by Nick Kyme
Typical of the Stratosan architectural style, it had been beautiful once but was now riddled with bullet holes and crumbling from shell damage. A demo-charge rigged by insurgents to a ballast tractor had taken out most of the south-facing wall, the bulk of the colonel’s command staff with it. With no time to effect repairs, a sheet of plastek had been piston-drilled to cover the hole.
This largely pointless measure did little to keep out the stutter of sporadic gunfire and incessant explosions from tripped booby traps and purloined grenade launchers. Sergeant Helliman had to raise his voice to be heard.
‘Three loft-cities remain under the control of the insurgents, sir: Cumulon, here in Nimbaros, and Cirrion. They have also collapsed all except the three major sky-bridges into these areas.’
‘What of our ground forces, any progress there?’ asked Tonnhauser, lifting his peaked cap to run a hand across his receding hairline and wishing dearly that the expulsion of the insurgents was someone else’s job.
Helliman looked resigned, the young officer grown thinner over the passing weeks, and pale as a wraith.
‘Heavy resistance is dogging our efforts to make any inroads into the cities. The insurgents are dug in and well organised.’ Helliman paused to clear his dry throat.
‘There must be at least ninety thousand of the cities’ total populations corrupted by cult activity. They hold all of the materiel factorums and are equipping themselves with our stockpiles. Armour too.’
Tonnhauser surveyed the city maps on the bench, looking for potential avenues of assault he might have missed. He saw only bottlenecks and kill-zones in which the Aircorps would be snared.
Helliman waited anxiously for Tonnhauser’s response, and the void in conversation was filled by the frantic chatter coming from the command vox. Corpsman Aiker, crouched by the boxy unit in one corner of the workshop, tried his best to get a clear signal but static ran riot over all channels in the wake of the destruction of the antenna towers. Tonnhauser didn’t need to hear the substance of the vox-reports to know it was bad.
‘What do we hold then?’ he asked at last, looking up into the sergeant’s tired eyes.
‘Our safe zones are—’
A shuddering explosion slapped against the workshop, cutting Helliman off. Fire spilled through the plastek towards the sergeant in a tide. It funnelled outwards, the plastek becoming fluid in the intense heat wave, and melted around the hapless Helliman. Tonnhauser swore loudly as he was dumped on his arse, but had enough presence of mind to pull out his service pistol and shoot the screaming sergeant through the head to spare him further agony.
Ears still ringing from the blast, Tonnhauser saw a figure scuttle through the fire-limned gouge in the plastek. It was a man, or at least a dishevelled interpretation of one, clad in rags and flak armour. His hair was sheared roughly all the way down to the skull. Hate-filled eyes caught sight of Tonnhauser as the wretch cast about the room. But it was the mouth of the thing that gave the loyal Stratosan pause. It was sewn shut with thick black wire, the lips and cheeks shot through with purple-blue veins.
At first, Tonnhauser thought the insurgent was unarmed. Then he saw the grenade clutched in his left hand… ‘Holy Emperor…’ Tonnhauser shot him through the forehead. As the cultist fell back there was an almighty thunderclap as the grenade went off, blasting the bodily remains of the insurgent to steaming chunks of meat.
The metal workbench spared Tonnhauser from the explosion, but he had little time to offer up his thanks to the Throne. Through the smoke and falling debris three more insurgents emerged, mouths sewn shut just like the first. Two carried autoguns; one had a crude-looking heavy stubber.
Squeezing off a desultory burst of fire, Tonnhauser went to ground behind the solid bench just as metal rain ripped into the workshop. It chewed up the room with an angry roar, tearing up the walls and disused machinery, perforating Corpsman Aiker where he crouched.
Crawling on his hands and knees, Tonnhauser pressed himself tighter into cover, discharging the spent clip from his pistol before reaching for another with trembling fingers.
No way could he kill them all…
Through the incessant barrage of gunfire, Tonnhauser first heard the plink-plink of a small metal object nearby, then saw the tossed grenade land and roll to within a metre of his foot. Survival instinct taking over, he lurched towards the grenade and kicked. It went off seconds later, heat, noise and pressure crashing over Tonnhauser in a violent wave, close enough for a shard of shrapnel to embed itself in his outstretched leg.
