Born of Flame

by Nick Kyme

  While two of my brothers with lascutters went to work cleaving open the blast door to the hangar, the rest of us adopted a defensive posture. Azoth took me aside. His mood was grim.

  ‘No word from the other squads,’ he told me. ‘Cunaeda, Vorrus, Hakkar…’ he shook his head. ‘Thirty-three assault rams went out. Currently, I only know of four that reached the Retiarius and they stand in this hangar. How far is the enginarium?’

  ‘It’s relatively close,’ I said, recalling the schematics eidetically, ‘but there are warrens of tunnels and chambers beyond those doors before we reach it.’

  Azoth nodded, looking to my side rather than at me, as if I had just confirmed what he already knew in his gut. He spoke with some resignation. ‘This was always a suicide mission…’

  Of all the Immortals I had known and fought beside, Azoth seemed the least sanguine about dying to restore his impugned honour. Or perhaps it was dying with what he felt was his honour still impugned. Azoth was brave, the equal of any Iron Hands legionary – including the noble Avernii – but I suspected his fervent wish was to return to the order of Iron Fathers before he fell in battle.

  But we were ghosts now, all of us, our honour as incorporeal to us as smoke. We had erred, and so we had to atone, or so the oath went.

  The blast door from the hangar went down, heralded by a resounding clang as it hit the deck on the other side.

  More gloom, more visceral darkness. Sweltering heat struck us like a fist, even more palpably than before. Impulse droning from the nearby enginarium was deafening. The thunderous report of broadsides trembled the deck underfoot and the walls shook with vibrational recoil. Petrochemical stink merged with the actinic aftertaste of recently discharged laser batteries wafting upwards from the lower decks.

  A starship at war was as brutal a battlefield as any, but the Retiarius deserved infamous acclaim for its severity.

  The power-armoured warriors who came at us from the sweat-drenched shadows were testament to that.

  First blood went to the World Eaters.

  Clad in beaten up war-plate, festooned in spikes and studs, the sons of Angron looked worthy of their name. Blood and grime tarnished them, lending further ferocity to an appearance where no more was needed. Froth bubbled up through their rebreather grilles and fever-sweat scented the air. Savage, snarling, brutal – I saw animals coming at us from the shadows, not men. Their martial prowess was daunting, even to us.

  An Immortal I did not know cried out, shield arm hanging slack with his vulnerable shoulder joint cut and the tendons beneath it severed. A second blow went from left clavicle to right hip. After overcoming inertial resistance, the two body halves slid apart and spilled my brother across the deck.

  A plasma pistol at close range evaporated the head of another Medusan who reacted too slowly. Three more in the front few ranks were savagely gutted. Chainblades – both swords and axes – growled bestially.

  Like an animal that was suddenly aware that it had been wounded, we recoiled. First we closed the breach from the door, keeping our enemy on the far side, so they couldn’t spill out and surround us. Then we fought back.

  A strong push that was as much about Medusan tenacity and grit as it was the durability of our breacher shields saw us gain a footing in the first corridor section beyond the blast door. Our enemy yielded to us, surrendering ground without choice, but then trammelled any further progress with ferocity and sheer weight of bodies.

  It was impossible to count, but I reckoned twice our number thronged the warren of corridors before us. We breached, every legionary in our foresworn company, and then the sons of Angron hit us like a hurricane of swords.

  Hot sparks flashed angrily off the edge of my shield as it met the burring chainblade of a World Eater. My enemy was unhelmed, revealing a face puckered with scar tissue and metal piercings. A chain looped from his ear to his nose and a spiked bar skewered both cheeks. Tattoos that looked like kill-tallies marked his neck, though the darkness made it hard to tell for sure.

  I mashed my shield into his body and he staggered, grunting. Pressing my bolt pistol into the purpose-forged groove of my breacher shield, I shot him almost point-blank in the throat. Skull fragments and red matter rattled against my faceplate as the World Eater’s head exploded.

  Grimly, I advanced a step.

  We all did.

  Azoth rallied us.

  ‘Hold steady!’ he roared. ‘Shields as one!’

