Salamander

I Besieged

Billowing ash clouds were dissipating slowly on the grey horizon. It was the last evidence of N'keln's muster from the Salamanders' encampment. Brother Argos had managed to release the land vehicles from the hold of the Vulkan's Wrath. N'keln had taken the Land Raider, Fire Anvil, with the Firedrakes, his Inferno Guard and Chaplain Elysius aboard. Even Fugis made the journey. The Apothecary had considered staying behind to tend the wounded, but his place was by N'keln's side and his brothers would likely need him in the coming battle against the Iron Warriors, so he had ventured back to the front line for the first time since Stratos.

The rest of the Salamanders' vehicles comprised four Rhino APCs that conveyed all three squads of Devastators and Brother-Sergeant Clovius's Tactical squad. The captain had selected his task force according to firepower. He intended to breach the fortress walls at distance, rather than storm them. Devastators were well suited to that task, and since Clovius boasted both missile launcher and plasma gun in his ranks, he was an ideal fourth squad choice and occupied the remaining Rhino.

Vargo and his Assault squad were the final element to the task force. His troops would make their way on foot, using bursts from their jump packs to keep pace. Once the walls were breached, Brother-Sergeant Vargo and his troops could quickly exploit the gap.

Dak'ir was left back to maintain vigil over the encampment. Though he would rather have joined the task force, he knew his duty and respected the will of his captain. The other squads continued with their rotational duties of excavating the Vulkan's Wrath, guarding the medical tents and searching for survivors. Naveem's old squad spent most of its time within the battered confines of the ship, opening up sealed areas and exhuming the dead from their metal, airlocked tombs. Brother Gannon had taken temporary charge, though he was untested as a sergeant. Agatone was content to remain behind. There were the observances of ritual cremation to be conducted for Vah'lek, and he was keen to be present for them.

These thoughts tumbled through Dak'ir's mind like flakes of ash drifting from the far off peaks of Scoria's volcanoes. As he stared into the grey void, the vista before him seemed to blend and shift…

…once distant mountains loomed suddenly large and immediate, arching over Dak'ir's head like crooked fingers until they touched and formed a canopy of rock. Ash, so ubiquitous before, drained away as if escaping through the cracks of the world to flee certain doom, and left solid rock beneath Dak'ir's feet. He was in a cave. It reminded him of Ignea. A tunnel led down, down into the heart of Scoria where promised fire lurked, flickering against the walls like dancing, red spectres. They took him deep, these imagined apparitions, to the nadir of the earth where lava ran thick in streams and shimmered with lustrous heat. Pools of liquid fire threw murky, joyless light that seemed to cling and conspire instead of illuminate. And there, dwelling within a vast cavern and surrounded by pits of flame like balefires, the dragon uncoiled. Scales shimmered like spilled blood in the lava-light, its sulphurous breath overwhelming the reek of the mountain.

Dak'ir was standing across from it. A tall pike was gripped in his gauntlet, and the lake of fire separated them. Hunter and beast eyed each other across the flaming gulf that ignited in empathy for their mutual anger.

'You are my captain's slayer.' The voice sounded distant and strange to him, but Dak'ir knew it as his own. It was a much a promise as an accusation.

Rage lent strength to his body that he didn't know he possessed, as Dak'ir leapt across the massive lake of fire to land crouched on the other side.

Challenge given and accepted, the dragon came at him, a bestial roar ripping from a fanged mouth wreathed in black fire.

Dak'ir cried out for Vulkan, and the primarch's vigour steeled him. As the beast came on, its footfalls shedding rock and cracking stone, Dak'ir took the pike and drove it like a lance into the dragon's belly. It screeched and the cave shook. It was a cry so full of wrath and agony that it levelled mountains and opened up the roof to a grey sky that was steadily turning red.

Clawing, rending deep grooves into the stone, the dragon struggled. Dak'ir pushed. He drove it to the lake of fire, heaved it flailing over the edge and let it burn as the heat rose up to consume it.

The dragon died, and in the haze and smoke of its conflagration it changed to become a man. His armour was red like scale, his mouth was fanged like a maw and he wore the defiled livery of a former angel who had turned his back on duty and loyalty, to embrace corruption. The body broke away, naught but bones and ash, a frugal meal for the lake of fire. Then the world broke away with it. A great tremor wracked the earth and Scoria split. Columns of fire erupted like bursts of incendiary exploding from under the ash, and the mountain was swallowed beneath the earth. Dak'ir witnessed a world die, consumed by itself. Then the fire came to him, and he was burning too… 'I sense doubt in you.'

Arrested suddenly from the dream, Dak'ir flinched. He kept the reaction small, though, and barely noticeable. Until that moment, he had thought he was alone.

'It's not doubt, Brother-Librarian,' he replied coolly, shrugging off the remnants of his vision as Pyriel came to stand beside him.

They were a hundred metres or so from the edge of the encampment, looking out across the dunes past the relentlessly pacing Thunderfire cannons and the hidden grenade belt beyond them. 'More a lack of resolution. Something I can sense, but beyond my reach.'

It wasn't a lie. The instinct had been there throughout the dream, just subdued by his subconscious mind.

'That there is something here, beneath the ash, that we are just not seeing,' stated the Librarian.

'Yes,' said Dak'ir, looking for him to extrapolate, uncertain why he himself was so surprised at Pyriel's prescience. The Librarian kept his gaze on the horizon, inscrutable as rock.

In the absence of further explanation, Dak'ir decided to go on.

'Ever since we made landfall, after the crash, I felt as if I was… being watched.'

Now Pyriel turned to regard him. 'Go on,' he said.

'Not the ash creatures that attacked us,' Dak'ir explained. 'Not even an enemy as such, just something… else.'

'I have felt it, too,' admitted the Librarian, 'A glimpse of a consciousness unknown to me. It is not the mind of a xenos that I feel. Nor is it the taint of Chaos exhibited by the traitors Brother Tsu'gan has found. It is, as you say, ''else''.'

The Librarian stared at Dak'ir a little longer, before turning back. 'Look out there,' he said, gesturing to the grey horizon. Dak'ir did as he was told. 'What do you see?'

Dak'ir opened his mouth to speak, when Pyriel raised a hand to stop him.

'Think carefully,' he advised. 'Not what there is, but what you see.'

Dak'ir readjusted and looked hard. All he saw was ash and spires of distant rock crested by dark clouds, and a grey horizon smudged with umber and red where the volcanoes vented.

'I see…' he began, but stopped himself to truly open his eyes. 'I see Nocturne.'

Pyriel nodded. It was a small movement, near undetectable, but expressed his satisfaction elegantly.

'That is what I see also. Beneath the layers of ash there is rock. The volcanoes have been venting for so long and so continuously that the grey flakes have made this place a grey world, with darkling skies, bereft of life. The oceans, for I believe the deep basins in the ash deserts were once large water masses, dried up long ago. Underground tributaries might still exist, but I doubt they're enough to support significant life. Scoria, I suspect, was once much like Nocturne, only more advanced in its geological cycle.' Pyriel stooped and placed a hand against the ground. He beckoned Dak'ir to do the same.

'You feel that?' the Librarian asked, closing his eyes, shutting out smell and sound, focusing purely on touch.

Dak'ir nodded, though he had no way of knowing if the Librarian had seen or realised his affirmation. There was a tremor running through the earth, faint but insistent like a pulsing vein.

'Those are the last heartbeats of a dying world, brother.'

