Deathfire

by Nick Kyme

  ‘He survived atmospheric re-entry onto Macragge,’ said Numeon. ‘Yes, I think he will live if we can take out the fulgurite. He could even excise it himself.’

  ‘Have you tried to remove it?’

  Numeon nodded, calmer. ‘I have.’

  ‘Since we came aboard the Charybdis?’

  Another nod.

  Var’kir’s brow furrowed as he noticed the blood dripping down from Numeon’s hands. He had laid his gauntlets and helm to one side. The vox-feed in the latter had been disengaged.

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘Every day.’ Now he shook his head, despairing. ‘But it never yields.’

  ‘It won’t. Ever. Not to strength, brother.’

  ‘Then what about will or belief?’

  ‘You think if you believe strongly enough, Vulkan will come back to us?’

  ‘And if I am alone in that, then my will shall have to be enough.’

  For a moment, Var’kir was lost for words.

  ‘I am with you, Artellus. We all are. Vulkan shall return to Nocturne but it is to be laid to rest, not revivified.’

  ‘Don’t you believe in immortality, Var’kir? In rebirth? Isn’t that what the Circle of Fire preaches?’

  ‘The dead do not come back, Artellus. I am not saying this to you as your Chaplain, but as your brother and friend. Do not cling to this poisonous obsession, it will destroy you.’

  Numeon scowled as his ambivalent feelings fought for supremacy in his expression. He opened his hands to the Chaplain. The wounds on his palms and fingers were shallow but many. The gesture was symbolic.

  ‘Help me, Var’kir. Please.’

  ‘Tell me, what can I do, brother?’

  Intense emotion flashed through Numeon’s eyes. It was frightening to see.

  ‘Believe.’

  The vox crackle in Var’kir’s helm came as welcome relief to the Chaplain. He listened. Numeon watched.

  Their eyes met as the message ended, cold glass lenses to crimson sclera.

  Numeon spoke first. ‘What is it, brother?’

  ‘Our duty, Artellus.’

  A solitary gunship speared from the Charybdis’s starboard launch bays, its engines glowing dully and without flame as they powered the warriors on board to Rampart. Its name was Draconis.

  Adyssian had withdrawn the Charybdis back into the radiation field to mask her presence from the Necrotor. No outward signs from the Death Guard ship suggested they had been detected.

  At full burn, it was a short flight to the installation. Twelve legionaries sat in the gunship’s hold, arming themselves and preparing for whatever awaited them. The light was low, indicating imminent combat insertion. An odd serenity fell across the warriors within, for the void offered up no turbulence.

  Eighteen minutes had elapsed since they had received the distress beacon’s signal. Xathen maintained watch on the chrono inside his visor.

  ‘If they are Death Guard, it won’t matter what defences Rampart has. It won’t take them more than half an hour to breach, kill every­one on that station and retrieve whatever it is they came for.’

  ‘Then hope we arrive to stop them before that happens,’ said Zytos. He had a bolter mag-clamped to his armour’s power gene­rator but favoured a deactivated thunder hammer sat across his lap. ‘Ushamann?’ he asked the Epistolary, who sat apart from the others on the opposite side of the hold to Zytos.

  The Librarian had closed his eyes to focus on the arcane. It had been a significant time since Ushamann had used the art. In Imperium Secundus, Guilliman had reinstated the Librarius with Titus Prayto at its head. Psychic abilities were weapons; only the user mattered, not the weapon itself. Such thinking had come about through necessity rather than invention. In spite of all that, Ushamann had held on. He had been a student of Ra’stan before the massacre, and had clung to the tenets of his master long after his death. Abstention, denial of power was the Emperor’s will. Only recently had Ushamann begun to do otherwise. Pragmatism superseded duty, for it in itself served duty.

  ‘There is fear… many lives…’ he murmured to his brothers in a strange, resonant undertone, as if he were speaking from beneath the ocean.

  Xathen nudged Zytos. ‘I thought this place was a refuelling depot?’

