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when he had insisted he stay with the main force. His talents, he surmised with a tone that brooked no

further discussion, would be best served aiding Dak’ir.

Illiad was another matter, of course. With no time to explain what had occurred beneath the surface right

now, Dak’ir had merely expressed how important the human was to them and that if they survived the fight

with the greenskins, Illiad would need to be brought before N’keln immediately. As it was, the leader of the

settlers was determined he would stand with his distant Nocturnean kin and so joined one of the battalions.

The human could fight and had his own lasgun, so Agatone saw no reason to oppose him. Dak’ir would see

him protected, of course, but supposed that standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fifty other armed men was

about as safe as it got right now.

“A thousand metres,” Apion reported, keeping sentry on the orks’ approach with a pair of magnoculars.

“Weapons ready,” snapped Dak’ir. His tone was clipped and precise as he brought up his bolter. Each

Salamander occupied a section of the outcrop, snug in makeshift firing lips rendered by the natural

permutations in the rocks. A staccato of arming sounds disturbed the heavy silence before the air was still

again.

“Eight hundred…”

Dak’ir sighted down the bolter’s targeter.

“Seven hundred…”

Dull percussions from the Thunderfire cannon salvo were rippling across the dunes. Clustered explosions

plumed in fiery grey, slowly pushing the greenskin vanguard together. “Six hundred…”

“In Vulkan’s name!” Dak’ir roared and the bolters roared with him.

Muzzle flares ripped into the darkness followed by the flash of explosive rounds tearing up the leaders of the

motorised ork vanguard. Bikes spun front over end, chewed up by the brutal fusillade coming from the

Space Marines. Trucks flipped as their fuel tanks ignited, turning them into rolling fireballs. Spitting

shrapnel shredded those outside the heart of the bolter storm, forcing bikes to slew into others and trucks to

veer widely and crash as their drivers were cut to pieces.

The frenzied ork advance slowed momentarily as the ones that followed on picked their way through

flaming wreckage, and as the greenskins at the periphery were forced into a cordon by the distant

bombardment of the Thunderfire cannons.

Bellowing curses like wielded blades, the orks regrouped and found a focus for their anger — the six

Salamanders blazing away at them from an outcrop of rocks. Like a hot spear-tip the orks came together. In

truth, the bolter fire had barely scratched them, but the bloody nose they’d received was stinging.

Errant bullets from the greenskins’ chainguns and solid-shot cannons chipped at the rock wall. A shard

spanged against Dak’ir’s pauldron but he barely felt it. The spatial display on his right helmet lens told him

the orks were just three hundred and sixty-five point three metres away.

In less than a minute they’d be hitting the grenade line. Then there would be two hundred metres between

them and the horde.

“Reloading,” shouted Dak’ir, ducking back behind the rocks to expel the partially spent magazine and ram

home another one. The process took less than three seconds. As he returned to the firing lip to resume the

fusillade, Brother Apion ducked back in his sergeant’s stead, cycling through the ammo replenishment

strategy Dak’ir had devised. This way, the Salamanders could maintain a barrage of uninterrupted bolter fire

with little deterioration in intensity between reloads.

At the head of the greenskin pack, a howling ork biker was suddenly kicked up into the air, riding a

blossoming fireball. It tore out the vehicle’s undercarriage, blasting off its rugged wheels, as well as

shredding the ork’s legs and abdomen. The beast was still raging until it struck the ground with a wet crunch.

Others followed it, shooting up into the air in a macabre, pseudo-pyrotechnic display. Explosions from the

grenade line churned up ash in a dense cloud, causing further carnage and confusion. Riderless bikes

trundled through the fog aflame, slowly succumbing to inertia without their throttles opened up. A truck

barrel rolled out of the murk, its hapless passengers battered to death as they thrashed continuously against

the ground. It settled into a mangled heap, a pair of ork bikers blinded by their ash-smeared goggles,

colliding into it and exploding after the impact.

The damage was horrendous, the densely-packed greenskins, precisely corralled by the Thunderfire cannons

and impelled by Dak’ir’s “bait” squad, suffering badly in the grenade field. Momentum carried the

greenskins behind into deadly debris and the remnants of the sunken grenades yet to be disturbed. They

couldn’t stop; their maddened fervour, coupled with the undeniable instinct to go faster, wouldn’t let them.

The orks piled on through and kept on dying.

