by Nick Kyme
Numeon unleashed Basilysk in a wide spread, aiming to distract, not annihilate. One-eyed, his depth perception was compromised. He favoured a blade anyway and only needed his brothers to get him close enough to use one.
Zytos led the others, he, Gargo and Dakar advancing steadily. From the threshold, Vorko swapped flamer for sidearm, the Death Guard now beyond the former’s effective range. Percussive bolt pistol fire sounded from the distance.
A faint chank signalled an empty breech and a spent clip came from above. Dropping his bolter, the grey legionary leapt from his perch and landed hard in front of the enemy vanguard. He and Numeon formed up, the enemy between them.
‘Advance!’ Zytos urged the Salamanders on as the Death Guard fought back fiercely. Several who had taken strong hits had pulled themselves up, living proof of the Legion’s famed resilience.
Dakar went down, struck in the plastron. Burnt and broken metal exploded from his draconic faceplate as he fell, half turning.
Amber flashed up on Zytos’s retinal display, indicating an injury to Dakar.
Another barricade, another powerful vault over it.
Numeon raced ahead, weaving between scant cover. His fire-blackened armour was riddled with dents and heavily scored. He paid it no mind. Five strides separated him from the Death Guard, who had given up trying to shoot down their enemies and drawn blades instead.
Heavy black blades shone dully in the wan light of the generator chamber.
‘Mistake,’ Zytos muttered, unsheathing his hammer.
Below, the turbines roared to a fever pitch. In the depths of the sink beneath the chamber, arc lightning crackled between two blurring nodes. Industrial-grade, grilled walkways transected both turbines, wide and thick enough to carry several tanks abreast.
Zytos’s boots rang loudly as he hurled his body across them.
An errant flash from below illuminated his battleplate, throwing the fangs of his helm and the armour’s saurian aspect into sharp relief.
A kukra swung at him, wielded by fists encased in steam-pinned gauntlets. This one’s armour looked dense and unyielding. His faceplate had a solitary slit where two hard eyes glared murderously.
Sparks sprang from the hammer’s haft as Zytos fended off the blow. It was heavy and jarred his shoulder, but he wouldn’t yield to it.
Ahead, he caught a glimpse of Numeon tearing the fangs of Draukoros across a Death Guard’s stomach. Metal, mesh and skin parted. Entrails spilled from a ruddy gash. The stink of necrotic flesh grew overwhelming.
A second blow forced his attention back to his enemy, who spat something at him in ugly Barbaran. Zytos ignored it and spun his hammer around, head to pommel. The traitor rocked back as his own momentum was turned against him.
Zytos kept the hammer circling, swinging it up as it reached its nadir, crushing pelvis and abdomen in a single actinic blow. Corposant roiled off the Death Guard’s body as he collapsed. The kukra clattering uselessly away was the last thing Zytos heard as he moved on.
After that, it was over in short order. Though they were hard to kill, the Death Guard were gutted and torn apart by superior warriors.
Not least of whom was the legionary clad in grey, his gladius dripping with Barbaran blood.
Zytos had seen him claim two heads in hand-to-hand combat. His fighting style was brutal, bullish. Not a fencer, more of a pugilist. Gargo fought in a similar fashion.
As the battle ended, a lull fell upon the generator chamber in spite of the raucous turbines.
Numeon had reached their strange ally first. Gargo and Zytos were quick to join him until all three surrounded him in a half-circle.
‘You have my gratitude,’ he said, in a deep but not uncultured voice. He sounded a little strained, perhaps injured. The warrior glanced over his shoulder. ‘And that of these people.’
Behind him, the labourers of Rampart had begun to show their faces. Most were women and children, though why anyone would want to bring their families to a place like this defied explanation. Desperate men, Zytos supposed and felt a pang of sympathy for these poor wretches trying to eke out a living from bare
rock.
Many of Nocturne did the same, and he did not pity them. He wondered why that was.
‘Gargo,’ he said, watching the grey legionary but not acknowledging his thanks just yet, ‘see to Dakar. Get him back on his feet.
