Salamander

I Black Rock, Green Tide

Tsu'gan joined Lok and the others on the wall. N'keln was handed a pair of magnoculars by the veteran sergeant and he peered up at the dark shape blighting the sky.

An almost penumbral cast had engulfed Scoria, the ash deserts made supernatural in its eerie lustre. The sun was all but gone, little more than a dwindling sickle of yellow light swallowed in the maw of something black and massive. An odd sense of stillness had fallen and Tsu'gan felt that niggle at the back of his mind again, as if he was down in the lower levels once more.

He detected the same tremor of unease in his brothers standing alongside him on the wall. Only Chaplain Elysius had stayed in the cell, intent on his prisoner. The rest had followed Lok outside to bear witness to the coming of something terrible.

Tsu'gan's eyes narrowed.

'What is it?' he asked.

Dark slivers were peeling off the black object steadily blotting out the sun, gradually forming a cloud that arrowed towards the planet.

N'keln handed the sergeant the magnoculars.

'See for yourself,' he replied grimly.

Though the magnoculars didn't have the range to penetrate beyond the planet's outer atmosphere, they did reveal the black shape to be a massive asteroid. The dark slivers, like fragments of its body, were in fact ships. Details were hard to discern but Tsu'gan managed to make out the ramshackle design of the nearest vessels. They moved at speed, spilling plumes of black smoke, engines roaring fire. There could be no mistaking the nature of the enemy closing on them.

Tsu'gan scowled as he lowered the magnoculars.

'Orks.'

A rush of activity greeted Tsu'gan's revelation. Extrapolating the sheer numbers of greenskins heading towards them from the ships breaking off from the black rock, N'keln had ordered the fortress to be re-fortified at once.

Techmarine Draedius set about constructing a makeshift gate that would be further reinforced by the Land Raider and one of the company's Rhinos. All Salamanders were mustered at once and squad sergeants barked clipped orders to their troopers, who assumed defensive positions along the wall. Some undertook their oaths of moment, swearing muttered litanies as icons of the hammer and the flame were pressed to lips.

Though the ramparts were chipped and in varying stages of ruination from the Salamanders' earlier battery, they were still defensible. The automated guns had all been destroyed. It mattered little. Despite their pragmatism, no Salamander would ever turn to the weapons of the Traitor Legions for deliverance. Instead, N'keln ordered the three Devastator squads to occupy the chewed-up gun towers. With four towers in total, the last post went to Clovius and his Tactical squad due to the nature of their weaponry. The towers provided a serviceable vantage point, even though a long-range view was impossible due to how the fortress was situated in the ash basin.

Sergeant Vargo's depleted Assault squad and Veteran Sergeant Praetor's Firedrakes were kept in the outer courtyard just beyond the gate as reserves. The Terminators were too bulky to climb the shallow stairways leading up to the wall, so had to content themselves as guardians of the inner keep. That left two Tactical squads, those of Sergeants De'mas and Typhos, strung out across the wall with Captain N'keln and two of his Inferno Guard, Shen'kar and Malicant. The company standard bearer unfurled his banner proudly and it snapped in the growing wind. It seemed a long time since it had last been upraised, but it instantly lifted the spirits of all who saw it. The last of the troops on the wall were a combat squad, led by Battle-Brother S'tang. The other half of the combat squad were operating outside of the fortress, climbing the ridge that would allow them to see much farther across the ash plain and report the enemy's movements back to their brother-captain.

An arid wind was blowing off the ash desert, kicking up gritty drifts that painted the Salamanders' armour a dull grey. The view through Brother Tiberon's magnoculars was grainy in the building storm, but Tsu'gan could see the approach of vehicles by their spewed smoke and the displaced ash gusting away from them. The cloud was massive, hugging the horizon in a dense, black pall. The air that came with it was redolent of oil, dung and beast-sweat.

'Must be hundreds of vehicles amidst all of that,' offered Lazarus, lying flat on his stomach on his sergeant's right.

'More like thousands,' Tsu'gan corrected, muttering. He handed the magnoculars back to Tiberon on the opposite side of him.

'Anything yet?' Tsu'gan asked Iagon, who was in a slightly more advanced position scrutinising his auspex. He had set it to its maximum wave band and the widest possible area array. The signals coming back were intermittent and hazy.

'No accurate readings,' he reported through the comm-feed in a clipped voice. 'Could be environmental interference, or there could simply be too many for the device to calculate.'

'There's a sobering thought,' replied Honorious, crouching just behind his sergeant and trying to keep the grit out of his flamer's igniter nozzle.

Tsu'gan ignored him and looked back over his shoulder. It had taken around half an hour to cover the distance from the fortress gate to the summit of the ridge, over uneven ground and on foot. Encumbered in power armour and fully armed, Tsu'gan reckoned they needed to leave at least twenty minutes for a return trip. He planned to mine part of the ridge, using all of the frag grenades he had left. It might not slow the greenskins to any great degree, but it would give them a sting they weren't expecting.

Above them the yellow sun had become a pale, convex line. In the conditions of the partial solar eclipse, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact time of day. Tsu'gan's rough calculation put it at around late afternoon. Judging by the speed of the approaching dust cloud, he reckoned the orks would reach them in less than an hour. Around an hour later and the sun would have set and total darkness would engulf the desert. He resolved to wire some photon flares and blind grenades amongst the redoubts before they returned behind the fortress walls.

'No way through that,' said Tiberon, interrupting Tsu'gan's thoughts, peering through the magnoculars. 'I hope to Vulkan that Agatone isn't facing a similar horde.'

The troops left guarding the Vulkan's Wrath were neither as numerous nor as well-defended as those at the fortress. They were also hindered by masses of injured crewmen. It left them and the strike cruiser vulnerable to attack. Tsu'gan had wanted to lead a band of reinforcements to bolster his brothers, but N'keln had forbidden it. All they could do was warn them to expect the enemy. It was scant consolation.

