Dak’ir’s mood was less ebullient.
“I hope you are right, brother-captain.”
“You do not think we will find Vulkan on Scoria?” N’keln asked plainly. There was no agenda, no careful probe in his words. Perhaps that was why he struggled at the political side of leadership.
“Truthfully, captain, I don’t know what we’ll find there or what any of this will amount to.”
N’keln’s eyes narrowed and in the pause in conversation, Dak’ir felt the imminence of what was to come like a stone collar around his neck. The captain’s gaze was searching.
“It is more pertinent for you than most, isn’t it, brother. You found the chest in the Archimedes Rex, did you not?”
Dak’ir gave his unneeded confirmation. Even though they faced away from one another, he felt the eyes of the Librarian boring into the back of his skull at the mention of the chest.
“You’ll have your answers soon enough, brother-sergeant,” the voice of Pyriel interjected, as if summoned by Dak’ir’s thought. “We are about to emerge from the warp.”
There was a pregnant pause, as all those aboard the bridge waited for translation back into realspace. “Now…” hissed Pyriel.
A massive shudder wracked the Vulkan’s Wrath, a sudden shock wave ripping down its spine. The bridge shook. Dak’ir and several others lost their footing. A deep roar filled the hexagonal room. It sounded like fire, but it howled as if truly alive, searching voraciously for air to burn. The human crew, besides the servitors, covered their ears whilst trying to stay upright. The ship was bucking back and forth, tossed like a skiff upon a violent ocean. Consoles exploded, spitting sparks and going dead. Klaxons whined urgently, their warning drowned out by the raging tumult battering the Vulkan’s Wrath from outside.
“Alert status crimson!” N’keln bellowed into the command throne’s vox, gripping the arms tight to stay seated. “All hands to emergency stations.”
Lok had fallen to one knee, braced against the deck with his power fist whilst his other hand clutched the strategio-table.
“Pyriel…” N’keln’s face was slashed by the intermittent strobe of emergency lighting as Dak’ir pushed himself back up from where he had fallen at the base of the stairs. Still groggy, his gaze went to the Librarian. The pulpit was a mess of sparking wires and scorched metal. Pyriel punched his way out of the twisted wreckage, his mood black.
“We must have translated into a solar storm,” he growled loudly, seizing the ragged edge of the shattered pulpit for balance as the ship was smashed again. Helmsmen in front of the Librarian desperately tried to steer the ship, whilst simultaneously fighting to stay on their feet.
The din of churning servos fought against the fiery thunder assailing the vessel, as the blast shields covering the view-points started to retract. It was an automated system that kicked in as soon as the Geller fields powered down and the ship re-entered realspace.
Dak’ir felt the danger before he saw a thin line of ultra-bright light creeping into being at the bottom edge of the shielding.
“Shut th—”
Horrified screams smothered the brother-sergeant’s warning as multiple shafts of super-heated light reached into the bridge. An ensign nearest the viewpoint spontaneously combusted as the deadly solar energy washed over him. Others at the consoles suffered a similar fate. A shipmaster spun, crying for the Emperor’s mercy, the left side of his face a blackened ruin. A naval armsman, with enough presence of mind to hunker down behind a console, pulled his laspistol and administered a killing shot between the poor bastard’s pleading eyes.
Dak’ir felt the heat against his armour tangibly. It was like wading through a wind tunnel as he fought to reach the blast shield’s emergency override lever. Not wearing his battle-helm, the view for Dak’ir shimmered through a heat haze. His naked skin was untroubled by it, though he saw a blistering servitor less resilient to the solar flare. It ravaged the inner walls, setting cables aflame and burning out circuitry.
Pyriel threw up a force dome around the crew, who crawled into it on their hands and knees. The blinded and the burned were dragged, mewling, into the psychic sanctuary whilst the dead were left to crisp and blacken, their bodies becoming human torches in the blaze.
The crack in the shielding was only centimetres thick when Dak’ir reached the override panel and threw back the lever. Agonisingly slowly, the armour plates rolled shut again and the hellish light was cut off.
