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 honeycomb 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-dogged, 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 reminded 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 augment
ed 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 over-watch 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 crashed.
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. 'Rib cage 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 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 forward. '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.
Fires of War - Nick Kyme Page 3