by Nick Kyme
Draedius, standing before the cannon, performed his own rituals. Restoration of the weapon's machine-spirit would not be easy, though it was a necessary task. Without it the cannon would not fire; it might even malfunction with dire consequences. The only small mercy was that the weapon was not already daemon-possessed.
It rankled with Elysius that they had been forced into employing the weapons of the enemy. It smacked of compromise and deviancy. Though devout, the Chaplain was no fool either. The cannon was the only means of destroying the black rock and halting the near-endless orkish tide. The rational part of his brain did wonder why the Iron Warriors would construct such a weapon. Its purpose here on Scoria seemed narrow and limited. He felt as if he were looking at it through a muddied lens, the edges caked in grime. His view was myopic, but instinct had taught Elysius to perceive with more than just his eyes. There was something lurking within that grimy frame, just beyond sight; only by seeing that would the full truth of the Iron Warriors' machinations be revealed. It bothered him that he could not.
'Vulkan's fire beats in my breast,' he intoned as the presence in the catacombs detected his doubts and sought to feed upon them, using them to widen the tiny cracks in the armour of his faith, 'with it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,' the Chaplain concluded, gripping the haft of Vulkan's Sigil and drawing strength from the hammer-icon's proximity.
No matter how hard he stared at the cannon, the obscurity around the ''lens'' remained.
The din of clunking machinery filtered up to them in the tunnel. The sounds were coming from a glowing opening below. Lava stench and the prickle of heat came with it. The mines were just ahead.
'Stay back, Val'in,' Dak'ir warned, stepping ahead of the boy and shielding him with the bulk of his armoured form.
The boy did as he was told, but gasped as he spied a shadow looming ahead of them at the base of the tunnel.
Brother Apion saw it too, having moved to take point, and aimed his bolter, about to fire.
'It's already dead,' Pyriel informed him, his eyes fading from cerulean blue.
'An Iron Warrior husk,' noted Dak'ir, his vision adjusting to discern the bare metal ceramite and the distinctive black and yellow chevrons marking the armour. The same as the redoubts. 'Advance with caution, brothers.'
Apion lowered his bolter a fraction and led them on.
At the base of the tunnel, the Salamanders found a natural gallery of rock. The machine noise - the whirring of drills and the chugging report of excavators - became louder. Long shadows cast from moving forms in a larger chamber beyond streaked the walls at the end of the gallery.
There were more ''sentries'' here - iron-armoured deterrents staged in ready positions abutting the walls. Val'in cowered, the natural fear emanating from the long dead corpses still very much alive for him.
Ba'ken brought him close, leaning down as far as his bulk allowed and whispering, 'Stay close to me, child. The Fire Angels will allow no harm to come to you.'
Va'lin nodded and his mood eased a little as he crept closer to the pillar of ceramite that was Brother Ba'ken.
Dak'ir failed to notice the exchange. His attention was on Apion, who had reached the end of the gallery and was poised at the threshold to the chamber. Dak'ir joined him seconds later and stared out into a wide expanse of rock. Here and there, struts of metal supported the cavern roof above. The empty shells of mining equipment lay strewn about the cavern like a machine graveyard, burned out and discarded once their usefulness had ended. Dak'ir saw boring-engines, bucket-bladed diggers, excavators and tracked drill-platforms. Servitors, slumped over their vehicles or piled up in corpse heaps, were a testament to the incessant overmining.
In addition to the machines, there were three stages, made of metal and lofted a metre off the ground on stout legs. Two of the three were flat and empty. The third was stacked with rotund metal barrels. Dak'ir didn't need to look inside of them to know they were brimming with fyron ore. The third stage was nearest to the source of the machine noise: a short but gaping tunnel shrouded in gloom. The Salamanders had entered the cavern at a slight angle, and through his enhanced eye-sight Dak'ir made out two servitor-driven drilling engines, like the ones the settlers had used in their ambush, and a bulky excavator rig on thick tracks, dragging away the useless rock and earth expelled by the drilling engines' labours. This too was worked by a servitor, hunch-backed and cable-slaved to the machine as if it were an integral part of its being. All three automatons were akin to the ghoul-drones encountered in the cannon's arming chamber.
