Salamander

I A Black Rock Dies

The line was holding. Few Astartes could boast tenacity as unshakeable as the sons of Vulkan. Here, against an unrelenting and seemingly endless horde of orks, the 3rd Company drew upon it like never before.

Heavy guns, aimed from the rear of the Salamanders' formation, softened up the onrushing greenskins, seeking to close with their opponents and exploit their chief strengths: raw aggression and brutality.

But the Salamanders were equally adept, if not superior, eye-to-eye with the enemy. The recently returned flamers exacted a sizeable toll on the orks as they came through the Devastators' fusillade.

Unlike the initial assaults against the iron fortress, the orks were predominantly on foot, supported by their piston-legged machineries, crude analogues of Space Marine Dreadnoughts. They eschewed the wagons, bikes and war trucks of the earlier sorties of their kin. Long-ranged guns were largely absent, too, and instead an expansive melee of chainblades, cleavers and clubs thundered at the Salamanders to bludgeon them into submission.

The orks found only fury and iron-hard resistance where they'd expected red-wreathed death and capitulation. Alloyed together, at almost full company strength and protecting the relatively narrow fielde in which the iron fortress was situated, the Salamanders were all but impregnable.

Casualties had been few, and those that could no longer serve the Chapter were dragged behind the stalwart line of armour, their absence accounted for by their brothers.

Tsu'gan gunned open the chest of an ork some ten metres away, downing the brute as if it were an enraged sauroch. Another took its place and he killed that one too with a precise burst to its snarling head. Several more followed, greenskins running the punishing gauntlet of Salamander guns. They were obliterated from view when Sergeant Vargo's depleted Assault squad landed amongst them. The exchange was savage and swift. Vargo and his troopers took to the air on tongues of fire less than a minute later, seeking other foes isolated by their eager bloodlust from the main greenskin throng. Carcasses rendered by bolt and blade, and a patch of scorched earth were all that was left in the Assault squad's clearing smoke.

'Press forward!' The bellowed order of N'keln reached Tsu'gan through the comm-feed as his captain sought to exploit the short gap that had developed through the Salamanders' recent mauling of the orks.

The line advanced as one. Tsu'gan felt the heavy footfalls of the Terminators alongside his squad through his booted feet.

'Unto the anvil, brother-sergeant,' said Praetor, a dark grin upon his face as he swung his thunder hammer towards the next wave of greenskins.

Snorting amusedly at the fatalism of it all, Tsu'gan fired again and his face was lit by the muzzle flare of his bolter. He laughed in tandem with the weapon's roar.

Overhead, the ork vessels streamed like cancerous veins in the sky. The black rock was venting constantly now. Soon there would not be enough of the ash dunes to hold all the greenskins expelled from its craterous surface.

Tsu'gan laughed harder at the thought of it, before his battle hysteria ebbed with a fresh realisation.

As long as the black rock endured there could be no victory here. If it wasn't destroyed soon, they'd all be dead.

Dak'ir was swathed in black lightning, the dark energies from Nihilan's force staff coursing over his armour. He cried out and fell to one knee, fists clenched over his weapons and shuddering against the terrible sorcery.

Vaguely, at the edge of his nulled perception, Dak'ir thought he heard Pyriel bellow his name. His tone was anguished, already grieving. The sergeant's eyes were clamped shut and saw again the Cindara Plateau, his ascent to the summit the final stage of his induction to become a neophyte. The acrid tang of the Acerbian Sea pricked his nostrils and the hot downdrafts of the Ignean caves of his birth warmed his skin.

Then he returned and the wracking pain of the lightning subsided; his nerve endings, previously ablaze, were still and warm. Dak'ir opened his eyes and realised he was still alive.

An amused look crossed Nihilan's face, the power in his force staff receding, before he turned and fell back with his traitorous brethren.

Ribbons of sorcerous smoke spilled upwards off Dak'ir's body as he started to rise, tugged forward in the draft from Pyriel racing past him.

He felt the presence of Ba'ken slowing just behind. Dak'ir staggered to his feet, waving the heavy weapons trooper on.

'Stop the renegades…' he slurred, still mustering his strength.

'I thought you were dead, Hazon,' Ba'ken murmured, before going on after on Pyriel.

'I should be,' rasped Dak'ir, his senses returning. He was about to drive on when he saw the beam of the multi-melta search menacingly out of the darkness. It forced a scream from Pyriel, his shoulder seared by the deadly weapon through his pauldron. The Librarian nearly fell, but managed to hold on.

Gritting his teeth in anger, Dak'ir found Pyriel's attacker. He recognised his shadowy form from the Aura Hieron temple, back on Scoria. He hadn't realised at first, but now he knew - this was Kadai's assassin, the killer of his old captain.

'Ghor'gan…' bellowed Nihilan to the Dragon Warrior with the multi-melta, the rest of his command smothered by the noise of roaring bolters as he and the other renegade drew away into the darkness. The one called Ghor'gan merely nodded and stood his ground. Nihilan was trying to escape.

This could not be allowed to happen. Dak'ir launched himself across the lava stream. It looked an impossible jump, but incredibly he landed on the other side, the heels of his boots scraping at the edge of where the rock fell away to hot oblivion. Ignoring the Iron Warrior, Dak'ir used his momentum to drive on at the Dragon Warrior with the multi-melta. Reacting to the sudden threat, Ghor'gan swung the deadly weapon about, a nimbus of energy already building in its twin-nosed barrel.

