Born of Flame

by Nick Kyme

  But the adept had needed safe passage across the ruined city and as Lupercal’s emissary he would not be denied, even by a legionary captain of the Sons of Horus. The ship, Son of Victory, a nimble Sword-class frigate that had fought during the Gorro Hollowing as escort for one of the larger warships, had returned in response to a long-range vox hail from the adept’s servitor form and confirmed to Kurnan in whom the true power resided.

  Though diminutive in size compared to the greater ships of the line in the Warmaster’s fleet, the Son had been fashioned with resilience in mind, both to external attack and internal incursion. Of its twenty-six thousand crew, several hundred were mortal auxiliaries charged with the ship’s defence. Moreover, it carried a modest garrison of legionaries, which Kurnan would have dearly liked to have had at his disposal when the Iron Hands were slaughtering his men.

  ‘I have limited understanding of human emotion, Kurnan,’ uttered a mechanised voice from the shadows of the sanctum, ‘but even I can tell you are harbouring some anger.’

  ‘My men are dead, and you had this ship and its warriors waiting in high orbit.’

  ‘The purpose of my mission was not to preserve the fighting strength of your legionaries, captain. The Son of Victory was a contingency, in case of the need for rapid extraction. Its garrison is charged with my defence. They will be needed. Soon.’

  Regulus emerged into the wan light of the lumens. He carried his skull-headed staff and only the faintest glow of the adept’s optics penetrated the shadows of his hood. He almost appeared to glide across the floor of the sanctum, the lie only exposed by the faintest scuttling of his many limbs rattling against it.

  Kurnan nodded, and smiled ruefully. ‘A ship has appeared on our augur. A battle-barge, no less. We are dead anyway.’

  ‘I know.’

  Kurnan was taken aback. ‘And yet you seem unconcerned.’

  ‘You will die, captain, but I shall endure. Now I am back aboard the Son of Victory and in this body, the machine is infinite. And I am the machine.’

  Kurnan drew his sword. ‘I should end you here, where we stand.’

  ‘I doubt I could stop you, captain. I will be sure to inform the Warmaster of your treachery, though. You value your honour – I have seen you demonstrate this fact many times. I suspect it is why you hated Solomus so much and despised acting as henchman for me. I do not think you would sully it by killing me.’

  Kurnan roared in frustration, slamming his blade back into its sheath. ‘We cannot outrun them, we are martially outclassed…’

  ‘Let them come. They will try to take the ship and that is when we shall make them pay for every yard. I will retreat to my inner sanctum. They are coming for me, for the knowledge I possess. Hold them off, as long you can.’

  ‘To what end?’ growled Kurnan.

  ‘We cannot prevail here, captain, but I can ensure what I know does not fall into their hands.’

  ‘I could kill you still and deny them anything.’

  ‘If I could feel amusement, captain, I suspect I would do so now. My biology, my life and its perpetuity have no bearing whatsoever on the data I hold within my core. It endures after death as I endure. It must be purged.’

  ‘How?’

  Regulus returned to the shadows as a small aperture at the back of the sanctum opened, allowing him into its heart. As it closed behind him, the adept gave Kurnan a final imperative.

  ‘That is my concern, captain. You have but to seek a worthy death.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  The burning men

  Obek had returned to the Obstinate and stood in the darkness of the ship’s teleportarium.

  Corposant trailed across three metal limbs that arched over the expansive dais of the teleportation array and cast flickering illumination into the large chamber. As well as Obek and his honour guard, it revealed Ulok and a cohort of Medusan Immortals. At the chamber’s periphery stood Ahrem Gallikus. He looked on pensively, not a part of Ulok’s breacher squad, and at a signal from the Iron Father did not linger.

  ‘Second Revenant cohort,’ said Ulok without bothering to look behind him.

  Gallikus nodded, and left the chamber.

  Morikan the Silent was apparently absent too, but then he might still have been watching unseen. Obek had seldom seen the Iron Father without his ‘shadow’.

  The rest of the Shattered Legions were engaged in a direct assault on the Son of Victory.

