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deaths. He had no desire to add that to his already troubled conscience.

A thought came unbidden into his mind at that, and he forced it down.

Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast, he intoned in his head to steady himself. With it, I shall smite the foes of the

Emperor. Tsu’gan clung to the mantra like a lifeline, as tenuous and jeopardous as the fragile bridge he

clutched between his hands.

The first of the “squads” made it across without incident, hugging jackets over their heads to ward off the

fire and smoke now issuing through the grille plate. A second group wandered through after them, their

footing wary because of the poor visibility. All the while, the Vulkan’s Wrath quaked and trembled as if it

was a bird fighting against a tempest.

Too slow, too slow, thought Tsu’gan as the third “squad” reached the other side, choking back smoke fumes.

The ship was tearing itself in half; they had to pick up the pace and get off the deck.

Dak’ir had realised the danger, too, and was ushering the crewmen across in larger and larger groups. He

shouted at Armsmaster Vaeder, urging him to take the last of his men across. Screeching and shuddering, the

deck plate held just long enough for the last of the crew to reach safety, before buckling and falling into the

fiery abyss below.

“Now you,” Tsu’gan bellowed, getting to his feet as Dak’ir nodded in understanding. The Ignean took two

steps back and was about to launch himself when a fierce tremor gripped the deck, knocking the humans off

their feet. Dak’ir got caught up in it and misstepped, stumbling as he made his jump. He fell agonisingly

short. Tsu’gan leant forward and outstretched a hand when he saw what was happening. He grasped Dak’ir’s

flailing arm and the weight of him dragged Tsu’gan to his knees. He hit the deck with a thunk of metal on

metal, felt it jar all the way up his spine.

“Hold on,” he growled, fire still lapping around him — the edges of his armour that were exposed to the

flames were already scorched black. He grunted and heaved — it was like hauling a dead weight with all

that power armour — pulling Dak’ir up so he reached the lip of the jagged deck and dragged himself up.

“Thank you, brother,” he gasped, once he was safely on the semi-stable side and facing his rescuer.

Tsu’gan sneered.

“I do my duty. That’s all. I wouldn’t let a fellow Salamander die, even one that has not the right to bear the

name. And I pay my debts, Ignean.” He turned his back, indicating it was the final word, and focused his

attention on the human crew.

“Get them to the lifter, armsmaster,” he said sternly.

Vaeder was on his feet, barking orders, hoisting men up, kicking those who thought to wallow. In a few

seconds, all fifty were trudging towards the faint light and the solace represented by the lifter.

Tsu’gan went after them, aware of Dak’ir following behind him. Again, he cursed at being shackled with

him of all his battle-brothers. He hated being in the Ignean’s presence. It was his fault that Kadai had died at

Aura Hieron. Wasn’t it Dak’ir that had sent Tsu’gan after Nihilan and exposed his captain’s flank? Wasn’t it

Dak’ir that saw the danger but failed to reach Kadai in time to save him? Wasn’t it Dak’ir that… Or was it?

Tsu’gan felt the weight of guilt upon him like an anvil strapped to his back whenever he wasn’t spilling

blood in the Chapter’s name; that guilt multiplied tenfold whenever he saw Dak’ir. It forced him to admit

that perhaps the Ignean wasn’t solely responsible, that maybe even he…

Armsmaster Vaeder was raking open the lifter’s blast doors with the assistance of two of the other crewmen.

The raucous screech of metal was welcome distraction. It didn’t last long, as the Ignean spoke again.

“We need to get these men to a flight deck, abandon ship with as many hands as possible.”

Tsu’gan faced him as the humans were clambering aboard the lifter. Though large, the lifter reached

capacity quickly and they would need to make several trips.

“It’s too late for that,” he answered flatly. “We must have entered Scoria’s upper atmosphere by now. The

ship will be at terminal velocity. Any escape would be suicide. We get them to the upper deck.”

Dak’ir leaned in and lowered his voice.

“The chances of these men surviving a crash are slim at best.”

Tsu’gan’s response was cold and pragmatic. “That can’t be helped.”

The lifter was coming down again, chugging painfully on overworked cable hoists. Ten metres from the

deck it lurched ungainly, emitting a high-pitched scream, until finally churning to an uneven stop.

Something approaching despair registered in the eyes of Vaeder and the ten crewmen yet to ascend.

Compounding their misfortune, an orange glow lit up the Salamanders’ armour from a rolling wave of fire

spilling up from the chasm and over into the deck where the humans cowered.

