Born of Flame

by Nick Kyme

  A slabbed road stretched before him, a part of the technoscape, but as real as stone or metal underfoot. He heard his boots echo as he traversed what he knew to be the datastream. The sound resonated, but oddly, hollowly, betraying the fact it was not sound at all but merely code his brain had begun to datasift as one footstep followed another.

  At the end of the road lay a gate, as tall as Olympus Mons and rendered in iridescent crystal. And beyond the gate, was the storm.

  T’kell could feel it repelling him with its hate and anger. He had breached its cordon and it would kill him for this transgression. As he closed on the gate, T’kell realised he was no longer clad in power armour, but in an archaic suit of tempered drake hide like a dragonknight of ages past. In his hand, he clutched a lance, seemingly plucked from the air that was not air.

  Two columns held the gate in place, and though there was no wall, no barrier either side, T’kell knew he must pass through this portal to confront the machine at the eye of the storm. He broke into a run, his lance held aloft and pointed forwards in the manner of a throwing spear, but as he closed on the gate itself the columns began to turn.

  On the sides that had faced directly away from T’kell were carved statues, on each a cyclops wrenched from the days of Terran myth. In a moment of terrifying synchronicity, both creatures opened their eye to behold the interloper.

  With a bellow, they stepped forward, leaving the columns behind and shaking the ground with the sheer weight of their tread.

  T’kell held firm, undaunted as he charged and felt the lance-tip pierce flesh…

  The cyclops roared, its muscular flank impaled by three feet of steel. It bucked and thrashed in its agony, shaking T’kell violently, but he clung on to the haft of his weapon. The second creature tried to grasp him in its meaty hands but, still hanging on to the lance one-handed in mid-air, T’kell drew a sword out of the datastream, its blade blazing with light.

  One stroke and the sword parted the cyclops’ hand from its wrist. Dark ooze flowed from the stump with a sound like machine static. Shrinking, it sank to its knees and T’kell released his grip on the lance still transfixed in the first creature. As he fell, he gripped his sword two-handed and struck off the head of the diminutive cyclops.

  As he turned, the first cyclops freed itself. It snapped the lance in two, and it discorporated into fragments of shattered code. But T’kell didn’t need it. He had the blade, and as the creature came for him, its eye alive with vengeance, the sword grew brighter still…

  It burned the creature, blinding it before searing the skin from its bones, and soon all that remained was a wire frame that capitulated under the weight of its own broken logic.

  The dust of the cyclops’ banishment lingered for a few seconds before being swept away, consumed by the voracious datastream feeding the storm.

  The gate yawned open as T’kell stood before it.

  All that remained was the storm and as he closed upon the threshold, he felt the presence of the machine and saw a lumbering shadow only partially concealed by the tempest.

  He stepped forwards and the storm took him.

  He saw the beast, the many-tentacled leviathan, and from its chasmal maw it spat lightning…

  Assailed by a barrage of power surges that sought to burn out his nervous system, T’kell held on. Amongst a screed of hostile scrapcode, he searched for the leviathan’s cortex and found a determined and hostile defender, a hunter-killer in all but name.

  He engaged it. The stench of his burning flesh was repellant, the pain almost unbearable but he held on. Even when his haptic implants fused to the inload ports, he held on.

  And when it became too much, he roared.

  ‘Vulkan!’

  Smoke was rising from his armour. Heat had seared the joints, but he held on.

  The storm beat against him and the lightning hammered his drake-hide armour until it was nothing but a sheath of blackened flesh. T’kell held the blade aloft, its light flickering against the darkness of the leviathan’s encroaching tentacles as it sought to smother him.

  He cried out, ‘Vulkan!’ but the word was emitted as a screed of code that fed the flame within the sword and saw it rekindled.

  The light grew, as bright as a sun and burning. It earthed the lightning, and took the storm’s power and fury for its own. The beast was close – it was all that T’kell could see. A single, glassy eye reared up before him and T’kell saw his fire-ravaged face reflected in it. It was abyssal, abominable, and now it must die.

