“I can break him, brother-captain,” Elysius replied. The Chaplain stood back, directing his chirurgeon-interrogators expertly.
“Have you even asked him anything yet, Brother-Chaplain?” said N’keln.
The Warsmith’s bionic arm had been removed and dismantled, bloodily. His right arm had been severed and the wound cauterised so that he wouldn’t fall unconscious from blood loss. Nor would he be able to morph a weapon from his flesh. Stripped of his body armour, the injuries Tsu’gan had dealt him were visible as a dense patch of welts and purple bruises. Elysius had allowed the Iron Warrior to keep his battle-helm on, for it was his belief that none should look upon the face of a traitor. Let him hide it in shame.
“I am about to,” the Chaplain hissed, a little strained under his captain’s scrutiny. After Elysius had issued a sub-vocal command, the chirurgeon-interrogators retreated, taking their blades, their wires and their torches with them. The stench of burned flesh and old copper wafted over to Tsu’gan and the other onlookers, which included Captain N’keln and Brother Iagon.
Tsu’gan’s second had requested he be allowed to observe the Chaplain’s techniques. Most within the company, like N’keln for instance, found Elysius’ methods distasteful, at the same time acknowledging their necessity. Iagon, it seemed, did not, and since Tsu’gan saw no reason to prevent him, he allowed the battle-brother to bear audience with him.
The shadow of Chaplain Elysius fell across the traitor like a deathly veil.
“What precisely were you constructing in the vault?” he asked simply.
Burned copiously, the vault had been resealed again following Techmarine Draedius’ analysis. He had yet to ascertain the exact nature of the weapon.
Something fell and evil lurked in the darkness below their feet. Tsu’gan had felt it all the while he was down there and had no desire to reacquaint himself with it. More than once, he had fought the urge to take out his combat knife and press it against his flesh. He knew whatever malign presence lurked in the fortress’ lower levels was just preying on his inner guilt and the manifestation of that guilt in his addictive masochism.
The Iron Warrior laughed, breaking Tsu’gan’s reverie. It was a hollow, metallic sound that echoed around the small cell like a discordant bell chime.
“What did it look like to you, lapdog of the False Emperor?”
It was a small gesture — like the twitch of one of Elysius’ fingers — that brought one of the chirurgeon-interrogators forward. Something happened, hidden by the servitor’s body, and the Iron Warrior shuddered and grunted.
“Again,” ordered the Chaplain in a low voice. There was a pause and the Iron Warrior shuddered for a second time. Smoke issued from his flesh, though Tsu’gan couldn’t see its source. The Iron Warrior laughed again.
But it was pained laughter this time and when he spoke, his voice was cracked and hissing.
“A weapon…” The breath wheezed in and out of his lungs.
“We know that.” Elysius went to order the chirurgeon-interrogator for a third time.
“A seismic cannon…” gasped the Iron Warrior.
Tsu’gan knew of no such weapon. Had this warband somehow acquired knowledge of an undiscovered standard template construct? It seemed impossible. Still thinking on it, the brother-sergeant detected the faintest tremor of movement in the Chaplain. The chirurgeon-interrogator retreated.
“How long have you been on this world?” Elysius asked, deliberately altering the course of his questioning to try and disorientate the prisoner.
“Almost a decade,” the Iron Warrior rasped, as if his breath were raking against his throat.
“Why are your brothers dead?”
“Killed in battle, of course!” Sudden rage gave the Iron Warrior strength and for the first time he struggled against his chains.
Bonds of loyalty and brotherhood were still strong, Tsu’gan considered, even in traitors.
Elysius struck the Iron Warrior’s ruined chest with the flat of his palm. It was a hard blow that pushed the air from the traitor’s lungs and smashed him against the bench.
“By what or whom?” demanded the Chaplain, patience thinning.
The Iron Warrior took a few seconds to catch a ragged breath.
“They will come again, the ones that bested my brothers,” he said, his yellow lenses flashing maliciously. “Very soon, much too soon for you to save yourselves…” A clicking sound scraped from his mouth, growing steadily faster and louder. The Iron Warrior was laughing again.
