by Nick Kyme
The power-armoured Salamanders, crouched low and clutching their grenades, were interspersed between them, five Space Marines either side of the ''spine'', each led by a sergeant with a Terminator at both flanks.
Tsu'gan counted fifteen steps, the weapons fire intensifying with every one. Outside his mobile redoubt of reinforced ceramite, he heard the shuddering reports of the Salamanders' guns and felt the heat from the venting flamers blazing overhead.
'…and slay the enemies of the Imperium with bolt and blade…' Elysius continued. His voice, normally cold like iron, burned with a zealot's passion now. The caustic rhetoric was amplified by the vox-emitters in his battle-helm, and his fiery sermons rang with the clarity and force of a loud hailer.
'…commit their vile forms to the flames of purgation…'
Ten more steps.
'…hurl the wretched into the abyss to be torn asunder by claws of iniquity…' Five more.
'…and the tainted shall burn within the pit, smote from the earth…' Three.
'Heed me traitors and tremble!' The gate was before them.
Praetor's shield wall broke. An aperture in the barrier of ceramite was forged to allow Tsu'gan and his commandoes through. The line divided into two, storm shields facing outwards, the Terminators drawing as much fire as they could from the remote guns.
Hunter-killers emerged from concealed firing slits, triggered by proximity. De'mas took out one, the incendiary in the rocket exploding in the wall, spitting out debris like iron hail. The other released; its target, the Chaplain who had stalked forwards to join his brothers at the gate.
Elysius disappeared amidst a cloud of fire and shrapnel. Tsu'gan fully expected him to be dead but when the dust cleared the Chaplain was down on his knee but very much alive, his Rosarius field flickering intermittently around him. The hunter-killer had retracted, only to return seconds later with a fresh payload.
'Dare bend me to my knee, craven tool of heresy,' spat Elysius, standing straight. 'With the fury of Prometheus, I smite thee!' His bolt pistol roared with the voice of damnation and the hunter-killer was no more.
Returning to the squad outside the gates, the Chaplain unlocked his own melta-bomb from his belt.
'Let the tainted be purged,' he intoned, tendrils of smoke rising off his armour from where the missile blast had breached his shield of faith.
Standing before the gate, Tsu'gan felt the baleful influence exuding from its central icon as tangible as heat. It was raw defiance and aggression, promised destruction and bloody threats. Brother-Chaplain Elysius smothered it with his mere presence, though it was an act of will to defy the malignity imbued within the symbol of iron. Tsu'gan and his brothers were emboldened by the Chaplain's example, drawing on their own inner belief to overcome the terrible gate. One conviction was left in their minds: the fortress must fall.
Together, the Salamanders attached their grenades and bombs, priming the charges for a three-second delay before retreating back behind the Terminators and their storm shields as they closed around them again.
The blast wave was like a baptism. Tsu'gan revelled in it washing over him and began to laugh, deep-bellied and loud.
'What is so amusing, brother?' asked Sergeant De'mas, the incendiary vapours dissipating from around the gate.
Tsu'gan's eyes burned like hellfires behind his battle-helm, aglow despite the darkness of his lenses.
'War at last, brother,' he intoned. 'Only war.'
Though, incredibly, the gate still stood, it was bent and crippled. Tsu'gan could see the inner fortress beyond it through fist-wide cracks as the Terminators parted slightly.
'Are you ready to face the traitor garrison, brother?' bellowed Praetor, the wild glint of anticipation in his eyes.
Tsu'gan matched it, grinning ferally behind his battle-helm. 'It's a small matter. But let us see, lord Firedrake.'
Praetor smiled, a thin fissure cracking the hard stone of his countenance, and brandished his thunder hammer.
'Bring it down!' he roared, and the Terminators before the gate struck as one.
II
Prisoners
'I will lead,' asserted Dak'ir as he tested the weight of the steel cable spooling from the winch-rig. One of the Salamanders Techmarines had set up the climbing device and each of the six Fire-born standing at the threshold of the chasm that had opened next to the Vulkan's Wrath was hooked to it. Threading the thick cable through loops on their battle harnesses, each Salamander made ready for a descent into the unknown.
