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Salamanders was in the large room and poised for immediate assault.

“A magos, by the look of it,” uttered Pyriel. His eyes flashed cerulean blue behind his helmet lenses and t hen

died again. “I see nothing,” he added in a hollow voice, “Nothing but mental static. It is as if its mind is shut

off somehow, or merely waiting for some trigger to ignite it.”

The Librarian looked to Brother Iagon, who was adjusting the auspex trying to get a more detailed reading.

“The biorhythms appear normal, all circadian functions are perpetuating as expected. Heart rate, respiration,

they are consistent with a deep sleep.”

Brother Emek shook his head. “It isn’t sleeping, as such,” he observed, his curiosity coming through via the

comm-feed. “Its movements are acute, but exact and repeated, as if locked in some kind of holding pattern or

mechanised catatonia. It is irregular.”

“Explain, brother,” Dak’ir returned.

“Magos are sentient: they are unlike servitors, dependent on doctrina wafers or pre-programmed work

protocols. Cold and inhuman, certainly, but they are not slavish automatons. Some trauma must have

afflicted it in for it to behave in this way.”

Tsu’gan had heard enough. He levelled his combi-bolter, taking careful aim.

Dak’ir put out a hand to stop him. “What are you doing?” he snapped.

Though he couldn’t see Tsu’gan’s eyes behind his battle-helm, Dak’ir felt the heat in his fellow sergeant’s

glare.

“Listen to your battle-brother. It’s a trap,” he growled, looking over at Dak’ir’s gauntlet on his bolter stock.

“Step aside unless you want to lose your hand, Ignean.”

Dak’ir bristled at the slight. He had no issue with his lowborn heritage, he only objected to the way that

Tsu’gan used it as a derogatory barb.

“Desist,” he warned him, through clenched teeth. “I won’t allow you to shoot a man in cold blood. Let me

approach him first.”

“It’s not a man, it’s a thing.”

Still Dak’ir would not yield.

Tsu’gan’s finger lingered near his bolter trigger for a few seconds more before he lost the battle of wills,

lowered the weapon and stepped back.

“Proceed, if you wish,” he growled. “But as soon as the creature turns — and mark me it will — I shall fire.

You’d best be out of the way when I do.”

Dak’ir nodded, though the gesture went unheeded so was scarcely necessary. He glanced behind him at

Ba’ken, who gave an acknowledgement of his own, though this one indicated that he was watching his

sergeant’s back. Before he turned away, Dak’ir noticed Pyriel looking on. The Librarian had observed and,

doubtless, heard the entire exchange between the feuding sergeants but had said nothing. Dak’ir wondered

then whether Pyriel’s presence on this mission was more than merely simple command. Had Master

Vel’cona, at Tu’Shan’s bidding, instructed him to assess how far the enmity between the brother-sergeants

went and act appropriately or even report back? Or perhaps there was another imperative guiding the

Librarian, one related to his careful observations during the ceremony on Nocturne? Now was not the time to

consider it. Dak’ir slowly drew his chainsword and approached the magos.

His bootsteps sounded like thunderclaps through his battle-helm as he walked tentatively towards the centre

of the temple. As Dak’ir moved he panned his gaze slowly back and forth, interrogating the deeper shadows

lurking in the recesses of the room. Cycling through the optical spectra afforded by his occulobe implants

and combined with the technology of his battle-helm’s lenses, Dak’ir felt certain there were no hidden

dangers.

Within an arm’s length of the kneeling magos, he stopped. Listening intently, he made out a susurrus of

meaningless sound seeping from the supplicant’s mouth. Close up, the tremors in the magos’ body seemed

more pronounced, though whether this was merely proximity or the fact that it had somehow detected his

presence, Dak’ir was uncertain.

“Turn,” he said in a low voice. It was possible the magos was in some kind of trance or deep meditation.

Perhaps he had lost his mind and was fixed in some catatonic state as Emek had suggested. In any case,

Dak’ir had no desire to alarm him. “Have no fear,” he added when a response was not forthcoming. “We are

the Emperor’s Astartes, here to rescue you and your crew. Turn.”

Still nothing.

Dak’ir took a firm grip on his plasma pistol, still holstered for now, and reached out with the tip of his

dormant chainsword.

The blade had barely brushed the crimson robes, when the magos turned, or rather its torso rotated as if on a

gimbal joint, and it faced the intruder defiling the sanctity of its temple.

“Abandon hope, all ye who enter…” it barked, the chattering phrase it had been repeating made audible at

last and vocalised in a grating, machine dialect.