Elysius was about to send the chirurgeon-interrogators forwards when Sergeant Lok interrupted them. The veteran was in command of the outer defences and the wall, and had rushed in from outside.
“Captain,” he uttered sternly, his face grave.
N’keln gestured for him to give his report.
“It is the sun, my lord,” Lok began.
“What of it, sergeant?”
“It has been partially eclipsed.”
N’keln was taken aback.
“By what?” he asked.
Tsu’gan felt fresh tension suddenly enter the cell. Lok’s tone suggested he had seen something that troubled him. For a veteran of Ymgarl, such a reaction was not to be treated lightly.
“A black rock, as large as the sun,” he said. “Parts of it are breaking off. Many parts.”
“Explain yourself, Lok,” demanded N’keln. “Are they meteors?”
“They are moving erratically, and at different speeds. More and more fragment each minute.”
N’keln scowled, reaching for his bolter instinctively. They all knew what was coming next.
“Whatever they are,” said Lok, “they’re headed for Scoria.”
“And with the dark comes a swarm of war, and beneath it the sun shall die,” Elysius intoned, now facing Lok.
Grating laughter issued from behind him.
“You’re too late,” croaked the Iron Warrior. “Your doom has come…”
Illiad stepped away from the recently opened portal, bowing his head in reverence.
It was difficult to see within; the gloom was thick and a pall of disturbed dust hung in the air like a grey veil. Dak’ir was aware of his primary heart thundering in his chest. It was not because he was about to go into battle; it was excitement and something approaching fear that gripped him as he stood before the threshold to the room. He turned to look at Pyriel.
“Your lead, brother-sergeant,” he said, a faint cerulean glow limning his eyes as he used his witch-sight to better penetrate the half-dark.
Dak’ir muttered a litany to Vulkan and stepped forwards. A few metres into the chamber and he saw musty-looking consoles, veneered by dirt. Cables hung down from the ceiling like the tendrils of some unseen sea plant. Brushing them aside with careful sweeps of his hand, Dak’ir half expected to be stung. His entire body seemed numb, yet electrified at the same time. The pounding cadence of his heart smothered the echoing report of his boot steps against the metal floor. He was only dimly aware of the presence of Pyriel behind him. The Librarian kept at around a metre’s distance, surveying the murky surroundings slowly and cautiously.
It was like descending into a dream.
At last, the hanging cables gave way to a metal esplanade Dak’ir recognised the symbol embossed in its centre. Though weathered and evidently damaged during the crash, the icon of the Firedrakes was discernible.
A set of stairs led off from the esplanade Dak’ir followed their trajectory with his gaze. There at the summit, his eye alighted on a command throne and the figure sitting in it.
Half-shrouded in shadows, details were hard to see, but the armour the figure wore looked old and massive.
Dak’ir reached out a hand without realising. His heart had actually stopped beating for a second of time that felt like minutes. When he spoke, his voice was little more than an awe-struck whisper and he felt an overwhelming compulsion to sink to knees.
“Primarch…”
CHAPTER NINE
> I
Black Rock, Green Tide
Tsu’gan joined Lok and the others on the wall. N’keln was handed a pair of magnoculars by the veteran sergeant and he peered up at the dark shape blighting the sky.
An almost penumbral cast had engulfed Scoria, the ash deserts made supernatural in its eerie lustre. The sun was all but gone, little more than a dwindling sickle of yellow light swallowed in the maw of something black and massive. An odd sense of stillness had fallen and Tsu’gan felt that niggle at the back of his mind again, as if he was down in the lower levels once more.
He detected the same tremor of unease in his brothers standing alongside him on the wall. Only Chaplain Elysius had stayed in the cell, intent on his prisoner. The rest had followed Lok outside to bear witness to the coming of something terrible.
Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed.
“What is it?” he asked.
Dark slivers were peeling off the black object steadily blotting out the sun, gradually forming a cloud that arrowed towards the planet.
