Deathfire

by Nick Kyme

  Until now, he had not considered whether they should do it, just if they could do it. Being on Nocturne, amongst fellow Salamanders beyond those sworn warriors of the Pyre, had skewed his perspective.

  Magnus the Red had claimed his hand in the miracles Numeon had not only witnessed but been party to. What if there was a darker strand of fate at work, one to which his obsession had made him blind?

  When the Charybdis had emerged within sight of Holy Terra, Numeon had believed then that that was the trial of his faith and devotion. A moment when he could have turned back.

  He saw now that he had been wrong. It was not over.

  A final trial yet awaited.

  A second vessel had made landfall after the Salamanders gunship. It was conical in shape, and had no weapons. Its trajectory was largely predetermined before launch but by sheer luck or something more divisive, it had delivered its sole occupant to Nocturne.

  Sixty-Four

  Bombardment

  Nocturne, Arridian Plain, the Draconius Gate

  It began as thunder, a rumbling underbelly that filled the dark clouds overhead with foreboding.

  Almost eight hundred Salamanders had amassed on the Arridian Plain, within bunkers and behind walls hewn into dark granite cliffs, and in sight of the two great arcs of stone known as the Draconius Gate.

  Drake heads had been carved into the apex of both half-arches. Gems served as eyes, and sigils ran the length of their craggy hides all the way back to the cracked earth in which they were embedded. The two edifices of basalt had stood for centuries, fashioned by the earth shamans of ancient Nocturne. The fastness that had grown within their shadow was more recent.

  Slab-sided redoubts and ornate barbicans decorated with the gilded heads of mythic beasts stood stalwart on the ash plain. One shouldered another, closing in a near-impenetrable chain formed by a union of rare minerals, adamantium and tempered ceramite.

  The Draconius Gate had resisted entropy; it had endured firestorms, earthquakes and volcanic eruption. So too had its fortress outpost, raised in one of the most inhospitable regions of the death world.

  The mouths of the gate appeared to snarl at the unnatural storm as the very air filled with the stench of plague. Above, the dense clouds took on an unhealthy bile-yellow cast.

  ‘Raise shields!’

  Vox-horns rang out at Nomus Rhy’tan’s command, a warning call for the Techmarine Covenants.

  Across the Draconius Gate several immense void shields flickered into being, generated by eight soaring activator-pylons.

  Hunkered down inside the bunkers or manning the walls, the Salamanders watched as poison rained upon Nocturne.

  Looking through a viewing block in the Wyvern Hold, the foremost bunker, Numeon waited for death to descend.

  ‘They are tenacious,’ remarked Zytos, standing with his captain who gazed up into the clouds and imagined the Death Guard forces poised for assault.

  ‘We must be greater.’ He turned to his sergeant, his eye alive with brightness. ‘And we must instil greatness in those around us.’

  Neophytes wearing pristine battleplate made up the bulk of the Salamander garrison. Wisely, Numeon had dispersed his Pyre veterans around them to help inspire and command. Gargo had joined the Techmarines, no more than a journeyman but one with the experience of working alongside Far’kor Zonn.

  Numeon knew he would need an able sergeant and trusted no one more than Barek Zytos. They had begun this together, and so it would end the same.

  ‘A larger force than we expected to have,’ Zytos conceded.

  Numeon’s gaze had returned to the clouds. ‘And yet still so few.’

  Zytos agreed. ‘Against warriors hardened by the war.’

  ‘And that also likely outnumber us, brother,’ Numeon replied.

  Vulkan’s casket was secured in the fastness deep, safe within a sealed vault. It irked Numeon that they had reached Nocturne but, as of yet, had merely traded one tomb for another.

  Cold steel and cold stone were no place for the Lord of Drakes. The fire beckoned, but first the Death Guard must be repelled.

  By mustering in force, Rhy’tan hoped the Death Guard’s wrath would fall on the Legion and not the mortals taking refuge in any of the Sanctuary Cities. Numeon knew it would work. The Death Guard wanted Vulkan; they had shown that much of their plans. Wherever the primarch was, that was where the blow would fall hardest.

