On Wings of Blood Read online

  ‘Your squadron,’ said Atraxii, nodding to the Stormhawks as they rapidly shrank from view.

  ‘Affirmative,’ replied Oblexus, also watching as the pilots of his elite unit departed. ‘They are of the Medusan Wing.’

  Engine wash buffeted the Iron Hands below, who remained impassive, still as statues. Thick landing claws clanked out from beneath the shuttle as it landed, sinking on hydraulics as they bore the small craft’s weight. Thick jets of steam hissed from the shuttle, its fuselage ticking as it cooled, souring the air with the acrid, scorched scent of atmospheric re-entry.

  A narrow ramp unfolded from an aperture beneath the shuttle’s embarkation hatch. From the low vermillion light of the craft’s interior, a shadowed form emerged. Stepping out into the intermittent light of Medusa, a skitarii ranger surveyed the landing pad before her from the whirring optics of her enclosed rebreather mask. Soft exhalations hissed from the mask beneath the crimson robes she wore parted over her battle armour. After a handful of heartbeats, she hefted the long barrel of her galvanic rifle, cradling it in bionic arms as she strode down the ramp.

  A tall, spindly figure appeared behind the skitarii ranger. Swathed in the same rust-coloured robes as her bodyguard, Adept Wyn followed her protector down to the waiting Iron Hands. Her gait was smooth, consistent and precise, as if she floated in the air. Nothing of her body, augmetic or biological, could be glimpsed through the concealment of her robes. All that could be seen were the clusters of optical sensors that glowed like shining chips of jade from beneath the darkness of her hood.

  Adept Wyn glided ahead of the skitarii ranger to a short distance before Oblexus. The Adeptus Mechanicus sniper stayed a pace behind and to the right of her charge, her rifle low across her chest with the barrel to the ground.

  Oblexus sent in a burst of binharic.

  The tech-priest inclined her head fractionally. she replied.

  Adept Wyn’s waif-thin form was a head taller than the Iron Father, even with her hunched posture. She bent down further, the lenses of her optical sensors ticking and rasping as they focused their lambent glow upon Oblexus.

 

  Oblexus’ posture shifted, his prior welcoming openness knit closed.

  canted Wyn, spreading her ghoulish arms to her sides.

  ‘Then you shall do so,’ the voice of Lochaar rumbled. A lift platform iris opened, and the hulking form of the Venerable Dreadnought appeared. He stomped forwards on thick armoured legs, his gait pounding resounding clangs into the landing pad’s surface. Thick ribbons of chainmail hanging from plates of dense armour rattled with every step. The grasping fingers that made up his left fist clenched and unclenched with a whirr of servos. The storm bolter built into his wrist clunked as it fed ammunition into firing chambers.

  ‘We of Medusa hold the servants of sacred Mars in esteem, as we always have, and thus the Iron Council would grant you audience,’ said Lochaar as he came to a halt. Oblexus and Atraxii stepped away to either side as the Dreadnought loomed over the Mechanicus adept. ‘Tell me why you have come here unannounced. Now.’

  -05.0-

  The two parties stood apart, crimson and bronze against featureless black.

  Lochaar looked down upon the Martian tech-priest, rendered in scarlet monochrome by the screeds of tactical data feedback that constituted his vision. He detected the adept’s skitarii protector shifting, ready to bring her galvanic rifle to bear upon him, should the command come from her ward. His augurs hissed as targeting locks brushed over his ironform, questing for points of weakness.

  The sparse biological components left of him, shrivelled and folded as they floated in the brackish fluid of his cramped sarcophagus, gave a fractional twitch. It was not a reaction to the cold – he had endured the marrow-deep chill of his coffin ever since he was interred. Nor was it anger. He knew objectively that each of the Iron Hands upon the platform had done the same, in readiness to destroy the envoy should she attempt any treachery.

  It was amusement.

  The idea that the lone skitarii ranger could threaten an ironform touched by the Gorgon himself was objectively, definitively, humorous. Lochaar savoured the rare stimulus for a fraction of a second. He had never regretted the degree of separation from his flesh. His interment within the blessed sarcophagus had been, and continued to be, the foremost distinction of his existence. Yet, as it had been nearly one hundred and eighteen complete years, by the Terran standard, since he had experienced such a thing, he embraced the novelty of the sensation for a passing instant.

  Adept Wyn raised the ticking lenses beneath her hood, as she finally answered the Dreadnought.