Ba'ken had returned quickly after his sergeant had dismissed him to re-armour. He carried the weighty rig of his heavy flamer upon his back, insisting that the bulky weapon would fit through the narrow crevice that led into the depths of Scoria. Brother Emek joined him, having left the remaining medical operations to the human chirurgeons of the strike cruiser. His surgeon-craft was limited to field wounds; he didn't possess the necessary skill to conduct complex procedures. In any case, a Space Marine's time was better spent than languishing amidst the injured and dying.
Brothers Apion and Romulus were also from Dak'ir's squad, and hand-picked by the sergeant for their battle experience. The final place in the small expeditionary team went to Pyriel. The Librarian would follow after Dak'ir, tracking the psychic thread he had discerned emanating from below like a bloodhound.
'Luminators on. Vox-silence until we reach the bottom and know what we're dealing with,' Dak'ir ordered, the lume-lamp attached to his battle-helm stabbing into the blackness of the chasm below. Taking the strain of the cable, he plunged into stygian darkness.
Sensors in his battle-helm attenuated to the planet's atmospheric conditions registered a slight increase in temperature as Dak'ir descended. The reading glowed coldly on the inside of his lens display. Deafening silence filled the narrow space, only broken by the dull drone of the spooling winch-rig above. Sharp crags from the chasm's internal wall scraped against Dak'ir's armour. Gusts of steam, vented from the strike cruiser's partially submerged lower decks, passed over him and filmed his battle-plate with condensation. Soon, the solid adamantium of the ship's outer armour gave way to abject darkness. It was like delving into the bowels of an orherworld, one that fell away endlessly.
After an hour of painstakingly slow descent, Dak'ir's lume-lamp threw an oval of light that touched solid ground. Alighting at the bottom of the chasm at last, the brother-sergeant voxed his discovery through the comm-feed. Disengaging the cable from his battle-harness, Dak'ir stepped aside to allow space for his battle-brothers and drew weapons as he surveyed the pervading dark around them. The luminators on his battle-helm revealed a corridor of bare rock, terminating at the edge of the lume-lamp's effective range where the light was swallowed by blackness.
'The tunnel appears to be manufactured,' Emek reported down the comm-feed in a subdued voice. He drew his gauntlet lightly across the wall, interrogating its surface under the glow of his luminator.
Ba'ken had been the last to reach the bottom of the chasm. Determined to get through with his heavy flamer rig still attached, he had damaged his battle-helm on a jutting spike of rock. The sporadic interference plaguing his lens display as a direct result of the collision had driven him to distraction. When he reached the ground he removed the helmet, hooking it to his belt. The hulking trooper had acknowledged Dak'ir's look of reproach with a grunt, adjusting the promethium tanks on his back.
After exploring a few hundred metres, Brother Emek leading with flamer readied, the squad of Salamanders had stopped to surround him when he'd discerned a variation in the tunnel's structure.
'It's cambered and smooth, as if ground by tools or digging equipment,' he added.
'Must be quite some rig to cut an opening this large,' replied Ba'ken, his back to Emek as he guarded the way they had come. Brothers Apion and Romulus trained their bolters forwards, moving to the head of the Salamanders' formation whilst Emek examined the wall.
Dak'ir agreed with Ba'ken. The tunnel was easily wide enough to acc
ommodate all six Astartes abreast and so high that even Venerable Brother Amadeus could have marched along it without needing to stoop.
'Definitely machine-hewn,' Emek concluded, reassuming his position at point.
Pyriel said nothing. His eyes were shut, and his expression was focused.
'Brother-Librarian?' Dak'ir asked.
Pyriel opened his eyes and the cerulean glow faded. 'Not the chitin-beasts,' he whispered, still surfacing from the psychic trance. 'Something else…' he added.
When it was clear the Librarian wasn't about to elaborate, Dak'ir ordered them on.
Split down the middle by a thick blade, the Iron Warrior's battle-helm broke apart as Tsu'gan nudged it with his armoured boot. The face beneath was contorted in its final death throes, a dark and ragged wound bisecting it. Nose shattered beyond recognition, puckered flesh - festooned with chains and graven sigils - semi-parted to reveal yellowed bone; whatever had killed the traitor had done so long ago.
'This one is no different,' said Tsu'gan, letting the body loll back into a prone position.
