by Nick Kyme
'This place reeks of death,' snarled Tiberon, sifting through the wreckage of the Warsmith's tools.
The captive Iron Warrior was gone. The ghoul-drones had been removed too, and burned upon the same smouldering pyres as the slain Iron Warrior garrison.
Chaplain Elysius had already left, going to his duties. Tsu'gan and his squad had remained behind.
Another flamer burst lit up the outer corridor as Honorious and his brothers continued to purge the walls and alcoves where Tsu'gan and his warriors had almost met their demise. Cleansing by fire had quietened the voices, but not engulfed them completely. The brother-sergeant was grateful this would be a short stay. Their mission was to search amongst the wreckage for anything that might shed light on the Iron Warriors' presence on Scoria and stand guard over Techmarine Draedius.
The Mechanicus adept had been sent from the Vulkan's Wrath, at N'keln's behest and Master Argos's concession, to examine the device the Warsmith had laboured over so manically. It was a cannon: forged of dark metal with a long, telescopic barrel and angled towards a blast door mounted in the ceiling. Though hidden in the metal floor plating, the weapon was obviously elevated into position via a pneumatic lifter. Its intended target, however, remained a mystery.
Tsu'gan knew artillery and he likened this one to the Earthshaker cannon most commonly employed by regiments of the Imperial Guard. Few Astartes Chapters had need for such a static bombardment weapon. Strike cruisers and Thunderhawk gunships provided all the long-range support a Space Marine army needed. Surgical strikes, swift and deadly, that was the Astartes' way of war. Patient, grinding shelling went against the Codex, but then the Iron Warriors followed no such tome. Tsu'gan knew enough of the Traitor Legion to be acquainted with their use of long-range artillery. Siege-specialists as they were, the sons of Perturabo preferred to employ such weapons to crush their foes from distance, before closing in to apply the killing stroke.
Only cowards feared to attack and finish an enemy before it was already beaten. Tsu'gan felt his rancour for the Iron Warriors deepen further.
'It is more than just death that pervades the air in here,' replied Brother Lazarus with obvious distaste.
Tsu'gan scowled.
'I smell cordite and sulphur.' It was more than that. The stench was redolent of a memory, an old place just beyond reach that Tsu'gan would rather not revisit.
'Here, my lord,' called Iagon from across the chamber. 'I may have something.'
Tsu'gan went over to him and knelt down next to the crouching trooper who gestured to a dark stain seared onto the floor.
'The metal is fused,' said Iagon as his brother-sergeant traced the edge of the stain with his finger. 'It would take a great amount of heat to do that.'
'Looks old,' Tsu'gan wondered aloud, 'and shaped like a boot print. What's this?' he added, smearing a fleck of something with his finger. He tasted it and grimaced. 'Cinder.'
The grimace became a scowl.
'The Iron Warriors are not the only traitors on Scoria.'
The voice of Techmarine Draedius intruded on Tsu'gan's thoughts.
'There are no shells, no ammunition of any kind for this cannon,' he said, almost to himself. 'It is powered by a small fusion reactor.'
'Nuclear?' asked Tiberon, who was closest.
Draedius shook his head. 'No. More like energy conversion. I've found several receptacles containing trace elements of a fine powder I have no records of.'
Tsu'gan looked up. The sense of unease that permeated the lower deep of the fortress had still not abated.
'Retain a sample but hurry with your work, brother.' A blast of fire from the purging that continued outside threw haunting shadows over the side of the sergeant's face. 'I don't wish to linger here any longer than is necessary.'
Coruscating fire ripped from Pyriel's fingertips in blazing arcs. It lit the cavern in smoky shadows and burned a ragged hole through an advancing chitin. The xenos swarming the human settlement reacted to the sudden threat in their midst. They faltered, losing purpose in the face of such fury. In contrast, the settlers were galvanised, redoubling their efforts as the spark of hope became a flame.