  ‘I have come,’ she said, her flesh-voice stilted and raw from lack of use, ‘in reference to the alloy between the sacred Adeptus Mechanicus and noble Medusa. Long has it been that the priesthood of the red forges has stood with the sons of Manus. Our forges have furnished the starcraft that bear your maniples. Our labours have armoured your warriors and crafted the weapons they bear to war.’

  She regarded Atraxii. ‘We have passed our knowledge to your brethren, and allowed them deeper communion with the Omnissiah.’

  Wyn turned back to Lochaar. ‘And in return, the Hands of Iron have stood in defence of the priesthood, and its labours, should circumstance demand it. Such a circumstance has arisen once again, and I have been dispatched to see that our convention remains solvent.’

  A low rumble issued from Lochaar, like gears slipping.

  ‘Show me.’

  Adept Wyn stepped within a pace of Lochaar, and raised a skeletal hand of brass. She did not touch the Dreadnought, her metal fingertips lingering just shy of brushing the ebon chassis of the ironform. Her eye-lenses flickered, and a muted squawk of binharic warbled from beneath her cowl.

  A concentrated databurst passed through the noosphere between the two as Wyn delivered the message she had been carrying across the stars from Halitus IV. Lochaar’s data feeds swelled with new information as the burst unpacked, showing him what had caused the Adeptus Mechanicus forge refinery to dispatch their adept tertius with such alacrity.

  Lochaar was silent for three seconds, before turning and striding back towards the lift.

  ‘Come with me.’

  The journey to the Eye of Medusa lasted two days. In that time, Adept Wyn had not paused in conveying her displeasure with what she deemed an unacceptable length of transit. She had allotted an exact allowance for her time upon the surface of the Iron Hands’ world, and the time needed to reach the seat of the Iron Council had vastly exceeded her timetable. The Iron Hands had borne her vexation in silence, adhering to their routines and protocols as normal until they arrived.

  Through monolithic armoured gateways, vast conveyors carried the Iron Hands and the Cult Mechanicus adept down deep below the surface of Medusa. After hours of slow, grinding progress, the conveyor platform halted before a bulkhead emblazoned with the icon of the Iron Hands. Noospheric blurts were transferred, identities were confirmed and concealed weapons arrays returned to standby as the newcomers were admitted within the Eye of Medusa.

  They passed through several more heavily defended hardpoints before arriving at their destination, on a path similar to that taken to the core of Kaargul’s fortress but an order of magnitude more formidable. The Chapter had been defined by the death of its leader, and those who had built the Eye of Medusa had taken steps to ensure those who guided the Iron Hands would not fall to a similar
fate within its walls.

  The central chamber of the Eye was a sweeping space, built to gather the Iron Council who guided the Chapter. Comprising the captains and Iron Fathers from each of the clan companies, the council would convene to coordinate the labours of the Chapter, plot crusades and cement their rivalries amongst each other.

  A dome of hewn onyx swept overhead, enclosing a space built to hold gatherings far grander in scale than the small party assembled there. The Iron Council would rarely gather in its entirety, save for the momentous conclaves where historic courses that would affect the future of the Chapter were decided, such as the Tempering, where the Iron Council met to guide the shattered Legion out of the ashes of Isstvan V after the death of Ferrus Manus. Forty-one thrones of brushed steel towered around the perimeter of the chamber, yet only six bore the weight of a Space Marine upon them.

  Among their number was Iron Captain Rumann, leader of Clan Kaargul. Mechadendrites and segmented cables wound over the Space Marine’s artificer power armour, and though he sat as immobile as the others, the iron captain’s presence rippled out over the noosphere as the newcomers arrived.

 

  replied Oblexus as he approached his own throne beside Rumann.

  Adept Wyn glided to stand at one end of the chamber, before the Voice of Mars.

  A triumvirate of senior tech-priests had maintained a permanent envoy with the Iron Hands since the days of the Tempering, a symbol of the entrenched covenant between the devotees of the Machine-God. The adepts hung within a vertical dais of writhing cables and thrumming brass cogwork, heads lowered as if in contemplation.

  Flickering bursts of binary cant linked between Wyn and the Voice of Mars. All of the adepts lifted their right arms in perfect synchronicity. Mechadendrites flashed from beneath their sleeves, snaking towards Wyn and embedding into her slight frame. Her skitarii guardian stood beside her, silently observing the other occupants.

  Oblexus sat at his appointed place within the chamber, neural connectors binding him to the throne with a series of sharp clicks, while Atraxii stood below him. Lochaar stood at the fore of his throne, the presence of his venerable ironform dominating all others as the neural interface cables embedded into his sarcophagus.

