by Nick Kyme
Zytos requested a schematic of the complex from the Techmarine who accessed the data and inloaded it to the squad’s retinal feeds in a matter of seconds. It didn’t help, only confirming the sheer size of the complex.
Three main domes annexed six smaller subsidiaries. Rapidly blink-clicking through the data-feed, Zytos discounted the smaller ones. He was looking for a main hub, something the Death Guard would be drawn to and the Imperial defenders, if any were left, would flock to defend and seek shelter within.
One presented itself a few seconds later.
‘North-east quadrant. Zone zero-eight-seven-slash-zero-zero-nine-three,’ he read straight off the schematic, magnifying the heads-up blueprint overlaying his visual display.
‘Core power generators,’ said Dakar, seeing the grid reference as Zytos marked it with a loc-signal.
‘That’s where they’ll be. Near the light, the heat.’ Zytos didn’t wait for Numeon’s approval. He knew he was right. ‘Move fast. There are lives at stake.’
The squad followed him.
Through an expansive storage yard, across the mine-face where tools lay discarded and in mid-use, then through an ancillary chamber. It appeared to be a refectory, and it was there that they made contact with some of Rampart’s labourers.
All eighty-seven of them were dead, gutted or poisoned despite their rebreathers.
No one slowed to regard the dead. A quick visual bio-scan revealed their fate and a cursory glance at the manner of their deaths showed who had been responsible.
‘As with these poor souls, as on the battlefield,’ Gargo murmured across the vox. He referred to the XIV Legion.
Painstaking, exacting, the Death Guard had taken their time with this massacre. Their methods were slow, inexorable.
‘I see the work of Destroyers here,’ said Vorko, resisting the urge to set the charnel pit ablaze with his flamer as the Salamanders hurried on.
‘Be ready for anything,’ Numeon uttered across the squad vox, ‘Those of Barbarus do not go down easily.’ His words recalled a memory shared by all Salamanders, of a black killing field and the ranks of implacable Death Guard holding them in that bloody desert basin.
A stark reminder of those dread ranks came to life around the next corner. A narrow tunnel, no more than a conduit to a larger chamber beyond.
Six legionaries in dirty white armour trimmed in turbid green were at work with black kukra blades. A taint emanated off these warriors, an unwholesome stench that reminded Zytos of putrefaction. Their ugly, slatted Mark II war-helms turned as one at the abrupt and unexpected interruption.
One, a master sergeant judging by his visible rank insignia, shouted out a warning or a challenge in his native Barbaran.
The Salamanders had already drawn bolters and filled the narrow defile with a hail of shells.
His own weapon bucking hard in his firm grip, Zytos saw three XIV legionaries struck before Vorko stepped in and doused the entire corridor in burning promethium.
The reek of cooking flesh, but old spoiled meat, exuded from the Death Guard bodies now ablaze.
Return fire came in sporadic bursts, but it was wild and unfocused as the six legionaries took cover behind natural alcoves in the rock.
Zytos and his squad stood their ground, picking their targets as Vorko released another fiery gout into the corridor. Above the roar of flames, the master sergeant bellowed more orders. Something stepped into the fire and the heat haze from the opposite end of the corridor.
Zytos did not hesitate. ‘Down and disperse!’
An actinic beam of heat-bleeding crimson speared through obfuscating black smoke. It took Vorko low in the hip. Eagerly burning his foes, the legionary had been slow to retreat but now howled in agony as his left greave was scorched black and the mesh layer beneath melted to his skin. His armour saved the leg, which would have been shorn off otherwise.
Hauling on his shoulder guards, Zytos and Numeon dragged the still screaming Vorko out of harm’s way. Zytos recognised the effects of a volkite. The tone and thickness of the beam suggested something large, probably a culverin and hefted at waist height. Only a glancing hit, or Vorko would be dead.
Another beam salvo burned chromatically through the smoke but went wide. It seared the air. Zytos caught a vague silhouette, obscured even through his eye lenses. Braced on one knee, he brought his bolter up to his shoulder and released two long bursts in rapid succession.