Dak'ir's eyes snapped open and he stood. The recent vision came back at him, and he wondered briefly if somehow Pyriel had seen it, had looked into his mind and perceived his very dreams.

'What are you saying, Librarian, that Nocturne will suffer the same fate?' The question came across more petulantly than he would have wanted.

'All worlds end, Dak'ir,' Pyriel answered pragmatically. 'Nocturne's demise might be millennia from now, it might only be a matter of centuries. I wonder if our progenitor brought us here to see something of our home world's fate.' His eyes flashed with cerulean fire. 'Is that what you've seen, brother?'

Seismic thunder erupted from the crash site before Dak'ir had to answer. Both Space Marines, even several hundred metres from the quake, were staggered by it. Then they were running, heading for the swathes of ash pluming into the air as the Vulkan's Wrath shifted and sank. A hundred metres from the ship and the Salamanders were engulfed by a grey cloud that struck their power armour in a gritty wave.

Dak'ir had rammed on his battle-helm, snapping on his luminator as he cycled through the optical spectra to best penetrate the murky explosion of ash. Pyriel needed no such augmentation. His eyes blazed like blue beacons in the darkness, more piercing that any lume-lamp.

'There,' he said, barely raising his voice and pointing towards the dark shape of the strike cruiser's hull. Dak'ir heard him perfectly, and saw vague silhouettes through the ash storm. Some were moving about, others lay huddled with their heads down.

'Ba'ken, report,' the sergeant shouted into the comm-feed.

Crackling static returned for a time, but as the billowing grey wave began to disperse, the bulky trooper's voice came back.

'A seismic shift, brother-sergeant. The entire ship moved with it.'

'Casualties?'

'Just minor injuries. I pulled back the excavation crews when I felt the vessel beginning to move.' There was a pause, as if Ba'ken was gauging what he should say next. 'You're not going to believe what it's shaken loose.'

The grey dust had all but cleared, settling as a veneer across the plains as if it had never been disturbed, though the serfs bore the evidence of it on their overalls as did the Salamanders on their armour. The silhouettes through the ash proved to be Ba'ken and one of the excavation crews. Coughing and spluttering, the humans lay on their backs and gasped for air. Servitors stood alongside them, impassive and untroubled. Ba'ken left them and went to meet Dak'ir and Pyriel as they approached him.

He was stripped out of his armour and wearing labour fatigues. Sweat-dappled muscles were still bunched from his efforts, and he carried a flat-bladed shovel in one hand.

'Brothers,' he said, snapping a quick salute across his broad, black chest.

'Just like being back home, eh, Ba'ken?' said Dak'ir.

'Aye, sir. It puts me in mind of the rock harvest after the Time of Trial. Though it's usually snow and ice, not ash, that I'm digging through.'

'Show me what you've found,' ordered the sergeant.

Ba'ken led them to where the Vulkan's Wrath had clearly shifted during the geological event. A deep, seemingly fathomless chasm had formed between the edge of the strike cruiser's hull and the surface of the ash plain. Languid drifts, motes of grey, trickled into it and were quickly lost from sight in the darkness. The chasm was narrow, but not so acute that a warrior in power armour couldn't squeeze down it.

'I can feel heat,' said Pyriel, peering over the edge into the darkness. 'And the consciousness I experienced earlier, it is stronger here.'

'You think there is something down there, brother?' asked Dak'ir, moving to stand alongside him.

'Besides the chitin-beasts? Yes, I'm certain of it.'

'How deep do you think it is?' Ba'ken leaned over to get a better look but the chasm was only lit by the ambient light for about fifty metres before the blackness claimed it. Even Astartes eyesight couldn't penetrate much further. If Pyriel had any better knowledge, he was keeping it to himself.

'It could run to the core of Scoria for all we know,' Dak'ir replied. 'Whatever the case, I mean to find out.' He turned to Ba'ken. 'Don your armour, brother, and meet us back here. I want to know what lurks in the darkness beneath our feet. Perhaps it will provide some answers as to why we are here.'

The lumbering forms of a vehicle convoy ground to a halt at the peak of the ridge. Exhaust fumes pluming smoke, their engines growled like war-hounds straining at the leash. N'keln and his warriors had arrived.

Tsu'gan watched them from the redoubt, his view enhanced through the magnoculars. The sergeant had switched to night-vision, rendering the image before him into a series of lurid, hazy greens. Embarkation ramps in the Land Raider and Rhinos slammed down in unison, the squads within debussing as one coherent unit. Tsu'gan watched the Salamanders deploy in a firing line along the ridge, and cursed.

'Close up,' he hissed, inwardly bemoaning N'keln's apparent over-caution. 'Your guns are outside effective range.'

A few seconds lapsed before the firing began. Iridescent beams from the multi-meltas stabbed into the gloom in lances of red-hot fury. Missiles spiralled from the ridge, buoyed along on twisting contrails of grey smoke. Gun chatter erupted from the heavy bolters, pintle mounts and secondary arms. The heavy chug-chank, chug-chank of the Fire Anvil's forward-mounted assault cannon joined it, building to a high-pitched whirr as it achieved maximum fire-rate. Blistering and bright, the storm of shells and lashing beams torn apart the darkness like a host of flares.

Throughout the fusillade, the Iron Warriors hunkered down. Unwilling to commit themselves, they stayed out of sight, content to let the fortress walls weather the assault.

The barrage persisted for almost three minutes before N'keln, a distant figure in the lee of the Land Raider's rear access hatch, ordered a halt to allow the firing smoke to clear. It revealed little: just patches of scorched metal and the odd ineffectual impact crater. No breaches, no dead. The gate was still intact - the assault had failed.

'Vulkan's teeth, bring them forward!' snarled Tsu'gan, unwilling to vox in case the Iron Warriors were monitoring transmissions, overheard him and discovered his guerrilla force staked out in the redoubts.

Even in the lull, the traitors didn't act. Only when N'keln gave the order to withdraw and re-advance did the Iron Warriors show their strategy.

Seemingly innocuous at first, a single hunter-killer missile emerged from behind the battlements on an automated weapons platform. Escaping incendiary choomed loudly as the missile's booster ignited and coiled off towards its intended target at speed. It fell short of the reforming Salamanders by several metres and for a moment Tsu'gan thought its homing beacon must be out. That was until a chain of explosions tore across the ash ridge from a field of hidden incendiaries.

Grimacing at the sudden burst of fire, Tsu'gan turned away. He adjusted quickly and when he looked back he saw the ridge collapsing under its own weight, the foundations pulverised in a single blast of explosives. Cries echoed from the gloom as the Salamanders foundered in it. The ground was disintegrating beneath them and their bulky power armour was dragging Tsu'gan's battle-brothers along with it. Flailing and cursing, they tumbled down the diminishing ridge, barely coming to rest before a raft of tracer lights knifed into the dark and illuminated the fallen Salamanders. Sporadic bolter fire replied but it merely pranged off the armoured carapace of automated defence guns churning into position across the length of the wall. Chugging thunder erupted from above Tsu'gan as heavy bolter and autocannon emplacements started to eat through their ammunition belts.

Crying out in rage and anguish, Tsu'gan saw three of his battle-brothers threaded by munitions fire. Power armour was tough; tough enough to withstand such weapons as these, but the sheer rate of shells increased their potency threefold.

Unfortunately, in Tsu'gan's eyes at least, N'keln had not been one of those caught in the ash slide. Barking swift commands from what was left of the ridge peak, he attempted to restore some coherency to his forces. Pinned down in the basin, though, the stricken Salamanders were getting slaughtered.

