The beast was tough, with the bulk and heft of a tank. Ba’ken felt his strength yielding to it and roared to draw on his inner reserves. His secondary heart pumped blood frantically, his body adopting a heightened battle-state, impelling a sudden surge from the Astartes’ muscles.
“Xenos scum,” he spat, using hate to fuel his efforts.
A second chitin, just finished gnawing on a settler, emerged on Ba’ken’s left flank. The Salamander saw it scuttle into his eye line.
Unarmed, there was no way he could fight them both.
The ragged corpse of the half-devoured settler slumped from the second chitin’s maw. Stepping over it, bones crunching under the chitin’s weight, the creature advanced upon Ba’ken.
Rushing into its path was Val’in. He swung his shovel madly from left to right in a vain effort to slow the beast.
Ba’ken’s face contorted with horror. “Flee!” he urged. “Hide, boy!”
Val’in wasn’t listening. He stood before the massive chitin bravely, trying to defend his saviour as he had defended him.
“No!” cried Ba’ken, distraught as the chitin loomed.
Explosive impacts rippled down the creature’s flank, tearing up chips of carapace and punching holes through flesh. The chitin was spun about from the force of the bolter fire thundering against it. Screeching, grey sludge drooling from its shattered maw, it slumped and was still.
Apion drew close and fired an execution burst into the creature’s shrivelled head.
Emek appeared alongside him, smoke drooling from his flamer. “Cleanse and burn!” he bellowed, then, “Down, brother!”
With a supreme effort, Ba’ken shoved the creature he was wrestling with. It rolled back onto its haunches as the Salamander dropped into a crouch and fiery promethium spewed overhead. Ba’ken felt its heat against his neck, and couldn’t resist looking up into the flames that consumed the chitin. His eyes blazed vengefully as the creature was incinerated, its death screams smothered by the weapon’s roar.
Ba’ken scowled at the beast, unhitching his heavy flamer before turning and unleashing a torrent of fire into a shambling chitin. Stomping over to a hab-shack, he checked inside and saw several settlers cowering within. They shrank back at the Salamander’s sudden appearance.
Ba’ken showed them his palm, his deep voice resonating around the metal dwelling.
“Have no fear,” he told the settlers, before turning to address Val’in. “In here. Come now,” he said and the boy obeyed, clutching the shovel to his chest as he scampered inside. Ba’ken closed the tin door after him, hoping it would be enough to keep them safe.
In the distance, war was calling. Ba’ken’s warrior spirit answered and he hurled himself, flamer blazing, into the fight.
All across the settlement, the Salamanders were gaining the upper hand. The heavy thunk-thud of bolters filled the air. The chitin were blasted apart in the storm, chased down by rampant settlers descending murderously on their stricken and wounded attackers.
Illiad was fearless as he led a group of men, Akuma at his side, driving back the creatures with determined las-salvos. Though not as deadly or decisive as the Astartes, they accounted an impressive tally.
Against the combined might of the Astartes and Illiad’s well-drilled troops, the chitin did not last long. Unprepared to face such an implacable foe as the Salamanders, what was left of the horde fled into their emergence holes bloodied and battered.
Dak’ir was wiping grey chitin blood from his powered-down chainsword when he saw Akuma spit down one of the emergence holes. Anger was written indelibly on the overseer’s face. It turned to despair when he surveyed the destruction around him.
Blood soaked the thoroughfare now and hab-stacks lay crushed or torn open. As Illiad gathered teams to begin collapsing the emergence holes using explosives, a mournful dirge was struck up by the wounded and the grievers for the dead. Wailing infants, some of them now orphans, added their own sorrowful chorus.
One hundred and fifty-four had died in the chitin attack; not all men, not all armed. Another thirty-eight would not live out their injuries. Almost a fifth of the entire human population killed in a single blow.
Silently, the Salamanders helped retrieve the dead.
At one point, Dak’ir saw Brother Apion looking down emptily at a woman clinging to her slain husband. She was unwilling to let go of him as the Salamander tried to take the body and set it upon the growing pyres. In the end she had relinquished him, sobbing deeply.