The low lighting cast by sodium lamp packs suspended on cables steam-bolted to the cavern roof framed the grotesque faces of the ghoul-drones evilly. Their masters were not far away.
Three Iron Warriors stood at the drilling tunnel's threshold, overseeing the work. They carried combi-bolters with barrel-mounted sarissa-blades, low slung on straps around their spiked pauldrons. Chips of rock scudded off their armour, such was the Iron Warriors' proximity to the mine face, and they were veneered in grey dust.
In the distance, a six-wheeled loader transported a cache of fyron ore barrels on its burgeoning flatbed. The vehicle rumbled on fat treads towards an opening at the back of the mine that led into unknown darkness.
A second six-wheeler was on its return journey and approaching the partially laden stage where another load of barrels awaited it. A pair of cargo-servitors - their arms replaced by twin-pronged lifter claws - shambled into view as the loader closed on them.
In the loader's wake, a group of figures was revealed.
Dak'ir's jaw clenched and he felt a ripple of anger pass through his body.
Kadai's slayers, the Dragon Warriors, were here.
There were three of them, armoured in blood-red ceramite that was scaled in places as if the suits themselves had somehow mutated. Their gauntlets ended in gore-tipped claws and a strong reek of copper exuded from their bodies. They were once Space Marines, these creatures; now they were renegades in service to the Ruinous Powers. Slaves to darkness and damnation.
One wore a helmet fashioned into the image of an ancient saurian beast. Two horns curled like dark red blades from both temples of his battle-helm. A cloud of fiery embers gusted from a snarling, fang-fringed mouth grille in time with the renegade's rapid breathing. Heat haze emanated from the Dragon Warrior, giving his form a sense of unreality.
Another cradled an archaic multi-melta, scarred with kill-markings. His battle-helm was bare but came to a stub-nosed snout that was rendered in bone. Skulls attached to bloody chains hung from his scaled pauldrons and he wore what looked like deep-red lizard hide over his abdominal armour. Dust particles spilled from his armour joints with every movement. To Dak'ir's enhanced sight they appeared like tiny flakes of epidermis and the Salamander was instantly put in mind of a serpent shedding its skin.
The last of them Dak'ir knew well. Flanked by his two warriors, this one's burning red eyes were ablaze as if he were constantly enraged. The smouldering anger was emulated by the scarification on his face, which was a horrific patchwork of burned skin and lacerations. Old welts and tracts of melted flesh ravaged his onyx-black visage. A horn curved from each of his pauldrons and he seized a crackling force staff in a clawed gauntlet.
This was Nihilan, sorcerer and architect of Kadai's destruction.
'Renegades,' snarled Apion, and Dak'ir heard the Salamander's fists crack.
'Ba'ken,' said the sergeant, his gaze never leaving his nemesis. They should have scoured these tunnels days ago. Dak'ir had sensed something here. His visions all pointed to it. Even Tsu'gan had suspected, and still they'd done nothing. Well, now the time for inaction was at an end.
An icon appeared in the visual display of Ba'ken's battle-helm, sent over from Dak'ir's with a single eye blink.
'Target acquired…' rumbled the hulking trooper, moving forward to level his heavy flamer.
The loader had almost reached the stage and the ghoul-drones were approaching it when a gout of superheat
ed promethium streaked across the chamber and ignited. The spear of flame burst through the pair of drones, setting them ablaze, but that was merely a glancing blow. Its intended target, the loader itself, exploded a few seconds later as its fuel cells were cooked and the volatile liquid within went up spectacularly. The loader was cast into the air and flipped over, the flaming wreckage crushing the still burning ghoul-drones and destroying them in a raging conflagration as it landed hard.
'Salamanders, attack!' roared Dak'ir as they charged into the cavern, bolters screaming.
The Iron Warriors were closest and reacted quickly. One was not quick enough however, as Dak'ir's plasma bolt took him in the chest and punched a hole the size of a clenched Astartes fist. Explosive rounds bursting from the traitor's combi-bolter raked the roof and shot out a lighting rig, as his fingers grasped at the trigger with the last of his nerve tremors.