'Whatever augurs the orks use will draw them to the crashed ship,' Tsu'gan answered Tiberon. 'But they'll be scavenger warbands, hoping for easy pickings. The bigger bastards will be coming here. Orks go where the best fight is. They'll remember the bloody nose given to them at the fortress and will return to it, eager to settle the score. Even if it's against us and not the traitors.' He turned to look straight at Tiberon. 'Don't worry, brother,' Tsu'gan added in a feral tone. 'There'll be plenty for us to kill.'

It wasn't Vulkan who sat upon the throne before him.

Dak'ir realised this as he approached the recumbent Salamander, having climbed halfway up the stairs. But the Fire-born sitting there was old, ancient in fact. His armour harked back to the halcyon era of the Great Crusade, when all Space Marines had been brothers in arms and a new age of prosperity and oneness was in prospect for the galaxy. Those dreams were as dust now, just like the ashen patina that veiled the old Salamander in front of Dak'ir.

The venerable warrior bore the Legion markings of a trooper. His antiquated power armour was a deeper green than that of Dak'ir's. It had a Mark V Heresy-pattern design with its studded pauldron and greaves. The helmet was similarly attired and sat next to the Salamander's boot where he had set it down but never reclaimed it.

A glow behind Dak'ir, emitted psychically from Pyriel's hand, revealed the old Salamander's leathery skin, his battle-weathered face and thinly cropped hair the colour of silver wire. His eyes, where once a fire had burned with the fury of war, were dulled but not without life. He faced away from both Dak'ir and Pyriel, visible in side profile. He also appeared to be staring at something concealed from their view by the bulkhead columns of the dilapidated bridge, for there could be no doubt that this was the part of the ship where they now found themselves.

Dak'ir wondered briefly how long the Salamander had been sitting like that. It seemed to him a desolate charge that the ancient had undertaken.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Dak'ir followed the seated warrior's eye line and felt a slight tremor of shock.

The wall of the bridge had broken away, presumably destroyed when the ship had crash-landed, to reveal another chamber through the ragged tear in the metal. Though it was dark inside, Dak'ir's occulobe implant utilised all of the ambient light to discern a natural cavern. Within he saw row upon row of Astartes battle-plate. Salamanders all, these husks of former Fire-born were arranged in serried ranks. There were fifty in total, ten files and five Space Marines deep. The armour was empty and supported by metal frames so that the warriors stood to attention proudly in parade formation. Each one matched the style and age of the old Salamander's battle-plate and was gouged and battered.

Dak'ir noticed that one or two of the suits had toppled over, due to the rigours of time or the capriciousness of nature. He saw a helmet landed on its side, resting near the boot of its owner. Here and there a bullet-holed pauldron had slipped, to sag forlornly near a suit's elbow joint.

Looking back at the old Salamander, Dak'ir was filled with a tremendous sense of sadness. He had watched his brothers stoically for millennia, keeping vigil until such a time as someone else took up his mantle or he could perform his duty no more.

'How is this possible?' hissed Dak'ir, unsure if the old Salamander was even still cognisant enough to be aware of their presence. 'If his ship is indeed from Isstvan, he must be thousands of years old.'

'A fact we cannot be certain of,' Pyriel replied. 'Obviously, he has been here for some time. Whether that period extends to millennia we cannot know. The armour is old, but still worn by some in the Chapter today. The ship itself could simply be a reclaimed Expeditionary vessel, re-fitted and re-appropriated by the Adeptus Mechanicus.'

Dak'ir faced the Librarian.

'Is that what you believe, Pyriel?'

Pyriel returned a side glance at the sergeant.

'I don't know what I believe at this point,' he admitted. 'The warp storms could have affected the passage of time. But it's also entirely possible that this Salamander is simply many years old, longevity being a benefit of our slow metabolic rate. Such a thing has never been tested, given that most of our number invariably meet their end in war or, if death is not forthcoming and age arrives first, by wandering out into the Scorian Plain or setting sail on the Acerbian Sea to find peace. It is the way of the Promethean Creed.'

Pyriel shone the corona of psychic fire around his hand a little closer so they could get a better look at the old Salamander. The light reflected off the warrior's eyes, turning them a cerulean blue.

The old Salamander blinked.

Dak'ir almost took an involuntary step back, but marshalled his sudden shock as the old Salamander spoke.

'Brothers…' he croaked in a voice like cracking leather that suggested he hadn't spoken in some time.

Dak'ir approached the old Salamander.

'I am Brother-Sergeant Hazon Dak'ir of the Salamanders' 3rd Company,' he said, before introducing the Librarian. 'You have been on watch duty for a long time, brother.'

Dak'ir knew he needed to be careful. If this ancient warrior before them really did hark back to a time before the Heresy, if he was a survivor of the Dropsite Massacre, then much had changed that he would be unaware of. They needed answers but any unnecessary information might only serve to confuse him at this point.

'Brother Gravius…' The ancient Salamander tailed off, his precise disposition within the old Legion deserting him. 'And yes,' he started anew, seeming to recall that he had been asked a question. 'I have been sitting here for many years.'

'How did you come to be here on Scoria, Brother Gravius?'

The venerable Salamander paused, frowning as he dredged through old memories. 'A storm…' he began, the words starting to come easier as he remembered how to articulate himself. 'We… withdrew from battle, our enemies in pursuit…' Gravius's face hardened and drew back into an angry snarl. 'Betrayers…' he spat, before lucidity failed him again and his features slackened.

'Was it Isstvan V, brother?' said Pyriel. 'Is that where you journeyed from?'

Gravius screwed up his face again, trying to remember.

'I… see fragments,' he said. 'Impressions only… disjointed in my mind.' He seemed to look past the two Salamanders in front of him.