Pyriel was nearing the end of the narrow rock bridge when the last Iron Warrior threw himself into his path. In his mind, the Librarian heard the slow pull, the long metal report of the depressed trigger as the traitor unleashed his bolter at him.

A bolter's velocity is ferociously quick, its rate of fire faster than an eye-blink. Pyriel's mind was faster.

Bolter shells exploded ineffectually against an invisible shield, dense blooms of light rippling in midair with each percussive impact.

Pyriel ran on, seeing Dak'ir land ahead of him on the other side, and reached his assailant. Changing tactics, the Iron Warrior slowed his fire rate to use his sarissa blade. Pyriel had unsheathed his force sword and parried the thrust meant to impale him. With the Iron Warrior unbalanced, he thrust himself and rammed the blade of his eldritch weapon halfway into the traitor's stomach. Plates of ceramite parted easily before the force sword, undone by its shimmering power field, before the Librarian lowered the invisible shield and channelled his psychic might through the edge of the weapon.

At once the Iron Warrior sagged as his soul was sundered, cast into the oblivion of the warp to be fed upon by daemons. Smoke exuded from the traitor's eye-slits and a deep light glowed from within. He screamed, a long and wailing note that echoed somewhere beyond the realm of reality, and sank into a heap, a scored-out husk all that remained.

With the traitor slain, Pyriel looked ahead to his battle-brother.

Fuelled by fury, Dak'ir hurled himself at Ghor'gan. The multi-melta's beam stabbed out, but the renegade's aim was off, pressurised into an early shot by the Salamander's headlong assault. It scorched the edge of Dak'ir's battle-helm, the actual beam itself passing a few centimetres overhead. It was close enough to burn through ceramite. It kept burning, melting away at the armour around Dak'ir's head, who wrenched it off before the corrosive effects ate through it completely and started in on his face.

The ruined battle-helm clattered to the ground, half-disintegrated, as Dak'ir hit Ghor'gan with a roar. Swinging his chainsword two-handed, the Salamander tore into the heavy weapon that had ended Kadai's life, shearing it in two.

Pyriel got to the end of the narrow span across the lava stream before he realised Ba'ken wasn't with him. He turned, with half a glance at Dak'ir hammering at the massive Dragon Warrior, before searching for Ba'ken.

The heavy weapons trooper was retreating back down the rock bridge.

'Brother!' cried Pyriel, a hint of accusation in his voice.

Ba'ken half turned his head.

'I cannot leave him, Librarian,' was his only explanation.

Pyriel was about to cry out again, when he saw that Ba'ken was heading for the boy, Va'lin.

Geysers of fire and lava were breaking the surface of the cavern now, the forked cracks in the earth splitting apart and allowing Scoria's blood to seep through. Va'lin had retreated to one corner of the cavern, keeping his head down and himself well hidden. Thick veins of encroaching lava webbed his retreat route to the entrance and spears of flame shot sporadically from the ground around him. The boy was crouched atop the skeletal frame of an excavator, clinging on for his life and too afraid to move.

In his determination to reach the Dragon Warriors, and perhaps the pain in his shoulder caused by the melta beam's savage caress, Pyriel had failed to hear Val'in's plaintive cry. Human life was important; Vulkan had taught them that. The Salamanders were protectors as well as warriors.

Ba'ken had heard the boy and was answering his noble calling as a Fire-born of Nocturne.

'In Vulkan's name, brother,' the Librarian muttered. Smoke was billowing into the cavern now and occluded his view. The hulking form of Ba'ken was lost in the grey and black.

Returning his attention to Dak'ir, Pyriel had taken just a step from the rocky span when a forked seam split the ground before his feet and a titanic wall of intense heat and fire impeded him.

Thrown off by the force of the flame-geyser's expulsion, Pyriel had to scramble back up so as not to be pitched into the lava stream. Warning icons flashed red on a status slate in his gauntlet. Tentatively, he went to touch the fiery barrier but withdrew his hand as the heat sensors in his armour spiked. His gauntlet came back badly scorched and partially melted.

Behind the flickering heat, the struggle between Salamander and renegade became an amorphous haze.

'Dak'ir!' he cried, venting his impotency and frustration. There was nothing he could do; the wall of fire stretched the width of the cavern. Dak'ir was alone.

The Dragon Warrior let the cleaved ends of the multi-melta fall from his grasp, and jabbed his left claw into Dak'ir's neck like a blade, while the other slashed at his assailant's wrist. The Salamander's gorget took the brunt of the blow to the neck, but Dak'ir was stunned and lost his grip on the chainsword when Gor'ghan's scything talons ripped a chunk of ceramite from his gauntlet. The empty thud of the weapon hitting the ground, the churning teeth slowing to a stop, felt like a death knell.

Dak'ir recovered quickly, barely noticing the barrier of fire that had erupted behind him, butting the Dragon Warrior's helmet and crumpling the nose despite the pain it caused him. Ghor'gan staggered back with a muffled cry of pain, ripping off the helm to reveal a scaled visage as dark as burnt umber and perpetually flaking. He tore at the shards of ceramite embedded in his reptilian face, casting the bloody wreckage aside before flying at Dak'ir.

The Salamander met him mid-attack and the two of them locked together, neither with the strength or purpose to gain the upper hand.