The colonel bit down so he wouldn’t cry out.
Won’t give this scum the satisfaction, he thought.
A sudden rash of las-fire spat overhead and abruptly the shooting ceased.
‘Colonel,’ an urgent voice called out from across the workbench a few moments later.
‘Behind here,’ Tonnhauser growled, wincing in pain as he saw the jagged metal sticking out of his leg.
Five Stratosan Aircorpsmen ran around the side of the bench, lasguns hot.
Tonnhauser read the first man’s rank pins.
‘Impeccable timing Sergeant Rucka, but aren’t you supposed to be with Colonel Yonn and the 18th at the Cirrion border?’
A second corpsman carried a portable vox. Reports were drumming out on all frequencies, accompanied by a throbbing chorus of explosions and muted gunfire from across the length and breadth of Nimbaros.
‘Colonel Yonn is dead, sir. And the 18th are pulling out of Cirrion. The city is totally lost, all safe zones are compromised,’ Rucka told him. ‘We’ve got to get you out.’
Tonnhauser grimaced as two of the other corpsmen helped him to his feet.
‘What about Cumulon? Has that fallen too?’ he asked, passing the dead bodies of the three cultists, and staggering out of the back entrance to the workshop.
The sergeant’s tone was hollow but pragmatic.
‘We’ve lost them all, sir. We’re in full retreat, back beyond the city limits and across the sky-bridge to Pileon.’
Once out into the city streets the noise of the encroaching gun battle grew exponentially louder. Tonnhauser looked up to the dome roof of the city and saw a stormy sky through the reinforced plastek above him. Scudding smoke clouded his view as the upper atmosphere of the loft-city was lost from sight. As he fell back with Sergeant Rucka and his squad, Tonnhauser risked a glance over his shoulder. A mass retreat was in effect. Distant insurgents closed on their position en masse, clutching various guns and improvised weapons. Their battle cries were muted by the wire lacing their lips together – the effect was unnerving. Tonnhauser didn’t need to hear them to tell the enemy was pressing a large-scale attack.
A gas-propelled rocket roared close by overhead, forcing Tonnhauser and the others to duck. It struck the side of a mag-tram depot and exploded outwards, engulfing an entrenched Aircorps gunnery position. The three-man team died screaming amidst brick and fire.
Rucka altered course abruptly, taking Tonnhauser and his men away from the destruction of the depot and down a side alley. ‘Throne, how did this happen?’ Tonnhauser asked when Rucka had them stop in the alley to wait for the all clear to proceed. ‘We were pressing them back, weren’t we?’
‘Took us by surprise,’ said Rucka, ducking back into the alley as a bomb blast lit up the road beyond. ‘Set off a chain of booby traps that decimated our troops then launched a mass ground offensive. They’re using advanced military tactics. No way can we retake the cities like this. We’ll have to regroup. Maybe then we can get Nimbaros and Cumulon back, but Cirrion…’ The sergeant’s words trailed away, telling Tonnhauser everything he needed to know about the capital’s fate.
‘What about Governor Varkoff?’
‘He’s alive, bunkered down in Pileon. It’s the nearest of the minor sky-cities that’s still under our control. That’s where we are headed now. He’s enacted official distress protocols on all Imperial astropathic and comm-range frequencies, requesting immediate aid.’
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nbsp; ‘Do something for me will you, corpsman,’ said Tonnhauser. The colonel had moved to the end of the alley and watched as another explosion took out a statue of the first Stratosan governor. It was a symbol of Imperial rule and order. It shattered as it struck the ground wrapped in fire.
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘Get on your knees and pray,’ Tonnhauser said, ‘pray for a bloody miracle…’
FOR THE LAST forty years, the dream hadn’t changed.
