On Wings of Blood Read online

  A Stormraven gunship rested within the centre of the chevron behind the lead Stormhawk. It would be Atraxii’s honour to pilot the Stormraven, supporting the two squads of Iron Hands aboard the Corporeal Lament near Halitus IV’s forge refineries to engage the greenskins on the ground. Atraxii brushed his fingertips against the drop-ship’s flank, sensing the venerable machine-spirit within stir as he made direct contact.

  Atraxii passed the Stormraven, finally coming to a halt beside the lead fighter. Whispered benedictions to the Master of Machines passed from his lips as he beheld it. The Stormhawk exuded the same silent menace as its squadron kin. The only differentiation was the silver lacquer that had been reverently applied to the fighter’s canopy and tail fins, in deference to its status as wing leader.

  The fighter needed no sigils recording its conquests, for they were etched within the heart of every battle-brother in the Chapter. It had flown the skies of Mereglocious, scouring the skies of that world of the Archenemy. It was the scourge of the foul eldar, laying waste to their armies above Colocnoc. It had won victory upon victory, duel after duel, and had slain champions and foes of every stripe across the span of the Imperium.

  Every son of Ferrus Manus knew the name Ironhawk.

  Atraxii reached out towards the Stormhawk’s fuselage. He detected the slumbering machine-spirit within, felt it rouse as he drew close. His crimson fingertips touched the metal–

  A tide of fury spiked through Atraxii’s mind. Ironhawk’s spirit lashed out at his intrusion like a caged beast. Its power was unbelievably potent, more so than any Atraxii had encountered before. It clawed at his awareness with a singular need. The entirety of its existence slavered for it.

  Ironhawk needed to hunt.

  Atraxii snapped his hand back, breaking the contact with the interceptor. He exhaled, feeling his heartbeat calm once more as the ancient spirit withdrew.

  ‘Ironhawk has a ferocious spirit,’ said Oblexus from behind Atraxii. The Techmarine turned, chastising himself for being so consumed by the legendary aircraft that he did not notice the Iron Father’s approach.

  ‘It is fierce,’ replied Atraxii, keeping his voice even. ‘I have known Titans with minds less savage.’

  Oblexus gave a short bark in simulacrum of a chuckle. ‘I am certain it would like to think so. It is a proud machine.’ He ran a hand down its flank. ‘Volatile, yes. But harnessed properly by one who possesses logic and control, there is little that flies which can stand against its fury.’

  The Iron Father nodded to the Stormraven gunship. ‘I remember how you flew a Thunderhawk as a neophyte. Your skill as a pilot elevated you to stand among those considered for the apprenticeship on Mars.’

  ‘To serve with such treasured relics of the Chapter so young was a great honour,’ replied Atraxii. ‘As was your decision that I should accompany you to Halitus Four.’

  Oblexus nodded. ‘The iron captain shared my assessment that you would be efficient in service to the Medusan Wing. After all, it was your logical threat assessment that influenced him to delay the fulfilment of our oaths in the Yandi Veil. Words must be followed with actions for those who are of iron.’

  Oblexus turned away to leave the hangar. ‘Come, the journey to Halitus Four may be brief and we must be prepared.’

  Atraxii noted the contempt in the Iron Father’s words when referring to warp travel, even through the implacable calm of his machine voice. The erratic and immeasurability of the immaterium was a plague upon the ships that travelled its dismal tides, and for none more so than the Iron Hands. The Corporeal Lament could arrive at Halitus IV hundreds of years after they had entered the warp, or a decade before the plea for aid had been dispatched. The Iron Father’s ire was reflected in all of the Chapter. The inability to measure the warp, to control it, made voyages a hated trial for even veterans of Oblexus’ ilk. Atraxii looked back, sparing a final look at Ironhawk, and followed him.

  Twenty-seven Iron Hands Space Marines filled a darkened chamber deep within the Corporeal Lament. The air was bitterly cold, and puffs of feathered breath hung before the hoods of the trembling serfs attending to the bulky cylindrical devices sunk into ornate alcoves lining the far wall, their gaunt faces lit by the spectral blue glow of electrocandles.

  In contrast to the vast sepulchral chamber of the Eye of Medusa, the frigate’s briefing area was a cramped, industrial room. Banks of cogitators lined the walls around the cylinders, tended by droning servitors and robed overseers more oblivious to the frigid conditions. Planetary scans of Halitus IV, schematics of the Adeptus Mechanicus forge refineries and the limited intelligence concerning the ork insurgency was represented in floating hololiths and reflected on transparent panels.