Dak'ir took the blow from a chitin's bone-claw on his pauldron, where it dug a jagged groove in the ceramite. He lunged with his chainsword, forcing it into the creature's abyssal-black eye up to the hilt. As he wrenched the weapon free, the chitin-beast screeched. Fluid spurted from its ruined eye socket, painting Dak'ir's armour in watery grey. The Salamander moved inside its death arc, weaving around retaliatory strikes, before severing a champing mandible and burying his blood-slick chainblade into the chitin's tiny brain. Shuddering, the creature shrank back and died. Dak'ir sprang off its hardened carapace as he vaulted over the chitin, its insectile limbs spasming still, and flung himself towards another enemy.
The boy, Val'in, was running again.
He'd followed Illiad and his warriors after the Salamanders had charged, and now found himself in the midst of the fighting. Clutching a shovel in trembling hands, he came face-to-face with a chitin. The creature's blood-slick mandibles chattered expectantly as it scuttled towards him. Val'in backed away but with a hab-shack suddenly at his back, could retreat no further. Tears were streaming down the boy's face but he held his shovel up defiantly. Rearing back, the chitin chittered in what might have been pleasure before an armoured hulk intervened between the creature and its kill.
'Stay behind me!' Ba'ken yelled, grunting as he held back the chitin's bone-claws that it had thrashed down upon him. He couldn't risk the heavy flamer - the blast would have torched the boy too. Instead, he had stowed the weapon in its harness on his back and went hand-to-hand instead. Back braced, his legs arched in a weight lifter's stance, the Salamander heaved. Furrows appeared in the dirt as the creature was forced back, scrabbling ineffectually with its hind legs as it tried to regain balance.
Hot saliva dripped from the creature's mandibles as they snapped for Ba'ken's face. Finding purchase, the chitin dug in and pushed. Its body closed with the Salamander. Ba'ken scowled as the stench of dank and old earth washed over him in a fetid wave. The chitin was about to bite again, aiming to take off the Salamander's face, before Ba'ken spat a stream of acid and seared the creature. Squealing, the chitin's mandibles folded in on each other and retracted into its scalded maw.
The beast was tough, with the bulk and heft of a tank. Ba'ken felt his strength yielding to it and roared to draw on his inner reserves. His secondary heart pumped blood frantically, his body adopting a heightened battle-state, impelling a sudden surge from the Astartes's muscles.
'Xenos scum,' he spat, using hate to fuel his efforts.
A second chitin, just finished gnawing on a settler, emerged on Ba'ken's left flank. The Salamander saw it scuttle into his eye line.
Unarmed, there was no way he could fight them both.
The ragged corpse of the half-devoured settler slumped from the second chitin's maw. Stepping over it, bones crunching under the chitin's weight, the creature advanced upon Ba'ken.
Rushing into its path was Val'in. He swung his shovel madly from left to right in a vain effort to slow the beast.
Ba'ken's face contorted with horror. 'Flee!' he urged. 'Hide, boy!'
Val'in wasn't listening. He stood before the massive chitin bravely, trying to defend his saviour as he had defended him.
'No!' cried Ba'ken, distraught as the chitin loomed.
Explosive impacts rippled down the creature's flank, tearing up chips of carapace and punching holes through flesh. The chitin was spun about from the force of the bolter fire thundering against it. Screeching, grey sludge drooling from its shattered maw, it slumped and was still.
Apion drew close and fired an execution burst into the creature's shrivelled head.
Emek appeared alongside him, smoke drooling from his flamer. 'Cleanse and burn!' he bellowed, then, 'Down, brother!'
With a supreme effort, Ba'ken shoved the creature he was wrestling with. It rolled back onto its
haunches as the Salamander dropped into a crouch and fiery promethium spewed overhead. Ba'ken felt its heat against his neck, and couldn't resist looking up into the flames that consumed the chitin. His eyes blazed vengefully as the creature was incinerated, its death screams smothered by the weapon's roar.
Ba'ken scowled at the beast, unhitching his heavy flamer before turning and unleashing a torrent of fire into a shambling chitin. Stomping over to a hab-shack, he checked inside and saw several settlers cowering within. They shrank back at the Salamander's sudden appearance.
Ba'ken showed them his palm, his deep voice resonating around the metal dwelling.
'Have no fear,' he told the settlers, before turning to address Val'in. 'In here. Come now,' he said and the boy obeyed, clutching the shovel to his chest as he scampered inside. Ba'ken closed the tin door after him, hoping it would be enough to keep them safe.