Illiad lit a flare and ignited the pyres as the last of the dead were accounted for and set to rest. Dak’ir found the custom familiar as he watched the bodies burning and the smoke curling away forlornly through a natural chimney in the cavern roof. The cremation chamber was already blackened and soot gathered in the corners.
Val’in was at the ceremony too, and approached Ba’ken who watched solemnly alongside his brothers.
“Are you a Fire Angel?” asked Val’in, reaching out towards the massive warrior.
Ba’ken, almost three times the boy’s height and towering over him, was surprised at the sudden upswell of emotion as Val’in’s hand pressed against his greave. Perhaps the boy wanted to make sure he was real.
A part of Ba’ken was deeply saddened at the thought of this innocent knowing something of the terrors of the galaxy, but he was also moved. Val’in was not Astartes: he did not wear power armour or wield a holy bolter; he didn’t even carry a lasgun or rifle. He’d had a shovel, and yet he was brave enough to stand in the path of the chitin and not run.
Ba’ken found an answer hard to come by.
Dak’ir spoke for him, but to Illiad and not the boy. “What does the boy mean when he says ‘Fire Angel’?” he asked.
Illiad’s face was set in a look of resignation. The flames from the pyres seemed to deepen the lines on his brow and throw haunting shadows into his eyes. He looked suddenly older.
“I must show you something, Hazon Dak’ir,” he said. “Will you follow me?”
After a moment, Dak’ir nodded. Perhaps it was at last time for the truth of why the Salamanders had been sent here.
Pyriel stepped forwards, indicating that he would accompany them.
“Ba’ken,” said Dak’ir, facing the massive warrior who still found himself daunted before the boy but managed to look up.
“Brother-sergeant?”
“You have command in my absence. Try to establish contact with the Vulkan’s Wrath and Sergeant Agatone if you can, though I doubt you’ll get a signal through all of this rock.”
“Don’t think we need your protection,” snapped Akuma, having overheard the conversation. Ba’ken turned on him.
“You are stubborn, human,” he growled, though his eyes betrayed his admiration for Akuma’s pride and diehard spirit. “But the choice isn’t yours to make.”
Akuma grumbled something and backed off.
After he’d checked the load of his plasma pistol and secured his chainsword, Dak’ir rested his hand on Ba’ken’s pauldron and leaned in to speak into his ear.
“Guard them for me,” he said in a low voice.
“Yes, sergeant,” Bak’en answered, eyes locked with the recalcitrant overseer. “In Vulkan’s name.”
“In Vulkan’s name,” Dak’ir echoed, before departing with Pyriel and following Illiad as he led them away from fire and grief.
II
Angels and Monsters
Illiad took them back down the winding tunnel road to the blast doors of the massive chamber they’d visited before. The bronzed portal was closed again now, its ancient mechanism engaged as soon as they’d left to join the battle.
Dak’ir recalled Pyriel’s words as he stared silently at the gate again. The Librarian, standing alongside him, was characteristically inscrutable.
Answers lie within.
Illiad opened the gates once more and this time stepped inside, without waiting to see if the Salamanders followed.
Dak’ir passed through
the threshold first, slightly tentative. But all he saw on the other side was a vast, barren room. He watched Illiad approach one of the walls and wipe away the layers of dust and grit that swathed it. Slowly, images were revealed, not unlike cave paintings but inscribed upon bare metal. The renderings were crude, but as Dak’ir approached, drawn inexorably to them, he discerned familiar shapes. He saw stars and metal giants, clad in green armour. Humans were depicted too, emerging from a crashed ship the size of a city. Flames were captured in vivid oranges and reds. In each subsequent interpretation, the ship was slowly being swallowed up by the earth as ash and rock buried it. Beasts came next, the visual history of the colony spreading down the massive walls. First were the chitin, easy to discern with their bulky carapace bodies and claws; then came something else — brutish, broad-backed figures, with dark skins and tusks. The humans were depicted fleeing from them as the metal giants protected them.
“How did you survive down here for so long, Illiad?” Dak’ir’s voice echoed, breaking the silence.
Illiad paused in his unearthing of the colony’s ancient lore.
