by Various
‘Lieutenant Bahnhoff?’ he said, remembering; a look of incredulity on his face when he saw the wheelchair.
‘Artillery blast got me,’ the officer supplied. ‘Platoon dragged me the rest of the way. Took me off the frontline too, though.’
Dak’ir felt a pang of sorrow for the lieutenant when he saw the shattered pride in his eyes.
‘Am I alone? Have my brothers gone to battle without me?’ Dak’ir asked.
‘They said you were too badly injured. Told us to watch over you until they returned.’
‘My armour…’ Dak’ir was naked from the waist up. Even his torso bodyglove had been removed. As he made to swing himself over the edge of the cot, enduring still further agonies, he saw that his battle-plate’s cuirass was lying reverently in one corner of the room. His bodyglove was with it, cut up where his brothers had needed to part it to treat his wounds. Dak’ir ran his finger over them. In the glow of a single lume-lamp they looked like dark bruises in the shape of fingerprint impressions.
‘Here… I found these in a storage room nearby.’ Bahnhoff tossed Dak’ir a bundle of something he’d been carrying on his lap.
The Salamander caught it, movement still painful but getting easier, and saw they were robes.
‘They’re loose, so should fit your frame,’ Bahnhoff explained.
Dak’ir eyed the lieutenant, but shrugged on the robes nonetheless.
‘Help me off this cot,’ he said.
Together, they got Dak’ir off the bed and onto his feet. He wobbled at first, but quickly found his balance, before surveying his surroundings.
They were in a small room, like a cell. The walls were bare stone. Dust collected in the corners and hung in the air, giving it an eerie quality.
‘What is this place?’
Bahnhoff wheeled backwards as Dak’ir staggered a few steps from the cot.
‘Mercy Rock’s catacombs. We use it as a medi-bay,’ the lieutenant’s face darkened, ‘and morgue.’
‘Apt,’ Dak’ir replied with grim humour.
A strange atmosphere permeated this place. Dak’ir felt it as he brushed the walls with his finger-tips, as he drank in the cloudy air.
We are here…
The words came back to him like a keening. They were beckoning him. He turned to Bahnhoff, eyes narrowed.
‘What is that?’
‘What is what, my lord?’
A faint scratching was audible in the sepulchral silence, as a quill makes upon parchment. Bahnhoff’s eyes widened as he heard it too.
‘All the Munitorum clerks are up in the strategium…’
‘It’s coming from beneath us,’ said Dak’ir. He was already making for the door. Wincing with every step, he betrayed his discomfort, but gritted his teeth as he went to follow the scratching sound.
‘Are there lower levels?’ he asked Bahnhoff, as they moved through a shadowy corridor.
‘Doesn’t get any deeper than the catacombs, my lord.’
Dak’ir was moving more quickly now, and Bahnhoff was wheeling hard to keep up.
The scratching was getting louder, and when they reached the end of the corridor the way ahead was blocked by a timber barricade.
‘Structurally unsafe, according to the engineers,’ said Bahnhoff.
‘It’s old…’ Dak’ir replied, noting the rotten wood and the gossamer webs wreathing it like a veil. He gripped one of the planks and tore it off easily. Compelled by some unknown force, Dak’ir ripped the barricade apart until they were faced by a stone stairway. It led into a darkened void. The reek of decay and stagnation was strong.
‘Are we going down there?’ asked Bahnhoff, a slight tremor in his voice.
‘Wait for me here,’ Dak’ir told him and started down the steps.
‘Stay within the cordon!’ bellowed Tsu’gan, as another one of Captain Mannheim’s men was lost to the earth.
An invisible barrier stretched the length of the killing ground that only flared incandescently into existence when one of the spectres struck it and recoiled. Like a lightning spark, the flash was born and died quickly, casting the scene starkly in its ephemeral life. Gunnery teams slogged hard to keep pace and infantry tramped hurriedly alongside them in long thin files, adopting firing lines once they’d reached the two hundred metre marker. Las-bursts erupted from the Phalanx ranks in a storm. Barking solid shot from heavy bolters and autocannon added to the sustained salvo. So close to the void shield, the energy impact returns were incandescently bright and despite the darkness, made several troopers don photoflash goggles. For some, it was just as well that their vision was impeded for shadows lurked beyond Librarian Pyriel’s psychic aegis and not everyone was immune to them.
