by Nick Kyme
'I saw a lizard with two heads prowling in the darkness of a barren sand plain,' said Dak'ir. 'It was hunting and found its prey, a smaller lizard, alone on the dunes. It cornered the smaller creature, swallowing it down its gullet. Then it slipped away into shadow, until it too was swallowed, but by darkness.'
Ba'ken shrugged.
'It's just a dream, Dak'ir - nothing more. We all dream.'
'Not like this.'
'You think it portends something deeper?'
'I don't what it means. I am more concerned with why I am dreaming it at all.'
'Have you spoken to Apothecary Fugis?'
'He knows of it, and until Kadai's death, had watched me like a dactylid watches prey. Now, it seems, Pyriel has been appointed my watcher.'
Ba'ken shrugged.
'If it was a concern, Elysius would be your shadow and not our Brother-Librarian, and you'd be having this conversation with the Brother-Chaplain's chirurgeon-interrogators.'
His eyes grew warm and earnest.
'Perhaps it was destiny that you found that chest on the Mechanicus ship, perhaps your vision of the two-headed lizard was for a reason. I know not, for I don't believe in such things myself. I know only this: you are my battle-brother, Dak'ir. Moreover, you are my sergeant. I have fought at your side for four decades and more. That is the only testament I need to your purity and spirit.'
Dak'ir pretended that his mind was eased.
'You are wise, Ba'ken. Certainly wiser than I,' he said with a humourless smile.
The hefty Salamander merely snorted, rotating his shoulder blades to ease out the stiffness. 'No, brother-sergeant, I am just old.'
Dak'ir laughed quietly at that, a sound that smacked of rare, untroubled abandon.
'Gather the troops,' he ordered. 'Armoured and on the assembly deck in two hours.'
Already, the other brother-sergeants were bringing their troops into line. Arming serfs were poised and ready for those who had divested themselves of their battle-plate to train.
'And you will be?' asked Ba'ken.
Dak'ir was pulling on his bodyglove, over which the electrical fibre bundles, interface cables and internal circuitry of his power armour would be placed and conjoined. 'On the bridge.' He ignored Ba'ken's slight impertinence by dint of the respect he afforded the heavy weapons trooper. He knew Ba'ken's inquiry was an honest one, bereft of any insolence. 'I want to speak with the brother-captain before we make planetfall.'
'What happened to the ''Promethean way''?'
'Nothing. I want to know what he thinks we'll find down on Scoria and if he believes this mission is the boon we all hope it is.'
Ba'ken seemed satisfied with the answer and saluted, heading off towards the scalding steam jets of the ablutions chamber.
Dak'ir donned the rest of his power armour in silence, staring ahead at nothing. When the arming serf was done, the brother-sergeant thanked him and left the gymnasia. He was determined the long walk to the bridge would clear his head. The memories of the earlier dream gnawed at him parasitically as he tried to discern its meaning.
Any introspection was marred by the sudden appearance of Fugis. He had rounded the corner in the same section of the ship. Dak'ir was reminded again of their exchange outside the Vault of Remembrance in Hesiod. The melancholy shroud had not left the Apothecary then, it had merely spread.
When Fugis looked up, he gazed through Dak'ir at first and even after that recognition was delayed.
'Are you all right, Brother-Apothecary?' asked Dak'ir, his concern genuine.
'Have you seen Brother-Sergeant Tsu'gan?' Fugis snapped. 'He has eluded me since we embarked and I must speak with him at once.'
Dak'ir was taken aback at the curt tone in the Apothecary's voice but answered nonetheless. 'I last saw him headed for the solitoriums, but that was almost six hours ago. It's very unlikely he is still there.'
'I rather think it is highly probable, brother,' Fugis snarled and stalked off, without further word or explanation, towards the solitoriums.
The Apothecary had always been cold; Dak'ir had regularly been on the receiving end of his innate frigidity, but never like this. The darkness had beset him now, strangling hope and smothering optimism. Dak'ir had seen it as they'd surveyed the Pyre Desert. He saw it again as Fugis's diminishing figure was swallowed by the shadows of the long corridor.
Dak'ir gave it no further thought for now. He had business on the bridge that was best unfettered by concern for his grief-stricken Apothecary.
