On Wings of Blood Read online

  Carving through the tortured skies, Atraxii peeled away from an ork fighter as Ironhawk’s las-talon blasted it to splinters. The Stormhawk interceptors of the Medusan Wing hung close together in the battle sphere, combining their fire against enemies and coming to each other’s aid when they came under attack from reckless ork pilots. The airspace was filled with the xenos aircraft, and though the Iron Hands proved to be the superior pilots in their dogfights, the numerical advantage, as it had ever been when confronting greenskins, was strongly against them. The ebon hulls of the Stormhawks became pitted and scorched as the effects of sustained battle began to mount against the Medusan Wing.

  Atraxii’s eyes flicked over a dozen read-outs as he blasted into a dense veil of fog, seeking to shake a greenskin fighter from his tail. Fuel was fast becoming a serious concern, as was his dwindling ammunition supply. The reserves for the assault cannons were down to twenty per cent, and the capacitor on Ironhawk’s las-talon was in danger of overloading from prolonged firing. If he pushed it much further, the energy cannon would burn itself to slag. He had a pair of krak missiles remaining, held back as a precaution.

  Cannon fire slashed around Ironhawk. The ork fighter held steadily on Atraxii’s rear scopes, tenaciously clinging to him. The Techmarine scanned his forward auspex and, finding what he was searching for, broke to port. The greenskin followed suit, continuing to spray fire down at Ironhawk.

  Once he had accepted the utility provided by melding his tactical doctrines with his natural instinct, the fiery defiance exhibited by the machine-spirit of Ironhawk had ebbed. Atraxii had ceded no control or influence to the savage animus, but allowing forces beyond logic to guide the Stormhawk in battle appeared to kindle a fledgling bond between it and the pilot. The fighter ceased to rail at Atraxii’s commands, giving him the focus needed to tear xenos squadrons from the sky.

  Atraxii hauled back on the control sticks, pulling Ironhawk up into the path of a distant ork fighter. Spinning up the assault cannons, Atraxii fired a pair of short bursts at the greenskin. The volleys zipped over and around the xenos aircraft, but failed to score any damage other than a glancing hit against its prow. The Techmarine had succeeded in attracting the attention of its pilot.

  The ork fighter rocketed towards Atraxii on a waving contrail of oily exhaust. The Space Marine could practically see the crazed pilot of the fighter slavering and barking challenges from the open cockpit as it hurtled closer. Fire blazed from its wing-mounted cannons, poorly aimed and erratic. Furious to have its prey set upon by a usurper, the ork behind Ironhawk redoubled its efforts, blasting closer.

  A round skittered over Ironhawk’s starboard wing, bucking the fighter and tearing a deep furrow down the ceramite. Atraxii could not tell if the shot had come from the enemy in front of or behind him. The Stormhawk shivered, and urgent proximity alarms began to blare as the two aircraft blasted towards each other on a collision course. Atraxii loathed the greenskins. He hated them with every drop of his blood, every plate of iron. But his hatred did not blind him to what the xenos were capable of, or what they were going to do.

  Atraxii was close enough now to see the ork ahead of him clearly. The brute had smashed the canopy of its ­cockpit open, punching a meaty fist through the gap to fire a crude pistol at Ironhawk. Atraxii’s eyes flicked to the proximity warning, watching the runes rapidly spool down in blinking ruby text.

  0600.00 feet.

  0450.00 feet.

  Atraxii gritted his teeth, holding course as the ork fighter filled his entire viewscreen.

  0300.00 feet.

  The control sticks compressed, buckling slightly in his grip.

  0150.00 feet.

  Atraxii roared, punching Ironhawk down into a spiralling dive. The hull shuddered in the jarring wake of the xenos ramjet as it rocketed overhead, close enough to scorch the lacquer from the Stormhawk’s tail. So consumed with their frenzy to destroy the Space Marine, the ork pilots were blind to one another’s screaming, unstoppable advance, until the very last moment.

  The ork fighters collided in mid-air in a blooming fireball of expanding shrapnel. The shock wave swept out in all directions, throwing Ironhawk end over end. Bits of jagged metal clawed across the hull, tearing tracks like silver tears down the matte-black armour. A section of Atraxii’s panoramic viewscreen blanked as a sensor cluster sheared away. He fought to regain control of the Stormhawk and pull it out of its tumbling dive.

