Born of Flame

by Nick Kyme

  Obek nodded, absent-mindedly rubbing the stump of his arm. It was hard not to imagine it itching or being able to grip with it, but he supposed he would adjust. He turned to the last of the gathered officers.

  ‘Varr, what say you? You’re quiet, Pyrus. I don’t like it.’

  Varr had been looking off into the distance, as if seeing something none of the others could perceive. Most thought him slightly mad, some saying he had stared into the heart of Deathfire too long and been afflicted by it. Certainly, he was strange, but Obek had always thought Varr possessed a sort of shamanic wisdom that reminded him of tales of the earth-shamans of old Nocturne. Then again, perhaps Varr was just insane.

  He turned to Obek with a look of utter certitude on his scarred face.

  ‘Someone else is in here with us.’

  Perhaps Zandu’s notion about an assault on a second front had already become reality.

  ‘What?’

  There was a pause, as if everyone were gauging the veracity of what Varr had just said.

  ‘Where?’ asked Obek, trusting Varr’s instincts and pulling out his borrowed pistol.

  The other legionaries reached for their weapons.

  ‘Fai’sho, make sure the door is secure. Find T’kell,’ said Obek, and the Apothecary nodded before heading off.

  A shouted warning came a moment later from somewhere deeper in the Wrought. It was Xen.

  ‘Zandu, Varr,’ he told the others, ‘you are with me.’

  They found Xen outside one of the arming chambers. He had Raios and Phokan with him.

  The Wrought was truly vast and comprised dozens, maybe even hundreds of weapon chambers, ammunition vaults, armouries and even hangars. In the short time they had been cloistered inside, the Salamanders had scarcely scratched the edge of what it harboured.

  ‘Hold here,’ Xen said as Obek approached. Phokan and Raios had formed a perimeter at either end of an arch that led into the room, guns trained inwards.

  ‘Be careful with those,’ said Obek to the legionaries.

  Given the sheer amount of stockpiled war materiel, any stray shell could instigate a devastating chain reaction that would tear the Wrought apart and them with it.

  Obek drew in close to the vexillary.

  ‘Show me…’

  ‘At first I mistook it for an empty suit of Mark Four.’ Xen gestured with his blade and Obek followed where it pointed in the darkness to a room filled with dusty war-plate. It was ranked up and arrayed in files that went at least six deep.

  ‘Phokan found it. He thought we could use the war-plate to patch up our own. And you need a fresh helm, brother-captain.’

  Something was moving; Obek saw it now. In the darkness, in the sheer vastness, it had been hard to discern, but a figure went slowly from one suit of power armour to the next. It was bulky, easily the size of a legionary.

  ‘Have you hailed it?’ asked Obek.

  ‘It could not have failed to hear my warning, but gave no reaction. I would dearly like to shoot it.’

  ‘Not until we know who or what it is. Are all our legionaries accounted for?’

  Xen nodded, then cursed. ‘This place is a damn labyrinth, impossible to recon from the inside. There could be an army in here and we would never know.’

  ‘There is definitely an army out there, brother, one that’s intent on killing us,’ said Obek. ‘I’ll take our chances in here.’

  ‘I could draw it out, brother-captain,’ offered Raios, ‘confront it. See what we’re up against.’

  ‘Ever eager, vengu,’ muttered Phokan, earning a scowl from the other Drake.

  Obek ignored them, instead turning to Xen, who nodded again.

  ‘Do it,’ Obek said to Raios, who gave an ardent salute before breaking off from his brothers. ‘The rest of you make ready.’

  Fai’sho found T’kell. He was standing before the door to the Wrought, muttering to himself.

  ‘Forgefather?’ Fai’sho ventured.

  T’kell barely moved. Apart from Fai’sho, he was alone and had his back to the Apothecary. He took a step towards the door.

  ‘Brother, what are you doing?’ asked Fai’sho.

  ‘I cannot…’

  As Fai’sho reached him, T’kell turned around. His plasma pistol glinted in the torchlight and drew the Apothecary’s eye.

  ‘Wha–?’

  ‘I cannot… stop it!’

  T’kell fired.

  Raios had crossed into the arming chamber, his bolter nestled in the crook of his arm and against his chin as he closed on the figure.