Dak'ir thought Gravius was gazing into space, when the old Salamander slowly raised his arm from the side of the throne and pointed a finger. Dak'ir turned to see what Gravius was gesturing at. It looked like an old pict-viewer, some kind of ancient data-recording device half smothered by millennia of dirt.

Exchanging a glance with Pyriel, the brother-sergeant descended the stairs and went over to the pict-viewer. Dak'ir knew that many ships kept visual logs as the basis for battle simulations or to chart the progress of a campaign for future reference. Gravius had indicated that this device might contain the log of his ship and with it some clue as to its provenance.

Though it had been broken apart, Illiad and his men had fed power to some areas of the vessel. Dak'ir hoped that this was one of them. Even so, he expected nothing as he activated the pict-viewer and lines of snowdrift interference appeared on the dust-swathed screen.

Using his gauntlet, Dak'ir smeared the worst of the grime away just as an image was resolving in the small square frame. There was no sound; perhaps the vox-emitters no longer functioned, or perhaps the audio was not recorded along with the visuals. The point was moot.

Though the image was grainy and badly marred by constant static, Dak'ir recognised the bridge, as it must have been before the crash. The scene was frantic. Fire had taken hold of some of the operational consoles - Dak'ir looked over to them as they were now and saw a hint of heat-blackening underneath their grey veneer - and several crewmen were lying on the deck, presumably dead. They wore grey uniforms that bore an uncanny resemblance to the attire of Illiad and the settlers. Most were shouting - their voiceless panic, the half-realised terror in their faces, was disturbing.

Dak'ir saw Salamanders, too. The throne was shrouded in shadows, but the bulk of the armour was clear, the flash of fire and warning lights illuminating it just long enough for the brother-sergeant to make the connection. Several of the Astartes were injured too. The image was shaking badly, as if the bridge itself was being subjected to a fierce ordeal. No one addressed the recording, and Dak'ir assumed, with a fist of lead in his stomach, that the captain of the ship had ordered it switched on to capture the last moments of him and his crew. He had not expected to survive the crash.

There was a particularly violent tremor and the screen went blank. Dak'ir waited to see if there was any more, but there the recording ended.

A grim mood had settled over the ruined bridge, quashing the earlier excitement and optimism that Dak'ir had felt. Another tremor rocked the chamber, sending a pauldron crashing nosily to the ground and shaking the brother-sergeant out of his dark introspection.

He exchanged a look with Pyriel.

If the quakes did indeed presage a cataclysm that threatened the planet itself, as the Librarian had predicted, then Brother Gravius and the battle-suits needed to be moved, and quickly. Perhaps, upon returning to Nocturne and under the Chapter Master's guidance on Prometheus, the secrets within Gravius's shattered mind could be unlocked. If this was what the Salamanders had been sent to find - their prize - then all efforts must be made to recover them intact. Not only that, but Illiad and his settlers would need to be rescued too. The pict-recording of the ship's final log had cemented in Dak'ir's mind that the ancestors Illiad had spoken of were in fact the ship's original crew and he and his people their descendants.

The revelation was remarkable. Against all the odds, they had endured, creating for themselves a microcosm of Nocturnean society here on ill-fated Scoria.

The visions Dak'ir had experienced earlier, just before the tectonic shift had revealed the chasm into the subterranean realm, came back to him. On a strange, almost instinctual level, it confirmed to Dak'ir that Scoria was doomed and that its demise was soon to be at hand.

Yes, all would need to be delivered from the fires of the planet's inevitable destruction. There was just the small matter of the Vulkan's Wrath half-buried in the ash desert, and without the means to break free of it. If this was the primarch's will, a part of his prophecy etched in the Tome of Fire, then Dak'ir hoped that salvation would present itself soon.

The brother-sergeant's gaze flicked over to Gravius.

'Can you arise, brother? Are you able to walk?' he asked.

'I cannot,' Gravius answered with regret.

Pyriel touched a hand to the venerable brother's greave and shut his eyes. He opened them a moment later, the cerulean glow still fading.

'His armour is completely seized,' said the Librarian. 'Fused to the throne. His muscles have likely atrophied by now, too.'

'Can we move him?'

'Not unless you want his limbs to break off as we attempt it,' Pyriel replied grimly.

'This is my post,' Gravius rasped. His breath reeked of slow decay and stale air. 'My duty. I should have died long ago, brothers. If Scoria is to expire, become dust in the vastness of the universe, then so must I.'

Dak'ir paused, as he tried in vain to think of some other solution. In the end he clenched his fist in frustration, Pyriel looking on patiently. His tone betrayed his anger and frustration to the Librarian.

'We return for the armour, and report back our findings to Brother-Sergeant Agatone. We must be ready when we have a way to leave this accursed rock.'

Tsu'gan returned to the battlements of the iron fortress just in time to see the first explosions tear into the orks.

A series of fiery, grey blooms rippled in a line before the greenskins' advance, chewing up footsoldiers and wrecking their ramshackle vehicles. Implacably, the orks marched over the debris of bodies and twisted metal, the carnage only seeming to increase their lust for battle.

Through the magnoculars, Tsu'gan saw several of the greenskins pause to kill off their wounded brethren and remove their tusks or strip them of wargear or boots. 'Filthy scavengers,' he snarled, regarding the massive horde of green.

Inwardly, he cursed the fact their forces were divided before such a massive host. Consolidation was needed now, not division. Yet, they could not simply abandon the Vulkan's Wrath, nor her crew. At any account, there could be no envoys sent to the rest of their brothers - nothing could get through the green tide arrayed against them and live.

The creatures mobbed in indistinct groups that the brother-sergeant likened to rough approximations of battalions or platoons. Each mob was led by a massive chieftain, usually riding a battered wagon, buggy or truck; all bolted metal, hammered plate and the bastardised components of enemy vehicle salvage. Tsu'gan assumed the beasts' ships, the ones that had brought them to the surface, had landed farther off in the ash dunes and were beyond the reach of the magnoculars.

