[Tome of Fire 01] - Salamander

by Nick Kyme - (ebook by Undead)

  “We are heading away from the bridge,” Emek whispered to Dak’ir, one eye on their battle-brothers in yellow. Brother Emek was the only one not engaged in weapons maintenance, instead using his time to conduct brief examinations of his wounded brothers. He had lingered by Dak’ir on his rounds in order to converse without drawing too much suspicion. “Whatever they are here for, it is not to find out what happened to this ship, or to search it for survivors, either. I thought you should know, brother-sergeant,” he added, before moving on his way to check on the wounded.

  Battlefield surgery was one of the Salamander’s many skills, useful in the absence of Fugis. Seeing Emek work reminded Dak’ir of the Apothecary and their last exchange before departing for the Hadron Belt and his assignment to reconnaissance aboard the Fire-wyvern. Fugis had remained with the rest of 3rd Company on the Vulkan’s Wrath. Though his place was with N’keln, it was unlike him to eschew frontline duties. Dak’ir wondered if Fugis had lost more than just his captain when Kadai had been killed; he wondered if the Apothecary had lost a part of himself too.

  The hot glare from Brother Harkane’s plasma-cutter spat suddenly, arresting Dak’ir’s reverie. The Techmarine made a slight adjustment and the intense beam returned to normal, the light it cast flickering over Dak’ir as he checked and reloaded his pistol’s last energy cell. Despite the Salamanders’ obvious paucity of ammunition, the Marines Malevolent had neglected to supplement them. The fact that their guns were so antiquated that neither the drum-mags nor the individual shells would have been suitable for their bolters made the point moot.

  “Their weapons are practically relics,” whispered Ba’ken.

  Dak’ir masked his sudden start — he hadn’t even heard the bulky Space Marine approach. Ba’ken eyed the Marines Malevolent warily as he set his multi-melta rig down, enabling him to sit with his brother-sergeant. The Marines Malevolent showed equal distrust, swapping furtive glances and watching the Salamanders through the corners of their helmet lenses.

  “The old drum-feeds are prone to jamming,” Ba’ken continued. “I’m surprised one hasn’t misfired in their faces before now.”

  “They are certainly not wasteful,” agreed Dak’ir, “But aren’t all our weapons relics to one degree or another?”

  Ba’ken was one of those who had removed his battle-helm during the brief abeyance and his lip curled up in distaste.

  “Aye, but there are relics and there are relics,” he said, obliquely. “These guns should have been stripped down for parts and re-appropriated years ago. A warrior is only as good as his weapon, and these dogs with their patchwork armour and archaic ideas are ragged at best.” He paused, turning to look his brother-sergeant in the eye. “I don’t trust them, Dak’ir.”

  Dak’ir agreed, reminded of Emek’s suspicions, but was not about to voice the fact aloud. Whether they liked it or not, the Marines Malevolent were their allies for now — tenuous ones at that. Any comment that supported Ba’ken’s views would only foster greater dissension between them.

  “I wonder what their purpose aboard this ship is.” Ba’ken concluded his line of thinking during his brother-sergeant’s silence. Again, he echoed Emek’s unspoken thoughts.

  “I suspect they would ask us the same thing,” said Dak’ir.

  Bak’en was about to reply when he noticed Sergeant Lorkar approaching and kept quiet.

  Lorkar waited, battle-helm clasped beneath one arm, until invited by Dak’ir to sit down with them. He nodded gratefully before setting his helmet on an adjacent crate.

  “The earlier hostility,” he began, “was regrettable. We acted with suspicion and without honour. Such behaviour is beneath fellow Astartes. Allow me to make amends.” It was an unexpected move. Certainly not one that Dak’ir had foreseen.

  “Unnecessary, brother. A misunderstanding is all.”

  “Even still. Our blood was up and things were said not befitting one Astartes to another.”

  “Apology accepted, then.” Dak’ir nodded. “But we were as culpable as you.”

  “I appreciate your magnanimity, Brother…” Lorkar leaned forward and tilted his head slightly as he searched for the name, “…Dak’ir?”

  The Salamander nodded again, this time to indicate that Lorkar was correct. The Marines Malevolent sergeant eased back, perpetuating a mood of camaraderie, but it was strained and false.