Two hundred metres became a hundred and fifty in Dak’ir’s helmet lens. With so many orks in the

vanguard, it was inevitable that some would make it through. But the brother-sergeant had made contingency

for that too.

Raking a slide of his bolter, he switched the gun to rapid fire. They’d burn through ammunition much faster

this way, but the punishing effects of such a salvo would be irresistible. Loosing his fury, Dak’ir saw the

muzzle flare at the end of the bolter expand into a knife-edged star of fire. The oncoming orks became a haze

before it, rendered into steaming flesh and bent metal.

The orks, more tenacious than a plague, rolled on into the firing line, scarcely fifty left in the vanguard from

the five hundred who had broken off from the slower element of the splinter horde.

Solid shot struck his elbow, finding a spot between the plates, and bit. Dak’ir grimaced, another deflecting

off his left pauldron as the orks got close enough to be partially accurate with their return fire.

Ignoring the bullets skimming off his power armour, some punching small holes but stopping at the layered

ceramite, Dak’ir rose to his feet. His brothers followed him.

“Purify!” roared the sergeant and the flamers opened up at last.

A curtain of fire swept over the last of the orks. Superheated promethium cooked engines and melted tyres to

rubberised slag. The greenskins bayed as they burned, crumpling down as they were engulfed by the intense

wave.

Caught between the twin storms of bolters and flamers, barely a score of orks remained. Roughly half

staggered, bereft of their vehicles, dazed and enraged to within a few metres of the outcrop when Dak’ir let

his bolter hang lose on its strap and unsheathed his chainsword. His voice buzzed like the sound of the

blades churning with their sudden activation.

“Charge!”

Dak’ir led, bounding over the rocks with his brothers on his heels. A flash of cerulean blue in his limited

peripheral vision told him that Pyriel had drawn his force sword.

The Salamanders descended on the battered remnants of the ork vanguard. And tore them apart.

It was over in seconds, and as the dust finally cleared the greenskin dead were revealed, littering the ground.

Orks possessed strong constitutions; they were hard beasts to kill. Amongst the carnage there’d be those that

still lived, but none posed a threat to the Salamanders at this point. Beyond the dissipating smoke and ash,

the rest of the splinter horde was closing. It was a sobering sight that dispelled the heady battle-euphoria of

their recent victory.

Over a thousand orks: more heavily armed, more resolute, more wrathful.

Whatever Argos was planning, Dak’ir hoped it would be ready soon and powerful enough to level a small

army.

“Fall back,” he ordered, “and recover any partially spent clips. We’re going to need every single round.”

They arrived at the main Salamander deployment almost at the same time as the Thunderfire cannons and

Dreadnoughts.

Agatone had ordered the withdrawal of the heavy guns as soon as the ork vanguard was in the “dragon’s

mouth”, as he would later refer to it. Dak’ir’s troops had fallen back a short time after that, but the better foot

speed of the battle-brothers had averaged out the head start fairly equally.

The brother-sergeant seemed distracted. As Dak’ir approached him, he realised it was because Agatone was

listening intently to the comm-feed in his ear. He nodded curtly, his face grim.

“A much larger horde of greenskins has amassed against the iron fortress. Captain N’keln is currently under

siege,” he announced.

“How large a force are we talking about, here?” asked Dak’ir, aware that the main horde they would soon

face numbered in the thousands.

“Estimations are hazy,” Agatone replied. “They reckon tens of thousands.”

Dak’ir shook his head ruefully, before pointing to the lunar eclipse. “The black rock up there orbits this

planet, and when it closes the orks will increase in number again.”

Agatone looked up to the ghastly planetoid, like a baleful black orb, and frowned darkly.

“We must reunite our forces,” he decided. “Find a way to get to Captain N’keln and our brothers before

they’re worn down by the siege.”

“We are in no position to lift it, Sergeant Agatone,” Pyriel interceded, displaying a cold pragmatism

normally associated with their Chaplain. “Our brothers will be measured against the anvil, as will we all.”

Agatone nodded at the Librarian’s wisdom, but said in a low voice:

“Let us hope it doesn’t break them.”

After that he summarised the troop dispositions one final time and went to rejoin his squad, leaving Dak’ir to

do the same. With Zo’tan leading the human auxiliaries a few hundred metres back from the line of

Salamanders, Dak’ir would have been a trooper down if not for Pyriel appending himself to his squad.