Kadai’s words in the dream came back at Dak’ir like a hammer blow and he almost staggered.

The phrase continued in an uninterrupted loop, speeding up and increasing in pitch and volume until it

became an unintelligible whine of noise. Dak’ir brought his chainsword up into a guard position and

retreated one step.

The sound of tearing cloth followed as the magos’ robes flared out in shreds at his back and two mechanical

arms sprang out like the pincers of some insect. A chainblade affixed to the end of one of the arms roared

into life; on the other a vibro-saw shrieked. Pale, gelid skin, sutured with wires and metal, possessed no life.

Sightless eyes held neither pity nor anger, only a simple function: eliminate the intruders. A nozzle

protruded from its mouth like an obscene tongue forcing its way from the cold, dark crevice. It was the tip of

an igniter, and spat a thin column of flame.

Dak’ir used his free forearm to shield himself, and intense heat washed over him. Radiation warnings spiked

in his battle-helm’s display. In the same movement, he parried the sudden dart of the vibro-saw blindly with

his chainsword. Powerless to stop the magos’ chainblade, it churned against his left pauldron hungrily.

Spitting sparks, it retracted and came about again.

Bolter fire thudded behind him and Dak’ir half expected to feel the shots penetrate his suit’s generator and

then his back, but the aim of his battle-brothers was true and he did not fall. Instead, he felt the crackle of

electricity and detected the stink of ozone in his nostrils. A secondary flash lit up his battle-helm, lenses

struggling to compensate as the blades whirred towards him again. Dak’ir realised that the magos was forceshielded.

“Hold your fire!” barked the voice of Tsu’gan behind him. “Encircle it, find its shield generator and destroy

it.”

Dak’ir was aware of movement in his peripheral vision as his brothers sought to open their trap. Between

searching blows, its mechanised limbs lightning fast, the magos reacted to the threat. Servos whining, its

robed form began to rise on cantilevered legs until it loomed almost a metre over Dak’ir. Its mouth widened

like the rapidly expanding aperture of a pict-viewer as a second and third flamer nozzle took their place

alongside the first. Panning its head left and right like a scope, it spewed white-hot fire around the fringes of

the room, keeping the Salamanders back. Molten deck plates and iron altars rendered to slag were left in its

wake.

Dak’ir caught the vibro-saw as it came at him again, and cut it off with a brutal sweep from its chainsword.

The magos’ own chainblade struck the Salamander’s generator on his back and found itself at another

impasse. Dak’ir swung around, dislodging the weapon with his momentum, and hacked down the pistondriven

arm two-handed. Issuing a metallic screech, the magos recoiled, the severed chainblade arm spitting

oil and sparks. Exploiting his advantage, Dak’ir ripped his plasma pistol from its holster and blasted a hole

through the magos’ torso. Something within the voluminous folds of its shredded robes flared and died. Still,

the firestorm cascading from its distended mouth continued, keeping Dak’ir’s battle-brothers at bay, their

only avenue of attack blocked by the brother-sergeant himself.

A flash of metal registered briefly in Dak’ir’s restricted vision. Pain lanced his armoured wrist, forcing him

to drop the plasma pistol, and he looked down to see a churning drill trying to impale his arm. Wrenching

himself free, he gripped the twisting tendril fed from the magos’ robes that had impelled the weapon towards

him. Dak’ir was about to cut it off when a second mechadendrite sprang from the creature’s torso, sporting

some kind of mecha-claw. Dak’ir blocked it with the flat of his blade and pushed it down. Locked as he was,

and acutely aware of the battle-brothers behind him, he started to try and manoeuvre his body to the side.

“Ba’ken!” he cried, seeing the vague form of the hulking Salamander in his peripheral vision.

“Hold it steady,” a booming voice returned.

It took almost all Dak’ir’s strength to force the magos around and keep him steady as Ba’ken wanted.

Intense heat and blinding light filled Dak’ir’s senses. His ears rang with the shriek of expulsed energy and he

fell. For a fleeting moment as the radiation of the fusion beam stroked his battle-helm and power armour,

Dak’ir was thrust back to Stratos and the instant of Kadai’s death. The jarring impact of iron-hard deck

plates against his body brought him quickly back around. The dull report of sustained thunder echoed around

the room as the rest of the Salamanders unleashed their bolters. Sporadic muzzle flashes lit up the magos like

some macabre animation, its body jerking and twisting as it was struck and demolished.