  Two squads of Iron Hands stood in the centre of the chamber. The ten warriors of Assault Squad Vladoc stood in pairs, their dark armour gleaming with fresh repair yet still bearing the faint scars of the relentless close combat they so excelled in. Their left greaves bore the cross icon of Assault squads, while on the right was a stylised number seven, showing their place within the order of the clan in chipped white enamel. The warriors shifted their weight from side to side, acclimatising to the absence of their turbine jump packs. Some wore their helms, and those that went without them showed extensive bionic reconstruction. While they embraced the replacement of their flesh as zealously as any other of the Iron Hands, those serving in Assault squads sustained the highest rates of grievous injury in battle, and thus often possessed the most augmentation.

  Where Assault Squad Vladoc showed tension and eagerness to begin operations, the brothers of Tactical Squad Voitek were like statues. The left greave of each warrior was bare of any heraldry, while a three adorned the right in white enamel. All wore their helms, and remained unmoving and silent but for the thrum of their active power armour. These warriors showed significant bionic replacement as well, with gleaming mechanical arms and legs contrasting with the black of their armour.

  Standing apart from the squads were the pilots of the Medusan Wing. Like Atraxii, the five Techmarines wore crimson armour, modified to allow increased flexibility within the confines of a craft’s cockpit. They stood behind Oblexus, while Atraxii stood a distance from the Iron Father on his left.

  With a muted click, the cylinders within the chamber unlocked, their fronts swinging aside in a glittering tide of cracked ice that scattered over the deck plating. Atraxii stepped forwards with the other Iron Hands, and each Space Marine entered one of the cylinders. As they settled against the hardened plasteel and iron, a faint hum rippled through the devices as their machine-spirits were roused. Atraxii pulled down the restraint harness above him, locking it into place as interface needles and neural plugs entered connection ports along his spinal column.

  Atraxii centred his mind as he began to enter the trance. The cylinder hatch swung closed, then the serfs secured it and bathed it with incense. It had been far too long since he had entered a simulus chamber, and he allowed himself a moment to enjoy the sensation as the machine absorbed him into its cold embrace.

  Atraxii blinked, and with a sharp twitch of displacement he was beyond the Corporeal Lament. He found himself drifting among an indistinct swirl of racing code, riven with thunderheads of static and broken data. His form of flesh and iron was gone, replaced by an amalgamation of glittering runes of pulsing scarlet and non-reflective black. Fractals wound and branched over his being, springing to harden into being or disintegrate within the mathematical tempest that silently engulfed him.

  Atraxii became aware of the others in a ring around him. Like him, his brother Iron Hands were gently shifting sheets of living data, black and silver and scarlet. Though they had no faces, Atraxii identified each of his brothers without effort. Their forms proclaimed their identities with a clarity that even their physical shells did not possess. Oblexus was an anchor, his form the least changing of the ring, while Vladoc and his warriors rippled with ev
en waves of bladed code about their edges.

  A remnant left from the Dark Age of Technology, the simulus chambers provided the Iron Hands with a means to quickly and efficiently upload vast quantities of data and disperse it to their warriors. Whether through the deployment and installation of mandated conditioning protocols, comprehensive debriefings following operations, or the provision of combat simulations, the apparatus allowed the Iron Hands to maintain an unrivalled consistency of doctrine throughout their Chapter.

  For Atraxii and the warriors with whom he formed the ring, the chamber would prepare them as one being for the battle to come.

  Oblexus’ dataform brightened slightly. With a jarring twitch, the light around the ring died, shifting to a simulacrum of the void. At the centre of the Iron Hands turned the ochre sphere of Halitus IV, its gentle rotation marred by occasional static and instability. Though the simulus chambers were powerful devices, the vast majority of their functionality was unknown to the Iron Hands, lost forever to ignorance in the battle against time’s relentless march. What the sons of the Gorgon managed to achieve through their use was merely scratching the surface of a potential that would, as with so much within the Imperium of Mankind, never again be achieved.

  Oblexus’ dataform pulsed with the sending. A likeness of the Iron Hands warship appeared, blinking into being and sliding to hang above Halitus IV.

 

  The view of the Adeptus Mechanicus planet swelled, and tactical diagrams displaying the primary forge refinery arrayed themselves before the communion of disembodied Iron Hands.

  The Iron Father illuminated the foremost cluster of forge refineries, encroached upon by a crescent of pulsing red icons representing ork units.

  Atraxii sent in reply.

 

  sent Squad Sergeant Vladoc, his and his warriors’ forms buzzing. Squad Sergeant Voitek pulsed his acknowledgement once in silence.

 

  asked Atraxii.