* * *
The blast doors to the bridge parted after a biometric scan ascertained Dak'ir's presence. A diminishing hiss of hydraulic pressure escaped into the air as the brother-sergeant passed through the portal to the command centre of the Vulkan's Wrath.
The lume-lamps surrounding the bridge were kept low. The semi-dark promoted an atmosphere of apprehensive silence, in keeping with the gloom. It was always this way when traversing the warp or during battle. The scant, reddish light hugged the outer walls of the hexagonal chamber, bleeding into penumbral darkness. Most of the illumination on the bridge came from strategium tables and overhead pict displays that monitored the ship's multitudinous systems. The raft of icons upon the various screens was green. It meant the Geller fields that proofed the ship against the predators of the warp were holding.
A semi-circle of consoles filled the forward arc of the bridge. Like all Astartes vessels, the crew of the Vulkan's Wrath was primarily made up of human serfs, ensigns and shipmasters, servitors and tech-savants, all toiling before the operational controls. Thick shielding had been rolled over the bridge's view-ports to protect them, for even to look upon the warp was to be damned by it.
The warp was an immaterial realm, a layer stretched over the real world, akin to an incorporeal sea. Time moved differently along its waves; portals could be opened in it and routes travelled that allowed ships to move across great distances comparatively quickly. Its dangers were manifold, though. Abyssal horrors and soul-hungering entities plied its depths. The warp was insidious, too; it had a way of creeping into a man's mind and making him do and see things. Many space-faring vessels had been lost this way, not claimed by daemons, just destroyed from within.
Despite his arduous psychological training, his gene-bred mental toughness, Dak'ir had felt a prickle of unease ever since they had entered the immaterium.
He was glad they would be free of it again soon. The warp unsettled him. It tugged at the edge of his awareness, like cold, thin fingers massaging away his resolve. Throbbing insistently, the half-felt presence of the warp was like a lost whisper filled with malicious intent. Dak'ir could ignore it well enough but it briefly cast his thoughts back to the Dragon Warriors, how they had willingly submitted to this other-reality of dark dreams and darker promises, even embraced it. As a loyal servant of the Emperor, he could not imagine such a thing, the motivation that had driven them to this desperate act. Nihilan and his renegades were indeed beyond redemption now. His mind drifted to Stratos and the reason the Dragon Warriors were there. Vengeance had always seemed a petty motivation for one such as Nihilan; or, rather, it didn't seem enough of one.
Dak'ir considered it no further. He had reached the rear of the bridge and was standing at the foot of a staired platform where Brother-Captain N'keln sat upon his command throne. N'keln's mood was idle and restive as he watched his Brother-Librarian guide them by the Emperor's Light through the vagaries of the warp. Pyriel was forward of the command throne, on a lower part of the platform. He was encased within a pseudo-pulpit, standing bolt upright. It was not for the purpose of preaching that he was so ensconced, rather his psychic hood was connected integrally to the pulpit's internal circuitry, augmenting his abilities.
A series of tactical plans and schematics, deep-augur maps, blind-sketched by the ship's astropaths, were arranged on a strategio-table to N'keln's right hand. The captain glanced at them absently, while Brother-Sergeant Lok, standing beside the command throne, posited potential landing
zones and approaches with a stylus. Evidently, the embarkation plans for Scoria were already in progress. It was all theory until they entered in-system, but Salamanders were nothing if not thorough.
Veteran Sergeant Praetor was nowhere to be seen. Dak'ir assumed that his bulky Terminator suit precluded his presence on the bridge and that he remained with his Firedrakes, locked in whatever clandestine rituals the warriors of 1st Company performed before battle. Perhaps Chaplain Elysius was with them, for he too was absent.
'Brother-sergeant,' N'keln's greeting held a tone of inquiry.
Dak'ir saluted, and took it to mean he was allowed to approach.
'Preparations for our landing are already underway?'
'Since before we left Prometheus, brother.' N'keln's gaze had shifted to the plans that Lok was annotating with arrows and battle-symbols.
Dak'ir noticed the military aspect to the icons the veteran sergeant was scribing.
