Salamander

sea.

It was a mask - the simulacrum of a human face; his face, or at least half of it. Dak'ir took the newly forged item in his hands. The metal had cooled but it still seared his fingers. He barely felt it as he trod silently to a plane of hammered silver, around a metre wide and three metres high, resting against the wall of the forge. Dak'ir's image was reflected in it. Burning red eyes set into an ebon countenance stared back at him. Only the face was actually half black; the other half was bleached near-white. Its normally black pigmentation, the melanin defect that marked all Salamanders, had been burned away. Apothecary Fugis had told him the scar would not heal, that Dak'ir's defacement was damage caused at the cellular level.

Dak'ir touched the burnt skin and the memory of the melta-flare on Stratos rekindled in his mind's eye. Kadai's death pulled at his gut. As he raised the mask to his face, flashes of remembrance like slivers of ice on calm water floated to the surface of his mind: rock harvesting in the depths of Ignea, hunting sauroch over the Scorian Plain, dredging on the Acerbian Sea - all deadly pursuits, but the formative memories of Dak'ir's pre-adolescence. The images faded like smoke before a cool wind, leaving a pang of regret. Some part of Dak'ir felt sorrow the loss of his old life, the death of his former existence before he was battle-brother, when he was just Hazon and his father's son.

As the years passed, filled with war and glory in the Emperor's name, with cities burned and enemies slain, the vestiges held by Dak'ir of those old memories eroded replaced by battles, a baptism in blood.

The pull towards his old life - one, in truth, that had scarcely begun - confused him. Was it disloyal, even heretical to have such thoughts? Dak'ir couldn't help wonder why the memories plagued him.

'I am no longer human,' he admitted to his reflection.

'I am more. I am evolved. I am Astartes.'

The mask covered his ebon visage, leaving the burned side of his face, the flesh-pink tissue, exposed. For a moment he tried to imagine himself as human again. The attempt was a failure.

'But if I am not human, am I still capable of humanity?'

The bass retort of the blast doors opening intruded on Dak'ir's reverie. He hastily pulled the mask away and threw it into the open grate of a nearby furnace, immolating it in fire. The silver ran like tears down the half-face of the mask, which held its form only briefly before sagging against the intense heat and becoming little more than molten metal.

'A rejected blade, sergeant?' said Emek, from behind him.

Dak'ir shut the furnace grate and faced his battle-brother. 'No, it was just scrap.'

Emek seemed content to leave it at that. He was fully armoured, the green battle-plate turned a lurid violet in the reflected lustre of the lava ponds. He held his battle-helm in the crook of his arm and his eyes flashed suddenly with zeal and vigour.

'We've been summoned to Prometheus,' Emek said after a few moments. 'Our lords have consulted the Tome of Fire and have divined an answer regarding Vulkan's chest. Your armour is waiting for you in the next chamber, sir.'

Dak'ir wiped his sooty body down with a length of already blackened cloth and began putting away the tools he had been using.

'Where are we to meet?' he asked.

'The Cindara Plateau. Brother Ba'ken will join us there.'

Emek lingered in silence as Dak'ir finished securing his forging equipment.

'There is something else on your mind, brother?' asked the sergeant.

'Yes, but I do not wish to appear insubordinate.'

Dak'ir's tone suggested his impatience. 'Speak, brother.'

Emek waited while he marshalled his thoughts, as if choosing his next words with great care. 'Before we departed for the Hadron Belt, back in the Vault of Remembrance, I overheard Brother-Sergeant Tsu'gan say something about your complicity in Captain Kadai's death.' Emek paused to gauge the reaction of Dak'ir's, who gave none, before continuing. 'Most of us were not present when Kadai was slain. There are… unanswered questions.'

Dak'ir thought about admonishing his battle-brother - to question your superior officer, however delicately couched, was grounds for punishment. But he had asked for honesty from Emek, and that was what he had given. He could hardly take him to task over that.

'The truth is, brother, that we were all culpable when it came to the tragedy of Kadai's death. I, Tsu'gan, all who set foot in Aura Hieron had our parts to play, even the captain himself. There is no mystery, no dark secret. We were outmanoeuvred by a cunning and deadly foe.'

'The Dragon Warriors,' Emek asserted in the following silence.

'Yes,' Dak'ir replied. 'The renegades knew we were coming. They were ready for us, and laid their trap for us to fall into. Theirs is an old creed, Emek - an eye for an eye; a captain for a captain.'

'To plan such a snare… it borders on obsession.'

'Obsessive, paranoid, vindictive - Nihilan is all of these things and worse.'

'Did you know him?'

'No. I met him only at Moribar during my first mission as a scout in 7th Company. Nor did I know his captain, Ushorak, though he schooled his protege well in the arts of deception and malice.'

'And it was he who died on the sepulchre world.'

'In the crematoria forge at Moribar's heart, yes. Kadai thought Nihilan was dead also, but unless a shade confronted us on Stratos he survived well enough, driven on by hate and the prospect of revenge.'

'And he was once…'

'One of us, yes,' Dak'ir finished for him. 'Even the sons of Vulkan are not without stain. The capacity for betrayal exists in us all, Emek. It is why we must constantly test ourselves and our faith, so that we are girded against temptation and selfish ideals.'

'And Ushorak?'

Dak'ir's face darkened and he lowered his gaze as if in remembrance, though in truth he only knew of the deeds that had led to Ushorak's bloody defection; the act itself was many years old, he had not witnessed it first hand. 'No. He was of another Chapter, though the shame of it is no less galling.'

'Nihilan did all of this just to avenge his lord… He must be very embittered. Is there no way to rehabilitate him and the renegades in his charge? It's not unheard of for forgiveness to be given and penance granted. What about the Executioners?'

Dak'ir shook his head, sadly. 'This is not Badab, Emek. Nihilan and his followers have entered the Eye of Terror, there is no way back from that. His last chance, Ushorak's last chance, was on Moribar. They didn't take it, and now they are our enemies, no different to the nameless horrors of the warp. But I do not think there was only vengeance on Nihilan's mind when he ambushed us on Stratos. There was something more to his plan.'

'What makes you say that?'

Dak'ir looked his brother in the eye.

'It's just a feeling.'