The munitions fire died and with it so did the magos, clattering to the floor in a disparate mélange of

wrecked machine parts and biological matter, the components of his former existence scattering across the

deck like metal chaff. Oil slicked it, reflecting the dim light of the brazier pans like iridescent blood.

Bizarrely the head remained intact, rolling from its eviscerated body until coming to rest next to Ba’ken. The

end of his multi-melta still exuded vaporous accelerant created during the chemical reaction engaged to fire

the heavy weapon. He looked down at the decapitated head, his body language suggesting repulsion. The

flamer nozzles had since retracted into the thing’s lipless maw. Ba’ken shifted uncomfortably as a stream of

binaric, the machine language the Mechanicum primarily used to communicate, barked from it like a torrent

of ceaseless profanity.

Without waiting for orders the Salamander brought down his booted foot and smashed it to pulp and wires.

Dak’ir, now back on his feet, nodded his appreciation to Ba’ken, who immediately returned the gesture.

Once the chattering had ceased, he turned to Tsu’gan who was making sure no life existed amidst the

wreckage of the magos.

“I owe you a debt of gratitude, brother.” Tsu’gan didn’t even look up.

“Save your thanks,” he returned flatly. “I did it for the good of the mission, not your well-being.” He was

about to turn away, when he paused and looked Dak’ir in the eye. “You’ll doom us all with your

compassion, Ignean.”

Dak’ir knew Tsu’gan was right to an extent; his desire to save the magos had endangered them, but he was

adamant given the same situation again, he would make the same choice. The Salamanders were protectors,

not merely slayers. Let other Chapters revel in that dubious accolade. Dak’ir wanted to enlighten his brother

to that very fact, but the steady voice of Pyriel prevented any riposte.

“The battle is not over.” The Librarian’s eyes flared cerulean blue behind his helmet lenses. “Fire-born,

prepare yourselves!” he called as one consciousness became many.

The dull sound of movement echoed from the corridor ahead as something shrugged itself awake.

“Multiple heat signatures,” reported Iagon as his auspex lit up a moment later. “And rising,” he added,

securing the device away and hefting his bolter. “All entrances.”

The Salamanders spread out, covering ingress into the temple.

“Something comes…” shouted Brother Zo’tan. “Servitors!” he added, the glare from his luminator casting

one of the lumbering creatures starkly.

A lobotomy plate was riveted to the servitor’s roughly shaven skull. It was dressed in dark labour overalls,

scorched by fire and muddied by oil and grime. Its skin was grey as if swathed in a patina of dust or merely

bled of all life and left to wither. One of its arms was curled up into a rigor-mortised fist, and fixed to a torso

bloated with wires and fat, ribbed cables; the other arm ended in a mechanised pincer, puffs of hydraulic gas

ghosting the air as it flexed.

Dak’ir recalled the slumped automatons they had encountered on their way to the temple. He could not be

accurate, but he knew there had been hundreds.

“Another here, second right!” yelled Brother Apion.

Dak’ir heard Brother G’heb bellow after him.

“Targets spotted third left corridor.”

The Salamanders had formed two semi-circles, one per squad, with Librarian Pyriel as the link between

them. Each faced outwards, one or two bolters levelled at an opening. Flamers took one portal each. That left

Ba’ken’s multi-melta and Brother M’lek, from Tsu’gan’s squad, carrying a heavy bolter. Dak’ir hoped the

combined firepower would be enough.

Brother Emek was standing to his left in their battle-formation.

“The death of the magos must have been the catalyst for some kind of activation code,” he said over the

comm-feed, testing the igniter on his flamer with a short spit of fire.

“How many could there be?” barked Tsu’gan, itching to destroy this new foe.

“On a ship this size… thousands,” Emek returned.

“It matters not.” Ba’ken’s deep voice was like dull thunder, on his brother-sergeant’s right flank. “We’ll

send them all to their deaths.”

Dak’ir only half heard him, having already picked up on Tsu’gan’s line of thought.

“Wait until they’ve closed to optimum lethal range. Short controlled bursts,” he ordered over the commfeed.

“Conserve your ammunition.”

Pyriel’s force sword burst into cerulean flame, reminding the brother-sergeant of the Librarian’s potency.

His voice took on an unearthly timbre as an aura of power coursed over his armour in miniature lightning

storms.

“Into the fires of battle,” he intoned.

“Unto the anvil of war!” his Salamanders replied belligerently.

The servitors emerged from the gloom with slow, monotonous purpose, like a horde of mechanised zombies.