'Use the transports as armoured cover,' Tsu'gan implored. 'Bring them down into the basin. Our brothers are dying, damn you!'

Igniting columns of smoke spilled out across the ridge as Vargo's Assault squad took to the air. It was an act of desperation, an attempt to alleviate the relentless volley targeting the warriors in the basin and force the enemy to split its fire.

Vargo landed a few metres short of the wall, ahead of the redoubts, just as Tsu'gan knew he would. Chainswords whirring, primed melt bombs winking in their mag-locks, the Assault squad made ready to jump again.

Chained detonations erupted down the length of the wall, engulfing Vargo and his squad in exploding frag. It was a first-strike deterrent, designed to stun and weaken an impatient attacker who sought to sack the bastion in his first foray. Smoke and flame died away to reveal the casualties of that ill-conceived strategy. Brother-Sergeant Vargo was on his feet but dazed, his armour blackened and cracked at the edges. Three of the Assault squad were down, unmoving. Four more carried obvious injuries, limping and cradling arms as they tried to drag their prone brothers next to the wall and outside the firing arcs of the sentry guns stitching lines of ammunition into the area where they had faltered. Jump packs looked shot to pieces, their turbines shredded or full of frag.

Tsu'gan was ready to abandon his post, when at last the vehicles came roaring down the half-flattened slope.

'Hellfire,' he snarled into the comm-feed, the order reaching all four combat squads. 'Execute!'

Brother S'tang hammered the switch on a palm-sized detonator taken from his combat-rig and flung himself to the ground along with his squad.

Explosions rippled across the edge of the redoubts, sending thick clods of dirt spitting high into the air amidst clouds of smoke and flame.

The Salamander assault force had been prepared for this, thanks to the careful instruction of Brother-Sergeant Typhos. Using it as a distraction, the beleaguered Space Marines managed to regroup.

Tsu'gan was first out of the redoubt. Debris from his grenade line was still falling as he raced towards the wall, bolter blazing. Behind him, the mobile armour of the vehicles had slewed into position and was taking fire. Another missile-launcher choomed overhead and one of the Rhinos went up in a ball of flame, flipped onto its back and burning. Astartes crawled out of the wreckage, using what was left of the hull for cover as the inevitable shots rained down at them from the walls.

'Combine fire!' Tsu'gan cried, skidding to a halt and dropping to one knee to steady his aim. Through his bolter sight he found an autocannon sentry gun, its muzzle lit by barking munitions. It jolted and collapsed as Tsu'gan brought his wrath to bear, Brothers Lazarus and S'tang adding to the fusillade that destroyed it.

Once the killing was done, Tsu'gan ordered the squad to move on, making it as hard as possible for the automated guns to track them. 'Advance!' he yelled. 'We have their attention now.'

Tiberon was picked off by an accurate bolter shot. It took him through the joint at his knee, crippling the Salamander instantly.

'S'tang,' said Tsu'gan as he saw Tiberon fall, 'to your brother.'

S'tang obeyed at once, jinking as he doubled back the short distance to Tiberon and dragged him into the cover of a crater cut by the grenade line.

Whickering fire came down at Tsu'gan and the other combat squads in earnest, as the Iron Warriors realised the more immediate threat in their midst. Tsu'gan didn't have time to take out another sentry gun before he was forced to move on lest the remote weapons platforms draw a bead and shred him and his squad.

The sound of rumbling adamantium offered a solution as the Fire Anvil, using the momentum from the ridge ramp, bulldozed through the recently vacated redoubts, smashing them into rubble and slewing to a stop in front of the brother-sergeant.

The other combat squads took the initiative and rallied to the formidable assault tank. A missile whooshed overhead and struck the Land Raider's roof, spilling fire and shell debris like rain. Smoke dispersed quickly. The Fire Anvil was left unscathed and started to rotate on its tracks, one side locked whilst the other churned it into position.

'Flamers!' yelled Tsu'gan as he realised what was coming next.

Brother Honorious and the other special weapons troopers came forwards, bodies pressed against the Land Raider's rear armour.

'Cleanse and burn!' Tsu'gan roared as the Fire Anvil's flamestorm cannons erupted gloriously. At the same time, Honorious and his brothers stepped from behind the Redeemer-pattern battle tank and added their own fire to the conflagration.

Roaring promethium scathed the walls, spilling through murder holes and firing slits, invasive and consuming. Muffled cries rewarded the blitz attack, and Tsu'gan smiled. The traitors were burning.

The rear embarkation ramp of the Land Raider slammed down and out stomped Veteran Sergeant Praetor and his Firedrakes in full Terminator armour, wielding crackling thunder hammers and storm shields.

All around them, the Salamander heavy weapons had been revivified. Heavy bolters raked the ramparts, splitting sentry guns apart in showers of metal; multi-meltas drawn up to lethal range burned into the walls, stripping away ceramite; missiles zoned in on the towers themselves, blasting the stoic bodies within to fragments.

'Concentrate fire on the wall guards,' bellowed Tsu'gan into the comm-feed, tactical-band, so it reached all fighting forces. Advancing upon the fortress, the brother-sergeant had realised something that had been staring him in the face since the redoubts.

'My lords,' he said, turning to acknowledge the Firedrakes.

'I am at your disposal, brother-sergeant,' boomed Praetor, his squad behind him like silent green sentinels.

'Break the gate and we break this siege,' Tsu'gan told him. He released a melta-bomb where he'd mag-locked it to his battle harness. Sergeant De'mas did the same, whilst some of their battle-brothers palmed krak grenades. 'There's enough explosive here to rip down three gates,' Tsu'gan boasted, eyeing the stretch of open ground between the Land Raider and the wall. 'I just need you to get me there and finish the job.'

Praetor nodded, though whether he saw Tsu'gan's plan or simply trusted him implicitly, the brother-sergeant didn't know.

Another missile strike lit up the flank of Fire Anvil this time, even as the flamestorm cannons continued to spew burning death from their battle-scorched maws.

'We advance under the blaze.' Tsu'gan had to bellow to be heard.

'Into the fires of battle then, brother…' The voice came from the shadowy confines of the Land Raider. It was harsh and filled with steel. Chaplain Elysius emerged into the half-light, though it was as if the gloom of the tank's hold clung to him like a shroud. The grinning skull mask of his battle-helm made him macabrely jocund.

'Unto the anvil of war,' Tsu'gan concluded. 'I am honoured, Brother-Chaplain.'

Elysius swung his crozius arcanum loose from its strap and impelled its power field into a vivid coruscation. He bade Tsu'gan go on.

The brother-sergeant turned back to Praetor. 'Can you make a mobile shield wall, brother?'

Praetor's loud laughter sounded like thunder. With well-executed precision, he and the Firedrakes formed a barrier wall with their storm shields, warding the front and flanks of Tsu'gan, De'mas and seven other battle-brothers. Elysius stepped outside of the protective cordon.

'Shoulder them, brothers,' Elysius bellowed with stentorian conviction. 'The Emperor and the will of Vulkan is my shield.'

Praetor wasted no further time. 'Forward, assault pattern Aegis,' he boomed, and the Firedrakes began to move.

Heavy weapons fire hammered against the Terminators and their upraised storm shields, but fell away harmlessly against their locked defence. Elysius strode alongside them, matching their ponderous pace, hurling canticles of faith and the litanies of the forge at the traitors like barbed spears.

'…and lo, upon the anvil did Vulkan smash the heretics, his hammer like a comet that falleth from heaven. Into the blood of Mount Deathfire are they consumed…'

Rosarius field flickering with every blow, the Chaplain did not once relent.