  He forged the blade in his hand into a screed of purifying code and as he roared his defiance at the blackness of the abyss, he thrust…

  Gallikus backed up. He was bleeding. One of his retinal lenses had burst and a blood-shot eye stared out through the shattered aperture to regard his enemies.

  Enemies… I once called them brothers.

  Six of the Revenants were down. They needed to return to cryostasis. They needed the machine.

  ‘They’re getting slower…’ said Gallikus, slurring his words.

  Ulok did not answer. He watched from a short distance away, letting his deathless cohorts do the fighting.

  Gallikus smiled bitterly as he raised his battered shield. Four more Revenants came at him.

  Behind them, Ulok waited.

  T’kell fell to his knees. Thin wisps of vapour trailed upwards from the armour now fused to his stricken body where the heat had begun to melt and evaporate the layer of hoarfrost encasing him.

  The leviathan was dead. He had slain it.

  Managing to raise his head, T’kell looked upon the caskets and saw that it was done.

  The cold, dead eyes staring blankly through rimes of rapidly diminishing frost showed no awareness of their fate, or gratitude at their release, at least not those that T’kell could see.

  ‘That which ends, ends,’ he said, his voice no louder than a croak, and would have fallen but for the arm around his chest.

  ‘Brother Drake,’ said Saurian. ‘It seems my arrival is timely. We must get you off this ship.’

  With effort, the Apothecary managed to steady T’kell so he would not fall and then told him to turn aside as he severed the mechadendrites linking the Techmarine to the machine. A last stab of agony flared and then dulled as T’kell was released.

  ‘You have my gratitude…’ he said, breathless.

  ‘Don’t thank me until you are off the ship. And to that end, I’ll need to give you something so you can walk. The pain will only be momentary.’

  Saurian took a vial from his narthecium kit and injected T’kell in the neck. As he was helped to his feet, T’kell found his pain greatly lessened and the fog of his injuries clearing.

  ‘Stimulant,’ Saurian explained. ‘It will only last for a while. Come.’

  He led the Techmarine from the silent cryo-chamber, not sparing so much as a glance at the entombed legionaries, and brought him to an access hatch that was barely large enough to accommodate his armoured bulk.

  ‘I should let Gallikus know,’ said T’kell.

  ‘He’ll know,’ said Saurian, and gestured to the access hatch. ‘That conduit will take you all the way down to the launch bays. A ship is already prepared for you. It was done at the same time I sent your brothers.’

  T’kell nodded. ‘They are your brothers too, Saurian.’

  ‘No. I think not. The Legion died on Isstvan V. I saw it perish. I am a ghost, no different to the thawing bodies in that mausoleum we just left.’

  ‘Then well met, brother,’ T’kell replied. ‘If we make it back to Nocturne, I will see your name is remembered.’

  ‘I had a name once. I no longer carry it. I am content to be Saurian.’

  ‘So be it.’ T’kell and Saurian clasped forearms, before he entered the hatch and left the enigmatic Apothecary behind.

  The last of the Revenants fell. Gallikus wept with every blow, for it was with both grief and vindication that he ended their suffering.

  His shield hung from
his arm in pieces and he shrugged it off. His power maul had become little more than a bludgeon.

  ‘Come then, Iron Father,’ he beckoned, drawing his gladius and extending it wearily in Ulok’s direction, ‘and let my betrayal be done.’

  Ulok regarded the defeated warrior and unslung his cog-toothed axe. An energy surge crackled cerulean along the blade’s edge.

  ‘You will make a worthy Revenant, Ahrem,’ he said coldly. ‘I have always thought so.’

  ‘Only if you take me alive, Iron Father.’

  ‘You will live,’ Ulok replied. ‘You will become your namesake and join the immortal ranks. You should feel honoured.’

  A host of silent warriors stood in ranks behind him, and Gallikus knew Ulok would not order them to attack. The Iron Father only needed for Gallikus to be worn down, not dead, before he committed him to an existence of eternal servitude.

  ‘And if there is no casket for me,’ said Gallikus, his feet unsteady, ‘what then?’

  Ulok’s eye narrowed, as he realised he had been deceived.

  ‘What have you done, brother?’

