by Nick Kyme
'Save your thanks,' he returned flatly. 'I did it for the good of the mission, not your well-being.' He was about to turn away, when he paused and looked Dak'ir in the eye. 'You'll doom us all with your compassion, Ignean.'
Dak'ir knew Tsu'gan was right to an extent; his desire to save the magos had endangered them, but he was adamant given the same situation again, he would make the same choice. The Salamanders were protectors, not merely slayers. Let other Chapters revel in that dubious accolade. Dak'ir wanted to enlighten his brother to that very fact, but the steady voice of Pyriel prevented any riposte.
'The battle is not over.' The Librarian's eyes flared cerulean blue behind his helmet lenses. 'Fire-born, prepare yourselves!' he called as one consciousness became many.
The dull sound of movement echoed from the corridor ahead as something shrugged itself awake.
'Multiple heat signatures,' reported Iagon as his auspex lit up a moment later. 'And rising,' he added, securing the device away and hefting his bolter. 'All entrances.'
The Salamanders spread out, covering ingress into the temple.
'Something comes…' shouted Brother Zo'tan. 'Servitors!' he added, the glare from his luminator casting one of the lumbering creatures starkly.
A lobotomy plate was riveted to the servitor's roughly shaven skull. It was dressed in dark labour overalls, scorched by fire and muddied by oil and grime. Its skin was grey as if swathed in a patina of dust or merely bled of all life and left to wither. One of its arms was curled up into a rigor-mortised fist, and fixed to a torso bloated with wires and fat, ribbed cables; the other arm ended in a mechanised pincer, puffs of hydraulic gas ghosting the air as it flexed.
Dak'ir recalled the slumped automatons they had encountered on their way to the temple. He could not be accurate, but he knew there had been hundreds.
'Another here, second right!' yelled Brother Apion.
Dak'ir heard Brother G'heb bellow after him.
'Targets spotted third left corridor.'
The Salamanders had formed two semi-circles, one per squad, with Librarian Pyriel as the link between them. Each faced outwards, one or two bolters levelled at an opening. Flamers took one portal each. That left Ba'ken's multi-melta and Brother M'lek, from Tsu'gan's squad, carrying a heavy bolter. Dak'ir hoped the combined firepower would be enough.
Brother Emek was standing to his left in their battle-formation.
'The death of the magos must have been the catalyst for some kind of activation code,' he said over the comm-feed, testing the igniter on his flamer with a short spit of fire.
'How many could there be?' barked Tsu'gan, itching to destroy this new foe.
'On a ship this size… thousands,' Emek returned.
'It matters not.' Ba'ken's deep voice was like dull thunder, on his brother-sergeant's right flank. 'We'll send them all to their deaths.'
Dak'ir only half heard him, having already picked up on Tsu'gan's line of thought.
'Wait until they've closed to optimum lethal range. Short controlled bursts,' he ordered over the comm-feed. 'Conserve your ammunition.'
Pyriel's force sword burst into cerulean flame, reminding the brother-sergeant of the Librarian's potency. His voice took on an unearthly timbre as an aura of power coursed over his armour in miniature lightning storms.
'Into the fires of battle,' he intoned.
'Unto the anvil of war!' his Salamanders replied belligerently.
The servitors emerged from the gloom with slow, monotonous purpose, like a horde of mechanised zombies. Their pallid faces were vacant masks, their only compulsion to execute the intruders on the ship. They were armed with the tools of their labours: chainblades, pneumatic drills, hydraulic lifter-claws, even acetylene torches burning white hot, heralding their advance from the darkness.
The Salamanders waited until the first wave of the servitors had made its way into the temple before unleashing hell.
Blood, oil, flesh and machine-parts cascaded in a visceral miasma, the automatons punished with the wrath of the Salamanders' weapons. But like their slayers, these creatures of melded skin and metal felt no fear; they experienced no emotion, and came forward implacably.
Where one fell, another two servitors took its place, funnelling from the depths of the Archimedes Rex like a tide.
Drone-like, they flocked to the temple and the interlopers within. As their numbers increased, so too did they begin to close on the Salamanders; for despite their prodigious abilities, the Space Marines could not maintain an unbroken wall of fire to hold the servitors off. With every metre gained, the fury of the Salamanders' response intensified and Dak'ir's earlier conservatism had to be abandoned.
