第 9 页

Their pallid faces were vacant masks, their only compulsion to execute the intruders on the ship. They were

armed with the tools of their labours: chainblades, pneumatic drills, hydraulic lifter-claws, even acetylene

torches burning white hot, heralding their advance from the darkness.

The Salamanders waited until the first wave of the servitors had made its way into the temple before

unleashing hell.

Blood, oil, flesh and machine-parts cascaded in a visceral miasma, the automatons punished with the wrath

of the Salamanders’ weapons. But like their slayers, these creatures of melded skin and metal felt no fear;

they experienced no emotion, and came forward implacably.

Where one fell, another two servitors took its place, funnelling from the depths of the Archimedes Rex like a

tide.

Drone-like, they flocked to the temple and the interlopers within. As their numbers increased, so too did they

begin to close on the Salamanders; for despite their prodigious abilities, the Space Marines could not

maintain an unbroken wall of fire to hold the servitors off. With every metre gained, the fury of the

Salamanders’ response intensified and Dak’ir’s earlier conservatism had to be abandoned.

It wasn’t long before this desperate approach took its toll.

“Down to my last rounds,” voiced Brother Apion.

His report spurred a slew of others over the comm-feed as, throughout the squads, Salamanders started to run

out of ammunition.

“Flamer at seventeen per cent and falling… Switching to reserve weapon… Ammunition low, brothers…”

The circle of fire was failing.

“I’m empty,” replied Brother G’heb, the hollow chank of his bolter starkly audible as it ran dry.

Dak’ir reached across and shot a drill-armed servitor with his plasma pistol while his battle-brother drew a

reserve weapon. Bolt pistol bucking in his grasp, G’heb nodded his gratitude.

“Endure it, brothers!” yelled Pyriel, impeding a servitor’s mecha-claw with his force sword as it sought to

remove his head. The automaton was one of the few that had made it through the bolt storm. The Librarian

opened his palm. With gauntleted fingers splayed he engulfed the servitor in a blast of psychic fire from his

hand, burning out its eyes, rendering its flesh to charred hunks and scorching machinery black.

Crushing the smoking husk of the servitor with a blow from his force sword, the Librarian moved out of

formation, a hot core of crackling fire building inside his now clenched fist. Battle-brothers S’tang and

Zo’tan covered him as Pyriel went down on one knee, head bowed, focusing his power.

The servitors converged on the Librarian but S’tang and Zo’tan kept them back with the last of their

ammunition. They had enough for Pyriel to raise his head, his entire body now swathed in an aura of

conflagration. It sped from his hunkered form in a violently flickering trail, its head that of a snarling

firedrake that arced around the Salamanders, encircling them as the elemental swallowed its own fiery tail.

“Brothers…” Pyriel’s voice crackled like the deepest magma pits of Mount Deathfire, “…go to your

blades… Now!” he roared, and the wall of flame exploded outwards with atomic force, the nuclear fire

burning all within its path to ash. The servitors became darkened silhouettes in the haze, only to disintegrate

like shadows before the sun.

Dak’ir felt the prickle of Pyriel’s psychic backwash at the edges of his mind, and he smarted at the

unfamiliar sensation. He bolstered his plasma pistol, which was down to its last energy cell, and drew his

combat blade, wielding both it and his chainsword in either hand. Several of his battle-brothers had done the

same, some preferring bolt pistols; others with no choice but to unsheathe their short blades.

Pyriel’s unleashed holocaust had drained him, and Brothers S’tang and Zo’tan maintained guard as the

Librarian returned to the cordon of green battle-plate in order to marshal his strength. Scorched metal, the

forlornly dripping remnants of votive chains and the ashen corpses of servitors littered the ground around the

Salamanders allowing them time to adopt fresh tactics.

The conflagration had been devastating. Hundreds of automatons were dead. It provided but a few moments’

respite.

“They come again!” hollered Ba’ken, the booming laughter that followed echoing loudly around the vast

chamber. “They come for death!” He had stowed his multi-melta via a mag-lock on the back of the heavy

weapon’s ammo rig. It was cumbersome, but Ba’ken was strong enough to bear it without much

deterioration of his close combat abilities. In its place he wielded a piston-driven hammer of unblemished

silver, a weapon he had fashioned himself, all hard edges and promised destruction.