  ‘It’s not what I have done,’ Gallikus replied, before Ulok charged and struck him down.

  T’kell emerged onto one of the Obstinate’s embarkation decks. Relatively small for such a large vessel, the deck had launch bays and maintenance pits for six gunships, all but one of which were empty. A reserve launch bay for use in extremis, he reasoned.

  A lone vessel rested on its landing stanchions, facing one of the aft launch bays. The gate was closed but not sealed. A skeleton deck crew was in attendance, engaged in maintenance. Shrouded lumens gave off little light and T’kell kept to the shadows as he crossed the threshold, but the crewmen paid him no heed and he realised they were all servitors.

  Saurian had been as good as his word, and despite his injuries T’kell began to move confidently towards his salvation.

  Halfway to the waiting gunship the launch gate icon went from green to red. A door from an upper deck opened and a cohort of twenty Iron Hands legionaries stepped out from a conveyer with bolters trained on the Techmarine.

  T’kell stopped, and heard the crackle of the ship’s vox emitting from somewhere in the vaults of the hangar.

  A voice he did not recognise echoed mechanically.

  ‘Forgemaster T’kell… They have orders to kill you if you attempt to escape,’ it said. ‘I am Iron Father Ulok and the Obstinate is my ship. Legionary Gallikus is dead. I assume it was he that asked you to sabotage the cryo-genesis chamber. I did not wish to kill him, but he left me no choice.’ The voice paused, as if debating the next words. ‘I am honoured to have you aboard, but I will kill you too if you force my hand.’

  The Iron Hands legionaries advanced in lockstep, and T’kell knew by the way they moved that they were Ulok’s creatures, just like those he had seen frozen and entombed.

  ‘Am I to be your prisoner?’ T’kell asked.

  A moment of silence lapsed that seemed to stretch.

  ‘Yes. You will assist me in repairing the machine you tried to destroy.’

  ‘I cannot,’ said T’kell. ‘I will not.’

  ‘You say that,’ said Ulok, ‘as if you think you have a choice.’

  The vox-feed cut off abruptly and T’kell was left alone facing the Iron Hands. They weren’t here to kill him. They would have done so already. Ulok had lied about that. They were here to apprehend him. A cryo-chamber must have survived, kept somewhere else aboard the ship and known only to the Iron Father. It was the only reason Ulok would need him to repair the machine.

  The vox crackled again, and for a moment T’kell thought Ulok had returned to gloat, but the feed emanated from his gorget.

  ‘Forgefather…’

  It was Ak’nun Xen. He was running. In the background, T’kell heard the sound of a blast door being released and the slow churn of its mechanism.

  ‘Vexillary.’

  Still T’kell did not move, still the Iron Hands legionaries advanced. They would be upon him soon.

  ‘We are coming for you, we–’

  ‘No.’

  ‘T’kell we are about to–’

  ‘No, brother. It’s too late. Tell Obek to fire upon this ship. I have disengaged its shields but I don’t know for how long.’

  ‘We are at the launch bay now.’

  ‘It’s too late, Xen. Destroy the ship.’

  A few moments passed. Xen would be raising Obek or conferring with Krask, if he yet lived. The Iron Hands legionaries reached him now and T’kell sank to his knees before them, head bowed in submission.

  The urgency in Xen’s voice had faded when he replied, turned to resignation. ‘Forgefather, I…’

  ‘Vulkan lives, brother,’ said T’kell, severing the feed.

  A gauntleted hand grasped his shoulder, and he closed his eyes.

  He was dragged to his feet and marched from the embarkation deck into the conveyor. A few seconds into their ascent, the deck erupted in fire.

  T’kell smiled as the flames consumed him, as the Iron Hands burned and the Obstinate broke apart.

  The Eye of Vulkan had torn a mortal wound that without its shields the Obstinate was unable to survive.

  Shipmaster Reyne, having drawn up alongside the gargantuan vessel, had no time to withdraw when the immense defence laser had fired. The explosion had gored the Chalice of Fire all across its port flank, overwhelming the void shields almost instantaneously and savaging the armour beneath with a storm of debris, but the ship was spared any further collateral damage.