'Murdering dog!' Dak'ir raged, about to spit acid from his betcher's gland into the renegade's face when Ghor'gan stopped him by shoving his forearm under the Salamander's chin and forcing his mouth shut. The caustic bile bubbled over Dak'ir's bottom lip harmlessly.

'Fight with honour,' countered the Dragon Warrior, his voice like crackling magma. In the frantic struggle, Dak'ir noticed a ragged wound, only half-healed, across his neck and assumed this was the reason for Ghor'gan's throaty cadence.

'You possess none,' Dak'ir accused when he'd pushed back the renegade's grip on his neck. 'I know you are the assassin that shot my captain when his back was turned.'

Ghor'gan's face darkened in what might have been regret.

'I am a warhound, like you,' he rasped, then granted as he tried to seize a hand around Dak'ir's throat. The Dragon Warrior was big, easily the size and heft of Ba'ken, and Dak'ir was finding his strength a severe test. 'I follow orders, even those I disagree with. It is the way of war,' he concluded.

'Pleading for mercy already, renegade?'

'No.' Ghor'gan's answer was flat, his tone almost weary. 'I just wanted you to know before you die.' The Dragon Warrior exerted his full strength, pressing Dak'ir into a crouch, and slipping his claws around his neck.

Dak'ir felt his throat constricting from the external pressure. He raked gauntleted fingers over Ghor'gan's face, trying to leaven his grip, but came away with a fistful of shed skin instead. Ghor'gan snarled at the ragged wound in his cheek but kept the pressure up, extending his arms to force Dak'ir away. The Salamander went for his holstered pistol but the renegade saw the move and smashed him into the cavern wall. White fire flared behind Dak'ir's eyes as hot knives stabbed his side where he'd struck the rock.

'Don't resist,' growled Ghor'gan, almost fatherly, 'Your pain is almost at an end…'

Dak'ir's lungs felt like withered sacks in his chest, as his throat was slowly being crashed. Darkness impinged at the edge of his sight and he felt himself slipping…

He reached out, trying to deny the inevitable. Pyriel was far away, behind the wall of fire. Dak'ir was alone with Ghor'gan, his old captain's killer about to add to his murder tally.

Ba'ken reached the edge of the growing lava pool slowly encircling Va'lin on his island of metal. The boy was choking on the sulphurous fumes and smoke wreathed his tiny refuge. Ba'ken would have to jump. He couldn't make it and return with the boy as well if he kept on his heavy flamer rig. Without a second thought, he disengaged the locking straps and shrugged the bulky canisters off his back, laying them carefully on the ground with the weapon itself.

Muttering a painful litany as he traced his hand lightly across the barrel of the gun he had forged and crafted, Ba'ken rose to his feet and leapt to Va'lin.

'Climb on, boy,' he said, once on the other side. The skeletal frame of the excavator was already buckling under the Salamander's weight, whilst around them the lava crept ever closer.

Va'lin clambered onto Ba'ken's shoulders, clinging desperately to the Fire-born's neck and pauldron.

'Don't let go,' the Salamander told the boy and launched himself back across, just as the lava flow began eating away at the excavator, until in a few seconds it had consumed it.

The molten stream raging through the cavern, bisecting it with a ribbon of viscous heat, had spilled over the rock span. There was no way back to Pyriel and Dak'ir. Ba'ken could scarcely see them through the smoke and falling debris.

He cried out. 'Brothers!'

A spurt of flame erupted from the earth near where he was standing and Ba'ken stepped away, grimacing.

'Brothers!' he bellowed again, his voice swallowed by the cracking of earth, the roar of fire answering.

The end of Scoria was at hand. There was nothing left for this world now. Maybe there was nothing left for Dak'ir or Pyriel either. Beseeching the Emperor and Vulkan for their safe return, Ba'ken fell back reluctantly.

Va'lin was suffocating; the Salamander heard it in the boy's wheezing breaths, his shuddering chest.

Ba'ken turned and made for the exit.

'Hang on,' he said grimly, racing for the tunnel back to the surface.

In the midst of the fighting, Tsu'gan had thought he'd seen Romulus and Apion return from the emergence hole, a wounded Brother Te'kulcar draped across their shoulders. He couldn't see the fyron ore, but then his view was fleeting in the press of combat.

A full assault was ordered and the Salamanders were pressing the orks with all the flame and fury they could muster. The line was no more; it had given way to probing attacks launched at strategic points throughout the greenskin horde. Witnessed from above, the assaults would have looked bullet trajectories, forcing their way slowly through the dark green flesh of the beast.

Mob leaders, totem carriers, psykers - these were the Salamanders' targets. Cripple the orks' leadership. Show them their mightiest could all fall beneath a Fire-born's flame and blade. Here the Assault squads excelled, Vargo and Gannon conducting raiding attacks on vulnerable positions or leaders exposed by the sudden death or retreat of their brethren.

Thousands of greenskins lay dead for little reply. That said, every Salamander casualty was felt keenly. Fugis had returned to the fight with Brother-Sergeant Agatone. The two fought shoulder-to-shoulder, their courage worthy of even Vulkan's praise. But the Apothecary, as heroic as he was, couldn't minister to all of his fallen brothers. If they survived this fight, there would be much work for Fugis to do in the aftermath.

Tsu'gan had lost sight of them after N'keln's full assault order and he wondered if they fought still.