It wasn't long before this desperate approach took its toll.
'Down to my last rounds,' voiced Brother Apion.
His report spurred a slew of others over the comm-feed as, throughout the squads, Salamanders started to run out of ammunition.
'Flamer at seventeen per cent and falling… Switching to reserve weapon… Ammunition low, brothers…'
The circle of fire was failing.
'I'm empty,' replied Brother G'heb, the hollow chank of his bolter starkly audible as it ran dry.
Dak'ir reached across and shot a drill-armed servitor with his plasma pistol while his battle-brother drew a reserve weapon. Bolt pistol bucking in his grasp, G'heb nodded his gratitude.
'Endure it, brothers!' yelled Pyriel, impeding a servitor's mecha-claw with his force sword as it sought to remove his head. The automaton was one of the few that had made it through the bolt storm. The Librarian opened his palm. With gauntleted fingers splayed he engulfed the servitor in a blast of psychic fire from his hand, burning out its eyes, rendering its flesh to charred hunks and scorching machinery black.
Crushing the smoking husk of the servitor with a blow from his force sword, the Librarian moved out of formation, a hot core of crackling fire building inside his now clenched fist. Battle-brothers S'tang and Zo'tan covered him as Pyriel went down on one knee, head bowed, focusing his power.
The servitors converged on the Librarian but S'tang and Zo'tan kept them back with the last of their ammunition. They had enough for Pyriel to raise his head, his entire body now swathed in an aura of conflagration. It sped from his hunkered form in a violently flickering trail, its head that of a snarling firedrake that arced around the Salamanders, encircling them as the elemental swallowed its own fiery tail.
'Brothers…' Pyriel's voice crackled like the deepest magma pits of Mount Deathfire, '…go to your blades… Now!' he roared, and the wall of flame exploded outwards with atomic force, the nuclear fire burning all within its path to ash. The servitors became darkened silhouettes in the haze, only to disintegrate like shadows before the sun.
Dak'ir felt the prickle of Pyriel's psychic backwash at the edges of his mind, and he smarted at the unfamiliar sensation. He bolstered his plasma pistol, which was down to its last energy cell, and drew his combat blade, wielding both it and his chainsword in either hand. Several of his battle-brothers had done the same, some preferring bolt pistols; others with no choice but to unsheathe their short blades.
Pyriel's unleashed holocaust had drained him, and Brothers S'tang and Zo'tan maintained guard as the Librarian returned to the cordon of green battle-plate in order to marshal his strength. Scorched metal, the forlornly dripping remnants of votive chains and the ashen corpses of servitors littered the ground around the Salamanders allowing them time to adopt fresh tactics.
The conflagration had been devastating. Hundreds of automatons were dead. It provided but a few moments' respite.
'They come again!' hollered Ba'ken, the booming laughter that followed echoing loudly around the vast chamber. 'They come for death!' He had stowed his multi-melta via a mag-lock on the back of the heavy weapon's ammo rig. It was cumbersome, but Ba'ken was strong enough to bear it without much deterioration of his close combat abilities. In its place he wielded a piston-driven hammer of unblemished silver, a weapon he
had fashioned himself, all hard edges and promised destruction.
'Restrain your bull, Ignean,' snapped Tsu'gan, releasing a gout of fire from his bolter's combination flamer. There was only enough chemical incendiary for one shot, so the brother-sergeant used it to gain a few extra metres in order that his fellow battle-brothers could see him.
'Head for the bridge,' he declared, ripping out his combat blade and letting his combi-bolter hang by its strap. 'We'll use the narrow cordon to our advantage, deny them their numbers.'
Pyriel was still debilitated from his psychic exertions and could only nod his assent.
Moving off in pairs, the Salamanders made for the exit that, according to Emek, would lead them eventually to the bridge. As they fell back, snap shots executed the first automatons to come from the other seven portals.
Already, their exit was clogged with servitors, emerging from unseen maintenance hatches and hidden access conduits.
Seeing the danger that the plan might fail before they had even gained the corridor leading off from the temple, Dak'ir sped over to the conductor array still throwing off flashes of electricity.
