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Pyriel, with all his psychic might, was hard-pressed to keep pace with the rampant brother-sergeant’s tally.

Fatigue, to Tsu’gan, was an enemy just like the automatons. It had to be fought and bested, denied at all

costs.

It was little wonder he carried such sway amongst the other sergeants of 3rd Company. But even Tsu’gan’s

will had its limits.

Something hard and heavy struck Dak’ir across his unguarded left flank. White heat flared behind his eyes

as he felt his rib plate crack. Blood was leaking down the side of his power armour, black and thick like the

oil of their adversaries. Darkness clawed at the edges of his vision. As he fell back, he saw the face of his

killer — pitiless eyes stared back at him from above a mouth obscured by speaker-grille, framed by skin

with a deathly pallor. Dak’ir thought of the robed figure in the temple as his body met the ground, his

inevitable death playing out in slow motion.

With its final, indecipherable words the magos had damned them all.

Muted thunder brought Dak’ir around. He’d been out for a few seconds before his body’s physiology

staunched his wound and clotted the blood, repaired his bones and sent endorphins to his brain to block the

pain. He wasn’t dead, and with that realisation others followed.

Muzzle flares lit the gloom in the vaulted ceiling above, the thud-crack of bolter fire emanating from the

gantries. Something heavier accompanied it, a dense chug-chank, chug-chank of a belt-fed cannon, the grind

of tracks rolling against steel and the creak of metal stanchions pushed to their limits.

Dak’ir was back on his feet before he had even told his body to rise, and in the killing mood. His chainsword

hadn’t stopped churning even as he fell, and the teeth found fresh flesh to chew as the Salamander fought.

Through snatched glimpses in the melee, Dak’ir caught the flash of yellow and black armour, the snarl of a

painted skull, predator’s teeth daubed down the edges of a coned battle-helm. As the barrage of enfilading

fire continued from either flank, ripping up servitors, a further epiphany materialised in Dak’ir’s mind. Their

saviours were Astartes.

Caught between such forces, the servitors finally began to thin out and fall back. Not out of fear or even any

remote sense of self-preservation; they did it because some nuance in their doctrina programming had

impelled them to. Emek would later theorise that the casualties the combined Space Marines had inflicted

were such that they endangered the minimum output capacity of the forge-ship and this protocol, entrenched

in one of the Mechanicus’ fundamental paradigms, overrode any others and resulted in capitulation. The

machines simply lowered their tools, turned and retreated. Some were slain as they retired from the fight, the

last vestiges of battle-lust still eking out of the blood-pumped Salamanders. But the majority left intact,

shuffling back to slumber until they were called upon by their masters to engage in their work routines once

more. It was an order that would never come — for Dak’ir was certain now that the magos in the octagon

temple had been the last aboard the Archimedes Rex.

As the bolter fire of the mysterious Astartes died, so too did the light cast by their muzzle flares and they

were thrown back into obscuring shadow. Dak’ir considered utilising his optical spectra to penetrate the

gloom and get a better look at them, but decided to wait as they marched heavily down the gantry. A pair of

lifters stationed at either end of each one brought the Space Marines down to yard level, where the

Salamanders could see their allies clearly for the first time.

Dak’ir was right; they were indeed Space Marines — ten of them, broken into two combat squads reunited

when the lifters hit deck-plate, plus a Techmarine who manned a battle-scarred mobile gun platform. The

war machine rumbled on steel-slatted tracks, cushioned on a bed of vulcanised rubber. Its design was

narrow, ideally suited to the close confines of the Mechanicus ship that had prevented Brother Argos’ muchneeded,

as it transpired, inclusion in the mission. The STC used to construct the gun, a pair of twin-linked

autocannons with a modified belt-feed, looked post-Heresy but pre-Age of Apostasy. Similar in essence to

the Space Marine Thunderfire cannon, the platform also bore the hallmarks of a Tarantula-cum-Rapiervariant

mobile weapons system — something the Adeptus Astartes hadn’t used in either form for many

millennia. The example before the Salamanders was evidently based on archaic designs.

The Space Marines themselves appeared to be just as archaic. Most wore Mk VI Corvus-pattern power

armour, stained yellow with a black cuirass and generators, the left pauldron studded with fat rivets. The

armour’s plastron was bereft of the Imperial eagle, and carried only an octagonal release clasp, unlike the

modern suits of the Mk VII Aquila-pattern. Every suit amongst them, bar none, was patched and chipped.

