by Nick Kyme
Ignoring the bullets skimming off his power armour, some punching small holes but stopping at the layered ceramite, Dak'ir rose to his feet. His brothers followed him.
'Purify!' roared the sergeant and the flamers opened up at last.
A curtain of fire swept over the last of the orks. Superheated promethium cooked engines and melted tyres to rubberised slag. The greenskins bayed as they burned, crumpling down as they were engulfed by the intense wave.
Caught between the twin storms of bolters and flamers, barely a score of orks remained. Roughly half staggered, bereft of their vehicles, dazed and enraged to within a few metres of the outcrop when Dak'ir let his bolter hang lose on its strap and unsheathed his chainsword. His voice buzzed like the sound of the blades churning with their sudden activation.
'Charge!'
Dak'ir led, bounding over the rocks with his brothers on his heels. A flash of cerulean blue in his limited peripheral vision told him that Pyriel had drawn his force sword.
The Salamanders descended on the battered remnants of the ork vanguard. And tore them apart.
It was over in seconds, and as the dust finally cleared the greenskin dead were revealed, littering the ground. Orks possessed strong constitutions; they were hard beasts to kill. Amongst the carnage there'd be those that still lived, but none posed a threat to the Salamanders at this point. Beyond the dissipating smoke and ash, the rest of the splinter horde was closing. It was a sobering sight that dispelled the heady battle-euphoria of their recent victory.
Over a thousand orks: more heavily armed, more resolute, more wrathful.
Whatever Argos was planning, Dak'ir hoped it would be ready soon and powerful enough to level a small army.
'Fall back,' he ordered, 'and recover any partially spent clips. We're going to need every single round.'
They arrived at the main Salamander deployment almost at the same time as the Thunderfire cannons and Dreadnoughts.
Agatone had ordered the withdrawal of the heavy guns as soon as the ork vanguard was in the ''dragon's mouth'', as he would later refer to it. Dak'ir's troops had fallen back a short time after that, but the better foot speed of the battle-brothers had averaged out the head start fairly equally.
The brother-sergeant seemed distracted. As Dak'ir approached him, he realised it was because Agatone was listening intently to the comm-feed in his ear. He nodded curtly, his face grim.
'A much larger horde of greenskins has amassed against the iron fortress. Captain N'keln is currently under siege,' he announced.
'How large a force are we talking about, here?' asked Dak'ir, aware that the main horde they would soon face numbered in the thousands.
'Estimations are hazy,' Agatone replied. 'They reckon tens of thousands.'
Dak'ir shook his head ruefully, before pointing to the lunar eclipse. 'The black rock up there orbits this planet, and when it closes the orks will increase in number again.'
Agatone looked up to the ghastly planetoid, like a baleful black orb, and frowned darkly.
'We must reunite our forces,' he decided. 'Find a way to get to Captain N'keln and our brothers before they're worn down by the siege.'
'We are in no position to lift it, Sergeant Agatone,' Pyriel interceded, displaying a cold pragmatism normally associated with their Chaplain. 'Our brothers will be measured against the anvil, as will we all.'
Agatone nodded at the Librarian's wisdom, but said in a low voice:
'Let us hope it doesn't break them.'
After that he summarised the troop dispositions one final time and went to rejoin his squad, leaving Dak'ir to do the same. With Zo'tan leading the human auxiliaries a few hundred metres back from the line of Salamanders, Dak'ir would have been a trooper down if not for Pyriel appending himself to his squad.
The Librarian had taken a keen interest in Dak'ir; for good or ill, the brother-sergeant did not know. The only certainty was that Pyriel would not let him out of his sight.
A rugged defensive line of metal storage crates, partially broken down prefab bunkers and empty ammo drums was strung out for the Salamanders to take cover behind. Battle-Brother G'heb raised his fist to indicate to his sergeant where they would be stationed. Dak'ir could feel the questions in his burning gaze, reflected in the eyes of all the Salamanders, of what happened below the earth and who this human was in their midst. Discipline let them compartmentalise the desire for veracity; survival and the protection of innocent human life overrode it for now.
Answers would come if they lived out this next battle.