'Are we expecting trouble, brother-captain?'
'I neither expect nor doubt it, sergeant. I merely wish us to be prepared for whatever is down there.'
N'keln looked up from the strategio-table when Dak'ir fell silent.
'Impatient for answers, Dak'ir?'
'My lord, I—'
N'keln waved away the nascent apology.
'You're the third officer in the last hour who has visited the bridge,' he said. 'I should admonish such restless behaviour, especially for a sergeant who ought to be with his squad, but in this case I shall make dispensations. It is not every day that a Chapter like ours gets the opportunity to discover the fate of its primarch.' It seemed to Dak'ir that N'keln's expression grew slightly wistful. 'I have seen artistic representations, of course,' he said, his voice reverent, 'rendered in stone and metal, but to see…' He emphasised the last word with heartfelt vehemence, '…and with my own eyes. Our father, ten thousand years since his fabled disappearance… It would be like myth come alive.'
Dak'ir's mood was less ebullient.
'I hope you are right, brother-captain.'
'You do not think we will find Vulkan on Scoria?' N'keln asked plainly. There was no agenda, no careful probe in his words. Perhaps that was why he struggled at the political side of leadership.
'Truthfully, captain, I don't know what we'll find there or what any of this will amount to.'
N'keln's eyes narrowed and in the pause in conversation, Dak'ir felt the imminence of what was to come like a stone collar around his neck. The captain's gaze was searching.
'It is more pertinent for you than most, isn't it, brother. You found the chest in the Archimedes Rex, did you not?'
Dak'ir gave his unneeded confirmation. Even though they faced away from one another, he felt the eyes of the Librarian boring into the back of his skull at the mention of the chest.
'You'll have your answers soon enough, brother-sergeant,' the voice of Pyriel interjected, as if summoned by Dak'ir's thought. 'We are about to emerge from the warp.'
There was a pregnant pause, as all those aboard the bridge waited for translation back into realspace. 'Now…' hissed Pyriel.
A massive shudder wracked the Vulkan's Wrath, a sudden shock wave ripping down its spine. The bridge shook. Dak'ir and several others lost their footing. A deep roar filled the hexagonal room. It sounded like fire, but it howled as if truly alive, searching voraciously for air to burn. The human crew, besides the servitors, covered their ears whilst trying to stay upright. The ship was bucking back and forth, tossed like a skiff upon a violent ocean. Consoles exploded, spitting sparks and going dead. Klaxons whined urgently, their warning drowned out by the raging tumult battering the Vulkan's Wrath from outside.
'Alert status crimson!' N'keln bellowed into the command throne's vox, gripping the arms tight to stay seated. 'All hands to emergency stations.'
Lok had fallen to one knee, braced against the deck with his power fist whilst his other hand clutched the strategio-table.
'Pyriel…' N'keln's face was slashed by the intermittent strobe of emergency lighting as Dak'ir pushed himself back up from where he had fallen at the base of the stairs. Still groggy, his gaze went to the Librarian. The pulpit was a mess of sparking wires and scorched metal. Pyriel punched his way out of the twisted wreckage, his mood black.
'We must have translated into a solar storm,' he growled loudly, seizing the ragged edge of the shattered pulpit for balance as the ship was smashed again. Helmsmen in front of the Librarian desperately tried to steer the ship, whilst simultaneously fighting to stay on their feet.
The din of churning servos fought against the fiery thunder assailing the vessel, as the blast shields covering the view-points started to retract. It was an automated system that kicked in as soon as the Geller fields powered down and the ship re-entered realspace.
Dak'ir felt the danger before he saw a thin line of ultra-bright light creeping into being at the bottom edge of the shielding.
'Shut th—'
Horrified screams smothered the brother-sergeant's warning as multiple shafts of super-heated light reached into the bridge. An ensign nearest the viewpoint spontaneously combusted as the deadly solar energy washed over him. Others at the consoles suffered a similar fate. A shipmaster spun, crying for the Emperor's mercy, the left side of his face a blackened ruin. A naval armsman, with enough presence of mind to hunker down behind a console, pulled his laspistol and administered a killing shot between the poor bastard's pleading eyes.