This might not be over yet.
A quick glance at Numeon, who had met Zytos’s gaze, suggested he thought the same.
‘Name yourself, brother,’ Numeon said to the grey legionary. He wasn’t asking.
‘I never realised sons of Nocturne were so suspicious,’ the warrior answered.
‘Aye, I’m sure. Our continued survival makes us so. Now, name yourself, or shall I have my sword loosen your lips?’
He kept Draukoros aimed at the grey legionary’s chest. One lunge, a quick thrust would be all it would take.
Zytos observed both warriors keenly. His thoughts betrayed his loyalty to Numeon, as he was forced to admit the outcome of a fight between these two was far from certain.
The grey legionary raised his hand in surrender.
‘Brother Kaspian Hecht,’ he said.
‘We will have questions, Brother Hecht,’ Numeon replied. ‘Not least of which concerning why you are here and how you come to have the mark of the Sigillite on your armour.’
Zytos masked his surprise behind his faceplate. He saw it now too, the unmistakable eye of Malcador surreptitiously engraved into the legionary’s grey armour by meson beam.
‘But for now,’ Numeon continued, ‘we are escorting you and these people out of Rampart. I cannot guarantee your safety if you stay.’ Behind Hecht, the civilians had begun to emerge from hiding and the Pyre captain spared them a glance.
‘And if I refuse?’ asked Hecht.
‘I have a feeling you won’t.’
The clatter of booted feet made the legionaries turn suddenly at the prospect of Death Guard reinforcements.
Upon seeing Xathen and his squad, armed but without enemies to fight, they lowered their weapons.
‘Did we miss the battle?’ he asked, disappointed. With so many weapons, Xathen looked like a one-man army standing at the threshold to the generator chamber.
Vorko gave him a consoling slap on the shoulder.
‘Don’t feel bad, brother-sergeant, there may yet be more of them.’
Xathen gave the flamer trooper a withering glare then asked, ‘Who’s he?’ and gestured to Hecht.
Zonn’s voice came over the vox before anyone could answer.
‘Brothers, they have found us.’
‘They?’ asked Zytos.
‘The third gunship is airborne and has our position.’
‘Zonn,’ said Numeon, ‘whatever happens, do not let that vessel off Rampart. No one must know we are here and whom we carry.’
‘That will not be a problem, brother-captain. They are not attempting to flee.’
‘What?’
‘They are trying to kill us.’
They left the complex at a run, Zytos barking orders for a rapid redeployment and response to the genuine Death Guard threat. Gargo would stay behind with Dakar and Vorko. The de facto Apothecary needed to get them fit enough for duty before the Salamanders were ready to leave Rampart. That meant standing and able to fight. They would also gather together the civilians for transit to the Charybdis, assuming they still had a vessel to ferry them.
It fell to Xathen to keep an eye on Hecht. The mysterious grey legionary was a rogue element Zytos could not ignore. Then there was Numeon…
He drove ahead of the others at a ferocious pace. If the Death Guard knew the Salamanders were no longer on Macragge, if they discovered they had Vulkan…
Zytos knew the risks. He knew entering the Ruinstorm was madness
even without the presence of Death Guard at their heel, but Numeon’s behaviour bordered on reckless.
In spite of that, Zytos managed to emerge from the dome tunnel just behind him.
All eyes were drawn to the murky sky above, where a Death Guard gunship had unleashed its pinion-mounted heavy bolters, shredding the ablative armour of the Salamanders transport.
‘Get their attention,’ said Zytos.
Xathen slowed, taking aim with his bolter.
Numeon was firing too, but his sidearm did not have the range, or he the accuracy with only one eye.
Xathen’s shell struck the plate casing of the port-side engine turbine, lodged and exploded. A one in fifty shot. Pluming black smoke whirled in a dirty spiral as the spluttering vents pushed out the cloud then sucked it back in.
The ship pitched, losing some lift, but the pilot adjusted and it levelled out. Winged, but not down. The gunship swung its nose around towards the Salamanders. With a high-pitched whine, lascannon capacitors powered up.