'…quail, base traitors, and receive the promised price of your perfidy. Burn, malfeasants, burn! Flayed in fire before the Emperor's glory!'

A rattling chorus of staccato gunfire joined Elysius's diatribes and was heard by Tsu'gan from within the protective shell of the Firedrakes' storm shields. Four Terminators formed the brunt of the armoured wall, shields locked in a seamless barrier. The energy fields generated by the shields crackled and spat with their joining, throwing off azure sparks and the reek of ozone. Two further Firedrakes guarded each flank, their shields held up and combined to configure a makeshift roof with the storm shields of two of their brothers that bisected the front line of four and acted as the spine of the formation.

The power-armoured Salamanders, crouched low and clutching their grenades, were interspersed between them, five Space Marines either side of the ''spine'', each led by a sergeant with a Terminator at both flanks.

Tsu'gan counted fifteen steps, the weapons fire intensifying with every one. Outside his mobile redoubt of reinforced ceramite, he heard the shuddering reports of the Salamanders' guns and felt the heat from the venting flamers blazing overhead.

'…and slay the enemies of the Imperium with bolt and blade…' Elysius continued. His voice, normally cold like iron, burned with a zealot's passion now. The caustic rhetoric was amplified by the vox-emitters in his battle-helm, and his fiery sermons rang with the clarity and force of a loud hailer.

'…commit their vile forms to the flames of purgation…'

Ten more steps.

'…hurl the wretched into the abyss to be torn asunder by claws of iniquity…' Five more.

'…and the tainted shall burn within the pit, smote from the earth…' Three.

'Heed me traitors and tremble!' The gate was before them.

Praetor's shield wall broke. An aperture in the barrier of ceramite was forged to allow Tsu'gan and his commandoes through. The line divided into two, storm shields facing outwards, the Terminators drawing as much fire as they could from the remote guns.

Hunter-killers emerged from concealed firing slits, triggered by proximity. De'mas took out one, the incendiary in the rocket exploding in the wall, spitting out debris like iron hail. The other released; its target, the Chaplain who had stalked forwards to join his brothers at the gate.

Elysius disappeared amidst a cloud of fire and shrapnel. Tsu'gan fully expected him to be dead but when the dust cleared the Chaplain was down on his knee but very much alive, his Rosarius field flickering intermittently around him. The hunter-killer had retracted, only to return seconds later with a fresh payload.

'Dare bend me to my knee, craven tool of heresy,' spat Elysius, standing straight. 'With the fury of Prometheus, I smite thee!' His bolt pistol roared with the voice of damnation and the hunter-killer was no more.

Returning to the squad outside the gates, the Chaplain unlocked his own melta-bomb from his belt.

'Let the tainted be purged,' he intoned, tendrils of smoke rising off his armour from where the missile blast had breached his shield of faith.

Standing before the gate, Tsu'gan felt the baleful influence exuding from its central icon as tangible as heat. It was raw defiance and aggression, promised destruction and bloody threats. Brother-Chaplain Elysius smothered it with his mere presence, though it was an act of will to defy the malignity imbued within the symbol of iron. Tsu'gan and his brothers were emboldened by the Chaplain's example, drawing on their own inner belief to overcome the terrible gate. One conviction was left in their minds: the fortress must fall.

Together, the Salamanders attached their grenades and bombs, priming the charges for a three-second delay before retreating back behind the Terminators and their storm shields as they closed around them again.

The blast wave was like a baptism. Tsu'gan revelled in it washing over him and began to laugh, deep-bellied and loud.

'What is so amusing, brother?' asked Sergeant De'mas, the incendiary vapours dissipating from around the gate.

Tsu'gan's eyes burned like hellfires behind his battle-helm, aglow despite the darkness of his lenses.

'War at last, brother,' he intoned. 'Only war.'

Though, incredibly, the gate still stood, it was bent and crippled. Tsu'gan could see the inner fortress beyond it through fist-wide cracks as the Terminators parted slightly.

'Are you ready to face the traitor garrison, brother?' bellowed Praetor, the wild glint of anticipation in his eyes.

Tsu'gan matched it, grinning ferally behind his battle-helm. 'It's a small matter. But let us see, lord Firedrake.'

Praetor smiled, a thin fissure cracking the hard stone of his countenance, and brandished his thunder hammer.

'Bring it down!' he roared, and the Terminators before the gate struck as one.

II Prisoners

'I will lead,' asserted Dak'ir as he tested the weight of the steel cable spooling from the winch-rig. One of the Salamanders Techmarines had set up the climbing device and each of the six Fire-born standing at the threshold of the chasm that had opened next to the Vulkan's Wrath was hooked to it. Threading the thick cable through loops on their battle harnesses, each Salamander made ready for a descent into the unknown.

Ba'ken had returned quickly after his sergeant had dismissed him to re-armour. He carried the weighty rig of his heavy flamer upon his back, insisting that the bulky weapon would fit through the narrow crevice that led into the depths of Scoria. Brother Emek joined him, having left the remaining medical operations to the human chirurgeons of the strike cruiser. His surgeon-craft was limited to field wounds; he didn't possess the necessary skill to conduct complex procedures. In any case, a Space Marine's time was better spent than languishing amidst the injured and dying.

Brothers Apion and Romulus were also from Dak'ir's squad, and hand-picked by the sergeant for their battle experience. The final place in the small expeditionary team went to Pyriel. The Librarian would follow after Dak'ir, tracking the psychic thread he had discerned emanating from below like a bloodhound.

'Luminators on. Vox-silence until we reach the bottom and know what we're dealing with,' Dak'ir ordered, the lume-lamp attached to his battle-helm stabbing into the blackness of the chasm below. Taking the strain of the cable, he plunged into stygian darkness.

Sensors in his battle-helm attenuated to the planet's atmospheric conditions registered a slight increase in temperature as Dak'ir descended. The reading glowed coldly on the inside of his lens display. Deafening silence filled the narrow space, only broken by the dull drone of the spooling winch-rig above. Sharp crags from the chasm's internal wall scraped against Dak'ir's armour. Gusts of steam, vented from the strike cruiser's partially submerged lower decks, passed over him and filmed his battle-plate with condensation. Soon, the solid adamantium of the ship's outer armour gave way to abject darkness. It was like delving into the bowels of an orherworld, one that fell away endlessly.

After an hour of painstakingly slow descent, Dak'ir's lume-lamp threw an oval of light that touched solid ground. Alighting at the bottom of the chasm at last, the brother-sergeant voxed his discovery through the comm-feed. Disengaging the cable from his battle-harness, Dak'ir stepped aside to allow space for his battle-brothers and drew weapons as he surveyed the pervading dark around them. The luminators on his battle-helm revealed a corridor of bare rock, terminating at the edge of the lume-lamp's effective range where the light was swallowed by blackness.

'The tunnel appears to be manufactured,' Emek reported down the comm-feed in a subdued voice. He drew his gauntlet lightly across the wall, interrogating its surface under the glow of his luminator.

Ba'ken had been the last to reach the bottom of the chasm. Determined to get through with his heavy flamer rig still attached, he had damaged his battle-helm on a jutting spike of rock. The sporadic interference plaguing his lens display as a direct result of the collision had driven him to distraction. When he reached the ground he removed the helmet, hooking it to his belt. The hulking trooper had acknowledged Dak'ir's look of reproach with a grunt, adjusting the promethium tanks on his back.

