rubber hammer to bring down a bastion wall. But then the orks were not necessarily intending to kill, only to delay.

All the while, the warboss laughed loudly, revelling in the carnage it was wreaking.

Brother Elysius aimed to sour the beast’s ebullient mood. Stepping into a void in the aftermath of the explosion, he brandished his crozius. Lightning crackled over the surface of the weapon, emulating the Chaplain’s hatred. The bile-filled litany was already half-formed as it passed his lips.

‘…and the perfidy of the alien shall be met with cleansing fire and burning blade. Its form, reviled and repugnant, shall be cast down into the pit of damnation.’

Elysius swung his crozius in a short arc, making a jagged trail of sparking energy that hung for a few seconds in the air. It was meant as a goad.

‘Face me, xenos filth,’ he snarled.

Recognising another challenger, the warboss beat its chest in anticipation of a good fight.

Tsu’gan was still getting to his feet when he saw Elysius facing off against the beast. The Chaplain, ordinarily imposing, looked small against the sheer bulk of the massive ork. It was easily several heads taller, and almost twice as wide. Tsu’gan felt dazed; his ears were still ringing from the blast and black clouds circled menacingly at the periphery of his vision. He shook them away through force of will.

He must have been thrown from the blast. A skid furrow in the ash in the shape of his body, several metres long, bore testament to the sergeant’s supposition. Putting his foot forward, Tsu’gan realised he was bleeding. He felt it, wet heat behind his battle-plate, and bit back a rush of agony.

‘To the Chaplain,’ he croaked, tasting copper in his mouth and forged towards where man and beast faced off in uneven contest.

N’keln was becoming a distant figure. Dak’ir slew a greenskin at almost every stroke, his chainsword clogged with churned flesh, but still the captain bested him. A bloody path, ragged and limb-strewn, described his passage through the orks. It made following him easier, and as the carnage wore on, fewer and fewer greenskins filled the void left in N’keln’s wake.

The Inferno Guard were closest, Shen’kar cutting down swathes of orks with his flamer, whilst Malicant held the company banner aloft. Fugis, Dak’ir had lost from sight. He had been left behind, ministering to the fallen even as he killed the enemy, the ultimate dichotomy of life and death expressed through an individual.

Dak’ir judged he was roughly four paces behind the Inferno Guard, and they four paces behind N’keln. The brother-sergeant had Emek at his side with Apion and Romulus. Ba’ken had opted to lag back and try to protect the settlers. Dak’ir lauded his heroism, but wished the bulky trooper was with him now.

Shattering an orkoid clavicle with a blow from his chainsword before burning a hole through its torso with his plasma pistol, Dak’ir saw the black armour of Chaplain Elysius in the gap left by the greenskin’s falling body.

He faced off against the ork warboss. The shadow of its horrifying stature eclipsed him. Others were rushing in support; Dak’ir saw Praetor and two of his Firedrakes free themselves from a swarm of greenskins. Tsu’gan, too, was staggering towards him, his squad belatedly in tow.

Even from distance, Dak’ir could tell they would not reach Elysius in time. The Chaplain would have to fight the beast alone.

An ork truck exploded somewhere off to Tsu’gan’s right, a roiling smoke cloud obscuring his vision as he lost Elysius from view.

By the time it cleared, he saw the Chaplain was bent down to one knee. The beast loomed above him, pressing Elysius down into the ash by grinding his chainblade against the Chaplain’s upraised crozius. There was a dark welt above the ork’s left eye and an angry black scorch mark where the crozius had stung him.

Elysius was buckling.

Tsu’gan struggled to reach him, pain anchoring his legs and weighing them down. He watched, almost transfixed, as the Chaplain aimed his bolt pistol through a gap in the crackling arcs thrown off by the crozius, only for the warboss to lash down with its power claw.

The ground trembled as another tremor wracked Scoria. Elysius screamed in unison with it, and his anguish seemed to shake the world. His arm was severed at the elbow. Blood was gushing from the wound, creating an ugly red mire around the Chaplain’s feet and bended knee. Elysius seemed to sink into it, the beast pressing down relentlessly as it stepped forward to crush the severed forearm into paste in a wanton act of mutilation.

He was only a few metres away, but Tsu’gan could taste the death blow coming, feel it like a change in the wind or a lurch in his stomach.

The Chaplain was about to die, and there was nothing Tsu’gan could do to prevent it. Another hero of the company slain, just like–

Then N’keln was there, drakescale cloak billowing with the rush of his charge, twin-bladed power sword gleaming, and fate was reversed. Bellowing Vulkan’s name, he rammed the master-crafted sword into the ork’s neck and drew it out in a welter of dark blood. The beast roared; a ragged cry emitted from its ruined throat where the gore was pumping readily. Elysius was forgotten and the Chaplain collapsed from shock and blood loss. N’keln took a blow from the ork’s power claw against the flat of his blade and the air around them became electrified.

Tsu’gan tasted the ozone. It numbed his lips and tanged his tongue as if it were on fire. Despite the pain, he was running. His bolter was out, the promethium canister for the flamer attachment long spent too, so he drew his spatha.

The earth shook again, in eerie synergy with the titanic battle unfolding upon it. The ork warboss rained down blows upon the Salamander captain like an angry giant. Each was like a comet, skull-bound and destined to kill before N’keln’s sword skill diffused or deflected it. A dark and viscous tabard of blood coated the ork’s chest now, a second mouth cut by N’keln’s power sword in its neck frothing crimson. Digging furrows in the ground, the Salamander captain was pushed back by the ork’s fury, finding no purchase in ash.

Slow exsanguination was making the warboss sluggish. Its movements were heavier; its prodigious strength fading. The more it exerted itself, the faster its blood spilled from its body. N’keln knew it and based his combat strategy on attrition – it was a gloriously Promethean way to slay an enemy. None could match a Salamander for sheer tenacity. Fire-born never knew when they were beaten.

The warboss slipped, its intended death blow failing to connect, and N’keln took his chance. Having dodged the downward swipe of the ork’s power claw, he stepped into its fighting arc and cut off the wrist holding the chainblade. N’keln then reversed the cut and brought it up into the beast’s exposed flank. The mono-molecular edge of the power-charged blades melted metal and overloaded the narrow-field force generator rippling energy across the greenskin’s armour. It howled as the sword bit into hide then flesh and finally bone.

The stink of cooking meat assailed Tsu’gan’s nostrils as he came at the ork from its blind side, ramming his spatha into an exposed patch of green skin between the plates and the chain links.

N’keln drove his sword deeper, searching for organs and grisly ways to ruin this monster from within. The beast lifted its power claw, a heavy burden, in attempted retaliation. Praetor smashed it down again with a blow from his thunder hammer, the sergeant and his warriors having joined the battle at last. One of his Firedrakes, Brother Ma’nubian, rammed the edge of his storm shield into the ork’s screaming maw.

Still it refused to die, its tiny eyes like malevolent red suns making false promises of retribution. The warboss bowed, the weight of its body dragging it downwards. A plasma blast seared its shoulder, Dak’ir shooting through a gap in the melee.

A dark figure loomed before the near-dead ork.

It was Elysius. He was bent-backed too, agony creasing his features behind the skull-faced grimace of his battle-helm. The cleaved forearm had clotted almost, the Larraman cells working hard to staunch the wound. A fine drizzle of blood issued from the ragged stump where at first there had been a torrent, and the Chaplain cradled it close to his body protectively. Despite his passing out, he had maintained his grip on his crozius arcanum.

‘Death to the ork!’ he rasped, bringing the crackling mace down and staving in the beast’s skull.

It was to prove the final blow in the greenskins’ defeat. Without their warboss to unify them, the clans broke apart fully. Ill-disciplined, fighting amongst themselves, the orks were soon destroyed. Many fled across the dunes into oblivion in the face of the Salamanders’ victory.

The beast’s own clan fought to the end, but the Firedrakes and the newly arrived squads of Dak’ir and Tsu’gan, together with other reinforcements, quickly vanquished them. The Inferno Guard went to their lord’s side. Brother Malicant passed the company banner to N’keln who thrust it into the gloaming sky and roared.

‘Glory to Prometheus! Glory to Vulkan and the Emperor!’

The Salamanders cheered, as did the human settlers, though they didn’t know what they were cheering about, only that they were alive and the swine-tusks were dead.

Ba’ken caught up to Dak’ir and the rest, the slumped carcass of the ork warboss cooling slowly in front of them.

‘The greenskins have broken,’ he announced.

Dak’ir saw Illiad following behind him and was glad the human had survived. Seventeen other settlers accompanied him.

‘They gave their lives for their home,’ said Illiad as he approached, guessing the Salamander sergeant’s thoughts. ‘It is what they and their families would have wanted.’ His mood was defiant, but sombre and grim too. The grief would come later.

‘Akuma?’ Dak’ir asked of the only other settler he knew the name of that had fought in the battle.

‘He died with honour,’ Ba’ken told him, and was struck by the sadness in his voice. ‘He is resting now, before I take him to the pyreum to join the other heroes who fell today.’

A sombre quietude followed, broken by the arrival of the captain.

‘Well met, brothers,’ said N’keln, handing the banner back to Malicant and going to stand amongst them.

The assembled Salamanders bowed slightly, humbled by their captain’s courage and prowess.

Dak’ir felt emboldened by it and was gladdened that N’keln had found his strength through the fires of battle. The anvil had tested him and he had emerged reforged. His optimism was abruptly crushed when he caught the baleful gaze of Tsu’gan regarding him. The glow in the brother-sergeant’s eyes was dimmed as he moved awkwardly. Fresh scars crosshatched his face, the honour markings of a battle well fought. Others would be added in recognition of this day by the brander-priests. Tsu’gan’s look of ire was fleeting as he passed from Dak’ir to N’keln. Dak’ir was heartened to see respect there and surprised to admit to himself that perhaps Tsu’gan’s concerns were legitimate at first, that he desired what was best for the company and not some grab for glory. If his brother-sergeant could acknowledge his mistake in hasty judgement, then perhaps Dak’ir should do so also concerning Tsu’gan’s motives. It didn’t mean the enmity between them had lessened, though.

‘Apothecary Fugis will tend to that,’ N’keln told Elysius, his tone brooking no argument from the Chaplain.

Dak’ir was astounded the Chaplain was still standing given the severity of the wound, even for one as robust as an Astartes.

Elysius merely nodded. The adrenaline was leaving his body now, and he had to focus all of his efforts on staying on his feet and conscious.

‘What now, my lord?’ asked Praetor, carrying scars of his own. His gaze flicked briefly to the distance where Namor and Clyten had fallen. Two of their battle-brothers had dragged them together in readiness for Fugis’s reductor. Sadness shadowed Praetor’s face for a moment before the sternness returned. ‘The orks are defeated, but the Vulkan’s Wrath is grounded still and we are no closer to discovering why the Tome of Fire led us here.’

‘And the tremors worsen by the hour,’ said Tsu’gan, his voice a strained rasp. ‘How much longer before this world cracks apart and is sundered to galactic dust?’

A nerve trembled in Illiad’s cheek, just below his left eye, at Tsu’gan’s callous remark. The brother-sergeant neither appreciated or noticed the effect his referral to the imminent demise of Scoria had upon the human native.

Dak’ir stepped forward humbly, bowing his head in respect to Praetor and N’keln.

‘I may have an answer to the second question,’ he said.

‘For now, it must wait,’ Elysius interrupted. Fugis was now at his side and attending to the Chaplain’s severed arm.

With his other hand, Elysius gestured to the sky.

The Salamanders around N’keln followed his gaze to where the black rock throbbed like a malignant tumour. It seemed larger than before. The sun was now totally engulfed by it. Not even a ring of light remained, just blackness, empty and consumptive. Splinters were breaking off from it, like jagged, purposeful hail homing in on the planet.

Ork ships. Many more than before.

Despite the victory, the Salamanders were weakened. Though united, they had fought and paid much to defeat the greenskins. There were no further reinforcements, no way to replenish their numbers. All that they had was there before them, tired and battered upon the bloodied ash dunes.

‘How long?’ asked N’keln, his voice was deep and forbidding.

‘A few hours,’ answered Elysius. ‘That is all the time we have left.’

Chapter Twelve

I

Doomed

‘Bring him out.’

The Chaplain’s severed arm was swathed in a bloody sling, and he hugged it close to his body subconsciously as he issued the curt order.

The chirurgeon-interrogators responded dutifully. The excrutiator frame and its incarcerated Iron Warrior Warsmith were dragged into the eldritch day.

The prisoner had been secured within the hold of one of the company’s Rhinos. The idea was to keep him away from the Salamanders on the walls and prevent him spewing any Chaotic dogma in an effort to dissuade them from their purpose.

A small group looked on in the courtyard of the iron fortress as the traitor was wheeled into view. Dak’ir was amongst the party that also included N’keln, Praetor and Pyriel. True to recent form, the Librarian was never far away from him now and glanced at the brother-sergeant studiously from time to time. Dak’ir did not know what was happening to him, nor what Pyriel made of it. If Scoria was to prove the 3rd Company’s final battlefield, he might never find out. He knew it was getting stronger however, and despite all of his experience, training and hypno-conditioning, he was afraid of it.

Elysius was leading the interrogation, refusing any further medical assistance besides the bandaged layer of gauze beneath the sling used to bind his grievous wound.

Fugis had expected nothing less. There was little love lost between them, operating as they did at opposite ends of the war spectrum. Dak’ir assumed the Apothecary was busied elsewhere, tending to the injured, extracting the geneseed of the dead. The brother-sergeant guessed that Fugis did so in the troop compartment of Fire Anvil. N’keln had declared that the keep of the iron fortress remain sealed. True, the intensity of the ill-feeling and baleful emanations coming from the very stone and metal it was forged of, had, in the absence of the orks’ natural psychic effusion, ebbed, but whatever lurked in the bowels of that place, corporeal or not, needed to stay there, locked away.

The Land Raider was a good enough substitute in lieu of a more expansive makeshift Apothecarion. Many injured Salamanders, even human settlers, gathered around the periphery of the assault tank awaiting an Apothecary’s ministrations.

Dak’ir had seen Tsu’gan enter a half hour ago, annoyed that he would not bear witness to the interrogation but ordered by N’keln to be assessed and made ready for battle again as soon as possible. In the light of his apparent reneging over contesting the captaincy of 3rd Company, Dak’ir resolved to meet with him and settle a few things before the orks came.

The rest of the Salamanders, those whose wounds were not severe or requiring Fugis’s attention, were arrayed around the battlements in front of the gate. Together, they watched the skies and dunes. Overhead, the black rock loomed like a curse. A few hours were all that remained before the greenskins made landfall, the sky blotted with the orks’ raking ships.

‘Speak, traitor, and your death will be swift,’ declared Elysius, summoning up his hatred despite his pain and discomfort.

The Iron Warrior failed to speak out loud, but there was a muttered sound emanating from his covered mouth.

‘Louder, craven worshipper of the false gods,’ spat Elysius. ‘True servants of the Emperor do not cower behind whispers.’

Dak’ir caught the susurrus of words as the Iron Warrior turned to face the Chaplain and raised his voice.

‘Iron Within. Iron Without,’ he chanted, like a mantra.

A lightning flash pre-empted Elysius’s cudgelling of the traitor across the chest with his crozius. The weapon was at low power, so it didn’t kill the prisoner. The scar of scorched flesh was visible on his body, though, and infected the breeze with its noisome odour.

Dak’ir noticed that the Chaplain wasn’t using his chirurgeon-interrogators to question the Iron Warrior, preferring, uncharacteristically, to do the work himself. He was obviously angry at the ork’s mauling of him and levelled that anger at the traitor.

‘No riddles,’ he snarled, stowing his crozius to draw out his bolt pistol. He pressed the cold muzzle against the Iron Warrior’s forehead. ‘Speak.’

‘Iron Within. Iron Without,’ replied the prisoner, continuing to be uncooperative.

‘I will not ask a third time,’ Elysius promised, pressing the bolt pistol hard against the Iron Warrior’s head. ‘Tell me now how you defeated the greenskins. How were you able to survive? Is the cannon in the bowels of your foetid bastion something to do with it? What is its purpose? Speak quickly!’

‘Iron Wi–’ the traitor began, before stopping abruptly. The shadow of the falling splinters from the black rock had shrouded the courtyard. ‘Doomed,’ he rasped.

Elysius followed his gaze, along with Dak’ir and the others. They all knew what was coming.

Earlier, on the return journey from the killing fields beyond the fortress, Dak’ir had described to N’keln the nature of the black rock as told to him by the human settler, Illiad. It was akin to a planetoid, rotating on a horseshoe orbit around Scoria; a planetoid inhabited solely by orks. Every few years it would come close enough to Scoria for the orks to launch their crude atmospheric craft to make war on those that inhabited the planet – for orks love war. Prior to the Salamanders’ arrival that war had been waged against the Iron Warriors, constructing their fortress and seismic cannon for some unknown purpose. Dak’ir suspected he knew part of the reason, but the rest of it was shrouded from him.

‘Doomed,’ the Warsmith repeated. ‘Our numbers were vastly in excess of yours, Emperor’s lapdogs, and still the greenskin fought us to near oblivion. You cannot prevail.’

‘Is that why you were building the weapon?’ Elysius asked, pressing his bolt pistol harder against the Iron Warrior’s temple. ‘You were planning to use it against the orks, tip the balance back into your favour.’

An amused, metallic rasp issued from behind the closed helm of the traitor.

‘You cannot see,’ he snorted. ‘It will save you. It is your destruction that we wrought here. The doom of the sons of Vulkan is at hand! Your doo–’

The wash of blood and matter against Elysius’s black armour was an epilogue to the barking retort of his bolt pistol as he shot the Iron Warrior through the head.

A slight tremor registered on Captain N’keln’s face, the only clue to his shock or displeasure at the suddenness of the execution.

‘He was an empty vessel, devoid of further use,’ explained the Chaplain. ‘Let him rot in the fires of the warp. The pit will claim him.’

‘The traitor was right, though,’ said Pyriel.

Elysius whirled to confront him. The body language of the Chaplain suggested he had just cast aspersions on his loyalty and faith, such was the fervour in it.

‘We cannot prevail against the orks,’ Pyriel affirmed. Elysius backed down before his cerulean glare. The Librarian turned his attentions to N’keln. ‘The black rock draws closer. Soon it will be at its optimum range. The skies are already thronged with greenskins. A planetoid of orks, my lord,’ he said, ‘possibly in their millions. Even with the greatest strategy, perhaps even with the entire Chapter and Lord Tu’Shan at our side, we would likely lose such a fight.’

‘I’m not sure I like where this line of reasoning leads us, Brother-Librarian,’ said N’keln.

‘I have spoken to Techmarine Draedius–’ this Dak’ir was surprised to learn, he had been with Pyriel almost all of the time prior to and before the battle ‘–and he believes the weapon forged by our traitorous brothers is functional.’

Elysius exploded at this remark.

‘You cannot suggest we employ the tools of the enemy!’ he raged. ‘Heresy lurks down that path, Librarian. I would gladly choose death before compromising my purity with the taint of Perturabo’s spawn.’

‘You may get your wish, yet,’ Pyriel returned, his voice measured. ‘But I would not willingly offer my life, or the lives of my brothers or the people of this world, upon the anvil of war for futile pride. Trust in faith and the fortitude of Nocturne bred into us from our very birth and rebirth,’ he implored. ‘We can activate the cannon, use it to destroy the black rock and the greenskin hordes upon it.’

‘And to what end?’ the Chaplain countered. ‘We risk compromising our purity in the eyes of the Immortal Emperor, and suppose we do so untainted and our enemies are vanquished. What then? Our ship is still mired in the ash, bereft of the engine power to free itself, as this planet is disintegrating from within.’

As if on cue, a tremor rumbled deeply below the earth and fire from the raging volcanoes turned the darkling sky red.

‘To abandon a chance for victory here is to abandon hope,’ said Pyriel. ‘I refuse to believe that Vulkan, through the Tome of Fire, would have sent us to Scoria without reason and to our inevitable destruction. You said yourself, brother, that it was our destiny to be struck from the sky, our eyes opened to the truth.’

Elysius heard his words replayed back to him and found he had no answer. Instead, he looked to N’keln. It was for the captain to decide.

N’keln stood in silence for what seemed a long time before he eventually spoke.

‘Though it offends me to my core to dirty my hands with the weapons of traitors, I see no other choice. We cannot use the Vulkan’s Wrath to destroy the black rock, nor is any weapon we possess here capable of such a feat – the Iron Warriors’ seismic cannon is our choice. Practicality must outweigh false glory. My decision is made.’

Pyriel nodded. Elysius echoed him a few moments later, reluctant but relenting to his captain’s will and counsel.

‘What would you have me do, my lord?’ asked the Chaplain.

‘After unsealing the keep, Brother Draedius will accompany you to the catacombs where the weapon is kept. Take flamers, take whatever you need and cleanse it, sanctify the cannon and allow our Techmarine to marshal its tainted machine-spirits. Then we bring it into the light of day and remove the dark stain that has so blighted this world’s sky.’

‘The weapon still requires an amount of fyron, the ore mined by the settlers here, for it to fire,’ cautioned Pyriel.

N’keln turned his hard gaze upon the Librarian. To Dak’ir, it seemed the captain was growing in stature with every passing moment.

‘You know where this mine is to be found, brother?’

‘A guide can be seconded from the human survivors,’ he said flatly. Dak’ir thought at once of Illiad, only to realise that he hadn’t seen the leader of the settlers since they’d returned to the iron fortress. He also now noticed the fact that a Rhino APC was missing, too.

‘Then do so,’ N’keln’s stern reply interrupted Dak’ir’s thoughts. ‘Brother-sergeant,’ he added, catching Dak’ir’s direct attention. ‘Gather a combat squad to accompany you and Brother Pyriel. It is paramount you return with enough fyron ore to power at least one blast of the cannon.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Dak’ir saluted.

‘To your tasks then, brothers,’ said N’keln. Brother Shen’kar was waiting patiently at the periphery with schematics and potential combat scenarios for the captain to assess. Even if they were successful in destroying the black rock, a great many orks were already on their way and would soon land upon Scorian soil. Battle with them was inevitable and the rest of the Salamanders would need to be ready.

There was little else to be done for Master Argos and the Vulkan’s Wrath. N’keln had denied all requests to go and reinforce the ship. Their position was strong at the fortress and the orks would come to them again. If any did find their way to the crash site, the auxiliaries would have to handle them. But N’keln did not think that likely. The Salamanders would not seek shelter behind tainted walls this time. Its effects were too dangerous and unpredictable with the psychic backwash from the greenskins. No, they would face the hordes out in the open and meet them at close arms where the sons of Vulkan excelled. If defeated, then N’keln deemed they were unworthy of the primarch’s love anyway and deserved no better a fate. He chose to trust in faith and that salvation for the company would present itself through the fires of war.

Dak’ir wanted to speak with N’keln personally, to discuss the fate of Gravius and the armour suits of the old Legion in more detail, but by now the captain was intent on his battle plans. So far, all he had delivered was a succinct appraisal of the facts: of his and Pyriel’s discovery of the ancient Salamander and that the power armour suits were being secured aboard the Vulkan’s Wrath, in one of the ship’s many armoriums.

The captain had taken all of this in with silent inscrutability and not indicated to Dak’ir what his plan might be concerning it.

Destroy the black rock, salvage what they could from the world and hope for a means of escape – those were the Salamanders’ priorities now, and in that order. Everything the else was of secondary concern.

‘Gather your warriors back here,’ said Pyriel once both N’keln and Elysius, gone to find Draedius and his flamers, had departed. ‘I will find us some guides.’

Dak’ir nodded, his mind suddenly on other things as he regarded the open embarkation hatch of the Fire Anvil. Ba’ken was waiting for him as he approached the Land Raider.

Clutching the hulking warrior’s pauldron, Dak’ir leaned in and said: ‘We are bound for the mines. I need four battle-brothers, yourself included.’

Ba’ken nodded and went off to gather the troops.

Dak’ir continued on his way and soon found himself at the Fire Anvil’s embarkation ramp. The internal lighting was kept low but he still made out injured battle-brothers hunched upon the assault bunks, awaiting treatment. Dak’ir also noticed two medi-caskets where comatose Salamanders reclined, preserved by the action of their sus-an membranes, in response to the grievous harm they’d suffered in battle against the orks.

He’d seen other caskets too: these contained the bodies of slain heroes, destined for the pyreum, their progenoids removed to cultivate later generations of Salamanders. The dead amongst the settlers, almost half of those who had gone bravely into battle with the Astartes, would join them as a mark of honour and respect for their sacrifice.

Dak’ir entered and he saw what at first he thought was Fugis tending to a wounded Salamander at the rear of the hold, his back to him. When he saw the green, not white, battle-helm resting on a medi-slab alongside him, Dak’ir realised it was not the Apothecary at all.

‘Where is Fugis?’ he asked curtly, annoyed at the perceived deception.

Brother Emek turned to face him, but his patient spoke for him.

‘N’keln sent him on another mission, as soon as we returned to the iron fortress,’ Tsu’gan told him, his spike of beard jutting out like a static, red flame. The sergeant’s plastron and a detachable portion of his torso under-mesh had been removed. Emek had just finished bandaging Tsu’gan’s chest. The bindings were tight and muddied dark pink with his diffuse blood beneath them. Salves and unguents had been applied to his body to speed up the recovery process. They smelled of ash and burning rock. Dak’ir also saw the many branding scars visited upon the sergeant’s skin. They were deep and wide, and he wondered how Tsu’gan’s brander-priest could’ve been so crude in his honour marking.

‘I’ll leave you, brothers,’ said Emek, ever the diplomat, and moved to the other side of the hold where another patient awaited him. Dak’ir nodded as he passed, but his attention was upon Tsu’gan who had got up and was replacing his plastron.

‘What about his duties here?’ Dak’ir asked. ‘And what mission?’

‘There was little for him to do, save the removal of the progenoids from our fallen brothers. That was done upon the field of battle, the rest are patch-ups that your trooper, Emek, seems more than capable of performing.’ Tsu’gan fitted the armour in place and clasped the front and back, betraying a wince of pain for his efforts. ‘Perhaps Fugis is grooming him for a role in the Apothecarion.’

Dak’ir clenched a fist at the brother-sergeant’s deliberate goading.

‘Where is Fugis?’ he asked again.

‘Gone,’ Tsu’gan answered simply, flexing his left arm and rotating his shoulder blade within his pauldron. ‘Stiff,’ he said, partly to himself.

‘Tsu’gan…’ Dak’ir warned. In their time apart, he’d almost forgotten how much he despised the other sergeant.

‘Calm yourself, Ignean. N’keln sent him to the chamber where you found the ancient. He’s going to extract his geneseed.’

‘And Illiad would be leading him there,’ Dak’ir muttered, but not so quietly that Tsu’gan couldn’t hear him. It also explained the missing Rhino APC.

‘The human you arrived with, yes.’

Dak’ir felt a pang of regret. It was only right that Gravius’s geneseed be preserved, but there was so much that the ancient Salamander knew that given time they could have unearthed. Instead, now, it would be forever condemned to oblivion, the same fate as Gravius’s body. Dak’ir had hoped they could restore him somehow, at least return him to Prometheus and the Chapter. It saddened him to think that this was the old hero’s end. It didn’t seem fitting.

‘Is that why you came, to speak to Fugis?’ asked Tsu’gan, interrupting Dak’ir’s reverie. ‘He is unlikely to return here and we’ll be neck-deep in orks before you have another chance.’ A mirthless grin passed over his features, and Dak’ir was reminded of a sa’hrk, one of the predator lizards of the Scorian Plain back on Nocturne.

Dak’ir moved a step closer, so the two of them were just under a metre apart, and lowered his voice.

‘I came to speak with you,’ he admitted. ‘I saw the way you looked at N’keln after he slew the beast. Am I to believe your opinion has changed?’

‘The fires of war have made their judgement,’ was Tsu’gan’s only reply, before he double-checked the pressure seals on his power armour.

‘An end to clandestine meetings then and your ambition to lead the company?’ Dak’ir’s tone was leading.

Tsu’gan looked up sharply. There was anger, even violence, in his fiery gaze.

‘Petty threats are beneath even you, Ignean,’ he said, misunderstanding. ‘Don’t test me,’ he warned.

Dak’ir matched his defiance with steel of his own.

‘Nor you me,’ he said. ‘And I make no threats. I merely seek to know where we stand on this.’

‘On even ground,’ Tsu’gan snarled through clenched teeth. ‘Do not think this accord has anything to do with you, Ignean. It does not. We still have unfinished business, you and I.’

‘Oh yes?’ Dak’ir invited.

Tsu’gan leaned in close. The scent of acerbic oils on his skin was pungent and put Dak’ir in mind of sulphur.

‘Your dreams and portents, Ignean – they are not natural.’

Dak’ir’s expression gave away his inner fear that this could be true.

Tsu’gan continued unabated.

‘I see how the Librarian watches you. I don’t know what it is you are hiding, but I will discover it…’ Tsu’gan moved so close he was eye-to-eye with the other sergeant, ‘…and know this: I will not hesitate to strike you down should it mean you veer from the righteous path.’

Dak’ir took a step back, but his posture was defiant.

‘You sound like Elysius,’ he snarled. ‘This is not about me, Tsu’gan. It is about Kadai and Stratos.’

The certainty in Tsu’gan’s face flickered for a moment.

You fear everything…

Nihilan’s words had a habit of returning when he least wanted them to.

‘I fear nothing,’ he muttered, too quiet for Dak’ir to hear.

The other sergeant went on.

‘Let your guilt go, brother,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘It will only destroy you in the end.’

Tsu’gan’s knuckles cracked and for a moment Dak’ir thought he would strike him, but he reined in his anger at the last moment and bit it back.

‘I have nothing to be guilty for.’ It sounded hollow, Dak’ir suspected, even to Tsu’gan’s ears. ‘Are we done here?’ he added after a charged pause.

‘I go to the mines,’ said Dak’ir, not certain why he was telling Tsu’gan. Perhaps it was because of what he suspected he might find down there and that it connected them both somehow.

Tsu’gan merely nodded.

‘They intend to fire the cannon to destroy the black rock,’ he guessed.

Now it was Dak’ir’s turn to nod.

With nothing else to say, unsure why he had really come to speak with Tsu’gan, Dak’ir turned away. He was approaching the ramp when he heard the other sergeant’s voice after him.

‘Dak’ir…’

He seldom called him that; usually it was ‘Ignean’. Dak’ir stopped and looked back.

Tsu’gan’s face was grave.

‘In the chamber where we discovered the cannon,’ he said. ‘I found burned metal and cinder.’

Dak’ir knew what that meant. Tsu’gan’s gaze would have clinched it for him, even had he not understood the import of his words. For Dak’ir had sensed them too. In the few days since they had crashed upon Scoria, the feeling had been there. It was merely bubbling under the surface like the magma lifeblood of the world, readying to burst forth and change Scoria forever.

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ uttered Dak’ir. His tone was solemn.

‘Aye,’ Tsu’gan answered, before turning away to pick up his bolter.

When he looked back to embarkation ramp, Dak’ir was already gone.

II

Old Foes

Experience is but a series of moments strung together across the web of time. Most go by unheeded, barely noticeable tremors through the lattice of personal chronology, but some, the truly momentous, are felt as wracking shudders that threaten all other moments. Such things can often be felt before they occur, a low tremble in the spine, a shift in the wind, a feeling. They are presaged, these moments; their coming is palpable.

As Dak’ir travelled through the darkened hollows of the subterranean world beneath Scoria, he felt such a moment was in the making.

‘All clear ahead,’ Apion’s voice returned through the comm-feed. A half minute later, the Salamander reappeared in the gloom of the tunnel having finished his initial recon.

There were seven of them in their party – a combat squad of five Astartes, and a guide as selected by Pyriel. The Librarian kept to the shadows, a silent, brooding figure as he reached out with his psychic senses to try and touch what might lurk ahead of them in the mines.

The boy Va’lin had brought the Salamanders this far. Dak’ir had at first objected to the use of such a young adolescent but Pyriel had reasoned Val’in knew the tunnels better than any other settler, and was likely to be far safer below the surface with them than above against the greenskin onslaught.

It had been almost an hour since they’d entered the emergence hole left by the chitin just outside the fortress confines, and found the trail that would lead them to the mines. Their pace was slow and cautious. Dak’ir thought it prudent.

Burned metal and cinder.

It could mean only one thing. Dak’ir’s thoughts went to his brothers above him, drawn in battle lines upon the surface of a dying world. By now, the first of the ork ships would have made landfall and the hordes would be converging on N’keln’s last stand.

Dak’ir resisted the feeling of despair that gnawed at him. Even if they managed to secure the fyron needed to fire the cannon and used it to destroy the black rock, there was still no guarantee they would be able to overcome the orks that had already landed. If such a victory should prove possible, the Salamanders still had no means of leaving Scoria, a planet that was slowly tearing itself apart with steadily greater vigour. They might defeat their foes only to be consumed by a rising ocean of lava or swallowed down into the deep pits of the earth as the world’s crust cracked open. Dak’ir supposed it would be a fitting epitaph for a company of Fire-born.

‘Your orders, brother-sergeant,’ whispered Ba’ken, who was standing alongside Dak’ir with his heavy flamer readied.

Dak’ir suddenly became aware that Apion was awaiting instruction. Brothers Romulus and Te’kulcar, too, taking up rearguard positions, appeared anticipatory.

The sergeant swung his attention around to Va’lin. Dak’ir recalled the bravery the boy had shown during the chitin attack on his settlement. He seemed equally stalwart now, watching the shadows, listening and assessing the sounds emanating from the rock.

‘How far, Va’lin?’ Dak’ir asked, crouching slightly so as not to intimidate him.

The boy kept his gaze on the tunnel darkness ahead, regarding the curvature of the earth, the shapes – though largely indistinct to Dak’ir and the other Salamanders – that were as clear as a road sign to him. After a moment’s cogitation, he spoke.

‘Another kilometre, maybe a half more.’

Another kilometre deeper into the earth, where the air grew hotter by the metre and the glow of lava could be seen flickering against the black walls of rock. Descending into the dark was like crossing the gateway to another world, one of fire and ash. For the Salamanders it felt more than ever like home.

Dak’ir remembered the scent of smoke and cinder that he had experienced in the tunnels just before they’d clashed with the orks and been reunited with their battle-brothers. It came again to him now, only this wasn’t just a sense memory, it was real. A draft was stirred up from somewhere, channelled up to them as an acrid breeze that held the reek of burning and the faintest trace of sulphur.

Dak’ir thought of red scales, of a serpentine body uncurling amidst a pall of cloying smoke. It was as if the thing in his mind’s eye had emerged from a fell pit of fire, hell-spawned and terrible.

‘They are close,’ the voice of Pyriel intruded upon the gloom. His eyes were blazing cerulean orbs when Dak’ir turned towards him.

‘Who are close?’ asked Te’kulcar. He was not with the squad when they had fought on Stratos. Brother Te’kulcar had been a replacement for the slain Ak’sor, recruited from a different company altogether.

Dak’ir’s voice was grim.

‘The Dragon Warriors.’

Raking the slide of his combi-bolter, Tsu’gan felt a slight twinge in his chest. The explosion from the dead ork warboss’s wartrike had cracked his ribplate and punctured a lung. Enhanced Astartes biology was healing him quickly, but the ache still remained. Tsu’gan ignored it. Pain of the body was easily mastered. He thought again of Dak’ir’s words about guilt and its consumptive nature. How many deeds of heroism would it take to wipe away the stain of conscience he felt at Kadai’s death? He hated to admit, but the Ignean was right. It wasn’t the presence in the walls of the iron fortress speaking this time, either.

The Salamanders had quit the confines of the traitor bastion. Tsu’gan was glad of it – the protection it offered was no sanctuary and they were better off without. The Fire-born were arrayed in front of the wall in stout, green-armoured battle lines, the stone and metal of its construction several metres behind them, bulwarking their backs. They were so advanced in order to cover and protect the emergence hole that Pyriel and the Ignean had taken to the mines. Should they prove successful and retrieve the fyron ore, they would need a clear run to the fortress and the catacombs of the inner keep where Elysius and Draedius awaited them.

Casting his eye across the army, Tsu’gan saw Captain N’keln in a position of prominence at the front, the Inferno Guard arrayed around him. The banner of Malicant hung low but stalwart on a weak breeze.

Fire Anvil and the other vehicles, barring the Rhino APC Fugis had taken to the Vulkan’s Wrath, punctuated the line at strategic anchor points. The transport tanks had little in the way of meaningful firepower but the mobile protection they provided was useful.

Venerable Brothers Ashamon and Amadeus stood stoic but ready. The unyielding forms of the Dreadnoughts were like armoured pillars amidst the field of Salamander green. As their weapon mounts cycled through preparation routines, the occasional flicker of electricity across their close combat armaments was the only betrayal of impatience for battle.

A churning ash cloud, building on the horizon, grasped Tsu’gan’s attention. The orks were making their approach, as they’d done before. More were coming this time. Their ships hung like a shroud overhead, blighting the sky in a swarm.

The primary enginarium deck of the Vulkan’s Wrath was hot like a steaming caldera. Haze made the air throb and flicker as if only partially real, as if it were overlaid by a mirage. Gouts of expelled gas plumed the air, thick and white, whilst dulled hazard lighting illuminated sections of machinery, hard-edged bulkheads and sweating deck serfs.

Fugis found Master Argos amongst the throng, a pair of Techmarines assisting him as he toiled at the ventral engines. Lume-lamps attached to his servo-rig bored lances into the gloom of the sunken chamber where he worked, large enough to accommodate twenty Astartes shoulder-to-shoulder. The Apothecary discerned the reek of unguents and oils designed to placate the out-of-kilter machine-spirits. Doleful chanting emanated from the attendant Techmarines on a recycled breeze, thick with carbon dioxide. There was the hint of engine parts, of blackened metal and disparate components revealed in the half-light.

‘You’ve come from the Apothecarion, brother,’ the voice of Argos echoed metallically from the darkened recess where he was working. The whirring action of unseen mechadendrites and servo-tools provided a high-pitched refrain to the Master of the Forge’s automated diction.

Fugis noted it was not framed as a question. Even if Argos hadn’t known the Apothecary was returning to the Vulkan’s Wrath, he knew every square metre of his ship intimately. He felt its every move subconsciously, as certain as if it were one made by his own body.

The Master of the Forge continued, ‘The power armour suits have been secured in the aft armorium of deck twenty. You’ve come to ask if our efforts in retrieving them and the geneseed of the ancient are in vain.’

Fugis gave a small, mirthless laugh.

‘You demonstrate as much prescience as Brother-Librarian Pyriel, Master Argos.’

The Master of the Forge’s head appeared out of the gloom for the first time. He went unhooded and Fugis saw the bionic eye he wore retracting as it readjusted to observe him from whatever detailed work it had been analysing.

‘It is merely logic, brother.’ He went on. ‘The Vulkan’s Wrath is repaired as best as I am able without a Mechanicus workyard at my disposal. Nothing has changed – we still require four functional banks of ventral engines. Three are primed and ready, the fourth – the access conduit to which you see me in here – is not. Crucial parts, damaged in the crash, and not salvageable from other areas of the ship, are needed for its operation. It is a relatively quick and rudimentary procedure to effect, the correct rituals are short and simple to perform but the machine-spirit will not be coaxed into life half-formed, Brother Apothecary.’

Fugis looked impassive at the Techmarine’s clipped and precise reply.

‘Then let us hope something does change so we might avert our fate,’ he said.

Fugis was not certain he believed in fate or destiny. As an Apothecary he was practical, putting his faith in his hands and what he saw with his eyes. These few days upon the doomed world of Scoria had changed that. He had felt it most strongly in the ruined bridge of the old Expeditionary ship, where Gravius had sat like a recumbent corpse. By the laws of nature, the ancient Salamander should not still be alive. As Fugis had approached him, a sense of awe and reverence slowing his steps, Gravius was nearing the end of his endurance. It seemed he had held on for millennia, waiting for the return of his brothers.

Fugis didn’t know what the significance of this discovery was. He was following the orders of his captain, but experienced a peculiar sense of woe and gravitas as he’d administered the Emperor’s Peace through a nerve-serum injection. It was almost like defilement as he cracked open the ancient armour and retrieved the ancient’s progenoids. In them was the genetic coding of the Legion, undistilled by time or generations of forebears. The experience was genuinely humbling and called to his fractured spirit.

‘Brother Agatone and I are returning to the iron fortress,’ he told Argos. The sergeant and his combat squad had accompanied Illiad in the Rhino APC. Agatone had waited outside the bridge when Fugis had gone to meet Gravius. Right now, he and his troopers were directing the evacuation of the settlers, those who had fought against the orks included – N’keln had decided no more human life would be lost to the greenskins if it could be avoided. All would return to the Vulkan’s Wrath in the hope that the ship be made void-worthy again and deliver them to salvation.

Fugis and Agatone, leaving the combat squad to protect the settlers and escort them to the ship, would head back and support their battle-brothers if they could. For the moment, the orks had not attacked the crash-site, nor showed any signs of interest in it. That was just was well – there were only auxiliaries to defend it now.

‘Sensors indicate the greenskins have already made landfall, brother. You will arrive too late to reach the battle lines, unless you plan on killing your way through a sea of orks,’ Argos replied. Remarkably, there was no sarcasm in his tone.

‘We’ll take the tunnels, track our route through them to emerge next to the fortress walls.’

‘Then you had best be going,’ said Argos, before returning to the gloom of the conduit. ‘Time is short for all of us now, brother.’

Fugis turned his back on him as he left the enginarium. The Apothecary wondered if it would be the last time.

The sounds of the battle above drifted down to the catacombs of the inner keep like muffled thunder. The orks had brought their war host and were now fighting the Salamanders tooth and claw across the blood-strewn ash dunes.

Chaplain Elysius had dismissed the flamer bearers, though the acrid reek of spent promethium still remained. The troopers would be better employed above against the greenskin horde than here amongst the dark and the whispers.

An itch was developing at the back of the Chaplain’s skull. He felt it lightly at first, muttering litanies under his breath as he watched Draedius go to work on the seismic cannon, trying to cleanse and purify its machine-spirits – the Techmarine would need to visit the reclusium after this duty, so that Elysius could appraise his sprit and ensure it wasn’t tainted. The itch had grown to a nagging insistence, a raft of sibilant whispers, drifting in and out of focus, pitched just at the edge of his mind. The Chaplain was steeled against it. The dark forces slaved to the iron fortress’s walls, were trying to breach his defences but the purifying fire had weakened them for now and his sermons were keeping them in check.

Draedius, standing before the cannon, performed his own rituals. Restoration of the weapon’s machine-spirit would not be easy, though it was a necessary task. Without it the cannon would not fire; it might even malfunction with dire consequences. The only small mercy was that the weapon was not already daemon-possessed.

It rankled with Elysius that they had been forced into employing the weapons of the enemy. It smacked of compromise and deviancy. Though devout, the Chaplain was no fool either. The cannon was the only means of destroying the black rock and halting the near-endless orkish tide. The rational part of his brain did wonder why the Iron Warriors would construct such a weapon. Its purpose here on Scoria seemed narrow and limited. He felt as if he were looking at it through a muddied lens, the edges caked in grime. His view was myopic, but instinct had taught Elysius to perceive with more than just his eyes. There was something lurking within that grimy frame, just beyond sight; only by seeing that would the full truth of the Iron Warriors’ machinations be revealed. It bothered him that he could not.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast,’ he intoned as the presence in the catacombs detected his doubts and sought to feed upon them, using them to widen the tiny cracks in the armour of his faith, ‘with it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ the Chaplain concluded, gripping the haft of Vulkan’s Sigil and drawing strength from the hammer-icon’s proximity.

No matter how hard he stared at the cannon, the obscurity around the ‘lens’ remained.

The din of clunking machinery filtered up to them in the tunnel. The sounds were coming from a glowing opening below. Lava stench and the prickle of heat came with it. The mines were just ahead.

‘Stay back, Val’in,’ Dak’ir warned, stepping ahead of the boy and shielding him with the bulk of his armoured form.

The boy did as he was told, but gasped as he spied a shadow looming ahead of them at the base of the tunnel.

Brother Apion saw it too, having moved to take point, and aimed his bolter, about to fire.

‘It’s already dead,’ Pyriel informed him, his eyes fading from cerulean blue.

‘An Iron Warrior husk,’ noted Dak’ir, his vision adjusting to discern the bare metal ceramite and the distinctive black and yellow chevrons marking the armour. ‘The same as the redoubts. Advance with caution, brothers.’

Apion lowered his bolter a fraction and led them on.

At the base of the tunnel, the Salamanders found a natural gallery of rock. The machine noise – the whirring of drills and the chugging report of excavators – became louder. Long shadows cast from moving forms in a larger chamber beyond streaked the walls at the end of the gallery.

There were more ‘sentries’ here – iron-armoured deterrents staged in ready positions abutting the walls. Val’in cowered, the natural fear emanating from the long dead corpses still very much alive for him.

Ba’ken brought him close, leaning down as far as his bulk allowed and whispering, ‘Stay close to me, child. The Fire Angels will allow no harm to come to you.’

Va’lin nodded and his mood eased a little as he crept closer to the pillar of ceramite that was Brother Ba’ken.

Dak’ir failed to notice the exchange. His attention was on Apion, who had reached the end of the gallery and was poised at the threshold to the chamber. Dak’ir joined him seconds later and stared out into a wide expanse of rock. Here and there, struts of metal supported the cavern roof above. The empty shells of mining equipment lay strewn about the cavern like a machine graveyard, burned out and discarded once their usefulness had ended. Dak’ir saw boring-engines, bucket-bladed diggers, excavators and tracked drill-platforms. Servitors, slumped over their vehicles or piled up in corpse heaps, were a testament to the incessant overmining.

In addition to the machines, there were three stages, made of metal and lofted a metre off the ground on stout legs. Two of the three were flat and empty. The third was stacked with rotund metal barrels. Dak’ir didn’t need to look inside of them to know they were brimming with fyron ore. The third stage was nearest to the source of the machine noise: a short but gaping tunnel shrouded in gloom. The Salamanders had entered the cavern at a slight angle, and through his enhanced eye-sight Dak’ir made out two servitor-driven drilling engines, like the ones the settlers had used in their ambush, and a bulky excavator rig on thick tracks, dragging away the useless rock and earth expelled by the drilling engines’ labours. This too was worked by a servitor, hunch-backed and cable-slaved to the machine as if it were an integral part of its being. All three automatons were akin to the ghoul-drones encountered in the cannon’s arming chamber.

The low lighting cast by sodium lamp packs suspended on cables steam-bolted to the cavern roof framed the grotesque faces of the ghoul-drones evilly. Their masters were not far away.

Three Iron Warriors stood at the drilling tunnel’s threshold, overseeing the work. They carried combi-bolters with barrel-mounted sarissa-blades, low slung on straps around their spiked pauldrons. Chips of rock scudded off their armour, such was the Iron Warriors’ proximity to the mine face, and they were veneered in grey dust.

In the distance, a six-wheeled loader transported a cache of fyron ore barrels on its burgeoning flatbed. The vehicle rumbled on fat treads towards an opening at the back of the mine that led into unknown darkness.

A second six-wheeler was on its return journey and approaching the partially laden stage where another load of barrels awaited it. A pair of cargo-servitors – their arms replaced by twin-pronged lifter claws – shambled into view as the loader closed on them.

In the loader’s wake, a group of figures was revealed.

Dak’ir’s jaw clenched and he felt a ripple of anger pass through his body.

Kadai’s slayers, the Dragon Warriors, were here.

There were three of them, armoured in blood-red ceramite that was scaled in places as if the suits themselves had somehow mutated. Their gauntlets ended in gore-tipped claws and a strong reek of copper exuded from their bodies. They were once Space Marines, these creatures; now they were renegades in service to the Ruinous Powers. Slaves to darkness and damnation.

One wore a helmet fashioned into the image of an ancient saurian beast. Two horns curled like dark red blades from both temples of his battle-helm. A cloud of fiery embers gusted from a snarling, fang-fringed mouth grille in time with the renegade’s rapid breathing. Heat haze emanated from the Dragon Warrior, giving his form a sense of unreality.

Another cradled an archaic multi-melta, scarred with kill-markings. His battle-helm was bare but came to a stub-nosed snout that was rendered in bone. Skulls attached to bloody chains hung from his scaled pauldrons and he wore what looked like deep-red lizard hide over his abdominal armour. Dust particles spilled from his armour joints with every movement. To Dak’ir’s enhanced sight they appeared like tiny flakes of epidermis and the Salamander was instantly put in mind of a serpent shedding its skin.

The last of them Dak’ir knew well. Flanked by his two warriors, this one’s burning red eyes were ablaze as if he were constantly enraged. The smouldering anger was emulated by the scarification on his face, which was a horrific patchwork of burned skin and lacerations. Old welts and tracts of melted flesh ravaged his onyx-black visage. A horn curved from each of his pauldrons and he seized a crackling force staff in a clawed gauntlet.

This was Nihilan, sorcerer and architect of Kadai’s destruction.

‘Renegades,’ snarled Apion, and Dak’ir heard the Salamander’s fists crack.

‘Ba’ken,’ said the sergeant, his gaze never leaving his nemesis. They should have scoured these tunnels days ago. Dak’ir had sensed something here. His visions all pointed to it. Even Tsu’gan had suspected, and still they’d done nothing. Well, now the time for inaction was at an end.

An icon appeared in the visual display of Ba’ken’s battle-helm, sent over from Dak’ir’s with a single eye blink.

‘Target acquired…’ rumbled the hulking trooper, moving forward to level his heavy flamer.

The loader had almost reached the stage and the ghoul-drones were approaching it when a gout of super-heated promethium streaked across the chamber and ignited. The spear of flame burst through the pair of drones, setting them ablaze, but that was merely a glancing blow. Its intended target, the loader itself, exploded a few seconds later as its fuel cells were cooked and the volatile liquid within went up spectacularly. The loader was cast into the air and flipped over, the flaming wreckage crushing the still burning ghoul-drones and destroying them in a raging conflagration as it landed hard.

‘Salamanders, attack!’ roared Dak’ir as they charged into the cavern, bolters screaming.

The Iron Warriors were closest and reacted quickly. One was not quick enough however, as Dak’ir’s plasma bolt took him in the chest and punched a hole the size of a clenched Astartes fist. Explosive rounds bursting from the traitor’s combi-bolter raked the roof and shot out a lighting rig, as his fingers grasped at the trigger with the last of his nerve tremors.

The other two Iron Warriors reached cover and began to return fire, even as the Dragon Warriors started to move into battle positions. Through the gunfire, Dak’ir thought he saw Nihilan laughing.

The Salamanders panned out: Dak’ir, Pyriel and Ba’ken heading right, whilst Apion, Romulus and Te’kulcar went left. Val’in, not wishing to remain in the corridor with the Iron Warrior corpses alone, ran behind the skeleton of a disused loader, bastardised for spare parts, and hid.

‘Anvil, gain the stage and secure the fyron ore,’ ordered Dak’ir over the comm-feed, using the call signs they’d established before entering the emergence hole. Out of the corner of his eye, past the barking reports of bolters, he saw Apion and Romulus rushing between machine husks as they tried to reach the ore platform, whilst Te’kulcar advanced offering covering fire.

‘Hammer, we advance now!’ Dak’ir led the others forward, streaks of flames keeping the Iron Warriors down as they sought to move to fresh cover. Through darted glimpses at the enemy, Dak’ir saw that Nihilan was letting his minions do the work. An incandescent beam seared through a vehicle shell where Pyriel had crouched. The Librarian moved out of its path just in time. Sustained bolter fire came from the other renegade, who seemed to revel in the act of loosing his weapon. He was like a mad dog, straining at the leash.

All the while, the ghoul-drones maintained their incessant mining.

A low rumble struck the chamber, arresting the Salamanders’ shock assault. Fragments of rock were cascading from the roof and the metal struts groaned forbiddingly in protest.

Dak’ir fell to one knee as he lost his balance. So did one of the Iron Warriors, lurching out of cover for a moment. Long enough for Ba’ken, who stood steady with his legs braced, to burn him down. A metallic screech issued from the traitor’s battle-helm before he collapsed in a smoking heap of charred metal. The violent tremors grew in intensity so that even Ba’ken couldn’t maintain his footing. The tongue of fire from his flamer receded.

The Dragon Warriors had gone to ground too. Dak’ir had lost sight of Nihilan, but he could sense his presence. He judged they were just over sixty metres away, about half the width of the cavern. A determined attack once the tremors had subsided would catch them off guard – they could reach the renegades before the multi-melta fired again. As a psyker, Nihilan was unpredictable, but Dak’ir was willing to take the chance. Strategy icons flashed up on the Salamanders’ battle-helm displays, conveying the sergeant’s plan.

Romulus and Apion were almost at the platform, the lone Iron Warrior protecting it finding his attention diverted by two groups of simultaneous attackers and giving neither the attention it needed. Short bursts of bolter fire from Te’kulcar, lying on his chest and shooting from a prone position for stability, kept the Iron Warrior down so the other Salamanders could claim their objective.

They were stumbling on to the platform when a deep, cracking sound resonated throughout the cavern like the breaking of a world. A flare of light bathed the drilling tunnel in an angry glow, before shuddering cracks split out from it in a jagged line. The cracks widened to a fissure and then a chasm, filled with bubbling lava. The hellish glow from inside the tunnel spread outwards rapidly. It preceded a wave of lava expelled from where the mine face had broken apart and Scoria’s lifeblood was flowing.

Buoyed by the force of the wave, the mining machines were thrust from the tunnel. Languishing in the deadly lava stream, they did not last long. Like short-lived metal islands they sank beneath the glutinous morass in moments, their slack-faced drones engulfed with them.

A yawning chasm of lava now stood between the Salamanders and their prey. A thin line of jagged rock spanned it, floating on the surface, wide enough for two Astartes to cross at a time. The violence of the tremors subsided but more cracks were cobwebbing the ground and streams of dust and rock spilled from the roof continuously. This needed to end quickly, before the entire cavern collapsed on top of them.

Romulus and Apion had reached the fyron ore and were securing it to their power armour. Two barrels each was the most they could carry without compromising their ability to fight.

As he bolted for the rocky channel that led across the lava chasm, Dak’ir hoped four barrels would be enough. Just before he’d reached the edge of the lava stream, a flash of hot light burned past him and Te’kulcar’s icon in the sergeant’s helm display flickered and went out. A glance back showed him the battle-brother was on the ground a few metres from his previous position, part of his torso melted away.

‘Get him out!’ Dak’ir cried, recognising the brutal effects of the multi-melta. Knowing Apion and Romulus were retreating with Te’kulcar and the fyron ore, Dak’ir raced heedlessly onto the rock channel. Intense heat from the lava flow either side of him prickled at his armour and warning icons flashed up on his display.

Grimly ignoring the discomfort, he was halfway across when the Iron Warrior on the other side emerged from cover. A bark of fire from Pyriel’s bolt pistol, the Librarian a few steps behind the sergeant, clipped the traitor’s pauldron and gorget, pinning him back.

But then another foe stepped into Dak’ir’s eye line.

Nihilan was grinning, a grotesque and bizarre expression given his facial scarring, as his force staff crackled with power. He levelled it at Dak’ir, who could not avoid the shadowy arc lightning that ripped from its tip and struck him full on in the chest. This was the raw energy of the warp, channelled by Nihilan’s sorcery. No one could survive such a blast.

Dak’ir cried out, his voice an agonised scream.

Chapter Thirteen

I

A Black Rock Dies

The line was holding. Few Astartes could boast tenacity as unshakeable as the sons of Vulkan. Here, against an unrelenting and seemingly endless horde of orks, the 3rd Company drew upon it like never before.

Heavy guns, aimed from the rear of the Salamanders’ formation, softened up the onrushing greenskins, seeking to close with their opponents and exploit their chief strengths: raw aggression and brutality.

But the Salamanders were equally adept, if not superior, eye-to-eye with the enemy. The recently returned flamers exacted a sizeable toll on the orks as they came through the Devastators’ fusillade.

Unlike the initial assaults against the iron fortress, the orks were predominantly on foot, supported by their piston-legged machineries, crude analogues of Space Marine Dreadnoughts. They eschewed the wagons, bikes and war trucks of the earlier sorties of their kin. Long-ranged guns were largely absent, too, and instead an expansive melee of chainblades, cleavers and clubs thundered at the Salamanders to bludgeon them into submission.

The orks found only fury and iron-hard resistance where they’d expected red-wreathed death and capitulation. Alloyed together, at almost full company strength and protecting the relatively narrow defile in which the iron fortress was situated, the Salamanders were all but impregnable.

Casualties had been few, and those that could no longer serve the Chapter were dragged behind the stalwart line of armour, their absence accounted for by their brothers.

Tsu’gan gunned open the chest of an ork some ten metres away, downing the brute as if it were an enraged sauroch. Another took its place and he killed that one too with a precise burst to its snarling head. Several more followed, greenskins running the punishing gauntlet of Salamander guns. They were obliterated from view when Sergeant Vargo’s depleted Assault squad landed amongst them. The exchange was savage and swift. Vargo and his troopers took to the air on tongues of fire less than a minute later, seeking other foes isolated by their eager bloodlust from the main greenskin throng. Carcasses rendered by bolt and blade, and a patch of scorched earth were all that was left in the Assault squad’s clearing smoke.

‘Press forward!’ The bellowed order of N’keln reached Tsu’gan through the comm-feed as his captain sought to exploit the short gap that had developed through the Salamanders’ recent mauling of the orks.

The line advanced as one. Tsu’gan felt the heavy footfalls of the Terminators alongside his squad through his booted feet.

‘Unto the anvil, brother-sergeant,’ said Praetor, a dark grin upon his face as he swung his thunder hammer towards the next wave of greenskins.

Snorting amusedly at the fatalism of it all, Tsu’gan fired again and his face was lit by the muzzle flare of his bolter. He laughed in tandem with the weapon’s roar.

Overhead, the ork vessels streamed like cancerous veins in the sky. The black rock was venting constantly now. Soon there would not be enough of the ash dunes to hold all the greenskins expelled from its craterous surface.

Tsu’gan laughed harder at the thought of it, before his battle hysteria ebbed with a fresh realisation.

As long as the black rock endured there could be no victory here. If it wasn’t destroyed soon, they’d all be dead.

Dak’ir was swathed in black lightning, the dark energies from Nihilan’s force staff coursing over his armour. He cried out and fell to one knee, fists clenched over his weapons and shuddering against the terrible sorcery.

Vaguely, at the edge of his nulled perception, Dak’ir thought he heard Pyriel bellow his name. His tone was anguished, already grieving. The sergeant’s eyes were clamped shut and saw again the Cindara Plateau, his ascent to the summit the final stage of his induction to become a neophyte. The acrid tang of the Acerbian Sea pricked his nostrils and the hot downdrafts of the Ignean caves of his birth warmed his skin.

Then he returned and the wracking pain of the lightning subsided; his nerve endings, previously ablaze, were still and warm. Dak’ir opened his eyes and realised he was still alive.

An amused look crossed Nihilan’s face, the power in his force staff receding, before he turned and fell back with his traitorous brethren.

Ribbons of sorcerous smoke spilled upwards off Dak’ir’s body as he started to rise, tugged forward in the draft from Pyriel racing past him.

He felt the presence of Ba’ken slowing just behind. Dak’ir staggered to his feet, waving the heavy weapons trooper on.

‘Stop the renegades…’ he slurred, still mustering his strength.

‘I thought you were dead, Hazon,’ Ba’ken murmured, before going on after on Pyriel.

‘I should be,’ rasped Dak’ir, his senses returning. He was about to drive on when he saw the beam of the multi-melta search menacingly out of the darkness. It forced a scream from Pyriel, his shoulder seared by the deadly weapon through his pauldron. The Librarian nearly fell, but managed to hold on.

Gritting his teeth in anger, Dak’ir found Pyriel’s attacker. He recognised his shadowy form from the Aura Hieron temple, back on Scoria. He hadn’t realised at first, but now he knew – this was Kadai’s assassin, the killer of his old captain.

‘Ghor’gan…’ bellowed Nihilan to the Dragon Warrior with the multi-melta, the rest of his command smothered by the noise of roaring bolters as he and the other renegade drew away into the darkness. The one called Ghor’gan merely nodded and stood his ground. Nihilan was trying to escape.

This could not be allowed to happen. Dak’ir launched himself across the lava stream. It looked an impossible jump, but incredibly he landed on the other side, the heels of his boots scraping at the edge of where the rock fell away to hot oblivion. Ignoring the Iron Warrior, Dak’ir used his momentum to drive on at the Dragon Warrior with the multi-melta. Reacting to the sudden threat, Ghor’gan swung the deadly weapon about, a nimbus of energy already building in its twin-nosed barrel.

Pyriel was nearing the end of the narrow rock bridge when the last Iron Warrior threw himself into his path. In his mind, the Librarian heard the slow pull, the long metal report of the depressed trigger as the traitor unleashed his bolter at him.

A bolter’s velocity is ferociously quick, its rate of fire faster than an eye-blink. Pyriel’s mind was faster.

Bolter shells exploded ineffectually against an invisible shield, dense blooms of light rippling in midair with each percussive impact.

Pyriel ran on, seeing Dak’ir land ahead of him on the other side, and reached his assailant. Changing tactics, the Iron Warrior slowed his fire rate to use his sarissa blade. Pyriel had unsheathed his force sword and parried the thrust meant to impale him. With the Iron Warrior unbalanced, he thrust himself and rammed the blade of his eldritch weapon halfway into the traitor’s stomach. Plates of ceramite parted easily before the force sword, undone by its shimmering power field, before the Librarian lowered the invisible shield and channelled his psychic might through the edge of the weapon.

At once the Iron Warrior sagged as his soul was sundered, cast into the oblivion of the warp to be fed upon by daemons. Smoke exuded from the traitor’s eye-slits and a deep light glowed from within. He screamed, a long and wailing note that echoed somewhere beyond the realm of reality, and sank into a heap, a scored-out husk all that remained.

With the traitor slain, Pyriel looked ahead to his battle-brother.

Fuelled by fury, Dak’ir hurled himself at Ghor’gan. The multi-melta’s beam stabbed out, but the renegade’s aim was off, pressurised into an early shot by the Salamander’s headlong assault. It scorched the edge of Dak’ir’s battle-helm, the actual beam itself passing a few centimetres overhead. It was close enough to burn through ceramite. It kept burning, melting away at the armour around Dak’ir’s head, who wrenched it off before the corrosive effects ate through it completely and started in on his face.

The ruined battle-helm clattered to the ground, half-disintegrated, as Dak’ir hit Ghor’gan with a roar. Swinging his chainsword two-handed, the Salamander tore into the heavy weapon that had ended Kadai’s life, shearing it in two.

Pyriel got to the end of the narrow span across the lava stream before he realised Ba’ken wasn’t with him. He turned, with half a glance at Dak’ir hammering at the massive Dragon Warrior, before searching for Ba’ken.

The heavy weapons trooper was retreating back down the rock bridge.

‘Brother!’ cried Pyriel, a hint of accusation in his voice.

Ba’ken half turned his head.

‘I cannot leave him, Librarian,’ was his only explanation.

Pyriel was about to cry out again, when he saw that Ba’ken was heading for the boy, Va’lin.

Geysers of fire and lava were breaking the surface of the cavern now, the forked cracks in the earth splitting apart and allowing Scoria’s blood to seep through. Va’lin had retreated to one corner of the cavern, keeping his head down and himself well hidden. Thick veins of encroaching lava webbed his retreat route to the entrance and spears of flame shot sporadically from the ground around him. The boy was crouched atop the skeletal frame of an excavator, clinging on for his life and too afraid to move.

In his determination to reach the Dragon Warriors, and perhaps the pain in his shoulder caused by the melta beam’s savage caress, Pyriel had failed to hear Va’lin’s plaintive cry. Human life was important; Vulkan had taught them that. The Salamanders were protectors as well as warriors.

Ba’ken had heard the boy and was answering his noble calling as a Fire-born of Nocturne.

‘In Vulkan’s name, brother,’ the Librarian muttered. Smoke was billowing into the cavern now and occluded his view. The hulking form of Ba’ken was lost in the grey and black.

Returning his attention to Dak’ir, Pyriel had taken just a step from the rocky span when a forked seam split the ground before his feet and a titanic wall of intense heat and fire impeded him.

Thrown off by the force of the flame-geyser’s expulsion, Pyriel had to scramble back up so as not to be pitched into the lava stream. Warning icons flashed red on a status slate in his gauntlet. Tentatively, he went to touch the fiery barrier but withdrew his hand as the heat sensors in his armour spiked. His gauntlet came back badly scorched and partially melted.

Behind the flickering heat, the struggle between Salamander and renegade became an amorphous haze.

‘Dak’ir!’ he cried, venting his impotency and frustration. There was nothing he could do; the wall of fire stretched the width of the cavern. Dak’ir was alone.

The Dragon Warrior let the cleaved ends of the multi-melta fall from his grasp, and jabbed his left claw into Dak’ir’s neck like a blade, while the other slashed at his assailant’s wrist. The Salamander’s gorget took the brunt of the blow to the neck, but Dak’ir was stunned and lost his grip on the chainsword when Gor’ghan’s scything talons ripped a chunk of ceramite from his gauntlet. The empty thud of the weapon hitting the ground, the churning teeth slowing to a stop, felt like a death knell.

Dak’ir recovered quickly, barely noticing the barrier of fire that had erupted behind him, butting the Dragon Warrior’s helmet and crumpling the nose despite the pain it caused him. Ghor’gan staggered back with a muffled cry of pain, ripping off the helm to reveal a scaled visage as dark as burnt umber and perpetually flaking. He tore at the shards of ceramite embedded in his reptilian face, casting the bloody wreckage aside before flying at Dak’ir.

The Salamander met him mid-attack and the two of them locked together, neither with the strength or purpose to gain the upper hand.

‘Murdering dog!’ Dak’ir raged, about to spit acid from his betcher’s gland into the renegade’s face when Ghor’gan stopped him by shoving his forearm under the Salamander’s chin and forcing his mouth shut. The caustic bile bubbled over Dak’ir’s bottom lip harmlessly.

‘Fight with honour,’ countered the Dragon Warrior, his voice like crackling magma. In the frantic struggle, Dak’ir noticed a ragged wound, only half-healed, across his neck and assumed this was the reason for Ghor’gan’s throaty cadence.

‘You possess none,’ Dak’ir accused when he’d pushed back the renegade’s grip on his neck. ‘I know you are the assassin that shot my captain when his back was turned.’

Ghor’gan’s face darkened in what might have been regret.

‘I am a warhound, like you,’ he rasped, then grunted as he tried to seize a hand around Dak’ir’s throat. The Dragon Warrior was big, easily the size and heft of Ba’ken, and Dak’ir was finding his strength a severe test. ‘I follow orders, even those I disagree with. It is the way of war,’ he concluded.

‘Pleading for mercy already, renegade?’

‘No.’ Ghor’gan’s answer was flat, his tone almost weary. ‘I just wanted you to know before you die.’ The Dragon Warrior exerted his full strength, pressing Dak’ir into a crouch, and slipping his claws around his neck. Dak’ir felt his throat constricting from the external pressure. He raked gauntleted fingers over Ghor’gan’s face, trying to leaven his grip, but came away with a fistful of shed skin instead. Ghor’gan snarled at the ragged wound in his cheek but kept the pressure up, extending his arms to force Dak’ir away. The Salamander went for his holstered pistol but the renegade saw the move and smashed him into the cavern wall. White fire flared behind Dak’ir’s eyes as hot knives stabbed his side where he’d struck the rock.

‘Don’t resist,’ growled Ghor’gan, almost fatherly, ‘Your pain is almost at an end…’

Dak’ir’s lungs felt like withered sacks in his chest, as his throat was slowly being crushed. Darkness impinged at the edge of his sight and he felt himself slipping…

He reached out, trying to deny the inevitable. Pyriel was far away, behind the wall of fire. Dak’ir was alone with Ghor’gan, his old captain’s killer about to add to his murder tally.

Ba’ken reached the edge of the growing lava pool slowly encircling Va’lin on his island of metal. The boy was choking on the sulphurous fumes and smoke wreathed his tiny refuge. Ba’ken would have to jump. He couldn’t make it and return with the boy as well if he kept on his heavy flamer rig. Without a second thought, he disengaged the locking straps and shrugged the bulky canisters off his back, laying them carefully on the ground with the weapon itself.

Muttering a painful litany as he traced his hand lightly across the barrel of the gun he had forged and crafted, Ba’ken rose to his feet and leapt to Va’lin.

‘Climb on, boy,’ he said, once on the other side. The skeletal frame of the excavator was already buckling under the Salamander’s weight, whilst around them the lava crept ever closer.

Va’lin clambered onto Ba’ken’s shoulders, clinging desperately to the Fire-born’s neck and pauldron.

‘Don’t let go,’ the Salamander told the boy and launched himself back across, just as the lava flow began eating away at the excavator, until in a few seconds it had consumed it.

The molten stream raging through the cavern, bisecting it with a ribbon of viscous heat, had spilled over the rock span. There was no way back to Pyriel and Dak’ir. Ba’ken could scarcely see them through the smoke and falling debris.

He cried out. ‘Brothers!’

A spurt of flame erupted from the earth near where he was standing and Ba’ken stepped away, grimacing.

‘Brothers!’ he bellowed again, his voice swallowed by the cracking of earth, the roar of fire answering.

The end of Scoria was at hand. There was nothing left for this world now. Maybe there was nothing left for Dak’ir or Pyriel either. Beseeching the Emperor and Vulkan for their safe return, Ba’ken fell back reluctantly.

Va’lin was suffocating; the Salamander heard it in the boy’s wheezing breaths, his shuddering chest.

Ba’ken turned and made for the exit.

‘Hang on,’ he said grimly, racing for the tunnel back to the surface.

In the midst of the fighting, Tsu’gan had thought he’d seen Romulus and Apion return from the emergence hole, a wounded Brother Te’kulcar draped across their shoulders. He couldn’t see the fyron ore, but then his view was fleeting in the press of combat.

A full assault was ordered and the Salamanders were pressing the orks with all the flame and fury they could muster. The line was no more; it had given way to probing attacks launched at strategic points throughout the greenskin horde. Witnessed from above, the assaults would have looked bullet trajectories, forcing their way slowly through the dark green flesh of the beast.

Mob leaders, totem carriers, psykers – these were the Salamanders’ targets. Cripple the orks’ leadership. Show them their mightiest could all fall beneath a Fire-born’s flame and blade. Here the Assault squads excelled, Vargo and Gannon conducting raiding attacks on vulnerable positions or leaders exposed by the sudden death or retreat of their brethren.

Thousands of greenskins lay dead for little reply. That said, every Salamander casualty was felt keenly. Fugis had returned to the fight with Brother-Sergeant Agatone. The two fought shoulder-to-shoulder, their courage worthy of even Vulkan’s praise. But the Apothecary, as heroic as he was, couldn’t minister to all of his fallen brothers. If they survived this fight, there would be much work for Fugis to do in the aftermath.

Tsu’gan had lost sight of them after N’keln’s full assault order and he wondered if they fought still.

It was stretched and the ash dunes were like a copper desert now, so stained were they with blood. Tremors wracked the undulating landscape almost constantly and dark lightning ripped strips into the sky as the volcanoes vented. Their voices were a doom-laden refrain to the heavy thunder overhead.

‘The world is ending, brother,’ roared Tsu’gan. He had not left Praetor’s side, although the sergeant’s squad had fragmented in the dense melee. Iagon, for instance, was elsewhere on the field of war. Tsu’gan hoped he was still alive.

‘A fitting end for us then,’ Praetor replied, crushing an ork with a crackling blow from his thunder hammer, ‘consumed by smoke and fire. All is ash at the end of days, brother.’

Tsu’gan smiled to himself – it sounded like something Brother Emek would say.

‘All is ash,’ Tsu’gan agreed and fought on.

Above the rising tumult of Scoria’s last storm, just audible over the raging battle, the churning report of metal could be heard echoing from the innards of the iron fortress.

Peaking above the lip of the wall, the stub-nose of the long cannon forged by the Iron Warriors but purified by the Salamanders emerged. Dust and rock was cascading from its metal casing in huge drifts, its pneumatic platform raising it from the depths of the keep to glower imperiously over the surface of Scoria like the metal finger of a dark and vengeful god.

For a moment, a fleeting second only, the fighting slowed as all who beheld the cannon’s emergence gaped in awe. Its eye was fixed heavenward as it sought to destroy a black sun.

Fyron-fuelled capacitors charged the air, their throb and pulse emitted as a wave of force as the cannon was empowered and a second later, unleashed.

II

Retribution

Dak’ir’s world was darkening. His arms grew heavy as his vision faded to black and his struggles against Ghor’gan ebbed.

‘That’s it,’ he heard the crackling magma voice say. ‘That’s it, find peace…’

A trembling in the earth below prevented the Salamander’s fall into oblivion. When it shook the very ground, its violent insistence threw the grappling Space Marines apart.

Clutching his neck, Dak’ir coughed and spluttered hot, smoky air back into his lungs. The sensation reminded him of Nocturne and the caves of Ignea – it was like breathing in a panacea.

Ghor’gan was getting to his feet as Dak’ir’s vision cleared. The Dragon Warrior braced himself against the rock wall as the entire cavern shook. A huge crack ran up the side of it as geysers of scalding steam and fire roared through the slowly fragmenting ground. In places small chasms and crag-walled pitfalls opened up like yawning mouths, their liquid tongues hot and glowing below. The renegade moved around them, stalking towards Dak’ir, determined to finish what he had begun.

‘Relent, little Salamander,’ he said, his voice low and weary.

Ghor’gan didn’t see the combat blade in Dak’ir’s hand until it was too late. The blade was only half a metre long but the Salamander sank it to the hilt in the renegade’s chest. The precise blow exploited a gap in the ceramite plates and penetrated armour, bone and flesh.

‘A life for a life,’ snarled Dak’ir. ‘My captain must be avenged.’

Ghor’gan’s mouth curled in pain; his eyes narrow slits of agony. Even as Dak’ir twisted the blade, searching out vital organs and soft tissue, the renegade fought on and dug his claws into the Salamander’s neck.

Dak’ir cried out, aiming a savage punch to the Dragon Warrior’s ear even as he shoved the combat blade harder with his other hand. Ghor’gan shifted his head, and took the blow on his much harder jaw instead, but it jarred enough to force him to release his claw.

Blood was dripping off Ghor’gan’s extracted talon when a ball of fire rolled through the wall of heat nearby, wreathed in flames and trailing smoke. From it emerged Pyriel, furled within the protective confines of his drakescale mantle.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dak’ir saw Pyriel move to assist him but the sergeant urged the Librarian on as he kept the bulky Dragon Warrior pinned.

‘Stop Nihilan,’ he roared, his voice hoarse from being half-choked to death. ‘Don’t let the bastard escape again.’

Pyriel didn’t even pause. The Librarian knew his duty and sped on after Nihilan and his brood.

‘Just you and I again,’ sneered Dak’ir, scenting the sulphur gas streaming from a craterous hole behind the Dragon Warrior. A sudden idea occurred to him. ‘You’re not Fire-born, are you renegade…’

The idling of powerful engines throbbed ahead of him as Pyriel thundered down the tunnel after Nihilan and the other Dragon Warrior.

Dak’ir was right – they could not be allowed to escape again. If it had to end here on Scoria then the renegades would die with them. The Librarian could feel peace if he knew that was so.

Too late, Pyriel arrived at the tunnel’s terminus. In the expansive cavern before him, a Stormbird was waiting. Its engines were burning with a dull, red glow. The embarkation ramp in the gunship’s hold was slammed down. The fang-mouthed Dragon Warrior was ferrying the last of the fyron ore aboard via the six-wheeled loader, his master looking on.

Just before Nihilan turned to see the foe in his midst, Pyriel looked up and realised the roof to the cavern was vaulted. In fact, it tapered several hundred metres up into a narrow chimney that led directly to the surface. Narrow, yes, but wide enough to accommodate the span of a Stormbird if piloted correctly.

A psychic cry ripped from Pyriel’s throat as he recognised his chance to stop the Dragon Warriors was already beyond his grasp. He fashioned a bolt of flame from the essence of the warp, channelling it down his force sword to lash at Nihilan. At least he would sear him.

Some fifty metres away, the sorcerer turned and threw up a hasty force barrier against which the fire bolt crashed and dissipated. Behind trailing smoke and eddies of flame, Nihilan emerged unscathed.

The Dragon Warrior then unleashed a psychic riposte. Black smoke boiled across the ground, resolving into tendrils upon reaching the Salamander. The tendrils coiled insidiously around Pyriel’s arms and legs, invading the protective aegis of his armour and bypassing the safeguards of his psychic hood. Powerless to prevent it, in a matter of seconds the Librarian was utterly paralysed. Thunderous rage burned in Pyriel’s eyes as he regarded his nemesis.

‘It’s been a long time, Pyriel,’ said Nihilan with a voice reminiscent of cracking parchment. ‘I missed you on Stratos, brother.’

‘A shame,’ Pyriel forced a sarcastic reply. He grimaced against the sorcerous hold, trying to unravel it with his mind.

Nihilan walked off the loading ramp almost casually. Despite the raucous engine noise venting around him, his words were strangely clear. ‘How long has it been, then? Over four decades for you? I see you have advanced in Master Vel’cona’s eyes since then. A mere Codicier, if memory serves, and now a vaunted Epistolary.’ Nihilan’s burning red gaze swept over the arcane rank sigils emblazoned on Pyriel’s armour contemptuously. The sorcerer’s mood darkened.

‘Still you deny the raw power of the warp,’ he breathed, lingering on the flame icon on the Librarian’s right pauldron. Enmity, perhaps even jealousy, flared briefly then died like the mirthless smile curling Nihilan’s top lip. ‘I eclipse your meagre abilities now.’

‘Spoken like a true pawn of Chaos,’ bit Pyriel, working as much vitriol as he could into the retort. ‘You are naught but a plaything for the Ruinous Powers. Once your usefulness has ended they will discard you.’

The amused expression returned.

‘I thought it was just the armour of my former brothers that was green. Not so for you of course, Librarian, but then the shade of your eyes make up for it, don’t they.’

Pyriel’s eyes burned an angry red. He wished dearly he could look upon Nihilan and engulf him within the fire of his wrath.

‘If you’re going to destroy me, then do it and spare the rhetoric before I expire of boredom.’

That struck a nerve. Nihilan seemed like he was going to give Pyriel his wish. Static blurted from the external vox feed in the hold of the Stormbird, arresting any retaliation.

‘Cargo secured, my lord,’ came a rasping voice. ‘Brother Ekrine is ready to take off.’

Annoyed at the sudden interruption, Nihilan managed to keep his irritation from his voice when he replied. ‘Understood, Ramlek. I will be with you momentarily.’ He turned his attention back to Pyriel.

‘I could smite you where you stand, but that wouldn’t be fitting. I want you to suffer before you die, Pyriel. Just like Vel’cona made me suffer when you betrayed my trust.’

Pyriel’s jaw hardened – the dark tendrils binding him were weakening. ‘Traitors are undeserving of trust.’

Pyriel shook off the sorcerous bonds with a feral shout. Force sword held high, the Librarian launched himself at Nihilan, who merely stepped back into the hold before the ramp was pulled up. Mocking laugher echoed down to Pyriel as the Stormbird lifted and the hold hatch closed with a resounding clang. The burst from the gunship’s rapidly vented thrusters sent the Librarian sprawling and the Stormbird soaring up the shrinking mouth of the rock chimney, up into the fractious air of Scoria.

Shrugging off the effects of Nihilan’s sorcerous attack and mouthing a muttered curse, Pyriel picked himself up and went back down the tunnel to find Dak’ir.

He returned in time only to see the Salamander sergeant and his foe pitching over the edge of a fiery crevice, plummeting down, occluded by smoke and rising ash.

Pyriel gave voice to his pain again.

‘Dak’ir!’

The black rock exploded with all the finality and grandeur of a shattered star. At once the blood-red sky flooded with brilliance, a pure white flare that bathed all in its eldritch glow. The flare died but the sun returned with it, weak and yellow but brighter than the forbidding gloom of the eclipse.

Abruptly and violently sundered, the black rock was spread across the firmament. The fragments of its passing became new stars burning in the light of day. Drawn by the gravitational pull of the planet, the stars became larger and larger until they resolved into vast meteorites, swathed in fire and billowing smoke.

The effect of the black rock’s destruction on the orks was almost palpable. The horde faltered, its impetus flagging like a ship with its sails abruptly cut. When the jagged balls of fire arcing from the heavens struck, it only compounded the greenskins’ despair.

Simultaneous meteor strikes punished the rear of the ork lines stretching back across the dunes. The celestial storm wreaked utter havoc, slaying hundreds beneath the fury of the fallen rocks, and cooking hundreds more in the resultant radiation wave.

Tsu’gan watched this all happen between the ever growing gaps in the fighting. As soon as the beam from the seismic cannon rang out, piercing the sky like a radiant lance, N’keln ordered the Salamanders to stand fast and consolidate. Though stretched and scattered, the Astartes became like green-armoured islands in the orkish sea, turning their bolters outward and brooking no interloper beyond their individual walls of ceramite.

Shoulder-to-shoulder with Praetor and three of his Firedrakes, Tsu’gan couldn’t help but stare in awe at the phenomenal display unfolding above. The earth chimed with it, trembling and cracking. Crevices and chasms split open, swallowing orks in their thousands. Those not falling to their doom in the abyssal darkness were consumed by rushing lava torrenting into the air.

Booming thunder pealed from the volcanoes, louder and somehow final as they erupted with hellish force.

Praetor’s laughter rivalled their bellow. The skies were darkening with smoke and ash. Soon artificial night would resume once more.

‘When fire rains from the sky and ash smothers the sun, it is the end of days,’ he shouted.

Tsu’gan’s gaze was still fixed upon the turbulent heavens. ‘That is not all the heavens bring, brother.’

Praetor followed Tsu’gan’s outstretched finger.

The belly of a ship emerged slowly through the billowing smoke clouds. Tsu’gan was put in mind of a giant predator of the deep emerging from a mist-wreathed ocean. Tiny meteorites arced past it on fiery contrails as it hovered a thousand metres above the surface. The backwash of massive ventral engines pressed down upon Tsu’gan despite its altitude. It was an Astartes strike cruiser.

Argos raised his body up out of the ventral thruster conduit in the enginarium. He stretched the stiffness out of his back, eased the knots from his tired muscles and rolled his shoulders beneath his pauldrons to coax back some mobility. He had done all he could.

The fourth, still non-functional, ventral thruster bank was prepped as exhaustively as possible. The machine-rites had been observed, the correct unguents applied and offerings dedicated. His throat was hoarse from the litanies of function and ignition he had performed in concert with his Techmarines. The Master of Forge was a part of this ship; he felt its malady and he knew its moods. If they could replace the parts they’d lost and needed, it would achieve loft. Once free of the dunes, the Vulkan’s Wrath’s main engines would do the rest.

The comm-feed in his battle-helm hissed and spat with static before Argos heard Brother Uclides, one of Sergeant Agatone’s squad tasked with escorting the human civilians aboard the ship.

After undertaking a cursory geological analysis, Argos had determined that the planet’s tectonic integrity was nearing imminent disintegration. Prudently, he had given the order for the auxiliary and all still living casualties to be secured aboard the ship for safety. Those injured who could not be moved were given the Emperor’s Peace and enclosed in medi-caskets for later interment into the pyreum.

‘All of the Scorian settlers are aboard, Master Argos. What are your orders?’

Argos was about to respond when he noticed the radiation spike in the atmosphere detected by the ship’s still functioning sensors, relayed to him through his direct interface.

‘Go to the fighter hangar and help prepare the gunships,’ he answered, changing his mind when he assumed the black rock had been destroyed. Apart from the servitors, the Salamander was alone, having already despatched the other Techmarines to the Thunderhawks still locked in their transit rigs. ‘Our brothers will be in need of immediate extraction and conveyance back to the Vulkan’s Wrath.’ Uclides communicated his obedience and cut the feed.

Argos was about to climb out of the sunken thruster access conduit when the ship’s vox-unit crackled into life alongside him. Uclides would have used the helmet comm-feed. The signal originated from outside of the ship.

‘Brother Techmarine Argos: 3rd Company, Salamanders Chapter, aboard the Vulkan’s Wrath,’ he began, observing protocol. ‘Identify yourself.’

A clipped voice responded with all the warmth and smoothness of rusty nails.

‘This is Brother Techmarine Harkane of his most noble lord Vinyar’s strike cruiser, Purgatory. In the name of the Emperor, the Marines Malevolent bring you salvation!’

Brother-Captain N’keln’s order to stand fast had kept his forces out of bombardment range and the worst hit areas of the meteor shower. The celestial storm had all but abated now and the greenskins, though battered and severely reduced in strength, still lived and fought.

During a brief lull in the battle, N’keln took stock of his surroundings. Mounted upon a high dune with his Inferno Guard and Sergeant Agatone, who had emerged alongside them with Fugis when they’d returned to the battlefield, N’keln surveyed the carnage. He saw tiny knots of Salamander armour out amongst the thrashing horde, lit by controlled bursts of bolter fire or plumes of igniting promethium. Their rear was anchored by the Devastators still. Lok was in able command, several hundred metres distant since the advance. The Dreadnoughts both functioned, prowling the edges of the Salamanders’ deployment zone. Ashamon had lost his heavy flamer and meltagun but he continued to pound on the orks with his seismic hammer. Amadeus was wholly intact, but with several deep gouges in his protective sarcophagus where the greenskins had attempted to forcibly exhume him.

N’keln estimated they had lost approximately thirty-three per cent of their original number. He didn’t know how many of those casualties would fight again. In light of the ork masses it was a lower rate of attrition than he’d expected. The greenskins, in contrast, had died in their thousands. A slew of carcasses lay strewn across the dunes, slowly decaying.

The company banner, held aloft by Malicant, began snapping violently in a sudden downdraft, drawing N’keln’s gaze upward. Above them, the brother-captain saw the long, grey ventral hull of a ship he recognised. Fraught with interference, the comm-feed in his battle-helm opened.

N’keln listened intently to the voice of Brother Argos as he relayed exactly what Harkane on the Purgatory had said to him. Towards the end, the captain’s face became grim.

‘Tell him he has my word,’ he replied, jaw clenched. He cut the feed and ordered the warriors around him back into the fight. N’keln suddenly needed to vent his wrath.

Pyriel ran to the edge of the crevice where he’d seen Dak’ir fall, expecting the worst. Peering over the edge, through smoke and flame and heat, he saw it was a short drop into a bubbling lava pool. Ghor’gan’s armour was slowly disintegrating in it, along with the rest of the Dragon Warrior. There was no sign of Dak’ir.

Then the smoke and steam cleared slightly and Pyriel saw him. Dak’ir was climbing up the rocky face of the crevice and had almost reached the top. Pyriel reached down and dragged him up just as the lava flow pooled high enough to swallow up the corpse of the renegade completely.

‘You are adept at cheating death, brother,’ Pyriel remarked. His tone was an ambivalent mesh of relief and thin-veiled suspicion.

Dak’ir only nodded, too exhausted to speak for the moment.

The cavern was crashing down around them. Fire wreathed it and falling rocks and spills of dust fogged the air. Nowhere was safe to stand now, with fresh chasms opening from the webbed cracks that littered the ground and lava plumes spewing capriciously from the bowels of the earth. They had to get out, yet the way to the tunnel was blocked.

‘Nihilan…’ rasped Dak’ir as a geyser of steam erupted nearby.

Pyriel shook his head. The Librarian’s dark gaze betrayed his anger.

‘Stand close,’ he said after a moment. Pyriel was tired too – breaking Nihilan’s sorcerous hold had been taxing. He tapped into what psychic strength he had left and opened the gate of infinity.

Scoria was dying, and in its despair sought to take those upon its surface with it to oblivion.

The earth tremors were a constant rumbling now as they presaged further cracks opening up in the doomed planet’s bedrock. Entire sections of the dunes were collapsing, sending greenskins in their thousands to fiery death in the rising lava streams below. Smoke wreathed the battlefield as if it were a gigantic pyre, the warriors locked in combat upon it fighting to avoid the touch of the flames. Spurting lava threw red and umber shadows into the greying haze, its glow grainy and diffuse in the clogged air.

Even the iron fortress had started to crumble. A few minutes after Elysius and Draedius had quit the keep a wide crack ran up its centre, splitting the bastion in two. Then several errant meteorites had struck it. A broken tower thrust up into the murder-red sky like a shattered femur, another was rendered a sullen stump. Walls partially collapsed, a yawning chasm in its courtyard, the iron fortress hung open a half ruin.

As far as he was from the site of its destruction, and though he could barely see it through the billowing smoke, N’keln sensed fear emanating from the iron fortress – fear and angry denial. The end of Scoria meant the end for whatever fell entity possessed the bastion’s catacombs. Fire would cleanse it at last, after all.

N’keln heard the thunder ripping across the sky. It came in the form of gunships, both Salamander and Marines Malevolent. Through the thick grey smog, he thought he traced the flight path of receding engines venturing out to evacuate his battle-brothers.

Occasionally, bright lances of energy surged through the smoky cloud layer blotting out great swathes of the sky as the Purgatory unleashed its guns on distant mobs of greenskins. The grey veil lifted for a time as the heat of the strike cruiser’s cannons burned it away, only for it to return moments later in the wake of their fury.

The orks were dying in droves and N’keln ordered a final push for victory, reinforced by what squads Vinyar had deigned to assist him with. The compact, agreed under some duress, with the Marines Malevolent captain still rankled but there was little other choice.

Upon N’keln’s reluctant concession, a squadron of Stormbirds had roared from the Purgatory’s fighter bays headed straight for the crash site and the Vulkan’s Wrath. Aboard were Brother Harkane and several other Techmarines and servitor crews. With them they carried the machine parts necessary for Argos to repair the fourth ventral thruster bank and give flight back to the Salamanders’ strike cruiser.

The Marines Malevolent had also secured the crash site. Between them and the Salamander forces still on the field, the remaining orks were being rounded up and destroyed. For that, N’keln was grateful.

The fight all but over, the captain had become estranged from his warriors and stood upon the field of war surrounded by smoke, seemingly alone. Grateful for the solitude, he heard the sounds of battle ending: the sporadic bark of bolters, the errant flash of flame or the desultory orkish roar of vain defiance. The greenskins were defeated. No more dark splinters from the sky, no more brutish ships making landfall. It was done.

Overhead, the Thunderhawks blazed, ferrying Salamanders back to the Vulkan’s Wrath. He made a mental note to commend Brother Argos for his foresight and prudence in this matter. Even as fire rained from the sky with the last vestiges of the meteor storm and the world shuddered in its final death throes around them, the sound of Salamanders chanting drifted to N’keln on a hot breeze.

They echoed his name.

Prometheus victoria! N’keln gloria!

It was an old Legion custom, this shouted accolade, borrowed from their Terran cousins. N’keln was humbled by their respect and laudation.

His heart swelled with warrior pride as he watched the Vulkan’s Wrath, visible despite the distance and the smoke, rise from the dunes, rock and ash cascading off its surface, aloft once more.

It was time to leave at last and return to Nocturne. N’keln hoped the ancient power armour suits and the geneseed of Brother Gravius might yield some revelations as to the fate of the Primarch yet and perhaps reveal the purpose of the Tome of Fire bringing them to this doomed world. For now, he was content with victory and the defeat of his enemies.

N’keln was about to raise Argos on the comm-feed to congratulate him and request extraction, when a burning pain flared in his side. At first, the captain wasn’t sure what had happened until he was stabbed again and felt the knife dig deep. Incensed, he made to turn to confront his would-be assassin, but was stabbed again and again. Blood flowed freely from the wounds where the knife had exploited the gaps in his power armour, half-ruined from the incessant fighting.

Biological warnings appeared on his helmet display as his armour notified him, belatedly, of the danger he was in. Hot agony raked his side and he fell forward, his body starting to numb. The weapon, still beyond N’keln’s sight as was his attacker, wrenched from his flesh and a half gasp, half cry betrayed the captain.

Mind reeling, his gushing blood painting his fingers red, N’keln tried to comprehend what was happening. Orks still moved in the smoke, bent on petty vengeance. Had one of them managed to sneak up on him, aiming for a pyrrhic victory of sorts?

Struggling to breathe, his lungs punctured and smoke billowing around him, N’keln ripped off his battle-helm. Forcing his body up, he staggered onto his feet as the blade went in again. He tried to fend off the attack, still unsure where it was coming from, but could only slump onto his back.

At last, N’keln looked up and saw the face of his attacker. The captain’s blood-rimed eyes grew wide. He tried to speak when the thick, orkish blade was thrust into his exposed neck. Blood bubbled up into his throat and all that escaped his mouth was a watery gurgle. N’keln’s fists bunched briefly before the weapon was rammed into his chest and his primary and secondary hearts.

The captain of the Salamanders died with rage in his eyes and his fingers curled into talons of impotent hate. The sounds of his victory and the chants of his name faded in his ears as blackness overtook them…

Fugis moved through the dense fog of smoke, despatching wounded orks or administering the Emperor’s Peace to the fallen and extracting their geneseeds. A faint cry echoing through the murk got his attention and he followed it through the grey world around him.

Upon a bloody dune of ash he found Brother Iagon. The Salamander was clutching the ruined stump of his left hand, trying to staunch the gory flow. Three dead ork corpses were strewn around him. A fourth body lay partially hidden by the rise of the dune, having tumbled into a shallow depression in the ash. Its boots were marred with grey but glimmered green underneath.

For now ignoring Iagon, whose eyes were urging him to go to the other body, Fugis rushed to the edge of the dune and saw N’keln, his rigored faced locked in fury, lying dead below.

Distraught, the Apothecary half-clambered, half-fell to the base of the depression where the slain captain lay. He was checking for vital signs, knowing really he would find none, when the rest of the Inferno Guard arrived on the scene.

Praetor and the Firedrakes, along with Tsu’gan and some of his squad joined them. It was the veteran Terminator sergeant that broke the disbelieving silence.

‘In Vulkan’s name, what happened here?’ A barely tempered rage affected the Firedrake’s voice as he directed his questioning first at Fugis, then at Iagon.

Iagon was shaking his head, as Fugis relayed his ignorance of the heinous act to Praetor and went to the other Salamander’s assistance.

‘I saw them… moving through the smoke,’ Iagon’s reply was broken by painful pauses as Fugis worked at cauterising the terrible wound. ‘Three of them, clad in stealth… and closing on the captain,’ he went on. ‘By the time I could reach him, N’keln was already dead. I slew two of them without reply, when my weapon ran empty and the third took my hand. I finished it with the stock, but I was too late to save him…’ Iagon’s voice trailed away, his head downcast.

Praetor regarded the bloodied bolter, its stock caked in gore, and the demolished face of the ork nearest the wounded Salamander. The other two carried bolter wounds, blood-slicked cleavers half-gripped in their meaty fists. Iagon’s armour was spattered with dark crimson.

Grave-faced, Praetor nodded slowly and turned his back on the tragic scene. He opened a force-wide band on the comm-feed and issued a full retreat order. All he said in addition was that Brother-Captain N’keln had been incapacitated and that he was assuming full command of the mission.

Dak’ir learned of Captain N’keln’s death sitting in the Chamber Sanctuarine of the Thunderhawk, Fire-wyvern. A melancholy mood descended upon the troop hold of the gunship as the black news filtered through to all. First Kadai and now N’keln – Dak’ir wondered what fate was next for 3rd Company.

He and Pyriel had emerged onto the battlefield in a maelstrom of lightning and noise. The nauseating effects of teleportation faded swiftly faced with the immensity of the burgeoning cataclysm about to destroy Scoria. A Thunderhawk was already hovering to land nearby. Dak’ir remembered feeling slightly aggrieved that he had not had a chance to fight alongside his battle-brothers against the orks before the evacuation. But there was no time for introspection.

The boarding ramp of the Fire-wyvern clanged open as soon as it touched down. Dak’ir, Pyriel and several others in the vicinity embarked without a word. Moments later, they were airborne and tracking across the ravaged ash desert slowly being consumed by fire.

It was only a short journey to the Vulkan’s Wrath. Their pilot, Brother Hek’en, voxed through to the troop hold, reporting that the strike cruiser was before them on the horizon, aloft and ready to take them off the doomed world.

Muted cheers greeted this news, tempered by the earlier communication from Praetor that he had assumed command and N’keln was down. Scattered word from Salamanders still out in the field followed swiftly, confirming that their captain was actually dead.

Gazing out of the occuliport in the side of the armoured gunship, yet to assume his transport harness, Dak’ir was saddened further when he saw the ground tear apart. He imagined the inert form of Brother Gravius, lava billowing up and rolling over the ancient Salamander, swallowing him under its fiery depths. The entire world was burning, waves of magma like tsunamis cascading over the fractured surface of Scoria turning it into a gelatinous sun.

Dak’ir turned away and found Pyriel staring at him. The rest of the Salamanders had their heads bowed in remembrance. The Librarian’s expression was anything but grieving. It told Dak’ir that the Epistolary was thinking about how Nihilan’s sorcery should have destroyed him, but left the Salamander sergeant barely scathed. It was not possible. And it was then that Dak’ir realised it wasn’t over for him, that there would be a reckoning upon their return to Nocturne.

Epilogue

‘Don’t think of me as a fool, Captain Vinyar…’ The deep and resonant voice of Chapter Master Tu’Shan filled the vast Hall of the Firedrakes on Prometheus with its authority and power. It was an inauspicious start to their initial meeting.

Vinyar stood stock still and silent, a prudent move given that he was in the throne room of another Astartes Chapter, facing their liege lord having forced one of his dead captains into a compromise he did not approve of but had no choice but to honour.

‘I know you and your troops were tracking the Vulkan’s Wrath,’ the Regent of Prometheus continued. ‘How else could you have heard its distress beacon and responded in such timely fashion, offering aid but only for the extortion of war materiel.’

Brother Praetor and a squad of Firedrakes looked on with barely restrained anger. The Marines Malevolent had tainted Brother-Captain N’keln’s sacrifice with compromise. They had outstretched the hand of salvation in return for the arms and armour they had wished to ‘liberate’ from the Archimedes Rex. Vinyar it seemed was bent on re-appropriating what he felt was his by right – a necessity for his warmongering in the Emperor’s name.

If the small retinue of warriors he had brought with him, indeed, the captain himself, felt anything at this show of aggression, they, to their dubious credit, did not show it. But nor did they dare speak whilst the Salamanders Chapter Master admonished.

‘I do not believe in coincidence or even providence,’ he told Vinyar, leaning forward in his throne to emphasise the point. Tu’Shan lowered his voice and there was a trace of very real menace in it. ‘If I thought your intention by tracking my ship was to exact some petty revenge for the Archimedes Rex, then you and I would be having a very different conversation to the one we are conducting now, brother-captain.’

A charged silence filled the Hall of the Firedrakes, Tu’Shan allowing his gaze to burn into Vinyar for a few moments before he signalled to the shadows.

A grav-sled emerged into view, lit by the fiery sconces blazing on the wall that hinted at the dozens of glorious banners lauding the deeds of the 1st Company. Apart from that, it was an austere chamber with a throne and several archways leading off into darkness.

The Marines Malevolent had followed the Salamanders all the way back to Nocturne. Vinyar’s display of audacity was as bold as it was incredible when he insisted on being given an audience with the Chapter Master before the war materiel was handed over to them. Tu’Shan had agreed without preamble, keen to set eyes on this upstart dog of a Space Marine captain.

The grav-sled was but the first in a long train. Accompanied by a stern-faced Master Argos and three of his Techmarines, the sleds accommodated all of the bolters, armour suits and other munitions the Salamanders had taken from the Archimedes Rex.

As the grav-sleds slowed to a halt, Master Argos and his coterie stepped back into the shadows and were gone from the chamber once more.

‘We Salamanders are warriors of our word,’ there was a snarl to Tu’Shan’s tone this time, as his patience began to ebb, ‘but I promise you personally that this is not an end to it, Malevolent. You have earned the ire of a Chapter Master this day, and that is not a thing to be taken lightly.’

Vinyar absorbed all of this and merely bowed. His body language was almost unreadable as was his expression, unhelmeted as he was before the Regent of Prometheus. But Tu’Shan detected an arrogant mien about him, a disdainful swagger in his deferent movements that riled him.

‘Get out,’ he growled, before he was forced to do something with the rising anger in his marrow.

The Marines Malevolent left without ceremony, escorted by Praetor and his Firedrakes.

Tu’Shan slumped back onto his throne once he was alone. A sequence inputted on a slate worked into the throne’s arm resulted in a hidden door opening in one of the flanking walls. Inside the vault, lit by more sconces, were the suits of power armour recovered in the catacombs of Scoria. Arrayed in rows, yet to be tended and polished as revered artefacts of war, Tu’Shan scrutinised them. The vial containing Gravius’s extracted geneseed was nearby, encased in a cryo-tank, its glass confines rimed by liquid nitrogen hoarfrost.

A voice that hummed with power came from the darkness.

‘You wonder why the Tome of Fire directed us to Scoria, if this is all we were meant to find,’ said Master Vel’cona. The Chief Librarian of the Salamanders did not need his prodigious psychic talents to guess the Chapter Master’s thoughts.

It wasn’t a question and Tu’Shan didn’t answer. Instead he looked. Something had caught his attention. It was, at first, just beyond his reach. But as he pored harder, he began to see… For in the arrangement of the armour in Legion formation, Tu’Shan discerned the fragments of a symbol prophecy. It was only visible when the armour was viewed together, at a certain angle, the components of the hidden shapes confluencing to produce a whole that only then possessed meaning.

Even after those conditions were met, only a Chapter Master had the necessary cognition, intellect and insight to recognise it.

‘What do you see, my lord?’ asked Vel’cona, the faint sound of his approaching step betraying his eagerness as he realised Tu’Shan had started to read…

‘A great undertaking…’ the Chapter Master’s eyes narrowed as he replied, ‘…A momentous event… Nocturne in the balance… A low-born, one of the earth, will pass through the gate of fire.’

‘The prophecy speaks of one amongst our ranks,’ breathed the Librarian. ‘I know of him.’

‘As do I,’ the Chapter Master returned darkly.

‘Does it bode well or ill, my lord?’

Tu’Shan turned to face him, a stony expression etched upon his regal countenance.

‘He will be our doom or salvation.’

The Regent of Prometheus allowed a pause before going on.

‘Master Vel’cona,’ he said. ‘Brother-Sergeant Hazon Dak’ir: watch him very closely.’

The Chief Librarian’s eyes, fathomless pits of knowledge, blazed with fire. He nodded then bowed, before slipping away into the darkness.

Tu’Shan returned to the armour suits, scrutinising them, trying to discern further clarity in their esoteric message.

‘Watch him…’ he repeated to an empty room, lost in thought. ‘Watch him closely indeed.’

Dak’ir had met Ba’ken on a sandy rock plateau overlooking the Pyre Desert. Few had come to observe Brother Fugis as he made the ‘Burning Walk’. Usually, it was not done. The pilgrimage, undertaken by a Salamander, was a spiritual journey, its inception supposed to be conducted in isolation as was the trial itself. Ordinarily, the old or the afflicted went on the Burning Walk. It was a way, according to Nocturnean custom and the Cult of Prometheus, that a warrior who had not died in battle but could fight for glory no more could claim some dignity and even myth in his last days. Fugis, like few others before him, had requested special dispensation to undergo the trial as a way to restore his fractured spirit. Dak’ir knew of none amongst the Chapter who had ever returned from the undertaking. Their bleached bones lay beneath the scorching desert now, he reckoned, the distant places of the Pyre a grave marking in more than name alone.

By treading the Burning Walk, Fugis was an Apothecary no longer. He had given up his power armour and his other Astartes trappings. He wore a sand-cloak now, with breathable mesh underneath, and a dust-scarf was wrapped around his neck and mouth. A specially modified Nocturnean hunting rifle was slung across his back – for he had given up the right to wield the holy bolter – and he carried a machete-knife strapped to his forearm and scant supplies of water. They wouldn’t last long. After that, he’d have to find his own way to survive in the desert.

His natural successor was nearby, standing alone upon an adjacent outcrop of rock, head bowed and eyes closed in silent contemplation. Brother Emek had been saddened to leave his squad brothers, but the needs of the company outweighed sentiment and the Master Apothecary of the Chapter was to train him in the healing arts. One half of Emek’s battle-helm was painted white to reflect his status.

A last plateau, the farthest distant of the three, held Agatone. He acknowledged the pair with a slight tilt of his head. As the soon-to-be captain of 3rd Company, his was a legacy of blood and a heavy burden. It showed in the weight of his downcast eyes.

Soon Fugis had gone from sight, just a shimmer on the hazy desert horizon. ‘A long deserved honour,’ uttered Dak’ir after a long silence.

It took a moment for Ba’ken to realise he was referring to him and the sergeant’s rank sigil freshly worked upon his armour by the Chapter artisans. By contrast, Dak’ir’s battle-plate was unadorned, stripped completely of its previous honours – a sergeant no longer.

‘I can think of no one better to lead the squad than you, Ba’ken,’ he added, clapping a comradely hand upon the hulking Salamander’s pauldron.

‘Aye, it’s true,’ Ba’ken replied.

They both laughed out loud at his mock arrogance, but their moment of levity was short-lived and eventually painful as it reminded them both of all they had lost and would never regain.

‘The company is breaking,’ muttered Ba’ken, giving in to melancholy. ‘You bound to Pyriel’s service. Emek joined to the Apothecarion. My brothers, ash in the pyreum,’ he sighed, ‘Even Tsu’gan–’

‘Agatone will restore its strength,’ counselled Dak’ir. ‘He builds upon a solid foundation. Both Kadai and N’keln have a worthy successor.’

A shadow fell across them, interrupting the former sergeant.

‘Brother Dak’ir.’ It was Pyriel.

Ba’ken knew this was coming and bowed curtly to the Librarian before leaving them.

‘I sensed the power in you long ago, Hazon,’ Pyriel confessed, walking up to the edge of the plateau and staring towards the seemingly endless desert. Behind him, the dull and faraway sound of the volcanoes boomed across the sun-scorched heavens.

‘What you did against Nihilan’s sorcery…’ he began, mastering his exasperation before he turned back around. ‘It was nothing short of miraculous. It should not be. You should not be,’ he said, drawing closer. ‘Over four decades a Space Marine and your latent potential has only just surfaced.’ He left a short pause. ‘You are unique, Dak’ir. An enigma.’ Pyriel turned away again, finding regarding the hellish sun easier. ‘Chaplain Elysius wanted you conditioned, even branded and censured – I opposed it.’

‘So what happens now?’

‘You are to accompany me.’

‘You don’t need them for me to do that,’ Dak’ir replied, indicating the pair of hulking Terminators that had just lumbered into view at the Librarian’s bidding.

‘Don’t I?’ Pyriel asked, facing him. ‘You are a mystery, and like all mysteries a shadow of suspicion hangs over you, but I will lift it if you prove worthy.’

‘And how will you know that?’ Dak’ir’s tone betrayed his impatience.

The Librarian’s response was pragmatic. ‘After your trials, if you live, you will be deemed worthy.’

‘Worthy for what?’

The cerulean flash returned to Pyriel’s eyes by way of dramatic gesture. ‘To be trained by me,’ he said.

Dak’ir heard the engines of a ship growl into life. A dust cloud was billowing from below, where the landed vessel awaited them.

‘Where are you taking me, Pyriel?’

The Librarian smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.

‘To the Librarius on Prometheus, and an audience with Master Vel’cona.’

Tsu’gan followed a long and rocky path of darkened coals towards a great gate. From high above, swept up in the shadows of a mountain cave, sat Iagon, watching him.

Bitterness filled the Salamander’s heart. He clenched his fists tightly.

‘I killed for you…’ he hissed.

Iagon’s dreams and plans were in tatters. He had been left behind by his would-be patron, even after the way was open for Tsu’gan’s ascension. Except, he had ascended, but to the vaunted ranks of the Firedrakes and not the captaincy of the 3rd Company, Iagon his chief aide. Brother Praetor – Iagon resisted a pang of jealous anger – had petitioned for his promotion, impressed by Tsu’gan’s actions on Scoria: his courage and battle-ethic, his leadership and prowess. The sergeant of the Firedrakes did not know the brittle tool he had inducted into his ranks. Iagon had been tempted to inform him of Tsu’gan’s penchant for masochism, his destructive inner guilt, but that would be all too easy.

Hero worship had turned to hatred in Iagon’s heart. He wanted Tsu’gan to pay the dearest price for betraying him.

Ascending a rocky stair, Tsu’gan entered a small amphitheatre. It was meant to be a sacred place; only the Firedrakes or those destined to become one were allowed to set foot on this part of Nocturne. Iagon cared not. He was not followed, nor seen. He had to see this.

Ominous thunder shook the open structure into which Tsu’gan had disappeared and a flash of light blazed out from it and then died as the teleporter was activated and Tsu’gan was on Nocturne no longer.

Iagon sat for a while, allowing the after-flare to fade from his vision, when he heard a pattering on the ground and thought it was rain. When he saw the pool of redness at his feet, he realised it was blood, dripping onto the ground from his clenched gauntlets. He’d seized his fists so tightly that he’d pierced them and dug into flesh.

He blinked, not seeing his own blood there for a moment, but the blood of others… Iagon tried to wipe it clean but it clung to him and spread instead.

Frantic now, slowly coming unhinged, a plaintive wail emitted from his mouth and he fled. Only one thing would calm his dark soul. It yearned within him. A single thought.

Vengeance.

‘Remember your purpose.

Remember, brothers, why we were born in Vulkan’s forge.

Remember the anvil and how we are tested against it.

Not merely through war and the fires of battle.

To endure the cauldron is every warrior’s lot.

We are not every warrior.

We are Fire-born.

Our purpose is to be a bulwark against oppression.

Our purpose is to protect the weak and those who cannot protect themselves.

We live amongst the people, because we are their champions.

We learn humility from their example.

Remember your purpose.

For in the darkest hours when the hammer strikes hard and the anvil is unyielding against your back

That is when you will need it most.’

– attributed to Tu’Shan, Chapter Master of the Salamanders

Prologue

The serpent dwells in a frozen black sea fractured by diamonds. It hovers, asleep, defying the atmospheric pull of the red orb below it. It is a sentinel, a fell guardian. Slowly, a morsel ship glides towards it on cones of fire. Silently, covertly, the vessel closes on one of the serpent’s many mouths. Deep space augurs do not detect it. Yet its signature is recognised by the serpent, and it starts to stir.

It is a small ship, but one that has travelled a great distance and seen much of this galaxy and the one that shadows it. No icons regale it; no markings identify its origin or allegiance. At first, the serpent only watches. Its eyes are open and aglow. The other heads do not move and still sleep. A few hundred metres away and the morsel ship comes level before this gargantuan beast. Now, its neck is extending, reaching for the unremarkable vessel. It is a piece of flotsam to this mighty creation, with its body of solar-scarred granite and cratered flesh. Upon its back and long neck are spines. Other vessels are impaled on them, some many times larger than the morsel ship. Slowly, so, so slowly, the serpent opens its maw.

Such artifice and craft is evident in those metallic jaws. Its scales are smooth. The metal is dull and hard, almost black like onyx. The eye-slits, burning like embers of violent potential, are viewports. Tiny, dark insects bustle within them like miniature irises in the grip of fever. The maw, though it is fanged and a tongue lies flat inside, is not a mouth at all. The morsel ship, its outer lamp arrays snuffed, flies within on engine gases. Stanchions, clawed like the feet of some predator-beast, extend with careful inevitability and the vessel lands on the serpent’s tongue.

It is not a tongue, though. It is a deckplate, one scratched by alighting gunships and other, much larger, vessels. The serpent’s head is empty, barring this one, unassuming ship. The deckhands busy themselves with automated protocols, ritually cleansing the ship in lapping fire. Atmospheric pressure has already been restored in this vast chamber of dark metal and fiery brazier-lamps. There is the reek of soot upon the air. The fuliginous environment only adds to the sense of old burning and fire.

Rituals observed, the side of the unassuming ship cracks open, severing its hermetic seals, and a single figure steps out. His footfalls are heavy, but not from fatigue. He feels the import of stepping upon the hallowed ground of this place. The serpent’s head has swallowed him whole, accepting him back into its heart. Unclasping his battle-helm with a hiss of escaping pressure and lifting it off, he gazes upon his new accommodations for the first time in a long time. Breathing deep of the soot-soaked air, he smiles, and a flash of fire lights his blood-red eyes.

The automatons hurrying around him do not heed his words. They are not meant for them. These words are for him and him alone.

‘It’s good to be home.’

Striding through gloomy corridors of lacquered stone and gunmetal, the figure took in all of his surroundings at a glance. He saw the brazier pans simmering dulcetly and the glow of fire-lamps overhead. He felt the heat in the air, prickling his skin. The scent of ash and cinder abraded his nostrils. He tasted metal and the acrid tang of burning. To some, this would be a hellish, diabolic place – the darkened, pseudo-subterranean lair of monsters. He knew it by another name:

Prometheus.

Even to think it as he trod its clandestine corridors, the conduits that led from the serpentine docking hangar to the inner sanctums, prompted a half smile. He had not felt this way for many years. He had not been here for many years, and yet he knew it like he knew his own honour-scarred flesh.

None barred his passage, for there were none abroad in the halls to witness it save the cleansing-servitors and they paid no mind.

It was as he wanted it to be. The Regent had orchestrated it this way, just as he had requested. Soon, he would meet him again. The throne chamber was not far. Such trust and confidence to dismiss his Firedrakes.

As he passed the pits of fire, burning lambently in alcoves of jet, a tremor of excitement ran through his armoured body. The wish to come back to the fraternity of his brothers was something he had repressed whilst on the quest for the Nine. Portents and signs had forced him to change his course. An astropathic message had gone out heralding his return to the Regent and the Regent alone. He’d locked the desire for the bonds of brotherhood deep within himself, but as he reached the great arch leading to the throne room he found he craved them again.

He wanted to pause before the mighty gate, to examine and appreciate the craft in the coiling dragons and the sigils of fire wrought around it. He had hoped to touch the artistry in the black lacquered doors, to detect the subtle variations in the many strata of volcanic rock upon their surface. But it was not to be. All these feelings, the sense of joy at reunion, the waves of nostalgia at familiar sights, he kept hidden. He sensed, though, as the great gate opened and the burning red eyes of the one upon the throne within alighted on him, that he knew. The Regent was wise. He possessed the shrewdness of the primarch. He could discern what was within the hearts of men and those that were something more than merely men.

Tu’Shan sat before him, deep in thought. He rested his broad chin on a slab-like fist encased within a gauntlet of green ceramite. The Regent of Prometheus had received the gifts of his primarch’s prodigious strength and bearing as well as his wisdom. His armour was ornate and finely artificed with iconography of dragons, drakes and other saurian creatures of Nocturnean myth. His hulking pauldrons were fashioned into the image of two snarling lizards, and a thick cloak of salamander hide spilled from his broad shoulders.

‘Welcome, brother,’ said the Regent, acknowledging the visitor as he stepped into the room. His voice was deep and low, as if it had been dredged from the deep lava pits below Mount Deathfire itself.

He came to stand before Tu’Shan and knelt down, head low, helm clasped under his arm like an offering.

‘It is I that should be kneeling to you.’

The penitent visitor did not move. The fiery light played upon the intricacies of his finely-wrought armour and pooled darker shadows in the scarification lines webbing his face.

Tu’Shan rose slowly from his throne, every movement deliberate, his step measured and powerful. He placed a firm hand upon the visitor’s shoulder.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast,’ he intoned, inviting the other to complete the litany.

The visitor lifted his gaze. His eyes were like flame-wreathed calderas.

‘With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor.’ His voice was lighter, soft like a susurrus of ash drifting across a lonely grey plain. It echoed the isolationism he had embraced as part of his sacred calling to the Chapter.

‘Kneel before me no longer,’ Tu’Shan told him. ‘Rise, Vulkan He’stan.’

Chapter One

I

Faith in Fire

A hard ceramite finger jabbed into the map-slate, webbing its polished surface with small cracks.

‘There,’ said a dour, commanding voice, ‘the South-East Capitol, Ironlandings. That will make a strong staging point.’

The light was low in the tacticarium-bunker, emanating from a single lume-strip. It deepened Agatone’s frown. Despite the confidence in the brother-captain’s voice, his physical demeanour betrayed him. The hard fire in his eyes flashed belligerently, turning his coal-black skin a ruddy orange, as another of the war party spoke out.

‘It makes no sense.’ The Salamander was larger than Agatone. His iconography denoted a sergeant’s rank. His left shoulder pad, like his captain’s, had a snarling orange drake on a black field – 3rd Company. With folded arms, he looked about as immovable as a mountain, only craggier and clad in green plate.

Agatone’s silence, and that of the other shadowy figures around the tacticarium-bunker looking on, invited him to continue.

‘Dusk-wraiths don’t hold territory.’ He gestured to another chart, steam-bolted to the ferrocrete wall. Aside from a small entourage of humans in flak vests and ash-grey fatigues, the rest of the war council could make out a star map of the subsector in the gloom: Gevion Cluster Worlds, Uhulis Sector, Segmentum Solar. ‘And an assault of this magnitude on an entire subsector of worlds…’ The burly Salamander shook his head slowly. ‘It’s deeply out of character for them.’

‘Dusk-wraiths?’ one of the humans asked, a grizzled-looking veteran by the name of General Slayte, 156th Night Devils, the Emperor’s Imperial Guard.

‘Sergeant Ba’ken uses an old Nocturnean name for the dark eldar,’ Agatone explained, turning his attention back to the other Salamander. ‘I agree, but the fact remains, here on Geviox, we have the best chance to eliminate this raider threat. Out of character or not, we must liberate the South-East Capitol and all the slaver territories inbetween. I won’t stand to let the citizens suffer another day. And there,’ he punctured the map-slate with his finger again, at Ironlandings, and the web of cracks broadened, ‘is where our hammer will fall hardest.’

Slayte spoke up. ‘Which means you’re sidelining the Night Devils, am I right?’

Agatone exhaled. He wasn’t annoyed, just regretful. He gave Slayte a soldierly but paternal look.

‘Your men have fought bravely during the campaign, general, but are spread thin. The bulk of your regiments are occupying and stabilising the lesser Gevion worlds. Your strength is depleted here.’ Agatone’s burning red eyes flashed with eager fire. ‘Let my 3rd Company Salamanders do the heavy lifting. Support us, as you have done, gallantly, so far. The dark eldar are a vindictive, cowardly race. They will inevitably target the weaker formations. Your men would be at risk of sustaining high casualties. I can’t allow that if it can be avoided.’

‘So you consign us to corralling citizens and protecting aid stations?’

‘It is noble work,’ Agatone interceded genuinely.

Since the dark eldar had appeared on Geviox, a steady stream of refugees, those who had managed to escape the slavers’ nets, had made for the outlands and the temporary Imperial aid stations there.

Slayte continued, unconvinced. ‘We are warriors, like you, my lord. We want battle. We’ve earned that much.’

Any other Chapter would’ve dismissed the general at once, pulled rank and exercised authority. Salamanders, however, were cut were from a different cloth. It was a scaled, unyielding garment, like the one Agatone wore upon his back, but not so inflexible that it couldn’t bend. The brother-captain placed his hand on the general’s shoulder. It was like a giant soothing an intemperate child.

‘I am truly sorry, General Slayte, but I swore an oath to preserve life wherever possible. Here, that means removing your men from the front line and preserving them for future wars in the Emperor’s glorious name.’

Slayte appeared about to protest, before straightening his greatcoat and summoning his peak-cap from a nearby aide.

‘Then our business here is concluded, my lord.’ He saluted, but there was a hint of irony to it, visible even in the half-light.

Agatone opened his mouth to speak but changed what he was about to say. Nodding, he said instead, ‘You’ll receive your standing orders within the hour, general. In Vulkan’s name.’

‘For the Emperor,’ Slayte added, before turning on his heel and leaving the bunker. The door slamming shut in his wake echoed around the chamber for a few moments before the Salamanders resumed.

Ba’ken was the first to break the silence. ‘His pride and courage are an example to all. It feels like we’re tarnishing his honour.’

‘You mean saving his life,’ a sibilant voice replied. Iagon stepped into the glow above the map-slate. His narrow eyes suggested cunning and an undercurrent of ruthless pragmatism. His perpetually sneering mouth suggested derision.

Ba’ken’s slab-like face cracked with a snarl. ‘Don’t claim that’s your concern, Iagon.’

Though he was much slighter and noticeably shorter than the giant Ba’ken, Iagon didn’t flinch before his brother’s anger. ‘I’m not. I hold these humans in no greater regard than your bolt pistol – less so, in fact.’

‘Well, you should,’ Agatone intervened, his tone brooking no further argument. ‘Human life is precious. We have a duty to defend it, sergeant.’

Iagon bowed his head contritely. ‘As you wish, my lord. I was only asserting that our main concern is the Geviox people, those who cannot defend themselves from the slavers.’

Ba’ken’s fists clenched. He was about to weigh in again when he felt a scathing glance from the darkest recesses of the room and stopped himself, before Agatone had to.

‘Don’t lie to me, Iagon. Don’t feign concern for a people you care nothing about,’ Agatone chided. ‘You’ve ridden high on the recommendations of your previous sergeant. Tsu’gan was most insistent as to your promotion. His own position affords him influence in this regard, but I still ratified the appointment. Don’t give me cause to regret it,’ he warned. ‘Make war, kill our enemies, but do not pretend you are benevolent. Not to me.’

Iagon was rubbing the gauntlet of his left hand. He developed the affectation shortly after losing his organic one to an ork’s chainblade on the long-deceased ash-world of Scoria – a bionic one, wrought by the Chapter’s Techmarines, served in place of his old severed flesh now. Scoria was also where he bore sole witness to the death of the previous 3rd Company captain, N’keln, an event that had earned Iagon certain notoriety amongst some of his brothers.

‘I meant no offence, Captain Agatone.’

Agatone wasn’t looking any more. He surveyed the map-slate instead, the geographical surface of Geviox pockmarked with conflict runes and known enemy dispositions as well as friendly ones. The dark eldar were fighting a guerrilla war, a slow retreat into their slave camps where the Salamanders couldn’t bring their full force to bear for fear of collateral damage.

It was a cynical tactic.

He addressed the assembled sergeants, most of whom had remained silent during the briefing.

‘You have your orders,’ he said. ‘Light the flame. Prepare for battle. We make war in two hours, at dawn.’

The sound of clenched fists slamming against plastrons and the sporadic uttering of ‘In Vulkan’s name’ greeted Agatone’s announcement. He muttered the litany in return, but kept his gaze on the map-slate as if trying to scrutinise some hitherto unseen detail that had escaped his notice. He stayed like this for several minutes, the tacticarium-bunker having long since descended into silence.

‘He’s right, you know,’ he said to the darkness, ‘About this being out of character for the eldar. What do they want here?’

‘What does any xenos race want?’ the darkness answered, a cold breeze chilling the humid atmosphere in the bunker. A black shadow moved to Agatone’s side. The whirring of its armour servos gave off a din like grinding bone. The warrior’s power fist, slaved to his left arm, was louder still. Tiny drake heads adorned each of the knuckles. Wrought by none other than Forgemaster Argos, it was a magnificent weapon. ‘They seek to usurp humankind,’ he concluded. ‘You can question their motives, try to explain their mores and their tactics, but the fact remains they are a stain to be purged, not understood.’

Agatone looked up from the map-slate at last and found the fiery glare of Elysius upon him. It was almost as if the Chaplain were measuring him. Agatone knew he was not the first to fall under that appraising stare. Nor would he be the last. Satisfied, Elysius continued.

‘The creatures will do as they will. We must prosecute our duty, bathe them in Nocturne’s fires until there is naught left but ash. They flee because they are weak. They use human shields because they are weak. They seek to confound us with obscure tactics because they are weak. We are strong, Captain Agatone. You are strong. Let that be how you are tested against Vulkan’s anvil.’

Agatone bowed to the Chaplain’s wisdom, but was still hesitant. ‘It is not my resolve that I question, Lord Chaplain.’

Elysius leaned back, allowing the shadows to gather about him again. The Chaplain had ever been a warrior of the dark. Much was unknown about him. His skull faceplate showed only uncompromising, painfully mortal bone. Ever since he had been inducted into the Chaplaincy by none other than Xavier, the Salamanders’ long-dead Reclusiarch, Elysius’s face and true identity had remained a mystery. It gave him power but also made him shrewd about the secrets of others.

‘Your bickering sergeants,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Legacy is a great and terrible thing. It can drive us to emulate and even exceed the great deeds of the past, but it can also debilitate and condemn us to repeat past mistakes. Let me lead our forces into Ironlandings,’ he said. ‘The south-west, over by the Ferron Straits, also needs strong leadership.’

Agatone was incredulous. ‘You’re suggesting I abandon my post here?’

‘Not abandon, merely relocate. I will observe Ba’ken and Iagon, and see if the root of acrimony can be excised.’

‘You will take the Capitol at Ironlandings yourself?’

‘Indeed. It does not require both of us. Faith in fire, brother-captain – remember that. Either our warring sergeants will be re-forged in it, their bond assured, or they will burn. It is the Promethean way.’

Agatone nodded, but was reluctant.

The Chaplain’s eyes widened as if seeing more than what was merely visible before him. Elysius was no Librarian. He did not possess witch-sight or the psychic gift. He did have incredible insight, however, instinct and subtlety to rival their Lord Tu’Shan.

‘You wish to confess something more, brother?’

Agatone’s jaw clenched, a vein tensing in his cheek.

‘I do.’

‘Then speak.’

‘First Kadai, then N’keln. There is a feeling that the captaincy of the 3rd is a poison barb.’

‘I didn’t take you as one who believed in curses, captain. Superstition does not become you. Nor is it true to the Promethean Cult.’

Agatone’s posture stiffened with barely restrained anger. ‘I don’t believe in curses. And I am not Kadai or N’keln–’

‘That is true,’ Elysius agreed, interrupting. ‘You don’t possess Kadai’s charisma, but you also do not suffer from N’keln’s doubts.’ His penetrating gaze narrowed. The voice was cold from behind the mask. ‘In many ways, you are the Promethean ideal: pragmatic, unswerving, loyal. These are laudable traits for a son of Vulkan.’

‘Three years ago, I did not support my captain as I should have.’ Agatone just came out with it, the long-harboured burden that he was constantly reminded of due to his position in the Chapter.

Now, Elysius seemed profoundly interested. ‘And what should you have done, brother?’

Agatone dipped his head at first but then raised his chin defiantly. ‘Spoken out against him. N’keln was not ready, and he died for it.’

‘You’re wrong. He was tested against the anvil. That’s all any of us can really ask for. It is Vulkan’s judgement, after all. Victory was won on Scoria, Captain Agatone, just as it will be won again on Geviox. Our brothers die – it is a fundamental fact of our existence. The 3rd has experienced more grief than most, but the blade that bears the brunt of the hammer’s wrath in the forge and does not break will be the hardest in the arsenal.’

‘What does not kill us makes us stronger?’

The Chaplain’s intensity lessened. ‘If you want to employ an ancient Terran idiom, then yes, I suppose so.’

Agatone paused, weighing up the wisdom of Elysius’s words.

‘I request a benediction, my lord…’ he said at last.

‘To purge the misgivings clouding your soul,’ the Chaplain asserted. ‘Kneel, Adrax Agatone. Vulkan’s eyes are upon you now.’

The captain took a knee and Elysius drew forth the Sigil of Vulkan from his belt. It was a holy artefact, once a piece of their primarch’s armour and thus named for him. It resembled a hammer, an icon of the Chapter and symbolic echo of Nocturne’s atavistic heritage. Its purpose, besides being a venerated Chapter relic, was unknown. In solitude, Elysius had studied it often but despite many years of examination, even after consulting the Tome of Fire which contained all of their primarch’s wisdom and prophecy, was no closer to unlocking its secrets. For someone obsessed with truth, it was an infuriating conundrum.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ Elysius intoned.

‘With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ Agatone concluded.

The Chaplain drew the icon of the hammer with the Sigil in mid-air above the captain’s head.

‘Arise now, brother.’

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ Agatone returned with renewed purpose, his mind already cast to the fresh field of war presented by the Ferron Straits.

Elysius’s voice was little more than a rasp, his rictus visage disappearing into shadow.

‘May he watch over us all.’

Ritual pyres burned along the horizon, throwing harsh light over the ruddy Geviox hills. It was a small world, barely five million souls, but rich in ferrous ore. Grey banks of iron dust streaked a landscape festooned with silos and towers. Cities were two-thirds factorums, inhabited by a predominant labour force population. But Geviox was no forge world; it had no allegiance to the Adeptus Mechanicus. It was a processor-planet, where raw materials would be ground from its earth, its very lifeblood yoked until it was dry. Then the populace would move on, little more than labouring transients, to the next world in need of harvest.

In the firelight, veins of rust brought about by the hot steam of the purifying-plants shimmered deep, visceral red. A metal tang infected the air, filtered through Iagon’s rebreather mask, reminiscent of blood.

He trudged up the iron hill, loose earth scattering down in his wake where his heavy boots displaced it. A ritual pyre burned for him, too. Just like his brothers, he’d built it himself, lit it and returned once it reached its apex. Reaching the summit, he cast around and counted almost fifty towering flames. Every Salamander waging war come the dawn was anointing their armour for battle, locked in solitude and focussed on inner reliance.

Iagon, however, was not alone. He saw his companion through the haze, a flickering outline obscured by flame and smoke.

Sitting opposite, he eyed the silhouette warily. White ash was gathering at the base of the pyre, into which Iagon dipped the gauntleted fingers of his right hand. His gaze never leaving his silent companion, he proceeded to draw the icon of the flame upon his left vambrace then the serpent on his plastron.

‘Wrath and cunning,’ he explained to the figure. The lambent light filled the crevices of his gaunt face, making it look hollow and dead. ‘I will have need of such traits come the dawn.’

As if catching a gesture from his companion, Iagon regarded the sergeant’s iconography on his armour. ‘Ah yes…’ he muttered in a thick drawl. ‘Your scraps, for which I am eternally grateful.’

Like a snake snatching suddenly for prey, Iagon yanked off his left gauntlet and sent it tumbling across the ground. Beneath it, his fingers were made from wires and metal, plastek and servos. They whined and churned as he clenched them. Brandishing the augmetic hand at the figure, he spat, ‘But the sacrifice does not seem to fit the reward, now does it!’

Surging to his feet Iagon leapt through the ritual flame, a cry of anguish on his lips. He seized the figure on the other side, lifting it bodily into the air.

‘Betrayer!’ he accused, casting his companion down into the pyre.

‘Liar!’ He smashed his armoured boot down onto the figure’s torso. The flawed metal cracked and split immediately.

‘Burn, you bastard. Burn!’ Again and again, Iagon drove his foot down upon the hollow armour suit, which broke and crumbled against his rage.

His voice came between rasping breaths. ‘I trusted… you…’

Mastering his composure, a cold detachment swept over the Salamander.

The anger had come much more quickly this time. Iagon pondered what that meant, watching as the effigy he’d fashioned was slowly devoured by ritual fire. It resembled a sergeant’s battle armour, but some of the markings upon it were distinctive and unique. He wore different panoply now. He had snatched at it without thought for those who had toiled and sacrificed to bring it within his grasp.

‘Selfish dog… Your promises are like ash,’ Iagon hissed, feeling the wrathful serpent retreat within him again, coiling around his cankerous heart. ‘I will not be discarded like some broken brander-priest,’ he vowed, heading back down the hill. It overlooked a sparse landing field where a pair of Thunderhawk gunships and three transporters waited for the dawn. ‘Nor will I be consigned to obscurity, a footnote in your great destiny.’

He bent down to retrieve his gauntlet – strange how after all these years he could still see blood on his hands, even the augmetic one – and replaced it with a savage twist.

‘My destiny is written too. Yours will be short, traitor.’

‘Brother?’ The voice was deep, coming from the left. It was distant but as Iagon swung his gaze around he saw Ba’ken stomping towards him.

A patina of ash coated the hulking Salamander’s armour. His slab-like face carried faint traceries of white.

Iagon’s sour glance held a challenge. Despite his brother’s size, he wasn’t intimidated. Ba’ken had a warrior’s soul. Unlike Iagon, he didn’t possess a cold-blooded killer’s.

‘Who were you talking to?’ Ba’ken asked, casting a wary eye towards the ritual pyre.

Iagon’s expression was cold and lifeless.

‘The dead.’

He stalked away without another word, leaving Ba’ken to wonder at the dwindling shadow inside Iagon’s ritual flame and what had transpired on the hill. He too noticed the landing field, where the Night Devils Valkyries and Chimera tanks had once idled, where now Astartes Rhino APCs were being made ready by a Techmarine and his coterie of mindless servitors. The pride of the 3rd Company armour, the Land Raider Fire Anvil, was anointed and ready. Ba’ken heard the slow-building fire of its machine-spirits as the engines were put through their final pre-battle routines.

Come the dawn, they would mount up and travel on armoured tracks to the battlefront. Come the dawn, they would enter the fires of battle where all of Vulkan’s sons must be tested.

It was as it always was, as it always had been on countless missions, during countless campaigns. Yet this time, for Ba’ken, it felt different. It felt wrong.

II

Strongpoint

Ba’ken kept as low to the ground as his frame allowed. Overhead, shard-fire turned the air into a razor-filled haze.

Reaching a partially destroyed emplacement strewn with dark eldar corpses, he snapped a pair of magnoculars to his eyes. He didn’t need them to see the assault was going well, but the additional magnification, combined with the genetic enhancement of his occulobe implants, revealed intricate detail.

A broad field of flat terrain stretched before the Salamanders from the penultimate line of xenos earthworks. Spikes, wound tight with wire and hell-barbs, jutted from the ground at obscure angles. The dark eldar had also dug pits filled with corpse-bombs, human casualties packed with alien explosives. Brother Mulbakar had lost his hand and most of his forearm when he’d gone to the aid of one still twitching in the pits. After that, the Salamanders burned them.

They were crude, cynical deterrents designed to sting and frustrate rather than actually impede to any great degree. Behind them, through a squall of rust-red ore dust, a firing line of dark eldar warriors shrieked and cursed at the Astartes. Through the lenses Ba’ken discerned every sweep and curve of the aliens’ segmented armour. Each barb, every blade, the grotesque daemonic mimicry of their coned helmets was made clear to him. The hated xenos. Ba’ken drank it all in and used it to fuel the fires of his wrath.

He estimated approximately sixty-three xenos defending the immediate area outside the gate to the Capitol sector and Captain Agatone’s strongpoint. Of that garrison, five had heavy cannon. Though the xenos shard weaponry lacked the strength to penetrate power armour easily, the long lances in the firing nests were deadly.

‘Stay low,’ he growled into the comm-feed fixed into his gorget. He stowed the magnoculars so he could replace his battle-helm. At once, the battlefield was drenched in a tactical-yellow film. Distances, dispositions, formations and geographical data swarmed across his retinal display, swallowed up by Ba’ken’s eidetic memory.

The fire overhead was still thick, punctuated by arrowed blasts from the lance cannons that left the air hot and cleaved. Two squads including Ba’ken’s were poised to advance down the centre but not before the heavy cannon were neutralised.

Blink-clicking a comm-rune on his retinal display, Ba’ken addressed a fellow sergeant.

‘Ek’bar…’

The return came back fraught with static and the distant rumble of explosions. Sustained gunfire underpinned the cacophony of war in a raking drone.

++Advancing++

‘I need those lances taking out.’

There was a short pause. More battle sounds filtered through. ++Momentarily, brother. You have the patience of Kalliman++

A wry smile crept onto Ba’ken’s lips at the dryness of his fellow sergeant’s wit. Kalliman was an ancient Nocturnean philosopher who had once spent forty days and nights in isolation to better learn the virtue of stoicism. Ba’ken was in no doubt that Ek’bar had meant the remark ironically.

On the left flank, the other sergeant made slow but certain progress, chewing up the dark-armoured xenos with strafing heavy bolter fire and well-timed grenade bursts. Ba’ken’s urging had lent him aggression, though. A huge plume of dirt and debris went up where one of the dark eldar’s cannon nests had been positioned. Ek’bar’s squad swarmed over it, chainblades cutting, bolters barking. Two lances down.

Clovius, granite-like and stocky, roamed the right flank. His troops were just as methodical, laying waste to the ravening skimmer-machines the xenos were attempting to use to deploy their warriors further into the Astartes ranks. The barb-like engines hovered via some depraved xenos anti-grav technology. It gave them manoeuvrability but the open-topped transports lacked armour and that made them vulnerable to sustained bolter fire.

It was a weakness the single-minded Clovius exploited to the full. Exploding shrapnel shredded the air as the whining vehicles were torn apart. A smaller squadron of grav-bikers retreated in the wake of the larger machines’ destruction, howling and whooping. They circled the battlefield jeering and spitting threats, tantalisingly out of reach, before laughing and burning up the sky with their over-revved engines. With the swarm in full flight, Clovius was able to direct his attention to another gun nest, a well-aimed plasma beam reducing it to smoke and scorched metal.

Behind him, Ba’ken felt the presence of Ul’shan and the ever-dependable Veteran Sergeant Lok as they pounded the Capitol’s outer gates with salvos from their Devastator squads. The heavy weapons had already cracked the walls. Bringing down the gate was only a matter of time.

Here, in the long to middle ground, the Salamanders reigned supreme. The gun nests and artillery emplacements the dark eldar had erected were not meant to last for long. They were not a static force. Grievously ill-equipped to hold territory – it was just as Ba’ken had asserted during the briefing.

‘This is nothing. A blooding at best. The cauldron awaits us behind those gates,’ shouted Chaplain Elysius. It was as if he’d read the sergeant’s thoughts.

The sudden change in command echelon had surprised Ba’ken, but as much devotion and loyalty as he had for his captain, serving under Elysius was always a stirring experience. The Chaplain’s zeal and fervour were contagious.

‘We are ready, Lord Chaplain,’ said Iagon, coldly despatching a wounded xenos half-buried in the sundered emplacement. The dark eldar seemed to shudder with pleasure as it died. According to Imperial data concerning the aliens, they relished all forms of sensation, even the painful ones.

‘Aye, if the enemy are already half-slain,’ muttered Ba’ken, unsure if he was more disgusted at the alien or his fellow battle-brother.

He didn’t appreciate being so close to Iagon on the line – it was like having a bolt pistol pointed squarely at the back of his head all the time, but those had been Elysius’s orders. The dispositions were clear, and so too were the Chaplain’s methods. He was testing them both. Iagon had the wit to see it, too – Ba’ken suspected his fellow sergeant was a great deal cannier than he let on – and had performed exemplarily since the combat action had begun.

‘The wall breaks, my lord!’ Brother Ionnes pointed to the gates as they collapsed under the Devastators’ incendiaries, throwing up clouds of dust and grit.

Four of the five cannons were down.

Elysius raised his crackling crozius mace into the air.

‘Into the fires of battle, brothers!’

‘Unto the anvil of war!’ they cried back and stormed towards the shattered gate house. Beyond it was the Capitol, a key defensive structure in Ironlandings, one of Geviox’s factorum-bastions. With it, the Salamanders would hold a strongpoint to launch further sorties into the city and eventually cleanse it of the xenos taint. The mission and how to accomplish it was clear – it always had been. What didn’t make sense was why the dark eldar had not cut and run already. They were raiders; this method of take and hold did not suit them at all.

Ba’ken felt a cluster of razor shards scythe his arm greave but kept on coming undeterred. A desultory burst from his bolt pistol took the head off a dark eldar warrior emerging from the earthworks to meet them.

The Space Marines ate up the metres between them and their enemy in a few short minutes. It was a brutal sight. The earth shook as several thousand kilograms of ceramite pounded over it. Emerging like green-armoured leviathans from a ruddy mist, the Salamanders laid into the remnants of the xenos vanguard with close-ranged fury.

Here is where we sons of Vulkan excel! Ba’ken revelled, crumpling a dark eldar torso with a blow from his piston-hammer as he leapt down into a shallow trench. The bespoke weapon, crafted by his own hand, rumbled eagerly in his grasp, smashing bone and pulping flesh.

Eye-to-eye is the Promethean way!

Tongues of fire lapped either side of the sergeant as the flamers went to work scouring the earthworks utterly. The dark eldar had crumbled against the determined Astartes assault, the few warriors that remained to defend the trenches throwing themselves at the Salamanders with suicidal abandon. Efficient and methodical, the Fire-born eliminated the rest of their opposition swiftly.

Stepping over the bodies of the dead, crushing their ashen remains underfoot, the Salamanders rolled on through the shattered gatehouse and into the Capitol itself.

A wide plaza opened out before them, strewn with human bodies.

‘Name of Vulkan…’ swore Sergeant Ul’shan, last through the gate as part of the force’s rearguard.

‘Stand fast,’ ordered Chaplain Elysius, having brought the Salamanders attack to an abrupt halt. Smoke stacks, silos, processing towers and gravel-grey dorm-habs loomed over them silently. Corpses hung from ragged spires, attached by chains and swinging in an iron-tinged breeze. The charnal pit that had exploded across the bloody plaza rippled with bodies bloated by putrefaction.

But Elysius saw it for what it was. Tiny incendiaries were lodged in the mouths or sewn crudely into the stomachs of the dead.

It was a minefield.

Adopting defensive positions, the Salamanders waited and fought down their anger at such degradation. The dark eldar, or dusk-wraiths as they’d once been known on Nocturne, had ever plagued their home world. The sons of Vulkan despised all enemies of mankind, but reserved a particular hatred for the ravening dark eldar. It was an old enmity, one that went back millennia.

Several avenues, made tight by the structures clustered around them, led up to the Capitol and the strongpoint the Salamanders sought. It was a bastion-like building with high, flat sides and crenulated walls. Here, Ironlandings’s overseers would calculate and log production rates, feeding the data to their Imperial tithe-masters. On this day, with the inhabitants of the city either dead or incarcerated, the yield was low. Still, the industrial complexes ground on, obeying automated doctrina protocols that kept the great machine going.

Refineries filled the air with a low hum, a mind-numbing pseudo-silence that only racked up the tension further.

Chaplain Elysius showed no discomfort. ‘Clovius and Ul’shan, keep our egress secure,’ he said.

‘Four points of attack, my lord?’ suggested Sergeant Ek’bar in his usual clipped manner. It made tactical sense: one squad per route of assault, terminating in the final breach of the Capitol itself. It would be what Agatone would do, but Elysius was not the brother-captain.

‘No. We are the hammer.’ The Chaplain indicated the largest thoroughfare leading directly to the Capitol building’s main entrance. It was essentially a roadway, littered with upturned ore-trucks and half-tracks. The vehicles had been left that way by their occupants when they’d fled the raiders. Judging by the gruesome display littering the plaza, it had availed them little.

‘Lay down a curtain of flame,’ ordered Ba’ken, now the plan was set.

Two of his battle-brothers stepped forwards and bathed the putrefied bodies with promethium. The hidden grenades and incendiaries detonated instantly and for a few seconds the plaza was consumed by violent explosions. When the conflagration had died down there were just ashen body parts and scorched earth barely visible under a veil of thick, dark smoke.

‘Well, at least that will have got their attention,’ remarked Lok after the last of the deep concussions. One of his eyes was bionic. It whirred and clicked, seeking out any lingering traces of explosives but finding none. Even without the lifeless orb in his socket, the veteran sergeant glared coldly across the devastated scene. A grim feeling was creeping over them all.

Ba’ken was eyeing the tall drill towers, looking for signs of snipers. He would have manned those towers, put a couple of those lance cannons in them. In the open ground, smoke or no, the Salamanders would be shredded. His sergeant’s rank insignia did not sit easily on his armour but Ba’ken was as tactically shrewd and experienced as any in the 3rd.

Elysius had no such concerns about enemy snipers. He would defy bullets and razor-shot with willpower alone.

‘That way, in force,’ he barked, thrusting out his crozius again, ‘Stoic and implacable, brothers.’

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ the sergeants returned in unison and started out along the still burning roadway.

At a slow run, it took approximately fourteen seconds to clear the roadway and enter the labyrinthine cluster of dorm-habs and stacks delineating the Capitol of Ironlandings.

The Salamanders adopted a diamond approach pattern down the main thoroughfare. On Ba’ken’s tactical display, overlaying the right retinal lens of his battle-helm, a cluster of force icons showed his brothers keeping to tight squad coherency discipline and arrayed in a two-rank oblique line formation. Elysius had the lead, the diamond’s tip. A bolt pistol, and not his crozius, was gripped in the Chaplain’s armoured fist now. He was attached to Ek’bar’s squad, one of its angled sides. Ba’ken was to his immediate right, the other front side of the diamond. Four metres of permacrete roadway separated the two squads as they hugged the abandoned vehicles either side.

Behind them making up the rearguard and the last two sides were Squad Lok and, of course, Iagon.

At least the viper at my back will keep me sharp, Ba’ken thought ruefully.

‘Where are the rest of the populace?’ asked Ionnes just over a minute into their advance. They’d slowed now, dropping down to a cautious walking pace. Ionnes’s tone suggested the barren streets and conduits unsettled him.

‘They hang from the rafters and the spires, brother,’ Koto replied, his flamer nozzle burning quietly.

‘That can’t be all of them,’ said Ionnes. ‘Look at the size of this place.’

‘Like dactylids with their wings spread for flight…’ remarked L’sen dispassionately. With his bolter he gestured to the upper storeys where several of the dark eldar’s victims were pinned into the rockcrete, their flayed flesh suspended under their arms in crude diaphanous membranes.

‘Enough, brothers,’ muttered Ba’ken. ‘Maintain vigilance.’

++They have a point, Sol…++ Lok’s voice came through Ba’ken’s comm-feed on a closed channel. ++Does this remind you of anything?++

Cirrion, loft-city. Ba’ken didn’t say it aloud. They’d lost their former captain that day. Everything had changed after that. Here, in the densely packed streets of Ironlandings, he was reminded again of war-torn Cirrion. It was a bad omen and Ba’ken drew the hammer of Vulkan across his breast to ward against it.

The ranks of bodies strung above them in the upper storeys seemed to thicken all of a sudden. A vague shifting of the light came from up ahead.

Ba’ken was only a second behind Elysius.

‘Fire-born! Bolters and blades!’ roared the Chaplain, strafing an explosive line of bolter shells through the hanging meat sacks above. Several of the wretched creatures survived the attack, launching themselves at the Salamanders despite sundered limbs and gaping torsos.

Ba’ken rammed his pistol into the gaping maw of a beast that had dropped beside him and blew what was left of its intelligence out the back of its skull. A thunking blow from his piston-hammer mashed the torso of another.

The things that descended on fleshy wings to attack the Salamanders had once been human. The evidence of it was still just discernible on their tortured bodies. Each time Ba’ken killed, the monsters dropping down around him with heavy thwacks of meat hitting stone, he saw the shredded semblance of a man. There were mine workers, labour-serfs, overseers, indentured citizens.

Flesh-bonded, mutated, sewn, cut and then re-sewn into horrific parodies of biology, they were now abominations. Vat-grown bone and chitinous layers of carapace had been grafted to drug-enhanced musculature. Some had distended maws filled with several rows of needle-like fangs. Dead-eyed with stimm-fuelled strength, they fought like chrono-gladiators or suicide-servitors whose lives were measured in minutes and seconds, whose only purpose was to kill and then be killed in turn. And there were hundreds.

But as Ba’ken hurled one of the wretched grotesques into the side of a broken down ore-truck, he knew their incoherent wailing pleaded for a single, irrefutable desire.

Mercy…

Time slowed, and the battle din became a dull, half-heard clamouring at the base of his skull. Around him, he knew his brothers had slipped into a similar state. Ba’ken’s secondary heart surged into life, filling him with vigour, providing his limbs and organs with the relentless energy they needed.

One of the piteous human-grotesques reared up in his peripheral vision…

Turn thirty degrees – kill stroke to jugular administered by piston-hammer. Eliminated.

A split-second later, another lashed out from the opposite side…

Back a half-step, two shots point-blank into midriff. Torso destroyed. Eliminated.

A third, then fourth charged him from the front…

Lead with right shoulder. Disable foremost threat by shattering ribs and collarbone. Headshot with bolt pistol to second target. Cranium destroyed. Eliminated. Return to disabled primary threat. Downward hammer strike to shatter spine. Fully incapacitated.

Blood pounded in his ears as he killed, Ba’ken playing his part in his brothers’ choreography of war.

In the initial rush the Salamanders were pushed into a tight cordon, their natural instinct to form a circle and defend outwards. Ba’ken felt the generator of his power armour slam against one of his brother’s. It was like a rock, allowing Ba’ken to focus on his forward-facing enemies. Litanies to Vulkan, Prometheus and the enduring spirit of the Fire-born chorused in air rent by hellish, plaintive screaming. The creatures surged against them but the green bulwark of ceramite held.

Malformed by dark eldar torture-science, the beasts were formidable. Against any other opponent, deadly. But Astartes, especially those led by the burning rhetoric of their Chaplain, were superhuman and not so easily undone.

‘Advance, for the glory of Prometheus!’ bellowed Elysius, driving the Fire-born through the bulk of the grotesques with sheer willpower and aggression. Above the Salamanders, the railings and rafters were almost devoid of corpses. The avenue was slowly clogging with the bloodied and the slain.

The circle broke apart again and Ba’ken turned to acknowledge the battle-brother who’d held his rearguard unshakeably.

He was surprised to see Iagon return his nod with a curt glance through the lenses of his battle-helm before dropping back with his squad to support Lok.

Ba’ken let it go. Ek’bar had fallen in behind their Chaplain, who was tearing his way through the mob with bolt pistol and power fist. Elysius heaved one grotesque – it looked vaguely like a woman but with a long serpentine tongue and rib-line spines jutting from her bulbous back – up in the air with his power fist. A flex of the weapon and the creature’s screeching head popped, showering his armour with gore. The Chaplain cast the fleshy wreck aside and forged on, spitting diatribes against the mutant and the alien as he went.

Through his retinal display, Ba’ken judged the Capitol gate to be under a hundred metres away. A rapid structural analysis suggested they’d need breaching charges or a multi-melta to penetrate it.

++Lok, how far away from our position are you?++ Ba’ken lagged a few metres behind Ek’bar’s
squad, forcing a cordon through the abominations.

After a few seconds, the comm-feed crackled.

++Enemy presence is intense back here. Press ahead and we’ll link up as soon as it’s clear++ A short burst of static broke the feed before he added, ++Wait. Something else is coming…++

Just as a low drone filled the air behind him, Ba’ken saw another force hastily move into position ahead of them. Two lance cannons held the end of the roadway. In seconds, they were blistering the air with deadly fire.

A dark beam struck Ek’bar and put him on one knee. The brother-sergeant grunted but got to his feet again immediately, roaring at his warriors to advance with Elysius. Rippling shield returns blossomed around the Chaplain as his rosarius field protected him from the heavy weapons.

++Keep it tight. Single file behind Elysius!++ Ba’ken urged.

Ek’bar pulled his troops in at once, bolters flaring either side of the Chaplain’s aegis, tearing up the street ahead with snapshots.

Ba’ken mirrored him, low and spear-like through the remnants of the mob now converging on the Salamander rearguard.

The Capitol gate was approximately seventy metres away; the dark eldar lance cannons another fifty. Eyes ahead, Ba’ken saw one of the crude barricades sheltering the cannons torn up by bolter fire. The gunners spun and collapsed against the fusillade. Part of the adjacent wall, weakened by sustained fire, collapsed on top of the bodies.

Fifty metres to the Capitol gate.

++Krak grenades ready at my command++ Ba’ken ordered, going to prime the explosives mag-locked to his belt when a shadow cut across them.

Something fast swept in low and without warning. Too fast for his retinal display to track, especially with the energy interference from the heavy guns ahead, Ba’ken could only watch as Brother L’sen gurgled and was lifted off his feet.

Reaching for his throat, where a red ooze was running down from his gorget, the Salamander dropped his bolter. He was hoisted a half metre before the almost invisible snare binding him was released and he collided into an upturned half-track.

In his tactical display, L’sen’s rune blinked from green to amber.

Disabled.

The drone came again, this time from the front and then above them.

++Find cover and stay down++ Ba’ken fought to track the attackers but their speed combined with the distraction of the blistering cannon fire fouled his efforts.

Ahead, Ek’bar was having similar problems. His squad was hugging the walls, split either side of the roadway. In the centre, Brother Drukaar lay prone, a lance wound in his chest.

Another rune went from green to amber, but then to red.

Permanently incapacitated.

Ba’ken glanced behind him. Reinforcements were still far off. Lok and Iagon were mired in battle against the last of the human-grotesques.

++Can you see them, brother?++ Ek’bar barely kept his anger checked. Drukaar had served at his side for over a decade.

Ba’ken heard the drone but their unseen enemy was still elusive.

++Above somewhere++ he said. ++Using the stacks and towers as cover. They are fast–++ A shadow passed across the roadway again. ++Wait…++ Ba’ken realised it presaged another attack. He turned to Ionnes, hunkered down behind him.

‘Two frags,’ said the sergeant, holding up two fingers.

Ionnes handed over the grenades from his belt. Ba’ken took them as he turned to Koto.

‘Have you seen this?’ said the flamer trooper.

Ba’ken quickly followed his gaze.

Elysius had broken cover and was charging the last fifty metres.

‘You mad, courageous bastard…’ Ba’ken muttered, then added in a louder voice to his troops, ‘Our Chaplain is baiting them.’ He showed Koto the two fragmentation grenades in his open palm. ‘Burn them on my order.’

Koto nodded, looking to the sky as the drone intensified.

Elysius was sixteen metres out, barrelling towards the last cannon. He’d dropped his bolt pistol somewhere during the melee and wielded his crozius instead. Bright energy bursts shuddered against his rosarius field.

Ba’ken had his eyes on the ground where the shadows abruptly fled. Tilting his head up, he threw the frags high into the air above Elysius’s position.

‘Do it!’

Koto triggered the flamer, shooting a gout of super-heated promethium into the grenades and cooking them explosively.

An expanding cloud of fiery shrapnel filled the air just as four dark eldar mounted on anti-gravitic boards and trailing razor-snares flew into the blast zone. In the brief moments before they were smothered by flame and smoke, Ba’ken saw their wild hair, heard them shrieking like hellions. Engulfed by the explosion, two of the xenos simply disappeared. The other two, lagging a half-second behind, tried to pull away but were buffeted by the shockwave.

‘Take them down!’ Ba’ken roared.

A fusillade of bolter fire answered and tore the last two hellions apart.

The Salamanders were already moving again, hurrying up the roadway, when Elysius reached the cannon and demolished it and the crew.

‘Make me a hole, brother-sergeant,’ he said as soon as Ba’ken had reached him. The pain in the Chaplain’s voice was obvious.

Ba’ken battle-signed for his troops to advance, Brothers Ionnes and G’heb brandishing krak grenades and racing the final twenty metres to the gate.

After a pair of dense, deep percussions the gate was breached and the way into the Capitol was open.

Lithe silhouettes moved languidly in the shadows within, shrouded partially by the resulting smoke from the explosion.

For the first time, Ba’ken noticed a wound tract in Elysius’s power armour scored by the dark lance. A glancing blow – anything else would’ve killed him – but painful despite that. The Chaplain paid it no mind. Regarding the last of the xenos defenders, he was emphatic.

‘Bring them bolter and flame.’

Vulkan’s name was on their lips as the Salamanders charged the breach and took the first real step towards the liberation of Ironlandings.

Elysius had made his command post in one of the overseers’ offices. It was a large chamber, grey and hard like the world around it. The low, squat desk – wrought-iron and heavy – had stayed, whilst the rest of the furnishings had been removed. Whereas before yield logs and processor reports had covered the desk, spattered with their old master’s blood, maps and charts adorned it now. This was all that the Chaplain needed to prosecute his part of the fight on Geviox.

Cleansing the bastion, even the running battle up the roadway to reach it, had been easier than anticipated. Enemy forces had been light and swiftly subdued. He believed in the strength of his Fire-born, that wasn’t the issue; he’d just expected sterner resistance.

Brother Drukaar had fallen into a sus-an membrane coma. That was lamentable. At least L’sen was walking, if not speaking due to his garrotted throat. Any other injuries sustained, including those he’d suffered himself, were negligible.

A vox-unit set up in one corner of the room crackled.

++…status of Ironlandings… is... secure?++

‘Yes, Captain Agatone. We sustained a single casualty and will need an Apothecary at this destination, but the South-East Capitol is ours,’ the Chaplain answered.

++Praise Vulkan… send… Brother Emek… your location… Ferron Straits… still contested…++

‘Are there signs of a command echelon?’

It was one of several facts bothering Elysius. They had yet to encounter any leader of the raiders, no slavemaster or xenos lord.

++Negative++

‘I’m instructing elements of the Guard to this position. Their time is better spent holding the Capitol. Squads Lok, Clovius, Ek’bar and Ul’shan will redeploy to the Ferron Straits, as per your orders. Thunderhawk carriers are already en route.’

++Confirmed, Brother-Chaplain++

‘Ba’ken and Iagon will remain to secure the strongpoint until I’m convinced we are not needed here.’

There was a short pause presaging Agatone’s next question.

++Something concerning… Elysius?++

‘Nothing I can grasp at this time.’

Agatone seemed to consider that for a moment before saying,

++In Vulkan’s name, then++

‘Unto the anvil, captain.’

Elysius cut the vox-link and the chamber fell silent. Utterly focussed on a geographical chart that tracked the xenos troop movements, he forgot about the attendants in the room until one of them shuffled.

‘Dismissed,’ the Chaplain snapped, sending his attendants and armour serfs scurrying away.

‘Inexplicable...’ he muttered at the icons denoting the dark eldar.

A fire was burning in the labour-yard below. Its glow, seeping through the dirty plastek window of the office’s south-facing wall, gave the chamber an eerie, orange cast. They’d found the last of the Capitol’s staff within its walls. They’d suffered badly before they’d died – playthings for the xenos. Elysius had ordered them gathered and burned. The firelight was the only source of illumination in the room. The rest of the lights, old gas-burning lanterns, had been doused.

‘My lord?’ a voice uttered from the darkness.

The address held an implicit question.

‘Not you, Ohm,’ Elysius said to his brander-priest. ‘My flesh is in need of scarification.’

‘Shall I assist you with your battle-helm, lord?’ Ohm shuffled forwards into the fiery glow spilling into the room from the labour-yard below.

He wore black robes, befitting his station as a Chaplain’s brander. The rod he clasped in his thin fingers was also a guide staff. For Ohm was blind.

Ever since Elysius had known him, it had been this way. The scars across his eyes suggested an old pain, a searing that left a dark band in its wake. It had not lessened Ohm’s skill with the branding iron. His craft was exemplary. As such, he had refused all optical augmentation.

‘Not yet, Ohm…’ The Chaplain’s voice tailed off in a tired rasp. Certain he was alone, barring his brander-priest, Elysius leaned heavily on the wrought-iron desk and felt the pain in his flesh anew. The lance burn had hurt him, but he could crush that with willpower. It was another wound, an old itch really, that distracted him.

‘Here,’ he added. ‘My fists…’

Ohm reached out and helped the Chaplain remove his gauntlets, laying them flat on the desk with the utmost care and attention. Then he took the burden of Elysius’s left pauldron when he’d removed that too. A loud clang resonated around the room as Ohm set it down heavily on the metal.

‘My apologies, lord. My strength is not what it was.’

‘It’s all right, Ohm. You have strength enough yet for your duties to me.’

A power fist hummed beneath where the armour had been. Its couplings and linking-brackets were exposed and vulnerable.

‘Step back,’ said the Chaplain, and Ohm obeyed, affecting a low bow that dropped his cowl so it obscured his fire-ravaged visage.

Taking care to twist his torso so the weapon was braced over the desk, Elysius then set to disengaging the wires, unfastening the brackets and couplings. Muttering a litany to placate the machine-spirits within the power fist, he unfastened the shoulder joint and the heavy weight left his body. Beneath it, the iron desk groaned.

Exhaling his relief, Elysius massaged the scarred stump of his mutilated shoulder where the ork warboss had severed his limb, where afterwards Brother Fugis had stitched and seared him closed. It was the Salamander’s last act as Apothecary. Something had happened to him on the mission to Scoria. They had spoken on it briefly, him and Elysius, but in the end Fugis had felt the Burning Walk was the only way to find spiritual peace again. Few returned from such a journey, and the Chaplain doubted they would see each other again.

On the battlefield none would doubt the fire in Elysius’s heart. His words alone could burn the enemy down, but some suggested that away from the cauldron of war ice and not blood flowed in his veins.

Such things were spoken of in whispers, but Elysius heard much. He did nothing to persuade his brothers otherwise. Detachment was useful in the execution of his duties. Intimidation and reputation often went far further than any chirurgeon-interrogator ever could. Xavier had taught him that.

But that coldness he cultivated and encouraged ebbed at the thought of Fugis’s death. Elysius regretted not being able to turn him from the desperate path he had felt forced to take but respected his courage for treading it nonetheless.

‘Do you miss it, lord?’ Ohm asked.

Elysius ceased kneading the stump of flesh that had long since knitted and acquired a thick skein of scar tissue.

‘For a blind man, you see much.’ The Chaplain smiled rarely but allowed himself a moment of humour then. Old memories of Fugis had blackened his mood, though, and the levity soon fled. ‘Not only the arm,’ he confessed, struck by the irony of him as Chaplain unburdening his soul to a serf.

‘You do not feel whole without it?’

‘Do you feel whole without your eyes?’

‘As you say, lord, I see much. I do not miss them. I know my world. I see Nocturne in the tang of fire on my tongue, the heat upon my face, the ash upon the wind. It is vivid, lord.’

‘There is beauty in that. Ohm. This here,’ Elysius said, running his hand reverently over the detached power fist, ‘is a thing of beauty, too. Master Argos fashioned it for me. And it is potent, Ohm. With it I am stronger, my enemies are felled easier. And yet… there is a sense of loss, of disassociation with my own body.’

There was a pause. Ohm let it stand, knowing he had no need to interject.

After a few seconds’ introspection, Elysius clutched the mag-clamps on the front of his battle-helm. Without a word, Ohm stepped in and disengaged the locks around the back of the neck. The Chaplain had to stoop for the brander-priest to reach them.

Not since being ordained by Xavier had anyone ever seen Elysius’s face. He often told himself it was the reason he still kept Ohm around, on account of the serf’s blindness, but the bond went deeper than that. Rumours abounded concerning disfigurement or that the Chaplain’s face and helm were one.

Elysius allowed himself a shallow chuckle.

The truth was far worse than any rumour or fiction invented by his battle-brothers.

Venting pressure signalled the locking clamps were disengaged. He lifted the helm off with Ohm’s help, standing straight and then holding it with one hand.

It was a mercy to be free of the death-mask. At times, it weighed heavily. Breathing in the unfiltered air, relishing its acerbity, Elysius turned the battle-helm around so the rictus was staring at him. It was important to appreciate the visage that his enemies and allies saw. It reminded him of who he was and his sacred charge.

‘Blindness must be a liberating disposition,’ he muttered.

A votive-servitor, a brander-priest’s constant companion in the field, clanked noisily into position from where it had been resting dormant at the back of the room. Ohm was intent on his work now. He thrust the dragon-headed iron into the deep brazier of white-hot coals pin-drilled to the servitor’s back.

Elysius embraced the heat.

No, he thought. Pain is liberating.

As a veteran of many campaigns, hundreds of battles, the Chaplain’s deeds of scarification were written across much of his body already. Ohm went to work on the neck, Elysius opening and splitting his gorget to remove it so the brander-priest could sear the flesh beneath.

The movements were slow and precise, a low hiss emanating from the super-heated rod as it dragged shallow furrows in the Salamander’s flesh.

A few seconds and it was done, a muttered litany from Ohm and then echoed by Elysius completing the ritual.

‘In Vulkan’s name…’ he breathed, closing his eyes and exhaling deeply.

Ohm didn’t have chance to reply; another was standing at the threshold to the room.

‘Brother-Chaplain…’ the voice came from the doorway, an armoured warrior in green waiting there patiently with his head bowed.

Ordinarily it would be extremely disrespectful to interrupt another Fire-born’s solitude. Isolationism, be it on the field or in the Chapter’s solitoriums, was a sacred tenet of the Promethean Creed. Only brander-priests were permitted into that covenant. But Salamanders were also pragmatic – at times, covenants had to be broken. Judging by the warrior’s demeanour, which Elysius read immediately, this was such an occasion.

‘What is it, my son?’ Elysius asked in an undertone, swallowed by darkness so only his silhouette was visible. Ohm, too, retreated into shadow.

It was Brother-Sergeant Ek’bar. He carried his battle-helm in the crook of his arm and his eyes blazed in the gloom but the fire there was dull and tempered by grief.

‘I need you to perform the Rites of Immolation, Lord Chaplain’ Ek’bar’s voice was just above a whisper, ‘Brother Drukaar is dead.’

Elysius paused, allowing the weight of purpose to return. ‘Ignite the pyre,’ he said, ‘Brother Emek will be here soon. I will join you in the labour-yard shortly.’

Sergeant Ek’bar bowed and was about to take his leave when he spoke up.

‘I served alongside him for ten years.’

‘Death and rebirth, sergeant – they are part of the Nocturnean circle of fire. Drukaar will return to the mountain, as will we all in the end. Take solace in that…’ a snarl crept onto the Chaplain’s hidden face, ‘…and turn your grief to hate. Stoke that flame and unleash it upon our enemies.’

Ek’bar only nodded. As he walked away, his slow and steady footfalls resounded through the metal steps leading to the floor below.

Regarding the grinning rictus of the death mask, Elysius scowled. Staring into those hollow eye sockets, he didn’t like what he saw.

Ba’ken met Iagon in the labour-yard. Most of the Fire-born who had fought at Ironlandings were there. Brother Emek, the Company Apothecary, was inbound. Captain Agatone and the rest of the Inferno Guard would not be joining them.

The two sergeants were alone, standing apart from the others who mustered in small groups contemplating their fallen brother Drukaar whose body would soon be anointed by flame and whose ash would rejoin the earth.

Iagon’s battle-plate was well chipped and scoured from his rearguard action a few hours earlier.

‘You should have your serfs attend to that,’ said Ba’ken, though it went against his every instinct to bandy idle words with the other Salamander.

Iagon scarcely glanced at the superficial damage, as if disinterested.

Not to be dissuaded, Ba’ken lumbered on. ‘They are scars well earned, brother. You fought bravely with Sergeant Lok today.’

Now a wry, if slightly perplexed, smile curled Iagon’s sneering lip. His eyes were cold as they regarded Ba’ken.

‘There has never been much accord between us, Sol. May I used your given name? So, I have to ask myself: why do you seek to ingratiate yourself into my confidence now?’

‘I merely offer camaraderie, Cerbius, as one Salamander to another.’

‘Because I defended your back on the road to the Capitol? Is it guilt that drives this overture or ego that you have misjudged me as a brother?’

‘Dak’ir was my sergeant and friend, you chose to ally–’

‘With a hero of our noble Chapter, a true Fire-born whose deeds have seen him elevated to the 1st Company.’ Iagon spat out the last part. Ba’ken mistook whom his anger was directed at.

‘I merely wished–’

‘To assuage your conscience, I know.’ Iagon’s eyes were cold like rubies, the sneer on his face lifeless. ‘You have great strength, Sol, and an easy camaraderie that earns you many friends and scar-brothers. I am Salamander, yes, but not like you. Guile and intelligence, a survivor’s determination – these are the traits I possess.’

‘We are still brothers, Cerbius.’

‘In name alone.’ Iagon was about to turn away when he paused, showing his profile to the other Salamander, ‘but your words are noted, Sol. They are noted.’

He walked away, craving the solitude of the dark.

Ba’ken let him go.

The sound of a Thunderhawk’s engines boomed overhead. In the labour-yard, a second pyre was lit. Its flickering light reflected off the armour of the Salamanders waiting to see Drukaar’s final moments with the Chapter.

Chapter Two

I

Gathering Strength

Pain-regressors bit into the flesh of his scar-ravaged face and Nihilan hissed. The barbs, administered by a grisly chirurgeon-servitor, went deep, right down to the nerves, but they eased the roaring fire there to a dull burning.

It had been that way since Moribar, since the flame… and Ushorak…

Hard images came back to him of that place often, of the grave world where he had changed from pupil to master, where he had been re-forged in crematoria fire. Sense memories pricked at his skin with hot needles for fingers, probing, burning. Then came the screaming, the last death shriek of a mentor who had become like a father he never knew.

If Nihilan had been capable of tears, he would have shed them then. Instead, he massaged his anger, honed it into a tight blade.

Soon… soon he would grip its haft and thrust it into the heart of his enemy, right to the hilt.

Darkness surrounded him, leavened only by the visceral glow of sunken lamps. Vents in the floor exuded scudding steam from the enginarium decks, like the breath of some fell creature of myth. Wrapped in the shadows, Nihilan relished the peace and solitude they offered.

Old habits, he thought with a bitter smile.

It wouldn’t be dark and empty for long. Nihilan was expecting ‘guests’, hopeful supplicants and mercenaries who wanted to be party to his grand vengeance. As he dismissed the servitor-creatures, little more than a mesh of technology and bonded organs, an armoured figure emerged from the gloom.

‘How long have you been standing there, Ramlek?’ Nihilan made his displeasure at being spied upon clear, even if Ramlek had not the wit for spying, the dutiful killing hound that he was.

‘I was waiting until your attendants had finished their rituals, my lord.’ The armoured giant was clad in scaled ceramite the colour of fresh blood and spoke with the cadence of cracking magma. A sulphurous stench tainted the air with his every word and tiny flecks of cinder cascaded from the mouth-grille in his battle-helm. Oh yes, Ramlek was a killer through and through. His trappings attested to that.

He was also ferociously loyal and bowed low before his master, causing his scales to shift and grate.

‘Arrivals?’ asked Nihilan, shifting from the chair of dark iron which he had made his throne.

‘Many. Several ships have already docked with the Hell-stalker.’

The strike cruiser was Nihilan’s great pride. Wresting the vessel from its original owners had been a bitter but glorious victory for his Dragon Warriors. They were little but raiders then, scrapping pirates snapping at the heels of larger war dogs. How the years had changed that. After Ushorak’s death, oblivion stared them in the face and would have devoured them were it not for Nihilan and his obsessive belief.

‘Where are they now?’

‘The delegates wait beyond the chamber doors,’ Ramlek replied, now standing straight and imposing. ‘Shall I admit them on your order or destroy them, my lord?’

Nihilan smiled. The gesture pulled at the scar tissue marring most of his face.

‘What would be the point of enticing them aboard ship if we were just going to slay them, brother?’

Ramlek waited pensively, as if the question still remained unanswered.

His smile broadened, even though it pained Nihilan to do it.

‘You are an unsubtle creature, Ramlek, and your readiness to engage in carnage amuses me greatly. But execution isn’t necessary at this point.’

A cloud of hot ash and cinder gusted from the Dragon Warrior’s mouth in what might have been displeasure.

Nihilan laughed without mirth.

‘You really are a brutal bastard,’ he said. ‘Disarm them and show them in.’

Nodding curtly, Ramlek turned and disappeared into the gloom like a wraith.

Ramlek’s footfalls were still echoing heavily around the large room a few moments later when a crack opened in the dusky confines from the chamber door. Several figures filed through, ushered by a squad of Nihilan’s renegades clad in bloody red. Ramlek led the escort himself.

One by one, the figures fell into line before the throne. Some offered practised indifference, others outward belligerence. Many could not hide their fear of the superhuman renegades who had summoned them to this place, to this ship. Just under twenty ship’s captains, warlords, pirate-kings, renegade generals and alien lordlings bent their knee to the Dragon Warrior upon his throne.

‘Do you know who I am?’ Nihilan asked, with the procession ended and his warriors in position at either flank of the delegates.

A giant, armed and armoured similarly to the renegades, although his apparel looked worn and patched as if it had seen more than its fair share of war, stepped forwards.

He looked about him, regarding their flanking escorts. Every one of the bloodstained warriors cradled a heavy-looking bolter in their clawed gauntlets.

‘Dragon Warriors,’ he said. ‘You are all renegades.’ His eyes, glowering behind a battered yellow battle-helm, came to rest on Nihilan. ‘And you are their leader.’

Nihilan edged forwards on the throne. His crimson-lidded eyes flashed with power, evidence of the warp-craft flowing in his cursed veins. Like Ramlek, he too wore armour of incarnadine blood with a curved horn arcing from either shoulder pad. The force staff, just an arm’s length away, lay dormant in its cradle. This was his ship, the Hell-stalker. Here, in this traitor’s court, Nihilan was pre-eminent.

‘Aren’t you too a renegade now, brother?’

Though armoured in black and yellow of a slightly more archaic design, the other warrior was in many respects the mirror of Nihilan. They had a similar caste, cut from once similar cloth. Ideologically, though, they couldn’t have been further apart.

He bristled at the Dragon Warrior’s usage of such a familiar term, but bit back his anger.

‘Hard to accept at first, isn’t it?’ Nihilan goaded when met with silence. ‘Your cause is just, your defection is not defection at all but merely following the hard path, the one your lords and masters do not have the courage to tread – is that about right, Astartes?’

‘No. I am not motivated by any of those ideals,’ the warrior replied in a grating whisper.

‘Oh, really?’ Nihilan sounded amused. ‘What then?’

‘Hate,’ the warrior said simply. ‘For the Salamanders.’

Nihilan’s eyes narrowed.

‘Now that, my dear brother, is something we do have in common. What is your name?’

The warrior slammed a fist against his breastplate. Given the circumstances, it seemed like an outmoded gesture now.

‘Lorkar,’ said the warrior, ‘Sergeant Lorkar of the Marines Malevolent.’

Nihilan smirked cruelly.

The knuckles cracked in Lorkar’s gauntlets at what he saw as an insult.

Ramlek shaped like he was about to react. The Marines Malevolent were little better than sanctioned, war-mongering psychopaths. Nihilan was amazed the Inquisition hadn’t sectioned them excommunicate traitoris yet. Their reputation was certainly bloodthirsty and uncompromising. Lorkar’s skin must be crawling surrounded by so many impure creatures around him.

Unhinged was the descriptor that sprung instantly to mind when faced with a Marine Malevolent. Capricious, too. Nihilan wouldn’t put it past them to infiltrate one of their brethren aboard his ship on some ill-conceived suicidal assassination mission. But, no, Lorkar was not here to murder – at least, that wasn’t his intent.

Nihilan barely had to exercise his psychic will to discern that fact. Belligerent, yes, but not murderous.

A raised hand from the sorcerer put Ramlek back on his leash.

‘I had heard a Malevolents ship had docked with the Hell-stalker. I didn’t believe it until now.’ Nihilan descended into partial monologue. ‘Puritanical Astartes like the Marines Malevolent allying themselves with renegades…’ he tutted, ‘…what must the sons of Vulkan have done to offend you so?’

‘That’s Malevolents business,’ Lorkar growled.

‘No longer, Sergeant Lorkar,’ Nihilan corrected. ‘Not any more. You are a Dragon Warrior now.’ He spread his arms, ‘One of us.’

Nihilan held Lorkar’s fierce glare a moment longer–

His rage will be useful.

–before letting his gaze take in the rest of the assembly. He recognised kroot, avian mercenaries little better than half-trained beasts but valuable in a fight; half-naked Chaos cultists with graven sigils tattooed into their self-abused flesh; the sinuous dark eldar, lithe and deadly, wearing torturers’ smiles; and other, stranger beasts and warriors. In truth, he cared little for any of them. The Astartes were a boon, and Nihilan would take great pleasure in their corruption. The dark eldar, too, had their part to play. But the rest were just fodder.

Recruiting scum was easy. Every system, every
sub-sector had them in abundance. Promises and offerings enticed such ‘enterprising’ individuals easily enough. Nihilan’s own Dragon Warriors numbered in the hundreds. Together with this mercenary rabble, he would have enough bodies to execute his plan, his grand vengeance.

Nocturne was not Ultramar. A Space Marine Chapter’s home world, yes, but it was not an empire.

One by one, the delegates came forwards at Nihilan’s beckoning and made their pledges. The Dragon Warrior accepted them all, barring one. A hound-faced warrior, at least judging by the shape of his battle-helm, raved like a lunatic before the throne. He would spill blood in the name of his dark lord. He would visit flesh-reaping retribution on the sons of Vulkan. He would cast down their skulls in supplication to his god.

After this tirade, Nihilan had reached for his force staff and smote the barbarian down where he stood. It served two purposes, showing not only his considerable power but also the fact that he would not ally himself with mindless, uncontrollable killers.

The Red Rage he had called himself, another renegade Astartes no less, but a broken one. Even Lorkar’s feral anger had focus and direction; this beast was little more than a frothing zealot. Such men, such creatures were not easy to control and Nihilan desired that above all else. He ordered the Red Rage’s ship annihilated and its representatives slain immediately. A pool of slowly steaming bone and organs was all that remained of the fanatic now.

‘Obedience is not a request,’ said Nihilan to the others, who were trying to mask their shock. Even the flint-hearted Lorkar flinched. Only the dark eldar seemed unaffected, a male and female, the latter dressed in little more than strips of dark leather and pieces of plate armour. While the male looked vaguely amused, she was positively aroused by the warrior’s agonising death and bit her lip, drawing blood, to suppress it.

The xenos delegates were an important element to Nihilan’s plan, but he did not relish their presence and sadistic hedonism.

‘And we are not madmen on a bloody quest to our own destruction,’ he continued. ‘There is but one agenda, my own. I have worked hard and sacrificed much in order to assure its fulfilment. Do your parts, you and your heinous kin, and you’ll be rewarded.’

Nihilan leaned back in his throne, seemingly weary all of a sudden.

The sound of cracking bolter slides informed the delegates the audience was at an end. Ramlek and his warriors ushered them out just as they had ushered them in, only minus one body.

Of the Dragon Warriors who had entered the chamber, only Ramlek remained.

Nihilan closed his eyes. He rasped in a voice like cracking parchment, ‘We are close, Ramlek.’ He stroked a pair of scrolls alongside him on the throne. ‘You have the decyphrex?’

Ramlek patted a cylinder mag-locked to the right thigh of his scaled power armour.

‘I do, my lord. And I have summoned the others. They should be arriving soon.’

‘Good, good,’ Nihilan breathed. ‘All is in readiness.’

The gloom split again and this time three more Dragon Warriors entered.

Before the throne, four dark runes had been cut into its metal dais. Ramlek had taken the first already, to Nihilan’s immediate right. A second renegade assumed the one next to him on the left. The other two stood upon the remaining runes.

‘You are my Glaive, brothers,’ Nihilan told them, ‘My most trusted warriors and the ones who will gouge out the heart of the Salamanders for all their perfidy against us and our long departed lord.’ He paused, regarding each of them in turn.

Ramlek’s eyes burned with an unslakable rage; Nor’hak, the warrior to his left, was cold like iron; Ekrine, the only one without a helmet, licked vaguely reptilian lips as his eyelids flicked from side to side; Thark’n, the most recent addition to the Glaive, folded his thick arms and nodded with quiet determination.

‘In the name of the slain do we do this,’ said Nihilan. ‘In the name of Ushorak.’

‘Ushorak,’ the Glaive intoned as one.

‘And for Ghor’gan,’ Nihilan added, paying particular attention to Thark’n. ‘Who fell in his sacred duty, a warrior of the Glaive who we also mourn in this cabal.’

‘Ghor’gan.’

‘We may come from differing heritage, the Chapters that spurned us, that constricted and took our love and loyalty for granted. Storm Giant, Black Dragon, Iron Warrior, Marine Malevolent…’ He paused before the last of the names, spitting it out as if it left a canker in his mouth. ‘…Salamander. These honorifics mean nothing to us. Now we are one. Dragon Warriors, all.’

Nor’hak couldn’t suppress a snarl, baring his pointed fangs. Ekrine’s bone-blades snapped forth as he fought his anger and emotions. Great gusts of cinder spilled from Ramlek’s maw like dragon smoke, whilst Thark’n’s knuckles cracked loudly in his gauntlets.

Nihilan smiled.

‘On Moribar we unearthed the means to wreak our vengeance.’ He pulled the scrolls to his side. ‘On Scoria we enabled its realisation, whilst striking a stinging blow to our enemies.’ This time he looked at Ramlek, who returned his lord’s admiration without emotion. ‘Old Kelock had no idea of the power he had chained. Scoria was nothing, a tenth of our strength. Now, we will harness all of it. Our Spear of Retribution is almost ready,’ he announced to them all. ‘And with it we shall tear out the heart of a world.’

Nihilan thrust out his clawed gauntlet in a fist.

‘Death to Nocturne.’

The others followed suit, punching their knuckles together and forming a ring of red ceramite.

‘Death to the Salamanders,’ Nihilan concluded.

II

Devils’ Bargains

Aboard the Eternal Ecstasy the air within the portal chamber rippled. It was as if an electric current had been passed through it. Slaves, shackled to its hot capacitors, wailed as their bodies were subjected to further tortures with the portal chamber’s activation. Agonised shadows littered the barbed walls, hinted at in the ephemeral flare of power. Sunk into a deep recess, the two capacitors were like the metal horns of some unseen beast. Pallid faces, those still with eyes to see, stared piteously out of that hell-pit. None present who looked upon them saw them as anything but fuel. Sacrificed to stave off She Who Thirsts, they were a means to an end – nothing more. The shriek of the capacitors lowered to a dull hum and darkness swallowed them again. A portal was opening.

It began as a crack of light, a jagged dagger thrust that tore through reality, exposing the myriad realm of the webway beyond it. Slowly the crack widened, ripples of electrical discharge raging at its edges. A dark void was revealed inside, a growing pool of blackness but not blackness, a strange un-reality that defied all laws of physics and matter. Flickering into existence like a bad pict-recording resolved into a coherent image, a figure stepped forth into the portal chamber onto a plateau of dark metal suspended above the hell-pit. He moved sinuously, abhorrently seductive, one foot overlapping the other in a perverted and suggestive mockery of grace. Eldritch wind whipped at the long dark hair that he let fall below the edge of his conical battle-helm. The strands writhed slowly like vipers, but there was only motion, no sense of air, no breeze as such, just its effects. Such was the mystery of the webway.

Another figure followed him, a female. Lithe and tall like the male but more muscular and near-naked, barring her leather and plate battle harness. Her gait was less affected, more warrior-like and purposeful, but she possessed a killer’s poise. She wore no helm but preferred a sharply edged domino mask instead, she the player in her personal theatre of death. Her hair was white, long and bound in a tight scalp lock that fed the conjoined braids all the way down her bare back like a serpent.

‘Extravagant, Malnakor,’ a grating voice issued from the gloom of the chamber when the webway transference was complete and the portal had closed. ‘The rest of your cohorts are still aboard ship and have yet to dock,’ it added, its tone full of implication.

The sinuous male removed his helmet. It had a double horn on the left temple, two thin barbs of flat, dark metal. The front was engraved with a wickedly grinning face, reminiscent of a daemonic jester.

Malnakor cast his hair about, freeing up the long locks after their confinement beneath the battle-helm. ‘I choose better company to travel with,’ he replied. The lascivious glance he gave the female who had portalled with him was blatant.

The warrior-wych ignored him, bowing down before the voice and the silhouette framed by shadow in front of them instead.

‘Wasteful and decadent, dracon,’ said the voice. ‘Slaves we can ill-afford to lose.’ The silhouette figure stepped into the light.

It too was male. His xenos features were cold and stark, as if cut from marble. His face was blanched as if exsanguinated. The cheekbones protruded like blades. His nose was aquiline. Where Malnakor was arrogant and sneering, this one was impassive and unreadable. Only his tone betrayed his displeasure, and even then only because he chose for it to.

‘An’scur…’ the word issued from the wych’s mouth like a seduction as she bowed lower still, careful to keep her cleavage visible for her lord.

‘Helspereth,’ said the archon, stepping forwards to caress her cheek with his right hand.

Dracon Malnakor arched his eyebrow when he saw the missing digit on An’scur’s hand. His face was symmetrical, his complexion and physiognomy utterly unmarred and utterly unsettling. Every effort had been made by the dracon to become doll-like and perfect. It was as if his youth was cast in amber to endure for eternity, hinting at his surgical addiction. To behold such a deformity as a missing finger in his so-called lord and master only convinced Malnakor he had been right to try and kill him.

Fifteen separate assassination attempts had been made against Archon An’scur. All barring three had been thwarted and yet here he was, alive and imperious, if a little gaunter than before.

The disaffected dracon eyed Helspereth’s naked affection jealously. He wanted her. Ever since he had witnessed her triumph in the Coliseum of Blades at Volgorrah, he had desired to taste her flesh, feel the warmth of her body next to his. That night, Malnakor had bedded and murdered thirty-one slaves and still his burning lust wasn’t slaked. Only the wych queen could do that. He had heard rumours from those she had favoured. Most did not live long beyond the telling. He would gladly die at her torturer’s fingers. Rapture beyond measure waited there – Malnakor could feel it, could see it smouldering like hell-fire in her predator’s eyes.

And yet, she favoured the archon.

Unlike his minions, An’scur wore thin violet robes that suggested the wiry, muscular frame beneath. His hair, like his face, was white. His eyes were black like two almond-shaped pieces of jet with a pinprick of grey to indicate the pupils. Some within the cabal said his soul was promised to Kravex – that the haemonculus kept An’scur’s missing digit under lock and key, and through the application of his torturer’s science had resurrected the archon each time he was killed. Only a sample of biological matter was needed. Gaining a haemonculus’s favour was the difficult part.

But then Dracon Malnakor had studied the path to securing such a bargain diligently. Kravex was a sadist of a particular stripe and like all the haemonculi he was old, one of the First Fallen. His secrets were manifold. The way to unlock them lay in bartering. And in the many ports and lairs of Commorragh slaves were the only currency that had value for a haemonculus.

As Helspereth purred at his touch, Archon An’scur looked askance at Malnakor. The shadow of an amused smile passed like a wraith across his bloodless lips.

Whore-mongering bastard, thought the dracon with a twinge of jealous pride. How I covet your power, sibling.

An’scur seized the wych’s jaw. His taloned fingers drew a little blood and she mewled with pleasure at his abusive touch. Then he released her and she retreated into the shadows.

As she slipped away, Malnakor watched her from the corner of his eye. He knew where she was headed and fought down his anger again. What debaucheries will you commit for him, slave-whore? He was almost salivating at the thought and had to drag his attention back to his lord.

‘So, brother,’ An’scur began, inspecting the droplets of Helspereth’s blood on his nails, ‘our pact with the Dragon Warriors is in place? They have made the slave pledges as previously agreed?’

Malnakor showed his perfect white teeth before ripping a dagger from its sheath and plunging it at An’scur.

The archon moved swiftly, as smooth as oil on water, and caught the flat of the blade between his palms. In the same motion, he twisted the weapon away from the dracon’s grasp and drove it deep into Malnakor’s thigh.

‘Prosaic,’ he said, laughing. ‘I thought you were more creative than that, brother.’

‘You’re still fast,’ the dracon rasped, pain and pleasure warring for dominance on his face.

‘Faster than you.’ The smile vanished. ‘Now, tell me of the pact. It means much to the cabal that we honour it.’ The word was hard to say. In his centuries of life, An’scur had not used it much.

Malnakor tugged the blood-wet blade from his thigh with a schluck of metal leaving flesh. A small hiss of ecstasy passed his lips.

‘Why must we deal with the mon-keigh? They should be kneeling to us as their masters.’

‘They are no ordinary mon-keigh, as well you know.’

‘I do. I also know of Kravex’s interest in them.’

A tremor of annoyance cracked An’scur’s emotionless veneer. ‘Oh yes? Tell me, brother, what you know of our haemonculus’s predilections?’

‘Only that he prefers the gene-bred ones. They last longer.’

An’scur was about to comment when he thought better of it. The emotionless mask was intact again. ‘We will deal with the mon-keigh,’ he asserted. ‘In fact, you are pivotal to our plans in this regard.’

‘Pivotal in what way?’ Malnakor’s suspicion was obvious.

‘Kravex awaits you on Geviox,’ said An’scur, the slightest flicker of amusement lifting his features, ‘You are to leave immediately.’

‘I said, leave me!’

The throne room was empty, or so Nihilan thought. He’d dismissed the Glaive after discussing their plans for Nocturne and was scrutinising the scrolls with the decyphrex. The device was a dodecahedral crystal fractured with strange geodesic lines. To the naked eye, to the unschooled and the ignorant, it would appear a valuable trinket, something to be parlayed for a greater prize. The truth was much more esoteric and clandestine. It held the means of uncovering a devastating power, a force the likes of which hadn’t been seen since before the Dark Age of Technology.

For though human, Kelock had been a genius. He was also an opportunist. The extant scrolls in Nihilan’s possession had been created by the technocrat, reverse-engineered by true science, providence or daemonology from a device uncovered many years ago.

The existence of the scrolls and the decyphrex was the deed of another, a creature in Nihilan’s temporary thrall that made its presence felt now the chamber was truly empty.

‘I cannot, mortal. I am as indelibly bound to you as the bone is bonded to your flesh.’ The voice sounded old and melancholic.

‘I haven’t…’ Nihilan began, choosing his next words carefully, ‘…felt you for some time.’

‘The empyrean tides demand my attention, the ebbs and flows of fate, the means by which you sit upon your pre-eminence, oh master.’ Now, it was cynical, sarcastic. It shifted mood often, neither one thing nor the next but a melange of emotion as difficult to predict as the dimension that spawned it.

‘There is news?’ Nihilan ventured.

‘None,’ it replied emphatically. ‘I come abroad to remind you of our bargain.’

The voice emanated from everywhere and nowhere at once, first a grating whisper then a bellowing tumult. Other voices joined it, sibilant and non-sequitous.

Nihilan ignored them, girding himself with his psychic discipline.

The daemon was toying with him, caressing his defences with razored mental claws. One careless slip and his sanity would be shredded.

‘You have no need to do that…’ Nihilan said through gritted teeth, resisting the urge to glance around the room and pinpoint a sound that had no origin. ‘I remember our pact. I will honour it.’

The presence was fading, retreating back into the tides.

‘See that you do, sorcerer…’ it whispered, like a dying breeze. ‘Remember what you promised me…’

‘Have no fear of that,’ Nihilan muttered, slowly releasing the mental bulwarks he’d put in place to protect himself.

‘A vessel,’ the daemon rasped, its voice all but gone. ‘A vessel…’

Nihilan’s eyes burned with inner fire, a genetic echo of his forsaken heritage.

‘I have the perfect candidate.’

Chapter Three

I

Sigils and Portents

Vulkan He’stan observed the pict-captures with careful detachment.

The image on the viewscreen was rendered in grainy monochrome on account of the extreme weather wracking the surface of Nocturne far below. Auspex readers within Prometheus’s superstructure gathered the data from picters arrayed in closeted bunkers within the threshold of the Sanctuary Cities. Even in the void of space high above, Nocturne’s elite guardians could still keep watch over their fragile world.

Their fragile and volatile world.

The Time of Trial was ending and an arctic winter seized Nocturne in its icy fist. Where once there had been ash plains, now there was snowy tundra; where previously geysers of steam had vented across the rocky plateaus, now placid streams of vapour drifted wistfully on a chill breeze. In the mountain ranges the volcanoes were like vast beacons, illuminating the grey-white fog of drifts and ice flurries. Wreathed with smoky effusions, it was as if the calderas of the fire-peaks were dragons of myth slumbering beneath the snow and rock, their maws pointing to a smothered grey sky.

Even Mount Deathfire – the largest of all the volcanoes – was quiescent, content to wane in the wake of her explosive fury during the Time of Trial.

Across the surface of Nocturne, the Sanctuary Cities had closed their gates and engaged their void shields. Anyone beyond their walls now would be in the lap of Vulkan. Against the anvil they would be tested – re-forged or broken. It was the way of the Promethean Cult.

A long trail of nomads, having trekked across the frozen floes of the Acerbian Sea, caught He’stan’s attention as they closed on a gnorl-whale held fast in the ice. They carried barbed harpoons and encircled it with a hungry predator’s disregard. Sustenance was scarce when Nocturne’s fire ebbed. Many of the indigenous lizards and saurians were hibernating in the caves. The Ignean tribesfolk would already be fighting a bitter war against the restive ones for food and warmth.

Such was the planet’s way of excising the weak and promoting the strong. It was a hard culture but one He’stan respected for its purity.

Such a fragile existence, he thought, feeling the plight of the people as his own. I have been away from it for too long.

‘Harvest will begin soon in earnest. A few more months and the hillsides and mountains, the thawing lakes and the fringes of the lava flows will be full of Nocturneans.’

He’stan felt Tu’Shan’s presence beside him, rather than saw him. The Chapter Master had a singular aura about him, a sense of the indomitable that He’stan had never felt in any other Salamander. He had been young when he’d assumed the mantle of Regent, but it was one he wore with great nobility and distinction. No two greater champions of the Chapter existed in the current decaying age of the universe. He’stan felt great pride but also profound sorrow at that revelation.

‘The ice will recede, the mountains will weep, Deathfire shall speak her rumbling refrain once more,’ He’stan said. He’d removed his battle-helm, a beautiful piece of his artificer armour rendered with saurian affectations and artistic flourishes. Underneath it, his face was sombre and grave. ‘I am the bearer of Vulkan’s Spear and I wear Kesare’s Mantle,’ he said. ‘Upon my left fist is the Gauntlet of the Forge, but it is nothing matched against our mother’s fiery heart. What is the will of a Forgefather or a Regent compared to that?’

It was at He’stan’s request that they’d come to one of the viewing galleries in Prometheus space port. The long chamber was dark, illuminated by brazier coals. The flickering light revealed the icon of the Firedrakes as they pulled the shadows away, only for it to be swallowed as the darkness reasserted itself again a few moments later.

‘Aye, we are humbled by her savage beauty, Lord He’stan.’ Tu’Shan clapped a firm hand upon the Forgefather’s shoulder.

For He’stan it was an odd sensation. He had been apart from his brothers for a long time. His quest for the lost artefacts of Vulkan had taken him to the edges of known space, to sights he would not describe and deeds he would never speak of. To them, his Fire-born kin, he was an enigma, a distant figure whose ways were inscrutable. It was no small thing to return. Something great and terrible had drawn him back. The signs as related in the Tome of Fire had led him to this point, to this temporal epoch.

He’stan turned his eyes away from the pict-viewer. The grainy feed had worsened on account of the weather on the planet far below, but he had seen well enough.

‘You had best take me to it, brother,’ he said at last.

‘It’s not far,’ Tu’Shan replied. ‘Follow me, brother.’

The armour had been moved to a vault annexed to the Pantheon Chamber. So esoteric, so ancient and inscrutable were the sigils upon them that Tu’Shan needed the Tome of Fire close at hand to study them properly. That had been three years ago, ever since the 3rd had returned from Scoria.

They were standing in the sacred chamber now, the circular temple at the heart of Prometheus that contained the Tome of Fire. Volume upon volume of the mythic text lined its walls. It was supplemented by scrolls, charts, artistic renderings, well-crafted arcana and other, even stranger, objects. All wrought by the primarch’s hand. Some had even been written in his deific blood.

Though shrouded in gloom, iconic representations of anvils, drake heads, great serpents and the eternal flame were still visible. Carved into vast menhirs of volcanic obsidian they shimmered wanly in the light from the low-burning torches that punctuated the room at precise intervals. Their glow also described the edge of eighteen granite thrones. Only vaunted members of the Pantheon Council were permitted to sit upon them. Seldom in the Salamander’s long history had they ever been full. Deliberations of the utmost importance were conducted in this hallowed room, matters that affected the entire Chapter and, prior to that, the Legion.

The induction of the first Forgefather, the defection of the Warmaster, counting the cost of the aftermath at Isstvan, the disappearance of Vulkan – all had been weighed and measured by the Pantheon Council.

These seats, each bearing sigils that represented the role and position of its incumbent, followed the curve of the room. Each was positioned at the same height and no one was larger or more grandiose than another. Here, the Lords of the Salamanders were equals.

He’stan eyed his own seat, a place that had long remained empty amongst the council, and felt the longing for brotherhood return just as it had as when he’d docked at Prometheus.

‘Forgefather…’ said Tu’Shan, as if replying to his deepest thoughts.

A low grinding of gears and servos invaded the quietude as the Chapter Master unlocked and opened the vault appended to the chamber.

One of the menhirs, a lustrous chunk of hard obsidian, rolled away to reveal the vault door and behind that the inner sanctum itself.

Within, there stood the armour suits reclaimed from the bowels of Scoria, arrayed as they had been in Tu’Shan’s throne room.

He’stan stepped into the room, drawn almost against his will to the artefacts before him. ‘Ancient…’ he breathed, reaching out to touch one of the archaic suits of power armour. It was gloomy in the chamber and the low red lume-light covered it with a bloody cast.

The armour was Salamander, no question – the iconography and design attested to that. But it was of a darker hue and crafted during a halcyon age.

‘From the Great Crusade, brother,’ said Tu’Shan, standing alongside him, ‘and the Age of Darkness that followed.’

He’stan’s voice barely reached above a whisper.

‘Our darkest hour…’

‘At Isstvan,’ uttered Tu’Shan.

He’stan met the Chapter Master’s fiery gaze, ‘At Isstvan.’

Both knew and felt keenly the fell deeds of the Dropsite Massacre when the then-Legion had been all but destroyed by traitors in their midst. The violent ripples of it were still felt by the Chapter, almost ten thousand years later.

Allowing a moment of introspection to pass, He’stan asked, ‘What have you learned?’

Tu’Shan frowned, scrutinising the symbols engraved onto the armour. Each individual suit carried a piece of a greater mystery. Alone, the marks were scratches, war-scars that held no intrinsic meaning; together, and when viewed from a certain angle with the eyes of one with sufficient wit to see it, they contained a piece of prophecy.

As of yet, Tu’Shan had been unable to decipher it.

‘That the answer lies within the Tome of Fire. We were led to Scoria by the hand of Vulkan, Forgefather, of that I am sure.’

‘And this was our father’s intent, to furnish us with this shrouded wisdom?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘Was there anything else?’ Now He’stan regarded the armour suits up close. Denuded of the bodies they once contained they were wraith-like and cold. Ghosts lived in those ceramite husks now, ghosts and dead memories.

‘Only this…’ Tu’Shan activated a rune-plate in the vault wall. A circular crack appeared in the metal floor of the chamber and the air filled with a dense pressure cloud around it. When it dispersed, a silver column with a force-fielded dome surmounting it had emerged from a compartment beneath the vault. In the crackling field there was a progenoid gland, held within an armourcrys vial and suspended in some kind of amniotic solution.

‘The fluid within the vial keeps it from necrotising?’

‘Apothecary Fugis manufactured it himself, before he took the Burning Walk.’

A raised eyebrow betrayed He’stan’s interest in the taking of the spiritual path into the desert. He had often wondered if such a journey would reveal anything of his own destiny.

‘Whose is it?’ He’stan asked.

Tu’Shan stepped closer to regard it, as if drawing his answer from proximity to the vial. ‘An ancient warrior of the Legio – Gravius was his name.’

He’stan turned sharply to regard his Chapter Master.

‘He lived? After ten thousand years?’

‘It would seem so, but his mind was shattered, crammed with the thoughts and memories of all of his brothers.’ Tu’Shan encompassed the array of power armour in a single sweeping gesture of his arm.

‘Incredible…’ He’stan breathed. He scrutinised the suits. ‘I recognise this passage,’ he said. ‘These sigils are familiar to me, Regent.’

Tu’Shan’s pensive silence bade the Forgefather continue.

‘Phrases and subtleties of meaning are lost to me, I suspect only the primarch could discern them, but there is reference to the Ferro Ignis here.’

‘The “Fire Sword”,’ Tu’Shan translated. ‘It is a doom prophecy. I’ve heard of it, but never seen it rendered in this form.’

He’stan ran his gauntleted finger reverently over one of the sigil fragments engraved on a vambrace. ‘Sigil-dialect is old. The ancient Nocturnean earth shamans used it back when the world was young and our Sanctuary Cities were plains of rock and circles of stone. It was this language that led me to recover one of the Nine.’ He’stan brandished the Gauntlet of the Forge.

‘I see more…’ He’stan added and read aloud, ‘“A low-born, one of the earth…’”

‘“…Will pass through the gate of fire. He will be our doom or salvation,’” Tu’Shan concluded.

He’stan met the Chapter Master’s formidable gaze. ‘You know who this warrior is, don’t you?’

Tu’Shan nodded.

‘His name is Dak’ir.’

He’stan turned back to the prophecy.

‘And where is Brother Dak’ir now?’

‘Vel’cona has him.’

That admission gave He’stan pause but he masked it expertly.

Tu’Shan continued.

‘He’s below Nocturne, training under the tutelage of the Librarius.’

‘This Dak’ir, he was the one that led us to Scoria, wasn’t he?’

‘He was.’

‘And he’s powerful, too, isn’t he?’

‘Very. The Chief of Librarians has never seen such potency in a student.’

He’stan’s voice dropped to a low murmur as his great mind turned over the permutations of everything he was learning, ‘Doom or saviour, indeed…’

II

Trial by Fire

Dak’ir’s world was consumed by fire.

He knew there was rock at his feet because he could feel it, but he couldn’t see it. Even through the retinal display of his battle-helm an impenetrable fog of smoke and drifting ash smothered the view. Flashes of fire tinged the grey pall a deep orange, and temperature spikes on the systems of his power armour that were still functioning relayed intolerable levels of heat and radiation.

Vaguely, he was aware he was crouched down. It was possible he’d passed out for a few moments. For a second, the gauntleted hand that he used to brace against a jagged spur of rock looked strange to him. Through the occluding smog he could just discern its outline and hue. Salamander green had changed to royal blue. Then he remembered. I am no longer a sergeant…

He was a Librarian. The colour of his armour signified that and his covenant with the order; the icons inscribed onto his battle-plate his lowly station within it.

Breathing came hard. Even through the helm’s respirator, Dak’ir tasted cinder and raw daggers of heat. Pain-killing drugs flooded his body, damping the agony down his left side into a dull ache that only debilitated and no longer incapacitated.

Still, he needed a moment to marshal himself.

Rise, Lexicanum!

The voice was inside his head. Dak’ir wished he could take his force sword and cut it out of his cerebellum but even that wouldn’t be an end to it.

Master the blade, the voice insisted. Use it! Arise now!

‘I cannot!’ Fire burned throughout his body; not the flames of the underworld cavern where Pyriel had left him to die, but fire from pain, from the grievous injuries the monster pursuing him had inflicted.

Dak’ir once believed only drakes prowled the humid deeps of Nocturne. Now, his eyes had been opened.

Endure it, Salamander. This is nothing. You are a son of Vulkan.

A series of low vibrations resonated through the earth releasing geysers of scalding steam, and spilling dust and debris from the cavern roof above. Like arteries veining a body, lava plumes erupted from the mountain’s craggy flesh, filling Dak’ir’s world with light and heat.

A world consumed by fire.

Shadows and smoke shrank and coiled in the magma flare. Pools of liquid fire bubbled and spat like cruel laughter nearby. A heavier percussion interrupted the steady thump of the golem’s approach. With his senses compromised, it was hard to gauge just how close and from what direction it came.

The cavern itself was long, but also wide and tall. Stalactites jutted from a craggy ceiling, only just visible at the summit of the smoky cloud. Dak’ir couldn’t remember how he had got here. He recalled his initial encounter with the golem had gone badly. He had been forced to retreat, down, deep into the earth. Respite was brief. The monster had found him and this time there would be no escape.

He was weak, in mind and body. Strength he thought he possessed, after he had mastered the burning, was mocked by the onyx-black giant intent on his destruction. He knew that now to his cost.

I will die in this place, Dak’ir thought grimly, making a fist as the tremors jarred his wounded frame.

Tentatively, he felt the cracks spoiling his fresh-forged ceramite. They were wide and deep. Blackened by soot, seared by fire, blue paint so reverently applied by the armour serfs chipped and worn, he would be broken by the time his body returned to the mountain.

Gripping the haft of his force sword, Dak’ir’s fingers felt like spikes of unyielding stone. Tiny rivulets of lightning played across his knuckles as he tried to stir psychic energies into the blade.

Endure it! Pyriel’s voice came again, hard and insistent across his head like a slap. You are Salamander!

Hard rain was falling onto Dak’ir’s armour as the golem’s footfalls loosened the rocks above. Fist-sized chunks of granite hitting his helmet forced him to stand. The drakescale cloak attached to his armour and falling beneath its power generator felt denser than before, like an iron anvil tethered to his neck.

Turning, Dak’ir closed his eyes and drew upon the burning. It had been over two years since he was first tested, since he had obliterated an ancient version of Nocturne in his dream-vision and nearly destroyed his mentor.

He harnessed the power, corralling it with a thought. The blade of the force sword ignited into conflagration. Beneath Dak’ir’s feet, the ground shuddered.

It was close.

The heat, intense despite the arctic winter above, had masked the scent of anointing oils and sacred ash rubbed into his armour for a time, but it had cornered him now.

Dak’ir opened his eyes.

Standing under a hundred metres away, the golem was immense. The smoke and ash seemed to recoil from its presence, allowing Dak’ir to see the monstrous construct. It was over twice the Salamander’s height and half again as broad. It was a man, or at least a simulacrum of one. Its skin was onyx-black from the volcanic basalt used like clay to fashion it. Carved psychically by Pyriel’s mind, it was a creation of utter perfection and terrifying beauty. The enhanced musculature was exhaustingly defined. Its noble countenance was hard but eerily humanoid. Its bald pate shone like jet, the reflected fire light swathing it in an orange sheen. And the eyes… they burned like captured pools of flame.

Pyriel had given it no weapons. It needed none. Two massive fists were hard enough to pound rock and ceramite to dust. A mere glancing blow had cracked Dak’ir’s armour so brutally.

Two red orbs blazed through the smoky haze. Tendrils of it clung to the golem’s brawny body as it parted the grey miasma like a leviathan emerging from the Acerbian Sea. Hollow, pitiless eyes regarded prey.

Death has come, Fire-born…

For such a massive creature, the golem was fast. It ate up the distance between them in long, earth-pounding strides.

Dak’ir braced himself as it gathered speed. It broke the longer stalactites as they scraped across its unyielding shoulders and smashed the columns of rock in its path aside. A juggernaut of impervious obsidian, nothing could stop it.

With the golem scant metres away Dak’ir swung his force sword in a wide arc, fire trailing from the blade, before unleashing its fury. White fire thrashed against the golem’s bulky torso arresting its momentum abruptly and violently. It staggered, sending granite cascading from above with the sudden jerking motion. Psychic flames engulfed it, wrapping its obsidian body.

Still it pushed, and Dak’ir took a back step. The golem thrust out its chin defiantly, though no discomfort or effort altered its blank face. It drove into the storm, matching its automaton’s implacability against the fledgling Librarian’s will.

Dak’ir fed more energy into the blade, marshalling his powers and attempting to master a weapon only more experienced Codiciers had any right to. He drew upon the burning, the well of nascent destructive potential within his core, and unleashed it.

Smoke, vapour and oxygen were devoured in an instant by the extreme heat. The backwash blistered Dak’ir’s armour, sending warning icons flashing frantically over his retinal display. His arms ached with the effort of holding the blade aloft and directing its terrible fire against the golem.

Break. Damn. You, he willed.

But to no avail.

A massive fist loomed out of the blaze, wreathing in flickering bands. Flinging himself aside, Dak’ir narrowly avoided the blow. Behind him, the spur of rock he’d sheltered against was pulverised. Shards of it exploded against his armour. Several were embedded in the ceramite.

Beads of sweat were running down Dak’ir’s face as he pulled himself up. Lances of agony skewered his side. He gritted his teeth. A chopping motion with the force sword sent an arc of fire into the golem, the beast turning when it realised its prey had eluded it.

Dak’ir might as well have used harsh words for all the damage he caused. He mustered two more psychic bolts, dragon-headed and surging on contrails of fire, before the monster swung again.

It came from the earth, moulded by fire… Pyriel’s voice echoed inside his head.

Fighting just to breathe, Dak’ir didn’t answer. He was moving again, dodging the overhead blow meant to shatter his spine and end his life. Sheathing his blade, he concentrated on running through the cavern. Lava pools, smoking streams of fire went by in a blur of motion. The golem’s massive footfalls pounded behind him.

The hot veins feeding the heart of the mountain thickened as Dak’ir went deeper into its fuliginous depths. A vast magma river surged alongside him as the cavern opened out and the smoke thinned at last. The end of the subterranean chamber was revealed. A sheer drop gaped in front of Dak’ir, the river cascading over the edge into a syrupy morass below.

‘Vulkan’s mercy…’

Coming to an unsteady halt a few steps away from a fiery demise, Dak’ir suddenly found his battle-helm stifling. The hot metal seared his flesh, the smoke and ash clogging his respirator was choking him. He smashed at the mag-clamps urgently to disengage them.

What are you doing? Do not remove your armour, Salamander!

‘Choking… can’t breathe…’

The battle-helm came off with a jerk. Dak’ir let it fall from his fingers and land noisily at his feet. Without his auto-senses, even befouled as they were, his orientation worsened.

At least the smoke and drifting ash was clearing.

Something vast and powerful loomed from the thinning grey miasma…

Throwing up a barrier of flame, Dak’ir took one final step towards the chasm behind him. The golem was close.

‘You have made a monster here, Pyriel…’ Dak’ir muttered, collapsing a thick granite column into the monster’s path.

It swept the obstruction aside, utterly heedless for its own safety, utterly committed to the destruction of the Librarian.

Such an implacable foe…

Sensing Deathfire’s heartblood beating beneath the cavern wall, Dak’ir opened a fissure in the rock with his blade and unleashed a fountain of lava onto the golem. The creature was bathed in liquid magma and the Salamander dared to hope… until it emerged on the other side unscathed. Waves of scalding heat emanated off its body in a haze as it charged, determined to end the fight and take them both over the edge and to oblivion.

With all the incredible momentum of a battle tank, the golem couldn’t have stopped even if it wanted to. Its rudimentary intelligence did not appreciate the danger it was in as Dak’ir levelled his force sword like a spear and raced towards it.

A tiny crack, the smallest of fractures was visible in its chest. Dak’ir had seen it when the monster parted his fire wall like it was air. The blast of white-hot fire had wounded it and the magma flow, expanding its igneous flesh, had exposed the weakness.

Seconds before impact, Dak’ir pulled the blade back the full length of fist to elbow and then thrust it forwards as the monster crushed him.

Dak’ir felt his rib-plate crack, the ceramite armouring it had already shattered exposing torn bodyglove and black Salamander skin beneath. Breathing was no longer possible; the air was punched from his lungs with all the force of a siege cannon shell. Blood filled his mouth, riming his teeth and releasing the heady stench of copper into his nose. The impact up his arm went all the way to his shoulder and fractured it, but the force sword had gone deep, splitting the golem’s impenetrable skin.

Cracks webbed its onyx torso. Magma lines glowed inside them like the ichorous blood of the divine. Except the monster was not divine, it was a construct forged psychically from volcanic clay and fortified by Pyriel’s warpcraft.

Consciousness fading, Dak’ir was vaguely aware of being carried along by the golem’s massive momentum. A few more steps and they would descend into the abyss…

He fed a bolt of flame down the blade and the cracks widened. Lava gushed from the wound, corroding his armour where it splashed it. Dak’ir let his numbing fingers fall from the sword hilt, instead pressing his hand against superheated rock.

We are not only pyromancers… we are earth shamans too.

Pyriel’s words from the first day they had come to the catacombs beneath the mountain returned to him even as the golem slowed, as if only now realising its folly. Channelling the last of his power, Dak’ir sent a huge seismic tremor through the cracking flesh and like a fault line exposed, the tectonic fury of its plates pulling apart, the golem separated.

Dak’ir fell backwards. His vision was fading. His last sight was of the golem breaking apart, devoured by its own heartblood into molten slurry… Beneath him, the chasm of fire beckoned.

Chapter Four

I

Unearthed

Few amongst the Chapter could navigate the Tome of Fire as expertly as Vulkan He’stan. The Forgefather had spent years studying the volumes, committed all of their teachings, however obscure, however veiled, to his mind.

He found the prophecy related in sigil-dialect upon the armour quickly. Something as prosaic as a leather-bound book contained an esoteric reference to it. Within its pages, secrets were revealed.

‘The icons are like a key,’ he explained to Tu’Shan who waited pensively as He’stan turned the parchment pages reverently. ‘Alone, the passages on these pages are useless, without meaning.’

‘The armour is a codifier of sorts,’ the Chapter Master interjected.

‘Yes…’ He’stan was absorbing the writings in the book, matching it against the sigil pattern he’d seen on the armour and now committed to his memory. Such analysis would take a human lexicanum-savant weeks to complete; for the Forgefather it took only minutes. ‘Vulkan’s wisdom was indeed great,’ he breathed. He’stan’s eyes blazed with satisfaction.

‘What other secrets did he conceal with it, I wonder?’ Tu’Shan replied.

‘Incredible things… terrible things, my liege,’ He’stan closed the book.

Though almost empty, the Pantheon Chamber felt alive with nervous energy as if it might burst into flame at any moment.

‘A revelation?’ Tu’Shan asked.

He’stan nodded slowly.

‘We must return to Nocturne and the catacombs below Mount Deathfire.’

A hot wind seared his face. He’d been lying on the ash-sand for some time. His skin burned as if on fire.

The pain of his injuries was gone. He felt his broken shoulder gingerly, but the bone was intact, strong. His ribs no longer hurt; they were fused again, as one. Then he noticed he wasn’t wearing his armour any more, nor did he carry a weapon – the force sword was gone.

Dak’ir’s last sensation was of falling, down into the chasm of fire to be engulfed by Deathfire’s blood. The golem was dead but then so too was he, and yet here he was.

This was the Pyre Desert, or at least it looked like the Pyre Desert. But that was impossible. Nocturne was in the grip of arctic winter; this terrain should be snowy tundra and not scorched ash-sand. It didn’t make any sense, but then so little of his Librarian training thus far had.

Propping himself up on his elbows, Dak’ir noticed he was wearing a nomad’s garb. A long sand coat covered his body, with many-layered robes underneath it and voluminous pantaloons designed to keep out the heat. His sturdy boots were ingrained with sand and ash, affecting a smudged grey-ochre patina over the hard leather. Readjusting the scarves around his face and neck, he moved into a crouch so he could retrieve his wide-brimmed hat where it had fallen in the ash. Webbing around the back of the hat hung down in a veil designed to keep out the heat and the desert dust. Then he picked up his travelling cane, a black-wood staff with a dragon’s head carved at the peak. This he used to lever himself into a standing position.

These were his trappings. He knew as he knew his own armour, and yet they should be foreign objects to him. The familiarity at their feel and heft was unsettling. It was like stepping into the flesh of another individual, like wearing their life as his own. But whose life was it?

Looking around, Dak’ir realised the ash-plain was deserted. At least, almost…

A tiny drygnirr regarded him from atop a small rock. It had coal-black scales with a blue streak down its back and spines. The lizard’s eyes flashed blood red as it took in the hulking nomad in its midst. He had seen the totem-creature before. Pyriel used it, his familiar and psychic embodiment in saurian form so he could observe all that Dak’ir did.

‘What now?’ he asked it. ‘Isolation in this false desert will not challenge me, Pyriel.’

The drygnirr turned its head away and looked to the horizon where a long line of fire blazed. The flames were rising with every passing moment. After they’d reached several metres, Dak’ir thought he could make out figures inside them.

He set off towards the horizon and the wall of fire.

This is the Totem Path, Pyriel’s voice drifted on the hot breeze. See those footsteps?

Skirls and eddies of sand circled ahead of him, leaving shallow impressions in the desert plain. Dak’ir nodded slowly.

They are yours…

Dak’ir’s eyes narrowed. Pyriel’s meaning was lost to him for now. He only knew he must reach the wall of fire, treading his old steps to do it.

‘Am I destined to relive my past, then?’ he asked the rising wind. It grew fiercer by the second but no answer was forthcoming. Ash-sand, whipped up on the breeze, stung his exposed face. Dak’ir drew his scarves tighter and lowered the brim of his hat. Pulling a pair of goggles over his eyes, he walked on.

After almost an hour, he realised he had lost the path. The wall of fire blazed ahead, even further away than before. He cursed, his frustration palpable in the tension throughout his body. A monster, however implacable, he could destroy. This would require patience and subtlety.

The storms intensified, making it increasingly difficult to find the impressions in the ash-sand. Dak’ir wanted to remove the goggles. It was hard to see through the grimy plastek lenses. But without them he’d be truly blind.

For all his strength, the abilities he’d honed over the last three years, even mastering the burning, it counted for nothing in the endless desert. It was like stepping into a void without form, a null place bereft of markers or way points. This was a labyrinth of a kind, he realised, its walls erected by the disorientation of its traveller.

Discerning the path again was impossible. The maelstrom had engulfed him. Even the sun was consumed. It felt like a hammer blow as it struck, pitching Dak’ir to his knees. He had to dip his head or risk being choked alive. The roar of it was so loud it deafened him. But there was something on the wind, between the white noise of its fury… a susurrus of voices too faint and distant to really hear.

Displaced ash-sand was building around him, slowly burying him. With effort, he rose but was buffeted down again. Grimacing, Dak’ir got up a second time. His shoulders were heavy with grains and flakes from the desert floor. Keeping low, he was able to make slow progress through the dunes but had lost all sense of direction. Everywhere he looked there was an undulating barrier of ash-sand. Even the drygnirr was gone.

Pyriel… he cried out psychically.

Only the sibilant voices replied but their meaning was unfathomable.

Pyriel!

Mocking laughter resolved itself on the wind.

Dak’ir turned, trying to locate the source.

Ignean… the voice returned.

Dak’ir spun around slowly, first to his left then to his right, but there was nothing.

‘Show yourself!’

He was struck in the back by a heavy blow like a battering ram and fell forwards. As he turned onto his back quickly, trying to rise, his attacker fell upon him and held him down.

The raging ash-sand made it difficult to see anything other than a bulky silhouette, but Dak’ir’s assailant was unmistakeable when it spoke.

Ignean, it spat.

‘Tsu’g–’ The choking hands around Dak’ir’s throat cut him off.

His attacker’s eyes blazed through the storm wind like tiny balefires of hate.

Dak’ir struggled against the figure’s grip, seizing his assailant’s wrists and trying to pull them away from his neck, but the fingers were locked fast like iron.

‘Tsu–’ he rasped again, his wide eyes accusing then slowly consumed by wrath.

Harder and harder his attacker pressed, gradually smothering Dak’ir beneath his hatred and the consumptive ash-sand. The Librarian thrashed, raging against the shadow figure, knowing whose avatar it was that had manifested to destroy him.

Anger fed the burning core within, stoked the inner psychic fires.

I will turn you into ash…

Dak’ir would immolate his would-be murderer. There would be nothing left but a charred mark on the plain.

Give in to it, brother, it mocked, further fuelling Dak’ir’s ire until it was a blazing nexus of flame inside his mind.

We are no so different, you and I… it concluded and its burning gaze mirrored the image of fire cultivated in Dak’ir’s witch-sight.

‘No…’ he gasped, and let go. His hands fell to his sides, the nexus of flame diminished until it was nothing but vapour and then even that was lost on the abstract wind of Dak’ir’s psyche.

The figure evaporated at once as if made from a pillar of sand, the grains breaking away on the desert zephyrs and carried off to rejoin the storm. Dak’ir heaved a breath into his lungs, coughing and spluttering as he fought to turn onto his hands and knees. His throat was sore, his windpipe almost crushed.

The maelstrom battered him still, paying no heed to his condition. Here, only the strong prevailed and the weak were swept away. Dak’ir looked up. Another figure loomed in his eye-line. This one stood just in front of him, seemingly untouched by the storm as if he existed in another piece of time and had broken through the temporal barrier separating parallel universes. Dak’ir could see him perfectly. His fists clenched.

Nihilan, sorcerer and warlord of the Dragon Warriors, impeded his path.

‘You are the destroyer, Dak’ir,’ he said. ‘You will burn all of Nocturne until it is a blackened rock, bereft of all life.’

Dak’ir fell again, as if the weight of Nihilan’s prophecy was physical.

‘Fall now,’ he continued, ‘fall and save your planet from destruction. You are the one, you will devour it with your power. Fall and do not rise again.’

Perhaps he was right; perhaps it would be better if Dak’ir stopped now. He remembered with painful clarity the dream-vision he’d had during the burning. Nocturne was utterly enflamed – there was nothing left, its people were shadows on a dead breeze.

He had unleashed that holocaust. It had come from within him and he’d been powerless to stop it. Dak’ir already knew that Pyriel regarded him as dangerous, that his potential, if not properly harnessed, could outreach him and the dire consequences of that if it did.

It would be easy to fall…

Perhaps…

But these were not his words.

No. I am Salamander. I know my will and my mind. I shall endure. I shall overcome. It is the Promethean Creed.

‘Stand aside, doubter…’ he muttered, standing easily and passing through Nihilan as he evaporated like haze.

Revealed in the fading apparition’s wake through the raging ash-sand was the outline of something large and blocky. It was only a few metres away. Dak’ir had almost missed it. The storm showed no sign of abating. He needed shelter.

Every step took several minutes, his momentary confidence at defying Nihilan having drained away like the final grains through the neck of an hourglass. Dak’ir slipped three more times before he reached out and touched what he hoped was salvation. Treading his old steps would have to wait…

Or am I on the path?

…Any longer in the storm and a bleached bone corpse would be the Salamander’s only legacy.

Dak’ir moved slowly down the object, feeling with his hands and using its metal flank as a guide until he came to an opening. It was partially ajar, wedged fast with a build-up of ash-sand. With a grunt, he ripped it loose, just wide enough for him to enter.

His occulobe implant allowed his eyes to adjust in seconds from the glare of the desert to the gloom of an expansive troop hold. It was a vessel, or at least the gutted remains of one, and though its internal power was no more lamps strung over its exposed beams and struts provided luminance.

Dulled by the thick adamantium hull of the ship, the storm winds became an eerie howl. The metal bent and creaked as if shifting uncomfortably against it.

Dak’ir breathed deep, relieved to have found shelter, and sank down. After a few moments, he looked around.

‘Stormbird…’ he murmured, knowing the inside of the Astartes assault craft from the old versions he’d seen in the Promethean Hall of Remembrance. Few Chapters used them any more, preferring the faster and more manoeuvrable Thunderhawks to act as their gunships. This one was ancient. It had crashed a long time ago. Much of the hold had been reclaimed by the desert, the slow process of its digestion taking centuries.

Ship no longer, it was a haven now and not just for Dak’ir.

‘Identify yourself!’ he said when he saw the booted feet sticking out from around a corner. There was a promethium stove and a selection of excavating tools nearby.

‘Speak now,’ Dak’ir reached for a plasma pistol that was no longer there. Instead, he brandished his staff, adopting a fighting grip as taught to him by his trainer-sergeant when he was just a Scout.

Despite the implicit warning, the figure did not move.

Dak’ir lamented his lack of auspex or auto-senses, but his instincts told him either the stranger hadn’t heard him or he was already dead. Rounding the corner, he found the latter to be true.

Slumped with its back against one of the hold’s bulkheads, an emaciated skeletal figure regarded him with sunken eyes. Obviously another nomad, it was similarly attired to Dak’ir, though its hat had fallen from the head that lolled on one side in death.

Something about it was familiar and Dak’ir leaned in close to get a better look.

The skin, which he had at first thought was decayed or scorched by exposure to the sun, was black. It was onyx-black, a Salamander’s skin.

Realisation dawned and Dak’ir hung his head, muttering a name.

‘Fugis…’

So the old Apothecary had not survived the Burning Walk.

Real or imaginary, the sign wasn’t good. Despite the unreality of this place, Dak’ir felt it carried a certain resonance with it into the actual world, as if what he were seeing and experiencing were merely echoes of a greater truth. On the Totem Path nothing could be taken for granted.

A faint disturbance in the sand mounds that had spilled through several of the Stormbird’s hatches got Dak’ir’s attention. He trained his Lyman’s ear on a sound too sporadic, too loud to be merely subsidence. As he got back to his feet, the first of the pyre-worms breached the surface.

Chitinous armour lined their long backs, the segmented plates clicking as they moved. Each of the beasts was over two metres long and as thick as Dak’ir’s arm. A round maw, filled with spine-like teeth, champed eagerly as it tasted necrotic flesh on the humid air. Pyre-worms were carrion creatures – they ate the dead.

Cast back into the fire, becoming one again with the mountain and Nocturne – that was how a Salamander should make his final journey. Not like this, devoured by desert vermin.

Dak’ir willed a ball of flame into existence but found his hand empty.

His psychic core was drained. There was nothing left.

Turning on his heel, he hoisted the body of Fugis over his shoulder and ran through the hold.

‘Come, brother,’ he said, ‘we’ll return to the mountain together.’

Tiny spines lined the pyre-worms, long armoured bodies propelling them along the ground at speed. Such creatures were easy to slay alone. In packs they were deadly, even to an Astartes. And pyre-worms were never alone. Dak’ir knew it was a nest. A small colony chittered behind them, their mandibles clacking hungrily.

The end of the hold was looming, so too was the exit hatch leading out the side of the fuselage.

Enter the storm again and risked being buried alive or face the pyre-worms and allow Fugis to be devoured.

‘No choice at all, brother,’ a cracked voice told him. Old ceramite, blackened by fire, corroded by age and violence seized Dak’ir’s forearm in a gauntleted fist.

Ko’tan Kadai, almost a cadaver himself and with a ragged melta burn cratering his torso until faint light showed through to the other side, looked on Dak’ir with dying eyes.

‘My lord…’ Dak’ir faltered, losing his momentum.

The pyre-worms were closing. He couldn’t carry them both and get out of the Stormbird in time.

Dak’ir shook Kadai’s hand loose. ‘I cannot save you…’ he uttered and barrelled through the exit hatch.

It gave with a resounding screech of tearing metal and flung open. They stumbled through to the other side, into the blazing sun and the utter silence of a barren desert plain. The storm had abated.

The Stormbird was gone too, as was Fugis’s body. The wall of fire was closer than before. It burned and beckoned the Salamander onwards.

‘What are you showing me, Pyriel? What manner of trial is this?’

There was no answer, no voice inside Dak’ir’s head.

In the distance, sitting on a lonely rock, was the drygnirr.

The steps, his steps, were gone. The storm had erased them as surely as it had erased the crashed ship and the spectres of Dak’ir’s subconscious mind. He focussed, imagining the impressions he had seen in the ash-sand. Banishing all doubt, all anger, even guilt, he drew deep of his psychic well. When he opened his eyes again, the footsteps had returned. Each one was filled with fire, ignited impossibly against the desert plain. They were beacons, leading him to his destination.

Good, the voice of Pyriel returned. Only unshackled and unburdened can you reach the wall of fire.

Dak’ir took his final steps confronting the eternal blaze bisecting the desert plain. Where it touched the ground, the ash became as dust and the sand as fractured glass. The heat of it was incredible and Dak’ir wondered if a Salamander in power armour could pass through it unharmed, let alone one wearing the trappings of a nomad.

Then he saw the figures within. They went the entire length of the wall, all the dead of Nocturne, all of those that had returned to the mountain, in rank upon endless rank stretching all the way to the end of the world itself.

They are Nocturne’s heart, said Pyriel, her lifeblood. It is the Circle of Fire, Dak’ir.

‘Resurrection,’ he answered in a low and reverent voice. To be in the presence of such ancients, native Nocturneans and Salamanders, was humbling. They were speaking. Their lips were moving but the roar of the eternal flame that held them in its flickering grasp obscured the voices.

Dak’ir leaned in closer. His skin was burning.

The spirits were whispering.

Destroyer… some said.

Saviour… others hissed.

‘Which am I?’

A pair of gauntleted hands thrust out of the blaze, seizing Dak’ir by the shoulders and dragging him into the wall of fire.

Incredible agony reached every nerve of his body, so strong he thought he would pass out.

Gravius would not allow it, though. He drew Dak’ir close, his ancient and withered face no different to how it had been on Scoria.

A low-born, one of the earth, shall pass through the gate of fire… The flames whirled around them, the other spirits coalescing into the blaze, becoming one with it. The heat grew. Dak’ir screamed as his clothes were burned off and his skin seared away in an instant until all that remained was bone.

He will be our doom or salvation.

II

Legends

A Thunderhawk brought them to the surface of the planet, touching down with flaps extended, landing thrusters melting the ice into a grey-black slush underneath. The gunship’s green armour plating was soon dappled by snow after its clawed stanchions made purchase on the frozen plains of the Pyre Desert.

The vessel’s hull was scaled like some mythical beast of the deep earth, its nose and glacis plate fashioned into the image of a mighty drake. Even the long, sweeping wings were clawed; the mouths of its cannons and incendiaries crafted into maws.

Primordian was Tu’Shan’s personal carrier, though he seldom used it. The return of the Forgefather was a unique occasion, however. The gesture felt justified.

Regent and Forgefather stepped out into the white void, armed and armoured. A fierce arctic wind was tossing the drifts into frenzy and unsettled the heavy drake cloaks about their backs as if the beasts they’d been skinned from still lived.

He’stan was the first to alight, an icy veneer crunching under the weight of his ornate power armour as he stepped from Primordian’s extended embarkation ramp.

Deathfire loomed distant on the horizon. Smoke exuded from its craggy mouth like a promise. A deepening glow burned in the nadir of its hellish cradle, waiting to be unleashed. Nocturne was a restless mother. She did not slumber long. Her volcanic heart would soon beat again.

++To see it thus++ said He’stan over the comm-feed – the weather was too hostile to speak openly without it, ++it is truly beauteous++

++I prefer her savage face, brother++ Tu’Shan replied standing alongside him.

He’stan laughed loudly. With a twinge of sadness, he realised he hadn’t done that in a very long time.

++These may be inauspicious times, Regent, but I am glad to be amongst my Chapter again++

Tu’Shan clapped him on the shoulder. It was the only affirmation He’stan needed.

As they started off, two legends amidst a desolate arctic vista following the still bubbling veins of the mountain, the Thunderhawk took off behind them. Soon it was lost to the snowstorms, its turbine engines swallowed by the howling wind.

Deathfire glowered over Dak’ir like an unhappy mistress. Her craggy flanks were wreathed with lava, her maw slathered with magma as the Time of Trial neared. Earthquakes shook Nocturne’s bedrock, its tectonic plates in turmoil as Prometheus’s stronger gravity exerted its violent influence.

Halfway up the mountain, Dak’ir saw the mouth of a cave. Here, he knew, was the gate of fire and the place of destiny he was prophesied to pass through.

Slowly, he began to climb. His sandals did little to insulate his feet from the ash slurry and broken cinder burning beneath him. His bare flesh – arms, legs and much of the torso exposed in the metal-shaper’s garb – tingled with the heat. Plumes of steam swathed him in a fever-sweat, though he was not sick. The forging hammer on his back was heavy, but it was a good burden, an honest burden at one with the earth.

He needed Pyriel’s voice no more. Dak’ir knew his path. Even as the sky rained with fire and the earth below rumbled and moaned in agony, he was unperturbed.

By defeating the onyx-golem he had proven his strength. His successful passage across the endless desert and through the wall of fire had demonstrated his spirit. Here, climbing the rugged crags of Mount Deathfire, what could be left for him to prove?

Courage…

The word entered Dak’ir’s mind as he reached the rocky plateau that led to the cave mouth. Inside it, the gate of fire was a flickering oval of intense heat. He only had to look upon the flames to know he would not endure them. But it was the beast outside, the gate’s slumbering keeper that arrested the Librarian’s attention.

Kessarghoth…

The drake’s name was old. It was born when Nocturne was young, its people tribesmen and shaman, not giant warriors who waged war across the stars first in the name of a glorious father and then in the memory of His life-sustained corpse. Scaled plates looked as thick as Dreadnought armour as they shifted placidly with Kessarghoth’s breathing. Its broad back was festooned with a ridge of spines twice as long as a Themian hunting spear. Their sharpness, Dak’ir did not doubt, was equal to any power blade in the Salamander’s arsenal. The beast was immense, like a pair of Land Raider battle tanks stood end-to-end and twice as wide.

Yet it slept, and while it slept Dak’ir lived, for to awaken such a creature would surely be the end of him.

Dragging his body up over the lip of the plateau, Dak’ir crouched low to consider his options. A tremor ran up the side of the mountain and for a moment he feared Kessarghoth would wake, but the beast merely stirred briefly and continued to sleep.

It would take more than the shifting of the world to disturb it.

And also something much less, Dak’ir thought shrewdly. He eyed a length of chain that shackled Kessarghoth to the mountainside. The oval links were massive, far larger than a fully-grown Astartes. Though it blocked most of the cave mouth, there was room enough to squeeze through without touching the drake.

Unhitching the hammer from his back, though it seemed a moot gesture in the face of such a monster, Dak’ir edged slowly towards Kessarghoth and the gate.

As a boy, before his apotheosis to the ranks of the Salamanders, he had hunted in the depths of Ignea. The subterranean continent, like much of Nocturne, was a dangerous place. Saurian beasts, giant insectoid creatures and other horrors lurked in its darkness. Long ago, Dak’ir had learned to walk quietly and carefully whilst stalking prey and although Kessarghoth was no prize to be slain, he followed those lessons now.

He kept his steps short and light, the strides small so the resonance of his movements was kept to a minimum. Gaze never leaving the drake, focussed on its eyes and mouth for signs of disturbance, Dak’ir crossed the rocky plain and entered the threshold of the cave.

It was surprisingly cold inside. The gate of fire seemed to emanate no heat. Dak’ir’s instincts told him the unreality of this place was trying to fool him. Bending down, with a half-glance at Kessarghoth to make sure the drake was still sleeping, he picked up a fist-sized rock and tossed it into the flames.

A short flash presaged its atomisation into a cloud of particulate ash.

Dak’ir thought about erecting a kine shield to safeguard his passage through the gate, but something suggested to him that would not be enough. He wore the metal-shaper’s garb for a reason.

Then he noticed the chain. Several of its links passed through the gate of fire. Whatever substance they were forged from appeared to be impervious to the flames. But they also held the creature in thrall, feeding several smaller chains that bound its mouth and claws. The angle of the larger chain suggested it was taut already, that Kessarghoth had reached the end of its limits and could come no further.

Like all Nocturneans and, by extension, all Salamanders, Dak’ir possessed a keen forgesmith’s eye. As he appraised the links that made up the drake’s mighty chain, he realised that one of them could be fashioned into a form of shield. With that braced against the infernal flames he could breach the gate and survive.

But to forge such a thing he would need to break the chain and release Kessarghoth. Dak’ir stepped towards the nearest of the links and raised his hammer.

The first blow rang out like a dull clarion, its report echoing around the mountain.

Still the drake slumbered.

A second and third had the same effect.

Kessarghoth did not stir.

Soon, Dak’ir found a steady rhythm and pounded at the joint in the link until it broke apart in two halves. The eldritch metal was hot, hot enough to reshape with his hammer. Finding a flat-headed rock, Dak’ir went to work levelling the link and then reforging its curved surface into a huge shield that would protect his entire body.

He had given up on Kessarghoth now. The ancient had slept for thousands of years. It would take more than the hammering of a lowly Nocturnean metal-shaper to rouse it.

Or so he thought.

Upon the last blow, his hammerhead still glowing red-hot, Dak’ir heard the drake stir at last.

Blinking back millennia of hibernation, the dust of ages veneering its body shaken free as it flexed old but strong muscles, Kessarghoth drew to its full height and bellowed.

The chains snaring the drake’s mouth snapped like kindling, as if removing the one link in its bondage was enough to weaken the rest. As it shambled forwards, lashing the air with a leathery pink tongue, it shrugged off the other chains binding it. Kessarghoth’s eyes narrowed to yellow slits as it regarded its prey. It hissed then roared at Dak’ir again, its ululating cry shaking the mountainside. The displaced earth cascaded in a miniature avalanche, as if fleeing from the beast’s fury.

The cave was not far, but the drake now blocked it with its bulky body. Hefting the shield in one hand, the hammer in the other, Dak’ir advanced.

For they shall know no fear…

Except he was not a Space Marine in this place and the monster before him was not an enemy of mankind, it was a denizen of primordial myth, a fable told to Nocturnean children to ensure they obeyed their elders.

In Vulkan’s name, Dak’ir could think of no strategy to defeat it.

Kessarghoth was fast. Its serpentine head shot out like a scaled dart and with the force of a seismic hammer. Dak’ir rolled, caught off guard but relying on his Astartes survival instincts to save him.

Jogging to its blind side, he tried to manoeuvre the beast away from the cave in the hope he could race by it and to salvation beyond. But the drake was wily with age and not to be fooled. It turned where it squatted, stout legs bunched as they crabbed in a half circle so it was facing its prey again.

It wasn’t hard to see the tenacity of his Chapter in that beast. Ferocious intelligence flared in its eyes, the bestial echo of his battle-brothers.

One of you resides within all of us, he thought, backing off across the plateau again. Flames lighted Nocturne’s sky. A chunk of fiery star-rock smashed into the mountain, tearing away a piece of Dak’ir’s platform and preventing further retreat. The hell-storm in the red heavens was worsening. Time was against him.

Kessarghoth sucked in its breath. A sagging pouch in its gullet filled with volatile liquid before it unleashed it in a stream of fire. The blaze rolled off Dak’ir’s shield, against which he had to brace his entire body lest the force of the blast pitch him off the mountain to his doom on the crags below.

It was over quickly, tendrils of smoke and steam evaporating off the metal as Dak’ir launched into a run directly at the drake.

A second meteor crashed into the plateau, obliterating where the Salamander had been standing. Chunks of the mountain fell away in slow motion to be sundered in the lava lakes below. Rocks cracked and grumbled as if the world was breaking and Dak’ir stood upon the last splinter of creation.

With the earth trembling beneath his feet, Dak’ir swept under Kessarghoth’s bite. Flecks of acidic drool burned his skin as they splashed him but he ignored them. Stepping inside the reach of the drake’s claws and dropping his hammer, Dak’ir used his forward momentum to scale Kessarghoth’s grizzled hide. Its thorny carapace provided ready handholds, its spiny back the means to propel up and over the broad bank of muscle in its haunches.

The drake turned, snapping wildly, hissing and bellowing in frustration.

Dak’ir hung on with one hand, the other desperately gripping his shield. It was like riding a skiff on the Acerbian Sea during geyser-tide. Tail thrashing, Kessarghoth stomped back and forth hoping to dislodge the insect on its back.

Dropping to his knees, Dak’ir slid the shield over his head as the drake belched another stream of liquid flame. Though the plume wreathed its back, lighting tiny fires in the nooks of its ancient body, Kessarghoth didn’t cry out.

It was mad.

This tenacious creature scratched at its hide but Dak’ir weaved away from its questing claws, refusing to furnish its hungering belly with flesh.

The cliff edge was looming. In its blind rage to throw Dak’ir off and devour him, the drake had moved away from the cave mouth and closer to the precipice’s edge. A blow from Kessarghoth’s flanged tail, harder than a power fist, almost unseated the Salamander. His shield arm rang painfully with the glancing blow but he hung on still.

With a deep, earthy basso the ragged fringe of the broken plateau finally gave way against the thrashing drake. At first, the beast didn’t realise what was happening. Its bellowing stopped momentarily when one of its hind legs fell backwards into the growing void behind it. Then it lost footing in its other rear leg. Now the drake panicked, releasing a high-pitched shriek, its eyes widening even as it knew its doom was inevitable.

Hate-filled eyes cursed Dak’ir as he let go at last and ran up Kessarghoth’s neck before vaulting off its head onto solid ground below. He turned to watch it fall. Such a noble beast, so venerable and magnificent. Someone should witness its death. Though it was a manifestation of psychic unreality, the drake’s death was a profound moment. Dak’ir vowed he would mark it, that the deed would not go unremembered. With scarification he would honour Kessarghoth.

But honour would have to wait. The gate of fire was before him.

He would have only once chance to pass through the flame. With Vulkan’s name on his lips, Dak’ir raced at the burning oval. Less than a metre away, the strange cold of the cave chilling his bare skin, he lowered the shield and roared.

The moment of passage stretched into minutes then hours then years. A dark world loomed large in his vision. Tombs lined its ossuary roads. Sepulchres ringed its grey vales. Bones filled its endless catacombs. It was a dead world, a world he knew with harsh clarity. The scent of grave dust and old burning ravaged his olfactory senses. Cold, thin hands like talons seized his body. Parchment skin brushed his face. Gossamer strands of congealed dust bound his arm like rough silk. It called to him, this place of death and desolation. It had always called. For four decades it had dominated his thoughts until a moment of unique trauma had quashed it beneath a veil of guilt. But now that burden had been lifted. In the endless desert, he had met those fears and overcome them. The old wounds had resurfaced again, hard scar-tissue reopened with a ragged knife of remembrance. Its blade was cold; the sibilance as it sliced into Dak’ir’s mind spoke a single word like a death rattle…

Moribar…

He thrust open his eyes, a feverish sweat chilling his skin, and saw Pyriel alone in a chamber beneath the labyrinthine depths of Mount Deathfire.

The Codicier wore his psychic hood without battle-helm. Spiral scarification edged over the lip of his blue gorget. A faint, almost imperceptible smile played at the corners of his mouth.

Pyriel had an unremarkable face. A thick shaven line of white hair divided his smooth shorn pate into two equal black hemispheres like an arrow that came to a sharp point between his eyes.

‘Stand, brother,’ he said, clasping his force staff like a badge of ceremony. In many ways, in this moment, it was.

Dak’ir had not realised he was kneeling. Penitence before his mentor seemed appropriate given the circumstances. He arose.

Pyriel nodded, a sagely wisdom Dak’ir could not yet grasp filling his eyes. They burned cerulean blue as he psychically augmented his voice to a deep, prophetic rumble. If nothing else, the Codicier possessed a flair for the dramatic.

‘Welcome, Lexicanum,’ he boomed, ‘to the vaunted ranks of the Librarius!’

In his outstretched hand, the naked blade laid reverently across his forearm, was Dak’ir’s force sword. It was his, earned by right of fire trial.

The Lexicanum took the proffered hilt. The exquisite haft, cross-hatched by veins of emerald, felt warm to the touch. All of Dak’ir’s fatigue and disorientation vanished in a pure instant of joining. This was his blade, tuned to his resonance and him to its. With clarity came remembrance and the irrefutable truth of what he’d witnessed passing through the gate of fire.

Dread, like a cold metal fist, slammed into Dak’ir’s gut.

‘Moribar,’ he said, his voice cracked with sudden urgency.

A crack split the side of the mountain. Tiny rocks rolled down its rugged flank, shed snow broke apart and shuddered in their wake. Hot air escaped the gloom revealed inside the crack. A tempest of ice flurries was sent swirling with the sudden thermal updraft. Noises from concealed machines hummed and clanked, audible above the storm.

From a fissure it grew to a chasm, in fact a gate, the entrance to a hidden route to Deathfire’s frost-shrouded heart.

He’stan withdrew the Spear of Vulkan from an invisible cleft in the rock. It was a magnificent weapon, a piece of artifice from a long dead age, the last of its kind. An artefact of the primarch, Tu’Shan was not surprised it was more than a mere weapon.

He entered the chamber ahead of the Forgefather, his drake cloak sweeping in his wake. A long passage led downwards. Ash and soot scented the warm breeze. It was good to be near the mountain again.

The gate ground shut with a thud that echoed loudly in the abrupt silence.

He’stan moved into step with his lord and the two Salamanders descended.

At the end of the tunnel the subterranean depths branched off into several semi-naturally formed corridors and chambers.

‘This way,’ muttered He’stan, intent on his mission.

Tu’Shan followed without comment, stooping below a cluster of stalactites impeding his path. So deep were they that Nocturne’s blood ran all around them, free flowing and vital. Above, the world shivered in the grip of arctic winter; below, its vigorous geology stirred.

So vast was the labyrinth below Mount Deathfire that two individuals could spend months abroad in its depths and never meet one another, never even witness a sign of another’s passing. Much of its subterranean darkness was uncharted. Only Vulkan had ever known its every shrouded corner, its every tunnel and chamber. Beasts slumbered in the lowest deeps, old creatures jealous of men and his dominance of the surface. The unique acoustics of the rock, the veins of phonolite and other aurally conductive minerals within its composition, allowed the plaintive wailing of such creatures to be heard far from their dwelling places by human Nocturneans. Few natives ever braved the mountain depths for that reason. It was the province of the Salamanders alone and so the way was deserted as He’stan and Tu’Shan traversed the gloom to an ancient door wrought of carved adamantium.

‘I have never seen this place before,’ the Regent confessed, awed by the icon of Vulkan fashioned into the gate.

‘Nor have I,’ He’stan replied.

As one, the two legends of the Chapter sank to one knee and bowed.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast,’ they intoned together, ‘he is my steel and I honour him with my loyalty and sacrifice.’ It was a rare variation of the more common litany, used to express sentiments of utter devotion and duty.

They arose with perfect synchronicity, stalled before the immense gate.

Tu’Shan had to arch his neck to see its apex, whilst He’stan stepped forwards to lay his gauntleted hand upon the metal. Beneath his battle-helm, he closed his eyes.

‘Fire surges through my veins, brother…’ he breathed.

Tu’Shan pressed his own mighty palm against the metal. ‘There is power here.’ He didn’t need to be a Librarian to realise it. ‘And I can feel an indentation in the surface. I will summon Master Vel’cona. He will know how to breach it.’

He’stan opened his eyes and lowered his hand reluctantly. The Tome of Fire had guided him to this place. It had opened his eyes to the existence of the forgotten chamber. Vulkan’s hand had been at work in this deed. The Forgefather took great comfort in that. It was as if the primarch were still with them, if only in spirit and not flesh.

‘Vulkan’s Sigil, who bears it now, my lord?’

‘Chaplain Elysius is its custodian, but what relevance is that?’

He’stan faced him and removed his battle-helm. His war-aged face had never looked so serious. The many honour-scars there seemed to shimmer in the crystal-refracted lava light.

‘It is the only thing that can open this gate. And make no mistake, Regent, we must open it.’

Chapter Five

I

Harbinger

I am Death.

Its shroud follows me like a shadow I cannot shrug off.

I feel the cold of it reaching around my twin hearts like a forging clamp even as the font of rage within me boils.

My father taught me to be thus. He taught with his blood and the genetic legacy of his mortal body.

Why then do my brothers, warriors all, not feel as I do?

Why does the guilt of my past deeds and lack of deeds haunt me like a spectre crouched on my shoulder?

I am invulnerable. I am war incarnate. I am the anvil upon which my enemies break.

But I am hollow, a shell filled with liquid fire.

How long before it overtakes my fragile form and burns me down to ash?

Tsu’gan opened his eyes. The branding rod had gone deep, a savage scoring in his right bicep that retraced his previous glories.

He found his teeth gritted with a rime of blood from when he’d bitten his lip. It wasn’t pain that drove the Salamander to do this, but anger. Tsu’gan had hoped upon promotion to the 1st Company that he would re-find his purpose, quell the choler inside him. Induction to the Firedrakes, his isolation on Prometheus surrounded by relics of champions, fighting alongside the Chapter’s mightiest heroes had only intensified the flame within.

It was as useful as it was debilitating. Unleashed on the battlefield, Tsu’gan’s battle rage made him formidable if reckless. His weakness had been noticed, however. Before, when he was brother-sergeant of 3rd Company, it had been Fugis who got closest to discovering his destructive masochism; now it was Praetor, veteran sergeant of the Firedrakes and Tu’Shan’s mailed fist in matters when the Regent was otherwise engaged, who watched him.

Mercifully, Praetor’s duties were many and kept him busy. Tsu’gan had no reason to suspect the veteran sergeant’s interest was anything more than mild concern.

The deaths of his battle-brothers bothered Tsu’gan greatly. Seeing heroes sundered, the other Firedrakes whom he regarded as invincible, shook his faith more deeply than he cared to admit. Only since Kadai had it been this way. He had idolised his former captain. His demise and the nature of it had left a crack of imperfection in Tsu’gan’s psyche. Like any wound that is left untended, it had festered and grown.

He had accepted it; accepted death was part of his warrior calling, before that fateful moment. A strange divergence of destiny had begun after that mission. Tsu’gan was no psyker, but he felt the shifting of fate nonetheless. He had taken to reading scrolls of prophecy, absorbing the encrypted wisdom of his forebears. Admittance to the Pantheon Chamber and the Tome of Fire was not permitted but there was lore enough on Prometheus in its vault-chambers and reliquary-shrines to satisfy Tsu’gan’s appetite. His path was his own. He would not allow another to dictate it to him.

Tsu’gan stood on a dais of burning coals. His bare feet smouldered, tendrils of smoke twisting through his toes, but he felt no discomfort. His body was inured to such things.

I feel nothing…

A drakescale loincloth preserved his dignity. This was the way of tribal Nocturne. Tradition was important to its peoples, so too to their superhuman guardians. Tsu’gan’s arms were held loosely by his sides as Maikar, his brander-priest, went to work. Only the clanking of the nearby votive-servitor, its cumbersome brazier cradle crackling with heat, invaded the sepulchral silence.

There were no lights in the solitorium. He preferred the dark. It hid his thoughts, dampened them for a time. The flash of fire, glowing coals and the luminance of Maikar’s cybernetic implants provided the only light.

Tsu’gan nodded and the brander-priest burned him again.

‘Scour it all away, Maikar,’ he said in a shallow voice. ‘Burn it, until there is none left.’

I hope for nothing!

You fear everything…

Tsu’gan started. That was not the voice of his subconscious. It was a memory, one he hadn’t recalled for three years.

‘Nihilan…’ he breathed, anger colouring his voice and filling it with strength. A snarl ruined the perfect Nocturnean heritage of his face. Besides the spike of red beard jutting from his chin, Tsu’gan was completely bald. Hesiod-born, his lineage was a noble one. But he chose to believe that meant being above man, to show them who their betters were. To associate too closely with humans, to adopt their traits, it brought the Salamanders low when it was they who should inspire and bring the humans up. Tsu’gan had never been able to see that was exactly what the Fire-born did. He was blind to it. His arrogance extended to one of his battle-brothers, a distant figure now. Tsu’gan hoped bitterly that Dak’ir had met his end underneath Mount Deathfire. Tsu’gan quailed momentarily at the idea that he hadn’t and somehow managed to unlock the psychological fractures in his mind with his newly realised gifts.

‘Enough!’ he snapped, seizing the rod before Maikar could apply it again. This serf was more pliant than Zo’kar, his previous brander. The bond that existed between Salamander and brander-priest was meant to last eternally or as long as war called to the Astartes. All efforts were made to ensure that the servitor-like humans lived well beyond mortal thresholds. Zo’kar had died on the Vulkan’s Wrath during a solar storm. His body was eventually found broken in one of the strike cruiser’s devastated solitorium chambers. It looked like Zo’kar had suffered before he’d died.

Maikar recoiled from his master’s wrath, finding solace in the shadows.

‘Summon my armour serfs,’ Tsu’gan muttered, stepping off the dais of coals and rubbing his arms. He winced – the pain was great, even for a Salamander. He focussed on it, pushing the darker thoughts down.

Four bowed serfs entered the solitorium in silence. Between them they carried Tsu’gan’s power armour. It was his old suit, the one he had worn whilst part of the 3rd. Now its surface was rendered with the swirling iconography of drakes, serpents and flames. It had been meticulously artificed, re-forged and remade into a thing of pure beauty. Far superior to its former incarnation, it was armour worthy of 1st Company, of a Firedrake of Vulkan.

First came the black bodyglove, almost invisible against Tsu’gan’s onyx skin. It was overlaid with an exoskeleton that interfaced with the systems of his power amour. Festooned with linking ports and conduit points, it would join him to his suit, enhancing his strength, speed and combat abilities exponentially.

Tsu’gan turned his wrists to face the ceiling just before his vambraces were locked in place. He saw the icon of Imaan, he who had died so that Tsu’gan could ascend the ranks. Imaan’s power armour had been smelted down but he had bequeathed his Terminator armour to Tsu’gan after death. The marks upon the Firedrake’s wrists were a reminder of that bond, and that when he wore the suit Imaan’s spirit warred with him.

Last of all, after cuirass, greaves and pauldrons, was the long drake cloak that spilled down Tsu’gan’s back around the suit’s generator. So armoured, he felt a semblance of being whole once more.

With gauntlets locked about his clenched fists he took chainsword and combi-bolter before assuming his place on a throne of red-veined basalt. The sigil
of the Firedrakes was carved into its rough surface.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ Tsu’gan intoned as Maikar returned and traced a band of white ash from the votive-servitor’s basin on his face, ‘…with it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor.’

Maikar bowed again and retreated. Tsu’gan took his helmet, proffered from the darkness by an armour serf, and slammed it down upon his head.

‘Release the gates,’ he commanded in a voice made tinny and harsh through his helmet’s vox-grille.

A sliver of light invaded the darkness, growing to a wide rectangle of magnesium-white.

‘War calls…’ he said, rising from his throne and striding from the solitorium.

‘The Firedrakes answer,’ Praetor’s deep voice resonated around the docking pad. His warriors were arrayed in a semi-circle, with the veteran sergeant at the centre facing them. Armed and armoured for war they were a forbidding sight, but the air around the pad was one of ready camaraderie. Though they were Salamanders, the epitome of the Fire-born in fact, the 1st Company had many rituals unfamiliar to their other battle-brothers. On the field, they were formidable, disciplined and arch exponents of the Promethean Creed; in their clandestine halls on Prometheus, they were equals.

Overhead, the blackness of the void hung like a dark canvas. A crackling force shield kept it from rushing in and dragging the Firedrakes into cold space. Visible at a distance through the shimmering field, one of Captain Dac’tyr’s vessels waited attached to one of Prometheus’s serpentine docking spines. The Master of the Fleet had generously provided a frigate, Firelord, to ferry the 1st Company warriors to their theatre of war.

The lume-lamps in the assembly area of the pad were kept low. Their glow threw ruddy shadows into the deepest corners, hinting at a vast chamber beyond. A Thunderhawk sat in dock behind Praetor. A team of servitors and maintenance serfs worked tirelessly to prepare it for immediate launch. Tech-adepts and one of the Salamanders Techmarines, Brother M’karra, muttered litanies and invoked unguents over the vessel. Before the Implacable could soar into the stars on blazing contrails its machine-spirits had to be placated, their will and purpose defined. Brander-priests burned ritual scars into the adamantium plate for this very reason.

‘On Gevion, a cluster of worlds in the Uhulis Sector, Segmentum Solar, contact has been lost with elements of 3rd Company,’ Praetor continued the briefing. He was an impressive warrior, even clad only in his artificer armour. Despite the fact he eschewed his Terminator suit, he still carried his thunder hammer and storm shield. His drakescale mantle had been affixed to this lighter armour, too. Praetor’s head was a black bolt sat between two hulking shoulders. Polished to a mirror sheen by his brander-priest, the armour reflected the light and gave a bloody cast to his features that only enhanced his stature.

‘Initially, it was believed that raiders had targeted the worlds for the purposes of slavery. Uncharacteristically for the dark eldar, though, they entrenched their forces.’

Derisive muttering rippled around the semicircle of Firedrakes. No native of Nocturne had any love for the xenos. Victims of raiders in the ancient past themselves, they reserved a particular loathing for eldar pirates.

Tsu’gan longed to slake his chainblade’s thirst against them. That such creatures had managed to silence elements of the Fire-born was unconscionable. He suspected xenos treachery and felt the fires of war stoked within him at even the thought of these baseless and unworthy aliens.

Lost briefly to the fog of Tsu’gan’s rage, Praetor’s voice came back into focus.

‘…of paramount importance that Brother-Chaplain Elysius is extracted from the war zone and returned to Prometheus.’

‘Who commands the Fire-born at Gevion?’ It was Halknarr who spoke out. The brother-sergeant hung his helmet from a thick leather cord at his belt in the style of an old campaigner. His lined face and greying temples betrayed his age, but Tsu’gan knew this Firedrake was as unyielding as Nocturne iron.

‘Adrax Agatone is captain of the 3rd,’ said Vo’kar. The hard-faced warrior was a heavy weapon specialist. Tsu’gan had fought with him before on the wreck of the Protean. He’d been there alongside him when Hrydor, the one Vo’kar had replaced, was slain by the Night Lords.

‘His forces and much of the 3rd are locked in battle along this area,’ Praetor told them. He opened his clenched fist to reveal a small hexagonal device. It was a hololith projector. He clicked the activation rune and a slew of grainy continents came into focus rendered in blue monochrome light, ‘The Ferron Straits.’ A long tract of flatland, streaked with ferron ore deposits, came into view as the hololith increased magnification. The ridged landscape looked like a bank of grey dunes. Fat clouds of steam from the Geviox processor plants rolled across them in itinerant squalls of vapour. ‘The territory suits the invader, but Agatone closes his mailed fist about them and will bring them to the anvil, of that I am certain. It is taking time, however. He cannot relent, a Salamander does not relent. So we will go to the aid of our beleaguered brothers.’

Vo’kar turned his attention to Tsu’gan.

‘You served in the 3rd, did you not, Zek? What manner of Fire-born is Agatone?’

Amongst the other companies such enquiry would be regarded as impudent in the extreme, but in this half-circle Firedrakes spoke together as closely bonded brothers. Vo’kar meant no slight. His question was honestly intended.

Tsu’gan afforded him the same measure of respect.

‘I left the 3rd soon after Agatone’s appointment as captain, but I fought with him on Scoria. There are few in the Chapter better. If Agatone could have broken the enemy and reached our Brother-Chaplain, he would have.’

Praetor nodded in agreement, before he clicked another rune on the hololith and the image scrolled on to a different landmass. This one was much larger and heavily industrialised. ‘This is Ironlandings, Chaplain Elysius’s last known location. Geviox is the cluster’s primary world, a processor-planet with several structures and strategic defence points. Ironlandings is, to all intents, its hub.’

‘What about the native populace? Are there any labour-serfs holed up in this area?’ asked Vo’kar.

‘All dead, victims of the xenos,’ Praetor replied.

Halknarr’s face was grim when he asked, ‘You believe we are entering enemy-held territory, brother-sergeant?’

Praetor’s eyes were like hard, red-hot coals. ‘Aye, I do.’

‘Hence the smaller insertion force,’ added Daedicus, a Badab War veteran who kept a black and yellow striped knee plate as part of his armour by way of commemoration. ‘And lack of Tactical Dreadnought Armour,’ he concluded.

Praetor nodded at the nineteen warriors before him again. Two full squads, led by himself and Halknarr. The Forgefather was leader to them all, but would be unencumbered by command for the mission.

It is the worth of several armies, he thought proudly.

‘The Night Devils, an Imperial Guard regiment, or elements of it at least, are also in the war zone but our mission is not to aid them,’ Praetor went on, ‘Elysius is our only concern.’

Halknarr folded his broad arms. ‘May I ask why?’

‘He is the bearer of Vulkan’s Sigil,’ said a calm voice from across the deck. He’stan’s words seemed to resonate with power as he stepped out of the shadows and approached the Firedrakes. ‘It is vital this artefact is returned to Nocturne. Alive or dead, we retrieve our Brother-Chaplain and the Sigil with him. Nothing else matters.’

All eyes turned from Praetor to the figure that came amongst them. Awesome as their veteran sergeant was, he could not command the same attention. Nor would he ever wish to.

Tsu’gan had never before met the Forgefather. He had never fought by his side. Vulkan He’stan bore the name of the primarch. He prosecuted their father’s sacred duty. To be before such a legend was humbling. His deeds were almost as legendary as his trappings. Kesare was the name of the creature Vulkan had slain for his mantle. That magnificent cloak of scale hung proudly from the Forgefather’s shoulders. In his mailed fist he carried Vulkan’s Spear, a power blade of incredible potency from Nocturne’s halcyon days. The other hand was encased in the Gauntlet of the Forge, an arcane weapon capable of summoning fire. But it was not these weapons, nor He’stan’s superbly wrought armour, that empowered him. It was his presence. There was something about him – Tsu’gan felt it palpably – that resonated with mystery and unknowable wisdom. But there was distance, too, a separation necessitated by the isolation of his quest. In many ways, the Forgefather was the closest link the Chapter had to their long lost primarch. All who came within He’stan’s aura felt it. The former captain of the 4th had come far and achieved much.

With purpose like that…

Tsu’gan wondered if his path could be changed.

Halknarr fell silent. He was the first to kneel and bow.

‘My lord…’ Profound emotion reduced his voice to a rasp.

The other Firedrakes kneeled too and lowered their heads. Even Praetor offered supplication.

‘Grant us your wisdom, Forgefather, that we might harness it for our victory,’ he said like a prayer.

Chin touching his chest, his eyes half on the deck, half on the hero standing alongside Praetor, Tsu’gan realised then what He’stan was. He was myth. But more than that, he was myth made flesh. It felt wrong to do anything but show fealty to him. Tu’Shan was their Regent and Chapter Master, he was their captain, but He’stan was something else.

The Forgefather’s eyes narrowed. He was uncomfortable at the gesture but concealed it flawlessly. With Tu’Shan he had experienced a returning bond of brotherhood; now he felt as aloof and distant as he had ever been whilst exploring the galaxy for the Nine.

‘I have stared into the pages of fate, witnessed the prophecies of Vulkan coming to fruition. An inauspicious time draws near. Nocturne stands on the brink of something momentous. We are, all of us, bound to this doom or salvation. But we must seize it and understand what our father would have us prepared to face. Only with his sigil can we do this.’

He paused, letting the import of his words sink in.

‘Rise,’ said He’stan, encouraging the Firedrakes with a hand gesture. ‘I would have you treat me as a brother, not some untouchable figure of myth.’

Praetor rose first. His example emboldened the others.

‘Forgive us, liege,’ he said. ‘But your coming here, it is a part of the prophecy, is it not?’

He’stan nodded.

‘We see the primarch in you,’ Praetor explained. ‘It is hard not to offer genuflection when faced with such a legacy. But you are my brother,’ he added, extending his gauntleted hand, ‘and I bid you welcome.’

A smile slowly cracked He’stan’s face, filled with the warmth of reflected camaraderie. ‘It does me good to hear you say that, Herculon.’ He shook the hand of the veteran sergeant, who nodded with brotherly approval. ‘But Elysius needs our bonds of brotherhood extending to him now. Our Chaplain is in certain danger, I fear.’

When Tsu’gan dared to look up again, he noticed He’stan’s eyes were upon him. From the gloomy confines of the assembly deck, they burned brightly. Tsu’gan imagined a fiery tempest in those eyes, waiting for the Forgefather to unleash it. They lingered for a time as if He’stan were seeing the turmoil inside the Firedrake’s soul. Unlike the scrutiny of Pyriel, Tsu’gan didn’t feel uncomfortable locked to the Forgefather. It was a sensation of calm that swept over him instead, a promise of redemption.

‘Is he alone? Are any of our brothers with him?’ Belatedly, as the attention of the group fell upon him, Tsu’gan realised the question had come from his mouth.

‘Two squads are unaccounted for,’ said Praetor. The veteran sergeant’s expression was grave. ‘Ba’ken and Iagon.’

A cold feeling grew in Tsu’gan’s gut at the mention of their names.

Iagon had been his second-in-command. He had left him behind in the 3rd but had ensured he would become brother-sergeant in his stead.

Now it seemed he might have fallen to the xenos.

The rage inside Tsu’gan boiled, burning away the cold and threatening to overwhelm him.

‘We must make all haste to Gevion,’ he said, hoarse with repressed anger.

He’stan’s glare was penetrating when he answered, the same fire igniting his kindred spirit, ‘Oh, we shall, brother, and rain down furious vengeance upon our enemies.’

II

A Cold Wind

With a hiss of scalding skin, T’sek drew the brand across Dak’ir’s shoulder and the icon of Kessarghoth was finished.

‘A fitting tribute,’ said Pyriel from the deep gloom of the solitorium.

Dak’ir examined the drake symbol embedded permanently into his flesh. It still shone with its fresh forging in the lambent glow of the votive-servitor’s brazier coals.

‘Even though the beast has not been seen on Nocturne for millennia, I felt its presence, master. Despite the unreality of the Totem Walk, I knew it was Kessarghoth’s spirit I fought against.’

‘And triumphed, Dak’ir,’ Pyriel interjected. ‘You vanquished it and survived. In so doing you became Lexicanum.’

‘It’s an uneasy rank to bear, still,’ Dak’ir confessed.

‘You miss your old command, the warriors of the 3rd.’

Dak’ir met the Librarian’s fiery gaze and nodded once.

He is an unremarkable warrior in many ways, Pyriel thought as he regarded the Fire-born before him. An old wound afflicted him, a patch of off-white scarification on the left side of his face that marked Dak’ir as different to his brothers. It was more than that, Pyriel knew. He had suspected it for a while. Apothecary Fugis had spoken to him of it, of the dreams – the remembrances of his old life, his human life, with unusual clarity. Dak’ir was an empath of sorts. It was what made him such a naturally gifted Librarian.

Ever since the burning, though, when Pyriel had almost been destroyed by the nascent psyker’s power, he had known. Dak’ir was different. More than that, he was significant. Vel’cona had confided in him the elements of the prophecy deciphered in the armour recovered from Scoria. Pyriel knew well enough of Dak’ir’s involvement in it. What he, and no one else in the Chapter, knew was how and to what end he was involved.

A low-born of the Ignean caves, a unique battle-brother. He should never have survived the trials, he should not have reached the vaunted rank of brother-sergeant, he should have failed the rigours of the Librarius… and yet, here he was, donning the blue ceramite, becoming a Lexicanum before Pyriel’s very eyes.

‘This is your calling, Dak’ir. For good or ill,’ he said at last.

Dak’ir looked up from securing his vambraces. The armour serfs had entered silently and worked swiftly. Mumbled intonation accompanied every affixed piece of battle-plate. Ash from the brazier cradle anointed every section in a veneer of white.

‘Good or ill?’

Pyriel smiled, but there was no warmth to it. ‘Only Vulkan can know all ends, Salamander. Who can tell where our purpose will lead us?’

‘Mine leads me to Moribar,’ Dak’ir replied, his tone betraying a hint of belligerence.

‘Are you so keen to go back to that place?’

When he’d handed the force sword, Draugen, to Dak’ir he’d shared a mote of the vision the Lexicanum had witnessed upon breaching the gate of fire. Sense memory fooled the Codicier that he could still smell grave dust on the hot air in the solitorium. A grey world, full of shades and old stone lingered at the edge of his subconscious like a wraith. The creeping spectre of the sepulchre world shadowed all members of the 3rd and those warriors who fought with them.

‘No,’ said Dak’ir. ‘I never wanted to go back, but it is my path nonetheless. It is at the heart of this somehow.’

‘Even before he was captain, Ko’tan Kadai cast a long shadow.’

Dak’ir’s gaze alighted on the ground as if seeking meaning out of the darkness.

‘He led us into battle that day, to return with our wayward brothers…’

‘Except Nihilan was too far from our captain’s reach,’ Pyriel interjected. He remembered the Dragon Warrior sorcerer from long before Moribar. The signs of his eventual defection were there to see, but it is hard to look at a brother as anything else but kin. Pyriel had learned the truth. He had learned it too late, before Vel’cona or Elysius could do anything about it. Nihilan had already fled to Ushorak and the Black Dragon’s new order. His focus returned to Dak’ir.

‘You couldn’t have affected the outcome of what happened in the crematoria – you need to know that, brother.’

Dak’ir exhaled deeply, levelling his gaze. He was armoured again and accepted Draugen from his brander-priest, T’sek. All that remained was his battle-helm.

‘It doesn’t matter, Pyriel. It was what it was. All the lines of fate spin from that nodal point. At Moribar we’ll find the core, where all the threads begin and maybe end.’

‘Regardless, a return to Moribar will stir many memories and emotions. You are psychically awakened now, Dak’ir. But you must also be prepared for that. It will be an onslaught at first, more intense than you have ever experienced–’

‘I am ready, master. And have progressed greatly since the burning.’

‘Let us hope so,’ Pyriel replied, before muttering, ‘or all of Moribar will burn in the funerary fires.’

‘Lord…’ Bowed before his master, lowly T’sek proffered Dak’ir’s helm in both hands.

‘Thank you, T’sek. You have the patience of Vulkan,’ Dak’ir reciprocated the brander-priest’s genuflection before taking his battle-helm.

According to the Lexicanum’s request, it had been fashioned with a section of silver plate down the left side. It resembled a human face and Dak’ir had instructed it should echo his scarred visage as closely as possible.

Pyriel found it intriguing, but nothing more. If Dak’ir wanted a reminder of the battle in the Aura Hieron Temple, site of Kadai’s death and his own maiming, then so be it. Salamanders bore their burdens stoically – this was no different.

The solitorium gate opened at Pyriel’s order, spilling a red oval of light down upon them from above. The grinding of gears heralded the activation of a lifter-plate, which provided sure and steady egress from the oubliette. Their heads arched towards an imaginary crimson sky, Pyriel and Dak’ir closed their eyes and left the solitorium.

Beyond the gate the rest of the Chapter Bastion beckoned. This was Hesiod, one of the Sanctuary Cities of Nocturne. Here, in the dark halls of its Chapter Bastion, the Salamanders could gather and train. Many of the Fire-born lived outside of its coal-black walls amongst the people. Here, they would inspire with their example, learn humility and self-sacrifice from those who lived it every day of their lives. Some in the Chapter, those of vaunted rank or with closed minds, believed that to associate with the human populace was to encourage their weaknesses to grow in the Astartes; that by living amongst the native Nocturneans they were somehow brought low when their purpose was to elevate. Tu’Shan, Regent and Chapter Master, did not hold that view.

Everything a Salamander needed was in the Chapter Bastion. Apothecarion and gymnasia provided for the body; solitoria and oratoriums for the spirit; lectorums and librariums for the mind. Armouriums contained weapons and battle-cages for training. The refectories offered repast and a place to convene. They were seldom used. Serfs and brander-priests trod these lonely corridors. The Salamanders were out in the Sanctuaries and beyond, on the plains and the deserts; plying the seas and ranging the mountains. Nomadic and solitary was how many of the Fire-born lived their lives away from the fires of battle, yearning again to return to the anvil of war and be tested. But they loved their people dearly. No other Chapter, Tu’Shan was sure, had such a close link to its charges as the sons of Vulkan. It was something the Regent took great pride in and reminded his warrior brothers of regularly.

Only the forges, the hot and smoke-shrouded catacombs below the rocky foundations of the Chapter Bastions, saw frequent use. Here, the Salamanders practised their art. Here, they expressed their craft and lore over anvils and the heat of burning coals. Not all fashioned weapons; some wrought artefacts of such beauty even the greatest artisans of Terra and Ultramar would weep at the thought of them being cloistered away beneath the earth, never to be seen or appreciated. It was the Promethean way. For a Salamander, even a native Nocturnean, it was the act that was most important. Adoration, acclaim and appreciation did not feature in such a pragmatic mindset.

The lifter-plate alighted in an alcove appended to a long corridor. The way was lit by dulcetly burning brazier pans that lent the air the redolence of smoke. Near deserted by all but the most diligent of serfs and servitors, the two Librarians walked together in silence. Their heavy footfalls echoed loudly through empty corridors, barren temples and relic halls. In short order they reached the Bastion’s north gate, which led them out into Hesiod City itself.

The arctic winter that seized Nocturne threw a pall of frozen white through the shimmering void shield surrounding the towers, elevated roadways, hab-stacks, fabricated reservoirs, mining installations and all the many structures of the city.

Hesiod was thronged with people. Its lower highways, as seen from the lofty plateau of dark granite where Pyriel and Dak’ir were standing, were jammed with bustling citizens. These were the refugees of the outer regions, seeking solace within the city’s high walls and the protection of its void shield generators until the Time of Trial had ended. The harvest would follow, when all the miners, prospectors, geologists and archaeologists would set out with crews of labour-serfs, servitors and pack-beasts to reap Nocturne’s bounty. Fresh veins of ore, minerals and rare gemstones were often revealed in the wake of their mother planet’s wrath. Such boons were a massive economical boost to Nocturne’s fortunes. Without them, the planet would face ruination of an entirely different kind and one that could not be forestalled by stout walls and implacable void shields.

Without the Sanctuaries, though, Nocturne would not survive. Regions of tectonic stability were discovered millennia ago by the first settlers of the world. These sacred sites were conquered by its tribal kings and mapped out by its earth shamans. They were as enduring now, the iron bastions and shielded metropolises, as they ever were when they’d been crude settlements of wood and stone.

Pyriel and Dak’ir stopped to survey the crowds. Rationing lines stretched far down a narrow road, the sanctum-guard doing their best to marshal it. Here and there, Salamanders appeared amongst the masses, their voices commanding authority and their presence assuring calm in all around them. On Nocturne, respect went both ways. It was not an easy time for anyone, but better that than enduring the cold and ice beyond the Sanctuary barrier.

Dak’ir wanted to descend to the lower levels and help them. He felt humanity’s plight deeper than many of his brothers. His kinship to mortals was a subject of much debate amongst some quarters; in others, it was deemed an aberration.

‘Despite our mother’s wrath, they endure,’ Pyriel’s voice came from behind him.

Dak’ir gripped a dark balustrade as he stared out across the crowds. ‘How many failed to make it, do you think? Reach the Sanctuary, I mean.’

‘Thousands, ten of thousands,’ offered Pyriel. ‘How can we be certain? I’d suggest Master Argos could provide us with a more accurate calculation.’ The Epistolary came to stand beside his brother, echoing Dak’ir’s stance by holding onto the balustrade. ‘But ask yourself this, how many survived by virtue of its aegis? How many more would have perished in Hesiod’s absence?’ He smoothed the stone beneath his armoured fingertips. ‘Like the people, our city endures. Seven havens across the entire planet and still Nocturneans endure. I find their humble spirit emboldening, Dak’ir. So should you. It’s an example of our people’s fortitude, self-reliance and determination to survive.’

‘And yet all I see is their suffering, master.’ Dak’ir turned away. ‘So fragile, this world and its people. Why does it feel like a dactyl egg seized by a vice? The Time of Trial comes and the vice is cinched a little tighter, one half turn of the lever. I can see the force of its iron grip webbing the egg’s surface, Pyriel. I fear for Nocturne’s continued endurance.’

Pyriel faced him. ‘What would you have us do? Uproot to another world? This is the beating heart of our people. Its blood, their blood, is the hot magma below its fragile crust. We could no sooner leave this place than excise a Fire-born’s organs and expect him to live.’ Overcome by passion for just a moment, the Librarian’s eyes flashed cerulean blue. ‘It is part of us, Dak’ir. One cannot exist without the other.’

Dak’ir’s body language suggested his demeanour hadn’t changed.

Clapping a hand upon his shoulder, Pyriel added, ‘These dark omens, the vision of Moribar and all the half-buried memories there have unsettled you – that is all, brother.’ He slapped the hard granite of the balustrade. ‘Hesiod has never been breached. Despite our volatile mother’s wrath, it continues to stand. None of the Sanctuaries have ever been sundered, Dak’ir. For millennia they have stood, in one form or another. I think they will endure still.’

Meeting his master’s gaze, Dak’ir sounded grim, ‘Then why do I dream about the breaking of the world? Why did I witness Nocturne’s destruction in my vision? It feels like a strand of prophecy is slowly coming to pass and there is nothing we can do to avert it.’

Reminded of the deciphered words on the armour recovered from Scoria, Pyriel didn’t answer at first. Dak’ir’s insight, his awareness, his close communion with fate and his inevitable part in it alarmed the Epistolary more than he cared to admit.

‘No one can know what will pass, Dak’ir. No one. If it is fate that Nocturne will face jeopardy the likes of which it has never known, the sort of peril that would see it destroyed, then we will confront that trial. It is Vulkan’s way – the Promethean Creed tells us this. You know that.’

It was no use. A dark mood had stolen upon the Lexicanum. He wouldn’t be swayed.

‘Pragmatism won’t save us, master,’ said Dak’ir, turning and walking away.

Pyriel followed a moment later, crossing the rest of the way over the bridge and to the docking pad beyond. A gunship waited for them there, and a pilot to ferry them.

Brother Loc’tar waited for them by the open embarkation ramp. He wasn’t alone.

‘Master Argos,’ said Pyriel as he approached the gunship and the two warriors standing beside it.

Loc’tar was wearing his power armour, the icon of the 4th, Captain Dac’tyr’s company, emblazoned on his left shoulder pad. He wasn’t wearing his battle-helm. Instead he held it in the crook of his arm. Across his right eye an icon of a dactyl in flight was seared into the meat of his flesh. Only pilots were permitted facial scarification before the rest of their bodies bore the legacy of their deeds. Many of Dac’tyr’s warriors carried the dactyl’s sigil. The company captain himself carried it, only its tail was longer, its wingspan greater and more magnificent. Master of the Fleet, Lord of the Burning Sky, was the honorific it conveyed.

Argos was no pilot, though. He was Forgemaster, one of a triumvirate unique to the Salamanders Chapter. He too went unhooded, his facial augmetics there for all to see. A steel plate emblazoned with the icon of a snarling salamander sheathed half of the Techmarine’s face. The other half was decorated with honour scars, all testaments to his veterancy and deeds in the name of the Chapter. A cold light filled the artificial iris of his bionic eye but somehow still possessed the burning fervour of his other human one.

A hulking servo-harness, replete with tools and other bionic appendages, sat upon his back. It gave the Forgemaster bulk and presence, not that he needed it. Like all of the Techmarines whose secret covenant with the Martian Priesthood was known only to them and the other servants of the Cog, Argos had a slightly aloof, unknowable aura.

‘I am surprised to see you here, brother,’ Pyriel added, as he and Dak’ir came to stand before him.

Argos’s voice was cold and metallic. It possessed a machine-like resonance devoid of emotion. His meaning was clear, however.

‘As am I to see you chartering a ship during the arctic tempest,’ he said. ‘An atmospheric breach in these conditions is inadvisable, Brother-Librarian, so I have to assume you have good reason.’ His gaze rested briefly upon Dak’ir. ‘Congratulations, brother.’

‘What for, my lord?’

‘For surviving.’

Argos’s bluntness was the conversational equivalent of a hammer, but Dak’ir respected the Forgemaster’s frank and open candour. He nodded.

His attention returned to Pyriel. ‘I assume this trip you’re planning is not part of the test?’

‘It is not.’

‘And that you are not going to disclose its nature to me, either.’

There was, inevitably, a divide between brothers of the Technicarium and the Librarius. One dealt with the tangible, the tactile, what could be grasped and seized with one’s own hands; the other dealt with the ethereal, the abstract and the amorphous. It was science versus superstition and the two did not always make easy bedfellows.

Master Vel’cona’s vociferous posturing on the subject did not help relations, either. The Chief of Librarians was often famously quoted regarding his thoughts on the limitations of science.

I can pulp your flesh and snap your bones in less than a second, and without so much as lifting a finger. What is the power of technology compared to that?

All who had ever heard it, Tu’Shan included, knew the good-natured fire behind it but it was incendiary nonetheless, particularly to the likes of Argos and the other two Forgemasters.

‘We follow the portents and tread the lines of fate where we can, brother. It is a journey that will take us off-world. Warpcraft is unpredictable, though,’ Pyriel replied.

‘As I thought,’ said Argos, stepping aside – not that he had ever intended stopping them. He waited until the two Librarians, master and student, were walking up the embarkation ramp before he spoke again.

‘To call it craft is a misnomer, brother. To call it craft suggests creation, permanence. Whereas, anything arising from your art is ephemeral at best.’

Pyriel turned to object but the flare in the Forgemaster’s human eye warned him against it. ‘I have performed the machine rites on your gunship myself,’ said Argos. ‘The Caldera will get you to your destination, tempest or no.’

Pyriel nodded, entered the darkness of the troop hold and the ramp closed behind him with a hard clang.

‘Why didn’t you tell him where we were going, master?’ asked Dak’ir as he strapped himself into his grav-harness. The Chamber Sanctuarine of the Caldera had room enough for thirty warriors so armed – with just two it felt positively desolate.

Pyriel’s eyes glowed deep red in the gloom, the aftermath of his spat with Brother Argos.

‘Because I am still uncertain as to the validity of taking this journey, brother. And if I question it then what would the Forgemaster’s reaction be?’

Dak’ir closed his eyes as the shuddering of the gunship’s imminent takeoff filled the hold with noise. In the darkness, he saw a vale of bones and a long ossuary road leading down into a heart of fire.

Moribar.

Chapter Six

I

Remembrance

A thin patina was forming on Nihilan’s armour where his body faced the ash storm. Seconds after leaving the Stormbird’s hold, he was almost as grey as the corpses buried beneath his feet.

Scads of fat flakes bustled across a desolate plain, obscuring the forbidding tombs and cryptoria. They looked like fell shadows in the grey dust, old silhouettes punctuating older memories. The wind that bore them was a choking death rattle that whispered… Moribar.

Heavy boots crunched into the bone of the ossuary road underfoot, interrupting Nihilan’s thoughts. Ramlek alighted beside him, mouth-grille frothing cinder and smoke.

‘Crematoria rain,’ the Dragon Warrior sorcerer remarked to him, his cold eyes fixed on the bleached yellow plains ahead.

‘Eh?’ grunted Ramlek, checking the load on his bolter and surveying the landing zone.

Deserted, as planned.

‘The ash,’ said Nihilan, catching a few flakes on his outstretched claws. ‘It’s called crematoria rain.’

Ramlek stared back at his leader without discernible expression.

Nihilan smiled thinly behind his draconic-faced battle-helm. ‘You really are a single-minded bastard, aren’t you, Ramlek.’

The brute grunted and stalked off into the storm.

Moments later, Nihilan was joined by Ghor’gan and Nor’hak.

‘He fails to appreciate the subtleties, lord,’ offered Nor’hak, his scaled power armour festooned with weapons and blades.

‘Ah,’ said Nihilan, leading them off after Ramlek, ‘but I have you for that, brother. Ramlek was ever a blunt object, but a true sadist in spite of that.’

Nor’hak hissed. The sound was tinny and resonant through his battle-helm’s vox-grille. He had no affection for the mad dog. He saw only a killer disappearing into the ash-fog, and in that vocation there lay a challenge for the well-armed Dragon Warrior.

‘This place,’ said Ghor’gan, oblivious to what had just passed between the others. ‘It feels strange to return.’

‘How many years has it been?’ asked Nor’hak, his distaste at the grave dust veneering his trappings obvious.

Nihilan rasped, ‘It’s hard to remember… I feel him here still, though. Ushorak is with us.’ His tone darkened. ‘And he craves vengeance.’

Behind them, thickening ash was slowly veiling their Stormbird. Soon it would be well camouflaged. The landing site was chosen with secrecy in mind. None must know they had come back. Not yet.

Ekrine, the vessel’s pilot, came through on the comm-feed.

++Make haste!++ he snapped. ++This muck is already infiltrating the engine vents. I have no desire to breath in air comprised of the long dead, either++

‘Our brother whines like a tortured slave,’ said Nor’hak.

Ghor’gan spat a reply, ‘It cannot be rushed. Respect must be observed for the fallen. Ushorak demands it.’ He clenched his taloned fists and turned around abruptly. ‘I will snap him in two for his insolence.’

‘Stop.’ Nihilan only needed to say it once. While Ramlek, who continued to roam ahead without comment, had the loyalty of a hound, Ghor’gan’s obedience was earned with something far more ironclad – faith. Ever since their first visit to Moribar, clad in the ‘cloth of their former lives’ as Ushorak would have had it, Ghor’gan had believed in Nihilan. It seemed like centuries ago now, since their erstwhile brothers had tracked them down. Even as Ushorak sought Kelock’s tomb, Nihilan had vowed they would not go down easy. Outnumbered and outgunned, he had brought the renegades together, alloyed them with his master’s borrowed rhetoric. Ghor’gan saw a sorcerer no longer; he beheld a prophet. And when Nihilan fell trying to save Ushorak from destruction, he had dragged him from the fire and seen a will so great it could defy death.

‘Ekrine is right,’ said the sorcerer. ‘We cannot delay. Our presence won’t go unnoticed forever.’ In a lower voice he said, ‘He deals with his grief differently to you, Ghor’gan. We all have our ways, since Ushorak was… taken.’

Ghor’gan swung his massive frame around, a cascade of shed skin seeping through his armour joints in a fine pall quickly lost to the ash storm. The bulky trooper hefted a multi-melta and checked the weapon’s ammo count belligerently as they carried on in silence.

For Nor’hak it was too much.

‘I hate this place,’ he said after a few moments. ‘It’s already dead, with nothing left to kill.’

Nihilan pointed to the horizon, where one of the ossuary roads met a stepped barrow. Shadows moved through the billowing grey, heads bowed against the dust.

Ramlek’s voice answered for him through the comm-feed.

++I see cattle++ His distant outline, hazed in the ash-fog, crouched down like a predator sniffing prey. ++Permission to engage, my lord++

‘Denied.’

The resulting snarl over the feed betrayed Ramlek’s anger, but like a dog commanded to heel he stayed still.

Nor’hak was already on the move, raking a long-bladed dagger with a serrated edge from its scabbard.

‘Quietly, brother,’ Nihilan called to the grey gloom.

Nor’hak had already blended into it. The Dragon Warrior was gone.

‘As quiet as the grave,’ Nihilan hissed, biting his lip until drawing blood. He hid his rage well, the grief that boiled within him like a tempest. Ushorak’s murderers would pay. He would destroy them all in the end, but first there would be pain.

++We should slay them…++ muttered Ramlek, a plume of cinder spilling from his fanged vox-grille.

He was crouched in an advanced position at the entrance to a catacomb-temple, a gateway that led deep into the vaults of the world. Beyond it there was a threshold of stone slabs and spiked mausoleums where a clutch of Ecclesiarchy serfs and notaries went about their business. Bizarre cherubim-like creatures buzzed in the high eaves of the temple like insistent insects. Cardinals and lesser priests waved censers of sacred incense silently over the many tombs and grave markers. A crew of servitors wielding promethium torches went from brazier to brazier lighting each and every one.

‘I agree,’ Nor’hak said to his brothers, who were several metres back, obscured behind one of the monolithic remembrance stones that led up to the gate.

A burning smell affected the breeze this far down from the surface. Above, the air had been cold, frigid with death. Here, Nihilan could detect the presence of the crematoria, the molten heart of the world. Despite the radiating warmth, his blood was chilled by old memories.