It was stretched and the ash dunes were like a copper desert now, so stained were they with blood. Tremors wracked the undulating landscape almost constantly and dark lightning ripped strips into the sky as the volcanoes vented. Their voices were a doom-laden refrain to the heavy thunder overhead.

'The world is ending, brother,' roared Tsu'gan. He had not left Praetor's side, although the sergeant's squad had fragmented in the dense melee. Iagon, for instance, was elsewhere on the field of war. Tsu'gan hoped he was still alive.

'A fitting end for us then,' Praetor replied, crashing an ork with a crackling blow from his thunder hammer, 'consumed by smoke and fire. All is ash at the end of days, brother.'

Tsu'gan smiled to himself - it sounded like something Brother Emek would say.

'All is ash,' Tsu'gan agreed and fought on.

Above the rising tumult of Scoria's last storm, just audible over the raging battle, the churning report of metal could be heard echoing from the innards of the iron fortress.

Peaking above the lip of the wall, the stub-nose of the long cannon forged by the Iron Warriors but purified by the Salamanders emerged. Dust and rock was cascading from its metal casing in huge drifts, its pneumatic platform raising it from the depths of the keep to glower imperiously over the surface of Scoria like the metal finger of a dark and vengeful god.

For a moment, a fleeting second only, the fighting slowed as all who beheld the cannon's emergence gaped in awe. Its eye was fixed heavenward as it sought to destroy a black sun.

Fyron-fuelled capacitors charged the air, their throb and pulse emitted as a wave of force as the cannon was empowered and a second later, unleashed.

II Retribution

Dak'ir's world was darkening. His arms grew heavy as his vision faded to black and his struggles against Ghor'gan ebbed.

'That's it,' he heard the crackling magma voice say. 'That's it, find peace…'

A trembling in the earth below prevented the Salamander's fall into oblivion. When it shook the very ground, its violent insistence threw the grappling Space Marines apart.

Clutching his neck, Dak'ir coughed and spluttered hot, smoky air back into his lungs. The sensation reminded him of Nocturne and the caves of Ignea - it was like breathing in a panacea.

Ghor'gan was getting to his feet as Dak'ir's vision cleared. The Dragon Warrior braced himself against the rock wall as the entire cavern shook. A huge crack ran up the side of it as geysers of scalding steam and fire roared through the slowly fragmenting ground. In places small chasms and crag-walled pitfalls opened up like yawning mouths, their liquid tongues hot and glowing below. The renegade moved around them, stalking towards Dak'ir, determined to finish what he had begun.

'Relent, little Salamander,' he said, his voice low and weary.

Ghor'gan didn't see the combat blade in Dak'ir's hand until it was too late. The blade was only half a metre long but the Salamander sank it to the hilt in the renegade's chest. The precise blow exploited a gap in the ceramite plates and penetrated armour, bone and flesh.

'A life for a life,' snarled Dak'ir. 'My captain must be avenged.'

Ghor'gan's mouth curled in pain; his eyes narrow slits of agony. Even as Dak'ir twisted the blade, searching out vital organs and soft tissue, the renegade fought on and dug his claws into the Salamander's neck.

Dak'ir cried out, aiming a savage punch to the Dragon Warrior's ear even as he shoved the combat blade harder with his other hand. Ghor'gan shifted his head, and took the blow on his much harder jaw instead, but it jarred enough to force him to release his claw.

Blood was dripping off Ghor'gan's extracted talon when a ball of fire rolled through the wall of heat nearby, wreathed in flames and trailing smoke. From it emerged Pyriel, furled within the protective confines of his drakescale mantle.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dak'ir saw Pyriel move to assist him but the sergeant urged the Librarian on as he kept the bulky Dragon Warrior pinned.

'Stop Nihilan,' he roared, his voice hoarse from being half-choked to death. 'Don't let the bastard escape again.'

Pyriel didn't even pause. The Librarian knew his duty and sped on after Nihilan and his brood.

'Just you and I again,' sneered Dak'ir, scenting the sulphur gas streaming from a craterous hole behind the Dragon Warrior. A sudden idea occurred to him. 'You're not Fire-born, are you renegade…'

The idling of powerful engines throbbed ahead of him as Pyriel thundered down the tunnel after Nihilan and the other Dragon Warrior.

Dak'ir was right - they could not be allowed to escape again. If it had to end here on Scoria then the renegades would die with them. The Librarian could feel peace if he knew that was so.

Too late, Pyriel arrived at the tunnel's terminus. In the expansive cavern before him, a Stormbird was waiting. Its engines were burning with a dull, red glow. The embarkation ramp in the gunship's hold was slammed down. The fang-mouthed Dragon Warrior was ferrying the last of the fyron ore aboard via the six-wheeled loader, his master looking on.

Just before Nihilan turned to see the foe in his midst, Pyriel looked up and realised the roof to the cavern was vaulted. In fact, it tapered several hundred metres up into a narrow chimney that led directly to the surface. Narrow, yes, but wide enough to accommodate the span of a Stormbird if piloted correctly.

A psychic cry ripped from Pyriel's throat as he recognised his chance to stop the Dragon Warriors was already beyond his grasp. He fashioned a bolt of flame from the essence of the warp, channelling it down his force sword to lash at Nihilan. At least he would sear him.

Some fifty metres away, the sorcerer turned and threw up a hasty force barrier against which the fire bolt crashed and dissipated. Behind trailing smoke and eddies of flame, Nihilan emerged unscathed.