At least the falling slivers, peeling off the black rock like bullet-nosed hail, had abated.

Fights broke out intermittently amongst the orks. Their diminutive cousins - cruel, rangy creatures known as gretchin - lingered at the periphery of such brawls, hoping for scraps, an opportunity to defile the loser or simply to hoot and bray for more carnage. Often these lesser greenskins would be seized during the indiscriminate and seemingly random affrays and used in lieu of a club to bludgeon an opponent with bloody consequences for both.

Orks were a breed of xenos that lived solely to fight. Their behaviour was largely inscrutable to the Imperium, for the creatures possessed no discernible method that any tacticus logi or adeptus strategio had ever qualified. The aliens' predisposition towards battle was obvious in their musculature and build, however. Trunk-necked, their skin as tough as a flak jacket, they were hard beasts to kill. Broad shouldered with thick bones and still thicker craniums, they stood as tall as an Astartes in power armour and were also his match in strength and raw aggression. The ork's only real weakness was in discipline, but nothing focused a greenskin's mind like the prospect of a fight against a hardy foe like the Space Marines.

Judging by the sheer mass of green approaching them, Tsu'gan knew this would be one battle not easily won.

Discipline and loyalty, Tsu'gan reconsidered. The greenskins have no loyalty to speak of; they possess no sense of duty to guide them. Yes, ''loyalty'' - that is our strength, that is our… His thoughts tailed off.

'How many?' asked Brother Tiberon.

Ever since they had fallen back in good order from the advancing greenskins, the horde's numbers had increased. Tsu'gan had related his best estimates to the forces in the iron fortress, but suspected they were now wildly conservative.

Brother-sergeant and combat squad had rejoined the rest of their battle-brothers on the wall, two sections down from where N'keln and his entourage were positioned. Iagon caught Tsu'gan's errant gaze as he looked away from the magnoculars to regard his brother-captain.

This battle will either forge or break him, was the unspoken exchange between them.

Brother Lazarus seemed to pick up on the vibrations between Iagon and his brother-sergeant. All in Tsu'gan's squad shared their leader's desire to see N'keln no longer at the head of 3rd Company.

That is not disloyalty, Tsu'gan told himself, still unsettled by his previous thoughts, It is duty - for the good of the company and the Chapter.

'If he falters,' said Lazarus in a low voice, 'then Praetor will step in. You can be sure of that.'

Then the way will be clear for another…

It was almost as if Tsu'gan could read the thoughts in Iagon's earlier expression.

Tsu'gan had his battle-helm mag-locked to his harness, preferring to feel the growing wind on his face and hear the bestial roars of the greenskins without them being distorted through the resonance of his armour. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to fathom his captain's demeanour.

'Let the fires of war judge him,' he said in the end. 'That is the Promethean way.'

Tsu'gan turned to Tiberon, the deep-throated bellows of the greenskins growing louder by the second.

'There are thousands, now, brother,' he uttered in answer to Tiberon's earlier question. 'More than my eye could see.'

In the wake of the dissipating smoke from the hidden grenade line, the orks stopped. Night was falling across the ash desert, just as Tsu'gan had predicted. The infighting amongst the greenskins ceased abruptly. They were intent on the killing now, on the destruction of the Salamanders.

In the fading light, the orks began to posture, slowly stirring themselves up into a war frenzy.

Chieftains jutted out their chins, like slabs of greenish rock. Their skin was darker than the rest and swathed in scars like that of their minders, who roamed protectively around them. The darker an ork's skin, the bigger it usually was and the older and more dominant. Irrespective of their brutish hierarchy, the orks began to beat their armoured chests, clashing fat-bladed cleavers and axes against scale, chain and flak. They hollered and roared, discharging their noisy guns into the air, creating a pall of rancid smoke from the cheap powder.

Tsu'gan could feel the energy within the creatures building. He was no psyker like Pyriel, but he still recognised the resonance of its effects. Orks generated this energy when in large groups and it was magnified when they fought. It prickled at the Salamander's skin, made his teeth itch and his head throb. Tsu'gan put on his battle-helm. The time for soaking in the coming battle's atmosphere was over.

The orks began to roar in unison, and Tsu'gan sensed an end to the savage ritual was near. Though their brutish tongue was virtually unintelligible, the brother-sergeant could still discern the meaning in their crude, bellowed words.

'DA BOSS! DA BOSS! DA BOSS!'

Flurries of ash came spilling down the ridge as if fleeing, disturbed by the passage of something large and indomitable.

Through the ranks of green, a huge ork emerged. It battered its way to the front of the horde, clubbing any greenskin that dared get in its way with a clenched power fist that rippled with black lightning. Unlike the Astartes' power fists, this orkish device was akin to a massive, plated claw and bore talons instead of fingers. Not only was it a deadly weapon that left any greenskins it struck bludgeoned to death, it was also a sign of prestige, as limpid as any rank insignia or Chapter honour a Space Marine might carry.

The beast wore a horned helmet with a curtain of chainmail hanging from the back and sides. Its armour looked to be some form of mesh-carapace amalgam, daubed with glyphs and tribal tattoos, though Tsu'gan thought he caught the glint of power servos in the ork's protective panoply. Its boots were thick and black, dusted by ash that collected in the armoured ribs of metal greaves. Grisly trophies dangled from its neck like macabre jewellery: bleached skulls, gnawed-upon bones and the chewed-out husks of helmets. Dark, iron torques banded its bulging wrist and arm; the other was taken up with the power claw. A thick belt girdled the ork's even broader girth and was heavy with a bulky pistol and chained-toothed axe.

Miniscule eyes, pitiless and red, held only menace and the promise of violence.

Tsu'gan felt his face tighten into a scowl. He would only be too happy to oblige the beast in that regard.

Satisfied that its presence had been properly noted, the giant ork threw back its head and roared.

'WAAARRRGH BOSS!'

