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 Firewyvern 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 Salamander 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 which prided itself on its humanitarianism, its pledge to protect the weak and the innocent, was 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 Salamander 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, 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 floatation 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 overallls 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, like 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, refashioned 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 almost infected 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 punctated with mausoleums and 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 bolt-hole of the city.
Fires of War - Nick Kyme Page 6