The Dragon Warrior then unleashed a psychic riposte. Black smoke boiled across the ground, resolving into tendrils upon reaching the Salamander. The tendrils coiled insidiously around Pyriel's arms and legs, invading the protective aegis of his armour and bypassing the safeguards of his psychic hood. Powerless to prevent it, in a matter of seconds the Librarian was utterly paralysed. Thunderous rage burned in Pyriel's eyes as he regarded his nemesis.

'It's been a long time, Pyriel,' said Nihilan with a voice reminiscent of cracking parchment. 'I missed you on Stratos, brother.'

'A shame,' Pyriel forced a sarcastic reply. He grimaced against the sorcerous hold, trying to unravel it with his mind.

Nihilan walked off the loading ramp almost casually. Despite the raucous engine noise venting around him, his words were strangely clear. 'How long has it been, then? Over four decades for you? I see you have advanced in Master Vel'cona's eyes since then. A mere Codicier, if memory serves, and now a vaunted Epistolary.' Nihilan's burning red gaze swept over the arcane rank sigils emblazoned on Pyriel's armour contemptuously. The sorcerer's mood darkened.

'Still you deny the raw power of the warp,' he breathed, lingering on the flame icon on the Librarian's right pauldron. Enmity, perhaps even jealousy, flared briefly then died like the mirthless smile curling Nihilan's top lip. 'I eclipse your meagre abilities now.'

'Spoken like a true pawn of Chaos,' bit Pyriel, working as much vitriol as he could into the retort. 'You are naught but a plaything for the Ruinous Powers. Once your usefulness has ended they will discard you.'

The amused expression returned.

'I thought it was just the armour of my former brothers that was green. Not so for you of course, Librarian, but then the shade of your eyes make up for it, don't they.'

Pyriel's eyes burned an angry red. He wished dearly he could look upon Nihilan and engulf him within the fire of his wrath.

'If you're going to destroy me, then do it and spare the rhetoric before I expire of boredom.'

That struck a nerve. Nihilan seemed like he was going to give Pyriel his wish. Static blurted from the external vox feed in the hold of the Stormbird, arresting any retaliation.

'Cargo secured, my lord,' came a rasping voice. 'Brother Ekrine is ready to take off.'

Annoyed at the sudden interruption, Nihilan managed to keep his irritation from his voice when he replied. 'Understood, Ramlek. I will be with you momentarily.' He turned his attention back to Pyriel.

'I could smite you where you stand, but that wouldn't be fitting. I want you to suffer before you die, Pyriel. Just like Vel'cona made me suffer when you betrayed my trust.'

Pyriel's jaw hardened - the dark tendrils binding him were weakening. 'Traitors are undeserving of trust.'

Pyriel shook off the sorcerous bonds with a feral shout. Force sword held high, the Librarian launched himself at Nihilan, who merely stepped back into the hold before the ramp was pulled up. Mocking laugher echoed down to Pyriel as the Stormbird lifted and the hold hatch closed with a resounding clang. The burst from the gunship's rapidly vented thrusters sent the Librarian sprawling and the Stormbird soaring up the shrinking mouth of the rock chimney, up into the fractious air of Scoria.

Shrugging off the effects of Nihilan's sorcerous attack and mouthing a muttered curse, Pyriel picked himself up and went back down the tunnel to find Dak'ir.

He returned in time only to see the Salamander sergeant and his foe pitching over the edge of a fiery crevice, plummeting down, occluded by smoke and rising ash.

Pyriel gave voice to his pain again. 'Dak'ir!'

The black rock exploded with all the finality and grandeur of a shattered star. At once the blood-red sky flooded with brilliance, a pure white flare that bathed all in its eldritch glow. The flare died but the sun returned with it, weak and yellow but brighter than the forbidding gloom of the eclipse.

Abruptly and violently sundered, the black rock was spread across the firmament. The fragments of its passing became new stars burning in the light of day. Drawn by the gravitational pull of the planet, the stars became larger and larger until they resolved into vast meteorites, swathed in fire and billowing smoke.

The effect of the black rock's destruction on the orks was almost palpable. The horde faltered, its impetus flagging like a ship with its sails abruptly cut. When the jagged balls of fire arcing from the heavens struck, it only compounded the greenskins' despair.

Simultaneous meteor strikes punished the rear of the ork lines stretching back across the dunes. The celestial storm wreaked utter havoc, slaying hundreds beneath the fury of the fallen rocks, and cooking hundreds more in the resultant radiation wave.

Tsu'gan watched this all happen between the ever growing gaps in the fighting. As soon as the beam from the seismic cannon rang out, piercing the sky like a radiant lance, N'keln ordered the Salamanders to stand fast and consolidate. Though stretched and scattered, the Astartes became like green-armoured islands in the orkish sea, turning their bolters outward and brooking no interloper beyond their individual walls of ceramite.

Shoulder-to-shoulder with Praetor and three of his Firedrakes, Tsu'gan couldn't help but stare in awe at the phenomenal display unfolding above. The earth chimed with it, trembling and cracking. Crevices and chasms split open, swallowing orks in their thousands. Those not falling to their doom in the abyssal darkness were consumed by rushing lava torrenting into the air.

Booming thunder pealed from the volcanoes, louder and somehow final as they erupted with hellish force.