“Restrain your bull, Ignean,” snapped Tsu’gan, releasing a gout of fire from his bolter’s combination flamer.

There was only enough chemical incendiary for one shot, so the brother-sergeant used it to gain a few extra

metres in order that his fellow battle-brothers could see him.

“Head for the bridge,” he declared, ripping out his combat blade and letting his combi-bolter hang by its

strap. “We’ll use the narrow cordon to our advantage, deny them their numbers.”

Pyriel was still debilitated from his psychic exertions and could only nod his assent.

Moving off in pairs, the Salamanders made for the exit that, according to Emek, would lead them eventually

to the bridge. As they fell back, snap shots executed the first automatons to come from the other seven

portals.

Already, their exit was clogged with servitors, emerging from unseen maintenance hatches and hidden

access conduits.

Seeing the danger that the plan might fail before they had even gained the corridor leading off from the

temple, Dak’ir sped over to the conductor array still throwing off flashes of electricity.

“Hold, brothers!” he bellowed, just as the first pair of Salamanders, Apion and G’heb, were about to start

cutting with their combat blades.

Obeying through conditioned reflex, they arrested their advance as Dak’ir crashed his chainsword against

one of the conductor pylons. The first batch of servitors was emerging through the portal as an unfettered

lightning arc erupted from the shattered conductor array. Dak’ir was thrown back by the resulting blast, as

the bolt of electrical energy earthed into the servitor forms, exploding circuitry and burning through clumps

of wiring. The arc spread, leaping from body to body, hungrily devouring the automatons who jerked and

shook as the artificial lightning wracked them.

Smoking corpses and the stench of charred meat and hot metal were left in the wake of the electrical storm.

Apion and G’heb rushed into the void it had created, crushing husked bodies with their booted feet and

clearing a path for their battle-brothers.

Dak’ir was hauled up by Ba’ken, who then turned surprisingly quickly given the weight on his back, and

crushed the skull on an oncoming servitor with his piston-hammer. When he turned back, tiny ripples of

electrical charge were slowly dispersing over Dak’ir’s power armour.

“Ready to move out, brother-sergeant?” he asked.

“Lead the way, brother.”

Fully half the Salamanders had entered the portal and were chopping through the hordes of automatons

coming at them from deeper in the ship. As Dak’ir entered the darkness of the narrow corridor, he wondered

briefly whether there was a vast factorum at the heart of the Archimedes Rex churning out entire battalions of

the creatures in an unending cycle.

“Emek, what’s the status of your flamer?” asked Dak’ir through the comm-feed. The battle-brother was one

of the last out of the temple, with only Tsu’gan lingering behind him intent on taking on the entire horde

himself it seemed.

“I’m down to six per cent,” Emek replied, between short roaring bursts.

“Hold the rear of the column as long as you can, brother.”

“At your command, sergeant.”

Tsu’gan revelled in the act of righteous slaughter. He killed with abandon, seeking out targets even before

he’d despatched the last. Every servitor that came within reach was cut down with ruthless efficiency. He

decapitated one with his combat blade, a spinal column of wires and rigid cabling left protruding from the

servitor’s ruined neck. Another he gutted, tearing out a handful of lubricant-wet wires like intestines.

Tsu’gan used his fist like a hammer, brutally pounding bone and metal with every wrath-fuelled blow.

Let the Ignean flee, he thought, derision creasing his face behind his battle-helm as he glanced in Dak’ir’s

direction, I expect it from one such as he.

A ring of carnage was rapidly growing around him, his combat blade so slick with oil and blood that it was

almost black. These soulless creations were as nothing matched against the mettle of a Fire-born.

But for all his slaughter, the attacks did not abate and the servitors kept on coming.

A heavy blow rapped his pauldron, forcing him to step back. Tsu’gan cut his assailant down but was struck

again, this time in the torso before he could get his guard up, and he staggered. Certain victory suddenly bled

away, replaced by the prospect of an ignominious death. Tsu’gan craved glory; he had no desire to perish in

some forgotten mission aboard a Mechanicus forge-ship.

Another thought crept into his mind, this time unbidden.

I have over-extended myself, cut off from my brothers…

Tsu’gan tried to fall back, but found he was surrounded. He balked at the realisation that his bravura might

have doomed him.