After exploring a few hundred metres, Brother Emek leading with flamer readied, the squad of Salamanders had stopped to surround him when he'd discerned a variation in the tunnel's structure.

'It's cambered and smooth, as if ground by tools or digging equipment,' he added.

'Must be quite some rig to cut an opening this large,' replied Ba'ken, his back to Emek as he guarded the way they had come. Brothers Apion and Romulus trained their bolters forwards, moving to the head of the Salamanders' formation whilst Emek examined the wall.

Dak'ir agreed with Ba'ken. The tunnel was easily wide enough to accommodate all six Astartes abreast and so high that even Venerable Brother Amadeus could have marched along it without needing to stoop.

'Definitely machine-hewn,' Emek concluded, reassuming his position at point.

Pyriel said nothing. His eyes were shut, and his expression was focused.

'Brother-Librarian?' Dak'ir asked.

Pyriel opened his eyes and the cerulean glow faded. 'Not the chitin-beasts,' he whispered, still surfacing from the psychic trance. 'Something else…' he added.

When it was clear the Librarian wasn't about to elaborate, Dak'ir ordered them on.

Split down the middle by a thick blade, the Iron Warrior's battle-helm broke apart as Tsu'gan nudged it with his armoured boot. The face beneath was contorted in its final death throes, a dark and ragged wound bisecting it. Nose shattered beyond recognition, puckered flesh - festooned with chains and graven sigils - semi-parted to reveal yellowed bone; whatever had killed the traitor had done so long ago.

'This one is no different,' said Tsu'gan, letting the body loll back into a prone position.

The Firedrakes had brought the gate down with successive blows from their thunder hammers, its structural integrity weakened by the grenade blasts. Within was not the traitor garrison that Praetor had predicted. Instead, the Salamanders found corpses, arranged in positions that parodied the Iron Warriors' former duties. Those traitors not pitched off their feet during the assault remained at sentry, or crouched by now silent gun emplacements. It was exactly how the warriors in the redoubts had been set up: dead, but maintaining the illusion of numbers and protection. Only five of the slain Iron Warriors had been fresh: the rest were necrotic husks, decaying in their armour.

Five Chaos Space Marines and an array of automated defence guns had kept out a force of over eighty. Three of the Salamanders had been slain during the ill-conceived assault; two of those had come from Vargo's squad. The third was the driver from the destroyed Rhino. Space Marines were not easy to kill: the Assault squad troopers had been almost rent apart, taking the brunt of the heavy explosion, whereas the APC driver was shredded by shrapnel and shot through the skull as he tried to stagger from the vehicle wreck. Their progenoids had been secured by Fugis whilst under fire, and were safe within his reductor's storage casket. Several more were injured, and the Apothecary was tending to them as the rest of the task force secured the fortress.

'Dead before we even attacked…' N'keln's voice held a trace of annoyance to it as it came from behind Tsu'gan.

'They were dead a lot longer than that, my lord.' The brother-sergeant's diction was clipped. He blamed the needless deaths of his battle-brothers on his captain for his trepidation and unwillingness to commit their forces properly when the Salamanders had initiated assault.

'Five Astartes to man an entire fortress,' N'keln thought aloud. 'What were they doing here, brother-sergeant?'

'Annals recount that during the Great Crusade, the sons of Perturabo occupied many frontier bastions such as this,' said Praetor, his mighty physical presence moving implacably into Tsu'gan's eye line. 'Squad-strength garrisons were not unusual, but for them to still exist over ten thousand years later…' The Firedrake's voice trailed off. His fiery gaze went to the fortress of iron's inner keep, a squat structure of broad bulwarks and grey metal. Chimneys, venting smoke, sprouted from its flat, crenulated roof. Another gate barred entrance to the inner keep. Sergeant De'mas and his squad were rigging charges to blast it in.

Tsu'gan felt a keen sense of apprehension as he regarded the secondary gate. Even just standing within the expansive inner courtyard, surrounded by Iron Warrior bodies, a pall of unease seemed to wax and wane as if already probing his defences.

A flame burst seen from the corner of his helmet lens arrested his attention. Brother-Chaplain Elysius was ordering the corpses rounded up and burned. Flamer teams, sequestered from the Tactical squads, doused the mangled pyre in liquid promethium.

'Whatever killed them, did so with brute force and outside these walls,' Praetor's voice interrupted Tsu'gan's thoughts, the veteran sergeant of the Firedrakes having followed his gaze.

'So they dragged the bodies back inside after a much earlier battle?' offered N'keln. 'They must have been victorious, though I can see no evidence of enemy dead.'

'The Iron Warriors burn their foes too, brother-captain,' said Praetor, 'An anachronism of old Legion custom that some warbands still adhere to.'

'They are ash,' spat Tsu'gan, struggling to rein in his anger, 'as our slain brothers soon will be.'

If N'keln felt the barb, he didn't show it. Nor did Praetor seem about to reprimand.

'Victory is correct, brother-captain,' said the Firedrake, 'but at what cost, and against whom?'

'Those xenos we encountered at the crash site are not foe enough to trouble Astartes,' Tsu'gan asserted. 'I have seen no other encampments, no evidence of vessels or an army's movements.' He eyed the burning pile of corpses again: some fifty or so Iron Warriors. Renegades, yes, but still Astartes once fashioned by the Emperor; still formidable warriors slain up-close and brutally. An enemy like that didn't simply disappear. It didn't lie down and die, either.

Tsu'gan's voice was low and forbidding. 'I think something other than the chitin lurks in the earth beneath us. It brought death to these traitors.'

Three hundred metres farther into the darkness and the tunnel became a labyrinth. Several corridors branched off from the main passage like a lattice within a giant hive. It put Dak'ir in mind of the chitin, but throughout their exploration of the underground network they had yet to encounter the creatures.

Ba'ken scoured each and every opening, the igniter from his heavy flamer casting a weak glow into the shadows. The Salamanders kept to the central tunnel, Dak'ir reasoning that it must lead to some nexus or confluence.

Ba'ken moved to the next junction. Panning his heavy flamer slowly and steadily, he started when an object skipped out of the darkness and rolled towards him.

'Contact!' he snapped smartly, preparing to douse what he thought could be a grenade in roaring promethium. The appearance of a diminutive figure scurrying into his firing arc stopped him.

It was a boy, and the ''grenade'' was a rubber ball.

Ba'ken lifted his finger off the release bar of his weapon just in time. A tiny spurt of flame spilled from the nozzle like a belch, but didn't ignite fully.

Grinding to an abrupt halt, the boy stared at the green-armoured hulk that brandished fire in his hands. In the ephemeral spit of flame, Ba'ken saw that the dark-skinned youngster was dressed in coarse grey fatigues. The clothing was patched, as if amalgamated from several different sources, and the boots strapped to his feet looked a few sizes too big for him. Terrified, the boy's eyes widened as Ba'ken came forward, lowering his heavy flamer.

'Have no fear,' he intoned, his voice deep and resonant in the narrow side-tunnel. Stepping into the darkness as he extended an open hand, the burning red blaze in the Salamander's eyes flashed casting his onyx-black skin in a diabolic lustre.

A whimper escaped from the trembling boy's mouth and he fled, leaving the ball behind.

Ba'ken's hand dropped and a tic of consternation afflicted his face.

'A child…' he said, acutely aware of Dak'ir arriving behind him. Ba'ken turned to face the sergeant. The rest of the squad had gathered at his sudden warning. Emek stood next to Dak'ir, whilst Apion and Romulus surveyed the shadows behind them. Librarian Pyriel stood a few steps back from the rest, his eyes smouldering with power.