  ‘Here they come,’ declared Zytos, as all eyes went to the heavens.

  Where the missiles struck they broke apart, releasing palls of virulent contagion into the atmosphere. Flesh-eating bacteria combined with deadly nerve agents into a soup of foulness that could render entire populations to liquified matter in seconds.

  Most worlds would have died from such a bombardment, their armies reduced to slurry, their war machines corroded and useless. But Nocturne was not most worlds. It had been ending life ever since its creation, anathema to all but the hardiest of survivors.

  The poisons burned as soon as they were released, but were not immediately destroyed by the fiery atmosphere They clung like a terminal disease, lingering, changing, fighting for life. It was as if something sentient and profoundly mutagenic had fallen upon the death world to scour it utterly.

  A bile-yellow miasma had begun to form, coalescing from where the heaviest concentrations of the contagion had fallen. It dispersed rapidly, voraciously, lending more weight to the abhorrent theory that it possessed a will and desire beyond that of a mere virus or agglomeration of spores.

  Rhy’tan saw the danger before the voids began to shudder with interference.

  ‘Engage burners.’

  Stationed across the outpost, batteries of auto-flamers spewed forth an inferno. Though the range of the guns was limited, the life-eater virus had gathered such momentum that it had almost reached the outer defences.

  Hot incendiary fire and scalding steam broke through the desert surface at the same time as the flamers engaged, like the white blood cells of the world reacting to a foreign invader.

  The taint slowed, almost recoiling, but endured.

  As it reached the walls, ranks of incinerators embedded around the outpost unleashed a conflagration of such intensity that it was impossible to see through the blinding haze. The air around the voids became a furnace, hot enough to turn steel to liquid. So intense was the blaze that the outer void shielding darkened, obscuring the view beyond.

  Numeon clamped on his helm. He was the last to do so, and saw his less experienced battle-brothers checking the hermetic seals on their armour. If the life-eater got through, battleplate would provide little protection. But the Salamanders had never been a Legion quick to yield, even in the face of certain death.

  ‘Incendiary units,’ he voxed, and heard the command repeated across the Draconius Gate as legionary squads carrying flamers took up vanguard positions.

  The noise was incredible, the roar of the conflagration against the slowly withering shriek of the contagion as it was put to flame. Without being able to see what was happening beyond the void shields, Numeon imagined two leviathans battling each other for supremacy.

  ‘How much of this can we take?’ said Zytos in a low voice, disturbing Numeon from his thoughts.

  ‘We will know soon enough.’

  The shelling lasted for almost twenty minutes before the augurs of the Reaper’s Shroud deemed it ineffective.

  Nothing survived apart from the Drakes protected behind their walls of tempered ceramite, and for a few moments silence reigned across the cracked earth, save for the distant bellow of the deep drakes far below, disturbed from their slumber.

  ‘I hear a different kind of thunder, brother,’ said Zytos.

  ‘The wrath of the earth answers,’ Numeon replied.

  ‘They’ll hit us again and again, until we break,’ said Zytos.

&nb
sp; ‘We can hold here against anything that ship can muster. Re­inforcements from Prometheus will arrive. They have to kill Vulkan quickly. To linger would be suicide. As soon as our erstwhile cousins see that they will come.’

  Zytos smiled darkly, exchanging a brief glance with Numeon. ‘When they do, then we will have them.’

  Conventional warheads followed in the wake of the failed virus bombing and these too met an impasse as they struck the formidable void shields.

  For another eighteen minutes, the second bombardment continued without cessation. But as the thunder ebbed and the dust thinned across the massive plain, the Salamanders stood unscathed beneath their shields.

  ‘What now?’ asked Zytos. ‘More shelling?’

  Numeon shook his head. ‘Now, we wait.’

  The bombardment was over, and the actual attack would soon begin.

  Sixty-Five

  Nocturne angers

  Grand Cruiser Reaper’s Shroud, bridge

  Laestygon stood up from his throne and donned his helm.

  Despite every belief he possessed about its efficacy as a military tactic, the virus bombing had failed.