  ‘Turn,’ he warned, ‘turn and identify yourself. Do it–’

  ‘I pose no threat to you, legionary.’

  It stepped into the light, revealing a Mechanicum adept in red robes. It looked human enough, but most of its body, all that Raios could see at least, was cybernetic.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Obek and the others had followed, leaving Phokan behind as rearguard.

  The adept turned his gaze upon the Salamanders captain.

  ‘An archivist, left here by my Martian masters. Did you think your Lord Vulkan built this place alone? I am tasked with its upkeep, its cataloguing.’

  ‘Its protection?’ asked Xen, not yet having let down his guard.

  The archivist addressed him. ‘I have no combat faculties at all, though I do possess extensive knowledge of this armoury and the war materiel confined within. For instance, I know there is a hangar at the core of the Wrought large enough for a forge ship. I also know Vulkan intended for this place to harbour his greatest creations.’

  Zandu turned to Obek, and murmured, ‘Perhaps we can use him?’

  ‘This place can no longer be a safehold for the artefacts,’ Obek mused aloud. ‘But his knowledge could prove useful.’ He addressed the archivist. ‘Do you know where the larger weapons are kept? The sentry guns, rapiers, tarantulas?’

  The archivist nodded.

  ‘I have extensive knowledge of this armoury, as I have already said.’

  ‘He is as irritating as most Martians,’ uttered Xen, lowering his aim.

  ‘But first, an interrogative,’ said the archivist.

  Obek frowned, confused at the sudden turn of events, but the adept was unarmed and had his hands by his sides. His robes betrayed no weapons, nor did his posture suggest a threat, and yet…

  ‘Do you have the primarch’s artefacts with you now?’ asked the archivist. ‘Are they located somewhere on this world?’

  Scowling, Obek raised his bolt pistol again.

  ‘Who are you? Really? What is your business here?’

  ‘You know who I am,’ the archivist told him, but did not make any gesture, threatening or otherwise. His voice emanated from a vocal emitter buried somewhere in his robes and behind his hood.

  Eyes widening, Obek realised the truth. ‘The adept…’

  Again, the archivist nodded, but a puppet on another’s binaric strings.

  ‘How?’ asked Xen. ‘He was dead.’

  ‘I was. I am,’ said Regulus in the voice of the archivist. ‘I am not. All of these states of being, however contradictory they must seem, are true. You are welcome to consider the implications, but I theorise understanding my nature will be of secondary importance to you.’

  Xen raised his bolter. They all did.

  ‘It will not matter,’ Regulus told them. ‘Have you not worked it out yet?’

  ‘Kill it,’ said Obek.

  The Salamanders legionaries fired and the archivist was destroyed, but in the dying roar of the muzzle flare they heard another sound echoing through the armoury.

  Xen turned to the others.

  ‘The door…’

  It was opening.

  Fai’sho was almost certainly dead. Lying face down, a smouldering hole had been cored through the Apothecary’s torso and came out through his ruptured power pack. The absence of much blood suggested a plasma wound.

  His killer was standing before them and all ember-red eyes were draw
n to him.

  ‘T’kell…’

  Obek was first to speak, but had yet to lower his weapon.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  The mechanism for the door had been engaged and a wafer-thin crack appeared at its base as it began to rise.

  ‘I am… not in control,’ T’kell sputtered, his mechanised voice pained with all-too-human agony.

  ‘Captain!’ Xen stepped in front of Obek, readying to fire. ‘He is armed.’

  T’kell had his plasma pistol in his hand, held at waist height but not yet primed to fire.

  ‘Halt the mechanism,’ Obek told him, urging Xen aside. ‘Do it, Forgefather.’

  ‘I want to… I…’ He tapped his forehead. ‘He’s in here… The scrapcode, it infected me. I thought I had… purged it. I was wrong.’

  The plasma pistol seemed to rise of its own volition, and Xen and the others were about to fire when Obek shouted, ‘Wait!’

  The door was rising, and T’kell could not or would not stop it. He had a gun to them, one he had already used to take out Fai’sho.