The rigours of battle were worn proudly as marks of honour, in the same manner as the Salamanders’

branding scars. It was armour that had been made to last, not in the sense of its superior forging or

exceptionally durable craftsmanship; rather, it was battle-plate that had seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of

victories and been strung back together and hammered into shape by any means necessary in order that it

saw another.

Bolters were no different. Lengthened stocks with the extended shoulder rest were an antiquated version of

the Godwyn pattern Mk VII carried by the Salamanders — albeit with Nocturnean refinements. Drum-fed

and carrying sarissas — a saw-toothed bayonet-style blade affixed to the gun’s nose — the bolters hefted by

the yellow-armoured Astartes were the sorts of outmoded weapons best left to museums.

But these warriors were hard-bitten veterans, every single one. They didn’t have the forges or the

technological mastery of the Salamanders. They were seldom re-supplied or their materiel restocked or

replenished. They knew only war, and fought it so relentlessly and without cessation that their equipment

was battered almost to destruction. As the leader of the Astartes stepped forward, his honour markings

indicating he was a sergeant, and proffered a hand, Dak’ir was struck by a final revelation:

These were the other intruders aboard the Archimedes Rex.

“I am Sergeant Lorkar,” the yellow-armoured Astartes spoke in a grating whisper, “of the Marines

Malevolent.”

CHAPTER THREE

I

Malevolence

“Brother-Sergeant Dak’ir, of the Salamanders 3rd Company,” replied Dak’ir, who found he was facing

Sergeant Lorkar. After a moment’s hesitation, he gripped the other Space Marine’s forearm in a warrior

greeting and nodded his respect.

“Salamanders?” said Lorkar, as if seeing them for the first time, “Of the First Founding? We are deeply

honoured.” The Marine Malevolent bowed, then stepped back to remove his battle-helm as his battlebrothers

looked on.

There was a strange manner about them, Dak’ir thought. The Marines Malevolent appeared edgy. All of

Lorkar’s ostensible bonhomie, his deference, seemed faked, as if they had not expected company and now

they had it, resented its presence.

With the gorget clasps disengaged, Lorkar lifted off his battle-helm and cradled it under one arm. Like the

rest of his armour, it was chipped and scratched. Much of the yellow staining had worn away, revealing bare

ceramite beneath. Black hazard markings striped the metal, which Dak’ir assumed indicated veteran status.

Lorkar’s grizzled visage clinched that suspicion.

Two platinum service studs were drilled into the Marine Malevolent sergeant’s skull. His skin was dark and

rugged as if the centuries of battlefield dirt and enemy blood were ingrained in it. Scars crosshatched his

chin, jaw and cheekbones, a veritable map of old pain and remembered wars. His hair was shorn short, but

done so crudely as if by shears and without care or the assistance of a serf. But it was his eyes that struck the

most — they were cold and empty, as if inured to killing and bereft of compassion or regard. Dak’ir had

seen flint with more warmth.

Not wishing to cause offence, Dak’ir removed his own battle-helm, mag-locking it to his weapons belt. A

tremor of surprise ran across Sergeant Lorkar’s face, which then spread to his cohorts, as he regarded the

Salamander’s visage for the first time.

“Your eyes and skin…” he began. For a moment, Dak’ir thought he saw Lorkar’s hand straying to his bolter,

hanging on its strap by his side. The gesture was instinctive. Clearly the Marines Malevolent had never seen

an Astartes with a melanochromatic defect before.

“As our primarch made us,” Dak’ir responded evenly, aware of his own brothers’ restiveness around him,

and meeting Lorkar’s gaze brazenly with his burning red eyes.

“Of course…” The look of thinly-veiled suspicion in Lorkar’s face suggested anything but placation.

Tsu’gan’s voice broke the uncomfortable silence.

“Marines Malevolent, eh? Do you find malice to be a useful tool on campaign, brother?”

Lorkar turned on the Salamander sergeant, who was obviously goading him.

Tsu’gan decided he didn’t like the way their new found “allies” looked at Dak’ir. Their manner smacked of

disgust and repellence. His intervention was not for the Ignean’s benefit, Tsu’gan’s contempt for him went

deeper than the flesh, it was because the Marine Malevolent’s slight tarred all of Vulkan’s sons and that was

something he could not abide.