Dak'ir felt the heat against his armour tangibly. It was like wading through a wind tunnel as he fought to reach the blast shield's emergency override lever. Not wearing his battle-helm, the view for Dak'ir shimmered through a heat haze. His naked skin was untroubled by it, though he saw a blistering servitor less resilient to the solar flare. It ravaged the inner walls, setting cables aflame and burning out circuitry.
Pyriel threw up a force dome around the crew, who crawled into it on their hands and knees. The blinded and the burned were dragged, mewling, into the psychic sanctuary whilst the dead were left to crisp and blacken, their bodies becoming human torches in the blaze.
The crack in the shielding was only centimetres thick when Dak'ir reached the override panel and threw back the lever. Agonisingly slowly, the armour plates rolled shut again and the hellish light was cut off.
Pyriel ended the force dome and sagged. His face was beaded with sweat, but his eyes conveyed his gratitude as his gaze met Dak'ir's.
The smoking ruins of men lay all about the bridge, their charred corpses like dark shadowy husks on the scorched deck.
'Medical crews onto the bridge now,' Lok spoke into his gorget, linked in with the ship's communication systems. The edges of his pauldrons were black, as if filmed with a layer of thick soot, and heat emanated off his bald pate.
'Master Argos,' N'keln barked into the throne vox. The fiery roar of the storm had not relented, making it difficult to convey orders. 'Damage report.'
Static filled the bridge's vox-emitters. The Techmarine's voice was strained as it fought to be heard through the interference. Background clamour from the Enginarium deck where Argos was situated impeded the clarity further.
'Hull engines are non-functional, aft thruster banks three through eighteen are showing sporadic power emissions. Shields are down and decks thirteen through twenty-six are showing critical damage, possibly an integrity breach.'
It was a grim report.
'What hit us?'
'The port-side of the ship was struck by a light beam from the solar storm. It burned through our outer armour, took out our shields and strafed most of the sun-side decks. Entire sections were ripped out. The worst hit areas were totally burned. Everything there is ash. I've shut them down already.'
'Vulkan's mercy…' breathed N'keln.
Somehow, perhaps through his augmetics, Argos heard him.
'Imagine a melta gun at point-blank range against a suit of ceramite.'
Dak'ir found he had no desire to.
'Give me something p
ositive, brother,' said N'keln, interrupting the sergeant's bleak remembrance.
The Techmarine's response was unintentionally dry.
'We are still aloft.'
The captain smiled without mirth. He was distracted for a moment as the blast doors opened and medicae teams spilled through to tend to the injured and remove the dead. Lok directed them for his captain, as N'keln continued to speak with his chief Techmarine.
'How long will that be the case whilst we are breached?'
There was a delay as the crackling retort of the vox-emitters blighted Argos's reply.
'Not long,' he said at last.
N'keln looked Dak'ir in the eye, his face assuming a stern cast. The breached decks would have to be purged and sealed. Hundreds, if not thousands, of human serfs worked in those areas of the ship - N'keln would be condemning them all to death.
'Alone, they cannot survive,' stated Dak'ir, already knowing his captain's mind.
N'keln nodded.
'That's why you're going to gather your squad - Lok, you too - ' he added with a side glance, 'and assist in the evacuation. Save as many as you can, brothers. I will order the decks locked down in fifteen minutes.'
Dak'ir rapped his pauldron, and he and Lok ran from the bridge, the din of their armour clanking urgently behind them.
II
Sinner and Saviour
Iagon was pitched off his feet as a violent tremor rippled across the solitorium. Zo'kar yelped in pain as he was torn from the Salamander's grasp. A low rumble echoed through the chamber, followed by the sound of tearing metal and a crash of steel. Something fell from the ceiling and the brander-priest was lost from Iagon's view. Heaving himself up from his prone position, filtering out the sudden roar invading his senses, Iagon staggered through the half-dark until he came to a pile of wreckage. The ceiling of the solitorium had collapsed. Zo'kar's pitiful face, the hood cast back in the fall, could be seen beneath it. Feeble arms pushed against a thick adamantium rebar crushing the brander-priest's chest. Blood was leaking from a wound concealed by his robes, a dark patch spreading over the fabric as he struggled.