by Nick Kyme
'Must be hundreds of vehicles amidst all of that,' offered Lazarus, lying flat on his stomach on his sergeant's right.
'More like thousands,' Tsu'gan corrected, muttering. He handed the magnoculars back to Tiberon on the opposite side of him.
'Anything yet?' Tsu'gan asked Iagon, who was in a slightly more advanced position scrutinising his auspex. He had set it to its maximum wave band and the widest possible area array. The signals coming back were intermittent and hazy.
'No accurate readings,' he reported through the comm-feed in a clipped voice. 'Could be environmental interference, or there could simply be too many for the device to calculate.'
'There's a sobering thought,' replied Honorious, crouching just behind his sergeant and trying to keep the grit out of his flamer's igniter nozzle.
Tsu'gan ignored him and looked back over his shoulder. It had taken around half an hour to cover the distance from the fortress gate to the summit of the ridge, over uneven ground and on foot. Encumbered in power armour and fully armed, Tsu'gan reckoned they needed to leave at least twenty minutes for a return trip. He planned to mine part of the ridge, using all of the frag grenades he had left. It might not slow the greenskins to any great degree, but it would give them a sting they weren't expecting.
Above them the yellow sun had become a pale, convex line. In the conditions of the partial solar eclipse, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact time of day. Tsu'gan's rough calculation put it at around late afternoon. Judging by the speed of the approaching dust cloud, he reckoned the orks would reach them in less than an hour. Around an hour later and the sun would have set and total darkness would engulf the desert. He resolved to wire some photon flares and blind grenades amongst the redoubts before they returned behind the fortress walls.
'No way through that,' said Tiberon, interrupting Tsu'gan's thoughts, peering through the magnoculars. 'I hope to Vulkan that Agatone isn't facing a similar horde.'
The troops left guarding the Vulkan's Wrath were neither as numerous nor as well-defended as those at the fortress. They were also hindered by masses of injured crewmen. It left them and the strike cruiser vulnerable to attack. Tsu'gan had wanted to lead a band of reinforcements to bolster his brothers, but N'keln had forbidden it. All they could do was warn them to expect the enemy. It was scant consolation.
'Whatever augurs the orks use will draw them to the crashed ship,' Tsu'gan answered Tiberon. 'But they'll be scavenger warbands, hoping for easy pickings. The bigger bastards will be coming here. Orks go where the best fight is. They'll remember the bloody nose given to them at the fortress and will return to it, eager to settle the score. Even if it's against us and not the traitors.' He turned to look straight at Tiberon. 'Don't worry, brother,' Tsu'gan added in a feral tone. 'There'll be plenty for us to kill.'
It wasn't Vulkan who sat upon the throne before him.
Dak'ir realised this as he approached the recumbent Salamander, having climbed halfway up the stairs. But the Fire-born sitting there was old, ancient in fact. His armour harked back to the halcyon era of the Great Crusade, when all Space Marines had been brothers in arms and a new age of prosperity and oneness was in prospect for the galaxy. Those dreams were as dust now, just like the ashen patina that veiled the old Salamander in front of Dak'ir.
The venerable warrior bore the Legion markings of a trooper. His antiquated power armour was a deeper green than that of Dak'ir's. It had a Mark V Heresy-pattern design with its studded pauldron and greaves. The helmet was similarly attired and sat next to the Salamander's boot where he had set it down but never reclaimed it.
A glow behind Dak'ir, emitted psychically from Pyriel's hand, revealed the old Salamander's leathery skin, his battle-weathered face and thinly cropped hair the colour of silver wire. His eyes, where once a fire had burned with the fury of war, were dulled but not without life. He faced away from both Dak'ir and Pyriel, visible in side profile. He also appeared to be staring at something concealed from their view by the bulkhead columns of the dilapidated bridge, for there could be no doubt that this was the part of the ship where they now found themselves.
Dak'ir wondered briefly how long the Salamander had been sitting like that. It seemed to him a desolate charge that the ancient had undertaken.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Dak'ir followed the seated warrior's eye line and felt a slight tremor of shock.