The legionary hauling around the culverin jerked then spun as several shells hit him. A low detonation followed by a wet crunch of bone presaged the severing of his arm, blown off at the shoulder. The culverin went down. So did the Death Guard wielding it.
Numeon was already on his feet, blade drawn. Charging.
‘Vulkan lives!’
It was never just a battle cry any more, not for him. It was a declaration of belief.
Zytos clamped his bolter behind his back, brought out his thunder hammer and followed Numeon into the flaming corridor.
Disorientated and slow to recover, the Death Guard were ill-prepared for what happened next.
Ahead of Zytos, Numeon was blurred by heat haze. Flames crept over his armour, but plumed away to nothing, their tendrils finding no purchase on the rapidly moving Salamander.
There was a sharp scrape of yielding battleplate, followed by parting flesh and separating bone as Numeon rammed Draukoros into one of the Death Guard. The concussive report of Basilysk followed, an almost point-blank bolt pistol shot to the face of a second legionary in dirty white.
Turning from his second opponent as the Barbaran’s skull detonated gorily, Numeon wrenched his sword from the first legionary’s gut. He snarled as he did it, savage, brutal, but economical with his effort. A decapitating blow took strength, but ended the first Death Guard with certain lethality.
Zytos breached the tunnel as Numeon engaged a third opponent. He wielded a battered-looking flail, lashing at the Salamander and wrapping the spiked chain around his forearm. Numeon grunted with pain, but held on to the bolt pistol in his outstretched hand and aimed at the Death Guard. He brought the chain down, the legionary yielding with it, and cleaved the links apart with Draukoros.
A fourth and fifth Death Guard had drawn heavy blades, the weapons they had used to kill the civilian labourers. One of the legionaries went for Numeon but Zytos interceded. His thunder hammer swung once, a half-arc given the narrow confines. It met breastbone, neck and the right-hand side of the skull. The Death Guard didn’t rise afterwards. He didn’t even scream. Cauterised blood stench briefly filled the tunnel, as rancid as before. The flames were dying, eating up the oxygen but finding little to begin with to sate their hunger. Through dissipating smoke, Zytos caught sight of the fifth Death Guard removing something from his belt.
Bomb.
The word had scarcely formed in his subconscious when Numeon reacted to the threat. Already in close and almost grappling, he shoulder-barged his opponent into the path of the bomber.
He yelled, ‘Protect yourselves!’ as the legionary grabbed on to his armour and hauled Numeon after him. Both struggling warriors collapsed onto the third as a muffled detonation threw them upwards. Numeon rode the body of the legionary who grabbed him down again as the blast wave ebbed. As well as the concussive damage, something toxic had been unleashed. A sickly miasma thronged the source of the explosion and crept outwards. The Death Guard who had let off the dirty bomb was dead, ripped apart by his foiled artifice, but the other, the one who Numeon still grappled with, was still alive, if wounded.
Part of his war-helm had come away from his head revealing a grim countenance. Pallid-skinned with sunken eye sockets and a face bloated with some contagion, the Death Guard had either succumbed quickly to the toxin his comrade had released or he was diseased to begin with. The taint. It was not unknown for Destroyers to be consumed by the very weapons of war they wielded. M
any knew that to be such a warrior in any Legion was a death sentence.
At some point during the fight, Numeon had let go of Draukoros. It was a poor tool at such close quarters, so he settled for seizing the diseased legionary’s head with his gauntleted hands and smashing it repeatedly against the ground. Surprisingly, the skull came apart easily and disgorged some of the contents of the cranial vault over the Salamander’s armour.
A seventh Death Guard was already down, and had been before the attack on the tunnel. A strangely gibbous legionary, his swollen armour was riddled with bolter impacts.
‘Numeon!’
The urgency in Zytos’s voice made Numeon turn and take stock of his surroundings. He realised he was in the midst of the poison cloud. Hermetic seals on his armour bubbled with acidic reaction. The biometrics on his lens display went from amber to red as its hazard detection spiked suddenly.
Zytos had been thrown back by the bomb detonation. As soon as he came to his senses and saw the manner of the incendiary the Death Guard had used, he backed off further.
