Unforged
Guy Haley

 	‘It’s definitely down there?’ asked Jo’phor.
 	Hae’Phast checked his hand-held auspex. The screen displayed the topography of the area in tightly-bunched lines. Where the ravine split the land, the lines gathered into one thick band. A red dot pulsed at their centre, a Salamanders Legion designation screed hovering over it.
 	‘The reading is clean, Jo’phor. A Stormbird, designation Warhawk VI. One of ours. All the codes are correct.’
 	‘How far down?’
 	Hae’Phast removed his helmet and scratched at his face. The lines of his coal-black features were etched with pale grime, and his beard reached past the lip of his plastron. The last weeks were a blur of frantic escapes, scavenging, furtive dawn marches. Time had become a meaningless value that their suit systems enumerated. Their armour was battered, the colours unrecognisable, stripped down to dirty metal, or scorched black.
 	‘Hard to tell,’ he said. ‘There might be a ledge down there, could be on that. It might be down at the very bottom – that’s two kilometres.’
 	‘We have to ask ourselves, assuming it is whole, then how did they get it down there?’
 	Hae’Phast grunted. ‘It’s not that narrow. I knew a veteran pilot attached to the Twelfth Chapter. He could thread a needle with a Thunderhawk. I don’t see many places that are any better to put down without alerting the traitors.’
 	Jo’phor stared into the ravine. Noon had passed three hours ago. The bottom was lost in shadow. Midnight lurked there, unconquered by the sun. 
 	‘It is a suitable place to hide a Stormbird.’ He blinked several times, his eyes gritty with tiredness. They had gone past the point where the gifts of the Emperor could help them. Not since his transformation had he been so sorely pressed. He knew it was even harder on the neophyte, Go’sol.
 	‘I don’t see how it matters,’ Jo’phor said. ‘Either it is an extraction team, or it is a trap. We can go down there or we can walk away. A simple choice.’
 	Hae’phast slid forward on his belly to gain a better vantage, but he saw no more than Jo’phor did.
 	‘We might die if we do, or we will die if we don’t,’ Jo’phor continued. ‘Is that our choice, between probably and certain death? Or are we losing focus, brothers. Are we giving up?’
 	Hae’Phast’s face set. The light of his eyes, low as embers these last days, flared angrily. ‘Never,’ he said.
 	Sulphurous winds blew out of a grim sky. Mountains of black granite stretched away in every direction, the land between faulted by gaping chasms. Somewhere to the south was the Urgall Depression, although where exactly Jo’phor was no longer sure. That was a good thing. The chaotic terrain baffled their auspex and armour systems. If they found the mountains difficult, so would the traitors.
 	They had seen no one else for days. Jo’phor sometimes entertained the idea that they were the only living things on the planet. At other times, when the sorrow overwhelmed him and the world took on a distant, brittle quality, he thought that they might all be dead. 
 	 There were similarities between Isstvan V and his home world of Nocturne. Both were landscapes crafted by volcanic upheaval, but Nocturne heaved with furious vitality. Isstvan’s heart was cold and still, its surface nigh on lifeless. Up in the mountains, the air was so bitter that even the world’s meagre apportionment of low order vegetation would not grow. 
 	If Nocturne were to die, it would be like Isstvan V. Jo’phor could not imagine a more fitting hell for his Legion.
 	Away to the south, a straight line gave away the location of one of the ancient xenos highways. Who they were and what had happened to them was lost to prehistory. They were dead too, their works mere monuments to the futility of existence.
 	Jo’phor looked away from the canyon to the rest of his pitiful squad. ‘I can’t make this decision. Brothers?’
 	The four of them looked at each other. Hae’Phast curled his lip. ‘I say let’s do it. Better a slim chance than no chance at all.’
 	‘Go’sol?’
 	The Scout thought a moment. ‘Hae’Phast is right,’ he said. He had abandoned the honorifics due to the others several days ago. He had proven himself to them time and again. In their eyes at least, he was a neophyte no longer. ‘What choice do we have?’
 	‘Donak?’ said Jo’phor.
 	The last of their number was silent. His features were so tense they were like a clay model that had been carelessly crumpled before firing. He did not speak. As far as the others knew, he was unable. Only Donak could have told them, but he had not uttered a single word since he had joined them. His eyes flickered as they danced from face to face. He nodded once, and drew his knife.
 	‘Then we are decided,’ said Jo’phor, sliding back from the edge. ‘We go down.’
