Salamander

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 comm-feed. '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. 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