Salamander

'It is more than protocol that stays his tongue. They are hiding something,' muttered Tsu'gan, before turning away himself, a dark look directed first at Lorkar and then Dak'ir.

Once Tsu'gan had gone, Dak'ir whispered, 'Keep your eyes open.'

Ba'ken's gaze was fixed on the departing yellow-armoured sergeant. He nodded, releasing his grip from the piston-hammer.

A thin mist

drifted over the deck of the cryogenic vault like the slow passage of a tired apparition. A gaseous amalgam of nitrogen and helium combined to produce the chemical compound that would catalyse the cryogenic process, it rolled languidly off a series of semi-transparent tanks situated at one end of a large metal room. A high ceiling still carried the ubiquitous censers and there were small Mechanicus shrines set into alcoves in the walls. Exposed hosing, cables and other machinery were also prevalent. It was as if they were the excised innards of some mechanical behemoth, and this room was part of its mech-biology. The dense agglomeration of pipes and wires extruded from the room's perimeter and fed to a series of cryo-caskets that dominated a pair of raised, arc-shaped platforms in the centre. Both platforms were approximately two metres off deck level and reachable via a grilled metal stairway on two sides. A deactivated lifter plate was also evident, delineated by a rectangle of warning chevrons. The natural passageway between the two platforms led to the vault's only exit, a huge blast door sealed shut by three adamantium locking bars.

Brother Emek wiped his gauntleted hand across the thick plexi-glass of one of the cryo-caskets, breaking up a veneer of hoarfrost.

'No outward vital signs,' he muttered after a few moments. 'This one is dead, too.'

The liquid nitrogen run-off pooled around the Astartes's armoured boots, curling around his greaves. It spilled off the edge of the platform where Emek was standing to hang a few centimetres above the lower deck of the vault like a ghostly veil.

At the aft-facing end of the room Harkane worked at releasing the blast door, the low hiss of his plasma-cutter a dulcet chorus to the machine-hum of the stasis tanks. Half his Marines Malevolent battle-brothers were clustered around him - Lorkar's combat squad - intent on the Techmarine's endeavours as if whatever lay beyond the door was of profound interest to them. The brother-sergeant was locked in almost constant conference with his battle-helm's comm-feed now. Whoever he was getting his orders from was issuing regular instruction and demanding progress reports. The rest of Lorkar's troops were silently guarding the forced entry point and, unless Dak'ir's instincts were off, watching him and his battle-brothers.

The Salamanders' first concern was the possibility of survivors. The Marines Malevolent's disregard in this had not gone unnoticed, but was left unchallenged. Whatever the other Astartes' mission, the Salamanders were not privy to it and it was not the place of one Chapter to question another for such flimsy reasons when all the facts were not known. Pyriel was determined it would not affect their own rescue efforts, however.

Two groups of five Salamanders, chosen from each of the two squads by their respective sergeants, were tasked with investigating the forty cryogenic chambers. Emek led one group; Iagon the other. Two ranks of twenty dominated the raised deck space, situated opposite the blast doors against either wall. Within were human adepts. Some had amputated limbs, fused stumps trailing insulated cables and wiring; others had hollow eye sockets, ringed with pink scar-tissue and tiny puncture marks where the installation pins had gone in and then been retracted. The crew's constituent mechanical components - bionic eyes, arms, mechadendrite clusters and even a half-track for a double leg amputee - were locked away in transparent armour-plas receptacles, stamped with the Mechanicus cog and fastened to their individual cryo-caskets. So far, eighteen of the forty were dead.

For one the freezing process had malfunctioned, atrophying his body, ice crystals infecting his lifeless skin like a contagion; another had simply drowned in the solution that had failed to catalyse when the casket was activated, the adept's eyes wide with frozen panic, a forlornly beating fist held for eternity stuck to the inner-glass. The others had succumbed to cardiac infarction - possibly brought on through shock during the cryogenic process or at the separation of their mechanised limbs and augmentation - hypothermia or other, unidentifiable, mortalities.

One thing was clear. The steps taken to preserve the crew, what few still lived, had been conducted in haste.

'Brother-Sergeant Dak'ir,' Emek's voice came over the comm-feed in his battle-helm.

'Go ahead, brother,' Dak'ir returned. He was standing on the lower deck alongside Brother Apion who was trying to raise the

Vulkan's Wrath

through a ship-to-ship comm-device set up in the room. Thus far he'd had no success - the strike-cruiser was obviously still out of range.

'I need you to see this, sir,' Emek replied.

Dak'ir instructed Apion to continue. A self-conscious glance at Tsu'gan revealed his brother-sergeant to be intent on Lorkar and his warriors at the blast door. A cursory examination of the Salamanders' other forces showed that Pyriel was similarly engrossed, though Dak'ir suspected the Librarian's awareness went far beyond that of his fellow brother-sergeant. Those battle-brothers not engaged with checking the cryo-caskets were keeping sentry. The Salamanders mixed with the Marines Malevolent directly and the tension between them was almost palpable. Ba'ken, in particular, caught Dak'ir's attention positioned next to a Space Marine who was almost his match in sheer bulk. The Marine Malevolent bore a skull-faced battle-helm, the beak nose sheared off and sealed in order to promote the cranial analogue. Not like a Chaplain's, masterfully wrought to resemble bone, the battle-helm's decoration was painted on. He also carried a plasma gun, and held it with the sureness of a warrior born. The two massive Space Marines were very alike, but stoically refused to acknowledge one another. Dak'ir hoped it would stay that way as he reached the top of the stairway and the cryo-caskets.

Emek was a third of the way down the sub-group of four he was analysing when he saw his sergeant approach. Evidently, it was slow going.

Most of the associated instrumentation of the cryo-caskets was damaged, so there was no way to tell how long the stasis-sleep had lasted. It also retarded the assessment of vital signs, but the Salamanders engaged in that duty did so exhaustively and methodically. The majority of the bio-monitors situated beneath the caskets were no longer operating, either, or were simply too encrusted with ice to be readable. From the corner of his helmet lens, Dak'ir noted Iagon using his auspex to ascertain life signs in certain cases. The battle-brother acknowledged him from across the small gulf between the platforms, and Dak'ir felt his guard go up instinctively.

'Sir,' said Emek with a slight nod, once his sergeant had reached him.

'Show me, brother.'

Emek stepped back to allow Dak'ir to move in and get a better look. 'See for yourself, sergeant.'

Emek had smeared away the rime of ice crystals obscuring the view through the casket's plexi-glass frontis. Dak'ir peered through the ragged gap in the frost and saw the remains of the adept inside. It was difficult to discern at first: the nitro-helium solution was tainted with blood, lots of blood. Other things floated in the tank too, held fast in the stagnant liquid.

'Flesh,' Emek said from behind him. 'Bone chips too, if I'm not mistaken.'

'Mercy of Vulkan…' Dak'ir breathed. His voice was made even hollower through his battle-helm.

'Self-mutilation, sir.' The explanation was hardly necessary. Deep lacerations ran down the adept's torso, arms and legs, four-pronged as if dug by fingernails. The stark evidence of the adept's hands supported that theory - they were stained with blood. Three of the nails had been ripped off, revealing the soft red membrane beneath; the rest were clogged with shreds of flensed skin.