At first there was only a vague sensation of heat, and then Dak’ir was back in the hot dark of the caves of Ignea on Nocturne. In his dream he was only a boy, the rock wall of that hostile place coarse and sharp against his pre-adolescent skin as he touched it. Mineral seams glinted in the glow of lava pools fed by the river of fire that was the lifeblood of the mountain above him. Ignea then faded, and the light from the river of fire died with it, resolving into a new vista…
The Cindara Plateau stretched before Dak’ir’s sandaled feet, its edge delineated by rock-totems, its surface the colour of rust and umber. Ash scudded in drifts across the Pyre Desert below, obscuring scaled saurochs as they hunted for sustenance amongst the crags. Above there came the sound of thunder, as if Mount Deathfire was about to erupt flame and smoke to blot out the heavens. But the great mountain of Nocturne slumbered still. Instead, Dak’ir looked up and saw a fiery blaze of a different kind, the engines of a vast ship slowly coming to land.
A ramp opened in the side of the vessel as it came to rest at last, and a warrior stepped out, tall and powerful, clad in armour of green plate and emblazoned with the symbol of the salamander, the noble creatures that lived in the heart of the earth. Others joined the warrior, Dak’ir knew some of them; he had worked beside them rebuilding and rock-harvesting after the Time of Trial. His heart quailed at the sight of these giants, though. For he knew they had come for him…
The image changed again, and this time Dak’ir had changed too. He now wore the mantle of warrior, carried the tools of war. His body was armoured in carapace, a holy bolt pistol gripped in his Astartes fist, his onyx flesh a stark reminder of his superhuman apotheosis. Monoliths of stone and marble loomed above Dak’ir like grey sentinels, ossuary roads paved the streets and the acrid stench of grave dust filled the air. This was not Nocturne; this was Moribar, and here the skies were wreathed in death. Somewhere on the horizon of that grey and terrible world, Dak’ir heard screaming and the vision in his mind’s eye bled away to be filled by a face on fire. He had seen it so many times, “the burning face”, agonised and accusing, never letting him truly rest. It burned and burned, and soon Dak’ir was burning too, and the screams that filled his ears became his own…
‘We were only meant to bring them back…’
DAK’IR’S EYES SNAPPED open as he came out of battle-meditation. Acutely aware of his accelerated breathing and high blood pressure, he went through the mental calming routines as taught to him when he had first joined the superhuman ranks of the Space Marines.
With serenity came realisation. Dak’ir was standing in the half-darkness of his isolation chamber, a solitorium, one of many aboard the strike cruiser Vulkan’s Wrath. It was little more than a dungeon: sparse, austere and surrounded on all sides by cold, black walls.
More detailed recollection came swiftly.
An urgent communication had been picked up weeks ago via astropathic messenger and interpreted by the Company Librarian, Pyriel. The Salamanders were heading to the Imperial world of Stratos.
A prolific mining colony, one of many along the Hadron Belt in the Reductus Sector of Segmentum Tempestus, Stratos had great value to the Imperium for its oceanic minerals as well as its regular tithe of inductees to the Imperial Guard. Rescue of Stratos, liberation for its inhabitants from the internecine enemies that plagued it, was of paramount importance.
Hours from breaking orbit, Captain Ko’tan Kadai had already assigned six squads, including his own Inferno Guard, to be the task force that would make planetfall on Stratos and free the world from anarchy. As Promethean belief dictated, all Salamanders about to embark on battle must first be cleansed by fire and endure a period of extended meditation to focus their minds on self-reliance and inner fortitude.
All, but Dak’ir, had been untroubled in their preparations.
Such a fact would not go unnoticed.
‘My lord?’ a deep and sonorous voice asked.
Dak’ir looked in its direction and saw the hooded form of Tsek. His brander-priest was dressed in emerald green robes with the Chapter icon, a snarling salamander head inside a ring of fire, stitched in amber-coloured wire across his breast. Half-concealed augmetics were just visible beneath the serfs attire in the flickering torchlight.
The chamber was small, but had enough room for an Astartes’ attendants.
‘Are you ready for the honour-scarring, my lord?’ asked Tsek.
Dak’ir nodded, still a little disoriented from his dream. He watched as Tsek brought forth a glowing rod, white-hot from the embers of the brazier-cauldron that Dak’ir was standing in barefooted. The Astartes barely registered the pain from the fire-wrapped coals beneath him. There was not so much as a globule of sweat across his bald head or onyx-black body, naked but for a tribal sash clothing his loins.