  ‘Our cousins react with aggression,’ Ushamann continued. Amongst his many talents, he was an excellent telepath and tried to home in on the emotional backwash emanating from Rampart through the warp to his carefully trained mind. ‘Reckless hate… I feel…’ Ushamann shuddered in his restraints, hands clenching and unclenching with sudden effort. His face was a tapestry of pain as he fought to grasp a tendril of emotion. ‘Something toxic…’

  Psychic abilities were like springs; they could rust through lack of use.

  ‘Save us!’ he cried out in a voice not his own. ‘Throne of Earth, please! Help us, Angel of the Emperor, help–’

  The voice cut out abruptly but Ushamann kept shaking, convulsing against his harness. His fingers splayed out like knives and something crackled brightly from their tips in the dingy hold.

  ‘It has them,’ he murmured. ‘A taint, it claws at my skull. Unearths Kabar! I cannot–’

  There was the hard crack of a gauntleted blow to the head, and Ushamann fell forwards, held limply in his seat like a broken doll. Igen Gargo stood over him, mag-locked to the deck. The white-haired black-smiter rotated his shoulder, then returned to his seat in the hold.

  ‘Was that necessary?’ asked Xathen, gesturing to the unconscious Librarian. ‘He’s out cold. We might need him.’

  ‘He could have destroyed this entire ship. Besides, you’re missing the point, Rek’or,’ Gargo replied. ‘He said “Angel of the Emperor” whilst channelling a soul from Rampart.’

  ‘He said a lot of things,’ replied Xathen. ‘That part about taint for instance. And who is Kabar?’

  ‘The soul he channelled? It doesn’t matter. It means we could have an ally down there,’ said Gargo. He jerked his arm, stretching it out and back three times.

  Xathen leaned over. ‘Still having trouble, black-smiter?’

  Gargo looked about to give Xathen some trouble of his own when he was interrupted.

  ‘Ushamann’s borrowed words mean nothing,’ said Numeon, leaning forwards as far as his restraint would allow. ‘Assume nothing, brothers. Our enemies are below and will try to deceive us if they can.’

  Gargo lowered his gaze, but Xathen appeared enthused and smiled belligerently behind his helm. Everyone in the hold could hear it in his voice.

  ‘I could not agree more, captain. Give no quarter, for none shall be given in return.’

  Zytos opened a private feed to Xathen.

  ‘A little belligerent, brother,’ he murmured in a subvocalised tone augmented by his helm then translated and magnified for Rek’or Xathen. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were relishing the fight more than your duty to these civilians.’

  Xathen was typically dismissive. ‘If they’re dead, which is likely. It is a mission of vengeance, not salvation, we undertake.’

  ‘Which would you prefer?’

  Xathen had the strength of character not to lie. ‘Either.’

  ‘What happened to your concern over numerical superiority?’

  ‘I never cared about that, Zytos. I just want to kill our betrayers.’

  Some wounds went too deep to salve, Zytos realised. Not coincidentally, his eye was drawn to Numeon at the thought.

  He had left open the feed and as Xathen followed Zytos’s gaze, he asked, ‘Is he ready for this?’

  ‘Gargo informs me his physical rehabilitation was excessive.’ Zytos looked askance at Xathen as he realised something. ‘And didn’t you spend countless sessions in the battle cages with him?’

  ‘Oh, he fights like a mean bastard still, but I’m not talkin
g about his physical wounds.’

  Even amongst brothers, Numeon appeared withdrawn and distant. His mind seemed elsewhere.

  ‘Either he is, or he falls. Here. On Rampart,’ Zytos stated and cut the feed, but it could not mask his doubt.

  An Angel of the Emperor had come to Rampart, and he alone fought the Death Guard.

  Whoever he was, he would not be alone for long.

  Twenty-One

  Tainted

  Ultramar, Rampart refuelling depot and minor substation

  Rampart possessed a thin atmosphere and tolerable gravity. Though not lethal to humans, it still necessitated the use of protective suits and rebreathers. The air was foul with grit, displaced from un­inhabitable sulphur dunes north of the station itself, and had higher than comfortably breathable levels of methane and ammonia. A distant star conglomeration provided some natural light but it was weak and left the planetoid bitterly cold. A grey and cloudless sky reigned overhead, a metaphor for the bleak existence of Rampart’s resident labourers.