‘No, we wait,’ he said. ++Hold++ he added to Ramlek through the feed.

Nor’hak was insistent. ‘We can take them!’

He was about to reach out for Nihilan’s arm when Ghor’gan seized his wrist.

‘Release me, cur!’

Ghor’gan leaned in and wished he could display his fangs through his battle-helm. ‘I’ll snap it,’ he promised in a growl.

‘Enough.’ Nihilan gazed at the temple gateway, using his warp-sight to penetrate stone and flesh. When the glow behind his helmet lenses had faded, he added, ‘There is a way through without alerting the faithful lapdogs.’

++I see it++ said Ramlek, catching the psychic resonance of Nihilan’s speech.

‘Lead us, brother.’

It was a simple challenge. The cardinals and their charges were devoted servants for certain, but they did not expect to see enemies in their midst. Moribar was a sepulchre world. Here, the dead were supposed to rest. Theirs was a quiet duty. They were oblivious in their faithful ministrations, unaware that death stalked amongst them. In a few minutes, the Dragon Warriors were through the catacomb-temple’s threshold and entered the bowels of Moribar itself.

Even in the darkness and the flickering crematoria shadows, bent-backed serfs toiled. They were gravediggers and corpse-men, the interrers of the dead, the burners of flesh and bone. Massive iron incinerators punctuated the lower tunnels like blockhouses. Lines of thin and sallow men, wheezing from the inhalation of too much tomb-dust, moved slowly towards the fiery gates of the incinerators. Upon their backs, or piled slovenly in carts and or on top of litters, were cadavers. Some were so emaciated they looked almost skeletal.

These were the labour tunnels and Nihilan was glad to avoid them. His destination and that of his warriors lay much deeper, far down into the basin of the catacomb world.

At its nadir they met the reaper.

Nihilan alone stood before it, unarmed and with arms wide in plaintive supplication.

‘Why does he abase himself before that thing?’ snapped Nor’hak from the shadows.

The others stayed out of sight as ordered but could still witness the exchange between the sorcerer and the grey giant clad in robes of stone. A heavy granite cowl concealed the reaper’s features. It clutched a heavy bone-scythe in thin, long fingers. No sigils adorned it, no ornamentation or finery detracted from the purity of its form. It was like a hooded angel with its wings clipped, hewn from a tomb-maker’s slab and given life. Only the whirring of servos, the click and churn of mechanical components gave truth to this lie.

‘He shows allegiance to gain its trust,’ Ghor’gan answered, rapt at the display.

Nor’hak whirled to face him. ‘It is a machine. What trust can it possess?’

‘The trust its makers have imbued it with.’

None shall pass.

The reaper’s augmetic voice boomed like prophecy from the dark void of its hood.

Only the dead.

A loud chunk followed by a hiss of pneumatic pressure being released heralded movement. The stone cladding of its robes parted a fraction and it came forwards as if manoeuvring on a track-bed.

None shall pass.

Slowly, it raised the bone-scythe, its blade edge shimmering with electrical energy.

Nor’hak was on his feet before Ghor’gan thrust him down again.

‘He’ll be cut in two!’

Even Ramlek, though shackled by his master’s orders, looked ready to break out his bolter. He turned to Ghor’gan, clenching and unclenching his fists, smoke and cinder spitting from his vox-grille in apoplectic fits.

‘Wait…’ Ghor’gan told them. ‘Have faith.’

They watched the reaper’s shadow fall over Nihilan who still had not moved. When it was close enough, the sorcerer uttered something too soft for them to hear. The effect, however, was all too obvious. The reaper froze as if cast in amber. Nihilan lowered his arms, beckoning the mechanised golem down with an outstretched finger. He leaned in when the reaper was at the height of his battle-helm and uttered something else, straight into the cerebral processor that passed for its brain.

Then he turned and walked away.

‘What did you do?’ asked Nor’hak when Nihilan had returned, one eye on his master, the other on the reaper as it returned to its post.

‘Tell me something, Nor’hak,’ he said. ‘When we were preparing to face our end against the Salamanders, how do you think Ushorak infiltrated the catacomb vaults?’

‘Past that thing, I have no idea.’

‘Knowledge, brother,’ Nihilan answered, tapping Nor’hak on the forehead through his battle-helm. ‘I am no preacher,’ he continued, ‘but words, not just weapons, have power too.’

Nihilan laughed at the open belligerence in Nor’hak’s posture. He enjoyed teasing the highly-strung assassin. Had he not been such a superlative killer, he might have disposed of him years ago.

‘Once I had its attention, I left it with something. A trigger.’

‘How can you be sure they’ll come, master?’ asked Ghor’gan as they stalked back up the tunnel.

‘Oh they will come, brother. They will come, but they must not know what we took from here. After what we’re about to do, they will hunt us, scour every battlefield they have ever fought us on. This, here on Moribar, is our birth site. Here is where they’ll look hardest. One amongst them, his eyes will be opened. When they do, I will shut them again. Permanently.’

‘And now?’ asked Ramlek, his patience with cloak and dagger nearly spent.

Nihilan’s eyes burned. ‘Now we return to the ship, where Ekrine has a course ready-plotted.’

‘To where?’ snapped Nor’hak.

‘A nothing world really,’ Nihilan replied. ‘But they will remember its name – Stratos.’

II

What Fate for Heroes…?

‘Retreat, retreat in good order, by Throne!’

The vox-link went dead in General Slayte’s grasp. Pressing his dry lips to the receiver cup, he was about to speak again but his only answer would’ve been cold static.

‘Open a channel to Major Guivan,’ he said to Sergeant Colmm, his aide and vox-man, in a breathless whisper. ‘Tell him he has field command. Colonel Hadrian is dead.’

‘And with him, the bulk of the 83rd battalion,’ an insidious voice said from the shadows with more than a mere hint of accusation.

Wiping the sweat from his wrinkled brow, the general faced the speaker.

‘If you have something inspirational to share with us, Krakvarr, I’d suggest now is the time.’

The commissar leaned forwards, a stick of tabac snared between his thin fingers drooling smoke.

‘Only that we should advance, and crush this alien scum beneath our booted heels. Relent and it will only drive the jackals at us harder. They already have our scent.’

General Slayte scowled, showing his teeth before turning to his command staff. A clutch of aides, officers and tactical savants were huddled over a hololithic display plotting the movements of the Night Devils regiment and those of reported enemy sightings in relation to them.

The scene rendered in grainy amber, flickering with every percussive shell detonation felt through the bunker’s ferrocrete walls, was an erratic mess. The xenos had pushed and pulled their forces in myriad directions, first dividing and then massacring. Small groups, isolated platoons or straggling squads, were despatched first. Weak before the strong, that was the way of it. Then the larger battle groups were hit with ambuscade or slowly withered away by lightning attacks when at camp or after dark. Fear like a contagion was running through the regiment with virulence and every man, even Krakvarr, bore symptoms.

General Amadeus Slayte was a proud man and an accomplished commander. His medals and laurels weighed heavy on his uniform, never more so than this moment. Reprimanded to the backlines by the Astartes, managing refugee columns and protecting assets already won, Slayte was secretly overjoyed at Commander Agatone’s order for him to return to the front. Joy turned to dismay when he learned of Chaplain Elysius’s disappearance.

Locked in battle at the Ferron Straits, the Salamanders could not intervene. Not yet. The Night Devils answered the call. A slow but determined march to the edge of Ironlandings followed a rapid muster, the men eager to fight and die for the Emperor. And die they did, all too readily.

Slayte believed that with the troops and armour at his disposal, making inroads to the Capitol would have been relatively straightforward. After all, these xenos, dusk-wraiths as the Astartes called them, were scavengers.

He remembered the quiet before the screaming. It was a dark lullaby that sent him to nightmarish places when he’d managed snatches of sleep in the intervening weeks. The advanced elements were hit first, seemingly from all directions.

An insect drone presaged an attack from gliders, skiffs and hover-bikes. Half-naked warrior-wyches plunged down from on high, reaping heads with their barbs and glaives. Creatures with gelid skin the colour of alabaster, strange even amongst the xenos, materialised out of the air and set about butchering with sharp, flashing knives. What passed for troops of the line, their segmented armour edged and bloody, shot whickering bursts of flechette fire into the Imperial ranks. A side glance at his carapace armour, and Slayte saw the remnants of splinter fire still embedded in the torso section and shoulder guard. His first adjutant, Nokk, had been shredded in the general’s place. He was not alone.

The road to Ironlandings had run red with blood, its rugged ore fields soaked in gore.

Dusk-wraiths, the Salamanders had called them, foes from a bygone age. Slayte knew them as the dark eldar. He knew them as nightmares made flesh.

In his command bunker, a prefabricated structure of ferrocrete and leather tarpaulins, his command staff pored over battle plans whilst he tried to contact his commanders in the field. So far, the only tactic that had worked a damn was a retreat by degrees to the Ironlandings border. At least, it had worked at first. Now the xenos had blood in their nostrils and a hunger that had to be slaked.

‘They have us outmanoeuvred,’ offered Major Schaeffen, somewhat redundantly. He chewed on an unlit pipe, an affectation he’d acquired since he’d run out of tabac.

‘We are slowly being encircled, major...’ Slayte replied ominously, giving up on the vox cup and picking up his battered armour. He thought again about trying to remove the splinters but they were hideously sharp. Colmm had tried with a pair of pliers but ended up just wrecking his tools.

‘What are you doing, general?’ asked Krakvarr from the shadows.

Slayte shrugged on the carapace body armour, fastening the straps while Colmm fixed the shoulder guards. ‘Stepping out. I’ll not cower in this bunker waiting for them to come to us. They are on their way. Let’s meet them.’

Krakvarr nodded, taking up his bolt pistol and cap. ‘This is the Emperor’s work we do, Amadeus.’

‘No, they’re the deeds of mad men, but what other choice is there?’

‘Only in Death does duty end,’ the commissar quoted from the Tactica Imperium.

‘Guns and boots, men,’ Slayte told the command staff. ‘Leave the maps. We won’t be needing them any more.’

A strange fatalistic resolve had settled over the command bunker even as the familiar drone started up in the distance. It would be much louder outside the ferrocrete walls.

In the assembly yard beyond, Slayte’s storm-trooper platoon awaited him. Three armoured Chimera tanks, pintle gunners sat idly at their posts, would convey the general and his staff.

‘Sergeant Colmm,’ said Slayte as he strode from the bunker to see a sky as visceral as freshly shed blood. Jagged silhouettes, like unsheathed blades, were moving towards them across it. ‘Contact the other commanders. Converge on our position, full assault.’

‘Suicide or glory, general?’ Schaeffen posited, the unlit pipe bobbing up and down between his grinning lips.

‘I think suicide, major,’ Slayte replied, ‘We have grossly underestimated our enemy. Even the Emperor’s angels cannot contain them. They are not scavenging or raiding at all.’

‘Then what?’ asked Krakvarr just before mounting the embarkation ramp to the second Chimera.

‘I wish I knew, commissar. I wish I knew.’ Slayte disappeared into the troop hold, followed by his command staff. The ramp slammed shut and the last of the Night Devils platoons headed towards certain death.

It was approximately three hundred and fifty-six metres past the Ironlandings border that they met their end.

Krakvarr’s Chimera was the first to be hit. The commissar was ensconced in the hatch, using it like a pulpit, spitting dogma and phlegmatic rhetoric to the men. He was halfway through a sermon evincing the weakness of the alien when something inhumanly fast, and so sharp it made a scything noise through the air, flashed by the tank. Krakvarr was arrested mid-speech, his idiot mouth lolling before his head fell from his shoulders. A half-second later a long range salvo from a distant skiff ripped into the front of the tank. The armoured glacis parted like parchment before a dark beam that skewered three crew and four storm-troopers riding in the troop hold before passing out the other side. Fuel tanks cooked in a micro-second. The carrier exploded with a loud crack, fire, smoke and shrapnel filling the air around it.

Slayte, standing proud in the hatch of his own Chimera, Sergeant Colmm alongside him acting as gunner, gave the order to adopt defensive formations and repel attackers.

The dark eldar fell upon them like scythed rain. One moment the threat was distant, the next it was amongst them cutting and cleaving.

They manoeuvred in packs, held aloft on anti-gravitic boards and bikes or borne along by their hovering, bladed skiffs. Long-nosed cannons set at the skiffs’ prows spat dark lances of energy that tore apart metal and roasted flesh. The warriors aboard, gripping long chains and strips of leather as they bent over the long platforms running along the spine of the skiffs, cackled and wailed with perverse glee as they discharged their rifles.

On one skiff was a horde of semi-naked warrior-wyches, males and females both, though such was the androgynous nature of the race it was hard to tell the difference. They wielded barbs and tridents, nets and glaives, smiling maliciously at the thought of imminent carnage. Together, the raiders moved in low, sweeping arcs. It was obvious they were trying to encircle the Imperial battle group.

Slayte sighted down his pistol at a trio of xenos mounted on anti-gravitic boards. His shot missed, the shrieking hellions able to change course in an eye-blink. Then Colmm was choking, dropping the heavy stubber before he’d had chance to yoke the triggers. His hands went to his neck where Slayte just made out a long, silver thread. The aide was ripped from the hatch, gurgling blood, and lofted into the air, lost in the hellish Geviox sunlight.

Around him the sharp crack of hellguns met the whickering report of eldar splinter fire. Men were screaming, spun about, their faces embedded with shards and streaming blood. From his vantage point, Slayte could see lithe figures moving through the carnage, splitting bodies with their blades. One somersaulted acrobatically onto the front of the other Chimera. Major Schaeffen had drawn his laspistol and was firing off bursts from the hatch. But it was as if time had slowed around the wych and she ducked and weaved around every blast. Each step took her closer until she was face-to-face with the Night Devils major who brought his sidearm around for one last desperate shot. With serpentine speed she sent the flat of her hand into Schaeffen’s mouth, propelling the unlit pipe into his throat for him to choke on. As he spluttered his last breaths, turning as grey as his uniform, the wych woman opened him up with her blades and spilled the major’s innards all over the front of his tank. It took seconds, and after she was gone before Slayte could draw a bead.

‘Pull together!’ he cried through the loud hailer attached to the hatch. ‘Hold the line!’

It was insane. He was insane. They never should have left the bunker. Damn Geviox to the Night-Hells and damn the bastard eldar. He seized the heavy stubber, ripping it from its pintle mount as a cadre of jet-bikers hove into view, the general in their sights. Bracing the weapon against the lip of the hatch, he backed against the opposite side of the rim and hauled on the triggers.

The recoil was so fierce it reminded him of his first Valkyrie air-drop. He’d been a member of the elite storm-troopers back then. So many years ago. They were less complicated times and Slayte found himself longing for them again as the stubber spat hot metal from its mouth. A long line of tracer fire tore into the bikers, winging one machine and exploding another.

‘Feggers,’ spat Slayte, employing an old oath from the Night Devils’ home world. The grin on his face was born of fatalistic abandon, for one of the bikers survived the salvo and was coming for him. She didn’t wear a helmet and her eyes were alight with perverse malice as she swung a long, serrated blade around.

Slayte yanked on the triggers again. His heart sank when the hard chank of a jam came back at him. She’d ducked, the alien bitch, anticipating the move. When she returned, her expression was etched with sadistic glee.

You’re mine, said the eyes. You’ll suffer, said lips pursed in the shape of a kiss.

A storm-trooper, looked like Sergeant Donnsk, popped up in the hatch next to Slayte, hefting a hellgun. A burst of splinter fire from the biker’s front-mounted cannons ripped up half of his face and tore his shoulder to hot, red ribbons of meat. Donnsk dropped without a whimper.

Slayte had his pistol out again. If this was to be the end then he’d die with a weapon in his hand, by Throne.

The Night Devils were being massacred. Encircled and out-positioned, they were like cattle being led to slaughter. All barring Slayte’s Chimera had been gutted, though now the general came to think of it, there were strange, gurgling noises emanating from below him. Small pockets of resistance made a brave fist of it. These men were some of the Imperial Guard’s finest – even faced with such odds they didn’t flinch or retreat. But the xenos bodies that peppered the almost wholesale slaughter of the humans weren’t enough, not nearly enough.

This, Slayte perceived as time condensed into a single moment, his last moment upon this iron-soaked, rusting rock.

The hammer fell on his bolt pistol and the round boomed from the chamber with all the slow purpose of an avalanche. The cone of fire projected from the muzzle flared incandescently for what seemed like minutes, extending and retracting like a flicking tongue.

She weaved around the burst on her jet-bike, as if moving in some different, more advantageous, temporal sphere and Slayte accepted the inevitability of her reaching blade. He expected painful death. He didn’t expect a green comet to come from on high and smite her where she hovered.

A heavy weight slammed into the Chimera, denting the armoured glacis. It bore the jet-bike down with it, the whirr of chainblades cutting the rider’s screams to an inchoate half-shriek.

Time resumed its normal rate and Slayte beheld the form of a giant standing in front of him. More comets were thundering down around him, across the entire battlefield. The warrior half-turned, showing one side of a battle-helm fashioned into the snarling form of a lizard. At his back, a scaled hide fluttered.

‘To your men,’ said the warrior, his voice deep and rumbling. ‘The Salamanders are here for your salvation.’

Chapter Seven

I

Dragonfall

From the open side-hatch of the gunship’s troop hold, Praetor beheld a slaughter. The dusk-wraiths were running rings around the Guard’s defensive cordon, pulling their fire hither and thither until it was almost totally ineffective. He marvelled at their discipline, to sustain such grievous casualties but still maintain formation. But discipline would not save them.

Even now, leather-clad harridans were moving through the Guardsman ranks cutting and shrieking. They used the smoke and processor haze to conceal their assaults, leaping down into the abyssal steam and emerging only to kill before disappearing again. Around the edges of the slowly fragmenting formations, the warriors ranging on the skiffs, hover-boards and jet-bikes tightened the noose. From within, their firing lines were undermined by the semi-garbed assassins.

Through his retinal display, Praetor saw it all. The steam and smoke was no barrier. It angered him to see such wanton massacre. He also saw the larger blade-prowed vessel, kin to the other, smaller skiffs. A command transport, Praetor had no doubt. He knew the dark eldar menace well – the Salamanders Chapter was well-versed in lessons of their depravity. He also knew of their secrets, some of them at least, of the curse they harboured and the malady that had plagued them since the dawning of time itself. Few in the Chapter knew much about it; Praetor was one of them. He’stan’s knowledge of the dusk-wraiths was unrivalled, even by that of the Chapter Master himself.

Standing alongside him, the Forgefather’s body language was unreadable.

Behind them, nineteen more Firedrakes had released grav-harnesses and were mag-locked to the deck ready for deployment. The assault pattern was called dragonfall. It had been a while since they’d attempted it.

Praetor spoke into the comm-feed of his gorget, linked to the Implacable’s pilot.

‘Bring us in close, brother.’

A clipped affirmative returned from the cockpit. They’d attracted some attention already. A lance of dark energy stabbed passed the hull sending heat warnings across Praetor’s retinal display. He ignored them, intent on the battlefield below.

‘Closer,’ he repeated, and the gunship dropped another five metres.

The wind was ripping into the hold with the speed of their descent but the Firedrakes didn’t move. They remained still, only their glowing eyes providing any clue that their power armour was even populated.

‘You must attack swiftly, break the links in the chain and release those men from its bondage,’ uttered He’stan.

Praetor smiled. Only the Forgefather would ever speak like that. It felt old, full of gravitas and import. Even his words and manner were impressive.

‘And you, my lord?’ the veteran sergeant returned.

He’stan didn’t turn; his gaze was fixed on the battle unfolding beneath. Already, he was reading, predicting, strategising.

‘I will seek the serpent’s head,’ he answered, ‘and cut it off.’

Praetor felt He’stan tense next to him, the slightest bend in his knees.

++You have your mission protocols++ the veteran sergeant said quickly over the comm-feed. ++Shatter that cordon, brothers. Rescue those men++

Seventeen metres from the ground, he turned to the others.

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ he roared.

Beside him, He’stan leapt from the hold and into the blood-red light.

A few seconds later, Praetor followed.

The air thundered past him in a blur, collision warnings flashing amber across Praetor’s tactical display. A few metres below, He’stan had angled his body like an arrow. His spear was held out in front of him, the Gauntlet of the Forge clasped to his chest so he was as aerodynamic as possible. He hit the ground less than five seconds before Praetor but the veteran sergeant marvelled at the carnage he wrought in that short space of time. A blow from the Spear of Vulkan severed a skiff in half, its bifurcated ends pulling away from each other like a sinking ship with its back broken. Fire and shrapnel from the engine explosion tossed ragged eldar corpses into the air. He’stan was engulfed but merely moved through the storm, plumes of fire rolling off his armour in waves. The Gauntlet of the Forge was unleashed and the survivors of the blast burned.

Praetor lost sight of the Forgefather when he hit the ground feet first, thunder hammer aloft like that of a descending god.

‘We are the hammer!’ he bellowed, smashing the weapon’s head down as he landed. A brutal shockwave rippled across the ground centred at the point of impact that threw dark eldar warriors off their feet. Leading with his shoulder, Praetor kept up the momentum. A screaming wych-woman aimed a barbed trident at his face that he deflected with his storm shield. He missed with his thunder hammer, but dented her face in with the drake boss on his shield. Another he crushed with the backswing. A third he broke with a blow from the hammer’s haft. Even without Terminator armour, he was brutal. Lead by example – that was the Promethean way. Praetor was as merciless as a volcano, as unyielding as an avalanche.

Sustained bolter fire raked air already fraught with screaming. Shells streaked past the veteran sergeant as he led the charge, exploding the frail xenos in gory eruptions. Blood and viscera spoiled his power armour in a fine spray but Praetor was undaunted, intent on reaching the edge of the circle and breaking it.

According to the battle plan, the two squads of Firedrakes had split into four, five warriors each tackling an aspect of the dark eldar’s cordon of death. Upon landfall, Praetor broke off with his squad, the Forgefather ahead of them and fighting where he chose. Halknarr and four of his warriors went northward, designated Assault Point Spear. Praetor was headed east on Assault Point Hammer.

Daedicus and another Firedrake called Mek’tar, both acting as de-facto squad leaders, came a few seconds later when the Implacable had repositioned, at the opposite arc of the circle. They took Anvil and Flame respectively.

Used to fighting forces that were outmanoeuvred and outmatched, the dark eldar reeled against the shock and awe tactics employed by the Firedrakes. In moments they’d struck the toughest elements of the xenos force and managed to break the barbed ring around the Night Devils. Slowly they dismantled the raiders.

‘Break them on the anvil, brothers!’ Some of Praetor’s old bombast was returning. He crushed the skull of a hellion, who was struggling to rise from the wreckage of his hover-board. With a stomp of his armoured boot, he mulched its fragile ribcage. A squeal of perverse pleasure slipped from the wretch’s lips before it died. Praetor scowled behind the snarling visage of his battle-helm.

++These creatures disgust me++

It was Halknarr who replied.

++Then let’s crush them swiftly, brother, and find our Chaplain++

As he killed, Praetor reviewed the data streaming across his retinal display. Ironlandings’ Capitol was nearby. Elements of the Night Devils were locked in battle around it, having abandoned more advanced positions when the xenos had forced a retreat.

Galvanise the Guard, cohere them, marshal them forward – once the Firedrakes had achieved that they could penetrate the Capitol and discover Elysius’s fate and that of the Sigil.

All that mattered was the Sigil.

In the distance, Mek’tar’s combat squad made landfall. Praetor pressed on. Already, the Forgefather was getting ahead of them. One of their squad seemed to be keeping pace, however.

Tsu’gan revelled in the act of war. He had fought battles before, many of them. The blood he’d shed in the Emperor’s name and the name of the primarch would turn the Pyre Desert red, or so he’d always imagined. Death had haunted his dreams, now it plagued his waking hours too – only by enacting it upon his enemies did he feel any peace. This was different, though. Firedrakes made war like avatars of death. Though stoic and implacable as any Salamander, they fought with such… fire. Stripped of their Terminator armour for this mission, they moved with a dynamism and intent that belied their Nocturnean heritage.

A spit of flame surged across Tsu’gan’s flank. His snarl turned to a feral grin as he watched the xenos who were caught in its blaze burn.

Brother Vo’kar offered no apology as he ran on, twisting around to send another burst of super-heated promethium into the dark eldar ranks.

Increasing his pace, Tsu’gan overtook him. The Forgefather was just ahead in the thick of it. He was determined to stay on the great warrior’s heels. Something about him, his spirit or his unknowable presence quieted the darkness in Tsu’gan’s soul. He saw more than a hero before him, rending and burning the xenos scum; he saw the possibility of salvation.

Thick squalls of factorum-steam from the ore processing plants were swathing the battlefield now. Blood-mist from exsanguinated Guardsmen merged with heavy metal dust, filling the air with a coppery stink. Filtering out the interference through his retinal display, Tsu’gan found He’stan.

He had a dark eldar impaled on his spear, hoisting it into the air before turning it to ash with his gauntlet. Even as the corpse was flaking away on the breeze, He’stan swept the haft around and decapitated a screeching wych-warrior with the blade.

Coming up alongside him, Tsu’gan hacked the headless corpse down with his chainsword before gunning another apart with his bolter.

More dark eldar were coming. They pressed in from the sides, slipping through the ragged Night Devils ranks with ease and closing on the real threat, the Space Marines in their midst. Tsu’gan missed the clash by the smallest of margins as Praetor and the others were swept up in a tide of mutated beasts and dark eldar cult warriors now running rampant across the field.

++Stay with him!++ urged Praetor through the comm-feed.

Tsu’gan released a burst from his combi-bolter, shredding a wych, before switching to the flamer attachment and burning down a horde of gibbering mutants. He had no intention of letting He’stan fight alone.

‘This rabble are nothing,’ he cried.

‘Hone your anger, Tsu’gan,’ said He’stan, allowing the Firedrake to come up alongside his left flank. ‘Use it.’

Another Firedrake had once said something similar to him. Gathimu. But that warrior was long dead. Tsu’gan used his rage to quash the sudden grief welling inside him.

‘They already flee, though, my lord.’

Tsu’gan was right. Jet-bikers and board-riding hellions were pulling out of the fight, letting the fodder take the strain. A distant, but closing, figure railed at them to return from the back of his skiff but the xenos only laughed and jeered.

‘Honourless dogs,’ muttered He’stan. His gaze was locked on something ahead, something through the mists that Tsu’gan couldn’t see.

They pressed on through a sudden surge of dark eldar warriors diverted from slaughtering the Night Devils, presumably at the distant commander’s bidding. He’stan cut a bloody path through them, intent on the skiff and the leader of the raiders. Two warrior wyches closed in on either flank, their blades flashing like lightning on the sun. The Forgefather caught one in his armoured fist and snapped the other with a blow from his spear.

Together, they cut through the warriors. The brief engagement ended when Tsu’gan gunned down the startled wyches with a pair of bolter bursts.

++Close the dragon’s jaws++ said He’stan over the comm-feed. ++I have the serpent in my sights++

Three command runes winked on Tsu’gan’s retinal display, confirmation from the squad leaders. The icons representing his brothers’ positions in the field started to close in.

The two Salamanders were in the thick of it now. Isolated pockets of Guardsmen still held out, retreating into circle formations, hellguns held out and spitting las. Where he could, He’stan dragged the humans out of harm’s way or interceded where a splinter blast would’ve killed one. All the while he advanced, and Tsu’gan marvelled at how he balanced the taking and preserving of life so expertly.

Gliding swiftly through the hot miasma of steam, knifing through the air with its bladed prow, the command skiff was soon upon them. It hovered a few metres away, the leader’s cohorts poised to leap from its barbed flanks and attack. Tsu’gan estimated around twenty warriors aboard, mostly clan troops but with a single, tall wych-woman wearing a strange, domino mask. She carried a pair of bloodstained daggers, held at rest against her thighs.

Three long-nosed cannons of dark, ridged metal made up the command skiff’s frontal arc. With a shriek of xenos dialect, the leader-caste ordered them aimed at He’stan.

The Forgefather didn’t wait for the salvo. He launched his spear with all the poise and grace of a supreme athlete and tore a hole through the skiff’s engine rig. Smoke and fire plumed from the vehicle that was losing loft by the second, upsetting the aim of the gunners who clung to the railings of their stations desperately.

An explosion followed swiftly, rippling up the long insectoid body of the skiff, tearing its mounting platforms into twisted metal and throwing its passengers skyward. The vehicle ditched, flames now wreathing its fragile hull, and went down bladed nose first into the ruddy dirt as a secondary explosion ripped what was left of it into scrap.

Tsu’gan tracked a silhouette as it leapt from the skiff’s broken back. For a moment he lost it in the scudding steam banks but then it landed a few metres from the wreckage on one knee with its head bowed.

The dark eldar leader had avoided the blast. So too had his female concubine, though Tsu’gan had not even seen her escape and yet here she was, standing alongside him.

Two against two. Xenos versus Astartes.

Tsu’gan revved his chainblade. It was about to get messy.

He’stan was already running towards them, focussed on the leader, ready to pummel the creature with his gauntlet.

The leader rose fluidly, like a silken shadow, and raced to meet him. A two-handed glaive, crackling with dark energies, appeared in its grasp where before it had seemingly been unarmed. The long mane of hair flowing from beneath its wildly grinning battle-helm caught in the breeze and snapped like irate vipers.

He’stan’s first swing missed.

The xenos dodged aside, almost impossibly, and caught the Forgefather a glancing blow against his forearm. Without the spear he was at a disadvantage, one the dark eldar exploited with sharp thrusts of his pole-arm.

Tsu’gan reached the duellists and weighed in against the wych with a swipe of his chainblade. Clad in strips of leather and metal plates, much of her body was on display. She was more muscular than the male but moved with a dancer’s grace. She avoided the attack with audacious ease before flipping away from Tsu’gan’s return blow. Then something very strange happened. She gave the leader a lascivious glance, pursed her lips in a mocking kiss and fled.

Suddenly two against two had become two against one.

The leader evidently didn’t like his odds and backed off, but couldn’t escape. Like desert nomads herding a recalcitrant sauroch, Tsu’gan and He’stan encircled the dark eldar and drew in close. Despite his supreme acrobatics, the xenos was breathing hard from his exertions.

‘You are doomed, alien,’ He’stan told him, edging towards him with caution. ‘Submit now and I will make it clean.’

Glancing at his retinal display, Tsu’gan saw his brothers were still engaged battling the rest of the horde. He alone fought with the Forgefather. His pride soared and he longed to strike the killing blow with He’stan.

The Salamanders were less than three metres away when the dark eldar bowed and a strange sensation stole over Tsu’gan. It was akin to all of the air being sucked slowly from his body, except it wasn’t air he was losing.

When the xenos stood up straight again, he had a speculum held between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. The other still grasped the glaive, though upright and planted into the ground like a banner.

When he made to move forwards, Tsu’gan’s footing faltered. He was weak, his vision spinning. He felt thin, thinner with each passing moment in front of that mirror. His armoured face was reflected in it, the burning light in his eyes reduced to dying embers.

‘Wha...’ was all could manage to say as his chainblade and bolter fell from his grasp and he collapsed to one knee clutching his chest.

‘Steel yourself,’ snarled He’stan, though the effort in his voice was all too clear.

Was it warp sorcery? The xenos didn’t have the bearing of a psyker... Tsu’gan’s mind reeled as he tried to cling on to something as incorporeal as smoke leaking from his body.

He’stan took a step forwards then he, too, fell to one knee. He raised the Gauntlet of the Forge, fingers grasping.

Laughter, shrill and cruel, emanated from beneath the dark eldar’s helmet.

‘Overconfidence,’ growled He’stan through ragged breaths, ‘will prove your undoing. I promised you a clean death if you gave in. Now you’ll suffer.’

A bright plume of flame gushed from his gauntlet. The cackling xenos saw the danger too late and was unable to skip away as the conflagration engulfed him. The speculum shattered in the heat. Tsu’gan felt his vitality return in a rush. As he was rising, He’stan was already fully recovered and on his feet. He wrenched his spear from where it had embedded in the ground and rammed it through the flailing dark eldar’s burning torso. With a grunt, he tore it free and the xenos slumped down, blood oozing from his charred remains.

‘What was that... artefact?’ asked Tsu’gan, still rubbing his chest but virtually recovered. ‘It felt like a piece of me was bleeding into the glass.’

‘It was,’ He’stan answered simply. ‘Much longer and you would be a shell standing next to me, not a Fire-born at all.’

‘Was it the warp?’

Around them the battle was slowly winding down. With the death or flight of their leaders, the dark eldar were finished. Their circle was broken, the majority of their warriors fled, the rest dead or soon to be put down by jubilant Night Devil troopers.

‘Not the warp, brother,’ He’stan told him. He grasped Tsu’gan by the shoulder and looked into the lenses of his battle-helm where his eyes blazed once more.

He held him like that for several seconds – all the while Tsu’gan felt his resolve and purpose returning – before letting him go.

‘You are whole,’ He’stan added. ‘It was a webway mirror the fiend used against us, ancient science, not sorcery of any kind. It was your soul it was draining, Tsu’gan.’

Tsu’gan knew the dark eldar, like all of the xenos races, had infernal technologies they used to prosecute their wars and bring man beneath their yoke, but this? To strip another’s soul? A shudder of the closest thing the Salamander could feel to fear ran down the back of his neck.

There was no time for further discussion. Praetor and the others had joined them.

The veteran sergeant carried a heavy gash to the right temple of his battle-helm but appeared none the worse for wear. As expected, they’d sustained no casualties.

‘The chain is broken and the xenos flee into the mists,’ declared Halknarr somewhat unnecessarily. The presence of the Forgefather was affecting his demeanour.

‘Aye, but they’ll return,’ said Praetor. ‘We should make all haste to the Capitol. Vulkan knows what Elysius’s fate might be by now.’

‘And the fate of our battle-brothers,’ whispered Tsu’gan in a hollow voice. His thoughts were of Iagon. He remembered the pain in his brother’s eyes when he’d told him of his ascension, that he would not be joining him. He regretted leaving Iagon behind, but what choice did he have? Iagon had not taken it well. His manner was calm and curbed, but Tsu’gan could read the Salamander’s humours. Iagon had felt betrayed.

Through the slowly clearing mist, a small party of men approached the Salamanders. They looked in awe of the massive warriors, who turned as one to look upon the Night Devil command group. The Space Marines’ posture and bearing was unintentionally, but unavoidably, intimidating.

Only one of the men, a gruff-looking general who wore the black and grey of his uniform as proudly as the Fire-born wore their power amour, seemed undaunted.

‘General Slayte,’ said the man, introducing himself and sketching a crisp salute. His fatigues were battle-worn, his officer’s jacket and cap splattered with dark patches of blood. Some of it was his. The bolt pistol in his holster was an heirloom but well-used. This was a man of war that stood before them, not some toy soldier more concerned with polishing his medals than fighting on campaign.

Praetor liked him instantly.

‘Brother-Sergeant Praetor,’ he said in return, extending his gauntleted hand.

The general took it, though it dwarfed his own, and removed his cap once his had had been released again.

‘We are in your debt, Astartes,’ he said, wiping his brow with a bloodstained sleeve. He shifted his gaze to Halknarr, ‘and I to you personally, my lord.’

Halknarr merely nodded, affecting an air of aloof disdain in the presence of the human commander.

‘What is the status of your force, general?’ asked Praetor, making a rudimentary visual assessment of the troopers that were slowly gathering back into formation at the bellowed orders of their sergeants.

Slayte’s attention returned to Praetor.

‘My commissar is dead. I have lost a major and two corporals. I survive by dint of the Emperor’s intervention and I’d posit just over two hundred and fifty of my five-hundred-strong battle group still live. And of those, close to another hundred are wounded. In short, my lord, we are in ragged shape.’

Praetor exchanged a glance with Halknarr. The other sergeant had removed his battle-helm to better taste the heat on the air. His eyes were hooded but stern. They told Praetor they could ill-afford stragglers. Without the Firedrake escort, though, Slayte and his men might fall foul of another ambush. And in their current condition, they’d likely be massacred. That couldn’t happen.

‘You’ll accompany us until you can be rejoined with the rest of your forces,’ Praetor decided. He sought He’stan in the throng for his silent approval but the Forgefather was gone. So was Tsu’gan. ‘But we are moving swiftly. Stay with us or fall behind. We are not here as liberators, general,’ he added. ‘Ironlandings will have to look to its own protection.’

General Slayte smiled, exposing his bloodied teeth.

‘Just get me to the rest of my men, and I’ll take care of that. You’ve broken their backs, we can do the rest.’

Tsu’gan met He’stan a few metres away from where their brothers had gathered. His gaze was in the distance, at the looming spectre of the bastion; so too was his mind.

‘What is it, my lord?’ Tsu’gan asked.

‘Something is wrong here,’ He’stan replied, the Geviox sunlight bathing his armour an ugly, visceral red, ‘something is very wrong.’

‘Is it Chaplain Elysius?’

‘It is more than that, Tsu’gan.’

‘Is he... he’s not dead?’

It was an impossible question. There was no way He’stan could have known Elysius’s fate, yet Tsu’gan asked it all the same. Something powerful was at work with the Forgefather, a wisdom and insight that wasn’t prescience but was also stronger than merely instinct.

‘I don’t know,’ He’stan replied, facing him, ‘but I do not think he is even here.’

II

Loss and Lamentation

A crack of lightning threw the grooves in Elysius’s armour into sharp relief. An eldritch wind pricked at his long white hair that hung low, obscuring his naked face. His back was arched, the heavy weight fastened to his neck forcing him to learn forwards. He braced his hand against the hard metal of the deck where he kneeled. The other one, his power fist, had been removed and a tangle of ragged wires sagged from the socket like intestines. There were furrows in his battle-plate where the barbs and lashes had stung him. He’d forgotten what had happened to his battle-helm. It was lost. They were all lost. Silently, surrounded by darkness and the perpetual lightning storm, he beseeched the Emperor for aid. His lips moved soundlessly as he performed a benediction over his brothers and the others not of the Chapter shackled alongside him.

‘Look, Helspereth,’ cried one of the dark eldar whelpmasters aboard the great slave skiff, ‘the mon-keigh babbles to the night. Madness has claimed him so soon.’ He laughed. The sound was shrill and sharp, like a blade drawn across a wire.

Elysius knew the dark eldar loathed using the speech of ‘lesser races’ but realised this remark was fashioned as a barb. It was nearly a successful one. He had to grit his teeth to stop from rising up and tossing the alien filth into the hot darkness surrounding them. But that was what the wretch wanted, an excuse to inflict further agonies. These parasites, the skulking pallid-faced creatures manning the skiff, fed on torture and pain. It was sustenance to them. Elysius resolved he would not give them another morsel.

Starve. I’ll give you nothing but indifference, scum.

Others aboard the vessel, those without the stoicism of the Fire-born, were not so resilient.

Some of the men, the remnants of the Night Devils who had arrived to secure the bastion at Ironlandings, shivered uncontrollably against a pervasive cold that surrounded the vessel.

‘Hold firm,’ the Chaplain muttered to a man beside him, a sergeant judging by his rank pins, ‘the Emperor has not forsaken us.’

At Elysius’s words, the man ceased quavering. Faith had not abandoned them yet.

‘Idiot,’ Helspereth snarled at the whelpmaster. The wych was reclining across the skiff’s fuselage but detached herself from it to stalk with feline grace up to the Chaplain. When she was close enough, she leaned into Elysius’s ear and whispered, ‘He prays to his god. He prays for deliverance.’ She stood up, maintaining her balance easily as the skiff bucked and jerked against the aetheric storm. ‘This one will try to defy us,’ she promised. ‘Won’t you,’ she hissed, raking a nail over the Chaplain’s cheek and drawing a ruby of blood.

She tasted it and hissed with pleasure.

‘Oh, but you are strong, aren’t you...’

‘Choke on it, you bitch,’ Elysius replied through clenched teeth.

‘And full of fire, too,’ purred Helspereth. ‘I will enjoy your fire, super-man. How long before I can expend it, I wonder? How your death-throes will nourish me...’

The harsh scrape of metal could be heard above the wind and the skiff’s engine as Elysius dragged a groove through the decking with his fingers.

‘Plenty of time for that later, my prey,’ whispered the wych before returning to her languor draped across the fuselage.

For the first time in what felt like hours, though time held little meaning in this place, Elysius raised his eyes. Through the flickering strands of his white hair he made out jagged spires in the distant dark. Boiling clouds, travelling against the wind, masked them. The mists clung to the long, razor-edged structures that were dotted with evil pinpricks of light, as if reluctant to detach themselves and surrender to the whim of this place. A cascade of lightning illuminated the spires briefly and Elysius realised there were further structures upon them and even vessels attached to the spikes protruding from their surfaces. It was a port or city of some sort. The spires were districts and quarters, but it was like no city the Chaplain had ever seen. It also meant there were people down there, more slaves like them. And perhaps other things too...

‘What is this place?’ asked Ba’ken in a low murmur.

The sergeant had also lost his battle-helm and his armour was cracked in several places. Like the Chaplain, he too was weighed down by a heavy spiked gorget and shackled to the deck.

‘I know not, brother,’ Elysius replied, ‘but wherever it is, it is not of the mortal world.’ Above them, a spur of fire lit the darkness from a stolen sun. It threw a strange cast upon the scene. The Chaplain watched the solar flare fade and then looked at Ba’ken. ‘How is Iagon?’

‘I will live.’ A choked rasp came from the other side of the deck. Three Night Devil troopers sat between him and the other two Salamanders. A fourth Salamander, Brother G’heb, kneeled on Iagon’s left.

Elysius knew, on the far side of the long, bladed skiff, there were more. He recalled the attack on the Capitol vaguely. His memory was fogged by his injuries and what had followed after he’d been taken with the others through the portal. The dark eldar had attacked swiftly and without warning. Instantly, he had realised they’d been drawn into a trap. Somehow, the xenos had bypassed their sentries and alarms. They had penetrated the inner quarters of the bastion using webway technology and arrived in the Salamanders’ midst en masse.

No defence, however meticulously planned, could have prepared them for that. They’d been fortified by units from from the Night Devils, the holding force designed to occupy the bastion and allow Elysius and Brother-Sergeants Ba’ken and Iagon to redeploy at the Ferron Straits. With the rest of their battle group already en route, they were weakened, but it was clear to the Chaplain from the outset that the intention of the xenos wasn’t merely to slay them, though several Fire-born had lost their lives in the assault, it was to capture them. Perhaps it was to capture him, though Elysius knew not for what purpose.

The ways of the alien were anathema to him. He did not wish to understand them, only to crush them beneath his armoured heel. The fact of his incarceration meant he was impotent to do that and this chafed at the Chaplain greatly.

‘Hold to your oaths as Salamanders,’ he said, returning to gaze upon the rapidly closing spires. Through the lightning it seemed to Elysius that they were rising above the city. ‘Remember your purpose. Remember the words of–’

Elysius screamed. A lash wreathed in hot, sparking energy wrapped itself around the Chaplain’s torso and burned. This was not a pure heat, like the fires of a forge or the touch of the brander’s iron – at that thought, a twinge of regret pricked him concerning Ohm – it was tainted, alien, an invasive and dirty pain Elysius reacted to.

‘Silence!’ hissed another one of the whelpmasters, a female judging by the cadence of her voice.

There were several of these sadists aboard, each armed with long energy whips that coiled and lashed with viperous energy. Even power armour was no proof against its painful effects. The whelpmasters were joined by a cohort of clan warriors in dark, segmented armour and carrying long, alien rifles. The one called Helspereth had joined them later, alighting from a seemingly isolated spur of rock floating in the darkness. Elysius had seen her step aboard but had no idea how she had come to be upon the rock spur. It was clear, though, that she held rank above the rest. Even the skiff’s captain, sat smugly upon his command throne, deferred to her in the most obsequious fashion.

The female whelpmaster released the lash and Elysius sagged before forcing himself upright again.

‘Remember the words of Vulkan,’ he continued, ‘and the teachings of Lord Tu’Shan.’

The power whip spat and sparked as another blow was about to be delivered when Helspereth spoke up.

‘Leave him,’ she ordered coldly. ‘I like this one. He is defiant. I will relish breaking him. It will be exquisite. Krone,’ she added, arching her neck and body seductively to regard the skiff’s captain, ‘take us higher, my love.’

Krone did as he was bid, smiling like a kept dog all the while.

The skiff rose higher into the growing maelstrom.

‘Tell me something, mon-keigh preacher,’ Helspereth said. She hefted something in her delicate but deadly hands. It was cumbersome and bulky, and looked utterly incongruous in her grasp. She held a broken crozius arcanum. The mace and symbol of office had belonged to Elysius. ‘Does this crude stick you wield contain the strength of your god?’

‘It is a sacred tool,’ Elysius countered, trying to hide the agony in his voice, ‘used to smite the unclean and the heathen. You will be acquainted with it soon enough, hell spawn.’

Helspereth laughed. It was an unpleasant, mirthless sound.

She leaned forwards on the fuselage, drawing back her leg and showing Krone a little more flesh than he could really handle without wanting to act on it.

‘I look forward to you smiting me, then,’ she said, and tossed the crozius onto the deck next to where the Chaplain was kneeling. It skidded, scraping against the metal, and came to rest against his armoured leg. ‘But first,’ she added, ‘you have to learn how to fly.’

The skiff was poised directly above the spire port-city now.

Elysius looked down over the edge and saw an abyss of razor-barbs and lightning.

At a command from Krone the chains shackling the prisoners to the skiff were released. Without orders, the whelpmasters came forwards.

‘Faith in Vulkan and the Emperor,’ said Elysius to his charges, snatching up the crozius in his hand before diving off the side of the skiff and into the darkness below.

‘Slain, my lord,’ said Daedicus. He gave a solemn shake of his head.

The dead Salamander had been pinioned to a vertical strut supporting the warehouse roof of the Capitol building. The warrior’s armour was badly rent, the left lens of his helmet a shattered and bloody ruin. Most disturbing of all though were the gaping crevice in his chest and its smaller twin in his gorget.

Moving up alongside Daedicus, Halknarr could scarcely believe what he was seeing. ‘His progenoids have been removed.’

‘Ripped out,’ added Daedicus.

‘No,’ offered Mek’tar, kneeling by another of their fallen brothers on the other side of the floor, ‘the cuts here are almost surgical, analytical.’

‘Dusk-wraiths are debased creatures,’ said Praetor, caring little for the disparities in how his kin had been mutilated. He ranged ahead of the others and surveyed the carnage around them with a wary gaze. Something about the scene bothered him – it was evident in his body language – and he interrogated every patch of shadow, every benighted nook and darkened vault in the high ceiling of the warehouse space. ‘Our ancestors, the first Nocturnean settlers, knew the evil of that race. Some enmities are built to last millennia, especially when forged in innocent blood.’

Low mutters of agreement greeted the veteran sergeant’s statement. Every Firedrake in the room was affected by the debauchery committed by the dark eldar but they kept their anger in check under a mantle of stoic resolve. All, except one.

Tsu’gan was in a dispersed formation called claw with the rest of his combat squad fanned around him. Each of the other three squad-leaders did the same, taking a separate quarter of the broad warehouse floor. His rage was like a font close to bubbling over. Only the presence of the Forgefather kept him still. He wanted to find the dark eldar responsible and slay them. Nothing short of a river of alien blood would account for these crimes. He revved his chainsword, his agitation echoed in its mechanised growling.

++Calm yourself, Tsu’gan++ said Praetor through a closed comm-link channel. The veteran sergeant was looking at him. ++Have Gathimu’s teachings had no effect on you whatsoever?++

++Brother Gathimu is dead, my lord++

Slain by a daemon-engine unleashed by a Khornate cult called the Red Rage, Gathimu had been Praetor’s intended mentor for Tsu’gan. He was supposed to have been a guide to temper his anger and hone it into something useful and less self-destructive. After Gathimu’s death, Praetor had yet to find a replacement.

++But not his words and deeds. They live on++

Praetor turned away and closed the link.

Tsu’gan’s black mood remained unleavened.

‘I am death,’ he thought. ‘Its shroud follows me like a shadow I cannot shrug off.’

The Firedrakes had moved into the building through the open bastion gate. That, in itself, was unsettling. This place had once teemed with labourers and, latterly, Imperial troops. Now it was empty and dead. With their bolters trained on the dark, the Fire-born had been met with the grisly remains of sentries in the outer corridors and then came the warehouse where the real carnage had begun.

The slaughtered bodies of Night Devil troopers lay strewn about like refuse, sundered and cleaved. Some were even beyond human recognition such were the tortures the dark eldar had visited upon them. Shell impacts pockmarked the walls, and loose casings littered the ground together with the spent power packs from lasguns.

‘They fought hard,’ said Halknarr, his armoured boot disturbing a welter of scattered ammunition spilled from an improvised heavy weapon nest.

‘But their efforts were ultimately for nothing,’ snarled Tsu’gan, stalking around the perimeter. Stabs of light from his battle-helm’s halo-lamp array cut into the deepening shadows revealing further atrocities. Men hung like ragged cloth on a line, their skin flensed open, innards sagging to the floor in wet piles. Others dangled by their ankles, throats cut and having bled out a slow death. Some were dismembered; the collection of body parts so numerous that attributing them to any individual was impossible. Decapitations, exsanguinations, eviscerations and bifurcations: the cruel and grisly handiwork of the dark eldar was prevalent throughout the vast room. The air reeked of blood, the tiny drifting molecules of the slain clogging the rebreathers in the Salamanders’ battle-helms.

‘Here,’ shouted Mek’tar. He was standing in front of one of the roof’s support columns. An elderly serf was staked to it, arms splayed and legs together in cruciform. Thick nails pinned his hands and feet. A branding rod impaled his thin chest through a ragged mess of robes that hung on his thin frame like scraps of skin.

Mek’tar’s halo-lamp lit the victim’s face. A mask of pain was frozen upon it. The cheeks and forehead were swollen and purple. Dead hollows for eyes returned the Salamander’s stern gaze.

‘He was a serf, no warrior, just an old man. And they took his sight, the hell-kites.’

Praetor sighed lamentingly when he recognised the wretched figure.

‘He was already blind, brother. That is Ohm, Chaplain Elysius’s brander-priest.’

Mek’tar turned, the quickness of the move betraying his concern.

‘Then...?’

‘Our Chaplain’s fate is still unknown, and should be treated as such,’ Praetor returned quickly.

‘How many of our kin?’ asked He’stan, his voice breaking through the sudden tension. His eyes blazed with a fierce flame lighting the shadows around him. It was the first time the Forgefather had spoken since their cautious ingress into the Capitol, this but the bastion’s threshold.

‘I count four,’ said Daedicus, surveying the high rafters where two more of their brethren had been bolted and crucified. His combat squad flanked across the right.

‘Five,’ Praetor corrected. The veteran sergeant had moved towards the large doors at the far end of the warehouse where another Fire-born was slumped against the wall, bolter hanging limply in his dead hands. The warrior’s head had been removed and placed in his lap. The mouth was arranged in a savage grin.

Praetor found a piece of cloth nearby and covered up the warrior’s face.

‘These are bad deaths,’ he muttered, reminded briefly of the Firedrakes he had lost most recently on the missions aboard the Protean and on Sepulchre IV. They were regrettable enough but at least they had been clean, warriors’ deaths.

Tsu’gan strafed the blackness with his helm-lamp, picking out a spastic silhouette locked in its final act of agony before expiring.

So much blood and human wreckage – it was like a charnel house, a butcher’s block. Sundered flesh lay all about him. Tsu’gan believed humans to be weak, both physically and mentally. He was not surprised the dark eldar had slain them so easily. Doubtless his Fire-born brothers had given their own lives protecting them, or so he discerned from the positions of the dead. But to be degraded so, to be subjected to such heinous and sadistic mutilation... his combi-bolter quivered with channelled wrath in his clenched fist.

‘They feed on pain and suffering,’ said a dulcet voice behind him.

Tsu’gan half-turned. He hadn’t even heard Vulkan He’stan approach. The Forgefather appeared melancholic, a strange distemper affecting him. It obviously grieved him to see such wanton destruction inflicted by the old enemy.

‘Feed?’ asked Tsu’gan in a half whisper, regarding the scene with fresh eyes. Was their some method to this insanity? He had taken it for alien savagery, nothing more.

‘Their souls, Tsu’gan,’ said He’stan, ‘are dying.’ He made a fist and slowly started to unclench it. ‘Imagine a ball of sand here in my gauntlet. Their souls are the sand and my fist is too loose to hold them. Slowly, as the grains would trickle free and into oblivion, so too would the souls of the dusk-wraiths dissipate and fade. Only by yoking the suffering of others can they forestall their destruction, being devoured by ruinous powers.’

Tsu’gan was rapt. He knew the Salamanders possessed lore about the dark eldar, that as their ancestral enemies the primitive Nocturnean earth shamans had learned much about them. Upon his arrival on the world, the Primarch Vulkan had devoted copious amounts of study to fathom the nature of dusk-wraiths, but this was the first time Tsu’gan had ever heard it related so candidly and with such authority.

‘You mean the warp?’

He’stan nodded. ‘Look around you, brother, and tell me this is not the act of Chaos or at least in reaction to the threat of it.’

‘Life signs, further into the bastion,’ the voice of Daedicus interrupted them. He was reading an auspex in his left hand. ‘Distant but numerous,’ he added.

Praetor looked again at the position of the now shrouded Fire-born. The head was removed as an afterthought, he realised. This was where the body had landed when his brother was felled.

‘They attempted to make a last stand in this room,’ he began.

‘But when that failed, they retreated,’ He’stan finished for him, moving towards Praetor.

All the Firedrakes now converged on their veteran sergeant.

‘There were twenty Astartes in that force,’ added Tsu’gan, his agitated manner making his anger obvious. ‘Fifteen of our brothers, our Lord Chaplain included, could not be so easily overcome.’

Halknarr’s eyes flashed behind his battle-helm.

‘They fight still.’

‘What is wrong, brother-sergeant?’ asked He’stan. He was looking directly at Praetor.

‘Why do I feel like a sauroch drawn to the hunter’s eye?’

Halknarr stepped forwards to emphasise his purpose. ‘Whatever is beyond those doors, we will be ready for it, Herculon.’

Praetor regarded the doors now. They were thick and layered with plasteel rebars. A mechanism, operated by a servitor or labourer and located in a small control booth above, was required to open them.

Such things were not impediments to Astartes, certainly not those with the determination and strength of Herculon Praetor. The veteran sergeant was as pragmatic as any Salamander. Misgivings or not, they would not discover what had befallen Elysius until they had delved further into the bastion. Hefting his thunder hammer he smashed open the massive doors open with a single blow.

‘My lord?’ he asked, turning to He’stan. Before them, the gloom of the inner bastion loomed.

‘Lead on,’ said the Forgefather, a fresh flare of fire lighting his eyes. Gone was anger; now vengeance roared within his red orbs. ‘Find our brothers and the xenos who took them.’

Chapter Eight

I

The Dead Speak

Thick clouds of ash rolled across the grey plains, whispering with dead voices.

The grave dust was clogging the lenses of Pyriel’s battle-helm as he and Dak’ir moved through the crematoria fog. Flakes smeared swathes of grey over the Librarius blue of their power armour. Pyriel had used his gauntlet to clear his vision on more than one occasion, despite the fact he could see well enough with his psyker’s sight.

They’d left the Caldera several kilometres behind them with Brother Loc’tar. Lost to the storm, the Thunderhawk was a distant memory now. As soon as Lexicanum and Epistolary had stepped onto the ossuary road and beheld the soaring bone-tombs and barrow-monoliths of Moribar, all other thoughts had vanished. This place held a special significance for the Fire-born of the 3rd. Especially for Dak’ir, it represented a dark episode over forty years in his past.

As soon as he’d left the gunship’s Chamber Sanctuarine, images had flashed into his mind demanding his attention. They spoke of fire and of dragons and of the betrayal of brothers. A twinge of guilt and accusation warred within him for dominance. It was just the psychic resonance of the place trying to assert itself. Dak’ir was stronger now. Unlike in the Aura Hieron Temple, where such visions had crippled him, he had now endured the burning. His training at the hands of his master beneath Mount Deathfire had girded him. He marshalled the images in his stride, compartmentalising them for later use.

He knew that Pyriel had felt the mental echo of the deed and silently lauded him for his control.

‘Sleeping dragons lie beneath these plains,’ Dak’ir said, drawing ahead of his master. Instinct guided him. With the shifting of the ash, the ravages of the decades and the ever accumulating monuments to the dead, the way to the crematoria had changed. It remained at the heart of the world but then the world itself had been altered and reshaped around it. Like he knew every contour of the plasma pistol holstered at his hip, though, he knew how to get to the crematoria.

So much had happened there. It seemed perversely fitting that they return and confront whatever spectres might lurk in the depths of Moribar.

‘Just memory echoes, Dak’ir,’ counselled Pyriel. He drew his salamander mantle around him to ward off the raging dust and ash. ‘An inauspicious time for a visit, though,’ he added ruefully.

‘When is there a good time to visit such a place? It reeks of the dead, of old and forgotten things.’

‘Except they are not forgotten, are they? Not by us and not by them.’

‘Kadai’s fate was sealed beneath these grey vales, in its hollow catacombs.’

Pyriel seized Dak’ir’s shoulder and turned him around. ‘Kadai’s fate was his own, Lexicanum. Never lose sight of that. Whatever he did to try and bring Ushorak back was right and just.’

Dak’ir shrugged him away. ‘But you were not there, Pyriel. I saw what happened. I was part of it.’

Pyriel looked about to retaliate but relented. Instead, he sighed and the sound joined the deathless chorus of the wind rising around them. ‘No, that’s true. But I knew well enough of Nihilan and his twisted ambition.’

‘He blames you for his fate, doesn’t he?’

They were walking again, wading through the grey fog, ash up to the rims of their leg greaves.

‘He blames all of us, and he blames himself and Ushorak. Nihilan is insane, Dak’ir. That’s what makes him so dangerous. We are still pawns in his plan, make no mistake of that. There is a higher power guiding his hand, I can feel it.’

‘So what can we do, master?’

Ahead, the shadow of a barrow-monolith loomed. Framed with a sepulchral archway depicting effigies of the Emperor’s cardinals and saints, it was a magnificent entrance that led into the lower domains of the world. It was one of several ways down to the crematoria. Its ossuary path was well-trodden. A low wall on either side was punctuated with skulls inscribed with holy sigils. Scripture nailed to the vertical columns of the arch fluttered violently in the wind.

‘Nothing but what we are doing. We must trust that we are guided here by Vulkan’s will, that the primarch is watching over us in this. Nocturne’s darkest hour approaches, Dak’ir. It is so close at hand I can almost taste the blood on the air.’

Beyond its ash-swept threshold, the sepulchral archway was lined with tombs and crypts but only the dead inhabited its halls. The two Librarians were alone.

‘If Nihilan is truly the arch-manipulator of all that has transpired so far then he will have anticipated our return to Moribar, too,’ said Dak’ir.

Pyriel nodded, drawing his force staff once they were far enough inside the barrow-monolith and out of the ash storm.

‘There may be more than the dead waiting for us in the darkness.’ Dak’ir drew Draugen, his force sword. His empathy with the blade was still naked and untempered but the bond would be forged soon enough.

An army of graves and mausoleums stretched into the shadows ahead of them. The way was lit by flickering brazier-lanterns but they did little to lift the gloom.

‘We stand beneath a shroud, Dak’ir,’ said Pyriel, leading them down the aisle between the tombs. ‘It occludes the truth.’

‘Then let us draw it back and expose what lies beneath.’ Dak’ir paused, regarding the darkness for a moment. He was listening. ‘They are calling to me,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘The dead.’

The wind became a shriek in the Chaplain’s ears as he plummeted from the deckplate and into the beckoning void. So fast was his descent, it tugged at the corners of his grimacing mouth. The tendrils of his long, white hair flared.

Beside and above him, the other slaves fell too.

A shock of lightning ripped out of the dark, striking a screaming Night Devil trooper and turning him to ash. Another Guardsman hit one of the higher spires and was ripped apart like offal. A third was lost from view, his body and his flight arrested when he struck a thin spike of metal and was impaled.

It was like descending into a forest of blades; a forest of blades wreathed with lightning. Darkness came and went, illuminated by the fury of the storm. Plateaus and what appeared to be docking platforms passed in a blur of hard edges. Deeper and deeper they fell, navigating the jutting spires and artificial razor crags of this hell-place.

Elysius felt a jagged spark of heat flash by his face. He winced against the flare of light but sped on, somehow spared from immolation.

‘The Emperor is my shield,’ he began, closing his eyes as he recited the benediction. He spied a potential landing point below him, through a web of blades, and made a mental note of the distance to it. He had, as of yet, no idea how he would arrest his descent so he didn’t break every bone in his body upon landfall. ‘He will protect my soul from harm. I am His watchful lantern, seeking out the darkness and bringing it to the light. With His sword I will smite the foes of mankind, bring justice to the weak and retribution to the perfidious.’

Another lightning flash, penetrating his eyelids despite the fact he had closed them. They were descending into the heart of the maelstrom. Close now, he could almost feel the pressing spires drawing nearer and the cutting promise of their razor-edges.

‘Vulkan’s will is righteous. He is the anvil. We are his hammer. The forge is my bastion and by its fires are my enemies sundered.’

The chill that had entered Elysius’s bones began to ebb as the heat from the spires, from venting plumes of steam and tall furnace fires warmed him. It wasn’t a pleasant heat; it was a prickling, stabbing sensation at once familiar and horribly alien.

The Chaplain opened his eyes.

The hard flank of a razor-spire loomed in his sight. Desiccated corpses and bleached bone skeletons clung to its spiky protrusions in deathless desperation. Angling his body into the shape of an arrow, Elysius dived headlong towards it. A distant shout above, a curt cry of anguish, signalled the death of another Guardsman.

He knew his brothers would be behind him, perhaps not through this selfsame vent, but navigating the deadly sea of barbs and chained lighting all the same.

As close as he dared, Elysius brought his body up, angling his feet downwards and his body towards the flat face of the spire. He struck the hard metal and bounced, plates scattering free into the void like shed skin with the force of impact. He struck again, this time snagging a length of chain that screeched as it burned through his clenched and gauntleted fist.

Slower. That was good. The hard flank of the spire was long. Where the edge of the spire terminated, a relatively short drop beckoned and then came a jutting platform. The chain snapped and Elysius found the momentum of his fall returning. He thrust his fingers into the metal and the plates began to shed again like scale.

Half-glanced out the corner of his eye, he saw his brothers doing the same.

Ba’ken had taken the opposite spire, the two so close they almost touched at the base but wide enough for the Salamanders to slip through the small vent between them to the waiting plateau. He held onto one of the Night Devils with his spare hand, cradling the veteran warrior like a child in his mighty grasp.

Iagon seized the same side as Elysius with two hands, a Guardsmen clinging to the power generator on his back in desperation.

It was the same with the others. Where they could, the Salamanders taken by the dark eldar protected the more vulnerable humans and tried to ferry them to the plateau.

Elysius saw two Guardsmen attempt to scale the sides of the spires with grapnels. One man was bounced off into oblivion, his screams soon lost to the dark; the other crumpled against the hard metal before getting caught in a length of chain and joining the ranks of corpses spitted against the spire’s hard face.

Elysius lamented all of their deaths. He had time for a final benediction of the dead men’s souls before the vent between the two spires loomed and he plunged over the edge.

II

Hunters and Hunted

The creaking report of the doors receded into the gloom of the corridor beyond the warehouse floor. In its wake there came a new sound, a gibbering, shrieking refrain that set Tsu’gan’s gritted teeth on edge.

‘Something is moving in the shadows.’ Halknarr brought his bolter up to his shoulder. The other Firedrakes took this as their cue to ready their weapons too.

‘Form two firing lines,’ ordered Praetor. The warriors around him slipped effortlessly into two ten-man ranks, flamers at the front. The electrical discharge from his ignited thunder hammer lit the snarl on his face. The fires of battle within him stirred. ‘Daedicus...’

The squad leader looked up from his auspex. ‘Over a hundred bio-signatures, brother-sergeant.’

The chittering, gibbering noise increased in volume.

Tsu’gan’s narrowed eyes made out figures in the void-like gloom, misshapen and grotesque figures. He wanted desperately to engage them now, to vent the fury building inside him in a single, glorious tempest of violence. Abruptly, he was aware of He’stan’s presence beside him. The Forgefather’s influence was dramatic, even though he spoke no words and gave no gestures. Tsu’gan felt immediately focussed. The reckless anger pulling at his leash ebbed and he found order to his emotions.

‘Rear rank,’ He’stan’s calm voice rose over the shrieking throng, ‘turn and raise bolters skyward.’

The Firedrakes obeyed without question, as a second force of dark eldar came screaming from their hiding places in the vaulted warehouse ceiling. They tore from the lofty rafters riding bladed sky-boards and barbed jet-bikes, hooting and jeering. Half-naked wyches descended on lines of gossamer-thin cord, their eyes wild with lustful and violent excitement. Descending like birds of prey from their eyries, heavily armed warriors plummeted towards the Salamanders on wings of serrated steel. Fouled by some manner of arcane science, the auspex had failed to detect these ambushers. Vulkan He’stan needed no device to see the truth of the trap that awaited his brothers. He had known it since they’d entered the room. His eyes searched the deeper shadows in the vaults above and found what they were looking for.

A shrivelled and emaciated figure hovered on a sky-board. He did not join the attack, but merely watched from the darkness. Though his mouth seemed stitched, his ancient eyes were alight with glee. Parchment-skinned, the colour of stained alabaster, this thing was almost a walking corpse.

‘I see you now,’ He’stan hissed. ‘I have drawn you out, cadaver... haemonculus.’

At a clipped and sibilant command from the withered haemonculus, a coterie of warriors emerged on the high gantries girdling the room and proceeded to unleash splinter-like fire into the Firedrakes’ ranks.

The Salamanders took the first salvo on their power armour before unleashing a bolt storm.

‘Unto the anvil!’ roared He’stan to the sound of tearing gantries and the ecstatic screaming of dying xenos.

A macabre rain of dark eldar warriors fell from the shadowed heavens in half-exploded chunks. In their wake came the hellions on their sky-boards and the jet-bikers.

Tsu’gan lit up one rider with a burst from his combi-bolter, burning down a second with a spurt of promethium from the weapon’s flamer attachment. A third he locked fast with his chainblade, the teeth spitting sparks as they met the hellion’s trident. The creature cackled madly before disengaging and flying off for another pass.

Instinctively, the Firedrakes changed their formation into an outward-facing circle. It was how they were born to fight, it was Vulkan’s way.

Form the anvil, break our enemies upon it.

‘We are the hammer,’ he heard Praetor cry. The veteran sergeant echoed all their thoughts. From the shadowed gallery beyond the warehouse the mutated beasts were shambling into a run.

Tsu’gan had no time to witness it. The winged warriors and the wyches had begun their assault.

‘Slay them,’ he bellowed, feeling the swell of battle lust overtaking him, ‘slay them all!’

He’stan thrust Vulkan’s Spear into a winged scourge, tearing out the heart. With the Gauntlet of the Forge, he put a wych coven to the torch. The lithe forms of the warrior women twisted in pleasure as they died.

‘In Vulkan’s name!’ he cried.

Tsu’gan’s heart soared.

As the grotesques charged, the lume-lanterns flanking the gallery erupted into sudden brightness. At once, the full extent of the creatures’ deformities was revealed. They were lumpen, mutilated things. Some waddled on stumps for legs, others cantered on long reverse-jointed limbs. Claws and bone-spears, barbed tails and flesh-fused mace fists served as weapons. They were abominations, mewling and frothing through fanged mouths.

Praetor recognised the forms of human men and women, some conjoined into one body. They had once been the populace of Ironlandings, the labourers of the bastion.

Smiting them would be a mercy.

As they spread out, the slower lumbering beasts giving way to the lighter and more agile, a circle of warriors appeared through the parting throng.

‘Our brothers!’ cried Halknarr. The anguish in his voice touched them all. An urgent tremor ran up the line. The sense of imminent motion filled the air around Praetor.

Lashed together with hooked chains; battered and pinioned by spikes, the bloodied remnants of the Salamanders who had been garrisoning Ironlandings were revealed. Most hung their heads, too weary to raise them. For some, their eyes were filled with a bitter rancour and still blazed in the darkness. The dark eldar had humiliated them.

‘Hold positions,’ said Praetor, his voice like a rock his brothers could fasten their resolve to. He was the bulwark against reckless abandon. He stemmed the tide of the Firedrakes’ anger and honed it into a single cohesive blow.

‘We are the hammer. Unleash it!’

Bolters screamed as the flamers spewed into the first wave of grotesques.

They howled as they fell, curling into blackened shapes that hazed with the heat. Expressions of pain and relief warred for dominance in their altered mouths.

The first to break through the web of explosive shells lunged at Praetor. It was a brute, with strong malformed legs, broad upper back and muscle-packed shoulders fraught with bulbous growths.

Praetor crushed the grotesque’s skull with a single blow, before uppercutting a second creature that came in the brute’s wake with his storm shield. Hot blood struck the metal in a dense spray. A line of it streaked his face like a dagger slash. Praetor ignored it. There were more to kill.

They were in it now. This was where it became thick and dirty. Bolters hammering around him, the flare of promethium throwing a ruddy glow on the scene, Praetor did what he was born to do – he killed in the Emperor’s name and for the glory of his primarch.

The mesh of the flung net screeched as Tsu’gan cut through it, parting the fanged snare in two with his chainblade. The wyches were upon them, dancing and weaving around the Firedrakes’ rapid bolter bursts to close with hook and blade.

Pain receptors slaved from his body to his battle-helm lit up in Tsu’gan’s retinal display. Grunting, he took the haft of the spear that impaled his shoulder and snapped it. Aiming a downward swipe with his chainblade that the leather-clad wych dodged with ease, he then brought up his bolter like a club and smashed her across the chest and face. Daedicus brought his weapon around and finished her with a desultory burst of fire.

Tsu’gan snarled behind his battle-helm. She was his to kill. He would speak to his over-zealous brother later, once the aliens were dead. No time now. The dark eldar were swarming them.

Outnumbered at least three to one, the slaughter perpetrated by the Firedrakes was prodigious. As he severed a hellion’s torso, Tsu’gan wondered if this was how his brothers had fought. Perhaps not. They had been dispersed around the warehouse floor when the Firedrakes had found them. Distracted out of a desire to protect the humans, they had compromised their own lives into the bargain. No such concern existed for Tsu’gan and his company brothers. And they had He’stan.

The Forgefather brought down a pair of wyches, several score marks in his armour attesting to their futile efforts to kill him, and began to move.

At first Tsu’gan wasn’t sure what was happening, only that something in the dynamic of their defence was changing. Then he realised.

He’s breaking formation.

He followed He’stan’s gaze to where it alighted on the graven corpse loitering above the battle mounted on a sky-board. The wretched creature’s thin lips were drawn into a tight line like a slit throat but he rubbed his emaciated, talon-like hands together. The death and carnage was fortifying him. Tsu’gan remembered what He’stan had told him earlier, of the dark eldar’s need to forestall soul death by feeding on the suffering of others, even their own kin.

Without thinking, Tsu’gan broke formation too.

Through his chosen pilgrim, Vulkan had shown them the way. It felt almost like divine purpose was guiding him as Tsu’gan cried to his battle-brothers.

‘Fire-born, with me. To the Forgefather!’

A pair of jet-bikes screeched out of the lofty warehouse roof, ducking beams and broken struts with calculated ease. They homed in on He’stan. His pace and urgency was such that he was caught in the open. Tsu’gan sent a burst of bolter fire into one, but the rider jinked and rolled, cackling derisively at the Salamander’s pathetic attempts to hit him. Vo’kar brought up his flamer and the promethium burst burned the rider down, turning his derision into screams of agony. Tsu’gan had corralled the xenos into the other Fire-born’s path. The last laugh was his.

He’stan destroyed the second bike himself, driving the blade of his spear through the fuselage and splitting the rider in two. A third, buzzing in the wake of the others, fell to a blast of fire from his gauntlet. Flames ran down the vehicle’s nose in a bright bloom, igniting the rider and cooking off its fuel tank in an incendiary burst. It spiralled away from its intended trajectory, the dark eldar’s control lost to agony, and the growing fireball around the bike engulfed a pair of hellions, consuming them too.

The haemonculus’s guardians were gathering to his defence. The xenos could see the purpose in the Forgefather’s eyes, what he intended for their depraved master.

Tsu’gan saw it too.

‘Take them!’ he roared, arriving at He’stan’s side with Vo’kar, Oknar and Lorrde. The others were not far behind. They fought in small packs, twos and threes; sometimes back-to-back, at other times rushing headlong into the enemy. It was fluid, dynamic. It was not the Fire-born way of war at all, but then He’stan was not a typical Salamander and Tsu’gan an all-too-willing student of his art. It was a fact that Herculon Praetor had not failed to notice.

Praetor cursed under his breath. ‘Hold, Kesare damn you,’ he muttered. A half glance behind him revealed Brother Lorrde struck in the neck by a flung trident. He buckled, going down on one knee, before a wych skipped in past his defences and slammed a hooked blade into his shoulder and back. The injured Firedrake crumpled. The icon on Praetor’s retinal display went from green to amber.

A second warrior, Brother Tho’ran, juddered as a whickering burst of dark-light skewered him. He fell, smoke spuming from the cauterised wound in his chest.

Praetor snarled, returning to the fight at his front, as Tho’ran’s icon ran through green to amber to red. Their backs were exposed. Though the Firedrakes running with He’stan had torn a hole through the dark eldar throng, they had left the veteran sergeant and his rank in an indefensible position. They were already giving ground, the edges of the line bending back to form a half circle.

Cursing Tsu’gan’s recklessness a final time, he embraced the pragmatic side of his Nocturnean heritage and gave the only order he could.

‘Firedrakes, forward on my lead. Bring the fight to the enemy! Bring them flame and fury!’

Praetor surged out of the front rank, bludgeoning grotesques with his thunder hammer like he was an automaton.

Haft thrust. Hammer blow. Shield smash.

He performed the manoeuvres by rote as if in the training pits on Prometheus.

A staccato chorus of hard bolter bangs and the aggressive whoosh and crack of spewing flamers resonated around him as his brothers followed his lead.

‘Defensive formation. I am the rock,’ he ordered. The Firedrakes responded as one, closing around their veteran sergeant and moving with him as he advanced. The mutant beasts couldn’t get close. Between sustained bolter fire and up-close chainblade attacks, the grotesques were kept at bay. It wasn’t long before a sea of bloody, dismembered body parts littered the gallery floor.

It wasn’t merely fury that drove Praetor, though; he was too experienced a warrior and a leader for that. He had a plan. They were outnumbered and the dark eldar had them engaged on two fronts. The conclusion was simple. They needed reinforcements.

The circle of chained Salamanders, the survivors of Squads Ba’ken and Iagon, were just ahead. None held their heads low now. They saw Herculon Praetor coming for them, calling them to the fires of battle.

A dense throng of dark eldar stood between He’stan and his quarry. The haemonculus was marshalling his forces to him. The tremble of fear affecting his skeletal frame seemed to invigorate him. The carnage only fascinated and engrossed him further. Slowly, he was drawn from the vaults and down into the melee.

No wych or hellion could stand before the wrath of He’stan’s entourage; no scourge or jet-biker could deter them. This was fury untempered. It was anger unleashed with all thoughts of stoicism abandoned. Fire reigned and in it the violent potential of the Firedrakes was laid bare.

Dark eldar were spun away from the juggernaut of green ceramite, their bodies broken and sundered. It was as if a rolling flamestorm had been let slip in their midst. It was moving inexorably towards the haemonculus. Nothing could stop this fire-tempest. It would blaze until its rage was burned out.

The cadaver creature appeared to sense the inevitability of his fate.

Tsu’gan thought he saw the haemonculus clip a finger end from his left hand. The severed digit went into a small iron box that disappeared beneath the creature’s tattered robes. The foul rite was lost on the Salamander but then the mores of aliens were not a thing to be understood, rather to be abhorred.

A second artefact replaced the first in the haemonculus’s bloodstained claw. This one was pentagrammic, flat but also fashioned from dark metal. It spun wildly in the flat of the dark eldar’s palm, tiny ripples of lightning playing over its sharp edges.

Behind the haemonculus, reality itself seemed to change.

It began as a pinprick of darkness, an insignificant blot against the canvas of the actual world. It grew steadily, from something the size of a coin, to then a tank hatch and finally a sprawling, circular void.

‘He is opening a portal to the webway,’ said He’stan urgently. The Forgefather quickened again, incredibly outstripping the others for pace.

The gateway shimmered like watery night. The ripples of its rapid creation ebbed, and it became a quiescent pool of still, utter black. Electricity crackled around its perimeter. The fabric of reality had been wholly torn and this gaping, unholy firmament was the thing that lingered between its skeins. Faces seemed to dwell in the darkening pool, too – tortured, hellish faces.

Even as the battle to reach the portal raged, something was emerging from within it. A bladed prow cut through the blackness first, followed by a ridged nose of angled plates. The long fuselage was that of a dark eldar skimmer-machine, the insectoid engines they used during their slave raids. It was much larger than the vehicles the Salamanders had encountered so far. Three long-nosed cannons, their dark metal glinting in the half-light, bristled in their armoured gun-ports.

The fighting was too dense to unleash the cannonade. The skimmer-machine had come for the haemonculus.

Realisation crept upon Tsu’gan like a silent thief, even as he killed the creature’s kabal warriors, even as he witnessed He’stan arch his back and pull his arm for a spear throw.

This was how the dark eldar had surprised their brothers. It was obvious. The portal had allowed the xenos to infiltrate Elysius’s defences. And now the cadaver creature was trying to escape by the same means.

The dark eldar got as far as turning his foul body towards the portal, the skimmer hovering close before the Spear of Vulkan sheared through his torso and pinned him squealing to the warehouse wall.

He’stan’s reaction was exultant.

‘Rally to me, brothers,’ he cried, ‘and turn this xenos scum to ash!’ The Gauntlet of the Forge spoke next and its words were fire and death. He strafed the skimmer, bathing its crew in liquid promethium. The machine sank quickly after that, hitting the ground hard. Smoke exuded off the hull and some of the deck plating was bent, but it was otherwise operational.

There would be no escape for the haemonculus now. He’stan had declared his wrath upon him. For the justice demanded by the dead, it would be meted out in full.

The hammer blow shattered the dark iron chains and they fell away from the captured Salamanders under their own weight.

‘To arms, brothers,’ said Praetor, tossing one warrior his storm shield, ‘Unto the anvil of war.’

Honorious took the weapon eagerly and surged forwards to smash down a grotesque. He used the shield like a bludgeon at first, before decapitating the creature with its hard edge. Spitting on the corpse, he searched for another enemy.

The surviving Salamanders of Squads Ba’ken and Iagon roared as one. Handed spare weapons by their 1st Company kin, they laid into what was left of the grotesques with relentless violence.

Let them vent, thought Praetor, taking a moment to watch his freed brothers unleash hell. Like the terrible anger of Mount Deathfire, their fury had been laid dormant by the xenos. Now, he had unfettered it and it was erupting amongst the mutants in a tide of blood.

‘Back to the door,’ he ordered, voice booming. The carnage in the gallery was nearly over. The grotesques were almost slain to a beast.

He felt the fires within ebbing. The battle was all but done. It was well met. Only two Firedrakes down, one maybe permanently, though. But a thought niggled at the forefront of Praetor’s mind as he followed the others. Chaplain Elysius had not been amongst the survivors. Neither had he been one of the dead. Several of their battle-brothers were unaccounted for, Sergeants Ba’ken and Iagon amongst them.

So where are you, brothers? What have the xenos done with you?

Chapter Nine

I

The Razored Vale

There was no way back. Elysius’s grenade belt had seen to that. The dust from the explosion was only just settling. Tiny motes and fragments of debris drifted from the ceiling of the sewer in a dark pall. The warriors penetrated the veil easily with their enhanced vision. Elysius revelled in his newfound strength and abilities. Upon his apotheosis to Scout, he felt empowered, invincible.

‘We have the creature now,’ he said to the darkness around him. Elysius marvelled at the Lyman’s ear implant. He could pick out the exact positions of his two other squad brothers with ease.

‘Aye, and Master Zen’de will laud us when it takes us to its lair,’ offered M’kett. Elysius heard the chunk-chank of his heavy bolter as G’ord panned it across the corridor. It was tight in the sewer but there was enough room for the weapon to make a pass.

‘The blood trail leads this way,’ said Elysius. He’d snapped on a luminator attached to his bolter and used an ultraviolet spectrum to illuminate a ragged line on the sewer floor. At least it was just dank and they weren’t knee deep in effluence. Xenos hunting would be markedly more difficult in those conditions.

‘We should exercise caution, brother,’ said another voice, the rearguard.

Elysius turned. It had been his idea to trap the creature in the first place.

‘You concern yourself too much, Argos. It is but one genestealer.’

‘They are pack creatures,’ Argos returned, ‘seldom alone. How can we be sure this one is isolated? We should be careful, that’s all.’

Elysius had not deigned to reply. Argos overthought everything. Ever since they had met on the training fields of the Cindara Plateau he had always calculated, and exercised caution and logic to all of his dealings. To Elysius, he was more of a machine than a man.

He led them onwards, strafing the way ahead with his bolter lamp and checking on the blood trail.

After a few more minutes, Elysius broke into a run.

‘Increase pace,’ he said, ‘the trail is thinning. We are losing it!’

The dense footfalls of G’ord echoed behind them as he struggled to match Elysius’s strides with the encumbrance of the heavy bolter slung across his body.

‘Stay together!’ snapped Argos, moving ahead of G’ord in an attempt to try and rein Elysius in.

‘I can tag the beast alone,’ Elysius muttered, slipping the tracker bolt into his weapon’s breech. The explosive tip had been removed by the Chapter’s Techmarines and replaced with a tiny beacon that would transmit to the rest of the Salamander battle group. It would hurt, but it wouldn’t kill. The plan was for the ’stealer to reveal the site of the nest when it returned to it. Find the nest, they could burn it and end the infestation.

‘Brother!’ urged Argos.

Elysius snarled as he turned. ‘Wha–’ he began and stopped short when he saw the creature descend from the tunnel ceiling where it had been hiding and shadowing them to fall upon G’ord.

The heavy-weapon Scout died when the genestealer tore out his throat and much of his face. The carapace armour he wore did little to protect his body either, which the beast gored with its fangs. A desultory burst from his heavy bolter lit the tunnel briefly but managed only to frame G’ord’s death in stark monochrome and send his brothers darting for cover.

A bark of bolter fire, triggered prematurely, saw the tracker bolt miss its target. Elysius cursed as he rolled. He came up ready to empty a clip into the ’stealer, in spite of the mission. What he saw froze his blood. It had moved, so quickly and silently that it was in front of him before his targeting instincts could kick in.

A flash of claw, and a deep red line of hot pain opened up along Elysius’s arm. He dropped the bolter and could only watch as the acid-sacs in the genestealer’s maw bulged and its venting glands expanded.

He was about to lose his face.

‘Elysius!’ Argos cried, and slammed into him...

He awoke to pain. It was a sharp burning sensation in his right leg, fuddled by the dull ache resonating along his temple.

The echoes of the nightmare faded in his consciousness like smoke tendrils carried on a faint wind. It had been a long time ago. He still bore the scar, its place on his body one of remembered shame amongst the other honour markings on his remaining arm.

Elysius looked up through blurred eyes and saw the gaping hole he’d made in the structure’s roof. The memories dwindled to ether and he became Elysius the Chaplain again; Elysius the Scout no longer. He’d been aiming for the flat ground but had been diverted when his body had struck the vent made by the two spires, and had crashed through the roof of some graven temple instead.

Dizziness subsiding, it was hard for Elysius to tell just what kind of structure it was he now found himself in. So much of this place was alien and incomprehensible. It was a ruin; that much he was sure of. His rough landing had only added to the destruction. Flakes of metal and glass slivers cascaded from above like black dust motes where the domed ceiling was open to the sky. They tinkled against the Chaplain’s power armour discordantly.

His leg was impaled by a dark iron spike. One of the structure’s spires had collapsed inwards with the Chaplain and its barbed tip was pinning him. Grimacing, Elysius ripped the spike out and tried to stand. He faltered at first, but found his strength quickly. Standing straight, the Chaplain went to his weapons belt out of instinct. He’d dropped the broken crozius.

Elysius cast about in the debris and the ruins but couldn’t see it anywhere. He suspected he’d lost it in the fall, or perhaps it had been dislodged when he’d crashed through the roof. The chemicals in his body, advanced combat drugs, were working hard to stultify the pain in his leg and heal the wound. At least now he could walk. Glass shards and a patina of grit fell off his armour as he moved. Elysius brushed off the worst of it with his hand. The absence of the other, even as a simulacrum in the form of the power fist, was... disconcerting. He thought briefly of Ohm, felt a pang of guilt and regret then quashed the remembrance under a hammer of pragmatism.

The dark eldar had not killed them for a reason. This was their arena, Elysius was certain of that. They meant to play with them before they died, draw all the agony and psychic sustenance they could from the Fire-born. But there was something more, something he could not fathom. His fingers traced the edge of another item shackled to his armour. It was old, having existed for many millennia. Even the merest touch of it brought hope him and inner strength. It was a sigil, Vulkan’s Sigil, and with it came the blessings of a primarch. In the darkness of the ruins, Elysius was drawn to the hammer-shaped icon. He did not know why, but believed that all would become clear.

I have been sent here, he thought. I am not as my Chapter needs me to be. This is my crucible of fire and within it I shall be reborn. My flesh, my purpose, as metal in the forge – remade strong, remade anew.

The crack of broken glass intruded on his benediction, and the Chaplain dropped into a crouch. He took up position behind the fallen spire, using its bulk to shield him from view. Lit by the ephemeral flare of the lightning strikes above, Elysius became aware of two shadows closing in on him and he edged around to the split end of the shattered spire. Instinctively, he reached for the crozius. Only when his hand grasped air did he remember it was gone. The sigil was a relic, despite its hammer-like form. Elysius would not sully it in combat. He made a fist instead, bringing to mind all of the unarmed combat drills of Master Prebian. With only one arm, he’d need to adjust his tactics. Elysius made the mental and physical adjustments in an eyeblink.

‘Vulkan, hone my fury to the dagger’s point,’ he hissed.

One of the shadows shifted suddenly.

They have heard me...

The other one paused then followed the first who was heading in the direction of the spire, heavy-footed and cautious. They were searching for him.

Come to me then...

The pair advanced another few metres, sniffing around in the dark. They were close enough to strike.

Legs pumping like piston-hammers, Elysius exploded from his hiding place. He brought his fist around, intending to shatter the first assailant’s jaw. A headbutt into the bridge of the nose would incapacitate the second.

‘Lord Chap–!’ G’heb managed to blurt before the blow to the side of his head felled him.

Seeing a friend not a foe, Elysius pulled the punch at the last moment, diverting the force away and glancing the side of G’heb’s face instead. Even still, the blow was powerful enough to put him down.

Ba’ken smiled ruefully. The big warrior was a head and a half taller than Elysius but still looked small compared to the formidable Chaplain. The sergeant’s bald head was like a piece of squared granite, hewn from the raw material of Nocturne itself. The smile, like a fissure in the rock of his countenance, softened it.

‘I see you’re in no need of rescue, my lord.’

Elysius kept to the shadows. Ever since he’d taken the black power armour, none amongst the Chapter save Tu’Shan and the other members of the Chaplaincy had ever seen his face. Unhooded, he was reminded of that fact starkly as Ba’ken watched him.

G’heb was picking himself up, rubbing his jaw painfully, as Elysius answered.

‘We are all in need of rescue, brother-sergeant,’ he said. ‘This place is both prison and execution chamber.’

Ba’ken fell silent, having forgotten the Chaplain’s sense of humour had been removed along with his fear. Elysius had heard it whispered often when they thought he wasn’t listening – the fact amused him greatly.

His thoughts were abandoned when the temple started to move. It began as a slow trickle of dust shards dislodged from the roof and standing columns, building to a cascade of larger debris. Underfoot, the ground trembled as if an armoured column was rolling past nearby.

‘In Vulkan’s na–’

The words were punched from Ba’ken’s chest in a blast of air as Elysius tackled him and bore him to the ground.

‘Move!’

A vast chunk of spire wrenched loose by the quake split off and smashed down into the temple. Upon impact it shattered like a fragmentation grenade, showering the three Salamanders with razor-edge slivers.

G’heb hissed as a shard cut his face.

Elysius and Ba’ken missed being crushed by the spire itself by an arm’s length.

A low bass rumble resonated through the temple structure, a raucous announcement from some alien instrument. The sound reminded Elysius of a dying sauroch herd left to bake in the Nocturnean sun, only deeper and more plaintive. Beneath the long mewling note, he also detected something else – a shifting of servos and gears, the scrape and whine of metal.

‘What in Deathfire’s blood is that?’ asked Ba’ken above the growing din.

The entire temple was shaking now. The ground shuddered violently as if in seizure. Chunks of cracked columns tumbled into the middle of the chamber, adding to its ruination. Great slabs of stone and dark iron sheared away, sliding off their foundations with slow finality, only to strike the ground and break into pieces.

‘Stay back,’ Elysius told his brothers. They’d scattered after narrowly avoiding being crushed by the fallen spire. All three were braced against the walls, backs pressed against it as they rode out the quake, but Elysius was estranged from the others, shrouded by the darkness a few metres away. ‘Hold here,’ the Chaplain added, showing his outstretched palm in case he hadn’t been heard.

Like the passing of a sudden storm, the tremors ebbed into extinction as quickly as they’d arrived and silence resumed.

As soon as it was over, Ba’ken activated the comm-stud on his gorget.

++Fire-born, report++

A spate of crackling voices returned a few moments later. The brother-sergeant nodded to G’heb. All was well.

‘What just happened?’ he asked, turning to Elysius.

From across the other side of the temple, the Chaplain looked to the ceiling where the lightning-wreathed sky seemed to twist in torment. ‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted. ‘But I suspect we felt an aftershock of it. Whatever just occurred didn’t originate here.’

‘Is it over? asked G’heb, reluctant to venture too far from the walls.

‘For now. We are as safe here as anywhere, brother.’ Elysius shifted his attention to Ba’ken. ‘How do we stand? Who lives?’

The Chaplain kept to the shadows, unwilling to reveal his face. To his credit, Ba’ken didn’t try see it. His expression darkened.

‘Adar is dead. He fell into the abyss trying to help the humans, may Vulkan preserve his flame.’

Elysius bowed his head, muttering a prayer for Brother Adar, and made the sign of the circle of fire against his plastron. It represented the great cycle of life, death and rebirth as taught by the Promethean Creed. The grief at how the Salamander died was strong – his body was lost. It couldn’t be returned to the mountain, its ash could not rejoin the earth. The circle of fire was broken.

After a moment of reflection, Ba’ken continued.

‘There are six Fire-born left. Iagon and Koto are searching for you on the opposite side of the plateau. I kept the radius small, believing you could not have deviated that far.’ He paused. ‘In truth, I hoped you had not succumbed to the same fate as Adar. L’sen and Ionnes are with the humans at the landing site.’

‘How many of them survived?’

‘Eight Night Devils still live, my lord. G’heb and I are what are left of our forces.’

‘What forces do you think we possess, Sergeant Ba’ken?’ Elysius replied a little caustically.

Ba’ken was about to respond when the Chaplain showed his palm in apology.

‘Sorry, brother. I’m weary, that’s all.’

‘I don’t wish to presume, my lord, but Kadai and N’keln’s deaths still weigh heavily on us all.’

Elysius narrowed his eyes. They were just slits of fiery red to Ba’ken, without a face and only darkness to frame them. ‘You are shrewd, sergeant. I can see why Dak’ir chose you as his replacement.’

Ba’ken bowed his head, uncomfortable at the compliment. He had never wanted command but accepted it with the stoic belief that he would do his very best to live up to the honour his friend had given him.

‘We cannot dwell on the past,’ Elysius decided, ‘in the same way we cannot be shackled by concern for the future. There is only now and the time of the moment.’

‘Zen’de?’ Ba’ken ventured.

‘A philosopher, too?’

‘Not really, my lord. An old friend taught it to me.’

Elysius paused, discerning the subtext of Ba’ken’s remark.

‘The 3rd has been through much change,’ he said. ‘It is like the broken blade going back to the forge to be renewed. Transition is never easy. Sometimes the metal must be melted back down to what lies at its core before it can be solid again. Vulkan tempers us all, brother. The forge is where he measures us. The 3rd will be reborn, Agatone will see to that. Right now, though,’ he added, ‘we have more pressing matters.’

Ba’ken looked to the shattered dome and the lightning-split sky above.

‘What is this place? Where are we?’

‘A hell-place of sorts, a nether realm over which the dark eldar have dominion. Our enemies hold the territorial advantage here. It’s only a matter of time before they come for us.’

‘So we are to be hunted, then?’

Elysius stooped to retrieve something from amongst the debris underfoot.

‘Make no mistake, sergeant. In this realm, we are prey.’

A lightning flash revealed the Astartes battle-helm Elysius had retrieved. It was black and well-worn.

‘Allies?’ Ba’ken asked.

‘Loyalists, but this helmet is old. They are likely long dead,’ said Elysius, donning the battle-helm.

‘I found this, my lord.’ Ba’ken held out the broken crozius. ‘It must have come loose when you fell.’

Elysius nodded, stepping forwards to take it.

‘I have found several blades and other weapons amongst the ruins,’ said Ba’ken.

‘This will do just fine.’

‘Its power is broken, though,’ Ba’ken replied before he checked himself and added, ‘I’m sorry, my lord. I meant no disrespect.’

The Chaplain waved Ba’ken’s contrition away. ‘Is it, though? Is it broken?’ He struck the crozius hard against the fallen spire, splitting the metal but bending the mace back into a shape where it could at least be used to bludgeon.

Ba’ken was nonplussed. G’heb, too, looked on with a furrowed expression. ‘It is dead, my lord. Its power cell is depleted.’

‘A crozius is more than an energy mace, brother-sergeant. It is a symbol. The power it represents comes from belief.’

‘But you cannot ignite it. The metal is just that, metal.’

‘And yet I can still draw strength from its presence. There is fire within it still. I can feel it.’

Ba’ken’s frown deepened. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You don’t have to understand, brother. You just have to believe.’

A distant baying echoed through the hollow ruins, cutting off any reply. The sound was deep and distinctly canine but with a resonance not entirely earthly.

‘We are not alone in this place, not nearly alone,’ said Elysius. ‘Gather the others. The hunters have come.’

II

Paths Unknown...

Those dark eldar whose bodies didn’t litter the warehouse floor had fled. Some had sped through the portal that still shimmered like a lidless, black eye bridging reality and the other world beyond. With their ambush beaten and the return of Praetor and the Salamander survivors, the xenos’s will was broken. The defeat and capture of the haemonculus was the final act that routed them.

‘They took them,’ said Brother Honorious. ‘Chaplain Elysius and the others. They took them into that.’ He was pointing at the portal.

He and the rest of the survivors were in the warehouse with He’stan and the other Firedrakes. It grieved them to see their slain battle-brothers. Some of the 3rd Company had already started to bring them down.

He’stan shared a dark glance with Praetor. The two of them stood with Honorious as he delivered his report. ‘It’s as I feared, brother.’

The veteran sergeant wasn’t wearing his battle-helm. His face was hard as stone.

‘What happened?’ he asked Honorious.

‘There was no warning. All of our sentries and alarms were bypassed. They bled out of the very shadows themselves.’ He looked as if he wanted to say more but stopped himself.

‘Go on, brother,’ Praetor told him. ‘You are amongst friends here. There’ll be no judgement, save that of the primarch.’

Honorious licked his lips, as if deciding how he should proceed. Like Praetor, he went unhooded. There was a large gash down the right side of his face where a dagger had struck him. It left a jagged line of gummed blood. The dents and rents in his armour were everywhere. He’d fought hard before he’d been taken. To be subdued whilst his brothers suffered, it would not have been easy for a warrior like Honorious to bear. He was loyal to the Chapter, as loyal as any. It made what he said next even harder to countenance.

‘Despite the surprise attack, the xenos could not have bypassed our defences without help.’

Praetor’s eyes widened in disbelief.

‘You are saying you were betrayed?’

Honorious nodded.

‘By whom?’

‘I don’t know, sergeant. But I set those flares and posted sentries myself. We could not have been taken unawares without them being tripped, without someone raising the alarm.’

Praetor looked to He’stan for an answer, but the Forgefather had none to give.

‘Make a pyre for the dead,’ he ordered instead. ‘Night Devils and Fire-born will share the same flame. They fought and died together, so too shall they return to the earth the same way.’ He looked Honorious in the eye. The battle-brother found it hard to meet He’stan’s gaze, but held it to his credit.

‘Gather your fallen and prepare the Rites of Immolation. Do you know how to?’

‘I have seen the Chaplains do it before. I know enough.’

He’stan clapped him on the shoulder. The gesture seemed to give Honorious immediate strength. ‘Go then, brother. We will take it from here.’

Honorious bowed his head before going to join the others reclaiming the dead.

‘They are wounded,’ said Praetor when he was gone.

‘Aye,’ He’stan agreed, ‘the 3rd have been through much these past years.’ He looked to Tsu’gan who was standing nearby guarding the haemonculus.

The wretch was still pinned by the Spear of Vulkan, drawing slivers of pleasure from his own agony as he squirmed. As Tsu’gan glared, a hiss escaped the haemonculus’s lips. The creature’s limbs shook as if with palsy but it managed to reach into its robes and pull something out.

‘Forgefather…’ Tsu’gan cried, reaching for the haemonculus.

He’stan was quicker. He seized the creature’s withered limb in a tight fist of ceramite. He turned the wrist, exposing the alien’s palm to the half-light and forcing its fingers open.

‘What have we here?’ He’stan’s voice was low, laced with threat.

The haemonculus showed a row of blackened nubs for teeth, the stitch-mouth parting like a wound in old cloth.

In a blink the portal vanished, leaving a stench and a strange sense of dislocation where it had manifested.

‘No!’

‘It’s gone,’ said Praetor.

‘And with it the only way to reach the Chaplain.’ He’stan’s eyes flared bright with anger. ‘Open it, cadaver,’ he snarled at the haemonculus.

Tsu’gan took the shaft of Vulkan’s Spear that still impaled the creature. As he touched the revered metal, the strength of eons flooded through him. The sensation was fleeting but in it he glimpsed the possibility of another path.

Ever since Aura Hieron and the death of Captain Kadai he had felt drawn towards a certain doom. The anger that drove him, that gave him strength was also consumptive. Only a matter of time before it ate away his purpose and his honour. But the spear, and by association the presence of its wielder, had shown him there was another way, that salvation was possible.

He let the anger back in, but this time he was its master.

‘Do it now, wretch!’ Tsu’gan turned the blade, churning the desiccated remains of the haemonculus’s internal organs. It only drove the thing to greater frenzy. Something old and racking escaped from its dry lipless mouth. It took the Salamanders a few seconds to realise it was laughter.

‘Let me crush its skull,’ said Tsu’gan.

Praetor gripped his brother’s forearm. ‘Hold.’

The laughter ebbed, concluded by a death-like rattle but still the haemonculus lived.

‘What kind of thing is this?’ asked Halknarr, having approached from where the other Firedrakes were standing sentry.

He’stan released the dark eldar’s wrist. His voice took on a sinister tone. ‘Torturer, murderer, techno-sorcerer – the haemonculi are all of these things and worse. No weapons we possess hold any fear for him. The cadaver is an ancient one, amongst the first of his kind.’

As the Forgefather spoke, the creature’s eyes glittered with malicious amusement. He knew there was nothing the Salamanders could do.

A susurrus of language spilled from between its lips, delivered through an evil grin.

Though he couldn’t discern its meaning, Tsu’gan knew the creature was mocking them. He turned to Praetor. ‘I’ll snap it in two.’

‘No,’ said He’stan, ‘release it.’

Tsu’gan wrenched the spear from the wall. He needed both hands and most of his strength to do it. He’stan’s throw had been incredible. He gave the weapon back to the Forgefather.

Without the spear to support him, the haemonculus collapsed. Praetor grabbed him and hoisted him up. ‘On your feet, stain.’

‘Lift its chin to face me,’ said He’stan, drawing in close. He was eye-to-eye with the creature now.

What happened next surprised them all.

The Forgefather spoke in the alien’s language. It was an old, rasping tongue that sliced and cut the air as if even its syllables were razor-sharp.

The haemonculus replied, making He’stan repeat his previous words only more vehemently.

This time, the dark eldar paused. The pentagram in its palm began spinning again and the portal resolved itself anew, its black canvas fresh and unsullied.

He’stan eyed the gate to the webway. The air was foul and unnatural around it.

‘Tsu’gan,’ he said. His gaze settled on the haemonculus. ‘Your bolter.’

Tsu’gan handed it over without hesitation.

‘A deal is a deal…’ He’stan murmured.

A thunderous report echoed around the warehouse as the bolt shell destroyed the creature’s skull. Congealed blood splattered the Salamanders around him, before the body crumpled and dried away to ash in moments.

He’stan returned the bolter. ‘Thank you, brother.’

A shocked cadre of Firedrakes watched as the Forgefather stalked to where the dark eldar skimmer-machine had ditched and currently rested on the warehouse floor.

‘My lord?’ asked Praetor.

‘Organise the Fire-born, brother-sergeant,’ he replied. ‘Ten of us, you, I and Brother Tsu’gan included, will venture to the shadow realm. The rest must fortify Ironlandings and rejoin Captain Agatone. He will need to know all that has transpired here.’

‘We are entering the webway then?’

He’stan reached the skimmer and mounted its deckplate. ‘If we want to find Chaplain Elysius, then yes.’

Praetor had followed him and came close. Tsu’gan was in earshot.

‘It is a myriad realm, my lord. How will we navigate it?’

Looking up from the skimmer’s control column, He’stan replied, ‘With the Sigil of Vulkan. Its resonance can be felt by all the Forgefathers that had have ever been or will be. It is more than a relic, Praetor. It is a beacon. I hear its call, even through the skin of the portal, even here in the mortal realm. The sigil was the primarch’s. The spear, the gauntlet and cloak I carry, all belonged to him. They will guide us. We need only to find a way.’

After a few second’s pause, the skimmer-machine thrummed to life and rose a half metre off the ground. He’stan looked to Praetor again. His mood was optimistic.

‘This is our way, brother. Gather the rest of the ten. We leave immediately.’

Praetor was aghast, but saluted crisply. He went to the others to make his selections.

Tsu’gan nodded to him before leaping onto the skimmer. It felt strange to be buoyed aloft by xenos technology. He would tear the graven machine to scrap metal when they were done with it.

‘How?’ was all Tsu’gan could think to ask.

‘I have searched the galaxy for the Nine. I have learned many things during that time. I have fought many foes, and made unlikely allies. But the dusk-wraiths and their ways are of a special interest. They were the original oppressors of Nocturne. Our bond with them is old. Do you understand?’

Tsu’gan nodded slowly, surprised that he actually did. He looked at the pile of dust that was all that remained of the haemonculus. ‘What did you say to it to make it reopen the portal?’

He’stan stopped what he was doing. ‘Death and pain hold no terror for the dark eldar, certainly not for one as old and venerable as a haemonculus. Do you know what the dark eldar dread?’

Tsu’gan stayed silent.

‘Ennui. Boredom, brother. They are sustained by sensation. Without it they would soon dissipate, become as ash like that cadaver I slew with your bolter. That one was ancient and he is far from deceased.’

‘The finger,’ Tsu’gan realised, ‘and the box it was put in, they were not with the body.’

‘Science is merely sorcery to those without the wit or knowledge to see it. What we don’t understand we regard as mythical, impossible. The box was a portal. The finger resides in some gene-lab now, awaiting the resurrection of its owner.’

‘Diabolical,’ Tsu’gan breathed. Did the depravity of the xenos have no end or limit?

Praetor was returning with the rest of the expedition that would brave the webway.

‘And to answer your question, I told the cadaver if he did not reopen the gate I would lock him in a chamber without light, without stimulation, devoid of windows or doors. I would simply forget about him. Resurrection or not, the creature could not face such a fate.’

‘My lord,’ Praetor announced, ‘we are ready.’ The veteran sergeant eyed the skimmer-machine with suspicion. ‘Master Argos would not approve.’

He’stan was pragmatic. ‘Perhaps not. But to penetrate the lava-wasp’s nest we must ride upon its back.’

‘Then let us hope,’ Praetor replied, heaving himself up onto the deckplate, ‘that we are not stung into the bargain.’

‘It’s a risk I’m willing to take.’

Vo’kar, Oknar, Persephion, Eb’ak and Invictese – Tsu’gan had fought with Invictese before on the wreck of the Protean where they’d lost so much. It brought back painful memories of his battle-brother, Hrydor. Five other Firedrakes, Sergeant Nu’mean amongst them, had died in that mission. They had almost lost Apothecary Emek too.

He beseeched Vulkan for better favour as they neared the edge of the webway portal and reality as they knew it.

Halknarr and Daedicus were the last to board the skimmer-machine. Behind them, the pyre flames were rising. They all wanted to stay behind to observe the ceremony. Honorious would conduct it. But there was no time to waste, and no way of knowing how long it would take them to track Elysius down and secure the Sigil of Vulkan. So much rested on it, perhaps the future of Nocturne itself.

Mek’tar was left in command. He watched the Rites of Immolation silently. The lenses of his battle-helm captured the reflected flame.

‘Brothers,’ He’stan addressed the late comers. Halknarr had one foot on the deckplating. The old veteran was clearly uncomfortable with riding the xenos machine, let alone entering their lair. Daedicus merely stood by and waited.

‘There is one more thing we need,’ He’stan said, then told them both what he wanted them to do.

Chapter Ten

I

Beneath the Veil

Dak’ir was listening. Brazier-lamps, set into the alcoves of the bare rock walls, sent flickering tongues of light across his armour. The crown of his psychic hood threw deep shadows over his battle-helm. The lenses were cold and empty. Dak’ir’s eyes were firmly shut.

In the background the low grind of industry invaded the silence. Labour-serfs – the grave-diggers, the corpse-masters and bone-gatherers – toiled nearby in legion-strong numbers. On Moribar, the dead outnumbered the living by many billions. The work for the armies of tomb-keepers was never done. While the cardinals and the priests and the preachers scribed in their ancient books, made the dead-lists and inked parchment with the details of Imperial bureaucracy that saw to the running of this world, the bodies grew and the grave pits deepened underneath them.

‘Nihilan’s psychic spoor is everywhere,’ breathed Dak’ir. ‘It thrums in the very air.’

Pyriel’s reply came from the shadows behind him. ‘He seeks to baffle us. By saturating the atmosphere with his warp-shadow, Nihilan knows we will find it harder to pinpoint the path he took.’

‘His last visit was more recent than decades, though. It’s obvious.’

‘Obvious?’ asked Pyriel. He kept his voice low, out of respect for the dead. The hollow sockets of the skulls pockmarking the walls seemed to stare in approval. ‘Not to me, Dak’ir.’

A note of uncertainly crept into the Lexicanum’s voice. ‘You think I am wrong, master?’

‘No, I think you are right. But you are just a novice and I, allegedly, the master. You discerned the truth of Nihilan’s psychic resonance much faster than I did.’

Dak’ir opened his eyes.

He saw again the subterranean world of Moribar’s catacombs. Here the dead were venerated. A tunnel stretched before him, cast in amber light from the lanterns lining the walls. Monolithic effigies of robed guardians supported its vaulted ceiling. They were called reapers, the massive servitor-statues that guarded these lower chambers. Though merely machines, the reapers were potent servants for the dead that ensured eternal rest was just that. The main channel leading deeper into the catacombs was ribbed by sepulchral arches and branched into several tributaries. Tomb-gates barred access to mausoleum chambers and the lesser crypts of the minor veins. The main artery was wider than a strike cruiser’s hangar and twice as tall. In the highest echelons, though in reality several kilometres below the surface, fluttering cyb-organic cherubim and darting servo-skulls could be seen weaving between the chains of hanging censer cauldrons. Great gusts of dark smoke exuded from the censers, wreathing the ceiling in a dense and unnatural fog.

The lower deeps were filled with funerary pits and immolation cradles. The iron crucibles were stacked with burning coals to ignite the hordes of corpses fed to them by the labour army toiling below. They were pale shadows of the crematoria, though, the fiery heart of Moribar raging at the planet’s core.

A bridge, cut from the same rock as the catacombs themselves, spanned a deep chasm filled with bones and ash. Iron gantries arced across a vast grate. Beneath it were row upon row of incinerators. Only pallid-skinned servitors could work the nadir of the chasm and even they were fitted with rebreathers and gas masks. The hot vapours from the incinerators formed as beads of sweat on the drone-like men and women some several hundred metres above. Nothing slowed them. Their barrows reached the funnels at the edge of the gantries that would take the dumped bodies to the incinerator floor. Shovelled into the fiery cages by the servitors, the dead would become bone then ash until finally joining the vast Moribar deserts.

Dak’ir saw a perverted version of the Promethean Creed in what was being done on Moribar, but he didn’t voice his thoughts. This was cold, mechanical and bereft of ritual. It signified nothing more than the efficient disposal of waste and the rendering down of life into matter. It was not the way of earth, but the way of industry.

Having seen enough in a few short seconds, he faced Pyriel.

‘What does it mean?’ he asked, ‘that I recognised the truth of Nihilan’s passing faster than you, master?’

Pyriel opened his eyes too. He kept his tone neutral.

‘Your power is growing.’

‘I can feel it,’ Dak’ir confessed. It unnerved him, but he chose to keep that part to himself. During the burning, he’d been close to losing control. Even now, he sensed something within him, a nascent flame slowly being coaxed into a conflagration. Let it slip, even for a moment, and the whole world would burn.

Pyriel’s gaze narrowed. ‘What else can you feel, Dak’ir?’

Dak’ir focussed, trying to push the desperate toiling of the labour-serfs out of his mind. It was less about psychic resonance and more about tapping into his instincts.

‘If we find out why Ushorak and Nihilan came to Moribar, we will discover why my vision sent us here and perhaps what fate awaits Nocturne.’

‘We will see what lurks beneath the veil.’

‘Yes.’

A flash of cerulean blue lit Pyriel’s eyes through his helmet lenses. ‘I sense reluctance in you, brother.’

‘Don’t do that,’ Dak’ir snapped.

‘Then hide your thoughts, Lexicanum! I can read them like they’re writ upon your face.’

A tremor of disquiet went through Dak’ir’s body as he realised Pyriel might have also seen his concerns about what happened during the burning and the doubts about his power that still plagued him. If his master did, he chose not to say anything.

Dak’ir unclenched his fist and exhaled. ‘I am sorry, master. It’s been over four decades since I was here. I know this place is significant. I’m not sure I want to find out why.’

‘Go on.’

‘I am afraid, not in the sense of feeling fear. I am Astartes and have long since come to deny that emotion. Rather, it is… unwillingness to accept whatever destiny is before me.’

Now Pyriel regarded him shrewdly and Dak’ir knew he had discerned the truth about the Lexicanum’s doubts and reservations.

‘We make our own fates, Dak’ir. I’ve told you this. You, me, Kadai, ultimately we must choose. Even Nihilan had that luxury once.’

‘And what if I don’t like the options before me?’

‘Then make another, but sometimes we have to face impossible decisions.’

‘And if I make the wrong one?’

Pyriel laughed. It was a clipped and mirthless sound. ‘The only wrong decision is to do nothing and not act. There is more to courage than wielding a bolter and blade, Dak’ir.’

‘If only Tsu’gan realised that,’ he muttered.

‘What does it matter what your brother does and does not realise? Zek Tsu’gan is Firedrake, now. He’s amongst the Lords of Prometheus. He chose.’

‘I saw him in the desert.’

‘The Pyre Desert, the Arridian Plain? What do you mean, Dak’ir?’

‘Below Mount Deathfire, during the Totem Walk and the final part of my training, I saw Tsu’gan. He tried to kill me.’

‘And you think this was prophetic, that your brother will turn and attempt to slay you?’

‘No. I think it might mean he has cause to do it, that I will be the one who turns.’

Pyriel was growing angry. ‘You are one of the Emperor’s Angels, a First Founding Salamander. We do not turn.’

Dak’ir’s voice was barely a murmur. ‘Then how do you explain Nihilan?’

Pyriel looked away. His ire was obvious from the energies roiling over his force staff.

‘An aberration. Ushorak’s doing.’

Stepping forwards, Dak’ir asked, ‘But how? Was Ushorak so convincing?’

‘There is much you don’t know about Vai’tan Ushorak. I was there when Nihilan took his first steps on the path. Like you and Tsu’gan, we were brothers once. I never thought it possible that…’ Pyriel’s voice trailed away, lost to remembered sorrow. His shoulders had sagged but now he straightened his posture.

‘It is history long dead,’ he said, facing Dak’ir again, ‘and matters not. Can you discern the path Nihilan took?’

Dak’ir’s eyes flared cerulean blue. He nodded.

‘A few years or four decades ago – both paths lead to same destination.’

‘Where?’

The Lexicanum paused, as if unsure of his own psychic instincts. He shook his head slowly. ‘Not the crematoria, not at first anyway…’

‘You fought them there, though,’ said Pyriel.

‘At the end, yes. But that wasn’t where they were going.’

‘Where then?’

Dak’ir looked along the dark tunnel. It sloped downwards, deeper into the earth. The crematoria was nearby, but another branch in the catacomb network would take them to a different place, one the Salamanders had overlooked.

‘The cryptoria – a voice there speaks louder than the others.’

Menials, peons, the masses of the insignificant dead all resided in the catacombs. It was the right of more vaunted Imperial servants, the ecclesiarchs, the lord-commanders, the aristocrats and the pious rich to be interred within the mausoleums of the cryptoria. Much like the world of the living, even the realm of the dead had a hierarchy.

Dak’ir pointed. ‘We take the bridge across the incinerators.’

Pyriel nodded, approving. ‘Lead us.’

II

Reapers

The reaper’s chamber lay not far past the labour tunnels beyond the bridge. Both Librarians sensed the ending of their journey and brandished their psychic weapons in readiness for whatever challenge might still await them.

Nihilan had come here after the death of Ushorak. He had come recently, in the last few years. To what end, Pyriel did not know. But he was certain it could not be good.

‘The cryptoria entrance is beyond that statue,’ he said, pointing to the giant form of the reaper.

It stood still before a massive arch. An underground field of mausoleums, tombs and crypts was hinted at in the shadows beyond. Hooded and robed, the reaper had the aspect of a priest. Its skeletal hands, resting on the blade of a giant scythe, betrayed that notion utterly.

This was the lair, a massive plaza of stone-clad earth. Bones had been fashioned into the walls, turning it into a macabre ossuary temple. Headless skeletons held aloft their own skulls. Fused femurs became columns. Vaulted arches, fashioned from spinal cords and fragments of rib, framed a bleached yellow ceiling. The chamber’s periphery, shrouded by flickering shadow, was littered with coffins and sarcophagi. The vessels were made from marble, dark granite, even more bone and were sunk into the soft soil like the broken teeth of some half-buried giant.

It was a grim place that reeked of death and eked away vitality. Neither Salamander had any wish to linger.

‘Do you hear that?’ asked Dak’ir. He slowed, stalling a few metres from the reaper.

A low scratching sound was just audible above the sound of the labour-serfs toiling in the distant tunnels behind the Salamanders.

‘Could be tomb rats or perhaps a skull-scribe?’ suggested Pyriel.

‘It’s coming from this room.’

Louder now, the scratching became more distinct, until both Librarians could detect the source.

Pyriel sent a flare of psychic fire up the haft of his force staff. ‘Get your back to me, brother.’

Dak’ir’s eyes were already aglow with warpcraft. He ignited the blade of Draugen in a heartbeat and took up a defensive posture with his master.

Several of the coffin lids were rattling. The motion became increasingly violent as the seconds passed. One of the lids slid off and cracked when it struck an adjacent sarcophagus. Something within was moving, framed in silhouette.

‘We have descended into a trap,’ snarled Pyriel as three more coffins shuddered loose on his side of the chamber.

‘I have at least six on my flank,’ said Dak’ir.

‘There must be hundreds in here...’

A great clamour filled the chamber as all of the half-sunken tombs and crypt-vessels joined the chorus. All the while, the reaper looked on, his shadow eclipsing the two Salamanders standing back-to-back in the centre of the room.

As the first of the wretches dragged its rotting carcass into the light, Dak’ir was reminded of the servitors aboard the Mechanicus vessel Archimedes Rex. True, they did not possess any weapons, save their filth-encrusted talons or the implements used to bury them with, but their movements were syncopated in the same fashion and their hollow eyes gleamed with an evil fervour.

‘Nihilan has raised the undead to slay us!’ Dak’ir crafted a ball of fire in his palm. He was about to unleash it into the growing throng of corpses advancing on him when Pyriel stopped him.

‘Wait until they get close, until enough are beyond the protection of their vessels.’ Dak’ir held onto the flame, nurtured it within him, shaped it within his mind. He closed his eyes, and heard Pyriel’s voice.

‘Master Vel’cona, your teachings guide my fury, let the fire become a conflagration and render my enemies to ash.’

The grave-stink was filling Dak’ir’s nose and mouth, even through his battle-helm. The scrape of the undead’s limbs as they dragged across the chamber floor was loud in his ears. He imagined their lopsided gait, the awkward shambling of limbs and muscles long atrophied forced into motion again. He could feel their collective animus, a pale echo of Nihilan’s own. The Dragon Warrior had invigorated these creatures. He had kept them quiescent until his enemies had come to this place. He knew.

‘They are close, master,’ Dak’ir muttered, concentrating on his craft. This was to be its first real test since his training.

Pyriel left a few seconds pause. The talons of the dead could only be a hand’s width away...

‘Purify them!’

Dak’ir opened his eyes. As he unleashed the flame, he viewed the world through a fiery veil. It was a roiling wave, snapping serpents at its crest, and it rolled over the walking corpses with such intensity that skin and flesh flaked to ash in seconds. Echoes, soot-silhouettes, were all that remained of the foremost undead. The ones that followed crumpled against the heat, their desiccated bodies quickly collapsing. Others, those who had only just surfaced, carried on, their bodies ablaze.

‘Break formation, brother,’ cried Pyriel. ‘Take them down!’ A stream of bolter fire stitched a rank of flaming bodies, filling the chamber with the dense thunder of explosions.

Dak’ir waded in hand-to-hand, seeing an opportunity to anoint Draugen in true battle. The corpses provided little challenge. Limbs and heads cascaded onto the ground, only to be stomped underfoot or forgotten as the next enemy came on. They were fearless, relentless creatures. For what did the dead have to fear? He thrust his sword into the chest of one creature and ignited its entire body with psychic fire. The ashen remains were still flaking off the blade when Dak’ir took the head from another. A third scrabbled at his shoulder pad, trying to drag him down. The Librarian drew his plasma pistol and put a bolt through its torso, ending it. The next shot vaporised the skull of a second.

‘We are breaking the sanctity of this place,’ he snarled to Pyriel, splitting a creature’s torso.

Facing the opposite side of the chamber, the Epistolary was possessed by a similar fury.

‘It’s too late for that. Nihilan defiled it when he cast his warp-sorcery.’

The two Salamanders fought in one half-circle each, defending an arc and leaving a void of open ground between them in the centre. That way no creature could get behind them. One relied on the other for his protection. Trust was paramount.

Despite the carnage, more and more undead were shambling into the fray. Whereas before they’d attacked individually, now they struck in a mob. Dak’ir counted over thirty on his flank alone. More were coming.

‘In Vulkan’s name, they’re endless!’

‘Burn them, Dak’ir,’ said Pyriel, a surge of fire channelled through his force staff interrupting him. ‘Unleash the deathfire.’

His combat doctrines came by rote – the blade of Draugen dimmed and became just a sword, his pistol thundered at precise intervals. The undead were kept at bay whilst Dak’ir’s focus travelled inwards, seeking the fiery core within and the catalyst with which he could release it. The name passed his lips without him realising it had been spoken.

‘Kessarghoth...’

Dak’ir’s eyes went from cold, cerulean blue to ardent flame red. He roared with the ancient voice of a
long-dead drake, and the terrifying din drowned out all others in the chamber. Molten death spewed from his mouth, through the grille in his battle-helm, and bathed the deathless horde.

‘Pyriel, down!’ The voice did not sound like Dak’ir’s, but the other Librarian crouched as the lava flow scorched overhead, engulfing the other side of the chamber. The walking corpses, hundreds strong, were swept up in a terrible maelstrom and melted away in moments. The coffins and sarcophagi proved more resilient but lasted only seconds more before they too had sloughed to insignificant wisps of smoke on a hot and undulating magma sea.

It was over in moments. The lava cooled rapidly into rock, the two Librarians standing on a circular plateau surrounded by a ringed crater. Of the dead, of their vessels, there was no sign. Dak’ir had obliterated them utterly. Hundreds of them.

‘Wisdom of Zen’de...’ breathed Pyriel. He straightened up to face his saviour.

Fire wreathed Dak’ir’s body, incandescent and alive. Just being near him seared the other Librarian’s armour and sent radiation warnings spiking across his retinal display.

‘Lexicanum...’

The heat was still growing. Dak’ir slumped to one knee, using Draugen for support. Tongues of flame lashed out from his aura of conflagration. Pyriel reached out to shake him, but recoiled as his fingers were burned even through his gauntlet. He had scarcely brushed the other Librarian’s shoulder guard.

‘Dak’ir!’ he cried more urgently, stepping back and throwing up a psychic shield. Blackened cracks were already forming in its surface when the Lexicanum met Pyriel’s pained gaze.

‘Dak’ir...’ he repeated, less forcibly now his strength was fading, and retreated from the terrible fire, ‘...marshal it.’ Pyriel’s mind returned to the burning again, to the moment when his apprentice had almost killed him in an uncontrollable flamestorm. Master Vel’cona had stepped in then and between them they’d averted disaster. Now, Pyriel was alone. He knew he didn’t possess the power to stop the Lexicanum’s tide of fire.

Slowly, Dak’ir’s fiery aura ebbed as he corralled the violent energies that threatened to engulf them both. The heat faded to a flickering haze around his body that eventually dissipated into nothing. Tendrils of smoke exuded from his armour, becoming grey translucent mists carried away on a shallow breeze.

‘I... I am...’ he stammered, his voice deep and thick with effort, ‘in control.’

Pyriel’s battle-plate was badly blistered. As he stood up, the ceramite lurched and cracked. ‘You have nearly destroyed my armour,’ he breathed. The words with Vel’cona, spoken years ago when Dak’ir had first lost his grip on the flame during the burning, returned to the Epistolary.

‘And if he loses control again?’

‘Do what you must… destroy him.’

Except Pyriel didn’t think he could do that. He didn’t know if he was capable. Dak’ir’s psychic potential was simply frightening. It was a weapon. If fettered, a potent and useful one. If left unchecked, one that could bring about a cataclysm.

Much of the battle-helm was scorched from the fire. The lenses were cracked and smeared black with soot, so Pyriel cast it aside. He breathed deeply. Until that point, the air had been stifling.

‘Never have I witnessed such power,’ he said with something close to awe, but closer to fear.

Dak’ir removed his battle-helm too, and mag-locked it to his belt. The scar Ghor’gan’s melta had left him glared starkly against his onyx-black skin. The flesh was near-white down one side of his face, a product of cellular regression caused by intense radiation of the beam.

‘You are more human than any of us,’ Pyriel continued, ‘and yet, at the same time, something else entirely beyond it.’

‘It stirred within me, master. It was a pyre-flame and the legacy of Kessarghoth.’

‘Your empathy has a psychic application I did not expect.’ Pyriel looked around at the crater and the blackened carnage Dak’ir had left in the wake of his power. ‘You almost killed us both.’

Dak’ir nodded solemnly. ‘I am not ready. It’s too soon after my training. I–’

‘Stop,’ Pyriel warned, gesturing to the force sword in the Lexicanum’s hand. Draugen was blazing with the psychic resonance of Dak’ir’s emotions. ‘Calm your humours, brother, and sheathe the blade now.’

As if scalded by the hilt, Dak’ir returned Draugen to its scabbard.

‘Your psychic hood,’ Pyriel added, not deigning to step any closer but content to point at the metallic collar that arced around the back of Dak’ir’s neck, ‘advance it to maximum capacity. Do it immediately.’

Dak’ir obeyed. The psychic hood was, in part, a nullifying device. It aided with the concentration of psychic force, whilst at the same time reducing the risk of its wielder succumbing to the predations of the warp. Here, Pyriel intended for it to staunch the roiling fire within his apprentice from a roar to a whisper. Gauged to maximum, the hood would prevent almost all psychic conductivity and leave Dak’ir effectively nulled.

The Epistolary hoped they had already endured all the snares left by Nihilan. His own strength was sapped and returning slowly; the Lexicanum’s could not be employed beyond seeking the Dragon Warriors’ trail. Anything more was simply too dangerous to even comprehend using. As soon as they were back on Nocturne, Pyriel avowed he would seek Vel’cona’s counsel.

Satisfied he had shackled Dak’ir sufficiently, he turned to regard the statue of the reaper.

‘Stand aside,’ he ordered.

It was standing atop a granite plinth. Only the lowest of the plinth’s stairs had sustained any lava damage.

None shall pass.

‘We are servants of the Imperium. Stand aside.’

Only the dead.

‘What’s wrong?’ Dak’ir hissed, eyeing the statue warily.

‘I don’t know,’ Pyriel replied. ‘It should yield.’

None shall pass, the reaper boomed again, and began to shift. Stone and metal creaking in protest, its massive limbs slowly extended. Its fingers gripped the haft of its power-scythe. Energy being fed down the blade filled the false creases of its robes with shadow. Its cowled face was a featureless, black void.

Only the dead.

It came forwards to descend the first step.

‘In the name of Vulkan and the Fire-born of Nocturne, I demand you step aside, automaton!’ Pyriel clenched his fist. The reaper was a formidable guardian. Fighting in his condition and with Dak’ir effectively neutered was unthinkable.

The decision was swiftly taken out of the Epistolary’s hands.

Fire-born... uttered the reaper, the timbre of its voice changing, becoming more deep and resonant. Pyriel knew at once the sound was beyond the range of its vocal-enhancers. He started to retreat, only now realising the danger they were in.

‘Mercy of Vulkan...’

The reaper dwarfed the two Salamanders, its shadow engulfed them. It raised its power-scythe, sharp enough to cleave ceramite with ease.

Nihilan had left one final surprise for them. Pyriel had just triggered it unwittingly.

As the Librarians backed away from the effigy of death, Pyriel knew there would be no escape.

Death to the Salamanders!

The scythe came down on them in a glittering arc.

Chapter Eleven

I

There be Monsters...

Monsters. That was how he would describe them. The things pursuing them through the haunted alleyways of the dark city were unlike any hounds Corporal Tonnhauser had ever seen. What was more, they were not entirely in this place. Through snatched glances, he’d seen their forms shimmering, the edges of their obscene musculature blurring. It was as if the hounds were not entirely synchronised with whatever plane of existence the survivors found themselves upon.

‘Hurry, human,’ snapped one of the giants. His green armour plate was badly battered. A gash along one side was gummed with blood. A thin line of onyx-black skin was revealed beneath an inner mesh.

Tonnhauser was no artificer or enginseer – he knew almost nothing about power armour. It was the aegis of the Space Marines. It was supposed to be almost impregnable. Surrounded by seven of these legendary warriors, ushering him and what remained of his troops through a nightmare of bladed streets and spiked structures, Varhane Tonnhauser should have felt safe. He did not.

Two of the Salamanders ranged ahead, trying to find a route through the alien byways and keep them ahead of the chasing pack. Two more roamed on either flank, the Night Devils between them. Another three served as rearguard behind. Most of Tonnhauser’s men had their heads down, some even ran with their eyes shut, clinging desperately to the belts of their fellow Guardsmen. These men were lost, just like the ones whose screaming had devolved into a piteous mewling. He didn’t blame them.

Tonnhauser’s head hurt from the shrieking of the beasts and the calls of their whelpmasters. The dark eldar were travelling behind the pack on a spiked skiff that hovered above the ground through Emperor-knew-what infernal technologies. His mind was reeling. This place was hell, Tonnhauser decided. It bent reality and twisted what he accepted as possible.

As the dark city passed by in a blur, even the sight of its barbed edges making him sicken, Tonnhauser thought of his father. He was back on Stratos and fought as part of the Air Corps. He’d wanted the same for his son, but Varhane had left as part of a planetary tithe of men and materiel to the Imperial Guard. He’d wanted to see the galaxy. If he was to die then he’d do it under a foreign sky and in the Emperor’s name.

Hunted down in the desolated streets of some alien city between realities had not been a part of his glorious vision. He didn’t know what had happened to his father. Varhane hadn’t seen or spoken to the man he knew as Colonel Abel Tonnhauser, or just ‘The Colonel’, in years, ever since he’d shipped out on the heavy lander. At that moment he hoped he’d see him again.

Tonnhauser slipped, losing his footing on a jagged spur jutting from the ground. It gashed his leg, even though it only struck a glancing blow.

‘Be mindful,’ said the giant beside him, hauling Tonnhauser along so he didn’t break stride. This one was massive, even bigger than the others. His head was squared like a block of black granite and his eyes were sunken like molten pits of fire. ‘The way ahead is sharp,’ he warned. ‘Stay with me and watch your footing. We can evade the creatures.’

At the mention of the hounds, Tonnhauser glanced over his shoulder. He wanted to believe the Salamander but their pursuers would not be shaken. Even now, they were gaining. The acid-burned hides of the beasts, shaggy with clumps of blood-flecked hair, came into greater detail as they closed. Their sulphur-yellow eyes glared hungrily. Where the skin was bare, it shimmered like oil on water. It was neither one hue nor another, but an iridescent melange of many. Faces were trapped behind that flesh, the half-devoured victims of the hounds beckoning others to join them in eternal torment.

It was no fate for a soldier, no fate for any man of flesh and blood.

When Tonnhauser started to hear their plaintive voices he turned away.

‘They’re herding us,’ said the massive Salamander. One in black, the leader and some kind of preacher, answered.

‘We have to keep moving. Be ready.’

Tonnhauser didn’t like the sound of that. A loud cry made him look behind again to see a Salamander hurl a spear into one of the beasts as it pounced.

The barbed tip of the flung missile tore into the hound’s unnatural flesh, spilling ichorous fluid akin to blood. But the beast had momentum and the warrior was borne down under its massive weight. Though impaled, the hound rent his armour plate and flesh. A welter of blood marred the green as another Salamander whacked a flat-bladed sword into the beast’s flank. This one was just a vanguard. More were coming. A third warrior, the last of the rearguard, took the creature’s head with an axe. Together the two uninjured Salamanders dragged the carcass off their fallen brother and hauled the spear-hurler back to his feet. Tonnhauser thought he must be dead. Incredibly, he managed to run.

‘Here,’ shouted another from up front. He was slighter of frame, though still bulky in his armour. He wore a perpetual snarl from some kind of burn. He beckoned towards a narrow cleft in the razor-edged avenue ahead.

Darkness within. It didn’t look like salvation to Tonnhauser. It looked like a dead end. Perhaps the Salamanders thought that too. Perhaps they’d elected to make a last stand. War could be glorious when you were engineered for it, when you were superhuman. Tonnhauser was just a man, with a man’s desires and dreams. He didn’t want to die here but if that was to be his fate then he’d meet it with the same resolve as the giants around him.

‘Give me a weapon,’ he said before realising he’d spoken.

They had almost reached the cleft. Just a few more metres…

‘Forge the armour strong,’ said the other outrider opposite the massive warrior. His voice was grating. The bloody gash in his neck – looked like it was from a garrotte – forced a rasp. ‘No weak links.’

The big warrior regarded Tonnhauser. ‘No weak links,’ he repeated, and tossed him a dagger that in the human’s hands was more like a sword.

‘Once on the other side, form up in a defensive phalanx,’ the preacher – Tonnhauser had heard them call him ‘Chaplain’ – was swift to add.

‘Make a wedge behind me,’ said the big warrior. He too carried a spear. To Tonnhauser it was massive, far too large for a man to wield, yet the giant hefted it like it was nothing. There was something old in his movements, as if he’d learned his war craft somewhere other than the place that had trained his brothers.

Tonnhauser had no more time to think on it. The Night Devils were being ushered through the gap and into the darkness within.

Seconds felt like hours as they waited. The hounds were coming. Their slavering voices presaged doom. Tonnhauser thought they were in some kind of amphitheatre. Rows of broken seats delineated a wide elliptical expanse that was strewn with debris from the upper floor. Several columns, razor-edged and sculpted with obscene and daemonic faces, had collapsed in the centre too.

Dust, disturbed upon their arrival, swelled in fat clouds. Several men coughed. It was like breathing in powdered glass. It stung Tonnhauser’s eyes enough so that when he looked up to the highest echelons and thought he saw a bulky figure flitter into view and out again, he passed it off as vision blur.

‘They are coming!’ said the big warrior. His spear was levelled and his footing braced. His brothers made an arrow behind him, two at either shoulder, two more at the shoulder of the next. The last two formed a rearguard, ready to step in should any warrior fall. Tonnhauser and the Night Devils were in the middle. The distance to the opening was barely a metre. The fighting wedge filled it. Close quarters and bloody was the how the fight was going to play out.

Tonnhauser gripped the haft of his sword and prayed to the Emperor.

‘Show Vulkan your mettle this day, Salamanders!’ Elysius was brandishing his crozius, his spitting fervour coming through his borrowed battle-helm in a roar. ‘Break them on the anvil, Fire-born.’

Ba’ken’s twin hearts were pumping hard. His Brother-Chaplain had stirred his warrior spirit. Three hounds were coming for them. The cleft was narrow, though. Unless they were breached, only one beast could get at the Salamanders at a time. Iagon had chosen well. The other sergeant was on Ba’ken’s right shoulder, wielding a serrated sword. The weapons could have come from any wielder. This hell-place was like a battlefield in parts. Ba’ken shuddered at the thought of the lives taken by it, at the sport made of the captives by its hunter packs. Simple blades and spears, large enough for Astartes to wield, had been easy to procure. They would only do so much. He wished he had his heavy flamer. But as the lead hound closed on Ba’ken, a spear would have to do.

Feels like home, he thought with a sad spike of nostalgia, back in Themis.

The Sanctuary City was another world away; more than just galactic distance separated it from the Salamander. Sentiment had no place in war. The battlefield respected only blood and sweat.

The hound reared up and Ba’ken stabbed it in the chest.

It struggled on the barbed tip of the spear, thrashing, exerting all its strength to free itself. Ba’ken stepped into its killing arc, ducking a swiping claw that would’ve taken his head had it connected. He came close, getting under the beast. The hound’s efforts only impaled it further.

‘Shoulder-to-shoulder!’ Ba’ken cried, taking a firmer grip on the spear and lunging hard. Iagon and G’heb obeyed, thunking sword and axe blade into the beast’s flank.

It howled – an unnatural and reverberant sound. Ba’ken smiled. It was hurt. He pushed harder and grunted when the barbed tip punched through the hound’s back, spraying gore.

He let go of the spear, bracing its haft diagonally against the ground. Muscles straining, Ba’ken seized the stricken beast’s forelegs and heaved. Iagon and G’heb rammed their shoulders in, lending weight.

The beast tipped over, spine cracking as it twisted awkwardly, and the spear was wrenched back through its chest.

At last it fell, oozing ichor, and rolled into a ragged heap.

‘Wedge forward,’ said Ba’ken, taking up his spear again.

Two more were coming. They appeared reluctant.

‘They recognise a hunter of the Arridian Plain before them, a man of Themis,’ Ba’ken revelled. He brandished his weapon in triumph, eager for another kill. Too late, he realised the beasts were being held back. A skiff hovered into view. A dark beam spat from the cannon on its prow.

It took Ba’ken in the shoulder, shredding the armoured pad and spinning him hard into Iagon. The two sergeants rolled and collapsed. One side of the wedge crumpled. In the same instant, the hounds were let slip. G’heb was still trying to fill the gap, L’sen and Ionnes coming from the rear to support him, when the beast smashed into him. It glowered over the Salamander, who was still flailing for his axe when the hound snapped its jaws and G’heb lost his head.

A fountain of blood spewed up from the dead warrior’s neck cavity, bathing human and Salamander alike. Some of the Night Devils were screaming in terror. Barging into the amphitheatre, the hound made room for its kin.

Elysius met the second beast with Ionnes and L’sen.

The first hound sprang off. A savage blow raked along Iagon’s flank and sent him sprawling off into the darkness. His scavenged sword scraped away along the ground, useless. Ba’ken was still coming to his senses when the loping beast came for him. On his back, he crabbed away and felt for his spear. The hound knew what its prey was attempting and trapped the haft with its paw. Hot saliva that smelled like oil and copper dribbled from its distended mouth. Up close there was something distinctly alien about these monsters. This one was partly scaled, with a long saurian maw. Its eyes were yellow pinpricks, beady and evil.

Ba’ken was about to leave the spear when the hound yelped and released the weapon as it turned about.

The human he’d given the dagger to was standing his ground in front of the beast.

A surge of pride turned to horror in Ba’ken as his saviour was struck a glancing blow by the beam weapon on the skiff. He lost the human from sight, but snatched his spear and got up. Ba’ken drove a heavy blow that skewered the hound from shoulder blade through to the gullet and out the other side. It was a vital wound and lathered the ground in viscous fluids. A death rattle sounded before the beast gave out and slumped dead.

‘Fall back!’ he heard Elysius cry, ‘Deeper into the ruins, fall back!’

The Chaplain’s crozius was drenched in blood and matter from where he’d bludgeoned the third hound to death. But more were coming, the skiff and the hunters too. The dark eldar had but one cannon. Judging by the blackened scar and the shorn ceramite of Ba’ken’s shoulder pad, it was a deadly one. He barely registered the pain. Suppressors in his bloodstream filtered it out, nulled it, but kept him alert. He left G’heb, mouthing a silent prayer to the primarch as he did so. The Salamander was dead. With no Apothecary in their ranks, G’heb’s legacy to the Chapter was sadly ended.

‘Brother-sergeant, move now!’

Elysius was calling him. Ba’ken was the last of them. He stooped as he made to retreat, finding the fallen human who had come to his aid, and hoisting him up onto his back.

‘Tonnhauser,’ he said, reading the boy’s ident-tag on his uniform. ‘I fought with another man who shared your name. He was brave too.’

Tonnhauser’s eyes widened in realisation before he passed out.

Elysius had arranged them into a circle, chunks of cracked stone from the upper tiers forming makeshift barricades in its arc.

They’d lost more of the humans when the hounds had broken through. Ba’ken counted four left, not including Tonnhauser. Dead or lost to the dark, he didn’t know. They were no use now, anyway. Those who remained cowered like children, unmanned by the nightmare they were living.

‘Hell has come, hell has come,’ one was saying, before L’sen cuffed him into unconsciousness.

‘Weak links,’ he reminded Ba’ken, as he joined them in the circle.

‘No so weak, brother,’ he replied, setting Tonnhauser down within the protective circle.

L’sen grunted, though it came out as a rasp. His eyes narrowed and Ba’ken followed their gaze.

Four more hounds entered the amphitheatre. They moved with a slow yet perverse grace, like the muscled leo’nid of the T’harken Delta and ash-adders from the Themian ridges in one. Ba’ken had hunted both of these creatures. Their pelts adorned his cave in the mountains. It was a place of peace and solitude. Like many Salamanders, when on Nocturne, Ba’ken was a loner. Only through isolation could a warrior learn self-reliance and endurance. The cave seemed very far away now but the lessons learned in its confines gave him strength.

Like the inexorable tightening of the executioner’s noose, the hounds began to circle them. Ba’ken lost sight of one when it loped up a ruined stairway to the higher levels. Suddenly, the protective cordon didn’t feel quite as impregnable.

Weak links… The words of L’sen came back to him. Except now, the chain was flawed because it no longer defended all angles of attack.

‘In the higher echelons,’ he said.

‘Eyes on the enemy around our perimeter,’ Elysius replied, holding back on another sermon for now. They would have need of them when battle was joined.

Ba’ken nodded then looked sidelong at Iagon. The other sergeant was cut up badly but had managed to retrieve his sword.

‘Don’t concern yourself with me,’ he snapped, reading his brother’s expression. ‘Look to your own protection.’ The snarl quickly faded, despite Iagon’s facial injury, and he nodded back.

‘A shame we understand each other now, only to die in a last stand,’ Ba’ken remarked.

‘It’s not over yet.’

The hounds closed again, still circling. Three of the beasts rotated between the cardinal points of the Salamanders cordon, a fourth unseen and waiting to pounce.

Instinctively, the Fire-born moved back a step and tightened the wall.

Elysius was standing on a chunk of fallen column in the middle of the circle. His vantage point gave him a commanding view. He could watch for cracks in the line. He tracked the beasts as they moved into his eye-line but never once shifted position. Instead, he used his other senses to stay aware of their stalking pattern and trusted in his brother Salamanders to remain vigilant where he could not. They all did.

Again, he thought of Vulkan’s teachings, of the crucible of fire and the need for his will to be tested. He resolved not to fail and felt a palpable hum of approval emanate from the Sigil. It was unexpected. Had he imagined it?

When the narrow cleft they’d used to enter the amphitheatre was torn apart by cannon fire, the Chaplain abandoned all thoughts but one: Fight or die.

Through a miasma of dust and crumbling stone, the skiff emerged. Long and jagged, it reminded Elysius of a blade. Much like the raider which had dumped them here, this one was festooned with skulls and other trophies. It hovered low to the ground and agonisingly slowly, all to the whistles and crowing of its alien riders.

Elysius counted six, hanging off the skimmer’s fuselage or languishing on its deckplates, males and females both – though the inherent androgyny of the dark eldar race made it difficult to tell – armed with tridents, barbed nets and whips. Sadism dripped from their every pore, from the bonded leather surplices, the leering hell-masks and spiked collars.

‘Why don’t they attack?’ asked a dazed-looking Night Devil officer.

Elysius glared down at him.

‘Because of you, human,’ he said simply. ‘Look around at your men. They are huddled in fear. The xenos are feeding on that. They are feeding on you.’

The officer grimaced but then looked up as a gargled yelp of pain resounded from the upper tier.

Elysius followed his gaze. ‘Wha–’ The carcass of one of the hounds came plummeting from on high and smashing into the skiff interrupted him. The heavy weight of vat-grown muscle and otherworldly sinew snapped the skimmer’s fuselage in two. Its occupants were sent sprawling. A moment later and something long and fast tore through the gloom, pinning one of the unseated riders before he could reach for his weapon. A thickly hafted spear transfixed him. A second rider collapsed, several hard black quarrels protruding from her neck and chest. The survivors screeched and wailed. Retaliatory fire whickered into the darkness above as they pulled out splinter rifles. Someone grunted and fell. Others were moving down to ground level. Elysius discerned maybe five ambushers, small-framed, humanoid. One in particular caught his interest, larger than the rest and using a familiar combat style. He caught a few slashes of movement then the figure was gone.

Who are you? the Chaplain wondered, but more importantly, why are you helping us?

‘Break ranks!’ Ba’ken gave the order. In the last few seconds, the hounds had faltered. He didn’t know who their allies were or what their plan was. He didn’t care. Kill the hounds, interrogate their newfound allies later. Bitter experience aboard the Archimedes Rex and the Chapter’s dealings with the Marines Malevolent had taught Ba’ken the importance of mistrust when confronted with unannounced ‘friends’.

The circle broke apart, Ba’ken and Iagon fanning warriors left and right into a dispersed attack formation. All thoughts of a last stand were forgotten in the face of the tactical alternative provided by the unseen ambushers. For that, at least, the brother-sergeant was grateful.

The hounds adapted and charged at the warriors coming for them. Without their handlers, who were still intent on punishing those who’d attacked them directly, they were savage but unfocussed. The Fire-born paired up swiftly. With G’heb slain, though, that left Ba’ken on his own until Tonnhauser and another Night Devil he didn’t know arrived at his side. Elysius, too, fought solo but then the Chaplain needed no assistance. Even with only one arm, he was a prodigious fighter.

‘Stay behind me,’ Ba’ken told both his charges. ‘I’ll draw it out. When it comes for me, attack its blind side.’

Tonnhauser and the other trooper nodded, their faces etched with determination. Both paled when the beast rushed them. Barrelling out of the darkness, clouds of grit and glass displaced in its wake, the hound was phantasmal. Horror piled on horror as its slitted eyes blazed and three fleshy flaps opened wide to reveal a grotesque tri-pronged maw. Lashing the air, its puckered tongue slavered at the approach of the kill.

Slowed by his earlier injury, Ba’ken failed to move quick enough and the hound raked his side as he tried to dodge it.

‘Hnnng!’

Three deep grooves tore up the right flank of his ceramite. The inner mesh hung ragged and open like skin. Ba’ken staggered but kept his body between the beast and the humans.

The Night Devils managed to stay clear, hurrying behind the Salamander as he angled to face the hound for another pass. It turned swiftly for such a brute and was on them again moments later. Ba’ken jabbed, using the spear haft’s full length, and caught it in the shoulder. The hound snarled in pain but the blow was weak and glanced off its muscled body, leaving an ichorous gash but nothing more. It swatted the Salamander, putting a fresh crack in his armour’s plastron and punching him onto his back. He held onto the spear and jabbed again. The beast evaded Ba’ken’s thrusts, pausing to rend the unknown Night Devil who’d rushed it with his bladed staff. The human died gurgling blood, his throat ripped out. Tonnhauser jumped over the trooper’s slowly crumpling form to hack at the beast with his sword. He got in close, taking a piece of ear, but was butted in the chest for his bravura. Ba’ken heard the crack of broken ribs. A strange wheeze escaped Tonnhauser’s lips as he sagged and fell, clutching his chest.

The distraction was enough for the Salamander to regain his feet.

‘Come on, you ugly spawn,’ he spat with a gobbet of his own blood.

His mind went back to Themis. Just a boy then, he had faced a wounded leo’nid on the Arridian Plain. Ba’ken, or Sol as he was known when he was a child, had tracked the beast for days. His snare had injured it, slowed the creature so he could finally confront it. Sol had come from a large family – the memories of them were indistinct and hazy now, subjugated by his Astartes conditioning – the leo’nid had slain nearly half of them when it came upon their camp four nights previously. A mean, scarred brute, its scaled haunches were leathery with age and its tendril-mane ropey and thick. Sharp, yellow eyes spoke of cunning but they also contained malice. It was a killer. Ba’ken had faced death on the plain that day and triumphed. The leo’nid’s pelt was a trophy of special significance. In the xenos hound he fought a similar beast. The old instincts returned.

As he rolled the spear in his grasp, Ba’ken became dimly aware of the other battles unfolding around him. The rest of the hounds were going down hard, too. He saw L’sen in his peripheral vision, unmoving on the ground. Somewhere, Elysius was raging with litanies of hate. The whelp creatures were fast, but so were his brothers. Several skirmishes played out at once with incredible pace and intensity.

Ba’ken lunged as the hound charged again and tore into its chest this time. Momentum kept the beast going. Warp-fuelled muscle met genetically enhanced physique and one broke. For Ba’ken, it was like being hit by a Land Raider. Super-hardened bones broke with an audible crack as the big warrior was boosted off his feet and hoisted into the air.

For a moment, the hot sun of the Arridian Plain bathed his face and the scent of the leo’nid filled his nostrils... Like smoke banished before the breeze, the sensations disintegrated and he was in the dusty amphitheatre again. He clutched his spear, twisting and yanking it to increase the damage, hoping to find a vital organ. Ba’ken landed hard. Searing agony crippled his wrist, and not from the fall. The beast’s jaws were clamped tight around it. The sheer strength of the hound lifted Ba’ken ferociously into the air again, his wrist the fulcrum about which he was being thrashed.

Dark spots blossomed in front of his eyes and his pumping blood thundered in his ears. If he’d still worn his helmet the damage readouts on his retinal display would be flashing amber. Even the leo’nid hadn’t taken him this close. He was dying.

Elysius caved in the monster’s skull with his crozius. An ignited mace would’ve made the task easier, but the weapon killed well enough. Breathing rapidly despite his superhuman physiology, he tried to get some bearing on the battle. His Fire-born were still engaged with the beasts, well dispersed around the amphitheatre but fighting hard. L’sen was dead – the Chaplain didn’t need a red rune in his absent retinal display to know that much. The anvil had broken many – Elysius mourned them all.

Then he saw Ba’ken.

Tossed into the air, his wrist a bloody ruin, the giant Salamander would not live out the fight. Elysius was running, shouting something he couldn’t make out even though it came from his own lips. Too many were dead, lost to this hell-place and so far from the mountain. He couldn’t lose another.

Ba’ken hit the ground and rolled. He came up on his elbows, spitting blood. The beast landed on top of him before he could drag himself clear. A savage blow ripped a chunk out of his generator. The latent hum in Ba’ken’s power armour ebbed.

Even with the aegis of his battle-plate intact, there was no way he could survive another attack.

The Chaplain was still several metres away.

He’ll be slain before I can reach him.

One more sundered against the anvil.

At least Elysius would have vengeance.

A black shadow surging from the hound’s blind side denied both. It moved with power and purpose, slamming into the beast to dislodge it. Fists clenched, Ba’ken’s saviour punched the hound’s flank. Like a freight sentinel hauling a heavy load, the figure kept on moving. Legs driving like pistons, the black-armoured warrior upended the beast. With a shallow cry, he leapt on its back, fists stabbing though he had no visible weapons.

Elysius closed and he saw the bone-blades. Now he knew what manner of Space Marine it was who’d saved Ba’ken’s life.

He beheld a monster before him. This was a savage, feral thing. Fangs filled the beast’s mouth, a calcified crest bifurcated his forehead. Swathed in gore, blood streaking his armour, he was an apparition, a nightmare made flesh. But then what else but nightmares and monsters could survive in a place such as this?

The beast was long dead before the warrior stopped stabbing. He looked up, the efforts of his grisly labours sprayed across a snarling visage. Wild eyes regarded Elysius, and for a moment the Chaplain assumed a battle posture. Slowly, reluctantly, the fervour dulled and the battle ended.

The hounds were dead. They were all dead.

A circlet of Salamanders surrounded Ba’ken, the slain beast and his strange protector.

‘Brother...’ said the big warrior, offering his hand.

‘Stand down!’ The bone-blade was at Ba’ken’s throat in an eye-blink. Several of the Fire-born moved, but Elysius stayed them with a glance. The feral warrior was indeed a Space Marine, one who wore black armour. His Chapter signifier was so degraded as to be all but lost. Elysius knew his origins, though. It was why he made the others hold. A rash move here and Ba’ken’s life-blood would be washing the ground.

The black-armoured warrior cast around him like an animal cornered by its hunters. He kept the bone-blade, protruding from his very flesh, at Ba’ken’s neck. An inching step forwards by Iagon made him press the edge closer and draw a bead of blood.

‘No closer,’ he warned, his voice a deep-throated snarl with an almost saurian cadence. His yellow eyes glared at Ba’ken. ‘Name thyself! Do it now or suffer the same fate.’ He gestured to the butchered hound.

With the bone-blade pressing on Ba’ken’s gullet it was hard to speak without rasping. ‘Brother Ba’ken,’ he said, ‘Of the Salamanders 3rd Company.’

The feral warrior’s breath was like spoiled meat as he leaned in close. Chunks of gristle were wedged between his ruddy fangs.

‘You are far from home, sons of Vulkan. What are you doing here on the Volgorrah Reef? Answer swiftly!’

‘Not before you answer a question for me, brother,’ Elysius interrupted. In his urgency to reach Ba’ken, he was closer than any of the other Fire-born. ‘Who are you?’ His tone was stern, unyielding. He would show this Astartes iron, and he would respect him for it.

Feral eyes narrowed. The bone-blade was kept close. Trust was evidently not one of the warrior’s virtues.

‘Zartath,’ he said, ‘of the Black Dragons.’

A tremor of unease ran around the Fire-born at the mention of the Chapter. To some amongst the Astartes ranks, the name ‘Black Dragons’ was a byword for ‘cursed’ or ‘aberrant’. Certainly, with their onyx skin and eyes of fire, the Salamanders had their fair share of detractors. It was part of the reason why honour and humanity were such important tenets of their belief structure. But this black-armoured warrior before them, his face a mask of blood, barely restrained murder in his eyes, was... a mutant.

‘Zartath,’ Elysius didn’t move and kept his tone level, ‘we are brothers here. Let him go.’

The Chaplain knew something of the 21st Founding. It occurred before the Age of Apostasy, during the 36th millennium, and was the largest single tithe of Astartes since the glorious 2nd Founding so many years before. A ‘Cursed Founding’, some had said. Something was wrong with the Chapters created during its genesis. The reasons why were not known to him. He did know, however, that the Black Dragons were amongst those charged as aberrant. Their deviancies were obvious. Bony growths from the elbows, fists and forehead were monstrous and abhorred. If rumours were to be believed then the Apothecarion of the Black Dragons encouraged such mutancy, nurtured it. Correlation between the bone-growths and increased aggression and feral temperament amongst the Chapter’s battle-brothers had never been established. As a survivor in an alien dimension, doubtless having been hunted and tortured, Zartath was hardly a fitting subject for study to prove or disprove that theory.

Elysius had fought with the Black Dragons before. He had known one of their number well. Ushorak had betrayed them. He had orchestrated the betrayal of others. It was long ago, but the wound was still fresh.

Zartath hadn’t moved. His breathing was elevated, his plastron heaving up and down with nervous regularity.

‘Release him, brother. Right now.’ Elysius gestured to the Salamanders around them.

The Black Dragon didn’t relent. Instead, he smiled, showing off the bloodied ranks of his spine-like teeth. ‘Did you think I survived this place for so long alone?’

The staccato snap of racking weapon slides filled the amphitheatre.

Elysius and the others looked up and saw twenty ragged human warriors emerge from their hiding places amongst the higher echelons. Almost half were armed with automatic weapons, stubbers, shotguns and heavy-bore rifles. Some carried heavy crossbows or bows. One other Astartes, also a Black Dragon, aimed a bolter.

Too many were dead already; Elysius wanted no further blood to mar his hand, especially if it could be avoided.

‘I am not alone,’ Zartath muttered darkly.

Mag-locking his crozius to his armour, Elysius then removed his battle-helm. It was the first time he had openly showed his face in over a century.

His eyes were penetrating. ‘You see me now for what I am – an ally. So, tell me Black Dragon, will you slay him and force me to end your life and the lives of your men or will you accept me as your brother?’

Still the bone-blade didn’t move.

Elysius ignored the shocked glances of his kin, offering his hand.

‘Decide quickly. Friend or foe?’

II

Fire and Stone

Flight went against a Salamander’s every instincts. Astartes were bred to ignore fear, to compartmentalise it and lock it away.

And they shall know no fear.

It was amongst the oldest edicts, since the time of the Great Crusade, when the Space Marines were young and they could still dream of untainted glory. Salamanders were stoic like no other. They would stand and fight when many had long left the field of battle. No cause was ever lost. No Chapter ever fought as tenaciously. It was Vulkan’s legacy and it had stood for millennia.

As the power-scythe came down between them, splitting the ravaged earth in two, Pyriel and Dak’ir fell back. A torrent of shells from Pyriel’s bolt pistol traced an explosive line that stitched the reaper’s flank. Barely a scratch registered after the fire and smoke had died. A half-aimed shot from Dak’ir’s plasma pistol had similar effect. The reaper was unscathed.

‘It’s tougher than Dreadnought armour,’ the Lexicanum gasped, snapping off another ineffectual shot. Streams of plasma ran off its granite-grey skin like water on oil. The golem-creature was advancing swiftly, its servos warmed up and impelling it to increase motion.

‘Try to hold it off,’ Pyriel replied, his pistol’s muzzle flare lighting up his battle-helm. He’d stowed his force staff. He was too exhausted to wield it.

They backed away further as the reaper came on, its power-scythe poised.

With the physical weapons the two Librarians possessed, the reaper was unkillable.

But Dak’ir had something more in his arsenal. It lapped at the mental bulwarks of his mind like a turbulent sea.

Unleash it. Let it all burn...

‘I can destroy it.’ Dak’ir went to the psychic hood’s dampener. One twist and the power, eager for release, would return.

Pyriel flashed a furious glance at him. ‘No! You’ll kill us both. Maybe even level the catacombs and the cryptoria beyond.’

‘I can vanquish it with a thought, master. Let me save us.’ It craved release. The power within him wanted to be let slip.

Feed me with your will.

He was taken back to the subterranean depths of Mount Deathfire where’d fought the giant of onyx. On the precipice’s edges, the lake of fire churning below, the monster had nearly ended his life. He was stronger now. A ripple of power jolted through him like a miniature shock wave, threatening to overload the psychic hood and throw open the mental flood gates.

‘Harness it, brother,’ Pyriel was imploring. He couldn’t make Dak’ir stop, all he had left was reason. ‘Don’t become like Nihilan.’

Like ice down his spine, Pyriel’s words chilled him.

Nihilan... The sorcerer had trod a similar path. Pyriel had trained with him. Pyriel had betrayed him. There was no choice.

The universal truth of it resonated in Dak’ir’s mind like a bolter shot and brought with it a startling revelation. The flame within him was a monster, something he couldn’t exert his influence over. It had to be shackled. His hand fell away from the dampener. The reaper was upon them.

Dak’ir flung himself aside, the scythe parting rock where his head had been a moment before. Debris shorn off by the blow cascaded onto his armour. A burst of gunfire from Pyriel dragged the golem-creature’s attention away. The Epistolary was more than a mere Librarian, he was a warrior with warrior instincts and took up a position on the reaper’s blind side.

Despite its size and strength, the golem-creature was still just an automaton, little more than a servitor. Even the psychic impel left behind by Nihilan couldn’t change that. It could be manipulated, goaded like any mindless, unthinking monster. Oil flowed in its veins instead of blood, machine parts not muscles drove it, but it was still just a thing.

Pyriel drew it on, all the while his psychic strength returning.

++We make for the doorway++ he said through the comm-feed.

In the brief respite his master had provided, Dak’ir replaced his battle-helm. ++We are to escape? What about the cryptoria? We must gain access–++

Another line of bolter shells strafed the pseudo-stone hide of the reaper, stalling but not stopping it. Pyriel was already moving again before the last round had detonated.

++Trust me, Dak’ir. Make for the doorway. I will not be far behind you++

Though he didn’t like it, Dak’ir ran for the doorway to the lair. He closed the distance in a few seconds, not even looking back as he burst through a short corridor and into the labour tunnels. The hot glow of the incinerators bathed his armour as he stood upon the bridge. Bent wholly on their work, the army of toiling serfs didn’t even acknowledge his sudden arrival let alone cease what they were doing.

Halfway across the bridge, Dak’ir waited for Pyriel.

Beneath him, a caged sea of fire raged and spat. A sense of realisation awakened within him. Nothing could withstand those flames…

++Master?++ It was taking too long, Pyriel should have appeared by now. Dak’ir was about to go back when the Epistolary rushed from the gloom. His bolt pistol was holstered and he was clutching his force staff when he reached the apprentice.

‘Stand firm,’ Pyriel told him. His breathing was laboured and there were energy-seared chips in his armour.

‘Master…’

Pyriel’s red eyes flashed angrily. ‘Stand firm,’ he repeated in a stern voice.

A second later and the forbidding effigy of the reaper emerged from the darkness, death incarnate.

It had to bend to get through the archway into the labour tunnels, servos protesting in an automated squeal. The reaper was supposed to be confined to its lair; it was not meant for the labour tunnels. Warp-sorcery had corrupted its central programming. The doctrina wafers slotted into its cerebral cortex were just blackened fragments of overridden data impulses. A slave to Nihilan’s psychic command, the reaper stepped out onto the bridge.

It swung its power-scythe, leaving a trail of latent energy humming on the air.

Dak’ir’s body tensed. His instincts screamed to attack or take a tactically superior position. Pyriel refuted both.

‘Hold,’ he said.

The bridge was narrow, at least for the reaper. Compelled it might be, but it still couldn’t throw its machine-life away recklessly, so advanced with slow purpose.

‘Hold,’ Pyriel continued, aware of the hypno-conditioned battle responses flooding Dak’ir’s brain – they were flooding his own, too.

A crackle of energy went up the haft of the force staff, a primer for what was to come.

The reaper was a few short metres away; the death arc of its scythe even less than that.

‘Lexicanum…’ Pyriel’s eyes were ablaze with cerulean blue fire.

The psychic echo of his thoughts resonated in Dak’ir’s mind, a command unspoken but understood all the same. He gripped the force staff with his master and channelled the small tributary of his psychic strength into the weapon where Pyriel could mould it.

It was called conclave, when two or more Librarians shared their mind-strength and unleashed it together.

Dak’ir could not control his powers, not at their apex, not yet, but he could siphon a portion of it into the staff for Pyriel to focus and direct.

Within striking distance, the reaper uttered its last.

Death to the Salamanders.

‘Death to traitors,’ snarled Pyriel, ‘and all who serve them!’ A bolt of fire surged from the end of the staff, slamming into the reaper to send it staggering. There was enough force to push it to the end of the bridge, where it teetered, swinging its scythe in impotent rage.

Rushing forwards, Pyriel fired the last of his bolt pistol’s rounds. ‘Finish it!’

Following his master’s mark, Dak’ir put a trio of plasma bolts into the reaper’s scorched torso.

Like a slab of mountain surrendering itself to the elements as it collapsed into oblivion, the reaper held on for a moment and then fell. Heavy like a gunship, the golem-creature smashed straight through the cage, killing a swathe of serfs on its way, before crashing into the incinerator. Hot flames lapped around its body, which was suspended for a few seconds on a bubbling lava bed before it finally sank and was gone.

Together, the Librarians watched it die. Klaxons were sounding below. Servitors and maintenance crews emerged from bulkhead-sealed hatches. The incinerator’s work must not be interrupted. The dead would not wait. The corpses were endless and the machine would go on. It was paramount the cage be repaired and the labour-serfs replaced. It took just minutes.

‘Another Imperial servant turned to Chaos,’ Pyriel muttered. He sounded bitter.

‘What did you mean,’ asked Dak’ir, ‘when you said “don’t become like Nihilan”?’

Bowing his head, Pyriel sighed. It was like he’d been burdened by a sudden invisible weight.

‘It was long ago,’ he answered in a quiet voice, ‘Before Moribar. I was a Lexicanum then with aspirations of becoming a Codicier. Nihilan, too.’

‘You were battle-brothers?’ Dak’ir tried to keep the disbelief from his voice. He hadn’t known the strength of connection of between his master and his nemesis.

‘Yes, but that was before...’ Pyriel tailed off, uncomfortable at unearthing the old bones of his life.

‘What happened?’

The Epistolary faced his apprentice. The flame glow in his eyes dimmed with regret.

‘He fell.’

A memory, dredged from Dak’ir’s mind, came out in his reply.

‘We were only supposed to bring them back.’

‘What?’

‘Back here,’ Dak’ir gestured to the fiery chasm below and the hard rock around them, ‘more than four decades ago, I dreamed of it. Nihilan led a minor rebellion. He and the others weren’t meant to be our enemies. They were wayward sons, polluted by a stronger mind.’

‘Ushorak had a gift.’ The praise was given through clenched teeth.

‘Like the traitorous scions of Lorgar.’

‘It wasn’t a rebellion, though,’ Pyriel corrected his apprentice. ‘It was him and one other. They weren’t the Dragon Warriors then. That came much later, though when exactly we do not know. It was a travesty, wrought by Ushorak’s hand – all of it.’

‘Some do not want to be brought back, some can’t. An old friend told me that.’

‘Who?’

‘Fugis. It was one of the last things he said to me before Stratos. Cirrion came soon after that. And the Aura Hieron…’

‘We’ve lost much.’ Pyriel didn’t need to be psychic to read Dak’ir’s thoughts.

‘Fugis isn’t dead, master. Our Apothecary will return from the Burning Walk.’

Pyriel’s tone verged on paternal. ‘Such hope… I always liked that about you, Dak’ir.’

The image of Fugis’s corpse, putrefying in the ship’s hold in Dak’ir’s vision came back to the Lexicanum unbidden.

‘He will return.’

‘Alive or dead, lost or returned, it matters not. I won’t stand by and let further destruction be waged upon us.’ Pyriel gestured towards the doorway at the end of the bridge. It was cracked, the stone splintered where the reaper had forced itself through. ‘The way is open. We make for the cryptoria,’ he added, trudging back across the causeway. It wasn’t fatigue making him weary – any Astartes could overcome that as easily as they could wield a bolter or chainsword – it was sorrow.

Dak’ir followed him in silence.

If the catacombs of Moribar represented the lowest level of squalor for the dead then here, further below, was the very peak of opulence.

Gilded mausoleums, silver-chased crypts, tombs of cut marble and crystal obelisks lined a concourse of pristine alabaster that ran throughout the entire cryptoria. It was a vast space, the equal of any starship’s footprint, and teemed with the interred dead. Heady incense flooded the air, overwhelming the grave-dust stink and ash-soaked reek of the pauper levels. The entranceway was immense, like the triumphal arch of some great cathedra or palace. Effigies of saints and ecclesiarchs were carved into its columns. Vines of onyx rose, strangle-ivy and helsbane wreathed the arch from base to apex. This great gate was open but shielded by a force-field that sparked and cracked as the minute specks of dust collided with it.

Passing through it required disabling the field long enough to walk the connecting chamber. The reaper was its intended guardian and with it destroyed, getting into the cryptoria was a matter of lowering the shield via a control port. Even still, the hermetically sealed environment beyond the force-field had to be preserved. Before Pyriel and Dak’ir had reached the other side of the conduit, air-scrubbing servo-skulls were sanitising the atmosphere.

Ranks of servitors tended expansive grounds, which were lush with manicured lawns and topiaried flora. A damp patina of vapour swathed the Librarians’ armour. The air was heavy with oxygen and hydrogen to maintain the health of the cryptoria’s gardens.

Pyriel paused on the road, absorbing the view. There were skulls embedded beneath him, their eye sockets glistening with jewels, bleached white and inscribed with litanies for the deceased.

‘Hard to believe that utopia exists amongst all this death.’

A fluttering of censer-bearing cherubim drew his eye up to a false firmament of starry glass. They were internal lume-globes, their polished silver as bright as a solar flare. Through the flocks of cyb-organic creatures above, it bathed the world in microcosm below with a refulgent aura.

Dak’ir was unmoved. All he saw was ash, and the rendering of what the cryptoria could be if the flame inside him was unleashed.

‘It’s as grey as the rest of Moribar.’

‘Perhaps…’ They were walking again, following the concourse.

The air was cold, sanitised. It ghosted through Dak’ir’s mouth-grille.

‘I can feel it.’

‘The voice?’ asked Pyriel.

‘Yes, it speaks still. Our enemies came this way.’

‘Can you discern the speaker?’

‘It’s in thrall, in a limbo between realities. The agony gives it resonance. Up ahead… here.’

A crypt of black obsidian stood out amongst the throng of tombs. It was grand, imposing. Whoever this monument was meant to commemorate had been wealthy. Incredibly so.

‘Do you recognise that mark?’ Pyriel pointed out a simple icon steam-carved into the glassy rock.

Dak’ir shook his head.

‘It is a dynastic sigil, one associated with a house of rogue traders. This one was a technocrat.’

Crouching down, Dak’ir traced an armoured finger across the sigil. It was the icon of a man, split in two and with his legs and arms splayed in a star shape. One half was flesh, the other metal.

‘How can you know, master?’

‘Because I’ve seen it before, emblazoned on one of the dynasty’s vessels.’

Dak’ir turned.

‘When Nihilan and I were neophytes, we fought a campaign with the Black Dragons,’ said Pyriel, by way of explanation. ‘Ushorak commanded our allies. Captain Kadai led the Fire-born, as he always did.’

Dak’ir stood. ‘None of this is in the Chapter records.’

Pyriel gave a sniff of amusement. ‘I daresay Elysius could unearth something. It was buried deep, much of it proscribed except to the higher ranks, and the darkest accounts to the Reclusiam only.’

‘Ushorak’s damnation,’ Dak’ir guessed.

‘The inception of it, yes.’

The Lexicanum regarded the crypt. It was, after all, the reason they had come to the grey world.

‘Do you know who is buried here, who Ushorak coerced into serving him?’

Pyriel shook his head. ‘No. But whatever knowledge is held by them, once in life and now in death, must be terrible indeed for Nihilan to have followed his master’s intended path as far as he has.’

The Epistolary held out his hand, palm flat to the crypt.

‘Stay very still,’ he warned.

Dak’ir watched and waited.

After a few seconds a dull, red glow suffused Pyriel’s hand. The air grew heavy with heat, the vapour-laden atmosphere boiling off into clouds of steam against it.

The voice came first, no longer just in Dak’ir’s psychic consciousness but aloud for anyone to hear. It was screaming, intermittent and as if from a great distance. The pitch rose and fell as an image, struggling to resolve itself, stretched and yawned.

Slowly, the outline of a figure shimmered into existence. It was a shade of sorts, a warp echo. Dak’ir was reminded of the apparitions they’d fought at Aphium and the Imperial bastion of Mercy Rock. A dark canker had infected that place, filled with disquiet energy that had manifested in the tortured revenants of the dead. The thing before him, twisting in its ethereal agonies, was uncomfortably familiar.

Pyriel’s hand was shaking and he’d twisted it into a claw. His fingers flexed as if pulling on the invisible skeins between the mortal world and the other.

‘He struggles...’ said the Epistolary in a strained voice. He still hadn’t fully recovered from the ordeal against the reaper, ‘but I have him. Ask of it.’

Dak’ir could feel the emanations of the warp echo tugging at the edges of his mind. It sent a spike of empathic pain through his fingertips as he reached out like his master to mentally brush against the void.

‘Who are you?’ asked the Lexicanum.

The baleful eyes of the revenant were like cold blue lampfires, the body itself incorporeal and transparent. As it lifted its chin, Pyriel seizing the invisible string that bound it, it smiled and then opened its mouth.

At first, its utterances were out of synch with its lolling jaw movements. The voice came out in a deep rasping timbre, slowed to the point of incomprehension. Like muscles that had atrophied with the weight of years, so too had the revenant’s ability to speak been degenerated.

‘Again,’ Pyriel urged. ‘It will remember how.’

Dak’ir refocussed, using what little psychic power the dampener afforded to impel the revenant.

‘Your name, creature, speak it to me now.’

‘Caaaaaaalllllleeeeebbbbbbb...’

It came out as a moan, drawn out and abyssal deep.

‘Caaaallleebbb...’

Clearer this time, the resonance was fading.

‘Caleb,’ Dak’ir repeated to the shade, understanding.

‘Caleb Kelock,’ it uttered.

Like a partially recorded pict, fraught with static, the image of a man flickered in front of the Lexicanum. The spiritual personification of Kelock wore a fine suit in the manner of the rogue traders with a brocaded jacket and attached cape. A thin strip of beard ran the length of his chin, ending in an arrow at the very tip. He wore gloves and his knee-length boots shone with an ethereal echo of what they must’ve been like when Kelock was still living.

Dak’ir realised it was the man’s funerary attire, that if they wrenched open the crypt they would find a decayed and eroded version of these clothes attached like strips of flesh to a skeleton.

‘Who did this to you, who trapped your essence between worlds?’ Dak’ir asked. Back on Aphium the warp echoes malingered because they had unfinished business. They craved peace that could only be brought about by blood-retribution. The Salamanders had granted them their vengeance and so lifted their curse on Mercy Rock.

Kelock was no unquiet spirit, he was a prisoner.

His incorporeal face twisted with anger and the lampfires in his eyes blazed.

‘Your kind,’ he accused.

‘Ushorak,’ Dak’ir muttered, feeling the chill of the technocrat’s ire as it formed ice on his battle plate. ‘Black armour,’ he said to the shade, indicating his partly frozen suit.

Kelock nodded, forming an angry scowl.

‘Dak’ir…’ It was Pyriel. His voice sounded strained. ‘Hurry up. I can’t hold it… indefinitely.’

The Lexicanum was about to go on when the solar glare bathing them from above suddenly died. A grey pall settled quickly over the massive cemetery. The lawns lost their lustre, the glory of its monuments seemed faded and dull. Hope and warmth bled away. It was the ashen wasteland Dak’ir had first imagined. How different the cryptoria appeared with the absence of light.

Shadows were moving through its benighted depths. They flashed like balefires in Dak’ir’s retinal display. Minimal heat traces. He remembered the hordes of servitors tending the funerary gardens. Picks and shears could easily be turned into weapons. He suspected these creatures served a dual purpose – groundsmen and guardians, both.

Rain was falling. Only it wasn’t really rain. It was the vapour in the atmosphere, condensed into heavy droplets in order to simulate rain. In seconds it turned from a light shower into a downpour.

‘Something is coming…’ Heavy rain hammered on Dak’ir’s battle plate, turning the ingrained ash into black slurry. The glowing embers of mechanical optics were closing on the Librarians.

‘Then our time here is ended,’ Pyriel had to snarl through clenched teeth. He was hanging on to Kelock’s apparition, but only just.

The shade flickered briefly out of existence before resolving again.

‘What secrets did the Traitor glean from you, technocrat? Answer me and your torment will be ended.’

Kelock beckoned him with an emaciated finger. Without time to wait, Dak’ir came forwards.

‘Sto–’

Pyriel’s warning arrived too late, the substance of it lost to a chorus of screams in Dak’ir’s head as the apparition clenched his fingers around the Salamander’s battle helm.

Images flooded the Lexicanum’s mind in hypno-conditioned flashes as Kelock divulged all that he knew and had seen in a single, cathartic release. For a brief moment, apparition and Astartes became one. Their disparate chronologies, both living and dead, fused. Threads of fate bound them together. One entity, one shared history. Awareness was like a lightning strike and Dak’ir was its grounding rod.

Dak’ir staggered, falling to one knee. He shuddered once then again. Etheric smoke was rising from his armour. Ripples of energy coursed ephemerally over the ceramite, turning the blue edges black.

‘Release him…’ he breathed when it was over, acutely aware of the servitors tramping closer. He had everything they needed. The truth of it made him feel hollow.

‘I cannot,’ Pyriel admitted, and an anguished Kelock blinked out of existence.

Dak’ir managed to stand. The servitors were still coming, just a few metres away. Their bladed implements shone in the half-light. ‘I made a vow.’

‘Which I broke. Only Ushorak or Nihilan can free the shade.’

Dak’ir glared at his master. ‘Show me how to bring him back and I’ll do it myself.’ He unsheathed Draugen, ready for the servitors, but kept the blade dulled.

Pyriel turned to face their attackers. They were close enough to strike. ‘No time,’ he said, unlocking his force staff. The Epistolary whirled it around his body, severing a mechanised spine with the first arc, punching through a servitor’s stomach with a heavy thrust at the end of the move.

Dak’ir cut down a third, cleaving it from shoulder to groin. Oil spewed to the ground in thick gouts, wires dangling like intestine. He sliced the head from a fourth, the automaton collapsing first to its knees and then falling face-forwards. The earth was churned beneath their feet, becoming mired.

They were all dead, not traitors or possessed machines, just loyal Imperial servants doing their duty. It left a bitter taste, but more were coming. These first few were just a proximal vanguard.

‘What happened?’ Pyriel couldn’t wait to ask. ‘What did the technocrat show you?’

Dak’ir’s eyes narrowed, the slits of fire in them turning into blades. He wrenched out his plasma pistol.

He declined to answer.

‘We have defiled this place. Our sacrilege is no better than that of Ushorak.’ A sizzling bolt tore a chunk from the base of a tall obelisk and sent it crashing like a felled tree into the path of more servitors. Those that escaped being crushed were suddenly impeded.

There was a note of desperation in Pyriel’s voice as he reached for Dak’ir. ‘Lexicanum, I must know.’

They were advancing along an oblique line, moving away from their attackers but keeping them in sight as they did. The few that reached the Salamanders Pyriel destroyed with efficient but deadly blows from his force staff. He was a master in more senses than merely the psychic. Dak’ir had heard about the Epistolary’s staff-fighting rotas. He followed the tribal katas of Heliosa, his Sanctuary City, blended with the pole-arm drills of Master Prebian.

‘Dak’ir!’

The Lexicanum ripped off his battle helm. Rivulets of fake rain teemed down his face. There was pain and disbelief in his eyes.

‘I saw the end,’ he said. ‘I saw Nocturne’s doom.’

With the mangled wreckage of the servitors around them, Pyriel and Dak’ir ran.

Master glanced at apprentice as they sped through the tombs, their pursuers dogged behind them. A few had swelled to almost fifty. More were gathering, consolidating with the pack.

Nocturne’s doom.

It was just as the armour suits from Scoria had predicted.

Chapter Twelve

I

Allies and Traitors

Elysius was stunned. He’d hit his head in the fall. No, that wasn’t right. He hadn’t fallen. Argos had pushed him.

G’ord was dead. His blood washed the walls in long, grisly trails. Elysius’s enhanced olfactory senses rankled with the stink of copper.

The screaming cut through the fog of dizziness. He recognised the voice. It was Argos. As the blurring went away, Elysius saw his brother Scout collapse with his hands to his face. His smoking, steaming face. Where the acid burned it. The acid meant for Elysius.

He still had a partial clip of shells. The auto-readout glowed ugly red. Enough. His aim was off. Elysius could barely see. Argos, now with one hand on his ravaged face, tried to fend the xenos off with his combat blade. Once it closed, Argos would meet the same fate as G’ord.

Elysius yanked on the trigger and filled the tunnel with the bolt pistol’s noise and fire. The first shell struck the ’stealer in the torso, pitched it back so it slammed into the wall. The second and third punched into vital organs. The resulting explosion from the mass-reactive rounds bathed the immediate area around the creature with xenos viscera.

There’d be no tracking it now. Mission fail.

Holding his wounded arm to his chest, Elysius managed to stumble to his fallen battle-brother.

‘You saved my–’ The sight of Argos’s acid-maimed visage made him stop. One hand could barely cover such a horrific injury. Angry red flesh, bubbling and burn-twisted, glared from between trembling fingers. He was going into shock.

‘Get up,’ Elysius heaved Argos’s free arm over his shoulder and supported him. The wounded Scout’s footing was unsteady but he could walk.

‘Why did you do that?’

The voice that replied was a grating parody of the battle-brother Elysius used to know. ‘You would’ve too… What about G’ord?’

‘He’s dead, and no Apothecary will revive him or his gene-seed.’

They struggled forwards, the two of them. Elysius managed to raise the comm-feed in his armoured collar.

‘Command echelon, this is Squad Kabe requesting assistance.’

++Speak, brother. This is Captain Kadai++

‘My lord, our mission has failed. We are trapped in the sewer tunnels, Argent Quadrant East, and require extraction. Threats proximate and numerous.’

Elysius was guiding them away from the caved-in entrance and deeper into the sewer network. It meant drawing closer to the nest.

++Engage your emergency beacon. We will be with you soon, brother. Fortitude of Vulkan. Faith in the Anvil++’

‘In his name, my lord.’

The comm-feed returned to static as the link was severed. Elysius shut it off. It could be hours before they were found. He clicked the emergency beacon in his collar, part of the mission failsafe should the tracker be misdeployed.

‘I can walk unaided,’ said Argos. That throaty rasp, robbed of its humanity, so unlike him.

‘You’ve suffered a massive trauma. You are in no fit condition to do much of anything unaided.’

‘I can walk alone.’

Elysius let him go, surprised to see that Argos could do just as he’d said he could. He lowered his hand and the view made Elysius grimace.

‘It’s bad, isn’t it? The pain is lessening. My body compensates.’

‘I am so sorry, brother. My hubris brought this upon you, upon G’ord.’ The cooling corpse of the dead Scout was behind them now, but the copper stink remained like an accusation in Elysius’s nostrils.

‘You were prosecuting the mission. How’s your arm? Can you fight with it?’

Elysius tested it. Stiff, but the blood had clotted. He was healing. The marvels of Astartes physiology, even that of a lowly Scout, continued to amaze him.

‘Bolter and blade,’ he replied, brandishing both.

‘That beacon will transmit all the way to the surface?’ said Argos, pointing at his brother’s flashing collar.

‘Brother-Captain Kadai is tracking us as we speak, leading an extraction team. Why do you ask?’

Argos checked the load on his bolt pistol and the two spare clips mag-locked to his belt. ‘Secondaries?’ he asked.

Elysius showed him the two extra clips attached to his own belt.

Argos nodded. ‘A beacon in the hands of two Astartes Scouts is better than any tracker bolt.’

‘You want us to find the nest?’ Elysius couldn’t hide his incredulity.

‘We must be close.’

Elysius laughed. It would be one of the last times he ever did, and his mirth was tainted with fatalism.

‘Into the fires of battle then, brother,’ he said.

Argos racked the slide of his bolt pistol. The auto-readout snapped to ‘MAX’.

‘Unto the anvil of war, and may death take us should we be found lacking.’

All the rumours and speculation, the grim beliefs passed from neophyte to neophyte, from battle-brother to battle-brother – unfounded. All of them.

Ravaged by bio-acid, twisted by xenos-toxin, emaciated by the taint of warp sorcery, a bleached bone skull to match his battle-helm, Chaplain Elysius suffered from none of these. He never had. His face, his perfect, handsome face was his greatest shame, so he hid it behind a mask of death and bone.

Ba’ken saw, but he did not quite believe. He always thought seeing the Chaplain’s visage would somehow lessen him, that his mystique and power would fade. The man was greater than the myth. He had given up the secret covenant he had made with himself and used it to make an ally of a warrior he didn’t even know.

‘Brother Zartath,’ Elysius pressed. ‘I think there has been enough loyal blood spilled here already. We are kin, you and I. All of us are.’

Zartath retracted the bone-blade with a snikt! as it raked against ceramite and finally into flesh.

‘You have my battle-helm,’ he said, rising.

Elysius looked down to where he’d mag-locked the helmet to his armour and smiled. He detached it with a faint chank of metal.

‘Now,’ he said, handing the battle-helm over, ‘how do we escape?’

‘This is the Port of Anguish,’ Zartath replied, extending his finger and twirling it around in a circle – his henchmen reacted by staying their weapons and disappearing from view as they made for the lower floor, ‘the gateway to Volgorrah,’ he added, fitting his battle-helm. ‘There is no escape.’

‘There must be a way–’ Ba’ken winced, still feeling his injuries acutely as he got up. The mark on his neck inflicted by the Black Dragon’s bone-blade was a sting to his pride more than his body, and he rubbed at it ruefully. Slowly his body’s reparatory systems were healing him, but he was still weak.

Iagon was close by and came to support his fellow sergeant.

‘Concerned for my wellbeing, brother?’ asked Ba’ken.

‘I would feel safer with your bulk between me and the dark eldar, is all,’ came the taut reply, but there was some warmth in it.

Zartath was already walking away, signalling he had no intention of answering Ba’ken.

‘No way of escape at all?’ asked Elysius, standing aside.

‘Six years I have existed in this place,’ snarled the Black Dragon, pausing as he went past the Chaplain, ‘and have found none. We are trapped here. All we can do is survive. Kill when we can, run when we cannot. That is all there is left.’ He stalked away. ‘Follow if you wish,’ he said, voice diminishing with the distance, ‘or not. It doesn’t matter to me.’

‘This one has fallen far,’ remarked Koto. His voice was accusing as he watched the Black Dragons and his cohorts disappearing into the shadows of the amphitheatre.

‘Something that could be levelled against the Chapter,’ added Ba’ken.

‘I agree,’ said Iagon. ‘Can we trust this castaway and his followers?’

Elysius looked on thoughtfully. ‘We have no other choice. Our survival in this place depends on us staying together. Brother Zartath has achieved that feat for six years–’

‘If he is to be believed,’ remarked Iagon, butting in.

The Chaplain glared at him, the perfect contours of his face like cut jet even when expressing displeasure. ‘Trust is in short supply in this benighted place already – let us not add to it, brothers.’

A shout from Brother Koto interrupted Iagon’s apology.

The Fire-born turned as one to see a gaggle of emaciated creatures lingering in the penumbral shadows.

‘Shall I engage, my lord?’ asked Koto, a barbed trident in hand. Elysius had seen him in the battle cages. With a single throw he’d punched a training spear through the body of an armoured servitor. Reinforced carapace with a ceramite plating meant the servitors were tough. Not tough enough for Brother Koto. The Fire-born originally hailed from Epimethus, the only one of the Sanctuary Cities surrounded by the Acerbian Sea. Koto was a weapon specialist second and a spear-fisherman first. The gnorl-whales that inhabited the Nocturnean oceans had volcanic rock for their hides. Breaching them was no easy task, even for an Astartes. Any action taken by Koto would be bloody and final.

‘Negative.’ Now he saw them, Elysius realised these things were wretches, little more than shrivelled ghouls, voyeurs to the recent carnage.

Zartath’s harsh voice rang out across the amphitheatre. He was barely visible, half-swallowed by the darkness and well-camouflaged in his armour. A crack of light behind him framed the warrior from a hidden passageway leading further into the city.

‘Leave them,’ he bellowed, ‘and come with me. I have something to show you.’

The Fire-born looked to their Chaplain. Elysius eyed the Black Dragon and then the wretched creatures, creeping closer by the minute. He regarded the dead dark eldar slavers and could guess what the ghouls were waiting for.

‘Leave them,’ he said at last, echoing Zartath. He led the Salamanders and what remained of the Night Devils off after their new allies. The emaciated wretches gathered closer in their wake, eyes hungry and dirty talons eager.

Not all of the slavers had been dead. Some were critically injured but alive.

Elysius consoled himself with that thought as they left the amphitheatre, and the ghouls to their feast.

It was an iron box, roughly a metre in length and a half-metre wide. It was steam-bolted with iron rivets. Rust collecting around the rivets reminded Elysius of blood.

Zartath had led them a fair distance from the amphitheatre, but the strange geography of the place made it difficult to gauge exactly how far they’d travelled. He’d learned it was called the ‘Razored Vale’ by the human survivors and was a bridging point into the webway proper. The Vale was merely part of a much larger settlement called the Port of Anguish, and situated in an area of the webway known as the Volgorrah Reef.

When Elysius had asked how he came to know all of this, Zartath had smiled and beckoned them onwards. Standing before the iron box in the wrecked shell of a temple with Ba’ken and Iagon, Elysius was still no wiser as to the Black Dragon’s meaning.

‘Kor’be,’ Zartath called to his second-in-command, the only other Astartes, another Black Dragon, in his ragged warband. The others were difficult to pin down: ex-Guard perhaps, mercenaries, rogue traders – the xenos were indiscriminate in the acquisition of slaves. Zartath had alloyed them, however. They were lean and wire-taut, ready for anything. But sometimes even that wasn’t enough; sometimes nothing could stop you from getting killed. They’d seen death and lost everything. It had made the ragged company hard.

The hulking warrior called Kor’be came forwards. He was missing his right shoulder pad and arm greave. His bare flesh was tanned like leather and just as rough. There were marks in the skin that indicated where several bone-blades had been removed surgically. Kor’be also carried the electoo of his Chapter, a white dragon head, imprinted on his shoulder.

‘He is mute,’ said Zartath, unnecessarily, ‘dark eldar took his tongue long ago. Took his blades too. At least he cannot question my orders,’ he added. His curt laughter quickly fell away into serious introspection.

Ba’ken and Iagon shared a furtive glance with one another.

He is mad, then, Elysius thought to himself, watching as Kor’be rammed a spear into the side of the iron box and, with an impressive feat of strength, prised open the lid.

It hit the ground with a heavy clang.

All eyes were drawn to its contents.

‘They are named the “Parched”,’ Zartath explained.

Within the iron box was one of the ghoul creatures, a particularly thin and wretched specimen. The thing was partly desiccated and its eyes were swollen shut. As the half-light of the Razored Vale touched it, the creature squirmed, sticking out its needle-like tongue to lash the air.

Naked but for a small cloth to preserve its dignity – what precious little it had left – the Parched was covered in tiny wheals and lesions. The contusions and internal haemorrhaging didn’t appear to be the work of Zartath or his men. Rather, it looked to be synonymous with some kind of invasive illness. From his conversations with Fugis, Elysius had learned of such diseases that affected humans, of how a body could turn on and destroy itself. The Apothecary had been vivid and detailed in descriptions of these maladies. The Chaplain knew enough that he could recognise them or something similar when he saw it.

Zartath grinned, displaying his saurian incisors, as if reading Elysius’s thoughts.

‘Shut inside, no light, no stimulation,’ he said, ‘it’s like torture to them. Slowly they waste away to nothing.’

‘Degeneration through sensory deprivation,’ the Chaplain clarified. ‘It is the soul hunger.’

The Black Dragon punched the Parched savagely in the ribs, making it squeal in pleasure-pain. ‘I keep it fed on scraps,’ he said, showing the dried blood on his gauntlet from where he’d just struck it. ‘You can keep them alive for weeks like this. After a few days they reveal their secrets.’

Elysius kept his disapproval to himself, but saw it written on the other Salamanders’ faces.

Zartath noticed it too.

‘How else do you think we survived this long?’ he snapped, seizing the Parched by the throat and shaking it. ‘Eyes and ears, brothers!’ he sneered, letting the creature go when it mewled for more.

The Black Dragon turned on Elysius. By now, the rest of the group, having been occupied sharpening blades and checking ammunition, were watching.

‘You are of particular interest to them, Chaplain.’

Elysius fought the urge to crush Zartath’s pointing finger. Kor’be was nearby, bolter in hand. He couldn’t have many rounds. During the fight, the Chaplain couldn’t remember it being fired once. It might be on empty already. Still, he wasn’t about to test a theory.

‘Helspereth is looking for you,’ the Black Dragon concluded. ‘You’ve piqued her interest.’

‘How fortunate.’

‘No, it isn’t. She is An’scur’s hell-bitch, his rabid dog,’ Zartath spat, ‘and she wants to sate her fangs on your flesh.’

‘We’ve met already.’ The Chaplain gestured to his missing limb. ‘She already took a trophy.’

The Black Dragon laughed. It was an ugly, hollow sound. ‘She’ll want more.’

‘Who is An’scur?’ asked Ba’ken, growing tired of Zartath’s histrionics, ‘The overlord of this place?’

Zartath nodded. ‘Aye, he rules the Reef. When we,’ – he slammed his plastron and pointed at Kor’be – ‘had numbers, before the reapings, I tried to kill him.’

Iagon smirked, finding accord with Ba’ken. ‘Needless to say, you failed.’

The Black Dragon bared his teeth and snarled.

‘And lost over a dozen warriors,’ he concluded bitterly. ‘Now you’re here, you think it will be different?’

‘Our brothers are coming for us,’ Elysius assured him.

‘You must’ve hit your head, preacher,’ Zartath replied. ‘There is no one coming for us. We are all we have.’

‘You’re wrong.’ The Chaplain brandished Vulkan’s Sigil. ‘They are coming for this.’

Iagon’s expression told Ba’ken his fellow sergeant knew nothing of that fact, either. Ever since Ironlandings and the fight to breach the bastion, a bond had been forming between them. Ba’ken had always thought of Iagon as a serpent dressed in ceramite, a poisonous creature unworthy of the title ‘Fire-born’. Polar opposites, like their feuding sergeants had been, Ba’ken and Iagon had never liked each other. Like Dak’ir and Tsu’gan before them, it bordered on enmity. They fought together – they were still battle-brothers after all – but it was far from a ready camaraderie. Yet, in the last few hours held prisoner on the Reef, something had changed. They had changed. Perhaps without the legacy of their old commanders overshadowing them they had broken free of the shackles that stopped Dak’ir and Tsu’gan seeing eye-to-eye? As he broke eye contact, Ba’ken hoped that was the case. His gaze went to the Sigil.

Ba’ken knew it was a relic, a piece of the primarch’s armour, his trappings. It was recovered from the shattered ruins of Isstvan and venerated in the then-Legion’s reliquary halls. During the breaking of the Legions the Salamanders had become a Chapter, though in truth there was little left to break. Ba’ken knew less of the Sigil’s fate during that time than he did during the Heresy, but it wasn’t long before it was brought into battle as a holy relic. Xavier had once been its custodian. Upon his death that honour fell to Elysius. And here, now, the Chaplain was suggesting some additional significance to it, some purpose none of those present knew or understood.

‘I can feel it,’ Elysius concluded with the sort of conviction that suggested he was certain.

More than a relic then, thought Ba’ken, even more than an anachronism from the Great Crusade...

Zartath smirked, his eyes drawn to a sharp rise they’d descended to reach the temple confines.

‘Then they’d best be quick, for she is already here.’

All eyes followed the Black Dragon’s gaze. There, upon a steep precipice of rubble, of broken columns and the sediment of shattered structures, stood a lithe figure. She was tall and carried a long barbed trident in one hand. Two blades were cinched to her waist and a long mane of braided white hair flowed to the peak of her thighs like a clutch of venomous adders.

Helspereth.

II

Follow the Beacon

Varketh Narln let the flensing knife slip from his fingers and sighed. It was a deep, frustrating sound. The slave, a grey-skinned inferior, had not lasted long and yielded little sustenance. Varketh craved. The soul hunger was upon him. She Who Thirsts was ever present. He needed more slaves, and in order to get them he needed to enhance his standing in the Reef. Too many petty dracons, and with An’scur lording it over the rest of the cabal, how could he, a humble watchman, hope to prosper?

Skimming slaves from the bounties coming in off the pirate raiders was a way, he mused. Exorbitant flesh-taxes were easy to impose but hard to refute. Only those in Volgorrah with the right pull and hierarchical clout could deny an overseer. Without an overseer’s seal, there was no way into the Reef. The Port of Anguish would close its gates. No access, no slaves. All became forfeit to the cabal, with a small percentage taken for Varketh’s pleasure of course.

But then that was Varketh’s problem. Appetite. So easy to succumb to; so hard to sate. I need more slaves. So when the crackling ’korder came to life in his oubliette he smiled. Another raider. A big one by the sound of Keerl’s enthusiasm.

Just a taste for you, underling, Varketh thought. For you and the rest of the peons.

An’scur might be lord of the Reef but here, at the Spike, Varketh Narln was master.

He dressed quickly, donning his red, segmented armour and slipping on his open-faced helmet before scaling the egress pipe and emerging into the way station’s basement. It was dark below, but Varketh heard the approach of a heavy grav-engine thrumming through the walls. His latent excitement heightened.

Many slaves on a rig that large.

The overseer was still performing the calculations in his head for the flesh-currency when he hoisted back the trapdoor that led into the station lobby. Narrowed eyes met him as he ascended. His crew, his minions – all murdered him with a glance. At least, they would if they could. Keerl was loyal. The splinter cannon cradled in the large warrior’s grasp – he had the build and sheer strength of an incubus – ensured the others stayed loyal as well.

‘What have we got?’ Varketh asked. He peered down the wide slit in the lobby floor through which the bladed dark eldar ships could dock and disgorge their cargo for inspection.

The mechanism was churning already, a slow grind as the slit widened to accommodate the larger raider’s bulk. Spiked pins either side of the growing chasm snapped into place, ready for insertion into the vessel’s hull.

‘Heavy Ravager, my lord,’ remarked Tullar, spitting poison with his words, particularly the last two.

‘Just one ship?’ Varketh glared into the lightning-void. The vessel was coming in slow. Perhaps the grav-engines had been damaged in the raid. He hoped they wouldn’t need repairs. It was unrewarding work. Maybe he could demand more flesh-currency if they did?

‘Weapons ready.’

Twenty splinter rifles and Keerl’s cannon came to life. It wasn’t unknown for particularly ‘enterprising’ pirates to try and overcome a way station by force. They often carried slave caches and the flesh-cattle records they also possessed were invaluable to certain haemonculi and cult-dracons. After all, this was the Reef, a wild and unruly extension of Commorragh. If the heart of the dark eldar empire was its urban sprawl then this, the Port of Anguish and its many way stations, was its untamed frontier.

As the Ravager came in, gliding almost silently now, its crew like statues, Varketh’s grip on his splinter pistol tightened.

‘My lord…’ a gaunt-faced warrior addressed the watchman.

The Ravager was just entering the outer boundary of the Spike. It would be with them in seconds. The docking slit yawned like a fanged metal maw.

Varketh turned on the warrior, who was at the lobby’s instrument panel. Data streamed over a dark screen in hazy emerald flashes. Sigils ran vertically and horizontally, detailing the vessel’s schemata and slave-bearing capacity. ‘What is it, Lilithar?’ he snapped.

‘The Ravager bears Kravex’s mark.’

As he turned to see the vessel sliding into the docking slit, Varketh’s pale skin bled to alabaster white.

The haemonculus!

‘Stow weapons!’ he said, ‘Do it now, whelps!’

Kravex, here, attending the Spike? Much influence and affluence could be derived from associating with the flesh-surgeons of the Reef. Word was that Kravex had the ear of An’scur, and more literally, his finger. The archon had many enemies. Rumours permeated to the outer frontiers that he’d been assassinated more than once already. Kravex’s patronage ensured that death didn’t stick.

Oh yes, Varketh desired very much to be in the good graces of the haemonculus.

But as the Ravager glided in, he couldn’t see his would-be patron aboard. It was dark in the lobby, though. The crew, their weapons held stiffly across their armoured chests, still hadn’t moved.

‘Boarding lamps,’ Varketh ordered and felt the faintest tremor of unease ripple through his lithe body.

Light, stark and flaring, described the Ravager. It lit the corpses of the crew as well. It illuminated their wounds, rapidly concealed but enough to fool an overseer and his entourage in the webway darkness.

‘Hells of Commorragh...’ breathed Varketh as the first of the dead crewmen fell forwards to reveal a looming giant in green armour.

He was reaching for his splinter pistol, half-tugged from its holster, when the lobby filled with fire. Varketh’s world exploded, his dark machinations with it.

The ambush lasted seconds. Bolter smoke and echoing thunder were all that was left in its wake. That, and the twenty-something corpses broken all over the lobby by the Firedrakes’ percussive gunfire.

Halknarr was examining a groove in his armour left by a splinter round.

‘I’ll add it to the collection,’ said the old campaigner, whose battle-plate was riddled with almost as many scars as his honour-scathed body. He’d left his helmet on the leather thong, looped around his belt, and smiled viciously at Praetor.

‘I think you enjoy this too much at times, brother,’ the veteran sergeant replied, a small smirk betraying his composure.

He’stan was first to disembark. His booted feet rang heavily against the metal lobby floor. He was headed for the instrument panel. The rest of the expanse was sparse. It was a dock with that as its sole function. A trapdoor led to a basement where Daedicus and Vo’kar found hanging chains and other instruments of incarceration and torture. Lower still was an oubliette that Daedicus reached first and shone his lume-lamp into.

‘Tortured xenos,’ he remarked impassively. The two of them vacated the basement, Vo’kar using his boot to close the lid.

Tsu’gan followed He’stan, grimacing as the dark eldar blood touched his boots. He longed to burn this place, to burn it all.

‘Forgefather?’

He’stan turned and his eyes narrowed through the lenses of his fanged battle-helm.

‘Brother,’ Tsu’gan corrected himself, still finding the familiarity that the Forgefather desired uncomfortable.

‘I can feel the Sigil,’ He’stan explained, returning to the instrument panel. ‘But our search will be much faster if we can narrow down what part of the Reef the Chaplain is on.’

‘How?’ Tsu’gan asked, leaning in and immediately feeling revolted by the barbed xenos script crawling all over the screen. ‘What is this… scratching?’

‘Dusk-wraiths have language, too,’ Praetor told him, joining them at the screen. ‘Although, it has no purity and is a baseless tongue.’

‘You can read it, brother-sergeant?’ Tsu’gan’s tone was incredulous. He wanted to tear the machine from its housings, demolish it with his chainsword. No good could come of such devices.

‘No, but I can,’ said He’stan, manipulating the unfathomable controls like an expert. More scything sigils cut across the display, spooling quickly now. It stopped on what appeared to be some kind of list.

‘The Reef keeps logs of all its slaves,’ He’stan told them.

Tsu’gan shared a concerned glance with Praetor, but the veteran sergeant nodded for him to keep listening. Again, Tsu’gan marvelled at just how different the Forgefather was to the rest of them. He was Fire-born, no doubt of that. He practically bled Deathfire’s molten ichor. But he was a warrior apart. The quest for the Nine had changed him in ways none of them could comprehend. Tsu’gan found his devotion for the Forgefather increase.

Nearby, the rest of the Firedrakes adopted defensive positions. At Halknarr’s command, they watched the dark and turbulent skies. In enemy territory, it wouldn’t go well to be caught unawares. All it took was another returning skiff or heavy skimmer and their presence would be exposed to every band of hellion, scourge and sky-riding jet-biker dwelling in the Reef. Slaying a cadre of unprepared and gullible overseers was one thing; taking on the mercenaries of this benighted place was quite another.

He’stan turned. ‘Flesh is currency on the Reef. Its scales are kept ever-busy with its bloody acquisition, but they are scales nonetheless and so must balance.’

Tsu’gan frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘To us, the dusk-wraiths are savages, hedonistic pleasure-seekers and torturers who adhere to no rule or structure. Not so. There is a society at work, a highly complex and hierarchical regime. He or she who holds slaves, holds power. Pacts and deals are not uncommon. They too are currency. It is fundamental, it is how they exist. So, therefore, careful records are kept. How many? What nature? Owning cabal? Disposition on the Reef? Everything is noted. Everything is logged. Here.’ He’stan tapped the screen with his gauntleted finger, making a shallow plinking sound.

‘Elysius is not alone,’ He’stan revealed.

How he knew that, Tsu’gan could still not discern but he accepted it.

‘He was left at one of the northern spires. Its name translates as the “Razored Vale”.’ Without warning, He’stan swung a fist and shattered the screen. Smoke, and wires palsied by venting electrical discharge, spewed forth like innards from the instrument panel. He was angry.

‘What is it?’ asked Praetor. ‘What’s wrong?’

The Forgefather’s body was stiff with fury.

‘The Razored Vale is not a lord’s dominion,’ he said. ‘It is a hunting ground.’

‘They mean to throw our Chaplain to the wolves,’ muttered Tsu’gan.

‘I suspect they already have,’ He’stan replied. To Praetor, he added, ‘Assemble the Firedrakes. We are already running out of time.’

Chapter Thirteen

I

Wych Hunt

Before Elysius could signal for the Fire-born to adopt defensive tactics, Zartath was sprinting up the rise. His brother, Kor’be, was not far behind him. Even the ragged mercenary militia he had bonded together took up the charge.

Helspereth hadn’t moved. She watched, her serpentine hair tossed about by a sudden breeze. The wind was quickly whipping hard, driving down the incline, kicking up grit and splinter shards as sharp as daggers.

Ba’ken looked to his Chaplain, caught by indecision.

Zartath was almost halfway up the rise. His bone-blades shucked free, ready to gore. He’d missed the chance to avenge his brethren on An’scur. It looked like he’d settle for the archon’s ‘hell-bitch’ instead.

Elysius cursed under his breath. Four Fire-born were left, one of those wounded, and a trio of injured humans. The Chaplain didn’t like his options, and they were narrowing with every metre the Black Dragon gained up the rise.

‘Ionnes, watch them,’ he said. ‘The rest, engage and destroy.’

Hefting the borrowed blades of dead warriors, three Salamanders led by their Chaplain sped up the ridge.

Survival should be the primary mission. Honour was secondary to the safety and sanctity of the Sigil. But Elysius could not abandon his brothers, not even those feral kin from a cursed and aberrant Chapter. Do that and all the Sigil stood for would count for nothing. Vulkan had made them warriors and so they would die as such. Elysius gave voice, as the hot wind scorched his face and the splinter shards cut him.

‘Surrounded by shadows, we are as rock. Bonded like the slopes of Mount Deathfire, our purpose is solid and unyielding...’

He increased his pace, eating into Zartath’s lead, impelling the others to match him.

‘...Our righteous fury shall burn the enslaver and the arch-potentate. Our will shall break down any fortress of oppression...’

Zartath was only moments away from attack. Helspereth let him come. She was smiling. Elysius finished the litany.

‘None shall stay our blades. We are Salamander and in Vulkan’s fire are we forged!’

They reached her at the same time, bone-blade and crozius slicing through air as the wych sprang into the sky and flipped acrobatically out of harm’s way.

Zartath snarled, about to give chase, when he saw what waited on the other side of the ridge in a valley walled by ruins.

Helspereth had company. She had brought her
hell-maidens with her. Hungry-eyed, licking their blood-red lips, the wyches rushed the ridge in a flood of barbs and blades.

Elysius counted thirty warriors, not including their grinning matriarch. He seized Zartath by the arm.

‘We cannot win this.’

The Black Dragon flashed the Chaplain a savage glance. ‘Not the Salamander pragmatism I have seen before.’

‘Vengeance is the province of the damned, brother. She’ll let her cohorts bleed us first and then devour us both, flesh and soul. I don’t fear death, but there are higher stakes here than you know.’

Zartath bared his fangs. ‘You had best be right about your relic, son of Vulkan,’ he said and bolted back down the ridge the way they had come.

It was a fighting retreat. No way could they hold the ridge against such numbers and with the weakened state of their forces, but they couldn’t hope to outpace the dark eldar either.

Elysius was falling back when he blocked a falchion intended to cut his throat. He headbutted the shrieking wych and sent her tumbling. Out the corner of his eye he saw one of Zartath’s mercenaries fall to a spear in the chest. Another became tangled by a net of razor-wire and swiftly bled to death. The Astartes were holding their own.

Ba’ken and Iagon had made it back to the base of the ridge. Koto was engaged in running battle still. Zartath and Kor’be were reluctant to give ground and fought savagely.

‘Fall back to defensive positions!’ Ba’ken cried. The strain in his voice betrayed the severity of the wounds he’d sustained fighting the hound-creatures in the amphitheatre.

It wouldn’t be enough. A last stand here would be just that. The Sigil. Something had triggered a desire to preserve it in the Chaplain’s mind. He needed to keep it safe. Help was coming. With the dead scattered across the ridge, the human mercenaries all but wiped out, Ionnes farthest back with the surviving Night Devils, Elysius countered his brother-sergeant’s order.

‘Retreat! Keep moving!’ Through the melee, breaking another wych against his crozius, Elysius found a way to Ba’ken’s side. ‘Stand now and we’ll be overrun.’

The brother-sergeant nodded, before making a laboured parry against a wych’s serrated blade. He swung himself, trying a get a blow in, before she sprang away to engage a different enemy.

Ba’ken was panting hard – his wounds, the battle, were taking a toll on the big warrior. ‘Why doesn’t she attack?’

Helspereth had regained the summit of the ridge but had yet to commit herself to battle. She held a third of her coven back with her, too.

Even the wyches that had engaged them were taking bites at the Astartes but then feinting away before they could be drawn into a deadly combat. All the while the Salamanders and Black Dragons were giving ground.

Elysius’s gaze narrowed. Both groups of Astartes were bunching. Barring the Night Devils, the humans were almost all dead. ‘They’re herding us. Culling the chaff first and then priming us for the kill. It’s sport to them. And it extends the sensation, the soul reaping.’

Pegged back like cattle surrounded by a ring of patient predators, the Astartes came shoulder to shoulder and the fighting stopped.

‘What now?’ snapped Iagon, wearing a fresh gash across his cheek.

The wyches were closing. Twelve of the twenty Helspereth had unleashed remained, their blades blood-slick but far from sated. Hell-red flared in their cruel eyes.

‘Here is where you tell us you have a way out of this place,’ Elysius hissed to Zartath.

A deep rumbling, the distant sound of churning machinery buried far beneath the earth, answered for him. Gripped by sudden superstitious paralysis, the wyches ground to a halt. Rivulets of dust and dislodged pieces of debris were cascading from the structures around them.

It was the same as before, when they’d originally landed in the broken temple. Elysius realised the city was moving. Some infernal engine, its science lost to myth or intellectual decay, compelled it. Avenues and corridors shifted, bridges and platforms rose and fell, dead ends became conduits, towers plummeted and new levels rose out of the darkness. Capricious will manoeuvred it without discernible scheme or design. The way behind the Salamanders and their allies opened, a vast crack splitting the platform they were on. The endless city became an ever-widening chasm behind them, the level they were on a precipice.

Zartath had his back to the Chaplain. The Black Dragon was laughing. Out beyond the edge of the precipice, hot winds squalled and twisted. Splinter dust abraded the Astartes’ armour and made their skin itch. A lightning flash from higher up threw their shadows in front of them. The wraith-like silhouettes were there and gone in an instant, like the echo of their lives.

‘We were already dead when we came to this place,’ growled Iagon, before Elysius’s glare silenced him.

Ba’ken couldn’t say much of anything. He was holding his chest, a recently revived Tonnhauser and the other two Night Devils supporting him.

‘Well?’ Elysius pressed the Black Dragon.

Helspereth and the rest of her coven were descending the ridge. The wych queen’s shrieking commands overrode their fear at the sudden dysjunction.

‘You’re not going to like it,’ Zartath replied, legs braced as the tremors slowly started to abate. He turned to Kor’be. The big Black Dragon nodded as he recognised some previously held agreement between the two of them.

‘Make ’em count,’ Zartath whispered. There was a flash of acknowledgement in Kor’be’s eyes.

‘On the shores of Cable, a small iron world in a sector I’ve long forgotten,’ Zartath began, slowly backing away, ‘my brothers and I fought the warband of the Incarnadine Supplicants to the edge of a fire-blasted cliff. It was called Doomfel on account that no living thing could survive the drop. An alkali ocean had existed there centuries ago but had drained, and left a deep trench in its wake.’

Iagon interrupted. ‘Is this really the time for war stories?’

Zartath ignored him. They were less than a metre from the precipice now. A dark chasm yawned beyond it, getting ever wider, filled with lightning and blades. ‘Face death at our hands or take Doomfel. Do you know what those traitors did?’

Elysius shook his head but could see where this was going. Helspereth had almost reached her kin. When she did, she’d signal the attack.

Zartath grinned and mouthed, Farewell, brother, to Kor’be. ‘They jumped.’ Turning on his heel, Zartath sprinted off the edge of the precipice and leapt into the gloom.

II

Apocalypse Near

A storm was rising. Out in the ash wastes of Moribar the winds were picking up. Grey squalls, congealed bone dust and stone, grew in intensity with each passing minute. A world was suddenly out of balance. Watching his ward with wary eyes, Pyriel couldn’t be sure that Dak’ir wasn’t the cause.

‘Not far now, master,’ he said, just audible above the growing storm.

‘Move swiftly, Dak’ir. We don’t want to be caught in whatever is coming on the horizon.’

At his master’s word, Dak’ir looked there and saw the cloud of dust slowly obliterating dunes and monuments. Grey death was approaching, fast and pitiless on a howling wind. Warning klaxons, blaring all across Moribar, announced it. None save the Salamanders heard them – them and the dead, of course. The pilgrims and missionaries had fled to underground bunkers; the servitors were dormant inside their subterranean cribs. The land above was bereft of life and yet in utter turmoil.

‘It’s as if Moribar itself is in upheaval.’

‘You can feel it?’ asked Pyriel, trudging through the thickening ash a few paces behind.

‘I feel something,’ Dak’ir confessed. His gaze tracked east. He recognised the rocky overhang where they’d left the Caldera several hours before. Hopefully, Brother Loc’tar would be there too, waiting for them.

Already the paint was being eroded from their armour, the glossy blue reduced by slashes of gunmetal grey.

‘This wind will shear us to pieces. It’s harsh enough to cut ceramite,’ muttered Pyriel, his displeasure at the vandalism done to his armour obvious. Even in the face of a growing hell-storm, the Epistolary was fastidious about his appearance.

A pregnant pause passed between master and apprentice before Pyriel spoke again. He used the time to catch up to Dak’ir and was walking alongside him.

‘You said you witnessed the end, the doom of Nocturne,’ he said tentatively. ‘What exactly did Kelock show you?’

Dak’ir stopped and faced him. ‘I’m not sure the apparition showed me anything. What I saw, I saw because–’ A wave of heat, rising from the east, interrupted him. ‘I saw–’ Dak’ir began before his body was wracked with seizure. His arm was flung out and he gripped his master’s vambrace. In that moment Pyriel saw everything too.

A wall of fire, so high it reached the heavens, surged from the earth. Nocturne’s surface had become a web of fissures, the planet’s lifeblood seeping out of them in rivulets of lava. The sky was ablaze. In the blood red firmament a star was falling. Prometheus burned, the metallic orb wreathed in re-entry flare as it cascaded like a doomed comet towards the planet below. Its gravity had failed. Death was certain.

From the hellish night above an incandescent beam speared down to strike Nocturne’s heart, impaling it. From the lowest depths of the world, a death cry sounded. It came from the ancient drakes who had lived in the bowels of the earth for millennia. Their spirits were dying. Nocturne was dying. Their mournful sound was a lamentation for a doomed world.

The rest came in flashes, each a jolt of lightning through Dak’ir and Pyriel, their consciousnesses linked in brief symbiosis.

The Acerbian Sea boiled into a great pall of steam, burning away the skiffs, eradicating the gnorl-whales and scalding Epimethus from existence.

On the Arridian Plain, Themis – City of Warrior-Kings – was dragged under the sands, lost to the wailing dunes.

Mount Deathfire belched fire and fury, the haemorrhaging of a vital artery bared open by a mortal wound. She spluttered, like a body with its lungs ruptured, her breaths the last from a life almost ended. The Dragonspire ridge collapsed, the craggy rises falling one by one into smoke and ruin. It was followed by the chain of the Serpent’s Fang. Forests of granite shattered, broken by the atomic blast wave coursing through them. Then came the Cindara Plateau, that most holy of monuments, swallowed beneath the fracturing earth.

Chapter Bastions, tribal settlements that had stood upon inviolable bedrock since the dawn of ages cracked and crumbled against the cataclysmic forces unleashed in the planet’s death throes.

‘Tempus Infernus’ – the words burned into the Librarians’ minds as indelible as a blacksmith’s signature on a blade, but still it wasn’t over.

Ignea, an entire region of subterranean caves, was sundered in a single, devastating instant. The only legacy of its existence, a deathly cloud of displaced ash.

Hot winds came from the east, transforming the Gey’sarr Ocean into a blanket of fire and scorching the white walls of Heliosa, the Beacon City, black.

Aethonian, the Fire Spike, ruptured and split, lava oozing down its once proud flanks like blood.

Hesiod, Clymene, as far as the Themian Ash Ridges, as deep as the T’harken Delta where the leo’nid preyed and the sauroch herds gathered – all of Nocturne became as dust. Its cities were shadows; its peoples not even a memory. Burned from the galactic sky, it was a warning, a cautionary tale. An entire civilisation was gone, rendered into atmospheric dust.

The fires grew and grew until they eclipsed the Librarians too. They had seen it before, during the burning. Except now the reality of it was closer than ever. Prophecy and destiny were coming together, closing in towards an apex of inevitability. The course of fate was locked; there would be no turning from it.

‘Tempus Infernus’ – Time of Fire. And all would burn before the last of its sands had run out.

Pyriel collapsed, his body seizing in the psychic aftermath.

Dak’ir shook his head free of the visions and found the solidity of the Moribar ash deserts beneath him again. His heart was racing, his eyes firmly shut. It took an effort of will to open them again. It took him a moment to realise he was on his knees, the vision felling him as surely as a hammerblow. The storm had engulfed them and the rocky overhang where the Caldera waited was slowly becoming obscured. Delay much longer and they would never find it, the senses in Dak’ir’s armour baffled by atmospheric interference.

Rise, he willed, rise up and overcome.

It was the Promethean Creed, to endure what others could not, to fight when the body rebelled.

Rise now. Vulkan’s strength is in my veins.

Dak’ir got to his feet.

Save for the nerve-tremors, his master wasn’t moving. His armour was turning grey as the thrashing whorls of spinning sand abraded it. When a small chip appeared in the shoulder guard of his own armour, Dak’ir knew it was time to go.

Hefting an unconscious Pyriel onto his back, he quickly activated the comm-link in his battle-helm.

++Fifty metres from your position, Brother Loc’tar++ he said ++Lift her now and come for us, or we’re not getting off this grey rock++

A grainy affirmative returned from the Thunderhawk pilot and after a few minutes the sound of blazing engines intruded on the storm winds. Dak’ir had trudged a few metres when a dense black shape resolved itself in the grey fog surrounding it. He stood beneath it and engaged the link again.

++Master Pyriel requires recovery. Unconscious but stable++

Through the gloom a winch hook glinted, attached to a strong line. It was less than half a metre away before Dak’ir saw it, tossed about in the breeze. He managed to grab it when it was close enough and cinched it around Pyriel’s waist. Two hard tugs on the line and the automated mechanism kicked in and retracted it.

Within seconds, a rapidly ascending Pyriel was lost from view. Once the Librarian was safely aboard, the Caldera risked a further descent. When it was low enough for Dak’ir to jump, he boosted the final few metres and hauled himself onto the embarkation ramp.

++Go now!++ he cried as the tumult smashed into them.

Engines whining, Loc’tar punched the Caldera into a savage ascent. Dak’ir clung on, fingers denting the metal of the ramp, until they were clear of the worst of it. When he’d dragged himself into the Chamber Sanctuarine, he rolled onto his back. His hearts were hammering, his breath ragged in his heaving chest.

‘Tempus Infernus…’ he rasped, and shut his eyes.

Chapter Fourteen

I

Sigil Fires

It was as if the world had split and been remoulded by savage hands.

A jagged wound ran through what might have once been an amphitheatre or temple. Its bifurcated hemispheres now sat at uneven levels, where once they might have been joined. Between them there rose a bridge of stone, wide enough for a trio of Land Raiders abreast. Smaller spans bled off from this grey artery. They were fringed by spikes and razored balustrades. Columns punctuated the main span – skeletal remains, human and xenos, hung from them by chains and steel cords. In the distance, there was a spire. Several figures were impaled upon it like graven offerings.

‘It’s called dysjunction,’ said He’stan, who’d halted the Firedrakes at the threshold to the temple, where the bridge began. There they waited together, in two lines of five. They’d heard and felt the capricious motions of the twisting city as they closed in their borrowed raider. It was junked now, rendered inoperable by Tsu’gan’s hand. He’d taken great pleasure in its destruction and bemoaned the curtness of the task. Deep in the avenues and conduits of the dark eldar’s frontier settlement, the Firedrakes had no further use for it. Besides, it could be tracked and at this point covertness was paramount. The rest of the way would be conveyed on foot.

Halknarr, for one, was glad of it.

‘Even their cities are twisted aberrations.’ He hawked and spat in the tradition of old campaigners.

‘It is the dusk-wraiths’ way,’ counselled He’stan. ‘Their borders are ephemeral, their pacts and allegiances likewise. It bodes well.’

‘How so, my lord?’ Halknarr asked. ‘Bad enough we must navigate this labyrinth without it changing on us constantly.’

‘The city’s denizens will require time to adjust, redraw their tiny empires and claw fresh lines of dominion in the sand. We can exploit this distraction, use it to get closer to the Sigil undetected.’

‘You mean closer to Elysius, my lord,’ ventured Daedicus.

‘No, brother, I meant what I said. The Sigil is all. I fear for Elysius.’

Daedicus’s silence betrayed his shock.

‘If there is a way, he will survive,’ Tsu’gan noted grimly. ‘The Chaplain is a tough and unyielding bastard.’

Praetor let the remark go. It was true enough.

‘Look!’ It was Halknarr, pointing towards the bridge. All eyes followed to alight on a body caught in the balustrade, snagged on the spikes; a body that wore green power armour.

‘Brother,’ cried Daedicus, starting to move before He’stan’s raised hand stopped him.

‘He’s dead,’ announced the Forgefather grimly, noting the absence of life readings through his retinal display.

The sound of a clenching fist signalled Tsu’gan’s anger. ‘But they are not…’ he said and nodded in the direction of the bridge.

A cluster of emaciated, grey-skinned, ghoulish figures was thronged around pieces of a broken dark eldar skiff. From this distance they had blended in with the debris at first and it was hard to tell what the undulating mass was doing. After a few moments, though, it became apparent.

They were gnawing… on flesh.

The distaste in Halknarr’s voice rang out, ‘Carrion-eaters.’

‘More of our brothers could be amongst them,’ said Daedicus.

‘Depraved bastards…’ Tsu’gan brandished his combi-bolter only for Praetor to push his aim downwards.

‘No, brother,’ said the veteran sergeant. His mouth was set in a tight line. ‘We go hand-to-hand this time.’

Tsu’gan grinned beneath his battle-helm. The hard red flash in his eyes mirrored He’stan’s own. The Forgefather’s decree was emphatic.

‘Slay them all,’ he said, and was running at the creatures.

Like the hive of a lava-ant, as soon as the ghouls were disturbed they broke apart and attacked en masse. There were at least a hundred of the wretches, shrieking and clawing, so pumped up on their cannibalistic activities as to eschew all sense of self-preservation.

Halfway across the bridge, the Firedrakes met them.

Tsu’gan was reminded of the zombified servitors aboard the Archimedes Rex as he killed. These creatures had no deadly tools or cutting saws, just tooth and claw, but fought with the same automaton-like abandon. He felt invulnerable, hacking off limbs, hauling dozens over the edge into the dark abyss below the bridge, taking out his anger one cut at a time.

Fighting back-to-back with Halknarr, Tsu’gan marvelled at the glimpses of the old campaigner’s prowess. The wretches barely laid a claw on him. He’d drawn combat blade and chainsword, cutting and thrusting with the poise of a fencer but the bullishness of a pugilist.

Where Tsu’gan was wrath and fury, Halknarr was the careful execution of force and aggression. There was much he could learn from his more veteran brothers.

Vo’kar, denied use of his flamer, fought with fist and combat blade. His years as a weapon specialist had not dulled his close quarter instincts. Invictese, his comrade aboard the Protean and fellow survivor of that ill-fated mission, stood beside Vo’kar carving lumps out of the creatures with his chainblade. Oknar, Persephion, Eb’ak – they all battled like heroes, crushing the wretches. Their blades and hammers slashed and bludgeoned with almost regimented discipline, each a masterpiece weapon forged by its owner’s hand.

No one however, not even Praetor, could keep up with He’stan.

These foes were beneath the Firedrakes, little better than xenos fodder, but they needed to be slain all the same. The Forgefather did that with efficient lethality. No blow was wasted, every strike was a kill. He ground a circle of death around him so thick that the bodies piled up into a barricade of flesh.

Praetor barged and smashed them, using his bulk and strength like a human battering ram. His thunder hammer rose and fell in electric arcs like a pendulum. The creatures were pitched off the bridge in a shower of corpses, their heady screams lost to the void below.

It was pure. It was a massacre.

To Tsu’gan, it was beautiful.

The fight lasted only a few minutes. By the end, the creatures were dead, cut down by hammer and blade. Many fell to their dooms far below. The Firedrakes were drenched in gore, but relieved to discover no Salamander was being devoured by the frenzied pack.

‘The Parched,’ said He’stan, rolling one of the half-chewed corpses onto its back to reveal a female dark eldar, ‘are like their kin but starved of sensation. They are dregs,’ he explained, ‘cowards and wretches, but like their entire race they are vicious and bitter.’

‘I once fought against the Plague of Unbelief,’ said Halknarr, regarding the masticated bodies. ‘They too ate the living, but their minds were lost to Chaos. They were little better than walking corpses, driven by their base instincts. This,’ he added, a sweep of his arm encompassing the grisly scene, ‘this I cannot explain.’

‘They are damned,’ said Tsu’gan, tearing a chunk of flesh from the teeth of his chainsword.

‘That is precisely what they are, brother,’ replied He’stan.

‘Another here, my lord,’ called Daedicus from the far end of the bridge. With the battle over, the Firedrakes had spread out to search the area for further casualties.

He’stan was determined if they could not bring their slain brothers peace, they would at least burn them. He muttered a litany for the one caught in the balustrade. The Salamander’s head had been removed. Doubtless it was mounted on some trophy rack or spike. The Forgefather had to marshal his anger at the thought.

Others were not so temperate.

‘It’s G’heb,’ snarled Tsu’gan, his rage impotent without anything to pummel. He settled for the bridge instead and demolished a chunk of stone from the balustrade. ‘He was 3rd Company. I recognise his armour markings.’

‘We will avenge him, brother,’ said Praetor, arriving at Tsu’gan’s side. He had Persephion in tow.

‘Any sign of Chaplain Elysius?’ asked the veteran sergeant.

‘It seems unlikely, my lord,’ Persephion replied.

Praetor seized him by the arm. His voice was stern. ‘Be certain. Search everywhere.’

Persephion nodded and went about his business.

He’stan was already heading for the end of the bridge where Daedicus knelt by the fallen Salamander.

‘L’sen,’ Tsu’gan told them. He and Praetor had followed the Forgefather, who was now kneeling by the body too. It had been left in repose, but without an Apothecary to harvest L’sen’s progenoids his legacy was ended.

‘Obviously Elysius came this way,’ said Praetor, searching the lightning-wracked horizon for some fresh sign of their brothers’ passing.

‘He lives then,’ said Tsu’gan in a quiet voice.

‘The Chaplain would’ve done what he could, I am sure,’ said He’stan. ‘Stay silent for a moment, brothers,’ he added, closing his eyes.

Tsu’gan shared a wary glance with Praetor but soon became enrapt by the Forgefather’s ritual.

In a kneeling position, he bowed his head and pressed the haft of his spear against it. He clutched the weapon in both hands, holding it upright like a banner or lightning rod.

He was muttering something, some benediction or invocation. It didn’t feel like warp sorcery, but there was something unknown and intangible about it. Tsu’gan had heard of the clandestine rituals conducted at the heart of Prometheus. Even as a Firedrake himself, he was not privy to all of their secrets. In fact, he knew very little of the inner workings of the 1st Company. Barely three years had he been one of them, it was a flickering flame compared to the blazing braziers nurtured over the decades by his warrior-kin. But then again, Praetor was pre-eminent amongst the Drakes and even he looked nonplussed.

After a few minutes, He’stan stood.

‘There is a signal, faint, but the trail of fire is there. They are not far,’ he announced to no one in particular.

Behind him, the Firedrakes had gathered, awaiting his pronouncement in respectful silence.

‘The Sigil is within our grasp,’ he concluded.

‘What trail? I see nothing,’ Halknarr hissed beneath his breath.

As the Forgefather led them off, Praetor leaned over to Tsu’gan.

‘Truly, the mysteries surrounding our Lord He’stan are incredible,’ he said.

Tsu’gan could only nod in agreement. His voice was choked with reverence. ‘Truly,’ he whispered.

II

Despair and Faith

Tonnhauser was glad Leiter and Fulhart were helping. The giant was heavy. His weight pressed on the trio of Night Devils with greater intensity every step they took. Tonnhauser could feel the shallowness of the warrior’s breathing through his armour, and smell the thready scent of blood every time he exhaled. The giant Salamander was dying. Tonnhauser didn’t need to be a field medic to know that, even a layman trooper could see it. During the few harrowing hours they’d spent in the Razored Vale, Tonnhauser had come to believe that angels could die. He’d seen one with his head removed, the explosion of gore no different to when Trooper Kolt had been decapitated. Another had fallen to multiple wounds, his tenacity incredible but no less futile than a common man’s.

Space Marines could die. It was a startling, terrifying revelation.

He’d caught the battle in snatches. The wych-warriors were so fast, like blade flashes against the sun. He’d heard the action on the plain with General Slayte over the vox, though he had no idea where the Night Devil commander was now. Dead, presumably. Everyone was dead. How could they be anything other, fighting against these things? He tried not to give in to despair but it was all too easy in the wake of his wounded faith. When they had defeated the monstrous hounds, Tonnhauser had dared to believe they could survive. Now the truth was glaring him in the face, truth that carried serrated blades and spiked tridents.

Shuffling towards the edge of the precipice, Tonnhauser shook his head to banish his fatalism. They’d endured this long, this far.

‘Tempered against the anvil,’ one of the Salamanders had said. Tonnhauser didn’t know what that meant but there was strength in it and the words brought him comfort. He owed it to the memory of his father to keep trying. But the wych-warriors were close and their formerly-indestructible guardians were beaten and seemed more vulnerable than ever.

The feral one in the black armour was relating some story to the rest. Tonnhauser found it hard to make out the words, such was his grating cadence. He caught fresh glimpses of the wych-warriors through the wall of armour in front of him – they were prowling nearer. He did not think death would be swift beneath their blades and barbs. He’d tried to look away several times but kept coming back – for all their ferocity, the strange androgynous creatures were alluring.

When he was done, the black-armoured warrior broke from the group and ran. Tonnhauser blinked twice as he leapt off the edge.

‘Did he just…’ Leiter began.

‘I didn’t think Space Marines were capable of suicide,’ added a breathless Fulhart.

‘Not suicide…’ rasped the giant. He staggered and almost took the three Guardsmen with him before he righted himself.

‘He is failing, Lord Chaplain,’ said another Salamander, the one with the narrow face and the scar that turned his mouth into a perpetual sneer.

Their leader, the black-armoured preacher, answered.

‘We have no choice–’

The giant Salamander shrugged off Tonnhauser and his other wardens. ‘I can stand.’ His voice was firm but his legs were not. He sagged and the narrow-faced warrior caught him.

‘You are wounded, brother,’ he hissed in his ear, loud enough for Tonnhauser to hear him. ‘And can do no further good here.’

Behind them, Tonnhauser saw the other black-armoured feral warrior racing up the ridge. His massive bolter flared intermittently.

‘Iagon, I can fight,’ the giant asserted.

‘I’m sorry Ba’ken, you cannot. Now, brace yourself.’

They were less than half a metre from the edge when the one called Iagon pushed the giant off. He fell, his face a mask of anger before he was lost from sight completely.

‘Take the humans,’ Iagon added, taking in Tonnhauser and the others in a glance. ‘Kor’be won’t prevail alone.’

‘Nor will you,’ said a third Salamander, this one brandishing a long spear.

The black-armoured preacher seemed to pause in indecision before he nodded.

‘May Vulkan take you to his fires, your souls eternally in the warmth of his flame.’ He touched a clenched fist to his breast, before turning to the last of the Salamanders.

‘Ionnes…’

The Salamander came forwards and Tonnhauser felt himself being lifted off the ground. ‘Long way down, little human,’ said the warrior, not without benevolence. ‘Be sure to hang on tight.’

Then Tonnhauser’s world became a rush of darkness and lightning flashes as he was taken over the edge of the precipice.

‘Hold them as long as you can, brothers,’ said Elysius, picking up the other two humans and following on Ionnes’s heels.

‘Our sacrifice shall not be in vain,’ Iagon replied to the shadows. He was alone at the edge. Below, the world was shadowed and barbed – not unlike his own existence, ever since Tsu’gan had forsaken him, ever since his betrayal.

He had fought against it, fought against the plan. But some things cannot be fought, they are inevitable. Ba’ken’s brief friendship had masqueraded as fresh purpose, but Iagon saw the fleeting truth of it now. You can’t fight fate. To deny nature was akin to refuting something as inexorable as time.

Koto was already running to Kor’be’s reinforcement, his spear held at his waist as he charged.

‘In Vulkan’s name!’ he roared.

‘Aye,’ whispered Iagon, ‘for the primarch…’ and flung his sword. It pierced Koto’s back, just below the heart, punching through his plastron at the front in an explosion of bloody grue.

Koto managed to turn before he toppled, a look of anguished disbelief on his face. He tried to form words but the meaning was lost on Iagon. Then he was gone, shredded by a whirlwind of blades as the wyches descended on him.

Oblivious to Iagon’s betrayal, Kor’be didn’t last much longer. His spent clip chanked in his empty bolter for a few rounds before he turned the weapon around, using it like a club. He battered one wych, crushed the skull of another. Helspereth was not to be denied, however. She weaved around his next blow, clumsy and child-like compared to her supreme prowess, and impaled Kor’be on her trident. With a feat of incredible strength, belied by her supple frame, she lifted the thrashing Black Dragon into the air and then drove the trident into a column of stone, pinning him. Fluidly, she drew her twin blades and severed his neck with a flick of silver.

Iagon was unarmed and went to his knees as the wyches approached, his hands in the air signalling surrender.

‘A traitor in the midst.’ Helspereth sounded amused. She fended off her charges with a daggered glance. The wyches parted before her so she could be relatively alone with her supplicating pet.

Iagon bowed his head.

‘And subservient too,’ she added with a soft, lilting laugh that contained only malice, ‘you are a twisted little thing, aren’t you, mon-keigh…’

She slashed Iagon hard across the cheek with her talons, opening a deep wound, forcing him to look at her.

‘Answer me then, whelp!’ she snapped, her mockery engulfed by a mask of hatred.

‘Nihilan,’ was all Iagon said. ‘I wish to speak to Nihilan.’

Helspereth’s eyes narrowed before the feigned amusement returned to her cold features. She had sheathed her swords after killing Kor’be and instead drew forth a metal glove. There were spiked links and tiny pins that fed down her fingers like spines. A translucent mesh crackled as it was stretched over her pallid skin.

She tensed her hand and long needles unsheathed themselves from her fingertips. With a snarl she rammed the needles into Iagon’s chest, easily penetrating the ceramite of his power amour. Electrical shocks wracked his body, cutting right to the bone. He jolted, once, twice then again. His racing hearts conveyed the trauma he was experiencing. Iagon’s nerve endings felt as if they were on fire.

Helspereth leaned in close to sample his agony. Licking the blood streaming from his ruptured cheek, she cooed, ‘Delicious…’

‘Take me… to Nihilan,’ Iagon demanded, spitting blood. ‘I am his ally.’

Helspereth wasn’t done. ‘Oh you’re mine, now. Your little priest can wait. I’ll whet my appetite with you.’ Her perfumed breath was oddly soporific. She dug around in Iagon’s chest again. He could feel his guts churning. The Larraman cells in his blood attempted to clot the multiple wounds Helspereth was opening in his chest, but even a Space Marine’s enhanced physiology had its limits. She’d eviscerate him there and then. Only Iagon’s rage at being denied his revenge kept him going.

‘Hell-bitch…’ he snarled, half-gasping, half-gurgling, ‘…take me to Nihilan.’

‘Such resilient little men,’ Helspereth said, slowly becoming lost to rapture. Around her the wyches crowded as close as they dared, taking up the psychic scraps from her butcher’s table.

‘I sabotaged the sentry points…’ Iagon confessed, ‘I… let you in…’

Helspereth ignored him. She was enjoying herself far too much, her desire threatening to overcome her malice. ‘I can see why that corpse, Kravex, finds such entertainment with you. Is your priest as hardy? I bet he is. I cannot wait to sample his pain. I might even let him hurt me a little first.’ One of her swords wavered into view. Iagon found his vision fogging. Kor’be’s blood still shimmered dully on the blade. ‘This dance is over for you, now, mon-keigh.’ She smiled, a serpent’s smile, a presage to death. ‘It has been fun, though.’ Her eyes were empty pits of ennui as she raised the blade to Iagon’s neck.

‘Nihilan…’ he rasped.

A voice from out of the ether stayed Helspereth’s hand. It spoke in a language Iagon didn’t understand. He was blacking out, but clung on to consciousness. After all, his life depended on it.

Helspereth answered the disembodied voice in the same sharp dialect. Her words were clipped and angry.

Iagon was to be granted a reprieve. She was angered because her kill had been denied to her. Another, one who held sway over the wych queen, perhaps the lord and potentate Zartath had spoken of, had decreed Iagon’s survival.

He knew the Dragon Warriors had a hand in this. He could detect Nihilan’s treachery from leagues away; it was not so dissimilar from Iagon’s own.

After a few more words of debate, Helspereth withdrew the electro-talons from Iagon’s chest and lowered her sword.

‘You have friends in high places,’ she spat at him in Low Gothic, before turning her back.

‘Not my… friends,’ Iagon rasped before darkness claimed him and he passed out.

Chapter Fifteen

I

Blind Horizon

The Caldera’s troop hold shook violently, buffeted by the ash storm.

The gunship’s pilot, Loc’tar, was engaged in a battle of wills with the vessel, struggling to keep it steady in the tumult rising from Moribar’s surface. As the gunship was being tossed about, Dak’ir could hear his brother-pilot’s litanies through the internal vox. All efforts to appease the Thunderhawk’s machine-spirits appeared to be in vain, however – they were going down, unable to breach even the upper atmosphere of the planet.

The shuddering Chamber Sanctuarine jolted Pyriel awake where he lay prone on the deck. Dak’ir was still recovering from his leap onto the embarkation ramp and hadn’t had time to secure him. Pyriel was sliding back and forth, the back-mounted generator he wore grinding loudly against the metal floor as he moved. The Epistolary was still groggy. In his delirium, he’d been muttering.

‘Tempus… infernus… tempus… infernus… tempus… infernus…’

‘Time of Fire,’ Dak’ir translated into Gothic-Latinum, a reassuring hand on his master’s shoulder guard. ‘I don’t know what precisely it portends.’

A crackle indicating damage to his battle-helm’s internal systems came from Pyriel’s mouth-grille. ‘I saw… destruction.’ He was still weak, even the effort of speaking was hard for him. ‘A spear of light…’

Before Dak’ir could answer the Thunderhawk bucked violently, slamming them both against an interior wall. Pyriel cried out, his head rebounding off a metal bulkhead. The noise inside the hold was incredible, protesting engine sounds mangled with those of the howling storm. Hard ash flakes, compacted into solid grains of matter, struck the outer hull. Through the protective armour of the gunship, they sounded like flak.

‘I’ve seen it before,’ Dak’ir told him, ‘On Scoria. It’s a weapon.’

Pyriel hadn’t fought on the barren world, though he had heard of the massive defence cannon being wrought in a workshop-bastion by the Iron Warriors.

‘The seismic cannon,’ he breathed.

Dak’ir nodded, and the Caldera pitched hard against the rising squall outside. They were thrown towards the ship’s stern. Warning icons flashed amber on Dak’ir’s retinal display as a detailed schematic of his power armour relayed a damage report.

‘A relic of the Dark Age of Technology,’ said Dak’ir. ‘Kelock discovered its existence, found a way to construct it.’

‘A weapon capable of annihilating a small moon…’ The implication in Pyriel’s words trailed off.

‘The one on Scoria was just a test. They wanted to see if it would work.’

‘They?’

‘The Dragon Warriors, who else? The beam I saw in the vision was much greater, mounted on a starship. Nihilan means to destroy us, master.’

‘His bitterness runs deep, poisoning him.’ Pyriel looked like he might say more, but another abrupt turn thrust them across the opposite side of the hold again.

‘What’s happening?’ Pyriel attempted to stand but collapsed almost as soon as he tried. ‘My mind… Like pieces of a shattered kaleidoscope.’ Everything was broken, out of place. Pyriel’s lucidity was coming and going, his focus divided.

‘It’s just the psychic aftermath. It’ll fade. Be steady, master,’ said Dak’ir, clinging to a handrail overhead as Loc’tar’s frantic reports came through the vox riddled with static. ‘We left it too late. We’re caught in the storm.’

Pyriel gripped Dak’ir’s arm. ‘Master Vel’cona,’ he said. ‘He told me to kill you if your power became too great.’

‘I know, master.’

A tremor of movement up Pyriel’s arm hinted at his surprise. ‘How?’

Dak’ir’s reply was reluctant. ‘I read your thoughts.’

‘Not possible, I…’

‘They appeared in my mind, unbidden. I’m sorry, master.’

Pyriel veiled his shock with a mirthless laugh. It sounded like there was blood in it.

‘Even if I wanted to I couldn’t stop you, Dak’ir. I’m not sure even Vel’cona could do that now.’

‘Ever since Aura Hieron I have resisted it. Even below Moribar, I couldn’t let go. Something burns within, almost sentient. I’m afraid if I unleash it, I won’t be able to call it back. What am I, Pyriel? What does it mean?’

‘Choose for yourself, Dak’ir. Salvation or destruction, what do you think?’

The hold lurched again, the Caldera’s armour plating protesting loudly against the strain.

‘I think it won’t matter if we ditch and burn in the Moribar sand.’ Dak’ir went to the vox. ‘Loc’tar! Can you bring us out of this?’

A long pause followed while the brother-pilot wrestled the gunship’s controls.

‘The Caldera is one of Captain Dac’tyr’s best vessels but its spirit is in turmoil. I expect the worst, Librarian.’

Dak’ir’s voice was grim. ‘Vulkan preserve us.’

Pyriel locked his gaze. ‘You can save us.’

‘I can what?’

‘Use your power, Dak’ir. Lift the ship, burn away the storm.’

‘In the chamber, you said–’

‘I know what I said, but your abilities are growing stronger with every moment that passes. Burn away the storm, take control of your power.’

‘What if I can’t?’

‘A Salamander does not forgo action because of doubt. If you fail, we are all dead anyway.’

‘But to unleash it…’

‘Is our only chance.’ The Caldera was shaking incessantly now. Much longer and the gunship would tear itself apart, scattering them all to the funerary winds. ‘I only regret not having more time to train you properly. But that doesn’t matter now. Learn by doing, Dak’ir. This is Vulkan’s way – it is the anvil against which all we Fire-born are tested with bolter, blade or psychic fire. Do it now!’ he urged.

Dak’ir reduced the nulling effect of his psychic hood and the dull insistent throb he had felt since activating it became a roar. He staggered at first, acclimatising to the rush but found his composure.

Just before he began, Pyriel seized Dak’ir’s wrist.

‘I cannot rein you in this time. I might not even be able to get through to you. Lexicanum, you’re alone in this.’

Dak’ir nodded. His eyes flared cerulean blue and the fire came.

‘Mass… heat signature… outside… ship!’ Loc’tar’s anxious report came through the vox in fragments.

Flames were bleeding off Dak’ir’s body. They fed through the rivets and the micro-fissures between the deckplates, through the smallest gaps in the embarkation ramp and out in the storm. The Caldera became a beacon in his mind’s eye, wreathed in fire. Waves of heat peeled off the hull in a pulse. The ash became as nothing, the air devoured by the hungry conflagration surrounding the gunship until the wind was reduced to a vacuum.

A roiling fire-ocean stretched out in front of Dak’ir, his self-awareness a skiff tossed about on its psychic waves. He needed an anchor, a place to tether his mind or he risked it unravelling. Inside the hold of a gunship, the effects of that happening would be catastrophic. Philosophies of Zen’de, the earthy wisdom of Master Prebian, Dak’ir recalled their words to his mind in an effort to find equilibrium. When that failed, he thought of Ba’ken, his closest friend in the Chapter – how long it had been since he’d seen the giant warrior. Pyriel’s teachings, the stony voice of Amadeus, Ko’tan Kadai’s temperate demeanour – nothing calmed the fiery waters where Dak’ir was adrift. He felt himself slipping, lost to the flames until something eased his consciousness to a place of innocence. He was below the surface of Nocturne, in the caves of Ignea. The cavern walls felt cool to his touch, shielded from the oppressive sun by layers of rock. Glacial meltwaters ran in rivulets down the stone, creating strange patternation. Penetrating further, Dak’ir found where the rivulets became a cataract. He allowed it to wash over his hand and then his body, soothing the prickling heat on his skin. The seas calmed, the fire ebbed. Anchored to the memory, Dak’ir found his equilibrium and opened his eyes.

The Caldera slowly stopped bucking and steadied into a smooth rise.

‘Controls returning…’ Loc’tar announced, ‘We are gaining altitude, praise Vulkan,’ he added, not bothering to mask the relief in his voice.

‘Praise Vulkan,’ echoed Pyriel, watching the fiery aura around Dak’ir dwindle into a haze and finally nothing.

The Lexicanum sagged where he was kneeling. He had to prise his grip from Draugen’s hilt. Dak’ir yanked off his battle-helm, gasping. He smiled at his master, but Pyriel had fallen unconscious again from the strain. Despite what he’d said, Pyriel had urged Dak’ir towards his psychic anchor.

He believed in him, perhaps. Dak’ir was not even sure he believed in himself. Pyriel had sanctioned his use of psychics to rescue the Caldera from certain destruction. It was a pragmatic decision but, if what the Epistolary said was true and none, not even Lord Vel’cona, could stop him, then it might have been one out of Pyriel’s hands.

All those years ago, back on the Cindara Plateau, had Tsu’gan been right? Was Dak’ir an aberration? Or was he something more, something transcendent sent by the primarch to deliver the Salamanders and Nocturne from annihilation? During the Librarian trials, there had been solace under the earth. It was easy to know what must be done, survival and the execution of the next trial Dak’ir’s only concern.

Now, he didn’t know what fate held for him, or if his destiny was even his to shape. He rode upon a storm, a symbolic one, towards a blind horizon. The doom-laden prophecies weighed heavy around Dak’ir’s neck. It was an unhappy burden but only he could bear it. If that made him aberrant then so be it, he would carry that too.

Resolved, Dak’ir raised Loc’tar on the vox. ‘Soon as we’re clear of Moribar’s gravity well, take us to Nocturne, brother,’ he said. ‘Take us home.’

II

Tender Mercy

Iagon awoke to find himself suspended several metres off the ground. Awareness came slowly but he realised he was attached to some kind of machine. Its design was hard to fathom, much of the device beyond his field of vision behind him. His arms were above him, each shackled by three rings whose inner surfaces protruded with needles that were embedded into his deep tissue. Iagon’s fists were clenched, not in anger, not yet, but because they were encased in a lozenge of gleaming metal. His legs and feet were similarly restrained. He no longer wore his armour. A cold breeze coming from above cooled his feverish skin. It was dark, but not completely. As the pain-blur behind his eyes faded, he looked down as far as his neck would allow and saw the terrible wounds Helspereth had inflicted. He saw also the honour-scars drawn by his brander-priest. How hollow and inconsequential those deeds seemed now.

A deep voice, sharp and edged like a blade, made Iagon look up.

Cold, alien eyes regarded him from the gloom. Their owner wore a surplice of black and violet over lamellar armour plates, vaguely insectoid in nature. It carried a long, barbed helm in the crook of its arm. There was a falchion-like blade attached to its slender hip in a jet-black scabbard. Iagon also thought he saw the silhouette of a long rifle strapped to the creature’s back.

As it came further into the light – the source of which the Salamander couldn’t pinpoint – Iagon saw it was dark eldar and male. The face was rigid, almost like porcelain. The cheekbones cut outwards, like blades carved out of the skull bone. A long mane of white hair unfurled down his back – it matched the hue of his marblesque skin. He was old, if such a thing was possible to discern with this race, his eyes telling the wisdom of millennia. There was malice too, just an undercurrent, well hidden beneath an impassive veil. A long black cloak of some shimmering material Iagon couldn’t place trailed behind this lord, its undulating fluidity giving it the appearance of oil. This then was An’scur, the one Zartath had been trying to kill, lord and master of the Volgorrah Reef.

A cadre of warriors waited patiently behind the archon, heavier-armoured and taller than the others the Fire-born had encountered so far. Iagon assumed they were the lord’s bodyguards and retainers. There was no sign of Helspereth. He was also no longer in the Razored Vale. His surroundings resolving slowly, Iagon realised he was aboard a ship. He could hear the low thrum of its engines, either impelling it through space or anchoring it to one spot. Another figure lingered in the background, bulkier than the rest, but its identity was lost to shadow. For now, it seemed content to watch.

An’scur smiled in a sickle shape, exposing teeth that ended in sharp metal-tipped points, and a surge of pain raced up Iagon’s spine. The Salamander convulsed, his chest wanting to thrust him forwards away from the source of the agony but his body bound hand and foot to the machine. He cried out, despite trying to stifle it.

More strange words from An’scur cut the air. Unlike his henchwoman, he was unwilling to sully his tongue with the language of lesser races.

Another jolt from the machine sent fresh agonies through Iagon and the sheen of sweat veneering his body came off him in a spray of bloody perspiration. His head sagged for a moment, chest heaving against the lingering pain, before Iagon raised it again and glared.

‘That all you’ve got?’ He caught An’scur’s surplice with a thin line of crimson-veined spittle.

Iagon blinked and the dark eldar’s falchion was at his neck, a bead of blood running down the flat of its blade where the edge had bitten into flesh.

‘Stop.’ The command came from the shadows, at the back of the chamber.

Iagon recognised the voice and at once knew who was watching his torture.

‘Nihilan…’

There was the acrid stench of cinder in the air, too, though Nihilan’s lapdog, Ramlek, was nowhere to be seen.

The figure didn’t respond to his name, though An’scur acquiesced and withdrew his blade.

Exhausted to the point of near-death, Iagon sagged again. The pain-engine wouldn’t let him rest, though. A cocktail of agony-inducing chemicals was pumped into his system ensuring his lucidity. Iagon snapped to with a muted yelp, drawing a sliver of pleasure from An’scur, though the archon hid it well.

Nihilan spoke again, this time in the scything dark eldar tongue. An’scur’s pleasure turned to annoyance.

Again, Iagon couldn’t understand the response but caught the word ‘mon-keigh’ and several others that had the ring of caustic invective.

An’scur debated a while longer before he was eventually browbeaten into obeisance. Incredible that Nihilan had power over these pirates and raiders. Iagon had always believed the dark eldar served only themselves. Even the tenure of their own lords and masters was fleeting, governed by the politics of murder and assassination.

‘You are fortunate,’ he said, the words spat from his tongue like a bitter tonic, ‘that my chief torturer is in regeneration. Kravex would have performed such wonders on you, spawn. The machine you’re strapped to is his design.’

‘What’s it supposed to do?’ Iagon slurred through a drool of blood.

An’scur swore in his native tongue, before remembering his place. With a viperous smile, he regained his composure.

‘Oh, there will be more time made for you,’ he promised. ‘You will be wailing for me to end it before I am finished.’

‘You can’t threaten me…’ said Iagon, expecting another burst of pain from the machine.

None came.

‘Oh?’

‘I have nothing to lose. I am betrayed, xenos-filth. My own kind has betrayed me, a beloved brother forsook me and looked to his own ascension. My ties are cut. The blood on my hands turns my world red. Your hatred is nothing compared to my own. Nothing!’

The pain came this time, though for An’scur’s idle amusement rather than the brief satiation of his anger.

‘Enough,’ said Nihilan. ‘I have need of him, An’scur. His rage will be useful.’

An’scur replied in his own language and Nihilan answered in the same.

Iagon was only semi-conscious from the pain but he caught one word, repeated by both.

Ushab-kai.

He mumbled it, his inflection interpretable as a question.

Nihilan moved in slowly from the shadows, revealing the crimson scale of his horned power armour and hideous visage. Despite the horrific scarring, Iagon could still see a trace of the Salamander Nihilan had once been in the sorcerer’s puckered skin. The burns, inflicted by the heat of Moribar’s vast crematoria, would never heal.

‘Ushab-kai?’ Iagon said again.

As Nihilan pursed his lips, a faint glow of power flared behind his eyes. ‘It means “vessel”.’

Chapter Sixteen

I

Thinning the Herd

Ionnes was dead. The spike of metal had punched right through his back, opening up his chest and destroying his primary and secondary hearts. Even if an Apothecary had been present, there was nothing they could’ve done for him. Before the end, Ionnes had possessed the presence of mind to throw Tonnhauser clear. The Night Devil was on the ground, dazed and prone, nearby.

Elysius was standing over Ionnes’s body. His eyes were closed as he muttered a benediction. When he was done, he didn’t open them immediately.

Am I to be tested? he asked of himself. So much death and loss. The circle of fire is broken. My faith teeters on the brink. This black cauldron sends my soul into turmoil. Oh Vulkan, steel my purpose beneath the hammer, shore up my resolve in the forge’s fires. I shall endure. I shall protect your Sigil. In your name, so do I swear it.

The Guardsman was stirring, the one Ba’ken had called Tonnhauser. His mumbling interrupted the Chaplain’s thoughts. The other two Night Devils had also lived, and went over to their comrade.

Of the Salamanders, Elysius and Ba’ken were the last. The giant warrior had survived the fall. He was slumped against a slab of rock holding his chest. He was breathing hard and the fire in his eyes had dimmed. Elysius was no Apothecary, but he knew Ba’ken’s wounds were severe.

Was it Elysius’s fate to be the sole survivor of this trial? The dark eldar could not crack his body, so had they chosen to attack his spirit instead? Kadai, N’keln – two captains had fallen during his tenure as Chaplain. It was his duty to minister to the faith and belief of his charges within the company. How, then, could he do that when his own beliefs were in upheaval? His thoughts went to Ba’ken.

You will have need of it too before the end, brother.

‘He’s weak,’ said Tonnhauser. The Guardsman was back on his feet. The other two had gone to sit down on whatever debris was lying around while he’d approached the Chaplain. He was referring to Ba’ken. ‘And by the look of him, labouring with a punctured lung.’

Evidently, Tonnhauser had some medical training. The Night Devils’ uniforms were so ragged and dirty it was hard to tell man from man, let alone rank or position.

‘It’s likely two,’ said Elysius, ‘with a cracked rib-plate.’

‘Rib-plate?’

‘It’s fused, medic. Like all Astartes. Takes a lot to crack it.’

Tonnhauser tried to hide his surprise. Human and Astartes physiology were a lot different to one another, despite their homogenous origins.

‘I suspect he has several internal injuries, too.’ Tonnhauser paused to lick his lips. Elysius glowered, waiting. When they’d leapt into the darkness, the dysjunction had closed the chasm behind them as a new level slid over it. It prevented direct pursuit, but only for a while. Soon they would have to move again. Zartath was already gone. For now, they would let Ba’ken rest.

‘I know little of your biology, my lord,’ ventured Tonnhauser, ‘but I understand it is capable of regeneration. Why isn’t he… healing?’

‘The trauma is too great.’ He looked at Ionnes. ‘Even we have our limits.’ Elysius was not just talking about the physical as he regarded Ba’ken. The sergeant’s jaw was clenched. ‘In fact, his sus-an membrane should’ve activated by now and put him into a regenerative coma. The stubborn sauroch is blocking it.’

‘I can walk…’ Ba’ken protested, ‘and hear.’

‘You can barely stand.’ Elysius turned when Zartath appeared in his peripheral vision. ‘Thought you’d abandoned us.’

The Black Dragon snarled. ‘We must hasten, Vulkan-priest,’ he snapped. He gave Ba’ken a half-glance. ‘Leave him. He will only slow us down.’

‘No one is left behind, aberrant!’ For a moment Elysius let his anger get the better of him. His eyes flared red.

Zartath bared his fangs. The bone-blades just peeked from their sheaths in his forearms. Thinking better of it, he turned away and started to walk. ‘A safe route is near. Be quick,’ he called.

A strange sense of warmth radiating from the Sigil caught the Chaplain’s attention. ‘Do what you can for Ba’ken,’ he said to Tonnhauser, his eyes still on the Sigil. ‘He must be ready to move.’

‘What will you do, my lord?’

‘I will lay my dead brother to rest, though there is little time for it.’ Elysius unclamped the holy relic to get a better look at it. The icon of Vulkan engraved upon its surface gleamed softly in the light. Elysius dared to hope.

The way ahead was slow and Elysius had no idea where they were going. He had to trust Zartath to lead them to safe haven and hope that their rescuers found them before Helspereth did. He staggered, the weight of Ba’ken on his back a heavy burden. The Salamander was barely conscious now. Tonnhauser had patched him up as best he could but he was no Chapter artificer who could repair power armour, nor was he an Apothecary who could mend the stricken Space Marine’s wounds. Ba’ken couldn’t walk and had to be carried.

Together, after Elysius had lifted Ionnes off the spike and laid him in repose, they’d removed most of Ba’ken’s armour. The power generator was barely functioning anyway, at less than ten per cent effectiveness. The breastplate remained. It was bound in cloth, the scraps of Imperial Guard uniform jackets, and was about the only thing keeping Ba’ken’s intestines inside his body. Much of the remaining armour was discarded. Many Astartes Chapters would balk at such an idea, reticent to leave such relics behind. Salamanders were possessed of Vulkan’s pragmatic spirit. Armour could be remade, fashioned anew even – warriors of the Fire-born could not.

Zartath was waving them on. Tonnhauser and the other Night Devils had become Elysius’s outriders. Inwardly, the Chaplain applauded their courage but doubted they’d be much more than a distraction if an attack came. The Black Dragon had found a tunnel and was urging them inside.

A flicker of movement made Elysius look up. He saw a spire, towering over the other ruins, overshadowing the wide avenue they were traversing. It appeared to be armour plated at its tip, like overlapping pieces of chitin on an insect’s back. It was the plates that were shifting; settling and resettling as a bird adjusts its wings on a lofty perch. They were wings, but it was no flock of birds clinging to the spike.

Elysius was shouting a warning when the scourges broke away from their eyrie, powerful legs boosting them into the open air where they extended their metal wings and descended on the survivors in a screeching flock.

The dark eldar arrowed down, sacrificing loft for speed, their wings angled close together and behind them like blades. The stutter of rifle fire split the air, a hard refrain to the shrieking chorus of the scourges, and one of the Night Devils staggered and fell. A black beam, coursing from a heavy cannon cradled by another of the flying devils, speared a second Guardsman. He didn’t even get time to scream as the dark lance skewered his throat and took off his head.

Tonnhauser was scrambling, Elysius bellowing at him to move. A third scourge, the last of the flying pack, took aim with its rifle. A thrown spear shredded its left wing and sent it spiralling downwards, its shot going wild. Tonnhauser reached the safety of the tunnel, while Zartath was pumping his fist into the sky and swearing thickly at their attackers.

Slowed by Ba’ken’s bulk, Elysius still had a few metres to go. He stumbled, but regained his footing just in time to see the remaining pair of scourges circling above him. Zartath hurled rocks at them but a raft of splinter fire kept him at bay inside the tunnel.

Elysius was staring down the barrel of the lance cannon. A litany of hate and the rejection of all xenos was on his lips when the scourge raised its cannon. It was laughing. They both were. Such arrogance and assuredness – even for dark eldar, the scourge were imperious.

Elysius had not stopped running. As he broke the threshold to the tunnel, the winged warriors flew off into the darkness.

Once the Chaplain was inside, Zartath sealed the tunnel shut.

‘A lucky escape,’ he said, a hint of mania in his voice. Elysius wondered how much longer the Black Dragon could hold it together.

Tonnhauser was slumped against the tunnel wall, his eyes on the ground.

The scourges had had more than enough time to kill the Chaplain. Elysius knew they had him cold, and yet…

‘Yes, very lucky,’ he answered, his suspicions lost to the dark as Zartath led them on.

II

Endure the Anvil

Standing on the ridge, Tsu’gan stared down at a battlefield.

As well as the wych corpses, strewn about but stripped of plunder, there were humans and Salamanders.

The humans appeared to be mercenaries of one stripe or another. Their uniforms and attire were eclectic, customised. He discerned Guard insignia but also the apparel of rogue traders, pirates and freebooters. Tsu’gan also noticed another body, that of an Astartes, but it was no Fire-born.

‘Have you heard of the Black Dragons, Tsu’gan?’ asked Praetor. The Firedrakes were descending the ridge, moving towards the basin of the blood-soaked valley. They were arrayed in a dispersed line, He’stan a few metres in front at their lead.

Tsu’gan shook his head. ‘Only rumours.’

‘Probably just as well. You wouldn’t like them.’ Judging by his expression, Praetor wasn’t being even slightly facetious.

Tsu’gan returned his attention to the Forgefather. ‘What is he doing, brother-sergeant?’

‘Seeking a trace of the Sigil, I think. The ways of Vulkan’s namesake are one of the Chapter’s deepest mysteries. Only Lord He’stan can claim to know of them.’

The Firedrakes were moving slowly, tracking their bolters across the shadows, laying down overlapping fire arcs in case of attack. Covert operation was still the key. If the dark eldar knew of an insertion force in the Reef, they would send troops to stop it. Elysius’s survival, the recovery of Vulkan’s Sigil, depended on that not happening.

‘We must save him,’ said Tsu’gan. ‘I know it’s not our mission, but it’s not enough to just bring back the Sigil.’

Praetor replied in a low voice. ‘I know, brother. I know.’

He’stan had stopped by the body of the Black Dragon. Tsu’gan and Praetor broke from formation to join him. Before they did, Praetor had a quick word with Halknarr and sent the old campaigner ahead to scout for tracks. Following the Sigil was one thing, and Praetor had every faith in the Forgefather’s esoteric methodology, but he would still prefer some solid evidence of their quarry too.

‘Torn apart,’ said He’stan, without looking up from the dead warrior.

The Black Dragon’s armour was a mess of rents and tears. He’d been stabbed so many times it was impossible without detailed medical analysis to tell where one wound ended and another began.

‘Vicious dogs,’ muttered Praetor. He crouched by the corpse. The helmet had been knocked off during the fight. Beneath it, bony protrusions that characterised the Chapter were revealed across his forehead as well as further nubs in his cheekbones. Praetor used a finger to lift the Black Dragon’s lip, examining the gum and the set of needle like fangs sprouting from it. He noticed something else too. ‘No tongue. What was he doing here?’

‘A slave, like our brothers,’ He’stan replied.

Tsu’gan clenched his fists. ‘Did this mutant side with the xenos then, a traitor to his own kind?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ answered Praetor. His gaze went to the body of the Salamander, a few metres farther into the valley. ‘They were allies. It seems the Black Dragons have been incarcerated here for a long time judging by their armour and trappings – much longer than our kin at least.’

He’stan nodded. ‘Agreed.’ He was watching Tsu’gan as he went over to the dead Fire-born.

‘Brother Koto,’ Tsu’gan said, tiring of seeing the dead bodies of his former company brothers. ‘Stabbed in the back by a traitor’s blade.’

‘What makes you say it was a traitor that killed him?’ He’stan asked. The serrated sword embedded in poor Koto’s back was plain for all to see.

‘It’s no dark eldar weapon. Looks old and poorly maintained.’

‘A weapon of opportunity, then?’

‘Perhaps… Must’ve been some throw to piece Koto’s armour like that.’

‘Do you think the dark eldar are that strong?’

Tsu’gan looked up from the body at the Forgefather. ‘They don’t look it, but my perceptions have been challenged ever since we entered this place.’

‘What do you see, brother?’

Tsu’gan looked down again. He stooped for a closer examination. ‘His face…’ he said, ‘the expression is one of…’

He’stan’s tone was neutral. ‘Betrayal?’

Tsu’gan nodded, slow and purposeful. There was a traitor amongst the survivors. He pointed to the dead Black Dragon. ‘One of them?’

‘What do you think, brother?’

By now Praetor had left them, gone to rejoin the others and get Halknarr’s report. Tsu’gan and He’stan were alone.

‘I think not. One of our own has turned. Koto knew his slayer.’

‘That is not an idle accusation, brother.’

Beneath his battle-helm, Tsu’gan’s brow furrowed. He didn’t want to think it, let alone believe it. ‘And I do not make it idly. One of Koto’s brothers did this to him. A coward’s blow,’ he hissed, clenching a fist. ‘Nihilan’s rot in our Chapter is not yet excised. Rage did this.’

He’stan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Perilous is the warrior’s path if walked with anger in his heart,’ he said. ‘How easily his hate can be directed inwards. Do you know what follows such self-revulsion, Tsu’gan?’

Tsu’gan shook his head slowly.

‘Damnation, brother.’

He’stan put his hand on Tsu’gan’s shoulder and gripped it. ‘You know of what I speak, and you know from whom this treachery before us came.’

Tsu’gan could only offer mute response. The Forgefather had seen to the core of him as easily as an ordinary man would see the colour of another’s skin.

‘Poison in a good soul is poison nonetheless – good or ill, it is no proof against it if that soul is weak, or broken.’

‘I… I have struggled, lord. Ever since Cirrion. Ever since…’

‘Ko’tan Kadai was a brave and noble warrior,’ said He’stan. ‘His legacy is one of honour. Don’t let his death diminish you, Tsu’gan. Reward his faith with glory.’

Tsu’gan met the Forgefather’s gaze. ‘Death’s shadow follows me.’

‘As warriors, it is our constant companion. We must all endure the anvil, brother. For some of us, the hammer falls harder. That is all. But if we do not break, then the metal of which we are forged is stronger, inviolable. Pain and suffering is not the sole province of Zek Tsu’gan.’

‘I know tha–’

He’stan didn’t let him finish. ‘Now is the time to listen, brother,’ he said levelly. ‘To be isolated in the void, away from my Chapter, away from my company and my brothers, it is difficult. I crave those bonds as you crave the respect and affirmation of your peers. It is my calling. It is my sacred destiny to endure this. All of us have a role – all are significant – even if your destiny is to end up dead, stabbed in the back on some alien world.

‘I face that fate every day. I am far from home. Should I die, another will be called. I am no more special than you, brother. I merely follow a different path. Only you can decide where yours will take you. Do you understand me, Tsu’gan?’

His battle-helm hid the tears in Tsu’gan’s eyes but not in his voice. It came out as a rasp. ‘I do.’

He’stan had averted his gaze and was looking over Tsu’gan’s shoulder. ‘Praetor is hailing us,’ he said. ‘Brother Halknarr has found something.’

Then he walked, leaving Tsu’gan behind. Tsu’gan waited for a few more seconds before following, his steel returned, his purpose renewed.

There was another path – He’stan had just put him on it.

When they’d rejoined the others, Halknarr was relating his findings.

‘Tracks end here,’ he said, indicating the path of ground where the trail ceased.

Praetor regarded it with narrowed eyes, crouching to touch the ground with his fingers. ‘This stone has been disturbed,’ he said, indicating the path beyond where the tracks faded. ‘Like it’s been laid over the top of something.’

‘Like the city itself has moved?’ offered Halknarr.

Praetor looked up at the old campaigner, ‘Aye.’

‘There is more.’ He traced back his steps to slightly farther up the ridge, just a few metres back. He pointed, ‘See the deep impressions?’ A few of the Firedrakes nodded. ‘Someone knelt here. In power armour.’

‘A deathblow, perhaps?’ suggested Persephion.

Halknarr shook his head. ‘No blood.’

‘Surrender then?’ Praetor said, nonplussed. No Astartes, especially not a Fire-born, would even consider it, let alone actually do it.

As Tsu’gan looked on, he was reminded of He’stan’s words to him.

‘Are you saying the dusk-wraiths have taken a prisoner, Brother Halknarr?’ asked Daedicus.

‘I am, and one that went willingly.’

‘Not Elysius?’ said Persephion.

‘It wasn’t the Chaplain,’ Tsu’gan asserted at last. ‘It was Cerbius Iagon, my old squad brother.’

All eyes, barring the Forgefather’s, turned to Tsu’gan.

‘I fear he has betrayed his own.’

‘Perhaps he had no choice?’ offered Daedicus, more with hope than conviction.

None amongst the Firedrakes wanted to believe betrayal amongst brothers.

‘This place affects the mind,’ muttered Halknarr, eager to be moving on. ‘Who knows what pressures our brothers were under?’

Praetor stood. His face was a stern, unreadable mask. He’d heard enough. ‘Elysius lives still, we can we sure of that.’

‘Their pursuers doubled back,’ added Halknarr. ‘Whatever route our brothers took it did not end here in this place, but nor were the xenos able to follow.’

‘Then we follow those tracks and try to get ahead of them. We have to reach the Chaplain first.’

‘No, Brother-Sergeant Praetor,’ uttered He’stan, clutching the Spear of Vulkan in his fist like a divining rod. His eyes blazed brightly. ‘I have seen another way.’

Chapter Seventeen

I

The Enemy of Doubt

Not since his trials on the Cindara Plateau had Elysius fought this hard to overcome adversity. Back then, over a century before, he had been human. Now he was Astartes and still this darkling place punished his mind, body and soul to its limit.

Ba’ken was a heavy burden on his back and they had fled through the xenos wasteland for hours. Throughout, they’d been harried by mercenary bands. Whooping hellions, atop their savage sky-boards, had tried to draw down on them in a narrow defile of ruins; a pack of whelpmasters and their warp hounds had dogged them without relent until Zartath had found another escape route; the very shadows themselves hunted, gelid warriors with alabaster skin and lank hair like ocean-weed. Through guile and cunning, Zartath kept them ahead of the dark eldar’s clutches, taking the survivors down new routes when others were closed off.

And as they ran, Elysius couldn’t shake the feeling they were heading somewhere. An inexorable destination awaited them on the dark horizon, drawing closer with every moment, and when they arrived it would all end, one way or another. Tonnhauser acquitted himself well – the human was resourceful, strong, steeled by his experiences of the night-city. While Zartath scouted ahead, Tonnhauser became Elysius’s running companion. The Chaplain was glad of it. The human’s resolve shored up his own. More than once, Elysius had wanted to stop and turn, to face his foes in glorious battle and end the hunt in blood. Tonnhauser stopped him. If nothing else, the human should be given every chance to live, even though Elysius thought the likelihood of that very doubtful.

When the baying of distant beasts ceased and the pursuit horns and the shrieked goading of the slavers stopped, when they did finally rest in a small, dark place below the earth, it felt as if they’d been running for days.

‘Nothing. I’ve heard nothing for almost an hour.’ Elysius had his head pressed against the cavern wall. It was cool, but with an icy bite that pained his exposed cheek.

Ba’ken was prone in the middle of the small chamber. His breathing was so shallow his chest appeared still, as if it wasn’t rising at all. But he was alive. For now.

Zartath regarded the Chaplain from across the opposite side of the cavern. He’d taken them deep into the bowels of the Razored Vale, away from the hunting packs and the sky-bound mercenaries that sought them. Of Helspereth and her wyches, there’d been no sign since the encounter on the ridge.

‘Means nothing,’ the Black Dragon snarled. ‘They will come when they are ready. The xenos always do.’

It spoke of years of bitter experience and again Elysius found himself wondering at just how long Zartath and his brothers had been incarcerated. To have survived this long, it was an incredible achievement but it had broken the Astartes irrevocably.

What fate awaits you if we live through this, mutant? Elysius wondered, and his gaze went to Tonnhauser.

Despite his courage, the Night Devil looked exhausted and close to the end of his strength. He’d become an increasingly feral and ragged figure since they’d first been brought to the Reef on Helspereth’s raider. It seemed like several lifetimes ago. When the hunt was on, when life or death became split decisions, governed by fate more than design, it was easy. Move and live. Stand still and die. It was a simple yet brutal doctrine. But now, in the quiet dark with only each other and their thoughts for company, a different battle for survival was being fought. It existed in the mind and Elysius knew of it all too well. He was Astartes, one of the Reclusiam, and his resilience was formidable. But lately, he had found his resolve sorely tested, in this his personal cauldron. Zartath was testament to the fate waiting for any Space Marine who gave in to the madness of the Reef.

Doubts crept in to Elysius’s mind like insidious fingers of shadow. What if they were never found? What if even now his rescuers lay slain? What if he fell before he could deliver the Sigil? Then it too would be lost. The Nine would become the Ten and the Forgefather’s quest made much more difficult.

Elysius crushed his misgivings in a clenched fist.

Faith is my shield. It is the wellspring of my conviction. It is water when I thirst. It is warmth when I shiver. It is vigour when I am weak. It is nourishment when I hunger. With it I am tempered and my will forged into a weapon. This I swear in Vulkan’s name.

The litany did its work. For Elysius the words brought a measure of comfort but also a sense of defiance. They had made it this far.

‘A few steps farther...’ he said out loud.

‘What do you say?’ asked Zartath.

‘Nothing. How long must we linger here?’

‘Soon, we’ll move again.’

‘And to where would you have us go, Black Dragon?’ asked Elysius, standing to stretch the muscles in his legs and back. A half-glance at his crozius and he saw the dullness of its haft in the reflected glow of his eyes. Hope was close to being extinguished too.

‘To wherever the xenos are not,’ came Zartath’s laconic reply.

‘And after that?’

The Black Dragon’s annoyance was obvious as he eyed the Chaplain.

‘We move again, Vulkan-priest. And so on, and so on, as I and my brothers have these last years. Do you think there’s an alternative?’ he snapped.

‘Sooner or later they will catch us. By then Ba’ken will be dead from his injuries and you and I will be weakened. We should consider finding somewhere to take a stand, at least make our sacrifice a cost the xenos won’t forget.’

Zartath rose rapidly like a striking adder. ‘Fool! We are already forgotten. Vulkan’s sons, so quick to stand and hold for glory. Your tenacity will see you dead, brother-priest. We move and do not stop. How else do you think my kin and I lived this long? Honour and nobility are concepts alien to this place. They’ll get you nothing but an unremembered death. Not until I see her or him again and can kill them, will I stop moving. Only then will I have peace. Only then will a measure of revenge begin to account for the loss of my brothers.’

The close confines of the underground cavern magnified and reflected the sound. Zartath’s impassioned words were echoing into silence when the grind of gears emanated from below. At once, the ground started to tremble and a thin sliver of light cracked the ceiling above them.

‘What is this place? Where have you brought us, Zartath?’ asked Elysius, going to his crozius.

The Black Dragon was vigorously shaking his head. ‘We are moving,’ he hissed.

‘Up...’ added Tonnhauser, his voice choked with fear as his gaze went skyward.

The crack was widening and the floor was moving underneath them.

‘Sealed,’ said Elysius, heaving on one of the doors to the chamber. It had locked when the gears were engaged – it was all a part of the same mechanism, a trap sprung by the movements of its prey.

Zartath tested the only other. ‘This one too.’

‘Up we go then,’ said the Chaplain and raised his head towards the chasm of light.

It was a lifter chamber, concealed in the rock. Elysius realised that now, somewhat belatedly. The inexorable destination he had felt them approaching – they had finally arrived.

II

The Coliseum of Blades

Slowly, they were ferried upwards. The walls fell away as the lifter plate rose, much larger than the chamber itself. There was no way out but up into the unknown light. Elysius was shielding his eyes, crozius drawn, when they emerged into an arena.

Shadows folded upon shadows, the gloom unleavened by brazier-lanterns hewn into the flagstone floor. The lambent light from their dulcetly burning embers hinted at patches of old blood, described the outline of barbed walls. Broken weapons, the skeletons of old warriors long dead in the black dust, were limned in red firelight that gave a visceral cast to the scene.

Open to the sky, lightning revealed the mouldering battlefield in flashes of blood-tinged monochrome. The dour faces of statues glared down upon it. These were the dracons and archons, nobles of the frontier realm. They stood upon their black pedestals, titanic in stature, a testament to the egotism and vainglory of the dark eldar. Some were dilapidated, age simply eroding them; others were defaced, their reigns ended in bloody assassination or worse, forgotten ignominy. One stood unblemished, aside from the rest. He was depicted in his lamellar, insectoid armour, a long cape drawn about his broad shoulders. The effigy cradled a helm in the crook of its arms, and its eyes stared imperiously from a face drawn in cruelty and casual malice. An’scur – Lord of the Reef.

Sunken into a deep oval trench, the arena was surmounted by blades. In the darkened pulpits and stalls a gaggle of ghouls looked on.

The Parched. Elysius recognised the wretches from before. Here they were in their hundreds, awaiting a spectacle. His gaze was drawn to the centre where a tall, lithe creature beckoned him with just her eyes. They glittered like poisoned emeralds behind a domino mask.

Helspereth.

She had drawn him here. It was not vanity on the part of the Chaplain that led him to this conclusion. Elysius knew the wych queen was obsessed with him, like a child fascinates over a trapped insect until its wings and appendages have been removed and the curiosity dies with the creature itself. Ever since the ridge, perhaps ever since they’d arrived in the Razored Vale, she had herded him here.

She wanted him, in her own twisted way. And now she had him and an audience to bear witness to whatever humiliation she had planned. This was Helspereth’s intended theatre, the final act about to commence.

‘And then there were four,’ she said, in a sibilant silken voice with hidden barbs. She gave a vicious smile when she regarded Ba’ken. ‘Well, soon to be three.’

A rattle of blades revealed a coven of her wyches, hiding in the shadows behind the survivors. Zartath had loosed his bone-blades but was not quick enough to react.

Elysius felt the cold press of metal against his neck and knew the others were similarly incapacitated. One thrust was all it would take…

‘Welcome,’ said Helspereth with mock geniality, ‘to the Coliseum of Blades.’ She flung her arms wide to encompass the gruesome place in all its anti-glory. ‘True,’ she mused, ‘it has seen fairer times. The flesh trade here is not what it once was. Dysjunction is a cruel and draconian mistress.’

Eyes adjusting to the preternatural gloom, Elysius did now see how ruined the arena was. Its towers and cages were broken and rusted; cracks in some of the walls ran deep; a thick veil of dust swathed almost every surface. It was now a fallen shrine to murder, a Coliseum of Blades no longer.

Helspereth’s eyes took on a fevered aspect as a tremor ran through her body. ‘I have slain so many in this arena. Gutted and cleaved and hewn and sawed and devoured… it is my temple. Here I worship. Katon, the Slaver King slighted me – I killed his genebred humanoid, the troglodyte barely whetted my bloodlust. Katon followed…’ She pointed to a spike where an impaled skull grinned macabrely. A scrap of hair clung tenaciously to the bleached bone scalp. It trembled in an eldritch wind emanating from behind the wych. A coldness came with it, a chill that Elysius felt in his marrow.

Something else was with them in the arena, something the Chaplain could not yet see.

‘Morbane, mon-keigh barbarian-lord, fell to my trident,’ she went on, touring the shadows, revisiting old victories in her mind’s eye, ‘Shen’sa’ur, one of the hated kin, I strangled with a barbed whip; the green-skinned brute, its hollow name was Tyrant, died to a thousand of my dagger cuts. I have bled them, I have decapitated, eviscerated and disembowelled. My legacy of blood is longer than ten of your lives, mon-keigh. You should feel honoured that I want you at the end of my sword.’

Then Elysius did something he hadn’t done for many long years.

He yawned, a long and exaggerated gesture that ended with a curt rejoinder for the wych. ‘Are you done?’

Helspereth stuttered, wrong-footed, ‘W-what?’

‘I tire of your rambling, hell-kite. I said: are you finished with it?’

Imperious nostalgia turned to anger in Helspereth’s expression and body language.

‘Face me now,’ she said evenly, ‘and I will release the others. Once I’m done with you, I’ll give them all a head start before I follow.’

‘Why me?’ Elysius asked.

‘Because you are not entirely unbeautiful for a mon-keigh,’ she snarled and her own false beauty was eclipsed, ‘because I want to crush your pathetic illusions of faith and expose the error of supplication to a powerless, mortal god.’ She moved closer. Her eyes were like black, pitiless coals. ‘I will drink in your sorrow and despair like a panacea. Such divine and sustainable agonies I will reap from your sundered flesh,’ she purred. Licking her blood-red lips in anticipation, she suppressed a tiny thrill.

‘Now,’ she added, ‘come to fight. I have yearned for this since first I took your fleshless arm from your quivering body.’

Elysius’s mouth was a grim straight line. It barely moved. ‘Very well.’

Helspereth smiled without warmth, without feeling. ‘Choose your weapon.’ She stood aside, revealing a host of blades and bludgeons. The Chaplain recognised a defunct chainblade, even a broken storm shield amongst a mass of lesser weapons.

He looked away. ‘I am already armed.’

Helspereth glanced scornfully at the crozius Elysius brandished.

‘That preacher’s stave? What weapon is that for a warrior?’

‘It is mine, given in honour and received with belief and humility,’ the Chaplain said. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand, wych.’

Helspereth made the facial equivalent of a shrug and hissed. ‘Let’s begin…’

She flew at Elysius, grinning savagely, and he was hard pressed to deflect her attacks. Wounds opened up in his cheek and above his left eye, and a score of deeper rents marked his power armour before the Chaplain had regained his footing and realised what had happened.

He was breathing hard when she came again. Helspereth’s blade whickered, like it was fluid and not edged metal at all. Elysius parried, once, twice and again before a stab of pain tore into his side like a torch and his skin burned with his own blood.

‘Too slow… too slow…’ she goaded, stepping back to admire her murder-craft. The wych’s chest was steady, her heartrate barely above a casual beat.

‘Don’t listen to that hell-bitch!’ snarled Zartath, struggling against the bonds and blades that held him down. A skein of razor-edged wire bound the Black Dragon, while a pair of wyches pressed spears to his neck. Beads of Zartath’s blood were already rolling down the tips and hafts due to his efforts. Tonnhauser was bowed by a sabre to his neck, whereas Ba’ken was unconscious and left alone to his oblivion.

Evidently, Helspereth wanted Elysius’s companions to bear witness to his demise.

The cold came again. It fringed the eldritch wind, preceding it like a frosty veil. Something shimmered, dark on dark, like two pict negatives overlapping
one another and exposed to a half-light.

‘Tell me, wych,’ said Elysius. ‘Did your great triumphs come at your hand or something else’s?’ He thrust into the formless shadows with his crozius, rewarded when it struck flesh and a creature resolved itself. Impaled on the Chaplain’s stave, it squirmed and shrieked in pleasure-pain. A cold thing, a white thing, a creature of lank, almost vampiric appearance – Elysius had heard of mandrakes. He grunted as he twisted the innards of this one and gutted it.

The Parched, already drooling at the arena’s bloody proceedings, swooned above them.

‘A simple test, my love…’ Helspereth purred, her excited gaze drinking in the dying mandrake’s agony, ‘…to see if you were worthy.’

Elysius shrugged the corpse off his crozius, the mace-like head threaded with ropes of gore. ‘No more games.’

She came again, buoyed on bounding pirouettes, her twin blades a whirlwind of edged metal. Elysius ignored them. He missed with a swipe to the body but caught Helspereth across the cheek with his fist as he backhanded.

She staggered, but recovered quickly as the Chaplain pressed. An overhead strike sliced air, the follow-up shoulder barge overbalancing him. Fresh agony in his chest was Elysius’s payment as Helspereth sank one of her blades deep.

The Chaplain pulled away, using the heavier weight of his body to lever himself, and the sword shucked free with a welter of blood.

There was a rattle in his throat, the faint gurgle of fluid. She’d nicked his lung in the last attack. It was slowly filling with Elysius’s own lifeblood.

‘Hag,’ he spat, his sputum flecked with crimson, ‘stand still so I can choke you.’

‘An enticing offer.’ Helspereth’s reply was half serious. She leapt through a flurry of Elysius’s blows, her acrobatics confounding the Chaplain’s rage, cutting him as she moved.

‘I will bleed you, my love,’ she promised. ‘Like the Tyrant, I will take from you a thousand cuts until you lie empty on the arena floor, a husk like all the rest.’

He fell, collapsing to his knees, and Elysius came face-to-face with a rictus grin. The skull was humanoid. It mocked the Chaplain.

You’ll die here, it said. Lay down, brother. Lay down, you are tired. The darkness waits. It will take you. We will take you. Let us.

Elysius forced himself to rise. The movements were painful but this was his cauldron. Pain was nothing, only a means of focussing the mind. His faith would provide the strength he needed.

It is vigour when I am weak...

‘Not. Done. Yet,’ he growled through gritted teeth and turned.

‘Oh, good,’ said Helspereth. ‘I’ve only just begun.’

She attacked again. This time, Elysius blocked the harder blows, letting the nicks and jabs fall where they might. Each left a jarring impact, but not so strong his power armour couldn’t absorb it. His riposte struck Helspereth across the midriff. The Chaplain had to time his attacks, wait for a moment when brute force could wound her. She gasped, the air exploding from her lungs. Elysius struck again, against her shoulder. Helspereth’s reply was lazy and he took it on his pauldron. He thrust an armoured knee into her stomach, a sideswipe to the neck drawing a yelp of pleasure from the wych.

Unrelenting, the Chaplain came on again. He smashed Helspereth’s parry aside and punched a jab into her torso. She coughed, spitting blood. A second blow was intended to take off her head but she blocked and held it.

Harsh, edged sparks spilled off the locked weapons in a cascade. Both combatants fought for dominance but neither had the beating of the other.

‘I enjoyed that,’ Helspereth hissed when their faces closed during the struggle. She sucked at the blood of her lip and her eyelids fluttered lustily. ‘But I’m getting bored now,’ she added. Shifting her stance, she suddenly overbalanced the Chaplain. In less than a second, Elysius was on the back foot, his single arm shaking with effort as Helspereth pressed down on him with her two.

The bloodied blade of her sword was less than a handspan from his eye.

‘I shall keep your face when I am through with you,’ she promised.

‘I have a confession to make,’ Elysius said through a grimace.

‘Oh?’

He whispered. ‘I was faking, too.’ With a roar, he threw Helspereth off. She sprang back, quickly shifting from heel to toe.

‘Even with one arm,’ the Chaplain boasted, ‘I can still beat you.’

Apoplexy marred her cold beauty as a murderer’s visage took over. She flew at Elysius. It was to be the deathblow.

‘Vulkan, armour me...’ he muttered, thrusting out the crozius arcanum. Impossibly, its mace-head and haft ignited into glorious energy-flame. Helspereth was struck by its power and faltered. Elysius used this distraction to stave in the wych’s skull. She fell, a look of dumbfoundment on her porcelain face. Shattered by the blow, the domino mask fragmented, exposing Helspereth’s face behind it. There was fear there in her twisted countenance. Even in death, she knew what fate awaited her. Ravening soul hunger was not the sole preserve of the dark eldar – other still more terrible beings craved too.

She Who Thirsts awaited Helspereth. Several lifetimes of torment were her fate now.

Chapter Eighteen

I

Victory and Retreat

A scream, horrific and piercing the veil separating the realms, ripped from her throat. Elysius had never heard such a desolate sound. Her blood was touching his boots when he struck again... and again. All the pent-up aggression and nerves released in a cathartic flood as the Chaplain turned Helspereth’s head into a red paste. Her skull cracked beneath the third blow and he bludgeoned it to fragments before he was done. Even then, Helspereth’s headless form quivered with the jolts of energy from the crozius.

How Elysius had known to thumb the activation rune then, he would never learn. How it had burned into life at all when it was supposed to be broken and spent was another mystery. Did a lingering kernel of energy in the weapon’s power cell impel it to life at the crucial moment? Or was another power at work, one governed by faith?

The Chaplain was wise enough to know that some miracles should simply be, and not be subject to questioning.

Appalled at their queen’s death, the wyches staggered forwards to regard her corpse, not even realising they had let their prey loose.

Zartath was quick to exploit their shock. His bone-blades sheared the razor-wire bonds and as he was still rising he cut down one of the wyches. A second fell to a gut wound from Tonnhauser’s knife. The Guardsmen stabbed several times to be sure the creature was dead. The third sprang away and was about to throw its spear at the human when a green-clad giant rose up behind it and crushed its frail frame in a brutal grapple hold.

Like wrestling the leo’nid of the plains.

The bones snapped audibly before the wretch expired.