'Human.' It was a statement not a question, but Ba'ken answered anyway.

'Yes, a boy.'

'Follow,' ordered Dak'ir in a low voice. 'Eyes open,' he warned, remembering the last time they'd encountered a human child in similar circumstances. It was back on Stratos, and the boy had led them into a trap. Dak'ir still recalled the crump of detonation and the skeins of shrapnel slewing across his visor.

He hoped this would not end the same way.

A vast iron hall was the first room the Salamanders encountered upon demolishing the inner keep's gate. It was bare, but much deeper and wider than the outer structure had suggested. Doorway yawning open, reinforced plasteel slabs hanging off their hinges, a pall of displaced dust rolled across the plated floor as Praetor entered. The other Firedrakes followed closely behind their sergeant, storm shields raised, a poised electrical charge rippling across their thunder hammers.

Recently reformed, the three Tactical squads followed in the wake of the Terminators. Issuing clipped orders, the sergeants dispersed their squads swiftly to reconnoitre. Negative contacts came back from De'mas and Typhos, who had been tasked to clear the alcoves and immediate anterooms. Brother-Captain N'keln and the Inferno Guard joined the rest of the Salamanders in the hallway soon after.

Lok's Devastators maintained guard at the inner keep's broken gate, whilst Brother-Sergeants Omkar and Ul'shan patrolled the battlements. Fire Anvil and one of the Rhino APCs blocked the main fortress gate. The dead from Vargo's squad and the slain driver were laid reverently in a second personnel carrier, parked further back in the courtyard. The third Rhino was kept idling. As soon as the Salamanders had ascertained what the Iron Warriors had been doing, it would go back to collect Argos or one of his Techmarines in the hope they'd be able to plunder and sanctify some of the traitors' technology.

'This room is secure, brother-captain,' said Praetor as N'keln entered the hall to stand alongside him, 'but there are further chambers that should be scoured leading off from this main hall—'

Praetor was interrupted by the sudden reappearance of Tsu'gan, back from reconnoitring. 'There is more than that, my lords,' he said, stalking towards them. Tsu'gan's tone was laced with animus. It suggested the Iron Warriors burning in the courtyard were not the only ones garrisoning the fortress.

N'keln's jaw hardened as old enmity surfaced. The Iron Warriors had been at Isstvan. 'Show me.'

Keeping pace with the fleeing boy wasn't easy. He moved nimbly and took the Salamanders on a winding path through darkened tunnels strafed by their luminators. Grainy white beams criss-crossed, cutting frantic sweeps through the gloom with the urgent movements of Dak'ir and his squad.

'Stay vigilant,' he warned, voice low over the comm-feed.

Pyriel was on the sergeant's heels. Emek followed closely with Apion and Romulus keeping a few paces distant deliberately, in case of an ambush.

Despite his prodigious strength, hefting the heavy flamer rig was slowing Ba'ken down, especially in the close confines of the tunnel complex. The hulking Salamander brought up Dak'ir's rearguard.

Dak'ir lost the boy from sight as he emerged from around a tight corner into a much wider cavern. He slowed to a cautious tread, checking out the debris left either side of a steadily narrowing channel. Piled rocks, steel-bucketed mining carts, metal crates, discarded lume-lamps and other detritus flanked the Salamanders as they formed a single file.

Detecting movement to his right, Dak'ir was about to order his squad to repel ambushers, when Pyriel stopped him.

Let them come, he warned his brothers psychically, and keep your weapons low.

Dak'ir wanted to protest, but this was not the time. He had to trust his squad to the Librarian's instincts and hope they weren't flawed.

'Follow Brother Pyriel's lead,' he ordered quietly over the comm-feed.

Emek's voice replied in a whisper.

'Five targets to the left, tracking us.'

Apion chimed in after him…

'Four more, static, in my fire arc.'

…then Romulus…

'I detect another six slowing to envelop.'

…and finally Ba'ken.

'Threats spotted, ten of them to our rear.'

Dak'ir knew there were five more up ahead, lying in wait at the tunnel's junction. The Salamanders could have neutralised them in seconds.

Within fifty more metres, the watchers lurking in the shadows sprang their ''trap''. Concealed light rigs blazed into life around the tunnel, throwing off a harsh sodium glare. Groups of men, armed with archaic-looking lasguns and solid shot rifles, emerged from hiding places behind crates and under dusty tarpaulins. Each of the Salamanders covered an enemy squad, though the humans' formation was anything but uniform. They were organised, their ambush-craft rudimentary though not beneath a well-drilled PDF regiment, but their movements suggested well-trained amateurs not soldiers. Dressed in coarse grey fatigues that were patched and worn like the boy's had been, they were hard-looking men with dark skin, who lived even harder lives if Scoria's harsh environs were anything to go by. Some carried anachronistic armour plates over the rough material: dull steel pauldrons and plastrons. Every man wore a pair of photo-flash goggles, evidently hoping to disadvantage their opponents by blinding them with the sudden light glare. They had not reckoned on facing Space Marines, whose occulobes reacted instantly to the shift in conditions.

A pair of what appeared to be mining engines rumbled into position on thick track-beds either side of the tunnel, effectively blocking it. Tripled-headed drilling apparatus comprised much of the front facing of the machines, with thick armour-plates and plastek glacis shielding the operators from view.

'Stand down and relinquish your weapons,' a stern voice echoed. 'Youare surrounded and outnumbered fivefold.'

Dak'ir followed the source and saw a figure step forward out of the group of men in front of him. The human was attired like the rest, but he also wore a short, ragged cloak that felt oddly familiar to the Salamander. Thick, ribbed boots almost went up to knees that sported rounded metal plates. He carried a lasgun low-slung with the ease of a man who knows his troops are watching his back for him. When he lifted the goggles from his face, Dak'ir saw the man was in his middling years. Wrinkles eked from his eyes and gave him a perpetual frown. Rock dust smothered his close-cropped hair, but much of the grey patina was his own. Despite his age, the human leader possessed undeniable presence and his muscles were still taut, his body and jaw solid.

'Remove your battle-helms, too,' he added. 'I want to see if you all look like this one.' The human leader gestured towards Ba'ken, who glowered at him.

We could disarm them with minimal casualties, thought Dak'ir, hesitating to consider the next course of action.

Pyriel intruded on his musings.

Do as he asks, brother-sergeant. Stand down your squad.

Dak'ir heard the grip of his chainsword tighten as he squeezed it impotently.

'You can't be seriously suggesting we yield to this rabble?' he hissed through the comm-feed.

'That is precisely what I'm suggesting. Do it now, before they start to twitch.' The Librarian turned his head slightly to regard the brother-sergeant. 'We must earn their trust.'

It went against his instincts and his training, but in the end Dak'ir gave the order to stow weapons.

The Salamanders obeyed instantly, despite their obvious misgivings, following suit as their brother-sergeant removed his battle-helm.

'I am Brother-Sergeant Hazon Dak'ir of the Salamanders Chapter, 3rd Company,' Dak'ir told the human leader, who smiled without it reaching his eyes.

'Sonnar Illiad,' he replied, gesturing to another of his group, a tall man with a blunt-looking head, facial scars and a pepper-wash of stubble colonising his broad jaw and pate. 'Overseer Akuma and his men will take possession of your weapons.' The tall man and four others came forwards warily.

Ba'ken bristled behind his sergeant.

'No Astartes relinquishes his weapon unless it is prised from his cold, dead hand,' he snarled through gritted teeth.

