Salamander

of war.

The bizarre, crustacean-like beasts reminded Dak'ir of the tyranid, as he slew them alongside his Chaplain. He imagined them as the product of some errant spore cluster vented by a stricken hive ship, only to drift into Scoria's orbit and infest the planet. Generations old, they were now an outmoded bio- form that had simply not evolved, but rather stagnated and propagated.

Dak'ir's squad, together with three others, had mustered to their Chaplain's side when Elysius had issued the call to battle. The Salamanders had adopted a wide perimeter, surrounding the horde of chitin-beasts and slowly corralling them with sustained bolter bursts. The creatures were big, almost as large as a Rhino APC, and their bony carapaces were hard, but not impregnable. Their bulk made them awkward, though, and they possessed a limited field of vision. By encircling them, the Salamanders attacked their blind sides and vulnerable flanks. The xenos reacted with confused and impotent aggression as they sought to attack a foe that was everywhere at once.

'Ba'ken,' yelled Dak'ir, as he vaporised a chitin-creature's bone-claw with a bolt of plasma, 'cleanse and burn!'

The hulking Salamander trudged forward as his sergeant retreated and sent a swathe of ignited promethium over the stricken xenos-beast. It keened and clicked in agony as the flames washed over it, the air trapped within its bone-plates escaping in a hissing scream.

Elsewhere, staccato bursts of sustained bolter fire became ever more clipped, indicating that the battle against the chitin-creatures was drawing to its end. The last of them had been enclosed within a circle of green battle-plate that was slowly tightening like a noose. Occasional, desperate assaults from the cornered beasts were met with explosive rounds that punctured alien bodies, rupturing them from within and sending gouts of sludge-viscera spitting from flapping mandible mouths. Flamer bursts harried the wretched creatures further, and they keened and clicked before the hot glare, evidently afraid of fire.

Finally, with only a half dozen remaining, the xenos burrowed back into the earth, away from the armoured giants who brought bellowing thunder and fire from the heavens.

T

su'gan observed his

distant battle-brothers with envious eyes. Behind him, the crash-landed strike cruiser loomed like a canted cityscape, bizarrely off-kilter. Even partially sunk into the ashen ground as it was, the

Vulkan's Wrath

was huge. Its span was the width of several hive blocks and it took several Astartes to guard it at kilometre intervals. The many decks, towers, platforms, superstructures, hangars, bays, even temples and cathedrals stretched like a dull green metropolis slowly smothered by grey falling snow.

As the battle raged, Techmarines, servitors and human labour crews toiled over the ship's storm-lashed surface. The solar flares had scorched fresh battle-scars down the old strike cruiser's flanks, and punctured its armoured skin with fire-fringed, meteor-sized apertures. Aboard grav-sleds, the worker crews made detailed reports of structural damage. Sparks cascaded from the ranks of heavy-duty welding rigs, fusing plates from ancillary sections of the ship over the most heinous of its wounds. A few areas were so bad that the wreckage had to be sheared away with cutting tools and patched over like an amputated limb.

It was demanding work, but Tsu'gan was concerned with other matters as he watched the combat with the chitin-creatures from afar. Blood pulsed in his veins as he lived the battle vicariously. His fists clenched of their own volition. Inwardly, he cursed his fellow sergeants Agatone, Vargo and Dak'ir. Had he not been ordered to remain with the bulk of the company to discuss tactics and set up a command post, he would have rushed joyously into combat. The chitin-beasts presented no challenge, of course, but after months without battle Tsu'gan was eager to shed blood in the Emperor's name.

'The

Vulkan's Wrath

has sustained major damage, my lord.' The metallic voice of Argos brought Tsu'gan back.

He was standing with the Techmarine, Brother-Captain N'keln and several of his fellow sergeants in a makeshift command post, attempting to impose some order and stability after the crash.

The command post itself was a prefabricated structure, little more than four walls, a canted roof and a hololith-projector slab displaying in grainy blue resolution what the sensorium and deep-augur probes had ascertained about the lay of the land. What they knew so far was precious little - Scoria was primarily flat, comprised of ash dunes and some basalt mountain ranges with an indigenous hostile life form akin to a giant Terran crab.

Beyond the command bunker, other prefab structures were being erected. In the main, these were medical tents to which the injured were ferried on stretchers and joined the system of triage set up by Brother Fugis. The Apothecary ministered to both human and Astartes, though the latter were few in number, and was ably assisted by Emek, loaned from Dak'ir's squad as a field surgeon. Human medics, those that had survived the crash, worked diligently alongside the Salamanders, but all had their work cut out for them. Fugis had also tasked rescue teams, comprising Salamanders and able-bodied serfs and servitors, to search the damaged areas of the ship for survivors. Though slow at first, as the ruined decks were gradually re-opened, more and more of the wounded flocked to the medical tents. The dead were also abundant. The pyreum was in constant use, shovel-handed servitors heaping piles of ash into huge storage vats for later interment.

'Can we achieve loft, Master Argos?' asked N'keln, his brow furrowed as the hololith switched to a rolling schematic of the

Vulkan's Wrath.

Red areas made up around sixty per cent of the total image and indicated damaged sections.

'To be brief: no,' the Techmarine replied, using a stylus to zone in on the lower portion of the strike cruiser. The image shifted again, this time incorporating Scoria's geography and the ship's relative position in it. A side view cutaway showed a large area of the

Vulkan's Wrath

below the earth-line, sunk deep into the planet's outer crust. 'As you can see, the ship is partially submerged within the ash plain. Basic geological analysis reveals that Scoria's surface is a mixture of ash and sand. The intense heat of our re-entry reacted with it, resulting in an endothermic metamorphosis. Essentially the ash-sand crystallised and hardened,' he added by way of explanation.

'Surely our engines are strong enough to pull us free,' offered the gravel- voiced Lok.

'Ordinarily, yes,' Argos returned. In addition to the repair crews, the Techmarine had already tasked excavation-servitors and human labour teams with digging out the sections of the ship that were buried deepest. 'But we are down to three banks of ventral engines. An operational minimum of four are needed to achieve loft.'

'What of our thrusters? Can we shake ourselves loose?' asked Brother- Sergeant Clovius, his squat form diminutive compared to the towering Praetor, who observed proceedings in silence.

'Not unless we want to burrow to the planet's core,' replied Argos without sarcasm. 'Our prow is angled downwards. Any thruster burst will simply push us further in that direction. The Adeptus Mechanicus did not build vessels such as this to take off from a grounded position.'

N'keln scowled, displeased at the developments.

'Do what you can, brother,' he said to Argos, switching off the hololith.

'I will, my lord. But without the components I need to repair and rig a fourth ventral engine, we will not be leaving this planet in the

Vulkan's Wrath.

'

'

We should reconnoitre,' offered Tsu'gan in a low voice. 'Try to ascertain the technological level of the planet and if it has indigenous human life. It's possible we'll be able to commandeer the materials we need to repair the ship,' he said, to Praetor's nodded approval. Tsu'gan went on, 'The prophecy brought us here for a reason. Securing our method of escape should be