The other two Iron Warriors reached cover and began to return fire, even as the Dragon Warriors started to move into battle positions. Through the gunfire, Dak'ir thought he saw Nihilan laughing.
The Salamanders panned out: Dak'ir, Pyriel and Ba'ken heading right, whilst Apion, Romulus and Te'kulcar went left. Val'in, not wishing to remain in the corridor with the Iron Warrior corpses alone, ran behind the skeleton of a disused loader, bastardised for spare parts, and hid.
'Anvil, gain the stage and secure the fyron ore,' ordered Dak'ir over the comm-feed, using the call signs they'd established before entering the emergence hole. Out of the corner of his eye, past the barking reports of bolters, he saw Apion and Romulus rushing between machine husks as they tried to reach the ore platform, whilst Te'kulcar advanced offering covering fire.
'Hammer, we advance now!' Dak'ir led the others forward, streaks of flames keeping the Iron Warriors down as they sought to move to fresh cover. Through darted glimpses at the enemy, Dak'ir saw that Nihilan was letting his minions do the work. An incandescent beam seared through a vehicle shell where Pyriel had crouched. The Librarian moved out of its path just in time. Sustained bolter fire came from the other renegade, who seemed to revel in the act of loosing his weapon. He was like a mad dog, straining at the leash.
All the while, the ghoul-drones maintained their incessant mining.
A low rumble struck the chamber, arresting the Salamanders' shock assault. Fragments of rock were cascading from the roof and the metal struts groaned forbiddingly in protest.
Dak'ir fell to one knee as he lost his balance. So did one of the Iron Warriors, lurching out of cover for a moment. Long enough for Ba'ken, who stood steady with his legs braced, to burn him down. A metallic screech issued from the traitor's battle-helm before he collapsed in a smoking heap of charred metal. The violent tremors grew in intensity so that even Ba'ken couldn't maintain his footing. The tongue of fire from his flamer receded.
The Dragon Warriors had gone to ground too. Dak'ir had lost sight of Nihilan, but he could sense his presence. He judged they were just over sixty metres away, about half the width of the cavern. A determined attack once the tremors had subsided would catch them off guard - they could reach the renegades before the multi-melta fired again. As a psyker, Nihilan was unpredictable, but Dak'ir was willing to take the chance. Strategy icons flashed up on the Salamanders' battle-helm displays, conveying the sergeant's plan.
Romulus and Apion were almost at the platform, the lone Iron Warrior protecting it finding his attention diverted by two groups of simultaneous attackers and giving neither the attention it needed. Short bursts of bolter fire from Te'kulcar, lying on his chest and shooting from a prone position for stability, kept the Iron Warrior down so the other Salamanders could claim their objective.
They were stumbling on to the platform when a deep, cracking sound resonated throughout the cavern like the breaking of a world. A flare of light bathed the drilling tunnel in an angry glow, before shuddering cracks split out from it in a jagged line. The cracks widened to a fissure and then a chasm, filled with bubbling lava. The hellish glow from inside the tunnel spread outwards rapidly. It preceded a wave of lava expelled from where the mine face had broken apart and Scoria's lifeblood was flowing.
Buoyed by the force of the wave, the mining machines were thrust from the tunnel. Languishing in the deadly lava stream, they did not last long. Like short-lived metal islands they sank beneath the glutinous morass in moments, their slack-faced drones engulfed with them.
A yawning chasm of lava now stood between the Salamanders and their prey. A thin line of jagged rock spanned it, floating on the surface, wide enough for two Astartes to cross at a time. The violence of the tremors subsided but more cracks were cobwebbing the ground and streams of dust and rock spilled from the roof continuously. This needed to end quickly, before the entire cavern collapsed on top of them.
Romulus and Apion had reached the fyron ore and were securing it to their power armour. Two barrels each was the most they could carry without compromising their ability to fight.