“Scoria has deep veins of ore. Fyron, it is called.” He wiped the sweat of his labours from his brow. “We are miners, generations old. Our ancestors, in their wisdom, realised the ore was combustible. It could be used to keep the reactor running, to charge our weapons and maintain our way of life, such as it is.” His face darkened. “It was this way for many centuries, so our legends tell us.”
Dak’ir indicated the wall paintings. “And these are your legends?”
“At first,” Illiad conceded, changing tack. “Scoria is a hostile place. Our colony is few. One in a generation has the duty to record that generation’s history in a log, though much of its formative years are drawn upon these walls. Long ago that task fell to my grandfather, who then passed it on to me after his son, my father, was killed in a cave-in.”
Illiad paused, as if weighing up what to say next.
“Millennia ago, my ancestors came to Scoria, crash landed in a ship that had come from the stars,” he said. “We were not alone. Giants, armoured in green plate, came with us. Most who now live don’t remember who they were. They call them the Fire Angels, for it was said that they were born from the heart of the mountain. This is why Val’in addressed your warrior in this way.”
Dak’ir exchanged a look with Pyriel and the Librarian responded with a slight widening of his eyes.
Fire-born, he thought.
Illiad went on.
“After my ancestors crashed, the Fire Angels tried to return to the stars. Our history does not say why. But their ship was destroyed and terrible storms engulfed the planet. Those that ventured into it, taking the ship’s smaller vessels, did not return. The rest remained with us.”
“What happened to these other Fire Angels?” asked Dak’ir.
Illiad’s face became grave.
“They were our protectors,” he began simply. “Until the black rock came, and everything changed. It was thousands of years before I was born. Brutish creatures, like tusked swine and who revelled in war, descended upon Scoria in ramshackle vessels, expelled from the black rock. It eclipsed our sun and in the darkness that followed, the swine made landfall. The stories hold that the Fire Angels fought them off, but at a cost. Every few years, the swine would come back but with greater and greater hordes. Each time the Fire Angels would march out to meet them, and each time they were victorious but less and less of them returned. Inevitably, they dwindled, falling one by one until the last of them retreated underground with my ancestors and sealed themselves in. The last Fire Angel took an oath, to protect my ancestors and pass on the tale of him and his warriors if others like them ever returned to Scoria.
“The years passed and the fate of that last Fire Angel was lost to history, the warriors from beyond the stars committed to mere memory… until now. We didn’t venture above the earth after that, and the surface of Scoria became lifeless, inhabited only by ghosts. The swine did not return. Some reckon it was because there was no further sport to be had.”
Dak’ir’s brow furrowed as he listened intently to Illiad’s story.
“You stayed like this… for millennia then?”
“Until several years ago, yes,” Illiad replied. “The storms that blighted our planet lifted for no reason other than they had run their course. Soon after, the Iron Men came.” Illiad’s expression darkened at this memory.
“‘Iron Men’?” asked Dak’ir, though he thought he already knew to whom Illiad referred.
“They came from the stars, like you. Thinking they were akin to the Fire Angels, I led a delegation to meet them.” Illiad paused to take a steadying breath and marshal his thoughts. “Sadly, I was wrong. They laughed at our entreaties, turning their guns upon us. Akuma’s wife and son were slain in the massacre. That is why he is so distrustful of you. He cannot see the difference.”
“You say you led the delegation, Illiad. How did you escape from the Iron Men?” asked Dak’ir, keen to learn all that Illiad knew of the Iron Warriors and their forces, for there could be no doubt that it was the sons of Perturabo who had perpetrated the massacre.
Illiad bowed his head. “I am shamed to say that I fled, just like the rest. They didn’t give chase and those who eluded their guns stayed alive. We watched them after that from hidden scopes bored deep beneath the earth.”
Dak’ir remembered the sense of being watched he’d felt outside the wreck of the Vulkan’s Wrath, and assumed this must have been Illiad or one of his men.
“They built a fortress,” Illiad continued.
“Our brothers have seen it,” Dak’ir told him, “out in the ash dunes.”
Illiad licked his lips, as if slicking them so the words wouldn’t stick in his throat.
