Tome of Fire
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Hell Night
Fires of War
Fireborn
Prometheus Requiem
The Burning
Only Ash Remains
The Firebrand
Emperor’s Deliverance
About The Author
Legal
eBook license
WARHAMMER 40,000
IT IS THE 41ST MILLENNIUM. FOR MORE THAN A HUNDRED CENTURIES THE EMPEROR HAS SAT IMMOBILE ON THE GOLDEN THRONE OF EARTH. HE IS THE MASTER OF MANKIND BY THE WILL OF THE GODS, AND MASTER OF A MILLION WORLDS BY THE MIGHT OF HIS INEXHAUSTIBLE ARMIES. HE IS A ROTTING CARCASS WRITHING INVISIBLY WITH POWER FROM THE DARK AGE OF TECHNOLOGY. HE IS THE CARRION LORD OF THE IMPERIUM FOR WHOM A THOUSAND SOULS ARE SACRIFICED EVERY DAY, SO THAT HE MAY NEVER TRULY DIE.
YET EVEN IN HIS DEATHLESS STATE, THE EMPEROR CONTINUES HIS ETERNAL VIGILANCE. MIGHTY BATTLEFLEETS CROSS THE DAEMON-INFESTED MIASMA OF THE WARP, THE ONLY ROUTE BETWEEN DISTANT STARS, THEIR WAY LIT BY THE ASTRONOMICAN, THE PSYCHIC MANIFESTATION OF THE EMPEROR’S WILL. VAST ARMIES GIVE BATTLE IN HIS NAME ON UNCOUNTED WORLDS. GREATEST AMONGST HIS SOLDIERS ARE THE ADEPTUS ASTARTES, THE SPACE MARINES, BIO-ENGINEERED SUPER-WARRIORS. THEIR COMRADES IN ARMS ARE LEGION: THE IMPERIAL GUARD AND COUNTLESS PLANETARY DEFENCE FORCES, THE EVER-VIGILANT INQUISITION AND THE TECH-PRIESTS OF THE ADEPTUS MECHANICUS TO NAME ONLY A FEW. BUT FOR ALL THEIR MULTITUDES, THEY ARE BARELY ENOUGH TO HOLD OFF THE EVER-PRESENT THREAT FROM ALIENS, HERETICS, MUTANTS - AND WORSE.
TO BE A MAN IN SUCH TIMES IS TO BE ONE AMONGST UNTOLD BILLIONS. IT IS TO LIVE IN THE CRUELLEST AND MOST BLOODY REGIME IMAGINABLE. THESE ARE THE TALES OF THOSE TIMES. FORGET THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE, FOR SO MUCH HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN, NEVER TO BE RE-LEARNED. FORGET THE PROMISE OF PROGRESS AND UNDERSTANDING, FOR IN THE GRIM DARK FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR. THERE IS NO PEACE AMONGST THE STARS, ONLY AN ETERNITY OF CARNAGE AND SLAUGHTER, AND THE LAUGHTER OF THIRSTING GODS.
VULKAN’S SHIELD
A dull explosion resonated through the hull of Fire-wyvern. The Thunderhawk gunship bucked against the resulting pressure wave, throwing up emergency icons inside the troop hold. Displaced shrapnel caromed off its armour in a burst of muffled plinks.
‘Another like that and we’ll be going the rest of the way on foot, if at all.’
Ko’tan Kadai smiled. His burning eyes flared with amusement in the gloom, limning his onyx-black skin in a visceral red.
‘Their aim is worse than yours, Fugis,’ said Kadai. ‘It’s nothing.’
Apothecary Fugis scowled at his captain, his thin face drawn so tight it was almost sharp.
‘It’s a needless risk.’
Kadai had stopped listening. His gaze travelled down the troop hold, along the grav-harnesses where the rest of his Salamanders were locked in. Armoured in green battle-plate, the snarling orange drake icon of 3rd Company upon their left pauldrons, they were Salamanders, the Fireborn. Like their captain, the eyes of his retinue glowed red behind their helmet lenses. The effect was almost infernal.