The wall of the bridge had broken away, presumably destroyed when the ship had crash-landed, to reveal another chamber through the ragged tear in the metal. Though it was dark inside, Dak'ir's occulobe implant utilised all of the ambient light to discern a natural cavern. Within he saw row upon row of Astartes battle-plate. Salamanders all, these husks of former Fire-born were arranged in serried ranks. There were fifty in total, ten files and five Space Marines deep. The armour was empty and supported by metal frames so that the warriors stood to attention proudly in parade formation. Each one matched the style and age of the old Salamander's battle-plate and was gouged and battered.
Dak'ir noticed that one or two of the suits had toppled over, due to the rigours of time or the capriciousness of nature. He saw a helmet landed on its side, resting near the boot of its owner. Here and there a bullet-holed pauldron had slipped, to sag forlornly near a suit's elbow joint.
Looking back at the old Salamander, Dak'ir was filled with a tremendous sense of sadness. He had watched his brothers stoically for millennia, keeping vigil until such a time as someone else took up his mantle or he could perform his duty no more.
'How is this possible?' hissed Dak'ir, unsure if the old Salamander was even still cognisant enough to be aware of their presence. 'If his ship is indeed from Isstvan, he must be thousands of years old.'
'A fact we cannot be certain of,' Pyriel replied. 'Obviously, he has been here for some time. Whether that period extends to millennia we cannot know. The armour is old, but still worn by some in the Chapter today. The ship itself could simply be a reclaimed Expeditionary vessel, re-fitted and re-appropriated by the Adeptus Mechanicus.'
Dak'ir faced the Librarian.
'Is that what you believe, Pyriel?'
Pyriel returned a side glance at the sergeant.
'I don't know what I believe at this point,' he admitted. 'The warp storms could have affected the passage of time. But it's also entirely possible that this Salamander is simply many years old, longevity being a benefit of our slow metabolic rate. Such a thing has never been tested, given that most of our number invariably meet their end in war or, if death is not forthcoming and age arrives first, by wandering out into the Scorian Plain or setting sail on the Acerbian Sea to find peace. It is the way of the Promethean Creed.'
Pyriel shone the corona of psychic fire around his hand a little closer so they could get a better look at the old Salamander. The light reflected off the warrior's eyes, turning them a cerulean blue.
The old Salamander blinked.
Dak'ir almost took an involuntary step back, but marshalled his sudden shock as the old Salamander spoke.
'Brothers…' he croaked in a voice like cracking leather that suggested he hadn't spoken in some time.
Dak'ir approached the old Salamander.
'I am Brother-Sergeant Hazon Dak'ir of the Salamanders' 3rd Company,' he said, before introducing the Librarian. 'You have been on watch duty for a long time, brother.'
Dak'ir knew he needed to be careful. If this ancient warrior before them really did hark back to a time before the Heresy, if he was a survivor of the Dropsite Massacre, then much had changed that he would be unaware of. They needed answers but any unnecessary information might only serve to confuse him at this point.
'Brother Gravius…' The ancient Salamander tailed off, his precise disposition within the old Legion deserting him. 'And yes,' he started anew, seeming to recall that he had been asked a question. 'I have been sitting here for many years.'
'How did you come to be here on Scoria, Brother Gravius?'
The venerable Salamander paused
, frowning as he dredged through old memories. 'A storm…' he began, the words starting to come easier as he remembered how to articulate himself. 'We… withdrew from battle, our enemies in pursuit…' Gravius's face hardened and drew back into an angry snarl. 'Betrayers…' he spat, before lucidity failed him again and his features slackened.
'Was it Isstvan V, brother?' said Pyriel. 'Is that where you journeyed from?'
Gravius screwed up his face again, trying to remember.
'I… see fragments,' he said. 'Impressions only… disjointed in my mind.' He seemed to look past the two Salamanders in front of him.
Dak'ir thought Gravius was gazing into space, when the old Salamander slowly raised his arm from the side of the throne and pointed a finger. Dak'ir turned to see what Gravius was gesturing at. It looked like an old pict-viewer, some kind of ancient data-recording device half smothered by millennia of dirt.
