by Nick Kyme
The flames from the promethium explosion had crept into the outpost and flickering orange tendrils had begun to consume the renegades who fought on, nearly inviolate inside their armour.
‘Brother-sergeant!’ Xen snapped down the vox.
But Zandu was already gone, lost in his own darkness.
The burning man stood before Zandu, his armour ablaze, and his eyes pits of infernal flame.
Zandu tried to speak but his throat became so parched that only a rasp escaped his lips. Here was death; here was judgement, a final reckoning. Zandu reached out to him, to the burning man, resigned to meet his fate. Yet as they closed, another hand reached out to seize Zandu’s outstretched gauntlet and a tide of flame engulfed the burning man until he was lost amidst its roaring depths.
‘The fire…’ Zandu breathed, his wide eyes absorbing the terrifying spectacle of his vision.
‘Yes,’ Zeb’du Varr replied, ebullient as he spewed gouts of promethium into the traitors. ‘You see him, don’t you, brother?’
Zandu blinked, as if he had woken from a dream. The flamers had come forwards, just as Xen described, and were unleashing hell into the Sons of Horus ranks.
‘See whom?’ Zandu asked, as his senses returned and he resumed the fight. Did Varr see the burning man too?
Varr laughed, and it was a wicked sound, uttered by a devil.
‘See Vulkan!’ he cried aloud. ‘Ablaze and alive in the fires of battle!’
Fire wreathed all. It consumed. It undulated. It breathed.
Whenever Varr saw the flame, he knew, Vulkan is with us.
The renegades burned. At first they resisted but slowly their forms shrank before the inevitable conflagration, sagging and capitulating as they cooked in their armour. A rank of heavy flamers stood stoic before them with Varr at their head.
Bolt shells hammered off the Salamanders’ war-plate and one Drake staggered, his jet of flame spewing wide and setting fire to the ground. Another fell, his faceplate cracked apart and a great torrent of promethium rising volcanically like an eruption before he died.
Varr was oblivious. He saw fire and knew it saw him.
‘Vulkan…’ he murmured, and heard the war cry of his primarch in the billow of the flames.
Another voice intruded on his reverie. It was the blademaster, Xen.
An imperative, his duty, cleared Varr’s senses and he ordered his flamers to part like the waves of a lava sea.
‘Pyrus, hit them now!’ Xen bellowed Varr’s war-name. ‘Make way…’
The armoured backs of the heavy flamer bearers moved apart to form a breach, through which Xen led the others.
Only a short distance separated the two forces of legionaries now, the Sons of Horus having advanced as they felt a sure victory was in their grasp. Both his swords drawn, the banner of the Unscarred unfurled from a standard pole fixed to his power pack, Xen closed the gap.
Momentary disbelief robbed the renegades of a few precious seconds, as the insane charge of the Salamanders legionaries rushed out to meet them. The renegades were burning too, and the shock and disorder threw the aim of some. Bolt shells clattered uselessly against drake-scale armour, and the speartip of the Salamanders’ thrust struck.
The clash was intense, and so loud it deafened. Xen split the first renegade from clavicle to groin with a brutal crosswise slash. His falchion had an energised blade; even power armour was no proof against it. He killed two more before his next foe had recovered from the collective battle-shock afflicting the Sons of Horus and could mount some kind of defence.
Two blades of monomolecular steel met each other and began to grind.
His momentum arrested, Xen was forced to stand and actually fight rather than just batter and butcher. Break through the cordon and the Salamanders legionaries lived. Fail to do so and they died. More Sons of Horus were coming and though most had now drawn close-combat weapons, the sheer press of their numbers and skilled aggression would quickly overwhelm the Drakes if they became pinned.
Attrition suited the XVIII Legion, but not against such odds.
Xen turned the warrior’s blade to break the deadlock and used his second sword, a serrated spatha, to hack off the renegade’s hand at the wrist. A sharp thrust to the chest ended it, and he pushed forwards into the maddening swell of bodies.
Zandu was near. Xen could hear him fighting, but saw little except the fountaining of blood and the heady blur of close-quarter combat. It became ugly very fast, and blade skill meant little, as the fight became a scrum of stabbing and bludgeoning.