“Meet it!” roared Tsu’gan, and the two Astartes formed a wall of ceramite between the brittle crew and the

raging flames. Heat washed over the Salamanders, but they bore it without flinching.

When the backdraft had died down, sucked into the chasm like liquid escaping through a vent, Dak’ir turned

to Tsu’gan again.

“So, what now?”

Tsu’gan eyed the crewmen in their charge. They were huddled together, crouched down against the recently

dissipated blaze. Steam was issuing off the Salamander’s armour and face, his view filtered through a heat

haze.

“We are going to crash in a vessel that is not meant to land, deliberately or otherwise, on solid ground. We

shield them,” he said. Wrenching metal resonated loudly in Tsu’gan’s ears, as forbidding as a death knell.

“And hang on to something.”

CHAPTER SIX

I

Planetfall

The chitin-creature died amidst a welter of exploded bone-plates and shredded mandibles. Grey, sludge-like

blood oozed from ragged wounds in its carapace. In its death throes, it flipped onto its armoured back,

insectoid legs spasming once and then curled up to remain still.

“Death to the xenos!” spat Brother-Chaplain Elysius, unleashing a storm from his bolt pistol. “Suffer not the

alien to live!”

The Vulkan’s Wrath had struck the surface of Scoria like a meteorite, its hull still burning from its rapid reentry

into the planet’s atmosphere. Impelled by its momentum, the strike cruiser had dug a massive furrow

into the earth, hull antennas, towers and engines ripped apart as they met against unyielding bedrock.

Hundreds died in the crash, smashed to paste and broken as they were bounced against barrack rooms and

hangars in the massive ship. Fires broke out instantly, burning those unlucky enough to be in their path to

ash. Some were crushed as the fragile sinews holding up vast sections of damaged upper decks and ceilings

capitulated, sending tons of metal debris crashing down onto their heads. Long swathes of armoured

shielding had punched inwards, pulping hapless crewmen when the corridor they were clinging to became a

single sheet of beaten metal. Others were tossed into chasms of fire and darkness, ripping open like yawning

mouths in the deck and swallowing them whole.

In the aftermath, chainswords and cutting tools buzzed into life, the smoke and dust still clinging to the air in

a veil, as crewmen sought to cleave escape routes through the bent metal. Hydraulic steam vented in a wave

as saviour portals were opened in the hull in a staccato chorus of disengaging locking bars. Survivors

spewed out sporadically, some carrying the injured, others forlornly dragging the dead. The Salamanders,

who had sustained casualties of their own, organised the evacuation from the worst affected areas and soon a

large body of men and servitors had gathered on Scoria’s ash-grey soil.

The crash had lasted only minutes, yet they had stretched into hours, even lifetimes, for those aboard praying

to the Emperor for deliverance. The furrow ploughed by the strike cruiser’s prow ran for almost a kilometre

and had disturbed something lurking beneath the ashen surface of Scoria.

The creatures came from the below the earth, whorled emergence holes presaging their arrival. Screams

from crewmen dragged under the ash plain were the first indication that they were being attacked. Hordes of

the things came on after that, shaking their squat, solid bodies free of clinging ash before wading in with

bone-pincers and clicking mandible teeth. Thirty-five crewmen died, swallowed into the earth, before the

Salamanders mounted a counter-assault.

Brother-Chaplain Elysius led the Fire-born and he did so with zeal and unrestrained violence.

“Purge them!” he bellowed, his blood-curdling voice amplified by the vox-emitters in his battle-helm, “With

bolt, blade and flame, eradicate the xenos filth!” Barking fire erupted from his pistol, raking a chitin-beast’s

torso and blasting away one of its mandibles, before the Chaplain advanced and rammed his crackling

crozius into its body, gutting it. Grey viscera flecked his skull-face, anointing him in the blood of war.

The bizarre, crustacean-like beasts reminded Dak’ir of the tyranid, as he slew them alongside his Chaplain.

He imagined them as the product of some errant spore cluster vented by a stricken hive ship, only to drift

into Scoria’s orbit and infest the planet. Generations old, they were now an outmoded bio-form that had

simply not evolved, but rather stagnated and propagated.