Dak'ir was reticent to leave the armour suits, the settlers and especially ancient Brother Gravius behind, but was afforded little other choice. He reasoned that they had survived this long without intervention, and so they were as safe as anywhere could be on Scoria. At least while the orks' attention was fixed on their foes on the surface, they would not decide to probe any deeper.
A rhythmic chant pervaded on the breeze, interrupting Dak'ir's thoughts. The orks were marching in time to beaten drums. They saw an outnumbered foe, out of tricks, who had shown their hand and was now in the open. It galvanised them. Dak'ir felt their belligerent confidence as an intense pressure at the front of his skull. He put a hand to his forehead in a vain effort to ward off the discomfort. The others seemed affected to, but not nearly as badly.
Stand straight, sergeant, Pyriel's voice was little more than a whisper in Dak'ir's mind. It is the subconscious psychic emanation of the greenskins that you can feel.
It was crippling. Dak'ir felt like his head was about to explode with it. He gritted his teeth, unaware that he'd stooped, and straightened up.
'Dak'ir…' Ba'ken, on the other side of his sergeant to Pyriel, reached out to him.
'I'm all right, brother,' he lied. The noise in his head was deafening and blood tanged his mouth.
Ba'ken edged closer to his sergeant; the Salamander lines were packed so tightly they were almost shoulder-to-shoulder anyway.
'Lean on me until the fighting begins,' he breathed, lowering his heavy flamer slightly and using his free hand to support Dak'ir surreptitiously beneath the elbow.
Dak'ir found he had no voice to respond. Was this another vision, but manifesting in some physically debilitating way? The approaching ork horde blended into a single note of raucous white noise that eclipsed everything else. Hot, angry green light burned like sunspots before Dak'ir's eyes and he lost focus. Rage: gratuitous, boiling rage filled his mind, and he felt his fists clench in defiance of it. Something primal within him was waking, and Dak'ir fought the urge to cry out and hurl himself at the orks. He wanted to tear into them with his bare hands, to rip their flesh apart with his teeth, to beat upon their bodies until there was nothing left but bone splinters and viscera.
Through the haze of mindless anger that descended, the world was tinted an ugly green.
Listen to my voice, Dak'ir. It was Pyriel again. Remember what you are.
He clenched his fists tighter. Blood flowed into his mouth as Dak'ir bit into his lip. Fire-born, said Pyriel.
Fury like chained lightning wracked his body and it began to tremble against the strain. Synaptic warning icons behind his helmet lens that were slaved to his body's biorhythms started spiking. Heart rate was nearing cardio infarction levels, Dak'ir felt it like a frag grenade going off continuously in his chest; breathing intensified; red, flashing icons warned of imminent anaphylactic circulatory collapse; blood pressure was rising, bordering on extreme hypertension.
Fire-born, Pyriel repeated.
Dak'ir felt again the heat of Mount Deathfire. He recalled ranging through the caves of Ignea, plying the Acerbian Sea and the long climb to the summit of the Cindara Plateau.
The green haze filtered away until his vision was red-rimed once more.
'Fire-born,' uttered Dak'ir. His voice was in unison with the Librarian's psychic casting inside his head.
Dak'ir moved away from Ba'ken to show he no longer needed his brother's support. The unspoken e
xchange between them said more than any words of gratitude ever could. The bulky Salamander merely nodded his understanding and reaffirmed his grip on the heavy flamer.
The Thunderfire cannons were booming at either end of the defensive line. Unseen, they pummelled patches of advancing greenskins with clusters of surface detonations. It was like dropping a bullet into an ocean. The orks parted briefly before the explosions then closed up again, the ripples short-lived and ineffectual, the slain crushed underfoot and forgotten.
'Merciful Vulkan…'
Dak'ir heard Emek over the comm-feed.
'Never despair,' said Dak'ir to bolster his troops. The blood caked against his teeth tasted like copper. 'Never give in. Salamanders only go forward.'
Bolter fire erupted down the line as the orks came into range. The greenskins weathered it as before, but no longer marched; they had broken into a run.
'This is it. For Tu'Shan and the Emperor,' declared Dak'ir. 'For Vulkan and the glory of Prometheus!'