‘Just catching my breath,’ gasped Ba’ken, his face greying and his eyes dim. ‘What did I miss?’

The sound of clapping, echoing across the lonely arena floor, forestalled Elysius’s reply.

All eyes turned on the slowly rising raider as it cleared the walls and descended into the deep basin of the coliseum.

The skimmer was unlike any other Elysius had seen. It was huge, replete with banners, hellish pennants of flesh and other macabre panoply. Chains swung lazily from its segmented armour plates. The plates were daubed in red and black, layered and spiked like an insectoid horn. Skulls and other grisly totems hung from the chains. Corpses rattled against the metal flanks.

In the centre of the machine, towering over its long fuselage and situated at the rearmost deckplate, was a throne. Two further deckplates, expansive and shielded by more layered armour like that at the prow, harboured warriors clad in black and bone. Their faces were covered by heavy helms, their armour thicker than that of the lesser kabal warriors. Each carried a bladed polearm not unlike a halberd, except all along the edge fell energy crackled.

‘Incubi...’ Elysius knew of these creatures. They were a lord’s trusted retainers, his bodyguards and executioners without peer. In all his skirmishes against the dusk-wraiths, he had never fought them.

Upon the throne their master reclined. He was every bit the titanic statue that cast its shadow over the Coliseum of Blades.

‘And you are An’scur,’ Elysius concluded.

The archon nodded. He was helmed, his expression hidden behind a daemon’s face wrought in metal.

Behind him, the Parched squirmed and spasmed in their stalls, part in ecstasy at the gruesome killing display they’d been treated to, part in undisguised terror at the presence of their lord and master.

An’scur turned and hissed at them in his native tongue, making the creatures scatter from sight.

‘Slayer!’ roared Zartath as he recognised the dark eldar lord and rushed at him across the arena.

The Black Dragon was only a few metres away when An’scur faced him and nonchalantly extended a finger. A thin line of barely visible mono-wire sprang from a tight brass ring. When the hooked barb at the end struck Zartath’s body the Black Dragon collapsed, wracked by convulsive agony.

‘Sit...’ said An’scur, the concession to use a heathen tongue not a light one.

The point was well made. The archon had dominion here. His incubi saw to that, as did the long-nosed cannons trained on the Salamanders and their human charge.

‘So you are Helspereth’s pet,’ he said, lifting off his helm to reveal a white-pallored face and eyes like slivers of jet. His long, alabaster hair was bound in silver scalp locks and fell back over his head and neck in a shower of tight braids.

‘Amusing,’ he added. An’scur’s gaze went to the prone form of Helspereth.

As the drone of the hovering skimmer-machine filled the silence, Elysius thought he saw a tremor of regret in the archon’s face.

‘Poor, bloodied Helspereth,’ An’scur said. ‘I will miss your tender mercies.’ He added something more in an alien dialect Elysius didn’t know.

‘She won many victories here,’ An’scur told him.

Elysius kept his silence. In truth, he was bleeding badly and finding it hard to stand at all. Behind him, Ba’ken had slumped to one knee and Tonnhauser was doing his best to support him.

‘Strange that a one-armed mon-keigh would be her undoing,’ the archon continued. He looked down at her broken body again, lingered on the crimson smear where her head had been. ‘Fascinating...’

An’scur looked at Elysius once more and donned his helm. ‘Kill them,’ he said.

All Elysius could think to do was mutter one last supplication as the incubi lowered their long, bladed staves.

‘Vulkan, forgive me...’

Then the thunder came, blazing from the shadows in a cluster of bright, burning muzzle flares.

Salvation had arrived. The Firedrakes had found him. Not only that, they were led by the Forgefather.

The Firedrakes attacked swiftly. A raft of bolter fire took apart a pair of incubi warriors, several others weathering the sudden fusillade on their superior armour before the throne-mounted archon gave the order to rise.

Strafing dark lance fire ripped up the arena floor, churning flagstones and turning stone to dust.

Tsu’gan veered aside from one burst, hauling on his combi-bolter’s trigger and clipping another incubus but not felling it before the raider lifted it from view. He advanced alongside Praetor, with Vo’kar and Persephion. The others, led by Halknarr, quickly surrounded the wounded and set about dragging them back from the battlefield.

Tsu’gan’s eyes were on He’stan’s back as he led the charge, screaming Vulkan’s name like an invocation. A tongue of fire surged from the Gauntlet of the Forge, searing the underside of the archon’s raider-skiff and melting the metal. One of the engines died but the machine had enough power to achieve loft.

The dark eldar lord was shrieking from his potentate’s perch. Several of his incubi dropped lithely from the deckplate, rushing to intercede against the Salamanders.

‘Firedrakes, assault as one!’ roared He’stan. He slowed to let the others catch up, tearing out chainblades and hammers as they moved. Together they crashed into the dark eldar elite.

The Forgefather impaled one on the end of his spear. Praetor clashed with another, smashing aside its blade with his storm shield and crushing its skull with his thunder hammer.

Persephion fell, his flank ripped out by one of the incubus power-glaives. He rolled and groaned before Vo’kar rushed in to shield him and hold the creature at bay.

Tsu’gan ducked a savage jab. The blade’s energy flare sent warnings skimming across his retinal display. A reverse swipe cut a groove in his plastron, not deep enough to fully penetrate. His heart leapt with brutal joy when his chainblade met armour and then flesh. The incubus squealed as Tsu’gan drove the grinding teeth of the weapon further then twisted. As he tore the chainblade free, Tsu’gan’s opponent broke apart in a cascade of gore.

‘For my brothers,’ he spat, ready to move on to the next target.

There was to be none.

‘Fall back, form a barricade!’ ordered Praetor. The incubi released by the raider were all dead. Even He’stan was retreating.

Tsu’gan turned, initially dismayed, but saw the Forgefather had what he had come here for. Surrounded by Halknarr and his Fire-born, Chaplain Elysius was alive and carried the Sigil.

Behind him, Tsu’gan heard the raider rise still further. Desultory blasts speared from its cannon-mountings now, no more than a deterrent to further attack. Horns were blowing too and there was the baying of beasts, the cackle of the hellion and the screeching of the scourge. The archon was amassing his warriors. The kabal was rousing to his banner. Interlopers had been found in the Razored Vale. They needed to be expunged.

Vo’kar had Persephion. He was dragging him back towards the others. Tsu’gan rushed over to help him, gripping beneath the wounded warrior’s arm and pulling.

Another of the Black Dragons, unconscious but not dead, was with Elysius and the others.

‘Kill, acquire and retreat,’ said Vo’kar. ‘Now I know how the White Scars feel.’ He laughed, utterly incongruously in the circumstances, and Tsu’gan smiled.

He’stan’s voice came over the comm-feed in his battle-helm.

++The Sigil is ours once more++ he said, ++Glory to Vulkan!++

Praetor’s strident tones followed. ++Engage homing beacons++

A series of dull icons from the small wrist-mounted devices locked to each and every Firedrake lit up the gloom in pearlescent white.

++Even through the veil...++ Praetor’s voice was already fading as transition took hold, ++...they will find us...++

Hot light filled Tsu’gan’s vision as a sense of dislocation swept over him. The ruins of the Volgorrah Reef faded as a new vista slowly resolved through the blaze of teleportation. It was dark and hard to see. He scented burning cinder, an acrid tang he recognised, and knew something had gone wrong.

II

Geviox Reclaimed

Agatone’s forces swept the Ferron Straits in a tide. All across the dusty flatland, the dark eldar hordes were in full retreat. Whatever had kept them here, warring against their natural instincts by holding ground, was gone.

The brother-captain of the 3rd Company and operational commander of the Gevion Cluster War stood proudly in the cupola hatch of a Land Raider battle tank and gave the order to advance.

‘Salamanders! Forward as one. Slow and steady.’

A chorus of replies from his sergeants filled Agatone’s comm-feed as affirmation was given.

From the rearline, Techmarines manning a battery of Thunderfire cannons ordered cluster fire into the panicked dark eldar ranks. They were little more than chaff now – most of the alien elite was either dead or had already fled into the webway. In the distance, hugging the horizon line, portals of dark liquid shimmered. One by one they vaporised out of existence, leaving a grimy fog that lingered on the breeze for a time like smoke before disappearing completely.

The vanguard of the Salamanders brought more battle tanks. The armoured spear was to be led by Agatone in his Land Raider, Fire Anvil. It had once been N’keln’s and before him, Kadai’s. For the first time since his promotion to captain, Agatone felt worthy of its legacy. He sank below the cupola hatch, letting it slam with a dull clank as the engines roared and Fire Anvil’s tracks started to move.

On the left flank, their vantage point a set of iron hills, Lok commanded the Devastators. Their salvos of missiles and plasma bursts took apart a rearguard of grotesques ferried out of the webway to stymie the Salamanders assault. Lascannons lanced the air, scything down raiders and other, more heavily armoured skimmer-machines, before their cult troops could ascend and flee.

This planet, this entire cluster of worlds would be cleansed. Agatone had sworn it.

Rhino transports followed in the wake of Fire Anvil. They carried what remained of the 3rd’s Tactical squads, armed and armoured for close engagement. It was the way of Vulkan.

Look thine enemy in the eye, he had purportedly said, and let him see the fires in yours.

Predators rolled between the armoured transports, the battle tanks sending punishing salvos from their autocannon and lascannon turret mounts.

Overhead, Assault squads burned the air with contrails of fire from their jump packs. They kept pace with the tanks, protecting their flanks and seeking out isolated enemy targets.

There was no great stratagem to it. None was needed. Agatone had fought the last of his enemies to this killing field and fashioned his force into a hammer. Now he meant to bring that crashing down upon the dark eldar, or what was left, and crush them in a decisive blow.

Supporting the Astartes were the Night Devils. General Slayte had survived the war and meant to end his part in it on the frontline with the rest of his men. Who was Agatone to deny him?

‘For those who died and the glory of the 156th,’ Slayte rallied his men.

Inside the dusky confines of the Fire Anvil’s troop hold, Agatone smiled. Such courage.

The Salamanders reached the last of the webway portals swiftly, impelled by stoic fury and their long historical enmity against the dark eldar. A final few raiders surged through the inky darkness of the portals, the last to be conveyed to Volgorrah before the sons of Vulkan brought the fire and the horizon burned.

Dense explosions rocked the sky above, the conflagration unleashed by the Salamanders on the ground rising to reach it. The Vulkan’s Wrath, strike-cruiser of the 3rd, was tearing the fleeing ships of the enemy apart. In low orbit the broken vessels flashed with incendiary flare that looked like starbursts to the warriors below.

And on the ground, amongst the carnage, a bright blaze of dislocation as the battle’s latest arrivals sought vindication and vengeance. The Firedrakes teleported into the heart of the stranded xenos troops from the frigate Firelord. Each of them fought silently. Praetor, unhooded, appeared grimmer than the rest.

Moments earlier, the Firedrakes had materialised in the teleportarium of the Firelord.

In his heart, Praetor felt well and whole. They had recovered the Sigil and Chaplain Elysius yet lived. At times, hunting through the monster-haunted depths of the Volgorrah Reef, the veteran sergeant had doubted that outcome. Then he noticed that Tsu’gan was missing and his heart fell.

He’stan tried but failed to hide his grief. He removed his helmet, as if it was stifling him, and slowly shook his head.

‘The perils of the warp are known to us all, brothers,’ Halknarr offered in a small, respectful voice.

Teleportation was a highly dangerous mode of travel. It meant slipping into the empyrean and riding the tides of warp space. Fell creatures lurked in those depths, attracted by the tiny soul fires of the living. Their hunger was insatiable. Even with a homing beacon slaved to the Firelord’s teleportarium, despite the prayers and acts of supplication made to the machine-spirits by the Techmarines, it was not an exact science. Tsu’gan had failed to make translation. His fate was likely a terrible one.

He’stan nodded but the old campaigner’s words did little to assuage his obvious guilt. ‘His path,’ he began, ‘it was not meant...’ the thought trailed away. Pragmatism took over. ‘We are victorious,’ he said, masking a tone that suggested he felt anything but. ‘The Sigil is safe and our Brother-Chaplain has returned to us.’

The arrival of Apothecary Emek and a clutch of medi-servitors and serfs prevented an immediate response.

Praetor’s face was harder than the flank of Mount Deathfire. His mood was just as volatile. His thoughts were plain to all.

I have failed him, they said in the blankness of his eyes and the tightness of his mouth. Not only that, I have lost another.

‘Bring him forwards,’ snapped Emek. He rasped, his voice affected by the grievous wounding he’d received on the Protean during another of Praetor’s missions. The Apothecary had very nearly died. He was the sole survivor of Brother-Sergeant Nu’mean’s squad. It had left him scarred in many ways. Vulkan’s testing of his sons was as severe as it was unremitting.

Daedicus and Invictese carried Ba’ken, the others parting to let them through. Emek hastily checked the sergeant’s vitals with a bio-scanner. Unconscious but alive.

‘The sus-an membrane has put him in a regenerative coma,’ he muttered, interpreting the data relayed on the scanner screen. Several red areas denoted serious damage. They were focussed on the torso. Emek eyed the Firedrakes sternly. ‘Fortunate given the condition of his body. It will take months to repair this damage. I cannot vouch for the psychological injury, of course.’

‘Ba’ken is strong. He will heal, brother,’ uttered Praetor, not in the mood for the Apothecary’s bile. Though he had not known him well, Praetor knew the tragic events that had unfolded aboard the Protean were directly responsible for Emek’s distemper. He had once been an optimistic, youthful-minded warrior. That life spark had been eclipsed the moment his injuries had near crippled him. Perhaps Praetor’s fate, that which he’d felt on his shoulders ever since Scoria, was not so dissimilar – only his scars were within.

Emek held his gaze before ushering a pair of servitors with a grav-bed forwards. The Firedrakes laid Ba’ken down, the grav-bed sinking a little with his weight before the correct amount of loft was reasserted. ‘Take him to the medi-deck,’ he said curtly, dismissing the serfs.

‘Him too,’ he added, gesturing to Persephion who was being supported still by Vo’kar. That left a glassy-eyed and haunted-looking Tonnhauser. ‘That one I can do little for, save sedate him and hope he recovers.’

‘You’re as brittle as Fugis, perhaps more so,’ said Elysius, approaching the Apothecary under his own strength as the wounded were being taken away.

Emek had never seen the Chaplain’s face. He guarded his surprise at it well, but there was a tremor of recognition visible in the Apothecary’s body language.

‘I am sorry we lost Tsu’gan,’ Emek said, bowing slightly before his Chaplain. In the intervening months since the Protean incident the two had discussed much.

‘Many were lost to bring this back to the Chapter,’ Elysius replied, holding the Sigil of Vulkan aloft.

All eyes went to the holy relic at once.

The Chaplain’s mood was suddenly dour. ‘I only hope it was worth our sacrifice.’

‘You need medical attention, my lord,’ added Emek.

‘In a moment,’ said Elysius, turning. ‘Kneel, my brothers,’ he addressed the others.

The Firedrakes went on one knee. Even He’stan gave genuflection before his Chaplain.

‘Loss and death is the hammer that tests us. In Vulkan’s cauldron, in his forge fires are we set against the anvil. I commend Tsu’gan’s soul and flame to his breast. In hope and brotherhood is the circle of fire maintained. Let us remember him, let us remember his deeds. Honour his sacrifice. He was one of us. Fire-born.’

‘Fire-born,’ they repeated in unison.

‘Firedrakes, stand,’ boomed Praetor. He held his thunder hammer aloft like a banner. ‘Zek Tsu’gan.’

‘Tsu’gan,’ they chimed together.

Zartath, thrashing and raging as soon as he came around, dented the Firedrakes’ reverie.

‘Release me, dogs,’ he snarled, straining as Oknar and Eb’ak moved quickly to hold him.

‘Who is the dog here, savage!’ snapped Eb’ak, resisting the urge to strike the Black Dragon.

‘You Sons of Vulkan are insane,’ Zartath spat. ‘The warp is no place to walk unprotected.’

‘Shut him up,’ Halknarr warned.

Praetor held his fellow sergeant back. ‘He’s raving, brother. Calm yourself.’

‘Release me!’ Zartath struggled on. The bone-blades slid from his vambraces.

‘Kesare’s breath,’ hissed Oknar.

‘I thought it was just a rumour,’ added Daedicus, pulling out his chainsword.

‘Desist,’ Praetor ordered. ‘And let him go. Now.’

Oknar and Eb’ak obeyed, backing away immediately as the feral Black Dragon was released.

Zartath bared his fangs at them then looked to Praetor. ‘Strange way to show your appreciation. I saved your priest and one of his flock. A human, too, though I expected him to die. Hath you no honour?’

‘He speaks the truth,’ said Elysius. ‘We would not have survived without him.’

‘A ship,’ Zartath uttered quickly, ‘I need a ship and a way back to my Chapter.’

‘That’s not happening any time soon,’ Halknarr told him.

The Black Dragon growled. The bone-blades extended further. ‘Will you stop me?’ he sneered.

‘Don’t make me regret my decision, brother,’ Praetor told him in a level voice. He tapped the haft of his thunder hammer.

Emek stepped through the throng. He’d been on his way to the Apothecarion when the Black Dragon had come around. He eyed the bone-blades with a mixture of disgust and fascination. ‘Does it hurt,’ he said, ‘when they come out?’

Zartath exhaled and stood down. The blades slid back into his forearms, ‘Aye, every time.’

‘What will we do with him?’ asked Halknarr. He looked to He’stan for guidance but the Forgefather seemed content to observe only.

Praetor grunted, evidently unhappy. ‘He stays here.’ He addressed Zartath, who was on the verge of another outburst. ‘For now. If he can behave.’

‘I’ll examine him in the Apothecarion,’ offered Emek. ‘Some of those wounds appear to be fresh.’

‘I need no tending,’ the Black Dragon seethed.

‘Even still, you will go with our Apothecary,’ Praetor told him, nodding.

When he saw he had no choice, Zartath acceded to the will of his new keepers. He left with Emek without further incident.

‘A bizarre ally, for sure,’ said Halknarr when they were gone.

‘I vouch for him, though,’ Elysius replied. ‘If not for Zartath, the dark eldar would’ve caught us sooner than they did. Even so, many still died to get us to that point.’

‘At least the dusk-wraiths were denied your head, my Lord Chaplain,’ offered Halknarr.

Elysius nodded, but privately he wasn’t so sure. Inwardly, he wondered if they had ever wanted him at all, that perhaps the dark eldar had a different purpose. At the back of his mind, then just a nascent realisation yet to surface, Elysius wondered if in fact he had merely been the bait to snare a different prey altogether.

‘Techmarine,’ Praetor’s stentorian voice interrupted the Chaplain’s thoughts. The Salamander at the teleportarium’s controls stood ready to receive the sergeant’s orders. ‘Set coordinates for the Ferron Straits. Bring us to the thick of it. I want to bloody my hammer before this is done. One last time.’

The Firedrakes agreed.

A grim smile returned to the Forgefather’s face as he stepped onto the teleporter plate with his brothers.

Tsu’gan would have approved.

Chapter Nineteen

I

Ferro Ignis

The gates of the vault beckoned.

Head bowed, He’stan handed the Sigil of Vulkan to his lord.

‘Whatever lies beyond these gates,’ said Tu’Shan, ‘we must be prepared for it.’ He took the Sigil from the Forgefather and pressed it into the impression wrought into the metal.

Almost immediately, the churning of gears sounded throughout the cavern as an ancient mechanism went to work. This was artifice of the oldest kind, from before the Great Betrayal and the Long War that still followed. Whether it was Vulkan’s hands that had wrought it or older still, none amongst the Chapter knew. It was a holy place now, though its secrets, lost to time, were about to be revealed.

Tu’Shan stood back, rejoining He’stan who’d lifted his gaze as a shuddering din echoed around the subterranean chamber.

He’stan made the symbol of Vulkan over his left breast to mark the import of the moment. Tu’Shan remained still, not wishing to disturb it. They two were the greatest heroes of the Chapter, lords of legend themselves, and yet they stood humbled before the gate and the legacy it represented.

‘I sense our primarch’s hand in this,’ uttered the Regent, his voice just above a whisper.

‘His ways are strange. Now, I know why I was guided back.’

Slowly, a crack appeared in the centre of the gate. It fed down from the cavern ceiling, some hundred metres or so higher up, and snaked around the Sigil itself until meeting the ground. Dust and light, made warm and lambent by the magma glow, spilled forth.

Regent and Forgefather let the cloud, redolent of ash and cinder, envelop them.

It billowed into nothing and the gate was left open, a corona of ruddy light smudging its threshold.

Low-burning braziers lined the walls of a small, round room. The rock was smooth, veined with black fissures and deep red. Their light was cast upon a single object located into the centre of the chamber. It was a book, cradled on a pedestal of obsidian.

He’stan stepped forwards. ‘From the Tome of Fire,’ he said, somewhat nonplussed.

‘It surprises you?’ asked Tu’Shan, facing him.

Gaze fixed on the pedestal, He’stan replied, ‘I had thought it would be one of the Nine. I believed that’s why my pilgrim’s path had brought me home. I was wrong.’

Tu’Shan didn’t know what that portended but chose to keep his sudden disquiet to himself.

‘Lord Vel’cona,’ he called to the shadows and the Chief of Librarians emerged from the darkness. His eyes flashed cerulean blue.

‘It has power,’ he uttered in an awed voice.

‘A lost chapter,’ He’stan concluded, taking another step towards it before he faltered.

It was a plain looking thing. Leather-bound in drake hide, it was unadorned save for the icon of Vulkan emblazoned into its front and a dark gold clasp to bind it.

‘As our primarch’s namesake, it is your right,’ Tu’Shan told the Forgefather.

Regarding his Regent for just a moment, He’stan nodded and entered the room.

Crackling brazier flames breached the reverent silence. A warm atmosphere pervaded, but it was heavy with the weight of moment.

‘It must not leave this place,’ said He’stan, voicing what he knew in his heart as he approached the book’s cradle.

This was a temple to Vulkan, a secret chamber of the primarch. His will had brought them here, across the millennia. It seemed impossible – for the braziers still to be lit, for this sanctuary to have remained undisturbed for so long. He’stan couldn’t say what had drawn him here when he and Tu’Shan had first discovered the chamber. Nor could he be certain why the primarch had chosen for his sons to find it now. All he knew was that they were here and this, a portion of Vulkan’s distilled wisdom, was what he meant them to find.

Hands shaking, He’stan undid the clasp and opened the book. As he read, his face began to darken.

Tu’Shan awaited them on his throne. He’stan was close by, standing a respectful distance behind the Regent, as were his Firedrakes. Praetor was amongst them, twenty of the 1st Company as honour guard for their Chapter Master.

Master Vel’cona and Chaplain Elysius, whole again wearing a newly fashioned power fist, were the only others present. They waited in silence for the arrival of the Caldera. The Thunderhawk gunship had docked at Prometheus less than an hour ago. Two of its occupants had been summoned to the Regent’s presence upon their arrival.

The great gate to the throne room opened and two Salamanders walked in haste through its ornate arch. The pair of Firedrakes flanking the gate eyed them both warily.

‘My liege,’ said Pyriel, trying to hide the shock of seeing Vulkan He’stan as he fell to one knee, ‘we bring grave news.’

Dak’ir knelt alongside his master, head bowed. He felt a strange sense of foreboding but not from the revelations they were about to impart. It was coming from his brothers gathered in the throne room and he needed no psychic wit to discern it.

They’d made their return from Moribar with all speed, and though the planet was not far from Nocturne, a twist of warp fate had ensured they’d arrived after He’stan and the Firedrakes. Pyriel had recovered en route, he and Dak’ir discussing what they had seen in the vision.

The Epistolary related that to the assembly now. He described their ‘meeting’ with Caleb Kelock, how the technocrat had revealed, even in death, all of his secrets. Pyriel told of Kelock’s account, that he had discovered plans for the weapon years before his death. It was a relic from before the Age of Strife and the technocrat had coveted it to his doom.

Throughout Pyriel’s explanation, Tu’Shan was stony faced.

‘It is an apocalypse weapon,’ the Librarian said, ‘the one we used on Scoria, or at least a version of it.’

‘It’s my understanding you weren’t present when that happened,’ said Vel’cona. His gaze was penetrating as he regarded his student.

‘I have seen it, my lord,’ said Pyriel, trying not to balk before his master’s fire. ‘In a psychic vision on Moribar, I saw it lance from the heavens and tear our world apart.’

Tu’Shan’s eyes narrowed, his anger visible in the fire flaring within them. Even a threat against his world was an affront to him and the Chapter.

‘It goes back to Stratos, my lords,’ Pyriel continued. The next part was difficult for Pyriel to say. ‘Ko’tan Kadai’s death was a deception.’

‘Explain yourself,’ the Regent pressed, ‘and do it quickly.’

‘During his… resurrection, Kelock’s mind was opened to us. We saw his past deeds and the measures he went to once he realised the destructive potential of the weapon. Somehow, Nihilan achieved the same feat. A trap was left for us on the sepulchre world and we very nearly succumbed.’ Pyriel kept the part about Dak’ir’s loss of control to himself, though Vel’cona looked far from deceived.

‘An item, a way to break the cipher Kelock protected the weapon template with, was needed. He hid it on Stratos in a vault.’

‘The Dragon Warriors were seeking it,’ said Vel’cona.

Pyriel turned to him, ‘Yes, master. And they succeeded. It was never about killing Kadai. His death was… incidental.’

Now, Tu’Shan’s fists were clenched. To hear that one of his valued captains, his brothers, had been slain to create little more than a smokescreen was galling. He looked down at Pyriel’s companion.

‘And what say you, Hazon Dak’ir? Was your former captain killed for no better reason than it was convenient? You were there at the moment of his death.’

Dak’ir looked up at their faces for the first time since he’d entered the chamber.

‘Nihilan hated Kadai, my lord. He hates all of us. But there is a greater plan than revenge at work here. We must be careful. Nocturne is in peril, and we must arm ourselves.’

Tu’Shan’s gaze bored into him as if seeking the truth in Dak’ir’s words.

Why are they so wary of us? thought the Lexicanum. All of their faces were stern and guarded. Why are they so wary of me?

His answer was forthcoming.

‘We will.’ Tu’Shan leaned forwards in his throne. ‘But we have learned much, also.’

Dak’ir noticed the Regent’s fists were still clenched. Whatever was coming, it hadn’t been easy for Tu’Shan to decide upon.

‘Forgefather…’ Tu’Shan invited.

First bowing to his lord, He’stan advanced on Dak’ir.

‘“A low-born, one of the earth, shall pass through the gate of fire”,’ he began. Dak’ir knew the words well. They were the prophecy, the one pertaining to him. ‘“He will be our doom or salvation”.’

‘Tempus Infernus…’ uttered Dak’ir, without thinking.

He’stan’s eyes were upon him, pieces of flame-wreathed flint driven into his soul. Unlike the benevolence they had shown to Tsu’gan, Dak’ir found only accusation in those smouldering orbs.

‘“And so begins the Tempus Infernus,”’ he continued, the other part of the prophecy as revealed to him by the book. ‘“The Time of Fire comes to Nocturne, and all trials before shall seem as nothing to this. One will become many. The Ferro Ignis shall emerge from ashes cold and wreath our world in conflagration. He is the Fire Sword. He is our doom”.’

‘It is you, Dak’ir,’ said Tu’Shan, his voice full of foreboding. ‘You are the Ferro Ignis, or will be. You are the destroyer who will bring about the Time of Fire.’

The Lexicanum rose to his feet. All eyes were upon him now.

Pyriel tried to fashion a riposte to his Chapter Master’s accusation but the severe expression of Vel’cona stopped him. The Epistolary had seen what Dak’ir was capable of. He had witnessed his nascent strength during the burning and again in the tunnels beneath Moribar. The Caldera would not have breached the planet’s tumultuous atmosphere had it not been for Dak’ir.

In the end, Pyriel stayed silent.

‘And so?’ Dak’ir asked, defiant.

Had Tsu’gan been right, then? Was he just an aberration? Worse than that, was he a pariah to his Chapter?

‘Until we know for certain,’ said Tu’Shan, ‘you will not be allowed to leave this place and your psychic powers will also be shackled. You are forbidden from using them.’

‘Such measures were undertaken before, my lord.’

‘Nikaea is ancient myth, ten thousand years old,’ the Regent replied. ‘You will adhere to this decree, until I see fit to lift it or impose more permanent sanctions. I will not risk this Chapter’s safety and that of the people of my home world.’

Dak’ir shook his head, ‘I am Salamander, Lord Tu’Shan. I am part of this, let me play my role. What if I am Nocturne’s salvation?’

‘In your eyes, I see you don’t truly believe that.’

Dak’ir was about to respond when he stopped himself. The Chapter Master was right. When Dak’ir had seen the apocalypse vision, there was a part of him that believed he was not merely witnessing it but that he had actually caused it.

‘I don’t know what I believe,’ he murmured.

Pyriel was looking around at the assembled Chapter elite, searching for some glimmer of sense amidst the unfolding madness.

‘He saved my life,’ he said, exasperated. ‘This is an error, this is–’

Silence!

The psychic impel hit Pyriel hard. Vel’cona’s eyes blazed.

There was little more to say. Tu’Shan nodded to his second-in-command.

‘Take him,’ said Praetor simply. Four Firedrakes from the honour guard marched from the darkness to surround Dak’ir.

‘Until we know what this means for Nocturne, you will be held here in the cells on Prometheus,’ Tu’Shan told him. ‘I am sorry, brother. There is no other way.’

Dak’ir unstrapped Draugen in its sheath and handed the sword to Pyriel.

‘Keep this for me.’

Pyriel nodded, unable to find the words.

Then Dak’ir held out his hands. Shackles were placed around his wrists and neck. Wrought by Vel’cona, all three bands had psychic nullifying properties.

As the final clasp was locked shut, Dak’ir closed his eyes.

Ferro Ignis. The honorific seeped into his mind like an accusation as he was led away from the throne room and to the cells.

Fire Sword.

Destroyer of Nocturne.

II

Burdens

‘I warned you, Pyriel.’ Vel’cona was pacing his chambers, a room of dark cobalt with much of its arcana lost to shadow. ‘I warned you of the dangers.’

The sanctum was one of the Chief Librarian’s many that he had situated around Prometheus. Most were protected by psychic wards, impossible for anyone but Vel’cona to locate, let alone penetrate. It was rare indeed that Pyriel gained admittance. But then these were rarefied times.

The Epistolary saw little through the darkness. A ring of ever-burning flame surrounded him but emitted no illumination or heat. It was psychic fire and the circle which the Librarian inhabited was the only concession into Vel’cona’s quarters that his master was prepared to make.

‘Nothing is certain, master,’ Pyriel replied. ‘Nocturne’s fate is, as of yet, undecided.’

Since the revelations in the throne room, the entire Salamanders Chapter had been put on alert. Captain Dac’tyr of the 4th had assembled the fleet at once and was currently anchored in low orbit above the planet. Those companies close enough to return had been contacted by astropath. Vulkan’s Eye, the mighty defence laser that watched over all of Nocturne from its perch on Prometheus moon, was turned towards the darkling stars.

None knew when the Dragon Warriors would make their assault or how it would happen, but at least they would be ready for it.

‘Did you learn nothing during the burning?’ Vel’cona asked.

‘With respect, master, you weren’t there on Moribar, in the Caldera.’ Pyriel spread his hands in contrition. ‘Dak’ir’s power is great. It terrifies me. The truth is, even if I’d wanted to vanquish him, I couldn’t. He would have overwhelmed me.’

‘You are my finest apprentice, Pyriel. One day you will assume my mantle as Chief Librarian. How can I let you do that if your judgement is so flawed?’

‘I’m being pragmatic. We must hone Dak’ir; help him to master his powers.’

‘No. You should have taken action sooner. You should have killed him during the trials. That was all you needed to do.’

‘Then why not do it now? If he is so dangerous, then why don’t you and I go to Dak’ir’s cell right now and destroy him?’

Vel’cona scowled, the fires in his eyes deepening his expression of displeasure.

‘Because you know we cannot. Doom or salvation,’ Pyriel added. ‘Salvation, master, but from what? We need Dak’ir. He is beyond us both. There is something within him, a potential that we have to realise or Nocturne itself could be forfeit.’

‘And who is to say that by realising his potential we do not damn ourselves in the process?’ Vel’cona countered. He sagged a little. ‘You and I have always seen alike, Pyriel. It is why I encourage you to speak your mind to me, why I tolerate your occasional lapses in respect, but in this you are wrong.’

‘I believe in him.’

‘Then I envy your faith.’ He paused and there was a hint of lamentation in it. ‘Dak’ir awaits the Chapter Master’s judgement and that of the Pantheon Council. Whatever is decided, we must both abide by it.’

‘And you will advocate his destruction, master, when the council is convened?’ It was an impertinent question, but one Pyriel felt he had a right to ask.

‘I will.’

‘Then I hope the vote goes against you.’

Vel’cona sighed. He knew this was not easy for Pyriel. ‘We will see. One thing I know for sure, Epistolary. War is coming. The Dragon Warriors are bent on our destruction.’

‘Nihilan is bent on our destruction,’ Pyriel corrected.

Vel’cona nodded. ‘I should have killed him years ago when I first suspected,’ he muttered. Then he added more assertively, ‘I won’t make the same mistake with Dak’ir.’

Pyriel bowed his head in supplication.

It was in the hands of Vulkan now.

Elysius staggered as he left the medi-slab.

‘I’ve got you, brother,’ said Emek, his arm swiftly under the Chaplain’s and around his chest.

The Apothecarion was dimly lit and smelled of the unguents and salves Emek had applied to Elysius’s battle-ravaged body. The deep muscle massage was intended to released the pent-up stress and allow faster recovery. But the Chaplain’s wounds were extensive, his exhaustion hidden behind a mask of determination. It had been hard enough to get him to agree to treatment. Now Emek had him, Elysius was eager to return to his supplications before the primarch in the Reclusiam. Evidently that desire had yet to transfer to his weary limbs.

‘The body never lies…’ Emek said. ‘No matter how strong you think you are.’

Stripped of his power armour, Elysius wore only a pair of mesh leggings, part of the armour’s sub-layer that went below the ceramite, and was naked from the waist up. As well as honing his mind and spirit, the Chaplain worked tirelessly in the gymnasia. His remaining arm was bunched with bench-pressed muscle.

Elysius regained his feet and Emek let him go.

The Apothecary nodded. ‘Nice,’ he said, ‘you’re healing well, the balance will come.’

‘And you, brother?’

Emek turned away, busying himself with the instruments he’d left on a counter next to the medi-slab. He adjusted the settings on a bio-scanner needlessly.

‘There is pain, but I’m managing it.’

The Apothecary was wearing a light robe and medical fatigues, power armour ill-suited to deep muscular rehabilitation. It exposed some of the horrific injuries he’d sustained on the Protean. A xenos psyker, its mind absorbed into the ship, had inflicted them. Despite several restorative attempts, much of the crude scarification remained. It had obliterated some of his honour-markings and left him walking with an awkward gait.

‘I’m not talking about your body, Emek,’ said Elysius, pulling on the mesh torso layer. One of the arms had been removed to account for the Chaplain’s maiming.

Emek glanced at him. ‘You should get an armour serf to do that for you. I could summon one…’

‘Answer my question,’ Elysius pressed. ‘Besides the physical pain, how are you coping?’

Emek licked his lips. He put the bio-scanner down and spread both hands against the counter, bracing himself.

‘Embittered,’ he admitted. ‘The Protean was no one’s fault, but I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be better that I’d died aboard rather than being condemned to this.’

‘Your role in this Chapter is vital to us all, brother.’

Emek turned quickly. There was anger in his eyes. ‘I am near crippled. Damaged to such an extent that even Master Argos cannot remake me anew. I used to march with my brothers, Elysius. I had such… hopes.’

‘You do your duty, Emek. You serve your Chapter still. What greater calling is there than that?’

‘I am tired, Elysius.’

‘These are trying times for all of us, brother. It will pass.’

Emek’s silence suggested his doubt.

‘When you are finished here, meet with me in the Reclusiam,’ said the Chaplain. ‘We will talk further.’

Elysius had left the Apothecarion several hours earlier and was now knelt in the Reclusiam, turning his crozius over and over in his hands. Master Argos had fashioned him a bionic replacement for his lost limb. The Chaplain still wore his power fist into battle, but the bionic one was more practical for his duties around Prometheus and Nocturne.

Elysius had already finished his litanies, yet still he pondered the weapon in his hands. The crozius was restored, again by Master Argos’s own craft. It was magnificent, the equal of any master weapon in the Salamanders’ arsenal. On Volgorrah, though, it had been shattered. Upon inspection later, the Techmarines had told him it should not have worked. The Master of the Forge had confirmed it. The crozius’s power cell had been breached. It was beyond function.

It was no mere thing, Elysius had decided. To ignite when he had needed it the most, it spoke of something deeper than faith. He chose not to interrogate further. It had entered the Reef broken and now it was restored – that was all that mattered.

So much had been lost. He had learned of Iagon’s suspected treachery and it pained him to think of it. Elysius was glad Tsu’gan hadn’t seen it and feared it would now hit Ba’ken hardest of all when he was revived from his sus-an membrane coma.

I should have seen it, he thought. I should have noticed the canker tearing Iagon up inside.

He’d let his own doubts cloud his mind. It wouldn’t happen again.

Resolved, Elysius rose and found a shadow falling across him from the Reclusial arch.

At first, he thought it was Emek having completed his ministrations in the Apothecarion.

‘Brother-Chaplain,’ uttered a cold, mechanical voice.

‘Master of the Forge,’ Elysius replied, coming eye-to-eye with Argos.

The Techmarine was armoured, but without his bulky servo-harness. Sigils of the Cog and fealty to the Martian Priesthood sat alongside the Salamander iconography of his battle plate.

The bionic eye Argos wore in place of an organic one glowed dully in the gloom.

‘It is good to see you, brother.’

‘And you.’

Argos looked down to Elysius’s belt where the Sigil of Vulkan was now mag-locked. ‘Returned to its rightful place.’

‘It has brought much revelation and unsettlement.’

‘The Archimedes Rex is to be reunited with the Mechanicus,’ Argos told him, apropos of nothing. The Salamanders 3rd Company, led by Pyriel, had discovered the forge-ship, derelict and floating in space.

‘I suppose these troubling times we live in all began in its haunted corridors,’ Elysius conceded.

After wresting it from a piratical faction of Marines Malevolent, the Salamander boarding party had discovered the casket with Vulkan’s mark that had led them to Scoria. It had been the first step on whatever path the Chapter was now walking. The forge-ship itself had gone back to Prometheus, where Argos could study it and hold it until its rightful owners could reclaim the vessel. That time had arrived.

‘Your capture pained me greatly,’ Argos said after a brief silence, the lack of inflection making the warmth of his words slightly incongruous. ‘And I see you no longer hide your face behind that mask of death.’

Since Volgorrah, Elysius had chosen to no longer wear his battle-helm in all circumstances. He would go into battle unhooded from now on. His charges would see the vehemence in his face, echoed by the fire of his words. His enemies would bear witness to his hate and quail before it. But those were not the only reasons.

Elysius regarded the metal plate masking half of Argos’s face. Beneath it, he knew there was an acid-ravaged mess. ‘I carried a heavy burden, Argos…’

‘I know.’

‘My guilt–’

‘Was unnecessary,’ the Master of the Forge interjected. ‘I forgave you long ago, Elysius. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing to forgive.’

The Chaplain’s voice became a choked whisper. ‘Thank you, brother.’

Vulkan He’stan stared through the occuliport of one of Prometheus’s viewing domes, looking at the void.

‘They are out there somewhere,’ he said softly to the dark before Tu’Shan emerged out of the shadows.

The lights in the vast chamber were all doused. Only the reflected glow of the stars and other lunar bodies provided the room with illumination.

Until Tu’Shan had arrived, He’stan had been alone.

‘Why do you isolate yourself out here, brother? I thought you were glad to be back amongst your kin.’

‘I am, but soon I’ll have to leave again. The Nine call to me with one voice and I must answer. I will be alone again and must prepare myself for that burden.’

After a few moments, Tu’Shan said, ‘Such uncertainty.’ He too was looking to the heavens now. ‘Much is unknown.’

‘You are questioning your decision to incarcerate Dak’ir.’ It was statement not a question.

Tu’Shan knew better than to be surprised. ‘I am.’

‘And you want to know what I would have done in your stead.’

‘Yes.’

He’stan turned to face the Regent. ‘I don’t know. It was not my choice to make.’

‘But if it had been?’

‘Then I would have done what I thought was right, for the good of the Chapter and the people.’

Tu’Shan nodded at the Forgefather’s understated wisdom. There was no right and wrong answer. All they could do was wait and hope they would not be found wanting against the anvil.

‘No one can see all ends, brother,’ said He’stan. ‘But a great time of trial approaches and there will be blood before it’s done.’

They both lifted their heads to the sky again.

Nihilan was coming. No one knew precisely what he had planned but with Dac’tyr’s fleet already in orbit and the Eye of Vulkan prowling the void, surely even the Dragon Warriors weren’t insane enough to attack Nocturne?

‘Let him come,’ Tu’Shan’s voice was hard and deep with anger. ‘I want to look this traitor in the eye before I crush him.’

Epilogue

The penitarium chamber was dark, its torches doused. A cold, icy smell emanated from its walls. It was a hollow place, a solitary prison with none of the purity of the solitoriums.

Dak’ir stared at Pyriel through a vision-grille in the gate. The prisoner was stripped of his power armour but the psychic dampeners around his neck and wrists were still in place.

‘Your battle-plate is secured in the armourium,’ Pyriel told him. The Epistolary had removed his helmet, which was sat in the crook of his arm. His face was full of darkness. He opened his mouth, unsure of what to say next.

‘It’s all right, master,’ said Dak’ir.

‘No, it isn’t. It’s wrong.’ Pyriel turned from the vision-grille, exasperated, then quickly turned back. ‘This is a mistake, but it is the will of my master and the will of the Regent, so we shall abide.’

‘Do I look as though I’m struggling to escape?’

Pyriel eyed the Firedrakes, standing sentry at either end of the access corridor. Neither had moved, except to allow the Librarian entry to see his apprentice.

‘No. But what choice do you have, brother?’

A brief silence fell between them, full of unanswered questions.

Pyriel attempted to answer some of them.

‘You’ll go before the Pantheon Council. I don’t know when they plan to convene, but it should be soon.’

‘Will you be there?’

Pyriel looked down. ‘I will, but my influence won’t count for much, I fear.’

‘What happens then?’

There was something different about Dak’ir, an inner peace and calmness Pyriel hadn’t seen before as he looked at him. The answer was simple. ‘You’ll be judged. So too the veracity and immediacy of the prophecy.’

‘Of all the Librarians you’ve trained, I am different, aren’t I?’

The Epistolary nodded. ‘There’s only been one other that had your natural gifts, but even he pales next to your psychic ability.’

‘Nihilan.’

‘Yes. That is why my master cannot allow you free until we know what the Fire Sword means.’

‘Don’t you mean: what the Fire Sword is?’

‘No, you are the Ferro Ignis. I’m convinced of that.’ Pyriel smiled wryly. ‘But as to what that means for Nocturne, how your destiny will manifest and affect our own. That I am uncertain of.’

‘But you don’t think me a destroyer.’

Pyriel snorted with dark humour. ‘Oh, you are a destroyer all right, but whether for our enemies or our world, that’s what is to be decided. For what it’s worth, I think you are our saviour. I must simply trust to the wisdom of my betters to draw that conclusion too.’

‘And if they don’t?’

Pyriel’s face darkened further. ‘Then they’ll kill you.’

Dak’ir lowered his gaze and took a step back from the gate. ‘Thank you, master. For everything.’

‘I’m not finished.’

Dak’ir looked up, sensing bad news.

‘Tsu’gan is lost.’

Confusion and grief warred on Dak’ir’s face. ‘Lost?’

‘To the warp. I am sorry, brother.’

Dak’ir was shaking his head. ‘I don’t understand. He fell in battle? What happened to him?’ His eyes narrowed. Tsu’gan was his greatest adversary within the Chapter. They had never seen eye-to-eye. Were it not for their oaths to Vulkan, they would be nemeses. Yet, Tsu’gan was still Dak’ir’s brother. They had bled together. News of his demise brought nothing but hollowness. There was no sense of relief. He had wanted to convince Tsu’gan of his worth, to have him call him brother and mean it. At the very least to draw blades on one another and air their grievances in the battle cages. This only left Dak’ir feeling cheated.

Pyriel explained. ‘When Elysius was rescued from the Volgorrah Reef,’ he said – by now, they had heard of their Chaplain’s dramatic escape – ‘the 1st Company had to teleport him out. There was no other way to flee the dusk-wraiths’ hell-realm. During translation back aboard the Firelord something went wrong. Tsu’gan did not return with the others. The warp took him.’

Dak’ir’s fist slamming into the gate made Pyriel flinch.

‘Calm yourself, brother,’ snapped the Epistolary.

‘This reeks of Nihilan and his bastard Dragon Warriors.’ Dak’ir was incensed. His eyes blazed, but only red, not cerulean blue, with the psychic dampeners in place. ‘What is being done to find Tsu’gan?’

Pyriel looked nonplussed. ‘Nothing. He is dead, Dak’ir. Tsu’gan won’t be coming back.’

‘It’s a lie, Pyriel. He’s been taken, I know it.’

‘How? How can you be sure of that?’

Dak’ir’s fiery gaze filled the vision-grille as he came right up to the gate. ‘It’s Nihilan. He wants us both. Ever since Cirrion, he’s wanted us.’

‘For what? Dak’ir, you are raving. This makes no sense.’

‘To join his brood, to sacrifice to whatever warp-born potentates he serves, who can tell what machinations drive him. But, master, please believe me when I say that Tsu’gan is not dead. He is in danger, not merely his body but his soul too.’

The pit was dark and smelled of blood. The metal collar around Tsu’gan’s neck was heavy. A chill numbed his exposed skin. His armour was gone, though he didn’t know how or when it had happened. His fists were clenched, tight with anger. His bare feet crushed shards of glass beneath him.

The pain was purifying.

He gazed around, interrogating the darkness. The pit was spiked around the edges, the low ceiling too. Eight rusting gates, each set in one wall of an octagonal chamber, offered a way out.

This was not the Firelord. But he must have been here longer than the few seconds of dislocation after teleporting. The beacon, the one he had worn on his vambrace, had been intercepted. It had brought him to this place instead.

As Tsu’gan watched, four of the gates, like portcullises, began to rise.

Eyes, wet and narrowed with malign intelligence, glittered in the gloom beyond as a quartet of creatures shambled out. The gates slammed shut behind them.

They moved on misshapen limbs, chains clanking and armour plating screeching as they ground against one another. Mutated fists clutched gladiatorial blades and bludgeons. Some of the beasts had claws already and no need of weapons. Slab-shouldered, thick-necked, grotesque with too much muscle, they were taller and broader than the Salamander. Each wore a stylised battle-helm to hide their horrific natures. A stink of offal and foulness pervaded them like a miasma.

‘A fight, is it?’ Tsu’gan smiled. He had fought in the Hell-Pits of Themis. Saurox, gorladon and dactylon had all fallen beneath his pugilist’s blade.

He tugged on a length of chain that was attached to the neck collar. It gave him about five metres before the links would go taut. Tsu’gan scowled and let the anger come.

‘Bring it…’

Tsu’gan dodged a trident lunge, using the first muto-gladiator’s momentum to bring its face into contact with his elbow. The helmet dented, the nose guard crushed inwards and the creature mewled in shock and pain. The second Tsu’gan broke against the chain. He let it come, pulling the chain taut at the last moment. Ribs cracked audibly as the metal links crashed against the gladiator’s body. Snatching up its fallen axe, Tsu’gan went for the third. He blocked a strong but lazy blade sweep with the purloined weapon’s haft then punched the creature in the face to disorientate it before burying the axe in its head. Gore and brain matter washed the Salamander’s honour-scarred body.

Leaving the axe embedded, Tsu’gan rolled from the path of the fourth. This one was a juggernaut, swinging twin morningstars in both its gnarled fists. It turned quickly, Tsu’gan ducking a blow meant for his head. He went in low, under its second swipe, and came up inside its death arc. Making fists, Tsu’gan boxed either side of the muto-gladiator’s head and it yelped in agony as its ear drums burst. Strange hooting noises, resonating through its metal helmet, issued from the creature as it swung recklessly at the Salamander.

Tsu’gan took up his chain again and ran around the crazed monster until he’d circled it. As it came for him again, Tsu’gan drew the chain tight. First it snapped against the gladiator’s body, then its neck. The Salamander broke it with a savage twist and the creature slumped dead.

The sound of moaning behind him brought a dark smile to Tsu’gan’s lips. He’d incapacitated the first two gladiators deliberately. Turning around, he approached them, stooping once to nonchalantly pick up a fallen sword.

The first he beheaded savagely. The second he ran through, leaving the sword impaled in the body.

‘Your wolves needed sharper fangs,’ he roared at the darkness above, where he knew someone was watching him.

‘Such rage…’ A disembodied voice echoed from the shadows. An armoured figure came slowly into view, walking to the edge of a lofty platform, looking down into the arena-pit.

Tsu’gan snarled when he recognised Nihilan. There was something… different about him, though.

‘Sorcerer,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come down here and face me. Or are you afraid?’

Nihilan merely smiled as if he hadn’t heard the Salamander at all.

His silence infuriated Tsu’gan. ‘Give me my armour and weapons!’ he shouted. ‘And I’ll cut my way free of this pathetic prison. You’ll regret snaring me with your warp-born subterfuge.’

‘Such rage,’ repeated Nihilan, his voice oddly resonant. ‘It makes you powerful… Malleable. You will be a worthy vessel for me, Tsu’gan.’

The Salamander frowned, eyeing the figure of Nihilan carefully. ‘I’m not speaking to the sorcerer right now, am I.’

‘No,’ said the thing using Nihilan’s body, ‘you’re not.’

‘Then what are you, spawn?’

‘He’s something else,’ said another voice from behind him, ‘though to call it he is a misnomer of huge proportions.’

Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed and the knuckles in his fists cracked as they clenched.

‘Iagon?’ he growled, part anger, part disappointment.

Cerbius Iagon, Salamander brother-sergeant, once Tsu’gan’s second in the 3rd Company, stepped forwards into the visceral light.

‘You’re probably wondering how you came to be here,’ he said.

‘You found a way to infiltrate the beacon?’ The chain pulled taut as Tsu’gan came forwards. He wanted to put his hands around his former brother’s throat.

‘Such safeguards are easy to circumvent,’ he replied. ‘They’ve wanted you for a long time, brother.’

Tsu’gan sniffed his contempt. ‘But not you, eh? Never you, Iagon. Until you bartered your soul and honour for a moment of usefulness.’

The barbs stung. Iagon flashed his teeth in a snarl… then regained his composure.

‘I am not the warrior you are, Tsu’gan. Nor do I possess Ba’ken’s strength or Dak’ir’s destiny, but I have other traits.’

‘You are Salamander, Iagon,’ Tsu’gan implored him, his fury eroding before a wave of anguish. ‘I gave my squad to you, entrusted you with its leadership.’

‘You gave me nothing – nothing!’ he screamed at him. ‘Abandonment, left to the dregs of obscurity, was your legacy. You were supposed to become captain, I following in your wake. N’keln died for this. I killed him!’

The shock upon Tsu’gan’s face curled into hatred.

‘You murdered him? You stabbed N’keln in the back? How could I have missed this madness…’ he said to himself.

‘I did it for you, brother. I did it to ensure your ascension.’ Iagon’s tone was almost pleading.

Tsu’gan’s eyes were hard and cold, despite the angry fire burning within them.

‘You damned yourself and in so doing became my enemy.’

Iagon laughed, but without humour. ‘This is vengeance, Tsu’gan. This is your damnation.’

Nihilan, or the thing currently wearing his flesh, snarled.

The conversation was over. Iagon retreated back into the shadows.

‘More carnage,’ said the Nihilan-thing, revealing spine-like teeth and a flickering aspect of its true nature.

Tsu’gan’s blood chilled.

The gates churned open again. This time, all eight. The muto-gladiators brought blades eagerly into the light.

Tsu’gan grinned ferally.

‘First the dogs, then I come for the master,’ he promised, before his voice dropped to a deep whisper. ‘Then I come for you, Iagon.’

Have you ever been to our benighted world?

Its name literally means ‘night’, but we do not dwell in darkness.

Hell comes to our cities and our peoples,

it visits upon the earth such ravages as to make the sky black as sackcloth and the ground spew red, molten death.

It is not a hospitable world, this world,

for monsters lurk in its fuliginous depths and death is but a slip away for the careless, the unwary or the simply ill-fortuned.

It is not a populous world because much of it cannot be populated.

The mountains are bleak, craggy places, their summits wreathed with poisonous fumes.

The deserts are many, and they are desolate, unforgiving plains of ash.

Our few rivers are veins of acid and alkali, tainted by the sulphurous earth.

We have no forests, save for the petrified groves that lurk in the hot shadows of our tallest peaks.

Our fauna takes to the air on leathern wing or hunts the dune with tusk and claw.

It is serpentine and reptilian; chitinous and saurian.

But it is home, this broken land, and we defend it with our blood and breath.

Woe betide any who come here seeking to put it asunder.

They will find it a terrible place, a very terrible place.

– Unknown Nocturnean tribesman of Themis

PROLOGUE

Black as Old Night, the giant asteroid hurtled through the void. Trailing cosmic wake, this harbinger had come far. It careened through space lanes, circled gravity wells, coursed alongside refulgent suns and past barren moons. Dead stars witnessed its passage, a seemingly random trajectory, but there was nothing random about fate. It skirted the atmosphere of a dozen backwards worlds, its potent magnetic field wreaking cataclysm and consigning to oblivion a host of lesser races whom the universe would never know and so never mourn.

It was immense, a terrible gnarled orb, fanged with crags, colonised by hungry craters and possessed of a seeming sentience. Contrails of persistently clinging dust shadowed it like gossamer-thin fingers attempting to seize upon its celestial coattails. Dark splinters shed from its mass into an even darker plane, like jagged knives of night. It was inexorable, but when the warp swallowed it only to disgorge its unholy form back into reality, its journey was nearing its end. A world hung in its path, red and hot against the benighted canvas of space. It was a world of burning skies, of jet black mountains and deserts of fire.

Centuries earlier, the Black Rock’s erratic course had been set. The Architect’s own clawed hand had put it into motion. Those with the sight, who could perceive the grand conjurations of the galaxy, would behold the strands of fate pulling it towards the red world, presaging apocalypse. They had but to look upon it.

The Black Rock had seen much, and borne many travellers upon its ancient back over the years. The last had been tenacious, slow to die even when exposed to the cold grip of the void. Entire systems had fallen prey to its destructive appetites, devoured in the wake of its passing like tiny archipelagos erased by a violent tsunami.

It was destiny. It was doom.

The red world loomed before it, ringed by a haze of pyroclastic cloud.

A fiery hell world, a furnace of the universe where civilisations were forged.

Nocturne.

CHAPTER ONE

I

The Killing Place

This place was death. Its shadow clung tenaciously to every alcove, every column. It lurked beneath every archway and crept inside every antechamber. Whispering like the husk of a corpse, it was the final exhalation of dust swathing the cracking brick in a patina of age and melancholy. The very air reeked of it, flavoured with copper. The gummy rime underfoot that softened his boot tread was further evidence, so too the redness of the walls. Fear came with it and laced the atmosphere with a greasy pall. He could feel it trying to adhere to his bare skin: fear, and anticipation.

Darkness only partially hid the crumpled forms of those that had come before him. Some had been dragged back into the barracks, broken and only half resembling men. Others had been recovered with shovels or would later be sluiced from the ground in a manky fluid.

Many found it was the waiting that was worst. Brutal warriors became gibbering wrecks in the quietude before the killing-time, where all they could hear was the roar and the scream. He was not shaking; he barely moved at all, except to breathe. His time had come, the one before him had been ended.

How many did that make for the beast? A tally of seven?

An auspicious number, he thought, rising from his haunches.

He’d seen some fighters clasp their hands together before going to their deaths, their lips mumbling oaths and promises in the hope of fortune. Others seized fists of earth as if tasting the battlefield and reading its ebb and flow. Such things were distractions only. They merely delayed and deluded. When he got to his feet, he rotated his arms in their sockets, and cracked his knuckles. His piecemeal armour clanked lightly as he did it; the chain attached to his weapon rattled dulcetly. He closed his eyes and peered through the narrow slits of his helmet a different being. To be a warrior was to be protean, the transition of one aspect to another. Mastery of both was the doorway to harmony and martial excellence. To embrace anything other was just reckless. For if a sword remained forever unsheathed it would eventually cut something for which it was not intended. When he opened his eyes again, his world was limned in crimson and he was of the killing mind.

I am Helfist. I am gladiator.

He climbed a sandy incline to the chorus of his chinking gladiatorial panoply. It was mainly leather, armour of the Old Ways as was tradition, but included some plated elements by way of aesthetic flourish. At the end of the ramp were a gate and a pair of grim-looking guardians festooned in metal from head to toe. Hulking, tall and muscular as if genebred for the very vocation, they still needed to look up as he strode past them.

Through the metal-banded doors, through the slim gaps in their bars, he could see the killing place. It was sand, it was blood-scent and it was torture.

He heard the screaming, the broken ones that pleaded and the baying of beasts…

Slowly but inexorably, the doors opened. Hollow skulls strung to their bars added a jangling refrain to the heavy creak of the iron.

Sunlight washed in, as red and visceral as the walls of the passageway.

He let it bathe his half-naked body before running the rest of the way up the ramp that led into the killing place. Ignoring the crunch of bone beneath him, Helfist stepped into the arena and listened to the adulation of the crowd.

His eyes never left the arena floor. There his fate was all too easy to see in the corpses of the other combatants. Men lay without limbs in drying pools of their own blood, or with heads cut from bodies and left to fester in the sun, or bloated with gangrenous poison, their eyes bulging and their appendages in the final throes of nerve spasm. Such were the destinies of all warriors in the end.

We are all merely ash on the wind, waiting to return to the mountain.

A brother in arms had said that to him once, before war had crippled him and turned his friend from poet to cankerous recluse.

A roar met his arrival in the arena, but the gladiator of Themis was unmoved. Let the mob bay and take their fill, it mattered not – his mind was on survival. Helfist adjusted the visor of his helm and peered through an aperture of pitted iron at the monstrous creature dominating the arena with its size and violent presence.

Scorpiad.

It was finishing the last morsels of its meal, another gladiator partly dissolved by intestinal acid from the creature’s ruddy maw, when its attention turned to Helfist. Anticipating carnage, the belligerent crowd quietened to a dull murmur.

Dropping its half-eaten feast, the scorpiad advanced with clicking, syncopated movements.

A dirt-dweller, the creature had tiny insect eyes that glittered like a pair of black pearls in its crustacean-like face. Overlapping bone plates formed a chitinous shell that shimmered like umber carapace over its snout and back. Its eight limbs were gnarled, but scaly rather than shelled, and its ribbed underbelly was thick and leathern.

Due to their subterranean natures, scorpiads were not easy to catch. Groups of nomadic Ignean trappers went out onto the Arridian Plain in packs, tempting the creatures with sauroch carcasses, drawing them from their greasy burrows with the overwhelming promise of blood. Pay from the Themian Gladiatorial Guilds was high for any monstrous bounty brought intact and capable of fighting in the arena. It was just as well, for hunting the scorpiad came with a high mortality rate.

Helfist could well appreciate that as the monster shifted its bulk towards him. It was massive, dwarfing even the giant gladiator and many times heavier. He drew back as it came on, eliciting some derisive goading from sections of the watching crowd. Behind their high walls and glass domes, looking down onto the anachronistic arena, what did they have to fear? They desired battle and death, not posturing.

Helfist gave it to them.

Goading the scorpiad with shouts and threats, he let it attack first. It lunged with a blood-crusted claw, which he ducked then rolled under to ram a fist-spike into the fleshy part of the monster’s limb. Its cry of pain manifested as a disconcerting wheeze from its puckered maw, where its mandibles clacked in agitation.

Scuttling back, it dived down at him with its other claw like a spear, but only managed to impale dirt. Helfist yanked out the spike and a gushet of ichorous green fluid came with it. The acerbic stink of bile-acid burned at his nostrils and the weapon came out slightly corroded. He leapt to avoid the sweep of the scorpiad’s legs as it turned, and came up out of another roll just in time to see its barbed tail whipping towards him. Helfist parried using the glove of his fist-spike but felt the impact all the way to his shoulder. In seconds, the metal guard was rotten with venom from the scorpiad’s stinger, so he discarded it and left the weapon to slowly dissolve on the ground behind him.

As he ranged around to the creature’s blindside it followed, scuttling sideways around its core, pummelling at Helfist as it moved. Dust was kicked up in the wake of the frenzied claw attack that also sent bits of dead gladiator spewing upwards like aerial chum. Helfist ducked and weaved, sprang back and bounded forwards again foiling every hammering impact of the scorpiad’s pincers. Hungry and becoming increasingly agitated; it combined thrusts of its tail with limb-slicing snaps of its claws. A spurt of acid from its fanged, tubular mouth left a burn scar across the sand but Helfist dodged that too. He pulled the monster around in circles, hacking off chips of chitin with a broad, crescent-shaped blade chained to his wrist and forearm. He went in low beneath its guard, dragging a bloody gash across its ribbed belly and drawing another agonised wheeze as the beast felt the wound bite. For Helfist it was exhilarating. His hearts were beating like forge hammers in his chest and above him the tumult of the crowd was growing. It had been a long time since he’d felt this vital, this strong, this invincible. He liked the sensation – it was addictive.

Seven gladiators had died to this beast: seven hard men with warrior-spirits and wills of iron. Helfist was taking the scorpiad apart like it was nothing.

The monster thrashed at him as he came from beneath it and this time he lashed out with his blade, cleaving a gore-slick wedge in the tail. It reared up on its hind legs, turning swiftly, its claws snapping impotently at the air.

Helfist looked up at it, a sneer just visible below the visor of his helmet.

‘You are an ugly brute,’ he told it in a deep, chasmal voice. He released the grip on his forearm blade and it dropped to the ground like an anchor, the chain around his wrist unfurling as it fell.

Every link was serrated like a knife-edge and as the scorpiad came thunderously back down Helfist yanked the blade up from the ground. As it cut through the air, it gave off a high-pitched keening sound before wrapping around the monster’s left foreleg.

Helfist tugged and the serrated links of the chain drew taut and began to saw. The scorpiad stumbled, a panicked bleat issuing from its bubbling mouth. He heaved again and the chain came loose as the limb broke away from its host in a welter of greenish blood.

It barely had time for a weak and flailing riposte before Helfist swung again, this time for a rear leg, and tore off another limb. Spewing dark and viscous fluid from the ruined stumps of its missing appendages, the scorpiad slumped down onto its belly. The tail whickered out as Helfist came on but he countered with a lash from his chain-glaive and the barbed tip was sent bundling across the arena floor, separated from the rest.

A healthy sweat sheened the gladiator’s body, helping to define his immense musculature, and his chest heaved with a deep but strong rhythm. The cured black leather of his armour blended perfectly with his slab-like skin, and the sun made it shimmer like oil as he went down on his haunches to look the monster in the eye.

‘This was never a fair fight,’ he said with quiet solemnity. Some of the scorpiad’s blood had sprayed the bare flesh of his arms, adding to the many scars they already carried. ‘It will be quick,’ he added, rising.

Helfist let the crescent-blade fall from his grasp as he reached up over his hulking shoulders to retrieve a long-hafted hammer. It was a magnificent piece of artifice that gleamed brightly in the light. Pistons worked in the weapon’s head, increasing its power and impact.

Hefting it two-handed, Helfist split the scorpiad’s mewling face in two and ended its suffering. He turned and held the gore-slick piston-hammer aloft in salute of his opponent and his triumph.

The mob roared.

When Helfist returned to the barracks someone was waiting for him.

‘I thought I would find you here in these… pits.’ He spat the word as if it left an acrid flavour in his mouth.

The figure was almost as tall as Helfist, clad in bulky green armour. Ribbed servos linked the joints between each concomitant plate and whirred as he moved. He still wore his battle-helm, which was white as opposed to green as was his right shoulder pad. The left guard bore the image of a snarling orange drake head on a black field to signify his allegiance.

Helfist was carefully removing his leather hauberk and scraping the blood from his body with a sharp-stone. A robed and hooded serf waited in the shadows behind him with its head bowed.

Overhead red sunlight hazed in, cut into grainy shafts by the barracks’ lattice ceiling. It illuminated suits of armour of all stripes and eras, and copious racks of war gear. There was a surgery too, its doorway shawled by a sheet of darkly spattered leather. Another gladiator, a survivor of the scorpiad, was inside laid up on the slab for the medicus to do his gruesome work. Underfoot was grit and sand in homage to the Old Ways. The air reeked of metal and sweat.

Helfist answered without looking up from what he was doing. ‘You don’t approve of the Themian hell-pits then, brother?’

‘No. I simply object to having to come all this way to track you down.’

There was bitterness in the other’s voice that Helfist found hard to reconcile. He kept his eyes on his labours though, unclasping one of his vambraces and dropping it into a barrel of oil to soak. ‘Keeps the leather supple,’ he said, ‘so it doesn’t crack in the heat.’

The reply was caustic. ‘I know how to tend armour, even those barbaric trappings.’

Helfist met the other’s gaze. His eyes burned like red furnaces. ‘It has been so long since I saw you with bolter and blade in clenched fist that I thought you might need reminding, Emek. How long since you graced the training cages or the arenas?’

The Apothecary, Emek, didn’t answer. He stepped forwards. It wasn’t a deliberately aggressive gesture but Helfist turned his shoulders towards him and squared his body ready for a fight.

Emek scoffed, ‘You’ve been in these tribal slums too long, Ba’ken.’

Ba’ken scowled and clenched a fist. ‘These are your roots, brother. Too much time spent secreted in darkness on Prometheus has made you forget!’ His anger ebbed and he relaxed. ‘It’s time you took your head out of Fugis’s data-slates and rejoined your Chapter.’

The Apothecary was much changed from the brother Ba’ken had once known. He was seldom seen without his battle-helm these days and rarely removed his armour on account of the horrific scarring on his body. These weren’t honour marks, earned proudly for battles won; they were a painful reminder of an aborted mission on the stricken hulk Protean and the psychic attack of a xenos creature he had fought there. Emek limped where once he had stridden; he was weak and hollow where once he’d been strong and vital. This was a ghost Ba’ken beheld before him, a shade of the Space Marine the Apothecary had been.

Hope, which Emek had once been so full of, had died within him on that ship.

Ba’ken realised his anger was at that, not at his brother. Relenting, his shoulders sagged and he lowered his voice.

‘I apologise. The heat of the arena still fuels my blood.’

With the hiss of the gorget clamps depressurising, Emek removed his helmet. His face was ravaged. His burns hadn’t healed well. Some supposed it was on account of them being caused by psychic lightning. Overlapping scar tissues knotted and scalloped in places, giving Emek an almost patchwork appearance, as if his visage was comprised of not just one face but many. His left eye was dull and grey, whilst his right blazed with a bitter flame.

The Apothecary breathed in deeply and the sound rasped up his throat.

‘Accepted, but I have important work to perform in the Apothecarion. Just because its progenitor is dead doesn’t mean I should ignore Fugis’s labours.’

‘He is not dead, brother.’

Emek raised an eyebrow. It was an ugly gesture. ‘He took the Burning Walk, Ba’ken – he’s dead.’

To fight such pessimism was pointless; Ba’ken had tried at length to do so. He sighed instead and went back to tending his armour.

‘Your wounds look well healed, though,’ Emek added, casting an appraising eye. He paused, as if deciding his next course carefully. ‘When I saw you after the Firedrakes returned from the Volgorrah Reef, I thought the worst.’

Ba’ken touched his chest at a lance of phantom pain. The wounds inflicted in the dark eldar frontier enclave, the so-called ‘Port of Anguish’, were gone but the memory of them lingered. So, too, the betrayal of Iagon.

‘I was lost to darkness, but relieved when I awoke to find I wasn’t in a metal tomb,’ he said.

Emek laughed, but it was an empty gesture. ‘The bio-scan made for grim reading, I will tell you that. But you’re a stubborn bastard, Ba’ken.’

‘No more than any Salamander.’ He looked over at Emek. ‘Promise me this, brother: if I am ever beyond help and that the only recourse is to be interred within the dreamless sleep of the warrior-eternal then administer the Emperor’s Peace and reclaim my genetic legacy for the Chapter. I have no wish to become like Amadeus or Ashamon.’

‘Most would consider becoming a Dreadnought an honour.’

‘I do not. Promise me.’

Emek held Ba’ken’s gaze for a few moments before nodding. He then nudged at the chained blade hooked on the weapons rack. ‘Helfist, eh?’ Something approaching a smirk crept into the corner of the Apothecary’s mouth as he tried at levity, a thing he used to be skilled at.

Ba’ken’s eyes narrowed. His joy at the flicker of humour in his brother’s voice outweighed his embarrassment, but he showed neither.

‘I heard the crowd chanting,’ Emek explained. ‘Didn’t think you went in for theatrics, brother.’

‘The arena is theatre. It’s not like fighting against the anvil, in the fires of battle.’

‘Still, you have some pretty scars.’ The caustic demeanour returned again.

Ba’ken stared. ‘Some scars cut deeper than most.’

‘Indeed.’

And like the wind snuffing out a flame, the warmth between them dwindled into smoke. Ba’ken found he’d had enough.

‘Why are you here, Emek? I assume it’s not to discuss old times.’

‘Why are any of us here on Nocturne? It’s him, Ba’ken. He wants to speak with you.’

Ba’ken lowered his eyes. His voice went barely above a whisper.

‘We have not spoken since his return…’

‘Perhaps he wants to confess.’

Ba’ken’s head came up sharply, his jaw clenched in anger.

‘He was your friend, Emek. We both were… are still.’

A tremor of something registered below the Apothecary’s left eye. It might’ve been because of the nerve damage he’d sustained. Ba’ken hoped it was regret.

Emek turned without reply, replacing his helmet as he did so.

‘Be quick about it,’ he muttered through the vox-grille.

Ba’ken called out as the Apothecary neared the way out.

‘Why you of anyone, brother?’ he asked. ‘Why did you come to summon me?’

Emek stopped for a moment but then carried on without uttering anything further.

II

A Return

The nomad’s fingers were curled into claws and his skin was dry as parchment as he putrefied in the hot sun. A sa’hrk worried at his leathern flesh, stripping back the toughened layers to get at the softer meat beneath. Above the lean-bodied predator, a flock of patient dactylids were disturbed in their circling by an immense shadow growing overhead. Emitting a panicked screech, the winged carrion-eaters scattered into a bank of ash cloud.

A tumultuous belt of sound preceded the shadow, which was spreading like a wave across the Scorian Plain. The earth vibrated, collapsing dunes and opening sand fissures that swallowed entire tracts of desert. Nictitating, the sa’hrk turned its ruddy snout to the heavens as the rolling darkness engulfed it too. Bleating in sudden terror, the creature took to claw, its meal forgotten. Muscular hindquarters bulged in its frantic efforts to escape, but the shadow was vast and consumptive. Over a dozen miniature suns opened up in the darkness, which reeked of oil and metal and incense. No sooner had they dawned than the miniature suns went supernova, spilling fire onto the sand, turning it to glass with the heat of their arrival.

The sa’hrk was rendered to a fire-black carcass that disintegrated as the collector ship touched down. Descent thrusters on the vessel’s hull burned for several minutes after making landfall. Their powerful backwash drove furrows into the sand bars around the collector ship’s crystallised contact point, unearthing further bodies the immolated sa’hrk had missed. These men and women were Ignean traders too, but the savage wounds that had killed them were caused by an entirely different breed of predator, one that carried sickle-wire, barbed falchions and serrated knives.

It was like a thick wedge of crimson-plated metal, blocky and functional. Even from across the Acerbian Sea, the fishermen in their tiny metal-bellied skiffs stood up in their boats to look. Riggers on the multi-limbed oil trawlers, trains of nomads and Themian hunter packs ranging the Arridian Plain, rock-harvesters out in the mountains all witnessed the vast ship’s arrival.

So too did another. He adjusted the focus on his magnoculars, allowing for the lens scarring caused by the Pyre Desert’s intermittent sandstorms, and recognised the ship’s particular iconography. He panned along its flanks, observing the many storage vaults and collection vats, the paucity of defensive weaponry and the thickness of the armour. A freighter, not a warship. Having seen enough he shut off the scopes, letting them hang by a leather strap around his neck as he pulled down a pair of sand goggles over his eyes. A long drover’s coat protected the rest of his equipment and a rugged-looking boonie hat with a wide brim and a mesh flap kept his forehead and neck in shade. As he got to his feet, he pulled the scarves he wore up over his nose and mouth until his face was completely obscured.

He’d left a sauroch in the desert basin below and clutched a fistful of rope he’d tethered to his kill. As he came back down from the dune, he realised he wasn’t alone. At the periphery of his vision a pack of sa’hrk were creeping up on him, intent on his meal and his flesh. Leaving the long rifle secured on his back, he pulled out a dulled blade from the scabbard on his leg instead and let the predators come...

It was over quickly.

After wiping the blade clean, he sheathed his gladius. Then he headed off into the deeper desert, dragging along his earlier kill and leaving the dead sa’hrk behind. He still had a long way to go.

Nocturne bred survivors. Ever since the ancient days of the tribes when the earth shamans founded the sacred bedrock upon which to establish their settlements, its peoples were hardy. But endurance and a wary respect for the elements was not enough to sustain a race on a volcanic death world. Technology gave them a crucial edge, the means to harness void shields to protect their cities, advanced seismographic warning systems and medical facilities that could withstand atomics. All of this and more besides was made possible because of the tithe.

Standing on a low ridge overlooking the landing site, Forgemaster Argos turned the piece of crystal he held over and over in his gauntlet. It shimmered beautifully in the sun, an ultra-rare chunk of stone unearthed after the last quake.

‘Such riches she yields,’ he muttered.

‘When the earth splits and fire rains from the sky,’ Orgento concluded the litany as he came shoulder to shoulder with his master. The ocular scope on his bionic eye trained on the crystal shard in Argos’s hand. ‘A rare specimen.’

Their voices were cold and mechanical, though Argos’s carried a deeper resonance with a faint machine hum underlying it.

‘It is why we’re here,’ the Forgemaster said to the other Techmarine, his gaze moving to the sand plain.

Orgento followed him. ‘The pact.’

‘Indeed, and thusly are our void shields kept strong and our armouries full.’

‘Do you feel a longing for it, master?’ asked Orgento as a depressurisation cloud engulfed the bulky collector ship in front of them. ‘The red planet and the Martian fraternity, I mean.’ The Mechanicus sigil was clearly emblazoned on the vessel’s armoured flank: a bifurcated skull, one side bone and the other machine, encircled by a cog. Thick wedges of red and black plasteel covered the vessel in a pitted carapace. It was ugly and functional.

Argos shook his head, prompting the servos in his neck and head to grind. ‘This is my home, Orgento. It is the fiery skies of Nocturne that I long for when parted from them. You and I, our brother Techmarines, we share a unique understanding amongst the Chapter but we are Salamanders before we are servants of the Omnissiah.’

Orgento bowed at the Forgemaster’s wisdom and followed him as he leapt down onto the sandy plain below. As they arrived at the threshold of the landing site the two Techmarines were joined by a pair of tracked hauler-servitors, and were just in time to see the vessel’s massive embarkation ramp lower amidst a secondary cloud of pneumatic depressurisation. Stepping out of the shadowy confines of the hull was a red-robed creature wearing a talismanic cog on a chain around his neck. His hands were clasped across his chest, just below the icon, but hidden within the folds of his robes. A thick cowl occluded most of his face and the telltale shine of cybernetics was only just visible in the shadows it cast. Much like Argos, the Adeptus Mechanicus magos travelled with an entourage. The meeting of pallid-fleshed, cyborganic creatures at the foot of the ramp was a bizarre one.

Argos inclined his head, setting the servos in his artificer armour whirring again. Unlike the Martians, the pair of Techmarines wore a lustrous green battle-plate. Only their right shoulder guards were red, as was Orgento’s battle-helm, to show their affiliation with the adepts of Mars. Argos went unhelmed. Half of the Forgemaster’s face was obscured by a plate with a firedrake symbol seared into the metal. A bionic eye glared coldly from the socket where the organic had once been. Snaking wires tracked from the device and terminated in plug-like implants in his cranium.

‘Greetings from Mars, Adept Argos,’ said the enrobed magos. The ‘voice’ came from a vox-amplifier in place of the creature’s mouth. Shiny metal tendrils clicked either side of the grille-speaker in tandem with the diction. ‘Praise be to the Omnissiah.’

Argos made the symbol of the cog out of respect. ‘Welcome back to Nocturne, Xhanthix.’

The magos nodded, replicating human affectation. ‘It has been almost two centuries, one hundred and eighty-six point three four Imperial years to be precise. You have embraced the Machine-God greatly since last we met,’ he added, eyeing the Forgemaster’s facial cybernetics.

‘Necessity, rather than by choice,’ Argos confessed, ‘though I welcome it.’

First in the sewer hives of Ullsinar and then again on the desolate moon of Ymgarl, Argos had lost his face. Both times the alien species known as tyranids, specifically a sub-genus designated ‘genestealers’, had been responsible. Part of his skull and, in addition, his brain had been interfaced with the bio-cybernetics that replaced his face. It had saved his life, but altered him in other ways. An odd quirk of memory sometimes stirred his olfactory senses to recall the stench of bio-acid and burning flesh even when locked in the solitorium. It had once been disconcerting; now it was merely interesting. This reaction, or lack thereof, prompted another line of reasoning for Argos that had no clear resolution.

When not engaged in rites to the Omnissiah and the arcane litanies used for awakening the machine-spirit, Argos wondered if his loss of physical identity had removed him one step further from humanity. Certainly, he was more aloof than his Salamander battle-brothers, perhaps more so than Orgento or the other Techmarines of the Chapter. The thought did not concern him; rather, it was a conundrum that could not be solved with logic. In a Chapter concerned with humanity, both literal and figurative, it was a curious position to hold.

He brandished the crystal open-handed to Xhanthix.

‘From our mines,’ Argos explained, ‘a strong harvest for the tithe.’

Mandible-like mechadendrites extended from within the magos’s hood, twitching as they closed on the crystal. ‘Flawless…’ he breathed, describing its atomic composition rather than its aesthetic quality. As the multi-jointed instruments caressed the crystal’s surface, feeding back information regarding its mass, size and geological properties, there was the lightest connection between the mechadendrites and the haptic implants in Argos’s hand.

Even insulated by his gauntlet, the Forgemaster felt a jolt of data transfer that manifested as painful static in his head. He grimaced as Xhanthix took the crystal, drawing the attention of Orgento.

‘Master?’ asked the Techmarine.

Argos recovered, shrugging off the sensation. ‘It’s nothing, a synaptic quirk.’

Xhanthix barely noticed; his cohorts stared ahead blindly, even less affected. The magos was engrossed by the crystal, seeing within it all the possibilities for technological invention.

‘Your forge-ship,’ said Argos, ‘it is docked at Prometheus?’ He referred to the Salamanders’ moon bastion, a sister celestial body to Nocturne that was responsible for the planet’s tectonic fragility. Principally a space port, Prometheus was also a vault for the Chapter’s relics and its hallowed halls were the domain of the Firedrakes, the Salamanders’ elite First Company.

The magos finished his appraisal before answering. ‘Yes, the Archimedes Rex and the rest of its crew are aboard at your stronghold preparing for my return.’

‘Archimedes Rex?’ In a rare expression of emotion, the right side of Argos’s lip curled into a scowl. ‘That vessel was wrecked. I know, for I saw it when it was recovered from deep space. The Marines Malevolent pillaged it.’

‘It was reclaimed by the Adeptus Mechanicus then restored.’

‘That I also know. I saw to its return to the Martian priesthood, not so long ago in fact.’

As far as his facial muscles were capable of it, Xhanthix frowned. ‘I do not see the relevance of the spurious time period. It was one year and three point six months according to standard Imperial units of time, to be precise. I was the one responsible for its restoration. Despite its time adrift in the void, the damage it sustained was not irreparable.’

Argos felt an unfamiliar sensation filling him, rushing the blood around his body, fuelling him with adrenaline. ‘But its crew were. I have seen the evidence of it. I even burned the remains of those creatures in our furnaces.’

Orgento shifted a little, eyeing the magos’s servitors with sudden suspicion as his hand strayed to his sidearm. He didn’t know what was happening or why his master’s demeanour had changed so abruptly but reason wasn’t necessary in this situation, only the readiness to act.

Even unencumbered by his massive servo harness, Argos was a huge and imposing warrior. He dwarfed the diminutive magos. ‘They were tainted, Xhanthix. Homicidal, in fact. One of your Martian brethren who was aboard, a magos, went insane and tried to kill my battle-brothers.’

‘They were also your brothers,’ Xhanthix replied without recrimination.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No, I do not. What is your meaning, exactly? Your argument is not logical and probably being tempered by your human side. Perhaps you are not as one with the machine as I first believed.’

It was a close to an insult from an Adept of the Mechanicus as you could get.

Argos relented – he was letting his humanity govern his emotional state. In a way he was glad of it.

‘I am merely surprised you re-commissioned the ship,’ he said. ‘I fully expected it to be denuded of anything of technological value and then scuttled.’

‘You held on to a ship awaiting its reclamation, believing it would be destroyed?’

‘It was not our decision to make, whether or not the Archimedes Rex should be decommissioned.’

‘The vessel was of technological value,’ Xhanthix asserted in that same neutral tone. ‘It would not have been logical to destroy it, not based on the evidence of a fault in a particular magos that was transferred to his subordinates. Machine corruption is not undocumented, and doctrina wafers are prone to degradation over time should the proper observances to the machine-spirit not be met.’

Argos saw no concrete line of reasoning to dispute that, but still asked, ‘Why did you bring it back here?’

‘I found the symmetry intriguing,’ said Xhanthix. ‘Something of a human predilection, I admit, but even so. Does that satisfy all of your questioning? Because I am keen to proceed. My vessel detected inordinately large levels of growing magnetic radiation in your planet’s atmosphere and I would not wish for any unforeseen delay to affect my instruments.’

Argos had discerned as much himself prior to leaving Prometheus. Such fluctuations were not uncommon but he was monitoring them anyway. Xhanthix was also right, of course – magnetic radiation could falsify geological results in his codifying instrumentation. In the end, he nodded.

‘There are samples waiting for you at the mines. We are here to escort you.’

Xhanthix bowed, indicating compliance before issuing a blurt of binaric machine code to his servitors who began to animate.

‘Lead on.’

Argos turned in the direction of the mines. It wasn’t far.

Orgento fell in next to him as they led the group.

‘Master, I am troubled,’ he confessed. ‘What just happened there? For a moment, I thought–’

‘As did I, brother,’ Argos said, interrupting him, ‘as did I.’

They fell silent, but the veil of static remained.

CHAPTER TWO

I

Nulls and Fetters

Dak’ir was alone. He was stripped of his armour, only recently given, and rank. He was a Lexicanum no longer, the heavy collar he wore only emphasised that fact. Hard bands enclosed his wrists. The metal from which they were forged was black and dense. It was a ‘null’ collar, the bracelets a part of the ward, an unassuming but arcane device that inhibited the use of psychics. The one fastened tightly around Dak’ir’s neck and wrists was dialled up to its most potent setting. They had even taken his force sword, Draugen, though he’d surrendered it willingly. He had been bonding with the blade, shaping its energy and spirit to his will. Thus amplified, he could’ve shattered his fetters and unleashed his power on the penitarium, breaking free of his enforced detention.

Instead, he felt a latent susurrus of the warp whisper across the collar’s dull black surface and chose not to nurture it.

He had gone without a fight or much argument. Tu’Shan himself had given the order, and he would not go against the will of his Chapter Master. For many months, he had dwelt in the darkness of his cell awaiting the long judgement of the Pantheon Council. Dak’ir’s eyes stung from the effort of keeping them open for several hours at a time. Whenever he closed them, he saw… fire. It was the flame that burned within him, the Ferro Ignis or Fire Sword as prophesied by Promethean lore, whose conflagration would rise up and consume all of Nocturne.

A low-born, one of the earth, will pass through the gate of fire. He will be our doom or salvation.

As revealed in the armour of his ancient forebears, the survivors of Isstvan, these fated words had haunted him for the last four years. As of yet, their meaning was unclear. He had passed through the gate of fire, besting the legendary drake Kessarghoth to do it. Visions of a dead world, Moribar, had assailed him and there he and Pyriel had discovered the plan of the Dragon Warriors to destroy Nocturne. Dak’ir’s role in that prophesied cataclysm was unknown. That was for the council to deliberate and ultimately decide. It was a decision which could result in his death.

In this and so many other ways, Dak’ir was alone. Even surrounded by kin, he felt isolated. It had always been this way. He consoled himself with the knowledge that this was merely a part of the Promethean Creed, that which preached the importance of self-reliance and self-sacrifice in all Salamanders.

Even amongst such august brothers, Dak’ir was unique. Some believed he was an aberration. The only Salamander not to hail from a Sanctuary City, he was an Ignean, one of the nomadic tribes who had crawled from the darkness of his cave dwelling and reached up to grasp the heavens and become ‘of the stars’. He had once believed his humanity defined him, that his uniquely human perspective gave him an empathy his brothers lacked.

Skin of onyx black and eyes as red as fire gave the sons of Vulkan a diabolic appearance. A battle scar earned several years ago and a quirk of melanochromatic degeneration had left Dak’ir with a patch of skin that was pale and vital like human flesh. He’d taken it as a symbol of his believed empathy and even went as far as to forge a mask that concealed the hellish aspect of his visage. His battle-helm bore a simulacrum of that mask.

But I am not human, he thought.

Saviour or destroyer: that was the fate Dak’ir was consigned to. Both were heavy and unenviable mantles. Even his fellow battle-brothers looked upon him with suspicion and wariness. As a figure of prophecy, something unknowable and even potentially omnipotent, how could he share empathy with any human being now? As he lamented, Dak’ir touched the old scar upon his face. It was like connecting to a lens through which he could observe a piece of time, and he was briefly transported back to the Aura Hieron temple on Stratos where Ko’tan Kadai had lost his life and he himself had been grievously injured.

It all began with Kadai. His death was the spark that lit the flame of our vengeance against the Dragon Warriors.

‘A death for a death.’ Dak’ir spoke the words out loud.

Kadai for Ushorak.

‘Reliving old dreams, brother?’ asked a deep, comradely voice.

In his introspection, Dak’ir hadn’t realised the door to the holding cell was open. The giant form of Ba’ken stood stolidly in the doorway.

‘Unhappy ones, I’m afraid,’ Dak’ir said but then smiled, the darkness vanishing from his face as he added, ‘You look well, sergeant.’

Ba’ken was wearing his full war panoply, power-armoured with his battle-helm in the crook of his left arm. He carried no weapons, however, and behind him Dak’ir caught the vaguest psychic trace of his master, Pyriel, watching the exchange.

‘Better than you.’ He laughed but it was short-lived, tainted by regret. Ba’ken’s expression, crag-like but leavened by a fading smile, darkened. ‘I wish I had been there at the council. It is difficult to…’

‘To understand,’ said Dak’ir. ‘I know, brother.’

Ba’ken’s jaw clenched, the impotence of the gesture obvious. ‘This is wrong, to treat one of the Chapter’s heroes like a traitor. Our efforts should be bent towards Nihilan and the Dragon Warriors and all the deeds for which they must be made answerable.’

‘I am a threat,’ Dak’ir replied simply. ‘Until that can be measured, I must remain here.’

‘You look as you ever did to me, brother.’

‘But I am not, Ba’ken. Not any more.’

Silence filled the cell, desolate, desperate and deafening. The anguish the sergeant fought within him was etched upon his face as indelibly as the honour scars on his body. A particularly harsh, almost blade-like, brand crept up to the base of Ba’ken’s throat and was just visible above the lip of his gorget. It represented the dark eldar and his survival of the terrible wounds he’d sustained at their hands.

‘What happened to you beneath the mountain?’

‘I felt… fire. Not only literally, but on a deeper subconscious level. It was a pure and destructive flame, Ba’ken, and it was in me. I was the flame.’ Dak’ir looked away, into the darkness but his senses had taken him to another place far beyond the holding cell. ‘Such fury… it was incandescent, world-consuming even. The Ferro Ignis…’

Ba’ken scowled. ‘It sounds like you crave it.’

Dak’ir snapped to and met the sergeant’s gaze.

‘I do. It is incredible, but also terrifying. For the first time since I assumed the black carapace, I feel fear. Not of my enemies, but of what I might become.’

Ba’ken looked suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Emek said you brought me here to confess.’

‘That I am the destroyer of Nocturne?’ Dak’ir laughed. It was altogether chilling. ‘I have no idea what I am supposed to confess to.’ His truculence ebbed and he asked, ‘How is our erstwhile squad brother?’

‘Bitter.’

‘I am sorry to hear that. When I learned of what happened to him on the Protean, I was already in this cage. Besides a brief exchange during his cursory examination of me in this cell, I have yet to speak him properly, since… since his wounding. I almost didn’t recognise him.’

‘Few do, who knew him before.’ Ba’ken hung his head and his bulky frame sagged as if all the troubles of the Chapter had been levelled atop his shoulders, a problem for him and him alone to negotiate. ‘By Vulkan! The anvil has been testing. It has beaten us to breaking point, tempered the steel that binds us until it cracked. Agatone tries to rally the Third, return to them their honour but we’ve laboured under long shadows, heavy with age.’

‘And yet we stand,’ said Dak’ir. ‘Lift your eyes, brother.’

Ba’ken did. ‘Why did you bring me here? I am supposed to join Master Prebian in the Pyre Desert in initiating the aspirants, my time is finite.’

‘I cannot think of a better tutor for them,’ Dak’ir allowed himself a wry grin, ‘or should that be task master?’ Despite the levity, Ba’ken’s question lingered in the eye like a blade unsheathed and close to the neck. ‘Emek told me you very nearly died on the Volgorrah Reef.’

Ba’ken snorted derisively. ‘Not so moribund that he holds his tongue, I see,’ he muttered.

‘I wanted to see that you are alive and unscathed, brother,’ said Dak’ir. He raised an eyebrow. ‘At least part of that is true.’

Ba’ken protested. ‘I am re-forged and ready for my duties to the Chapter.’

Dak’ir waved away the unintended insult. ‘No offence was meant, but you are not fully recovered yet. But that’s not why I requested your presence. I wanted to look you in the eye and ask you something.’

Ba’ken’s anxious silence bade Dak’ir to continue.

‘What do you see?’

Ba’ken frowned, not understanding. ‘I see my brother, I see Dak’ir.’

‘Look deeper.’

‘I don’t know what you are asking me to–’ And then he saw it, roiling within Dak’ir’s eyes, tiny pits of hell and damnation.

‘I see fire,’ said Ba’ken, and his voice was hollow and cold. ‘All I can see is fire.’

Dak’ir nodded solemnly. ‘Now you know why I must remain in this place. Find again your purpose, brother, and let your troubled thoughts rest upon me no longer. It is the anvil, and I am merely being tested against it. That is all.’

‘Yes, but what if it should break you?’

‘Is that what you believe?’

‘I don’t know what to believe. It broke Emek.’

Dak’ir sighed, abruptly melancholic. ‘Yes… I think it did.’

II

Deeper Scars

Jagging claw marks ravaged the interior of the Apothecarion’s isolation chamber. Emek had put its inhabitant under with a potent blend of sedatives and anaesthesia. The doses were in extremely high concentrations in order to bypass the multi-lung’s resilience to toxins. As an expert in Space Marine biology he was well suited to the task.

Divested of his power armour and other trappings, Emek’s subject was crouched down in one corner of the chamber, sullen but dormant. A thick wall of ferrocrete with a single rectangular observation portal stood between them. As of yet, the Apothecary had been unable to draw any significant conclusions concerning Zartath’s aberrant physiology. All attempts to make contact with his Chapter had also, thus far, been unsuccessful.

‘I am a prisoner in this hole,’ he growled, slurring his words only for them to become muffled by the armaglas.

Emek looked up from the data-slates and parchments scattered on the medi-slab in front of him. ‘You recovered from that last belt of sedative much more quickly than the previous strain. I’ll increase your dosage next time.’ He went back to his studies.

‘Release me,’ Zartath snarled.

The light in the Apothecarion anteroom was subdued. Emek found the harsh surgical glare of its lamps painful and dulling them helped. The half-illumination hinted at medical paraphernalia – philtres, salving agents, coagulant-gels and other remedies – as well as a vast complex of corridors, infirmaries and surgeries where the Chapter Apothecaries could conduct their vital work. In the lower levels were the gene-banks where recovered progenoids from fallen Salamanders waited in frozen stasis. They represented the Chapter’s future, its legacy after the warriors that once carried them were burned to ash and given back to the earth.

It was part Codex Astartes doctrine as laid down by Primarch Roboute Guilliman in ages past, and part Promethean lore as handed down by the tribal kings of ancient Nocturne. Rebirth and reincarnation were a core tenet of the Creed, the great Circle of Fire through which each and every Nocturnean, human or super-human, moved. A sacred flame was a means of providing transition, the earth the great cosmological forge to which the essence of the dead could be returned so that they might live on. Literal, puritanical, interpretations of the Circle of Fire hailed from Nocturne’s ancient ages and were outmoded after the birth of Vulkan and the coming of the Emperor, but some still clung to the Old Ways. Veneration and remembrance were important.

Emek held on to a position of rationality and enlightenment. The ancient beliefs and prophecies were just that – archaic and no longer relevant. He wondered if his ‘friend’ beyond the armaglas thought any differently. The isolation chamber was only a small portion of the Apothecarion, one cell amongst many. Currently, Zartath was the only occupant.

‘I will not be caged!’ the warrior persisted.

Annoyed at the constant interruption, Emek glared and his still functioning eye flared brightly in the gloom.

‘You were held prisoner on the Volgorrah Reef for six years. Who can really say what effect the tortures of the xenos, losing your battle-brothers like you did, had on your mind?’

Zartath bared his teeth. ‘I am still a prisoner!’

Ignoring him, Emek went on, ‘And then there is your mutation to consider…’

Little was known about Zartath, save that he was once a Space Marine in the Black Dragons Chapter. It was amongst those ill-fated brotherhoods referred to as the ‘Cursed Founding’ – although such terms varied according to the speaker – that the Black Dragons had come into being. His physical deviancy was obvious. Bony growths jutted from his head and forearms. When Zartath was roused to anger, they would become like ossified blades punching straight through flesh and skin. The savaging taken by the isolation chamber’s internal walls was evidence of that.

Despite the sedatives plaguing his system, Zartath was belligerent. It was part of the reason he was still incarcerated.

‘Face like blackened coal and eyes like embers, and you speak to me of mutancy.’ He sneered, showing off his needle-like fangs. ‘Let me go, hypocritical dog.’

‘There is also the matter of your heritage.’ Here, Emek pressed against his barely veiled contempt. For was it not Ushorak of the Black Dragons who had infected Nihilan with his canker, and ultimately brought about the creation of the Dragon Warriors and the death of the Salamanders’ beloved Captain Kadai? His vitriol passed quickly but Emek left room for a final bite. ‘Let us not forget your mental state, either.’

Zartath stood, although he should not have been able to, and charged the armaglas. ‘Release me!’ The bone blades sniktd from his forearms. Soon the view into the isolation cell was occluded by raking claw marks and flung spittle.

Unimpressed, Emek nulled the chamber. The raging became mute and the observation portal turned to black.

‘Beast.’

‘He is,’ answered the darkness, a chill entering the room along with the voice. ‘A real vicious bastard, too. He held a blade to Sergeant Ba’ken’s throat and would’ve cut it if he’d thought we meant him harm.’

Elysius stepped forwards into the wan light cast by the dulled lamps. ‘But were it not for him, we all would have died in that place.’

Armoured in black battle-plate festooned with talismans of purity and devotion, including a holy relic of the primarch, Elysius was a Chaplain to his icy core. Since his visit to the Volgorrah Reef his frosty demeanour had thawed somewhat. He entered the Apothecarion unhooded, his battle-helm mag-locked to his thigh. There was a time when he would not have done so. Contrary to a once-held belief, Elysius was not hideous or war-scarred, horrifically burned or twisted in some way. He was handsome for a Space Marine; his skin was unblemished, his features strong and even.

Only his left arm showed evidence of permanent wounding. The limb he wore was artificial, a bionic replacement for the one he had lost on Scoria fighting the ork. During campaign, he would affix a power fist to that arm instead and his debilitating injury would be turned into crushing martial advantage.

Elysius gestured to the blank slab of armaglas. ‘I can’t imagine he has taken to examination well.’

‘He hasn’t.’ Emek didn’t bother to look up. ‘It requires heavy sedation every time I must take a dermal bio-scan or extract a marrow sample. Caged drakes are easier to handle.’

‘You are as stern as your predecessor, Brother Emek.’

The Apothecary continued to be absorbed by his data-slates. ‘I am merely being prudent.’

‘Are those his notes you are researching?’ Elysius asked, though he didn’t pry. He didn’t need to. He knew Fugis had a dossier on Dak’ir. It was obvious the notes in front of Emek pertained to him.

The Apothecary stopped what he was doing to face his Chaplain.

‘Yes. Combined with the regular examinations I must conduct on the Black Dragon, I have little time for distraction.’

‘Like visiting the hell-pits at Themis, you mean?’ There was no trace of accusation in the Chaplain’s tone, no reproach. He was merely asking the question.

‘I meant by unannounced visitors.’

‘I know what you meant. You are spending overlong in the Apothecarion; you need to be back amongst your brothers again. Your meeting with Sergeant Ba’ken suggests you realise that too.’

Emek’s retort had barbs. ‘Are isolation and self-reliance not a part of the Promethean Creed?’

‘Not when they are bent towards self-destruction.’

Scowling, Emek returned to his work but Elysius wasn’t done with him. ‘You have a patient, not a prisoner. Your treatment of him suggests an imbalance in your humours, brother.’

‘Until he can be reclaimed by his Chapter or my assessment of him deems his stability, he is too dangerous to be on the loose.’

‘I agree. It is your harsh judgement of our distant brother that I question, Apothecary.’ The Chaplain maintained a carefully neutral expression. ‘It wasn’t Zartath aboard the Protean.’

‘So we get to the truth of it at last,’ Emek sneered.

‘I am responsible for the spiritual wellbeing of this company. You expect me to ignore this shift in your demeanour?’

‘I was once whole, now I am not. The anvil has tempered me and I shall bear its judgement with the stoic pragmatism of my Chapter. Is that what you want to hear?’

‘I hear only your bitterness, brother.’ Now Elysius showed his anger. ‘On the Volgorrah Reef, in the Razored Vale as my brothers died around me, I felt a darkness encroaching. It was a malaise of the spirit, a tempering against which I was to be measured. I witnessed much horror and death there, but here I stand. As warriors we are made whole by our bonds of brotherhood, by war’s purifying flame.’ He gestured to his bionic arm. ‘On Scoria did I not lose a limb to the Great Beast?’

Emek clenched his fists as the rancour poured out of him. ‘But you can still fight. How can I return to battle?’ He met Elysius’s gaze and in Emek’s eyes were pictured all of his faded hopes. ‘This ague plagues me, Chaplain. I am a cripple because of it!’

‘Don’t let it consume you,’ said Elysius, lowering his voice. Realising his arguments went unheeded he turned and stalked from the Apothecarion.

Emek watched him leave.

‘It already has,’ he muttered to the dark.

CHAPTER THREE

I

Legacies

The hour was late but the sun never set over the Pyre Desert and glared down on the aspirants with an oppressive heat.

Master Prebian was observing the summit of the Cindara Plateau. Though old, even for a Space Marine, he needed no magnoculars to find what he sought in the haze.

‘Who is that?’ he asked, in a gritty voice.

For over four centuries, Prebian had served the Chapter as Master of Arms. As de facto captain of the Seventh Company, a rank he had held for just over four decades, he had a small but august legacy.

Ko’tan Kadai had been one of Prebian’s most celebrated pupils, his own legacy of honour lasting three centuries before his untimely demise; Elysius, now of the Reclusiam, had learned hand-to-hand fighting techniques from the master, so too Pyriel and Veteran Sergeant Lok. Countless other captains and Chapter luminaries had benefited under his esteemed tutelage.

Since the death of Zen’de, the Chapter’s previous Master of Recruits, Prebian had stepped into the breach but was looking for a successor. Only sixty Scouts comprised the full fighting strength of the Seventh, a throwback to the devastation wrought during the ill-fated Isstvan V assault that nearly destroyed the Legion as it was then and was still felt some ten thousand years later. A consummate drill-sergeant and expert in close-combat techniques, as Master of Arms, Prebian was needed by all Salamanders companies, not just the Seventh. The captain’s mantle was his only to bestow upon another.

Sol Ba’ken squinted. Prebian was venerable, but his eyesight was certainly undiminished.

‘He is called Val’in,’ the sergeant said. The aspirant’s name prompted recall for Ba’ken. Val’in was descended from the survivors of the 154th Expeditionary ship the Salamanders had found in the subterranean depths of Scoria. It was one amongst several other revelations, the substance of which currently resided in a vault on Prometheus. As for the boy, Ba’ken had been his rescuer after he’d guided the Salamanders through the myriad cave systems beneath Scoria’s surface. Val’in and a few others had been taken off-world and brought back to Nocturne. Unlike some, who found life on the death world too harsh to survive, Val’in had adapted well and been chosen as an aspirant.

It was the tenth ascent without rope or pick up the crag-shawled flanks of the Cindara Plateau. It jutted from the ashen sands like a ruddy spike but with a flattened peak that was its namesake, and it sides were riddled with geyser holes. Scalding steam vented from the invisible fissures in the rock at sporadic intervals, making an already treacherous climb deadly. Many an aspirant had lost his face or worse to that unpleasant fate.

For the tenth time, Val’in conquered the summit before any of his would-be brothers. He stood on the plateau itself, breathing hard but triumphant.

‘He’s strong,’ said Prebian.

‘Determined too.’

‘Indeed. Not unlike the warrior standing beside me.’ He looked askance at Ba’ken. ‘Let us just say that not everyone could have come back from the beating you took.’

Before reaching the pits of Themis, Ba’ken had spent hours on the Arridian Plain hunting leo’nid as the Master of Recruits put him through his paces. Like the sergeant, Prebian also hailed from the City of Warrior-Kings.

The armour he wore was slightly archaic, one of the Mark V suits created millennia ago but possessed of incredible artifice. In many ways, Prebian was an anachronism too and drew much of his fighting techniques from old tribal methods used by the first Nocturnean chieftains. He carried several blades about his person as if to emphasise his martial prowess. A saw-toothed spatha was strapped to his leg and a shorter gladius was scabbarded next to his left hip. On the opposite side was a holstered melta-pistol. Prebian’s bolter, racked next to his armour’s power generator on his back, completed the deadly ensemble.

Prebian folded his arms, his mind decided.

‘Bring them in, those that remain.’

The rest, the dead or those too injured to continue, would be left to the desert.

Ba’ken felt no remorse. It was as it should be, as laid down by Promethean law. To an outsider it might seem contrary to the humanitarian beliefs of the Salamanders but nothing could be further from the truth. Strength and endurance were vital if the Chapter was to fulfil its duty to the Emperor and to its home world. Protection of Nocturne’s citizens was one thing; gauging the suitability of aspirants by hammering them mercilessly was quite another.

A dull or weakened blade is as dangerous to its wielder as its enemy, so philosophised Zen’de.

Bellowing, Ba’ken summoned the aspirants to fall in.

By the time they had descended the rock and met with their masters on the desolate plain, there were nine left from the original twenty-three that had been chosen. The rate of attrition was not unusual.

Despite the fact he’d had to climb back down from the plateau summit, Val’in was the first to return.

Ba’ken nodded as they came back. The stern-faced Prebian loomed behind the sergeant, arms still folded. The arsenal he carried clanked as he shifted in his armour. The effect was deliberately off-putting for the aspirants, who wore simple fatigues and carried only las-carbines and Themian hunting knives.

By contrast, Ba’ken carried a bolter and his piston-hammer. The latter was a bespoke weapon of his own forging, as much a part of him as an extra limb.

‘If you are to become Fire-born then you must learn endurance, you must learn how to survive. Our mistress,’ Ba’ken gestured to the desert all around them, ‘is cruel and unforgiving. She will temper you well for the challenges to come.’

One of the aspirants – he appeared almost broken – dared to spare a glance at one of his fellows who’d collapsed before reaching the masters and was slowly dying from the heat.

‘Don’t look at him!’ Ba’ken snapped, coming forwards and using all of his bulk and massive size to intimidate. ‘Heed me, aspirant. My instruction and your will are all which stand between you and that same fate. He returns to the earth, sundered by the anvil.’ He went down on one knee to scoop up a handful of earth. ‘This is what should concern you, what is real and tangible. This desert is your enemy, it wants to kill you. It will kill you if you do not respect it.’

Val’in’s concentration never wavered. He followed every move of Ba’ken, who allowed no trace of their history to affect his manner. He was just another aspirant, albeit a seemingly gifted one.

Having undergone several stages of biological implantation associated with ascending to the lowly rank of Scout, Val’in was a boy no longer. None of them were. Already, his skin was beginning to show the melanochromatic degeneration that would see him become like his full-fledged battle-brothers.

A mutation in the Salamanders genome meant their pigmentation reacted more aggressively and irreversibly to the implantation of the melanochromic organ than other Space Marines. Meant as a safeguard against ultraviolet and radioactive exposure, it actually reacted with the unique radiation of Nocturne’s atmosphere to create onyx-skinned warriors. It also affected retinal cells, and the glow about Val’in’s eyes was almost fire-red. His bulked-out musculature showed a strong response to the introduction of the ossmodula that enhanced bone mass and durability, as well as ossifying an aspirant’s ribcage into a solid plate.

Ba’ken knew they would need all of these biological advantages if they were to survive the trials ahead. He also realised that for some this would not be enough.

Val’in met his gimlet gaze and didn’t flinch.

You are a tenacious one, he thought with silent approval.

‘Out there…’ Prebian took over the oratory, pointing to the deeper desert, ‘lies a heart of fire. You will march into it, to the hunting grounds of the sa’hrk and the dactylid, and you will do so without water or provisions.’

Ba’ken took the aspirants’ canteens. Several licked their lips longingly at the disappearing vessels. His voice was low and forbidding as he then confiscated their stubby carbines. ‘A warrior must know how to fight with blade and fist.’

Ignoring the looks of dismay on the faces of some, he gestured to the hunting knife of one aspirant. ‘A sa’hrk’s talons are both longer and sharper.’ Then he pointed to his head. ‘Here is where you must defeat its low cunning.’

Prebian came forwards. ‘You have three hours. Bring trophies back with you.’

At Val’in’s urging the nine ran off into the desert, following the Master of Recruits’ direction.

When they were out of earshot, Prebian asked, ‘How many do you think will survive the trial?’

Ba’ken was staring into the horizon. ‘This one? I see strength enough in eight to succeed and live. By the time we are done?’ He let the question linger, before answering at length, ‘Just Val’in.’

Prebian nodded slowly, following the sergeant’s gaze.

‘Soundly spoken,’ he said then added, ‘I am recommending you for promotion to Master of Recruits, Captain of Seventh.’

Ba’ken was taken aback at his abruptness. Prebian was not one to waste time with idle preamble and epitomised Themian directness.

‘I am just a sergeant…’

‘You are a veteran, a sergeant long before you ever carried the rank. Your campaign experience is almost peerless and you have an affinity for training. I see a Master of Recruits before me, even if you do not.’

‘It is an honour, but–’

‘And not one that you can refuse, brother,’ Prebian cut in. ‘I need to appoint a captain for Seventh – you are whom I will put before the Chapter Master for consideration.’

Ba’ken bowed his head. ‘You humble me, lord. I am deeply–’ He paused, looking up as something out in the desert caught his attention.

Prebian’s hand strayed to his holstered pistol. The Pyre was a dangerous place even for a Space Marine. Monsters roamed its plains, in addition to numerous environmental hazards.

‘What do you see?’ he hissed, scanning around.

Ba’ken relaxed, but not completely. ‘A feeling…’

Prebian tried to pinpoint it too, but saw only a featureless desert baked by the sun.

‘Like we were being watched.’ Ba’ken cursed under his breath and dismissed it. ‘Paranoia,’ he muttered ruefully. ‘It’s been a while since I was in the field.’

Prebian clapped his shoulder paternally. ‘The dusk-wraiths have long talons, brother, and they sink deep. It will be a while before your wounds heal fully. But if it makes you sharp, then embrace it.’

Ba’ken scoffed, but without humour. ‘I think all of Third is on edge. Being recalled, Dak’ir and the prophecy… I want war to be simple again.’

‘You’ll fight your enemies soon enough. This…’ said Prebian, slapping his spatha’s blade, ‘and this…’ he added, touching the stock of his bolter, ‘are the tools that will help you find your focus again. Be patient. Agatone was right to bring the Third back. Geviox… Scoria and Stratos,’ he said, naming the worlds where N’keln and Kadai had met their respective ends, ‘have been hard on all of you. To lose two captains in just a few years is tough on any battle company.’

‘We must re-forge in the fires of war.’

‘You will, brother. In time.’

‘In time…’

Prebian turned. A Land Speeder hovered a short distance behind them, engines idling with a dulcet hum.

Ba’ken stashed the carbines in the vehicle’s webbing, while Prebian climbed into the pilot’s seat. Speeders were rare in the Salamanders Chapter but not unheard of. This one had a heavy bolter mounted on a rack and slide. Its muzzle was tipped downwards and off-centre. Ba’ken was about to get into the gunner’s seat when he paused, one foot on the embarkation stirrup.

The paranoid sensation he’d felt earlier returned, but then quickly dispersed again like smoke on the breeze. He climbed aboard and Prebian gunned the engines before they roared off to follow the progress of the aspirants.

Ba’ken and Prebian weren’t the only ones observing the aspirants.

The strangers moved like shadows across the sun, defying the light and the brightness to stay undetected. Sinuous, graceful but also deadly, they left a trail of dead Ignean nomads in their wake. The poor traders had been unlucky. At least their deaths had been swift. The strangers had wanted to prolong their demise, to eke the hapless natives of all their suffering and pain, but discipline had surpassed desire. They moved on, burying the dead in shallow graves. Their landing ship was hidden too, cloaked with infernal technologies. They had used the magnetic interference from the Black Rock to bypass the enemy’s wards. Their infiltration was perfect, their appetite for torture never slaked.

The armoured giant was aware of their presence, but its brutish wit was too dull to realise it.

Eyes narrowed against the sun, his cruel blade held close, the leader kept the boy-soldiers in his eye-line.

‘Mon-keigh…’

The time to strike was nearing.

He hissed an order at his cohort to remain still until the ugly flying vessel had passed.

Then silently, the strangers followed.

II

Devotion of Another Stripe

The underdeck of the Hell-stalker echoed with the sound of screaming.

‘There’s more for you to bleed…’ promised a voice like cracking magma.

It took Tsu’gan a few moments to realise the screams were his. The blade embedded in the nerve cluster in his leg had brought him around. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been out – it could’ve been seconds or hours – or how many times he’d gone under.

A taste of leather and copper tarred his palate. His tongue felt as if it were laced with crushed glass. Then he realised he had a strap across his mouth. He’d been gnawing on it when the pain got too much. Tiny slivers of leather stuck between his blood-rimed teeth.

‘Open your eyes,’ growled the voice again. It was deep and resonant, sulphurous too – the stench of his torturer’s breath was acerbic. It was also familiar.

A hard blow to the kidneys brought Tsu’gan’s eyelids fluttering. They snapped open and he beheld the face of his tormentor.

Ramlek.

Nihilan’s lapdog seldom went without his battle-helm. During the first few days, after they’d ‘softened’ Tsu’gan up in the arena-pits, the renegade had explained how it physically hurt to remove it. He said he wanted ‘the whelp’ to see his face as he applied the knife.

As his blurred vision began to sharpen, Tsu’gan noticed other things.

The torture chamber was small, its heady atmosphere cloying and hot; blood permeated the air and adhered to every surface, including the Salamander’s skin, in a greasy residue. It resembled a workshop. A large recyc-fan with serrated blades, embedded in the left wall, spun lazily. Its droning was mocking rather than dulcet: whomp, whomp, whomp, ever turning, fanning the stink of death.

Ramlek had made his grisly work into an art form. All manner of tools hung on racks or were suspended from the ceiling on barbed chains. Some of them were bespoke, fashioned by the torturer; all were sharp and well-used. Tsu’gan could well imagine Nihilan offering scraps from the ship’s serfs to satisfy Ramlek’s sadistic tendencies. It was not so different from throwing cast-off meat for a dog to savage and devour.

The renegade drank deep, almost inhaling his victim’s pain, as he returned with a fresh implement.

‘I will peel your noble flesh…’

A cloud of ash and cinder escaped the Dragon Warrior’s lips. They were black, as if smeared with soot. As he spoke, Ramlek exposed his fangs in a subconscious feral display of dominance. Dark veins running from the corners of the renegade’s ugly mouth webbed his scaly cheekbones. Ramlek’s left eye was red but the cornea wept hot, acidic fluid that left raw marks down his face. The right was like solid stone, unblinking. So ravaged, it was hard to tell which tortures he had visited upon himself and which were Chaos mutation.

Tsu’gan was no stranger to masochism, the self-punitive purity of it had been like a salve during his darker moments, but this was mutilation.

He laughed inside.

Darker moments.

It was hard to think of one blacker than that which he currently found himself in.

Ramlek was about to start in again, eager to re-anoint the leather apron he wore in place of his armour, when a voice stopped the paring-blade centimetres from Tsu’gan’s skin.

‘Heel.’

The tone was rasping like old parchment being crushed, but dominant.

Nihilan.

Ramlek snarled, but backed off.

Good dog…

Tsu’gan couldn’t see the sorcerer but knew he must be looking on. Nihilan continued.

‘That’s enough for now.’

Despite himself Tsu’gan felt relief, even satisfaction at Ramlek’s obvious displeasure.

‘Raise him and let him speak.’

The voice was coming through a vox-unit. It must have been slaved to the cell to allow two-way communication between it and some adjacent antechamber.

A low grinding of gears presaged jerky movement in the slab that Tsu’gan was strapped to. It was forged of pitted iron and abraded his bare back. The clasps around his wrists were wrought from a similar material but had tiny spikes on the inner surface that dug into flesh. Belatedly, he became aware of the rust-grit under his fingernails from where he’d clawed the metal.

Pneumatic pistons, old enough to have been from before the Scouring, were angling the slab to forty-five degrees. Tsu’gan grimaced as the magnesium lamps burned his eyes.

Then there was merely darkness in front of him and the pistons stopped.

‘I had to hurt you, Tsu’gan,’ Nihilan’s disembodied voice issued from the formless void. ‘If I had not let Ramlek play with you, he would certainly have tried to kill you.’

The dog was nodding. Tsu’gan sneered derisively as he thought of a wagging tail instead. There was a sudden jolt of fresh agony, and he realised the leather gag was being removed. His mouth was numb. It took a while to get the feeling back before he could speak.

Tsu’gan laughed. It was a cracked, unpleasant sound.

‘You think that was pain? You know nothing of pain,’ he slurred.

Ramlek went for a saw-blade but a shout from Nihilan froze him solid.

‘Like I said,’ the sorcerer went on when his hound had been verbally leashed, ‘it was for your long-term benefit.’

‘You should kill me now,’ Tsu’gan told him, trying but failing to get a fix on his nemesis in the darkness. He suspected his sight was shadowed by warp sorcery. ‘Because if you don’t, I’ll break free of this trap and kill your dog. Then I’ll come for you, and the other one who’s standing next to you right now. You, Iagon,’ he snarled the name, ‘you, I shall save for last.’

In the antechamber, Iagon seethed.

‘When Ramlek is done, I want my chance to cut him.’ Spittle flicked from his perpetually sneering mouth as he looked into the torture cell. It hit the dark glass and smeared.

Iagon was gaunt and slight for a Space Marine, and in his time aboard the Hell-stalker his back had started to bend so he walked with a stoop.

He wore a renegade’s panoply now. Gone was his Salamanders armour, butchered and ground down, the raw metal splashed blood red and banded black in the colours of the Dragon Warriors. Chains and spikes blighted the once noble curves of a First Founding Chapter’s ceramite. Random knife gashes marred the battle-plates. Some of the strokes were frenzied, others careful and considered, echoing the renegade’s pathology.

His transition from loyal servant of the Emperor to traitor was both swift and easy. Nihilan was surprised to discover he found it distasteful.

‘The power for you to make demands exists only in your own mind.’ The sorcerer glared at him, feeding a little of his psychic will into the gesture. Iagon blanched but held his ground. ‘You have yet to gain my trust or my counsel,’ said Nihilan. ‘Be grateful that I am even allowing you to witness this.’

Iagon had lost none of his oleaginous diplomacy and was instantly contrite. He even bowed.

Nihilan turned his attention back to the prisoner.

‘I believe you would kill us all, Tsu’gan. Your rage is… incandescent. I can visualise its aura suffusing you.’

Tsu’gan spat a gobbet of blood at the darkness, earning a hard slap from Ramlek. ‘I hope you choke on it,’ the Salamander growled.

‘Do you want to know why I am keeping you alive?’

‘Because you are prone to repeating mistakes? You should’ve killed me on Stratos when you had the chance.’

Nihilan ignored the gibe, but he remembered Stratos fondly. Kadai had died on Stratos, the first link in the ever weakening chain around the Salamanders’ unity and strength eroded by a multi-melta’s beam. Tsu’gan had felt the loss acutely. Some damage, Nihilan knew only too well, was irreparable.

A captain for a captain; Kadai for Ushorak. It was balance, a way of redressing the scales. Vengeance, but only in part.

‘No,’ he said, ‘you are far too valuable for that. I see such potential in you, Tsu’gan, such bitterness.’

‘You are deluded.’

‘Am I? Are you sure it isn’t you that serves the wrong master?’

Tsu’gan laughed. He laughed loud and raucously, so hard it brought agony to his battered body as he shook with the sheer violence of it.

Able to pierce the veil, Ramlek looked into the darkness for direction but Nihilan merely glared.

‘You are a fool,’ Tsu’gan said at length. There were tears streaming down his face, not of joy but derision. ‘Did you bring me here to make me traitor? Idiot. I am not as weak-willed as that wretch who cowers in your shadow. Have the dog gut me or cut me loose; either way you won’t get what you want.’

Nihilan delivered his retort with a smile. It pulled painfully at the scar-tissue around his face.

The armour he wore was old and the colour of incarnadine blood. A curved horn arced from either shoulder, and it was adorned by scale and chain burned black from exposure to fire. It carried the actual scars of campaigning, rather than the petulant marks inflicted as a result of petty rages. There were graven sigils and unholy talismans too that attested to Nihilan’s mastery of warp-craft.

His crimson-lidded eyes glowed flame-red. ‘Truthfully, I would have been disappointed had you yielded easily. At least now I know you are worthy of all this attention. It is interesting, though…’

Tsu’gan didn’t bite so Nihilan went on. ‘It is interesting that you think you have any choice in this. There is no choice. Even Horus Lupercal could not resist the lure of Chaos. Is Zek Tsu’gan mightier than the primarch of the Luna Wolves, the Warmaster of the Great Crusade?’ he scoffed.

Tsu’gan responded with flippancy. ‘Just like a servant of Ruin to refer to ten thousand year-old myth. Get over it, the Long War is done.’

‘It is never done until Terra burns and that rotting corpse upon his Throne is put out of his misery.’

‘I find your histrionics hard to swallow, witch. The only Legion blood in your line is the same as mine.’ Tsu’gan grinned, showing bloody teeth. ‘Save your pantomimes for the puppet you have beside you, dangling on a traitor’s strings, and know this: I am Fire-born, true son of Vulkan and warrior of Nocturne. You reneged on your oaths, sorcerer. You showed your weakness to the galaxy. I will not turn as you did for promises of false power and hollow glory. I spit on your creed, scum.’

Another blood-veined gobbet of phlegm speared into the formless darkness.

‘Leave me to your butcher’s cleaver; at least I can ignore his inane babbling.’

Nihilan’s fist was clenched when he shut off the vox-unit.

Iagon decided to fill the silence that followed.

‘Lord, I meant no offence earlier. If I overstepped my bounds it is only because I am eager for him to suffer.’

Mastering his emotions, Nihilan swept out a desultory hand towards the grim vista in the workshop. ‘He suffers. Was he not your sergeant once? Have your bonds of devotion been so utterly broken, Iagon?’

Iagon scowled, looking askance at Tsu’gan strapped to the torture slab. His voice was low and dripped with malice. ‘I worshipped him. Even removed those in his path that sought to prevent his destiny.’

Fugis, N’keln, Koto – the list was growing…

He paused, letting his fanatical anger subside. ‘In the end, I was betrayed.’

Under torture and mental conditioning, Iagon had revealed everything – every dark deed, every dishonourable act, all the secrets of the Salamanders that he’d been privy to. Most of it was useless; strategies would have already changed, battle plans and formations likewise. It was the personal details that Nihilan found interesting.

His psychological analysis of Iagon’s behaviour, his manias and paranoia, was well within the realm of the psychotic. Indeed, he was surprised that such an individual had lasted as long as he had without discovery or self-awareness of his deviant nature. The mind was such an intriguing construct; the slightest upset to its perceived idea of order could throw a fragile one into turmoil. Nihilan had yet to find Tsu’gan’s mental pressure points but that was for later – let Ramlek have his fill for now. He’d earned it.

Nihilan adopted a more forbidding tone as his burn-ravaged face took on the dark light of unpleasant memories. ‘Oh, I am familiar with the concept of betrayal, as was my master. We are both very familiar with that.’

‘You mean Ushorak?’

Nihilan struck him, hard across the cheek. His clawed gauntlets raked an ugly gash in Iagon’s face. ‘You may not speak of him,’ he declared with a terrifying coldness. ‘Your tongue is unworthy of it.’

Iagon quelled his indignation and rage, bowing instead. ‘I have sacrificed,’ he went on. ‘I can still feel the pain sometimes…’ He worried at the bionic hand he wore in place of the organic one he’d lost.

Nihilan came in close. He was about to rebuke again but the words he’d planned to say were usurped by others, as were his emotions. ‘Does the greenskin knife still hurt?’ he breathed instead. There was a resonance to the cadence of it. Something inside him, buried deep beneath the surface but rising was influencing him. ‘You had best get used to pain, for there is much more awaiting you. Much more. You are on the path now, Iagon, and you stand to lose more than merely an appendage or limb. But for the price…’ Nihilan exhaled in lascivious pleasure, ‘… the rewards are beyond comprehension…’ His expression changed again and the voice that came from Nihilan’s mouth did not sound like his own. ‘How I long to taste the world again…’

Excitement and fear warred over Iagon’s face. Nihilan clutched his brow. He stepped back, shaking his head as if to cast off some invisible pall that had surrounded him. ‘You know nothing of sacrifice…’ He sounded drunk. When he lifted his face again, Nihilan’s demeanour had changed back. He looked Iagon in the eyes.

‘Wait here. Watch if you so choose, but nothing more.’

Beyond the shadows the torture slab was lowering again.

Nihilan left the chamber, as Iagon eagerly looked on.

It was probing at his resilience, Nihilan knew this. To invite something in, as he had, was to become its host, but guests needed boundaries too. His was becoming restless. Nihilan needed a vessel for it, and soon.

He was walking the shadow-dark corridors of the Hell-stalker by instinct. Few ventured this deep, even fewer stayed for more than moments at a time. The things that lurked in the undercrofts, the catacombs of the ship, were always hungry but they feared Nihilan and so he was left alone. There was a curious solace to the act of touring these seldom-trodden passageways. It was an old affectation from when he’d been part of a different order that he still sometimes indulged. Ushorak had shown him truth. He’d opened Nihilan’s eyes to the lies of the False Emperor.

Not that he really cared about the Long War. In that at least, Tsu’gan had been right. His goals were much more realistic and infinitely more personal. Let the corpse rot upon his Golden Throne, what was that to Nihilan? In the Eye, he’d met and killed several petty warlords and chieftains who’d been slaves to that goal. They were blind fools who acted out of some misguided, millennia-old instinct. Now their warriors swelled his warband and gave him fealty.

A warrior who lives in the past shall die by the unforeseen hand of the future.

Ushorak had taught him that.

The terrible sanctity of the place Nihilan now walked and its fell denizens were precisely the reasons he had chosen for the Chaplain’s shrine to be here.

Nihilan uttered a word of power, one spoken to him and him alone during the ‘day of enlightenment’, and a fissure in the iron slab before him broke apart to reveal a small, dark chamber hidden within the bulkhead.

The scent of old death assailed him as he entered, head bowed, and the bulkhead closed behind him with a dull clang. Even the Glaive, Nihilan’s inner circle, were not permitted into this unholy sanctuary. He knelt before a pedestal upon which a gauntleted finger, desiccated, burned but somehow still bleeding, rested. Above it a torn and rotten banner seemed to float suspended in mid-air. It was not, of course, but the visual illusion created by the conditions of the shrine-room was very convincing. A Chaplain was depicted on it, crozius aloft, a battlefield behind him engulfed in holy fire. His black power armour was resplendent and carried the image of a white drake coiled in upon itself. Gore-slicked bone blades raked from the demagogue’s vambraces.

‘Ushorak…’ Nihilan intoned. The speaking of the dead Chaplain’s name was akin to an invocation. The hot air inside the chamber grew cold until hoarfrost limned the edges of the sorcerer’s armour. Some anima of the old, dead Chaplain still lingered.

Upon the ragged banner, the image shimmered. To Nihilan’s eye, the battlefield was moving again, its players animated as if part of some incredible theatre acted out for his edification. It was not merely limited to sight, either. Nihilan heard the crash of bolters, the war cries; he smelled fire and smoke, tasted blood on a breeze that did not really exist.

It was real, and it was all taking place within the torn banner. A light pitter-patter, pitter-patter arrested Nihilan’s attention until he realised it was blood, but blood that was dripping off the battlefield with every stroke of Ushorak’s mace. The visceral tapestry even appeared to exude smoke and the heat of incendiary fire. An explosion bloomed behind the Chaplain, slow to expand, with detail threaded as if it was being stitched in at an exponentially rapid rate.

Bowing his head in deference, Nihilan closed his eyes and allowed his other senses to dominate.

‘We are close, my lord,’ he whispered. ‘Our vengeance draws near and so too your glory. I await your–’

You made a pledge to me…

The disembodied voice of his dead master rang aloud in Nihilan’s mind, interrupting him.

That had never happened before. Ever.

Had all of his blessings and beseeching finally penetrated the veil? Was such a feat even possible? Nihilan dared to hope… ‘Master?’

You made a pledge to me…

‘Lord Ushorak, how is this–’

And I have maintained my part in the pact.

Nihilan scowled.

It was the other.

‘Why do you come upon me in this sacred place?’

To remind you of our bargain and your part in it.

His skin was crawling as if thousands of tiny hands were pressing on the inside trying to get out.

‘Desist!’ He snapped, resisting the urge to use his warp-craft and inadvertently empower the other further. It was straining, Nihilan could feel it. Like a foetus grown too large for the womb, it wanted release. The pressure in the sorcerer’s gut was incredible.

‘Desist…’

The pain subsided and Nihilan could breathe again.

We creatures of the void are older than time. Our memories are long and we are patient. I am particularly patient but my sanguinity has reached its end, mortal.

‘You will have your vessel. Everything is in–’

Did I not massage the skeins of fate to your desire and gift you with prescience for your war? I pressed weapons into your hands and manipulated allies towards your cause. All of this I did because we had an agreement forged in souls and blood. It is burned upon your heart, mortal…

Reflexively, Nihilan clutched his chest.

…Even now I see the mark I made there. It is long and dark, jagged and black. It is eternal, Nihilan.

His voice returned as the pain in his chest dissipated.

‘As I was saying, everything is prepared. You will have what you want.’ Aeons were like moments to the thing crawling around inside him. A few more hours hardly mattered. It was merely playing with him, asserting its mastery. Who was Nihilan to defy it?

Images flared hot and agonising in his mind. The pain was excruciating, as if the grainy scenes had been inserted into his consciousness by a burning needle. He beheld fleets of ships, the Hell-stalker amongst them along with several renegade frigates and the strange vessels of the xenos with whom he was forced to join swords. There was a giant asteroid too, following an inexorable trajectory towards Nocturne, the huge swathes of magnetic radiation throwing off its core masking the approach of his armada very well. Like a doomsday clock counting backwards from the final minute to the moment of its inception, the last image was of a blocky forge vessel.

Cause and effect, a string of events had been set in motion and the moment of their fruition was almost at hand.

Every action has consequence.

How true those words were and would prove to be.

The other had influenced these events, it had bent fate and defied destiny to bring about this confluence. Nihilan had much to be grateful for, but he also loathed his benefactor for he knew it would exact a telling price for its boons.

He was about to try and placate it further when he realised the other was gone.

‘What dark dreams must you entertain in your hellish slumber,’ he muttered as a sudden sense of relief swept over him. He realised there were potent entities beyond the veil that would regard him and his petty concerns as the merest speck on the galactic canvas. Always pressing, ever pushing against reality; mankind would be driven to madness should it ever become aware of such fell intelligences.

Nihilan left the shrine, resealing it behind him, and then reactivated his armour’s vox-feed. It was less than a few seconds before Ekrine contacted him.

‘We have broken warp and our armada is in readiness, my lord.’ His warrior’s voice was sepulchral and reptilian. ‘The xenos are also aboard.’

Nihilan was walking swiftly, only peripherally aware of the slitted eyes in the Hell-stalker’s undercroft that followed him. Since transition into realspace their hunger had lessened. ‘I’m on my way. Hold our ships in formation.’

CHAPTER FOUR

I

Needs

The hangar was crude and ugly. It drew a sneer of barely veiled contempt from Archon An’scur. Like so many of the things he’d endured to maintain his millennia-long existence, he found the alliance with the mon’keigh distasteful but necessary.

If they ever found about it, they would hunt him down for this. His eldritch cousins in High Commorragh would see him flayed and eviscerated, and that would be but the appetiser to a much longer banquet of suffering. For what the sorcerer was promising, it was worth the risk. He had not lived as long as he had without knowing which bargains to take and which to refuse. This particular gambit was on the threshold between. Besides, An’scur had felt a creeping ennui of late. It manifested as a shadow on the edge of his vision, a sliver of darker black against the benighted corners of empty corridors… haunting him. He needed to escape the frontier lands. Too long had he been confined to the sub-realm of the Volgorrah Reef.

Eternity was a long time, he’d decided. It wore upon him, draining the very sustenance from his body so that replenishment was needed frequently. The shadow knew, and it hungered for the day when restoration would no longer be possible for the archon. It waited, for death eternal was a patient mistress.

An’scur did not form attachments to those beneath him. Helspereth had been most literally beneath him, and he had bonded with her despite his better judgement. She had been a singular creature when it came to the reaping of souls. Of all the dark eldar at the Port of Anguish, she knew how to extract every iota of pain and suffering from her victims. They’d bathed in it, An’scur and his favourite wych.

Now she was dead, killed by a primitive’s hand. And though it went against his nature, he wanted vengeance for her death. An’scur would derive much pleasure from exacting agony upon the one who took her, the one in the black.

She had been beautiful and terrible at once, the perfect female specimen. Her lovemaking was torture and ecstasy in unison – many of the nobles she’d bedded hadn’t survived the experience. Her loss had left an ache inside An’scur, which surprised him. It had not come straight away; it was only later in solitude that he began to feel her absence. Perhaps that was why he’d dispatched Malnakor; the little bastard had coveted Helspereth’s pearly skin and supple frame. He had also attempted to kill An’scur on more than one occasion. Retaliation against the upstart dracon was inevitable, albeit conducted via conspiracy and treachery so as to bypass the burden of proof and the tedium of recrimination.

An’scur’s distracted musings ended when the sorcerer entered the hangar. He strode through a dank corridor of pitted columns and ugly ships, passed by grotesque and toadying serfs and menials unfit to even lick at a lowly dracon’s boot heel. He was flanked by a cadre of armoured warriors, red and black like the rest. These three praetorians joined the sorcerer upon his late arrival and were just as imperious as their master.

An’scur fought his arrogance down and surreptitiously checked the device on his wrist. The Eternal Ecstasy was still docked with the renegades’ flagship. Against his better reasoning, he had come aboard with only two servants. One was a simple sybarite who kept his eyes low and carried the archon’s weapons. An’scur was paranoid enough to keep various murder-devices concealed about his person that only he knew about, lest the retainer turn on him or they become separated. The other servant was a haemonculus: a desiccated, patchwork creature with a bent back and a stitched-on face, who was an artist in torture and resurrection. As his former haemonculus Kravex’s successor, Lyythe was not to be wholly trusted but had honoured the pacts of her old master.

An’scur would have preferred different company and more of it, but his bodyguards were back on his own ship to deter any potential mutiny in his absence. The incubi had a remarkable ability to dissuade certain loyally ambiguous subjects from doing anything rash. A pity Malnakor had not learned that lesson.

The plunder in slaves and materiel that the sorcerer offered was enticing, status-altering even. It would enhance An’scur’s fortunes greatly and cement his grip on the frontier territory of Volgorrah. With a little barter and a lot of murder, it might even buy him passage into High Commorragh. For that reason alone he had acquiesced to the sorcerer’s summons in person. But he refused to cower before this overlord, no matter how much martial strength he had amassed.

He bowed, maintaining a benign expression even though he was scowling inside at being forced to show deference to a being that was barely centuries old and from a backward culture of hairless apes.

As the sorcerer approached, An’scur noticed something different about him. All of the enhanced giants had an aura of the warp about them, but this sorcerer was like a burgeoning chalice. At once, the archon suspected a hidden power behind the renegade’s throne.

‘Your gathered armada is not entirely unimpressive,’ said An’scur. The archon was lithe, even in his segmented armour, but tall. He met the sorcerer eye-to-eye.

‘I suppose that is as close to a compliment as you’ll give. Let us make this quick.’

An’scur smiled, but it was closer to a sneer. ‘I am in agreement with that at least. Your feral language offends my superior tongue.’

The archon was amused when the silent praetorians bristled at his last remark. He knew he was putting himself in genuine jeopardy when he made it but could not resist. Apes dictating to an older, nobler race – it bordered on the ridiculous, but needs must, he supposed.

‘Keep wagging it in that manner, xenos, and I’ll see it cut out.’ The sorcerer’s eyes roamed to the craven figure of the haemonculus. ‘Is this it?’ he asked.

An’scur nodded. ‘As requested, however irregular.’ His black, pupil-less eyes narrowed. ‘What exactly is it you want the creature for?’

The sorcerer’s gaze didn’t move as he appraised the xenos torturer. ‘You know all you need to.’ He looked back. ‘What of your scouts?’

‘Several days ahead of the fleet. My nightfiend assures me they will be positioned auspiciously by the time the main assault is launched.’

‘See that they are.’

An’scur wanted to strike him for his insolence but fashioned a thin smile instead. ‘But of course,’ he purred.

The sorcerer turned on his heel, and An’scur had to fight the urge to rip the sword from his retainer’s grasp and ram it, hilt-deep, into the sorcerer’s back.

‘Thark’n, Nor’hak… Bring it with us,’ the renegade said idly to his cohort.

Two of the giants came forwards, their eyes burning with anger and repressed violence. An’scur glared defiantly, willing the apes to act on their obvious desire.

‘She is to be returned to me, sorcerer,’ he called. ‘Without blemish, as we agreed.’

The sorcerer’s voice was becoming increasingly distant, his mood dismissive. ‘You’re being well compensated for the loan of this wretch. Be thankful I do not alter our arrangement. Now,’ he added, ‘get off my ship.’

An’scur clenched his fists as the haemonculus was led away. It was a risk, the creature had value, but the dividends would be worth it in slave-stock alone. He bowed and backed away.

‘Lyythe has the arcana she requires?’ he asked of his retainer in a whisper, never deigning to make eye contact.

The sybarite nodded. ‘Yes, my lord. We can extract her via the Ecstasy easily enough.’

‘Good,’ he hissed, not bothering to tell his retainer that no such rescue would be taking place. He gave one final glance to the disgusting hangar. To think such a brute race held dominance over the galaxy. It made An’scur want to kill them all and bathe in their inferior blood.

‘We are treating with swine,’ he said, as they entered the Eternal Ecstasy’s docking portal.

Needs must.

Ekrine led them down to the gun decks in the direction of the Hell-stalker’s prow. The air was thick with the stench of blood and oil. Sulphurous soot clung to vast arching stanchions ribbing the corridors. Creatures, blind and decrepit, snuffled in the darkness. It was hot in the gun decks and the chug-clank of munitions being slowly prepared kept up a steady, mind-numbing refrain. Slave masters, hulking and gene-bulked brutes, worked the ratings harder and with greater cruelty as their overlords passed them. The screams of these unfortunate swine rang out in a pitiable chorus as their overseers beat them, while the dead or broken were shovelled into the furnaces as blood-fuel.

It was a hell-realm, this blackened forge in the bowels of the Hell-stalker. It was a place for the forgotten and the insignificant, human meat for the vast mill that could never have enough grist. Flesh and bone kept it turning, blood on blood and the constant sacrifice of innocent souls.

The quartet of Dragon Warriors ignored it.

The haemonculus had since departed, escorted by a cadre of armed serfs to a holding cell; Nihilan was alone with his inner circle. Only Ramlek, who was busy brutalising their prisoner, was absent.

‘The xenos is arrogant,’ said Nor’hak, radiating iron-hard coldness. He had a fat-bladed paring knife in his hands and was sharpening it against the plates of his armour. Unless he had a weapon in his hands to field strip, modify or fire his fingers twitched incessantly. Ramlek had once plunged a bayonet into either hand in an effort to still them when the affectation had begun to grate, but it failed. Nor’hak had later stabbed him in the shoulderblade with one of his longer blades in retaliation and it was considered evens.

Thark’n merely nodded, his gorget creaking at the strain put on it by his muscular neck. He spoke seldom. His tongue was a nest of barbs that hooked into the roof of his mouth, and to use it was excruciatingly painful. A more useful boon from the Eye was his behemoth-like frame. Even for a Chaos Space Marine, Thark’n was big. It made toting heavy arms easy. He’d hung the belt feed for his reaper over his neck like a chain. Bandoleers of grenades tunked loudly against his armour in the quiet passageway.

‘It is a racial predisposition,’ Nihilan explained.

‘Can it be trusted?’ asked Nor’hak, absently sharpening a different blade to keep from trembling.

‘Of course not, but by the time it decides to betray us we will have what we came for.’ Nihilan called ahead to Ekrine. ‘Anything from the warsmith?’

‘Nothing unforeseen.’ His head jerked left to right with the syncopated motion typical of a reptile. Scales colonised much of his skin. They were just visible above the neck, suggesting a larger infestation beneath his armour plate, and patchy over his face and head. The flesh there had begun to flare outwards, becoming like a serpent’s hood. In keeping with his snake-like aspect, Ekrine was fast. It was what made him such a good pilot.

Nihilan had taken much time and effort to acquire the clandestine lore that had put the planet-killer in his hands. Tougher still was forcing the Iron Warrior to serve him. The alliance on Scoria was to their mutual benefit, but even that had not been easy to broker; this was different again.

The end of the passageway opened out into a massive vaulted chamber. A metal gantry clanked loudly with the renegades’ heavy footfalls. Seen through the lattice floor was a pair of immense capacitors. Menials, servitors and other debased creatures busied themselves in the darkness far below with the radiation and the heat. A low hum was coming off a bank of power coils that bled into the capacitors and flanked a large fusion reactor with refined fyron powder at its core. The machinery fed into an immense segmented barrel etched with graven runes that was only partially visible. The rest protruded into the void from the Hell-stalker’s prow like the ram on an ancient sea-faring vessel.

Ironically, the weapon actually was archaic. At least, its standard template construct was. It had originated from an age before Old Night when all the many secrets of the universe had been lost. Through his patron and the obsession of the dead technocrat Caleb Kelock, Nihilan had wrested one of those secrets back from obscurity. Even witnessed in part, the seismic cannon was a thing of terrible beauty.

‘Our Spear of Retribution,’ he announced, as if blessing a fledging ship before its inaugural voyage.

Nor’hak’s hands stilled at the sight of it. Thark’n wept.

Only Ekrine, who had kept a close eye on the weapon’s construction, maintained his composure. He called to the creature performing the final pre-firing rituals.

‘Warsmith…’

An armoured beast turned slowly at the calling of its name. It was clad in grey metal, its yellow and black chevrons described in scuffed paint. Hulking shoulder guards protruded with spikes. Rusted rivets held much of the panoply together. Old hate flared in its eyes as it regarded the four renegades, but like a flame about to snuff out. Much of its form was mechanised and it whirred and ground robotically as it moved.

Necrotic breath to match the condition of its pallid flesh washed from the Iron Warrior’s ugly, slack-jawed mouth. It struggled to speak. Its tongue was black and lolled like a fat torpid slug between its teeth.

‘Allll issss reeeeady…’ it slurred.

Nihilan’s eyes narrowed approvingly. ‘Fascinating…’

Several devices, esoteric and alien in origin, were implanted into the Iron Warrior’s skull. An ankh-like rune glowed dully upon the surface of one. It helped to conceal the fact that much of the back of the creature’s head was missing, so too the bulk of its brain-matter.

‘Reconstitution was not easy,’ Ekrine hissed, ‘but Ramlek managed to fashion something to animate it at least.’

‘Is it fully revivified?’ Nihilan asked as the creature stared and drooled.

‘No. This is a husk with some remembered behaviours for our purposes. It is not unlike a servitor, except its protocols were slaved solely to the construction of the weapon.’

Nor’hak scowled. ‘It smells foul.’

‘That’s because it’s dead, you moron,’ Ekrine snapped and there was a flash of potential violence between them.

Nihilan’s voice quelled it. ‘Is its task done? Do we require this thing further?’

‘No, my lord, it is–’

The thunderous report of a bolt pistol ended Ekrine’s reply.

Nihilan holstered his sidearm, looking down on the headless Iron Warrior.

‘I have need of the mind shackles your dead-man is wearing. Sieve them from whatever brain chunks are left and throw the bodily remains into the furnaces.’

Ekrine bowed and swiftly dispatched a pair of nearby menials to the task.

As he returned down the corridor, the others followed Nihilan without word or complaint.

‘Our dawn is coming,’ he told them. ‘It will be savage and drown all of Nocturne in blood.’

II

Secrets of the Earth

Vel’cona turned the pages with slow deliberation. Each was heavy with the weight of ages. Together they carried the fate of an entire world.

‘Doom or salvation…’ he muttered, fingers tracing the sigils for the hundredth time or more. ‘So begins the Tempus Infernus… The Time of Fire comes to Nocturne, and all trials before shall seem as nothing to this.’

The light in the vault came from the glowing veins of ore lining the cavern walls, just bright enough for the Chief Librarian to require no further illumination. Vel’cona had doused the brazier-lamps, finding solitude in the natural semi-darkness of Mount Deathfire’s under realm. This place was a temple, a sanctuary of Vulkan, and should be treated as such.

He turned the page again, this same passage over and over as he tried to ascertain its true meaning. ‘One will become many.’

That seemed to suggest dissolution, a breaking of the Chapter, or a breaking of a world. He had pored over these symbols for many days without rest, entering almost a meditative state to better unravel them.

‘The Ferro Ignis shall emerge from ashes cold and wreathe our world in conflagration. He is the Fire Sword. He is our doom.’

Vel’cona stared at the page, as he had done for the last few hours. Over and over, he turned the prophecy in his mind, trying to fathom the message within it.

Fire.

Doom.

The consequences were certainly dire, but the conditions required to bring about such a cataclysm were still veiled.

It was as much as the Chapter knew. Alone, it wouldn’t save them.

‘Why show us this?’ he asked, turning a fresh page. ‘What secrets lurk beneath the earth?’

His aura of solemnity was only broken as another entered the vault with him.

‘Innocuous enough, isn’t it?’ he said without looking up.

The shadows answered. ‘Most extremely dangerous things usually are. The same could be said of a virus bomb.’

‘Justly spoken, Epistolary.’

Pyriel stepped into the light, wearing a suit of blue power armour. Arcane devices attached to the battle-plate showed his affiliation to the Librarius. A psychic hood arced around the back of his neck. His battle-helm was mag-locked to his thigh, allowing the shadows to pool in the grooves of an unremarkable face. A line of shaven white hair divided his onyx-black skull down the middle like an arrow.

Vel’cona traced the tips of his fingers over the edge of the page. ‘There is much here still beyond my reach.’

‘It was written by the primarch. What greater hand, save that of the Emperor, could have weaved its mysteries?’ He came to Vel’cona’s side, his noisy battle-plate disturbing the atmosphere of serenity in the temple.

Thusly armoured, Pyriel dwarfed his kneeling master who was dressed in a supplicant’s robes. Vel’cona’s presence, however, was still undeniable.

‘None, Pyriel,’ he said flatly.

The book before him was ancient, millennia old in fact. It had a simple drake-hide cover with a dark gold clasp and sat upon a humble pedestal of onyx.

‘Doesn’t look like much, does it?’

Pyriel came closer, but only a step. It was almost as if he dared not approach within the book’s invisible aura.

‘Our fate is really decided by what is in those pages?’

Vel’cona laughed. It seemed like an incongruous thing to do in a temple.

‘I hope not. Even with Lord He’stan’s help, we’ve uncovered almost nothing of its secrets.’

‘Yet it was left to us by the primarch. His sigil opened this vault, a place that had been hidden from even our sight for millennia.’

‘Perhaps. Certainly, it is of the Tome of Fire.’ Vel’cona straightened and lifted his eyes from the page. ‘I believe the wisdom within is veiled by the sigil-language of ancient Nocturne.’

‘The dialect of the earth shamans?’

‘Precisely. It is so old that much of the lore needed to read it has been lost. None alive can speak it.’

‘Do you think that Vulkan could?’

‘Yes. I believe he found something during his time on Nocturne, before he was reunited with us, and committed it to these pages.’

‘Will it bode ill for Dak’ir?’

As he faced Pyriel, Vel’cona’s expression was accusatory. ‘Whatever fate awaits your old acolytum is etched in stone. I warned you long ago of the danger he represented.’

Aware of his master’s rising anger, Pyriel chose his next words carefully. ‘I could not abandon him. Nor do I believe he is this world’s destroyer.’

‘Your beliefs in this matter are of no consequence. Truth is truth; it will come out in the end. There is knowledge within these pages. Some of it may be of help to our cause, but there is much that is still concealed from my sight.’

‘Enlighten me, master. What have you learned?’

‘That your impertinence hasn’t changed,’ he scolded, a flash of cerulean blue flaring in his eyes before it dulled and they were ember-red again.

Pyriel went down on his left knee and bowed his head, contrite. ‘Apologies, master. I overstep.’

‘Yes, you do, but as my second you should know of what I’ve discovered.’

Lifting his eyes, Pyriel waited like the eager student to receive the knowledge of his master.

‘Do you believe that the dead can come back?’ Vel’cona asked.

Pyriel was nonplussed. ‘I have seen battle-brothers at the brink of death or lost to suspended animation coma, only to return against the odds.’

‘No, the dead, those beyond hope of healing.’

‘There are… plagues. I have heard of the slain brought back, but they are misshapen things, flesh-craving horrors…’

‘You misunderstand my meaning.’

‘Because what you suggest is impossible, master.’

Vel’cona gestured to the book. ‘Within these pages ancient rituals are described of an earth culture, the progenitor of the Promethean Creed by which we all abide. They preach of the returning of the dead.’

Pyriel frowned. ‘A resurrection cult?’

‘Of a kind, I suppose, yes.’

‘And this was condoned?’ His tone suggested the idea beggared belief.

‘As far as I can tell, which isn’t very far at all, it was condemned… by the tribal kings and their earth shamans. These were arcane rites, brother, practised by graven men. To call it by its proper name, it was sorcery.’

Pyriel was shaking his head. ‘Why would Vulkan commit such blasphemies to parchment?’

Vel’cona shrugged. ‘As a warning, or a means of simply passing on knowledge. These were the records of his culture, perhaps he wanted to preserve them. It should not surprise you. Nocturne has seldom been a world at peace with itself. Before Vulkan united them, the disparate tribes fought tooth and nail for the “sanctuary rock, where the earth’s fury could not split the land” – meaning the seven sacred sites where Nocturne’s Sanctuary Cities now stand. According to the book, a struggle for land was not the only war of survival. It also speaks of a conflict before Vulkan’s coming against a corrupted brotherhood, the resurrection cultists and the casting of these corpsemancers into fire.’

‘Into the mountain? Into Deathfire?’

‘I suspect so. They were hunted down and killed as pariahs. The rest I have yet to discern.’

The revelations disturbed Pyriel, who knelt unmoving and unblinking as he considered them. After a few moments he asked, ‘But what purpose does this knowledge have? How does it concern the prophecy?’

Vel’cona got to his feet and smoothed down his robes. ‘It doesn’t as far as I can tell.’

Pyriel wore a pained expression. ‘I am deeply troubled, master. These feel like ill omens.’

‘It is merely history, Pyriel, and ancient history at that. Much of what I’ve learned here is open to interpretation and conjecture. Nothing is certain.’

Pyriel regarded the book as it sat open upon the pedestal. To his eyes, the writings were meaningless, described in a form and code he could not understand.

‘Why keep it here and not within the Pantheon Chamber like the rest of the Tome of Fire?’ he asked.

Vel’cona closed the covers reverently and reattached the book’s clasp.

‘Vulkan put it in this temple for a reason, as inscrutable to us as that may be. Here is its place and here it will stay. Is our Lord Chapter Master ready for us?’

‘The council of tempering is convened, yes. But I still do not see why Dak’ir must be measured like this. He passed his trials and endured the gate of fire–’

‘Only the Pantheon can decide that. All of us, our trials are different. This is merely the path Dak’ir must follow. We, the entire Chapter, are bound to it to whatever end.’

‘Then I hope for a favourable resolution.’

The two Librarians then left the chamber, the door closing behind them. Revelation would have to wait a while longer. A Thunderhawk, its engines idling, was standing on the surface above. It would convey them both to Prometheus and the Pantheon Council.

CHAPTER FIVE

I

Savage Meat

Tsu’gan was hurting. He felt like tenderised meat. He’d lost a lot of blood and several of his bones were fractured, some broken. It didn’t need an Apothecary to provide diagnosis. His sternum was cracked; he had a fractured clavicle; carpals, metacarpals and phalanges were all traumatised to the point where it hurt to tense let alone grip; the ulna and radius were fractured; three ribs, fused together in his ossified torso plate, were broken; he also had minor breaks in his left tibia and right femur. That was without even mentioning damage done to muscle tissue, ligaments and tendons.

Ramlek had been thorough and had laboured hard, indulging his every sadistic desire, to inflict pain on his prisoner. He wanted to break him, to bring Tsu’gan down where he’d crawl on his belly and swear loyalty to the dog’s master.

Begging in front of a dog? He was not about to give his torturer that satisfaction, for Tsu’gan knew something that gave him a distinct advantage.

Ramlek couldn’t kill him.

For whatever reason, Nihilan needed Tsu’gan alive. Drawing him out, turning Iagon in order to capture him, the sorcerer had gone to great lengths for his prize. He wasn’t about to let some unhinged lackey undo all of that careful planning. Tsu’gan suspected that was why Ramlek had showed restraint.

The beatings had stopped. It had been a few minutes, or as close as Tsu’gan could guess. It was difficult to tell how much time had passed. The ringing in his head and the blood in his eyes and mouth impaired his concentration. Ramlek was searching for something amongst his tools. He was muttering to himself, the words lost in the low thwomp-thwomp of the recyc-fan. Tsu’gan could just see it blurring around, every rotation exacerbating the mortal stench alive in the workshop. The muttering continued. He suspected it was little more than inane rambling.

Ramlek was insane. Utterly and blissfully unhinged, but not in a demonstrative, obvious way; rather his mania was the quiet, dangerous kind, the kind that often erupted without warning. If Ramlek got carried away, his word to his master might not be his bond. Tsu’gan knew he had to escape.

The brief respite gave him some encouragement. The last hammering he’d taken had loosened one of the clasps around his right wrist. In his frenzy, Ramlek hadn’t noticed. Frustrated that his ‘art’ wasn’t having the desired effect he’d ventured off to find something sharper and more unpleasant to cut his prisoner with.

Tsu’gan tested the clasp’s strength. Nothing happened at first, but then… a little give; a slight bending in the iron. Salamanders knew metal well; they worked it in their forges, understood its strengths and flaws. Just by the feel of it, the way it moved under the tension exerted by his wrist, Tsu’gan knew he could break the bond. His hearts started to beat faster, flooding his system with adrenaline to overwhelm the pain. Twisting his wrist, he managed to lever the clasp a little further. It was wide enough to slip out of. A nearby surgical table lay strewn with some of Ramlek’s failed implements. They were bloody and gore-slicked. Dark splashes coloured the tarnished metal. Tsu’gan noticed something else too, an operation unit for the recyc-fan. It was a small and dirty rectangular box. A simple icon increased the unit’s speed; another reduced it. The cable feeding it power from the Hell-stalker’s reactors was entwined around the legs of the table. By pulling on it Tsu’gan could drag the tray of cutting tools within his grasp.

He just needed someone to stab with them.

‘Dog…’ he rasped.

Ramlek was engrossed, throwing saws and blades around as he sought for just the right one.

‘I said, dog.’ Louder this time, with more aggression.

Ramlek stopped what he was doing and turned.

Tsu’gan scowled. ‘You are by far the ugliest bastard I’ve ever had the displeasure of sharing air with. You stink, Ramlek, did you know that?’

Ramlek snarled. ‘Be patient, flesh. I shall return with more pain very soon.’ He was about to continue his search when Tsu’gan’s voice stopped him.

‘Tell me something: does Nihilan feed you scraps from his table when you’ve done as asked? Does he make you perform tricks for his amusement? Which is it: fetch or roll over?’

Ramlek snapped a blade he was considering in his clenched fist and threw down the broken remains. Ash and cinder gushed from his mouth, signifying his rage.

Tsu’gan smiled.

Come to me, you brutal bastard…

‘Or perhaps it’s play dead?’

‘For you it will not be play, flesh,’ Ramlek declared. ‘I am my master’s loyal subject.’ He’d abandoned the tools and decided to batter the prisoner with his fists instead.

‘A dutiful hound, for sure,’ Tsu’gan goaded. ‘Let us just say I have never seen one renegade scratch another’s balls, but in your case–’

Ramlek roared.

A dog was always so protective of its master.

Tsu’gan ripped his hand free seconds before Ramlek thundered into him. In the same movement, he yanked on the cable and pulled the surgical table into the renegade’s path. Unable to stop his momentum, Ramlek careened into it, sending hooks and scalpels scattering across the room. Enraged, he wrenched the table aside. The blow lifted it off its feet and cast it against the wall where it lay in a bent and crumpled heap.

As he fixed his meaty hands around Tsu’gan’s throat a flash of dirty silver caught in the lume-lamps above. Ramlek screamed as the paring knife was lodged, hilt-deep, into his eye. His cornea bubbled over the blade, corroding it, but he held on.

‘Took my eye!’ he raved.

Under Ramlek’s iron grip, Tsu’gan felt his throat constricting. ‘You’ll lose more than that,’ he promised, ripping out the paring knife. A jet of blood gushed from the eye socket at the same time as a howl of agony tore from Ramlek’s mouth, before the blade was jammed it into his neck. Tsu’gan pushed it so hard that the ragged tip punched through the opposite side.

Spitting blood, Ramlek loosened his grip.

‘I told you…’ Tsu’gan snarled through gritted teeth, getting up in the renegade’s face, ‘…you should’ve killed me when you had the chance.’

He snapped one of the clasps around his ankles, bringing his knee into Ramlek’s gut. It broke the renegade’s hold and Tsu’gan followed up with a heavy kick that propelled him across the workshop floor. Belt grinders and glaiving-blades burred dangerously close to the renegade’s face as he stumbled. He was blind, but came at Tsu’gan with unerring accuracy. The Salamander tore off his other wrist clasp and smashed the last one holding his other leg with his heel. He was hurting, but he was also extremely angry.

He used his forearm to block Ramlek’s wild overhead swing and palm-smashed his solar plexus in retaliation. If the renegade had been power-armoured, even whilst blind, the fight might have gone a different way. As it was, Tsu’gan felt the rib-plate shielding Ramlek’s vital organs crack. He still had the recyc-fan’s control box in his hand and thumbed up the speed. The rotor cranked around at a punishing rate, flecking off chips of caked-on viscera. It turned into a billowing, rust-coloured cloud.

Ramlek staggered, one arm held protectively across his chest. That last blow had wounded him. Before the renegade could return the favour, Tsu’gan dropped the control box and vaulted off the torture slab. His momentum carried him forwards, two-footed, into Ramlek who was flung backwards into the whirring blades of the recyc-fan…

Tsu’gan turned his cheek just before it was spattered with gore. It was hot and viscous. He was careful not to get any in his mouth or eyes, but didn’t recoil. He wanted to see it, see his tormentor’s demise. Cracking bone and chewing meat overwhelmed the ugly grind of Ramlek’s tools for several seconds. The renegade didn’t scream. Tsu’gan fought hard not to respect him for that.

He sagged, fell to one knee and then stood up again quickly. A stink had started to permeate the air, fouler than a xenos abattoir.

‘Can’t say I never gave fair warning,’ he said, spitting on Ramlek’s headless corpse. It was still twitching. ‘Least I’ve improved your looks.’

Tsu’gan grimaced as his injuries flared afresh. Biting pains jabbed into the balls of his bare feet and hands. His limbs throbbed like he’d been running for months without rest, but it was the dull ache in his chest that concerned him. He suspected internal injuries and knew that while his enhanced physiology would repair some damage, he needed an Apothecary for the rest. The renegade had battered him, torn him up like savage meat and hammered his war-weary body to its limit. He looked around the workshop, feeling his strength ebbing even as his will screamed for him to endure.

Ramlek had not just been a butcher; he saw his given vocation as craft.

‘Where is it?’ Tsu’gan slurred, fighting back the dark flashes impinging on his vision. He tossed over a bench, sending a grinder clattering. Another, he upended, tipping barbed needles and fingernail daggers to the floor. He was about to rip up a third when he found what he was looking for.

It was a small lozenge-shaped container. It looked hermetically sealed.

What does every interrogator worthy of his art require?

He unclasped the container, its lid flipping back as a hiss of pressurised air escaped from the padded chamber within.

A means of keeping their victims alive and awake.

There were chemicals inside, vials and philtres, small ampoules of mottled liquid. Not all of the solutions were medicinal, he guessed. Time was against him. Tsu’gan took a handful of vials and sniffed at the contents, even tasted them. His enhanced olfactory senses, combined with the neuroglottis, allowed him to filter out the toxins and find what he needed. Casting the other vials aside, he kept one and grabbed a syringe that was secured in the base of the container. His fingers were shaking as he filled it with what was in the vial. He’d need a large dose.

As he primed the syringe, Tsu’gan was put in mind of the chrono-gladiators that fought in the underhives of numerous frontier worlds. For a while they would be unstoppable, their physiologies enhanced exponentially, but when the chrono finally ran out…

‘Make me unstoppable,’ he said, and rammed the syringe of adrenaline into his primary heart.

It was like fire running through his veins as a hundred suns exploded inside his mind. The effects were intense and instantaneous. Hearts thundering, breath hammering in and out of his battered lungs, Tsu’gan smashed through the door to the workshop and saw prey.

The first serf died before he’d realised what was going on. The second tried to raise an alarm before the Salamander snapped his neck. Crouched on all fours, Tsu’gan held the dead man down and became silent as he looked up the corridor. It was dark, but only dark.

He rose to his haunches and ran on.

Chrono’s ticking.

II

Judgement

At first, the flame didn’t burn. It was bright, luminous even, and roared like a primal thing.

Though it did not speak, it promised destruction. It needed no words, it was elemental, the spark to ignite the violent potential of the universe. And it was inside him, burning gently just below the surface.

Within his mind’s eye, he tried to gauge its tides but the flame was capricious and defied all attempts at hubris. It didn’t possess a pattern, some scheme which mortals could predict. It merely ravaged; the ultimate force of transition as old as the stars themselves.

The time of the burning came back, pressing at the barriers of his subconscious despite the psychic fetters. A conflagration to consume a planet rose up from nothing, tsunami-like in its fury. In that moment, he was struck by a terrible revelation – the flame was sentient, it wanted to be born.

Then it burned and the pain of it, coursing through his veins, shocked him to the core.

Everything burned…

His eyes snapped open. Dak’ir was back in the penitarium again. The long exhalation from his lungs carried a tremor. The faintest beading of sweat chilled his forehead as the tang of heat still lingered. He had relaxed his vigil for but a moment.

It was like scaling the face of a new-born sun, weaving through its fire squalls as they whipped off its core, coursing across molten oceans that stretched into infinity. It was the flame, and it had shown him its strength, learning Dak’ir’s in return.

I am master, not the other way around.

A pity that declaration sounded so hollow.

Seconds later, and the door to the penitarium parted revealing Pyriel’s armoured form.

‘They are ready for you,’ said the Librarian. Though he concealed it well, Dak’ir could sense the concern in his master. Pyriel must have felt some psychic echo of what had just transpired in the cell. He had seen evidence of the inner flame’s power before, during the burning and on Moribar.

Dak’ir lowered his gaze, obscuring the cerulean glow that hadn’t yet faded.

‘Then let’s not keep them waiting.’

Clamped in chains, Dak’ir awaited the judgement of his lords and masters in a small, austere chamber.

He’d been led from the penitarium by Pyriel and flanked by a squad of six Firedrakes wearing unmarked, saurian power armour. Each one carried a ceremonial chainblade and melta-pistol. Their identities were hidden from him by their draconian faceplates and none spoke nor would have uttered a word if spoken to. The procession from the penitarium rang with the uncomfortable silence common to an execution.

‘Is this to be my last walk, Pyriel?’

The Epistolary hadn’t answered, though the act of staying his tongue wasn’t easy.

Dak’ir took that to mean it was entirely possible he was about to be killed. Idly, he wondered who would do it and how it would be done. A blade through the neck, the blow angled downwards to pierce the heart? That was a soldier’s death, an honourable death, something likely favoured by the Ultramarines should such an unconscionable situation ever arise to require it. Perhaps it would be the cold, hard muzzle of a bolt pistol, pressed against his temple? That felt dirty, undignified, an end reserved for betrayers. Cast into the fire, back to the heart of the mountain, that was how he would want it to be. He would go willingly, should it be the judgement of the council; for their sanction was absolute.

Such morbid thoughts had dogged Dak’ir’s every step since being escorted from the penitarium.

All was in readiness for him by the time they reached the chamber.

His ankles were shackled, the chains fed through a metal ring worked into the floor. The polished obsidian allowed Dak’ir to see his reflection in the black glass surface.

At least I look defiant.

His wrists were bound behind his back, the null bracelets unclasped and then re-clasped again quickly by his grim attendants. The collar around his neck had never felt so heavy. Surrounded by a refractor field with the energy wall turned inwards, every precaution had been taken with Dak’ir’s imprisonment.

I feel like a traitor, but one without trial or evidence of betrayal against him.

Lifting his gaze, he recognised the faces of his judges.

Much like the Pantheon Chamber this place of deliberation and judgement bore eighteen seats, one for each of the vaunted masters of the Chapter. Several were empty, those belonging to the leaders of the battle companies in the field or those who were engaged elsewhere on Nocturne.

Captains Mulcebar of the Fifth and Drakgaard of the Sixth were present. Both wore artificered suits of power armour, the latter favouring a hood of chain instead of scale for the ornamentation of the shoulder guard. Their drake pelts were old and gnarled. Despite their reserve company status, each carried honour markings from Badab and Armageddon and wore them proudly. Drakgaard’s ‘souvenirs’ from those campaigns extended to a crippling facial injury that had torn up his bottom lip, revealing one side of his teeth even when his mouth was shut. By contrast, Mulcebar was unscathed, but had a broad brow that shadowed his eyes and gave him a perpetually disapproving expression.

Their battle-helms were sitting on a stone table that arced around the seated area in a ring and stared coldly at the accused with dead lenses. The eyes of the reserve captains were equally stern.

The two captains were joined by another, Dac’tyr. The Master of the Fleet and Fourth Company appeared pensive as he regarded the prisoner. Like all of the Chapter’s pilots he bore the honour-brand of the dactyl over his right eye, albeit this one’s tail was longer and it had a greater wingspan than his comrades to denote his vaunted rank. Its meaning was ‘Lord of the Burning Sky’, and only the captains of Fourth were ever allowed to bear it. His left eye was augmetic, the bionic aperture tracking back and forth as if examining the accused.

Agatone was sitting next to Dac’tyr. His face was unreadable, though Dak’ir had heard about his fervent desire to bring glory back to the Third who had suffered so heinously in recent years. A former veteran sergeant who had served on Scoria, he was Master of the Arsenal now and bore the mantle with all the stoic pride he was famous for.

It left only two vacant seats for the company captains: Mir’san of Second, at large somewhere on the edge of the Uhulis Sector but otherwise in absentia, and Prebian, Master of Arms and acting-captain of Seventh, who was training aspirants in the Pyre Desert. Thus far, all efforts to reach Prebian had met with failure. Unusually high magnetic radiation was believed to be the cause.

As well as being Regent, Tu’Shan was also captain of the First, but sat alone. The Chapter Master leant back, chin resting on his massive fist, deep in contemplation. It was hard to discern the details of his finely wrought armour but Dak’ir knew it was magnificent. Curls of drake scale unfurled from his back and draped over the granite steps of his throne. His bearing was not unlike the tribal chieftains of ancient Nocturne.

At his right hand was Praetor of the Firedrakes. The bald-headed veteran sergeant was armour-clad like the rest. Unlike the other masters, he was ramrod straight, his thunder hammer and storm shield within easy reach. Perhaps Praetor would be Dak’ir’s slayer then? Should something go wrong and the other Firedrakes fail to act in time, the veteran was the contingency. He’d see it done; see the accused dead before he could become the destroyer they were all so wary of.

Dak’ir thought that assertion to be optimistic, even slightly naive. The slightest mote of arrogance pushed the thought into his mind and he wondered briefly if his will was actually his own. Ever since Moribar, that first fateful visit over four decades ago, he had felt a design at work in the shaping of his destiny. Perhaps the flame had always been within him, merely flickering at first but now ablaze. He marshalled his thoughts, suddenly aware again that the eyes of the Chapter were upon him.

Elysius sat to the Chapter Master’s left. The Chaplain wore his skull-plate for the occasion, armoured in the black of the Reclusiam. His fingers were steepled, gauntleted digits overlapping bionics. No one had been as battle-ravaged as Elysius. He’d lost his arm during the battle for Scoria and nearly his faith out on the Volgorrah Reef, if rumours were to be believed. The Chaplain had endured all trials and appeared stronger than ever.

I pray to Vulkan that my will is as strong.

All the Masters of the Forge were absent so the positions normally occupied by the Armoury went empty, which left only the Librarius.

Dak’ir’s gaze fell on Vel’cona last of all. He saw nothing in those pitiless orbs, an utter void of emotion. Pragmatism ran through the Master Librarian’s veins like floes of ice. During the burning, Dak’ir had felt Vel’cona’s disapproval towards him. It was only through Pyriel’s dogged insistence that he become his master that Dak’ir had survived at all.

Even through the psychic wards, he could sense the Epistolary’s unease. Alone of the entire council, Pyriel was standing. He had vowed to do so, to be at Dak’ir’s shoulder or as close to it as his confinement allowed.

Why does it feel like I am in need of more allies?

Vel’cona’s voice, given by unmoving lips into his mind, made Dak’ir start.

All of us here are your allies, Lexicanum. His face never moved. There was just the faintest glow of cerulean blue in his eyes to give him away. This is not about you, Salamander. It is for the preservation of Nocturne that we convene and make council.

Dak’ir nodded, shamed by the master’s wisdom and his own arrogance. Selfishness and ego went against the Promethean Creed. Whatever the Pantheon Council willed he would have to abide by it, even if that meant his destruction.

It had taken a year for the masters to be assembled, for Tu’Shan to deliberate on the mysteries of the prophecy. It had been a slow, methodical process – it was the way of the Fire-born. But that time had ended and the decision would soon be known to Dak’ir, as the last member of the congregation entered.

Even arrayed in his power armour, Emek seemed like a withered version of his old self. The Apothecary was stooped and carried a limp. He held his left arm close to his body. Under the right he had a batch of data-slates.

Dak’ir tried to make eye contact with his old friend but Emek was studiously avoiding his gaze. That didn’t bode well.

The circular ring of stone that delineated the council seats had a break in its circumference where its artisan had fashioned a raised dais and lectern. Emek took it, laying the data-slates on the flat surface. In ancient days, tribal chieftains of Nocturne had assembled in similar circular councils when the deed was sufficiently great as to not be the concern of a single tribe. The chamber on Prometheus echoed and honoured that tradition.

Dak’ir exchanged a concerned glance with Pyriel. The Epistolary’s expression hardened.

When he was ready, Emek looked to the Chapter Master who gave the barest nod to proceed.

‘I have before me the Apothecarion records of Brother Fugis, comprising both private notes and a medical assessment written for the attention of the now deceased Captain Kadai. They concern the prisoner, Dak’ir.’

The prisoner. It was a barb Dak’ir would not quickly forget.

Now the Apothecary made eye contact and there was a gulf of ennui contained in his gaze. Suddenly the comradeship of battle-brothers seemed very long ago.

Emek went on undaunted.

‘Aside from the fact that Dak’ir had been singled out by the then Apothecary of Third Company for…’ he paused to read from a data-slate, ‘… “special examination”, there is documented evidence of “somnambulant visions” during battle-meditation in the solitorium. Initially these were described as traumatic memories and later became apocalypse dreams.’

Captain Drakgaard learned forwards in his seat. His voice was raking, like bone claws across scaled hide. ‘I fought with Kadai at Ullsinar. He was sound of judgement in all things. I would know his reaction to his Apothecary’s assessment of the prisoner.’

Emek obliged, reading directly from Fugis’s transcripts. ‘“Dak’ir’s spirit will be cleansed in the crucible of battle; that is the Salamander way. Failing that I will submit him to the Reclusiam and Chaplain Elysius for conditioning.” According to our Brother-Apothecary, these were the captain’s exact words.’

A quiet but commanding voice spoke up as Dac’tyr addressed Elysius. ‘Brother-Chaplain, was such a concern known to you?’

Elysius shook his head. ‘Dak’ir’s spiritual guidance was no different to the rest of his brothers. He has only ever fought with honour under my eye.’

That was unexpected. Dak’ir had thought the Chaplain would be the most punitive of the assembly.

Drakgaard turned to Agatone, with whom he shared a strong bond. ‘You were his company-brother, how would you gauge his humours?’

Agatone’s jaw unclenched. He cleared his throat, unfolding his arms to brace them against the table. ‘All I see before me is my brother in chains. Dak’ir was no more troubled than the rest of us and I am of the belief–’

Mulcebar cut in. ‘But you acknowledge a shadow lies upon Third and there is the legacy of Nihilan to consider.’ His eyes invited a comment from Vel’cona.

‘A known traitor and renegade, your point being?’

‘That precedent exists for enemies guised as allies, especially in the midst of our Librarius.’

The captain of Fifth was a staunch traditionalist whose views on psykers and use of the warp were scathing at best. A diligent historian, in more partisan crowds he occasionally made reference to the ten thousand year-old sanctions laid down at Nikaea. It was ancient history to most that now walked the Chapter’s halls, but Mulcebar had determined its ideals would not die out completely.

He continued. ‘I know that Master Argos shares my concerns in this regard.’

‘A pity then that he is not here to voice them,’ Vel’cona replied.

A stern rivalry existed between the Armoury and Librarius. Like that between the Sanctuary Cities and their respective companies, it was encouraged, but on occasion it spilled over into something more confrontational.

‘Regardless,’ Mulcebar continued doggedly, ‘the very fact that Dak’ir could be prey to the warp should not be overlooked. This combined with his… unusual behaviour gives me cause for concern.’

Vel’cona’s riposte had a little venom in it. ‘Are you pushing a different agenda here, captain?’

Mulcebar waved away the spurious remark as if it were beneath comment.

Drakgaard, who had maintained his neutrality so far, considered his fellow captain’s last point. ‘Apothecary Emek, does Brother Fugis’s report make mention of further testimony?’

‘No, but I have some of my own.’

Dak’ir’s eyes narrowed as his former friend spoke to him directly. ‘Just scrap, you told me,’ he said. ‘Do you remember?’

It took a few seconds for realisation to occur. Before Scoria they had met in the low-forges. The resonance of Stratos still lingered, his wounding still fresh-felt. Dak’ir had created something which he later destroyed in the furnace. ‘The simulacrum mask, you saw it, didn’t you?’

Emek nodded as an interested murmur passed around the room.

Agatone looked deeply uncomfortable. ‘What mask? What is the meaning of this? What possible bearing could it have?’

‘Facial scarring,’ Emek began, gesturing to the injury Dak’ir had suffered on Stratos, the patch of cellular degeneration inflicted by a renegade’s multi-melta. It was the same blast that had killed Ko’tan Kadai. The entire council could see it. ‘Dak’ir fashioned a mask in secret, like the one that adorns his battle-helm. He made it to occlude his genetic heritage, to conceal that which makes him one of us, a Fire-born.’

‘You saw this, and yet you said nothing,’ Elysius challenged him.

Emek turned to face the Chaplain. ‘At the time I thought it meant nothing–’

‘And now you do?’ Elysius interrupted. ‘Believe it has meaning?’

‘In light of Brother Fugis’s notes, I do. At the very least it demonstrates a flaw in character, a lack of trust. Was Nihilan not condemned to his fate by such minor defects?’

Vel’cona answered. ‘Nihilan’s was a bitter seed, and he had help in the reneging of his Chapter oaths and his betrayal of the Librarius.’ He shared a glance with Pyriel, who knew full well the extent of the Dragon Warrior’s treachery. ‘He craved secrets and power, misguided by the whims of a dark master.’

‘You speak of Ushorak…’ Mulcebar’s assertion drew protest from Agatone.

‘Do not utter his name!’ he snapped. ‘We waste our tongues on it. Even dead that traitor’s legacy has damned the Third.’

Mulcebar held up a hand to show no offence was meant.

Minor outburst over, Vel’cona went on. ‘Dak’ir has power. I have witnessed it first hand, felt it. But know this: I do not believe he is Nihilan in another guise, but he is dangerous. His presence, his continued existence troubles me greatly.’

‘My lord–’ Pyriel started to interject.

‘You have seen it too, Epistolary,’ said Vel’cona, admonishing. ‘A prophecy that foretells the coming of a destroyer, he that is the Ferro Ignis – we had, all of us, best be mindful or that flaming sword will ruin all of Nocturne.’

‘So you would kill him then?’ asked Elysius.

Vel’cona’s eyes blazed with fierce determination. ‘I would have done so long ago had I known of the potential threat we now face, but such measures passed out of these hands long before it was my place alone to pass judgement.’

‘And what of Gravius,’ Elysius replied, ‘our venerable brother discovered in the bowels of Scoria, whose gene-seed even now is harboured in our vaults? His signal, some ten thousand years old, was discovered by Dak’ir on the Archimedes Rex, was it not?’

‘A hell-trap that almost killed the Fire-born who went aboard,’ was Drakgaard’s retort, though he uttered it without accusation.

‘And who without being so imperilled would never have discovered Vulkan’s mark and our ancient brother’s existence,’ added Pyriel, finding some traction in the Chaplain’s arguments so he could at last mount a defence. ‘He inscribed armour that led us to the missing volume from the Tome of Fire.’

‘This,’ said Mulcebar, ‘the very armour that foretold of the doom prophecy we are discussing here in this council.’ He shook his head. ‘I am of the same mind as Vel’cona. Whether he is conscious of it or not, the Lexicanum represents too great a risk.’ His eyes saddened as he regarded Dak’ir. ‘For what little worth it is, I am sorry, brother.’

‘I cannot–’ Pyriel began but was silenced by his master’s obvious displeasure.

Elysius saw the exchange and reacted. ‘Speak! Vel’cona has no rank over you in this place.’

The Chief Librarian glared thunderously at the Chaplain but didn’t intervene.

Pyriel licked his lips, abruptly aware of the dryness in his mouth. The tension in the chamber was rising as all present began to feel the gravitas of the decision facing them.

‘Dak’ir passed the trials. True, I saw him display psychic mastery no Lexicanum has any right to possess. But it saved my life on Moribar. I see in him the potential for terrible deeds, destruction on an incredible scale, but it is tempered by a noble will. If that power can be honed and bent towards a righteous cause…’

Vel’cona scowled. ‘It changes nothing.’

‘I agree,’ said Mulcebar.

‘As do I,’ Drakgaard concurred. ‘This risk is too great for any of us.’

He was losing. It did not take great wisdom to see that. Dak’ir felt the grains of his life like desert sand, straining through his nerveless fingers. His only regret was that he wouldn’t get to see Ba’ken one last time. His gaze fell upon Emek, and he hoped that his brother would cast off his bitterness and find peace.

Elysius addressed the entire council. ‘I beheld a miracle on the Volgorrah Reef. It was fate that I survived, that the sigil be returned to us and our father’s secrets unlocked. I am convinced of that. There is a destiny unravelling here and Dak’ir is part of it. Whether that bodes for ill or good, I cannot say but we should not act out of fear.’

His declaration was met by silence. Irritated, he went on.

‘Is it to be death then? Shall we condemn this son of Vulkan and cast his ash to the Arridian Plain? Brothers! Do not act in haste. There is more here than any of us can see. I sense Vulkan’s hand in this.’

Tu’Shan stared pensively. The scales were evenly matched. In the end it was another voice that answered.

‘As do I.’

All eyes went to the shadowy figure sat back from the rest, removed from the circle just as he was removed from his Chapter by the necessity of his sacred mission.

Vulkan He’stan spoke and all heeded him.

‘A low-born, one of the earth, shall pass through the gate of fire. He will be our doom or salvation,’ he said, reciting part of the prophecy. ‘What if it is salvation?’

CHAPTER SIX

I

Carnage

At first he had tried to hide his kills, used stealth to cull the unwary or alone. Now Tsu’gan had left a trail of carnage behind him. Once he’d penetrated far enough into the ship, he’d left warnings. Corpses were pinned to the walls by their long-blades or slit from ear to ear and propped up in groups as if sleeping. Others he hung with cables or spools of wire and let them swing like metronomes. After a few hours, by the time that word and fear had spread, it had the desired effect.

The terrified serfs now roamed in packs as they tried to apprehend him. It only played to Tsu’gan’s advantage. Larger groups simply meant less patrols. Evading detection suddenly became much easier.

In the section of duct where he was crouching, he heard an explosion. Shrapnel, both bloody bone and metal, spumed into the junction he was watching.

A feral smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

With the greater freedom of movement, he’d had time to fashion improvised booby traps. Simple trip-wired clusters of frag grenades were easy to miss when scared. He was trying hard not to enjoy it too much.

His other pursuer was less affected. Tsu’gan could hear it coming in the wake of the dead and maimed serfs. It stopped to gnaw on the wounded, and he heard a plaintive wailing abruptly cut off. Bounding up on his feet, he moved on.

Rounding a corner, Tsu’gan nearly ran into a Dragon Warrior headed for the hangars. It must have been a late-comer. His skills at evasion were good, Prebian had taught him well, but Tsu’gan was grounded enough to realise that if Traitor Space Marines had been a part of the hunt he wouldn’t have lasted this long. The entire filthy order was preparing for war. Nihilan had issued his call to arms. That’s why none were chasing him, that’s why they’d sent behemoths. He considered rushing the renegade. If he found the gap between helmet and gorget with his stolen blade, both larynx and throat were viable targets. Bring the knife up and with enough force it penetrates the skull, cuts the brainstem. Killing blow.

In the end he decided against it, and bled back into the shadows. The corridor split in three. He couldn’t go back the way he’d come, the behemoth was close, so he took the third route. He went low and quiet, hugging the walls of the benighted ship. Structurally, the Hell-stalker wasn’t so different to an Adeptus Astartes battle-barge. Tsu’gan even noticed some tell-tale Imperial markings that had been half-scoured or obscured by manic over-engineering. He suspected the vessel was once loyal and wondered briefly how the Dragon Warriors had come upon it. At the very least, it meant he was partially familiar with the probable layout. A schematic unfolded in the abstract of his mind, his superior tactical acumen plotting potential courses, gauging where vulnerable systems might be situated.

Nothing was certain, of course. Modifications had likely been made, but even a renegade warship, especially one stolen from a loyal Chapter, would have some sense of order. As far as he could tell, he was on a sub-level, possibly between decks. Workshops, even those utilised for interrogation and torture, tended to be near the enginarium or munitions decks.

His musings ended when a patrol of serfs, tooled up with auto-carbines and serrated swords, hustled into view. Tsu’gan retreated into an alcove, avoiding contact with the hot iron of the corridor’s stanchions. They were in a hurry, probably after him or maybe even avoiding the behemoths, so he let them go.

Tsu’gan had no real illusions of escape, though the audaciousness of such a feat appealed to his ego; he would try and find something useful instead, something vital he could sabotage. As missions went it was purely spiteful rather than strategic, but then spite was all the Salamander had left.

A dirty, snuffling sound issued from the corridor behind him.

It had his scent.

Thought delays action, trust instinct.

Zen’de’s wisdom. Between them, the two combat masters had moulded scores of fearsome soldiers.

Tsu’gan ran. The adrenaline in his system was still boosting him, but on the wane. Barrelling straight into the patrol, he wrestled two of the serfs to the ground, before gutting a third and throwing his sword like a dagger into the face of a fourth. The rest opened fire. White agony erupted in Tsu’gan’s shoulder where the round clipped him. A second ripped open his leg, just a glancing blow.

The serfs were wearing dirty charcoal-grey fatigues, not unlike boiler suits, with a leather cuirass and greaves over the top. So when Tsu’gan punched the first shooter in the torso, his chest caved. Something splashed against the mouth-plug he wore as part of a leather fright mask. He was dead before the Salamander had swung his corpse around to act as a human shield. Solid shot smacked against the meat. It jerked and shook in parody of life with the last serf’s desperate salvo. Tsu’gan crouched into it, head against the meat sack, body sideways to present a smaller target. When he was close enough, he threw the corpse into the last shooter and ran like hell just as the behemoth scuttled around the corner.

It was massive.

Flesh-pink, dewy-eyed and sweating, the behemoth was a wretched and muscular thing. Its eyes were tiny, as if it lived much of its life underground or in abject darkness and had devolved accordingly. A flared snout with broad undulating nostrils dominated a brutish face. Bulbous growths mutated its already overdeveloped limbs and back. Its neck was thick and brawny. Though it carried no weapons, its fists were like piston-hammers and its malformed skull like a battering ram capable of denting tank armour.

The serf mewled as the behemoth crashed into him. He turned to paste, ground beneath its monstrous bulk. It barely noticed. It didn’t even slow down.

Tsu’gan flung himself down the next corridor. Mercifully, it was empty. Hammering a door rune, he passed through a ragged archway and found he’d reached the gun decks. Ramlek’s workshop must have been close, situated on a sub-level between the gun deck and whatever was above it just as Tsu’gan suspected. He couldn’t remember heading down and he’d never used a stairway or lifter, but somehow he had found this place. It would have to do.

It stretched before him, a vast metal plaza of mesh decking with a ribbed ceiling. Chains dangled from the vault overhead, hung with hooks or skeletal bodies. Darker than the outer passageways, it had a visceral cast to it. The air was an oily fug that greased the skin upon contact. Heat, cloying and oppressive, radiated off the vast banks of gun batteries where the emaciated deckhands toiled under the gaze of bloated overseers. For now their hatches were sealed but ammo hoppers and vast crates of munitions were being gathered in readiness.

It was an engine room of sorts, colonised by gears of flesh and blood.

Sweating ratings, the flesh-branded slaves of the underdecks, paid him little heed as he hurried past them. Even so, Tsu’gan kept to the shadows. He was looking for a weapon, something more potent than his stolen blade. Auto-carbines were no use; their human-sized grips were too small for his fingers. He needed something bigger, maybe a belt-feed or sentry cannon. He could tear it off its mountings, use it low-slung, hard into the shoulder to absorb the inevitable kick.

Screaming echoed behind him and knew the behemoth had followed. Overseers watching from above either laughed or got clear before the monster decided to tear down their gantries and feast on them too. It wanted Tsu’gan and only killed what got in its way.

He ducked down a side corridor; the gun deck was a labyrinth of conduits and tunnels, antechambers and sub-levels. Trying to throw it off was pointless. He needed to kill it.

A heavy kick caved the door to a weapons chamber. Its guard had already fled. He slipped inside and looked around. There were dozens of boarding weapons, large tracked cannons and belt-feeds. Booted feet rattled on the deckplate outside. Something with authority was trying to restore order.

Tsu’gan seized an auto-fed cannon. Someone had left a drum in the breech. He estimated over four hundred rounds.

‘Praise Vulkan,’ he whispered, taking the cannon off its mounting tripod. It was hefty, but wieldable.

‘Just like being back in the Devastators…’

The patrol reached the munitions locker before the behemoth. Four serfs carrying studded body shields made cover for four more toting heavy carbines.

Foolish…

Triggering the cannon, Tsu’gan filled the doorway with noise and fire. The serfs were rendered into ruddy chunks in a matter of moments. Others on the periphery, not in the direct line of fire, took shrapnel hits or were felled by the sheer explosive force of the attack.

Muzzle flare lit Tsu’gan’s face as he pressed ahead, jaw clenched with the recoil, his already bruised shoulder and torso taking further punishment with every chug of the barrel.

He moved legs spread, body open with his free hand outstretched for balance. In face of such incredible fury, the intervention by the Hell-stalker’s armsmen was abandoned. As he came into the main deck corridor again, Tsu’gan noticed the gunnery-slaves were in full flight. Then he noticed the behemoth.

Men were strewn around it, serfs with goads and electro-pikes. They were dead, crushed and maimed by a beast that didn’t want to be caged.

It wanted its prey.

Tsu’gan was glad to oblige.

‘This way, ugly…’

Heedless of the auto-feeder, the behemoth charged.

Tsu’gan felt the momentum of it all the way up from the balls of his feet, across the length of the gun deck.

‘Far as you go,’ he growled, and unleashed what was left in the cannon.

It got another few metres before it slumped and died. The behemoth’s grotesque body was riddled with bullet holes and drooling blood from countless wounds. Tsu’gan was gasping at the end of it, the auto-feeder whining empty long before he’d released the trigger.

There was no time to celebrate. Shouts echoed behind the slain monster, coming from further out. They must’ve been waiting for the behemoth to kill or be killed. Now the reinforcements were headed his way.

Tsu’gan dumped the cannon. There wasn’t time to grab another. He’d got lucky with the first anyway; others might not be loaded. Time was running down at last.

You’ll have to catch me, you bastards.

He went deeper.

Scattered packs of bone-thin ratings and gunnery slaves huddled together at the periphery of the deck corridor, willing the red-eyed demon to pass.

Tsu’gan glared at any who wandered into his path, acutely aware of his grievous injuries. As pain returned, his chemically-enhanced prowess ebbed at the same time. He was limping, his arm tucked into his body. Sweat poured off him but he wouldn’t give up. Not yet.

Vision fogging, he reached the end of the long corridor and emerged into a large vaulted chamber. It was curiously empty and silent. Even the sound of his pursuers had ceased. Tsu’gan’s laboured breathing was louder than the sounds of the ship at that moment.

He recognised the vast weapon before him. He had seen it before; at least, he had seen its design. On Scoria. It was the exact imitation of the seismic cannon, only several times bigger. A phrase sprung to mind, unbidden, as he beheld it.

Planet-killer.

‘Death of Nocturne…’ The words slipped from his mouth, rasped, disbelieving. Nihilan had found a way to kill their home world. This was his ultimate vengeance upon the Chapter that had spurned him.

Heavy footfalls that could only belong to power-armoured warriors resounded against the deck behind him. Tsu’gan turned to face his aggressors, only just realising he had taken several steps towards the vast gun.

‘The chase is over,’ uttered one of the Dragon Warriors. In either hand, he carried a spatha and gladius. Their edges were keen and serrated. He looked eager to put the blades to use as they twitched in his gauntleted grip. Though his horned helm was sealed, Tsu’gan caught a flash of malice in the renegade’s eyes.

He was joined by two others, armoured in black and red, scaled and dressed with chain that hung like a metallic web across the spikes. This had been power armour once, worthy of the name. It was a recent mark, not like that of the old traitors, the ones who still thought of themselves as Legion.

Tsu’gan wanted to gut all three just for defiling sacred battle-plate.

Of the others, one was broad and generally huge. His size rivalled that of Ba’ken. The second was sinuous and fidgeting, as if ill at ease in his own skin.

‘Three against one,’ Tsu’gan rumbled. He was almost done. ‘I don’t like your odds very much…’

The blademaster came closer. ‘Fortunately for you, our master wants words.’

The arrogant smirk on Tsu’gan’s face changed to a scowl. ‘I recognise you…’

Then the world around him grew dark and he felt a strange lightness affect his body.

‘Not again,’ he growled, but knowing that translation would be harder on him if he resisted it. ‘Nihilan, you bastard…’

It felt like falling.

II

Proposition

The room he emerged into was dark. Even Tsu’gan’s occulobe failed to pierce the gloom and he realised it was warp sorcery that hampered his vision. He was crouched on one knee, and chose to stay like that until the effects of teleportation faded. There were no doors he could detect, just bare metal walls in every direction. Even that he wasn’t certain of. It could be a vast, echoing chamber or an oubliette. Without anything spatial to gauge it by, the room’s exact dimensions were a mystery. He only thought it was metal because of how the ground felt beneath his feet.

‘Is this your plan?’ he shouted at the dark. ‘Do you mean to bore me into submission?’

Silence answered. Not merely quiet, but the total absence of sound. Were it not for the solidity underneath him, Tsu’gan might have believed he’d entered some sort of oblivion or nether realm.

‘Nihilan!’

A whoosh of flame broke the silence and illuminated an alcove in front of him. A brazier burned above a bulky form beneath, casting flickering shadows over a suit of armour.

It was power armour. Tsu’gan recognised scars in the battle-plate that no amount of beating or re-fashioning could wholly erase. Geviox and the perfidy of the dark eldar were mirrored in the dents and scratches. He knew them as intimately as he knew his own face. It was his armour. He’d not seen it since his capture. Even in the shadows, it looked no different to the last moment he had worn it.

Without knowing why, he rose to his feet and approached the empty suit. His fingers were about to touch it…

‘Are you sure that is the choice you wish to make?’

Tsu’gan turned around, a stolen blade in hand.

Nihilan was standing behind him.

‘I am unarmed, Tsu’gan.’ He widened his arms, opening his body to a kill-thrust. ‘You may slay me if you wish.’

Tsu’gan stepped forwards.

‘But is it really me that you are angry at?’

‘Stop speaking in riddles, renegade.’ Tsu’gan eyed the darkness, expecting an ambush. ‘If I killed you now, what is to stop your warriors rushing in here and killing me?’

‘Nothing.’

Nihilan paused. The fact he had survived this long showed he had Tsu’gan’s attention. Inwardly, he smiled.

‘I wish to know something, Tsu’gan. You are an intelligent warrior. You know there is no way off this ship. Even if there were, your brothers would suspect you tainted. An entire year to be broken down and remade by the enemy? At the very least your status as a Firedrake would be withdrawn. At worst, Elysius would have you at the not-so-tender mercies of his chirurgeon-interrogators. So, why then do you still try to escape?’

Tsu’gan was lowering the blade. ‘Because I must.’

‘Ah.’ Nihilan smiled. It was an ugly expression. ‘The legendary tenacity of the Salamanders. Such an overrated trait. No cause is ever lost, no battle ever done until Vulkan decrees it.’ The sorcerer’s mood became rancorous. ‘Where was that attitude when I awaited rescue on Lycannor? As my brothers lay dead and dying around me, where was that tenacity then?’

Tsu’gan had no knowledge of Lycannor. Few did, save Kadai and he was dead.

‘Why have you brought me here, to whine and bleat? Don’t you have servants who can listen to your interminable whimpering?’ he asked, throwing down the blade. It would be of no use here. Nihilan wasn’t about to let Tsu’gan gut him. ‘If it is to kill me, then do it and end these games. They’re tiresome.’

‘Always so fatalistic, brother.’

‘You are no brother of mine!’

‘But I could be. Tell me, how long is it before the pain comes back? When you have the brander-priests carve into your flesh to obscure the agony in your soul, how long before it returns? A day? An hour?’ He came closer, lowering his voice. ‘A minute?’

He had no answer. Tsu’gan was powerless.

‘It is a sickness, Tsu’gan. You’ve kept it hidden so far, but your masters are intolerant. Strength and only strength is what they respect. Weakness… well…’

Tsu’gan snarled. ‘I am not weak!’

‘Kneel.’

He rebelled, but Tsu’gan obeyed Nihilan’s command. The sorcerer looked down on him as king to vassal. His voice was deathly calm.

‘Your brothers abandoned you on the Volgorrah Reef. They left you for dead, assumed you were lost without even a shred of evidence that pointed towards your demise. Where was Nocturnean tenacity then? It was outweighed by Nocturnean pragmatism.’

A thick vein in Tsu’gan’s forehead throbbed. He fought but could not rise. Nor could his leaden tongue make him speak.

‘I told you once of your destiny, and who stands in your way.’

‘Dak’ir…’ The word was rasped.

‘Nocturne’s chosen son, the reason you take blade to flesh and cut. You cannot excise him, Tsu’gan. Not that way.’

A second brazier flared into life, illuminating another alcove alongside the first. Within was a suit of armour, just like before. Only this time, it was in the black and red of the Dragon Warriors.

Still cowed by Nihilan’s sorcery, Tsu’gan was incredulous.

‘I said you had a choice,’ Nihilan told him. ‘This is it. Search your desires. I know of the pain, of the yearning for retribution.’

From above there came a shaft of hazy yellow light, like the crack in a coffin lid. It speared down to rest upon an eviscerator.

Tsu’gan saw his reflection in the dull metal housing for the serrated blade. A glabrous onyx skull with a red spike of beard jutting belligerently from a noble face looked back. The patrician lineage of the kings of Hesiod was echoed there.

I am unworthy of it.

The two-handed chainsword was immense. Its mono-molecular teeth could even cut adamantium apart.

Somehow, Tsu’gan had got turned around. He was on his feet, though he didn’t remember getting up.

Nihilan looked on in silence, though his voice drifted into Tsu’gan’s subconscious.

‘Make your decision.’

Tsu’gan took up the eviscerator. The grip was leather-bound, solid and weighty. It took all of his fading strength to lift it above waist height. Fate was pulling him. He had come so close to a reprieve. Vulkan He’stan had very nearly saved him, but the masochistic craving was coming back. He could feel it under his skin, the desire for pain to smother pain.

‘I am already damned,’ he whispered and hacked into his power armour.

Chunks of green battle-plate were hewn from the venerable suit, the line from its previous incumbents broken in an orgy of destructive self-hatred. By the time it was done, a ragged mess remained where once had been a proud relic of an even prouder Chapter.

Tsu’gan’s back and shoulders were heaving. It was hard to breathe. Sweat glistened on his naked body.

‘I must confess,’ Nihilan began… just as Tsu’gan turned and drove the still-churning eviscerator at the sorcerer’s face.

Tsu’gan grimaced in expectation of flying bone chunks and flesh, but the keen blades whirred impotently a fraction from Nihilan’s misshapen nose.

Even exerting more pressure, Tsu’gan couldn’t push the eviscerator closer. A kine-shield was blocking it.

‘You do not disappoint,’ said Nihilan.

The chainblade was edging away, against Tsu’gan’s will, getting closer to his own face and body as his hands betrayed him. He fought, but was already weak. There was no escaping it.

‘I expected this,’ said Nihilan, an outstretched hand acting as puppeteer for Tsu’gan’s rebellious limbs. ‘Your traitorous brother said you would capitulate, but I know you better.’

‘Iagon…’ The name came out as a growl.

‘You truly are a defiant bastard.’

Tsu’gan stopped struggling, closed his eyes.

The churning blade ceased. It dropped to the floor from his numbed fingers.

‘Kill me!’ he roared. ‘Kill me then if that is my fate.’

Nihilan slowly shook his head.

‘No.’

‘Then what is it? What is it you want from me? I am not Dak’ir. I am not chosen by Vulkan. I am–’

‘Exactly what I need,’ Nihilan cut in. A device had appeared in his left hand. It was fashioned from silver, but the surface seemed to flow like mercury. Initially ovoid in shape, its form changed when three pairs of talon-like appendages snapped out from its body. Now it resembled an insect with limbs and a carapace. Upon its back there glowed a tiny sigil like an ankh.

Tsu’gan frowned at the device, knowing it was alien in origin but no more than that. He felt the urge to resist anew but was at the limits of his endurance.

‘Keep that filth away from me…’ he slurred.

‘I lied too, Tsu’gan.’ Nihilan was impassive as he advanced on him. ‘There was never any choice.’

As the door parted to the antechamber, Iagon was afforded a tantalising glimpse of Tsu’gan in the throes of agony. The scrape of the knife against his already butchered vambrace quickened.

Unlike the one Ramlek had subjected him to, this was torture of the mind and a place where the broken Salamander was so much weaker. ‘I want to watch him suffer again…’ he rasped. The door slid shut as the knife blade stuck in the groove he’d made.

‘No,’ said Nihilan simply. ‘You’ve seen enough.’

‘I need this…’

Iagon started towards the door, but Ramlek stood in his path. ‘Shall I kill him, my lord?’

Nihilan shook his head.

‘You really are twisted, aren’t you?’ he said.

Iagon backed off from the brutal Dragon Warrior to plead with Nihilan.

‘I was supposed to ascend,’ he said. ‘Here!’ He brandished his augmetic gauntlet, the one he now had in place of a hand since he’d cut it off in a fit of deranged devotion. It was slashed to hell and back with knife scars. ‘See what I gave? My flesh and bone. And he…’ Iagon pointed to the door. ‘He left me behind. Betrayed me and discarded me like I was nothing.’ His face darkened, the mania parting to reveal something altogether more homicidal. ‘I am not nothing,’ he muttered in a throaty whisper.

Nihilan appeared to consider this.

‘Tsu’gan is loyal to his Chapter and places that above all else. I believe he saw what was truly inside you, Iagon, and it disgusted him.’

Iagon shrieked and, twisting the knife around, came at Nihilan.

Ramlek’s meaty fist seized him. His own blade was immediately at Iagon’s throat.

‘I could remove his head,’ he offered.

‘There has been enough of that already.’

Almost instinctively, Ramlek stretched his neck where the regenerative tissue still irritated him.

Nihilan waved him down and drew closer despite the fact Iagon had just tried to stab him.

‘You do not disgust me,’ he said in a conciliatory tone. ‘I know you are not “nothing”. I shall make you into something more. Would you like that, brother?’

Iagon lowered his blade and nodded slowly. ‘I’m listening…’

Nihilan held up his hand.

‘Then come forwards,’ he said, ‘and embrace me as your liege-lord.’

Something in the strained smiled on the sorcerer’s face should have warned Iagon, but his sense of self preservation was blurred by overwhelming ambition. He did as requested, kneeling and taking Nihilan’s outstretched hand.

Unseen by Iagon, Nihilan’s expression changed as the supplicant’s gaze went to the floor in deference. Hatred filled his eyes and his smile turned into a thin line expressing his grim satisfaction.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I

Infection

The docking gates opened up chasm-wide in the scalloped flank of Prometheus, admitting the Caldera into Hangar Seven. A cloud of venting pressure was released from the hold prior to atmospheric stabilisation, becoming particulate upon contact with the void. The gunship ghosted on low thrust across a vast floor, its fuselage lamps hinting at tracts of cable, maintenance pits and access hatches, until reaching its holding bay. Landing stanchions mag-locked to the deck once it was in the delineated safety zone and secured the Thunderhawk firmly in place. It joined several others that were all awaiting launch or undergoing routine inspection.

Hazard strobes continued to flash intermittently throughout the landing, washing the expansive hangar in grainy amber light. It did little to alleviate the dark, vapour-clouded environs, but warned servitor crews that a second vessel was incoming.

This was no gunship.

The Adeptus Mechanicus collector ship followed in the Caldera’s engine wash, its massive thrusters vibrating the walls. The shock-dampened glass of the command station overlooking the hangar trembled before the larger freighter set down. Its hold was full with the mineral tithe from the Nocturnean mines and it would need prepping and readying for return to its forge-ship.

As the docking gates closed and atmospheric integrity was restored, the forward embarkation ramp of the Caldera slammed down onto the deck.

Orgento was first to descend the ramp. His bionic eye relayed data back to his frontal cortex concerning temperature, pressure, oxygen saturation. A system-failure icon flashed up briefly but then disappeared. He put it down to a glitch and scheduled the augmetic for re-sanctification at the next available juncture.

Several landing crews wearing atmosphere suits were already en route to the vessels, accompanied by technical servitors. A grim host of cyber-skulls hovered in the air above them. They were the remains of serfs long-dead, immortalised in reliquary so they could continue to serve the Chapter.

The crews parted before the Techmarine like a flock of dactylids interrupted in flight by a larger predator, only to reassemble once he had passed. Ritual flamers doused the hull in his wake as the crew overseers spoke rites of function over the gunship.

‘Promethean Creed meets worship of the Omnissiah,’ he remarked to Argos who had followed on behind him. The Master of the Forge saluted to their pilot, Loc’tar, who would report to the solitorium for fire-cleansing, before answering.

‘The Caldera will be all the better for the twin baptism,’ he said. ‘As to its effects on that vessel, I am unsure.’

Attached to the hangar’s exterior docking spine was the impressive forge-ship the Archimedes Rex. It loomed through a vast portal of clear armaglas that was durable enough to withstand meteor strikes and starship barrage.

Argos had been on Nocturne ensuring the mineral tithe was ready when the Martian delegation had arrived. It was the first time he’d seen the ship since it had been salvaged from deep space.

Its flanks were still scarred from long exposure to the void. Asteroid erosion marred the armour plates and there was staining from the effects of solar wind. Much of the Martian red in its paintwork was scored to the bare, grey metal beneath. The machine-cathedra, the mech-temples, data-shrines and factorum of the immense forge-ship appeared rusted, almost fossilised against its craggy hull. Jutting laser batteries and macro-cannon turrets slumped lazily at their stations. The entire ship seemed to exude malaise. The Archimedes Rex was a goliath and even outside its presence dominated the hangar.

After the ship, Argos was drawn to the battalion of Martians standing in its shadow. A cadre of servitors, genetors and lesser adepts were ranked up awaiting the return of Xhanthix.

The magos and his cyborganic cohort had recently disembarked.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ Argos asked as the Martians joined them on deck.

‘I was granted permission to visit your forge-ship. I believe the designation given to it by your Chapter is Chalice of Fire. I am intrigued by its manufacturing process and would data-log with my own mechadendrites.’

Out the corner of his eye, Argos noticed the vast security doors to the hangar were opening. Closed, they sealed off the rest of the space port and Prometheus’s inner halls, including the route to the Chalice of Fire. A five-man welcoming party from Fourth, bolters clasped across their chests, was standing to outside the doors.

‘There are over fifty–’ A jolt of painful static made Argos wince. His Lyman’s ear was suddenly filled with white noise.

A warning rune flashed up on his bionic eye. A message scrolled across the retinal display in binaric. It took a fraction of a millisecond to translate.

++Infection detected… Infection detected++

‘Who…’ The word crackled out of his mouth, as if from interference. He had seen the warning, deciphered its meaning, but cognitively could not react.

Orgento’s voice was broken, distant as if it needed tuning in.

‘M…as…ter…’

The security doors were almost fully open. Something was happening to the Martian cohort. Red lights flashed up on their diodes and optical units. Tracked servitors went from docile to manoeuvre-ready, rising up on their hydraulics. It took another second to realise they were armed.

Argos was almost on his knees, his eyes flicking from Xhanthix’s dumb expression to the Martian cohort that was steadily weaponising.

++Infection detected… Infection detected++ slid across his view, mocking him.

‘Orgento…’ It was like speaking through a broken vox-impeller.

His eyes went to the ugly, lumpen thing at the end of exterior docking spine of Hangar Seven.

There was something wrong with the ship. Whatever had afflicted the Archimedes Rex wasn’t gone. It was merely dormant, waiting for a synaptic trigger to release it.

Xhanthix had primed it, inloaded some crucial data-packet out on the dunes.

The corrupt data was within him, running rampant within his cybernetic implants, virulent as a contagion. A binary compound, he was the reactant to its catalyser. Alone, each component was harmless; together, they were lethal.

Terrible knowledge unfolded in Argos’s brain slowly, too slowly.

I am the trigger.

Like a sluggish data-file that had finally inloaded, Argos realised he had been compromised. Something had happened to him when he’d first interfaced with the forge-ship; something so powerful and invasive that it could overrun an entire Martian complement. It had done so before, turning its denizens homicidal. The signal was strong; he’d felt its resonance even on the surface of Nocturne when the Archimedes Rex was at dock on Prometheus. It had been dormant for several years. Logically, it was the only way it could have escaped detection. Otherwise, it would have been isolated, quarantined and neutralised during one of his sanctification rituals.

‘Enemies inside perimeter…’ He was reaching for his bolt pistol as the main hangar lights hummed into life. He felt his hearts beating in his chest as the biological part of his body struggled to react to what was happening to the inorganic part.

The security doors were disengaged. Five warriors came striding through them.

Orgento’s face creased into a scowl as he went for his own sidearm. His body was shielding Xhanthix from view but as he turned Argos could see beyond the Techmarine. A data-light was flashing inside the magos’s hood. It was a countdown, about to reach its terminus.

‘Get down…’ Argos growled, knowing it was already too late.

Three high-pitched bleats emitted from Xhanthix’s vocaliser, synchronised with the data-flash, before he exploded.

The deck fell away beneath him – or rather, he was lofted above it by the intensity of the blast wave. His retinal senses were immediately overloaded by the angry flare of light. Temperature gauges red-zoned as the tolerance levels of his armour reached their limit. He was spun in slow motion, rotating through a hundred and eighty degrees, limbs flailing. Hot frag launched from ground-zero with the velocity of bolter rounds, shredding hapless crewmen and tearing servitors apart in a welter of oily blood.

Argos’s roar merged with the cacophonous explosion until it became one agonised sound. Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes as furious incendiary waves rolled out across the hangar.

He hit the ground with a jolt, ripping off a shoulder pad and scraping across the deck for another ten metres before finally coming to a stop.

A buzzing sensation muddied his hearing, but Argos was wary of using his other senses. He’d shut down his bionic eye. The left side of his face felt numb from deactivation. Staggering to his feet, he found his bolt pistol and aimed it at the smoke roiling over the hangar.

‘Orgento!’ It was like shouting under water.

There were fires, bodies strewn between them. Some were badly burnt; others writhed in agony, speared by shrapnel. He heard shouting and then the steady staccato of automatic weapons fire. He could see no enemy, only the dead and dying. Dull muzzle flashes coloured the gloom but it was hard to tell how far away or pinpoint their precise origins.

Klaxons screamed, echoing off the hangar walls which were washed red by hazard strobes warning of depressurisation.

‘Orgento!’

Argos was bleeding. The servos in his right leg were damaged and it didn’t move as easily. Every third step he had to drag his foot. The static in his head was fading, becoming more like a dull ache. He risked reactivating his bionic eye. A heat spectrum overlaid his vision. Bio-scanning matrices identified Orgento’s signature to Argos’s left. Only a few metres separated them.

The Techmarine had flat-lined.

Orgento was dead.

His power generator was torn up along with most of the cuirass protecting his back. One of his arms was missing, the blood clotting but not enough to save him. Massive internal haemorrhaging registered on the scan. Several organs had been liquefied as poor Orgento bore the brunt of the explosion.

‘Vulkan guide thee…’ Argos muttered sadly and made the Circle of Fire. His grief was postponed by a bulky silhouette coming out of the dissipating smoke.

His targeting systems were still inactive, so he snap-fired and tore a line of sparks from a servitor’s weapon mount. It returned with an auto-cannon salvo but only succeeded in raking the deck. Argos put three precise rounds in its torso and the cyborganic split apart with the mass-reactive detonation. Its tracked impellers ground forwards another half-metre before coming to a final stop.

More of the creatures were emerging from the gloom. Some were engaged with unseen opponents attacking from other directions. Argos advanced towards the ones zeroing in on him.

A burst of solid shot ripped into his exposed shoulder, forcing a grimace. Argos replied with a two-round headshot, before swinging in the opposite direction and putting down another servitor.

Despite the vastness of the hangar, it was not unlike guerrilla warfare, stalking through the smoke and killing whatever came his way. He ambushed one cyborganic. It was eviscerating a crewman with a rotary saw. Grisly work. Argos slipped a vibro-knife from a sheath fastened to his chestplate and severed the thing’s thorax cabling. It struggled for a few seconds, whirring plaintively, before he cut the head from the neck entirely and ended it.

Minor skirmishes were breaking out across the hangar, but bereft of cohesion. As logic took the place of instinct, Argos tried to determine the purpose of the enemy’s plan. It was an attack, designed and premeditated, but it didn’t make any sense. Even with the route to the inner halls open, it should require a considerable amount of force to gain entry. The automated defence systems alone could repel a sizeable invasion party without the need for additional reinforcement.

Argos dispatched another servitor and swung around to engage the next opponent, but stopped a fraction of a second before pulling the trigger.

The battle-hardened form of a Salamander of Fourth Company greeted him.

‘Master Argos, praise Vulkan you are alive.’

Argos analysed the warrior’s unique facial signifiers to ascertain his identity.

‘Status report, Brother Ak’taro.’

‘Hangar Seven is contained. Ek’thelar and Rodondus hold the security gate. I came to look for you on Brother-Sergeant Kel’s final order.’

‘Final order?’

‘Brother-Sergeant Kel is dead, my lord.’

Argos nodded. The firefight was starting to ebb as the Space Marines and human armsmen reasserted control. Scattered gunfire still rang throughout the hangar but it was spaced further apart and no longer sustained. Dac’tyr’s troops had reacted swiftly, but Argos was still troubled.

He eyed the Archimedes Rex.

‘Nothing enters or leaves that ship. Lock it down; lock this entire area down.’ Emergency crews had succeeded in activating stasis shielding to prevent further venting and were re-pressurising the hangar. The security doors to the inner halls beyond the space port were still being worked on. Until that was done, fortification would have to come from Ak’taro and his men.

‘Aye, my lord,’ the now acting-sergeant replied.

Argos gave a last look to the forbidding forge-ship. ‘In fact, assemble crews and weld shut any access hatches, conduits or pipes.’

Ak’taro tried not to blanch. ‘On a vessel that size that is a considerable undertaking, my lord.’

Argos was already on his way. He needed to interface with one of Prometheus’s control hubs, find out if the infection from whatever scrap code the Archimedes Rex harboured had penetrated further than Hangar Seven.

‘Then you had best get started,’ he said.

It was still unclear what the purpose of the Martian sabotage had been. Efforts to penetrate the inner halls had failed but the security door was compromised and so too the docking gate into the hangar, which had suffered badly in the explosion and was ripped open. Stasis shielding would keep out the void and maintain structural integrity but it could not prevent any enemy ship from landing.

‘We are vulnerable,’ he said to himself as he passed beyond the threshold of the security door. He still carried the limp. Fixing his armour servos would have to wait. He shut down a part of the mechanism, which increased the drag but abated the hydraulic pressure release and stopped the sparking.

Labour crews and squads of armsmen Ak’taro had summoned to secure and stabilise the hangar gave him a wide berth as they hurried in the opposite direction. It was like wading against the tide, but with Argos slowed by his injuries rather than an imaginary current.

He reached a second security door. This was also being kept open while the serfs were needed from other parts of the space port. Ahead, he knew there was a control hub where he could assess the extent of the damage done by the scrap virus. The other direction led deeper into the complex and would take him to Prometheus’s core defence system.

An unsettling thought entered his mind as he stopped at the junction.

I cannot move.

It wasn’t the servo. Even unassisted, he could force his power armour’s motor-function. It was just more difficult.

The static returned, invading his senses and infiltrating cognition. The human part of Argos’s brain rebelled as it realised it was being manipulated, whilst the machine part had already surrendered to it.

He seized the arm of a passing serf with his last act of free will.

‘What is your name?’ Argos barked the question, his voice resonant with tension and mechanical interference.

The startled labour serf balked and stammered at the cybernetic giant that had grabbed him. ‘S-sonnar, my liege.’ He looked old but had recently received juvenat treatments. Some of the aging in his body had been regressed, restored to beyond its prime. As the impromptu bio-scan concluded, Argos realised that he knew him.

‘Sonnar Illiad,’ the serf said at last.

‘Get help.’

His heart rate was well above normal. Illiad was terrified. Pupil dilation and increased respiration were rapidly logged and recorded as Argos desperately tried anything to stave off the harmful code infecting him.

‘My liege?’

‘Our deep space augurs have been off-line for the last twenty minutes and… I… I am not myself. Do it now!’

Illiad stumbled down the corridor without looking back, headed to the hangar where he knew Brother Ak’taro was waiting.

Argos was moving again, though not entirely of his own volition. Mechadendrites sprang from their housings in his gauntlet. The haptic implants interfaced with the door controls, locking it in an open position. Only another Master of the Forge could override it. Then he turned and made for the core defences, ignoring his original destination of the control hub.

As he sealed the door to the other corridor shut, a single compulsion repeated within his mechanised sub-conscious.

He was headed for Vulkan’s Eye, the immense defence laser that protected Prometheus from orbital assault. It came from a forgotten age of technology. There was no other weapon system like it that still functioned. It had never failed the Chapter.

Until now.

II

Preyed Upon

Hugging the dunes, the Land Speeder barely kicked up a sand cloud as Prebian minimised the engine wash. Its repulsor plate that reacted to Nocturne’s gravity was kept low. They were stalking the aspirants and he wanted to observe them undetected. Even the rear thrusters that provided propulsion were baffled, so they could run silent.

Decreasing in speed, the skimmer crested a small dune before sinking into the deep ravine behind it. There they idled, engines humming with just enough power to keep them aloft, observing another dune some three hundred metres away.

Heat haze radiated off the baking desert floor and a sand squall was rolling in, driven by distant winds coming off the Acerbian Sea. It would blanket their position perfectly.

‘Scopes…’ Prebian held out a hand, taking the magnoculars from Ba’ken as they were offered. ‘Should be coming over that rise any time now…’ he muttered, half to himself.

‘And if not?’ Ba’ken asked. He was watching the sandy peaks at either side of the ravine, his earlier paranoia still lingering.

‘Then they’re lost in the Pyre and already dead.’ Prebian handed back the magnoculars. ‘Val’in has the lead.’

Ba’ken took a look.

The view was grainy and green-tinged, tracking data spooling across his view, but the aspirant stood out clearly enough. Hot winds were rolling in, kicking up a dust storm. Val’in kept his head bowed against it, leading with his shoulder and taking long strides through the gathering ash-sand.

‘Head up…’ Ba’ken knew the aspirant couldn’t hear him but scolded anyway.

It was basic survival technique. Eyes on the ground perceived nothing of the danger ahead. It was why so few military advances were conducted against a storm. Deserts were particularly hazardous. As well as equipment malfunction, which was common, there was also the heat and sun-glare to contend with. Sandstorms only added to the lethality of the environment. Survive all of that and in the Pyre there were still the sulphur drifts, ash-sinks and acid geysers to kill the unwary.

He increased magnification. The youth was glancing up intermittently, head low to keep out the worst of the storm.

Ba’ken smiled.

Though he looked tired, Val’in was making solid progress.

‘Conserve your strength…’

The breeding grounds of the sa’hrk were close, and the monstrous denizens of the Pyre were just as remorseless as its other dangers. Val’in would need his Themian hunting knife and whatever was left of his wits very soon.

‘Keep the blade close…’

‘Your instruction will avail your protégé little all the way out here, brother-sergeant,’ said Prebian.

Ba’ken lowered the magnoculars and secured them in the speeder’s cockpit. It was a Storm-variant, with capacity for carriage at the expense of deadlier weapon systems. Any aspirant that survived induction would at least have a ride back to the nearest Sanctuary City. The Storm only had room for two crewman and five riders, which said a lot about Salamander pragmatism and the harshness of the trials.

‘My apologies, master. It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was out on the sands, hunting prey, earning my black carapace.’

Prebian grinned ferally and all his many years seemed to fall away.

‘Stirs the blood, doesn’t it?’

He gunned the engines and they drove out of the ravine at cruising speed.

As they were nearing the peak of the next rise, Prebian checked their coordinates on the map screen built in to the Land Speeder’s console.

‘Better get on that cannon,’ he said, eyes ahead. ‘Sa’hrk will be near.’

Ba’ken hauled on the heavy bolter, unlocking it and sliding the gun around on its mounting rail. He checked the load – a full mag of heavy mass-reactive. Any sa’hrk hit by one would be crimson mist.

Flicking up the iron sights, Ba’ken adjusted his aim by tracking along a distant ridge. A reflection, sun on metal, caught his eye. It was ephemeral but definitely not a figment of his imagination.

‘Contact high,’ he snapped, providing the bearing as he slung the heavy bolter round on the same line. ‘Approximately five hundred metres.’

Prebian slewed the speeder around in a wide arc without hesitating, adding thrust to increase manoeuvrability. It brought the bearing Ba’ken had just given to their front aspect, where their armour was toughest and the cannon had the broadest arc of fire.

They slowed to a near stop, halfway up a rise, nose pointed at a distant ridge behind where the aspirants had come from.

Prebian was reaching for the magnoculars.

‘Confirmation?’

‘Nothing further,’ Ba’ken replied, eye trained down the iron sight. He panned across the ridge, slow and steady.

‘Is he following us?’

‘Direction suggests yes.’

‘Nothing on scopes.’

Prebian put the magnoculars down and waited.

Apart from the low engine throb from the speeder, the desert was quiet.

Ba’ken could feel his twin hearts beating. They were strong and steady, calm. His perspective condensed down into the circular world viewed through the heavy bolter’s iron sights.

Dust motes curled lazily across the summit of the ridge but nothing else stirred. It was dotted with volcanic rocks, clefts and crags – plenty of places to hide.

‘Keep the high ground covered,’ said Prebian, getting out of the driver’s seat. ‘I’m heading for a closer look.’ He unhitched a sniper rifle from the speeder’s webbing and proceeded to stalk up the dune, his blindside facing away from the potential ambusher.

Ba’ken lost the Master of Arms beyond his peripheral vision but resisted the temptation to follow him. He stayed fixed on the ridge as Prebian went wide and low to outflank.

He caught a brief glimpse of the master again a few minutes later, much farther off as he homed in on Ba’ken’s bearing. He was staying down, hugging the rocks. Whoever was following them would’ve seen him disembark; they would either attack or withdraw. Both actions would reveal their position to the Salamanders.

Prebian was using his sniper sight to get a bead on the summit of the ridge, looking through the scope exclusively as he advanced. As he crested the rise, coming in at an oblique angle, Ba’ken lost sight of him again. He felt a moment of tension in the intervening moments before Prebian’s head appeared above the ridgeline and he waved the all-clear. Ba’ken switched to the driver’s seat and gunned the speeder up the rise to pick him up.

‘Whoever it was has gone,’ Prebian announced when they were reunited.

Ba’ken frowned. ‘I saw something. I swear it to Vulkan.’

‘There’s no need to do that, brother. I found this.’ He held out his hand. In it was a dagger, but a strange jagged implement utterly unlike the heavy blades used by the Chapter or indeed anyone who had business roving the desert.

Old memories flared in Ba’ken’s mind like raw wounds reopened in his flesh, and his face darkened. ‘I know this weapon’s provenance,’ he said.

‘It’s a message.’

‘Friend or foe?’

‘Unknown.’ Prebian climbed into the gunner’s seat. ‘We’re not alone out here. Dark eldar are on Nocturne, abroad in this desert.’

Ba’ken gave the engine some throttle.

‘Ease down,’ Prebian warned. ‘If they are stalking the aspirants, they might not have seen us yet or at least know where we are. Low and silent, brother-sergeant, but be ready to move.’

‘You mean to use the aspirants as bait?’

‘They are already bait. We are alone in this desert without reinforcement, against an enemy we cannot see and whose number we cannot yet ascertain. We must press our every possible advantage.

Ba’ken nodded, bringing the Land Speeder around and cruising slowly back down into the ravine.

Training was over. Either the aspirants would earn the right to become Space Marine Scouts or they would die.

Living in the caves beneath Scoria, Val’in had formed a healthy respect for dangerous things. As a boy, he was all too aware of the chitin and the threat those monsters represented to his way of life. He had become adept at avoiding them, at knowing when they were close. One might describe it as a sixth sense, though Val’in was certainly no psyker. Rather, he was simply accomplished at survival and had honed his instincts to a razor’s edge.

He relied on that innate quality as he stooped beneath a craggy outcrop of volcanic rock and the hackles on the back of his neck rose. Val’in was not a native of Nocturne but he had lived on and endured the hell-world for over three years, learning much in that time. He knew of the leo’nid, apex-hunters of the Arridian Plain, and the sa’hrk that even now he hunted; he had seen what flocks of hungry dactylids could do to lone travellers and heard the bellow of the great fire lizards that lived beneath the earth. Nocturne was possessed of all these terrors and more besides, some of which had no names or had not been seen in decades; this however, was something different. He could not say why he knew that. It was just a feeling, a creeping sense of dread that reminded him he was still human.

Val’in had chosen the overhang as a good place to get out of the sun, whilst still making progress across the desert basin. It was firm underfoot, too. He’d never intended for it to become a haven from whatever was stalking them.

Blending into the shadows of the sparse rocks, he waited.

Heklarr was first through the opening, following the same logic and possibly the route of his fellow aspirant. As well as his tracks, he also found Val’in’s knife at his neck.

He hissed for silence, even though a storm was blowing outside. An embryonic flash of fire-red lit Val’in’s eyes as he let the other aspirant go.

‘Who follows you?’ he asked, cutting off any objection from Heklarr.

Heklarr scowled. ‘What are you–’

‘Who? Speak the names!’

Whether it was the tone of Val’in’s voice or the look in his eyes, but Heklarr understand in that moment the severity of the danger they were in.

‘Kot’iar, Ska’varron and Exor. The others, I don’t know. Maybe they fell behind; maybe they’re already dead.’

Val’in eyed the entrance, thinking. ‘We’ll have to assume they’ve taken them.’

‘Who? What are we hiding from, brother?’

‘I don’t know, but it isn’t the sa’hrk nor is it something devised by our training masters.’ He quickly gauged the size of the overhang. It was partially enclosed, more like a cave. Only two ways in and out, but it was also long and narrow. Penned in at either end there would be little room to manoeuvre but being caught out in the open somehow felt worse.

‘How do you know all this? Did you see something? Storms can play tricks on the mind.’

Heklarr was a native, born of Epimethus in the Acerbian Sea. He had seen countless drovers and whalers lose their sanity to the rough elements.

‘I felt something. An instinct, like when you’re being watched.’ He eyes narrowed as he fought to remember the initial experience. ‘It was almost as if it wanted me to know it was there, that my fear of it would give it power. No beast hunts that way, not even here.’

‘What are you proposing we do?’ Heklarr asked. He had spent enough time around Val’in to know his hunches were usually reliable. He gestured to his blade. ‘The masters took our carbines. We are armed with knives.’

Val’in frowned, his plan not yet fully formed. ‘Signal to the others. Bring them here if you can. Other than that, I suggest we try and survive.’

‘That’s your plan?’ Heklarr was incredulous.

‘You have a better one?’

After a moment, Heklarr went to the entrance and tried to find the others in the roiling storm.

He’d been wrong about the others. They weren’t dead, at least not yet.

Dukkar got as far as the basin of the sand valley before his body erupted in a shower of shredded gore. To Val’in, watching from the rocks and willing the others to reach them, it appeared like a thousand tiny splinters had exploded from inside the poor aspirant’s flesh.

Ralas’tan had a different fate. He was slit groin to cranium as he crested the rise. The blade-wielder was unseen, as was the blade itself. It was as if he merely parted and his organs sloughed out of his body all over the ash-sand.

Of the stragglers, T’org came closest to salvation. The Themian had strong legs which he used to outpace the others. Heklarr, standing with Val’in at the entrance, urged him on. He outstretched a hand to pull him in, when T’org became rooted to the spot. There was a look of abject terror etched on his face that literally froze in place as particles of hoarfrost coalesced around it. Ice in the desert – the very fact it was anathema to the natural order sent flurries of dread rippling through Val’in. He snatched back Heklarr’s hand before the deadly frost spread to him too.

‘Retreat,’ he hissed, barely daring to breathe let alone speak.

The five survivors headed into the tunnel of rock. They only got halfway before the shrieking began.

Something was moving outside, something fast and black against the sun. Val’in saw it through the cracks in the rock. It went on foot, or at least it seemed to; its incredible pace and dexterity suggested an altogether slicker mode of motion.

There was more than one, though the shadow-speed made it difficult to tell just how many. Taunting, they darted back and forth, running their blades against the outer rock.

‘Form defensive perimeter!’ shouted Exor, who’d taken it upon himself to act as leader.

The other four obeyed, though Val’in’s eyes continued to try and track the shadow-creatures flitting by outside.

‘I have the north facing,’ said Kot’iar.

‘South,’ added Ska’varron.

Their masters had trained them well. They were falling back on their lessons, applying well-honed tactics appropriate to the situation. They would avail them nothing against this enemy.

‘I see something…’ hissed Heklarr, pointing over Kot’iar’s shoulder to the north-facing entrance they had just fallen back from.

It was sinuous, whatever this thing was that slid its way into the tunnel. Scent-pits flared in its nostrils, almost tasting them. The troglodyte thing was utterly blind, but its other senses more than up for this deficiency. Grey in pallor, it weaved towards them with a hungering gait.

Outside, the shadow-creatures had stopped moving.

They are watching this! Val’in realised with a terrified shudder.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ he began, trusting to the litany to galvanise him in the darkness as the grey whip-thin horror came closer.

Kot’iar broke. He roared, as fear overwhelmed him and turned into reckless abandon. He left the defensive cordon, deaf to the protests of his brothers, and threw himself at the beast.

The ur-ghul reacted faster. It bent away from Kot’iar’s knife like a serpent jinking from a predator. A half-dozen shallow spurts of blood vented from the back of the aspirant’s neck. It took the others a few seconds to realise the beast had plunged its spine-like claws into Kot’iar’s vital organs. Even with the enhanced physiology of a pseudo-Space Marine, he was dead before the ur-ghul began to feast. Rows of its needle fangs ground poor Kot’iar’s flesh, devouring it in succulent slivers. It took all of Val’in’s resolve not to attack, and considerable presence to prevent the others from doing so too.

Further reckless action now would see them all dead.

This dread thing was beyond them but for now, with the shadows looking on, it was all the aspirants faced; together, they could kill it.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast,’ Val’in began again, keeping the beast in his eye-line even though it disgusted him to watch what it was doing to his brother. ‘Speak the oath!’ he snarled at the others when met by their silence.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ he said a third time.

‘With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor.’ They chorused in unison.

‘Feed your courage, brothers.’ Val’in was only just on the right side of sounding confident. ‘We may not be full-fledged Fire-born, but we have strength enough to kill this wretched thing and avenge our fallen.’

They spread out, Ska’varron watching their backs as Val’in and the others crept towards the beast. Its grotesque head jerked up at them when they were close. It snarled, revealing blood-rimed teeth jammed with chunks of Kot’iar’s flesh.

Exor lunged and the beast whipped aside as before. Its deadly riposte was prevented when Heklarr slashed its pallid limb. It lashed out in reply, but then Exor cut it too. The pain didn’t seem to slow it, though its wounds bled freely and with a noisome stench. An angry bleat escaped its misshapen lips as it went to fight both assailants at once, before Val’in slipped beneath its guard and rammed his Themian knife into its screaming throat. He pushed the blade deep until it punched through the beast’s skull. Still it fought, until Exor and Heklarr punctured its reedy torso.

There was no plan to it, no great strategy any of them could lay claim to. It was a desperate and frenzied thing, only successful because they’d attacked en masse. It was dirty and clumsy, the kind of assault Master Prebian would’ve chastened them for. But they were alive and the creature was about to be dead. The first true rule of hand-to-hand combat was to survive. In that at least they had achieved their lessons.

As it faded, all three aspirants gave in to aggressive fear and repressed grief, butchering the horror until it was little more than offal. To the observer far removed it would’ve seemed gratuitous; to the aspirants it was entirely necessary.

There was blood on Heklarr’s face. He spat on the thing’s visceral remains, beaming triumphantly. Relief flashed through the eyes of the others, but Val’in knew it was far from over.

‘On your feet,’ he told them. His gaze was locked on the north-facing entrance and the figure standing there.

It wore shaped leather, angular and sharp like blade edges. A segmented metal greave armoured one leg, where the other was bare and showed pale skin. It was the same with the beastmaster’s arms, one of which was coiled around with a whip. A scalp lock scraped the dark, lustrous hair back and Val’in realised upon looking into its eyes that this one was female. She was fearsome, her laughter cruel and lilting. He felt pathetic before her gaze, insignificant.

Though he wasn’t Nocturne-born, Val’in knew of the dusk-wraiths. Raiders, slavers and soul-thieves, they were the ancestral enemies of the tribes. The Salamanders Chapter knew them by another name: dark eldar.

The beastmaster said something in her language that was equal parts lustful promise and dire curse, before standing aside to admit her abomination.

This one was much bigger than the ur-ghul. It had a broad back with long, ape-like limbs and was swathed in a rough patina of fur. Muscular and brutish, it had the aspect of something lupine and chiropteran in nature. A corded tail that ended in a barb lashed about behind it, displaying the monster’s agitation. In a mask of ruddy chitin was a nest of eyes, twinkling like malicious emeralds. Its slitted snout flared as it drank in the aspirants’ fear.

Her eyes fluttering, the beastmaster seemed to echo the creature as the slightest expression of sadistic pleasure escaped her lips.

‘Back up,’ Val’in told the others. He didn’t want to run. They wanted them to run, and a strong part of him desired to deny them that satisfaction. But to stay was death and, perhaps, in the playing of the dark eldar’s game there might yet be a way out for him and his brothers.

‘Ska’varron…’

‘The way is clear,’ the aspirant replied without needing to be asked.

‘They will hunt us down out there,’ snapped Exor. ‘It was you who brought us in here in the first place.’

The fiend was stalking closer, filling up the end of the tunnel with its bulk and flesh-hunger.

‘I was wrong,’ said Val’in. ‘In here we are good as dead already. At least out there we make them work for their slaughter.’

‘Good enough for me,’ agreed Heklarr and the four surviving aspirants fled, taunted every step by the laughter of the beastmaster.

The storm had almost abated as they broke through the other side of the partially enclosed outcrop and the sun was blazing overhead. Val’in winced as his eyes adjusted to the sudden, harsh light.

It was bleak and grey with a bloody orb pulsing in the fire-red sky above. Lightning cracked, framing the distant mountains as smoke billowed from their calderas in a pall. Vast and expansive, there was no refuge in the Pyre Desert, only death.

Ska’varron was first. Barely a few steps beyond the edge of the tunnel and he crumpled. Exor tried to haul him up but there were some kind of shards embedded in his neck and arm, weakening him. It wasn’t mortal but it had made a mess of him and he was venting blood.

‘Leave him,’ snarled Val’in. ‘We have to move!’

The engine throb of vehicles starting up hummed across the dunes. It went against his better instincts but Val’in looked back.

First he noticed the hulking fiend lope from the tunnel and seize upon Ska’varron. He balked when he saw the dozen warriors wearing black segmented armour, carrying serrated falchions and needle-like rifles. The beastmaster was amongst them and where she rode a sickle-bladed anti-gravitic board, the others were mounted on a long, barb-prowed skimmer-raft.

Somehow these creatures had infiltrated Nocturne; they had bypassed its defences for some unknown purpose and were eliminating anything that could betray their presence.

Val’in had been wrong. There was no hope out here on the dunes for them. But he would not be cut down like a dog. He stopped running. So did the others.

We’ll stand our ground like Salamanders.

‘This isn’t how I imagined it to end,’ said Exor as the three aspirants came together. ‘I wanted glory, not ignominy.’

‘We all did, brother,’ muttered Heklarr.

Val’in had nothing. No speech, no strategy. War and death – this was it, just as they’d been told in the lectoriums.

‘At least we’ll die on our feet.’ It was all he could think of to say in the end, and even that sounded cheap.

The chase was done and with it the dark eldar’s appetite for sport. The raiders homed in on the aspirants with purpose now, their taunting and cajoling over. Actual blades, not barbs cast by tongues, would do the wounding from here on out.

Val’in wondered briefly if they should slit each other’s throats in preference to what the dark eldar were about to do to them, but dismissed the thought as ignoble.

We fight, such as it is.

They lifted their heads as one, defiant.

Exor spat a gobbet of phlegm onto the ground where it sizzled bitterly. ‘To hell with this fate, and to hell with them.’

The dark eldar were unmoved.

Val’in, Exor and Heklarr prepared to meet them.

The dense bark of heavy cannon arrested their mordancy.

It struck the skimmer-raft in a whickering tracery, ripping the vehicle apart and tearing up its inconsequential armour plating. Like a vertebrate with its spine broken, the skimmer folded in on itself, engines exploding in a series of fiery blooms. They swept over the crew, devouring the screaming xenos in a burning wave.

Some of the xenos leapt clear, bringing up rifles and shouting obscenities in their raking tongue. Val’in followed their aim as another throaty report roared from the cannon. He saw a muzzle burst in the distance, like lightning on the sun. It spread out from a fat black barrel, a cruciform flare made from spikes of fire. Heat haze and the desert drifts made it hard to see what was coming. It was moving fast, tearing out from a ravine.

Heklarr cried out in retribution for Ska’varron as the fiend disappeared in a welter of gore.

Val’in’s eyes narrowed as their saviours closed. He made out the sigil of the drake on the speeder’s tail fin as a plume of smoke vented from the launcher under its flat nose.

Pushed along on streamers of fire, the missiles detonated amongst the scattered clusters of dark eldar warriors. The Cerberus launcher was usually employed as a stun weapon to disorientate the enemy. Prebian had had one of the Techmarines modify this one so it fired incendiaries instead. Out in the Pyre there were some large predators that a heavy bolter wouldn’t scratch. A missile payload, however…

Bodies were tossed in the air along with thick geysers of ash-sand. Others were thrown by the blasts, landing twisted and broken next to fire-blackened corpses.

Vor’lessh knew it was over. She cursed her own stupidity for listening to Skethe. The bastard nightfiend had made careful assurance that the young ones were alone. Now she knew he’d betrayed her to draw out the warriors watching over them, bait atop bait. It was enough to make any predator choke. Her small cohort was dead or maimed. It was tempting to linger and taste their suffering, so sweet and fortifying, but self-preservation took over the desire for sadistic pleasure.

She fled, leaving the dying to their fate.

It ended before it had begun. She felt a sudden jolt beneath her as the skyboard achieved loft, and heard the hard bang of the ugly speeder’s main armament. Spinning vertiginously without hope of realignment, Vor’lessh ditched in the gritty ash-sand of the mon’keigh desert.

As she lay in the gore of her own vital fluids she understood the reason for Skethe’s betrayal. Death so imminent in her future gave her clarity. She’d discovered the nightfiend’s fealty towards An’scur, their overlord, to be in question. He served another. A pity she had not learned whom before this unfortunate ending.

Vor’lessh tried to move but her body was shattered, impaled on a piece of capricious shrapnel. She laughed, spitting blood through snarling teeth, as the swarthy young one approached her with knife unsheathed. There was murder in his fire-red eyes – they almost burned. She’d witnessed the same look in her own.

This was a barbarous race, despite their intention to seem otherwise. These hairless apes were debased, cannibals dressed in cloth and nothing more. In the end, when the veil had fallen, they’d eat each other.

She tried to fight down her fear. It wasn’t from the knife; She Who Thirsts was calling, promising an eternity of agony and not the pleasant kind.

Cut quickly then, whelp.

She spat a torrent of abuse, hurrying the knife along.

Exor didn’t understand the beastmaster’s barbed language but knew when he was being derided.

‘Shut up, bitch.’ He slit her throat, standing back to watch the life drain away.

‘Brother!’ Val’in pulled him back, a warning in his tone not to go too far. They’d all suffered but malice for its own sake was the preserve of the dark eldar, not the Salamanders.

The Land Speeder hovered into their collective eye-line, engines screaming. Heklarr had already climbed aboard, priming his carbine as he urged the others to join him.

‘Mount up!’ snapped Prebian, raking the heavy bolter aside so he could leap from the gunner’s seat. The old master proceeded to track down every xenos survivor and execute them in turn.

‘They’re just scouts,’ he said to the aspirants upon his return. ‘More will be coming.’ He got back into the gunner’s seat and turned to Ba’ken. ‘Hesiod is closest.’

‘That’s a ride of several hours.’

‘Then we’d best get moving.’

Leaning back in the driver’s pit, Ba’ken addressed the aspirants behind him.

‘Hold on.’

Val’in gripped the nearest guard rail. Over the next rise he saw a vast cloud of dust. It was closing. There was something else too, something much closer. Despite the heat, a rime of frost crystallised on the speeder’s vertical roll bar. It was just like outside the tunnel where T’org had died.

He praised Vulkan’s mercy as the speeder tore away, bouncing along the dunes at full acceleration, and left whatever had caused the ice behind them.

‘What’s happening?’ Exor had to scream to be heard above the engine noise.

‘No enemy has ever set foot on Nocturnean soil undetected,’ Prebian replied. ‘This ambush precipitates an attack. Raiders do not do this – it is something more.’ The hot wind rushing by almost stole the words but all aboard the speeder heard them.

‘We have been invaded.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

I

Unbound Flame

None present would ever doubt the sagacity of the Forgefather.

He spoke with Vulkan’s wisdom, even shared his name. He was the living embodiment of everything it meant to be a Salamander. No one epitomised the values of the Promethean Creed better than he. Self-sacrifice, endurance, self-reliance, tenacity in the face of impossible odds. His quest for the Nine had taken him, and those who wore the mantle before him, across the galaxy and into the darkest regions of uncharted space. He commanded the will of the Chapter, should he need it. He’d given up brotherhood for a sacred calling. There was none more lauded.

And when he spoke everyone listened.

‘It is our nature to mistrust that which is unknown,’ he said. ‘I don’t know our primarch’s mind, I merely enact his will. He is with us all. His words guide us, but they are incomplete. We must earn the wisdom intended for us. We Fire-born must decide his meaning.’

Dak’ir hoped this testimony would absolve him. He had never met Vulkan He’stan, though he had heard of his deeds. He knew he was once a captain of the Fourth Company, but that had been long ago. From what little Dak’ir had garnered from Pyriel, he had only recently returned to the Chapter. His sacred journey had brought him far from Prometheus and Nocturne. It was either an auspicious moment or a terrible omen that he had chosen this time to return. Either way, it was definitely not mere coincidence.

It was Zen’de, the old Master of Recruits, who had first recounted the legend of the Nine. As he looked upon the shadowed outline of the Forgefather, Dak’ir found himself back in the lectorium when he had only just become a Scout.

‘In ages past Vulkan hid nine sacred artefacts throughout the galaxy. His prophecies, buried within the Tome of Fire not only reveal where the artefacts reside but what form they will take.’

The words were as hot and clear as ritual fire within Dak’ir’s mind.

‘Of the Nine, as they are known, only four remain to be found. Three are borne by the Forgefather as his panoply of war, whilst the other recovered relics remain here on Prometheus.’

Zen’de referred to the Chalice of Fire, the forge-ship where the Chapter’s armour and weapons were crafted, and Vulkan’s Eye, a massive orbital defence laser that stood sentinel over the space port and Nocturne itself.

His eyes were the only thing visible of the Forgefather in the gloomy chamber, blazing like the molten core of the mountain, and they rested firmly on Dak’ir as if he had read his thoughts.

It was hard to meet his gaze, but Dak’ir didn’t falter.

‘I have been on a long journey. It has brought me back here to my brothers.’ His sweeping arm encompassed the entire gathering. Some of the older masters nodded reverently at this remark. ‘I rejoice!’

He’stan leaned forwards and the many whorls of scarification were revealed on his face. He had a noble countenance, youthful but wise. Despite his obvious zeal, there was a hint of melancholy to temper his tone.

‘But there is despair in my heart too, for I am a warrior apart, alone and without peer. This road I take, it only bears my footprints, but I do not believe it is random, that it would lead me here without reason.’

A hush descended as He’stan let the words sink in.

Elysius was first to speak. ‘Noble Forgefather, do you counsel absolution for the accused, then?’

He’stan regarded the Chaplain curiously. ‘Absolve him of what, brother? Of deeds he might yet commit or those he never will?’

‘A threat to the very existence of our Chapter, of Nocturne, stands in our midst,’ Emek cut in. ‘We should not ignore that.’

When He’stan’s eyes fell upon the Apothecary they were heavy with regret. ‘Are you so bent on judgement that it has blinded you, brother?’

Emek went on undeterred. ‘If we have an opportunity to avert cataclysm by taking Dak’ir’s life we must do it! To risk otherwise is folly. What of the prophecy and the doom of which it speaks?’

‘There are many prophecies,’ He’stan told him. ‘Few are easy to discern or possess clear meaning. Even then the outcome is seldom absolute. If we set aside our bonds of brotherhood we are as good as dead anyway. It is the anvil, brother. We must endure it, however harsh the trial.’

‘And if it breaks us?’ asked Mulcebar.

He’stan slowly shook his head. ‘I see fear around this room and a willingness to believe in superstition over what we can see with our own eyes. We are warriors of the earth, that which is solid and tangible.’ He clenched his fist. ‘Not ethereal, ephemeral creatures – we are Fire-born, as unchanging as rock.’

Some of the masters shifted uncomfortably at the Forgefather’s words. Others were not so easily shamed.

‘I fear nothing, brother,’ Drakgaard stated flatly. ‘It is terrible, what we are countenancing here, but if we have to commit one heinous act to avoid a greater one taking place then we should do it.’

‘I’m unconvinced by any of this, but can we really leave our existence to fate?’ asked Dac’tyr. ‘One life balanced against millions…’ He tailed off, shaking his head.

The Master of the Fleet looked like he’d be a supporter. Dak’ir felt a sudden turning in the tide.

Vel’cona certainly advocated his destruction. Only his adherence to ritual and the Promethean Creed had prevented him from doing so already. Both Mulcebar and Drakgaard were of the same mind, pragmatism guiding them towards the safest path.

The swell had risen to Dak’ir’s neck, it seemed. Pyriel thought so too; he could sense the resonance of the Epistolary’s anxiety in the faint psychic aura that bled off his body. Within Dak’ir the flame stirred. It was just a susurrus of disquiet, a tang of burning on his tongue, the prickling of heat underneath his fingertips, but enough to make the Lexicanum want to close his eyes. In the end he clenched his fists and prayed.

‘But does that not depend on how you bias the scales?’ asked Elysius. ‘If you execute Dak’ir and he is our saviour then you have condemned those very millions you are trying to save.’

Vel’cona scowled. ‘Where is your conviction, Chaplain? I don’t recognise the warrior before me.’

‘Alive and well, Master Librarian, though your compassion is apparently lacking.’ He turned on Emek, ‘As is any hope you once possessed, Apothecary, or did the Protean cripple your spirit as well as your body?’

‘Enough!’ Tu’Shan’s voice reverberated around the chamber as loud and rousing as a war horn, yet he didn’t shout. He’stan was not the only one who needed to do little to be heard.

All parties bowed obediently to the Chapter Master.

‘We are divided,’ Tu’Shan continued after the three had made gestures of contrition to one another and to him. ‘Seeker,’ he used an ancient term of address for the Forgefather, ‘the winding path of the Nine brings you back to Prometheus. Tell us why.’

He’stan nodded to his Regent.

‘There are four I seek,’ he said. ‘I speak of the Nine, the artefacts of Vulkan.’

All eyes were upon him now, watching silently.

‘Here,’ he declared, brandishing a gauntlet of incredible artistry emblazoned with the sigil of the drake, ‘the Gauntlet of the Forge. I ripped it from the hold of the pirate lord Iath Bloodweaver. And this,’ he thrust forth a spear in his clenched fist, ‘Vulkan’s Spear, whose burning blade never dulls. I wear Kesare’s Mantle, the beast slain by our primarch.’ He stood and a great scaled cloak unfurled from his back. ‘Vulkan’s Eye and the Chalice of Fire are the last,’ he added, ‘harboured here on Prometheus.’

A visceral fire ignited in his eyes, an old burning that spoke of the terrors he had seen and the darkness he had overcome.

‘Four remain. Only their names are known. It has been this way for millennia. Many Forgefathers, and the Fire-born in their service, have died in search of them.’ His eyes became calderas of flame-red as his fervour increased. ‘Even the slightest inkling of their form would be progress the likes of which this Chapter has not seen in centuries. I don’t believe we will ever know. I believe the path will only be revealed when it is already trodden.’

He’stan glanced at Elysius.

‘Faith, brothers. Our belief in Vulkan’s wisdom. What if we are on that path?’

‘Enlighten us, brother,’ said the Chaplain, his voice taking on a sense of awe. Something momentous was building. It would happen in this very chamber at this very time. Dak’ir found his hearts beating, a flicker of nascent fire clasped desperately in his hands.

I want to be born, the flame seemed to whisper – or was it some wilful part of his mind rebelling against its incarceration?

‘The Song of Entropy, the Obsidian Chariot and the Engine of Woes are three,’ said He’stan. He looked at Tu’Shan. ‘You asked me, Regent, why I returned to Prometheus. At first I thought it was to help guide the Chapter through this time of reckoning, but now I am of a different mind. The path has brought me here, just as it brought me to Iath Bloodweaver.’

The Chapter Master’s eyes widened. ‘You come to us now…’

‘Because one of the four is here,’ He’stan concluded.

Vel’cona gaped. ‘Not possible. I would have seen it.’

‘We have all been blind,’ said Elysius.

Drakgaard was incredulous. ‘An artefact of flesh and blood?’

Every master present knew the name of the fourth of Vulkan’s missing gifts. Only Tu’Shan had the courage to speak it.

‘The Unbound Flame…’

All eyes went to Dak’ir.

II

Blinded

Argos slammed down the corridor like he was inebriated. Such a thing was nigh-on impossible for a Space Marine, the action of specific genetic implants would prevent it, but it was as close as the Master of the Forge could equate to how he felt at that moment.

He was… aware, but his movements were not entirely his own. Some external force drove him, an impulse, an infection in his psyche. He’d been unprepared for it and thus it held him fast in its tainting grip. Every step he fought it, the impulse that repeated like a distress beacon in his mind. But he was losing and the compulsion gnawing at him was getting stronger.

He passed servitors and half-human tech-adepts on his way to Vulkan’s Eye. No one stopped him or queried his odd behaviour, nor could he signal for aid. No one was coming. The way behind him was shut and Ak’taro would not reach him. His own fight for survival was coming.

The great gated arch to the Vulkan’s Eye chamber loomed in front of him.

Argos couldn’t remember how he had got there. Lucidity flickered in and out like a damaged lume-strip in need of repair.

I am in need of repair…

It was a beauteous thing, crafted by Salamander artisan-smiths, as regal as it was forbidding. Argos saw none of the arcing filigree or the inscribed illumination around its edge. He failed to notice the image rendered on its plated surface of Vulkan and T’kell, the first Master of the Forge, together. It was a sacred place that the gate protected, a temple as well as a battle station, and Argos was about to defile it.

At a haptic command from his mechadendrites the barrier slid open. Such was the vast size of the gate, it happened slowly and with the grinding of tremendous gears. The rendering of Vulkan and T’kell split down the middle, one on either side as two halves of burnished metal were revealed and drew apart.

Before it had opened fully, Argos strode through the widening crack and stepped into a glorious light issuing from within. This too, he did not perceive or appreciate. It was as if he walked amidst a cloud of static, his perception lost to external interference.

Except, it is coming from within… from inside me…

He fought, but his feet were moving of their own volition like he was suddenly a puppet on another master’s invisible strings.

Submitting to the machine, becoming one with the Omnissiah, had its sacrifices. They were payments of the flesh, in trade for knowledge and understanding. Will was not one of them. It had ever been the Master of the Forge’s greatest fear – the surrender of self. He might become hardened to emotion, embrace the coldness of metal, but he was always himself, the decision a conscious and well-reasoned one. This was nothing short of abomination.

He was beyond the threshold of the gate now, the great barrier resealing behind him. Teeth clenched he tried to override whatever command was compelling him to do what he knew he must not do. But it was evasive and time was running short. Muttered litanies between taut lips were all he could muster: rites of cleansing and repair, of purging and function.

There were pipes and cabling, the churning of vast machines. Incense overloaded his senses from braziers swinging on chains strung across the vaulted ceiling. Alcoves harboured relics and statues devoted to the primarch, to Masters of the Forge past and present.

This is a holy place and I am about to commit sacrilege.

The impression of the chamber became a blur as Argos’s optical senses betrayed him. Whirring plaintively, his bionic eye zeroed in on the armoured figure slaved to the seat of the cannon. Not all of the weapon was visible; much of the defence laser protruded outside of a plated dome, its massive barrel pointed heavenwards.

And so doth Vulkan watch over us, his eye unblinking against the darkling night…

It carried sigils upon its flanks and bore the mark of master artisan-smiths of an elder age. Vulkan’s hand was evident in it, for it was he who had forged it in millennia past.

The figure joined to it via mental interface uplink did not stir as Argos approached. He was intent on his duty, his eternal duty. Servitors and lesser adepts roamed the area too, consulting cogitators and examining streams of data, or observing monitors and augur arrays.

Something troubled the seated figure. He was much larger than his cohorts, armoured in red and green plate, the sigil of the cog emblazoned upon his plastron. He was distracted. In his state of half-self, it took Argos a few moments to understand why.

The augurs were not functioning. Nothing was functioning as it should. He saw the interference addling his mind echoed on their fractious screen-slates, heard the white noise mimicked in their audio outputs. Argos tried to isolate that, to help him find where the rogue signal originated from, but he would be too late.

One screen remained. It was the largest and hung above the cannon like a vast piece of obsidian. An image had appeared in the glass-like plane of a huge asteroid, several thousand kilometres away but closing. The zoom adjusted, as if fast-forwarding the rock’s trajectory. Sharp crags were revealed across a rough sphere wreathed in celestial gas. Its wake trailed like the tendrils of some ocean-born beast come to the surface in search of prey. And it was black, so black like the end of all things, a void against the void, dark upon dark.

Targeting data streamed across the visual in a series of runes and rapidly changing geometric diagrams. Some of the symbols flashed crimson as the weapon’s crosshairs aligned over the sprawling rock’s core. Adjustments were fed into the machine, subtly altering the prescribed position of impact.

Argos was close now. He staggered towards the armoured figure who was engrossed in his work, throwing aside a servitor that got in his way. The cyborganic crashed against a wall, leaking blood and fluid.

A message crackled belligerently on Argos’s retinal display: INOPERATIVE.

He cut down another, this time a tech-adept who had deliberately tried to impede his progress. It was as if his mind was no longer connected to his body, that he was witnessing the event from outside it and crying out in impotent horror.

‘Kor’hadron…’ he slurred, and the machine voice was fraught with static and did not sound like his own.

Now the armoured figure turned. His baleful helmet lenses regarded Argos, lit by amber flame.

‘Brother?’ asked the armoured figure he had called Kor’hadron. His anger faded, usurped by confusion. Another question emitted from the vox-grille on his battle-helm. It was an ornate piece, just like the rest of his armour. Argos recognised it but couldn’t quite place it, like a face just beyond his reach, like the salvation from this nightmare he couldn’t quite touch.

Kor’hadron’s words were lost to the static, rendered down into white noise as the Master of the Forge’s lucidity failed again.

It must have been something in his demeanour or perhaps the tiniest mote of a distress signal that Argos managed to transmit before he was utterly lost that alerted the other Forge Master. For when he struck, Kor’hadron moved. Synaptic cables snapped loose with a flash of angry sparks, a hiss of steam whipping them about like agitated vipers, as the blow struck the shoulder.

The power axe dug into Kor’hadron’s guard, cleaving it. There was a sudden cry of pain when the edge bit flesh.

Still reeling from the forced synaptic disconnect, Kor’hadron was slow and sluggish; whereas all of Argos’s disorientation vanished in the face of a certain, homicidal drive. He hacked again, and cut the other master a glancing blow that severed the cog on his plastron and dented his battle-plate.

A punch to the side of Kor’hadron’s head caved in the side of his helmet. One of the retinal lenses burst outwards in shower of super-hardened glass, revealing a bloodied eye wide with disbelief and rage.

He had no time to act on his fury as Argos pummelled him out of the chair and onto the deck nursing a swathe of energised cuts. A vicious backhand blow as he tried to rally smashed Kor’hadron off his feet and sent him skidding prone into the wall. There he stayed, unmoving.

Three more servitors, in an attempt to intervene, died quickly before Argos mounted the command chair to Vulkan’s Eye and jacked in.

It rebelled at first, whatever machine-spirit possessed the artefact realising the caustic element in its new symbiotic partner. Whatever was driving Argos, the impulse he continued to fight so hard to locate and neutralise, overwhelmed it.

Data streamed into his compromised cortex. Targeting matrices and alternative firing solutions presented themselves in an unfettered blur of rapid information exchange. He and the cannon were now one. The mental interface was complete.

Subconsciously he adjusted the aim of the cannon, a vast and complex procedure that took seconds as it aligned over an immense distance.

A warning flashed up on the screen. The core of the asteroid was highly combustible. A direct hit would result in a chain reaction that would release an explosion of such force and magnitude as would be felt across several planetary regions. Prognosis for its effect on Prometheus verged on catastrophic.

A vestige of resistance surfaced briefly in Argos’s mind. Kor’hadron, his fellow Forge Master, had intended to glance against the asteroid’s surface and spin it off its current trajectory. The calculations streamed by, jettisoned in favour of a more direct and entirely destructive approach.

I am about to unleash hell…

It was like shouting inside a vacuum. The body did not react.

His fingers were shaking as he manipulated the controls for a core shot. Argos struggled, the tension manifesting in the ropey vein protruding from his forehead. He opened his mouth, releasing a stream of anguished binaric that echoed off the chamber walls…

…but the foreign presence within him would not be denied.

Firing codes populated the data stream scrolling across Argos’s vision, the first act of an apocalyptic script set to the pages of fate over four decades before.

Vulkan’s Eye beaded down on its prey.

Power coils embedded in the weapon’s superstructure reached optimum levels as the artificial scream of capacitors at full tolerance drowned the chamber in ear-shredding noise. No human could bear it; even unaugmented Space Marines would experience massive auditory discomfort. This was a god-weapon, a slayer of monsters. In Argos’s tainted hands it had become the monster.

In a shriek of venting energy the defence laser fired. The whickering beam coursed from the barrel at incredible velocity, impelled by semi-nucleonic fusion. Its retort was felt in the resulting shockwave that rattled instrument panels and caused tracts of cabling to quiver.

The heavens were scoured by the beam’s passage, the Black Rock at its terminus impaled as if upon a lance of pure light.

Reaction was instantaneous as a second sun was born briefly in the void-night, its life expectancy cut cruelly short as it went from red dwarf to supernova in a matter of micro-seconds.

Argos perceived none of this – no one did. Only his mind’s eye bore witness.

False dawn bathed all of Nocturne below.

Hell was unleashed.

CHAPTER NINE

I

Outgunned

As the speeder bounced across the Pyre, Val’in struggled to sight down his carbine.

The pilot rode it close to the desert floor, ripping through canyons of ash-sand and skirting over crag-ridged dunes at skin-stretching speed. It left little room for error. One slip, a jutting rock striking the propulsion plate, a miscalculated turn and it was all over.

The slant-eyed jackals chasing them would show no remorse with their knives and barbs if the Salamanders crashed.

Val’in saw them in grainy green luminescence, through the crosshairs of his lasrifle: three arrow-shaped skimmers that mirrored the one they’d broken earlier. Their segmented prows were armed with spiked rams that glistened in the sun. A cohort of warriors, clad in night-black, crowded each vehicle’s deckplate, cackling and jeering.

And they were gaining.

Val’in fired and missed.

Exor and Heklarr had similar misfortune.

‘It’s like shooting Aethonian fire-serpents in the dark, one hand tied behind the back,’ grumbled the former.

‘Ba’ken, try and keep her steady,’ Prebian shouted against the wind. They’d picked up further speed, ramping up the thrusters to maximum in the hope of losing their pursuers. All it had achieved so far was to hinder communication and make aiming more difficult. ‘Have you ever tried skewering gnorl-whales in an Acerbian sea swell? This is tougher.’

Fire-serpents, gnorl-whales, all killers; even a pack of leo’nid or colony of scorpiad would be preferable to the hunters that closed on them as the sun painted the sky as blood above them.

It wasn’t just the jerky motion of the speeder. The skimmers were protected by some kind of flickering field that masked their true movements and provided unnatural camouflage. Doubtless it was how they’d managed to infiltrate so far into the desert without detection.

Ba’ken kept his attention on the route ahead, switching between that and the vector map scrolling by quickly on the control console. The augur slate displayed a wire-mapped version of the upcoming terrain, the contours described in hexagonal delineation so he could predict when to turn or how close they were to a ravine or ridge. The construct was a basic one but highly accurate.

But regardless of Ba’ken’s desert-craft, his knowledge of the surroundings and the ear-pulsing acceleration of the speeder, he was not able to shake the dark eldar. He suspected they could catch them at any time but chose to torment their prey first. He dearly wanted to shut down the engines and meet them in honourable battle, but even that would be denied him. Without aid, outnumbered, outgunned, death looked certain. He avowed the savages would not torture him, though. He would not submit to chains or any other snare. Death in battle was the only outcome he would willingly accept.

I am Helfist. I am gladiator.

Even outside the Themian hell-pits, he felt the first tendrils of transition brush across his psyche.

A whickering burst of dark energy lit up the side of the speeder in Ba’ken’s peripheral vision, forcing him to swerve. He rode the move up a ridge of sharp rocks, propulsion plate shrieking loudly as it scraped over them. A second burst had him pull to the left, a jinking transition a Ravenwing would’ve been proud of, but it threw him into the path of a steeper dune.

‘Impact!’ he snarled, piling on as much loft as he could muster, as the nose of the speeder dug into the ash-sand and sent squalls of dirt rolling over the hull. Thickening cloud obliterated the view so Ba’ken relied on the augurs to navigate the blacked-out terrain. He managed to bring the nose back up, using the momentum of the thrusters to push them free of the dune. They were trailing fire and smoke. Several warning-runes flashed up on the control console in red.

‘I know, I know,’ he muttered under his breath.

Behind him, he heard Prebian curse as he and the aspirants struggled to hold on.

There was a brief sensation of weightlessness as they launched into the air like a mortar shell. The sharp parabola brought them down again within seconds, hard ash-sand rushing to meet them with bone-jolting force. They cleared the ridge, Ba’ken driving wild and on instinct at this point, and plunged into a deep canyon threaded with acid streams.

Instantly, the already acrid air became sulphurous. The speeder’s green paintwork started to crack and peel away as it was eroded.

An acid-sink, even a shallow one, was no place to touch down. It was one of Nocturne’s deadliest hazards.

Ba’ken had brought them here deliberately.

From the back of the speeder, Val’in watched as the first skimmer reached the crest of the ridge and dived down into the ravine. Its driver was unprepared for what lay beyond. The aspirant looked on in grim satisfaction at the sudden screaming, the dark eldar without helmets feeling the acid burn more acutely than the rest. It was unfortunate for them that the skimmer driver was vain enough to eschew any face protection. Still flickering with the action of its alien field generator, the craft turned and then ditched, burying itself nose first into a mire of sulphuric acid.

The stench of burning flesh resolved on the hot breeze, as did the wailing of the dying xenos.

As the speeder levelled out and cleared the ravine Prebian rose from a crouching position, one hand against the roll bar to steady himself. His face was untouched.

‘We are born in Vulkan’s forge,’ he told the perishing eldar. Even the aspirants, not yet having reached their full apotheosis, only carried minor burn scars. ‘We know what true fire is.’

It was only a minor victory. The other skimmers were wise to the trap and swerved around the ravine, leaving the dying to their fate.

‘They are malicious bastards,’ said Heklarr, tracking the pair of craft as they took opposite sides of the high ridge surrounding the drop.

‘They will give us the same regard,’ Prebian told them. He turned his head. ‘Ba’ken, we have gained crucial minutes. Put them to good use.’

‘We’ve taken damage. Our engines might not last out and the propulsion plate…’ Ba’ken gestured to the control console awash with urgently flashing crimson.

‘Unto the anvil, brother…’ Prebian held his shoulder guard. ‘Do whatever you can.’

The alien cannons started up again, dark-light raking the air next to the speeder. Ba’ken rode the gauntlet valiantly until a beam caught his tail fin and threw the vehicle off balance. They were careening down a wide plain of ash, shuddering violently. He fought the controls, trying to wrench the speeder back onto some kind of line, when the sky ahead burst suddenly into magnesium white. The flare of light roared across the heavens as a second sun blazed into life above. A blast wave came with it, the epicentre in deep space felt even on the surface. It smashed into the speeder like a god’s fist, turning the vehicle over and tossing it desultorily across the ash-sand.

His harness kept Ba’ken seated, strapped into the rolling mass of fire and metal as the others were thrown painfully clear. He felt the wreckage close in around him as the flanks, hull and roof of the speeder bent and caved each time they hit the ground. He gritted his teeth, trusting to his genhanced resilience to save him.

Without knowing why, the words spoken to him earlier by Dak’ir returned amidst a flood of kaleidoscopic sensation.

I wanted to see that you are alive and unscathed, brother… At least part of that is true.

As Ba’ken’s world broke down into slowly shattering fragments of light, sound and pain, he realised those words had been accurate.

I am not yet whole. I am not yet inviolable.

The world reached equilibrium again, time flowed as normal. Ba’ken could smell fire. He tasted blood. In several places he felt broken bone. Blackness took him.

Of the aspirants, Val’in was the first to rise. A moment later he realised he’d been hauled to his feet by Master Prebian.

‘Take some cover,’ he was saying, though he heard it as if through a dense fog that was slow to clear. He stumbled towards a small patch of rock, hunkering down as the dark eldar reaved in.

Prebian got Heklarr and Exor to the rocks before the shooting began. It was pinning fire, intended to herd not to wound or kill. Val’in saw him consider the wreck clutching Ba’ken in its metal embrace, but he couldn’t reach it.

His breathing was coming hard and fast, partly a reaction to the sudden adrenaline rush from the crash and partly his genhanced physiology preparing him for imminent battle.

The skimmers slowed to a crawl, put up their guns and then hovered in front of the beleaguered Salamanders, taunting them.

Val’in leaned on the rocks to steady his aim but then retracted his hand smartly as a rime of frost began to coat it.

‘Master…’

Prebian’s narrowed gaze roved over the gaps between the raiders and the shimmering dead space either side.

‘They’re called mandrakes, aspirant.’

He didn’t elaborate further but Val’in followed his eye-line and made out the vaguest suggestion of something stirring in the long shadows cast by the skimmers. It flitted from the patches of darkness, itself a concomitant part of the shadow, darting almost imperceptibly between them until alighting in the one thrown off the rocks where the Salamanders were crouching. One shadow became several, like black blade slashes anthropomorphising in front of him.

‘My lord…’ uttered Exor. Hoarfrost crusted his vambrace and greave.

Prebian had seen it too. ‘Withdraw,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Go to your blades.’

The aspirants drew their Themian hunting knives in a flat scrape of steel.

They were backing up, leaving the cover of the rocks behind them. The dark eldar didn’t want to shoot them down like dogs; their mandrakes wanted to gut them like swine instead and wear their steaming entrails as a trophy.

‘I cannot see them,’ hissed Heklarr, glancing uncertainly in the direction of the waiting skimmers.

‘They are close,’ whispered Exor.

Val’in mimicked Prebian, staying silent and watchful.

‘How can we fight something we can’t even– hurrlcch!’ Heklarr staggered forwards, spitting blood. The Themian knife slipped from his dead fingers, as a gore-slick blade resolved as from the ether jutting out of his back. In front of him, standing in the inky pool of his own shadow was a mandrake.

Lank, white hair cascaded from an alien skull. Its body was lithe, clad in rags and not entirely fixed in this plane of reality. It flickered in and out of resolution like a weak pict signal, syncopated and aglow with eldritch flesh-etched runes.

Prebian struck a second before Val’in. He drew a hollow shriek from the dreaded creature, whereas the aspirant only cleaved air.

‘Open fire!’ he roared, swinging up his bolter and spraying the area with shells. Poor dead Heklarr jerked and bucked with the explosive weapon impacts but Prebian was taking no chances. ‘Watch your shadows,’ he said as the two remaining aspirants opened up with their carbines.

Full auto raked the ash-sand, flashing between the darting half-glimpsed figures of the mandrakes as the rest of the dark eldar returned fire.

‘Back, back!’

Prebian urged them to retreat but was careful not to let them give in to their instincts and flee. They were not yet Scouts, let alone Space Marines; their human predilections might still hold some sway.

Val’in took a splinter round to the shoulder, dropped his knife, but kept a hold of his carbine. The power cell was almost exhausted. He had another but wouldn’t get a chance to reload. In the wake of the intense shooting, it seemed the mandrakes had withdrawn but that still left the pair of skimmers and the warriors aboard.

They were moving quickly now, accuracy sacrificed for rate of fire and speed.The wide ash plain narrowed into a tighter bottleneck of rocks and high ridges. It dipped into an unseen trench that had Val’in scrambling with the sudden shift in terrain. For a few moments they were screened from view by the high lip of the canyon’s mouth. The short bout of speed it afforded got them to the middle of the basin before the skimmers came over the rise in single file.

Shadows prowled the smoke-wreathed summits of the ridges on either side, but they weren’t mandrakes. Even in obscured silhouette, Val’in knew sa’hrk when he saw them. He realised that in their haste to outrun the dark eldar they must have overshot the edge of the sa’hrk’s feeding grounds and ended up deep in the creatures’ territory.

‘Master…’ he began.

‘Stay at the lowest point of the basin,’ hissed Prebian. His eyes never left the approaching dark eldar but he knew the other predators were close. ‘The ones on the ridge are not alone.’

Smoke lay in swathes at the nadir of the canyon. It had come as if from nowhere, funnelled down from the ash-drifts rolling across the plains above and creating thick and choking smog. The xenos tried to hover above it, but soon even they were forced into the grey morass to hunt for their prey.

‘Ba’ken chose this route well,’ muttered Prebian.

Val’in agreed but couldn’t banish the fear that the sergeant was dead. Even if he’d survived the speeder crash, there was nothing to prevent the mandrakes torturing then executing him.

His morbid thoughts were arrested by a crewman on one of the skimmers shouting something in the barbed dark eldar dialect to his captain. Val’in saw him point to the high ridges. At a barked command a few of the warriors aimed then fired rifles into the smoke-shrouded rocks.

High-pitched impact sounds revealed a cluster of missed attempts, but the prowling shadows scattered. The crewman who’d spotted the roaming sa’hrk was laughing when a lean shape sprang out of the smog and claimed the skimmer’s gunner. A half-choked scream echoed out of the smoke before xenos and beast were gone.

That was when the firing started in earnest. The warriors aboard both skiffs unleashed their rifles and assault weapons in a blurring fusillade that tore up the smog. More shadows pounced from the darkness, one arrested in flight, transfixed by a dark-light beam; another bearing a xenos to the ground. Several of the sa’hrk landed on the skimmers’ deckplates. They savaged limbs and torsos before being bought down by combined rifle fire or the jagged blades of falchions.

A steady stream of the creatures were spilling down the ridge-side now, curt, ululating throat-cries organising the pack. But these weren’t Ignean nomads or even desert-weary Scout aspirants; they were also predators, albeit of a different stripe.

Weaving through the melee, the mandrakes returned. Val’in saw their outlines blurring in the smog. It was impossible to track them but no sa’hrk could lay tooth or claw on the apparitions and it was beginning to thin their numbers.

‘Should we engage or retreat?’ Exor sounded conflicted.

‘Neither,’ Prebian replied. ‘Stay together, back to back. Form a circle.’

Val’in faced towards the dark eldar. It was hard to tell whether there were three or thirty mandrakes, they moved so swiftly and seamlessly. Distracted, he almost missed the sa’hrk running at them before a well-placed las-bolt ended it. The desert predators were non-discriminating and had no allegiance to their native-born.

But they were losing.

A deeper throat-cry from an unseen great sa’hrk signalled the retreat. The pack broke off, low against the desert basin, before scurrying back up the canyon walls to find easier prey elsewhere on the Pyre.

The dark eldar had been badly mauled by the ambush, their warriors stripped by over half in a matter of a few blood-drenched minutes. Unscathed, the mandrakes came on at last, having decided to claim the heads of the Salamanders for themselves. Whilst the others were still licking their wounds what appeared to be a female mandrake whickered into existence in front of the survivors. Her eyes were shrouded by her grey-white hair that seemed to ghost about her narrow face. Runes on her coal-black skin shimmered and a veil of frost preceded her, reaching for Val’in and the others.

‘No point in running. This is as far as we go,’ said Prebian, the hope dying in his voice. ‘Stand your ground.’ He triggered a burst from his bolter but the mandrake disappeared. By the time the muzzle flare had died she was within striking distance.

Prebian swung at her with his gladius but she bent away from the blow like a serpent, stabbing him through the shoulder with a thrust of her own blade. The Master of Recruits cried out in agony as the evil weapon penetrated his defences.

Val’in and Exor were only beginning to move when a second blade materialised in the mandrake’s other hand, intended for Prebian’s neck and a quick death. She got as far as the pull back before her head jerked violently and blood vacated the side of her skull in a red plume.

She flickered once in vain, mouth frozen in a silent scream, and crumpled to the ground.

A second shot – Val’in heard it as a whip of displaced air – took out the second skimmer’s gunner, neutralising the dark-light cannons. By now the xenos had realised the sa’hrk preceded a greater menace and were scouring the ridgeline again. They should’ve been watching the mouth of the canyon instead as a stampede of sauroch came barrelling into it mewling and baying.

The foremost cattle-beasts were cut down by frantic, panicked shard-fire but the others behind them drove on, trampling the dead and then crashing into the skimmers. Sauroch were bulky, muscular beasts with hard, horned snouts and powerful forelegs. The skimmers were swept aside and broken apart on the beasts’ armoured backs, their riders borne down and crushed beneath pounding hooves.

‘Climb!’ Prebian led the aspirants scrambling up the ridge. Some of the xenos tried to do the same but were either too late or picked off by sniper fire.

By the time the stampede had worn itself out, the skimmers were destroyed and the xenos were dead almost to an eldar. Some of the survivors made it back to the lip of the canyon and fled into the desert to be hunted down by the sa’hrk; the rest languished bloodily on their backs, impaled on wreckage or half-crushed to death.

One of the wounded tried to rise, reaching for his weapon. His head snapped back, venting crimson, before he had even touched the grip.

Val’in followed the shot’s trajectory and saw a figure walking brazenly down the ridge-side, a sniper rifle held loosely in his grasp. He was large, broad around the shoulders too, and looked like a drover. With the scarves and boonie hat, it was tough to make out a face. Any detail was concealed. He moved down the mouth of the canyon where he’d started the stampede. Hitching the rifle onto his back where it hung across his left shoulder on a strap, he parted his long drover’s coat and unsheathed a gladius.

That was the first thing that gave Val’in pause as he tracked the stranger through the sights of his carbine. The second came when he stooped to slit a dark eldar’s throat and there was a brief flash of fire-red that lit the shadows beneath the hat.

Prebian was smiling as he pushed down Val’in’s aim.

‘Be calm, aspirant. You draw on an ally, though I can scarcely believe what I am seeing for myself.’

‘Who is that?’ asked Exor in a low voice as Prebian went to meet the stranger.

‘I have no idea,’ Val’in confessed, ‘but I think I know what he is.’

They watched Prebian approach the drover, who had finished executing the wounded and stood up to receive him.

‘Brother,’ said the master in greeting.

The drover nodded, unravelling his scarves and pulling back his hat to reveal a blade-thin, onyx-black face.

‘Master Prebian,’ he said.

Prebian laughed. ‘Apothecary Fugis, I thought you were dead.’

II

Salvage

‘I was never dead, just absent,’ Fugis said. He’d done all he could to help Ba’ken and was crouching down alongside him. Extracting the wounded sergeant from the wreck was difficult but not impossible. Fortunately, the dark eldar had left Ba’ken for dead. Either that or they’d intended to return for him later when they were done with the others. Fugis had put a sizeable crimp in those plans. Prebian was standing next to him, scouring the horizon line with the magnoculars. Besides Ba’ken, it was about all they’d managed to salvage from the speeder.

The aspirants were crouched down, clustered around a dully flashing beacon Fugis had speared into the ground as soon as they’d got Ba’ken loose.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t reach you sooner,’ he said, reviewing the injured Salamander’s vitals. Without a bio-scanner he had to perform the medical analysis by eye and touch. There were some fractures, even possible breaks in the ossmodula skeleton and some internal bleeds. Ba’ken was unconscious but hadn’t drifted into coma. It was a positive sign.

‘I found the beacon in a crashed ship, deep in the desert,’ he said, apropos of nothing. ‘I didn’t think the skeletal remains inside would need it.’

Prebian lowered the magnoculars. ‘And you left us a message too.’

Fugis was still busying himself with Ba’ken’s care.

‘Ah, the dagger… Yes, I took that from a straggler who’d lingered to torture a Themian desert trader. I couldn’t save the human but I choked the xenos easily enough. They’d lost some warriors already to the Pyre. I didn’t think one more would be missed. There is a hierarchy. Those on the lower rungs are given little regard.’

‘How long were you tracking us for?’

‘A while. I’d been following the xenos much longer.’

Prebian paused to think. ‘Was that explosion something to do with them?’

‘I’m not sure. Possibly.’

‘I think there are more xenos at large in the remote regions, away from the scrying towers near the cities.’

‘I agree,’ said Fugis, ‘but those we killed were the only ones I’ve seen. I believe this to be a larger incursion, the dark eldar merely the vanguard of a much greater force.’

Prebian nodded then looked down at him. ‘What made you come back? Did you find what you were seeking in the desert?’

Fugis met his gaze. ‘My Burning Walk was over. That ship I found didn’t just have a beacon inside. There was something else too, a sign.’

‘What sign? Could you discern its meaning?’

‘I not sure yet, but I must speak with Lord Tu’Shan immediately. It’s why I returned.’

Prebian frowned. ‘You said you found this sign in a ship. Who did it belong to?’

Fugis smiled. The resulting tightening of his features only made him appear more intimidating.

‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

The hard drone of gunship engines getting closer forestalled further questioning as a Thunderhawk responding to the distress beacon came into view. They all knew it well.

It was the Fire-wyvern.

Val’in had listened to the exchange between Fugis and Prebian keenly, only trading occasional glances with Exor who was keeping a watch.

‘Who is he?’ Exor asked.

Val’in shook his head. ‘An Apothecary that used to be part of Third, I think. I’ve heard his name mentioned before and he was on Scoria but that’s all I know.’

‘What did he mean when he said he’d found “a sign”?’

Gunship engines pummelled the breeze, creating hot vortices in their downdrafts. Both aspirants looked up as the shadow of the Thunderhawk eclipsed them. Landing stanchions began to extend as the embarkation ramp slowly opened.

‘I know as much as you, brother,’ said Val’in.

At the top of the ramp there stood a Salamander in artificered armour. Fugis recognised the suit and the warrior who wore it, even if the warrior did not recognise him.

He was an Inferno Guard, the broken command squad of Adrax Agatone and Third Company. The snarling orange drake head blazed proudly on his pauldron and a fanged battle-helm rested in the crook of his arm.

‘You are a welcome sight, Brother Malicant.’

The Salamander bowed humbly.

‘I am glad we found you when we did. Come aboard, my master, there is much–’ He paused to look intently at the drover. He frowned, disbelieving and then…

‘Kesare’s breath. Fugis, is that you?’

Fugis nodded. He too had once been part of the Inferno Guard. It seemed so very long ago now.

Malicant came down the ramp and embraced him warmly. He clapped his hands on the Apothecary’s shoulders.

‘By the primarch, we all thought you were dead!’

‘A common mistake, it seems.’ He risked a wry glance at Prebian.

The Master of Recruits stepped forwards. ‘We have wounded and must make for Prometheus at once.’

Malicant’s face fell.

‘What’s wrong, brother?’ asked Prebian.

‘Prometheus has been badly damaged. It might not be possible to make dock.’

‘An attack? So soon?’ He exchanged a worried expression with Fugis, who remained stern.

Malicant was shaking his head. ‘No, master. An explosion in deep space, but communication is down and details are slow to appear.’

The magnesium flare, Prebian realised. To be felt so egregiously on the planet surface, the magnitude of whatever combustion event preceded it must have been immense.

‘Where is Dak’ir?’ asked Fugis, his tone cutting.

‘On Prometheus, brother. The Pantheon Council meets to decide his fate.’

‘They must be roused at once.’ He leaned in close, fire burning in his eyes. ‘I cannot express how important it is that I reach Prometheus and Hazon Dak’ir. Nocturne’s fate might well depend on it.’

Skethe was alone when he returned to the canyon. He did so via the deepening shadows and the patches of darkness between the grey crags. Travelling as a whisper across the sand plain, he took great cares not to be spotted by the departing vessel. It was an ugly thing, flat-edged and clumsy-looking. The ship roared away on dirty jets, leaving the nightfiend to his task.

It had been close. The stampede was not entirely without cunning for a mon’keigh but a true servant of the old city was wiser. Skethe had survived where all else had perished. The ravening beasts of the desert killed the craven. It meant he wouldn’t have to at least, and could delight in the psychic echoes of their suffering before She Who Thirsts claimed them.

The morsel was enough to stave off the soul-hunger for a while; certainly, it would sustain him until he reached his ship. The stripped down Razorwing was waiting nearby, cloaked with nightfields and other visual bafflers so as to defy detection. He had never intended to join the ground assault – let the genhanced mon’keigh and their cohorts die in that meatgrinder. Skethe wanted heads, lots of them. He liked flesh-trophies, keeping the great many he’d procured over the ages in a secret vault only he knew how to locate that existed between dimensions. Tongues, fingers, he had even collected voices and heartbeats across the millennia of his existence. The damaged space port carried an infirmary of sorts. There would be a great many wounded in its halls very soon, all ripe for the edge of his executioner’s blade. He would do it to honour Kheradruakh, the great Decapitator. Perhaps one day, Skethe would add the skull of his patron to his collection too.

Such vainglorious thoughts evaporated when he found what he was looking for.

‘Siliathe…’ he purred in a susurrus that could just as easily be mistaken for the turning of the breeze.

The dying woman turned. She’d blended into the shadows of a rocky overhang but Skethe perceived her easily enough.

‘Are you dying, sister?’ he asked, supping up her pain like it was nectar.

Siliathe’s lips moved but she couldn’t speak. She was clinging to her soul with slipping fingers, but didn’t plead or beg. As a mandrake, she would have shown an equal measure of pitiless disdain should their roles have been reversed.

‘She will come soon,’ he promised. ‘Your suffering will be long, however, but I cannot stay to enjoy it. I must only ask you this – does he know whom I serve?’

Siliathe’s eyes widened but her feigned shock was far from convincing even in her death throes.

‘Do not lie,’ he warned her. ‘We three are coven, and share our secrets.’ The sigils carved into the flesh of his half-naked body pulsed hungrily as they drank in Siliathe’s pain. ‘Syarrth is dead, dwelling in eternal soul-torment, so I cannot ask her. Tell me now: does he know whom I serve?’

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Siliathe shook her head.

Skethe smiled but there was nothing benign about the gesture.

‘Thank you, sister,’ he said. ‘I believe you.’ The nightfiend leaned in close to the dying mandrake. ‘And now a confession from me. I lied.’ He placed his hand upon her chest. ‘I will watch you die and take from you all that’s left to give…’

Siliathe tried to breathe but she was already dead, her soul tumbling into an abyss of everlasting agony.

‘Your final breath,’ Skethe whispered, clenching his fist as if he held this last kernel of life force in his hand and devouring it. ‘Delicious…’

He slid away like smoke on the wind, a half-remembered shadow, and made for his ship.

CHAPTER TEN

I

Absolution

A bout of agitated conjecture became a clamour amongst the gathering as they struggled to comprehend the magnitude of what the Forgefather was suggesting.

Tu’Shan held his hand aloft to restore calm.

‘The Unbound Flame in a vessel of flesh and blood? Are you certain of this?’ he asked He’stan.

‘Nothing is certain, but it is my belief.’

Vel’cona remained unconvinced. ‘How can this be? Vulkan hid his gifts almost ten thousand years ago, yet Dak’ir has not even earned a single platinum stud.’

‘Could the primarch have begun a confluence of events that would reach their terminus at this point?’ suggested Dac’tyr. ‘Could he have foreseen this, somehow known a vessel for the Unbound Flame would emerge in this time, at this hour of crisis?’

‘It is ten thousand years ago, brother-captain,’ said Vel’cona. ‘How can we possibly know? At best it is myth, at worst it is maliciously false.’

‘When we entered the Archimedes Rex and found that casket with Isstvan’s origination stamp, I thought we had discovered something monumental.’ Pyriel looked humble as he spoke, as if he realised he was part of something unfolding that was so much greater than him or any one of them. ‘I thought we had found Vulkan, and that he was not dead but merely… absent. I do not know if Dak’ir is somehow the personification of the Unbound Flame but I believe he is a herald.’

‘One of doom and destruction,’ snapped Vel’cona, annoyed at his protégé. ‘I knew you were an optimist, Pyriel, but I did not think you credulous. There are countless prophecies that speak of our father’s return but we cannot trust in any of them to come to pass. We must look to ourselves, not fate ten thousand years old, for our survival. Vulkan is gone. Dak’ir is not the Unbound Flame, nor is he some kind of messianic figure, a deific artefact made flesh. He is a dangerous psyker, his strength unprecedented, but it is strength that he cannot marshal. I have witnessed it for myself and seen the world drowned in fire and blood.’ He jabbed a gauntleted finger at Pyriel, ‘So have you, Epistolary.’

Elysius raised his hands for calm. ‘None of us here can see all ends, brother,’ he said in a conciliatory tone. ‘What of our bonds as Salamanders, our fealty to Prometheus?’

Vel’cona was quick to retort. ‘Have you forgotten our pledge to the tribes of Nocturne, our sworn duty to protect the weak from any threat?’ He gestured to Dak’ir. ‘One stands before you, Elysius. If an unexploded bomb is in your midst, you do not sit back and hope it doesn’t go off. You do something about it.’

‘Dak’ir is not some piece of metal without breath or blood.’ The Chaplain appealed to his Chapter Master.

Tu’Shan sighed deeply. The matter was not a simple one. He heard all testimonies, confronted with the incredible possibility that what stood before him in chains was no mere Salamander but an artefact clad in skin and wrought of bone, a legacy of his primarch.

‘Answer me this,’ he said. ‘Who am I to trust? You are both my loyal servants and paragons of this Chapter, one who counsels with the mind, the other with the spirit. Even our Lord He’stan can give no clear answer.’ The Forgefather had retaken his seat and nodded at this acknowledgement.

They had reached an impasse and were teetering at the cusp of an impossible decision that divided the masters of the Chapter down the middle as keenly as any blade.

In the end, resolution came from an unlikely source.

‘Lords…’ A stentorian voice, built to bellow not whisper, resonated around the chamber.

Praetor, who in his role as enforcer had remained silent throughout the proceedings, got to his feet. The veteran sergeant of the Firedrakes dropped to one knee, his head bowed.

Tu’Shan raised him with a gesture.

‘Speak, Herculon.’ He used Praetor’s first name. Such informality was beyond the veteran sergeant of the Firedrakes, his temperament as stern and rigid as his appearance.

‘Word from the outer defences breaches the sanctity of this chamber,’ he said.

‘It must be of dire import to interrupt a ruling of the Pantheon Council,’ Vel’cona interjected, making his displeasure obvious to all.

Praetor looked askance at the Master Librarian.

‘It is. A massive asteroid on a collision course with the planet has been destroyed in close proximity to Nocturne.’

‘So the danger has been averted? I fail to see the threat here,’ said Tu’Shan, but knew that no Fire-born would ever break the sacred vow of isolation imposed during a conclave of the Pantheon Council without reason.

‘The asteroid was fashioned of a volatile core. The resulting explosion has inflicted tremendous destruction upon the space port. We are too deep and insulated to feel its aftershock.’ Praetor’s face darkened further, weary with loss for the deaths he had witnessed in recent times. ‘Many are dying.’

Dismayed at this news, Dac’tyr asked, ‘How was this even possible? Our deep space augurs would’ve detected the mass long before it could threaten us.’

‘I do not know, Fourth Captain,’ Praetor answered.

‘What of Kor’hadron?’ asked Elysius, ‘and Vulkan’s Eye? This rock should be dust floating in the void.’

‘The Master of the Forge Secundus has so far been unreachable, a communication interrupt at Hangar Seven.’ Praetor had heard this information only seconds ago and was being updated by a broken uplink to Prometheus’s comm-feed. So far, details were vague but something had clearly gone wrong.

‘Hangar Seven,’ said Agatone, ‘what do we have docked there?’

‘Two squadrons of gunships in for refit and repair,’ said Dac’tyr, ‘and the Archimedes Rex.’

Pyriel spoke up. The tension in his voice betrayed him. ‘The Adeptus Mechanicus forge-ship?’

‘What of it?’ asked Dac’tyr.

Agatone answered for the Epistolary. ‘It’s the self-same ship a strike-team from Third entered over four years ago. It led us to the prophecy.’