N’keln handed the sergeant the magnoculars.
“See for yourself,” he replied grimly.
Though the magnoculars didn’t have the range to penetrate beyond the planet’s outer atmosphere, they did reveal the black shape to be a massive asteroid. The dark slivers, like fragments of its body, were in fact ships. Details were hard to discern but Tsu’gan managed to make out the ramshackle design of the nearest vessels. They moved at speed, spilling plumes of black smoke, engines roaring fire. There could be no mistaking the nature of the enemy closing on them.
Tsu’gan scowled as he lowered the magnoculars.
“Orks.”
A rush of activity greeted Tsu’gan’s revelation. Extrapolating the sheer numbers of greenskins heading towards them from the ships breaking off from the black rock, N’keln had ordered the fortress to be re-fortified at once.
Techmarine Draedius set about constructing a makeshift gate that would be further reinforced by the Land Raider and one of the company’s Rhinos. All Salamanders were mustered at once and squad sergeants barked clipped orders to their troopers, who assumed defensive positions along the wall. Some undertook their oaths of moment, swearing muttered litanies as icons of the hammer and the flame were pressed to lips.
Though the ramparts were chipped and in varying stages of ruination from the Salamanders’ earlier battery, they were still defensible. The automated guns had all been destroyed. It mattered little. Despite their pragmatism, no Salamander would ever turn to the weapons of the Traitor Legions for deliverance. Instead, N’keln ordered the three Devastator squads to occupy the chewed-up gun towers. With four towers in total, the last post went to Clovius and his Tactical squad due to the nature of their weaponry. The towers provided a serviceable vantage point, even though a long-range view was impossible due to how the fortress was situated in the ash basin.
Sergeant Vargo’s depleted Assault squad and Veteran Sergeant Praetor’s Firedrakes were kept in the outer courtyard just beyond the gate as reserves. The Terminators were too bulky to climb the shallow stairways leading up to the wall, so had to content themselves as guardians of the inner keep. That left two Tactical squads, those of Sergeants De’mas and Typhos, strung out across the wall with Captain N’keln and two of his Inferno Guard, Shen’kar and Malicant. The company standard bearer unfurled his banner proudly and it snapped in the growing wind. It seemed a long time since it had last been upraised, but it instantly lifted the spirits of all who saw it. The last of the troops on the wall were a combat squad, led by Battle-Brother S’tang. The other half of the combat squad were operating outside of the fortress, climbing the ridge that would allow them to see much farther across the ash plain and report the enemy’s movements back to their brother-captain.
An arid wind was blowing off the ash desert, kicking up gritty drifts that painted the Salamanders’ armour a dull grey. The view through Brother Tiberon’s magnoculars was grainy in the building storm, but Tsu’gan could see the approach of vehicles by their spewed smoke and the displaced ash gusting away from them. The cloud was massive, hugging the horizon in a dense, black pall. The air that came with it was redolent of oil, dung and beast-sweat.
“Must be hundreds of vehicles amidst all of that,” offered Lazarus, lying flat on his stomach on his sergeant’s right.
“More like thousands,” Tsu’gan corrected, muttering. He handed the magnoculars back to Tiberon on the opposite side of him.
“Anything yet?” Tsu’gan asked Iagon, who was in a slightly more advanced position scrutinising his auspex. He had set it to its maximum wave band and the widest possible area array. The signals coming back were intermittent and hazy.
“No accurate readings,” he reported through the comm-feed in a clipped voice. “Could be environmental interference, or there could simply be too many for the device to calculate.”
“There’s a sobering thought,” replied Honorious, crouching just behind his sergeant and trying to keep the grit out of his flamer’s igniter nozzle.
Tsu’gan ignored him and looked back over his shoulder. It had taken around half an hour to cover the distance from the fortress gate to the summit of the ridge, over uneven ground and on foot. Encumbered in power armour and fully armed, Tsu’gan reckoned they needed to leave at least twenty minutes for a return trip. He planned to mine part of the ridge, using all of the frag grenades he had left. It might not slow the greenskins to any great degree, but it would give them a sting they weren’t expecting.
