Salamander

As Illiad gathered teams to begin collapsing the emergence holes using explosives, a mournful dirge was struck up by the wounded and the grievers for the dead. Wailing infants, some of them now orphans, added their own sorrowful chorus.

One hundred and fifty-four had died in the chitin attack; not all men, not all armed. Another thirty-eight would not live out their injuries. Almost a fifth of the entire human population killed in a single blow.

Silently, the Salamanders helped retrieve the dead.

At one point, Dak'ir saw Brother Apion looking down emptily at a woman clinging to her slain husband. She was unwilling to let go of him as the Salamander tried to take the body and set it upon the growing pyres. In the end she had relinquished him, sobbing deeply.

Illiad lit a flare and ignited the pyres as the last of the dead were accounted for and set to rest. Dak'ir found the custom familiar as he watched the bodies burning and the smoke curling away forlornly through a natural chimney in the cavern roof. The cremation chamber was already blackened and soot gathered in the corners.

Val'in was at the ceremony too, and approached Ba'ken who watched solemnly alongside his brothers.

'Are you a Fire Angel?' asked Val'in, reaching out towards the massive warrior.

Ba'ken, almost three times the boy's height and towering over him, was surprised at the sudden upswell of emotion as Val'in's hand pressed against his greave. Perhaps the boy wanted to make sure he was real.

A part of Ba'ken was deeply saddened at the thought of this innocent knowing something of the terrors of the galaxy, but he was also moved. Val'in was not Astartes: he did not wear power armour or wield a holy bolter; he didn't even carry a lasgun or rifle. He'd had a shovel, and yet he was brave enough to stand in the path of the chitin and not run.

Ba'ken found an answer hard to come by.

Dak'ir spoke for him, but to Illiad and not the boy. 'What does the boy mean when he says ''Fire Angel''?' he asked.

Illiad's face was set in a look of resignation. The flames from the pyres seemed to deepen the lines on his brow and throw haunting shadows into his eyes. He looked suddenly older.

'I must show you something, Hazon Dak'ir,' he said. 'Will you follow me?'

After a moment, Dak'ir nodded. Perhaps it was at last time for the truth of why the Salamanders had been sent here.

Pyriel stepped forwards, indicating that he would accompany them.

'Ba'ken,' said Dak'ir, facing the massive warrior who still found himself daunted before the boy but managed to look up.

'Brother-sergeant?'

'You have command in my absence. Try to establish contact with the

Vulkan's Wrath

and Sergeant Agatone if you can, though I doubt you'll get a signal through all of this rock.'

'Don't think we need your protection,' snapped Akuma, having overheard the conversation. Ba'ken turned on him.

'You are stubborn, human,' he growled, though his eyes betrayed his admiration for Akuma's pride and diehard spirit. 'But the choice isn't yours to make.'

Akuma grumbled something and backed off.

After he'd checked the load of his plasma pistol and secured his chainsword, Dak'ir rested his hand on Ba'ken's pauldron and leaned in to speak into his ear.

'Guard them for me,' he said in a low voice.

'Yes, sergeant,' Bak'en answered, eyes locked with the recalcitrant overseer. 'In Vulkan's name.'

'In Vulkan's name,' Dak'ir echoed, before departing with Pyriel and following Illiad as he led them away from fire and grief.

II Angels and Monsters

I

lliad took them

back down the winding tunnel road to the blast doors of the massive chamber they'd visited before. The bronzed portal was closed again now, its ancient mechanism engaged as soon as they'd left to join the battle.

Dak'ir recalled Pyriel's words as he stared silently at the gate again. The Librarian, standing alongside him, was characteristically inscrutable.

Answers lie within.

Illiad opened the gates once more and this time stepped inside, without waiting to see if the Salamanders followed.

Dak'ir passed through the threshold first, slightly tentative. But all he saw on the other side was a vast, barren room. He watched Illiad approach one of the walls and wipe away the layers of dust and grit that swathed it. Slowly, images were revealed, not unlike cave paintings but inscribed upon bare metal. The renderings were crude, but as Dak'ir approached, drawn inexorably to them, he discerned familiar shapes. He saw stars and metal giants, clad in green armour. Humans were depicted too, emerging from a crashed ship the size of a city. Flames were captured in vivid oranges and reds. In each subsequent interpretation, the ship was slowly being swallowed up by the earth as ash and rock buried it. Beasts came next, the visual history of the colony spreading down the massive walls. First were the chitin, easy to discern with their bulky carapace bodies and claws; then came something else - brutish, broad-backed figures, with dark skins and tusks. The humans were depicted fleeing from them as the metal giants protected them.

'How did you survive down here for so long, Illiad?' Dak'ir's voice echoed, breaking the silence.

Illiad paused in his unearthing of the colony's ancient lore.

'Scoria has deep veins of ore. Fyron, it is called.' He wiped the sweat of his labours from his brow. 'We are miners, generations old. Our ancestors, in their wisdom, realised the ore was combustible. It could be used to keep the reactor running, to charge our weapons and maintain our way of life, such as it is.' His face darkened. 'It was this way for many centuries, so our legends tell us.'

Dak'ir indicated the wall paintings. 'And these are your legends?'

'At first,' Illiad conceded, changing tack. 'Scoria is a hostile place. Our colony is few. One in a generation has the duty to record that generation's history in a log, though much of its formative years are drawn upon these walls. Long ago that task fell to my grandfather, who then passed it on to me after his son, my father, was killed in a cave-in.'

Illiad paused, as if weighing up what to say next.

'Millennia ago, my ancestors came to Scoria, crash landed in a ship that had come from the stars,' he said. '

We

were not alone. Giants, armoured in green plate, came with us. Most who now live don't remember who they were. They call them the Fire Angels, for it was said that they were born from the heart of the mountain. This is why