From the demeanour of his battle-brothers, it was clear that they agreed with him. Throne, Dak'ir agreed too. Pyriel had insisted they stand down, and stand down they had. This he would not accede to.

'You may take my blade and pistol, as a gesture of good faith,' Dak'ir told the one called Illiad. The overseer stopped at once, looking back to his leader for guidance. A battle of wills was begun, between Dak'ir and the human. It played across Sonnar Illiad's face as clear as a plasma flare.

'Very well,' he conceded at last, before motioning to the one called Akuma. 'Take them.'

Dak'ir unsheathed and unholstered his weapons, proffering them to the overseer.

'Treat them reverently,' he warned, 'For I will be taking them back very soon.'

Akuma tried not to let his fear show, but was obviously intimated by the red-eyed Salamander and was swift to back away once he had his weapons.

The brother-sergeant then faced the man who called himself Illiad.

'We surrender,' he said. 'What now?'

Tsu'gan battle-signed for his squad to surround the trapdoor concealed at the back of the giant hall. Forged in thick iron, the gate looked sturdy, unashamedly designed to keep things out… or in. Dust-clogged and veneered in rust, it was invisible to a cursory examination of the area. Empty ammo crates and munitions tubes had been piled on top of it, draped over with a ragged tarpaulin. The fact that the stores of ammunition were exhausted revealed much about the Iron Warriors' desperate defence. They had used up almost everything they'd had to repel the attackers. Tsu'gan didn't doubt that the belt feeds and drum mags wedged in the sentry guns were their last.

He held up a fist, ordering his squad to wait.

Praetor and Brother-Captain N'keln were close by with weapons drawn.

Auspex was wretched with interference, bio-signatures seemingly appearing and disappearing like smoke on a stiff breeze, so Tsu'gan had ordered Iagon to shut the device off for now. Instead, he used his own senses to discern the presence of his enemies and found them when he detected the faintest clank of metal on metal through the iron door.

Pointing to his ear, Tsu'gan indicated that very fact to the others. He made a chop and pull motion with one hand - the other gripped his bolter. Brothers S'tang and Nor'gan heaved the gate open, its locks sheared by a plasma-torch from one of the Rhinos' equipment bays. Scraping back the entrance to the lower level as silently as possible, the two Salamanders moved aside quickly to allow Tsu'gan and the flamer-wielding Brother Honorious to cover the now gaping portal.

The din of striking metal grew louder but there were no enemies lurking in the shadows, only a steel-runged ladder extending into blackened depths.

Tsu'gan made his hand into a flat blade, giving the all-clear, then splayed his fingers and made another fist. Half of his squad would accompany him into the darkness; the rest would remain on the surface and protect the exit. Praetor and N'keln would remain too; the Terminator too bulky and cumbersome to fit into the tight confines suggested below, the captain too valuable to risk on a scouting mission into the unknown.

Extending two fingers, Tsu'gan chopped down twice in rapid succession. Tiberon and Lazarus, waiting at the periphery, took the ladder one-by-one and plunged below. Once the two Salamanders were down, he raised one finger, made a fist, and then raised two and chopped down twice again. Tsu'gan descended next, knowing that Honorious and Iagon would follow as rearguard.

Keeping luminators snuffed, the Salamander combat squad moved slowly down a tight corridor that reeked of dank and copper. A strange pall pervaded the air: invisible but tangible, as if a second skin was forming over their battle-plate.

Tsu'gan followed the clamour of metal, still persisting, but seemingly farther away than when he'd first heard it in the hall above. Though his optical spectra were set to night-vision and then infra-red, the dark was oddly impenetrable as if subsuming any and all ambient light. Only sound guided him and his squad as they ranged cautiously through cloying shadows.

'Sire,' hissed Honorious.

Tsu'gan whirled around to face him, incensed that he had broken vox-silence.

The flamer trooper had stopped dead and was aiming his weapon down a sub-corridor branching off from the one the combat squad was traversing.

'You break vox-silence at my command only, trooper,' Tsu'gan snarled in a low voice.

Honorious turned, nonplussed.

'I didn't speak, sergeant.'

'Sire,' rasped Tiberon.

The battle-brother was at point, intent on the way ahead and seemingly oblivious to the fact that a large gap was developing between him and the rest of the squad.

A reprimand formed on Tsu'gan's lips, but he didn't give it voice.

'Squad halt,' he said into the comm-feed, instead. Iagon's auspex blazed into life, multiple signatures plaguing the hazy screen at once.

'Contacts!' he snapped, swinging his bolter around to aim at shadows.

'I have movement,' hissed Lazarus.

'Over here…' whispered a voice that Tsu'gan didn't recognise. He trained his combi-bolter in its direction, finger poised over the jet-release for the weapon's flamer.

'Sire,' Honorious's voice came again, far away this time, but the battle-brother was crouched right next to him in a ready-position. There was no way he could have actually spoken and it sound that distant.

'Sir, multiple contacts closing…' said Iagon, jerking his bolter back and forth as he sought targets.

The reek of dank and copper grew stronger.

Tiberon was still going. He was almost lost from Tsu'gan's sight altogether. For a moment the brother-sergeant gave in to something approaching fear, filled with a deep knowing that if Tiberon was swallowed by the darkness, he would never come back and they would never be able to find him.

'Hold, brother. Hold!' Tsu'gan cried, but his shout was smothered by the maddening din of hammered metal and the warnings of his squad.

'Over here…'

Clank!

That voice again; the one Tsu'gan didn't know…

'Enemy movement! Engaging!'

Clank!

Tiberon fading into the darkness ahead…

'Contacts closing, no target!'

Clank!

His mind spinning…

'Sire…'

Clank!

The sudden compulsion to make it stop… 'Sire, help us…'

Clank!

The bolter in his hands, pressed against his temple, tool of his salvation…

Clank!

The only way to end it…

'Please, make it stop,' Tsu'gan gasped. The muzzle felt cold against his sweat-drenched forehead. The sound of the slowly squeezing trigger was as deafening as thunder.

'Vulkan's fire burns in my breast,' a powerful voice intoned, eclipsing the beat of hammered metal. 'With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor!'

Sensation, vague and indistinct at first, returned to Tsu'gan. He was faintly aware of a reassuring presence nearby, a lodestone to which he could anchor himself.

'For we are the Angels of the Emperor, servants of the Golden Throne, and we shall know no fear.'

Tsu'gan caught hold of the voice, stentorian and commanding, grasping it like a rope of salvation. A refulgent figure stood beside him, a crackling stave held in his outstretched hand.

'From the fires of battle are we born.'

No, not a stave - the warrior, sable-armoured with a face of death, held a hammer.

'Upon the anvil of war are we tempered.'

A blazing aura roiled from it like a fiery wave, chasing down the darkness and burning back the apparitions that tried to clench to them like parasites.

'Speak the words!' Brother-Chaplain Elysius snapped. 'Speak them and find your courage, Salamanders!'

Tsu'gan and his squad uttered the words as one, and the fog of insanity lifted.

The Chaplain smacked a reassuring hand against Tsu'gan's pauldron.

'Good enough, brother-sergeant,' he said. 'I will take the lead from here. Restore your battle-helm and follow me.'

Tsu'gan looked down at the battle-helm cradled in his grasp, agog. He hadn't even realised he'd removed it. Wiping away the sweat that was very real, he set his helmet back on and obeyed. The rest of his brothers had come to their senses as well, and followed with weapons ready. Even Tiberon had stopped. He let the Chaplain catch up to him before falling in behind.