  They hit us again, raging, foaming at the mouth like rabid dogs. I felt the frenzied, repeated axe strikes against my shield resonate down to my shoulder. It burned and a numbness born from excessive muscular tension spread into my arm.

  Azoth was unrelenting. ‘Hold!’

  A few more seconds of battery passed before he said, ‘Now… heave!’

  Unified, ordered, strong, we advanced and threw our aggressors back. Their killing lust made them fearsome but profligate with their effort. One man, however skilled and ferocious, cannot hold back a tide. A hundred men, if acting individually, will find themselves similarly disadvantaged.

  After their initial wild flurry, the World Eaters were struggling to break us down. After herding them from the breach in the blast door made by our lascutters, we found ourselves several metres into the warren of corridors. Compared to the hangar it was confined, but wide enough for six shields abreast.

  ‘Form ranks!’

  Azoth was trying to impose further order. Unable to match their ruthless fury, it was the only way to break the World Eaters.

  Thrust to the front, I was shoulder-to-shoulder with Mordan and Katus. The former was an arch fatalist who had surprised us all by living this long. The latter was a zealot who believed that strength came from adversity, and who revelled in his Immortal calling. Different though they may be, the mutual determination bleeding off my brothers was both infectious and galvanising. Behind us, I could sense Azoth’s desire to be a part of the fighting rank, to prove that his shaming had been unjust. His shield was against my left shoulder guard, stalwart and unyielding. Sombrak had the right, as staunch as an iron buttress. Not once had I seen him ever take a backwards step in combat.

  As well as our former ranks, our clans were also scoured from us. To be Immortal is to be alone, but despite this abject form of penitence I felt as closely bonded to these warriors as if they were all from Gaarsak and not spread the length and breadth of Medusa.

  The World Eaters hit us hard with a renewed strength born of rage. Bloodied, they carried on unbowed, proving as tough and determined as we knew them to be.

  I had seen their warmaking first hand, not as an enemy but as an ally.

  I earned my shame that day on Golthya, during the Great Crusade, not long after we were reunited with our father…

  Inside the Retiarius we reached as far as a cross-junction before our progress was arrested. A hulking Dreadnought almost filled the corridor ahead of us with its sheer bulk. Our sudden stall also prompted World Eaters to attack us from either flank. Our steady advance was stopped at the nexus of the junction, forcing us into an arrow wedge.

  Katus and three others stormed the monstrous war engine.

  One of its weapon arms was missing, and I suspected it had been in the midst of ground deployment preparation when we breached the vessel. Instead, it had been reassigned to stop us getting any further. Sombrak carried a melta-charge. So did three other Immortals in the boarding party. Allowed to detonate in the enginarium deck, these incendiaries would wreak havoc on the Retiarius.

  Leading with his shield, Katus took a bruising blow that dashed him against the wall. His power pack ruptured and the small explosion threw him forwards into the Contemptor’s lightning claw.

  He spat blood. It sprayed the inside of his helm and leaked out through a crack in his faceplate. He was dead before he hit the ground. Bolt-shells caromed off the Contemptor’s armoured hide from the other three Immortals who had charged with Katus, but they were no more than irritants. The Dreadnought b
attered two of them down with its claw, gouging one through his shield and crushing the other under its armoured foot when the Iron Hand lost his footing.

  The fourth Immortal was Mordan, the only one to be alone out of the group that had gone forwards to engage the monstrous Contemptor.

  He wasn’t alone for long. A renewed shield wall rushed up to join him.

  I tried to suppress a twinge of envy at my brother’s glorious death as I advanced on the Dreadnought. It swung again, blood boiling on its energised talons and filling the corridor with the stench of burned copper. Mordan and I put up our shields as one, but I felt every pound of the Contemptor’s piston-driven force rattling down through my body. It put us both on our knees.

  ‘Your mistake…’ I snarled, as Azoth waded into the gap left by Mordan and staved in the Dreadnought’s head with his thunder hammer. Sombrak’s volkite speared it through the chest in the same coordinated attack. It staggered as if unable to comprehend the immediacy of its own demise and fell back into an inert heap of metal.

