The scream of warning klaxons brought them both to an abrupt halt.
The convent-bastion was on sudden alert.
‘It’s already here…’ he breathed.
Heavy booted feet were hammering down the corridor towards them. Canoness Ignacia was marshalling her troops.
Sepulchre IV was under attack.
A mass evacuation was underway. Fleets of ships – lighters, ark-cruisers, speeders, freight-haulers, clippers and gunships – were deserting Sepulchre IV in their droves, like insects fleeing a forest fire. On the ground, those without vessels to ferry them to the starships anchored in low orbit around the planet had to run. Masses of people clogged the roads. Some clung desperately to one another for succour, others screamed for deliverance. The few that had mechanised walkers or personal half-tracks were soon mired in the throng. Horns blared frantically like the wailing of the already damned.
‘Pandemonium reigns.’ Tsu’gan was unable to keep the sneer from his face. It was black. Not dark-skinned but really black, like onyx, and just as hard. The red spike of beard on his chin jutted like an accusing finger as he stared through one of the Implacable’s vision slits.
‘They want to live.’ Praetor’s deep voice was matter-of-fact but dominated over the Thunderhawk gunship’s engine noise. ‘It’s not so weak to cherish your own life,’ he added, guessing what the other Space Marine was thinking.
Tsu’gan turned – his heavy Terminator armour whirred and clanked as the hidden servos went to work shifting his bulk – and his red eyes blazed in the gloomy hold. He found the cumbersome suit a challenge, but relished the power it gave him. Tsu’gan valued strength above all else.
He appraised the rest of his squad in a glance.
Ankar and Kai’ru were as still as sentinels, their grav-harnesses locked and widened to accommodate their bulk.
Gathimu, the ‘spear’, was anointing his heavy flamer with ash. He drew a wide slash with his armoured finger then followed it with a drake’s head. It was Kalimar, the creature he’d slain below Mount Deathfire and whose flesh he now wore as a mantle on his left pauldron. So focused, so honed was Gathimu.
Praetor was his sergeant, a veteran of over a hundred campaigns, a hero of the Chapter. Apart from Tsu’gan, he was the only one yet to don his helmet. Praetor’s face and scalp were bald, polished to mirror sheen by his brander-priest. The scars upon his cheek and the three platinum service studs above his left brow were marks of honour and service. His Terminator armour was more ornate than Tsu’gan’s. Fashioned by a master artificer, it bore the heraldic devices of dragon heads and gilded laurels. It came with a cape of salamander hide that almost went down to the floor.
Praetor glowered.
‘To your harness, brother. It’s not much farther.’
Tsu’gan obeyed, still finding the unfamiliar sensation of walking in Tactical Dreadnought Armour unsettling. Once he was mag-locked and secured by thick metal bracers, he relaxed.
These men, these super-men, were his brothers. Not by blood but by battle. Born in Vulkan’s forge, their bond was stronger than adamantium. They were Salamanders, Fire-born. No, they were more than that. They were the Chapter’s First Company, to which their armour and its proud iconography testified, their Firedrakes.
As Praetor leaned forward to look through one of the vision slits, the green of his Terminator suit caught a shaft of light from outside and turned a lurid purple.
‘The sky is red as blood.’
‘Yet we defy it, going against the tide.’ Gathimu had finished his rituals and looked over at Tsu’gan through the cold lenses of his battle-helm. Ornate drake’s teeth gave the helm a feral snarl. ‘Flex your muscles, cycle through your pre-battle physical routines. It will help.’
‘I am ready,’ Tsu’gan snapped, a little too quickly.
‘You are untempered.’ Gathimu’s even tone suggested he meant no offence.
Tsu’gan bit back a reply. He glared through the vision slit and saw again the red sky of the shrine world. Fat clouds gorged on blood smashed against the gunship’s hull, painting it crimson and riming its edges with a visceral gum. Escaping ships sped past them too, headed away from the battle towards the hopeful salvation in low orbit.
A blockade of enemy starships was already forming around the planet. They planned to slaughter everyone on this world, a glorious sacrifice to their violent potentate. Soon, no one would be getting off alive. It leant the Salamanders’ mission a certain… urgency that Tsu’gan felt more acutely as he looked outside.
