Seemingly innocuous at first, a single hunter-killer missile emerged from behind the battlements on an automated weapons platform. Escaping incendiary choomed loudly as the missile’s booster ignited and coiled off towards its intended target at speed. It fell short of the reforming Salamanders by several metres and for a moment Tsu’gan thought its homing beacon must be out. That was until a chain of explosions tore across the ash ridge from a field of hidden incendiaries.
Grimacing at the sudden burst of fire, Tsu’gan turned away. He adjusted quickly and when he looked back he saw the ridge collapsing under its own weight, the foundations pulverised in a single blast of explosives. Cries echoed from the gloom as the Salamanders foundered in it. The ground was disintegrating beneath them and their bulky power armour was dragging Tsu’gan’s battle-brothers along with it. Flailing and cursing, they tumbled down the diminishing ridge, barely coming to rest before a raft of tracer lights knifed into the dark and illuminated the fallen Salamanders. Sporadic bolter fire replied but it merely pranged off the armoured carapace of automated defence guns churning into position across the length of the wall. Chugging thunder erupted from above Tsu’gan as heavy bolter and autocannon emplacements started to eat through their ammunition belts.
Crying out in rage and anguish, Tsu’gan saw three of his battle-brothers threaded by munitions fire. Power armour was tough; tough enough to withstand such weapons as these, but the sheer rate of shells increased their potency threefold.
Unfortunately, in Tsu’gan’s eyes at least, N’keln had not been one of those caught in the ash slide. Barking swift commands from what was left of the ridge peak, he attempted to restore some coherency to his forces. Pinned down in the basin, though, the stricken Salamanders were getting slaughtered.
“Use the transports as armoured cover,” Tsu’gan implored. “Bring them down into the basin. Our brothers are dying, damn you!”
Igniting columns of smoke spilled out across the ridge as Vargo’s Assault squad took to the air. It was an act of desperation, an attempt to alleviate the relentless volley targeting the warriors in the basin and force the enemy to split its fire.
Vargo landed a few metres short of the wall, ahead of the redoubts, just as Tsu’gan knew he would. Chainswords whirring, primed melt bombs winking in their mag-locks, the Assault squad made ready to jump again.
Chained detonations erupted down the length of the wall, engulfing Vargo and his squad in exploding frag. It was a first-strike deterrent, designed to stun and weaken an impatient attacker who sought to sack the bastion in his first foray. Smoke and flame died away to reveal the casualties of that ill-conceived strategy. Brother-Sergeant Vargo was on his feet but dazed, his armour blackened and cracked at the edges. Three of the Assault squad were down, unmoving. Four more carried obvious injuries, limping and cradling arms as they tried to drag their prone brothers next to the wall and outside the firing arcs of the sentry guns stitching lines of ammunition into the area where they had faltered. Jump packs looked shot to pieces, their turbines shredded or full of frag.
Tsu’gan was ready to abandon his post, when at last the vehicles came roaring down the half-flattened slope.
“Hellfire,” he snarled into the comm-feed, the order reaching all four combat squads. “Execute!”
Brother S’tang hammered the switch on a palm-sized detonator taken from his combat-rig and flung himself to the ground along with his squad.
Explosions rippled across the edge of the redoubts, sending thick clods of dirt spitting high into the air amidst clouds of smoke and flame.
The Salamander assault force had been prepared for this, thanks to the careful instruction of Brother-Sergeant Typhos. Using it as a distraction, the beleaguered Space Marines managed to regroup.
Tsu’gan was first out of the redoubt. Debris from his grenade line was still falling as he raced towards the wall, bolter blazing. Behind him, the mobile armour of the vehicles had slewed into position and was taking fire. Another missile-launcher choomed overhead and one of the Rhinos went up in a ball of flame, flipped onto its back and burning. Astartes crawled out of the wreckage, using what was left of the hull for cover as the inevitable shots rained down at them from the walls.
“Combine fire!” Tsu’gan cried, skidding to a halt and dropping to one knee to steady his aim. Through his bolter sight he found an autocannon sentry gun, its muzzle lit by barking munitions. It jolted and collapsed as Tsu’gan brought his wrath to bear, Brothers Lazarus and S’tang adding to the fusillade that destroyed it.
Once the killing was done, Tsu’gan ordered the squad to move on, making it as hard as possible for the automated guns to track them. “Advance!” he yelled. “We have their attention now.”
Tiberon was picked off by an accurate bolter shot. It took him through the joint at his knee, crippling the Salamander instantly.
“S’tang,” said Tsu’gan as he saw Tiberon fall, “to your brother.”
S’tang obeyed at once, jinking as he doubled back the short distance to Tiberon and dragged him into the cover of a crater cut by the grenade line.
Whickering fire came down at Tsu’gan and the other combat squads in earnest, as the Iron Warriors realised the more immediate threat in their midst. Tsu’gan didn’t have time to take out another sentry gun before he was forced to move on lest the remote weapons platforms draw a bead and shred him and his squad.