The Firedrakes had brought the gate down with successive blows from their thunder hammers, its structural integrity weakened by the grenade blasts. Within was not the traitor garrison that Praetor had predicted. Instead, the Salamanders found corpses, arranged in positions that parodied the Iron Warriors' former duties. Those traitors not pitched off their feet during the assault remained at sentry, or crouched by now silent gun emplacements. It was exactly how the warriors in the redoubts had been set up: dead, but maintaining the illusion of numbers and protection. Only five of the slain Iron Warriors had been fresh: the rest were necrotic husks, decaying in their armour.
Five Chaos Space Marines and an array of automated defence guns had kept out a force of over eighty. Three of the Salamanders had been slain during the ill-conceived assault; two of those had come from Vargo's squad. The third was the driver from the destroyed Rhino. Space Marines were not easy to kill: the Assault squad troopers had been almost rent apart, taking the brunt of the heavy explosion, whereas the APC driver was shredded by shrapnel and shot through the skull as he tried to stagger from the vehicle wreck. Their progenoids had been secured by Fugis whilst under fire, and were safe within his reductor's storage casket. Several more were injured, and the Apothecary was tending to them as the rest of the task force secured the fortress.
'Dead before we even attacked…' N'keln's voice held a trace of annoyance to it as it came from behind Tsu'gan.
'They were dead a lot longer than that, my lord.' The brother-sergeant's diction was clipped. He blamed the needless deaths of his battle-brothers on his captain for his trepidation and unwillingness to commit their forces properly when the Salamanders had initiated assault.
'Five Astartes to man an entire fortress,' N'keln thought aloud. 'What were they doing here, brother-sergeant?'
'Annals recount that during the Great Crusade, the sons of Perturabo occupied many frontier bastions such as this,' said Praetor, his mighty physical presence moving implacably into Tsu'gan's eye line. 'Squad-strength garrisons were not unusual, but for them to still exist over ten thousand years later…' The Firedrake's voice trailed off. His fiery gaze went to the fortress of iron's inner keep, a squat structure of broad bulwarks and grey metal. Chimneys, venting smoke, sprouted from its flat, crenulated roof. Another gate barred entrance to the inner keep. Sergeant De'mas and his squad were rigging charges to blast it in.
Tsu'gan felt a keen sense of apprehension as he regarded the secondary gate. Even just standing within the expansive inner courtyard, surrounded by Iron Warrior bodies, a pall of unease seemed to wax and wane as if already probing his defences.
A flame burst seen from the corner of his helmet lens arrested his attention. Brother-Chaplain Elysius was ordering the corpses rounded up and burned. Flamer teams, sequestered from the Tactical squads, doused the mangled pyre in liquid promethium.
'Whatever killed them, did so with brute force and outside these walls,' Praetor's voice interrupted Tsu'gan's thoughts, the veteran sergeant of the Firedrakes having followed his gaze.
'So they dragged the bodies back inside after a much earlier battle?' offered N'keln. 'They must have been victorious, though I can see no evidence of enemy dead.'
'The Iron Warriors burn their foes too, brother-captain,' said Praetor, 'An anachronism of old Legion custom that some warbands still adhere to.'
'They are ash,' spat Tsu'gan, struggling to rein in his anger, 'as our slain brothers soon will be.'
If N'keln felt the barb, he didn't show it. Nor did Praetor seem about to reprimand.
'Victory is correct, brother-captain,' said the Firedrake, 'but at what cost, and against whom?'
'Those xenos we encountered at the crash site are not foe enough to trouble Astartes,' Tsu'gan asserted. 'I have seen no other encampments, no evidence of vessels or an army's movements.' He eyed the burning pile of corpses again: some fifty or so Iron Warriors. Renegades, yes, but still Astartes once fashioned by the Emperor; still formidable warriors slain up-close and brutally. An enemy like that didn't simply disappear. It didn't lie down and die, either.
Tsu'gan's voice was low and forbidding. 'I think something other than the chitin lurks in the earth beneath us. It brought death to these traitors.'
Three hundred metres farther into the darkness and the tunnel became a labyrinth. Several corridors branched off from the main passage like a lattice within a giant hive. It put Dak'ir in mind of the chitin, but throughout their exploration of the underground network they had yet to encounter the creatures.