As he bolted for the rocky channel that led across the lava chasm, Dak'ir hoped four barrels would be enough. Just before he'd reached the edge of the lava stream, a flash of hot light burned past him and Te'kulcar's icon in the sergeant's helm display flickered and went out. A glance back showed him the battle-brother was on the ground a few metres from his previous position, part of his torso melted away.
'Get him out!' Dak'ir cried, recognising the brutal effects of the multi-melta. Knowing Apion and Romulus were retreating with Te'kulcar and the fyron ore, Dak'ir raced heedlessly onto the rock channel. Intense heat from the lava flow either side of him prickled at his armour and warning icons flashed up on his display.
Grimly ignoring the discomfort, he was halfway across when the Iron Warrior on the other side emerged from cover. A bark of fire from Pyriel's bolt pistol, the Librarian a few steps behind the sergeant, clipped the traitor's pauldron and gorget, pinning him back.
But then another foe stepped into Dak'ir's eye line.
Nihilan was grinning, a grotesque and bizarre expression given his facial scarring, as his force staff crackled with power. He levelled it at Dak'ir, who could not avoid the shadowy arc lightning that ripped from its tip and struck him full on in the chest. This was the raw energy of the warp, channelled by Nihilan's sorcery. No one could survive such a blast.
Dak'ir cried out, his voice an agonised scream.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I
A Black Rock Dies
The line was holding. Few Astartes could boast tenacity as unshakeable as the sons of Vulkan. Here, against an unrelenting and seemingly endless horde of orks, the 3rd Company drew upon it like never before.
Heavy guns, aimed from the rear of the Salamanders' formation, softened up the onrushing greenskins, seeking to close with their opponents and exploit their chief strengths: raw aggression and brutality.
But the Salamanders were equally adept, if not superior, eye-to-eye with the enemy. The recently returned flamers exacted a sizeable toll on the orks as they came through the Devastators' fusillade.
Unlike the initial assaults against the iron fortress, the orks were predominantly on foot, supported by their piston-legged machineries, crude analogues of Space Marine Dreadnoughts. They eschewed the wagons, bikes and war trucks of the earlier sorties of their kin. Long-ranged guns were largely absent, too, and instead an expansive melee of chainblades, cleavers and clubs thundered at the Salamanders to bludgeon them into submission.
The orks found only fury and iron-hard resistance where they'd expected red-wreathed death and capitulation. Alloyed together, at almost full company strength and protecting the relatively narrow fielde in which the iron fortress was situated, the Salamanders were all but impregnable.
Casualties had been few, and those that could no longer serve the Chapter were dragged behind the stalwart line of armour, their absence accounted for by their brothers.
Tsu'gan gunned open the chest of an ork some ten metres away, downing the brute as if it were an enraged
sauroch. Another took its place and he killed that one too with a precise burst to its snarling head. Several more followed, greenskins running the punishing gauntlet of Salamander guns. They were obliterated from view when Sergeant Vargo's depleted Assault squad landed amongst them. The exchange was savage and swift. Vargo and his troopers took to the air on tongues of fire less than a minute later, seeking other foes isolated by their eager bloodlust from the main greenskin throng. Carcasses rendered by bolt and blade, and a patch of scorched earth were all that was left in the Assault squad's clearing smoke.
'Press forward!' The bellowed order of N'keln reached Tsu'gan through the comm-feed as his captain sought to exploit the short gap that had developed through the Salamanders' recent mauling of the orks.
The line advanced as one. Tsu'gan felt the heavy footfalls of the Terminators alongside his squad through his booted feet.
'Unto the anvil, brother-sergeant,' said Praetor, a dark grin upon his face as he swung his thunder hammer towards the next wave of greenskins.
Snorting amusedly at the fatalism of it all, Tsu'gan fired again and his face was lit by the muzzle flare of his bolter. He laughed in tandem with the weapon's roar.
Overhead, the ork vessels streamed like cancerous veins in the sky. The black rock was venting constantly now. Soon there would not be enough of the ash dunes to hold all the greenskins expelled from its craterous surface.
Tsu'gan laughed harder at the thought of it, before his battle hysteria ebbed with a fresh realisation.
As long as the black rock endured there could be no victory here. If it wasn't destroyed soon, they'd all be dead.
