The explosion immolated Vogel, and threw the others off their feet. Fire swept across the jetty, igniting a chain of grenades dug into and around the tunnel entrance. They cooked off in seconds, releasing a secondary explosion and effectively sealing the outflow behind a tonne of debris.
Smashed back towards the entrance and then away from it as the second blast hit, Narek was on the ground, stunned but alive. He’d dragged Elias down with him as he sought to keep the Dark Apostle from harm. Hate him he might, but he still had his duty to perform. Peering through smoke and fire, the huntsman saw four legionaries emerging from the sink with bolters raised. He threw his knife, piercing the neck of one before the Salamander had a chance to fire.
Dagon had his rifle up, preparing to execute a second ambusher, when a shot whined out from a distance and struck right through the side of his head. The sniper was dead before he hit the jetty.
Bolt-rounds from the submerged legionaries ripped Melach apart, the Word Bearer with his pistol only half drawn.
Prone, almost underneath Narek, Elias fired off a burst and clipped one of the emerging legionaries, who had now drawn blades and were charging through the water. Narek suspected they were low on – or even out of – ammunition, as a concentrated fusillade would have ended the fight quickly. He wondered what the loyalists might be saving their rounds for.
Six more hauled themselves over the edge of the outflow basin. One advanced ahead of the rest. He was a Salamander, a centurion.
A quick headcount made the odds fairly even, but of the many in the tunnel only a few had got out before the blast hit and sealed in the rest. The loyalists also had a plan and the advantage of surprise.
Elias was on his feet. He fired off a snap shot that took the Salamander officer in the shoulder. He staggered but kept on coming, swinging a hefty-looking glaive.
Narek had other concerns as the two from the sink drove at him. He parried one thrust with his rapidly drawn gladius. A second attack he trapped with his forearm and then dragged the legionary in, crushing his vox-grille with a savage head-butt.
Saarsk had engaged some of the Salamanders who had clambered up over the edge of the sink. He stabbed one and shot another before the sniper ventilated his chest, and the others dragged the Word Bearer down to finish him.
He saw Elias barrelled over as the Salamander officer hurtled into him. The two grappling warriors fell hard against the jetty, which cracked under their weight. A second later and the wooden jetty split, dumping everyone on it down into the filth. It doused the fire still crackling against Narek’s armour, and he used the sudden shift in terrain to put a pistol burst point-blank into one of his opponents. Grunting, the Salamander rolled over and sank into the water.
An elbow strike in the second legionary’s throat dented his gorget and partially choked him, freeing Narek of immediate enemies. The fall had split Elias and the Salamander officer apart. They were close to the edge of the sink and a long drop into the reservoir of filth below. Ignoring the other legionaries, who had started to regroup after the Word Bearers’ fast counter-attack, Narek went straight for Elias.
‘What are you doing?’ yelled the Dark Apostle.
They were outgunned, with a sniper rifle trained on them at distance. Everyone else in the kill-squad was dead or soon to be, and all their reinforcements were trapped inside the tunnel without any excavation gear.
‘Saving our lives,’ snapped Narek as he took Elias and himself over the edge of the sink and down towards the foaming tumult below.
Numeon rushed to the edge of the sink and almost jumped.
Leodrakk stopped him, hauling the captain back by his shoulder guard.
‘We’ve lost enough already,’ he said, but leaned over and sighted down his bolter.
‘Save your rounds,’ Numeon told him, embittered. ‘They’re gone.’
Putting aside his anger, Leodrakk relented and lowered the bolter. ‘We almost had him. That bastard.’
‘He’ll want revenge for this. We’ll see him again.’
‘Did you see his arm?’ asked Leodrakk. ‘He was wounded. Recently.’
‘But not by us.’
‘Not one of his own?’
‘No,’ Numeon said, pensive, ‘something else.’
After a few seconds of watching the tide of filth still plunging from the outflow and not seeing either Word Bearer snared by the current, they stepped away from the edge.
K’gosi was alive. His breastplate was bloodstained where a Word Bearer had plunged a blade into it, but he was otherwise unharmed. He had long since depleted his reserves of promethium and flexed his left gauntlet irritably. The right he held against Shen’ra’s chest.
‘We will remember your sacrifice, brother,’ he muttered softly, kneeling next to the Techmarine whom he had rolled onto his back in repose. The splinter of jetty Shen’ra rested on was about all there was left of it; the others were still up to their armoured shins in sewage.
The Techmarine was not the only casualty. Daka’rai was also dead, on his back in the filth with a knife jutting from his neck. Ukra’bar had taken a bolt-round point blank and would not rise again. The others all carried minor injuries, and none that would amount to the wounding inflicted by their brothers’ deaths.
All present bowed their heads, before Leodrakk spoke up.
‘We cannot even burn them.’
‘No, we cannot.’ Numeon went over to the prone form of the dead human, one of the sump-catchers, and retrieved K’gosi’s cloak to give back to him. ‘So we must honour them a different way.’
In his left hand he held up the fulgurite spear. During their fight, he had wrested it from the Dark Apostle’s scabbard.
Despair turned to hope at the sight of this mundane object, though none who saw it could explain why. It crackled with power, an inner golden glow that spoke of the Emperor’s grace and his near-divinity. Stringent steps and sanctions had been taken to refute the idea of the Emperor as a god, but his power had always suggested otherwise, despite the desire to move from superstition to enlightenment. But the past months had begun to challenge that paradigm. For the universe was not the sole province of mortals, be they human or alien – it was the realm of gods, too, and most of them were malign. The Word Bearers believed in them, even courted their foot soldiers for dark favours. They had faith, but what they believed in was horrible.
As he held the spearhead aloft, Numeon knew that he had faith too: faith in the Emperor and his design for the galaxy and humanity, and faith that his primarch was still alive. The power in the fulgurite seemed to ignite that belief; it ignited it in all of them.
He lightly traced his fingers over the sigil at his waist.
‘Vulkan lives,’ he uttered simply.
Every legionary standing before him replied. First K’gosi and Ikrad.
‘Vulkan lives.’
Then G’orrn and B’tarro.
‘Vulkan lives.’
And Hur’vak and Kronor.
‘Vulkan lives.’
With every new voice, the chorus became louder, until only one remained.
Numeon looked his Pyre brother in the eye, and saw the hurt and pain he held there from when Skatar’var had been lost on Isstvan. If any had cause to doubt, it would be Leodrakk. The memory of that day and their flight to the drop-ships left a canker of regret in Numeon’s mouth, but he kept his expression neutral as he regarded Leodrakk.
His gaze moving from Numeon to the spear to the sigil and then back again, Leodrakk nodded.
‘Vulkan lives.’
Together they turned their affirmation into a battle cry, shouting at the sky in defiance and as one.
‘ Vulkan lives!’
They would hold to this belief, and use it to give their cause much-needed hope.
For the first time since they had run from Isstvan, beaten and bloody, Numeon knew what he had to do. Going back to stand at the edge of the sink, he signalled to Pergellen, with whom he knew Hriak and John Grammaticus were also waiting.