A spear of flame erupted to his left, singeing the edge of his pauldron and setting warning icons flashing on

his helm display. Tsu’gan was half-shielding his body when he saw the servitors engulfed by the blaze,

slumping first to their knees and then collapsing in a smouldering heap. He recognised Brother Emek,

releasing his flamer as the last of the promethium was spent. Tsu’gan also saw that the way to the corridor

was now clear.

“Call your trooper back, Dak’ir,” he snapped down the comm-feed, outwardly lamenting his scorched

armour, “Unlike you, I don’t want my face burned off.” He grunted a reluctant thanks to Brother Emek as

Dak’ir returned.

“Then retreat with your fellow Fire-born. You overstretch yourself, brother.”

Tsu’gan took out his frustration on a servitor that had strayed ahead of its pack, pummelling the creature

with a blow from his fist. Inwardly, the brother-sergeant gave a sigh of relief — he knew were it not for

Dak’ir’s contingency, he would probably be dead. That admission alone burned more than the thought of

perishing unheralded on the Archimedes Rex. Tsu’gan was determined that the debt would not last.

Storming through the tightly-packed corridors of the Mechanicus ship, the Salamanders fought in the way

they were made for — up close and eye-to-eye. Though they had exhausted both flamers, their zeal and

wrath more than compensated for it. Blood and oil ran thick as they held their lines and won metre by goredrenched

metre, the tally of dead servitors in the hundreds. Tenacious and unyielding, they epitomised the

Promethean ideal — they were Fire-born, Salamanders. War was their temple; battle the sermons that they

preached with bolter and blade.

Their violent efforts took them as far as a wide gallery, possibly an inspection yard given the ranks of

assessment tables lining either side. Stout metal columns etched in binaric and the sigils of the Omnissiah

punctuated each of the empty bays where armour, weapons and other materiel would normally be logged,

examined and approved by inspection servitors. The barren bays were overlooked by broad steel gantries

that hung fifty metres up. Any details were lost in shadow, but they were supported by angled stanchions

enabling them to take a considerable mass.

Servitors spewed from blast doors that were opening in three locations around the yard. Tsu’gan, who had

slashed and bludgeoned his way to the front, met them with a furious battle cry. He clove the arm off one

automaton, spilling fuel and releasing sparks as Dak’ir bifurcated another from sternum to groin. A clutch of

wires slopped from the ragged wound like intestines as the brother-sergeant swept past it looking for anot her

foe, before Ba’ken followed in his wake and crushed the stricken wretch with his piston-hammer.

An organised retreat had turned into a melee. The Salamanders fought in groups of two and three, watching

their brothers’ blindsides as they brought fire and fury to the relentless enemy. Only Pyriel fought alone.

None dared approach the Librarian, his force sword carving irresistible death arcs through anything it

touched. Psychic fire spilled from his eyes like an optical laser, tearing through a line of servitors and

severing their mechanised torsos. A clenched fist, and the summoned firedrake roared into being, the

elemental burning down automatons as it swept over them in a fiery wave.

“In the name of Vulkan, repel them! Fire-born do not yield!” Pyriel bellowed a rallying cry as the servitors

closed inexorably.

With their ammunition all but spent, many of the Salamanders had turned to close assault weapons. Some

carried the traditional combat blade, akin to the Ultramarine spatha; others wielded hammers in homage to

the blacksmith, and Vulkan’s adopted father, N’Bel or in tribute to the primarch himself who had first taken

up the weapon to defeat the xenos plaguing Nocturne and liberate the planet.

Honour, for all its noble intention, meant precious little as the Salamanders were slowly enveloped. At

distance, the servitors were no challenge. Bereft of ranged weapons, the automatons could be vanquished

with ease. At close quarters, they were a different prospect. Though slow and cumbersome, their claws and

drills and hammers were deadly, easily capable of chewing through power armour. Attacking in such

numbers with no sign of respite; unless something changed, the Salamanders could not hope to prevail…

The rash of fatalism flashed across Dak’ir’s mind as he put another servitor down. Despite his training, the

many hours of drills, the constant honing of his skills and building of his endurance, the brother-sergeant

was beginning to tire. They’d sustained casualties. Brother Zo’tan was limping; S’tang had a fierce dent in

his battle-helm that had probably cracked his skull; several others nursed shoulder or arm wounds and fought

one-handed.

Tsu’gan raged against the inevitable, easily killing twice the servitors of any of his battle-brothers. Even