It made no difference to Xen. He knew every way there was to fight, and to kill. He thrust and cleaved and hacked, leaving some injured, killing others but always pressing deeper, striving to breach the back of the enemy’s ranks and seize the chance at survival that success promised.
‘Vulkan!’ he roared, and heard the fervent antiphony of his kin.
Xen felt the killing heat. It hazed the air and turned it bloody and thick.
‘Vulkan!’ he roared again, and felt a primal anger rise within. The flamers were with them now, Varr pushing his warriors hard so they didn’t remain caught in the trap.
‘So many, brother…’ uttered Zandu, his voice strained by battle across the vox. At least he was cogent again, it seemed. Xen still couldn’t lay eyes on him – too many legionaries in green and black were trying to kill him. He could answer though.
‘Ever has our Legion defied the odds… Vulkan!’
An echoing cry rang out, but from fewer voices. Xen’s muscles ached and his hearts thundered in his chest, but the momentum of the charge had almost gone and the aperture of hope he had driven towards slid inexorably closed.
‘Vulkan!’ he raged, not in triumph or defiance, but desperation.
He hoped the dead could hear his plea. He hoped the dead could deliver them.
A gunship swept in low, heavy bolters strafing the renegades’ ranks.
It ripped up the rearmost echelons of the Sons of Horus forces, chewing up bodies and sending them spiralling skywards. It moved swiftly, turbines screaming, as a swarm of missiles chased it into the clouds.
The renegades were struggling to counter the sudden aerial assault, hastily turning their heavy weapons on the Thunderhawk that had lined up for another run. They scattered, but the damage to the Sons of Horus ranks was already severe.
Obek rushed into the wake of the gunship’s carnage, dispatching the wounded with cold lethality. How quickly fortune could change. T’kell had recovered enough to fight, and did so with a fury at odds with the coldness of his Martian training. Wrath had overtaken them both as they advanced steadily through the dead and the dying. All too soon they were no longer culling the injured and came upon able-bodied enemies, but when the blow came that felled Obek, he never saw it coming.
Xen knew he would die in this misbegotten hole. An irradiated wasteland was no place for a warrior to meet his end, and he railed at the injustice of it. The knot of renegades grew tighter, a hangman readying the condemned before the inevitable drop. He caught the edge of a chainblade against his pauldron, so hard it jerked his shoulder and his guard slipped…
This is it. Damn you, Zandu. For your weakness, for your–
Muzzle flare suddenly lit up the darkness, spearing through the storm. It scythed into the backs of the renegades, hurling bodies and chewing up the earth. A tremor ran through the enemy warriors, the instinctive reaction of a creature wounded and seeking to retaliate.
The knot had loosened; Xen could see light through it. Cutting down the nearest Sons of Horus legionary, he broke the noose and took his brothers with him. Against such ferocity, the renegades fell back. The gunship returned, as did its twin, and hit the scattered Sons of Horus hard.
Xen kept fighting. He severed the arm of one traitor, then impaled another. He left them grievously wounded, before pressing on. The kill didn’t matter, only survival.
We have been surviving ever since this war began.
Zandu re
ached him as a small cordon of respite grew around the remnants of the Drakes. His outstretched finger stabbed towards the gunships.
‘Signal the retreat. We’ll make egress via the Thunderhawks.’
Xen bit his tongue, and did as ordered.
Varr anchored the fallback, unleashing a wall of flame to keep the renegades disorganised.
As they reached the gunships, which were already taking fire, Xen saw Zandu had gone back for someone. It was T’kell, unconscious and dragged by his ankle as his rescuer shot indiscriminately behind him. As the Forgemaster was flung aboard, Xen asked, ‘Firebearer?’
Zandu shook his head.
‘Slain?’ Xen could scarcely believe it.
‘I don’t know.’
It was the truth. As they had made their retreat, Zandu had seen T’kell but not Brother-Captain Obek.
Standing in the lee of the Thunderhawk’s open troop hatch, Xen made to go back but Zandu stopped him.
‘He’s gone, brother. We go back, we die.’
‘Then we die. He is our captain.’