  ‘Medusan Four.’ Atraxii could barely hear Dektaan’s voice over the disjointed chorus of conflicting alarms. ‘What is your status? Are you hit?’

  Atraxii clenched his teeth hard enough to feel them shift in his jaw. He fired a burst from the Stormhawk’s thrusters, slowing his tumbling cartwheel. Wrenching the control sticks to starboard, he stomped down on the tail rudder pedals at his feet. Ironhawk blasted sideways, robbed of its momentum as it began to level off.

  ‘Medusan Four, respond.’

  Atraxii pushed a breath through his teeth as he brought Ironhawk back under control. ‘I have not been seriously damaged.’

  ‘Confirmed,’ Dektaan replied. ‘Rally on my position immediately. Auspex is detecting a massed anomaly, closing fast.’

  With a mechanical roar, Oblexus sidestepped the ork bike as it cleared the ground, simultaneously slashing down with his power axe in a two-handed grip. The energised blade sheared through the torso of the xenos rider, splitting it from collar to hip. Oblexus continued his follow through, driving the axe through the ramshackle chassis of the warbike and bisecting it into twin mounds of sparking scrap metal and spurting fuel lines.

  The Iron Father flung himself to the side, rolling away from another ork biker swinging a rattling flail. He came up in a crouch and drew his plasma pistol. A precision blast vaporised the greenskin’s head. The bike careened on, smashing its front tyre down into a trench and pitching the headless corpse through the air to vanish amidst the calamity of the battlefield.

  All semblance of order had disintegrated. The Imperial forces had mounted a ferocious defence of the trench line. The kill-zone before them was a scrapyard of broken ork vehicles and broken alien bodies. Disciplined fusillades of las- and solid-shot fire scythed down the pressing greenskins, making them pay dearly for each bloody yard they gained.

  But onwards the orks came, frothing over yellowed tusks, and beady red eyes blazing with frenzy for the slaughter. The greenskins began to punch holes into weakened portions of the trench line. They flooded into the industrial earthworks of broken rockcrete. The Vostroyans began to separate, cut off into shrinking islands of defenders to be butchered by the xenos.

  The skitarii commanders had altered their stratagems, dividing their forces and forming lines of warriors designated for close combat. The red-robed infantry engaged the xenos hand-to-hand, slicing their foes apart with transonic swords and pulping bodies with arc mauls. Rangers stood behind them firing volleys from galvanic rifles, coring torsos and blasting apart ork skulls.

  Oblexus and the Iron Hands waded through the clash reaping a devastating tally but without the numbers to hold back the tide. He watched an Ironstrider struggle as a mob of greenskins crawled up its legs, dragging the spindly walker to the ground to disappear under the clamouring hordes. A crippling blast threw dozens from their feet as a Dunecrawler exploded, brought low by massed detonations from the bombs of ork sappers.

  The ground beneath Oblexus’ boots quaked, and he turned his head as a deafening roar filled the air.

  The banks of ochre cloud ahead of the battle glowed with a point of growing light like a miniature star. The light punched through the boiling cloud, arcing down towards the surface on a column of fire. Magnifying the image with his enhanced visor, Oblexus glimpsed a black dot at the centre of the light, and a shudder rippled over his remaining flesh.

  ‘Incoming!’ he barked, the words booming like a loudspeaker from his snarling iron mask. ‘Orbital roun
d, incoming!’

  The collapsed tower vanished in a blinding flash of nuclear fire. Hundreds of orks were incinerated in the searing blast, others further out crushed to ruin by the shock wave that followed. A colossal mushroom cloud the colour of bruised flesh unfolded from the blast crater, blooming into the ravaged sky on tendrils of irradiated smoke.

  Oblexus’ visor tinted, and his audio systems dampened the din to compensate for the blast. The shock wave was strong enough to hurl men and xenos from their feet even where he stood at the fore of the trench line three hundred yards away, as dust and rock slashed against the battered ceramite of his armour.