A resonant voice stole the attention of the chamber.

‘It is the Black Rock, this doom that sunders Prometheus. We have seen it before, on the ash world of Scoria. It is a harbinger of death and blood, beginning the Time of Fire when a sword will be unsheathed and wreak conflagration on the world.’

Dak’ir only realised it was he that had spoken when the eyes of the entire congregation were upon him. Even Pyriel appeared disturbed by his pronouncement.

Vel’cona was quick to seize upon the moment. ‘He is a prophet of doom to us. Condemned by his own words!’

‘The apocalypse weapon, the attack,’ said Pyriel in an urgent tone, ‘it is happening now. This is merely the beginning. All of this,’ he gestured widely with his arms to encompass the entire chamber, ‘is but a distraction. Nihilan comes and he brings ships and a burning lance of light that will split Nocturne and this Chapter in half! A year has passed and our vigilance has ebbed. Our ships are back in their docks, our eye has wavered from the darkness around us, but it is here now – the Dragon Warriors are here. Now.’

Tu’Shan’s face was ridged with displeasure. He gestured to Praetor.

‘Show me my enemy, brother-sergeant,’ he said in a low growl.

Praetor saluted to his Regent then took a holo-picting device slaved to Prometheus’s augurs. With its destruction, the Black Rock’s magnetic field was dissipating and the interference that had dogged the station’s viewing arrays was alleviated. A grainy image fed from the small device in a reverse triangle of green light.

‘East quadrant,’ Tu’Shan ordered. An aspect of Prometheus that faced in the direction where the asteroid had come from resolved on the display.

A vast field of floating debris was revealed. Behind that there came a flurry of small vessels, each no larger than a frigate in size. The fleet was eclectic, consisting of both xenos and renegade ships.

Dac’tyr leaned forwards to inspect the image closer.

‘War spheres and dark eldar escorts. There are some smaller gunships and fighters of non-specific design too.’

‘Mercenaries,’ Mulcebar spat with distaste.

‘A vanguard,’ said Tu’Shan.

‘We are beyond these proceedings now,’ Elysius told them all, ‘and must look to the defence of Nocturne. It would appear we have already lost Vulkan’s Eye, what more are we willing to sacrifice?’

‘Our Brother-Chaplain is right,’ said He’stan. ‘Nothing we do here can alter fate now. It has begun. Our backs are to the anvil, brothers. Vulkan’s judgement falls on us all.’

Another ship, coming in the wake of the smaller vessels, appeared on the holo-image. It was a vast, ugly thing; a bastardised Space Marine strike cruiser debased by the attention of traitors. A small flotilla of escorts surrounded it. The jutting prow lance of the capital ship was like nothing the Chapter Master had ever seen. This then was the apocalypse weapon Pyriel had warned them about.

‘That vessel is the Hell-stalker,’ said Agatone. ‘Nihilan’s flagship.’

‘And it bears the seismic cannon as its main armament,’ added Elysius. ‘A scaled up version of the one we saw on Scoria.’

‘We knew this moment would come,’ said Pyriel, ‘and have to stop looking for potential enemies within when faced with certain ones without.’ His pleading gaze was for Vel’cona, who he hoped would understand.

Tu’Shan’s face was a mask of barely restrained anger.

‘Council is ended,’ he announced flatly. ‘All efforts must be made to help our beleaguered brothers. Marshal any and all forces you have at your disposal.’

All present nodded.

‘Lord Dac’tyr…’ he began.

‘I have the Firelord, Vulkan’s Wrath and Flamewrought void-anchored and ready to engage.’

Tu’Shan nodded approvingly. ‘Your quiet wisdom humbles us all, brother-captain. Deploy your fleet and any others still docked that can be made void-ready. You can be certain our enemy means to press his fleet immediately within our defensive cordon. Since Vulkan’s Eye and much of our orbital defences are no longer functioning we will have to counter it ship-to-ship.’

Dac’tyr made a curt salute and departed swiftly.

‘All reserve and battle companies are to embark gunships and make for the surface at once. Even on his best day, Captain Dac’tyr cannot contain a fleet of that size. Landers will likely deploy in the deserts, which will be to their cost, but rest assured the traitors and their sell-swords will be approaching our Sanctuary Cities en masse. Fortification of any land-bound settlements is our priority here,’ Tu’Shan ordered. He turned, ‘Praetor…’

‘Ours is the void-war, my lord.’

‘Indeed.’

Praetor slammed a fist to his plastron and went to summon the rest of the Firedrakes, accompanied by the masked guardians, as the other captains also made to depart.

He’stan was already gone, intent on his own mission.

Only five others remained with the Chapter Master.

One of them was Dak’ir.

‘Brother, I do this because I know it is right.’ Tu’Shan was looking at Vel’cona.

The Master Librarian was stern-faced. ‘You are sparing him.’

Tu’Shan nodded. ‘We need every bolter and blade,’ he said, and turned to Dak’ir.

The refractor field shimmered and then collapsed at the Regent’s silent command.

Pyriel stepped forwards to remove his nullifying bonds.

Emek was perturbed enough to speak out. ‘But, my liege…’

Tu’Shan’s glare in the Apothecary’s direction was scathing. ‘Concern yourself with the wounded, brother. There will be many already in need of aid. My decision is made, for good or ill.’

Emek gave no further dissent and bowed, leaving for the Apothecarion. Tu’Shan turned to Pyriel.

‘Get him into his armour,’ he said with a half-glance at Dak’ir.

‘Take him to the Reclusiam, we’ll do it there. It’s too far to the armorium,’ said Elysius. ‘Besides, our wayward brother will be in need of some benediction.’

Tu’Shan nodded his approval.

‘The time for debate is over,’ he said. ‘War calls and every Fire-born son of Nocturne must answer. We face annihilation and I will not submit to that fate without a fight.’

II

Unleashed

Emek did not reach the Apothecarion easily. It was carnage outside the confines of the chamber. A mood of barely shackled panic pervaded the space port as those aboard struggled to comprehend what had happened and how they were going to contain it.

Fires had broken out in several areas and entire sections were sealed off by emergency bulkheads to prevent atmospheric depressurisation. Many sectors were already registered as being breached. Secondary explosions, promethium reserves cooking off after the initial impact or as a result of slow structural degeneration, shook the station’s chambers and corridors.

The hangars themselves had been the worst hit. Praise Dac’tyr for his foresight that there were any vessels left to launch. Though information was flowing painfully slowly around the stricken space port, it was clear that the great asteroid known as the Black Rock had broken apart explosively, unleashing a meteor storm upon Prometheus. Some of the slower-moving chunks, trapped in Nocturne’s gravity well, had yet to impact. Others were hitting the station constantly in a barrage.

Emek was slammed against the wall as a particularly violent tremor hit and cursed his injuries for how they weakened him. They had made him into a ghost, confined him to his infirmary and the hollow halls of Prometheus. He was glad of it. To think of his brothers’ pity made him sick. He had been a warrior once, on course for a glorious future. All of that had ended in ignominy the moment the psychic fire had half-destroyed him aboard the Protean.

Now all he could do was labour to repair others, spare them the same fate.

None should suffer like this, he thought bitterly, pulling himself back up.

These corridors were seldom trodden and the first serfs he met were several levels up from the catacombs. With curt commands he directed them to the Apothecarion, gave instruction as to what to do with the injured and began to formulate a triage system in advance of his arrival to cope with the influx of wounded. Scores might already be awaiting him upon his return. If this was indeed an attack, there would be many more.

Emek entered the Apothecarion through a side chamber. A long corridor that reeked of counterseptic led to a smaller room that he used as his solitorium. He kept this place away from the death and suffering. Dismissing his brander-priest many months ago, he used the spartan chamber as a refuge to think, to train, to mourn.

There was a wooden statue, a bare-featured simulacrum of a man, in one corner of the gloomy solitorium, on which Emek hung his armour. He removed it himself, painfully, piece by piece. When he was done, the statue was armoured and he was naked before a tall slate of polished obsidian. He knew it was tantamount to a form of masochism, torturing himself with the mirror reflection of his ravaged body, but he couldn’t help it.

A figure Emek did not recognise glared back. He was burned and scarred, this grotesque doppelganger. His entire left side was torn up and twisted. Knots of flesh and rough-edged skin described the years of pain he had endured but could not begin to articulate his suffering. Loss of self, loss of what it was to be a Salamander, a Space Marine, was the highest price Emek had paid aboard the Protean. An hour did not pass when he wasn’t filled with regret about that mission. Talons of psychic lightning had left their indelible mark. He was half a warrior, so full of bitterness he almost choked on his own bile.

A face, once strong and youthful, was drawn and blasted. Having refused a bionic replacement, Emek’s left eye was ruined. His mouth, now given only to the occasional sardonic smile, was pulled down at one corner as if a heavy weight attached to his lower lip was pulling and disfiguring it. His scalp, where once he’d worn three chevrons of flame-red hair, was reduced to a grubby patch of half stripes.

He was in pain, but a pain that went far deeper than any physical scar.

Emek also used the chamber as a gymnasium. Since sustaining the injuries aboard the Protean, he no longer trained with the others. His physical disfiguring meant he couldn’t match the pace of his battle-brothers anyway. Various pieces of equipment were stowed away on racks at the back of the room. He hefted a light weight; it was shaped like an anvil and forged from a dark metal. The effort to lift it was excruciating. It felt like the sinews in his left arm were about to snap. Letting the weight clang loudly to the floor, he sank down into a crouch and closed his eyes.

‘What am I doing?’ he whispered to the shadows. There were those in pain who needed him. Now was not the time for indulgent self-pity. He remonstrated internally – there was never a time for that. He rose to his feet, pushing on the discarded weight for support.

Emek was dressing in a light robe and cowl when he heard a muted cry outside the sanctum. Averting his gaze from the aberration in the mirrored obsidian, drawing a veil of black cloth over it, he left the chamber and stepped into the corridor beyond. Passing through a shorter corridor, its walls harsh and white, he reached the main gate.

What greeted him when he finally stepped through the doors to the Apothecarion proper, into its wards and infirmaries, was a sea of blood and screaming.

Though principally a dock, Prometheus was so much more than that. Conservative when compared to the vast stations of Ultramar or Baal, it was still many levels deep and could comfortably make harbour for the entire Salamanders fleet. It also possessed secret places, ancient halls and crypts where the Firedrakes performed clandestine rituals and the masters met in private deliberation. It had an entire barracks for the First Company, together with an extensive armoury.

The Apothecarion was at the centre of all this, located on a surface level to make conveyance to the facility easy for those coming from the planet itself. It had its own docking pad, which was small but amply appointed for Thunderhawks and vessels of similar size. So far it was empty, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

It was just as well – there were many, mainly deck crew from Hangar Seven, that needed the Apothecary’s attention.

Cadorian, a medicae and one of Emek’s practitioners, approached him.

‘Praise to Vulkan you’re back,’ he said, wiping a bloody hand across a sweating brow. It smeared a ruddy line, like war paint, across his weathered features. The man had a rude, irreverent disposition that suited the Apothecary. Better still, he could be left to his labours without continual instruction.

‘We are already stretched but injured are still arriving from across the space port,’ he concluded. Emek hobbled past him, picking his way through the forlorn wounded languishing in groups around the Apothecarion floor. Cadorian kept pace, shadowing Emek at his shoulder. The man was markedly shorter but betrayed no sense of intimidation towards the Space Marine. Emek liked that about him too. ‘It’s mainly burns, occasional lacerations and contusions from debris, some trauma.’

‘There will be more,’ Emek growled. ‘Activate the rest of the medi-servitors and requisition any man that comes in here with experience in field surgery. Secure the gene-banks–’

‘Already done. All is well.’

Emek glared at him. He pulled back his cowl with an agitated hiss. A scowling, scarred visage was revealed behind it.

‘And clear this floor. Non-critically injured are to return to their posts, the rest are to be warded. Anyone who cannot assist is to leave.’

He was headed for the isolation chambers, beyond the throng of the bleeding and dying. Emek was inured to their suffering, too preoccupied with his own.

The practitioner held back and Emek assumed he’d gone to his duties before he spoke up again, ‘Apothecary…’

‘What is it now, Cadorian?’

‘That way has taken some damage. It’s why we are so overrun.’

Now that he looked ahead, focused for the first time since re-entering the Apothecarion on his surroundings rather than Dak’ir’s exoneration and his own bitterness, Emek saw that part of the complex was damaged. Several systems were red-lining, malfunction icons flashing persistently on a control slate set into the wall. He was standing before an adamantium door that stubbornly refused to open.

Cadorian was a few paces behind him.

‘I thought it prudent to seal it.’

‘Unseal it,’ Emek snapped. ‘There is someone in there. Do it now!’

Cadorian worked at the control slate, releasing the locks without question.

The door slid open halfway and jammed. The portal was wide enough, though, so Emek stepped through.

‘I bio-scanned the entire section,’ Cadorian was saying. He’d been deep in the gene-banks where the Chapter’s legacy was secured when Emek had left for the council. ‘It came back with no vitals.’

‘Then one of two things have occurred,’ muttered the Apothecary, snarling as he battered his way through the wrecked interior. Part of the ceiling had caved in and fires were still rampaging in the deeper areas. Armaglas carpeted the floor and various instruments and machinery lay smashed and destroyed. Debris was everywhere, barely visible through gouts of venting steam and clouds of smoke.

‘He’s either dead…’ Emek bludgeoned his way to the observation chamber, using a chainsword to cut through a fallen beam he couldn’t vault. He unshrouded the viewing portal. A flickering light above revealed the isolation cell in stuttering white illumination. It was empty.

‘Or he’s escaped.’

It did not take long to call the Firedrakes to war. They came from their barrack chambers, solitoriums and shrine-holds quickly and efficiently.

Praetor had already seen to the sealing of the Hall of the Firedrakes where many of the Chapter’s most hallowed relics were kept safe. Only two others had the authority to unseal it, the Reclusiarch and the Regent.

By the time they had reached the vicinity of the armorium, close to a hundred warriors of the vaunted First Company marched in lockstep with the veteran sergeant.

Word had been sent ahead. A veritable army of artificers and armourers were ready and waiting to festoon their lords in the trappings of war. A void-war meant only one attire was suitable and it was the sole honour of the Firedrakes to wear it.

They entered in robes or power armour and left as Terminators clad in Tactical Dreadnought Armour.

Rites and blessings were observed, battle markings made in flesh by the brander-priests. Before the end Praetor dismissed the human flock, his deep voice carrying throughout the massive armorium.

This last part would be conducted by them and them alone. It was only for the Firedrakes to know.

With his chosen warriors arrayed before him, their venerable green battle-plate gleaming, Praetor turned to Vo’kar.

‘Ignite the flame…’ he uttered.

Vo’kar nodded solemnly, swinging his heavy weapon around and releasing a burst of superheated promethium. A cradle in the centre of the room about which the Firedrakes had gathered roared into life. The fire clasped within its stone curves was vibrant and raging. It rose, becoming a mighty column that thrust into the air and almost touched the ceiling.

‘First squad step forwards and receive the ritual fire.’ At Praetor’s order the warriors who had been to the Volgorrah Reef to rescue Chaplain Elysius came forth.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’

‘With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ they concluded the veteran sergeant’s invocation together. They each then thrust their power fists into the blaze. Those without, the ones bearing thunder hammers and storm shields, let the tips of their gauntleted fingers blacken in the flame instead. It was a baptism of war, a transition into the warrior-state.

One by one the squads stepped forwards and the litany was repeated. It was done methodically, exacting and by rote until all of the Firedrakes were scorched.

‘We are, all of us, born in fire,’ Praetor told them, ‘so do we wage war with it clenched in our mailed fists.’

‘Unto the anvil!’ the Terminators bellowed.

‘An enemy has come to us,’ Praetor said with the echoes of thunderous affirmation still fading around him. ‘He is bent upon the destruction of our world. Many have died already in service to Vulkan. We remember them all.’ He gestured to Persephion, a survivor of grim wounding at the hands of the dark eldar, who brandished his vambrace. Upon it, as with every Firedrake who mustered in the armorium, were inscribed the names of every fallen hero of the First.

Beginning with Persephion a name was uttered aloud, so that each of this vaunted brotherhood would be remembered before battle.

A great, long list of honour was recounted, each name given with zeal and fiery bombast. As was ritual, Praetor went last but spoke the final warrior’s name with quiet melancholy.

‘Zek Tsu’gan… Let him return to the mountain and the Circle of Fire be remade.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I

Old Friends

A punch to the jaw jolted Tsu’gan awake. He tasted blood in his mouth and spat it out before opening his eyes.

At first he thought he’d returned to Ramlek’s workshop. The air was rank with the heady stink of copper and he’d been restrained on some kind of slab again. Something was different though. He was armoured this time. Tsu’gan could feel the heft of it, clad to every inch of his body except for his face. He wore no helmet, nor rebreather or faceplate, but there was something attached to his cheek. It sank tiny sub-dermal needles into his flesh and covered a quarter of his skull. He felt a throbbing there and the impact points of the needles itched.

It was cold, not a natural chill from standing outside but something more invasive. He realised it was void-frost and knew then that he was standing in the hold of a ship. Not the Hell-stalker. It was too small for that. Felt like a gunship.

Darkness surrounded him. It was thick and black, a shroud his eyes couldn’t penetrate. He knew he wasn’t alone and not just from the violence to his face. There were others, several of them ranked up and ready for battle.

Another punch sent his ears ringing.

‘You’re with me now,’ snarled a familiar voice. Not a renegade, though. Tsu’gan couldn’t place it at first. He smelled oil and solder, old metal and filing wire.

‘Let me have a piece of him…’ snapped a second voice. It was greasy, insidious, affected by mild hysteria. He sensed this one did not just mean him harm but wanted to kill him. Tsu’gan knew the voice but he was having difficulty forming his thoughts and the name wouldn’t come.

‘Curb your ire,’ uttered a third. The cadence was rasping and seemed farther away than the rest, yet at the same time much closer. ‘Open your eyes, Tsu’gan.’

He’d thought they were already open. The dark veil lifted and he was standing in a crowded troop hold. Dingy red light bled from flickering strip lumes overhead. A steady judder rattled the inner walls and his view directly ahead was of the back of another warrior’s battle-helm. In the wretched light it was hard to tell the warrior’s allegiance.

‘You are to be honoured,’ the snarling voice told him.

‘Hurt him again,’ said the insidious one.

That sense of familiarity again. Tsu’gan wanted to turn but his neck was rigid. His entire body was stiff as if petrified into stone. He struggled. Veins bunched in his neck, teeth clenched but achieved nothing. He managed to work his lips. A croak escaped.

‘Where… am I?’

‘Amongst old friends,’ mocked the snarling voice.

Tsu’gan wasn’t attached to a torture slab; he was cinched into a battered grav-harness. He saw motifs on his armour, kill-markings he wasn’t familiar with. Heavy rivets bonded together some of the plates, which were beaten up and re-sealed many times over.

This wasn’t his old Salamander armour, but nor were they the trappings of the renegades.

‘What have you done to me?’

The snarling bastard was laughing.

A swell of anger possessed him and with a roar Tsu’gan threw off the grav-harness. It was old and decrepit, the metal yielding easily to his strength.

‘I am no prisoner!’ he bellowed, ripping the gladius from its sheath and ramming it deep into the snarling one’s throat. Blood foamed the dying Space Marine’s vox-grille as he scrabbled at his murderer with gauntleted fingers.

Tsu’gan tore the blade free, slashing it across the insidious one’s throat as he tried to release his harness. There was panic in his eyes, weakness. Deep red fluid sprayed from the wound, showering the warrior’s neutral armour.

Battered by the pitch and yaw of the descending gunship, Tsu’gan dragged his way through the troop hold to the vessel’s cockpit. Behind him, he heard the others as they released their harnesses.

It was too late for them. Tsu’gan had already opened the door. Sweeping up a discarded bolter he raked the cockpit, ventilating the crew. Only the pilot hung on, his body half-draped across the controls as he attempted to make an emergency landing.

‘I am death…’ Tsu’gan plunged the gladius into the top of the pilot’s skull and left it there. Then he turned the bolter around and used its heavy stock to smash the control console, pitching the gunship into a fatal dive.

The others from the troop hold had just breached the cockpit’s threshold when he turned.

‘None survive,’ he declared, raising up the bolter as he made his last stand.

Their faces were formed of nondescript battle-helms without insignia or Chapter marking. All of them were laughing as the glacis plate burst and fire swept in.

‘What is this?’ Tsu’gan lowered the gun…

…and blinked.

He was still in the grav-harness.

‘The last vestiges of your will,’ the rasping voice told him. ‘Your mind is strong, preconditioned to resist outside influence–’

‘Release me!’

‘I cannot. You are an integral part of my plan.’

Nihilan… Tsu’gan’s fists clenched despite the paralysis affecting his body. Something had been done to him; something added that was interfering with his neutral pathways, sub-diverting them to another’s control.

‘When will you learn, sorcerer, that all the methods of coercion at your disposal cannot compel me to do your bidding?’

‘What is your mind telling you to do?’

‘To kill every one of the whoreson-dogs on this gunship.’

‘And yet…’

Tsu’gan’s wrath was impotent, confined to a body that could not vent it. It was furious in his eyes and the tension in his jaw but the arcane device attached to his face kept him otherwise quiescent.

‘Nurture that hatred, all of your rage, you will need it to survive what’s to come.’

‘I will find you, Nihilan,’ Tsu’gan promised through ranks of teeth. ‘I will pull your still beating hearts from your ribcage.’

‘I believe you, brother. But for now, I am far from your reach. Others, though, are not so distant…’

Tsu’gan turned his head, vaguely aware that the impulse to do so was not wholly his own.

Iagon glared at him from the next grav-harness along. There was murder in his pitiless eyes and he worried at his right gauntlet, scratching it with augmetic fingers.

Tsu’gan laughed at him, the decision to do so entirely his own.

‘I thought I smelled the stench of traitor filth. Are Nihilan’s boots not yet clean of it that you must work your tongue a little harder into the grooves?’

‘I am his equerry,’ he replied with self-deluded satisfaction. ‘You are the betrayer,’ Iagon spat, struggling against his better judgement not to put hands on his old sergeant.

A sigh of genuine regret escaped Tsu’gan’s lips. ‘The fact that you still believe that shows just how far you have fallen. Whatever promises he has made you to slake this desire for vengeance, will not come to be. You are a fool, Cerbius.’

‘No, brother,’ uttered the snarling voice.

Tsu’gan faced his other tormentor. Realisation crashed in on him in a wave of iron. He almost balked.

‘You are the fool,’ Sergeant Lorkar informed him. ‘I said you were with me now, and did not lie…’

Tsu’gan’s eye was drawn down to the armour he was wearing. It was painted yellow but chipped gunmetal grey from numerous battlefield repairs. The suit was old too – one of the antique Corvus patterns – and had an octagonal release clamp in the centre of the plastron instead of the Imperial Eagle.

Lorkar was smiling beneath his faceplate, though his eyes just visible through his retinal lenses were dead and cold. The mockery was evident in the tone of his voice.

‘The sorcerer thought you’d take to this attire a little better than the trappings of a renegade.’

‘I see no difference,’ spat Tsu’gan.

‘I don’t care either way. You’re Marines Malevolent now, and you’ll be killing Salamanders before this is done,’ Lorkar replied. ‘Tell me, brother. What will your precious Chapter of mutants think of you then?’ he asked, before punching Tsu’gan in the face and knocking him out cold.

It was a loathsome task, and it took all of Lorkar’s resolve not to order their guns open up on the xenos vessels alongside them in the vanguard. He knew the flotilla included dark eldar, kroot and a half-dozen lesser alien and mercenary ships. He wanted nothing more than to obliterate them from the void.

The crackling voice of their pilot came through on his helmet’s vox-link.

‘Brother-sergeant, some of the dark eldar are peeling off from the first wave.’

‘The sorcerer has promised them flesh,’ Lorkar replied. ‘Keep them in our sights until they’re beyond range. I don’t trust the scum.’

He cut the link, and inwardly cursed the day they had ever set eyes on the Demetrion. Everything had changed after that mission. Lorkar was only here on this ship because of it.

It had not been difficult to join Nihilan’s warband. The sorcerer’s arrogance blinded him to the guile of true warriors. Lorkar would show him the error of that.

The title ‘renegade’ sat about his shoulders like an ill-fitting cloak. Lorkar did not think of himself thusly. To some, the methods of the Marines Malevolent might appear extreme, even excessive, but these were the failings of heretics and traitors, those who would shun the true light of the Immortal Emperor.

Lorkar knew better.

Despite what had happened to him and his warriors.

The ends always justified the means. Hate is the surest weapon. Never accept a slight without retribution – this was the creed of the Marines Malevolent and it was this last part of their warmongering mantra that saw him here upon this gunship, amongst enemies.

The equerry the sorcerer had sent was a poor excuse for a Space Marine. Lorkar could see the conniving look in his eye, the stoop in his bent back from listening at keyholes and other craven acts ill-suited to warriors. He remembered him vaguely, as one of the Salamanders his war party had encountered aboard the Mechanicus ship. That he had turned his back on the Emperor’s light only further convinced Lorkar that the sons of Vulkan were indeed tainted. It also helped him reconcile with the deed he had sworn to commit.

Still, it was not his business to lay judgement. How could he speak of resisting the corruption of dark forces and not feel a tremor of hypocrisy? But the Salamanders were different. They bore their mutancy openly and with pride. They embraced it! Could he have put his sword to their necks, he would have. Vinyar’s orders had been very specific when he’d learned of Lorkar’s malady, as was the stipulation the captain not be implicated in any way. Loyalty to his Chapter overrode all else in Lorkar’s mind. Promises had been made regarding his very public excommunication. What else could Vinyar have done but condemn? In private he had pledged his aid.

He opened up a closed channel in his battle-helm. Even those harnessed next to him wouldn’t hear his next orders.

‘Vathek, Rennard…’

Two warriors close by reacted with the slightest of movement. He’d told Vinyar back aboard the Purgatory when all of this was just still words, ‘I’ll need men I can trust…’

All of those aboard the Demetrion had been sworn to his cause, even those who were unafflicted.

Lorkar’s eyes narrowed.

‘I don’t know what the sorcerer has planned. The other one is nothing to us, but watch Tsu’gan. He is dangerous.’

Vathek and Rennard nodded as the scream of descent engines filled the hold. They had breached Nocturne’s atmosphere. The ground assault was close at hand.

II

Wreckage

Argos staggered through the burning debris. He’d blacked out for a few minutes and was struggling to remember what had happened. The static in his head had lessened with the execution of his mission. Seeing Kor’hadron slumped face-down amidst the wreckage of the chamber brought it all flooding back.

All of the servitors and tech-adepts were dead. Argos had killed most of them, and the rest had died in the explosion. Vulkan’s Eye had borne the brunt of the asteroid’s blast wave. It had overloaded and shut down their void shields, damaged the defence laser array so that it no longer functioned.

Heading towards Kor’hadron, Argos staggered and fell to one knee. It brought him face to face with a collapsed augur screen that had come back online. It was one of the few pieces of machinery that still worked in the devastated weapon’s room. A vast fleet of enemy vessels was inbound. Argos saw smaller escorts forging a path through the debris field for the larger capital ships as they drove to the edge of Nocturne’s atmosphere.

A vanguard was already beyond the beleaguered orbital defences and locked into descent trajectories. As he watched, several ships were breaking off from this flotilla and heading for Prometheus. Hangar Seven was gaping open like a rotting wound. Infestation would begin there first. Only just ahead of the scouts was another ship. This one had a Nocturnean signature and had come from the planet’s surface below. Fire and smoke had taken hold in the room. There was no time to investigate further. He dragged himself up and went to Kor’hadron.

Argos tried to perform a bio-scan to ascertain the Forge Master’s vitals but the interference in his brain was getting in the way of an accurate reading.

He stopped, performing self-diagnostics as he tried to isolate the source. Muttering machine-rites of cleansing and purification, he found the section of his artificial cortex where the debilitating code had embedded itself.

Without hesitation, he took a piece of shrapnel from the floor and rammed it like a dagger in his metallic cranium. He jerked and there was a final scream of static like a death cry before he got the spasming under control as well as his senses. It felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his back. Data streamed across the internal retina of his bionic eye. Some of his neural functions governing memory and targeting were damaged but otherwise he was fine. The static had abated. A piece of sharp metal lodged in his head was an inelegant solution but there wasn’t time for anything more. Argos resolved to find something permanent later. More pressing concerns demanded his attention.

A bio-scan revealed Kor’hadron was alive but had slipped into sus-an membrane coma. Argos hauled him onto his back and made his way out of the chamber.

The damage was little better in the adjacent corridor. A firestorm had ripped through the door to the weapon room, tearing it from its bearings. Argos found it halfway down the corridor embedded in the scorched wall.

He reached another door, the one that led back into the main conduit and eventually Hangar Seven, but it was sealed. Code overrides didn’t work and neither did brute force. Without substantial cutting tools, Argos couldn’t get through.

After the destruction of the asteroid, levels of magnetic interference had diminished. Communication should be operable again.

He opened up a channel to Brother Ak’taro at Hangar Seven.

‘Master Argos, when we lost contact I feared the worst.’

‘The enemy’s sabotage went deeper than we thought,’ said Argos. ‘What forces do you have in place?’ he asked.

‘Two squads of Fire-born and a small contingent of armsmen. Sergeant Balataro is in command. Do you wish to speak–’

‘No. But tell the sergeant to prepare for an attack.’

‘At once, Master Argos. Brother Draedius is also en route to you as we speak. A serf, Sonnar Illiad, passed on your message.’

Draedius was a Techmarine, one closely affiliated with Third. Argos would need his assistance to remove all traces of the scrap code if he was to employ Prometheus’s defence systems without fear of corrupting them.

‘I am on my way, but bearing wounded.’

Another voice cut in. ‘This is Sergeant Balataro. We will provide egress for the wounded but can’t reinforce the hangar further. Most of Fourth are heading to the surface.’

‘Then you’ll have to hold with what you’ve got. I’m coming and will provide reinforcement of my own.’

He severed the link – it was causing havoc with the spar of shrapnel jutting from his skull – leaving Balataro to wonder at his meaning. Then he waited, Kor’hadron over his shoulder. After a few minutes, a tiny patch of superheated light appeared in the metal of the bulkhead. Draedius had found him.

The Fire-wyvern touched down on the Apothecarion’s landing pad amidst flaring stabiliser jets. It had been a rough passage through the floating debris field and more than one dent marred the gunship’s outer surface.

A docking clamp extended automatically, pressing against the vessel’s side embarkation hatch before mag-locking to the hull. It slid open to reveal Fugis, still in his drover’s garb albeit with hat and scarves removed, and Ba’ken aloft on a grav-sled.

Fugis turned back to Prebian as the interior lume strips started to light up the docking corridor to the Apothecarion.

‘I can take him the rest of the way.’ He glanced at Val’in and Exor. ‘What will you do with them?’

‘Take them with me to Hesiod and the rest of Seventh. We’ll join up with the Third and protect the city. If you see Tu’Shan, tell him that’s where I’m headed.’

Fugis nodded and was about to depart when Prebian’s voice stopped him.

‘Whatever sign you saw out in the desert,’ he said, ‘I hope it bears good omens.’

‘So do I,’ the Apothecary replied, turning. ‘I have a feeling we shall be in need of them.’

He descended into the docking corridor as the Fire-wyvern’s hatch closed. The way back was sealed behind him. Ahead was the Apothecarion.

‘Hold on, brother,’ he muttered. ‘I did not survive this reunion just so you could die on me.’

Ba’ken was awake but in incredible pain. His weak smile quickly turned to a grimace.

The outer hatch to the Apothecarion opened, revealing Cadorian and a pair of medical-servitors. The practitioner bowed.

‘Where is Emek?’ Fugis asked curtly.

‘Looking for an escapee,’ Cadorian replied. ‘Are you a… drover?’ he asked, noting the obvious melanchromatic defects and burning red eyes of a Fire-born but matching it to the stranger’s incongruous attire.

‘I am Brother Fugis, former Apothecary of this station.’ Ignoring Cadorian’s shocked expression, Fugis gestured to Ba’ken. ‘He needs urgent attention.’ The medi-servitors were bringing the grav-sled inside. Fugis went with it.

‘I… I heard you were dead,’ said Cadorian, following them.

‘I am alive,’ Fugis replied unnecessarily. He laid a hand on Ba’ken’s shoulder, muttering a litany of healing over the wounded sergeant. When he looked up at Cadorian, his eyes were hard. ‘If Emek should return, tell him I have gone to speak with Lord Tu’Shan.’

‘The entire council has just broken up. They were in one of the lower chambers. I don’t know where precisely.’

‘That’s because it’s not your business to know. Do your duty, practitioner. This is but a taste of what’s to come. We are at war.’

Not waiting for a reply, Fugis stormed off. It was difficult entrusting Ba’ken’s care to others but the need to speak with the Chapter Master was paramount. It could decide the fate of Nocturne.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I

Rally

The damage worsened the closer they got to the docks. It was a short walk made longer by the fact that sections of the space port were closed off and the usual means of conveyance were denied to them.

Praetor led close to a hundred Firedrakes down the expansive corridors of Prometheus. They were not a full complement. Costly missions to Sepulchre IV and the space hulk Protean had taken a toll on the ranks of the Firedrakes.

‘I see the look in your eyes, Herculon.’ It was Halknarr, a brother-sergeant of First and one of the Firedrakes who’d also been to Volgorrah.

‘What look?’ Praetor glanced askance at the old campaigner. ‘There is no look to be seen.’

Halknarr gave a rueful smile that creased his already wrinkled features. Age was evident in the greying around his temples, the numerous lines around his eyes and mouth, but experience had made him shrewd too. He kept his voice low.

‘Precisely that. You seem to be as stone, brother.’ Even Halknarr’s trappings were vintage. His Terminator armour was of an ancient design, a previous incarnation that was just as inviolable but bulkier that operated an extended chainfist and a triple mag storm bolter that was anything but standard.

‘I am ready for war, Halknarr.’

‘Then fill your gaze and heart with fire, for you’ll need it.’

Sacrifice and death were a warrior’s destiny, but Praetor had seen overmuch of that in all too recent memory. It was part of the reason for the remembering and the burning of the hand in the sacred flame. None who fell in battle would ever be forgotten – their legacy would live on. He vowed not to lose any more so needlessly, but knew the perils of their present mission.

It had hardened him, near petrified his soul.

‘A warrior fights with heart and mind, as well as bolter and blade,’ Praetor quoted Zen’de. ‘Thank you, brother.’

Halknarr merely nodded. ‘I need you angry. It’ll be my back you are guarding after all.’ He smiled broadly and they laughed together.

Behind them, Vo’kar laughed too.

Halknarr turned his head towards the heavy weapon specialist.

‘Do you even know what this is about?’ he asked.

‘No, but it seemed a good time for humour,’ said Vo’kar honestly.

Praetor laughed louder still, and left Halknarr muttering.

‘Should keep his mind on igniting the flame and not listening to the conversations of others…’

Wise, yes, but Halknarr was also cantankerous.

Levity, however incongruous, was what bonded these warriors. Praetor knew they had shared blood, honour, glory and defeat across countless battlefields. Only now this was a war upon their own soil, on the very earth they had sworn to protect. Unlike the other Salamanders, the First did not live amongst the peoples of Nocturne. Some thought that meant they were haughty, arrogant, uncaring of the plight of mortals.

Like other Space Marines…

It was not so. They knew of the horrors of the galaxy, to a greater and more detailed extent than many captains. It was their solemn duty to gird mankind from those horrors and that could best be achieved through seclusion and isolation.

In order to conduct his sacred mission, He’stan had to be estranged from his brothers, the Chapter he knew; Praetor felt that way about his people, his earth, but he could bear it because he knew it was necessary to protect it. If anything should ever happen to change that…

His mood darkened again swiftly as the names of the fallen came back to haunt him even in his waking hours. He focused on the march.

Deckplates shook beneath the Firedrakes as they advanced and the walls trembled with their passing. There were few serfs, save the armourers, this far down. Most of the humans had been evacuated to saviour pods or transferred to more secure areas of the space port. It was a lonely walk but one conducted in determined silence the rest of the way.

When they reached the vast teleporter pad that would take them to Dac’tyr’s flagship, a lone figure was waiting for them.

Every Firedrake in the company knelt as one when they saw who it was. ‘It is rare to see the entirety of the Firedrakes so arrayed,’ he said, gazing upon the vaunted warriors with approval. ‘But rise, Herculon,’ he added, gesturing for them to stand. ‘Halknarr, Persephion, all of my brothers, arise. We have fought together before, and I would ask that we do so again.’

Praetor lifted his chin and rose noisily to his feet. It was done amidst protesting servos and screeching pneumatics. Terminators were not meant to kneel.

The others followed him, first Halknarr then Persephion until a cacophony of grinding gears and mechanisms filled the echoing halls and all the Firedrakes were standing once more.

‘Ask, my lord? Vulkan He’stan need not ask the First for anything. It is his.’

He’stan extended his hand. He was clad in his own power armour, a finely wrought suit as potent as any Tactical Dreadnought Armour.

‘Even so… I ask.’

Praetor clasped his forearm in the warrior’s grip. In his Terminator suit he was a head taller than the Forgefather but still appeared humbled.

‘It would be our honour.’

Halknarr nodded, pride overflowing.

‘To war again then, Herculon,’ said He’stan, appraising the others with a glance, and released his grip.

‘In the fires of battle, where the stakes have never been higher,’ he replied.

All of First took up position on the vast teleporter pad. Distant explosions from farther into the space port boomed dully as if to emphasise the severity in the veteran sergeant’s tone.

‘I had thought,’ he ventured, ‘that your place would be with Dak’ir. If he is the Unbound Flame…’

Halknarr had begun the countdown to transition. An automated voice rang out from the external vox-hailers, issuing warning. Klaxons were sounding as the chamber was sealed off from the rest of the station and a temporary Geller field cocooned it. Magnesium light dawned overhead like a new-born sun warring with the red of flashing lamps.

‘So had I,’ admitted He’stan, ‘but Unbound Flame or not, Dak’ir’s destiny is his own. I can play no further part in it. Vulkan has guided me.’

The light overhead grew to blindingly bright levels. Everyone standing upon the teleporter pad donned his helmet and muttered a prayer to Vulkan. Those who had been to the Volgorrah Reef remembered what had happened the last time they attempted complex mass-transition. They remembered Tsu’gan.

‘Can you hear him, his voice?’ Praetor asked barely above a whisper.

‘I see his hand, his will, and know that we are not alone.’

Praetor was grateful for his battle-helm, and that it obscured the tears of fire running down his chiselled face. Halknarr had been right. Stone was not a fitting disposition for the heart before battle. An automaton could become stone; he was flesh and vital flame.

He’stan regarded the veteran sergeant through his retinal lenses. His voice issued through the vocalisers in his battle-helm but was no less sincere.

‘My place is here,’ he said, as the teleportation flare engulfed them, ‘with my brothers…’

From his throne on the bridge of the Flamewrought, Dac’tyr surveyed carnage.

Prometheus had taken severe damage. Tiny fires guttered like dying candles attached to its surface and streams of atmosphere bled out into the void from hundreds of miniscule fissures like escaping breath. It made Dac’tyr think of a drowning man, doomed to the oblivion of the endless ocean.

Several of the moon station’s docking arms had been destroyed. The long drake-like necks were cut off at the jugular, spewing sparks and vapour. Fluids flash-froze upon contact with realspace, crystallising into banks of shards that broke upon the cold flanks of the dead ships severed from dock like icy surf.

Dac’tyr had yet to make an inventory of the vessels critically damaged during the attack. They’d lost many. More than they could bear. A conservative estimate put the fleet at around forty per cent. Nihilan’s own armada would have outnumbered a full-strength complement but Dac’tyr would have wagered on them anyway. With these odds, the Lord of the Burning Skies was not so sure.

Shutting down the view of the devastated space port, he concentrated on the battle line he did have.

Flamewrought, so named for Vulkan’s flagship back during the days of the Great Crusade, was flanked by the frigate Firelord and the strike cruiser Vulkan’s Wrath. Two other strike cruisers, Hammerforge and Serpentine, joined the small fleet as well as a handful of lighter escorts and several squadrons of gunships that had escaped the destruction of their parent vessels.

He brought up the tacticarium and a cluster of crimson icons lit up on the display revealing enemy dispositions. There were twice as many capital ships and the same again in escorts and fighters. One wing, consisting solely of smaller gunships, broke off from the vanguard to deviate around the Salamander sfleet.

Dac’tyr hoped the defenders aboard Prometheus were ready for them.

Nihilan had arrayed his void-forces in two lines with the Hell-stalker, his flagship, in dead centre at the rear. Even at distance, too far yet to engage in meaningful cannon exchanges, the manoeuvre planned by the traitor was obvious to Dac’tyr. Only the Hell-stalker mattered, the rest of the ships were fodder. Vessels in the centre of the line were pulling forwards, utilising their more powerful engines to get ahead of the rest, whilst the flanks kept steady pace. Evidenced by the tacticarium display, both lines were evolving into an arrowhead formation. It was a breaching tactic, intended to break through blockades. In this case it would try and scatter the Salamanders fleet, taking heavy damage in the process but delivering the core ship into position over the planet.

Nihilan only needed the Hell-stalker to get within range and he’d unleash the apocalypse weapon.

Dac’tyr had no intention of being rolled over by the vast enemy armada, nor would he submit without a fight. He raised the respective captains on the fleet-wide vox-band and ordered them to disperse. So arranged it would leave them open to attack from multiple quarters, especially when the vessels closed, but weathering a frontal assault, even a suicidal one, wasn’t an option. They would attack in two arms, either side of the enemy line, leaving their centre open to advance but largely impotent without targets to bear on. It would even the odds, giving them a tenable possibility of victory without annihilation.

It left only one problem. Without opposition, the Hell-stalker would breach easily. But Dac’tyr had a solution for that too. An icon flashing on his tacticarium screen told him it had just arrived aboard the Flamewrought.

There would be no time for greetings. The Firedrakes knew what was expected of them. All of the boarding torpedoes were prepped and ready for launch. Dac’tyr just had to get them close enough to the Hell-stalker so they had a fighting chance of surviving its anti-boarding barrage.

He looked up from his strategising. The bridge was plunged into darkness with only the light of consoles to alleviate the gloom. Silhouettes of crewmen working diligently at their stations were just visible. One activated an alert that appeared on the tacticarium screen.

The enemy were within engagement range. Dac’tyr gave the order to power all forward lance batteries. An array of firing solutions materialised on a sub-screen. One-by-one they were locked in as target acquisition came online. The other large vessels in the fleet reported similar states of readiness.

Before addressing his captains, Dac’tyr opened a channel to the torpedo deck.

‘Brother-Sergeant Praetor, we are about to engage.’

‘The First are aboard and ready to launch,’ the crackling reply came back.

A second sub-screen gave green lights for all thirty-two boarding torpedoes in the breech and primed to fire. It was ten more than required by the Firedrakes and their ‘fire support’; the rest were loaded with anti-personnel weapon systems but also functioned as slower-moving decoys to draw fire.

‘I will get you as close as I can, brother-sergeant.’

‘In the Lord of the Burning Skies, I have no doubts. In Vulkan’s name.’

‘In Vulkan’s name.’

Dac’tyr closed the channel and switched the link to the fleet-wide band.

‘Captains, you may begin your assault. Nothing less than the fate of Nocturne rests on our success here today. Our darkest hour is upon us all. Bring the light. Bring the fire of Prometheus to them.’

A series of affirmations was returned and Dac’tyr cut the link to concentrate on evasive manoeuvres.

‘And may Vulkan watch over us all,’ he muttered.

II

Bulwarks

Tu’Shan spread his hands wide so they gripped the outer edges of the strategium table. Vel’cona had joined him in the throne room and was standing at the opposite side of the hololithic map that depicted the surface of Nocturne. An expansive view showed all of its Sanctuary Cities as well as minor settlements, oceanic platforms, watchtowers and remote defences.

‘Who would come to hell with thoughts bent on invasion?’ he asked the flickering green vista before him.

It was a deadly world. The ash deserts, the mountains and acid seas – all would be quick to punish an invader who was ignorant of the danger each presented. Not to mention its native fauna, the saurian beasts of the crags, the chitinous, subterranean horrors beneath the sands. Nocturne was not a place that welcomed outsiders.

Vel’cona answered. ‘Nihilan does not want to conquer, he wants to annihilate us.’ The Master of Librarians hadn’t mentioned the Regent’s decision to spare Dak’ir once. It was done and now they would endure the consequences of that, whether they were good or bad. It mattered only to serve his lord and protect the sanctity of his Chapter’s home world with all the powers at his disposal.

‘All of this for vengeance?’ Tu’Shan shook his head slowly. ‘It smacks of petty madness.’ He looked up from the glow of the hololith map. ‘Should I have hunted him down? Should I have scoured the galaxy for the taint of Vai’tan Ushorak and all his corrupt progeny?’

‘That was Ko’tan Kadai’s duty, one he fulfilled at Moribar.’

‘And Nihilan?’ The Regent shook his head again, his face creased with rueful anger. ‘I should have purged this dirty aberration to our Chapter as soon as it was given birth.’

‘No one, except Nihilan himself, will ever know the truth of what was spoken on Lycannor. They lasted several days in that city, lost many brothers and faced the prospect of death before being rescued.’

‘Giving Ushorak opportunity to lay the seed of treachery in once noble hearts.’

‘I do not think Nihilan’s heart was ever noble, my lord. His was an addiction, I realised belatedly. He craved power, craved it! To Nihilan, no wisdom should ever be denied, no knowledge ever proscribed. He was censured but not nearly enough. Too late, I saw the danger. But it is past and we must look to this day, this hour, if we are to survive. Nihilan has come and brings with him an armada to destroy us. Will you yield to it?’

Tu’Shan scoffed at the last remark, as if it wasn’t even a question.

‘Of course not. I will break him and his renegades upon the back of my anvil with this fist,’ he brandished it, ‘as my hammer.’

‘Then cast out these doubts and self-recriminations,’ Vel’cona gestured to the hololithic rendering of Nocturne sitting between them, ‘and defend us, my lord. Defend Nocturne and cast this traitor to the flame.’

Tu’Shan looked down grimly.

‘It will begin at Hesiod…’ he said, marking the site of the city on the map with a touch of his gauntleted finger.

Subterranean beacons indicated multiple planetfalls coming from the direction of the Pyre Desert. The first Sanctuary City in their path would be the Seat of Tribal Kings.

‘Themis will be next,’ he lit up a second marker over the City of Warrior Kings, ‘though they’ll find the Arridian Plain tough country to negotiate.’

‘All of Nocturne is “tough country”, my liege,’ Vel’cona interjected. ‘The land knows when it is under threat. It will try to kill the invaders just as we shall.’

Tu’Shan smiled thinly over the grainy projection. It cast haunting shadows across the noble grooves of his face.

‘Spoken like an earth shaman of old.’

‘Am I not, albeit clad in armour and armed with the strength of my Emperor?’

‘Indeed,’ Tu’Shan conceded, and went back to the map.

Epithemus, the Jewel City, was situated in the middle of the Acerbian Sea and would only be vulnerable to aerial attack. A small attack wing of gunships held in reserve that had survived the devastation on Prometheus could protect it.

Heliosa and Aethonion, the Beacon City and Fire Spike respectively, would be defended by the reserve companies of Mulcebar and Drakgaard. That left only Clymene, the Merchant Sprawl, and Skarokk, also known as the Dragonspine. Both were at the remote edges of Nocturnean civilisation, bordered by the T’harken Delta and eastern Gey’sarr Ocean. So isolated were these regions that an enemy would be hard-pressed to mount an invasion there without first marching across vast tracts of inhospitable desert, and that was assuming they had already sacked Hesiod and Themis. If Nihilan managed to get that far all was lost anyway, so Tu’Shan focused on his first bulwarks.

‘I will lead our armoured divisions across the Themian Ash Ridge,’ he declared. ‘Only Fire-born can navigate its crags. The peaks will provide natural cover from any gun emplacements Nihilan has brought to sunder our walls and void shields.’

He took up his thunder hammer from where it leaned against the table, appreciating its heft.

The weapon’s name was Stormbearer. Rumour persisted around the Chapter that it was forged from the self-same metal as its ancestral twin Thunderhead, the hammer of Vulkan. Though none alive could refute or substantiate such a claim. In truth it was one of many hammers, blades and spears that Tu’Shan possessed in his armoury. As a master forgesmith, he had several weapons but Stormbearer was his favourite. There was no armour it couldn’t break, or so the masters told the aspirants when recounting its legend.

‘Then I shall await you at Hesiod where hell will fall hardest,’ Vel’cona answered, also readying to leave. The time was long past when the lords of Nocturne should go to war.

Tu’Shan nodded and drew a line in the hololith between the two neighbouring cities.

‘We’ll break them here or not at all.’

‘It might not come to that,’ said another.

Cerulean fire dimmed in Vel’cona’s eyes as he recognised the figure beneath the archway to the throne room. It lay open to all, and with the Firedrakes all aboard the Flamewrought was largely unguarded.

‘You have looked better, Apothecary,’ said Tu’Shan. ‘I’m glad you’ve returned from the Burning Walk.’

‘Unfortunately, to inauspicious times,’ added Vel’cona, folding his arms with a nod of greeting.

Fugis bowed humbly to his masters. ‘Perhaps it was to bring important tidings,’ he told them, rising. ‘Where is Dak’ir? I must see him at once.’

‘The Reclusiam, readying to join our defence with Pyriel and Elysius,’ Tu’Shan replied.

Vel’cona’s eyes narrowed as the psychic glow returned. ‘You saw something out in desert. What was it, brother?’

‘An omen, one that could decide the fate of us all. ’

‘Then deliver it. Nihilan has assembled armies and brought them to our world,’ said Tu’Shan.

‘I have seen the dusk-wraiths in the desert.’

‘Another vanguard to silence our towers and outer defences. They have prepared a landing zone for a considerable ground force. Vel’cona and I go to meet them.’ Tu’Shan picked up his battle-helm and held it in the crook of his arm. ‘I’d advise you to make it quick. The majority of the transports have left Prometheus already, and not all of us can walk through the gates of infinity.’

He gestured to a flickering light, clinging to the air like iridescent dust motes, where Vel’cona had been a moment before.

Fugis was nonplussed. ‘Don’t you wish to hear of it? What I have seen?’

‘Take no offence, brother,’ said Tu’Shan, moving around the table. ‘I can either stand here, listening to talk of omen and prophecy that may or may not come to pass, or I can go to my people where I am needed.’ He clapped Fugis on the shoulder as he passed him. ‘Bring your message to Dak’ir. It is for his attention, not mine. You’ll find me on the Themian Ash Ridge, shouting the primarch’s name from the cupola of Promethean.’

Fugis nodded. ‘I will join you as soon as I am able to, my lord.’

Tu’Shan left the throne room without another word.

Nothing more needed saying. They would fight and live, or they would die – Nocturne, the Chapter, everything.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I

Hangar Seven

A swarm of Venoms swept into the raw wound of Hangar Seven, splinter cannons roaring. They emerged from the void amidst an expanding pall of darkness exuded from their insectoid hulls, and spread across the deck like a contagion. The withering return fire from the barricaded defenders was indiscriminate but sustained.

Las-bolts and solid shot fizzed and spanged off their alien hulls but achieved little more than metal-scoring ricochets. The jet-skimmers were strafing fast across the expansive hangar, hurtling around the burnt-out shells of boxy gunships and other craft, making accurate targeting almost impossible.

The docking bay was a vast flat plate of metal scattered with sunken maintenance pits and racks of machinery. It was wide with plenty of open space for turning and landing. Intended for vessels as large as escorts and bulk-freighters, the blasted hangar gate was more than wide enough to accommodate the dark eldar raiding ships. It was twisted, the adamantium peeled back from incredible explosive force so that it resembled a ragged, gaping aperture.

The defenders could not hope to protect every avenue of attack, especially from an enemy so swift, but they had tried hard.

Arrayed in four lines – utilising crates, wreckage and pieces of shattered gunship fuselage – the defensive barricades were improvised but not entirely ineffective. Semi-circular heavy gun emplacements were interspersed between ranks of crude laser rifles and noisy hand-held scatter cannons.

Despite their night shields, several of the dark eldar’s transports went down burning. One, clipped by a missile burst, rolled across the hangar deck wrapped in fire. It screeched to a wrecked halt and exploded, killing the warriors aboard and spraying frag.

It was of little consequence as a second swarm hoved in after the first and then a third, followed by a fourth. Overwhelming force and a multitude of different targets made it difficult for the defenders to mount any sort of concerted defence.

An’scur was amongst the last to enter the hangar aboard the void-shrouded transports and watched with mild amusement as the mon’keigh’s firing discipline became increasingly erratic. It was gloomy in the chamber and the muzzle flares from their brute weapons flash-cast the fear on their faces. Only the gene-bred ones, the armoured giants, maintained their resolve when confronted with horror incarnate.

Dispassionately, he observed the bodies of his kabalite warriors strewn around the deckplate like broken dolls. Their unwilling sacrifice had paved the way for the wych cults to leap over and amongst the first line of makeshift barricades where they could cut and cleave and kill for the mutual pleasure of all the dark eldar.

Reinforcements were piling in after them, dark lances and disintegrators ripping up the ramshackle entrenchments where the humans cowered. An’scur savoured their agonised deaths as his gaze turned to the wyches.

They were darkly beautiful creatures, but nothing in comparison to Helspereth. It provoked a sad memory that surprised him with its potency. The archon’s melancholy soured to anger quickly and he armed himself with falchion blade and splinter pistol.

‘Sybarite, stay close to me but within my eye-line at all times,’ he ordered, sliding down the mask of his war-helm. A face as white as alabaster, narrow as a drawn blade with eyes of ash-grey, disappeared behind a daemonic visage forged from dark metal.

An’scur’s blade-hand nodded slowly, and drew a long glaive from a scabbard of human skin upon his back. It crackled evilly as he fed a pulse of tainted light over its razored edge.

‘By your will, lord archon,’ he said, the husking voice obscured by a flesh-leather hell-mask.

An’scur did not reply. He began to run. Hot beams whipped past him, too slow to even glance his armour. There were approximately ninety-seven strides to the first line of barricades. The Venom could have got them closer but there was no thrill in that, no challenge. He leapt and rolled, a bark of heavy shell fire tearing up the deckplate where he’d been standing. Now there were only seventy-one.

Fleet-footed, the sybarite was his master’s shadow. He moved in perfect symmetry, like he knew An’scur’s movements ahead of time and could predict them. Weaving aside from a raking las-beam, snap-shooting the firer through the neck with a deft burst from his splinter pistol, An’scur considered the sybarite might be a little too good and began to formulate a plan to remove him.

After all, sell-swords, even those who styled themselves on the warrior kabals, were not to be trusted for any length of time.

Just thirty-three strides remained.

A Venom from the last attack wave pushed forwards, hoping to slice a jagged hole in the heavier barricades towards the back of the hangar. Beyond this last redoubt was a fortified gate, which led deeper into the complex and towards An’scur’s objective. The insectoid vessel was too aggressive and opened itself up to a gene-bred warrior who cut it apart with a salvo of hot light. It exploded, showering the area around it with fire and shrapnel. As it expanded, the burst engulfed An’scur and his lackey. Engaging his shadow field, the archon flew through the carnage, flickering out of existence briefly before resolving again on the other side. To his mild chagrin, the sybarite made it too, albeit trailing smoke, his Ghostplate armour hazed with heat.

‘At your side, my lord,’ he rasped, with only the barest hint of sarcasm.

For a moment, An’scur thought he recognised the tone and timbre of it, but threats more immediate seized his attention.

At seven strides left, they vaulted the first barricade and set about them with their envenomed blades.

An’scur barely acknowledged the first cut. It sent a grubby mon’keigh’s head spinning like a grenade into the deeper ranks, trailing arterial blood like red streamers. A thrust disembowelled a second then a series of blows, delivered at eye-stinging speed, slew a clutch of others. A ring of blood and dismembered limbs framed the carnage. Together, the archon and his sybarite leapt the second barricade.

Ak’taro knew they were being pushed back. The sheer number of dark eldar and their rampant aggression was proving too difficult to stymie in the massive hangar bay. The next fall-back point was beyond the gate behind them but he was loath to relinquish position.

Hold the line. Those were his orders. He intended to honour them.

At his left shoulder he heard Sergeant Balataro lauding another of his battle-brothers.

‘Send them back to hell, Ikaron!’

The plasma gunner raised a fist in salute as the blazing enemy vehicle rolled in front of the first barricade in a storm of fiery debris.

Several figures that had yet to disembark were caught in the conflagration and staggered from the wreck aflame.

Ikaron took aim but Balataro stopped him.

‘Let them burn.’

The plasma gunner switched to a fresh target, sending an energised bolt into another horde of warriors instead.

Ak’taro, who’d paused to reload, noticed something emerge through the fire and smoke of the broken vehicle. He pointed to it with a gauntleted finger.

‘Brother-sergeant!’

Balataro followed his trooper’s gesture and saw it too.

Two armoured warriors were coming at the barricades at speed. With hellish abandon they took the first barricade, advancing through a fusillade of las-fire and scatter shot, and cut down the armsmen behind it at will. Then they were in amongst the second, culling desultorily as before.

Lasguns pressed into the hands of deck crew, even highly trained combat-armsmen, weren’t going to so much as slow these butchers down.

The sergeant drew his chainsword, thumbing the activation stud so the teeth-blades screamed.

‘A lordling and his servant,’ he snarled. Balataro was headstrong and not one to shirk from a fight. The rate of attrition was unusually high for squads under his command, perhaps part of the reason he would never rise higher through the ranks, but so too were the laurels.

‘Combat-squad Hyperion with me,’ he ordered, vaulting the barricade. Four warriors armed with bolters went with him.

Ak’taro was left behind, his own sergeant dead to Mechanicus sabotage, so he assumed command of his own squad’s remnants and Balataro’s leavings.

‘Apollus and Venutia, close ranks and dig in!’ he bellowed, and the half-squads hunkered down. He still had Ikaron’s plasma gun so put some heavier fire on the xenos pressing at the far right flanks of their emplacements.

It took less than a minute for Balataro to reach the lordling. Ak’taro heard the shout of Vulkan’s name as blades clashed and sparks fell as rain. It was hard to see in the melee. Another fight had grown around it, dark eldar warriors rushing in behind their nobles to exploit the inroads they’d made.

Balataro’s troops had formed a circle around him as the alien lordling’s reinforcements enveloped them.

Ak’taro fought the urge to advance and assist. He couldn’t level supporting fire either in case a stray shot hit an ally.

Hold the line, he remembered, and snapped, ‘Do your duty!’ beneath his breath.

Hand-to-hand fighting had erupted across the length of the first two barricades. Through his retinal lenses, the xenos appeared slightly altered. Their heat signatures were different, colder. Men of Nocturne were dying in their droves, the red aura of their bodies going dark like candles slowly being snuffed out. Light was fading as the dark eldar’s noose tightened around them inexorably.

Ak’taro looked for Balataro but couldn’t see him. For a terrible moment, he thought the sergeant was slain but then he appeared, bloodied and reeling.

The gene-bred one was vicious but slow. An’scur parried a clumsy blow, hacking into his shoulder with a deft return. Spitting oaths that were little more than bestial grunts to the archon’s ears, the hairless ape came again, swinging a bulky pistol around. An’scur stepped aside from the barrage, the shells ripping first into air and then the hapless kabalite warriors behind him. They ruptured and broke apart from internal detonation, showering the combatants with bone and gore.

Such loud, ugly warriors, he thought.

An’scur nodded to the mon’keigh, impressed at the savagery of his weapons. This gesture only seemed to further enrage the whelp, who charged in swinging. A brutal downstroke took a chip off the archon’s lamellar shoulder guard, angering him. The upswing came late and laboured. An’scur weaved away from it and cut across, cleaving the churning saw-blade in two. Shadow-cloaked, he flickered through the storm of jagged teeth that spat outwards, embedding into flesh and metal.

The mon’keigh was digging one from his destroyed cheekbone, face painted in blood, when An’scur lopped off his wrist and drove the tip of his falchion into the opposite shoulder joint, severing a crucial nerve cluster. The broken haft of the mon’keigh’s blade-weapon clattered to the ground from benumbed fingers. Disarmed, with one arm useless and another reduced to a wrist stump, the primitive drove at An’scur, head lowered like a battering ram. The archon took a second to marvel at the brute’s tenacity before holstering his splinter pistol and drawing an agoniser that he lodged in the mon’keigh’s screaming mouth.

Immensely painful death was not quite instantaneous. The mon’keigh’s last expression was fashioned into a rictus of agony. A red rime coated his teeth from when he’d severed his own tongue.

Leaving the corpse still locked in agonised nerve convulsions, An’scur moved on with the sybarite in tow. The sell-sword had reaped a steady tally of heads with his glaive, and left a pair of wounded for the chasing pack to gorge upon.

An’scur smiled. Perhaps the warrior was worthy of being spared a little longer… The gate wasn’t far now. The final barricade beckoned.

Ak’taro looked on in disbelief as the butchered body of Sergeant Balataro collapsed below the barricade line and was lost from sight. The xenos lordling had cut him apart, piece by piece. It was unworthy of the noble Salamander.

‘Ak’taro…’ It was Brother Rodondus. ‘We must avenge him!’

The desire to do so was strong but a swift glance at the barricade line revealed it was breaking. Stabbing attacks had punched holes through barricade three, whilst two and one were completely overrun.

Terrified armsmen, far beyond the Salamanders’ reach, were being rounded up and slaughtered. Over half the heavy gun emplacements were silent, either dry of ammo or their crews dead. No one ran. No one could run. The only way out was through the gate and the xenos were converging on that.

Ak’taro held Rodondus back. Every mote of his being wanted to charge, death or glory, into the enemy. Pragmatism and the knowledge it would be a life spent for nothing prevented him.

Hold the line, those had been his orders, but the line was gone.

‘We fall back, corridor by corridor. Hangar Seven is lost.’

Rodondus looked like he was about to protest but conceded to wisdom.

Suppressing fire erupted from the Space Marines’ ranks, as Ak’taro called the retreat. He raised Draedius on the comm-feed.

‘Full retreat is in effect, open up the corridor and prepare for incoming. Keep the aperture narrow, enemy close.’

The reply was static-laden and hard to discern but a few seconds later the gate mechanism stirred into life, and began to part. Rodondus roared at the few human survivors as they pelted through the hydraulic pressure cloud, heads down. One unfortunate deckhand was clipped before he got through and fell bleeding. The others grabbed him but then a second man got his chest cavity vacated by a disintegrator prompting Rodondus to shout, ‘Leave the wounded. Get through now. Go!’

Barring Ek’thelar, who was priming charges, Ak’taro was last to leave.

He turned for a moment, ‘Twenty metres, hug the walls and adopt overwatch pos–’

A brief stint as acting-sergeant ended with a splinter burst to the throat. Ak’taro’s gorget bent and broke apart as a fountain of blood and shrapnel ripped out of his neck. He fell just as Ek’thelar was getting through the gate. It sealed behind him, locking Ak’taro’s dead form in Hangar Seven.

With the closing of the gate silence resumed in the corridor, broken a second later by a dull explosion as the incendiaries placed by Ek’thelar went off.

Then they waited.

II

Siege

The walls surrounding Hesiod were thronged with troops. Since Captain Agatone had given his rallying speech, a quiet resilience had descended over the garrison that epitomised Nocturnean resolve. Militia, some soldiers, others who were rock harvesters or ash traders, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Fire-born. United, they would cling to this city with tenacious fingers. They would do it to their dying breaths.

Behind them, clogging passageways and conduits, plazas and gantries were scared but stoic Nocturnean faces. Its peoples looked to the world’s defenders, their thin green lines, and prayed to the Throne it would be enough.

Val’in was amongst the Scouts alongside Master Prebian, who surveyed the ashen plain beyond the walls through his magnoculars. They had not long returned from Prometheus aboard the Fire-wyvern. Emptied of its cargo, the Thunderhawk was headed towards Epimethus and the Acerbian Sea. Mercenary flyers had been sighted by the watchtowers, bound for the Jewel City. Squadrons of speeders and gunships had been sent to counter them. That any enemy force had managed to get so close to the Sanctuaries prior to detection was testament to the dark eldar’s infiltration.

Clutching a bolter close to his carapace plastron, Val’in regarded the approaching enemy ground forces with nervous eyes. All of the Scouts, even he and Exor as aspirants, carried bolters and other long-range weapons. Prebian had instructed the Chapter Bastion’s armouries opened and its materiel distributed. The Master of Recruits had supplemented his already impressive arsenal with a chainsword that hung from a scabbard strap around his hip. There were heavy bolters and tube launchers amongst Seventh too, with drum-clips and missile crates close to hand.

‘There’s armour,’ Prebian said to no one in particular, ‘lots of it, coming from the west across the Pyre.’ He lowered the magnoculars and gave them to Val’in. ‘Here, see for yourself.’

Through the grainy scopes, Val’in saw a thick dust cloud presaging a host of armoured vehicles and infantry. There were tracked-haulers too, massive bulky things that dragged fat-wheeled artillery pieces behind them. The disciplined ranks of graven Dragon Warriors marched alongside an alien rabble: wire-limbed, avian creatures who rode along on brutish pack-beasts and in roofless rigger-trucks. Val’in was appalled to see other renegades amongst the throng. He knew they weren’t Dragon Warriors because their armour was different, although they all bore Nihilan’s mark of allegiance, but had no knowledge of these other warbands.

‘There is a host of renegades, all wearing power armour.’ Though he tried, he couldn’t keep the fear out of his voice.

‘Traitors, all the same,’ Prebian replied. ‘Nihilan has gathered strays and dogs from the Eye to swell his ranks. You’ll be killing them soon enough.’

‘How?’ He’d never fought other Space Marines before. It had only just occurred to him that he ever might.

Prebian pulled down the magnoculars and pointed at the ribbed joints between sections of his battle-plate. ‘Here is where it’s weakest, or if they fight without helm then aim for the head. Remember your rituals of accuracy. Use them.’ He addressed both aspirants. ‘Once they’re beyond the void shields, no man-portable weapon can breach these walls. They’ll need to climb. You’ll have an advantage then. Keep your sights angled low, closer to vertical the better. A shell that penetrates something not fatal like a shoulder or kneecap will travel further. Hopefully it’ll detonate around something important.’

He gestured to his hearts, throat and finally head.

‘Killing shots,’ he explained. ‘No mercy, no quarter. This is the Great Enemy we fight. A Space Marine, even one corrupted by Ruin, can sustain a lot of punishment. Anything less and they’ll be over these walls. That happens and it’s over.’

Val’in nodded, and looked further.

Just behind the infantry, maintaining pace and coming in low, were the gunships. Unlike Fire-wyvern, these flyers were older, battered and of some antiquated design. The dark metal flock descended on contrails of fire and swathed the desert in their shadow. Buzzing around them like outriders were dark eldar riding jetbikes and a host of the skimmer-rafts he’d seen earlier.

This was but one army. Others would be gathering all around Nocturne and advancing on the cities. Hesiod, Prebian had told him, would be first.

Known as the Seat of Tribal Kings, it rose up on a mound of granite and backed against a broad shoulder of basalt that made its south and east aspects almost impossible to assault. It was to the north and west facings that Prebian had arrayed his troops. As the first line of defence, much of Third was also garrisoned here.

Val’in could not see his battle-brothers but knew they were ranked below, combat-ready. Some were also stationed on the north wall but were distant enough to be indistinct. He understood that a vanguard of assault troops was hiding in ambush amongst the dunes. Here they would harass and neutralise key targets to slow the advance, buying time for the defenders to hammer them. Thunderfire cannons had been brought from the armoury and were installed at intervals around the wall. Val’in had never seen one fired but knew they were deadly.

Although he’d only been an aspirant, not yet even a Scout, for a short amount of time, he knew this was not the Space Marine way of war. They were shock troops, fast-moving and adaptable, capable of achieving any mission in any battle zone. This siege had been forced upon them.

Prebian had stepped back from the battlements and was deep in conversation over the comm-feed. Val’in turned to Exor.

‘I never expected to be fighting a war so soon,’ he admitted.

While tactics and survival were Val’in’s forte, Exor had excelled with weapons. He cradled a snub-nosed grenade launcher, a bandoleer of fat shells wrapped around his torso – it wasn’t exactly standard armament but then this was far from a standard battle. He was checking the sighter sat at the end of the barrel when he looked up and met Val’in’s gaze.

‘Nor me. We’ll earn honour for our Chapter this day,’ he vowed, showing none of the other aspirant’s anxiety.

‘And retribution… for Heklarr, and Kot’iar, Ska’varron and the rest who fell to the dusk-wraith’s blades.’

‘For all of them,’ said Exor, and held out his hand.

Val’in took his forearm in the warrior’s grip and their pact was made.

‘Retribution.’

‘You’ll have it, aspirants,’ Prebian told them, unslinging his bolter, ‘that and the black carapace if you survive this.’ He racked the weapon’s slide, checked the ammo gauge. ‘Make your oaths to Vulkan. I’ve received word from Captain Agatone. We are to join in battle.’ He gestured to the horizon where the first of the enemy’s guns had begun to fire.

Across the length of the void shields the artillery barrage was like an iridescent lightning storm. The smaller shells created stabbing flashes in the shield’s transparent membrane when they struck, whilst the heavier salvos erupted in vast eye-burning blooms that lingered for seconds afterwards like oil on water. Hot and stinking ozone raked the air, bringing an acerbic breeze to the wall as the defences were tested.

They were getting hammered with everything that Nihilan’s immense arsenal possessed, but they were holding. For now.

Val’in ignored it and kept firing into the shadows below him. He was leaning deep into the crenellations, keeping the angle of his bolter low as instructed.

Void shields provided excellent protection against high-velocity shelling and turret-mounted energy weapons but were no barrier to slow-marching infantry. The first waves who’d survived the hell-storm beyond the shield threshold emerged like pale versions of themselves coming slowly into focus. They were scythed down mercilessly before they’d had a chance to charge the walls themselves.

Prebian and Agatone had arranged the defences so there was a ‘kill box’ between where the wall ended and the void shield began. Anything inside that zone would be slaughtered by close weapons fire. Meltaguns and flamers were particularly adept at this task and the ground below Val’in was clogged with smoke, and scorched black.

A burst jolted his shoulder with fierce recoil, but it was so numb and bruised that he could hardly feel it. Something screeched beneath him. It was an alien sound, slowly diminishing as it fell. A second burst, more measured to conserve ammunition, shot out its grapnel. The enemy infantry had weathered the barrage from the walls and were now making their assault in earnest.

At first only a few dregs had got through without being immolated in the kill box, the cannon fodder Nihilan was willing to sacrifice to blunt the defenders’ guns, but now they were coming on in numbers. Renegades had joined the ranks in an elite second wave but these were still lesser warriors. So far none of the Dragon Warriors had committed to the fight. The last Val’in had seen of them before the crackling void shield obliterated his view was during the enemy’s march to Hesiod.

Behind him, the Thunderfire cannons kept up a steady refrain that boomed across the battlements and threw up clods of earth, smoke and bodies in the middle distance. So loud was the barrage that Val’in almost missed the hollow chank in his drum-mag.

‘Running low…’ he warned, reading the gauge was down to single digits. A Scout, his name was Tk’nar, had just reloaded and took up Val’in’s position as the aspirant went for ammunition. Resupply was strictly rationed. It had to last long enough to beat back the besiegers, break their will and send them reeling. So far, the enemy was proving tenacious.

In the brief respite from the wall Val’in caught a glance through the flickering void shields. Assault squads from Third were attacking the fringes of the enemy line, engaging isolated formations. In the few seconds of visual clarity, he saw angelic warriors clad in green battle-plate descend from on high and destroy a convoy of tanks that was repositioning. Before the infantry blocks protecting the armour could retaliate, the saboteurs were gone, buoyed aloft on streamers of oily flame, filling the air with jet-smoke.

To be amongst the Fire-born who waged war on wings of fire…

It was a glorious sight but one quickly lost as a missile salvo flashed angrily across the shield, obscuring the view.

Val’in returned to his post on the wall and the line bunched together again, the bolt storm unceasing.

‘Death to the traitors and all enemies of Nocturne!’ roared Prebian, strafing a precise line along the base of the wall.

Exor was invigorated by his captain’s war cry and pumped a barrage into the darkness. Multiple explosions lit up the shadows, churning up dirt and blasting bodies apart. Before the dust had settled, he went to release a second barrage when Prebian stopped him.

‘Methodical, precise,’ he warned. ‘Conserve your ammo, it’s not everlasting.’

Aggression when unleashed was hard to rein in, even harder to manage and direct. Val’in felt the surge of adrenalised abandon fill him too, a desire to kill everything in his sight, to revel in the power his genhanced attributes provided. But Prebian was right. Temperance, self-awareness and control – these were the traits that separated the loyal Space Marines from the traitors.

He heard the Master of Recruits on the comm-feed.

‘We are holding, Captain Agatone, but have yet to engage any of Nihilan’s elite forces.’

There was a brief period of silence as he listened to the distant commander. Prebian had his hand over one ear to try and block out the battle din.

‘I agree, brother, the sorcerer is planning something. We can do little but hold them off for now. Tu’Shan is coming. We must become the anvil to his hammer.’

We are the anvil, the thought was like an island of calm amidst a sea of utter chaos. War was a brutal thing, without form, bereft of reason or even obvious purpose. There were those that lived and those that died, nothing in-between. It was changing him, Val’in realised. Bolter screaming, he felt it already with the iron in his jaw and the steel in his heart. In this cauldron, he would become Adeptus Astartes or he would perish.

Hundreds of bolters hailed hell down from the walls in a frenzied staccato of gunfire. A bass sound rumbled beneath their roar from heavy bolters and autocannon. High-pitched missile bursts accented the brutal symphony as they vented from their tubes. Lower notes, the heavy foom-thwomp of expelled grenades, were interspersed between them. Deeper still were the thund-chank-thud of the siege cannons launching death and thunder into the heavens.

It became a cacophony for Val’in, blending together raucously in a belt of white noise without meaning, incapable of differentiation.

His bolter bucked and roared in his grasp like a sentient thing, craving carnage. Teeth gritted, he held it tightly until whitened knuckles could no longer feel and his hands became an extension of the weapon. With every violence-fuelled moment, he was changing. Val’in welcomed it, embraced it. He would need to evolve if he was going to live.

I will become the anvil.

The battle ground on.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I

Burning Skies

The Felldrake broke apart as a series of internal explosions rippled through its hull. The escort ship was easy meat for the bulky renegade cruiser, its shields and armour overwhelmed in a single destructive broadside.

Dac’tyr watched its destruction in enhanced magnification via the Flamewrought’s main occuliport. Outgunned, outsized, the escort had stood little chance against the larger vessel. It was one of several. Despite the Master of the Fleet’s pincer strategy inflicting tremendous damage on the enemy armada, the rate of attrition was catching up to his own ships.

He signalled to the Serpentine to converge with him on an attack heading.

The void was threaded with the long beam fire of forward lances and peppered with automatic bursts from cannon batteries. It rolled against the Flamewrought’s shields, its own turrets swivelling to acquire fresh firing solutions. Fighters and lesser ships broke apart against the determined salvos, carving a path for the flagship to advance. It was a vast behemoth of a vessel that moved slowly across the scrap of space where the battle for Nocturne’s upper atmosphere was being fought.

A pair of enemy frigates angled to intercept, pouring the forward momentum from their vast engines into a manoeuvre that would bring them both abeam of the Space Marine battle-barge, effectively creating a blockade. It would also bring their vastly superior broadside weapons to bear.

A pulse from the Flamewrought’s prow mounted nova cannon tore one of the frigates apart and left it shedding fuel and atmospheric pressure. Its crew were expelled with it, jettisoned from the holes in the vessel’s rent armour. A short burst of turret fire shredded most of them and left the rest flash-frozen by the void.

Serpentine removed the other frigate with a well-aimed lance strike, but not before numerous shield impacts registered on Dac’tyr’s tacticarium screen from a bout of ineffective broadsides. A schematic of the flagship showed negative damage from the salvo, but elsewhere several decks were sealed off and engines were running at below capacity. So far, the nova cannon still functioned but it was taking longer to re-power after firing and a section of starboard broadsides was destroyed. Shields in that section were also displaying weakened energy returns. Overall, the voids and displacers were currently at around forty-seven per cent effective.

Four enemy capital ships, all cruiser classes, had been scratched already as Flamewrought and Serpentine had laid anchor on the port side of the enemy battle line. Their husks floated across the void, blank-eyed and silent. Emblazoned with graven images and fell statuary, they were not so different from floating tombs.

Across a distant gulf laced with wrecks, damaged vessels and intense battery fire, the Vulkan’s Wrath and the Hammerforge racked up their own kills. So far the larger Space Marine cruisers were faring well but now the enemy vessels were gathering in attack formations and exploiting their greater numbers.

Dac’tyr had used enfilading fire with the Serpentine at extreme range to rip up numerous escorts and frigates too. These morsels were the first to burn, but represented little more than fodder. It had warmed up the guns but nothing more. In response, several vessels were peeling off from their previous attack vector and coming for the battle-barge. Draw them away from the Hell-stalker and Dac’tyr might be able to close enough for a boarding action, but it would take time.

Like all void battles, the conflict above Nocturne was slow and ponderous. A captain was not only required to think in terms of multi-dimensional space but he also had to predict and prepare. There was a sense of almost orchestral choreography in its complexity, where each instrument supports every other. In isolation each ship in a battle line was less effective than when combined and deployed in the right order at precisely the correct moment. Foresight was essential. If a hulking cruiser or battle-barge was in the wrong place, it would take a long time to move. Rapid manoeuvres in response to enemy tactics were simply impossible.

‘All ahead full,’ Dac’tyr ordered down the vox-feed to his bridge crew. In a few minutes they’d pass the debris field left by the sundered enemy frigates and bring their guns to bear on the renegade cruiser.

The battle-barge’s cogitator banks identified it as the Harganath, an old Imperial vessel stolen by renegade pirates and put to the use of Ruin. Dac’tyr had no idea of who captained the ship now; only that it was an abomination that must be destroyed. Through the occuliport its hull appeared to be jagged and its serrated prow resembled the maw of some vast ocean predator. Dark slashes decorated its massive flanks like black blood.

Three more enemy vessels appeared on the tacticarium screen, forward arcs firing. A torpedo spread roared from each, intended to inflict critical damage on the Flamewrought and Serpentine, which had just come abeam.

‘Deploying interceptors,’ the voice of Captain Sargorr’ath crackled over the external vox-feed.

Dac’tyr launched his own fighters too as a fourth ship ranged up onto his prow, alongside the more distant spectre of the Harganath. This was a lighter vessel with a flanged prow like a mace, spare with its weapons but carrying ranks of boarding claws along its flanks and underbelly.

To come into close proximity with a ship like that was to invite death by evisceration from its berserkers and breaching troops.

‘Forward lances,’ Dac’tyr roared, as an icon flashed on another sub-screen indicating the fighters had launched.

Shield impacts blazed across the Flamewrought’s forward occuliport before its lances could retaliate. The tacticarium screen hazed and then blinked back, indicating they’d taken sensorium damage.

The lances powered and a salvo of deadly beams raked across kilometres of void-space to the aggressor ship.

‘Torpedo spread, wide dispersal,’ he followed, and the forward tubes were vented. Dac’tyr watched the tacticarium screen and the red icon representing the ship that had ambushed them. Forward lances registered several strong hits which downed the cruiser’s shields momentarily. It was a calculated shot as the torpedo markers bypassed the overloaded defences and bloomed against the vessel’s armour.

‘Bring it up, full magnification.’

The overhead screen displayed a view of the cruiser, its prow wreathed in flames. Secondary explosions rolled up the hull as incendiaries and ammunition stores cooked off spectacularly. It was ailing, the damage inflicted by the torpedoes critical.

‘Captain Sargorr’ath, she’s yours to finish.’

‘At your word, my Fleetmaster.’

A slew of lance strikes arrowed from the Serpentine, savaging the already stricken vessel. Without shields, the renegade cruiser was a floating powder keg primed for violent ignition. Its bridge was destroyed upon impact. Several weapon towers went with it, collapsing and spearing into the superstructure below. Its engines capitulated against the strain of the attack and the cruiser fell from the void, set adrift and burning.

‘On our port side,’ Sargorr’ath returned.

The fighters had neutralised the torpedo spread but were still at large, attempting to regroup with their parent ships through a hail of flak. The trio of cruisers flanking them had closed their formation to better intensify the effect of their forward weapons. Desultory turret fire ripped into the plucky interceptors and barely half made it back to their launch bays.

Dac’tyr was focused on the Harganath. He had one eye on the nova cannon, which was close to full charge. Impact markers flared on the tacticarium screen as the Serpentine took a battering from the port side ships. It looked heavy as they all targeted the smaller strike-cruiser. Kill one and then they’d gang up on the larger battle-barge.

‘Serpentine… Sargorr’ath, are you still with me?’

The return came back marred by static. Warning klaxons and the hiss of active fire-suppressant systems undercut the captain’s jagged response. ‘Taken… heavy fire… shields… almost out… lost port side weapon batteries.’

The nova cannon was ready to fire. Dac’tyr could eliminate the Harganath but then Sargorr’ath was done for. His eyes scanned the tacticarium display, searching quickly for an answer.

Grimly, he hailed his helmsmaster. ‘All stop. Bring us about, full power to port side aft to make her turn.’

‘My lord, that will bring us abeam of the Harganath. Our starboard side batteries are unlikely to disable it and shields are already dipping below forty per cent effective.’

‘Bring us about, helm,’ Dac’tyr ordered calmly. ‘Do it now, if you please.’

He raised the ship-to-ship vox as the rapid heading change went into effect. It was like turning the arm on a heavy crane, slow at first but quick to build as it accumulated momentum.

‘Serpentine, this is Dac’tyr of the Flamewrought.’

‘I can see your heading, Fleetmaster.’

‘Very good, captain. The Harganath is all yours.’

‘I have lances powered and torpedoes primed.’

‘Vent it all, everything you’ve got.’

‘In Vulkan’s name and for the burning skies,’ Sargorr’ath replied.

‘Vulkan and the burning skies.’

The vox went dead as Sargorr’ath cut the feed.

Dac’tyr gripped the arms of the command throne as the bridge shuddered with the Harganath’s assault on their broadside.

‘How are those shields holding?’ He had to shout above the sound of sudden warning klaxons and the perpetual tremors thundering throughout the ship.

The helmsmaster sounded fraught. ‘Below thirty per cent, twenty-four, twenty-two…’

‘Just keep us intact a little longer.’ They were coming about. Ahead on the forward occuliport, Dac’tyr and the rest of the bridge crew could see the trio of advancing cruisers. Their front arc weapons were raining fury against the Serpentine, which had yet to release its own forward salvos.

‘A little closer, Sargorr’ath,’ Dac’tyr muttered, teeth clenched as a renewed bombardment brought fresh damage reports scrolling down a sub-screen.

‘Eighteen per cent, fifteen…’ The helmsmaster kept up the grim commentary.

Now the Flamewrought was taking fire to the front. The flanking cruisers must have seen what Dac’tyr was planning. None of them could break off; they were too close, any large manoeuvre would risk a catastrophic collision. Instead, they gave the front arc weapons everything, pouring hell and thunder against both Salamander ships.

Still a few degrees to go before the nova cannon could be unleashed. Momentum from the aft engines was picking up. Dac’tyr estimated as long as a minute until they achieved the optimum firing solution.

‘Nine per cent, six per cent…’ The helmsmaster looked up anxiously from his station.

‘Hold your nerve, helm. Bring us around… Just a little closer.’ Dac’tyr’s gaze was locked on the tacticarium. The Serpentine had just passed beneath them and closed to within lethal lance range. Markers indicated a torpedo launch from all of its bays. They streamed across the black void of the crackling display screen in formation, rendered as tiny dagger-shaped icons.

‘Cut them open, brother,’ Dac’tyr willed.

‘Three per cent. Shield collapse imminent.’

‘A few more degrees…’

‘Starboard shields down, we’re taking damage.’

Fire plumed across the bridge, engulfing several members of the crew. Others were thrown off their feet or clung desperately to their stations as the deck beneath them roiled.

Dac’tyr shut his mind to their screaming, to waver now and lose resolve would mean the end of all of them.

‘Stay with me, helm!’ he bellowed.

An explosion in his peripheral vision took out a bank of consoles, throwing bodies into the smoke-thick air. A section of the vaulted ceiling caved in, crushing a group of servitors who’d been attempting to get the fire under control.

‘My lord!’ The helmsmaster was bleeding and held himself awkwardly from some unseen injury.

Sixty seconds that had felt eternal in their passing finally reached a terminus.

The Flamewrought came about, bringing Dac’tyr’s target to bear.

‘Fire! Unleash the nova cannon!’ he roared.

A coruscating beam thrust from the prow of the Flamewrought and coursed across the void. Hit with the destructive fury of a dying sun, the middle cruiser broke apart and shattered. Trailing fire and escaping pressure, she ditched at once, listing horribly to the port side. Motive power had failed utterly as sheer brutal momentum took the ship into the side of another cruiser which was attempting to move away.

The dead ship’s spike ram tore into the fleeing vessel, ripping open its flank and spilling what was inside like guts strewn across the void. It drove on, pushing apart the other ship’s inner decks and tearing prow from aft. The fleeing ship came apart and the two vessels, briefly entwined, exploded. The blast was immense. It rolled into the third ship like a tidal wave, heaving it over so its ventral section angled starboard. Turrets and cathedra towers came apart in the force wash as hundreds of small fires erupted across the hull like the sporadic colonisation of an ant horde.

Despite himself, Dac’tyr clenched his fist in triumph.

‘Well done, helm.’ His voice was a little strained. ‘Well done.’

The fire was brought under control and auxiliary systems activated. Non-essential stations were shut down and crew re-appropriated across the bridge so the Flamewrought could still function.

Damage reports came thickly now. Dac’tyr processed each and every one, locking into his eidetic memory and deploying measures as needed. They were still combat-effective, which was just as well… The Hell-stalker had just appeared on tacticarium.

II

Stormriders

The tremors below decks subsided and Praetor whispered a prayer to the Emperor.

The launch bay was a vast space, but little more than bare metal with a strongly buttressed ceiling. A massive teleportation pad was well shielded towards the centre of the chamber where the Firedrakes had been received from Prometheus. It was dark too, lit solely by emergency lighting that ran in arcing lume strips halfway up the onyx-black interior. Both flanking walls were punctuated with circular docking hatches. Beyond each hermetically sealed, interleaved gate was a boarding torpedo. Thirty-two torpedoes were engaged for launch, each with a nose-mounted vulcan-drill capable of penetrating starship armour. The embarkation zone in front of each access hatch was delineated by warning chevrons. Currently, they were all occupied.

Praetor and a Terminator command squad were mag-locked in one; Halknarr and his Firedrakes in another. All told there were twenty five-man units ready to breach and board. Most carried storm shields, thunder hammers and melta weapons. Vo’kar had his heavy flamer. A warrior in Halknarr’s squad called Un’gar hoisted an assault cannon to bear. The deployment of even a solitary squad of the First represented a serious threat; to engage its entire complement for a single action smacked of overkill, but then their mission was one of necessity, survival for their Chapter its price. Overkill was what was needed.

‘Trust in Lord Dac’tyr,’ said He’stan. He had joined Praetor’s squad and since translation into the Flamewrought had waited silently at the veteran sergeant’s side.

‘It is not my brother-captain that concerns me,’ Praetor admitted. ‘It is the vagaries of fate and the capricious nature of the void. I have fought in void-wars before and they have a habit of seldom running to plan.’

The comm-feed in Praetor’s battle-helm crackled.

‘At least we are still in one piece, a sign that Vulkan is with us if ever there was one.’

In the next embarkation zone, Halknarr held his chainfist aloft. A flash of fire lit the retinal lenses of his drake-helm.

Praetor replied. ‘Why is it on campaign you are an obstinate, cantankerous bastard until faced with the prospect of imminent death, brother?’

‘I blame the years of my veterancy.’ He tapped the stilled teeth-blades of his chainfist to his forehead.

These are worthy warriors, all, thought Praetor. Let me honour them; let us honour Vulkan and the Chapter this day of days.

He looked up at the ready lights above the portal. One icon was lit green indicating that the boarding torpedoes were primed for launch. Two more were still dark.

‘Give the signal,’ he urged beneath his breath. ‘Unleash us into the fires of battle…’

A second light joined the first and Praetor declared down the company-wide channel, ‘All Firedrakes into boarding positions, mag-locked and harnessed immediately.’

The access hatches opened in quick succession. With a hiss of released pressure, the metal leaves retracted like an expanding iris that led into the darkened interior of the boarding pod.

Techmarines and their servitor crews wheeled the sentry weapons into the ten decoy tubes. The last two were occupied by Ashamon and Amadeus, hulking Dreadnoughts and warriors-eternal.

The massive war engines were equipped with seismic hammers. Where Brother Ashamon favoured a heavy flamer, Amadeus cycled an assault cannon through its pre-firing routines. Both were forced to stoop as they entered their respective tubes.

‘In Vulkan’s name!’ they bellowed as one.

Praetor nodded to the venerable champions as the hatch closed behind him, shutting the launch bay off from view until only the inside of the boarding torpedo remained. Muttering litanies of activation, he flicked on a small targeting console affixed to the centre of the shallow strip of deck inside the tube. The simplistic display was rendered in blue and would chart their progress to the target. Icons represented the other vessels and debris along their trajectory to the Hell-stalker.

The mission objective required a very specific breach and insertion point. Margin for error was narrow, so he checked the small retro-jets fitted to the tube had manual power and enough fuel in case of course correction.

All was in readiness.

Praetor lifted his gaze to regard each and every one of the Firedrakes aboard with him. Gathimu… Hrydor… Nu’mean... he had already lost so many.

Who will bring back my corpse to the mountain? he wondered bleakly.

He’stan’s hand upon his armoured shoulder removed all doubt.

‘Vulkan is with us, brother,’

Praetor’s grief was burned away by a righteous flame.

The third light inside the torpedo turned green.

They launched.

On the bridge of the Hell-stalker, Nihilan consulted a hololith map of Nocturne’s surface. His cohorts were engaged across two Sanctuary Cities. Themis and Hesiod would bear the brunt of the attack, for it was these bastions he’d have to raze first. As he gazed across a grainy projection of the ground assault, it was to the latter that he focused his attention.

Artillery was well entrenched and bombarded the Salamanders’ void shields without cessation. Tens of thousands of infantry pushed up to the threshold of the shimmering barrier-fields as they fought to gain the walls. It was bloody, even from distance, and hundreds of the dead already clogged the base of Hesiod’s defences.

Fire-born, he knew, were tenacious. They would hold until they no longer drew breath. A meatgrinder was where that trait came into its own. Nihilan had predicted the cities would not be easy to crack but that was not really his aim, and he had a solution for the defenders’ obstinacy anyway.

Adjusting the pict-feed from the sensorium, he panned out to a wider vista and then homed back in on Mount Deathfire, which shadowed both cities with its craggy flanks. Fumes spilled from the vast calderas. Nihilan could almost hear the lament of the firedrakes, wailing in sympathetic anger with the earth.

‘She will be blighted before this is done,’ he promised, his eyes alighting on a narrow aperture at the summit of one of Deathfire’s peaks.

‘Are you certain it is there?’ he asked of the shadows.

A voice answered that only Nihilan could hear.

Drive your spear and you will rip out her still beating heart, drowning her children in blood.

It was more distant than before, as if only a relic of sentience remained. The crawling sensation beneath his skin was no more, the pressure on his mind absent. There was connection but it was no longer forged through symbiosis.

‘My eternal thanks are yours.’

The pact is sealed, no gratitude is necessary. My hunger will soon be sated…

The voice drifted away as if carried on an unfelt breeze and Nihilan was alone again.

He straightened in his command throne, shutting off the hololith.

‘Closing to within range, master,’ growled the voice of his helmsmaster. The creature cowered in the gloom, head bowed with its claws wrapped around a control console.

Nihilan was pleased. The lesser ships had done their task well, occupying Dac’tyr and his fleet. He glanced at the tacticarium screen, noting the signatures of the Flamewrought and the Serpentine advancing upon them as well as a host of smaller escorts.

He leaned over to the ship’s vox-feed.

‘Ekrine, is the Stormbird ready?’

‘And waiting, my lord.’

Thark’n and Ramlek were standing either side.

Kneeling before him was Nor’hak.

‘You know what’s coming for you?’ Nihilan asked.

The supplicant raised his eyes to meet the sorcerer’s. ‘I will slaughter them all.’

In his Terminator armour his homicidal tremors were kept still. He had yet to don a tusked battle-helm, which he held in one hand and rested on his bent knee. His eyes spoke murder and a desire to inflict pain.

‘It is difficult to say which one of you is the most sadistic,’ Nihilan remarked with a glance at Ramlek. The larger warrior looked like he wanted to prove it even with his rival clad in Tactical Dreadnought Armour.

‘Stop them, Nor’hak, that’s all I need you to do. Do that and they will die on this ship. All of them, including the pilgrim.’

Nor’hak nodded and Nihilan arose from his throne.

‘She’s all yours,’ he said. ‘I need only to see one more thing before I depart.’ He turned to the cowering wretch at the Hell-stalker’s helm.

‘The weapon is locked into position, master.’

Nihilan smiled, but the expression never reached his eyes.

When the order came it was given calmly.

‘Then fire.’

Far below the bridge of the Hell-stalker in the lower gun decks, the seismic cannon powered to life. The metals employed in its construction trembled as the mechanisms of its archaic design shifted like a slumbering titan, goaded into waking. It did not do so easily. This hand of gods, this weapon that had been dredged up after the aeons of darkness had buried it, stirred reluctantly as if it knew the devastation it could wreak.

According to the worshippers of the Omnissiah, the great Martian Machine God, every weapon has a spirit. It is this anima that must be soothed and placated in order for it to function. The seismic cannon possessed an ages-old sentience. It had the perspective of a terrible era when such apocalypse weapons existed that could erase entire races from being. Its spirit was malicious and terrible. It could not be placated, and was only capable of wrath.

The fully charged capacitors released a mournful whine as the fyron powder reacted in devastating molecular fusion. Energy coursed up the vast barrel, only barely contained. Upon reaching the mouth there was a flaring corona of power like a dawning sun that bleached the sky magnesium white.

Then it roared with a voice like crackling thunder and drove a wound deep into the heart of a world.

With his deadly cargo released, Dac’tyr prepared to withdraw and engage the rest of the enemy ships from distance. Through the forward occuliport he watched the Hell-stalker approach with disgusted awe.

It was immense, dwarfing even the Flamewrought. No weapon he possessed could stop it. Perhaps the nova cannon, if fired at close range and able to hit some vital system, might slow the behemoth down but this was a fleet-killer.

Dac’tyr had seen its like before but not for many years. It was a vessel built for crusading, so vast and powerful that it could take on opposing flotillas single-handed and run for centuries before needing to make dock.

It was once a true ship of war, but one whose noble lineage stood corrupted by Chaos. The vessel was bloated by additional cannons, torpedo tubes and fighter bays. Armour, thickened and re-bolted several times over, fattened its grossly cluttered flanks and underbelly. The Hell-stalker was an ugly thing, wrought for carnage at the sacrifice of speed and manoeuvrability. It would win simply by battering its enemy into submission, forcing him to empty his stores of ammunition until there was nothing left but desperation.

Then it would crush that too and spit the carcass back into the void to join the other lifeless, floating hulks.

And like the ship, its primary weapon was a spiked and wretched thing protruding from its prow like a harpy’s talon.

Dac’tyr was relaying evasive orders to the helm when he saw the crackling energy stir around the seismic cannon’s immense muzzle.

He voxed the lead boarding torpedo.

‘Brother-Sergeant Praetor, be advised something’s happening…’

A pulse of light ignited from the energy flux. It held there, burning for a few seconds, before being unleashed in a single focused beam.

An escort in its path, attempting to come at the Hell-stalker from beneath, was clipped. The ship disintegrated on contact with the energy lance uncoiling from the seismic cannon. A flash of light filled the Flamewrought’s occuliport and when it faded the ship was gone. A squadron of smaller gunships, coming in the escort’s wake but peeling away at the sight of the larger vessel’s destruction, were swept aside by the blast wave. Their hulls were stripped back in seconds, the metal flayed off layer by layer until only atoms remained.

It hit the Flamewrought too and sent warning icons scrolling across the tacticarium display. Several lower decks had taken damage; the port sections reported it was severe.

If the Firedrakes were caught up in that…

Dac’tyr prayed that the boarding torpedoes were still flying within the umbrella of the flagship’s void shields.

All comms snapped out, leaving a drone of static.

‘Re-open a channel to Brother-Sergeant Praetor immediately!’

A series of dead returns came back.

The boarding torpedoes sped from their launch tubes at incredible velocity into a mire of debris.

Praetor’s leading torpedo, like the tip of an arrow, bore the brunt of it.

Broken sections of ship armour smacked loudly against the hull, crates and drums disgorged from split cargo bays smashed upon its armoured nose, while the frozen bodies of dead crewmen simply bounced off. Every impact rocked the tube but failed to shake it off course. It was just chaff caught between the Flamewrought’s void shields.

Using the guidance console to navigate, Praetor made small adjustments to avoid the larger pieces of floating wreckage. He burned the retro-jets sporadically, pulling the tube’s trajectory to keep it steady.

Kilometres clicked by in one corner of the screen, counting down the distance to target.

They were approaching the edge of the void shielded area in a dispersed formation when the instrumentation across the entire spread overloaded. The torpedo shook violently and Praetor grimaced as a chain of sparks erupted from the console before it cut to black.

A secondary void-tremor slammed into the diminutive boarding vessel, spinning it. The shriek of protesting metal threatened an integrity breach. If that happened they’d survive but be cast adrift like all the other flotsam of space. The seals held but were under huge strain. Tiny fissures, venting minute pressure leaks, webbed the interior hull. Monstrous turbulence seized them and the torpedo trembled like a bunker exposed to a constant ordnance barrage.

‘We cannot take much more of this,’ uttered Persephion.

‘Stand firm, trust in the primarch.’ He’stan had his gaze fixed ahead, as if he could see through the drill-tipped prow to a point beyond the ken of his brothers. ‘We must endure it.’

Praetor hammered at the darkened console, putting a crack in the glass.

‘Navigation is out,’ he muttered, as if it were a small matter.

The void-tremors were subsiding, signalling the return of comms.

Captain Dac’tyr’s voice exploded through the static, fraught and over-loud.

‘…lkan’s breath and all the damned hells of Nocturne!’

In all the many years Praetor had known him, Dac’tyr had never once lost his composure. And here he was ranting like a zealot.

‘Brother-captain…’

At hearing Praetor’s voice, Dac’tyr’s tone changed. Relief warred with shock for supremacy. ‘Praetor! Brother-sergeant, they have fired.’

‘The weapon?’ Even the stoic leader of the Firedrakes sounded anxious.

‘Hell-stalker has unleashed the seismic cannon,’ Dac’tyr confirmed. ‘I have never seen…’

‘What is happening?’ Praetor was struggling to concentrate. Though they’d ridden out the worst of it, the passage to Nihilan’s flagship was still rough and, without guidance, uncertain. ‘Speak to me, brother-captain.’

All aboard the torpedo were enrapt by the exchange. So far, the only known fact was that Nocturne had been hit by the apocalypse weapon. It was the very thing their intervention was meant to have prevented.

Silence.

‘Dac’tyr!’

‘Hell and flame, brother, it was something terrible. Such power…’

‘What of our world, our home? Does she yet live?’

Shock turned into dour pragmatism. ‘I cannot tell, brother. The augurs are damaged but Nocturne has been struck by the weapon. I saw it breach the atmosphere and lance the surface. I can’t imagine what must…’ He trailed away. No one ever even countenanced such a doom, let alone expected to witness it.

Praetor was grimly taciturn. ‘Then we must not allow it to fire for a second time.’ He thumbed the retro-jets to maximum, intending to power through the wreckage field or die impaled upon it.

‘We are upon the anvil now, brothers,’ he told the rest of his squad, shouting above the scream of the jets. Inertia shuddered the curved walls of the tiny hold as the entire vessel tried to shake itself apart.

He’stan was the only one to answer. ‘Then let us show Vulkan we are worthy of its tempering.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I

Destiny

Apotheosis can be a state of mind as well as body. Rebirth from what was to what is, a transition from one thing to another, begins with understanding identity.

Dak’ir had never been certain of that. Unlike his brothers, his memories of childhood hunting through the caves of Ignea were strong. In many ways they possessed him, became an aspect of his reality as it was now. Becoming a Space Marine had done nothing to clarify that; it had only left him conflicted.

How can I be humane if I am not human? It was not so long ago that he’d asked this question of himself. Upon his ascension to the Librarius and the rank of Lexicanum, his confusion had increased further.

I am a weapon, but then aren’t we all? Over the last year, in the darkness and solitude of his prison, he had asked this too.

There were those that believed he had the power to doom or save a world. These were not idle-speaking men, nor were they credulous, paralysed by their own superstitions. They were vaunted champions, a council of elders whose wisdom was beyond question.

I am the Unbound Flame?

Was Dak’ir really expected to believe he was an artefact of myth given human form, an eternal fire anchored to flesh and blood?

Yet, there it lingered, this destructive force within him. He had kept it shackled within the bounds of his psyche. Through sheer will he did this, not through the null collars or the wards and sigils.

I am changing, he thought as the last of his armour was affixed to his body.

Apotheosis.

It felt good to become Lexicanum once more.

‘Dak’ir…’ Pyriel’s voice brought him out of his reverie. The Epistolary was holding something towards him in outstretched hands. ‘No Librarian should be without his staff or blade.’

It was Draugen, his force sword.

Closing his hand around the hilt, Dak’ir remembered the power it possessed and how to wield it with deadly purpose. The sword was like an extension of his being; without it, he was incomplete.

‘Gratitude, my master,’ he said, ‘for this and your words during my judgement.’

‘Besides angering Vel’cona, I achieved little. Be grateful for the wisdom of Tu’Shan and the expediency of the moment.’ He paused, and took on a concerned expression. ‘How do you feel?’

Dak’ir hooked Draugen’s scabbard to his battle-plate.

‘Better… worse. I feel as if I’m at the whim of some destiny I cannot shape or influence.’ He took his plasma pistol as it was offered, holstering that too. ‘The Time of Fire arises and yet here I am… unchanged.’

‘Into the fires of battle, brothers,’ Elysius, who was watching from the shadows at the edges of the Reclusiam, reminded them. ‘War calls.’

Pyriel nodded to the Chaplain, before clapping Dak’ir on the shoulder.

‘Whatever fate comes, whatever trial the anvil brings, we shall face it together, brother.’

The bonds of brotherhood burned fiercely in Dak’ir’s eyes, ‘In Vulkan’s name.’

‘Aye, in Vulkan’s name.’ Pyriel let him go so he could receive his benediction.

‘Come forwards then, Hazon Dak’ir,’ said Elysius, brandishing his rosarius, ‘and let the primarch see you.’

Head bowed, Dak’ir was poised to kneel in supplication when the ceremony was interrupted.

Framed by the Reclusiam’s triumphal arch, a dishevelled figure whose attire looked utterly out of place admist the religiosity and statuary of the chamber stood and observed them. Despite the modest trappings, when Dak’ir saw him he recognised the figure instantly.

‘Fugis…’ The name, only scarcely given, made the others turn. Dak’ir was already rising. ‘Brother, I thought… I saw…’ During the Totem Path, the final stage of his Librarius training in the desert, he had received a vision of Fugis’s death and yet here he was.

The Apothecary’s reply was typically acerbic. ‘I live, and stand here in the flesh of my earthly body to prove it. Why did so many assume me dead? I had hoped for greater confidence in my survival skills.’

Elysius nodded to him. ‘Few survive the Burning Walk. Is your faith restored, brother?’

Fugis knelt before his Chaplain to receive benediction, which was muttered over his bowed head. ‘I am whole again,’ he said, standing, ‘but have learned much out in the desert.’

‘You return at an auspicious moment, brother,’ said Elyisus, ‘though I suspect that is why you are before us now.’

‘Indeed.’ Fugis couldn’t take his eyes off Dak’ir.

The effect was deeply uncomfortable. Pyriel noticed it too.

‘What is it?’

The Apothecary’s next words dampened the ebullient mood.

‘I wish I could return in better circumstances, but I bear a message that cannot wait for heartfelt reunion.’

‘Speak, brother,’ Elysius urged him.

‘I saw a sign, out in the desert.’ His gaze alighted on the Lexicanum and did not waver for a moment. ‘About you, Dak’ir, and your destiny.’

Pyriel stepped into Fugis’s eye-line to get his attention. ‘Then tell us quickly, brother. Nocturne is at war.’

‘I know,’ he snapped at the Epistolary. ‘I have already been fighting in it.’ When the Apothecary’s gaze flicked back to Pyriel’s old acolytum, his eyes lit with the fires of remembrance.

‘I wandered the ash plains for years. It felt as centuries, brothers, roaming those trackless, grey wastes. I survived through dint of my gifts, the genetic heritage we all share, but I was forced to adapt. I learned the ways of the drovers and used them to hunt, to find shelter, to live as a nomad beyond the solace of the Sanctuary Cities. I did it because my mind was in turmoil, my spirit and belief battered.

‘Each night passed much as the last. I killed and ate, lived in harmony with our terrible earth but could not find what I sought to salve my wounded soul.’ His voice darkened. ‘On one bleak evening I was out in the Pyre Desert, close to the Cindara Plateau. I had hoped a reunion with the place of my ascension to Space Marine would stir providence. It did, but not as I imagined. Upon the farthest dune, I beheld a column of fire pluming high into the bloody sky, coiling like a serpent intent on devouring the heavens. Rising from the peaks of the Dragonspires, it presaged a storm. It was utterly unlike anything I have ever known.’

Fugis’s eyes went far away as he relived the events of the fateful night he was describing.

‘I left my camp, my kills, the shelter I had made. For to be abroad on the Pyre when it struck would surely be my doom. I ran, taking what weapons and provisions I was able, not knowing where I was headed, only that I had to go.

‘It began as a wind at first, a hot zephyr I felt upon my back despite the advantages given to me by my progenitor. Then it grew into a roaring heat, an almighty flame that rolled across the dunes immolating all before it. Spears of flame came with it, turing into firewyrms as they were cast down from the hell-red sky in a veritable rain of conflagration.

‘The heat burned the clothes from off my back, turned them into dust. It blistered my skin. Naked and on fire, I tumbled down into a ravine not knowing how much longer I would survive. Blinded by smoke, the churning of the desert ash in my ears and mouth, I reached out and grasped something in the darkness.’

Fugis reached out during his recitation, seizing air as he mimicked his night of hell for his audience.

‘It was a hatch, and the hatch led into a ship. With the fire only seconds from spilling down into the ravine and destroying me, I crawled inside on pain ravaged limbs, the hatch closing in my wake. I fell then – the floor, like the air inside, was cool – listening to the storm as it battered my sanctuary and surged across its hull.

‘I heard the frustration in the fire’s voice as I was denied to it. My mind drifted into a place of shadows, of earth that smelled like the grave and of great, sweeping ossuary roads that went on into forever. Behind my fevered thoughts, the flame seemed to linger, trying to find ingress into my tomb…’

Fugis paused, the memories coming slower as he reached the terminus of his experience. He clenched his fist, brought it to his lips as he tried to effect recall.

‘I must have passed out for a time, for when I awoke I was healed. I arose to regard my surroundings. It was indeed a ship, but not one such as I had ever seen. Naked as an infant, I wandered its lonely halls in search of survivors, but wary of other denizens who might be waiting for me in the shadows with hungry mouths.

‘For hours I walked, inside a ship so vast it could not have gone unnoticed even in the Pyre and yet…’ Fugis shook his head as if the mystery of the ship’s anonymity still vexed him. ‘As I was giving up hope of ever finding anything or anyone aboard, I discovered a small campsite in some chamber whose use had been long forgotten. There I saw a drover’s coat, his hat and supplies. I took them all, the material cold against my fire-cleansed skin. Amongst the absent drover’s belongings was a beacon, the one I used to summon the Fire-wyvern to my aid and come here, but he had left me a message too, this ancient outlander.’

Dak’ir’s eyes widened at this remark, his twin hearts trembling. He felt the flame within him become restless and fought to suppress it.

‘I almost missed it, so dark was the room,’ Fugis said. ‘It was etched upon the wall, a simple tableau rendered in clay-wax and the embers of a fire. As I looked, I noticed a piece of wood at the base of the wall. It was sharpened like a quill, its tip flame-ravaged and charcoal-black. It was the image of a dark rock, headed for a red world. In the next I saw a warrior emerging from the earth. Then again, but changed. In his maw he consumes a hundred warriors and is wreathed in fire. With sword in hand, the flaming saviour is depicted driving off a horde of draconian beasts who fly on pinioned wing and are the colour of old blood. Then there is fire, only fire. The rest of the walls were covered in it, hidden at first by the shadows and only revealed by a lume-lantern’s light.’

Elysius exchanged a concerned glance with Pyriel.

‘It was a flame-eternal,’ Fugis continued, ‘a world fire, consuming all and everything before it.’

Pyriel’s face had darkened. ‘It bears more than passing similarity to the prophecy of the Ferro Ignis, the Fire Sword,’ he said, suddenly acutely aware of Dak’ir’s psychic presence.

The Chaplain’s eyes fell upon the Lexicanum. ‘A low-born, one of the earth… He who is our doom or salvation and will drown Nocturne in an eternal fire.’

‘But I am as I was,’ Dak’ir protested. ‘Look at me now – I am no saviour, nor a prophet of doom.’ He turned to the Apothecary, whose mind had not yet come back to the Reclusiam. ‘Fugis, did it say how I was to become this… Fire Sword?’

Fugis looked up. Lucidity was slow to return. ‘Many become one. I believe this is what catalyses the process of rebirth.’

‘Rebirth?’ asked Elysius. ‘Into what, exactly? Are we sure we want to bring about such an apotheosis?’

Pyriel turned on him. ‘You had fewer doubts during judgement, brother.’

‘Sparing a battle-brother a pointless and ignominious death is one thing, taking part in some… ritual to bring about an ascension we know nothing about and have no control over is another.’

Fugis wasn’t listening. He spoke to Dak’ir. ‘Where is the ancient’s gene-seed, the genetic lifeblood of Gravius? Do we still possess it?’

That got Pyriel’s attention. ‘It is in a vault which can only be accessed through the Pantheon Chamber, under lock and key. None save Tu’Shan can get to it,’ he said before Dak’ir could answer.

‘That isn’t strictly true,’ said Elysius.

Everyone looked to the Chaplain.

‘It is only by the Chapter Master’s authority that the chamber containing all the relics we recovered from Scoria can be opened, but Vulkan’s Sigil,’ he brandished the hammer icon that was once believed a part of the primarch’s armour, ‘will grant us passage to what we seek.’

Fugis was already moving. ‘We must go there immediately.’

Elysius’s outstretched arm stopped him. ‘And do what? How can we be sure of any of this? You were delirious, brother, half-dead from whatever rigours your body withstood in the desert. This might all be madness.’

‘The beacon was very real.’ Fugis was indignant, bordering on violent. ‘There was a time when this Chapter trusted my word and thought me valued counsel. Has that changed so suddenly?’

The Chaplain held up a placatory hand.

‘None here doubt you, brother.’

‘Where is your faith, Elysius?’ Fugis asked. ‘Don’t you believe in miracles any more, or the possibility of divine providence?’

He did. Elysius had borne witness to it on the Volgorrah Reef in the Coliseum of Blades when the broken crozius had ignited and killed the wych queen, despite the fact it shouldn’t have been able to. Because of that, he’d lived; because of that, his belief and purpose had been restored.

He’d said himself that he sensed Vulkan’s hand in unfolding events. The Apothecary’s return was a part of that design. Now was not the time to waver.

The Chaplain stood aside.

Scowling, Fugis made for the Pantheon Chamber.

‘His epiphany in the desert has done nothing to improve his demeanour,’ remarked Pyriel in a low voice.

Elysius watched him as he left. His gaze was as steel.

‘It would seem not.’

His instincts told him to turn back, to stop this and make for Nocturne immediately. He quietened them with a thought. It was time to trust in faith.

II

Vulkan’s Hand

There were no guards, no wards of any kind. The way was open before the Chaplain and empty. It was a disturbing sight, of times changed and the closeness of a calamity that had surreptitiously closed around the Salamanders without them realising.

‘I have never seen this place…’

Dak’ir stood in Elysius’s shadow, not daring to step farther. An overwhelming sense of reverence emating from inside the sacred temple held him back. He was awestruck and fought the urge to fall on bended knee in supplication.

‘It has that effect on everyone the first time they see it,’ the Chaplain muttered wryly. ‘I still feel it and I am the bearer of Vulkan’s Sigil, a relic keeper much like this place is a repository of relics.’

Librarium, reliquary, lodestone, the Pantheon Chamber held a great significance for the Promethean Cult and the luminaries of the Salamanders. It harboured the Tome of Fire, the wisdom of Vulkan as given unto his sons to guide them beyond his passing.

Around the temple’s circular walls were arrayed the many tomes, scrolls and charts where the primarch had inscribed his writings. There were arcane devices, statues, metal sculpture, even weapons that all bore some element of Vulkan’s fathomless knowledge of that a time that now only existed in faded tapestry or rumour.

Some amongst the Chapter believed that the primarch was long dead, slain on the battlefields of Isstvan V during the start of the Great Betrayal. Others thought him merely lost, a pilgrim roaming the edges of the known galaxy to one day return at Nocturne’s darkest hour. Theories differed wildly and were prone to large amounts of conjecture as history over ten thousand years old had a habit of being inconclusive.

Gravius, the anachronistic warrior that Third had discovered on Scoria, was the closest existing link to that era. Now all that remained of him was his gene-seed.

Of all Salamanders Dak’ir had ever known, Fugis best exemplified the Chapter’s pragmatism. His observances were swiftly done before he stormed into the chamber and stood before a vast plaque of red-veined rock.

Though the chamber was small by comparison to the other sacred halls, Dak’ir still nearly lost sight of the Apothecary in the gloom as he crossed to the other side of the room. Flickering torch light cast his long shadow upon the sigil of a gilded drake’s head wrought into the floor. The ever-burning embers crackled in chorus to the heavy thuds of his footfalls.

‘Here…’ he called, his harsh voice echoing.

Great serpents and monstrous drakes glared down at the interlopers from huge menhirs of volcanic obsidian encircling the room. Carved between them were other artefacts of Promethean lore, the anvil, hammer and the forge flame. Each stood sentinel over a granite throne, eighteen in total, for the vaunted members of the Pantheon Council. Even setting foot in the chamber, Dak’ir felt like a transgressor.

‘Come,’ Pyriel urged him, walking softly into the room behind Elysius.

Fugis was crouching down and gestured to the floor as the others approached him.

‘I can see an indentation.’

Up close, Dak’ir realised the lustrous plaque of rock was another of the menhirs. The head of a draconian beast stared down from its summit, jewelled eyes glinting fiercely in the torch light. He made the sign of the hammer.

With the grinding of ancient gears, a mechanism from the time of T’kell the first Master of the Forge, the menhir slid aside to reveal the door to a vault.

Elysius was rising to his feet, having recovered the sigil from where he had placed it in the floor depression.

‘It is still sealed,’ uttered Dak’ir, a sense of moment beginning to overtake him. For his entire life he had not known his place or purpose; now that was about to change, his destiny revealed to him. For a second he rebelled against it, fought to urge to run as far away as he could, to throw himself into battle, to forget the prophecy and all its bloody promises.

‘Have patience, brother,’ Elysius told him. ‘The workings are old, from an era when we were still Legion.’

Gradually a crack appeared in the silver-grey surface of the door as it began to open.

‘There…’ The Chaplain smiled behind his skull-mask, choosing that moment to remove his battle-helm and mag-lock it to his armour.

Low lume-light painted the vault in visceral red but was slow to lift the gloom. It cast the armour suits within in the hue of blood, limning them crimson.

Much like Gravius, there was something anachronistic about this battle-plate. It was darker; its design archaic and rarely seen during the 41st millennium.

‘So old…’ Dak’ir remembered them. They were as they had been when Third had recovered them on Scoria, the armour husks of the ancient’s long-dead brothers, the ones he had devoured to preserve their legacy. The strain of the memories and genetic identity of all those warriors had destroyed Gravius – one mind, even a Space Marine’s, was not meant to hold so much. It broke him mentally.

Each suit of battle-plate was engraved with a symbol, themselves each a piece of a larger mystery. They carried Dak’ir’s destiny, one that had been more than ten thousand years in the making. Only Tu’Shan had seen it. The message there was meant for Vulkan’s Regent and his Forgefather to discern, but others too had discovered it in time and all Fire-born were now aware of it.

Dak’ir reached out to touch one of the suits, his fingers agonisingly close to one of the sigil-scars that formed part of the prophecy but never making contact.

‘It seems impossible that it has lasted.’

‘I once thought a great many things impossible, Dak’ir,’ said Elysius, gently pushing down the Lexicanum’s outstretched hand, ‘but my perspective has been changed.’

Pyriel pressed against a rune-plate in the wall. It was easy to miss, fashioned to resemble the marbling of the stone. The vault had a metal floor. A circular outline appeared within it. A dense pressure cloud was expelled from the groove. Through the dissipating vapour, a silver column resolved with a force-fielded dome at the summit. Within the crackling field there was an armourcrys vial that contained a translucent fluid. Inside the amniotic solution was a progenoid gland, the last remaining biological element of Gravius.

Fugis approached as closely as he could without being repelled by the force field. ‘The solution has preserved it well,’ he muttered, ‘prevented necrotisation as I’d hoped.’ He looked up at Elysius. ‘How do we switch this off?’

Pyriel pushed another hidden rune-plate. The force field protecting the vial flickered once and then dispersed into motes of energy that quickly dissipated on the air.

Fugis reached in and grabbed the vial without ceremony, though he was careful not to breach it.

‘Hard to believe it had endured this long,’ he said to himself, scrutinising the vital organ. Then he proffered it to Dak’ir.

The Lexicanum flinched at first.

‘That’s it. I just eat it?’

‘For one to become many you must consume the gene-seed,’ Fugis explained. ‘It is life, Dak’ir, legacy. Your destiny.’

Pyriel had moved to the opening.

‘If anyone wishes to leave then do so now,’ he said, ‘but I won’t do this and risk the sanctity of the Tome of Fire or the rest of the inner halls.’

‘Perhaps we should adjourn to somewhere safer and less important,’ suggested Elysius.

‘If you can name a place then speak of it, for I know none,’ snapped Fugis. ‘There is no time, Brother-Chaplain. The moment is upon us, here and now.’

Elysius glanced at Pyriel for support.

‘When sealed this vault will contain any fury we might unleash,’ Pyriel said. ‘I am staying here.’

‘As am I.’ The Chaplain descended to one knee, head bowed. Silently, he began reciting a litany of protection.

A wild fire flashed in Fugis’s eyes. ‘We are all bound to this fate, then.’ He brandished the vial again as the door to the vault was closing.

Dak’ir was unconvinced. ‘What if something goes wrong? One of you should remain outside to summon help.’

‘If we fail here,’ said Pyriel, ‘if all we believe is to be proven false, then it won’t matter, Dak’ir. War is upon us. Our cities are enveloped by it, our skies thronged with it. Doom or saviour, here is where we find out for certain.’

Dak’ir looked down at the tiny vial in his gauntleted palm. It seemed so innocuous, such an insignificant thing, until he remembered the very fate of a Chapter was held within its glass walls.

‘Blessed Vulkan, be my guide upon the ocean of fire…’ he muttered, and devoured the gene-seed.

Silence reigned, charged with anticipation.

Nothing happened. An immense sense of relief and disappointment warring within him, Dak’ir opened his mouth to dispel the tension when a wracking pain seized his body. He fell, hitting the ground amidst violent convulsions. Thrashing, he felt strong hands try to hold him and keep his spasming limbs steady but he slipped their leash. Agony fed through his marrow like the passage of a red-hot needle, stitching fire through his entire skeleton. His hearts were thundering like the pounding of waves upon the Acerbian Sea, crashing against his chest with force enough to shatter them. Memories sped into his mind, sights of ancient battles, of days of Legion, of the Great Crusade and the coming of the father.

‘Vulkan…’ he drooled.

Too fast, too much…

Someone was shouting. The tone was urgent but the voice was not directed at him.

His spine arched as his chest thrust forwards, so severely it cracked the bone, and Dak’ir threw his head back in a terrible psychic scream.

The flame that had been kept quiescent for so long broke free of its shackles and poured from his eyes and mouth, filling the vault with conflagration.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I

Gaining the Wall

Lorkar emerged from a pall of dust, the gunship retreating into the air behind them on screaming turbo-fans.

Overhead, explosive blossoms clouded the sky and wracked it with their dull thunder. Heavy flak and tracer fire whickered in an enfilading lattice poured on from the high city battlements.

Slogging across the dunes, he scowled at the various wretches arrayed with them in the second wave. Lorkar had an excellent knowledge of xenos creatures. He knew a great many ways to inflict pain upon them and then dispatch them. Weakness was something he loathed to his core but knowing the chinks in the armour of others, his enemies, was infinitely useful.

He recognised the avian creatures to his right flank as kroot. They were mercenaries and no better than cannibals. Savage beasts, they crowed and shrieked as they were lost to war-lust and drove ahead of the slower Marines Malevolent advance. That suited Lorkar fine. Let the craven wretches be first into the Salamanders’ guns, they would soon learn the folly of their wild abandon.

There were others amongst the alien throng too, hairy-backed kharateg and reptilian loxatl, the saurian galthite. Mercenaries, bandits and renegades all. Nihilan had put Lorkar’s men amongst the dregs and was saving his own Dragon Warriors in reserve for when the defenders’ fury had been well blunted by the rabble.

Penetrating the threshold of the void shield, the Marines Malevolent entered a killing zone into which the Salamanders were pouring their fire. The hard bangs of scatter shot merged with the flat chank-rattle of bolters and the throaty cough of rocket-propelled grenades flung from shoulder-mounted tube launchers.

They waded in a mire of the dead, a charnel field of festering alien corpses and the broken bodies of human renegades. Part of the second wave had gained sections of the wall and the barrage from the defenders above was lessening as some of the city’s garrison were forced to stop and deal with the breaches in security.

Even still, it was intense.

Any ordinary warrior would have balked, marching into that cauldon. Lesser men would have fled at the very sight and sound, piss trickling down their legs, uniforms soiled as they screamed to their hollow gods for deliverance.

Some did, and Lorkar cut them down if they strayed too close.

‘Craven scum…’ he muttered, firing from the hip and shooting up a band of fleeing idolators whose resolve had broken.

Breaking into a powerful run as the ash-sand ground beneath his boots, Lorkar acknowledged he’d never considered himself ordinary. That fact was especially true now, ever since finding the Demetrion and all that had happened within its walls.

Shouting, he exhorted his warriors. ‘Forward, in the name of the Marines Malevolent!’

They left the corpse field behind and entered a patch of open ash-sand.

His men too were far from ordinary, some of them at least. Like Lorkar, they clung to the trappings of their old Chapter. Like a tether in the midst of a cyclone it kept them grounded, kept the voices at bay.

Lorkar refuted them with all of his being and his will, but they had followed him here on the back of his deepseated hatred for the Salamanders and he’d been powerless to quieten them.

Though he dare not admit it out loud, Lorkar knew he was lost.

Thirty warriors comprised his warband, every soul who’d survived the Demetrion and some that had not but still walked and could fire a bolter. He glanced at Tsu’gan on his left. The once Firedrake was keeping a steady pace, his borrowed battle-helm obscuring the device that had bound his will to Nihilan’s.

Throne knew where that bastard was and what he was doing. The sorcerer had allies from the Eye and despite his recent clash with forces of the ether Lorkar still hated him for it. He despised impurity, and so he also loathed himself. Perhaps he and Tsu’gan had more in common that he’d at first realised.

The other one, the turncoat, was with him too. Iagon kept to rear ranks, the only warrior not under the Marines Malevolent’s direct command. He called himself equerry but Lorkar saw the lie in that immediately. Iagon was just a pawn. When the siege was done he’d already decided to kill the worthless dog and suspected Nihilan had left his little pet in Lorkar’s charge because he knew the puritan Space Marine would execute him.

It mattered not. When he was free of the voices, Lorkar would have his vengeance on them all.

A hundred metres ahead of them, the walls of Hesiod were holding.

Blinking the magnification in his retinal display to maximum, he saw the Scout squads that garrisoned the battlements and the missile launcher aimed in his direction.

Holding up a clenched fist, he brought the warband to an abrupt halt and they went to ground immediately, taking refuge in the undulating ash dunes and battle debris as a rocket-burst foomed overhead. It threw up clods of earth and grit that washed across Lorkar’s helmet lenses but left them otherwise unharmed.

Having found his range, the Scout was calling for another missile as he adjusted his targeter for a second shot.

Lorkar wasn’t about to allow that to happen.

‘Harkane!’

The Techmarine was already preparing the tracked Rapier-mount he’d brought with them. It was archaic, the gun platform hailing from several previous generations of Space Marine warfare. The track bed it rolled across the dunes on was built for heavy terrain and coped well with the rigours of the desert. It had even surmounted the mound of the dead. As Harkane manipulated the hand-held control console a pair of cannon-bearing weapon arms unfolded from the Rapier’s central stock and cycled into position. Drum mags dropped either side of the twin autocannons, belt feeds unfurling like brass-shelled tongues from their breaches.

With the angry growl of protesting gears, the Rapier rotated into position.

Lorkar smiled as the Scout gave the signal to his loader that he was ready. The other one was still ducking down as the Marines Malevolent bellowed his order.

‘Silence that launcher.’

Hard staccato gunfire chug-chanked from the twin autocannons, raking the battlements and turning the air in front of the Scouts into a gritty storm. After a few seconds and several hundred rounds, the Rapier’s muzzle flare died off and the dust cleared. The Scouts were gone. Others around them were shouting, hauling something away that was lost beneath the lip of the battlements and closing up the bloody gap it had left.

The Marines Malevolent were well within the boundary of the void shield now and in striking distance of the wall itself; there was no time to wait around.

Lorkar hailed his troops. ‘Advance!’

They came forwards together in three lines, crouched low and firing up towards the hazy summit of the wall. Overhead the sky was gore-streaked and wreathed with pyroclastic cloud. It was a fitting omen.

Someone staggered then fell, Lorkar thought it was Rygor. Ignored by his brothers, the plasma gunner picked himself up and rejoined the battle line at the rear.

Rygor was strong, a true Malevolent. Unlike some, such as the infiltrator in their ranks.

Marines Malevolent did not stoop to pull their brothers up if they fell, but they would have stopped to end this one should he have faltered.

A pity the shot had not pierced his armour plate.

The itching had grown worse, so bad it now eclipsed the phantom pain Iagon felt in his missing hand. In the early days after he’d severed it to cast off the veil of suspicion surrounding N’keln’s murder, a murder he’d committed in cold blood, the wrist stump had been agony. Cauterised, nerve endings dulled and sealed, it still hurt. Even now with an augmetic hand to replace that which he’d sacrificed, the pain persisted. It was psychology, some remnant of guilt or paranoia at being caught that dogged him so.

Tsu’gan was a masochist, he chose to flay and brand his body to scour away the pain eating away at him. Iagon could only do that by inflicting pain on others and so his damnation was assured. He had taken the mirror into his soul and turned it from his sight so that it reflected on others. A sadist then. He knew it, and didn’t care. He’d only ever wanted to taste glory, even bask in the glow of others. And power, of course. Oh yes, he desired power above all else.

Self aware enough to realise he was not remarkable, Iagon had chosen to attach himself to others that were and ride upon their backs. Tsu’gan had risen, in recognition of his abilities. He was remarkable.

He had done so and left Iagon alone, embittered and without a hand.

Through the murky red of his retinal lenses, his eyes never left the betrayer’s back. Even with the mind shackle, Tsu’gan was a formidable warrior. Iagon could not hope to best him with bolter and blade. But then so too was N’keln and he bled easy enough…

To think of all you sacrificed, he whispered to himself as the bombs came down and gunfire ripped up the ash-sand around them. It was like passing through a breeze to Iagon, so removed was he from the world.

It was the itching. It dominated his thoughts, feeding on his hatred, exacerbating it until…

He found a point of the betrayer’s back. It was a heart strike, a killing blow.

All it would take is a little thrust.

A smile turned his perpetually sneering mouth, but as the itching persisted Iagon failed to realise that the voice inside was not truly his own.

II

Stranger’s Skin

It was like being a prisoner in his own body. He could see it, feel it, his senses were as alive as they always were but it moved in a way that was alien to him. It did things, performed acts he had not told it to. It was as if his neural synapses had been re-routed and Tsu’gan was no longer in full command of them. His limbs moved now as if of their own volition. He had become like a puppet, dangling helplessly on Nihilan’s strings. But that wasn’t entirely accurate. Tsu’gan had heard of some psykers that could inhabit the bodies of others, using their will to impel their actions, effectively wearing them like a suit of battle-plate. Nihilan’s mind shackle was not like that. Tsu’gan could only liken it to the command protocols given to a servitor via their doctrina wafers. It was as if he’d been given a series of pre-set routines and was now bound to follow them. But programming like that was not infallible, it could be overcome. With enough willpower, anything was possible.

Tsu’gan formed a grimace, the only evidence that he was fighting to resist the mental bypass. His body was still not his own.

He was running, snap firing at his brothers on the battlements, his every instinct screaming at him to turn his weapon on the traitors in his midst instead. Solid shot spanged off his shoulder guard and plastron, and he grunted. That at least had been of his own making. Tsu’gan’s return fire forced the shooter to cower, whilst a second burst clipped him and he disappeared amidst gouting blood.

Lorkar ordered the advance and was first to lead the line. The renegade kept Tsu’gan close, perhaps to keep an eye on him, or maybe he was considering trying to slay him during the battle.

I am surrounded by enemies.

He wondered if his mind-shackled body would protect him, or would he submit to the murderer’s knife without resistance?

Another of the Techmarine’s tracked engines launched grappling lines up onto the crenellations. Six flanged hooks bit hard and deep, burying adamantium teeth into Hesiod’s outer wall. He fired another six as the machine’s launcher recycled its cargo and the Marines Malevolent sprinted to grasp the dangling wire-weave lines.

An ambitious kroot went for Tsu’gan’s line, but the once-Salamander wrestled the alien off and snapped its neck before pushing into the climb. Three of its brethren shrilling vengeance went for his back. With one hand wrapped around the wire, Tsu’gan swung out from the wall and gunned them all down with his bolter.

Backstabbers dealt with, he continued his ascent in earnest.

Though he railed against every metre, Tsu’gan quickly reached the apex of the wall and was confronted by a pair of scouts. Too close for bolters, they went for their combat-blades.

‘Die, traitor!’ one of them yelled, trying to fix his gladius into the gap between rerebrace and plastron. Tsu’gan turned the thrust aside with his arm, the blade raking a groove along his gauntlet and vambrace, before punching the Scout in the face.

He shattered the neophyte’s cheek, using the stock of his bolter to block the frenzied hacking of the other one. Tsu’gan shoved him back and stepped into the space he’d created, drawing his chainsword at the same time.

Traitor…

Tsu’gan was no traitor.

Heed me, brothers! he pleaded. I am trapped by another’s will. Help me!

The screaming voice echoed within him but only Tsu’gan could hear it. Though his face was swollen and lathered with blood, the Scout with the shattered cheek came on again. This time, Tsu’gan batted down his clumsy thrust and swatted him so hard he fell off the back of the battlements and pinwheeled to the ground below. The crunch of bone was lost to the sound of combat.

Turning his full attention on the other one, Tsu’gan pushed the muzzle of his bolter into the Scout’s chest and pulled the trigger. The close-range burst scorched his armour, turning it black from the discharge flare, but ripped open the neophyte’s torso.

Tsu’gan let him crumple in a bloody heap as he went to engage the next combatant.

He was back-to-back with Rennard, a warrior of Lorkar’s brood, who was crouched down laying incendary charges. It seemed the Marines Malevolent meant to forge a breach from the inside out.

Glancing at his retinal display, Tsu’gan noticed Iagon had gained the wall too. His ident-rune flashed red, unlike the others which were yellow. The traitor-dog was in his crosshairs now, but he was powerless to slay him. The only upside was several other warriors separated them so at least Iagon couldn’t plant a blade in his back like he’d done to N’keln. Nine renegades had reached the summit of Hesiod’s defensive perimeter and were fighting hard along it to make room for the others coming after them. Elsewhere on the wall there were similar breaches.

Impulse drove Tsu’gan on into the Salamander Scouts. Most mortal fighters, the troopers of the Imperial Guard, the crusaders of the Holy Ecclesiarch, would find even Space Marine neophytes tough combatants.

To Tsu’gan, it was like fighting infants. Having cut his way through the initial press of defenders, he found he had room to manoeuvre and could bring all of his ruthless combat-training to bear.

He cut down the first two Scouts that raced to oppose him with contemptuous ease, though his mind was railing at their slaughter and burning with impotent rage at what Nihilan’s technomancy had forced him into doing.

A third took a bracing stance and swung around a heavy bolter to rake the gap between them.

Tsu’gan reached back and seized Rennard. The Marine Malevolent wasn’t expecting the move and by the time he fought it he was being used as a meat shield and struck by mass-reactive shells.

The dense impacts rocked the warrior’s body and Tsu’gan pushed forwards behind it all the way to his opponent, causing horrendous damage to Rennard in the process. At almost point blank the sheer force of the heavy salvo knocked them both off their feet.

Tsu’gan landed hard on his back but was quick to roll the groaning Marine Malevolent off him as he led with his chainsword. He rose from prone into a crouch just as the next round of shells came chugging from the Scout’s belt-fed cannon. Tsu’gan threw his blade, hilt over tip like a hand axe. It embedded in the Scout’s body, impaling him. Spitting blood, the neophyte stopped firing and collapsed to the ground.

Wrenching his chainsword loose with a dirty schluck of engrained gore, Tsu’gan thumbed the activation stud and leapt over the body. Blood was thumping in his ears, like a wave battering the shoreline. He heard his breath, rapid in his chest, not from combat-exertion but from his efforts to break the fetters around his free will.

This was Hesiod, once his home. These Scouts, they were the Chapter’s lifeblood, its next generation.

And he was killing them.

Tsu’gan was weeping now, tears of fire running down his face inside his battle-helm, but he couldn’t stop. Leaving Rennard to bleed out, he went hunting for more enemies. The hapless warrior’s incendiaries went off behind him, issuing a defeaning boom and filling part of the wall with fire and frag.

He glanced back. It had barely made a crack.

Inside Tsu’gan, the part of him that was fighting the mind shackle scoffed at the idiocy of the renegades. Nocturnean stone, especially stone hewn for the Seat of Tribal Kings, was not so easy to break.

The troops on the wall were thinning out as they struggled to defend it with reduced numbers. Attrition for Nihilan’s army had barely made a dent; every casualty was felt keenly by the Salamanders, though.

Ahead of him, Tsu’gan saw a Scout fumbling with a snub-nosed grenade launcher. He looked up, half focused on reloading and half on the warrior rushing him.

Another easy kill.

Tsu’gan fought it but his chainsword came around in a butchering arc just as the Scout was bringing up his arms to fire.

Sparks spilled off the grinding teeth as they whined and growled against a rival blade blocking the route to the neophyte’s neck.

A bulky warrior in artificered battle-plate hauled the Scout aside, shouting something to him that Tsu’gan didn’t catch. He then twisted his arm, pushing Tsu’gan’s chainblade away and out, exposing his chest where he stabbed a spatha that had appeared miraculously in the veteran’s other hand.

Pain made Tsu’gan back off, and the spatha’s serrated edge chewed up flesh and battle-plate as it was forcibly withdrawn.

‘Fight me then, traitor,’ the Salamander veteran invited, adopting a fighting stance that Tsu’gan vaguely remebered through the mental fug of the mind shackle.

‘Master…’

The words actually issued from his throat but were lost behind his battle-helm and the veteran’s fearsome renewed assault.

Tsu’gan went on the defensive at once. He tried to bring up his bolter for a close range burst to wing his opponent but the flash of a spatha sent the weapon spinning from blade-stung fingers.

‘You are strong and skilled,’ said the veteran, pressing his advantage and pushing Tsu’gan back across the battlements to negate the gains he’d made.

He knew this warrior. He had learned from him, been his student.

Tsu’gan fashioned a riposte that cut into the veteran’s shoulder guard, but was hacked in turn against his flank. He tasted blood in his mouth and knew he was hurt. It rimed his vision, the edges of his sight burning black and the darkness creeping closer over it.

Parrying an overhead from the veteran’s chainsword, he aimed a punch at his head but missed and hit the upper arm. It was enough to loosen the veteran’s grip on the spatha, which Tsu’gan exploited with a chainblade smash of his own, disarming him. He’d used the flat metal of the weapon’s casing but it was enough to send the secondary blade clattering away uselessly.

‘Very skilled…’ the veteran corrected, taking his chainsword in a two-handed grip. It was only then Tsu’gan noticed it was modified with a longer hilt and broader blade not unlike an ancient bastard sword.

Other trappings of the veteran’s war panoply came into sharp focus too – his armour plate, the holstered melta-pistol and gladius; the saurian-styled helm and the timbre of his voice.

‘Prebian…’

Tsu’gan was fighting the Salamanders Master of Arms. Small wonder he was losing. He blocked a heavy cut that staggered him. A shoulder barge to follow up dented his plastron and had Tsu’gan reeling.

‘Prebian…’ It was louder this time.

He parried, but the blow was so hard it went through his defences driving Tsu’gan’s churning chainsword into his own face. Sparks and chips of metal spilled from his gorget but the spinning teeth went higher, scoring a jagged line into his battle-helm and putting out one of the retinal lenses. One half of Tsu’gan’s tactical display was reduced to crackling static and for a few brief seconds he was blinded in one eye.

‘Here is the taste you’ve been craving, hell-kite,’ Prebian snarled, pressing the blade closer so it bit deeper into the ceramite. ‘I’ll see your face before you die,’ he promised as Tsu’gan’s battle-helm split apart under the strain and fell away from his head in two battered halves.

Prebian pulled up short, his mouth agape.

There was remebrance in his eyes and disbelief, visible even though his helmet lenses.

‘Brother Tsu’gan?’

The momentary distraction gave Tsu’gan the advantage. With a roar, he threw Prebian off and brought up his partly blunted chainblade. The mechanism was churning hard, its servos straining from when it had cut into ceramite, but he could still use it to kill.

He wanted to resist, staying his hand and putting up his blade, but the mind shackle wouldn’t let him.

Instead, he attacked with gritted teeth and rivulets of sorrowful fire trickling from his eyes.

Please, they said, please, brother…

Against his will, he fought on.

Prebian fended off each blow, holding back as he realised what was happening.

‘Fight it, brother,’ he hissed, eyeing the alien device attached to Tsu’gan’s face. ‘Give me an opening.’

Tsu’gan understood. He bored deep within himself, tried to use anything as a bulwark to hold onto, a place in his psyche where he could stand his ground and fight.

He tried to remember his first kill, when he had brought a leo’nid pelt from the dunes as a trophy; the first time he had wrought a blade and wielded it in anger; he thought about his father, the Tribal King of Hesiod, and the day he had wept before his cold tomb in the undercrofts before being taken by Zen’de. But they were, all of them, imperfect memories from a time that seemed like it belonged to someone else.

Tsu’gan was losing and soon Prebian would have to fight back with all his skill. The Master would be forced to kill the former student.

Brotherhood, honour, glory to his Chapter – they all meant something to him, but none alone was strong enough to countermand the mind shackle. He needed to focus on something vital, something powerful.

He remembered Dak’ir.

Not since Scoria had he seen the Ignean, not since he had been taken by the Librarius and Tsu’gan had ascended to the ranks of the Firedrakes had their paths crossed. Dak’ir might have slipped from his mind, but the anger had not faded. He, the low-born of the prophecy, fated as saviour or destroyer, was still the source of Tsu’gan’s distemper. He used it, fashioned his wrath into a spear and thrust its tip through the barrier between his mind and body.

He lowered his chainsword.

Do it, his silent lips told Prebian.

The Master didn’t hesitate. He struck at the mind shackle, hacking into it with his gladius and cleaving it down the middle. But as soon as the blade was withdrawn, the damage was undone. The device had repaired itself.

Tsu’gan sagged in defeat, feeling the numbness in his head again as the tendrils of bondage were remade. His brief rebellion was over. The mind shackle had reasserted its influence. He lifted his blade.

End my suffering… His mournful gaze spoke the words even if his lips could not.

Prebian defended a hail of attacks but wasn’t ready to give in. Waiting for another opening, he thrust again recklessly with his gladius this time and impaled the device. Already the blade was being pushed out, the split it had carved reknitting as living metal flowed over it like sentient mercury.

‘Strength of Vulkan,’ he said through clenched teeth.

Dropping his chainsword, Prebian used both hands to push back. His breath came heavy through his fanged vox-grille as he pressed hard on the gladius’s pommel with the flat of his palm. His grip, wrapped around the hilt, was like adamantium.

The alien metal was stronger.

‘I cannot…’ he gasped, holding on as the device excised his blade like a splinter pushed from a closing wound.

Prebian’s eyes met Tsu’gan’s as he realised he was going to fail and be left defenceless.

‘Brother, try–’

Tsu’gan lunged with the chainsword still clasped in his hand, thrusting it all the way into Prebian’s side.

‘Where it’s weakest,’ rasped the Master, repeating the selfsame words he’d given to the aspirants on the ash plains.

Tsu’gan had been one of his best.

He fell back, first onto one knee and then the other. The sword still jutted from his body, his life blood pouring down his armour in a dark flood.

With Tsu’gan standing over him about to finish the kill, Prebian reached for the clasps on his battle-helm and then removed it.

His old face was lined, the skin turning from onyx to a charcoal grey. His hair was silvern and thin. Fire burned in the Master’s eyes still but it was fading fast.

‘My last embers,’ he said, looking up at his killer, as if he could read his thoughts.

Tsu’gan yanked the blade free, drawing a grimace of pain from Prebian. A welter of blood came with it and he held it aloft for the murder-stroke.

Horror filled his eyes as the sheer magnitude of what he about to do came crashing down.

I am no traitor…

In retrospect, it sounded like a hollow declaration now.

He was about to fell his old master in cold blood when a lance of light roared from the hell-red heavens like the voice of a god and turned the sky magnesium white.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I

A Thrown Spear

Nocturne screamed. The earth cracked and like a beast with its flank skewered by the hunter’s spear its blood poured forth. Deep in the bowels of the world, the lamentation song of the ancient drakes was drowned by the sound of tectonic plates breaking and grinding.

Presaged by the runnels of lava spilling out into the plains like fiery arteries, a cavalcade of massive earthquakes wracked the surface of Nocturne. Mount Deathfire bellowed, spewing up a vast pyroclastic cloud that fashioned night from day in a matter of seconds. The air thickened with ash as the red world fought to tear itself apart, thrashing and shouting with the pain of her wounding.

Crimson lightning split the smoke-drenched sky; the deep lava glow of the erupting mountain chains was like a firmament of hot amber stars in the blackness. Thunder rolled in belligerent salvos, speaking doom and an end to all things.

Chasms opened in the lands beyond the Sanctuary Cities. Entire settlements, the tented outposts of nomads, the subterranean domains of cave-dwellers were extinguished in moments. Those not smothered by ash were boiled with intense heat; the few that survived those trials were swallowed by the gaping earth or drowned in hellish lava.

A jagging line in the ground fed all the way to the gate-wall of Hesiod, thick enough to devour a gunship whole without it touching the sides. It struck the void shield first, which shimmered in a few seconds of valiant resistence before capitulating and collapsing. Then it roared on, smashing into the wall itself and sharpening its craggy teeth on the foundation stone of Nocturne. This was the planet’s bedrock, one of the seven places discovered by the earth shamans of old and where the tribal-kings had founded the Sanctuaries that would later become city-bastions.

A fissure rode up the dark obsidian of Hesiod’s boundary. It became a crack, widening farther as each second passed, tearing open the city’s defences like they were naught but clay.

As the gate-wall parted, the warriors upon it cascaded down onto the courtyard below in an armoured rain, still battling as they fell. Bodies struck the ground with the impact of mortar shells, a flesh and metal barrage where the ordnance groaned and bled and died in the aftermath.

The crack only dissipated when it reached the threshold of the Chapter bastion, but by then it had wreaked utter carnage. Like a broken dam, Hesiod lay open and all of the cruel waters lapping outside it poured in unabated.

A scalding wind came in the wake of the blast, whipping across the ash-plain.

Val’in heard the cry of alien beasts, unprotected by their heathen armour, and knew that many had died. His skin was stinging from the sulphurous air, and only his genetic enhancements stopped him from choking on it.

He was still on the wall, though now a massive ugly gap yawned between him and his brothers. It took him a while to come around and realise he was prone. Val’in felt a strong hand grip his forearm and help him to his feet.

‘Master Prebian has fallen. Get up!’ Exor was bloodied, but alive.

Dimly at first but with increasing clarity, Val’in remembered crying out as the master was stabbed. He’d been coming to his aid when the lance of light had struck.

‘Where is he, brother?’ Smoke and heat haze were hampering his sight.

Exor gestured into a grey miasma. Where it thinned momentarily, Val’in could see the slumped form of Master Prebian. He was laying on his side unmoving, a pool of dark blood wallowing underneath him.

‘And his slayer?’ Val’in had found his combat-blade in the debris and was on the move, head low.

Overhead, scattered bolter fire and solid shot still rattled.

‘We don’t know he’s dead.’ Exor ran alongside him, cradling his grenade launcher.

Somewhere in the melee Val’in had lost his bolter and resolved to fight without it. He preferred close-quarter combat anyway, and excelled at it. Against the dazed renegades emerging through the fog, he’d need to be at his best.

They’d not seen Prebian’s prone body. It was partly covered with debris and obscured by smoke. The traitors were staggering, obviously wounded, and had borne more of the brunt of the blast than the two Scouts.

None of them were the warrior Val’in had seen stab his master in the flank, though. That dog had fled.

One pointed, a drool of blood exuding from his sealed gorget.

They’d seen the Scouts.

Val’in smiled grimly. That was good.

Raising their jagged blades, the renegades stuttered into a charge. A burst of bolt pistol fire chewed up a chunk of broken wall near Exor, forcing him into cover, but then the weapon clunked empty and was tossed aside.

Val’in had got ahead of his brother, rushing to put his body between the enemy and the slumped Prebian who incredibly stirred with life still. If either of the renegades saw that they would end him.

Something else stirred a hand’s width away from the master too. It was a chainsword, an ornate blade Val’in had seen racked to Prebian’s power generator. It was his weapon. Sheathing the gladius, Val’in reached the master’s body and took up his sword. It was hard to wield, but the machine-spirit was strong and vital. It yearned for vengeance after its wielder had been put down. Nothing short of traitor blood would slake it.

Muttering litanies of cleaving, Val’in hefted the buzzing blade and prepared to meet the enemy. He dragged it low, such was the weight, like a master swordsman minus the finesse.

‘In Vulkan’s name!’

The renegades laughed in their battered armour. Up close, some of the plates appeared as if they’d been fused to the skin. The one carrying the throat wound actually looked like his helm was part of his mocking face.

They wouldn’t be laughing soon.

Val’in leapt over a small crack in the battlements, chainsword low in a reverse two-handed grip, so heavy it threatened to leaden his arms fatally.

He let the first renegade swing. It was a lazy attack, overconfident and indulgent. No discipline. Val’in was able to dodge it, and kept running. Using his momentum he vaulted up onto a jutting piece of rock, leaping over a wild slash from the second renegade that was intended to cut Val’in’s legs from under him. As he descended, Val’in drove the chainsword through the warrior’s damaged gorget and right into his neck, ramming it in all the way to the hilt.

He let go and rolled, coming up behind the choking renegade whose insides were being churned into mulch.

The other one had turned and was coming at him. Without a weapon to defend himself… wounded or not, the renegade would kill him.

A grenade burst against the warrior’s flank, pitching him off the side of the wall where he disappeared in the darkness below.

Val’in saw Exor emerging from cover. He showed his hand in gratitude. Exor thumped his chest in the warrior’s salute and went to Prebian.

‘He lives,’ he said when Val’in joined him.

His breath was ragged and the pulse in his neck erratic. Val’in cursed beneath his breath. ‘For now.’ He glanced around in the thinning smoke. ‘We are far from allies.’ The damage to the wall had left them isolated from the rest of the battle, like survivors shipwrecked on an island rock protruding from a grey, swirling ocean.

Exor thumped Val’in’s carapace breastplate.

‘In Vulkan’s name, indeed,’ he said, nodding with awe-filled respect.

Val’in frowned.

‘That move you pulled off,’ Exor explained, ‘the neck strike? I’ve never seen anyone do that before. How did you?’

Val’in was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know. My instincts took over. The blade seemed… lighter almost.’

An explosion blossomed overhead, but the showering shrapnel from it was absorbed by what was left of the wall’s defences.

Exor crouched hurriedly. ‘What shall we do?’

Out beyond the walls, fire was engulfing everything. The land had become a lava sea, the pitted earth cracked open and bleeding. Through the clouds of smoke, Val’in thought he saw a ship descending. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before and was headed for Mount Deathfire and the massive pillar of ash roiling from its wounded depths.

His answer when given was distracted. ‘More will be coming. We stay here, protect the master.’

No, it was definitely not a ship he had ever seen before.

It was ancient, something that had once been described to him in the lectorium by the Master of the Arsenal. He couldn’t be certain but he remembered the name his teacher had used.

Stormbird.

Lorkar’s warriors had been severely reduced in fighting strength. Some of their bodies were still laying in the debris from the shattered wall, crushed to oblivion, injuries from which even a Space Marine could not recover. Others had been slain in the ferocious fighting that led up to its destruction.

He half staggered towards Iagon, wrapping a gauntleted hand around his throat while the traitor was still only half conscious from the fall.

‘Worm!’ he snarled, tightening his grip. ‘Did you know he possessed such a weapon?’ He ripped off the traitor’s battle-helm, leaving the clamps torn and broken. ‘He used it to kill his own. You were in that blast radius too.’

Iagon scrabbled desperately at Lorkar’s gauntleted fingers. He slipped a jagged knife from his belt but Lorkar saw the blade and seized Iagon’s wrist. He twisted it until it cracked.

‘I’m not some callow fool you can stab in the back,’ he growled and threw him down.

Iagon grabbed the nearest weapon, a snub-nosed bolt pistol, and shot Lorkar in the face. The sergeant of the Marines Malevolent roared, clutching at his face as Iagon fled.

‘Let him go,’ he snapped, watching the craven traitor disappear into the smoke. Most of the battlefield outside Hesiod was swathed in the dirty black pall. It smothered the bodies as well as the screams.

It also clung around the massive breach in the wall where the rear battalions were currently clamouring to get in. The Salamanders defended it tenaciously, and Lorkar saw gouts of flame, the sporadic flare of bolters, in the darkness within. They were holding but only just, the weight of the tide would eventually push them back if something didn’t change.

Blood-stink was heavy on the breeze, so too the stench of putrefaction barely masked by the sulphurous air.

Lorkar was inured to all of it as he and his men moved against the tide. The wall was won; he had other prey on his mind. At least that’s what the voices were telling him. Of much greater concern were the channels of lava erupting at random across the battlefield. In the short time since being thrown from the battlements, he’d witnessed an entire tank squadron devoured by spewing magma and whole regiments decimated by caustic acid-wind.

A scorch mark muddied his faceplate where Iagon’s barrage had hit him, the only sign of damage he’d sustained thus far. It was a glancing blow that dented his armour and hurt like a bastard but little else.

His warriors, those that were left, put up their bolters.

A brief lull had descended on the far side of the wall. Within Hesiod, the courtyard was being fought for doggedly but that didn’t interest Lorkar. What did was the fact that the Salamanders would not surrender one of their greatest cities without more of a fight. Reinforcements were certain to be on the way. He gestured to Brother Vathek. ‘Scopes.’

Crouching down to where the smoke was thinnest, he peered through the magnoculars at the distant ash ridges. There was a dust cloud approaching, cutting through the lava trails. He increased magnification.

‘Heavy armour,’ he muttered, the sound grating, as he saw tanks.

He turned the dial to maximum and saw who was leading the column.

Beneath the damaged battle-helm, an ugly smile split his scarred face.

‘Tu’Shan.’

Hearing the vague sound of engines through the chaos, he panned the view upwards.

The smile became a scowl when he saw the distant drop-ship in Dragon Warrior colours.

‘You dirty little–’

‘Sire…’

Vathek was gesturing to the hosts of Dragon Warriors withdrawing back across the ash plain.

‘Where in the name of Throne are those scum going?’

Several renegade battalions were embarking onto gunships and headed back for the upper atmosphere. They’d been deployed as a show of force only, something to galvanise the fodder.

Lorkar’s eyes narrowed as he looked back to the distant drop-ship, descending in the mountains.

‘You needed their gaze elsewhere, didn’t you? What’s down there that you’re after?’ he muttered.

Nihilan had betrayed them all, it seemed.

When he handed the scopes back to Vathek, Lorkar was on his feet.

Sixteen of his men remained, amongst them Harkane with his tracked Rapier and Tsu’gan. Lorkar sneered with displeasure as he recognised this particular survivor.

He was on his knees and appeared almost shell-shocked.

Lorkar bent down to speak into his ear.

‘Saw you cutting up your kin like you were butchering meat on the block, brother.’

He tapped the muzzle of his bolter against the silver-metal growth attached to his face.

‘This thing will keep you honest, eh? I’m surprised the sorcerer gave you up to me so easily. I thought he wanted you for himself. Still,’ he gestured to the carnage unfolding behind the wall, ‘now you’ve had a hand in this you won’t be returning to your Chapter again.’

A nerve pulsed in Tsu’gan’s cheek. His wide eyes burned as they were turned on Lorkar.

The sergeant clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll make a Malevolent out of you yet.’

An eldritch wind whipping from the breach made Lorkar turn. Streaks of lightning crackled the air presaging…

‘What the f–’

…an explosion of light that blazed into life inside the wall. It lasted only moments but was bright and violent enough to overload the Marine Malevolent’s retinal display. Blinking back the harsh afterglare, he saw a hazed silhouette step from the psychic storm like a wayward traveller arrived after a long journey.

He was clad in blue ceramite and steeped in arcana. A drakescale cloak flared behind him and cerulean lightning coursed angrily across his eyes. In a clenched fist he brandished a skull-headed staff.

Lorkar sneered, ‘Witch,’ then recoiled as the first ranks of Nihilan’s rabble were thrown back, maimed by the Librarian’s onrushing flame wall. He stepped into the mouth of the breach, hurling fire and death from his fingertips as simply as if it were breathing.

Those dregs without armour to protect them burned, their hair and clothes and skin shrivelled and cooked in a terrible inferno.

Lorkar balked as the Librarian came on, the other defenders advancing in his wake, taking the fight to any of the renegades that had survived the flames.

Beneath his feet the earth began to tremble and crack.

Lava oozed to the surface, tiny rivulets at first and then gushing fountains of the planet’s molten core.

He snarled to his men, ‘We’re done here,’ then looked at Tsu’gan. ‘Get him up. He’s coming with us.’

Vathek and Morgak shouldered their bolters and went to pull the once-Salamander to his feet when a plume of fire speared from the earth and took Tsu’gan with it. A second column of flame followed quickly after the first, scorching Vathek’s armour plate and drawing a curse from his lips. Then came a third and fourth. Morgak was immolated by the fifth. It cooked him inside his armour and fused the metal to his trembling body. The warrior’s tongue was burned away before he could scream.

Columns of fire were surging up into the air across the ash-plain, pushed up through the cracks, impelled by the Librarian’s psychic will and the disruption of Nocturne’s tectonic balance. Erupting like geysers they choked the sky with smoke and flame, spewing lava in a flood.

Lorkar thought about going back for Tsu’gan. The once-Salamander was a distant figure, prone against the ash-sand, burned and unmoving. If nothing else, Lorkar could at least finish him off and exact a measure of retribution.

‘Leave him,’ he decided in the end, retreating from the deadly eruptions and the renewed fight for Hesiod’s wall. ‘He’s probably dead, anyway.’

Inside his head, the voices told him what to do. They guided him gently towards his prey. This was Vinyar’s command, wasn’t it? He would fulfil it.

‘Never accept a slight without retribution,’ he muttered, in a voice not quite his own.

II

Mortal Wounds

Tsu’gan wasn’t dead. He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes to look up, and found a sundered sky staring back at him. It was black, thick with smoke and ash. It was almost like night. The clouds moved slowly, as if sticking to the air and reluctant to take their leave of it. A smear of red, like old blood, appeared in a break in the cloud bank as if an invisible hand had cut a wound into the blackness and let it bleed.

That’s when he realised he was partially blinded. Something about his visual perception was wrong. Diminished, even. It lacked depth and the periphery of his sight was foreshortened. One of his eyes was gone, burned out by the plume of superheated fire.

Agony came with realisation and Tsu’gan roared to dull the blazing needles in his face. Pain brought clarity. Awareness of place, the memory of the battle came back to him in a disconcerting flood. He remembered the wall, the lance of light striking from the heavens and the blast wave that rolled across the wastes like a tsunami. Then he knew only fire and the cold tendrils of near death.

Nocturne was tearing itself apart and he’d been kissed by her haemorraghing vitae. It pitted his armour, the left shoulder guard eroded down to the mesh underlayer. Pieces of his plastron were stripped back to the bare metal and an entire section of the cuirass on his back was gone with the bare skin visible underneath. Even ceramite was poor protection against the earth’s heartblood.

Crawling onto his knees, Tsu’gan found his strength returning. Tentatively, he touched his face. He felt bone, not skin or flesh. When he brought them back, his gauntleted fingers were shiny with gore.

I’ve survived worse, he said to himself and tried to believe it.

Peering through a haze of heat and blurred vision, he discerned the outlines of the Marines Malevolent leaving the battlefield. Then he saw the Third battling through the breach with Vel’cona in their midst.

The Master Librarian was blazing like a righteous torch, laying waste to the mercenary hordes and lesser renegades with contempuous ease. Not so long ago, Tsu’gan had been a part of that horde. He regarded the tattered remnants of his traitor’s garb, fighting the urge to tear it off, every damnable plate, and felt ashamed.

Disgusted with his self-pity, he averted his eyes from the borrowed armour and caught sight of Captain Agatone urging the troops from the wall. Adrax Agatone was brave, if stolid, but fought with a fire in his soldier’s heart. Tsu’gan had known him as a sergeant, an honourable and forthright warrior he’d greatly respected.

There was Malicant beside him; the venerable banner bearer had served Kadai too. So too what was left of the Inferno Guard, the captain’s loyal retainers. During his service to the Third, Tsu’gan had only known two other captains and they were both dead.

Seeing his former brothers, knowing he could no longer return to their ranks, was more painful than the ruination of his face. In those waking moments, Tsu’gan considered offering himself up to their blades. At least that way he would die in battle and by a Fire-born’s hand. Agatone would do it. He’d place the blade deep, a heart strike, giving him a shred of honour. Tsu’gan could embrace the mountain like that.

But that would achieve nothing, save his ignominious death.

He would survive instead and find the ones who’d done this to him. With clarity of purpose came another revelation. It was slow to form, dulled by his injuries, but unmistakable. The numbness in his head, the sense of disembodiment had faded. Tsu’gan, not the mind shackle, was governing his actions again. He reached up to touch the alien thing clinging tenuously to his cheek. The skin where it was pinioned was raw, down to the bone; the lava had dissolved it, but it had also severely damaged the mind shackle. Tsu’gan didn’t hesitate. Life was pain. He ripped it off his face and took what followed with gritted teeth.

Agony already wracked his entire body, what did a little more matter.

White heat dying like the embers of a fire behind his eyes, Tsu’gan regarded the alien thing clutched in his shaking hand.

‘Not much to speak of really,’ he sneered, the breath catching in his throat.

Vulkan’s Eye, it was torturous!

Tsu’gan crushed the broken silver beetle and scattered its remains.

Rise, he urged himself. Get up… do it now!

Every nerve ending was burning.

It was a strange sensation to be caught in the midst of a battle but waiting in the eye of its storm. Gunfire, clipped and sporadic, the clash of blades and the screams of the slain, surrounded Tsu’gan’s island of calm but it would not last. To believe he was divorced from it was as certain to kill him as picking up a knife and turning it on himself. War spread, that was its nature. Islands were swallowed by growing oceans of violence. It was inevitable, not merely probable. He needed to move on.

Staggering at first, Tsu’gan got his feet. He slipped once on the ash and clattered back down onto his knees. Defiant, his facial injuries having lessened to a dull ache, he rose again. His enhanced nervous system was trying to compensate for the incredible damage he’d sustained, pumping his body with endorphins and adrenaline so he could continue to function. He couldn’t operate like this indefinitely, but it might give him enough time to find Lorkar and kill him. There was also the matter of Iagon. He’d promised the dog retribution and Tsu’gan intended to deliver but he’d lost sight of him after he’d fled from the wall. The wretch could be anywhere.

Caught in the no-man’s-land between the host of Dragon Warriors and the broken Hesiod wall where the Salamanders were making their stand, Tsu’gan was wracked with a final moment of indecision.

I am Fire-born, this is my place. It would be easy to proclaim his survival and return from the hands of the enemy. The city of my birth is burning and I should defend it, but I have killed my own, my brothers. It would be triumphant. This is their blood on my hands. Glorious. How can I embrace them again with unclean hands? But ultimately, it would be a lie.

Tsu’gan turned his back on his brothers, his Chapter, everything he had ever known and started to run away from the battle. Returning to the fold of the renegades was unconscionable too, not now his mind was again his own, so he followed an oblique line between Hesiod’s wall and the now advancing renegades.

For the first time in his life Tsu’gan was uncertain of his path. It was a dark one, he was well aware of that, and it had led him to this crossroads but now he stood upon it he felt powerless to act.

The muffled sound of clanking armour as an ambusher sought to mask his approach brought Tsu’gan around to matters at hand. The lapping ocean had arrived sooner than even he had realised. He turned, catching the barest glint of fire on metal in the smoke, and dodged the frantic blade thrust of Cerbius Iagon.

The jagged edge of the traitor’s knife scored armour plate and then cut into the mesh of the eroded sections, drawing blood.

Tsu’gan grimaced, but trapped Iagon’s arm in the pit of his own and turned him. Scrambling, the traitor stumbled away with the impetus of his momentum and came up snarling.

‘Betrayer!’ Foaming spittle on his sneering lip gave him the face of a madman. It was an accurate description. A wadge of phlegm was clinging to his angular chin and drooled down, tarring his gorget. He didn’t even move to wipe it away, just let it hang there.

Tsu’gan backed off, Iagon’s outstretched blade keeping him at bay.

‘Says the one wearing a traitor’s colours,’ he replied. ‘You dishonour your forebears.’

‘Always so righteous…’ Iagon, making a tentative lunge like a huntsman trying to cow a vicious predator, became scornful. ‘The noble lord of Hesiod, he who would be king.’

Tsu’gan avoided the blow easily, it was intended to goad not kill.

‘Do you want for privilege, Iagon? Is that it?’

Iagon slashed wildly this time. ‘I want only for your death and suffering.’

‘Because I’m noble born?’

A desperate lunge made Tsu’gan sidestep. ‘You’ll need to do better than that, brother,’ he muttered, acutely aware of the stimulants in his body that were keeping him upright.

Iagon laughed. It was an unpleasant, mocking sound. ‘Brother? What makes you a brother to me?’ He brandished his augmetic hand, clenched into a fist. ‘I sacrificed. I murdered for you…’ A terrible ennui passed across his face, a coldness of spirit that had hollowed him out until only darkness was left. He grinned, and it was an altogether repugnant expression. ‘But now there’s blood on your hands too.’

‘Just like your master, you are deluded, Iagon,’ Tsu’gan told him, ignoring Iagon’s clumsy attempts to lure him. But he was careful to maintain his distance. Without the weapons he’d lost in the blast plume, Tsu’gan was vulnerable. He knew he was weak too. There was a chainsword laying half-buried in the ash nearby but he couldn’t reach it without dropping his guard. ‘You have sold your soul to Chaos, Iagon, and the price was cheap.’

‘I’ll tell you what I am.’ Iagon slammed a fist against his plastron. It was an act of petulance. ‘I am a survivor. I will outlast you, brother. I will outlast all of you.’

The tremors were intensifying, so too the battle around them.

Tsu’gan had landed in a shallow ravine but could see the approaching muzzle flares of bolters as the Salamanders and Dragon Warriors closed on one another.

‘If you are going to kill me, then do so quickly,’ he said. ‘For once they meet,’ he gestured to the two battlelines, ‘there’ll be no escaping the meat grinder for either of us.’

Iagon sneered. ‘Are you afraid, brother? Scared you won’t fulfil your grand destiny?’

Tsu’gan’s voice was hard as iron. ‘I know no fear,’ he replied, ‘as any true Space Marine should.’ He’stan had shown him that, on the Volgorrah Reef. ‘Tell me though, brother, have you ever known what that feels like? Have you ever truly been a Space Marine?’

Letting out a cry of atavistic rage, Iagon threw himself at his old sergeant. Slashing frenziedly with the knife, he lost his footing as another quake hit and stumbled.

Tsu’gan barrelled into him, seeing his opportunity. Feeling the jagged blade bite into his exposed shoulder, he endured the pain and barged Iagon to the ground. The force of his momentum kept him going far enough to stoop. His fingers closed around the chainsword’s hilt…

In the meantime, Iagon had hauled himself to his feet and was a handspan away from sinking his knife into Tsu’gan’s neck when he found a track of sharpened blade-teeth buzzing next to his side.

Crouched down, Tsu’gan held the chainsword firmly and up at an angle.

‘Do you remember the promise I made to you when Ramlek was sticking his knives in?’ he asked. ‘I said I would come after you and that I’d leave you until last…’

Using both hands, Tsu’gan hacked into Iagon’s flank so hard he cut legs from torso in a single furious stroke.

‘I lied,’ he said, Iagon’s blood flecking his ravaged face and leaking all over the desert as the traitor fell into two halves. His expression was etched in genuine terror.

Tsu’gan didn’t linger. He felt no remorse. Even if he could have stayed, there were others to kill. Like a chrono-gladiator whose dial was ticking, Tsu’gan felt the finite nature of the time he had left. It was short. He’d need to kill quickly. He spat on the corpse, excising the last of the bitterness he felt towards a warrior he had once counted as his own, and went after Lorkar.

As the Emperor’s Angels, His champions and mankind’s chosen protectors, Space Marines could withstand incredible amounts of punishment before they finally expired. It was not easy to kill one, and the sort of thing that could only be achieved by another Space Marine or some of the most dangerous alien species of the galaxy.

Iagon knew this. He knew because it had been told to him by the masters of his Chapter, by those who had turned him from a lowly human mortal into a warrior-god. To become such a thing, to aspire to the ranks of the Space Marines and be so vaunted was the single most significant event of Iagon’s existence. Only, he hadn’t been alone in his apotheosis. He had walked with other warrior-gods too and their shadows were long indeed. Longer than his own.

Guile, however, was something Iagon had in abundance and ambition… such ambition! It drove him to do great and terrible things. If he could not attain the trappings of power and pre-eminence for himself then he would look to others to do it for him. He would stand in their shadows still, but at least he’d be closer to the sun.

But despite his machinations, so carefully planned, so fearlessly and oft literally executed, he was undone. As his lifeblood leaked from the ragged ends of his flesh, he did not feel inviolable, nor a warrior-god. He felt painfully mortal, as if his regenesis was coming undone at the genetor’s brutally unstitched seams.

Punishment was a Space Marine’s trade, dealing it out and taking it, but the distance between the two halves of Iagon’s body may as well have been a gulf.

He had been transformed into a killing machine only to be slain by a better one.

As his mind was fading and the last worn threads of his life slowly frayed and snapped, a mote of something vital stirred between feelings of thwarted destiny. Another transformation was taking place within Iagon, one that turned his slashed intestines into groping tendrils and forced the two halves of his body to reach out for one another across the bloody ash-sand.

Disturbed and excited at the same time, he felt the organs meet and re-knit. As a winch being wound by some invisible crank-hand, torso and abdomen slowly drew together. Skin met skin and began to fuse. Flesh regenerated. Meat, chewed up by the vigorous chainblade, was restored.

Sensation, gradually fading into numbed oblivion a moment ago, returned and brought with it renewed strength. Feeling came back in his legs and he managed to stand. He clenched his fists and saw the augmetic hand had gone, replaced by another.

‘Incredible…’

The hot gusting of his breath brought a sulphurous tang with it, more potent than Nocturne’s blighted air. Iagon felt… greater, but strength and stature were not the limits of his gifts.

He turned at some unknown sign and saw the first of the Dragon Warrior vanguard spilling into the ravine where Tsu’gan had killed him.

Iagon gazed upon them with his arms down by his sides, unmoving, not as allies or enemies but as lowly beings and with ancient eyes that were not entirely his own.

Five Dragon Warriors, little more than a scouting party, aimed through the iron sights of their weapons as if feeling the old malice within Iagon. It exuded from his skin in a necrotic musk, putting him in mind of boneyards and flayed flesh. For a moment, he caught a glimpse of another realm, where armies of the lost and damned were slaves to darkness. A chorus of thunderous bolter retorts and muzzle flares crashed into existence as the renegades unleashed everything they had to slay him. In a fleeting second of doubt, Iagon threw up his arms to ward off the fatal fusillade.

There was no second death, no chunks of hot gristle scattered across the ash-sand. Iagon was whole, untouched. He watched in mute fascination as the mass-reactive shells impacted harmlessly against his body in slow motion. Pieces of broken armour spun into the air in a languid storm of ceramite. But his skin was utterly unblemished. There was no scratch.

The renegades saw that too.

Close enough to try and gut him, three warriors drew blades and went in close. Iagon dispatched them with a sweep of his arm. The blow struck all three renegades at once, shattering armour and bone. Thrown into the air they disappeared over the dune amidst a hail of broken spikes, split links of chain and fragmenting plate.

He leapt on the fourth, who was hurriedly reloading his bolter, taking a full clip to the chest before he tore the warrior’s head off. The last he impaled with his hand. Blade-like it slid through the renegade’s power armour like parchment and came out clutching twin beating hearts.

Such power!

Iagon’s dreams of ascension were coming true. It was not exactly as he’d pictured it but nonetheless…

‘I am… gnn…’ Steeped in genhanced gore, he revelled in his newfound strength but then, just as a candle is snuffed out by the breeze, his awareness faded to a splinter as another presence took hold, ‘…reborn.’

Engel’saak regarded the burning desert with hateful eyes. It quietened the terrified screams of the mortal, confined them to a black place where light never touched and none could ever hear. The vessel would serve… for now.

For millennia the daemon had dwelled in the ether of the abyss, with only its wrath and desire for vengeance to sustain it. Visits to the mortal sorcerer were petty amusements, his flesh little more than a lens through which Engel’saak could perceive the race of men. He was a gatekeeper and the flesh sacrifice he’d provided the key. Such bright little soulfires the mortals made and in such abundance – how it longed to feast upon them again.

Banishment had robbed it of earthly form. It could still remember the white heat of the warrior’s hammer and see the forge fires raging in his eyes. This mortal was not like the others, there was something incandescent about him. Deific. He was earth and fire incarnate.

Engel’saak had been guilty of underestimating him. It would not make the same mistake with his lesser progeny.

The daemon was only vaguely aware of the shouting mortals, doubtless humbled and frightened by its burgeoning form. The flesh-change was accelerating rapidly as its will asserted itself over the possessed. The armour binding it ruptured and split as a ready flow of scaled feathers burst from within. Its legs extended, transforming into gnarled pinions conjoined to its elongating body by a fleshy membrane. The arms followed, lengthening as talons sprouted from mortal fingertips. Last was the neck, stretching into something long and scaled and serpentine, surmounted by a head that was avian and reptilian at the same time.

The mortals were not fleeing; rather they were mustering to attack.

Engel’saak swept out a desultory claw in the direction of the warriors as their crude weaponry pattered against its skin. As one they sank into convulsions as rapid and violent mutation seized them. In moments, they were little more than steaming piles of blubber, quivering and mewling as their minds surrendered to oblivion.

Another band piled over the dune. They were shouting, trying not to look at the remains of their fellow mortals. Several took up crouching positions and shouldered cannons that blazed with a pellucid light. As the bright beams touched Engel’saak’s skin they burned, they actually hurt it.

Screeching its hell-cry, the daemon put the warriors on their knees where they clutched their war-helms in agony. Dark fluid seeped between the joins at the neck as they collapsed, one after the other.

So brittle…

Engel’saak wasn’t just referring to the dead warriors, for they were not the only ones anchored to mortal flesh. Rivulets of ichor ran from the cracks in its corporeal vessel. Another thought staunched them and re-wove the scaly skin around its body, but the daemon knew it was vulnerable and outnumbered by these lesser creatures.

More were coming. It could smell the tantalising essence of their soulfires through its flaring nostrils.

Too many to flesh-change.

It spewed a stream of corrupting fire from its beak-like maw, engulfing the summit of the dune and the mortals who were first to crest it. Despite their armour they burned, groping and writhing in the ash of their own immolated bodies.

Charnel-stink on the breeze was invigorating. Such an old familiar odour, Engel’saak revelled in it.

Others shouldered through the flames, hazy silhouettes resolving into solid armoured warriors. Their weapons were levelled and spoke angrily.

Not fear, it thought, tasting with a long rugose tongue, arrogance.

These mortals would fight relentlessly, until either they’d killed the daemon or were slain themselves. It could not linger, not here.

Engel’saak threw back its head, emitting a deep and ululating scream. The fleshy membranes attached to its limbs billowed out and became wings…

Agatone paused in the killing to gesture at the beast that had just soared from the renegades’ ranks and into the air.

‘Did you see that?’

Malicant looked skywards. His banner caught on the breeze and made the drake-head icon snap. ‘It has wings, but much larger than a dactylid,’ he said.

Brother Shen’kar, Agatone’s second-in-command, spoke as he released a flamer burst.

‘A monster disturbed from the ash-sand, emerged from some freshly opened crevice in the earth?’

Agatone was barely listening.

Since Vel’cona’s arrival they’d made good progress through the breach. Nihilan’s fodder had been numerous but were close to annihilation now. Agatone had been able to task Scouts from Seventh with shoring up defences and seeing to civilians. Uncounted injured lined the streets and crowded plazas looking to the Salamanders to deliver them. Agatone remembered lifting a stricken woman above his shoulders to save her from being crushed in the mass panic when the sky fell. He’d done this even though his enemies were all about him. All the Salamanders did. These were their people, the humans they’d sworn their lives to protect.

Honorious had been speared through the shoulder by a xenos blade as he shielded an infant from certain death. Lok was burned as he threw a man from a renegade’s flamer. They’d taken their blows, each and every one, earning gratitude and scars. Agatone loved his people. He’d rejoiced to find that echoed in his battle-brothers.

‘With our deeds, raise them!’ he’d proclaimed to the wall before the siege began, in earshot of the huddled civilians. ‘Our courage shall be an example to all. It will galvanise our people and show them what it means to be Fire-born. We are Vulkan’s shield!’

The great cheer that had followed was gratifying, but these were words and as such meant nothing without action. It had been too long since the Third stood in glory. He would restore them, return honour to their name, and the long diminished Inferno Guard to pre-eminence.

Even though he openly refuted such things, he’d once thought the captaincy of Third to be a poison barb, cursed to suffer endless ill-fortune. Now he believed it was a calling. All he had to do to answer it was survive.

The loss of the void shield was troubling and what Techmarines the captain could spare were already working hard to repair Hesiod’s generator. The deep quakes, the ones that shook the bedrock and had split the Sanctuary’s foundation stone, concerned Agatone the most. He’d experienced the Time of Trial on many occasions before but this was different, almost apocalyptic, and now this… this creature.

‘What is that thing?’ he said, scowling at its scaled and muscular body, its long leathern neck and vast unfurled wings. Old paintings of Terran myth and rumours of the lowest deeps beneath Mount Deathfire arose unbidden in his mind. ‘It looks like…’

‘It is a drakon,’ uttered Vel’cona, ‘or at least a simulacrum of one.’ He was at the captain’s side and vanquished a scurrying band of galthite pirates with a torrent of serpentine flame. Their noisome flesh cooked in their armour, their saurian faces ablaze. ‘It is also known by other names… wyvern, felldrake… estragon. Fenrisians call them ormr or wurm.’ The Master Librarian’s inflection was thick with rustic accent, hinting of the campaigns he had fought beside the Wolves. He followed the monster’s immense shadow with his eyes until it reached the cloud bank and disappeared. Even then his gaze lingered.

‘In ancient days, primitive human tribes worshipped and feared it. They called it dragon.’

Agatone slowly shook his head. Through the comm-feed in his battle-helm reports were coming in from the wall sentries that a massed force of Dragon Warriors was marching across the ash-dunes to meet them. There was little time for investigation.

‘Whatever name the beast goes by,’ he said, ‘it tossed those renegades like they were chaff.’ He met Shen’kar’s gaze. ‘What if it is from the deep world, roused in anger at Nihilan’s sacrilege?’

Every culture of the civilised galaxy had its tales of monsters, Nocturne more than most. Drakes had many names, not just their given ones that Salamanders had rune-branded on their flesh. There was the lohikäärme and the tulikäärme. Ancient sok and the serpentine kulebre. These were old beasts, legends of a forgotten world before even the time of Vulkan.

‘No, its aura is malfeasant. Can’t you taste the acrid taint of it on your tongue, brother? Like rusted metal and putrefaction. This thing did not come from the earth. It is a daemon, here to lay waste to us all.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I

Sacrifices

Tsu’gan kept low and fast as he crossed the dunes. He’d scavenged a bolter with a half clip and another spare from the body of a dead renegade half-buried in the ash-sand to add to his chainsword. They were battered weapons, unworthy of a Salamander, but then he reminded himself he was no longer one of them.

Killing his enemies was all that drove Tsu’gan now. Achieve that and he might attain some small measure of peace. He was following the Marines Malevolent’s trail when he heard the reverberant screech tear into the air and turned.

Something reptilian and borne aloft on membranous wing had just disappeared into the thick cloud swathing all of Nocturne. He suppressed an involuntary shudder as he realised what this must be. During his incarceration, Tsu’gan had heard mutterings about the ‘vessel’. On several occasions, Iagon had goaded him with it, suggesting a loathsome fate for the once-Salamander.

He thought back to the Aura Hieron temple on Stratos. Nihilan had threatened him with daemonic possession, tried to turn him to the renegade’s cause. He’d done it again on Hell-stalker. Though his masochism had made him weak, even fatalistic, Tsu’gan had refused the sorcerer’s overtures. He was broken inside but no traitor. Willingly, he would never betray his brothers.

Iagon, though… he was all too willing. Rage and jealously were potent nectars for the soulless fiends that lurked beyond the veil. Such weakness thinned the gossamer membrane keeping mortal and daemon separate.

The monstrous creature was gone for now, lost to the roiling night above, and Iagon was first amongst its victims.

‘I pity you,’ Tsu’gan muttered, knowing that if he returned to where he’d killed the traitor there would be no bodily remains.

Thunderous impacts shook the earth, signalling the use of ordnance. Renewed conflict had broken out amongst Hesiod’s sallying defenders and the renegades’ second front. The opening salvos were devastatingly loud and monstrously destructive. Tsu’gan lost his footing more than once as he scrambled between flowing lava channels to the summit of a volcanic crag. Lorkar had come this way. His troops were lying in wait in a ravine below.

Tsu’gan kept down, crouched at the foot of a jutting rock split in half by the tectonic event ripping into Nocturne. Its broken peak was scattered across the crag’s flanks and basin. It was large enough for him to hide behind and creep closer to the Marines Malevolent.

One was pointing and Tsu’gan followed the direction of his outstretched arm to where a vast column of tanks was rolling into view. His gaze alighted on Tu’Shan, leading from the front in Promethean. The Land Raider was ancient, its twin-flamers on either sponson clearing a burning path to the heart of the Dragon Warrior positions.

A squadron of Predator battle tanks, Destructor and Annihilator variants, rumbled along in its wake. Autocannon turrets and side-mounted lascannons riddled the static enemy artillery with armour-busting fire.

A missile battery went up in a blaze of fire and shrapnel. The explosion spread to a heavier ground-to-air Bombard, killing its crew and scuppering the war engine. Renegade armour that had been focused on the advancing ground force from the city turned to intercede against the flanking threat.

Tsu’gan watched them gun their track beds in desperate rotational manoeuvres as they tried to bring firing arcs to bear. Ponderous ordnance tanks, the Whirlwinds and Vindicators of Master Kor’hadron’s Armoury, laid down suppressing fire from a distance. Rocket bursts chewed up the earth in front of the enemy tanks and split their tracks, slowing their response to Tu’Shan’s flanking column. Fat shells spat from the mouths of Demolisher cannons tipped entire vehicles onto their sides where the escaping crew were lit up like burning torches from Tu’Shan’s flamestorm side-mounts.

They’d been battered, the Chapter Master and his tank commanders, doubtless come from Themis, but their fury was brazier-hot.

Dragon Warrior tanks ruptured and died in the aggressive cannonade from the forward Predators and Land Raiders. The hulls of some burst apart in the barrage, others merely slowed to an all-stop, billowing smoke.

Tu’Shan rolled over the mechanised outriders, smashing the wrecks from his path and grinding foot troops to paste beneath his iron-shod tracks. In a few short minutes, the artillery was almost totally destroyed and the Dragon Warriors were in retreat. But they were a shadow of the forces Tsu’gan had seen arrayed on the Hell-stalker. Nihilan had cohorts and fighting battalions numbering in the hundreds. This was just a fraction of his martial strength.

As he picked his way silently down into the ravine, he wondered what the sorcerer was saving in reserve and why he hadn’t committed his entire army. Nocturne was wounded, her blood was evident across the cracked and fiery earth, but she wasn’t dead. This wasn’t the abject annihilation that Nihilan had threatened.

With the faint scrape of metal against scabbard, Tsu’gan drew his borrowed chainblade as the first of Lorkar’s sentries came into view.

What is your purpose, sorcerer? he asked himself, preparing a kill-strike aimed at the Marine Malevolent’s back.

An answer of sorts came with the sound of leathern wings flapping on the breeze and a crimson shadow bolting out of the ash clouds. Like a hunter-seeker on an inexorable course, it arrowed towards Tu’Shan.

Nihilan embarked from the belly of the Stormbird to stand upon a vast and yawning crater.

Two of his Glaive followed, taking up position at either shoulder.

Ramlek crouched at the edge, looking down. His boot disturbed a piece of rock that went skittering off into the gloomy depths.

‘Deep,’ he uttered, a ghosting of fine cinder spilling from his fanged vox-grille.

Thark’n nodded, his thick arms folded across his chest.

‘It leads to the heart of Nocturne,’ Nihilan told them, ‘and our destiny.’

Forged by the fury of the seismic cannon, the bore hole was also wide. It walls were ridged, and descended in molten rings. In the manner of a colossal drill, the energy lance had pierced the many layers of rock and earth between the surface and the magma halls beneath it. Laid open like a wound, Nihilan had but to turn the enemy’s eye away and he could walk into this realm unmolested.

‘Soon…’ he promised, though the intended recipient wasn’t listening, at least not in any conventional sense.

Behind them, the shadow of the Stormbird slowly receded as Ekrine guided it above the cloud layer and out of sight. He’d stay nearby but also hidden.

Close to the summit of Mount Deathfire, the air was acrid and foul with sulphur. Shimmering heat, exuded off the lava tracts and growing magma pools, flaked the paint from their armour. Only the ceramite shielding kept them from burning up.

Banks of pyroclastic cloud ringed the peaks that only Nihilan’s witch-sight could penetrate. Far below, he saw the battle raging and the daemon as it descended on Tu’Shan.

‘Even if it doesn’t end you, there’s a second blade with your name on it,’ Nihilan promised under his breath.

Though he couldn’t see it, all creatures touched by the warp could detect the presence of another. Especially powerful ones blazed like hell-fires.

‘Why the worm and not the warrior?’ asked Ramlek. He looked up at his lord. ‘And why leave its manifestation to chance?’

He was not questioning in the sense that he disagreed, the dutiful hound would never do that; he merely wanted to understand.

‘Tsu’gan was more resilent than I thought.’

‘Mind and flesh,’ Ramlek agreed. He rubbed at his neck where the razor-fan the once-Salamander had thrust him into had severed it.

‘Possession was far from a certainty,’ Nihilan continued. ‘Resistance, or the very least hindrance, could have ruined everything. I needed a pliable vessel. Iagon was perfect, flawed in every way.’

He neglected to say that a part of him respected Tsu’gan, was in awe of his rage and determination. In him he saw an ally, a potential convert. Even now, after everything and on the cusp of achieving his ultimate goal, Nihilan hadn’t abandoned the idea of turning the once-Salamader to his cause. But that wasn’t for Ramlek to know. Spit on a dog’s food enough and soon it will look to find its meat elsewhere, perhaps even the flesh of its master.

Nihilan’s eyes narrowed as he contemplated the strands of fate he’d woven to bring about this reality. ‘It wasn’t chance, Ramlek. It was preordained. The worm, as you call him, hated his old sergeant. Murder was inevitable, and Tsu’gan provided it as I knew he would. After its millennia of yearning, Engel’saak is free.’

A clenched fist suggested Ramlek’s barely restrained zeal. ‘I would witness its slaughter.’ He brandished a hefty power axe in his left hand. ‘My blade yearns for the kill. I envy Nor’hak. At least he will face the Firedrakes.’

Nihilan scoffed. ‘Don’t be so quick to crave blood and death. There’ll be plenty to slake your desires, Ramlek.’ He gazed down into the swirling smoke. ‘I would rather leave Engel’saak with that bastard Lorkar and his cronies. Daemons have no true allegiance, save to themselves. Be glad you are up here and not below with the other sacrificial dogs. Not out of desire, do I bring them to the altar to bare their necks. It is out of necessity and the furthering of our creed. Everything has led to this.’

Ramlek bowed his head. ‘Your will is great, my lord.’

‘It will need to be greater for what follows.’

Up in the vaults of the world the thunder was louder and the crimson lightning fiercer. A bolt jagged out of the darkness, striking the crater’s edge not far from Ramlek’s feet. Tiny pieces of rock caromed off his armour but the Dragon Warrior didn’t even flinch.

Nihilan lifted his eyes to the sky. ‘She voices her displeasure.’ The darkness of the crater beckoned.

Ramlek turned his head. ‘What is that sound?’

A sonorous mewling echoed from the deeps, resonating off the walls and carried all the way to the surface.

‘Drakesong,’ answered Nihilan, ‘A cry for the dying world. We move now.’

Engaging the ignition stud on his jump pack, Nihilan felt the gout of chemical-blue flame lick from the exhaust-port. Angular vanes attached to the jet engine to assist with trajectory fanned out like draconian wings. Convection vents manufactured into the sides plumed invisible heat vapour. A cruel machine-spirit lurked within, eager to be let loose.

Nihilan obliged it, leaping off the crater’s edge and into the abyss.

‘Stay close,’ he growled against the rushing descent wind. ‘There may be defenders we don’t know about. Without the daemon to augment them, my powers have lessened.’

The Glaive warriors were as the sorcerer’s shadow, ever at his heel down into the long darkness of Nocturne’s subterranea.

II

Born of Fire

Pyriel unclenched his eyes and found he was still alive. Heat radiated off his armour and seized his limbs, despite the psychic shield he’d erected. It was hard to uncurl his body and stand. He felt fused together, as if labouring under a heavy weight that he couldn’t throw off.

It took a few seconds for him to realise he was breathing through his battle-helm’s internal filters. All the oxygen in the vault had been burned up in the fire. The air blurred with heat haze. It was heady and thick, like moving through liquid.

Fugis was crouched next to him, huddled in a foetal position. Pyriel reached out, snatching his hand back when he realised his gauntlets would likely scald the Apothecary.

‘Hold on, brother,’ he murmured. His tongue was leaden too, his lips reluctant to function.

Fugis was suffocating.

Staggering, the lactic acid in his knee joints like blade thrusts with every step, Pyriel hit the wall and hammered on the door release.

He called out, rasping, ‘Elysius…’

The vault wouldn’t open. Its gears protesting, the ancient mechanism whined and growled at the punishment it had suffered. Still sluggish, struggling to stay on his feet, Pyriel said again, ‘Elysius!’

Fugis was suffocating.

A crackling shield of energy dissipated from around the kneeling Chaplain. He arose on steady limbs, feeding a jolt of power into his crozius.

‘Step aside!’ he commanded, swinging the mace around in a blazing arc. The first hit made a dent but the door wouldn’t yield. Elysius took the power stave in two hands and swung again. This time he made a crack. It was wide enough for his fingers to get some purchase. For good measure, he made a third strike and opened the crack a little further for greater leverage.

‘Now, brother,’ he said, ‘help me!’

Together they pulled at the door to the vault, Pyriel low and Elysius high, one at either side. Slowly, the two halves of the gate parted and the heat began to escape pushed out by the onrushing air.

Elysius grabbed Pyriel’s gorget and pulled him close. His face was a mask of anger but untouched by the flame. ‘What was that? What have we done here?’

The Librarian was almost too dazed to answer. He fought for lucidity, but could remember nothing after the conflagration had engulfed them.

‘Fire…’ he murmured, ‘there was only fire…’

Elysius struck him with the back of his gauntlet, hard enough that Pyriel slid a half metre across the floor. Relentless, the Chaplain advanced on him.

‘Gather yourself! You mind has been overwhelmed but it will pass.’ In the corner of the chamber, Dak’ir’s still body was slumped on its side and unmoving. ‘I need to know what I have sanctioned.’

Pyriel was coming around, but it was taking time. He looked incredulously at the Chaplain. ‘How are you?’

Elyisus brandished his rosarius. ‘Faith protects me.’ There was a mania in his wide eyes. ‘What did we unleash? Tell me, Pyriel!’

The Librarian turned to the corner of the chamber. It was blackened, the metal scorched. Reduced to a few scattered pieces, the ancient armour from Scoria was no more.

‘Dak’ir…’

Fugis had crawled over to the Lexicanum’s prone form and was trying to check his vitals.

‘Apothecary?’ Elysius called from across the room.

Fugis hauled himself up so he was kneeling by Dak’ir.

‘Not even warm,’ he muttered.

Elysius left Pyriel gibbering as he tried to recover from the psychic storm.

‘Our Librarian is gone for the time being, what do you have left?’

Steam was emanating from the Apothecary’s skin. Unlike the others, he wasn’t wearing power armour but he’d still survived. It seemed a message might not be the only thing he’d brought back from the desert.

His fingers were trembling. Fugis noted the Chaplain’s worried expression.

‘Just a little nerve damage and some shock. It’s nothing.’

He carefully rolled Dak’ir onto his back. It wasn’t easy with him clad in full battle-plate, and Elysius had to assist. Then Fugis bent down and leaned in to Dak’ir’s chest.

Unclasping his gorget, the Apothecary placed two fingers against the Lexicanum’s neck.

‘Help me with this,’ he said to Elysius. Together they unhitched Dak’ir’s plastron and removed it.

Fugis leaned in again, shook his head.

‘What did we miss?’ said the Chaplain. ‘What part of the prophecy did we get wrong?’

‘None of it!’ snapped the Apothecary. ‘Everything is as it should be.’

Elysius threw out his arm, gesturing to the body. ‘He is no Fire Sword, brother!’

Returning to a kneeling position, Fugis let his arms fall by his sides.

He sighed. ‘You’re right.’

Kneeling by the body, the Apothecary looked beaten.

At the entrance to the vault, Pyriel had got back onto his feet and joined them. His expression was grim as he regarded Dak’ir.

‘Is he dead?’ It came out as a rasp.

Fugis nodded. His face was drawn taut, sharp as a blade. ‘Our brother has fallen.’

‘By our own hand.’ The Chaplain’s gravel voice was thick with accusation. He donned his helmet and turned his back on Dak’ir’s lifeless body. ‘This is over. We make for Hesiod at once and pray to Vulkan that there is some shred of Nocturne left for us to help save.’ He stalked from the vault, crozius clenched tight in his gauntleted fist.

Pyriel helped pull Fugis to his feet.

The Apothecary met the Librarian’s gaze. Anger and denial warred across his face.

‘It should not have been this way. The signs…’

He followed Elysius silently, leaving Pyriel alone with Dak’ir. He bent down on one knee.

Dak’ir’s eyes were open but lightless. The red orbs didn’t even harbour an ember of life.

‘I am truly sorry, brother,’ he said, closing the staring eyelids so it looked as if the Lexicanum were merely in repose.

There was no time for any rites or ceremony. They would have to wait. Lying in the vault of the Pantheon Chamber, Dak’ir’s body was as safe as anywhere on Prometheus.

Pyriel arose, finding some resolve.

‘I failed you, Dak’ir, but I will not fail my Chapter or my people.’

He had not told the others, because they’d had enough with visions and portents. But as the eternal fire burned around him, he had seen. The Librarian knew where he must go and what he must do.

Drawing on the latent psychic energies still present in the room, Pyriel opened up a gate of infinity and was gone.

Fugis looked back to the vault when he heard the eldritch wind of translocation.

‘Pyriel is no longer with us,’ he said to Elysius.

The Chaplain didn’t turn. They were headed for the armoury, for his power fist and a suit of battle-plate for the Apothecary. Without serfs or brander-priests to aid them, they’d need to move quickly.

They passed through the sacred archway to the Pantheon Chamber, sealing the gate behind them. Beyond its threshold, the dampening effect on the feed was lifted. Comm chatter came alive in Elysius’s battle-helm. Hangar Seven had been breached. There were xenos abroad on the station.

‘He goes to meet his destiny,’ he told Fugis. ‘We all do.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I

Into Hell

They breached the armoured flanks of the Hell-stalker to the discordant clamour of vulcan-drills shredding metres-thick starship metal and emerged inside a dingy hangar. Automated pressure seals burst and flung open upon entry and once the boarding torpedo was static. The engines died immediately as a series of access hatches clanged onto the hard metal of the deck. But the incumbents were wise enough to wait before debarkation.

Auto-slaved weapon systems cycled into violent action as secondary holding tubes split apart as if spring-loaded. Droves of missiles sped into the gun decks, ripping into the makeshift barricades erected by the defenders and tearing apart the grisly torture chains draped across its vaults. Bone and metal links cascaded in tune with the chooming salvos. Hell-fire chased away the gloom and flash-froze faces by the dozen etched into expressions of horror and imminent death. Dense explosions chewed up weapon teams and hastily scrambled shield-carriers. Frag and hot shrapnel accounted for an even higher yield towards the murder-harvest.

Static Rapier turrets added to the carnage of the Deathwind missile arrays, shredding the packed ranks of canoneers who’d hauled tracked multilasers and wheeled heavy stubbers into firing positions. Hot las and desperate scatter shot pinged off the thick armour of the Salamanders’ remote weapon pods but they weathered the counter-fire well. A muted cheer, gritty through their fright masks, from the black flak-armoured defenders greeted the destruction of a Rapier but it was merely a consolation.

The auto-slaved weapons were just a vanguard; the real killers were still awaiting orders to assault.

‘In Vulkan’s name!’

Praetor stepped out first onto the enemy ship with a roar and raked a lofty gantry where a heavy weapons team was assembling under an overseer’s gaze. The heretics died in the bolt storm he drew down upon them. A crate of rocket-propelled grenades went up in tandem with the armsmen and tore the gantry from its mountings. Praetor ignored the screams of those crushed beneath it. His brother Firedrakes were at his back, muzzle flares erupting from their weapons in all directions as they sought to establish a beachhead.

The auto-slaved weapons had thinned the ranks considerably and gave the Terminators vital clear ground to move into and occupy. Resistance was light at first as the reinforcements fell in, consisting of a few hundred armsmen wearing carapace, carrying rudimentary firepower and a few dozen heavier cannon. They were better drilled and equipped – the fodder had been used to soak up the auto-fire – but still woefully under-strength to take on warriors in Tactical Dreadnought Armour.

Solid shot pattered off the Terminators like metal-cased rain. It turned the deck into a quagmire of spent ammunition and impotent brass shells. A round smacked against Praetor’s left retinal lens and he scowled before eviscerating the shooter and four of his nearest comrades with his return fire.

Scanning the perimeter, cycling through several light spectra until he found one that provided the cleanest visual feed, he isolated cell leaders that were shouting frantic orders for more men.

Lighting these individuals up on the group tac-display was swift; their deaths to the combined fire of several key Firedrake squads were quicker still.

Overseers pressed slave-cohorts into the breach to compensate. These rabid dogs had once been servants of the Imperium from half a dozen different systems or more, but had devolved into crazed wretches. Rabble-rousers daubed in fell sigils and clad in robes of supplication stirred the mob. Some carried thick, broad-handled cutters; others wielded hook-chains and wrenches; most only had their fists and their mania to galvanise them.

While the Firedrakes were hewing down the massed hordes of the unwashed, subordinates in the ranks of the armsmen were slow to assert authority and take control. Troops were being mustered from across the ship. Bulkheads had begun to activate, coming up from the flooring to provide cover or seal off vulnerable areas. It was done without coordination and in a panic.

In the maddening pressure chamber of a boarding action men could be forgiven for losing their resolve and forgetting their purpose. Terminators across the entirety of the Adeptus Astartes were created for such cauldrons, though. They were not men, as such, and suffered none of an ordinary man’s limitations. Even other Space Marines knew their place in the presence of a First Company veteran. Their very existence allowed for such insane missions to be countenanced, let alone actioned and achieved.

In the close confines of an enemy hulk, reality can take on a different caste. Corridors are smaller, tighter. Sound, especially the hard bark of gunfire, is louder. Muzzle flashes are brighter, and everywhere there is killing. Sweat, piss, the tang of old metal, it fills the air and makes it heavy. The ceiling creeps in as if lowered by a crank and primed to crush what’s beneath it to paste. Fear takes root and its tendrils dig deep to the marrow of mere men.

During a boarding action, men come to know the truth about the vast floating citadels they are a living, breathing part of. They learn that ships are not ships at all, but that they are tombs, filled to the gunwales with the walking dead.

Ordinary mortals, even those defending the vessels they know intimately, can find themselves suddenly in strange environs, bereft of allies with only death a constant companion. Men flee in such conditions, only to find there is nowhere to run. In a boarding war, there is no back, only forwards. Within, there is heat and blood, noise so raucous it deafens all the senses; without, there is only the void and that cold unforgiving place holds no charity for the gutless.

Terminators knew no such peril. Just as their armour, their spirit was inviolable, their courage unflinching. A warrior with the honour of bearing a suit of Tactical Dreadnought Armour will either stand or advance; nothing else, for he does not know how to do anything else.

‘Advance, forward and spread,’ Praetor called down the comm-feed.

The way ahead was clogged with the grubby remains of bonded-slaves. It chafed to raise arms against once-loyal servants to the Throne but madness and hell had rendered them beyond redemption. Execution was a mercy. ‘Fire to cleanse the fore,’ he added.

Vo’kar and the other heavy flamers unleashed a furious blaze that turned the sundered corpses into ash.

Slowly, but with purpose, the Firedrakes drove over it and expanded their cordon. Superheated bone cruched to powder underfoot. They fanned out from the breaching point in tight lines, keeping up sustained burst-fire to thin down enemy numbers. Interspersed between the five-man squads were the Dreadnoughts, Amadeus and Ashamon. The two were like titans, the very image of Bray’arth Ashmantle, and laid waste with assult cannon and heavy flamer. Between them they tore up a bulkhead with twin blows from their seismic hammers, exposing a command cohort. Desultory fire from their underslung storm bolters dispatched the enemy officers before a rescue attempt could be made or a counter-attack mobilised.

One with the garb and trappings of a deacon fell to his knees in supplication, muttering curses in the black tongue.

‘Your false gods will not save you!’

Ashamon immolated the demagogue in the righteous fires of his heavy flamer.

Soon the enemy dead outnumbered the living as Praetor pressed their shock and awe tactics for all they were worth.

From the postulated schematics he had seen and the proposed trajectory and insertion point for the mission, he believed this to be one of the Hell-stalker’s gun decks. From here it was a relatively short march to the prow of the vessel and the seismic cannon. Everything depended on destroying the Dragon Warriors’ apocalypse weapon. Only the primarch knew what damage it had already wreaked on the surface of Nocturne. It could not be allowed to fire again.

‘Rear guard to secure breach point, hold and execute,’ he ordered. ‘All other Firedrakes are to advance on my lead, in Vulkan’s name.’

Amaedus and Ashamon took up sentry positions with four heavily armed Terminator squads to maintain the ground they’d gained and keep the way open for a rapid egress once the saboteurs were done.

The rest continued up the wide avenue of the gun deck, following the veteran sergeant until he came to a halt. Aside from a few scattered and demoralised remnants, the first section of the gun deck was cleansed. At the end of the corridor, a heavy bulkhead gate had slammed into place to prevent further progress. Even now, reeling from the terrifying assault, Praetor knew that the survivors were rallying with reinforcements from the upper decks and planning a counter-strike.

‘Apex sergeants, report.’

The squads at the edges of the Firedrakes, control-perimeter sounded in. The message was unified: All enemy threats neutralised. Zero casualties.

A glance at Praetor’s retinal display informed him that they were missing four squads from the original assault roster.

‘Sergeant Halknarr, report.’ He cast around the hulking, green metallic ranks behind him and a host of blazing red retinal lenses stared back silently.

He turned to Persephion. ‘Find out what has happened to Sergeant Halknarr.’

The Firedrake saluted and went to carry out his lord’s orders.

Praetor cursed. Despite the unexpected ‘turbulence’, he’d thought they’d arrived aboard the Hell-stalker with a full complement. There wasn’t time to linger but he couldn’t just leave the old campaigner to an ignominious death if he could be rescued. He’d already lost too many.

‘We should proceed.’ He’stan had emerged from the throng and was standing by the veteran sergeant’s side.

The Forgefather had fought like a tempest during the initial stages of the breach. Entire battalions of armsmen had fallen to his spear and gauntlet. The warrior-spirit was upon him now, as it was all of them. He was eager to continue and achieve the mission. ‘More will be coming.’

‘Until I know the whereabouts of our missing brothers, I am staying here, my lord.’ There was no hint of truculence in Praetor’s reply; it was merely a stating of the facts.

‘Don’t allow compassion to jeopardise the mission, brother-sergeant.’ He’stan kept his voice low. ‘It is war. If Halknarr and the others are lost then it is the will of the anvil.’

Praetor was calling for a Techmarine. They needed to get a better idea of their location and an assault route through the Hell-stalker’s lower decks. From here on out it would be akin to a labyrinth, one fraught with pitfalls, ambushes and myriad other dangers.

‘It was my honour for you to join us on this mission, Forgefather, but this is my command and I will not abandon them if there is a chance they can be saved. Your philosphy may allow for such estrangement from your brothers, but mine unfortunately does not.’

Praetor didn’t defy his lord lightly. This was the bearer of the primarch’s name, his chosen pilgrim and seeker of the Nine. Even still, he would not condemn Halknarr and the others. It was for the survival of Nocturne they all were fighting. To recklessly discard any of its sons, however dire the situation, was counter to that objective as far as the veteran sergeant was concerned.

He’stan nodded sagely. ‘You speak wisely, brother. I have been too long alone on the quest. Leave none behind,’ he said. ‘Self-sacrifice is one of the greatest tenets of Promethean Creed.’

Though he didn’t need it, Praetor was glad of the Forgefather’s approval. ‘And I mean to enact it to the full.’

Persephion’s voice came back over the feed.

‘Brother-sergeant, I have Sergeant Halknarr.’

Praetor activated the relay-link and Persephion’s feed was replaced with that of Halknarr.

‘Where are you, brother?’ he asked.

‘Good to hear that you’re hale and hearty too, Herculon,’ the old campaigner replied.

‘The entirety of First rejoices at your survival,’ Praetor returned curtly, ‘now where?’

Crackling static stalled the response for a few tense seconds.

‘…breached two decks farther out, some kind of ancillary hangar. Looks prepped for receiving ships. Met little resistance so far, but I have wounded from the aborted insertion into the gun decks.’

‘How many are with you? Did we lose any during breach?’

The summoned Techmarine arrived and proffered Praetor a hazing schematic of the Hell-stalker’s lower decks on a data-slate. The grainy image depicted a vast, sprawling space several kilometres in length that would take time to traverse. It also showed the various junction points between decks. Hardwired into one of the vessel’s control consoles, the display kept drifting in and out of resolution as the rogue signal dipped and peaked. It wouldn’t last long, so Praetor committed everything he was seeing to his eidetic memory. He’stan did the same.

‘I have nineteen Firedrakes, four of which are injured but still battle-capable,’ said Halknarr. ‘One, Brother Karnus, didn’t make it.’

Another sacrificed to the anvil. Its metal flanks must be slick with Salamander blood by now, thought Praetor.

He’stan pointed out a potential point of overlap between the routes of the two disparate groups.

Praetor nodded to him then replied to Halknarr. ‘Proceed towards the starboard batteries,’ he said. ‘There is an intersection between gunports Crucius and Vitriol that will bring you up three decks. Then continue in the direction of the stern. At the end of a mainteinance corridor you should find a freight lifter that will bring you to us on the gun decks. I can locate you with auspex at that point. We are headed to the prow and the primary mission target.’

‘You make it sound like a training mission, brother.’

‘It isn’t. Be vigilant.’ Praetor heard something behind the crackle of Halknarr’s voice, ambient noise coming from the other end of the feed. It sounded like distant gunfire, shouts and booted feet hitting metal. ‘What’s happening?’

In retrospect, it sounded like an obvious question.

Halknarr was taciturn as he focused his attention elsewhere. ‘They’ve found us.’

‘We encountered human battalions on the gun decks,’ Praetor replied, straining to hear. The shouting was agitated and coming from the Firedrakes. He recognised at least three of their voices. Sporadic holding fire turned into a sustained barrage from both parties.

‘Not humans…’ Halknarr was moving, distracted as he fought and bellowed orders between reporting to Praetor. ‘There are Traitor Astartes down here with us, Dragon Warriors.’

‘In number? Can you break through their ranks?’

‘We are falling back.’

‘Hold and regroup, brother,’ Praetor urged him.

A Terminator will only stand or advance – that credo was tested and falsified in the space of a few seconds. Only something that could outmatch the fighting strength of twenty Firedrakes in full Tactical Dreadnought Armour could have forced Halknarr to give ground so easily.

There was a long break, filled with the muffled sounds of combat. Halknarr’s chainfist starting up made the feed wretched with static.

A deeper sound like a bellow, but resonant and metallic, overwhelmed the audio and it cut out before returning a moment later.

All Praetor could do was listen.

‘Negative,’ the other sergeant replied at last, ‘there are too many of them. Kesare’s breath, I thought the bastards were supposed to be on the surface.’

‘Give me your position, brother. I will deploy squads for your immediate reinforcement and egress.’

Again, another long pause laced with vague battle sounds. The bellowing returned; something big, something powerful.

Praetor heard the voices of the enemy. They were deep and guttural, spitting curses at the Firedrakes and offering up their souls to dark and thirsty gods. The metal knuckles of his gauntlet cracked as the veteran sergeant impotently clenched his fist.

‘Halknarr, give me your position,’ he repeated.

The din of rattling combi-bolters was eclipsed by the roar of heavier cannon. Fell laugher boomed between its staccato shell bursts.

‘Negative. Do not come back for us. Do your duty and destroy the apocalypse weapon.’

‘I will save you, brother. Just tell me exactly where you are.

When Halknarr answered his voice was steady and sorrowful. ‘You cannot save us all, Herculon, no matter how much you want to.’

The fighting intensified. Praetor heard the old campaigner grunt as he took a hit. It was followed by the shriek of his chainfist, audibly gutting the assailent.

‘Don’t come back for me, you fool. Praetor, they have Terminators and a mon–’

The feed died, replaced by static.

He’d lost them, surrendered to the anvil just like all the others.

Praetor bowed his head in a moment of private grief, before he arose again resolute. He gestured to the barrier that had sealed the way ahead.

‘Breaching charges on that bulkhead. Meltaguns and chainfists, front and ready. Bring it down. Bring it all down.’ He met He’stan’s gaze from behind glowering retinal lenses. ‘We’ll tear the heart out of this thrice-damned ship.’

II

Fire Against Ice

Hobbling down the corridor was painful and awkward. Muscles that had partly atrophied through lack of use burned and sent blades of agony through Emek’s half-ravaged body. Sweat veneered his brow beneath his battle-helm.

Sweat, for Vulkan’s sake!

Ba’ken had been right when he gibed him about his absence from the training cages. Physically, mentally, he was not at his prime.

Emek cast a glance over his right shoulder…

Still nothing…

…and cursed again his decision to go after the Black Dragon. It was rash, foolish and headstrong. It might also prove a fatal one. Beyond the confines of the apothecarion, as he was now, the creature stalking the lonely corridors of Prometheus had him trapped.

Hoarfrost clinging to his shoulder guards forewarned him of the hunter. It crusted the joints, made them crack as he moved his arms. At least he was wearing armour. He’d equipped as soon as the space station was hit, before they knew the extent of the damage or the nature of the attack. A bolt pistol with a full clip sat in its holster, left on the medi-slab in his haste to go after Zartath. At that moment, there had been no threat beyond an escaped patient. Arming himself might have spurred the Black Dragon to violence. But then a moment is but a small piece of time, which can change in the next. Sometimes fatally.

He did have his reductor gauntlet and a surgical paring knife. Not much as far as weapons went, especially given his current situation. A narthecium medical kit came with the armour. It carried various items, coagulant gels, counterseptic, rapid-ossifying sprays, a bio-scanner, chem-ampoules with liquid nitrogen and phials of anaesthetic. Of much higher grade and concentration than human compounds, his medi-kit was designed to prolong and preserve life; none of it was particularly useful in the art of killing.

Cadorian, one of his practitioners, had reached him through his helmet’s feed when some of the communications across Prometheus had been restored. Hangar Seven was reporting a total breach and hostiles in-bound. The nature of the enemy was xenos, classified dark eldar. During his tenure as part of the apothecarion, Emek had done extensive research into the myriad alien races that plagued mankind and knew the thing that was stalking him. It was a wraith-creature, a deadly infiltrator that had slipped the fragile cordons established by Master Argos and penetrated deeper into the station. Scenting blood, the prospect of a quick and easy kill, it had come for him.

Xeno-taxonomers would classify the creature: mandrake.

Shadow-skinned, it could appear almost at will and without warning, save for the hoarfrost.

Emek hadn’t ventured far from the borders of the apothecarion but far enough to leave him needing to find an alternate route back to the safety of its confines. There, he had augur arrays and visual-spectra devices that could detect the mandrake. He also had a cohort of battle-servitors that could be tasked with its execution or at the very least deter or delay it.

Abroad in the abandoned corridors of the space station, he had nothing but himself. A cripple without bolter and blade, nursing faded hopes would have to suffice. He was still a Space Marine, a broken one but one of Vulkan’s sons. If death was to be his fate then Emek was determined he wouldn’t surrender easily.

The Apothecary dug deep into what was left of his resolve as he reached the next junction.

The meteor strike had left its mark. A long corridor stretched in front of him, shrouded in penumbral gloom. Halfway down, part of the ceiling was caved in, a welter of broken pipes and cabling spewing forth from the upper deck like spilled intestines. Steam vented dulcetly from a shattered heating duct, the plume white and gaseous. Shallow fires flickered in the distance.

It was one of the approach corridors that led to the apothecarion. At least he was close.

Overhead, jerking lume strips flared into life and cast the corridor in eye-burning monochrome, winked out and then flared up again in a juddering palsy. Tattered strips of insulation plastek hung down in grubby translucent veils, stirred by the stale air-scrubbers, whilst underfoot the deck plates were broken and exposed gaping pitfalls to the maintenance level between decks.

Unafraid but wary, Emek loosened the surgical knife in its calf sheath. His eyes never wavered from the way ahead. His senses were alive to any sound, any sign.

‘I know you are here,’ he said to the dark, expecting no answer, and started down the corridor.

‘Apothecary,’ Cadorian’s voice came abruptly over the feed.

‘Hsst!’ Emek chided. In the dim emergency lighting, the mandrake could be anywhere, waiting in any alcove. He crouched down, tried to make himself a smaller target. ‘I am not alone. Enemy infiltrators have made it as far as the approach corridor. Be quick and speak quietly.’

‘Sorry, but I am to inform you that Master Argos is aware of your situation and has arranged for troops to be sent to your aid.’

‘Negative!’ Emek snapped. ‘I don’t know how many there are hunting me. I haven’t even seen it yet, practitioner.’ His eyes darted around the corridor at a sudden sound but it was just a pressure valve popping. ‘It’s too dangerous. Tell Argos to hold the line so there are no further strays for me to deal with. I can find my own route back to the apothecarion unassisted.’

There was a short pause as Cadorian took it all in.

‘Apothecary?’

Emek was trying very hard to be patient, but his reply was still clipped. ‘Yes.’

‘Your sidearm is here on the medi-slab. You are unarmed. Help is not far, I ca–’

‘Did something happen in my absence from the apothecarion, serf? Was I replaced and am simply unaware of the fact that my authority no longer carries weight?’

‘No, Apoth–’

‘Then do as I order. I know I have no sidearm. I have all the weapons I need. Just keep the injured alive long enough for me to save them upon my return.’

Cadorian sounded disgruntled. ‘And if you do not return?’

Emek cut the link. It was here, in the corridor with him. ‘Then you’ll be having a different visitor,’ he muttered beneath his breath, hoping that the practitioner had as many guns as was feasible aimed at the apothecarion door.

The reductor was a drilling implement attached to his gauntlet. It was noisy but sharp enough to cut through ossmodula-hardened bone. Not a practical weapon but an effective one if used up close. It wouldn’t do for the shadow-creature.

There was still the outside chance that Emek hadn’t been seen. He didn’t want to jeopardise that, so he slid out the surgical knife instead. The shuck it made slipping from its sheath sounded loud in the gloom. It was a broad-bladed, saw-edged thing forged of mono-molecular steel that could cut toughened Space Marine flesh with ease. Emek hoped it would have the same gory effects on a mandrake.

‘Come on then…’ He grimaced as he tried to rise. Crouching down was easy. With his damaged leg, it was the getting up again that was hard. Pain brought fresh focus, kept him alert to the patch of shadow drifting towards him that seemed at odds with the light.

Every magnesium-bright flare saw the patch shrink to nothing, stalling its progress as the creature sought the solace and anonymity of the darkness where the lume strips couldn’t touch. When the shadows returned it returned with them, moving slowly and silently towards its prey.

The kill was close. Yulgir had tracked it for a while, savouring the hunt, following the mon’keigh’s movements around the dingy tunnels of the crude structure. Its ennui was caustic but he tasted despair and pain exuding from the body of the prey too.

Morsels before the feast, thought Yulgir.

Now it faced him down the corridor, the hulking giant armoured in green, a last act of defiance before the hunt was done. It would not go easy, which only heightened the mandrake’s anticipation. These ones didn’t feel fear, but they had other chinks in their defences to exploit. Arrogance and hubris for instance. It would fight him in the open. Such creatures were honour bound to do so. They also lasted longer under torture.

Yulgir hungered.

Blades slid into being at the end of the mandrake’s wrist stumps. They were gnarled and glowing, like radioactive bone.

He would gorge upon this creature, suck every last iota of agony from it.

Perhaps he would steal its last breath and keep it for eternity as a trophy.

Hnnn… delicious…

It was time to let the mon’keigh see him.

A shape stepped out of the shadows, corporealising before Emek’s eyes. Skin like shifting oil reflected the Apothecary’s image back at him. It was a grotesque simulacrum, twisted by the shimmering fluidity of the mandrake’s outer form. Hair the colour of alabaster, lank and gossamer thin, hung past its shoulders. There were glowing sigils cut into its flesh, evil runes that hurt the eyes and promised a hell of eternal suffering.

A mortal man might flee in the face of such an abomination. Certainly, his mettle would be tested in standing his ground. Emek merely wanted to kill it. A smile split his withered half-face as he remembered what it meant to be Adeptus Astartes.

A rime of frost crept across his armour again, intense and paralysing even through the ceramite. It turned Emek’s smile into a grimace. It was as if his arm was vitrifying under the baleful effects. His damaged leg and left side already put him at a disadvantage, he didn’t need another.

‘One of your foul kin tried to kill me before. As you can see, monster, I am still very much half alive. It’s all I need to kill you.’

Emek charged and swung.

Slow, too slow, he thought, berating himself as the blade missed by a distance.

Or did it? The mandrake appeared to blend around the attack, so that it actually passed through the surgical knife. He turned quickly, activating the reductor and using it like a punch-dagger. After three ineffectual thrusts, Emek was no closer to landing a hit, let alone a telling one.

‘Fight!’ he roared, excising some pent up frustration.

The cut to his torso came swift and with a blur of acid-green light. It brought with it a flare of intense pain. The glare of the lumen strip seemed slightly darker than before, as if the presence of the mandrake was somehow absorbing it.

Emek swung again but just like oil, the mandrake oozed from the blow, negating it.

It was toying with him, he realised, but he also knew it was a mistake to play with dangerous things; they had a habit of biting back and crippled or not, Emek was still a very dangerous thing.

Like a spectre resolving out of the fog, the mandrake came again. A downward slash of its glowing blades cut the Apothecary’s forearm and he dropped the knife, feigning injury. There was just enough time to reach for an ampoule in his narthecium kit. Attached to the neck was a small atomiser that Emek triggered like a sidearm. The liquid contents coned out in a fine spray, vaporising instantly on contact with the air into a pellucid white gas which then crystallised.

The mandrake shrieked and recoiled as the liquid nitrogen compound reacted with its skin. Parts of its body started to freeze solid as it sought the succour of its shadow realm, anchoring it in reality.

Emek lunged with the reductor and this time cut alien flesh, chewing an ugly line that bisected one of the sigils on the mandrake’s body. He drove deeper, searching for vital organs, all the while resisting the creature’s baleful agony.

‘See the dark that’s coming?’ he snarled. ‘That’s for you, xenos!’ Punching the reductor until it penetrated the mandrake’s back, Emek then yanked upwards and out through its shoulder.

There was sheer terror in those once pitiless eyes, the certain knowledge that something even direr than the shadow-skinned monster was coming to claim it.

Emek didn’t know what awaited the mandrake beyond the veil, but he was immensely satisfed by its suffering. The creature dissipated into ash and the reek of dead, dank places, leaving behind an ululating scream that carried on long after it was gone.

It wasn’t alone.

The realisation, his sluggish instincts condemning him, came too late. Emek turned but the dead mandrake’s partner was upon him with its knives poised to plunge in his flesh.

‘Vulkan!’ He wanted it to be the last word on his dying lips.

A thunderous retort, made louder in the narrow corridor, deafened him and the mandrake disappeared in a welter of flesh, bone and shadowed strips. It didn’t have time to scream, only to die.

As the wraith slumped from his eye-line, Emek beheld his saviour. ‘I applaud your timing, brother.’

‘Saturnine as ever.’ Ba’ken, nursing his side and limping with injury, lowered his bolter. He’d fired it one-handed and smoke was still wafting from its muzzle.

‘Here…’ The hulking brother-sergeant tossed the Apothecary his holster and sidearm, which Emek caught with his free hand. ‘You’ll be needing this.’

‘What, when I have the mighty Helfist to protect me?’ he said, strapping the weapon to his armour.

‘You should never have left it, you were… gnn.’ Ba’ken stumbled and would’ve fallen if not for the wall. He braced himself, using the bolter like a crutch as Emek hobbled over.

‘You are a stupid bastard, Ba’ken,’ said the Apothecary, looping his arm around the sergeant’s back and supporting him under his shoulder. He wasn’t wearing his pauldrons or cuirass, which meant his power generator was absent too. The medi-servitors had removed them during his surgery. He still had his leg greaves, boots and vambraces but it was far from certain protection. He’d also slung a bolter and his piston-hammer around his torso on thick straps.

‘And you almost looked like a Space Marine killing that thing.’

They began to stagger down the corridor together.

Emek grunted dismissively. ‘Look as us, the cripple and the invalid wounded. Ha! We’ll cleanse Prometheus of the dark eldar ourselves.’

‘Let us hope–’ Ba’ken grimaced at a sudden twinge. There was blood blossoming faintly beneath the bandages binding his torso. ‘Let us hope that we find no more of them until we’re back in the Apothecarion.’

‘That would be a pleasant fiction, brother.’

‘I see you have not yet shaken your fatalism,’ Ba’ken hit back.

Emek wasn’t goaded by the gibe. ‘I am a realist, that’s all. Aboard the Protean was about as real as anything can get.’ His head dropped a little as he remembered the ill-fated mission. ‘When you have the lightning tendrils of a malicious alien psyker destroying one half of your body and live, you try not to become fatalistic.’

A short pause underlined the sudden tension.

The Apothecary lowered his voice. ‘But you were right, though. Some scars do run deeper than others, and they cannot always be seen.’

‘We are brothers, Emek, and my shoulders are broad enough for more than just my own burdens.’

The Apothecary was about to make another cutting remark but nodded instead. Despite the danger they were both in, the mood eased.

‘We should do this more often,’ said Ba’ken, as they were shuffling down the half-lit corridor.

‘What? Die slowly together? I think it’s more of a once only pastime.’

Ba’ken laughed, loud and deeply. It hurt like the fiery hells of Themis to do it but it was worth it.

Emek’s raised hand cut his amusement short. The sergeant’s bolter was already aimed down the next corridor.

Shadows lurked there, moving against the light. There were other signifiers too: distant voices, alien in nature and the low scrape of blades kissing against metal.

‘Not that way,’ said the Apothecary.

‘Agreed.’

They had reached a junction point and had to take an oblique route to the Apothecarion that drew them deeper into the heart of the space station.

‘We aren’t going to make it to your quarters, brother,’ Ba’ken said.

‘The barricades at Hangar Seven must be breached worse than I thought.’

‘Barricades?’

‘We are overrun. Whilst Tu’Shan and the Chapter fight for Nocturne’s survival below, what’s left of the Fire-born must keep Prometheus from being gutted by xenos knives.’ Emek’s gaze was fixed on the path not taken. ‘The Pantheon Chamber is not far behind us. We’ll head there.’

The sacred temple was a nodal point on the space station. They could use it as a means of getting around the enemy-held junction.

Ba’ken nodded.

‘You were right, too, brother,’ he said, as they were retreating. ‘I wasn’t healed enough. I should’ve waited.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Sol. We are here. All that matters is to survive. Watch the way behind us. I will guide in front.’

Panning the darkness with their bolters, the wounded Salamanders headed for the Pantheon Chamber.

‘They will find us, brother.’

‘Then we had best be ready when they do.’

Behind them, the sound of metal scraping metal grew louder.

Fugis was gone. It wasn’t a particularly fond farewell. Pragmatism overrode sentiment. His years in the desert had estranged the once-Apothecary from his brothers, like a sibling who returns from a terrible war but is changed and no longer the person they were. That was how Elysius saw him now, as someone he didn’t recognise and couldn’t relate to, a stranger in familiar flesh. His actions in sending Dak’ir to his doom only soured their reunion further.

Fugis had taken the last vessel to the surface, a battered gunship in need of repair. There were no pilots to spare, all were engaged in the void war above, so he took the stick himself and rode it out of Prometheus with engines flaring. The berth was far from Hangar Seven, where the Chaplain was headed.

As he hurried down the empty corridor, the flickering lume strips revealed his way and cast a light upon his thoughts.

Dak’ir’s death had shaken the once-Apothecary. He had believed utterly in the sign that had manifested on his Burning Walk. To see it so cruelly disproven to the extent that another Salamander died because of it hurt his resolve.

Elysius knew he could not give in to dismay, and drew deep of his well of faith. He would need it now; they all would. Below, on Nocturne, they had heroes enough. Up here, in the cold and darkness, was where his flaming torch was needed most.

‘And I shall burn the heretics from my sight, and the alien shall be cast down in my righteous fire.’ The litany tripped off his tongue, fuelling his resolve, readying it for the trials to come. ‘I am the flame and it lives within my clenched fist. So am I armoured for war, a brazier to purge the darkness that encroaches.’

The din of battle was nearing. It grew louder as the Chaplain started to run.

‘It is ruin and it is fury. My heart is molten, incandescent as the blood of the earth. Consume them! Render them unto ash and smoke!’

Hangar Seven was still relatively distant but the sound of gunfire was close. The defenders had been pushed back, their lines withdrawing. The crozius in his mailed fist blazed into life.

‘The taint shall be cleansed, its perfidy rid from these halls. For I am the flame and it lives within my clenched fist. I am the flame and its conflagration shall bring hell upon the hell-born!’

He emerged into a blistering firefight. Shard rounds, alien and venomous, impacted against the rosarius field the Chaplain arrayed around him. Like blind insects striking armaglas, the barbs from the dark eldar’s chattering rifles fell dead at his armoured feet.

He resisted the urge to crouch down and present a smaller target, instead trusting in his trappings of faith and standing tall.

‘Hate the alien with all the canker in your noble veins!’ he declared in a stentorian voice. The Salamanders, remnants of Fourth not commited to the void war, redoubled their efforts at the sound of Elysius’s dogma. ‘Purge them from our midst and cleanse Vulkan’s hall of this taint!’

There were humans amongst the throng, who beheld the Chaplain with undisguised awe as he strode into the very heart of the firefight.

‘Haul them back,’ he urged. ‘Take what is yours by blood and breath!’

In his ear, the comm-feed crackled.

‘Good to have you with us, old friend.’

Elysius spied the hulking form of Master Argos at the foremost barricade. They were automated shields, a little over waist height. There were several Tarantula and Rapier emplacements slaved to the defence too. Another Techmarine, Elysius recognised him as Brother Draedius, hunkered down behind a barrier in the third rank manipulating the machineries remotely.

Heavy barks of automatic fire spat into a shrieking horde of lithe-limbed aliens wearing segmented armour plate the colour of a deep bruise. Their return salvos were weaker but they were weathering the Space Marines’ barrage well.

Elysius reached Argos and crouched down at last.

At such close range, the firefight was almost deafening so they spoke through the feed.

‘There are another five hundred metres of shielding I can activate down this ventral corridor,’ said the Forge Master, ‘Beyond that lies one of the Drake Halls, T’kell’s Chamber.’

‘Docking-temple of the Chalice of Fire.’ Elysius understood at once. The mighty forge-ship he referred to was one of Vulkan’s artefacts, restored to the Chapter in an elder age. Without it, the Salamanders’ capacity to fashion artificered armour and weapons would be greatly reduced. Not only that, but its destruction would strike a blow to morale that would forever cripple them.

‘Amongst other relics, like the Nocturne’s Hammer,’ Argos added. ‘We must hold them here and give no more ground.’

Looking at the xenos hordes, their thickening ranks and the elite warriors waiting to attack behind the fodder using up the ammunition from the emplaced cannons, Elysius saw the anvil. He heard the ring of hammer against metal and knew it was calling to him.

He looked back to Argos and noticed the gaping head wound.

Long ago when they were barely Scouts, he and Argos had served under Captain Kadai. On Ullsinar, much of the Forge Master’s face had been burned away by alien bio-acid. The blame lay with Elysius and his over-zealous desire for glory. It had changed them both and seen their paths set: one to the Mechanicus and the other to the Reclusiam. Whilst Argos had reconciled the deed long before, many decades had passed before Elysius could do that. He still wished it could have gone differently, though.

‘I was infected,’ said the Forge Master, ‘and needed to excise it at the source.’ He tapped his skull. ‘Here.’

It prompted a raft of further questions in the Chaplain’s mind but the sound of heavier troops advancing towards them behind the xenos fodder overrode his need for answers.

The armour-clad warriors parted to let the reinforcements through. These were not dark eldar, though, nor any caste of creature slaved to them. Servitors, grossly mutated and swollen with weapon mounts, lumbered into range of the guns. The first ranks were shot apart; clunks of wet meat and shattered machine parts hitting the deck in a percussion of dense plinks and dull thuds.

Argos was on his feet, bolter flaring.

‘From the Archimedes Rex,’ he explained. ‘I ordered the hatches sealed but they must have opened them from inside.’

A missile-tube emerged into being, growing like a corrupted bloom on the arm of one of the servitors that had survived the automated fusillade. A choom of displaced air and firing thrusters heralded a burst of small ordnance that ripped up one of the Tarantula guns and bent a barricade out of shape seconds later.

Rattling solid shot erupted in the wake of the explosions. Smoke was still clinging to the corridor in a thick cloud when raking las-fire started scything through the murk.

Armsmen fell quickly as their armoured defences were undone by the sudden barrage of heavy fire. What few Salamanders held the corridor with Argos stepped up to cover their stations but the line was stretched beyond breaking.

Elysius got to his feet. ‘We can hold them here no longer,’ he declared, and raised his crozius arcanum aloft.

‘In the name of Lord Vulkan,’ he roared to his brothers.

A chorus of chainswords started up, blades were drawn.

‘Into the fires of battle…’

‘UNTO THE ANVIL OF WAR!’ they bellowed as one.

Leaping over the barricades, the Salamanders charged.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I

Last Stand of Broken Soldiers

Ba’ken collapsed for the third time, his legs giving way under his bulk. Bodily supporting him, Emek nearly fell too and was able to lean the hulking sergeant against the corridor wall.

‘Leave me here,’ he rasped. He was breathing hard and lathered with a feverish sweat. The faint crimson blossom beneath his surgical bindings had become darker and wetter, spreading across his entire torso.

Emek crouched by his side, the effort paining him, and assessed Ba’ken’s vitals with his bio-scanner. ‘You’re bleeding to death. Even your Larraman cells cannot regenerate fast enough whilst your body is being exerted like this.’

‘Leave me,’ he repeated. Lucidity was fading in his eyes. The fire there had dimmed. ‘Just make sure my bolter is gripped in my fist before you do.’

‘I doubt you would relinquish it even in death.’ Emek cast a glance at the gloomy corridor they’d left behind them. The hunters had their scent now. It didn’t matter. Evading them had never really been an option but the prospect of it had got them this far.

A few hundred metres ahead was the gate to the Pantheon Chamber. They could make a last stand.

The sound of scraping metal returned, not as distant as it had once been.

One last look at the end of the corridor, his bolt pistol trained on the junction, and Emek lowered his aim to lean in to Ba’ken.

‘We are close, Sol. I would rather die in the Pantheon Chamber than out here in some nameless corridor. Can you rise?’

Ba’ken clenched a fist, using whatever was left of his willpower to get up.

Emek grimaced as he withdrew his hand from his brother’s wound to help lift him. It was soaked in genhanced blood.

‘Who’d have thought you’d have so much blood in you.’

‘It’s my Themian heritage, we’re–’ Ba’ken coughed and there was something dark and vital in the phlegm hacked up out of his body.

‘One step then another,’ said Emek, guiding them the final agonising metres to the temple.

‘Are you hoping for divine intervention?’ asked Ba’ken as the Apothecary set him down by the opening. It was sealed but not locked. Something had burned away the mechanism. The stench of sulphur and smoke was redolent on the stale air.

‘Don’t move,’ Emek replied, not trying to be humorous. Ba’ken could barely nod. He pressed the activation rune for the gate and it slid open to the screech of protesting gears.

A pall of black smoke escaped from within. The Apothecary stood his ground as it washed over him, scanning the gloom and panning his sidearm across the room until it had dispersed.

There was no fire damage to the Pantheon Chamber itself, though it was clear an incredible blaze had died only recently in the temple. The effect was miraculous and Emek found his first steps across the threshold were tentative.

His eye was drawn to an antechamber at the opposite side of the room to the entrance. Here the smoke and latent heat was thickest.

It was a vault, hidden behind one of the massive obsidian statues that encircled the greater chamber. Emek went closer.

At the cusp of the secret room he paused. The lights were out and showed no signs of revivification. The stench of burning was easily strongest here. This place had been the ignition point. He had a lume-lantern attached to his narthecium pack. Gripping the handle slowly, he pulled it free and pressed the activation stud. An azure glow bled off the hand-held device, grainy in the smoke-laced air. The interior of the vault was blackened to all hell and back. Paint had blistered, ceramite was melted, armaglas vitrified. Whatever had caused the devastation must have been intensely hot.

‘Fires of Vulkan…’ he muttered, unware of how apt that was until he noticed the silhouette at the back of the room. It was in the shape of a body, one that had been wearing power armour judging by its bulk and contours. Here the vault was blackest.

Immediately, he was put in mind of one of Zen’de’s old philosophies.

‘Fire never truly dies. It is merely dormant, waiting for its moment to reignite.’

Those words, spoken years ago in the lectorium, rang especially true in that moment.

Emek approached the strange silhouette, lume-lantern fixed on where it was marked out on the floor. As he reached it he knelt down, extending two fingers to touch the layered ash it was formed of. He withdrew his hand with a mild curse.

It was still warm even through his gauntlet, incredibly so, though the air around it was comparatively cool. There was a draught coming from somewhere. He detected it through his battle-helm’s autosenses, a subtle shift in the quality and composition of the re-scrubbed air.

Emek looked up and saw a gaping crevice in the ceiling that led into a ragged tunnel of endless darkness. For the first few metres he could see the inner workings of the between-deck and then the deck above and the one above that. Then there was just blackness, abject and absolute. A gobbet of superheated metal dripped down from the hole and landed on his shoulder guard, sizzling before cooling and solidifying. The entire opening was lined with cooked metal as if something extremely hot had burned through it, like a plasma cutter or meltagun.

The rest of the vault was empty. Any sign of occupancy had been obliterated by the fire anyway. Emek returned to Ba’ken.

The brother-sergeant was still conscious, bolter aimed – and trembling only slightly – towards the end of the corridor.

‘What did you find?’

‘A mystery to which I don’t have an answer. Come on.’ Emek hooked his arms underneath Ba’ken and started to drag him.

The scraping and shrieking entered the corridor section the Salamanders were stranded in, announcing the presence of their enemies.

Emek scowled, shaking his hand as he set his brother down again to draw his sidearm. ‘Too close.’

‘They’re coming,’ said Ba’ken. ‘How many rounds do I have left?’

Emek checked.

‘Not enough.’ He levelled his bolt pistol in the same direction at the sudden shrieking. No subterfuge this time. The dark eldar wanted them to know they’d found them. ‘We’ll have to make our stand here.’

A malformed shadow fell across the far end of the distant corridor. It was hulking and gene-bulked, snorting like a mutant bull.

‘Not mandrakes,’ muttered Emek.

Then there came another and another. A riot of gibbering could be heard emanting from the flesh-hungry pack, and a noisome reek of putrefaction muddied the already wretched air.

‘How many do you think?’ Ba’ken was having a difficult time staying conscious. He spoke through gritted teeth and stared much too hard.

Emek was belligerent. ‘I hope there are hundreds.’

Ba’ken smiled grimly at that. ‘I always thought…’ He drifted off, before forcing himself back around. ‘I always thought I would die in the arena.’ His bolter was wavering.

‘Not the battlefield?’

‘Hasn’t killed me yet.’

‘Well spoken.’

A horde of lumpen, grotesque creatures lumbered into view. They were stitched-together things, bulked-out amalgams of slave stock ripped from the cruel imaginings of their torture-surgeons. Ridged spines split through leathern skin, blood-pink and staked with bizarre chemical tubing; muscle-swollen limbs dragged across the deckplate, their metal talons screeching; mouths wired shut moaned and mewled behind harrowing facemasks. Clutched in flesh-thick fingers, the beasts had massive cleaver-blades and other rending implements. They were nightmares fashioned by some graven tailor, the laboratory progeny of the dark eldar haemonculi.

Ba’ken scoffed. He’d fought these beasts before on Geviox. ‘They send their dregs…’ His aim dipped until the molten fire coursing through his bloodstream jolted his arm straight. He gasped with the sudden shock, alert and alive.

‘What–’

Emek was pulling an injector from the hulking warrior’s brawny neck where the veins bulged like cables.

‘It’s a massive dose of adrenaline. Enough to kill a lesser being, but just the right amount to keep you conscious long enough so you can help me kill these bastards.’

Seeing prey, their scent glands flaring behind leather masks, the wretched horde broke into a loping run.

Ba’ken was already lining up his first kill-shot. ‘Why didn’t you do it before?’

Alongside him, Emek put a sustained burst into the lead creature, dropping it.

‘Because in a few minutes it will overload your nervous system and send you into anaphylactic shock. Your body will then compensate for this trauma by putting you into suspended animation coma.’

‘Then be ready to revive me when that happens.’

A raking bolter shot from Ba’ken cut down another of the abominations. Its bloated torso ruptured with multiple detonations, spearing its closest brethren with bone shrapnel as its chest cavity exploded.

‘If I am still standing when that happens, brother, you have my solemn oath.’Emek decapitated a third with a headshot, painting the walls either side of it with gore and brain matter. Nothing slowed or deterred them. The dead and wounded were crushed under a stampede of overly-muscled bulk. No fear, no pain – the grotesques lived in torture, they knew nothing else. It had made them immune to such petty concerns as survival. They only wanted to inflict suffering on others.

‘We need more firepower…’ Ba’ken lurched to his feet. Without the compensators built into his power amour, he had to brace himself as he racked an alternator slide and switched to full auto.

This burst would likely expend all of his ammunition in a single stroke. With one hand under the barrel to steady it, he triggered his bolter and engulfed the corridor in a storm of exploding shellfire. Midway through the salvo, he roared in concert with his weapon and for a few glorious seconds they were of one voice, one purpse. A split second before the hard chank of metal announced the chamber was empty, he lifted the barrel.

‘I’m out.’

Emek ran dry a few seconds later.

Smoke and blood-scent coloured the air in ruddy grey, a butchered slew of monstrous corpses just visible at the edge of a retreating cloud. Something was definitely still moving further back into the miasma.

‘Still not dead.’ Ba’ken sounded a little breathless. He drew the piston-hammer from off his back, the metal haft scraping against his vambrace as he hefted it into position. ‘I remember when this felt lighter,’ he added ruefully.

Emek had his surgical knife and holstered the spent pistol so he could use his reductor like a punch-dagger. The buzzing bone-saw sounded loud and belligerent as it started up.

A few of the beasts, enough outnumber the Salamanders, had survived the barrage and were emerging from the bloodied remains of the dead.

‘Hard to kill,’ said Emek as the beasts loped slowly towards them.

‘So are we.’ Ba’ken ran headlong into the mob.

The Salamander ducked a vicious blade-swipe that would have separated head from shoulders, before stepping into the beast’s killing arc to stave in its misshapen skull. A downward stroke glanced his shoulder, drawing a spit of blood, but Ba’ken hit again, this time smashing several of the chemical phials seemingly sutured into the thing’s skin. A hard blow to the stomach with the piston-driven hammer head caved in its torso and finished it.

The second Emek took in the throat, jamming his knife in all the way to the hilt before the beast could retaliate. He severed its hand with the reductor, stripping skin to flesh to bone in an instant before turning the screaming blade on the monster’s face. It died mewling, spitting blood through the tears in its facemask.

A third they killed together, Ba’ken smashing the back of its knee and putting it down before Emek slashed open its throat and let its life ooze away onto the deckplate.

Ba’ken took a hit from the last one. Rib-plate cracked audibly as he was flung across the corridor and smashed into the wall. Still dosed on adrenaline, he was up quickly and dodged a cleaver slash that would’ve opened him up from groin to sterum. Sparks trailed after the massive blade as it carved up the wall and got stuck as Ba’ken rolled aside.

Emek punched the reductor in the beast’s back but the blade wasn’t deep enough to reach anything vital. The Apothecary started carving, abandoning his knife so he could curl an arm around the monster’s bulging neck. It was like wrestling a sauroch, its strength was incredible. He held on long enough for Ba’ken to smash a hail of two-handed blows into its clavicle, forearm and finally head. With a protracted wheeze, the beast lolled onto its side and died.

Emek was breathing hard when he looked up from the corpse.

‘Well fought, brother,’ he gasped.

Ba’ken was about to reply when he staggered three more steps and collapsed.

From the depths of the corridor the scraping sound returned.

‘Hell-shit…’ Emek turned to see three more of the monsters looming. The foremost bleated at him maliciously as it levelled an arcane-looking device attached to its wrist instead of a hand.

Purely out of instinct, the Apothecary hit deckplate as a fount of xanthic spray coursed from the weapon’s nozzle. Acid-hiss and the stink of sulphur arrested his senses and he knew his armour was burning.

Pain flared angrily along his left side, not from the acid but from his old wounding, and he struggled to stand. He came as far as getting to one knee when the shadow of the first monster engulfed him and he was suddenly eye-to-eye with the dripping barrel of the liquefying pistol.

For the second time in as many hours Emek faced death. He closed his eyes, knowing that he had honoured his primarch and his Chapter but wishing his sacrifice could have saved Ba’ken too.

II

Clad in Black

Just before Emek met oblivion, the shadow of something very dark and very fast appeared in his diminishing peripheral vision. The beast shrieked as the pistol barrel was cut open, spraying its arm and torso with flesh-eating intestinal acid. It staggered, skin sloughing like candle wax by the second, then crumpled in a heap of its own half-digested viscera.

Emek had got to his feet as the second monster died. A bone-blade punched through its jugular from behind, spattering the deck with arterial blood. The weapon was shucked out a moment later and then hacked across the thing’s neck, decapitating it. The Apothecary watched its head bounce wetly against the floor with a dull thuck before coming to rest.

The last one lost its forearm and then most of its innards as the shadow figure slashed open its abdomen and spilled everything that was inside, outside. A final blow was delivered with a leap off the second one’s cooling corpse and found a way into the beast’s shrieking throat, cutting laryx and oesophagus.

Zartath had mounted the monster as it died, straddling its brawny chest, his free hand spearing a pectoral as he rode it all the way to the floor. The metal deck was still resounding to its felling when he climbed off and approached the Apothecary.

The Black Dragon was swathed in blood and scars. This wasn’t the ritual scarification practised by the Salamanders, these were war wounds. There were many, an entire colony of injuries that charted his violent past. His skin was pale from being imprisoned on the Volgorrah Reef for six years. Even without the augmentation of his power armour, he had killed the three monsters like they were children.

Emek backed off a step, trying to gauge the feral warrior’s mood. A word he had used to describe the creature returned to him.

Beast.

‘Is he dead?’ Zartath stopped, and gestured to Ba’ken’s supine form.

Emek didn’t take his eyes off the Black Dragon, just like he’d never relax his guard around any wild creature.

‘Not yet. He’s fallen into suspended animation coma. It’ll keep him alive, but I need to get him to the Apothecarion.’ Emek tried not to balk at the sheer bloody destruction wrought by the Black Dragon. He’d fought alongside tidier Space Wolves. ‘Why did you come back?’

‘For vengeance. For my dead brothers back on the Razored Vale. To slay dusk-wraiths.’ Everything was direct and declarative with Zartath. He knew only one direction: forwards. He bared his spine-like teeth. He’d bitten his own cheek during the killing and they were slicked with dark blood. Zartath’s eyes were wide and feral. ‘I did not do it to save your skin, flesh-cutter.’

‘Regardless, you have my gratitude.’ Emek bowed. He was about to rise when he felt a stabbing agony in his gut. Not from his injuries, this was something else. He could barely move, and felt his stomach where the pain was emanating from. His gauntleted fingers came back drenched in blood.

‘In Vul–’ He lurched up, falling forwards into the Black Dragon as a stream of gore erupted from his chest. It painted the inside of his battle-helm too as he spat it from his mouth, filling it with a coppery stink.

He doubled over again as a second dagger went in, punching through his paper armour.

‘Gah…’ Words wouldn’t materialise. His tongue was heavy, lolling like a fat pink slug in his useless mouth. He struck the deck and realised Zartath had moved aside. Somewhere he heard the Black Dragon shout, but it was a distant and echoing sound. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact location. Fog was rolling in across his vision. He felt cold, and then saw the rime of hoarfrost upon his pauldrons and knew what had murdered him.

During the earlier fight, one of them must have escaped. It was watching them, waiting for his guard to lower.

As the last of his blood ebbed from his shattered body, Emek was glad he had found his honour and that he had died a Space Marine.

Skethe let the half-warrior bleed out as he concentrated on the feral one still standing, still lethal. It was fast and seemed to possess some sense of the mandrake, despite the fact it was cloaked in shadow-skin and could not be seen.

The large one was still alive. He’d watched it fall with mild interest. One of several toxins he possessed would bring the hulking mon’keigh around later in pangs of agony. Skethe would savour that. Lyythe’s grotesques had failed to claim their fill of flesh, so he would benefit from their deaths instead. Worn down, the genebred warriors were easy meat. Except this last one. The one with the ossified knives jutting from its skin was not so easy to kill.

Skethe jabbed with his blade, the wicked residue from the edge caressing the feral one’s armour but not penetrating it. It had weaved aside and fashioned a thrust of its own that Skethe barely evaded.

The nightfiend dissolved into shadow, moving much swifter than sight, and retreated back into the gloom of the corridor. Seemingly possessed, the feral one came after him, spitting curses and swinging with twin ossified blades. Skethe unleashed a blast of bane frost from his distended maw, hoping to bone-freeze the creature and then gorge upon its petrified, still-living body, but the feral one smashed through it and lunged with blades extended.

Skethe slid aside, but was cut along the ribs. He drank in the fortifying pain before turning to apply the killing stroke – but his opponent was gone. It had rolled out of its cleaving dive and was back on its feet, blades bared for another round.

‘Wretched spawn,’ he cursed in his barb-like language.

The creature muttered something back, mussitating the words of some fate it wished to subject the nightfiend to.

Skethe allowed it a mocking smile and was about to gut the impudent mon’keigh when a voice resolved in his mind. It was just a single word, spoken by the one to whom he had given his fealty. He had known this was coming, that it would be here where the deed would be done.

Now, it said simply.

Zartath breathed. It was several minutes since he’d worked his lungs, driven into frenzy by the shadow-thing. But it was gone. The stink of it, so redolent, so obvious, had evaporated like the darkness of which it was made, leaving him alone.

The flesh-cutter was dead. He was lying face down in a pool of his own blood. The shadow-thing had cut him deeply, torn him right open. Despite his belligerence towards the Apothecary, Zartath had wanted to kill the creature for that, to exact some small measure of revenge. There were still dusk-wraiths abroad on the space station. He wouldn’t need to venture far to find them again. True, the Apothecary was dead but the other one was not. A brother, this one; he’d fought with him and Kor’be on the Razored Vale, killed the hunters.

Suddenly, the Black Dragon found himself at a junction in more ways than one. He knew the route back to the Apothecarion, but would have to go via the empty corridors and not the hidden ways he’d used to escape in the first place. Returning would mean denying his thirst for violence; Kor’be and his slain brothers would remain unavenged. But to leave the hulking warrior to die alone…

Zartath saw the opening to the temple. He knew the sanctity of this place just by being near to it.

‘You were brave, flesh-cutter,’ he said to Emek as he rolled the Apothecary onto his back and proceeded to drag him into the Pantheon Chamber, ‘braver than I credited you for.’

Laying Emek down, he folded the Apothecary’s arms across his chest to conceal the wound and make it appear as if he were in repose. After he’d closed the door, Zartath turned to Ba’ken.

‘Don’t die, blade-brother,’ he snarled, heaving the big warrior onto his back, ‘or all of this will be for nothing.’

Muttering a curse with every other step, Zartath headed for the Apothecarion.

He heard the one in black before he saw it. An’scur was letting the flesh-machines of Nihilan’s corrupted ship bear the brunt of the enemy’s fury before he would commit to the killing. The presence of the one in black had changed all that, though. This was Helspereth’s murderer, the lesser creature who had humbled and humiliated her in her own coliseum.

The archon had told himself he was not attached to the wych, that her death was something that intrigued him rather than forced him to despair, but even still. He wanted blood, an equal measure and then the same again to account for the slaying of his favourite concubine. Since Helspereth’s death, there was none amongst the coven that could replace her. An’scur had broken a great many in the time intervening; their bleached bones littered the foot of his throne like a mausoleum, their screams were like a requiem to her.

His blade unsheathed with a low scrape of cursed metal before he’d even realised it was drawn.

‘I want its head,’ he hissed to the sybarite at his side.

The blade-hand nodded slowly, eyes glinting in murderous anticipation behind his flesh-leather hellmask.

An’scur’s hand on the sybarite’s shoulder made him turn his head.

‘I will do it, though,’ the archon warned. ‘Cut me a path to its neck and my falchion shall part its ugly head from its shoulders.’

The blade-hand nodded again and drew his massive glaive.

In a feat of sheer strength, Argos lifted a corrupt servitor off its feet and smashed it onto the hard deck. Blood and oil spilled from its cracked skull in a sticky pool. He rammed his boot, cracking its chest, before the monster could rise. Another fired a heavy bolter attachment but a bright flare of actinic energy arrested the salvo before it could hit him.

Elysius was shielded by his rosarius and had interceded between servitor and Salamander. The creature was almost point-blank so he only had to swing to stave in its weapon arm. A slew of bolts and broken machine parts radiated from the impact like scatter shot as the Chaplain pressed on, exhorting his battle-brothers.

‘Forward for the primarch!’ he yelled. ‘Purge this taint from our halls!’

‘In Vulkan’s name, brother,’ said Argos, burning through a second servitor with a plasma torch.

The Chaplain nodded, smashing into a pack of the corrupted flesh-machines with his power fist. Broken cyborg bodies were tossed aside like chaff before a storm. He cleaved another with a vicious downward stroke from his crozius, separating flesh from metal.

Argos snapped the head off one with his bare hands. Enhanced by his cybernetics and power armour, the Forge Master’s strength was incredible. They would need it. The sentry guns had done all they could. The Rapiers and Tarantula guns had fallen silent, either destroyed or clanking on empty mags.

The last remnants of Fourth were putting up stern resistence too, supported strongly by the armsmen, and thinned down the monstrous servitor horde. The Space Marines were taking the automatons apart, reducing what was left of the Archimedes Rex’s crew to spare parts.

Elysius knew this was but the beginning. The dark eldar waited beyond. There was no way the xenos would get between the virus-crazed servitors and the Salmanders. Certainly, they would not commit to the fight until–

A lithe figure springing from the embattled throng robbed that thought of its conclusion. Elysius knew this warrior. It was the archon, the one who had tried to kill them all on the Volgorrah Reef. It was An’scur.

With a curt flash of baleful energy, the dark eldar archon cut down a servitor that had lumbered into his path. A second and third fell in quick succession afterwards, split across waist and neck respectively. The blows were florid but economical, he expended no more strength and energy than was needed.

Elysius saw the archon for what he truly was in that moment. A killer.

The Chaplain also realised why the dark eldar lord had entered the fray. He wanted blood, his blood. The warrior-witch had been a favoured pet, after all.

The bodyguard An’scur brought with him slashed open a servitor that had reverted to defensive protocols and was actually attacking the xenos. It was not alone. Several of the corrupt automatons started to turn, recognising a threat in their midst. Suddenly, what was meant to be fodder to try and blunt the Salamanders’ anger was turning on its xenos allies. A three-way battle erupted in the corridor, the flesh-machines caught in the middle.

‘Mon’keigh!’ the archon screamed, beheading a servitor and vaulting on top of its corpse to point his sword.

Elysius rotated his shoulder then his wrist; the crozius left a scar of jagged lightning in its wake.

‘Whenever you’re ready, xenos,’ he muttered.

A servitor closed on him but the bodyguard interceded, impaling it on a massive glaive and shucking the two halves of its bisected body off the blade.

An’scur dropped down from his grisly perch and walked slowly towards the waiting Chaplain. A burst of bolter fire deflected off the archon’s blade, dismissed like an insect.

A battle-brother who’d advanced up the corridor followed up with a drawn gladius but again the bodyguard dashed in. The fight was brief and bloody. It ended with a Salmander sliced from neck to waist. The warrior crumpled, one hand on his chest to try and keep it together; the other firing his bolter. When his head rolled from his shoulders, the desperate salvo was cut short.

Though it rankled to see one of his brothers so cruelly dispatched, Elysius kept perfectly still as the bodyguard advanced on him. Eyes narrowed behind his skull-mask as he watched the warrior’s movements and tracked the sweep of the deadly glaive.

A shout from the archon stopped the bodyguard dead and he lowered his weapon immediately in a gesture of subservience.

An’scur was but a few sword-lengths away. His almond-shaped eyes flashed as he regarded Elysius.

‘All mine,’ he said, the words falling like jagged knives from his lips.

Such pain would he visit on this lesser being, such utter humiliation he would heap on its bestial shoulders. The hairless apes would learn of their folly in opposing the elder races of the galaxy. An’scur would bathe in their primitive blood.

‘Sybarite!’

The blade-hand knew the command tone and began to withdraw.

‘Stay close,’ An’scur hissed as he passed the warrior. A shallow incline of the blade-hand’s head showed he’d been understood.

He focused on his opponent.

The one in black was bulky. One hand ended in a massive fist, which crackled with actinic ripples. In the other, it clutched a stave devoted to some craven god or another. Death markings characterised its armour. The fire-red eyes glaring from behind its bone-mask were hard and unyielding like stone.

As if they dwelled at the centre of a maelstrom, the battle continued to rage around them. Whether compelled by honour or simply self preservation, none entered the cordon created by the two combatants.

An’scur smiled indulgently behind his daemon-faced helm. He would break this creature. He would cut it down limb by limb, piece by piece, every stroke a bloody devotional to the slain Helspereth.

‘You will wish you had not killed her, ape,’ he whispered and then struck.

The words meant nothing to Elysius but he knew what they presaged.

The first blow came fast, almost too fast to see. Instinct pulled the Chaplain out of its deadly path, but he felt it cut into his armour plate. He swung in return but was too slow. An overhead with his power fist ended up putting a hole in the deckplate as the archon weaved aside. Elysius managed to parry the follow-up, a chain of eldritch sparks ripping outwards from the impact off the haft of his crozius.

He swiped with the power fist again, but only succeeded in smashing one of the last surviving servitors into paste. Crackling violently, his rosarius field saved him from a certain kill stroke.

Trying to match the archon for technique wasn’t working. The dark eldar was faster and more skilled. Elysius had bulk and strength on his side. Trusting to his faith to protect him, he barged into the xenos leaving him open to attack.

An’scur felt the crunch of metal as his armour bent inwards. Like a bull, the one in black had thrown itself at him. Pain flashed through his body, hot like quicksilver. A vambrace blade slid from his armour at a twist of An’scur’s wrist and he hacked into the mon’keigh’s back as he was borne along the corridor. When he was thrown down, he felt something break in his back, possibly a rib, but the one in black was bleeding. Using the pain, An’scur sprang to his feet and launched a flurry of blows with his falchion. They rained against some kind of crude energy shield that the one in black maintained through his incessant muttering. The last blow breached its defences, though, and cleaved deep into its shoulder guard.

With a desperate shout, the mon’keigh fell to its knee.

An’scur smiled through bloodied teeth.

Now, you are mine.

An’scur was savouring this. He conducted his symphony of pain with utter devotion, every cut a perfect note, every riposte an exquisite refrain. It would prove his downfall.

‘You should have just killed me,’ Elysius spat despite the extreme agony coursing through his body. ‘Perhaps you can’t.’ The gibe was indulgent of him. It took all of the Chaplain’s resolve to stay conscious. There was some strain of venom on the archon’s blade, some dark elixir that was intensifying the pain.

Biting down, Elysius ignored it. He fended off another attack but managed to lock the archon’s deadly blade with the haft of his crozius. Pulling the dark eldar in, he swung with his power fist in the same motion and landed a glancing blow. A less agile opponent would have been obliterated, but the archon was merely stunned and staggered back. Dark, alien blood was drooling from beneath his battle-helm.

Elysius stifled a feral grin. He had hurt him.

‘Like I said…’

This theatre was wrong. It was not how An’scur had imagined it. It wasn’t supposed to play out this way. The one in black would die by his hand. Its head would be taken as a trophy and defiled upon his return to the Volgorrah Reef. It would mount a spike when his cache of slaves propelled him to High Commorragh and all the prestige he deserved, when a backwater province of the webway was no longer his domain.

The crackling fist had hit him hard, harder than he was letting on.

Better to let your enemy think you are strong when you are not.

It was meant to be easier than this. Why was this one so stubborn?

An’scur didn’t let these doubts trouble him for very long. Vengeance could be had vicariously. He had not survived this long without letting others occasionally bloody their hands for him. An’scur was pragmatic as well as a vicious bastard.

He gestured to the stricken ape who was, even now, attempting to stand.

So annoyingly tenacious.

‘Sybarite…’ He heard the blade-hand rise from a crouching position. ‘Kill him for me.’

‘As you wish, master…’

There was something in the voice, the tone and the timbre, that made An’scur turn. It had been disguised before, modified somehow. As a veil was cruelly lifted, the archon realised he had never looked his slave in the eye, never deigned to really look. If he had he would’ve noticed a traitor glaring daggers back at him.

The sybarite had removed his flesh-mask and the face of another was revealed from behind it.

An’scur was so utterly shocked he almost failed to parry the blade-hand’s first attack.

‘Malnakor…’

Blades locked, glaive versus falchion. A dracon he had once thought dead and forgotten glared across the clashing steel between them.

‘Surprised to see me?’ Where An’scur was grating and pale, Malnakor was vital and silken. His face was perfect, almost doll-like, as if carved from amber and left statuesque.

‘Your problem is, you never concern yourself with the help.’ With an angry grunt, Malnakor thrust away from the impasse. A swift double parry, first left then right, the glaive moving like a pendulum with his hands as the fulcrum, negated twin jabs from An’scur.

‘Was it Lyythe?’ he asked. ‘That haemonculus bitch will reap the rewards of this treachery.’

They traded a blindingly fast hail of blows but failed to land anything telling.

Malnakor laughed in a brief respite. ‘Of course it was Lyythe, and I sincerely doubt you’ll be afforded opportunity to exact any petty revenge.’

‘Oh, I doubt that.’ An’scur backed up a step, glowering. He gestured to the mon’keigh who was wounded enough to still be down. ‘Can’t you see I am in the middle of something here, worm?’

‘As was I with Helspereth until you tried to destroy me.’

An’scur lashed out. The double-handed blow was so hard it cut the glaive’s haft in half.

Malnakor balked at the archon’s fury, and staggered. He used the two broken pieces of haft ambidextrously but was hard pressed to defend himself.

‘You are no match for me, whelp,’ An’scur told him.

‘Which is why,’ he lunged, opening up his side to attack deliberately, ‘I brought help.’

Too late An’scur realised he was done; too late he tried to withdraw from the certain killing stroke that would have ripped the insolent dracon open and spilled him all over the floor. An’scur felt the chilling blades that could only belong to a mandrake slide into his flesh. Armour parted like smoke before them, blood boiled from a particular poison crafted to inflict the maximum agony on him, and him alone.

The archon collapsed, his falchion falling from nerveless fingers as his body began to inexplicably vitrify.

‘No…’ The voice that came from his slowly crystallising lips was small and oddly resonant.

Hoarfrost swept over his body, filling his veins, converting his flesh.

A shadow resolved in his peripheral vision and he saw Skethe watching his long death hungrily. Betrayed by the nightfiend, betrayed by Lyythe – An’scur cursed his dealings with the sorcerer and the naked ambition that had seen him blinded to a nest of waiting vipers.

With a final agonised lurch of frost-tinged breath, An’scur crystallised completely into ice. Using the bladed end of the glaive, Malnakor shattered him into pieces.

Xenos infighting was of no interest to Elysius but he recognised a coup when he saw one. He gained his feet and buried the head of his crozius into the shadow-skinned creature’s back. It was so intent on sucking up An’scur’s last shreds of agony that it didn’t realise the danger until most of its spine was shattered. Elysius fed a jolt of energy into the weapon, finishing it off.

‘I’m still here, lordling,’ he growled, stepping over the mandrake’s spasming corpse.

Clenching and unclenching his power fist, the Chaplain advanced.

Dracon, now Archon, Malnakor backed up. Skethe was dead when a moment ago he was a willing ally. At least it meant he wouldn’t need to arrange his death later. Killing mandrakes was fraught with all kinds of peril.

His newly acquired troops outnumbered the mon’keigh but the enemy wasn’t showing signs of capitulation, even the lesser ones. The kabalite warriors were his now, so too the incubi aboard the Eternal Ecstasy. If he didn’t return to the ship quickly, the transition of leadership might prove contentious. Malnakor’s hand closed around a small ovoid object attached to his armour. It was no larger than a pebble and fashioned of infinite jet, the runes on its surface manifold and bewildering. With the simple manipulation of select surface sigils, he activated the webway portal and a great gulf of darkness tore into reality behind him.

‘Return to the ship,’ he commanded his warriors, who were cutting down the last of the flesh-machines but otherwise withdrawing from battle. ‘An’scur is usurped and I am master in his stead.’

There was the briefest moment of resistance but it passed quickly.

Leaving behind their dead and wounded, the dark eldar retreated into the roiling void of the webway which led to the Eternal Ecstasy.

‘Your time will come again,’ he said to the mon’keigh armoured in black. For now, Malnakor would preserve what he had, return to the Volgorrah Reef and work out how he would hold onto the power he had just seized.

The skull-faced warrior looked back at him, its eyes like burning embers, but didn’t move to intercede. All of the armoured giants held the line and watched him and his kabal go.

A reckoning would have to wait.

In a tempest of eldritch wind, the webway portal collapsed and silence returned to Prometheus.

The quietude persisted until Chaplain Elysius lifted his crozius aloft.

‘Glory to Vulkan!’ he bellowed, and the halls resounded to the chant of triumph.

‘Glory to Vulkan!’ he yelled again, exulting in the moment. Even the armsmen and the survivors from Hangar Seven’s deck crews took up the cry.

Though most of the Salamanders had survived the assault, there were several dead amongst the human contingent and more still that were wounded.

A labour serf was on his knees trying to push life back into a fallen comrade but to no avail. The armsman died spitting blood.

‘So much death…’ the labour serf muttered.

Elysius looked down at him.

‘It’s a heavy price,’ he said, ‘but one we had to pay. Honour his sacrifice when you mourn him and know he will sit close at the Emperor’s hand.’

The labour serf looked up, and at once the Chaplain recognised him. Not a native of Nocturne this one, but he had fought like he defended home soil. Old eyes looked back at Elysius, but from a body that was in its prime. He nursed a gash across his shoulder, a part of his uniform was dark with his blood, but didn’t falter.

‘Sonnar Illiad,’ the Chaplain addressed him. ‘I remember you. I owe you a debt of thanks.’

‘For what, my liege?’

‘For showing me again the depth of human courage.’

This was a man who had lived his life as a freedom fighter on the blasted world of Scoria. It was thanks to Illiad and his men that the relics taken by the Salamanders were there to save in the first place. Elysius had never forgotten that.

‘Your example raises us all, liege.’ Sonnar Illiad bowed.

‘Gather the wounded. Those that can walk must do so. Everyone else is to be carried.’ He gestured to two of Fourth, who saluted at the Chaplain’s summons. ‘Escort these heroes of Prometheus to the Apothecarion. All shall be remembered this day.’

As the pair of Salamanders started to help Sonnar Illiad, Elysius felt a strong hand upon his arm.

‘Shoulder to shoulder, the primarch made us strong, as strong as any mountain,’ said Argos.

The Chaplain looked down the corridor to the gates of the Drake Hall.

‘It was close in the end.’

Argos nodded slowly. ‘The sanctity of T’kell’s Chamber is preserved.’ He averted his eyes from the baroque gate that led to the relic hall and met the Chaplain’s gaze. ‘Fighting beside you again brought back memories of Ullsinar.’

‘Has it really been that long?’

‘Blade to blade, it has.’

Elysius removed his battle-helm. He wanted to look his brother in the eye, at least the organic one that remained. Beneath the metal, the wiring and the cybernetics, Elysius could still see the bio-acid scarring.

‘Never to be repeated, not like that. I lost you your face that day.’

‘And the Machine God saw fit to bless me with another. I do not miss it.’

They clasped forearms, silently renewing old oaths they had sworn to one another when they had barely been Scouts.

Elysius could still feel the pain of his injuries keenly but the work wasn’t yet done. The entirety of Prometheus’s halls had to be scoured for enemy stragglers. The dark eldar had infiltrated deeply and not even a remnant of their presence must remain. His expression grew severe as he thought of the other battles still raging. For several hours they’d heard nothing from Nocturne or Captain Dac’tyr.

‘I hope the God-Emperor and Vulkan favour our wayward brothers. They will have need of their blessings before this is done.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I

Into the Bowels of Hell

Lyythe knew she had been abandoned. How An’scur could’ve known about her pact with the aspiring dracon was a mystery to her. She was a haemonculus, the haemonculus, having progressed from being Kravex’s wrack to pre-eminent torture-surgeon of the Volgorrah Reef. Since her master’s demise, Lyythe was the only one and she deserved respect. She did not deserve to be cast to these dogs and placed at their beck and call.

‘I am not some hireling,’ she had cursed when they had taken her to catacombs to await the sorcerer’s return. Her slab-armoured custodians had not replied. They had merely taken her to the lower deeps of the ship and left her there. It wasn’t fitting. Even An’scur knew that. Lyythe was not blade-hand like the sybarite. Her position in the kabal was a vaunted one.

Sat in the grubby cell-chamber, she felt far from important. On the contrary, Lyythe felt almost sacrificial. To abuse a haemonculus, albeit a fledgling practitioner, in such a way and through her divulge some of the arcane mysteries of the dark eldar… the Commorite high lords would not approve.

Lyythe wondered briefly, as she had several times over the last few hours, how the archon planned to buy her silence once she was back aboard the Eternal Ecstasy. Before giving her over to the mon’keigh, An’scur had given her a device. It was a webway portal but a small one, barely large enough for her lithe, disfigured frame. It was shaped like a tiny, baroque pyramid. The runes on each of its facings had to be manipulated in a precise way to activate the portal. She was tempted to use it now and escape the crude, ugly ship to her laboratory quarters on the Ecstasy.

An’scur would kill her for that.

Worse he would throw her into an oubliette until the soul hunger withered her already wretched body and she turned to ash for She Who Thirsts to sate Her daemon’s tongue upon.

Thinking of that fate made Lyythe hunger. It had been too long since she’d enjoyed the suffering of others. Even now her parchment flesh, the stitched-together skin, was flaking and cracking. She was soul-starved. Something gnawed at her psyche, just behind her eyes, and she knew with a creeping dread exactly what it was.

Though she had been told to wait, her guard was gone and the ship’s iron corridors were empty. Tucking the tiny pyramid back into her filthy leather smock, Lyythe got up and drifted out of her cell. This ship was gorged on suffering. She could taste it in the air. Drawn by the wailing of the damned, she activated her shadowfield and slipped like a wraith into the darkness. Somewhere, she knew, somewhere close, there would be a slave she could feed on.

The bowels of the Hell-stalker were like a labyrinth. The air was cloying and thick, scented with the blood-copper from thousands of sacrifical slaves. Tainted ash muddied armour plate and fouled respirator filters. It was dank and humid, confined and claustrophobic. The gun decks had given way to a network of jagged corridors limned red with visceral brazier fire.

After breaching the bulkhead gate, Praetor had unhooked his thunder hammer and storm shield. Close confines demanded close and deadly weapons. He led with the latter, glaring through retinal lenses over the shield’s edge, the Firedrakes tramping loudly in his wake. According to the schematic provided by the mission’s Techmarine they were not far from the weapon chamber.

A more direct route to the seismic cannon was denied to the Firedrakes by a barricade of debris and slamming bulkhead doors that even melta weapons and chainfists could not penetrate. Huge sections of the ship, parts of its actual superstructure, had been demolished and set up to impede them. A seemingly overlooked access duct had led the Terminators to the maze of maintenance corridors they were now traversing.

Besides the intermittent screaming of the damned coming up through floor vents leading down into the Hell-stalker’s catacombs and dungeons, they had met nothing in the way of resistance. Wherever the overseers and their hordes had gone, it was not here.

‘Why does it feel like we are being herded?’ he heard Persephion remark over the comm-feed.

‘Because we are,’ Praetor replied curtly. ‘Be ready.’

Vulkan He’stan stayed quiet, just beside him. The Forgefather scanned the shadows, every alcove, every nook and choke point as if something was about to happen at any moment.

The wait was not prolonged.

Through a combination of his autosenses and finely honed instincts, Praetor detected the booby trap a few vital seconds before it went off.

‘Down!’ he roared, moving into a squat, braced position, shoulder behind his storm shield.

The other Firedrakes responded instantly, hunkering behind him, heavier shoulder armour turned towards the threat as fiery shrapnel washed over them in a blistering wave.

The trap was only intended as a distraction, not to actually wound or kill. What followed it would do that.

‘Enemy contacts,’ Persephion said down the feed.

Power-armoured silhouettes loomed in the red-tinged darkness. A second later a host of muzzle flares erupted from their bolters, ripping into the shadows and revealing the renegades in their full panoply.

‘Dragon Warriors,’ another Firedrake clarified above the din of mass-reactive rounds hailing their Tactical Dreadnought Armour.

‘Engage, engage,’ Praetor snapped, rising to break into a heavy, lumpen charge. ‘Target and eliminate. Death to the traitors!’

A plasma bolt struck the skull boss of his shield and rocked him. Servos protesting in his leg armour, he pounded into the shell storm being unleashed by the renegades. ‘Hell and flame!’ he bellowed.

A burst of superheated promethium from Vo’kar’s heavy flamer roared through the tightly packed corridor, burning the leading squad of Dragon Warriors down.

Praetor and He’stan were in amongst them quickly.

Like a bull-sauroch, the veteran sergeant barged the plasma gunner to the ground before he got off a second shot. Stepping forwards he smashed a flame-wreathed warrior with his thunder hammer, shattering ceramite and crushing shoulder and neck. A shield smash that bit into the deck also beheaded the one he had just floored.

Snatches of the wider combat through his retinal lenses revealed He’stan spearing one warrior as he unleashed the Gauntlet of the Forge on another squad readying heavy weapons.

Brother Or’vo took a lascannon beam in the chest, which felled him. A succession of storm bolters put his slayer down soon after.

Praetor was killing freely now, using his strength and aggression to bully the renegades out of position. His hammer moved almost automatically, reacting to the nearest threat and dispatching it before finding another. He fought like a crusader of old, thrusting with his shield and bludgeoning with his hammer. Chainsword teeth met adamantium hammer haft and started spitting sparks. Praetor drove his elbow into his attacker, shattering the Dragon Warrior’s nose cone and breaking the deadlock. A punch from his hammer head crushed the renegade’s sternum. A slash from his shield’s rim did the rest. The names of the fallen, the Firedrakes he had lost whilst leading the First, were on his lips as he slew.

‘Nu’mean and Hrydor,’ he intoned, crushing in a warrior’s flank with a heavy swipe; ‘Kohlogh and Gathimu,’ another collapsed with a split skull and battle-helm; ‘Tsu’gan and Halknarr,’ he choked a third in his gauntleted fist, letting the thunder hammer hang by a lanyard around his wrist.

It was not enough. It would never be enough.

‘Retribution and death,’ Praetor hollered over and over again until the corridors echoed with his voice ‘In Vulkan’s name!’

Sustained bolter fire nearly drowned him out, but the last part was amplified through his helmet-vox.

Traitor Astartes were tough fighters. They had once been loyal Space Marines and carried all of that training, all of their genetic enhancements, and fused them with the mania of Chaos. They were changed things, these warriors. Even encased inside power armour, Praetor could feel the creeping taint of Ruin running through their veins. Barbed and hooked, festooned with chains and scraps of incarnadine scale, horned and reeking of sulphurous ash, the Dragon Warriors were black-and-red-clad nightmares come back from hell.

But against Terminators, they were outmatched.

Renegade fatalities easily outstripped that of Praetor’s First. Subconsciously, he checked the schematic arrayed on his right retinal lens as a stream of combat data scrolled by on the opposite one. They were getting closer. According to the schematic, there was a large vent ahead. Some kind of cooling chamber, it would lead them up to the prow of the ship and the seismic cannon.

It took another three minutes of intense corridor fighting before Praetor breached into the cooling chamber.

‘Secure and fan out,’ he ordered. The room was immense, a vast octagonal chamber set with massive spinning fans that pushed ice-laced air into a web of generatoria far above. Halfway up the long tunnel, industrial jets squirted gouts of liquid nitrogen into the manufactured atmosphere. Upon contact with the air, the jet streams vaporised and veneered the lower sections of the generatoria in a chemical frost.

Praetor could think of only one thing that would require such excessive methods to cool it. Above them was the apocalypse weapon. They had but to climb the vent to reach it. Between them, the Firedrakes had enough charges to cripple a battleship. Get close enough to attach them to the seismic cannon and it would be silenced permanently.

The edges of the octagonal chamber were largely flat and made of metal. There was maybe just over a hundred metres to the mesh underfloor of the chamber above. Burn through that and they had a clear assault vector to the cannon. A series of gated ancillary shafts bled off from the main spine but they were all closed. By mag-locking their boots to the walls, they could march all the way to the top. Praetor found the audaciousness of it all appealing.

Perhaps Halknarr was rubbing off on him. Putting the old campaigner from his thoughts, he gestured to three of the squad sergeants: Kabok, Festar’on and Vorpang. A steady bolter storm was thrashing away at the entrance, keeping the Dragon Warriors pinned.

‘Heavies and officers are to stay here at ground level,’ he told them. ‘I need three of your boarding assault troops each, loaded with explosives.’ Praetor arched his head as far back as it would go and pointed up the sprawling shaft. ‘I’ll lead them, through that mesh ceiling and then into the weapon chamber located in the ship’s prow.’ As he looked down again he met the collective gaze of the listening sergeants. ‘If the primarch is with us, we will destroy the seismic cannon and regroup with our forces at the insertion point. In Vulkan’s name.’

Each sergeant nodded, slamming a gauntleted fist against his plastron in salute and producing a resounding clang of metal before heading off to assemble the demolition teams.

Praetor was re-checking the rack of melta bombs he had locked to his wargear when he noticed He’stan kneeling in the middle of the chamber, the Spear of Vulkan across his lap.

‘What are you doing, Forgefather?’ he asked.

He’stan kept his head bowed. He was utterly still. ‘Preparing for the trials,’ he said.

Praetor was nonplussed. ‘We have them stymied. Those traitors in the corridor won’t breach our lines.’

‘Not them…’ said He’stan, looking up into the shaft. The sound of something cumbersome and massive crawling up one of the ancillary tunnels boomed through the walls. ‘Did you think they would let us come in here and destroy what we wanted without significant opposition?’

The strange acoustics made the sound hard to pinpoint. Praetor could only liken it to a heavy scuttling, emanting from every direction simultaneously.

He hefted his thunder hammer, scanning the upper reaches of the shaft. His voice darkened. ‘Nihilan knew we were coming. He knew we would go for the cannon.’

He’stan was rising.

‘The pacts he has made with daemons and their masters have granted him foresight none of us could have predicted.’ He held the spear tip-down, ready to be shouldered and thrown. ‘Look to your weapons, sergeant.’

Praetor’s gaze never wavered.

‘I am ready.’

He was not alone. At a sub-vocal command, the Firedrakes not defending the entrance to the chamber turned their storm bolters skywards.

With a shriek of ruptured metal, one side of the shaft tore open and a creature dredged from the depths of the Eye itself crawled out.

The noisome thing stank of raw warp sorcery. The air around it was formed of a crackling miasma that shimmered like heat haze. It was immense, easily the size of a Land Raider, possibly bigger. The lower half of its body consisted of six insectoid limbs, engineered by some insane techpriest. Mechanised parts met daemon flesh in an unholy fusion where its abdomen and torso joined. Here it was red as blood-fire, sinous and over-muscled. It was not unlike a grim, daemonic centaur, only more horrific, an engine merged with the physical essence of a warp-fiend. An ululating, metallic roar belted from its spined-toothed mouth. Pipes jutting from its back vented hell-smoke in sympathetic empathy of its tangible anger.

Praetor scowled, fighting the revulsion in his gut at the mere presence of the thing. This was the monster that had killed Halknarr and the others, the one the old campaigner had tried to warn them about. He levelled his thunder hammer like he was pointing the crooked finger of death itself.

‘Slay it!’

A crescendo of bolter fire rang out as the Firedrakes tried to put the monster down before it could reach the ground and begin setting about them.

The shells seemed to ripple against its skin as if striking a molten barrier that was robbing them of all potency. It was like rain hitting glass, and just as effective.

‘Use your blades and hammers,’ shouted He’stan, hurling the Spear of Vulkan as the monstrous thing descended. He ran to the outer edge of the chamber as the daemon-machine came thundering down, crushing one of the Firedrakes beneath its bulk. It bleated angrily, trying in vain to dislodge the spear that was burning its rune-engraved skin.

He’stan unleashed a burst from his storm bolter. Like all of the Forgefather’s trappings, this was no ordinary weapon. It was blessed by the hand of Vulkan and fashioned to smite the denizens of eternal hell-realms.

‘It is a creature from the Soul Forge,’ he said. The hallowed shells from his first salvo detonated brightly against the monster’s daemonic torso. The wounds were white against its hell-red flesh and flared with a righteous flame, but did little to slow let alone kill the thing. ‘It is a Soul Grinder,’ He’stan told him, ‘and I will know its name.’

Though the Firedrakes surrounded it, chipping at it with hammers and blades, the Soul Grinder was far from outmanoeuvred. It lashed out, snapping a warrior in two before it seized upon another with a hideous mechanised claw and butchered him. Heavy rounds thundered from a cannon fused into one of its arms, chewing up another of the indomitable First.

Praetor cried out in anguish as his brothers were slain so cheaply. He moved aside as a Firedrake was battered back and slammed into the wall of the shaft.

‘This beast was abroad on the traitor’s ship?’

How Nihilan could’ve tamed such a thing was beyond the sergeant. He came face-to-face with it and stood his ground, a mortal before a daemonic hell-engine. The Soul Grinder towered over Praetor, dwarfing the noble Salamander lord who brandished his hammer like a threat.

‘See this? I shall use it to smash you to paste.’

The names of the fallen passed his lips like a mantra, before he roared out a challenge: ‘Back to the void with you, hell-beast!’

The Soul Grinder bellowed. A blast of foetid air gusted from its maw as it slashed down with a hot and glowing blade. Daemon whispers coursed off the edge of the weapon like vapour, promising torture and destruction.

Praetor charged to meet it but was borne to the ground and out of harm’s way by something heavy slamming into him at speed. The daemon-blade bit into the deckplate, shredding it with the baleful energies oozing off the sword.

He’stan helped return him to his feet. The Forgefather was immensely strong but it was only for the fact of the Tactical Dreadnought Armour’s suspensors that he was able to lift the prone sergeant at all. Then he pointed. ‘Your fate is up there, destroying that cannon,’ said He’stan. ‘Mine is here with the beast.’

There was no point in protesting, the Forgefather was right. Praetor nodded and went to rally the demolition teams.

‘All incendiary carriers to me,’ he ordered over the feed. ‘We ascend, brothers!’

He cast a brief look back at He’stan. At the edge of his vision, he also noticed the Soul Grinder had just managed to release its wedged blade.

‘Keep that thing occupied for as long as you can,’ he said.

He’stan was already running at it, shouting clipped orders to the other Firedrakes to slowly encircle it. ‘I intend to kill it, brother-sergeant.’

The beast was massive but so too was the chamber. While He’stan drew it off, Praetor was able to begin the climb relatively unmolested. The mag-locks were powerful and adhered to the metal shaft with a resonant clang but held his boots in place. Despite the fact it was only a short distance it was slow going, each footfall having to be placed precisely and carefully. By the time they’d reached halfway up the vertical, Praetor was feeling the pressure. He could only hear the battle below, caught snatches of it over the feed. He focused on the way ahead, on heading up, and instructed his warriors to do the same.

They’d reached just over fifty metres, when three more ancillary hatches opened. This time they gusted with pressure release and a narrow platform extended from the doorway that was created.

Hulking forms lumbered from the darkness onto these reinforced gantries. They wore red and black, and their helms were horned. Though scarred by the claws of things best left consigned to nightmares, and reeking of old blood, the design of their armour was not so dissimilar to the Firedrakes’.

Traitor Terminators.

To a warrior, they laughed as a hail of fire came withering down at Praetor and his brothers.

‘Defend yourselves!’ he cried. He couldn’t reach his mag-locked storm bolter so he raised his storm shield instead and weathered the salvo.

II

Dead End

Lyythe was getting closer to the source of agony and torture she had scented on the breeze. She had found a few scraps along the way, huddled slave-things barely worth her efforts. Their lives had been short, their endurance limited. She derived little sustenance from their deaths; her hunger demanded more. Lyythe could feel the presence of She Who Thirsts. It might have been imagined paranoia but she was in no position to test that theory. She pressed on.

Something wafted stronger up ahead, the slightest tremor of pain and remorse. It was faint but getting stronger. It could not be far. This sensation felt a little more substantial than the slave-things. Perhaps one of her armoured custodians was gravely injured and crawling to find help. Lyythe smiled, pulling at the stiches in her patchwork face.

That would be perfect.

He’stan saw one of the climbing Firedrakes fall. His brother hit the ground thunderously like a comet, hurt but not dead. Adapting to the surprise attack, the rest were holding. Praetor was even driving upwards slowly. Rounds pranged off his shield. Discarded shell casings clattered against He’stan’s armour like brass rain. A third force had ambushed them. As he ran around the scuttling Soul Grinder, he saw the retinal lenses of more traitors glowing evilly in the gloom above.

‘As the storm gathers around us, so must we keep hold the purifying fire to banish the shadows.’ The litany had sustained him many times over during the long isolation of the Quest. It was only now, as he fought for his life and the lives of his brothers, side-by-side with his Chapter, that He’stan realised the toll the Nine had taken upon him. It had made him a recluse, severed him from the bond of brotherhood. He revelled in this, the line reforged in battle as Vulkan had always taught them. If this was to be death, then at least they’d meet it together.

He needed the spear. It was still lodged in the beast’s back. From there he could plunge it into the Soul Grinder’s black heart and end the daemon, but only if he could reach it.

He’stan had lost count of the monsters he had slain. The Quest had taken him to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. He had been to places for which there were no maps and fought things that defied reason. This beast was no different. But during those battles, he had only needed to think of himself and not his brothers. The trail of dead and wounded was already beginning to tell on the Firedrakes. Those who could do so had edged to the periphery of the octagonal arena and engaged the traitor ambushers; the rest tried to fight the beast with hammer and blade. He’stan watched as one brave soul was bludgeoned into the wall. Another, attempting to saw into one of the Soul Grinder’s legs, was crushed.

Like Praetor, he felt every death, every wounding keenly. Through Volgorrah and now the assault on the Hell-stalker, he had become attached to the Firedrakes. Long lost, his connection to the Chapter had been restored through them. It was a link in danger of being broken.

‘Fall back and support your brothers!’ he yelled down the feed. Using its pincer, the beast had dislodged the spear and cast it aside. It clattered noisily to the deckplate and stayed there, waiting. Vulkan He’stan eyed it keenly, between scuttling, mechanised legs. ‘I shall fight this beast alone,’ he said to himself. He sent a gout of flame into the Soul Grinder’s midriff. Blessed, burning promethium seared up the creature’s torso. It recoiled from the fire’s purifying touch, rearing like some massive arachnid. It gave the Forgefather the moment of opportunity he needed. Barrelling between the beast’s upraised forelimbs, he burst through to the other side and snatched up the spear just as it began to turn.

Enraged, the Soul Grinder unleashed a storm of shells from a weapon fashioned into the flesh of its pincer arm. The fusillade struck one Terminator and brought several others to their knees.

‘Here!’ shouted He’stan. He slammed his chest, hefted the Spear of Vulkan high so the beast could see it. ‘Here is your prey. Face me, daemon.’

‘Pilgrim…’

So it had a voice, this thing from the hell-depths. Not only that, but it seemed to know who stood before it and what he represented.

‘Oh, you are a good dog, aren’t you?’ He’stan replied.

A stream of warp flame burst from the Soul Grinder’s mouth, forcing He’stan to dive aside or be immolated by it. He barely had time to spring to his feet when a second burst engulfed the deck behind him. The metal squealed and spat as it was malformed under the warp fire’s terrible influence.

He’stan kept running. Dim memories returned of corralling giant bull-sauroch of the Arridian Plain. Hacking into the beast’s trailing leg, he drew off a chain of sparks that cascaded from the wound where ichorous oil was leaking like black blood. The Soul Grinder shrieked and cleaved down at the Forgefather with its blade.

‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’ He only narrowly avoided the hellish sword. Baleful residue hissed against his armour plate like acid.

It swung again. He’stan had not time to avoid the blow so he had to meet it with the hallowed spear’s glaive-like tip. Such power was levelled in the blow that He’stan staggered but stood his ground.

The sheer strength of the Soul Grinder was incredible.

He’stan clung to the spear haft with both hands but was still pushed to one knee. The monster knew he was weakening. It came close, baring its spine-like fangs and opening wide for a final burst of warp flame.

‘Pilgrim…’ it drawled, hungrily.

‘Vulkan…’ He’stan pleaded, and hoped the primarch was listening.

Lyythe followed a trail of carnage all the way to a narrow chamber in the bowels of the ship. She judged she was close to the prow. Not far above her, she could hear the sounds of a furious battle taking place. She felt residual pain and suffering exuding from the iron walls, seeping down to her like blood-stink from a corpse, but her prey was ahead. There was a dark line of something wet and vital amidst all the wreckage. It didn’t take a torture-surgeon to know what that substance was and what it meant.

Wounded.

Lyythe shuddered excitedly at the thought of it. She would gorge herself on this morsel of suffering.

Still, she cautioned herself, it might have some fight left in it.

Lyythe delved within the confines of her skin-tight leather robes and impossibly pulled forth a claw-like glove. It was hard like leather, but pieced together from scraps of skin and stitched with sinew. With the flesh gauntlet, the haemonculus felt bolder and pressed towards the silhouette she had just seen slump down in the corridor ahead.

Wraith-like and silent, Lyythe got within a few metres of her prey. She was already drinking in its palpable agonies when the sound of something heavy and metallic slotting into place caused her some alarm.

