Salamander

But the Salamanders were equally adept, if not superior, eye-to-eye with the enemy. The recently returned flamers exacted a sizeable toll on the orks as they came through the Devastators' fusillade.

Unlike the initial assaults against the iron fortress, the orks were predominantly on foot, supported by their piston-legged machineries, crude analogues of Space Marine Dreadnoughts. They eschewed the wagons, bikes and war trucks of the earlier sorties of their kin. Long-ranged guns were largely absent, too, and instead an expansive melee of chainblades, cleavers and clubs thundered at the Salamanders to bludgeon them into submission.

The orks found only fury and iron-hard resistance where they'd expected red- wreathed death and capitulation. Alloyed together, at almost full company strength and protecting the relatively narrow fielde in which the iron fortress was situated, the Salamanders were all but impregnable.

Casualties had been few, and those that could no longer serve the Chapter were dragged behind the stalwart line of armour, their absence accounted for by their brothers.

Tsu'gan gunned open the chest of an ork some ten metres away, downing the brute as if it were an enraged sauroch. Another took its place and he killed that one too with a precise burst to its snarling head. Several more followed, greenskins running the punishing gauntlet of Salamander guns. They were obliterated from view when Sergeant Vargo's depleted Assault squad landed amongst them. The exchange was savage and swift. Vargo and his troopers took to the air on tongues of fire less than a minute later, seeking other foes isolated by their eager bloodlust from the main greenskin throng. Carcasses rendered by bolt and blade, and a patch of scorched earth were all that was left in the Assault squad's clearing smoke.

'Press forward!' The bellowed order of N'keln reached Tsu'gan through the comm-feed as his captain sought to exploit the short gap that had developed through the Salamanders' recent mauling of the orks.

The line advanced as one. Tsu'gan felt the heavy footfalls of the Terminators alongside his squad through his booted feet.

'Unto the anvil, brother-sergeant,' said Praetor, a dark grin upon his face as he swung his thunder hammer towards the next wave of greenskins.

Snorting amusedly at the fatalism of it all, Tsu'gan fired again and his face was lit by the muzzle flare of his bolter. He laughed in tandem with the weapon's roar.

Overhead, the ork vessels streamed like cancerous veins in the sky. The black rock was venting constantly now. Soon there would not be enough of the ash dunes to hold all the greenskins expelled from its craterous surface.

Tsu'gan laughed harder at the thought of it, before his battle hysteria ebbed with a fresh realisation.

As long as the black rock endured there could be no victory here. If it wasn't destroyed soon, they'd all be dead.

D

ak'ir was swathed

in black lightning, the dark energies from Nihilan's force staff coursing over his armour. He cried out and fell to one knee, fists clenched over his weapons and shuddering against the terrible sorcery.

Vaguely, at the edge of his nulled perception, Dak'ir thought he heard Pyriel bellow his name. His tone was anguished, already grieving. The sergeant's eyes were clamped shut and saw again the Cindara Plateau, his ascent to the summit the final stage of his induction to become a neophyte. The acrid tang of the Acerbian Sea pricked his nostrils and the hot downdrafts of the Ignean caves of his birth warmed his skin.

Then he returned and the wracking pain of the lightning subsided; his nerve endings, previously ablaze, were still and warm. Dak'ir opened his eyes and realised he was still alive.

An amused look crossed Nihilan's face, the power in his force staff receding, before he turned and fell back with his traitorous brethren.

Ribbons of sorcerous smoke spilled upwards off Dak'ir's body as he started to rise, tugged forward in the draft from Pyriel racing past him.

He felt the presence of Ba'ken slowing just behind. Dak'ir staggered to his feet, waving the heavy weapons trooper on.

'Stop the renegades…' he slurred, still mustering his strength.

'I thought you were dead, Hazon,' Ba'ken murmured, before going on after on Pyriel.

'I should be,' rasped Dak'ir, his senses returning. He was about to drive on when he saw the beam of the multi-melta search menacingly out of the darkness. It forced a scream from Pyriel, his shoulder seared by the deadly weapon through his pauldron. The Librarian nearly fell, but managed to hold on.

Gritting his teeth in anger, Dak'ir found Pyriel's attacker. He recognised his shadowy form from the Aura Hieron temple, back on Scoria. He hadn't realised at first, but now he knew - this was Kadai's assassin, the killer of his old captain.

'Ghor'gan…' bellowed Nihilan to the Dragon Warrior with the multi-melta, the rest of his command smothered by the noise of roaring bolters as he and the other renegade drew away into the darkness. The one called Ghor'gan merely nodded and stood his ground. Nihilan was trying to escape.

This could not be allowed to happen. Dak'ir launched himself across the lava stream. It looked an impossible jump, but incredibly he landed on the other side, the heels of his boots scraping at the edge of where the rock fell away to hot oblivion. Ignoring the Iron Warrior, Dak'ir used his momentum to drive on at the Dragon Warrior with the multi-melta. Reacting to the sudden threat, Ghor'gan swung the deadly weapon about, a nimbus of energy already building in its twin-nosed barrel.

P

yriel was nearing

the end of the narrow rock bridge when the last Iron Warrior threw himself into his path. In his mind, the Librarian heard the slow pull, the long metal report of the depressed trigger as the traitor unleashed his bolter at him.

A bolter's velocity is ferociously quick, its rate of fire faster than an eye-blink. Pyriel's mind was faster.

Bolter shells exploded ineffectually against an invisible shield, dense blooms of light rippling in midair with each percussive impact.

Pyriel ran on, seeing Dak'ir land ahead of him on the other side, and reached his assailant. Changing tactics, the Iron Warrior slowed his fire rate to use his sarissa blade. Pyriel had unsheathed his force sword and parried the thrust meant to impale him. With the Iron Warrior unbalanced, he thrust himself and rammed the blade of his eldritch weapon halfway into the traitor's stomach. Plates of ceramite parted easily before the force sword, undone by its shimmering power field, before the Librarian lowered the invisible shield and channelled his psychic might through the edge of the weapon.

At once the Iron Warrior sagged as his soul was sundered, cast into the oblivion of the warp to be fed upon by daemons. Smoke exuded from the traitor's eye-slits and a deep light glowed from within. He screamed, a long and wailing note that echoed somewhere beyond the realm of reality, and sank into a heap, a scored-out husk all that remained.

With the traitor slain, Pyriel looked ahead to his battle-brother.

F

uelled by fury

, Dak'ir hurled himself at Ghor'gan. The multi-melta's beam stabbed out, but the renegade's aim was off, pressurised into an early shot by the Salamander's headlong assault. It scorched the edge of Dak'ir's battle-helm, the actual beam itself passing a few centimetres overhead. It was close enough to burn through