  Twelve Caestus assault rams had deployed in a wide dispersal across the length of the frigate, the Iron Hands legionaries on board targeting the ship’s bridge, weapon decks and other strategically valuable locations. They would maintain pressure on the Son’s defenders whilst a smaller cadre, consisting of Gor’og Krask’s Terminators, would seek out the adept. Ulok had theorised that Regulus would have embedded his sanctum deep in the heart of the vessel and on one of the lower decks near the enginarium. A drop pod assault against this area of the ship had commenced after the main assault was under way.

  A continuous situational report broadcast over the vox, unheeded by the servitors and menials busying themselves with the array’s preparation and function, but listened to intently by Obek and Ulok. Its crackling refrain echoed in the large chamber and brought news that Krask had gained the lower enginarium deck.

  ‘Encountering resistance,’ Krask’s voice reverberated over the vox. The crack of weapons discharge undercut it. To Obek’s ears, it sounded like las and solid shot. Armsmen.

  A roar of bolter fire overwhelmed the vox, so intense it cut out. It returned a few seconds later with only Krask’s voice and the droning undercurrent of the ship’s engines on the feed.

  ‘Neutralised.’

  A ship schematic displayed via hololith provided positional data on the Firedrakes. Krask and his squad were making steady progress from their original point of ingress and navigating across the enginarium deck to a major nexus that hopefully led to the inner core of the ship.

  ‘The sanctum will be near,’ said Ulok, coldly regarding the schematic and the flashing icon that represented the Salamanders. ‘Engage the homer as soon as you are across its threshold.’

  ‘Affirmative… Engaging.’

  Another slew of bolter fire sounded across the vox, a cacophony of muzzle flare and muffled detonations so loud it bordered on white noise. An answering salvo came in its wake.

  ‘Renegades sighted! Sons of Horus!’

  Obek gripped the haft of his sheathed gladius all the tighter, reacting to Krask’s warning.

  ‘Taking heavy fire.’

  The vox cut out again, unable to cope with the intense auditory returns. It took longer to re-establish this time. After a tense interruption of almost a minute, the vox came back in screaming fury. A deadly firefight had erupted as entrenched renegade defenders took on Krask’s Terminators. No sterner protection existed for a Zone Mortalis engagement than Tactical Dreadnought Armour. In the grim confines of a shipboard assault, its heavy plating and potent weapon systems could tear apart bulkheads and defences, whilst weathering almost anything levelled against it.

  Yet it was not inviolable.

  The defenders of the Son of Victory hunkered behind raised automated barricades as a pair of rapier destroyers enfiladed down the corridor. Krask reflected that the renegades must have purposefully deployed at a cross-junction with a sealed bulkhead at their backs, seemingly confident in their ability to hold this crucial nexus of interlinking corridors. Steam flooded the narrow space from ruptured heating vents and the smoke from over a dozen deck fires funnelled down to it through atmospheric turbines. Again, this was by design and intended to foul autosenses.

  Krask fought through a miasma, braced behind a dragonscale storm shield in the Firedrake vanguard as the Sons of Horus unleashed their heavy weapons. It was like advancing into a hurricane, hammered by las-beams and staggered by incendiaries. A wash of flame spewed into his midst, surging hungrily around the Drakes, intended to blind and disorientate.

  Krask h
eld fast behind his shield, roaring down the vox at his brothers to do the same. The first five legionaries in the ranks were shield-bearers, their blunt assault designed to stun an enemy formation and leave it crippled and reeling, for the second half to finish off with combi-bolters and chainfists. Its configuration was versatile and powerful, and more than enough to overwhelm whatever came the Firedrakes’ way. It was not infallible, though.

  Rath stumbled, losing his bearings for an instant before a rapier’s lascannon cored through his exposed chest. The beam struck him high, shearing through hardened adamantium and ceramite. It broke the aegis of Rath’s armour, severing through the mesh and fibre bundles in his arm, and then took off the limb at the shoulder in a welter of sparks and blood. Rath’s storm shield struck the deck with a barely audible but ominous resonation. A second beam hit his solar plexus, cutting his bellow of defiance short and burning a crater through his torso that speared all the way through his back.

  ‘Forward!’ roared Krask. The lascannons would be charging for another salvo. ‘We are the favoured of Vulkan!’