Fire wreathed the horizon, casting a ruddy glow on the ruins of chapels and cathedra. Flaming bell towers had crumpled, like broken fingers reaching for the earth. Collapsed bridges were clogged with the dead and the sky blossomed with explosions from faraway aerial battles.
Tsu’gan clenched his power fist. The servos whined within and he thought of the distant war he would not be part of. He’d seen enough. Eyes back in the hold, he saw his battle-brothers felt his frustration too.
The Red Rage had come to Sepulchre IV, and its blood-lust was not easily sated.
Roaring afterburners announced their arrival at the docking pad. Landing stanchions extended quickly as the Implacable touched down. The Salamanders disembarked from the rear hatch, green-armoured giants ploughing through the pneumatic pressure cloud.
An Ecclesiarchy representative met them with two of her fellow Battle Sisters. Backwash from the Thunderhawk’s half-powered down engines tossed her white hair, revealing a jagged scar that made her appear more severe.
Though they came from the Order of the Ardent Veil, these warrior-fanatics looked anything but peaceful. Their white power armour was studded with silver spikes, concomitant bodices drawn tight over their tauht muscles. They were akin to the suits worn by the Firedrakes’ battle and reserve company brothers, only slighter but still potent. Holy signifiers – purity seals, rosarius beads and icons of the Emperor’s aquila – bedecked the armour, defining the Battle Sisters’ purpose and zealous determination. They held bolters low-slung at their hips. The sister superior with the white hair also carried a flanged power mace. Her helmet, mag-locked to her belt, was silver. Whatever force of Chaos had come upon Sepulchre IV must have been dire that these soldiers of faith could not defeat it.
Praetor bowed his head before the Battle Sisters to show his respect. It had not been easy for them or the Ecclesiarchy to ask for help. The veteran sergeant had no wish to make it any more difficult.
The white-haired superior nodded then turned her back on the Salamanders, leading them away from the docking pad towards a thick perimeter wall crowned by razor-wire. Two watchtowers with mounted heavy bolters overlooked a reinforced gate on either side, the docking pad’s only access point. Hard-looking female faces regarded the strangers from within, their mood unreadable.
The docking pad doubled as a barracks and chapel, too. Tsu’gan noticed much of its religious statuary had been ripped down and replaced by ablative armour, sandbags and rockcrete barricades. Anything of significance to the faith of the Order was gone, leaving a blank echo on a wall or a denuded alcove. The fleeing ships transported not only people but Ecclesiastical artefacts too.
‘I’ve had warmer welcome on Fenris.’ Kai’ru kept his voice low.
A glare from Praetor silenced him, before they were led towards the gate.
Tsu’gan had to agree with his battle-brother. A cold wind was blowing through the Order of the Ardent Veil and the white of their battle sisters’ armour reminded him of frost. Salamanders fought with a core of fire in their breast; these warrior-maidens harboured a spike of ice.
Once past the docking pad, Praetor chose to enlighten his brothers over a closed comm-channel.
++Use the senses our father gave you. The Order is mute. They cannot acknowledge you even if they wished to.++
Kai’ru found suddenly that he was similarly afflicted.
‘Deeds not words are the speech of angels.’ Gathimu was quoting from some philosophic
al treatise he’d read.
Any reply was forestalled as a pair of Immolator battle tanks reversed from the gate, allowing the Salamanders through. Their turret-mounted inferno cannons swivelled as they moved, constantly trained on the gate. One trigger pull from the gunners would engulf the entranceway in a conflagration of burning promethium.
With the churn of hidden gears, the gate cracked and slid open. As they had seen from the air, the carnage of burnt out tanks and twisted corpses lay beyond it. Sepulchre IV was a place of ruins and shades, of scorched earth and blood-tainted air. Some of the fires still flickered in the hollow shells of the broken basilica.
Several Battle Sisters flanked the gate, bolters aimed into the killing ground before them.
The sister superior looked expectantly at Praetor. She wanted to seal the compound again quickly.
Tsu’gan detected no enemies nearby. He scowled behind his battle-helm at what he saw as fear.
Fear is the province of the weak.
‘Ave Imperator,’ he heard Praetor say to the Battle Sister.