Praetor's laughter rivalled their bellow. The skies were darkening with smoke and ash. Soon artificial night would resume once more.

'When fire rains from the sky and ash smothers the sun, it is the end of days,' he shouted.

Tsu'gan's gaze was still fixed upon the turbulent heavens. 'That is not all the heavens bring, brother.'

Praetor followed Tsu'gan's outstretched finger.

The belly of a ship emerged slowly through the billowing smoke clouds. Tsu'gan was put in mind of a giant predator of the deep emerging from a mist-wreathed ocean. Tiny meteorites arced past it on fiery contrails as it hovered a thousand metres above the surface. The backwash of massive ventral engines pressed down upon Tsu'gan despite its altitude. It was an Astartes strike cruiser.

Argos raised his body up out of the ventral thruster conduit in the enginarium. He stretched the stiffness out of his back, eased the knots from his tired muscles and rolled his shoulders beneath his pauldrons to coax back some mobility. He had done all he could.

The fourth, still non-functional, ventral thruster bank was prepped as exhaustively as possible. The machine-rites had been observed, the correct unguents applied and offerings dedicated. His throat was hoarse from the litanies of function and ignition he had performed in concert with his Techmarines. The Master of Forge was a part of this ship; he felt its malady and he knew its moods. If they could replace the parts they'd lost and needed, it would achieve loft. Once free of the dunes, the Vulkan's Wrath's main engines would do the rest.

The comm-feed in his battle-helm hissed and spat with static before Argos heard Brother Uclides, one of Sergeant Agatone's squad tasked with escorting the human civilians aboard the ship.

After undertaking a cursory geological analysis, Argos had determined that the planet's tectonic integrity was nearing imminent disintegration. Prudently, he had given the order for the auxiliary and all still living casualties to be secured aboard the ship for safety. Those injured who could not be moved were given the Emperor's Peace and enclosed in medi-caskets for later interment into the pyreum.

'All of the Scorian settlers are aboard, Master Argos. What are your orders?'

Argos was about to respond when he noticed the radiation spike in the atmosphere detected by the ship's still functioning sensors, relayed to him through his direct interface.

'Go to the fighter hangar and help prepare the gun-ships,' he answered, changing his mind when he assumed the black rock had been destroyed. Apart from the servitors, the Salamander was alone, having already despatched the other Techmarines to the Thunderhawks still locked in their transit rigs. 'Our brothers will be in need of immediate extraction and conveyance back to the Vulkan's Wrath! Uclides communicated his obedience and cut the feed.

Argos was about to climb out of the sunken thruster access conduit when the ship's vox-unit crackled into life alongside him. Uclides would have used the helmet comm-feed. The signal originated from outside of the ship.

'Brother Techmarine Argos: 3rd Company, Salamanders Chapter, aboard the Vulkan's Wrath,' he began, observing protocol. 'Identify yourself.'

A clipped voice responded with all the warmth and smoothness of rusty nails.

'This is Brother Techmarine Harkane of his most noble lord Vinyar's strike cruiser, Purgatory. In the name of the Emperor, the Marines Malevolent bring you salvation!'

Brother-Captain N'keln's order to stand fast had kept his forces out of bombardment range and the worst hit areas of the meteor shower. The celestial storm had all but abated now and the greenskins, though battered and severely reduced in strength, still lived and fought.

During a brief lull in the battle, N'keln took stock of his surroundings. Mounted upon a high dune with his Inferno Guard and Sergeant Agatone, who had emerged alongside them with Fugis when they'd returned to the battlefield, N'keln surveyed the carnage. He saw tiny knots of Salamander armour out amongst the thrashing horde, lit by controlled bursts of bolter fire or plumes of igniting promethium. Their rear was anchored by the Devastators still. Lok was in able command, several hundred metres distant since the advance. The Dreadnoughts both functioned, prowling the edges of the Salamanders' deployment zone. Ashamon had lost his heavy flamer and meltagun but he continued to pound on the orks with his seismic hammer. Amadeus was wholly intact, but with several deep gouges in his protective sarcophagus where the greenskins had attempted to forcibly exhume him.

N'keln estimated they had lost approximately thirty-three per cent of their original number. He didn't know how many of those casualties would fight again. In light of the ork masses it was a lower rate of attrition than he'd expected. The greenskins, in contrast, had died in their thousands. A slew of carcasses lay strewn across the dunes, slowly decaying.

The company banner, held aloft by Malicant, began snapping violently in a sudden downdraft, drawing N'keln's gaze upward. Above them, the brother-captain saw the long, grey ventral hull of a ship he recognised. Fraught with interference, the comm-feed in his battle-helm opened.

N'keln listened intently to the voice of Brother Argos as he relayed exactly what Harkane on the Purgatory had said to him. Towards the end, the captain's face became grim.

'Tell him he has my word,' he replied, jaw clenched. He cut the feed and ordered the warriors around him back into the fight. N'keln suddenly needed to vent his wrath.

Pyriel ran to the edge of the crevice where he'd seen Dak'ir fall, expecting the worst. Peering over the edge, through smoke and flame and heat, he saw it was a short drop into a bubbling lava pool. Ghor'gan's armour was slowly disintegrating in it, along with the rest of the Dragon Warrior. There was no sign of Dak'ir.

Then the smoke and steam cleared slightly and Pyriel saw him. Dak'ir was climbing up the rocky face of the crevice and had almost reached the top. Pyriel reached down and dragged him up just as the lava flow pooled high enough to swallow up the corpse of the renegade completely.