The ritual was part of the teachings of the Promethean Cult, to which all warriors of the Salamanders stoically adhered.
As Tsek applied the branding rod to Dak’ir’s exposed skin he embraced the pain it brought. His fiery eyes, like red-hot coals themselves, watched approvingly. First, Tsek burned three bars and then a swirl bisecting them. It conjoined the many marks he and other brander-priests had made upon Dak’ir’s body where they’d healed and scarred into a living history of the Salamander’s many conflicts. Each was a battle won, a foe vanquished. No Salamander went into battle without first being marked to honour it and then again at battle’s end to commemorate it.
Dak’ir’s own marks wreathed his legs, arm and some of his torso and back. They were intricate, becoming more detailed as each new honour scar was added. Only a veteran of many campaigns, a Salamander of centuries’ service, ever bore such markings on his face.
Tsek bowed his head and stepped back into shadow. A votive-servitor shambled forward in his wake on reverse-jointed metal limbs, bent-backed beneath the weight of a vast brazier fused to its spine. Dak’ir reached out and plunged both hands into the iron caldera of the brazier, scooping up the fragments of ash from the burned matter collected at its edges.
Dak’ir smeared the white ash over his face and chest, inscribing the Promethean symbols of the hammer and the anvil. They were potent icons in Promethean lore, believed to garner endurance and strength.
‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ he intoned, making a long sweep with his palm to draw the hammer’s haft.
‘…With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ another voice concluded, letting Dak’ir cross the top of the haft with his palm to form the hammer’s head before revealing himself.
Brother Fugis stepped into the brazier’s light, clanking loudly as he moved. He was already clad in his green power armour, but went unhooded. His blood-red eyes blazed vibrantly in the half-dark. As befitted a Space Marine of his position, Fugis bore the ash-white of the Apothecaries on his right shoulder pad, though the left still carried the insignia of his Chapter on a jet-black field, the snarling salamander head there a blazing orange to match the pauldrons of his Third Company battle-brothers.
Thin-faced and intimidating, some in the company had suggested Fugis might be better served in a more spiritual profession than the art of healing. Such “suggestions” were never voiced out loud, however, or given in front of the Apothecary, for fear of reprisal.
Dak’ir’s response to the Apothecary’s sudden presence was less than genial.
‘What are you doing here, brother?’
Fugis did not answer straight away. Instead, he scanned a bio-reader over Dak’ir’s body.
‘Capt
ain Kadai asked me to visit. Examinations are best conducted before you’re armoured.’
Fugis paused as he waited for the results of the bio-scan, his blade-thin face taut like wire.
‘Your arm, Astartes,’ he added without looking up, but gesturing for Dak’ir’s limb.
Dak’ir held his arm out for the Apothecary, who took it by the wrist and syringed off a portion of blood into a vial. A chamber in his gauntlet then performed a biochemical analysis after the vial was inserted into its miniature centrifuge.
‘Are all of my brothers undergoing such rigorous conditioning?’ asked Dak’ir, keeping the annoyance from his voice. Fugis was evidently satisfied with the serology results, but his tone was still matter of fact. ‘No, just you.’
‘If my brother-captain doubts my will, he should have Chaplain Elysius appraise me.’
The Apothecary seized Dak’ir’s jaw suddenly in a gauntleted fist and carefully examined his face. ‘Elysius is not aboard the Vulkan’s Wrath, as you well know, so you will have to endure my appraisal instead.’
With the index finger of his other hand Fugis pulled down the black skin beneath Dak’ir’s left eye, diffusing its blood-red glow across his cheek.
‘You are still experiencing somnambulant visions during battle-meditation?’ he asked. Then, apparently satisfied, he let Dak’ir go. The brother-sergeant rubbed his jaw where the Apothecary had pinched it.
‘If you mean, am I dreaming, then yes. It happens sometimes.’
The Apothecary looked at the instrument panel on his glove, his expression inscrutable. ‘What do you dream about?’
‘I am a boy again, back on Nocturne in the caves of Ignea. I see the day I passed the trials on the Cindara Plateau and became an Astartes, my first mission as a neophyte…’ The Salamander’s voice trailed away, as his expression darkened in remembrance. The burning face…