  Ba’durak took Rath’s place in the vanguard, locking shields with Krask, who had resumed a dogged advance into the teeth of the guns. Together, they marched in lockstep, yard by bitter yard and slowly, inexorably increased their pace. The rank of shields behind them did the same until the Drakes had overcome the considerable inertia exerted by their armour and charged.

  ‘Slay them!’ roared Krask, as he bulled through a barricade, smashing it apart with his hammer, Cragfell. It had been master-crafted by his own hand, an artisan weapon with a heavier head than an ordinary thunder hammer and a longer haft. Only Krask could wield it with a storm shield. He battered one renegade, smashing the shoulder and hearing bone crack. A second he rammed in the throat with the shield’s scalloped edge, cutting off the legionary’s head. It made enough room to swing Cragfell, which tore the defenders off their feet as it obliterated power armour.

  Ba’durak and the other two shield-bearers laid in with their own hammers, the energy discharge from every blow lighting up the gloom in destructive monochrome.

  As they bludgeoned the defenders, Krask signalled for the second half of his squad to move in.

  ‘Take the bulkhead,’ he ordered calmly as he speared a prone legionary through the chest with Cragfell’s fang-pommel.

  As his brothers’ chainfists began to tear up the solid bulkhead, a second tranche of defenders entered from the left-facing corridor. Krask and his men were standing in the cross-junction. Three legionaries with combi-bolters prepared to lay down covering fire as a welter of bolt shells careened off the armour and shields of the exposed Firedrakes, but never even acquired targets as a wall section farther down the corridor blew in, bringing smoke, fire and a storm of plascrete.

  Through the ragged breach came a squad of Medusan Immortals.

  ‘Hold fire,’ Krask warned, not wishing to hit the Iron Hands legionaries. They needed to push on; the bulkhead was about to yield, but the Firedrake Master could only watch in rapt fascination as the Immortals went about their gory task in utter silence.

  No war cries escaped their lips, no shouts or roars of pain or anger. They appeared implacable, redoubtable, but without true animus. The Sons of Horus had quickly regrouped and retaliated hard. A spear of burning promethium struck the Iron Hands legionaries, breaking against their shields and taking hold of their armour. The flamer-bearer maintained the pressure, and soon the entire first rank of Immortals was utterly consumed.

  Tanks spent, the flamer-bearer stepped back, but as the fire died down, Krask saw the Immortals still advancing with their bodies ablaze. No screams, just a cold determination to kill their enemies. A close range volkite burst seared off an Immortal’s arm and half of his face, but he did not cry out and kept on coming. A second was impaled on a power sword, the crackling blade thrust two-handed by its wielder as one of his battle-brothers rammed a chainsword downwards into the Immortal’s chest. It did not yield and no sound betrayed its certain agony.

  Methodically, inexorably, the Immortals took the renegades apart. As the bulkhead preventing further encroachment into the ship finally came down, Krask was left with the image of the Iron Hands legionaries bludgeoning the last of the renegades with mauls and the stocks of their bolters.

  He felt no aggression from them as he departed, no emotion at all, just a host of burning men putting others to the sword without vengeance and bereft of satisfaction of any kind.

  ‘Brothers, well met!’ he cried to them, raising his thunder hammer in salute.

  None replied; none even acknowledged the gesture. They simply turned their backs and walked on.

  ‘Master Krask…’ It was Ba’durak, come to summon his leader.

  Krask’s war-helm hid his disquiet, and he gave a shallow nod.

  ‘Onward,’ he uttered, his voice betraying his feelings. ‘Into the breach and off this ship as soon as we are able.’ As he pushed through to the vanguard, he raised his hammer again. ‘Favoured of Vulkan!’

  His brothers echoed him, but the sound of their affirmation did not allay the unease he had felt.

  Kurnan knew it would end soon. He had sharpened his blade and cleansed it of grime. He left Solomus’ blood on his armour as a grim reminder of fate. Vox reports from throughout the ship filtered through to his war-helm. Almost every deck was overrun. The bridge had fallen. Every weapon the Son of Victory had in its modest arsenal had been silenced.