  The Dreadnought’s death barely registered with the other World Eaters. They were of the killing mind now and would not relent until either they or we were dead. For the first time since we had boarded the Retiarius, the thoughts of the Iron Tenth and the World Eaters aligned.

  We rode the storm of their fury. Without the Contemptor to break our ranks, the close confines of the corridors suited us.

  ‘Take it!’ shouted Azoth, now part of the front fighting rank where he belonged. ‘Take everything they’ve got!’

  Hammer blows pummelled our collective defence, but we held. The shield wall held and we were able to advance.

  The base of my shield scraped the floor with every hard-won step. My shoulder burned from having to thrust it into the reverse side of my shield to keep the enemy from overrunning us. Our strength came from cohesion. If one link failed then our entire chain would unravel.

  They hit us; we hurled them back. Each time we stood firm and absorbed the punishment, the World Eaters became more frenzied in their attempts to break us, and more reckless.

  It took over eighteen minutes for us to kill every warrior-berserker in the warren. By the time it was over, blood slicked the walls, and drenched the deck beneath us, and we emerged into the next chamber weary but victorious.

  I had expected to see the enginarium. What we found was something quite different.

  A wide slope led from the corridor section’s upraised bulkhead. We barrelled out onto it, maintaining good order and swiftly redressing our ranks in the process. It led to a pit, little more than a hollow basin of bare, bloodstained metal. It had been recently cleansed but some marks remained, the indelible legacy of a Legion’s bloodletting.

  More of our Immortal brothers were waiting for us in the pit, impaled from groin to crown on ugly iron spikes. I counted thirty and balked at the realisation that so few of us had even reached the Retiarius, let alone died on it.

  I heard the clenching of fists in impotent wrath, the muttering of vengeful oaths against the World Eaters. I kept my own emotions buried, but felt the deepest stirrings of hate begin to flare like a hot, angry welt against my pride.

  Azoth had been right in his assessment – this was a suicide mission.

  Glory and honour were not the rights of the damned, and we were damned men. Our shame had made us that.

  My shame had condemned me to that fate. On Golthya.

  It had been a bleak, ugly world. We were arrayed against the kethid, a hairless, perversely humanoid alien species who had, like so many others during the coming of Old Night, subjugated the native human populace. Deep into the yawning mouth of Jreth Valley, we deployed clouds of phosphex to kill the grey-skinned aliens, but the kethid had fashioned anabatic winds through their crude science. It turned our deadliest, most loathsome weapon against us.

  How we burned, the green flame flaying our flesh and turning our iron to nought but charred matter…

  Croen died first, our company’s vexillary. Then Laeoc, Garric, Maedeg… until there was only me, Sombrak and a handful of others left. Our flank had been crippled and we too surely would have died were it not for the berserkers clad in blue and white that descended from on high.

  We fought with them, but only in a supporting role. It was meant to be our victory. The World Eaters lauded us for our courage. I stood at the shoulder of Varken Rath, a legionary of singular skill, who thanked me personally for my efforts. Sombrak and the rest of our surviving iron-kin made similar sword-brothers.

  Alas, our father did not see it thusly. I have wielded a breacher shield ever since.

  I have often reflected on the cruelty of that and how the battle of Golthya mirrored that aboard the Retiarius in both its desperation and ferocity.

  At the edge of the pit on board the Retiarius, the World Eaters were waiting for us. Unlike the ones we had defeated in the warren, these men were armoured more like gladiators.

  I knew them. I had seen them emerging from the burned metal teardrops of their deep insertion pods, through the dissipating phosphex mist that had claimed over half my company before the alien kethid attacked.

  Savage, even back then, the Rampagers were much changed.

  Unhooded, they wore their facial tattoos openly. Chains and thick veils of iron ringlets accented their white and blue power armour, the spikes entwined between the links presaging a darker aspect to come. Head to foot, they were swathed in gore, baked hard over their war-plate by the Retiarius’ immense enginarium heat. Without needing it confirmed, I knew in my marrow that the blood was Medusan, wrung from the tortured bodies of our brothers in the pit.