 	The descent was arduous. The ravine’s side was a twisted mass of boulders and grotesque rock formations. The mountains were young; their rock had been rapidly formed and was as fragile as glass. The trek took hours. The weight of their armour caused seemingly solid rock to give way beneath them. Several times they doubled back to find a safer way, until they came to a place where they had no alternative – a vast scree cone, high as a mountain itself, the far side blocked by a cliff that prevented them from skirting the top.
 	‘I don’t like the look of it,’ said Jo’phor. ‘The material looks unstable.’
 	‘It is unstable,’ said Hae’Phast. He threw a rock into the centre of the scree. It stuck fast, but a portion of the slope slipped dangerously around it.
 	Loose rock and sand mantled the slopes as far as they could see downwards. The execresences of lava that made up the upper slopes were buried beneath it.
 	‘We’re not turning back,’ said Hae’Phast. ‘We’re almost there.’
 	They stood precariously, legs locked against the treacherous black stone.
 	‘I’m lightest,’ said Go’sol. ‘I don’t have full battleplate, so I’ll take a line.’
 	‘You don’t have to do this, brother,’ said Jo’phor.
 	‘Yes, I do.’
 	From their utility pouches, the Space Marines pulled out emergency rappels – fifty metres apiece of string-thin high tension cable. Go’sol linked them together, then bound one end around his waist. Hae’Phast drove his combat knife into a cleft in the rock and tethered the other end to its hilt.
 	Cautiously, Go’sol crabbed his way across. Shattered stone skittered away from his feet as if startled. The Scout froze, his fingers spread, ready to grab for any purchase he could. He looked as though he were trying to placate the mountain itself.
 	But the debris moved no further, and Go’Sol went on. Shortly after, he made the other side. 
 	Hae’Phast tested the rope after Go’sol hauled it taut. ‘That’s as good as it’ll get.’
 	‘I’ll go next,’ Jo’phor offered.
 	A hand grabbed his arm. Donak shook his head and pushed past him.
 	His great, armoured weight sent miniature avalanches slipping down the mountainside. He slid on the material all the way across, almost losing his footing towards the end. Only the line saved him. 
 	He announced his arrival with a single vox-click.
 	‘Now me,’ said Jo’phor. He checked the knife.
 	‘It will hold, or it will not,’ said Hae’Phast gruffly. ‘Cross, brother.’
 	Jo’phor gripped the line. It seemed ethereally slender, almost impossible to feel through his gauntlets. The drop below was staggering. The slope was so steep that its integrity must have been at the utmost limit of material tolerance. He went slowly.
 	By the time he joined Donak and Go’sol at the foot of the cliff, it was dark.
 	‘Hae’Phast,’ he said, risking the vox.
 	‘On my way.’
 	The line twanged with Hae’Phast’s every step. The light from his helm became steady as he fixed his eyes on his destination.
 	He paused. ‘Brothers. There is–’
 	He never finished.
 	The line went slack. Jo’phor switched to light amplification in time to see Hae’Phast fall, his arms windmilled. He toppled backwards, tumbling head over heels, dislodging rolling curtains of stone as he tried to dig in with his hands. But he could not hold on, and slithered away into the dark.
 	A rumble heralded the avalanche. Hundreds of tonnes of rock sheared away. Hae’Phast’s helm lenses flashed once more in the gloom, far below, and the mountainside followed him.
 	As the thunder of the fall subsided, Jo’phor searched the night.
 	‘Do you see him? Could he have survived?’ Go’sol whispered desperately.
 	In the green-tinted, static-laden view that Jo’phor’s helm provided, he saw nothing but settling dust. Hae’phast’s vital signs were flat.
 	‘No,’ he said. ‘He is gone.’
 	From there, the way was easier.
 	Jo’phor put his head around the corner carefully. He had his boltgun in his hands. The ravine floor proved wide enough to take a gunship, bringing the slippery rush of hope. They were close enough now for his battleplate’s short-range sensors to pick up the locator signal. He had a thumbnail map active in the top right of his vision plate, the beacon there pulsing red. A bight floored with black sand greeted him. On the other side was a crag. He pulled his head back in.
 	‘Is it there?’ asked Go’sol hopefully.
 	‘There’s a spur of rock. The signal’s coming from behind that,’ said Jo’phor. ‘Even if someone’s watching, we should be able to get across without being shot at.’
 	‘We should try signalling them. We should turn our identification markers back on. If there is someone here, and they’re friendly–’
 	‘We have few friends left on this rock,’ interrupted Jo’phor. ‘Chances are it’s a trap. We’ll have to risk it.’