Forty against three thousand.
Dak'ir had looked into the primitive psyche of the orks. He knew, on an almost cellular level, their fury and aggression. Unless something changed to even the balance, many Fire-born would not live out this fight. Dak'ir vowed that he would not submit to the pyreum easily.
A dense throb built at the back of his skull. For a moment, Dak'ir thought it was the ork rage returned, but as the sound started to resonate across the ash plain he realised it was from a different source.
The massive capacitors in the Vulkan's Wrath's guns were charging. Huge upper-deck turrets swivelled into position with the churning retort of metal. The air crackled with slow actinic discharge, magnetising the metallic elements in the ash and grit particles, statically adhering them to the Salamanders' boots and leg greaves. The throb built to a high-pitched whine and Dak'ir saw a nimbus of electrical energy spark and fork around the mouth of the guns.
An instant later and they were unleashed.
A blast wave, so heavy and powerful it put the Salamanders on their knees, rippled across the ash plain. Concave slashes of grey scudded in the wake of the turret guns' lethal discharge, swirling mini-vortices of displaced ash and dirt.
The barrage lasted a few seconds but the greenskin horde was left devastated by it. Strike cruiser guns were intended to be fired at extreme ranges in the depths of space against massive, heavily-armoured and void-shielded targets. The firepower they could bring to bear was insanely destructive. Argos, in his genius, had only activated a small portion of the guns. The laser battery was enough to atomise vast chunks of the greenskin army, slaying hundreds in a deadly las-duster. Several thousand super-powerful blasts had emitted from the guns, but at such frequency and velocity that they appeared as one continuous beam. Those not caught directly in the beam were burned by it. Several hundred greenskins were already ablaze; some wandered about aimlessly amongst the scorched earth, others were just charred husks. The rest were crippled by shock and disorientation, blinded and deafened by the terrible assault.
Dak'ir was getting to his feet when Agatone, his voice cold and menacing, came over the comm-feed.
'The greenskins are down. Close in and finish them. Salamanders attack!'
A roar of thrusters ripped into the air as Acting-Sergeant Gannon and his Assault squad surged upwards on contrails of smoke and fire. Their blades were drawn, eager to taste ork blood.
The foot troops barged over the makeshift barricade together, bolters flaring. Flamers tramped alongside them, whilst the heavy static guns stayed behind and pummelled the decimated greenskin horde from distance.
From the flanks, the Dreadnoughts closed the deadly trap and in the resulting carnage the ork splinter force was destroyed utterly.
Greenskin blood swathed Dak'ir's faceplate and he removed his battle-helm so he could better see. Execution teams roamed through the smoke coiling across the dunes. Anonymous bursts, sharp and sporadic, occasionally broke the eerie quiet of post-battle as greenskin wounded were finished off.
Looking above the carnage, Dak'ir saw the horizon and imagined the greater horde still out there laying siege to the iron fortress. He also wondered how they could hope to break such a massive force with the troops at their disposal. Defenders would have to remain with the Vulkan's Wrath. It was their only way off a planet that was slowly breaking apart. The tremors were almost constant now, the distant volcanoes erupting with ominous regularity. Even without the eclipse, Dak'ir reckoned the skies would still be grey with falling ash.
'Like Moribar,' he muttered to himself, unaware that he'd just echoed the earlier words of his rival, Tsu'gan. At the back of his mind, Dak'ir felt that the dark legacy of the Dragon Warriors was interwoven with the fate of 3rd Company somehow, particularly that of him and Tsu'gan. He even sensed their clawed caress on this distant world.
Agatone emerged through the murk into Dak'ir's eye line. He was wiping greenskin blood from his power sword as he approached.
'The orks are slain,' he said with finality.
'If they return, we'll have Master Argos engage the Vulkan's Wrath's guns again.'
Agatone shook his head.
'No we won't. Argos has told me he can only fire them once. The recoil might collapse the bedrock holding up the ship and bury it for good. He won't risk it.'
'Then our reprieve is short-lived,' said Dak'ir.
'Precisely.'
'Any word from Captain N'keln?'
'We're trying to raise him now, but there are other matters I wish to attend to first.' Agatone's cadence was leading.