'The beast establishes its dominance.' Brother Lazaras's voice had a sneering tone to it as he watched the display.

'No,' Tsu'gan corrected him, 'it is a call to war and blood.'

II The Last Redoubt

Photon flares blazed into the steadily thickening night like forlorn beacons in a black sea. They threw a red cast over the slow march of the orks that tinted them the colour of blood. Magnesium bursts followed as the blind grenades Tsu'gan and his combat squad had set up went off. The orks howled and bellowed in pain as their eyes were flooded with harsh, angry light. Those who were closest stumbled into their brethren - some were slain by their belligerent cousins, others struck out and killed the greenskins in their path, swiping in wild agony.

The disruption was minimal. Many orks, upon witnessing the effects of the blind grenades, drew down bug-eyed goggles or simply shaded their eyes with a meaty hand.

Confusion wasn't the only purpose for the bank of flares; the Salamanders used the percussive glow like a search light. Ork clan leaders were identified in the pellucid bursts and executed with accurate bolter shots. Brief internecine skirmishes broke out until another ork established its dominance, but it gave more time for the heavy bolters to reap a bloodier toll. Lead vehicles were pinpointed and destroyed by multi-meltas or missile launchers, causing fiery pileups in those following in column behind them. Trucks and buggies mangled together in a twisted metal embrace, as their dazed crews were shot dead crawling from the wrecks.

The greenskins responded in kind. Random fire came from their long range weapons but to no effect, save chipping rockcrete or kicking up clods of ash. Orks were not built for shooting, their efforts were half-hearted at best. They did it more to hear the guns go off, the thud-bang and the stink of expelled smoke, than to actually kill anything. Orks preferred to fight close up, where they could smell the blood and fear.

The beasts will find little of the first and none of the second from us, Tsu'gan thought.

The orks were close now and the brother-sergeant knew the order to unleash a firestorm was close too. Crackling static in his ear over the comm-feed gave way to Captain N'keln's voice, and Tsu'gan realised that order was at hand.

Salamanders were pragmatic, not as given to lofty speeches and rousing rhetoric as some of their distant cousins, such as the Ultramarines. The fact made N'keln's speech comparatively epic.

'Sons of Vulkan, Fire-born all, this is our last redoubt. There is no line beyond this wall, no further gate to defend or keep to garrison. This is it. I have but one edict: None shall pass.' He punctuated each and every word. 'Into the fires of battle!' cried N'keln, as his voice became many. 'Unto the anvil of war!' the Salamanders chorused.

'Let them close,' uttered Tsu'gan to his squad. Across the battlements, sergeants were priming their troops in the wake of the captain's speech.

Sighting down his bolter's targeter, Tsu'gan felt a presence behind him and turned to see Elysius appearing on their section of the wall.

'You have missed the start of the battle, brother,' Tsu'gan offered wryly.

The Chaplain snorted with derision.

'I have missed the parlay, you mean, brother-sergeant.' By his tone, it was difficult to tell whether or not Elysius was serious. Tsu'gan would find out later if his idle remark had been taken in jest.

'The xenos are a stain upon the galaxy,' the Chaplain intoned, zealotry affecting his timbre as he lowered his voice. 'Let them burn in the fires of retribution!

Eyes flashing with hate, Elysius ignited his crozius and pointed it in the direction of the onrushing horde.

Tsu'gan sighted down the targeter again. 'Unleash hell!'

It was as if all the sergeants were somehow synchronised or linked by empathy as weapons fire erupted across the wall in unison. Muzzle flashes ripped down the battlements of the iron fortress in a fiery wave, the resultant din like thunder. Greenskins were torn apart in the brutal bolter salvo, the explosive shells wreaking terrible havoc even amongst creatures as tough as orks. Exhorted by threats and the bellows of their captains, the beasts weathered it, trudging over the chewed-up remains of their kin implacably and without remorse. Some fled - those whose nerve had broken, or who'd lost their captains to enemy fire or infighting - they were met mercilessly with a cleaver or axe upon reaching the line of green still poised at the apex of the ridge. For this was just a first wave.

'Bolter fodder,' growled Tiberon, over the comm-feed. It was difficult to be heard above the roar of gunfire, though Chaplain Elysius managed it with his scathing diatribes and xenophobic tirades. Pistols and flamers were still out of range, as the orks had yet to close, so he directed each caustic utterance like a bullet aimed to kill.

The side of Tsu'gan's battle helm lit up as Brother M'lek fired his multi-melta. The hungry beam burned a hole through an advancing ork truck, cooking its engine and turning it into a white fireball that engulfed several foot sloggers rushing alongside it.

The brother-sergeant paused to commend M'lek's fine shooting, before addressing Tiberon.

'That is why we must break them, brother, and maintain our strength for the real fight to come.'

Tsu'gan gunned down a chieftain's armoured bodyguard, turning its skull into bone fragments and red vapour as the bolter round entered its eye and exploded outwards. He saw only one ork battle leader in the midst of the fighting, and judging from the clan markings of the greenskins barrelling towards them, this was its tribe. Perhaps the claw-armed warboss on the ridge was letting his subordinates take turns at trying to crack open the iron fortress.

'Let them come,' Tsu'gan hissed belligerently. He took aim again and executed the chieftain itself, who had strayed too close to the fight. 'They'll die by my hand,' he concluded grimly.

With the death of their tribal leader, the orks faltered. A bloody killing field had materialised in the no-man's-land before the wall; the greenskins in the first wave, despite their efforts, having been unable to get close enough to launch a meaningful assault upon it.

Seeing this, up on the ridge, the warboss bellowed his anger. Sweeps of his brawny arm sent the other tribes forwards, one after the other. Orks in their thousands charged at the Salamanders. Their tribal chieftains hooted and roared, eager for their clans to be the first to reach the enemy. The swell of the greenskins' brutish voices rose into a clamour.

