flare.
'Very well,' he conceded at last, before motioning to the one called Akuma. 'Take them.'
Dak'ir unsheathed and unholstered his weapons, proffering them to the overseer.
'Treat them reverently,' he warned, 'For I will be taking them back very soon.'
Akuma tried not to let his fear show, but was obviously intimated by the red- eyed Salamander and was swift to back away once he had his weapons.
The brother-sergeant then faced the man who called himself Illiad.
'We surrender,' he said. 'What now?'
T
su'gan battle-signed for
his squad to surround the trapdoor concealed at the back of the giant hall. Forged in thick iron, the gate looked sturdy, unashamedly designed to keep things out… or in. Dust-clogged and veneered in rust, it was invisible to a cursory examination of the area. Empty ammo crates and munitions tubes had been piled on top of it, draped over with a ragged tarpaulin. The fact that the stores of ammunition were exhausted revealed much about the Iron Warriors' desperate defence. They had used up almost everything they'd had to repel the attackers. Tsu'gan didn't doubt that the belt feeds and drum mags wedged in the sentry guns were their last.
He held up a fist, ordering his squad to wait.
Praetor and Brother-Captain N'keln were close by with weapons drawn.
Auspex was wretched with interference, bio-signatures seemingly appearing and disappearing like smoke on a stiff breeze, so Tsu'gan had ordered Iagon to shut the device off for now. Instead, he used his own senses to discern the presence of his enemies and found them when he detected the faintest
of metal on metal through the iron door.
Pointing to his ear, Tsu'gan indicated that very fact to the others. He made a chop and pull motion with one hand - the other gripped his bolter. Brothers S'tang and Nor'gan heaved the gate open, its locks sheared by a plasma-torch from one of the Rhinos' equipment bays. Scraping back the entrance to the lower level as silently as possible, the two Salamanders moved aside quickly to allow Tsu'gan and the flamer-wielding Brother Honorious to cover the now gaping portal.
The din of striking metal grew louder but there were no enemies lurking in the shadows, only a steel-runged ladder extending into blackened depths.
Tsu'gan made his hand into a flat blade, giving the all-clear, then splayed his fingers and made another fist. Half of his squad would accompany him into the darkness; the rest would remain on the surface and protect the exit. Praetor and N'keln would remain too; the Terminator too bulky and cumbersome to fit into the tight confines suggested below, the captain too valuable to risk on a scouting mission into the unknown.
Extending two fingers, Tsu'gan chopped down twice in rapid succession. Tiberon and Lazarus, waiting at the periphery, took the ladder one-by-one and plunged below. Once the two Salamanders were down, he raised one finger, made a fist, and then raised two and chopped down twice again. Tsu'gan descended next, knowing that Honorious and Iagon would follow as rearguard.
Keeping luminators snuffed, the Salamander combat squad moved slowly down a tight corridor that reeked of dank and copper. A strange pall pervaded the air: invisible but tangible, as if a second skin was forming over their battle-plate.
Tsu'gan followed the clamour of metal, still persisting, but seemingly farther away than when he'd first heard it in the hall above. Though his optical spectra were set to night-vision and then infra-red, the dark was oddly impenetrable as if subsuming any and all ambient light. Only sound guided him and his squad as they ranged cautiously through cloying shadows.
'Sire,' hissed Honorious.
Tsu'gan whirled around to face him, incensed that he had broken vox- silence.
The flamer trooper had stopped dead and was aiming his weapon down a sub-corridor branching off from the one the combat squad was traversing.
'You break vox-silence at my command only, trooper,' Tsu'gan snarled in a low voice.
Honorious turned, nonplussed.
'I didn't speak, sergeant.'
'Sire,' rasped Tiberon.
The battle-brother was at point, intent on the way ahead and seemingly oblivious to the fact that a large gap was developing between him and the rest of the squad.
A reprimand formed on Tsu'gan's lips, but he didn't give it voice.
'Squad halt,' he said into the comm-feed, instead. Iagon's auspex blazed into life, multiple signatures plaguing the hazy screen at once.
'Contacts!' he snapped, swinging his bolter around to aim at shadows.
'I have movement,' hissed Lazarus.
'Over here…' whispered a voice that Tsu'gan didn't recognise. He trained his combi-bolter in its direction, finger poised over the jet-release for the weapon's flamer.
'Sire,' Honorious's voice came again, far away this time, but the battle-brother was crouched right next to him in a ready-position. There was no way he could have actually spoken and it sound that distant.
'Sir, multiple contacts closing…' said Iagon, jerking his bolter back and forth as he sought targets.
The reek of dank and copper grew stronger.
Tiberon was still going. He was almost lost from Tsu'gan's sight altogether. For a moment the brother-sergeant gave in to something approaching fear, filled with a deep knowing that if Tiberon was swallowed by the darkness, he would never come back and they would never be able to find him.
'Hold, brother. Hold!' Tsu'gan cried, but his shout was smothered by the maddening din of hammered metal and the warnings of his squad.
'Over here…'
That voice again; the one Tsu'gan didn't know…
'Enemy movement! Engaging!'
Tiberon fading into the darkness ahead…
'Contacts closing, no target!'
His mind spinning…
'Sire…'
The sudden compulsion to make it stop… 'Sire, help us…'
The bolter in his hands, pressed against his temple, tool of his salvation…
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