“Hold your fire!” barked the voice of Tsu’gan behind him. “Encircle it, find its shield generator and destroy it.”
Dak’ir was aware of movement in his peripheral vision as his brothers sought to open their trap. Between searching blows, its mechanised limbs lightning fast, the magos reacted to the threat. Servos whining, its robed form began to rise on cantilevered legs until it loomed almost a metre over Dak’ir. Its mouth widened like the rapidly expanding aperture of a pict-viewer as a second and third flamer nozzle took their place alongside the first. Panning its head left and right like a scope, it spewed white-hot fire around the fringes of the room, keeping the Salamanders back. Molten deck plates and iron altars rendered to slag were left in its wake.
Dak’ir caught the vibro-saw as it came at him again, and cut it off with a brutal sweep from its chainsword. The magos’ own chainblade struck the Salamander’s generator on his back and found itself at another impasse. Dak’ir swung around, dislodging the weapon with his momentum, and hacked down the piston-driven arm two-handed. Issuing a metallic screech, the magos recoiled, the severed chainblade arm spitting oil and sparks. Exploiting his advantage, Dak’ir ripped his plasma pistol from its holster and blasted a hole through the magos’ torso. Something within the voluminous folds of its shredded robes flared and died. Still, the firestorm cascading from its distended mouth continued, keeping Dak’ir’s battle-brothers at bay, their only avenue of attack blocked by the brother-sergeant himself.
A flash of metal registered briefly in Dak’ir’s restricted vision. Pain lanced his armoured wrist, forcing him to drop the plasma pistol, and he looked down to see a churning drill trying to impale his arm. Wrenching himself free, he gripped the twisting tendril fed from the magos’ robes that had impelled the weapon towards him. Dak’ir was about to cut it off when a second mechadendrite sprang from the creature’s torso, sporting some kind of mecha-claw. Dak’ir blocked it with the flat of his blade and pushed it down. Locked as he was, and acutely aware of the battle-brothers behind him, he started to try and manoeuvre his body to the side.
“Ba’ken!” he cried, seeing the vague form of the hulking Salamander in his peripheral vision.
“Hold it steady,” a booming voice returned.
It took almost all Dak’ir’s strength to force the magos around and keep him steady as Ba’ken wanted.
Intense heat and blinding light filled Dak’ir’s senses. His ears rang with the shriek of expulsed energy and he fell. For a fleeting moment as the radiation of the fusion beam stroked his battle-helm and power armour, Dak’ir was thrust back to Stratos and the instant of Kadai’s death. The jarring impact of iron-hard deck plates against his body brought him quickly back around. The dull report of sustained thunder echoed around the room as the rest of the Salamanders unleashed their bolters. Sporadic muzzle flashes lit up the magos like some macabre animation, its body jerking and twisting as it was struck and demolished.
The munitions fire died and with it so did the magos, clattering to the floor in a disparate mélange of wrecked machine parts and biological matter, the components of his former existence scattering across the deck like metal chaff. Oil slicked it, reflecting the dim light of the brazier pans like iridescent blood.
Bizarrely the head remained intact, rolling from its eviscerated body until coming to rest next to Ba’ken. The end of his multi-melta still exuded vaporous accelerant created during the chemical reaction engaged to fire the heavy weapon. He looked down at the decapitated head, his body language suggesting repulsion. The flamer nozzles had since retracted into the thing’s lipless maw. Ba’ken shifted uncomfortably as a stream of binaric, the machine language the Mechanicum primarily used to communicate, barked from it like a torrent of ceaseless profanity.
Without waiting for orders the Salamander brought down his booted foot and smashed it to pulp and wires.
Dak’ir, now back on his feet, nodded his appreciation to Ba’ken, who immediately returned the gesture. Once the chattering had ceased, he turned to Tsu’gan who was making sure no life existed amidst the wreckage of the magos.
“I owe you a debt of gratitude, brother.” Tsu’gan didn’t even look up.
“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 dr
ills, 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.
[Tome of Fire 01] - Salamander Page 7