  ‘Muster whoever’s left,’ Obek said to Xen. ‘Bring up anything we’ve already found and set up a fire cordon. We have no time to argue, brother.’

  Xen did as commanded, first backing off and then running deeper into the Wrought, shouting orders down the vox. He took Raios and Phokan with him. Zandu stayed by his captain’s side.

  ‘You too, sergeant.’

  ‘Negative, brother-captain.’

  Obek looked at him ruefully, but conceded.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it,’ he asked T’kell, ‘who struck me from behind at the encampment? Even then, he had you in his thrall.’

  T’kell nodded. The plasma pistol rose further. He had almost pressed it to his temple…

  ‘I can stop it.’

  Obek shook his head. ‘Not that way, Forgefather. You are needed. Vulkan gave you a sacred charge, one which you asked me to help you fulfil.’

  ‘I can stop it.’

  T’kell fired.

  Obek shouted out, ‘No!’ He reached out for him, but it was too late.

  And the door kept on rising.

  Kurnan had marshalled his forces outside the door. The corridor was wide enough for a large fire team to rank up ten abreast, so he had the servitors form their vanguard.

  His fellow Sons of Horus would advance as a second wave, using the Mechanicum troops as ablative armour.

  ‘It rises, brother,’ said Ghodak, staring through the massing cyber-organic bodies.

  Kurnan nodded, his eyes also on the crack at the base of the door.

  ‘They will walk into certain destruction without hesitation?’ He asked the only servitor to have broken ranks and joined the legionaries.

  ‘They neither know nor feel any fear, or sense of self-preservation, captain,’ said the drone in its monotone voice, but with the unmistakable arrogance of Regulus.

  ‘You are sure, adept? By now, the Salamanders will have had time to make preparations.’

  ‘Be assured, they will not falter.’

  Several hundred had ranked up before the doors, what remained of the skitarii inserted amongst them.

  Kurnan’s own forces were less numerous. He reckoned they must be close to whatever the sons of Vulkan still possessed.

  ‘I want the Techmarine alive, though,’ said the servitor, and there was something sinister about the way it uttered the words so coldly. ‘I have use for him yet. He has knowledge I would possess for my–’

  He paused, like an interrupted vox-cast. Dead air reigned for a few seconds.

  ‘That was unexpected.’

  Kurnan scowled. ‘You are lying to me, emissary. And when this is over I will have the truth of what you are doing here.’

  The servitor did not answer. Its dead gaze was fixed upon the door that was slowly rising.

  Watching and waiting. As soon as it reached halfway and was high enough to pass through, the firefight began.

  As Xen activated the sentry guns, Obek and Zandu dragged T’kell behind the firing line.

  Arranged in a sickle-shaped ring, facing the doorway from every aspect with enfilading firing solutions, the claw-mounted rapiers and tarantulas roared to life the moment they detected movement.

  ‘Here they come!’ Xen had to shout to be heard above the thunderous report of the guns. His armour lit up with the muzzle flare, casting it in pale monochrome.

  His brothers were lit the same, the warriors of the Unscarred aligned in a shooting formation of their own several feet back from the automated cannons.

  A blistering salvo of return fire met them, las-beams and solid shot meeting in a deathly storm. Three of the sentry guns went down quickly, torn apart from the combined fusillade of a slow-moving but relentless Mechanicum battle cohort.

  Despite the toll meted upon them, the servitors kept coming. Some stumbled, trammelled by the bodies of the fallen, only to be crushed by the shambling ranks that followed in their wake.

  ‘Sons of Vulkan,’ declared Obek, taking up position in the firing line, his bolt pistol held out in front of him, as potent a symbol as any banner or icon, ‘here we stand in the halls of our father’s last legacy. We are all that remains here to defend it.’

  He looked to T’kell, his half-blasted skull fused with blood and oil, then Zandu, who looked close to death, and Xen, who had unfurled the banner he so vehemently wanted to discard in favour of a more glorious calling, and knew he would gladly die with these men, these brothers of Nocturne. Even Varr, who could not hide the mania in his eyes, the scar he bore, the scars they all carried…

  ‘What is the meaning of the sacrifice?’

  The door kept rising. The servitors kept coming. The sentry guns steadily fell silent.