The sound of rumbling adamantium offered a solution as the Fire Anvil, using the momentum from the ridge ramp, bulldozed through the recently vacated redoubts, smashing them into rubble and slewing to a stop in front of the brother-sergeant.
The other combat squads took the initiative and rallied to the formidable assault tank. A missile whooshed overhead and struck the Land Raider’s roof, spilling fire and shell debris like rain. Smoke dispersed quickly. The Fire Anvil was left unscathed and started to rotate on its tracks, one side locked whilst the other churned it into position.
“Flamers!” yelled Tsu’gan as he realised what was coming next.
Brother Honorious and the other special weapons troopers came forwards, bodies pressed against the Land Raider’s rear armour.
“Cleanse and burn!” Tsu’gan roared as the Fire Anvil’s flamestorm cannons erupted gloriously. At the same time, Honorious and his brothers stepped from behind the Redeemer-pattern battle tank and added their own fire to the conflagration.
Roaring promethium scathed the walls, spilling through murder holes and firing slits, invasive and consuming. Muffled cries rewarded the blitz attack, and Tsu’gan smiled. The traitors were burning.
The rear embarkation ramp of the Land Raider slammed down and out stomped Veteran Sergeant Praetor and his Firedrakes in full Terminator armour, wielding crackling thunder hammers and storm shields.
All around them, the Salamander heavy weapons had been revivified. Heavy bolters raked the ramparts, splitting sentry guns apart in showers of metal; multi-meltas drawn up to lethal range burned into the walls, stripping away ceramite; missiles zoned in on the towers themselves, blasting the stoic bodies within to fragments.
“Concentrate fire on the wall guards,” bellowed Tsu’gan into the comm-feed, tactical-band, so it reached all fighting forces. Advancing upon the fortress, the brother-sergeant had realised something that had been staring him in the face since the redoubts.
“My lords,” he said, turning to acknowledge the Firedrakes.
“I am at your disposal, brother-sergeant,” boomed Praetor, his squad behind him like silent green sentinels.
“Break the gate and we break this siege,” Tsu’gan told him. He released a melta-bomb where he’d mag-locked it to his battle harness. Sergeant De’mas did the same, whilst some of their battle-brothers palmed krak grenades. “There’s enough explosive here to rip down three gates,” Tsu’gan boasted, eyeing the stretch of open ground between the Land Raider and the wall. “I just need you to get me there and finish the job.”
Praetor nodded, though whether he saw Tsu�
�gan’s plan or simply trusted him implicitly, the brother-sergeant didn’t know.
Another missile strike lit up the flank of Fire Anvil this time, even as the flamestorm cannons continued to spew burning death from their battle-scorched maws.
“We advance under the blaze.” Tsu’gan had to bellow to be heard.
“Into the fires of battle then, brother…” The voice came from the shadowy confines of the Land Raider. It was harsh and filled with steel. Chaplain Elysius emerged into the half-light, though it was as if the gloom of the tank’s hold clung to him like a shroud. The grinning skull mask of his battle-helm made him macabrely jocund.
“Unto the anvil of war,” Tsu’gan concluded. “I am honoured, Brother-Chaplain.”
Elysius swung his crozius arcanum loose from its strap and impelled its power field into a vivid coruscation. He bade Tsu’gan go on.
The brother-sergeant turned back to Praetor. “Can you make a mobile shield wall, brother?”
Praetor’s loud laughter sounded like thunder. With well-executed precision, he and the Firedrakes formed a barrier wall with their storm shields, warding the front and flanks of Tsu’gan, De’mas and seven other battle-brothers. Elysius stepped outside of the protective cordon.
“Shoulder them, brothers,” Elysius bellowed with stentorian conviction. “The Emperor and the will of Vulkan is my shield.”
Praetor wasted no further time. “Forward, assault pattern Aegis,” he boomed, and the Firedrakes began to move.
Heavy weapons fire hammered against the Terminators and their upraised storm shields, but fell away harmlessly against their locked defence. Elysius strode alongside them, matching their ponderous pace, hurling canticles of faith and the litanies of the forge at the traitors like barbed spears.
“…and lo, upon the anvil did Vulkan smash the heretics, his hammer like a comet that falleth from heaven. Into the blood of Mount Deathfire are they consumed…”
Rosarius field flickering with every blow, the Chaplain did not once relent.
“…quail, base traitors, and receive the promised price of your perfidy. Burn, malfeasants, burn! Flayed in fire before the Emperor’s glory!”
A rattling chorus of staccato gunfire joined Elysius’ diatribes and was heard by Tsu’gan from within the protective shell of the Firedrakes’ storm shields. Four Terminators formed the brunt of the armoured wall, shields locked in a seamless barrier. The energy fields generated by the shields crackled and spat with their joining, throwing off azure sparks and the reek of ozone. Two further Firedrakes guarded each flank, their shields held up and combined to configure a makeshift roof with the storm shields of two of their brothers that bisected the front line of four and acted as the spine of the formation.
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 otherworld, 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.
[Tome of Fire 01] - Salamander Page 22
