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《Salamander:Tome Of Fire（科幻战争）》

作者:[英]Nick Kyme【完结】

Synopsis (英文书籍文案)

A unit of Space Marines (genetically enhanced soldiers) called the Salamanders, which due to some genetic oddities have glowing red eyes. It starts out with a tragedy, an ambush and the death of the unit's captain. The main character is somewhat responsible for the ambush and is left with inner turmoil. The primary antagonist within the group resents him for that and also for his underprivileged roots. There's also internal strife in the unit as certain elements vie for power. It's all a little cliched, but it still works and I did really appreciate that the semi-villain within the group is a little deeper than just trying to grab power for power's sake; he has is own demons. The machinations of his assistant pushes the plot ahead in interesting ways, but I felt they rely a bit too much on happy coincidences at times.

PROLOGUE

Tsu’gan screamed as he plummeted from the stone parapet towards the temple floor below.

“No!” The word was wrenched from his throat.

He heard rasping laughter as he fell.

Nihilan had planned this doom. He had fooled them all. It was this, the cold realisation of his failure, which

sat like ice in Tsu’gan’s gut.

He remembered the armoured shadow, closing in from where he should have been; where, as a loyal

Salamander, he should have stayed sentry. Hubris and arrogance had impelled him to disobey. Tsu’gan had

believed glory was worth the risk.

The world passed by in a blur as Tsu’gan traversed the short distance to the ground. In his maddened

urgency, he’d lost sight of the ambusher who was closing on Kadai. His captain was alone, standing before

the pooled remains of the warp creature he had just vanquished, and he was weakened…

Blinding light ripped into the darkness like a jagged knife, careless of the damage it wreaked. Tsu’gan kept

his balance, a few seconds extending into lifetimes as he followed an incandescent beam searing through t he

gloom. He saw Dak’ir glanced by it, his battle-helm corroding, his pain at the beam’s malign caress emitted

as a wail of agony. The force of it, surging from the multi-melta, spun him away from certain death.

Undeterred, the beam sped on and struck Kadai. The captain’s body was lit up like an incendiary. Terrible

light engulfed him. Kadai screamed and the wrenching sound echoed Tsu’gan’s own as he landed in a

crouch, shattering rockcrete beneath his Astartes bulk.

Heart thundering in his chest, Tsu’gan was on his feet and running, heedless of the danger presented by the

shadows around the edges of the temple. The distance to his captain seemed so impossibly far, the chances

of Kadai’s survival so remote. Yet he hoped.

It was only when he closed and he saw Kadai’s armour fold in on itself that he realised his beloved captain

was dead. He skidded to a halt, not wishing to touch the corroded remains, and slumped to his knees.

Tsu’gan hung his head, even as he heard the cries of N’keln and his battle-brothers returning to reinforce

them. Only, they were too late.

“Salamanders! Slay them!”

Barking bolter fire brought a crescendo of noise. Tsu’gan was dimly aware of the bucking forms of dying

cultists — the followers of the debased cult that had brought the Salamanders to this graven place — as

N’keln and the others tore them apart. He felt hollowed, as if a dagger had been thrust into his gut and all of

his innards carved away. Physical agony, more painful and invasive than any torture, spread through his

bones to his very core. It was as if he had ceased to exist in the world and merely watched as it revolved

around him.

A solid shot spanging off Tsu’gan’s pauldron brought him to his senses. Grief and denial became rage.

Shaking hands became fists grasping his bolter. Tsu’gan was on his feet again. He looked to the dark, but

Kadai’s murderer had fled.

A cultist came at him, seen from the corner of his eye. The wretched creature’s stitched mouth prevented a

battle cry. He wielded an eviscerator in bone-thin fingers. Ragged robes flapped around a withered body like

a corpse.

He would have to do.

Tsu’gan ducked the clumsy swipe of the chainblade, hearing the churning teeth as they raked over his head.

In the same motion, he brought up his fist into the wretch’s stomach, felt ribs crack and then the soft meat of

his belly. With a bestial roar, Tsu’gan ripped out a fistful of viscera and finished the cultist with a heavy

blow from his bolter stock.

Tsu’gan barely registered the skull collapsing beneath his wrath when he turned and drilled three robed

figures fleeing off into the dark. The muzzle flare from his bolter lit up their escape and they danced like

doomed marionettes before the ammo storm. He found another, snapping its neck with a blade-like hand.

