Salamander

Heart rate was nearing cardio infarction levels, Dak'ir felt it like a frag grenade going off continuously in his chest; breathing intensified; red, flashing icons warned of imminent anaphylactic circulatory collapse; blood pressure was rising, bordering on extreme hypertension.

Fire-born,

Pyriel repeated.

Dak'ir felt again the heat of Mount Deathfire. He recalled ranging through the caves of Ignea, plying the Acerbian Sea and the long climb to the summit of the Cindara Plateau.

The green haze filtered away until his vision was red-rimed once more.

'Fire-born,' uttered Dak'ir. His voice was in unison with the Librarian's psychic casting inside his head.

Dak'ir moved away from Ba'ken to show he no longer needed his brother's support. The unspoken exchange between them said more than any words of gratitude ever could. The bulky Salamander merely nodded his understanding and reaffirmed his grip on the heavy flamer.

The Thunderfire cannons were booming at either end of the defensive line. Unseen, they pummelled patches of advancing greenskins with clusters of surface detonations. It was like dropping a bullet into an ocean. The orks parted briefly before the explosions then closed up again, the ripples short-lived and ineffectual, the slain crushed underfoot and forgotten.

'Merciful Vulkan…'

Dak'ir heard Emek over the comm-feed.

'Never despair,' said Dak'ir to bolster his troops. The blood caked against his teeth tasted like copper. 'Never give in. Salamanders only go forward.'

Bolter fire erupted down the line as the orks came into range. The greenskins weathered it as before, but no longer marched; they had broken into a run.

'This is it. For Tu'Shan and the Emperor,' declared Dak'ir. 'For Vulkan and the glory of Prometheus!'

Forty against three thousand.

Dak'ir had looked into the primitive psyche of the orks. He knew, on an almost cellular level, their fury and aggression. Unless something changed to even the balance, many Fire-born would not live out this fight. Dak'ir vowed that he would not submit to the pyreum easily.

A dense throb built at the back of his skull. For a moment, Dak'ir thought it was the ork rage returned, but as the sound started to resonate across the ash plain he realised it was from a different source.

The massive capacitors in the

Vulkan's Wrath's

guns were charging. Huge upper-deck turrets swivelled into position with the churning retort of metal. The air crackled with slow actinic discharge, magnetising the metallic elements in the ash and grit particles, statically adhering them to the Salamanders' boots and leg greaves. The throb built to a high-pitched whine and Dak'ir saw a nimbus of electrical energy spark and fork around the mouth of the guns.

An instant later and they were unleashed.

A blast wave, so heavy and powerful it put the Salamanders on their knees, rippled across the ash plain. Concave slashes of grey scudded in the wake of the turret guns' lethal discharge, swirling mini-vortices of displaced ash and dirt.

The barrage lasted a few seconds but the greenskin horde was left devastated by it. Strike cruiser guns were intended to be fired at extreme ranges in the depths of space against massive, heavily-armoured and void-shielded targets. The firepower they could bring to bear was insanely destructive. Argos, in his genius, had only activated a small portion of the guns. The laser battery was enough to atomise vast chunks of the greenskin army, slaying hundreds in a deadly las-duster. Several thousand super-powerful blasts had emitted from the guns, but at such frequency and velocity that they appeared as one continuous beam. Those not caught directly in the beam were burned by it. Several hundred greenskins were already ablaze; some wandered about aimlessly amongst the scorched earth, others were just charred husks. The rest were crippled by shock and disorientation, blinded and deafened by the terrible assault.

Dak'ir was getting to his feet when Agatone, his voice cold and menacing, came over the comm-feed.

'The greenskins are down. Close in and finish them. Salamanders attack!'

A roar of thrusters ripped into the air as Acting-Sergeant Gannon and his Assault squad surged upwards on contrails of smoke and fire. Their blades were drawn, eager to taste ork blood.

The foot troops barged over the makeshift barricade together, bolters flaring. Flamers tramped alongside them, whilst the heavy static guns stayed behind and pummelled the decimated greenskin horde from distance.

From the flanks, the Dreadnoughts closed the deadly trap and in the resulting carnage the ork splinter force was destroyed utterly.

G

reenskin blood swathed

Dak'ir's faceplate and he removed his battle-helm so he could better see. Execution teams roamed through the smoke coiling across the dunes. Anonymous bursts, sharp and sporadic, occasionally broke the eerie quiet of post-battle as greenskin wounded were finished off.

Looking above the carnage, Dak'ir saw the horizon and imagined the greater horde still out there laying siege to the iron fortress. He also wondered how they could hope to break such a massive force with the troops at their disposal. Defenders would have to remain with the

Vulkan's Wrath.

It was their only way off a planet that was slowly breaking apart. The tremors were almost constant now, the distant volcanoes erupting with ominous regularity. Even without the eclipse, Dak'ir reckoned the skies would still be grey with falling ash.

'Like Moribar,' he muttered to himself, unaware that he'd just echoed the earlier words of his rival, Tsu'gan. At the back of his mind, Dak'ir felt that the dark legacy of the Dragon Warriors was interwoven with the fate of 3rd Company somehow, particularly that of him and Tsu'gan. He even sensed their clawed caress on this distant world.

Agatone emerged through the murk into Dak'ir's eye line. He was wiping greenskin blood from his power sword as he approached.

'The orks are slain,' he said with finality.

'If they return, we'll have Master Argos engage the

Vulkan's Wrath's

guns again.'

Agatone shook his head.

'No we won't. Argos has told me he can only fire them once. The recoil might collapse the bedrock holding up the ship and bury it for good. He won't risk it.'

'Then our reprieve is short-lived,' said Dak'ir.

'Precisely.'

'Any word from Captain N'keln?'

'We're trying to raise him now, but there are other matters I wish to attend to first.' Agatone's cadence was leading.

'The human settler?' Dak'ir asked, already knowing the answer.

'Precisely,' Agatone repeated. 'What did you find below the earth?'

Dak'ir kept his tone level, so his brother-sergeant would be sure of his sincerity.