In the distance, war was calling. Ba'ken's warrior spirit answered and he hurled himself, flamer blazing, into the fight.
All across the settlement, the Salamanders were gaining the upper hand. The heavy thunk-thud of bolters filled the air. The chitin were blasted apart in the storm, chased down by rampant settlers descending murderously on their stricken and wounded attackers.
Illiad was fearless as he led a group of men, Akuma at his side, driving back the creatures with determined las-salvos. Though not as deadly or decisive as the Astartes, they accounted an impressive tally.
Against the combined might of the Astartes and Illiad's well-drilled troops, the chitin did not last long. Unprepared to face such an implacable foe as the Salamanders, what was left of the horde fled into their emergence holes bloodied and battered.
Dak'ir was wiping grey chitin blood from his powered-down chainsword when he saw Akuma spit down one of the emergence holes. Anger was written indelibly on the overseer's face. It turned to despair when he surveyed the destruction around him.
Blood soaked the thoroughfare now and hab-stacks lay crushed or torn open. As Illiad gathered teams to begin collapsing the emergence holes using explosives, a mournful dirge was struck up by the wounded and the grievers for the dead. Wailing infants, some of them now orphans, added their own sorrowful chorus.
One hundred and fifty-four had died in the chitin attack; not all men, not all armed. Another thirty-eight would not live out their injuries. Almost a fifth of the entire human population killed in a single blow.
Silently, the Salamanders helped retrieve the dead.
At one point, Dak'ir saw Brother Apion looking down emptily at a woman clinging to her slain husband. She was unwilling to let go of him as the Salamander tried to take the body and set it upon the growing pyres. In the end she had relinquished him, sobbing deeply.
Illiad lit a flare and ignited the pyres as the last of the dead were accounted for and set to rest. Dak'ir found the custom familiar as he watched the bodies burning and the smoke curling away forlornly through a natural chimney in the cavern roof. The cremation chamber was already blackened and soot gathered in the corners.
Val'in was at the ceremony too, and approached Ba'ken who watched solemnly alongside his brothers.
'Are you a Fire Angel?' asked Val'in, reaching out towards the massive warrior.
Ba'ken, almost three times the boy's height and towering over him, was surprised at the sudden upswell of emotion as Val'in's hand pressed against his greave. Perhaps the boy wanted to make sure he was real.
A part of Ba'ken was deeply saddened at the thought of this innocent knowing something of the terrors of the galaxy, but he was also moved. Val'in was not Astartes: he did not wear power armour or wield a holy bolter; he didn't even carry a lasgun or rifle. He'd had a shovel, and yet he was brave enough to stand in the path of the chitin and not run.
Ba'ken found an answer hard to come by.
Dak'ir spoke for him, but to Illiad and not the boy. 'What does the boy mean when he says ''Fire Angel''?' he asked.
Illiad's face was set in a look of resignation. The flames from the pyres seemed to deepen the lines on his brow and throw haunting shadows into his eyes. He looked suddenly older.
'I must show you something, Hazon Dak'ir,' he said. 'Will you follow me?'
After a moment, Dak'ir nodded. Perhaps it was at last time for the truth of why the Salamanders had been sent here.
Pyriel stepped forwards, indicating that he would accompany them.
'Ba'ken,' said Dak'ir, facing the massive warrior who still found himself daunted before the boy but managed to look up.
'Brother-sergeant?'
'You have command in my absence. Try to establish contact with the Vulkan's Wrath and Sergeant Agatone if you can, though I doubt you'll get a signal through all of this rock.'
'Don't think we need your protection,' snapped Akuma, having overheard the conversation. Ba'ken turned on him.
'You are stubborn, human,' he growled, though his eyes betrayed his admiration for Akuma's pride and diehard spirit. 'But the choice isn't yours to make.'
Akuma grumbled something and backed off.
After he'd checked the load of his plasma pistol and secured his chainsword, Dak'ir rested his hand on Ba'ken's pauldron and leaned in to speak into his ear.
'Guard them for me,' he said in a low voice.
'Yes, sergeant,' Bak'en answered, eyes locked with the recalcitrant overseer. 'In Vulkan's name.'