  An endless horde against a ragged band of sons of the forge…

  ‘To live when others died,’ the others answered in unison. ‘To never know the pain of our greatest betrayal. To never feel the bite of our reflected shame in the traitor’s knife,’ they cried, voices rising in a crescendo of defiance. ‘To have never bled upon the black sands of Isstvan.’

  The horde still came, implacable despite horrific losses, and amidst their ranks was the glint of the war-plate of a Legion turned renegade.

  ‘I give you your purpose,’ bellowed Obek, gesturing to the traitors, ‘and name us Unscarred no longer! To know glory. To find vengeance. For Vulkan!’

  ‘For Vulkan!’ came the answering thunder.

  The sentry guns had almost fallen. When they did, the Salamanders would finally meet their enemy.

  SIXTEEN

  Shadow of the black sands

  No one could have accused them of not being brave. Courage was not their failing. Not knowing when to give in, not knowing when they were already dead was what undid the sons of Vulkan.

  ‘Selfless martyrs in a war they will never understand,’ muttered Kurnan. ‘Poor, deluded fools.’

  As he advanced behind the vanguard of servitors, little better than meat shields, he snatched glimpses of the Salamanders legionaries through the gaps in the bodies.

  Ragged, battle-worn, he knew the Drakes would not go down easily.

  What is it they say? Eye to eye, tooth to tooth?

  It would be bloody.

  ‘We should have done this hours ago,’ Solomus said across the vox. He was close, and turned to Kurnan, who could imagine the grin behind the legionary’s faceplate. It disgusted him, but Rayko was right. Hunting the Salamanders down would have gone better than a head-on assault into their guns, meat shield or no.

  ‘You’ll get to killing soon enough,’ said Kurnan, and cut the feed.

  The servitors had taken a beating, their ranks decimated by the auto-defences employed by Kurnan’s black-skinned cousins. Soon enough they would reach the Salamanders legionaries and then the grim toil with blades would begin.

  Before the last sentry gun went down, Obek signalled the attack.

  Xen led them in at the point of the sp
ear, the others to either flank and behind him. Raios and Phokan were close. He heard their wordless war cries as they fought with the tenacity expected of Firedrakes. Xen took a servitor in the throat with his first thrust, the reverse blow severing its head, but he didn’t pause. Raios had moved ahead a step, splitting a skitarii down the clavicle and tearing off its arm. Phokan took it down, hammering it with his shoulder guard as it flailed for its firearm and stomping into the chest cavity once it was on its back.

  Drakos flashed as Xen swung it overhead, taking the lead again as he hacked into the chest of a second automaton. Ignus cleaved in from the side and the two swords met with a clash of metal and bisected the servitor.

  Again he pressed on into the horde, blood and oil sluicing off his blades as he wrenched them loose, Raios and Phokan in his peripheral vision and matching him step for step.

  ‘To never know glory,’ he roared.

  ‘To be denied vengeance,’ shouted Raios and Phokan together.

  Several servitors were dead, even more were critically wounded and a small cordon had opened up around Xen, affording him enough time to sheathe Ignus and clutch a fistful of the banner he had draped over his shoulders like a mantle. It was already drenched in gore but as he raised it aloft, the Unscarred declared their fury.

  A second line of skitarii entered the fray, firing their carbines and culverins with frenetic abandon. The urgency was akin to fear, a manifestation of the transhuman dread experienced by all who fought against Space Marines and were not transhuman themselves. Even the servitors, those that had some mote of consciousness remaining, appeared reluctant to engage when faced with the Drakes’ ferocity.

  The Salamanders legionaries used that to their advantage.

  As Xen carved a furrow into the heart of the Mechanicum troops, Zandu and Varr anchored either flank with the remnants of their squads.

  Zandu had neither the skill nor finesse of Xen, but he traded it for brute aggression. His chainsword reaped a red tally, spattering him with blood and oil. Hacking down one servitor, pushing the burring teeth into its gelid flesh until the blade bit deep, he stamped on the skull of another that had been trying to rise. A third he seized around the throat, his other hand still wrapped around the hilt of his chainsword, and squeezed until his gauntleted fingers met and the servitor’s head came off in his hand.