Pyriel ended the force dome and sagged. His face was beaded with sweat, but his eyes conveyed his gratitude as his gaze met Dak’ir’s.
The smoking ruins of men lay all about the bridge, their charred corpses like dark shadowy husks on the scorched deck.
“Medical crews onto the bridge now,” Lok spoke into his gorget, linked in with the ship’s communication systems. The edges of his pauldrons were black, as if filmed with a layer of thick soot, and heat emanated off his bald pate.
“Master Argos,” N’keln barked into the throne vox. The fiery roar of the storm had not relented, making it difficult to convey orders. “Damage report.”
Static filled the bridge’s vox-emitters. The Techmarine’s voice was strained as it fought to be heard through the interference. Background clamour from the Enginarium deck where Argos was situated impeded the clarity further.
“Hull engines are non-functional, aft thruster banks three through eighteen are showing sporadic power emissions. Shields are down and decks thirteen through twenty-six are showing critical damage, possibly an integrity breach.”
It was a grim report.
“What hit us?”
“The port-side of the ship was struck by a light beam from the solar storm. It burned through our outer armour, took out our shields and strafed most of the sun-side decks. Entire sections were ripped out. The worst hit areas were totally burned. Everything there is ash. I’ve shut them down already.”
“Vulkan’s mercy…” breathed N’keln.
Somehow, perhaps through his augmetics, Argos heard him.
“Imagine a melta gun at point-blank range against a suit of ceramite.”
Dak’ir found he had no desire to.
“Give me something positive, brother,” said N’keln, interrupting the sergeant’s bleak remembrance.
The Techmarine’s response was unintentionally dry.
“We are still aloft.”
The captain smiled without mirth. He was distracted for a moment as the blast doors opened and medicae teams spilled through to tend to the injured and remove the dead. Lok directed them for his captain, as N’keln continued to speak with his chief Techmarine.
“How long will that be the case whilst we are breached?”
There was a delay as the crackling retort of the vox-emitters blighted Argos’ reply.
“Not long,” he said at last.
N’keln looked Dak’ir in the eye, his face assuming a stern cast. The breached decks would have to be purged and sealed. Hundreds, if not thousands, of human serfs worked in those areas of the ship — N’keln would be condemning them all to death.
“Alone, they cannot survive,” stated Dak’ir, already knowing his captain’s mind.
N’keln nodded.
“That’s why you’re going to gather your squad — Lok, you too—” he added with a side glance, “and assist in the evacuation. Save as many as you can, brothers. I will order the decks locked down in fifteen minutes.”
Dak’ir rapped his pauldron, and he and Lok ran from the bridge, the din of their armour clanking urgently behind them.
II
Sinner and Saviour
Iagon was pitched off his feet as a violent tremor rippled across the solitorium. Zo’kar yelped in pain as he was torn from the Salamander’s grasp. A low rumble echoed through the chamber, followed by the sound of tearing metal and a crash of steel. Something fell from the ceiling and the brander-priest was lost from Iagon’s view. Heaving himself up from his prone position, filtering out the sudden roar invadi
ng his senses, Iagon staggered through the half-dark until he came to a pile of wreckage. The ceiling of the solitorium had collapsed. Zo’kar’s pitiful face, the hood cast back in the fall, could be seen beneath it. Feeble arms pushed against a thick adamantium rebar crushing the brander-priest’s chest. Blood was leaking from a wound concealed by his robes, a dark patch spreading over the fabric as he struggled.
“Lord… Help me…” he gasped, his tone pleading, as he saw Iagon standing over him.
“Rest easy, serf,” said the Salamander. With his Astartes strength, he could lift the rebar and drag Zo’kar out. He wedged his gauntleted hands beneath it, testing his grip. But before Iagon took a proper hold he lifted his head, and his face became an emotionless mask. The Astartes reversed his grip, instead placing his hands on top of the rebar, not under it. “Your pain is at an end,” he concluded and pushed down violently.
Zo’kar spasmed once as the rebar broke his ribs and pulped his chest and internal organs. A gush of blood erupted from his mouth, spattering his face and robe in dark droplets. Then he slumped down, his dead eyes staring glassily.