Dak’ir’s squad, together with three others, had mustered to their Chaplain’s side when Elysius had issued the

call to battle. The Salamanders had adopted a wide perimeter, surrounding the horde of chitin-beasts and

slowly corralling them with sustained bolter bursts. The creatures were big, almost as large as a Rhino APC,

and their bony carapaces were hard, but not impregnable. Their bulk made them awkward, though, and they

possessed a limited field of vision. By encircling them, the Salamanders attacked their blind sides and

vulnerable flanks. The xenos reacted with confused and impotent aggression as they sought to attack a foe

that was everywhere at once.

“Ba’ken,” yelled Dak’ir, as he vaporised a chitin-creature’s bone-claw with a bolt of plasma, “cleanse and

burn!”

The hulking Salamander trudged forward as his sergeant retreated and sent a swathe of ignited promethium

over the stricken xenos-beast. It keened and clicked in agony as the flames washed over it, the air trapped

within its bone-plates escaping in a hissing scream.

Elsewhere, staccato bursts of sustained bolter fire became ever more clipped, indicating that the battle

against the chitin-creatures was drawing to its end. The last of them had been enclosed within a circle of

green battle-plate that was slowly tightening like a noose. Occasional, desperate assaults from the cornered

beasts were met with explosive rounds that punctured alien bodies, rupturing them from within and sending

gouts of sludge-viscera spitting from flapping mandible mouths. Flamer bursts harried the wretched

creatures further, and they keened and clicked before the hot glare, evidently afraid of fire.

Finally, with only a half dozen remaining, the xenos burrowed back into the earth, away from the armoured

giants who brought bellowing thunder and fire from the heavens.

Tsu’gan observed his distant battle-brothers with envious eyes. Behind him, the crash-landed strike cruiser

loomed like a canted cityscape, bizarrely off-kilter. Even partially sunk into the ashen ground as it was, the

Vulkan’s Wrath was huge. Its span was the width of several hive blocks and it took several Astartes to guard

it at kilometre intervals. The many decks, towers, platforms, superstructures, hangars, bays, even temples

and cathedrals stretched like a dull green metropolis slowly smothered by grey falling snow.

As the battle raged, Techmarines, servitors and human labour crews toiled over the ship’s storm-lashed

surface. The solar flares had scorched fresh battle-scars down the old strike cruiser’s flanks, and punctured

its armoured skin with fire-fringed, meteor-sized apertures. Aboard grav-sleds, the worker crews made

detailed reports of structural damage. Sparks cascaded from the ranks of heavy-duty welding rigs, fusing

plates from ancillary sections of the ship over the most heinous of its wounds. A few areas were so bad that

the wreckage had to be sheared away with cutting tools and patched over like an amputated limb.

It was demanding work, but Tsu’gan was concerned with other matters as he watched the combat with the

chitin-creatures from afar. Blood pulsed in his veins as he lived the battle vicariously. His fists clenched of

their own volition. Inwardly, he cursed his fellow sergeants Agatone, Vargo and Dak’ir. Had he not been

ordered to remain with the bulk of the company to discuss tactics and set up a command post, he would have

rushed joyously into combat. The chitin-beasts presented no challenge, of course, but after months without

battle Tsu’gan was eager to shed blood in the Emperor’s name.

“The Vulkan’s Wrath has sustained major damage, my lord.” The metallic voice of Argos brought Tsu’gan

back.

He was standing with the Techmarine, Brother-Captain N’keln and several of his fellow sergeants in a

makeshift command post, attempting to impose some order and stability after the crash.

The command post itself was a prefabricated structure, little more than four walls, a canted roof and a

hololith-projector slab displaying in grainy blue resolution what the sensorium and deep-augur probes had

ascertained about the lay of the land. What they knew so far was precious little — Scoria was primarily flat,

comprised of ash dunes and some basalt mountain ranges with an indigenous hostile life form akin to a giant

Terran crab.

Beyond the command bunker, other prefab structures were being erected. In the main, these were medical

tents to which the injured were ferried on stretchers and joined the system of triage set up by Brother Fugis.

The Apothecary ministered to both human and Astartes, though the latter were few in number, and was ably

assisted by Emek, loaned from Dak’ir’s squad as a field surgeon. Human medics, those that had survived the

crash, worked diligently alongside the Salamanders, but all had their work cut out for them. Fugis had also

tasked rescue teams, comprising Salamanders and able-bodied serfs and servitors, to search the damaged

areas of the ship for survivors. Though slow at first, as the ruined decks were gradually re-opened, more and

more of the wounded flocked to the medical tents. The dead were also abundant. The pyreum was in