  So too, the subsequent bombardment. Whatever fortress the Drakes were holding Vulkan in had to be formidable.

  He doubted it was well manned. After the devastation visited upon the Legion at Isstvan V, there could not be many Salamanders left.

  Before the Preacher could raise any objections, Laestygon had determined to storm that fortress and take his trophy through force of arms. Nothing would stop him.

  ‘Watch him,’ he muttered to the two Death Guard legionaries standing guard on the bridge.

  Laestygon glanced at Quor Gallek as he descended the command dais.

  ‘I will have need of the Preacher once I return with Vulkan’s body and the god-weapon.’

  All pretence of an alliance between them had vanished with the Monarchia’s destruction and the death of Quor Gallek’s men. Laestygon had made it known that he saw the Preacher as a tool, one he planned to use to its fullest extent and discard if he so chose.

  He had no desire to let the treacherous cur take part in the assault where he could slip his grasp or betray the Death Guard. Better that the Preacher remain on board the Reaper’s Shroud. The craven would not try anything whilst under XIV Legion guns; he did not have the stomach or guile for it.

  Laestygon was on the verge of leaving the bridge when Quor Gallek’s voice stopped him.

  ‘You swore to me the fulgurite would be mine. A bargain you said.’

  Laestygon laughed, a wet gurgle emanating from his throat.

  ‘It will be, preacher, but in service to me.’

  ‘That is not what we agreed.’

  ‘Yes, but it is what I am offering. Unlike your daemons, I cannot be so easily bound by pacts.’

  Laestygon left, his mocking laughter echoing in his wake.

  Deep engine drone and the screaming descent of drop pods penetrated through the waspish hum of the voids.

  In response, the earth trembled as deeply buried mechanisms were activated by the Techmarines. Cracks opened up in the ground, widening to chasms that became subterranean weapon silos from which macro-cannons and multi-launchers emerged.

  Like rising leviathans, the dragon-mouthed barrels and launch tubes drooled dust and ash as they discharged salvoes of missiles and super-heavy shells.

  Gunships daubed with Death Guard iconography fell out of the sky aflame and broken apart. Several struck the inviolable edge of the voids and exploded again, shattering in a welter of metal across the ionised energy sphere.

  The earth trembled as the mountains spat their anger. Pillars of fire shot into the heavens, turning them red, and gouts of black smoke spewed down onto the plain.

  Through the thickening cloud, Fire Raptors, Thunderhawks and Storm Eagles tried to force a landing.

  Choking on the ash and cinder drawn up into its engines, a Fire Raptor ditched and crashed in a billowing explosion. Another lost a wing as lava spewed up from a subterranean vent and melted it off. The gunship spun and pinwheeled before colliding with another vessel struggling to see in the abject blackness. Both folded together before breaking apart as they struck the ground.

  Despite the odds, a Storm Eagle achieved a landing, but before it could disgorge the legionaries, a chasm opened up beneath it, swallowing the gunship and the troops aboard.

  As drop pods arrowed earthwards they disappeared into vast magma trenches, or were fused shut by immense geysers of super-heated steam.

  It was as if Nocturne sensed invaders and rose up to destroy them.

  Foolish was the warlord who attempted to assault a death world, even if that warlord was a legionary. On Nocturne, the Salamanders held a distinct advantage, and no amount of obstinate force could truly match that.

  The Death Guard were learning the extent of that miscalculation as what had at first seemed like inevitable victory became much more tenuous, and potentially hard fought.

  But Laestygon would not be denied. He hadn’t risen this high and climbed the ranks by giving in to adversity. Vulkan would die by his hand, even if Nocturne itself stood against him.

  For deadly as the world was, he knew it could not prevent the landfall of such a large force in its entirety.

  The Death Guard hurtled down in droves, quickly establishing a beachhead a few kilometres from the edge of the void shields. Heavy landers came in the wake of the smaller troop transports and gunships, bringing forth armoured Land Raiders and Sicaran battle tanks. Soon the voids rippled with iridescent blooms from the sustained fire of lascannons and Herakles-pattern autocannons. The war engines began to cohere into armoured battalions, rolling over the rock and earth on scorched black treads, their hulls painted grey with ash.

