cracking. Crevices and chasms split open, swallowing orks in their thousands. Those not falling to their doom in the abyssal darkness were consumed by rushing lava torrenting into the air.
Booming thunder pealed from the volcanoes, louder and somehow final as they erupted with hellish force.
Praetor's laughter rivalled their bellow. The skies were darkening with smoke and ash. Soon artificial night would resume once more.
'When fire rains from the sky and ash smothers the sun, it is the end of days,' he shouted.
Tsu'gan's gaze was still fixed upon the turbulent heavens. 'That is not all the heavens bring, brother.'
Praetor followed Tsu'gan's outstretched finger.
The belly of a ship emerged slowly through the billowing smoke clouds. Tsu'gan was put in mind of a giant predator of the deep emerging from a mist-wreathed ocean. Tiny meteorites arced past it on fiery contrails as it hovered a thousand metres above the surface. The backwash of massive ventral engines pressed down upon Tsu'gan despite its altitude. It was an Astartes strike cruiser.
A
rgos raised his
body up out of the ventral thruster conduit in the enginarium. He stretched the stiffness out of his back, eased the knots from his tired muscles and rolled his shoulders beneath his pauldrons to coax back some mobility. He had done all he could.
The fourth, still non-functional, ventral thruster bank was prepped as exhaustively as possible. The machine-rites had been observed, the correct unguents applied and offerings dedicated. His throat was hoarse from the litanies of function and ignition he had performed in concert with his Techmarines. The Master of Forge was a part of this ship; he felt its malady and he knew its moods. If they could replace the parts they'd lost and needed, it would achieve loft. Once free of the dunes, the
main engines would do the rest.
The comm-feed in his battle-helm hissed and spat with static before Argos heard Brother Uclides, one of Sergeant Agatone's squad tasked with escorting the human civilians aboard the ship.
After undertaking a cursory geological analysis, Argos had determined that the planet's tectonic integrity was nearing imminent disintegration. Prudently, he had given the order for the auxiliary and all still living casualties to be secured aboard the ship for safety. Those injured who could not be moved were given the Emperor's Peace and enclosed in medi-caskets for later interment into the pyreum.
'All of the Scorian settlers are aboard, Master Argos. What are your orders?'
Argos was about to respond when he noticed the radiation spike in the atmosphere detected by the ship's still functioning sensors, relayed to him through his direct interface.
'Go to the fighter hangar and help prepare the gun-ships,' he answered, changing his mind when he assumed the black rock had been destroyed. Apart from the servitors, the Salamander was alone, having already despatched the other Techmarines to the Thunderhawks still locked in their transit rigs. 'Our brothers will be in need of immediate extraction and conveyance back to the
Uclides communicated his obedience and cut the feed.
Argos was about to climb out of the sunken thruster access conduit when the ship's vox-unit crackled into life alongside him. Uclides would have used the helmet comm-feed. The signal originated from outside of the ship.
'Brother Techmarine Argos: 3rd Company, Salamanders Chapter, aboard the
he began, observing protocol. 'Identify yourself.'
A clipped voice responded with all the warmth and smoothness of rusty nails.
'This is Brother Techmarine Harkane of his most noble lord Vinyar's strike cruiser,
B
rother-
C
aptain
N
'keln's order
to stand fast had kept his forces out of bombardment range and the worst hit areas of the meteor shower. The celestial storm had all but abated now and the greenskins, though battered and severely reduced in strength, still lived and fought.
During a brief lull in the battle,
N
'keln took stock of his surroundings. Mounted upon a high dune with his Inferno Guard and Sergeant Agatone, who had emerged alongside them with Fugis when they'd returned to the battlefield, N
'keln surveyed the carnage. He saw tiny knots of Salamander armour out amongst the thrashing horde, lit by controlled bursts of bolter fire or plumes of igniting promethium. Their rear was anchored by the Devastators still. Lok was in able command, several hundred metres distant since the advance. The Dreadnoughts both functioned, prowling the edges of the Salamanders' deployment zone. Ashamon had lost his heavy flamer and meltagun but he continued to pound on the orks with his seismic hammer. Amadeus was wholly intact, but with several deep gouges in his protective sarcophagus where the greenskins had attempted to forcibly exhume him.
N'keln estimated they had lost approximately thirty-three per cent of their original number. He didn't know how many of those casualties would fight again. In light of the ork masses it was a lower rate of attrition than he'd expected. The greenskins, in contrast, had died in their thousands. A slew of carcasses lay strewn across the dunes, slowly decaying.
The company banner, held aloft by Malicant, began snapping violently in a sudden downdraft, drawing N'keln's gaze upward. Above them, the brother-captain saw the long, grey ventral hull of a ship he recognised. Fraught with interference, the comm-feed in his battle-helm opened.
N'keln listened intently to the voice of Brother Argos as he relayed exactly what Harkane on the
had said to him. Towards the end, the captain's face became grim.
'Tell him he has my word,' he replied, jaw clenched. He cut the feed and ordered the warriors around him back into the fight. N'keln suddenly needed to vent his wrath.
P
yriel ran to
the edge of the crevice where he'd seen Dak'ir fall, expecting the worst. Peering over the edge, through smoke and flame and heat, he saw it was a short drop into a bubbling lava pool. Ghor'gan's armour was slowly disintegrating in it, along with the rest of the Dragon Warrior. There was no sign of Dak'ir.
Then the smoke and steam cleared slightly and Pyriel saw him. Dak'ir was climbing up the rocky face of the crevice and had almost reached the top. Pyriel reached down and dragged him up just as the lava flow pooled high enough to swallow up the corpse of the renegade completely.
'You are adept at cheating death, brother,' Pyriel remarked. His tone was an ambivalent mesh of relief and thin-veiled suspicion.
Dak'ir only nodded, too exhausted to speak for the moment.
The cavern was crashing down around them. Fire wreathed it and falling rocks and spills of dust fogged the air. Nowhere was safe to stand now, with fresh chasms opening from the webbed
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