The voice that came out of the darkness at her was old and thick with phlegm.

‘Heard you coming from way back,’ it said, and discharged the round in its weapon.

The haemonculus shrieked as the high-velocity, mass-reactive shell came at her. Only through the artifice of her trappings was she able to narrowly avoid the flaring salvo as it lit up the corridor in harsh monochrome.

Not prey at all this one, but a hunter like her.

It was on its feet.

Not really wounded, not badly.

It was firing again. Fleeing madly, she’d put some distance between them but the shadow was tenacious. Lyythe could hear its monstrous footfalls as it gave chase. Suddenly the flesh gauntlet seemed woefully inadequate for her needs.

Death surely imminent, Lyythe had no choice but to risk the wrath of her lord; whoever that might be. She grasped the pyramidal object An’scur had given her and hurriedly activated the runes. It was only as the last sigil was sliding into place and a dark light infused the device from within, bleeding from its joints, did Lyythe consider she had made a mistake.

An’scur was not about to become beholden to a haemoculus. She had been abandoned. More than that, she had been consigned to execution.

As the dark light burned Lyythe’s wretched hands into skeletal claws she enjoyed a final, tragic moment of absolute agony before the concealed void mine exploded and her soul was cast to the feet of ravening daemons.

A tremor rippled through the underdeck, so heavy it forced He’stan and the daemon apart. Released from the terrible pressure he’d been under, the Forgefather backed off from the Soul Grinder’s lethal attentions.

‘Something you should know about me, daemon…’ He’stan spun the Spear of Vulkan around until the tip was facing down and he had the haft in a backhand grip. He lifted the primarch-forged weapon to rest on his shoulder. ‘I never miss twice.’

Like a spit of purifying flame, the relic blade coursed through the air and pierced the Soul Grinder’s fell heart. It was a throw of peerless strength and accuracy, a deathblow powerful enough to kill a daemon. Disbelieving, the beast lurched back from the imperious Forgefather. It staggered on mechanical limbs, convulsing like some kind of hideous spider in its death throes.

He’stan yelled to the Firedrakes. ‘Finish it!’

A host of waiting chainfists and thunder hammers smashed the vile creation back to the abyss until there was nothing left of it but broken machine parts and an ichorous residue.

Halknarr and his warriors had been avenged, but it wasn’t over. He’stan looked up the shaft. A brutal fire exchange was taking place between the Firedrakes on the ground and halted on the walls, and the Dragon Warrior Terminators assailing them both.

Praetor was close. He had almost reached the mesh ceiling of the shaft and was reaching out with a breaching charge when a second wave of armoured figures appeared at the summit. A reaper canon spat out from the shadowy throng, catching the veteran sergeant in the chest and hurling him down.

Before he hit the ground, Praetor knew it was over. Nihilan had them outmanoeuvred and outgunned before they’d even boarded the Hell-stalker. He had kept his best warriors aboard and in number. The sorcerer had even unshackled a monster to cull the Firedrake’s ranks. So many had the brother-sergeant lost. He had led them to their dooms. It was numbing and he barely felt the jolt as he smashed into the deckplate, buckling it.

With a tenacious death grip, Praetor held on to his shield and hammer. The breaching charge went skittering away in the darkness, lost and useless. On the walls, the Firedrakes were being beaten back. The sheer amount of fire gave them little choice. Retreat and live; hold and die. A Salamander’s creed was to be indomitable and unyielding but they were also pragmatic.

Guns lined the summit of the shaft now, chewing through the mesh and pouring down fire onto the First. Heavier weapons were allied to the barrage of twin-linked bolters. Through the cracked resolution of his retinal lenses, Praetor recognised the telltale muzzles of reaper cannons and heavy flamers. Dark, smoke-edged fire rippled through the remains of the mesh and turned the base of the shaft into a cauldron.

Vision hazing from the heat and the damage to his battle-helm, Praetor barely saw He’stan striding through the flames. In his salamander mantle, he was all but impervious. The sergeant struggled to his feet for a second time.

As the fire began to die, the reapers started up. A bark of heavy shells became a roar. Plasma and melta bursts came in the wake of the ammo storm, thickening the air with actinic heat.

‘I stand at your shoulder, brother,’ He’stan shouted above the deadly crescendo.

Praetor hunkered behind his shield as he reached for his mag-locked storm bolter.

‘What you did to that monster,’ he said, fighting against the din of the storm. No ordinary Space Marine could’ve survived for long in such a battle. Even Terminators would be sorely tested. ‘I have never seen such bravery.’

‘Then we shall both die as heroes,’ He’stan replied.

‘I am sorry, my lord.’

‘For what, brother?’

‘For signing your death warrant with this mission.’ Praetor slipped the end of the storm bolter’s barrel against one corner of the shield and started shooting.

By now, there were no Firedrakes on the wall. Any who could fire were doing so. The rest fell back to the corridor to repel the Traitor Terminators coming from that direction. From the reports in the feed, Praetor knew they were surrounded and out of options.

There was no escape.

‘You must call me brother, Herculon Praetor,’ said the Forgefather, ‘or Vulkan, as that is my name.’

‘I’m sorry, lor– Vulkan.’

‘It is not an ending, Praetor,’ said He’stan, ‘for the Circle of Fire does not end.’

Praetor nodded. ‘Then I am glad to be here fighting at your side.’

‘As am I, brother, as am I.’

The storm intensified. Several of the Firedrakes had already fallen. Against such an intense levelling of firepower, those who were left would not last much longer.

Nor’hak stood upon one of the gantries, laughing loudly as he rained death upon his hated enemies.

‘Die, die, die!’ he repeated like a mantra, neither elegant or inspiring. He just wanted to kill. It was the only time the tremors ceased, when whatever corrupt fuel filled his veins was stilled. Through the jagged eyeslits of his tusked battle-helm, he watched a Firedrake jerk behind the flare of his canon’s muzzle flare. Spent shell casings spat from the weapon’s breach at an almost mesmeric rate, Nor’hak’s finger clenched perpetually on the trigger.

He laughed again, an ugly, booming sound filled with malice.

‘Stop them, Nor’hak, that’s all I need you to do.’ Those were Nihilan’s words when he was put in charge of the Hell-stalker. Not Ramlek, the dog, but him, Nor’hak.

‘Do that and they will die on this ship. All of them, including the pilgrim,’ Nihilan had said.

‘It will be done by my hand,’ he said, reaching for a fresh mag with a trembling gauntlet. He so wanted to cut them, to plunge a knife into the pilgrim’s heart whilst he was still screaming.

Nor’hak was considering the drop when a blazing heat manifested above. His autosenses were crazed with temperature readings. Unwilling to pause in his manic fusillade, he didn’t see the vaulted ceiling glowing red and the burning line etched in the kilometres-thick metal.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I

Heavenfire

Dac’tyr was not one given to pessimistic thought but when he had lost contact with Praetor and First, he considered the worst had happened.

There was precious little time to mourn the death of the Firedrakes, an entire company, the Salamanders veterans no less, lost on a single mission. It was desperation to believe they could have penetrated the enemy ship, neutralised its host of defenders and destroyed its principal weapon system in one single move.

As Lord of the Burning Skies, Dac’tyr was not given to capitulation either and as they coursed towards the Hell-stalker he summoned his helmsmaster.

‘Plot an impact course with the Hell-stalker, and give me all power to the forward shields and port weapons.’

The response was strained and betrayed the helmsmaster’s injuries. ‘My lord, that is–’

‘Suicidal. Yes, I know. I prefer to think of it as a noble sacrifice. We have no choice. Praetor and the First have failed. We are Nocturne’s last hope.’ He opened up the bridge-wide feed and then broadened the comms-relay further so that it rang through the ship.

Multiple weapon impacts from the Hell-stalker and the other enemy ships still engaged in the void-war registered on the tacticarium display alongside streams of damage data that Dac’tyr ignored. Ahead, the main occuliport was awash with laser bursts and silent torpedo explosions. The front shields rippled and bloomed, dangerously close to being overloaded, and it would only worsen the closer they got to the enemy flagship.

‘All crew, as we are flung headlong into the yawning darkness, heed my words. That sound you hear, the chiming of metal upon metal, the shriek of adamantium steel and the lofty thunder beyond our walls is the anvil. Make no mistake, the time of our reckoning is at hand.’

The bridge was shaking violently. Fires were breaking out across all stations as servitors and human crew battled to keep the Flamewrought void-worthy long enough for it to strike a crippling blow.

‘You have fought for me, you have fought for this ship and for that I will be eternally in your debt. Men and women of Nocturne, Vulkan calls you now. Hold on until the anvil is done with us, hold on and fight with your blood and breath for one last time. This is Captain Dac’tyr, Master of the Fleet and Lord of the Burning Skies. For glory and for Vulkan.’

He couldn’t hear the cheers of defiance above the noise. It was deafening on the bridge. Dac’tyr had to clutch the arms of his command throne just to stay seated.

‘Hold the course,’ he roared above a chain of explosions from the ventral hull that were felt all the way to the prow.

His teeth were gritted so hard he thought they might buckle and snap under the pressure. That was when he saw the flame. At first, as he saw it blaze across the black vista of space on the occuliport, he thought it was a comet or some celestial body that had chosen that precise moment to manifest. Only when it didn’t follow a prescribed trajectory, when it dodged around and through the debris of sundered vessels did he realise it was something else.

It was climbing, this flame, this spear of fire, and headed for the Hell-stalker.

‘Helmsmaster…’ Dac’tyr leaned forwards in his command throne as he tried to get closer to the occuliport. He consulted the tacticarium display but the readings were indecipherable. The sheer speed of the flame spear was incredible. It was like no spacefaring vessel he’d ever seen, but then this wasn’t a ship; it wasn’t a ship at all.

‘Magnify that image and reduce power to all engines. Half impulse on the plasma drives. Pull us out of this collision. Do it at once.’ He relayed coordinates through the tacticarium and a section of the occuliport was brought to extreme magnification as the mighty Salamanders flagship slowly began to course-correct.

Broadsides opened up on the Flamewrought’s flanks as its aspect changed and it came abeam of the Hell-stalker. Shield power was diverted to the starboard side to absorb the retaliatory cannon fire from the enemy ship’s gunners. Scrambled fighters wove and jinked into a maelstrom of bright tracer, seeking out the torpedo spread vented from the Hell-stalker’s tubes.

All of this and Dac’tyr was transfixed by the flaming spear. His eyes widened and he wept openly, realising what it was he was seeing.

‘In Vulkan’s name…’ he whispered.

The flaming spear widened at its tip, spreading into a fiery blade that burned in the void despite the lack of oxygen. Brighter than the sun, it struck the Hell-stalker with the force of a god and sheared it in half.

First Praetor felt an overwhelming sensation of heat and then he saw a crackling wall of flame. It passed through the hull of the enemy warship, cleaved through it like a welding torch cutting through metal. He lost sight of the Traitor Terminators in the heat haze, though he heard their screaming. Depressurisation came in the fire’s wake, the chill of the void rushing into the shaft as the Hell-stalker’s prow simply fell away and parted from the rest of the ship.

Its occupants were jettisoned at once. Praetor’s world became a tumbling, incoherent mass of sound and images as he fought to cling to whatever was left of the crippled ship. Nothing he knew of, no weapon ever fashioned by man could inflict that sort of damage. It had cut the the prow from a capital ship, devastated it and the seimic cannon in a single catastrophic blow. It was impossible.

Warriors were being cast into the void, armour flash-freezing, bolters pumping out rounds slowly with rigid determination. Praetor saw one of the vented Dragon Warriors struck by an errant shell. The brass casing burst against the renegade’s armour, like a metal bloom opening and fragmenting in slow motion. Most of the Firedrakes were still mag-locked to the deck and fought to hold their ground, but the pull was incredible and tore the deck from under them.

He saw Vo’kar, and wanted to reach out. The heavy flamer bearer was sucked from the shaft and spat out into the darkness.

Explosions were rippling throughout the Hell-stalker as the rest of the ship started to come apart. The gun decks went up in a silent flare of incendiary red, felt through the bucking of the abused hull.

Praetor was clinging to an exposed strut, its ragged end molten and hot. His gauntleted fingers drove furrows into the cooling metal as the void sought to claim him. There were dozens of figures out there now, Dragon Warriors and Firedrakes both. Some had become locked in deathly embraces, fighting tooth and nail even as the cold web of space closed in around them.

Dozens became hundreds as the wretched serfs and armsmen from the upper and lower decks were ripped out, disgorged like the innards from some mighty spaceborne beast. They froze upon contact with the harshness of the void; the blood crystallised in their veins, their limbs super-hardened. Several bounced off chunks of floating hull and broke apart on impact. Others shattered into tiny flesh-frozen fragments. Only the superhumans in power armour and the Terminators were capable of surviving in the void, but even that wasn’t indefinite. Stay with the ship as it slowly disintegrrated into a dead and floating tomb or let go and be lost to the vageries of space.

Praetor considered his lack of options.

‘Ferro Ignis, brother.’ He’stan was talking to him through the comm-feed. The Forgefather sounded almost jubilant.

Despite the incredible forces trying to rip him into the abyss, Praetor managed to turn his head. He’stan was alongside him, hanging on to a different piece of strut ribbing. A few other Firedrakes had achieved the same feat. Precious few, Praetor noted.

‘The Fire Sword,’ he said. ‘The prophecy.’

A fiery glow was dying below Praetor as the wall of fire descended to the surface of Nocturne.

Praetor could barely believe the truth of it as he watched the flame-red aura fading. ‘Dak’ir?’

With a lurch of shrieking metal, the strut sheared away and he was cast into the darkness.

Fugis battled at the controls of the Incendar. It was perhaps insanity to take such a damaged gunship out into a void war, but there was little choice in the matter. Reaching the hangar had taken time through the damaged sub-corridors of Prometheus. The once-Apothecary had considered going with Elysius but his place was on the surface with Captain Agatone. He was still a part of the Inferno Guard, albeit one whose place had not been filled for some time.

It was a stupid act, and one born out of the despair he’d felt at Dak’ir’s death. He had been so sure he was right. Amidst the fury of death-riddled space above Nocturne, it seemed a much lesser concern than it had.

‘Bank and turn, thrice-cursed ship!’ he raged, tugging hard on the controls to pull away from a vast piece of looming debris. Fluid glittered in its wake, icy and shining with the glow of distant nebulae. Engines squealing, Fugis fought the gunship under his control amidst further curses. His supplications to the machine-spirits were indelicate to say the least. It wasn’t so much the threat of enemy fire that posed a serious danger to Fugis breaching Nocturne’s atmosphere intact – unless engaging another ship directly, he could go relatively unnoticed into the maelstrom – but rather the immense chunks of floating wrecks and other jetsam that floated in the void. One slip, a single lapse in concentration and the ship would be crushed, him with it.

Fugis coursed through a jagged hole in a frigate’s hull, narrowly making the gap and scraping the Incendar’s outer armour. Within, the vessel was black and silent. Fugis decreased engine speed, slowed so he could see what was ahead and brought up the frontal lamp arcs. Dizzying, pellucid white scorched into the darkened chambers of the dead ship. Bodies, frozen solid, drifted around in the shadows, one half inside an environment suit. They bounced morbidly against the hull as Fugis drove through a floating graveyard. Despite the crusting of ice, the rapid degradation of tissue from void-exposure, the once-Apothecary recognised the uniforms of the dead serfs. They were Nocturnean. He was passing through the sundered guts of a Salamanders ship.

Muttering the litany of the Emperor’s mercy, which was taught to all Apothecaries via the wisdom of the Codex, Fugis shut his senses to the dead and rode on.

The Incendar’s lamp arrays detected a point of egress ahead, describing a much larger gash in the frigate’s flank that it could pass through more easily. From the curious stillness of a floating, tomb-like world, Fugis was thrust back painfully into the void war.

Only seconds after emerging from the destroyed frigate, he was confronted by the slab-sided remains of another ship, only much bigger. This leviathan seemed without end as Fugis wrenched Incendar into a sharp and almost vertical climb. Running a gauntlet of exploding turrets and venting blast doors, he came to the apex of the massive ship debris at last. It was a jagged spike of broken ship’s spine, naked struts jutting from the wound like broken ribs. It had been severed, and molten edges of the metal superstructure suggested it was something phenomenally hot that had done it.

A false dawn was dying off to the gunship’s port side, slightly obscured by the hulking wreck. Fugis caught a distant glimpse, like a spear, like a setting sun falling to earth. At some instinct, for just a moment, he dared to hope.

‘The Fire Sword, the Unbound Flame…’

He was almost caught off guard during his reverie. A chunk of broken deck was hurtling at him with gunship-crushing impetus. Boosting the engines, he slammed the Incendar into a dive and tried to find an opening where he could slip through. Portholes came and went, flashing by too fast to change course or too small to fit the gunship into. The slab of deck was getting closer, the glacially slow suddenly hellishly quick and immediate, when Fugis found his escape route. He passed into a wide and open deck. Corpses were here too, hooked on iron chains or shackled to columns. Slaves, the lost and damned.

Something up ahead, picked out in the magnesium white of his frontal arc lamps, got the once-Apothecary’s attention. He checked twice to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. It was a living being, someone that had survived the death of the ship. Fugis did not need to remind himself this was a traitor vessel. Evidently, one of the garrison had proven tenacious enough not to die.

Flicking the manual trigger lever for the heavy bolter mounted in the gunship’s nose, Fugis intended to rectify that. A second away from blasting the clinging figure to oblivion, he stayed his hand.

Scaled armour, draconian pectorals, the faceplate of a snarling creature of the deep earth – he knew this figure, or at least what it represented.

‘Firedrake.’

Fugis could scarcely believe it. He realised the wreck he was piloting through must be the Hell-stalker and this one of the warriors sent aboard to scupper it. Thoughts of elimination turned to rescue in his mind as he sought out a place to land. A plateau appeared out of the gloom, framed by the gunship’s lamp array. He set the Incendar down a few metres from the stricken Firedrake’s position and opened up the comm-feed.

‘Get aboard. Be quick about it, brother.’

With his boots mag-locked to the crippled deck, the Firedrake was painfully slow in reaching the gunship’s rear embarkation hatch. Fugis had already sealed off the crew section and launched again as soon as the instrument panel indicated the hatch was closed and repressurisation in progress.

He opened up the internal vox to the troop hold behind him.

‘You are fortunate I did not shoot you,’ he said, leaning in to the receiver cup.

‘Had I a flare,’ said the passenger, ‘I would’ve set it off.’

‘Are you alone, brother? Are there others nearby?’

‘All slain. To my shame, I survived.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Brother-Sergeant Halknarr of the Firedrakes. And you?’

‘Fugis, once of the Apothecarion.’

They were finally reaching the end of the deck. The opposite end was wide open, several times larger than a hangar door.

‘I have heard of you, brother,’ said Halknarr. ‘Though I must confess, I thought you were dead.’

Fugis scowled. ‘Lucky for you that I am not.’

He guided them back into the open void. For a few moments the dark skies were clear. Then he saw the wrecks. Ship after enemy ship littered the void, burned and blackened by incendiary fire, broken and bleeding. They’d emerged into utter carnage. It had swung the favour of the battle to Dac’tyr’s fleet and the Salamanders.

Fugis didn’t need to see it to know the spear of flame he’d caught a glimpse of earlier had done this, had reduced an enemy flotilla to rags.

So in awe of this terrible miracle, he didn’t notice the host of gunships arrayed around them until it was too late.

II

Tome of Fire

It was dark in the deep caverns of the world. As he drifted down into the chasmal crater, Nihilan cycled through his optical spectra until he found a filter that provided the cleanest visual acuity. Other than crags and drifting ash there was little to see, but the ridged edges of the bore hole were treacherous. One scrape could puncture a vent, disable his jump pack and send him falling to oblivion in the fuliginous depths below. The seismic cannon had cut a wound into the molten core of Nocturne, close to its heart.

Sulphur palls drifted upwards from the distant basin of the crater, buoyed on rising magma thermals. There was a strong stench of burning in the air, and an acerbic tang invaded Nihilan’s nose and throat despite his battle-helm. It brought back memories, that smell, of his Lexicanum training with Pyriel, of the days when they had fought as allies.

Smoke and heat cascaded across Nihilan’s retinal lenses, occluding his remembrances and fouling the visual signal. Despite the interference, he had seen an opening ahead. He increased the burn in his engines, thumbing just a little more power into the vents. Then he waited silently in the shadows, jump pack eating fuel with a dulcet burr, keeping its wearer aloft and relatively still.

Below them, much deeper into the crater, the blood of the earth cracked and spat. The heady drifts of burning air were thicker here and wafted up from a ruddy pit; the smoke was so dense it obscured the belts of magma boiling at its nadir, reducing them to an umber glow. Soon, it would swell and burst. Mount Deathfire would crack and open. She would bleed to death and drown the world in hellfire.

Nihilan eyed the dark a moment longer.

Nothing stirred, no guardians, no monsters of the deep world opposed them – the way was open. Everything and everyone was on the surface, defending Nocturne. They did not realise their true enemy was below, that the vaults and bastions they thought safe were not.

With such a massive beam, the margin for error with the seismic cannon was large but it was still quite a feat to have homed in on almost the precise incision point Nihilan needed.

Hearts drumming in his chest, he thumbed a burst of power into the engines and glided through the shadow-darkenened corridors to the edge of the crater. His retainers followed. Before them was a chamber, sliced open as if in cross section by a surgeon’s knife. The vault’s massive, artificered gate was cleaved almost in two. A molten arc where the beam had cut into it still glowed. The aperture left behind was easily wide enough for the three Dragon Warriors to enter abreast.

‘I am shaking, Ramlek,’ Nihilan confessed to his dog.

‘It reeks of Salamanders, this place,’ he snarled.

Thark’n merely nodded as the three passed through the shadow of the broken gate.

Low-burning braziers, those not destroyed by the passage of the seismic cannon, described a sparse shrine. The flickering torches picked out an obsidian plinth. Upon it was a book.

Nihilan landed gently onto the floor of the shrine room. It was webbed with cracks and smaller stress fractures but, even beneath the armoured bulk of the three Dragon Warriors, felt solid enough. As the sorcerer approached the plinth, his warriors stayed behind to guard the mouth of chamber. It was like a cave hewn into the side of the mountain, its threshold utterly flat.

‘Nothing moves,’ said Ramlek, surveying the darkness both above and below.

Thark’n slowly panned his reaper cannon around, and grunted much the same.

Nihilan wasn’t listening. His hands were trembling, almost close enough to touch the ancient tome.

‘Vulkan buried you here, didn’t he,’ he whispered, as if expecting the artefact to respond. ‘He discovered something during his time on this world, something from the Old Ways, something forbidden and proscribed.’

Nihilan scowled behind the faceplate of his battle-helm.

‘A jealous father protecting his secrets,’ he hissed, ‘but I know, I see what is within…’ He gripped the edges of the book with gauntleted fingers, holding it up carefully to the light as if at any moment it might crumble. ‘Simple drake-hide, bound with a gilded clasp,’ he muttered. ‘Who would believe the revelations you possess… life, resurrection.’

Engel’saak had told him of the corpsemancers, of the fell men of ancient Nocturne and their dark mastery of the earth. Only a daemon was old enough to remember such things, but it had been all too willing to divulge its secrets for Nihilan to give it flesh again. For the simple promise-price of a vessel, he would possess the means to return life to the dead.

‘For my lord,’ said Nihilan, his voice cracking. ‘For Vai’tan Ushorak.’

His reverant mood was interrupted by a shimmering heat haze materialising towards the back of the shrine. Nihilan felt it before he saw it, as a prickling of his psychic senses. A jagged line of fire tore into reality and expanded. From within its smoke-filled confines, a figure wearing the blue power armour of the Librarius stepped forth and into the chamber.

Pyriel was wreathed in psychic fire as he emerged from the gate of infinity. The force staff in his clenched fist crackled with trapped power.

‘Have you come alone, brother?’ Nihilan sounded surprised, even a little insulted. He was also still holding on to the book.

Smoke drizzled from the Librarian’s armour in a flood. He appeared unperturbed.

‘For now.’

‘That was foolish, very foolish, especially after such a difficult ritual. Did you cast you body and soul all the way from Prometheus?’ Cerulean fire flashed in Nihilan’s eyes. ‘You look tired.’

‘Do I?’

A plume of white flame arrowed from Pyriel’s outstretched fingertips, spearlike and incandescent. Nihilan blocked it with the palm of his hand, deflecting the fire bolt into Thark’n who was about to rake the shrine room with his reaper cannon. Struck in the chest, the Dragon Warrior was pitched from the chamber and into the chasm below.

There was no scream, but Thark’n was most certainly dead.

‘Slay him!’ Nihilan snapped, backing off to protect the book.

Ramlek broke into a loping run, power axe swinging. Pyriel threw the hulking warrior aside with a burning column that spiralled with the heads of chasing serpents and crashed the Dragon Warrior into the chamber wall. He tried to get up but Pyriel hit him again with a blazing hammer that left Ramlek’s armour cracked and trailing smoke. Out cold, the Dragon Warrior didn’t rise again.

‘Just you and me, brother,’ he said, turning to face his nemesis.

Nihilan had his staff in his hand and was describing arcane sigils in the smoke-drenched air with its tip. ‘You failed to defeat me on Scoria. What makes you believe you can do anything other than die this time?’

Pyriel’s eyes flashed cerulean blue in the gloom. ‘Because now you are without your daemon’s crutch.’

Nihilan laughed, his blood-red armour lit by the fiery convocation his old fellow acolytum was summoning. A ribbon of flame wrapped around Pyriel’s body, fending off a hail of black talon-darts.

The psychic castings cancelled each other out but the Librarian had kept something in reserve.

‘Do you remember much of those days, Pyriel?’ asked Nihilan as a surge of flame-red lightning crackled impontently against the dark sigil he’d fashioned in the air. The sigil became a daemonic mouth, drawing the lightning in and swallowing the psychic storm whole.

There was blood in his mouth. Behind his faceplate, Pyriel licked at it where it rimed his clenched teeth. A taste of copper came back on his tongue, warm and vital. That and the throbbing at the back of his skull told him he was losing.

He drew in a long, steadying breath. It felt as if his lungs were lined with razor blades. He exhaled, shuddering.

Vulkan’s blood… One of the black darts had bitten through his armour. Pyriel imagined it moving parasitically through his body, intent on his heart. It wasn’t real, though, just a psychic manifestation. His mind made it real. His will alone could excise it like a splinter from the wound. Gasping another knife-edged breath, he pushed the dart out.

The mental rigours of the duel were wearing him down. Pyriel knew when he had come here, when he had realised what Nihilan was about to do, that he was the lesser psyker. Though he tried to deny it, the ‘sending’ from Prometheus had weakened him. Even at full strength, this was always going to be difficult. Nihilan was formidable. He always had been and that was part of the problem, for Nihilan knew it too. This wasn’t some revenge-crazed renegade, or some blood-lusting warlord thrown from the Eye intent on carnage. Those threats were easy to counter and then vanquish. The weaknesses of such obvious men were exploitable. The ‘chinks’, Pyriel called them. Every opponent he had ever faced had one. Nihilan was different. He had no chinks. Even when they had trained together as Vel’cona’s acolytes Pyriel had seen it. Nihilan was frighteningly pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness, and, before Dak’ir, the most gifted psyker Pyriel had ever met. His powers might already outstrip Vel’cona and here Pyriel faced him, alone.

Every strategy, every piece of psychic alchemy and shred of prescience led the Librarian to the same conclusion: he was going to die. Capitulation wasn’t in his nature.

Even outmatched, he had to try.

‘It’s a pity the master didn’t destroy you when he had the opportunity,’ Pyriel said.

‘Pity, was it? No. It was weakness that stayed Vel’cona’s hand, consigned me to the null collar and the bloody ruins of Lycannor!’ Nihilan carved a blackened blade from the raw material of the ether, gave it solidity and hacked at Pyriel.

A chain of fire wrapped around the smoking edge of the warp blade, snaring it, slowing it. By the time the glowing links had been broken, the black sword had dispersed into ethereal smoke.

The effort of creation nearly staggered Pyriel but he could not show weakness before his enemy.

‘You made your own fate, a Lexicanum with ambition beyond his knowledge. You were warned of the danger–’

‘I sought only to enhance my strength. Mastery of knowledge was our credo, if you remember.’

‘Your tastes verged on the heretical, brother.’

Pyriel was stalling, trying to marshal his power. Amidst the furore of his thoughts it was hard to focus. He hoped his voice had been heard in the ether and not devoured by some hungry, half-spawned sentience.

Nihilan smiled. The gesture was obvious in the timbre of his words. ‘I knew you were tired.’

‘I tire of your rhetoric.’ Pyriel’s bones felt like powder, filled with agony. His muscles cramped as lactic acid threatened to burn them from the inside out. He tried to summon the mantras he needed to fortify his mind but failed.

I am fading.

Nihilan strode around the chamber, like a predator that had trapped his prey. His eyes never left the Librarian. Behind the battle-helm slits, Pyriel saw them narrow.

‘Are you gathering your strength for something impressive, Pyriel? I liked the psy-hammer, by the way. It’s not easy to put Ramlek down.’

‘He died a traitor’s death,’ he spat, ‘no different to any other rabid dog.’ Pyriel brought his staff across his body in a warding gesture, watching the sorcerer’s every step. It took all his efforts just to keep it steady.

Nihilan tilted his head as he considered that.

‘You are at least partially right,’ he conceded.

Bored of the taunting, he grew serious.

‘I only craved wisdom, and Vel’cona sanctioned me for it. Brutally! He stripped me of my power, humiliated me in front of my brothers.’ The derision in his voice created the impression of Nihilan’s sneering face in Pyriel’s mind. ‘You speak of the anvil and how we must all be tempered by it. I see only a bastard’s tool, a convenient excuse to condone negligence. It is blind acceptance. If it is the will of the anvil then it is just, Vulkan had decreed it.’ He clenched his fist. ‘I spit on Vulkan!’ he declared, and brandished the book. ‘This is the only facet of his legacy worth anything and it was hidden by earth and metal.’

‘What is in those pages that you were willing to sunder a world to attain?’ Pyriel asked.

A sudden and disturbing calm possessed Nihilan, as if the truth within the tome were the only salve to his anger.

‘The means to reverse entropy, brother.’ A flash of fire lit his eyes behind the retinal lenses of his battle-helm.

‘Explain it to me.’

Sadness tinged the sorcerer’s reply. ‘You would never understand.’ He put the tome away, shackled it with a dead penitent’s chain to his armour. ‘Enough prevarication. I truly wish I could spare you, brother, but the Fire-born walk a treacherous path that will ultimately lead to their deaths.’

‘And you walk a devil’s road, paved to damnation. Were those the demagogue’s words? Is that how he turned you on Lycannor?’

Nihilan was shaking his head. The voice emitted from his battle-helm was rasping and full of malice again. ‘No… Ushorak opened my eyes, but it wasn’t until your beloved captain burned off half my face and more in the crypts of Moribar that I was truly enlightened. That is when I turned, when I embraced Chaos.’

The braziers around the room guttered violently.

‘That is when I knew I had been truly abandoned and consigned to death by my own brothers!’

Pyriel snarled. His anger was galvanising. ‘You spat on your Chapter and threw it into disrepute by your hubris. You shamed us all, but it will end now!’ Smashing the butt of his force staff into the ground, Pyriel unleased a roiling belt of conflagration that grew into a vast wall of fire, crested by a score of roaring drake heads.

Nihilan sank to one knee. His staff was braced across his body like a breaker when the flame hit him, impeding its flow and spilling it aside. He weathered the firestorm and stood, shimmering with heat haze but otherwise unscathed.

He scoffed, letting the bile rise in his throat. ‘Is that the best you can do?’ Nihilan thrust out with a bladed hand.

Pyriel described a psychic shield of drake scale to repel the next attack but found the casting had dissipated before it was properly formed. Cold was flooding through his chest, spreading to his neck and limbs. A spike of white-hot pain followed, focused on his solar plexus. He looked down.

A lance of writhing warp energy had impaled him, extending all the way from Nihilan’s talons. It bulged with the tortured faces of the soul-damned, twisting like some hellish drill into Pyriel’s broken defences as if they were nothing.

They were nothing, he realised. Nihilan had just been humouring him, debating whether or not to spare his life. All the training, the many long hours spent in psychic meditation suddenly felt cheap. The sorcerer could have ended it at any time.

‘You were always such a petty little pyromancer,’ Nihilan said, ‘but I did love you, brother.’ With an aggressive thrust, he drove the soul-lance deeper as the cerulean light in Pyriel’s eyes died forever.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I

Summoning Fire

Even through the rebreathers in his battle-helm, it was the smell that assailed Tu’Shan first. Pervasive and noisome, it carried the reek of spoiled meat. It even overwhelmed the tang of ash and sulphur on the breeze. If the stench was a warning, then the fat beat of leather against the air and the shadow eclipsing the sun described the nature of Tu’Shan’s enemy.

Daemon. Standing in the Promethean’s lofty cupola, he lifted his gaze to the blood-red sky.

It was dragon-kind, or something that had moulded itself to look like one. Such things had been consigned to myth aeons ago, the wicked kin of the nobler and most ancient drakes as recounted in Promethean lore. Like all Nocturneans, Tu’Shan had been taught the legends of the ancient wars between the monsters of the deep earth and the towering mountain crags. It was before the coming of men. Few remembered it, or cared to. Like so much history, it was lost and forgotten, unimportant. The beasts of that singular age had been titans. This one, albeit an ersatz version, was immense.

Gunning their engines, a pair of Predators went to engage it, turrets booming. Autocannon shells exploded harmlessly off the daemon’s scaled hide. In retaliation, it spewed a torrent of warp fire that reduced the tanks to molten slag and their crew to ash.

In front of Hesiod’s walls the battle had reached a crescendo and was still being fought furiously despite the unfolding cataclysm, but several warriors had stopped the killing to witness the terrifying creature.

‘Stay back!’ Tu’Shan shouted down the armoured column’s feed, knowing that he would be sending his Fire-born to their deaths if they got involved. Despite his orders, an armoured Rhino strayed too close to the daemon and was immolated. Another, slewing on its tracks to drive clear, was smacked aside with a sweep of the creature’s tail. It rolled, spitting fire and frag before crashing to a halt on its roof. Side hatches were kicked open and what was left of the crew and occupants staggered out.

The creature needed a distraction before it destroyed the entire tank company. Tu’Shan called down to the Land Raider’s driver.

‘Promethean, forward!’

If he must sacrifice his life to stop this thing, then so be it. The anvil would temper or break him. It was time to test the strength of the Chapter Master’s forging.

He had to bellow above the scream of the engines to be heard but Tu’Shan’s voice carried well enough, ‘Hell and flame!’

Both side sponsons erupted as the flamestorm cannons were unleashed. Purifying promethium washed over the daemon and it was lost in haze of heat and smoke.

‘Pour it on!’

The fire intensified as the flamestorm cannons were pushed to their critical limits.

A silhouette writhed in the fiery maelstrom and for a moment Tu’Shan dared to hope… but a beast of the abyss, a true daemon-kind, was not so easily banished.

On unfurled wing, the creature sprang from the conflagration. It trailed fire and smoke, emitting a screech of hellish anger. It was hurt, but far from dead.

Tu’Shan grimaced as the daemon-dragon smacked into the Land Raider’s hull. He got off a desultory burst from the pintle-mounted storm bolter before the battle tank pitched onto its nose and the Chapter Master was thrown clear of its negligible protection.

Tu’Shan skidded across the ash-sand but used the momentum of the fall to spring quickly to his feet.

The dragon-daemon had crushed the front of the Promethean, squeezed its armour in its talons like it was parchment and left it buring. The venerable battle tank had fought in countless wars and now it was reduced to wreckage. Tu’Shan’s anger fed his resolve like a furnace but the daemon’s sheer presence battered him back so he had to stand braced against it or be pushed to his knees.

Tu’Shan pulled out Stormbearer and held it up like a talisman. The thunder hammer glowed with a faint light, lent strength to his limbs.

Serpentine eyes regarded him curiously, as if the daemon was putting an identity to the mortal challenging it.

A morsel of anxiety fluttered through Engel’saak as it felt again the bite of sanctified steel that had sent it from the material plane. The daemon easily suppressed the tremor of half-buried horror from its host. Too late had the vessel realised the folly of its compact with the daemon. It was beneath Engel’saak’s notice. This mortal, the one bearing the burning bright hammer, had its undivided attention. After the demi-god had banished it, Engel’saak had drifted along on the warp tides for millennia, with only its anger as sustenance. It had been weak, vulnerable and prey to the greater intelligences that swam those ethereal seas. Returning had not been easy.

Vengeance would not be swift for this mortal, Engel’saak decided, but it would be painful.

‘Recognise this?’ Tu’Shan said, then muttered under his breath, ‘You do. You’re an old bastard, aren’t you?’

An answer of sorts was forthcoming. Rising up on its hindquarters, the beast extended a long, sinuous neck to its full height and released a storm of hell-fire.

Tu’Shan roared, and brandished his hammer like a shield as the flames washed against it. Rreaching around his back, he gripped the edge of his drakescale cloak and threw it around in front of him. No fire existed that could penetrate salamander hide and Tu’Shan’s had come from one of the oldest and most venerable beasts. It provided a better barrier than Stormbearer but after a few seconds, the heat was intense.

‘How much fire is in you, hell-kite?’ he spat, hunkered down against the barrage.

Instinct made him move, and the slightest suggestion of the blaze abating. The daemon slashed with a massive talon, carving furrows into the earth in Tu’Shan’s wake. Lava plumed from the gash in Nocturne’s flesh, scalding the creature and drawing an avian shriek from its foul, distended maw.

Tu’Shan smiled grimly. His land, his heartblood – it had risen to the defence of its Regent. While the daemon still recoiled from its wounding, he struck it hard across the foreleg and was rewarded with an audible crack of bone.

His second blow never fell. The daemon fended Tu’Shan off with a beat of its colossal wings, buffeting him back so he had to regain his footing. Like ash carried off by the wind, he’d lost his advantage as soon as it was gained and was back on the defensive.

Parrying a lash from the daemon-dragon’s barbed tail, Tu’Shan staggered. His guard opened up to a raking talon that would rip apart his artificered armour and spill his lifeblood over the ash-sand.

Vel’cona’s lightning shield saved the Chapter Master’s life. It flickered and spat as the creature’s warp essence touched it, reacting like a refractor field does when exposed to rain. There was a hiss of static then the stink of ozone and the shield collapsed.

Not waiting for a riposte, the Master Librarian threw a psychic storm against the daemon, feeding arcs of jagged, azure lightning into its neck and torso. It was badly burned. Fat slabs of scale hung off the daemon by immaterial threads and an ugly, black scar marred the bloody shimmer of its hell-skin but the daemon still came at them.

‘Back!’

Tu’Shan obeyed without question, falling back as Vel’cona thrust his open hand towards the ground. As he brought his hand back up, stiffened into a grasping claw, the surface of Nocturne was wrenched up with it.

Tendrils of dust and debris trailed off a vast, metres-thick wall of earth. For a few seconds even the daemon-dragon was obscured from sight. The clatter of crumbling stone presaged its return as the creature crashed through the elemental barricade.

It was relentless. Pain, fatigue, fear; these concepts held no meaning for the denizens beyond the veil. Mortal limitations did not apply to its kind.

Vel’cona dug deeper, dredged up the bedrock Hesiod had been founded on. With a psychic sculptor’s hand he fashioned a prison of sanctuary stone around the creature, encasing it within the fortified heart-rock of Nocturne.

It barely held.

‘That cage of stone won’t trap it for long,’ he said.

Tu’Shan could hear the tiredness in the Master Librarian’s voice, though he betrayed no outward sign.

‘Then we’ll take our chance to smite it now,’ he said. ‘Can you reach the Flamewrought?’

Vel’cona’s eyes narrowed. ‘It should be possible. What are you thinking, my lord?’

‘If psychic lightning and sacred hammers can’t kill this thing, we need to use something bigger.’

The Varkonan broke up with a satisfying chain of explosions along its starboard side. Incendaries in the prow cooked off in the resulting blast and finished off the cultist-cruiser in a spectacular supernova. By the time the light flare of the Varkonan’s death faded, it was sinking into the void like a headless shark, bleeding gas and crew.

Dac’tyr watched another icon blink out on the tacticarium and looked for the Flamewrought’s next target.

‘Frigate, abeam, port side,’ he spoke into the bridge-vox. ‘Give it a volley of the broadside laser batteries.’

A few minutes later and the already damaged enemy frigate was no more. In the final stages of the battle they had racked an impressive tally of kills. Dac’tyr committed each and every one to memory for the brander-priest to score his flesh with later.

Other concerns were at the forefront of his mind at that moment, and it wasn’t the swathe of ships he was cutting down with impunity either. Dac’tyr knew the Flamewrought and trusted it with his life. It had never lied to him, never let him down in any way, and yet he still found it hard to believe what the tacticarium had described when he’d been locked on a suicidal ramming run against the Hell-stalker.

He should be dead. They all should be.

Despite Dac’tyr’s best efforts, the Salamander fleet had been facing certain defeat, outnumbered and outgunned by a superior foe. The Lord of the Burning Skies was a superlative captain, he knew this without a shred of arrogance, but even he could not have achieved victory in such a scenario.

A trailing torch of fire had intervened. Everything changed in the space of a few heartbeats. It had torn the enemy flagship into pieces and crippled several others. The balance of the scales had tipped, and in Dac’tyr’s favour. He meant to make the most of it.

Though he didn’t have many functioning vessels left, those he did have were being put to good use. With the flame’s intervention, it was now a matter of destroying the enemy ships above Nocturne that were either too tenacious or too stupid to flee into the warp. The dark eldar were already long gone. They’d quit the void-war much earlier for some inexplicable reason. Some of the more belligerent war-spheres of the kroot remained. A broadside barrage raked one that had appeared through the debris field left by the destroyed frigate and been seen via Flamewrought’s main occuliport. There were a handful of smaller renegade cruisers too, cult ships and hell-barges brimming with fanatics. Such creatures as these didn’t know how to retreat. They couldn’t. Dac’tyr and his fellow captains punished them without mercy.

The death of the Hell-stalker had signalled the defeat. It was the first unpicked seam upon which the enemy’s plans unravelled, but a crucial one. The massive capital ship was reduced to a floating wreck, listing in the blackness and broken into three disparate sections. Venting fuel, vapour and men, it was a cold carcass ripe for later plunder by the void’s carrion-eaters. Dac’tyr was content to let it drift.

Like a belt of tiny signature flares, the Firedrakes spilling from the shattered hull had appeared brightly on the Flamewrought’s augur arrays and sensorium. Dac’tyr had dispatched his entire complement of gunships and fliers with any troop capacity to pick them up. The surviving Dragon Warriors disgorged at the same time were gunned down. Two ships, a Caestus and a Thunderhawk, had fallen prey to the renegades, hacked apart as they collided and latched onto their hulls, but the rest engaged in the rescue mission were successful.

Flocks of the lighter vessels were already bound for Nocturne, descent jets blazing. Communcation with the surface had still not been re-established, which meant the ground war was still being waged. Reinforcement from the First would make a difference to its outcome. After everything, victory was within reach.

One gunship amongt the vast squadron was not in Dac’tyr’s original roster. The Incendar was being piloted by a Brother Fugis. The name was known to the captain as belonging to an ex-Apothecary he’d thought dead. Brother Fugis had gruffly corrected him on the falsehood of that in no uncertain terms when the Flamewrought had made contact.

Unlike the other gunships, the Incendar was headed back to Prometheus after a belligerent warrior, the Black Dragon survivor of Volgorrah, Zartath, demanded the presence of an Apothecary on the space station. Dac’tyr didn’t ask about the fate of Brother Emek, who he knew was supposed to be manning the Apothecarion, and instead sent a single Thunderhawk escort with the Incendar as it went against the tide. Word had come via Master Argos that Prometheus had sustained casualties but was secure, Vulkan be praised. Fugis’s return was timely, then.

As the gunnery captains unleashed the Flamewrought’s broadside salvos, Dac’tyr reviewed the damage reports and crew fatality lists. It was hard reading. Both ship and men had taken a severe beating. The bridge itself still carried the scars of the battle. Several bodies were still awaiting transfer but had to make do with being shawled by silver hypothermic blankets for now. Already, Dac’tyr had begun to formulate a programme of repair and refit for the broken fleet. It was methodical and exacting, as was to be expected from a Salamander. As soon as the void-war was won they would return to Prometheus, to whatever hangars and docking spikes were operational, and rebuild. Dac’tyr wanted to revel in victory, to excise some of his grief in cathartic retribution, but practicality would not allow it. Let the rest of the crew vent their anger. They needed it.

Dac’tyr was in the process of evacuating and sealing off several damaged areas of the battle-barge when a keening sensation split his skull like an axe-blade. He gripped the tacticarium for support, stumbling from his command throne as he lurched forwards in agony.

‘My lord?’ ventured the bridge’s practitioner. At his order, a pair of nearby medical servitors began to approach, bio-scanners drawing data from the staggered captain, but he waved them off.

Dac’tyr clenched his eyes tight. His hands were balled into fists pressing on the tacticarium display. Then he relaxed, exhaled a breath and opened his eyes again. His voice was thick and laboured as he summoned the attention of the helmsmaster.

‘Have the gunners power the prow-lances,’ he said, wiping a line of blood from his mouth, ‘and prepare a firing solution to the surface.’

‘That’s an orbital strike, my lord,’ confirmed the helm, reviewing the coordinates.

Dac’tyr had almost recovered. An intense ocular migraine still blurred his sight, worsened by the chromatic aberrations in his peripheral vision, but at least he could see again. The sensation had not been a pleasant one and if the war on Nocturne was won he intended to have serious words with a certain individual.

‘It is. Be precise.’

II

Redemption

A miniature sun was born in the bloody sky above them, magnesium white and growing by the second. Static electricity crackled the air, presaging a flurry of dry lightning strikes. Vel’cona fended off one with his outstretched palm; another he earthed to his force staff.

‘We should retreat to a safe distance,’ he said. His cerulean gaze never left the stronghold of rock he’d forged around the daemon. Small stones were already skittering down its rugged flanks, along with rivulets of displaced grit.

Tu’Shan gestured to the Promethean, lying crushed on its side.

‘What about tank armour for cover?’ he suggested.

Vel’cona didn’t need to look. He dare not. ‘Good enough.’

Together they reached the wreckage of the Land Raider as a tiny targeting beam pierced the oily clouds above.

As if waking from a dream to a sudden and terrible realisation, the look on Vel’cona’s face made Tu’Shan turn.

‘What is it?’

‘I have to leave. Immediately.’

In less than a minute the lance strike would hit the surface.

‘Right now?’

‘Nihilan is inside the vault.’

‘Beneath Deathfire?’

Vel’cona nodded.

Tu’Shan’s gaze strayed back to the cage of stone where the Master Librarian had trapped the daemon.

‘Whatever his goal, he must be stopped. I can finish this thing myself.’

‘With respect, you cannot, my lord.’

‘You’ve been wrong before.’

‘Rarely.’

‘Then pray this is one of those times. Find Nihilan. Stop him.’

Vel’cona didn’t argue. He disappeared in a flash of cerulean light, bound for the nadir of the world just as a blazing white light filled its heavens.

Lorkar shouted for his warriors to take cover as the orbital lance strike came down. It hit the earth with an ear-splitting boom, the shock wave billowing out as far as the ravine where the Marines Malevolent sheltered. It was bright, incredibly bright and the after-flare was slow to recede from the sergeant’s retinal lenses.

A pall of debris washed over them, flung from the impact point. Hard grit caught up in the eddying swirls of dust plinked against the sergeant’s armour. Sulphurous smoke was pooling in the deep basin too, running off the mountains. In the dirt-smog, Lorkar’s vision worsened further.

‘Harkane!’ He summoned the Techmarine, knowing the visual filters in his bionics could penetrate the murk.

A whirring, clanking shadow knelt down beside his sergeant. It sounded like Harkane’s machine parts were in need of re-sanctifying. Manipulating a series of dials embedded into the mechanical part of his skull, his ocular bionic implant ground noisily into focus.

‘Ordnance, fired from deep space,’ he asserted.

Lorkar racked the slide on his bolter impatiently. The gloom was still too thick for him to penetrate. ‘I know that. Tell me what just happened down here.’

Harkane’s bionic clicked three stages to the right, one back to the left as he refocused. The dirt cloud was extremely dense. Without rebreathers, a non-augmented human would choke to death in it. Grey soot veneered the Marines Malevolent’s chipped yellow armour from the disturbed ash-sand.

‘The Chapter Master of the Salamanders is down. Not dead.’ Harkane adjusted again, his optics relaying a low intermittent hum as they zoomed in on the target. ‘Cursory wreckage analysis suggests he was thrown by the blast. Currently, he is trapped beneath a section of a battle tank that has flipped onto its side.’

‘Any rescuers?’

Harkane panned around. The aperture of his bionic expanded and contracted as it continually refocused and adjusted.

‘Negative. The lance strike has isolated him from the rest of the fighting. I can detect no heat signatures or electronic returns within five hundred metres. The density of the surrounding dust cloud suggests visual recognition would be even less than that.’

Lorkar smiled, muttering, ‘So we have our opportunity.’ He was almost salivating at the prospect of the Salamander’s Chapter Master pinned and helpless. ‘And the creature?’ They’d seen it soaring overhead before it engaged the Chapter Master and his witch. Lorkar had no desire to become the subject of its attention. His mission was very specific.

There was a short pause as Harkane gathered more data before he answered. ‘Inconclusive. The blast radius suggests the Chapter Master was thrown beyond its immediate path.’

‘And into ours,’ Lorkar concluded. The dirt cloud was thinning. He could finally see the prone Chapter Master sprawled on his back, trying in vain to push the massive battle tank off his trapped leg.

It was just like Stratos all over again. He was back inside the Aura Hieron temple with Kadai at the mercy of the traitors. Dark memories returned of his captain facing off against the warp spawn, an assassin lurking in the shadows, the melta beam ending him forever…

‘Never again,’ Tsu’gan swore, closing silently on the warrior below him.

‘Stay alert,’ Lorkar told his troops. ‘This is still an active battlefield.’ He was about to order the advance when a fire-red glow scorched overhead.

As one the Marines Malevolent crouched down and aimed their weapons skywards. It was fast, so fast Lorkar couldn’t detect its origin.

‘Anyone get a bead on that?’ No one replied. ‘Harkane?’

The Techmarine shook his head. ‘Negative.’

It moved erratically, like a hunter-seeker missile, only it was ablaze.

Vathek gestured with his well-worn chainblade as the flame disappeared somewhere in the distance.

‘There! What is it?’

‘A fight we want no part of,’ muttered Lorkar. He was looking through the magnoculars. Putting the scopes down, he shook his head, ‘All I can see is fire.’

Karvak, the Apothecary, was conducting a cursory analysis with a battered auspex. ‘I’m reading intense thermal spikes on a vast scale and holding.’

Harkane confirmed.

Not far beyond the wreckage site where Tu’Shan was struggling to free himself, the air shimmered with haze.

‘I can actually smell the heat coming off that thing, even from here,’ said Vathek.

Lorkar scowled. It was a risk, anything unknown always was. The others had slowed. As their sergeant, he needed to get them moving again. The voices gave him focus, boosted his resolve and determination. Vinyar’s orders… weren’t they, recalled from deep conditioning? He could almost feel certain sections of his salvaged armour contracting against his skin, reminding him of his mission.

I will not fail you, lord.

‘Not our concern. We are presented with an opportunity. This is what we came here for. Seize it! With me. Now.’ Lorkar leapt a shallow barrier of rock, slipping from the ravine as Vathek glanced to the ridgeline behind them. Gorv’s silhouette was barely visible in the dispersing dust cloud. The sentry appeared to stumble.

‘What about Gorv?’

‘I can see no sign of Vogan, either,’ said Karvak, following Vathek’s gaze.

Lorkar barked into the comm-feed, static adding unneeded grit to his voice, ‘Forget them. They will have to catch us up. Move!’

He had never abandoned men before. Ever. Something was wrong. Lorkar knew it. He had known it ever since they had left the Demetrion. Only now he no longer possessed the desire to care. The mission was all that mattered. Salvation was all that mattered. Head low as he ran through the dirty smog, he only hoped they had not left it too late.

Tu’Shan had enough self-awareness to realise he was injured. This was not a flesh wound, like the countless minor injuries he had sustained through the course of being a Space Marine; this was genuinely debilitating. Warriors died from such wounds. Not because of the wound itself. It wasn’t life threatening. They died because they were weakened, and an enemy will always seek out a weakened opponent to put him down. Tu’Shan had no intention of dying to an executioner’s blade or a point-blank shot to the side of the head. He would fight. So, he heaved against the Land Raider with all the strength he had.

That he had survived the blast was testament to his endurance, but his leg was trapped beneath the tracked section of the tank. He blessed Vulkan’s mercy for that. Under the hull and he’d require a bionic replacement. As it was, he could drag the limb loose and need an Apothecary rather than a Techmarine in order to walk again.

Dark spots blossomed intermittently in front of his eyes, but it wasn’t through his failing consciousness that he had lost sight of the daemon. Tu’Shan hoped it was dead. The lance strike hit harder than he’d expected. He knew the risks. The pressure wave had lifted the wreckage of the Promethean off the ground, him with it. For a few crucial seconds he’d blacked out. By the time he’d come round again, he was on his back in the dirt with a massive battle tank sat on his leg.

Stormbearer was lashed securely to his wrist, the only reason he still had the hammer. He gripped the haft and swung, deciding to smash the track apart instead. The first blow went a little wide, splitting off a few chunks of metal tread. Too cautious. The second put a crack in one of the Land Raider’s track rollers. Tu’Shan didn’t swing a third time.

He felt the presence of warriors gathering around him and arched his neck so he could look behind him. One of the Marines Malevolent he’d met aboard the Purgatory stalked into view. Smoke was rolling in from the venting calderas in the mountains, muddying the view, but the warrior wasn’t trying to hide. It didn’t even occur to Tu’Shan to question why this warrior was on Nocturne. His posture and determined gait told the Chapter Master all he needed to know. From a prone position, the warrior was upside down and had drawn a short combat blade. That confirmed it.

‘I knew you were a bastard, Lorkar, but I didn’t think you were also a traitor.’

‘I’m flattered you remember me.’

‘I never forget a bastard.’

‘You can’t goad me, Tu’Shan. I’m not one of your whelps.’

‘Are you here to try and kill me then?’

‘If that were my intention there would be no try.’ Lorkar thumbed the activation stud on his grip and the combat blade buzzed into motion. ‘I merely wish to part you from something.’ He looked around theatrically. ‘Seems your brothers have abandoned you.’

Tu’Shan suspected the rest of the Salamanders were close, maybe even looking for him, but he’d been carried far from the main battlezone. For now, he was on his own.

‘Save the histrionics. I need no help in besting the likes of you,’ he said, then smiled mirthlessly. ‘I could do it with one leg crushed beneath a tank.’

Lorkar nodded as three of his cohorts appeared behind him, brandishing their blades. ‘Just as well.’

Tu’Shan immediately lashed out but to his blind side, crippling the Marine Malevolent trying to outflank him. The warrior’s knee plate buckled, the bone too as it was pulped by Stormbearer. His assailant collapsed and screamed in agony, clutching at his shattered limb.

Lurching onto his elbow, Tu’Shan swung across his body and caved in the chest of a second ambusher. He fell back and didn’t move again.

‘Two down,’ he snarled, ‘sure you don’t want to even the odds some more?’

‘No,’ said Lorkar, shutting off his combat blade and sheathing it. The three warriors behind him had drawn bolters and levelled them at the Chapter Master. ‘I think we’ll just shoot you instead.’

‘Always thought you were a murdering dog, bereft of honour.’

Lorkar beat his fist against his plastron. ‘I am no murderer,’ he snapped, before recovering his lost composure. He gestured with his bolter’s serrated bayonet at Stormbearer. ‘But I will take that hammer.’

Tu’Shan’s face creased with angry confusion. ‘Trophy hunting? I thought you Malevolents only cared for scrap.’

And that was when Lorkar revealed the truth.

‘I need it. Need. It.’ He ordered the others to lower their guns. ‘Something happened to us, aboard a ship.’

‘The Demetrion,’ said one of the warriors, a Techmarine judging by his trappings.

Lorkar nodded to him. ‘The Demetrion.’ He unclasped part of his vambrace armour. It was an old piece, battle-scarred and scorched by fire. It detached from a larger section that sat beneath it. An unpleasant musk escaped into the air as this second layer of plate was revealed. It was pitted, rusted at the edges and fused into Lorkar’s flesh.

Tu’Shan had seen the tainted armour of traitors before. He knew how it could mould to the wearer, become a symbiotic part of them.

‘Vulkan’s mercy, you have turned. You just don’t realise.’

‘It was not…’ Lorkar faltered, ‘intentional.’

Tu’Shan was dour. ‘The path to damnation never is.’

Lorkar let the bolter swing loose on its strap and drew his blade again, his mind in obvious disarray. ‘I am sorry, but I need that hammer. I can break it…’ he said, breathless. ‘I can break it apart, become who I was.’

Tu’Shan shook his head slowly. ‘No, brother. You can’t.’

There was a gleam of madness in the sergeant’s eye. ‘We shall see.’

The four Malevolents attacked together. Tu’Shan blocked the chainsword of one with his haft. Another he punched in the face as he lunged. Lorkar rammed his vibro-blade into the Chapter Master’s armour, between the pectoral and shoulder guard. Tu’Shan cried out as the churning teeth met flesh.

‘Give it up,’ Lorkar snarled.

The fourth warrior, the Techmarine, had wrapped a gauntleted hand around the Stormbearer’s haft.

‘Not even when I am slain,’ said Tu’Shan, feeding a jolt of power into the hammer and severely electrocuting the Techmarine who was flung back several metres and landed in a quivering, smouldering heap.

Lorkar drove his blade deeper. ‘So be it.’

The chainsword came down again, the attacks from its wielder frenzied. Tu’Shan parried a couple of blows but one got through his defence and ground against his rerebrace. The one whose face he’d punched was back up too and keen for retribution. Looking through the frantic melee, Tu’Shan realised the warrior’s helm and face were one. Skin and metal were conjoined.

‘This is madness,’ he spat. ‘The hammer will not achieve what you want it to.’

‘It will cut me free of this nightmare,’ said the helmet-headed one, drawing a sidearm and pressing it to the Chapter Master’s temple as he struggled.

An executioner’s blow.

The others pinned him, Lorkar no longer caring if he had Tu’Shan’s blood on his hands.

‘I can separate you easily enough,’ promised a voice behind them.

Helmet-head half-turned, bringing the bolt pistol around, but was stopped by the chainsword cutting through his neck and decapitating him.

‘See?’ said Tsu’gan, running through another, tearing up his innards until they were red mulch inside his tainted armour.

Lorkar swung wildy at him. ‘You were dead,’ he protested, as the other sentries he placed around the ambush site started to return.

‘No, brother. Your troops, those fools you left on the ridge, they are dead. I am very much alive.’ He blocked the sergeant’s overhead cut, punching him in the gut with his free hand. Lorkar recoiled and went for his bolter.

Tsu’gan saw it coming and severed the weapon through stock and barrel.

On the ridge at the edge of the blast crater, reinforcements were looming. Tsu’gan gripped the bolter hanging off his shoulder on a strap and put down the first Malevolent to appear.

Return fire juddered from the dust and smoke in a series of dull muzzle flashes. Tsu’gan clipped another and then strafed right as the ground was chewed up in his wake. Between bursts, he saw Lorkar fall back to his own ranks and scowled with disdain. Shots were pranging off the Land Raider’s impregnable hull as he slammed against the tank’s underbelly next to Tu’Shan.

‘Let’s hope they don’t have anything more substantial in their arsenal,’ he said. The Chapter Master’s eyes were penetrating as he took in his rescuer’s ravaged face, his borrowed armour. ‘Are you afflicted like them too, brother?’ he asked.

Tsu’gan’s voice darkened. ‘No, not like them.’ He squeezed off a few rounds of snap fire to keep the Malevolents pinned.

Tu’Shan was close enough to the edge of the tank to peer around it into the smoke.

‘They’re widening their spread,’ he said, ‘trying to encircle us.’

Letting off another desultory burst, Tsu’gan rolled behind the improvised barricade. ‘We need to move.’

‘Agreed. Can you lift a Land Raider, brother?’

Tsu’gan regarded the point where the track had Tu’Shan pinned. ‘Not above my head, but…’

As the rain of fire continued to batter the tank, he got his fingers under the piece of half-wrecked track and heaved.

‘We thought you’d perished in the warp,’ said Tu’Shan, realising what Tsu’gan was attempting and forcing the long haft of Stormbearer under the tiny aperture he had made.

‘In a way, I did.’

Together they pushed down on the thunder hammer, using it as a lever.

‘Get ready to move that leg,’ said Tsu’gan. The shots smacking the hull were getting closer.

‘Whatever you have done, you can be redeemed,’ Tu’Shan told him, seeing the emptiness in his eyes. Hauling his leg out from under the Promethean, he grimaced but didn’t cry out.

‘No I can’t. Not yet.’ He helped the Chapter Master to sit up, got his back braced against the underside of the tank.

‘You saved my life, Tsu’gan.’

Tsu’gan paused, about to sneak a glance around the edge of the Land Raider. It wouldn’t be long before Lorkar had them surrounded. ‘You might still die yet, my lord.’

A voice called through the smoke and dust behind them, ‘Lord Tu’Shan!’

It was Agatone.

‘Here come your saviours now, liege.’

The closing bolter fire striking the hull receded as Lorkar chose discretion over valour.

‘Stay,’ said Tu’Shan, eyeing the retreating shadows of the Marines Malevolent even as those of Agatone and the Third materialised at the edge of the crater. ‘Stay with your Chapter and–’

He was talking to the air. Tsu’gan was gone, lost to the ash and smoke.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I

Broken by the Anvil

Strands of gossamer-thin unreality shredded before Vel’cona as he passed through the flaming infinity gate and into the vault. A battered and crippled Pyriel was sliding to his knees as he arrived, the gaping hole left in his chest by the warp lance raw and mortal. He had trained the acolytum, seen in him something great and the promise of legacy. None of that would ever come to pass. Nihilan had seen to that.

The Dragon Warrior sorcerer reacted immediately to the Master Librarian’s presence, unleashing a storm of darkness. Vel’cona fashioned a hasty defence of protective sigils described in the air with his force staff but was too late to negate the deadly summoning.

‘Hell has come to you, master,’ roared Nihilan. Vel’cona barely heard the taunt above the terrible tumult of the cloud. Inhuman voices, deep and guttural, smothered all thought and reason. He felt their malign will pressing against him as tangible as any blade.

There were things writhing in the blackness. Vel’cona felt them slither against his armour plate, pallid tentacles of sentience that left burn marks in the ceramite. Horror lived here in this cloud and it wanted to pick him clean of flesh, bone and soul.

Bowing his head, Vel’cona shut his eyes as he struggled to maintain his focus. Mental strength, the endurance of will was all that a psyker had. It was what kept him alive against the predations of the warp, against the very conduit through which he siphoned his power. Vel’cona had spent many hours, long years in fact, in psychic meditation, learning to manipulate and interpret the vagaries of the warp, channelling and honing his powers. He needed every second of that dedication to his art during those moments when the black horror was all about him.

Vel’cona sank to one knee as the coiled tentacles lashed, retreating to a molten core within himself. Here was his fortress, his refuge against dark forces. He had forged it with his own psychic hands, raised and nurtured it. Pain made him jerk and spasm, reminding him of the immediacy of reality. Threat of taint kept him awake. Nothing must disturb his serenity. A beacon of light shone in his mind’s eye, just a flicker at first but growing swiftly to a roaring pyre. Vel’cona regained his feet, wrapped himself in armour of fire. Where it touched him, the hellish cloud became ablaze. Its myriad sentience shrieked as it was put to the flame, turning to scraps of ephemera that burned away like parchment before being reduced to ash.

Emerging from the fading darkness, Vel’cona fed a lightning arc through his palm that struck Nihilan in the shoulder. The Master Librarian called down a second strike that cracked his chestplate then a third, hammering the Dragon Warrior as he tried to rise.

Nihilan earthed a fourth bolt with his staff, using it like a lightning rod. He was halfway to his feet when Vel’cona clenched a fist to split the ground beneath him. Foundering in the cracks, Nihilan threw a wayward spit of hell-flame that the Master Librarian repelled easily with a dismissive gesture.

‘Weak, sorcerer.’

‘So was your apprentice.’

Pyriel’s body lay inert on the floor of the vault, bloodless and still. During the momentary distraction, Nihilan summoned a lance of darkness that would strip his old master’s soul from his flesh and leave the rotting husk in its wake.

Vel’cona threw up a spear of his own, an arcing line of flame that met the blackness of Nihilan’s warp sorcery and held it.

Fire warred against shadow. The vying psychic conjurations expanded as more power was fed into them by their wielders, becoming a miniature event horizon that slowly filled the vault and everything in it.

Within the boiling morass of warp energy, Vel’cona percieved his avatar as a roaring drake, thick-scaled and tusked; whereas Nihilan had fashioned one of the dragon-kind, a blood-red, winged beast scarred by old wounds. The monsters clashed, gouging and clawing, tearing hunks of scale and flesh with their fangs, giving physical form to the mental struggle.

Slowly, the drake began to assert its dominance. It grew larger even as the dragon diminished.

‘Pyriel shall not die unavenged,’ Vel’cona promised as his monstrous avatar bit down on the other’s neck and tore off its head. The fountaining gore became motes of sundered warp energy, dissipating in a violent explosion that threw Nihilan across the vault.

Vel’cona heard the sorcerer’s spinal column crack as he hit something hard and unyielding. In the far reaches of the chamber, obscured by shadow, was an anvil. It struck Vel’cona that despite the time he had spent in the vault he had never seen this anvil before. It was old, colonised by rust. There was something ancient, slightly anachronistic about it. It was a black-smiter’s tool but one left unused for many years, even millennia. Nihilan had been broken against it.

But he wasn’t dead. Not yet.

The cerulean fire in Vel’cona’s eyes dimmed to faint embers. Despite his better judgement, he put his force staff away. Nihilan’s was snapped in two, far from the sorcerer’s agonised gasp.

‘I’ll choke you with my bare hands for this,’ Vel’cona promised. ‘It will not be quick.’

It wasn’t for his staff that the sorcerer was reaching.

A blast of fire smashed into Vel’cona. Like a tank had rammed him in the flank, the Master Librarian hurtled across the vault. In spite of the pain, he was on his feet within seconds of being downed.

Ramlek was badly burned, his armour hung in scraps across his body, but he was healing. Puckered flesh reknit and smoothed over. Bloody gashes sealed themselves up as if an invisible thread was stitching them together. Bones re-set with an audible crunch. In moments he was whole and vital again.

‘Impressive trick,’ Vel’cona conceded.

The renegade dog glared. ‘Death to the Salamanders,’ he growled, and spewed gouting fire from his mouth.

Vel’cona sheltered behind his drakescale cloak and let the flames smother him. After he’d endured the worst of Ramlek’s conflagration, he threw the mantle off, ready to kill them both, but found the vault was empty.

His enemies were gone, and they had taken the tome with them.

Allowing the lightning arc he was marshalling to fade, he was about to focus his powers in pursuit when he heard Pyriel’s choked voice.

‘Master…’

Incredibly, he still lived.

Vel’cona went over to him. He had to hold up Pyriel’s head to keep it from falling. ‘I am here. Be at peace, brother.’

‘I am sorry, my… lord.’

The words did not come easy for the Epistolary. He had hung on this long, but the fire was calling and would soon consume him.

‘For what?’ Vel’cona asked.

There was a gaping chasm in Pyriel’s torso from where the soul lance had gutted him. Though the hell-fire had cauterised the wound, it had left it black with taint and destroyed the majority of his organs. Only his will had kept him alive this long. With no Apothecary at hand, this was the end of Pyriel’s legacy, and for that Vel’cona was truly remorseful.

‘For my defiance at the council, for… trying to kill Nihilan myself.’

‘He was beyond us all in the end, brother, but you need not apologise to me. It is your strength of will that was always your greatest asset.’

‘Perhaps it is… ironic that this is what saw me dead.’

‘Perhaps, but I take no solace from that.’

‘Did you finish him, lord?’

Vel’cona’s expression darkened. ‘No. Nihilan escaped with the book, one of our most sacred relics.’

‘He means to resurrect Ushorak with… the proscribed lore within its pages.’

‘I should have foreseen this.’ Vel’cona looked into the darkness as if prying an answer from its depths. None were forthcoming. ‘My thought was bent solely on the prophecy. I was blinded, Pyriel and for that I am sorry.’

There was no reply.,

‘Brother, did you hear–’ Vel’cona looked down but Pyriel was already dead. He let out a long and rueful breath. ‘I will bear you to the mountain myself.’

The vault was devastated and the tome’s sacred temple defiled, not that it mattered now. At least Nihilan had been made to pay a price of sorts. The anvil had broken him, it had…

Vel’cona could not find it. He searched in the darkness but the vault was empty, just as it had been when he’d first entered. The anvil, if it had ever truly been there, was gone.

When Agatone found the Chapter Master slumped against the underbelly of the wrecked Promethean he was quick to signal for reinforcements.

The smoke had begun to clear at last and a bright, bloody-hued sun glared down on them from an oppressive sky. To Agatone, it was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

‘Promethean sun…’ he breathed, descending into the basin and taking it as an omen from Vulkan.

Sporadic bolter fire erupted from distant engagements as warriors of the Third made the site secure. Beyond that, the last throes of a larger campaign were being fought and won. News of the Hell-stalker’s destruction and the defeat of the enemy fleet, along with their general’s sudden absence, had reached the ground troops. Apart from the Traitor Astartes who still fought doggedly, the rest were all but routed.

Reports were coming in rapidly on the comm-feed. Captains Mulcebar and Drakgaard had made contact. Heliosa and Aethonion were secure; the few enemy forces that had reached their borders were unsupported and swiftly crushed. Units from the reserve companies were en route to Hesiod to help round up any recalcitrant enemy formations that still remained.

Gunships, squadrons of them, were landing in the Pyre Desert. Straight from the victorious void battle, the Firedrakes were deploying in force and cutting off the Dragon Warriors’ retreat. Between hammer and anvil the enemy would be crushed. The war wasn’t over yet but the Salamanders had the tactical and numerical advantage. Surely, it was just a matter of time.

‘He is here!’ Agatone cried out, rushing to Tu’Shan’s side. ‘Can you walk, my lord?’ he asked, dispensing with any preamble. Tu’Shan nodded. He was weak, and spoke through clenched teeth.

‘Tsu’gan,’ he said, ‘did you see him?’

Agatone was trying to assess his Chapter Master’s injuries. The right leg was badly crushed and there was another wound to his shoulder and torso. Without an Apothecary, he couldn’t be certain of their severity.

‘I saw no one leave this basin, my lord,’ he replied.

Malicant and Shen’kar, survivors of Agatone’s Inferno Guard, were close by and keeping a watchful eye. They had encountered renegades on the way in to where they had found Tu’Shan.

‘We are clear for extraction,’ crackled the voice of Honorious through the feed.

Agatone turned from the Chapter Master for a moment, showing his profile as he put a gauntleted finger to an ear-bead.

‘Contact Brother Hek’em and get the Fire-wyvern to this position immediately. Our Lord Chapter Master is injured.’

‘In Vulkan’s name, brother-captain.’

Agatone cut the link.

‘He was here,’ said Tu’Shan. ‘Tsu’gan,’ he clarified, ‘he saved my life.’

Lowering his bolter, Agatone helped Tu’Shan to his feet, supporting him on his wounded side like a crutch.

‘I saw no sign,’ reasserted the captain. ‘We must get you back into the city and then to the Apothecarion on Prometheus.’

Tu’Shan was barely lucid. He kept drifting in and out of consciousness, enhancing Agatone’s concern further.

‘You’ll get me to Hesiod where I’ll stay until this war is won.’

‘It is not safe, my lord. We must–’

‘Am I not your Chapter Master?’ snapped Tu’Shan, though his anger was fleeting because of his injuries.

Agatone reluctantly conceded. ‘To Hesiod then, under my protection. There are human medics in the city. Not as versed in Space Marine physiology as a practitioner, but even still.’

Tu’Shan shaped to protest but Agatone was quick with a rebuttal.

‘In this there will be no argument.’

Now it was the Chapter Master’s turn to nod and concede. They had reached the edge of the basin and were hobbling out of it to higher ground as two squads from Third forged a protective cordon around them.

Shen’kar was setting up the signal-beacon for the Thunderhawk when a shadow flitted across the sun. It was winged and jagged-edged, bringing with it the stench of spoiled meat. Guts churning, Agatone set the Chapter Master down and crouched with his bolter aimed at the sky.

‘Bolters high!’ he warned.

The two squads forming the cordon followed the captain’s example, as did Shen’kar and Malicant.

The air became still and thick, the company banner a lifeless piece of cloth attached to its bearer’s standard.

‘It is the creature, the drakon.’ Malicant used Vel’cona’s word for it. ‘I can sense it.’

‘As can I,’ muttered Shen’kar. The veteran’s flamer would be of little use against an aerial target so he concentrated on acting as spotter for his brothers instead. Several of the squad warriors muttered much the same. Even soaring high above them, the presence of the creature was palpable.

‘Didn’t we just level an orbital lance strike against that thing?’ said Malicant. They had seen the magnesium flare from the main battlefield.

Shen’kar nodded, scouring the smoke-laden sky for any sign.

‘Stand ready,’ Agatone told them. ‘Stay behind me, my lord.’

It was a daemon, this thing. No one had described it thusly but Agatone knew enough of such creatures to recognise one in his midst. And it was old, this one. Venerable. Even with squads from Third and his retainers, he knew he couldn’t kill it.

Tu’Shan was unconscious, having reached the limits of his endurance. Suddenly vulnerable, Agatone and his men would have to safeguard the Chapter Master’s life. Nothing else mattered.

From imminent victory to dire peril in just a few heartbeats, no war was ever truly won until the last enemy was killed. This one, the creature prowling the skies above them, eclipsed all others. Its shadow passed over again, closer this time. It was circling.

‘Hek’em?’ Agatone reached the Fire-wyvern’s pilot and tried to keep his voice calm and level.

‘Inbound, captain,’ was the clipped reply.

‘Make it swift. We are not alone out here. And watch the skies, brother.’

Static foiled Hek’em’s immediate reply. ‘I see it, captain, aloft on pinioned wing.’ There was another short delay as the pilot convened with his crew. ‘It has seen us! Engaging!’

‘No, brother. Evade!’ Agatone searched the skies desperately but knew he was impotent to do anything on the ground for Hek’em.

The feed stayed live. Muffled shouting and the low bark of heavy bolter fire filled the background.

Agatone listened. Warning sirens suddenly forced their way to the forefront of the feed. The Fire-wyvern was in trouble.

‘Vulkan’s blood…’ Hek’em’s reply was broken, only half-focused as he concentrated on not dying. ‘There is… I can see something… fire. Captain, I see fire.’

‘What in the hell-pits is he talking about?’ asked Shen’kar, who was listening in.

The sky was suddenly ablaze as if all of the air in the upper atmosphere had turned to fire. It was roaring, incandescent… devastating.

The sensation in Agatone’s guts faded, supplanted by awe and a desire to kneel down in supplication.

Moments later, the descent jets of a Thunderhawk gunship could be heard as Fire-wyvern made its landing on the plain. It was burned. The wingtips and fuselage were black. Talon marks scraped the troop hold but it was still operational. The glacis plate disengaged with a hiss of released pressure and Hek’em stood up in his pilot’s position in the cockpit.

‘Get him aboard now,’ he said. His tone was urgent and without ceremony.

Agatone knew better than to question. He turned to Shen’kar as he lifted the unconscious Chapter Master back onto his shoulder. ‘Help me, brother.’

Shen’kar took the other arm and between them they half-dragged, half-carried Tu’Shan to the Fire-wyvern’s lowered embarkation ramp.

Agatone used the feed to speak to Hek’em.

‘We are aboard, brother. Close the ramp and get us into the air.’

Powering turbo-fans obscured the pilot’s affirmative reply. The embarkation ramp was still lifting as the Thunderhawk soared into the air. Through the slowly closing gap Agatone saw the sky. It was an ocean of fire, boiling and churning a few metres above them. He caught a glimpse of something arrowing through its waves. It was carrying a heavy burden, a monstrous thing with splayed wings unable to resist the fury of the fire tide that bore it away towards the mountain. This spear of flame that Agatone saw, it looked very much like a man.

‘Did you see that?’ asked Shen’kar, as the ramp closed and pitched them briefly into darkness.

Crimson hold lamps flickered on as Agatone replied, ‘I did, but do not ask me what it was, brother. For I have no words for it. None at all.’

II

Saviour and Destroyer

Burning, ever burning. The flame was incandescent, like a supernova given form in a human host. It had torn the metal ships from the endless night like they were nothing; less than nothing. Like a blade of fire it had ripped through them and cast them screaming into the void. It was infinite as an ocean, endless as time. It was the flame and its power was without limit. All would burn. Everything would be as ash before its rage was spent.

Dak’ir was only partially self aware. A significant part of him was given up to the fire coursing through and over his body.

I must be anchored, he thought, struggling to channel the roaring psychic energies within. More than a hundred sentiences crowded inside him. Their animae and subsumed memories were fuelling him. He knew he was no Unbound Flame, whatever that even was. He was not a relic given the form of flesh. He was a conduit.

Upon the throne of Scoria, Gravius had held onto the psyches of his former brothers and it had driven him to insanity, burned him from the inside out. But Gravius was no psyker, his mind was untrained and unready for the burden of legacy he placed upon it. He was merely a vessel, a means of harbouring that power until the right host came along. Dak’ir was the Ferro Ignis, the Fire Sword, and he had emerged from the ashes of war to smite Nocturne’s enemies.

This beast from the blackest pit, this hell-spawned thing he fought across the blood-soaked heavens was pre-eminent amongst them.

It raked him, scoring deep rents in his fiery armour, as they struggled. Dak’ir carried a burning blade, literally a tongue of sharpened fire made solid and white-hot by his psychic will. He hacked into the beast, ignoring the damage he was sustaining to its talons. Only when it bit his shoulder, seizing upon it with long, serpentine jaws, did Dak’ir cry out.

He lashed at it with a burning gauntlet, cracking its scales and tearing at its flesh. Hammer blows that would have crushed battle tanks rained against the daemon. His sword-arm effectively pinned, Dak’ir battered at its neck, dug his flame-wreathed fingers in and gouged until it shrieked in agony. Wounded, the beast recoiled. Beads of molten lava bled from Dak’ir’s armour as he was released, cauterising and sealing his damaged shoulder.

It was fighting him, fighting against the flame that would bear them both to Mount Deathfire. Belatedly, the daemon realised its peril. It felt the heat of Nocturne’s oldest and greatest volcano. Embattled, they soared to the mountain’s summit, bursting though dense banks of pyroclastic cloud, surging beyond thunderheads of dry, crimson lightning. Sulphur wreathed the breeze, so thick and corrosive even the daemon’s unnatural scales began to blacken.

The daemon struggled, but the flame was stronger. Dak’ir let it take another shred of his will and conscience, fuelled it into bearing the daemon to the edge of Deathfire’s caldera.

‘Dak’ir,’ it said, ‘please… brother.’

He knew that voice. It was his brother, but a distant, traitorous one. He blinked and it was a Salamander in his clutches, a warrior of his Chapter and blood.

‘Iagon.’ Dak’ir didn’t recognise the resonance in his reply at first; it took him a moment to realise it was him that had spoken. The word crackled as if it too were ablaze. Whorls of smoke escaped from his parted lips.

‘Save me, brother. You were always the compassionate one, Dak’ir. I knew I should have followed you, trusted you. I was betrayed, led to this devil’s bargain, but you can redeem me. You can–’

Pitiless, fiery eyes regarded the daemon-Iagon as Dak’ir saw the ruse for what it was.

‘Still the serpent, still the traitor,’ he said. ‘You are going to burn for all you’ve done, monster.’

Desperation gave the daemon a last rush of strength. Iagon’s pleading mouth grew into a distended smile. It opened, revealing dragon’s teeth, and threw black fire against Dak’ir. For a moment, he was engulfed. Blinded, choking to death on the warp fumes, his mind awash with images of burning worlds, Dak’ir lunged and trusted to instinct.

A scream was torn from the daemon’s throat, the creature’s true name.

Dak’ir spoke it loudly, the words unutterable in any mortal tongue but passing from his lips as easily as breathing. The black fire receded, withering away to nothing. The burning blade in Dak’ir’s hand had become a lance. It pierced the daemon’s ribbed belly and transfixed its heart.

Then it fell, still wearing Iagon’s form, and Dak’ir fell with it, over the edge of the crater and into Nocturne’s fiery heart.

The daemon was devoured, its physical form burned up and consumed by hungry, vengeful lava.

Dak’ir felt his strength and will fading. He had fallen far, deep into the lifeblood of the mountain. He needed to rise. Deathfire tried to pull him down, to swallow the flame. It was draining, bleeding away the power that had made him capable of sundering starships. With the last of it, he climbed. Every effort was bent towards escaping the endless lava sea. Like a sword reborn from the forge’s fire, Dak’ir breached the surface of the caldera. Blind, weakened by the battle, he soared erratically across the heavens. Too weak to stay aloft, he plummeted like a fallen comet into the Pyre Desert, burning a great furrow into the earth.

When Dak’ir opened his eyes again, he was on his back and staring into a bloody sky. He didn’t know how long he had been lying there. The fire that had coursed through him was dying out. Just a few stray embers remained. His time as the conduit for whatever power had infused him was ending.

‘Saviour or destroyer,’ he rasped through cracked, fire-blackened lips. His armour hazed with heat, partly molten from the influence of the flame. It cracked as it cooled, a forbidding sound that make Dak’ir think of his bones.

The daemon was dead, banished back to the Eye. Nocturne’s armies were victorious. All the doom-laden prophecies, the vision he had seen during the burning. None of it had come to pass. He lived and so too did his world.

‘Saviour…’ he decided.

Dak’ir was about to rise when he felt a surge of heat within him. A fiery core of something he had thought extinguished was suddenly reignited. Despite his injuries, he struggled to his feet. In the distance, enemy troops were retreating from a force of Firedrakes. Gunships were taking to the air. Even further away, he could see his brother Salamanders reinforcing Hesiod’s walls. A blackened Thunderhawk touched down on one of the city’s landing pads.

He looked to the sea, to the endless desert, to the mountains, and imagined the other Sanctuaries. Victory cries would fill their mouths, songs would be sung, tears of sorrow and relief would be shed. Life, despite everything, would continue on this hell-world.

Unless…

Dak’ir tried to harness the flame, to bring it under his control, but it was beyond him now.

I have to die, he realised. He needed to sever the conduit at its source. He was that source. I have to die.

The burning blade was gone and Dak’ir could not make it manifest. He carried no other weapons and so could not even fall upon his sword. He wanted to call out even as the fire around him began to grow. First it would infuse his fingertips, then it would wrap around his body, then burn the desert, burn so hot the sand would turn to glass. The fire would expand, more destructive than a payload of atomics. It would burn and consume, overwhelming the cities until all that remained was ash.

‘I cannot stop it…’ The realisation was cold, in sharp contrast to the heat, and terrifying. Glaring at his fire-wreathed fists, Dak’ir was not even sure he wanted it to stop.

‘Then let me.’

The first blow across his back put Dak’ir on his knees. He snarled, trying to find his attacker, but a second blow doubled him over. He lashed out blindly, hit something hard that fell back. On his feet, Dak’ir saw the face of his enemy.

‘I’ll beat the fire out of you,’ said the scarred warrior wearing a renegade’s armour, his bottom lip curled down in a snarl. ‘Ignean.’

Tsu’gan advanced on Dak’ir, the teeth on his chainsword blurring. He smashed Dak’ir across the chest, cutting a deep groove in his armour, and then struck again, hard across the shoulder guard.

Impelled by its need for survival, the burning blade started to materialise in Dak’ir’s hand but Tsu’gan just hit him again and the weapon faded to smoke. The blow should have killed, but Tsu’gan had only managed to put a crack in Dak’ir’s armour.

‘Trying to marshal your strength, to burn us all to hell and back,’ Tsu’gan spat, landing a punch across Dak’ir’s jaw.

Dak’ir was staggered but parried the chainsword with his vambrace, letting the teeth drag and spark against his battle-plate. He smashed Tsu’gan in the torso and threw him back. Burning ovals where Dak’ir had placed his fingertips blackened Tsu’gan’s armour.

‘I heard you were lost to the warp,’ said Dak’ir. ‘I knew it could not be true. I felt you were still alive.’

‘I did die. I just came back to kill you.’

‘We are still brothers, Tsu’gan.’

‘You are no brother of mine, Ignean,’ he snapped, then lowered his voice a moment. ‘None of you are any more. Like I said, I died.’

‘How did you even find me?’ Though he tried to conceal it, Dak’ir was struggling to keep the flame at bay. In his mind’s eye, his fingers clutched the floodgates but he was slipping.

Tsu’gan smiled, at least one half of his face did. The other was too badly burned to form expression. ‘I was hunting different quarry when I saw your burning trail in the sky. I knew it must be you,’ he sneered, ‘the one of the prophecy, the doom or salvation of Nocturne. To me, Ignean, you were always just an aberration.’

‘You are the one armoured in the trappings of a renegade.’

‘Aye,’ said Tsu’gan with a hint of melancholy as he brandished the chainsword, ‘and I shall use them to dispatch you.’ He swung the weapon around, relieving some of the tension in his wrist. ‘Now, bare your neck to the blade and I’ll end this quickly. I always despised you, Hazon, but you killed that thing Nihilan dredged from the abyss. I don’t understand how, but you did and tore the bastard’s fleet to ribbons too. For that, I’ll grant you a merciful death but death it must be.’ He gestured to the sand in front of his feet. ‘Now, kneel.’

‘Zek, I…’

‘Just kneel. Do it quickly.’

Dak’ir nodded but didn’t kneel. Instead, he thrust a hand around Tsu’gan’s throat.

‘I am the flame,’ he said, in a resonant voice akin to his own, as the skin held beneath his gauntleted fingers began to smoulder.

Tsu’gan screamed.

‘Everything must burn. Even you, brother.’

Tsu’gan met his gaze and over four decades of resentment poured from his eyes as he croaked through gritted teeth, ‘Not this day, Ignean…’ He rammed the still buzzing chainblade into the crack he’d made in Dak’ir’s armour, shoving it into his body all the way to the hilt.

Dak’ir gasped and released his grip.

Tsu’gan let the chainblade go, left it buried and churning. He collapsed to his knees, clutching at his ruined throat but determined to watch as Dak’ir staggered.

The vessel for the flame, its psychic conduit, had been breached. Fire was leaking from the grievous wound, spilling from Dak’ir’s eyes and mouth in a glutinous flood. Ablaze, burning inside and out, he threw back his head and screamed.

The flare of burning light that roared out of him was brighter than a dying sun.

Tsu’gan didn’t bother to defend himself. It was pointless. He closed his eyes, thought of Captain Kadai and let the blast wave take him.

Val’in was on the wall with Exor, ministering to Master Prebian, when he saw the explosion in the desert. It looked like a fireball, burning and expanding rapidly until it collapsed under its own mass and dissipated.

Below them, the Salamanders and the citizens of Hesiod had seen it too. Shoulder to shoulder, Fire-born and human alike stopped to witness the event. None amongst them knew what had happened. Few would even recognise the names Zek Tsu’gan and Hazon Dak’ir. They would never know of the sacrifice that had been made and the legacy that had brought it about.

Exor had been working with a field kit, dressing Prebian’s wounds, when the flare had made him look up.

‘What in Vulkan’s name was that?’ he asked.

Val’in couldn’t tear his eyes away. ‘Victory and death, brother.’

‘And ending?’

‘No. The Circle of Fire never truly ends.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I

Sons of Vulkan

‘Is this all that was left of him?’

Tu’Shan was sitting on his throne with his right leg fixed in a brace. The armature had been fashioned by Master Argos to assist with the Chapter Master’s recovery, but also meant he was confined to quarters on Prometheus.

According to Fugis, who had taken over responsibility for the Apothecarion after Emek’s death, the wound would heal given time. Not many warriors, even Space Marines, could expect to walk after being crushed beneath a Land Raider, let alone be able to fight, he had reminded the Chapter Master.

Tu’Shan was looking at a pict screen that showed an image of an armoured silhouette burned into the ash-sand.

‘We scoured the desert for days on end and in every direction,’ said Agatone.

‘With how many?’

‘As many as the repairs to Hesiod and the other Sanctuary Cities could spare.’

‘And Tsu’gan?’

Agatone shook his head sadly. ‘No sign, my lord. It seems he perished in the fire.’

‘No Salamander can be burned by fire,’ Tu’Shan countered.

‘It was no ordinary blaze, my lord.’

Tu’Shan stared at the pict and tried to make sense of everything that had happened. Barely a few weeks ago, Nocturne had been under siege and close to destruction. Prometheus was in ruins and overrun by xenos. His Chapter was brought almost to its knees and eradicated. It had taken this long to sift through the wreckage.

Now, the traitors were dead or fleeing, cast to the warp like the craven dogs they were. The deserts and mountains had been purged of any lingering enemies. The hostile environs of Nocturne would deal with any that had fled deep enough to avoid the Salamanders patrols. According to seismographic beacons Argos had instructed planted in the deep deserts, the planet was tectonically stable for the moment. How long that state would last was not known. Prometheus was partly restored and functioning as a space port again, albeit with a reduced fleet until extensive repairs to Dac’tyr’s damaged ships could be made, and Vulkan’s Eye was operational under Kor’hadron. But Tu’Shan still had questions, lots of them.

‘He is gone, my lord.’ Vel’cona stepped out from the chamber’s penumbral gloom and into the flickering brazier light. ‘They both are.’

Tu’Shan looked up and met his gaze. ‘As is Nihilan, if I’m led to believe correctly.’

The Master Librarian nodded humbly. ‘He escaped with the Tome of Fire, a piece of it at least.’

‘Bent on resurrecting Ushorak, is that right?’

Vel’cona betrayed no emotion. ‘Those were Pyriel’s last words, yes.’

‘What is to be done about that?’ asked another.

It was the first time Elysius had spoken since the assembly. The Chaplain looked tired, despite his rigid posture. Restoring the faith and resolve of the Chapter had been at the forefront of his many duties since the invasion. Learning of Dak’ir’s supposed apotheosis and eventual fate had also seen him retreat to the Reclusiam for hours, even days at a time. He had only recently returned from one such castigatory session.

Tu’Shan let out a long, weary breath and leaned back in his throne.

‘Nothing can be done, not yet. We cannot hunt the traitor, nor can we prepare for an old enemy resurrected.’ He glanced at the Chaplain. ‘For now we rebuild, gather our strength. The Emperor’s wars must still be fought. The crusade has not ended for us.’

He regarded his captains, all of those who had fought in Nocturne’s defence. Only two were absent, Mir’san of Second who was fighting the wars the Chapter Master had referred to, and the captain of Seventh. More than ever, the custodian of the Scouts was needed. Tu’Shan’s gaze fell on Praetor last of all. The veteran sergeant had lost many aboard the Hell-stalker, though the survivors numbered well over half and included the Dreadnoughts Ashamon and Amadeus.

He knew Praetor felt the losses keenly. More would be needed to swell the ranks again. In fact, a list of battle-brothers had been provided that were considered worthy of commendation.

‘We live, so too does Nocturne and our Chapter,’ Tu’Shan told his officers. ‘The anvil has tempered us, forged us stronger.’ He allowed a pause, gauging the mood of his warriors during the short silence.

Beaten but resolute, battered yet enduring.

It would suffice, for now.

‘That is all. Go to your duties,’ he added, ‘in Vulkan’s name.’

Their reply echoed him in unison as the Salamanders officers departed. Some were bound for galactic war far from Nocturne’s orbit; others would remain to bring about the rebuilding Tu’Shan had spoken of.

‘Masters Vel’cona and Elysius,’ he said. The Master of the Librarians was always the last to leave and lingered behind as the throne room emptied. The Chaplain knew this was coming and had not stirred.

Tu’Shan dismissed the Firedrakes too, ensuring the three of them were alone.

‘Is it possible?’ he asked simply once the throne room was empty.

‘Is what possible, my lord?’ asked Vel’cona.

‘Please don’t be evasive, Master Librarian. You know of what I speak.’

Vel’cona nodded, contrite. ‘Ancient and proscribed rituals can achieve many things, but I have never heard of one returning life to the long dead.’

‘And what do you say, Brother-Chaplain? You have told us all that you witnessed a miracle on Volgorrah. Are such things even feasible?’

‘Are you asking me if I believe it can be done, that the disparate spirit can be reunited with the body and the body itself restored at the same time?’

Tu’Shan didn’t answer. He waited.

‘Ushorak was a bastard and a zealot. I have never seen a Chaplain of his like before. Ever. He inspired devotion with a will of iron and a brutal ethic as far as punishment and righteous fury were concerned. There are few of my order that ever caused me disquiet, but he was one of them. If all it takes to crawl from the worm-infested earth is will then he is already clad in armour and clutching his crozius as we speak. Thankfully, that is not the case.’

‘You failed to answer my question, Elysius,’ said Tu’Shan.

‘That is because it has no answer. I cannot say whether I believe it or not. Dak’ir arose from death, from death, and became something which defies definition. Now he is gone and with him any answers he might have had, though I doubt he knew any more than we did.’

‘The Unbound Flame,’ Tu’Shan said to Vel’cona. ‘Was he an artefact made flesh, one of the Nine?’

The Master Librarian had no answer, either.

Tu’Shan turned and glared into the darkness at the very edge of the throne room.

‘Can you tell me, Forgefather?’

Vulkan He’stan had entered silently and emerged from the shadows at the chamber’s door.

‘No, Dak’ir was not the Unbound Flame.’

‘Is that it? All of your wisdom and that is all you have for your Regent?’

‘Should I lie to you, Lord Tu’Shan? Should I break the solemn bond of brotherhood we forged just to salve your mind?’

Tu’Shan looked about to retort but then sagged in his throne. ‘No. Of course not,’ he said. His voice was low, tired. ‘Forgive me, brothers. I am weary. I want answers where there are none to be found.’

‘I am leaving,’ said He’stan, apropos of nothing.

Tu’Shan nodded, knowing this would happen.

‘I am glad you were with us for this long.’

He could see the sadness in the Forgefather’s eyes, his desire to stay warring with his honour. The Nine were his masters. Perhaps with their acquisition, some measure of truth could be found that would explain everything.

Somehow, Tu’Shan doubted it.

‘As I fought the daemon and Nocturne burned around me, I felt something,’ he confessed. ‘As if I were not alone.’

‘In the vault, I felt it too. I think it even broke the traitor’s back,’ said Vel’cona.

‘It was alive in all of us, brothers,’ said Elysius.

He’stan didn’t need to speak his evidence to show he had experienced it too.

‘His strength was in my arm. I saw it in the courage of us all,’ Tu’Shan went on. ‘It has made me consider whether he is truly dead.’

He’stan smiled. It was a strange expression to see on one usually so taciturn and enigmatic. ‘He is not dead, my lord.’ He opened up his arms in an expansive gesture. ‘I see him before me now. He lives on. We are, all of us, his sons.’

Tu’Shan nodded. There was determination and strength etched upon his face as if it had been branded there by the priests.

‘Vulkan,’ he said.

‘Vulkan,’ answered the others.

II

Legacy

The practice servitor exploded in a shower of sparks. Oil and pseudo-plasma was spewing from its severed cabling, smoke spilled from its machinery. It was a heavy-duty variant, armoured up and fashioned to absorb punishment.

Ba’ken had split it apart with a single blow.

As he yanked the chainblade free with a grunt of effort, he became aware of someone watching him.

‘Emek’s notes suggested you preferred to train in the Themian hell-pits.’

Ba’ken turned around and sheathed the sword in a nearby weapons rack.

‘I believe a great many scorpiad and gnarachnid were disturbed during the earthquakes. You could have your pick of the fiercest,’ Fugis concluded.

The Apothecary was wearing his power armour, although he eschewed a battle-helm. He paused at the entrance to the training cage, observing.

‘Looks good on you, brother,’ said Ba’ken, indicating the armour.

‘Feels heavy, somehow.’

‘The armour?’

‘No, not the armour.’

He meant Emek and the void left by the previous Apothecary.

‘I feel it too,’ Ba’ken confessed.

‘The burden of leadership, you mean?’

As soon as Ba’ken had been able, Prebian had handed over the mantle of captaincy of Seventh. The Master of Arms had returned to his old duties and to tend his own wounds.

‘Yes, and the fact that my two closest battle-brothers are dead and gone.’

Fugis stepped into the training cage. He picked up a power stave from the rack, gauged its heft and indulged in a few practice swings.

‘Your technique needs some attention.’

‘Aye.’ The Apothecary restored the stave to the rack. ‘But I’d wager there’s no one can touch me at spearing sauroch.’

They laughed but their humour died quickly.

Dak’ir was gone. Emek was dead. Many others had also lost their lives in the war. Brothers. Allies. Friends.

Fugis turned his back, considering his next words. ‘You know, Ba’ken, I could tell you that as Salamanders we must endure. I could quote the Promethean Creed and discuss the nobility that comes with self-sacrifice.’ He faced him, and his expression was stern. ‘I am not Elysius. I won’t do that, so if you’re looking for a catechism to bolster your battered faith or some esoteric scrap of scripture to salve your grief then seek it elsewhere. I am concerned with bones and blood, your body not your soul. You are strong, brother, but do not make the mistake of leaving this battle cage until you are ready.

‘Emek is dead and I will take over his duties from here on out. Dak’ir is gone, also likely dead. Vel’cona has other acolytes to fill his place. You and I, we live, we go on. If I can give you a single piece of advice, it’s don’t dwell in grief. Become strong. Hone your aspirants and make them strong too. We shall need them.’

‘I feel alone, Fugis.’

‘You are alone,’ snapped the Apothecary. ‘We all are. Deal with it.’

He left a short pause to allow the message to sink in.

‘I will have need of you soon, so I would suggest finishing up in here and joining me in the Apothecarion.’

‘Val’in and Exor?’

‘Yes, they are to receive the black carapace. It’s the beginning of a bold new legacy for the Fire-born. You should be there to witness it. Oh,’ Fugis added, ‘Zartath has been added to your list of responsibilities also.’

‘The Black Dragon?’ The tone of Ba’ken’s voice suggested this was anything but good news.

‘It might be some time before he can be reunited with his Chapter. If he’s to be useful, he will need indoctrinating into our ways of war. I cannot think of anyone better for this task than the Master of Recruits.’

Fugis turned his back and was walking out of the cage when Ba’ken called out to him.

‘You really are a hard-faced bastard, Fugis.’

The Apothecary didn’t turn or slow down, he merely said, ‘I am a pragmatist, brother. No more, no less. Be swift, your former aspirants are already prepped for the final stage towards apotheosis.’ He stopped a few metres beyond the cage entrance and turned. His eyes flashed red in the gloom.

‘I trust you will be ready.’

Fugis walked on until he was lost to the darkness.

Ba’ken nodded slowly. He felt the strength in his arm. His entire body radiated with power.

‘I will be ready,’ he promised to the shadows. ‘The Salamanders will rise again.’

EPILOGUE

The signal beacon blinked three times in quick succession on the viewscreen, paused for a second and then blinked again three times.

Leaning over to the receiver cup, the Thunderhawk pilot spoke into the vox.

‘Mechanicus facility detected and in range.’

The message was relayed through to the troop hold. As he finished, he switched back to the emergency rebreather he was using for oxygen.

It was dark in the troop hold. Most of the lume arrays were down and what sporadic crimson light there was did little to alleviate the gloom. It did describe the melta-sealed sections, the ragged industrial solder lines. It also cast a grim, visceral light on the rows of the wounded. There were several.

Lorkar had known the danger when he’d accepted Nihilan’s offer but he had not realised the full cost. Of the thirty men he’d entered Nocturne with, only four were battle-ready and one of those was the pilot. The rest, those he and his able-bodied brothers had managed to drag from the blood-soaked ash-sand, numbered in single figures. Barely a squad had survived.

He glanced at Harkane before he answered the pilot.

‘Then get us to a landing zone quickly.’

The Techmarine was keeping them aloft, deep in supplication and ritual to the machine-spirit as he worked to ensure the turbo-fans kept turning.

Lorkar still couldn’t quite believe they had escaped the vengeful Salamanders ships. They’d fled through the debris field of stricken vessels, under fire. They’d taken several hits but managed to limp to the orbit of a Mechanicus station at the edge of the system. Had the Salamanders’ fleet not been so badly damaged during the battle, he felt sure they wouldn’t have reached this far.

As it was, they now had a chance.

Karvak was knelt over one of the fallen, muttering.

Lorkar watched him unsheathe his mono-molecular blade and shove through the warrior’s gullet, up into his brain. Then he went to work with the reductor.

‘We are a dying breed,’ he said to the Apothecary.

Karvak was drilling noisily through super-hardened bone carapace, and pretended not to hear him.

Lorkar became quickly distracted, scratching at the infected armour plate fused to his arm. There was another piece attached to his back, a section of cuirass that was also irritating him.

‘What fate for the Marines Malevolent now?’ he mused, ‘What fate for the damned?’ One of the wounded stirring caught Lorkar’s attention.

He shuffled over to the warrior, bracing himself several times whenever the damaged gunship bucked and pitched. The pilot and his gunner up in the cockpit had a difficult task ahead of them to bring the limping vessel in but were at least prevailing so far.

‘Be still, brother,’ Lorkar whispered. The warrior was muttering something under his breath. He was badly burnt. The upper portion of his armour was scarred black and half-melted from heat.

‘Be still,’ Lorkar repeated, pressing a hand reassuringly to his chest. ‘We are nearing salvation.’

The wounded warrior grimaced. He might have snarled. It was hard to tell in the gloom and with his facial injuries. Lorkar realised he was trying to speak, to impart a message.

Lorkar leaned in close. ‘Tell me, brother. I will answer if I can.’

He heard the tension in a gun trigger being slowly squeezed and when he realised what the wounded warrior was saying, knew his critical error.

‘Salvation does not exist for the likes of you.’

The wounded warrior’s right hand was moving. Lorkar seized on it, pinning the bolter carried in it to the deckplate. When the combat blade in the other hand was sunk into the meat of his neck, he knew he was dead.

Lorkar met the fierce gaze of his killer, but could only rasp, ‘Brother…’

‘Brother-sergeant?’ Regon barked urgently down the vox when he’d heard the dull boom of bolter fire coming from the hold.

‘Brother-Sergeant Lorkar.’ Still no response. The pilot looked to his gunner.

Vakulus pulled his sidearm and went to cover the door. He had almost reached the reinforced column surrounding it when the cockpit hatch burst in with an explosion of incendiaries.

Vakulus went down under a short staccato of mass-reactive shells. He was only wearing half armour and the usual protection afforded by a full suit of battle-plate was absent. He died as his internal organs were pulped by the shells detonating inside his body.

A Marine Malevolent stepped over the twitching corpse, but Regon was powerless to intervene as he was locked in at the controls.

‘Kill me and we will crash land,’ he warned, straining to align their flight trajectory.

Klaxons were sounding and impact runes were flashing across the control console. Through the glacis plate, the outer atmosphere of the repair facility bled by in a polychromatic swathe. Structures loomed through the industrial fog and smeltery clouds. From one of them there jutted a landing dock.

‘I can bring us in,’ he snarled. Regon assumed one of his brothers had gone insane, been finally driven to homicidal madness by the voices they all shared.

‘So can I,’ the other warrior whispered into Regon’s ear. His breath reeked of ash and burning.

He aimed the bolter’s muzzle at the pilot’s head and removed it with a single explosive shot.

The gunship was locked into a landing vector but not a perfect one. Unclipping the pilot’s harness, the warrior shoved him aside, took his seat and prepared to crash land.

He closed his eyes before the Thunderhawk hit the landing platform and breathed, ‘In Vulkan’s name.’

‘On the Anvil of War are the strong tempered and the weak made to perish, thus are men’s souls tested as metal in the forge’s fire.’

Vulkan’s Shield

A dull explosion resonated through the hull of Fire-wyvern. The Thunderhawk gunship bucked against the resulting pressure wave, throwing up emergency icons inside the troop hold. Displaced shrapnel caromed off its armour in a burst of muffled plinks.

‘Another like that and we’ll be going the rest of the way on foot, if at all.’

Ko’tan Kadai smiled. His burning eyes flared with amusement in the gloom, limning his onyx-black skin in a visceral red.

‘Their aim is worse than yours, Fugis,’ said Kadai. ‘It’s nothing.’

Apothecary Fugis scowled at his captain, his thin face drawn so tight it was almost sharp.

‘It’s a needless risk.’

Kadai had stopped listening. His gaze travelled down the troop hold, along the grav-harnesses where the rest of his Salamanders were locked in. Armoured in green battle-plate, the snarling orange drake icon of 3rd Company upon their left pauldrons, they were Salamanders, the Fireborn. Like their captain, the eyes of his retinue glowed red behind their helmet lenses. The effect was almost infernal.

Despite the restrictive confines of the Fire-wyvern, they still managed to perform their pre-battle rituals. N’keln led them. It was his duty.

‘In Vulkan’s image are we crafted, our bodies are his immutable instruments...’

Kadai watched the veteran sergeant reach into a fiery brazier wrought into a support column and withdraw a fistful of burning coals. The others echoed him, Vek’shen and Shen’kar. Together, they crushed the coals into dust and used the hot soot to anoint their armour.

‘What is that?’ remarked another warrior in the hold. This one was not a Salamander. He wore the black ceramite of the Raven Guard. His left pauldron carried his Chapter’s icon, a white raven with outstretched wings. Whereas Salamanders were onyx-black, the bare-headed Raven Guard was stark white with eyes like tiny shards of jet. Together, they were a contrast in chiaroscuro.

Vek’shen had scribed the effigy of a dragon’s head upon his forearm.

‘Unguh’lar,’ he said, ‘The great drake slain in ritual combat whose mantle I wear.’ The Company Champion touched the scaled cloak draped over his back and carefully fashioned around his power armour’s generator. ‘I carry this sigil to honour him and grant me fortitude in battle.’

‘Yours is a savage culture, Nocturnean,’ said another. The remark was directed at Kadai, who turned to face the speaker.

‘The Promethean Creed is not for everyone, Adrak.’

The Raven Guard stared through the dark lenses of his white battle helm. The bulky jump pack on his back made him lean forwards in his grav-harness. It gave a false sense of earnestness that Sergeant Adrak Vraver didn’t feel. He and three more of his battle-brothers had hitched a ride on the Fire-wyvern, pledging to aid Kadai in his extraction mission. The two went back a long way. Vraver was veteran of dozens of campaigns. Kadai had served in some of those in his two centuries and more of service.

‘And I suppose your stubbornness is kindled from the same embers?’

There was mirth in the Raven Guard’s tone that Kadai couldn’t see.

Outside, the explosions intensified. The interior shuddered constantly. Metal groaned in abject protest. They rode a storm of ordnance now.

‘Not too late to go back,’ Vraver added. ‘Our battle-brothers are pulling out, Ko’tan. This city is lost, but the war is won. There’s nothing for the Space Marines here. Let the Guard flatten it.’

Kadai laughed but it didn’t reach his blazing eyes.

Perhaps that was true for the Raven Guard. Prosecuting a guerrilla war behind enemy lines, they had crippled communications, sabotaged transport links and executed several insurgent officers, including the world’s corrupt lord-governor. For Kadai, however, the mission was not yet ended.

‘Months ago, before undertaking this mission,’ the Salamander said. ‘A neophyte remarked something to me on the Cindara Plateau back on Nocturne. Do you know what he said?’

Vraver relaxed his lightning claw in a gesture for Kadai to continue.

‘“My lord,” he began, “the Promethean Creed tells us that nothing is above the sanctity of human life, that we are Vulkan’s Shield, here to protect the innocent and defend the weak. But when I awoke in the solitorium after seven months of endurance and solitude I found I had become a monster… ”’ Kadai touched his skin, dragging the eyelid down a fraction to show the red heat within ‘“…How then,” he asked me, “can we be our primarch’s shield if we look like this?”’

Fire-wyvern shook violently from another aerial bombardment, but Vraver and Kadai didn’t flinch. From the cockpit, through the internal vox, Brother He’ken relayed that they were closing on their objective.

++Ninety seconds…++

‘What was your answer?’ asked Vraver.

Kadai spread his hands as if it was obvious, ‘“Because we must.”’

‘As simple as that,’ said the Raven Guard. ‘I always admired your frankness, Ko’tan. You Salamanders are such pragmatists, even when your very appearance betrays your ideals.’

Fire-wyvern’s engines were screaming. The gunship was banking into a sharp dive. Kadai could feel the inertia even in his power armour. Heavy cannon fire boomed through the hull, muffled slightly by the gunship’s armour.

++Sixty seconds…++

‘It is because of what we are that we can be Vulkan’s Shield. Triumph over adversity, self-sacrifice and the capacity to endure comes from this.’ He gestured towards his diabolic features. ‘By being less human on the outside, we are made more human inside.’ Kadai touched his breastplate where a symbolic flame was rendered in gold. ‘The burning core of our righteousness and the belief in our duty and all the Promethean Creed comes from within.’

++Ten seconds… nine… eight…++

Kadai donned his helmet. Like his armour, it was finely artificed. It depicted a snarling drake head, its scales echoed in the captain’s battle-plate.

The deployment ramp of Fire-wyvern opened slowly. Heat and sound rushed in. Having disengaged his grav-harness, Kadai mounted the ramp first. Brother He’ken had brought them low. Thirty metres down, fire wreathed Echelon City in a crackling veil.

The once regal avenues burned. Plazas fluttered with the charred remains of anti-Imperial propaganda leaflets. Bodies of loyal citizens and cultists alike littered roads clogged with blood and rubble. One structure remained. Blasted ruins filled with Chaos insurgency troops surrounded it. Three battalions, over a thousand troops, moved into position. Their heavy gun emplacements had taken a toll on the schola’s marble walls. Columns were toppled. Statues of prominent alumni were beheaded and defiled. Soon it would be no more. The Space Marines had arrived just in time.

A comm-feed in Kadai’s ornate helm revealed that Navy ordnance would be unleashed from sub-orbit in less than six point three minutes and counting. Only ash would remain afterwards.

He’ken drew them closer still. Heavy bolters from the Thunderhawk’s wings and forward fuselage raked a cannon battery wheeling around to get a bead. Simple brown flak armour and the hoods of their debased cult availed them nothing. The heretics disappeared in a storm of blood and debris.

Kadai unhitched a pair of krak grenades mag-locked to his belt.

The roof of the schola hove into view. It had been damaged and would yield with little force. Kadai cast down the grenades, priming them with a three-second timer. Vrarer loosed two more.

The detonation was fast and loud. In a cloud of smoke and flame, the schola roof collapsed. Several young faces and the older visage of an abbot peered up through the clearing dust at the angels in the war-blackened sky above. Salvation had come.

‘Tell me, brother,’ shouted Vraver, readying to drop then engage the thrusters of his jump pack, ‘this precocious neophyte, what is his name?’

Salamander met the gaze of Raven Guard briefly. Kadai’s eyes flared, his emotion unclear.

‘Dak’ir,’ he replied, leaping off the ramp and into the schola below. ‘Hazon Dak’ir.’

Hell Night

It can’t rain all the time…

The trooper’s mood was sullen as he helped drag the unlimbered lascannon through the mire.

The Earthshakers had begun their bombardment. A slow and steady crump-crump – stop – crump-crump far behind him at the outskirts of bastion headquarters made the trooper flinch instinctively every time a shell whined overhead.

It was ridiculous: the deadly cargo fired by the siege guns was at least thirty metres at the apex of its trajectory, yet still he ducked.

Survival was high on the trooper’s list of priorities, that and service to the Emperor of course.

Ave Imperator.

A cry to the trooper’s right, though muffled by the droning rain, got his attention. He turned, rivulets teeming off his nose like at the precipice of a waterfall, and saw the lascannon had foundered. One of its carriage’s rear wheels was sunk in mud, sucked into an invisible bog.

‘Bostok, gimme a hand.’

Another trooper, Genk, an old guy – a lifer – grimaced to Bostok as he tried to wedge the butt of his lasgun under the trapped wheel and use it like a lever.

Tracer fire was whipping overhead, slits of magnesium carving up the darkness. It sizzled and spat when it pierced the sheeting rain.

Bostok grumbled. Staying low, he tramped over heavily to help his fellow gunner. Adding his own weapon to the hopeful excavation, he pushed down and tried to work his way under the wheel.

‘Get it deeper,’ urged Genk, the lines in his weathered face becoming dark crevices with every distant flash-flare of siege shells striking the void shield.

Though each hit brought a fresh blossom of energy rippling across the shield, the city’s defences were holding. If the 135th Phalanx was to breach it – for the Emperor’s glory and righteous will – they’d need to bring more firepower to bear.

‘Overload the generators,’ Sergeant Harver had said.

‘Bring our guns close,’ he’d said. ‘Orders from Colonel Tench.’

Not particularly subtle, but then they were the Guard, the Hammer of the Emperor: blunt was what the common soldiery did best.

Genk was starting to panic: they were falling behind.

Across a killing field dug with abandoned trenches, tufts of razor wire protruding like wild gorse in some untamed prairie, teams of Phalanx troopers dragged heavy weapons or marched hastily in squad formation.

It took a lot of men to break a siege; more still, and with artillery support, to bring down a fully functioning void shield. Men the Phalanx had: some ten thousand souls willing to sacrifice their lives for the glory of the Throne; the big guns – leastways the shells for the big guns – they did not. A Departmento Munitorum clerical error had left the battle group short some fifty thousand anti-tank, arrowhead shells. Fewer shells meant more boots and bodies. A more aggressive strategy was taken immediately: all lascannons and heavy weapons to advance to five hundred metres and lay void shield-sapping support fire.

Bad luck for Phalanx: wars were easier to fight from behind distant crosshairs. And safer. Bad luck for Bostok, too.

Though he was working hard at freeing the gun with Genk, he noticed some of their comrades falling to the defensive return fire of the secessionist rebels, holed up and cosy behind their shield and their armour and their fraggin’ gun emplacements.

Bastards.

Bet they’re dry too, Bostok thought ruefully. His slicker came undone when he snagged it on the elevation winch of the lascannon and he swore loudly as the downpour soaked his red-brown standard-issue uniform beneath.

There was a muted cry ahead as he fastened up the slicker and pulled his wide-brimmed helmet down further to keep out the worst of the rain – a heavy bolter team and half an infantry squad disappeared from view, seemingly swallowed by the earth. Some of the old firing pits and trenches had been left unfilled, except now they contained muddy water and sucking earth. As deadly as quicksand they were.

Bostok muttered a prayer, making the sign of the aquila. Least it wasn’t him and Genk.

‘Eye be damned, what is holding you up, troopers?’

It was Sergeant Harver. The tumult was deafening, that and the artillery exchange. He had to bellow just to be heard. Not that Harver ever did anything but bellow when addressing his squad.

‘Get this fraggin’ rig moving you sump rats,’ he barracked, ‘You’re lagging troopers, lagging.’

Harver munched a fat, vine-leaf cigar below the black wire of his twirled moustache. He didn’t seem to mind or notice that it had long been doused and hung like a fat, soggy finger from the corner of his mouth.

A static crackle from the vox-operator’s comms unit interrupted the sergeant’s tirade.

‘More volume: louder Rhoper, louder.’

Rhoper, the vox-operator, nodded, before setting the unit down and fiddling with a bunch of controls. The receiver was amplified in a few seconds and returned with the voice of Sergeant Rampe.

‘…Enemy sighted! They’re here in no-man’s land! Bastards are out beyond the shield! I see, oh sh–’

‘Rampe, Rampe,’ Harver bellowed into the receiver cup. ‘Respond, man!’ His attention switched to Rhoper.

‘Another channel, trooper – at the double, if you please.’

Rhoper was already working on it. The comms channels linking the infantry squads to artillery command and one another flicked by in a mixture of static, shouting and oddly muted gunfire.

At last, they got a response.

‘…aggin’ out here with us! Throne of Earth, that’s not poss–’

The voice stopped but the link continued unbroken. There was more distant weapons fire, and something else.

‘Did I hear–’ Harver began.

‘Bells, sir,’ offered Rhoper, in a rare spurt of dialogue. ‘It was bells ringing.’

Static killed the link and this time Harver turned to Trooper Bostok, who had all but given up trying to free the lascannon.

The bells hadn’t stopped. They were on this part of the battlefield too.

‘Could be the sounds carrying on the wind, sir?’ suggested Genk, caked in mud from his efforts.

Too loud, too close to be just the wind, thought Bostok. He took up his lasgun as he turned to face the dark.

Silhouettes lived there, jerking in stop-motion with every void impact flare – they were his comrades, those who had made it to the five hundred metre line.

Bostok’s eyes narrowed.

There was something else out there too. Not guns or Phalanx, not even rebels.

It was white, rippling and flowing on an unseen breeze. The rain was so dense it just flattened; the air didn’t zephyr, there were no eddies skirling across the killing ground.

‘Sarge, do we ’ave Ecclesiarchy in our ranks?’

‘Negative, trooper, just the Emperor’s own: boots, bayonets and blood.’

Bostok pointed towards the flicker of white.

‘Then who the frag is that?’

But the flicker had already gone. Though the bells tolled on. Louder and louder.

Fifty metres away, men were screaming. And running.

Bostok saw their faces through his gun sight, saw the horror written there. Then they were gone. He scanned the area, using his scope like a magnocular, but couldn’t find them. At first Bostok thought they’d fallen foul of an earth ditch, like the heavy bolter and infantry he’d seen earlier, but he could see no ditches, no trench or fire pit that could’ve swallowed them. But they’d been claimed all right, claimed by whatever moved amongst them.

More screaming; merging with the bells into a disturbing clamour.

It put the wind up Sergeant Harver – Phalanx soldiers were disappearing in all directions.

‘Bostok, Genk, get that cannon turned about,’ he ordered, slipping out his service pistol.

The lascannon was well and truly stuck, but worked on a pintle mount, so could be swivelled into position. Genk darted around the carriage, not sure what was happening but falling back on orders to anchor himself and stave off rising terror. He yanked out the holding pin with more force than was necessary and swung the gun around towards the white flickers and the screaming, just as his sergeant requested.

‘Covering fire, Mr Rhoper,’ added Harver, and the vox-operator slung the boxy comms unit on his back and drew his lasgun, crouching in a shooting position just behind the lascannon.

Bostok took up his post by the firing shield, slamming a fresh power cell into the heavy weapon’s breech.

‘Lit and clear!’

‘At your discretion, trooper,’ said Harver.

Genk didn’t need a written invitation. He sighted down the barrel and the targeting nub, seeing a flicker, and hauled back the triggers.

Red beams, hot and angry, ripped up the night. Genk laid suppressing fire in a forward arc that smacked of fear and desperation. He was sweating by the end of his salvo, and not from the heat discharge.

The bells were tolling still, though it was impossible to place their origin. The void-shrouded city was too far away, a black smudge on an already dark canvas, and the resonant din sounded close and all around them.

Cordite wafted on the breeze; cordite and screaming.

Bostok tried to squint past the driving rain, more effective than any camo-paint for concealment.

The flickers were still out there, ephemeral and indistinct… and they were closing.

‘Again, if you please,’ ordered Harver, an odd tremor affecting his voice.

It took Bostok a few seconds to recognise it as fear.

‘Lit and clear!’ he announced, slamming in a second power cell.

‘Not stopping, sir,’ said Rhoper and sighted down his lasgun before firing.

Sergeant Harver responded by loosing his own weapon, pistol cracks adding to the fusillade.

Casting about, Bostok found they were alone; an island of Phalanx in a sea of mud, but the advanced line was coming to meet them. They were fleeing, driven wild by sheer terror. Men were disappearing as they ran, sucked under the earth, abruptly silenced.

‘Sarge…’ Bostok began.

Onwards the line came, something moving within it, preying on it like piranhas stalking a shoal of frightened fish.

Harver was nearly gone, just firing on impulse now. Some of his shots and that of Genk’s lascannon were tearing up their own troops.

Rhoper still had his wits, and came forwards as the heavy weapon ran dry.

‘F-f…’ Harver was saying when Bostok got to his feet and ran like hell.

Rhoper disappeared a moment later. No cries for help, no nothing; just a cessation of his lasgun fire and then silence to show for the end of the doughty vox-officer.

Heart hammering in his chest, his slicker having now parted and exposing him to the elements, Bostok ran, promising never to bemoan his lot again, if the Emperor would just spare him this time, spare him from being pulled into the earth and buried alive. He didn’t want to die like that.

Bostok must’ve been dragging his feet, because troopers from the advanced line were passing him. A trooper disappeared to his left, a white flicker and the waft of something old and dank presaging his demise. Another, just ahead, was pulled asunder, and Bostok jinked away from a course that would lead him into that path. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Harver and Genk were gone – the lascannon was still mired but now abandoned – fled or taken, he didn’t know.

Some of the Phalanx were staging a fighting withdrawal. Gallant, but what did they have to hold off? It was no enemy Bostok had ever seen or known.

Running was all that concerned him now, running for his life.

Just reach the artillery batteries and I’ll be fine.

But then a hollow cry echoed ahead, and Bostok saw a white flicker around the siege guns. A tanker disappeared under the earth, his cap left on the grille of the firing platform.

The fat lump of numbing panic in his chest rose into Bostok’s throat and threatened to choke him.

Can’t go back, can’t go forwards…

He peeled off to the left. Maybe he could take a circuitous route to bastion headquarters.

No, too long. They’d be on him before then.

In the dark and the rain, he couldn’t even see the mighty structure. No beacon-lamps to guide him, no searchlights to cling to. Death, like the darkness, was closing.

The bells were tolling.

Men screamed.

Bostok ran, his vision fragmenting in sheer terror, the pieces collapsing in on one another like a kaleidoscope.

Got to get away… Please Throne, oh pl–

Earth became swamp beneath his feet, and Bostok sank. He panicked, thinking he was about to be taken, when he realised he’d fallen into an earth ditch, right up to his chin. Fighting the urge to wade across, he dipped lower until the muddy water reached his nose, filling his nostrils with a rank and stagnant odour. Clinging to the edge with trembling, bone-cold fingers, he prayed to the Emperor for the end of the night, for the end of the rain and the cessation of the bells.

But the bells didn’t stop. They just kept on tolling.

Three weeks later…

‘Fifty metres to landfall,’ announced Hak’en. The pilot’s voice sounded tinny through the vox-speaker in the Chamber Sanctuarine of Fire-wyvern.

Looking through the occuliport in the gunship’s flank, Dak’ir saw a grey day, sheeting with rain.

Hak’en was bringing the vessel around, flying a course that would take them within a few metres of Mercy Rock, the headquarters of the 135th Phalanx and the Imperial forces they were joining on Vaporis. As the gunship banked, angling Dak’ir’s slit-view downward, a sodden earth field riddled with dirty pools and sludge-like emplacements was revealed. The view came in frustrating slashes.

Dak’ir was curious to see more.

‘Brother,’ he addressed the vox-speaker, ‘open up the embarkation ramp.’

‘As you wish, brother-sergeant. Landfall in twenty metres.’

Hak’en disengaged the locking protocols that kept the Thunderhawk’s hatches sealed during transit. As the operational rune went green, Dak’ir punched it and the ramp started to open and lower.

Light and air rushed into the gunship’s troop compartment where Dak’ir’s battle-brothers were sat in meditative silence. Even in the grey dawn, their bright green battle-plate flashed, the snarling firedrake icon on their left pauldrons – orange on a black field – revealing them to be Salamanders of the 3rd Company.

As well as illuminating their power armour, the feeble light also managed to banish the glare from their eyes. Blazing red with captured fire, it echoed the heat of the Salamanders’ volcanic home world, Nocturne.

‘A far cry from the forge-pits under Mount Deathfire,’ groaned Ba’ken.

Though he couldn’t see his face beneath the battle-helm he was wearing, Dak’ir knew his brother also wore a scowl at the inclement weather.

‘Wetter too,’ added Emek, coming to stand beside the hulking form of Ba’ken and peering over Dak’ir’s broad shoulders. ‘But then what else are we to expect from a monsoon world?’

The ground was coming to meet them and as Hak’en straightened up Fire-wyvern the full glory of Mercy Rock was laid before them.

It might once have been beautiful, but now the bastion squatted like an ugly gargoyle in a brown mud-plain. Angular gun towers, bristling with autocannon and heavy stubber, crushed the angelic spires that had once soared into the turbulent Vaporis sky; ablative armour concealed murals and baroque columns; the old triumphal gate, with its frescos and ornate filigree, had been replaced with something grey, dark and practical. These specific details were unknown to Dak’ir, but he could see in the structure’s curves an echo of its architectural bearing, hints of something artful and not merely functional.

‘I see we are not the only recent arrivals,’ said Ba’ken. The other Salamanders at the open hatch followed his gaze to where a black Valkyrie gunship had touched down in the mud, its landing stanchions slowly sinking.

‘Imperial Commissariat,’ replied Emek, recognising the official seal on the side of the transport.

Dak’ir kept his silence. His eyes strayed across the horizon to the distant city of Aphium and the void dome surrounding it. Even above the droning gunship engines, he could hear the hum of generatoria powering the field. It was like those which protected the Sanctuary Cities of his home world from the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that were a way of life for the hardy folk of Nocturne. The air was thick with the stench of ozone; another by-product of the void fields. Even the constant rain couldn’t wash it away.

As Fire-wyvern came in to land with a scream of stabiliser-jets, Dak’ir closed his eyes. Rain was coming in through the hatch and he let it patter against his armour. The dulcet ring of it was calming. Rain – at least the cool, wet, non-acidic kind – was rare on Nocturne, and even against his armour he enjoyed the sensation. There was an undercurrent of something else that came with it, though. It was unease, disquiet, a sense of watchfulness.

I feel it too, a voice echoed inside Dak’ir’s head, and his eyes snapped open again. He turned to find Brother Pyriel watching him intently. Pyriel was a Librarian, a wielder of the psychic arts, and he could read people’s thoughts as they might read an open book. The psyker’s eyes flashed cerulean-blue before returning to burning red. Dak’ir didn’t like the idea of him poking around in his subconscious, but he sensed that Pyriel had merely browsed the surface of his mind. Even still, Dak’ir looked away and was glad when the earth met them at last and Fire-wyvern touched down.

The cold snap of las-fire carried on the breeze as the Salamanders debarked.

Across the muddied field, just fifty metres from the approach road to Mercy Rock, a commissarial firing squad was executing a traitor.

An Imperial Guard colonel, wearing the red-brown uniform of the Phalanx, jerked spastically as the hot rounds struck him, and was still. Tied to a thick, wooden pole, he slumped and sagged against his bonds. First his knees folded and he sank, then his head lolled forward, his eyes open and glassy.

A commissar, lord-level given his rank pins and trappings, was looking on as his bodyguards brought their lasguns to port arms and marched away from the execution site. His gaze met with Dak’ir’s as he turned to go after them. Rain teemed off the brim of his cap, a silver skull stud sat in the centre above the peak. The commissar’s eyes were hidden by the shadow the brim cast, but felt cold and rigid all the same. The Imperial officer didn’t linger. He was already walking away, back to the bastion, as the last of the Salamanders mustered out and the exit ramps closed.

Dak’ir wondered at what events had delivered the colonel to such a bleak end, and was sorry to see Fire-wyvern lifting off again, leaving them alone in this place.

‘Such is the fate of all traitors,’ remarked Tsu’gan with a bitter tang.

Even behind his helmet lens, Tsu’gan’s stare was hard. Dak’ir returned his glare.

There was no brotherly love between the two Salamanders sergeants. Before they became Space Marines, they had hailed from opposite ends of the Nocturnean hierarchy: Dak’ir, an Ignean cave-dweller and an orphan, the likes of which had never before joined the ranks of the Astartes; and Tsu’gan, a nobleman’s son from the Sanctuary City of Hesiod, as close to aristocracy and affluence as it was possible to get on a volcanic death world. Though as sergeants they were both equals in the eyes of their captain and Chapter Master, Tsu’gan did not regard their relationship as such. Dak’ir was unlike many other Salamanders, there was a strain of humanity left within him that was greater and more empathic than that of his brothers. It occasionally left him isolated, almost disconnected. Tsu’gan had seen it often enough and decided it was not merely unusual, it was an aberration. Since their first mission as Scouts on the sepulchre world of Moribar, acrimony had divided them. In the years that followed, it had not lessened.

‘It leaves a grim feeling to see men wasted like that,’ said Dak’ir. ‘Slain in cold blood without chance for reparation.’

Many Space Marine Chapters, the Salamanders among them, believed in order and punishment, but they also practised penitence and the opportunity for atonement. Only when a brother was truly lost, given in to the Ruinous Powers or guilty of such a heinous deed as could not be forgiven or forgotten, was death the only alternative.

‘Then you’d best develop a stronger stomach, Ignean,’ sneered Tsu’gan, fashioning the word into a slight, ‘for your compassion is misplaced on the executioners’ field.’

‘It’s no weakness, brother,’ Dak’ir replied fiercely.

Pyriel deliberately walked between them to prevent any further hostility.

‘Gather your squads, brother-sergeants,’ the Librarian said firmly, ‘and follow me.’

Both did as ordered, Ba’ken and Emek plus seven others falling in behind Dak’ir whilst Tsu’gan led another same-sized squad from the dropsite. One in Tsu’gan’s group gave Dak’ir a vaguely contemptuous look, before turning his attention to an auspex unit. This was Iagon, Tsu’gan’s second and chief minion. Where Tsu’gan was all thinly-veiled threat and belligerence, Iagon was an insidious snake, much more poisonous and deadly.

Dak’ir shrugged off the battle-brother’s glare and motioned his squad forwards.

‘I could see his attitude corrected, brother,’ hissed Ba’ken over a closed comm-link channel feeding to Dak’ir’s battle-helm. ‘It would be a pleasure.’

‘I don’t doubt that, Ba’ken,’ Dak’ir replied, ‘but let’s just try and stay friendly for now, shall we?’

‘As you wish, sergeant.’

Behind his battle-helm, Dak’ir smiled. Ba’ken was his closest ally in the Chapter and he was eternally grateful that the hulking heavy weapons trooper was watching his back.

As they marched the final few metres to the bastion gates, Ba’ken’s attention strayed to the void shield on the Salamanders’ right. The commissar lord, along with his entourage, had already gone inside the Imperial command centre. Overhead, the skies were darkening and the rain intensified. Day was giving way to night.

‘Your tactical assessment, Brother Ba’ken?’ asked Pyriel, noting his fellow Salamander’s interest in the shield.

‘Constant bombardment – it’s the only way to bring a void shield down.’ He paused, thinking. ‘That, or get close enough to slip through during a momentary break in the field and knock out the generatoria.’

Tsu’gan sniffed derisively.

‘Then let us hope the humans can do just that, and get us to within striking distance, so we can leave this sodden planet.’

Dak’ir bristled at the other sergeant’s contempt, but kept his feelings in check. He suspected it was half-meant as a goad, anyway.

‘Tell me this, then, brothers,’ added Pyriel, the gates of the bastion looming, ‘why are they falling back with their artillery?’

At a low ridge, just below the outskirts of the bastion, Basilisk tanks were retreating. Their long cannons shrank away from the battlefield as the tanks found parking positions within the protective outer boundaries of the bastion.

‘Why indeed?’ Dak’ir asked himself as they passed through the slowly opening gates and entered Mercy Rock.

‘Victory at Aphium will be won with strong backs, courage and the guns of our Immortal Emperor!’

The commissar lord was sermonising as the Salamanders appeared in the great bastion hall.

Dak’ir noticed the remnants of ornamental fountains, columns and mosaics – all reduced to rubble for the Imperial war machine.

The hall was a vast expanse and enabled the Imperial officer to address almost ten thousand men, mustered in varying states of battle-dress. Sergeants, corporals, line troopers, even the wounded and support staff had been summoned to the commissar’s presence as he announced his glorious vision for the coming war.

To his credit, he barely flinched when the Astartes strode into the massive chamber, continuing on with his rallying cry to the men of the Phalanx who showed much greater reverence for the Emperor’s Angels of Death amongst them.

The Fire-born had removed battle-helms as they’d entered, revealing onyx-black skin and red eyes that glowed dully in the half-dark. As well as reverence, several of the Guardsmen betrayed their fear and awe of the Salamanders. Dak’ir noticed Tsu’gan smiling thinly, enjoying intimidating the humans before them.

‘As potent as bolt or blade,’ old Master Zen’de had told them when they were neophytes. Except that Tsu’gan deployed such tactics all too readily; even against allies.

‘Colonel Tench is dead,’ the commissar announced flatly. ‘He lacked the will and the purpose the Emperor demands of us. His legacy of largesse and cowardice is over.’

Like black-clad sentinels, the commissar’s storm troopers eyed the men nearest their master at this last remark, daring them to take umbrage at the defamation of their former colonel.

The commissar’s voice was amplified by a loudhailer and echoed around the courtyard, carrying to every trooper present. A small cadre of Phalanx officers, what was left of the command section, were standing to one side of the commissar, giving off stern and unyielding looks to the rest of their troops.

This was the Emperor’s will – they didn’t have to like it; they just had to do it.

‘And any man who thinks otherwise had best look to the bloody fields beyond Mercy Rock, for that is the fate which awaits he without the courage to do what is necessary.’ The commissar glared, baiting dissension. When none was forthcoming, he went on. ‘I am taking command in the late colonel’s stead. All artillery will return to the battlefront immediately. Infantry is to be mustered in platoon and ready for deployment as soon as possible. Section commanders are to report to me in the strategium. The Phalanx will mobilise tonight!’ He emphasised this last point with a clenched fist.

Silence reigned for a few moments, before a lone voice rang out of the crowd.

‘But tonight is Hell Night.’

Like a predator with its senses piqued, the commissar turned to find the voice.

‘Who said that?’ he demanded, stalking to the front of the rostrum where he was preaching. ‘Make yourself known.’

‘There are things in the darkness, things not of this world. I’ve seen ’em!’ A gap formed around a frantic-looking trooper as he gesticulated to the others, his growing hysteria spreading. ‘They took Sergeant Harver, took ’im! The spectres! Just sucked men under the earth… They’ll ta–’

The loud report of the commissar’s bolt pistol stopped the trooper in mid-flow. Blood and brain matter spattered the infantrymen nearest the now headless corpse as silence returned.

Dak’ir stiffened at such wanton destruction of life, and was about to step forward and speak his mind, before a warning hand from Pyriel stopped him.

Reluctantly, the Salamander backed down.

‘This idle talk about spectres and shadows haunting the night will not be tolerated,’ the commissar decreed, holstering his still-smoking pistol. ‘Our enemies are flesh and blood. They occupy Aphium and when this city falls, we will open up the rest of the continent to conquest. The lord-governor of this world lies dead, assassinated by men he trusted. Seceding from the Imperium is tantamount to an act of war. This rebellion will be crushed and Vaporis will be brought back to the light of Imperial unity. Now, prepare for battle…’

The commissar looked down his nose at the headless remains of the dead trooper, now lying prone.

‘…and somebody clear up that filth.’

‘He’ll demoralise these men,’ hissed Dak’ir, anger hardening his tone.

Two infantrymen were dragging the corpse of the dead trooper away. His bloodied jacket bore the name: Bostok.

‘It’s not our affair,’ muttered Pyriel, his keen gaze fixed on the commissar as he headed towards them.

‘The mood is grim enough, though, Brother-Librarian,’ said Ba’ken, surveying the weary lines of troopers as they fell in, marshalled by platoon sergeants.

‘Something has them spooked,’ snarled Tsu’gan, though more out of contempt for the Guardsmen’s apparent weakness, than concern.

Pyriel stepped forward to greet the commissar, who’d reached the Salamanders from the end of the rostrum.

‘My lord Astartes,’ he said with deference, bowing before Pyriel. ‘I am Commissar Loth, and if you would accompany me with your officers to the strategium, I will apprise you of the tactical situation here on Vaporis.’

Loth was about to move away, determined to send the message that he, and not the Emperor’s Angels, was in charge at Mercy Rock, when Pyriel’s voice, resonant with psy-power, stopped him.

‘That won’t be necessary, commissar.’

Loth didn’t looked impressed at he stared at the Librarian. His expression demanded an explanation, which Pyriel was only too pleased to provide.

‘We know our orders and the tactical disposition of this battle. Weaken the shield, get us close enough to deploy an insertion team in the vicinity of the generatoria and we will do the rest.’

‘I– that is, I mean to say, very well. But do you not need–’

Pyriel cut him off.

‘I do have questions, though. That man, the trooper you executed: what did he mean by “spectres”, and what is Hell Night?’

Loth gave a dismissive snort.

‘Superstition and scaremongering – these men have been lacking discipline for too long.’ He was about to end it there when Pyriel’s body language suggested the commissar should go on. Reluctantly, he did. ‘Rumours, reports from the last night-attack against the secessionists, of men disappearing without trace under the earth and unnatural denizens prowling the battlefield. Hell Night is the longest nocturnal period in the Vaporan calendar – its longest night.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes.’ Loth’s face formed a scowl. ‘It’s sheer idiocy. Fearing the dark? Well, it’s just damaging to the morale of the men in this regiment.’

‘The former colonel, did he supply you with these… reports?’

Loth made a mirthless grin.

‘He did.’

‘And you had him shot for that?’

‘As my duty binds me, yes, I did.’ Loth had a pugilist’s face, slab-flat with a wide, crushed nose and a scar that ran from top lip to hairline that pulled up the corner of his mouth in a snarl. His small ears, poking out from either side of his commissar’s cap, were ragged. He was stolid when he spoke next. ‘There is nothing lurking in the darkness except the false nightmares that dwell in the minds of infants.’

‘I’ve seen nightmares made real before, commissar,’ Pyriel took on a warning tone.

‘Then we are fortunate to have angels watching over us.’ Loth adjusted his cap and straightened his leather frockcoat. ‘I’ll weaken the shield, be assured of that, nightmares or no.’

‘Then we’ll see you on the field, commissar,’ Pyriel told him, before showing his back and leaving Loth to wallow in impotent rage.

‘You really took exception to him, didn’t you brother?’ said Emek a few minutes later, too curious to realise his impropriety. They were back out in the muddy quagmire. In the distance, the sound of battle tanks moving into position ground on the air.

‘He had a callous disregard for human life,’ Pyriel replied. ‘And besides… his aura was bad.’ He allowed a rare smirk at the remark, before clamping on his battle-helm.

Overhead, the sky was wracked with jagged red lightning and the clouds billowed crimson. Far above, in the outer atmosphere of Vaporis, a warp storm was boiling. It threw a visceral cast over the rain-slicked darkness of the battlefield.

‘Hell Night, in more than just name it seems,’ said Ba’ken, looking up to the bloody heavens.

‘An inauspicious omen, perhaps?’ offered Iagon, the first time he’d spoken since landfall.

‘Ever the doomsayer,’ remarked Ba’ken under his breath to his sergeant.

But Dak’ir wasn’t listening. He was looking at Pyriel.

‘Form combat squads,’ said the Librarian, when he realised he was under scrutiny. ‘Tsu’gan, find positions.’

Tsu’gan slammed a fist against his plastron, and cast a last snide glance at Dak’ir before he divided up his squad and moved out at a steady run.

Dak’ir ignored him, still intent on Pyriel.

‘Do you sense something, Brother-Librarian?’

Pyriel eyed the darkness in the middle distance, the no-man’s land between the bastion and the shimmering edge of the far off void shield. It was as if he was trying to catch a glimpse of something just beyond his reach, at the edge of natural sight.

‘It’s nothing.’

Dak’ir nodded slowly and mustered out. But he’d detected the lie in the Librarian’s words and wondered what it meant.

False thunder wracked the sky from the report of heavy cannons at the rear of the Imperial battle line. Smoke hung over the muddied field like a shroud, occluding the bodies of the Phalanx troopers moving through it, but was quickly weighed down by the incessant rain.

They marched in platoons, captains and sergeants hollering orders over the defensive fire of rebel guns and the dense thuds of explosions. Heavy weapons teams, two men dragging unlimbered cannons whilst standard infantry ran alongside, forged towards emplacements dug five hundred metres from the shield wall.

Incandescent flashes rippled across the void shield with the dense shell impacts of the distant Earthshaker cannons and from lascannon and missile salvoes, unleashed when their crews had closed to the assault line.

In the midst of it all were the Salamanders, crouched down in cover, at the edges of the line in five-man combat squads.

Librarian Pyriel had joined Dak’ir’s unit, making it six. With the flare of explosions and the red sky overhead, his blue armour was turned a lurid purple. It denoted his rank as Librarian, as did the arcane paraphernalia about his person.

‘Our objective is close, brothers. There…’ Pyriel indicated the bulk of a generatorium structure some thousand metres distant. Only Space Marines, with their occulobe implants, had the enhanced visual faculty to see and identify it. Rebel forces, hunkered down in pillboxes, behind trenches and fortified emplacements, guarded it. In the darkness and the rain, even with the superhuman senses of the Astartes, they were just shadows and muzzle flashes.

‘We should take an oblique route, around the east and west hemispheres of the shield,’ Dak’ir began. ‘Resistance will be weakest there. We’ll be better able to exploit it.’

After Tsu’gan had secured the route, the Salamanders had arrived at the five hundred metre assault line, having stealthed their way to it undetected before the full Imperial bombardment had begun. But they were positioned at the extreme edges of the line – two groups east, two groups west – in the hope of launching a shock assault into the heart of the rebel defenders and destroying the generatoria powering the void shield before serious opposition could be raised.

‘Brother Pyriel?’ Dak’ir pressed when a response wasn’t forthcoming.

The Librarian was staring at the distant void shield, energy blossoms appearing on its surface only to dissipate seconds later.

‘Something about the shield… An anomaly in its energy signature…’ he breathed. His eyes were glowing cerulean-blue.

For once, Dak’ir felt nothing, just the urge to act.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know…’ The psychic fire dimmed in the Librarian’s eyes behind his battle-helm. ‘Oblique assault – one primary, one secondary. East and west,’ he asserted.

Dak’ir nodded, but had a nagging feeling that Pyriel wasn’t telling them everything. He opened a comm-channel to the other combat squads.

‘We move in, brothers. Assault plan serpentine. Brother Apion, you are support. We will take primary. Brother Tsu’gan–’

‘We are ready, Ignean,’ came the harsh reply before Dak’ir had finished. ‘Assault vector locked, I am the primary at the western hemisphere. Tsu’gan out.’

The link was cut abruptly. Dak’ir cursed under his breath.

Taking out his plasma pistol and unsheathing his chainsword, running a gauntleted finger down the flat of the blade and muttering a litany to Vulkan, Dak’ir rose to his feet.

‘Fire-born, advance on my lead.’

Emek’s raised fist brought them to a halt before they could move out. He had his finger pressed to the side of his battle-helm.

‘I’m getting some frantic chatter from the Phalanx units.’ He paused, listening intently. ‘Contact has been lost with several secondary command units.’ Then he looked up. During the pregnant pause, Dak’ir could sense what was coming next.

‘They say they’re under attack… from spectres,’ said Emek.

‘Patch it to all comms, brother. Every combat squad.’

Emek did as asked, and Dak’ir’s battle-helm, together with his brothers’, was filled with the broken reports from the Phalanx command units.

‘…ergeant is dead. Falling back to secondary positions…’

‘…all around us! Throne of Earth, I can’t see a target, I can’t se–’

‘…ead, everyone. They’re out here among us! Oh hell, oh Emperor sa–’

Scattered gunfire and hollow screams punctuated these reports. Some units were attempting to restore order. The barking commands of sergeants and corporals sounded desperate as they tried to reorganise in the face of sudden attack.

Commissar Loth’s voice broke in sporadically, his replies curt and scathing. They must hold and then advance. The Imperium would brook no cowardice in the face of the enemy. Staggered bursts from his bolt pistol concluded each order, suggesting further executions.

Above and omnipresent, the sound of tolling bells filled the air.

‘I saw no chapel or basilica in the Phalanx bastion,’ said Ba’ken. He swept his gaze around slowly, panning with his heavy flamer as he did so.

‘The rebels?’ offered Brother Romulus.

‘How do you explain it being everywhere?’ asked Pyriel, his eyes aglow once more. He regarded the blood-red clouds that hinted at the churning warp storm above. ‘This is an unnatural phenomenon. We are dealing with more than secessionists.’

Dak’ir swore under his breath; he’d made his decision.

‘Spectres or not, we can’t leave the Phalanx to be butchered.’ He switched the comm-feed in his battle-helm to transmit.

‘All squads regroup, and converge on Phalanx command positions.’

Brother Apion responded with a rapid affirmative, as did a second combat squad led by Brother Lazarus. Tsu’gan took a little longer to capitulate, evidently unimpressed, but seeing the need to rescue the Guardsmen from whatever was attacking them. Without the support fire offered by their heavy guns, the Salamanders were horribly exposed to the secessionist artillery and with the shield intact they had no feasible mission to prosecute.

‘Understood.’ Tsu’gan then cut the link.

Silhouettes moved through the downpour. Lasgun snap-shot fizzed out from Imperial positions, revealing Phalanx troopers that were shooting at unseen foes.

Most were running. Even the Basilisks were starting to withdraw. Commissar Loth, despite all of his fervour and promised retribution, couldn’t prevent it.

The Phalanx were fleeing.

‘Enemy contacts?’

Dak’ir was tracking through the mire, pistol held low, chainsword still but ready. He was the fulcrum of a dispersed battle-formation, Pyriel to his immediate left and two battle-brothers either side of them.

Ahead, he saw another combat squad led by Apion, the secondary insertion group. He too had dispersed his warriors, and they were plying every metre of the field for enemies.

‘Negative,’ was the curt response from Lazarus, approaching from the west.

Artillery bombardment from the entrenched rebel positions was falling with the intense rain. A great plume of sodden earth and broken bodies surged into the air a few metres away from where Dak’ir’s squad advanced.

‘Pyriel, anything?’

The Librarian shook his head, intent on his otherworldly instincts but finding no sense in what he felt or saw.

The broken chatter in Dak’ir’s ear continued, the tolling of the bells providing an ominous chorus to gunfire and screaming. The Phalanx were close to a rout, having been pushed too far by a commissar who didn’t understand or care about the nature of the enemy they were facing. Loth’s only answer was threat of death to galvanise the men under his command. The bark of the Imperial officer’s bolt pistol was close. Dak’ir could make out the telltale muzzle flash of the weapon in his peripheral vision.

Loth was firing at shadows and hitting his own men in the process; those fleeing and those who were standing their ground.

‘I’ll deal with him,’ promised Pyriel, snapping out of his psychic trance without warning and peeling off to intercept the commissar.

Another artillery blast detonated nearby, showering the Salamanders with debris. Without the Earthshaker bombardment, the rebels were using their shell-hunting cannons to punish the Imperials. Tracer fire from high-calibre gunnery positions added to the carnage. That and whatever was stalking them through the mud and rain.

‘It’s infiltrators.’ Tsu’gan’s harsh voice was made harder still as it came through the comm-feed. ‘Maybe fifty men, strung out in small groups, operating under camouflage. The humans are easily spooked. We will find them, Fire-born, and eliminate the threat.’

‘How can you be–’

Dak’ir stopped when he caught a glimpse of something, away to his right.

‘Did you see that?’ he asked Ba’ken.

The hulking trooper followed him, swinging his heavy flamer around.

‘No target,’ Ba’ken replied. ‘What was it, brother?’

‘Not sure…’ It had looked like just a flicker of… white robes, fluttering lightly but against the wind. The air suddenly became redolent with dank and age.

‘Ignean!’ Tsu’gan demanded.

‘It’s not infiltrators,’ Dak’ir replied flatly.

Static flared in the feed before the other sergeant’s voice returned.

‘You can’t be sure of that.’

‘I know it, brother.’ This time, Dak’ir cut the link. It had eluded him at first, but now he felt it, a… presence, out in the darkness of the killing field. It was angry.

‘Eyes open,’ he warned his squad, the half-seen image at the forefront of his mind and the stench all too real as the bells rang on.

Ahead, Dak’ir made out the form of a Phalanx officer, a captain according to his rank pins and attire. The Salamanders headed towards him, hoping to link up their forces and stage some kind of counter-attack. That was assuming there were enough troopers left to make any difference.

Commissar Loth was consumed by frenzy.

‘Hold your ground!’ he screeched. ‘The Emperor demands your courage!’ The bolt pistol rang out and another trooper fell, his torso gaping and red.

‘Forward, damn you! Advance for His greater glory and the glory of the Imperium!’

Another Phalanx died, this time a sergeant who’d been rallying his men.

Pyriel was hurrying to get close, his force sword drawn, whilst his other hand was free. In the darkness and the driving rain he saw… spectres. They were white-grey and indistinct. Their movements were jagged, as if partially out of synch with reality, the non-corporeal breaching the fabric of the corporeal realm.

Loth saw them too, and the fear of it, whatever this phenomenon was, was etched over his pugilist’s face.

‘Ave Imperator. By the light of the Emperor, I shall fear no evil,’ he intoned, falling back on the catechisms of warding and preservation he had learned in the schola progenium. ‘Ave Imperator. My soul is free of taint. Chaos will never claim it whilst He is my shield.’

The spectres were closing, flitting in and out of reality like a bad pict recording. Turning left and right, Loth loosed off shots at his aggressors, the brass rounds passing through them or missing completely, driving on to hit fleeing Phalanx infantrymen instead.

With each manifestation, the spectres got nearer.

Pyriel was only a few metres away when one appeared ahead of him. Loth’s shot struck the Salamander in the pauldron as it went through and through, and a damage rune flared into life on the Librarian’s tactical display inside his battle-helm.

‘Ave Imp–’ Too late. The spectre was upon Commissar Loth. He barely rasped the words–

‘Oh God-Emperor…’

–when a blazing wall of psychic fire spilled from Pyriel’s outstretched palm, smothering the apparition and banishing it from sight.

Loth was raising his pistol to his lips, jamming the still hot barrel into his mouth as his mind was unmanned by what he had seen.

Pyriel reached him just in time, smacking the pistol away before the commissar could summarily execute himself. The irony of it wasn’t lost on the Librarian as the bolt-round flew harmlessly into the air. Still trailing tendrils of fire, Pyriel placed two fingers from his outstretched hand onto Loth’s brow, who promptly crumpled to the ground and was still.

‘He’ll be out for several hours. Get him out of here, back to the bastion,’ he ordered one of the commissar’s attendants.

The attendant nodded, still shaken, calling for help, and together the storm troopers dragged Loth away.

‘And he’ll remember nothing of this or Vaporis,’ Pyriel added beneath his breath.

Sensing his power, the spectres Pyriel had seen had retreated. Something else prickled at his senses now, something far off into the wilderness, away from the main battle site. There was neither time nor opportunity to investigate. Pyriel knew the nature of the foe they were facing now. He also knew there was no defence against it his brothers could muster. Space Marines were the ultimate warriors, but they needed enemies of flesh and blood. They couldn’t fight mist and shadow.

Huge chunks of the Phalanx army were fleeing. But there was nothing Pyriel could do about that. Nor could he save those claimed by the earth, though this was the malice of the spectres at work again.

Instead, he raised a channel to Dak’ir through his battle-helm.

All the while, the bells tolled on.

‘The entire force is broken,’ the captain explained. He was a little hoarse from shouting commands, but had rallied what platoons were around him into some sort of order.

‘Captain…’

‘Mannheim,’ the officer supplied.

‘Captain Mannheim, what happened here? What is preying on your men?’ asked Dak’ir. The rain was pounding heavily now, and tinked rapidly off his battle-plate. Explosions boomed all around them.

‘I never saw it, my lord,’ Mannheim admitted, wincing as a flare of incendiary came close, ‘only Phalanx troopers disappearing from sight. At first, I thought enemy commandos, but our bio-scanners were blank. The only heat signatures came from our own men.’

Malfunctioning equipment was a possibility, but it still cast doubt on Tsu’gan’s infiltrators theory.

Dak’ir turned to Emek, who carried the squad’s auspex. The Salamander shook his head. Nothing had come from the rebel positions behind the shield, either.

‘Could they have already been out here? Masked their heat traces?’ asked Ba’ken on a closed channel.

Mannheim was distracted by his vox-officer. Making a rapid apology, he turned his back and pressed the receiver cup to his ear, straining to hear against the rain and thunder.

‘Not possible,’ replied Dak’ir. ‘We would have seen them.’

‘Then what?’

Dak’ir shook his head, as the rain came on in swathes.

‘My lord…’ It was Mannheim again. ‘I’ve lost contact with Lieutenant Bahnhoff. We were coordinating a tactical consolidation of troops to launch a fresh assault. Strength in numbers.’

It was a rarefied concept on Nocturne, where self-reliance and isolationism were the main tenets.

‘Where?’ asked Dak’ir.

Mannheim pointed ahead. ‘The lieutenant was part of our vanguard, occupying a more advanced position. His men had already reached the assault line when we were attacked.’

Explosions rippled in the distance where the captain gestured with a quavering finger. These were brave men, but their resolve was nearing its limit. Loth, and his bloody-minded draconianism, had almost pushed them over the edge.

It was hard to imagine much surviving in that barrage, and with whatever was abroad in the killing field to contend with too…

‘If Lieutenant Bahnhoff lives, we will extract him and his men,’ Dak’ir promised. He abandoned thoughts of a counter-attack almost immediately. The Phalanx were in disarray. Retreat was the only sensible option that preserved a later opportunity to attack. Though it went against his Promethean code, the very ideals of endurance and tenacity the Salamanders prided themselves on, Dak’ir had no choice but to admit it.

‘Fall back with your men, captain. Get as many as you can to the bastion. Inform any other officers you can raise that the Imperial forces are in full retreat.’

Captain Mannheim motioned to protest.

‘Full retreat, captain,’ Dak’ir asserted. ‘No victory was ever won with foolish sacrifice,’ he added, quoting one of Zen’de’s Tenets of Pragmatism.

The Phalanx officer saluted, and started pulling his men back. Orders were already being barked down the vox to any other coherent platoons in the army.

‘We don’t know what is out there, Dak’ir,’ Ba’ken warned as they started running in Bahnhoff’s direction. Though distant, silhouettes of the lieutenant’s forces were visible. Worryingly, their las-fire spat in frantic bursts.

‘Then we prepare for anything,’ the sergeant replied grimly and forged on into the churned earth.

Bahnhoff’s men had formed a defensive perimeter, their backs facing one another with the lieutenant himself at the centre, shouting orders. He positively sagged with relief upon sighting the Emperor’s Angels coming to their aid.

The Salamanders were only a few metres away when something flickered into being nearby the circle of lasguns and one of the men simply vanished. One moment he was there, and the next… gone.

Panic flared and the order Bahnhoff had gallantly established threatened to break down. Troopers had their eyes on flight and not battle against apparitions they could barely see, let alone shoot or kill.

A second trooper followed the first, another white flicker signalling his death. This time Dak’ir saw the human’s fate. It was as if the earth had opened up and swallowed him whole. Except the trooper hadn’t fallen or been sucked into a bog, he’d been dragged. Pearlescent hands, with thin fingers like talons, had seized the poor bastard by the ankles and pulled him under.

Despite Bahnhoff’s efforts his platoon’s resolve shattered and they fled. Several more perished as they ran, sharing the same grisly fate as the others, dragged down in an eye-blink. The lieutenant ran with them, trying to turn the rout into an ordered retreat, but failing.

Emboldened by the troopers’ fear, the things that were preying on the Phalanx manifested and the Salamanders saw them clearly for the first time.

‘Are they daemons?’ spat Emek, levelling his bolter.

They looked more like ragged corpses, swathed in rotting surplices and robes, the tattered fabric flapping like the tendrils of some incorporeal squid. Their eyes were hollow and black, and they were bone-thin with the essence of clergy about them. Priests they may once have been; now they were devils.

‘Let us see if they can burn,’ snarled Ba’ken, unleashing a gout of promethium from his heavy flamer. The spectres dissipated against the glare of liquid fire coursing over them as Ba’ken set the killing fields ablaze, but returned almost as soon as the fires had died down, utterly unscathed.

He was about to douse them again when they evaporated like mist before his eyes.

An uncertain second or two passed, before the hulking Fire-born turned to his sergeant and shrugged.

‘I’ve fought tougher foes–’ he began, before crying out as his booted feet sank beneath the earth.

‘Name of Vulkan!’ Emek swore, scarcely believing his eyes.

‘Hold him!’ bellowed Dak’ir, seeing white talons snaring Ba’ken’s feet and ankles. Brothers Romulus and G’heb sprang to their fellow Salamander’s aid, each hooking their arms under Ba’ken’s. In moments, they were straining against the strength of the spectres.

‘Let me go, you’ll tear me in half,’ roared Ba’ken, part anger, part pain.

‘Hang on, brother,’ Dak’ir told him. He was about to call for reinforcements, noting Pyriel’s contact rune on his tac-display, when an apparition mat-erialised in front of him. It was an old preacher, his grey face lined with age and malice, a belligerent light illuminating the sockets of his eyes. His mouth formed words Dak’ir could not discern and he raised an accusing finger.

‘Release him, hell-spawn!’ Dak’ir lashed out with his chainsword, but the preacher blinked out of existence and the blade passed on harmlessly to embed itself in the soft earth behind him. Dak’ir raised his plasma pistol to shoot when a terrible, numbing cold filled his body. Icy fire surged through him as his blood was chilled by something old and vengeful. It stole away the breath from his lungs and made them burn, as if he had plunged naked beneath the surface of an arctic river. It took Dak’ir a few moments to realise the crooked fingers of the preacher were penetrating his battle-plate. Worming beyond the aegis of ceramite, making a mockery of his power armour’s normally staunch defences, the grey preacher’s talons sought vital organs in their quest for vengeance.

Trying to cry out, Dak’ir found his larynx frozen, his tongue made leaden by the spectral assault. In his mind his intoned words of Promethean lore kept him from slipping into utter darkness.

Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast. With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor.

A heavy pressure hammered at his thunderous hearts, pressing, pressing…

Dak’ir’s senses were ablaze and the smell of old, dank wood permeated through his battle-helm.

Then a bright flame engulfed him and the pressure eased. Cold withered, melted away by soothing heat, and as his darkening vision faded Dak’ir saw Pyriel standing amidst a pillar of fire. At the periphery, Ba’ken was being dragged free of the earth that had claimed him. Someone else was lifting Dak’ir. He felt strong hands hooking under his arms and pulling him. It was only then as his body became weightless and light that he realised he must’ve fallen. Semi-conscious, Dak’ir was aware of a fading voice addressing him.

‘Dragging your carcass out of the fire again, Ignean…’

Then the darkness claimed him.

The strategium was actually an old refectory inside the bastion compound that smelled strongly of tabac and stale sweat. A sturdy-looking cantina table had been commandeered to act as a tacticarium, and was strewn with oiled maps, geographical charts and data-slates. The vaulted ceiling leaked, and drips of water were constantly being wiped from the various scrolls and picts layering the table by aides and officers alike. Buzzing around the moderately sized room’s edges were Departmento Munitorum clerks and logisticians, counting up men and materiel with their styluses and exchanging dark glances with one another when they thought the Guard weren’t looking.

It was no secret that they’d lost a lot of troops in the last sortie to bring down the void shield. To compound matters, ammunition for the larger guns was running dangerously low, to ‘campaign-unviable’ levels. Almost an hour had passed since the disastrous assault, and the Imperial forces were no closer to forging a battle-plan.

Librarian Pyriel surveyed the tactical data before him and saw nothing new, no insightful strategy to alleviate the graveness of their situation. At least the spectres had given up pursuit when they’d entered the grounds of Mercy Rock, though it had taken a great deal of the Epistolary’s psychic prowess to fend them off and make retreat possible.

‘What were they, brother?’ said Tsu’gan in a low voice, trying not to alert the Guard officers and quartermaster who had joined them. Some things – Tsu’gan knew – it was best that humans stayed ignorant of. They could be weak-minded, all too susceptible to fear. Protecting humanity meant more than bolter and blade; it meant shielding them from the horrifying truths of the galaxy too, lest they be broken by them.

‘I am uncertain.’ Pyriel cast his gaze upwards, where his witch-sight turned timber and rockcrete as thin as gossamer, penetrating the material to soar into the shadow night where the firmament was drenched blood-red. ‘But I believe the warp storm and the spectres are connected.’

‘Slaves of Chaos?’ The word left a bitter taste, and Tsu’gan spat it out.

‘Lost and damned, perhaps,’ the Librarian mused. ‘Not vassals of the Ruinous Powers, though. I think they are… warp echoes, souls trapped between the empyrean and the mortal world. The red storm has thinned the veil of reality. I can feel the echoes pushing through. Only, I don’t know why. But as long as the storm persists, as long as Hell Night continues, they will be out there.’

Only a few metres away, oblivious to the Salamanders, the Guard officers were having a war council of their own.

‘The simple matter is, we cannot afford a protracted siege,’ stated Captain Mannheim. Since Tench’s execution and the commissar’s incapacitation, Mann-heim was the highest ranking officer in the Phalanx. His sleeves were rolled up and he’d left his cap on the tacticarium table, summiting the charts.

‘We have perhaps enough munitions for one more sustained assault on the void shield.’ The quartermaster was surveying his materiel logs, a Departmento Munitorum aide feeding him data-slates with fresh information that he mentally recorded and handed back as he spoke. ‘After that, there is nothing we possess here that can crack it.’

Another officer, a second lieutenant, spoke up. His jacket front was unbuttoned and an ugly dark sweat stain created a dagger-shaped patch down his shirt.

‘Even if we did, what hope is there while those things haunt the darkness?’

A patched-up corporal, his left eye bandaged, blotched crimson under the medical gauze, stepped forward.

‘I am not leading my platoon out there to be butchered again. The secessionists consort with daemons. We have no defence against it.’

Fear, Tsu’gan sneered. Yes, humans were too weak for some truths.

The second lieutenant turned, scowling, to regard the Salamanders who dwelt in the shadows at the back of the room.

‘And what of the Emperor’s Angels? Were you not sent to deliver us and help end the siege? Are these foes, the spectres in the darkness, not allied to our faceless enemies at Aphium? We cannot break the city, if you cannot rid us of the daemons in our midst.’

Hot anger flared in Tsu’gan’s eyes, and the officer balked. The Salamander snarled with it, clenching a fist at the human’s impudence.

Pyriel’s warning glance made his brother stand down.

‘They are not daemons,’ Pyriel asserted, ‘but warp echoes. A resonance of the past that clings to our present.’

‘Daemons, echoes, what difference does it make?’ asked Mannheim. ‘We are being slaughtered all the same, and with no way to retaliate. Even if we could banish these… echoes,’ he corrected, ‘we cannot take on them and the void shield. It’s simple numbers, my lord. We are fighting a war of attrition which our depleted force cannot win.’

Tsu’gan stepped forward, unable to abstain from comment any longer.

‘You are servants of the Emperor!’ he reminded Mannheim fiercely. ‘And you will do your part, hopeless or not, for the glory of Him on Earth.’

A few of the officers made the sign of the aquila, but Mannheim was not to be cowed.

‘I’ll step onto the sacrificial altar of war if that is what it takes, but I won’t do it blindly. Would you lead your men to certain death, knowing it would achieve nothing?’

Tsu’gan scowled. Grunting an unintelligible diatribe, he turned on his heel and stalked from the strategium.

Pyriel raised his eyebrows.

‘Forgive my brother,’ he said to the council. ‘Tsu’gan burns with a Nocturnean’s fire. He becomes agitated if he cannot slay anything.’

‘And that is the problem, isn’t it?’ returned Captain Mannheim. ‘The reason why your brother-sergeant was so frustrated. Save for you, Librarian, your Astartes have no weapons against these echoes. For all their strength of arms, their skill and courage, they are powerless against them.’

The statement lingered, like a blade dangling precariously over the thread of all their hopes.

‘Yes,’ Pyriel admitted in little more than a whisper.

Silent disbelief filled the room for a time as the officers fought to comprehend the direness of their plight on Vaporis.

‘There are no sanctioned psykers in the Phalanx,’ said the second lieutenant at last. ‘Can one individual, even an Astartes, turn the tide of this war?’

‘He cannot!’ chimed the corporal. ‘We need to signal for landers immediately. Request reinforcements,’ he suggested.

‘There will be none forthcoming,’ chided Mann-heim. ‘Nor will the landers enter Vaporis space whilst Aphium is contested. We are alone in this.’

‘My brother was right in one thing,’ uttered Pyriel, his voice cutting through the rising clamour. ‘Your duty is to the Emperor. Trust in us, and we will deliver victory,’ he promised.

‘But how, my lord?’ asked Mannheim.

Pyriel’s gaze was penetrating.

‘Psychics are anathema to the warp echoes. With my power, I can protect your men by erecting a psy-shield. The spectres, as you call them, will not be able to pass through. If we can get close enough to the void shield, much closer than the original assault line, and apply sufficient pressure to breach it, my brothers will break through and shatter your enemies. Taking out the generatoria first, the shield will fail and with it the Aphium resistance once your long guns have pounded them.’

The second lieutenant scoffed, a little incredulous.

‘My lord, I don’t doubt the talents of the Astartes, nor your own skill, but can you really sustain a shield of sufficient magnitude and duration to make this plan work?’

The Librarian smiled thinly.

‘I am well schooled by my Master Vel’cona. As an Epistolary-level Librarian, my abilities are prodigious, lieutenant,’ he said without pride. ‘I can do what must be done.’

Mannheim nodded, though a hint of fatalism tainted his resolve.

‘Then you have my full support and the support of the Phalanx 135th,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you need, my lord, and it shall be yours.’

‘Stout hearts and steely resolve is all I ask, captain. It is all the Emperor will ever ask of you.’

Tsu’gan checked the load of his combi-bolter, re-securing the promethium canister on the flamer element of the weapon.

‘Seems pointless, when we cannot even kill our foes,’ he growled.

The bellicose sergeant was joined by the rest of his brothers at the threshold to Mercy Rock, in the inner courtyard before the bastion’s great gate.

Behind them, the Phalanx platoons were readying. In the vehicle yards, the Basilisks were churning into position on their tracks. Anticipation filled the air like an electric charge.

Only two Salamanders were missing, and one of those was hurrying to join them through the thronging Guardsmen from the makeshift medi-bay located in the bastion catacombs.

‘How is he, brother?’ Emek asked, racking the slide to his bolter.

‘Unconscious still,’ said Ba’ken. He’d ditched his heavy flamer and carried a bolter like most of his battle-brothers. Dak’ir had not recovered from the attack by the spectre and so, despite his protests, Ba’ken had been made de facto sergeant by Pyriel.

‘I wish he were with us,’ he muttered.

‘We all do, brother,’ said Pyriel. Detecting a mote of unease, he asked, ‘Something on your mind, Ba’ken?’

The question hung in the air like an unfired bolt-round, before the hulking trooper answered.

‘I heard Brother-Sergeant Tsu’gan over the comm-feed. Can these things even be fought, brother? Or are we merely drawing them off for the Guard?’

‘I saw the Ignean’s blade pass straight through one,’ Tsu’gan muttered. ‘And yet others seized upon Ba’ken as solid and intractable as a docking claw.’

Emek looked up from his auspex.

‘Before they attack, they corporealise; become flesh,’ he said, ‘Although it is flesh of iron with a grip as strong as a power fist.’

‘I had noticed it too,’ Pyriel replied. ‘Very observant, brother.’

Emek nodded humbly, before the Librarian outlined his strategy.

‘Our forces will be strung out across the killing field, four combat squads as before. I can stretch my psychic influence to encompass the entire Phalanx battle line but it will be a comparatively narrow cordon, and some of the spectres may get through. Adopt defensive tactics and wait for them to attack, then strike. But know the best we can hope for is to repel them. Only I possess the craft to banish the creatures into the warp and that won’t be possible whilst I’m maintaining the psychic shield.’

‘Nor then will you be able to fight, Brother-Librarian,’ said Ba’ken.

Pyriel faced him, and there was an unspoken compact in his low voice. ‘No, I’ll be temporarily vulnerable.’

So you, brothers, will need to be my shield.

The severity of the mission weighed as heavy as the weather. Captain Mannheim had been correct when he’d spoken in the strategium: for all their strength of arms, their skill and courage, they were powerless against the spectres. Almost.

Pyriel addressed the group. ‘Fire-born: check helm-displays for updated mission parameters and objectives.’

A series of ‘affirmatives’ greeted the order.

‘Switching to tac-sight,’ added Tsu’gan. A data stream of time-codes, distances and troop dispositions filled his left occulobe lens. He turned to Pyriel just as the great gates to Mercy Rock were opening. ‘I hope you can do what you promised, Librarian, or we are all dead.’

Pyriel’s gaze was fixed ahead as he donned his battle-helm.

‘The warp storm is unpredictable, but it also augments my own powers,’ he said. ‘I can hold the shield for long enough.’

On a closed channel, he contacted Tsu’gan alone.

‘My psychic dampener will be low,’ he warned. ‘If at any moment I am compromised, you know what must be done.’

If I am daemonically possessed by the warp, Tsu’gan read between the Librarian’s words easily enough.

A sub-vocal ‘compliance’ flashed up as an icon on Pyriel’s display.

‘Brothers Emek, Iagon?’ the Librarian asked with the gates now yawning wide. The gap in the wall brought lashing rain and the stench of death.

Emek and Iagon were interrogating overlapping scan patterns on their auspexes in search of warp activity in the shadows of the killing field.

‘Negative, brother,’ Emek replied. Iagon nodded in agreement.

The way, for now at least, was clear.

Despite the rain, a curious stillness persisted in the darkness of Hell Night. It was red and angry. And it was waiting for them. Pyriel was drawn again to the patch of wilderness, far off in the distance.

Just beyond my reach…

‘Into the fires of battle…’ he intoned, and led the Salamanders out.

Dak’ir awoke, startled and awash with cold sweat. He was acutely aware of his beating hearts and a dense throbbing in his skull. Disorientating visions were fading from his subconscious mind… An ashen world, of tombs and mausoleums lining a long, bone-grey road… The redolence of burning flesh and grave dust… Half-remembered screams of a brother in pain…

…Becoming one with the screams of many, across a dark and muddied field… The touch of rain, cold against his skin… and a bell tolling… ‘We are here…’ ‘We are here…’

The first was an old dream. He had seen it many times. But now new impressions had joined it, and Dak’ir knew they came from Vaporis. He tried to hold onto them, the visions and the sense memories, but it was like clutching smoke.

With the thinning of the unreal, the real became solid and Dak’ir realised he was flat on his back. A wire mattress with coarse sheets supported him. The cot groaned as he tried to move – so did Dak’ir when the daggers of pain pierced his body. He grimaced and sank back down, piecing together the immediate past. The attack by the spectral preacher came back to him. A remembered chill made him shiver.

‘You’re pretty well banged up,’ said a voice from the shadows. The sudden sound revealed just how quiet it was – the dull reply of heavy artillery was but a faint thudding in the walls. ‘I wouldn’t move so quickly,’ the voice advised.

‘Who are you?’ rasped Dak’ir, the dryness in his throat a surprise at first.

A high-pitched squeal grated against the Salamander’s skull as a Phalanx officer sitting in a wheelchair rolled into view.

‘Bahnhoff, my lord,’ he said. ‘You and your Astartes tried to save my men in the killing field, and I’m grateful to you for that.’

‘It’s my duty,’ Dak’ir replied, still groggy. He managed to sit up, despite the horrendous pain of his injuries and the numbness that lingered well after the preacher had relinquished his deathly grip. Dak’ir was gasping for breath for a time.

‘Lieutenant Bahnhoff?’ he said, remembering; a look of incredulity on his face when he saw the wheelchair.

‘Artillery blast got me,’ the officer supplied. ‘Platoon dragged me the rest of the way. Took me off the frontline too, though.’

Dak’ir felt a pang of sorrow for the lieutenant when he saw the shattered pride in his eyes.

‘Am I alone? Have my brothers gone to battle without me?’ Dak’ir asked.

‘They said you were too badly injured. Told us to watch over you until they returned.’

‘My armour…’ Dak’ir was naked from the waist up. Even his torso bodyglove had been removed. As he made to swing himself over the edge of the cot, enduring still further agonies, he saw that his battle-plate’s cuirass was lying reverently in one corner of the room. His bodyglove was with it, cut up where his brothers had needed to part it to treat his wounds. Dak’ir ran his finger over them. In the glow of a single lume-lamp they looked like dark bruises in the shape of fingerprint impressions.

‘Here… I found these in a storage room nearby.’ Bahnhoff tossed Dak’ir a bundle of something he’d been carrying on his lap.

The Salamander caught it, movement still painful but getting easier, and saw they were robes.

‘They’re loose, so should fit your frame,’ Bahnhoff explained.

Dak’ir eyed the lieutenant, but shrugged on the robes nonetheless.

‘Help me off this cot,’ he said.

Together, they got Dak’ir off the bed and onto his feet. He wobbled at first, but quickly found his balance, before surveying his surroundings.

They were in a small room, like a cell. The walls were bare stone. Dust collected in the corners and hung in the air, giving it an eerie quality.

‘What is this place?’

Bahnhoff wheeled backwards as Dak’ir staggered a few steps from the cot.

‘Mercy Rock’s catacombs. We use it as a medi-bay,’ the lieutenant’s face darkened, ‘and morgue.’

‘Apt,’ Dak’ir replied with grim humour.

A strange atmosphere permeated this place. Dak’ir felt it as he brushed the walls with his finger-tips, as he drank in the cloudy air.

We are here…

The words came back to him like a keening. They were beckoning him. He turned to Bahnhoff, eyes narrowed.

‘What is that?’

‘What is what, my lord?’

A faint scratching was audible in the sepulchral silence, as a quill makes upon parchment. Bahnhoff’s eyes widened as he heard it too.

‘All the Munitorum clerks are up in the strategium…’

‘It’s coming from beneath us,’ said Dak’ir. He was already making for the door. Wincing with every step, he betrayed his discomfort, but gritted his teeth as he went to follow the scratching sound.

‘Are there lower levels?’ he asked Bahnhoff, as they moved through a shadowy corridor.

‘Doesn’t get any deeper than the catacombs, my lord.’

Dak’ir was moving more quickly now, and Bahnhoff was wheeling hard to keep up.

The scratching was getting louder, and when they reached the end of the corridor the way ahead was blocked by a timber barricade.

‘Structurally unsafe, according to the engineers,’ said Bahnhoff.

‘It’s old…’ Dak’ir replied, noting the rotten wood and the gossamer webs wreathing it like a veil. He gripped one of the planks and tore it off easily. Compelled by some unknown force, Dak’ir ripped the barricade apart until they were faced by a stone stairway. It led into a darkened void. The reek of decay and stagnation was strong.

‘Are we going down there?’ asked Bahnhoff, a slight tremor in his voice.

‘Wait for me here,’ Dak’ir told him and started down the steps.

‘Stay within the cordon!’ bellowed Tsu’gan, as another one of Captain Mannheim’s men was lost to the earth.

An invisible barrier stretched the length of the killing ground that only flared incandescently into existence when one of the spectres struck it and recoiled. Like a lightning spark, the flash was born and died quickly, casting the scene starkly in its ephemeral life. Gunnery teams slogged hard to keep pace and infantry tramped hurriedly alongside them in long thin files, adopting firing lines once they’d reached the two hundred metre marker. Las-bursts erupted from the Phalanx ranks in a storm. Barking solid shot from heavy bolters and auto-cannon added to the sustained salvo. So close to the void shield, the energy impact returns were incandescently bright and despite the darkness, made several troopers don photoflash goggles. For some, it was just as well that their vision was impeded for shadows lurked beyond Librarian Pyriel’s psychic aegis and not everyone was immune to them.

The barrier was narrow, just as Pyriel had warned, and as the Phalanx had tried to keep pace with the Salamanders on the way to the advanced assault line some stepped out of it. A muted cry and then they were no longer seen or heard from again. By the time the firing line was erected, some several dozen troopers were missing. The Salamanders, as yet, had not succumbed.

Tsu’gan saw the flickering white forms of the warp echoes through the Librarian’s psychic shield. They lingered, angry and frustrated, ever probing to test the limits of Pyriel’s strength. Though he couldn’t see his face through his battle-helm, Tsu’gan knew by the Epistolary’s juddering movements that he was feeling the strain. He was a vessel now for the near-unfettered power of the warp. Like a sluice gate let free, the energy coursed through him as Pyriel fought hard to channel it into the shield. One slip and he would be lost. Then Tsu’gan would need to act quickly, slaying him before Pyriel’s flesh was obtained by another, heralding the death of them all, Salamanders or no.

One of the creatures breached the barrier wall, corporealising to do it, and Tsu’gan lashed out with his fist.

It was like striking adamantium, and he felt the shock of the blow all the way up his arm and into his shoulder, but did enough to force the creature back. It flashed briefly out of existence, but returned quickly, a snarl upon its eldritch features.

‘Hard as iron you said,’ Tsu’gan roared into the comm-feed as the weapons fire intensified.

Overhead the Earthshaker shells were finding their marks and the void shield rippled near its summit.

Emek battered another of the spectres back beyond the psychic cordon, the exertion needed to do it evident in his body language.

‘Perhaps too conservative,’ he admitted.

‘A tad, brother,’ came Tsu’gan’s bitter rejoinder. ‘Iagon,’ he relayed through his battle-helm, ‘what are the readings for the shield?’

‘Weakening, my lord,’ was Iagon’s sibilant reply, ‘but still insufficient for a break.’

Tsu’gan scowled.

‘Ba’ken…’

‘We must advance,’ the acting sergeant answered. ‘Fifty metres, and apply greater pressure to the shield.’

At a hundred and fifty metres away, the danger from energy flares cast by void impacts and friendly fire casualties from the Earthshakers was greatly increased, but then the Salamanders had little choice. Soon the bombardment from the Basilisks would end when they ran out of shells. The void shield had to be down before then.

‘Brother-Librarian,’ Tsu’gan began, ‘another fifty metres?’

After a few moments, Pyriel nodded weakly and started to move forwards.

Tsu’gan turned his attention to the Phalanx.

‘Captain Mannheim, we are advancing. Another fifty metres.’

The Phalanx officer gave a clipped affirmative before continuing to galvanise his men and reminding them of their duty to the Emperor.

Despite himself, the Salamander found he admired the captain for that.

The bells tolled on as the Imperial forces resumed their march.

The stairs were shallow and several times Dak’ir almost lost his footing, only narrowly avoiding a plunge into uncertain darkness by bracing himself against the flanking walls.

Near the bottom of the stairwell, he was guided by a faint smudge of flickering light. Its warm, orange glow suggested candles or a fire. There was another room down here and this was where the scratching sound emanated from.

Cursing himself for leaving his weapons in the cell above, Dak’ir stepped cautiously through a narrow portal that forced him to duck to get through and into a small, dusty chamber.

Beyond the room’s threshold he saw bookcases stuffed with numerous scrolls, tomes and other arcana. Religious relics were packed in half-open crates, stamped with the Imperial seal. Others, deific statues, Ecclesiarchal sigils and shrines were cluttered around the chamber’s periphery. And there, in the centre, scribing with ink and quill at a low table, was an old, robed clerk.

The scrivener looked up from his labours, blinking with eye strain as he regarded the giant, onyx-skinned warrior in his midst.

‘Greetings, soldier,’ he offered politely.

Dak’ir nodded, uncertain of what to make of his surroundings. A prickling sensation ran through his body but then faded as he stepped into the corona of light cast by the scrivener’s solitary candle.

‘Are you Munitorum?’ asked Dak’ir. ‘What are you doing so far from the strategium?’ Dak’ir continued to survey the room as he stepped closer. It was caked in dust and the grime of ages, more a forgotten storeroom than an office for a Departmento clerk.

The scrivener laughed; a thin, rasping sort of a sound that put Dak’ir a little on edge.

‘Here,’ said the old man as he backed away from his works. ‘See what keeps me in this room.’

Dak’ir came to the table at the scrivener’s beckoning, strangely compelled by the old man’s manner, and looked down at his work.

Hallowed Heath – a testament of its final days, he read.

‘Mercy Rock was not always a fortress,’ explained the scrivener behind him. ‘Nor was it always alone.’

The hand that had authored the parchment scroll in front of Dak’ir was scratchy and loose but he was able to read it.

‘It says here that Mercy Rock was once a basilica, a temple devoted to the worship of the Imperial Creed.’

‘Read on, my lord…’ the scrivener goaded.

Dak’ir did as asked.

‘“…and Hallowed Heath was its twin. Two bastions of light, shining like beacons against the old faiths, bringing enlightenment and understanding to Vaporis,”’ he related directly from the text. ‘“In the shadow of Aphium, but a nascent township with lofty ambitions, did these pinnacles of faith reside. Equal were they in their fervour and dedication, but not in fortification–”’ Dak’ir looked around at the old scrivener who glared at the Salamander intently.

‘I thought you said they were not fortresses?’

The scrivener nodded, urging Dak’ir to continue his studies.

‘“–One was built upon a solid promontory of rock, hence its given appellation; the other upon clay. It was during the Unending Deluge of 966.M40 when the rains of Vaporis continued for sixty-six days, the heaviest they had ever been in longest memory, that Hallowed Heath sank down beneath a quagmire of earth, taking its five hundred and forty-six patrons and priests with it. For three harrowing days and nights the basilica sank, stone by stone, beneath the earth, its inhabitants stranded within its walls that had become as their tomb. And for three nights, they tolled the bells in the highest towers of Hallowed Heath, saying, “We are here!”, “We are here!” but none came to their aid.”’

Dak’ir paused as a horrible understanding started to crawl up his spine. Needing to know more, oblivious now to the scrivener, he continued.

‘“Aphium was the worst. The township and all its peoples did not venture into the growing mire for fear of their own lives, did not even try to save the stricken people. They shut their ears to the bells and shut their doors, waiting for a cessation to the rains. And all the while, the basilica sank, metre by metre, hour by hour, until the highest towers were consumed beneath the earth, all of its inhabitants buried alive with them, and the bells finally silenced.”’

Dak’ir turned to regard the old scrivener.

‘The spectres in the killing field,’ he said, ‘they are the warp echoes of the preachers and their patrons.’

‘They are driven by hate, hate for the Aphiums who closed their ears and let them die, just as I am driven by guilt.’

Guilt?

Dak’ir was about to question it when the scrivener interrupted.

‘You’re near the end, Hazon, read on.’

Dak’ir was compelled to turn back, as if entranced.

‘“This testament is the sole evidence of this terrible deed – nay; it is my confession of complicity in it. Safe was I in Mercy Rock, sat idle whilst others suffered and died. It cannot stand. This I leave as small recompense, so that others might know of what transpired. My life shall be forfeit just as theirs were, too.”’

There it ended, and only then did Dak’ir acknowledge that the old man had used his first name. He whirled around, about to demand answers… but he was too late.

The scrivener was gone.

The Earthshaker barrage stopped abruptly like a thumping heart in sudden cardiac arrest. Its absence was a silent death knell to the Phalanx and their Adeptus Astartes allies.

‘It’s done,’ snarled Tsu’gan, when the Imperial shelling ended. ‘We break through now or face the end. Iagon?’

‘Still holding, my lord.’

They were but a hundred metres from the void shield now, having pressed up in one final effort to overload it. Without the heavy artillery backing them up, it seemed an impossible task. All the time, more and more Phalanx troopers were lost to breaches in the psychic shield, dragged into dank oblivion by ethereal hands.

‘I feel… something…’ said Pyriel, struggling to speak, ‘Something in the void shield… Just beyond my reach…’

Despite his colossal efforts, the Librarian was weakening. The psychic barrier was losing its integrity and with it any protection against the warp echoes baying at its borders.

‘Stand fast!’ yelled Mannheim. ‘Hold the line and press for glory, men of the Phalanx!’

Through sheer grit and determination, the Guardsmen held. Even though their fellow troopers were being swallowed by the earth, they held.

Tsu’gan could not help but feel admiration again for their courage. Like a crazed dervish, he raced down the line raining blows upon the intruding spectres, his shoulders burning with the effort.

‘Salamanders! We are about to be breached,’ he cried. ‘Protect the Phalanx. Protect your brothers in arms with your lives!’

‘Hail Vulkan and the glory of Prometheus!’ Ba’ken chimed. ‘Let Him on Earth witness your courage, men of the Phalanx.’

The effect of the sergeants’ words was galvanising. Coupled with Mannheim’s own stirring rally, the men became intractable in the face of almost certain death.

Tsu’gan heard a deep cry of pain to his left and saw Lazarus fall, impaled as Dak’ir had been by eldritch fingers.

‘Brother!’

S’tang and Nor’gan went to his aid as Honorious covered their retreat with his flamer.

‘Hold, Fire-born, hold!’ Tsu’gan bellowed. ‘Give them nothing!’

Tenacious to the end, the Salamanders would fight until their final breaths, and none so fiercely as Tsu’gan.

The battle-hardened sergeant was ready to make his final pledges to his primarch and his Emperor when the comm-feed crackled to life in his ear.

‘You may have cheated death, Ignean,’ snapped Tsu’gan when he realised who it was. ‘But then survival over glory was always your–’

‘Shut up, Zek, and raise Pyriel right now,’ Dak’ir demanded, using the other Salamander’s first name and mustering as much animus as he could.

‘Our brother needs to marshal all of his concentration, Ignean,’ Tsu’gan snapped again. ‘He can ill afford distractions from you.’

‘Do it, or it will not matter how distracted he becomes!’

Tsu’gan snarled audibly but obeyed, something in Dak’ir’s tone making him realise it was important.

‘Brother-Librarian,’ he barked down the comm-feed. ‘Our absent brother demands to speak with you.’

Pyriel nodded labouredly, his hands aloft as he struggled to maintain the barrier.

‘Speak…’ the Librarian could scarcely rasp.

‘Do you remember what you felt before the first assault?’ Dak’ir asked quickly. ‘You said there was something about the shield, an anomaly in its energy signature. It is psychically enhanced, brother, to keep the warp echoes out.’

Through the furious barrage a slim crack was forming in the void shield’s integrity, invisible to mortal eyes but plain as frozen lightning to the Librarian’s witch-sight. And through it, Pyriel discerned a psychic undercurrent straining to maintain a barrier of its own. With Dak’ir’s revelation came understanding and then purpose.

‘They want vengeance against Aphium,’ said Pyriel, beginning to refocus his psychic energy and remould it into a sharp blade of his own anger.

‘For the complicity in their deaths over a thousand years ago,’ Dak’ir concluded.

‘I know what to do, brother,’ Pyriel uttered simply, his voice drenched with psychic resonance as he let slip the last of the tethers from his psychic hood, the crystal matrix dampener that protected him psychically, and laid himself open to the warp.

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ Dak’ir intoned before the link was overwhelmed with psychic static and died.

‘Brother Tsu’gan…’ Pyriel’s voice was deep and impossibly loud against the battle din. A tsunami of raw psychic power was coursing through him, encasing the Librarian in a vibrant, fiery aura. ‘…I am about to relinquish the barrier…’

Tsu’gan had no time to answer. The psychic barrier fell and the warp echoes swept in. Thunder split the heavens and red lightning tore across boiling clouds as the warp storm reached its zenith.

Already, the breach Pyriel had psychically perceived was closing.

‘Maintain positions!’ roared Mannheim, as his men were being taken. ‘Keep firing!’

Secessionist fire, freed up from mitigating the Imperial artillery barrage, was levelled at the Phalanx. Mannheim took a lucky las-round in the throat and was silenced.

Tsu’gan watched the officer fall just as Pyriel burst into violent conflagration. Running over to Mannheim, he scooped the fallen captain up into his arms, and watched as a bolt of flame lashed out from Pyriel’s refulgent form. It surged through the void shield, past the unseen breach, reaching out for the minds of the Librarian’s enemies…

Deep in Aphium rebel territory, in an armoured bunker sunk partially beneath the earth, a cadre of psykers sat in a circle, their consciousnesses locked, their will combined to throw a veil across the void shield that kept out the deeds of their ancestors. It was only around Hell Night when the blood storm wracked the heavens and brought about an awakening for vengeance, a desire for retribution, that their skills were needed.

One by one they screamed, an orange fire unseen by mortal eyes ravaging them with its scorching tendrils. Flesh melted, eyes ran like wax under a hot lamp, and one by one the psyker cadre burned. The heat inside the bunker was intense, though the temperature gauge suggested a cool night, and within seconds the psykers were reduced to ash and the defence of Aphium with it.

Upon the killing field, Tsu’gan detected a change in the air. The oppressive weight that had dogged them since mustering out for a second time on Hell Night had lifted, like leaden chains being dragged away by unseen hands.

Like mist before the rays of a hot sun, the warp echoes receded into nothing. Silence drifted over the killing field, as all of the guns stopped. The void shield flickered and died a moment later, the absence of its droning hum replaced by screaming from within the city of Aphium.

‘In Vulkan’s name…’ Tsu’gan breathed, unable to believe what was unfolding before his eyes. He didn’t need to see it to know the spectres had turned on the rebels of Aphium and were systematically slaying each and every one.

It wasn’t over. Not yet. Pyriel blazed like an incendiary about to explode. The Librarian’s body was spasming uncontrollably as he fought to marshal the forces he’d unleashed. Raging psychic flame coursed through him. As if taking hold of an accelerant, it burned mercilessly. Several troopers were consumed by it, the mind-fire becoming real. Men collapsed in the heat, their bodies rendered to ash.

‘Pyriel!’ cried Tsu’gan. Cradling Captain Mann-heim in his arms, he raised his bolter one-handed.

…you know what you must do.

He fired into Pyriel’s back, an expert shot that punctured the Librarian’s lung but wasn’t fatal. Pyriel bucked against the blow, the flames around him dwindling, and sagged to his knees. Then he fell onto his side, unconscious, and the conflagration was over.

‘Tsu’gan. Tsu’gan!’

It took Tsu’gan a few seconds to realise he was being hailed. A curious stillness had settled over the killing field. Above them the red sky was fading as the warp storm passed, and the rain had lessened. On the horizon, another grey day was dawning.

‘Dak’ir…’

Stunned, he forgot to use his derogatory sobriquet for the other sergeant.

‘What happened, Zek? Is it over?’

Mannheim was dead. Tsu’gan realised it as the officer went limp in his arms. He had not faltered, even at the end, and had delivered his men to victory and glory. Tsu’gan’s bolter was still hot from shooting Pyriel. He used it carefully to burn an honour marking in Captain Mannheim’s flesh. It was shaped like the head of a firedrake.

‘It’s over,’ he replied and cut the link.

A faded sun had broken through the gathering cloud. Errant rays lanced downwards, casting their glow upon a patch of distant earth far off in the wilderness. Tsu’gan didn’t know what it meant, only that when he looked upon it his old anger lessened and a strange feeling, that was not to last in the days to come, spilled over him.

Rain fell. Day dawned anew. Hell Night was ended, but the feeling remained.

It was peace.

Fires of War

‘Give me some good news, Helliman,’ growled Colonel Tonnhauser. The old soldier spoke out the side of his mouth, a cigar smouldering between his lips.

He ducked instinctively as another explosion rocked the walls of the workshop, sending violent tremors through the floor and chips of rockcrete spitting from the ceiling onto the map-strewn bench below.

‘That was closer…’ Tonnhauser muttered, blowing smoke as he brushed away the dislodged dust and debris for the umpteenth time.

It’s a hard thing for a man to lose his own city to an enemy. When that enemy comes from within, it’s even more repugnant. But that was the stark reality facing Abel Tonnhauser of the 13th Stratosan Aircorps. He’d given too much ground already to the endless hordes of insurgent cultists, and still they pushed for more. Soon there’d be nothing left. The defence of the three primary cities of Stratos was on the brink of failure. The cloud-and-bolt badge he wore, though tarnished by weeks of fighting, was pinned proudly to a double-breasted tan leather jacket. It was only made of brass, but felt about as heavy as an anvil.

The workshop structure in which he’d made his command post was full of disused aeronautical equipment and machinery, more or less a refit and repair yard for dirigibles and other flying craft that were a necessary part of life on Stratos. Air tanks, pressure dials and coils of ribbed hosing were strewn throughout the building. The one in which Tonnhauser conferred with Sergeant Helliman, while Corpsman Aiker monitored the vox-traffic, was broad and long with vast angular arches and tall support columns, all chrome and polished plasteel.

Typical of the Stratosan architectural style, it had been beautiful once but was now riddled with bullet holes and crumbling from shell damage. A demo-charge rigged by insurgents to a ballast tractor had taken out most of the south-facing wall, the bulk of the colonel’s command staff with it. With no time to effect repairs, a sheet of plastek had been piston-drilled to cover the hole.

This largely pointless measure did little to keep out the stutter of sporadic gunfire and incessant explosions from tripped booby traps and purloined grenade launchers. Sergeant Helliman had to raise his voice to be heard.

‘Three loft-cities remain under the control of the insurgents, sir: Cumulon, here in Nimbaros, and Cirrion. They have also collapsed all except the three major sky-bridges into these areas.’

‘What of our ground forces, any progress there?’ asked Tonnhauser, lifting his peaked cap to run a hand across his receding hairline and wishing dearly that the expulsion of the insurgents was someone else’s job.

Helliman looked resigned, the young officer grown thinner over the passing weeks, and pale as a wraith.

‘Heavy resistance is dogging our efforts to make any inroads into the cities. The insurgents are dug in and well organised.’

Helliman paused to clear his dry throat.

‘There must be at least ninety thousand of the cities’ total populations corrupted by cult activity. They hold all of the materiel factorums and are equipping themselves with our stockpiles. Armour too.’

Tonnhauser surveyed the city maps on the bench, looking for potential avenues of assault he might have missed. He saw only bottlenecks and kill-zones in which the Aircorps would be snared.

Helliman waited anxiously for Tonnhauser’s response, and the void in conversation was filled by the frantic chatter coming from the command vox. Corpsman Aiker, crouched by the boxy unit in one corner of the workshop, tried his best to get a clear signal but static ran riot over all channels in the wake of the destruction of the antenna towers. Tonnhauser didn’t need to hear the substance of the vox-reports to know it was bad.

‘What do we hold then?’ he asked at last, looking up into the sergeant’s tired eyes.

‘Our safe zones are–’

A shuddering explosion slapped against the workshop, cutting Helliman off. Fire spilled through the plastek towards the sergeant in a tide. It funnelled outwards, the plastek becoming fluid in the intense heat wave, and melted around the hapless Helliman.

Tonnhauser swore loudly as he was dumped on his arse, but had enough presence of mind to pull out his service pistol and shoot the screaming sergeant through the head to spare him further agony.

Ears still ringing from the blast, Tonnhauser saw a figure scuttle through the fire-limned gouge in the plastek. It was a man, or at least a dishevelled interpretation of one, clad in rags and flak armour. His hair was sheared roughly all the way down to the skull. Hate-filled eyes caught sight of Tonnhauser as the wretch cast about the room. But it was the mouth of the thing that gave the loyal Stratosan pause. It was sewn shut with thick black wire, the lips and cheeks shot through with purple-blue veins.

At first, Tonnhauser thought the insurgent was unarmed. Then he saw the grenade clutched in his left hand…

‘Holy Emperor…’

Tonnhauser shot him through the forehead. As the cultist fell back there was an almighty thunderclap as the grenade went off, blasting the bodily remains of the insurgent to steaming chunks of meat.

The metal workbench spared Tonnhauser from the explosion, but he had little time to offer up his thanks to the Throne. Through the smoke and falling debris three more insurgents emerged, mouths sewn shut just like the first. Two carried autoguns; one had a crude-looking heavy stubber.

Squeezing off a desultory burst of fire, Tonn-hauser went to ground behind the solid bench just as metal rain ripped into the workshop. It chewed up the room with an angry roar, tearing up the walls and disused machinery, perforating Corpsman Aiker where he crouched.

Crawling on his hands and knees, Tonnhauser pressed himself tighter into cover, discharging the spent clip from his pistol before reaching for another with trembling fingers.

No way could he kill them all…

Through the incessant barrage of gunfire, Tonn-hauser first heard the plink-plink of a small metal object nearby, then saw the tossed grenade land and roll to within a metre of his foot. Survival instinct taking over, he lurched towards the grenade and kicked. It went off seconds later, heat, noise and pressure crashing over Tonnhauser in a violent wave, close enough for a shard of shrapnel to embed itself in his outstretched leg.

The colonel bit down so he wouldn’t cry out.

Won’t give this scum the satisfaction, he thought.

A sudden rash of las-fire spat overhead and abruptly the shooting ceased.

‘Colonel,’ an urgent voice called out from across the workbench a few moments later.

‘Behind here,’ Tonnhauser growled, wincing in pain as he saw the jagged metal sticking out of his leg.

Five Stratosan Aircorpsmen ran around the side of the bench, lasguns hot.

Tonnhauser read the first man’s rank pins.

‘Impeccable timing, Sergeant Rucka, but aren’t you supposed to be with Colonel Yonn and the 18th at the Cirrion border?’

A second corpsman carried a portable vox. Reports were drumming out on all frequencies, accompanied by a throbbing chorus of explosions and muted gunfire from across the length and breadth of Nimbaros.

‘Colonel Yonn is dead, sir. And the 18th are pulling out of Cirrion. The city is totally lost, all safe zones are compromised,’ Rucka told him. ‘We’ve got to get you out.’

Tonnhauser grimaced as two of the other corpsmen helped him to his feet.

‘What about Cumulon? Has that fallen too?’ he asked, passing the dead bodies of the three cultists, and staggering out of the back entrance to the workshop.

The sergeant’s tone was hollow but pragmatic.

‘We’ve lost them all, sir. We’re in full retreat, back beyond the city limits and across the sky-bridge to Pileon.’

Once out into the city streets the noise of the encroaching gun battle grew exponentially louder. Tonnhauser looked up to the dome roof of the city and saw a stormy sky through the reinforced plastek above him. Scudding smoke clouded his view as the upper atmosphere of the loft-city was lost from sight. As he fell back with Sergeant Rucka and his squad, Tonnhauser risked a glance over his shoulder. A mass retreat was in effect. Distant insurgents closed on their position en masse, clutching various guns and improvised weapons. Their battle cries were muted by the wire lacing their lips together – the effect was unnerving. Tonnhauser didn’t need to hear them to tell the enemy was pressing a large-scale attack.

A gas-propelled rocket roared close by overhead, forcing Tonnhauser and the others to duck. It struck the side of a mag-tram depot and exploded outwards, engulfing an entrenched Aircorps gunnery position. The three-man team died screaming amidst brick and fire.

Rucka altered course abruptly, taking Tonnhauser and his men away from the destruction of the depot and down a side alley.

‘Throne, how did this happen?’ Tonnhauser asked when Rucka had them stop in the alley to wait for the all-clear to proceed. ‘We were pressing them back, weren’t we?’

‘Took us by surprise,’ said Rucka, ducking back into the alley as a bomb blast lit up the road beyond. ‘Set off a chain of booby traps that decimated our troops then launched a mass ground offensive. They’re using advanced military tactics. No way can we retake the cities like this. We’ll have to regroup. Maybe then we can get Nimbaros and Cumulon back, but Cirrion…’ The sergeant’s words trailed away, telling Tonnhauser everything he needed to know about the capital’s fate.

‘What about Governor Varkoff?’

‘He’s alive, bunkered down in Pileon. It’s the nearest of the minor sky-cities that’s still under our control. That’s where we are headed now. He’s enacted official distress protocols on all Imperial astropathic and comm-range frequencies, requesting immediate aid.’

‘Do something for me will you, corpsman,’ said Tonnhauser. The colonel had moved to the end of the alley and watched as another explosion took out a statue of the first Stratosan governor. It was a symbol of Imperial rule and order. It shattered as it struck the ground wrapped in fire.

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘Get on your knees and pray,’ Tonnhauser said. ‘Pray for a bloody miracle…’

For the last forty years, the dream hadn’t changed.

At first there was only a vague sensation of heat, and then Dak’ir was back in the hot dark of the caves of Ignea on Nocturne. In his dream he was only a boy, the rock wall of that hostile place coarse and sharp against his pre-adolescent skin as he touched it. Mineral seams glinted in the glow of lava pools fed by the river of fire that was the lifeblood of the mountain above him. Ignea then faded, and the light from the river of fire died with it, resolving into a new vista…

The Cindara Plateau stretched before Dak’ir’s sandaled feet, its edge delineated by rock-totems, its surface the colour of rust and umber. Ash scudded in drifts across the Pyre Desert below, obscuring scaled saurochs as they hunted for sustenance amongst the crags. Above there came the sound of thunder, as if Mount Deathfire was about to erupt flame and smoke to blot out the heavens. But the great mountain of Nocturne slumbered still. Instead, Dak’ir looked up and saw a fiery blaze of a different kind, the engines of a vast ship slowly coming to land.

A ramp opened in the side of the vessel as it came to rest at last, and a warrior stepped out, tall and powerful, clad in armour of green plate and emblazoned with the symbol of the salamander, the noble creatures that lived in the heart of the earth. Others joined the warrior, Dak’ir knew some of them; he had worked beside them rebuilding and rock-harvesting after the Time of Trial. His heart quailed at the sight of these giants, though. For he knew they had come for him…

The image changed again, and this time Dak’ir had changed too. He now wore the mantle of warrior, carried the tools of war. His body was armoured in carapace, a holy bolt pistol gripped in his Astartes fist, his onyx flesh a stark reminder of his superhuman apotheosis. Monoliths of stone and marble loomed above Dak’ir like grey sentinels, ossuary roads paved the streets and the acrid stench of grave dust filled the air. This was not Nocturne; this was Moribar, and here the skies were wreathed in death.

Somewhere on the horizon of that grey and terrible world Dak’ir heard screaming and the vision in his mind’s eye bled away to be filled by a face on fire. He had seen it so many times, ‘the burning face’, agonised and accusing, never letting him truly rest. It burned and burned, and soon Dak’ir was burning too, and the screams that filled his ears became his own…

‘We were only meant to bring them back…’

Dak’ir’s eyes snapped open as he came out of battle-meditation. Acutely aware of his accelerated breathing and high blood pressure, he went through the mental calming routines as taught to him when he had first joined the superhuman ranks of the Space Marines.

With serenity came realisation. Dak’ir was standing in the half-darkness of his isolation chamber, a solitorium, one of many aboard the strike cruiser Vulkan’s Wrath. It was little more than a dungeon: sparse, austere and surrounded on all sides by cold, black walls.

More detailed recollection came swiftly.

An urgent communication had been picked up weeks ago via astropathic messenger and interpreted by the Company Librarian, Pyriel. The Salamanders were heading to the Imperial world of Stratos.

A prolific mining colony, one of many along the Hadron Belt in the Reductus Sector of Segmentum Tempestus, Stratos had great value to the Imperium for its oceanic minerals as well as its regular tithe of inductees to the Imperial Guard. Rescue of Stratos, liberation for its inhabitants from the internecine enemies that plagued it, was of paramount importance.

Hours from breaking orbit, Captain Ko’tan Kadai had already assigned six squads, including his own Inferno Guard, to be the task force that would make planetfall on Stratos and free the world from anarchy. As Promethean belief dictated, all Salamanders about to embark on battle must first be cleansed by fire and endure a period of extended meditation to focus their minds on self-reliance and inner fortitude.

All but Dak’ir had been untroubled in their preparations.

Such a fact would not go unnoticed.

‘My lord?’ a deep and sonorous voice asked.

Dak’ir looked in its direction and saw the hooded form of Tsek. His brander-priest was dressed in emerald green robes with the Chapter icon, a snarling salamander head inside a ring of fire, stitched in amber-coloured wire across his breast. Half-concealed augmetics were just visible beneath the serf’s attire in the flickering torchlight.

The chamber was small, but had enough room for an Adeptus Astartes’ attendants.

‘Are you ready for the honour-scarring, my lord?’ asked Tsek.

Dak’ir nodded, still a little disoriented from his dream. He watched as Tsek brought forth a glowing rod, white-hot from the embers of the brazier-cauldron that Dak’ir was standing in barefooted. The Astartes barely registered the pain from the fire-wrapped coals beneath him. There was not so much as a globule of sweat across his bald head or onyx-black body, naked but for a tribal sash clothing his loins.

The ritual was part of the teachings of the Promethean Cult, to which all warriors of the Salamanders stoically adhered.

As Tsek applied the branding rod to Dak’ir’s exposed skin he embraced the pain it brought. His fiery eyes, like red-hot coals themselves, watched approvingly. First, Tsek burned three bars and then a swirl bisecting them. It conjoined the many marks he and other brander-priests had made upon Dak’ir’s body where they’d healed and scarred into a living history of the Salamander’s many conflicts. Each was a battle won, a foe vanquished. No Salamander went into battle without first being marked to honour it and then again at battle’s end to commemorate it.

Dak’ir’s own marks wreathed his legs, arms and some of his torso and back. They were intricate, becoming more detailed as each new honour scar was added. Only a veteran of many campaigns, a Salamander of centuries’ service, ever bore such markings on his face.

Tsek bowed his head and stepped back into shadow. A votive-servitor shambled forward in his wake on reverse-jointed metal limbs, bent-backed beneath the weight of a vast brazier fused to its spine. Dak’ir reached out and plunged both hands into the iron caldera of the brazier, scooping up the fragments of ash from the burned matter collected at its edges.

Dak’ir smeared the white ash over his face and chest, inscribing the Promethean symbols of the hammer and the anvil. They were potent icons in Promethean lore, believed to garner endurance and strength.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ he intoned, making a long sweep with his palm to draw the hammer’s haft.

‘…With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ another voice concluded, letting Dak’ir cross the top of the haft with his palm to form the hammer’s head before revealing himself.

Brother Fugis stepped into the brazier’s light, clanking loudly as he moved. He was already clad in his green power armour, but went unhooded. His blood-red eyes blazed vibrantly in the half-dark. As befitted a Space Marine of his position, Fugis bore the ash-white of the Apothecaries on his right shoulder pad, though the left still carried the insignia of his Chapter on a jet-black field, the snarling salamander head there a blazing orange to match the pauldrons of his Third Company battle-brothers.

Thin-faced and intimidating, some in the company had suggested Fugis might be better served in a more spiritual profession than the art of healing. Such ‘suggestions’ were never voiced out loud, however, or given in front of the Apothecary, for fear of reprisal.

Dak’ir’s response to the Apothecary’s sudden presence was less than genial.

‘What are you doing here, brother?’

Fugis did not answer straight away. Instead, he scanned a bio-reader over Dak’ir’s body.

‘Captain Kadai asked me to visit. Examinations are best conducted before you’re armoured.’

Fugis paused as he waited for the results of the bio-scan, his blade-thin face taut like wire.

‘Your arm, Astartes,’ he added without looking up, but gesturing for Dak’ir’s limb.

Dak’ir held his arm out for the Apothecary, who took it by the wrist and syringed off a portion of blood into a vial. A chamber in his gauntlet then performed a bio-chemical analysis after the vial was inserted into its miniature centrifuge.

‘Are all of my brothers undergoing such rigorous conditioning?’ asked Dak’ir, keeping the annoyance from his voice.

Fugis was evidently satisfied with the serology results, but his tone was still matter of fact.

‘No, just you.’

‘If my brother-captain doubts my will, he should have Chaplain Elysius appraise me.’

The Apothecary seized Dak’ir’s jaw suddenly in a gauntleted fist and carefully examined his face. ‘Elysius is not aboard the Vulkan’s Wrath, as you well know, so you will have to endure my appraisal instead.’

With the index finger of his other hand Fugis pulled down the black skin beneath Dak’ir’s left eye, diffusing its blood-red glow across his cheek.

‘You are still experiencing somnambulant visions during battle-meditation?’ he asked. Then, apparently satisfied, he let Dak’ir go.

The brother-sergeant rubbed his jaw where the Apothecary had pinched it.

‘If you mean, am I dreaming, then yes. It happens sometimes.’

The Apothecary looked at the instrument panel on his glove, his expression inscrutable.

‘What do you dream about?’

‘I am a boy again, back on Nocturne in the caves of Ignea. I see the day I passed the trials on the Cindara Plateau and became an Adeptus Astartes, my first mission as a neophyte…’ The Salamander’s voice trailed away, as his expression darkened in remembrance.

The burning face…

‘You are the only one of us, the only Fire-born, ever to be chosen from Ignea,’ Fugis told him, eyes penetrating as he looked at Dak’ir.

‘What does that matter?’

Fugis ignored him and went back to his analysis.

‘You said, “We were only meant to bring them back”. Who did you mean?’ he asked after a moment.

‘You were there on Moribar,’ Dak’ir uttered and stepped off the brazier-cauldron, hot skin steaming as it touched the cold metal floor of his isolation cell. ‘You know.’

Fugis looked up from his instruments and his data. His eyes softened fleetingly with regret. They quickly narrowed, however, sheathed behind cold indifference.

He laughed mirthlessly, his lip curling in more of a sneer than a smile.

‘You are fit for combat, brother-sergeant,’ he said. ‘Planetfall on Stratos is in less than two hours. I’ll see you on assembly deck six before then.’

Fugis then saluted, more by rote than meaning, and turned his back on his fellow Salamander.

Dak’ir felt relief as the Apothecary departed.

‘And Brother Dak’ir… Not all of us want to be brought back. Not all of us can be brought back,’ said Fugis, swallowed by the dark.

The surface of Stratos writhed with perpetual storms. Lightning streaked the boiling tumult and thunderheads collided in violent flashes, only to break apart moments later. Through these ephemeral gaps in the clouds tiny nubs of chlorine-bleached rock and bare earth were revealed, surrounded by a swirling maelstrom sea.

The Thunderhawk gunships Fire-wyvern and Spear of Prometheus tore above the storm’s fury, turbofans screaming. They were headed for the conglomeration of floating cities in Stratos’s upper atmosphere. Named ‘loft-cities’ by the Stratosan natives, these great domed metropolises of chrome and plascrete were home to some four-point-three million souls and linked together by a series of massive sky-bridges. Due to the concentrated chlorine emissions from their oceans the Stratosans had been forced to elevate their cities with massive plasma-fuelled gravitic engines; so high, in fact, that each required its own atmosphere in order for the inhabitants to breathe.

The words of Fugis were still on Dak’ir’s mind and he willed the furore inside the Chamber Sanctuarine of the Fire-wyvern to smother his thoughts. The gunship’s troop hold was almost at capacity – twenty-five Astartes secured in standing grav-harness as the Thunderhawk made its final descent.

Brother-Captain Kadai was closest to the exit ramp, his gaze burning with courage and conviction. He was clad in saurian-styled artificer armour and, like his charges, had yet to don his helmet. Instead, he had it clasped to his armour belt, a simulacrum of a snarling fire drake fashioned in metal. His close-cropped hair was white and shaven into a strip that bisected his head down the middle. Alongside him was his command squad, the Inferno Guard: N’keln, Kadai’s second in command, a steady if uncharismatic officer; Company Champion Vek’shen, who had bested countless foes in the Chapter’s name, and gripped his fire-glaive; Honoured Brother Malicant who bore the company’s banner into battle, and Honoured Brother Shen’kar, clasping a flamer to his chest. Fugis was the last of them. The Apothecary nodded discreetly in Dak’ir’s direction when he saw him.

It was dark in the chamber. Tiny ovals of light came from the Salamanders, their red eyes aglow. As Dak’ir’s gaze left Fugis it settled on another’s, one that burned coldly.

Brother-Sergeant Tsu’gan glared from across the hold.

Dak’ir felt his fists clench.

Tsu’gan was the epitome of Promethean ideal. Strong, tenacious, self-sacrificing – he was everything a Salamander should aspire to be. But there was a vein of arrogance and superiority hidden deep within him. He was born in Hesiod, one of the seven Sanctuary Cities of Nocturne, and the principal recruiting grounds for the Chapter. Unlike most on the volcanic death world, Tsu’gan was raised into relative affluence. His family were nobles, tribal kings at the tenuous apex of Nocturnean wealth and influence.

Dak’ir, as an itinerant cave-dwelling Ignean, was at its nadir. The fact that he became Astartes at all was unprecedented. So few from the nomadic tribes ever reached the sacred places where initiates underwent the trials, let alone competed and succeeded in them. Dak’ir was, in many ways, unique. To Tsu’gan, he was an aberration. Both should have left their human pasts behind when they were elevated to Astartes, but centuries of ingrained prejudice were impossible to suppress.

The Thunderhawk banked sharply as it made for the landing zone adjacent to the loft-city of Nimbaros, breaking the tension between the two sergeants. The exterior armour plate shrieked in protest with the sudden exertion, the sound transmitting internally as a dull metal moan.

‘A portent of the storm to come?’ offered Ba’ken in a bellow.

The bald-headed Astartes was Dak’ir’s heavy weapons trooper, his broad shoulders and thick neck making him ideally equipped for the task. Ba’ken, like many of his Chapter, was also a gifted artisan and craftsman. The heavy flamer he had slung on his back was unique amongst Tactical squads, and he had manufactured the weapon himself in the blazing forges of Nocturne.

‘According to the Stratosan’s reports, the traitors are dug in and have numbers. It will not be–’

‘We are the storm, brother,’ Tsu’gan interjected, shouting loudly above the engine din before Dak’ir could finish. ‘We’ll cleanse this place with fire and flame,’ he snarled zealously, ‘and purge the impure.’

Ba’ken nodded solemnly to the other sergeant, but Dak’ir felt his skin flush with anger at such blatant disrespect for his command.

An amber warning light winked into existence above them and Brother-Captain Kadai’s voice rang out, preventing any reprisal.

‘Helmets on, brothers!’

There was a collective clank of metal on metal as the Astartes donned battle-helms.

Dak’ir and Tsu’gan fitted theirs last of all, unwilling to break eye contact for even a moment. In the end Tsu’gan relented, smiling darkly as he mouthed a phrase.

‘Purge the impure.’

‘Cumulon in the east and Nimbaros in the south are still contested, but my troops are taking more ground by the hour and have managed to secure the sky-bridges that link the three cities,’ explained a sweating Colonel Tonnhauser over the crackling pict-link of Kadai’s Land Raider Redeemer, Fire Anvil. ‘We’re using them to siphon out civilian survivors. There are still thousands trapped behind enemy lines though, my men amongst them.’

‘You have done the Emperor’s work here, and have my oath as a Salamander of Vulkan that if those men can be saved, I will save them,’ Kadai replied, standing inside the hold of his war machine as it shuddered over the sky-bridge to Cirrion. Four armoured Rhinos rumbled behind it in convoy, transporting the rest of the battlegroup.

Once the Salamanders had made planetfall outside Nimbaros, Kadai had ordered Brother Argos, Master of the Forge, to make a structural assessment of the approach road to Cirrion. Using building schematics from the Stratosan cities inloaded to the Vulkan’s Wrath’s cogitators and then exloaded back to a display screen on the Fire-wyvern, the Techmarine had determined the sky-bridges were unfeasible locations for the gunships to land and redeploy the Astartes.

Less than twenty minutes later, three Thunderhawk transporters had descended from orbit and deployed the Salamanders’ dedicated transport vehicles.

Kadai had held his Salamanders at the landing zone in squad formation, ready for the arrival of the transports. There had been no time for a tactical appraisal with the Stratosan natives. That would have to be conducted en route to Cirrion.

‘I pray to the Emperor that some yet live,’ Tonn-hauser continued over the pict-link, network-fed to all of the Astartes transports. ‘But I fear Cirrion is lost to us, lord Astartes,’ he added, lighting up a fresh cigar with shaking fingers. ‘There’s nothing left there but death and terror now.’ He seemed to be avoiding eye contact with the screen. Kadai had taken off his helmet during the ride over the sky-bridge and the human clearly found his appearance unsettling.

‘Wars have been won on the strength of that alone,’ he remembered the old Master of Recruits telling him almost three hundred years ago when he had first been given the black carapace.

‘Tell me of the enemy,’ Kadai said, face hardening at the thought of such suffering.

‘They call themselves the Cult of Truth,’ said Tonnhauser, the pict-link breaking up for a moment with the static interference. ‘Until roughly three months ago, they were merely a small group of disaffected Imperial citizens adept at dodging the mauls of the city proctors. Now they are at least fifty thousand strong, and dug in all throughout Cirrion. They’re heavily armed. Most of the Stratosan war-smiths are based in the capital, as are our dirigible fleets, our airships. They carry a mark on their bodies, usually hidden, like a tattoo in the shape of a screaming mouth. And their mouths…’ he said, taking a shuddering breath, ‘their mouths are sewn shut with wire. We think they might remove their tongues, too.’

‘What makes you say that?’

Tonnhauser met the captain’s burning gaze in spite of his fear.

‘Because no one has ever heard them speak.’ Tonnhauser paled further. ‘To fight an enemy that does not cry out, that does not shout orders. It’s not natural.’

‘Do they have a leader, this cult?’ said Kadai, showing his distaste at such depravity.

Tonnhauser took a long drag on his cigar, before crushing it in an ash tray and lighting another.

‘Our gathered intelligence is limited,’ he admitted. ‘But we believe there is a hierophant of sorts. Again, this is unconfirmed, but we think he’s in the temple district. What we do know is that they call him the Speaker.’

‘An ironic appellation,’ Kadai muttered. ‘How many troops do you have left, colonel?’

Tonnhauser licked his lips.

‘Enough to hold the two satellite cities. The rest of my men in Cirrion are being pulled out as we speak. Civilians too. I’ve lost so many…’ Tonnhauser’s face fell. He looked like a man with nothing more to give.

‘Hold those cities, colonel,’ Kadai told him. ‘The Salamanders will deal with Cirrion, now. You’ve done your duty as a servant of the Imperium and will be honoured for it.’

‘Thank you, my lord.’

The pict-link crackled into static as Kadai severed the connection.

The captain turned from the blank display screen to find Apothecary Fugis at his shoulder.

‘Their courage hangs by a thread,’ he muttered. ‘I have never seen such despair.’

‘Our intervention is timely then.’ Kadai glanced over Fugis’s shoulder and saw the rest of his command squad.

N’keln was readying them for battle, leading them in the rites of the Promethean Cult.

‘Upon the anvil are we tempered, into warriors forged…’ he intoned, the others solemnly following his lead. They surrounded a small brazier set into the floor of the troop hold. Offerings to Vulkan and the Emperor burned within the crucible, scraps of banners or powdered bone, and one by one the Inferno Guard took a fistful of the ash and marked their armour with it.

‘Guerrilla warfare is one thing, but to defeat an entire Imperial Guard regiment… Do you think we face more than a cult uprising here?’ asked Fugis, averting his gaze from the ritual and resolving to make his own observances later.

Kadai brought his gaze inward as he considered the Apothecary’s question.

‘I don’t know yet. But something plagues this place. This so-called Cult of Truth certainly has many followers.’

‘Its spread is endemic, suggesting its root is psychological, rather than ideological,’ said the Apothecary.

Kadai left the implication unspoken.

‘I can’t base a strategy on supposition, brother. Once we breach the city, then we’ll find out what we’re facing.’ The captain paused a moment before asking, ‘What of Dak’ir?’

Fugis lowered his voice, so the others could not hear him.

‘Physically, our brother is fine. But he is still troubled. Remembrances of his human childhood on Nocturne and his first mission…’

Kadai scowled, ‘Moribar… Over four decades of battles, yet still this one clings to us like a dark shroud.’

‘His memory retention is… unusual. And I think he feels guilt for what happened to Nihilan,’ offered Fugis.

Kadai’s expression darkened further.

‘He is not alone in that,’ he muttered.

‘Ushorak, too.’

‘Vai’tan Ushorak was a traitor. He deserved his fate,’ Kadai answered flatly, before changing the subject. ‘Dak’ir’s spirit will be cleansed in the crucible of battle; that is the Salamanders way. Failing that I will submit him to the Reclusiam and Chaplain Elysius for conditioning.’

Kadai reactivated the open vox-channel, indicating that the conversation was over.

It was time to address the troops.

‘Brothers…’ Dak’ir heard the voice of his captain over the vox. ‘Our task here is simple. Liberate the city, protect its citizens and destroy the heretics. Three assault groups will enter Cirrion on a sector by sector cleanse and burn – Hammer, Anvil and Flame. Sergeants Tsu’gan and Dak’ir will lead Anvil and Flame, into the east and west sectors of the city respectively. Devastator heavy support is Sergeant Ul’shan’s Hellfire Squad for Anvil and Sergeant Lok’s Incinerators for Flame. I lead Hammer to the north with Sergeant Omkar. Flamers with all units. Let nothing stay your wrath. This is the kind of fight we were born for. In the name of Vulkan. Kadai out.’

Static reigned once more. Dak’ir cut the link completely as the convoy rumbled on slowly past sandbagged outposts crested with razor wire. Weary troops with hollow eyes manned those stations, too tired or inured by weeks of fighting to react to the sight of the Astartes.

‘This is a broken force,’ muttered Ba’ken, breaking the silence as he peered out of one of the Rhino’s vision slits.

Dak’ir followed his trooper’s gaze. ‘They are not like the natives of Nocturne, Ba’ken. They are unused to hardship like this.’

A lone file of Stratosan Aircorps passed the convoy, marching in the opposite direction. They trudged like automatons, nursing wounds, hobbling on sticks, lasguns slung loose over their shoulders. Every man wore a respirator, and a tan stormcoat to ward off the chill of the open atmosphere. Only the cities were domed, the sky-bridges open to the elements, though they had high walls and were suspended from rugged-looking towers by thick cables.

The gate of Cirrion loomed at the end of the blasted road. The way into the capital city was huge, all bare black metal, and hermetically sealed to maintain its atmospheric integrity.

‘I heard a group of corpsmen talking before we mustered out,’ offered Ba’ken as they approached the gate. ‘One of them said that Cirrion was how he imagined hell.’

Dak’ir was checking the power load of his plasma pistol before slamming it back into its holster. ‘We were born in hell, Ba’ken… What do we have to fear from a little fire?’

Ba’ken’s booming laughter thundered in the Rhino all the way up to the gate.

Deep within the bowels of Cirrion the shadows were alive with monsters.

Sergeant Rucka fled through shattered streets, his pursuers at his heels. His heart was pounding. Cirrion’s principal power grid had collapsed, leaving failing back-up generators to provide intermittent illumination for the city via its lume-lamps. With every sporadic blackout, the shadows seemed to fill with new threats and fresh enemies. It didn’t help matters.

Rucka had been at the front of the second push in the capital city. The attack had failed utterly. Something else was stalking the darkened corridors of Cirrion, and it had fallen upon his battalion with furious wrath. It was totally unexpected. In strategising his battalion’s assault Rucka had deliberately taken an oblique route, circumventing the main battle zones, to come through the northern sector of the city.

All Stratosan-gathered intelligence had suggested that insurgent resistance would be light. It wasn’t insurgents that had wiped out five hundred men.

Rucka was the last of them, having somehow escaped the carnage, but now the cultists had found him. They were gaining too. His once proud city was in ruins. He didn’t know this dystopian version of it. Where there should have been avenues there were rubble blockades. Where there should be plazas of chrome there were charred pits falling away into stygian darkness. Hell had come here. There was no other word to describe it.

Rounding another corner, Rucka came to an abrupt halt. He was standing at the mouth to a mag-tram station; on one side a stack of industrial warehouses, on the other a high wall and an overpass. The trams themselves littered the way ahead, just burnt out wrecks, daubed in crude slogans. But it was the tunnel itself that caught the sergeant’s attention. Something skittered there in the abject darkness.

Behind him, Rucka heard the pack. They’d slowed. He realised then he’d been steered to this place.

Slowly the skittering from the tunnel became louder and the pack from behind him closer. The cultists scuttled into view. Rucka counted at least fifty men and women, their mouths sewn shut, blue veins threading from their puckered lips. They carried picks and shards of metal and glass.

It wasn’t the end that Rucka had envisaged for himself.

The sergeant had picked out his first opponent and was about to take aim with his lasgun when a piece of rockcrete clattered down onto the street. Rucka traced its trajectory back to the overpass and saw the silhouettes of three armoured giants in the ambient light.

The brief spark of salvation given life in Rucka’s mind was quickly crushed when he realised that these creatures were not here to save him.

Thunder roared and muzzle flares tore away the darkness a second later.

Rucka read what was about to happen and went to ground just before the onslaught. The deadly salvo lasted heartbeats, but it was enough. The cultists were utterly annihilated – their broken, blasted bodies littered the street like visceral trash.

Rucka was on his back, still dazed from the sudden attack. When he couldn’t feel his legs, he realised he’d been hit. Heat blazed down his side like an angry knife ripping at his skin. His fatigues were wet, probably with his own blood. A sudden earth tremor shook the rockcrete where Rucka lay prone, sending fresh daggers of pain through his body, as something large and dense smashed into the ground. More impacts followed, landing swift and heavy like mortar strikes.

Vision fogging, the sergeant managed to turn his head… His blood-rimed eyes widened. Crouched in gory armour, two bloody horns curling from its snarling dragon helm, was a terrible giant. It rose to its feet, like some primordial beast uncurling from the abyss, to reveal an immense plastron swathed in red scales. Heat haze seemed to emanate from its armoured form as if it had been fresh-forged from the mantle of a volcano.

‘The vault, where is it?’ the dragon giant asked, fiery embers rasping through its fanged mouth-grille as if it breathed ash and cinder.

‘Close…’ said another. Its voice was like cracked parchment but carried the resonance of power.

Though he couldn’t see them in his eye-line, Rucka realised the secondary impacts had been the giant warrior’s companions.

‘We are not alone,’ said a third, deep and throaty like crackling magma.

‘Salamanders,’ said the dragon giant, his vitriol obvious.

‘Then we had best be swift,’ returned the second voice. ‘I do not want to miss them.’

Rucka heard heavy footfalls approaching and felt the ominous gaze of one of the armoured giants upon him.

‘This one still lives,’ it barked.

Rucka’s vision was fading, but the sergeant could still smell copper coming off its armour, mangled with the acrid stench of gun smoke.

‘No survivors,’ said the second voice. ‘Kill it quickly. We have no time for amusement, Ramlek.’

‘A pity…’

Rucka tried to speak.

‘The Empe–’

Then his world ended in fire.

The black iron gates of Cirrion parted with slow inevitability.

The armoured Astartes convoy rumbled through into the waiting darkness. After a few moments the gates shut behind them. Halogen strip lights flickered into life on the flanking walls revealing a large metal chamber, wide enough for the transports to travel abreast.

Abandoned Stratosan vehicles lay abutting the walls, dragged aside by clearance crews. Caches of discarded equipment were strewn nearby the forlorn AFVs. Webbing, luminator rigs and other ancillary kit had been left behind, but no weapons – all the guns were needed by the human defenders.

Hermetically sealed from the outside to preserve atmospheric integrity, the holding area had another gate on the opposite side. This second gate opened when the Salamanders were halfway across the vast corridor with a hiss of pressure, and led into Cirrion itself.

The outskirts of the benighted city beckoned.

Deserted avenues bled away into blackness and buildings lay in ruins like open wounds. Fire seared the walls and blood washed the streets. Despair hung thick in the air like a tangible fug. Death had come to Cirrion, and held it tightly in its bony grasp.

Akin to a hive, Cirrion was stacked with honey-comb levels in the most densely packed areas. Grav-lifts linked these plateau-conurbations of chrome and blue. Sub-levels plunged in other places, allowing access to inverted maintenance spires or vast subterranean freight yards. Above, a dense pall of smoke layered the ceiling in a roiling mass. Breaks in the grey-black smog revealed thick squalls of cloud and the flash of lightning arcs from the atmospheric storm outside and beyond the dome.

Tactically, the city was a nightmarish labyrinth of hidden pitfalls, artificial bottlenecks and kill-zones. Tank traps riddled the roads. Spools of razor wire wreathed every alleyway. Piled rubble and wreckage created makeshift walls and impassable blockades.

The Salamanders reached as far as Aereon Square, one of Cirrion’s communal plazas, when the wreckage-clogged, wire-choked streets prevented the transports from going any further.

It was to be the first of many setbacks.

‘Salamanders, disembark,’ Kadai voiced sternly over the vox. ‘Three groups, quadrant by quadrant search. Vehicles stay here. We approach on foot.’

‘Nothing,’ Ba’ken’s voice was tinny through his battle-helm as he stood facing the doorway to one of Cirrion’s municipal temples. It yawned like a hungry maw, the shadows within filled with menace.

From behind him, Dak’ir’s order was emphatic.

‘Burn it.’

Ba’ken hefted his heavy flamer and doused the room beyond with liquid promethium. The sudden burst of incendiary lit up a broad hallway like a flare, hinting at a larger space in the distance, before dying back down to flickering embers.

‘Clear,’ he shouted, stepping aside heavily with the immense weapon, allowing the sergeant and his battle-brothers through.

Sergeant Lok and his Devastators were assigned to the rearguard and took up positions to secure the entrance as Ba’ken followed the Tactical squad inside.

Dak’ir entered quickly, his squad fanning out from his lead to cover potential avenues of attack.

They’d been travelling through the city for almost an hour, through three residential districts filled with debris, and still no contact with friend or foe. Regular reports networked through the Astartes’ comm-feeds in their helmets revealed the same from the other two assault groups.

Cirrion was dead.

Yet, there were signs of recent abandonment: lume-globes flickering in the blasted windows of tenements, sonophones playing grainy melodies in communal refectories, the slow-running engines of dormant grav-cars and the interior lamps of mag-trams come to an all-stop on the rails. Life here had ended abruptly and violently.

Numerous roads and more conventional routes were blocked by pitfalls or rubble. According to Brother Argos, the municipal temple was the most expedient way to penetrate deeper into the east sector. It was also postulated that it was a likely location for survivors to congregate. The Techmarine was back in Nimbaros with Colonel Tonnhauser, guiding the three assault groups via a hololithic schematic, adjusting the image as he was fed reports of blockades, street collapses or structural levelling by Salamanders in the field.

‘Brother Argos, this is Flame. We’ve reached the municipal temple and need a route through,’ said Dak’ir. Even through his power armour, he was aware of the dulcet hum of the plasma engines keeping the massive city aloft and reminding him of the precariousness of their battlefield.

Putting the thoughts out of his mind, he swept the luminator attached to his battle-helm around the vast hall. Within its glare a lozenge-shaped chamber with racks of desks on both flanking walls was revealed. Overhead, exterior light from the city’s lume-lamps spilled through a glass-domed ceiling in grainy shafts illuminating patches on the ground. Lightning flashes from Stratos’s high atmosphere outside augmented it.

Parchments and scraps of vellum set ablaze by Ba’ken’s flamer skittered soundlessly across a polished floor, or twisted like fireflies on an unseen breeze. More of the papers were fixed to pillars that supported the vaulted roof above, fluttering fitfully – some stuck with votive wax, others hammered fast with nails and stakes. The messages were doubtless pinned up by grieving families long since given in to despair.

‘These are death notices, prayers for the missing,’ intoned Brother Emek, using the muzzle of his bolter to hold one still so he could read it.

‘More here,’ added Brother Zo’tan. He panned the light from his luminator up a chrome-plated staircase at the back of the room to reveal the suited bodies of clerks and administrators entangled in the balustrade. Torn scrolls were pinned to the banister, and gathered over the corpses on the steps like a paper shroud.

‘There must be thousands…’ uttered Sergeant Lok, who had entered the lobby. The hard-faced veteran looked grimmer than ever as he surveyed the records of the dead with his bionic eye.

‘Advance to the north end of the hall,’ the Techmarine’s voice returned, cracked with interference as it called the Salamanders back. ‘A stairway leads to a second level. Proceed north through the next chamber then east across a gallery until you find a gate. That’s your exit.’

Dak’ir killed the comm-feed. In the sudden silence he became aware of the atmospheric processors droning loudly in the barrier wall around the city, purifying, recycling, regulating. He was about to give the order to move out when the sound changed abruptly. The pitch became higher, as if the processing engine were switched to a faster setting.

Dak’ir re-opened the comm-feed in his battle-helm.

‘Tsu’gan, are you detecting any variance in the atmospheric processors in your sector?’

Crackling static returned for a full thirty seconds before the sergeant replied.

‘It’s nothing. Maintain your vigilance, Ignean. I have no desire to haul your squad out of trouble when you let your guard slip.’

Tsu’gan cut the feed.

Dak’ir swore under his breath.

‘Move out,’ he told his squad. He hoped they’d find the enemy soon.

‘He should never have been chosen to lead,’ muttered Tsu’gan to his second, Iagon.

‘Our brother-captain must have his reasons,’ he replied, his tone ever sinuous but carefully neutral.

Iagon was never far from his sergeant’s side, and was ever ready with his counsel. His body was slight compared to most of his brethren, but he made up for sheer bulk with guile and cunning. Iagon gravitated towards power, and right now that was Tsu’gan, Captain Kadai’s star ascendant. He also carried the squad’s auspex, maintaining a watch for unusual spikes of activity that might prelude an ambush, walking just two paces behind his sergeant as they stalked through the shadows of a hydroponics farm.

Tiny reservoirs of nutrient solution encased in chrome tanks extended across an expansive domed chamber. The chemical repositories were set in serried ranks and replete with various edible plant life and other flora. The foliage inside the vast gazebo of chrome and glass was overgrown, resembling more an artificial jungle than an Imperial facility for the sector-wide provision of nutrition.

‘Then that is his folly,’ Tsu’gan replied, and signalled a sudden halt.

He crouched, peering into the arboreal gloom ahead. His squad, well-drilled by their sergeant, adopted overwatch positions.

‘Flamer,’ he growled into the comm-feed.

Brother Honorious moved forwards, the igniter of his weapon burning quietly. The Salamander noticed the blue flame flicker for just a moment as if reacting to something in the air. Slapping the barrel, Honorious muttered a litany to the machine-spirits and the igniter returned to normal.

‘On your order, sergeant.’

Tsu’gan held up his hand.

‘Hold a moment.’

Iagon low-slung his bolter to consult the auspex.

‘No life form readings.’

Tsu’gan’s face was fixed in a grimace.

‘Cleanse and burn.’

‘We would be destroying the food supply for an entire city sector,’ said Iagon.

‘Believe me Iagon, the Stratosans are long past caring. I’ll take no chances. Now,’ he said, turning back to Honorious, ‘cleanse and burn.’

The roar of the flamer filled the hydroponics dome as the sustenance of Cirrion was burned to ash.

‘They are drawing us in,’ said Veteran Sergeant N’keln over the comm-feed. He was in the lead, tracking his bolter left and right for any sign of the enemy.

‘I know,’ Kadai agreed, trusting his and N’keln’s warrior instincts. The captain held his inferno pistol by his side, thunder hammer crackling quietly in his other hand. ‘Remain vigilant,’ he hissed through his battle-helm, his squad treading warily with bolters ready.

The city loomed tall and imposing as the Salamanders advanced slowly down a narrow road choked with wreckage and Stratosan corpses – ‘remnants’ of the battalions Tonnhauser had mentioned. The hapless human troopers had erected sandbagged emplacements and makeshift barricades. Habs had been turned into bunkers, and bodies hung forlornly from their windows like rags. The defences had not availed them. The Stratosan infantry had been crushed.

Fugis was crouched over the blasted remains of a lieutenant, scowling.

‘Massive physical trauma,’ muttered the Apothecary as Captain Kadai approached him.

‘Colonel Tonnhauser said the cultists were heavily armed,’ offered N’keln alongside him.

Fugis regarded the corpse further. ‘Ribcage is completely eviscerated, chest organs all but liquefied.’ Looking up at his fellow Salamanders, his red eyes flared behind his helmet lenses. ‘This is a bolter wound.’

Kadai was about to respond when Brother Shen’kar called from up ahead.

‘I have movement!’

‘Keep it tight,’ warned Dak’ir as he advanced up the lobby stairs towards a large chrome archway leading to the second level of the municipal temple.

The igniter on Ba’ken’s heavy flamer spat and flickered furiously until he reduced the fuel supply down the hose.

‘Problem?’

‘It’s nothing sergeant,’ he replied.

Dak’ir continued up the stairway, battle-brothers on either side of him, the Devastators still in the lobby below, ready to move up if needed. When he reached the summit he saw another long hallway beyond, just as Brother Argos had described. The room was filled with disused cogitators and other extant machinery. Sweeping his gaze across the junk, Dak’ir stopped abruptly.

In the centre of the hall, surrounded by more dead Administratum workers, was a boy. An infant, no more than eight years old, he was barefoot and clad in rags. Dirt and dried blood encrusted his body like a second skin. The boy was staring right at Dak’ir.

‘Don’t move,’ he whispered to his battle-brothers through the comm-feed. ‘We have a survivor.’

‘Mercy of Vulkan…’ breathed Ba’ken, alongside him.

‘Stay back,’ warned Dak’ir, taking a step.

The boy flinched, but didn’t run. Tears were streaming down his face, cutting through the grime and leaving pale channels in their wake.

Dak’ir scanned the hall furtively for any potential threats, before deeming the way was clear. Holstering his plasma pistol and sheathing his chainsword, he then showed his armoured palms to the boy.

‘You have nothing to fear…’ he began, and slowly removed his battle-helm. Dak’ir realised his mistake too late.

This infant was no native of Nocturne. One look at the Salamander’s onyx-black skin and burning eyes and the child yelped and fled for his life back across the hall.

‘Damn it!’ Dak’ir hissed, ramming his battle-helm back on and re-arming himself. ‘Sergeant Lok, you and your squad secure the room and await our return,’ he ordered through the comm-feed. ‘Brothers, the rest of you with me – there may be survivors, and the boy will lead us to them.’

The Salamanders gave chase, whilst the Devastators moved up the stairs behind them. Dak’ir was halfway across the hall with his squad when he felt the tiny pressure of a wire snapping against his greave. He turned, about to shout a warning, when the entire room exploded.

‘Dead end,’ stated Brother Honorious, standing before the towering barricade of heaped grav-cars and mag-trams.

Tsu’gan and Anvil had left the hydroponics farm a smouldering ruin and had advanced into the city. Directed by Brother Argos, they’d passed through myriad avenues in the urban labyrinth until reaching a narrow defile created by tall tenement blocks and overhanging tower-levels. A hundred metres in and they’d rounded a corner only to find it blocked.

‘We’ll burn through it,’ said Tsu’gan, about to order Sergeant Ul’shan’s Devastators forwards. The multi-meltas would soon–

‘Wait…’ said Tsu’gan, surveying the tall buildings reaching over them. ‘Double back, we’ll find another way.’

At the opposite end of the alleyway a huge trans-loader rolled into view, cutting off their exit. Slowly at first, but with growing momentum it rumbled towards the Salamanders.

‘Multi-meltas now! Destroy it!’

Sergeant Ul’shan swung his squad around to face the charging vehicle just as the cultist heavy weapon crews emerged from their hiding places in the tenements above and filled the alleyway with gunfire.

‘Eyes open,’ hissed Captain Kadai.

The Inferno Guard, together with Omkar’s Devastators, were crouched in ready positions spread across the street. The dangers were manifold – every window, every alcove or shadowed corner could contain an enemy.

Kadai’s gaze flicked back to Fugis as the Apothecary hurried, head low, towards a distant gun emplacement. A Stratosan lay slumped next to its sandbagged wall, alive but barely moving. Kadai watched the trooper’s hand flick up for the third time as he signalled for aid.

Something didn’t feel right.

The trooper’s movements were limp, but somehow forced.

Sudden unease creeping into the pit of his stomach, Kadai realised it was a trap.

‘Fugis, stop!’ he yelled into the comm-feed.

‘I’m almost there, captain…’

‘Apothecary, obey my ord–’

The roar of a huge fireball billowing out from the emplacement cut Kadai off. Fugis was lifted off his feet by the blast wave, the slain Stratosans buoyed up with him like broken dolls. Chained detonations ripped up the road, rupturing rockcrete, as an entire section of it broke apart and fell away creating a huge chasm.

Flattened by the immense explosion, Captain Kadai was still struggling to his feet, shaking off the blast disorientation, when he saw Fugis lying on his chest, armour blackened by fire, gripping the edge of the artificial crater made during the explosion. Kadai cried out as the Apothecary lost his hold and slipped down into the gaping black abyss of Cirrion’s underbelly, vanishing from sight.

From the hidden darkness of the city, the depraved cultists swarmed into the night and the shooting began.

Shrugging off the effects of the explosion, Dak’ir saw figures moving through the settling dust and smoke.

One loomed over him. Its mouth was stitched with black wire; blue veins infected its cheeks. Eyes filled with fervour, the cultist drove a pickaxe against the Space Marine’s armour. The puny weapon broke apart on impact.

‘Salamanders,’ roared Dak’ir, rallying his squad as he pulverised the cultist’s face with an armoured fist. He took up his chainsword, which had spilled from his grip in the blast, eviscerating three more insurgents as they came at him with cudgels and blades.

Reaching for his plasma pistol, he stopped short. The atmospheric readings in his battle-helm were showing a massive concentration of hydrogen; the air inside the dome was saturated with it.

To Dak’ir’s left flank, Ba’ken was levelling his heavy flamer as a massive surge of cultists spilled into the hall…

‘Wai–’

‘Cleanse and burn!’

As soon as the incendiary hit the air, the weapon exploded. Ba’ken was engulfed in white fire then smashed sideways, through the rockcrete wall and into an adjoining chamber where he lay unmoving.

‘Brother down!’ bellowed Dak’ir, Emek offering suppressing fire with his bolter as he came forwards, chewing up cultists like meat sacks.

More were piling through in a steady stream, seemingly unaffected by the bolt storm. Picks and blades gave way to heavy stubbers and auto-cannons, and Dak’ir saw the first wave for what it was: a flesh shield.

Another Salamander came up on the sergeant’s other flank, Brother Ak’sor. He was readying his flamer when Dak’ir shouted into the comm-feed.

‘Stow all flamers and meltas. The air is thick with a gaseous hydrogen amalgam. Bolters and secondary weapons only.’

The Salamanders obeyed at once.

The press of cultists came on thickly now, small-arms fire whickering from their ranks as the heavy weapons were prepared to shoot. Dak’ir severed the head from one insurgent and punched through the sternum of another.

‘Hold them,’ he snapped, withdrawing a bloody fist.

Ak’sor had pulled out a bolt pistol. Bullets pattered against his armour as he let rip, chewing up a bunch of cultists with autoguns. The dull thump-thud of the heavier cannons starting up filled the room and Ak’sor staggered as multiple rounds struck him. From somewhere in the melee, a gas-propelled grenade whined and Ak’sor disappeared behind exploding shrapnel. When the smoke had cleared, the Salamander was down.

‘Retreat to the lobby, all Salamanders,’ shouted Dak’ir, solid shot rebounding off his armour as he hacked down another cultist that came within his death arc.

The Astartes fell back as one, two battle-brothers coming forward to drag Ba’ken and Ak’sor from the battle. As Dak’ir’s squad reached the stairs and started to climb down, Sergeant Lok rushed in. Due to the presence of the explosive hydrogen gas the Incinerators were down to a single heavy bolter, strafing the doorway and ripping up cultists with a punishing salvo.

There was scant respite as the enemy pressed its advantage, wired-mouthed maniacs hurling themselves into the furious bolter fire in their droves. Brother Ionnes was chewing through the belt feed of his heavy bolter with abandon, his fellow Salamanders adding their own weapons to the barrage, but the cultists came on still. Like automatons, they refused to yield to panic, the fates of their shattered brethren failing to stall, let alone rout them.

‘They’re unbreakable!’ bellowed Lok, smashing an insurgent to pulp with his power fist, whilst firing his bolter one-handed. A chainsaw struck his outstretched arm seemingly from nowhere and he grimaced, his weapon falling from nerveless fingers. Red-eyed eviscerator priests were moving through the throng, wielding immense double-handed chainblades. Dak’ir crushed the zealot’s skull with a punch, but realised they were slowly being enveloped.

‘Back to the entrance,’ he cried, taking up Lok’s fallen bolter and spraying an arc of fire across his left flank. The ones he killed didn’t even scream. Step by agonising step, the Salamanders withdrew. There was a veritable bullet hail coming from the enemy now, whose numbers seemed limitless and came from every direction at once.

Inside the comm-feed it was chaos. Fragmented reports came in, plagued by static interference, from both Anvil and Hammer.

‘Heavy casualties… enemy armour moving in… thousands everywhere… brother down!’

‘Captain Kadai…’ Dak’ir yelled into the vox. ‘Brother-captain, this is Flame. Please respond.’

After a long minute, Kadai’s broken reply came back.

‘Kadai… here… Fall… back… regroup… Aereon Square…’

‘Captain, I have two battle-brothers badly injured and in need of medical attention.’

Another thirty seconds passed, before another stuttering response.

‘Apothecary… lost… Repeat… Fugis is gone…’

Gone. Not wounded or down, just gone. Dak’ir felt a ball of hot pain develop in his chest. Stoic resolve outweighed his anger – he gave the order for a fighting withdrawal to Aereon Square, and then raised Tsu’gan on the comm-feed.

‘Vulkan’s blood! I will not retreat in the face of this rabble,’ Tsu’gan snarled at Iagon. ‘Tell the Ignean I have received no such order.’

Anvil had, under Tsu’gan’s steely leadership, broken free of the ambush without casualties, though Brother Honorious was limping badly and Sergeant Ul’shan had lost an eye when the trans-loader hit and the drums of incendiary heaped onboard had exploded.

Without use of their multi-meltas, Tsu’gan had torn through the vehicle wreckage himself, scything cultists down on the other side with his combi-bolter. They were falling back to defended positions in the wider street beyond when Dak’ir’s message came through.

At some point during the fighting, Tsu’gan had damaged his battle-helm and he’d torn it off. Since then he’d been relying on Iagon for communication with the other assault groups.

‘We are Salamanders, born in fire,’ he raged zealously, ‘the anvil upon which our enemies are broken. We do not yield. Ever!’

Iagon dutifully relayed the message, indicating his sergeant’s refusal to comply.

Further up the street, something loud and heavy was rumbling towards them. It broke Tsu’gan’s stride for just a moment as a tank, festooned with armour plates and daubed with the gaping maw symbol of the Cult of Truth, came into view. Swinging around its fat metal turret, the tank’s battle cannon fired, jetting smoke and rocking the vehicle back on its tracks.

Tsu’gan had his warriors in a defensive battle line, strafing the oncoming cultist hordes with controlled bursts of bolter fire. The tank shell hit with all the force of a thunderbolt, and tore the ragged line apart.

Salamanders were tossed into the air with chunks of rockcrete chewed out of the road, and fell like debris.

‘Close ranks. Hold positions,’ Tsu’gan snarled, crouching down next to a partially destroyed barricade once occupied by Stratosan Aircorps.

Iagon shoved one of the bodies out of the way, so he could rest his bolter in a makeshift firing lip.

‘Still nothing from the captain,’ he said between bursts.

Tsu’gan’s reaction to the news was guarded, his face fixed in a perpetual scowl.

‘Ul’shan,’ he barked to the sergeant of the Devastators, ‘all fire on that tank. In the name of Vulkan, destroy it.’

Bolter fire pranged against the implacable vehicle, grinding forwards as it readied for another shot with its battle cannon. In the turret, a crazed cultist took up the heavy stubber and started hosing the Salamanders with solid shot.

‘You others,’ bellowed Tsu’gan, standing up and unhitching something from his belt, ‘grenades on my lead.’ He launched a krak grenade overarm. It soared through the air at speed, impelled by Tsu’gan’s strength, and rolled into the tank’s path. Several more followed, thunking to earth like metal hail.

At the same time, Iagon’s bolter fire shredded the cultist in the stubber nest, whilst Sergeant Ul’shan’s heavy bolters hammered the tank’s front armour and tracks. An explosive round from the salvo clipped one of the krak grenades just as the armoured vehicle was driving over it. A chained detonation tore through the tank as the incendiaries exploded, ripping it wide open.

‘Glory to Prometheus!’ roared Tsu’gan, punching the air as his warriors chorused after him.

His fervour was dampened when he saw shadows moving through the smoke and falling shrapnel. Three more tanks trundled into view.

Tsu’gan shook his head in disbelief.

‘Mercy of Vulkan…’ he breathed, just as the comm-link with Captain Kadai was restored. The sergeant glared at Iagon with iron-hard eyes.

They were falling back to Aereon Square.

Dak’ir had been right. Tsu’gan felt his jaw tighten.

‘Hold the line!’ Kadai bellowed into the comm-feed. ‘We make our stand here.’

The Salamanders held position stoically, strung out across the chewed-up defences, controlled bursts thundering from their bolters. Behind them were the armoured transports. Storm bolters shuddered from turret mounts on the Rhinos and Fire Anvil’s twin-linked assault cannon whirred in a frenzy of heavy fire, though the Land Raider’s flamestorm side sponsons were powered down.

The Salamanders had converged quickly on Aereon Square, the fighting withdrawal of the three assault groups less cautious than their original attack.

The slab floor of the square was cratered by bomb blasts and fire-blackened. Fallen pillars from adjacent buildings intruded on its perimeter. The centre of the broad plaza was dominated by a felled statue of one of Stratos’s Imperial leaders, encircled by a damaged perimeter wall. It was here that Kadai and his warriors made their stand.

The cultists came on in the face of heavy fire, swarming from every avenue, every alcove, like hell-born ants. Hundreds were slain in minutes. But despite the horrendous casualties, they were undeterred and made slow progress across the killing ground. The corpses piled up like sandbags at the edge of the square.

‘None shall pass, Fire-born!’ raged Kadai, the furious zeal of Vulkan, his progenitor, filling him with righteous purpose. Endure – it was one of the central tenets of the Promethean Cult, endure and conquer.

The bullet storms crossed each other over a shortening distance as the cultist thousands poured intense fire into the Salamanders’ defensive positions. Chunks of perimeter wall, and massive sections of the fallen statue, were chipped apart in the maelstrom.

Brother Zo’tan took a round in the left pauldron, then another in the neck, grunted and fell to his knees. Dak’ir moved to cover him, armour shuddering as he let rip with a borrowed bolter. Insurgent bodies were destroyed in the furious barrage, torn apart by explosive rounds, sundered by salvos from heavy bolters, shredded by the withering hail from assault cannons whining red-hot.

Still the cultists came.

Dak’ir gritted his teeth and roared.

‘No retreat!’

Slowly, inevitably, the hordes began to thin. Kadai ordered a halt to the sustained barrage. Like smoke dispersing from a doused pyre, the insurgents were drifting away, backing off silently into the gloom until they were at last gone from sight.

The tenacity of the Salamanders had kept the foe at bay this time. Aereon Square was held.

‘Are they giving up?’ asked Dak’ir, breathing hard underneath his power armour as he tried to slow his body down from its ultra-heightened battle-state.

‘They crawl back to their nests,’ Kadai growled. His jaw clenched with impotent anger. ‘The city is theirs… for now.’

Stalking from the defence line, Kadai quickly set up sentries to watch the approaches to the square, whilst at the same time contacting Techmarine Argos to send reinforcements from Vulkan’s Wrath, and a Thunderhawk to extract the dead and wounded. The toll was much heavier than he had expected. Fourteen wounded and six dead. Most keenly felt of all, though, was the loss of Fugis.

The Salamanders were a small Chapter, their near-annihilation during one of the worst atrocities of the Heresy, when they were betrayed by their erstwhile brothers, still felt some ten thousand years later. They had been Legion then, but now they were merely some eight hundred Astartes. Induction of new recruits was slow and only compounded their low fighting strength.

Without their Apothecary and his prodigious medical skills, the most severe injuries suffered by Kadai’s Third Company would remain untended and further debilitate their combat effectiveness. Worse still, the gene-seeds of those killed in action would be unharvested, for only Fugis possessed the knowledge and ability to remove these progenoids safely. And it was through these precious organs that future Space Marines were engineered, allowing even the slain to serve their Chapter in death. The losses suffered by Third Company, then, became permanent with the loss of their Apothecary, a solemn fact that put Kadai in a black mood.

‘We will re-assault the city proper as soon as we’re reinforced,’ he raged.

‘We should level the full weight of the company against them. Then these heretics will break,’ asserted Tsu’gan, clenching a fist to emphasise his vehemence.

Both he and Dak’ir accompanied Kadai as he walked from the battle line, leaving Veteran Sergeant N’keln to organise the troops. The captain unclasped his battle-helm to remove it. His white crest of hair was damp with sweat. His eyes glowed hotly, emanating anger.

‘Yes, they will learn that the Salamanders do not yield easily.’

Tsu’gan grinned ferally at that.

Dak’ir thought only of the brothers they had already lost, and the others that would fall in another hard-headed assault. The traitors were dug-in and had numbers – without flamers to flush out ambushers and other traps, breaking Cirrion would be tough.

Then something happened that forestalled the captain’s belligerent plan for vengeance. Far across Aereon Square, figures were emerging through the smoke and dust. They crept from their hiding places and shambled towards the Salamanders, shoulders slumped in despair.

Dak’ir’s eyes widened when he saw how many there were, ‘Survivors… the civilians of Cirrion.’

‘Open it,’ rasped the dragon giant. His scaled armour coursed with eldritch energy, throwing sharp flashes of light into the gloom. He and his warriors had reached a subterranean metal chamber that ended in an immense portal of heavy plasteel.

Another giant wearing the red-scaled plate came forward. Tendrils of smoke emanated from the grille in his horned helmet. The silence of the outer vault was broken by the hissing, crackling intake of breath before the horned one unleashed a furious plume of flame. It surged hungrily through the grille-plate in a roar, smashing against the vault door and devouring it.

Reinforced plasteel bars blackened and corroded in seconds, layers of ablative ceramite melted away before the adamantium plate of the door itself glowed white-hot and sloughed into molten slag.

The warriors had travelled swiftly through the mag-tram tunnel, forging deep into the lesser known corridors of Cirrion. None had seen them approach. Their leader had made certain that the earlier massacre left no witnesses. After almost an hour, they had reached their destination. Here, in the catacombs of the city, the hydrogen gas clouds could not penetrate. They were far from the fighting; the battles going on in the distant districts of Cirrion sounded dull and faraway through many layers of rockcrete and metal.

‘Is it here?’ asked a third warrior as the ragged portal into the vault cooled, his voice like crackling magma. Inside were hundreds of tiny strongboxes, held here for the aristocracy of Stratos so they could secure that which they held most precious. No one could have known of the artefact that dwelled innocuously in one of those boxes. Even upon seeing it, few would have realised its significance, the terrible destructive forces it could unleash.

‘Oh yes…’ replied the eldritch warrior, closing crimson-lidded eyes as he drew upon his power. ‘It is exactly where he said it would be.’

Desperate and dishevelled, the Stratosan masses tramped into Aereon Square.

Most wore little more than rags, the scraps of whatever clothed them when the cultists had taken over the city. Some clutched the tattered remnants of scorched belongings, the last vestiges of whatever life they once had in Cirrion now little more than ashen remains. Many had strips of dirty cloth or ragged scarves tied around their noses and mouths to keep out the worst of the suffocating hydrogen gas. A few wore battered respirators, and shared them with others; small groups taking turns with the rebreather cups. The hydrogen had no such ill-effects on the Salamanders, their Astartes multi-lung and oolitic kidney acting in concert to portion off and siphon out any toxins, thus enabling them to breathe normally.

‘An entire city paralysed by terror…’ said Ba’ken as another piece of shrapnel was removed from his face.

The burly Salamander was sat up against the perimeter wall, and being tended to by Brother Emek who had some rudimentary knowledge of field surgery. Ba’ken’s battle-helm had all but shattered in the explosion that destroyed his beloved heavy flamer and, after being propelled through the wall, fragments of it were still embedded in his flesh.

‘This is but the first of them, brother,’ replied Dak’ir, regarding the weary passage of the survivors with pity as they passed the Salamanders sentries.

Aereon Square was slowly filling. Dak’ir followed the trail of pitiful wretches being led away in huddled throngs by Stratosan Aircorps to the Cirrion gate. From there, he knew, an armoured battalion idled, ready to escort the survivors across the sky-bridge and into the relative safety of Nimbaros. Almost a hundred had already been moved and more still were massing in the square as the Aircorps struggled to cope with them all.

‘Why show themselves now?’ asked Ba’ken, with a nod to Emek who took his leave having finally excised all the jutting shrapnel. The wounds were already healing; the Larraman cells in Ba’ken’s Astartes blood accelerating clotting and scarring, the ossmodula implanted in his brain encouraging rapid bone growth and regeneration.

Dak’ir shrugged. ‘The enemy’s withdrawal to consolidate whatever ground they hold, together with our arrival must have galvanised them, I suppose. Made them reach out for salvation.’

‘It is a grim sight.’

‘Yes…’ Dak’ir agreed, suddenly lost in thought. The war on Stratos had suddenly adopted a different face entirely now: not one bound by wire or infected by taint, but one that pleaded for deliverance, that had given all there was to give, a face that was ordinary and innocent, and afraid. As he watched the human detritus tramp by, the sergeant took in the rest of the encampment.

The perimeter wall formed a kind of demarcation line, dividing the territory of the Salamanders and that held by the Cult of Truth. Kadai was adamant they would hold onto it. A pair of Thunderfire cannons patrolled the area on grinding tracks, servos whirring as their Techmarines cycled the cannons through various firing routines.

Brother Argos had arrived in Aereon Square within the hour, bringing the artillery and his fellow Techmarines with him.

There would be no further reinforcements.

Ferocious lightning storms were wreaking havoc in the upper atmosphere of Stratos, caused by a blanketing of thermal low pressure emanating off the chlorine-rich oceans. Any descent by Thunderhawks was impossible, and all off-planet communication was hindered massively. Kadai and the Salamanders who had made the initial planetfall were alone – a fact they bore stoically. It would have to be enough.

‘How many of our fallen brothers will be for the long dark?’ Ba’ken’s voice called Dak’ir back. The burly Salamander was staring at the medi-caskets of the dead and severely wounded, aligned together on the far side of the perimeter wall. ‘I hope I will never suffer that fate…’ he confessed in a whisper. ‘Entombed within a Dreadnought. An existence without sensation, as the world dims around me, enduring forever in a cold sarcophagus. I would rather the fires of battle claim me first.’

‘It is an honour to serve the Chapter eternally, Ba’ken,’ Dak’ir admonished, though his reproach was mild. ‘In any case, we don’t know what their fates will be,’ he added, ‘save for that of the dead…’

The fallen warriors of Third Company were awaiting transit to Nimbaros. Here, they would be kept secure aboard Fire-wyvern until the storms abated and the Thunderhawk could return them to the Vulkan’s Wrath where they would be interred in the strike cruiser’s pyreum.

All Salamanders, once their progenoids had been removed, were incinerated in the pyreum, still wearing their armour, their ashes offered in Promethean ritual to honour the heroic dead and empower the spirits of the living. Such practices were only ever conducted by a Chaplain, and since Elysius was not with the company at this time, the ashen remains would be stored in the strike cruiser’s crematoria until he rejoined them or they returned to Nocturne.

Such morbid thoughts inevitably led to Fugis, and the Apothecary’s untimely demise.

‘I spoke to him before the mission, before he died,’ said Dak’ir, his eyes far away.

‘Who?’

‘Fugis. In the isolation chamber aboard the Vulkan’s Wrath.’

Ba’ken stood up and reached for his pauldron, easing the stiffness from his back and shoulders. The left one had been dislocated before Brother Emek had righted it, and Ba’ken’s pauldron had been removed to do it.

‘What did he say?’ he asked, affixing the armour expertly.

Not all of us want to be brought back. Not all of us can be brought back.

‘Something I will not forget…’

Dak’ir shook his head slowly, his gaze fixed on the darkness beyond Aereon Square. ‘I do not think we are alone here, Ba’ken,’ he said at length.

‘Clearly not – we fight a horde of thousands.’

‘No… There is something else, too.’

Ba’ken frowned. ‘And what is that, brother?’

Dak’ir voice was hard as stone. ‘Something worse.’

The interior of the Fire Anvil’s troop hold was aglow as Dak’ir entered the Land Raider. A revolving schematic in the middle of the hold threw off harsh blue light, bathing the metal chamber and the Astartes gathered within. The four Salamanders present had already removed battle-helms. Their eyes burned warmly in the semi-darkness, at odds with the cold light of the hololith depicting Cirrion.

Summoned at Kadai’s request, Dak’ir had left Ba’ken at the perimeter wall to rearm himself, ready for the next assault on Cirrion.

‘Without flamers and meltas we face a much sterner test here,’ Kadai said, nodding to acknowledge Dak’ir’s arrival, as did N’keln.

Tsu’gan offered no such geniality, and merely scowled.

‘Tactically, we can hold Aereon Square almost indefinitely,’ Kadai continued. ‘Thunderfire cannons will bulwark our defensive line, even without reinforcement from the Vulkan’s Wrath to compensate for our losses. Deeper penetration into the city, however, will not be easy.’

The denial of reinforcements was a bitter blow, and Kadai had been incensed at the news. But the granite-hard pragmatist in him, the Salamanders spirit of self-reliance and self-sacrifice, proved the stronger and so he had put his mind to the task at hand using the forces he did possess. In response to the casualties, Kadai had combined the three groups of Devastators into two squads under Lok and Omkar, Ul’shan with his injury deferring to the other two sergeants. Without reinforcements, the Tactical squads would simply have to soak up their losses.

‘With Fugis gone, I’m reluctant to risk more of our battle-brothers heading into the unknown,’ Kadai said, the shadows in his face making him look haunted. ‘The heretics are entrenched and well-armed. We are few. This would present little impediment should we have the use of our flamers, but we do not.’

‘Is there a way to purify the atmosphere?’ asked N’keln. He wheezed from a chest wound he’d sustained during the withdrawal to Aereon Square. N’keln was a solid, dependable warrior, but leader-ship did not come easily to him and he lacked the guile for higher command. Still, his bravery had been proven time and again, and was above reproach. It was an obvious but necessary question.

Brother Argos stepped forward into the reflected light of the schematic.

The Techmarine went unhooded. The left portion of his face was framed with a steel plate, the snarling image of a salamander seared into it as an honour marking. Burn scars from the brander-priests wreathed his skin in whorls and bands. A bionic eye gleamed coldly in contrast to the burning red of his own. Forked plugs bulged from a glabrous scalp like steel tumours, and wires snaked around the side of his neck and fed into his nose.

When he spoke, his voice was deep and metallic.

‘The hydrogen emissions being controlled by Cirrion’s atmospheric processors are a gaseous amalgam used to inflate the Stratosan dirigibles – a less volatile compound, and the reason why bolters are still functioning normally. Though I have managed to access some of the city’s internal systems, the processors are beyond my knowledge to affect. It would require a local engineer, someone who maintained the system originally. Unfortunately, there is simply no way to find anyone with the proper skills, either alive amongst the survivors or amongst those still trapped in the city.’ Argos paused. ‘I am sorry, brothers, but any use of incendiary weapons in the city at this time would be catastrophic.’

‘One thing is certain,’ Kadai continued, ‘the appearance of civilian survivors effectively prevents any massed assault. I won’t jeopardise innocent lives needlessly.’

Tsu’gan shook his head.

‘Brother-captain, with respect, if we do not act the collateral damage will be much worse. Our only recourse is to lead a single full-strength force into Cirrion, and sack it. The insurgents will not expect such a bold move.’

‘We are not inviolable against their weapons,’ Dak’ir countered. ‘It is not only the Stratosans you risk with such a plan. What of my battle-brothers? Their duty ended in death. You would add more to that tally? Our resources are stretched thin enough as it is.’

Tsu’gan’s face contorted with anger.

‘Sons of Vulkan,’ he cried, smacking the plastron of his power armour with his palms. ‘Fire-born,’ he added, clenching a fist, ‘that is what we are. Unto the Anvil of War, that is our creed. I do not fear battle and death, even if you do, Ignean.’

‘I fear nothing,’ snarled Dak’ir. ‘But I won’t cast my brothers into the furnace for no reason, either.’

‘Enough!’ The captain’s voice demanded the attention of the bickering sergeants at once. Kadai glared at them both, eyes burning with fury at such disrespect for a fellow battle-brother. ‘Dispense with this enmity,’ he warned, exhaling his anger. ‘It will not be tolerated. We have our enemy.’

The sergeants bowed apologetically, but stared daggers at each other before they stood down.

‘There will be no massed assault,’ Kadai reasserted. ‘But that is not to say we will not act, either. These heretics are single-minded to the point of insanity, driven by some external force. No ideology, however fanatical, could impel such… madness,’ he added, echoing Fugis’s earlier theory. The corner of Kadai’s mouth twinged in a brief moment of remembrance. ‘The hierophant of the cult, this Speaker, is the key to victory on Stratos.’

‘An assassination,’ stated Tsu’gan, folding his arms in approval.

Kadai nodded.

‘Brother Argos has discovered a structure at the heart of the temple district called Aura Hieron. Colonel Tonnhauser’s intelligence has this demagogue there. We will make for it.’ The captain’s gaze encompassed the entire room. ‘Two combat squads made up from the Devastators will be left behind with Brother Argos, who will be guiding us as before. This small force, together with the Thunderfire cannons, will hold Aereon Square and protect the emerging survivors.’

Tsu’gan scowled at this.

‘Aereon Square is like a refugee camp as it is. The Aircorps cannot move the survivors fast enough. All they are doing is getting in our way. Our mission is to crush this horde, and free this place from terror. How can we do that if we split our forces protecting the humans? We should take every battle-brother we have.’

Kadai leaned forwards. His eyes were like fiery coals and seemed to chase away the cold light of the hololith.

‘I will not abandon them, Tsu’gan. We are not the Marines Malevolent, nor the Flesh Tearers nor any of our other bloodthirsty brothers. Ours is a different creed, one of which we Salamanders are rightly proud. We will protect the innocent if–’

The Fire Anvil was rocked by a sudden tremor, and the dull crump of an explosion came through its armoured hull from the outside.

Brother Argos lowered the ramp at once and the Salamanders rushed outside to find out what had happened.

Fire and smoke lined a blackened crater in the centre of Aereon Square. The mangled corpses of several Stratosan civilians, together with a number of Aircorps were strewn within it, their bodies broken by a bomb blast. A woman screamed from the opposite side of the square. She’d fallen, having tried to flee from another of the survivors who was inexplicably clutching a frag grenade.

Tsu’gan’s combi-bolter was in his hands almost immediately and he shot the man through the chest. The grenade fell from the insurgent’s grasp and went off.

The fleeing woman and several others were engulfed by the explosion. The screaming intensified.

Kadai bellowed for order, even as his sergeants went to join their battle-brothers in quelling the sudden panic.

Several cultists had infiltrated the survivor groups, intent on causing anarchy and massed destruction. They had succeeded. Respirator masks were the perfect disguise for their ‘afflictions’, bypassing the Stratosan soldiery and even the Adeptus Astartes.

Ko’tan Kadai knelt with the broken woman in his grasp, having gone to her when the smoke was still dissipating from the explosion. She looked frail and thin compared to his Adeptus Astartes bulk, as if the rest of her unbroken bones would shatter at his slightest touch. Yet, they did not. He held her delicately, as a father might cradle a child. She lasted only moments, eyes fearful, spitting blood from massive internal trauma.

‘Brother-captain?’ ventured N’keln, appearing at his side.

Kadai laid the dead woman down gently and rose to his full height. A thin line of crimson dotted his ebon face, the horror there having ebbed away, replaced by anger.

‘Two combat squads,’ he asserted, his iron-hard gaze finding Tsu’gan, who was close enough to hear him, but wisely displayed no discontent. ‘Everyone is screened… Everyone.’

‘Now we know why the survivors came out of hiding. The cultists wanted them to, so they could do this…’ Ba’ken said softly to Dak’ir as the two Salamanders looked on.

Kadai touched the blood on his face then saw it on his fingers as if for the first time.

‘We need only get a kill-team close enough to the Speaker to execute him and the cultists’ resolve will fracture,’ he promised. ‘We move out now.’

Five kilometres filled with razor wire, pit falls and partially demolished streets. Cultist murder squads dredging the ruins for survivors to torture; human bombers hiding in alcoves, trembling fingers wrapped around grenade pins; eviscerator priests leading flocks with wire-sewn mouths. It was the most expedient route Techmarine Argos could find in order for his battle-brothers to reach Aura Hieron.

Only two kilometres down that hellish road, after fighting through ambushes and weathering continual booby traps, the Salamanders’ assault had reached yet another impasse.

They stood before a long but narrow esplanade of churned plascrete. Labyrinthine track traps were dug in every three or four metres, crowned with spools of razor wire. The bulky black carapaces of partially submerged mines shone dully like the backs of tunnelling insects. Death pits were excavated throughout, well-hidden with guerrilla cunning.

A killing field; and they had to cross it in order to reach Aura Hieron. At the end of it was a thick grey line of rockcrete bunkers, fortified with armour plates. From slits in the sides constant tracer fire rattled, accompanied by the throbbing thud-chank of heavy cannon. The no-man’s-land was blanketed by fire that lit up the darkness in gruesome monochrome.

The Salamanders were not the first to have come this way. The corpses of Stratosan soldiers littered the ground too, as ubiquitous and lifeless as sandbags.

‘There is no way around.’ Dak’ir’s reconnaissance report was curt, having tried, but failed, to find a different angle of attack to exploit. In such a narrow cordon, barely wide enough for ten Space Marines to operate in, the Salamanders’ combat effectiveness was severely hampered.

Captain Kadai stared grimly into the maelstrom. The Inferno Guard and Sergeant Omkar’s Devastators were at his side, awaiting their rotation at the front.

No more than fifty metres ahead of them Tsu’gan and his squad were hunkered down behind a cluster of tank traps returning fire, Sergeant Lok and his Devastators providing support with heavy bolters. Each painful metre had been paid for with blood, and three of Tsu’gan’s troopers were already wounded, but he was determined to gain more ground and get close enough to launch an offensive with krak grenades.

The battle line was stretched. They had gone as far as they could go, short of risking massive casualties by charging the cultists’ guns head on. The insurgents were so well protected they were only visible as shadows until their twisted faces were lit by muzzle flashes.

Kadai was scouring the battle line, searching for weaknesses.

‘What did you find, sergeant?’ he asked.

‘Only impassable blockades and un-crossable chasms, stretching for kilometres east and west,’ Dak’ir replied. ‘We could turn back, captain, get Argos to find another route?’

‘I’ve seen fortifications erected by the Imperial Fists that put up less resistance,’ Kadai muttered to himself, then turned to Dak’ir. ‘No. We break them here or not at all.’

Dak’ir was about to respond when Tsu’gan’s voice came through the comm-feed.

‘Captain, we can make five more metres. Requesting the order to advance.’

‘Denied. Get back here, sergeant, and tell Lok to hold the line. We need a new plan.’

A momentary pause in communication made Tsu’gan’s discontent obvious, but his respect for Kadai was absolute.

‘At once, my lord.’

‘We need to get close enough to attack the wall with krak grenades and breach it,’ said Tsu’gan, having returned to the Salamanders’ second line to join up with Dak’ir and Kadai, leaving Lok to hold the front. ‘A determined frontal assault is the only way to do it.’

‘A charge across the killing ground is insane, Tsu’gan,’ countered Dak’ir.

‘We are wasting our ammunition pinned here,’ Tsu’gan argued. ‘What else would you suggest?’

‘There must be another way,’ Dak’ir insisted.

‘Withdraw,’ Tsu’gan answered simply, allowing a moment for it to sink in. ‘Loath as I am to do it. If we cannot break through, then Cirrion is lost. Withdraw and summon the Fire-wyvern,’ he said to Kadai. ‘Use its missile payload to destroy the gravitic engines and send this hellish place to the ocean.’

The captain was reticent to agree.

‘I would be condemning thousands of innocents to death.’

‘And saving millions,’ urged Tsu’gan. ‘If a world is tainted beyond redemption or lost to invasion we annihilate it, excising its stain from the galaxy like a cancer. It should be no different for a city. Stratos can be saved. Cirrion cannot.’

‘You speak of wholesale slaughter as if it is a casual thing, Tsu’gan,’ Kadai replied.

‘Ours is a warrior’s lot, my lord. We were made to fight and to kill, to bring order in the Emperor’s name.’

Kadai’s voice grew hard.

‘I know our purpose, sergeant. Do not presume to tell me of it.’

Tsu’gan bowed humbly.

‘I meant no offence, my lord.’

Kadai was angry because he knew that Tsu’gan was right. Cirrion was lost. Sighing deeply, he opened the comm-feed, extending the link beyond the city.

‘We will need Brother Argos to engage the Stratosan failsafe and blow the sky-bridges connecting Cirrion first, or it will take an entire chunk of the adjacent cities with it,’ he said out loud to himself, before reverting to the comm-feed.

‘Brother Hek’en.’

The pilot of the Fire-wyvern responded. The Thunderhawk was at rest on the landing platform just outside Nimbaros.

‘My lord.’

‘Prepare for imminent take off, and prime hellstrike missiles. We’re abandoning the city. You’ll have my orders within–’

The comm-feed crackling to life again in Kadai’s battle-helm interrupted him. The crippling interference made it difficult to discern a voice at first, but when Kadai recognised it he felt his hot Salamanders blood grow cold.

It was Fugis. The Apothecary was alive.

‘I blacked out after the fall. When I awoke I was in the sub-levels of the city. They stretch down for about two kilometres, deep enough for the massive lifter-engines. It’s like a damn labyrinth,’ Fugis explained with his usual choler.

‘Are you injured, brother?’ asked Kadai.

Silence persisted, laced with static, and for a moment he thought they’d lost the Apothecary again.

‘I took some damage, my battle-helm too. It’s taken me this long to repair the comm-feed,’ Fugis returned at last. In the short pauses it was possible to hear his breathing. It was irregular and ragged. The Apothecary was trying to mask his pain.

‘What is your exact location, Fugis?’

Static interference marred the connection again.

‘It’s a tunnel complex below the surface. But it could be anywhere.’

Kadai turned to Dak’ir. ‘Contact Brother Argos. Have him lock on to Fugis’s signal and send us the coordinates.’

Dak’ir nodded and set about his task. All the while heavy cannon were chugging overhead.

‘Listen,’ said Fugis, the crackling static worsening, ‘I am not alone. There are civilians. They fled down here when the attacks began, and stayed hidden until now.’

There was another short silence as the Apothecary considered his next statement.

‘The city is still not ours.’

Kadai explained the situation with the hydrogen gas amalgam on the surface, how they could not use their flamers or meltas, and that it only compounded the fact that the cultists were well-prepared and dug in. ‘It is almost as if they know our tactics,’ he concluded.

‘The gas has not penetrated this deep,’ Fugis told him. ‘But I may have a way to stop it.’

‘How, brother?’ asked Kadai, fresh hope filling his voice.

‘A human engineer. Some of the refugees were fleeing from the gas as well as the insurgents. His name is Banen. If we get him out of the city and to the Techmarine, Cirrion can be purged.’ A pregnant pause suggested an imminent sting. ‘But there is a price,’ Fugis explained through bursts of interference.

Kadai’s jaw clenched beneath his battle-helm.

There always is…

The Apothecary went on.

‘In order to cleanse Cirrion of the gas, the entire air supply must be vented. Its atmospheric integrity will be utterly compromised. With the air so thin, many will suffocate before it can be restored. Humans hiding in the outer reaches of the city, away from the hot core of the lifter-engines, will also likely freeze to death.’

Kadai’s brief optimism was quickly crushed.

‘To save Cirrion, I must doom its people.’

‘Some may survive,’ offered Fugis, though his words lacked conviction.

‘A few at best,’ Kadai concluded. ‘It is no choice.’

Destroying the city’s gravitic engines had been bad enough. This seemed worse. The Salamanders, a Chapter who prided themselves on their humanitarianism, their pledge to protect the weak and the innocent, were merely exchanging one holocaust for another.

Kadai gripped the haft of his thunder hammer. It was black, and its head was thick and heavy like the ready tool of a forgesmith. He had fashioned it this way in the depths of Nocturne, the lava flows from the mountain casting his onyx flesh in an orange glow. Kadai longed to return there, to the anvil and the heat of the forge. The hammer was a symbol. It was like the weapon Vulkan had first taken up in defence of his adopted homeworld. In it Kadai found resolve and, in turn, the strength he needed to do what he must.

‘We are coming for you, brother,’ he said with steely determination. ‘Protect the engineer. Have him ready to be extracted upon our arrival.’

‘I will hold on as long as I can.’

White noise resumed.

Kadai felt the weight of resignation around his shoulders like a heavy mantle.

‘Brother Argos has locked the signal and fed it to our auspex,’ Dak’ir told him, wresting the Salamanders captain from his dark reverie.

Kadai nodded grimly.

‘Sergeants, break into combat squads. The rest stay here,’ he said, summoning his second in command.

‘N’keln,’ Kadai addressed the veteran sergeant. ‘You will lead the expedition to rescue Fugis.’

Tsu’gan interjected.

‘My lord?’

‘Once we make a move the insurgents will almost certainly redirect their forces away from here. We cannot hold them by merely standing our ground,’ Kadai explained. ‘We need their attention fixed where we want it. I intend to achieve that by charging the wall.’

‘Captain, that is suicide,’ Dak’ir told him plainly.

‘Perhaps. But I cannot risk bringing the enemy to Fugis, to the human engineer. His survival is of the utmost importance. Self-sacrifice is the Promethean way, sergeant, you know that.’

‘With respect, captain,’ said N’keln. ‘Brother Malicant and I wish to stay behind and fight with the others.’

Malicant, the company banner bearer, nodded solemnly behind the veteran sergeant.

Both Salamanders had been wounded in the ill-fated campaign to liberate Cirrion. Malicant leaned heavily on the company banner from a leg wound he had sustained during the bomb blast in Aereon Square, whereas N’keln grimaced with the pain of his crushed ribs.

Kadai was incensed.

‘You disobey my orders, sergeant?’

N’keln stood his ground despite his captain’s ire.

‘Yes, my lord.’

Kadai glared at him, but his anger bled away as he realised the sense in the veteran sergeant’s words and clasped N’keln by the shoulder.

‘Hold off as long as you can. Advance only when you must, and strike swiftly. You may yet get past the guns unscathed,’ Kadai told him. ‘You honour the Chapter with your sacrifice.’

N’keln rapped his fist against his plastron in salute and then he and Malicant went to join the others already at the battle line.

‘Make it an act of honour,’ he said to the others as they watched the two Salamanders go. They were singular warriors. All his battle-brothers were. Kadai was intensely proud of each and every one. ‘Fugis is waiting. Into the fires of battle, brothers…’

‘Unto the anvil of war,’ they declared solemnly as one.

The Salamanders turned away without looking back, leaving their brothers to their fate.

The tunnels were deserted.

Ba’ken tracked his heavy bolter across the darkness, his battle-senses ultra-heightened with tension.

‘Too quiet…’

‘You would prefer a fight?’ Dak’ir returned over the comm-feed.

‘Yes,’ Ba’ken answered honestly.

The sergeant was a few metres in front of him, the Salamanders having broken into two long files on either side of the tunnel. Each Space Marine maintained a distance of a few metres from the battle-brother ahead, watching his back and flanks in case of ambush. Helmet luminators strafed the darkened corridors, creating imagined hazards in the gathered shadows.

The Salamanders had followed the Apothecary’s signal like a beacon. It had led them south at first, back the way they had come, to a hidden entrance into the Cirrion sub-levels. The tunnels were myriad and did not appear on any city schematic, so Argos had no knowledge of them. The private complex of passageways and bunkers was reserved for the Stratosan aristocracy. Portals set in the tunnel walls slid open with a ghosting of released pressure and fed off into opulent rooms, their furnishings undisturbed and layered with dust. Reinforced vaults lay unsecured and unguarded, their treasures still untouched within. Several chambers were jammed with machinery hooked up to cryogenic flotation tanks. Purple bacteria contaminated the stagnant gel-solutions within. Decomposed bodies, bloated with putrefaction, were slumped against the glass, their suspended existence ended when the power in Cirrion had failed.

Kadai raised his hand from up ahead and the Salamanders stopped.

Nearby, one step in the chain from Tsu’gan, Iagon consulted his auspex.

‘Bio-readings fifty metres ahead,’ he hissed through the comm-feed.

The thud-chank of bolters being primed filled the narrow space.

Kadai lowered his hand and the Salamanders slowly began to proceed, closing up as they went. They had yet to meet any cultist resistance, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Dak’ir heard something move up ahead, like metal scraping metal.

‘Hammer!’ a voice cried out of the dark, accompanied by the sound of a bolt-round filling its weapon’s breech.

‘Anvil!’ Kadai replied with the other half of the code, and lowered his pistol.

Twenty metres farther on, a wounded Salamander was slumped against a bulkhead, his outstretched bolt pistol falling slowly.

The relief in Kadai’s voice was palpable.

‘Stand down. It’s Fugis. We’ve got him.’

Banen stepped from the shadows with the small band of survivors. Short and unassuming, he wore a leather apron and dirty overalls that bulged with his portly figure. A pair of goggles framed his grease-smeared pate.

He didn’t look like a man with the power to wipe out a city.

The gravitas of the decision facing Kadai was not lost on him as he regarded the human engineer.

‘You can vent the atmosphere in Cirrion, cleanse the city of the gas?’

‘Y-yes, milord.’ The stammer only made the human seem more innocuous.

The Salamanders formed a protective cordon around the bulkhead where Fugis and the survivors were holed up, bolters trained outwards. The Apothecary’s leg was broken, but he was at least still conscious, though in no condition to fight. With the discovery of the Apothecary an eerie silence had descended on the tunnel complex, as if the air was holding its breath.

Salamanders encircling them, Kadai stared down at Banen.

I will be signing the death warrant of thousands…

‘Escort them back to Aereon Square,’ he said to Brother Ba’ken. ‘Commence the cleansing of the city as soon as possible.’

Ba’ken saluted. The Salamanders were breaking up their defensive formation when the held breath rushed back.

A few metres farther down the tunnel, a lone insurgent dropped down from a ceiling hatch, a grenade clutched in her thin fingers.

Bolters roared, loud and throaty down the corridor, shredding the cultist. The grenade went up in the fusillade, the explosion sweeping out in a firestorm. The Salamanders met it without hesitation, shielding the terrified humans with their armoured bodies.

Hundreds of footsteps clattered down to them from the darkness up ahead.

‘Battle positions!’ shouted Kadai.

A ravening mob of insurgents rounded the corner. Further hatchways in the walls and ceilings suddenly broke open as cultists piled out like fat lice crawling from the cracks.

Kadai levelled his pistol.

‘Salamanders! Unleash death!’

A team of cultists brought up an autocannon. Dak’ir raked them with bolter fire before they could set it.

‘Iagon…’ shouted Tsu’gan over the raucous battle din.

‘Atmosphere normal, sir,’ the other Salamander replied, knowing precisely what was on his sergeant’s mind.

Tsu’gan bared his teeth in a feral smile.

‘Cleanse and burn,’ he growled, and the flamer attached to his combi-bolter roared.

Liquid promethium ignited on contact with the air as a superheated wave of fire spewed hungrily down the corridor.

Shen’kar intensified the conflagration with his own flamer. The cultists were obliterated in the blaze, their bodies becoming slowly collapsing shadows behind the shimmering heat haze.

It lasted merely seconds. Smoke and charred remains were all that was left when the flames finally died down. Dozens of insurgents had been destroyed; some were little more than ash and bone.

‘The fury of fire will win this war for the Salamanders,’ said Fugis, as the Astartes were readying to split their forces once again. Ba’ken supported the Apothecary and was standing with the others that would be returning to Aereon Square.

Kadai was adamant that Fugis and the human survivors be given all the protection he could afford them. If that meant stretching his Salamanders thinly, then so be it. The captain would press on with only Tsu’gan, Dak’ir, Company Champion Vek’shen and Honoured Brother Shen’kar as retinue. The rest were going back.

‘I am certain of it,’ Kadai replied, facing him. ‘But at the cost of thousands. I only hope the price is worth it, old friend.’

‘Is any price ever worth it?’ Fugis asked.

The Apothecary was no longer talking about Cirrion. A bitter remembrance flared in Kadai’s mind and he crushed it.

‘Send word when you’ve reached Aereon Square and the gas has been purged. We’ll be waiting here until then.’

Fugis nodded, though it gave the Apothecary some pain to do so.

‘In the name of Vulkan,’ he said, saluting.

Kadai echoed him, rapping his plastron. The Apothecary gave him a final consolatory look before he had Ba’ken help him away. It gave Kadai little comfort as he thought of the thousands of innocents still in the city and their ignorance of what was soon to befall them, a fate made by his own hand.

‘Emperor, forgive me…’ he whispered softly, watching the Salamanders go.

Aura Hieron hung open like a carcass. It had been austerely beautiful once, much like the rest of Cirrion, stark silver alloyed with cold marble. Now it was an abattoir-temple. Blood slicked its walls, seeping down into the cracks of the intricate mosaic floor. Broken columns punctuated a high outer wall that ran around the temple’s vast ambit. Statues set in shadowy alcoves had been beheaded or smeared in filth, their pale immortality defaced.

Crude sigils, exulting in the dark glory of the Cult of Truth, were daubed upon the stonework. A black altar, re-fashioned with jagged knives and stained with blood, dominated a cracked dais at the back of the chamber. Metal spars ripped from the structure of Cirrion’s underbelly had been dragged bodily into the temple, tearing ragged grooves in the tarnished marble. Blackened corpses, the remains of loyal Stratosans, were hung upon them as offerings to the Chaos gods. A shrine to the Emperor of Mankind no longer, Aura Hieron was a haven for the corrupt now, where only the damned came to worship.

Nihilan revelled in the temple’s debasement as he regarded the instrument of his malicious will from afar.

‘We should not be here, sorcerer. We have what we came for,’ rasped a voice from the shadows, redolent of smoke and ash.

‘Our purpose here is two-fold, Ramlek,’ Nihilan replied, his cadence grating. ‘We have only achieved the first half.’ The renegade Dragon Warrior overlooked the bloodied plaza of Aura Hieron from a blackened anteroom above its only altar. He was watching the Speaker keenly, beguiling and persuading the cultist masses basking in his unnatural aura with his dark-tongued rhetoric.

The brand Nihilan had seared into the hierophant’s flesh over three months ago, when the Dragon Warriors had first come to Stratos, had spread well. It infected almost his entire face. The seed the sorcerer had embedded there would be reaching maturation.

‘A life for a life, Ramlek; you know that. Is Ghor’gan prepared?’

‘He is,’ rasped the horned warrior.