  After the Salamanders had landed, Far’kor Zonn penetrated and nullified Rampart’s sensoria remotely and with ease. Outside detection range, the Techmarine engineered and emitted a signal pulse that blinded every device capable of monitoring the gunship’s approach.

  Unlike the others, who disembarked at speed as the rear ramp hit the ground, Zonn stayed behind to run communications and infiltrate the station’s security systems. As pilot, he also had to keep their engines running in case an emergency egress was required.

  His mechanised voice sounded across Zytos’s vox.

  ‘Docking zone ahead.’

  Zonn marked its location with an icon on the retinal feed.

  ‘Numeon?’ Zytos asked, his request for orders implied as he slowed.

  The response across the vox was curt. ‘Take point, sergeant. These are your men.’

  Zytos gritted his teeth, but masked his anger. Lead us, he thought, but said, ‘As you wish, captain.’

  Using battle-sign, Zytos relayed orders for the squad to split into two. Such tactics were abnormal for legionaries used to mass military actions, but almost every one of the Salamanders present had become well practised at this guerrilla-style warfare.

  Adapt or die. This credo had never seemed more pertinent than it did during the Warmaster’s rebellion.

  The docking zone was little more than a large expanse of dirt used exclusively as a landing pad. Several ships were already moored, mostly tankers, but there was a small frigate too. A tunnel, partially subterranean, led from the docking zone. An empty, domed watchtower overlooked it. It had a search lamp, shot out, but no weapons.

  A pair of grubby-looking white gunships with green-trimmed wingspans and upper fuselages sat nearby.

  ‘Two landers sighted,’ said Zytos. ‘Death Guard. Confirm.’

  Leading second squad, Xathen replied, ‘I see them, brother. That tunnel is our way in. Likely guarded.’

  ‘Not if they aren’t expecting us,’ said Zytos, blink-clicking a regroup point and marking it up on the visual feed. ‘Recon every ship, Xathen,’ he added, leading off first squad. ‘No surprises.’

  Reconnoitring the vessels in dock revealed nothing, except the dead.

  Most had been ripped apart by explosive ammunition. Bolter shells. One female, possibly a medicae adept judging by the emblem on her atmosphere suit, had simply died without apparent sign of injury. A dark mould had built up over her rebreather. Others showed similar signs of contagion.

  By the time both squads reached the gunships, they had found over sixty dead civilians.

  ‘Destroyers?’ suggested Dakar, as the squads regrouped.

  Gargo was kneeling by one of the bodies to inspect it. He had some apothecarion knowledge, the only one who did amongst the Pyre.

  ‘Possibly. A dirty bomb, perhaps? Looks invasive.’

  Vulkan had never once condoned the use of such weapons. Radiation grenades, phosphex, virus bombs… the Salamanders primarch had called them terror weapons with no place in his Legion. It was one of few matters on which he and Ferrus Manus did not agree.

  For the Gorgon, the end justified the means. Any enemy of the Imperium deserved no quarter. Vulkan saw them a inhumane, even when Ferrus Manus had reminded him burning foes to death was equally unpleasant. As Vulkan saw it, there was a vast difference and so the matter was laid to rest unresolved. Now it would remain so forever, regardless of whether the body on board the Charybdis had life in it still.

  ‘Nothing on biometrics,’ said Xathen, as he checked the integrity of his armour. ‘Not even radiation.’

  Gargo looked up at the veteran. ‘Could be the taint Ushamann mentioned?’

  ‘Either way, they’re dead,’ said Zytos. ‘I hope we’re not too late for the rest.’

  Xathen gestured to the gunships. ‘I hope there are Death Guard still aboard,’ he growled, out for blood.

  How easily an ostensibly humanitarian mindset could turn vengeful.

  Without the influence of Numeon, who seemed satisfied to follow his sergeant’s lead, Zytos decided to give Xathen what he wanted.

  ‘Cleanse the ships. Both of them. Quickly.’

  A deep guttural noise rumbled up from Xathen’s throat, reminiscent of a true drake. His yearning to kill the Death Guard, who had rained down destruction upon the Salamanders at Isstvan V, was almost palpable.

  ‘I’ll burn them to ash.’

  ‘And the third vessel?’ said Numeon, making the two sergeants turn.

