Salamander

'I am Brother-Sergeant Hazon Dak'ir of the Salamanders' 3rd Company,' he said, before introducing the Librarian. 'You have been on watch duty for a long time, brother.'

Dak'ir knew he needed to be careful. If this ancient warrior before them really did hark back to a time before the Heresy, if he was a survivor of the Dropsite Massacre, then much had changed that he would be unaware of. They needed answers but any unnecessary information might only serve to confuse him at this point.

'Brother Gravius…' The ancient Salamander tailed off, his precise disposition within the old Legion deserting him. 'And yes,' he started anew, seeming to recall that he had been asked a question. 'I have been sitting here for many years.'

'How did you come to be here on Scoria, Brother Gravius?'

The venerable Salamander paused, frowning as he dredged through old memories. 'A storm…' he began, the words starting to come easier as he remembered how to articulate himself. 'We… withdrew from battle, our enemies in pursuit…' Gravius's face hardened and drew back into an angry snarl. 'Betrayers…' he spat, before lucidity failed him again and his features slackened.

'Was it Isstvan V, brother?' said Pyriel. 'Is that where you journeyed from?'

Gravius screwed up his face again, trying to remember.

'I… see fragments,' he said. 'Impressions only… disjointed in my mind.' He seemed to look past the two Salamanders in front of him.

Dak'ir thought Gravius was gazing into space, when the old Salamander slowly raised his arm from the side of the throne and pointed a finger. Dak'ir turned to see what Gravius was gesturing at. It looked like an old pict-viewer, some kind of ancient data-recording device half smothered by millennia of dirt.

Exchanging a glance with Pyriel, the brother-sergeant descended the stairs and went over to the pict-viewer. Dak'ir knew that many ships kept visual logs as the basis for battle simulations or to chart the progress of a campaign for future reference. Gravius had indicated that this device might contain the log of his ship and with it some clue as to its provenance.

Though it had been broken apart, Illiad and his men had fed power to some areas of the vessel. Dak'ir hoped that this was one of them. Even so, he expected nothing as he activated the pict-viewer and lines of snowdrift interference appeared on the dust-swathed screen.

Using his gauntlet, Dak'ir smeared the worst of the grime away just as an image was resolving in the small square frame. There was no sound; perhaps the vox-emitters no longer functioned, or perhaps the audio was not recorded along with the visuals. The point was moot.

Though the image was grainy and badly marred by constant static, Dak'ir recognised the bridge, as it must have been before the crash. The scene was frantic. Fire had taken hold of some of the operational consoles - Dak'ir looked over to them as they were now and saw a hint of heat-blackening underneath their grey veneer - and several crewmen were lying on the deck, presumably dead. They wore grey uniforms that bore an uncanny resemblance to the attire of Illiad and the settlers. Most were shouting - their voiceless panic, the half-realised terror in their faces, was disturbing.

Dak'ir saw Salamanders, too. The throne was shrouded in shadows, but the bulk of the armour was clear, the flash of fire and warning lights illuminating it just long enough for the brother- sergeant to make the connection. Several of the Astartes were injured too. The image was shaking badly, as if the bridge itself was being subjected to a fierce ordeal. No one addressed the recording, and Dak'ir assumed, with a fist of lead in his stomach, that the captain of the ship had ordered it switched on to capture the last moments of him and his crew. He had not expected to survive the crash.

There was a particularly violent tremor and the screen went blank. Dak'ir waited to see if there was any more, but there the recording ended.

A grim mood had settled over the ruined bridge, quashing the earlier excitement and optimism that Dak'ir had felt. Another tremor rocked the chamber, sending a pauldron crashing nosily to the ground and shaking the brother-sergeant out of his dark introspection.

He exchanged a look with Pyriel.

If the quakes did indeed presage a cataclysm that threatened the planet itself, as the Librarian had predicted, then Brother Gravius and the battle-suits needed to be moved, and quickly. Perhaps, upon returning to Nocturne and under the Chapter Master's guidance on Prometheus, the secrets within Gravius's shattered mind could be unlocked. If this was what the Salamanders had been sent to find - their prize - then all efforts must be made to recover them intact. Not only that, but Illiad and his settlers would need to be rescued too. The pict-recording of the ship's final log had cemented in Dak'ir's mind that the ancestors Illiad had spoken of were in fact the ship's original crew and he and his people their descendants.

The revelation was remarkable. Against all the odds, they had endured, creating for themselves a microcosm of Nocturnean society here on ill-fated Scoria.

The visions Dak'ir had experienced earlier, just before the tectonic shift had revealed the chasm into the subterranean realm, came back to him. On a strange, almost instinctual level, it confirmed to Dak'ir that Scoria was doomed and that its demise was soon to be at hand.

Yes, all would need to be delivered from the fires of the planet's inevitable destruction. There was just the small matter of the

Vulkan's Wrath

half-buried in the ash desert, and without the means to break free of it. If this was the primarch's will, a part of his prophecy etched in the Tome of Fire, then Dak'ir hoped that salvation would present itself soon.

The brother-sergeant's gaze flicked over to Gravius.

'Can you arise, brother? Are you able to walk?' he asked.

'

I

cannot,' Gravius answered with regret.

Pyriel touched a hand to the venerable brother's greave and shut his eyes. He opened them a moment later, the cerulean glow still fading.

'His armour is completely seized,' said the Librarian. 'Fused to the throne. His muscles have likely atrophied by now, too.'

'Can we move him?'

'Not unless you want his limbs to break off as we attempt it,' Pyriel replied grimly.

'This is my post,' Gravius rasped. His breath reeked of slow decay and stale air. 'My duty. I should have died long ago, brothers. If Scoria is to expire, become dust in the vastness of the universe, then so must I.'

Dak'ir paused, as he tried in vain to think of some other solution. In the end he clenched his fist in frustration, Pyriel looking on patiently. His tone betrayed his anger and frustration to the Librarian.

'We return for the armour, and report back our findings to Brother-Sergeant Agatone. We must be ready when we have a way to leave this accursed rock.'

T

su'gan returned to

the battlements of the iron fortress just in time to see the first explosions tear into the orks.

A series of fiery, grey blooms rippled in a line before the greenskins' advance, chewing up footsoldiers and wrecking their ramshackle vehicles. Implacably, the orks marched over the debris of bodies and twisted metal, the carnage only seeming to increase their lust for battle.

Through the magnoculars, Tsu'gan saw several of the greenskins pause to kill off their wounded brethren and remove their tusks or strip them of wargear or boots. 'Filthy scavengers,' he snarled, regarding the massive horde of green.

Inwardly, he cursed the fact their forces were divided before such a massive host. Consolidation was needed now, not division. Yet, they could not simply abandon the