The barrier was narrow, just as Pyriel had warned, and as the Phalanx had tried to keep pace with the Salamanders on the way to the advanced assault line some stepped out of it. A muted cry and then they were no longer seen or heard from again. By the time the firing line was erected, some several dozen troopers were missing. The Salamanders, as yet, had not succumbed.
Tsu’gan saw the flickering white forms of the warp echoes through the Librarian’s psychic shield. They lingered, angry and frustrated, ever probing to test the limits of Pyriel’s strength. Though he couldn’t see his face through his battle-helm, Tsu’gan knew by the Epistolary’s juddering movements that he was feeling the strain. He was a vessel now for the near-unfettered power of the warp. Like a sluice gate let free, the energy coursed through him as Pyriel fought hard to channel it into the shield. One slip and he would be lost. Then Tsu’gan would need to act quickly, slaying him before Pyriel’s flesh was obtained by another, heralding the death of them all, Salamanders or no.
One of the creatures breached the barrier wall, corporealising to do it, and Tsu’gan lashed out with his fist.
It was like striking adamantium, and he felt the shock of the blow all the way up his arm and into his shoulder, but did enough to force the creature back. It flashed briefly out of existence, but returned quickly, a snarl upon its eldritch features.
‘Hard as iron you said,’ Tsu’gan roared into the comm-feed as the weapons fire intensified.
Overhead the Earthshaker shells were finding their marks and the void shield rippled near its summit.
Emek battered another of the spectres back beyond the psychic cordon, the exertion needed to do it evident in his body language.
‘Perhaps too conservative,’ he admitted.
‘A tad, brother,’ came Tsu’gan’s bitter rejoinder. ‘Iagon,’ he relayed through his battle-helm, ‘what are the readings for the shield?’
‘Weakening, my lord,’ was Iagon’s sibilant reply, ‘but still insufficient for a break.’
Tsu’gan scowled.
‘Ba’ken…’
‘We must advance,’ the acting sergeant answered. ‘Fifty metres, and apply greater pressure to the shield.’
At a hundred and fifty metres away, the danger from energy flares cast by void impacts and friendly fire casualties from the Earthshakers was greatly increased, but then the Salamanders had little choice. Soon the bombardment from the Basilisks would end when they ran out of shells. The void shield had to be down before then.
‘Brother-Librarian,’ Tsu’gan began, ‘another fifty metres?’
After a few moments, Pyriel nodded weakly and started to move forwards.
Tsu’gan turned his attention to the Phalanx.
‘Captain Mannheim, we are advancing. Another fifty metres.’
The Phalanx officer gave a clipped affirmative before continuing to galvanise his men and reminding them of their duty to the Emperor.
Despite himself, the Salamander found he admired the captain for that.
The bells tolled on as the Imperial forces resumed their march.
The stairs were shallow and several times Dak’ir
almost lost his footing, only narrowly avoiding a plunge into uncertain darkness by bracing himself against the flanking walls.
Near the bottom of the stairwell, he was guided by a faint smudge of flickering light. Its warm, orange glow suggested candles or a fire. There was another room down here and this was where the scratching sound emanated from.
Cursing himself for leaving his weapons in the cell above, Dak’ir stepped cautiously through a narrow portal that forced him to duck to get through and into a small, dusty chamber.
Beyond the room’s threshold he saw bookcases stuffed with numerous scrolls, tomes and other arcana. Religious relics were packed in half-open crates, stamped with the Imperial seal. Others, deific statues, Ecclesiarchal sigils and shrines were cluttered around the chamber’s periphery. And there, in the centre, scribing with ink and quill at a low table, was an old, robed clerk.
The scrivener looked up from his labours, blinking with eye strain as he regarded the giant, onyx-skinned warrior in his midst.
‘Greetings, soldier,’ he offered politely.