She slammed her gauntleted first against her pauldron in salute as the Salamander sergeant led his Firedrakes out.
Deeds not words.
Once outside, the gate ground shut behind them. The gaze of the Battle Sisters in the towers was still upon them, though. Tsu’gan felt their heavy bolter sights like an itch at the back of his neck.
Gathimu released a spit of promethium from his heavy flamer to test the igniter on the nozzle, interrupting Tsu’gan’s thoughts. ‘This place reeks of death.’
Tsu’gan estimated over a thousand dead bodies strewn throughout the perimeter. ‘The battle moved elsewhere?’
‘To the convent-bastion.’ Praetor had donned his battle helm and was consulting a data feed running across his left lens. ‘Our destination.’ Topographical and geographical schemata spooled across his iris at rapid speed. Praetor’s occulobe implant absorbed the information in a single beat, storing it in his eidetic memory for later use. He’d locked in the route to the convent-bastion and was mission ready. He led them to a patch of open ground.
‘How many did they lose trying to get in?’ Ankar took his place in a ritual circle with the others.
Praetor paused to blink the relevant data onto his inner helm lens. ‘Nearly a quarter of their garrison – over a thousand battle sisters. Though I’d suggest that’s a conservative estimate.’
‘And within, defending the bastion?’
‘Celestians, mainly. They may have a few hundred troops inside. There are more beyond its walls. Holding firm… for now.’
‘Such a waste of lives,’ said Kai’ru. ‘No wonder they’re so aggrieved.’
Tsu’gan’s servos protested as he moved towards Praetor, his armour as belligerent as his mood. ‘They’re fools. Mute or not, they should’ve summoned us sooner.’
Gathimu was standing next to him. ‘Would your pride have allowed that, brother? Asking for help?’
‘We need none, we are Adeptus Astartes.’ He stamped heavily into position beside his sergeant. His uneven gait was obvious, especially to Gathimu.
‘Your anger weighs you down more than that armour ever could. Let go of it.’
It’s not anger, thought Tsu’gan. It’s hate.
And it went deep, into his flesh where he’d tried to have the brander-priest’s iron remove it. But no burning, however invasive, could go far enough. Not when the hate and anger was turned inwards…
Behind them, the burst of engine noise signalled the Implacable’s take-off from the docking pad. The gunship had brought them as close as it could without risking being downed by enemy flak. Several Ecclesiarchy craft littered the killing field outside the fortified compound, testament to the wisdom of a foot approach. The rapid deployment of the Terminators to Sepulchre IV prevented any other kind of insertion.
‘And so we are alone.’ Kai’ru lifted his head to watch the slowly vanishing outline of the Thunderhawk. Headed for Sepulchre IV’s spaceport, it would aid the evacuation effort until summoned again by Praetor.
Gathimu was philosophical. ‘In the end brother, we are always alone.’
Praetor looked to him now the Salamanders had formed the ritual circle.
‘Ignite the flame.’
A burst from Gathimu’s heavy flamer lit a column of fire in the wasteland, like a beacon torch.
‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast,’ Praetor intoned.
‘With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ they concluded as one then each thrust their fists into the blaze, allowing their armoured fingers to blacken at the tips before withdrawing them.
‘We are born in fire,’ the sergeant continued, ‘so do we wage war with it clenched in our mailed fist.’
‘Unto the anvil!’ bellowed the Terminators.
Praetor unslung his thunder hammer and storm shield. ‘Firedrakes! In Vulkan’s name!’
The ritual circle broke apart and the Salamanders fell into combat-march formation, Praetor at the front, the others forming a two by two square behind him.
Tsu’gan’s lens display showed ten kilometres to the convent-bastion. The land between them and it was fiercely contested by Ecclesiarchy and enemy troops. The war was close by. There was no way could they reach their destination without encountering it.
It would be a long walk.
Sister Evangeline prayed. She was in one of the convent-bastion’s sanctums kneeling before an icon of her Order’s patron, the martyred Sister Uthraxese. Silver-armoured Celestians surrounded her with ready bolters. Despite their experience and status, the elite Battle Sisters looked edgy.