'Hold, brothers!' he bellowed, just as the first pair of Salamanders, Apion and G'heb, were about to start cutting with their combat blades.
Obeying through conditioned reflex, they arrested their advance as Dak'ir crashed his chainsword against one of the conductor pylons. The first batch of servitors was emerging through the portal as an unfettered lightning arc erupted from the shattered conductor array. Dak'ir was thrown back by the resulting blast, as the bolt of electrical energy earthed into the servitor forms, exploding circuitry and burning through clumps of wiring. The arc spread, leaping from body to body, hungrily devouring the automatons who jerked and shook as the artificial lightning wracked them.
Smoking corpses and the stench of charred meat and hot metal were left in the wake of the electrical storm. Apion and G'heb rushed into the void it had created, crushing husked bodies with their booted feet and clearing a path for their battle-brothers.
Dak'ir was hauled up by Ba'ken, who then turned surprisingly quickly given the weight on his back, and crushed the skull on an oncoming servitor with his piston-hammer. When he turned back, tiny ripples of electrical charge were slowly dispersing over Dak'ir's power armour.
'Ready to move out, brother-sergeant?' he asked.
'Lead the way, brother.'
Fully half the Salamanders had entered the portal and were chopping through the hordes of automatons coming at them from deeper in the ship. As Dak'ir entered the darkness of the narrow corridor, he wondered briefly whether there was a vast factorum at the heart of the Archimedes Rex churning out entire battalions of the creatures in an unending cycle.
'Emek, what's the status of your flamer?' asked Dak'ir through the comm-feed. The battle-brother was one of the last out of the temple, with only Tsu'gan lingering behind him intent on taking on the entire horde himself it seemed.
'I'm down to six per cent,' Emek replied, between short roaring bursts.
'Hold the rear of the column as long as you can, brother.'
'At your command, sergeant.'
Tsu'gan revelled in the act of righteous slaughter. He killed with abandon, seeking out targets even before he'd despatched the last. Every servitor that came within reach was cut down with ruthless efficiency. He decapitated one with his combat blade, a spinal column of wires and rigid cabling left protruding from the servitor's ruined neck. Another he gutted, tearing out a handful of lubricant-wet wires like intestines. Tsu'gan used his fist like a hammer, brutally pounding bone and metal with every wrath-fuelled blow.
Let the Ignean flee, he thought, derision creasing his face behind his battle-helm as he glanced in Dak'ir's direction, I expect it from one such as he.
A ring of carnage was rapidly growing around him, his combat blade so slick with oil and blood that it was almost black. These soulless creations were as nothing matched against the mettle of a Fire-born.
But for all his slaughter, the attacks did not abate and the servitors kept on coming.
A heavy blow rapped his pauldron, forcing him to step back. Tsu'gan cut his assailant down but was struck again, this time in the torso before he could get his guard up, and he staggered. Certain victory suddenly bled away, replaced by the prospect of an ignominious death. Tsu'gan craved glory; he had no desire to perish in some forgotten mission aboard a Mechanicus forge-ship.
Another thought crept into his mind, this time unbidden.
I have over-extended myself, cut off from my brothers…
Tsu'gan tried to fall back, but found he was surrounded. He balked at the realisation that his bravura might have doomed him.
A spear of flame erupted to his left, singeing the edge of his pauldron and setting warning icons flashing on his helm display. Tsu'gan was half-shielding his body when he saw the servitors engulfed by the blaze, slumping first to their knees and then collapsing in a smouldering heap. He recognised Brother Emek, releasing his flamer as the last of the promethium was spent. Tsu'gan also saw that the way to the corridor was now clear.
'Call your trooper back, Dak'ir,' he snapped down the comm-feed, outwardly lamenting his scorched armour, 'Unlike you, I don't want my face burned off. He grunted a reluctant thanks to Brother Emek as Dak'ir returned:
'Then retreat with your fellow Fire-born. You overstretch yourself, brother.'
Tsu'gan took out his frustration on a servitor that had strayed ahead of its pack, pummelling the creature with a blow from his fist. Inwardly, the brother-sergeant gave a sigh of relief - he knew were it not for Dak'ir's contingency, he would probably be dead. That admission alone burned more than the thought of perishing unheralded on the Archimedes Rex. Tsu'gan was determined that the debt would not last.