  “Tell me, brother,” he said, his tone leading, and now Dak’ir knew he would get to the motivation behind Lorkar’s sudden contrition. “There is no campaign in the Hadron Belt, what brings you here?”

  Lorkar was cunning. Dak’ir couldn’t tell for certain if the sergeant’s enquiry was merely to idle away time and build confidence or if something deeper lurked behind his words. He wanted to say that his timing was uncanny, but kept it to himself.

  “Retribution,” returned Tsu’gan, his voice like a blade as he approached them. Evidently tired of his pacing, the Salamander sergeant had fixed upon the conversation between Lorkar and Dak’ir. “We seek assassins, those who slew our captain in cold blood — renegades who call themselves the Dragon Warriors.”

  “A matter of legacy. I see.” Lorkar rapped his plastron. “This section of plate came from my dead sergeant’s armour. I wear it to honour his sacrifice. Two of my slain brothers once wore this vambrace and pauldron—” He held up the pieces in turn “—before my own were shattered beyond repair.”

  Tsu’gan stiffened at some unseen slight, but allowed Lorkar to continue.

  “Do you bear your dead captain’s armour still?” he asked.

  Dak’ir weighed in on his fellow sergeant’s behalf. “No. It was incinerated, rendered to ash in keeping with our native customs.”

  Lorkar looked nonplussed. “You destroyed it?” His tone suggested consternation. “Was the battle-plate entirely beyond repair?”

  “Some could have been salvaged,” Dak’ir admitted. “But instead it was offered to the mountain of fire on Nocturne, our home world, so that Kadai could return to the earth.”

  Lorkar shook his head. “My apologies, brother, but we of the Marines Malevolent are unused to such profligacy.”

  Tsu’gan could restrain himself no longer. “Would you have us bastardise our captain’s armour instead, as you do?”

  The Marine Malevolent glared back at him sternly. “We only mean to honour our fallen brethren.”

  Tsu’gan straightened as if stung. “And we do not? We pay homage to our slain heroes, our lamented dead.”

  The churning report of the blast door finally prising open prevented any caustic reply from Lorkar. Instead, the sergeant merely got to his feet and went to his Techmarine.

  “And what is your business here, Sergeant Lorkar? You haven’t told us that,” said Dak’ir as the Marine Malevolent was leaving.

  “My orders stay within the Chapter,” he replied tersely, ramming on his battle-helm and rejoining his battle-brothers.

  “It is more than protocol that stays his tongue. They are hiding something,” muttered Tsu’gan, before turning away himself, a dark look directed first at Lorkar and then Dak’ir.

  Once Tsu’gan had gone, Dak’ir whispered, “Keep your eyes open.”

  Ba’ken’s gaze was fixed on the departing yellow-armoured sergeant. He nodded, releasing his grip from the piston-hammer.

  A thin mist drifted over the deck of the cryogenic vault like the slow passage of a tired apparition. A gaseous amalgam of nitrogen and helium combined to produce the chemical compound that would catalyse the cryogenic process, it rolled languidly off a series of semi-transparent tanks situated at one end of a large metal room. A high ceiling still carried the ubiquitous censers and there were small Mechanicus shrines set into alcoves in the walls. Exposed hosing, cables and other machinery were also prevalent. It was as if they were the excised innards of some mechanical behemoth, and this room was part of its mech-biology. The dense agglomeration of pipes and wires extruded from the room’s perimeter and fed to a series of cryo-caskets that d
ominated a pair of raised, arc-shaped platforms in the centre. Both platforms were approximately two metres off deck level and reachable via a grilled metal stairway on two sides. A deactivated lifter plate was also evident, delineated by a rectangle of warning chevrons. The natural passageway between the two platforms led to the vault’s only exit, a huge blast door sealed shut by three adamantium locking bars.

  Brother Emek wiped his gauntleted hand across the thick plexi-glass of one of the cryo-caskets, breaking up a veneer of hoarfrost.

  “No outward vital signs,” he muttered after a few moments. “This one is dead, too.”

  The liquid nitrogen run-off pooled around the Astartes’ armoured boots, curling around his greaves. It spilled off the edge of the platform where Emek was standing to hang a few centimetres above the lower deck of the vault like a ghostly veil.