'You are adept at cheating death, brother,' Pyriel remarked. His tone was an ambivalent mesh of relief and thin-veiled suspicion.

Dak'ir only nodded, too exhausted to speak for the moment.

The cavern was crashing down around them. Fire wreathed it and falling rocks and spills of dust fogged the air. Nowhere was safe to stand now, with fresh chasms opening from the webbed cracks that littered the ground and lava plumes spewing capriciously from the bowels of the earth. They had to get out, yet the way to the tunnel was blocked.

'Nihilan…' rasped Dak'ir as a geyser of steam erupted nearby.

Pyriel shook his head. The Librarian's dark gaze betrayed his anger.

'Stand close,' he said after a moment. Pyriel was dred too - breaking Nihilan's sorcerous hold had been taxing. He tapped into what psychic strength he had left and opened the gate of infinity.

Scoria was dying, and in its despair sought to take those upon its surface with it to oblivion.

The earth tremors were a constant rumbling now as they presaged further cracks opening up in the doomed planet's bedrock. Entire sections of the dunes were collapsing, sending greenskins in their thousands to fiery death in the rising lava streams below. Smoke wreathed the battiefield as if it were a gigantic pyre, the warriors locked in combat upon it fighting to avoid the touch of the flames. Spurting lava threw red and umber shadows into the greying haze, its glow grainy and diffuse in the clogged air.

Even the iron fortress had started to crumble. A few minutes after Elysius and Draedius had quit the keep a wide crack ran up its centre, splitting the bastion in two. Then several errant meteorites had struck it. A broken tower thrust up into the murder-red sky like a shattered femur, another was rendered a sullen stump. Walls partially collapsed, a yawning chasm in its courtyard, the iron fortress hung open a half ruin.

As far as he was from the site of its destruction, and though he could barely see it through the billowing smoke, N'keln sensed fear emanating from the iron fortress - fear and angry denial. The end of Scoria meant the end for whatever fell entity possessed the bastion's catacombs. Fire would cleanse it at last, after all.

N'keln heard the thunder ripping across the sky. It came in the form of gunships, both Salamander and Marines Malevolent. Through the thick grey smog, he thought he traced the flight path of receding engines venturing out to evacuate his battle-brothers.

Occasionally, bright lances of energy surged through the smoky cloud layer blotting out great swathes of the sky as the Purgatory unleashed its guns on distant mobs of greenskins. The grey veil lifted for a time as the heat of the strike cruiser's cannons burned it away, only for it to return moments later in the wake of their fury.

The orks were dying in droves and N'keln ordered a final push for victory, reinforced by what squads Vinyar had deigned to assist him with. The compart, agreed under some duress, with the Marines Malevolent captain still rankled but there was little other choice.

Upon N'keln's reluctant concession, a squadron of Stormbirds had roared from the Purgatory's fighter bays headed straight for the crash site and the Vulkan's Wrath. Aboard were Brother Harkane and several other Techmarines and servitor crews. With them they carried the machine parts necessary for Argos to repair the fourth ventral thruster bank and give flight back to the Salamanders' strike cruiser.

The Marines Malevolent had also secured the crash site. Between them and the Salamander forces still on the field, the remaining orks were being rounded up and destroyed. For that, N'keln was grateful.

The fight all but over, the captain had become estranged from his warriors and stood upon the field of war surrounded by smoke, seemingly alone. Grateful for the solitude, he heard the sounds of battle ending: the sporadic bark of bolters, the errant flash of flame or the desultory orkish roar of vain defiance. The greenskins were defeated. No more dark splinters from the sky, no more brutish ships making landfall. It was done.

Overhead, the Thunderhawks blazed, ferrying Salamanders back to the Vulkan's Wrath. He made a mental note to commend Brother Argos for his foresight and prudence in this matter. Even as fire rained from the sky with the last vestiges of the meteor storm and the world shuddered in its final death throes around them, the sound of Salamanders chanting drifted to N'keln on a hot breeze.

They echoed his name.

Prometheus victoria! N'keln gloria!

It was an old Legion custom, this shouted accolade, borrowed from their Terran cousins. N'keln was humbled by their respect and laudation.

His heart swelled with warrior pride as he watched the Vulkan's Wrath, visible despite the distance and the smoke, rise from the dunes, rock and ash cascading off its surface, aloft once more.

It was time to leave at last and return to Nocturne. N'keln hoped the ancient power armour suits and the geneseed of Brother Gravius might yield some revelations as to the fate of the Primarch yet and perhaps reveal the purpose of the Tome of Fire bringing them to this doomed world. For now, he was content with victory and the defeat of his enemies.

N'keln was about to raise Argos on the comm-feed to congratulate him and request extraction, when a burning pain flared in his side. At first, the captain wasn't sure what had happened until he was stabbed again and felt the knife dig deep. Incensed, he made to turn to confront his would-be assassin, but was stabbed again and again. Blood flowed freely from the wounds where the knife had exploited the gaps in his power armour, half-ruined from the incessant fighting.

Biological warnings appeared on his helmet display as his armour notified him, belatedly, of the danger he was in. Hot agony raked his side and he fell forward, his body starting to numb. The weapon, still beyond N'keln's sight as was his attacker, wrenched from his flesh and a half gasp, half cry betrayed the captain.