Elysius had secured Vulkan's Sigil to his belt, though the artefact still glowed faintly with remembered power. Undoubtedly, the Chaplain had saved their lives. Whatever malfeasance preyed upon these lower catacombs had very nearly forced Tsu'gan and his squad to turn their guns on themselves. A few moments more and they would have done.

'Heretics are close,' Elysius rasped, his crozius arcanum igniting like a flaming torch in his mailed fist.

Tsu'gan realised that the heavy metal clank had returned to normal. It was still loud, and emanated from a sealed hatch ahead of them.

A few steps from the hatch, the Chaplain brought up his bolt pistol.

'Steel yourselves,' he warned.

The strange malaise affecting the tunnel returned but lingered at the periphery of Tsu'gan's thoughts as if unwilling to press further. The brother-sergeant gripped his bolter for reassurance, running a gauntleted finger over the flame icon embossed on the stock. Muttering a litany of warding, Tsu'gan opened his eyes and saw that the Chaplain had stepped aside from the hatch.

The entrance was locked and barred.

Tsu'gan beckoned Tiberon and Lazarus, who came to the front of the squad with krak grenades primed. After affixing the explosives with a dull, metallic thunk, the two Salamanders fell back. Honorious moved ahead of them, but kept low and at a safe distance. Tsu'gan pressed his body against the wall. He noted the Chaplain did the same on the opposite side, trusting to solid steel rather than his rosarius this time.

Squad in position, spread either side of the tunnel and outside the blast funnel, Tsu'gan drew his hand across his gorget in a slashing motion.

Aiming down his bolter's targeter, Iagon fired a single shot into one of the mag-locked krak grenades. A second later the hatch exploded.

Smoke and fire surged down the corridor in a plume, sending pieces of shrapnel brushing against the Salamanders' armour.

Stalking through the dirt cloud, Chaplain Elysius was the first to enter the room beyond the hatch, Tsu'gan close behind him. They emerged into a metal-bound vault, dimly lit and filled with the stink of copper and iron. Rust streaked the walls like blood. Barbed hooks embedded in the metal resonated with remembered agony. Pitted manacles dangled slackly like hanged men.

This was a place of death and horror.

Crunching servos heralded a sudden attack by a quartet of ghoulish drones. Grey-faced, skin webbed by livid red veins, the automatons were an analogous but twisted variant on the servitors from the Archimedes Rex. The wretched parodies screamed in agony as they came at the interlopers, as if their bodies were still in pain from the invasive techno-surgeries employed to fashion them. Pain synapses flared with every motion, fuelling a terrible rage, only leavened by the shedding of blood and the rending of flesh.

Swollen with grotesque musculature, the monstrous ghoul-drones were the size of ogryn. They barrelled for the black-armoured warrior suddenly in their midst. Elysius ignored them, bent on an ironclad figure toiling over some device at the back of the chamber, apparently oblivious to the fight.

Tsu'gan only caught flashes of the mysterious artificer between the gaps in the Chaplain's body as he moved: a servo-arm attached to the generator on the figure's back; the colour of the dirty steel; yellow and black chevrons framing the armour; gilded greave plates fringed with rust around the bolts; pipes and cables, serpentine and alive; hydraulic gases venting and spitting like a curse.

Evil emanated from this being. Every blow from its incessant hammering was like the beat of a fell heart. Even as he closed, Tsu'gan couldn't tell what the Warsmith laboured at so furiously, smothered as it was by thick shadows and an even thicker sheet of coal-black plastek.

A bolter flare lit up Tsu'gan's left flank as a ghoul-drone was torn apart in a welter of oil and viscera. His battle-brothers were covering him as the sergeant shadowed his Chaplain, knowing that he couldn't leave Elysius to face the Warsmith alone.

Another ghoul-drone was destroyed, engulfed by Honorious's flamer. Its biologically unstable frame collapsed hideously in the intense heat. It muscles cooked and burst in blood-red torrents. A third beast dragged lengths of saw-toothed chain from the stump of its arm. Hot bile rose in his throat as Tsu'gan realised the chains were actually part flesh, part sinew and that some of the teeth were human bone. Boltgun roaring, he sundered the abomination and stamped over the remains. Punching a fourth, he knocked the creature aside to try and stay in the Chaplain's wake. Gore and charred meat peppered Tsu'gan's armour in a grisly spray. Maintaining momentum, Iagon had punctured the ghoul-drone's cranium with a bolt round that exploded it from within and obliterated the eight-pointed star branded onto its face.

The ghouls were all dead, but their hellish master endured still.

At last, the Warsmith seemed to realise his peril and reached for a combination melta-bolter on a work-slab alongside him. Lightning arcing from his crozius arcanum, Elysius severed the clutch of cables linking the weapon to the Iron Warrior's fusion generator. Undeterred, the Warsmith spun about, revealing a reaper cannon morphing from the constituent parts of his right arm. It glowered evilly as the long-gun corporealised, a hot yellow line searing from the vision slit in the angular battle-helm encasing his head.

Elysius swung again, but the Warsmith swatted the blow away with his left arm, a bionic limb like one of its legs - this thing was more machine than man. Pistons heaved, spewing gaseously as power was fed to the augmetic. The arm ended in a razor-edged claw that the Iron Warrior used to split the Chaplain's battle-plate.

Gasping in pain, Elysius brought up his bolt pistol only for the servo-arm, curled over the Warsmith's right pauldron, to snap down viperously. The Chaplain screamed as his wrist was seized and slowly crushed. All the while, the reaper cannon was slowly resolving. Coagulated flesh and iron blended into solid, dull metal. Inner mechanisms were forming, the hellish strain of the obliterator virus rapid and pervasive. If fully forged and allowed to fire, that weapon could shred the Salamanders into flesh and chips of battle-plate.

Determined that wouldn't happen, Tsu'gan reached Elysius and waded into the melee with a roar.

Unloading a full clip into the Warsmith's body, he watched between the sporadic flash-bang of explosive rounds as the Iron Warrior bucked and jerked against the fusillade. The transmutation halted, the need for self-preservation briefly outweighing the desire to kill.

Elysius staggered, dropping his pistol as his wrist was released. Battered, the Iron Warrior fell back, howling in pain and fury. The sound resonated metallically around the vault. There was something ancient and hollow about it, images of jagged metal and age-old rust surfacing in Tsu'gan's mind. The brother-sergeant followed up, ramming in a fresh clip as he moved, and was about to issue a lethal head shot when Elysius stopped him. 'Hold!'

Tsu'gan's blood was up; he wasn't about to relent. 'The traitor must be executed.'

'Hold, I will not be merciful if you disobey,' the Chaplain retorted. Dark fluids were running down a gash in his plastron, flowing more vigorously as he staggered forwards, and his wrist hung limply at his side. 'Lower your weapon, brother-sergeant.' Though laboured and rasping, Elysius's tone made it clear this was an order as he approached the supine Warsmith. The Iron Warrior's breastplate was wretched with holes and scorch marks. Inert and unconscious, he was barely alive. 'I want to interrogate him first,' the Chaplain added, 'To find out what he knows about this bastion, its purpose and what happened to the garrison.'

Tsu'gan stood down, aware that behind him his squad had the room secured.

Elysius spoke into the comm-feed.

'Brother-captain, have flamers brought down to the vault. We need to scour the taint from its walls,' he said, spitting the last remark. 'And I need my tools,' he added. 'The prisoner and I have much to discuss.'