Father Lumeon was conversing with Canoness Ignacia at the back of the small chamber. The Celestians were Ignacia’s personal guard. She also wore silver armour but of a more ornate design. An antique power sword was sheathed at her hip, next to her battle-helm. Oil censers and a book of scripture hung from her belt by a pearled rosarius string, whilst the scars of battle mapped the Canoness’s face like a continent of past glories.
Father Lumeon looked calm but the way he worried at his aquila betrayed his concern. ‘We could hide.’
Ignacia gave him narrowed eyes.
‘In the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary,’ the priest added.
The Canoness shook her head. The notion of hiding was anathema to her. She wanted to wait. Perhaps with reinforcements from the Space Marines they could break through to the gunships.
In a bout of frustration, Father Lumeon pointed to where Evangeline was praying before the icon. There was a finger bone of the great martyr herself within its coffin-like confines. Some, the particularly devout, suggested some spirit essence still existed within the calcified remains.
‘The relic must be taken from this place. It cannot fall to the enemy. Even now they seek it!’
Ignacia was about to admonish him, when he held up his hand contritely. ‘Our forces dwindle by the minute. Soon there’ll be none left and the Ruinous Powers will not stall long at our barred gates. The Adeptus Astartes are on the way, canoness.’
She scowled at this, ever prideful.
‘If we hide, it might give us more time. We might–’
The hard clang of Ignacia slamming her fist against the wall stopped Father Lumeon mid-plea. Evidently, signing would not convey her meaning accurately enough.
Evangeline didn’t start at the interruption, though it was loud enough. She stayed calm, channelling an inner peace as taught by the sister superior of the Hospitaller.
Anger serves only to promote further anger. Guidance is only found when the mind is still. Serenity breeds truth.
Before the Canoness could go further, a pair of Crusaders from the convent-bastion’s outer wall arrived at the sanctum’s force-shielded doorway.
Both had removed their helmets in the presence of their holy mistress. There was news from the battle-front. From their expressions, it wasn’t good.
The chains tightened around the sorcerer’s torso, forcing him awa
ke. The iron links burned white-hot and sent needles of agony across his bare flesh where his power armour had been removed. Were it not for his enhanced constitution, he’d be dead.
Dreghgor knew that, just as he knew how far he could push his captive. The warlord of the Red Rage was a tyrant and a butcher but he was also wise. Khorne loathed magic, as did he. The collar of black iron around Dreghgor’s neck was inimical to sorcery, but he was not beyond using sorcerers as a tool to further his own ends.
The bitch-maidens of the False Emperor held his warrior legions at bay. No matter how many he threw against their defences, the spiteful whores would not break. Dreghgor knew what lay within their disgusting temple; the sorcerer had scryed its presence after the knives had gone in. Khorne wanted it. Dreghgor would not fail his master, who had seen fit to grant him an armada of ships to bring forth a bloody reign upon the sub-sector. Seven worlds already burned in the wake of his red crusade. He only needed one more… The Eye of the Gods was upon him. He felt it like razorblades under his changed skin.
From the burnt out shell of a shrine, Hagtah Dreghgor had fashioned an arena. The remains of its millennia-old reliquaries were scattered about the bloodied floor like carrion bones. Priceless relic-statues lay broken and beheaded on a carpet of stained-glass fragments. The blood of innocents anointed the shrine’s walls from where they hung impaled on hell-barbs. A Chaos star delineated the battlefield with a freshly flensed skull at each of its eight points.
Two of Dreghgor’s champions clashed within it, chainblade to chainblade. They wore sanguine power armour, chased with brass. Reinforced ribbing between the armour’s plates was as black as sackcloth, and each donned a skull-faced battle-helm in honour of their bloody god.
Dreghgor’s own helm was fashioned into the visage of a snarling hound, a dark iron echo of one of his master’s many forms, and had a single brass horn jutting from its left temple. His armour, scarred from numerous battles, was riddled with studs and barbs. Chains bearing eight skulls from his finest kills hung from plate to plate. He’d scrimshawed marks to represent the lesser ‘achievements’. The tallies resembled little more than deranged scratches there were so many of them. Rib bones were engineered into his vambraces. Alien teeth turned his gauntlets into spiked fists.
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