Despite the restrictive confines of the Fire-wyvern, they still managed to perform their pre-battle rituals. N’keln led them. It was his duty.
‘In Vulkan’s image are we crafted, our bodies are his immutable instruments...’
Kadai watched the veteran sergeant reach into a fiery brazier wrought into a support column and withdraw a fistful of burning coals. The others echoed him, Vek’shen and Shen’kar. Together, they crushed the coals into dust and used the hot soot to anoint their armour.
‘What is that?’ remarked another warrior in the hold. This one was not a Salamander. He wore the black ceramite of the Raven Guard. His left pauldron carried his Chapter’s icon, a white raven with outstretched wings. Whereas Salamanders were onyx-black, the bare-headed Raven Guard was stark white with eyes like tiny shards of jet. Together, they were a contrast in chiaroscuro.
Vek’shen had scribed the effigy of a dragon’s head upon his forearm.
‘Unguh’lar,’ he said, ‘The great drake slain in ritual combat whose mantle I wear.’ The Company Champion touched the scaled cloak draped over his back and carefully fashioned around his power armour’s generator. ‘I carry this sigil to honour him and grant me fortitude in battle.’
‘Yours is a savage culture, Nocturnean,’ said another. The remark was directed at Kadai, who turned to face the speaker.
‘The Promethean Creed is not for everyone, Adrak.’
The Raven Guard stared through the dark lenses of his white battle helm. The bulky jump pack on his back made him lean forwards in his grav-harness. It gave a false sense of earnestness that Sergeant Adrak Vraver didn’t feel. He and three more of his battle-brothers had hitched a ride on the Fire-wyvern, pledging to aid Kadai in his extraction mission. The two went back a long way. Vraver was veteran of dozens of campaigns. Kadai had served in some of those in his two centuries and more of service.
‘And I suppose your stubbornness is kindled from the same embers?’
There was mirth in the Raven Guard’s tone that Kadai couldn’t see.
Outside, the explosions intensified. The interior shuddered constantly. Metal groaned in abject protest. They rode a storm of ordnance now.
‘Not too late to go back,’ Vraver added. ‘Our battle-brothers are pulling out, Ko’tan. This city is lost, but the war is won. There’s nothing for the Space Marines here. Let the Guard flatten it.’
Kadai laughed but it didn’t reach his blazing eyes.
Perhaps that was true for the Raven Guard. Prosecuting a guerrilla war behind enemy lines, they had crippled communications, sabotaged transport links and executed several insurgent officers, including the world’s corrupt lord-governor. For Kadai, however, the mission was not yet ended.
‘Months ago, before undertaking this mission,’ the Salamander said. ‘A neophyte remarked something to me on the Cindara Plateau back on Nocturne. Do you know what he said?’
Vraver relaxed his lightning claw in a gesture for Kadai to continue.
‘“My lord,” he began, “the Promethean Creed tells us that nothing is above the sanctity of human life, that we are Vulkan’s Shield, here to protect the innocent and defend the weak. But when I awoke in the solitorium after seven months of endurance and solitude I found I had become a monster… ”’ Kadai touched his skin, dragging the eyelid down a fraction to show the red heat within ‘“…How then,” he asked me, “can we be our primarch’s shield if we look like this?”’
Fire-wyvern shook violently from another aerial bombardment, but Vraver and Kadai didn’t flinch. From the cockpit, through the internal vox, Brother He’ken relayed that they were closing on their objective.
++Ninety seconds…++
‘What was your answer?’ asked Vraver.
Kadai spread his hands as if it was obvious, ‘“Because we must.”’
‘As simple as that,’ said the Raven Guard. ‘I always admired your frankness, Ko’tan. You Salamanders are such pragmatists, even when your very appearance betrays your ideals.’
Fire-wyvern’s engines were screaming. The gunship was banking into a sharp dive. Kadai could feel the inertia even in his power armour. Heavy cannon fire boomed through the hull, muffled slightly by the gunship’s armour.