Something had struck the ship and continued to assail it, that much Iagon knew as he leapt over the wreckage and fought his way into the outer corridor. Alert sirens were blaring and the vessel was plunged into emergency half-light. The upper deck was evidently badly damaged. The destruction had spilled over into its counterpart below, where Iagon was now standing, bringing down struts in sections of the ceiling. He heard N’keln’s voice coming over the vox, broken by static interference. All Astartes were being ordered to decks thirteen through twenty-six, whichever was nearest. The ship was breached and needed to be locked down. N’keln was trying to save the crew.
“Noble, but futile,” Iagon muttered, rounding a corner to find a group of human armsmen huddled around a spar of metal piercing the deck grille. As he got closer, Iagon saw a warrior in green battle-plate was pinned by it. He recognised the face of Naveem, one of Tsu’gan’s main opposers. He’d torn off his helmet — it lay discarded nearby — likely to aid his breathing, judging by the sergeant’s ragged gasps for air. The metal spar had impaled his chest. Going on the sheer size of it, Iagon reasoned that most of Naveem’s internal organs were already ruined. The sergeant was hanging on by a sinewy thread.
“Step aside,” Iagon ordered, stalking up to the arms-men. “You can do nothing for him.”
Buffeted by an unseen blow, the ship bucked again, throwing one of the armsmen to the ground and drawing an agonised moan from Naveem.
Iagon steadied himself against the wall.
“Go to your emergency stations,” he said. “I will deal with this.”
The armsmen saluted then sped off uncertainly down the corridor.
Iagon loomed over the supine Naveem. The sergeant’s mouth was caked with expectorated blood and dark fluid leaked from the copious cracks in his power armour.
“Brother…” he rasped upon seeing Iagon, spitting out a film of bloody vapour.
“Naveem,” Iagon replied. “You chose the wrong side,” he added darkly.
The sergeant’s expression was nonplussed as Iagon leaned in, taking both edges of the metal spar in a firm grip…
“Iagon!”
Whatever Iagon was about to do was arrested by Fugis’ voice.
“Over here, Apothecary,” he bellowed with feigned concern, relaxing his grip. “Brother Naveem is wounded.”
Fugis reached them in moments, narthecium in hand. His attention was fixed on the stricken form of Brother Naveem — he barely acknowledged Iagon at all.
Crouching over the bloodied sergeant, the Apothecary made a quick assessment. His thin face grew grave. Carefully disengaging Naveem’s gorget, he took a stimm from his narthecium kit and injected a solution of pain-regressors into Naveem’s carotid artery.
“It will ease your suffering, brother,” he said quietly.
Naveem tried to speak, but all that came from his mouth was near-black blood, a certain sign of internal bleeding. His breath became more ragged and his eyes widened.
Fugis pulled his bolt pistol from its holster and pressed the barrel to Naveem’s forehead. An execution shot to the frontal lobe, point blank, would kill him instantly but leave both progenoids intact. Since the sergeant’s chest was all but destroyed, that only left the one in Naveem’s neck.
“Receive the Emperor’s Peace…” he whispered. A deafening bang echoed off the corridor walls.
“There was no other choice, brother.” Iagon’s tone was consoling.
“I know my duty,” Fugis snapped, going to the reductor mounted on his left gauntlet. The device consisted of a drill and miniature chainblade, designed to chew through flesh and bone to get to the progenoids buried in a Space Marine’s body. A syringe, appended to a pre-sterilised capsule, would extract the necessary genetic material once the outer bone wall had been breached.
Fugis moved in, his reductor drill whirring as it bit into Naveem’s dead flesh. The Vulkan’s Wrath was shuddering badly, jolting with severe force every few seconds or so. The Apothecary fought to keep himself steady, knowing that any small mistake would see the gland destroyed and Naveem’s legacy ended, just like Kadai’s. Kadai…
The unwanted memory of his captain surfaced in Fugis’ mind. Suddenly, the concern he felt at the bucking ship outweighed his caution and he began to rush, fearing a sudden tremor. In his haste, he slipped. The syringe missed the progenoid and the drill sheared the gland in half, spilling it into the dead Salamander’s exposed throat.