Xen looked down at where Zandu’s hand was pressed against his breastplate, then back at the brother-sergeant.
‘He is our captain,’ he said slowly, his voice level.
‘Enough have died already.’
Xen backed down, and Zandu released him.
Varr and his squad had almost reached the gunships. Dwindling spurts of promethium from their flamers signalled their tanks were almost empty. Of the ten legionaries in the squad, only six remained. Two of those grabbed a third, still spitting fire as they dragged their wounded brother into the hold.
Zandu gave the order and the gunships began to rise. As the troop hatch closed, and the shadows closed with it, Xen spoke to the blank, unfeeling wall of the hold.
‘If he lives, we’re going back for him.’
Zandu nodded. His hands were clenched, out of anger and impotence. He tasted blood in his mouth and he thought he might have bitten his tongue during the battle. Then he felt a trickle seep from his nose, marring the faceplate of his helm, and knew he hadn’t.
His retinal lenses crackled with static. They had been doing it throughout the battle, and before. The integrity warning flashed green to red, then stayed on red.
Obek engages the Sons of Horus
SEVEN
The adept
Obek awoke. In the darkness of his confines, he tried to discern as much as he could. The room he was in was small. Certainly, he was underground, for the light was artificial and the air was bad. The walls were bare and nondescript metal. Out of instinct, he reached up for the helm that was no longer there.
‘Don’t concern yourself,’ said a voice from the shadows. The speaker came forwards, also without a helm, and a grizzled face inked with Cthonian tattoos was revealed in the half-light of an overhead lumen-strip. ‘This room is rad-scrubbed. You don’t need your armour.’
His war-plate was etched with scarification, not the ritual kind the Salamanders usually wore on their flesh, but rather the scars earned from battle. Sharp, silver flecks marred already-dirty green-and-black Legion colours. Kill markings proclaimed a legacy of war and death.
‘How many of those were my brothers?’ Obek asked, suddenly aware of the fact that he was bound and seated.
The Sons of Horus legionary regarded the markings that had drawn the Drake’s eye.
‘A fair few.’ His answer showed no malice or sadism; it sounded almost regretful. The blade in the legionary’s hand suggested he wasn’t about to see the error of his ways and surrender, though.
‘How many shot or stabbed in the back?’
He met the Salamander’s gaze, and there was a coldness in his eyes that told Obek this legionary had long since transcended pride or remorse. He could not be goaded.
‘Fewer.’
‘What do you want of me? Why am I here?’
The Son of Horus looked down on his prey.
‘Not to kill you,’ he replied, then regarded the knife. The blade was notched and the metal stained dark. ‘All evidence to the contrary. I’ve been asked not to kill you. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Who are you, legionary? Do you know you address a brother-captain?’
‘I am Rayko Solomus, and I do, which is why I won’t dishonour you by asking what you are doing on this world now. Once we begin,’ he said, ‘you will try very hard not to scream, but I want you to know there is no shame in it, not here in the pit. No one of your Legion can hear you. No one of your Legion is coming to save you.’
Obek smiled, despite the pain of his battle injuries.
‘It won’t matter. I won’t talk and you will have changed nothing. The fight will continue without me.’
And then Solomus said something that quelled the fire in Obek’s blood, turning it to ice in his veins.
‘The war is over, brother. Terra has fallen. Horus has already won.’
The cold, mechanical eyes of the adept regarded the prisoner and his warder. It had been several hours since interrogation had begun in the pit and Regulus had shut off the audio inside the small observation chamber. Solomus had been right – the Salamanders legionary had tried not to scream. More impressively, though, he had succeeded. Whatever physical pain his torturer could bring to bear, this Rahz Obek had an answer to it.
‘I have always admired the tenacity of the Eighteenth Legion,’ said Regulus, his mechanical voice issuing from the cowl of his black robes. So deep was the hood that it betrayed no sense of his face and his robes were voluminous enough to suggest only the vaguest, humanoid form.
Regulus, though, had transcended human form and humanity itself long ago. If nothing else, the mechadendrite arms that came through a gap in his robes and folded across his back were testament to that.