 	‘And if it’s not?’ said Go’sol.
 	Donak, as always, said nothing.
 	They ran across the sand, eyes upon the cliffs and scree around them. As they rounded the corner, Jo’phor’s hearts sank.
 	There was no gunship.
 	The locator beacon was genuine, but there was no sign of the Stormbird that once housed it. The apparatus was propped up against the rock face. Above it three words were scraped onto the rock, almost luminously white in the dark:
 	WELCOME TO PURGATORY.
 	The air cracked gently – the characteristic report of a legionary sniper rifle. Jo’phor spun around. Go’sol collapsed, shot cleanly through the head.
 	A second shot caught Donak in the arm. He fell sideways, sprawling for cover.
 	Jo’phor threw himself to the side as a third shot spacked into the ground exactly where he had been standing. The Emperor’s gifts came alive, supercharging his metabolism. Time slowed. Conscious thought receded. What little was left of his humanity was submerged. The alterations to his mind bypassed his frontal lobe, reaching under it for the more primitive, efficient systems it overlaid. Before he knew it, he was running, his body and armour working in tandem. He functioned optimally despite his weariness. He was a weapon, forged to the Emperor’s design. His helm’s auto-senses switched to thermal and highlighted three heated paths through the cold night, still coherent though warped by air currents.
 	A las-weapon’s discharge track.
 	Another round flared across his lenses. He had his bolter up to his shoulder, laying down a suppressive burst as a figure moved to engage him from behind another boulder. The warrior was forced to duck back.
 	He could see them now – five traitors betrayed by plumes of hot air vented by their armour’s cooling plants. They were visible to him as writhing columns that flattened themselves out six-point-four metres up against a cap of cooler air, their tops dragged into cirrus shapes by sluggish laminar flow at the thermal boundary. His racing mind tracked them all. He fired on fully automatic the moment he saw a cooling vent protrude over a rock.
 	His infravision flared as the nozzle was caught and detonated, the blasts of other shells bursting all around it. The traitor was flung around by the hit, and his hand appeared bright in the false-colour image as he steadied himself. This Jo’phor missed, but by then he was bounding up the slope, using the talus that sheltered the traitors as stepping stones. Donak had gained cover and was firing from behind Jo’phor, keeping the enemy pinned down.
 	So be it. If they were to die, let them take a few more of their treacherous kin with them. 
 	Bolt fire blasted the fragile rock into pinging shards all around him, the rest of his foes abandoning caution as he closed.
 	He reached the rock sheltering the first Space Marine and scrambled over the top, slaying him with three fast shots, gun pointed down as he leapt across the gap to the next boulder.
 	The vox clicked. ‘Stop! Stop!’ came a frantic voice.
 	Jo’phor detected cowardice. His hatred for those who had slain his father, betraying the great dream, howled in his mind and blotted out all else. Let them beg for mercy. He had none to give.
 	The next traitor was ready for him. Bolter shots raked across his breastplate. Two were deflected, but two more penetrated the cabling on his front. Gas hissed. Power was abruptly cut to his left leg. He sagged, off balance. The foul taste of Isstvan’s unfiltered air filled his mouth. The fifth blasted through the joint at his shoulder, embedding itself deep inside his chest. The bolt blew, shredding both his hearts and his lungs.
 	His armour contained the explosion. Somehow he survived, but his time was ending. He fell forward, coughing blood into his visor.
 	A figure appeared from behind a rock twelve metres away. Jo’phor’s eyes widened.
 	A Salamanders unit identification rune pulsed in his viewplate.
 	The legionary threw down his sniper rifle and broke into a run. ‘No… No!’ He reached Jo’phor and caught his arm. ‘Brother! What have we done? Cease fire! Cease fire all of you – they are ours!’
 	Other ident-runes blinked into life, smeared out by Jo’phor’s fluids.
 	Iron Hands.
 	The Salamander wrestled Jo’phor’s helmet off – the world was already dimming as it clanged off the rocks. The Salamander held up Jo’phor’s limp head with cold metal gauntlets.
 	‘Brother! Brother!’ The warrior’s voice was anguished. Such pain. It was no terrible thing to be leaving all this behind, Jo’phor realised. ‘No, stay with us! Stay with us! What have we done?’
 	Jo’phor could no longer see. A fearful roaring filled his ears. Through it, Jo’phor heard Donak bellowing wordlessly into the desolate night.
 	He felt a sense of vague disappointment, but his war was over.