++Sixty seconds…++
‘It is because of what we are that we can be Vulkan’s Shield. Triumph over adversity, self-sacrifice and the capacity to endure comes from this.’ He gestured towards his diabolic features. ‘By being less human on the outside, we are made more human inside.’ Kadai touched his breastplate where a symbolic flame was rendered in gold. ‘The burning core of our righteousness and the belief in our duty and all the Promethean Creed comes from within.’
++Ten seconds… nine… eight…++
Kadai donned his helmet. Like his armour, it was finely artificed. It depicted a snarling drake head, its scales echoed in the captain’s battle-plate.
The deployment ramp of Fire-wyvern opened slowly. Heat and sound rushed in. Having disengaged his grav-harness, Kadai mounted the ramp first. Brother He’ken had brought them low. Thirty metres down, fire wreathed Echelon City in a crackling veil.
The once regal avenues burned. Plazas fluttered with the charred remains of anti-Imperial propaganda leaflets. Bodies of loyal citizens and cultists alike littered roads clogged with blood and rubble. One structure remained. Blasted ruins filled with Chaos insurgency troops surrounded it. Three battalions, over a thousand troops, moved into position. Their heavy gun emplacements had taken a toll on the schola’s marble walls. Columns were toppled. Statues of prominent alumni were beheaded and defiled. Soon it would be no more. The Space Marines had arrived just in time.
A comm-feed in Kadai’s ornate helm revealed that Navy ordnance would be unleashed from sub-orbit in less than six point three minutes and counting. Only ash would remain afterwards.
He’ken drew them closer still. Heavy bolters from the Thunderhawk’s wings and forward fuselage raked a cannon battery wheeling around to get a bead. Simple brown flak armour and the hoods of their debased cult availed them nothing. The heretics disappeared in a storm of blood and debris.
Kadai unhitched a pair of krak grenades mag-locked to his belt.
The roof of the schola hove into view. It had been damaged and would yield with little force. Kadai cast down the grenades, priming them with a three-second timer. Vrarer loosed two more.
The detonation was fast and loud. In a cloud of smoke and flame, the schola roof collapsed. Several young faces and the older visage of an abbot peered up through the clearing dust at the angels in the war-blackened sky above. Salvation had come.
‘Tell me, brother,’ shouted Vraver, readying to drop then engage the thrusters of his jump pack, ‘this precocious neophyte, what is his name?’
Salamander met the gaze of Raven Guard briefly. Kadai’s eyes flared, his emotion unclear.
‘Dak’ir,’ he replied, leaping off the ramp and into the schola below. ‘Hazon Dak’ir.’
HELL NIGHT
It can’t rain all the time…
The trooper’s mood was sullen as he helped drag the unlimbered lascannon through the mire.
The Earthshakers had begun their bombardment. A slow and steady crump-crump – stop – crump-crump far behind him at the outskirts of bastion headquarters made the trooper flinch instinctively every time a shell whined overhead.
It was ridiculous: the deadly cargo fired by the siege guns was at least thirty metres at the apex of its trajectory, yet still he ducked.
Survival was high on the trooper’s list of priorities, that and service to the Emperor of course.
Ave Imperator.
A cry to the trooper’s right, though muffled by the droning rain, got his attention. He turned, rivulets teeming off his nose like at the precipice of a waterfall, and saw the lascannon had foundered. One of its carriage’s rear wheels was sunk in mud, sucked into an invisible bog.
‘Bostok, gimme a hand.’
Another trooper, Genk, an old guy – a lifer – grimaced to Bostok as he tried to wedge the butt of his lasgun under the trapped wheel and use it like a lever.
Tracer fire was whipping overhead, slits of magnesium carving up the darkness. It sizzled and spat when it pierced the sheeting rain.
Bostok grumbled. Staying low, he tramped over heavily to help his fellow gunner. Adding his own weapon to the hopeful excavation, he pushed down and tried to work his way under the wheel.
‘Get it deeper,’ urged Genk, the lines in his weathered face becoming dark crevices with every distant flash-flare of siege shells striking the void shield.