Ba'ken scoured each and every opening, the igniter from his heavy flamer casting a weak glow into the shadows. The Salamanders kept to the central tunnel, Dak'ir reasoning that it must lead to some nexus or confluence.
Ba'ken moved to the next junction. Panning his heavy flamer slowly and steadily, he started when an object skipped out of the darkness and rolled towards him.
'Contact!' he snapped smartly, preparing to douse what he thought could be a grenade in roaring promethium. The appearance of a diminutive figure scurrying into his firing arc stopped him.
It was a boy, and the ''grenade'' was a rubber ball.
Ba'ken lifted his finger off the release bar of his weapon just in time. A tiny spurt of flame spilled from the nozzle like a belch, but didn't ignite fully.
Grinding to an abrupt halt, the boy stared at the green-armoured hulk that brandished fire in his hands. In the ephemeral spit of flame, Ba'ken saw that the dark-skinned youngster was dressed in coarse grey fatigues. The clothing was patched, as if amalgamated from several different sources, and the boots strapped to his feet looked a few sizes too big for him. Terrified, the boy's eyes widened as Ba'ken came forward, lowering his heavy flamer.
'Have no fear,' he intoned, his voice deep and resonant in the narrow side-tunnel. Stepping into the darkness as he extended an open hand, the burning red blaze in the Salamander's eyes flashed casting his onyx-black skin in a diabolic lustre.
A whimper escaped from the trembling boy's mouth and he fled, leaving the ball behind.
Ba'ken's hand dropped and a tic of consternation afflicted his face.
'A child…' he said, acutely aware of Dak'ir arriving behind him. Ba'ken turned to face the sergeant. The rest of the squad had gathered at his sudden warning. Emek stood next to Dak'ir, whilst Apion and Romulus surveyed the shadows behind them. Librarian Pyriel stood a few steps back from the rest, his eyes smouldering with power.
'Human.' It was a statement not a question, but Ba'ken answered anyway.
'Yes, a boy.'
'Follow,' ordered Dak'ir in a low voice. 'Eyes open,' he warned, remembering the last time they'd encountered a human child in similar circumstances. It was back on Stratos, and the boy had led them into a trap. Dak'ir still recalled the crump of detonation and the skeins of shrapnel slewing across his visor.
He hoped this would not end the same way.
A vast iron hall was th
e first room the Salamanders encountered upon demolishing the inner keep's gate. It was bare, but much deeper and wider than the outer structure had suggested. Doorway yawning open, reinforced plasteel slabs hanging off their hinges, a pall of displaced dust rolled across the plated floor as Praetor entered. The other Firedrakes followed closely behind their sergeant, storm shields raised, a poised electrical charge rippling across their thunder hammers.
Recently reformed, the three Tactical squads followed in the wake of the Terminators. Issuing clipped orders, the sergeants dispersed their squads swiftly to reconnoitre. Negative contacts came back from De'mas and Typhos, who had been tasked to clear the alcoves and immediate anterooms. Brother-Captain N'keln and the Inferno Guard joined the rest of the Salamanders in the hallway soon after.
Lok's Devastators maintained guard at the inner keep's broken gate, whilst Brother-Sergeants Omkar and Ul'shan patrolled the battlements. Fire Anvil and one of the Rhino APCs blocked the main fortress gate. The dead from Vargo's squad and the slain driver were laid reverently in a second personnel carrier, parked further back in the courtyard. The third Rhino was kept idling. As soon as the Salamanders had ascertained what the Iron Warriors had been doing, it would go back to collect Argos or one of his Techmarines in the hope they'd be able to plunder and sanctify some of the traitors' technology.
'This room is secure, brother-captain,' said Praetor as N'keln entered the hall to stand alongside him, 'but there are further chambers that should be scoured leading off from this main hall—'
Praetor was interrupted by the sudden reappearance of Tsu'gan, back from reconnoitring. 'There is more than that, my lords,' he said, stalking towards them. Tsu'gan's tone was laced with animus. It suggested the Iron Warriors burning in the courtyard were not the only ones garrisoning the fortress.
N'keln's jaw hardened as old enmity surfaced. The Iron Warriors had been at Isstvan. 'Show me.'