Tsu'gan felt the dull nagging at the back of his head again, the sensation of being in the tunnel below the iron hall. The feeling of cold metal against his forehead where he'd pressed the bolter's mouth returned. Nascent psychic energy from the orks was building. Perhaps it was somehow fuelling whatever lurked in the darkness beneath the fortress.

Elysius's voice responded to it, became the anchor once more to keep the Salamanders grounded. In their multitudes, the orks had got beyond the killing field and were readying for a first assault against the wall. The Chaplain used the bark of his bolt pistol to punctuate his spite-filled sermons, whilst all across the battlements flamers spewed with promethium fury.

'Cleanse and burn!' roared Honorious, as his faceplate was lit by his weapon's fiery glow.

Despite the Space Marines' strategic acquisition of targets, and their spoiling tactics, the sheer mass of greenskins meant a close-up battle was inevitable. That suited the Salamanders well.

'Here is where your mettle shall be tested,' cried N'keln, his voice clear as a silver spear thrown in sunlight, resonating through the comm-feed. 'Be the anvil, become the hammer!' The effect was galvanising.

'Judged in the fires of battle…' remarked Lazarus with genuine admiration.

Iagon stayed silent, focused on slaying the approaching orks with angry bursts of his bolter.

'Hold them here,' snarled Tsu'gan, steeling his squad as he knew his brother-sergeants would be too. 'We knew this was coming,' he added, as the first of the ork grapnels clanged and found purchase against the battlements. He blasted apart the thick chain dangling off it, waiting for the line to become taut before he fired. Muffled screams from the unseen greenskins once climbing up the severed chain, now falling to their deaths, made Tsu'gan smile beneath his battle-helm.

Three more grapnels followed it. Brother S'tang took out one, before another five rattled onto the battlements, biting deep.

Brother Catus mistakenly hacked at a chain with his combat blade before leaning over to strafe the orks below with his bolter. He lurched back with a cleaver lodged between his neck and clavicle, spurting blood. S'tang dragged him aside, putting a bolt through the cranium of the ork that dared be the first to poke its head up over the rockcrete lip of the wall.

Ugly greenskin faces emerged en masse after that. They were attached to brutish bodies carrying cleavers and saw-toothed blades.

Chaplain Elysius brained one of the orks with his crozius, electricity still coursing through its shattered frame as it fell back in the morass of warriors below, before jamming his bolt pistol into the maw of a second and reducing its head to shredded meat. A red haze spattered his skull-faced visage, anointing him in blood. Yet as deadly as he was, Elysius could not kill them all.

'Honorious!' yelled Tsu'gan.

The battle-brother swept his flamer around from pouring gouts of promethium down the wall and sent a searing blaze over the greenskins trying to outflank the Chaplain.

'Burn in the fires of perdition, xenos!' spat Elysius, as the orks were consumed and plunged, flailing, into the mobs amassing at the foot of the wall.

Tsu'gan wiped a swathe of blood from his visor and took a moment to look around the battle site. Sporadic skirmishes had erupted all across the wall. The Tactical squads bore the brunt of the attacks, allowing the Devastators in the higher, less accessible towers to continue wreaking carnage amongst the greater horde that swelled beyond in the ash basin like a green slough.

Many sergeants had broken their warriors up into combat squads; those that fought hand-to-hand or to disengage the grapnels, and those that maintained a ranged fusillade.

In the brief seconds of assessment he allowed himself, Tsu'gan also noticed ork vehicles prosecuting suicide runs against the walls. He saw a bulky wagon, festooned with plates and brimming with orks, rammed headlong in the wall. Shot apart by heavy bolters and multi-meltas, the wagon was a wreck, but now the greenskins were climbing up its tower-like pulpit and using the debris to gain the battlements. Missiles choomed overhead, super-heated beams cross-hatched the night obliterating the ork suicide runners before they could close, but couldn't stop them all.

An impact against the lower part of his section almost knocked Tsu'gan off his feet. The tremor rippled up through the metal and rockcrete. A blast wave of heat washed over the sergeant and his squad, as the vehicle that had collided into the wall ignited and exploded. A few seconds later, scrapes and clanks could be heard as the orks scrambled up the makeshift siege tower.

'Grenades!' ordered Tsu'gan, knowing that he was out, but that half of his squad could oblige him. Frag grenades bounded down the wrecked carcass of the vehicle, pulped and burning against the wall, and exploded in a series of dull percussions. The scraping and clanking ceased.

'Glory to Prometheus!' he yelled, exultant in this small victory.

Then he saw the force approaching the Techmarine Draedius's gate.

A mob of heavily armoured orks advanced under fire towards the fortress's only ingress.

Something moved amongst the larger ork bodies. Tsu'gan caught the glint of metal, a spherical object daubed in jagged iconography, akin to a mine…

'Concentrate fi—'

A concussive blast erupted from the gate below, cutting the sergeant off before he could issue the order to try and stop it. The Salamanders occupying the section of wall directly above it were thrown off their feet. Out the corner of his eye, Tsu'gan thought he saw Shen'kar pitched off the battlements. His vision was marred by coiling smoke and exploding debris, so he couldn't be certain. Brother Malicant stumbled and the company banner fell. Only Captain N'keln kept his footing, snatching the banner in defiance of the fire crawling rapidly up the wall, lashing tongues of flame devouring everything they touched.

'Tank bombers,' said Tiberon, groggily. The squad had felt the blast wave like the full force of a hammer blow. 'Must've cracked open the gate…'

Greenskins swarming into the dust cloud billowing from the gate confirmed Tiberon's theory. The Salamanders still standing aimed through the murk, trying to take out the ork assault force that had seemingly appeared from nowhere. Ork commandos returned fire, and Tsu'gan saw another of his brothers fall; a lucky shot through his gorget disabling him.

The heavy-armoured brutes also returned, obscured by the grey fug of smoke and churned ash now swathing the battlefield. The throaty rumble of revving chain-blades could be heard through it, anonymous and forbidding.