  At the aft-facing end of the room Harkane worked at releasing the blast door, the low hiss of his plasma-cutter a dulcet chorus to the machine-hum of the stasis tanks. Half his Marines Malevolent battle-brothers were clustered around him — Lorkar’s combat squad — intent on the Techmarine’s endeavours as if whatever lay beyond the door was of profound interest to them. The brother-sergeant was locked in almost constant conference with his battle-helm’s comm-feed now. Whoever he was getting his orders from was issuing regular instruction and demanding progress reports. The rest of Lorkar’s troops were silently guarding the forced entry point and, unless Dak’ir’s instincts were off, watching him and his battle-brothers.

  The Salamanders’ first concern was the possibility of survivors. The Marines Malevolent’s disregard in this had not gone unnoticed, but was left unchallenged. Whatever the other Astartes’ mission, the Salamanders were not privy to it and it was not the place of one Chapter to question another for such flimsy reasons when all the facts were not known. Pyriel was determined it would not affect their own rescue efforts, however.

  Two groups of five Salamanders, chosen from each of the two squads by their respective sergeants, were tasked with investigating the forty cryogenic chambers. Emek led one group; Iagon the other. Two ranks of twenty dominated the raised deck space, situated opposite the blast doors against either wall. Within were human adepts. Some had amputated limbs, fused stumps trailing insulated cables and wiring; others had hollow eye sockets, ringed with pink scar-tissue and tiny puncture marks where the installation pins had gone in and then been retracted. The crew’s constituent mechanical components — bionic eyes, arms, mechadendrite clusters and even a half-track for a double leg amputee — were locked away in transparent armour-plas receptacles, stamped with the Mechanicus cog and fastened to their individual cryo-caskets. So far, eighteen of the forty were dead.

  For one the freezing process had malfunctioned, atrophying his body, ice crystals infecting his lifeless skin like a contagion; another had simply drowned in the solution that had failed to catalyse when the casket was activated, the adept’s eyes wide with frozen panic, a forlornly beating fist held for eternity stuck to the inner-glass. The others had succumbed to cardiac infarction — possibly brought on through shock during the cryogenic process or at the separation of their mechanised limbs and augmentation — hypothermia or other, unidentifiable, mortalities.

  One thing was clear. The steps taken to preserve the crew, what few still lived, had been conducted in haste.

  “Brother-Sergeant Dak’ir,” Emek’s voice came over the comm-feed in his battle-helm.

  “Go ahead, brother,” Dak’ir returned. He was standing on the lower deck alongside Brother Apion who was trying to raise the Vulkan’s Wrath through a ship-to-ship comm-device set up in the room. Thus far he’d had no success — the strike-cruiser was obviously still out of range.

  “I need you to see this, sir,” Emek replied.

  Dak’ir instructed Apion to continue. A self-conscious glance at Tsu’gan revealed his brother-sergeant to be intent on Lorkar and his warriors at the blast door. A cursory examination of the Salamanders’ other forces showed that Pyriel was similarly engrossed, though Dak’ir suspected the Librarian’s awareness went far beyond that of his fellow brother-sergeant. Those battle-brothers not engaged with checking the cryo-caskets were keeping sentry. The Salamanders mixed with the Marines Malevolent directly and the tension between them was almost palpable. Ba’ken, in particular, caught Dak’ir’s attention positioned next to a Space Marine who was almost his match in sheer bulk. The Marine Malevolent bore a skull-faced battle-helm, the beak nose sheared off and sealed in order to promote the cranial analogue. Not like a Chaplain’s, masterfully wrought to resemble bone, the battle-helm’s decoration was painted on. He also carried a plasma gun, and held it with the sureness of a warrior born. The two massive Space Marines were very alike, but stoically refused to acknowledge one another. Dak’ir hoped it would stay that way as he reached the top of the stairway and the cryo-caskets.

  Emek was a third of the way down the sub-group of four he was analysing when he saw his sergeant approach. Evidently, it was slow going.

  Most of the associated instrumentation of the cryo-caskets was damaged, so there was no way to tell how long the stasis-sleep had lasted. It also retarded the assessment of vital signs, but the Salamanders engaged in that duty did so exhaustively and methodically. The majority of the bio-monitors situated beneath the caskets were no longer operating, either, or were simply too encrusted with ice to be readable. From the corner of his helmet lens, Dak’ir noted Iagon using his auspex to ascertain life signs in certain cases. The battle-brother acknowledged him from across the small gulf between the platforms, and Dak’ir felt his guard go up instinctively.