  The orks cheered in savage revelry as the fallen tower was blasted to dust and broken glass. They began to shout, a rhythmic, guttural bark that repeated again and again. The Iron Father realised that the orks were chanting, as a gargantuan shape slowly darkened the clouds above the battlefield, its prow still glowing from the ruin it had just unleashed. The tortured skies and atmosphere of Halitus IV had plagued long-distance scans and communications since before the Iron Hands had made planetfall, but could such distortion truly mask such a colossal arrival?

  ‘Brothers,’ said Oblexus over the Iron Hands’ vox-channel. ‘Withdraw to the forge temple. The xenos have brought their starship into the atmosphere.’

  -17.0-

  It materialised from the churning shrouds of toxic cloud like a deep-sea leviathan rising from the darkness of an ocean’s depths. Waves of incinerated atmosphere rippled out from it as it ploughed down from the void. A protruding prow parted the nimbus veil, fashioned into a scrap-iron jawline, as if come to devour the forge refinery hovering before it. The misshapen barrels of cannons filled the space between the warship’s jaws, the one at its centre a smouldering red from firing upon the installation.

  Atraxii recognised the looming vessel as it edged over the forge refinery. He had participated in void skirmishes against its like before. Though he did not know the mongrel title given to this type of vessel by the greenskins, in the Imperium of Mankind, it bore a name.

  Terror ship.

  The Iron Hands Techmarine realised how the orks had been capable of fielding so many fighters. Where other ork warships were packed with as many weapons batteries as their crews could bolt and solder on to their superstructures, huge sections of the terror ship’s rust-eaten hull had been cut away, the space utilised instead to house squadrons of xenos fighters. The ship lumbered on flickering engines, drifting precariously over the lip of the forge refinery.

  ‘The ship barely reached the installation under its own power,’ said Atraxii.

  ‘The greenskins launched this raid for fuel,’ said Enych. ‘The promethium they stole was sent to power this monstrosity.’

  ‘Typical,’ scoffed Colnex. ‘They use the entirety of their pilfering to bring the warship into the fray.’

  ‘Look,’ called out Atraxii, skirting Ironhawk below the terror ship but keeping his distance from its guns and swarming fighter escorts. Ork landers were hurtling down upon a promethium storage facility. Thick lengths of segmented hose and piping trailed from the landers, connecting them to the terror ship like the strings of crude puppets. Teams of greenskins leapt from the landers, tearing through plasteel containment blisters and sinking the hose lines into the silos of fuel within.

  ‘One of the refinery’s primary reservoirs,’ replied Colnex. ‘The orks seek to siphon that promethium.’

  Atraxii’s glowing eyes narrowed behind his helmet visor. ‘That is enough fuel for the xenos to launch raids against any of the surrounding systems.’

  ‘Then it must be destroyed,’ said Dektaan with finality. ‘Medusan Wing, form up on my lead. We are tearing that abomination out of the sky.’

  Oblexus chanted a prayer to appease the spirit inhabiting his plasma pistol as he adjusted the weapon’s sizzling focusing rings. He swung out from cover, firing into a knot of roaring orks charging his barricade of broken rockcrete. Three died, their flesh blackened and seared away, shoved aside by their frenzied kin.

  The Iron Father’s backpack-mounted pincer claw shot out, seizing one of the greenskins by the throat. The claw closed, snapping the ork’s neck with a series of wet pops. The claw flung the corpse into the alien’s howling fellows, bowling them to the ground. Oblexus leapt forwards, butchering the thrashing beasts with his power axe.

  Oblexus’ visor display beeped twice in rapid succession. He turned, sprinting down the street. Orks pursued him, oblivious to the darkening shadow looming over them.

  Vladoc smashed down into the orks, leaving a crater of shattered rockcrete and broken bodies. The Assault sergeant tore into the rampaging aliens as Oblexus reached the next cover point. The Iron Father skidded behind an overturned Vostroyan troop transport, and sent a databurst to Vladoc, who promptly blasted into the air, scorching nearby greenskins with the flames of his jump pack.

  The Iron Hands had been engaged in running battles since the ork terror ship had bombarded the Imperial lines into ruin. They moved back in a staggered advance leading towards the forge temple at the centre of the floating refinery city, covering one another as they withdrew from the xenos. Looking up, Oblexus saw that the monolithic structure now hung over them, a colossal pyramid of brass and cogwork spires.