His own armour seals were damaged too, but still functional. Though under strain, his rebreather still functioned. Barely. For now he was not contaminated. As for Numeon…
Vorko and Dakar reared up in the sergeant’s peripheral vision, the latter supporting the former, who had braced his flamer.
‘Do it!’ shouted Zytos, frantically gesturing at Gargo to step aside.
His flamer nozzle opened to produce a wide spread, Vorko unleashed a cone of fire into the tunnel. The last of the Death Guard and Artellus Numeon were consumed by it.
‘Brother!’ The horror in Gargo’s voice was unmistakable. ‘He has no mantle!’
When Numeon’s armour had been forged anew, it had not come with a cloak of drake hide. Every legionary who possessed one had taken it from a beast he had hunted and flensed for that purpose. Legacy mattered. Tradition mattered. No son of Vulkan would brook breaking from it. Numeon’s hide was gone, lost to war. He would need to take another. Until then he would have to bear the flames without one.
Vorko looked about to relent when Zytos told him firmly, ‘Keep it up.’
The other Salamander looked unsure, as did Dakar.
‘That’s an order, Vorko. Keep it burning until that filth is gone. Numeon was born from fire – we all were. He will survive this.’
He must survive this…
Grimly, Vorko kept up the blaze.
Trapped inside the conflagration, they saw Numeon on his knees. His head was down and he held something in both hands, though amidst the smoke and heat haze it was impossible to tell what.
A strangled vox-cry, vying against the din of the flamer, reached Zytos and the others.
‘Vulkan…’
‘We’re burning him alive!’ shouted Gargo.
Zytos held up his hand in a gesture for Gargo to be still. He was watching the flames intently, watching the retinal display as it still registered harmful contamination inside the inferno.
‘Vulkan…’ the vox repeated, ‘Vulkan… lives!’
The contagion burned. Numeon burned.
‘Shut it down.’ Zytos practically wrenched Vorko’s hand off the firing trigger before running into the fire-wreathed tunnel a second time. Only now his motivation wasn’t the execution of betrayers, it was the salvation of a brother.
Scorched black walls hemmed in Numeon’s fire-scarred form. He remained crouched as Zytos approached, shrouded by an aura of shimmering heat. His joints had fused and smoke drooled off his armour like a creeping fog.
He clasped a hammer. A simple fuller. Vulkan’s sigil.
Lacquering on his armour cracked as he tried to move and overcome the resistance of his seared gyros.
Zytos reached him as he seized the clasps affixing helmet to gorget.
‘Try not to move, brother-captain,’ Zytos warned.
Hands trembling, Numeon removed his helm. If any contaminant remained it would infect him, but the helm was useless and an impediment.
‘I must, Zytos, if we are to cleanse this place,’ Numeon rasped. As he slowly got up, the baked-on soot veneer over his armour began to flake away. So did the paint, leaving hot, bare ceramite beneath.
He glanced at Igen Gargo, who stared back.
‘I commend you on the armour plate, black-smiter,’ said Numeon. ‘I didn’t know it could withstand heat like that.’
‘Nor I,’ Gargo confessed, numbly accepting Numeon’s proffered hand.
‘And the taint?’ asked Zytos, stepping into their eyeline. ‘Are you free of whatever was unleashed?’
Biometrics in his armour told Zytos the area was cleansed but it couldn’t offer an insight into Numeon’s condition.
‘I am…’ Numeon said at length, ‘…untouched, I believe.’
‘Xathen is close, we could return you to–’
‘As I have already said, Zytos,’ Numeon interrupted, ‘we must go on. All of–’
The words stuck in his mouth, held fast by the clenched fist of the Death Guard who had risen up and seized his throat. The legionary’s one arm marked him out as the wielder of the culverin. He had moved so quickly, so silently through the occluding smoke that none of the Salamanders had seen him until he was already choking Numeon’s life from him.