Dak’ir nodded, uncertain of what to make of his surroundings. A prickling sensation ran through his body but then faded as he stepped into the corona of light cast by the scrivener’s solitary candle.
‘Are you Munitorum?’ asked Dak’ir. ‘What are you doing so far from the strategium?’ Dak’ir continued to survey the room as he stepped closer. It was caked in dust and the grime of ages, more a forgotten storeroom than an office for a Departmento clerk.
The scrivener laughed; a thin, rasping sort of a sound that put Dak’ir a little on edge.
‘Here,’ said the old man as he backed away from his works. ‘See what keeps me in this room.’
Dak’ir came to the table at the scrivener’s beckoning, strangely compelled by the old man’s manner, and looked down at his work.
Hallowed Heath – a testament of its final days, he read.
‘Mercy Rock was not always a fortress,’ explained the scrivener behind him. ‘Nor was it always alone.’
The hand that had authored the parchment scroll in front of Dak’ir was scratchy and loose but he was able to read it.
‘It says here that Mercy Rock was once a basilica, a temple devoted to the worship of the Imperial Creed.’
‘Read on, my lord…’ the scrivener goaded.
Dak’ir did as asked.
‘“…and Hallowed Heath was its twin. Two bastions of light, shining like beacons against the old faiths, bringing enlightenment and understanding to Vaporis,”’ he related directly from the text. ‘“In the shadow of Aphium, but a nascent township with lofty ambitions, did these pinnacles of faith reside. Equal were they in their fervour and dedication, but not in fortification–”’ Dak’ir looked around at the old scrivener who glared at the Salamander intently.
‘I thought you said they were not fortresses?’
The scrivener nodded, urging Dak’ir to continue his studies.
‘“–One was built upon a solid promontory of rock, hence its given appellation; the other upon clay. It was during the Unending Deluge of 966.M40 when the rains of Vaporis continued for sixty-six days, the heaviest they had ever been in longest memory, that Hallowed Heath sank down beneath a quagmire of earth, taking its five hundred and forty-six patrons and priests with it. For three harrowing days and nights the basilica sank, stone by stone, beneath the earth, its inhabitants stranded within its walls that had become as their tomb. And for three nights, they tolled the bells in the highest towers of Hallowed Heath, saying, “We are here!”, “We are here!” but none came to their aid.”’
Dak’ir paused as a horrible understanding started to crawl up his spine. Needing to know more, oblivious now to the scrivener, he continued.
‘“Aphium was the worst. The township and all its peoples did not venture into the growing mire for fear of their own lives, did not even try to save the stricken people. They shut their ears to the bells and shut their doors, waiting for a cessation to the rains. And all the while, the basilica sank, metre by metre, hour by hour, until the highest towers were consumed beneath the earth, all of its inhabitants buried alive with them, and the bells finally silenced.”’
Dak’ir turned to regard the old scrivener.
‘The spectres in the killing field,’ he said, ‘they are the warp echoes of the preachers and their patrons.’
‘They are driven by hate, hate for the Aphiums who closed their ears and let them die, just as I am driven by guilt.’
Guilt?
Dak’ir was about to question it when the scrivener interrupted.
‘You’re near the end, Hazon, read on.’
Dak’ir was compelled to turn back, as if entranced.
‘“This testament is the sole evidence of this terrible deed – nay; it is my confession of complicity in it. Safe was I in Mercy Rock, sat idle whilst others suffered and died. It cannot stand. This I leave as small recompense, so that others might know of what transpired. My life shall be forfeit just as theirs were, too.”’
There it ended, and only then did Dak’ir acknowledge that the old man had used his first name. He whirled around, about to demand answers… but he was too late.
The scrivener was gone.
The Earthshaker barrage stopped abruptly like a thumping heart in sudden cardiac arrest. Its absence was a silent death knell to the Phalanx and their Adeptus Astartes allies.
‘It’s done,’ snarled Tsu’gan, when the Imperial shelling ended. ‘We break through now or face the end. Iagon?’
‘Still holding, my lord.’