  One of the Rampagers stood out amongst the rest. He nodded towards us, I thought. Then I realised he was actually gesturing to me.

  ‘Gallikus…’ his voice boomed across the echoing space, resonating off the pit and the shattered breacher shields lining its walls. ‘Well met.’ It almost sounded genial, a greeting.

  It was, of sorts. Or rather, a challenge.

  It was Rath. There could be no mistaking my former comrade in arms. It was blunt nomenclature for a genhanced instrument of war that was anything but. He was an exemplary swordsman and wielded a blade in each hand as if to prove it. I needed none. He had gutted kethid on those blades like they were swine. Falax, they were called, or so Rath had told me.

  ‘If you want to reach the enginarium then this is the battleground you must cross to do it,’ he said, calmly gesturing to the pit where they had staked our brothers out to die. He nodded to me again. ‘I’ll give you a good death. You’ve earned that right.’

  I wanted to crush him. For his unintended condescension and the barbarous way his kin had treated mine. I almost heard our sword-bond break in his casual laughter.

  ‘Some yet live!’ cried Sombrak, who jabbed a finger at an Immortal twisting on his metal spit.

  ‘Blood of Medusa!’ Mordan’s gauntlets cracked as they clenched tighter around the handle of his shield.

  Rath was smiling. All the Rampagers were smiling.

  Azoth had seen enough.

  ‘Kill them! Avenge the fallen!’ he roared, and every Iron Hand in our slowly dwindling company drew swords and mauls.

  For what the Rampagers had done, we would have our vengeance at close quarters.

  Our desperate assault was over. All we had left was retribution and, some believed, a last chance for honour. Our immortal duty.

  To their martial credit, the World Eaters waited until we were halfway across the pit before they rushed to engage us.

  Then we clashed. There was no order to it, no unity. Just blood.

  We outnumbered the Rampagers two to one, but in the first eight seconds of the battle those odds were slashed drastically.

  As I closed on Rath, briefly allying with Mordan to bring down one of the Rampagers and watching the World Eater gut one of my brothers in return, I considered the very likely fact that we had been allowed to get this far. That we had been drawn here for the prospec
t of a good fight. Perhaps Angron needed his psychotics to have their blood up before he unleashed them?

  That arrogance would unstitch them, I decided.

  Rath and I met in the centre of the arena. I still had my shield – it would be a vital barrier against my opponent’s twin falax – but had drawn a gladius in lieu of my holstered pistol.

  Blade to blade. Honour demanded no less.

  At first, Rath seemed to appreciate the gesture but then his face locked up in an expression of pure, agonised rage. His eyes widened, the spontaneously rupturing veins turning the sclera a deep, visceral red. No trace of the man remained; now there was only a beast.

  For almost three minutes he hacked into my shield as I mustered a desperate defence. He only stopped when Sombrak tried to wade in and relieve me. Despite his murder-blindness, Rath reacted on instinct. He half-parried Sombrak’s thrust and let the blade pierce his side. With the other falax, he cut off Sombrak’s head.

  I sagged back, too exhausted to take advantage of Rath’s distraction. My breacher shield was split down the middle, the arm holding it numbed to lead. I watched Sombrak’s body slump to its knees and his head roll away into shadow.

  Then Rath turned, exultant with the kill, and came again for me.

  No martial quarter was given this time. Rath was drunk on murder-lust.

  His falax came in high and I twisted to let my shoulder guard take the blow. It found the vulnerable join between the metal plates of my armour and cut all the way down to the mesh beneath, cleaving through to my flesh. Blood welled instantly. I felt it seep into my armpit and gum around my chest.

  The second blade I blocked, turning it aside before aiming a stabbing thrust that sank my gladius two thirds of the way into Rath’s midriff.

  It was a debilitating wound, meant to slow and eventually incapacitate. Rath showed no sign of either. We were up close. I could smell his charnel breath. A savage headbutt smashed my faceplate, cracking the retinal lenses and sending the glass splinters back into my face. An elbow strike put me on one knee before Rath brought the falax round into my flank where it lodged like a nail.