  A thunderous detonation shook the ground beneath Oblexus’ boots, nearly causing him to stumble in spite of his armour’s stabilisers. Whipping tides of dust shot through the gaps between buildings as fire leapt up into the sky. The ork ship had continued its bombardment of the surface, firing a creeping barrage towards the temple. Whooping with cruel laughter in the shadow of their warship, the greenskins attacked with redoubled ferocity, despite losing swathes of warriors in each of the terror ship’s blasts.

  Oblexus charged to the rallying point, twisting and firing his plasma pistol behind him at the pursuing xenos. Seeing a firing line of skitarii ahead, he broadcast his ident-burst across the noosphere. The skitarii re-aimed their weapons, allowing the Iron Father to pass.

  Coming to a halt, Oblexus crouched next to Voitek, who was busily stripping a track of ruined, gore-gummed teeth from his chainsword. His other brethren knelt in firing positions around him, forming a crescent before the central avenue leading into the forge temple behind them. Nine were left standing. The tactical withdrawal to this position had cost much Medusan blood. Vladoc landed in a crunch of fractured rockcrete beside Oblexus, catching a spare bolt pistol magazine from a brother and reloading his weapon.

  The Iron Father looked up as his vox crackled. The voice was distorted, thin and flawed by static, but Oblexus heard it clearly.

  ‘This is Dionaki, respond.’

  Oblexus had not expected there to be any survivors from the shattered Astra Militarum lines. He had witnessed almost the entire force of skitarii obliterated by the terror ship’s bombardment and had assumed the mortals had shared their fate. This Vostroyan was more resourceful than he had anticipated.

  ‘Oblexus of the Iron Hands,’ he replied. ‘Acknowledging your transmission.’

  ‘My lord, I am moving my surviving elements to your position. Do not fire upon us.’

  ‘Colonel, do you require assistance?’

  ‘Negative,’ Dionaki replied flatly. ‘We can reach you without intervention.’

  Oblexus shot a sidelong glance at Voitek, who shrugged indifferently as he laid a fresh track of teeth into the battered chainsword.

  ‘Acknowledged, colonel.’

  Within the hour, Oblexus spotted a pair of ragged columns moving swiftly through the ruins towards them. The black fatigues of the Remnant of Fire were torn and clotted with dust and blood. The soldiers carried as much ammunition as they could salvage during their withdrawal, even managing to haul a pair of siege mortars with them.

  Oblexus noticed that there were no wounded. Dionaki had been logical to leave them behind to stall the xenos advance, buying her
viable elements a window to rendezvous at the forge temple. The Iron Father had seen many a commander lose their resolve under such conditions, and the stern efficiency with which the Vostroyan had conducted this war had earned her his respect.

  ‘Well met, colonel,’ said Oblexus, thudding a fist against his chest.

  Dionaki ran a gloved hand across her face, wiping grime from the network of scars that covered it.

  ‘We are a shadow of our former strength, my lord. There is little we can do against a void ship, but we will hold until we fall.’

  ‘As if simply dying were your purpose,’ uttered a modulated voice from behind them.

  Oblexus turned to see the cowled form of Adept Wyn striding towards them with her gliding gait. The clawing wind and smoke rippled across her heavy robes. The tech-priest’s ranger bodyguard followed in her shadow, the air around her thick with ozone as the skitarii’s internal auspex scried the area for threats.

  Wyn’s optics panned to Dionaki, and the adept released what might have been the mechanical equivalent of a sigh.

  ‘I shall refrain from binharic communication,’ she rasped in her flesh voice. ‘For the sake of those incapable of comprehension.’

  Dionaki made a show of unclipping the restraint strap on her holstered laspistol, before crossing her arms in a buzzing snarl of damaged servos. The adept’s ranger guardian twitched the barrel of her galvanic rifle in the Vostroyan’s direction, centring it over her chest.

  Wyn continued, as if oblivious or simply above concern. ‘The forge temple and its vaults are now in jeopardy. Your inability to restrict the progress of the xenos is most unacceptable.’