They were but a hundred metres from the void shield now, having pressed up in one final effort to overload it. Without the heavy artillery backing them up, it seemed an impossible task. All the time, more and more Phalanx troopers were lost to breaches in the psychic shield, dragged into dank oblivion by ethereal hands.
‘I feel… something…’ said Pyriel, struggling to speak, ‘Something in the void shield… Just beyond my reach…’
Despite his colossal efforts, the Librarian was weakening. The psychic barrier was losing its integrity and with it any protection against the warp echoes baying at its borders.
‘Stand fast!’ yelled Mannheim. ‘Hold the line and press for glory, men of the Phalanx!’
Through sheer grit and determination, the Guardsmen held. Even though their fellow troopers were being swallowed by the earth, they held.
Tsu’gan could not help but feel admiration again for their courage. Like a crazed dervish, he raced down the line raining blows upon the intruding spectres, his shoulders burning with the effort.
‘Salamanders! We are about to be breached,’ he cried. ‘Protect the Phalanx. Protect your brothers in arms with your lives!’
‘Hail Vulkan and the glory of Prometheus!’ Ba’ken chimed. ‘Let Him on Earth witness your courage, men of the Phalanx.’
The effect of the sergeants’ words was galvanising. Coupled with Mannheim’s own stirring rally, the men became intractable in the face of almost certain death.
Tsu’gan heard a deep cry of pain to his left and saw Lazarus fall, impaled as Dak’ir had been by eldritch fingers.
‘Brother!’
S’tang and Nor’gan went to his aid as Honorious covered their retreat with his flamer.
‘Hold, Fire-born, hold!’ Tsu’gan bellowed. ‘Give them nothing!’
Tenacious to the end, the Salamanders would fight until their final breaths, and none so fiercely as Tsu’gan.
The battle-hardened sergeant was ready to make his final pledges to his primarch and his Emperor when the comm-feed crackled to life in his ear.
‘You may have cheated death, Ignean,’ snapped Tsu’gan when he realised who it was. ‘But then survival over glory was always your–’
‘Shut up, Zek, and raise Pyriel right now,’ Dak’ir demanded, u
sing the other Salamander’s first name and mustering as much animus as he could.
‘Our brother needs to marshal all of his concentration, Ignean,’ Tsu’gan snapped again. ‘He can ill afford distractions from you.’
‘Do it, or it will not matter how distracted he becomes!’
Tsu’gan snarled audibly but obeyed, something in Dak’ir’s tone making him realise it was important.
‘Brother-Librarian,’ he barked down the comm-feed. ‘Our absent brother demands to speak with you.’
Pyriel nodded labouredly, his hands aloft as he struggled to maintain the barrier.
‘Speak…’ the Librarian could scarcely rasp.
‘Do you remember what you felt before the first assault?’ Dak’ir asked quickly. ‘You said there was something about the shield, an anomaly in its energy signature. It is psychically enhanced, brother, to keep the warp echoes out.’
Through the furious barrage a slim crack was forming in the void shield’s integrity, invisible to mortal eyes but plain as frozen lightning to the Librarian’s witch-sight. And through it, Pyriel discerned a psychic undercurrent straining to maintain a barrier of its own. With Dak’ir’s revelation came understanding and then purpose.
‘They want vengeance against Aphium,’ said Pyriel, beginning to refocus his psychic energy and remould it into a sharp blade of his own anger.
‘For the complicity in their deaths over a thousand years ago,’ Dak’ir concluded.
‘I know what to do, brother,’ Pyriel uttered simply, his voice drenched with psychic resonance as he let slip the last of the tethers from his psychic hood, the crystal matrix dampener that protected him psychically, and laid himself open to the warp.
‘In Vulkan’s name,’ Dak’ir intoned before the link was overwhelmed with psychic static and died.
‘Brother Tsu’gan…’ Pyriel’s voice was deep and impossibly loud against the battle din. A tsunami of raw psychic power was coursing through him, encasing the Librarian in a vibrant, fiery aura. ‘…I am about to relinquish the barrier…’
Tsu’gan had no time to answer. The psychic barrier fell and the warp echoes swept in. Thunder split the heavens and red lightning tore across boiling clouds as the warp storm reached its zenith.