  “Sir,” said Emek with a slight nod, once his sergeant had reached him.

  “Show me, brother.”

  Emek stepped back to allow Dak’ir to move in and get a better look. “See for yourself, sergeant.”

  Emek had smeared away the rime of ice crystals obscuring the view through the casket’s plexi-glass frontis. Dak’ir peered through the ragged gap in the frost and saw the remains of the adept inside. It was difficult to discern at first: the nitro-helium solution was tainted with blood, lots of blood. Other things floated in the tank too, held fast in the stagnant liquid.

  “Flesh,” Emek said from behind him. “Bone chips too, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Mercy of Vulkan…” Dak’ir breathed. His voice was made even hollower through his battle-helm.

  “Self-mutilation, sir.” The explanation was hardly necessary. Deep lacerations ran down the adept’s torso, arms and legs, four-pronged as if dug by fingernails. The stark evidence of the adept’s hands supported that theory — they were stained with blood. Three of the nails had been ripped off, revealing the soft red membrane beneath; the rest were clogged with shreds of flensed skin.

  “This one had ocular implants?” Dak’ir asked.

  “No, sir.”

  The eyes, then, had been torn out. Gore streaked from the ruined sockets that were deep and red and visceral. Dak’ir regarded the abomination sternly.

  “Assessment?”

  Emek paused, weighing up his words, until his sergeant faced him to demand an answer. “I believe the ship turned on itself, though I don’t know how or why,” he said.

  Dak’ir remembered the view of the Archimedes Rex through the Fire-wyvern’s occuliport; in retrospect, the weapons damage was strange. It was possible that the ship’s crippling had been self-inflicted. It might also explain why they had encountered one single magos — he was the last standing, having killed the rest. The cryo-vault was sealed, not against foreign invaders, but to keep the rest of the ship’s inhabitants out.

  “What about the servitors?” Dak’ir followed his line of reasoning out loud.

  “They aren’t sentient like the magos and the other adepts. Perhaps they weren’t affected in the same way.”

  Dak’ir took one last look at the mutilated adept in the tank. His salvation had come too late. Sealed in the cryo-casket, and with nothing to at
tack, he had evidently turned on himself.

  “Keep looking for survivors,” he said, turning, glad to avert his gaze from the gruesome spectacle.

  As he walked back down the access stairway, Dak’ir’s comm-feed crackled to life. It was on a closed channel with himself and Tsu’gan.

  “Brother-sergeants.”

  Dak’ir looked over at the sound of Pyriel’s voice. The Librarian maintained his vigil over their dubious allies. The cause for his words was obvious. The Marines Malevolent had opened up the blast doors. When he reached the Librarian, Dak’ir saw inside the chamber the other Astartes had been so fixated on. It was a massive storage room, akin to the one they’d discovered earlier only much larger. Also unlike the smaller munitions store, this one had a vast cache of manufactured arms and armour: Mk VII battle-plate hung in suits from overhead armatures; bolters sat in racks like parade soldiers, pristine and unfired; ammo crates brimming with sickle mags for the guns were piled in pallets of a hundred, a thousand clips per crate. Materiel spanned the hangar-like room in an unending slew of grey-black.

  The Marines Malevolent were already emptying it, positioning guns, ammunition and power armour directly outside the chamber within an invisibly delineated area.

  Dak’ir then realised what Lorkar and his battle-brothers were doing on the Archimedes Rex. The fledgling weapons were the perfect replacements for their arcane militaria. The Marines Malevolent were re-supplying; appropriating the materiel cache from the forge-ship for their own purposes.

  One of the yellow-armoured warriors, the shark-helmeted Brother Nemiok, had been in brief concert with his sergeant and afterwards removed something from a large belt pouch. It was a bulky device, hoisted into position atop the centre of the small arms cache by a thick handle, and consisted of a narrow-necked tube with a lozenge-shaped tip that contained a beacon, appended with small pistons that powered a ribbed compression cylinder.

  Though crude and out-dated, Dak’ir recognised it at once. It was a teleport homer. En route to the Archimedes Rex, the Salamanders had neither seen nor detected another vessel. Dak’ir could only assume the Fire-wyvern’s sensor arrays lacked the range to discover it, for he was sure now that the Marines Malevolent had a cruiser nearby, its teleportarium primed for the stolen Mechanicus haul.