‘It is a risk to let them live,’ said Vosto Kurnan, his war-plate and Sons of Horus livery battle-worn. He had a sharply trimmed beard and cleanly shorn scalp. The Eye of Horus had been shaved into his left temple and the only gang tattoo he had was one of a writhing serpent over his left eye.
Regulus smiled beneath his hood, his shiny metal digits clicking against the ivory staff he clutched in his right appendage.
‘Great reward comes at great risk, legionary captain.’ He had said that before, to the Fabricator General of Mars himself, to Kelbor Hal. It was as true then as it was now, and the memory of it and what transpired soon after sent a frisson of pleasure through his electrical field. ‘Like the Vaults of Moravec, the Lord Drake’s arsenal will harbour many secrets.’
‘Save your aphorisms. I will only be sanguine once we are into the vault and have plundered it.’
Regulus ceased his tapping, and heard Kurnan unclench his teeth a little.
‘You sound sceptical…’
‘We should hunt them down.’
‘A wounded prey is a dangerous one?’ Regulus scrutinised the Salamanders legionary through the blacked-out armourglass.
‘Precisely.’
‘And how wounded are you, legionary captain?’
Kurnan scowled. ‘What?’ His hand went instinctively to the gladius sheathed at his hip.
‘That is to say,’ Regulus elaborated, ‘how many men did you lose when the Salamanders escaped? Tell me something, is it harder to fight an enemy whose back is not turned to you and whom you only slightly, instead of outrageously, outnumber?’
‘You dare…!’ Kurnan snarled.
‘Chemicals are flooding your bloodstream,’ said Regulus, ‘as your keenly honed biology reacts to your anger. The gladius you wear is four finger-widths out of its sheath, but you will not act.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because I have all the power here, and I wanted you to be reminded of this fact.’
The shadows of the observation chamber turned red at the adept’s words and the growl of servos from a mechanised presence sounded behind them.
Kurnan slipped the gladius back, but the anger was slow to subside. Regulus read it in the sudde
n increase in testosterone in the air. Heartbeat, temperature, surface perspiration, the adept had constructed a complete biological map of Kurnan’s emotional state in nanoseconds. He knew what the legionary was about to do before the legionary did.
‘Watch your tongue, adept,’ Kurnan said, turning to leave the room. He eyed the giant Castellax battle-automata Regulus was using as an enforcer, but the cold steel construct gave no response save the unwavering glare of the red optics in the servo-skull recessed below its dome-shaped head and the nascent threat of its formidable armaments. A factorum marking had been steam-seared into its carapace in Low Gothic. It read: Kronus VI.
A sound very much like laughter issued from Regulus’ voice modulator at Kurnan’s threat.
‘It’s a figure of speech,’ he said, putting on his war-helm.
‘Indeed.’
As Kurnan left, Regulus turned his attention back to the Salamanders legionary under the tender mercies of Rayko Solomus.
‘I think you’ve suffered enough,’ he murmured to himself, the Castellax behind him standing cold and impassive. ‘Let’s see what knowledge Solomus has bled out of you.’
Obek knew pain. He knew it like the feel of his sword’s grip or the heft of his bolt pistol. So the pain of a hot blade in his flesh or a fracture in his bones held little concern for him.
Still, he barely registered the stranger admitted into the chamber.
An adept of the Mechanicum, swathed in darker robes and carrying a skull-topped ivory staff. His fingers, if they could be called such, were more like spindly arachnoid limbs than anything remotely human. Even his voice was a facsimile.
‘You can stop now, legionary,’ he said in a calm but mechanised cadence.
Solomus looked up at the interruption, paused, then meticulously began to gather up his several knives. There were flecks of Obek’s blood spattered over his armour, evidence of a task diligently performed, if unsuccessfully.
‘Who are you,’ Obek growled, through bloody lips, ‘the one who promises he can end the pain if I reveal what I know?’ He laughed. It hurt to do so. ‘What I know can’t help you,’ he said, sparing a glance for Solomus, who had stood aside for the dark-robed adept. ‘You had us surrounded, outnumbered and you still failed to kill us. What makes you think you’ll do any better when we know you’re coming?’