Above them the yellow sun had become a pale, convex line. In the conditions of the partial solar eclipse, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact time of day. Tsu’gan’s rough calculation put it at around late afternoon. Judging by the speed of the approaching dust cloud, he reckoned the orks would reach them in less than an hour. Around an hour later and the sun would have set and total darkness would engulf the desert. He resolved to wire some photon flares and blind grenades amongst the redoubts before they returned behind the fortress walls.
“No way through that,” said Tiberon, interrupting Tsu’gan’s thoughts, peering through the magnoculars. “I hope to Vulkan that Agatone isn’t facing a similar horde.”
The troops left guarding the Vulkan’s Wrath were neither as numerous nor as well-defended as those at the fortress. They were also hindered by masses of injured crewmen. It left them and the strike cruiser vulnerable to attack. Tsu’gan had wanted to lead a band of reinforcements to bolster his brothers, but N’keln had forbidden it. All they could do was warn them to expect the enemy. It was scant consolation.
“Whatever augurs the orks use will draw them to the crashed ship,” Tsu’gan answered Tiberon. “But they’ll be scavenger warbands, hoping for easy pickings. The bigger bastards will be coming here. Orks go where the best fight is. They’ll remember the bloody nose given to them at the fortress and will return to it, eager to settle the score. Even if it’s against us and not the traitors.” He turned to look straight at Tiberon. “Don’t worry, brother,” Tsu’gan added in a feral tone. “There’ll be plenty for us to kill.”
It wasn’t Vulkan who sat upon the throne before him.
Dak’ir realised this as he approached the recumbent Salamander, having climbed halfway up the stairs. But the Fire-born sitting there was old, ancient in fact. His armour harked back to the halcyon era of the Great Crusade, when all Space Marines had been brothers in arms and a new age of prosperity and oneness was in prospect for the galaxy. Those dreams were as dust now, just like the ashen patina that veiled the old Salamander in front of Dak’ir.
The venerable warrior bore the Legion markings of a trooper. His antiquated power armour was a deeper green than that of Dak’ir’s. It had a Mark V Heresy-pattern design with its studded pauldron and greaves. The helmet was similarly attired and sat next to the Salamander’s boot where he had set it down but never reclaimed it.
A glow behind Dak’ir, emitted psychically from Pyriel’s hand, revealed the old Salamander�
�s leathery skin, his battle-weathered face and thinly cropped hair the colour of silver wire. His eyes, where once a fire had burned with the fury of war, were dulled but not without life. He faced away from both Dak’ir and Pyriel, visible in side profile. He also appeared to be staring at something concealed from their view by the bulkhead columns of the dilapidated bridge, for there could be no doubt that this was the part of the ship where they now found themselves.
Dak’ir wondered briefly how long the Salamander had been sitting like that. It seemed to him a desolate charge that the ancient had undertaken.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Dak’ir followed the seated warrior’s eye line and felt a slight tremor of shock.
The wall of the bridge had broken away, presumably destroyed when the ship had crash-landed, to reveal another chamber through the ragged tear in the metal. Though it was dark inside, Dak’ir’s occulobe implant utilised all of the ambient light to discern a natural cavern. Within he saw row upon row of Astartes battle-plate. Salamanders all, these husks of former Fire-born were arranged in serried ranks. There were fifty in total, ten files and five Space Marines deep. The armour was empty and supported by metal frames so that the warriors stood to attention proudly in parade formation. Each one matched the style and age of the old Salamander’s battle-plate and was gouged and battered.
Dak’ir noticed that one or two of the suits had toppled over, due to the rigours of time or the capriciousness of nature. He saw a helmet landed on its side, resting near the boot of its owner. Here and there a bullet-holed pauldron had slipped, to sag forlornly near a suit’s elbow joint.
[Tome of Fire 01] - Salamander Page 27