  Behind the shields, the serried ranks of Salamanders stood and watched.

  They had three gunships and no armour on the ground.

  Detachments of heavy weapons were brought up to firing slits and gaps in the ramparts but they could not hope to stop the Death Guard’s armoured host, which had been joined by Cerberus and Spartan battle tanks.

  And at the head of the formation, Numeon saw the bulk of a Typhon siege tank.

  ‘That is a lot of armour,’ he said.

  ‘They’ll tear the shields down with that much firepower,’ murmured Zytos.

  Already weakened by the bombardment, Numeon knew the voids would not hold for long. After they failed, the Death Guard would pulverise the Draconius Gate until it and everyone harboured within its fastness was dust.

  He scowled, frustrated as fate turned again. But there was still a chance...

  ‘We could try and get Vulkan out?’ suggested Zytos. ‘Take him to Prometheus.’

  ‘And where then, brother?’ Numeon shook his head. ‘No, we make our stand now. Here. On Nocturne. This is our world, and we alone are its best defence. Besides, that much armour creates a lot of seismic disturbance.’

  Zytos grunted appreciatively. ‘And to think I once wondered why the Legion was always so careful deploying heavy armour on Nocturne.’

  Numeon gave a feral smile behind his snarling mask. ‘We won’t be alone for long.’

  As if in empathy, the mountains thundered again and found their indignation answered by what dwelled below. As the Death Guard tanks rolled inexorably onwards, the earth beneath them was split by chasms, and through disgorged smoke something emerged from the depths.

  The sons and daughters of Nocturne had many names for them, just as they had many names for fire. Here, the ignorant invaders had stepped into immolus without even realising it. Gnarlwyrm, urdrake, basilysk, wyvern, drakon, targon, the monstrous tide appeared endless.

  They spilled from the deep crags, fissures in the rock that had lain undisturbed for centuries. Long spits of flame from the maws of urdrakes melted tank
armour to slag, whilst gouts of incendiary gas spewed by drakons fused battleplate and boiled the flesh of crew trapped within.

  Overhead, wyverns and targons took flight before sweeping down out of the sun to rip turrets and rend bodies. The horned gnarlwyrms, largest of the beasts, charged at the heaviest armour. The thunder of their cloven hooves shook the earth with tectonic fury. Swarms of basilysks came in the wake of the gnarlwyrms, crushing whatever machineries still functioned between their constricting coils.

  Battle cannons responded as a rapid redeployment was effected, but the thick leathern hide, bone crests and carapace of the beasts proved inviolate against all but the most potent of the Death Guard arsenal.

  Crushed, gored, snapped in half, the tanks could not withstand such an onslaught. On pinioned wing, by tooth and claw, spewing fire or corrosive gas, these drakes had even challenged the will of a primarch. They ripped out the heart of the XIV Legion war host with impunity.

  Numeon looked on grimly and aghast, as did every Salamander. Only Rhy’tan appeared unmoved, a statuesque sentinel awaiting an end to the incursion.

  ‘They rise for him,’ he uttered, without investing the words with unnecessary import. ‘Nocturne angers.’

  ‘Merciful Vulkan…’ breathed Zytos, scarcely able to believe the evidence of his eyes.

  ‘Do not pity them, Zytos,’ said Numeon.

  ‘I do not, but I have never borne witness to such…’ Words could not convey what they all saw.

  ‘Nor I.’

  Nomus Rhy’tan’s voice rose up over the vox.

  ‘Lower all shields. We attack now!’

  Numeon heard a click as Rhy’tan hailed the Pyre captain over his private vox channel.

  ‘Will you join us, Captain Numeon, and fight alongside the Firedrakes once more?’

  Numeon’s heart swelled with fierce pride and a desire to mete out vengeance against the Death Guard. ‘It would be an honour, Lord Chaplain.’

  As the beasts of the deeps laid waste to the enemy’s armour, the Salamanders took advantage of the distraction by sallying forth from the Draconius Gate.