Storming through the tightly-packed corridors of the Mechanicus ship, the Salamanders fought in the way they were made for - up close and eye-to-eye. Though they had exhausted both flamers, their zeal and wrath more than compensated for it. Blood and oil ran thick as they held their lines and won metre by gore-drenched metre, the tally of dead servitors in the hundreds. Tenacious and unyielding, they epitomised the Promethean ideal - they were Fire-born, Salamanders. War was their temple; battle the sermons that they preached with bolter and blade.
Their violent efforts took them as far as a wide gallery, possibly an inspection yard given the ranks of assessment tables lining either side. Stout metal columns etched in binaric and the sigils of the Omnissiah punctuated each of the empty bays where armour, weapons and other materiel would normally be logged, examined and approved by inspection servitors. The barren bays were overlooked by broad steel gantries that hung fifty metres up. Any details were lost in shadow, but they were supported by angled stanchions enabling them to take a considerable mass.
Servitors spewed from blast doors that were opening in three locations around the yard. Tsu'gan, who had slashed and bludgeoned his way to the front, met them with a furious battle cry. He clove the arm off one automaton, spilling fuel and releasing sparks as Dak'ir bifurcated another from sternum to groin. A clutch of wires slopped from the ragged wound like intestines as the brother-sergeant swept past it looking for another foe, before Ba'ken followed in his wake and crushed the stricken wretch with his piston-hammer.
An organised retreat had turned into a melee. The Salamanders fought in groups of two and three, watching their brothers' blindsides as they brought fire and fury to the relentless enemy. Only Pyriel fought alone. None dared approach the Librarian, his force sword carving irresistible death arcs through anything it touched. Psychic fire spilled from his eyes like an optical laser, tearing through a line of servitors and severing their mechanised torsos. A clenched fist, and the summoned firedrake roared into being, the elemental burning down automatons as it swept over them in a fiery wave.
'In the name of Vulkan, repel them! Fire-born do not yield!' Pyriel bellowed a rallying cry as the servitors closed inexorably.
Wi
th their ammunition all but spent, many of the Salamanders had turned to close assault weapons. Some carried the traditional combat blade, akin to the Ultramarine spatha; others wielded hammers in homage to the blacksmith, and Vulkan's adopted father, N'Bel or in tribute to the primarch himself who had first taken up the weapon to defeat the xenos plaguing Nocturne and liberate the planet.
Honour, for all its noble intention, meant precious little as the Salamanders were slowly enveloped. At distance, the servitors were no challenge. Bereft of ranged weapons, the automatons could be vanquished with ease. At close quarters, they were a different prospect. Though slow and cumbersome, their claws and drills and hammers were deadly, easily capable of chewing through power armour. Attacking in such numbers with no sign of respite; unless something changed, the Salamanders could not hope to prevail…
The rash of fatalism flashed across Dak'ir's mind as he put another servitor down. Despite his training, the many hours of drills, the constant honing of his skills and building of his endurance, the brother-sergeant was beginning to tire. They'd sustained casualties. Brother Zo'tan was limping; S'tang had a fierce dent in his battle-helm that had probably cracked his skull; several others nursed shoulder or arm wounds and fought one-handed.
Tsu'gan raged against the inevitable, easily killing twice the servitors of any of his battle-brothers. Even Pyriel, with all his psychic might, was hard-pressed to keep pace with the rampant brother-sergeant's tally. Fatigue, to Tsu'gan, was an enemy just like the automatons. It had to be fought and bested, denied at all costs.
It was little wonder he carried such sway amongst the other sergeants of 3rd Company. But even Tsu'gan's will had its limits.
Something hard and heavy struck Dak'ir across his unguarded left flank. White heat flared behind his eyes as he felt his rib plate crack. Blood was leaking down the side of his power armour, black and thick like the oil of their adversaries. Darkness clawed at the edges of his vision. As he fell back, he saw the face of his killer - pitiless eyes stared back at him from above a mouth obscured by speaker-grille, framed by skin with a deathly pallor. Dak'ir thought of the robed figure in the temple as his body met the ground, his inevitable death playing out in slow motion.