Two more fell to his weapon’s retort, their chests exploded as the volatile rounds did their gruesome work;

another crumpled beneath an elbow strike that shattered her neck and left it sagging.

Green-armoured forms were moving around him too — his battle-brothers. Tsu’gan was only vaguely aware

of them as he killed. He never moved far from his captain’s side, maintaining a cordon of protection that

none would breach and live. The cultists were many and he revelled in their slaughter. When his bolter ran

dry, Tsu’gan cast it aside and lifted the still whirring eviscerator, torn from the dead cultist’s grasp.

A red haze came upon him. He cut and cleaved, and rent and slashed, and gored and sundered until a grisly

wall of body parts surrounded him. When the cultists thinned at last and the final few were chased down and

executed, Tsu’gan felt the strength in his mighty legs fail him. He fell again, once more to his knees, in a

pool of enemy blood. With the tip of the eviscerator’s blade, he carved a long groove into the stone floor so

the tainted vitae would not touch his captain. Tsu’gan then closed his eyes and despaired.

“Brother-sergeant,” a voice came to him through a grief-filled fog. “Tsu’gan,” it insisted.

Tsu’gan opened his eyes and saw that Veteran Sergeant N’keln stood before him.

“It is over, brother. The enemy are slain,” he said, as if it was any comfort. “Your battle-brother will

survive,” he added.

Tsu’gan looked nonplussed.

“Dak’ir,” clarified N’keln. “He will live.”

Tsu’gan hadn’t even realised he was there. Kadai was all that mattered. Tears were streaming down his face.

“Kadai…” said the brother-sergeant, his voice barely a whisper. “He is dead. Our captain is dead.”

Tsu’gan screamed as he plummeted from the stone parapet towards the temple floor below.

“No!” The word was wrenched from his throat.

He heard rasping laughter as he fell.

Nihilan had planned this doom. He had fooled them all. It was this, the cold realisation of his failure, which

sat like ice in Tsu’gan’s gut.

He remembered the armoured shadow, closing in from where he should have been; where, as a loyal

Salamander, he should have stayed sentry. Hubris and arrogance had impelled him to disobey. Tsu’gan had

believed glory was worth the risk.

The world passed by in a blur as Tsu’gan traversed the short distance to the ground. In his maddened

urgency, he’d lost sight of the ambusher who was closing on Kadai. His captain was alone, standing before

the pooled remains of the warp creature he had just vanquished, and he was weakened…

CHAPTER ONE

I

The Old Ways…

Dak’ir stood above the lake of fire, waiting to let his captain burn.

What was left of Ko’tan Kadai’s corroded power armour was chained to a pyre-slab along with his halfdestroyed

body. Lava spat and bubbled beneath it, wafts of flame igniting in it before being consumed, only

to flare to life again in another part of the molten flow. The black marble of the pyre-slab reflected the lava’s

fiery glow, the veined stone cast in reds and oranges. Two thick chains were piston-drilled to one of the short

edges, and the rectangular pyre-slab hung down lengthwise. Ceramite coated its surface, so the pyre-slab

would be impervious to the magma heat. It would take Kadai on his final journey into the heart of Mount

Deathfire.

Inside the vast cavern of rock, Dak’ir recalled the slow and solemn procession to that great volcanic peak.

Over a hundred warriors, marching all the way from the Sanctuary City of Hesiod, had made the pilgrimage.

The mountain was immense, and tore into the fiery orange heavens of Nocturne like the tip of a broken

spear. Ash drifts had floated from the crater at its peak, coming down in slow, grey swathes.

Deathfire was at once beautiful and terrible to behold.

But there was no pyroclastic fury, no belligerent eruption of rock and flame this day, just lamentation as the

mountain took back one of her sons: a Salamander, a Fire-born.

“Into fire are we born, so unto fire do we return…” intoned Dak’ir, repeating the sombre words of Brother-

Chaplain Elysius. He was speaking rites of interment, specifically the Canticles of Immolation. Despite the

Chaplain’s cold diction, Dak’ir felt the emotional resonance of his words as they echoed loudly around the

underground cavern.

Though ostensibly rough rock, the cavern was actually a sacred place built by Master of the Forge Tkell.

Millennia old, its artifice and functionality were still lauded in the current decaying age. Tkell had fashioned

the vault under the careful auspice of the progenitor, Vulkan, and had been amongst the first of his students

upon his apotheosis to primarch. These skills Tkell would impart to future generations of Salamanders,

together with the arcane secrets learned from the tech-adepts of Mars. The Master of the Forge was long

dead now, and others walked in his mighty stead, but his legacy of achievements remained. The cavern was

but one of them.