A fusillade of shells hammered the Death Guard vessel with little impact as the legionaries on the ground fought to bring it down, but without heavier weapons it would take a miracle.
Below the gunship, the rear ramp of Draconis crashed down and a figure in blue-green battleplate staggered out.
‘Is that Ushamann?’ asked Xathen, not trusting to luck and firing off sustained bursts like the others.
Zytos divided his attention between Hecht and Numeon, who had at least slowed to allow the others to stand with him. A flare of pellucid light seized his attention, drawing his eye to the Librarian.
A storm crackled across Ushamann’s fingertips, coalescing quickly into a billowing thunderhead of mass and substance. He flung out one arm to direct an arc of lightning that stabbed into the armoured flank of the gunship like a lance.
No… not a lance. It did not merely strike, it writhed and bored. A serpent of heaven-fire coursed throughout the ship. Minor lightning arcs were rippling across the fuselage, cooking off the ammunition in the pinion-mounts. The frontal glacis suddenly webbed with cracks. Ushamann threw out his other hand, unleashing a second bolt. It slithered hungrily like the first, blowing out one of the engines. A plume of smoke and fire punched out the side hatch of the ship as something within exploded.
It pitched, the gunship, suddenly uncertain of its velocity and ability to stay aloft.
Figures inside the hold scrambled to the blown side hatch, trying to jump out, but the gunship was thrashing in its death throes now. None made it out before the fuel tank ignited and a ball of flame lit up the sky in place of the gunship like the ephemeral dawning of a second sun.
Wreckage and bodies fell. The Salamanders made sure there were no survivors. Xathen was particularly ruthless. Only when it was over and they stood amongst the ruins of the vessel and its slain cargo, did anyone approach Ushamann.
‘Brother…’ said Zytos, reaching for the Epistolary, but he stayed his hand when he saw the veins of corposant wreathing Ushamann’s armour.
Ushamann was on his knees but had enough strength to hold up his hand.
‘A moment…’
‘You were unconscious.’
‘I was compelled to rouse.’
‘Compelled?’
‘In my stupor, I beheld a vision.’
Ushamann craned his neck to look up. Unlike Zytos, he wasn’t wearing his helmet, so his blazing azure eyes were visible.
‘Of our father, of Vulkan. He told me I had to rise.’
Numeon held the sigil.
‘Vulkan lives…’ he breathed, and all who were in his presence felt the conviction in his words. His belief.
Even Kaspian Hecht.
Twenty-Two
Interrogative
Battle-barge Charybdis, interrogation chamber
‘Are you alone?’
‘Here, in this darkened cell?’ asked Hecht, gesturing to the walls, the door, the near-lightless confines.
‘It is not a cell, but it could be,’ Zytos reminded him.
He stayed in the shadows at the edge of the interrogation room, arms folded.
Var’kir was the one asking the question, his skull-faced helmet sitting in front of him on the circular table, staring hollow-eyed at Hecht.
Hecht spared Zytos a glance but only that. He had been told to remove his helm, so complied. A stern, war-weary face regarded them. Hecht’s origin was hard to determine, his skin lightly tanned, his bearing patrician. At first Zytos had thought Ultramarine or Imperial Fists legionary, but there was an edge, a dangerous vitality uncharacteristic of either.
Not a Raven, the flesh palette was wrong. Bionics were not in evidence, so that ruled out the Iron Hands too. The melanchrome mutation was also absent, though Zytos reckoned he or Var’kir would have instantly recognised a fellow Nocturnean.
‘Alone in your mission,’ Var’kir clarified for the obstreperous legionary.
‘I wasn’t. There was another. I had orders to meet him.’
‘On Rampart?’
‘No. I was attacked, my ship practically destroyed and I left for dead. I drifted, with only my armour to ward me against the void, until a passing freighter found me and took me to Rampart.’
‘That was fortunate.’
‘I do not believe in luck.’
Zytos snorted at the grey legionary’s impudence, but Var’kir lifted his hand a fraction to let him know he had control of the situation.
