Salamander

But let us see, lord Firedrake.'

Praetor smiled, a thin fissure cracking the hard stone of his countenance, and brandished his thunder hammer.

'Bring it down!' he roared, and the Terminators before the gate struck as one.

II Prisoners

'

I will lead

,' asserted Dak'ir as he tested the weight of the steel cable spooling from the winch-rig. One of the Salamanders Techmarines had set up the climbing device and each of the six Fire-born standing at the threshold of the chasm that had opened next to the

Vulkan's Wrath

was hooked to it. Threading the thick cable through loops on their battle harnesses, each Salamander made ready for a descent into the unknown.

Ba'ken had returned quickly after his sergeant had dismissed him to re-armour. He carried the weighty rig of his heavy flamer upon his back, insisting that the bulky weapon would fit through the narrow crevice that led into the depths of Scoria. Brother Emek joined him, having left the remaining medical operations to the human chirurgeons of the strike cruiser. His surgeon-craft was limited to field wounds; he didn't possess the necessary skill to conduct complex procedures. In any case, a Space Marine's time was better spent than languishing amidst the injured and dying.

Brothers Apion and Romulus were also from Dak'ir's squad, and hand-picked by the sergeant for their battle experience. The final place in the small expeditionary team went to Pyriel. The Librarian would follow after Dak'ir, tracking the psychic thread he had discerned emanating from below like a bloodhound.

'Luminators on. Vox-silence until we reach the bottom and know what we're dealing with,' Dak'ir ordered, the lume-lamp attached to his battle-helm stabbing into the blackness of the chasm below. Taking the strain of the cable, he plunged into stygian darkness.

Sensors in his battle-helm attenuated to the planet's atmospheric conditions registered a slight increase in temperature as Dak'ir descended. The reading glowed coldly on the inside of his lens display. Deafening silence filled the narrow space, only broken by the dull drone of the spooling winch-rig above. Sharp crags from the chasm's internal wall scraped against Dak'ir's armour. Gusts of steam, vented from the strike cruiser's partially submerged lower decks, passed over him and filmed his battle-plate with condensation. Soon, the solid adamantium of the ship's outer armour gave way to abject darkness. It was like delving into the bowels of an orherworld, one that fell away endlessly.

After an hour of painstakingly slow descent, Dak'ir's lume-lamp threw an oval of light that touched solid ground. Alighting at the bottom of the chasm at last, the brother-sergeant voxed his discovery through the comm-feed. Disengaging the cable from his battle-harness, Dak'ir stepped aside to allow space for his battle-brothers and drew weapons as he surveyed the pervading dark around them. The luminators on his battle-helm revealed a corridor of bare rock, terminating at the edge of the lume-lamp's effective range where the light was swallowed by blackness.

'T

he tunnel appears

to be manufactured,' Emek reported down the comm-feed in a subdued voice. He drew his gauntlet lightly across the wall, interrogating its surface under the glow of his luminator.

Ba'ken had been the last to reach the bottom of the chasm. Determined to get through with his heavy flamer rig still attached, he had damaged his battle-helm on a jutting spike of rock. The sporadic interference plaguing his lens display as a direct result of the collision had driven him to distraction. When he reached the ground he removed the helmet, hooking it to his belt. The hulking trooper had acknowledged Dak'ir's look of reproach with a grunt, adjusting the promethium tanks on his back.

After exploring a few hundred metres, Brother Emek leading with flamer readied, the squad of Salamanders had stopped to surround him when he'd discerned a variation in the tunnel's structure.

'It's cambered and smooth, as if ground by tools or digging equipment,' he added.

'Must be quite some rig to cut an opening this large,' replied Ba'ken, his back to Emek as he guarded the way they had come. Brothers Apion and Romulus trained their bolters forwards, moving to the head of the Salamanders' formation whilst Emek examined the wall.

Dak'ir agreed with Ba'ken. The tunnel was easily wide enough to accommodate all six Astartes abreast and so high that even Venerable Brother Amadeus could have marched along it without needing to stoop.

'Definitely machine-hewn,' Emek concluded, reassuming his position at point.

Pyriel said nothing. His eyes were shut, and his expression was focused.

'Brother-Librarian?' Dak'ir asked.

Pyriel opened his eyes and the cerulean glow faded. 'Not the chitin-beasts,' he whispered, still surfacing from the psychic trance. 'Something else…' he added.

When it was clear the Librarian wasn't about to elaborate, Dak'ir ordered them on.

S

plit down the

middle by a thick blade, the Iron Warrior's battle-helm broke apart as Tsu'gan nudged it with his armoured boot. The face beneath was contorted in its final death throes, a dark and ragged wound bisecting it. Nose shattered beyond recognition, puckered flesh - festooned with chains and graven sigils - semi-parted to reveal yellowed bone; whatever had killed the traitor had done so long ago.

'This one is no different,' said Tsu'gan, letting the body loll back into a prone position.

The Firedrakes had brought the gate down with successive blows from their thunder hammers, its structural integrity weakened by the grenade blasts. Within was not the traitor garrison that Praetor had predicted. Instead, the Salamanders found corpses, arranged in positions that parodied the Iron Warriors' former duties. Those traitors not pitched off their feet during the assault remained at sentry, or crouched by now silent gun emplacements. It was exactly how the warriors in the redoubts had been set up: dead, but maintaining the illusion of numbers and protection. Only five of the slain Iron Warriors had been fresh: the rest were necrotic husks, decaying in their armour.

Five Chaos Space Marines and an array of automated defence guns had kept out a force of over eighty. Three of the Salamanders had been slain during the ill-conceived assault; two of those had come from Vargo's squad. The third was the driver from the destroyed Rhino. Space Marines were not easy to kill: the Assault squad troopers had been almost rent apart, taking the brunt of the heavy explosion, whereas the APC driver was shredded by shrapnel and shot through the skull as he tried to stagger from the vehicle wreck. Their progenoids had been secured by Fugis whilst under fire, and were safe within his reductor's storage casket. Several more were injured, and the Apothecary was tending to them as the rest of the task force secured the fortress.

'Dead before we even attacked…' N'keln's voice held a trace of annoyance to it as it came from behind Tsu'gan.

'They were dead a lot longer than that, my lord.' The brother-sergeant's diction