Exchanging a glance with Pyriel, the brother-sergeant descended the stairs and went over to the pict-viewer. Dak'ir knew that many ships kept visual logs as the basis for battle simulations or to chart the progress of a campaign for future reference. Gravius had indicated that this device might contain the log of his ship and with it some clue as to its provenance.
Though it had been broken apart, Illiad and his men had fed power to some areas of the vessel. Dak'ir hoped that this was one of them. Even so, he expected nothing as he activated the pict-viewer and lines of snowdrift interference appeared on the dust-swathed screen.
Using his gauntlet, Dak'ir smeared the worst of the grime away just as an image was resolving in the small square frame. There was no sound; perhaps the vox-emitters no longer functioned, or perhaps the audio was not recorded along with the visuals. The point was moot.
Though the image was grainy and badly marred by constant static, Dak'ir recognised the bridge, as it must have been before the crash. The scene was frantic. Fire had taken hold of some of the operational consoles - Dak'ir looked over to them as they were now and saw a hint of heat-blackening underneath their grey veneer - and several crewmen were lying on the deck, presumably dead. They wore grey uniforms that bore an uncanny resemblance to the attire of Illiad and the settlers. Most were shouting - their voiceless panic, the half-realised terror in their faces, was disturbing.
Dak'ir saw Salamanders, too. The throne was shrouded in shadows, but the bulk of the armour was clear, the flash of fire and warning lights illuminating it just long enough for the brother-sergeant to make the connection. Several of the Astartes were injured too. The image was shaking badly, as if the bridge itself was being subjected to a fierce ordeal. No one addressed the recording, and Dak'ir assumed, with a fist of lead in his stomach, that the captain of the ship had ordered it switched on to capture the last moments of him and his crew. He had not expected to survive the crash.
There was a particularly violent tremor and the screen went blank. Dak'ir waited to see if there was any more, but there the recording ended.
A grim mood had settled over the ruined bridge, quashing the earlier excitement and optimism that Dak'ir had felt. Another tremor rocked the chamber, sending a pauldron crashing nosily to the ground and shaking the brother-sergeant out of his dark introspection.
He exchanged a look with Pyriel.
If the quakes did indeed presage a cataclysm that threatened the planet itself, as the Librarian had predicted, then Brother Gravius and the battle-suits needed to be moved, and quickly. Perhaps, upon returning to Nocturne and under the Chapter Master's guidance on Prometheus, the secrets within Gravius's shattered mind could be unlocked. If this was what the Salamanders had been sent to find - their prize - then all efforts must be made to recover them intact. Not only that, but Illiad and his settlers would need to be rescued too. The pict-recording of the ship's final log had cemented in Dak'ir's mind that the ancestors Illiad had spoken of were in fact the ship's original crew and he and his people their descendants.
The revelation was remarkable. Against all the odds, they had endured, creating for themselves a microcosm of Nocturnean society here on ill-fated Scoria.
The visions Dak'ir had experienced earlier, just before the tectonic shift had revealed the chasm into the subterranean realm, came back to him. On a strange, almost instinctual level, it confirmed to Dak'ir that Scoria was doomed and that its demise was soon to be at hand.
Yes, all would need to be delivered from the fires of the planet's inevitable destruction. There was just the small matter of the Vulkan's Wrath half-buried in the ash desert, and without the means to break free of it. If this was the primarch's will, a part of his prophecy etched in the Tome of Fire, then Dak'ir hoped that salvation would present itself soon.
The brother-sergeant's gaze flicked over to Gravius.
'Can you arise, brother? Are you able to walk?' he asked.
'I cannot,' Gravius answered with regret.
Pyriel touched a hand to the venerable brother's greave and shut his eyes. He opened them a moment later, the cerulean glow still fading.
'His armour is completely seized,' said the Librarian. 'Fused to the throne. His muscles have likely atrophied by now, too.'
'Can we move him?'
'Not unless you want his limbs to break off as we attempt it,' Pyriel replied grimly.
'This is my post,' Gravius rasped. His breath reeked of slow decay and stale air. 'My duty. I should have died long ago, brothers. If Scoria is to expire, become dust in the vastness of the universe, then so must I.'
Dak'ir paused, as he tried in vain to think of some other solution. In the end he clenched his fist in frustration, Pyriel looking on patiently. His tone betrayed his anger and frustration to the Librarian.