Before the others could react, Numeon had wrenched the Ultramarian gladius from its hilt and rammed it up into the Death Guard’s chin. He pushed so hard it came out again through the crown of his war-helm. Emitting a gargled curse in Barbaran, the Death Guard held on for a second longer then fell, dead.
Numeon slumped back, prising the gauntleted fingers off his neck.
‘Death Guard…’ he stooped to retrieve Draukoros, then bent to wrench the gladius from its skull sheath, ‘…don’t go down easily.’
Zytos wanted to say something, but time was ebbing for the people of Rampart. The Salamanders quickly moved on.
War had broken out amongst the core power generators, staged around three immense electro-kinetic turbines. Each generator provided light, heat and artificial atmosphere to the geodesic domes of Rampart. They were fortified, built into a deep basin surrounded by aegis lines of auto turrets and manned weapon emplacements. Were the generators to be destroyed or compromised in any way, Rampart would die and its indentured populace with it. Here was where the survivors, the human workers and their families, had chosen to gather for a final stand.
Here, the cudgel of the Death Guard fell hardest.
Fourteen legionaries in the dirty white of the XIV strode into frenzied suppressing fire. Las-beams and solid shot caromed off their armour, but did little more than stall them. Even then the delay was fractional.
Three aegis lines lay in ruins. Smoke streamed from squat gun towers, bodies were strewn over broken barricades. Some were aflame. The Death Guard stomped over the corpses and the ruins of their defences implacably and without regard for the dying and the wounded. It was methodical, efficient. Inexorable.
Slowly and purposefully, they withered down their opposition until only a desperate few remained.
‘No wall of martyrs will hold them,’ said Dakar, taking cover behind the broad archway leading into the generator chamber.
The Salamanders had entered behind the Death Guard. Reacting to a warning from their comrades now slain in the tunnel, a small cadre had turned and begun to lay down fire.
Gargo pointed to several dead legionaries, entangled in the wreckage.
‘The Death Guard are not unbloodied.’
‘Look high, to the north-east,’ said Numeon. ‘He’s the reason.’
Zytos saw him too, a legionary in grey battleplate. No discernible iconography or rank markings and an unfamiliar armour variant that even at distance looked advanced.
He had a bolter pressed to his shoulder and was shooting Death Guard from one of the gun tow
ers. Shots came sparingly, slowly. He was running low on ammunition.
‘The “Angel” described by Ushamann?’ Gargo suggested.
‘Perhaps,’ answered Zytos, watching the warrior keenly.
‘Is he an ally, then?’ asked Dakar.
‘The enemy of my enemy…’ said Numeon. ‘It doesn’t matter. He’ll be dead soon if we don’t act.’
Zytos nodded, decided.
‘Let’s find out where his allegiance lies.’
Still wounded, Vorko stayed behind but not before he released a jet of burning promethium that set the XIV rearguard aflame. They fought on regardless, but the fire impeded their efficacy enough for the rest of the Salamanders to slip beyond the threshold and into the chamber unharmed.
‘Use the wreckage,’ said Zytos. He held up his fore and index fingers. ‘Two and two, disperse and outflank.’
Orders given, the Salamanders obeyed. Numeon went with Zytos, and Gargo with Dakar. They quickly got in close, eye to eye as was their favoured tactic. Already burning, injured and compromised, the four legionaries in the rearguard did not last long.
Recognising a more serious threat, the Death Guard commander shouted an order and the vanguard hunkered down as the rest turned and engaged.
From his parapet, the Angel in grey seemed to notice his new allies and laid down fire to prevent the Death Guard bringing their full strength against the Salamanders.
Shells were crashing against the ruined barricades where they took cover, not far from the Death Guard gun line.
‘Break them now or not at all, brothers!’ shouted Zytos and leapt over the barricade. A round clipped his shoulder guard. A glancing blow, it nearly staggered him but he recovered his balance enough to fire back.
Either side of him, Dakar and Gargo moved up, each laying down heavy bursts. A Death Guard lurched forwards, his faceplate exploding outwards from the round in the back of his head. His comrade next to him half turned, trying to find the shooter to enact some vengeance.
Dakar shot him through the neck.
Only six Death Guard remained.