‘We make our own,’ said the Chaplain.
‘I believe in the Emperor’s judgement. He deemed my survival just.’
Var’kir’s eyes narrowed.
‘Who were you meeting? What was his name?’
‘I am not at liberty to say.’
‘Consider your liberty very carefully.’
‘You won’t incarcerate me,’ replied Hecht with confidence.
‘Is that so?’
Hecht nodded. ‘I am a sworn servant of Malcador the Sigillite.’ He turned his shoulder towards the meagre light. ‘See his mark upon my armour.’
‘We see it,’ said Var’kir. ‘Are your orders from Terra? Do you know if it still endures?’ There was an urgency to the Chaplain’s questioning, despite his previously cool demeanour.
The implications if Terra did still stand were sizeable, not least for Guilliman’s second empire. Contingency was one thing, but if such an undertaking, the founding of Imperium Secundus, had taken place with the Throneworld in dire need then it would stand as a great shame for all involved. Heresy, even.
Hecht appeared to falter, as he considered his response. It became apparent his hesitation was born of uncertainty.
‘I have not set eyes on Terra for a long time, nor have I had any contact with Lord Malcador beyond my original orders. But my mission is mine alone to know. Even your volatile psyker could not wrench it from my mind, and any tortures you might devise would yield nothing also. You have no choice but to give me my leave. For now, our paths converge. From what I’ve seen you have few warriors aboard this vessel and you are obviously headed somewhere inhospitable to be so cautious.’
‘Our caution and our destination are no business of yours,’ snapped Zytos.
Hecht showed his palms in a gesture of compliance.
‘I do not plan to make it so. I am without a ship, my comrade lost, probably dead. For now, I find myself in the company of allies. Let me do Malcador’s will unimpeded. As soon as I can procure another ship, I will leave you to whatever it is you are doing out here in the void.’
‘Where we are headed that might not be possible,’ said a third figure, one Hecht had not noticed until it had turned to him.
‘And where is that, might I ask?’
The burning embers of Numeon’s eyes blazed as he came into the light.
‘Into the Ruinstorm.’
‘Does that expression denote good or bad news?’ asked Ushamann, sitting up on a medi-slab in the ship’s apothecarion.
‘Your vitals appear fine,’ Gargo replied, putting down the bio-scanner, ‘but I am not an Apothecary. I can patch up wounds, my physiological knowledge is lacking.’
‘Good news, then.’
Gargo raised an eyebrow.
‘How so?’
‘Ignorance is oft preferable to truth,’ said Ushamann, climbing off the slab to stand beside Gargo.
Even in his battleplate, the black-smiter only came up to the Librarian’s nose. Ushamann’s slight frame possessed height but not width to eclipse his brother.
‘You can’t believe that.’
‘I do, Gargo.’ Three stripes of deep red hair, shaved into drake heads, divided the Librarian’s otherwise smooth head. His eyes were perpetually narrowed, as if scrutinising, measuring, and he had the weary expression of a warrior who had seen too much.
Gargo knew Isstvan V had been harsh to Ushamann. He had lost his mentor, and many of his Librarius who had been reduced to line troopers during the massacre. All that power… shackled and denied to them.
What a difference it might have made.
What was it Xathen often said? We have all lost something.
‘This war is an ugly truth,’ Gargo reasoned. ‘Brother killing brother. It’s abhorrent, but we must confront it.’
‘How shall we confront the loss of Terra, brother?’
‘We cannot know that Terra is lost.’
‘True, and yet we must consider it. Our guest, this Hecht, claims to serve Malcador and he appears to be telling the truth. But his origin is no proof that the Emperor still rules the Imperium – only that he did whilst Hecht was last there.’
Gargo held in his anger. ‘You cannot believe this, Ushamann.’
‘Why not?’
‘Terra must endure. The Emperor must endure.’
‘Then why was Guilliman raising a second Imperium with Macragge as its epicentre? By confronting this war, we face an unpleasant truth. This is no different. It is the same for Vulkan, also.’