  Adept Wyn turned in a faint rasp of bionics and extended one of her too-long arms towards the centre of the council chamber. A mechadendrite darted from the sleeve of her robe, plugging into an interface node with a muted click.

  A hololithic projector built into the floor sprang to life, and a star chart leapt into the air, bathing the occupants of the Eye of Medusa in pale blue light. A section of the star chart pulsed amber and magnified, swelling to fill the entire projection. The chart enhanced again, and again, until a single orb spun slowly beneath the dome.

  The planet was a gas giant, a sphere of dense rolling cloud intermittently riven with lightning storms. Blocky shapes were picked out in amber on the projection, with Adeptus Mechanicus designation sigils and accompanying screeds of data scrolling beside them.

  canted Wyn, addressing the Iron Hands in binharic once more. The remnants of her throat, atrophied and irradiated from a lifetime in the forges, were incapable of sustained function over extended periods of time.

 

  A cluster of red icons blinked into being, massing towards one of the refineries. The icons surrounded it, and its amber light faded. The icons then spread in all directions, a rolling, disorganised advance that swept over the closest installations like a tide. Two more refineries winked out.

 

  asked Rumann.

 
 

  Adept Wyn withdrew the mechadendrite, which snapped back within the sleeve of her robes. The projection faded into motes of thin light.

  Atraxii sensed a tremor through the noosphere as a secure binharic network channel opened.

  canted Lochaar, his cranial sensor cluster tilting to regard Rumann.

  replied the leader of Clan Kaargul.

  sent Oblexus,

  canted Rumann.

  Oblexus was silent for a moment.

 

  sent Lochaar.

 

  Atraxii felt Lochaar’s smouldering eye-lenses settle upon him.

  Atraxii responded immediately.

  Another rumble issued from Lochaar. The Dreadnought looked back towards Rumann and Oblexus, who held his gaze from their own iron masks.

  Rumann canted.

  Adept Wyn canted, comporting her body language in an expression of satisfaction.

  -06.0-

  The Corporeal Lament shuddered around Atraxii as it carved through the warp. His metronomic stride set the deck plating clanging as he turned down a junction leading to the primary hangar bay.

  The Techmarine could hear the Geller field. He could differentiate its unique timbre from the countless other noises made by an Imperial warship as it squealed against t
he daemon tides slavering to engulf them. The relatively small contingent of mortals aboard the frigate, save the ship’s Navigator and a spare few others, had been sequestered upon translation to reduce the probability of warp-related madness. Such occurrences were common during prolonged travel within the ether, and this voyage had been no exception.

  One of the gunnery thralls, a brutish vat-grown slab of a man, had cracked due to proximity to the warp. He had broken free of his confinement, butchering eight of his fellow ratings before the Iron Hands had hunted him down in the darkness of the ship’s lower decks.

  Atraxii had studied the frenzied serf, imagining how the warp must appear to him as it ravaged his anaemic mind. The man shrieked, frothing from the mouth as he moaned about the nightmare realm of daemons where the screeching of tortured anguish and howls of enraged bliss overlapped and interwove, swelling and separating and joining in the obscenely endless fluidity of Chaos.

  It was sickening. Oblexus had ended the thrall with the tightening of a gauntleted fist around his throat, crushing the man’s vertebrae with a series of wet clicks. The body had been incinerated without ceremony.

  Atraxii pondered the dead man’s rantings as his flesh dissolved within the furnace. He dared not question the ways of the Omnissiah, but it was troubling that He should create beings of such power to forge a dominion for beings of such weakness. How could they do anything but squander the inheritance bought for them with Adeptus Astartes blood?

  The Techmarine dismissed his banal musings, and made note to make penance for such flippancy later. He stepped forwards as the bulkhead at the end of the corridor rumbled open, and entered the hangar.

  The aircraft of the Medusan Wing were spread out in an ordered chevron before Atraxii, and he canted a binharic psalm in humble reverence as he approached them. Five Stormhawk interceptors perched upon the hangar deck, forming an arrowhead of void-black armour. The hulls of the formidable fighter craft bore no trappings or pageantry, no sigils listing the foes slain by the venerable machines, no vain boasts of past victories. These were silent, noble war engines, craft that did their killing with ruthless, cold calculation, just like the pilots who flew them. Only the icons of Chapter and clan adorned their hulls, laser-etched onto the armour plating in bleached white.