Nihilan smiled thinly. The scar tissue on his face pulled tight with the rare muscular use. ‘Our enemies will be arriving soon,’ he hissed, psychic power crackling over his clenched fist, ‘then we will have vengeance.’

Eyes like mirrored glass stared out from beneath a mausoleum archway, no longer seeing, unblinking in mortality. Tiny ice crystals flecked the dead man’s lips and encumbered his eyelids so they drooped in mock lethargy. The poor wretch was arched awkwardly across a stone tomb, his head slack and lifeless as it hung backwards over the edge.

He was not alone. Throughout the temple district, citizens and insurgents alike lay dead, their breath and their life stolen away when the atmospheric processors had vented. Some held one another in a final desperate embrace, accepting of their fate; others fought, fingers clutched around their throats as they tried in vain to fill their lungs.

The ruins of the temple district were disturbingly silent. It was oddly appropriate. The quietude fell like a shroud over broken monoliths and solemn chapels, acres of cemeteries punctuated with mausoleums, sepulchres and hooded statues bent in sombre remembrance.

‘So much death…’ uttered Dak’ir, reminded of another place decades ago, and glanced to his captain. Kadai seemed to bear it all stoically, but Dak’ir could tell it was affecting him.

The Salamanders had passed through the city unchallenged, plying along the subterranean roads of the private tunnel complex. Though he had no map of the underground labyrinth, Techmarine Argos had extrapolated a route based on the position of the hidden entrance and his battle-brothers’ visual reports, relayed to him as they progressed through its dingy confines. After an hour of trawling through the narrow dark, the Salamanders had emerged from a shadowy egress to be confronted with the solemnity of the temple district.

Kadai had told his retinue to expect resistance. Truthfully, he would have welcomed it. Anything to distract him from the terrible act he had been forced to commit against the citizens of Cirrion. But it was not to be – the Salamanders had passed through the white gates of the temple district without incident, yet the reminders of Kadai’s act lurked in every alcove, in each darkened bolthole of the city.

Mercifully, Fugis and the others had arrived at Aereon Square without hindrance. Kadai was emotionally ambivalent when the Apothecary’s communication had reached him over the comm-feed. It was a double-edged sword, salvation with a heavy tariff – annihilation for Cirrion’s people.

‘Aura Hieron lies half a kilometre to the north,’ the metallic voice of Argos grated over the comm-feed, dispelling further introspection.

‘I see it,’ Kadai returned flatly.

He cut the link with the Techmarine, instead addressing his retinue.

‘The people of Cirrion paid for a chance to end this war with their lives. Let us not leave them wanting. It ends this day, one way or the other. On my lead, brothers. In the name of Vulkan.’

Ahead, the temple of Aura Hieron loomed like a skeletal hand grasping at a pitch black sky.

Dak’ir crept through the darkened alcoves of the temple’s west wall. Opposite him, across the tenebrous gulf of the temple’s nave, Tsu’gan stalked along the other flanking wall.

Edging down the centre, obscured by shattered columns and the debris from Aura Hieron’s collapsed roof, was Kadai and the rest of his retinue. They kept low and quiet, despite their power armour, and closed swiftly on their target.

Ahead of them cultists thronged in hundreds, respirators fixed over their sewn mouths, prostrate before their vile hierophant. The Speaker was perched on a marble dais and clad in dirty blue robes like his congregation of the depraved. Unlike the wire-mouthed acolytes abasing themselves before him, the Speaker was not mute. Far from it. A writhing purple tongue extruded from his distended maw, the teeth within just blackened nubs. The wretched appendage twisted and lashed as if sentient. Inscrutable dogma spewed from the Speaker’s mouth, its form and language inflected by the daemonic tongue. Even the sound of his words gnawed at Dak’ir’s senses and he shut them out, recognising the mutation for what it was – Chaos taint. It explained at once how this disaffected Stratosan native, who, up until a few months ago, had been little more than a petty firebrand, had managed to cajole such unswerving loyalty, and in such masses.

Surrounding the hierophant was the elite of those fanatical troops, a ring of eight eviscerator priests, kneeling with their chainblades laid out in front of them in ceremony.

It left a bitter tang in Tsu’gan’s mouth to witness such corruption. Whatever foul rite these degenerate scum were planning, the Salamanders would end with flame and blade. He felt the zeal burn in his breast, and wished dearly that he was with his captain advancing down the very throat of the enemy and not here guarding shadows.

Let the Ignean skulk at the periphery, he thought. I am destined for more glorious deeds.

A garbled cry arrested Tsu’gan’s arrogant brooding. Spewing an unintelligible diatribe, the Speaker gestured frantically towards Kadai and the other two Salamanders emerging from their cover to destroy him. His craven followers reacted with eerie synchronicity to their master’s warning, and surged towards the trio of interlopers murderously.

Shen’kar opened up his flamer and burned down a swathe of maddened cultists with a war cry on his lips. Vek’shen charged into the wake of the blaze, the conflagration having barely ebbed, fire-glaive swinging. The master-crafted blade reaped a terrible harvest of sheared limbs and heads, spurts of incendiary immolating bodies with every flame-wreathed strike.

Kadai was like a relentless storm, and Tsu’gan’s warrior heart sang to witness such prowess and fury. Channelling his fiery rage, the captain tore a ragged hole through one of the eviscerator priests with his inferno pistol, before crushing the skull of another with his thunder hammer.

As the wretched deacon went down, his head pulped, Kadai gave the signal and enfilading bolter fire barked from the alcoves as Tsu’gan and Dak’ir let rip.

As cultists fell, shot apart by his furious salvos, Tsu’gan could contain his battle lust no longer. He would not be left here like some sentry. He wanted to be at his captain’s side, and look into his enemy’s eyes as he slew them. Dak’ir could hold the perimeter well enough without his aid. In any case, the enemy was here amassed for slaughter.

Roaring an oath to Vulkan, Tsu’gan left his post and waded into the battle proper.

Dak’ir caught sight of Tsu’gan’s muzzle flare and cursed loudly when he realised he had abandoned his orders and left the wall deserted. Debating whether to press the attack himself, his attention was arrested when he noticed Kadai, having bludgeoned his way through the mob, standing scant metres from the Speaker and levelling his inferno pistol.

‘In the name of Vulkan!’ he bellowed, about to end the threat of the Cult of Truth forever, when a single shot thundered above the carnage and the Speaker fell, his head half-destroyed by an explosive round.

Kadai felt the meat and blood of the executed Speaker spatter his armour, and started to lower his pistol out of shock. A strange lull fell over the fighting, enemies poised in mid-attack, that didn’t feel entirely natural as the Salamanders captain traced the source of the shot.

Above him there was a parapet overlooking the temple’s nave. Kadai’s gaze was fixed upon it as a figure in blood-red power armour emerged from the gathered shadows, a smoking bolt pistol in his grasp.

Scales bedecked this warrior’s battle-plate, like those of some primordial lizard from an archaic age. His gauntlets were fashioned like claws, with long vermillion talons, and eldritch lightning rippled across them in crackling ruby arcs. In one he clutched a staff, a roaring dragon’s head at its tip rendered in silver; in the other his bolt pistol, which he returned to its holster. Broad pauldrons sat like hardened scale shells on the warrior’s shoulders, a horn curving from each. He wore no battle-helm, and bore horrific facial scars openly. Fire had blighted this warrior’s once noble countenance, twisting it, devouring it and remaking his visage into one of puckered tissue, angry wheals and exposed bone. It was the face of death, hideous and accusing.

A chill entered Kadai’s spine as if he was suddenly drowning in ice. The spectre before him was a ghost, an apparition that died long ago in terrible agony. Yet, here it was in flesh and blood, called back from the grave like some vengeful revenant.

‘Nihilan…’

‘Captain,’ the apparition replied, his voice cracked like dry earth baked beneath a remorseless sun, burning red eyes aglow.

Kadai’s posture stiffened as the shock quickly passed, subjugated by righteous anger.

‘Renegade,’ he snarled.

Wracking pain gripped Dak’ir’s chest as he beheld the warrior and was wrenched back into the otherworld of his dream…

The temple faded as the grey sky of Moribar engulfed all. Bone-monoliths surged into that endless steel firmament, ossuary paths stretched into endless tracts of cemeteries, mausoleum fields and sepulchral vales. Through legions of tombs, across phalanxes of crypts, along battalions of reliquaries sunk in earthen catacombs, Dak’ir followed the grave-road until he reached its terminus.

And there beneath the cold damp earth, boiling, burning, its lambent glow neither warm nor inviting, was the vast churning furnace of the crematoria.

Pain lanced Dak’ir’s body as the vision changed. He gripped his chest, but no longer felt his black carapace. He was a scout once more, observing from the edge of the crematoria, the massive pit of fire large enough to swallow a Titan, burning, ever burning, down into the molten heart of Moribar.

Dak’ir saw two Astartes clambering at the edge of that portal to fiery death. Nihilan clung desperately to Captain Ushorak, his black power armour pitted and cracked with the intense heat emanating from below.

The terrible conflagration was in turmoil. It bubbled explosively, plumes of lava spearing the air in fiery cascades, when a huge pillar of flame tore from the crematoria. Dak’ir shielded his eyes as a massive fire wall obliterated the warriors from view.

Strong hands grasped Dak’ir’s shoulder and wrenched him away from the blaze as the renegades they had come to bring to justice, not to kill, were immolated. Barely visible through the solid curtain of flame, Nihilan was screaming as his face burned…

Dak’ir lurched back to the present, a sickening vertigo threatening to overwhelm him, and he reached out to steady himself. He tasted blood in his mouth and black spots marred his vision. Tearing off his battle-helm, he struggled to breathe.

Somewhere in the temple, someone was speaking…

‘You died,’ Kadai accused, looking up at the warrior on the parapet. He fought the invisible pressure stopping him from striking the renegade down, but his arms were leaden.

‘I survived,’ returned Nihilan, the effort to maintain the psychic dampening that held the battle in stasis against the Salamander’s will creasing his scarred face.

‘You should have faced justice, not death,’ Kadai told him, then smiled vindictively. ‘Overloading the crematoria, stirring up the volatile core of Moribar, you provoked it in order to escape and kill me and my brothers into the bargain. Ushorak’s destruction was your doing, yours and his.’

‘Don’t you speak of him!’ cried Nihilan, red lightning coursing through his eyes and clenched fists, writhing around his force staff and spitting off in jagged arcs. Exhaling fury, the Dragon Warrior recovered his composure. ‘You are the murderer here, Kadai – a petty marshal who’d do anything to catch his quarry. But perhaps you’re right… I did die, and was reborn.’

Kadai raised his inferno pistol a fraction. Nihilan’s grip was loosening. He was readying for it to slip completely, and slay the traitor where he stood, when the Speaker’s body started to convulse.

‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ the Dragon Warrior added, stepping back into the shadows of the parapet. ‘Not for you…’

Kadai fired off his inferno pistol, melting away a chunk of parapet as Nihilan released his psychic hold. The Salamander was about to chase after him when a terrible aura enveloped the Speaker, lifting his prone corpse inexplicably so that it dangled just above the ground like meat on an invisible hook.

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, he raised his chin to reveal a ruined face destroyed by the bolt pistol’s explosive round. Slick red flesh, wrapped partially around a bloody skull, shimmered in the ambient light. What remained of the Speaker’s cranium was split open like an egg. Luminous cobalt skin was revealed beneath. Cracking bone gave way to a leering visage called forth from a dark unreality as something… unnatural… pulled itself forth into the material plane.

A lidless eye of fulgent black glared with otherworldly malevolence. The eight-pointed star, once burned into the Speaker’s forehead, was now glowing upon this new horror. It was raw and vital, pulsing like a wretched heart as the warp-thing grew hideously. Bulbous protrusions tore from mortal flesh, spilling out with thickets of spines. Fingers splayed as if pulled taut by unseen threads, talons rupturing from them, long, sharp and black. The thing’s distended maw, in mimicry of the Speaker’s original mutation, stretched further and wider until it was a terrible lipless chasm, the lashing tongue within three-pronged and spiked with bloodied bone.

Cultists shrieked in fear and adoration as the Speaker’s corpse was possessed. Eviscerator priests pledged their mute allegiance, turning their chainblades towards the Salamanders once again.

The creature was primal, wrenched from ethereal slumber and only partially sentient, a deep soul-hunger driving it. Roaring in fury and anguish, it surged forwards, devouring a pair of eviscerator priests closing on Kadai. Like some terrible basilisk, it consumed them whole, bones crunching audibly as it dragged the prey down its bulging gullet.

‘Abomination…’ Kadai breathed, gripping the haft of his thunder hammer as he prepared to smite the daemon. Nihilan had given his soul over to the dark powers now, and this was but a taste of his malfeasance.

‘Die, hell-beast!’ cried Vek’shen, stepping between his captain and the unbound daemon. Whirling his fire-glaive in a blazing arc, the Company Champion crafted an overhand blow that would’ve felled an ork warlord. The daemon met it with its talons and the glaive was held fast. Its tongue slid like lightning from its abyssal mouth, oozing swiftly around Vek’shen’s power-armoured form. The Salamander gaped in a silent scream, breath pressed violently from his body, as he was crushed to death.

Kadai roared, launching himself at the beast, even as his battle-brother’s flaccid corpse, dented where the daemon’s tongue had clutched him, crashed to the ground.

Dak’ir was recovering his senses. Though he hadn’t seen how, the Speaker was dead, shot in the back of the head, his body lying at Kadai’s feet. It wasn’t all that he’d missed while he was under the influence of his memory-dream. In the time it had taken for his Adeptus Astartes constitution and training to override the lingering nausea the remembrance had caused, Nihilan was already retreating into the shadows. Leaving his flank position, Dak’ir ran towards the nave determined to pursue, when a swathe of cultists impeded him.

‘Tsu’gan!’ he cried, gutting an insurgent with his chainsword and firing his bolter one-handed to explode the face of another, ‘Stop the renegade!’

The other Salamander nodded in a rare moment of empathy and sped off after Nihilan.

Dak’ir was battling through the frenzied mob when he saw the Speaker’s corpse rising and felt the touch of the warp prickle his skin…

Tsu’gan bolted across the nave, pummelling cultists with his fists, chewing up packed groups with explosive bursts of fire. Shen’kar was just visible in his peripheral vision, immolating swathes of the heretical vermin with bright streaks of flame.

Smashing through a wooden door at the back of the temple, Tsu’gan found a flight of stone steps leading up to the parapet. He took them three at a time with servo-assisted bounds of his power-armoured legs, until he emerged into a darkened anteroom.

Something was happening below. He heard Vek’shen bellow a call to arms and then nothing, as if all sound had fled in a sudden vacuum.

Burning red eyes regarded him coldly in the blackness.

‘Tsu’gan…’ said Nihilan, emerging from the dark.

‘Traitorous scum!’ the Salamander raged.

But Tsu’gan didn’t raise his bolter to fire, didn’t vanquish the renegade where he stood. He merely remained transfixed, muscles clenched as if held fast in amber.

‘Wha–’ he began, but found his tongue was leaden too.

‘Sorcery,’ Nihilan told him, the surface of his force staff alive with incandescent energy. It threw ephemeral flashes of light into the gloom, illuminating the sorcerer’s dread visage as he closed on the stricken Astartes.

‘I could kill you right now,’ he said levelly. ‘Snuff out the light in your eyes, and kill you, just like Kadai killed Ushorak.’

‘You were offered redemption.’ Tsu’gan struggled to fashion the retort, forcing his tongue into compliance through sheer willpower.

The sinister cast to Nihilan’s face bled away and was replaced by indignation.

‘Redemption was it? Spiritual castigation at the hands of Elysius, a few hours with his chirurgeon-interrogators, is that what was offered?’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘That sadistic bastard would only have passed a guilty judgement.’

Stepping closer, Nihilan took on a sincere tone.

‘Ushorak offered life. Power,’ he breathed. ‘Freedom from the shackles forcing us to serve the cattle of men, when we should be ruling them.’

The Dragon Warrior clenched his fist as he said it, so close now that Tsu’gan could smell his copper breath.

‘You see, brother. We are not so dissimilar.’

‘We are nothing alike, traitor,’ snapped the Salamander, grimacing with the simple effort of speaking.

Nihilan stepped back, spreading his arms plaintively.

‘A bolter shot to the head to end my heresy then?’ His upturned lip showed his displeasure. ‘Or stripped of rank, a penitent brand in place of my service studs?’

He shook his head.

‘No… I think not. Perhaps I will brand you, though, brother.’ Nihilan showed the Salamander his palm and spread his fingers wide. ‘Would your resistance to corruption be stauncher than the human puppet, I wonder?’

Tsu’gan flinched before Nihilan’s approach, expecting at any moment for all the turpitude of Chaos to spew forth from his hand.

‘Cull your fear,’ Nihilan rasped, making a fist as he sneered.

‘I fear nothing,’ barked Tsu’gan.

Nihilan sniffed contemptuously. ‘You fear everything, Salamander.’

Tsu’gan felt his boots scraping against the floor as he was psychically impelled towards the edge of the parapet against his will.

‘Enough talk,’ he spat. ‘Cast me down. Break my body, if you must. The Chapter will hunt you, renegade, and there will be no chance of redemption for you this time.’

Nihilan regarded him as an adult would a simple child.

‘You still don’t understand, do you?’

Slowly, Tsu’gan’s body rotated so that he could see out onto the battle below.

Cultists fell in their droves, burned down by Shen’kar’s flamer, or eviscerated by Dak’ir’s chain-sword. His brothers fought tooth and nail, fending off the horde whilst his beloved captain fought for his life.

Kadai’s artificer armour was rent in over a dozen places, a daemon-thing that wore the flesh of the Speaker assailing him. Talons like long slashes of night came down in a rain of blows against the Salamanders captain’s defence, but he weathered it all, carving great arcs in riposte with his thunder hammer. Vulkan’s name was on his lips as the lightning cracked from the head of his master-forged weapon, searing the daemon’s borrowed flesh.

‘I was devoted to Ushorak, just as you are to your captain…’ Nihilan uttered in Tsu’gan’s ear as he watched the battle with the hell-spawn unfold.

Kadai smashed the daemon’s shoulder, shattering bone, and its arm fell limp.

‘…Kadai killed him,’ Nihilan continued. ‘He forced us to seek solace in the Eye. There we fled and there we stayed for decades…’

Ichor hissed from the tears in the daemon’s earthly form, its hold on reality slipping as Kadai punished it relentlessly with fist and hammer.

‘…Time moves differently in that realm. For us it felt like centuries had passed before we found a way out.’

A chorus of screams ripped from the distended throat of the daemon-thing, as Kadai crushed its skull finally and banished it back into the warp, the souls it had consumed begging for succour.

‘…It changed me. Opened my eyes. I see much now. A great destiny awaits you, Tsu’gan, but another overshadows it.’ Nihilan gave the faintest inclination of his head towards Dak’ir.

The Ignean was fighting valiantly, cutting down the last of the cultists and heading for Kadai.

‘Even now he rushes to your captain’s side…’ Nihilan said, insidiously, ‘Hoping to gain his favour.’

Tsu’gan knew he could not trust the foul tongue of a traitor, but the words spoken echoed his own long-held suspicions.

And so, unbeknownst to the Salamander, Nihilan did plant a seed. Not one born of daemonic essence. No, this came about through petty jealousy and ambition, through the very thing Tsu’gan had no aegis against – himself.

‘This cult,’ the Dragon Warrior pressed. ‘It is nothing. Stratos is nothing. Even this city is meaningless. It was always about him.’

Kadai was leaning heavily on his thunder hammer, weakened after vanquishing the daemon.

Nihilan smiled, scarred flesh creaking.

‘A captain for a captain…’

Realisation slid like a cold blade into Tsu’gan’s gut.

Too late he saw the armoured shadow closing in. The Dragon Warriors springing their trap at last. By leaving his post, he had let them infiltrate the Salamanders’ guard. The cultists were only ever a distraction; the true enemy was only now revealing itself.

He had been a fool.

‘No!’

Sheer force of will broke Nihilan’s psychic hold. Roaring the captain’s name, Tsu’gan leapt off the parapet.

Hoarse laughter followed him all the way down.

Dak’ir had almost reached Kadai when he saw the renegade hefting the multi-melta. Shouting a warning, he raced to his captain’s side. Kadai faced him, hearing the cry of Tsu’gan from above at the same time, and then followed Dak’ir’s agonised gaze…

An incandescent beam tore out of the darkness.

Kadai was struck, and his body immolated in an actinic flare.

An intense rush of heat smashed Dak’ir off his feet, backwash from the terrible melta blast. He smelled scorched flesh. A hot spike of agony tortured his senses. His face was burning, just like in the dream…

Dak’ir realised he was blacking out, his body shutting down as his sus-an membrane registered the gross trauma he had suffered. Dimly, as if buried alive and listening through layered earth, he heard the voice of Sergeant N’keln and his battle-brothers. Dak’ir managed to turn his head. The last thing he saw before unconsciousness claimed him was Tsu’gan slumped to his knees in front of the charred remains of their captain.

When Dak’ir awoke he was laid out in the Apothecarion of the Vulkan’s Wrath. It was cold as a tomb inside the austere chamber, the gloom alleviated by the lit icons of the medical apparatus around him.

With waking came remembrance, and with remembrance, grief and despair.

Kadai was dead.

‘Welcome back, brother,’ a soft voice said. Fugis was thin-faced and gaunter than ever, as he loomed over Dak’ir.

Emotional agony was compounded by physical pain and Dak’ir reached for his face as it started to burn anew.

Fugis seized his wrist before he could touch it.

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he warned the sergeant. ‘Your skin was badly burned. You’re healing, but the flesh is still very tender.’

Dak’ir lowered his arm as Fugis released him. The Apothecary injected a solution of drugs through an intravenous drip-feed to ease the pain.

Dak’ir relaxed as the suppressants went to work, catalysing his body’s natural regenerative processes.

‘What happened?’ His throat felt raw and abrasive, and he croaked the words. Fugis stepped away from Dak’ir’s medi-slab to check on the instrumentation. He limped as he walked, a temporary augmetic frame fitted over his leg to shore up the break he had sustained in his fall. Stubborn to the point of bloody-mindedness, nothing would prevent the Apothecary from doing his work.

‘Stratos is saved,’ he said simply, his back to the other Salamander. ‘With the Speaker dead and our flamers restored, the insurgents fell quickly. The storms lifted an hour after we returned to Aereon Square,’ he explained. ‘Librarian Pyriel arrived twenty minutes later with the rest of the company to reinforce N’keln, who had taken the wall and was already en route to Aura Hieron…’

‘But too late to save Kadai,’ Dak’ir finished for him.

Fugis stopped what he was doing and gripped the instrumentation panel he’d been consulting for support.

‘Yes. Even his gene-seed was unsalvageable.’

A long grief-filled silence crept insidiously into the room before the Apothecary continued.

‘A ship, Stormbird-class, left the planet but we were too late to give chase.’

The rancour in Dak’ir’s voice could have scarred metal.

‘Nihilan and the other renegades escaped.’

‘To Vulkan knows where,’ Fugis replied, facing the patient. ‘Librarian Pyriel has command of Third Company, until Chapter Master Tu’Shan can appoint someone permanent.’

Dak’ir frowned.

‘We’re going home?’

‘Our tour of the Hadron Belt is over. We are returning to Prometheus to reinforce and lick our wounds.’

‘My face…’ Dak’ir ventured after a long silence, ‘I want to see it.’

‘Of course,’ said Fugis, and showed the Salamander a mirror.

Part of Dak’ir’s facial tissue had been seared away. Almost half of his onyx-black skin had been bleached near-white by the voracious heat of the melta flare. Though raw and angry, it looked almost human.

‘A reaction to the intense radiation,’ Fugis explained. ‘The damage has resulted in minor cellular regression, reverting to a form prior to the genetic ebonisation of your skin when you became an Astartes. I cannot say for certain yet, but it shows no sign of immediate regeneration.’

Dak’ir stared, lost in his own reflection and the semblance of humanness there. Fugis arrested the Salamander’s reverie.

‘I’ll leave you in peace, such as it is,’ he said, taking away the mirror. ‘You are stable and there’s nothing more I can do at this point. I’ll return in a few hours. Your body needs time to heal, before you can fight again. Rest,’ the Apothecary told him. ‘I expect you to be here upon my return.’

The Apothecary left, hobbling off to some other part of the ship. But as the metal door slid shut with a susurrus of escaping pressure, Dak’ir knew he was not alone.

‘Tsu’gan?’

He could feel his battle-brother’s presence even before he saw him emerge from the shadows.

‘Brother,’ Dak’ir croaked warmly, recalling the moment of empathy between them as they’d fought together in the temple.

The warmth seeped away, as a cold wind steals heat from a fire, when Dak’ir saw Tsu’gan’s dark expression.

‘You are unfit to be an Astartes,’ he said levelly. ‘Kadai’s death is on your hands, Ignean. Had you not sent me after the renegade, had you been swift enough to react to the danger in our midst, we would not have lost our captain.’ Tsu’gan’s burning gaze was as chill as ice. ‘I shall not forget it.’

Stunned, Dak’ir was unable to reply before Tsu’gan turned his back on him and left the Apothecarion.

Anguish filled his heart and soul as Dak’ir wrestled with the terrible accusations of his brother, before exhaustion took him and he fell into a deep and fitful sleep.

For the first time in over forty years, the dream had changed…

Sitting in the troop compartment of the Stormbird, Nihilan turned the device stolen from the vault in the depths of Cirrion over and over in his gauntlet. His fellow Dragon Warriors surrounded him: the giant Ramlek, breathing tiny gouts of ash and cinder from his mouth grille as he tried to calm his perpetual anger; Ghor’gan, his scaled skin shedding after he’d removed his battle-helm, cradling his multi-melta like a favoured pet; Nor’hak, fastidiously stripping and reassembling his weapons; and Erkine his pilot, the other renegade left behind to watch the Stormbird, forearm bone-blades carefully sheathed within the confines of his power armour as he steered the vessel to its final destination.

The Dragon Warriors had risked much to retrieve the device, even going as far as to establish the elaborate distraction of the uprising to cloak their movements. Kadai’s death as part of that subterfuge had been a particularly satisfying, but unexpected, boon for Nihilan.

The Stormbird had been primed and ready before the trap in Aura Hieron was sprung. With eager swathes of suicidal cultists to ensure their escape, the renegades had fled swiftly, leaving the atmosphere of Stratos behind them as the engines of their extant craft roared.

‘How little do they realise…’ Nihilan rasped, examining every facet of the gilt object in his palm. Such an innocuous piece of arcana; within its twelve pentagonal faces, along the geodesic lines of esoteric script that wreathed its dodecahedral surface, there was the means to unlock secrets. It was the very purpose of the decyphrex, to reveal that which was hidden. For Nihilan that enigma existed in the scrolls of Kelock, ancient parchments he and Ushorak had taken over forty years ago from Kelock’s tomb on Moribar. Kelock was a technocrat, and a misunderstood genius. He created something, a weapon, far beyond what was capable with the crippled science of the current decaying age. Nihilan meant to replicate his work.

Over a thousand years within the Eye of Terror, patiently plotting revenge, and now he finally was closing on the means to destroy his enemies.

‘Approaching the Hell-stalker,’ the sepulchral voice of Erkine returned over the vox.

Nihilan engaged the grav-harness. As it crept over his armoured shoulders, securing him for landing, he peered out of the Stormbird’s vision slit. There across a becalmed and cobalt sea, a vessel of molten-red lay anchored. It was an old ship with old wounds, and older ghosts. The prow was a serrated blade, ripping a hole in the void. Cannons arrayed its flanks, gunmetal grey and powder-blackened. Dozens of towers and antennae reached up like crooked fingers.

Hell-stalker had entered the Eye a mere battle-barge and had come out something else entirely. It was Nihilan’s ship and aboard it his warriors awaited him – renegades, mercenaries and defectors; pirates, raiders and reavers. There they gathered to heed of his victory and the slow realisation of their ambition – the total and utter destruction of Nocturne, and with it the death of the Salamanders.

Fireborn

Though it was forbidden, Evangeline ran through the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary.

She ran as if the hounds of Chaos were behind her.

Votive candles lit the way through one of the transepts of remembrance, guttering faintly as she swept by. Statues of martyred saints glared at her disapprovingly from shaded alcoves. As she passed through the holy narthex, Evangeline was trying to piece together what she’d seen. Her sandalled feet rapping on the cold convent floor, louder than incendiary blasts in the silence, muddled her thoughts.

Blood.

She’d seen blood, like red rain coming from the sky.

All shall bleed, the voices had said. Skulls for the throne of–

The last part made her dizzy. She smelled oil, tasted iron and heard the harsh clank of machinery though the convent was quiet as the void.

In the Devotional Gallery, she found Father Lumeon.

‘My child, what in the Emperor’s name is wrong?’

The breathless specimen, a waif of a girl in pale unadorned robes, could only pant.

Father Lumeon, officious in his priestly vestments, drifted from behind his blackwood desk. He’d been labouring over parchments and data-slates, a mechanised lexicanum savant scribing his dictations with a neuro-quill. Sublimation of native belief cultures into the auspices of the Imperial Creed – it was heavy work, gratefully postponed, even for a devoted man like Father Lumeon. Dismissing a pair of cyborganic cherubs who had descended on angelic wings to investigate the sudden fuss, he came before Evangeline and gently lifted her chin.

‘Be at peace…’

Evangeline’s frenzy lessened to an insistent ache.

‘And tell me what the matter is.’

The Sister Hospitaller had tears in her eyes and a tremor in her body.

An answer wasn’t forthcoming.

‘Come with me.’ Father Lumeon led her slowly to an ornate balcony which looked out over all of Sepulchre IV.

Chapels and cathedra stretched into the distance, castellated bell towers touched the heavens, pilgrims marched over chasm-spanning ornate bridges, fluttering cherub-servitors flocked the skies. Armies of the righteous, adepts of the Ecclesiarchy and its most zealous defenders populated this shrine world. The sight of it gladdened Father Lumeon whenever he beheld it.

Sister Evangeline’s reaction was not as beatific. She wept and shook and looked away, pointing to the sky.

When Father Lumeon followed her gesture he noticed Sepulchre’s sun. It was red, where once it had been yellow. It was red and drenched the pale stone of the cathedrals so they looked as if they’d been fashioned from incarnadine bone.

‘What did you see?’ He seized Evangeline by the shoulder. He was hurting her and knew it. ‘Tell me now!’

Their eyes met, Evangeline’s full of fear and foreboding; Father Lumeon’s red-ringed and fervent.

What had she seen in the dark of the abyss? Why was the sky bleeding?

She confessed everything.

Pinching her under the arm to keep her close, Father Lumeon hurried Evangeline through the quiet corridors of the convent-bastion. Their passage was met by furtive glances from the other Sister Hospitallers of the Order of the Inner Sanctum. Some carried votive candles or pungent censer burners. They kept their eyes low but were obviously dismayed that one of their Order, even a lowly novitiate, was being led off so urgently. Lumeon bustled past them, scarcely stopping as he activated gilded blast doors and mechanised arch-gates. Artefact chambers, stasis-locked reliquary vaults, beautifully illuminated vaulted ceilings and finely sculptured columns went by in a blur of insignificance. Father Lumeon ignored them all.

He said nothing, only frowned with the furrowed expression of a man who’d asked and received an answer he wished to return. He half-glanced at Evangeline. Her face was grey as ash.

Within the Order, it was unprecedented.

Slowly the religious austerity of the convent-bastion gave way to military functionality. Slab-like walls of gunmetal grey rose around them like bulkheads. Steam-stamped barrack markings and warning chevrons provided direction. The distant ring of combat training became a muffled refrain to their softer footfalls.

Evangeline had only ever roamed in the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary and its annexes that included her dormitory. She had never been to this part of the sprawling convent-bastion. It was cold and harsh. Percussive weapons fire from some distant armoury hurt her ears. The clash of blades sent unpleasant jolts down her spine.

Father Lumeon sensed her reluctance to proceed and had to march Evangeline the rest of the way. At the end of a long, stark corridor their journey ended. Before them, a single figure stood silhouetted in the light from overhead lume-globes.

She had the cut and form of a Crusader. Her robes were red to resemble the blood of martyrs running in her veins. Her silver helm occluded her face completely, though her stance suggested it was severe beneath the mailed mask. One gauntleted fist gripped a vast Crusader shield almost the size of her entire body. Only with the augmented strength from her silver armour, which was also swathed with purity seals, devotional chains and holy parchments, could she wield it. The same was true of the Crusader sword in her other hand. Its blade was etched with tiny inscriptions and crackled with energy from an unseen source.

Father Lumeon found it levelled at him when he approached her.

He held up the aquila icon, suspended around his neck by a string of beads. Each one had been fashioned from a saint’s knuckle bone. It was a potent symbol and the staff of his office.

‘In the Emperor’s name, I must speak with Canoness Ignacia immediately. It is a dire matter.’

The slightest inclination of the formidable Crusader’s head suggested she regarded Evangeline cowering beside Father Lumeon. The warrior didn’t move and for a moment the venerable priest feared she might strike them both down.

At a silent command, the blast doors behind the Crusader broke open as if cracked by a bolt of invisible lightning. Lowering her sword, she backed off into the escaping pressure mist.

Wiping his brow with his sleeve, already knowing there’d be more grey in his temples come the morning, Father Lumeon started to drag Evangeline through after him.

The scream of warning klaxons brought them both to an abrupt halt.

The convent-bastion was on sudden alert.

‘It’s already here…’ he breathed.

Heavy-booted feet were hammering down the corridor towards them. Canoness Ignacia was marshalling her troops.

Sepulchre IV was under attack.

A mass evacuation was under way. Fleets of ships – lighters, ark-cruisers, speeders, freight-haulers, clippers and gunships – were deserting Sepulchre IV in their droves, like insects fleeing a forest fire. On the ground, those without vessels to ferry them to the starships anchored in low orbit around the planet had to run. Masses of people clogged the roads. Some clung desperately to one another for succour, others screamed for deliverance. The few that had mechanised walkers or personal half-tracks were soon mired in the throng. Horns blared frantically like the wailing of the already damned.

‘Pandemonium reigns.’ Tsu’gan was unable to keep the sneer from his face. It was black. Not dark-skinned but really black, like onyx, and just as hard. The red spike of beard on his chin jutted like an accusing finger as he stared through one of the Implacable’s vision slits.

‘They want to live.’ Praetor’s deep voice was matter-of-fact, but dominated over the Thunderhawk gunship’s engine noise. ‘It’s not so weak to cherish your own life,’ he added, guessing what the other Space Marine was thinking.

Tsu’gan turned – his heavy Terminator armour whirred and clanked as the hidden servos went to work shifting his bulk – and his red eyes blazed in the gloomy hold. He found the cumbersome suit a challenge, but relished the power it gave him. Tsu’gan valued strength above all else.

He appraised the rest of his squad in a glance.

Ankar and Kai’ru were as still as sentinels, their grav-harnesses locked and widened to accommodate their bulk.

Gathimu, the ‘spear’, was anointing his heavy flamer with ash. He drew a wide slash with his armoured finger then followed it with a drake’s head. It was Kalimar, the creature he’d slain below Mount Deathfire and whose flesh he now wore as a mantle on his left pauldron. So focused, so honed was Gathimu.

Praetor was his sergeant, a veteran of over a hundred campaigns, a hero of the Chapter. Apart from Tsu’gan, he was the only one yet to don his helmet. Praetor’s face and scalp were bald, polished to mirror sheen by his brander-priest. The scars upon his cheek and the three platinum service studs above his left brow were marks of honour and service. His Terminator armour was more ornate than Tsu’gan’s. Fashioned by a master artificer, it bore the heraldic devices of dragon heads and gilded laurels. It came with a cape of salamander hide that went almost down to the floor.

Praetor glowered.

‘To your harness, brother. It’s not much farther.’

Tsu’gan obeyed, still finding the unfamiliar sensation of walking in Tactical Dreadnought Armour unsettling. Once he was mag-locked and secured by thick metal bracers, he relaxed.

These men, these super-men, were his brothers. Not by blood but by battle. Born in Vulkan’s forge, their bond was stronger than adamantium. They were Salamanders, Fire-born. No, they were more than that. They were the Chapter’s First Company, to which their armour and its proud iconography testified, their Firedrakes.

As Praetor leaned forwards to look through one of the vision slits, the green of his Terminator suit caught a shaft of light from outside and turned a lurid purple.

‘The sky is red as blood.’

‘Yet we defy it, going against the tide.’ Gathimu had finished his rituals and looked over at Tsu’gan through the cold lenses of his battle-helm. Ornate drakes’ teeth gave the helm a feral snarl. ‘Flex your muscles, cycle through your pre-battle physical routines. It will help.’

‘I am ready,’ Tsu’gan snapped, a little too quickly.

‘You are untempered.’ Gathimu’s even tone suggested he meant no offence.

Tsu’gan bit back a reply. He glared through the vision slit and saw again the red sky of the shrine world. Fat clouds gorged on blood smashed against the gunship’s hull, painting it crimson and riming its edges with a visceral gum. Escaping ships sped past them too, headed away from the battle towards the hopeful salvation in low orbit.

A blockade of enemy starships was already forming around the planet. They planned to slaughter everyone on this world, a glorious sacrifice to their violent potentate. Soon, no one would be getting off alive. It leant the Salamanders’ mission a certain… urgency that Tsu’gan felt more acutely as he looked outside.

Fire wreathed the horizon, casting a ruddy glow on the ruins of chapels and cathedra. Flaming bell towers had crumpled, like broken fingers reaching for the earth. Collapsed bridges were clogged with the dead and the sky blossomed with explosions from faraway aerial battles.

Tsu’gan clenched his power fist. The servos whined within and he thought of the distant war he would not be part of. He’d seen enough. Eyes back in the hold, he saw his battle-brothers felt his frustration too.

The Red Rage had come to Sepulchre IV, and its blood-lust was not easily sated.

Roaring afterburners announced their arrival at the docking pad. Landing stanchions extended quickly as the Implacable touched down. The Salamanders disembarked from the rear hatch, green-armoured giants ploughing through the pneumatic pressure cloud.

An Ecclesiarchy representative met them with two of her fellow Battle Sisters. Backwash from the Thunderhawk’s half-powered down engines tossed her white hair, revealing a jagged scar that made her appear more severe.

Though they came from the Order of the Ardent Veil, these warrior-fanatics looked anything but peaceful. Their white power armour was studded with silver spikes, concomitant bodices drawn tight over their taut muscles. They were akin to the suits worn by the Firedrakes’ battle and reserve company brothers, only slighter but still potent. Holy signifiers – purity seals, rosarius beads and icons of the Emperor’s aquila – bedecked the armour, defining the Battle Sisters’ purpose and zealous determination. They held bolters low-slung at their hips. The sister superior with the white hair also carried a flanged power mace. Her helmet, mag-locked to her belt, was silver. Whatever force of Chaos had come upon Sepulchre IV must have been dire that these soldiers of faith could not defeat it.

Praetor bowed his head before the Battle Sisters to show his respect. It had not been easy for them or the Ecclesiarchy to ask for help. The veteran sergeant had no wish to make it any more difficult.

The white-haired superior nodded then turned her back on the Salamanders, leading them away from the docking pad towards a thick perimeter wall crowned by razor-wire. Two watchtowers with mounted heavy bolters overlooked a reinforced gate on either side, the docking pad’s only access point. Hard-looking female faces regarded the strangers from within, their mood unreadable.

The docking pad doubled as a barracks and chapel, too. Tsu’gan noticed much of its religious statuary had been ripped down and replaced by ablative armour, sandbags and rockcrete barricades. Anything of significance to the faith of the Order was gone, leaving a blank echo on a wall or a denuded alcove. The fleeing ships transported not only people but Ecclesiastical artefacts too.

‘I’ve had warmer welcome on Fenris.’ Kai’ru kept his voice low.

A glare from Praetor silenced him, before they were led towards the gate.

Tsu’gan had to agree with his battle-brother. A cold wind was blowing through the Order of the Ardent Veil and the white of their battle sisters’ armour reminded him of frost. Salamanders fought with a core of fire in their breast; these warrior-maidens harboured a spike of ice.

Once past the docking pad, Praetor chose to enlighten his brothers over a closed comm-channel.

++Use the senses our father gave you. The Order is mute. They cannot acknowledge you even if they wished to.++

Kai’ru found suddenly that he was similarly afflicted.

‘Deeds not words are the speech of angels.’ Gathimu was quoting from some philosophical treatise he’d read.

Any reply was forestalled as a pair of Immolator battle tanks reversed from the gate, allowing the Salamanders through. Their turret-mounted inferno cannons swivelled as they moved, constantly trained on the gate. One trigger pull from the gunners would engulf the entranceway in a conflagration of burning promethium.

With the churn of hidden gears, the gate cracked and slid open. As they had seen from the air, the carnage of burned-out tanks and twisted corpses lay beyond it. Sepulchre IV was a place of ruins and shades, of scorched earth and blood-tainted air. Some of the fires still flickered in the hollow shells of the broken basilica.

Several Battle Sisters flanked the gate, bolters aimed into the killing ground before them.

The sister superior looked expectantly at Praetor. She wanted to seal the compound again quickly.

Tsu’gan detected no enemies nearby. He scowled behind his battle-helm at what he saw as fear.

Fear is the province of the weak.

‘Ave Imperator,’ he heard Praetor say to the Battle Sister.

She slammed her gauntleted first against her pauldron in salute as the Salamanders sergeant led his Firedrakes out.

Deeds not words.

Once outside, the gate ground shut behind them. The gaze of the Battle Sisters in the towers was still upon them, though. Tsu’gan felt their heavy bolter sights like an itch at the back of his neck.

Gathimu released a spit of promethium from his heavy flamer to test the igniter on the nozzle, interrupting Tsu’gan’s thoughts. ‘This place reeks of death.’

Tsu’gan estimated over a thousand dead bodies strewn throughout the perimeter. ‘The battle moved elsewhere?’

‘To the convent-bastion.’ Praetor had donned his battle helm and was consulting a data feed running across his left lens. ‘Our destination.’ Topographical and geographical schemata spooled across his iris at rapid speed. Praetor’s occulobe implant absorbed the information in a single beat, storing it in his eidetic memory for later use. He’d locked in the route to the convent-bastion and was mission ready. He led them to a patch of open ground.

‘How many did they lose trying to get in?’ Ankar took his place in a ritual circle with the others.

Praetor paused to blink the relevant data onto his inner helm lens. ‘Nearly a quarter of their garr-ison – over a thousand battle sisters. Though I’d suggest that’s a conservative estimate.’

‘And within, defending the bastion?’

‘Celestians, mainly. They may have a few hundred troops inside. There are more beyond its walls. Holding firm… for now.’

‘Such a waste of lives,’ said Kai’ru. ‘No wonder they’re so aggrieved.’

Tsu’gan’s servos protested as he moved towards Praetor, his armour as belligerent as his mood. ‘They’re fools. Mute or not, they should’ve summoned us sooner.’

Gathimu was standing next to him. ‘Would your pride have allowed that, brother? Asking for help?’

‘We need none, we are Adeptus Astartes.’ He stamped heavily into position beside his sergeant. His uneven gait was obvious, especially to Gathimu.

‘Your anger weighs you down more than that armour ever could. Let go of it.’

It’s not anger, thought Tsu’gan. It’s hate.

And it went deep, into his flesh where he’d tried to have the brander-priest’s iron remove it. But no burning, however invasive, could go far enough. Not when the hate and anger were turned inwards…

Behind them, the burst of engine noise signalled the Implacable’s take-off from the docking pad. The gunship had brought them as close as it could without risking being downed by enemy flak. Several Ecclesiarchy craft littered the killing field outside the fortified compound, testament to the wisdom of a foot approach. The rapid deployment of the Terminators to Sepulchre IV prevented any other kind of insertion.

‘And so we are alone.’ Kai’ru lifted his head to watch the slowly vanishing outline of the Thunder-hawk. Headed for Sepulchre IV’s spaceport, it would aid the evacuation effort until summoned again by Praetor.

Gathimu was philosophical. ‘In the end brother, we are always alone.’

Praetor looked to him now the Salamanders had formed the ritual circle.

‘Ignite the flame.’

A burst from Gathimu’s heavy flamer lit a column of fire in the wasteland, like a beacon torch.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast,’ Praetor intoned.

‘With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ they concluded as one then each thrust their fists into the blaze, allowing their armoured fingers to blacken at the tips before withdrawing them.

‘We are born in fire,’ the sergeant continued, ‘so do we wage war with it clenched in our mailed fist.’

‘Unto the anvil!’ bellowed the Terminators.

Praetor unslung his thunder hammer and storm shield. ‘Firedrakes! In Vulkan’s name!’

The ritual circle broke apart and the Salamanders fell into combat-march formation, Praetor at the front and the others forming a two by two square behind him.

Tsu’gan’s lens display showed ten kilometres to the convent-bastion. The land between them and it was fiercely contested by Ecclesiarchy and enemy troops. The war was close by. There was no way could they reach their destination without encountering it.

It would be a long walk.

Sister Evangeline prayed. She was in one of the convent-bastion’s sanctums kneeling before an icon of her Order’s patron, the martyred Sister Uthraxese. Silver-armoured Celestians surrounded her with ready bolters. Despite their experience and status, the elite Battle Sisters looked edgy.

Father Lumeon was conversing with Canoness Ignacia at the back of the small chamber. The Celestians were Ignacia’s personal guard. She also wore silver armour but of a more ornate design. An antique power sword was sheathed at her hip, next to her battle-helm. Oil censers and a book of scripture hung from her belt by a pearled rosarius string, whilst the scars of battle mapped the Canoness’s face like a continent of past glories.

Father Lumeon looked calm but the way he worried at his aquila betrayed his concern. ‘We could hide.’

Ignacia gave him narrowed eyes.

‘In the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary,’ the priest added.

The Canoness shook her head. The notion of hiding was anathema to her. She wanted to wait. Perhaps with reinforcements from the Space Marines they could break through to the gunships.

In a bout of frustration, Father Lumeon pointed to where Evangeline was praying before the icon. There was a finger bone of the great martyr herself within its coffin-like confines. Some, the particularly devout, suggested some spirit essence still existed within the calcified remains.

‘The relic must be taken from this place. It cannot fall to the enemy. Even now they seek it!’

Ignacia was about to admonish him, when he held up his hand contritely. ‘Our forces dwindle by the minute. Soon there’ll be none left and the Ruinous Powers will not stall long at our barred gates. The Adeptus Astartes are on the way, canoness.’

She scowled at this, ever prideful.

‘If we hide, it might give us more time. We might–’

The hard clang of Ignacia slamming her fist against the wall stopped Father Lumeon mid-plea. Evidently, signing would not convey her meaning accurately enough.

Evangeline didn’t start at the interruption, though it was loud enough. She stayed calm, channelling an inner peace as taught by the sister superior of the Hospitaller.

Anger serves only to promote further anger. Guidance is only found when the mind is still. Serenity breeds truth.

Before the Canoness could go further, a pair of Crusaders from the convent-bastion’s outer wall arrived at the sanctum’s force-shielded doorway.

Both had removed their helmets in the presence of their holy mistress. There was news from the battlefront. From their expressions, it wasn’t good.

The chains tightened around the sorcerer’s torso, forcing him awake. The iron links burned white-hot and sent needles of agony across his bare flesh where his power armour had been removed. Were it not for his enhanced constitution, he’d be dead.

Dreghgor knew that, just as he knew how far he could push his captive. The warlord of the Red Rage was a tyrant and a butcher but he was also wise. Khorne loathed magic, as did he. The collar of black iron around Dreghgor’s neck was inimical to sorcery, but he was not beyond using sorcerers as a tool to further his own ends.

The bitch-maidens of the False Emperor held his warrior legions at bay. No matter how many he threw against their defences, the spiteful whores would not break. Dreghgor knew what lay within their disgusting temple; the sorcerer had scryed its presence after the knives had gone in. Khorne wanted it. Dreghgor would not fail his master, who had seen fit to grant him an armada of ships to bring forth a bloody reign upon the sub-sector. Seven worlds already burned in the wake of his red crusade. He only needed one more… The Eye of the Gods was upon him. He felt it like razorblades under his changed skin.

From the burned-out shell of a shrine, Hagtah Dreghgor had fashioned an arena. The remains of its millennia-old reliquaries were scattered about the bloodied floor like carrion bones. Priceless relic-statues lay broken and beheaded on a carpet of stained-glass fragments. The blood of innocents anointed the shrine’s walls from where they hung impaled on hell-barbs. A Chaos star delineated the battlefield with a freshly flensed skull at each of its eight points.

Two of Dreghgor’s champions clashed within it, chainblade to chainblade. They wore sanguine power armour, chased with brass. Reinforced ribbing between the armour’s plates was as black as sackcloth, and each donned a skull-faced battle-helm in honour of their bloody god.

Dreghgor’s own helm was fashioned into the visage of a snarling hound, a dark iron echo of one of his master’s many forms, and had a single brass horn jutting from its left temple. His armour, scarred from numerous battles, was riddled with studs and barbs. Chains bearing eight skulls from his finest kills hung from plate to plate. He’d scrimshawed marks to represent the lesser ‘achievements’. The tallies resembled little more than deranged scratches, there were so many of them. Rib bones were engineered into his vambraces. Alien teeth turned his gauntlets into spiked fists.

Slayer Lord, Ender of Lives – just two of Dreghgor’s well-earned honorifics.

The warlord watched his champions intently from a pile of ruined stone. Something was still twitching beneath him, mewling for a merciful death. He paid it no heed. Let the weak suffer. While the blood flows, Khorne’s will be done.

His warriors fought fiercely, hacking at each other with abandon. Every drop of spilled blood hissed as it touched the unholy circle. Dreghgor saw dark energy coursing through the lines he had carved in the shattered flagstones.

With a grunt, one of the champions severed the head of the other and roared. Though his armour was cut and his body bleeding from countless wounds, the warrior exulted in triumph.

Dreghgor smiled beneath his helm. Khorne would be satisfied. The bloodletting had been prodigious. He turned his gaze upon the shackled sorcerer, who looked on meekly from the opposite end of the arena, caged in an iron gibbet.

The warlord’s eyes burned like balefires, and he nodded.

As the sorcerer began to incant, blood from his ruptured organs flecked the inside of the cage. The victorious champion clutched his chest and went down on one knee.

Vokrhan was a mighty warrior; he would make a strong vessel.

Dark tendrils, like strands of hyperactive electricity, crackled around the circle. When the champion tried to rise, a black bolt felled him. He tried again, and this time the dark energy was more potent. Vokrhan’s roar of triumph had turned into a wail of agony. Despite all of his strength and fortitude, he collapsed and shook.

‘Take his flesh,’ Dreghgor uttered like a curse. ‘Bind it to the engine.’

From below Dreghgor’s ‘throne’ of sundered stone, a suit of dark mechanical armour was wheeled forth by Kharthak the Blood-wrought.

By now the champion’s body was ravaged by daemon-change. Something dark and abyssal had crept into his soul. The essence of the thing manifested in his tortured and mutated flesh. Claws and monstrous faces stretched it as they fought for release, whilst screams heralded every agonised jerk of Vokrhan’s body.

Kharthak released the ribcage of the engine, which sprang opened like a fanged maw. Chains spilled from within like hungry tentacles, driven by a smoke-spewing, oil-spattering device on the back of the armour that also colonised its joints and limbs.

Hooks fashioned at the end of the chains found purchase in the terrified meat-puppet and dragged Vokrhan thrashing into the engine’s iron embrace.

After the ribcage slammed shut with a hard bang, the screaming stopped. A dull glow smouldered in the eyes of the engine’s banded war-helm. Its studded torso, made to resemble bone, heaved as if with a first breath.

Dreghgor leapt from his rocky vantage point and landed in front of it, stone splintering beneath him.

Dominance had always been one of the warlord’s chief credos.

‘Who is your master?’

With a creak of shifting iron, the daemon-engine went down on one knee in front of the warlord and lowered its head.

Dreghgor smiled… then struck it, hard across the temple. Even bowed, the daemon-engine was a head taller than the warlord, but his blow was fearsome enough to send it reeling to its feet and back a step.

Its eyes flared with red-hate and an array of weapons – sharp, spiked and bladed things, festooned with chains and dripping oil – snapped from its arms, greedy for blood. Dreghgor fed it his rage and his fury, it boiled within him like a tempest. He sensed the thing that had hollowed out his champion’s corpse for its own, slaved to the engine. It struggled against its bonds. Let slip, it would devour him and all of his warriors.

Dreghgor liked that. The daemon-engine would cause such carnage. His smile became a snarl.

‘Slay our enemies. Bleed them. Bring me what I seek.’

The streets of Sepulchre IV were drowning in blood. Ecclesiarchy troops lay tangled in the rubble like broken alabaster dolls. Survivors fell back by degrees, sloshing through vital fluids and avoiding the corpses choking up the once proud avenues.

Despite their defiance, the shrine world’s defenders were wilting before the Chaos battalions. The Battle Sisters were losing. Several combat squads were trying to hold their ground in Unity Square of Monast, Sepulchre’s capital. All other cities had been evacuated or overrun. Here in Monast, the Red Rage fell hardest. Here in Monast they bracketed the defenders’ escape routes, destroyed the bridges before reinforcements could be brought in and ensured dominance of the blood-soaked skies. Here in Monast they sought something, a relic to satisfy their warmongering god. The Red Rage surrounded the convent-bastion but, as of yet, hadn’t broken through.

But time, Tsu’gan was acutely aware, was running out.

‘Enhance magnification.’

The image resolved itself in his occulobe.

A bare-headed Battle Sister was holding her power sword aloft, rallying the troops, when she took a round to the neck. She fell seconds later as the mass-reactive shell exploded, staining her skull-white armour crimson.

Sustained bolter fire met her demise.

Tsu’gan was reluctantly impressed. The Battle Sisters had adopted a long firing line and kept it steady in spite of casualties. He watched another sister superior step into the dead one’s place and try to anchor the defenders.

No war cries, nor screams. It was… unnerving. At first, Tsu’gan thought it was pique at having to call on the Adeptus Astartes to retrieve their holy artefact. Now, he wasn’t so sure. The Battle Sisters were almost automatons.

A few shattered rockcrete barricades and a pair of half-destroyed tanks stood between them and the enemy. Red Rage Traitor Marines wielding boltguns and chainblades, their power armour baptised in arterial blood, came at them in a mob. Cultists, those they had brought upon their graven ships and desperate converts, former natives now driven insane by the carnage, ranged ahead of them like pack dogs.

Tsu’gan sneered contemptuously.

Weak.

++Your orders, brother-sergeant?++ Ankar’s voice came across the comm-link.

The Firedrakes were a hundred metres or so from the battle-site, having penetrated Unity Square and approached down its flank. They could avoid this fight, continue on to the convent-bastion and the mission.

Praetor ignited his thunder hammer. Energy crackled along the head and haft, stirring the weapon’s machine-spirit.

‘Combat formation.’

Tsu’gan rejoiced. Battle at last!

As the Firedrakes advanced, a missile scudded overhead and tore apart one of the immobilised tanks. It detonated the fuel reserves, slinging the warrior-maiden who’d been firing its turret-mounted heavy bolter to the ground where she lay bleeding.

Flamers were brought up, and bathed the onrushing Red Rage with super-heated promethium. The cultists died immediately, like pathetic candles withered by a blow-torch. The Traitor Marines were not so easily felled. One collapsed to a knee, shimmering in the heat haze, his armour wreathed by fire, but the others drove through it. Emerging from the smoke, they looked like daemons born from the fiery hells of the warp. Tendrils of licking flame trailed off their battle-plate.

Chainblades screeching for blood, the Red Rage were about to tear into the Battle Sisters when a second flamer blast smashed into them from the flank, spilling bodies unprepared to meet it.

‘Into the fires of battle!’ Praetor thundered towards the Traitor Marines like an armoured bull.

Tsu’gan was behind him. He felt the resonance of his heavy footfalls through his armour, and those of Kai’ru and Ankar to either side. Gathimu was at the rear, slow enough to scorch the Red Rage with his heavy flamer. Tsu’gan felt him too, saw his ident-rune on the grainy tac-display imposed on his helmet lens.

Advance three steps – fire. Advance three steps – fire.

Gathimu was unfaltering.

Running in Terminator armour was difficult, but not impossible. Unused to the manoeuvre, Tsu’gan found his enhanced physiology stretched but he soon compensated. His breath sounded harsh and reverberant inside his helmet. The enemy were getting closer through the yellow-orange optic lenses.

A spray of blood cascaded from the shattered skull of a Traitor Marine as Praetor connected with his thunder hammer. A second red slash tore from the warrior’s stomach as the Salamanders sergeant used his storm shield to open him up.

Tsu’gan triggered his storm bolter, the hard crash-bang staccato that followed filling his heart with righteous anger.

‘In Vulkan’s name! Glory to Prometheus!’ He strafed a fresh line of cultists rushing to intercept the Salamanders.

The Terminators barrelled through them like they were nothing. One crumpled against Ankar’s armoured bulk. Another disappeared in a visceral mist, torn apart by Kai’ru’s chainfist.

Ahead of them, the Battle Sisters were rallying. But further enemy forces were coming, Havoc squads armed with heavy weapons and a Rhino APC carrying another battle squad. A wall of fire whickered from their ranks. It pinged off the invulnerable Terminators but scythed into the Battle Sisters brutally. Bodies were spun and tossed by the fusillade. They fell in silence despite their wounds.

A trio of Ecclesiarchy tanks rolled up the street to meet the enemy’s secondary force, two Battle Sisters squads running alongside them. Unity Square was packed with troops. A short range fire-fight had erupted across a small patch of open ground. Frantic melta beams stabbed across the debris, generators screaming. Heavy bolters added a grunting chorus to the orchestra of war.

The skirmish was escalating.

In the middle of the storm, the Firedrakes met the enemy proper.

Cracking ceramite, the sound of sundered power armour, accompanied Tsu’gan’s bludgeoning of one of the Traitor Marines. Another came in his wake, firing his combi-bolter point blank into the Salamander’s torso. Tiny insect-like stings were no more than an annoyance.

Tsu’gan’s power fist crushed him into paste.

Buoyed by the sudden appearance of heavily armoured reinforcements, the Battle Sisters advanced beyond their barricades to link up with the Space Marines. Gathimu had reached his battle-brothers too, and sent a plume of burning promethium into the Chaos Rhino. Destroyed tracks and a badly scorched hull brought the vehicle to a skidding halt.

Keeping up the pressure, Gathimu engulfed the stricken Rhino. Smoke-shrouded figures stumbled from its hatches, before the hold ignited and blew out the rear door in a deep foom of exploding incendiary.

The muzzle-flare from Tsu’gan’s storm bolter lit up his armour in a stark glow. Already ablaze, the Traitor Marines from inside the vehicle bucked and spasmed against the bolt storm. Three survived, staggered by shell impacts but unbowed in their durable power armour.

Praetor’s thunder hammer showed no such mercy as he waded in and crushed them.

Emboldened, the Battle Sisters advanced ahead of the more cumbersome Terminators to establish a fresh strongpoint beyond Unity Square. Further squads were moving in from the avenues of broken temples and collapsed spires. Rubble provided a natural cordon in which to funnel the Chaos renegades.

Tsu’gan noticed the sister superior he’d seen earlier give a curt nod of thanks to his sergeant before pressing on.

Praetor’s voice rumbled over the comm-link a moment later.

++Fire-born, converge on my position.++

A series of affirmation runes flashed up on Tsu’gan’s helmet lens as the squad tightened its coherency.

++Do we advance?++ Kai’ru sounded eager for more.

He wasn’t alone. Tsu’gan was getting ready to head after their allies when Praetor spoke again.

++Hold position.++

++Brother-sergeant–++

Gathimu cut Tsu’gan off before he made a mistake he’d regret.

‘Be patient, brother. This isn’t over yet.’

Tsu’gan followed his eye-line. A pair of Immolator battle tanks spearheaded the Ecclesiarchy counter-assault. Their inferno cannons were short-ranged but deadly. Shooting gouts of intense fire ahead of them, they laid a path for the warrior-maidens behind. Some rode inside the Rhino APC that followed. Others hung on to its outer rails, holding their bolters one-handed.

Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed. His occulobe filtered out smoke graining and sharpened the image despite the distance and the heat haze. Something was coming, heralded by a squall of blood-crazed cultists. What was left of the Havocs and the few Traitor Marines from the battle squads retreated to consolidate with it.

++Massive heat signature, brother-sergeant.++ Gathimu was calm, the blind sword of utter stillness to Tsu’gan’s font of reckless anger.

++I read++

Threat icons in Tsu’gan’s helmet array flashed insistently.

++Looks like some sort of machine. Dreadnought?++

Tsu’gan locked onto it with his targeter. His tac-display spooled down the metres rapidly.

It was speeding up, and no Dreadnought.

Ankar cranked fresh rounds into his storm bolter. ++An Adeptus Astartes?++

A dense but distant thunk of metal against metal arrested Praetor’s reply. A dark shape was crashing out of the sky towards the Firedrakes. It took Tsu’gan a few seconds to realise it was one of the Immolators.

They were already moving when Praetor bellowed. ++Disperse!++

A hunk of flaming tank landed between them, like so much burning shrapnel. It had literally been torn apart.

++Forwards on me, brothers!++ Praetor circled the wreck quickly, overcoming the weight of his armour with sheer strength.

Tsu’gan was first behind him, but Praetor already had a lead. ‘What is that thing?’

It resembled a suit of mechanised armour, a simulacrum of a man, something that might once have been part of the long defunct Legio Cybernetica. And though it had pistons and cogs, wheels and chains, and vented steam and oil like a mag-lev train, it was no robot. Something lived and drew breath in those dark iron confines. Tsu’gan felt it.

‘Unnatural…’ Gathimu sounded almost haunted. ‘It’s possessed.’

Tsu’gan’s teeth clenched. It was a daemon that had a hand in the death of his former captain, Ko’tan Kadai. His ire grew as he vowed this one would be banished back into the warp without taking anyone with it.

A short distance away, the Battle Sisters were levelling everything they had at it. Bolter fire, even melta blasts rolled off like they were nothing. Another Immolator crumpled like parchment when the daemon-engine shoulder-barged its hull. Fuel and ammunition exploded in a vast fireball that Tsu’gan felt in the resulting heat wash.

‘Emperor’s name… It’s strong.’

Praetor was swinging his thunder hammer in a slow but steady arc. ++We are stronger.++

The daemon-engine was relentless. It tossed Battle Sisters like limp marionettes. White-armoured bodies fell like rain, eviscerated by its blades and saws.

Tsu’gan heard Praetor mutter when the Firedrakes charged.

++Vulkan guide me in my hour of doom.++

Up close, the daemon-engine was massive. It reeked of blood and oil. Smoke and heat exuded off its dark iron flesh in a pall. But it was the eyes that Tsu’gan really noticed. With every blow, as the carnage increased, they blazed brighter with a malign light.

Praetor swung. It was like lightning from the sky when he struck. Tsu’gan expected to see the daemon-engine crumble but instead his sergeant’s battle cry became a roar of agony as he was punched off his feet several metres through the air.

To see the mighty Praetor so humbled made the Firedrakes falter.

Kai’ru recovered quickest, getting ahead of Tsu’gan to ram his chainfist into the daemon-engine’s torso.

‘Taste Vulkan’s wrath, warp spawn.’ The oath died on his lips when one of the thing’s hell-blades punctured his Terminator armour as if it were tin. With his aegis broken, Kai’ru could only watch as the saw-teeth churned his innards to mulch.

Gathimu was advancing fast, Kai’ru’s name a cry of anguish on his lips. The igniter on his heavy flamer was already burning when the daemon-engine levelled its wrist-mounted cannon and unloaded. Dozens of armour-piercing shells, jacketed with hellfire, peppered his armour and detonated the promethium tanks on his back.

Blinded by the sudden explosion, Tsu’gan waited a few seconds before his occulobe implant compensated. Gathimu was burning.

++Ankar.++

The other Firedrake nodded. They would attack the daemon-engine together. Tsu’gan’s tac-display recorded five metres until engagement when a transmission icon flashed urgently on his helmet lens. It had an Imperial signature, emergency coded. The message spooled as rune-text across the display:

Incoming. Fall back five metres and stand fast.

A high-pitched whine broke overhead. No time to retreat. Tsu’gan and Ankar locked their bodies as the ordnance hit. It struck the daemon-engine squarely and it disappeared in a storm of fire and shrapnel.

The explosion billowed outwards, engulfing the Terminators who weathered the blast like a cliff against the tide. When the dust dispersed, the daemon-engine was crouched almost fifty metres away but still intact. It rose slowly. Its dead eyes blazed brighter.

Behind the Salamanders, Ecclesiarchy troops were advancing in force. A stern-faced sister superior appeared from the roof hatch of an Exorcist. It looked more like a grotesque church organ than a battle tank, but there it was, auto-loaders priming for another missile launch.

Another pair of Immolators flanked it, heavy bolter turrets rattling. High velocity, mass reactive shells stitched a thick line all the way to the daemon-engine. The dense impacts never even scratched it. The tanks rolled on past the Salamanders, determined to block it. Two Rhinos sped after them, fully loaded with engines screaming.

‘See to your battle-brother.’ Praetor was on his feet. His battle-helm was shattered and he’d torn it off. He was bloodied, still groggy from the blow. It was incredible he lived, let alone stood.

Praetor scowled when it didn’t happen immediately. ‘Get Gathimu up.’

With some effort, Ankar and Tsu’gan hauled the Firedrake to his feet. His armour was badly damaged, blackened by burns, but he nodded his willingness to fight.

Tsu’gan was ready to go again. ‘How do we kill it?’

‘We don’t.’

‘But Brother Kai’ru–’

‘Is gone.’ Praetor’s face was grim. This wasn’t an easy decision. ‘We make for the convent-bastion. They have given us that chance.’ He gestured to where the Battle Sisters fought and died furiously.

Incomprehension and anger warred in Tsu’gan’s burning eyes. ‘What of vengeance? Our brother’s death demands it!’

Praetor snarled, thrusting his thunder hammer in Tsu’gan’s direction. ‘I’ll fell you where you stand. Obey my orders.’

He showed them his back and stalked away. ‘On my lead.’

Despite himself, Tsu’gan was about to protest again, when Gathimu touched his arm.

‘We’ll win no honour for Kai’ru by dying here, our oaths unfulfilled. Sacrifice is not always physical, brother.’

Grief softened Tsu’gan’s face briefly, before the mask returned and his impotent wrath dominated.

The Firedrakes left the battlefield. The convent-bastion wasn’t far. Tsu’gan knew, in their wake, the daemon-engine would be close.

The heavy drumming of explosions outside sounded muffled through the thick convent-bastion walls.

Father Lumeon was pacing.

Why don’t they feel thick enough?

Since departing with the Crusaders, Ignacia had not returned. Five Celestians remained, a full half of her bodyguard, led by Sister Clymene. They eyed the long corridor beyond the force-shield nervously. It was dark, its emergency lighting low.

He looked away when the shadows started to grow and coalesce in his mind. His heart was racing and he gripped his aquila for support.

Evangeline showed no such anxiety. She was kneeling before the reliquary, serene, bereft of all doubt. Though her lips moved in prayer, she made no sound.

Sister Clymene hunched over a tactical console fashioned like a shrine in one corner of the chamber. She turned to Father Lumeon, who then went over to her.

A grainy pict-viewer displayed the situation beyond the convent-bastion’s walls. Flaring bolter fire polluted the image with bright flashes, overloading the external pict-viewer. Static from comm-link chatter obscured it further. But the picture was painfully clear to Father Lumeon. There was no escape. They would all die here. All that mattered was the relic.

He was muttering a prayer to the Emperor when four armoured forms came into view at the edge of the pict. Lumeon had never studied the Adeptus Astartes in any great detail but he recognised the insignia of the Salamanders and offered up his profound thanks.

Despite their bulky armour, the Adeptus Astartes progressed steadily through the Chaos picket lines, shredding foes with their holy bolters and bathing the heinous masses with cleansing flame. Father Lumeon was transfixed as a bald-headed giant smashed his way to the gate, his warrior brothers behind him. As the barrier wall began to open, a force of Celestians came out to meet the Adeptus Astartes. Desperate to get inside, the Red Rage couldn’t get close. The defenders were just too fierce to breach.

Once the Salamanders were through, the Celestians retreated and the gate banged shut again. Pintle-mounted fire from the towers intensified and a battle tank was rolled into the small outer courtyard to watch the gate.

The vox-unit on the tactical console crackled to life.

++This is Sergeant Praetor of the Salamanders First Company Firedrakes – acknowledge.++

Father Lumeon looked to Sister Clymene, who gestured for him to answer.

His relief was almost palpable. ‘Lords, the Emperor’s blessing you have come. I am Father Lumeon, Missionary High Priest attached to the Orders.’

++We are sealing the inner doors now.++

Father Lumeon’s tone betrayed his surprise.

‘Ah… But how will we get out? The relic–’

++Is in safe hands. Be more concerned that the enemy doesn’t get in.++

There was a short pause that filled the priest’s gut with lead.

++Something is following us. There is little time. Ready the relic, we will be with you soon.++

The vox-link died and silence returned.

Something is following us.

Something.

The words replaying in Lumeon’s head chilled him before he found some resolve.

‘Sister Evangeline.’ She was praying in front of the reliquary and looked up. ‘It’s time.’

The force-shield shimmered once then dissipated before Praetor and his Firedrakes stepped into the sanctum. It was quick to resolve itself again, the waft of ozone from its reactivation souring the air.

Tsu’gan scowled at such fear.

‘That won’t save you,’ said Praetor, looking down at the frail, old priest in front of him.

‘Then we shall have to rely on the Emperor’s grace to protect us.’

If Praetor had an opinion about this, he kept it well hidden.

The priest bowed. ‘I am Father Lumeon.’

The Firedrake sergeant kept the introductions brief. He showed him a small, cylindrical device mag-locked to his belt. ‘Teleport homer. Once locked onto its signal, my ship will transport us and the relic aboard.’ Praetor’s expression became regretful. ‘Its localised field is too small for all of us. Besides, you would not survive translation intact. I am truly sorry.’

Lumeon was already resigned to his fate. He had no fear of death, only of losing the relic.

Praetor’s gaze alighted on the reliquary of Sister Uthraxese where a slim novitiate was kneeling.

‘Brothers, make way.’ The Firedrakes standing behind him spread out. A gap for Praetor and the relic formed between them.

‘When translation occurs, there will be a massive exothermic reaction. Stand well back. Better still, leave the chamber.’ Praetor had moved into position. When he turned the novitiate was standing downcast before him.

‘I am tempered in Vulkan’s forge, sister. I have no need of benediction.’ Praetor looked up. ‘Priest, bring forth the relic. Our time is almost up.’

A dull explosion echoed through the convent-bastion walls all the way to the sanctum. Luminal red bathed the chamber from the tactical console. The outer wall had been breached.

Tsu’gan had a decent view of the screen from where he was standing. The ensuing fire-fight was brutal. A familiar form appeared through the carnage of bolter fire and smoke. Celestians fell like porcelain statues, shattered by its irresistible force.

‘The machine has broken through.’

It scythed through the defenders, crushing tanks and swatting Battle Sisters aside, until it reached the inner gate. Flamers and melta guns were brought up, but nothing fazed it. If anything, the daemon-engine looked bigger, a mutating hulk whose unnatural flesh strained at its corporeal bonds. Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed when he caught something through the melee. Before he could analyse it further, a stray explosion killed the pict-feed and the tactical console went dark.

Tsu’gan’s eyes met his sergeant’s.

It will be here soon.

Already, the heavy thump of the daemon-engine’s feet could be heard hammering up the corridor towards them.

Praetor’s face was solemn. None would survive. But retrieve the reliquary and it would all be worth it.

‘Now, priest.’

Father Lumeon looked nonplussed. ‘It is before you, Astartes. Sister Evangeline is the relic.’

What might have been anger crossed Praetor’s face. ‘Don’t mock me, priest. If you’ve lost your mind to Chaos, I’ll vanquish you here… now.’

‘Evangeline is the relic, a living relic! She beheld a vision from the Emperor on Earth and it has awoken her grace.’

Praetor saw the truth in the priest’s eyes, and beseeched Vulkan for his strength.

‘Then we have a problem.’

Father Lumeon was shaking his head. ‘No, no. You’re here now. Rescue Evangeline. The rest of us do not matter. You must do this, lord. I beg of you!’

Praetor ignored the priest’s pleas, addressing his Firedrakes instead. ‘Secure the corridor. Firepoints at every ingress.’

Gathimu and Ankar waited for the force-shield to deactivate again then lumbered through the doorway.

‘Astartes, what are you doing? The living relic–’

‘Is a girl, and thusly will not survive teleportation to my ship.’ Praetor spoke harshly. He wasn’t angry at Lumeon, thrusting the serene-looking novitiate towards him desperately. He was angry at the situation and the fact they faced a foe he knew they couldn’t best with strength of arms. Herculon Praetor was not used to such impasses.

Father Lumeon seemed to shrink with despair. Evangeline, by contrast, was utterly calm. Her serenity and grace emanated outwards. It was slow, but even Tsu’gan was beginning to feel his choler lessen just by being near her.

Praetor felt it too. He reached out to touch Evangeline’s cheek but stopped short.

‘I can see why the Red Rage wants you so badly, child. Have no fear, they won’t claim you.’

Judging by his ambivalent demeanour, Father Lumeon was unsure if that was a good or a bad thing given the circumstances. He looked askance down the corridor where the sounds of battle were growing louder.

‘What do we do?’

Praetor regarded the priest sternly.

‘Return to your reliquary, both of you, and pray.’

Tsu’gan couldn’t avert his gaze from Sister Evangeline as she knelt in prayer. Such poise and calm. She radiated tranquillity. Peace threatened to overcome his rage. Tsu’gan had not experienced such a feeling in a long time.

The din coming from the corridor had lessened in the last few minutes. It could mean only one thing. The Celestians had been defeated.

A ring of explosives rigged from the Battle Sisters’ frag and krak grenades booby trapped the entrance to the sanctum. When the daemon-engine breached the force-shield, it would set them off. By then the Firedrakes and their ward would be withdrawing into the room behind it. Tsu’gan had performed the short reconnoitre himself: from the sanctum to a long gallery, which then led to a transept and finally a chapel. Cloisters and dormitories bled off from this chamber, but the daemon-engine would have caught them at that point and have to be fought.

Tsu’gan didn’t fear it, but nor did he wish to be found wanting when the time came. A desire for flagellation at the brander-priest’s rod had welled up in him during the tour. Upon returning to the sanctum and Sister Evangeline, that masochistic urge had ebbed.

Gathimu’s voice came through on the comm-link. He and Ankar were at the opposite end of the corridor.

++It comes.++ Harsh-sounding bolter fire broke the feed. ++Glory to Vulkan and the Emperor, brothers. I go to them now.++

Gathimu disappeared, wading into the battle that Tsu’gan could only imagine beyond the corridor.

Ankar was behind him.

++Unto the Anvil, brothers.++

Even Evangeline’s presence couldn’t quell Tsu’gan’s anger. He fist was clenched. ‘I will carve their names into its hell-bound flesh.’

Praetor hefted his thunder hammer. ‘Honour their sacrifice with victory, brother.’

Tsu’gan was in no mood for pragmatism.

‘I hope their blood is worth this human’s grace. We don’t even know why she is so important to the Ecclesiarchy.’

Father Lumeon rose from the reliquary where he prayed with Sister Evangeline to approach the Firedrakes.

‘Do you know what true names are, Astartes?’

‘They are a daemon’s weakness, words of power that can banish them into the warp.’

Lumeon faced Praetor. ‘Yes, they are. Sister Evangeline knows true names.’

‘What do you mean, priest? Speak plainly.’

‘By being close to a daemon, she can hear their true names. She can banish the denizens of the warp with but a word! That is why she is so valuable. That is why you must save her.’

Only Evangeline’s presence kept Tsu’gan’s rage from boiling over. He wrenched off his battle-helm. He was livid. Praetor’s outstretched hand warned him to be still.

‘A pity you did not mention this before.’ The sergeant leaned in closer. ‘But what of the fact she is mute? How can she even utter such a word?’

Father Lumeon followed the Firedrake’s gaze to Evangeline then back again.

‘The Emperor’s divine will is not for us to question, it just is. I do not know how.’

Praetor slammed his fist into Tsu’gan’s chest to hold him. ‘Go back to your prayers, but be ready to move.’

He sighed, turning to Tsu’gan as the priest sloped away again. ‘Vulkan give us strength.’

‘There is no way to defeat this thing.’

Praetor’s brow furrowed. ‘Not with the weapons we have here at least.’ He paused, deciding on their final strategy. ‘We hold it as long as we can. Then do what must be done. The enemy must not claim her. Whatever vile sacrifice is in mind for this child will be far worse than death, for her and the sub-sector.’

‘I will do my duty.’

Praetor nodded. ‘If we still live, I will engage the beacon and pull us back to the ship.’

The two ident-runes on both Firedrakes’ tac-displays blinked out.

Tsu’gan’s face was grim. Their brothers were dead. He checked the load on his storm bolter. It was getting low. As Praetor backed away, gesturing for the priest and his novitiate to get up, Tsu’gan stomped into position in front of the force-shield. The five Celestians, including Sister Clymene, formed a firing line with him.

Silence flushed the corridor. Unseen fires sent flickering fingers of dusk across the metal walls. Smoke drizzled outwards like a carpet of fog. The heavy clank of the daemon-engine’s footfalls beat in time with the defenders’ hearts.

Tsu’gan aimed at the end of the corridor. ‘Brace yourselves.’

Five boltguns locked and loaded beside him.

‘Lower the force-shield.’

The energy veil flickered and dissipated at Tsu’gan’s command.

A large silhouette bled onto the gunmetal floor. The daemon-engine lumbered into view.

It was much larger than before. Its flesh strained against the machine shackling it. Blood and oil seeped from every cleft in its armour. Long, hell-runed chains scraped along the floor as it moved. Steam and smoke spewed from the engine on its broad back. And the eyes… the eyes burned with a baleful fire, stoked by the fear and rage of its enemies.

Tsu’gan hesitated for a second.

‘Fire!’

An incandescent bolter storm roared from the sanctum archway. For a few moments the daemon-engine took it, even staggered as the mass reactive shells exploded against it. Then it charged.

Its bulk had slowed it and it took a few seconds to overcome inertia but then it was moving, like a battle tank with engines screaming.

Tsu’gan estimated it would clear the corridor in approximately five more seconds.

‘Back into the sanctum. Now!’

The force-shield was reactivated in their wake.

Reunited with Praetor, Tsu’gan was retreating into the long gallery when the daemon-engine hit the force-shield. The energy veil stretched and crackled, sending jolts of electricity through the abomination’s metal frame. As if it was wading through bands of viscous light, the daemon-engine pushed and strained against the field. Then like rubber put under too much stress, the bands snapped and the veil shut down for the last time.

Tsu’gan’s storm bolter was already blazing halfway down the gallery when the daemon-engine stepped across the sanctum’s threshold and tripped the grenades.

Intensified by the close confines of the chamber, the explosion was deafening and blew smoke and fire in both directions. Shrapnel careened off Tsu’gan’s armour, embedding itself in the walls and floor.

Laying down suppressing fire all the way, Tsu’gan and the Celestians reached the chapel. Nothing stopped the daemon-engine. They didn’t even slow it down.

Three of the Celestians rushed forward, bolters flaring at close range, righteous fury in their eyes.

They were scattered in seconds, smashed and broken against the walls.

‘Protect them, brother!’ Praetor led with his storm shield, the daemon-engine looming ahead.

It went against Tsu’gan’s every instinct to leave his sergeant. But, shielding the non-combatants with his body and backing off from the battle, he obeyed. He was her last defence. Sister Evangeline needed him.

Expecting to slow, rather than smite it, Praetor was lasting longer against the daemon-engine this time. Its bulk actually worked against it, and the Firedrake was able to get in beneath its guard and land a few blows.

Bolter fire raked down the machine’s torso before the last Celestian was impaled on a hell-blade. Transfixed, she shuddered once and then died.

Sister Clymene made the most of her comrade’s sacrifice by attaching a melta bomb to the daemon-engine’s blind side. Too close to withdraw, she was cooked in her armour while the abomination was rocked but stayed standing.

Only Praetor remained.

Tsu’gan and the others had almost reached the end of the chapel when he saw the sergeant smashed aside. Praetor was lifted off his feet and left a ragged hole in the wall where he’d crashed through it. His thunder hammer was sent spinning loose, embedding itself in the chapel floor just a metre from Tsu’gan’s grasp.

They’d reached the door to one of the dormitories. The daemon-engine had slowed, sensing its prey was near and at its mercy.

Tsu’gan’s storm bolter was empty. He’d have to crush her neck.

‘Shut your eyes.’

He struck Father Lumeon, as hard as he dare without killing him, knocking the priest unconscious before he could protest.

‘Shut your eyes, Evangeline.’

Tsu’gan reached around her tiny neck, sensed the warmth of her skin against his gauntleted fingers… and stopped. He thrust Evangeline into the centre of the chapel, where she stumbled and fell.

As he dragged Father Lumeon and closed the dormitory blast door behind them, he saw the daemon-engine close on Evangeline.

By Vulkan, I hope this works…

Alone, Evangeline faced the daemon-engine. She quietened her fast-beating heart and recovered from her stumble into a kneeling position. She began to pray.

With each silent benediction, the abomination that had been summoned to sacrifice her soul to Khorne slowed. Whereas before, brute force and fury had driven the daemon-engine to impossible feats, now every step was an effort. The closer the machine came to Evangeline, the more it began to shrink. Its grotesque musculature withered and atrophied. The baleful lights in its eyes started to fade, like a candle starved of oxygen.

This was the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary – its borders were anathema to rage and fear. Here, peace and tranquillity held sway. Sister Evangeline was the paragon of that fundamental truth. She was order in place of chaos, serenity opposed to anger. There was nothing in this place or in her for the daemon-engine to feed upon. She had disarmed it, and by the time it reached her it had returned to its former size, hell-blade poised above her bowed head but unable to strike. Ichor was drooling from between the daemon-engine’s armour plates, its body seized as if fossilized. Impotent, dwindling rage smoked away to almost nothing in its eyes.

The blast door opened and in stepped Tsu’gan. His eyes were closed. He felt Evangeline’s aura brush against him, and envelop him, like a cool breeze. Reaching out, he found the thunder hammer in his grasp. He could hear everything, every heart beat, every shallow breath.

A spark ignited in the daemon-engine’s eyes. Hellish hope became neutered fury as it found nothing but calm in the warrior before it.

In a pure moment of awakening, Tsu’gan hurled the thunder hammer.

It spun, end over end, until his righteous blow broke open the machine chassis that bound but also girded the abomination within.

Free of its fetters, fire surged into the now unbound daemon’s eyes. Hellish claws reached out from the shattered rib cage as it pulled loose.

I will feast upon this world.

Evangeline opened her eyes and uttered the first and last words she would ever speak. A true name…

Khartak-shek-hlad-bahkarn…

The daemon shrieked before a harsh corona of light engulfed it. Hot winds, the stench of ash and blood tainted the air, then was gone, the daemon with it. The banishing spilled outwards like a droplet expanding in a massive pool, beyond the chamber, beyond the convent-bastion walls, across all of Sepulchre IV.

In the chapel, only a smouldering hunk of machine metal remained. The scorched remnants of the engine were lifeless and inert.

Praetor staggered in, bloody but with storm shield in hand.

It was over.

Father Lumeon had roused too and stumbled in behind Tsu’gan. What he saw made him weep.

Evangeline’s aura had almost faded.

‘Her grace is spent. By speaking, she violated the most sacred credo of the Order. Her unique gift is lost.’ The priest was distraught, but glad Evangeline was alive.

Tsu’gan saw it differently. ‘A daemon is banished and the Red Rage has been dealt a severe blow.’

Reports were flooding in through his comm-link. He read them aloud. ‘Their forces are in retreat. The skies are clearing and the blockade lifts.’

Praetor scowled. ‘It will not last. We have only a short opportunity.’

Going to the comm-bead in his ear, he contacted the Implacable with extraction coordinates. Praetor turned to the priest and novitiate. ‘You will ride with us.’

Father Lumeon nodded, holding Evangeline close like a child.

‘Brother-sergeant.’

Praetor took his thunder hammer from Tsu’gan and nodded.

‘A worthy blow.’

Tsu’gan saw the respect in his eyes and made the most of it. With Evangeline’s grace gone, the old anger was returning. He’d been a fool to believe it was anything more than a temporary reprieve.

‘What’s wrong, brother?’

‘Nothing,’ he lied. By the time the sound of the Implacable’s engines were overhead, his inner pain, his rage, had returned.

Prometheus Requiem

The hangar gaped like an open wound in the side of the ship, festering with rust and warp corrosion. It belonged to the Glorion, an ancient vessel from the long-dead Kapp Frontier Wars and was just one in a conglomeration of almost a hundred. Ruined cathedra, mashed together in the violent act of joining, jutted alongside broken spires, shattered domes and the cleaved remains of many-tiered decks. The union of once-disparate vessels was as incongruous as the product of their fusion. Now a single drifting mass, such abominations were commonly referred to as ‘hulks’.

The Implacable was an insect compared to this behemoth and its landing stanchions touched down on an area of deck plating capable of harbouring an entire fleet of gunships. Ten armoured figures stepped out from the embarkation ramp. They moved slowly. Not because of the massive Terminator suits they were wearing or because of the inertia of the zero-gravity, nor was it because their boots were mag-locked to the deck plating. They were wary.

Hulks had ever been the province of alien creatures, hiding in the dark forgotten recesses, stirring from a deep-space slumber. But it was more than that. This amalgam, its many-hulled body ravaged by claw marks, colonised by strange bacterial growths and seared by solar wind, had been to the Eye. Spat from the warp like a birth mother expelling its nascent spawn, it had emerged back into the realm of realspace after almost a century’s absence.

‘I can smell the reek of the warp.’ Praetor’s voice came through the comm-feed in Tsu’gan’s helmet. Though he couldn’t see his face, Tsu’gan could tell his sergeant was scowling.

More than smell alone, the hangar walls bore visual evidence of the hulk’s taint. In the glare from the halo-lamps spearing out of his armour, Tsu’gan picked out traceries of void-frozen veins and oddly shaped protuberances. Gaps in the bizarre growths resembled mouths, flash-frozen in distended hunger. The aberrations stained every vertical surface and ended in slurries of fossilised biomass that collected against the edges of the deck.

‘Flamer.’ Praetor’s order was clipped, undercut by barely checked disgust.

Brother Kohlogh stepped out of formation and doused the wall in purifying fire. Like a match held to a stack of oiled timber, the flames raced across the tainted mass, devouring it to the eerie report of sibilant howling, just discernible above the heavy weapon’s roar.

Tsu’gan watched Emek make the sign of Vulkan’s hammer across his breast. None of the Firedrakes did it, but then the Apothecary was not one of them and more superstitious than most. He caught Tsu’gan’s gaze briefly, held it, then looked away as Praetor drove them on. It was obvious he wanted to be off this ship as soon as possible. He had good reason.

The empyrean was a shadow realm, a world overlaid on reality like a dirty film of plastek. Fell creatures swam its tides, given form by fear, envy and a desire for power. They were parasites that preyed on the weaknesses of man. An old word gave them substance. Daemons they were called. No ship, hulk or otherwise, that had plied the warp could ever be wholly untouched by the experience. Daemons and their influence had a way of lingering…

‘Makes your skin crawl, eh, little wyrm?’ asked Hrydor over a closed channel.

Tsu’gan’s jaw clenched and he bit back his anger.

‘Address me as Tsu’gan or brother,’ he hissed.

Hrydor laughed loudly for everyone to hear. A giant, even amongst Terminators, he carried their squad’s heavy weapon, a brutal assault cannon etched with kill-scars.

Praetor sent a crackle of energy up the haft of his thunder hammer to better survey the darkness. It also lit the green of his battle-plate and deepened the shadows in the folds of his drakescale cloak.

‘Keep it down, brother,’ he said.

Hrydor nodded but wasn’t done.

‘Stay eager, little wyrm. You and I shall fight together very soon.’

The magma lakes below Mount Deathfire on Nocturne were cooler than Tsu’gan’s ire at that moment.

Aside from the tainted growths, the hangar was empty.

‘How far to the Proteus?’ asked Praetor.

‘She’s close. I can feel her.’

A flashing rune on Tsu’gan’s retinal display identified the speaker.

Brother-sergeant Nu’mean. His impatience, uncharacteristic of a Salamander, was obvious even in his implacable Terminator suit.

Praetor turned, shifting his bulk.

‘Are you a Librarian now, brother?’

‘I am a Firedrake.’ Nu’mean answered curtly. Not as deep-voiced as Praetor, but with an edge that could cut ceramite. ‘And I know my own ship. She is near.’

He stomped ahead as the already freezing temperature dropped further.

‘Emek,’ Praetor ignored his fellow sergeant for now, ‘how far?’

Unlike his predecessor who’d been all thin-faced cynicism, Emek was optimistic and curious.

After you’ve pulled a few more gene-seeds from your dead and dying brethren, your mood will change, brother, thought Tsu’gan, his voice bitter even inside his head.

Emek was consulting an auspex array built into the gauntlet of his smaller power armour. ‘Based on ship schematics, approximately five hours through the Glorion’s tertiary decks until we reach fusion-point and the Protean’s aft section.’ He looked up from his calculations. ‘That’s dependent on a straight route through the vessel – no encounters, clear terrain and re-establishing gravity.’

‘Soon as we locate an active console you can set to work on that third condition, brother,’ said Prae-tor. ‘The other two we’ll deal with as necessary.’

Every Terminator had a chainfist on his left hand, invaluable when exploring hulks where bulkheads and debris could make progress difficult. That was for condition two.

‘Thermal scans from the Implacable suggest resistance will be light. The xenos are still largely dormant.’

Storm bolters, an assault cannon and the heavy flamer in Nu’mean’s squad dealt with condition one.

‘Then let us hope that remains the case.’ Praetor’s attention switched back to Nu’mean, who’d taken up an advanced position with his squad. For the moment Praetor was in command, but as soon as they reached the Protean the other sergeant would take over. It had been agreed. Nu’mean had his atonement and would bear the responsibility of it alone. It was the Promethean way. ‘You are certain he’s here?’

‘I know it in my blood.’ There was a growl to Nu’mean’s voice. ‘He is here, still inside the ship.’

‘A century drifting the warp tides, he might not have survived.’ Praetor’s normally booming voice softened. ‘We may be searching for a corpse, brother… or something worse.’

Nu’mean let the words hang in the air then stared beyond Praetor, his gaze alighting on Emek.

‘He is alive, held in cryo-stasis just as I left him.’ He paused, about to add something. The hard veneer almost cracked when he turned away again.

Praetor gave a final glance to Emek, flanked by two green bulwarks of armoured ceramite – they were two of Nu’mean’s squad, Mercurion and Gun’dar. Power armour was formidable protection on most battlefields, but this drifting space hulk was no ordinary battlefield.

‘Keep him safe.’ Praetor didn’t bother to hide it in a closed channel. The Apothecary knew the risks. Praetor glared again at Nu’mean.

Subtlety was not a trait that Herculon Praetor held in any great regard. The mission was still his for the moment. His voice was thunderous and commanding as he took the lead, ‘Firedrakes, advance on me.’

The muzzle flare from three storm bolters fired in unison lit the grimace on Praetor’s face as he threw the xenos off his storm shield. Acidic vital fluids hissed against his armour as he crushed the creature against the wall.

The corridor was tight. Pipes and thick cabling hung from the ruptured ceiling where the genestealers had clawed through. Deck grating, half corroded by xeno-blood, clanked underfoot. At least the warp taint was no longer present. At least… it was not visible. Hard gravity from the Glorion’s malfunctioning systems kept the Firedrakes grounded. Recently revived air-scrubbers re-oxygenating the deck allowed Praetor to remove his battle-helm. Suspensor readings in retinal displays showed maximum lift capacity. Manoeuvring was tough. Tsu’gan tasted salt on his lips, his face covered in battle-sweat, secondary heart pumping to cope with the additional physical stresses.

The xenos showed no such difficulty.

Two bounded up the short corridor, jostling for position. Three Terminators faced them – Tsu’gan, his sergeant and Vo’kar – two more including the assault cannon were staggered behind them. Though Hrydor’s heavy weapon was silent, Invictese’s storm bolter barked between the front line’s shoulder plates. Nu’mean’s squad clustered behind them, guarding the rear.

Tsu’gan sent a burst into the creatures, rupturing the ribcage of the leader and ripping off a limb. The second got close enough to leap, its long muscled legs propelling it easily off the deck plate and into the air. The chainfist embedded in its torso cut its screeching to a strangled mewl and the genestealer’s clawing lacked strength and purpose as it raked Tsu’gan’s armour.

‘Good little wyrm!’ said Hrydor. The flare from the storm bolters lit up the corridor like a tongue of fire. Tsu’gan felt their heat. Three xenos exploded against the fusillade. ‘But look, there are more!’

Hrydor gestured with his chainfist. Roughly thirteen xenos corpses lay scattered around the Terminators for no losses or injuries. It was a vanguard, nothing more. The beasts were half slumbering, still not fully out of hibernation. Up ahead, a high-pitched keening presaged another wave.

The genestealers scurrying across the deck were easy kills. They bucked and jerked against the combined fire. Too late, the Firedrakes realised these were just sacrificial. Others – clinging to the ceiling and walls, bodies low to present a smaller target – reached them in force.

Tsu’gan staggered as he took a glancing blow to his battle-helm. The internal display crackled with static for a second then returned. The beasts were fast, much faster than the others. He swept his chainfist around, hoping to connect, but the genestealer had scurried over him and onto his back.

Pain sensors in his suit flared an angry red and Tsu’gan cried out. Flesh hooks from the ’stealer’s maw punched against his armour joints, seeking a weakness. He couldn’t reach to grab it, so thrust backwards instead. A satisfying crunch of bone resounded when he made contact with the wall. Barely recovered, his enhanced body pumping pain-regressing chemicals into his bloodstream, another sprang at him from its perch on the ceiling. In the darkness, despite his occulobe implant, he only just saw it.

Praetor’s thunder hammer shattered it in mid-flight, the electrical discharge shocking the air and illuminating the xenomorph’s death scream like a frozen pict-capture.

‘Firedrakes, advance!’ he boomed, mashing another with a punch of his storm shield.

Staccato bangs of bolter fire told Tsu’gan his brothers were with him as he raked the corridor ahead. Through combined effort, the Firedrakes had almost wiped out the second wave and used the brief respite to gain some ground. A wider corridor section loomed ahead, some kind of maintenance bay with old machinery strewn about like metal carcasses. The extra room allowed Nu’mean’s squad to rank up alongside Praetor’s.

Praetor raised his fist as they fanned out: three in front, sergeants to the centre with two behind, including heavies. ‘Halt here.’

The dying echoes of gunfire faded until a tense silence, undercut by the dulcet movements of the Glorion’s extant systems, resumed.

‘We should proceed,’ said Nu’mean, making his impatience obvious.

Praetor nudged one of the ’stealer corpses over. Feeder tendrils lolled from its mouth cavity like ribbed tongues. Before the sergeant went to his comm-feed he noticed a faint light dying in the creature’s eyes. It could’ve just been an illusion, brought about by the intense conditions of the ship. Praetor activated the feed.

‘Apothecary?’

‘Still here, my lord.’

‘The xenos are done,’ Nu’mean persisted. ‘Why delay?’

‘He’s been waiting for almost a century, brother – a few more hours won’t make any difference,’ Praetor countered. ‘Besides, they are still here. Waiting.’

It was obvious the other sergeant didn’t like it.

Tsu’gan remembered Nu’mean from before when he’d first teleported to Prometheus, the lunar space station and domain of the Firedrakes. The brother-sergeant had been the first to meet him. He had a weathered face with a long scar running down the right side that tugged at his lip and pulled it up into a permanent snarl. The right eye was slightly dimmed, and a small well of black infected the blazing red. A blade of red hair, shaved into an arc, fed across the right hemisphere of his skull. It put Tsu’gan in mind of a streak of flame. Despite the heat of the proving-forge and the gate of fire, the welcome had not been warm. Judging by Nu’mean’s present demeanour, the years inbetween had not softened him.

Praetor turned his halo-lamps to full glare and aimed them at the corridor section ahead. Ragged hoses hung down like vipers. Somewhere out of sight a steam valve vented. According to Emek, they were maybe an hour from the fusion-point and the Protean.

Like his battle-brothers, Tsu’gan followed his sergeant’s example. At first, he saw nothing except ravaged metal, broken pipes and cables like spewed intestines rudely lit in harsh magnesium-white. Then something stirred at the edge of the cone of light, creeping slowly along the penumbra.

‘In Vulkan’s name!’ Tsu’gan roared and his battle cry became a chorus with his brothers.

Like limpets attached to the hull of an ancient ship, the genestealers broke off from the walls and fell into a loping run. At the same time the grates in the ceiling crashed down and a steady stream of creatures poured out.

As Tsu’gan swung his storm bolter around, he was reminded of Nocturnean lava-ants mustering from their hive to repel an invader. Except here the lava-ants were larger than a man and their nest was a rotten hulk floating in the depths of space.

Every shell struck a xenos body. Limbs and gore exploded outwards in a series of ghastly blossoms, but the genestealers kept on coming.

‘Something drives them!’ Tsu’gan snarled, and went to take a back step when he felt a pauldron locked against his, stopping him.

Praetor was beside him, a ceramite rock in the face of the advancing alien tide.

‘Only forwards, brother. Resist. Our will is greater.’ Then he turned to another Firedrake. ‘Hrydor, give us some breathing room.’

Moving from Praetor’s right, Hrydor stepped forwards and triggered the assault cannon.

The air was instantly filled with the whine of its spinning barrel, spitting high-velocity shells at a phenomenal rate. Strafing left and right, Hrydor rejoiced loudly, singing litanies of the Promethean Creed as he eviscerated clusters of genestealers starting to clog the corridor.

‘Seems we’ve stirred the nest, brother-sergeant,’ he said.

Tsu’gan heard Praetor mutter. ‘And I know of only one way to cleanse it… Nu’mean.’

The other sergeant nodded, gesturing to Brother Kohlogh.

‘Burn it!’ cried Nu’mean, and the Firedrake brought his heavy flamer to bear.

Liquid promethium ignited on contact with the weapon’s burner, engulfing the corridor section ahead.

Despite the heat, some of the xenos were still determined to attack.

‘Ve’kyt, Mercurion!’

Two more Firedrakes stepped to at Nu’mean’s order, exploding the flame-wreathed bodies staggering from the conflagration with precise bolter rounds. In a few more moments, it was done.

The sounds of screaming persisted long after all the genestealers were dead, rendered to ash in the heat of the flamer’s irresistible blaze. Smoke palled the air like a death shroud.

‘What’s that noise?’ asked Emek. He’d moved up to the rear rank and no longer needed the comm-feed to be heard.

‘Have you ever broiled crustacid or chitin?’ asked Hrydor, allowing the barrel on his assault cannon to spin and cool before shutting it down.

The Apothecary shook his head.

‘It’s air, brother,’ Tsu’gan snapped, a little impatient at Emek’s apparent naivety, ‘escaping from between the joins in the carapace.’

‘Well, little wyrm, it appears there is more to you than wrath and thunder.’

Tsu’gan wanted to smash the front of Hrydor’s battle-helm into his face but resisted. Instead, he walked slowly to Praetor who pressed his hand against the wall while two of Nu’mean’s squad checked the way ahead was actually now clear.

‘Brother-sergeant?’

‘Do you know what I feel when I touch the wall of this ship?’

Praetor’s eyes were hard like granite. Since joining the Firedrakes, Tsu’gan had seen a different side to the sergeant. On Scoria, fighting against the orks he had been almost ebullient, bombastic. Now, he was dour and withdrawn. N’keln dying on the cusp of victory had changed him, just as Kadai’s murder had changed Tsu’gan. Dead captains had a way of doing that to their fellow brothers-in-arms, even those not of the same company.

‘I feel sorrow.’ Praetor frowned. ‘Something lives inside this ship, in its every fibre. It is neither Salamander nor genestealer, nor any physical thing I can touch or slay.’ The sergeant kept his voice low. ‘That bothers me, greatly. Place your hand against the wall, brother, and feel it,’ he added, stepping aside.

Tsu’gan’s reply was barely a whisper. ‘I do not wish to, my lord.’

On their previous mission to the shrine world of Sepulchre IV the Firedrakes had faced an almost invulnerable foe. Fighting it had cost lives: brothers. The weight of that loss, futile as it had been, hung around Praetor’s neck as tangibly as the gorget of his armour.

‘Very well,’ he said. His gaze lingered on Tsu’gan a moment longer before he lumbered away to convene with Nu’mean.

‘Pain is everywhere, brother,’ he added, his back turned. ‘Embrace it in the fires of war or run and let it be your master. I can’t make that choice for you.’ Then he was gone, leaving Tsu’gan to ponder his wisdom.

The fusion-point was where an old enginarium deck had breached what sensors and ship schematics suggested was the Protean’s medi-deck. That was good. It meant the cryo-stasis chamber would be close by upon entry. Not so good was the several thousand kilograms of debris preventing a direct burn, hull-to hull, through to the next vessel.

Such a problem might prove an impasse to common explorators or even fellow Space Marines. Terminators had no such issue.

‘Heavies guard the rear,’ said Praetor, ‘Everyone else… cut her open.’

The sound of revving chainfists ground the air before the two squads went to work hewing and sawing.

‘Apothecary, stand clear,’ he added. ‘Don’t risk your cargo, brother.’

Emek nodded, checking the vial embedded in his gauntlet. The chemical solution sloshed benignly within.

‘If we can locate a blast door or even a sealed bulkhead, I might be able to unlock it from here. It’ll make our progress swifter.’

Praetor nodded to the Apothecary before wading in with his thunder hammer.

Emek looked again to the vial. A small injector needle on the end would guarantee delivery of the solution, which was red and faintly luminous. Emek knew little of its origin, but he knew it was potent. Scarcely fifty millilitres resided in a clear armourplas tube the size of the Apothecary’s thumb.

So much, resting on so little a thing.

They found the door. It was a disused service hatch in the Protean’s aft that led to a short maintenance conduit and the ship’s medi-deck. Only wide enough for one Terminator at a time, entry was fairly slow. It did give Tsu’gan and the others first in the line a chance to reconnoitre their surroundings though.

Unlike the Glorion, the old Salamanders strike cruiser still maintained a flickering power grid. Lume-lamps cut up the dark in trembling flashes, revealing a gloomy interior. Gunmetal was scorched black in places from an old fire, long dead. Soot carpeted the deck underfoot and shifted like a torpid sea every time one of the Firedrakes moved. Ash clung to rafters and crossbeams like grey fungus.

They had emerged into a large, hexagonal room. Five of its sides branched off and terminated in a console, making the room some kind of hub. There were glyphs and icons crafted into the walls. Sigils of the Salamanders – the flame, the serpent and the drake’s head – glittered wanly against the Terminators’ halo-beams. The light above was hexagonal too and its design echoed outwards concentrically.

Emek was poring over a green-lit console as Tsu’gan approached him.

‘Don’t wander too far.’

‘You worry too much, brother. I can look to my own protection.’

Tsu’gan snorted derisively. ‘Did the Ignean breed that insolence into you?’

The Apothecary had once been one of Dak’ir’s troopers, the one that Tsu’gan referred to as the Ignean. A snarl at the thought of the former sergeant sprang unbidden onto the Firedrake’s face.

Emek declined to answer. Even now, engaged with new assignments, there was still acrimony between the battle-brothers from the old tactical squads.

‘What are you doing?’ Tsu’gan snapped when he realised the Apothecary wouldn’t be baited.

‘Checking emergency systems are online.’

‘And?’

Emek turned. ‘Even after a century, everything seems to be working. The cryo-stasis chamber is intact. Ships like the Protean were built to last.’ He paused, looking Tsu’gan in the eye. ‘Does it annoy you that I am privy to elements of this mission that you are not?’

Tsu’gan clenched a fist and the servos in his gauntlet seemed to growl.

‘Your curiosity will get you killed one day, brother. Or perhaps worse… perhaps it will dent your optimistic spirit and break you.’

Tsu’gan was walking away when Emek spoke to his back.

‘Is that before or after you’ve burned yourself to ash in the solitorium?’

‘What do you know of it?’ Tsu’gan stopped, and snapped at the darkness.

‘When I took on Fugis’s mantle, I took on his notes and data from the Apothecarion too. Your name is mentioned.’

Tsu’gan appeared to stiffen, but then Emek’s voice softened. ‘There’s no shame in grief, but it’s dangerous if channelled inwards.’

Tsu’gan didn’t turn, though he wanted to. Finding out what Emek knew of his pain addiction would have to wait – something else had caught his attention.

‘What do you know of grief?’ he muttered instead, and walked over to an archway leading from the room into a wide gallery.

The long chamber was lined with doors on either side. It looked like some kind of isolation ward for patients receiving intensive treatment. The floor was partially tiled, some of the white smeared grey and cracked or chipped away. The doors too, plasteel with a single porthole window, were white. Some carried faded marks that in the half-light looked almost brown or black.

A smell, like ozone and burning meat, made Tsu’gan’s nose wrinkle. The dull report of his footfalls thumped in time with his heart. A faint tapping became a chorus to these louder beats, like a finger on glass. Tsu’gan followed it. His auto-senses came back with no threats. Gravity and oxygen were at stable and acceptable levels. All was well on the Protean. And yet…

It was coming from one of the doors. An image flashed across the surface of Tsu’gan’s memory but discerning it was like grasping mental smoke. His heart quickened. He approached the door, closer with every step. He realised he was reluctant, and chided himself for being a weakling. And yet…

Tsu’gan’s retinal display was still reporting zero threats. No heat-traces, no kinetics, no gas or power surges. The long chamber was clean. And yet…

He reached the door, fingers to his chainfist outstretched and probing towards the glass. Tsu’gan was a few centimetres away when the lights flickered and he gazed upwards at the lume-lamps. When he looked back a face regarded him through the porthole. Partially dissolved flesh and sloughed muscle revealed more of a skull than any recognisable human visage. And yet, Tsu’gan knew exactly who it was.

‘Ko’tan…’ His dead captain glared at him through the glass. Tsu’gan was horrified when he saw bony fingers reaching up to match the position of his own, as if he were staring into some grotesque mirror and not glass at all.

Another smell quashed the stink of burning meat and melta discharge. There was heat and sulphur, the sound of cracking magma and the redolence of smoke. A hazy figure was reflected in the glass behind him.

Red armour the hue of blood, festooned with horns and scale…

Dragon Warrior…

Tsu’gan whirled around as fast as his cumbersome suit allowed, triggering his storm bolter as he let out a roar of anguish.

Praetor parried the gun aside, directing the explosive salvo harmlessly into the ground.

‘Brother!’ he urged.

Tsu’gan saw only foes. Heat shimmered off the Dragon Warrior’s armour, hazing his outline. These were the renegades who had killed Ko’tan Kadai. How they came to be upon this ship mattered not. All that concerned Tsu’gan was the manner of their deaths at his hands – the bloodier the better. He gave up on the storm bolter and activated his chainfist instead. More were coming. He could hear them, pounding towards him across the deck. He had to finish this quickly.

Praetor braced the chainteeth against his shield. Sparks cascaded down onto his face as he deflected the blow upwards.

‘Brother!’ he repeated.

Spat through clenched teeth, it was a declaration of disbelief as much as it was anger.

Tsu’gan pressed the churning blades against the shield, his rage lending him the strength to overpower his enemy. The bastard was grinning – he could see fangs beneath the mouth grille of the Dragon Warrior’s battle-helm.

I’ll rip them out…

Then the red fog before his eyes faded and Praetor was revealed. A moment’s distraction was all that the sergeant needed to land a blow from the thunder hammer’s haft against Tsu’gan’s chest. A jolt of energy shocked the Firedrake and put him on one knee.

The whine of the chainfist died and Praetor let his hammer fall to his side with it. But then he moved in close, ramming the cleaved edge of his storm shield under Tsu’gan’s chin and bringing him to his feet.

‘Are you with us?’ Praetor asked.

Tsu’gan’s tongue was paralysed. The world around him was only just making sense again. The others were looking on, weapons primed.

Praetor pressed the shield up harder, lifting Tsu’gan’s head. ‘Are you with us?’

‘Yes…’ It was a rasp, but the sergeant heard and believed it.

Nu’mean was not so quick to stand down. He levelled his storm bolter.

‘It’s finished,’ Praetor told him, stepping into the other sergeant’s firing line.

‘The warp–’

‘Infests this ship, this entire hulk, Nu’mean. It’s done.’ Praetor ushered Tsu’gan away to be cursorily examined by Emek. A side glance at Hrydor told the Firedrake to go with him and keep watch.

Nu’mean lowered his weapon.

‘How can you be sure?’ he asked, when Tsu’gan had moved away.

Praetor leaned in close.

‘Because I saw things too,’ he whispered. ‘This floating wreck is alive with the sentience of the warp. Something is channelling it, into our minds. Tsu’gan was taken off guard, that’s all.’

Nu’mean fashioned a snarl. ‘He is weak, and not to be trusted.’

‘He passed through the gate of fire and endured the proving-forge – he is one of us!’ Praetor asserted. ‘Can you say this mission, this ship, has not influenced your behaviour in some way? I have seen it plainly but will you admit it, Nu’mean?’

Nu’mean didn’t answer him. He eyed Tsu’gan as their Apothecary conducted a bio-scan instead. By now the other Firedrakes were securing the chamber, checking each of the cells in turn and the hub annexe. ‘You made a mistake with that one, brother.’

‘There was no mistake. Guilt masters him for now. Know this: his destiny is with the Firedrakes. I won’t abandon him–’

Nu’mean spat back with anger. ‘As I abandoned others, is that what you are driving at, brother?’

Praetor moved in close. ‘Get a hold of yourself, or I shall assume command of this mission. Are we clear on that, sergeant?’

Though he simmered with rage, Nu’mean conceded and gave the slightest nod before stalking away.

Praetor let him go, using the few seconds to gird his own emotions. He looked back at the portholes that lined the infirmary and his ire bled away, replaced by regret.

‘I won’t abandon him,’ he repeated solemnly to himself.

There were faces staring at him from the portholes that only he could see. Gathimu and Ankar, slain on Sepulchre IV; Namor and Clyten, killed on Scoria, and a dozen others whose names blended into memory but were still his charges.

‘We’ve already lost so many.’

‘It is nothing, little wyrm…’ Hrydor was at Tsu’gan’s shoulder as Emek examined him for injury. After releasing the pressure clasps, the Apothecary then carefully removed Tsu’gan’s helmet. Immediately, the unfiltered atmosphere washed in. Despite the years, the air still stank of ammonia and counterseptic. The sanitised aroma made Tsu’gan’s skin itch and he found himself yearning for the touch of fire. But there was no rod, no brander-priest’s iron to slake his masochistic urge.

‘What is “nothing”? Speak plainly, brother. You sound like a Dark Angel,’ Tsu’gan shot back venomously.

‘Hold still,’ said Emek, seizing Tsu’gan’s chin and shining a light in his eyes. They burned suddenly brighter. He reviewed the readings on his bio-scanner, logging the data for later analysis.

‘I am myself.’ Tsu’gan glared at the Apothecary, daring him to arrive at any other conclusion. The memory of Kadai’s face still lingered like an old dream in his subconscious though, and he wondered what had triggered it.

‘Physically, I can discern no adverse effects. Mentally, I cannot–’

‘Then release me.’ Tsu’gan jerked his chin away and took back his helmet.

Emek left with a parting remark. ‘Your demeanour certainly remains as amenable as usual.’

‘Are you sure you’re a warrior, Emek?’ Tsu’gan sneered, before ramming on his battle-helm. The pressure clamps cinched into place automatically as Tsu’gan went to Hrydor. ‘Now, explain yourself.’

The other Firedrake didn’t look intimidated. If anything, he was pensive. ‘The bulk and the strain of the great armour you wear – they are difficult burdens, little wyrm. It once belonged to Imaan. His aegis is woven into that of the suit.’

‘I know that. I was at the ritual. I stood before the proving-forge and crossed the gate of fire. I carry Imaan’s icon upon my flesh alongside many other honour scars, given unto me for the deeds I performed in battle. It’s the reason I am beside you now. I am Zek Tsu’gan, former brother-sergeant of Third Company and now Firedrake. I am not your little wyrm!’

Hrydor looked blankly at his battle-brother for a moment before laughing loudly.

‘I can handle the suit and the mission,’ Tsu’gan protested, earning a backwards glance from Praetor. It would be a few more minutes until they were done searching and securing the gallery. Then they could move on. Tsu’gan had that long to re-prepare himself. He lowered his tone in response to his sergeant’s scowl. ‘I saw… something. A relic of the past, nothing more. Old ship, old ghosts – that’s all it is.’

Hrydor became suddenly serious. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ His voice took on a brooding tone. ‘On Lykaar, before I became a Drake, I fought with the Wolves of Grìmhildr Skanefeld. It was a bitter campaign warred over winter-fall, and the ice upon Lykaar was thick. We Salamanders brought fire to counter the ice; the Wolves brought fury. It was a good match. Greenskins had invaded the planet, making slaves of its people and siphoning from its promethium wells like common pirates.’

Tsu’gan interrupted. ‘What’s the purpose of all this?’ he hissed. ‘If you must watch me, then do it in silence and spare us both this doggerel. Allow me to re-consecrate my arms and armour without your endless chatter.’

‘Listen and you may just hear the purpose of it, brother.’

Yes, thought Tsu’gan, the Fenrisians have much to account for. They too are fond of overlong sagas.

‘We were few,’ Hrydor continued, ‘but the orks and their stunted cousins had been fighting indentured men with picks and ice-nailers. They were ill prepared to face Space Marines. But, there was something we did not know. A creature, a kraken, slumbered under the ice. Our warring disturbed it and brought it forth.’ Hrydor’s voice darkened. ‘It took us by surprise. I was among the first. Before my bolter could speak, the beast seized me, swept me up in its tentacles. A lesser man would’ve been crushed, but my armour and Emperor-given fortitude saved me. Had Grìmhildr not intervened, casting his rune axe to sever the creature’s hold, I doubt I’d have survived. Others on the field that day were not so lucky.’

‘A stirring tale, I am sure,’ said Tsu’gan, sarcastically, ‘but we are ready to depart.’

‘As always, you fail to see what is before you, Tsu’gan,’ Hrydor replied. ‘I see the kraken still. I will it to find me in my solitorium chamber, to face it and conquer it.’

Tsu’gan didn’t move, still not understanding.

Hrydor rested a hand on his pauldron. ‘Harbouring ghosts doesn’t make you unique. All warriors have them, but it is the manner of how we deal with them that defines us as sons of Vulkan.’

Tsu’gan shrugged Hrydor’s hand away and went to find Praetor. He was eager to move on. ‘Whatever you say, brother.’

Having dispersed around the infirmary, the Firedrakes were forming back into squads and preparing to advance again. Hrydor was about to fall in when he caught a glimpse of something slithering away in his peripheral vision. His auto-senses came back with nothing and when he tried to follow it, the thing, whatever it was, had gone. Only the scent of the ocean, of ice and the deep reek of something ancient and long forgotten, remained.

‘It’s nothing,’ Hrydor said to himself. The ship had begun to affect them all. ‘Just an old ghost.’

According to the ship schemata, following the medi-deck’s south-east access conduit would lead them first to an emergency hangar and then to the cryo-stasis chamber. After reviewing the other options in the infirmary, this was determined the most expedient route and therefore sanctioned by Nu’mean as their best method of approach. Though it mattered little to the other sergeant, who’d become increasingly driven ever since they’d boarded the Protean, Praetor had concurred with this assessment. He led his squad separately to Nu’mean’s, this time taking the rearmost position, whilst the other sergeant had the scent and the lead.

‘Steady your pace, brother. The ship is badly damaged and may not stand up to such rigours.’ Praetor said through the comm-feed.

Nu’mean replied on the same closed channel. ‘It’s not your conscience, though, is it, Praetor?’

‘You’ll make less ground if–’ A flash of something in the shadows of the access conduit – which was long, narrow and badly lit – made Praetor stop. ‘All squads, halt.’

A chorus of clunking feet gave way to the low murmurs of the ship as the Firedrakes stopped.

‘What is it? ’Stealers?’ Nu’mean sounded irritated.

Praetor’s sensors came back empty. If the xenos were present, they were invisible to all mundane methods of perception.

‘What’s happening here…?’ he whispered to himself. He noticed Hrydor eyeing the shadows keenly as well.

‘Are we safe to proceed or not? I’m getting nothing on my scanners,’ said Nu’mean.

Praetor looked at the Firedrake to his left. ‘Tsu’gan?’

Tsu’gan had his eyes fixed forwards. He kept his voice low. ‘I can smell burning flesh and ozone.’

Nor any physical thing I can touch or slay. Praetor’s own words came back to him. ‘Give me the status of the cryo-chamber.’

There was a pause as Emek checked his data.

‘Fully functional, my lord.’

‘Proceed or not?’ Nu’mean didn’t bother to mask his impatience.

Praetor hesitated. The sealed doors of the emergency hangar were less than a hundred metres away. Nothing but darkness ahead of them.

Something wasn’t right, but what choice did they have?

‘Lead on, Nu’mean.’

The hangar was massive. Several bays, consisting of antechambers, refuelling stations and maintenance pads, comprised the vast space. The bulk of it, however, was taken up by the landing zone itself, which sat directly under a segmented, adamantium-reinforced ceiling. There was evidence of force-shielding too, a last failsafe to keep out the ravages of realspace when the roof to the chamber was open to the void. Six vessels were in dock, all Thunderhawk variants with stripped-down weapon systems, sacrificed for greater troop capacity. They were arrayed, one per docking pit, in two rows of three, noses angled inwards so the line of the ships crossed at diagonals and pointed towards the approaching Firedrakes.

Unlike the other doors in the Protean, Emek had been unable to open the one to the emergency hangar via its external console. They’d had to breach it. The air inside had escaped like a death rattle. Suit sensors revealed it was heavy in carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

The modified gunships were not alone. The dead kept them company.

‘This is no gunship hangar, it’s a morgue,’ said Hrydor, panning his suit lamps into some of the darker recesses.

Skeletons in scraps of uniform – some in fatigues, others wearing what was left of their robes – were clustered against the dust-clogged landing stanchions of the vessels in dock. A few were strewn in the open, rigor mortis having curled their limbs grotesquely. Some carried lasguns and other small arms, or once had. There were other weapons, too, of non-Imperial design.

Nu’mean showed no respect for the dead, ploughing straight into the room, intent on crossing the four hundred metres of the hangar deck to the cryostasis chamber beyond as quickly as possible.

I’ve waited a century for this.

‘Move out. We can do nothing for–’ He stopped short when his boots brushed a corpse he had not expected to see.

‘Xenos?’ Tsu’gan saw it too, noticed several alien bodies in fact. He recognised the lithe forms and segmented armour of the eldar. They were less badly decomposed than the humans, resembling desiccated corpses rather than fleshless skeletons. The eldar were grey and shrunken, their eyes dark hollows and their hair thin like gossamer. Some wore helmets of a conical design with angled eye slits to match their alien physiognomy.

Emek stooped by one of the bodies. Wiping away a veneer of dust, he found a strange sigil he didn’t recognise. ‘Some kind of advanced warrior caste? What were they doing here?’

Praetor appraised the scene. ‘Fighting against us at first then fighting for their lives. There are claw marks here in this wall, too large and broad for any of these bodies.’

He shared an uneasy glance with Nu’mean.

‘There is little time,’ the other sergeant muttered in a small voice.

Swathes of diffuse light, scything through the dust-fogged air from above, flickered once and died. The power cut out, plunging the room into sudden and total darkness.

Tsu’gan felt his massively armoured body start to rise. Gravity, as well as the lights, had failed.

Lances of magnesium-white from their halo-lamps stabbed into the gloom, criss-crossing as the Terminators began to float around. Despite their bulk, they were lifting steadily. So too were the gunships. Untethered in their docking pits, the Thunderhawks rose as if in a slow-motion launch, like heavyweight dirigibles set loose on a skirling wind. Silently they pulled free of their landing stations, the slightest change in the air influencing their laboured trajectory.

Tsu’gan was trying to engage the mag-clamps on his boots but a system failure message scrolled across his retinal display in icon-code.

‘Mag-locks are down,’ he growled to his brothers. The lances of light issuing from his suit flickered intermittently. ‘Halo-lamps failing too.’ A final burst before the light died completely lit the broadside of a Thunderhawk, groaning towards him like a gunmetal berg.

‘Vulkan’s anv– gnnrr!’ He crashed into the side of the vessel and rebounded. The impact was harder than expected, and his body railed against it painfully.

‘Steer clear of the gunships. Use your proximity sensors.’ Nu’mean’s warning came too late for a rueful Tsu’gan.

‘Expel gas from your pneumatics for guidance until locking cords are fixed,’ he added.

Tsu’gan was already spiralling, waiting until he was more or less upright before evacuating a portion of the gas that fed some of the systems in his suit: oxygen, propulsion, motion – they were all vital to a lesser or greater degree but had a certain level of redundancy that made voiding a small amount of them non-critical.

In a matter of seconds, ghost-like plumes of gas were venting across the chamber as the Firedrakes fought to organise themselves. One of the drifting gunships collided with another of its fleet and the report was deafening. It didn’t prevent Tsu’gan from hearing Hrydor cry out, though.

‘The beast! I see it! Engaging!’ A burst of assault cannon fire shredded the air, lighting up the dark with muzzle flare. It sent Hrydor surging backwards, where he spun and struck one of the chamber walls.

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ he drawled, still groggy from the impact, and triggered the cannon again.

‘Cease and desist. Power down – all weapons!’ Praetor was floating towards him as fast as he could while staying out of Hrydor’s deadly fire arc.

Tsu’gan was close by too and moved to assist. He could hear his sergeant muttering.

‘Leave me, brothers. Leave me. You are at Vulkan’s side, whose fire beats in my breast…’

He had no idea who Praetor was talking to. The rest of the Firedrakes were dispersed around the chamber. Some were trying to attach locking cords to anything stable. Others were acting… strangely. A rash of reports came over the comm-feed in rapid succession.

‘…cannot move… my armour… like stone…‘

‘…systems failing… oxygen tainted…‘

‘…xenos! ’Stealers in the hold! Permission to engage…’

The last one Tsu’gan recognised as Nu’mean.

‘All dead… abandon ship… all hands… dead…my brothers…’

Emek, who Tsu’gan caught a glimpse of in the corner of his eye, was disappearing below, heading for something on the deck but otherwise faring much better than the heavier Terminators. He was also one of the few unaffected by whatever was assailing them.

Then he saw him.

Face a patchwork of scar tissue; eyes crimson-lidded and burning with hate; armour of red and black with scales swathing the battle-plate; horned pauldrons and long vermilion claws upon his gauntlets. There was no mistaking it.

It was Nihilan.

The leader of the Dragon Warriors was here and his thrice-damned warp-craft was afflicting them all. Tsu’gan would cleanse the Protean of the renegades. He would end them all.

Nihilan’s lips were moving. A voice like cracked parchment resonated inside Tsu’gan’s head.

‘I fear nothing! Nothing!’ he spat back against the accusation only he could hear.

The renegade smiled, baring tiny fangs.

‘I’ll slay you now, sorcerer…’ Tsu’gan sneered, aiming his storm bolter towards his hated enemy.

Tsu’gan stopped dead. His weapon, his gauntlet and vambrace, his entire arm…

‘No…’

So wretched was his dismay that he could barely give it voice.

Armour of red and black covered Tsu’gan’s body, usurping the familiar Salamanders green. Small flecks of dust cascaded through the cracks in the joints as he felt his skin shedding like a serpent’s beneath it. The reek of copper filled his nostrils, emanating from his own body. He knew that stink. It haunted his dreams with the promise of blood and prophesied treachery. Tsu’gan’s battle-helm was no longer fashioned into the image of drake: it was bare and came to a stub-nosed snout rendered in bone. Skulls hung from bloody chains wrapped around his body.

‘Arghh!’ His anguish was louder this time as a Thunderhawk floated by, obscuring Nihilan from view for a moment. On its flank a face was impossibly reflected. Tsu’gan beheld his form and saw Gor’ghan there instead, the renegade that had slain his captain. It was he, he was it. Failure. Murderer.

The gunship passed. Nihilan was laughing, standing on the deck below.

Tsu’gan clawed his way to the sorcerer, grasping whatever he could to propel himself, using up the pneumatic pressure in his suit.

A pair of clashing gunships narrowly missed him, but Tsu’gan barely noticed in his determination to reach Nihilan. Around him, his brothers struggled against their own phantoms. Hrydor’s belligerent wailing became as white noise. Tsu’gan ignored it all. They didn’t matter. A glancing blow struck his pauldron, resonating agony through the suit that he bit down and endured. Only vengeance mattered.

A life for a life. Those were the words he’d used to justify murder.

Tsu’gan came close enough to reach his prey.

Locking hands around the renegade’s neck, he squeezed.

‘Laugh now, bastard! Laugh now!’

And Nihilan did. He laughed as blood spilled from his mouth, as the veins burst on his forehead, as his neck was slowly crushed.

Emek’s voice broke through the veil that had fallen across the chamber and across the Firedrakes.

‘Restoring power now. Brace yourselves.’

Gravity returned along with the lights.

The Terminators fell. So too did the gunships, like asteroids from the sky.

A piece of Thunderhawk fuselage missed Tsu’gan by less than a metre. Chunks of debris broken off from the gunship’s body during the impact rained against his armour, but he weathered it. In his hands, he was holding a corpse. Its neck was crushed and when he loosened his fevered grip, the head fell off.

Tsu’gan let the wretched body of a dead serf go. Disgust became relief as he saw the reassuring green of his battle-plate. The hallucination had passed. He was himself again, although the trauma of it still lingered as if waiting to be rekindled.

‘What happened?’

Praetor was releasing his hold on Hrydor, who had also recovered but was shaken by his experiences, when he answered.

‘There is something aboard this ship. Something kept quiescent by its systems,’ he admitted. ‘Like a healthy body rejects foreign invaders, so too does this vessel.’

‘How is that possible, brother-sergeant? It’s just a ship.’

Nu’mean came up alongside him. The Firedrakes were converging, finding strength in proximity and all wanting to know what the phenomenon was plaguing the corridors of the Protean. Mercifully, the Terminators had escaped being crushed to death by the plummeting Thunderhawks.

‘A ship that has been to the warp.’ He regarded Praetor. ‘Its stench is redolent with every rotation of the life support systems. And that is not all.’

The moment was pregnant with anticipation, as if a terrible revelation was at hand. In the end, it was Praetor that broke the silence.

‘Seeing will make an explanation easier.’

‘Seeing what?’ asked Hrydor, his composure returning. So powerful, so mentally invasive had their ordeals been that an ordinary man would be rendered a gibbering wreck. As it was, Space Marines were hewn of sterner material and found their faculties stressed but were otherwise not lastingly affected.

‘In the cryo-stasis chamber,’ said Nu’mean. ‘We go there now. Come on.’ He was leading them out across the bay, now trashed with the wreckage of the downed Thunderhawks and littered with small fires, when Emek spoke up.

‘Something on the power fluctuation readings is wrong,’ he said to no one in particular. The Apothecary was standing before the room’s main operational console and had accessed a data stream concerning the recent power outage.

‘It wasn’t caused by a sporadic energy surge?’ asked Praetor.

Emek turned.

‘No, my lord. The power from the ship’s systems was diverted to another section. It looks like it was used to open a previously sealed bulkhead door.’

‘Genestealers don’t do such things. They nest, confined to whatever area they’ve colonised. It’s not in their nature to explore,’ said Nu’mean.

Tsu’gan stepped forwards into the circle that had developed between the two sergeants and the Apothecary. His tone was mildly annoyed.

‘Meaning what, exactly?’

Praetor answered without looking at him. His eyes were on the distant blast door and the way ahead to the cryo-stasis chamber.

‘It means we are not alone on this ship. Someone else has boarded the Protean.’

The rest of the journey to the cryo-stasis chamber was conducted in silence. There was no way of knowing who or what else was aboard the Protean or their relative location to the Firedrakes. They exercised extreme caution now. Every junction, every alcove was checked and double-checked.

It took them several minutes, through several tracts of closely confined corridors, before they reached the area of the ship designated for cryo-stasis. A four-way junction led up to the chamber. The way behind them, they knew. Turning left and right were another two corridors. According to Emek, the right as the Firedrakes faced it went to a bank of saviour pods. The left went deeper into the Protean and a maintenance sub-deck. A short strip of corridor approximately a metre long continued ahead and brought them to the cryo-stasis chamber itself.

The room was heavily locked down. An almost impervious bulkhead door cordoned it off and kept it sealed from idle explorers. Formerly, the Protean had been Nu’mean’s ship. The brother-sergeant possessed the access codes that would open up the chamber and reveal whatever it was they had ventured this far for, and with an Apothecary in tow.

The bulkhead retracted into the thick corridor walls on either side, slipping into previously unseen recesses that closed themselves off once the procedure was complete.

Cold air, charged with liquid nitrogen mist from inside the chamber, beckoned them closer. The room was not especially large or remarkable. It was square and held twenty banks of clear, cylindrical coffin-like receptacles capable of housing a Space Marine in full armour. This was where crew-members could go during a long space journey. It was also a place to keep the badly wounded until a space station or dock could be reached which had superior medical facilities to those of the cruiser.

At that moment, as the Firedrakes entered and dispersed around the room, it had but one resident.

‘We didn’t bring you here to save anyone, Brother Emek,’ said Praetor as he stood before the only occupied cryo-tank.

Within, a crystallised frost veneering the glass, was an alien figure. Peaceful, as if in death, its helmet had been removed. The eldar’s almond-shaped eyes were closed. Its long angular face was androgynous and oddly symmetrical. It wore robes over segmented armour inscribed with peculiar, alien runes. Hands folded over its chest, it took on the semblance of a bizarre, sleeping child, disturbing and beguiling at the same time.

‘No, not a saviour at all,’ uttered Emek, regarding the serum within his gauntlet with fresh understanding. ‘I am here as an executioner.’

‘So now you know,’ Nu’mean broke in, unwilling to wait a moment longer. Pipes fed down into the cryotank, pumping in the solutions and gases needed to keep the subject in suspended animation. It also had a console, as they all did, which controlled the tank’s operation. A small port, ringed invitingly by brass, enabled additions to be made to the liquid nitrogen amalgam and the fluids that kept the occupant of the tank alive.

Praetor put his hand on Nu’mean’s shoulder.

‘Prepare him for what must be done. We will guard the entrance. If these interlopers are close…’ He let the implication hang in the air for a moment, before ordering the other Firedrakes out, leaving Emek and Nu’mean alone with the frozen xenos.

Tsu’gan retired from the scene reluctantly, eager to know just why this one alien was so important and why they hadn’t simply thrust chainfists through the glass and killed it without all the needless ceremony.

‘Death to the alien,’ he spat under his breath as he was leaving.

‘The nerve agent will render the creature brain-dead,’ Nu’mean explained. ‘It is virulent and fast acting but must be applied through the brass receptor port.’ He gestured to the ring on the console.

‘I had thought my mission here was to revivify one of our lost brothers,’ said Emek, unaware of his impropriety and eyeing the still, alien body of the eldar. He knew a little of the race and recognised it as a farseer, some kind of eldar witch. ‘Its psychic emanations have been affecting us since we boarded the Protean.’

‘Yes,’ Nu’mean answered calmly, rarely, now at peace with closure so close at hand. ‘Warp exposure has bonded him to the ship, for it is a he. Praetor felt it, so too did I but didn’t voice it. The cryo-process is the only thing keeping the wretch down. Without it, even the slightest breach, we would be exposed to his witchery. I lost over three thousand hands on this ship to capture this creature. Cruel fate threw us into a warpstorm just as his xenos kin fought to free him. I could do nothing for the men and women of this vessel. I lost battle-brothers, too. My order to curtail the evacuation condemned them all.’

Even with all the years now having passed, all those lives… all the ones the Salamanders had sworn to protect, were felt keenly by Nu’mean. A prisoner of war the farseer might no longer be, but he was still an enemy.

Emek’s posture hardened noticeably. ‘What must we do to kill it?’

Nu’mean began the procedure to open up the receptor port for the vial. He removed his battle-helm to do it, to better see and manipulate the controls.

‘It will take only a moment. Prepare the vial,’ he said.

Emek ejected it from his gauntlet and engaged the syringe at the end.

‘Ready, my lord.’

‘Almost there…’ Nu’mean began before all power feeding the cryo-chamber cut out completely.

Outside, the lights died.

Praetor was turning, heading back into the chamber when he saw the Apothecary recoil from the cryo-tank, a bolt of arc-lightning ripping him off his feet. It had come from the stasis tank. His cry echoed around the chamber as he spun and lay prone on the ground.

Another lashed out like a whip, ripples of psychic power coursing over the cryo-tank’s surface in agitated waves. Nu’mean staggered as the bolt struck him but stayed standing, protected by his Crux Terminatus.

‘Get back!’ Nu’mean, not wishing to test the limits of his personal ward again, seized Emek by the ankle and proceeded to drag him bodily across the floor.

‘Storm bolters!’ yelled Praetor.

Tsu’gan stepped inside and unleashed a salvo. The explosive shells stopped a few centimetres from the frozen cryo-vessel, detonating harmlessly in mid-air. The impacts blossomed outwards, as if striking some kind of miniature void field, and dissipated into nothing.

It saved Nu’mean from another bolt of arc-lightning as he almost threw Emek through the doorway and then barrelled out of the chamber himself. The bulkhead slammed shut after him, Praetor on hand to seal it.

At least the doors were still working, evidently controlled by a different part of the vessel’s internal power grid.

Even with the chamber sealed, with the power still out Tsu’gan could feel the hallucinations returning. Though his logical mind told him they were not real, his senses railed against it. They told him he could smell copper, see shadows coalescing into foes in the long corridor ahead of them, taste the bitter tang of sulphur stinging his palate.

‘Be strong of mind, brothers,’ Praetor told them, even as Nu’mean was attending to Emek.

‘He is badly wounded,’ he said, all the old guilt and sense of impotence rushing back in a flood.

A large crack parted the Apothecary’s plastron. Blood was welling within it. There were scorch marks too, a long gash of jagged black infecting the armour like a wound itself. Part of Emek’s helmet was broken away. An eye awash with crimson blinked back tears of blood.

‘I am wounded…’ he rasped. He tried to look around but found he could not. Vital fluids bubbled in his throat and he could hear the slow rhythm of his secondary heart kicking as it attempted to cope with the trauma.

Tsu’gan looked on and found his anger towards the Apothecary had fled, to be replaced by concern. He was his brother and now, faced with seeing his potential death, realised he had acted ignobly towards the Apothecary. It was not behaviour worthy of a Salamander of Vulkan. Once tied to the Ignean Emek might have been, but he was not the one that Tsu’gan hated.

‘He’s dying,’ he uttered.

Nu’mean ignored him. ‘We must restore power to the cryo-chamber,’ he told Praetor. ‘I won’t leave this unfinished.’

Praetor nodded. The Firedrakes were clustering the corridor. They’d set up a defensive perimeter, responding to their conditioned training routines. If there was one thing Salamanders knew how to do, and do well, it was hold ground.

‘Stay here,’ he said, ‘and be ready to move in again on my signal. I have the schemata of the ship. I’ll take my squad and find the central power room.’ He glowered meaningfully. ‘Then I’ll find whoever shut it off and do the same to them. Bloodily.’

‘In Vulkan’s name, brother,’ said Nu’mean as they departed.

‘We’ll need his will in this,’ was Praetor’s response as he clanked away down the corridor. A short distance, and a junction led them away from the medical deck and deeper into the Protean’s cold heart.

Tsu’gan scanned the shadows warily. This part of the Protean was largely untouched and possessed an eerie quality, as if all life in its empty corridors had simply ceased. No struggle, no damage, just absence.

‘I’m detecting no signs of ’stealer habitation,’ reported Brother Vo’kar. He partnered Tsu’gan as they advanced towards the central power room under Praetor’s instruction.

‘Keep a wary eye,’ the sergeant advised. Behind them, Hrydor swept the darkness with his assault cannon. The last member of the squad, Brother Invictese, was a half-pace ahead of him. ‘It’s not the xenos we face here,’ Praetor concluded.

Distance from the cryo-chamber helped. The mission chrono told the Firedrakes they had left Nu’mean’s squad exactly thirty-three minutes ago. Tsu’gan estimated with some accuracy that they had travelled several hundred metres in that time. But despite the distance, he still felt the same old feelings from before tugging at his resolve.

A shadow darted ahead of them but before he had aimed his storm bolter it disappeared, seemingly into smoke. Copper was heavy on the recycled air. Psychic fabrication or real, Tsu’gan had no way of telling. He saw Praetor eyeing the dark, too, finding apparitions in the deepest alcoves before deliberately looking away.

Hrydor’s heart rate and respiratory functions relayed on Tsu’gan’s tactical display were elevated.

Praetor had seen them too.

‘Gird yourselves, brothers.’ He didn’t single any one of them out, but Tsu’gan knew to whom he was really speaking. ‘Our minds are our enemies. Rely on your instincts. Use your mental conditioning routines to find balance. We were born in Vulkan’s forge. We all crossed the gate of fire and were tested before the proving-forge. Our mettle is unbendable, as Firedrakes it must be so. Remember that.’

A series of solemn affirmations answered the brother-sergeant but all felt the uneasiness in the atmosphere, like a serpent crawling beneath the skin. Hrydor gave his last of all.

So far, they had encountered no resistance. According to the schemata, the central power room was not much further.

But, even as his halo-lamps strafed the dark, Tsu’gan couldn’t assuage the uneasy feeling in his gut.

At the bulkhead door to the cryo-chamber, Nu’mean waited impatiently.

Emek was slumped against the back wall, still bleeding. He was conscious but not entirely lucid. He’d used whatever medical unguents and salves he had in his narthecium kit to do what he could. His brothers, under his faltering instruction, had done their best to aid him. He was in Vulkan’s hands now. Either he would endure the anvil and emerge reforged or he would break against it. In any event, Nu’mean had taken the vial in its brass partial outer casing and mag-locked it to his vambrace. Though small, the device was not so delicate that he couldn’t apply the serum himself. It would be difficult and better handled by an Apothecary but that option was no longer viable.

‘Sergeant Nu’mean.’ The comm-feed address came from further up the long corridor, where Brothers Mercurion and Gun’dar guarded the junction Praetor and his squad had taken to reach the central power room.

‘Report, brother.’

‘Contacts on my scanners. Closing quickly.’

Nu’mean went to his own bio-scanner, one of the concomitant systems of his Terminator armour.

Several heat traces, distant but very real, were approaching. He deduced their origin from a section of the ship that had previously been sealed.

‘Maintain defensive cordon,’ he said to Brothers Kohlogh and Ve’kyt beside him.

‘Hold position. Fall back only on my order,’ he told the advance line.

Something is wrong, he thought. With the farseer active, he had expected to be assailed with visions and mental tortures by now. He had expected the screams of the dying, to witness the burning faces of the thousands he had condemned to death. But there was nothing, just the nagging sense of something out of kilter.

‘Hold position,’ he repeated and felt his unease growing.

Hrydor whispered something, but not loud enough for Tsu’gan to hear. The Terminators moved in close formation through the final few corridors like the Romani legionnaire formations of old, some of Terra’s battle teachings having permeated Nocturnean culture. Only Hrydor was lagging at the rear.

Several junctions went by, each leading off into another area of the ship, each a darkened recess that needed to be scanned and checked before they could proceed.

Tsu’gan was about to send Praetor a sub-vocal warning about his troubled battle-brother when a moment of revelation struck him. The nagging at the back of his skull, the itch he felt upon his neck and shoulders, the invisible tension that charged the air, he knew it. He’d felt it before. Watchers. Watchers in the shadows.

Something scuttled almost imperceptibly through the darkness. Tsu’gan got the impression that the shadows and it were one, blended as night on top of night.

The figures he’d dismissed earlier were not hallucinations – they were real. Nor had Praetor witnessed and refuted apparitions in the gloom but something very tangible and very dangerous; dangerous enough to foul the Salamanders’ auto-senses.

Tsu’gan’s warning came too late as something else set its influence against them and fell hardest on Hrydor.

‘I see it!’ he cried out, breaking squad coherency and clanking off back the way they’d come.

‘Grimhildr…’ he waved the imaginary Space Wolf over his shoulder in a bid to follow, ‘the kraken… Bring your axe and bond-brothers. I have it in my sights!’

How long poor Hrydor had been quietly under the farseer’s influence, they’d never know.

Praetor turned and saw him disappearing down one of the other junctions into an unknown part of the ship. ‘Brother!’ he called, but Hrydor was lost to his own version of reality.

Assault cannon fire echoed back to them loudly as he engaged the imaginary beast of the deeps.

Praetor was already moving. ‘After him.’

‘Where is he going?’ asked Tsu’gan.

‘To his death, if this continues. We are not alone here.’

Tsu’gan nodded and followed his sergeant.

The junction Hrydor had chosen led to a long corridor. He was still visible as the others reached it, firing bursts from his assault cannon before stomping ahead again.

‘I can clip him, maybe take a piston out in his leg.’ Tsu’gan was already taking aim. ‘It will slow him.’

Praetor shook his head.

The scuttling sound returned. They all heard it this time, as well as a high-pitched keening as if issued by a flock of mechanised birds.

‘Name of Vulkan…’ The sergeant scowled, trying to track the source of the raucous noise as a bulkhead door slammed down to impede them. They lost sight of Hrydor, though Tsu’gan swore he noticed the shadows closing in on him just before they did, as if detaching from the very walls.

‘Hold the junction,’ Praetor told Invictese and Vo’kar. They assumed defensive firing positions at once. He turned to Tsu’gan. ‘Get it down, now!’

Tsu’gan plunged his chainfist into the metal and cascading sparks lit the corridor.

It took several minutes to tear through the bulkhead.

Tsu’gan was the first to see to the other side.

‘Gone,’ he snarled, but then detected blood traces on the grated floor. The corridor had a vaulted ceiling, littered with pipes and narrow vertical ducts. Chains hanging down from the gloom jangled faintly. Praetor and Tsu’gan pulled at the gap in the bulkhead with their hands until it was wide enough to traverse. More precious seconds were lost.

Hurrying now, Praetor and Tsu’gan cleared the corridor in another two minutes. Leaving the others behind and rounding a tight corner, they found Hrydor’s body.

The xenos were coming fast, dozens and dozens of them.

The long corridor afforded a decent fire point for Nu’mean’s squad and the ceiling was solid enough that they didn’t have to worry about ambuscade from above.

If the genestealers came from the Protean’s aft they could hold them off.

A few metres from the cryo-chamber’s door was the cross-junction bleeding left and right. Nu’mean had positioned himself, Emek and the other two Firedrakes in his squad here.

To the left was the chamber housing the bank of saviour pods. An incursion from that direction was unlikely. But if the xenos came from the right-hand corridor at the same time as the aft-facing one, the fight would likely be a lot shorter. Already, he could hear them: chittering, scuttling, loping. It would not be long.

Approximately fifty metres separated them and Brothers Mercurion and Gun’dar at the next junction. Another hundred or so and the long corridor terminated in a patch of darkness their halo-lamps were too far away to penetrate.

‘Wait until you have a target then lay suppressing fire to slow their ranks.’ Nu’mean ordered down the comm-feed. ‘Let’s see if we can clog the way ahead with xenos corpses, brothers.’

A belligerent ‘affirmative’ delivered in synch told him he’d been heard and that the Firedrakes were making their final oaths.

The door behind him, where his prey partially slumbered, felt hot against Nu’mean’s back.

All of this for vengeance.

Nu’mean crushed his doubt in a clenched fist.

No price is too steep.

‘Here they come!’ The corridor ahead was suddenly lit by the muzzle flare of crashing storm bolters.

Fleetingly, through the press of bodies and gunfire, Nu’mean saw the rabid xenos exploding.

They were relentless. Even at a distance, he noticed a fervent glow in their eyes. It gave the beasts aggression and awareness. Nu’mean realised then why they’d barely felt the farseer’s psychic emanations. He was part of the ship and that extended to the denizens aboard. The eldar was channelling his power through the ’stealers, animating and guiding them like a substitute Hive Mind.

The bolter fire from Gun’dar and Mercurion lasted another few seconds before they began to fall back. They loosed in sporadic bursts after that, one then the other, overlapping their salvos.

Nu’mean could barely discern whole alien bodies, such was the gore and dismemberment wrought by the guns.

‘Running low,’ said Mercurion.

‘Aye, brother,’ Gun’dar replied.

Nu’mean started forwards, but discipline took hold and he stopped. He went to the comm-feed instead.

‘Fall back. Rejoin the line, brothers.’ There was an urgency to the sergeant’s tone that suggested he knew what was coming.

Genestealers were everywhere, clambering over the dead, clawing their way over wall, floor and ceiling.

Such fury…

‘Vulkan’s fire beats–’ Mercurion began. He was snapping a fresh load in his storm bolter, Gun’dar covering him, when a ’stealer got close enough to tear off half of his helmet and face. Brother Mercurion staggered, sputtering a few more rounds from his storm bolter, before another xenos punched a hole through his chest. A third leapt on his back. Then they engulfed him and a Firedrake was lost to the swarm.

‘Rejoin the line! Rejoin the line!’ But Nu’mean’s imploring was for nothing.

Gun’dar fell moments later. Surrounded, he could not hope to hold out for long. His storm bolter lit up the corridor for another six seconds before it fell silent.

Nu’mean held on to his anger, prevented it from sending him crashing into the onrushing ’stealers to his doom and vainglory.

‘Brother Kohlogh…’

The Firedrake took a step forwards to brandish his heavy flamer.

Nu’mean’s voice was hollow. ‘Burn it.’

Hrydor had been hacked apart. Chain-toothed weapons left scars across his armour. The cuts were heaviest at the weaker joints. His Terminator suit was badly rent and scorch marks suggested close-ranged plasma. Sections of partially dissolved ceramite, which left gaping crevices in Hrydor’s sundered flesh, had been made by a melta gun. His assailants had set upon him from all sides and took him apart, piece by piece. Blood painted a grisly scene that glowed a deep, visceral red in the starkness of the halo-lamps.

A solitary figure stood mockingly at the end of the next corridor, poised at the junction. It was clad in archaic power armour, dark like twilight or deeper; it was hard to tell precisely. A battle-helm, morphed into the graven visage of some howling daemon, its crude mouth grille locked in a silent scream, looked stretched, almost avian, as did its clawed feet and gauntlets. Tilting its head on one side, the hideous thing clicked. The motion was strange, slightly syncopated, and its clawed foot grated the metal in time.

Tsu’gan’s mouth curled into a snarl behind his helm. ‘Raptor…’

Then he barrelled headlong down the corridor, storm bolter crashing.

Screeching in bird-like, mechanised monotone, the Raptor leapt into the air, the densely throated thrusters on its back coughing out plumes of smoke and fire to lift it.

Tsu’gan cursed. He missed.

Above them, the chains and pipes clanked noisily. Tsu’gan fired into the darkness of the vaulted ceiling where he thought he’d detected movement.

Cruel laughter, like a vulture’s cawing and impossible to pinpoint, greeted his failure. Then came another blast of bird-like screeching, synthesised through a vox-grille mouth.

‘Chaos Traitors!’ he snarled to Praetor, scything chain links with another salvo and sending them cascading like iron rain onto his armour.

His sergeant’s reply was cut off by the bulkhead door slamming down between them. He’d been caught. Tsu’gan spat another curse as several armoured figures, the first Raptor’s kin, descended from above on bladed wings. Freefalling, they seemed to melt out of the shadows, and only engaged their jump packs to arrest their flight at the last moment.

Ozone from the melta stink and the reek of blood-laced, oiled chainteeth filled the air. The blades were buzzing already, growling for prey.

‘You’ll not kill me so easily, hellspawn,’ he vowed, trying to shut off the other sensations pressing at the edge of conscious thought, the copper stink, the veil of sulphur…

These foes were real. Night Lords – terror-mongers and cowards, unworthy of the name Space Marine, even when they’d been loyal to the Throne.

Raptors were pack-hunters and he had sprung their trap. The blades came in quick. Tsu’gan barely had time to see, let alone defend them.

It took Praetor three blows from his thunder hammer to batter the bulkhead door down and send it screeching from its moorings into the corridor at speed. Like most sons of Vulkan, his strength was prodigious, but even amongst the Fire-born Praetor had a reputation for incredible feats. Brought on by fury and determination, this one ranked amongst the toughest.

The closest Raptor didn’t see it coming. Six thousand kilograms of half-metre-thick metal took the renegade down, slamming into its torso and nearly cutting it in two. A death rattle escaped from its skulled faceplate before it died.

Tsu’gan saw the improvised missile in time, twisting aside, but the flying bulkhead still grazed the front of his plastron and left a groove in the ceramite. The rents in his armour from the chainblades were light. The Firedrake took advantage of his assailants’ shock, albeit a few seconds in duration, to gut one at close range with a burst of his storm bolter.

Crushing the Raptor’s pauldron in his fist, he rammed the muzzle hard into its stomach and pulled the trigger. Tsu’gan was throwing the body aside as another tried to leap into the air to regroup. It got so far, arching its body to draw a bead with its plasma gun, when Tsu’gan reached out and seized its ankle. With barely a portion of his strength, he sent the Traitor smashing to the deck. It slid, claws scratching at the deck for purchase, in front of Praetor. The sergeant severed the creature’s head with the edge of his storm shield.

‘Feel Vulkan’s wrath!’ he bellowed, battering another Raptor aside that sprang over to engage him.

Tsu’gan was free of the flock and laid about him with controlled bursts. Warning icons blazed across his retinal display, intense thermal temperature spikes. The meltagunner weaved out of his initial salvo, firing small bursts of its jump pack to stay aloft, before Praetor blindsided it and slammed the Raptor into the wall.

By now, Vo’kar and Invictese had been summoned from the strongpoint and were placing careful blasts into the melee from the end of the corridor.

Like weird, metal dolls, the Raptors jerked and shuddered as they died.

Facing almost a full Terminator squad, they couldn’t hope to win.

What had begun as a cynical ambush had turned into a bitter and desperate defeat before the might of the Firedrakes.

Barely four of the Traitors remained. The Salamanders were in the ascendancy. Two, blazing contrails from their jump packs, made for the vaulted roof. Combined storm bolter fire – so concentrated, so close – shredded their armour like tin.

A third lashed out at Praetor, but the chainblade it wielded ran afoul of the sergeant’s sturdy armour. Broken metal teeth rattled the deck, followed swiftly by the Raptor’s sundered corpse.

Tsu’gan came face-to-face with the lone survivor, their leader and the one who wore the daemon’s distended face. It angled its head, fibre bundle cabling at its neck sparked as its body spasmed. Then the wretched, avian creature screeched at him. The goad forced Tsu’gan to swing – he wanted to feel its flesh and bone churning against his chainfist – but the Raptor leader had banked on this and avoided the blow, snatching up the fallen meltagun instead.

It looked like it was about to turn the weapon against the Firedrake before the creature boosted its jump jets and soared into the vaulted ceiling, burning through metal sheeting as it went, fashioning an escape route. Tsu’gan’s bulk blocked a clear shot for the others and storm bolter rounds tore up the pipes above harmlessly before the Firedrakes were alone again.

‘Night Lords,’ spat Tsu’gan. ‘Craven whelps and molesters. What are they doing aboard the Protean?’

Praetor couldn’t answer. He was listening to the comm-feed.

‘Nu’mean is in trouble,’ he said when he was done. ‘The Traitors will have to wait–’

Tsu’gan bristled. ‘Hrydor’s vengeance!’

‘Will have to wait,’ Praetor repeated firmly. ‘Our brothers, those who yet live and breathe, need us to breach the central power room now.’

They were about to retrace their steps when an explosion, loud enough to resonate through Tsu’gan’s armour, rocked the corridor. Metal debris fell in thick chunks. Dust and fire billowed out ahead of them in a blackened plume.

Praetor glared through the smoke and carnage, filtering out the interference from the explosion’s aftermath. He muttered something. The rest of the squad had assumed battle positions, expecting another ambush. The sergeant consulted the scanner of his retinal display. He did this several times before he swore, an old Nocturnean curse.

‘Brother-sergeant?’ asked Vo’kar.

‘Our way back is closed.’

‘Lord?’

Praetor rounded on him, his fury affecting the burning embers in his eyes and setting them ablaze.

‘We cannot proceed, brother! The Traitors have collapsed it. And unless we find another route to the central power chamber, Nu’mean and his squad are dead!’

The respite would not last. The cleansing fire of Brother Kohlogh’s heavy flamer had done its work well. Ashen genestealer bodies littered the corridor ahead, but more were coming, many more.

Nu’mean had his ear to the comm-feed, listening to Praetor’s grim report. The conversation ran in several one-sided bursts.

‘I understand, brother.’

‘Do not attempt it. Cutting through will take too long.’

‘Another route? There is none that will get you here fast enough.’

‘You must. I can get Brother Emek off the hulk. His life is the only one you can save now.’

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ he echoed the last transmission under his breath after he’d cut the feed.

He consulted the bio-scanner on his retinal display, looked at the lethal vial of toxin mag-locked to his armour. His enemy was within metres. He should be able to kill it. In any other circumstance, a sergeant of the Firedrakes should have been able to kill it.

The noises from the gloom ahead were getting louder.

It would be soon.

Act!

Nu’mean addressed Brother Ve’kyt. ‘Get the Apothecary to the saviour pods. Ensure he is on his way and return here to the line. I will need you and Brother Kohlogh before the end.’

It was a risk, putting Emek in one of the pods, which was not guaranteed to function. Nor was his rescue assured once he was adrift in the void of space. And with his injuries…This was the only choice. Nu’mean knew what was expected.

Ve’kyt had gone, taking the groggy, half-comatose Apothecary with him.

Nu’mean rested his gauntlet on Kohlogh’s shoulder plate.

‘None shall pass, brother.’

Kohlogh nodded. The ’stealers sounded closer than ever. Vague shapes could be seen in the darkness ahead.

Nu’mean turned and approached the bulkhead door. The activation codes were on his lips.

‘Seal it behind me,’ he said quietly. ‘Do not open it again. Whatever happens.’

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ Kohlogh intoned.

‘Aye for Vulkan…’ Nu’mean answered, the chittering of the approaching beasts rising to a crescendo as he opened the door and entered the cryo-chamber.

He was barely across the threshold, the door sealing shut behind him, when the arc-lightning struck. It was a dull pain at first, intensifying into something much more invasive and burning as Nu’mean took each agonising step.

His Crux Terminatus gave him some protection, but it was his Salamanders tenacity that kept him moving across the fog-shrouded floor.

Like white-hot fingers running across his armour, the psychic lightning probed for flesh and for weakness. Slowly, the joints in Nu’mean’s once-impervious suit were eased apart.

Above the crack of energy, he heard the battle outside. Bolter fire and flamer bursts mingled with the war cries of his brothers and the shrieking of the xenos. It was a fitting requiem to their last stand in this hellish place. This was not the ship of his memory. This abomination was the Protean no longer. Only wraiths lingered here, best forgotten. Nu’mean had learned that too late, but now he would at least finish his mission.

Merely steps away from the cryo-tank, he saw the farseer slumbering, as serene as he had ever been. To look upon the alien, one would not know of the turmoil in his mind as he fought the invader that sought to kill him.

But kill you I will, Nu’mean vowed.

The horrors and cerebral tortures returned when the psychic lightning failed. Faces, rotten and withered by decay, glared at him with accusing eyes. Suddenly, there were hundreds, clogging the path to the cryo-tank, their zombified talons clawing at the Firedrake sergeant. Serfs and crewmen, brander-priests and even fellow Space Marines held Nu’mean at bay with their anger and his guilt.

Nu’mean gritted his teeth. The pain in his body was incredible, as if his nerve-endings were being stripped and immolated, one by one. He couldn’t see through the throng but felt the console. It was still primed for the lethal serum’s delivery.

The farseer redoubled his efforts, sending wave after wave of arc-lightning cracking into the Salamander.

Nu’mean screamed with every blast, the flesh peeling from his bones. His gauntlets were on fire but he saw his purpose clear enough through the bloody haze.

‘I am your death…’ he rasped, and slammed the vial into the receptor ring. The toxin emptied quickly, feeding into the mechanism like an eager parasite. At once, the farseer convulsed. The tremors looked incongruous when matched against the calmness of his expression. In a few seconds he became still.

The battle beyond the door had fallen silent long ago. The genestealers couldn’t get through, reduced to scratching the dense plating with their claws until they became bored and moved on.

Nu’mean was fading. Somewhere deep down he heard the clanging of the forge, of the anvil at the hammer’s touch.

I will be there soon, he thought. I will be joining you all soon, my brothers.

Tsu’gan nursed bitter wounds, as he stood silently harnessed in the Implacable’s Chamber Sanctuarine.

The mood was maudlin in the troop hold. No fewer than six Firedrakes had died trying to wreak century-old retribution. Somehow, the scales did not feel balanced.

He craved the burning of the solitorium, for the heat to purge the pain and impotent rage he harboured. The voice of Volkane, their pilot, interrupted his dark thoughts.

After escaping the wreckage of the Protean and returning to the Glorion’s hangar deck via another route, they had attempted to re-establish communication with Nu’mean. It was to no avail. Apothecary Emek might yet have lived, however, and so they’d trawled the immediate area of space from where his saviour pod had been ejected.

Now, two hours later, they’d found him.

‘Emergency ident-rune matches the Protean’s signature.’ Brother Volkane’s voice was grainy through the comm-link.

Praetor spoke into the bulkhead’s receiver unit.

‘Conduct bio-scan and bring us in close.’

There was a pause of almost a minute before Volkane replied.

‘Life readings affirmative.’

Tsu’gan saw Praetor shut his eyes briefly. It was as if a weight had lifted from his back.

‘How long, brother?’ he asked the gunship pilot.

‘Approximately three minutes and seventeen seconds, my lord.’

‘Bring our brother back to us, Volkane. Bring him back to the forge.’

‘In Vulkan’s name.’

‘In Vulkan’s name,’ Praetor repeated, cutting the link. His eyes met with Tsu’gan’s as he turned. A slight nod from the sergeant told the Firedrake all he needed to know.

Emek, at least, had lived. After being recovered from the saviour pod, he was laid prone in a medi-casket, strapped down to the hold floor like a piece of cargo. The Apothecary’s face and much of his left side was badly damaged. Tsu’gan regretted his earlier remark to Emek about him one day being broken. He had not intended for it to be prophecy.

Praetor watched him keenly. The sergeant’s eyes blazed without his helmet on. They matched the fury of Tsu’gan’s own.

So much death in the name of something so futile and transient… Vengeance was not a filling meal; it left you cold and empty. Yet, Tsu’gan’s desire for it still burned like an all-consuming flame. At that moment, it burned within them all.

They had given a name to their pain. Tsu’gan knew that name without the need for it to be spoken.

Night Lords.

The Burning

First there was heat, then a sense of dislocation and a curious weightlessness as his body was propelled through humid air. It lathered his skin in a feverish steam-sweat that condensed into vapour as he moved. Pain followed swiftly, focused in pins of agony impaled into his face, setting every nerve aflame. Reality was a series of flashes: light then dark, then hot and red.

Groggy, he lolled on his back. Ash, kicked up from the hard fall, billowed up in a grey pall. Coughing, he tried not to choke on it. Fire, fire in the eyes. Cinder flecks made them itch and sting. Scratch it out. Muffled voices spoke without meaning. The smell was potent, though. It was…

Burning.

A stark moment of revelation, and he realised it was his own flesh. His fingers…

They don’t feel like my own… smaller, not as strong.

…were just millimetres from the charred edges of his skin when a strong hand seized him.

‘Don’t…’ a voice warned. The faded quality dampened the sense of urgency it tried to convey. The accent was deep, thick. It had a silken tone that was instantly recognisable yet somehow incongruous.

‘What– what happened?’

My voice… strange, as if from someone else’s throat. No power, no resonance.

‘Dusk-wraiths,’ the other replied – he still couldn’t see him, his eyes registered only blurs of light and heat – as if that was explanation enough. ‘We must move. Come on, get up.’

‘I can’t see.’

So craven, so weak and… and… mortal. This is not my voice.

‘You will. Give it a moment.’

Strong hands gripped him again, hooking under the arms and hoisting him up. Sulphur tanged the breeze, acrid on his tongue. Sight returned slowly.

On the horizon stood a mountain of fire, its peaks wreathed in pyroclastic cloud as it spoke with a voice from the depths of the earth.

I know it. Was I born…?

A great plain of ash spread before him, grey like a tomb, flaking like cremated skin. In the distance, the mountain, imperious over its smaller brothers and sisters, reached up with craggy fingers to rake the incarnadine sky. Hot clouds billowed in the visceral firmament like blots of dissolute blood. Veins of lava bled down the mountain face, trailing to a vast lake of fire many kilometres away.

Ash, rock, flame – this was a hellish place, somewhere the damned came to suffer eternal torment. It was a red world, a world of magma rivers and razor-edged crags, of sulphuric seas and gorges of flame. It was beyond death.

One foot went in front of the other.

I used to be stronger than this…

His legs worked of their own volition, rather than through an effort of will. They were running when he spoke again, though he didn’t know from what.

‘Am I dead?’

Was I reborn?

The other turned, resolving through a milky film of slowly regained sight. He was tanned, etched with tribal scars and carrying a long spear. Even with the scaled hide draped across his body and the rough sandals on his feet, the man had a feral but noble bearing.

‘No, Dak’ir,’ he replied, nonplussed. ‘This is Nocturne.’

Home…

Behind him, Dak’ir heard the scrape and whirr of the turbines slowly closing on them. He dared not look back. Half-glances, snatched during the panicked flight, had revealed dark weapons and a long droning engine. Its nose ended in a jagged barb, its flanks were bladed and it hovered as if held aloft by the very air hazing around it. A metal stink, wet and hot, followed it in a thick miasma. Platforms either side of its black fuselage carried… daemons, black-skinned daemons.

The other had led them into a narrow gorge, scurrying down volcanic scree and through venting geysers of steam. It was hard going, even on foot, even unencumbered by armour or machineries…

I remember my armour.

…yet the turbine whirr followed.

Dusk-wraiths were dogged hunters.

I know them by another name.

Dak’ir heard their shrieking – an unnatural, eldritch clamour – grow with anticipation of the kill.

‘Follow!’ the other cried. Dak’ir lost him briefly in the smoke rolling across the crags. He fought to maintain pace, heart hammering in his chest…

Why do I only have one?

…but the other was too swift. He knew this plain. Dak’ir felt he should know it too, but it seemed distant in his memory, as if the sights were not his own to recall.

Keeping low, aware of the jagged bursts of displaced air overhead caused by weapons fire, Dak’ir barrelled around a twist in the rock.

Reaching the other side, he found the other was gone. He’d entered a belt of smoke, exuded from some venting crater, and did not appear again. Dak’ir fought his panic, held it at bay.

But I should know no fear…

Panic now and he was dead. He’d not even seen his predators clearly, yet knew in his core the sharp tortures they’d visit on his flesh.

I’ve seen their victims flayed alive, impaled on spikes…

Crashing through the ring of smoke, Dak’ir closed his eyes. Rough hands dragged him aside and into the shadow of a deep and hidden spur.

The other was there, a finger pressed tightly to his tanned lips.

Something large and fleet skidded past them, impossibly aloft on the hot air, breaching the smoke bank like a serrated knife through skin.

Three seconds lapsed before the whine of engines became the roar of explosions as the skimmer-machine was torn apart, its hellish riders thrown clear or devoured by fire.

An ululating war cry ripped from the other’s lips as he hefted his long, hunting spear.

Dak’ir found a recurve bow suddenly in his hands. He knew its contours well. This was his weapon.

And yet, it isn’t.

Nocking an arrow, he followed the other to the site of the wreckage.

More tanned warriors were emerging from the smoke and displaced ash. Some carried finely-wrought swords. A number of them even had long rifles, braced to their shoulders and spitting shot.

Dusk-wraiths lolled in the tortured remains of their skimmer-machine. Up close, it reminded Dak’ir of an Acerbian skiff but longer and infinitely more bladed. Skulls and other grotesque fetishes hung from spiked chains looped around its metal hull.

Its riders were armoured in a sort of black carapace reminiscent of an insect’s segmented outer shell. Not daemons at all, but still daemonic in their own depraved way. They were tall and lithe, cruelly barbed like their ship. Murderous coals burned in their eyes, like the embers of trapped hate.

I know these creatures, and yet they are not…

Several were dead, even before the spears, bolts and blades cut down the rest. The slain rotted and festered before Dak’ir’s eyes, their armour corroding on the arid breeze like metal rusting impossibly quickly until flaking almost to nothing. Their bodies became ash, meeting the grey patina of the plain and disappearing. By the end, there was nothing to suggest they’d ever been there.

Dak’ir lowered his bow, too stupefied to loose. The slaughter was over anyway.

The other approached him, wiping black ash and rust from his spear, and frowned.

‘Brother…’

Yes, I have many brothers, but you are not they.

‘Are you all right?’ The other came closer. Dak’ir felt the other’s hand upon his shoulder and only just realised he himself was similarly attired in sash and sandals.

‘I– I don’t…’

This is not my armour.

The other gestured for him to sit on a nearby rock. ‘Still dazed from the blast,’ he said mainly to himself. ‘It’s me, N’bel.’

I’ve heard that name before. It’s very old.

Dak’ir looked up, his eyes and senses suddenly sharp. The name resonated but he didn’t know why.

‘Brother…’ he echoed, and clasped N’bel’s arm in a warrior’s greeting. ‘I know you.’

It was called a drygnirr, a fire-lizard, one of many that stalked the volcanic plains of Nocturne. It was a kind of salamander, the lesser kin of the monstrous firedrakes that dwelled deep in the mountains near to the magma’s warmth. Dak’ir remembered this much of his surroundings as he awaited the metal-shaper.

Scurrying over the scattered rocks, the creature regarded him intently. A fire burned in its eyes, casting a glow about its onyx face. Barring a thin spine of blue, its scales were utterly black.

‘What do you want, little lizard?’

‘Don’t let the others hear you talking to yourself.’ N’bel appeared, carrying something in his hands. ‘They already doubt an Ignean’s mettle in battle.’ N’bel leaned in close and clapped a strong palm on Dak’ir’s shoulder. ‘Not I though, brother.’

Dak’ir nodded at the other Nocturnean’s camaraderie, so familiar and yet so strange to him at the same time. He had felt the prejudice at his Ignean heritage before, too.

That was another time, spoken by another’s lips.

When he glanced back towards the rocks, the drygnirr was gone. Perhaps it was just a figment of his imagination, and he wondered briefly if his doubters might be right.

‘Here.’ N’bel proffered a silver mask. ‘Pyrkinn flesh,’ he explained as Dak’ir took the mask. ‘It’ll quicken healing.’

The metal-shaper, a bald-headed, broad-shouldered warrior with folded arms like bands of iron, nodded sagely behind him. Unlike the other tribal warriors, the metal-shaper carried a stout hammer across his back. White ash marked his body in sigils representing the anvil and the tools of the forge. His skin was even darker than N’bel’s and his glossy eyes captured the fire of the overhead sun and blazed.

Eyes of fire… Skin as black as onyx…

Dak’ir put on the mask. It only covered half of his face, the wounded part, but he felt the pain ease immediately.

My face was burning when I heard them cry out his name.

‘My skin…’ he said, realising for the first time that it was much lighter than N’bel’s.

‘Ha! Ignean-ash. A cave-dweller sees less of the Nocturnean sun, Dak’ir.’ N’bel looked concerned. ‘Are you sure you’re well?’

‘Just a little disorientated. What happened to the wraiths?’

N’bel became pensive. ‘Gone.’ He gestured to the plain beyond where several warriors assembled. One of them wore scaled robes and a snarling lizard mask.

He waved a crooked staff threaded with curving fangs and desiccated reptilian tails. A chest-plate of saurian bones armoured his muscled torso. The others watched him intently as he padded the earth: taking up handfuls, tasting, scenting, releasing and finally repeating all over again.

‘The shaman will find their trail, though,’ he added sternly. ‘The earth never lies.’

On Nocturne, the earth and its people were one. She was a cruel mother, the world of fire, capable of terrible destruction and death uncountable. During the Time of Trial, she would crack and tear, spill her blood and weep tears of lava that threatened to consume the land and the very people scratching an existence on her rocky flesh. The earth gave as it took, however. It was part of the great cycle of birth, death and rebirth. She would take you back, the fire-mother, volatile Nocturne, take you back into her heart and her bosom. Life ended in fire; so too was it begun.

Resurrection was merely an aspect of tribal culture, of Promethean Creed.

Nothing that ever came to live and die on Nocturne was ever truly gone. It was simply changed, reborn into something else.

Am I ‘else’, am I reborn into this unfamiliar flesh? My bones were like iron, my skin as strong as steel. I was invulnerable. And now… now… just the burning.

The shaman’s bond with the earth was great, certainly stronger than any in the modest war party. Ash flakes, smouldering craters, the very grains of the earth spoke to him in a voice only he could understand.

Dak’ir had ridden with them, a long file of tribal warriors mounted on the backs of sauroch.

Scaled, bull-like creatures, the sauroch were known neither for speed nor ferocity. But they were strong and tenacious, their hides thick, and capable of bearing great burdens over long distances. Ash nomads, the transient tribes who shunned the Sanctuaries, travelled the Scorian Desert on their broad backs.

I have soared through the skies on wings of thunder…

In the blood-red of Helldawn, dactylids circled. The winged lizards, combined with the whispers of the earth, had brought the shaman to a rust-red ridge veined with iron-grey. Slowly, the saurochs had followed him and there at a rocky summit the hue of old blood, they found the rest of the dusk-wraiths. Shrieking, screaming, laughing that hollow sound from throats of dust; it was a cacophony. A heavy and oppressive shroud laid upon them all, the sauroch riders.

Dak’ir could not remember the journey, though he did recall the drygnirr watching from the darkness of caves or the peaks of volcanic hills. It shadowed him, neither guide nor predator, merely an observer only he could see. It was as if the creature’s eyes could burn right into his soul and strip away the innermost secrets of his mind.

A scryer, psyker… I know you, brother. Your gaze… it burns. I burn.

‘We attack from three sides,’ N’bel was outlining his plan to the others. He’d dismounted and carved a crude map of the camp with a stick in the dirt, less than twenty warriors gathered around him. He beckoned Dak’ir closer into the circle.

‘Brother?’ The concern etched N’bel’s face as clearly as his honour scars.

I wear them too, burned into my flesh. They are a record of my deeds.

‘I’m fine.’ Dak’ir nodded for him to continue.

N’bel gave him one last look, before he went on. ‘Three prongs,’ – he made a trident from his fingers – ‘two from the east and west as a diversion. A third, much smaller, party will enter from the north where we are now.’

Dak’ir’s gaze strayed to the deep valley below the ridge as he imagined the route N’bel had inscribed with his stick. The path was strewn with crags and sulphur pits. The cinder and ash blown from the nearby caldera of slumbering volcanoes would render the ground red-hot underfoot.

I have walked across fire. I have felt it beat inside my breast. With it I shall… The rest of the litany is lost to me. The burning… it clouds my mind and thoughts.

At the nadir of the valley was a camp of wire and blades. Sharp structures, little more than metal pavilion tents like spikes, carried markings in a strange script. Even the alien letters were edged, as if merely speaking them could cleave your tongue. More skimmer-machines, like the one lying broken on the ash plains, hovered languidly nearby. Some were tethered to bloodied staves of iron; others roamed the perimeter for the entertainment of their riders. Distant figures fled before those machines, pursued by a savage pack.

One, a dark-skinned Nocturnean limping badly, was skewered by a dusk-wraith’s spear and Dak’ir averted his gaze. The riders screamed mockingly in tune with their victims, parodying their agony.

It was a slave camp this place and, judging by the sheer number of metal tents dotting the ground below, the flesh-tally was high. Dak’ir counted fifteen of the ‘tents’. No telling how many were clustered in those metal cages. A larger one at the centre of the camp drew his eye.

N’bel meant to free his people. The skimmer-machine ambushed on the ash plain had been drawn into a trap so they could follow its trail along the earth and find this graven place. He and Dak’ir had been the bait, the wound upon his face…

The burning.

…was the price of such bravery.

Dak’ir knew this, despite his fragmented memory, the sense of otherness, not just about this place, but also this time.

‘Dak’ir…’

He turned and caught a flash of lightning on the sun. It was a sword, its blade serrated and gleaming.

I know this blade… No. I know of one much like it. Its chained teeth sing a symphony of death.

‘You lost it on the ash plain. A warrior is only as good as his weapon, brother.’

You sound like someone I knew, someone I fought with a long time ago… or will a long time from now.

Dak’ir nodded and looked down into the valley. The slavers’ depraved revels were painting the earth a deep, visceral red. The heavy scent of fresh copper tainted the sulphur breeze.

‘With whom do I ride, N’bel?’

That was better. I sound something like myself, the old strength returning…

N’bel brought his sauroch up alongside Dak’ir’s. They were both so close to the edge. Another step and they’d be charging down the scree.

‘You are with the northern party.’ He smiled, but there was no mirth to it. ‘You ride with me, brother.’

They abandoned the saurochs a hundred metres from the camp, going the rest of the way on foot. The valley was littered with rocks and deep crevices thick with sulphurous smoke. There were plenty of places to hide from the dusk-wraith sentries. The earth and Nocturne’s people were one. They could blend together as fire blends with rock.

Dak’ir sent a whickering metal shaft through the creature’s neck. It crumpled, clutching its punctured throat. By the time he and N’bel had reached it, the dusk-wraith was already an emaciated husk.

‘Why do they wither to ash like this?’ he hissed.

Because they aren’t really here… ‘Focus on the burning. Use it.’ These are not my words inside my mind…

N’bel shook his head. ‘No matter how many we kill, there is always the same remaining at the camp. If I believed in it, I would say they cannot die because they are not truly alive.’

And neither are you, my brother…

A second sentry fell to a hurled spear. Another Nocturnean pairing appeared briefly before becoming lost again in the rocks and smoke.

The heart of the slaver camp was close. They’d penetrated the outer ring and were moving into the vicinity of the metal tents. The sun was still low, low enough to cast long, red shadows across the desert.

Dak’ir was about to advance when he saw the drygnirr again. It crouched atop the shell of a dusk-wraith’s corpse, blinking with eyes of flame.

‘Why do you watch me?’

He sees into your mind… my mind. I feel it… the burning… Vulkan, give me strength.

The drygnirr was occluded by a sudden stream of smoke. Once it had cleared, the creature was gone again.

Another shaft nocked to his bow, Dak’ir moved on.

Six of them crept silently into the dusk-wraiths’ camp, slaying sentries invisibly as they went. The rest of the slavers were swollen on carnage, in a drug-induced soporific slumber brought on by the brazier pans blazing lambently around the camp.

Upon reaching the first of the tents, a warning cry rang out.

The others had launched their attack. East and west, sauroch riders drove at the slavers to steal their attention.

‘Swiftly now,’ whispered N’bel, up off his haunches and running low to the first of the tents.

Dak’ir was right behind him.

N’bel ushered him on to the next tent, but gripped Dak’ir’s arm before he could go.

‘What?’

‘That’s where you’ll find what you seek.’ N’bel was pointing to the larger structure, the one at the heart of the camp. ‘He awaits.’

‘Who, brother? Who awaits?’

I can smell his decaying breath, feel it against my cheek, despite the burning…

‘Your enemy is there.’

‘My enemy? But what about the people?’ Dak’ir was struggling but N’bel would not let him go. Dusk-wraiths had noticed the commotion. Their forces were moving through the camp.

N’bel smiled. ‘We are already dead, Dak’ir. We’ve been dead for aeons, brother. Now, go!’ He pushed Dak’ir off, who stumbled and almost fell.

He was about to turn, to demand the truth, when a burst of rifle fire sliced overhead. Shard ammunition tore up the earth and shredded the flank of a tent. Dak’ir was about to loose when he saw another dusk-wraith, then a third and a fourth, heading towards them.

The large tent was near. He dropped his bow and ran.

The whine of automatic fire from the dusk-wraiths’ weapons hurt his ears. They merged with the baying of the saurochs as they were slaughtered. Somewhere a skimmer-machine exploded.

‘We are dead, Dak’ir, but you still live. Go!’ N’bel’s final words were a shout.

Dak’ir didn’t look back.

Crashing bolter fire rings my ears. I am within my gunmetal cocoon, surging to the planet below.

His path to the large tent was suddenly blocked by one of the dusk-wraiths. She was masked, the face long and elongated to tapered spikes at chin and forehead, and grinned evilly. The sun glinting off her wicked blades, held in either hand, turned the metal to the colour of blood. She was lithe and deadly, with the body of an athlete and a torturer’s confidence.

She rushed Dak’ir, a murderer’s snarl pulling at ruby lips visible through a slit in the mask.

He scraped his sword along the ground, kicking up a line of cinder-flecked dust into her face. She hissed as the hot flakes stung her, but drove on.

Dak’ir felt a cut to his ribs, then the warm splash of blood down his side. They’d crossed each other, like duelling riders, blade to blade.

I must control my breathing, remember the routines learned in the solitorium. My hearts beat with the thrill of battle.

She came again, the dusk-wraith witch, slashing down with her blades as a pair. Dak’ir parried, sparks spitting off the metal of his sword. A kick to his stomach sent him sprawling across the hot sand and into the tent.

Pain lanced his body. It was like he was on fire.

Must… fight… it… The burning… will consume me if I don’t.

Dak’ir waited several moments in the dark, watching the slivered entrance, waiting for his assailant. But she never came. He was alone.

The air smelled strange, like being underground, and the scent of soot and ash was redolent. As his eyes slowly adjusted, Dak’ir reached out a hand to touch the walls of the tent. Half expecting a barb or spike, he was cautious, but instead of a cut, all he felt was stone. The walls were rough and craggy, and hot against his tentative fingers.

The sensation was momentary. As he felt his way ahead in the dark, the walls changed again, smooth and cold as metal should be.

There were no captives, nor any dusk-wraiths. Yet, N’bel had mentioned an enemy.

The tent was larger within than it appeared on the outside. At the end of its gloomy length, Dak’ir saw a figure seated upon a throne. It was a silhouette, a veritable giant, and armoured unless he was mistaken.

‘Come forth!’ Dak’ir challenged, brandishing his sword.

The figure did not answer, did not even flinch.

‘If you are my enemy then face me.’

Still nothing.

Dak’ir crept closer.

From the corner of his eye he thought he saw movement… a flash of reptilian eyes, a streak of blue on black. But when he looked, the drygnirr wasn’t there.

He watches, even now… even as I burn.

The figure on the throne was mocking him, Dak’ir was certain. He would cut the–

A thrown spear tore into the side of the tent and a shaft of light spilled in. It lit the figure, a silhouette no longer. His armour was pitted and broken, as if it had been corroded by time or–

The melta’s beam cutting across the temple. There is nothing I can do, even when it touches my face…

Though badly damaged, much of the paint chipped away, Dak’ir saw the armour had once been green. A pair of wings with a flame in the centre emblazoned the warrior’s shattered breastplate. Fingers of bone poked out from his ruined gauntlets. A chest cavity of dust-choked ribs yawned through the ragged gaps in his plastron. A skull, locked in a rictus-grin, regarded Dak’ir where a battle-helm had long ceased to be.

A word, a name, trembled on Dak’ir’s lips as he approached the armoured cadaver.

‘Ka… Ka…’

He was my captain. My guilt gives him form in this place.

Dak’ir was less than half a metre away – ‘Ka… Ka…’ – when the corpse-warrior reached out with his deathless hands and seized Dak’ir by the neck.

‘Diiiiieeeee…’ it hissed, naming itself and damning Dak’ir in one word, though its rictus jaw never moved.

Yes, that was his name. I cannot forget.

Dak’ir was choking. He scrabbled at the bony fingers but they wouldn’t relent. Blood pulsed in his ears and he felt his eyes bulging as his brain was starved of oxygen.

The burning… Use it!

He had to drag some breath into his lungs or be strangled by the terrible undead thing before him. That was when he noticed the air bleeding out of the room, devoured hungrily by the flames wreathing his body. It burned, a flame so invasive it went to the nerves and threatened to overwhelm Dak’ir.

The skeleton’s grip loosened.

Dak’ir choked through fire-cracked lips.

‘What is happening?’

Let it burn us. Embrace the flame. It is yours to mould…

The fire became an inferno. It roared outwards in a wave, cascading from Dak’ir’s body, exploding the skeleton to ash with its fury, yet he was untouched.

Pain wracked him, bringing him to his knees as the fire rolled out, devouring the tent, sloughing the metal. It boiled outwards in a white-hot tempest. Blinking against the rising sun, Dak’ir watched the rest of the camp as it was consumed. His brothers fled before the flame but none could outrun it. N’bel fell last of all, screaming as the burning stripped flesh from bone and turned a man into a dark shadow upon the scorched earth.

It was out of his control now, a fiery maelstrom engulfing all upon the plain, consuming all of Nocturne in a relentless wave.

Dak’ir threw his head back, as the fire turned on him at last, and screamed.

Pyriel staggered as the blast wave struck him. He was standing in the pyre-chamber below Mount Deathfire. Crushing the totem creature of the drygnirr in his fist, now little more than a simulacra wrought of flame, he hastily erected a psychic shield against which the waves of conflagration broke eagerly. He could barely see the figure crouched at the eye of the flame storm, but heard Dak’ir’s screaming clearly.

White fire lit the Librarian starkly, flickering across the blue of his power armour and the many arcane artefacts chained about his person. The drakescale cloak Pyriel wore on his back snapped and curled with the tangible heat.

Sweat beaded the Librarian’s forehead. He felt it running down to the nape of his neck. Never before had he been so tested, never before seen such a potent reaction to the burning. To his horror, the edges of his psychic barrier were cracking against the fire tide. He tried to reinforce them but found he had neared his limits.

‘Vulkan’s strength…’ he gasped, beseeching his primarch, and was answered.

Master Vel’cona emerged from a cascade of flame into the room, his eyes ablaze with cerulean power. His armour, only a suggestion through the heat haze, was more ancient than Pyriel’s. Akin in some ways to the earth shamans of old Nocturne, it was festooned with reptilian bones and dripped in scale.

Together, the two Librarians pushed the fire tide back until it was nought but wisps of smoke. A blackened crater outlined Dak’ir’s crouched position. He was naked, steam and fire exuding from his scarred flesh. The searing legacy of the melta beam he’d suffered on Stratos flared angrily on the side of his face, a physical reminder of how he was different to his fire-born brothers. The burning had destroyed his armour, rendering it an ashen patina shrouding his body.

Though he remained still and upright, his head tucked into his chest, arms drawn up around his legs protectively, Dak’ir was unconscious.

The entire pyre-chamber was a charred, soot-stained ruin. It was little more than bare rock, its entrance sealed by a pair of reinforced blast doors, but fire-blackened wall to wall. The only void was where Pyriel had been standing. The air was so hot it hazed, and reeked heavily of sulphur.

The ash cocoon encasing Dak’ir cracked and he slumped to the earth.

Vel’cona regarded the would-be Lexicanum impassively. ‘He has survived the burning.’

It wasn’t a question, but Pyriel answered it anyway.

‘Yes.’ He was still breathless from his exertions but recovering.

‘And?’ Vel’cona turned his penetrating gaze on to the other Librarian. The fuliginous darkness of the room seemed to coalesce around him, rendering him indistinct and shadowed.

‘Incredible power, like nothing I’ve ever seen.’

Vel’cona’s eyes flared like blazing blue sapphires in the gloom. ‘Can it be controlled?’

Pyriel removed his battle-helm, revealing a sweat-swathed face. His scalp was excessively damp. Only now was the cerulean fire in his ember-red eyes fading, such was the power he’d been forced to call upon. He delivered his answer in a low voice.

‘On this occasion, he could not.’

‘Saviour or destroyer…’ Vel’cona muttered. ‘Nocturne in the balance… A lowborn, one of the earth, will pass through the gate of fire.’

Pyriel was confused. ‘Master?’

‘The Tome of Fire reveals much,’ said Vel’cona on his way out of the chamber. He had to use a bolt of psychic force to open the metal blast doors. They were fused together. ‘But it does not tell us everything. Who can say what the Ignean’s role will be in the turning tide? His flame may flicker and die, it may roar into a conflagration. Much is not yet known, but I sense a visitor approaching who may help us in our understanding.’

Pyriel had been hoping for a more straight-forward explanation, but he had learned long ago not to question the vagaries of the Chief Librarian of the Salamanders.

‘What is your will, master?’

‘Keep training him.’

‘And if he loses control again?’

‘Do what you must,’ Vel’cona’s voice echoed from the darkness beyond the fire-smote room. ‘Destroy him.’

Only Ash Remains

The mag-lev descended in slow, jerking spasms and groaned in machine-like cadence against the weight of the three hooded figures riding on it, struggling to bear them despite the regular shipments of ore and freight it carried to the Deeps.

Emitting a high-pitched squeal, the lifter stopped dead, stranding the figures in abject darkness halfway to nowhere.

‘Get us moving,’ uttered the one standing in front. His arms were folded across his chest as he glared imperiously from within the confines of his heavy hood into the shadowy underhive below.

‘Immediately, sir.’ A second, loitering at the rear of the group, knelt down to examine the mag-lev’s protesting engine. There was a little smoke, even the flicker of flame. It briefly lit up the figure’s face, whose eyes flashed fire-red as if in empathy.

After a few seconds of tinkering and muttered imprecations from the second, the first spoke again. ‘How long?’

A hard strike with the flat of an armoured palm brought the engine sputtering back to life.

‘Immediately, sir,’ answered the second.

The first hid a wry smile.

Descending again, it wasn’t long before the mag-lev was bathed in the low-grade phosphor lamps of the Deeps. Much like the upper world, the lower hive was heavily industrialised. But unlike the city above, order was far from certain, or even common, down below. Here, there were monsters. The three looked for one in particular. They had tracked it to this benighted place.

The shrieking mag-lev came to rest with a final lurch, booming noisily as it touched down. Five miles up to the surface, the sound carried just like it did throughout the Deeps.

Dregs stirred in their warrens, alerted by the sudden clamour.

It was to be expected. The three knew this and had prepared accordingly. For now, the dregs kept to the shadows, lurking at the periphery of vision, pretending to be anonymous.

Striding down a broad concourse, a steel-gridded gantry underfoot and a nest of steam-spewing pipes overhead, the three paid them no heed.

After several minutes and several hundred metres, a voice called out to them.

‘This area’s restricted.’ It had a drawl to it, as if even the owner’s voice was lazy.

The three turned as one to regard a bizarrely dressed human and a cohort of fifteen others. Every one of the gangers was armed with an array of weapons ranging from the mundane to the exotic. They all wore leather and coloured bandanas; the leader wore his around his wide-brimmed hat.

‘Move on,’ the first told him, keeping his hood low to cover his eyes.

‘Can’t do that,’ said the gang leader. His cronies had begun to circle. ‘Y’see, there’s a toll needs paying.’

The third, the one yet to speak since they had boarded the lifter, tensed to attack but the first held up a hand that stopped him.

‘We have no money for you. I advise you once more – take your people and move on.’

The gang leader was belligerent. He was also clearly an idiot.

‘Don’t want money, hulk,’ he said, referring to the first’s massive size. If it daunted him, the ganger didn’t show it. Perhaps it was his fifteen friends, or the fact that three of them were bulky chrono-gladiators, lumbering into the phosphor light. ‘We want your weapons, your blood and your organs. Hand ‘em over quiet, and I’ll make the transfer less painful.’

‘You have made a mistake,’ said the first, his two companions angling to each face a different aspect of the closing net of gangers. One protected the back of the other, and so the web of steel was forged.

‘You’re the one don’t appreciate simple arithmetic. Sixteen against three is bad odds.’

‘For you, yes,’ muttered the first.

‘Let me gut them!’ snarled the third, his voice an angry rasp.

The first looked about to protest, hand straying to the blade beneath his cloak, but then relented and stepped back.

‘Quick and quiet.’

The gang leader uttered a command word and the three chrono-gladiators roared into action, arco-flails and electro-whips crashing.

Sweeping between them, low and faster than he had any right to be wearing full armour, the third cut off their arms in a welter of blood and oil. A bleating sound escaped the scarified lips of the gladiators, who collapsed and died from chronic blood loss, time still on their clocks.

Terrified, dumbstruck, it took a few seconds for the rest of the gangers to realise what was happening. The leader opened up first, his pump-action taking the third in the chest but scarcely stalling him. He baulked when he saw what was beneath the cloak, but had no time to shout a warning when a long bone claw punched into his sternum and went right through his back.

The others did not last long. One or two got off a las-round. A bulky-looking ganger even managed to crank up his autocannon before it was shredded, and him with it. In just under nine seconds, all sixteen of the dregs were dead, their blood and viscera painting the Deeps.

When it was done, the first asked, ‘What happened to quiet, Brother Zartath?’

‘You also said “quick”, Brother-Captain Agatone.’

Agatone sighed. If not for the fact that the ex-Black Dragon was a consummate hunter, he would have remained on the Vulkan’s Wrath with the rest of Third.

‘They were protecting something,’ the second called from off in the darkness.

Agatone and Zartath joined him. ‘What have you found, Brother Exor?’

The Techmarine didn’t need to answer. It was plain to see, surrounded by rubble and months-old debris, veiled in a thick patina of dust.

A gunship. It carried the winged lightning bolt insignia of the Marines Malevolent.

Agatone nodded to Zartath, who scurried inside through a ragged tear in the fuselage with the apparent agility of a spider.

It took a few minutes for him to reappear.

‘Well?’ asked the Salamanders captain.

‘Lots of bodies, all Malevolents. Looks like he killed them all.’

Agatone stiffened uncomfortably. ‘And our quarry?’

Zartath shook his head. ‘He’s in the wind. Tsu’gan is alive, but he’s not here. Only ash remains.’

The Firebrand

A baggage train of Ignean nomads resolved through a cloud of skirling dust. Fifteen men and women with their beasts of burden in tow toiled through grey, undulating dunes. Two outriders mounted on sauroch-bulls ranged ahead of the main group trying to find safe passage for the rest, except there was no safe passage through the endless tract of ash and death.

Most were dressed in rags tightly bound around their limbs and bodies, sand cloaks to ward off the sun. Six guards, armoured in light flak, carried spears and carbines. Not there for the people, they protected the wagons and the hydro-oxygen coolers harboured under leather tarps, the life expectancy of the travellers expressed in litres. None of the Igneans went without rebreathers, though the equipment was crude and wouldn’t last more than a few hours. Heat and thirst were the slow killers but there were many and entirely more aggressive ways to die out on the Scorian Plain.

Ba’ken knew of several and thought the nomads looked ill-prepared to survive any of them as he watched them from a high ridge of sun-baked rock. Below and all around him, the landscape was almost featureless, a veritable ocean of undulating ash-sand that stretched as far as a red horizon. Here the flat plain changed, growing into rugged mountains, the highest of which was a brooding, black colossus of intemperate humour. Mount Deathfire. How any man, even one such as he, could endure that fount of rage when fully roused was a question to which Ba’ken had no answer. Nor did he know the purpose of the stalwart Igneans attempting to brave it. This was the fifth such pilgrimage he had seen since entering the desert. He had heard talk from his brothers on sentry duty of considerably more.

Entire tribes, whole settlements, generations of Igneans.

He had yet to see a single one coming back.

The proud Nocturneans slogged through a nascent storm that was growing into a tempest. They weren’t moving on or seeking refuge in one of the Sanctuary Cities as some did when the rigours of living in the desert beyond the void shields became too much. Rumours had compelled them to leave whatever safety and solace they had found on this most inhospitable world. They were pilgrims in search of a myth.

‘Do you think he’s really out here somewhere?’

‘No,’ Ba’ken told Va’lin flatly.

‘The native Nocturneans must believe it, or else why would they turn out in such droves?’

Ba’ken turned his slab-like face to glower at the Scout.

‘And they are fools for doing so. He’s dead.’

Realising his error, Va’lin apologised. ‘I meant no offence, brother-captain. My intention wasn’t–’

Ba’ken turned away. ‘Forget it,’ he said, but he hid his grief poorly. Va’lin was an asset to the Seventh, remarkable in many ways, but possessed of a credulity that his captain was determined to train out of him.

If he could.

Ba’ken went on. ‘Like all on Nocturne, they harbour the knowledge that death is seldom far away and seek meaning before it claims them. Weakness and desperation make them do it, not truth.’

A tower of ceramite and stony hard will, Ba’ken dwarfed the much slighter Scout. Thick pauldrons sat like chunks of smoothed granite on his vast shoulders. His muscled neck was cable-thick, taut sinews suggesting strength. Green armour plate, the hue of the Salamanders Chapter, encased his imposing frame and only made him more intimidating. Head shorn to a glabrous scalp, the rest of his features were craggy like a rockface. Physically massive, Ba’ken had been ideally suited to his former role as a heavy weapons trooper. Those days were ended long ago, and the now captain of the Seventh missed them, as he missed a great many things he had lost.

‘I heard the Igneans raised some kind of shrine,’ said the Scout standing at Ba’ken’s opposite shoulder. ‘Dozens die every day in search of it, and the ones who built it are no longer alive to tell of its existence either. Myths can be dangerous. They’re the province of the gullible and desperate.’

Exor was much more pragmatic and a little thicker set than Va’lin. There was a hard streak in him that reminded Ba’ken of someone else he once knew, also now believed dead, although his brothers still searched. But there was no arrogance. He was simply blunt, like a hammer. That too reminded him of someone, and he wondered where the Chaplain was at that moment. Exor believed in what he could see and touch, qualities Ba’ken respected. But Va’lin… Ba’ken had saved his life when the Scout was just a boy and not the transhuman he was rapidly becoming now. It felt like an age ago. During their trials, back in the time of dragon-strife, as some of the Chapter and the Creed were calling it, he had been exceptional. Then again, so had another and his legacy was still talked about darkly by some warriors of the Chapter.

Old wounds, Ba’ken reminded himself, were often slow to heal.

Both Scouts, not far from receiving their black carapace, were here on the Scorian Plain to heed a final lesson before going to the ranks of the Devastators.

‘Eyes front,’ Ba’ken told his charges. ‘We are not here for pilgrims, and there is still much I can teach you before you ascend to full battle-brothers and join one of the battle companies.’ He squinted through a monocular lens past kilometres of dirty smoke and acres of cloud washing low over the dunes, filling the deep canyon that sank into the desert before them with slate-grey. ‘See here and attend,’ said the captain. ‘Aspirants fresh into the forge.’

Four figures could be discerned through the murk, fighting their way through a dark gloom many hundreds of metres below. Over fourteen had begun the trial. In truth, Ba’ken was surprised at how many had made it this far. He wondered if perhaps he was asking too much. Certainly, the inductions into Seventh Company had dwindled in the past few years. Humanity – his humanity – was getting in the way of clear thinking. Break them now, destroy them against the anvil and no bond would be formed, no room for grief later. If they survived, they were obviously strong enough to last as a Scout and go on to join the battle companies, where Ba’ken would no longer be responsible for them. But so few did, so few became Scouts at all. Was he building a stronger Chapter or merely insulating himself against further pain of loss? Ba’ken decided he would speak to Chaplain Elysius about it and seek his Chaplain’s counsel.

‘We are here for them,’ Ba’ken said, putting his thoughts aside, then asked, ‘Tell me, what do you see?’

He passed the monocular to Exor, servos growling in the captain’s scarred power armour as if in empathy with its wearer. A mantle of drake hide fluttered in the wind behind him, pinned to his shoulder guards by gilded clasps. He noticed that Va’lin eyed the skin enviously.

Exor observed the scene instead, and gave a quick appraisal. ‘They adopt formation. One ranging ahead, functioning as a vanguard…’ He paused. ‘A leader gives orders. Another acts as rearguard, but they are not all in accord.’

‘Your assessment?’ invited Ba’ken.

Exor lowered the scope and gave it to Va’lin.

‘They are in trouble.’

Ba’ken nodded slowly. ‘This is one of the fire canyons,’ he said, gesturing to the monolithic chasm, several hundred metres wide but filled with narrow gorges in some places and razor-edged crags. Even at distance, it was massive. And behind, far away to the north but still imposing, loomed the cyclopean Mount Deathfire. Without climbing tools the flanks of the canyon were unscalable; the only way to escape it was to pass through it. A walk of fire in all respects.

Lava channels threaded the canyon floor like pulsing hot veins, and where it dipped into shallow basins the lava pooled and caught fire. Smoke thronged the air in a choking fog, stinging the eyes and dulling all other senses until only instinct could be relied upon for guidance. Geysers spewed scalding steam in spastic fits and starts, the pattern of their expulsions unpredictable.

‘Its savage geography is obvious,’ Ba’ken explained, pointing to a rolling bank of cloud obscuring the canyon’s summit, ‘but its indigenous predators are not…’

Exor followed his captain’s lead and found shadows prowling the smoke and fog.

‘What are they?’ The Scout’s tone was inquisitive, not apprehensive. The shadows were hulking, easily twice the mass of the largest aspirant, and there was the suggestion of chitinous body plating, but they moved swiftly with the cloud and were gone from sight before it passed.

Ba’ken smiled. ‘Monsters. And they crawl within the canyons like lice.’

Har’gaan shielded his eyes from the spit of flame erupting from a crack in the hard earth of the canyon. It was red like blood, sharp as all hell and hot to the touch. A place of death, a final rest for the dead.

How many have gone to their dooms in this dire place?

Illion was briefly obscured from sight and Har’gaan’s heart quickened as he thought they had lost him to the fire, but the pathfinder emerged from behind a pall of smoke very much alive.

‘Here,’ he called, hurriedly waving the others on. ‘A route through the fire chasms.’

Har’gaan grinned ferally. He had never met a pathfinder as gifted as Illion, or as fearless.

Smoke and flame were everywhere, yet Illion trod with the certainty and courage of one who had lived his entire life in such places. Nocturne was harsh; it bred strong people, hardy people – they had to be – but the canyon was an extreme. He supposed for the vaunted warriors of the Fire-born, it was merely practice.

‘I am relieved,’ Har’gaan confessed when he caught up, clapping Illion on the shoulder. ‘The longer we stay here, the worse our chances of survival become.’ Both took a breather in the lee of an overhanging crag, waiting for the others. The air was harsh and hot, and stung the throat, but at least it was air.

‘Thought you’d appreciate the shade,’ said the pathfinder with good humour. Illion was the youngest of the aspirants but had a hawkish look that made him seem older. A ragged scar cut into the left hemisphere of his skull from when he had been maimed by a sa’hrk as a child. Some would grow weak from such an ordeal, retreat within themselves and be devoured by the harsh Nocturnean landscape. Illion had turned it into strength and a wariness that he wouldn’t be caught like that again. Har’gaan respected him for that.

‘I admit,’ said Har’gaan, ‘for a moment back there I thought the earth had claimed you, brother.’

Illion laughed, an utterly incongruous sound in the fire canyon. ‘Not yet. My tribe knows earth and stone. I reckon I could tread this path blindfold if needed.’

‘How are we not doing that already?’ A harsh voice cut in, Za’tenga making his presence felt. The noble son from Hesiod had a thin face like a dagger’s blade and it sharpened further as he jabbed a finger skywards, ‘Boast later, Illion, we are not alone.’

All three craned their necks towards a roiling bank of cloud above. Dense thunder pealed across it and there were flashes of crimson lightning that cracked between the sonorous booms like a refrain. Something flew within the fire-tinted smoke, occluded by shadow, revealed by the blood-red jags of angry light. It was winged and gave a deep, screeching cry that ululated throughout the canyon.

‘Sounds like a big one,’ muttered Kade. By the time the burly Themian reached them, he had removed the rest of his damaged carapace. It was acid-burned when a hydrochloric vent had erupted in their midst and nearly taken off his face. As it was, the tribal tattoo across his eyes survived, even if one of his comrades had not. Ven’gar had been standing next to him and died mouthing a silent scream as his vocal cords were cooked. Kade lived but now wore a burn across his muscular torso. An occasional grimace was the only betrayal of the barbarian’s resolute facade.

‘They’re carrion-eaters,’ said Za’tenga, letting his mind wander. ‘Feasters of the dead. My first sight from the womb was of such creatures. Born in blood, I arrived in this world hearing their cries and the screams of the dying as they were picked apart.’ He scowled, as if the pain of it were still fresh. ‘Even as an infant, I can still remember it.’

Har’gaan reached out to him. ‘It’s all right, brother–’

Za’tenga recoiled, barking, ‘It is far from all right. They see prey before them. We are carrion now.’

‘I doubt they’ll have had a feast that’ll fight back as fiercely as us,’ said Kade, with a belligerent look. Other than in battle, the Themian’s eyes were cold fires that burned away all warmth and hope. His enemies in the tribe had seen that look. It was often their last sight, for Kade had never been defeated in ritual combat. No less than three leonid pelts hung from his trophy spike back in the city.

‘Give them a few rounds,’ suggested Za’tenga, letting a vengeful snarl curl his upper lip. He’d watched Runial carried off by one of the creatures as he had tried in vain to stop it from ripping his fellow tribesman apart. That was when the cracks in the aspirants’ brotherhood had begun. Za’tenga blamed Har’gaan for Runial’s death.

Har’gaan pushed down Kade’s combat shotgun, spoiling his aim. It was actually two weapons, liberated from fallen comrades, strapped and taped together to make a side-by-side. The others carried carbines and short hunting knives. Not enough to worry the creatures, but the Themian’s cannon would have made quite the mess of them.

Kade frowned, rippling the short strip of hair bifurcating his forehead, but didn’t protest beyond that. His comrades all had shaven heads, the sigils of their tribes shorn into them, down to the dark scalp. The melanochromatic defect common to all Salamanders was yet to manifest, though in time it would blacken their tanned skin to the colour of onyx.

‘We’ll bring them down on us,’ Har’gaan said, glaring at Za’tenga. His reddish irises seemed to flash with embers of anger. ‘You were born into war, but that doesn’t mean you understand it, Za’tenga. They’re circling because they are looking for us. Shoot now and you might as well send up a flare.’

Za’tenga’s retort was barbed. ‘Then what do you suggest? Let them stalk us, wait until we are vulnerable and carry off another like they did Runial? Or shall we cower here, under this rock, until the heat kills us?’

‘I don’t like either of those paths,’ declared Kade, ‘so we had best find another.’

Smoke was thickening in the fire canyon, and flames licking at the edges of Illion’s discovered route were creeping closer.

Har’gaan choked back a wad of sooty phlegm before answering. ‘We advance, reach the edge of the canyon. Illion has got us this far.’

Za’tenga scowled. ‘You’ll kill us all, Har’gaan. Then who will join the ranks of the Fire-born?’ he said, and tramped off after Illion who was already on the move again.

Har’gaan didn’t answer. He had noticed Kade looking at the smoke-wreathed summits of the canyon that flanked the party to either side.

‘What are you staring at?’ he asked, keeping his head low against the choking fog.

The Themian peered intently, but Har’gaan could not see what his keen eyes had picked out.

Kade’s response was to prime his shotguns.

Har’gaan saw only smoke at first, but then he caught the flicker of something through the grey. Heat haze was spoiling focus but a slithering torso, long and segmented, appeared before burrowing out of sight. In the brief reveal, Har’gaan counted four creatures. They were moving down the canyon wall, digging right through it. He knew what they were and the thought chilled him despite the heat inside the fire canyon. Years ago he had watched a herd of sauroch moving through the Pyre Desert, their drovers wrangling the beasts from the back of grav-wagons. Eight men and fifteen sauroch died in minutes, dragged under the sand and devoured. Har’gaan had watched his uncle try to fight one of the creatures off. It coiled its viperous body around a sauroch first, crushing its ribcage, lungs, internal organs, and then bit off the man’s arm before it took him screaming into the dirt and the dark. Har’gaan alone survived.

The drovers never returned to that same patch of desert again.

Serrwyrms, the creatures were called.

‘Monsters,’ Kade answered at last, snugging the cannon into the crook of his arm and raising the twinned muzzles.

Har’gaan shouted up to Za’tenga and Illion.

‘Run!’

But his voice was eclipsed by tectonic thunder.

Ba’ken’s grim humour faded when he saw Va’lin had not trained the monocular on the canyon wall as instructed. ‘Va’lin,’ he said.

The Scout seemed not to hear. He had the lens aimed at the distant horizon line and the chain of volcanoes that towered across it. Largest of them was Deathfire, and she looked angry.

‘I see something…’ Va’lin began.

Ba’ken followed the Scout’s gaze. His eyes widened. ‘It’s a helstorm.’

Nocturne was a volatile world, the overbearing gravity exerted by its larger moon created an environment of tectonic fragility. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and pyroclastic storms were all common. Helstorms were amongst the worst of those devastating natural events. It was not the potentially world-ending Time of Trial but it was destructive, deadly to any caught without shelter, and it was happening. Now.

Deathfire vented spears of cloud and gouts of debris from the caldera at her peak. Heartblood, the life of Nocturne, was running down her flanks in runnels of fire. A sudden explosion shook the summit, rippling outwards in a shockwave. It began as motes of sand-ash, vibrating against one another and grew into a temblor several minutes later that trembled the earth beneath Ba’ken’s feet. In the same moment, a great spume of pyroclastic gas and smoke erupted as Deathfire roared into the flame-scarred heavens, nearly blotting out the sun. She was not finished, not nearly. She was merely warming up, fashioning an altogether more violent encore to the first refrain.

It hit seconds later, though Ba’ken and the others had to wait minutes to feel the effects, an immense quake that cracked the Scorian Plain in chasms, the fractures many and wide-ranging. Flame, intense and angry, spewed up from every fissure and the view down into the canyon was lost behind a sudden wall of conflagration.

Ba’ken sent the Scouts back. Hot hail was raining from the rapidly blackening sky, deadly to warriors only armoured in carapace. He grimaced as he opened the comm-feed in his gorget, pulling a chunk of rock from his vambrace and wincing at the burning line scorched across his cheek at the same time.

‘Forge Master,’ he said into the feed, attempting to raise the Techmarine monitoring their progress in the Prometheus moon far above Nocturne’s turbulent atmosphere.

Behind him the two Scouts were regaining their feet but stayed low and wary as the hail continued. They were right at the edge of its destructive fury.

Ba’ken stabbed out a finger. ‘Into the speeder,’ he said, gesturing to a squat, boxy vehicle hovering just above the desert floor on anti-gravitic motors. Exor was up and into the gunner’s seat to man the pintle-mounted heavy bolter. Only a step behind, Va’lin vaulted into the open-topped troop hold and strapped in. The Storm-variant Land Speeder was designed for troop transport and could carry up to five easily, but Ba’ken had stocked it with equipment: phosphor flares, grapnels and rappelling wire, as well as spare ammunition and a modest weapons cache.

Enough for a rescue mission.

Va’lin began tooling up his webbing.

Another tremor, harder and louder than the previous one, shook the Scorian Plain. A column of fire soared from the mountain in a coruscation, tearing into the smoke and igniting the ash in the air. The effect was mesmeric as a chain reaction of blood-red flame rolled across the sky in a tsunami wave.

An echoing cry across the ruddy clouds answered. Helstorms were not only flame and ash; they disturbed the beasts of the deep desert, forced them to the surface, emboldened them even as the earth itself grew more volatile.

After a few tense minutes, Va’lin gestured to the sky. ‘Incoming,’ he warned, taking up a bolter and aiming along its stock as he pointed the weapon at the silhouettes moving amongst the clouds.

‘Tracking engaged.’ Exor brought the heavy bolter up, peering down its sight as he cranked the cannon to its highest elevation.

Something pierced the cloud… Sickle-bladed wings, a feral snout, blind but with deep nasal pits akin to knife slashes and gaping auditory canals like gills ridging its neck. Skin like dirty pearl took on the fire of the mountain and seemed to burn.

Exor unleashed a salvo but the creature pinwheeled, rolled and avoided every shell.

Va’lin’s aim was better, firing into its predicted trajectory. The first bolt clipped it, staggering the creature, and the second and third took out its torso and blew it apart. Spreading cloud swallowed it whole, obscuring its fall to earth.

‘More,’ Exor warned, hitting the twin triggers.

Six more flyers plunged, wisps of smoke trailing off the razor-edges of their pinions.

They were carrion-eaters, not prone to attacking armed prey, but forced from the sky in panic.

Recoil from the heavy bolter made the speeder jerk, but its suppression systems absorbed the worst of it. Exor’s second salvo was better. Combined with another accurate three-round burst from Va’lin, the sleek mantarids disengaged in search of easier pickings and clearer skies. The creatures flew under the worst of the storm, calling to one another, arcing and wheeling in a loose predatory formation. Though imperilled, Nocturne’s native fauna was always hungry.

‘We’ve driven them into the canyon,’ said Va’lin, his concern for the aspirants obvious.

Exor said, ‘We don’t know that.’

Chunks of stone were hammering down now, and the Scouts had taken what cover they could inside the vehicle. It too was taking hits, weathering dents.

Ba’ken climbed into the speeder. They were at the very edge of the helstorm’s fury but still being peppered with hail. ‘Forge Master,’ he repeated down the feed, then a moment later shouted, ‘Argos!’

A crackle of static presaged a response as Ba’ken took up the pilot’s position and gunned the engines. After a guttural roar and a belch of flame the speeder was moving.

‘Seismic data suggested you would have several more hours of dormancy,’ a mechanical voice returned on the other end of the feed.

‘She’s just stirring in her sleep,’ said Ba’ken, slewing the speeder into a wild turn to elude a piece of falling debris the size of his torso. He eased down the throttle, jinking again as a crack split the ground beneath and vented flame a second later, then boosted the engine to pull them out of the immediate blast zone. The storm was expanding.

Argos replied, ‘From the readings I am getting, I would conclude she is having a nightmare, brother.’

Va’lin leaned forwards in his harness.

‘There’s no way the aspirants can survive in that.’

Ba’ken shook his head, muttering, ‘It’s the will of the anvil.’ He pulled further out, trying to ride around the maelstrom of smoke, ash and debris. Heat was slapping against the sides of the speeder, crinkling the paint, warming the metal.

Va’lin hung to the speeder’s rollcage, despite his burning skin.

‘We cannot abandon them. We must–’

Ba’ken half turned, glancing sidelong at the Scout behind.

‘The circle of fire burns, Va’lin. It is the Promethean Creed, life necessitates death. It is Nocturne, it is Fire-born.’

Some of Ba’ken’s doubts resurfaced, the harshness of the induction into Seventh. He crushed them, poured on the power to get them clear.

In a few more seconds they were out of the worst of it, and the speeder’s engines cycled down to a low vibrational burr. A lull in the helstorm, the briefest cessation in its fury, allowed a glimpse into the canyon.

Exor pointed over the heavy bolter’s firing rail.

‘I think I see them…’ he said. ‘They are still alive!’

Ba’ken looked through the monocular, holding it one-handed whilst steering the speeder with the other. A pack of serrwyrms had got the aspirants’ scent – lathing the air with dagger-thin tongues, sniffling at the hot earth – and were closing. Lowering the scope, he re-opened the feed.

‘Argos, how long will this break last?’

A short pause, then the Forge Master replied. ‘Not long… Inloading seismic data to your scanners now.’

‘Read it,’ Ba’ken ordered Exor, nodding to an auspex mag-locked to the speeder’s control console. Releasing the heavy bolter, Exor interpreted the data inload from Master Argos.

‘There’s some deep subterranean activity developing,’ he said, gauging the spikes and fluctuations in tectonic motion displayed on the auspex screen. ‘Looks slow, but when it hits, the tremor will be potent.’

‘And likely collapse most of the canyon,’ Ba’ken concluded grimly.

Exor looked up. ‘We have minutes, no more than that.’

Even at cruising speed they had pulled ahead of the aspirants now, riding a high ridge with the fire canyon plunging down to the left.

Ba’ken could see the young warriors running even without the scope. Wounded but resolute, they were fighting hard to survive. Arkhan Land had designed the speeder to be fast but it couldn’t run that gauntlet. Not even the Dark Angels Ravenwing with their considerable piloting skill could do that. It was impossible. Ba’ken’s mouth hardened to a thin line, and he spoke through clenched teeth as he shook his head.

‘We can’t help them.’

Va’lin reached over, put his hand on Ba’ken’s shoulder guard.

‘Get me in front of them,’ he urged. ‘I know a safe route through the canyon, it’s imprinted on my memory. I can lead them out.’

Ba’ken was blunt. ‘No. This is the nature of the trial. Tempered against the anvil, emerging stronger, or crushed against it. That was the way with you, Va’lin, so shall it be with them.’

‘It’s certain death if we don’t intervene.’ Va’lin knew he was bordering on insubordination, but his conviction overruled it. ‘That’s not a trial, it’s an execution.’ He tried reason. ‘Fate, not weakness, has condemned these warriors. They’ve endured this far. Doesn’t the Promethean Creed also preach self-sacrifice? Let me help them, captain.’

Va’lin was already an expert at navigating the harsh terrain of Nocturne. During the dragon-strife, in the defence of Hesiod City, he had displayed courage and tenacity too. Ba’ken knew he would only stop arguing when he got his way or his captain was forced to reprimand him.

The problem was, Ba’ken agreed with him.

In the end, the captain merely growled and yanked up the speeder.

As they burst along the ridge, Va’lin sat back and started to prepare for the rescue mission.

‘I’ll put you down near the lip of that low ridge, two hundred and thirty-six metres out,’ said Ba’ken, scanning the pict-screen of the speeder’s control console and reading the contours of the canyon.

Accessing his eidetic memory, Va’lin recalled the specific location. There was a sharp slope that dipped down into the canyon’s basin, but he could rappel it quickly. From there, a short sprint of one hundred and fifty-three metres to a narrow aperture, where he would intercept the aspirants.

As Va’lin was getting equipped, Exor turned his head to speak over the back of the gunner’s seat. ‘Serrwyrms are weak under their natural carapace, and their eyesight is poor.’

‘So I wait until I can smell them.’

Va’lin smiled, but Exor was stony faced.

‘And they you. Once that snout has distended, give them something to chew on that isn’t flesh and bone.’

‘Your tactical acumen never fails to astound me, Exor.’

‘And you are always surprising me with your recklessness, brother. Anyone would think you had something to prove.’

‘I do.’ Punching the release clamp of his belt harness, Va’lin stood up and gripped the speeder’s rollbar. They were slowing down. The cleft in the rock that led to the low ridge was in sight. ‘That Salamanders protect their own,’ he concluded, leaping from the speeder. Sand and ash were kicked up where he landed, crouched on the desert floor. Then he was running.

Ba’ken watched him go, all the way to the ridge until he secured his rappelling wire and disappeared over the edge.

‘Is he going to make it?’ asked Exor, glancing down at the seismic returns coming through the auspex. They rippled like Doppler waves.

Ba’ken grimaced. ‘If Vulkan wills it.’

Gunning the engines, he raced towards the end of the canyon.

Za’tenga took it as a bad sign that he could no longer hear the monsters behind them. Billowing smoke, streaking down over the ridge line into the canyon dulled the senses, though. It was hard to hear much of anything through the violent rumble of the mountains, the roar of fire and the harsh rasp of steam venting from clefts in the ground.

The earth trembled beneath them, spitting out columns of fire, thronging the air with heat and the smell of burning. Za’tenga stumbled, losing his footing as a piece of rock speared up from the ground, the fragility of the canyon exposed by the seismic forces threatening to tear it apart.

Since the storm hit, the fire canyon had become even more hazardous.

Za’tenga cried out, ‘Kade!’

It was tough to see the burly warrior. His outline rippled through a veil of heat haze, obscured further by the scudding drifts of ash. Za’tenga thought he saw him turn…

A hand seized his forearm, hauled him up. Har’gaan’s soot-smeared face was determined.

‘We stay together,’ he told Za’tenga, who nodded.

‘Gratitude, brother.’

‘Come on, Illion is not far ahead. Kade too.’

Za’tenga couldn’t see the pathfinder any more, he was lost to the encroaching darkness spewing from the clouded peak of Mount Deathfire.

His route through the fire chasms had evaporated with the arrival of the helstorm, its violent eruptions swallowing the narrow passages of rock Illion had identified in the swathes of lava. Adapting, they went around it, through a claustrophobic warren of roofless tunnels before emerging into a wider plain where the flames were not so fierce.

A shuddering crack, the sound of the earth being sundered, resonated right and left as slabs of rock broke away from the flanks of the canyon and crumbled down into a miasma of occluding, grey smoke.

Fissures became chasms, splitting apart in savage wounds to reveal the magma within.

One opened up in front of Har’gaan so he leapt over it, not breaking stride.

Za’tenga followed, strong and sure-footed, though he felt a twinge in his ankle from when he had stumbled and prayed it was nothing more than a light sprain. Injury now would be certain death.

‘I thought you left him,’ said Za’tenga, shouting up to Har’gaan.

‘Left who?’

‘Runial. I thought you left him behind and that was why he died. But you came back for me.’

Har’gaan’s reply was a little breathless with exertion. ‘No more of us are dying here.’

‘I was wrong about you, Har’gaan,’ said Za’tenga. ‘I’m sorry.’

If Har’gaan heard the other aspirant’s admission, he didn’t show it. Instead, he was looking ahead, trying to find the pathfinder.

‘Illion!’ Even a few metres away, Har’gaan’s voice was muffled and distant.

An explosive roar hit the canyon like a god’s hammer blow and they stumbled again.

‘Kade!’ cried Za’tenga, fearful to stay still for too long but wary about advancing blindly through utter blackness. Another burst of fire, an orange-red smear against the smoke, speared from the canyon floor.

Har’gaan was spun by it, limned in a ruddy glow. He staggered, tried to say something then collapsed to one knee. Flames were licking his arm and back. Still he tried to speak. Za’tenga realised he was actually trying to scream.

Diving on Har’gaan, he slapped at the flames, beating them down.

Tendrils of smoke were still rising from Har’gaan’s body as Za’tenga rolled him over. He cried out in agony as he went onto his right side. The skin was blistered around his face and neck, his entire left shoulder burned black.

‘Get up,’ Za’tenga snarled, putting Har’gaan’s arm around his shoulders. ‘No more of us are dying, remember?’

Shadows were scurrying to the right and left, lingering at the very edge of peripheral vision.

‘I see them too,’ said Har’gaan in a pained whisper. At least that’s what Za’tenga thought he said. With all the noise he just saw the other warrior’s lips moving and guessed at their meaning.

Something darted in from the right, and Za’tenga swung around, triggering his carbine. Solid shot raked a black, glossy carapace at the same time a shell-burst peppered the creature’s snout. It was sniffing the air, tasting burned flesh and human sweat, the copper stink of blood.

Za’tenga only got a glimpse, the twin attacks enough to keep the serrwyrm at bay for a few more seconds. It was long, with segmented chitin encasing its back and torso. Low to the ground, it almost slithered but actually had six short legs, reverse-jointed and with long curved claws for burrowing. Earth or flesh, those claws would ruin either.

Not far ahead, Kade had reached another bottleneck in the canyon and was waving them towards it. He cranked the spent shells from his double shotgun burst, the extra incentive that had dissuaded the serrwyrm.

‘I counted six whilst I was standing here,’ said the burly warrior, straining to see through the smoke. ‘But with all of this,’ he gestured to the grey miasma now smothering the canyon, ‘there could easily be more.’ He glanced at Har’gaan, how he leaned so heavily against Za’tenga, but said nothing.

‘Where’s Illion?’ asked Za’tenga, setting Har’gaan down against the flat wall of the narrow gorge. It was no more than six metres across, tight enough to defend, and provided a little shelter with its overhanging crags.

‘Not far,’ said Kade, holding his side.

Za’tenga saw the dark patch across his skin. ‘Are you wounded too?’

‘Just a scratch,’ he said. ‘We need to go.’ He pointed down the gorge, the end a mystery swathed in soot-black smoke. ‘It runs for another eighty metres.’

Za’tenga saw the danger. ‘And we don’t want to be down there when the beasts come again.’

Kade nodded. ‘Can he even walk, let alone run?’ he asked, gesturing to the stricken warrior.

‘I’ll bloody walk through that,’ Har’gaan snarled, but his pugnacity cost him as he went to rise.

Za’tenga caught him, put out a hand to let Kade know it was fine.

‘Don’t worry about us. I can carry him.’

Kade looked like he wanted to say something but decided against it.

With the Themian in the lead, they headed off down the narrow gorge.

Va’lin descended into hell. When he hit the ground, the heat was like a slap across the face. Fire and smoke were everywhere, rippling across the canyon floor, spewing across its crags, draping pitfalls in an impenetrable miasma of grey. Ash was falling like rain. It covered his shoulders and the top of his head, and flecked his armour. Va’lin let it. The natural camouflage might prove useful.

He took a few seconds to get his bearings. By his reckoning, the aspirants were south-east of his position, between two and three hundred metres behind him. He needed to move quickly. Seismic body blows were reshaping the nature of the canyon all the time. If fortune didn’t favour him, the landscape might be very different from the one he expected by the time he reached them.

Va’lin was on the move again when he detected his shadow. A pair of serrwyrms, broken off from the pack pursuing the aspirants, had discovered his scent. Deadly to Nocturnean natives, they would find a Scout of the Adeptus Astartes a much tougher prospect.

Not breaking stride, Va’lin kept the creatures in the periphery of his vision, content to let them roam and prowl. Unable to discern transhuman from human, the serrwyrms only perceived lone prey and began to close.

As they crept closer, slithering through the sharp rocks, Va’lin thumbed the catch off his pistol holster. He had a bolter too, strapped around his torso, but couldn’t shoot it one-handed and run at the same time, plus the harder recoil might spoil his aim and he wasn’t planning on missing.

‘Wait until they can smell you,’ he echoed some of Exor’s advice from earlier.

As the first serrwyrm pounced, Va’lin turned and unleashed a three-round burst.

Muzzle flare lit up the shadow caused by occluding ash overhead. For an instant the creature was frozen in it, the last inexorable seconds of its existence captured in monochromatic chiaroscuro. That was before its head exploded, taken apart by mass-reactive fury. The torso followed, jerking as the head was struck, a ripple of hard kinetic bangs first buckling the natural carapace and then shredding it.

Viscera laced the front of Va’lin’s armour in a trio of gory tracts. A fourth licked his face and he spat out the serrwyrm’s foul, acerbic blood.

The second creature was more cunning and stayed behind the Scout, in his blindside.

Va’lin’s hearing was acute enough to detect the rapid motion and disturbance that preceded an attack. He ducked, allowing the serrwyrm to pass over his body. Claws flailing, the creature managed to snag Va’lin’s shoulder and brought him down.

It took seconds for the Scout to regain his feet, leaving the pistol where he’d dropped it and pulling out a monomolecular combat knife. He held it low, blade down, hooked up next to his forearm as the creature uncoiled and showed its own fangs.

As he glared the serrwyrm down, Va’lin got a good look at it.

Long-bodied, armoured in plate, it had a head like an arrow tip, albeit stitched with four rows of razor-pointed teeth. Emitting a low, reverberant hiss which could have been a warning or a challenge, its mouth unpicked itself and opened up like a fleshy bloom. Three tendril-like tongues, barbed at the tips, writhed within a purple and foul-smelling maw.

It hissed again, coiling and uncoiling, preparing to spring.

‘Challenge accepted,’ muttered Va’lin, and lunged with his knife.

He rammed it straight into the serrwyrm’s mouth, grimacing as the poison from its tongue-barbs flared nerves. It thrashed, gagging on a length of steel that Va’lin only pushed further until the buried blade punched out through the serrwyrm’s back. He yanked, dragging it along its spine, tearing open the rugged armour plating and spilling what was inside, out.

Done with the grisly butchery, he jabbed a phial of anti-toxin into his thigh and hurried on.

Stopping to retrieve his pistol, he returned the weapon to its holster and shook off a bout of vertigo. His metahuman resilience to poison was still developing, but he hoped the anti-toxin would boost his biology enough to overcome it.

It would have to, Va’lin told himself. Lives, and not just his own, depended on it.

Illion met the aspirants on the other side of the gorge.

From the expression on the pathfinder’s face, Za’tenga could tell their situation wasn’t good. Looking past Illion’s shoulder, he could see why.

A tempest of fire rolled ahead of them, swathing the canyon and spitting out waves of heat that were already biting their skin. The tightest aperture through the flames revealed steadier ground beyond and another narrow gorge where they might find further shelter, but to reach it they would need to run a gauntlet only a fully armoured Salamander would survive. Even then, the ground was webbed with lava streams. One slip, a moment of ill-footing, and it would be over.

‘Can we get through it?’ asked Kade, glancing behind them to see if they were being followed.

Illion shook his head.

Har’gaan murmured something, but his voice was lost in the roar of fire. He spoke louder, his face etched in pain from the effort. ‘How far have we got to go?’

‘Looks bad for him,’ said Kade, coldly appraising the burned aspirant.

Har’gaan glared at the Themian. ‘I can still hear you.’ He turned back to Illion, repeating, ‘How far?’

The pathfinder was resting on his haunches, coughing up ash and smoke. He shook his head. ‘Another four hundred metres, give or take.’

Kade grunted. He was the only one who seemed untroubled by the fire and darkness. ‘He won’t make that.’ The Themian was referring to Har’gaan. ‘I could carry him.’

‘Then we won’t make it, none of us,’ said Za’tenga, adding, ‘He stays with me. If those creatures are out there in the flames we’ll need that cannon of yours to fight them off. You stand a better chance of achieving that unburdened.’

Another grunt from Kade. ‘Agreed.’

Ahead, the fire tempest was thickening, the narrow avenues through it closing.

Illion ventured forwards. ‘Let me try it first.’ He ran on, was lost and then revealed again through the smoke.

Anxiously, the others watched and waited.

The pathfinder crouched low beneath the belt of smoke, keeping his body tight to stay away from the worst of the fire. He only got a few metres before the others heard him cry out.

‘Is he dead?’ Har’gaan muttered, biting back the pain.

Za’tenga was looking, but could not see the pathfinder.

Kade stood impassively, emotions unreadable. ‘There.’ He pointed a thick, meaty finger at a silhouette emerging from the darkness.

Illion was alive, but clutching his wrist. His right hand was burned, the skin black and blistered. Through gritted teeth he said, ‘There’s no way through that. Fire… too unpredictable.’

‘So we’re dead then.’ Za’tenga was resigned.

Once again, Kade was unreadable but for a tremor below his right eye which betrayed his annoyance.

Illion shook his head a second time as he began to bind his hand with strips of cloth torn from his sleeve.

‘I saw a cliff face. There was a path around the sea of fire, far enough at the edges that we won’t burn.’

‘You’re certain we can endure it?’ Kade was staring into the roaring flames and didn’t make eye contact at first. When he did, his eyes spoke of the Themian’s deep determination for survival.

It chilled Za’tenga despite the rising heat.

Illion nodded. ‘As certain as I can be. I only caught a glimpse, but the path is treacherous.’

‘I would be disappointed if it were anything other,’ uttered Har’gaan, standing up without Za’tenga’s help. ‘Lead us then, pathfinder.’

Za’tenga gave him a concerned look, but Har’gaan waved it away.

‘I can make the climb.’

He did not look convinced, nor did Kade.

Pulling his knife from the serrwyrm’s corpse, Va’lin wondered how many more of the creatures he would need to kill before he found the aspirants. Together with the one festering in his wake, this made four he had killed since entering the fire canyon. A few stragglers roused to the surface by the quakes he could cope with, an entire herd might prove fatal. He needed to move faster but the air was thoroughly clouded with smoke now; it was a struggle to see let alone get a bearing. Weaponry was something else he had to consider. The last pair of serrwyrms were caught unawares, gutted to conserve ammunition, but once the creatures realised there was another predator in their midst they might be more cautious, even gang up. They were hunting, but not for him. Following a trail left by their kin, Va’lin reasoned. That rationale brought some hope. The aspirants must be close.

If this rescue was going to succeed they would have to be. Conditions were worsening by the minute. Great sections of the canyon were shearing off and collapsing, sealing off routes but creating others. The tectonic shifts were often seen rather than heard, as the smoke occluded everything except for what was right in front of him. After every step Va’lin strained to hear the cracking of rock that presaged another landslide or chasmal split in the earth underfoot, that deepening report of thunder too sustained, too heavy to be the storm overhead. It was an ever-changing labyrinth filled with fire and smoke.

For the first time, Va’lin considered the fact he might have made an error. Even with a Scout’s enhanced senses, navigation was proving difficult. Soon it would be impossible. If that happened before he and the aspirants were out of the fire canyon, they would all be dead. So much for reckless heroism.

Va’lin was not a Nocturnean, not by birth. He had become one, a colonist in many ways, rescued from the world of Scoria by Ba’ken and the Third Company. Those warriors had changed much in the intervening years between then and now. Many were dead, killed on Va’lin’s birth-world or lost to the dragon-strife that came after. He had always felt himself inferior because of that, because he wasn’t Nocturnean. His skin was not as dark, nor would it ever be, and his eyes would not burn as fiercely as his battle-brothers’. Va’lin had resolved that his spirit would have to blaze brighter to compensate. His deeds would have to be greater. But as he knelt by the serrwyrm carcass, trying to draw breath, failing to get his bearings, he wondered at the folly of those convictions.

Doubt is the enemy of action.

Va’lin recalled the words from one of Chaplain Elysius’s sermons, a mantra often echoed by his sergeant and captain. Despair now, falter even one step, and the fire canyon would claim him. No cremation in the pyreum, no ceremony at Mount Deathfire. The Circle of Fire would be broken and Va’lin lost to the earth like ash carried away on a bitter breeze.

It could not happen that way. He could not believe he had been saved all those years ago to die such an ignominious death now.

Another tremor shook the earth.

Va’lin took it and rose up.

Ahead, flames crackled and roared in a fog of smoke and drifting ash that layered the ground in a false wintery shroud. White above, white below, like an artist’s canvas that had no borders or end. As the ash rain continued to fall, coating Va’lin and his armour, he considered that soon he would be part of the endless white, subsumed into the fire canyon and never seen again.

Ask for forgiveness later.

That was one of Captain Ba’ken’s favourite phrases. It meant that it was better to act in error than not act when action was required.

Surrounded by the white, action was definitely required.

Trusting to instinct, Va’lin hurried on through the farinaceous haze.

It wasn’t long before he was rewarded for his boldness as a monolithic pillar, blackened by fire but still standing, resolved through the perfect gloom. Recognising the rock, Va’lin realised he had veered off course, but only slightly. The aspirants were heading north, and he had planned on intercepting them on a south-west heading. The rock was a nodal point, a milestone at which he could rally and strategise his next move. What was more, there were handholds and, about a hundred metres up, a short ledge where he could better survey the canyon. It rose above the cloud layer, beyond the grasp of the flames. A hard climb up a razor-edged cliff, but the vantage he would gain would be worth the effort.

It took several minutes for Va’lin to scale the flank of the pillar, the tectonic booms of thunder, the shifting of the rock his constant companions and a stark reminder of how close death really was. A single slip and it would all be over. Swinging up to the last handhold, Va’lin clambered onto the ledge. The storm raged overhead, splitting the clouds above with eldritch-looking lightning that formed shapes of monsters and daemons in his mind’s eye. They were neither, and Va’lin shook his head to banish the apparations plaguing him. As he stooped low to secure his footing and stabilised his centre of gravity, the reek of soot clung to his nostrils and made him gag. After hacking up a black, phlegmy gob, he peered into the smoke.

It was burning beyond the white of the canvas. A billowing grey sea, lit by flares of fire, spread out in all directions. Where he caught the impression of a throbbing red-orange smear, Va’lin knew there was a lava chasm. Fingers of rock, not unlike the one on which he perched, stabbed up from the fog but were little more than sharp peaks gesturing accusingly at a careless sky. The aspirants could not have climbed them.

Reaching into his webbing, Va’lin took out a pair of folded scopes. He extended them, snapped on the activation rune and began cycling through the ocular settings. There was too much visible light to make night vision useful and thermal imaging would prove difficult given the waves of heat coming off the canyon, but with some adjustment Va’lin could at least penetrate the smoke layer. The rock formations below the grey fog resolved in a ruddy blur allowing Va’lin to trace a route through them. He found the bottleneck where he was originally going to intercept the aspirants below, but the route was blocked by a shelf of collapsed rock.

Va’lin cursed loudly. His task had just become many times more difficult.

He retrained the scopes, panning them farther back, trying to imagine the alternative path the aspirants might have taken. A vast lake of fire was burning in a wide basin that stretched the length of the canyon at one of its widest points. Temperature readings were spiking into the red zone of his scopes. There was no way they could have taken that route.

He went back farther still and after a few seconds found a narrow channel running up one side of the canyon to the west. It was a short climb up onto a ledge that looked as if it wound all the way around the flames until it reached the other side. If they were alive, that was where the aspirants would have gone.

Snapping the scopes shut, Va’lin secured them back in his webbing and was about to retrace his steps when something hit the tower of rock. It shuddered as if it had been smacked by a mortar barrage. Va’lin stumbled and fell into a deeper crouch so he didn’t come off the ledge and plummet to certain doom on the crags below. The pillar trembled as a dull cracking sound presaged its collapse. A subterranean tremor must have dislodged it, compromised its integrity like a tree severed at its base. Even as he wracked his brain for an escape plan, the angle was shifting, tipping to the left as gravity exerted its will upon Va’lin’s now precarious vantage point. He went against it, running up the ledge that was now a steep incline, getting steeper by the second.

Hurling himself over the edge that up until that moment had been the pillar’s flat summit, Va’lin found whatever handholds he could, half scaling, half falling. He had not scrambled far when he lost his grip, the rock disintegrating in his grasp, and he fell. Something sharp pierced his lower back as he bounced off the side of the pillar, and he cried out. Thrusting up a hand, he arrested his descent for a second before losing his grip again. He tumbled, pinwheeling as his axes became inverted and then righted themselves again.

Another hard jolt. Pain flared in his side. Part of his carapace armour was ripped off as his shoulder was raked against crags of jutting rock. He rolled, smacked against the crumbling pillar and tasted blood in his mouth, his world a kaleidoscope of smoke and fire. Briefly, he found some purchase under foot. Stumbling and staggering as the vertical plane he had scaled rapidly became horizontal, Va’lin tried to make what ground he could before even that disappeared beneath him and he was cast down into abyssal darkness and consuming flame.

Ba’ken saw the pillars collapse from the pilot’s seat of the speeder. They had slowed to cruising speed and were coming around to the northernmost edge of the fire canyon at last, the one that faced Mount Deathfire in the distance. Over twenty kilometres wide, the edge of the slowly crumbling chasm had several exits that led into the deeper Scorian Plain beyond. With their instrumentation ruined by the storm, it would be impossible to know which, if any, Va’lin had taken.

‘Something in the dunes, captain,’ Exor said, pointing, failing to keep the alarm from his voice.

Ba’ken hadn’t been looking farther out, his attention was focused solely on the fire canyon itself. Now he shifted his gaze, he saw what Exor had discovered.

He counted three bodies, barely visible, half buried in the sand.

Without a word, he pulled the speeder into an aggressive turn, belatedly muttering, ‘Hold on,’ as Exor was almost thrown from his seat and into the rollcage above.

As they got closer, Ba’ken eased the throttle. The pitiable corpses were too slight, too small to be Fire-born.

‘Pilgrims,’ said the captain, uttering a quiet benediction. It was no more than he had suspected when none of the baggage trains had returned. Casting his eye farther still, he found the rest, not far ahead but their bodies were sunk deeper.

‘They were fools,’ said Exor, rueful.

Ba’ken replied, ‘The earth will reclaim them and the Circle of Fire will turn.’

‘Into fire and ash…’ said the Scout, his voice trailing off with his thoughts.

‘As we’ll all become in the end,’ added Ba’ken fatalistically, turning them around so they faced towards the fire canyon again.

Close up it was impressive, almost god-like in its power and violent majesty.

Huge plumes of smoke, ash and fire were billowing from the mouth of the gorge like hot breaths exhaled by some monster of Nocturnean myth. The shattered spines of rock were its broken fangs, the canyon itself its belly, thrashing in its death throes. If Emek had lived, Ba’ken believed the Apothecary would have found something poetic about its self-destructive beauty.

The four aspirants were suddenly of much lesser concern. Somewhere in the darkness and conflagration was Va’lin.

‘What could live in that?’ asked Exor, the implication obvious.

Ba’ken answered with an order: ‘Hand me the scope.’

Even with its enhanced magnification and visual filters, the captain could see little beyond the canyon’s maw.

He dared not get too close, the speeder was already taking hits from the debris kicked up by the storm. Within its immediate radius, there was no way of telling where another quake might split the earth or if a giant tremor was about to sunder the entire canyon and consume it whole. He smashed his fist against the console making the seismic returns shudder, crackle out of focus and then fizzle back again.

Ba’ken opened up the comm-feed. ‘Argos, how long will this helstorm last?’

There was a short delay before the Forge Master replied, ‘Impossible to predict with any certainty. It could be hours or even days, but that is the nature of the trial and the anvil upon which would-be Fire-born are tempered.’

‘One of my Scouts is in there. Va’lin.’

‘The Scorian?’ It was more of a statement than a question but Argos phrased it like one anyway.

‘Yes.’

‘There are no search teams, no reinforcements close enough to assist you in time, brother-captain.’ Another statement as Argos did the only thing he really could, relate facts. His last comment was knowingly facile. ‘You are on your own.’

Ba’ken laughed ruefully, ‘We’ve been on our own since Isstvan, Forge Master. Every fire-born son of Nocturne knows that. Surviving on our own with our guts ripped out is what we Salamanders do best.’

‘You have a certain way of expressing yourself, Sol.’ Though he couldn’t see him, Ba’ken thought he detected a rare smile in Argos’s voice as he used the captain’s given first name. It fled quickly as he gave his final statement.

‘The chances of Va’lin’s survival are minimal according to the readings I am seeing. So too your aspirants.’ Another pause, this time not caused by static but by the Forge Master’s desire to find the appropriate emotional response. ‘I am sorry, brother-captain.’

‘No you’re not, Argos, but the gesture is appreciated nonetheless. Ba’ken out.’ He cut the feed, let the speeder idle along in silence for a few more seconds.

‘I should not have let him go,’ Ba’ken berated. ‘A death sentence, he said it himself.’

‘Va’lin is the most resourceful warrior I know in the Seventh,’ said Exor. ‘If there is a way to make it out of the fire canyon, he will find it.’

The speeder came to a halt, hovering just beyond the storm’s edges and minimum safe distance.

‘And that is the problem, Exor.’ Ba’ken glowered and the hard crags of his face bunched together in a fist of black rock. He paused for a beat, thinking. ‘Phosphor-flares. Now. Stake them as close as you can and at every possible aperture out of that hell hole.’

Exor unclipped his gunner’s harness and climbed over into the speeder’s troop hold. A satchel of flares was slung over his shoulder when he touched down on the plain.

‘Plant them deep. Do it fast,’ snapped Ba’ken, watching the Scout go to work. ‘I’ll drive around, see if the view is any better farther along.’

As the speeder started up again, he snarled, angry. At the wastefulness of it all, at Va’lin, at himself.

‘Impetuous fool. If he does live through this, I’ll bloody kill him myself.’

Gunning the engines, Ba’ken drove the speeder around the other side of the canyon in the desperate hope of finding a way through.

Illion’s wounded hand made the climb more difficult. It was tough already but the pathfinder was determined not to let something as inconsequential as pain slow him down. His bindings, laced with morphia gel from his modest field kit, took the edge off but only so he wouldn’t pass out. Slight, perhaps; young, most certainly, Illion had survived against the odds – his facial scars were a daily reminder of that – and he wasn’t about to relinquish the life he had been given easily.

‘Which way?’ he heard the Themian ask from below.

Illion was barely holding on with both hands, so he nodded up to the natural causeway he had found in the canyon’s flank and hoped Kade would catch on.

He did. The Themian ate up the ground like a rathlyd, except where the lizard would have employed its subcutaneous hook-talons, Kade used hands the size of spades to make his ascent. Prodigious climbing ability was not the only thing he had in common with that saurian species, Illion decided as he climbed up after the barbarian. The Themian was cold-blooded too. Yes, he had undeniable fire, the kind of focused rage and overconfidence that all great warriors possessed, but Illion reasoned he would find a fount of ice running through Kade’s veins if he were ever cut deep enough.

The pathfinder was still considering that when he saw a brawny hand outstretched above him, offering aid. The grip around his good wrist that seized him a moment later was like a manacle of iron.

Kade hauled him up the rest of the way as if he weighed no more than a child.

‘Good, pathfinder?’ the Themian asked, crouched on haunches like girders of plasteel.

Illion nodded, grateful for the assist.

Perhaps he isn’t cold as nuclear winter after all…

A few minutes later, Har’gaan and Za’tenga reached the summit.

Illion could perform very basic battlefield surgery but it didn’t take a medicae to know that Har’gaan was in a bad way. The blisters on his back and shoulder were red-raw and seeping. Infection was almost certain, though the worst of it was obviously cauterised by the heat. Sweat, and not from the external heat, was beading Har’gaan’s brow and his eyelids flickered. He was barely on the edge of consciousness.

A rough hand seized Illion’s shoulder, the manacle becoming a clamp that bit down with iron fingers.

‘We follow it, then where?’

Kade had entered a sort of catatonic survival mode. He was so calm, it was actually terrifying. They would need that impervious strength and resolve to make it the rest of the way out of the fire canyon.

Illion dared not make him wait for an answer.

He nodded. ‘Follow the causeway,’ he confirmed. ‘In about thirty metres it hooks to the left and then angles downwards another ten or so. Keep flat to the wall and be mindful of your footing, the ledge is very narrow in places.’

‘Then where?’ It came out as a demand not a question. Kade’s fists bunched around the stock of his combat shotguns but he had at least released his grip on Illion’s shoulder. If not, he might have crushed his collar bone.

‘Keeps descending, down into a shallow basin of rock, I think. Couldn’t read it that well through the smoke.’

Kade regarded the pathfinder for a few more seconds, as if gauging whether he was satisfied with his guide’s assessment. In the end he turned away and started off down the causeway. ‘Follow, pathfinder,’ he called behind him.

‘Something has happened to him,’ said Za’tenga in a low voice.

Illion nodded to the other warrior at his shoulder then asked, ‘Har’gaan?’

Za’tenga was about to shake his head when Har’gaan staggered past them both.

‘Come on,’ he said, grimacing. ‘We are not dead yet.’ Har’gaan glanced over his shoulder, but his gaze went beyond the other two aspirants and he scowled. ‘We need to move. Now.’

Illion turned.

Fear had spurred Har’gaan’s limbs into a final desperate act of motion.

The aspirants were not the only ones seeking a way around the sea of fire. Three sinuous bodies, low against the sheer rock and climbing swiftly, followed them. The serrwyrms had caught up with their prey.

‘Down!’ Kade’s shout was almost as loud as his twin shotgun blasts as a storm of shrapnel erupted from their mouths. The muzzle flare was brief but sharp, so too the lead serrwyrm’s death scream as it plummeted off the fire canyon’s flank with only half a head.

The big Themian racked another shell into the breech. He was stalking forwards along the causeway, the others flat against it, advancing on the creatures.

‘Fight or die!’ he roared, triggering the cannons again, this time at a second pair who were scaling down the canyon’s summit from above.

Three las-carbines answered as the rest of the aspirants combined their fire to take down a third creature. Throughout the barrage, the serrwyrms slithered and weaved, and the fire canyon continued to break apart.

‘We cannot stay here and fight them all off.’ Illion had adopted a kneeling stance with the end of the carbine’s stock tucked into his armpit, up into the shoulder to better absorb recoil. Every shot was accurate, he had some skill as a marksman, but the serrwyrm’s chitinous armour was thick. Most of his shots were ineffective.

Behind him, Kade grunted.

‘How many left?’ he growled between shotgun blasts.

‘At least three, but there could be more,’ shouted Illion.

Za’tenga slammed home a fresh clip. ‘Last one,’ he said, reading off the dwindling ammo count. ‘Not enough to fend them off. We need a different strategy.’

‘I would suggest running,’ said Illion.

A few short metres separated them from the serr-wyrms now. Only the fact that the canyon was shaking so violently had prevented the creatures from springing at the aspirants, and bearing them down to feast upon.

‘Agreed,’ said Kade.

Before he turned, Illion caught the look in the Themian’s eyes and perceived the cold survival logic there. From this point, whoever was the fastest would live. Stronger, uninjured, more sure-footed than the rest, Kade was in the best position.

But despite the pathfinder’s expectations, the Themian didn’t take the lead. Instead he went to Har’gaan who was barely holding himself upright against the trembling canyon wall.

‘Go!’ Kade barked at the others, ‘I will carry him.’ He heaved Har’gaan up one-handed, keeping his other hand free to fire the shotgun. His aim was wild but the large bursts compensated. ‘Go!’

Illion ran, Za’tenga, who seemed reluctant to leave Har’gaan behind, in front.

‘Don’t look back,’ he shouted ahead, but risked a glance over his own shoulder.

For the second time in almost as many minutes, Illion’s expectations were confounded. He thought he would see Kade’s back, the Themian manfully retreating along the causeway by degrees, Har’gaan slung over his shoulder like a sandbag.

Har’gaan wasn’t slumped over Kade’s shoulder. He was kneeling in front of him, the big Themian’s arm around his neck. He was whispering something to him. That struck Illion as odd; he didn’t think Kade was capable of whispering.

Just as he began to turn away, Illion saw movement. A savage twist, Kade releasing Har’gaan’s limp body to the ground where he kicked it forwards like an offering.

Then he ran.

Illion fought every instinct to cry out Har’gaan’s name for to do so would only seal his own fate. Something cold crept into his gut as he looked away at last, Kade leaving behind a feast for the serrwyrms after all. Before the Themian caught up, Illion gripped Za’tenga’s arm. As instructed, he had not looked back but needed to be warned about what the pathfinder had witnessed.

‘Keep your eyes ahead,’ Illion hissed, as loud as he dared, maintaining pace with Za’tenga so as not to throw them both off balance. ‘Har’gaan didn’t make it.’

Za’tenga almost turned out of shock but stopped just short. He stumbled but only a little, and kept his footing.

‘What? How?’

Kade provided the answer, bellowing from close behind.

‘Make haste. Our brother’s sacrifice will only buy us a little time.’

Illion felt Za’tenga stiffen in his grasp. He let go, numb at what the Themian had done to ensure their survival.

‘He killed him, didn’t he,’ said Za’tenga.

‘Yes.’

They reached the first descent, scurrying on hands and knees through the smoke-choked causeway. The second descent was sharper. At the front, Za’tenga nearly fell but Illion grasped the strap of his chest armour and righted him enough so the aspirant could regain his balance.

‘Gratitude, brother.’

‘Just keep going.’

Shuddering cracks, the wrench of stone splitting apart pursued them like a vengeful spirit as the causeway and the entire flank of the canyon started to disintegrate.

‘Move!’ Illion almost screamed, his eyes on Za’tenga’s back, feeling burning heat prickling the skin of his own. Lava crackled, the slow, deep snap of sloughing rock as it was dissolved in a glowing soup of immolation. A thick sheaf of the canyon wall slid away, crashing down amidst a rapidly expanding pall of smoke and blazing debris.

Illion was heading down, risking sure footing for a better chance of escaping the dissolution of the earth behind him. An ululating screech pierced the volcanic thunder and he stooped, not slowing, fearing a return of the mantarids. But the flyers were gone, fled beyond the storm and the hellish red clouds enveloping the canyon. It was the serrwyrms, burned away despite their chitinous armour. From his father Illion had heard of creatures on Nocturne, those of the low earth who could survive the lava lakes, even live in them, but serrwyrms were not that enduring. He gave brief praise to the Throne and Vulkan that at least one terror had been vanquished by another.

Now they merely had to survive the wrath of the mountain itself.

A second prayer of deliverance was quick to pass his lips.

After another fifty metres it appeared his supplication was answered when the aspirants reached a basin of ash and smouldering cinder, the pyroclastic leavings from the volcano venting above.

Kade was last to arrive, defying Illion’s hope that he had perished with the other predators. Behind him, most of the canyon wall had collapsed into a fresh sea of lava but the destruction had abated. Revelling in his survival, the Themian angled his head up to let the drifting flakes of grey-white touch his face. His laughter then was booming and terrible. As he looked down to regard the others, he looked like a ghost swathed in powdered bone.

‘I snapped his neck,’ he told them, the shotguns hanging by a strap over his shoulder an unspoken threat. There was no remorse in his expression, all the humour had faded too and a face of ice looked on at them. ‘Har’gaan was a dead man walking. His sacrifice meant we could live.’

For a moment no one moved or spoke, despite the fact that any delay could mean their deaths, and the rumble of the storm persisted violently in the void they had left.

Za’tenga’s teeth were clenched. His fist wrapped around the hunting knife sheathed at his belt. The carbine was dry, clutched by the stock in his other hand like a club.

Kade took a step forwards in a very deliberate, silent challenge. The hot coals crunched underfoot. He gestured to the knife Za’tenga was obviously thinking about drawing.

‘Do you know where that knife was made, where it comes from?’ he asked calmly, then without waiting for an answer, he continued. ‘I shall tell you. It is Themian, from the City of Warrior Kings.’ Kade bowed his head just slightly and his eyes seemed to darken. ‘My city.’

Za’tenga pulled the knife a thumb width from its sheath, exposing the silver of the blade. It shone red against the flames as if already blooded.

In the end, Illion put out his hand and laid it on top of Za’tenga’s.

‘No, brother,’ he told him simply.

It took a few seconds, but Za’tenga let go.

Kade didn’t smile, satisfied he had convinced the other man to back down; he didn’t do anything until Za’tenga’s back was turned. Then he raised the shotguns.

‘I only need you, pathfinder…’

Illion flung his knife. He threw it as hard and fast as he could, spinning it tip over hilt in little blinding circles of fiery silver.

Kade saw it late, not predicting that the pathfinder had the guts to turn and fight him. He cried, twisting too slowly as the knife found the meat of his thigh and dug deep. A second later, the shotguns went off but Za’tenga had gone to ground and the blast only peppered air, not flesh.

‘Murdering bastard!’ Za’tenga was scrabbling to his feet, half slipping on ash and cinder. His wounded leg wasn’t helping. With blackened knuckles, he gripped his knife hilt and yanked it free… Then stopped. Two barrels from a conjoined combat shotgun were staring him in the eyes.

Illion was halfway to them when he saw the moment and froze. He held out his hand, so did Za’tenga.

‘Enough blood,’ said the pathfinder, his tone pleading. ‘Enough has been shed already. Why can’t we all live?’

Za’tenga put the knife down. He did it slowly, careful to show Kade the blade.

‘Only the strong will live,’ said the Themian, ‘the weak will perish against the anvil.’ He looked down at Za’tenga’s leg. ‘And you are weakened, my friend.’

Kade looked up. ‘I need only you, pathfinder.’

As the shot sounded, Illion closed his eyes tight. When he opened them again the Themian’s body was a ragged, half-destroyed mess. Most of his legs were intact, the shell had hit him in the torso, pushing him back with the sheer force of the impact and then detonating inside his body. Internal organs, bone, it was hard to discern amidst the ruddy pile of viscera Kade had become. His head was several metres away, torn off his neck during the explosion.

Illion fought down an urge to vomit.

Za’tenga had already been sick all over the front of his fatigues.

Both turned to see a tall figure emerging from the smoke and drifting ash. The warrior looked battered, his armour broken and his trappings torn. He held a stocky looking pistol in his outstretched hand and his eyes were like two burning coals.

‘Come with me and you’ll live,’ said the newcomer, looking past them. Illion turned to see several slithering bodies, just burrowed up from the earth.

But this time the serrwyrms were not hunting. They were fleeing.

Above, the mountain roared, unhappy the insects scurrying in its fire-wreathed canyons had survived its wrath. It vented harder, as if trying to redress the oversight.

‘You know what this is?’ Va’lin asked one of the aspirants whilst on the move, a hawkish-looking boy with an old scar across his face.

He nodded. ‘A bolt pistol.’

‘Very good,’ Va’lin handed the weapon to him. ‘Keep it close and shoot two-handed. Try it in one and you’ll dislocate your shoulder, at best. It’s not meant for normal humans.’

Normal humans.

The expression had come unbidden and even though Va’lin’s transhuman apotheosis was in its relative infancy he could no longer be classed as merely ‘human’. The realisation was as chilling as it was empowering.

‘It will kick,’ he warned. ‘Use it to kill those bastards if they get too close.’

The fleeing serrwyrms were shadowing them, trying to escape the fire canyon’s fury just like their former prey. Shadows, all sinuous and fleet of claw, appeared sporadically through the ash drifts, a reminder that they were not alone.

‘Are they still a threat?’ asked the other aspirant. ‘I thought you said they were running, like us?’

This one was taller, stronger, though not nearly as big as the Themian Va’lin had been forced to put down. He would have to explain that to Ba’ken later, why he had shot dead one of his fellow tribesmen. The other aspirant had the regal bearing of a noble; he was definitely from Hesiod.

A bark of fire ripped from the bolt pistol’s muzzle and the lead serrwyrm backed off.

‘There’s your answer,’ said Va’lin, glad to see the slighter aspirant was still on his feet and still running.

‘If they want to get ahead of us, they won’t go around,’ Va’lin told the other. ‘They’ll come through us with tooth and claw. Try running with a maimed leg or your guts hanging from your stomach.’

That silenced the noble. He carried a knife, Va’lin had nothing else to spare. His bolter was the last of his weapons that had survived the fall and he wasn’t about to part with it. He doubted the boy could fire it and not cave in most of his ribcage with the recoil anyway.

Again, Va’lin was reminded of his enhanced physiology. Soon it would be strengthened further, by the black carapace and the fusion of flesh to power armour. That was if they could escape the storm.

Darkness was gathering thickly, the smoke almost impenetrable. Breathing was difficult, even for Va’lin. The aspirants suffered badly. In a few short minutes, they had lost sight of the serrwyrms. Dead or fled elsewhere, it didn’t matter. The mouth of the canyon could be mere metres away, but they would never know. From his eidetic memory of its original geography, modified by what little information he had gleaned whilst crouching on the pillar of rock, Va’lin knew there were several routes out of the fire canyon. Even if, by some freak of fortune, Ba’ken found the right one there was no guarantee they would see his signal.

Kilometres across, swathed in ever expanding black, they might as well have been in an ocean.

Slowing down, beckoning the others to do the same, Va’lin pulled three phosphor-flares from his webbing. When broken off at the tip, they burned magnesium-white and were the best chance they had of someone seeing them from beyond the storm.

‘Can you throw?’ he asked the Hesiod noble.

‘With a javelin, at gnaw-squid in the Acerbian Sea. But yes, I can throw.’

Snapping off the end where it blazed in a riot of pellucid white, Va’lin handed him one of the flares and pointed to the east. ‘As far and deep as you can.’

The noble was true to his word, the flare cutting through the smoke in a dazzling parabola, landing somewhere just beyond the sixty-metre mark where it continued to burn and became a beacon in the smog.

The other two flew farther, cast by Va’lin. One disappeared, swallowed by lava or simply plunged into a gaping crevice. The other flickered briefly and died.

‘We follow yours, aspirant.’ Va’lin nodded, indicating the wan magnesium glow in the distance. ‘And hope for solid ground between us and it.’

‘I am Za’tenga,’ said the noble, holding out his hand.

Briefly they had stopped running. Not to catch a breath, for there was precious little of that remaining, but to try and get some kind of bearing. It was like running in the void with only the illusion of solidity beneath them to tell up from down.

Va’lin looked down at the aspirant’s hand. It was bloody, soot-smeared and painfully small compared to his own. So used was he to only being with his battle-brothers, even as a Scout, he had forgotten some of the simple interactions that came with dealing with mortals. He clasped the human’s forearm and held it firmly.

Za’tenga reciprocated. ‘If we are to live or die here,’ he said, coughing hard through his words but determined to say them, ‘then I would prefer you to know my name.’

‘Va’lin,’ the Scout replied, releasing his grip.

Za’tenga half turned, ‘And he is… Illion!’

The hawkish aspirant had collapsed, his lungs finally giving in to the soot and smoke.

Za’tenga tried to help his comrade before he too was overcome by the fumes.

Va’lin was impressed they had lasted this long. To have endured such a trial of fire and lived to almost the end of it.

He fell to one knee, his wounds getting the better of him or perhaps some latent effect of the serrwyrm venom his immune system had failed to fully neutralise.

‘Vulkan…’ he snarled, getting to his feet and staggering over to the aspirants.

He hauled them both onto his shoulders, carrying them like ammo drums for an autocannon.

‘Don’t let go,’ he told them through a cage of teeth.

Weak beyond the facility to walk, both aspirants had enough presence of mind left to seize the straps of the Scout’s armour with every last iota of strength they possessed.

The glow of the phosphor-flare was dwindling, but Va’lin was fading too. He tried to deny it but the fall, his wound, the endless smoke and ash were all taking a toll.

‘I must endure…’ Va’lin muttered, trudging weary steps towards the slowly dying light.

If he could just reach it, find a way out.

‘Vulkan…’

The flare died, the last of its fire sucked away on the breeze and obliterated by thickening smoke.

He had been so close. Va’lin could almost see the edge of the fire canyon but now it was lost to him, so too his sense of direction. Like a drowning man in the mist, metres from a shore he couldn’t see, Va’lin was lost.

He trudged on a few more steps as the last vestiges of his defiance bled from him leaving a well of pain, rage and anguish.

Throwing back his head, he roared to curse the heavens. ‘Vulkan!’

Something blazed in the darkness, scarcely bright enough to see at first, let alone follow.

Va’lin squinted, dredging up every last mote of concentration and presence he had left.

The flare brightened. It became a surging flame, a firebrand guiding him towards safety.

‘Ba’ken.’ His mountainous captain had found him. In spite of all the odds, he had located Va’lin and come into the fire canyon to drag him out.

As he came closer, Va’lin could just about make out a shadowy silhouette through the smoke. It was beckoning, urging the Scout to move faster.

‘You may be able to haul two dead weights and still sprint across the Scorian,’ Va’lin muttered breathlessly, ‘but I am not fashioned like a slab of the mountainside.’

Every step he took brought him out of the grey dark. Smoke thinned, tectonic thunder lessened, left behind in the fire canyon’s death throes, the ash rain faded.

Vision dimming, the figure in front of him resolving in a green and blue haze before fading again, Va’lin slumped first to his knees and then fell forwards, gratefully kissing the earth. A different kind of blackness took him them, one born of exhaustion and pain.

‘Rest,’ he heard Ba’ken say in a voice that was not entirely the captain’s.

Va’lin opened his eyes and found he could breathe. Sitting up sharply, he went to his weapons, drawing his bolter, but he found no enemies nearby. Smoke thronged the air, tinged with orange and red from the still burning fire canyon. It had collapsed into a massive sink hole of lava and ash, but the worst of the helstorm was over and they were away from danger.

There was no sign of the speeder, Exor or Ba’ken. He was alone with the two aspirants.

Getting up to check on them, Va’lin found they were still unconscious but alive.

Standing from a crouched position, the Scout looked around. He was in some kind of shallow sand basin, the edges of which were delineated by stone totems etched in Nocturnean script. Channels of lava threaded the desert surrounding it and a strange katabatic wind, redolent of soot and ash, rolled around the landscape with the basin at the heart of this bizarre maelstrom.

‘What is this place?’ he asked himself.

Even with the absence of any other statuary or altar, Va’lin saw enough to know he was in a shrine.

His twin hearts produced a hard single beat that sent a tremor of realisation through his body.

Frantic now, he searched the entire basin. It was more than thirty metres across in all directions. At the approximate centre he found a sigil scorched into the earth. Though the ash drifts and dunes of sand spilled across the plains with great regularity, this patch of the Scorian remained untouched and unsullied. Belatedly, Va’lin realised the mark was not a sigil at all but a silhouette of a human body, a Salamander to be precise.

He knelt down, stretched out a trembling hand to touch the mark.

There was heat, a dense throb of heat but a coldness too in spite of it, endless as the stars themselves. Va’lin was no psyker, his training and relentless mental conditioning had revealed nothing of the warp within him, but he felt… a presence here. An undeniable sense of spirit and existence dwelled within that mark.

He stood up, looked around, surveyed the edge of the sand basin but could see no farther than the totems. Smoke surrounded them on all sides, occluding the desert beyond. It was like being trapped beyond time.

‘Da–’ he began to call, but then thought better of it.

Something was burning. He heard the crackle of fire, the snap of smouldering wood. Ahead, in place of one of the totems, was a firebrand, the one they had followed to this place which had led them safely from the canyon and saved their lives.

Va’lin was about to go to it when he heard Illion stirring. Za’tenga alongside him coughed up a wad of black phlegm and the Scout was reminded that the survival of the aspirants was even now not guaranteed.

For the second time, he hauled them up onto his shoulders. As he trudged from the shrine circle, pausing briefly at the flickering brand, scared to touch it should it be proven false and Va’lin’s mind broken, Za’tenga muttered, ‘Are we dead?’

‘No,’ Va’lin told him, eyes forward as they parted the veil of smoke. ‘Not yet, at least.’

For several minutes, Va’lin walked through a grey miasma, not knowing where he was going but somehow assured he was on the right path. And as mist parts from the surface of a cooling lake, the veil thinned and they returned to the Scorian Plain. Over a shallow rise they found the speeder. Captain Ba’ken was standing in the pilot’s seat, panning the length of the desert with his scope.

When he saw them, he dropped back down and the guttural engines revved hard. Within a few seconds, he and Exor were with them, rushing from the transport to take Va’lin’s mortal burden and secure them in the troop hold.

While Exor provided what little medical attention they had packed with them in the speeder, Ba’ken stood with Va’lin a few metres from where they had set down.

‘I thought the earth had claimed you,’ he said without emotion, though Va’lin could tell he was holding back his anger and his relief.

‘For a few moments back in the canyon, I thought it had too.’

A minute of silence passed between them with the dull throb of the idling Land Speeder the only sound.

‘You should not have lived,’ Ba’ken said. He was stating a fact, based on the evidence of his eyes and his knowledge as a captain of the Salamanders. ‘When that canyon collapsed, you should not have lived. It isn’t possible.’

Va’lin opened his arms. ‘And yet here I stand. Alive.’

Ba’ken’s gaze flicked to the back of the speeder where Exor was engrossed in his work.

‘I cannot decide whether it was recklessness or insane bravery,’ admitted the captain. ‘But they too will probably live,’ he turned to face Va’lin again, ‘thanks to you.’

The Scout bowed his head.

‘You are leaving my company,’ said Ba’ken.

‘Yes, brother-captain.’

‘And you will join the Devastators, along with Exor. Can I be certain you won’t be as reckless again?’

Va’lin opened his mouth to speak but Ba’ken raised his hand to prevent him.

‘No need to answer. I already know you will. In donning the black carapace you’ll become a battle-brother, one knuckled finger of two clenched fists.’

‘I will serve with honour and duty until death, captain.’

Ba’ken nodded but his thoughts had strayed to other matters as he turned away to face the now quiescent Mount Deathfire.

‘What happened out on the plain? Where did you go, Va’lin?’

The Scout looked up to find his captain looking straight at him.

‘I don’t know.’

He was tempted to try and retrace his steps, to locate the shrine for some kind of answer that made sense, but a part of Va’lin realised it would not be there, that hours of searching would not reveal it.

‘We were rescued,’ he conceded. ‘I was dying, and the smoke gathered so thick I couldn’t see. There was no way out and suddenly I saw it.’

‘Saw what?’

‘A firebrand. A flame to guide us out of the darkness and back into the desert.’

Ba’ken shook his head, denial and incredulity etched upon his features as if they had been chiselled there by Va’lin’s words.

‘I thought it was you, captain, come back to get us out, but it couldn’t have been.’

Ba’ken was staring, his mouth a hard line across his face as he clenched his teeth until the bone ground together.

‘Don’t say anything more,’ he told the Scout. ‘We’ll return to Hesiod, where you’ll be properly debriefed then the brander-priests will score you and prepare you for your apotheosis. That is all.’ He turned away and marched back to the speeder, a cloud thicker than the smoke of the fire canyon upon his face.

Va’lin met Exor as he was stepping out of the troop hold.

They embraced briefly, one glad to see the other alive and well.

‘I’ve made them comfortable,’ said Exor. ‘I assume you’ll want to ride back with them.’

Va’lin nodded, regarding the two slumbering aspirants he had risked so much to rescue.

‘Their life signs are good,’ Exor went on. ‘You saved them, brother.’

‘No I didn’t,’ Va’lin replied, ‘not really.’

Exor frowned. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I don’t know, brother. Define “all right”.’ He looked at him, and knew it was the hollowness in his eyes that Exor reacted to.

‘It is not unusual to be shaken after so close a brush with death.’ But Exor knew that wasn’t it. His face gave the assumption away immediately. ‘Did something happen in the fire canyon?’ he asked.

Va’lin nodded slowly, remembering but not understanding. The silhouetted figure holding the firebrand, its body clad in power armour. The shrine and the mark emblazoned in the earth.

‘It was the place where he died, Exor.’

‘What?’

‘Where he sacrificed everything for us.’

‘I don’t understand, Va’lin. What exactly did you see?’

‘A miracle, I think. Come back from the dead.’

Emperor’s Deliverance

Blood. There was too much blood.

Athena’s hands were slick with it, right up to the elbows. The crimson morass where she buried her fingers was a man’s chest, the ribs splintered and the organs exposed. She was searching for an artery. It was hard to find in all the viscera and vital fluid. Flickering lumen-strips overhead were weak and ineffective. Athena could barely see the novitiate beside her, handing over surgical tools. Betheniel was almost apologetic – the blades and saws were crude, woefully inadequate, but it was all they had at Emperor’s Deliverance. It was all anyone had in the shadow of Devil’s Ridge on the war-torn world of Armageddon.

Athena held out a steady, blood-soaked hand. She’d tried to wipe it on her smock but the nails were red-rimed, the gore so deeply ingrained it was like her skin was swathed in a patina of rust. With her other hand, she pinched the spewing artery.

‘Clamps, sister. Quickly now.’

An explosion overhead shook the roof of the infirmary, making the novitiate fumble. Some of the tools clattered noisily into the gloom, but she found the clamps.

Athena staunched the bleeding, muttering as she tied off the vein. ‘Fortunate that we don’t require the rib spreaders.’ Most of the man’s chest cavity was gone, torn out by a greenskin bomb. Part of his jaw was missing too.

She addressed Betheniel directly. ‘When a life is at stake we must show resolve, even in the face of danger. Those were Marauders overhead, our Imperial Navy bombers, heading for what’s left of Hades Hive.’

The novitiate nodded, contrite. She recoiled a moment later when Athena threw down a ragged piece of cloth she’d been using to clean her instruments.

‘Throne and Eye!’

‘What is it, sister? Have I done something wrong?’

‘Grant me the fortitude of Saint Katherine…’ she whispered, making the sign of the aquila for the blasphemous outburst. ‘No…’ Athena wiped a hand across her brow, smearing an incarnadine line in the sweat. ‘There’s nothing more we could’ve done.’ She deactivated the medi-cogitator next to the man’s bunk. Cardiac response was negative, blood pressure flat-lined. ‘He’s dead.’

A grey-haired orderly, cheeks peppered with stubble, emerged from the shadows and caught Athena’s attention. Sanson used to be a hiver, a low-labourer in the ‘sinks’ who’d made machine parts all the way into his middle years until Hades was sacked. Calm-headed and meticulous, he made a reliable orderly. He’d made his way quietly through the numerous groaning bodies, the blood and sweat-stained beds, the thousands of wounded that were pouring into the camp’s infirmary every single harrowing day.

‘They have arrived, sister.’

‘At the perimeter?’ Athena was removing her smock as she made for a small basin with its sub-standard sanitising spray and dermal-scrubbers. Two acolytes approached her from either side as she stooped to wash her grubby hands, and took off her medical fatigues. For a few moments, she was naked in the half-light – Athena had long since foregone modesty – until her handmaidens dressed her in white robes and gilded iconography.

When she faced Sanson she was a Sister Hospitaller again, officious and noble in the trappings of the Adepta Sororitas. She clutched a string of rosarius beads to her breast, the sigil of a burning candle swinging from the end. Ornamental armour clad her body, a slim silver breastplate and vambraces. Lastly, she drew a hood over her jet-black hair which was scraped back by scalp locks.

‘Across from the Eumenidies River, yes,’ replied the orderly. Sanson had kept his eyes low and his integrity intact.

A vox-radio was playing somewhere in the shadows. A trooper hunched over, listening to the propaganda messages with the volume turned low.

++…innocence does not exist, only degrees of guilt. Freedom must be earned, it must be fought for. Cowards, the weak and the impure do not deserve to live. Hades was lost on the backs of the craven. Armageddon will only be won by the strong. We of the Marines Malevolent will stand before this menace and we will–++

‘Turn that tripe off,’ Athena scowled at the trooper, a private called Kolber who was wise to do as she asked. ‘I’d rather listen to Yarrick espousing the virtues of resistance that listen to him.’ Captain Vinyar’s rhetoric was fleeting on the vox-band but his propaganda was always directed at the disparagement of the weak and their worthlessness to war.

Angry, she summoned Betheniel, who was attired in the less ostentatious garments of a novitiate. Head bowed, she followed her superior.

‘Shouldn’t this be brought to the attention of Colonel Hauptman?’ Sanson inquired of Athena’s back.

She paused momentarily. The colonel had been responsible for the protection of the camp. He was an officer of the Cadian Fifth, a good soldier and an honourable man who understood the plight of those who couldn’t fight for themselves.

‘Tell him yourself,’ she replied, disappearing into the dark. ‘He’s lying on that slab in front of you.’

With Elias Hauptman dead, it would fall to others to protect Emperor’s Deliverance. Athena saw them at the crest of a muddy rise, waiting at the perimeter of the camp. She tried not to think about the thousands of refugees from Hades Hive housed below her, the wounded and the inadequate block houses, the unsanitary conditions of her infirmary, the dead and the pits where she and the servitor units she was afforded had buried them. Disease and vermin were becoming a problem. She’d taken to carrying a shock maul with her when not in surgery and had a tally of bludgeoned sump rats to rival any hiver.

She felt Betheniel trembling beside her and briefly clutched her hand.

‘Have courage, sister. They are here to keep us safe.’

But as she regarded the towering knights in front of them, their weapons low-slung and ready, the kill-markings and the battered armour, Athena felt doubt… and fear.

There were two of them, both wearing the same gritty yellow and black battle-plate, a winged lightning-strike on their left shoulder guards. Both wore their battle-helms. One was beak-shaped and had been made to look like a shark’s mouth with teeth painted on either side of the cone; the other was plainer, stub-nosed with a vox-grille.

As she bowed, Athena felt their baleful stare and fought to keep the tremor from her voice.

‘I am Sister Superior Athena and this is my novitiate, Betheniel. I am pleased that such august warriors have deemed Emperor’s Deliverance worthy of their protection.’

‘We have not,’ the shark-faced one replied. He spoke flatly, but with an edge like that of the serrated blade scabbarded at his hip. He stepped forward, looking down on the woman at a sharper angle. The pectoral on his plastron read Nemiok in archaic script.

‘I don’t understand.’ There was steel in Athena’s eyes and a defiance that suggested she wouldn’t be cowed by these warriors.

The other spoke. His voice was grating but not as harsh as his comrade’s. ‘Our mission is to take and hold this river, the camp too. Nothing further.’ According to his battle-plate, his name was Varik.

‘So who is charged with defending the camp? I have over twelve thousand refugees, many of whom are wounded, not to mention another thousand Ministorum staff.’

Brother Nemiok leaned in, using all of his bulk and height to intimidate.

‘Look to yourselves, if you’re able.’ He glowered into the distance, unwilling to speak further on the matter.

Athena was shaking her head. Betheniel desperately wanted to leave and even risked pulling at her superior’s arm. She snatched her hand away again at the sister’s scathing glance, which was then turned on the Space Marines.

‘This is unacceptable. I will speak to Colonel Destrier about this–’

Nemiok swung his head around, the gears in his armour plate growling, ‘Begone! And pray the orks do not come.’

Despite herself, Athena backed away. Her heart was pounding. She could barely breathe. ‘I will at least know whom you serve.’

Varik replied before Nemiok decided to do something more than threaten.

‘Captain Vinyar of the Marines Malevolent. Now return to your camp and consider this a warning.’

The discussion was over. If she lingered, there would be violence. It practically exuded from the Space Marines. Betheniel was sobbing, scared to lift her eyes from their boots.

Athena had to help her novitiate back down the muddy slope. Even when they’d reached the relative safety of the camp, the sister superior was still shaking.

While Betheniel sipped from Private Kolber’s flask of grain liquor to steady her nerves, Athena listened to the vox-radio.

++…will not lie to you. We are experiencing Imperial losses in the Eumenidies region of the Diablo Mountains. But though we must surrender ground now, stand fast good citizens, for we shall gather our forces and reclaim it. Be vigilant. Greenskins are at the edge of the Diablo Mountains, but are unlikely to forge a crossing. Resist, fight and we shall win this war together.++

Yarrick’s bombast meant more refugees would be coming in. Athena looked at the ranks of beds and the already overcrowded conditions. Their ‘protectors’ were monsters, masquerading as heroes. She prayed to the Emperor for his mercy.

Nemiok was scouring the mountains for any sign of the orks, one hand on the stock of his combi-bolter as it hung by a strap from his shoulder.

‘Do not do that again, brother.’

Varik was cleaning the dirt from his chainblade and looked up. ‘Do what?’

‘Pander to that woman. She must be made to know her place. Remember your Chapter and duty…’ Nemiok paused to turn and meet his battle-brother’s fierce gaze, ‘…or I shall remind you of it.’

Chastened, Varik only nodded.

Nemiok went to the comm-feed in his ear and listened.

‘Mobile artillery is being moved in on the opposite side of the camp,’ he said a minute later. ‘It seems Captain Vinyar is planning on starting that push a little early.’

He smiled when he saw the tank column emerging from the cloud of dust opposite their sentry position, missile points glistening in the pale sun, but there was no mirth in it, no humour at all.

Rain at Emperor’s Deliverance was only good for washing away the blood. Even then it coalesced in the sink holes and basins of the camp, making the ground muddy and hard to traverse on foot or track. Ravines of the grisly matter ran thick and red, gumming up boots and thickening the air with a metallic smell.

Athena was out in the downpour wearing medical fatigues, having abandoned ceremony in favour of pragmatism. Betheniel was lagging behind on the slope, a storm cloak clutched tight around her tiny frame.

‘I need your help,’ she said to the Space Marine sentries, hoping her directness would get their attention.

Nemiok deigned to look at her. ‘Go on.’

‘The Salvation, it’s a medical transport, has broken down. They’re mired in the earth and have over five hundred wounded aboard. I need to get them to the infirmary as soon as possible. You are stronger than anyone in camp and could get us back on the road quickly. Not protection,’ she explained, showing her palms, ‘just saving lives.’

Nemiok waited. The rain drizzled down Athena’s face, saturating her clothes. She was shivering; so too was her half-drowned novitiate.

‘Please… I know I spoke out of turn yesterday, but it would not take long. I’m begging you. Help us.’

Slowly and deliberately, the Marines Malevolent removed his battle-helm and attached it to his belt by the neck strap. His eyes were pitiless, his mouth sneering. The rain lashed his horrible, scarred face and he did not move, he did not feel. It was like speaking to a slab of granite.

‘No. You can manage without us.’

‘Over five hundred wounded!’ she pleaded. ‘You can save them by doing this, at least give them a chance.’

The sneer turned into a scowl on Nemiok’s face. He drew his spatha. The jagged blade was almost black. No amount of scrubbing would remove the murder stains.

His voice lowered with implicit threat. ‘I abhor weakness.’

Beside him, Varik kept his helmet on and his eyes forwards.

‘What about you?’ Athena asked, ‘Won’t you help us, either?’

Nemiok snapped, snarling, ‘Don’t look to him! I speak for the Marines Malevolent. Go back and pray my mood stays this sanguine.’

Athena stormed off into the rain, catching up to Betheniel several metres farther down the slope.

She returned alone several hours later, bloodied and ragged with fatigue, but kept her distance. It was still raining, though the deluge had lessened.

‘You were right,’ Athena said, without emotion. ‘I dug out the Salvation. It took six labour servitors four hours to do it. We also lost over half the wounded by the time it reached the infirmary.’ Her eyes were like chips of ice, dark as coal in the gloom. ‘I wanted you to know that, to know that a mindless flesh-mech slave showed greater compassion for humanity than the Emperor’s Angels.’

Nemiok said nothing. He didn’t even acknowledge her presence.

Only Varik betrayed his shame with a slight awkward shift in his posture. He was about to tell her to leave, but Athena had already gone.

A blurt of comm-static got Nemiok checking the feed in his ears.

His tone with Varik was like stone. ‘We’re moving.’

Smoke from distant fires smudged the sky above the Diablo Mountains a dirty orange. Burning resolved on the breeze, the stench of munitions, wood and human flesh. There was another odour too, something stagnant, earthy and fungal.

Betheniel huddled her legs close to her body, relieved that her sister superior had returned unharmed.

‘And they said nothing?’

‘Like statues, sister.’ Athena was weary, bone and spirit. ‘I’ve never felt coldness like that before.’

They were sitting outside the infirmary, getting some air. The vox-radio hummed in the background.

++Efforts to repel the orks at the Diablo Mountains have failed. Imperial Guard regiments are already in place on Devil’s Ridge and will halt the greenskins there. Solely as a precaution, civilians south of the River Eumenidies are advised to head away from the mountains and seek shelter. Trust in the Emperor.++

A grim silence fell for a few moments.

A fearful Betheniel, staring up at the crags, interrupted it.

‘That’s close to camp.’ She bit her lip as the years drained off her, leaving behind a little girl afraid of the darkness. ‘Shouldn’t we try to move the injured?’

Athena was resigned. ‘There are too many. We’ll have to make a stand and hope the Guard blockades stop them.’

‘And if they don’t?’

Echoing from the mountains, there emitted such a roar that it swallowed Athena’s response with its fury.

‘WAAAAAAGGH!’

Athena was up on her feet. Her tone was urgent.

‘Back inside.’

After their sojourn outside, the heady stink of sweat, blood and piss hit them like a hammer when they rushed into the infirmary.

Sanson looked up from a tray of bandages and medical gauze.

‘What’s happening?’

Private Kolber was hobbling over to where his sidearm hung from a wall hook.

‘The greenskins are here, aren’t they? The blockade didn’t stop them.’ Only a young man, the trooper had aged a decade in the week he’d been in the infirmary.

Athena had no time for explanations. ‘Lock all doors and shutters,’ she told Sanson. ‘No one goes outside.’

A pair of her fellow Hospitallers began to pray at a small shrine.

Overhead, a piercing whine made them all look up; nearly three thousand heads turned to the sky, pleading for salvation.

‘More bombers?’ asked Betheniel. She was watching the juddering lumen-strips, the dust motes cascading from the ceiling picked out in their flickering light.

The sound was decreasing in pitch.

Athena was slowly shaking her head. ‘Hide! Get to cover!’ she cried, just as the first shells fell.

The ceiling crashed down with an awesome, terrifying din. The praying Hospitallers disappeared under a mountain of debris, rewarded for their piety. Those who were able pressed their hands over their ears. A massive explosion blew out the walls and sent bodies flailing. A second later, the lights went out and panic rushed in along with the dark.

Having survived the initial blast, Athena was staggering through the carnage. Poor Sanson was dead, riddled with shrapnel. It had almost cut him in two. She clung to Betheniel, the only person she could realistically still save, and tried to find a way out.

Another incendiary burst tore across the sister superior, forcing her to the ground as it swept away a host of screaming silhouettes. Something hot splashed across her face. It stank of copper. There was grit too from the churned up earth, some of it too hard and sharp to be mud. She hauled her body up, dragging Betheniel.

Belatedly, she noticed her ears were bleeding. A perpetual monotone deafened her, so she failed to hear the piercing shriek presaging another blast.

It landed further out, throwing up corpses like flesh-rain. Bodies hit the ground bent and broken, entangled with their bunks.

Somewhere, a fire had started. Athena saw the ruddy glow that suggested the twisted remains of men and women strewn about the infirmary floor; she could smell the smoke. It mixed with the reek of cordite from the heavy mortars.

The orks in the mountains don’t use mortars.

Horrified, she realised what was happening. They were in the midst of an Imperial barrage.

Blundering in the darkness, clambering over the dead and dying, her fingers found the edge of a hatch to the outside.

Athena was about to yank on the handle when a thunderous boom filled her senses and she was lofted into the air.

Betheniel was screaming.

Nemiok watched the shells fall with immense satisfaction. As they poured down from Devil’s Ridge, the greenskins were blasted apart. Behind him, the Whirlwinds kept up a relentless barrage, but it was indiscriminate. Structures in the refugee camp were flattened. Some of the humans had taken to running outside as soon as the shelling began.

‘Fools,’ he muttered.

Those not sundered in the bombardment were picked off by the orks that made it through the gauntlet. A horde of the beasts was gathering, returning fire, attempting to mass for a counterattack.

Nemiok racked the slide of his combi-bolter to full auto.

‘Ready, brother?’

‘There are people down there,’ said Varik.

Nemiok was dismissive. ‘There are greenskins too.’

Varik nodded, thumbing the activation stud of his chainblade. They’d been joined by a Marines Malevolent vanguard attached to the armoured column.

Together with their battle-brothers, they descended into the camp.

Athena woke, coughing up blood. Pain sent hot knives down her right side where she’d fractured her ribs. Internal bleeding explained the ruddy sputum. She was groggy as if just punched. Light was filtering in from above. It took her a few seconds to realise it was because the infirmary roof was gone, shredded to nothing. It revealed a grisly scene of prostrate bodies and dismembered limbs. Some were still moving and groaning. Most were still and silent.

She’d been blown several metres from the hatch, which now hung open like a torn scab. Betheniel was nearby, alive but in shock. Her soot-smeared face was fixed in a catatonic grimace of terror.

‘Come on,’ Athena said, soothing. ‘Follow me, sister. Here…’ She held out her hand but had to grasp Betheniel and pull her up. The novitiate staggered, moving warily as if blind.

Together they made it through the ragged hatch, stumbling outside.

Smoke wreathed the camp. A fog thickened it, rolling down from the mountainside and across the river, creating a murky pall that rested over Emperor’s Deliverance like a shroud. Gunfire and screaming raked the breeze, so loud that it made Athena cower at first. There were more of the dead in the muddied, blood-drenched streets. She saw a mother and daughter slumped cold and lifeless, their fingers barely touching. Inside a shattered blockhouse a Guardsman hung over a window-lip trying to get out. A broken helmet sat on the ground just below him and a lasgun dangled from his grasp. Dozens of her fellow sisters, pious women she had known for many years, lay red and open; she had to avert her gaze.

Monsters emerged through the smog with leathern, gnarled green skin. Huge and brutal, they stank of cloying earth and spoiled meat. One with a fat-bladed cleaver, its left arm missing from elbow down and carrying a gash to its forehead, saw them through the carnage. Violence radiated off it so powerfully that it made Athena dizzy.

‘God-Emperor…’ she breathed. The beast roared, tasting prey, and stumbled into a loping run. Armour plates clanked against its muscular body, as did the bones and flesh-trophies it had taken.

Private Kolber was lying in the street too. Athena saw his corpse resolve through a passing belt of smoke.

‘Stay here,’ she said to Betheniel, who nodded dumbly, and rushed towards the dead trooper. It brought her closer to the ork, but also to a gun. She wrenched Kolber’s sidearm from its holster. Backing off until she reached Betheniel, she took aim.

‘Stop,’ she yelled at the beast, more to charge her courage than in any real attempt to stall it. As predicted, the ork kept coming.

Athena fired. The first shot went wide; the second struck the greenskin’s torso. It grunted but didn’t slow. She fired again and again, venting the laspistol’s power pack and praying to hit something vital.

The ork was bleeding and burned, but not dead. The gun whirred, temporarily drained. Athena threw it down and drew her shock maul. Now in killing range, the ork lunged, its cleaver swinging down to cut off her head. Desperately, she threw herself clear and smashed a blow against its knee.

The beast was laughing, about to slay them both when a shadow loomed out of the smog behind it. Athena saw the muzzle flare in slow motion, realising that the bolter’s salvo would hit them too.

‘Throne, no!’ she screamed, diving to the ground and praying her novitiate would do the same.

She heard a cry just after the bolter’s retort and knew it was Betheniel.

‘Engaging left.’ A bark of fire erupted from Nemiok’s bolter, chewing up an ork crawling from a crater. He followed up with a grenade from an under-slung tube launcher, slinging a charging truck tailgate over axle and cooking the driver in the fiery aftermath.

Another, running out of the incendiary smoke, went down missing half of its skull.

‘Threat eliminated,’ uttered Varik, swinging his weapon around as he sought a fresh target.

They were advancing through the camp, methodically gunning down any greenskins in their path. After the bombardment, Emperor’s Deliverance was to be cleansed. No restraint. The order came from Captain Vinyar.

From the left, a burst of heavy bolter fire ripped up a mob of stunted greenskin scavengers, turning them into a visceral mist. Brother Drago was heedless of the humans scurrying into his firing line as he opened up on an ork vehicle wreck and the greenskins trying to liberate a heavy stubber from the rig’s flatbed. Everything disappeared in a massive explosion and the angry flare of the belt-fed cannon.

Out of the smoke clouds a land speeder descended. It hovered in low, engine wash kicking up dirt, aiming its nose-mounted heavy flamer at a ruined blockhouse.

A female refugee, cut up and hobbling, shouted at it to turn around.

‘There are people trapped inside!’

‘Step aside,’ growled the pilot, unleashing a jet of super-heated promethium into the ruin. Burning orks and humans staggered out as the structure burned. Any last resistance was dealt with when the gunner swung around his rail-mounted assault cannon and thumbed the triggers. A salvo of high velocity shells spat from the rotating barrel that blew out the blockhouse’s windows in a glassy storm, killing everything left inside. Then he turned their wrath on the flaming survivors.