  Nine legionaries, chosen by Kurnan, stood with him. Each was a veteran and their blades crackled as they were drawn, much like Kurnan’s. Each had removed their weapons belts and left them discarded in one corner of the outer sanctum.

  Here is honour, thought Kurnan. Cthonia had a barbaric culture, but amidst its slums the ganglords knew what honour meant, even if the form they knew was vicious and cruel.

  The door to the outer sanctum remained closed, but Kurnan had not sealed it. He was not hiding nor trying to prolong his life. He merely waited for his death to come and find him.

  I am here, he said to himself, and found the hatred that had lain so heavy upon his shoulders begin to ease.

  The adept had told him to seek out a worthy death, and only as the sanctum door began to rise did he learn how worthy.

  As the aperture widened and his foes became known, Kurnan smiled and knew it would be most worthy.

  A few minutes dwelling in the darkness of the mausoleum and Gallikus’ armour had already gained a rime of frost. As he pressed deeper into the chamber, the thin white veneer of it fractured and came apart. The air ghosted around the heat sinks of his generator and respirator grille.

  He found Azoth still in his casket, not amongst those chosen to assault the renegade ship, although a great many of the cryostasis vaults were empty and thickened the already nitrogen-rich air with the overbleed from their disengaged immersion pipes.

  ‘Brother…’ He uttered the word solemnly, sadly, as he placed a gauntleted hand upon the obscured glass of Azoth’s casket. A bio-scanner betrayed the life signs of the ostensible corpse within, but it was not true anima. It had not been Azoth for a long time, not since the Retiarius.

  ‘You died there,’ whispered Gallikus, and bowed his head in shame. ‘I will help you die again. I vow this. My oath.’

  Some of the frost had retreated against the heat of Gallikus’ gauntlet, and as he raised his eyes again he saw the face of his former brother through the narrow aperture he had just created.

  Though his was fraught with emotion behind the faceplate of his war-helm, Azoth wore a different mask. It spoke of endless winters and grey, chill earth. A tomb-like silence descended, undercut by the dulcet thrum of the active cryostasis vaults.

  Gallikus said nothing, and only turned and left the mausoleum behind.

  As he was leaving the chamber, he activated his helmet vox.

  ‘Saurian,’ he uttered, ‘this ends. Now.’

  He found the Apothecary waiting for him, unarmed and submiss
ive.

  The badly injured Salamanders legionaries were still prone upon their medi-slabs, though Gallikus saw one was absent.

  ‘Who did you send?’

  ‘The rad victim. Ulok wanted to see the effects of the process on him.’

  ‘With Morikan?’

  ‘Yes, he took the Salamander with him.’

  Gallikus muttered, ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘The others are to be awakened soon,’ the Apothecary said, hesitating, ‘including Azoth.’

  Gallikus shook his head. ‘How many of us are left, Saurian? How many true legionaries? No more than a handful. Ulok prefers slaves to brothers.’

  Saurian bowed his head sadly and was about to return to his work when Gallikus’ voice stopped him.

  ‘No,’ he said calmly.

  Saurian frowned. ‘It is our duty.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We cannot–’

  Since visiting the mausoleum, Gallikus had removed his helm and it hung from his belt, so when he snarled and advanced upon him, Saurian could see his fury.

  ‘No more!’ he said, seizing the Apothecary by the throat. ‘This wretchedness ends.’

  Saurian allowed Gallikus’ wrath, not struggling, and after a few moments was released.

  ‘Morikan is not here to see his will done any more,’ murmured Gallikus as he regarded the bio-signs of the wounded.

  Saurian grimaced, rubbing his injured throat.

  ‘It is betrayal, iron-brother.’

  Gallikus turned and said in a soft voice, ‘And what we have allowed already is not?’

  The Apothecary’s silence told him there was no argument.

  ‘Beyond waking the Revenants–’

  Gallikus’ attention had returned to the wounded but he warned, ‘Do not sully them with that name.’

  Saurian nodded. ‘Beyond waking our fallen brothers, to do anything more… Only the Iron Father can use the vault.’

  ‘That has been so,’ agreed Gallikus, as he approached one medi-slab in particular, ‘until now. I spoke to their captain. I trust the Drakes. I trust him.’