'The human settler?' Dak'ir asked, already knowing the answer.
'Precisely,' Agatone repeated. 'What did you find below the earth?'
Dak'ir kept his tone level, so his brother-sergeant would be sure of his sincerity.
'We found Nocturne.'
Agatone's face betrayed his incredulity.
'Let me introduce you to Sonnar Illiad,' said Dak'ir. 'There is much you should know, brother.'
II
Death by Guilt
The dull report of explosions rumbled through the walls of the keep, manifesting physically as dust motes spilling from the ceiling. The siege was in its second phase as the greenskin warboss threw his seemingly inexhaustible forces against the Salamander-held wall. Thus far, the casualties had been few. Brother Catus had needed his neck patching up before he could return to battle and Shen'kar had received several broken bones from his fall, but those had been swiftly righted and the Inferno Guard was back at his captain's side.
There were more severe cases. Two Salamanders were currently laid out, supine, their sus-an membranes having shut their bodies down in response to the grievous wounds they'd received during the first ork assault.
Other more minor injuries - severed hands, gouged eyes, punctured lungs - appeared more frequently. Gauntlets drenched in blood, Fugis was glad of the work, but he was also glad of the solitude of the keep. Ever since Naveem and his much-maligned pact with Iagon, the Apothecary had begun to doubt himself. An excuse to stay behind the lines, away from the thunder of battle, was ready-made with the need for him to monitor the two comatose Astartes.
It was anathema for a Salamander, for any Space Marine, to shirk away from combat like this. Fugis knew it, and it preyed upon his thoughts destructively.
He allowed his gaze to wander out of the open-doored cell, one of many in the keep - this one had been cleansed by Chaplain Elysius and a flamer team, and reappropriated for use as an Apothecarion, though Fugis doubted the Iron Warriors had used it for such a curative purpose - and alight upon the shadowed confines of the torture chamber. It was close by, and the doorway to the cell was concealed by a black curtain of plastek. The traitor prisoner was inside, secured upon'one of the Chaplain's devices, his chirurgeon-interrogators acting as dutiful but deadly lapdogs outside.
It felt odd to Fugis; a place of torture and a place of healing in such close proximity. On reflection, though, perhaps the two were not so
disparate.
An internal chrono-icon flashed up on the Apothecary's medi-gauntlet display, reminding him that the monitoring cycle for the stricken warriors in his care was due. Fugis gripped the edges of a mortuary slab and bowed his head.
'Vulkan's fire beats in my breast…' he began, in an effort to steel himself.
Footsteps approaching before him arrested what was next in the catechism. Fugis started to look up slowly and saw first the green of a Salamander's battle-plate.
'Brother…' he started to say, when he noticed the ragged hole in the Salamander's plastron and found the dead eyes of Naveem glaring back at him.
'Brother.' Naveem's words were slurred, but as if there were a second voice laid over the first. His breath was rank with decay and a strong stench of old blood wafted from his wound, as stinging as the irony in Naveem's tone.
His face was set in a rictus sneer.
'You're dead,' Fugis asserted ludicrously. He reached for his bolt pistol, recognising an emanation of the warp. It seemed the Chaplain's blessing had not been stringent enough and the flamers had failed to purify completely.
'Thanks to you,' replied Naveem, in that same dual voice. He didn't move, but just stood there, radiating malice and accusation. 'You killed my legacy and me, brother.'
Fugis's anger swelled at the apparition's mockery. He felt the reassuring solidity of the bolt pistol in his grasp.
'You cannot kill me twice, brother,'said Naveem.
'You are not my brother, denizen of the warp,' Fugis countered and levelled the pistol.
'I am your guilt and your doubt, Fugis,' it said.
The Apothecary faltered. What good would a bolt pistol do against a figment of his mind? The weapon wavered in his grasp.
'Now,' it said. 'Put the gun to your forehead.'
Fugis's face creased defiantly, but he found himself slowly turning the pistol around. He did feel guilty for what had happened to Naveem. It gnawed at his soul, and weighed down his spirit. Fugis wanted to succumb to it, to be drawn down into the darkness there and to never resurface.