Tsu’gan heard Praetor mutter when the Firedrakes charged.

++Vulkan guide me in my hour of doom.++

Up close, the daemon-engine was massive. It reeked of blood and oil. Smoke and heat exuded off its dark iron flesh in a pall. But it was the eyes that Tsu’gan really noticed. With every blow, as the carnage increased, they blazed brighter with a malign light.

Praetor swung. It was like lightning from the sky when he struck. Tsu’gan expected to see the daemon-engine crumble but instead his sergeant’s battle cry became a roar of agony as he was punched off his feet several metres through the air.

To see the mighty Praetor so humbled made the Firedrakes falter.

Kai’ru recovered quickest, getting ahead of Tsu’gan to ram his chainfist into the daemon-engine’s torso.

‘Taste Vulkan’s wrath, warp spawn.’ The oath died on his lips when one of the thing’s hell-blades punctured his Terminator armour as if it were tin. With his aegis broken, Kai’ru could only watch as the saw-teeth churned his innards to mulch.

Gathimu was advancing fast, Kai’ru’s name a cry of anguish on his lips. The igniter on his heavy flamer was already burning when the daemon-engine levelled its wrist-mounted cannon and unloaded. Dozens of armour-piercing shells, jacketed with hellfire, peppered his armour and detonated the promethium tanks on his back.

Blinded by the sudden explosion, Tsu’gan waited a few seconds before his occulobe implant compensated. Gathimu was burning.

++Ankar.++

The other Firedrake nodded. They would attack the daemon-engine together. Tsu’gan’s tac-display recorded five metres until engagement when a transmission icon flashed urgently on his helmet lens. It had an Imperial signature, emergency coded. The message spooled as rune-text across the display:

Incoming. Fall back five metres and stand fast.

A high-pitched whine broke overhead. No time to retreat. Tsu’gan and Ankar locked their bodies as the ordnance hit. It struck the daemon-engine squarely and it disappeared in a storm of fire and shrapnel.

The explosion billowed outwards, engulfing the Terminators who weathered the blast like a cliff against the tide. When the dust dispersed, the daemon-engine was crouched almost fifty metres away but still intact. It rose slowly. Its dead eyes blazed brighter.

Behind the Salamanders, Ecclesiarchy troops were advancing in force. A stern-faced sister superior appeared from the roof hatch of an Exorcist. It looked more like a grotesque church organ than a battle tank, but there it was, auto-loaders priming for another missile launch.

Another pair of Immolators flanked it, heavy bolter turrets rattling. High velocity, mass reactive shells stitched a thick line all the way to the daemon-engine. The dense impacts never even scratched it. The tanks rolled on past the Salamanders, determined to block it. Two Rhinos sped after them, fully loaded with engines screaming.