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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 battlebrothers.

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’ 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 aft er

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 otherworld, 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 battlebrothers

and drew weapons as he surveyed the pervading dark around them. The luminators on his battlehelm

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, brothersergeant?”

“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. “Squadstrength

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