Mind reeling, his gushing blood painting his fingers red, N'keln tried to comprehend what was happening. Orks still moved in the smoke, bent on petty vengeance. Had one of them managed to sneak up on him, aiming for a pyrrhic victory of sorts?

Struggling to breathe, his lungs punctured and smoke billowing around him, N'keln ripped off his battle-helm. Forcing his body up, he staggered onto his feet as the blade went in again. He tried to fend off the attack, still unsure where it was coming from, but could only slump onto his back.

At last, N'keln looked up and saw the face of his attacker. The captain's blood-rimed eyes grew wide. He tried to speak when the thick, orkish blade was thrust into his exposed neck. Blood bubbled up into his throat and all that escaped his mouth was a watery gurgle. N'keln's fists bunched briefly before the weapon was rammed into his chest and his primary and secondary hearts.

The captain of the Salamanders died with rage in his eyes and his fingers curled into talons of impotent hate.

The sounds of his victory and the chants of his name faded in his ears as blackness overtook them…

Fugis moved through the dense fog of smoke, despatching wounded orks or administering the Emperor's Peace to the fallen and extracting their geneseeds. A faint cry echoing through the murk got his attention and he followed it through the grey world around him.

Upon a bloody dune of ash he found Brother Iagon. The Salamander was clutching the ruined stump of his left hand, trying to staunch the gory flow. Three dead ork corpses were strewn around him. A fourth body lay partially hidden by the rise of the dune, having tumbled into a shallow depression in the ash. Its boots were marred with grey but glimmered green underneath.

For now ignoring Iagon, whose eyes were urging him to go to the other body, Fugis rushed to the edge of the dune and saw N'keln, his rigored faced locked in fury, lying dead below.

Distraught, the Apothecary half-dambered, half-fell to the base of the depression where the slain captain lay. He was checking for vital signs, knowing really he would find none, when the rest of the Inferno Guard arrived on the scene.

Praetor and the Firedrakes, along with Tsu'gan and some of his squad joined them. It was the veteran Terminator sergeant that broke the disbelieving silence.

'In Vulkan's name, what happened here?' A barely tempered rage affected the Firedrake's voice as he directed his questioning first at Fugis, then at Iagon.

Iagon was shaking his head, as Fugis relayed his ignorance of the heinous act to Praetor and went to the other Salamander's assistance.

'I saw them… moving through the smoke,' Iagon's reply was broken by painful pauses as Fugis worked at cauterising the terrible wound. 'Three of them, clad in stealth… and closing on the captain,' he went on. 'By the time I could reach him, N'keln was already dead. I slew two of them without reply, when my weapon ran empty and the third took my hand. I finished it with the stock, but I was too late to save him…' Iagon's voice trailed away, his head downcast.

Praetor regarded the bloodied bolter, its stock caked in gore, and the demolished face of the ork nearest the wounded Salamander. The other two carried bolter wounds, blood-slicked cleavers half-gripped in their meaty fists. Iagon's armour was spattered with dark crimson.

Grave-faced, Praetor nodded slowly and turned his back on the tragic scene. He opened a force-wide band on the comm-feed and issued a full retreat order. All he said in addition was that Brother-Captain N'keln had been incapacitated and that he was assuming full command of the mission.

Dak'ir learned of Captain N'keln's death sitting in the Chamber Sanctuarine of the Thunderhawk, Fire-wyvern. A melancholy mood descended upon the troop hold of the gunship as the black news filtered through to all. First Kadai and now N'keln - Dak'ir wondered what fate was next for 3rd Company.

He and Pyriel had emerged onto the battlefield in a maelstrom of lightning and noise. The nauseating effects of teleportation faded swiftly faced with the immensity of the burgeoning cataclysm about to destroy Scoria. A Thunderhawk was already hovering to land nearby. Dak'ir remembered feeling slightly aggrieved that he had not had a chance to fight alongside his battle-brothers against the orks before the evacuation. But there was no time for introspection.

The boarding ramp of the Fire-wyvern clanged open as soon as it touched down. Dak'ir, Pyriel and several others in the vicinity embarked without a word. Moments later, they were airborne and tracking across the ravaged ash desert slowly being consumed by fire.

It was only a short journey to the Vulkan's Wrath. Their pilot, Brother Hek'en, voxed through to the troop hold, reporting that the strike cruiser was before them on the horizon, aloft and ready to take them off the doomed world.

Muted cheers greeted this news, tempered by the earlier communication from Praetor that he had assumed command and N'keln was down. Scattered word from Salamanders still out in the field followed swiftly, confirming that their captain was actually dead.

Gazing out of the occuliport in the side of the armoured gunship, yet to assume his transport harness, Dak'ir was saddened further when he saw the ground tear apart. He imagined the inert form of Brother Gravius, lava billowing up and rolling over the ancient Salamander, swallowing him under its fiery depths. The entire world was burning, waves of magma like tsunamis cascading over the fractured surface of Scoria turning it into a gelatinous sun.

Dak'ir turned away and found Pyriel staring at him. The rest of the Salamanders had their heads bowed in remembrance. The Librarian's expression was anything but grieving. It told Dak'ir that the Epistolary was thinking about how Nihilan's sorcery should have destroyed him, but left the Salamander sergeant barely scathed. It was not possible. And it was then that Dak'ir realised it wasn't over for him, that there would be a reckoning upon their return to Nocturne.