  It had near-crippled the vessel, which could only limp away from the site of the Obstinate’s destruction under failing reserve power. It had taken days, not hours to get away. They had survived only to be doomed themselves.

  The Salamanders had returned to one of the Chalice’s forge halls. A solemn brotherhood had gathered there, surrounded by eddies of smoke and tendrils of flame.

  T’kell was dead, so too Zau’ull, Zandu, Varr and many more amongst the Unscarred.

  The wounded had been saved, those sent by Saurian in the saviour pods, but it was bitter compensation.

  Obek stood at the head of the throng. All was darkness and flickering shadow in the obsidian chamber. Gor’og Krask and the Terminators kneeled closest, Xen alongside them, the banner clutched in his left hand. Phokan knelt in front of those Firedrakes in the rear rank.

  Fewer than half of those who had begun the mission remained.

  Obek had sealed the artefacts, including the one taken by Zau’ull, in the deepest and hottest vault of the ship. It seemed fitting to keep them close to the heart of the forges.

  He donned his war-helm and heard the last reports of Shipmaster Reyne as he counted down the seconds of power left in the engines. After that, they would drift with only the fathomless void before them.

  ‘It is ended,’ he told the Drakes, unscarred no more. ‘And we have found the final rest of our father’s legacy. It is here, with us.’

  Though they kneeled, every Salamanders legionary met their captain’s gaze with fiery and stalwart determination. With their dying breaths they would protect the artefacts of Vulkan. They would hold the ship.

  Obek looked to Xen, raising his sword. It gleamed in the firelight, polished to a mirror sheen.

  ‘What is the meaning of sacrifice?’ he asked.

  ‘To live when others died,’ Xen replied.

  ‘And what is our purpose?’

  ‘To be the wardens and protectors,’ answered the throng.

  ‘And who are we?’

  ‘Vulkan’s chosen,’ they said as one. ‘Custodians of his legacy.’

  The vow had changed, Obek reflected, but their duty had not.

  ‘Vulkan’s chosen!’ he roared, and the hall shook to the echoes of impassioned affirmation.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Stasis

  Obek woke, wiping away the void-frost on his retinal lenses.

  He had no idea how long he had been out. His feet were s
till mag-locked to the floor of the relic hall, his bolter and blade to either thigh.

  Disengaging the armour lock, he felt a sudden lightness as the zero gravity leavened his mass. Motes of void-matter floated in the air, shimmering like languid stars in the light of his suit lamps. Bodies floated too, frozen in their death throes.

  All was still. His brothers were beside him. He tried to check the status of Zau’ull’s casket but the ship’s cogitators were offline. Life support, weapons, shields, engines – all had redlined. The navigation cogitator still functioned. Obek accessed it through his helm and brought up their location on his retinal lens.

  UNKNOWN…

  The data scrolled across his vision in an endless stream of red.

  UNKNOWN…

  UNKNOWN…

  UNKNOWN…

  UNKNOWN…

  UNKNOWN…

  UNKNOWN…

  UNKNOWN…

  UNKNOWN…

  He blinked to shut down the feed.

  His internal chrono told him he had been in stasis for over a year. Longer than the last time. His suit systems were almost depleted, despite their low power setting. Partial sus-an meditation for so long had left him groggy, but something had woken him.

  The others were waking too, alerted by the same instinct. Obek watched the dull flare of their retinal lenses as their power armour reactivated.

  Then he felt it. A dull scratching against the hull. Distant. It must be inside the outer armour but close enough that the resonance of it had been picked up by his autosenses.

  Something was inside, and trying to reach further into the ship, slowly worming its way towards the core.

  Obek had his back to the door of a second chamber, an inner sanctum close to the cold forges of the ship.

  He reached for his weapons, shattering the void-frost encasing his armour in a slow cascade of ice crystals. His voice was no louder than a croak, but the warning still carried weight.

  ‘More are coming.’

  THE BROKEN CHALICE

  The squad moved slowly through the silent ship, their armour sealed against the vacuum and the slow return of their rebreathers audible in their helms.