'In Vulkan's name,' Dak'ir echoed, before departing with Pyriel and following Illiad as he led them away from fire and grief.
II
Angels and Monsters
Illiad took them back down the winding tunnel road to the blast doors of the massive chamber they'd visited before. The bronzed portal was closed again now, its ancient mechanism engaged as soon as they'd left to join the battle.
Dak'ir recalled Pyriel's words as he stared silently at the gate again. The Librarian, standing alongside him, was characteristically inscrutable.
Answers lie within.
Illiad opened the gates once more and this time stepped inside, without waiting to see if the Salamanders followed.
Dak'ir passed through the threshold first, slightly tentative. But all he saw on the other side was a vast, barren room. He watched Illiad approach one of the walls and wipe away the layers of dust and grit that swathed it. Slowly, images were revealed, not unlike cave paintings but inscribed upon bare metal. The renderings were crude, but as Dak'ir approached, drawn inexorably to them, he discerned familiar shapes. He saw stars and metal giants, clad in green armour. Humans were depicted too, emerging from a crashed ship the size of a city. Flames were captured in vivid oranges and reds. In each subsequent interpretation, the ship was slowly being swallowed up by the earth as ash and rock buried it. Beasts came next, the visual history of the colony spreading down the massive walls. First were the chitin, easy to discern with their bulky carapace bodies and claws; then came something else - brutish, broad-backed figures, with dark skins and tusks. The humans were depicted fleeing from them as the metal giants protected them.
'How did you survive down here for so long, Illiad?' Dak'ir's voice echoed, breaking the silence.
Illiad paused in his unearthing of the colony's ancient lore.
'Scoria has deep veins of ore. Fyron, it is called.' He wiped the sweat of his labours from his brow. 'We are miners, generations old. Our ancestors, in their wisdom, realised the ore was combustible. It could be used to keep the reactor running, to charge our weapons and maintain our way of life, such as it is.' His face darkened. 'It was this way for many centuries, so our legends tell us.'
Dak'ir indicated the wall paintings. 'And these are your legends?'
'At first,' Illiad conceded, changing tack. 'Scoria is a hostile place. Our colony is few. One in a generation has the duty to record that generation's history in a log, though much of its formative years are drawn upon these walls. Long ago that task fell to my grandfather, who then passed it on to me after his son, my father, was killed in a cave-in.'
I
lliad paused, as if weighing up what to say next.
'Millennia ago, my ancestors came to Scoria, crash landed in a ship that had come from the stars,' he said. 'We were not alone. Giants, armoured in green plate, came with us. Most who now live don't remember who they were. They call them the Fire Angels, for it was said that they were born from the heart of the mountain. This is why Val'in addressed your warrior in this way.'
Dak'ir exchanged a look with Pyriel and the Librarian responded with a slight widening of his eyes.
Fire-born, he thought.
Illiad went on.
'After my ancestors crashed, the Fire Angels tried to return to the stars. Our history does not say why. But their ship was destroyed and terrible storms engulfed the planet. Those that ventured into it, taking the ship's smaller vessels, did not return. The rest remained with us.'
'What happened to these other Fire Angels?' asked Dak'ir.
Illiad's face became grave.
'They were our protectors,' he began simply. 'Until the black rock came, and everything changed. It was thousands of years before I was born. Brutish creatures, like tusked swine and who revelled in war, descended upon Scoria in ramshackle vessels, expelled from the black rock. It eclipsed our sun and in the darkness that followed, the swine made landfall. The stories hold that the Fire Angels fought them off, but at a cost. Every few years, the swine would come back but with greater and greater hordes. Each time the Fire Angels would march out to meet them, and each time they were victorious but less and less of them returned. Inevitably, they dwindled, falling one by one until the last of them retreated underground with my ancestors and sealed themselves in. The last Fire Angel took an oath, to protect my ancestors and pass on the tale of him and his warriors if others like them ever returned to Scoria.
The years passed and the fate of that last Fire Angel was lost to history, the warriors from beyond the stars committed to mere memory… until now. We didn't venture above the earth after that, and the surface of Scoria became lifeless, inhabited only by ghosts. The swine did not return. Some reckon it was because there was no further sport to be had.'