Though each hit brought a fresh blossom of energy rippling across the shield, the city’s defences were holding. If the 135th Phalanx was to breach it – for the Emperor’s glory and righteous will – they’d need to bring more firepower to bear.
‘Overload the generators,’ Sergeant Harver had said.
‘Bring our guns close,’ he’d said. ‘Orders from Colonel Tench.’
Not particularly subtle, but then they were the Guard, the Hammer of the Emperor: blunt was what the common soldiery did best.
Genk was starting to panic: they were falling behind.
Across a killing field dug with abandoned trenches, tufts of razor wire protruding like wild gorse in some untamed prairie, teams of Phalanx troopers dragged heavy weapons or marched hastily in squad formation.
It took a lot of men to break a siege; more still, and with artillery support, to bring down a fully functioning void shield. Men the Phalanx had: some ten thousand souls willing to sacrifice their lives for the glory of the Throne; the big guns – leastways the shells for the big guns – they did not. A Departmento Munitorum clerical error had left the battle group short some fifty thousand anti-tank, arrowhead shells. Fewer shells meant more boots and bodies. A more aggressive strategy was taken immediately: all lascannons and heavy weapons to advance to five hundred metres and lay void shield-sapping support fire.
Bad luck for Phalanx: wars were easier to fight from behind distant crosshairs. And safer. Bad luck for Bostok, too.
Though he was working hard at freeing the gun with Genk, he noticed some of their comrades falling to the defensive return fire of the secessionist rebels, holed up and cosy behind their shield and their armour and their fraggin’ gun emplacements.
Bastards.
Bet they’re dry too, Bostok thought ruefully. His slicker came undone when he snagged it on the elevation winch of the lascannon and he swore loudly as the downpour soaked his red-brown standard-issue uniform beneath.
There was a muted cry ahead as he fastened up the slicker and pulled his wide-brimmed helmet down further to keep out the worst of the rain – a heavy bolter team and half an infantry squad disappeared from view, seemingly swallowed by the earth. Some of the old firing pits and trenches had been left unfilled, except now they contained muddy water and sucking earth. As deadly as quicksand they were.
Bostok muttered a prayer, making the sign of the aquila. Least it wasn’t him and Genk.
‘Eye be damned, what is holding you up, troopers?’
It was Sergeant Harver. The tumult was deafening, that and the artillery exchange. He had to bellow just to be heard. Not that Harver ever did anything but bellow when addressing his squad.
‘Get this fraggin’ rig moving you sump rats,’ he barracked, ‘You’re lagging troopers, lagging.’
Harver munched a fat, vine-leaf cigar below the black wire of his twirled moustache. He didn’t seem to mind or notice that it had long been doused and hung like a fat, soggy finger from the corner of his mouth.
A static crackle from the vox-operator’s comms unit interrupted the sergeant’s tirade.
‘More volume: louder Rhoper, louder.’
Rhoper, the vox-operator, nodded, before setting the unit down and fiddling with a bunch of controls. The receiver was amplified in a few seconds and returned with the voice of Sergeant Rampe.
‘…Enemy sighted! They’re here in no-man’s land! Bastards are out beyond the shield! I see, oh sh–’
‘Rampe, Rampe,’ Harver bellowed into the receiver cup. ‘Respond, man!’ His attention switched to Rhoper.
‘Another channel, trooper – at the double, if you please.’
Rhoper was already working on it. The comms channels linking the infantry squads to artillery command and one another flicked by in a mixture of static, shouting and oddly muted gunfire.
At last, they got a response.
‘…aggin’ out here with us! Throne of Earth, that’s not poss–’
The voice stopped but the link continued unbroken. There was more distant weapons fire, and something else.
‘Did I hear–’ Harver began.
‘Bells, sir,’ offered Rhoper, in a rare spurt of dialogue. ‘It was bells ringing.’
Static killed the link and this time Harver turned to Trooper Bostok, who had all but given up trying to free the lascannon.
The bells hadn’t stopped. They were on this part of the battlefield too.
‘Could be the sounds carrying on the wind, sir?’ suggested Genk, caked in mud from his efforts.