The orks converged on the gate and the brother-sergeant was powerless to stop it. He cursed his position on the wall, wanting desperately to be where the fighting was fiercest. A bright plume of fire, its roar so loud it eclipsed the chugging chorus of mechanised blades, tore through the smoke and murk below, devouring the assaulting horde with voracious hunger.

Fire Anvil had unleashed its flamestorm cannons and the orks tasted the Land Raider Redeemer's fury. Howling in rage and pain, the greenskins fell back. Enflamed bodies stumbled from the ruined gate, before sinking to their knees and collapsing in charred heaps upon the ground. No Salamander put them down; they just let them burn.

Three consecutive bursts and the conflagration ebbed, leaving scorched earth, edged by fire, in its wake.

'In Vulkan's name and for the glory of the Chapter!'

Praetor's stentorian timbre thundered across the comm-feed like a rallying bow wave. The Firedrakes had filled the breach.

'In Vulkan's name!' echoed N'keln, standing tall amidst the dying flames wreathing the battlements before him. Brother Malicant was down, but the captain held aloft the company banner in his stead. The coiling drake depicted on the sacred cloth snapped and snarled in the wind as if alive within the fabric. The edges of it were burned and blackened, but that only added to its belligerent allure. N'keln became a beacon, forged as steel upon the anvil of war at last.

'None shall pass,' he roared, and the firedrake upon the banner seemed to roar with him.

Tsu'gan found a smile was curling his lip.

The orks were doomed.

In desperation, the last of the tribal chieftains had assaulted the wall up one of the wrecked wagon towers. It gained the battlements, bloodied but unbowed.

Elysius, just finished dispensing with one of its lessers at the end of his bolt pistol, rammed his crozius through the foul beast's chest as it appeared. It snarled, only for the Chaplain to head-butt it with his battle-helm, shattering a tusk and then snapping off the other with a savage pistol-whip from his still-smoking sidearm. He tossed the weapon aside, seizing the dying chieftain in his gauntlet, the other hand gripped tightly around the haft of the crackling crozius, and lifted the ork into the air.

In a stunning feat of strength, or faith, Elysius raised the flailing ork above his head and flung it, screaming, onto the ground far below.

'I cast thee out, abomination!'

Coupled with the Fire Anvil's fury and the wrath of Praetor's Terminators, it proved a decisive blow.

The orks fled en masse, back across the killing field and up to the ridge.

Their warboss took their capitulation badly. Every one of the fleeing greenskins was slaughtered by the hordes that still remained.

A strange lull descended. It was punctuated by a deep throbbing in the back of Tsu'gan's skull, like the Salamander could feel the ork warboss's rage. So potent was the beast's fury that it had manifested physically, a distinctive pulse in the greenskins' natural psychic overspill.

In the absence of battle, the sense of despair from earlier returned. Tsu'gan lurched forward to grip the lip of the battlement for support.

'Sire?' hissed Iagon, leaning conspiratorially towards his sergeant.

Tsu'gan held up his hand to show he was all right. He gripped his bolter for reassurance. Guilt flooded his body pervasively like a cancer, and he longed for the brander-priest's rod and the pain that dulled the ache inside him.

'There is evil here…' he heard himself slurring, as low as a whisper.

It was eking out of the stones. In his delirium, Tsu'gan almost imagined he could see it: a thin, trailing mist of utter black.

'Hold together, brothers,' Elysius girded him, 'and we shall smite the alien.'

The baleful effects of the iron fortress ebbed. It was not yet strong enough to overcome the Chaplain's fervour. Tsu'gan straightened again, gritting his teeth.

'Let's finish this.'

The warboss bellowed, reasserting his dominance. The orks charged again.

Dak'ir emerged from the chasm to a different world than the one which he'd left previously. An eldritch darkness blanketed the ash dunes now. A black shape, like a moon or planetoid, smothered whatever celestial body of Scoria should have held prominence in the night sky. This then was the black rock of which Illiad had spoken; the carrier for the orks. Its orbit had brought it close enough to the ashen world for the greenskins to launch an assault. As time passed, Dak'ir knew it would only bring them closer.

The strange milieu brought other sensations with it, too - the sounds and smells of battle. The bulk of the Vulkan's Wrath, still high as an Imperial bastion's defence tower even though it was partly sunken into the desert, obscured Dak'ir's view but he could still see a warm orange glow tinting the darkling sky. There was something serene and beautiful about it, despite the distant crump of explosions and the whiff of smoke and promethium wafted on a hot breeze.

The comm-feed in his battle-helm crackled, like life breathed back into a corpse, and he heard the voice of Brother-Sergeant Agatone.

'Marshal your forces, brother,' he snapped, clearly perturbed that they'd been out of vox contact for so long. The inquest would come later. 'We are about to be under attack.'

Dak'ir didn't question it. Instead, he ran around the half-submerged prow of the Vulkan's Wrath and climbed up to the summit of a small dune. What he saw there quickened his heart to a state of combat readiness.

'Pyriel,' said Dak'ir. The Librarian had been right behind the sergeant and followed him up the shallow dune. 'When you said there were no oceans on Scoria…'

Before their eyes, still distant but closing, there boiled a belligerent green sea.

'I was wrong,' Pyriel replied simply.

The voice of Illiad intruded.

'Swine-tusks…' he uttered, hoarsely.

The rest of the combat squad had positioned themselves around him in battle formation. They'd all heard Agatone over the comm-feed.

'The swine-tusks have returned,' rasped Illiad, gaping in terrified awe at the grotesque spectacle swarming the dunes. 'The slayers of your brothers are back to kill us all.' Dak'ir hadn't heard fear in the human before… until now.

The main swell of the greenskin horde was far off at the iron fortress, yet still their masses could be seen by the defenders of the Vulkan's Wrath, spreading across the land like a dark stain. A tributary had peeled off from the major force and was surging towards the stricken strike cruiser.