  Oblexus replied flatly, his sending cold but without malice.

  said Atraxii,

  The communion was silent, hanging in the flickering datastream. Dektaan, Oblexus’ lieutenant and wingman within the Medusan Wing, hardened his dataform with cold cubic fractals.

  sent Dektaan, his transmission not as sanguine as Oblexus’ had been.

  sent Oblexus, communicating to both Techmarines before casting his focus upon Atraxii.

  Oblexus’ dataform flashed once, his judgement final. The ring echoed the spark of illumination, as the Iron Hands bound themselves to the doctrine. The datastream surrounding Atraxii became blurred and insubstantial. He experienced another pang of displacement as it fragmented, and his senses returned from his form of data and light to one of flesh and iron.

  The translation bell sounded from the darkness in shrill, even chimes as the simulus chamber opened. Atraxii understood the sensations of the Corporeal Lament shivering beneath his boots as the vessel returned to reality from the warp once more.

  ‘Prepare yourselves, brothers,’ said Oblexus. ‘We will attack as soon as we reach low orbit.’

  -07.0-

  The pilot’s restraint harness locked around Atraxii as he surveyed the hangar bay of the Corporeal Lament through the armourglass canopy of the Stormraven gunship Vengeance of Santar. His hands danced over the control panels to ready the drop-ship for flight.

  Within the crew bay of the gunship, the Iron Hands of Assault Squad Vladoc offered whispered benedictions to their wargear, made final adjustments to their equipment, or waited in silence. They donned their helms, their eye-lenses glowing crystal-blue in the darkness as the optics connected to the power supplies of their suits. As the assault ramp folded up and sealed, the Assault Marines split into pairs.

  ‘May my iron sharpen yours,’ the Iron Hands chanted to one another in Ekfrasi as they exchanged weapons. Chainswords, power axes and boltguns were traded, stowed by their new owners in the crew bay compartments or mag-locked to armour plates.

  ‘May its return find your iron sharpened,’ came the ritualised reply, promising the return of the treasured armaments once the mission had concluded, as the Iron Hands locked themselves into restraint thrones.

  Crimson light strobed in the cockpit as Atraxii spooled the Stormraven’s engines into action. Their bass drone split the hangar, the noise muted to Atraxii by his armour and the thick hull surrounding him, and the craft hummed as the drop-ship’s venerable machine-spirit growled its readiness to begin.

  Klaxons wailed in the hangar bay. Servitors and trained crew disconnected fuel lines, secured ammunition hoppers and offered final prayers over the blessed machines in their care as they hurriedly cleared the area.

  It had been forty-eight years since Atraxii had piloted a Chapter aircraft into an active warzone, eighteen years serving with a Tactical squad, and thirty spent training upon the surface of Mars. Though it was not an insignificant amount of time, the intensive training and experience gained guiding a Thunderhawk gunship in combat flowed back to Atraxii in an instant. The Stormraven was a smaller craft, and lacked the heavy armour and the devastating battle cannon possessed by the Thunderhawk, but it made up for it in manoeuvrability, and the Techmarine recognised many similarities between the two gunships. The touch of the controls, the reassuring weight of the fuselage around him and the array of formidable weapons at his disposal banished any doubt that he would achieve his mission directives.

  He would be efficient.

  The deck shuddered as the Stormhawks sat in formation around Atraxii came online. The Techmarine had cherished performing the rites of
awakening and calibration over the fighter craft of the Medusan Wing, consecrating their engines and anointing their weapons with sacred oils. Their blackened forms vibrated as the hangar bay doors of the Corporeal Lament ground open.

  A vista of swirling ochre cloud revealed itself to Atraxii through the open bay doors. The gaseous sphere of Halitus IV spun serenely in the void before him, its storm-clotted skies rippling with intermittent webs of lightning and conflagrations. Atraxii could see the small blocky shapes of the Adeptus Mechanicus’ forge refineries hanging amidst the vast banks of orange vapour. He could not see any sign of the xenos, but was able to detect the wreckage of an Adeptus Mechanicus system monitor floating in orbit around the gas planet. He analysed the high degree of damage to the floating installations with his enhanced visor. While the central facilities were largely unharmed, the peripheral refineries surrounding them had sustained crippling damage, and the circle was growing smaller with each passing moment.

  ‘Medusan Wing,’ Oblexus’ voice crackled across the vox network from the cockpit of Ironhawk. ‘Convey your readiness.’

  ‘Medusan Two, affirmative.’ Atraxii recognised Dektaan’s harsh growl.

  ‘Medusan Three, in readiness,’ voxed Colnex, the longest-serving member of the Medusan Wing, save for Oblexus.

  ‘Medusan Four, at your command,’ said Enych, his voice even and without emotion.

  ‘Medusan Five, the flesh is weak!’ growled Severus, the most recent Techmarine inducted into the squadron.