'We return for the armour, and report back our findings to Brother-Sergeant Agatone. We must be ready when we have a way to leave this accursed rock.'
Tsu'gan returned to the battlements of the iron fortress just in time to see the first explosions tear into the orks.
A series of fiery, grey blooms rippled in a line before the greenskins' advance, chewing up footsoldiers and wrecking their ramshackle vehicles. Implacably, the orks marched over the debris of bodies and twisted metal, the carnage only seeming to increase their lust for battle.
Through the magnoculars, Tsu'gan saw several of the greenskins pause to kill off their wounded brethren and remove their tusks or strip them of wargear or boots. 'Filthy scavengers,' he snarled, regarding the massive horde of green.
Inwardly, he cursed the fact their forces were divided before such a massive host. Consolidation was needed now, not division. Yet, they could not simply abandon the Vulkan's Wrath, nor her crew. At any account, there could be no envoys sent to the rest of their brothers - nothing could get through the green tide arrayed against them and live.
The creatures mobbed in indistinct groups that the brother-sergeant likened to rough approximations of battalions or platoons. Each mob was led by a massive chieftain, usually riding a battered wagon, buggy or truck; all bolted metal, hammered plate and the bastardised components of enemy vehicle salvage. Tsu'gan assumed the beasts' ships, the ones that had brought them to the surface, had landed farther off in the ash dunes and were beyond the reach of the magnoculars.
At least the falling slivers, peeling off the black rock like bullet-nosed hail, had abated.
Fights broke out intermittently amongst the orks. Their diminutive cousins - cruel, rangy creatures known as gretchin - lingered at the periphery of such brawls, hoping for scraps, an opportunity to defile the loser or simply to hoot and bray for more carnage. Often these lesser greenskins would be seized during the indiscriminate and seemingly random affrays and used in lieu of a club to bludgeon an opponent with bloody consequences for both.
Orks were a breed of xenos that lived solely to fight. Their behaviour was largely inscrutable to the Imperium, for the creatures possessed no discernible method that any tacticus logi or adeptus strategio had ever qualified. The aliens' predisposition towards battle was obvious in their muscu
lature and build, however. Trunk-necked, their skin as tough as a flak jacket, they were hard beasts to kill. Broad shouldered with thick bones and still thicker craniums, they stood as tall as an Astartes in power armour and were also his match in strength and raw aggression. The ork's only real weakness was in discipline, but nothing focused a greenskin's mind like the prospect of a fight against a hardy foe like the Space Marines.
Judging by the sheer mass of green approaching them, Tsu'gan knew this would be one battle not easily won.
Discipline and loyalty, Tsu'gan reconsidered. The greenskins have no loyalty to speak of; they possess no sense of duty to guide them. Yes, ''loyalty'' - that is our strength, that is our… His thoughts tailed off.
'How many?' asked Brother Tiberon.
Ever since they had fallen back in good order from the advancing greenskins, the horde's numbers had increased. Tsu'gan had related his best estimates to the forces in the iron fortress, but suspected they were now wildly conservative.
Brother-sergeant and combat squad had rejoined the rest of their battle-brothers on the wall, two sections down from where N'keln and his entourage were positioned. Iagon caught Tsu'gan's errant gaze as he looked away from the magnoculars to regard his brother-captain.
This battle will either forge or break him, was the unspoken exchange between them.
Brother Lazarus seemed to pick up on the vibrations between Iagon and his brother-sergeant. All in Tsu'gan's squad shared their leader's desire to see N'keln no longer at the head of 3rd Company.
That is not disloyalty, Tsu'gan told himself, still unsettled by his previous thoughts, It is duty - for the good of the company and the Chapter.
'If he falters,' said Lazarus in a low voice, 'then Praetor will step in. You can be sure of that.'
Then the way will be clear for another…
It was almost as if Tsu'gan could read the thoughts in Iagon's earlier expression.
Tsu'gan had his battle-helm mag-locked to his harness, preferring to feel the growing wind on his face and hear the bestial roars of the greenskins without them being distorted through the resonance of his armour. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to fathom his captain's demeanour.