Do you feel them, Dak'ir? Pyriel asked psychically.

Dak'ir nodded slowly. Yes, he felt it.

'Such rage…' he muttered.

The orks were not that far away now. Dak'ir could make out the crude and jagged forms of their vehicles and see their brutish weapons as they discharged them into the air. He discerned the snarled visage of the barbarous greenskin and his fist clenched. These were the spore of those beasts that virtually wiped out his ancient brothers. Here, upon the same ashen fields, the battle would be refought - Salamander versus greenskins. Dak'ir was adamant that this time, the orks would not be back.

The comm-feed spat static for a few seconds and then cleared again.

'Sergeant,' growled the voice of Agatone. 'I need your forces now.'

'On our way,' Dak'ir returned and cut the feed. He ordered his combat squad to move out. They left the dune swiftly, Illiad in tow, and went to liaise with Agatone and the others.

Rounding the vast bulk of the Vulkan's Wrath, Dak'ir saw that the medical tents were already emptying. The injured that could walk or be moved safely were trailing out in ragged groups.

Battle-Brother Zo'tan - from the other half of Dak'ir's squad - had taken charge of the armsmen and able-bodied human crew, forming them into auxiliaries. A quick head count revealed almost three hundred troops, divided into six fifty-man battalions, assigned squad leaders and commanders. The auxiliary had started to assume strategic positions around the medical tents.

They were the last line of defence, there to protect those still festering in their pallet-beds. Even though the badly wounded probably wouldn't survive, the Salamanders would not leave them to be butchered.

Brother-Sergeant Agatone was stalking towards them. Sergeant Ek'Bar remained behind where they had been discussing a holo-chart, and waited patiently.

Agatone dispensed with any preamble.

'We have three Tactical and one depleted Assault squad,' he began. 'Venerable Brothers Ashamon and Amadeus have also been roused from slumber by Master Argos.' The doughty forms of the Dreadnoughts loomed in the distance, prowling the extremity of the defensive cordon designated by Agatone.

As he looked, Dak'ir noticed acting Sergeant Gannon also up ahead. He was kneeling upon a high dune, his Assault squad gathered around him, surveying the orks through a pair of magnoculars.

Agatone was interrupted abruptly by the comm-feed. The sergeant pressed a gauntleted finger to his gorget, as his battle-helm was mag-locked to his belt.

'Go ahead,' he instructed.

Gannon's voice came through.

'I estimate four thousand enemy,' reported the acting sergeant, 'with assorted vehicles and bikes. Armament is mainly automatic chain-gun and solid shot rifles and pistols.'

'Good work, sergeant. To your positions. In Vulkan's name.'

'In Vulkan's name.'

Gannon secured the magnoculars and stood up. A second later he and his squad took to the air, jump pack engines screaming as they ignited, and trailing smoke and fire.

Agatone gestured to the middle distance, where the Thunderfire cannons had patrolled earlier. There was no sign of the tracked heavy guns now, or their Techmarine operators.

'The grenade line is still untouched,' he told them, 'and we've added additional explosive payloads. Our stratagem is to funnel the orks into it, launching a full assault into their vanguard when they're scattered, hurting and confused.'

Dak'ir regarded the greenskin splinter force as Agatone relayed his plan. The xenos had forged some distance between themselves and the parent horde; the latter was just a dense black line cresting a far-off high dune now. He also noticed that the splinter force had become stretched in its eagerness for a fight. A vanguard of bikers, trucks and the faster orkoid elements ranged ahead of a much larger body of greenskins comprising foot soldiers and rumbling half-tracks.

'See how they are spread?' said Agatone. It was wide, widening all the time as the speed-obsessed orks raced and tried to out do each other. Dak'ir was put in mind of a giant maw slowly opening as it prepared for its first bite. 'We need them to become a dense column.'

'Corral them,' said Dak'ir, seeing the potential at once to manoeuvre the fast, but brittle greenskin advance forces.

Agatone nodded, a slight hint of irritation in his manner. 'It is already in place.' He pointed to distant flanks, just beyond the Dreadnoughts. Dak'ir saw something moving there, obscured by the eerie half-darkness.

'Thunderfire cannons,' he thought aloud.

'Just so,' Agatone replied. 'Subterranean blast shelling will commence as soon as we've got the orks' attention. The tremors will force them into line. Any that don't will be dealt with by the Dreadnoughts.'

Dak'ir's eyes narrowed as he pictured abstractly the full realisation of Agatone's plan.

'We need bait to draw them in.'

The other sergeant nodded.

Dak'ir checked the load of his plasma pistol, then secured it in its holster again.

'I'll take a combat squad only,' he said. 'Where should we deploy?'

'Five Astartes is all I can spare, Dak'ir,' Agatone replied. He gestured to a patch of rocky ground about two hundred metres shy of the grenade line. 'That's your squad's position.'

It was as good a staging point as any. The rocks provided some cover and the ground was set into a small depression the Salamanders could use like a crater to hunker down in if necessary.

'Five Fire-born to engage a horde of about five hundred,' said Ba'ken, his tone sardonic. 'Good odds.'

'And the rest of the force - what will you do about the ork reserves?' asked Dak'ir.

'Argos is working on something,' Agatone replie looking slightly uncomfortable for the first time during the impromptu briefing, 'We just need to give him some time. Stall the greenskins.'

'How much time?' Dak'ir asked levelly.

Agatone's expression was stony.

'As much as we can.'

It didn't take an anthro-linguistic servitor to realise that Agatone's obvious misgivings were grave. The sergeant went on.

'Once the vanguard is eliminated, fall back to the second line. You'll see it because I'll be stood at it with the rest of our forces.'

'And after that, if the orks get through?'

Agatone snorted in mock derision. There was a sense of pathos to the gesture.

'After that it won't matter.'