“No!” Fugis emitted a breathless cry of anguish, thumping the deck heavily with his fist. “No, not again,” he rasped, and hung his head despairingly.
Iagon leaned in.
“It was an error, brother. No more than that.”
“I don’t make errors,” Fugis hissed, his fist clenched. “My mind is too troubled. I am no longer fit for this,” he confessed.
“You must do your duty,” Iagon urged him. “You are needed by this company, Brother-Apothecary… as is Brother-Sergeant Tsu’gan,” he added.
Fugis looked up after a few moments when he realised what Iagon was implying. If he would turn a blind eye to Tsu’gan’s masochistic affliction, then Iagon would not speak of the Apothecary’s apparent frailty. Fugis was caught in a moral web of his own devising, but laid by Iagon.
Anger contorted his features. “You bastard,” he spat.
“I prefer pragmatist,” Iagon answered smoothly. “We can ill-afford to lose two officers.”
He offered his hand, but Fugis ignored it.
“How many more will die if you are not there to minister to them, brother?” Iagon asked him. He looked down at his still proffered hand. “This is what seals our pact.”
“What pact?” Fugis snorted, back on his feet.
“Don’t be naive,” Iagon warned him. “You know what I mean. Take it, and I will know I have your oath.”
Fugis wavered. There was no time to consider. The ship was being ripped apart.
“Your brothers depend upon you, Apothecary.” Iagon’s tone was coaxing. “Isn’t the preservation of life your credo? Ask yourself, Fugis — can you really turn your back on it?”
Fugis scowled.
“Enough!”
He knew he would regret this compact, yet what other choice did he have? Stay silent about Tsu’gan’s indiscretion and compromise his ethics, his sense of moral tightness, or speak out and relinquish his position in the company? He could not allow his brothers to go into battle without an Apothecary. How many could die needlessly as a result? Hating himself, he took Iagon’s hand.
Why does it feel like I’ve just made a deal with Horus…?
Dak’ir and Lok parted company at the first intersection after leaving the bridge. Both sergeants had contacted their squads via the comm-feeds in their battle-helms. Salamanders were rapidly dispersing across the stricken decks, rescuing those who were trapped, quelling panic or opening up escape routes. The Vulkan’s Wra
th was well outfitted with lifters and deck-to-deck conduits, and though the strike cruiser was vast, reaching the crisis areas had been swift.
Reaching deck fifteen, Dak’ir was greeted with a scene of utter carnage. He ranged along darkened corridors lit by fire and filled by the screams of the injured and dying. Twisted metal and collapsed ceiling struts made progress slow and dangerous. Torn deck plates bled away into the darkness of the lower levels, pitch-black pitfalls that he discerned through his battle-helm’s infrared spectra. Leaping across the miniature chasms, Dak’ir tried not to think how many bodies might be lying beneath him in mangled heaps.
Through the gaseous haze of a split coolant pipe, Dak’ir saw Brother Emek crouching by the slumped form of a wounded crewman. Liquid nitrogen was gushing everywhere, freezing whatever it touched. Crushing the pipe either side of the breach and cutting off its supply, Dak’ir effectively sealed the leak. When he reached Emek, his brother was already closing the slumped crewman’s eyes for him.
“Dead…” His voice held a trace of sorrow. “But there are more who still live. In the corridor beyond,” he added. Another survivor was strapped up to his back. The man’s legs were a red ruin, crushed to paste by falling wreckage. Clinging on to Emek desperately, he whimpered in pain like an infant.
“Ba’ken is ahead,” he said, and got to his feet.
Dak’ir nodded and moved on, as Emek went in the other direction. Sparking terminals lit the way. They showed hollow-eyed crewmen, those who were still able-bodied rushing from the damaged deck. Continual reports from the Enginarium and Brother Argos issued through Dak’ir’s battle-helm. More and more areas of the ship were being sealed off as entire sections of deck fragmented under the solar storm’s baleful glare.
[Tome of Fire 01] - Salamander Page 17