The Librarian had taken a keen interest in Dak’ir; for good or ill, the brother-sergeant did not know. The

only certainty was that Pyriel would not let him out of his sight.

A rugged defensive line of metal storage crates, partially broken down prefab bunkers and empty ammo

drums was strung out for the Salamanders to take cover behind. Battle-Brother G’heb raised his fist to

indicate to his sergeant where they would be stationed. Dak’ir could feel the questions in his burning gaze,

reflected in the eyes of all the Salamanders, of what happened below the earth and who this human was in

their midst. Discipline let them compartmentalise the desire for veracity; survival and the protection of

innocent human life overrode it for now.

Answers would come if they lived out this next battle.

Dak’ir was reticent to leave the armour suits, the settlers and especially ancient Brother Gravius behind, but

was afforded little other choice. He reasoned that they had survived this long without intervention, and so

they were as safe as anywhere could be on Scoria. At least while the orks’ attention was fixed on their foes

on the surface, they would not decide to probe any deeper.

A rhythmic chant pervaded on the breeze, interrupting Dak’ir’s thoughts. The orks were marching in time to

beaten drums. They saw an outnumbered foe, out of tricks, who had shown their hand and was now in the

open. It galvanised them. Dak’ir felt their belligerent confidence as an intense pressure at the front of his

skull. He put a hand to his forehead in a vain effort to ward off the discomfort. The others seemed affected

to, but not nearly as badly.

Stand straight, sergeant, Pyriel’s voice was little more than a whisper in Dak’ir’s mind. It is the

subconscious psychic emanation of the greenskins that you can feel.

It was crippling. Dak’ir felt like his head was about to explode with it. He gritted his teeth, unaware that he’d

stooped, and straightened up.

“Dak’ir…” Ba’ken, on the other side of his sergeant to Pyriel, reached out to him.

“I’m all right, brother,” he lied. The noise in his head was deafening and blood tanged his mouth.

Ba’ken edged closer to his sergeant; the Salamander lines were packed so tightly they were almost shoulderto-

shoulder anyway.

“Lean on me until the fighting begins,” he breathed, lowering his heavy flamer slightly and using his free

hand to support Dak’ir surreptitiously beneath the elbow.

Dak’ir found he had no voice to respond. Was this another vision, but manifesting in some physically

debilitating way? The approaching ork horde blended into a single note of raucous white noise that eclipsed

everything else. Hot, angry green light burned like sunspots before Dak’ir’s eyes and he lost focus. Rage:

gratuitous, boiling rage filled his mind, and he felt his fists clench in defiance of it. Something primal within

him was waking, and Dak’ir fought the urge to cry out and hurl himself at the orks. He wanted to tear into

them with his bare hands, to rip their flesh apart with his teeth, to beat upon their bodies until there was

nothing left but bone splinters and viscera.

Through the haze of mindless anger that descended, the world was tinted an ugly green.

Listen to my voice, Dak’ir. It was Pyriel again. Remember what you are.

He clenched his fists tighter. Blood flowed into his mouth as Dak’ir bit into his lip. Fire-born, said Pyriel.

Fury like chained lightning wracked his body and it began to tremble against the strain. Synaptic warning

icons behind his helmet lens that were slaved to his body’s biorhythms started spiking. Heart rate was

nearing cardio infarction levels, Dak’ir felt it like a frag grenade going off continuously in his chest;

breathing intensified; red, flashing icons warned of imminent anaphylactic circulatory collapse; blood

pressure was rising, bordering on extreme hypertension.

Fire-born, Pyriel repeated.

Dak’ir felt again the heat of Mount Deathfire. He recalled ranging through the caves of Ignea, plying the

Acerbian Sea and the long climb to the summit of the Cindara Plateau.

The green haze filtered away until his vision was red-rimed once more.

“Fire-born,” uttered Dak’ir. His voice was in unison with the Librarian’s psychic casting inside his head.

Dak’ir moved away from Ba’ken to show he no longer needed his brother’s support. The unspoken exchange

between them said more than any words of gratitude ever could. The bulky Salamander merely nodded his

understanding and reaffirmed his grip on the heavy flamer.

The Thunderfire cannons were booming at either end of the defensive line. Unseen, they pummelled patches

of advancing greenskins with clusters of surface detonations. It was like dropping a bullet into an ocean. The