Laughter made an ugly sound through Nemiok’s battle-helm as he hailed the gunner’s kills.

‘Wipe them from existence!’ he roared, sighting a group of orks that had escaped the fusillade. He unclipped a grenade and tossed it towards them.

As the greenskins were engulfed by explosion, he called to Varik. ‘Brother, I wish to anoint my blade with their xenos blood!’

Varik nodded, his drawn chainsword burring in his iron grip.

Though battered, the orks charged, cleavers and cutters swinging. Varik sliced the head off one as his battle-brother impaled another. Nemiok then eviscerated a third before Varik finished the last, bifurcating the beast from groin to sternum.

Sheathing his chainsword, Nemiok headed down a narrow street that led into a larger plaza.

‘Hold!’ Varik’s cry fell on deaf ears as he rushed to catch his brother.

Emerging from between a pair of smouldering blockhouses, Nemiok drew a bead on a greenskin’s back. It was already wounded, missing half an arm and badly shot up. It was rushing at a kill the Marines Malevolent couldn’t see and didn’t care about. He scythed the ork down, opening up its back and spine as the mass reactive bolter shells exploded. As it fell, Nemiok saw two females he recognised through his blood-flecked crosshairs. He pulled his finger from the trigger, but it was too late.

Betheniel was dead. Her eyes were open as she lay on her back in a growing pool of blood. The shell shrapnel had only clipped her, but it was enough for a killing blow. Athena held the novitiate in her arms, muttering a prayer.

‘Saint Katherine, I beseech you, bring this faithful soldier to the side of the Emperor. Protect her soul for the journey to the Golden Throne…’

She did not weep. Her resolve was hard as marble. Athena tightened her grip around Private Kolber’s sidearm and stood up. She wasn’t unsteady, nor did she feel any fear or doubt as she approached the armoured giant in yellow and black.

‘You are a disgrace to the aquila,’ she spat, bringing up the laspistol.

The shot was almost point-blank. It made Nemiok grunt and stagger but otherwise left him unscathed. He tore off his helm, uncaring of the battle around them. Underneath, he wore a mask of pure hatred.

‘For that show of strength, I will let you see my face before I execute you,’ he snarled, letting the bolter drop to its strap and drawing his spatha. ‘This will really hurt,’ he promised.

The punch to his unarmoured jaw sent Nemiok reeling and the spatha spiralling from his grasp to land blade down in the earth.

‘You’ve shamed yourself enough.’

Nemiok looked like he was about to reach for another weapon but stopped when Varik shook his head.

‘Killing innocents in cold blood, there is no honour in that.’ Varik turned to Athena.

‘Get out of here. A warzone is no place for a sister of mercy,’ he told her. ‘Stay alive and do some good at least.’ He took the pistol, crushed it. ‘Draw on my brothers a second time and I won’t stay my hand.’

She nodded, realising what Varik had sacrificed so that she could live.

Athena rushed to Betheniel’s side. Another group of refugees had found them and helped lift the body onto an Imperial Guard half-track. They drove off south, away from Devil’s Ridge and the orks. There were still more greenskins thronging the edge of the camp, coming down from the mountains.

She didn’t know what had made Varik intercede. Perhaps there was more compassion in the Space Marines than she realised. It didn’t matter. Compassion wouldn’t win this war. Only Yarrick could do that.

Overhead the barrage began anew, stealing away her thoughts and keeping the orks pinned. It would be several hours before the battle was done. Many more civilians would die. Only a few would know the Emperor’s deliverance.

Varik kept his brother in his sights until he was sure his ire had cooled.

‘You’ll regret that,’ Nemiok told him.

‘You go too far.’

The dense throb of heavy engines interrupted and they looked up to see a squadron of gunships coming down to land in the distance.

‘Now there’ll be trouble,’ Varik muttered.

The gunships were forest green, emblazoned with the snarling head of a firedrake. They belonged to the Salamanders.

Vinyar yanked off a gauntlet as he reclined on his throne in the Marines Malevolent barrack house. It was gloomy within the boxy ferrocrete structure, furnished with all the austerity expected of his puritanical Chapter. The captain kept banners and trophies close at hand. It was the only ornamentation he allowed in the stark chamber, except for a broad strategium table where a host of maps and data-slates were strewn.

He reviewed one, a report of the bombing at Emperor’s Deliverance, not deigning to look at the two warriors standing silently in his presence.

‘How many human casualties?’

‘Around four thousand, sire.’

‘And the orks?’

‘Total annihilation.’

Vinyar set down the slate, smiled at the two warriors.

‘Acceptable losses.’

‘There was also significant structural damage.’

‘Negligible,’ Vinyar waved away any concerns. ‘The greenskins are in retreat, the Marines Malevolent are victorious.’

‘What of Armageddon Command? I have heard talk of sanctions against us.’

Vinyar’s laugh was derisive. ‘Destrier has been reminded of his place and purpose in this war, Brother Varik. There’ll be no further repercussions from him.’

The warriors lingered, prompting the captain to ask, ‘Was there something more?’

Varik awaited Nemiok’s damning account of what had happened with Sister Athena, but his response was surprising.

‘No, sire,’ he rasped, jaw tight.

‘Then you’re dismissed.’

Both warriors saluted, turned on their heel and left.

Vinyar was poring over the maps on his strategium table, planning the next assault, when he heard the barrack house door opening again.

‘Changed your mind, Nemiok?’ he asked, looking up but finding someone else in his chambers. Vinyar sneered. ‘You.’

An onyx-skinned warrior was standing before him, armoured in forest green. A scaled cloak hung from his broad shoulders, attached beneath gilded pauldrons. Iconography of drakes and fire, hammers and anvils emblazoned his battle-plate. His voice was abyssal deep.

‘I have spoken with Colonel Destrier,’ he said. ‘I have also witnessed the excessive force used at Emperor’s Deliverance and been told of the civilian casualties.’

‘There is collateral damage in any war,’ protested Vinyar. ‘If I had not acted as punitively as I did, there would still be orks roaming that camp. Besides, cowards are unworthy of being spared.’

The green-armoured warrior had unhitched a thunder hammer from his back and slammed it on the strategium table, cracking data-slates and tearing maps. He was unbuckling a holstered pistol when he said, ‘You misunderstand the purpose of my visit, Vinyar.’ He looked up and his eyes flashed fire-red. ‘This isn’t a discussion.’ He glanced at the gauntlets the Marines Malevolent captain had discarded. ‘Put those back on. I want this to be even.’

Vinyar was belligerent, but reached for his gauntlets anyway. ‘What are you talking about, Tu’Shan?’

‘Penance and restitution,’ said the Chapter Master of the Salamanders. Bones cracked in his neck as he loosened them.

‘I’ll give you one piece of advice,’ he added, clenching and unclenching his fists to work the knuckles. ‘Don’t go for a weapon.’

Then he closed the barrack room door.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

ADEPTUS ASTARTES

Salamanders Sixth Company

Drakgaard, Ur’zan, Captain

Her’us, Champion, ‘Serpentia’

Sepelius, Kratus, Apothecary, ‘Serpentia’

Onagar, Pyroclast, ‘Serpentia’

Zetok, Pyre warden, ‘Serpentia’

Tul’vek, Banner bearer, ‘Serpentia’

Kaladin, Battle-brother, ‘Serpentia’

Tseg’un, Battle-brother, ‘Serpentia’

Vervius, Battle-brother, ‘Serpentia’

Elysius, Chaplain

Zantho, Akadin, Veteran sergeant, tank commander

Kor’ad, Venerable Dreadnought, ‘The Warmaker’

Kadoran, Veteran sergeant

Kessoth, Sergeant

Vah’gan, Sergeant

V’reth, Sergeant

Salamanders Fourth Company

Iaptus, Sergeant, ‘Wyverns’,

Va’lin, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’

Dersius, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’

Naeb, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’

Ky’dak, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’

Arrok, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’

Xerus, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’

Illus, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’

Vo’sha, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’

Sor’ad, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’

Bar’dak, Goran, Sergeant, ‘Targons’

Amadu, Battle-brother, ‘Targons’

Ush’ban, Battle-brother, ‘Targons’

Ramadus, Battle-brother, ‘Targons’

Nerad, Battle-brother, ‘Targons’

Salamanders, Third Company

Agatone, Adrax, Captain

Exor, Techmarine

Xarko, Librarian

Zartath, Battle-brother, former Black Dragon

ECCLESIARCHY

Angerer, Maelisia, Canoness Preceptor, Order of the Ebon Chalice

Laevenius, Celestian, Sister Superior, Order of the Ebon Chalice

Stephina, Seraphim Sister Superior, ‘Archangels’, Order of the Ebon Chalice

Avensi, Seraphim Sister Superior, ‘Shrivers’, Order, , of the Ebon Chalice

Cassia, Seraphim Sister Superior, ‘Sanctifiers’, Order of the Ebon Chalice

Helia, Seraphim Sister Superior, ‘Exculpators’, Order of the Ebon Chalice

Revina, Non-militant Adepta Sororitas

‘CURSED’ ASTARTES

Urgaresh, Champion

Thorast, Apothecary

Ghaan, Former vexillary

Skarh, Black Dragons Chapter, the ‘wrath’

Haakem, Black Dragons Chapter, the ‘wrath’

ARCHENEMY

Faustus, Heklion, Warlord, Black Legion

Gralastyx, Daemon Prince of the Eye

Vorshkar, Champion, the ‘Chosen’, Black Legion

Children of Torment

Kargol, Terminator

Kaid, Terminator

Lufurion, Champion, Warlord of ‘The Incarnadine’

Klerik, Renegade Astartes, ‘The Incarnadine’

Preest, Sorcerer, ‘The Incarnadine’

Juadek, Renegade Astartes, ‘The Incarnadine’

MORTALS

Redgage, Colonel, Cadian 81st

Issak, Medicus

Makato, Kensai, Lieutenant Armsman on the Forge Hammer

Jedda, Master-at-arms on the Forge Hammer

THE OTHERS

Kinebad, Archeotech hunter

Scar-borne, Mercenary, former gladiator

PROLOGUE

An old lie

It began with Sejanus. It began with his corpse and the corpses of his Glory Squad red-carpeting the throne room floor of the High City. They had died invisibly, by unseen hands. Retribution for the treachery that had laid them low would be ostensibly more visible. It would come at the hands of Hastur’s brothers, vengeance for a favoured son.

A speartip was formed, oaths sworn. A legion descended on Sixty-Three Nineteen with one desire in its heart. It wasn’t compliance. It was a desire for blood, a way to level the scales of treachery balanced against it.

It began with Sejanus. It ended at the induction gate.

Faustus skirted the edge of the main battlefield with a company of genhanced warriors in tow. The Twenty-First Velites were armour-light compared to the majority of their Luna Wolf brothers. Designated reconnaissance, they carried bolters and long-barrelled viper-class sniper rifles, scoped and modified for mass-reactive ammunition. They moved fast, quietly and without fuss.

Thirty led by a Centurion roared up an exterior stairway appended to one of High City’s flanking sub-towers. In ruins, half flattened from cursory bombardment, it nonetheless clung to life and though much of the tower structure was destroyed, a large section of wall had endured. Klaed had spotted the vermin through his scope. Hooded and cloaked, but with the tiniest scrap of flashing silver on magenta giving them away. Careless. One man’s laxity had signed his entire unit’s death warrant.

‘How many, Klaed?’ asked Faustus, pausing. He had been pacing the steps three at a time, a characteristic spring in his motion. The Centurion loved war. He lived for it. There was but one thing he placed above it: the warriors in his charge.

A broad-shouldered Luna Wolf, muddy-white half armour clamped around his bulky torso, lowered the scope. ‘Thermal imaging puts them at eighty-six. Give or take.’

‘It is give or take, brother?’ asked the warrior directly behind Klaed, whose pepper-stubbled jawline never betrayed a smile.

‘Easy there, Klaed,’ said the warrior, clapping a meaty hand on Klaed’s shoulder. Ahenobarbus was half a head taller and a shoulder width broader. He wore a leather skullcap, strands of his long hair allowed to flow freely from beneath it. His combat shotgun was low slung, his finger rested alongside the trigger.

‘What does it matter, Clod? Eighty-six, one hundred and eighty-six. These men are walking dead anyway.’

Ahenobarbus half turned so he could scowl at Narthius.

‘That is not my name, pup.’

The young Luna Wolf beside him grinned. ‘But it suits you so well.’

Narthius’s face was gaunt, but handsome where most of his brothers’ were blunt and flat. A shorn crest of dark hair cut his cleanly shaven scalp in two even hemispheres of tanned skin. Ahenobarbus thought Narthius over-preened and had remarked so on more than one occasion. In turn, Narthius described Ahenobarbus as a lump of heavy meat, blunt but useful if pushed and aimed in the required direction.

Both had saved each other’s lives more times than they needed to count. That tally paled in comparison to how many times Faustus had saved the lives of all of his men. Reconnaissance units faced a harder task than most. Though admittedly not always at the brunt of the fighting, they were often without support nor as heavily armed or armoured. Quick minds, decisive action. It was a greater shield than any power armour or even Cataphractii plate, or so Faustus believed.

‘You two will have time to spar later,’ he said, cutting the banter short. ‘With me, if this operation doesn’t go smoothly.’

As they moved out again, Narthius patted Ahenobarbus on the back. ‘Don’t worry, Clod. I won’t let them kill you today.’

Ahenobarbus kept up the act for a few more seconds before his scowl faded. Laughter lines crossed with his numerous scars, as perfect white teeth were exposed in a feral grin.

‘Let’s hope they don’t spoil your youthful good looks whilst you’re saving my life, eh, pup?’

Faustus had reached the summit of the stairway, a wide but pockmarked path of cratered stone with one side facing a granite wall, the other a partially destroyed iron railing. It was high up, the wind catching his cape and causing it to flap spasmodically. It also offered a good vantage of the larger battlefield.

On the left flank, Abaddon was driving First Company hard. Faustus couldn’t see the Centurion individually but recognised his vexilliary’s banner. Evidently, Ezekyle wanted the honour of breaching High City before anyone else, but Tenth were already approaching the gate. Their vanguard was engaged with the gate’s guardians. Strong-looking men, well armed and equipped but not the equal of a legionary. Titans roamed at the battle’s periphery, drawn back from the fighting companies of Luna Wolves now the need for men, not machines, took precedence. A fake dawn was still fading in the distance from the sundered starship that had crashed in the border districts. It threw light across the three kilometre-wide mass of Legio Astartes battleplate battering successfully against High City’s door. False Emperor or not, Sixty-Three Nineteen’s potentate was about to learn a lesson in the ephemeral nature of rulership.

The covered gallery of the stairway had led 21st to overlook the induction gate. An enfilading position.

‘Velites!’ Faustus cried out so as to be heard above the thunderous battle. At the summit of the stairs, the hair fled from his face in streaks of white as the wind tugged at it, and his eyes flashed sapphire-blue in the reflected flare of distant lightning. It was easy to follow men like Faustus, and Faustus knew the importance of never being afraid to demonstrate that. He raised his drawn gladius. Come the assault, he would sheath it again, but for now it served a solid purpose in cementing his image and invigorating his men. ‘We blood them now!’

At Faustus’s bidding, Brother Ezekus came forward and attached a pair of melta bombs to the gallery’s access door. It was barred, bolted and evidently well fortified but the wrought iron sloughed away in seconds against the violent burst of microwaves. Shroud bombs were thrown through the growing aperture in advance of the Velites. Faustus stepped through first, amidst smoke and scanner-foiling electro-static. His enemies appeared as monochrome green spectres through his night vision goggles. A cough from his rifle and the man closest to him went down, throat exploded just as he had begun to turn. Two more shots in rapid succession killed near-identical targets.

The gallery was long but also narrow. A parade of firing slits lined its east-facing wall, overlooking the battlefield. Fixed weapon mounts lay in every alcove, an array of energy carbines, solid-shot cannons and high-powered sniper rifles.

Faustus fired quickly and on the move, vacating the breach so the rest of the Velites could file in behind him. The legionaries fanned out across the width of the gallery as they entered the tight space, their rifles whispering promises of death to the enemy. Men collapsed in droves, soon too many to be ignorant of, folding up as if their bones were suddenly turned to paper and could no longer support them in their armour.

One turned, a flash of magenta armour revealed as his cloak parted with the rapid movement. He gaped at the apparitions emerging from the sea of fog that had suddenly risen up around him, but had little time to concern himself. The soldier was about to raise the alarm, but found he could only quietly choke with the combat blade suddenly embedded in his neck. He fell without further sound. Faustus was on him before his cooling corpse hit the ground, kneeling and then retrieving his blade in one swift motion.

Twenty-four were dead, the first eight teams, before the enemy realised they were under attack and attempted to counter. By then, Faustus and his men were amongst them, knives drawn for close quarters. In the tight confines of the corridor, the gurgling refrain of slit throats merged with the raucous discharge of legionary combat shotguns and bolters as the secondary units moved in.

At the end of the gallery, the survivors had marshalled a makeshift defence. They broke some of the cannons out from their concealed nests, rolled in whatever they could to fashion a barricade and set up behind it, weapons blazing.

‘Grab cover!’ Faustus bellowed across the vox, though his voice carried down the gallery well enough without it.

The Velites reacted as one, vacating a fire corridor where energy rounds and solid shells were chewing up the gallery floor. Glass and mosaic spat upwards in a cloud of shrapnel. The gallery had once been an artful place but war had rendered it into something entirely uglier.

Faustus rolled, chased by a fusillade of enemy fire that chipped stone and made the dead bodies jerk in animated parody. He moved rapidly out of the central aisle and up against the nearest alcove set into the wall. They were shallow but offered some protection.

Ahenobarbus took a hit to the leg, some kind of phase-weapon. Pain bled out of him in an angry roar as his flesh was burned black, and Narthius had to drag him clear.

‘Told you I wouldn’t let them kill you, Clod,’ he said, replacing a spent clip.

Ahenobarbus grunted, pressing his muscular body into the wall.

‘Flesh wound, pup. Takes more than something like that to kill me.’

‘Our limits will be tested soon enough,’ Faustus told them both with a dark smile. He and the other two Luna Wolves were holed up together, hunkered down behind a granite column being chipped back by aggressive suppressing fire.

‘You want us to take that barricade, sir?’ asked Narthius, forced to shout above the din.

‘I know you would if I ordered it, brother. But no. As robust as even Ahenobarbus here is, a headlong rush into those guns is suicide. I’d have a more heroic death for the Velites, and this isn’t it. Not this battle. Not this day.’ He turned his attention across to the opposite side of the corridor, through the hail of bullets and energy beams, to where Klaed was taking cover with Ezekus.

Faustus opened up the vox by tapping the bead embedded in his ear.

‘We need to divide their attention. Can you fashion me a diversion, Rakon?’

Rakon Klaed nodded, not bothering with the vox. He tapped Ezekus on the shoulder, who was kneeling down in front of him, acting as spotter for the rest of his unit but with mixed success, and asked him a question.

The demolitions expert nodded curtly once and went to his bandoleer.

Faustus turned back to Ahenobarbus and Narthius, sizing up the big warrior first of all.

‘Can you walk?’

‘I’ll run if you ask it of me, sir.’

‘I only need a kick, brother. A hard one.’ Faustus gestured to the firing slit. It was damaged from an errant shell explosion or some such and cracks lined the stone around the broken slit, promising a much wider aperture if forced.

Ahenobarbus lashed out with all his considerable strength and the slit broke apart, sundered stone sent tumbling from the ruptured aperture. In the noisy carnage of the battle no one paid it any attention. It was also now large enough to accommodate a fully-armoured legionary.

Faustus strapped his rifle over his shoulder so that he could draw a pair of combat blades. The edges were serrated and shone dully in the gloomy light of the gallery. Narthius was watching, and followed suit.

‘Three volunteers,’ Faustus said to the others in the two adjacent alcoves. ‘Not you, brother,’ he added to Ahenobarbus when he tried to offer. ‘A kick is one thing, but a climb…’ He gave him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder.

Eight Luna Wolves, all the legionaries in ear-shot stepped forwards. Faustus picked three – Kern, Faek and Henador – and passed Ahenobarbus to hang out of the gaping hole the hulking warrior had made for him.

‘Fifty metres,’ he said to the others, who had crept forwards to get as close as they could to their Centurion. ‘We won’t have much time. We’ll need to move quickly. Charges?’

Kern proffered his captain a pair of krak grenades. He was a veteran warrior, greying hair tied back in a pony tail that snaked down the back of his neck.

Faustus thanked him.

‘On my mark then, blades at the ready.’ He looked across the gallery floor through a gulf of unremitting enemy fire but found Klaed waiting for his signal. Faustus gave it and in his next movement plunged through the gap in the wall and back outside into the battle proper.

Klaed simultaneously patted Ezekus hard on the back and the squat demolitions expert flung a cluster of shroud and frag grenades he had bound together with wire.

Smoke and fire filled the confined gallery space, which rang with the thunder of explosives.

Outside, Faustus was already moving.

A shallow ledge, nothing more than a lip with room enough for the edge of his booted toes to snatch purchase, ran along the exterior gallery wall. Faustus had leapt onto it and then swung, pivoting on one foot and plunging his first knife into the rock. It sank in deep, the monomolecular edge retaining optimum sharpness. In under a second, he had swung again, using the opposite foot to pivot on and the embedded knife as a makeshift handhold, swiftly rolling his body across the gap from back to front. He crabbed in this manner across the entire length of the wall, using one blade then the other, pivoting off right foot then left, back over front until he had reached the firing slit beyond which he had judged the enemy forces to be barricaded.

The magenta-armoured warriors were so intent on the Luna Wolves pressing them to the front, they missed the five commandoes almost in their midst.

Faustus paused at the edge of the firing slit, sparing a glance at his four legionaries who had followed their captain’s example precisely and now awaited his next order. Sheathing one of the blades, Faustus attached the krak grenades, moving over to the opposite side of the firing slit before he primed them.

He gave one last look at the others, before mouthing, ‘Three, two…’

On one the incendiaries went off, erupting in a storm of stone shards, fire and pluming smoke. The men on the other side in the gallery choked on it. Those closest to the wall who had foolishly abandoned their posts were ripped apart in a flare of harsh, white light and knew nothing of their deaths. Others were mauled by the razor-edge stone shards. Some also caught on fire. Bodies were thrown inwards and bludgeoned into pieces by sheer concussive force.

But this was as nothing compared to what came in the wake of the explosion.

Faustus and his men were upon the enemy, the epitome of their savage namesake, howling and slitting throats with their blades.

Seeing the enemy stricken and distracted, Klaed ordered the headlong rush into their dwindling guns. The Luna Wolves took some hits but weathered the storm and struck the enemy mass like a threshing machine. None were spare, but the slaughter was brief. In under thirty seconds, every man wearing magenta armour in the corridor was dead.

The last one who died was cut down by Faustus. He had been a sniper, his weapon resting in the next alcove along from where the Centurion had made the breach. It was locked on a tripod, its firing position fixed. Out of curiosity, Faustus looked down the scope. Just moved into the crosshairs, having broken through the induction gate was the captain of Tenth. Faustus didn’t know his name and the warrior was gone in seconds anyway.

He smiled, though, amused at the fact this unknown officer would never realise how close he had come to death.

‘You’re very welcome,’ whispered Faustus, before looking away.

Ten thousand years later…

CHAPTER ONE

Heletine, at the outskirts of Canticus

Three contrails from a trio of gunships scored through the dark sky over Canticus.

The city was burning. Ash and smoke from the fires had brought on premature night. War had transformed this place. In the grubby brown half-light, once regal statuary writhed in imagined torment, proud temples hung open like cracked corpses and the gilded streets turned black with spilled blood. It was, in every respect, a haunted landscape. Death stalked the streets, death and the nightmares that brought death with them – a legion in black, a legacy most foul and one that still yearned for some scrap of its former power and prestige.

The Thunderhawks wove through the chaos, banking and turning to keep the buildings between them and the torrent of flak fire spitting from the gun emplacements entrenched somewhere below. They were snub-nosed, boxy-looking vessels, their Salamanders green begrimed by the war. And they were not alone. The polluted sky over Canticus was choked by more than smoke alone – a battle equal in ferocity to that being fought on the ground was being contested in the air. Stormtalon interceptors engaged in sporadic dogfights with the draconic, winged daemon-engines of the Archenemy, as they tried to shepherd the larger landers. The enemy vessels were more like beasts of ancient myth, steel and dark anima combined. Their name ‘Heldrake’ was well earned.

The Thunderhawks lost their last outrider when the Stormtalon was set upon from above, a daemon-engine seizing the interceptor in its claws and bearing it down into smoke and oblivion below.

Boosting their engines, the gunships increased speed, risking a more direct approach through the latticing flak fire to put some distance between them and the Heldrake. Wing-mounted bolters flaring, they strafed a landing zone ahead, committing to a rapid deployment dive.

From the roof of an old preceptory, an armour-clad warrior watched the gunships make their cargo drops into the heart of one of the city’s war zones. Seven identical drops had taken place in the last hour. More would follow. Each transporter went in hot. The first carried a single war machine – a hulking Redeemer-class Land Raider, named for devastating heavy flamers – for only in fire could true repentance be found. The others had two battle tanks apiece, Predators. Ubiquitous amongst the Adeptus Astartes’ armoury, these two were the less common Annihilators, armed with lascannons. In short, they were tank-killers.

The tracks of the five vehicles were already rolling at combat speed before touching down, weapon-targeting systems active and tracking movement. They hit the ground running with no break between landing and combat, before the Thunderhawks pulled away sharply, banking around with throaty pulses from their engines and disappearing intermittently behind great plumes of smoke.

Of the Heldrake, there was no sign. Perhaps it had been destroyed in the crash, or perhaps it had simply found other prey.

Drakgaard’s focus was elsewhere, on the tanks and their mission. It had been a sacrifice to redeploy the armour. They would pay for that, and lose some of the bitter ground they had gained with blood and sweat. Canticus, even the world of Heletine itself, was demanding like that. She was a warren, a dark labyrinth. Little was taken for granted in such theatres of war, save for the vastness of the death toll.

Despite the massive destruction already wreaked against it, a proud and pious city stretched out in front of Drakgaard. Temples stood silhouetted against the gloom, and beneath their columnar and statued glory lurked a sprawl of streets and avenues. If the monolithic temples and shrineholds were the flesh, then the streets were its veins and arteries. Though those arteries were shedding freely and spilling lagoons of blood, there was still artistry to the city’s claustrophobic design.

Possessed of a grim mien, the brother-captain seldom found much to enjoy in beauty. Some in the Chapter had whispered an iron hand would suit him better than a drake-scale mantle, but Drakgaard was Salamander from skin through to marrow. Yet, in spite of his quiet detractors, Drakgaard did wonder at what Canticus would have looked like before war had engulfed it.

With the fires that had broken out, very little remained of the city’s geography that wasn’t contested. Much of it was now in ruins, partly from brutal urban engagements and partly from the preliminary bombardment that had lasted four days and yielded little in the way of tactical traction for the allied Imperial commander.

Drakgaard looked upon his works from his vantage on the roof and saw only a long war of attrition ahead.

He had committed almost all of their strength to the taking of Canticus and the driving out of an entrenched enemy. Sixth Company’s entire complement as well as assault elements from Fourth made up the Salamanders infantry and Sergeant Zantho had assembled a sizeable division of battle tanks to neutralise the heretics’ heavy armour. Yet despite all of this formidable strength, the war was still a bitter grind.

It suited Drakgaard, it suited the Chapter. Meet them eye to eye and burn them out of their holes. The Salamanders had waged this way of war for centuries. None were as tenacious or as committed as the sons of Vulkan. He had been at Badab and Armageddon, Drakgaard knew the full meaning of ‘attrition’ – his body bore the scars in testament to the fact.

Were he able, Drakgaard would have smiled at the thought of past glories but his face was drawn up into a permanent snarl because of old injuries. He had several, and wore them proudly, more proudly than the many honours he had received in a long and distinguished career. A warrior was measured by his scars not his medals, or so the captain of Sixth believed. It was a trite belief, but one he clung to when the ache of old wounds became pronounced. Much like this day.

A three-dimensional representation of Canticus projected from a hololithic device revolved in front of Drakgaard. The transmission was poor, which made the image grainy and prone to breaks in resolution, but the story it told was clear.

Five major war zones across the world of Heletine, all being fought with fang and claw. To the equatorial south a predominantly Cadian force fought a guerrilla war for dominance of the Centari Mountains. Drakgaard had lent the Astra Militarum forces several squadrons of Stormtalons to leaven their war burden. Judging by the skies over Canticus, he might need to recall them soon. In the east, at Veloth, Sergeant V’reth of Third Squad held the fringe of the barren desert region and its few remote temples, supported by some minor Cadian armour and Sentinel squadrons. The city of Solist was all but destroyed, and only a token force skirmished over its remains now. Escadan was firmly in Imperial control and served as a muster point for the other major cities. An industrial region in the main, the heretics had paid it no mind, presumably deeming it of little tactical significance.

The rest had come to Canticus. It was here, Drakgaard was convinced, that the deadlock would finally break. He had but to find a way. He accessed a dispositional feed from his battle-helm prompting force organisational data to scroll down his left retinal lens.

The Cadian 81st were almost down to bare bones after being first responders to the crisis and bearing the brunt of the heretics’ wrath and martial strength. The local defence forces were all but depleted or had defected. Drakgaard had witnessed sixteen separate firing squads that morning as the dogmatic Cadians sought to excise further traitors from the allied ranks. A thankless task, but one that fortunately did not burden the brother-captain.

The Salamanders held firm. They did so with honour, and according to the Promethean Creed. As commanding officer, it was Drakgaard’s opportunity to expunge the stain on the Chapter’s glory brought about by the troubled Third. Agatone had not taken kindly to his warriors being taken off the frontline. It had been five years since Nocturne, five years since a Lexicanium named Hazon Dak’ir had nearly destroyed them all. After the deaths of two captains and a verified record of renegade defections coming from within the ranks of the company, Drakgaard was not surprised when Chapter Master Tu’Shan had demanded a period of investigation and spiritual restoration.

It was the fire-born way, and now Drakgaard’s star was in the ascendency. He resolved to conduct himself with honour, and bring glory back to the Salamanders. First, he had to win the war on Heletine.

His thoughts were disturbed by the sound of heavy boots tramping up the stairwell behind him.

‘Chaplain,’ said Drakgaard, recognising his visitor without needing to see him.

Elysius acknowledged the greeting with a nod. The black-armoured Chaplain stood a little taller than the captain, but not as wide, though the presence of a power fist served to bulk out his frame. Unlike Drakgaard, he wasn’t wearing his helmet and had it mag-locked to his belt instead. His head was cleanly shorn, all the way down to the scalp. It shone like a smooth nub of onyx.

‘I can’t recall the last time I saw your face, brother-captain.’

Drakgaard didn’t even spare Elysius a sideways glance. ‘We are at war. Such things as helms are necessary when bad men are trying to kill you.’

‘You know what I mean. Much is revealed by the face, the eyes in particular.’

‘You of all of us should know something of the desire to hide one’s face.’

‘I did it out of shame and respect,’ Elysius replied. ‘What’s your excuse?’

‘Very well…’

With a hiss of escaping pressure, Drakgaard unlocked his helm from his gorget and lifted it off. Then he faced the Chaplain. He was a mess of scars and exposed muscle, only partially healed. In his left cheek, his molars were visible through the sizeable gouge in his skin.

‘What do you see?’ Drakgaard asked.

Elysius’s expression softened marginally.

‘Pain, a legacy of it.’

Drakgaard snorted, unimpressed with Elysius’s attempts at camaraderie. He returned his helmet to its proper place.

‘Is that all? By your sermonising tone I was expecting you to reveal some revelation of my character.’

‘I need only hear your voice for that.’

Drakgaard didn’t answer.

Since they had been talking, vox reports had been feeding in to Drakgaard’s comm from the various battlefronts. None were directed at him personally, he just liked to keep abreast of developments. What he was hearing far from satisfied the captain. Despite their difficult relationship, he allowed himself to vent in front of the Chaplain.

‘They are a horde, Elysius,’ said Drakgaard, gesturing to the amorphous enemy below. There was little to see, even from the roof. The cultists and their dark masters had become little more than a homogenous mass. Now day was finally turning to night, vision was further impaired. Though, with all the smoke, the transition was difficult to appreciate. ‘We should have broken them by now, and restored this world to the grace of the Throne.’

‘Quite the pious sentiment, brother.’

‘I am not without faith,’ Drakgaard quickly replied, as if his pride had been wounded.

‘Indeed, I apologise. Dug in, with knowledge of the terrain… They are more than just a horde, brother. Black Legion is a formidable enemy. They were like us once.’

‘No longer,’ Drakgaard scowled, unhappy with the direction the conversation was taking. ‘And I have seen precious few actual Renegade Space Marines amongst the heretics to warrant considering them our main enemy here.’

‘Rest assured, they are here and have been brutalising Cadians and turning what’s left of the Heletine militia against us.’

‘I am far from assured.’ Drakgaard folded his arms. ‘How easily some can fall to ruin…’

A strained silence fell between them that lasted a few seconds before Elysius replied.

‘Have you set yourself in judgement too? Did your eyes see more than my own during Dak’ir’s trial?’

‘I have great respect for you, Elysius. Your record is beyond reproach but Third Company was ill-fated ever since the day it lost Ko’tan Kadai. Some believe that curse spread to all associated with it.’ Drakgaard turned, his helmet’s faceplate ever-snarling as if echoing his mood. ‘I am no gifted dissembler–’

‘Nor am I, brother. What are you insinuating?’

Drakgaard raised a placatory hand. ‘Nothing. I merely speak and see plainly. There was something cankerous at the heart of the Third, and you were closer to it than most. Perhaps Agatone can reforge what has been broken, perhaps not…’

‘And if not, then who? You, Ur’zan Drakgaard?’

Whatever Drakgaard felt at Elysius’s intentional snipe was left unsaid as the low thrum of thrusters interrupted them.

Their attention was drawn skyward to another vessel. Not a gunship this time, but a lander.

Elyisus narrowed his eyes.

‘You recognise that vessel,’ said Drakgaard.

‘I do. I’ve fought alongside their kind before. Although not this particular order.’

Like the Chaplain’s armour, the ship was also black but that was where any affiliation ended. Through occluding smoke, the icon of a chalice became visible. The stylised cup dominated the underside of the lander and was depicted holding a stark white flame like a brazier.

‘What was your appraisal?’

Stabiliser jets flared as the main engines died off and all forward momentum slackened to nothing. Eddies of dust and swirling smoke spun away as if retreating from the vessel as it hovered into a slow descent. Below, Imperial engineers and labourers scattered as a Salamanders command squad approached the landing zone with weapons at ease but ready.

‘You have not fought with the Adepta Sororitas before, then, brother-captain?’ asked Elysius.

‘You mean beside.’

Elysius looked confused.

‘Beside, not with.’

‘I know what I meant.’

Drakgaard shook his head.

‘They are good fighters,’ Elysius continued. ‘Not Adeptus Astartes, but resolute, determined.’

‘That all?’

As the ship emerged through the smoke, so did several others, all armoured in black with the sigil of a chalice on their flanks and underside. Some were smaller with the aspect and armament of gunships.

‘No. They’re fanatics. Only their brand of fanaticism is sanctioned.’

‘Brand? Is that supposed to be humorous, Brother-Chaplain?’

The ships touched down on the landing field, a host of ground crew hustling back and forth in the resultant dust storm kicked up by a host of descent thrusters. Whilst the ground crews coughed behind their sleeves, trying to keep the grit from their eyes and waving to their comrades in an attempt to exert some order on the unexpected arrivals, Drakgaard’s warriors stood and watched. To the practised military eye, they had formed a defensive perimeter.

‘Believe me, brother, there is nothing amusing about the Order of the Ebon Chalice,’ Elysius concluded.

Then they descended the stairs from the preceptory, and went to meet the Sisters of Battle.

CHAPTER TWO

Heletine, Canticus southern war zone

The ambush had come swiftly, leaving Va’lin and his brothers pinned down and estranged from their commanding officer.

Sergeant Iaptus was further up the street, shouting vainly against the din of exploding shells and solid shot raining down on half his squad. Even through the carnage, Va’lin could see Iaptus had his storm shield raised and was using it to ward off the worst of the frag.

From a distance he looked angry, the hammer in his gauntleted fist rippling with energy to match his rising temper. No warrior ever liked to be trapped by his enemy, especially when he was used to soaring across the battlefield on jets of fire.

Va’lin activated the vox-feed in his battle-helm. Comms had been scratchy ever since the last hit. He saw Iaptus nod then smack the vocaliser of his own helm and after a few seconds of crackling static, the sergeant’s voice bled through.

‘Push up with the rest of the squad…’ He battle-signed to a tower fortified by flak board and razor-wire. From it, a static cannon emplacement was ripping up most of the plaza where his squad were currently hemmed in. ‘Neutralise that gun nest then we re-take the high ground and move west along–’

An explosion interrupted the sergeant’s orders, forcing him back into cover as the heretics brought up a pair of rocket crews.

Two infantry squads in varying degrees of combat efficacy were currently stymied until Iaptus could establish territorial dominance.

A burst of flame drew Va’lin’s attention as Brother Herador maintained the small cordon the Salamanders did control.

With the Space Marines essentially penned in by heavy artillery from above, the heretic infantry forces were attempting to overrun them on the ground. They hadn’t reckoned on Salamanders’ tenacity.

The street where the fire-born hunkered down was broad and long, offering little in the way of cover. They had been marching in dispersed formation when the attack came. The area was supposed to have been cleared, but something got through. A battalion’s worth of something.

As soon as the ambush hit, after Agrek and Nemis went down, the rest of the Salamanders darted into alcoves and doorways. Black Legion Havocs in the buildings overlooking the road were quick to establish a punitive firing pattern. Hard, barking chatter from autocannons and heavy bolters became a constant drone.

Three separate breakouts were attempted. All failed. The last one had killed Kra’tor. He was lying face down in the middle of the road, his armour shot to pieces.

Snatching glimpses of their enemy between salvoes, Va’lin counted three squads of legionnaires. The rest were cultists, a ragged band of half-armoured but well-supplied human soldiery. Some, judging by their scratched out livery, were ex-Heletine defenders. Man was easy prey for Chaos. His fear and selfishness made him weak. Va’lin tried not to despise the turncoats for that – they had merely succumbed to instinct. It didn’t mean he would find any impediment to ending their lives, however. For once on the path to damnation, even a single footstep cannot be taken back. Zen’de had once said that, and all Salamanders heeded his wisdom. Chaos was a moral choice, not a disease. The mind had to be willing, for the spirit to suffer.

‘Must be close to fifty or sixty up there.’ The voice that came from Va’lin’s left belonged to Naeb and was altogether too eager. He wore a Mark VI battle-helm with an extended nose cone. Part of the helmet’s structure had also been altered to accommodate a bionic eye in place of the left retinal lens.

‘Are you concerned for your safety, brother? I can protect you.’

Naeb laughed, the humour suited him. ‘Your protection? Now that is something to be feared.’

In the wake of the explosion, the smoke concealing Iaptus and the rest of the squad was clearing. They were less than twenty metres in front of them, but with the amount of solid shot and las-shot stitching the rockcrete between the two halves of the squad it may as well have been a gulf. Va’lin’s tactical display reported no casualties.

Iaptus’s comm-rune lit up again, interrupting Va’lin and Naeb.

‘Belay order to advance, and hold position. Air support inbound.’

‘He’s pinned,’ said Naeb, afforded an enhanced view through his bionic. The explosion had been a marker and now every targeter the Black Legionnaires had was aimed at Iaptus and his half of the squad.

Va’lin scoured the rooftops. The jump pack felt heavy on his back. He had not been an Assault Marine long, but he already felt the same frustration as the veterans in his squad at their wings being metaphorically clipped.

‘We’re useless down here,’ he muttered.

Still no point of entry presented itself through the enemy’s defences, but amidst the smoke he did see a third squad of heavies moving up. More power armour, toting lascannons and plasma guns, enough to wipe out all three Salamanders squads.

‘How long for that air support, sergeant?’ Va’lin asked over the vox.

‘Soon, just be ready.’

Va’lin switched the feed to Sergeant Kessoth, who was leading the stalled infantry wave on the opposite side of the street.

‘Sergeant Kessoth, can you advance and concentrate fire on that roof?’ Va’lin rune-marked the location on his tac-display and transferred it to the sergeant’s feed.

There was a slight pause before Kessoth’s deep voice responded.

‘In Vulkan’s name, we will try, brother.’

In the street, the other squad intensified their return fire but it was largely ineffective. Seven muzzle flares roared into life, while at the same time Kessoth led his men out into the open, pushing for an advanced position and a better line of fire.

‘If he makes that run, we must be ready to move,’ said Va’lin.

Naeb nodded, then battle-signed to the rest of the squad who were strung out along the street in alcoves and doorways. Two crouched down behind Kessoth’s upturned Rhino that the sergeant’s squad had been quick to vacate before it exploded. The wreck was still burning, and spewing smoke.

Above the stricken Imperial troops came the unmistakable engine drone of a Stormtalon.

On the rooftop, the third Havoc squad rushed into position, trying to put some cover between themselves and the aerial threat. Several cultists turned and levelled weapons at the gunship. The high-pitched whine of an assault cannon superseded the engine drone. Fourteen cultists were sprayed across the adjoining rooftops, rendered to bloody chunks by the Stormtalon’s spinning nose-mount.

The gunship hove into view, weapons flaring. It chased down a second group of cultists who had fled at the sight of their disintegration and were headed for a way off the roof.

Kessoth pushed up. His squad was taking fire, and through the carnage Va’lin thought he saw one of the fire-born crumple from a direct lascannon hit but his view was obscured and uncertain.

He glanced back to Sergeant Iaptus, still hemmed in and taking heavy fire.

‘Get ready,’ he voxed to the others.

They would need to break cover and quickly boost jump packs. A single thrust should provide enough elevation to climb the first roof. From there they could–

A sudden, ululating screech shattered Va’lin’s battle plan.

Something fast, a flyer, swept in overhead.

The Stormtalon saw it too. Its left turbofan switched to maximum rotation as the gunship tried to turn. The underslung assault cannon was pivoting on its limited axis when a shadow descended on the gunship. In seconds its glacis was ripped away, the pilot with it. Va’lin saw his flailing body fall to the ground somewhere below. His eyes met those of the pilot’s slayer.

Neck craned over its kill, wings at full span, it was akin to some immense but metallic bird of prey. The uglier truth was this was a daemon-engine, something that had once been a man and machine but had been turned, through the ruin of Chaos, into an abomination.

Shrieking a war cry, the monstrous Heldrake cast the wreckage of the Stormtalon down and soared up into smoke and shadow. Distant las-fire chased it from somewhere deep in the city. It was enough to force the monster to disengage but too late to save the Stormtalon.

It fell like a dying angel, striking the ground with lethal finality. A second explosion rocked the embattled Salamanders as the burning gunship hit Kessoth and his squad, who were scattered by the blast.

The cheer that went up from the cultists dragged down on Va’lin’s resolve like an anchor as did the sight of Kessoth’s squad being so brutally neutralised.

Before the smoke had cleared, heavy fire came down again from the towers and forced what was left of the battered Salamanders who were in the open into retreat.

‘Merciful Vulkan…’ Naeb watched the beleaguered warriors drag their sergeant with them, leaving two more for the Apothecary’s reductor.

Va’lin’s attention was on the second Havoc squad, scrambling back across the rooftops now the threat of the gunship had been ruthlessly dealt with. There was no sign of the murderous Heldrake, but its contribution had been telling. Unmolested, the Havocs could circle around and find a vantage over Iaptus’s position. Without cover, the sergeant and the fire-born with him would be annihilated.

‘Sergeant Iaptus, enemy high to your flank–’ Va’lin’s warning stopped short when the dead return came back. The vox was down again. ‘Blood of the primarch…’ he swore. Driven back into cover, neither half of the squad had a good sight line to the other.

Va’lin half turned, careful to give the bulky jump pack he was wearing some room.

‘Battle-sign ineffective…’

‘Plan beta?’ asked Naeb.

‘Two krak grenades on this wall. We effect an insertion, work our way up through the structure.’

‘If this fails, brother, we bring the wall down on top of us, reduce our cover to rubble and become target practice for those Havocs up there.’

‘Then hope it does not fail.’

‘Affirmative.’

Both pinned their charges in place and primed them. Then they hunkered down, Va’lin on one side, Naeb the other. The rest of the squad waited as the tactical feed through their retinal lenses divulged the strategy.

‘Sergeant Kadoran,’ Va’lin addressed the only officer he had comms with who was still conscious, ‘we are effecting an insertion and will attempt to gain a counterattacking vector through the structure. Hold firm.’

‘Holding, brother,’ replied Kadoran. ‘Bring them hell.’

‘Firing!’ cried Naeb a second later. An explosion rippled across the street but not from enemy incendiaries this time. Hot air, dust and debris plumed out in a wide, expanding cone from the point where the Salamanders had attached their krak grenades. As the smoke began to clear, a ragged hole large enough for a Space Marine was revealed.

‘Ingress now!’

Naeb led them in, Va’lin hanging back to usher in the rest.

Once far enough inside, the noise from the street lessened but only marginally. It was dark, the city evacuated several weeks ago, and cluttered with debris. Part of the upper floor had caved in after some previous bombardment. A wide lobby area was dominated by an ornamental prayer fountain. Clouded by dust, the water in the fountain was rimmed at the edges where a ruddy scum had developed. Pieces of broken masonry, timber and brickwork from the sundered upper floors jutted from its shallow basin.

Quickly establishing a perimeter, the five fire-born led by Va’lin tromped noisily across the lower floor. Debris crunched underfoot and they smashed bodily through the remains of a narrow doorframe. Urgency fuelled their steps, and the certain knowledge that if they delayed their sergeant and the rest of their squad were dead.

Across a long hallway a shaft of light indicated a breach in the ceiling and a possible route onto the roof.

‘Move up,’ Va’lin said quietly across the vox.

They moved in single file with Ky’dak at the back maintaining rearguard. Targeters bled grainy red sight lines into the darkness but picked up on nothing. By now, the squad had switched to low light vision through their retinal lenses, but so far nothing stood out. It was a large space, badly damaged and that meant a lot of places to hide.

Reaching the shaft of light, the Salamanders found themselves in a stairway large enough to accommodate the squad. A few splintered timbers and the odd broken balustrade intruded into a potential jump route that led all the way to the roof.

Brother Sor’ad stepped up to clear the wreckage and put a larger hole in the ceiling through which the light was filtering. He got his bolt pistol to head height when something hit him… hard, and flung him across the room.

Sor’ad hit the wall, his bolt pistol up and firing. Brass shells bounced off a hide of hulking war-plate, its servos groaning with the effort of propelling a Terminator-armoured monster across the room.

Va’lin reacted, releasing a jet of promethium from his flamer just as Sor’ad’s hand was severed from his wrist, taking his sidearm with it. The burr of the Terminator’s chainblade sounded like a challenge as he turned to declare his allegiance to his enemies in some dark tongue.

Clad in thick black battleplate with a stiffened topknot of indigo hair rising from the crown of his head, the Terminator was massive, easily twice as wide as the power-armoured Assault Marines and half again as tall.

Though he wore the Eye of Horus and sigil of the Despoiler, the Terminator was not a pureblood warrior of the Black Legion. Human flesh stretched across his immense chest plate, strips of skin like gonfalons hanging from his greaves and shoulder guards. Each cured and leathery offering was daubed with the crescent rune of Slaanesh, the Chaos god of carnal pleasures and excess. Many warbands had gone on bended knee before the one they called ‘Warmaster’, and he had accepted them all and seen his legions grow. This particular horde called themselves the Children of Torment, revelling in the torture and pain they had subjected Heletine to.

That legacy of pain continued with Sor’ad.

With a growl that came closer to ecstasy than fury, the black-clad Terminator plunged the churning teeth of his chainblade into Sor’ad’s torso. Driven by the traitor’s immense strength and mounted to a power fist, the Salamander was brutally gutted.

Naeb roared, voicing his anguish at the sight of a brother slain so callously, and went in with his chainsword. None could fault Naeb’s bravery but he was outmatched and the Terminator swatted him aside even as he lifted Sor’ad off his feet, impaled on the still turning chainblade. Blood fountained against the monster’s graven armour, drooling into sigils and the simulacra of screaming faces. For a moment as they drank in the blood, it was as if they actually were screaming and Va’lin shook his head to banish the image from his mind.

He triggered his flamer again, sending a gout of promethium over the monster and forcing him back a step. Time was slipping away, precious seconds that could make the difference between life and death for Iaptus and the others, but this monster had come as if from nowhere.

‘Naeb, the roof…’ Va’lin gestured to the upper floor.

Naeb was back on his feet and eager for vengeance but duty prevailed.

Dersius and Ky’dak were circling the monster. He had no helmet, his face ravaged by conflict and the entropy of the warp. Spiked chains hung from his battle-gear, which was ancient and war-beaten. Mounted to his wrist were two bolters, combined to fire in unison. It was archaic, not as potent as the storm bolters used by the Chapter Terminators, but could still tear an armoured Space Marine apart with enough concentration of firepower. Muzzle flash brightened the gloom, and the heavy boom of bolter shells accompanied it.

Ky’dak boosted to avoid the storm of rounds spitting from the combi-bolter. Dersius was about to attack when Va’lin stopped him.

‘Go now!’

Ky’dak was grounded where the ceiling jutted over him, but Naeb and Dersius soared upward on tongues of flame, their twin fusillade clearing the wreckage above. The backwash from their boosted jump packs spilled down into the room below, filling it with a conflagration.

Va’lin crouched and let the fire wash over his armour, seeking Ky’dak through the heat haze.

A glancing hit from the Terminator’s chainfist sent Ky’dak sprawling and half-wrenched his helmet off. Ky’dak did the rest, tearing away the seals between helm and gorget with his gauntleted hand. Eyes like burning coals glared back at the monster. Like all sons of Nocturne, Ky’dak’s skin was onyx-black. It was almost invisible in the darkness. In his anger, his eyes became dagger-slits of blood red.

The Terminator charged Ky’dak, and at the same time Va’lin pushed himself up into a run, tossing a frag grenade in the monster’s midst. The close detonation staggered the Terminator, but not for long. He also turned, his hellish glare fixed on Va’lin who stood his ground and braced his flamer.

With a brief spurt of ignition, Ky’dak leapt onto the Terminator’s back and thrust downward with his chainsword, finding the gap between gorget and neck. Pipes, cabling and servo lines were all shredded. Spitting machine oil quickly became blood as the churning teeth bit into flesh.

‘Burn it!’ Ky’dak snarled, shouting to be heard.

Va’lin fed the Terminator a burst of promethium, dousing the monster’s torso and face. Ky’dak snarled as the flames lapped up and over him too, but clung on as his foe flailed and stomped. His hair was on fire, but Ky’dak would not relent and roared through the pain.

Bellowing, trying to dislodge the Salamander on his back, the Terminator brought up his combi-bolter. As his arm came around, brass shells roaring from the gun mouth, Va’lin charged. Boosted across the room by his jump pack, he hit the Terminator hard and forced his aim. A shell clipped Ky’dak, tearing him off the monster’s back, but three more punched through the Terminator’s skull and detonated.

Decapitated, combi-bolter still chugging out rounds into the floor, the Terminator staggered one more step and then fell.

Ky’dak’s chainsword was still lodged in the stump of what remained of the monster’s head. He was getting to his feet and going over to retrieve the weapon when Va’lin asked, ‘Where did that thing come from?’

Ky’dak shook his head, wrenching his blade free. It was damaged, some of the teeth were broken and the motor had given out.

‘Machine-spirit be damned,’ he hissed.

Va’lin peered into the shadows from where the attack had first come but could see nothing of significance. When he was certain nothing else was coming out of the dark at them, he looked up.

‘Are you injured?’ he asked.

‘Just wrathful.’

Ky’dak’s eyes blazed without his battle-helm, but it was something cold and hollow that burned behind them.

Craning their necks towards where Naeb and Dersius had forced a path through the ceiling, both Salamanders got into position then simultaneously engaged their jump engines. They burst up through the roof, trailing fire into a murky night clouded with smoke. They found their comrades quickly. Naeb and Dersius were already amongst the Havocs, having joined up with Iaptus and the others.

A second squad of renegades had moved into position after Va’lin’s battle-brothers, intending to bracket them in, but were surprised when two further Salamanders emerged amongst them.

Ky’dak was first to react. He impaled one legionnaire in the neck, ramming his dulled chainsword through the warrior’s gorget like a pike. Va’lin torched the other two with a short burst of fiery promethium, letting his partner finish them as they cooked in their armour.

‘Fire and blood, they’re everywhere,’ snarled Ky’dak, searching for the next fight.

From his vantage on the rooftop, Va’lin’s gaze was drawn downward.

An armoured column was moving in from the west. Five vehicles. He recognised the tank commander riding up in the cupola, Akadin Zantho. Two more, heavy-armoured Vindicators, rolled in from the north as well as a pair of massive Redeemers. In the streets below, what Va’lin could see of them, the cultists panicked. The legionnaires held on grimly, the other Havocs turning their autocannons and heavy bolters on the Salamanders tanks.

One of the Predators ground to a halt, its turret rising as solid shot ricocheted ineffectually off its hull. Twin-linked side sponson mounts angled in unison to meet the same target. The hum of power generators grew to a shriek as the capacitors reached a critical mass and unleashed laser death on the Havocs. Power armour shredded apart like flakboard as three more equally potent salvoes lanced from the other Predators.

In a few violent, energy-charged seconds, the Havocs were gone with only a faint crackle of corposant to mark their destruction. The cannons swung around on their turrets, tracking fresh targets and vaporising cultists with every energy discharge.

With a command Va’lin couldn’t hear over the battle, Zantho unleashed the Redeemers. Avenues and tunnels, all the clandestine crawl spaces the heretics had used to effect their ambush were filled with flame. He’d seen enough.

Va’lin urged Ky’dak onwards and as the burning below commenced, the Assault Marines leapt into one of the heretic gun nests and cut down its crew. Most were already running anyway, and the Salamanders snarled at the backs of their foes as they fled. It didn’t stop either one shooting them down. An enemy unwilling to fight face to face and eye to eye was worthy only of contempt and so would be put down thusly. The deaths of the crew were scarcely footnotes in an ongoing saga of the war on Heletine. After that, heretical resistance crumbled as the will to fight bled from them.

It bled all over the streets in runnels.

Scraps of the fleeing cultists survived, as vermin always did even when faced with a cleansing fire. Some reached tunnels, hidden culverts and side streets. Their escape would afford them a little more life. It would be measured in minutes or days only. Salamanders were patient. They could wait until the fire became a conflagration for all these thrice-damned souls to burn in.

Zantho rode down the rest, watching impassively from his Land Raider’s cupola as cultists fell screaming beneath the tracks. It was not music to his ears, as some warriors might claim; it was merely war. But that did not make it any less satisfying. He had a vengeful streak, the tank commander. He found it amply slaked in those final moments of the battle.

Va’lin watched as Ky’dak wrecked the autocannon that had been strafing the road. With the battle over, there seemed little else to occupy his fading need for violence. Below, the remnants of Kessoth’s and Kadoran’s squads had moved into the open and were laying down fire on the other towers and weapon emplacements. One tower collapsed, seemingly capitulating against the onslaught. Another simply fell silent, an empty shell haunted by terrified ghosts who had looked true fury in the eye and blinked. Salamanders had that effect.

‘With Zantho here,’ said Ky’dak, stepping up to the edge of the cavernous hole they had used to breach the tower, ‘that means he has either secured the northern district of the city in much shorter order than any of us could have hoped or…’

Va’lin absorbed the scene below too and guessed at the other warrior’s inference. ‘He has surrendered it on Captain Drakgaard’s orders, to pull our souls from hellfire.’

‘Takes the edge off, doesn’t it.’

Va’lin did not answer. Sigils daubed in what he assumed was blood on the walls had caught his eye.

As a Space Marine, he was largely immune to such debased iconography, but it sent a twinge of unease running through him.

He doused the sigils in fire, before muttering, ‘Strange…’

‘What is?’ asked Ky’dak, turning around to face him.

Even Chaos sigils had a pattern. They were each fashioned in such a way as to show and garner allegiance from some daemonic patron. The blood-graffiti in the nest conflicted, as if more than one potentate of Ruin were being called upon. It led Va’lin to speculate how many enemies were on Heletine and which of those had yet to reveal themselves. Ever was it the way with Chaos in his experience. Nothing was ever as it seemed, a fact that extended to an incident during his Scout training back on Nocturne. The memory grew sharp in his mind. Distant gunfire, the last echoes of a battle fought and won, brought him back. No sense in lingering on that now.

‘Nothing,’ he lied, letting his suspicions rest. Master of Recruits Ba’ken had always remonstrated Va’lin for his over inquisitive mind, and here he was again. Part of him wished Ba’ken were here now – his wisdom would be greatly appreciated – but Va’lin had left him behind on Nocturne. That door was closed to him. It wasn’t even his home world. That too was gone, and how he missed it.

He rejoined Ky’dak as he looked out of the sundered gun nest.

The battle was over, the tanks had seen to that and Salamanders infantry was quickly mopping up what little resistance did remain.

‘What happened in the stairwell, brother?’ he asked.

Ky’dak looked confused.

‘We fought and killed an enemy combatant. I don’t follow.’

‘There was a death wish in your eyes,’ said Va’lin. ‘I’ve seen rage like that before and his path was far from glorious.’

‘Speak plainly, Va’lin. We have been battle-brothers for only a short time but you’ve never been cryptic with me. Don’t start now. Who do I remind you of?’

‘Very well. He was a Firedrake, a sergeant before that. Zek Tsu’gan.’

Ky’dak recognised the name. ‘The defector?’

‘No one has said he defected.’

‘But they’re hunting him?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re likening me to him?’

‘You are as reckless as he was. You fought as one, not a squad. You defied every combat doctrine.’

Ky’dak scowled, abruptly disinterested.

‘We are alive, he is not. You’re a pragmatist, Va’lin. I’ve heard you don’t always follow orders directly. I thought you would understand.’

‘Improvisation and adaption, not a reckless desire to kill or die in the attempt no matter the cost.’

‘When Iaptus takes issue with my tactics, then I shall listen. Until then…’ Ky’dak shouldered Va’lin out of the way, and put one foot on the lip of the ragged window crater. ‘I follow my own doctrine, brother. It’s simple,’ he said, half turning so Va’lin could see the coldness of his eyes again. ‘Do whatever it takes to win.’

Iaptus was below with the others.

‘Time to regroup,’ said Ky’dak and leapt from the window.

Va’lin followed, descending from the seven-storey tower on heat hazing jets of thrust from his jump pack.

Rockcrete split underfoot as he landed hard, sending out a web of impact cracks across the roadway.

He saw Ky’dak nod to their comrades, who returned similarly restrained responses. Taciturn, perceived as maudlin, even distant, Ky’dak had few he would consider friends. Va’lin, however, was welcomed back warmly. Dersius clapped him on the shoulder. Even Naeb, who was suffering with an injury from where the Terminator had struck him, managed a half-embrace.

‘In Vulkan’s name, brother.’

With the battle effectively over, Naeb had clamped his war-helm to his thigh. His breathing was a little laboured but he smiled broadly at his friend.

‘You led us from that death trap, Va’lin, and Iaptus knows it.’

Iaptus, his ornate weapons now sheathed to his armour, approached. His face was as stern as always but he allowed a tiny crack in his stony facade.

‘Well met, Va’lin.’

Unlike the others, Iaptus wore a veteran’s battleplate. His Mark III, so-called ‘iron armour’ had scales worked into the cuirass and greaves. Even his jump pack was ornate, each of the exhaust vents crafted to resemble a drake’s snarling mouth.

Every time he saw him, Va’lin was reminded of everything he wanted to be and how he wished to serve.

‘Brother-sergeant.’ Va’lin’s tone bordered on reverent, and he bowed his head before meeting Iaptus’s gaze again.

‘You have my gratitude and the gratitude of this squad, brother. I shall see to it Captain Drakgaard hears of your bravery and ingenuity.’

‘I was not alone. My brothers,’ Va’lin gestured to Dersius, Naeb and Ky’dak, ‘were alongside me.’

‘Shoulder to shoulder,’ said Naeb proudly.

Dersius nodded.

Ky’dak gave a faint sniff of what might have been contempt. Va’lin bristled but let it go.

‘I was merely doing my duty, sergeant,’ he said instead.

‘Aye, and well,’ Iaptus replied.

‘As my masters have instructed.’

‘Not well enough for Sor’ad,’ said Ky’dak, somewhat acerbically. ‘He lies dead, his duty ended.’

Iaptus turned to the other Salamander.

‘And he will be missed. Sepelius will be here soon.’ Iaptus gestured to Naeb. ‘Get him to the Apothecary as soon as Sepelius has harvested the fallen. I don’t want us to be further under strength for whatever our captain would have us do next. I must convene with Sergeant Zantho. Va’lin… The squad is yours until I return.’

Iaptus turned to go to speak with Zantho, leaving Va’lin with the others.

Dersius pointed towards the edge of the city district where a host of Rhinos was making its way along the crater-strewn road.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Sepelius will be amongst them.’

‘Then carry me, brother,’ Naeb replied, staggering, ‘for I think my Larraman’s cells have been overly taxed already.’ Blood was still leaking freely from his damaged plastron, but he managed to smile thinly.

‘You will need a Techmarine to look at that armour too, brother,’ added Dersius, supporting Naeb under the shoulder. Together, the two began limping towards the oncoming entourage of support vehicles.

‘Does your stoic pragmatism ever meet with empathy or sympathy, brother?’ Naeb gibed with good humour. ‘Or are you simply absent those parts of your personality?’

Dersius was a broad-shouldered warrior, easily the stockiest in the squad. He was a methodical thinker, dogged and determined but not predisposed towards command. For a few seconds he stared blankly at Naeb until he realised he was gently being made fun of.

Va’lin was certain his booming laughter would be heard all the way back at camp.

Ky’dak was about to follow, when Va’lin grabbed his arm to stop him.

‘You and I will speak again, Ky’dak.’

‘Oh yes? Have you not already said your piece, brother?’ He didn’t look remotely concerned about being physically restrained. Privately, Va’lin wondered how far he could push this before Ky’dak reacted.

‘Whatever your issue towards me, I won’t have it mar the efficacy of this squad.’

‘Mar the efficacy?’ He lowered his voice. ‘Do you hear yourself, Va’lin? Iaptus’s backslap has gone to your head, brother. This squad is ninety per cent efficacious. It has been thus since we lost Sor’ad. I have no “distemper” towards you. I am angry for reasons you could not understand, but I assure you, brother,’ he leaned in close and slowly removed Va’lin’s hand from his arm, ‘they have absolutely nothing to do with you.’

A little on the back foot, Va’lin let him go.

Questions could wait. Some had waited years, ever since the fire canyons on Nocturne and what he had seen amidst the smoke. Ky’dak and the Terminator they had killed, and the conflicting sigils in the gun nest were the latest but also the most pressing. As he followed after Ky’dak, a thought went through his head.

Vulkan ward us from whatever is to come.

An ill feeling was growing within him. Ever since they had set foot on Heletine, it had been there, almost like a premonition.

CHAPTER THREE

Elsewhere

Xarko smelled the burning. It surrounded him, emanating from a sea of fire.

A spur of dark rock like an unfurled tongue stretched out from the safety of the bank over endless magma. Xarko was standing upon its precipice, looking down into grey palls of pyroclastic smoke.

Above, there was no sky, no earth. Only darkness reigned – eternal, amorphous and unnatural.

No armour, no protection of any kind covered Xarko’s body, yet the flames spitting up at him did not burn. Not even when they touched his naked skin and sizzled against flesh before dissipating into formless smoke did they cause him harm.

This raiment of fire had become his mantle. He embraced it, and the sheer destructive power of the mountain. Her name was Deathfire. The ancient tribes had called it so, and thus it ever was and would be. Surrounded by its heartblood, Xarko stood at Deathfire’s subterranean epicentre and exulted. He closed his eyes. With the shimmering heat haze and the smoke he was almost blind anyway. The fire became a sudden omnipresence, a sentient and blazing ocean. In many ways, more than Xarko realised in that moment, it was.

Senses now fully engaged, he drank in the heady atmosphere and used it to marshal his thoughts. Waves churned and roared. Ash and earth were redolent on the hot breeze and borne aloft on eddies of steam. Xarko wished to rise with them but knew his destination was below, deep within the merciless currents.

With the rock sharp and gritty underfoot, his bare skin prickling at its touch, Xarko committed his mind and soul… and leapt from the spur.

For a fleeting moment, he felt peace. Suspended in midair, as if held in aspic, a strange transcendence overcame Xarko. Then the fire sea opened its maw wide and swallowed him. There was no pain, only reluctance as if admittance into these lower depths was uncertain. But after overcoming this brief inertia, Xarko began to descend.

In spite of the preparations he had made, the experience was disconcerting at first. Eventually, he allowed the currents to take him. As he sank into endless flame, he recalled the myths of old Nocturne, like Ullyus dragged down to the hell maelstrom by his anvil, or Kar’dra, who failed to outswim the drake Bhaargal on the Acerbian Sea, or Gheliah, who sank to his doom in the Gey’sarr Ocean wrestling the serpents of Okesh.

Xarko was no mythic hero of Nocturne, though he relished recalling their deeds. Yet, here he was on the fire sea, cut adrift just like in those sagas of old. The memories armoured him, more potent than any suit of ceramite and adamantium ever could in this place. With a final push, he reached the bottom of the ocean and almost simultaneously breached the surface, emerging into a twilit world.

Hard iron chains wrapped around his ankles, the weight of their small anvils dragging at him but also anchoring him. The stronger his mental state, the more inviolate the chains became, the tougher each link would be. By anchoring his body in this place, they were also anchoring his mind. Seeing and feeling the mental tethers, however illusory it all was, made it easier to believe they were actually there. In this place, belief was reality. Without the anvils… well, he did not want to consider what kind of fate that could lead to.

Alone, he beheld a night-black ocean, one that reached to the edge of sight and beyond. A storm was rising, driving the sea into turbulent waves with their crests ablaze. Firelight dappled the water like frenzied flecks of pigment. Images resolved, painted on this dark canvas by an unseen hand.

To Xarko they resembled faces. Some, he knew, were old; others, yet to be. Boundless, formless chronology unfolded before him. He had but to swim in it to learn its secrets.

The storm was perturbing, though. He had not expected it. Turmoil was common in this other realm but not like this. Something was wrong; something external was trying to exert its influence.

Xarko swam, braving whatever tumult had seized the ocean. Fear was an enemy he could ill afford. His training and conditioning had rendered the concept alien. Here, both would be tested. Despite the tempestuous waters, he knew these straits and their perils. Predators did not take long to come. Drawn by Xarko’s soul-flame they appeared as shadows at first, a darker sliver on an already black background. Three shapes resolved soon after, spear-tips of coal knifing through an ocean limned in red.

A great swell of water was rising. Xarko went perpendicular to the tide, swimming hard against the edge of a growing wave. The anvils, rather than hold him down, began to slip. Only force of will kept them manacled. Driving furiously, arm over arm, legs beating hard, he risked a glance over his shoulder… and smiled.

The coal-black hunters were following.

He swam on, all the while the currents shifting below him, the tide ever pulling. As he raced, he heard voices, half snatched before the roar of the flaming sea carried them hence. In the fiery-wreathed depths, he half glimpsed faces that were about to resolve before they too were dashed by the ocean’s fury.

The wave was rising, curling, and in a moment it would break.

Xarko rose with it, his body screaming. The hunters gave chase, darting after him like flung spears. Xarko reached the wave crest just as it crashed. He crested the peak with a last surge of strength and the hunters, fractionally behind him, were smashed apart. Gasping, Xarko rolled gently down the back of the wave. The tumult ended, and the sea was calm again.

Taking a few moments to gather up his depleted strength, Xarko heard the voices return. One rose to prominence amongst the clamour. Whomever it had, did or would belong to cried out in anguish. The tides began to rise again, this time a reflection of the mental turmoil expressed through the twilit ocean rather than the incursion of neverborn entities.

Xarko turned, trying to discern a pattern to the images painted in fire upon the water. He thought he saw a face, locked in a silent scream before it grew too wide and ate itself in a fount of spume.

An echo faded with the image, two words, difficult to grasp.

Ferro ignis.

Yes, that was it.

Fire sword.

Xarko had no idea as to its meaning.

He wanted to delve deeper, find truth within the tides, but another voice wrenched him back. Unlike the cry he had heard across the ocean, Xarko recognised this one and allowed his mental tethers to unravel. One by one, the chain links around his ankles unpicked themselves and fell into the sea where they dissolved like ash. Slowly, deliberately, Xarko detached mind and body from this realm and awoke in another… aboard a spaceship.

Transition from the other realm to the one of matter and substance was not immediate. Xarko first became aware of the chamber around him. His psychically heightened senses slowly faded in a diminishing pulse, like an echo reaching its aural terminus. He felt the ship, the souls aboard, his Librarian’s eye seeing everything in a burst of psychic sonar.

Engines were at full stop, anchor was laid and the low thrum of life support systems barely intruded on the quietude. Serfs roamed the corridors, performing such circadian rhythms as was required of them, but it was almost ghost-like on the Forge Hammer.

The ship was slumbering. Ever since the seekers had departed, a state of dormancy had descended upon those left behind as if their existence was held fast in amber until the others returned to report their findings.

In his darkened chamber, Xarko drank in the silence and absorbed the shadows. His crouched form exuded steam. Wisps of white vapour rose up into the air filtration systems of the frigate. On his perch nearby a drygnirr with blue scales and a yellow crest cawed and snapped.

‘I see it, no need to shout, Kraelish,’ Xarko murmured, still coming around from his journey across the fire tides.

A vox hail lit up the console in front of him.

‘Speak,’ said Xarko.

‘It’s me,’ a stern voice answered. ‘We’ve found the ship.’

The feed was a little broken, unclear. Atmospheric interference had been fouling communications. Either that, or Agatone was leading his men further down into the hive.

‘Anything else?’ asked Xarko.

‘Just ash, brother.’ Agatone left a short pause before saying, ‘Your voice is slurred, Codicier. I thought Vel’cona advised you to limit your time trawling the fire tides.’

‘I’m just tired, brother-captain,’ Xarko lied. ‘No need for concern.’

Another pause as Agatone considered his response.

‘Have you heard anything from the others?’ he asked.

Xarko used the console to activate a screen. Weak light bled from it, illuminating his features. They were sharp, angular. Not uncommon in Nocturnean psykers. His eyes glowed a deep crimson but there was the faintest trace of cerulean blue there also, as his recent exertion of power had yet to fade completely.

Three sigils were lit up on the screen, one of which was active. Below each sigil, lines of biorhythmic data identified each individual member of all three hunt-teams. A chrono-stamp indicated their last recorded communication. Two had been silent for several hours.

‘Nothing. They made planetfall, but all quiet since then. Yours is the first voice I’ve heard in a while, brother-captain.’

Agatone paused to give orders to the other warriors in his hunt-squad, before resuming his conversation with Xarko.

‘Lok went west into the tunnel complex, Clovius north to the silos. Down here, taking any direction is like entering a labyrinth.’

‘Our father faced a similar trial, or so legend says.’

‘Not like this. It’s like trawling in a sea of effluence. Whatever prompted him to seek refuge here, I cannot say. Sah’rk nests have more charm.’

‘Will you keep looking? What if he’s already gone? Or dead?’

‘If he’s dead there’ll be a mess, and we can track it. Warriors like him don’t die easily. I think we’re close. Zartath claims he has his scent.’

‘You trust him, the mutant I mean?’

‘You realise he can hear you, Codicier?’

‘He knows my feelings. I have voiced them often enough to his face.’

‘Consider yourself fortunate he has yet to cut yours open.’

‘I shall bear that in mind, brother-captain,’ said Xarko, smiling at an empathetic snarl from Kraelish. ‘And so your quarry, will you keep looking?’

‘I must.’

‘Then I shall continue to monitor you from the Forge Hammer.’

‘All quiet up there?’ asked Agatone, as the conversation began to wind down.

‘Peacefully so.’

‘And the tides, Xarko… what did you learn from them?’

Now it was Xarko’s turn to pause as he considered the question.

‘Unsure, but they are fickle. There was… some turmoil.’

‘I am not a psyker, Xarko.’ Agatone chafed. ‘What exactly does that mean?’

‘That something is going to happen, something important. Soon, I think.’

Agatone took a few seconds to respond.

‘Stay out of the tides, Xarko,’ he said eventually. ‘Some mysteries are best left alone.’

‘As you wish.’ Xarko bowed to the shadows and cut the vox-link.

Silence was restored and darkness reasserted. He closed his eyes to cast his consciousness out amongst an ocean of thought and began to roam. Serfs went about their duties, the decks were quiet with bulkheads sealed and all systems were running normally. For now, they remained undetected.

But Xarko’s psychic awareness stopped at Forge Hammer’s armoured hull. It failed to reach into space. For if it had he would have known that all was far from normal. He would have perceived the small ship gliding slowly towards their anchorage in the upper atmosphere and he would have felt the homicidal intent emanating from the few determined souls aboard.

‘Lieutenant Makato,’ Xarko spoke down the vox-feed to his chief armsman.

‘My lord,’ came a firm reply a few seconds later.

‘I am entering my sanctum, and not to be disturbed.’

‘Understood, my lord.’

Xarko severed the link, closed his eyes and re-entered the fire tides.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior

The crash site reached at least fifteen metres in all directions. Debris littered the ground, great streams of it like mechanised intestine. In the hive levels above, detritus hung from girders and gantries, serving as evidence of the ship’s difficult landing. Ship no longer, it was now a partially destroyed wreck. Scorch marks blackened its flanks, deeper and longer on the right-hand side where the engine had exploded. Dust, grit and dented fuselage, half-exposed to the bare metal, obscured much of the gunship’s iconography. Its flattened nosecone, shattered glacis and ruptured right wing made even identifying its class a challenge.

It was a Thunderhawk, a gunship with a winged lightning bolt symbol described in black on its side amidst a field of bile-yellow. The amount of damage inflicted on the ship, together with the obvious hostility of its impromptu landfall, made it even more surprising that at least one of its occupants had survived.

Exor emerged from behind the ship, having been to examine the engine damage.

He shook his head, the mechadendrite tools he had been using to perform the rituals of function retracting in their haptic implant sleeves as he breathed, ‘Omnissiah… I have no idea how he landed this ship and lived.’

His shock betrayed his youth, as did his voice. It had the mechanised cadence of most Techmarines, only lighter. Exor was far from being a veteran, unlike his two much more grizzled companions.

‘What else?’ asked Agatone, his deep voice slightly muted inside the folds of his hood. He looked sidelong at the dead hivers they had left in their wake and considered hiding the bodies. As Space Marines, they had little to fear from the underhive’s inhabitants but in a large enough pack they might prove problematic and dead always brought carrion in a place like this.

He returned his attention to Exor.

‘It won’t fly again,’ declared the Techmarine. ‘One engine is gone, along with the wing on the right-hand side. Weapon systems and all forms of cogitation are defunct. Landing stanchions are wrecked and the hull’s structural integrity needs a complete re-armour before it could ever be considered for atmospheric flight. In short, the ship is dead, captain. Machine-spirit and all.’

Agatone grunted as he considered the ramifications. With his own visual assessment, he added what he could to the information Exor had provided.

Scratches marred the exterior hull that were not a result of crash damage, stripping the paintwork to bare metal in places. As well as the crushed forward aspect of the ship, the rear was also badly damaged, its exit ramp ripped away and long gone. A gaping hole where the ramp should have been provided access to a charnel house of bodies within. Some looked like battle dead, ferried from Nocturne but dying before their Apothecary could minister to them or retrieve any gene-seed from the truly lost causes. Like the ship, they wore armour of yellow livery with the black winged bolt symbol on their shoulder guards. Closer inspection had revealed the dead had been gnawed upon where the flesh was exposed, as if by whatever carrion-eaters lived this far down in the city’s underhive.

Agatone approached the rear hatch. Zartath had gone back inside the ship, disappearing through a ragged hole in the fuselage that led to darkness and the reek of blood. Trusting the dead gangers had no other scouts in this section of the underhive, he drew back his hood. It itched, and he was used to being bare-headed. Even the stifling confines of his battle-helm would have been preferable. But they had left their armour aboard the frigate that had laid anchor in Sturndrang’s upper atmosphere. Agatone had insisted; they would be less conspicuous that way. He felt almost naked without his full battleplate, having to settle for body-carapace and half greaves normally reserved for sparring. A storm cloak completed the ‘disguise’, concealing their armour but unable to mask the Salamanders’ sheer size. Their equipment also came without battle-helm, which meant ear beads for vox, no tactical data-feed and no respirator.

So there was no filtration of the underhive atmosphere, which stank. It was redolent of petro-chem, fycylene and low-grade promethium, amongst other synthetically produced combustibles. Despite the rank odour, it failed to conceal the stench of putrefaction emanating from inside the ship’s hold.

Agatone scowled. ‘Reeks of decay.’

‘Fecal matter also. Sections of the hold are swimming in the crud.’

‘Indigenous?’

The voice of Zartath snorted with amusement. ‘I doubt the Malevolents soiled their armour, though with your errant drake amongst them and bent on killing some may have.’ He snorted again, in derision this time, ‘They don’t know from savagery…’

Agatone ignored the feral boast, though it was becoming all too common since they had made planetfall. ‘Was our quarry wounded?’ he asked. ‘Beyond whatever injury he sustained during the crash.’ If he was struggling with an injury, it would make hunting him easier, his pattern more predictable. He would seek out a medic, or whatever sawbones passed for thus in this decrepit burrow.

A low snarl answered. ‘Unlikely. Everything I see suggests he took them by surprise. He killed them quick, but painful.’

Exor joined Agatone. The Techmarine activated his auspex. ‘Bio-scan reads negative. Blood’s all theirs. Some samples from the hold might yield more though…’

‘As I said,’ Zartath growled, unable to disguise the contempt he felt towards the Techmarine, ‘I don’t need the artifice of your Martian masters to tell me that.’

Despite his youth or possibly because of it, Exor rose to Zartath’s slight as he emerged from the hole in the fuselage.

‘Every day I am reminded of how much of a beast you are, Zartath. Cursed, I’ve heard some say. Half human.’

Where Zartath was wiry and gaunt, Exor had flatter, plainer features. In keeping with the traditions of the magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, he carried several augmetic and cybernetic implants that gave him a partially mechanised appearance, and these were made all the more apparent because of the stripped-down armour he was wearing. But this was not the only marked difference between them. Exor’s skin, much like his captain’s was onyx black and his eyes a deep fire-red.

Zartath’s skin was pale under his cloak and armour. Although he had sworn fealty to his adopted Chapter, even undergone its ‘rite of pain’ to become one of them, he was still not of Nocturne. His eyes still blazed, though, but not with the captured fire of a Nocturnean heritage and a genetic First Founding ancestry, but with an intensity of purpose and spirit that had seen him live where others had perished in the slave arenas of the dark eldar.

In the earliest years, not long after the war on Nocturne, the great Dragon Strife as some referred to it, Agatone had found it difficult to trust the mutant. He questioned his inclusion in the Chapter, an issue deliberated over for years in the Pantheon Council, but now he was forced to admit that if properly directed and motivated Zartath could be a loyal and potent asset.

Even so, he still needed a strong hand now and again. A leash, according to his more vocal detractors. Agatone did not like to think of him as some hound – it felt disrespectful. But it was not always easy.

Zartath bared his teeth, and claws.

‘Let him up,’ said Agatone, brooking no argument. ‘Sure or not, Exor needs to examine the ship.’

Bone claws retracting into his gauntlets, Zartath leapt down. The ossified growths were the physical manifestation of his mutancy, a gross distortion of the radius or ulna; only surgical x-ray or autopsy would reveal which with any certainty. Exor had expressed which methodology he would recommend to discern an answer. Zartath’s mandible bone and teeth were also unusual, the canines overlong and pronounced like fangs. His mouth, both inside and his lips, was black. So too his tongue which tapered to a sharp point like a dagger.

Some Chapters, such as the Marines Malevolent, would hunt down and execute what they regarded as deviations from the Emperor’s genetic design, a template that had regrettably been diluted over the millennia since its initial perfecting. None now existed who could restore it, and so there were those amongst the Adeptus Astartes regarded as ‘cursed’ and although the Salamanders did not ostensibly count themselves amongst these puritans, there were still some for whom the presence of such an obvious mutant element in their ranks was not only distasteful, it was also dangerous. It had made the ex-Black Dragon’s transition to the Salamanders difficult.

As if to emphasise the fact, Zartath glared at the Techmarine as they passed each other, his body almost shaking with repressed violence.

‘Shall we see who is the more human, brother?’ Zartath snarled, showing his savage nature again. ‘Let me cut the metal from your flesh. I doubt the remainder would amount to much. Certainly, there’d be no spine amongst the offal.’

Exor had climbed halfway into the ship when the augmetic replacement of his right eye flared, crosshairs interleaving over the iris and cornea as he accessed an internal targeting matrix. His right hand, a bionic, strayed towards his holstered bolt pistol.

‘Cease,’ Agatone told them both. The two had been at each other’s throats since planetfall, and it was trying the captain’s patience. In truth, each now came from a different world. Zartath, though he had adopted the Salamanders as his Chapter now and wore their deep green livery, was still a Black Dragon. Not merely that, he was also a mutant and still prone to volatility. Exor was younger, not long returned from Mars where he had been privy to the secrets of the Adeptus Mechanicus and emerged a fresh-forged Techmarine. Like Zartath, his loyalty was irrevocably split, partly to Nocturne and the Chapter, partly to the red Martian world.

Conflict, Agatone reminded himself again, was inevitable.

‘I brought you here to hunt, Zartath,’ he said. ‘So, hunt. Find his trail.’

Like a hound brought to heel, the ex-Black Dragon nodded and obeyed.

Alone for the moment, Agatone considered their surroundings and the likelihood of the success of their mission.

Sturndrang was a heavily industrialised world of vast factorums and massively overly populated hive cities. Utilising the rich mineral deposits of its mines and other subterranean works, the majority of its populace served the Throne through intense manual labour in the production of materiel for the never-ending Imperial war effort. Shells, tank armour, glacis for aircraft, vulcanised rubber, plastek, fuel, teeth for chain-weapons, even rivets were all manufactured on Sturndrang in one of its twenty-three hives.

When they had made their descent through low atmosphere, the Salamanders had been granted their first proper look at their hunting ground, a smog-choked vista of blister-encrusted spires on a plain of irradiated wasteland.

Sturndrang was a war world in many respects, and a standing army was garrisoned on it to protect its highly valuable assets. Amongst the domes and blisters, the sub-spires and annexed mezzanine levels jutting from the ugly sloped flanks of the hives, Agatone had seen bastions and blockhouses. Landing pads, even a sizeable orbital dock were in evidence. Search-lamps strafed the night that gripped Sturndrang in an eternally clenched fist and patrols in light gun-cutters or atmospherically-sealed speeders made regular passes to ensure continued compliance and maximum civilian efficiency.

Agatone had come from a world of industry too. Nocturne, although much less stable than Sturndrang, an alpha-classification death world in fact, was not so dissimilar in its industrial endeavour. It was, however, entirely less like a sprawling slave camp. As they had made planetfall, careful to avoid the patrols and the strafing lights, Agatone found the idea of Sturndrang disgusted him. A quirk of his humanitarian nature, he supposed, but to inflict such squalor and deprivation on a populace seemed little better than tyranny to his mind. It was then he was reminded of just how large and unruly the galaxy was. So many worlds, so many interpretations of the Imperium’s law.

‘So much corruption…’ he had muttered angrily, and without the taint of Ruin in sight.

And beneath these very literal hives of industry were the substrata, those sectors that had been constructed upon to serve the fervent desire of Sturndrang’s overseers for greater production, larger output. Over centuries and millennia, they had sunk deeper and deeper into the earth until few alive could recall what their original purpose and function had been. Here and there, as the Salamanders had descended into the underhive, experiencing the squalor and desperation of its underclasses for themselves, was evidence of former glories. A mosaic floor, an ornate fountain long parched, a marble staircase, a grand hall stripped of its gilding, a begrimed sign bearing some proud industrial motto or rubric. Wars, natural disasters, power grabs, all and more had served to transform Sturndrang during its long history of Imperial fealty. Fortunes and landscape had changed – one thing that had not was the production of materiel.

As Agatone stood by the wreckage of the Malevolents’ ship, one his former battle-brother had somehow guided to this devastated landing his Techmarine now examined, he considered the warren they were searching. Labyrinthine did not even begin to describe its complexity.

He hoped Tsu’gan was dead. He would wish he was dead by the time Agatone finally caught up with him.

CHAPTER FIVE

Heletine, Canticus, Imperial held territory

They reached the laager of armoured personnel carriers where Sepelius had set up his apothecarion. Ahead of Va’lin, Dersius and the injured Naeb, trails of wounded snaked from various medical stations. Most were Cadians, battered and brutalised, tramping wearily in long trains like a coffle of slaves. Some travelled via stretcher; others were covered from sight, being taken for the pyre not the medicae. Entire troop holds of Chimera transports were filled with the dead. Va’lin had seen their bodies. White Shields, troopers, Kasrkin, even commissars. None were spared the Black Legion’s wrath or thirst for blood.

Overhead, the low turbine thrum of engines was a constant drone as slow-moving Stormravens ferried the Salamanders dead and injured. As he looked up at the shadow of one passing over them, Va’lin wondered if Sor’ad was aboard. He also caught Ky’dak’s eye for a moment, following a few steps behind the others, and glanced away.

Munitorum clerks would record the latest Canticus engagement as a victory, but Va’lin and the others who had fought in the battle knew it was a pyrrhic one at best. Zantho’s armoured intervention had cost them ground elsewhere. Where one point of pressure was relieved, another was redoubled. So far, during these first weeks of engagement, all the Imperium had managed to achieve was a grinding stalemate. Va’lin wondered why, and also what the Black Legion wanted with this world, beyond mere bloody conquest. Speculation would have to wait. As they reached the edge of the laager, Sepelius awaited.

Va’lin had already sent the others back to barracks for weapons and armour repair. Without Iaptus, who was still on the recently won battlefield with Zantho, there were only four of the original squad present.

Upon seeing the battered assault squad tramping through his ‘gates’, the Apothecary asked, ‘More meat from the grinder, brothers?’

Dersius handed over Naeb to a pair of medical servitors Sepelius had sent to meet them. The servos of the cyborganic creatures strained audibly as they took the injured Salamander’s weight. Naeb knew little about it. He had been going in and out of consciousness for the last few minutes. Va’lin was relieved his brother would finally be getting some medical attention.

‘Seems I have a butcher’s lot already,’ added the Apothecary in a sibilant voice.

The improvised medical station inside the laager’s armoured boundary was capacious. Warriors from Sixth stood sentinel in stormbolter turrets, and small squads of Cadian 81st patrolled the periphery with fingers poised next to lasgun triggers. An air of unease pervaded on account of a battle barely won.

Nearby, a large area had been staked out and delineated as a landing pad. The Stormraven Va’lin had seen flying overhead earlier had just finished unloading its mortal cargo and was cycling its turbine engines as it prepared to get airborne again.

‘Is that what we are to you, Sepelius… Meat?’

Dersius could not keep the distaste out of his voice.

‘Anything other and I fear the trauma of seeing so much death would unhinge me, brother,’ Sepelius smiled, but it was cold and utterly without humour.

The Apothecary wore predominantly white armour, though it was stained by now with blood and dirt. One shoulder guard displayed his allegiance to the Chapter. Unlike the assault squad’s green drake head sigil on a field of black, Sepelius was part of Drakgaard’s command squad and wore the same drake head against a backdrop of fiery yellow. His face was long, his forehead pronounced. An ugly man in many ways, not that this concerned Sepelius remotely. He was tall also, and marginally looked down on the warriors before him. His hair was shorn close to his scalp, and winter-white much like his demeanour.

‘Just patch him up, Brother-Apothecary,’ said Va’lin, cutting through the needless posturing. ‘I have need of him, as does the grinder.’

The servitors were carrying Naeb away into a busy throng of medics and walking wounded. Sepelius had already established a system of triage and was prioritising Adeptus Astartes over Guard. From the sheer number of injured against the amount of medical staff present, it looked like they had a long night ahead of them.

‘He’ll be ready for death again come the morning, Va’lin,’ Sepelius replied as the other three Salamanders turned to leave. ‘Tell me,’ he called, ‘are your thoughts still troubled?’

Va’lin cursed under his breath, but kept on walking. Against his better judgement, before he knew how caustic Sepelius could be, he had gone to the Apothecary about his experiences in the fire canyons back on Nocturne. Upon meeting the man, Va’lin’s instincts had warned him against saying too much but now Sepelius would not let it go.

‘What’s he talking about?’ asked Dersius with a scathing glance over his shoulder at the Apothecary.

Ky’dak said nothing, and kept his eyes forward, but Va’lin could tell he was also intrigued.

‘I confided in someone I shouldn’t have, brother. There’s no more to it than that.’

A spit of flame overhead and the aggressive roar of jump jets interrupted as the descending figure of Sergeant Iaptus prevented any further awkward questioning.

He seemed agitated.

‘Dersius, Ky’dak, rejoin the rest of the squad back at camp. Brother Va’lin, you are with me.’

Iaptus boosted away again immediately and Va’lin followed.

‘Brother-sergeant?’ he asked across the vox, which was now fully functional again.

‘Captain Drakgaard has recalled all officers not currently in the field. Apparently, there has been a change in our war footing on Heletine.’

‘Because of Canticus, and Zantho’s redeployment?’

As they soared over the city, leaping from one ruin to the next, Va’lin was afforded a good view of the fires and the wreckage the war had wrought so far. Canticus appeared as if it had been ransacked, and he wondered again at the motives of their enemies.

Through the darkness and drifting smoke, Va’lin picked out the phosphor lamps of a hexagonal landing pad and the bulky Stormraven there with engines idling.

‘That and something else,’ Iaptus replied as they touched down thirty metres from the waiting gunship. ‘Allies,’ said Iaptus, speaking without the vox as they tramped across the earth. ‘Sisters of the Ebon Chalice.’

‘Sororitas?’

Iaptus turned his gaze on Va’lin.

‘The Ecclesiarchy’s warrior-zealots have come to Heletine for Throne only knows what reason.’

The front hatch of the Fourth Company Stormraven descended to form a ramp. Iaptus and Va’lin climbed aboard to make the remainder of the journey to Escadan and the Imperial encampment.

CHAPTER SIX

Nova-class frigate, Forge Hammer

The ship drifted, night-black against a starless void. Battle-worn, its hull was ragged and bore stark evidence of a recent hostile engagement. Its engines were dormant and without function, cold like a dead star. Its port and starboard facings were dark and no heat trace was present in its systems that, for all intents and purposes, were inert. Ostensibly, the Hunter-class Destroyer that had recently come into close proximity of the Forge Hammer was dead.

Lieutenant Makato’s face betrayed his consternation as he glared at the sensorium feed that described the foreign vessel that had just strayed into their vicinity. His mood failed to improve as he regarded the scratchy pict captures. Incongruity displeased him, and everything about this ship, its sudden appearance and condition, was incongruous. Like a slow-moving ocean predator that plays dead whilst drifting on the currents with the other flotsam, the dark ship had crept up on the larger frigate, as innocuous on the sensorium as an asteroid. It wasn’t until the ship could be seen and identified that the alarm had been raised.

‘How long have you been aware of this?’ Makato asked pensively, smoothing his moustache and beard.

He was looking over the shoulder of a young officer, overseeing the ship’s eyes and ears. The Forge Hammer was currently at ‘silent running’, so the bridge was quiet, the many consoles sparsely attended by a skeleton crew and under-lit with softly glowing lumens.

‘A few minutes, sir. I hailed as soon as I was sure.’

‘Sure of what, ensign?’

‘That it was a ship, sir.’

‘And what’s your assessment now?’

The officer seemed nonplussed. ‘It’s a wreck, sir. A carcass of a ship, really. It must have drifted into the planet’s gravity well and been drawn to us.’

‘You’ve detected no motive power at all?’ asked Makato, whose eyes had yet to leave the screen.

‘No, sir.’

‘No life signs?’

‘Not that we can tell, sir. Biorhythmic activity is difficult to accurately gauge at this range, though, and our instruments are not–’

‘Then we should take a closer look.’

‘Y-yes, sir.’

Makato lifted his gaze from the console at last.

‘Not you, ensign,’ he said, and turned his attention to the broad-shouldered armsman standing at ease behind him.

‘Jedda, summon three of your men trained in atmospheric combat.’

Jedda saluted crisply and departed as ordered. The uniform he wore, like all those sworn to the fire-born aboard the Forge Hammer, was coal black with his rank markings described in grey. Makato’s insignia, as befitted his station, was silver.

‘You,’ said Makato, facing the officer, ‘will vox for Enginseer Utulexx to join us on launch deck six. I want a craft fuelled and ready in twenty minutes.’

‘Us, sir?’

‘Yes, I need to stretch my legs.’ Makato was stalking away when he paused. ‘And tell him to bring the Thallax.’

‘Sir…’ the ensign ventured somewhat hopefully.

Makato paused again. Though he had his back to the lad, the stiffening of his shoulders intimated his annoyance.

‘Should I contact Lord Xarko with news of this discovery?’

Makato seemed to consider this, relaxing for a moment, before stiffening up again and trooping on his way.

‘No, do not. The lord is in his sanctum – we don’t need to disturb him with this.’

An Arvus Lighter was prepped and waiting on launch deck six for Lieutenant Makato as per his orders. So too was a squad of armsmen, all kitted out in atmosphere suits. They stood at attention outside the small atmospheric craft, armed with heavy-gauge lasguns and hand-held plasma-cutters. The atmosphere suits were enhanced rubber and plastek, ugly looking things and cumbersome but they were effective.

Also present was the enginseer. Utulexx had brought his watchdog, which loomed large and threatening behind the robed servant of the Martian Mechanicus. The Thallax was a battle engine, a hulking cyborg that cradled an immense rifle across its armoured torso. It was called a ‘lightning gun’, a blunt yet accurate appellation. Through a series of capacitors and power relays slaved to the Thallax’s cyborganic systems, the lightning gun was capable of producing a devastating energy beam that could incapacitate mechanical targets via an extreme overload of power. For organic targets, the effects were somewhat messier and more permanent.

Between Jedda’s squad and the combat-droid, there was a lot of firepower. In his many years of service aboard the Forge Hammer and the Triumphal before that, Makato had learned to be cautious, especially when stepping into the unknown.

Apart from the lumen array which was lighting up the area around the Arvus, the rest of the deck was dark. There were sixteen launch bays on this deck in total, all lined up on the flanking wall. All but one were sealed and in shadow. Aft launch bay theta-seven was lit by a ring of flashing amber emergency lamps.

This was Captain Agatone’s ship, and while he and the rest of his warriors were off-deck Lord Xarko was in command. In his absence, Kensai Makato ran things. Though by any military standards his rank was modest, he took great pride in his appointed task. He was in service to a Chapter of the Emperor’s Angels; in his mind that was a great and unimpeachable honour. Every serf from armsman to brander-priest was his responsibility. In many respects he was this ship’s major-domo, its custodian and gamekeeper. Any potential threat to its smooth running Makato regarded as his duty to deal with.

This ship was but the latest.

And besides, as he had told the ensign, he needed to stretch his legs. The last bit of excitement they had experienced was several weeks back when the Vulkan’s Wrath had docked with the Forge Hammer letting Agatone and eight of his men aboard. Xarko was already on deck, the Librarian had joined them earlier via shuttle craft. A course was plotted to Sturndrang and the rest was kept need-to-know. For Makato that meant their destination but nothing else. Agatone and his charges had seemed agitated, though, but that was the extent of what was shared with any non-Adeptus Astartes personnel.

It didn’t matter to Makato. He knew his duty, and would prosecute it to the fullest. If that meant breaking up the monotony of twiddling his thumbs in low orbit above some dirt world he had never heard of and was less than inclined to visit then so much the better.

Descending via pneumatic pressure lift, Makato reached the deck promptly.

‘All is in readiness, Jedda?’ he asked as he reached the others.

‘Aye, sir,’ replied the gruff master-at-arms. ‘All pre-flight checks have been conducted. Ship is fuelled and at your command.’

‘Then let’s get this done.’

Makato paused on the lighter’s access ramp before going in.

‘You know why you’re here?’ he asked Utulexx.

‘Explorative mission aboard apparently scuppered Hunter-class vessel that has drifted into our immediate vicinity.’ The enginseer spoke through a vocaliser grille instead of a mouth. Underneath his hood, a single optic glowed as its tracking rings focused and refocused on the lieutenant. He was hunched, a result of the heavy cybernetic augmentation his body had undergone during his long tenure, but most of his mechanised enhancements were concealed by expansive brown robes. A Mechanicus sigil, unique to his dominions back on Mars and echoed over the Thallax’s black and gunmetal grey carapace, adorned his priestly vestments.

‘You wish to know what is on board, lieutenant,’ Utulexx concluded.

‘Correct.’

Makato glanced up at the ‘head’ of the Thallax. He had to crane his neck quite far to do so. A diode where its eye might have been glowed green, signifying passivity.

‘Keep that thing quiescent unless it’s needed,’ he warned Utulexx. ‘If there are survivors, I don’t want them eradicated before I’ve had a chance to question them.’

‘And if they are hostile, lieutenant?’ asked Utulexx.

‘Defend us.’

Makato led them inside without further preamble. He had already decided he would fly the craft himself and once aboard quickly got strapped in to the pilot’s station and commenced start up protocols.

The others filed in after him, Jedda in front, and likewise strapped themselves in to the crew compartment. Each man checked the rebreather and function of the atmosphere suit to the man on his left. Once satisfied, Jedda gave the signal for the launch to commence.

Seeing that the enginseer and Thallax were also now aboard, Makato began ignition. Through the lighter’s glacis, he saw the amber lumens around the launch portal turn to green as he provided the requisite launch codes. The landing strip was lit. He boosted the shuttle’s engines and fired up into launch. Eight seconds and they had cleared the landing strip and emerged from one of the aft launch ports into the void.

Twenty-three kilometres in front of them loomed the dark and lightless shape of the stricken destroyer.

As he made course for the massive vessel floating listlessly through space, Makato found it hard not to think of it as a tomb. He was no coward, far from it. Makato had served with the Imperial Navy for almost a century, and was considered a veteran. But deep down in his marrow, he prayed for the ship to be empty and that nothing was lurking aboard.

A damaged fighter bay allowed the Arvus untrammelled access to the Hunter-class vessel. Within seconds of touching down onto an ice-bitten, debris-strewn deck it was obvious that atmospheric conditions aboard had been severely compromised. Mag-locking the landing stanchions of the lighter, Makato lowered the ramp and gave the order to disembark.

The Thallax led them out, its targeting matrix hazing the zero atmosphere of the deck. Engaging luminator banks on its chest carapace, it spread a thin wash of magnesium-bright light over the void-dark interior.

‘I am no expert, sir, but I’d hazard this bay has been damaged by a torpedo impact,’ said Jedda through the contrivance of his atmosphere suit’s vox. He cast his own lamp pack over the expansive deck, made larger by depressurisation and the subsequent evacuation of all men and materials not bolted down. Evidence of fires rapidly extinguished could be seen marring some of the walls, which were also riddled with tiny craters the size of Makato’s fist.

‘Some kind of fragmentation warhead…’ he posited out loud, ‘shredded the whole deck.’

Each man had locked his boots with a moderate magnetic charge. Enough to hold on but not so much that he could not advance. As an additional safety precaution, Makato had insisted each man be tethered to another. If one experienced magnetic failure, the other would anchor him down until further help could arrive.

Only Utulexx went without, trusting to the manifold apparatus of his cybernetic implants to keep him grounded. The Thallax had its own terrain adaptive systems that included void combat. It could have traversed the outside of the ship if so commanded.

‘Sergeant,’ the enginseer began, using voice amplification and modulation to be heard by the atmosphere-suited humans, ‘I have located a route further into the ship.’

Makato turned, slowed by the lack of gravity, and saw the access port Utulexx was referring to.

It looked like a maintenance hatch, a crawlspace just wide enough for the Thallax if it was crouched down. The rest of them should not have any trouble, and there was no way their plasma-cutters were going to get through the larger gates and sealed bulkheads that had come down, too late it seemed, to seal off the launch bay.

‘Make it safe, enginseer. We’ll proceed in that direction.’

Utulexx nodded and with a blurt of binaric cant sent the Thallax up to take point.

At Makato’s order, Jedda brought up two armsmen with plasma-cutters.

‘Make it quick,’ he voxed.

Six minutes and they were through the hatch and into the corridor beyond. During that time, Utulexx scanned for life signs but found nothing.

The Thallax would have been compromised in the narrow access corridor, so Jedda went in first with his carbine primed. It was snub-nosed and compact, perfect for boarding actions. At close range, Jedda was confident of its stopping power.

On one wall in the eight-metre corridor was a cogitator panel. Utulexx force-accessed it using his mechadendrite implants and gained access to some of the ship’s onboard systems. First he rebooted the life support, which had been inexplicably suspended, then used what little emergency reserves remained to provide minimal lighting and motive power to some of the lifters. He then sealed the maintenance corridor behind them with a secondary blast gate that dropped down from the ceiling. Yellow lumens in both walls flickered once and stayed on. The light was weak, but at least it was lit and better than abject darkness. A hissing sound presaged re-oxygenation and in just over eight minutes the corridor and the immediate section of the ship beyond it – a small maintenance deck – was habitable again.

The corridor was wide enough for two abreast, so Jedda and Makato were shoulder to shoulder when the exit hatch opened and admitted them deeper into the ship.

Jedda went first, breathing slow and steady through his respirator, blowing out gusts of carbon dioxide through the filtration vents at the sides of his mask. He moved low and stealthy, almost feline, the carbine tucked into his shoulder and panning across the deck.

Like the rest of the ship, it was deserted. Squalls of mist ghosted across the floor, obscuring it from view. Lamp packs still flickered as they tried and failed to maintain a consistent link to the ship’s recently resupplied emergency power. In the half-light, they saw chains hanging from a vaulted ceiling. A swaying phosphor globe sporadically illuminated a squadron of power-lifters, their cabs bowed down as if in reverence, lifter arms hung slack by their sides. No crew, though. There were no bodies anywhere, only crates and laid down tools.

Advancing close on Jedda’s heels, Makato paced out the deck in his mind. He guessed two hundred and sixty metres. Definitely a sub-deck, but the lifter tube at the end of it would grant them further access. He reasoned that any survivors still on board would either be on the bridge or in life support.

According to Utulexx’s scans, this meant heading upwards to the higher decks.

Roughly halfway across the maintenance deck, Makato clenched his fist then raised it to order an all-stop. The boarding party were moving in a column, and there was plenty of space between them and the shadowy confines of the wider deck either side.

‘Enginseer, I’m reading some temperature fluctuations.’

‘The ship is still normalising its environment,’ Utulexx replied, his Thallax watchdog standing dutifully over him.

‘Are we safe to remove respirators?’ Makato asked. They were fouling his peripheral vision, and if the ship was atmospherically stable from this point, he would prefer to be without the handicap.

Utulexx took a few seconds to collate and assess the data from across the activated decks.

‘You may disengage atmospheric redundancies, sergeant.’

Makato unclipped the dome-like glacis from his head and removed it along with his respirator. The air smelt stagnant, still in the early stages of filtration and recyc but at least it was air.

Jedda and the others did the same, breathing deeply and relieved to no longer be stifled by their masks. They still needed the suits, however. Temperature levels were sub-zero and clouds of low-lying coolant still thronged some parts of the deck, encrusting stanchions and gantries with artificial hoarfrost.

Pulling a data-slate from a pouch in his atmosphere suit, Makato said, ‘According to this, we can take the lifter up three levels and come out in cryogenics. If there’s anyone still alive on this ship, that’s where they’ll be.’ He tapped the slate and the haptic implant in his glove blanked away the schematic and transferred it to a retinal lens independent from the suit itself but worn by Makato in a circlet around his head. The rectangular lens was transparent and flicked over his right eye where it displayed the schematic layout of the ship and superimposed it over his current destination. Now he had a living map of their route to cryogenics.

Thusly prepared, he moved the column out again.

‘How many saviour caskets does a vessel this size have?’ he asked Utulexx, who consulted his datacore for the answer.

‘Between three and five hundred, intended for essential personnel only.’

Makato nodded.

‘So there could be as many as five hundred souls up there?’

‘With the amount of damage this ship has sustained, the amount of time it could have been adrift in the void, I would posit that number to be significantly less.’

‘But five hundred at most?’

‘Potentially, yes.’

Makato began to wonder if he had brought enough men. Too late now. He decided they would get to cryogenics, assess the situation and then determine if further rescue teams were needed.

They crossed the remainder of the maintenance sub-deck without incident. The lifter was large enough to accommodate the entire team, so they went together. After three decks, they reached cryogenics.

As the gates to the lifter opened, a long corridor was revealed, stretching away into half-darkness. Two other corridors lay either side of it, but were only accessed through the central aisle, making five in total. Makato’s schematic showed each corridor had two rows of fifty cryogenic saviour caskets. This was the ship’s cryo-vault and, according to its chrono-stamp, it had not been accessed in several days.

Five hundred souls. Alpha through epsilon, with the main access corridor marked as gamma.

As they stepped from the lifter and onto the deck threshold, it became clear that not all of the caskets were functional. Some were broken, the activation lumens within dark and non-operational. Each casket was identical, arranged vertically and shaped like a glass cocoon mounted to a power generator slaved to the cryo-vault’s power array. They were large too, large enough to accommodate a human host with ease. Pipes and tubes fed nutrients and maintained hydration. A simple face mask rebreather provided oxygen. During cryo-sleep, a host should want for nothing and be left to dream. But some of the inhabitants lodged in this ship’s cryo-vault had been anything but quiescent. Closer inspection revealed that most of the caskets were empty but some contained desiccated, even skeletal, remains of human crew.

None of these men or women had died well.

Jedda made the sign of the aquila as Makato led them down the main access corridor. Lamp packs stabbed into the darkness, shining into each casket, as their bearers checked for survivors.

‘The long sleep…’ said Makato, trying not to imagine waking from cryo-stasis locked inside one of those caskets, unable to breath, barely able to move, slowly freezing to death as the process of vitrification broke down. The terror-etched faces staring hollow-eyed back at him made it hard to refute the image. Hands curled into claws, scratching ineffectually at glass. Fingertips blue with cyanosis. Lips peeled back over ice-rimmed jaws and teeth, mouths outstretched in silent expressions of fear and anguish…

‘Something very bad happened here,’ Jedda murmured. It was the first sign of internal doubt he had shown since mission start.

Makato found he could not argue, so said the only reassuring thing he could think of, ‘Whatever went wrong and condemned these poor souls to a cold death has passed. Stay vigilant.’

They moved slow, two by two with one man as rearguard.

The air was chill, and getting colder by the second. Their breath ghosted in long, white plumes of exhalation. The hard deck clanked underfoot with every booted step.

Nothing on the schematic.

‘Are you getting any bio-signs, enginseer?’

Makato had left Utulexx and the Thallax at the entryway, where a command console was linked to all five hundred caskets.

‘The ship’s entire complement of cryogenic stasis caskets has been activated. None are registering life signs but the control functions of this facility have been compromised.’

‘Compromised?’

Makato, Jedda and his men were reaching the end of the first bank of caskets. Frost crusted their boots from the expulsion of cryogenic gas leaking from several damaged units that crept across the floor in a white fog.

‘Sabotaged,’ Utulexx replied. ‘Cryo-freezing should not be able to occur if a unit is damaged or its hermetic seal has been breached. This facility is currently violating that protocol.’

Hence the air, and the frost underfoot.

Makato gripped a support stanchion of one of the caskets to test it. The metal cracked and split with only a minor application of force. Shortness of breath, acute headache and nausea: Makato did not need to be a medicus to recognise the early stages of hypoxia.

‘Helmets on,’ he ordered, feeling his skin start to prickle.

Encased by the domed glacis, Makato experienced a stifling of his senses but the temperature readout on the glass and the increased nitrogen in the air’s composition suggested some minor factional distillation had occurred with the large-scale release of several broken caskets. Prolonged exposure would be harmful to both him and his men.

At the end of the first bank they had discovered sixteen operational caskets, another twenty without power and fourteen with hermetic breaches spilling out cryo-gas into the localised atmosphere. Eight had been occupied by members of the crew. All were dead, their stasis arrested or having failed completely.

Four more banks awaited them, but Makato was growing impatient. As a Navy veteran, he had learned to trust his instincts. Here they were telling him to perform whatever due diligence he needed to in the cryo-vault and then get himself and his men off the ship.

‘Jedda, split your men into two teams and have them cover the port-facing caskets. I’ll take the starboard.’

Jedda nodded and went to his task.

Makato went right. Before heading down the next bank of caskets, he checked the load of his carbine; there was frost occluding the ammo gauge and he had to wipe it with his glove several times before it cleared. He had yet to fire it, so he knew the weapon held a full charge but the sight of the flashing readout was absurdly reassuring.

‘Enginseer, any life signs?’

‘Still none, but I am reading increased heart rate and respiration in your biorhythms, lieutenant.’

‘I’m fine, just keep your attention on the cryo-vault. I don’t want any surprises.’

The next bank of cyro-caskets was dark and what little light that came from the deck lamps underfoot was obscured by the vaporous atmosphere created by the leaks. About halfway down the corridor, one of the caskets spewed thick gouts of freezing mist into the air from a ruptured pipeline. It was hard to tell in the conditions, but the cable looked as if it had been cut.

Giving each casket a cursory examination now, as he subconsciously increased his pace, Makato edged past the badly damaged cryo-unit. As he emerged into the latter half of the corridor, a thought occurred to him.

‘Enginseer, what purpose would deliberately flooding the cryo-vault with aerosolised nitrogen serve?’

It took a few seconds for Utulexx to respond. During the short pause, Makato caught the sound of Jedda’s voice through the muffled confines of his helmet. He was about to raise the armsman on the vox when Utulexx replied.

‘Other than to create a hypoxic atmosphere, I can think of only one: the obfuscation of genuine active bio-signatures within the vault.’

Makato’s grip on his carbine intensified, and his pace slowed as his heart rate increased. Each casket was an empty void, most were unlit. The billowing pipeline behind him created a soft, dulcet refrain that scraped his nerves rather than eased them.

‘Explain.’

‘If an infiltrator wanted to hide their presence from a rudimentary bio-scan, a cryo-vault with a compromised structural integrity would be the optimum location to achieve that.’

‘Meaning, the drop in temperature would effectively make them invisible?’

‘Precisely.’

‘What about the effects of prolonged exposure?’

‘In most cases that would result in decreased motive and cognitive function, concluding in death.’

Most cases.

Makato wanted to hail Jedda. He wanted to recall his men, but the next cryo-casket in line was frosted with recent activation, the glass almost impossible to see through. Almost impossible. Something loomed behind the glass. It was large.

‘Lieutenant,’ Jedda’s voice came over the vox. ‘We’ve found something…’

Makato was only half listening as he reached out a gloved hand to wipe away the hoarfrost obscuring his view.

‘You said most cases. What could survive in conditions like that?’ he asked Utulexx, whilst simultaneously smearing away the frost on the outside of the casket, creating a half-horseshoe window of clear glass through which to observe…

‘Only a transhuman subject could survive in a nitrogen-saturated environment for any length of time.’

…power armour.

‘Emperor’s blood…’ gasped Makato, and backed away. From the opposite end of the cryo-vault he heard smashing glass and the shouts of Jedda and his men. Energised carbine discharges followed in a high-pitched whine.

‘Who is firing?’ Makato demanded. ‘Jedda, report!’

Jedda’s reply was swallowed up by more las-discharge and panicked shouting.

Makato dared not turn his back on the cryo-casket. In his peripheral vision, which was limited within the dome of his helmet, he saw a second casket was similarly occupied. In the one directly in front of him, something was moving.

Power armour… It took him a few seconds to make the connection.

Through the gap in the frost, Makato saw the casket occupant’s eyes open. They were black, like pools of oil.

‘Enginseer, we’re in trouble. Activate the Thallax.’

Utulexx gave a clipped affirmative. At the same time, a gauntleted hand smacked the inside of the casket, forming a crack in the hardened armourglass.

Makato raised his carbine and fired a three-round burst almost point-blank into the casket and ran. He went straight through the venting gas and felt it bite even through the protection of his atmosphere suit. He got as far as the junction when the crash of sundered glass resounded behind him and something heavy fell onto the deck. He did not look back.

Jedda was coming the other way with one of his men. A third shambled into view behind them. There was blood on this armsman’s atmosphere suit and a rent in the hardened material through which Makato could see aggressive heat bleed. The armsman staggered two more steps before collapsing facedown on the deck.

Jedda kept on running. So did the man with him.

Makato did not know their names, only that they were Jedda’s men and therefore Jedda’s responsibility. Faced with what he suspected was in those caskets, Makato felt remiss in not learning those names, that in this moment of peril, he had disrespected the lesser armsmen somehow and would now not be able to rectify that. It was strange how much that bothered him.

‘Where’s the other one?’ asked Makato, recognising his maudlin thoughts as potentially hazardous to his survival, however remote that might be, and pushing them to his subconscious. Maintain focus now, live to repent later. He, Jedda and the other armsman regrouped in sight of the central corridor. The heavy tread of the Thallax resonated against the metal as it advanced, but was not particularly comforting. Makato wanted it between them and whatever was coming out of the caskets, but his duty made him go and get his men first.

‘Dead, lieutenant,’ Jedda replied. ‘They gutted him soon as they came out of stasis.’

‘They? How many did you see?’

To his immense credit, Jedda was managing to stay coherent.

‘Three, I think. The first broke out behind us, killed Halder. It was slow, still shrugging off stasis but it tore him apart all the same. We retaliated. I think we wounded it but a second one came out in front, boxing us in, so I gave the order to retreat.’ Jedda glanced over his shoulder at the facedown corpse a few metres away. ‘Navaar got clipped by the one we wounded.’

Halder. Navaar. Makato would remember them, and would honour their sacrifice if he survived. If any of them survived.

‘I’ve got at least two more in banks delta and epsilon,’ he said, then asked the other armsman, ‘What’s your name, son?’

‘Bharius, sir,’ Bharius answered, a little confused.

Strange, how the small things mattered when death was crouched within your eye line.

‘Are they…?’ ventured Jedda, unwilling to voice the name of their would-be killers aloud.

Makato nodded.

He had never fought against Renegade Space Marines before. Despite his many years of service to the Chapter, the scenario had never come about. No fire-born would ever even countenance putting a human life in harm’s way whilst they could still be that human’s shield. It was their creed. But Makato knew what was in that first casket, even though he had only seen a sliver of its identity, a half-glimpsed plastron, an ice-bitten gauntlet. Those pits of night glaring murderously through the frosted glass.

Armoured in black with eyes the mirror of their battleplate, there were many renegade warbands who answered that vague description. Makato knew only of a few, but had not seen any iconography or markings to narrow that down. It hardly mattered, all were deadly and beyond he and his depleted squad’s current capabilities to kill or even incapacitate. Even the Thallax would struggle to overcome an entire squad of transhumans, but it could slow them down.

If Utulexx could then seal them in the cryo-vault… They were sluggish, Jedda had said as much. Even transhuman biology would struggle to return to full efficacy after prolonged cryogenic exposure. It had been the perfect camouflage but had also left them diminished.

‘What are your orders, sir?’

Makato could not have wished for a better soldier than Jedda. It crushed his pride to think they might all soon be dead.

‘Thallax is inbound. We get it between us and them, hold corridor gamma until Utulexx can seal the cryo-vault.’

Jedda nodded and the three of them ran for the central corridor.

The Thallax was immense and easily filled the corridor with its height and bulk. Capacitors in the cyborganic’s micro-reactor cycled up to full ionisation. Coils along the barrel of the lightning gun, sleeved to its left arm and cradled by the three metal digits of its right, electrified with energised promise. A chainsaw bayonet protruding beneath the rifle’s muzzle began to turn. The low hum of the blade became a throaty growl.

It halted halfway down the corridor, the single cortex in its skull flaring red, a hound at the extent of its master’s leash.

Upon seeing the Thallax, Makato slowed almost to a stop as did Jedda and Bharius. The voice of the enginseer got them moving again with purpose.

‘It would be unwise to delay, lieutenant.’

Makato got Jedda and Bharius behind the Thallax a few seconds before the firing began. Glancing over his shoulder as he ran down corridor gamma, Makato saw a burst of energy whip from the coiled muzzle of the lightning gun and into an armoured warrior who had just stepped into its sights.

There was an audible grunt, the strong scent of burned metal as the warrior took a hit that slung him back and slammed him into one of the caskets that then burst apart in a flare of actinic light.

A subsequent salvo of shots ignited the muzzle coil moments after the first, as the Thallax reacted to a second combatant. A third came closely on its heels. Both warriors were carrying some kind of blade, but had no firearms to speak of. It was hard to be certain in the half-dark while trying to fight the sudden rush of transhuman dread that Makato felt creeping into his marrow. The shots went wide of the mark, or rather the warrior evaded one and took the other as a glancing hit on his shoulder guard. Makato saw nothing further, as he needed to look back around or would risk colliding with the caskets or one of his men in the rising panic.

When he did turn again, the Thallax had winged the second warrior, but the third was still moving. A fourth, difficult to discern with the air clouded by the corposant discharge from the lightning gun, had entered the corridor but stooped to help his wounded comrade. According to his rough calculation, Makato reasoned the Thallax had one more shot before the third warrior made up the ground and would be on it.

There was still a quarter of the corridor to go. Makato saw Utulexx waiting at the end for them, entering the activation protocols that would seal the cryo-vault.

When he heard the high pitched shriek of the lightning gun, Makato turned. The shot was good, but even wounded the third warrior swung his blade and forced the Thallax to parry with its bayonet.

‘You need to hurry,’ came the voice of Utulexx through the vox.

Makato was torn between standing his ground with his carbine and running like hell. They were almost there but the Renegade Astartes were close and they moved so fast…

A fraction too late, he saw Bharius turn and aim high with his carbine. A fifth warrior in black armour had mounted one of the caskets, like a living gargoyle but one poised to attack rather than slaved to stone.

In front of Makato the Thallax had thrown back the third warrior but the second, who had now recovered, went in hard with his blade. With incredible strength he slashed apart a cluster of cabling that put the cyborg on one knee as the mechanised equivalent of its tendons were severed. A point-blank burst from the lightning gun sent the warrior reeling, rolling end over end until he struck one of the caskets and it crumpled inwards against his violent impetus.

In the same moment, a dark spray flecked Makato’s helmet glacis and atmosphere suit. Bharius’s abruptly clipped scream revealed what had happened.

Something large, much more massive and imposing up close, landed amongst them. Paralysed with the same dread he had been fighting ever since seeing what was inside the caskets waiting for them, Makato could only watch as a black-armoured angel of death tore apart what was left of Bharius. In the same killing stroke, the warrior seemed to point his gauntleted fingers at Utulexx who had begun to seal the cryo-vault. Makato did not even have time to feel anger at this betrayal as the enginseer came apart in a welter of gore and machine components, his blood merging horribly with oil.

Slow, so impotently slow, Makato turned with his carbine.

Reacting to its master’s demise, the Thallax was turning too, intent on engaging the enginseer’s murderer, who had evidently implanted his watchdog with some kind of vengeance protocol. It was ultimately dooming as, with its guard down whilst it took aim at the warrior that had killed Utulexx, the other two warriors ripped into the Thallax from behind, and destroyed it.

Knowing there was no way out now, Makato put up his hand and lowered his gun. With a glance, he ordered Jedda to do the same.

Seen behind his retinal lenses, the eyes of the warrior who had dropped down on them from the stasis caskets met Makato’s.

‘Surrender…?’ said a guttural voice, deep and harsh as scoured steel. ‘A considerably wise move on your part.’

Now he saw the warrior up close as it rose to its full, awesome height, Makato saw the blades were not blades as such – at least, they were not the kind that are drawn or lacquered or mounted in an armoury. They were bone. A living part of the warrior. Bone protruded through his battle-helm too, a crest of it that stretched across his entire skull all the way to the nape of the neck as far as Makato could tell.

He had the rank markings of a sergeant, and Makato assumed this one was their leader, but carried no visible weapons other than the deadly bone growths. By the way he had torn Utulexx apart, Makato had thought the warrior might be a psyker but again, as he looked closer, he saw the smaller bone ‘knives’ embedded in parts of the enginseer’s sundered corpse.

The two who had cut the Thallax apart, severing both arms and legs before decapitating it, joined the sergeant. The three warriors formed a cage of black ceramite around Makato and Jedda, who had now sunk to their knees.

These two had the same bony growths as their sergeant, only shorter and without the crest. One of the warriors, the one Makato had seen through the glass, was without a helmet. His skin was extremely pale, rimmed with frost, the extremities tinted azure with cyanosis. Whether a result of lurking in unprotected and partial cryo-stasis or some mutagenic quirk, his ears were slightly pointed at the ends, his nose almost beak-like. But it was the eyes that resonated. They were indeed black, as if the pupil had overwhelmed the sclera and clouded the eye with abject shadow.

Makato found he could not hold the warrior’s gaze and looked away. Before he did, he saw that all three had the silver icon of a snarling dragon on their shoulder guards.

‘We are cursed,’ the sergeant told Makato when he saw him looking at the bone growths of him and his men.

Makato was no stranger to being around Adeptus Astartes. The awe they inspired with their mere presence was familiar to him, but there was something different at work in the black-armoured sergeant. He radiated strength and savagery. Something feral and utterly monstrous lurked behind the faceplate he wore, a mask to contain a beast, betrayed by the snarl in his every syllable. There was no pity, no potential for remorse or compassion, only brutality and the prospect of violence.

Despite his terror, Makato found the resolve to speak, though his words were uttered as a rasp through fear-clenched teeth.

‘I am Lieutenant Makato of the Chapter Adeptus Astartes vessel Forge Hammer.’ He was surprised at his own defiance. Jedda’s head was bowed, but he raised it upon hearing Makato’s proud words.

Makato was fifth generation Navy, and his esteemed heritage extended all the way back into the previous millennium. His was a proud family, a lineage of honour and duty. A silver braid upon his uniform had once belonged to his father, Hiroshimo. Makato had barely known the man, for a life in the Navy is one that seldom comes with the comfort of loved ones, but he still valued that tangible piece of familial legacy like the heirloom it truly was. A ceremonial sword he had in his quarters had once served his grandfather, Yugeti, and though Makato had never drawn it in battle the blade was still sharp. In the memories of these things lay strength. Makato drew on that, on the legacy of Yugeti and Hiroshimo, and yoked it for the courage it afforded in facing down the monster before him with unyielding resistance. He up-thrust his chin imperiously and–

The blow came swift, and a starburst of pain flashed behind Makato’s eyes a moment later. He tasted blood, and felt a raw and aching agony in his face. His atmosphere helmet was gone, smashed loose by the warrior’s blow. The realisation of that came late as well as the fact Makato had been knocked onto his face. It had been little more than a slap, but he felt the loose teeth in his mouth and spat out a wad of blood.

Jedda made to rise when the sergeant advanced on Makato, but was roughly put down by one of the other warriors. The sergeant paid the armsman no heed, who was doubled over in pain, several of his ribs broken.

‘Leave him,’ snarled Makato in a half-rasp, looking up from all fours as he tried to get back up to his feet, glaring through blurring vision.

A second blow put him down again, harder than the first and he had to stifle a yelp as he felt something break. Makato was determined not to give his aggressor that satisfaction. With the three black-armoured warriors looking on impassively, Makato struggled to his knees again and grimaced through a cage of missing teeth.

‘I am Lieutenant Makat–’

He was struck again, hard enough to send him sprawling this time. Dark shadows crowded at the edge of Makato’s vision as he came close to blacking out. Only half-conscious, Makato felt himself seized by a manacle-like fist. The pain of the sergeant’s grip was so intense it brought Makato back around.

‘I heard you, maggot,’ the sergeant uttered in a low growl. ‘I am battle worn and half frozen but not deaf.’

‘What do you want?’

Makato could smell the sergeant’s foetid breath issuing in a cloud of vapour through his helmet grille as he crouched down to answer. It stank of spoiled meat and old blood. Makato imagined fangs behind that mouth grille.

His words came out as a whisper that was more chilling than any battle cry.

‘Revenge,’ he said. ‘But first we want your ship.’

Makato laughed in spite of his rising terror. ‘You are mad. There will be retribution for this.’

‘Could well be,’ said the sergeant before he hauled Makato up by the chin, his gauntleted fingers closing vice-like around the lieutenant’s neck. The fingers bit flesh, drawing blood. He raised him until his feet dangled off the floor. ‘Now hear me. Your courage is misplaced. You want to live, but above that you want your men to live. I am willing to allow this. The one in the corridor you left for dead yet survives. So too does the one currently bent double at the feet of my warriors.’

The sergeant seized Makato’s neck a little harder, spreading his fingers across his lower jaw as he brought him in closer. ‘I am Urgaresh of the Black Dragons. You will see us aboard your ship, and on my honour no further hand will be raised to you. Are we in accord?’ The one who called himself Urgaresh dropped Makato to the deck, who immediately gasped for air as he clutched his throat.

‘Your honour?’ said Makato when he could breathe again. ‘How can you speak of honour when you ambushed and killed two of my men?’

‘We fought. You lost. Do not succumb to vainglorious pride and add to the tally already made. An accord? Do we have one or must I kill another?’

Urgaresh stepped in close, giving Makato the lightest of kicks to urge him towards a quick answer. Pain flared in Makato’s chest, but he was still alive. So was Jedda, so was Navaar if what the Black Dragon had said was to be believed. He did not know the name of the warband, what Ruinous deities or warmaster they served. Makato only knew he had no choices left.

He nodded weakly.

Urgaresh stepped back and called to the warrior who had stopped to tend to their injured.

‘Thorast, does our brother yet live?’

‘He does.’

Urgaresh turned back to Makato. ‘That is fortunate for you, maggot. Tend the wounded mortal, stabilise him only,’ he continued to Thorast, though his gaze did not leave Makato, who was kneeling again. ‘Get these two fit enough to leave this ship on foot. We are bound for the Forge Hammer
then, and a reckoning with the sons of Nocturne.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sturndrang, underhive of Molior

The journey from the surface of Sturndrang and down into the subterranean underhive had not been without incident. Even by shedding their armour and attempting to conceal their true nature beneath capacious storm cloaks, the Salamanders were far from inconspicuous. An underhive was the epitome of a dog-eat-dog existence, except here they actually did eat the dogs… and the rats, and whatever other carrion was unfortunate enough to stray beneath the hungering gaze of the underhivers. Dominance through fear of reprisal, the showing and establishing of strength was essential for anyone to thrive in such lightless, lawless conditions. That often meant as a pack, for even starving wolves are prone towards an instinct to congregate. It was no different here in the deep underground of Hive Molior.

Three men, large in stature, and obviously of a martial leaning had entered an arena without their prior knowledge of the fact. The arena was immense, the length, breadth and depth of the sprawling underhive. They had been stalked, but suppressing their genetically imposed instincts to confront and overcome, the Salamanders had managed to avoid conflict until one of those hiver wolf packs had finally tracked their scent to a place of reckoning. It had gone poorly for the gangers, who had made the fatal mistake of thinking their trio of chrono-gladiators were any guarantee of victory against such hooded and unknown warriors. Hulking and gene-bulked, the chrono-gladiators would fight on regardless of injury, until their death-clocks ran out. For most, at least those that inhabited Molior’s underhive, they would be formidable opponents. For most… not all. Their leader had seen three fools lost and out of their depth; his education to the contrary had been bloody and at Zartath’s hands, or rather claws. So had it been for all fifteen of these wretched men.

As Exor performed a more detailed analysis of the crashed ship and Zartath hunted for Tsu’gan’s ever-cooling trail, Agatone went over to the corpses of the gangers.

He had little experience of hive scum such as this, his wars demanding a much sterner test of the veteran captain, and found them an eclectic mix. There were hazards in these dark, forgotten places of the world, he had no doubt about that, but the threat did not come from such pathetic opponents. They were a far cry from the noble sons and daughters of Nocturne, and Agatone wondered how hard he would strive to protect the lives of degenerates such as these. He considered the morality of that decision, and whether or not it was right to discriminate on the grounds of personal worth as he saw it.

Am I fit to be the arbiter of such a decision? he wondered. And what of Tsu’gan? How should he be judged? It was a dilemma he had faced ever since being charged by Tu’Shan with the errant Salamander’s recovery. Others from Third had far more straightforward imperatives. Most remained on Nocturne to help train the scout company and begin the inception of a Seventh Battle Company, an unprecedented undertaking since before the time of the Second Founding. Two much smaller factions had been given unique sanction by the Chapter Master, one to track down Tsu’gan and the other, comprising Firedrakes led by Herculon Praetor, to find whatever remained of the Dragon Warriors. Praetor’s mission was simple – retrieve from their cold, dead corpses the missing book from the Tome of Fire.

Agatone was not given the choice of which path to take. In his heart, he wanted nothing more than to track down the Chaos renegades and exact vengeance for their heinous assault on Nocturne, but Tsu’gan had been his responsibility. In the Pantheon Chamber, he had vowed to Tu’Shan to do all within his power to bring the errant fire-born back, or die in the attempt.

And so he and nine others had departed the Vulkan’s Wrath and secured a more modest frigate to take them to Sturndrang where the last recorded position of the stolen Malevolent gunship had been plotted by Prometheus’s sensorium. It was tenuous as trails went, and a planet-wide search grid was far from narrow, but they had found the ship and that in itself was miraculous. Now they merely had to find the man. Agatone was close to beseeching the Emperor for His providence.

‘Do you hear that?’

Zartath’s voice distracted him from his thoughts. He began to return to the crashed gunship.

Somewhere in the distance, deep in the belly of the underhive, a rough klaxon was chiming. It could mean more hive scum, or something worse.

‘It’s getting louder,’ said Agatone, and reached for his holstered pistol. He slipped a small combat shield the size of a buckler onto his wrist. All of their weapons were small, easy to conceal, but at that moment he wished he had a bolter.

Behind him, one of the gangers was stirring.

‘I thought you killed them…’

Zartath’s fangs glistened wetly in the faint phosphor light. The klaxons were rising in volume as if one had begun a relay and that relay was now working its way towards them. He had to shout.

‘I did!’ Spittle sprang from his lips in a chain as Zartath’s bone claws snapped loose, first piercing flesh then skin. ‘They were cold when I left them.’ His martial pride had been slighted and that needed to be answered for, but Agatone was already standing over the dead gangers. The master had the leash.

‘Karve don’t die so easy, hulk…’ drawled the ganger, but he was in a bad way. When he tried to rise, Agatone floored him with a palm-strike to the chest. It was little more than a slap, but cracked at least two ribs.

‘Stay down,’ Agatone warned.

The one called Karve gurgled, blood frothing from his lips because of a collapsed lung. Aghast at what the warrior had done to him, Karve had enough strength to rip open his jacket and body armour. Beneath the rough apparel was some kind of device. It looked to Agatone like a hexagonal amulet, a piece of crude technology that had as much to do with the arcane as it did with science. Briefly, he wondered where this gutter rat had found, stolen or bartered for it.

Upon closer inspection, he realised that rather than being on a chain, the amulet was actually surgically attached to Karve’s chest, just below his heart. There were small notations etched around the edge that could have been runes and it had two hardened glass ampoules inset in a small chamber in the centre. The dual vial of chemicals was empty as the various stimulants and apparently regenerative fluids had already been dumped into Karve’s body intravenously. It was how he had come back, with a massive flood of chemicals and perhaps something else if the runes were not just for ornamentation.

Karve tried to laugh but just ended up gurgling more blood. Agatone could tell by his eyes though – they were narrowed in bitter mirth, and the wretch flecked his lips with crimson as he spat and wheezed.

‘You’re dying,’ Agatone told him, his eyes pitiless as they regarded the wretch. ‘Whatever you know, speak up now and I’ll end it quickly.’

A bone claw flashed past his eye-line, coming perilously close to the ganger’s exposed neck and would have cut off Karve’s head had Agatone not seized Zartath’s wrist.

Heel! The command came unbidden to Agatone’s mind and he felt ashamed at it. He chose his actual words more carefully.

‘Hold. He knows something. I want to hear it.’ Agatone’s dour gaze fixed on Karve again. ‘What are these alarms? What do they mean?’ Seeing it rotating slowly on the ganger’s chest, Agatone seized the amulet and stalled its motion. Karve immediately paled and jerked uncomfortably. ‘Talk and I release it. You can eke out whatever dregs of life are left in this thing or I can end you. Those are the last two choices left to you now.’

A crude equivalent of an adrenaline shunt, the amulet was no doubt intended to give an enterprising underhiver a fighting chance at finding aid or sloping off to safety should he be badly injured. But Karve’s wounds had been so severe that it was merely prolonging his life so he could experience more pain. Agatone was willing to extend that further if he could find out what the discordant noise coming from the klaxons meant.

Alerted by the sound, Exor emerged from the wrecked gunship to find both Agatone and Zartath crouched over the ganger.

‘What is it?’ he called out. ‘Did we trip some kind of alarm?’

‘I don’t think it’s an alarm…’ said Agatone, watching the ganger’s growing hysteria. ‘I think it’s a warning.’ He released the amulet and let it continue its fatal countdown. There was no negotiating with the wretch now – his mind was crashing even as the cocktail of narcotics flooding his system attempted to jumpstart his broken body. There was no resurrection for gutter scum; for them, death was a way of life. Knowing his end was near, the ganger smiled, showing blood-rimmed teeth, and managed to utter two words before he died.

‘Feeding time…’

Agatone crushed his throat with a booted foot.

Zartath growled, annoyed at being deprived of the kill, but a glare from Agatone calmed him at once. Again, the captain tried not to think of the warrior as a wild beast only partially tamed, but evidence was evidence.

‘Something is coming,’ snarled Zartath, and turned in the direction of the deeper underhive and the darkness smothering it.

Agatone checked the ammo gauge on his bolt pistol. He carried two spare clips attached to his belt, but if he ran dry he still had his combat knife. He eyed the darkness that seemed to have grown more pervasive over the intervening seconds.

‘Whatever comes from that tunnel,’ he said, using his vox-bead, ‘does not live. Am I understood, brothers?’

Both Salamanders responded in the affirmative.

Standing at the periphery of the crash debris, Exor had drawn a lamp pack as well as his bolt pistol and was shining it into the gloom. By now the klaxons were screaming, evidently part of a mechanised relay that fed throughout much of this district.

‘What does it presage, Zartath?’ asked Agatone, his voice almost a roar by necessity. Over the years, he had learned to trust the savage warrior, but Zartath did not answer. He listened. Agatone cast around for the source of the cacophony but it had to be higher up, above ground level and accessed via lifter or one of the many ladders to the rusted gantries.

Whilst his comrades were rooted, Exor kept advancing with the lamp pack. His bolt pistol panned across the leavened shadows.

The vox-bead in Agatone’s right ear crackled.

‘I see movement, brother-captain.’

Up ahead, Exor dropped into a kneeling position, setting down the lamp pack so he could aim his sidearm and also draw his combat knife.

‘Distance, brother?’ asked Agatone, hurrying to reach the Techmarine. Zartath was a few steps behind him.

‘Hard to be sure… It’s as if the ground is… writhing.’

The great, sprawling underhives below cities such as Molior were fraught with dangers. In many respects they were as war-torn as any of the battlefields Agatone had ever fought on.

Feeding time, the ganger had said.

Food for what, though?

‘What do you mean, Exor? Be specific. What can you see, broth–’

Agatone cut off at the same time as the warning klaxons.

In the echoing silence that followed, a different sound established itself. It was the sharp refrain of skittering and the shriek of thousands of bestial voices.

‘Name of Vulkan,’ Agatone breathed, realising what was upon them. ‘Fall back, Exor. That is an order, Techmarine.’

There was no time. Spewing from the tunnel mouth, riming its sides almost all the way to the ceiling, was a vast deluge of vermin. Some had the appearance of rats, others were malformed and only resembled creatures of nature. As he saw what was bearing down on the Techmarine, who stood before it like a man before the crashing waves of a tsunami he knows he cannot outrun, Agatone knew this was a plague of un-nature. Mutation was rife in the swollen tide and Exor was about to be drowned in it.

Exor carried a belt of flares, six in total. He lit and threw down the entire bandoleer, then ran with all haste. The vermin tide screeched angrily as the flares ignited, the light rather than the fire causing them pain. It gave him a few precious seconds to gain some ground.

Agatone and Zartath were coming towards him. He waved them back, shouting, ‘Get to high ground!’

Behind him, the shrieking vermin chorus was like a knife drawn over glass. Exor clenched his teeth and fired off a three-round burst blind. The shrieking intensified in pitch for a few seconds, and he realised he had hit something. But then how could he miss?

The nearest gantry was a few metres away – Agatone and Zartath were already climbing its rickety ladder – when Exor felt the creature land on his back. Only half armoured with what amounted to Scout carapace, he was more vulnerable than he would have been in an encompassing suit of power armour. It stank, the creature, of spoiled meat and mould. There was something else too, a taint that disturbed Exor more than the horde itself and suggested a ruinous origin to the mutation affecting the vermin. It bit deep into the back of his neck before Exor could crush it.

Another latched onto his leg but he shook it off before it could bite down. He did not risk another shot, putting all of his effort into running those last few metres. The tide was almost upon him now, its high-pitched squeal deafening and close.

Agatone and Zartath had made it to the gantry. Exor boosted into a final sprint and leapt for the ladder. He scaled the first few rungs before his weight and the impact of his landing wrenched the bolts free and the ladder tore away from its holdings.

Instinctively he reached out and felt a strong grip around his wrist.

‘Hold on,’ Zartath snarled through gritted teeth, leaning right over the gantry with Agatone clinging to his belter to stabilise him.

Below Exor, the vermin tide roiled and undulated. The diminutive horde lapped against the support struts of the gantry like a dirty sea pounding against the resolve of coastal bulwarks. Blood slicked the Techmarine’s arm from a savage bite – with the adrenaline pumping into his system, he had barely noticed it but now it was running freely, something in the bite preventing his Larraman cells clotting as they should do. Zartath felt his hand slipping, and he fought to maintain his grip.

‘Climb…’ he snarled with the effort of holding on.

Exor reached, determination etched on his nondescript features… and slipped.

The fall was relatively short, and what awaited him below was far more hazardous.

Agatone watched his Techmarine disappear into a morass of furred bodies. Exor was absorbed instantly.

Zartath made to leap in after him, but Agatone stopped him.

‘He’ll be carried by the flood, end up Throne knows where,’ growled the ex-Black Dragon.

‘So will you if you jump. Here,’ said Agatone, finding a length of chain and hacking it loose from the gantry with his blade, ‘we’ll drag him in.’

Agatone opened up the vox whilst Zartath gathered up the length of chain.

‘Exor,’ Agatone began, scanning the vermin tide for any sign of the Techmarine, ‘if you can hear me, try to breach the surface and we’ll haul you in.’

There was no response, but a second later Exor’s outstretched hand burst forth from the tide which had now flooded the entire lower level.

Zartath was whipping the chain around in a circular fashion and was about to launch it in the direction of Exor’s hand when he saw what was clenched in it.

A frag grenade primed for detonation exploded in the Techmarine’s hand as he released the trigger. Scores of furred, verminous bodies were sent skyward in a welter of blood and bone. The blast forged a crater in the tide with Exor at its epicentre. He was badly wounded, and had lost the hand, but he was alive.

Knowing the tide would reform in moments, Zartath threw the chain. Exor caught it in his remaining hand and Agatone heaved. With Zartath helping, Agatone pulled Exor up and away from the ravening horde. They hauled the Techmarine like a piece of cargo, and when his body crested the gantry’s edge they dragged him onto it.

‘Vulkan’s mercy…’ Agatone breathed.

Exor was covered in bites. Every bit of exposed flesh had been gnawed upon, in some cases savagely. His right hand and forearm were almost completely destroyed. Oil and blood were spewing from the shattered cabling jutting from the stump. It was a mercy that the hand had been a bionic. His armour was ruined and though partially shielded from the blast by his attackers, Exor was badly burned.

Agatone would have expected such injuries to already be healing, but something was interfering with Exor’s regenerative abilities and he bled from where he should be healed.

‘Some kind of toxin…’ he rasped feverishly. He was shaking, going into shock.

Below them, the vermin tide was passing, and Agatone guessed it happened in cycles, hence the klaxons.

‘What do we do with him?’ said Zartath.

Agatone shook his head, sighing deeply. This had not been a part of his plan. Too deep to go back, too far away from help to request reinforcement or extraction, there was little choice left to him.

‘Get him to a medic. There must be something down here. Wherever that wretch,’ he gestured to where Karve and his men used to be, for the tide had carried them off to feast upon, ‘stole that disc from that he wore. Our mission is to stabilise Exor and then proceed as originally planned.’

‘Leave me here…’ said Exor, but the words were laboured. ‘I just need time… to recover, then rejoin you later.’

Zartath had dragged him up into a sitting position but the Techmarine still looked on the verge of collapse.

‘There’s something in your blood, Exor,’ Agatone told him. ‘It’s preventing you from healing properly.’

‘Poison… I can feel it… coursing through me.’

‘Not coursing,’ snarled Zartath as he tasted some of Exor’s spilled blood before quickly spitting it up, ‘cursing, brother.’ For once, there was no rancour when he referred to Exor as his brother. Zartath looked up at Agatone from his kneeling position. ‘Tainted. An unnatural venom.’

Despite being close to unconsciousness, Exor’s eyes widened as he despaired, ‘Am I damned then?’

‘No, brother,’ Agatone replied, tasting the blood for himself and scowling as he too spat it out immediately. ‘Chaos damnation is not a disease. You cannot contract it by a wound. It is a moral decay, a choice. Those things harboured it, some dark plague, and we must flush it out if you’re to heal.’

‘You’re certain it is… the taint?’ asked Exor, face screwed up in obvious pain.

‘No, but I can see its effects and it is no poison I have ever encountered. The taste of your blood, it is not… right. It’s old, somehow.’

‘Then Tsu’gan found more here…’ Exor faltered briefly, ‘than a hive city. Could he have succumbed to it?’

‘Perhaps, but we won’t know until we find his body or evidence of his escape,’ said Agatone. ‘Either way, we’re getting you away from here and to whatever help this warren can offer.’ Agatone went to lift Exor up, when Zartath stopped him.

‘Respectfully, brother-captain,’ said Zartath, ‘I must carry him.’

‘Because you think you let him fall?’

‘Because you are the leader of this mission and should not be encumbered and, yes, because I let him fall.’

‘You’re my hunter. I need you out in front,’ said Agatone. ‘Exor stays with me.’

Zartath did not argue, he merely helped his captain get Exor onto his shoulders so Agatone could carry him.

‘He’s heavy,’ said Agatone.

‘Too much metal,’ Zartath replied.

‘That metal may well have saved him,’ Agatone replied, noting that Exor had passed out. That was good, it meant his body was trying to heal him.

‘Are his wounds tainted by Chaos?’ asked Zartath.

‘You tasted his blood too, what was your first impression?’

‘I received a vision, a flash, a fragment, nothing more,’ Zartath replied. ‘Such tortures were inflicted upon me at Volgorrah by the xenos. They were weapons of the warp, brother-captain. Tainted blades, tainted fangs. I saw hell in my mind’s eye. I hear it still, a keening in my ears. What did you see?’

Hell, thought Agatone, but did not speak it. He did not need to.

‘Which way?’ he asked.

‘Tsu’gan’s tracks suggested he went east.’ Zartath pointed in the direction of the tunnel.

It was wide mouthed, hung with the broken links of chains and decaying girders. Even in the gloom, they could see it sloped downwards and went deeper into the heart of the underhive. For now, it looked deserted. If the vermin tide did return, the klaxons would sound. Forewarned, even encumbered with Exor’s body, they should be able to get clear in time. Tsu’gan was injured in the crash. He would have needed aid too, and Agatone had never met a warrior with better survival instincts than he.

‘Then we go east,’ he said, and let Zartath lead the way.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Heletine, Imperial-held city of Escadan

Before the invasion, Escadan had been a city that vaunted achievement and excellence in all its forms. Unlike the labyrinthine Canticus, or the towering industrial stacks of Solist, Escadan had been a bastion of light where the great and gifted were exalted like gods. Statues and petroglyphs celebrating the world’s luminaries lined the concourses to its many cenotaph and stadia. Historians, scientists, ecclesiarchs and artisans were all honoured in marble, onyx, agate and carnelian.

When war came, the exalted were trampled just as easily as their lessers, bloody conflict ever the great leveller.

A veritable cavalcade of exquisitely detailed statuary punctuated the galleria to the grand amphitheatre Drakgaard had chosen as his headquarters in the city. It was expansive, though its beauty had been no defence during the outbreak of hostilities. It was the first place the allied Imperial forces had secured and liberated, but many of the alabaster renderings that greeted visitors to the arena itself were mutilated in some fashion. Intended to recount the athletic achievements performed here, now they were a stark reminder of what Escadan and, indeed, Heletine had lost because of the war.

Stark magnesium lamps had been erected around a relatively small area in the centre of the amphitheatre. Drakgaard stood within the cordon of light, just breaching the penumbra at its edge as he pored over a hololithic map table whilst awaiting the summoned officers and the new arrivals.

Elysius had joined him, having followed from the preceptory roof.

‘Why here, brother-captain, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘I do not,’ Drakgaard replied stiffly, his attention on the map that showed an uncomfortable number of red zones where the enemy still held territory. Since initial engagement, the pattern on the map had shifted as the Black Legion migrated from region to region, halting briefly to fight before moving on again like ash nomads. As of yet, Drakgaard had been unable to detect any strategy in it.

‘It helps me think,’ said the captain at length. He looked up, taking a rare break from his strategising. ‘Here,’ he gestured to the expansive amphitheatre. He did not know its name, for there were none left alive to tell it, at least that he had met, but it hardly mattered. ‘In this sliver of light, I am an island. Around me is darkness, obscuring, obfuscating, but here in the light I can see clearly.’

‘A little more poetic than I had you down for, Ur’zan,’ said Elysius.

‘My mind isn’t closed off to it as some would believe. I merely find little use for it.’

The Chaplain laughed, and the sound echoed, but there was irony to his mirth.

‘Are you sure it isn’t metal and cybernetics beneath your skin instead of flesh?’

‘Would that it was,’ Drakgaard replied bitterly and went back to the map table.

Just beyond the edge of the oval of light cast by the lamps, a small group of serfs and Departmento Munitorum logisticians examined data concerning supply lines, ammunition stores, casualty rates and engagement reports. Drakgaard had them feed him every one through his battle-helm’s retinal lens display.

‘Canticus is the dam,’ muttered Drakgaard as he surveyed the map and the troop dispositions on it again, ‘breach it and we will flood this world with our wrath. None could escape it.’

Elysius was about to respond when he heard footsteps echoing from one of the concourses that led into the amphitheatre. They sounded unhurried but purposeful, and lighter than a fully armoured Adeptus Astartes would make.

Three females, tall and armoured in the black of the Ebon Chalice with white chasubles beneath accented by crimson inner fabric, emerged into the arena. Though they were shrouded by shadow, Elysius had some time to examine them as they made their way across to where the Salamanders awaited in the cordon of light.

Two were stern-faced, their age hard to determine. One, a canoness by the look of her trappings, had harder eyes that spoke of centuries of warfare. Votive chains attached to censers trailing prayer incense hung from her battleplate. A pair of braziers, slaved to a small reservoir of promethium, crested the rounded stabiliser jets of her power armour’s generator. She carried a power mace tied off at her hip by a leather thong and on the opposite hip wore a holstered fusion pistol. Her hair was cropped short and the silver of polished gunmetal.

The other was marginally less grizzled but carried a scar down the left side of her face that must have come close to taking her eye. The scar extended across her scalp, however, cutting a channel into coal-black hair that was flecked with white. Across the unmarred side of her face, she had tattooed an icon of the Ebon Chalice, presumably to guard her sight from further harm. A bolter was mag-locked to her thigh, the stock modified and shortened with a combination flamer attachment. On the other side she had locked her helmet, which was pure white and marked above the helm’s retinal lenses with the same icon she had tattooed on her face. Her sidearm was a bolt pistol, but in her gauntleted hands she cradled a leather book and not a weapon. Purity seals adhered to her armour, held in place by red nubs of wax stamped with the Order’s holy sigil.

Not as tall or broad as a Space Marine, the Sisters of Battle still radiated strength and purpose. Despite his distaste for some of their methods, Elysius found it hard not to feel a kinship with these warriors. He saw the reason for his reluctance in their eyes, for they glittered with a hostile fervour Elysius would not have expected amongst supposed allies.

As a Chaplain, Elysius was no stranger to impassioned oratory. His sermons were crafted to inspire fury and purpose in his brothers, but since his time in the clutches of the dark eldar on the Volgorrah Reef and everything he had witnessed during the battle for Nocturne, his once brittle humours had veered away from the choleric. He believed he was a better spiritual leader because of it, but these two still retained an edge of religious fanaticism that Elysius considered dangerous to any who failed to share it.

By contrast the third Battle Sister appeared less soul-hardened. She was younger, her hair longer than the other two, with streaks of velvet red in the black. She also wore a fluted jump pack, reminiscent of angel wings, marking her out as a Seraphim. Elysius had fought beside these shock troops before and knew them to be effective, dedicated warriors. This one had the rank insignia of a sergeant, or Sister Superior in the less secular terminology of the Adepta Sororitas.

Striding across the cracked flagstones of the partially ruined arena, the canoness and her charges were quickly before the two Salamanders.

‘Blessings of Saint Dominica upon you, Chaplain,’ she addressed Elysius with a slight bow, recognising his spiritual authority before the actual secular command of Drakgaard, ‘and you, captain,’ she conceded with a nod. ‘I am Canoness Angerer, Preceptor of the Order of the Ebon Chalice.’

Though she spoke ostensibly in greeting, the canoness’s words were like iron coming from her lips, her voice as stern as her bearing.

‘My Sororitas…’ she began, gesturing to her retinue who bowed as Angerer’s gauntleted hand passed over them as if in benediction, ‘Sisters Superior Laevenius of my Celestian Guard,’ the scarred warrior glared icily, her fingers seeming to tighten on the book, ‘and Stephina of the Order Seraphim.’ She nodded to both warriors, hands by her sides and within easy reach of the powerblade she had sheathed next to her jump pack and the plasma pistol belted at her waist.

Elysius hoped it was just habit that made them so war wary, or this alliance that was seemingly being proposed by the Sisters’ presence on Heletine would not be an easy one.

Drakgaard made curt introductions, explaining the other officers in his command cadre were either inbound or about to be linked to by hololith. He did not waste time with pleasantries, preferring to explain quickly so he could move on to the obvious question.

‘What are you doing here on Heletine, Canoness Angerer? What brings the noble Sisterhood of the Ebon Chalice to my battlefield?’

Elysius sighed resignedly, the gesture hidden by the shadows. The meeting had not begun well.

A difficult alliance it is then.

What the Sisterhood wanted was precious little. As a holy world, and part of the Ecclesiarchy’s galactic protectorate, Heletine had several enshrined relics that would be better served far from the war zone and in the custody of the Sisterhood’s Convent Prioris on Terra.

Angerer and her Order were here to ensure the acquisition, protection and transference of these relics. They had brought a Preceptory to achieve this sacred task, which included over six hundred Adepta Sororitas, the majority of those of the Order Militant, and a sizeable armoured force of Immolators. According to Angerer, her Battle Sisters were already being deployed in the muster field at the edge of Escadan city along with the flame tanks.

In openly discussing the disposition of her forces, Angerer also pledged her Sister Hospitallers towards leavening the burden placed upon the Imperial medicae by the war thus far. Furthermore, she added, if the Ebon Chalice could lend aid to the Adeptus Astartes in the prosecution of their sacred duty, then they would consider themselves doubly blessed.

‘It could explain the erratic occupation of the enemy,’ suggested Elysius after he had finished hearing what Angerer had to say about the relics.

Drakgaard nodded, his eyes back on the map hololith.

On Armageddon the orks had deliberately befouled certain sites of religious significance, effectively rededicating them to their own brutish deities. None could say if such vile acts had any bearing on the spiritual conflict being fought across the entire world, if Imperial belief was somehow weakened as a result, but it had dampened morale and sapped the courage of some. Where the orks erected their totems, where their crude sculptures of dung stood like dirty monoliths, blighting the air with their stench, the greenskins were harder to defeat.

The Imperial allies on Heletine had yet to see or hear from the heretic leader – some more credulous individuals believed it could be the Warmaster himself but that was ridiculous – but his strategy might be to fight a war of faith to win a war of blood.

Drakgaard gestured to the areas of confluence on the map hololith.

‘Can you determine which of these regions are also sites of religious significance?’

Angerer had a string of votive peals in her grasp, twenty-three perfect white orbs that the canoness would later explain represented all the souls she had saved from darkness and brought to repentance. She had many such rosaries in her possession; this was the only one with a single black opal.

As she smoothed the pearls between her fingers, Angerer’s lip curled but the thin smile did not reach her eyes.

‘My Sister Dialogus has already begun.’

The Stormraven touched down on a landing strip within sight of the amphitheatre.

Iaptus had said nothing further during their short journey. Va’lin considered mentioning the sigils in the gun nest but had no idea to what they portended, if anything. He also thought about voicing his concerns to his sergeant about Ky’dak but decided the matter was between him and Ky’dak for now.

So it was that they flew from the edge of Canticus to the heart of Escadan in silence but with their thoughts far from quiescent.

As soon as they disembarked, Va’lin noticed theirs was not the only transport to have alighted in such close proximity to the Imperial headquarters. Another, a black-armoured Rhino with an icon of a white chalice on its flanks, also stood idle at the edge of the landing apron. Its engines burred, giving off a faint heat wash, as the vehicle readied for imminent departure.

At a more distant landing zone, the main muster field for the Imperial forces as well as its barracks, a host of those same black ships were in the midst of deployment. Va’lin noticed several tanks amongst the disciplined squads of Battle Sisters.

‘Armour and infantry,’ he observed. ‘The Sororitas are here in force, brother-sergeant.’

Though the main muster field was over a kilometre away, the rituals of blessing and piety being performed by the Sisters were discernible, as were the bizarre war engines that came ambling out of their ships’ holds and the zealots who accompanied them.

Blinded, festooned with devotional seals and the red-raw wheals inflicted during self-flagellation, they appeared more like slaves than warriors. The engines were fashioned in the manner of walkers, bipedal and armed with various blades and saws. Some also carried what looked like short-range flamers. A whip-thin, emaciated wretch served as the only crew. Va’lin found it difficult to tell if they were manning the machine or were bound to it as some form of torture.

The others, those who marched sullenly alongside the walkers were no better. They wore hoods in the form of masked inhibitor helms and their lash-grafted arms hung slack by their sides, trailing in the dirt. Barefoot, their reedy bodies were half-naked and exposed to the elements.

‘They are the penitent,’ said Iaptus when he noted Va’lin’s frown. ‘See…’ He gestured to a cadre of chainblade wielding females and the mistress goading them from the ship with an energised lash. ‘Faith can do strange things to the faithful, but it is nothing compared to its potential effects on those wishing to atone or punish themselves for transgression.’

‘What kind of army is this?’ asked Va’lin, heedless of the disrespect he had just directed at the Sororitas.

Whilst they were talking, they had moved within the shadow of the amphitheatre. Its faded glory and obvious ruination were a microcosm of what was happening to Heletine.

‘We are about to find out, brother,’ Iaptus replied.

Both Sergeant Zantho and Colonel Redgage, the commanding officer of the Cadian 81st, attended the war conference via hololith. Their forms were rendered in grainy static-laced amber light that emitted from projector ports located in the floor of Drakgaard’s command hub.

A third figure joined them via hololith, though his projection was much larger than the other two and, despite the fact his actual presence was many kilometres away in Canticus, entirely forbidding.

‘No gains were made during our last sortie into the western districts.’

The voice had once been that of a transhuman warrior, but was now rendered machine-like through Dreadnought vox-casters that trembled the air even via hololith.

Kor’ad was immense, and his sarcophagus was a scaled carapace replete with the honours of his previous incarnation as a brother-captain of the fire-born. Upon his hulking back he wore the spines of the beast he had ritually killed for his ascension to the Chapter. Its hide hung down like a tabard between two piston-driven legs. Twice he had been forced to quit his appointed posting within, initially to perform an undertaking of great honour, secondarily out of necessity and a desire to serve on. Kor’ad did not miss the touch of air upon his face, the feeling of heat against his bare skin. He did not care that he would never witness another sunrise or behold his brothers with his own eyes rather than the sensorium of his Dreadnought tomb. Kor’ad, the Warmaker, had no such misgivings about his transformation. As a flesh and blood Salamander he had lived for battle – now he could fight on forever.

Kor’ad’s left arm was gloved in a power fist that in turn clenched a thunder hammer. The right carried a weapon-mount, a Contemptor-pattern heavy plasma, the wide muzzle shaped into a dragon’s snout. His flamer would have been more appropriate to the iconography but it lacked range and firepower for what Kor’ad had in mind.

Colonel Redgage, a thick-set man with a neat handlebar moustache and grey hair, was clearly still in the field. The edges of a war tent were revealed at the very extremity of the hololithic projection and the dull, but far off, sound of heavy mortar occasionally interrupted his reports. Kor’ad, though, was at war during the conference, his grainy image showing him in battle. More than once the resolution cut off mid-stream as a nearby explosion broke the link, and it was generally foul with smoke and airborne debris.

‘The loss of the armour reduced our efficacy considerably, captain. I strive to hold what we have already taken but it is far from certain.’

Kor’ad led a heavy division comprising half of Sixth Company’s Devastators and two other Dreadnoughts. Snatches of missile salvoes and the collimated streamers from heavy energy weapons intruded on the feed. The barrage from the Devastators was intense and unremitting. They were a hammer, a means to pound the entrenched enemy into submission for the spear thrust of Zantho’s tanks.

‘If you shackle my hands, captain, what else can I do but strain against it?’

The plan involving the heavy weapons unravelled spectacularly when all the Salamanders armour was recalled from the western districts and Kor’ad was left with a static force with no means of actually taking the ground they had spent so long pummelling. It had left the venerable warrior frustrated.

‘I am a war-maker, captain, not a defensive bastion.’

The hololith crazed once then blinked out. Whether the link had been cut accidentally or deliberately would likely never be known.

It left Drakgaard seething at only static charged air.

The council had not gone well. Va’lin and Iaptus had arrived in the midst of Zantho’s report. Despite their victory at Canticus south, the tanks had achieved little but to shore up a ruin and prevent a slaughter. That in itself was reason enough to redeploy them but it brought the Salamanders no closer to a lasting victory on Heletine. Every engagement had been a frustrated one. Heretics were dug in, and the warren-like streets made for a complex hunting ground.

Drakgaard dearly wanted to burn them out, but he lacked the necessary manpower to conduct a citywide cleanse. Ambuscade complicated matters further, making the execution of a large scale mission difficult. They were spread thin and unable to consolidate.

‘You are at an impasse, brother-captain,’ said Angerer after she had heard the reports of all the officers. ‘And I sense the Emperor’s divine providence in bringing us to Heletine to win this war of faith. Your salvation is at hand.’

The physically present Salamanders stiffened at this remark. Iaptus clenched his fists. Even Va’lin felt his gorge rise at the canoness’s remarks. Zantho and Redgage cut their holo-feeds. Only Elysius managed to remain neutral.

Drakgaard gave voice to the reason for the sudden hostility.

‘Our salvation and inevitable victory shall be won with our blood and courage, as our gains in this war have been so far.’

‘Forgive me, brother-captain,’ said Angerer, bowing with false contrition. ‘I only refer to the ruins we saw upon our arrival, of a city… no, a world in turmoil.’ She made the sign of the aquila and never before had Drakgaard found it so repellent. ‘The Emperor is with you now, His light shines through us, His daughters. Surely, even the stubborn pride of the Salamanders would yield to an ally sent from the Throne itself?’

With the Adepta Sororitas tanks, with their warriors and materiel, they could launch an effective counter attack. A citywide purge might be possible, but not under these conditions. Drakgaard could not countenance that. He had expected trouble from the Ecclesiarchy troops but not this arrogance and condescension.

‘Salamanders yield to no one,’ he uttered through clenched teeth. ‘Even emissaries of the Throne. You need to choose your words more wisely, Sister.’

Angerer bowed again, but showed no remorse this time.

‘I meant no slight or dishonour, but you are losing this war. Whether your faith is wanting or your arm unwilling, it does not matter–’

‘Wisely, Sister!’ Drakgaard warned her, echoing the belligerence felt by his men.

‘It does not matter,’ Angerer repeated, and would not be cowed. ‘We are here. The Emperor is here.’

Laevenius maintained a mask of austerity throughout, but the younger Sister Stephina could not hide her concern at the sudden turn of events, her gaze flicking back between the Space Marines they had inadvertently annoyed.

Angerer was heedless of both.

‘Relics of the holy Ecclesiarchy are at rest beneath the rubble you have made of these temples and sanctuaries. I only pray they are still intact.’ And now did she reveal the cause of her passive aggression. ‘You are truly the hammer, aren’t you Captain Drakgaard? It has fallen here on Heletine, a slayer of relics more than a slayer of heretics, I am afraid.’

Drakgaard half drew his sword. It was a saw-toothed kaskara with one serrated edge and the other a singular flat blade. The hilt was ornate, with a blended tellurium and gold banding for the grip. The pommel was a drake’s tooth ripped from the maw of the beast whose hide also served as Drakgaard’s cloak. It was sun-burnished and flashed like copper flame as it was unsheathed.

Elysius laid a hand on the kaskara’s pommel, preventing Drakgaard from drawing it fully. When the captain glared back at him, the Chaplain lightly shook his head. Realising he was being baited, Drakgaard regained his.

‘Do not presume me to be a patient man, Sister,’ he said to Angerer. ‘I do not bear insult with reproach or restitution. You should know this about me.’

Around the war council, both Iaptus and Va’lin had drawn pistols in their hands. From the shadows, Drakgaard’s command squad became more than just bulky silhouettes as they emerged into the light. They too had weapons to hand. None would use them unless commanded.

Drakgaard did not need them to. The show of unity was enough.

‘It is the same for my Chapter,’ he explained needlessly.

Elysius clutched the icon of a hammer he had bound to his armour with his ordinary hand and stared at the Adepta Sororitas, one servant of the Imperial faith to another. Though his face was as stone, there was a depth of warning in his gaze.

Angerer seemed abruptly aware of her surroundings, all her bombast and self-righteousness having bled away like smoke. She licked her lips.

‘Forgive us,’ she said, holding up a placatory hand to show her sincerity. ‘Our journey from Convent Prioris has been long and arduous. As I said, my Dialogus,’ Angerer gestured to Sister Laevenius, who carried a scroll fastened to her armour that she now unclasped and handed to the canoness, ‘has already begun the work of charting the position of known relics in Canticus. According to her study, a great many have been lost.’ She read out a handful of names from the scroll to emphasise her point.

The shawl of Palatius.

Gerontium’s blood.

Saint Acretia’s skull.

The reliquary of Naaga Dahl.

None amongst the Salamanders had heard of them, not even Elysius, and none cared much for the recitation either.

‘It weighs upon us all, the sundering of such artefacts that can never be replaced. Our religious ideology is a touchstone to this Order, to every Ordos Sororitas… I came to you with closed fist where I should have offered an open palm.’

Acting out her words, Angerer opened her hand before Drakgaard.

‘I ask only that we be allowed to try to save our holiest relics.’

Drakgaard sheathed his sword, and braced his hands against the edge of the hololith table.

‘Mark here, on this map, the sites of your relics. Have your artefact keepers come and do it if needed. I want to know where they are to be found.’ He straightened then, and walked around the map table to clench Angerer’s wrist in a warrior’s grip which the canoness reciprocated.

‘At least one thing you said was accurate,’ Drakgaard allowed. ‘We are at an impasse, and I am not so prideful that I don’t see that or accept help if it is offered.’ Angerer was about to speak when Drakgaard tightened his grip to let her know he had not finished. ‘Is it help you offer? An alliance, Sister? My duty is to Heletine and nothing will turn me or my warriors from its cause and the cause of its people.’

Angerer showed no discomfort, though she must have been in pain from the Salamanders captain’s iron grip. Instead she nodded, her eyes meeting his.

‘You are different to other Chapter Adeptus Astartes,’ Angerer said.

Drakgaard wore his helm, as always when at war, so Angerer would not have seen his smile but she heard it well enough in his voice.

‘We are the epitome of them, Sister.’

Canoness Angerer bowed to the warriors in her midst and took her leave with Sisters Laevenius and Stephina.

Outside the amphitheatre, a black-armoured Rhino APC awaited them with its engines idling. Its hull was chipped and dented from recent combat and there was dirt ingrained in the metal but the icon of the Ebon Chalice still stood out proudly.

Knowing this was where they parted ways, Sister Stephina turned to the canoness and clasped her hands in front of her chest. She was about to bow and receive benediction when Angerer reached out to hold her clasped hands.

‘Sister…’ she began.

Stephina looked up. She was stern, but could not hide her youth and relative inexperience compared to the more veteran Sisters.

‘My canoness…’ her voice was soft, but with an underlying strength. Her drill abbot had been a fearsome tyrant in the schola, but he had taught Stephina well. She possessed a determination others lacked, but she had yet to find the true faith of the likes of Angerer and Laevenius. She had yet to witness a manifestation of Saint Alicia Dominica as they had done.

‘Are you a Daughter of the Emperor?’ Angerer asked her, as softly as her own harsh and grating cadence would allow. Up close, the canoness’s votive incense was cloying to the point of almost making Stephina gag.

Stephina nodded.

‘And whose will do you serve?’

‘I serve the Emperor’s will, my canoness,’ she answered, still bowed.

‘And whose will do you serve on this mortal plane?’

Now Stephina raised her eyes, and saw both Angerer and Laevenius, a step farther back, watching her intently. Though she had served the Order of the Ebon Chalice for several years, proving her piety and devotion beyond reproach, she sensed her next answer to be an important one that presaged something more than the mere affirmation of duty.

The Rhino’s engines grumbled, as if annoyed at the delay. Fumes plumed from its exhaust ports that reminded Stephina of grey censer smoke. The cloying incense threatened to make her eyes water.

This seemed suddenly very much like a test of faith. No, Stephina corrected herself inwardly with a hint of shame at the weariness she felt, of loyalty…

‘I follow the orders of you, my canoness,’ she said, choosing her words carefully.

Angerer smiled thinly, but it was a false thing, a mask to hide a very different emotion.

‘You are a dutiful servant, a dedicated warrior.’

‘I am as you and my drill abbot made me to be.’

The smile faded like winter sun before a cloud.

‘Indeed,’ said Angerer. ‘I have a duty for you now, Sister. Is your will and your faith up to it, I wonder?’

Stephina was not sure why her will and faith were being put to the question but she answered in the affirmative.

‘I need you to watch the Adeptus Astartes.’

Stephina’s face wrinkled with confusion.

‘Watch them, my canoness?’

‘Yes, observe everything they do, every ritual they partake in, and their rites of battle.’

‘But why?’ Stephina clamped her mouth, realising her error. She had spoken without thinking and had failed her canoness’s test. She would be found wanting. Saint Alicia Dominica would not appear before her, even though she was Seraphim.

Laevenius looked shocked and about to rebuke Stephina for her unintended insolence, but Angerer forestalled the Celestian’s chiding with surprising sanguinity.

‘Because I do not know them,’ said Angerer, and now she showed the truth of her emotions at last as her face became hard and unyielding as ice, ‘because I do not trust them. We embark on a mission of faith, sacred to His Ecclesiarchy. They are diabolic savages who worship fire and burn the bodies of their dead. We must be mindful. You are my eyes and ears in this, Stephina, so I ask again, do you have the will and faith for this solemn charge?’

Now Stephina nodded at once, glad she had avoided the canoness’s ire but fearful any slowness in answering would also condemn her.

‘I am, my canoness.’

Angerer looked over Stephina’s shoulder, beyond the dark fluting of her angelic jump pack and up into the murky sky crowding Escadan.

‘Then go and do the Emperor’s work. Fly, my warrior angel.’

Angerer stood back to give Stephina her benediction, before the Seraphim was airborne on wings of ebon night.

The others watched her go, trailing tongues of flame in her wake.

Laevenius drew up alongside Angerer, the book clenched firmly in her gauntleted grasp.

‘Should we tell her, canoness?’

Angerer lowered her gaze to ground level again to where the war was being fought in distant Canticus.

‘She would not understand, Sister. She does not possess the same faith as you or I.’ Angerer paused to turn. She touched her armoured fingers to the vicious scar on Laevenius’s face, the one that had nearly taken her eye. It was jagged, as if done with a blunt blade, claws… or nails. ‘Besides, we each have a personal stake in this, don’t we?’

Laevenius nodded slowly. Her gaze strayed to a small glass phial attached to the canoness’s trappings. A clear, shimmering liquid was contained within. Then she too touched the wound on her face, almost absently. The pain of Laevenius’s injury, her scarred appearance, it was a daily reminder of how she had once lowered her guard. She vowed it would not happen again. She clenched the book at the memory of her wounding, imagining it to be the neck of the one who had tried to maim her, and lifted her gaze.

‘Are you certain, Sister Laevenius?’ asked Angerer, nodding to the book. It was not really a question.

‘She is in the Book of Names, as prophesied by Saint Dominica.’

‘Indeed, she is.’

Though Laevenius betrayed no outward sign, Canoness Angerer felt the question on her lips.

‘What is it, Sister? You have served the Order faithfully for many years. You have earned the right to speak your mind.’

Laevenius bowed her head, showing contrition and acknowledging the wisdom of her canoness.

‘How do we know? How can we be sure she is here?’

Angerer smiled benevolently, the way a mother smiles at a daughter when she knows her child is being foolish.

‘We do not need to know. We only have to believe, and all that requires, dear Sister, is faith.’ Angerer maintained her smile but as she narrowed her eyes the tone of it seemed to subtly change as a measure of her hatred for their quarry was revealed. ‘Remember Laevenius, hellspawn can wear many masks. Some even clothe themselves in righteousness to ward the faithful sword from their necks, but we are not fooled by such glamours are we?’

‘No, canoness.’

‘No,’ Angerer agreed, a cold glint in her eyes at the thought of that faithful sword doing its holy work, ‘no we are not.’

After the departure of the Adepta Sororitas, Drakgaard had dismissed the others too. He was walking back wearily to quarters he had set aside for his own private contemplations when Elysius’s voice arrested him.

‘Would you have struck her down, brother?’

Drakgaard paused. He was halfway down an unlit corridor, a branch that fed off from the amphitheatre and led to a small barracks room. There was no accusation in the Chaplain’s tone, merely matter-of-fact enquiry.

‘No,’ he lied. ‘I meant only to declare my anger at her ill-chosen rhetoric.’

‘Was it so poorly chosen?’

Drakgaard turned quickly, the choler of his earlier mood returning.

‘You think she was right?’

Elysius stood before him with open palms.

‘No, but I think you believe she might have had a point. Salvation? You latched onto that word. I’ve seen your doubt, brother. This campaign has been overlong and much more arduous than it had any right to be. You question whether we are in need of some divine providence.’

‘Perhaps we are. We have yet to even set eyes on their master.’

‘He or it is here, Ur’zan, rest assured of that.’

‘Then show me to him, Elysius, and I will end this war.’

The Chaplain held up a placatory hand.

‘Patience, brother. We must endure as always.’

Drakgaard’s shoulders sagged a little, even in his armour and he unfastened his helmet. Even in the darkness, his scar-ravaged features were hideous. His humours rebalanced, veering back towards the phlegmatic.

‘Should we not be enough? That is all I ask.’

‘Whether this war would have been ended by our hand alone is a moot point now, brother. We will never know. The Ebon Chalice are here and at our disposal.’

Drakgaard’s eyes widened incredulously. ‘You believe that?’

Elysius conceded the point with a tilt of his head.

‘Well, perhaps at our disposal is stating it too strongly. Pragmatically, we are reinforced. And we of Nocturne’s heartblood are ever the pragmatists.’

Drakgaard nodded and Elysius saw the weariness in his eyes.

‘You realise, of course, that you will have to treat with her again.’

He nodded again, all too aware that both forces needed to agree on strategy before any meaningful blow against the Black Legion could be struck.

‘Do you trust them, Elysius?’ he asked, a captain to his Chaplain.

Elysius’s reply was emphatic. ‘No, brother. I do not.’

It was warm in the barracks house, and dark. The scent of burning metal pricked the air, adding to its heat. In one corner, smoke thronged the mouth of a small furnace. The coals within glowed a dull, fire-red. Brought all the way from Nocturne, from the slopes of Mount Deathfire, the coals represented rebirth and transformation.

Fire changes all, as old Zen’de used to say.

‘Etar…’ Drakgaard rasped, breathing deep of the smoke and cinder smell. It eased him, and acted like a balm.

A hooded brander-priest stepped into view. His head was bowed, the instruments of his sacred calling clenched in thin, wiry hands.

Every fire-born had a brander-priest. It was he or she that would scour the flesh, burn in the deeds of duty and embed forever the ignominies of defeat. For a Salamander’s skin was his legacy and his mortal tapestry of remembrances. Like many Chapter warriors had subalterns, minor equerries or auxiliaries, the fire-born had the brander-priests or Incendum Sacerii as some knew them. It was an old term, rapidly growing out of fashion but Drakgaard was an old warrior and had tastes to match.

They were armourers as well as priests, and some amongst the Chapter even called upon them for counsel. Drakgaard had only ever uttered his own brander-priest’s name. It was not that he thought Etar was beneath him, it was simply all the communication that was needed between them.

As Drakgaard held out his arms, Etar took it as a signal to stow his branding iron in a rack on the wall and went to his master.

It took almost an hour to remove the armour and Drakgaard grimaced at every plate extracted from his body. A litany of scar tissue was revealed beneath, merging with the brands that also colonised Drakgaard’s flesh. He remembered every one, knew every wound and relived it acutely when he was stood naked in readiness for the blessing of the furnace.

He stepped forwards, limping with the knotted muscle and twisted skin of his right thigh. Smoke and heat fell upon him like a purifying veil as he felt the soles of his bare feet start to burn.

A metal plate sat adjacent to the furnace, absorbing its heat. Drakgaard stood on it, arms held by his sides, fists bunched as he breathed deep of the fiery vapours. It was only now, during the ritual of branding, that the dull ache of his injuries abated. Pain to cleanse pain, only this was the purer.

Drakgaard bowed his head, eyes now shut as he entered deep meditation. He heard the scrape of metal against stone as Etar took up the brand again and thrust it into the furnace. It would take a few minutes to reach the temperature he needed it to. Drakgaard awaited its touch, welcoming it.

Bring the fire, he willed, a brief cessation to the dull agony he lived with day in and day out. Let it burn…

Thus far, the war on Heletine had been long. It was to get longer.

CHAPTER NINE

Sturndrang, underhive of Molior

No one else approached them as they delved deeper into Molior’s foetid underbelly, Zartath’s massacring of Karve and his gang enough to keep others at bay. Through the tunnels, the atrophied gantries and abandoned block-towers, beneath the low grimy fog underfoot and the distant skeletal remains of once-regal domiciles, Agatone was certain that eyes watched from the febrile darkness. He detected fear and a weakness of spirit in the marrow of this desolate place, one he had only found previously in the enslaved. Most other Chapters would have despised the human underclass that dwelled in lower Molior but, as a Salamander, Agatone pitied them.

Zartath had a less humane philosophy.

‘They reek of fear, this waste,’ he said, his voice a guttural snarl of distaste. ‘This pit is ripe with it, that and corruption. I was held prisoner, but I was never a slave. Not like this. Small wonder the taint has crept in – weak minds are ever prey to it.’

Through his belligerence, Zartath betrayed himself. A slight tremor in the cheek, under the right eye, at the memory of his incarceration by the dark eldar. For the longest time, he had scavenged to survive and watched his brothers slain. It had changed him, made him into something that was more animal than man, but despite his savage edge, he still felt.

Back aboard the Forge Hammer, after they had left their brothers – Agatone’s brothers, in truth, for although liveried in green drake scale and having endured the rite of pain, Zartath still had the feral beating heart of a dragon – Agatone had seen the ex-Black Dragon at prayer. His words were guttural, more like growls and snarls, but they were imprecations and devotions of faith. It was a rare moment of stillness, one Agatone did not interrupt nor reveal his witnessing of later. Zartath had been given a fresh suit of power armour upon his induction to the Chapter, artificered by none other than Forge Master Argos, but he had insisted on keeping his old and battered trappings. A relic, scarcely effective protection anymore, Agatone believed Zartath had kept them to remind himself of who he was and where he had come from. It gave the captain hope that his savage charge was more than just a beast.

Even so, though his assessment of the pitiful wretches they had seen in lower Molior was harsh, it was an opinion likely to be shared by many of the Adeptus Astartes.

‘They look starved to me, not tainted,’ said Agatone. ‘Don’t judge so harshly. We don’t know how long these people have been the grist for the millstones of their overseers or which potentate has them firmly beneath their heel.’

‘Are we liberators now then, captain? Do you wish to save these wretches from themselves?’

Agatone did not answer. On this mission, redemption extended only to one, and he was proving elusive.

There was a plague upon this place, though. Whether a moral or spiritual decay, Agatone did not know, but whatever the source it was virulent. Only now, as they drilled down, was it evident how rotten the core had become. A warrior such as Tsu’gan, even in disgrace, would have seen it had he ventured this way, this deep. Agatone wondered if he had tried to find the source and been outmatched, or had he been too wounded to do anything but stagger hopefully towards aid?

The image was incomplete, a fact that more than irked the Salamanders captain.

They pressed on.

After wandering through a labyrinth of tunnels, walkways and the low-ceilinged sub-hives pressed upon by the multitudinous levels above them, Agatone and Zartath emerged into what amounted to a settlement. It was no more than an industrialised shanty, a few aggregated structures and a populace of dirty-faced, malnourished individuals that huddled in packs around drum fires. There were vendors, selling dubious ‘meat’, some weapons and crude supplies. All of it was trash, gathered from the refuse of the hive, but none of these would-be entrepreneurs dared approach the newcomers.

The appearance of the bulky, obviously armed and armoured, strangers sent herds of these human dregs scurrying for the dark and further anonymity. Agatone wondered who else had visited these poor wretches and what their purpose might be.

‘Eyes and ears, Zartath,’ Agatone murmured, but the ex-Black Dragon’s awareness was already at its peak.

Exor was a dead weight on Agatone’s shoulder, and he noticed some of the bolder inhabitants approach a little closer for a better look at his burden, muttering in hushed whispers to one another when they saw it was a body he carried.

Mercifully, the Techmarine was still breathing and had not yet slipped into sus-an membrane coma. If that happened, reviving him would not be easy. Certainly, it could not be achieved with whatever crude technology the underhivers possessed.

Walking slowly through the procession of rough buildings that shouldered against each other like malformed teeth, their facades badly abraded, Agatone looked for signs that might indicate a medical facility.

He winced. The keening sound Zartath had mentioned earlier was still echoing in his head. It actually seemed louder and he wondered if he had spat out the tainted blood too slowly.

As they reached the square of this frontier settlement, a ‘welcoming committee’ at last met the two warriors. It was one armed with guns and blades, ten men strong. They looked weak, fearful.

As well they might.

Others, too many to discern numbers, cowered in the shadows cast by the ramshackle buildings.

‘C-collection isn’t until next cycle,’ stammered the leader, an old-looking man with pepper-wash stubble and narrow weasel-like eyes.

One looked much the same as another to Agatone, and once again he railed at the filth and depravity of these men and women. Each wore a haphazard agglomeration of armour plate, plastek and some form of hide that he assumed was flensed from the indigenous fauna of Molior’s underhive. Their weapons were machetes or the lengths of sharp metal bent roughly to resemble makeshift blades with taped up grips. Crude ratchet-action shotguns and rusty-looking stubbers served as firepower.

Agatone wondered if they were even loaded as the men moved to encircle them both.

‘We’re not here to collect,’ he told the leader.

‘Because we gave up our tithe – we gave up a full flock as ordered,’ said the old man. Now he had the strangers in his sights and surrounded, he grew a little bolder. ‘You’ll get nothing more from us.’

‘Tithe?’ Agatone asked, intrigued.

The old man looked confused, as if answering a question Agatone should already know the answer to.

‘For the Seven Points.’

‘We’re strangers here,’ Agatone explained. ‘What are the Seven Points?’

Zartath was eyeing the natives dangerously. Surreptitiously, Agatone held out his hand in a silent signal to stand down. They could kill or incapacitate these men in a matter of seconds, but Agatone needed information, not more bodies.

‘Not are,’ said the old man with a half-smile, the kind a native gets when he realises he has outsiders in his midst and sees the possibility for exploitation. ‘Is. The Seven Points is an arena. Some folks call it the “cross”, though Seven Points is more accurate.’

Agatone scowled.

‘You’ll understand when you see it,’ said the leader. ‘Silas Krebb and Otmar the Brute own it. They own everything around these parts. Their gangers set up the fights and we, amongst others, provide the fighters. We’ve only given up dregs before, but this time we had a real prize for ’em.’ The leader flashed an ugly smile, revealing three gilded teeth. Agatone also noticed his coat and pistol were of a higher quality than the rest of his apparel. No doubt the spoils of his slave trading.

Despite his best efforts, Agatone found his anger rising.

Zartath was far ahead of him.

‘What arena?’ Zartath snapped, painful, associative memories resurfacing. ‘What did you give them?’

The old man paled, his brief confidence ebbing as surely as Agatone’s patience, as he caught a glimpse of Zartath’s exposed fangs beneath the ex-Black Dragon’s hood. He started babbling.

‘We patched up a big one, as big as you he was. And a stranger too. We sent him…’ He pointed, and his hand was shaking. ‘That way.’

Agatone stepped in. It was do that or allow Zartath to kill them all.

‘You have a medicus then?’ asked Agatone.

The old man nodded.

‘Show me to him,’ said Agatone. ‘Now.’

‘And if we don’t?’ said one of the crowd behind the leader, a youth with more bravura than sense.

Agatone pulled his cloak aside to afford the human dregs a glance at his armour and bolt pistol.

‘That would be unwise,’ he counselled. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘your medicus. My friend is injured and in need of aid.’

‘You are far from the stars, adept,’ a strong, but veteran voice uttered from the shadows.

The surgery was a grim and poorly lit facility, although the word ‘facility’ did it overdue credit. It huddled between two other structures, stubby tenements rammed with more of the human waste that dwelled in the underhive settlement. A wrought iron staircase, indicated by the leader of the men who had first stopped them, led to this hovel and now he had found it, Agatone was beginning to regret his decision to seek aid here.

‘You know of the Adeptus Astartes, do you, medicus?’ Agatone stepped forwards into the dull lamplight of a hanging phosphor globe. It was the room’s only illumination, and flickered intermittently.

‘Some,’ he admitted. ‘I once fought beside them as part of His Eternal Majesty’s Ecclesiarchy. And my name is Issak,’ said the man, he too then moving into the light. ‘Though I’d suggest we get acquainted later so I can see to your friend.’

Whilst he reconnoitred the surgery, making sure it was not a foolish attempt at an ambush, Agatone had given Exor up to Zartath. Judging by the ex-Black Dragon’s mood, he was not confident Zartath could stay his killing mood and, in error, gut the one man who might be able to restore Exor should he in fact prove to be genuine.

As he regarded the weathered features but bright ruby-coloured eyes of the one who had introduced himself as Issak, Agatone was glad of that decision.

‘I saw you,’ said Issak, tapping a gnarled finger against a cracked pict screen which showed the area immediately outside of the surgery’s door, ‘and heard the booming thunder of your voices all the way down in the square.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I wonder what three adepts of the stars are doing here in Kabullah.’

‘Kabullah?’

‘This settlement’s name, or as was,’ said the medicus. ‘Few live now that remember it, or care. Many call it “the sink”. I’m sure you can appreciate why.’

The nomenclature was an appropriate one – this place was a hole, a sink in all respects.

Issak gestured to the door behind Agatone with his chin. ‘You had better bring him in.’

Agatone watched Issak keenly as he worked. Together, he and Zartath had managed to get Exor inside the surgery and onto the operating table. Despite its roughshod appearance, Agatone discovered the place was clean and sanitised; the tools at Issak’s disposal were simply beyond their best and patchwork as a result.

The air was acerbic with counterseptic chemicals and Issak performed his ministrations behind a half-mask rebreather. He also wore a dark tan medical smock over functional leggings, a crumpled shirt and padded flak vest. Agatone noted, even though it was tight, Issak did not remove the armour to perform surgery. The room was cramped with equipment, various philtres, vials and bespoke medical machinery all hinted at and half shrouded in shadow.

With Agatone’s help, Issak had removed Exor’s armour, surprisingly not reacting to the Techmarine’s bionic augmentations. As to the extent and nature of Exor’s injuries, the medicus had merely said, ‘You need to climb when the klaxons wail. That’s vermin tide and is best avoided even for warriors such as you.’

‘Had we known that…’

‘You would not be here now. I understand.’

Issak worked quickly and diligently, first cleaning the wounds, careful not to get any of Exor’s blood on his skin directly, though he could not have known of the true origin of its poison, and then sealing them where necessary. He used an adhesive gel rather than thread, trusting to the meagre medical provisions available to him.

Agatone had only ever seen an Apothecary work with greater skill at patching up an Adeptus Astartes.

‘You said you fought with us, before?’ asked Agatone.

‘Not you, precisely, another Chapter,’ Issak replied. His attention was mostly absorbed by his ministrations, so he only glanced at Agatone when he added, ‘Nor your other friend’s Chapter either.’

Zartath waited outside as ordered. There was little room in the surgery and the reek of blood was having an undesirable effect on him. It affected Agatone too, and made the keening seem louder. Perhaps, though, it was just the tight confines of the surgery.

Agatone ran a hand through his crest of hair, and found his forehead was lathered with sweat.

Issak glanced up, ‘Should I examine you next?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Agatone replied, then asked, ‘You know something of our order?’

Issak had tended the physical wounds as well as he could. It had taken time, and the medicus was obviously not a young man, but went about his task with vigour and purpose. Agatone suspected it had been a while since Issak had found genuine fulfilment in his work.

‘I am Nocturnean, I should.’

The deep red pupils, the leathern skin darkened by the sun, Agatone saw it at once.

‘Vulkan’s name, you are aren’t you?’

‘Epimethus. Like so few of my fellow Nocturneans, I sought a different path to that of ore-miner or black-smiter. I boarded a ship, part of a human auxilia and, after a few years of war, I found a different calling on a nearby shrine world. I became a missionary, entrusted with teaching the Emperor’s glory to the heathen and the ill-educated,’ said Issak as he scrubbed his hands clean for the next stage of Exor’s ministrations. ‘Molior seemed as foul a place as any to begin.’

‘How long have you been here, medicus?’

‘Over thirty years. I ventured down into the underhives when I heard of the squalor and depravity there. I took the role of medicus because I used to be a field surgeon. If at the same time as healing broken bones, I could heal the crack in a man’s faith, then I would consider that a blessing and a good day.’

‘And have you had many? Good days, I mean.’

‘Fewer than I would like,’ Issak admitted, ‘but I try to keep faith.’

‘And what does your faith tell you about my friend’s chances of recovery?’

‘His blood is tainted, but you already knew that.’ Issak put on fresh surgical gloves and went to retrieve a device from a locked cabinet he had close to hand.

Agatone considered just how worldly-wise this medicus was. As a missionary in the Ecclesiarchy he would be privy to some knowledge, but clearly he had experience of the Chaotic. To Agatone’s mind, it was wasted here and he wondered what must have driven Issak to seek out this life, this place. Perhaps it was penance? Perhaps that’s why Tsu’gan had fled here too? It was the closest thing they could find to hell, a fitting place for sinners Agatone supposed. It mattered little. He needed Exor and so he needed Issak. The Ecclesiarchy’s loss would be Agatone’s gain. He could live with that, but he still had questions.

‘You saw another of my kind recently?’

‘Is that really a question?’ Issak worked as he talked, preparing his tools for the patient.

‘No,’ admitted Agatone. ‘How bad were his injuries? The alderman said you’d patched him up.’

‘The alderman’s name is Garvat, and your quarry left here half conscious but alive. You are hunting this man, I assume?’ Agatone nodded, seeing no value in obfuscation at this point. Issak continued. ‘The sawbones at Seven Points would see to the rest of his treatment.’

‘And his blood, was it tainted like my brother’s here? Is that why he nearly succumbed to his injuries?’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Issak answered flatly. ‘I assume he climbed.’

The crash had obviously hurt Tsu’gan badly enough that he had been forced to seek aid in Kabullah. Despite the medicus’s efforts, it had left him weakened enough that a group of human slavers had been able to take him prisoner. What happened after they got him to the arena… that, Agatone did not know.

‘You expected to learn more?’ asked Issak, seeing the Space Marine lost in thought.

‘Honestly, I don’t know. I hoped…’ Agatone’s gaze strayed from the shadows around them back to Exor lying supine on the medicus’s slab. ‘How could you tell?’ he asked.

‘About the blood? A warning in my gut. A disquiet I have learned to recognise. It’s hard to explain.’

‘None is needed. Just tell me, can you cure him?’

‘Yes, but it’s not a matter of faith, brother…?’

‘Agatone.’

‘Agatone. Yes, he needs blood. Your blood, to be precise, as it’s a close genetic match.’

‘A transfusion?’

‘Exactly.’ Issak set the device up on a bench and Agatone saw that its purpose was the exsanguination of a patient or donor.

Agatone frowned.

‘Will that work? It seems… simplistic.’

‘I believe so. The blood carries a pathogen that is currently inhibiting your friend’s ability to regenerate. We remove enough of that pathogen by transfusing your blood for his, we restore his natural regenerative ability.’

‘How long?’

‘A few hours. It might take five or six transfusions. Perhaps, during the wait, you can tell me why you are here and not upon some battlefield somewhere.’

Agatone turned from the machine to look the medicus in the eye.

‘What makes you think we’re not on a battlefield?’

Issak nodded, as Agatone began to remove his greave for the first transfusion. He clicked on the comm-bead.

‘Zartath, maintain watch on our perimeter,’ Agatone said. ‘Exor can be healed but it’s going to take a few hours.’

A grunted affirmative returned on the other end of the feed before the link was cut.

Agatone had given the hound his leash – now he would find out just how tame the ex-Black Dragon was.

CHAPTER TEN

Nova-class frigate, Forge Hammer

As the atmospheric craft touched down in one of the Forge Hammer’s hangars, Urgaresh felt his battle-brothers strain at the leash. Thorast was the exception perhaps – in him there was nobility still. But then, he had always possessed the most outwardly balanced mien of the zorn or ‘wrath’ as it was known on Gauntlet. Urgaresh told himself they could come back from the edge, but only once they were whole again. They needed leadership. It had wounded them to lose him like that, and then be cruelly denied by a quirk of fate. He wondered what of their fates once this was done. Would they rise? Could they? Human blood slaked Urgaresh’s claws. It stank of damnation. A necessary evil, he told himself. Committed by a necessary monster.

And we are, all of us, monsters.

Unlike the bone-cold Apothecary, Haakem and Skarh snarled and spat every moment they were airborne, gnashing their incisors until their gums bled. Both warriors clenched and unclenched their fists at the void of not having a weapon to hand. They felt it as keenly as a missing limb. Urgaresh knew this with certainty, because he felt it too.

Ghaan was the last of them. The old vexilliary was akin to a brooding storm, sullen and adapting to the pain of his injuries with all the civility of a sabre-wolf. He had once carried their standard, and considered it an honourable duty. His banner had long since been lost to ruin, burned by a dark lance. In its absence, Urgaresh found it hard to remember what they were fighting for. He supposed it was for each other and when that was no longer a tenable belief, he would fight for a good death instead.

Yes, they had risked much in braving the slave pits of Volgorrah. Four caskets in the old Fist of Kraedor’s mortuarium attested to that more poignantly than any ragged banner ever could. The bodies were lost to them now. Jerrak, Skellig, Neroth and Bhar’thak. All gone, their legacy in Thorast’s care now.

None had escaped wounding. Urgaresh carried a limp, a hand span of xenos steel still embedded in his right thigh. Both Haakem and Skarh bore head injuries, the mounting pressure of which had made them increasingly volatile. Urgaresh had to keep the leash tight on those two, and maintained a vigilant watch aided by Thorast. The Apothecary had lost an eye, but it did not spoil his already brutish face. The loss of depth perception meant his scalpel was less reliable but his blade arm was still strong and that was all that really mattered. Ghaan had been untouched, but now had extensive burns from the Thallax’s lightning gun.

They had lost their ship, gutted during their escape and with only enough strength left in her weary bones to get them within sight of their goal. The Kraedor’s crew all dead. The four corpses of their brothers. There was little left but the mission. It would have to be enough.

They would have to be enough, but they were dangling by the thinnest of threads.

Urgaresh knew these warriors, like he knew his own blood. The zorn needed a victory. They had fought and died together in a search that began in Commorragh and would end here above this dirt-ball world in the corridors of some insignificant frigate. Their journey had begun in anger and a desire for retribution, so it would end the same. Urgaresh liked the symmetry of that, though his soul was far from poetic. Before their first steps, they had been monsters. With everything that had happened, Urgaresh had no word that could describe them now.

‘What will you do with us now?’

The voice intruded on Urgaresh’s black mood. His mind’s eye was awash with revenge scenarios. He saw now only in two hues, both well matched to his humours. Red and black.

Fire and bone.

As if waking from a dark dream, Urgaresh looked down at the diminutive mortal who had showed such defiance in the cryo-vault. Urgaresh wanted to smack the pride right out of him, but stayed his hand. It would achieve nothing but to satisfy a savage urge.

He was the necessary monster, he knew, but would not let it be his keeper. I choose when you are unleashed. I. Choose.

‘Leave this vessel,’ Urgaresh rasped, as a low growl began to build in the hold from the others.

The mortal looked perplexed. Wary.

‘You are releasing us?’

Urgaresh leaned in close, and let the rank odour of his charnel breath wash over the man.

‘Flee now, maggot. I won’t offer again.’

He rose back to his full height and the mortals left the ship, casting wary glances behind at the black-armoured warriors, and carrying their wounded survivor between them.

‘He will raise alarum, brother-sergeant,’ said Thorast. ‘More will come.’

Urgaresh bared his teeth. So did Haakem and Skarh.

‘Let them,’ he declared, snarling as the bone blades pierced his flesh.

Ghaan came to his sergeant’s side, his movements awkward and pained. The burning had reached deep. The old vexilliary felt it gnawing with every step.

‘What are your orders, brother-sergeant?’

‘First, we three take the armourium.’ His gaze encompassed Ghaan and Thorast. Our weapons were lost aboard the Kraedor. We need replacements.’

Ghaan nodded.

‘They’ll expect us to strike for the bridge immediately,’ Urgaresh went on, ‘and will make their defences accordingly.’

‘And us, brother-sergeant?’

Urgaresh turned to Haakem and Skarh.

‘You will unpick those defences before we get there, brothers.’

Haakem bared his teeth a little further as he anticipated the hunt to come. Skarh unsheathed his bone claws and began striking them against one another to sharpen their edge.

‘A warning,’ said Urgaresh before they moved out, satisfied he had given the mortals enough of a head start, ‘no killing unless we must. We are cursed, but we are not damned. Not yet.’

Descending the ramp of the Arvus lighter, they entered the darkness of the frigate’s landing deck. The hunt began.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Heletine, on the border between Escadan and Canticus

Smoke collides and the last vestiges of light die with the phosphor flare.

Ash is clouding my vision, choking me despite the enhancements of my transhuman body. The transformation is only partial. I am without black carapace, and the last few muscle and organ inducements to make me truly fire-born.

I am dying, encumbered by a weight on my back I can’t remember bearing.

So close…

I thought I could see fire, just the edges of it, lapping like a burning sea at the end of the fire chasm. I need only reach for it, like a beacon. But even that is lost to me.

Pain, rage, anguish. They fall upon my shoulders, adding to my burden.

Ash, smoke, the resonance of heat like a throbbing invisible wall. If I reach out I can touch it with my fingers and feel it burn.

No direction left. No flare to guide me. No firelight from the edge of this chasm. I am lost.

I cry out a name. It is defiance, not a hail for aid or me beseeching for divine providence. We are taught not to believe in such things, and even if I did I am undeserving of any favours.

I was a fool to come here into the darkness and shadow. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to save them, just as I had been saved. But I am not of Nocturne. I am a Scorian and the weakness of that has left me undone in this place of hell. How arrogant of me to believe I could tame it. None could tame this fiery wilderness, certainly not one such as I.

The name I cried rips from my dry lips one last time. It is like breathing in a furnace and the act leaves my throat raw. I imagine my flesh burning, all of it ending, my bones as ash. I will rejoin the earth and the Circle of Fire shall turn again. There is no coming back. No one can do that. Not even…

A light…

I see a light. A flame is kindled within that echoes the one I can see without. The spark of it ignites. Now it is a beacon I can follow. A figure is outlined in the smoke. He is carrying the firebrand and urging me and the two I carry to safety. The steps are hard. I am exhausted, but hope gives me purpose. My captain has forged me to be strong, so I am determined to reward his faith with effort.

The edge of the fire chasm comes into view and the smoke begins to thin at last.

Half delirious, my vision fading, I look up to see a figure standing over me.

It is not Ba’ken as I first thought.

‘Rest…’ he says. I swear I know him. But it can’t be possible, for this man is dead.

Va’lin came around with a sudden start. He had been meditating, trying to restore some of his vigour from the earlier battle. He had scarcely got his bearings when he heard a voice he recognised.

‘You make a poor sentry, brother.’ Naeb’s gentle laughter turned it from a rebuke into mild cajoling.

Va’lin had been perched on the edge of a jagged promontory of a former scriptorium at the edge of Escadan. Everything within the archive had been destroyed, set to the flame or simply obliterated during the initial bombardment. The vista did not change very much below either. A sea of destruction stretched into the distance where Imperial-held Escadan gave way to the viciously contested streets of Canticus. For even here, at the edge of the Imperium’s strongest bastion on Heletine, the war was rudely felt and its works laid bare for all to see.

Va’lin eyed his brother shrewdly. ‘I am surprised to see you alive, let alone upright and with strength enough for mockery.’

Naeb opened his arms. The mark from the split in his armour remained, though the blood had been cleaned away and the damage to the war-plate fused by a Techmarine.

‘Sepelius might be a grim and unpleasant snakr’ah, but he knows his craft.’

Naeb used an old Nocturnean word to denigrate the Apothecary. It loosely meant ‘snake-skinner’ but more broadly referred to ‘one of ophidian nature, with a lowness of bearing and character’. To Epimethians like Naeb, most other Nocturneans were snakr’ah, except the regal born of Hesiod. And they had other names for the nobles of that Sanctuary City.

Va’lin noticed Dersius looming behind his friend and nodded to the burly Themian. Though he doubted Dersius would admit to it, Va’lin suspected he was keeping a watchful eye on their wounded brother. Naeb’s easy humour could not hide the fact he was in pain. Va’lin read it in the slight grimace when Naeb had showed off his injury and thought his brother was not looking. The fluid movement that made Naeb such a fierce sparring partner in the battle-cages seemed unrefined and halting.

Dersius nodded. ‘Va’lin,’ he said, taciturn as ever. Naeb thumbed over his shoulder at the massive warrior. ‘My keeper,’ he explained, with only a little wounded pride to add to his physical injuries. Va’lin saw clearly that Dersius had appointed himself Naeb’s shadow until he was restored to his former strength. Self-reliance was a tenet of the Promethean Creed but so too was self-sacrifice, a virtue in which Dersius had excelled often.

Both fire-born carried their battle-helms and something of their faces was revealed in the flickering firelight from below. Naeb had the cultured features of a rogue trader, albeit bulked out and hardened by his transhuman physique. He wore his salt-white hair in three short rows that cut his scalp into four equal black segments. He was also handsome for a warrior, which suited his sanguine demeanour well.

A Themian tribal tattoo painted Dersius’s flat and uncompromising face. The pigment used to ink the warrior was deep blue, so the icon of a leo’nid rampant was difficult to make out unless observed in the proper light. Like most from the City of Warrior Kings, he was bald and had features more in kind to rock than flesh. In many ways Dersius reminded Va’lin of his old captain, Ba’ken.

‘Have you come to summon me then, brothers?’ asked Va’lin.

Come the dawn, which was still an hour or two off, the Imperial forces and their Ecclesiarchy allies would muster for a massive offensive. Word had reached all officers, and through them their warriors, of a huge push into Canticus to reclaim the city in its entirety and drive the heretics out. Many had died in the last failed offensive. Many must therefore be mourned before commencement of the next. Fires littered the ubiquitous ruins on the border between cities in recognition of that fact as the Salamanders war host about to descend on it observed their rituals of flame and ash.

Power-armoured figures were gathering below, forming circles around distant blazes. Each was a pyre, the burning of a brother in arms.

Naeb’s expression grew serious.

‘Iaptus wants us to remember Sor’ad.’

Va’lin nodded, needing to say nothing further.

All three donned their battle-helms. A slew of situational data appeared in crisp glowing green across Va’lin’s retinal lens display: trajectories, wind speed, ground distance. Fuel levels and engine temperature for his jump pack were reading optimum.

‘See you when we hit earth,’ he said to the others over the vox-feed, and cast a glance in his brothers’ direction as they lined up on the ruined promontory alongside him.

‘Shall we wager on who lands first?’

Va’lin smiled behind his faceplate. Naeb’s spirit was beyond dampening it seemed.

‘Agreed,’ Va’lin replied, ‘name the stakes.’

‘The honour of leading the combat squad when Iaptus splits us again.’

Va’lin bent his knees slightly, descending into a crouch and saw the stance echoed by his brothers.

‘How can you be sure he will?’

‘He will.’

‘Making bets when we are about to mourn our brother?’ Dersius’s tone smacked of disapproval as his deep voice came over the vox-feed.

Naeb had to crane his neck a little to regard him eye to eye.

‘Do you want to lead or not? Sor’ad would have approved.’

Dersius nodded, and it was as if the snarling drake teeth on his battle-helm had cracked a rare smile.

‘Just say when we leap.’

‘On a count of five,’ said Naeb, and a chrono flared into life on Va’lin’s and, he knew, his brothers’ retinal displays.

‘Was it Dak’ir?’ Naeb asked.

Va’lin turned his head towards him.

‘What?’

‘Your dream.’

‘I…’

‘Mark!’

The chrono hit zero the same second Naeb announced it. Two ignition flares lit up the ruined scriptorium, spilling gouts of flame across the promontory. Va’lin was a fraction behind, gunning his jump pack in the wake of the others, but he was too late. Naeb’s jump arc, superior to Dersius’s, would carry him earthward first. The honour of leadership would be his.

Iaptus was waiting for them around the fire with the rest of the squad. A shrine devoted to Saint Hafetus had stood here once, a known smith according to Xerus. Near to the Canticus border, it had suffered during the war and was now little more than a ruin. Despite that, it was deemed a fitting place of commemoration.

Arrok, Vo’sha, Illus and Xerus were already crouched by the pyre, their bare faces swathed in flickering shadows. Half glimpsed through tendrils of smoke, Va’lin saw Ky’dak sat a little distant from the others. Even in this solemn act, he was a man apart. Va’lin was at odds whether to despise or pity him.

Xerus nodded, and bade the three latecomers sit down. He was the other specialist in the squad, but preferred a broad-barrelled plasma pistol to the flamer Va’lin carried. Iaptus approved, of course. He said it gave the squad balance. Xerus was a veteran, and possessed of a generous spirit that had seen him become something of a mentor for the younger specialist. Proficient in many weapons, since his earliest days in the Devastators and then Tactical before joining Captain Dac’tyr’s Wyverns, Xerus was an exceptional teacher. Through his guidance Va’lin had thrived, despite his relative inexperience.

Flames of burned orange and vermillion flowed over a silhouette of scorched black plate. The last of their number, late of the corporeal realm dominated the gathering. Here was Sor’ad’s final rest, his armoured corpse in repose upon the pyre with its progenoids since excised by Sepelius to preserve the dead warrior’s legacy. Dark smoke rose in a great column from the smouldering body, driven upwards by the heat of the blaze and blighting the sky, as the mood of all present was blighted by their loss.

‘We gather to remember…’ said Iaptus, his face framed by firelight which heightened every noble groove and peak. Honour scars branded in linked chains of Nocturnean sigil were etched upon his cheeks and forehead. An arrowhead of short wiry hair that was the colour of black volcanic ash covered his chin and jaw. His scalp likewise. In the old language, the sigil-dialect of the first Nocturnean earth-shamans, Iaptus meant ‘Piercer’. On first impression it was an ill-fitting honorific for one who carried a thunder hammer and fairly bludgeoned his opponents, but as leader of Squad Iaptus he was every shred the lance Dac’tyr used to core his enemies, heart and all.

Like the others, Iaptus had removed his battle-helm out of respect and his ornate jump pack was unclasped and leant against the remains of the walled enclosure that surrounded the squad. In the middle of the ruin, encircled by a ring of stones, the pyre had grown into a conflagration and reached up into the night.

The other three took their places by the fire, Va’lin sparing only the briefest glance for Naeb who had the audacity to wink at his battle-brother.

‘We gather to set a flame…’ Iaptus continued once the rest of his squad was gathered and crouched.

Through the fire, Va’lin noticed two others attending the rite. Zantho and Sepelius, without squads of their own, stood at the fringes and looked on. Though he was not Sor’ad’s brother-in-arms or from Squad Iaptus, Zantho still mouthed the other sergeant’s ritual benediction. He inclined his head to Va’lin when he saw him watching and the younger warrior looked away.

‘And let it burn,’ the squad uttered as one, each removing a gauntlet.

‘Let us remember So’kan Sor’ad,’ said Iaptus.

Together, they thrust their bare hands into Sor’ad’s flames. During the ritual burning, Dersius cried out as he sang a Themian war-lament. Va’lin did not know the words, but he knew their meaning for Dersius had explained it to him the first time it was sung. It recounted the tale of a hunter of the old tribes who stalked a great leo’nid across the Arridian Plain. The beast had slain his wife and child, taken them down to the hot earth where it had devoured their flesh. Only by finding and killing the beast in turn could the hunter give his loved ones peace and also lay his own grief to rest.

It was a melancholy tale, made all the more so because it had no ending. The hunt went on after Dersius had finished and would do forever. Through the verse, Va’lin noticed Ky’dak’s usually severe expression darken further. Ky’dak was Themian just like Dersius and Va’lin wondered what it meant, if anything, beyond the fraternal grief they were all experiencing.

The lament concluded and Squad Iaptus removed their hands from the flame. The blaze would burn long into the night, rendering metal and bone to ash and returning Sor’ad to the earth.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ Iaptus intoned, striking his burned fist against his breastplate.

‘With it, I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ uttered the rest, saluting as their sergeant had done.

‘A few words, brother,’ said Iaptus to the figure behind him.

Zantho stepped into the light. The tank commander had a broad, expressive face forked and sculpted by rendered sauroch fat. It was framed by a red beard that extended into a mane of rugged hair and jutted from his scalp in spikes. Made room for in the circle by Arrok and Vo’sha, he knelt down to give them all his wisdom.

‘Ours is a violent calling, but as adherents of the Promethean Creed we believe in the Circle of Fire.’ Zantho put the tips of his fingers together to make an ‘O’ shape and held it out in front of him. The others did the same as he went on. ‘None can come back as they once were, but in death we are returned to the ash from whence we came to be born anew, our blood and bone bonded with the earth. Through fire are our remains made protean, through fire and the reunion with earth do we experience rebirth. After death, after our duty is ended, we give ourselves to these elements and in so doing become a part of them. This is the nature of the Circle of Fire.’

Many amongst the gathering were nodding. Xerus even reached over to clap Zantho on the shoulder. Va’lin knew the words, he knew the teachings. They had been Vulkan’s and thus did every Salamander learn them, but he wondered about the first part, about not coming back. One amongst the gathering had an even more sceptical reaction.

‘Death is death,’ uttered Sepelius, cowled by a drake-skin hood, his face akin to a cadaverous rendering of the fabled reaper itself in the firelight.

‘Don’t you believe in rebirth, Kratus?’ Zantho asked without turning around. ‘Are you so morbid that your beliefs don’t allow for the possibility?’

‘I am a realist, brother, that is all. I don’t have the luxury of indulging such existential notions.’

‘You are a cynic,’ Zantho challenged.

‘Yes, that too,’ Kratus Sepelius agreed, utterly unfazed.

‘Then why attend the ritual at all, Apothecary?’ asked Arrok, a little too wounded, a little too headstrong. Xerus laid a hand on the younger warrior’s shoulder to remind him where he was and who he was addressing.

‘To see it was properly observed. I might not believe in rebirth but that doesn’t mean I want our traditions to be mishandled.’ He smiled, though it might as well have been a scowl at Arrok. ‘My duty is to the living, and keeping them that way. Legacy is maintained by science,’ he tapped the progenoid flask of his reductor with a gauntleted finger, ‘not through fire and ash. Such archaic concepts are anachronisms of the “old ways”, but none here have ears for my thoughts, so I shall bid you all a good burning and be on my way.’

Sepelius gave an ironic bow before stepping back into the shadows. A few seconds later he was gone.

‘Are they all like that?’ asked Arrok.

‘All?’ Iaptus queried, his gaze on the void left in the darkness by Sepelius’s exit.

‘Apothecaries.’

Iaptus frowned as if the question was a facile one.

‘Indeed, Brother Arrok. How did you think they were chosen for the apothecarion in the first place?’

A moment of stunned silence followed before Xerus glanced at Zantho who both then erupted into laughter.

Arrok looked appalled at first, that such experienced veterans would dishonour the solemnity of the ritual, until he realised this was the ritual.

‘Aye,’ said Naeb to Va’lin, as Arrok found his humour at last, ‘I think Sor’ad would have approved.’

But Va’lin’s gaze was on the pyre, and he barely heard Naeb. He watched transfixed as the body burned and recalled again what he had witnessed in the fire canyons, occluded by smoke.

Rest, the figure had said.

None can come back. Those were Zantho’s words, echoing the Promethean belief in the Circle of Fire. None can come back.

But someone had.

A winged figure watched from its perch on the rock, an angel armour-clad in black. Her pinions were fluted steel, her aspect that of a preying rook.

Sister Stephina could be sure she went unobserved by those below, hidden as she was by shadow. Lurking like this offended her martial spirit but Stephina reminded herself she was not in combat. Not yet. She had seen everything from her lofty vantage, the ritual of fire in its entirety. She witnessed them burning their flesh, and heard their savage plainsong cried out across the ruins.

Eyes of tempered fire. Coal-black skin. Diabolic in every aspect. There could be no denying the physical aberrations, but her secret vigil had revealed something of the Salamanders’ spirit. It was tribal, almost shamanistic.

Seeing everything she needed to, Stephina unfurled her ebon wings and took to the sky.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Heletine, on the border between Escadan and Canticus

After the ritual had ended, Squad Iaptus broke up and went their separate ways. The time of battle was drawing near and with it the need for the swearing of oaths and the marking of brands in flesh. Most of the Salamanders were returning to the barracks houses in central Escadan except, notably, half of Sixth Company’s Devastators led by Venerable Kor’ad. The Dreadnought had maintained heavy bombardment throughout the night in conjunction with armoured elements from the Cadian 81st under Colonel Redgage. Military intelligence could not ascertain whether the punitive barrage was achieving much beyond the slow depletion of ammunition but Kor’ad had assured Captain Drakgaard it was the only way to safeguard the sections of the city they still held and so such attrition had been deemed worthwhile.

Va’lin had not gone back with the others, despite Naeb’s vocal protests. He craved solitude, wanting to return to his reverie begun in the eaves of the shattered scriptorium before Sor’ad’s ritual cremation. So he took to patrolling the Escadan/Canticus border in an effort to still his racing mind. He went armed and armoured, flamer in hand but with the igniter for its promethium reserve still cold. Canticus was still contested and designated ‘safe’ regions could change quickly in such a fluid theatre of war. Several enemy spies and would-be saboteurs had already been discovered and neutralised since nightfall. They added to the clutches of deserters who also presented a problem to Drakgaard’s officially sanctioned patrols but who had lessened in number since the Ecclesiarchy’s arrival. Despite the ostensible distrust between the other Imperials and the Battle Sisters, Va’lin considered that their presence on Heletine might be of some benefit.

Not long after leaving the others, Va’lin felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck. This was despite the heat and heft of his hulking armour with its low humming generator a constant presence. He reached out with his auto-senses. Someone was following him, but not bothering to hide the fact. Their identity did not remain mysterious for long. Va’lin knew of only one candidate.

‘Why are you following me, Sepelius?’

Va’lin heard the Apothecary step out into the open as the weight of his armoured form crushed rubble underfoot.

‘What gave me away?’ Sepelius asked sardonically, gesturing to his bone-white battleplate.

Va’lin turned his back on him. ‘I came out here for solitude, not further cross-examination.’

‘Through the fire,’ said Sepelius just as Va’lin started walking. ‘I saw it.’

Va’lin stopped, but did not turn around. ‘Saw what?’

‘That look in your eyes. You have been dreaming again.’

Va’lin stayed rigid, but felt his irritation giving way to curiosity. He longed to understand everything he had seen in the fire canyons and what it portended, if anything.

‘He dreamed, you know,’ said Sepelius.

‘Who did?’

‘Dak’ir.’

Now Va’lin turned, his eyes burning with anger. ‘Don’t insinuate, brother. I am tired of hearing your lips do it.’

Sepelius held up his hands plaintively. ‘I merely point out the correlation. Curious, how history can echo through the ages. How prophecies can align more than once in a given generation.’ He paused for a beat. ‘Rebirth.’

Va’lin said nothing. His eyes spoke for him, making the Apothecary’s narrow in turn.

Sepelius smiled incredulously. ‘You think he’s alive.’

A sudden tightening in Va’lin’s jaw cascaded across his features until his entire face had hardened. He did not bother to veil the threat – the warning in his tone was obvious.

‘Leave me alone.’

Sepelius bowed, then backed away obeisantly.

‘Dak’ir almost destroyed Nocturne. Are you worried you might be like him, Va’lin? A vessel through which he might return?’

‘He was our saviour…’ Va’lin wanted to put more conviction into his reply but it came out half-hearted.

‘He was both and none, or so the prophecy of the ferro ignis portended.’

‘You don’t believe in prophecy. Empirical truth is all you care about.’ Even to Va’lin, it sounded weak as a retort.

Sepelius saw it at once. He gently shook his head.

‘Now you’re just reaching, brother. Think on what I’ve said, Va’lin. We can talk again, you and I,’ he said, and disappeared off into the ruins.

Va’lin let him go. He had moved off again when he heard the faint crunch of stone once more.

‘Sepelius, I told you to–’

Another stood before him, clad in deep green. It looked almost black in the darkness as if a shadow lay across the figure.

‘Ky’dak?’

‘Follow me,’ said Ky’dak and went off into the ruins.

Va’lin saw he was heading deeper into Canticus, and followed.

In the darkness of the night, the ruin resembled even more of a hollowed-out shell, shrouded in abject black. Sor’ad had died here, his duty ended by the teeth of a Chaos warrior’s chainblade. His blood still painted the wall from where it had jetted free of his body in a crimson arterial spray. A pall of death and regret lay heavy on the site of their skirmish with the Black Legion Terminator. The warrior’s blood also tainted the place but in a different way. Both bodies had been removed, the traitor’s dragged out with chains and then incinerated without ceremony, so only the echoes of their passing remained.

Working their way silently through Canticus’s shattered streets and buildings, the two Salamanders got as far as the breach Va’lin and Naeb had made in the outer wall when Ky’dak raised his gauntleted hand for caution.

‘Why are we here, Ky’dak?’ Va’lin hissed.

Ky’dak gestured into the gloomy hollow of the building.

With his enhanced vision Va’lin could see in the darkness, but when he followed Ky’dak’s pointing finger the meaning of what he saw was still unclear.

They retreated to either side of the breach. Va’lin called across it, careful to keep his voice quiet.

‘Who is she?’

One of the Adepta Sororitas was inside the ruin, her back to them and currently unaware of the Salamanders’ presence.

‘I tracked her after the ritual. Thought she was the enemy,’ Ky’dak hissed back.

Va’lin was considering whether they should just announce their presence and call the Sister out then and there, but when he looked inside again she was gone.

He mouthed to Ky’dak, ‘Where?’

Ky’dak gave him the facial equivalent of a shrug, but then nodded as the Sister reappeared. She had emerged as if from the shadows, seemingly out of nowhere. Her route took her deeper into the ruins and away from the breach in the wall, so she remained ignorant of being watched.

Va’lin waited with Ky’dak until she was gone before moving inside. Donning his helmet, he cycled through the visual spectrum afforded by his retinal lenses until he found what he was seeking. A small sub-chamber existed below the floor, hard to see in the rubble and half hidden by the dark. Exchanging a glance with Ky’dak that prompted both to ready their weapons, Va’lin descended a set of shallow steps and went inside.

More darkness within, but Va’lin saw everything in variegated hues of night-vision green. Bones lay smashed all over the floor, disturbed from within alcoves. Some had been snapped, others crushed underfoot. Were he seeing it in daylight, Va’lin believed he would have found scorch marks too, for the faded stench of burning smothered everything.

They were standing in a reliquary chamber, one of the holy sites the canoness had described during her volatile first meeting with the Chapter.

‘Place looks ransacked,’ said Ky’dak.

‘Doesn’t look like a search,’ Va’lin replied.

Ky’dak knelt down to run his hand through the shattered bone fragments.

‘He was here,’ he muttered, ‘the traitor that killed Sor’ad.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Va’lin.

‘His taint is pervasive. There is blood mixed in with this grave dust. He didn’t just want to destroy,’ said Ky’dak, standing.

‘He wanted to profane,’ Va’lin concluded. ‘Why?’

‘To weaken it.’

Va’lin turned his head.

‘The spiritual hold of the Throne on this city,’ Ky’dak explained.

‘To what end?’

‘To let whichever master he served do whatever it is he cannot do while that hold is still strong.’

‘And the Sister?’

Ky’dak slowly shook his head.

‘I don’t know yet.’

More questions lurked in the shadows of Heletine before any answers would be forthcoming. Va’lin had one he could ask immediately.

‘You could’ve done this alone. Why involve me?’

‘I couldn’t be sure what I would be facing. Two stand a better chance of someone making it back. As it is, I don’t know what to make of any of this.’

Va’lin nodded, deeming it reasonable justification.

‘We do nothing for now,’ he said. ‘Not until we know more.’

‘Agreed.’

Va’lin held out his hand. ‘I may have misjudged you, Ky’dak.’

Ky’dak ignored the offer and headed back up the stairs.

‘No you didn’t,’ he said.

Klerik watched the two drakes. He liked to watch, a murderous voyeur crouched atop a perch of crumbling stone. He was relatively close, close enough to tell they had no idea what the female fanatics were really here on Heletine to do. It amused Klerik to linger proximally to his foes, to revel in the knowledge of their ignorance of his presence.

I could kill them easily from this distance…

So still and quiet, deep in shadow, a casual passerby would have mistaken him for a statue.

The drakes disappeared into the ruin, but they would be back.

Nothing for you there, little drakes.

Klerik only broke his silence when the Salamanders had gone and he realised he was not alone.

‘Good evening, brother.’

Someone had tried to creep up on him, sleekly wending their way up the shattered ridge to his rocky vantage point. No one surprised Klerik – he had a… way about him, a means of simply knowing when others were present and what their intentions towards him were. Not precisely – he wasn’t that gifted – merely a vague sense of their humours at a given moment.

An armoured warrior stepped more heavily from the shadows, resorting to his usual gait now his subterfuge had been uncovered so expertly. ‘I thought I had you that time.’

‘I know you did, Juadek. I read your sanguinity as easily as Preest reads the vagaries of the warp. So, beyond your feeble attempts to catch me lurking, what is it exactly that you want?’

‘You are requested, brother,’ Juadek replied, quietly settling down to crouch alongside Klerik. ‘Everyone is being recalled.’

Klerik raised an eyebrow, wrinkling the skin across his handsome face. Like so many of the Emperor’s Children, he aspired to be perfect. And, like so many of his brothers, that desire had become twisted over the millennia. Klerik’s skin was porcelain-white, his features strong and chiselled as if they were hewn from marble. His eyes were black, shiny like opals, his hair silver-white. Daggers were his favoured weapon, and he carried two sheathed at each hip. A short cape of cured human leather trailed below the power generator of his armour, which was pristine in heliotrope purple.

‘Interesting,’ Klerik replied. ‘And what does he say about the others – any news from the warp?’

‘They made planetfall, but nothing further beyond that. He thinks the mission may have gone awry. Blames fate.’

‘Fortunate then that we have a further opportunity here.’

‘Indeed, brother…’

Juadek went quiet, but lingered on the rock with Klerik.

His armour was the same heliotrope purple as his comrade’s, only not as well tended. It was battle-worthy but festooned with fetishes, strings of severed hands, ears and other appendages. Juadek also liked spikes and had hammered them into his pauldrons, greaves and boots – any plate that would take them. They even protruded from his cheeks and close- shorn scalp. For a servant of Slaanesh, he was an ugly brute.

‘You deliver your message, and yet you are still here forcing me to breathe the same air,’ said Klerik. ‘Evidently, you have a question.’

‘Do you believe what is said about him?’

‘About whom, Juadek?’

‘The captain. That he killed all of his old comrades and took their flesh for his own?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That he’s not a man at all, but an amalgam of several?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘You should, Klerik. What if he has designs on killing us, we, his inner circle?’

‘You say that so proudly.’

‘I have no desire to be a part of his shared flesh.’

‘Nor I,’ Klerik agreed, ‘but there are others who would certainly like to kill us.’ Klerik gestured to the street rubble below and the warrior sifting through it. He offered Juadek his scope. He didn’t need it to see, but he enjoyed the enhanced detail it provided. Detail was important.

‘She is searching for something,’ said Juadek, adjusting the focus on the scope.

‘No, she has what she seeks. It just isn’t what she wanted to find.’

‘Hmm…’

‘That’s where they killed Vaug,’ Klerik uttered solemnly.

Juadek sniffed his contempt. ‘Vaug was a bastard.’

‘He was also a Cruciator, and they do not die easily or well.’

‘His slayers entered from the north,’ Juadek replied, returning the scope to Klerik who took a good look.

‘I have already seen them.’

Klerik shook his head, nonplussed and unimpressed at the same time.

‘How did they kill him?’

‘That remains a mystery,’ said Juadek.

Klerik put the scope away and started to back down the ridgeline, careful not to raise too much noise lest they be discovered.

‘Tell me something, brother,’ he said to Juadek as they dipped out of sight together. ‘If Lufurion killed them all, who lived to tell this tale?’

‘Preest claims a daemon told him.’

‘My brother should take more care about who he shares his secrets with.’

Juadek laughed as if suddenly understanding a joke.

‘Heh. Preest. Klerik.’

‘Say nothing further, unless you aren’t attached to that fool’s tongue sitting in your mouth.’

‘You have to admit, it is amusing.’

‘You find everything amusing, Juadek.’

‘Especially this… and death.’

‘Would you find your own death so funny, I wonder?’

Juadek answered with silence.

‘Thought not,’ Klerik replied as they reached the bottom of the ridge and made their way back through the ruins to their dark masters.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Heletine, on the border between Escadan and Canticus

Canoness Angerer, not Laevenius, was waiting for Stephina when she returned to the Order’s encampment. Drop ships and armoured transports marked the confines of Ecclesiarchy territory. Shrines and chapels in the lee of the vehicles, their votive candles sheltered from the katabatic wind blowing off the mountains, threw a lambent glow across the laager. Censer smoke spiralled from the iron cradles of braziers, their cloying aromas leavened by the same southward breeze. Figures huddled in the shadows on penitent knee, alone and in groups. Some wept, others flagellated as the crack of punitive whips sounded on the night air.

To Stephina’s eyes, looking from on high as she descended on her Seraphim’s wings, it seemed an overly defensive position to uptake when surrounded by allies. But then, she supposed that was why the canoness had given this sacred duty – to ascertain if the non-Ecclesiarchy on Heletine could be trusted.

In addition to the vehicles, the Order of the Ebon Chalice and its attendant congregation had been afforded the use of several barracks houses and minor templum during their occupation of Escadan. It was in one such billet Stephina had hoped to find Laevenius. The Celestian had been her mentor, then her trainer after the drill abbots had exhausted their martial teachings and, so Stephina believed, the closest thing to an actual sister in the Order.

Angerer was alone in the barracks house, her charges dismissed to their duties or in many cases prayer and supplication before the Throne and He on Holy Terra. Her ornate armour with its string of white rosary pearls and one black opal hung upon a metal frame. Her weapons likewise hung on a steel rack in one corner of the room. In place of her armour, Angerer wore her simple white chasuble. Her feet were bare and her silver hair was fastened in a tight scalp lock and trailed down the nape of her neck.

In the opposite corner a small votive candle burned before a holy triptych of Saint Alicia Dominica. Its small flame flickered over a stained-glass vista of the saint vanquishing hordes of Unbelief, at prayer before an effigy of the Golden Throne and giving holy benediction to her sacred charges, the Sisters of the Ebon Chalice. Even seeing a glass simulacrum of these events stirred Stephina’s blood, reminding her of everything Saint Dominica had sacrificed and her own path towards martyrdom. Briefly her thoughts turned, as they often did, towards why she had never been blessed by a vision of the saint, as Stephina knew Angerer and Laevenius had, but she dismissed her concerns as selfish and unworthy.

Angerer had neither seen nor heard the Seraphim approach, lost as she was in her fighting katas and holy effusions. Despite the obfuscating censer smoke, Stephina marvelled at her canoness’s martial skill. As a figurehead of the Ecclesiarchy, a gifted orator and spiritual lodestone, it was all too easy to forget that Angerer was, first and foremost, a holy warrior. Amongst the Order of the Ebon Chalice, there was none finer.

Fighting in such voluminous holy vestments was not easy, but Angerer performed her combat patterns expertly and without profligacy of motion. She was fluid, powerful. Her every thrust with the fingers, every cut with the blade of the hand, every punch with palm and clenched fist was precise and explosive.

‘Step into my sight, Sister,’ she said, a little breathless from exertion but maintaining her patterns without pause or loss of efficacy.

Stephina obeyed, the canoness seeing more than the Seraphim realised.

Angerer spared her a glance as she moved through a series of punishing elbow jabs.

‘Have you come seeking Sister Laevenius or myself? For I can tell you, I am the only one here.’

Stephina lowered her gaze in contrition as Angerer concluded her training cycle.

‘It’s all right, Stephina,’ she said, shrugging off her chasuble to stand naked before the Seraphim. ‘It is to be expected you would seek out Laevenius. She was your original mentor, after all. I assume this means you have something of import to tell me.’ Angerer’s body was lean and taut, despite her age. Rejuvenat, a strict regimen of physical exertion and bodily purity had kept her in peak condition.

As her vestments touched the floor, a male frateris swept in from the shadows to pick them up. A second serf, also male, then appeared and began anointing the canoness’s sweat-dappled skin with holy unguents and water blessed by a cardinal of Convent Prioris. These ablutions lasted several minutes before Angerer was provided with another, lighter robe. Dismissing her serfs, she beckoned Stephina to follow her into a small antechamber.

‘Apologies, canoness,’ said Stephina once she and Angerer were alone. ‘I assumed you would still be in tactical discussions with our allies.’

The canoness had taken a seat at a small writing desk in what appeared to be her private library. Scrolls and prayer books, canticles of faith and catechisms warding against the unholy, were stacked in a pair of cases lining two of the walls. A lantern mounted on an antigravitic platform hung in the air just above Angerer’s head, its oil plate flame flickering in a slight crosswind that skirled through the barracks.

‘Those concluded some time ago,’ Angerer replied, the weaker lamp light casting long shadows across her face. ‘Prayer and martial discipline are firm allies to my mind. Both require precision, purity of thought and determination of purpose.’ Angerer looked up from the scroll detailing the various relics that were at risk amongst the Canticus ruins. Stephina was surprised Laevenius was not in possession of it and directing efforts to find the holy treasures described. If anything, the weather-beaten parchment appeared almost as if it had been discarded.

‘Do you not think so, Sister?’

‘My canoness?’

‘Purpose, both martial and religious,’ explained Angerer mistaking Stephina’s response for confusion when she had actually been distracted by the anomaly of the discarded scroll, ‘have much in common, their sum greater than each individual part.’

‘Yes, my canoness. A pure and pious mind leads to a sure and deadly sword arm,’ said Stephina, remembering herself.

Angerer nodded, satisfied her wisdom had been heeded.

‘So tell me then, what else have you learned?’

Stephina spared no detail, and by the end of her account Angerer’s face was a mask of righteous indignation.

‘It has thus ever been, since the Adepts of the Stars were allowed to roam so far from Terra’s holy light.’

Stephina frowned, prompting Angerer to elucidate.

‘Unlike our Holy Ordos, which are pure and free of taint, the Space Marines are at best… inconsistent. None could doubt their prowess. To do so is to invite destruction. But as to their purpose, their devotion… What kind of creed preaches the anointing of flesh with fire? What savage culture proselytises with tribal wailing?’ Angerer’s brow furrowed, her internal consternation manifesting physically. ‘This is deeply concerning, Sister Stephina.’

Stephina said nothing, waiting for her canoness’s instruction which she knew would be forthcoming.

‘Tomorrow, at dawn, we fight alongside these devil-skinned monsters. I would not have my Order so close to potential calamity.’ Taking up a fresh sheet of vellum parchment, Angerer began to scribe furiously with a quill. ‘Have a cherub transcribe this and deliver a copy to each Sister Superior. Let none of the other Imperial officers see it.’

‘These are dispositions, canoness,’ said Stephina who could clearly tell, with the barest glance, the nature of the document Angerer was writing.

Angerer nodded, only half listening as she focused on finishing her task.

‘It does not look like an allied deployment,’ Stephina ventured.

‘Because it is not. Our purpose is not their purpose, Sister. We have our sacred duty. We shall attend to it ourselves.’

‘If the other Imperial forces are expecting us to occupy certain battlefield positions, that will leave them exposed if we are absent those positions.’

Angerer stopped writing and placed the flat of both hands against the desk as she stood. She kept her eyes down, fixed on the slowly drying ink on the parchment.

‘You know I have little time for dissemblers, Sister. Out with it.’

‘Are we going to betray the Salamanders?’

Now Angerer lifted her gaze. It was hard as Fenrisian ice and froze Stephina where she stood.

‘We are going to do what the Throne requires of us and liberate this world of its Ecclesiarchy relics. That task will be made much easier with the heretics engaged with our allies.’

Stephina did not need to hear the callousness in her canoness’s tone to realise she was being lied to. The relics were not Angerer’s main concern. She also realised that Angerer had planned this duplicity from the moment they had arrived on Heletine and needed only the thinnest of excuses to justify it to herself.

Wrath was her first reaction, anger at being used, but Stephina buried it behind a false face of dutiful adherence, hoping the canoness would not notice her clenched fists.

For months, Stephina had laboured under a feeling of unease. She had believed it was out of doubt in her faith, the fact she had not been visited by the saint. But now it was as if a veil had been lifted from her eyes. Whatever Angerer’s true motives for coming to Heletine, they had begun all those months ago and were now slowly emerging.

We are blind, thought Stephina as Angerer returned to her treacherous scribing, orders that would surely condemn many to death. Utter devotion and conviction to their canoness’s will had blinded the Order to the truth of whatever personal agenda was being served here. Certainly, it was not the will of the Emperor.

With all her strength, her martial prowess, Stephina was still powerless to intervene.

Angerer finished her scribing and handed Stephina the piece of vellum. It looked so innocuous in the canoness’s outstretched hand. The Seraphim saw it for what it was – the death warrant of countless souls.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior

Ever since he had been a prisoner on the Volgorrah Reef, Zartath had preferred his own company to that of others. He valued the bonds of brotherhood and had missed being a part of a Chapter, hence his decision to adopt a new one, but his mind was most at peace when he was alone.

Agatone had asked him to maintain a watchful eye but he could not do that surrounded by the unwashed masses of this hole they had found themselves in. He needed distance; he craved silence.

But silence was not so easy to come by these days…

The keening had begun as soon as the klaxons had ended, he later realised. With the clangour still ringing in his ears, he had not been able to differentiate the echo of that from the tinnitus now gnawing at his reason. It hurt – moreover it encouraged certain feral instincts, and Zartath hoped that some solitude would prevent him doing something regrettable. Slipping from his perch outside the surgery, he had gone back out into the square and walked until he was beyond the settlement’s borders.

He ignored the fearful glances, the half-muttered threats. Blooding his claws on such wretches would be dishonourable. Sometimes his martial honour was all that Zartath believed he had left, so he clung to it in the vain hope it would save his soul. Aboard the Vulkan’s Wrath and the Forge Hammer after that, he had affirmed this belief staring into the eyes of his cracked and broken battle-helm, its coal black surface dented and scraped just as he was.

Sleep came rarely and for short spates only. Were he not transhuman, Zartath would have died from chronic insomnia by now. As it was, he clung on, sustained by unspoken grief and a barely caged anger he did not fully understand. Something had snapped inside him on the reef, he knew that now, and there was no way to tether the disparate halves. He had forgotten so much, entire annals of his previous life. Little of it remained, scraped away as it had been by the dark eldar. So he sought solitude when he could – not for contemplation, like his adopted brothers, but to try to be still, just for a moment.

Even at the edge of the derelict shanty, where the clutter of humanity was not so strangled by the overcrowding at its core, life still gasped and scratched for air and light. ‘Warren’ would describe it adequately, the people like cattle in their murky tenements. A hive was a collective, but it was also a hub of industry and labour. Upon reaching the extremity of the settlement and the limits of his own imagined rope, the vista that unfurled before the ex-Black Dragon as he looked back was one of squalor: a stinking fetor, a pit of spiritual apathy, its inhabitants left to scrape an existence from rock.

Fear clung to this place in a filthy shroud, curling Zartath’s lip into a snarl as he felt the apathy and despair as palpably as furnace heat. The captain would chastise him for such disparaging thoughts, but compassion and empathy were not amongst Zartath’s virtues.

Zartath gave a bitter smile, ‘Captain…’ he murmured. More like whelpmaster. He was under no illusions about his role, and his leash. ‘I am a savage beast.’ The smile became genuine. Still a prisoner then, albeit one with roaming privileges.

Putting distance between himself and the loathsome dregs of humanity had not eased his agitated mien. Zartath’s teeth were still on edge with the keening and he wondered if it was something to do with his mutation, if he was somehow made differently to other Adeptus Astartes. With his comrades all dead on the reef, he had no frame of reference anymore, but was vaguely aware of a change manifesting in him that had begun with the first of those torturous days at the hands of the dark eldar.

Crouched at the briny water’s edge of a sump pond, Zartath tried to still his mind. It was vast and dark as the pond, like a rotten canvass, and stretched for some distance into the shadows. A child dressed in rags scurried at the pond’s fringes but was careful to maintain a safe distance from the hulking, cloaked figure at the bank.

Zartath drew deeper into his hood, abruptly self-conscious of the horned nubs upon his pate and the fangs that crowded his bestial mouth.

I am a monster.

‘Bless the curse…’ he muttered to ward off a sudden pang of melancholy. The words were part of an old Black Dragon mantra, one in which they celebrated their physical aberration and embraced it. He remembered so little of his old life, but knew that at least. Zartath felt a fresh curse affecting him now, a malady of the mind and possibly even the spirit, not the body. He tensed his forearm and the bone claw sheathed beneath the skin tore out, a thin line of his blood limning the razor edge of the distended radius.

He looked up, but the child had gone. The sump pond burbled and spat as something moved beneath its viscous depths but was wise enough to stay hidden. An outflow pipe feeding the sump pond trickled thick, foetid ooze. Doubtless other things travelled its ironclad concourse and with that thought, Zartath belatedly realised the child had borne a spear. It was hunting.

Zartath stood up, jerking the bone blade back into his arm with a minute muscle movement. As he turned his head to the pipe’s mouth, the throbbing in his skull intensified the way the auditory of a vox-caster did when angled directly at the receiver.

He drew closer, only half aware that he was ankle deep in the sump pond. Behind him, Zartath heard a voice. It was a warning, but the keening grew louder with its siren call and he was powerless to ignore it. Creeping closer still, the foul water up to his shins and beginning to corrode his armour, Zartath tried to discern the nature of the sound. Part static, part plaintive wail, it was impossible to identify. He needed to get closer…

Something seized his leg, a clamping of jaws not so dissimilar from a vice. Zartath was turning, the throbbing in his skull reaching a crescendo. His blood pulsed with it, a deeper refrain. And just before he felt his head was going to explode, he passed out.

The coppery tang of blood filled his mouth, and as soon as Zartath tasted it he knew it did not belong to him. Head throbbing, he tried to stand but staggered and collapsed before he had even managed to get to one knee.

Stay down, snarled an angry voice inside his head. Even Zartath’s subconscious was belligerent. Find your bearings…

He did not need to open his eyes to know he was indoors. It felt like a small chamber he occupied. The floor was hard and cold, but metal rather than stone. Slick too – the rough fabric of his cloak was adhering to it. A viscous liquid pulled lightly at his finger tips as he moved them. They felt something else too, something sharp against the haptic nerves… Zartath’s bone blades. He could not remember unsheathing them, but then everything had gone black after the edge of the sump pond. The keening, he recalled that. It had diminished to a dull ache, just audible above the faint patter of rain against the roof.

No… not rain. The dripping sound was emanating from inside.

The smell hit Zartath last of all but near overwhelmed his olfactory senses. It was everywhere, as pervasive as the reek of filth that clung to the underhive like a miasma.

At last, Zartath opened his eyes and left sleep behind.

With waking came horror.

The room was dark, but the walls and floor and even ceiling shone wetly in the ambient light. Black against black, Zartath knew the shade well. He had painted with it, though scarcely regarded what he did as art. And in all the blood that coated every surface, that stank with charnel acerbity, that dripped down from ceilings and door frames and the slats of half-broken windows, were two bodies.

Or the remains of such.

A butcher’s leavings had more definition than the offal trailing steam in the chill underhive air.

The same blood discoloured Zartath’s claws, clothing them in a glistening dark sheen.

The boy at the sump pond… The memory was not a pleasant one for it led Zartath towards an unpleasant conclusion. He had been hunting… because this was where he lived.

Past tense.

Horrifying clarity crashed in on Zartath and he fled as he felt a sudden claustrophobia threaten to choke him. He ran outside and emerged into a place he did not recognise. He was still in the underhive of Molior, no longer on the same bank of the sump pond. A vast lake of effluence did stretch out before him though, and it took him a moment to realise he had traversed the pond or been ferried across it.

Through the mist of pollutants rising from the surface of the sump, Zartath saw the settlement. As his bearings slowly returned, other things became apparent too. Rain was falling, or some approximation of what passed for rain in the underhive of Molior. The run-off from an atmosphere condenser, a malfunctioning hydration compressor. It fell in heavy sheets, but was laced with chemicals: acidic and alkaline agents that would scorch flesh.

Zartath willed it to burn, but his enhanced physiology would not oblige him. It cascaded down his face, his chest and arms, washing away the dark blood but not purifying. He watched it spill in black runnels from his exposed bone claws and pool at his feet. In his mind’s eye, the blood remained and though he had no memory of it, he knew what he must have done to earn this stain.

The rain hammered him, but Zartath knew as he threw back his head to howl at the imagined gods of a false storm that it could not cleanse the darkness in his soul, or the darkness of whatever he had wrought with it.

When his throat grew hoarse from screaming, he slumped down again, down into the filth where he belonged and cradled his head. The keening, always the keening. It spoke to him in octaves of pain. And it was getting worse.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Nova-class frigate, Forge Hammer

Shutting off the bulkheads would achieve nothing. By now, they were already aboard and infiltrating the ship. It was dark on board with most of the systems powered down, aside from life support and the barest sensorium. Emergency lumens fed the companionways with dull, amber light, a little brighter over the junctions. Tiny vibrations still ran through the ship’s hull, felt through the bones of its super-structural skeleton, but they were minimal. With the hunters still at large on the world below, they needed to stay hidden. Communication limited, engines cold, weapons and shields nullified – anything that might show up on an atmospheric monitor or deep space augur probe.

Standing in the corridor of the Forge Hammer’s aft-section, Makato considered their limited options.

‘We can’t just attack them head on. I’m not even sure it’s us they want to fight.’

Navaar was lying on his back unconscious, Jedda crouched by his side keeping an eye on his vitals. He looked up at the lieutenant. ‘So what do they want, sir?’

‘He said revenge, but Throne only knows for what. Our lords have accrued enemies over the decades and centuries, but something seems a little off about this one. We need to find out soon, though. We are far from help out here and no one will be coming to find us. Not yet. Not soon enough.’

With the vessel on silent running, all longer-range communications were down this far from the bridge. All three had since shed their atmosphere suits, so at least they could move faster, but just under a kilometre trek from the embarkation deck through corridors and access tunnels stood between them and the nearest available help. An alarm could be raised a little closer than that, but there was no guarantee how soon it would get picked up. Besides, Makato doubted the frigate’s armsmen would trouble the enemies he had been forced to let aboard.

Not a living soul had met them since their recent arrival. Even their landing had been automated. Dull-eyed servitors had met them on the landing strip. Their doctrina-wafers slaved them to maintenance tasks only. They had no capacity for defence or even the raising of the alarm. For now, at least, he and Jedda were alone.

‘Why do you think they spared us?’ asked Jedda, watching over Navaar. The supine armsman was barely breathing.

Makato shook his head, glancing up at the gloomy corridor space they had just left behind and tried not to imagine the black-armoured warriors stalking them down it.

‘Honour, I suppose.’

Jedda turned sharply from his vigil to look hard at the lieutenant.

‘What honour? They killed Bharius and Halder. The enginseer and his watchdog too.’

The man was fraught with stress, close to losing his cool. Makato let the minor insubordination go but warned, ‘Remember who you’re addressing, sergeant.’

Even in as bleak a situation as this, chain of command had to be observed. Order and a calm head would be vital to their survival now.

Bowing his head, Jedda showed he knew that too.

‘Apologies, sir. I am simply…’ Words failed.

‘We all are, sergeant. But we fired on them first, remember?’

‘After they laid an ambush, sir.’ He paused for a beat. ‘And they are mutants. The blades in their arms were made of bone. Their bones.’

Makato nodded, pensive.

He needed Lord Xarko, but before that he needed a way to reach the Librarian.

‘How far to medical?’ he asked.

Jedda didn’t answer straight away, prompting Makato to look at him. He was bent over Navaar, ear pressed close to the wounded armsman’s mouth and then pressing his fingers to his neck to check for a pulse. Jedda sat up, sighing his contempt at the fates that had brought them to this.

‘He’s dead.’

Jedda got to his feet, the weariness bleeding out of him making room for a different emotion. Makato recognised it in the hardness of the man-at-arms’s eyes, because it gave him purpose too.

‘We need weapons,’ said Jedda, ‘and more men. A lot more.’ When they had been taken prisoner, the black-armoured warriors had disarmed them. They even took the plasma-cutters. Everything else was back on the Arvus.

‘So do they,’ said Makato. His gaze met Jedda’s. ‘That’s where they are headed, to the armoury. Not the bridge. Not yet. That gives us a little time.’

‘There’s another one deeper into the ship.’

‘Deck three?’

Jedda nodded.

‘That’s where we keep the track mounts.’

Jedda smiled. ‘Yes it is, sir.’

Makato smiled too. He took off his cloak and laid it over poor Navaar’s body. They had tried to save this man, or at least give him a fighting chance. They had also let him and Jedda go relatively unharmed. That did not strike Makato as the action of traitors, but they were on his ship and he would do everything in his power to defend it.

Gripping Hiroshimo Makato’s silver braid, he told Jedda, ‘Currently we are all that stands in their way. Come on.’

Xarko swam the fire tides. He had no intention of defying the will of Agatone, but something in the hot depths had called to him. Instinct had ever been the Librarian’s guiding force and right now it was telling him to ply the waves deep. And as the fire folded him within its embrace, Xarko’s concerns beyond his sanctum faded as did his awareness of the Forge Hammer. The void was quiet, he had told himself and the voices were calling. So he opened up his mind and plunged, ignorant of the corporeal world and everything in it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Heletine, at the outskirts of Canticus

A second dawn lit the sky over Canticus as the heavy guns of the Cadian 81st erupted with fire and thunder. Colonel Redgage commenced the heavy bombardment from the cupola of his command vehicle.

The earthshakers spoke first, the remnants of Eighth Squadron releasing several tonnes of heavy munitions into the uncharted northern district of Canticus. They lived up to their name – Redgage felt the micro-tremors all the way back to his Chimera.

The intention was to deliver a punitive barrage into the heart of the enemy stronghold and then assault in force, which was problematic as that stronghold tended to move. No sighting had yet been made of the enemy commander, though what scant intelligence the Imperials did have suggested it was a high ranking Traitor Space Marine officer. Three other battle groups, supported by elements from the Ecclesiarchy, launched simultaneous attacks in an effort to bring the heretics to open battle and destroy them.

Dust still clearing from the initial punitive barrage, Redgage ordered a second salvo. Held at the back of the line with the Basilisks that began the shelling, Griffons and Bombards launched ordnance. Three troops of siege engines fired in unison, the weak dawn light briefly obscured as a heavy rain of shells soared overhead. The violence of the combined mortar launch rocked the ground, shaking Redgage’s Chimera but he was too busy watching the parabola of their lethal payloads through his magnoculars to notice.

The strike was good – a long chain of explosions spewed earth and rock skyward some three kilometres away. In the short aftermath several taller buildings, their previous form and function long since eradicated, collapsed. They tumbled slowly like felled trees, releasing huge clouds of dust and grit when they hit the ground.

Redgage slipped one cup of his ear defenders over his helmet and turned to the war machine.

Venerable Kor’ad remained still and faced forwards his squads of heavies likewise. The Salamanders wore scorch marks on their armour like it was war paint. Their armour was patched in places too, evidence of the hard graft of their armourers trying to maintain a decent level of combat efficacy. The retreat had hurt them, and not just physically. The Dreadnought had refused Zantho’s aid after that, preferring Redgage’s armoured company instead.

This was the first time they had met, officer to officer; one of flesh and blood, the other a walking battle engine. Two other war machines stood behind him, but were subservient to this ancient warrior. Translation issues were to be expected. Redgage guessed the meaning behind Kor’ad’s silence.

‘Hit them again,’ he voxed to his crews, turning back towards the city as he put the sound-deadening cup back in place.

First the Basilisks then the heavy mortars. Plumes of earth rocketed into the air again, fires broke out in some quarters, more buildings buckled under the weight of the Imperial hammer of war. Redgage observed everything through the magnoculars. Finally, the backwash of heat and seismic disturbance hit him from the initial bombardment, tickling his moustaches and inducing a cough with all the displaced dust. Even at distance, the destructive fury of the heavy tanks was impressive but the Imperials had no way of knowing if it was also being effective.

Their answer came after the third round of shelling.

A cacophony of shrieking presaged a flock of Heldrakes, darting from some unseen silo and spreading their wings as soon as they had pulled clear of their hidden nest.

Behind the colonel and overhead, a flight of Stormtalons and the patched up remnants of his own fleet of Vulture gunships roared across the sky to intercept. Engines burning, bleeding cloud contrails and heat vapour, they cut through the air like daggers. The approaching dawn light shone brightly against their wing tips and angular nose cones. It was, briefly, a magnificent sight.

‘Throne protect you, lads,’ muttered the colonel, stroking the aquila pendant he wore around his neck.

Punisher Gatling cannons opened up in the lead Vultures, stitching the air with darting flashes of tracer fire. One of the Heldrakes took a burst across its left wing. A second burst raked its fuselage and it dipped, trailing fire and something reminiscent of blood and oil but far less earthly.

Rocket expulsion bloomed in vapour clouds under the wings of the second wave of Vultures as the air was choked with missiles. An ululating screech tore from a Heldrake as it tried to pull away from the salvo. Three hunter-killers impacted against its open span, tearing off one wing and blowing it out of the sky. Secondary explosions erupted moments later as a third monster went down, its neck streaming flames and gore.

Then the Chaos flyers were amongst them and the killing began in earnest. Redgage saw a Vulture ripped in two as it was seized in iron claws. A second went down burning after it was enveloped in daemon-fire.

Piloted by Space Marines, the Stormtalons were fairing a little better, their assault cannons racking up an impressive tally of enemy kills, but the sky was still hotly contested.

‘Hydras move up, firing solutions at these coordinates,’ barked Redgage, conveying the data from his spotter aboard the Chimera to all flak tank commanders. On the right flank, two troops of anti-aircraft platforms rolled into position on grimy tracks. A few seconds later their autocannons were chugging high-calibre rounds into the dogfight above. The artillery quads on each tank thumped back and forth alternatively like pistons, spitting out an incredible rate of shells. Two more enemy flyers were torn apart, dismantled by chasing autocannon fire.

Retaliation was swift. A Heldrake broke off from the interception sweep, diving in low to unleash its nose-mounted cannon. Hell-hot rounds whined in like hail and sawed one of the Hydras in half. A stray round hit the fuel tanks and the whole engine went up in a fiery plume. Exploding shrapnel shredded the exposed crew of the tank alongside it but mercifully its armour prevented a chain of destruction.

Turrets swivelling, the other Hydras tried to track the monster amongst them but it was flying too close and too low.

Strapping into the Chimera’s pintle mount, Redgage tried to distract it with a burst of heavy stubber. He needed to keep it away from the siege tanks. Solid shot chased the monster through the air before peppering its armoured hide.

Redgage roared down the vox as the Heldrake came for him. ‘Vulture Six, peel back and engage!’ And in that moment the battle shrank to just he and it, witnessed down the myopic ironsights of a heavy stubber. Impervious to his cannon, Redgage had just made it angry.

‘Vulture Si–’

Vulture Six went down, its pilot shouting in the colonel’s ear until his screams were eclipsed by static. The rest of the air group were already engaged. A low dive from the Heldrake became a strafing run.

‘In the Emperor’s grace I trust,’ said Redgage, his fingers clenched on the heavy stubber’s triggers. Brass casings cascaded down at his feet, sparks cracked across the Heldrake’s armoured face. ‘Let it be a light in dark places…’

Balefire ignited within the monster, its eyes already aflame, mouth trailing smoke.

‘Let it be my shield,’ whispered Redgage, and began to shut his eyes.

A flare of actinic energy slammed into its neck, wrenching it off course. The balefire went wild, streaming wide and burning up the ground. Kor’ad brought the Heldrake down with a second burst, coring a hole right through its fuselage with his plasma cannon. It limped on in defiance of the mortal injury before crashing a half-kilometre away, towards the western district of the city.

Still a little shaken, Redgage nodded his thanks but got nothing from the Dreadnought who had already turned away.

Though the Emperor’s Angels had begun as men, in the broader sense, they were far removed from that biological paradigm after their genhanced apotheosis. Redgage admired them, was in awe of their prowess and fortitude, but found he could not understand or relate to them. And allegedly, the Salamanders were the most human of all the Chapter Adeptus Astartes. Some of the men were afraid of them. None had admitted as much, but Redgage saw it in their eyes as they looked on the green-armoured monsters. Still, they fought like black-skinned devils and that was good enough for the Cadian colonel.

The skies were clearing over war-torn Canticus at last. After receiving enough punishment, the Chaos flyers had broken off and the wings of Stormtalons and Vultures were ordered back. Several did not make the recall.

‘A good fight,’ murmured Kor’ad, surveying the devastation through his sensors. With the grind of leg pistons, the Dreadnought faced the colonel. ‘You honour them.’

Redgage wasn’t sure that he was the one being addressed at first.

‘My lord?’

Kor’ad’s impassive vision slit regarded him. For Redgage it was like staring back into an unfeeling abyss.

‘You stood, willing to sacrifice your life. You honour them,’ Kor’ad repeated.

Was the Dreadnought giving him praise? Redgage was unfamiliar with any Adeptus Astartes offering praise to lowly men, especially a warrior as ancient as Kor’ad.

‘I am the one who is honoured,’ said Redgage, mustering enough resolve to converse with the massive war machine. Even sat up in his cupola, the Dreadnought stood eye to eye with the colonel. ‘By their bravery. I vouch for every one of these men, tankers and flyers both.’

‘I see now why the mettle of Cadia is mentioned in such high regard,’ said Kor’ad. ‘Your courage and magnanimity do you credit, colonel. Refer to me as brother from now on – you are my warrior-equal, not my serf.’

Redgage had no reply, genuinely aghast and humbled. He did not need one – Kor’ad had already turned away to address the battle group.

‘Skies are ours,’ he uttered thunderously through his vox-emitters. ‘Advance into the city.’ With ground-quaking purpose, the Dreadnought led his squads out. It was a half kilometre march to the next bombardment point, and from there into Canticus proper.

Redgage consulted his tactical slate, fighting down the swell of pride in his breast at the Dreadnought’s words. Artillery was staying behind, at the first line. Two troops of Demolishers and a pair of Thunderers moved forward with his Chimera. Once they hit beyond Canticus’s outer borders, an infantry battalion from the Adepta Sororitas that was coming up from the blockaded eastern road would link up with them. Just before they rolled out, Redgage ducked his head back inside the tank.

‘Any word from the Ecclesiarchy?’ he asked his comms-operator.

‘Nothing yet, sir.’

Redgage took another look at the slate. In order to make an incursion into Canticus, they needed that infantry support. At distance his tanks were lethal. They had already turned much of the outer reaches into rubble and debris. But at close range, in that warren of streets, they would be vulnerable. Best defence against infantry was infantry, and Redgage had heard the Battle Sisters excelled in that role. He got back on the vox to his commanders.

‘We are heading into the belly of the beast, officers,’ he announced with full-blooded conviction. ‘Keep a tight formation. Roll out.’

Subtle vibrations from the turbofans trembled the Thunderhawk’s interior but it was background noise to those seated within. Amber strip lighting just below the ceiling glowed but shed little light in the gloomy hold. Despite the ostensible calm, the mood in the gunship bordered on tense.

The Wyverns of Fourth Company were anxious. One of their own lay dead: a tax in enemy lives was demanded in payment.

Va’lin had been with Sor’ad when he died and so had the warrior sitting across from him. Not since their foray into the Canticus ruins had the two of them spoken. Ky’dak kept his feelings guarded as if like Va’lin he did not know what to make of the reliquary or its meaning to the enemy or the Ecclesiarchy. Voicing concern prior to deployment would serve no useful purpose, so Va’lin had kept quiet. His eyes met Ky’dak’s, trying to read him but saw nothing but a granite wall. In the end it was Va’lin who looked away. His averted gaze arrived at another difficult sight.

Sor’ad’s empty harness was like an open wound. Xerus sat alongside the vacant spot at the end of the row, muttering to himself, or perhaps it was with his slain brother that he exchanged conversation. Except
for Xerus, a solemn mood persisted, the others preoccupied with grim thoughts. Dersius leant his head against the hull, eyes closed in meditation. Vo’sha and Illus bowed their heads, murmuring final oaths of moment. Arrok filled his mind with routine, mechanically thumbing brass-shelled mass-reactives into spare clips, oiling and sharpening the teeth of his chainblade. Naeb was quiet. Sepelius had declared him combat-ready but Va’lin suspected his injury was paining him.

‘Silence suits you, brother.’

Naeb returned a weak smile.

‘I do not plan on making it habit.’

‘A pity. You would make more friends that way.’

‘I need none. I have one, a long-suffering ally.’

Va’lin laughed, letting his relief show at Naeb’s good humour.

‘Indeed, I am.’

For a moment, Naeb grew serious. ‘I meant Dersius, brother.’ He held Va’lin’s gaze a moment longer before laughing loudly.

Dersius’s eyes remained closed but he said, ‘If you are disparaging me, Naeb, I will see you in the cages once battle is done.’

‘I think you upset him,’ said Va’lin, thumbing in the burly Themian’s direction, one eyebrow raised. His eye fell on Iaptus, and he felt their levity bleed away before the sergeant’s intense stare. Iaptus rarely smiled, seeing little value in humour. He was a stark, serious man but a warrior they all aspired to emulate.

Mastery of thunder hammer and storm shield in combat was not easy. Harder still was wielding them proficiently whilst aloft on the screaming fire-jets of a jump pack. Iaptus had mag-locked his shield to a weapons rack inside the hold, but his thunder hammer was to hand, sitting across his lap. His stare was penetrating, searching, as if he knew everything Va’lin and Naeb were thinking, as if every fault and flaw were laid bare to him. He nodded to give them reassurance. His one intention for them all was victory, and retribution for a brother lost.

‘Blood for blood, brothers,’ he said aloud, looking directly at Va’lin, ‘We go to avenge Sor’ad.’

Nine Salamanders thumped their fists against their breastplates.

So it was said, so it would be done. Iaptus had just given them his word, and that was more unbreakable than his storm shield.

The hold’s vox crackled, admitting the voice of Brother Orcas.

‘Prepare for imminent disembarkation, brothers,’ said the pilot. A lumen glowing next to the Thunderhawk’s rear access ramp changed from amber to green. Gusting pressure release filled the area around the point of egress with pneumatic gas before a crack appeared delineating the ramp and began to let in daylight.

‘Helmets on,’ said Iaptus, disengaging his restraint harness so he could stand.

The crack of daylight became a yawning chasm as the ramp slowly unfurled. Iaptus was framed in the light, his armour rimmed in a rising umber dawn. He shouldered his storm shield, thunder hammer gripped in his right hand.

‘Let this be a day for vengeance!’ he shouted over the wind buffeting inside the hold.

The ramp distended fully, eight armoured silhouettes standing behind Iaptus who waited patiently for their target to present itself in the conflict below.

A vast bridge, wide enough to accommodate entire armies stretched below. Well fortified, its arches and buttresses were thronged with razor-wire. Forked tank traps, huge crosses of barbed and rusted metal, littered the roadway. Sand-bagged gun emplacements, sniper nests, minefields and barricades fashioned from the burned wrecks of freight loaders and ground cars turned Salvation Bridge from a major artery into the city into a death trap.

Squad Iaptus were about to dive right into it. Gladly.

Orcas brought the gunship in low. Firefights on the ground were keeping most of the insurgent heretics busy, so they attracted little in the way of flak. Even so, the hull shook with close impacts and the smoke from explosions swept in through the open hatch.

‘Confirmed visual on Zantho’s line-breakers…’ Iaptus voxed.

Orcas did not reply, preoccupied with keeping them aloft, but the turbofans burned harder in response and Iaptus saw the drop point through the blur of smoke and fire swilling across the hatch.

Four Predators armoured up with dozer blades were trying to push through the wreckage. Zantho rode up in the cupola of the one in the middle, Annihilator-class, preferred to his Redeemer. After the grubby fight in the Canticus ruins, the commander had ordered the Land Raiders kept in reserve. It was the knock-out blow and the cleansing fire that would rid them of the enemy once they had brought them to battle. Predators were lighter, more manoeuvrable, and equipped with dozer blades they made shovelling through debris look easy. As well as his own, Zantho led four other similar Destructor-class battle tanks and three siege-breaking Vindicators.

This was the armoured fist that would punch through the heretic defences, reach in and crush its throat. The Wyverns just had to help breach the ‘gate’. It was code for the mass of wreckage blocking the bridge. Its opening was their primary mission and would be effected by incendiaries, melta charges, but there was work to do beforehand. Cleanse and purge were the secondary missions. Heretic infantry armed with all manner of improvised bombs, explosives and even crude rocket tubes colonised the debris below. Before Zantho’s tanks could properly advance, they needed excising. Squad Iaptus was the ideal scalpel for such an operation.

Iaptus smacked the flat of his thunder hammer against his shield, sending a minor charge through both. Heat vapour was already eking from the exhaust vents of his jump pack as he sank to a crouching position from which to launch.

‘On my mark…’ he said, ‘now fly!’ and leapt from the hold.

Va’lin was third out behind Xerus, body angled down like a spear and accelerating fast. Wind shear hit him like a mailed fist and he corrected with small bursts from his turbine engines. Nine armoured forms knifed through clouds of smoke and rising ash, their eyes ablaze. Iaptus drew them into a wedge, himself as the spear-tip.

‘Give them tooth and claw,’ said the sergeant. ‘Show them how drakes fight and kill.’

Va’lin clenched his teeth as his combat reflexes began to kick in, but felt his body shaking as the rapid descent hammered his armour systems. A counter in his left lens cycled down the metres as he hit terminal velocity. Smudged shapes began to resolve into fighters clad in rags and crude armour. Detail increased. Some of the fighters were shouting, gesturing wildly at the sky and aiming their weapons.

An explosion blossomed on the right, but Naeb ploughed through unharmed. Whining solid rounds were thickening the air, pranging armour plate. Va’lin felt a lucky shot smack his pauldron and ricochet.

‘Eye to eye, brother,’ Naeb’s voice came over Va’lin’s personal vox-feed. He was laughing all the way down. Va’lin could not prevent a feral smile.

They were close. Distance diminished as the crater-strewn roadway rushed up to meet them and Iaptus angled his body so he went down feet first.

‘Ready to engage,’ he uttered over the vox, taking a slew of hits against his storm shield.

Eight affirmatives responded in near-perfect unison as Squad Iaptus mirrored its sergeant.

Va’lin could not suppress a snarl as he gunned the engines of his jump pack, violently arresting his ascent on twin cones of fire.

A conflagration spread out below, cooking the drop zone and everything in it in successive waves of flame. Flesh and rockcrete blistered equally, and Squad Iaptus landed amidst a score of blackened corpses.

Iaptus touched down at the epicentre of a ring of fire, cracks webbing the rockcrete at the impact point, his warriors radiating out from it. He launched again seconds later, a small burst that took him just beyond the scorched perimeter of the drop zone and into a warren of burned out maglev carriages.

Heretics infested it like lice. Armoured in a mismatch of heavy carapace, flak and improvised plate metal ripped from various transports, the enemy had neither cohesion nor tactics. Men, their faces daubed in crude violet tattoos, threw themselves down on the Salamanders. Their minds were lost, for no sane man would commit to such a suicidal charge.

The killing was intense but no more than a conditioned reflex.

Va’lin’s flamer was still mag-locked to his jump pack as he favoured his sidearm and gladius for close quarters. An elbow strike broke an arm, a left swing carved open a clavicle, the return swing took a head. Another three seconds passed and the same rote repeated. Two bolt-rounds from Naeb accounted for a team attempting to set up a heavy cannon at the end of a corridor bracketed by a pair of carriages. More deranged heretics scurried from the carriages’ shattered windows. Dersius gave them a bloody welcome.

Naturally splitting into their combat squads, Xerus went with Iaptus on the opposite side of the makeshift enemy barricades. He cored the plate shield of a tripod-mounted autocannon that was being set up on a carriage roof. The plasma bolt burned through metal, skin and bone. Arrok and Vo’sha raced on ahead, gaining a little loft from their jump packs before hitting two groups of dirty-looking soldiers that had finally scattered from the Salamanders’ irresistible onslaught.

A thick knot of warriors, armed with various solid-shot weapons and blades tried to bulrush Dersius down a flanking avenue. The hulking Salamander launched into them, breaking the pack before laying about them with chainblade and bolt pistol. Va’lin was right on his heels, Naeb just behind him, when he saw a second mob piling over a barricade on the opposite side.

‘Douse them, brother,’ said Naeb through his mouth grille, ‘I’ll reinforce Brother Dersius.’

Va’lin nodded, and came to a halt so he could level his flamer. Promethium-fire bathed the onrushing horde, rendering them down to charred and steaming bone. Va’lin moved on.

‘Brothers,’ Iaptus’s voice came over the vox-feed, ‘cleanse this nest then break for high ground.’

The secondary objective was all but achieved – now for the primary, the opening of the ‘gate’.

Dersius and Naeb finished the first mob just as the last of the heretic dregs were thinning out. More were positioned further down the bridge, but were bedded in and would need digging out. Dersius voiced their collective frustration.

‘We’re wasting our time with this rabble. Where are the real warriors?’

‘They are here, Dersius,’ said Naeb. ‘They’re just afraid to fight you, brother.’

Laughter echoed loudly across Salvation Bridge, incongruous when heard over the carnage.

Va’lin was scouring the vehicular warren and barely noticed.

‘Where is Ky’dak?’

Naeb scowled, ‘Probably waging a one-man war, as always.’

In the fierce melee, Va’lin had lost sight of the Themian, but found him again in his peripheral vision boosting to the roof of a flamed freight loader.

‘I see him…’

A quick burst from his jump pack put Va’lin on the same level. He heard his two brothers land heavily behind him.

Ky’dak was gutting a half-armoured heretic with his chainblade. Techmarines had tried to repair it, but the weapon was only partially functional and it made a grisly, flesh-chewed mess of the mortal. Ky’dak appeared to relish the gory baptism and, upon seeing his brothers, waved them on.

‘He is mad,’ said Naeb.

‘Have you never seen an angry Themian, brother?’ asked Dersius.

‘Every time you grace me with your brave countenance, brother.’

Va’lin barely heard them. For the first time since the drop, he had a decent view above the swamp of wreckage of Salvation Bridge as it stretched away into the middle distance. At the far end, Zantho’s line-breakers were pushing against the deluge of rubble and debris trammelling their route across the roadway. Pockets of heretics dotted these ruins and barricades like cancerous growths. Unlike the chaff Squad Iaptus had just destroyed, these warriors were not only dug in, they were more disciplined. Only fire would burn them out. Likely, they were military trained, possibly comprising a large number of native former-Imperials and even some Cadians.

Redgage, if he had been present, would likely have disputed that, but the evidence of Va’lin’s eyes suggested the contrary.

‘Nine hundred and eighty-eight metres,’ said Dersius, gauging the distance from their current position to the slow moving line-breakers through his helmet’s auto-senses.

‘Then let us run the gauntlet,’ replied Naeb with a hint of teeth bared. Battle was an unequalled panacea it seemed, for the Salamander’s injury did not look to trouble him now.

‘Lead on as earned, brother,’ said Va’lin with wry amusement, ‘or we’ll miss the war.’

Naeb gestured to the mounds of corpses they were leaving behind.

‘What do you call this, brother?’

‘Distraction.’

Iaptus, Xerus and the rest of the squad barring Ky’dak were already advancing, bounding across the sundered vehicle wrecks on pillars of flame.

Two massive stone arches loomed ahead and above them. The veteran sergeant’s voice came over the vox-feed.

‘Those arches are crawling with heretics. Gut them. Burn everything. I’ve marked your targets on retinal displays.’ The link cut off.

Ky’dak abruptly joined them on the freight loader’s roof. He was bloodied, but every drop of it was an enemy’s.

‘Stay in formation, brother,’ snapped Va’lin, stomping over to confront him. ‘You risk more than yourself by giving in to these reckless urges.’

Ky’dak looked about to bite back but Dersius’s looming presence seemed to dissuade him. He gave a brief nod of contrition instead.

‘Far archway is ours,’ he said unnecessarily. Everyone had the same view through their lens display, the farthest structure outlined in mission-critical red.

Iaptus and the other half of the Wyverns were taking the first arch already.

‘On your order, brother,’ invited Va’lin, giving a last warning glance to Ky’dak. Something volatile ran through the Themian’s veins, hotter than the blood of Mount Deathfire. The truth behind it was hidden in whatever Ky’dak had seen in those flames at Sor’ad’s burning, but there was no time to address that now.

Naeb slammed a fist against his breastplate in salute.

‘Advance on my lead. We cleanse the nest of vermin then move on to the barricade. We’ll make that breach,’ said Naeb, feeding power to his turbine engines, ‘and open the way for Zantho’s line-breakers.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Nova-class frigate, Forge Hammer

The cell was empty, apart from one crucial detail.

‘This is no holding cell…’ said Urgaresh, his voice a rasp. He was crouching on one knee, surrounded by the ‘wrath’, a piece of broken metal clenched in his gauntleted hand. The rest of the armour was lying on the floor, discarded. It was almost identical to the armour worn by Urgaresh. Shell shrapnel peppered the outer ceramite, burns scorched its cuirass and greaves a deeper black. The clasps were broken, forcibly removed. Urgaresh held a face. It glared back at him through shattered eye lenses, a ragged scar across the scalp and cheek. Light blazed through this cleft from a brazier of coals glowing beneath. Urgaresh felt its heat next to him as he turned to his brothers. They were all armed, and not just with their bone blades. The armoury had been unguarded and provided bolters, sidearms and a chainsword the sergeant had taken for himself.

‘It’s a torture chamber,’ said Urgaresh and held up the ruined faceplate to the others, the separated battle-helm still lying at his feet. ‘This is his armour.’

Thorast held out a gauntleted hand. ‘Let me see it.’

Urgaresh handed the faceplate over to the Apothecary who examined it carefully, whilst Haakem and Skarh tried to marshal their anger at the discovery. Ghaan stood apart from the others, leaning heavily against the cell wall, half in light and half in shade from the open doorway.

They had met no resistance so far. No klaxons sounded. No boarder repulse-teams tramped down the corridors to meet them. After letting the mortals go, the Black Dragons had expected transhuman intervention. It was why they were here, after all. This latest discovery changed everything, though. Urgaresh felt the leash binding them all, the one he alone grasped, slipping. A growing part of him wanted to let it go.

‘Too quiet,’ Ghaan slurred, still feeling the effects of the Thallax’s lightning gun. As well as the wall, he leaned heavier on the only boarding shield they had found amongst the cache of weapons. His brothers would have disparaged him for claiming it, but everyone in the ‘wrath’ knew he was dying – so did Ghaan.

‘Where are they, brothers?’ snapped Haakem, fingers twitching. Despite the fact the armoury had been well-stocked, Haakem had refused any weapons. He was a silent killer, best deployed from the shadows. Bone blades were all he needed, or so he had declared with obvious disgust at the others, even though it was tactically sound to arm up.

‘Hiding behind their serfs,’ snarled Skarh. ‘Honourless dogs.’

‘Be calm, brother,’ Urgaresh told him, though he felt anything but himself. He turned to Thorast. ‘Well, Apothecary? Am I right?’

Thorast gently put the faceplate down. For a moment he stared into the broken lenses as if regarding the lifeless eyes of an old friend for the last time.

‘Yes,’ he breathed, voice choking with emotion. ‘It is definitely his. The wound patterns are grievous…’

Urgaresh arose, and stood next to the Apothecary.

‘Is he dead, Thorast?’ he demanded. ‘Can we be sure of that at least?’

Thorast bowed his head and all eyes from the ‘wrath’ went to him. Haakem and Skarh calmed their violent energy. Ghaan stood just a little straighter and with only the shield for support. Eyes wide, Urgaresh seized the Apothecary by the shoulder.

‘Brother, an answer!’

Thorast only had the strength to murmur. ‘Yes… he is dead.’ He raised his head and there was something in his eyes burning away the grief. Urgaresh chose to interpret it as anger and spoke to the ‘wrath’ himself.

‘Zartath is slain.’

He looked each of them in the eye, finding their rage enough to drown worlds.

‘Spare no one,’ he rasped. ‘Everyone on this ship dies.’

Makato could hear them coming. By some miracle, he and Jedda had reached not only the deck three armoury but also a comms-station through which the lieutenant was able to gather reinforcements. Makato had cleared all noncombatants from the areas aft of deck three and assembled his armsmen at key points across the Forge Hammer. One hundred and thirty-two men and women stood ready, over fifty in this section alone. Makato would have preferred double that.

After the visit to the armoury, the lieutenant was wearing heavy-duty combat carapace. It came with a helmet and a bandolier of blinders. He still had his grandfather’s sword and father’s braid. The latter was wrapped around his fist in some vain attempt to curry the favour of the dead.

We that are soon to join them, he thought as he turned to Jedda and said, ‘Bring up that cannon.’

It ground noisily across the deck on thick, metal tracks. The weapon mount had a colourful designation, or so Makato thought: Rapier. Quad-heavy bolters cycled ammunition as the track-mount moved, arming up in preparation for whatever was coming down the corridor.

‘Save that idiot grin for when the ship is safe and we’re still alive,’ Makato warned his man-at-arms, prompting Jedda to adopt a more stoic demeanour. Like his lieutenant, Jedda was armoured in carapace. Whilst he carried the Rapier’s control unit, his combat shotgun was slung over his back. The corridor was long and narrow – he had the perfect arc of fire. It was dark, however. Despite being able to access most of the Forge Hammer’s on-board systems, shutting off bulkheads and conduits to force the aggressors into this bottleneck, the available power with the ship on silent running still only afforded limited illumination. Only Xarko had the authority and ability to change that, but currently the Salamanders Librarian was unreachable. His sanctum was impregnable to any means of breaching it Makato had at his disposal, and despite numerous attempts at contact, silence persisted between it and the rest of the ship. The lieutenant’s armsmen were all there was to defend the ship. They would just have to be enough.

Makato turned to the man behind him, but his words were intended for all fifty-something armsmen cramped in the small junction, backs pressed against walls, into alcoves and behind what little cover they had.

‘These warriors are not like ordinary boarders. We still do not know what they want, either. Be ready, for they’ll move quickly and savagely. Stay together, hold position and listen to my orders and you will have a much better chance of staying alive.’

Satisfied his speech had done all it could, Makato turned back to face the corridor.

‘Keep it close, Jedda,’ he said, referring to the track-mount and making sure only the man-at-arms could hear him. ‘I want every inch this corridor can offer. We stop them here or we don’t stop them at all.’

‘There are just five of them, sir.’

‘Five angry Renegade Astartes,’ Makato replied. ‘Even one would worry me, Jedda.’

‘You know this location is not secure,’ Jedda murmured.

‘Even so, I am staying here.’

‘There are too many maintenance ducts, tunnels, companionways… I cannot guarantee they haven’t infiltrated one or more of them.’

‘I have eyes watching every possible access. Even if we can’t lock them down, we will see them coming.’

‘I just wanted to make you aware, sir. No one would misjudge you if–’

Makato held up his hand. ‘You’re a fine soldier – none finer serve on this ship and I can say that even surrounded by all of these brave souls because they know it too, but don’t lessen my respect for you by saying what I think you were going to. They are on my ship. I will be here, at this line, until that is no longer the case.’

Jedda nodded, and that was an end to it.

When the talking ceased, the sounds of the ship and its circadian rhythms took over as deafening as silence. Air-recyc hummed, the hull groaned, engine drone kept at its lowest impulse throbbed like a migraine. Surprising then that no one heard the dull clank of heavy boots against the deck, or even saw the bulky shadow of black-armoured warriors bearing down upon them until they were already halfway down the corridor.

The armsmen behind Makato spotted the danger first.

‘There!’ he cried just before a shell whined through the dark and blew his head apart like an egg. Bone, brain and blood were still raining down as Jedda triggered the heavy bolters. Four cannons lit up at once, muzzle flashes throwing harsh light down the corridor. Sparks cracked against a solid mass, as if the darkness itself was moving on them. And it was getting closer. A heavy boarding shield, a massive Adeptus Astartes-sized thing. It was almost broad enough to fill the width of the corridor. Without better firing angles, the armsmen would be forced to shoot right at it. What had started out as a sound tactical position had turned into a weak and predictable one. Rather than a quintet of armoured figures advancing upon them, it was a single mass.

Makato saw the danger and bellowed to shock his men into action.

‘Take out that bloody shield!’

A fusillade of shotgun bursts and lasgun cracks filled the air, adding to the Rapier’s louder boom. Aim was poor with barely half the armsmen managing to hit the target, in spite of its size and singular nature. For many, this was the first time they had fought against Space Marines. Makato knew Jedda had drilled them hard, but no amount of training could have prepared them. Hands were shaking, hearts failing.

Frustrated, Jedda pushed the control panel into the hands of a rookie armsman and hefted his combat shotgun.

‘Aim and fire,’ he roared, showing how by example. Burn scars and pellet marks cratered the boarding shield but it was made to withstand sterner punishment and the warriors behind it to weather fiercer opposition – it just kept on coming.

Ghaan was feeling the pressure. Two thirds of the way down the corridor, and he slipped. Thorast was there to hold him up.

‘Almost there, vexilliary,’ the Apothecary told him.

‘Need… a moment,’ he said, gasping for air smack in the middle of the fire storm as the others took snap shots from behind the boarding shield. Ghaan grasped the side of his battle-helm, struggling to release the clasps. ‘Help me get this off.’

‘We need to move,’ said Thorast, but Ghaan’s hand upon his arm cooled his urgency. There was something about the way he did it, the manner of his grip.

‘Brother…’ Ghaan insisted, ‘I can barely breathe.’

Hunkered down, Thorast released the locking clamps to help Ghaan take his battle-helm off. It clanged loudly as it hit the floor, the sound all but drowned out by the fusillade hitting the shield.

‘Better?’ asked the Apothecary. ‘Now can we move forward?’

‘Do I look better, brother?’

‘Like death, Ghaan.’

Ghaan chuckled ruefully. ‘Good.’ He licked his lips – there was blood on them. His armour glistened with it. ‘A pity we have no banner…’

‘Don’t you know yet, vexilliary,’ said Thorast. ‘It was you, not the banner, that we followed.’

Ghaan laughed again, but the Apothecary was not finished.

‘We owe a debt of blood,’ he said, grimacing at the blistering fire just above his head. ‘We cannot stop.’

Ghaan nodded wearily, pushing the shield with the Apothecary’s help, grinding it against the deck for a few feet until the vexilliary had lifted it again.

‘Then I rest,’ Ghaan breathed, coughing up frothy, blood-flecked sputum.

‘Then you rest,’ echoed Thorast, knowing exactly what the vexilliary meant.

It wasn’t working. The shield was too robust, their weapons ineffective. Armsmen were intended for the security of a ship, its internal security principally. Against deck ratings, unruly overseers and bondsmen, they were the very best. Even in a limited boarder repulsion role, they could be extremely useful, but this was the Forge Hammer – its complement of Adeptus Astartes was supposed to defend it. The one that had been left behind was absent. As a result, Makato felt distinctly outgunned. He considered falling back. There were junctions and chambers deeper into the ship that would afford better arcs of fire, and present an enfilading position to reduce the effectiveness of the boarding shield. Slow the advance of the renegades might be but, against small-arms fire and even the track-mount, it was inexorable.

Close up, even behind their mobile barricade, Makato got a better look at the Black Dragons. He recognised their leader, the one with the excessive bone growths. They had shown mercy earlier, expressing a desire to fight with the Chapter warriors aboard this ship. Makato had sensed some honour in them. What had happened to drive them into such a berserk rage?

‘Hold fast,’ he shouted to the others, having drawn a bolt pistol and firing it single-handed like a naval officer of old. ‘We can break them. We can break them.’

‘Munitions are running low, sir,’ said the rookie who was manning the Rapier.

Jedda had advanced to the forward line, just to the side of the chugging track-mount, a grimace etched onto his face from the retort of the heavy bolters.

‘Stop and reload,’ replied Makato, reaching for his bandolier. ‘I’ll buy you some time.’

The rookie went to it, getting help from the nearest armsmen who had overheard the lieutenant, just as Makato primed a blind grenade.

‘Blinders out!’ he bellowed, prompting the men to turn and shield their eyes as he lobbed the flashbang in the renegade’s midst. It lit up the corridor in a flare of magnesium, so bright it seemed for a moment to bleach the walls white. Their shadows still receding along with the sudden light burst, Makato got a good look at the enemy.

Four warriors still stood. The shield still stood. It had hurt them, though. He heard curses and–

Four warriors…

The thought struck Makato like a blast of chill wind. There had been five on the ship initially and with no casualties that meant one was unaccounted for.

‘Jedda!’ cried Makato, just as the fusillade started up again, but he was already too late.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Nova-class frigate, Forge Hammer

Though it was tight, Haakem slipped through the maintenance shaft with the stealth of a viper. Using his bone-clawed elbows, he quickly dragged his armoured body across the floor of the tiny duct. Never stopping, he remained intent on his point of egress as dictated by Urgaresh. It was hard to think without his brother-sergeant’s instruction, the throbbing inside his cracked skull a constant distraction. It made him… wrathful.

Ahead, a light burned. It hurt his eyes – he much preferred the dark – but knew it meant the execution of the next phase of his mission was at hand. Execution was just what Urgaresh had charged him with. Encouraging the bone blades to slip a fraction from the flesh sleeves in his forearms then through the gaps in his armour, Haakem let the savagery that was ever at the edge of his thoughts take over.

Preceded by the clatter of a hatch hitting the deck as it was stripped off its hinges, something large and black burst from the maintenance duct and into the armsmen.

Makato was already turning as a solid armoured mass hit his men like a wrecking ball. Demolition did not accurately sum up what happened in the seconds that followed, however. Massacre did. Blood arced in fountains from suddenly screaming armsmen – so did their limbs and heads as the monster’s bone blades began to carve.

‘Take him down!’ Makato screamed, trying to bully his way through the press of bodies that were understandably retreating from the murderous whirlwind that had sprung up amongst them. A panicked scrum developed, between those men within reach of the monster and those trapping them. Makato had packed the corridor tight. He wanted overlapping fields of fire, a cannonade that would bring even Space Marines down. They were positioned at a junction with three exits, guns pointing towards aft, one exit to the side and the rest of the corridor behind. Death clad in black came from this direction, and unlike the slow inexorable force often recited in bleak poems and soliloquies, here death was swift and bloody.

Order was lost. Even if they could stop this one monster, they were utterly undone.

Ahead of the armsmen watching the corridor, the boarding shield moved aside and admitted a fresh band of deadly warriors. With the Rapier’s ammo-mags still half in, half out, Makato’s men were reduced to small arms fire. Shotgun bursts and lasgun beams smacked and ricocheted off the renegades’ armour, but the Black Dragons were undaunted. They came on like a tide, bolters crashing like the thunder of waves.

Makato froze, trapped in an island of indecision. One way, the monster threshing his men like crops on an agri-farm; the other, a rushing force tired of hiding and committed to the charge. For the first time since Yugeti Makato had given him his inaugural sword-fighting lesson, Kensai did not know what to do. Strike or fade?

Strong hands seized him by the shoulders, almost hauling Makato off his feet. Decision made, but not by him. Jedda rushed in front of him, taking charge and waving the two men who grabbed Makato away.

‘You can shoot me for insubordination later, lieutenant,’ he said to the thrashing form of Makato as he disappeared down the side corridor. ‘This is your ship. You have to live if you’re going to defend it, sir.’

‘Jedda!’ Makato screamed, remembering how he had screamed as Yugeti had dragged him away from his father’s body, Hiroshimo dead to a pirate’s blade. Though the household guard, the Bushiko, had repulsed the xenos raiders, Kensai Makato had become a man that day. He had made his first vow, to join the Imperial Navy and honour the legacy of Hiroshimo and Yugeti Makato. This was how it was supposed to end for him, embattled with weapon in hand. He railed against it, his cheated fate, but was powerless to stop it as Jedda vanished into the shadows.

‘I will hold them as long as I can,’ he called, wading in with the others as the bulkhead door slammed down, cutting him off from view and silencing the screams.

Urgaresh saw the officer dragged off by his own men and knew the fight was theirs. It had been the moment Haakem had emerged amongst them, but with them now trying to save their leader it meant the mortals had all but accepted their fate.

By his side were Thorast and Skarh, the latter firing off quick bursts from his purloined bolter to try to break up the wall of solid shot and las peppering the Black Dragons. There was no sign of Ghaan, but Urgaresh could not worry about that now. He had tossed his own bolt pistol when the mag ran dry and wielded the chainsword two-handed, leading into the charge with his shoulder. He was hurting. His eyes still burned from the blind grenade, despite the optical compensators in his battle-helm. Urgaresh knew Thorast and Skarh had felt it too. Both were seized by a feral rage.

With Haakem at their backs, cutting flesh as he was born to, and Thorast, Skarh and Urgaresh pushing from the front, the fight was mercifully short. For what they had done to Zartath, Urgaresh wanted to punish the mortals more but was cogent enough to realise these wretched souls were not the true focus of his ire. He wanted the Salamanders.

‘Where are they?’ snarled Skarh, battering a man to death with the stock of his bolter. Ammunition was short, and now they were amongst the armsmen it made sense to try to conserve it. Urgaresh was surprised at Skarh’s restraint. Perhaps they were not as lost as the sergeant believed. ‘They should come. We slaughter their men.’ Skarh lifted a man by the throat, crushing the mortal’s larynx with a savage twist before dropping him and breaking another. ‘They should come.’

Haakem met his brothers from the other side of the melee. Anointed with blood, there was something monstrous and unpredictable about him even to Urgaresh.

‘Well met, brother,’ rasped the sergeant, using the flat of his chainblade to swat a figure into the wall. Its face was crushed on impact, the armsman’s helmet splitting across the middle of the crown. Urgaresh barely registered it – the burring chainteeth of his sword were already cutting into more meat. In the carnage his enemies had ceased to be people anymore – they were just obstacles in his way, laid waste to by his wrath. The slaughter became mechanistic, almost perfunctory. A momentary flash of pain in his cheek brought him out of this murderous torpor, and belatedly Urgaresh realised he had been shot almost point blank in the face. He staggered, and felt the hot knives of the shotgun pellets where they had penetrated his helm and embedded into flesh. The vox-grille was wrecked, so he ripped it away with his free hand, warding off his attacker with his chainsword in the other.

He was a skilled fighter, this mortal. Urgaresh recognised him from the Fist of Kraedor. Still fending off his attacker, Urgaresh tore off his battle-helm completely and swung. The blow came unexpectedly and struck the man across the torso and neck. He snapped back, disarmed. Urgaresh spared him no words and thrust the chainblade into the mortal’s prone body.

It was over. The rest either died or fled. Urgaresh did not bother to give chase, nor did any of the ‘wrath’. They would get to them all soon enough. This had been the defenders’ best attempt to stop them, and it had failed.

‘Is this it?’ snapped Skarh, glaring at the spread of bodies lying beneath him in rapidly expanding pools of their own blood. He turned to Urgaresh, a savage look in his eye visible where one of his retinal lenses had been smashed during the fight. ‘My fury is not yet slaked, brother-sergeant.’

