Salamander

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 gore-drenched 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 another 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…