“We kept a vigil on it at first, as the walls and towers went up,” he said. “But the men keeping watch began to act erratically. Two of them committed suicide, so I put a stop to it after that.”
“Your men succumbed to the taint of Chaos,” said Pyriel sternly.
Illiad seemed nonplussed.
“Do you know what the Iron Men are doing in the fortress?” Dak’ir asked in the lull.
“No,” Illiad answered flatly. “But we encountered them again, this time at the mine where we used to extract the fyron ore. We never got further than their sentries and though they must have known we were there, they seemed disinterested in slaying us.”
Pyriel’s silken voice interrupted.
“They come for the ore, and are drilling deep to get it,” he said. The Librarian turned his cold gaze onto the human. Illiad, despite his obvious presence and courage, shrank back before it.
“Where is this mine?” Pyriel asked. “Our brothers must be told.”
“I can take you there,” Illiad answered, “but that is not why I brought you here. The legends of the Fire Angels are just tales to protect our young and placate the ignorant. I alone, know the truth.” Illiad turned to Dak’ir. “You are not the first Fire Angel I have seen. There is another living among us.”
That got the Salamanders’ attention. All thoughts of the mine and the Iron Warriors faded into sudden insignificance.
“The duty of recording our history was not the only thing my grandfather passed on to me,” Illiad told them. He moved to the back of the chamber. Dak’ir glanced over at Pyriel but the Librarian’s gaze was fixed on the human. “Wait there,” Illiad called back to them, working at a dust-dogged panel in the far wall.
Dak’ir saw the faint glow of illuminated icons as Illiad pushed them in sequence. A deep rumbling gripped the chamber, and for a moment the Salamander sergeant thought it was another tremor. It was, but not one caused by Scoria’s fragile core; instead, it came from the flanking wall.
Stepping back, the Salamanders saw a recessed line emerge in the encrusted metal, spilling out tracts of dirt as a portal formed within it and opened with a hiss of pressure. Old, stale air gusted out from a darkened chamber beyond.
“Until my grandfather showed me this place, I thought the Fire Angels were just a myth. I know now they are very real and lived by a different name,” said Illiad upon reaching them. “Now, I am the old man and I’m passing on the legacy of my ancestors to you, Salamanders of Vulkan.”
Chaplain Elysius never got his gauntlets dirty during an interrogation. He was fastidious about this, to the point of obsession. This was an Astartes who knew how to inflict pain; agony so invasive and consuming so as to leave no mark, save the one in the victim’s psyche.
Watching the partly dismantled Warsmith in the flickering half-light of the cell, Tsu’gan fancied that Elysius could even wrest a confession from one of the tainted.
After the brief battle in the torture chamber-cum-workshop — for Tsu’gan was convinced it was a union of both — the half-conscious Warsmith had been dragged above ground and taken to an abandoned cell in the upper level. There he lay now, as Tsu’gan watched, chained to an iron bench and bleeding from the wounds the Salamander sergeant had given him.
The tools the Chaplain had requested included a pair of chirurgeon-interrogators that he’d had stored in the Fire Anvil’s equipment lockers. The creatures, servitor-torturers, had unfolded from their metal slumber like the jagged blades of knives extending. Wiry and grotesque, the interrogators’ mechadendrites were fashioned into an array of unpleasant devices, excrutiators, designed to inflict maximum pain. Elysius had constructed the servitors in part himself — at least, he had taken the Mechanicus stock and modified them for his own purposes.
“Is this butchery strictly necessary?” asked N’keln, looking on from the shadows.
Since the battle to take the fortress and Tsu’gan’s squad’s near miss in the catacombs, the brother-captain’s stock had depleted further. Though no one spoke of it openly, his disastrous command at the gates of the iron fortress was viewed with ever more critical eyes. Tsu’gan could feel the discontent building like a wave, whilst his own standing had been greatly increased, especially in the eyes of Veteran Sergeant Praetor. The Firedrake had commended the brother-sergeant several times for his valour and strategy. Undoubtedly, it was Tsu’gan that had prevented further deaths and restored parity in the battle.
[Tome of Fire 01] - Salamander Page 26