‘We aren’t done,’ said Urgaresh, largely ignoring Skarh’s minor tantrum while he inspected the chainsword. Some of the teeth were broken and its motor hardly purred anymore. Perhaps he had gone at the mortals harder than he first thought. In his peripheral vision, Urgaresh noticed Haakem. Drenched in blood and sweat, he released a cascade of mortal fluids as he shook his head. The act was not unlike that of a dog, and Urgaresh wondered again at where this road was taking them all.

‘I would have Salamanders blood for Zartath,’ hissed Skarh, gripping the edge of Urgaresh’s plastron.

Urgaresh glared at him. ‘So would I,’ he calmly replied. ‘Now, release me.’

Skarh obeyed, bowing his head in swift compliance as he realised his overstep.

‘Skarh is right, brother-sergeant,’ said Haakem. ‘This is barely worth the effort. I joined a rescue mission that turned into one demanding vengeance instead. With that I have no issue, but slaughtering these dregs…’ he gestured to the bodies. ‘It’s butcher’s work, not worthy of us. We’re unscathed and yet they–’

‘No, brother,’ uttered the solemn voice of Thorast. The Apothecary was kneeling next to Ghaan, his reductor already unsheathed. ‘Not unscathed.’

Ghaan was dead, his body slumped against the boarding shield but still more or less upright. He had died on his feet, which was little more than they could all ask. The shield had taken some grievous hits after all. There were gaps in the armour, gaps that Ghaan had stopped with his own body.

‘“Do not fail your brothers. Though their bodies die, their spirit must return to the Chapter. That is your charge.”’

‘So it was said,’ murmured Thorast, nodding at Urgaresh’s recitation of the Credo of Apothecaries.

‘So too shall be done,’ the sergeant concluded.

All watched as Thorast took Ghaan’s gene-seed and added it to the rest from the Fist of Kraedor.

‘It’s done,’ said Thorast, turning to his sergeant. ‘What now?’

‘Are we monsters, brothers?’ asked Urgaresh.

‘We are what our masters on Terra made us to be,’ said Skarh.

‘Then we head to the bridge. If there are Salamanders here on this ship, that is where we will find them. I want to look them in the eye before we kill them, and ask why.’

‘What kind of answer do you want?’ asked Thorast.

‘It hardly matters, I suppose. I just want them to know what this has all been for, what they have forced us to do, to become… and what we must do next.’

Without transhuman reinforcements, the ship was at the mercy of the Black Dragons. For what the Salamanders had done, Urgaresh would see it crashed on the dirty world below.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior

Agatone found Zartath wandering alone at the edge of Kabullah’s border. The ex-Black Dragon looked punch-drunk as if he had just had a bout with Ba’ken in the practice cages and the hefty captain of Seventh Company had given him some brutal ‘instruction’. He almost staggered in Agatone’s direction when he saw him. Recognition was not instantaneous, either.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Agatone, wary, and kept his hand within reach of his holstered bolt pistol. There was something about the way Zartath moved, the blankness in his eyes, that gave the captain pause.

Blinking once, Zartath nodded. He did it slowly, wearily.

‘Did something happen, brother?’ Agatone asked, approaching him but still alert. His eyes narrowed when he saw the blood stains only half washed off Zartath’s armour. ‘Where have you been?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Zartath replied, and seemed to regain some of his senses.

‘Where, brother?’

‘I am my own man, brother-captain,’ said Zartath, only now understanding the level of caution Agatone was showing towards him.

‘Where have you been?’ Agatone pressed, and touched his fingers to the grip of his sidearm. He had known this day might come, that he might have to take Zartath to hand, the way a master deals with a feral dog. Agatone knew he might have to put the ex-Black Dragon down.

Zartath raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, and stopped.

‘Needed time alone,’ he admitted, ‘away from the roar.’

‘You were supposed to maintain watch, brother. Were this a conventional mission–’

‘But it isn’t, brother-captain. Nothing about it is,’ Zartath replied, and lowered his hands. ‘Tell me something, though. Have you heard it too?’

‘Heard what?’

‘You know what I’m talking about.’

The drone, that strange keening that had persisted ever since the klaxons had first sounded for the so-called ‘vermin tide’.

Agatone eased off a little but still kept his guard up. He gave one, slow nod.

‘So have I. It drums in my skull even now.’ Zartath took a step but no more than that. ‘I heard it at the sump pond, pounding through a waste pipe, coming up from below somewhere. There is something rotten here, brother-captain. It has tainted this place beyond the corruption of the flesh. It is tainting us, even now, as we hear it. Our helms, would that we wore them, would be no protection, either. It is within us.’

Agatone had suspected as much, but to hear his suspicions spoken aloud by Zartath gave them form and palpability. It also clarified them. He saw the truth of it now. The vermin that had attacked them were incubators for some pathogen, and the blood, their tainted blood had been a carrier that unlocked some deeper evil at large in Molior’s underhive. And they were hearing its siren call in the droning. For now, there was nothing Agatone could do about that. For the second time he wondered if Tsu’gan had run afoul of this ‘evil’, and tried to vanquish it. He hoped they were hunting for a living fire-born and not merely a corpse. Either way, none of it explained the blood on Zartath’s armour.

‘I need to know what you did, Zartath.’

Zartath showed Agatone his palms again.

‘Would that I knew what that was. Something… attacked me, I think.’

Agatone scowled. ‘You think?’

‘I ventured into the waters of the sump, drawn by the siren call in my head. I felt something wrap its jaws around my leg. The next moment, I awoke covered in blood.’

‘So you killed it, whatever it was?’

‘I would not be alive otherwise.’

‘A reflex then?’

Zartath nodded mutely.

Something was missing from Zartath’s testimony, Agatone was certain. What he could not be sure of was whether the ex-Black Dragon was deliberately hiding the truth of that, or whether the savage warrior simply did not know. Part of the reason Agatone had once stringently opposed his inclusion into the Chapter was on account of such murderous blackouts. Elysius had convinced him it was a worthwhile risk – the hunt for Tsu’gan demanded it – and for his part Zartath had performed well, proving a valuable asset, but frequently Agatone questioned his suitability. He did so again now.

He scrutinised Zartath for a few seconds, hoping the silence might reveal something his questions had failed to, but found nothing new. In the end, Agatone beckoned him to follow.

‘Come on. Exor is awake, and we need to move out.’ He turned and led Zartath back, the ex-Black Dragon a few paces behind. ‘You need not walk at the back of me,’ Agatone called to him, tramping back to the muddy lights of the settlement.

‘It is my place,’ said Zartath, and the words gave Agatone renewed pause. The captain was wise enough to realise something had happened during the three hours he had been transfusing his blood to save Exor – it had left him a little weakened, but the effects would wear off quickly, a Space Marine’s Larraman cells more advanced than mortal blood cells. Regeneration and replenishment would be swift but he had neither the time nor means to interrogate Zartath further. Exor and, he hoped, Tsu’gan, were waiting.

Issak was the one waiting for them when they returned to the settlement. He was standing at the bottom of the staircase to his surgery, armed and armoured with a pack on his back. Some of the natives, including the ageing but relatively well-attired alderman, lurked nearby, looking concerned.

Agatone read their fear and anxiety immediately.

‘Going on a trip, medicus?’ he asked, and looked upwards in the direction of the surgery.

Issak was wearing light flak armour with a mesh underweave. It looked old, but serviceable, clearly Militarum-grade. His pack most likely contained his med-kit, spare ammo and whatever provisions he needed. It too was Guard-issue. His boots were dark, functional, with visible metal toe-caps and he had a leather skullcap too. A combat shotgun and stubby autopistol on a leather strap across his back and hip holster respectively were the extent of his arsenal, barring any knives. A storm cloak completed the image of underhive gun for hire.

‘Your comrade has recovered to an extent,’ Issak replied, following Agatone’s gaze all the way up to the surgery. ‘He is upright and mobile, at least.’

Agatone gave a slight bow of the head. ‘And for that you have our gratitude, but you didn’t answer my question.’

‘I suspect you already know the answer, along with my destination.’

Agatone turned to Zartath who had just caught up to him. ‘See to Exor,’ he said. When Zartath was tramping noisily up the staircase, Agatone resumed his conversation with the medicus.

‘Craving the glory days, are we?’

‘Not exactly. I told you once I was a religious man. In coming here, I served the Throne and ministered to the faithless, preaching the Imperial Creed. I found the very worst hole of existence I could, and made it better. For the Imperium. For these people. I knew it would not be forever.’

‘I don’t need another gun – I have two already and others in the hive city I can call upon.’

‘With respect, lord, I believe the former but not the latter. You needed me to patch up your Techmarine because he’s the only one you’ve got. Vox-comms don’t work so cleanly in the underhive and where you’re going they will cease to function at all. The feral one and your wounded brother currently in my surgery are all the manpower you have at your immediate disposal.’

‘And your gun arm will tip the odds back in my favour, will it?’

‘I don’t offer it… at least, I don’t offer it alone. Finding Seven Points is easy if you know your way around. It’s also a lot safer if you’re familiar with our hazards.’

It made sense. Issak had decided he had been given a sign from the Emperor, that the Salamanders coming presaged a calling of sorts. A guide would make the journey to Seven Points easier, but Agatone struggled with the morality of putting the human’s life in danger, especially as he had just, in all likelihood, saved Exor’s.

‘I can’t guarantee your safety,’ Agatone told him.

Issak laughed. It was a warm, genuine sound that smacked of his natural beneficence.

‘Had I not walked these treacherous roads for years before your arrival, and not ventured from Sturndrang’s surface to this sub-strata, I might find a warning note of caution in those words, Agatone. Alas…’ he concluded, and opened his arms wide as to suggest the decision was already made.

‘Well then,’ said Agatone, first seeing Exor then Zartath emerge at the summit of the stairway, but his eyes falling on Issak last of all. ‘Seems your duty to the Throne is not yet done. Take us to Seven Points.’

Seven Points, or the ‘cross’ at it was sometimes known on account of the seven interlocking and divergent paths that led to this nexus point, was in ruins. Granted, most of Molior’s underhive had a broken down, dilapidated appearance but even for an arena this was a war zone.

‘A battle was fought here…’ hissed Zartath. He stated the obvious, not with the intention of drawing his companion’s attention to it but rather as part of his internal process of deconstruction. The four of them, three Adeptus Astartes and one missionary-turned-medicus, approached the battlefield along one of the seven paths. Stretching out in front of them was a scene of carnage, but of a battle already fought and ended. Judging by the amount of bodies, it was a conflict with few victors.

Zartath went on ahead, weaving amongst the corpse-strewn wreckage and still-smoking fires. He kept low, even though there were no obvious signs of life. More than once, a careless scout had toured the aftermath of a battle believing all threat ended, only to find enemies alive with their blades still sharp, their desire for vengeance even sharper.

‘Five distinct groups fought here…’ Zartath went on, beckoning the others as he stopped at intervals to examine any sign or spoor.

Smoke hugged the ground in a thick veil. Broken limbs and weapons stuck out from it, breaching the surface like flotsam on a beach exposed by retreating surf. Heat haze still wavered the air from conflagrations that had diminished into mere blazes since their ignition. The shells of burned-out buildings hung open like old, blackened wounds yet to heal.

‘I see only four,’ Exor replied. He moved tentatively, without the confidence of full fitness, but was as battle-ready as Issak could make him. To Agatone’s mind, it would have to do.

‘As do I, Zartath,’ the captain agreed with his Techmarine.

Exor had said little during the journey from Kabullah to Seven Points, which had been made mercifully short thanks to Issak’s knowledge of these depths. The Techmarine had kept a wary eye on his auspex at all times, which Agatone deemed as normal behaviour for one schooled by the Martian adepts, so left him alone. Exor’s anvil would come later when he was pressed into the fires of battle again. Then Agatone would see the true measure of his readiness. But as of right now, all they had was the hunt and that was Zartath’s area of expertise.

The ex-Black Dragon scurried through the ruins, amongst the bodies. Some he stooped to examine, others he left alone. His level of scout-craft was, admittedly, a mystery to Agatone.

‘Where is the fifth, brother?’ Agatone called, eyeing the high gantries above where the smoke was rising with suspicion. Below, the dead were all underhivers, variously gang affiliated.

‘Close and few in number,’ Zartath answered cryptically. ‘There are many signs.’

Some of the bodies had the trappings of gladiators, escapees from the arena or perhaps even unleashed by their masters. If what the alderman had told Agatone was true, then two gang lords ruled this quarter. Their men would be amongst the dead.

With Zartath so engrossed in his task, Agatone turned to Issak. ‘You know the markings of the local gang lords here?’

Issak nodded, pointing to a corpse wearing thick factorum overalls and a grey bandana tied around his neck.

‘Junkers,’ he said pointing to another, this one thickly muscled and squeezed in dark fetish leather. ‘Hel-kytes.’

There was a third gang, Agatone noticed. These wore red hoods with heavy smocks, almost akin to robes. Cultists.

‘Them I don’t know,’ Issak admitted, having followed Agatone’s gaze.

‘Can’t see him amongst the dead,’ said Exor. He was kneeling by the body of a gladiator, a chrono-slave who had been gutted by a heavy blade. Nearby was an abhuman, classification ogryn, its head separate from its body and a heavy cannon, still fully loaded, in its rigor-mortised grip. ‘This one was evidently for security,’ offered Exor, before running a scan with his auspex.

‘Seven Points looks far from secure,’ murmured Agatone, as he delved further into the carnage with the others. ‘Any sign at all of Tsu’gan?’ he called out to Exor.

‘Nothing from the bio-scan, but we might have better luck deeper into Seven Points.’

Agatone nodded, and they pressed on. ‘Stay by me,’ he growled at Issak. Wisely, the missionary obeyed.

By the time they reached the middle of Seven Points and its infamous arena, Agatone had counted more than a hundred dead and that was just at the periphery. Many bore the trappings of the Junkers and the Hel-kytes but there were red hoods too. Amongst the slain, they found the gang lords, Silas Krebb and Otmar the Brute. Issak seemed genuinely disturbed to see both men killed so casually, not because he carried any regard for them but on account of the fact that their power had seemed absolute in this quarter. He remarked as much to Agatone.

‘A sudden break in their alliance, perhaps?’ asked the captain.

Exor shook his head. ‘Judging by the position of their bodies, they were fighting side by side against a common enemy. Releasing their slaves suggests they were desperate too.’

‘You know of anyone who wanted their territory, medicus?’ Agatone asked Issak. ‘For if my errant brother is not with either of these men’s organisations, then he might well be with the victors.’

‘I’ve never seen these red hoods before, nor heard any talk about them. If someone was planning on muscling in on either Silas’s or Otmar’s territory then I would have heard something. This doesn’t look like a turf war, though…’

‘That’s because it’s not,’ rasped Zartath, having appeared silently at Issak’s side who started at the hunter’s sudden return. ‘It’s a sacrifice. This is a place of Ruin.’

The arena was close, the nexus of where the crosses intersected – the heart of Seven Points. Sunken into a deep manmade depression, the floor of the arena itself had been excavated, potentially even after the battle as the bodies inside had been dragged to its periphery. Underneath the dirt and grime and blood were the archaeological remains of the paths from which Seven Points had derived its name. Only there weren’t seven, not originally. Exposed by the excavations of the victors was an eighth.

‘An eight-fold path…’ said Exor, his voice low and resonant with mechanised reverb.

Issak muttered a quiet benediction to the Throne as Zartath and Exor descended into the arena. Six bodies had been cut up and laid upon the eight divergent paths, blood, limbs and entrails. The naked flesh was etched with arcane symbology, carved there indelibly.

‘Search this entire arena,’ said Agatone, his face a mask of grim discomfort. ‘Make it fast. You stay with me, medicus, and tell me what you can about this atrocity.’

Issak slowly shook his head as Zartath and Exor went to their duties. Peripherally, Agatone noticed they did not make eye contact and went to opposite ends of the arena. They might have just been intent on their duty, or there might be some residual distemper between them. Like much of what had happened in Molior, there was little Agatone could do about it now but he resolved to confront it later. When Tsu’gan was in his custody.

‘I am of the Ecclesiarchy not the Inquisition,’ Issak confessed. ‘I have little knowledge about the rituals of Chaos, let alone what any of this means.’

‘Just tell me what you see.’

Issak half turned and for the first time since Agatone had met him looked unsure of himself. Many mortals had such a reaction when confronted by the evidence of Chaos desecration up close.

‘But how does this help you find your quarry?’ he asked, wiping sweat off his brow, even though the air around Seven Points was chill as hoarfrost and Issak’s breath ghosted from his mouth.

‘He either fought and killed them or was killed in turn. Since I can see neither a body, nor evidence of this cult’s destruction since the ritual site is intact, I have to assume he fought, killed and then escaped or was captured,’ said Agatone. ‘We find the cult, we find our quarry.’

Issak nodded, still obviously uncomfortable, but examined the bodies more closely.

‘It’s a blood ritual, that much is clear,’ he said, careful not to actually touch anything but getting close enough so he could scrutinise the individual elements. ‘The cuts are precise, measured. I’ve seen surgeons with inferior blade-craft to this, good ones.’ He skirted around the ring of sundered flesh. ‘Each piece was arranged meticulously, and with purpose.’

‘To what end?’ asked Agatone, watching the medicus keenly.

‘I have absolutely no idea, but I see no evidence of summoning. I cannot see any taint, detect it through my olfactory senses or otherwise.’ He looked back at Agatone. ‘Perhaps an attempt at some form of communion?’

‘They were sending a message?’

‘Yes, possibly, but I don’t know. Like I told you, I am a missionary, a medicus before that, not a daemon-hunter. Please…’ Issak added, ‘I would like to leave this place now.’

Agatone nodded. The others were returning anyway.

Exor brought news.

‘He was definitely here,’ said the Techmarine. ‘There is a lower level, cells by the look of them, a sort of barracks to house the gladiators between bouts. I found markings carved into the wall. Agatone, it was Nocturnean sigil-dialect, akin to the symbols we use to brand our flesh.’

‘What did he carve, brother?’

‘The anvil and the hammer, over and over again,’ said Exor. ‘He is punishing himself. Tsu’gan wants to suffer.’

Agatone knew that Tsu’gan had always had a masochistic streak. He supposed all Salamanders did to an extent, the Promethean Creed demanded it of them, but there were rumours about Tsu’gan’s addiction to pain that had never been proven one way or the other. His disappearance after the rescue mission into the Volgorrah Reef that had yielded Zartath as well as its intended targets, Chaplain Elysius and Sol Ba’ken, had prevented any meaningful enquiry. The fact was, no one had spoken to Tsu’gan since that moment except for Dak’ir, and he was dead or presumed so.

‘One of us fought here,’ Zartath confirmed. ‘I found transhuman blood, whether from this battle or another in the arena…’ He shook his head, scowling. ‘Impossible to determine. There are tracks, footprints that radiate from the ritual site. Their gait is uneven, drunken.’

‘Perhaps they fell into some kind of torpor after whatever they did here?’ suggested Agatone.

‘It’s likely,’ said Zartath, appearing to be more lucid and focused than before, the hunt seeming to have done him some good. He offered something to Agatone in his open hand, a small silver dagger. ‘I doubt they would have left this, otherwise.’

Agatone regarded it but did not touch it. Issak made the sign of the aquila.

‘It’s not the weapon they used to cut up these sacrifices.’

‘No,’ Issak agreed, finding his voice again at last. ‘They’d need a saw or at least something with a serrated edge to get through bone. The athame was probably used to cut the sigils into their flesh, a spiritual icon more than a weapon. I am surprised they didn’t come back–’

Zartath’s raised fist interrupted Issak.

‘Who says they haven’t?’ he hissed.

Zartath hurried away from the ritual site to the arena wall and pressed flat against it, prompting Agatone and Exor to do the same. Issak belatedly followed their example.

‘That fifth group,’ Zartath muttered to Agatone. ‘They are here.’

‘Auspex reads nothing’ said Exor.

Zartath faced him savagely. ‘They will not appear on any scanner, brother. But I can smell their scent.’ His lips drew back into a snarl. ‘And I hear them. Listen!’

Exor had to bite back his anger, but did as he was told.

‘Four of them?’ guessed Agatone, frowning as he strained to pinpoint the enemy’s exact numerical strength.

‘Five,’ Exor confirmed, his augmetic hearing surpassing even that of Zartath’s, though the ex-Black Dragon did nod to confirm.

‘Tread’s heavy,’ Agatone whispered, then addressed Issak. ‘You stay here, medicus. Keep your head down whilst we engage.’

Issak nodded. Though he could not hear as well as the Space Marines, he paled with fear. ‘No arguments here.’

Zartath was already scaling the arena wall, driving his bone blades into patches of exposed earth. His upper torso rippled with effort, describing the muscles in his lithe frame. Saliva drooled from his open mouth, fangs glistening with it, as one of those above drew close to strike.

‘Get ready…’ he hissed to the others, and lunged.

It began with a wet slurrch of flesh and ended in a low grunt of pain. Zartath roared, and heaved a body almost as large as he was over his head. Initially impaled in its heart, the bone blade slipped out, tearing flesh and cartilage as Zartath brought the body down into the pit.

Issak barely had enough time to take in the monster’s grotesque appearance – its swollen musculature and physical mutation, the blood-stained robes and battered armour underneath, its array of bizarre weaponry, the strange tubes attached to its back and neck – before Exor had launched something into the air, a spherical object, dark in colour and blunt of design. Issak saw it winking, three second-long pulses, and caught the warning from the Techmarine just in time.

‘Hide your eyes!’

The flare from the blind grenade was intensely bright. Even turned away, hands clamped over his face, Issak still found his vision was impaired afterwards. He heard a scream, though, and knew it had surprised the ones above.

Agatone was climbing from the pit, bolt pistol in hand. Exor lingered a fraction behind him, but was soon lost beyond the captain’s peripheral vision. Zartath had already engaged, using the momentum of his earlier kill to spring up and out onto the battlefield. Three sharp booms echoed from Agatone’s sidearm as the mass-reactives found purchase in living tissue and subsequently detonated. He had made a mess of the creature’s left arm, but it had two of them on that side alone so its combat efficacy was barely diminished.

It was brutish, heavily gene-bulked and mutated. Something pumped into its carotid vein, some kind of adrenal philtre or chem-shunt. Hunched, still mewling from the sting administered by the Techmarine, the monster was only a little shorter than Agatone. Raised to full height it would dwarf the Salamander. A glaive had been surgically grafted to one of its remaining arms and the blood spouting from the region Agatone had ruptured with his three-round burst was rapid-healing, which meant it had some kind of regenerative cocktail in its system. Nerve pain had been shut down too. It should have been in shock from a wound like that, but instead it came for him with the glaive.

Though it might once have been human, now it was an aberration bent on murder. And even with the one Zartath had gutted and thrown into the pit, it was one of four. Gritting his teeth, Agatone drew his gladius and fired his pistol as he moved to engage.

Exor struggled over the lip of the arena wall, slowed by his injury. Pain knifed into his side, his back, anywhere the machine did not touch him. He was cursing his flesh-weakness when he noticed he was in the crosshairs of a mutant’s bow-caster. It looked crude, almost rudimentary, but the barbs on its ammunition were sharp. The crossbow jerked and Exor screamed as the bolt quarrel thunked into his upper torso.

The medicus went to move to his aid, until Exor shouted him back. Then he was moving, dragged up and over the lip of the pit wall and across the ground as the firer retracted its harpoon bolt on a length of high-tensile cable.

Agony spreading through his chest and back, Exor fumbled for a plasma-torch, even his knife, but he was being thrown around too fiercely and could not reach them. Glimpsing a blade in the mutant’s meaty hand, he let out a frustrated roar of pain. It had staved the bow-caster into the ground and was reeling in the Techmarine remotely.

Forgetting the knife or the plasma-torch, Exor went for his sidearm. That too, he struggled to reach. His hands slipped against the holster clasp, his fingers trembling as his body fought the intense strain it was under to prevent him from passing out again.

Then the cord went slack, cut abruptly at the source. Exor rolled on his back in time to wrench the barbed hook out and see a welter of blood shoot up from his assailant’s slit throat.

Zartath hunted without pause. Every cut, every feint and counter was chained together. From the first to the last motion, he fought with utter kinaesthetic awareness and acuity. Out of the death of the first opponent, he blended into his attack on the second. It was fluid, deadly. Like art, only bloody. In a skirmish at close quarters, momentum was everything. Keep your enemy off balance, hit him where he’s unprotected and unprepared. Make him react to you. Zartath epitomised this credo. He was born to it. Experience had honed him to become this. On the Volgorrah Reef, in the xenos death-labyrinth, it was a way of life.

Two more remained. Zartath had already discounted the one against Agatone, confident the captain would despatch it.

The first opponent jabbed at him with a spear. A heavy, powerful thrust but one Zartath easily dodged. He cut open the warrior’s shoulder, severing a vital nerve cluster in its deltoid region that made the arm go limp. With his enemy debilitated, Zartath proceeded to weave aside from another wild retaliatory strike and cleave through its neck. The blow wasn’t clean, just as Zartath had intended, and the head hung back as the neck opened in a grotesque yawn of ruddy flesh.

A bellow to his left. Close. He could smell its breath, feel the transformative heat of its body as the chem-shunts went to work rapidly fuelling its metabolism. Anger would make it clumsy. Zartath smiled, already moving, always moving. Slipping aside to avoid its opening attack, Zartath knew the fight was over.

Something stirred in the pit, and Issak realised it was the body of the dead mutant. Only it wasn’t dead. Brackish, foul-smelling liquids pulsed into it as it drank greedily. The blood had stopped flowing, now clotting completely, and the wound in its chest was closing.

Muttering a prayer to the Emperor to gird his soul against contamination, Issak ran over to the corpse with shotgun in hand. He racked the slide to chamber a round. Did it one-handed. It was a gorgon-class variant with a short barrel and broad muzzle. The range dipped on account of the modifications, but the trade-off was stopping power. Pressing the shotgun’s mouth to the monster’s forehead, he had time to see its eyes blink open once before he declared, ‘Try and come back from this,’ and pulled the trigger.

Then he ran back to the wall and climbed.

Three more rounds put the creature down, evacuating the contents of its torso in the process. Agatone kicked the body over and saw Zartath decapitate the fourth and final mutant. Then he went to Exor and helped the Techmarine to his feet.

Once he was back up, Exor bowed his head. ‘I’m sorry, brother-captain. My wounds are…’

‘Still fresh,’ Agatone replied. He lightly examined the goring of Exor’s chest caused by the harpoon. ‘With fresher still to join them.’

‘I can fight,’ he assured Agatone.

‘You will have to regardless of your readiness for it, brother.’ He looked to Zartath who was approaching slowly, his armour painted in arterial sprays of crimson. ‘Why decapitation, brother?’ Agatone asked him.

‘To be sure of death.’ His savage eyes briefly went to Exor, and there was a mocking smile within them. Weak. A liability always in need of rescue, they said. ‘I’ve not met an enemy yet who can come back from having no head.’

‘Best be certain,’ said Issak’s voice behind them. He was walking towards them, having just clambered from the pit, his robes also flecked in dark blood.

‘You injured, medicus?’ asked Agatone, with a hint of concern.

‘Not mine,’ he replied. ‘I had to put my shotgun to the head of the one in the pit.’ He looked at Zartath. ‘It was rising.’

‘I cored its heart. That’s a sure killing stroke,’ snarled the ex-Black Dragon.

Agatone looked around them. The mutants had been reduced to meat chunks but their limbs yet quivered. At first he had thought it nerve endings catching up to the fact that the body was dead, but now he really scrutinised the dead he saw eyelids flickering, lips trying to form words even when the heads upon which they featured were severed.

He glanced around quickly.

Zartath’s bone blades slid from their flesh sheaths as he went to finish what he thought he had done already.

‘Wait…’ Agatone held up his hand, and gestured to a cluster of nearby drums, the kind used to house fires that kept out the underhive chill. ‘Bring them to the pit,’ he told Exor. ‘Zartath and I will get the bodies.’

‘To what end?’ Zartath asked.

Agatone met his feral gaze with stern resolution.

‘To torch them. We burn everything. It’s the only way to be sure.’

They dragged the dead into the pit, wary of potential and sudden resurrection. With Issak’s help, Exor dropped in the barrels, oil spilling across the arena floor. At Agatone’s order, the Techmarine took out his hand flamer.

‘Is there anything you don’t have on that rig?’ said Zartath, jutting his chin in the direction of the small mechanical frame attached to Exor’s back. Much smaller than a servo-harness, the rig’s array of tools was limited but small enough to be hidden under the Techmarine’s cloak.

‘I believe in preparation. Not a philosophy you’re familiar with, I’d suspect.’

Zartath opened his arms wide. ‘Everything I need, I already have.’

‘And how would you have ignited the accelerant? By spitting on it?’

A roar of flame crowded out Zartath’s response as Exor put the barrels and the bodies to the torch. They watched the fire burn, the four of them, letting it warm their faces. Shadows were flickering across Agatone’s, the conflagration’s glow reflecting in his onyx-black skin.

‘He came looking for hell, and he found it,’ he whispered. ‘Tsu’gan is here. And he’s not looking for punishment, not any more. He wants redemption, not death. Against this cult, whoever or whatever they are, he may find both.’

‘Something changed those men into monsters,’ uttered Exor. ‘It wasn’t just will that drove them to damnation. The method by which they regenerated, the way their blood clotted and skin knitted back together… I have only seen that on one other life form.’

Agatone nodded, as Zartath stared into the flames.

They had come hunting for Tsu’gan and discovered he was engaged in a hunt of his own. And it was a particular quarry he was after.

Traitor Space Marines. The legionaries of Chaos had come to Molior.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Heletine, Canticus, Salvation Bridge

Dozer blades attached to the front of Zantho’s Predators shouldered aside the minor wreckage but not the heavier land-freighters and hauler-trams the heretics had used to block the road. Using their turret weapons would not clear them, either. If they managed anything more than a dent, they would only create more trammelling wreckage. Zantho was not accustomed to relying on others, no fire-born was, so he decided they would try to barge their way through.

‘Roll back,’ the tank commander ordered. ‘Push again.’ He was starting to regret holding the larger Redeemers in reserve, but nothing could help that now.

Small-arms fire from scattered pockets of enemy fighters was peppering Zantho’s position, but it was no more irritating than a persistent hail against his power armour. The various cannon nests dug in across the bridge and shored up in alcoves and on ledges high up on its Victory Arch were less easily dismissed.

Salvation Bridge was the single largest span leading into Canticus. It was almost four thousand metres long with six major arches and twelve minor arches stretching over its fifty-metre width. Heretics occupied the first third of that. Victory Arch was but the initial major arch across the bridge. That left at least one more major, and up to four minor arches, a total of over one thousand metres of hard, dug-in fighters. Tough did not begin to describe the task before Zantho.

And he needed to get through it. In the north, Kor’ad led a force that was moving into Canticus through its templum district and then on to its slums. A large disposition of heretic armour had been sighted moving through that region and an attack from the angle of the slums to the north and Salvation Bridge to the south would not only bracket the enemy armour, but also see it destroyed as a result. Any other outcome would leave one or the other force outgunned, outmatched and likely defeated. Smashing this armoured convoy was the key to gaining a foothold in the city, above and beyond the scraps of territory the Imperial alliance had so far achieved. And from that staging ground with the Adepta Sororitas as reinforcement, they could begin a meaningful invasion.

A major step was opening the ‘gate’ and releasing Zantho’s armour onto the bridge.

He winced when a las-beam came close, searing the side of his face with its passage of heat. High-calibre solid shot and heavy bolt-rounds followed it in withering storm, but the same wreckage that was impeding the armour group’s progress absorbed most of the impact. It was the lascannons that gave Zantho the greatest concern.

As soon as the beam flashed past, he opened up the vox-feed.

‘Storm bolters on that nest. Hose the whole damn thing down.’

The arches were riddled with alcoves and crawlspaces. Ledges, suspension wires and gantries clung to every surface. There was room enough for an entire army to bed in, if they so desired.

The pintle mounts on the Predators were already firing, and aimed up simultaneously to put pressure on the lascannon nest. It was firmly entrenched in the arch’s plascrete, surrounded by sandbags and wire-threaded crates. The brief salvo forced the gunners into retreat but failed to neutralise the threat.

Most of the Predators’ heavier cannon, the turret and sponson weapons, were ineffective until they could get beyond the barricades and effect some decent lines of fire. Zantho had forbidden the use of their more powerful turret weapons against the arches and the Vindicators did not have the range or potential missile trajectory. Salvation Bridge must stand if they were to cross and support Kor’ad’s push across the northern templum district. If even one of the four arches fell, the bridge would likely collapse with it. Stalled, boxed in, the greatest strengths of Zantho’s tanks were mitigated, their weaknesses enhanced.

It was an unenviable position outlined by the Nocturnean taking a solid hit to its front armour. A second split it open and struck the fuel tanks. The tank went up moments later, throwing shrapnel across the width of the bridge. Zantho ducked below the cupola, throwing the hatch closed as the resulting fire storm rolled over the remaining tanks.

‘As Vulkan bears witness,’ he roared down the vox. ‘Get this damn barricade down!’

They rolled forwards, engines growling in protest and were met by the sound of slamming steel and the continued frustration of not going anywhere fast.

More las-beams stabbed down from the nests. On the Victory Arch they looked like incandescent threads of light. One unstitched another of Zantho’s Predators. It took off the tank’s left tread leaving it floundering and useless trapped behind the barricade.

Back above the hatch, the fires were still burning. Strength of Xavier and Immortal Anvil had been next in the line to the sundered Nocturnean and bore the brunt of the frag and fire. Both were black as soot ash, their hulls jutting with pieces of shrapnel. Zantho had three lines left. Four Predator Annihilators and three Destructor-class in the first two lines, with two Vindicators at the back. As he appeared back above the cupola hatch, Zantho had a pair of magnoculars in hand and brought them up to his eyes. Scanning through the billowing smoke, he caught sight of one of Fourth’s Wyvern squads. They were fighting their way across the bridge.

Zantho smiled. ‘Vulkan be praised.’

Then he saw the shadow flash overhead, and made out through his scopes the underside of a Thunderhawk. The smile faded as he recognised the icon scored into the metal. A brazen eight-pointed star with an unblinking eye at its core. So far they had fought heretic insurgency fighters, mainly dregs with some Militarum-trained defectors. Well-armed, but more irritating than genuinely troubling. That all changed with sighting the gunship. It meant a different calibre of enemy had just entered the battlefield.

The Black Legion.

Iaptus and his combat squad were climbing all over Triumphal Arch, bursting into the traitor gun nests and digging them out by force. It was slow and painstaking, but the first half of the Wyverns went about their task methodically. The arch would be cleansed. Ahead of it was Victory Arch and the point closest to the Salamanders tank armour. That too would need to be cleared out before a breach on the gate could be attempted with any strong chance of success.

Though much of Salvation Bridge’s aesthetic beauty had been destroyed by the war, the bold arches still retained some of their artistry. Huge frescoes of prelates, cardinals and other ecclesiarchs stood alongside palatines and lord-commanders, one on either arm of the arch, soaring into the sky. Heletine was a world that could trace its lineage back to the Great Crusade. The men and women sculpted on these arches were its founders and leaders in ages past. It had weathered the Great War of Heresy, and endured. It was tragic then that with the invasion of the Arch-Traitor’s sons, that legacy could be nearing its end – unless the descendants of another primarch could prevent it.

Naeb craned his neck to take in the monolithic spectacle of the Victory Arch.

‘Vulkan’s blood…’

‘Afraid of heights now, little drake?’ asked Dersius.

‘No, brother. Only wary of you falling and hitting me on the way down,’ Naeb replied, and focused on the mission. ‘Two-man teams,’ he said. ‘We cover more ground. Who knows how many nests and lurkers are up there.’ He glanced at Va’lin. ‘Dersius and I. Va’lin and Ky’dak. East and west, respectively. Stop when you reach the summit.’

‘It’s dirty work,’ said Dersius.

‘Tell me when war is anything other,’ Va’lin replied, and Dersius nodded in agreement.

Ky’dak snorted his impatience, ‘Moving to engage,’ then boosted his engines. Va’lin had to hurry to keep pace. They veered to the west side of the arch as ordered, whilst Naeb and Dersius went east.

‘Try to keep up,’ Ky’dak said through the vox-feed. ‘Fall behind, I’ll leave you behind, brother.’

‘Look to your own part in this mission,’ Va’lin replied, gaining one of the lower ledges, ‘and I’ll look to mine.’ It was unoccupied, and he boosted his engines again quickly to stay on Ky’dak’s heels who was already soaring for the arch’s higher echelons.

‘I intend to.’

They hit the first nest together, surprising a four-man crew with a pair of autocannons. Upon forcing his way inside, Va’lin crushed one with his sheer bulk. Ky’dak despatched the other three with short stabs of his gladius.

Above them a second battery of gunners had spotted the incursion and were rapidly trying to uncouple a heavy bolter from its mountings so they could aim it at the Salamanders. Va’lin sent a six-metre jet of flame into their alcove and three fire-blackened figures plummeted from the nest screaming.

‘Burn little heretics,’ Ky’dak laughed.

Va’lin ignored him, focusing instead on the other gun nests.

‘I count fourteen.’

‘Agreed,’ Ky’dak replied. ‘Four are harbouring snipers.’ He pointed so Va’lin could also pick out the grainy light haze from their targeters.

The second nest went down bloody with Ky’dak going in aggressively again. By the time they had reached the third, any advantage surprise had given them was over as the gunners split their fire between the tanks held up at the barricade and the warriors assaulting them from below.

‘Need to move,’ said Va’lin, boosting ahead of Ky’dak who had paused to finish off the last group of gunners. As he crested the next sunken nest, Va’lin heard the sharp whine of sniper shot whistle by his head. He caught a round in the leg, but his armour took off any sting. It slowed him incrementally, though, and he was still readjusting when he entered the fourth nest. It was larger than the others so far, a host of five heavy cannon present, and well-defended. As he moved on the first, he noticed one of the heretics come barrelling over a low wall of sandbags. Va’lin turned his flamer on him – he could take out all five cannons with a single burst – when he saw the grenade in the man’s clenched fist. He never got a chance to throw it, but the grenade went off anyway as did the bandolier of frags around his chest.

The explosion smashed into Va’lin’s chest, so hard it kicked him back and took him over the edge of the nest. For a few seconds he was falling, until Ky’dak grabbed his wrist and hauled him back.

‘Up, brother,’ he said, and there was a hint of a smile in his voice.

The gunners in the nest were all dead, burned to death by Va’lin’s flamer or blown apart when the grenades had cooked off.

‘Let’s waste no further time then,’ Va’lin snapped, locking a firing ledge in his sights and surging for it.

As he was about to hit the ledge, he caught sight of Naeb on the far side of the arch. He was clinging to a buttress jutting from an ornate column fashioned into the arch, and activating the vox.

‘Black Legion!’

Va’lin followed his gaze to the sky where, through roiling clouds of smoke, he saw the outline of two gunships emblazoned with the eye of Horus.

‘Ky’dak…’ Va’lin began, about to engage until he found the firing ledge empty.

The other Salamander joined him.

‘Strafing run?’ asked Ky’dak staring upwards at the passing ships.

‘Too high,’ said Va’lin. ‘And looks too slow for–’ he stopped when he saw something fall from one of the gunship’s cargo doors. Too large to be a missile, too anthropomorphic for something so lifeless. A form spiralled in freefall from the gaping hatch. To be precise, there were three forms. Three from each gunship.

They plummeted. Six dark shapes in total that resolved into warriors, their arms outstretched.

‘Not a strafe,’ Va’lin confirmed, watching the two enemy gunships peel off into the upper atmosphere before they attracted the attention of the nimbler Salamanders Stormtalons. ‘Reinforcements.’

‘They’ll die,’ said Ky’dak, but reloaded his bolt pistol and took aim at one anyway.

‘Save your ammunition, you’ll never hit it from this range.’ Va’lin shook his head, ‘No they won’t. That’s Tactical Dreadnought Armour.’

Terminators. Of the self-same creed and kin as the monster who had butchered Sor’ad and almost killed Va’lin and Ky’dak. Other than its champions, the Black Legion had no deadlier warriors and six of them were hurtling towards Salvation Bridge.

Va’lin turned his attention back to the barricade and Zantho. ‘We need those tanks out here now. They’re about the only thing that’ll cut through those warriors.’ He opened the vox-feed to Iaptus. ‘Brother-sergeant, are you seeing what we are?’

‘Heretics falling from the sky, brother. Yes, we see it. Disengage and head for Zantho. The gate opens now or not at all. Regroup on my marker.’

Iaptus cut the feed, leaving Va’lin to inform his brothers.

‘Naeb…’ he began, but was too late. Naeb and Dersius were almost at the summit of Victory Arch when two of the heavily armoured forms slammed down right in their midst.

The Terminators used their claws and fingers to grip the arch, tearing deep drag marks in the stone. Using the furrows like handholds, they proceeded to climb.

‘I see them, Va’lin.’ Naeb sounded pained, feeling his injury again.

‘Disengage, brother,’ Va’lin urged. ‘We can face them together on the ground.’

‘We’re pinned, Va’lin. Between the nests and these two, we would never make it down in one piece. You and Ky’dak have to take the gate with Iaptus as ordered.’ He cut the feed.

Another Terminator landed on the bridge after clambering down one of the minor arches. He was already priming a cannon slung under one arm. Two more hit the opposite side of Victory. The sixth missed its target and smashed straight into the road, splitting a freight-loader in half and carving a large crater into the rockcrete with the impact.

Va’lin was about to launch, when Ky’dak gripped his wrist.

‘What are you doing?’ Va’lin asked sharply.

‘What are you doing, brother? Naeb and Dersius are good as dead facing off against those things alone.’

‘I won’t disobey a direct order.’

‘I won’t leave two of our squad to die.’

‘What do you care about the squad, Themian? You fight as if you’re alone, heedless of squad cohesion and regard for others.’

‘We avenged Sor’ad. I don’t want to have to avenge Naeb and Dersius as well.’

Va’lin swore, before re-opening the feed.

‘Sergeant Iaptus. We cannot join you on the ground.’

‘Cannot? It’s an order, Va’lin. I am not giving you a choice.’

‘I can’t leave the rest of my squad, sergeant.’

‘We are also your squad, brother.’

‘That said, I cannot abandon Naeb and Dersius. Vulkan be with you, brother-sergeant.’ The link died and so did any standing Va’lin might have had with Iaptus. ‘I never wanted advancement, anyway.’

Ky’dak shook his head. ‘Neither did I.’

Together, they boosted for the east side of Victory Arch.

From his vantage point of his cupola hatch, Zantho saw one half of the Wyverns break off, headed for the barricade, whilst the other remained to take on the recently deployed Black Legion. The heretics infesting the two major arches were far from neutralised. It was a gauntlet from Victory to the edge of the barricade, threaded with solid shot and las-fire. As soon as the enemy saw what the Wyverns were attempting, they would be the focus of every cannon that had range and line of fire.

Zantho saw it for what it was: a suicide run. His fellow sergeant knew it and wanted to improve the odds of getting enough bodies to the barricade to make a difference. With half his squad cut out, selling their lives cheaply against the Terminators, those odds had just been slashed drastically.

‘Iaptus, you fool…’

Zantho ordered all secondary weapons on the arch to strafe and suppress, but even with twice the number of guns he knew it would not be enough.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Heletine, Canticus, Salvation Bridge

Iaptus was furious. He boosted beneath the towering Victory Arch with all haste, intent on reaching the barricade and fully aware of the storm that was about to come down on them. It began ahead of schedule as the Terminator on the ground opened up with his reaper.

‘Evade and into cover!’ he bellowed, as the distant muzzle flare roared.

The combat squad slammed down roughly fifty metres beyond the arch, hunkered down behind a clutch of drums and a wrecked loader. Solid shot stitched the metal, threatening to bore a hole right through it, as the Terminator fired and advanced.

From above, las-beams cracked against the road behind them. An errant missile from a hand-held rocket tube spun away to the left and exploded, its firer blown apart by a bolt round.

Arrok switched targets and released another burst. Vo’sha and Illus had joined him at rearguard as the five Salamanders formed a loose, protective circle.

‘We can’t sit here for long, brother-sergeant,’ Xerus reminded Iaptus unnecessarily.

‘I don’t plan to, brother.’ Peeking through a gap in the wreckage, Iaptus caught sight of the Terminator. He was advancing up the road, his sustained barrage on pause whilst he slammed a fresh clip in the reaper’s stock. Barely visible through the smoke, a second Terminator was slowly dragging itself out of a crater a few metres behind the first.

‘Outflank and engage,’ Iaptus told Xerus. He held up two fingers, indicating the number of targets.

Xerus nodded and peeled away, prompting the autocannon to start up again as soon as he was airborne. Iaptus did not wait. He boosted straight forwards, clearing the wreckage with a single bound and landing a few metres away from the reaper-armed Terminator. Caught between two potential targets, the Terminator started to back up, spreading his arc of fire as he moved.

His companion was on his feet, advancing rather than retreating, and swinging a crackling power axe. Xerus hit him with a bolt from his plasma pistol but took a few rounds in the chest from the autocannon in return. The soaring Wyvern veteran was unceremoniously plucked from the sky and sent earthward where he rolled and scraped across the ground.

Illus was at Iaptus’s back; he saw the battle-brother’s icon on his retinal display. Arrok and Vo’sha were on Xerus.

This was an ambitious plan, Iaptus realised, attempting to run a gauntlet of heavy guns whilst simultaneously taking on two Black Legion elite. But he was committed now, and so would see it through to whatever end.

Iaptus led with his shield, taking a desultory salvo from the reaper before his enemy was forced to disengage so his close combat-armed comrade could wade in. Iaptus tried to barge him, using the momentum of his jump, but the massive warrior just shrugged it off and threw him across the roadway.

Illus took over, landing just in front of the Terminator as Iaptus skittered half on his knees, digging the head of his thunder hammer into the rockcrete to slow himself down. The other Wyvern managed two swings before the Terminator severed his left arm and then took his head. Illus was falling back, neck gouting blood, as Iaptus squeezed a little thrust from his jump pack to smash into the Terminator from the side. This time his enemy was distracted, and staggered against the blow. Iaptus took the warrior’s return swipe against his shield, and saw the power axe’s blade chip the edge. Pressure building, Iaptus punched with the thunder hammer’s head and broke the Terminator’s armoured hip. As he sagged with the loss of support on one side, Iaptus hit the warrior again, this time across the shoulder. A burst of energy was unleashed with the blow, and the Terminator roared in agony as his face and torso were fried. He had enough time for one final wild swing, before Iaptus caved in his helm and skull.

Sparing no thought for Illus, Iaptus reengaged his turbine engines. Fire spewed from the twin jets, the dragon mouths venting their fury and carrying the sergeant across the open ground to the overhang of broken vehicles where the rest of his squad took cover.

Xerus was alive but so was the other Terminator, though it had been forced back and wide by the sudden assault, and resumed hammering against their meagre shelter with the reaper.

‘We should advance. Can’t stay pinned here,’ said Xerus. His armour was pitted and scored from where the autocannon shells had hit him.

‘Agreed,’ said Arrok.

Iaptus had his eyes on the road ahead. A hail of gunfire was chewing it to pieces. It would chew them to pieces as well. They had scarcely progressed a hundred metres. Surprise was no longer an asset at the Wyverns’ disposal, and now the enemy knew where they were, the threat they posed and that they were pinned down by one of their dark lords.

‘We aren’t getting through that.’

Xerus sounded grim. ‘What are your orders, brother-sergeant?’

‘Fall back to the arch and regroup.’ Iaptus opened the vox. He had to tell Zantho. ‘Brother,’ he began, his voice heavy with the sound of bitter defeat and grief for Illus, ‘we won’t be able to breach that vehicle blockade.’

‘Armour is moving,’ Zantho returned, and Iaptus could hear the grind of tanks and the dull report of their turret weapons behind the other sergeant’s words.

‘What?’

From their vantage point, pinned down beneath the overhang of wrecked vehicles, Iaptus and the others could not see the barricade but according to Zantho it was open.

‘Our angelic Sisters obliged us.’

And now Iaptus saw it… saw them.

They were like angels, rising on wings of fluted steel, their black armour shining with reflected firelight. Serephim.

They brought fire of their own. It burned down heretics in swathes. The black armoured angels landed amongst them like a flock of murderous ravens, hacking and cleaving with their blades. Death screams, even the crash of bolt weapons and chainblades was rapidly eclipsed by a growing swell of bellowed prayer.

Behind him, Iaptus heard two distinct heavy impacts as a pair of Terminators hit the ground.

‘Eye to eye, brother-sergeant,’ said Xerus.

Iaptus nodded, ‘Use your speed and manoeuvrability. Do not get pinned down and do not try to take these warriors on alone. They’ll kill you. It’s that simple.’

Message delivered and understood, Iaptus led them out. They would engage the Black Legion and then join up with the chorus of Seraphim sweeping across Salvation Bridge. Never before had it seemed so aptly named as in that moment. Behind the Seraphim, Zantho’s tanks crushed the lesser barricades underfoot. The vehicles were all ablaze, the lurkers within who had been carrying incendiary devices and other explosive armaments burning with them. A mass crematoria of the damned, a fitting end for traitors.

Dersius and Ky’dak held off the Terminator’s chainblade as the traitor tried to force it into Dersius’s face. Clinging to the arch with one gauntleted hand, the Terminator fought both Salamanders to a stand-still. His strength and brutality were almost overwhelming. Chainteeth ground against one another, releasing fits of sparks. Already damaged, Ky’dak’s weapon was proving unequal to the task and as the Terminator pushed hard, the rotating belt snapped and the teeth exploded from the Salamander’s weapon. Several embedded in the armour of all three combatants. One struck Ky’dak near the eye, shattering his left retinal lens. The helmet had only recently been repaired but the gouge was deep enough that it would require major work to restore again. That only mattered, of course, if Ky’dak still had a head to put it on. The impact threw him back, almost off the arch itself, and crucially left Dersius to fight alone.

Ky’dak had been right. Their brothers would be dead if not for his and Va’lin’s intervention. Despite their disadvantage, the Black Legion warriors had enclosed the exposed Assault Marines quickly, lurching hand over hand across the face of Victory Arch and making fresh handholds with their immense fists. They practically simmered with corruption, both warriors exuding a dark aura as palpable and real as the squalls of smoke rising up into the air around them.

The first was armoured head to toe. Curling tusks protruded from his faceplate and helm, which was shaped in the aspect of a ram. A soaring crest of lurid pink hair, its provenance likely human, arced from his brow to the nape of his neck. The other one was bareheaded with the broad, oddly symmetrical features common to most transhumans. His expression was almost obscenely benign in a face that exceeded the usual conventions that would regard it as ‘handsome’. The warrior was, in many ways, beautiful but it was a physical perfection born of Chaos and therefore wholly repellent. Disparate in appearance, both Black Legionnaires were united in their cause of destroying the Salamanders within their reach.

Chased by weapons fire, tracked by the tracer rounds of the deeply embedded snipers, Naeb and Dersius had found themselves back to back in one of the alcoves they had cleared, effectively pinned. Ky’dak had gone in hard, surging upwards from below on thick bursts of flame from his jump pack. His initial impact and impetus had staggered the ‘handsome’ Terminator, allowing Va’lin to find an opening. The Salamanders, however, were still boxed in, trapped in the empty gun nest and on the defensive.

Va’lin ducked a savage blow that would have taken off his head had he been any slower, and shot back with his bolt pistol. At such extreme close range, the flamer would do more damage to the Salamanders than the traitors, so he had switched to his sidearm. So far, the effect of his rounds had been negligible. In tandem, Naeb landed a solid hit with his chainsword against the monstrous Terminator’s breastplate but only managed to chew metal and further blunt the teeth of his weapon.

Behind him, Dersius roared with effort. The Themian was big, almost as big as Ba’ken, and clutched his chainsword two-handed, but the ram-headed warrior was incredibly strong and the battle was a losing one for the Salamander. Ky’dak was dazed, blinking the blood out of his eye and thanking the Throne he was not blind in it. He struggled to his feet, lurching unsteadily on the ledge on which they duelled. The heretic had managed to get one of his massive armoured feet onto the ledge and was using the extra purchase to lever more pressure onto Dersius.

‘Brothers…’ Dersius was in trouble. He had been forced down onto one knee, his enemy now bearing down on him.

‘Glory…’ whispered the handsome killer. His voice was like music, but the symphony was cloying and strangely discordant. Ky’dak struck him like a bullet, full-blooded and impelled by his jump pack on maximum burn. The backwash of heat and fire flooded the already scoured nest. It spilled over Va’lin and Naeb too. Rockcrete split apart at the point of attachment between Victory Arch and the traitor’s clenched fist. He still held a chunk of it as Ky’dak barged him off the structure and was borne down with him to the roadway below.

Va’lin clenched his teeth as the blazing promethium fire coursed over him. Ceramite was primarily designed to be flame-retardant and his power armour offered some protection, but he was not of Nocturnean blood like Naeb, so it still burned. It burned through the joints and the minute fissures. It burned with the sting of rapidly heated metal and seared mesh against his skin. He would have screamed but he did not want to give his enemy the satisfaction of knowing he was hurt.

Naeb recovered fastest from the flames. He aimed a thrust that skidded off the ram-headed warrior’s chestplate but bit through where two sections of his armour joined and released a thin gout of blood.

Now, the Terminator screamed or rather, roared. He smashed Naeb onto his back, opening up the Salamander’s wound but also overextending his reach. For a moment he poised to cleave down on Va’lin until the Wyvern shot the rockcrete he clung to and sent him flailing. Ram-head clawed as he fell, trying to find fresh purchase. Dersius had recovered and launched from the nest, small-arms fire from the lesser heretics cracking all around him.

‘Naeb,’ said Va’lin. He turned around, trying to see if his brother was badly hurt.

Naeb struggled back up and waved him on. ‘Go after him. I’ll follow Ky’dak. If we land through this sket storm and still have all our limbs, it will be a miracle, brother. If we die, I would rather go out on jets of flame as a Wyvern.’

Va’lin was only half listening. He stared towards the entrance of Salvation Bridge, where Zantho’s tanks had floundered. Only now they were moving, and in force. The streamers of gunfire hailing up at them had lessened considerably.

‘Miracle, you said?’ said Va’lin as dozens of glorious Seraphim soared like black angels out of the sky.

Stephina led forty of her Sisters, soaring at the head of a Seraphim chorus. The bridge was thick with smoke from weapons discharge and rampant fires, but her battle-helm filtered out the worst of it and improved target acquisition.

Hordes of traitors were scurrying across the bridge, a ragged force of cultists and Imperial deserters. The sight of them sickened Stephina to her stomach. How easily man turned from the light of the Throne when the dark gods made promise. She wanted to personally smite every heretical one of them but had to satisfy her desire for righteous punishment vicariously through Sister Helia and her squad of ‘Exculpators’. It was an ironic cognomen. There was no forgiveness for these wretches, only death.

Helia’s warriors went about their duty with hand flamers, sending bright bursts of purging fire through the heretic ranks. As their growing conflagration soared, so too did Helia’s and the Exculpator’s voices, prayer and punishment as one.

‘Sister Avensi, Helia’s flock have cleansed the path,’ uttered Stephina across the vox-link. ‘Show our heathen brothers to the light.’ At her order, a second squad of Seraphim broke off from the chorus and landed on the roadway at the edge of the heretics’ barricade.

Stephina lost sight of Avensi and her ‘Shrivers’ soon after that, but knew her orders would be carried out to the fullest. She had to spearhead the remaining twenty Seraphim, Cassia’s ‘Sanctifiers’ and her own ‘Archangels’, and reinforce the stricken Adeptus Astartes fighting on the bridge.

Despite their obvious tribalism, their rough and brutal nature, Stephina found she admired the Salamanders in that moment. From the ritual she had witnessed out on the ridge overlooking the ruins, she had supposed theirs to be a base culture, one with little in common to the Imperial Creed but they fought with courage. She wondered then, as she drew blade and plasma pistol, if the Order had perhaps misjudged them. Simultaneously, she experienced a wellspring of guilt fount up within her.

‘My Sister,’ came Avensi’s voice across the vox-link, ‘the breach is made. We have begun a flood of wrath to wash away these traitors!’

The ‘Shrivers’ melta bombs had done their work. Now the Salamanders fighting on the bridge had tanks as well as avenging angels in support. Even with her Seraphim’s intervention but a few minutes old, Stephina could see the fight was over. There were just a handful of warriors left who would not die without a struggle.

‘Return your flock to the chorus, Sister. There is yet more corruption to be purged.’

The targeting reticule in the retinal lens of Stephina’s helmet focused and locked on one of the hulking, black-armoured warriors on the bridge. It was slaved to her plasma pistol. Building up a full charge, she fired off a bolt just as she was coming in to land.

Va’lin watched the ram-headed Terminator force his way through a wall of flame. Most warriors would have withered under the super-heated burst, but the heretic strode against it as if it were merely a strong gust of wind.

‘Dersius!’ Va’lin cried, and saw the Themian in his peripheral vision begin to rise from where the Terminator’s first blow had sent him sprawling.

‘We can’t kill him this way, Va’lin.’ Dersius used the vox, the intensity of the battle too loud to converse without it now.

‘We don’t have to,’ Va’lin replied.

The Seraphim came to earth in a vast, heavenly host. Their leader hit the ground first, firing off an incandescent bolt of energy moments before landing. Ionised plasma tore a scorched rent in the Terminator’s war-helm, ripping off a tusk and exposing his snarling face beneath. On fire, he advanced on the Seraphim but she was already darting away from the warrior’s enraged charge and unleashing another bolt. This one struck the gorget, and blew out part of the Terminator’s neck. Ram-head did not waste time trying to staunch the bleeding – instead he fired off a stream of rounds with his combi-bolter, spitting fury at his enemies in an old, dark language.

Va’lin’s flamer had run empty. Without time to reload a fresh canister, he drew his gladius and ran at the Terminator. Now, while the traitor was still reeling, there was only this chance. Pulling his sustained salvo in a wider arc, the ram-headed warrior tried to hit both the Salamander and the Seraphim at once. Va’lin took a round on his shoulder guard. It staggered him, but he kept on moving. His gladius locked with the sarissa bayonet on the Terminator’s gun. He fired twice with his bolt pistol, both point-blank bursts that raked the warrior’s chest and face, but the traitor turned the damaged aspect of his war-helm aside to weather the bolt storm against his near-inviolable armour. He was about to bring his chainblade around when Dersius rushed in and slammed his own weapon up against it. Even two against one, the Salamanders strained against the massive warrior. Servos grinding like screams, the traitor slowly bore his opponents down and forced them onto their knees. He was gloating, his laughter half heard through his vox-grille and the tear in his helm. His breath was sickly like overripe fruit.

Seeing her opening, the Seraphim leapt forwards in close quarters having dodged the earlier bolter salvo and slashed her powerblade straight through the Terminator’s broken gorget, taking neck, head and all. The wound cauterised instantly, though the traitor did stagger for a few seconds before his body realised it was dead and collapsed.

It was over: the traitor Terminators were done. Seeing her Sisters had no need of her, the Seraphim bowed to one knee as she murmured a prayer to the Emperor.

‘Vulkan’s blood…’ Dersius swore, an eye on the angelic Sister as he caught his breath.

Va’lin nodded, glad to be alive. ‘You sound tired, old man.’

Dersius glared at him. ‘Older drakes are the most dangerous.’

‘And disagreeable.’

‘Aye, that too.’

Freed from the prospect of imminent death, Va’lin was able to take in his surroundings beyond the duel with the now dead ram-headed warrior. An entire squad of Seraphim were gunning another of the Black Legionnaires down. Several of the angelic warriors lay dead, but it only served to enhance the fervour of those still standing. Ky’dak and Naeb lived, the Themian holding the Epimethian up whilst the Seraphim harassed the other enemy warrior to the edge of the bridge and eventually over it. A traitor gunship returned to evacuate what was left. By now, Zantho’s battle tanks had smashed their way through the smaller debris littering Salvation Bridge and were in range with their turret weapons. It took a few hits, but the gunship managed to take off and speared up into the covering smoke, battered but airborne.

Much like the earlier battle in Canticus, the lesser heretic dregs were hounded and destroyed. Some pitched off the bridge after their Black Legion master but would not survive the fall. Others tried to fight, as would a feral beast when dying and cornered. None surrendered.

When they heard the rumble of battle tanks behind them, Va’lin and Dersius moved aside, one to either flank. Zantho was up in the cupola hatch and saluted down at them both as he rode past, now headed for Canticus north and the link up with Kor’ad.

Split from his battle-brothers while the armour column drove by, Va’lin found himself on the same side of the bridge as the Seraphim. When she had finished praying, he offered his open hand to her.

‘Your intervention was timely, Sister. You have mine and my brothers’ thanks.’

She at first looked at Va’lin’s gauntleted hand like it was a viper poised to bite her.

‘I have no diseases,’ said Va’lin, but it appeared his attempt at humour was misplaced for the Seraphim did not even smile. ‘Not that I know of, at least.’

After a few more seconds she simply stared.

When he realised the Sister had no idea what she was supposed to do, Va’lin gripped his own forearm by way of demonstration.

‘Like this,’ he told her.

Understanding, she reciprocated and they greeted one another in the way of warriors.

‘This is the old way,’ Va’lin explained. ‘We are taught it is from the days of the Legion.’

‘By whom?’ asked the Sister, her manner still a little prickly and over-stern. She was genuinely curious, though.

‘Our Chaplains, the keepers of our Chapter’s history and ancient lore.’

‘Do they teach you to burn your bodies in supplication to the dead, also?’

Va’lin cocked his head to the side a fraction and saw the Sister had revealed more of what she knew than she had intended. She had witnessed Sor’ad’s cremation, the Circle of Fire ritual, so must have been watching them in secret. Seeing no benefit in calling her out, Va’lin decided to let it go.

‘You do not trust easily, do you?’ he asked, releasing his grip so he could remove his helmet. ‘I am Brother Va’lin.’

Still unsure of the protocol, the Seraphim removed her own battle-helm.

She was younger than he had expected, and more beautiful. A compassion in her eyes undercut her more obvious zealotry and in that moment Va’lin believed a genuine accord between the Order and the Chapter could be possible.

‘Sister Stephina,’ she told him.

‘You were at the council, one of the canoness’s officers.’

‘I am Preceptor Angerer’s devoted disciple, yes.’ An awkward silence descended, and Stephina looked around at the carnage. The end of the armoured column was in sight and soon they would be back with their respective warriors again.

‘So few of you,’ she said. ‘To take this bridge – you needed more warriors. Only nine…’

‘And now we are eight,’ interrupted another voice.

Va’lin saluted Iaptus immediately. The brother-sergeant approached in an open manner but gave nothing away of his true feelings, despite the fact he too had removed his helm.

‘You have the gratitude of the Wyverns and our Chapter, Sister.’ He did spare a sideways glance in Va’lin’s direction, which promised a reckoning later.

‘Your… brother has already given it,’ Stephina replied. ‘To attempt such a task with so few. I do not know if it is reckless bravery or simple stupidity that drives you.’

The tanks had passed; Stephina’s Seraphim were waiting. She nodded, without needing an answer and boosted up and across the bridge to rejoin her forces, leaving Va’lin and Iaptus alone.

‘Illus is dead,’ Iaptus began before Va’lin could speak.

‘Brother-sergeant, I–’

Iaptus held up his hand to stop Va’lin short. ‘He was slain by Black Legion, enemy warriors we owe a great debt of blood.’ He looked over at the distant form of Sister Stephina. She was gathering her flock, doubtless calling in for extraction. ‘She is right. We are too few, and have been for several weeks. But we also have our duty, the one given to us by Captain Drakgaard. He is not Dac’tyr, he is not Fourth, but he is our general in this war and so we will heed his orders as if they were Vulkan’s himself. And you will heed my orders, Va’lin. Two of our brothers live. One does not. I don’t have the prescience of Librarian Xarko, so I cannot say if the outcome would have been different had you not defied me, but I do know it will not happen a second time.’ He leaned in closer, enhancing his threat and presence. ‘Were we not on the frontline and needed elsewhere, every one of our few, I would have submitted you to Chaplain Elysius for punishment. Some say he has grown soft since he returned from capture, but believe me when I tell you his wrath is undiminished.’

Va’lin bowed his head, ‘Yes, brother-sergeant.’

The heat of Iaptus’s barely contained anger lingered and was slow to fade.

‘Don’t make me brand you with the penitent’s mark, Va’lin. Show me again why you are part of the Wyverns, why Captain Ba’ken and Sergeant Lok recommended you so highly.’

‘I will, brother-sergeant.’

Iaptus held his gaze a moment longer. For Va’lin it was like staring into the mouth of a furnace.

‘I know you will, brother.’

Exfiltration would be momentary. Stephina had called in their transport and was informed it was en route to them at Salvation Bridge. The Seraphim would not join the Salamanders at the heart of Canticus north – they were to redeploy with their Order. According to the plan discussed during the council, they would act as a reserve force for an Adeptus Astartes and an allied Imperial spearhead. The memory of Canoness Angerer’s redeployments returned and for a fleeting second Stephina wondered at their sagacity. She remonstrated herself for her doubt almost instantly, forcing her attention to the present and her Throne-given duty.

Helia, Avensi and Cassia all lived. Several of the chorus did not, having given their lives in service of the Emperor. Would that all Adepta Sororitas could be martyred in such glorious cause. It was that Stephina ever hoped for, that and a holy vision of their saint.

‘Four dead,’ announced Cassia gruffly. Her right eye had a patch over it that concealed the empty socket beneath but not the grievous scarring around it she had carried since the war against the tyranid on Gethseda. Her black armour was flecked with blood, her chainsword bearing the grim evidence of her kills.

‘They are at His side now,’ said Avensi, and muttered a quiet prayer for her Sisters’ souls. Avensi was a zealot, and wore her hair shaved almost to the scalp with votive tattoos inked onto her pate. Whilst she and Cassia offered up their thoughts to the dead, Helia approached Stephina with something else on her mind.

‘What were they like, Sister?’ she asked. Unlike the others, Helia was without scarification or devotional mutilation. Her hair was almost pure white, cropped to her shoulders. It reminded Stephina of chiselled alabaster, for like Helia’s face, it was edged and cut like stone.

‘Who?’ asked Stephina, her eyes searching the horizon for the gunships that would ferry them from the battlefield and back to the Order.

‘The heathens,’ answered Helia, and gestured to the Salamanders. ‘I hear they call themselves fire-born?’

All four Sister Superiors turned to regard the Adeptus Astartes.

‘Unexpected,’ said Stephina, looking back.

Cassia nodded, as if catching on to Stephina’s meaning. ‘They fight hard and with courage. Any warrior who will shed his or her blood alongside me and stand, I regard as an ally.’

‘Their practices, though, are… barbaric,’ said Avensi.

‘What did he say to you, Sister?’ asked Helia.

‘He told me he had no diseases before greeting me in the old way of his Legion.’ Confused silence followed her remarks, so Stephina continued. ‘He also said we do not trust easily, and in that he was right at least.’

‘Well they have earned my allegiance, Sisters,’ declared Cassia. ‘Such brave warriors.’

‘But so few,’ said Stephina, donning her helmet as she looked to the sky where the sound of approaching gunships could be heard.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Heletine, Canticus southern district, ‘the Cairns’

So named for the immense stone pillars beneath which were the burial mounds of saints, ecclesiarchs and palatines, the Cairns had ever been a place of solemnity in Canticus. That sense of reverence had been shattered with the arrival of war, and the Cairns was no longer a place of peace anymore. It was a vast area, deep into the southern district and far beyond the fragile territory the Imperials had established with their previous victory.

Surrounded by his honour guard, the Serpentia, and standing amidst these ruins, Drakgaard regarded a holo-map of the region.

‘What do you see, Elysius?’ he asked his Chaplain.

The grey image rotated slowly, hazing in and out of focus as it completed each revolution. It showed contours, structures, even a degree of geological depth. The various reliquaries, tombs and votive shrines Canoness Angerer had described were visible as darker areas on the map, representing fissures and subterranean undercrofts. Some were very deep, and the trail of relic sites went for long periods without interruption.

‘I see a world beneath a world, brother-captain,’ said the Chaplain. ‘Hidden from our sight.’

Word had come back from several of the other battle groups operating within Canticus. The assault on Salvation Bridge had been successful, thanks in no small part to some of Angerer’s Seraphim. In the templum district and adjacent slums, Kor’ad had conducted a successful bombing campaign to link up with Sergeant Zantho’s armoured column. Enemy resistance was staunch but ultimately overcome. Combined, it was the single largest territorial gain the Salamanders had made since arriving on Heletine.

‘Here, though?’ asked Drakgaard. ‘The war rests on this city alone. Victory in Canticus means victory on all of Heletine. I need to understand why that is.’

‘Perhaps the canoness is right,’ offered Elysius. ‘Some ritual significance has drawn the warlord of the Black Legion to the city. By thwarting these plans and killing him, we break his warband and free Heletine of this tyranny. It matters not, brother-captain. All that matters is we prosecute this duty to its bitter conclusion and make the lives lost in payment of it worth something.’

By turning his wrist, Drakgaard altered the bare topographical view and brought up a tactical overlay displaying the current disposition of his forces throughout the Cairns. Such a large region demanded a wide dispersal and Drakgaard had split what remained of his troops and the Cadian survivors into two distinct battle groups. Eighteen pillars, or ‘Cairns’, soared into the smoke-choked air above Canticus. Occasionally, when a strong wind briefly swept away this red-grey miasma, the summits were visible without need of spectral magnification. Seven of the eighteen still had the statues of the pious individuals whose bones were allegedly buried beneath them, along with a swathe of lesser faithful, too numerous and unimportant to mention beyond an engraving on a votive plaque at the base of the pillar.

According to its now scattered population, the pillars were believed to ‘uphold the roof of heaven’ and should they ever fall, the very firmament above Heletine would collapse. Drakgaard wondered if there was any truth to that. Were the heretics attempting to sunder the pillars? Was there a weakening of the veil between reality and the warp in this place, and would this act of destruction bring about a rift between them? Drakgaard was no psyker. His knowledge of such metaphysics, while far superior to the average citizen of the Imperium, was crude compared to the likes of a Chapter Librarian. He knew the pillars were immense in size and despite the war all had endured so far. Perhaps the heretics sought to use other, non-corporeal means to collapse them? Certainly, he had heard of great temples that had stood for millennia crumbling inexplicably when their spiritual link to the Emperor was severed. It would explain the targeted destruction of the relic sites as well as the Adepta Sororitas’s presence on Heletine.

All of the eighteen adhered to a pattern, forming an octakaidecagon with nine pillars each on either side of the Sanctium Vius, or ‘holy road’, a long and expansive processional avenue that ran all the way from the Cairns to the Veloth desert in the east.

Drakgaard’s two battle groups, led by himself and Veteran Sergeant Kadoran, were arrayed either side of this processional, deep into the labyrinthine avenues and sprawling habitation towers that riddled the area. It was tight, fraught with dead ends, choke points and blind zones. In short, it was dangerous territory and likely occupied in some force. Unfortunately that enemy was also currently in hiding. Fortunately, Drakgaard had the means to seek them out, from whatever rock they had crawled under.

‘Targons,’ he addressed a squad of five fire-born clad in hulking Centurion armour. The Targons were borrowed from Fourth Company, nominally the heavier class of Assault Marine compared to the lighter and faster Wyverns. Each armature or rig was equipped with siege drills on both arms, and underslung heavy flamers. Unlike his men, Sergeant Bar’dak’s rig was equipped with meltas instead. All five Targons were armed with hurricane bolters, fitted to the torso. Essentially individual warsuits, the Centurions were effectively worn by the Assault Marines who simply stepped into the up-armoured rig in full battleplate.

At the sound of Captain Drakgaard’s voice, Brother-Sergeant Bar’dak turned. He was slow to do so, the warsuit pilot sacrificing speed and manoeuvrability for superior offensive and defensive capabilities.

‘You are the vanguard, brother-sergeant,’ said Drakgaard, clenching his fist to shut off the hololith. ‘Take us in.’

Bar’dak led the line of warsuits out. Within minutes, their armoured forms were lost amidst smoke and dust. Only the sound of their heavy footfalls as they stomped through the rubble gave away the fact of their existence.

Drakgaard had his Serpentia honour guard and a tactical squad moving up in support. He switched his retinal lens display to tactical view and saw a truncated schematic of the terrain and his units advancing through it rendered as icons over his left eye. He opened up the vox-link.

‘Captain Helfer, you are to stay behind us with the Devastators until we breach this area proper.’

‘Understood, my lord,’ came the swift reply. Helfer was the leader of four squads of elite Kasrkins. They wore heavier armour than Colonel Redgage’s regular troopers and carried rebreather masks along with an array of specialist assault weaponry and hellguns, an enhanced version of the lasgun. Hellguns enjoyed improved armour penetration capability over their standard-issue counterpart, but even with this augmentation they were no match for power armour. Ordinarily cast as storm troopers, the Kasrkins were reduced to a support role until the Targons could establish the level of enemy resistance and root it out. Drakgaard had assured Redgage he would not use his men as bait, or treat their lives cheaply. Against Traitor Space Marines, the Kasrkin were at a disadvantage. Drakgaard wanted to mitigate that first before deploying into the Canticus war zone.

An icon associated with the second battle group flashed up on Drakgaard’s right lens display, rendered in luminous crimson over a transparent background tinged the same only lighter. Veteran Sergeant Kadoran had just given notification of simultaneous deployment of his own troops. As of yet, there was no word from Canoness Angerer. Drakgaard was about to try to raise her on the vox when a final marker blinked up on his display below the first.

‘Sisters are moving in behind us,’ he voxed to Elysius alone. ‘Angerer left it late for confirmation.’

The Chaplain had joined the Serpentia as part of Drakgaard’s command squad.

‘She is still unhappy that you insisted on us going in first.’

‘It is our right,’ Drakgaard replied. ‘I won’t have the glory of this victory stolen from under us by the Ecclesiarchy.’

‘Glory? Is that why we are here, brother-captain?’

‘Now is not the time to try and peer into my immortal soul, Chaplain.’

‘Just so long as you are clear why we are fighting this war.’

‘It is our duty, Elysius.’

‘That is our purpose, to do our duty, not the reason why we came to Heletine.’

The pain of his injuries was making him irascible, so Drakgaard cut the conversation short before he said something to the Chaplain he would later regret. There was one thing he wished he had voiced aloud, though. A question.

Can we trust them, brother?

Angerer fed the string of rosary pearls between her gauntleted fingers. She paused when she reached the black opal. All those souls she had saved and just this one eluded her. Sensing she was being watched, Angerer glanced up. Laevenius was staring at her.

‘How can you know where?’ asked the scarred warrior. Her Celestians were nearby, waiting patiently for their Sister Superior and canoness outside of the ship. It was one of several corralled together and brimming with Adepta Sororitas. They had touched down at a landing strip at the edge of Canticus, ostensibly to redeploy once the Salamanders and Cadians had made sufficient ingress into the city and engaged the enemy.

‘With faith,’ Angerer replied, letting go of the rosary, ‘and with this.’ She produced a small, brass artefact. When flat it resembled a teardrop, but unfolded across its fragile hinges it was more like a compass. In fact, that is exactly what it was. Setting the brass compass down, Angerer then took a phial of clear liquid from her trappings.

‘Precious little sorrow left,’ she murmured.

Laevenius remained still and stared at the glass bottle as Angerer decanted the last few drops onto the arrow of the compass. Then she waited. The seconds seemed to lengthen, both warriors waiting in silence for the compass to move. It trembled at first then the arrow spun around to settle in one direction. Angerer removed one of her gauntlets, and held her bare hand over the compass so she could feel its emanations against her skin.

‘Not far…’ she said. When she put her gauntlet back on, Laevenius saw a reddening of Angerer’s skin from where the compass had lightly blistered it. Gently, Angerer picked up the compass and handed it to Laevenius. ‘Give this to only your most trusted warrior then get everyone on board. We are leaving immediately.’

‘And the others, my canoness?’ asked Laevenius, taking the compass reverently and being careful not to spill a drop of the liquid.

Angerer was already moving to the front of the transport where she would take up position in the cockpit alongside the pilot and gunner. She only half turned.

‘Have them hold position for now. I want to be absolutely sure before we commit to this. I want to see her with my own eyes, Sister.’

There were catacombs beneath Canticus, and they stretched beyond the bounds of the city. Some reached as far as Escadan, others went all the way to Solist. They were old, and largely forgotten. It was where the Heletines had once buried their relics and their dead. It was a place of saints that had now become a lair for sinners. No one ventured into the catacombs anymore – they were dark and uncharted places. None save for those with longer memories and the reason to do so. None save for the unholy and the blasphemous.

The anteroom was carved from the very bedrock of the world, and festooned with skulls like the rest of the underground ossuary. Sigils had been cut into the walls, signifying the proto-Imperial Creed that had since spread to become the dominant form of religion in the galaxy. Smashed, befouled, these sigils had no power here now. Pillars raised the ceiling. In places it was high enough to house a Titan, stretching up into gloomy vaults speared with stalactites. There were deeps. Great wells that fell into black oblivion. A core of Heletine’s raw elements had existed here once, a fossil fuel used to synthesise promethium production. Miners and riggers had denuded this wealth, sacked it for their profit and prosperity. Men now long dead, their skeletons had joined the masses already entombed but with unmarked graves and forgotten lives.

In their wake came the Ecclesiarchy, the great Adeptus Ministorum. In vast ships, they crossed the ocean of stars and braved the empyrean itself to bring a lost world back into the fold. Some said it was the Crusade reborn, but they were foolish men, given over to vainglory. It was but one world, yet no less significant for that fact. The Ecclesiarchy reclaimed this land from the industrial tyrants who had yoked from it Heletine’s blood and marrow. Tombs thought lost for millennia were rediscovered. New relics were interred in the earth. Shrines were raised. Reliquaries formed. For the cardinals and the palatines knew this world’s legacy as well as its spiritual significance, and sought to gird it. But holy men are not the only beings privy to secrets, those locked away in ancient librariums or contained in the rasped whispers of the damned – daemons know things too.

Two warriors knelt before an immense statue. It was dark in the chamber, the only light cast by flickering torches, and in the shadows the statue loomed over them, powerful and oppressive. So still that, despite its anger, anyone entering the chamber without prior knowledge could otherwise be forgiven for not realising it had anima and was flesh, not stone.

Kneeling was not easy for these warriors, and not just because the hulking armour plate they were wearing had not been fashioned with the need for penitence in mind. Pride had compelled them to remain standing, but against the will of the towering statue figure they fell awkwardly in supplication.

‘We have lost the bridge, my lord…’ rasped one. His armour was festooned with skulls, several impaled on spikes with others hanging from loops of dark chain and wire. A war-helm was clasped under his arm, a blood-red topknot rising from the crown in a plume. His face was patchwork, a raft of knitted-together skin each taken from a different provider. None of the flesh-givers had been willing participants in Kargol’s art, however.

The statue spoke, though in the darkness it was hard to tell if his lips actually moved. His voice was unmistakable, and though akin to human was most definitely unkind to any mortal being.

‘There were six of you that went out. Where are your brothers?’

There was genuine concern in the question and it was obvious then that the statue figure’s anger was directed at his enemies for the slaying of his men and not for the apparent failure of those self-same warriors.

Now the other spoke up. A long barrelled reaper cannon rested on his knee. He too was helmed, but left it on. It was part of him, fused to his flesh and could not be removed. Jade embers blazed behind his eye slits as if beneath the irremovable helm his face was perpetually on fire. For all his brothers now knew, perhaps it was. Ever since the ‘changing’, Kaid had been this way. Unlike some, he embraced the gifts and willed his gods to bestow further boons. He wanted glory, so he had gladly bended the knee and joined the rest of the Children of Torment when the Warmaster had made his offer.

Here, in this dusty catacomb of piled skulls and other forgotten bones, he did so again but not in the same cause. Conquest, a chance to fight at the head of a Black Crusade, that was Kaid’s desire. Glory. Down in the dirt with the long dead, he felt far indeed from such a promise. For how could his gods see him here in this pit, searching and scrabbling in the dirt?

‘Arvan and Helux are dead. Socred we lost to the river. Only the Eye knows where he now resides.’ There was bitterness in Kaid’s voice that he failed to hide. Despite the helm, his ambition was etched plainly on his brute, metal ‘face’.

‘Should I ask it?’ said the statue figure, affecting an air of menace with the coldness of his tone to the two veterans knelt before him. ‘Or would you like to, Kaid? Your desire for advancement is as palpable to me as the blade sheathed at my hip.’ He did not move to the weapon, which was immense and forged of warp-bonded black iron. He did not need to enhance the threat he had just made. ‘But know this, brother,’ the statue added, ‘there are many ways to ascend, some more inglorious than others. You are in service to the Warmaster’s Black Legion. On Heletine, I am Warmaster. If I choose to have you scrabbling in the dirt then that is what you will do.’

Kaid suppressed a shiver. It was as if the words had been plucked from his mind.

‘Or, the alternative is I bury you under it. For a brother…’ he paused, and there was emotion straining his voice, ‘a true brother never questions the orders of his captain. How I long for such days again…’

Kaid bowed his head, as the towering figure seemed to lose himself in remembrance. He knew he had gone too far and was quick to show contrition.

‘That will not be necessary, my lord. I can track Socred. Either bring back him or his body.’

‘Socred will find his own way back to us, if he lives,’ said the figure, dismissing Kaid’s offer with the slightest shake of his head. ‘I suspect he will attempt to “amuse” himself along the way.’ As he moved, the weak underground light inside the cavern caught the edge of his face. It glistened, and did not resemble skin at all, though that is what it was supposed to represent. It was more like porcelain or glass, the kind of material used to create a doll or the facsimile of a man.

‘And our enemies,’ he asked, ‘they move?’

Kargol silenced his brother by speaking first. ‘They move, my lord. In armoured column with outriders wearing jump packs.’

‘Then we have nothing to concern us. Arvan and Helux will be remembered. Socred too, if he is also dead. Rise,’ said the lord, turning to face the figure in the background who was regarding them. ‘Return to your brothers. Our other enemies will be here soon. We must be ready for them.’

Kargol and Kaid got to their feet with the snarl of servos, and took their leave. Down the long tunnel behind them and in the larger cavern beyond, the sound of the muster could be heard. Warriors were preparing for battle. With over half their number dead or missing, the two brothers would divide the warbands evenly.

‘You see, Kaid,’ uttered the lord to the warrior’s back as he was walking away, ‘your fortunes in the eye of the gods improve already.’

Kaid paused, ‘Yes, my Lord Faustus,’ before moving on.

Faustus paid him no further heed and approached the watcher, stepping into the light as he did so.

Apart from his head, which was bare and oddly the most artificial part of him, Faustus wore full war-plate. Coal-black, it wrapped his muscular form like a second skin, the epitome of his legion. It was also of a size and magnitude greater than the warrior in front of him, Faustus half again larger in every aspect.

The other warrior bowed, but without the trepidation of the two Terminators.

‘Why do you insist on them calling you that?’ he asked.

Faustus was nonplussed. ‘It is my name. Heklion Faustus.’

‘It was your name.’

‘And what is your name, brother?’ Faustus asked, though he knew it full well and was crafting a lesson for his favourite underling. The other had received this particular teaching before.

‘Lufurion, as it has ever been.’

‘But you are not he, not entirely.’ Viperously fast, Faustus seized Lufurion by the edge of his gorget and dragged him forwards. The light from a brazier’s flame flickered over them both, casting deepening shadow. It made the ridges of their armour shine and burn with reflected fire. More importantly, it exposed Lufurion’s surgeries. Beneath his armour, every major limb and joint bore the marks of amputation followed by attachment. Only the neck and arms, which were bare of armour plate, bore them obviously. Lufurion’s face was not his own. That had been a fire-ravaged ruin. He had taken his new visage from an old friend, one who had betrayed him and who he betrayed in turn. He smiled, revealing an over-wide jaw. Pointed teeth ran all the way across his face, up to his ears, and there was an acid burn etched into an inverted ‘v’ shape on his chin.

‘True,’ Lufurion replied, seemingly unconcerned. One of his lackeys devised to draw a weapon but a savage glance from Lufurion stayed the foolish warrior’s hand. Fortunately, Faustus was too lost in his own theatre to see it. ‘I have made myself flawless again. But you,’ Lufurion said, smiling thinly and nodding at the monster holding him in its grasp, ‘are not Faustus.’

‘I am a true Cthonian,’ Faustus sneered proudly.

‘That you are.’

Faustus wasn’t ready to let him go just yet. He glared, pain and hate warring for dominance in his eyes. They were strange, eldritch things, simultaneously ageless and yet also weary.

‘You and I are not familiar enough. You are not Klaed or Ahenobarbus, or Narthius. They were true brothers…’ Faustus drifted into the past again, and Lufurion took advantage of the warrior’s momentary lapse in purpose.

‘I came to tell you we are ready.’

Faustus blinked, as if revived from a dream. He let him go.

‘Show me.’ The genuine longing in Faustus’s voice was in stark contrast to the practiced indifference of Lufurion’s.

‘Of course. This way, my lord. I’ll be with you momentarily.’

Faustus deigned not to answer.

Lufurion met Klerik’s gaze. He was Incarnadine, one of Lufurion’s sworn warriors, now allied to the Children of Torment. Like the rest of the warband, and its warlord, the Incarnadine Host wore armour of heliotrope purple. Fashioned over the plate metal were leathern strips of cured flesh, baked and hardened. To this grisly apparel was added studs, spikes of bone and bloody daubing. Blades were favoured. Every man was scarred, imperfect in some way to better emphasise their warlord’s own flawlessness. Lufurion knew it was vain, but he did not care.

All except for Klerik. As Lufurion’s bloody right hand, Klerik was permitted to be flawless too. Aside from a short cape of flesh, his armour went without the fetishistic trappings of his brothers.

‘Marshal the men, Klerik. It will not be long now. They’ll be coming for her.’

Klerik nodded, eyeing Faustus as he left the room, then asked, ‘Who is dealing with our other pressing concern?’

‘Vorshkar.’

Klerik gave a quiet, ironic laugh. ‘That maniac. Hopefully he’ll end up dead.’

‘Hopefully.’ Lufurion’s tone suggested he didn’t think that was going to happen.

‘I heard our errant brothers met with ill fortune, captain,’ Klerik whispered, though Faustus was already gone and had paid the warrior’s furtiveness no heed.

Lufurion clapped him on the shoulder.

‘This makes our endeavours here even more important.’

Klerik nodded again and went to his duty as Lufurion went after Faustus into another subterranean cavern. It was deeper than the previous one and they had to descend a long ramp of earth to reach it. In ages past, some effort had been made to pave the area with stone but much of it had been worn away by entropy. Stepping through a wide arch, high enough for Faustus to pass under without stooping, was a vaulted chamber that ran on for several metres. A silver casket lay on a plinth at the end of it. Three of Lufurion’s warriors surrounded the casket, the igniters on their flamers burning a dormant blue.

‘Within, the sacred bones of Lucrezzia Absetia,’ said Lufurion, his words barbed enough to pierce flesh.

‘She is one of their saints? Another false idol?’

‘Just a mouldering corpse, one this false empire likes to revere,’ Lufurion replied, nodding to his men.

Tongues of fire spewed from the mouths of their weapons, lapping at the casket eagerly. For a moment, the venerable tomb of Saint Absetia seemed impervious but after a few seconds it ran with flowing silver tears. Quickly turning molten, the casket bled all over the plinth and then the floor, oozing like wax.

Like many of his kind, Lufurion was a child of the warp. Though not a true neverborn, he could nonetheless feel the veil between reality and the ether thin with the destruction of the casket. He shuddered, chilled and excited at the same time. A ripple passed through Faustus too. Lufurion saw it reflected in the mirror sheen of the silver before it curdled and blackened. In it Faustus was revealed as a monster, a daemon-spawn trapped in the shell of a man. The Luna Wolf was screaming, a proud warrior of Cthonia no longer.

Lufurion did not witness what Faustus saw: a warrior of the old war, the first great war, clad in legionary battleplate. He saw the ideal, the lie. Slipping from the present for a moment, his gaze seemed to wander as he outstretched his gauntleted hand.

‘They are close…’ he whispered. ‘I can hear their voices, calling out to me. Ahenobarbus… Narthius… Klaed… all of them.’ Faustus lowered his hand, withdrew from the warp and the past life it held in thrall. He turned his attention to Lufurion. ‘Bring forth the witch.’

At Faustus’s command, a tall enrobed figure emerged from the shadows into the dying light of the fire. His violet armour marked him out as one of the Incarnadine. Lufurion gave Preest a subtle nod as their eyes met across the lake of molten silver that had spilled from the casket like blood.

Faustus stepped through it, largely heedless of the sorcerer and intent on whom he clasped in his gauntleted hands.

She was little more than a girl, weak and blind, a gossamer-thin chasuble clinging to her frail frame like a pair of flaccid, diaphanous wings. She was, in many respects, an insect but a useful one. At least for the present. She was flanked by another pair of mortals, a male and female, their features hidden behind their robes but all too visible to the daemonic sight of Faustus. He noted the chains that were locked to the iron collars around their necks, and was careful to keep his distance.

Preest bowed in supplication.

‘Master…’ he hissed.

Faustus ignored him, stooping to seize the girl by her bony jaw. She was weeping, for her plight or the desecration of Saint Absetia’s tomb, it did not matter. All that concerned Faustus were her tears.

‘Cry, little witch. Tell me where my brothers are to be found.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior

‘He lives,’ said Zartath, standing amidst the carnage of the arena battle, ‘and walked away from the fight.’

After burning the mutant cultists, Agatone had set the ex-Black Dragon loose. They had reached Seven Points, found it to be a haven for the depraved and debased worshippers of Slaanesh, but their quarry was gone. With no other lead, they needed to find Tsu’gan’s trail, and soon, before it went cold.

Zartath had done just that and was crouching over a spoor he and he alone could discern.

Agatone joined him, leaving Exor to watch over Issak and act as sentry. Though most were no match for Adeptus Astartes, the underhive was fraught with many hazards Agatone was keen to avoid. A delay now could destroy any remaining chance they had of finding Tsu’gan, and he was determined to bring the wayward fire-born back. Third’s reputation was damaged, the confidence of its Chapter Master in it tarnished. They needed this. Agatone needed this. It would be done, one way or the other.

‘Which way?’

Zartath gestured vaguely east.

Even to Agatone’s enhanced senses, it was just more industrial gloom. The pipes, gantries and striated sub-levels seemed to extend endlessly.

‘How long ago?’ he asked.

‘Few hours.’

Keen to get moving again, Agatone was about to rise and summon the others when Zartath grabbed his wrist.

‘He did not leave alone,’ said the ex-Black Dragon.

‘An ally?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Zartath, ‘or a prisoner,’ he snarled, not liking that word for all the memories it raised of his own incarceration, and let Agatone go.

Agatone got to his feet and hailed Exor.

‘Techmarine, we leave now.’

Exor turned. He looked battered, his carapace armour shredded by the rat swarm, but at least his wounds were healing.

‘Zartath has his trail,’ Agatone concluded.

‘Still no word from the others,’ said Exor as he joined them. The Techmarine had been checking the vox-bands, trying to locate the frequencies of the other hunting parties and make contact. All of his attempts had proven fruitless so far, however. ‘Some sort of deep subterranean interference. Perhaps if we could get higher, above some of this metal and compacted industry…’ He sounded irritated, and Agatone wondered how much his injury was bothering him or whether he could still hear the keening. It lingered at the edge of Agatone’s hearing, like a barely audible sub-tone, grating but still present. His system had been purged of tainted blood, but some of its effects clung on tenaciously.

‘Lok and Clovius’s warriors would be very useful right now, but we go where Zartath leads us,’ he said. ‘Keep trying, brother.’

Exor nodded.

Agatone turned his attention to Issak.

‘You kept your word, medicus. You’ve honoured us with your service, but I won’t ask anything further of you. Here is where we part ways.’

Issak smiled, as a man does when he realises a fundamental truth and takes pleasure in his own enlightenment.

‘I was wrong, Brother Agatone.’

Agatone frowned, restive and eager to be moving on.

‘Speak your mind, medicus.’

‘My calling is not in Kabullah. It is here, with you and your warriors. Let me come with you, and see this through. You have already said you cannot vouch for my safety. I accept that and will join you anyway.’

‘He will slow us down,’ said Exor.

Issak gave the Techmarine a sideways glance.

‘With respect, in this terrain, in the underhive, you would slow me down.’

‘He has a point…’ said Agatone, considering. ‘The medicus comes with us, but we go now,’ he decided, brooking no further protest and turning to his huntsman. ‘Zartath…’

The ex-Black Dragon was staring into the shadows. His gaze followed the distant figure of a blood-stained boy carrying a spear. But there was no water and no fish for him to catch.

‘I can see…’ Zartath began, half rising before he realised it was an apparition, some manifestation of his subconscious, and not a boy at all. A second figure stood behind it, looking on grimly. So, both father and son had returned. Though he could not yet fill the lacuna in his memory, Zartath knew he had done this to them. He felt their revenant malice, their cold, dead eyes glaring and–

‘Brother!’

–was brought back from the edge of the nightmare by Agatone’s voice.

‘Are you still with us?’ asked the captain.

Zartath nodded, obeyed. He led them away from Seven Points, following Tsu’gan’s trail. And the keening inside his head thrummed ever louder.

As the others followed, Agatone slowed to grab Exor’s shoulder.

‘Keep a watchful eye.’

The Techmarine nodded.

Despite his familiarity with the underhive, Issak struggled to keep pace. Zartath moved quickly through the wreckage. Sometimes stooped, occasionally on all fours, it was hard not to think of him as a beast. But he traversed the low ceilings, access pipes and crawl spaces like he was born to it. To his brothers, he seemed driven. To Issak, the transhuman warrior looked possessed. Something had invested him with purpose, a bloodhound with the scent of its prey pungent in its nostrils. A singular imperative drove him, one the others had no knowledge of. It rang loudly inside his skull, a promise and a curse combined.

For several hours they gave chase, following Zartath into the underhive, not really knowing how far or how deep they had plumbed in search of Tsu’gan. Occasionally, Zartath would stop, pausing to examine some detail or re-check their route. They had only doubled back once before he had Tsu’gan’s spoor again.

They were getting closer.

No one challenged them. There were no more gangs, no more monsters, just darkness and metal, the toxic agglomeration of centuries’ worth of neglect and industrial entropy. Agatone was uncertain what the silence presaged, but he assumed and prepared for the worst.

When Zartath finally came to a halt, he did so standing at the precipice of a wide, circular abyss. It was vast, large enough to accommodate a small starship and its ragged edge suggested it had either fallen to ruin or something had punched through it.

‘Another false trail?’ asked Exor as he watched the shadows around them for any sign of disturbance.

Agatone slowly shook his head, his eyes on Zartath’s unmoving form.

‘I don’t think so. Not this time.’

The ex-Black Dragon had his back to them but it was obvious from the angle of his neck that he was staring down in the chasmal darkness in front of him.

‘I have heard of this place,’ said Issak. He was walking in between the two Salamanders, protected on either flank. Agatone might have acceded to his joining them, but was not about to leave the medicus undefended.

Agatone stopped, prompting Issak and Exor to do the same. He kneeled down like a father might to a son, so his eyes and those of the medicus were at roughly the same height.

‘Tell me what you know.’

‘It’s called the Well, and has been here for as long as I can remember.’ He spared a glance towards the chasm and Zartath loitering over it, who appeared to be transfixed, before averting his gaze back to Agatone. ‘You have to understand, Molior is old. Its roots go deep. Much of its vastness is uncharted. Unknown. What the Imperium does not need anymore,’ here he gestured to their immediate surroundings, ‘it forgets, and leaves it to decay. Do you know what this place was before it became a hive?’

Agatone shook his head. He also gestured to Exor to go and keep an eye on Zartath.

Issak went on. ‘It was an Administratum archivium, a place of secure knowledge about the Imperium and its history. Over the centuries, millennia even, it was neglected. Forgotten.’

‘What is your point, medicus? And how can you know all this?’

‘You hear things. Learn things… My point, Brother Agatone? The knowledge kept safe… it is still here.’

Agatone saw Exor in his peripheral vision. The Techmarine was waving them over.

‘Whatever lies here, it is no concern of ours. I want Tsu’gan. Zartath says he’s close. That means we’re almost done. I won’t linger.’

Zartath looked down into the abyss, as still as a statue. Exor was standing beside him surreptitiously running a bio-scan.

Agatone stalled the Techmarine’s report with his upraised palm. He had known something was wrong with Zartath since Kabullah. It didn’t matter now. He had to hope the ex-Black Dragon would perform his duty long enough so that they could achieve the mission.

‘What do you see?’ Agatone said to Zartath, no louder than a murmur.

‘Darkness… something is alive down there.’

The so-called ‘Well’ reminded Agatone of a long gullet, fanged with spiky and uneven teeth. It was not so much of a stretch to imagine it having sentience, to being a microcosmical glimpse of something larger and more terrible. In truth, the gullet was a wide and broken shaft, rough at the edges, and the teeth were jutting rebars and large splints of twisted metal. He looked up to the ceiling, and saw the pattern repeated. Rather than at the bottom, Agatone gauged they were actually somewhere in the middle of the shaft.

‘I can see a trajectory,’ said Exor.

Agatone nodded. ‘Something crash-landed here, hot and violent enough to bore through the surface and several layers of sub-hive beneath.’

‘I hear it…’ uttered Zartath, and made the others turn.

He was still staring.

‘The keening?’ suggested Agatone, at which Zartath nodded.

‘It’s much louder below.’

Agatone turned to Exor. ‘What did that scan tell you?’

‘Nothing. Physically, he is fine. Better than I am, for certain. Whatever’s wrong with him is not in his body, brother-captain. But I am no Apothecary.’ He looked to Issak, and the medicus shrugged.

‘Without conducting a more thorough examination, from what I can tell he is right. Zartath’s illness is psychological.’

Agatone scowled. He still needed the huntsman, but Zartath was verging on the catatonic. He tried to get what he needed.

‘Is Tsu’gan down there? Did he follow the keening too?’

‘No. He climbed…’ For the first time since he had reached the Well, Zartath looked up and pointed, ‘up there.’

He gestured to a gantry leading to a stairwell, which rose up and over the edge of the shaft that had been cored through Molior and into a higher level.

Moving away from the shaft seemed to help Zartath’s cogency, so Agatone gently pulled him back from the edge. Zartath looked him in the eye.

‘It doesn’t matter what you do, captain. I must go to it. End it.’

Agatone seized Zartath’s shoulders, trying to stay the focus of his attention, but the ex-Black Dragon’s eyes wandered.

‘We are close, brother. I need you here with me if we’re to finish this.’

‘This is as far as I can go by your side, captain,’ Zartath replied, shrugging out of Agatone’s grasp.

Engaging his retinal augmentations, Exor scanned the point Zartath had indicated.

‘I have faint heat traces, some blood.’

Hope kindled briefly as Agatone turned to the Techmarine and asked, ‘Recent?’

‘Very.’

As if drawn to it by the siren-like keening, Zartath was moving towards the edge of the shaft again. When Agatone reached out to hold him back, the ex-Black Dragon snarled.

‘Stand down,’ Agatone warned, but didn’t let him go.

‘Release me,’ Zartath growled.

‘You are not yourself, brother.’

Exor drew his bolt pistol, firmly pushing Issak behind him, but Agatone waved him off.

‘I am handling this.’

‘I am a warrior,’ said Zartath, his tone almost pleading, ‘I am not to be handled like some beast.’

‘You are not a beast,’ Agatone replied, but heard the lie in his words. ‘At least… I know you can be more than that.’

For a moment Zartath almost looked like he believed him and the hollow opals that were his eyes softened in a fleeting impression of remembered brotherhood, before it was swallowed behind something darker and more feral.

Breaking free of Agatone’s hold, Zartath roared and the bone blades slid from his forearms.

Not waiting for a command, Exor fired. The shot was high and deliberately wide, glancing Zartath’s shoulder. The impact spun him and he staggered backwards. It was enough to send him over the edge of the shaft and into the darkness below.

Agatone leapt to grab his flailing hand, but missed.

‘No!’

He was left on his stomach, facing the abyss and watching Zartath’s slowly shrinking form as it descended, until the darkness claimed and he was lost from sight.

‘Captain.’ Exor came rushing over. ‘I had no choice. I had to–’

Agatone got up without the Techmarine’s help.

‘At that range, you could have killed him. I thought you would have. What stopped you?’

‘I saw the man grow larger than the beast,’ Exor replied. ‘I believed, as you did, that he could be saved.’

‘Do you still believe that?’

‘I do, brother-captain.’

‘Can you track him?’

‘Yes, I can follow his biological trail easily enough,’ he tapped his bionic eye as if that explained how, ‘but what about Tsu’gan?’

‘Go after Zartath. Find whatever is driving him to the brink of insanity and bring him back. I won’t lose one in order to find another. I’ll continue after Tsu’gan.’

‘Take the auspex then,’ said Exor. ‘It’s inloaded with Tsu’gan’s biological signatures. Not foolproof but it’ll help you find him.’

‘Won’t you need it?’

‘I can find him in that hole without it. If he’s alive, I’ll bring him back, captain.’

Agatone nodded his thanks, attaching the scanner to his belt. ‘When did you do all that? The data inload, I mean?’ he asked.

‘A few seconds ago when I blinked.’

Agatone laughed out loud. ‘Secrets of the Martian brotherhood, eh?’

‘There is only one brotherhood that has my allegiance.’

Agatone smiled, finding a soul tempered by the anvil.

Exor seemed not to notice and gestured to Issak, who was looking in the direction of the shaft where he had just seen, or thought he had seen, Zartath plummet to his death.

‘What about him?’

‘The medicus comes with me. I’ll need him.’ Agatone held out his hand, and Exor seized it in the warrior’s grip.

‘You do realise it’s madness to split up our party,’ said Exor.

Agatone nodded. ‘Sometimes you have to risk everything in order to succeed at something.’

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast,’ Exor said to his captain.

‘With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ Agatone concluded. ‘Move quickly.’

As part of his trappings, Exor had a high-tensile strength wire and grapnel gun. Stepping back, he fired the launcher into the Well where it snagged on one of the many outcrops of metal debris. He then attached several disc-shaped objects to his belt.

‘Suspensors,’ he explained. ‘They’ll slow me down enough that so I don’t break my neck or get impaled on a rebar.’ Then he leapt over the edge and let gravity take him.

Agatone didn’t need to watch him land and make the slow traverse. Exor was on his own now. Entering Molior as little more than a neophyte, he had grown into a battle-brother with similar skill and judgement to a veteran. Agatone wanted fiercely to have him as a member of Third Company. He would need warriors like that to help rebuild it, and forge its reputation anew. First, he had another fire-born to bring to heel.

Issak looked up from the Well. ‘How could he have survived that fall?’

‘We Adeptus Astartes are hard to kill, especially fire-born. Takes more than a long drop to finish us.’

‘But Zartath isn’t a fire-born,’ Issak replied.

‘Ah medicus, but he is. And I would see all my brothers returned to Nocturne’s forge.’

Urging Issak to move, Agatone eventually reached the other side of the chasm, where Exor had indicated Tsu’gan had gone. Clambering up to the precise spot, Agatone reached down to help the medicus and easily hauled him onto the ledge where he was crouching.

Standing, Agatone looked out into the deeper underhive, trying to imagine Tsu’gan’s route and what he could have been doing. All he saw was further wreckage: a sloping ceiling, shattered pipework, trails of viperous but inert electrical wire… and an icon. It was half-buried in all the detritus, begrimed and otherwise obscured by filth. But Agatone’s keen eyes discerned its symbol as well as its meaning.

It was an Imperial eagle split down the middle, one head and wing lost to decay.

Agatone checked the auspex. The trail led to the broken eagle. Beneath it there was a gap in the rubble just large enough for a transhuman body to crawl through.

‘The archivium you mentioned,’ said Agatone, pointing, ‘could that be it?’

Without a Space Marine’s genhanced vision, Issak didn’t see it at first, but after a few seconds he made out the eagle.

‘It must be.’

‘Tsu’gan went inside,’ said Agatone, without a trace of doubt.

Issak frowned, unable to make the connection. ‘To what end?’

‘I’m not sure it was his idea,’ said Agatone. ‘Either way, that’s where we are going.’

Exor hit the ledge hard and felt the impact throughout his body. His wounds were healing but more slowly than he’d like and they flared angrily. He winced, taking a moment to marshal the pain and catch his breath.

The suspensors were lightening his weight, but not enough. As a means of lessening the encumbrance of a lascannon or heavy bolter, their intended purpose, they performed well. Utilised as an improvised anti-gravitic, less so. In his current condition, without them he might already be crippled so he bit down, retracted the grapnel and prepared for the next jump.

Launching the cable into the darkness, focusing on a point where he could snare the grapnel hook, Exor tried to gauge the distance to the ground but couldn’t. Depth was impossible to speculate as was Zartath’s eventual position. He could be dead. If that was the case, then Exor would still have to locate him and haul his body back to the surface then wait for Agatone’s return.

He leapt out into the unknown.

Heat from a venting pipe seared his face as Exor passed through a grimy cloud of steam and gritty particulate. He landed awkwardly, jarring his knee and wondered if he had over-estimated his fitness for duty. Rolling onto his back, he looked up through the now-dissipating miasma jettisoned from the pipe and estimated he had descended almost eight hundred metres by variously rappelling down and leaping from ledge to ledge.

As the mist cleared fully, he saw something else. A claw mark, just two or three metres above him.

The inner side of the shaft led to the various sub-levels of the underhive. Whatever object had cored through each level had exposed them to each other, like layers of diseased flesh. Ordinarily accessed through myriad tunnels, lifters or stairways, the Well made reaching Molior’s sub-strata much easier. Zartath had chosen this place to make ingress, hunting down an enemy only he could perceive. Exor would have to follow him and hope they could overcome that enemy together.

As a Techmarine, and a relatively inexperienced one at that, he knew little of battle psychology. But it didn’t take an expert to know that Zartath, whilst loyal, was damaged. He had heard about the ex-Black Dragon’s imprisonment in the alien realm and his subsequent rescue by the Firedrakes. He had also heard about his heroism during the dragon-strife when all of Nocturne was at war, but Zartath was still an enigma. If he found him, alive, sane, Exor was not sure what to expect or how to approach him. Logic would dictate he formulate a plan, but that was of no use here. Instinct was all he’d have to go on.

Noting the position of the claw marks and Zartath’s likely entry point, Exor lifted himself up using a strut of broken rebar for support. As he did so he felt a tiny vibration, like a minor seismic tremor, ripple through the metal. At first he thought he had got up heavily, moving awkwardly because of his injuries, but then realised the vibrational resonance persisted even when he was still and the ledge had settled under his weight.

Tiny flakes of metal peppered his armour and exposed skin. So focused on the descent through the Well, Exor hadn’t noticed until he had stopped and taken stock of his situation. Now he looked up and saw the glinting, metal drifts fogging the air. Larger pieces of debris accompanied them and as he analysed the scene in more detail, noting the massive chunks of wreckage on the verge of plunging down into the shaft, Exor was put in mind of a slowly eroding cliff face. Only in this instance, the cliff was a steadily widening hole suffering under the effect of sustained seismic resonance. He realised that the Well had been much smaller originally. It must have taken decades for it to reach its current size. Whatever initially came through was likely much smaller than he had first estimated but its arrival had triggered an effect that was slowly shaking the entire area apart.

Using the haptic implants in his bionic hand to analyse the vibrations, Exor estimated that the source was coming from deeper into the hive, exactly where Zartath was headed.

Securing his gear, the Techmarine climbed the short distance up the shaft to where the claw marks mapped his path. There he found a large vent, the inside recently scratched as someone had crawled through it. First drawing his bolt pistol so he could crawl with it in front of him, Exor entered the vent. It led to a narrow access tunnel, tight enough that he dragged himself slowly on his elbows.

Exor emerged onto another ledge into a flickering halogen glow. A cluster of overhanging lamps fizzled with their weak electrical connections, casting the scene in front of him in murky grey monochrome.

A capacious chamber opened out in front of him helping to banish the claustrophobic sense of containment engendered by the rest of the underhive. It had a vaulted ceiling and the outward appearance of a wrecker’s yard, for a few metres below the ledge was a steep slope of accumulated industrial detritus. Rather than the slow degeneration of neglect and disrepair Exor had seen so far, this wreckage had been piled here deliberately. In the weak light he discerned girders, roofing plates, blast doors, gantries, several tonnes of mesh grating – all the debris that had come down on top of whatever had crashed through the hive levels in the first place and ended up here in Molior’s underhive.

There were bodies as well, most too emaciated and skeletal to have been recent. Victims of the collapse? It was certainly possible – some of the half-mangled structures looked like tenement habs. If Kabullah was any gauge then the collapsed structures would have been vastly overpopulated when the sky fell down on them. Tens of thousands could be rotting amongst the rubble, and Exor realised with a rare spike of compassion that he was looking at a mass grave. Wasted limbs jutted from the industrial morass. Skulls, skin stretched thin as parchment across the bone, leered at him through the lattice of collapsed metal.

‘Vulkan’s mercy…’ he breathed.

There were no heat traces, nothing in close proximity. Whoever had piled the wreckage had since moved on. Nothing had been scavenged either, which seemed at odds with the philosophy of the underhive he had come to understand. There was only a path wide enough for a small cargo loader or four-track freight hauler to traverse that led deeper into the level. Whatever was waiting at the end of that road was obscured by the subterranean gloom and the peaks of wreckage. It had to have taken a small, dedicated army of workers to shift that much metal.

Exor tried to contact Agatone but the vox return was too weak. Signal interference from the depth, he assumed. About to move out, he stopped when he felt the blade against his neck and silently cursed for allowing himself to be caught off-guard so easily.

‘You whisper too loudly,’ said a rasping voice, redolent with the stink of raw meat. ‘Should I kill you now? Is that why he sent you?’

Exor holstered the bolt pistol, raising both hands so that his assailant could see he was unarmed.

‘I came to find you, brother.’

‘Am I your brother now then?’

‘Petulance doesn’t suit you, Zartath.’ Exor tried to break away but the bone blade sank deeper, nicking the skin around his neck. ‘Why save me back then, only to kill me now?’

‘A slave to logic, trying to reason with an animal. You amuse me.’

He gave a throaty laugh, causing spittle to fleck across Exor’s cheek but the Techmarine didn’t flinch.

‘You are still a man, brother. Agatone would not have–’

‘Agatone! I am our captain’s faithful dog, brother. He keeps me leashed, or have you not noticed? I am the necessary monster he needs to achieve his mission.’

‘Then why send me after you? To put you down like the rabid dog you think you are?’ Exor laughed too, mustering as much derision as he could. Since Mars and his induction into the secrets of the Mechanicus, emotion had become increasingly difficult. ‘Leaving you down here to rot would have been much more logical.’

Silence lingered in the wake of Exor’s voice, broken only by the ex-Black Dragon’s feral breathing. Slowly, the pressure against his neck eased and Exor turned to face Zartath’s cold staring eyes.

He snorted. ‘How did you ever advance beyond the rank of Scout?’

‘I had help.’ It wasn’t a lie. Va’lin had been at his side throughout. It had not been easy to leave him – their bond had been forged in blood, but their paths diverged. Brother-Captain Ba’ken had told them it was Vulkan’s will. Exor wondered if his battle-brother yet lived.

‘And are you here to help me or stop me?’ asked Zartath, shaking his head. ‘The latter will not go well for you, I think.’

Exor knew he was in no condition to fight. Even fully fit and armed, he would struggle and likely die going up against the ex-Black Dragon.

‘I’ve seen you fight,’ he said, holding up his hands in surrender.

Zartath regarded him for a moment, gauging the Techmarine’s veracity before giving him a draconic smile that revealed both rows of his fangs.

‘Your instincts are better than I thought, Martian.’

‘I am not a Martian,’ Exor replied. ‘I am fire-born.’

‘That is what they tell me also,’ said Zartath, leaping silently over the ledge and scaling the wreckage below.

Exor went after him, slower because of his injuries. When they reunited at the bottom, Zartath concluded, ‘But we know differently, don’t we, brother?’

Exor chose not to answer. Zartath was in a capricious mood – it made him more unpredictable than usual. As a Techmarine, Exor based his interactions with others on logic. The ex-Black Dragon adhered to no such principal, he was a creature of pure instinct. Perhaps that was the source of Exor’s distemper towards him and the reason why negative emotion was easier to illicit in his presence. He chose to be direct instead.

‘What’s down here? What made you leap into the pit?’

Zartath’s face darkened and all his humour bled away, replaced by haunting neutrality.

‘The keening.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘There is no answer. It just is!’ he snapped, allowing the briefest chink of weariness to show. ‘It’s like a passenger I cannot release,’ he pointed to his skull, ‘inside my head. Calling. Always.’

Exor had felt it too, but not to this degree. A drone lingered at the edge of his hearing, but so faint he dismissed it as imagined or a part of his subconscious. Zartath’s exposure to the taint running through the blood of Molior’s vermin had been much less, yet his affliction appeared magnitudes worse. It had to be something else. Zartath’s mutant physiology had made him more attuned, exposed him because of his greater sensitivity.

Exor knew something of xeno-biology, that there were several known species that could emulate a ‘siren-call’. Such abilities were psychic in origin, but perhaps in this case there was a physical factor also. However there was another explanation.

Chaos. It was the moral corruption of the soul. Mutation was its physical expression. Some mutation was tolerated, even essential. Navigators, astropaths, even the Adeptus Astartes Librarius – the Imperium would cease to function without them. They were also the individuals at greatest risk from contamination by the warp. Such men and women were conduits that, if improperly channelled, became doorways for unnatural creatures. It was logical to assume that mutants, those bearing the physical stigmata of Ruin, could also be susceptible in some way.

Whether on account of his mutation or some, as yet, unrevealed taint within him, Zartath’s psychosis was pulling him to this place. Like a piece of driftwood caught in the maelstrom’s inexorable gravity, he could do nothing to prevent it. Exor merely feared the reaction when Zartath was finally forced to confront that which had almost driven him insane.

‘And when you find whatever is causing this… keening, what will you do?’

The coldness returned, Zartath’s eyes like chips of carved jet.

‘Kill it.’

He moved off, low and fast into the flickering half-light. He seemed different, edgier and feral.

Exor had no choice but to go after him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Heletine, Canticus southern district, ‘the Cairns’

Demolition of over half the city during the bitter fighting made the deployment of heavy armour almost impossible. This deep into Canticus, the streets were choked with debris. Barricades, tank traps and other improvised defences only made the going even harder for track-mounted vehicles. Razorwire threaded every avenue. Chunks of fallen masonry were riddled with mines and live grenades. Shells of tanks still smouldered in hidden trench lines and pits, their crews silently decomposing within.

None of this offered any impediment to the Targons.

Bar’dak’s warriors advanced doggedly through the corpse of the once proud city, their Centurion armour more than equal to its hazards. As vanguard troops, they were almost unrivalled, and ranged several hundred metres ahead of the main force which included the overall Imperial commander, Captain Ur’zan Drakgaard.

Where the Wyverns ruled the sky, the Targons dominated the ground. All things in balance, or so Vulkan’s teachings went, and Bar’dak believed vehemently in this Promethean creed. Like all fire-born, he was a warrior ascetic but to the greatest extreme. Bar’dak forever needed to test himself, to know the limits of his endurance and determination.

During his early years of initiation, he had walked the length of the Scorian Plain and swam the straits of the Gey’sarr. He did so alone and without fanfare or audience. For it was not out of a desire for adulation that Goran Bar’dak performed these feats – he did so because he had to know if he could.

According to Chaplain Elysius, pride was a sin to be wary of, one Bar’dak knew himself to be guilty of. Not selfish pride but esteem for his Targons, an indulgence of ego he found he was unable to temper. Live long enough unscathed and any man, however humble, will start to believe he is immortal. Not the Chaplain’s words, but part of Zen’de’s philosophy. Bar’dak knew it well, and recognised the truth of it in his own hubris. No battlefield had bested the Targons yet, and no recruits had joined their ranks since the current squad was formed almost a century ago. None had been needed. As records went, even the lauded sons of Ultramar would struggle to name an equal.

‘Sergeant,’ Ush’ban’s voice crackled over Bar’dak’s vox.

One of the tower-templum that sprang up around the Cairns like fungus in shadow had collapsed across the street, effectively blocking it off. Its foundations jutted from the earth like nubs of broken bone, the tower the limb from which they had been severed.

Civilians, mainly pilgrims and minor Ecclesiarchy functionaries, lived and prayed in these templums. The city had been evacuated weeks ago, but encounters with the human populace of Canticus were not unheard of. No matter how dire things became, mankind would always strive to cling to what it has and what it knows. The majority of these desperate, lingering few had been swept up by the heretic army and pushed into service as conscripts, indentured slaves or worse. Most clutched crude stubbers or shotguns, improvised cudgels or blades and had been fighting against the Salamanders since they had arrived on Heletine several weeks ago.

They were not the men and women they might once have been. Scarification marked their naked flesh, the burned brand of their Chaos potentate whose favour they now sought. Self-mutilated, armed and armoured with whatever they could scavenge, foreswearing Throne and Emperor, their souls were lost, their bodies grist for the ever-grinding war machine of the old enemy. Madness and desperation were inevitable.

Ush’ban’s war-plate still carried the burns and gouges of an improvised explosive wielded by one crazed devotee. In sacrificing himself, the cultist had levelled half a city district. Ush’ban’s warsuit had protected him, but Colonel Redgage had lost a lot of men in the blast. Captain Drakgaard had insisted the fire-born bear the brunt of the fighting after that incident, only utilising Guard armour in a vanguard role and the dwindling Cadian 81st as support. The decision was met with resistance by a conflicted colonel, who had no wish to throw away the lives of his men but at the same time had felt his honour besmirched. The matter had only just been resolved when the arrival of the Adepta Sororitas complicated everything again.

‘Bore through,’ Bar’dak replied, his expression hard as stone behind his battle-helm. With no time to search, if any civilians were hiding like vermin in the ruins they would likely be killed. Momentum was everything. On Drakgaard’s order, Bar’dak would ensure it was maintained. He relayed as much to the captain through the vox, and the rest of the battle group hunkered down several hundred metres distant until the impediment could be removed.

Siege drills engaged, Ush’ban and Nerad tore through the collapsed tower. The three-headed, triple-bladed boring tools were attached to their armoured fists as a concomitant part of the warsuit’s armature and hungrily ate up the rock. Both Centurions punched and moved stolidly with unceasing momentum. As Ush’ban and Nerad made the initial breach, the other two in the squad stomped in their wake amidst squalls of heavy dust to widen the gap. Bar’dak followed on as rearguard, liquifying any jutting chunks of debris the siege drills had missed with his melta.

‘It is desultory work, brother-sergeant,’ Brother Amadu remarked, igniting his heavy flamer and dousing what remained of the tower. Caution was necessary, even at the risk of harming or killing anyone taking shelter within. Canticus was riddled with insurgents. Like an infestation of maggots, they lurked everywhere. Ush’ban had been fortunate. Others were not so. To die in such an ignominious fashion, Bar’dak could scarcely think of a worse fate for the warriors in his charge. He had vowed they would maintain vigilance.

‘It is also necessary, brother,’ Bar’dak replied, emerging through the slowly diminishing flames and onto the other side of the ruin. The way ahead looked no less restricted as a string of choked streets and rubble-thick buildings dominated the vista in every direction.

‘Such destruction…’ breathed Ramadus. ‘How could any civilisation ever recover?’

‘None could,’ Bar’dak answered, ‘but that is not our charge here, brother.’

Ramadus bowed his head slightly after the mild rebuke from his sergeant.

‘Hold here,’ Bar’dak ordered the squad, who responded by forming a defensive line that faced all directions ahead of them.

It was dark over Canticus. The day was dying fast and smoke still occluded what little light shone over the benighted city. Utilising his omniscope, Bar’dak searched the ruins for any sign of the enemy. After a few seconds, he hailed Drakgaard on the command channel.

‘Report, brother-sergeant,’ declared the weathered voice of the captain.

‘Negative contact. Advancing. Maintain distance.’

‘Understood. On your order, sergeant. You are our eyes.’

With the all clear announced, Drakgaard would lead the others out. Bar’dak watched them form up and deploy in the tactical display shown on his right retinal lens. If desired, he could widen the scope and see Sergeant Kadoran’s troops effecting a similar manoeuvre. All Salamanders and Cadian forces were making deep ingress into the city, bolstered by their allies in the Adepta Sororitas who were acting as relief. Though Bar’dak could not see the Sisters on the tactical feed.

The Centurions reached another fifty metres further in when Bar’dak was forced to retract his earlier remarks. Ush’ban, Nerad and the others saw why at the same time as Bar’dak, so were quick to come to a halt and form up.

‘Is that…?’ Amadu began. The Targons were arranged in a dispersed formation and still relied on the vox to communicate.

‘Two civilians,’ Bar’dak saw them clearly and closely through the omniscope as he answered for Amadu. ‘They’re scavengers.’

‘I was under the impression all the city’s non-combatants had been evacuated,’ said Ush’ban.

‘They were, but some stayed,’ Bar’dak replied.

‘We cannot leave them to die,’ said Nerad, the grittiness of his voice at odds with his ostensible compassion.

‘If I ordered it so, then it shall be done,’ Bar’dak asserted, not needing to see Nerad to know he had been understood.

‘Then what should we do, sir?’ asked Ush’ban.

Bar’dak blink-clicked and two identicons flashed up on his retinal lens display. They represented Amadu and Nerad.

‘You two will secure the civilians immediately and send them back to our lines. The Kasrkin can escort them out of the city, whilst we continue to advance. Make it fast, but know the eyes of your brothers are watching out for you.’

Both Centurions gave signal affirmation then stomped over in the direction of the civilians, roughly a hundred metres away.

Bar’dak watched them very carefully through the omniscope, moving from his warriors to the scavengers and back again.

‘Didn’t see them,’ Bar’dak murmured, forgetting to close the vox-link.

‘Sir?’ asked Ush’ban.

With Amadu and Nerad leaving formation, the remaining two Centurions had moved up to create a wedge of three with their sergeant at the tip.

‘Before, when I surveyed the area. They weren’t there.’

‘Who, brother-sergeant?’

‘The scavengers. It’s as if they just… appeared out of the air.’

The tactical overlay displayed on Bar’dak’s right retinal lens showed Drakgaard and the others had passed through the breach and were moving up behind the Targons. He was about to vox their discovery when he noticed something across his auto-senses.

Movement.

A moment of terrible premonition dawned on Bar’dak with the realisation his martial pride was about to suffer a wound from which he could not recover. In that instant, the truth of his own self-deluded ego was revealed to him along with the arrogance of the belief that the Targons were indestructible.

‘Centurions!’ Bar’dak roared, voice distorting through the vox.

The warsuit was not built for speed, but Bar’dak forced it into a desperate half-run. Ush’ban and Ramadus followed close behind their sergeant but were equally encumbered.

For all the razorwire, the trench-pits and the minefields, the Targons had neglected the most obvious trap. A baited snare: two wretched human scavengers acting as the draw. As it was sprung, several power-armoured forms emerged into the diminishing light to confront Amadu and Nerad.

The edges of their dark armour shone, the dull brass catching the last shafts from a fading sun above. Seconds later, cloud obscured it and threw the streets into shadow so that only the warriors’ weapons glowed with malefic light. A beam shot from the gaping maw of one. It struck Nerad in the shoulder who screamed in pain as his defensives were pierced, his skin and bone seared black.

Black was the hue of these warriors, darker than sackcloth, their armour studded with bone and bestial horns. Their helmets of deformed metal were stretched into the image of the neverborn. Hell writhed within these flesh hosts, Chosen of the Warmaster’s own Legion.

Bare-headed, an eight-pointed star branded into his ivory white pate, the leader of the Chosen made himself known.

‘Vorshkar!’ he declared, then spat a stream of invective in an old language Bar’dak didn’t understand. The meaning was clear, though.

Crackling jags of blood-crimson light were already stabbing towards the Targons as Bar’dak summoned his hate.

‘Targons! Death to the traitors!’

Seconds separated Bar’dak and the rest of his squad, but crucially they were split and thus their formation weaker against an experienced enemy.

Shuddering hurricane-bolters mounted in the torso plates of the Centurions kicked out a frenetic storm of return fire as the air between Chosen and Targon was threaded with beams and shells, so thick that every obstacle between them was destroyed almost instantly.

Ush’ban staggered, clipped by a burst of mass-reactive shells and needing a few seconds for his armour to compensate. Ramadus went ahead of him, releasing a long stream of intense, white fire from his heavy flamers. It caught one of the Chosen who was engulfed instantly and fell to his knees. Blinding shrapnel erupted around Ramadus as a missile exploded against his shoulder guard, knocking him off balance.

With the pressure relieved, the burning Chosen hauled himself up and recommenced firing. Ramadus ignored the shells and kept on, trying to locate the heavy. He saw the launcher a fraction too late, swinging around his flamers as a second missile spat from the rocket tube. It detonated square in the Centurion’s chest, cracking the ceramite and rendering one half of the hurricane bolter array useless. Ramadus put the other to use, raking the traitor’s armour. The bolter fire on his flank was intensifying, the warning runes flashing up on his battle-helm’s display too insistent to ignore. He half turned, expecting to see his enemy braced and firing but was instead confronted by a third Chosen, charging at him with a power fist.

Ramadus desperately geared up his siege drills, bringing them around into a defensive posture. The horned-headed traitor punched straight through them, shattering four out of six drill heads with sheer strength augmented by his power fist’s energy field.

Staggering, Ramadus tasted blood. Some of it had sprayed against his face plate. He could smell it, copper-sharp and indicative of internal bleeding. His suit concurred, but he shut down the trauma alerts so he could focus on surviving. One arm of his Centurion warsuit dangled uselessly by his side, whilst the rest of his armour was studded with drill shrapnel. Ramadus tried to fire his bolters. They were torn from his chest by power-gloved fingers, most of the breastplate ripped out with them and cast onto the ground. Knowing he wouldn’t survive a third blow, he went to turn and use his bulk to overwhelm the smaller Chosen. A glancing missile burst impacting against his shoulder showered both combatants with frag and slowed Ramadus just enough that his chest was exposed when the traitor thrust for his heart…

Ush’ban saw his brother die with his chest torn out. For a few seconds he stood upright, cold as a statue as his killer exulted in the death. Then the missile struck and Ramadus, his Centurion armour and the belief that the Targons were invincible was violently blown apart.

As Ramadus died, Ush’ban was already moving and advanced into a storm of hurled metal: chunks of plate that used to be armour. Bone and blood came with it, a grisly shower of viscera that clung to Ush’ban like guilt. He had fallen behind, and let Ramadus die alone.

Plunging through expulsion smoke from the landed missile, retribution was Ush’ban’s only salve as he met the one with the power fist who had just slain his brother.

‘Engaging!’ Nerad shouted down the vox, and moved to shield the civilians from a torrent of gunfire roaring from the Chosen. Through the tactical feed in his retinal lens, he was aware of Bar’dak and the others trying to bridge the gap between them and him, but right now he and Amadu were on their own. Nerad was hurting, the wound in his shoulder serious but he cut out the pain and triggered his chest-mounted bolters. He counted six Chosen in his eye line, but his auto-senses were picking up three more. Ramadus was dead – the odds against the Targons were worsening.

‘Two squads,’ he voxed to Amadu.

Amadu nodded, reaching down to grab one of the civilians.

‘Female,’ he said to her, though she still had her back to him, ‘we must get you to safety.’

Bar’dak had the one called Vorshkar in his sights, less wary of the flanged mace he wielded in both hands than the trail of ethereal mist it was exuding. He only saw Amadu briefly, approaching the female, and saw her look up at her saviour while at the same time unclasping the collar she wore around her withered neck…

Amadu felt the danger before he saw it in the rising of the hackles on the back of his neck and the acid taste on his tongue, despite his battle-helm’s rebreather.

Psyker…

The thought came too late. Amadu had less than a second to regret his decision as the collar was breached and a flood of power unleashed. Magnesium-bright, searing hot pain overloaded the Centurion’s auto-senses. His indomitable warsuit cracked. Smoke issued from the frame as it partly sloughed away, merging with the slurry of his deliquesced flesh, bone and organs.

A bolt of arc lightning had struck Amadu, spat from the mouth of the female, impaling him through the chest like a crackling, fulminating skewer. His entire body transfixed, he shook with such violence that he cracked the retinal lenses in his battle-helm. Smoke issued from the joints of his armour, which had begun to scar and blacken, then melted before Ush’ban’s eyes.

Ush’ban had fought alongside Amadu for ninety-six years. They trained together. The ceremonial gladius Ush’ban wore at Chapter gatherings had been forged by him, a gift reciprocated by the bolt pistol Amadu had once carried as his sidearm. His death was a physical blow to Ush’ban but the mental upheaval it caused was far more debilitating and he almost missed the Chosen as the traitor sought to add to its kill tally.

The first swing caught Ush’ban a glancing blow on his hip and sent painful shockwaves through his leg and abdomen. He blocked the second with the outside of his siege drill but lost the armature in the process. It freed him up to use his armoured glove as something more than just to trigger the drill, and when the third blow came in Ush’ban seized the Chosen’s arm then hoisted him off his feet. Powered servos grinding and shrieking as he exerted them, Ush’ban threw the traitor across the rubble and into the facade of a partially collapsed temple ruin. Falling masonry buried the Chosen, silencing his roared curses.

Amadu’s demise happened quickly, the rest of his life measured in no more than a few seconds of excruciating agony. His death flame was like a photon-flare going off, only magnitudes greater. His silhouetted afterimage was ingrained on Bar’dak’s cornea, as his battle-helm tried desperately to compensate for the intense flash of light. It blinded him, and Bar’dak’s last sight was the Chosen advancing on him with that warp-touched mace. He had little time to worry about it. The psyker-witches who had killed Amadu weren’t finished. Emaciated, skeletal, the male wretch staggered unevenly to his feet and unclasped his own collar to begin the crescendo of what the female had unleashed.

Crackling lightning coruscated around the male, his body transfixed like a cruciform banner pole. Particulates in the air around him slowed until suspended as gravity was undone. The effect spread outwards, levitating grit, dust and debris. Amadu’s ruined body lifted with it. Bar’dak was caught in the wave along with the others and felt himself grow lighter as a sliver of air slipped between his boots and the ground.

Reaching its apex in a few seconds that seemingly stretched to minutes, the wave drew back like a tide recoiling from land. Like a long inhaled breath, reverse katabatic winds recalled it to its origin point, the male psyker-witch on the verge of going supernova.

Bar’dak realised this creature was a weapon, a human bomb no different to the ones that had killed so many of Colonel Redgage’s men and scarred Ush’ban’s armour. Only the technological aegis of the Mechanicus would not protect him this time – it would not protect any of them, not from this.

Gravity returned and in the same instant the inhaled breath was released in a terrifying storm.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Heletine, Canticus southern district, ‘the Cairns’

‘What just hit us?’ asked Drakgaard, staggered by the sudden blast wave but on his feet.

Elysius was about to shake his head when he sniffed the air.

‘You smell that?’

‘Soiled meat? Old blood?’ suggested Drakgaard, his gaze flitting between the Chaplain and their surroundings.

‘More like sour milk,’ said Elysius. ‘Warpcraft.’

Captain Helfer was being helped up by one of his troopers. ‘Feels like a damn bomb just went off,’ he groaned. Blood was trickling down his face from a cut sustained across the forehead, and his closely cropped moustache and beard were powdered with a fine layer of dust.

Most of the Kasrkin were down, some of them not moving.

Elysius regarded the mortal, his tone ominous.

‘I believe it just did, captain.’

Like their officers, the fire-born weathered the blast better and stayed standing, though had to check their advance mid-march. Dust was still rolling across the street in swathes as Her’us of the Serpentia broke formation and went to reconnoitre.

Rubble, indistinct and ubiquitous, lay everywhere but offered no answers. The tactical display was down, whatever had struck them taking out their short-range comms and helm visuals. Based on their previous position, Drakgaard knew the Centurions could not be more than two or three hundred metres away.

‘Did you hear gunfire prior to the blast?’ Drakgaard asked Elysius.

The Chaplain nodded. ‘We should move.’

A slow advance became a run, Drakgaard to the fore with the Serpentia his vigilant shadows. With Her’us back in their ranks, they surrounded the captain like a cloak of drake scale and moved in concert.

Caution was discarded in the wake of whatever had hit them. Gunfire scarcely heard before the blast resumed loudly on the air.

Close on the heels of the Serpentia were Squad Vah’gan. Led by Captain Helfer, the Kasrkin followed on as rearguard and left the slower Devastators behind.

After a few minutes, they found Bar’dak. The sergeant was lying on his back at the edge of a circle of scorched earth, his armour blackened just the same. Smoke clouded the area, seeping through the ruins. Fires crackled in the open, creating flickering shadows.

Warriors moved in the gloom, too indistinct to know exact numbers and disposition, their weapons fire succinctly revealing their allegiance.

‘Serpentia, engage!’ shouted Drakgaard, advancing steadily with the honour guard as Sergeant Vah’gan and the Kasrkin swiftly moved up in support.

Return fire erupted across the Imperial line, a collimated mix of bolter shells and hellgun las-rounds.

A missile exploded nearby as the Salamanders briefly overloaded armour systems came back online. Targeting reticules lit up the retinal lens displays of twenty fire-born, who unleashed a fearsome salvo against their hidden enemies.

Then silence.

As quickly as it had manifested, all enemy resistance died away to nothing. The last few echoes of Squad Vah’gan’s bolter fire were fading as Drakgaard held up his hand for them to cease.

‘Hold here,’ he said, allowing the Serpentia to reach the stricken form of Sergeant Bar’dak. ‘Apothecary…’

Sepelius broke ranks to kneel by Bar’dak’s side. Taking out his bio-scanner, he assessed the damage whilst the rest of the squad shielded him and the injured Centurion.

‘Life signs are weak,’ he told his captain, noting the arrival of the Devastators through the press of bodies.

Drakgaard nodded grimly before turning to Elysius, who pre-empted him.

‘I’ll see to the others.’

There were three other Centurion war frames lying prone in the dirt. The fifth and final squad member was scattered around the battle site in pieces.

As Elysius went to check vital signs and provide final rites if needed, Drakgaard surveyed the ruins. They were quiet, but that didn’t mean anything. He ordered both Devastator squads to bombard the next city block to be sure of no further surprises. As a massive firestorm engulfed the distant ruins, Sergeant Vah’gan approached.

‘Sir, we’ve just received word from Sergeant Zantho.’

Drakgaard bade him to continue.

‘His armoured column has joined up with Venerable Kor’ad and the Cadians, and awaits further orders.’

‘Tell him to push up. Head east.’ In his mind’s eye, Drakgaard imagined a wave of purifying flame sweeping across Canticus, burning all heretics to ash and finally ridding Heletine of the Black Legion’s consumptive presence. He bristled with fury at the thought, his grip tightening on the haft of his kaskara. ‘We are become two mailed fists, which, when they meet, will crush the heretics utterly.’ Drakgaard allowed himself a vicious smile, which more resembled a snarl on his scarred face. ‘Have Sergeant Kadoran converge on our location. Tell him we’re consolidating our forces before advancing further into the ruins.’

‘And the Sororitas, brother-captain?’

He had almost forgotten about them. Their knowledge of the relic sites had stopped the fire-born from chasing shadows and let them finally engage the enemy. In the wake of current events, these facts seemed somehow less significant.

‘Relay to them to move up in support, but not to get ahead of our lines. This is our victory, sergeant, one for the fire-born not the Ecclesiarchy. They may have whatever relics remain at the end, but I want the honour of breaking these traitors to go to none but us. Am I understood?’

Vah’gan saluted firmly, his eyes blazing with fierce pride.

‘Aye, sir.’

In his wake, Elysius returned. Judging by his body language his mood was less choleric.

‘Bar’dak was the only survivor,’ said Elysius gravely. ‘The rest of the Targons are slain.’

A tremor of anger rippled through Drakgaard at this news, and he felt his old wounds flare in painful sympathy. He had always believed pain was useful if it could be honed into anger and that anger then put to use. His retinal lenses shone in the bright incendiary flare of the concentrated barrage from the Devastators.

‘Sepelius and a squad of Kasrkin will stand guard until a transport is scrambled from Escadan to provide extraction.’

‘It is a great loss to the Chapter.’

‘It will be greater still if we do not march again soon. The Targons will rise again, brother.’

‘You’re more sanguine than I expected, Ur’zan. Bar’dak was a Centurion in more than just rank as his service studs will attest.’

‘I am not sanguine, Elysius, I am wrathful.’

‘And when put to proper purpose, wrath can be useful…’

Drakgaard smiled, though he knew the Chaplain could not see it.

‘Are you reading my mind, brother?’

‘But,’ Elysius continued, ‘if prompted to act rashly, it can be a severe detriment.’

Now Drakgaard faced him, seeing the sermon for what it was.

‘Speak what’s on your mind, Chaplain.’

‘We should tread warily.’

‘We will, but with purpose,’ Drakgaard countered, and Elysius saw how the long weeks had taken their toll on an already injured warrior. He was old, and worn like drake hide. Such treatment makes the scale hardy and unyielding, but beat it too much and even the toughest hide will crack.

‘I know you are eager for this, Ur’zan, but we should not overreach ourselves. There is much we don’t know, such as what killed Bar’dak and his squad.’

‘Bar’dak lives.’

‘By a thread! His part in this war is over.’

‘I will take any and all precautions. I am not Adrax Agatone, charging off half-cocked. A pity he did not heed your council as I have.’

‘Would you hear it now?’ Elysius asked.

‘Only a fool would ignore the wisdom of his Chaplain.’

Elysius laughed mirthlessly at the politick answer. Whilst there was respect, a gulf of mistrust existed between them. Where Drakgaard believed Elysius to be suspect because of his former association with Third Company, Elysius was convinced Drakgaard was so desperate for glory that he might neglect his own good sense. None of this could be said aloud, for it would undermine command and it was not the way of Adeptus Astartes to voice such open dissent, but it was the truth.

‘Hold here. Fortify and defend what we have won, and send in scouts to see what lies before us,’ Elysius said.

‘Why would I do that when our enemy retreats?’

Elysius tried not to sound exasperated. ‘It’s a dozen warriors, perhaps fewer.’

‘They are on the run, for the first time since this war began.’

‘We have been afforded a glimpse and know nothing of our foes’ disposition or strength. Look to the evidence of your eyes and see the peril of underestimating what is out there.’

‘Are you a military tactician, Chaplain, or do you in fact advise on the spiritual wellbeing of your brothers?’

Heeding his better judgement, Elysius did not give in to pettiness.

‘I am a servant of the Emperor, as are you, whose solemn duty is to preserve the rituals of the Chapter and guard against false pride.’

Drakgaard was stubborn. He bit back a sharp reply and instead answered, ‘As soon as Sergeant Kadoran arrives, we advance, and nothing shall dissuade me from that course. We have been made fools of by a dwindling warband of heretics who used the terrain to their advantage. That ends. Now.’

It availed them nothing to be at odds now – for good or ill. Drakgaard would receive his full support.

‘In Vulkan’s name then,’ Elysius replied, but the words rang hollow.

Eighteen armour kills littered the field, their shells still burning. Another seven were scattered throughout the connecting streets. Most were light vehicles, with only a few actual battle tanks amongst their number. No Renegade Astartes armour, no foul engines of the Dark Mechanicus. This was a distraction force, thrown together with the express purpose of dragging Zantho’s company deeper into the ruins. The tank commander was beginning to wonder if a real army still existed on Heletine, or if in fact they had been chasing shadows for the past weeks. Such a warren as Canticus made it difficult to know.

Ever since they had cleared and crossed Salvation Bridge, the route had become ever more crowded with scrap and wreckage. It had taken two hours to destroy the heretic armour. Zantho had been forced to reduce much of the district to rubble in the process. Fortunately, the arrival of Kor’ad and the Guard battle tanks had made bracketing the enemy easier. It was then a simple matter of tenaciously advancing down every road and street that could accommodate a battle tank until nothing remained.

In the end, they had pinned the last recalcitrant enemy armour in an expansive public square. The rare allowance of space did little to improve manoeuvrability, such was the overcrowding of vehicles. Victory came swiftly to the fire-born but felt almost profligate.

‘We should aim south, break through here,’ Redgage indicated a point on the hololith with his gloved finger where a wide road circumvented the city outskirts, ‘and then reroute east as ordered.’

Zantho stroked his beard. It was part of the great red mane of spiked hair that framed his face which, presently, was wrinkled with consternation.

‘A long diversion, colonel.’

‘True, but faster than slogging our way through these streets where we’re at risk of being ambused. Concealed infantry should be our main concern.’

‘My main concern is following my commander’s orders,’ Zantho replied, looking up from the grainy map image to see the Vindicators had almost cleared the enemy wrecks with their attached dozer blades. Embarkation was imminent. ‘But you’re right,’ he conceded, looking back at Colonel Redgage. They had only lost four vehicles during the battle, and all of those to hidden demolitions teams. ‘I’ll give the order to head south.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ said Redgage, smoothing his grey moustaches. ‘My lord,’ he added, looking up nervously to Zantho’s left before saluting crisply and returning to his tank with his men.

The three commanders had met in the square in the shadow of Zantho’s Predator. Redgage had come with his entourage. Zantho was alone, so too the third officer of this gathering.

‘You cannot bear me a grudge for following orders, brother.’ Zantho kept his eyes level, and didn’t look up. ‘Had I not acted as I did, further lives may have been lost.’

‘Lives were lost,’ a deep, mechanised voice replied, conveyed through a vox-emitter.

‘It is war. That is its currency,’ said Zantho, finally gazing up at the towering form of Venerable Kor’ad.

‘One which I have long accepted, since before you were even an initiate.’ The Dreadnought turned a fraction, easing his sarcophagus over the sergeant to glower through his vision slit at him.

‘For an ancient, you are petty, Kor’ad.’

‘For an ancient, I am temperate!’ roared the Dreadnought, stomping towards Zantho so he had to back away or be crushed. ‘But do not think me blind, either,’ he said more calmly. ‘I know what Drakgaard ordered you to do, as I know my own orders. He is frustrated and believes he can lose this war. To compensate he throws himself into the crucible without proper caution.’

Only an ancient such as Kor’ad would ever openly criticise his commanding officer in this way. Such things, whilst incredibly uncommon, were not without precedent. Yet the fact of hearing it still rankled with Zantho.

‘Defeat is always possible. Though, I never took you for cautious, brother.’

‘Not for the victors. And I am mindful. There is a stark difference.’ Kor’ad paused, letting the harsh grind of servos articulate his mood. ‘If you are so certain of our captain, why are your largest war engines languishing in Escadan?’

‘To reinforce us. I am being prudent.’

Zantho didn’t feel it, though, and Kor’ad was wise enough to see that.

‘Grind down a blade enough,’ uttered the Dreadnought, ‘and soon even the sharpest sword will lose its edge.’

‘Zen’de, but what has philosophy got to do with any of this?’

‘Our captain functions with blunted purpose.’

‘Then it is our duty to help restore it. I say again: what is your meaning, Kor’ad?’

‘Be mindful, that is all. As we speak, Ur’zan Drakgaard is dangerously close to being reckless,’ said Kor’ad, turning and stomping away.

The last words of the ancient troubled Zantho, for he too had noticed the strain Drakgaard was under. His old wounds had made him bitter, the fact of his being sidelined to the reserve companies even more so. This was a great opportunity for him to show his mettle and, in his opinion at least, restore the Chapter’s reputation. Drakgaard had needed a war of his own; he just didn’t need this one.

Climbing back aboard his Predator, Zantho took up position in the cupola hatch and stared out into the dark horizon. The way ahead was occluded but he felt a cold wind against his face and wondered what it might portend.

Naeb landed with a minor ignition flare from his jump pack, burning the earth around him and searing the short grass underfoot. This part of Canticus had once been its ornamental gardens and vineyard, but the war had made it a dirty brown mess of felled trees, broken statues and fire-blackened vegetation. The grass was churned to dark earth from the tramp of booted feet, the fountains were broken or choked with chemicals. A single tree stood alone in the midst of this destruction, the fruit on its branches withering and rotting in the actinic air.

‘A world has lost its innocence, brother,’ Va’lin remarked as Naeb killed his turbine engines.

‘I’m not sure if Heletine was ever innocent, but it has certainly lost much.’

An explosion detonated fifty metres away, turning a fallen ornamental arch into rubble but neither fire-born reacted beyond a glance.

Redgage’s engineers were demolishing the gardens, clearing a path for the tanks to traverse unimpeded. Until they were needed elsewhere, the Wyverns had been tasked with ensuring the sappers’ safety.

Va’lin stared into the darkness, willing the enemy to appear. Since Salvation Bridge, he had seen little in the way of combat and now the silence of that was becoming deafening. Instead of foes, though, he saw the squad widely dispersed over the expansive area, patrolling in loose pairs. His mood darkened further. With the deaths of Sor’ad and Illus, they had been reduced to eight.

‘You saved Dersius and I,’ said Naeb softly, as if guessing Va’lin’s dark thoughts. ‘Illus died a Wyvern, fighting hard and on his feet. None of us can ask for more.’

‘Then why does it bother me still?’

‘Because they are dead, and we would wish them not to be. It’s not so hard to understand, brother.’

‘You have an over simple view of the world, Naeb.’

‘And you think too much.’ Naeb gestured to Dersius as he landed nearby and within earshot. ‘Try being more like the Themian. An anvil feels nothing.’

Dersius did not rise to the bait as Iaptus and the rest of the squad landed a few seconds later. In the distance, a Chimera had arrived to ferry the engineers. Evidently, their work was complete.

‘We push north,’ Iaptus told them, ‘acting as escort for the armour. Brother Orcas will provide infiltration momentarily.’

‘Do we have eyes on the enemy, brother-sergeant?’ asked Va’lin.

‘The Black Legion? Not yet. Nothing since the bridge, but apparently Captain Drakgaard is confident we are close.’

Above, they could all hear the heavy whip of a gunship’s turbo fans as it came in to land.

‘Even the skies fall quiet…’ muttered Ky’dak as the vague outline of the Thunderhawk appeared overhead.

‘They will be aflame soon enough,’ said Iaptus, flatly.

Arrok ventured a question, ‘Brother-sergeant, what of the Sororitas? Have we received word of their movements?’

Iaptus looked up at the descending gunship, which was close and right above them.

‘Nothing beyond their pledged support.’

‘I, for one, am grateful of it,’ said Xerus, the veteran having nothing but praise for the Seraphim who had fought beside them on Salvation Bridge.

Iaptus nodded, but kept his own counsel.

Ky’dak exchanged a glance with Va’lin, their discovery of the Sororitas scavenger in the ruins still fresh in the mind.

‘Tell me, brother,’ said Naeb, his words lost to the others in the down wash of heat and noise as Orcas brought the gunship down to land, ‘I neglected to ask, what did she say to you on the bridge?’

‘She said we were too few,’ Va’lin replied as the ruckus from the engine was diminishing.

Everyone heard him – their silence provided the same answer.

They were too few, and alone could not win the war.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Heletine, Solist

In the early days of the war for Heletine, Solist had suffered in the punitive bombardments of the local militia. Its name had once meant ‘sanctuary’ in native Heletian, but had become a thing of bitter and chilling irony. For days, falsely believing it to be the heretics’ muster point, macro cannon bursts and ceaseless missile salvoes had pummelled the city into a desert of grey rock and partially irradiated dust. The desperate actions of the now-dead planetary governor achieved little except the wholesale destruction of one of Heletine’s major cities, together with its unwillingly sacrificed populace.

Only bones inhabited Solist now.

Picked clean by the carrion that roamed the wastes, a skeletal hand reached up out of the sand trying to grasp the sun. The clawed stanchion of a black gunship crushed its bleached fingers, its turbine engines kicking up dust in savage, twisting squalls. The embarkation ramp was descending before the ship had touched down, Angerer’s silhouette framed just inside it by the hold’s internal illumination.

‘Laevenius…’ said the canoness, summoning her second-in-command, and allowing the ship to land before she stepped out.

The Sister Superior followed, twenty Celestians looming behind but waiting aboard the transport. As she walked down the ramp, Laevenius’s armoured grip tightened around the leather book, her gauntleted fingers digging in. Though to a casual glance it would appear nondescript, the book was far from ordinary. It described the identities of traitors, those believed shown to Dominica by the Emperor before she was sainted.

It was a list of prey, of those meant for death or incarceration. In Angerer’s mind that was currently a list of one… the Order’s great shame, the black opal on her rosary chain. Many knew of her existence, but few knew of her provenance.

A wretched creature crawled over to the canoness on its belly, emaciated by radiation poisoning. It had once been a man, a soldier judging by his tattered uniform. A sigil of Chaos marked his blighted skin, doubtless an act of desperation when the pain had become too much to bear. Many of those in Solist were afflicted thusly, a shambling and half dead host, the dead governor’s dark legacy.

Angerer stalled the wretch’s progress with her armoured boot, and looked down at him through cold retinal lenses. All the Sisters had donned their helms. Only low-level radiation permeated the city now, and Angerer was sure their faith would protect them, but a layer of hermetically sealed adamantium and ceramite were also adjudged prudent.

‘The Dark Gods don’t grant succour for the weak… nor does the Throne,’ said Angerer, levelling her fusion pistol and ending the wretch’s suffering. ‘The brass compass, sister,’ she added, staring macabrely at the cauterised stump of neck where the man’s head used to be. ‘His soul will burn as do the souls of all traitors.’

By the time she looked up again at Laevenius, the Sister Superior was holding out the compass.

Twenty Celestians had marched from the gunship’s hold, filing out in ivory ranks, their chasubles the hue of sanctified blood. Bolters locked across their bodies, they loosely encircled their leader. Angerer had barely noticed, her attention instead on the compass and the teardrop still balanced precipitously on it. Even wearing her gauntlets, she could feel the heat of divination. It told what she believed to be true in her heart.

‘She is here,’ she breathed, her hand straying subconsciously to the rosary pearls and the single black opal that spoiled the perfect chain. ‘What did I tell you about belief, Sister Laevenius?’

Whilst Angerer was establishing the proximity of their quarry, two more ships had landed on the barren wastes and were disgorging the rest of the canoness’s forces. Two further squads of Battle Sisters and a squad each of Retributors and Dominions. The latter half of the force was heavily armed, equipped with flamer and melta weaponry.

Angerer was taking no chances, not with this prey. Not with this particular traitor. Over sixty armoured Sororitas waited silently on the sand, standing at the ready outside their transports, and it was still not enough.

‘Signal the rest of the Preceptory. Give them the code command, Angelicus.’

‘All of them, my canoness?’ asked Laevenius.

Angerer turned sharply, her glare like a chastening fire even through the icy blue of her retinal lenses. ‘Bring everything to this city. Have them hold position at the border. Nothing must prevent us from getting off Heletine with our prisoner. Do it quickly. As soon as our troops move, the barbarian drakes will suspect they have been betrayed.’

‘Have they not, my canoness?’ asked Laevenius again.

Angerer scowled, unaccustomed to being questioned by anyone, let alone her trusted right hand. ‘For good cause. Our ends justify the means – never forget that. Is your faith wavering, Sister? I thought we were of one mind and soul on this matter, its consequences and its cost…’

‘We are, canoness,’ Laevenius replied, lowering her head and touching the book. She remembered the scar on her face and looked up. ‘By the Emperor’s will, by Throne it shall be done.’

Satisfied, Angerer gave the order to move. Only Laevenius and her trusted Celestians would accompany her. The rest would stay with the gunships to protect their egress. A rise up ahead of the landing zone shielded what she knew was a valley where they would find Sister Revina and redemption for the Order. She could not wait for further reinforcement. She had waited too long already.

It was hard to make out at first. A hot wind blew through the valley, creating a veil of dust that occluded whatever was lurking at its basin in murky grey.

Something was down there, Angerer was certain. And as she and her entourage drew closer, it began to resolve. First an indistinct smudge against the grey, then a roughly humanoid shape, finally a woman dressed in a ragged robe.

She was staked down in the sand, wrists and ankles, and left to bake in the sun.

Angerer’s wrath warred between those who had subjected her sister to this degradation and Revina herself. Of the former, there was no sign. Tracking auspex and bio-scanners revealed nothing, too fouled by latent radiation to provide an accurate reading. Trusting to caution, Angerer approached slowly and sent Laevenius with one squad of Celestians out into flanking positions that encircled the torture site.

She eyed the ridgeline – so did Laevenius from the left flank. Nothing manifested. No surprise attack, no trap was sprung – Angerer merely got closer. As she closed, she saw the caked blood around Revina’s mouth: her cracked and bone-dry lips, the patches of exposed skin where the sun had burned her.

It took a good deal of Angerer’s composure not to rush over and free her, to roar her defiance at the slow torture visited upon Revina. She wondered how long she had been here, if the heretics realised who and what she was. It felt like a goad, Revina trussed up like this. It felt like she was bait.

‘Sister…’ Angerer uttered across the vox-link, afraid to speak too loudly and disturb the silence of the desert into action. So quiet, so eerily still in spite of the eddying dust clouds and even they had begun to subside in the last few seconds.

‘No movement,’ answered Laevenius, knowing precisely what was going through her canoness’s mind.

‘Do not be fooled,’ Angerer replied, casting her gaze across the opposite ridgeline again. ‘We are not alone out here.’

Sister Revina was only a few metres away now, and Angerer could see she was aware of her Sisters’ presence around her. She did not struggle or cry out. Her throat was so parched she would not likely speak again, or soon anyway.

Angerer stopped, staring at Revina who stared back through seared and bloodshot eyes. Angerer detected no fear, no pleading, just a solemn kind of acceptance she found altogether more unsettling, as if Revina knew this would happen and knew what was about to happen too.

Signalling the Celestians in her bodyguard to halt, Angerer went the last few metres alone. Revina was her mess to deal with, her dirty secret. She would meet her without the others, one sister to another.

‘Revina,’ she said, surprised at how faint her voice had become. ‘Revina,’ she repeated more loudly, displaying the confidence she wanted to feel. ‘Sister…’

Revina blinked, once. It must have taken great pain and effort to do so. Her lips began to move but she could not utter a word, even if she wanted to.

‘I confess I questioned whether or not we would find you, but your tears showed me what I wanted to know.’ Casting aside the compass, Angerer drew her mace and crept forwards another step.

‘And here you are… witch.’

Now Revina’s eyes registered some emotion. Pity. For a sister who cleaved to duty over blood and who feared the uncertainty of her own future. She glanced to one side, trying to find her other sibling, trying to find Laevenius.

‘Your sister reviles you as much as I,’ spat Angerer. ‘Perhaps more so,’ she added, then gestured to the Celestians, ‘but I have brought an entire war host to track you down and bring you back. I should have killed you, but death is too good for you now. I won’t let you escape your fate that easily.’

Again, Revina gave her that pitying look.

Angerer wanted to crush her skull for it, for it was a mirror into the canoness’s own soul and the reflection did not paint her in a favourable light.

Time was wasting. Angerer felt it like the irradiated sands of Solist moving inexorably beneath her feet.

She was about to order her Celestians to release Revina and make her their prisoner again when she realised the sand was moving. It was feeding slowly towards some at first unseen aperture that was rapidly expanding into a broad fissure. The fissure became a chasm, huge swathes of sand pouring inside it and, like a swimmer ensnared by the tide, Angerer was dragged along with it.

Seeing the canoness’s peril, the Celestians rushed forwards but that only made it worse and several were caught up in the swell. Revina disappeared with it too, the sand draining away and in its wake revealing armoured forms that had been concealed until that moment.

Laevenius was the first to react and gave the order to open fire, but the traitors were already firing. At first there were ten, then twenty, then thirty, until forty armoured Black Legion warriors emerged from beneath the desolation of Solist to add more corpses to the tally of thousands that already rotted there.

The Celestians closest to Angerer were the first to die. One jerked backwards, the perfect sheen of her ivory power armour broken apart by an explosive shell and painted a darker crimson than the blood-red of her robes.

Another half turned, raising her bolter at the enemies suddenly in her midst, before her arm was vaporised from her body.

A third cried out some canticle of hatred against the traitor as her right eye lens was shot out and her helm, skull and the matter within erupted outwards a few seconds later.

Eight Celestians lay dead before those that were left made any sort of reply. The two survivors joined Angerer in the pit – a steep-sided, six-metre trap with a grated sand sluice at the bottom – but were not to last long. Something else besides Revina was down there with them, something massive and powerful. It crafted itself to look like a man, a transhuman warrior of some bygone era but was anything but. Its sheer size and menace, the empyreal nature of its form, suggested otherwise.

Angerer put a word to it, spoken in a half rasp of barely contained terror and righteous fury.

‘Hellspawn!’

As the daemon closed on her, the pair of Celestians rushed forwards with the name of Saint Dominica on their lips. It was a brave, reckless display but one that ended in both being dashed against the steel walls of the trap with their skulls crushed.

Angerer brandished her mace, knowing it to be a more effective weapon against daemonkind than her fusion pistol. Unlike her charges, she knew firsthand how dangerous such creatures could be.

‘Get back,’ she warned, mustering her hate to try to ward off the terror that was threatening to paralyse her.

The daemon laughed, as ungodly a sound as it was possible for a thing to make, an exhalation of derision redolent of sulphur and decomposing flesh. Angerer’s censers, their votive incense, did nothing to repel it. Like their mistress, they capitulated before this horror, shrinking back until the daemon eclipsed them in its unearthly shadow.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Heletine, Canticus southern district, ‘the Cairns’

Ever since he had become captain of Sixth, Ur’zan Drakgaard had felt overshadowed. Though he was a campaign veteran, a warrior of esteemed and lengthy service, his banner had never been as lofty or lauded as the battle company captains. Amongst the reserves, a warrior learned his place was by the sidelines or reinforcing his Chapter brothers as support.

Few were the opportunities to step into the light of war’s ever-present flame and be recognised. It had never bothered Ur’zan Drakgaard. He knew, amongst the fire-born, he was not remarkable. He did not possess the charisma Ko’tan Kadai had before his death or the martial prowess of Pellas Mir’san. Adrax Agatone was a superior tactician, Dac’tyr was unrivalled in naval warfare. Even Sol Ba’ken of Seventh had a better rapport with his battle-brothers. His best traits were his determination, singularity of purpose and utter refusal to capitulate under any circumstances. His wounds, a vast and spreading colony across his body, testified to that.

But here, now, Ur’zan Drakgaard had a rare chance to step into the light. He told himself he was just doing his duty, that personal glory didn’t matter. It was for the honour of the Chapter he fought and would one day die.

Ur’zan Drakgaard told himself this lie as he led out the line, a feral smile twisting the corners of his scarred mouth.

Reunited with Sergeant Kadoran’s troops, the Salamanders storming across the Canticus ruins represented almost the entire Sixth Company’s martial strength. They were further reinforced by a cadre of elite Kasrkin. The mortal soldiers were showing their mettle by maintaining pace with the faster, hardier Space Marines. Helfer had trained them well and such warriors did him credit, but Drakgaard knew the true test would come when they engaged the enemy proper.

The heretics could not be much farther now. This was the deepest Imperial troops had ever ventured. Beyond the snap fire from the shadows when they had first discovered the defeated Centurions, resistance was non-existent. Privately, Drakgaard did wonder what manner of weapon had dispatched one of Fourth Company’s most elite units so comprehensively. Perhaps they had managed to destroy it during the fighting. Bar’dak was in no position to refute or deny that, by now on the way back to Escadan aboard a Thunderhawk with Apothecary Sepelius.

No resistance meant only one of two things: either Drakgaard was right and the heretics had been so diminished by attrition they no longer possessed the military strength to stand and fight, or the fire-born at his command were being drawn into a trap. In a way, it didn’t matter. Root them out, burn their bones, it was all Ur’zan Drakgaard knew how to do; it was all he had ever done.

Every few moments, he checked the tactical display. The Salamanders and their Cadian allies were making steady progress, despite the heavy terrain. Sentinel walkers had been tasked with flanking the advancing force, acting as scouts and outriders, their design uniquely disposed to the urban environs. Between them were Drakgaard’s infantry, an alliance of Tactical and Devastator squads, and the Kasrkin. The Serpentia held the centre under the overall commander’s leadership with his Chaplain.

From the south, two companies of Imperial armour under Commander Zantho and Redgage picked their way through the rubble and would link up with the troops on foot soon. Ingress into the heart of the city via armoured tank tread was far from easy. Wide-scale devastation had rendered most of Canticus a ruin barely traversable by foot, let alone battle tank, but a road that adjoined the Sanctium Vius from the south provided the means for both battle groups to reunite. Once alloyed, Drakgaard believed it didn’t matter what level of martial strength the heretics still had; it would be crushed between hammer and anvil.

‘Even with a hundred charges, it would take hours to shatter it,’ said Naeb.

Although all of the Wyverns knew how to break into a defended position or destroy a wall or bunker, Naeb had the greatest expertise in demolition. He surveyed the collapsed column of stone through his bionic eye, searching it for weaknesses but finding none.

‘I doubt even our brother’s lumpen head,’ he said, looking at Dersius, ‘thick as it undoubtedly is, could split it.’

The Themian took a step forwards. ‘Shall we wager if it would break your faceplate instead, Naeb?’

Va’lin intervened to halt their banter.

‘Naeb’s silence suggests declination, brother.’

Dersius laughed loudly.

Naeb gave Va’lin a short bow, ‘Astute as always,’ he said, as his gaze strayed to a lone figure standing at the edge of the rubble. ‘A pity our other Themian does not possess Dersius’s good humour.’

If Ky’dak heard him, he didn’t react. His was staring into the shell of a distant building, the fires within it guttering but still bright.

Va’lin murmured, ‘What does he see when he stares into the flames?’

‘Whatever it is,’ Naeb replied softly, ‘it does not improve his demeanour.’

‘Wyverns!’ Sergeant Iaptus called from the opposite side of the column. ‘Gather.’

To call it a column was like referring to Mount Deathfire on Nocturne as a hill. It was immense, one of the so-called ‘Cairns’, inexplicably felled across their route of march, effectively shearing it in half.

Divided by the Sanctium Vius, the armoured force under the overall command of Venerable Kor’ad had occupied and was traversing the southern fringe of the octakaidecahedral region when the great column had fallen. Advancing in file, several battle tanks had been crushed during this calamity, at first trapped and then unable to get out of the way in time. In the process, a wedge had been driven between the recently joined companies.

Sent ahead to assess the damage, the Wyverns were standing atop the fallen edifice like conquerors over the corpse of a world but found no reason to be triumphant. Nearby their gunship piloted by Brother Orcas idled on a patch of scrub that served as a rare landing zone.

‘Inconvenient how it splits us in two even halves,’ said Arrok, as the Wyverns came together.

‘Not so even…’ Ky’dak muttered.

On one side of the monolithic column were the Cadians, on the other side Zantho and his tank company.

Va’lin heard him and was quick to remonstrate. ‘Don’t dishonour them, Ky’dak. They have fought bravely so far.’

‘And yet,’ answered Ky’dak, ‘they are still just mortals.’ He leapt down from the flat-sided column to join Xerus below.

‘It stretches credulity to think this was mere happenstance,’ said Xerus. Unlike the others, the veteran had been standing at ground level, investigating the column’s rupture point. ‘There are powder marks here from blasting charges. Some of the stone also bears evidence of las-cutting. It was worn down over several days of demolition before the final push was applied to collapse it.’

‘So the enemy armour drew us here deliberately,’ Iaptus was furthest forward of the squad and peered into the distance, ‘is that what you’re saying, brother?’

‘It is, brother-sergeant.’

None of this was improving Iaptus’s already irascible mood.

Vo’sha was just behind the sergeant, looking ahead through a pair of magnoculars.

‘The route diverges,’ he said. ‘No way to link our two forces – we’ll be pushed farther south before we can head east again.’

Zantho’s voice came through the vox.

‘How far, brother-sergeant?’

‘Difficult to judge…’ said Iaptus.

Vo’sha adjusted the magnification through the scopes. ‘A detour of several hours at least.’

Zantho heard and cursed quietly in Nocturnean. Exhaling a frustrated breath he said, ‘Join up with Kor’ad. I’ll inform the ancient he’s going to be lighter by several battle tanks but that at least the Wyverns will be watching his flank.’

Iaptus sent Zantho his affirmation sigil and opened a link to the waiting Thunderhawk.

‘Brother Orcas, prepare for departure. We’re joining Kor’ad and the Cadians.’

Ignoring the thrumming engines, Sister Stephina bowed her head in prayer. In the darkness of the transport’s hold, she shut her eyes to the outside world and beseeched Saint Dominica’s aid.

For years, Canoness Angerer had been her lodestone and a constant reminder of her faith and duty to the Throne. In all that time the latter had never wavered, but knelt in the dark before the votive shrine, Stephina confessed to doubts about her preceptor.

‘Our teachings are the words of the Emperor, His Throne we serve in perpetuity and in so doing sacrifice all mortal concerns and desires,’ she whispered. ‘Our Order so does pledge, by our Ebon Chalice, sigil of Our Martyred Saint Dominica.’

The canticles of faith passed quickly across her lips, Stephina afraid that in doing anything other she would be exposed for her lack of faith and forever diminished in the eyes of the Emperor and the saint.

‘Grant me faith, oh Dominica – let me see how my canoness serves the Throne. Her will is the will of the Order, she who represents you on earth. And yet…’ she paused, breath catching in her throat. To believe her canoness acted out of some selfish agenda was one thing, to speak it invited actual condemnation if she was wrong, ‘I cannot see the Emperor’s hand in her works.’

‘Sister…’

Stephina’s heart trembled in her chest, so engrossed in prayer was she that for a moment she believed it was the voice of Alicia Dominica and not her fellow Seraphim that had addressed her.

‘Casiopia,’ she said, managing to sound calm as she opened her eyes serenely.

‘Orders have been received from the Canoness-Preceptor.’ Sister Casiopia clutched a leaf of parchment in her hand, reverently bowing her head so her superior could rise from prayer and accept it.

Stephina read the wax-sealed parchment, knowing already what it contained.

‘What was the signal word, Sister?’ she asked, her face darkening as she took in Angerer’s written orders. Despite her prayers, she could not help but see the treachery in them.

‘Angelicus, my Sister.’

Stephina nodded, dismissing Casiopia.

Twenty Seraphim occupied the hold of the transport; another almost equally burdened gunship flew alongside it not twenty metres away.

‘We are to Solist then,’ said a voice she knew.

Sister Helia, her white hair and alabaster complexion marking her out as angelic in more than honorific alone, approached from the other side of the hold. It was not spacious but neither was it at capacity, so there was room enough to move and seek solitude if needed.

‘I had no wish to interrupt,’ she added, clutching the same parchment orders as Stephina did. ‘You seemed… troubled, Sister.’

Of the entire Order, there was no one Stephina trusted more than Helia. Except perhaps Laevenius, but Stephina believed she was somehow allied to whatever scheme Angerer was fulfilling.

They were blood sisters, after all.

Even so, she had to consider what she said to Helia next.

‘Troubled to what end, I cannot fathom.’

‘Is that why you were so deep in prayer, Sister? It is not so shameful to admit you have doubts.’

‘I see only bloodshed on this parchment,’ Stephina confessed, trusting enough in Helia to speak her mind.

‘You worry for the savages?’

‘What is in Solist that we must abandon our allies to obtain?’

Helia frowned as if she’d just been asked a facile question. ‘We obey our preceptor, Sister. Her faith is our guide, her will the will of the Throne.’

‘We are leaving them to die, Sister.’

‘They are capable warriors.’

‘Who believe they are reinforced by a holy Order of the Adepta Sororitas. Tell me this does not sit ill with you.’

‘We follow the decrees of Canoness Angerer. Our duty is to the Ecclesiarchy, above all else.’

‘And what if the preceptor is not serving the Ecclesiarchy in this?’ Stephina lowered her voice, glancing sidelong to see if anyone else was listening but fortunately the drone of the engines was masking the conversation. ‘What if she serves her own ends?’

‘Do you have proof?’

‘I have the inexplicable nature of these orders,’ said Stephina. ‘I have my faith.’

For a moment Helia succumbed to doubt. It was written plainly on her face, her look of angelic serenity marred by sudden confusion.

For a moment, Stephina hoped it had not been such a stretch to implicate their canoness so boldly. It did not last.

‘I have never seen you like this before, Stephina.’

‘Because I have never been told to abandon my post and allies of the Imperium for a clandestine mission. Let the Inquisition be ruled by such subterfuge – we Battle Sisters are of higher morality.’

‘Sister…’ Helia reached out to hold Stephina’s hands. They shook with anger. ‘Be calm. You are weary, that is all. Rest, pray. There is a little time before we reach Solist.’

It was like shouting into a storm. Helia would not hear her, and Stephina was yet unsure what she could do. Appearing to heed her Sister, she gently released herself, bowed her head in gratitude and returned to the shrine.

‘Answer me this, Sister,’ she said whilst her back was turned, just about to kneel down again. ‘When did we become betrayers?’

Helia could not.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior

The din of machinery and clattering metal resolved on the warm air, suggesting the excavation was still ongoing.

And close.

A heady scent pervaded, cloying and noxiously saccharine. It dulled the otherwise industrial and actinic scent of the underhive Exor had come to know but overlaid a much more unsettling odour that felt incongruous in the sweating, metal confines.

Somewhere close was the nexus of whatever foulness had crept into the heart of Molior and taken root. It was the source of Zartath’s disquiet and the reason why the vermin were so grossly mutated. Facts interleaved, coincidence became causality and all the disparate threads they had been following suddenly conjoined at this point, in this moment.

Logic and instinct had reached the same conclusion in the same instant and so its two agents in Molior found themselves at the precipice of a great and dark discovery.

Slowing naturally as instinctive caution took over, Zartath signalled for Exor to take the opposite flank of the wreckage. The path they had been travelling, shouldered by peaks of discarded metal, had widened, the summits either side shrinking as the debris flattened out in a rusted plain.

Exor nodded, understanding, and as the warriors diverged they crouched low and moved quietly between scraps of cover.

As well as the noise from the machines, there was light now too. As Exor crept closer, he tried to keep Zartath in his field of vision. Agatone had sent Exor after the hunter to bring him back and now the Techmarine found himself in league with him, facing some terror of the subterranean world below Sturndrang. Even with his mission parameters changed in the face of empirical evidence, Exor knew he needed to keep Zartath in his sights, watch him as his captain had ordered. It was impossible. The hunter moved too swiftly, Exor a lumpen clod in comparison. He had to settle for knowing he was close by and that, for now at least, their objectives were in alignment.

The light was coming from a string of phosphor lamps, rigged above a deep pit from which the scattered and piled wreckage had been excised. More light emanated from drum fires and the metal shells of vehicles and structures that had been turned into massive burning braziers. They reminded Exor of ribcages and he briefly wondered if their design had been deliberate.

Figures huddled in the light. Men and women, not so dissimilar to the dregs he had seen in Kabullah. The differences between them were subtle, but immediately alarming. A nervous vitality affected the ones now before him. It drove their weary bodies back to the pit where half a dozen vehicles were crowding. Three of the vehicles were industrial-grade excavators, drilling and digging. Two others were cargo haulers, brimming with scrap from the pit. The last vehicle was a freight loader, a four-track. On the back of the truck a tall figure in purple robes murmured sibilant imprecations.

The men and women were not slaves; they were supplicants. Through his visual implants, Exor discerned sigils scratched into their flesh. Self-inflicted wounds. Scarification marred faces already withered by malnutrition. None of this disfigurement or wretchedness appeared to dampen their spirits, though it was difficult to tell if they laboured in thralls of rapture or melancholy. The mood of the supplicants seemed to wax and wane according to their proximity to the pit. Exor estimated almost forty at the dig site, including the robed demagogue who he assumed was the leader. As his imprecations grew louder, chanting began in the cultists’ ranks too and a realisation was quick to form.

This was who they had fought at Seven Points, who Tsu’gan had fought too. A cult of Chaos was at large and growing in Molior’s deep underhive. Unchecked, it would be the end of this world.

About to creep closer and try to find Zartath, Exor saw the first sentry. Unlike the diggers, it moved languidly as if affected by some torpor. Disguised beneath its robes and afflicted by some kind of physical mutant action, gender was hard to determine. He did make out the strange arrangement of tubes in kind to the creatures they had dispatched at Seven Points. Seeing it for a second time, Exor was reminded of the amulet the underhiver wore when they had first delved into Molior. Tainted blood had corrupted these men and women, turned its vermin into monsters.

Pipes fed down into the pit, extracting, exsanguinating. Whatever lurked within was being siphoned and turned into a narcotic that altered its takers in initially subtle but ultimately ruinous ways, like the one that had affected the ganger called Karve.

The taint: this place in the darkness was the epicentre and the radial fractures of its corruption were slowly spreading. Like hacking down a dead tree to expose the insects burrowing under its seemingly healthy bark, the fire-born had uncovered an infestation. Only one course of action remained to them – exterminate it at the source.

Exor edged forwards, low and to the shadows, careful to avoid the sentries’ patrols. Techmarines were not adept at stealth but the sentries seemed so entranced that sneaking amongst them was not much of a challenge. The sudden and painful throbbing in Exor’s skull was. The closer he got to the pit, the louder and more agonising it became. The supplicants’ rapture was his torture. It could only be worse for Zartath.

The keening, that’s what he had called it. In mythic ages, it was a siren’s call dragging sailors to their doom. Only this siren was embedded in the deep earth of the underhive, not an ocean, and the sailors were the two fire-born who had tracked it to its lair.

There was no tuning it out, and no solace from the call. It was inside, a hollow drone that rattled around within the skull like a broken chip of bone, the damage being caused by its existence unknown until it was too late.

An ordinary man would have been driven mad by it, or driven to it, foreswearing all oaths and friendships in order to be in service to the keening. But Space Marines were not men, and did not give in to Chaos easily. A duty lay before Exor now, one he had sworn to uphold when he became fire-born, to defend mankind from threats without and within to his dying breath.

As part of the Chapter or alone here in the dark of the underhive, it did not matter.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ he began, affirming his purpose and planning a route through the sentries that would get him to the demagogue. Then all thoughts of duty and tactics deserted him.

He had found Zartath. The ex-Black Dragon was on his feet, charging down the nearest sentry and roaring like a beast unhinged.

Horrified and agape, Exor watched as Zartath bore the sentry down with bone blades embedded in its chest. Shattering its blood-vials, Zartath was back on his feet and running again before the creature expired with a strange whimper of pleasure-pain. He moved low but with long, loping strides like a hound on the hunt. Blood sprayed across his muzzle, the sense-shattering keening coring out his skull – Zartath was as close to truly feral as he had ever been. So singular of purpose, so maddened, he was heedless of almost everything except the keening.

All thoughts of stealth now abandoned, Exor rose up and opened fire on the mutant closing on Zartath’s blindside. It cradled a strange-looking fusil, the stock and trigger clutched by long, bony fingers, the barrel steadied with a coiling tentacle. Truly, they had unearthed a den of ruin in Molior.

It had to burn.

Exor fired again on the move, taking the mutant somewhere in its midriff. The shot knocked it off its feet, torso and legs sheared apart in the resulting explosive crescendo. Heads turned. Faces with too many eyes regarded the second interloper in their midst. With a clawed hand outstretched, his own face occluded by the folds of his hood, the demagogue marshalled his disciples.

As one and with eerie synchronicity, the supplicants dropped what they were carrying and ran like wolves at the fire-born.

A solid shot whipped past Exor’s ear; he felt the heat and heard the speed of its passage. Another clipped his slim shoulder guard and he was reminded how perilously unprotected he was without his power armour. He broke into a run, loosing off three more shots in quick succession, aiming for the sentries as they were armed and already firing.

Two more went down, broken into chunks of smouldering meat by a bolt-shell’s explosive impact. He thought he had missed the third, but the round had actually bounced off the mutant whose hide was like a sheath of impervious armour plate.

A head shot overcame the problem and decapitated the sentry. There was no time to be subtle – only brute aggression would prevail. Exor knew he had to get to the pit, then confront and kill whatever was in it. He would have to go through the demagogue and his flock to reach it, unless Zartath got there ahead of him.

The ex-Black Dragon was eating up the ground between himself and the pit with long, determined strides. Reacting instinctively, he switched between evasion and sheer power. Anything in his way was cut down. Three mutant sentries so far, their spilled and noisome innards steaming on the collated trash they seemed to worship. Resistance had been fleeting, suicidal even, but as Zartath closed on the pit the ranks of defenders thickened.

It was all Exor could do to maintain a steady pace. Loosing three more bursts, his clip began to run dry. He finished it off and ejected the clip, reaching for another, but there were none so he drew his combat blade. Cursing, he realised he must have lost the spare during his descent.

Fortunately, not only had Zartath thinned the herd, his insane dash towards the pit had drawn everything to him. A morass of bodies, supplicants and sentries both, enveloped the hunter. Excited and terrified at the prospect of his own imminent death, the demagogue grew more animated. His sermons devolved to ranting. He was baying now, baying for the transgressor’s blood with all the fervour of a frothing lunatic.

A greater madness had been unleashed against him, though. Zartath had survived the labyrinthine prison of the Volgorrah Reef and killed Renegade Astartes – no enrobed zealot was going to resist him for long, even with a host to protect him.

Exor arrived to find Zartath cutting the last of the disciples down, a butcher cleaving meat. He ended the slaughter with the demagogue, who finally fled but stumbled when his robes snagged on a piece of twisted metal and fell onto his face. Crawling on his stomach, he reached the edge of the crevice his followers had been digging.

Even from a little distance away, Exor could see the shallow but widening gyre they had made in the wreckage. A speartip of metal jutted just high enough for the Techmarine to see from where he was standing. It looked like the cone of a drop pod…

A predator sensing wounded prey, Zartath sprang on the mewling demagogue who was desperately trying to claw his way into the pit. Part of his trappings had torn loose, revealing the corruption beneath. Twisted flesh, an over-wide maw in place of a natural mouth, his eyes small slits of flesh, surrendered for this other mutation. As always with Chaos, one must give in order to receive.

As he was thrown onto his back by the rough hands of the ex-Black Dragon, the demagogue uttered a single arcane word. His oratory was his gift, a boon from his dark patrons that had helped him enslave the citizens to his will. It was meant to stop his assailant dead, a single, chiming utterance of power. Zartath was singularly unmoved.

Mad with rage, Zartath rammed his bone blade through the side of the demagogue’s skull, silencing him, but failed to quieten the daemons in his own head.

Battle over, the cult vanquished, Exor went to join him at the edge of the pit.

When he was a sword length away, Zartath whirled around.

‘Broth–’ The Techmarine stopped short as the searing fire of the bone blade coursed through his chest and out of his back in radiating tremors of agony. He cried out in pain, but his voice was half-strangled and came out as a gasp. Reaching up, Exor grabbed Zartath’s shoulder in support, in trembling accusation and tried to meet his gaze.

Wild, dark eyes of pure fury looked back. There was no recognition in them, no guilt or remorse. Whatever was gnawing at Zartath’s mind was still there, embedded in his psyche. Exor staggered, the heat of the wound dulling and turning to ice as he contemplated how close to death he was again. The ice floes he felt in his blood spread to Exor’s back then his limbs, until every part of him that was meat and bone became as cold as the metal of his bionics.

This must be how the world feels to give yourself fully to the Omnissiah, he thought, imagining the cybernetic tutors of his Martian training but seeing the snorting, snarling image of the monstrous warrior he called brother in front of him instead, staring with unrestrained hate. Exor realised it wasn’t meant for him. It was fuelled by something else.

In Exor’s head, the keening was fading but in Zartath’s it had reached a deafening fever pitch he could no longer resist.

As the bone blade withdrew, a spurt of dark blood jetted from the wound. Internal bleeding. Organ damage. He didn’t need his power armour’s biological data stream to know he was in trouble. Exor was released but found his legs could no longer support him. He collapsed, the culmination of his injuries felling him.

Awareness dimming as his body began trying to shut itself down, Exor fought to stay conscious but slipped into such delirium he could not be sure of what he saw next. Memory, reality and fiction began to blend. Something emerged from the pit, hauling itself over the edge from a cocoon of metal. Striated by age, withered by entropy, the drop pod must have shifted to this place over time, moving in vermicular fashion through the slowly disintegrating layers of the underhive.

Its siren call was weak, and needed time to infect its followers and make them fanatical. Even then, releasing it from its prison would have taken years. It was the blood, leaking into the pit from its prison, siphoned by its desperate acolytes and fashioned into an elixir that promoted strength, resilience, even escape from death. Exor could think of few species whose blood was capable of such wonders.

From out of the pit emerged a figure armoured in heliotrope purple. Whether it was the presence of such august enemies that drew it forth, or some other incredulous coincidence, Exor would never know. They simply had to kill it.

Flayed skin hung in ragged strips from its war-plate. Fetish chains strung with shrivelled ears and fingers looped around shoulder guards and greaves. Its face was scarred like the men and women who had freed it and its eyes were dense chasms of fresh-remembered hate. No pupils, just two orbs of incarnadine red. There could be no mistaking a warrior of the old Legions.

A Traitor Space Marine, trapped in Molior for years.

It rose up to its full height, flakes of debris breaking off from its body and cascading downwards like shed skin. Years of accumulated dust and grit spilled from the joints of its armour. Wrenching free transfusion pipes it had attached to its exposed skin, it drew an old and scarred sword from a dusty scabbard.

The challenge it uttered was in a language Exor didn’t know, but used words and sounds that set his teeth on edge.

Zartath faced the warrior, lathered in a feverish sweat, his chest and shoulders rising and falling with heavy breaths.

A few strides separated them.

Bone-blades against tainted steel – who knew what curses were bound up in that traitor’s sword?

Spitting back a guttural retort in his native tongue, Zartath lunged at the pallid-skinned warrior.

It was then his enemy spoke, truly used its voice…

A nerve-shredding discord sawed through Exor, forcing back alertness such was its strength and amplification, so loud it almost transcended sound and turned it physical.

Zartath opened his mouth to scream but his voice was swallowed by the terrible clangour resonating through his skin, flesh and bones. He sank to one knee, clutching his fractured eardrums as the true power of the keening was unleashed. The traitor’s siren call, that which drew the weak-minded and the easily influenced to the traitor’s service and bent them towards its emancipation, had become a weapon. It was killing Zartath.

Slowly dying, but defying his enhanced biology’s attempts to put him into a regenerative coma, Exor struggled back to his feet. Fellowship to the Martian Priesthood came with the acceptance of a simple rubric – flesh will ultimately be surrendered to the machine; the machine is perfection. Exor arrived on the red world a being of flesh and blood and left partly cyborganic. His hand was a bionic; both his eyes were augmented, the corneas replaced with synthetics incorporating targeting matrices and enhanced magnification; part of his left side, his shoulder and hip were also mostly machine. Last of all was his auditory cortex – both ears and the minuscule bones inside, drum and ear canal too, had been manufactured in the forge temples of Mars.

The drumming in his skull, the latent power of the keening, had abated in preference to a more direct attack: one Exor could filter out. As he disengaged his hearing, a momentary deafness overcame him. The pain in his vibrating bones still hurt, but the paralysis from the auditory overload lifted.

Out of ammunition, his knife lost when he had first fallen, Exor used the only weapon he had left. Himself.

Scrambling, lurching bodily with every ungainly step, he threw all of his considerable mass at the Traitor who turned, seemingly dumbstruck at the insanity of the reckless attack.

The old sword swung around, hefted with less speed than it might once have been, the warrior’s muscles stiff and mildly atrophied from his long confinement. Instead of spearing the Techmarine through the sternum, it cut into his clavicle and sheared against the edge of the bone.

Agony of a thousand white-hot needles impaling his raw nerve endings shot through Exor but not enough to stop him. He careened into the warrior, hearing armour split, bone crack as it yielded to his machine-borne strength.

The discord abated and Exor hit the ground as his eyesight began to darken. But through an ever-dwindling corridor of shadow, he saw the hunter take his prey at last. As the traitor tried to rise and reassert his dominance a shaft of yellowed bone, the bloodstains on it dark like oil, impaled his gullet. A second pierced his eye socket. For three seconds he trembled and then was still.

Like a flood rushing to fill a crater, darkness swamped Exor’s sight. His hearing came back briefly, restored by some instinctive physical signal. Nothing at first, but the ambient rhythms of the underhive. It stayed like that for minutes, Exor clinging on.

Breathing, initially heavy but eventually more even, drifted through the mental fog of unconsciousness. It touched Exor’s face, wet and foetid with the stench of raw meat.

An untamed beast will be a slave to its instincts. It cannot think, it cannot reason, it can only react, survive.

‘Get up…’

The words were so distant, like whispers from the summit of a well, they seemed imagined.

‘Get up and let me carry you…’

A man decides, makes choices – he lets his conscience guide him and the fact he has a higher nature. His own survival is secondary to those he would consider as kin.

‘Let me carry you, brother…’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Nova-class frigate, Forge Hammer

Amongst the fire tides, time was fluid. It flowed as easily as the burning waves Xarko swam against.

Unmoored from reality, slipping free of temporal concerns was all too simple. The tides were aligned to the aetheric plane, a place not so easily bent to mortal geography and chronology. Time here flowed differently. Diurnal and nocturnal, these cycles had no bearing in such an uncertain realm. Enter at the nascent dawning of the universe and a moment later emerge to find it inert, surrendered to the inevitable rigours of entropy. But to the contrary, enter in the twilight years of creation and find yourself returning to worlds in youthful bloom only seconds later. Life, matter, existence, all of it could be altered in course by the pervasive nature of the warp.

The fire tides were the warp, and the warp the fire tides.

As an accomplished student of the arcane, Xarko knew of the tacit relationship that existed between the two sides of the veil – the real and the unreal – and the metaphysical implications of that relationship. Geography mattered, timing and context mattered. What to the uninitiated and the ignorant might appear random was a scheme of near-incomprehensible complexity to those with enough esoteric knowledge to discern it. To behold the entire tapestry was to invite certain madness and dissolution, but to perceive a strand, a thread or two of the weave… That came as close as anything not unborn could do to navigating the vagaries of the tide.

Xarko sought such a thread, and swam in pursuit of it. He had been afforded but a glimpse, a narrow aperture through which he could perceive past, future and present colliding together in a fateful continuum. Life. Death. Rebirth. Over and over again. He knew that in attempting to locate what he had seen before in the tides he risked great danger. Only a psyker of considerable ability and confidence would ever trawl this incorporeal sea. Looking had a habit of resulting in finding, except not always the thing you wanted to unearth. Not only life, but the soul was also at stake. Things… creatures with old names, and hunger that was older still, hunted eagerly for the warmth of souls.

Amongst the fire tides, these creatures were the black slivers. As Xarko swam, his body locked safely away in his sanctum aboard the Forge Hammer, he felt the predators lurking at the edge of perception, threatening his mind and soul.

Wary after the last time, the predators did not attack immediately, as if waiting for a better opening or a vulnerability to present itself. Xarko was determined to show them neither, so he swam on. He had passed beyond the chamber, penetrated the first wall and had emerged into the twilight fire sea that so closely resembled the Gey’sarr or the Acerbian from back on Nocturne. It varied with every fresh tide.

For a time there was nothing beyond the usual susurrus of voices, the chronology of the universe laid out for him to listen to and observe. Faces, images wrought from fire, materialised in the deeps but were not the one Xarko was seeking.

He went further, pushing his body even though rationally he knew it was his will he exerted. Physical strength meant nothing here, but manifested anyway as a way for the mind to make sense of what it was experiencing. To an untrained mind, it would appear terrifying, even impossible. The fire would seem to burn and the mind would close in on itself. Some who chose to swim the tides had not returned. Their faces were mirrored in the waves now, stretched taut in expressions of agony and despair. Their bodies were long gone, rendered to ash in the true mountain. Some lived on in a catatonic state, watched over by the brander-priests and shackled in Prometheus’s deepest cells.

Still the resonance of what he had experienced before eluded him. He went deeper and the black predators began to converge as they sensed Xarko’s mental reserves draining. Strong currents tugged at his body as Xarko went further and further. One sharp pull threatened to drag him into an unseen well, the tendrils of a maelstrom that had begun to swell out in the distance. Pouring more effort into his strokes, Xarko managed to get free of it but was badly shaken and needed a moment to recover.

The predators chose their moment, striking fast and stabbing barbed hooks into Xarko’s flesh. He screamed, pain knifing into his skull as the hooks dragged. He thrashed, kicking out with his legs and managing to dislodge one of the fiends. He kicked again, the equivalent of a mental push, and thrust away from his twin assailants.

Arm over arm, breath sawing in and out of his lungs.

The tides heaved and pounded at his bones. Xarko was nearly at the end of his resilience but he fought on, knowing the black predators were behind him. Strong tendrils of current pulled at his limbs, and he realised the maelstrom could be his escape. He let the currents take him, surrendering to their will. As he was flung past his pursuers, taking cuts from their blades, he saw a face appear in the fiery spume. Half its skin was ravaged by scars, not the branding marks of the solitorium but a wound that had changed its complexion. Here was the thread Xarko wanted, fleeing from his grasp as he was pulled away by fate and his own weary mind.

No.

The word echoed in Xarko’s mindspace, calmly delivered but powerfully resonant. It shook the dark sky above the ocean, and tore strips into it with arcing jags of crimson. Pulled under, Xarko felt the bite of the predators once more and as he turned in the maelstrom’s ferocious undersea spiral, the face dissolved and was replaced by the insistent drumming of his heart…

Thud.

Thud.

The beat became a rap of knuckles, hard against metal. Despite his nausea and disorientation, he could hear the desperation in the sound. Sensation was slow to fade. Psychic echoes clung to the corporeal realm and Xarko struggled to detach them. Visions bled into reality, of the fire, the dark predators. He could smell their spoiled flesh, hear their sibilant whispering grating against the metal of the chamber. With a singular effort, he closed his mind to it, denying a foothold to the voracious denizens of the fire tides. The sanctum resolved, a fire-black circle surrounding him. Steam and smoke rose from his bare flesh.

It took a few seconds to marshal his disorientation and remember exactly when and where he was.

Alive, awake and restored to the physical plane, Xarko tried to stand. He collapsed, grimacing in pain at fresh wounds on his back and torso, souvenirs from his encounter on the other side.

Someone was hammering on the door to his sanctum. Even weakened, he managed to reach out with his mind, touch the surface thoughts of those closest to him and know something aboard the Forge Hammer was terribly wrong.

On instinct, he activated a distress beacon to their forces on Sturndrang, hoping they would hear it.

‘I’ve swum too long…’ Xarko hissed, reaching for his armour with shaking hands.

Makato would not have the deaths of these brave men and women on his conscience. The weight of guilt he bore was already heavy, and he had no desire to add to it.

‘Jedda, Halder, Navaar, Bharius.’ He said each name aloud to honour the promise he had made. They were just the ones he knew. Many others had died to protect this ship, to protect him. Makato hoped someone would remember them and their noble sacrifice.

‘I go to join you soon…’ he murmured to the walls of the empty corridor.

Makato was standing alone outside the blast doors to the bridge. Behind him, on the other side of two metre-thick reinforced ceramite and adamantium, were twenty-eight armsmen and fourteen bridge crew. No captain sat upon the command throne, but consoles were manned and the ship was still in the hands of its crew. Never in all his years of service had it been otherwise.

Swearing on the souls of his father and grandfather, Makato vowed that would not change this day, this hour, this moment.

He knew though that the moment had run out.

Every effort had been made to slow the Renegade Astartes but they had advanced through the ship inexorably, their path bringing them to this nexus where Makato was now standing.

He saw the first of them, their sergeant, appear in the low light at the end of the corridor. Scarcely twenty-four metres separated them but Makato felt no fear.

Instead, he slowly stripped off his uniform, removing the jacket and vest beneath until he was standing naked from the waist up in boots and breeches.

‘Shang’ji Hiroshimo!’ he said and drew his ancestral sword to cut a shallow wound across his chest, honouring his father.

The black-armoured warrior was approaching with three others when Makato drew a second cut.

‘Shang’ji Yugeti!’

Again the blade sliced his chest, bisecting the first wound, honouring his grandfather.

He stepped forwards, entering a fighting stance with his sword held up and behind him. With the words of his native lands echoing into silence, Makato saluted the leader of the renegades.

He stood no chance, but if he was fated to die, to rejoin his ancestors then he would do it his way, on his terms.

Feeling the rough cord of his father’s old braid between the fingers of his off-hand, Makato muttered a prayer to the Throne, and prepared to meet his death with honour.

Snarling at the sudden scent of fresh blood, Urgaresh signalled a halt.

‘What are we waiting for?’ snapped Skarh. ‘Cut him down and be done with this.’

‘No,’ murmured Urgaresh. ‘We are not animals, not yet.’

He alone advanced, dropping the bolter he had scavenged, uncoupling the clamps that bound the cuirass of his armour to his body. Greaves and vambraces hit the deck with a loud clatter, obscuring the dense thud of Urgaresh’s purposeful footfalls. Gauntlets next, they clattered with the many plates used to form their fingers as they hit the floor.

‘I see you, warrior,’ said Urgaresh, coming to a stop and standing a few metres from the mortal. ‘And accept your challenge. Never let it be said,’ he snarled, revealing sharp incisors, ‘that the Black Dragons are without honour.’

With the sound of tearing skin and the light patter of blood hitting metal, Urgaresh slid his bone blade from its fleshy sheath.

The man raised his chin arrogantly, or perhaps it was defiance. The subtlety of mortal gestures was often lost on the Black Dragon.

‘I am Kensai Makato, grandson of Yugeti, son of Hiroshimo,’ he declared without fear or hesitation.

Urgaresh smiled ugly, a shark’s smile that never reached his cold, dead eyes.

‘Good,’ he hissed, ‘I shall carve it on my sword when you are dead, so none will forget your bravery.’

He gave a stiff nod in the mortal’s direction by way of salute, and attacked.

During the years he had with his father and grandfather, Makato had been well trained. Even before his tutelage in the art of Shogu was complete, he could best all of the household guard. There was not a man among the Bushiko who did not treat Makato’s sword arm with respect.

Countless drills in the training yards had prepared him, under the shadow of Mount Kiamat where the Tahken Dynasts dwelled upon the mist-shrouded peaks, jealously guarding the secrets of their kaisen blades.

Makato’s training could have afforded him a position in many august professions: Astra Militarum, Adeptus Arbites, Protectorate Nobilis, but in the end he chose to serve the Imperial Navy as an armsman, to maintain the generational thread.

But no training, no will of tempered iron could have prepared him for a one-on-one duel with a warrior of the renegade’s calibre.

Urgaresh went in hard, spitting a curse as he lunged at the mortal. Inexplicably, the blow failed to land but he felt a hot line trace his pectoral muscle instead. The Black Dragon turned, chasing his elusive prey and crafting a slash that went high to low.

Again, the mortal avoided the blow, stepping back with the speed of a well-trained swordsman.

Urgaresh snarled, wondering if his muscles had been irrevocably atrophied from their time in cryo-stasis aboard the Fist of Kraedor.

‘Don’t worry about them,’ he said, as he noticed the mortal looking over his shoulder at the three Black Dragons now standing behind him. ‘You’re fighting me. Don’t insult my honour by suggesting treachery.’

Urgaresh attacked again, filling the corridor with his bulk and favouring an overhead cut he knew the mortal would have to block. Bone scraped against well-honed metal, drawing sparks and filling the corridor with the stink of burned ulna. The mortal avoided the swift counter, a low punch designed to cave his ribs and leave him spitting blood as his organs ruptured. Instead, he rolled aside, allowing the Black Dragon’s bone blade to slide off his sword and embed itself into the deck with the force of its own momentum. Urgaresh drove into the mortal as he tried to slip past again, crushing him into the corridor wall with his shoulder even as his bone blade stuck fast.

The air was driven hard from Makato’s lungs. Winded, he felt a bone fracture somewhere in his side, possibly two ribs. Despite his martial discipline, he let out a yelp of pain but managed to get past the hulking warrior whose weapon was lodged in the deck plate.

Turning on his heels, ignoring the scything agony in his side, Makato thrust two-handed and impaled the warrior’s back. The blade went straight through and punched out of the warrior’s chest in a welter of blood. He tried to withdraw, intending to back off and wait for another chance to counter but the warrior turned too quickly and too violently. Eighteen years of his grandfather telling him never to lose his grip on his sword was rendered meaningless as the weapon was wrenched from Makato’s hands.

Fury was lending Urgaresh strength and speed now. Shutting down the pain of breaking his bone blade so he could face his opponent, ignoring the sword sticking out of his chest, he aimed a savage kick that caught the mortal off-guard and sent him sprawling down the corridor.

Dazed, chest throbbing, nerves screaming, Makato looked up at the dull lume-strips above and realised he had landed on his back. Too badly injured to get to his feet, he reached for his father’s braid that had been flung from his grasp and apologised to the spirit of his grandfather for losing his sword.

Makato hoped, despite his defeat and his death, he had made them proud. He smiled at their memory, imagining the monsoon clouds over Mount Kiamat, training with his patriarchs in the brooding shadow of a storm. It had made him feel so alive, so vital.

The heavy, approaching footfalls of his opponent brought Makato back to his senses.

‘Yugeti…’ he croaked, ‘Hiroshimo…’

Briefly mastering his warrior-rage, Urgaresh gave the mortal a second nod as he stood over him grasping a sword. It was a ceremonial piece, beautifully crafted although more like a short sword in Urgaresh’s massive fist.

‘Whoever those men were,’ he said in a rasp, ‘you honoured them.’

Raising the ceremonial sword, intending to drive it through the mortal’s heart, he added, ‘I hope it is fitting I use this blade to return you to them.’

The tip of the blade stopped a hand span from Makato’s bloody chest.

He looked up, craning his neck to do so, trying to understand his sudden stay of execution. The renegade was locked fast, though his face showed signs of exertion. He wanted to kill Makato, but couldn’t. Ice rimmed the blade in a thin veil of hoarfrost. Tiny particles of it dappled the renegade’s brow and caused his breath to ghost the air in clouds of vapour.

Unable to crane his neck any longer, Makato collapsed back, closed his eyes and surrendered to unconsciousness.

Urgaresh was furious.

‘Where is your honour!’

Though his eyelids were heavy with accumulated frost, he was able to look up at his enemy.

Standing in the open doorway that led to the bridge was a warrior clad in a deep green, though one arm of his battleplate was painted blue. A high metal collar rose up from his gorget around the back of his neck, where thin crackles of lighting could be seen coursing between its psycho-conductive nodes.

Two eyes blazing with cerulean blue regarded Urgaresh from a face as black as onyx. A white arrow-point beard masked the chin. Three cornrows of close shorn hair bisected the scalp in straits of black and white.

Urgaresh felt his anger renewed as he looked up at the witch.

‘Salamander…’ he growled, fuelled with enough rage to break the bonds foisted upon him.

Xarko held out his upraised palm as if brandishing it could stop the Black Dragon.

It could, and did.

The warrior had broken the psychic bindings causing his initial paralysis but now faced an invisible kine-shield that sealed off the entire corridor. Only when the warrior’s aggregated blows struck against it did the impacts bloom like tiny star flashes in midair.

‘You’ll find no passage through here…’ said Xarko, but he was already beginning to show the sounds of strain in his voice.

Three more warriors joined the first, spitting curses and expletives between blows, though the psychic barrier occluded the sound of their guttural voices.

‘Take him,’ Xarko rasped. He was far from at full strength when he emerged from the sanctum. It was the only reason he hadn’t already incinerated the infiltrators and cleansed the Forge Hammer of their presence.

As a pair of armsmen rushed forwards to drag Lieutenant Makato’s prone form back onto the bridge, Xarko felt the absence of souls aboard the ship of the men and women slain by the Black Dragons. It made him angry, but he was also confused as to what could have brought about such an act of aggression from a Chapter the Salamanders considered as allies.

Admittedly, he had never fought alongside them personally and he had heard about the instability of their gene-seed that manifested in their bizarre osseous mutation. The monsters aboard the Forge Hammer bore all the hallmarks, their leader the worst afflicted.

+What do you want?+ Xarko managed to send, shocked at the pure animal rage of the leader as he brushed against the Black Dragon’s thoughts. Red, an ocean of red, washed over every instinct, every emotion. Red wrath, black hate – psychically, it was like battering against a fortress gate inlaid with spikes. It hurt.

+GET OUT OF MY HEAD, WITCH!+

Another blow. The warrior’s rejection of Xarko’s telepathy was so violent it actually staggered the Librarian. For a moment, he feared the kine-shield would breach but marshalled enough strength to restore it.

Reason was out then. It left little other recourse.

Xarko wanted to crush them, to unleash the full potency of his gifts and rescue the ship but his earlier exertions in the fire tides had severely weakened him. With a growing sense of impotence, he realized he could hold them off but that was all. Every blow was a smack to his already bruised psyche. He didn’t know how long he could last like this. The distress signal had been sent. No doubt the bridge crew were also trying to raise assistance now Xarko had broken their silence. He only hoped it would reach Agatone soon enough to matter and that a weary crew, not a massacre, would await his overdue return.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior

To Agatone, it felt as if they had been searching for hours for any piece of evidence that would unlock why Tsu’gan had gone this way and who had gone with him.

The archivium was vast, an immense sprawling space, a catacomb that stretched into the subterranean shadows and went on further still. According to Issak, it was an ancient Imperial repository, an information storage facility. Data within the archive appeared to go back millennia to the time of the first Great Crusade, yet the majority of it was so old that it had fallen into ruin and decrepitude. Much was also so heavily encrypted as to be almost useless.

Not long after he and Issak had entered the place, Agatone had given up trying to glean anything of import from the scribed mess strewn throughout the chamber.

‘Looks relatively undisturbed,’ he had muttered, only partly to himself, as he had regarded the hundreds of stacks replete with books, scrolls, slates and countless other methods of storage. Theodolites sat in dusty alcoves alongside incunabula. Oraculums and divinifiers abutted stone tablets of prognostication. Reams of parchment, trapped in humming stasis fields, ranked up next to scriptora rendered on the flensed skulls of martyrs. It stretched for what appeared to be countless metres, a cornucopia of informational data requiring an army of lex-mechanics, auto-scribes and scriveners to decode and collate.

‘This will make it harder to track them,’ Agatone had concluded when faced with the gargantuan repository.

Once inside the archivium, the readings from the auspex had grown patchy. It got them beyond the threshold of the labyrinth but Agatone soon attached it to his belt, settling for passively scanning the ancient chamber.

Everything was old and carried a heavy veneer of dust. Motes clung to the air, caught in slow motion free fall in the thin shafts of light that penetrated the chamber’s fractured roof. Such scant light did little to lift the gloom, nor did the meagre ventilation help alleviate the choking clouds of dust they had inevitably disturbed.

Without the gifts of his transhuman ally, Issak had to blunder around in the shadows until Agatone had realised he was struggling and snapped on a lume-strip.

‘Here,’ he had said, passing the illuminated stick to the medicus.

In its magnesium-bright flare more details were revealed.

Entire volumes had been colonised by mildew. Mould corroded leather and wood. Data-slates were rusted, their glass screens cracked and useless. Some of the parchments and book bindings had even been gnawed upon. For though the archive was ostensibly sealed within the massive vault, the pervasive vermin of the underhive had still managed to find a nook or cranny through which to gain entry.

Judging by the crack in its main door they had seen earlier, the breach in the archivium’s passive security was recent. Agatone had no doubt Tsu’gan or his companion had perpetrated it.

For long minutes he and Issak had negotiated the musty confines of the archivium in silence, the air so still and thick it subconsciously demanded a certain solemn observance. It was after a particularly lengthy stretch that Agatone finally broke this quietude.

‘Watch your step, medicus.’ He put out a warning hand, the other one currently occupied by his bolt pistol.

Part of the floor had fallen away, revealing a gaping dark hole into the all-consuming and ever-hungry sink of the underhive. Everything was drawn to it, or so Agatone had come to feel, its gravity impossible to resist. And the only way to stay beyond its reach was to climb, build higher and higher, new atop old and layer upon layer. Those who did not, or could not, would be dragged to this pit never to return.

Having protected the medicus this far, Agatone had no desire to lose his charge to mishap.

Issak nodded in gratitude and, as he raised the lume-strip to get a better sense of his surroundings and footing, saw something in the congested route ahead.

‘Does that look fresh to you?’ he asked.

Agatone followed his gaze.

One of the stacks was damaged, hacked apart to make a passage through it. Clean and raw blade marks were visible in the hard wood.

‘They went this way.’

As he reached the shattered wood, Agatone paused to inspect it. He ran a hand across the split, trying to gauge what kind of weapon could have made it.

‘Single hit…’ he muttered, again only partially to himself. ‘Bladed weapon… very wide.’

A blunted chainaxe sprang to mind. Blunted or simply exhausted of power.

Definitely Adeptus Astartes, Agatone was certain.

‘Recent…’ he said, concluding the analysis. He looked over his shoulder at Issak. ‘We must hurry.’

Issak seemed not to hear him and was panning his lume-strip around the stacks, picking through scraps of displaced parchment.

Agatone barked at him, impatient to be moving on. ‘What is it?’

‘Everything looks…’ Issak met the Salamander’s irritated gaze, his face faintly lit in the glow of the lume-strip, ‘familiar.’

‘I thought you said you’d only heard of this place, not been here?’ asked Agatone, frowning in consternation.

‘I haven’t, but I still recognise it. As if I have memories of this place, but no idea where they’re from or to whom they belong.’

Agatone sniffed the air.

‘Atmosphere in here is addling your mind, medicus.’ The auspex began to chime softly but insistently. Agatone unclipped it and checked the screen. Then he looked up. ‘Shine the strip over there,’ he said to Issak, pointing to where he wanted the light.

Issak obeyed, revealing a sweeping stairway cluttered with debris but still passable.

‘No more delays,’ Agatone growled, sensing his prey was close, and made for the stairs.

He emerged well ahead of the medicus into an upper level. Several of the archivium’s sealed stacks here had been broken open, their locks cast aside in haste.

‘Here,’ Agatone called down as he sighted an old lifter at the back of the room, its activation panel glowing with life. ‘We rise, medicus.’

A long, metal shaft was bored down into the roof of the archivium surrounded by a lattice of reinforced plasteel. Agatone realised they must have been exploring the basement levels of the repository, where its oldest records were kept. He assumed the upper levels were no more, consumed by war, disaster or time. Only this fragment of the archivium had endured but so too had its entry shaft and the lifter that would convey them to the surface.

Breathless, Issak reached the summit of the stairway and saw what had captured the Salamander’s attention.

‘You want me to ride in that? It’s probably at least hundreds of years old!’

Agatone smiled darkly. ‘Someone has revivified it, medicus. We will follow them.’

Scowling, Issak approached Agatone who was already throwing back the lifter’s security gate.

‘Why do I get the impression you’re enjoying this?’

‘Because we are close. For good or ill, Tsu’gan is coming back with me. That’s all that matters now.’

He wrenched the gate aside with a loud clatter and ushered the medicus within. When Issak was standing on the boarding plate, hands firmly gripping the guide rails, Agatone followed and closed the gate after.

‘Up?’ Issak hazarded, standing next to the operation panel.

Agatone nodded, craning his neck so he could look to the summit of the shaft where a faint scrap of light beckoned. ‘Up, medicus.’

Issak hit the activation stud and the lifter started to rise.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior

They were moving. It was all Exor could tell with any degree of certainty. Consciousness was fleeting, flickering in and out like a lamp pack struggling for power.

He saw the tunnel he had crawled through, though this time he had the vague sensation of being dragged.

Then the Well and him rising, the hard breaths and grunted curses of his saviour accompanying him every metre they climbed.

It was a long climb, though Exor only experienced it in fragments.

‘Where…?’ he managed to croak, before blacking out.

A hard smack and hot lances of pain in his cheek brought Exor back around. His head was throbbing and it was hard to breathe. His skin burned like it was on fire. Sweat lathered his back, face and chest as his enhanced biology reacted to the severe wound he had been dealt.

‘Wake up!’ snapped a guttural voice.

A second blow – it hurt just as much as the first.

‘Rest is for the dead,’ declared the voice, ‘and the weak.’

A third blow was threatened that Exor stopped.

‘Cease,’ he croaked, dizzy and faintly aware he was lying with his back against a wall.

Despite his ocular augmentations, the image that eventually resolved in front of him was indistinct, but he immediately recognised Zartath’s snarling visage.

‘The thing that caused the keening is dead. I am free of it,’ he growled. ‘We are going back. Our original mission is still unfinished. Agatone charged us with tracking his quarry, so that is what we are going to do.’

‘I can barely stand, let alone track,’ said Exor.

‘You need do neither,’ Zartath replied. ‘You came after me when you could have left me for dead. That’s twice I owe you fire-born a debt.’

‘You fire-born?’ Exor queried.

Zartath nodded. ‘We, us. I am fire-born now.’

Though it was but a brief glimpse, Exor saw the face of the savage give way to that of the man Zartath wanted to be but which his nature would not yet allow.

‘Get up,’ he snarled, the beast rumbling up to the surface again.

Zartath heaved the Techmarine onto his back, grunting at the strain.

‘Leave no one behind,’ he said and followed the trail left by Agatone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior

The scrap of light became an iris then an oval, getting wider and wider until it was a portal that led close to the surface of Sturndrang.

Agatone closed his eyes as moist, relatively fresh air from the world above washed over his face and body, cooling the underhive heat. He blind-loaded his pistol, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it, then secured his combat-blade and spare clips.

‘Are we going into battle again, Brother Agatone?’

‘Yes, we are,’ Agatone replied, opening his eyes but keeping them fixed on the portal of light.

‘I thought you knew him, this…’ he recalled the name, ‘Tsu’gan.’

‘It’s because I know him that I’m preparing for a fight.’ Agatone glanced down at the medicus to convey the seriousness of his next words. ‘Tsu’gan won’t go down easy.’

The light enveloped them and a bracing wind whipped around the lifter’s carriage as its two passengers were exposed to the elements. They had emerged into an expansive shipyard, one lost to decay and neglect but still usable for embarkation.

Ostensibly still very much a part of the underhive, the shipyard was situated at the bottom of an immense and long shaft that fed all the way to the surface of Sturndrang and the void beyond.

Wrecks of old vessels, their fuselages ripped open and gutted like animal carcasses, littered a flat rockcrete plain studded with snapped communication spikes and relay towers. Hangars and warehouses, their gates broken open and contents scavenged, colonised one small area of the yard and there were workshops and a freight depot. It wasn’t hard to imagine this place as once being inhabited but only ghosts lingered now and the echoes of old lives.

There were bodies, not of men but some indigenous prey-creature as far as Agatone could tell. Several corpses had been left out in the open to rot. What he first believed was metal reflecting off the ambient light above were actually eyes, blinking in the shadows. More of the prey-creatures, too afraid to venture closer with the bullet-holed bodies of their kin stinking in plain view. Agatone counted eight, most of which had been split by a heavy blade not unlike the one used in the archivium. Some had simply been blasted apart by some immense and unsubtle weapon.

‘Stay close to me,’ Agatone murmured, eyes scanning for threats.

‘Is he here?’ whispered Issak.

Agatone nodded.

‘How can you be–’ Issak began.

The dull throb of a turbine rotor cycling up interrupted him.

Agatone snarled, and spoke between clenched teeth. ‘No, not again…’

He ran, leaving Issak behind to fend for himself. He didn’t call back or tell the medicus what he should do. He just ran.

Bursting from behind a hangar and through a knot of ships, Agatone emerged into a sparsely occupied area of the shipping yard to see a gun-cutter rising in the distance. Comms traffic had started crackling in his ear and he assumed some of the towers retained some small level of function. He ignored it for now, intent on the figure waiting below the rising vessel. It was muscular, broad-shouldered and wearing strange armour. It was also bald with onyx-black skin.

Agatone ran harder, pumping his arms and urging his legs to greater effort. A large chasm split off the part of the shipping yard he was on and the spur currently occupied by the figure. He realised they must have scaled it. Glancing up, Agatone saw it was the only place that offered a clear run up the shaft. He could make the leap. If the figure could do it, then so could he.

A side hatch in the ship opened, sliding left to right, and another figure appeared. Smaller, human, male. Agatone locked the details away in his memory for later use. A line was lowered and the waiting figure grasped it as it came down. It still had its back to Agatone, heedless of his rapid approach.

‘I can make it…’ Agatone hissed between his teeth, psychologically preparing for the jump. It was at least twenty metres. The crackling in his earbead resolved into words. A distress beacon that was coming from the Forge Hammer. Agatone listened, scowled.

Ahead, the figure had wrapped the line around its wrist and was signalling for the vessel to take off.

Agatone could still reach it. The chasm loomed. One solid leap and he would be on him.

The message continued – Agatone began to slow, fists clenched in slow frustration. He skidded to a halt at the edge of the abyss and could only watch as his prey was pulled into the air and away from his grasp.

The Forge Hammer was under attack. He had no choice but to return. Agatone activated the locator signal that would summon the waiting ships to come and retrieve him. He set off another beacon for both Lok and Clovius so they would know the hunt was over. Comms might be patchy but the beacon would get through.

‘Tsu’gan…’ he uttered breathlessly.

The other vessel rose, the figure disappearing within, the turbine engines carrying it far away.

Agatone found his voice, and his fury.

‘TSU’GAN!’

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Heletine, Canticus southern district, ‘the Cairns’

Drakgaard watched his troops on the tactical display as they delved further and further into uncharted Canticus. For almost an hour, since the Targons’ fateful encounter, there had been no sign of the enemy and no word from the Adepta Sororitas, either. It was as if the heretics had retreated so far into their own lines that they had emerged out of the other side of the city and into the desert. Unopposed, Drakgaard felt increasingly like he was walking into a trap but his desire to grasp what he saw as a chance at a final victory overrode his better judgement.

Little was left in reserve, only a few Cadian infantry platoons, some light vehicles, any Stormtalons that could be spared: Drakgaard was betting almost everything he had on a single, decisive attack. Sergeant V’reth’s squad was too distant to recall, likewise the other Cadian regiments. Their engagements were skirmishes now, insignificant to this. The relics forgotten, Drakgaard had a taste of the enemy and was storming through a once unconquerable city in a belligerent mood. It didn’t occur to him that the ragged line of his formation was brutally vulnerable, that in a single, knockout blow his enemies could destroy him and his army.

That possibility didn’t occur to Drakgaard until he remembered something he had heard about Canticus, about the old districts where his enemy hid from sight, about the old tunnels, the world beneath a world, the city concealed as a bed of leaves would a huntsman’s trap.

Ahead, a ridge of high ground emerged through the darkness, the edges of its lofty buildings picked out by the Sentinels’ search lamps. They had strayed into an urban valley, a basin of land before the city rose up higher and more dominant.

Drakgaard was turning, his Chaplain reaching the same conclusion as his commander, their eyes meeting as a sense of impotent urgency filled them. The order to fall back was barely formed on Drakgaard’s snarling lips before a low rumble filled the valley, swelling to a bellowing crescendo and the world beneath the world rose up to engulf them.

Zantho felt the quake before he heard or saw anything. It rumbled up through the chassis of his Predator tank in subtle tremors that rocked his pintle mount and told him something terrible had just happened.

As he called down for the vox to try to establish contact with Colonel Redgage, he noticed the plumes of smoke and dust occluding part of the city. They came from the direction of the second armour column, the one accompanied by Kor’ad and his troops. The Dreadnought had been en route to link up with Captain Drakgaard’s forces and the bulk of the Salamanders martial strength in Canticus.

If the two had met as planned…

‘Oh, merciful Vulkan…’ Zantho whispered.

Both vox-links to Kor’ad and Colonel Redgage were non-responsive.

‘Drek’or,’ he called down to his comms-operator below, ‘establish a column-wide link.’

After a few seconds, Drek’or replied, ‘Ready now, commander.’

Zantho nodded, and addressed the entire column.

‘All tank commanders, change heading to east now. I repeat, all armour is to proceed eastwards immediately.’

A direct route would take them through the city. They would be vulnerable to ambush. They would lose vehicles to the terrain. Some, most, would likely not make it through. Desperation had forced the commander’s hand, robbing him of choice and sound tactics.

‘Brother-Sergeant Zantho,’ Drek’or began, ‘across that rubble and debris, we risk–’

‘I know the risks. If we have to bulldoze our way through this accursed city to reach our brothers then that is what we’ll do. We have no time left for caution. Warriors are dying, Drek’or.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Heletine, Canticus, inside the ravine

Redgage’s Chimera was on its side and trailing smoke. One of its tracks had been torn off and the front section was ablaze. Still groggy from the crash, he could feel the heat prickling his skin and smell the burning crewmen trapped inside. Mercifully, they were dead before the flames had taken hold but the fat of their bodies crackled and spat all the same.

Blood was leaking down his face from a gash in his forehead. No doubt his helmet had saved his skull, but Redgage couldn’t find it now and wasn’t about to look.

A ravine had opened up in the heart of the city, a yawning abyss that swallowed the allied Imperial forces whole at the exact moment they combined assets. The concerted push by Captain Drakgaard had ended in dismal failure. As far as Redgage could tell from his smoke-choked death trap, everyone in a Cadian uniform or drake-scale battleplate was fighting for their lives.

The enemy had been waiting, goading Drakgaard just enough to keep him eager. Weeks of bitter attritional fighting had led to this moment, though why the plan had been enacted now was anyone’s guess at this point.

Redgage struggled from the half-crushed cupola hatch, surprised at his own clarity. Perhaps his imminent death had ramped up his situational awareness in an effort to save him. Survival was really all that was left to him now, though judging by what was going on below the Salamanders weren’t ready to capitulate yet.

He had heard that said about them, that they refused to admit defeat, willing to fight in the face of impossible odds.

Though he could discern little through the smoke and heat haze, Redgage ventured only two possible outcomes: retreat or destruction.

He crawled out through the narrow hatch on his stomach, dragging his wounded leg behind him. It hurt like the damned Eye, but reminded him he was still alive and kept him awake so he could try to stay that way. Something snagged his belt on the way out and he reached down to find out what it was. He touched skin and looked back into the murky hatch to see what appeared to be Hansard’s fingers grasping at him.

Incredibly, Redgage’s gunner had survived.

‘Hold on, Hansard,’ Redgage told him. ‘I’ve got you,’ he said, grabbing the man’s wrist and heaving even as he lurched from the cupola himself.

Hansard came loose, but only from the elbow. The rest of the poor fool was still in the tank, severed from his limb in the crash.

Redgage gaped at Hansard’s forearm, distraught, before casting it down in disgust and muttering a prayer for the man’s soul as he reconciled himself to an uncomfortable truth. Of his crew, he alone lived.

Free of the wreck, coughing up black tar from his lungs as the smoke intensified, Redgage limped away into cover.

Dirt and debris from the collapsed city block was strewn all around him. Some of his comrades had been crushed by it. He had his back against a pillar and was trying to look up through the grey clouds at the summit of the ravine. It was a hard climb, but even with his leg it was doable.

Redgage started to move. If asked, he would not have described himself as a corpulent man. Several decades had passed since he had taken his physical training seriously, though, and he wished he had recently put more time in on the endurance yard.

Very few Cadian tanks had avoided the sinkhole. Those that did stood proudly on the edge of the ravine, speaking loudly through their cannons. Less than half the Thunderers and Demolishers Redgage had brought with him remained. The rest were broken and on fire like his Chimera. Clambering up the ruined slope, Redgage fixed a point in his mind where a stout wall of armour still resisted and aimed for it. So intent was he on reaching salvation that he failed to notice the cultist until it was almost upon him.

Dressed in whatever rags they had worn when forfeiting their immortal souls, cult worshippers had poured into the ravine like vermin. Driven to the point of desperate fanaticism, ordinary men and women had become murderers by the insidious promises of Chaos.

Salvation, status, vengeance, retribution, a man’s sins were varied enough that the gods of Ruin knew what to offer in return for eternal servitude. Moral corruption was, by its nature, a choice. Every cultist scrambling into the ravine had made theirs – some, Redgage noticed with disgust, were even wearing ragged Cadian uniforms.

One such traitor leapt at him now, combat knife already bloodied and hungry for more.

Redgage had enough time to throw up his arms in defence and managed to seize his assailant by the wrist before the frothing trooper bore the colonel down beneath his weight.

Hot breath, rancid with halitosis, washed over Redgage and he fought not to gag. The blade nicked his cheek like a wasp sting and he roared to push it back again.

Eyes sunken, hair falling from his scalp in clumps, the trooper looked like he was rad-poisoned. But it wasn’t radiation, it was the taint. Redgage barely recognised the man as one of his own. Only the uniform gave weight to the lie that all the Cadians had stayed loyal or died to remain so.

‘Traitor!’ spat Redgage, kneeing his assailant in the chest and using his anger to throw him off. Seemingly fuelled by unnatural vigour, the trooper sprang to his feet and was about to lunge again when Redgage drew his service pistol from its black leather holster and shot the man dead.

A second cultist a few metres away was lining up a rocket tube when the colonel spotted him. Steadying his aim with his free hand, Redgage killed him too. He executed a third who was scrambling up the slope below. He wanted to kill them all, to vent the anger and the horrific sense of frustration threatening to unman him. So many slain – no amount in return could balance those scales. The accountancy of war didn’t work like that and Redgage knew it.

His brief, but frenzied, bravura brought the attention of others and made the colonel regret his lapse in composure. For after the deluge of cultists had stormed the ravine, the genuine warriors of the heretic cause had shown themselves.

Black Legion, the name held terror for most who heard it. For the men and women of Cadia, especially those who stood watch at the Cadian Gate, it promoted a stern but resigned steadfastness.

Said to descend from Horus himself, the sons of old Cthonia were rightly feared throughout the galaxy, at their head a leader so venerable he could remember the days of the primarchs. Such history, millennia old, was little more than fiction for those who lived in the Time of Ending, but not by him, nor his sworn warriors.

Redgage watched as three hulking, armoured bodies muscled through the rubble. Each had drawn a chainblade, their impassive faceplate masks unable to convey their relish of the kill. Skulls hung from their breastplates on spiked chains. Human hair dyed red served as topknots for their horned helms. Eager, murderous fire blazed within their flat, rectangular eye slits.

Redgage knew he couldn’t outrun them. He did the only thing he could – he levelled his sidearm at one of the power-armoured monsters and declared with more courage than he felt, ‘Come on then, scum!’

Then fired.

The bright flare of laser discharge lit up the slope for a few seconds as Redgage drained the pistol’s power pack. Barring a few scorch marks, the warriors emerged undamaged and undeterred. More than that in fact, they were laughing at him.

Lost somewhere during the crash, Redgage had no close combat weapon so he picked up a length of pipe instead, and tried to prop himself up against the rubble so he could swing it.

‘Bernadetta, my love…’ he whispered to the wife he would never see again, ‘I am so sorry.’

The growl of hungry chain-teeth filled his senses as Redgage faced down the three traitors.

Uselessly brandishing the pipe, Redgage prepared his soul for the end. The prayer died in his mouth as the first warrior evaporated in a ball of actinic blue light. The others turned at once, recognising a worthy foe.

Huge, imposing and horrendously powerful, Kor’ad strode amongst them. His plasma cannon was recharging for another burst, but the Dreadnought still had his thunder hammer and smashed a second warrior aside with it.

The third went in close, shouting for reinforcements in his own crude language, aiming for the Dreadnought’s weak points with his chainblade.

Sparks spitting from a ruptured power cable in his casket, Kor’ad backed up and knocked the warrior down with a punch from his massive fist. Then he quickly stepped forwards and crushed the traitor underfoot.

Two more were coming, and Kor’ad shifted his massive bulk into their path.

‘Rise, colonel,’ he bellowed through his vox-emitters. ‘Return to your men.’

The reinforcements looked tougher than their predecessors. Both were clad in hefty suits of war-plate, larger and more formidable than power armour. As one of the warriors stood firm, he unleashed a long-barrelled cannon. Redgage threw himself down as a hail of shells filled the air. Kor’ad bore the brunt of it, staggering as several dense rounds pierced his thick armour. There was no respite.

In the wake of the salvo, the second warrior drove into the Dreadnought, chainfist swinging. Kor’ad reacted on instinct, striking a glancing blow that took off the warrior’s helm and sent him sprawling. Beneath the blood and the mass of shorting cables, the warrior wore a face of flayed skin.

Kor’ad advanced on him when a second burst ripped from the long-barrelled cannon. This time the Dreadnought could angle his body without fear of Redgage being hit and avoided most of the shell storm. Turning back, aware the warrior with the chainfist was coming at him, Kor’ad fired off a bolt from his plasma cannon and the Black Legion shooter disappeared from sight.

Dead or smashed back down the slope by the impact, Redgage didn’t know. He saw the other warrior hit Kor’ad again though, and heard the ominous clunk of a grenade being attached to the Dreadnought’s casket.

The detonation came seconds later as Kor’ad’s plasma cannon exploded, taking his left arm with it and severing the cables in the right so the Dreadnought dropped his thunder hammer. Kor’ad had enough power left to reach for the unhelmeted warrior and crush his skull in his fist before throwing him bodily into the air and back down into the ravine.

Redgage had never seen a Dreadnought kneel; he didn’t know they could until that moment. Close up, he realised it wasn’t just the arm that had been damaged when the krak grenade had gone off. Part of Kor’ad’s casket was split too, and he could see the remnants of the warrior the Dreadnought once was languishing within.

He was just a man inside, a withered torso and head, whose flesh was puckered with cables and venting fluid, a war-maker no more.

‘What can I do? Tell me,’ Redgage pleaded, his knowledge of Dreadnought repair woefully lacking.

Kor’ad was bloody, struggling for breath. Dying. Without his vox-emitters, he sounded frail and rasping.

‘You’ve stood with me… colonel,’ said Kor’ad haltingly. ‘That is… enough. Run… save your–’

The whine of rocket propulsion cut off the end of the sentence, followed by the ear-shattering explosion of the missile striking the Dreadnought’s back. There was a scream, half mechanised through the emitters, half croaked by the failing lungs of the withered corpse entombed in his dying machine.

Kor’ad fell face forward. His back was a smoking ruin. The Venerable was dead, slain by an honourless blow. Redgage thrust out his pistol, searching for a target but it was an empty gesture. His enemy was lost to him through smoke and fire. He paused, holstering his pistol as he regarded the wreck of his saviour, once so formidable but now laid irrevocably low.

Then he ran, scrambling, up the slope.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Heletine, nearing the border of Solist

The screaming began about forty kilometres out from Solist. Sitting quietly in the gunship’s troop hold, Stephina had the vox frequency switched to that of their so-called allies. In that moment, surrounded by the solemn figures of her Seraphim whose heads were bowed in prayer and guilt, she wondered if that word could really be used for betrayers.

As abhorrent as that truth was, it was also irrefutable.

Sister Helia went to cut the link but Stephina’s raised hand stopped her.

‘No,’ she uttered flatly. It was the first time any of them had spoken since the vox-feed had been opened.

‘We need not listen to that,’ said Helia, her seraphic appearance at odds with her obvious discomfort.

Stephina looked up to meet her fellow Sister Superior’s gaze.

‘Does it bother you, my Sister, to hear their cries of pain and curses against our Order?’

The voices conveyed by the vox not only screamed their death agonies, they also vowed revenge upon the Ebon Chalice and the daughters of the Emperor who had chosen to abandon them.

‘Craven men will oft lay blame at the feet of the blameless,’ Helia replied.

Stephina quickly got to her feet, causing several of her fellow Seraphim to look up from their devotions.

‘Your own words betray you, Sister, and barely convince yourself!’ she snapped, but then calmed down. It would not be proper to act thusly in front of the others. ‘We have both seen them fight. They are not craven men.’ She let that hang in the air for a moment to gauge Helia’s reaction and see if she dared refute it.

Helia’s mouth shaped a response but the words died on her lips, and she shook her head.

‘No.’

‘Nor are they savages, deserving of savage treatment.’

Helia lowered her gaze and let out a resigned breath.

‘Our orders come from the preceptor, she who is the will of the–’

‘The will of the Throne, yes I am well aware,’ said Stephina, reaching out to gently lift Helia’s chin. She spoke with a quiet intensity. ‘Whatever work Canoness Angerer is engaged in cannot be worth the souls of thousands of Imperial servants, the very angels of the Emperor Himself!’

The vox-feed cut to static as whoever was broadcasting the signal could do so no longer. A brief silence followed.

Helia’s eyes were pleading, tearful.

‘We must have faith in Angerer’s plan…’

‘Even if that plan is to leave our allies to slaughter?’

Stephina turned away, not waiting for an answer as she contacted the transport’s pilot.

‘Sister,’ she began with authority, ‘we are turning around.’

There was a short pause as the pilot tried to comprehend the order.

‘Superior?’

‘Do not question. Obey. Make heading for Canticus at all speed. This is my order: you are my Seraphim. Let it not be said that we too abandoned our God-Emperor sworn honour.’

The vessel slowed with the dull roar of turbo fans, banking sharply as the pilot changed course.

When Stephina had relayed the same order to Avensi and Cassia in the second transport, who were both wise enough not to argue with their commanding superior, she addressed the hold.

‘Know who you are,’ she said, shouting above the engines as they pushed hard and complained loudly. ‘Know your purpose is divine and that there is no greater expression of faith or loyalty to the Throne than in battle against the enemies of the Ecclesiarchy. We are less than forty souls aboard these two ships, but we will fight as more than four hundred.

‘Our allies are dying on the battlefield, our promise to them ash in the wind. Take up your arms and follow me. The righteous have no fear. A holy wrath descends upon the perfidious and the traitor – it falls on ebon wings, your wings. I would have them occlude the very sun.’

Stephina gritted her teeth, stirred by her own rhetoric.

‘If any here believe we follow an unjust path, that I lead you to damnation in the eyes of Throne and God-Emperor, speak and let us all hear your condemnation.’

None did.

And none looked down to their feet anymore, either. Every Seraphim aboard the vessel had raised their eyes, blazing with holy fury.

Betrayers no longer, they would be avengers and honour their oaths to the Salamanders.

‘Canticus…’ Stephina snarled through clenched teeth. ‘Blood and fire await us!’

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Heletine, Canticus, inside the ravine

The Serpentia moved through the ravine as one, fighting all quarters and surrounding Drakgaard as they went. Elysius was amongst them, roving between warriors and shouting canticles of retribution against the traitor. In the tight scrum of bodies slowly filling the ravine, resolve was everything. The Chaplain used his gifts to strengthen that resolve with hate. If vitriol was a blade, his would have cut through power armour.

The earth had collapsed beneath them, demolished by charges set against fragile foundations by the heretics. The explosives had exposed the weakened surface of Canticus, upon which were built its temples, shrines and domiciles, dropping the majority of the Salamanders into the catacombs below.

This subterranean world was vast, only hinted at in maps and impossible to accurately chart through geological survey and sensorium probes from low orbit. Tunnels threaded the catacombs like arterial veins, leading to vast chambers and antechambers where the bulk of the heretic forces had mustered and lain in wait. Goaded like fools, the Imperial army had been drawn into the trap based on the belief that the enemy was defeated. It had merely been saving its killer blow for that moment.

Recalled dimly through the smoke and dust, Elysius saw an immense sinkhole open up. As they were at the vanguard of the army, the fire-born fell first, dragged down against their will as the dirt and rock piled on. Then came the tanks, an entire company of Cadian heavy armour raining down on the heads of the fragile infantry like a vehicular landslide.

After the first blow, the enemy made itself known. Cultists swarmed from the ridge, weapon emplacements were established. Solid shot, las and shells descended in a storm.

Most of the Kasrkin were dead, and those that had survived were getting picked off as they tried to haul their severely wounded captain back up the slope. Half the Cadian tanks were lying broken and on fire at the bottom of the ravine in a slurry of unrecognisable machine parts.

The fire-born held their ground. No Salamander would ever retreat, unless in extremis. Even then they would solemnly lay down their lives if it meant denying victory to the enemy, self-sacrificial to the end. It was a bitter, self-destructive creed but it had hardened them well.

Few remained though – Devastators, some remnants from Tactical. There was no sign of Kor’ad or his brother Dreadnoughts. Zantho and the armour was cut off from the main army.

Escorted by the Serpentia, Elysius surveyed Drakgaard’s operational assets and knew they were vastly outmatched. They had got so much wrong, made so many mistakes it might not be possible to rectify.

It wasn’t the fall that had killed the fire-born, it was what was waiting for them inside the ravine that opened up beneath them. This was the third blow.

Not only Black Legion, but a massive host of sworn Renegade Astartes. A veritable army of deserters and civilians turned cultist served as cannon fodder, weak but armed and numerous. One man alone with a stubber was barely worthy of notice. A mob armed with cudgels and blades could similarly be dismissed, but a horde of thousands arrayed with rocket tubes and heavy cannon… Such an enemy posed a genuine threat, even to Adeptus Astartes.

It was the fanatic masses that attacked first, a second host spilling from the tunnels to join up with those scrambling down the slopes of the ravine. Only once the dregs had been engaged, the fire-born committed to what they had seen as a desperate but still costly ambush, had Black Legion emerged from the tunnels.

Then the real killing began.

The attack was well-crafted despite its savagery, intended to split the Salamanders up and destroy them piecemeal.

So far, it was working but not without resistance.

Elysius caved in a renegade’s skull with his mace, splitting it apart in a shower of crumpled armour plate and bone. He barely paused to register the stink of hyper-cauterising blood caused by the energy surge from the powered crozius, instead turning to see Tul’vek die.

A chainsword was lodged in the warrior’s throat. Dismayed, Elysius reached out for him but the churning blade had chewed through enough flesh and sinew to nearly remove the Serpentia’s head. As Tul’vek fell, gouting blood, Elysius snatched his banner so it wouldn’t touch the ground.

Kaladin slew Tul’vek’s killer, coring the Black Legion warrior through the torso with his melta. The dragon mouth of the weapon roared as he fired, given voice by Kaladin’s anguish.

‘Brother Her’us…’ Elysius called above the battle din, causing the Champion to pause in his hammer swings and look up.

Elysius gestured to the gap in their defensive circle left by Tul’vek.

Her’us nodded and took the dead banner bearer’s place to close it.

Apothecary Sepelius had already departed with the injured Sergeant Bar’dak. At least, Elysius considered bitterly, there would be someone left to harvest the Chapter’s due. So, without Tul’vek, Drakgaard’s command squad numbered six warriors.

They fought like sixty.

Drakgaard led them, hacking and cutting with his kaskara. There was a certain savagery to the captain’s blows, a wild abandon brought about through desperation. In spite of everything, he wanted this victory, believing solely through force of will and aggression he could still obtain it. Whatever injuries blighted his once strong body were forgotten during the ferocity of close combat. Though not skilled beyond any expected level for a ranking fire-born, Drakgaard was tenacious and hard to kill. His wound-ravaged flesh was testament to that.

He took blows that would finish lesser men, shrugging them off and gutting his surprised opponents with typical brutality. A kaskara was a noble weapon, a blade forged by artisans. Drakgaard had afforded it every flourish but wielded it like a slaughter-man’s cleaver, and to great effect.

‘We are dying in this grind,’ Elysius voxed to the captain during a brief respite.

From its initial sprawling melee, the battle had broken up into smaller but still brutal skirmishes. Occasionally, two or more would merge and a larger fight would erupt only to break apart again when warriors were slain or routed.

At the nadir the ravine smoke and settling dust from the earth collapse reduced visibility, and with enemies in such close proximity to one another, combat was dominated by short-range firefights and hand-to-hand engagements. Farther out, where rubble and the shells of tanks littered the slopes, artillery from both sides was being employed to even the odds. Shell impacts from the heavy guns sent plumes of earth and bodies skyward, adding to the horrendous carnage.

‘Let the screw turn,’ Drakgaard replied, forging onward through the chaos, ‘let it gnaw our bones, Chaplain. I won’t yield until I am dead!’

‘Ur’zan, listen to–’

Drakgaard cut the feed, his violent threshing of the enemy unabated.

Elysius could respect a death wish – it spoke to the Promethean Creed – but not one that could lose a war and kill dozens of fire-born into the bargain. He briefly clutched Her’us’s shoulder guard. The Chaplain was close enough to speak to the Company Champion without the aid of comms.

‘Stay close to him. He dies and I’ll be the one who brings you to account.’

Her’us nodded. He parried a chainaxe with the haft of his hammer before throwing the renegade back and obliterating the right side of his torso. Blood flecked his draconic faceplate as the traitor’s flank crumpled, ruddying the inlaid ivory teeth of the helm.

‘On my honour, Chaplain,’ Her’us replied when he was clear of foes. ‘I die before he falls.’

A Company Champion’s place in battle was by the side of his captain. Her’us fought on Drakgaard’s left, where their different fighting styles would complement each other. Zetok positioned on the captain’s right, shoulder to shoulder. Zetok was a pyre warden and protected Drakgaard’s off-hand with his storm shield. The three of them formed the Serpentia’s vanguard, cutting through the throng of heretics and supported by their brothers in formation behind them.

A bolt-round struck Zetok’s shield square on and would have staggered him if not for Vervius leaning in from behind with his shoulder to help set his brother back on his feet.

‘Hold as one,’ said Vervius, and shot a sustained burst from his plasma pistol. Crackling spheres of energy left an actinic smear in their wake, indiscriminately rupturing flesh and ceramite.

Having recovered his composure, Zetok drove forwards again, and the circle of Serpentia hit hard into the Black Legion ranks that were swelling with every second as more warriors poured from the tunnels with their cultist retinues.

Warriors of like-for-like skill and ferocity met and were bloodied.

Tseg’un broke apart a traitor’s breastplate with a power fist, crushing bone and organs, as another warrior lodged a chainblade in his clavicle. His cry of agony drew the attention of Her’us, who lashed out at Tseg’un’s attacker and split the warrior’s chainblade apart in a storm of broken teeth. Elysius finished the traitor with a crushing blow from his power glove.

‘Ave Imperator…’ he snarled breathlessly.

They had been fighting for several minutes already, but had barely begun. More were coming.

Tseg’un lived but was badly wounded. His part of the circle was now weakened.

Elysius moved alongside him to bolster Tseg’un’s strength and resolve as further enemies loomed out of the half darkness.

Drab, grey smoke choked the battlefield. If it was day above, no one within the ravine would have known it. The sun was utterly eclipsed. Fire illuminated the oily clouds, spat in sharp flashes from promethium-based weapons or rendered in dull smudges from slowly burning vehicles.

Onagar lit his own flame and it cast him and the other Serpentia in a feverish wash of amber. He was the squad’s pyroclast, an old term from the Heresy War, since fallen out of fashion but still remembered by some in the Chapter. Burns ravaged Onagar’s exposed skin, making it leathern and tough. He was gnarled like a petrified tree but scowled with an arsonist’s pleasure as he spewed hellfire from his Nocturne-forged flamer. Silhouettes, smears of dirty brown and grey, stumbled in the blaze. Onagar laughed as they seemed to shrink inside the fire. His dark humour was cut short when a bolt-round took apart half his cheek and battle-helm. Retribution was meted out by Kaladin who reduced the renegade to a noisome slurry with his melta.

‘How do I look?’ Onagar slurred to his avenging brother, bone visible through his ruined and bloody cheek. It was a miracle he could still speak.

‘Ugly,’ replied Kaladin.

Onagar laughed, a reedy, guzzling sound. ‘I was always ugly.’

For every warrior slain, another two took his place along with an entourage of cultists that came on in deranged hordes. Zetok hewed at them with a butcher’s grace, cleaving limbs from torsos and severing necks with a drake-fanged axe. On Nocturne it was a called a ‘burning blade’ because the edge glowed hotter than a furnace and fire licked its savage teeth.

One cultist violently combusted as the axe touched him, the fire of his immolation spreading to his confederates. Only the Traitor Space Marines, girded by their power armour, weathered the blaze and were able to engage.

In seconds, Zetok was hard pressed and on the defensive. Beyond the edge of his storm shield, which was being hammered by mauls and chain-teeth, he saw a Havoc in black war-plate stand to and steady a missile launcher.

‘Brace!’ Zetok roared, throwing back his attackers so he could thrust forwards with his shield and meet the threat.

Elysius was ahead of him, in both reaction and commitment.

The incendiary streaked from the launcher tube, flying scarcely ten metres before it struck a shimmering barrier of force generated by the Chaplain’s rosarius. It dissipated in a firestorm, throwing hot orange tendrils around Elysius’s protective dome and scattering metal shrapnel from the casing that struck the field and bounced off harmlessly.

In three strides, Drakgaard reached the Havoc and struck him down before he could reload or draw a weapon.

The Serpentia quickly reformed but had to wade deep into the enemy’s ranks to do so.

Somewhere amidst the carnage, Kaladin went down. Elysius missed whatever it was that had killed him. Only the stark evidence of an indent-rune turning crimson in his tactical display told the Chaplain they had lost another.

With so much black armour surrounding the chosen of Drakgaard’s warriors, the deaths came swiftly after that.

Zetok, his shield arm severed at the wrist. He parried the first thrust, blood spitting from his wounded stump, but the second took him in the side and chewed up his body. A third cut parted his gorget and took his head. The three traitors who had killed him then hacked apart his body.

Onagar died by immolation, his promethium tank struck by a tragically unlucky ricochet. He went up in a flare of magnesium-white before collapsing in a bone-charred and fire-blackened heap. The explosion blew the heart out of the Serpentia, smashing the defensive circle and scattering them. Mercifully, it also threw back their enemies.

Elysius felt his body lifted by the pressure wave, the heat and impact force registering in violent warning spikes on his armour’s integrity display. It was breached in several places but ultimately it had saved his life.

Drakgaard was nearby, sprawled onto his front but rising heavily onto his hands and knees. With a trembling hand he ripped off the faceplate to his battered helmet and spat up a thick gobbet of blood. Elysius saw his face through the smoke and heat haze. It was pained, Drakgaard’s old scars and permanently snarling mouth contorted in a rictus of agony.

The Chaplain was about to call out to him when something lumbering and swathed in feverish heat loomed though the grey fog. It moved silently, despite its bulk, and Elysius realised he had been temporarily deafened by the blast.

‘Ur’zan!’ he cried, but felt like he was shouting into the void. He stumbled, weak in his left knee, and saw the greave was split, the kneecap reduced to a broken crevice thick with partially clotted blood.

Drakgaard was still on his knees, but had dragged off his ruined helm. The scalp beneath was also scarred, and scraps of badly healed flesh colonised his skull. A trickle of dark fluid ran from his left ear.

‘Ur’zan!’ Elysius was on his feet, staggering as if in slow motion towards his captain. He couldn’t see Her’us. He caught Vervius in his peripheral vision, reaching for the fallen banner that was streaked with mud and gore.

Up ahead, beyond Drakgaard but closing, was a monstrous form. It was part flesh, part machine, bone plate scabbing over metal, sinew and exposed viscera entwined around pistons and cables. A single black ivory horn sprouted from its back, arcing between two fluted exhaust pipes. Insane and screaming, the warrior slaved to the diabolical engine glared out from an aperture just above the torso that glistened wetly and was studded with sharp teeth.

The warrior’s skull was shrunken and emaciated, his vitality surrendered to fuel the machine. It was no noble Dreadnought, no venerable Space Marine clad for all time in an armoured war-casket. Those in service to the Omnissiah called it abomination. Elysius knew it by it a different name.

‘Helbrute!’ Sound returned in a cacophony of pain, the warning shout and the battlefield noise rushing back to the Chaplain in a flood.

Still dazed, hurt and bleeding, Drakgaard turned and saw the danger. He rose, scrabbling up his sword from the dirt and brandishing it at the monster.

Elysius cast around for Her’us, even as he staggered to Drakgaard’s side. He found the Champion surrounded by a growing circle of corpses, whirling around his thunder hammer in reaping arcs. Vervius stood beside him, holding up the banner. Defiance like that, so Elysius believed, was uniquely Nocturnean.

Elysius couldn’t help either of them now, so he stayed with Drakgaard.

‘You might get your wish,’ said the Chaplain, bitterly. ‘Death before surrender.’

Drakgaard raised his sword, saluting to the mindless Helbrute as it crossed the last few metres to them.

‘Would you have it any other way, brother?’

Elysius could not suppress a fatalistic grin. His power fist might crack the abominable war machine’s armour but he and the captain were running on reserves of strength.

‘I would not, brother.’

They were not, and would likely never be, friends but the war on Heletine had made them better allies. Elysius was glad they would face the Helbrute as such. It was something traitors would never truly understand.

Before they could engage the monster, a pair of hellfire missiles streaked out of the gloom on burning contrails. They struck the Helbrute’s centre mass simultaneously and tore the wretched machine apart in a spray of gore and metal. Only its smoking feet, severed at the shins, remained. The rest was scattered across the battlefield.

Elysius craned his neck as the roar of stabiliser jets overhead broke through the clamour of the battle. He looked up to see the descending shadow of a gunship, its embarkation hatch lowered and warriors standing upon the ramp.

Drakgaard collapsed alongside him, finally succumbing to his wounds.

‘Death from above…’ he rasped, flat on his back. As Elysius rushed to his side, Drakgaard laughed at the Wyverns taking flight.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Heletine, Canticus, inside the ravine

Iaptus was first onto the Thunderhawk’s ramp, his thunder hammer gripped firmly as the turbine engines of his jump pack started to ignite. His weapon’s crackling energies illuminated the mouth of the troop hold, casting the eight warriors waiting to disembark in a cerulean glow.

Smoke shrouded, littered with bodies and the burning wrecks of tanks, the ravine would seem a daunting prospect to many soldiers. It was meat and drink to the Wyverns.

‘We are outnumbered and cannot be everywhere,’ Iaptus shouted to his warriors above battlefield noise that had intensified with the dropping of the ramp. He took a further step upon it. ‘Defend Brother-Captain Drakgaard and Brother-Chaplain Elysius. We have orders to effect their egress from this chaos.’

‘We are retreating?’ Arrok ventured, foolishly.

Va’lin exchanged a look with Dersius who rested a hefty gauntlet on Arrok’s shoulder.

‘No, brother. But we need to regroup. We can’t do that if our commander is knee-deep in enemy dead, swallowed in that mess below.’

‘We are the ones that are going to be swallowed, Arrok,’ said Naeb with ironic cheer.

Va’lin exchanged another glance with him, but Naeb shrugged unapologetically.

‘Wyverns…’ Iaptus declared, ‘on breath of fire!’

He lifted his hammer and was about to make the leap when the gunship’s left side exploded. It pitched immediately, throwing Iaptus and the rest of the Wyverns against the right-hand side of the hold. Through a ragged gap in the fuselage, Va’lin could see the left wing had been sheared off and the engine was trailing smoke. Fire lapped at the edges of the tear, guttering with the passage of air as Brother Orcas piloted them through it at speed, whilst trying to keep them aloft.

Iaptus got on the vox. ‘Orcas!’

The reply was halting and marred by static.

‘Rocket hit… Attempting to correct, but we’ve sustained critical damage. Don’t think I can… bring her back, sergeant. Suggest emergency disembark.’

The vox went dead as the communications array failed. Klaxons were wailing inside the troop hold, which was washed in crimson emergency lighting.

‘Everyone out,’ roared Iaptus as the high-pitch whine of the engines told him they were descending fast and about to crash. ‘Now!’

The ramp had jerked back up a fraction when they were hit, so he kicked it back down with his boot and began to usher his warriors out.

Arrok went first – he and Xerus had been right behind Iaptus in formation. Then Dersius and Ky’dak jumped, the latter taking off from the ramp at a furious sprint. Va’lin quickly lost them to the smoke. He was next in line with Naeb and barrelled through the open hatch as flames from the burning engine washed across his sight.

Va’lin broke through and hit a bank of thick smoke that occluded optics so he switched to auto-senses. Naeb was gone, but he kept a track of him and the others on the tactical display flashing upon on his right retinal lens. Six were free of the gunship, in the wind. Two were still aboard, Vo’sha and Iaptus.

A missile burst through the cloud layer, an instinctive twist of his body saving Va’lin from its warhead and a short flight. He turned, head facing downwards towards the ground and looking back up. He had yet to ignite his pack in case the enemy had heat-seekers trained on the sky. The missile was still visible, arcing towards the stricken gunship with rocket-fuelled intensity. Va’lin saw the future and felt a cold ball of ice rise up into his gullet. He had one attempt to shoot the missile down. His flamer was no use. Preferring his sidearm, he ripped the bolt pistol from its holster and took aim. Buffeted by the wind and the force of acceleration as he reached terminal velocity, his hand was shaking. The missile was moving fast, closing on the gunship.

Va’lin fired off a three-round burst, hoping the spread would improve his chances.

Two shells missed, but a third hit the target. Va’lin’s triumph turned to anguish when he saw the bolt-shell detonate but only throw the missile slightly off course. It struck the gunship in the ramp instead of the underside, tearing off the hatch and throwing the two warriors who were about to leap out back into the hold. The gunship pinwheeled, plummeting now as it spun around prow to aft, trailing fire. Thick black smoke poured from its fuselage and engines, choking the hold and enveloping the gunship in a dirty pall. The glacis protecting the cockpit was shattered and exposed to the elements. As he fell, still yet to ignite his engines and watching in morbid fascination, Va’lin thought he saw Orcas on fire, wrestling with the controls.

The gunship disappeared from view, only to return a few moments later as it struck the slope and went up in a massive fireball.

Va’lin crushed down his guilt and tore his gaze away. Smoke and cloud parted, and the ground came rushing up to meet him. He fed all power to the jump pack’s turbines, barely arresting his descent in time with a huge burst of ignition.

He landed hard, buckling at the knees, and heard his powered joints protest at the rough treatment. Then he was moving, shooting at targets with his bolt pistol. A cultist’s head exploded. A renegade armoured in heliotrope purple went down with two shell holes in his torso.

Despite the frenetic chaos of the battle around him, Va’lin realised he had landed far from the intended drop zone. He couldn’t see his fellow Wyverns, let alone Drakgaard or Elysius. They were scattered, thrown apart as their Thunderhawk had pitched and yawed in its death throes. Though the smoke cover at ground level wasn’t as thick as it was in the sky, the ravine was massive and overrun with clashing warriors from both sides. He was alone, though not for long.

Having witnessed Va’lin’s descent and subsequent arrival, a swathe of heretics were converging on him led by a warrior of the Black Legion.

Two warbands, Va’lin realised, recalling the conflicting sigils he had seen during the Canticus street battle when the Wyverns had lost Sor’ad. An alliance explained the sheer numbers of troops the heretics had in reserve. They had been waiting here, under the earth, to attack. A rudimentary trap. It was sprung by a desire to end the war quickly and inspired by the erroneous belief that the heretics were all but defeated. Blind, without proper reconnaissance, the Salamanders had rushed into an unknown part of Canticus and denied all of their methodical instincts into the bargain.

As the heretics came for him, Va’lin brought to mind the words of Zen’de.

He who knows himself, knows truth. He who knows himself and acts to his own strengths shall deny all lies that might bring about weakness.

A pity they had not heeded their own natures, but it was too late now.

Va’lin stowed his sidearm and brought up his flamer. A long, fiery plume ignited on the air and struck the baying mob with enough force to knock down the heretics who burned horribly.

Not the Black Legionnaire, though. He emerged from the conflagration wreathed in fire and spitting curses to salve his obvious pain. Two dark eyes glared out from a pallid-looking face etched with the eight-pointed star of Chaos and promised pain and suffering for the Salamander.

Clenched in both gauntleted hands, the warrior hefted a flanged mace that exuded a strange, aetheric mist. Images formed and collapsed in that mist, the faces of the damned and the claws of their tormentors. He would need to be wary of the mace.

The flamer would be useless in close combat and didn’t look like it would stop the Black Legionnaire. Va’lin drew his sidearm and gladius, letting the flamer fall. That made the warrior smile, though his eyes shone with murderous intent, and he saluted the Salamander for his reckless bravura.

‘Vorshkar,’ uttered the traitor, nodding to Va’lin.

He had surged through the flame storm like a mad dog but now gave his name as part of some strange honour ritual. Va’lin had heard of the capricious nature of the warriors of the old Legions, those poor souls trapped out of time, their sanity gnawed away by daemons but had never experienced it before. Regardless, he answered the warrior with the same contempt he would any traitor.

‘Death to the slaves of Ruin,’ he spat, and adopted a fighting posture, leaning forwards in preparation for a small burst of ignition. A sudden attack might provide a sorely needed edge.

The warrior’s smile faded. His reply in Gothic was hard for him to form but he delivered it with certitude and malice.

‘Yours will be slow and lasting, Vulkan’s son.’

Va’lin gunned the throttle, boosting into an abrupt but rapid charge. His transhuman mind had already analysed the traitor’s defences and found his face and neck to be his weak points. The Salamander aimed for them, firing off a snap shot into the warrior’s torso to distract from the intended killing stroke with his gladius.

But where the blade should have cut through jugular and carotid artery, it only sheared through air. The warrior had evaded him, moving faster than the jump pack’s propulsion capacity was able to move Va’lin.

A blow resounded against Va’lin’s shoulder, crumpling his guard and carrying on into his jump pack. The left jet turbine exploded, ripping apart much of the protective housing and spraying it over the side of Va’lin’s armoured face. Shrapnel from the sundered intake vent embedded in the side of his battle-helm crazing the visual feed from the left retinal lens and effectively ruining depth perception.

A second blow hammered against Va’lin’s ribs, denting the plastron and shearing the jump pack’s quick-release strap. Pain resounded through his body, felt in his shoulder and chest at once, so acute they vied for dominance on the scale of Va’lin’s agony.

He was sunk to one knee before he had even managed to raise his sword weakly in defence.

Vorshkar’s mace was invested with the sorcery of the warp but it did not just grant him deadly potency, it also imbued the warrior with preternatural speed. It was a boon that Va’lin had no power to counter. He reacted but it was as if he had been drawn into a well of extreme low gravity and every movement was slow and laboured.

A third blow shattered Va’lin’s standing knee, breaking his armoured pad apart and sending him crashing to the ground. He tried to look around and find his enemy but injury warnings were streaming across both retinal lenses – the right clean and grim with severity, the left a cracked and hazing mess.

In the end, Va’lin felt the traitor’s boot slammed atop his chest. He met Vorshkar’s gaze, the warrior looking down on his defeated opponent with amusement. Another smile twisted his ivory-pale face.

‘I lied about it being slow and lasting,’ he admitted, ‘at least in this realm of existence. I am about to end your flesh, Vulkan’s son, but your soul… well,’ he let out a long, malicious breath, ‘that is for the neverborn to decide.’

‘Never… born?’ Va’lin croaked, not understanding, as consciousness began to leave him.

Vorshkar’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let me show yo–’

A flash of light overloaded Va’lin’s optics, rendering him blind. In the second of vision he was afforded before blackout, he saw Vorshkar thrown onto his heels, his neck snapping back as he unleashed an agonised scream.

It was the last sound Va’lin heard as he faded – his body shutting down, his mind suddenly awash with visions of the fire canyons.

Rest, the figure in his dream said again.

None can come back. Zantho’s words resounded, echoing the Promethean belief in the Circle of Fire. None can come back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Heletine, Canticus, inside the ravine

Elysius dragged Drakgaard’s prone form across the battlefield, Her’us and Vervius guarding their retreat. These two were the last of their kind – the rest of the Serpentia were dead. Not even their bodies could be recovered. The battle was over, the Imperial forces defeated. Tenacity met its equally potent counterpart in a Nocturnean’s cultural psychology, pragmatism, and lost.

Fight on and they would certainly be destroyed utterly. Retreat now and regroup, at least they could muster whatever was left of their forces and salvage some kind of military response.

With Drakgaard incapacitated, command fell to Elysius, and the Chaplain had no hesitation about giving the order to fall back. Most not clad in drake-scale armour already had, though precious few Cadians were left alive to be ashamed of the fact.

Armour had come in from the east, a ragged assembly of Space Marine tanks under the charge of Sergeant Zantho, battered and bruised from shouldering their way through the rubble of a city. Elysius could not comprehend how many vehicles Zantho had lost or what sort of damage had been done to the ones that were currently bombarding the heretics to curtail any meaningful pursuit, but would have laid oaths that it was grievous.

‘We are clear of the third vector, brother-sergeant,’ voxed Elysius, his bionic arm and power glove making light work of hauling Drakgaard up the slope.

‘Understood, Brother-Chaplain,’ came the reply from Zantho a moment later.

Three more seconds elapsed before the area of the ravine Elysius and the remains of the fire-born had just evacuated was engulfed in a hail of explosive shellfire.

On the opposite side of the battlefield, the Sisters of the Ebon Chalice were still engaged in a fighting retreat themselves. Of the promised reinforcements, a vast Ecclesiarchy warhost, only these Seraphim had answered the call. There was no time to question that now, but Elysius was determined that if he lived he would have an answer, one way or another. The betrayers, whoever they were, would be punished.

As he reached the ridge line, a Rhino armoured transport was waiting with a rough bodyguard of fire-born outside it firing off shots into the ravine to deter any last ditch attacks. Elysius got Drakgaard aboard, sending him off with Her’us by his side in the troop hold. A Thunderhawk was waiting to take them back to Escadan, one of the few that could still fly.

Elysius stayed behind with Vervius to oversee the retreat. The Chaplain’s jaw clenched at the sight and the thought of such utter defeat.

‘Chaplain,’ uttered Vervius.

Elysius turned to face him.

‘You are bleeding, sir.’

Elysius looked down at the many wounds he had sustained that had penetrated his battleplate. In truth, it was a ruin and in dire need of a Techmarine’s ministrations.

‘It’s a small matter, brother,’ Elysius replied, lifting his gaze to the ravine again. ‘Upraise the banner, Vervius,’ he said as the last few survivors made it to the ridge line and safety, ‘let our enemy know we are defiant even when we are beaten.’

Elysius spared a last glance in the direction of the Seraphim who were now embarking aboard transports. These few had defied whatever order had condemned the rest of the Imperials to defeat. By blood or torture, if it was necessary, he would find out who gave it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Nova-class frigate, Forge Hammer

Xarko’s strength was at its end. He saw the kine-shield flicker once and then dissipate. Alone in the access corridor, exhausted to the point of collapse, he faced down the four Black Dragons who had come aboard the ship intent on murderous vengeance.

Every fractional movement was bone-gnawing agony, but Xarko still drew his sword. The edge crackled with ionic charge. He doubted he could do much with it beyond lift it.

‘Don’t make me kill you.’

The sergeant in war-ravaged black plate laughed, seeing through the weak facade.

‘I shall not afford you the same courtesy, Salamander,’ he replied, exposing the sharp fangs in his snarling mouth. ‘You sealed your fate when you murdered our captain.’

Xarko frowned.

‘Murdered? You are mistaken. No blood has been shed on this ship that you did not bring about yourselves.’

‘Liar!’ spat a warrior with bone nubs jutting from his ugly pate. Another beside him snarled, clenching and unclenching fists that ended in calcified blades. The fourth was a cold storm. He’d lost an eye but the one that remained was like a chip of ice as it regarded the Librarian, and he carried the Prime Helix of the apothecarion.

‘Who are you? What are you doing aboard this ship?’ Xarko asked, stalling.

Silencing the beasts in his retinue, the sergeant came forwards.

‘We are the wrath,’ he declared in a menacing undertone, ‘here to claim our vengeance…’ As he raised his bone blade to strike, a stentorian voice echoed from the opposite end of the corridor.

‘Trouble yourself no further with him,’ said Adrax Agatone as he moved into the light with bolter raised, ‘you have much worse problems now.’

The captain had returned with a small war party. Sergeants Lok, Clovius and five other warriors all armed. One of them stepped in front of Agatone, seeing the familiar trappings of the infiltrators aboard the Forge Hammer.

‘Brothers…’ said Zartath, disbelieving. ‘Who sent you?’

The sergeant’s anger bled away instantly and he took a knee. So too did the others he had brought with him.

‘Don’t you know us?’ asked the sergeant, seemingly confused by Zartath’s attire but more concerned that he didn’t recognise them. ‘I am Urgaresh. This is Skarh, Haakem.’ He gestured to each in turn.

‘Thorast, my lord,’ uttered the Apothecary.

Zartath sneered, confused. ‘Lord? I am no one’s lord.’

Urgaresh rose to his feet. His eyes narrowed. ‘We are your wrath,’ he said. ‘And have searched long and far.’

‘To what end, warrior?’ Agatone interjected, reminding the Black Dragons of his presence and the bolters aimed at them.

‘To find our captain,’ said Urgaresh, as all eyes fell on Zartath.

‘Do you trust them?’

Agatone looked up from his vigil and met Issak’s gaze.

‘They boarded my ship and killed several of its crew. No, I don’t trust them.’

They were sitting in the darkened confines of the Forge Hammer’s apothecarion, the unconscious form of Exor laid down on the medi-slab in front of them. Vitals were steady but the wound he had taken from the traitor’s sword in Molior was grievous. Given the extent of the injuries and Exor’s augmentations, Agatone considered they might have been better off with an enginseer rather than a ship’s medic.

‘What will you do with them?’ asked Issak.

Agatone looked down again. The Black Dragons had been incarcerated in the brig. They went willingly, in part due to Zartath’s presence but also on account of the sheer number of bolters levelled at them.

Zartath had no knowledge of them, and had spent every moment since his brothers’ imprisonment watching them from an observation chamber. Agatone resolved to go and check in on him after he had finished visiting Exor.

‘Why did you come with us, medicus?’ he asked, answering Issak’s question with one of his own.

‘Because you allowed it.’

Agatone looked up at that.

‘It was more than that,’ he said. ‘And don’t tell me you just wanted out of the hive.’

‘I won’t. I experienced something in the archive, a sense of being there before but not knowing when or how. It led me to a name.’

Agatone raised an eyebrow, questioning, and Issak continued.

‘It was amongst the wreckage in the archive. The uppermost level before we got in the lifter. I don’t know why I was drawn to it, but I was. I think it was what your errant warrior and his companion were looking for.’

‘What name?’

‘Draor.’

CHAPTER FORTY

Heletine, beneath Solist

Angerer awoke to pain and an alarming lack of feeling in most of her body. The lids of her eyes were heavy and difficult to lift, so what she saw when she first tried to open them came in slivers.

A dark chamber, somewhere underground and lit by flaming torches…

The brooding presence of my monstrous captor, hulking and vile as it regards me from the back of the room…

Warriors, clad in armour, the same traitors we met at Solist…

A wretched figure, robes clinging to her body, knelt and praying before me…

She is hunched, shivering, but does not relent in her murmuring benedictions.

Looking up at me, our eyes meet and I recognise the kinship in them.

It is Revina. It is my sister. And she is praying for me.

‘Reunited with your sister,’ uttered the monster, its voice resonant. ‘How long has it been?’

Angerer glanced at it but only glanced. To do anything more would be to invite damnation. She tried to focus on Revina, on her sister. Despite her conditioned revulsion for the witch and the heretic, Angerer had tears in her eyes when she answered.

‘Years…’ she said, her tone low and faint, ‘it has been years since I last saw my sister.’

‘I forgive you,’ said Revina. Her voice had recovered, losing the reedy croak from when she had been staked down in the desert.

Angerer had no words. She warred between familial compassion and what was demanded of her by the sacred creed of the Ecclesiarchy.

Suffer not the witch and the heretic to live.

It was tattooed across the back of Angerer’s partially shaved scalp, just above the nape of her neck, scribed in High Gothic.

‘I forgive you, Maelisia.’

No one had called Angerer that name since before the Adepta Sororitas.

‘And I am so sorry…’ said Revina, bowing her head.

Incredulous for a moment, Angerer found her voice stronger. ‘For what?’

Belatedly, the canoness realised she was pinned. Her limbs, waist and neck were shackled to some kind of wrought iron edifice. It stank of old blood and the foulness of decay, but was impossible for her to see whilst she was bound to it.

Rage supplanted pain as Angerer fell back on her training. All those hours of excoriation and penitence had honed her into something more and at the same time less than human.

‘Release me!’ She snarled at the monster, spitting her zeal from cracked lips.

‘I too have siblings I wish to be reunited with,’ it answered, stepping into the light and letting the lambent glow from the torches wash over it.

It wore a thick sheath of war-plate, but rather than fit perfectly over its body like the armour of a Space Marine should, it was stretched and malformed like wax exposed to heat. Between the glossy black plates, pale ivory trimmed with ocean green peeked through like an aperture into another world. Its face was false, the simulacra of one of the Emperor’s Angels rendered into artistic stillness.

‘Unlike you,’ said the monster, coming in close so Angerer could smell the corpse-stench of its breath and feel her skin prickle at the proximity of its unnatural aura, ‘I won’t cast them out. They are lost. Your sister,’ it gestured to Revina, whom Angerer glanced at, ‘is going to help me find them.’

Its eyes briefly changed from two pure black voluminous orbs to having corneas, retinas and irises. Perhaps it was her pain-fuelled imagination, but Angerer swore there was something vaguely lupine about them.

‘I was formerly a Wolf,’ the monster confessed, tearing open Angerer’s thoughts as easily as it would her flesh. ‘One of Luna…’ it said resignedly, ‘but no more.’

‘Sister,’ Angerer was weeping, her wrath and despair colliding ambivalently, ‘what have you done?’

‘What I had to do,’ Revina replied calmly, though her eyes betrayed the depth of anguish she felt for her sister, ‘what I was born to be. If you didn’t want me to see, you should have taken my sight.’

‘Would that I could, dear sister.’

The monster clamped a meaty gauntlet around Angerer’s chin, forcing back her attention.

‘Strange, isn’t it, that only when we are faced with losing something or someone do we appreciate its true value.’ There was scorn in its voice now, and Angerer suspected some part of it despised her for what she had done to Revina.

‘She has a gift, your sister,’ the monster went on, though it did not loosen its grip which had begun to wear at Angerer’s jawbone. ‘I shall see it used to bring about a reunion between my brothers and I. They are here… somewhere, and blessed Revina and her witch-sight are going to peer beyond the veil for me, so I can know exactly where, so I can determine where in the skein of the flesh-world I need to make my cut.’

Revina was a seer, an augur of sorts. Her latent gift had been discovered in her infancy, manifesting as an uncanny ability to know things before they had happened. The first time had been the death of their mother. A virulent illness had destroyed her from within, eating the poor woman alive whilst her children could only watch. Revina wept. Once on her own, before her mother had passed, and again with her sisters – both for the parent she had lost and the orphan life as part of the Sisterhood they were about to be forced into. She had seen everything.

Though she was only a child, Revina saw the drill abbot arriving at their domicile before he had arrived. Through her sorrow she was afforded a glimpse of him.

Later, when the three sisters had been inducted to the Order of the Ebon Chalice as neophytes, Revina had lost the penitent cup she used for prayer and ablution. Without it she would have been severely beaten and chastised by her superior. Her tears revealed the location of the cup, sparing her the lash but eventually opening her up to more serious censure. It was Angerer who had discovered her ‘taint’, and Angerer who brought her to the attention of the then canoness. Once Angerer had been cleared of any suspicion, her genetics deemed pure, it all but assured her rise to prominence in the order but condemned her sister at the same time. Laevenius rose with her, whilst Revina languished in a cell, her existence known only to a few, a dirty secret the order kept at its heart. It was a circle that shrank to two when the old canoness died and Angerer replaced her.

Decades old, the memories resurfaced like fresh wounds. It might have been the presence of the monstrous warrior or just pent up and repressed emotion. The revulsion, the disgrace of having a mutant for a sister and the purifying vindication she felt when she had exposed her to the order. It was empowering.

‘Witchling!’ Angerer cursed Revina, tears streaming from her eyes now, ‘Laevenius and I should have strangled you as a child.’

But Revina was no longer there. She had been ushered away by the monster’s warriors. Angerer turned to it instead, hawking a gob of phlegm onto its pristine, false face.

‘Abomination!’

‘I wasn’t always,’ said Faustus, and tightened his grip until the Sister’s jaw broke. His name was no longer Heklion Faustus, it was Gralastyx, daemon lord of the Eye.

Lufurion watched the brutalisation of the woman with detached interest. He kept to the shadows, out of Gralastyx’s immediate sight and gathered with his trusted warriors, ostensibly strategising. These three had been hard to find. Amongst the Children of Torment and the remnants of his own Incarnadine Host, Lufurion had discovered entire nests of betrayers. But these three he had fought with, bled with, pledged oaths with. It wasn’t brotherhood – he had abandoned that long ago, but it was something close.

‘Reports are coming in,’ uttered Klerik, keeping his voice low, ‘Vorshkar has led the army to victory against the Imperials.’

‘I heard he was injured in the act,’ whispered Juadek.

‘No need to sound so conspiratorial, you idiot,’ snapped Klerik, looking askance at the Black Legion warriors standing to attention around the chamber and waiting on their master.

‘It has been agreed,’ said Lufurion. ‘We deliver the daemon’s kin and he will give us the witch. From there we part ways.’

Preest angled his head up slightly.

‘He knows, Preest,’ Lufurion told the sorcerer.

‘Can we trust him, though?’

‘Of course not,’ Lufurion told him, ‘but his mind is no longer entirely his own. He’s a slave to that thing he has become, but he’s also driven by sentiment and an outdated sense of fraternal honour.’

‘A true son of Cthonia then,’ laughed Juadek.

‘So he claims, yes,’ Lufurion replied.

‘Are we certain we still need the witch?’ asked Klerik. ‘In the wake of Vorshkar’s triumph we could take our ships and be gone.’

Lufurion looked to the sorcerer again. ‘Preest says we do.’

All eyes went to him for an explanation.

‘Our brothers we sent to Sturndrang are all dead.’

Juadek leaned in, a sour look on his face as he regarded the sorcerer.

‘You’re sure?’

Preest gave him a disparaging glance.

‘I spoke unto a servant of the Eye,’ he said, as if it were a rudimentary thing he was describing and not a rite of incredible difficulty and peril.

‘Claimed by the warp then?’ asked Klerik. ‘I had wondered what happened to Ryos and the others.’

Preest shook his head. ‘They arrived, only several years ago.’

‘Temporal displacement,’ said Klerik. ‘The tides really didn’t favour them, did they?’

‘Something else killed them,’ Preest continued. ‘Even now their souls are in torment.’

‘And I have no desire to join them,’ said Lufurion, nodding to Gralastyx as the daemon allowed his prisoner to sag in her chains. She would not die yet – he still had use for her.

The gathering parted swiftly. Preest would be needed to ‘encourage’ the witch’s auguring. His mortal worm would assist, the one that still lived. As the sorcerer was summoned by one of the Black Legion warriors, Klerik hung back to whisper in Lufurion’s ear.

‘We both went on bended knee before the Warmaster. We pledged oaths in front of Devram Korda. If they discover our plan to betray them, the daemon will be the least of our worries.’

Lufurion smiled, the patchwork of his stitched face straining to perform the gesture.

‘We always knew it would come to this. Either Ryos and the others found the archive on the hive world or we secured the witch. Ryos is dead, so that leaves us. I’ve seen her work. She’ll give us what we seek.’

Klerik’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is it real?’

‘Ten thousand years ago, it was.’

‘But can it do what Preest claims?’

Lufurion gave the facial equivalent of a shrug. ‘Something that old, with that kind of provenance… We’ll have to acquire it to find out.’

‘They’ll hunt us. The drakes, what’s left of the Iron Tenth… Abaddon.’

Lufurion smiled thinly. It was a viper’s smile, deadly. ‘You sound scared, Klerik. Have I misplaced my faith in you?’

Klerik didn’t respond to the threat. He knew Lufurion was just testing him.

‘I merely point out the list of our enemies should we pull this off.’

‘If we do, Klerik,’ said Lufurion, ‘with the storm we’ll unleash, none of them will matter anymore. They’ll all be too busy… drowning in their own blood.’

EPILOGUE

A future truth…

Kinebad struck up the lamp’s igniter and a stark light lifted the darkness. Old stone, layered with dust, was revealed. The chamber was based on a hexagonal structure, a vast outer ring that led to increasingly smaller ones.

So far, Kinebad and his companion had passed through five circles. He hoped the sixth was the last.

The lamp hissed and flared, reacting to something in the air, before settling into a pulsing glow that gave off an actinic stench.

‘That thing reeks foul,’ uttered a deep, belligerent voice behind Kinebad.

Kinebad was stooped over, trying to avoid a section where the ceiling had partially caved in. Dust cascaded languidly from the gap with the natural shifting and settling of the stone above. It did not look as if it was going to come crashing down any time soon – in fact, this place barely looked disturbed in years – so Kinebad was content to proceed.

‘It’s phosphor,’ he said.

Kinebad turned the lamp on the speaker to reveal a tall, thick-set warrior clad in loose-fitting carapace. The grey armour was bespoke and had sigils on it scrawled by the wearer in ash. A mesh layer underneath the plates hinted at a muscular frame, far larger than that of an ordinary human man. The hood attached to the mesh was drawn up over his head, but couldn’t conceal his eyes. They were fiery red, burning like hot coals.

‘Sadly, it is also necessary,’ answered Kinebad. ‘Despite my many gifts, I don’t have your enhanced sight or physiology,’ he said, and took the lamp light off his protector.

He didn’t need protection, per se. Kinebad was trained: both armed and unarmed, and in a variety of fighting disciplines. He carried a folded long rifle in a case cinched to his back and a snub-nosed automatic pistol, the Redoubter, in a holster on his left hip. His right thigh was strapped with a mono-molecular kaisen blade. It was a relic, as well as his birthright, from an ancient human dynasty.

Compared to the other warrior’s heavy slugger that he had strapped across his immense back and shoulders, Kinebad’s weapons were practically an arsenal. He had offered to furnish his protector with better materiel but had been refused. Repeatedly.

The light picked out the details of the chamber. It was mainly granite but there was also some ouslite, marble and even obsidian, though the volcanic glass had tarnished over the ages. The air was cold too, and it made the light grainy. The slightly brisk atmosphere was in sharp contrast to the world several hundred metres above them. On the surface of Draor, it was a blisteringly hot night and the sulphur rain was falling in sheets.

Kinebad had searched for this world and then this chamber, or series of chambers, for almost half a decade. Using the power and influence granted him by the rosette he carried beneath his armoured tunic, he had scoured obscure histories, references on forgotten parchments and proscribed knowledge vouchsafed by the Holy Ordos of Terra. A common archeotech could not have come as close as he – likely they would have been silenced for even asking the question. But here he was, on the very threshold of a significant discovery. Shogu master he might be, but it was the beating heart of a scholar and a theologian that fed the blood around Kinebad’s veins and gave him vigour.

‘What is this place, witch?’ asked the warrior, casting about his surroundings as bare stone gave way to lapidary inscription.

Kinebad had moved beyond the sixth ring and was into the seventh. A pair of columns separated it from the rest, between them the only entrance. Faded frescoes had been worked into their smooth stone but the meaning had all but been obliterated by time and entropy.

‘I do wish you wouldn’t call me that.’ Kinebad moved further, slowly casting the lamp around to find his footing. There was much debris on the ground, which made crossing the chamber slightly hazardous.

‘It’s untrue?’ The warrior sounded nonplussed.

Kinebad turned his gaze on him. A scrutinising lens flicked from under his headgear across his right eye. It gave off a faint whirring sound as the analysing rings calibrated.

‘It’s derogatory.’

‘I didn’t think you had me in your company for my manners.’

‘Your bearing suggested nobility, Scar-borne.’

‘You say that like it isn’t my name.’

‘I know it isn’t. It’s what the overseers called you on Sturndrang, a slave name. Are you a slave?’

‘To you, witch… no.’

Kinebad laughed. ‘You’re fortunate I have need of you.’

The warrior named Scar-borne took a step forward. In the light from Kinebad’s lamp, he seemed to increase in size. And threat. The shadows across one side of his features deepened, his face a cleaner version of the volcanic glass in the chamber.

‘Am I? Am I really, inquisitor?’

There was a brief moment when Kinebad felt the irresistible urge to reach for a weapon. But even with an arsenal as formidable as his, and with all the dynastic training from his shogu instructors, good sense told him this would be a mistake.

Scar-borne was testing his boundaries again. He harboured a deep anger, a sense of injustice and volatility Kinebad had found useful, but occasionally it needed marshalling.

Not rising to the bait, he turned away and went back to his work.

A large circular hall stretched in front of the inquisitor, held up by more columns. And something else…

‘There,’ Kinebad hissed, and gestured to a shaft of light.

An opening high up in the vaulted ceiling fed back to the surface almost three hundred metres above them. Thin veils of sulphur rain were coming in through the gap and hissed against an obelisk as they struck it. The obelisk was marble, three metres high and its six faces each carried an illustrated slab of varicoloured minerals. At the summit there was a statue of a massive warrior, similar in build to Scar-borne, and another, smaller warrior kneeling down in front of the first.

They looked like ancient knights, armed and armoured as such.

From the look of the breach in the ceiling it was recent, and rather than diminishing Kinebad’s find, the caustic action of the rain was actually revealing the begrimed tablets around the obelisk. Script had begun to form at the base of each. A closer inspection revealed the language to be old, some form of archaic Gothic no longer spoken in the Imperium.

As a student of history, Kinebad had mastered many dead tongues as well as the extant conjurations of languages that had evolved over time. Though obscure, he found he could read what had been inscribed on the tablets.

‘You asked what this place is,’ said Kinebad, as he knelt by the tablet that was facing the entrance and therefore in his line of approach. The image on the tablet was of the same warrior depicted by the statue, his gauntleted fist held up in triumph. ‘It is history, Scar-borne. It is legacy and the truth concerning a myth ten thousand years old.’

‘You’re wrong, inquisitor,’ said Scar-borne, his voice darkening as he drew the heavy slugger from his back.

This time Kinebad turned, his right hand reaching for Redoubter out of instinct and conditioned reflex.

It would be too late. Scar-borne had him cold. The ugly maw of the slugger seemed to gape and mock. Little more than a blunderbuss, it would, nonetheless, shred the inquisitor’s storm coat, light body armour and flesh.

‘We had an agreement,’ he snapped, more a reminder than a threat.

‘Down,’ said Scar-borne.

Kinebad obeyed.

Thunder shattered the silence of the temple, broke it apart with two raucous booms of the warrior’s massive cannon.

Hot viscera splashed against the inquisitor’s storm coat. He looked around, still crouched down, and saw the steaming bodies of two skels. The wire-furred canines shone black in the half-light, their mail coats glossy with their exploded blood and innards. Massively muscled, with fur as resilient as mail and the unerring silent approach of the very best apex predators, skels were a deadly xenos breed. They were also the dominant and prevalent form of life on Draor.

Scar-borne went over to both carcasses, stamping down on their skulls with an armoured boot.

‘It’s a lair,’ he told Kinebad, before thrusting an outstretched finger at the opening. As the light came in, the summit of a ziggurat was revealed. ‘More skels will fill this place within the hour. Whatever you need to do, do it quickly.’

Skels were also adept climbers, their long dewclaws strong enough and sharp enough to gain purchase in solid rock. Before planetfall, Kinebad had conducted extensive observation of the indigenous xenos population. That learning had proved extremely useful in getting them this far.

Kinebad gave a mute nod of thanks in Scar-borne’s direction as he remembered the many reasons he had offered him a position with his group.

Turning, he began to read.

‘On the eighteenth day of Nureg, the Guardian of Terra did alight on Draor…’ Kinebad began.

Scar-borne’s gaze went to the statue, the great armoured warrior. There was something familiar, archaic about the design of his battleplate.

‘…and there was a great star-fire in the heavens as seven ships of gold descended.’

The fabled landing described was depicted on the second tablet.

On the third was a host of warriors, knelt down in fealty.

‘And, lo, did the men of Iron kneel to his will and the will of the Avenging Son.’

On the fourth tablet was a huge figure wearing a politician’s robes and carrying a heavy book under the crook of one mighty arm. His head was arrayed with a laurel wreath and a white ‘U’ symbol served as a clasp for the garments he wore in place of his armour.

‘He brought his word and his bond, but it was the gift of bone the men of Iron took heed of.’

The fifth tablet depicted the so-called ‘Guardian’ handing a box to one of the men of Iron, a leader judging by his sword and banner.

‘And so reunited with their patriarch was a pact with the men of Iron sealed and the Imperium of Man reunited.’

A skull, its eyes rendered in dull, lifeless jet, dominated the final tablet and it was there the inscribed legend ended.

‘Never again would it be put asunder.’

Kinebad was shaking. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, despite the chill.

‘Do you know what this means?’

Throughout the recitation, Scar-borne’s gaze had not left the statue. Now it fell to the inquisitor.

‘They raised a monument,’ he said, ‘the people who once dwelled on this world.’

‘Almost ten thousand years ago, yes they did.’ Kinebad shook his head, scarcely believing what he had discovered. ‘This is real Imperial history, Scar-borne, from the days of the War.’

‘There have been many wars. I’ve fought in several.’

‘The Heresy War that ended the first Great Crusade.’ When Scar-borne’s interest wasn’t piqued by Kinebad’s rhetoric, the inquisitor grew irritated. ‘It was a formative period in your Chapter’s history.’

Now it was Scar-borne’s turn to be angry.

‘I have no Chapter,’ he said. ‘Not anymore.’ Scar-borne’s shoulders slumped as he briefly relived bitter memories. ‘I am unworthy of it,’ he added quietly, allowing his gaze to fall.

As Kinebad revisited each tablet, pict-capturing with his scrutinising lens, he heard Scar-borne speak from the other side of the obelisk.

‘Why have I never heard about any of this before? I know my Chapter’s history. I have read of every battle the Legion fought in, and studied them. But this… I have no knowledge of this.’

‘Even I was ignorant of it. History is full of lacunae, especially after so many millennia. Much is lost, like the people who raised this monument and committed this truth to indelible stone for others to find. Here we are unearthing some of that truth, the same truth that our enemies seek to use.’

Recording the image of the final tablet, Kinebad walked back around the obelisk to find Scar-borne looking right at him.

‘The cult you and I destroyed on Sturndrang. That was not the end of it?’

‘It was the beginning.’

Scar-borne shook his head and scowled, gesturing to the obelisk.

‘Do you even believe this?’

Kinebad’s gaze, much like his conviction, was unwavering. ‘I believe we are a step closer to achieving our ends and finishing the Incarnadine Host for good.’

The vox-link in Kinebad’s ear crackled, interrupting them.

‘Go ahead, Skaed.’

A woman’s voice answered, patchy but still audible across the feed. Torrential rain served as a backdrop behind it.

‘Indigenes are moving in. So we need to be moving out. Right now.’

A brief break in connection prompted Kinebad to crouch and press the receiver bud in his ear. ‘Skels?’

‘Hundreds of the ugly bastards, and some larger xeno-forms we haven’t seen before.’

‘Effect egress at once, Skaed. I want you on the Reckless and back with Heckt immediately.’

‘I am in no immediate danger, inquisitor. My vantage is still good. I could provide you with some cover.’

‘Unnecessary. Scar-borne is with me.’

‘That is what concerns me.’

‘Retreat to the Reckless, Uanda.’

Uanda Skaed gave the affirmation tone and cut the link.

Scar-borne was racking two immensely large shells into the breach of his slugger.

‘I knew she didn’t like me.’

‘Do many?’

‘No.’

Kinebad raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t know why you favour that monstrous cannon. It’s badly weighted, the aim is poor and the reload slow.’

‘Because it kills whatever it hits.’ Scar-borne grinned and one side of his face, one that was severely scarred, contorted into a terrifying scowl. ‘We have an understanding, it and I.’

‘So it seems.’

Through the gap in the ceiling, the howling had begun.

‘We need to move,’ said Kinebad.

Scar-borne nodded and led them out.

Outside, the deluge intensified. Sulphur rain was lashing straight down in burning little tears of acid. The refractor field generated by one of Kinebad’s several rings flickered with the constant hammering of the rain. Scar-borne had no such protection. He did not need it. His armour was acid-proofed and his skin was inviolable against it. He endured the heat too. Kinebad used his psychic gifts to maintain a comfortable temperature; Scar-borne was simply used to hotter.

Underneath the tumult of the storm, the low howling of the skels was just audible.

A flash of lightning cut a jagged path through the night sky. It lit up a barren landscape, a place of ruination and a people long since deceased. Skels dominated now and their eyes flashed like hungry sapphires as they gathered in packs around the inquisitor and his warrior.

Scar-borne counted almost three hundred skels. The larger xeno-forms Skaed had mentioned were further back and harder to make out. Porcine perhaps, with an almost simian gait? When encountering the alien, it is mankind’s natural instinct to try to make sense of it, to look for parallels within his own sphere of knowledge. But one cannot impose the natural upon the unnatural, the familiar on the alien. The things waiting for them out in the rain adhered to no natural template. They were monsters, but Scar-borne knew monsters and their kind very well indeed.

‘You expect me to fight all of them?’

‘I know you probably would,’ said Kinebad, producing a small lozenge-shaped object from his many trappings, ‘but I had something less messy and more effective in mind.’

‘The fealty the tablet spoke of,’ said Scar-borne, showing some interest in what Kinebad had discovered for the first time, as the inquisitor began to activate the aetheric beacon, ‘it was to Guilliman, wasn’t it? He was the Avenging Son and the pact he had Dorn make was for the Codex.’

‘I believe it was, yes.’

As if scenting that their prey was leaving, the skels began to move and their howling increased in pitch.

‘And the gift he gave? The one to force the men of Iron onto bended knee…’

Dematerialisation was in process, and both Scar-borne and Kinebad felt their bodies and immortal souls being slowly surrendered to the warp.

The skels were rushing now, shrieking and baying as the prey-scent began to fade. Saliva-wet fangs glistened in their hyperextended mouths.

Kinebad spoke a silent prayer as he felt the first pull of aetheric wind, the skin-tingling charge of corposant.

‘It was the skull of their primarch,’ said Kinebad as the screaming of the skels and the tearing of reality merged. His voice trailed off, partially lost to the warp but lingering long enough for Scar-borne to hear what he said, ‘the head of Ferrus Manus.’

About the Author

Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Deathfire and Vulkan Lives, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio drama Censure. His novella ‘Feat of Iron’ was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, including Rebirth, the Space Marine Battles novel Damnos, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Time of Legends novel The Great Betrayal. He lives and works in Nottingham, and has a rabbit.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Salamander first published in Great Britain in 2009.
Firedrake first published in Great Britain in 2010.
Nocturne first published in Great Britain in 2011.
Tome of Fire first published in Great Britain in 2012.
Rebirth first published in Great Britain in 2014.
This eBook edition published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Lords of Nocturne © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2016. Lords of Nocturne, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-194-6

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.