A vast reservoir of lava dominated the cavern’s depths. The hot, syrupy magma came from beneath the earth

and was the lifeblood of Mount Deathfire. It was held in a deep basin of volcanic rock, girded by layers of

reinforced heat-retardant ceramite so that it pooled briefly before flowing onwards from one of the many

natural outlets in the rock. There were no lanterns in the cavern, for none were needed. The lava cast a warm

and eldritch glow. Shadows flickered, fire cracked and spat.

Chaplain Elysius stood in the darkness, despite his prominence on an overhang of rock that sat on the

opposite side of the cavern to Dak’ir. A spit of lava threw harsh orange light across the overhang. It was long

enough for Dak’ir to see Elysius’ ebony power armour and the ivory of his skull-faced battle-helm. It was

cast starkly, the light describing the edges of its prominent features. Eyes glowed behind the lenses, red and

diabolic.

Isolationism was a fundamental tenet of Promethean creed. It was believed this was the only way a

Salamander could find the reliance and inner fortitude he needed to prosecute the Emperor’s duties. Elysius

embraced this ideal wholly. He was insular and cold. Some in the Chapter reckoned in place of his primary

heart, the Chaplain had a core of stone. Dak’ir suspected that might actually be true.

Even though Elysius was often distant, in battle he was completely different. His barbed zeal, as tangible and

sharp as a blade, as furious as a bolter’s voice, brought his battle-brothers together. His fury, his fierce

adherence to the Promethean Cult, became theirs too. Countless times in war, the Chaplain’s faith had

dragged hard-fought victory from bitter defeat.

A symbol of devotion hung from his weapons belt, a simulacrum of a hammer. It was Vulkan’s Sigil and had

once been carried by the famed Chaplain Xavier. Long dead now, like so many heroes, the legacy of Xavier

as keeper of this badge of office had passed to Elysius.

There in the highest echelons of the cavern, the Chaplain was not alone.

Salamanders from the 3rd and 1st Companies were watching too from a ridge around the edge of the cavern,

where they stood to attention in darkened alcoves, their red eyes ablaze. This ocular mutation affected all

Salamanders. It was a genetic defect brought about by a reaction to the radiation of their volatile home

world. Together with their onyx-black skin, it gave them an almost daemonic appearance, though there were

none amongst the Emperor’s Astartes more noble, more committed to the defence of humanity than the Fireborn.

Chapter Master Tu’Shan observed the ceremony from a massive seat of stone. He was flanked by his

bodyguard the Firedrakes, warriors of the 1st Company, his company. Honour markings covered Tu’Shan’s

noble countenance, a physical legacy of his deeds writ into his ebon flesh. They were the branding scars that

every Salamander had, in keeping with Promethean ritual. Few amongst the Chapter, only the most

distinguished veterans, ever lived to have them seared upon their face. As Regent of Prometheus, Tu’Shan

wore a suit of ancient power armour. Two pauldrons sat upon his hulking shoulders, wrought into the image

of the snarling fire lizards from which the Chapter took its name. A cloak of salamander hide, a more

venerable and honour-strewn version of that worn by the Firedrakes, was draped across the Chapter Master’s

broad back. Tu’Shan’s bald pate shone with the reflected lustre of the lava, the shadows of its undulations

creeping up the walls like fingers of dusk. His eyes were like captured suns. The Chapter Master brooded,

chin resting on his fist, as inscrutable as the very rock of the mountain itself.

After acknowledging his Chapter Master, Dak’ir’s eye was drawn to Fugis. The Apothecary was one of the

Inferno Guard, Kadai’s old retinue, of which only three now remained. He had removed his battle helm and

clasped it in the crook of his arm. It was stark white like his right-side shoulder armour. His sharp, angular

face was haunted by lava-shadows. Even through the rising heat shimmer emanating from below, Dak’ir

thought he saw Fugis’ eyes glisten.

Ever since Dak’ir had won his black carapace and become a battle-brother, throughout his forty years of

service, he’d felt Fugis’ watchful eye. Before he became Astartes Dak’ir had been an Ignean, an itinerant

cave-dweller of Nocturne. That fact alone was unprecedented, for no one outside the seven Sanctuary Cities

had ever been inducted into the vaunted ranks of the Space Marines. To some it made Dak’ir unique; to

others, he was an aberration. Certainly his connection to the human side of his genesis was stronger than any