“Hate is the surest weapon,” Lorkar replied with all seriousness. So vehement was his stress on the first

word that if the sergeant had had the power to kill with it then Tsu’gan would have keeled over in his power

armour there and then. “You are the commanding officer here, Salamander?”

“No,” Tsu’gan answered flatly, taunting having now turned to outright belligerence.

“That honour is mine.” Pyriel stepped forward from the throng of Salamanders, authority and certainty never

more evident in his voice and manner.

“A warp dabbler!” Dak’ir heard one of other Marines Malevolent hiss. He carried a twin-linked combibolter

and wore a beak-shaped battle-helm made to look like a shark’s mouth with painted fangs either side.

Lorkar interceded before Tsu’gan’s promised violence was enacted.

“Excuse Brother Nemiok,” he said addressing Pyriel, who exhibited no reaction. “We are unaccustomed to

Librarians in ranking positions,” Lorkar explained somewhat thinly. “The Marines Malevolent still adhere to

some of the tenets laid down at Nikea.”

“An outmoded set of edicts some ten thousand years old, fashioned by a council arraigned before your

Chapter was even formed,” countered Tsu’gan, his mood still truculent.

“Communion with the warp is perilous,” Pyriel intervened. “I can understand your Chapter’s caution,

Sergeant Lorkar. But I can assure you that I am master of my abilities,” he declared, to defuse the situation

and suspend the trading of insults before they devolved into threats and then violence. “Perhaps we have

lingered here long enough?”

“I agree,” replied Lorkar, with a dark glance at Tsu’gan before he replaced his battle-helm. He paused a

moment, bowing his head slightly, and seemed to be listening intently to some private instruction. “We

should continue on together,” he said at last, surfacing from whatever discreet confabulation he had been

engaged in. “The servitors in this section of the ship are dormant now, but we can’t know how long that will

last and what other defences we might face.” Lorkar then turned on his heel, his warriors parting like a

yellow sea to allow him through.

“Worse than Templars,” muttered Ba’ken to Emek, who was grateful that his battle-helm masked his

amusement.

Dak’ir saw nothing humorous in it. The encounter with the Marines Malevolent had put him on edge. There

was an air of frustrated superiority about them, suggesting they thought themselves uniquely worthy of the

appellation “Space Marine”. Yet here they were faced with a progenitor Chapter. Such evidence was

difficult to refute, for even the most zealous-minded. They had an agenda, of that Dak’ir was certain. And if

that conflicted with the Salamanders’ mission, violence would surely follow.

The route deeper into the Archimedes Rex was conducted largely in silence. Before they had headed out after

the Marines Malevolent, Brother Emek had examined the wounded Salamanders using what rudimentary

medical craft he possessed and declared all injuries minor, and the recipients fit for combat. Mercifully, there

had been no further encounters with the forge-ship’s guardians.

For now, it appeared that Lorkar was right — the servitors had returned to slumber.

Dak’ir sat beside an iron bulkhead in some kind of expansive storage room. The room contained numerous

metal crates, caskets and munitions cylinders — all of which had already been ransacked. Dak’ir was sitting

on one of the empty crates, methodically engaged in weapons maintenance rituals. He glanced up

sporadically at the Marines Malevolent’s Techmarine, who was using breaching tools and a promethium

torch from his servo-harness to prise open a sealed blast door impeding their further progress into the forgeship.

It was the first barrier of its kind they had discovered which wouldn’t open through a console or

operational slate, suggesting the heart of the ship lay beyond it.

The other Salamanders were locked in similar routines to the sergeant. Once the room had been made secure,

many had removed their battle-helms, taking the opportunity to be free of their stifling confines if only for a

few minutes— for the Marines Malevolent’s part, any reaction to the Salamanders’ facial appearance was

kept hidden. Pyriel was silently meditative, eyes shut whilst he channelled the reserves of his psychic energy

and shored up his mental bulwarks to guard against daemonic possession. Tsu’gan paced impatiently,

waiting for the Techmarine to complete his task. Dak’ir had learned the Astartes’ name was Harkane, though

that was all the taciturn Techmarine had disclosed.

They had already deviated from Emek’s route. Sergeant Lorkar insisted that he and his combat squad had

already tried that way and it was blocked. Harkane had mapped another course, and it was this which they

now followed. Tsu’gan had been the most reluctant to accede. Pyriel’s order had made it impossible for him

not to.

“We are heading away from the bridge,” Emek whispered to Dak’ir, one eye on their battle-brothers in