  Zytos answered firmly. ‘Civilians first. Zonn can search for the third vessel.’ He maintained eye contact with his captain as if to challenge any attempt to countermand his order. Numeon offered none.

  ‘Then make haste. Vulkan waits.’

  He will be waiting a good long while, thought Zytos, bitterly, but was reminded of what he had heard when the primarch was first placed within his casket. A single heartbeat. The sight of Vulkan’s sigil attached to Numeon’s belt, his utter belief and determination, made it harder to discount that sign as either imagination or wishful thinking. Now was not the time. Other matters took precedence. Lives in the balance. Their solemn duty.

  Protect the weak. Defend those who cannot defend themselves.

  These words warred with others in Numeon’s mind. Zytos could see it in his eyes just before they moved out.

  Honour thy father.

  Second squad moved off to silence the transports. First squad headed for the tunnel.

  Zonn deactivated the gate, rerouting power so Gargo could prise it open manually. He did so quickly and covertly, overwhelming the mechanism through sheer strength and widening the aperture just enough so the Salamanders could slip through.

  After the tunnel, they found a prefabricated complex beneath the first geodesic dome. It was large. Individually segregated habitation bunks implied a sizeable workforce. Rough picts of family members, elsewhere in Ultramar, offered a microcosmic lens into the labourers’ lives but there was little room for further affectations. Every bunk was regimented. Even tools and equipment were under lock and key in an approximation of an armoury.

  Underfoot, the floor was dirt and earth. Deck plating ran to some areas but was used sparsely. Narrow gantries overhead provided access to upper bunks and the domiciles of overseers. No man or woman was present. Alive or dead.

  Beyond habitation, there was a medical bay and several machine workshops designated for tool repair. A vehicle bay lay empty, but one of the armoured transporters was up on blocks over a maintenance pit. Its dozer blade had been removed and sat undisturbed on the open maintenance floor. There were no weapons, and still no inhabitants.

  Xathen’s voice crackled over the vox-feed. Some minor distortion suggested the domes interfered with vox signals but Zytos heard him well enough.

  ‘Found our traitorous cousins,’ he said. ‘
Everyone on the gunships is dead. All the crew, with single gunshots to the head, through the canopy.’

  ‘How many?’ asked Zytos. He kept the squad moving, picking up the pace.

  ‘Six legionaries. Three per vessel.’

  ‘Any sign of their killer?’

  ‘Negative. Shells were mass-reactive. Left a lot of mess.’ Xathen paused before asking, ‘Did I miss the war, Zytos?’ He sounded disappointed.

  ‘Not yet. Bring your squad up to the tunnel and follow us in. This place is huge.’

  As the vox-feed ended, Zytos could already hear Xathen shouting at his charges to move quickly. His eagerness for combat stemmed from an inability to influence the war in a meaningful way, something every Salamander felt to a lesser or greater degree.

  Of the three Legions massacred at Isstvan V, the Iron Hands still had the bulk of their fighting strength. Scattered, yes, but numerically they were still legion and their voice shouted loudest in the guerrilla efforts Zytos had come to understand were taking place in the galaxy at large. Even the Raven Guard, though much diminished, still had Corax and could flock to his raised banner. Shadow war suited them, anyway.

  No, it was the Salamanders who were wounded worst. Scattered, dramatically reduced militarily, and their primarch – at least for now – gone. Leadership was needed. Zytos had hoped Artellus Numeon would take up the mantle of Cassian Vaughn, the old Legion Master. Another hope, a fire long-thought doused but rekindling, grew in Zytos now. His natural pragmatism told him to refute it, and encourage Numeon to take up his rightful position, but that selfsame warrior’s belief was pushing him towards yearning for the impossible.

  Resurrection.

  Vulkan lives.

  ‘We need to narrow the search,’ said Gargo, echoing Zytos’s recent thoughts. He was standing at a broad arch that led further into the dome. Ordinarily, an overseer would have manned it. Currently, that post was empty.

  The others were close by, maintaining defensive overwatch as they advanced through the dingy habitation chamber.

  ‘Raise Zonn,’ said Numeon, but allowing Zytos the lead. He had given the sergeant command and would honour that decision.