Salamander

he gripped the other Space Marine's forearm in a warrior greeting and nodded his respect.

'Salamanders?' said Lorkar, as if seeing them for the first time, 'Of the First Founding? We are deeply honoured.' The Marine Malevolent bowed, then stepped back to remove his battle-helm as his battle-brothers looked on.

There was a strange manner about them, Dak'ir thought. The Marines Malevolent appeared edgy. All of Lorkar's ostensible bonhomie, his deference, seemed faked, as if they had not expected company and now they had it, resented its presence.

With the gorget clasps disengaged, Lorkar lifted off his battle-helm and cradled it under one arm. Like the rest of his armour, it was chipped and scratched. Much of the yellow staining had worn away, revealing bare ceramite beneath. Black hazard markings striped the metal, which Dak'ir assumed indicated veteran status. Lorkar's grizzled visage clinched that suspicion.

Two platinum service studs were drilled into the Marine Malevolent sergeant's skull. His skin was dark and rugged as if the centuries of battlefield dirt and enemy blood were ingrained in it. Scars crosshatched his chin, jaw and cheekbones, a veritable map of old pain and remembered wars. His hair was shorn short, but done so crudely as if by shears and without care or the assistance of a serf. But it was his eyes that struck the most - they were cold and empty, as if inured to killing and bereft of compassion or regard. Dak'ir had seen flint with more warmth.

Not wishing to cause offence, Dak'ir removed his own battle-helm, mag-locking it to his weapons belt. A tremor of surprise ran across Sergeant Lorkar's face, which then spread to his cohorts, as he regarded the Salamander's visage for the first time.

'Your eyes and skin…' he began. For a moment, Dak'ir thought he saw Lorkar's hand straying to his bolter, hanging on its strap by his side. The gesture was instinctive. Clearly the Marines Malevolent had never seen an Astartes with a melanochromatic defect before.

'As our primarch made us,' Dak'ir responded evenly, aware of his own brothers' restiveness around him, and meeting Lorkar's gaze brazenly with his burning red eyes.

'Of course…' The look of thinly-veiled suspicion in Lorkar's face suggested anything but placation.

Tsu'gan's voice broke the uncomfortable silence.

'Marines Malevolent, eh? Do you find malice to be a useful tool on campaign, brother?'

Lorkar turned on the Salamander sergeant, who was obviously goading him.

Tsu'gan decided he didn't like the way their new found ''allies'' looked at Dak'ir. Their manner smacked of disgust and repellence. His intervention was not for the Ignean's benefit, Tsu'gan's contempt for him went deeper than the flesh, it was because the Marine Malevolent's slight tarred all of Vulkan's sons and that was something he could not abide.

'

Hate

is the surest weapon,' Lorkar replied with all seriousness. So vehement was his stress on the first word that if the sergeant had had the power to kill with it then Tsu'gan would have keeled over in his power armour there and then. 'You are the commanding officer here, Salamander?'

'No,' Tsu'gan answered flatly, taunting having now turned to outright belligerence.

'That honour is mine.' Pyriel stepped forward from the throng of Salamanders, authority and certainty never more evident in his voice and manner.

'

A warp dabbler!'

Dak'ir heard one of other Marines Malevolent hiss. He carried a twin-linked combi-bolter and wore a beak-shaped battle-helm made to look like a shark's mouth with painted fangs either side.

Lorkar interceded before Tsu'gan's promised violence was enacted.

'Excuse Brother Nemiok,' he said addressing Pyriel, who exhibited no reaction. 'We are unaccustomed to Librarians in ranking positions,' Lorkar explained somewhat thinly. 'The Marines Malevolent still adhere to some of the tenets laid down at Nikea.'

'An outmoded set of edicts some ten thousand years old, fashioned by a council arraigned before your Chapter was even formed,' countered Tsu'gan, his mood still truculent.

'Communion with the warp is perilous,' Pyriel intervened. 'I can understand your Chapter's caution, Sergeant Lorkar. But I can assure you that I am master of my abilities,' he declared, to defuse the situation and suspend the trading of insults before they devolved into threats and then violence. 'Perhaps we have lingered here long enough?'

'I agree,' replied Lorkar, with a dark glance at Tsu'gan before he replaced his battle-helm. He paused a moment, bowing his head slightly, and seemed to be listening intently to some private instruction. 'We should continue on together,' he said at last, surfacing from whatever discreet confabulation he had been engaged in. 'The servitors in this section of the ship are dormant now, but we can't know how long that will last and what other defences we might face.' Lorkar then turned on his heel, his warriors parting like a yellow sea to allow him through.

'Worse than Templars,' muttered Ba'ken to Emek, who was grateful that his battle-helm masked his amusement.

Dak'ir saw nothing humorous in it. The encounter with the Marines Malevolent had put him on edge. There was an air of frustrated superiority about them, suggesting they thought themselves uniquely worthy of the appellation ''Space Marine''. Yet here they were faced with a progenitor Chapter. Such evidence was difficult to refute, for even the most zealous-minded. They had an agenda, of that Dak'ir was certain. And if that conflicted with the Salamanders' mission, violence would surely follow.

The route deeper

into the

Archimedes Rex

was conducted largely in silence. Before they had headed out after the Marines Malevolent, Brother Emek had examined the wounded Salamanders using what rudimentary medical craft he possessed and declared all injuries minor, and the recipients fit for combat. Mercifully, there had been no further encounters with the forge-ship's guardians.

For now, it appeared that Lorkar was right - the servitors had returned to slumber.

Dak'ir sat beside an iron bulkhead in some kind of expansive storage room. The room contained numerous metal crates, caskets and munitions cylinders - all of which had already been ransacked. Dak'ir was sitting on one of the empty crates, methodically engaged in weapons maintenance rituals. He glanced up sporadically at the Marines Malevolent's Techmarine, who was using breaching tools and a promethium torch from his servo-harness to prise open a sealed blast door impeding their further progress into the forge-ship. It was the first barrier of its kind they had discovered which wouldn't open through a console or operational slate, suggesting the heart of the ship lay beyond it.

The other Salamanders were locked in similar routines to the sergeant. Once the room had been made secure, many had removed their battle-helms, taking the opportunity to be free of their stifling confines if only for a few minutes - for the Marines Malevolent's part, any reaction to the Salamanders' facial appearance was kept hidden. Pyriel was silently meditative, eyes shut whilst he channelled the reserves of his psychic energy and shored up his mental bulwarks to guard against daemonic possession. Tsu'gan paced impatiently, waiting for the Techmarine to complete his task. Dak'ir had learned the Astartes's name was Harkane, though that was all the taciturn Techmarine had disclosed.

They had already deviated from Emek's route. Sergeant Lorkar insisted that he and his combat squad had already tried that way and it was blocked. Harkane had mapped another course, and it was this which they now followed. Tsu'gan had been the most reluctant to accede. Pyriel's order had made it