On Wings of Blood Read online

  ‘Vengeance of Santar, affirmative,’ said Atraxii.

  ‘We embark, brothers,’ said Oblexus. ‘Our sworn allies of the Martian priesthood have called for our aid to overcome the xenos who have defiled the holy works of these machines, and we have answered their call. We shall honour the covenant made between the red planet and the blessed primarch. The Medusan Wing shall purge these greenskins and the obscenities they have built to oppose us. Their creations are abominations, affronts against the perfection of the Omnissiah. In the name of the Emperor and the Gorgon, let us visit annihilation upon all of their misbegotten kind. With wings of iron!’

  ‘No weakness shall bar us from our course!’ responded the Medusan Wing as one.

  The hangar filled with the cacophony of screaming turbine jets, then the craft of the Medusan Wing lifted in unison, blasting out and away from the Corporeal Lament.

  The blurred orange of Halitus IV rushed up to meet Atraxii as Vengeance of Santar plunged through its mesosphere. The gunship rattled and ribbons of flame flowed over the canopy as Atraxii guided the craft through atmospheric entry.

  Atraxii checked his auspex, seeing the smear of the Corporeal Lament shrinking behind him, as well as the smaller outline of the Priori as it sheltered in the wake of the Iron Hands warship. The two vessels broke off almost immediately, rising to take up positions at high anchor. A small comet streaked down past Atraxii on the port side, as the drop pod bearing Tactical Squad Voitek slashed through the clouds to its landing zone. Atraxii and the Medusan Wing had conducted a wider circuit to remain clear of the drop pod’s path, and now swung tighter towards the target in its wake.

  The rumbling flames ceased as the Medusan Wing passed through the atmosphere. The Vengeance of Santar bucked in Atraxii’s hands as the banks of swirling cloud and whipping air currents buffeted the gunship. Visibility for the unenhanced would be exceptionally poor, and Atraxii cycled through the vision filters of his augmetic eyes and retinal display in an attempt to pierce the tempest. Settling on a spectrum that rendered the cloud layers into a thin mist, the Techmarine watched as the principal forge refinery of Halitus IV swelled in his visor display.

  A floating city hung amidst the ochre skies like a blister of dark iron. Towering smokestacks and exhaust columns vomited gouts of toxic smog into the air, which wrapped around the installation as a dark shroud of dense pollution. Sprawling industrial complexes were heaped upon one another in the fashion of an insect hive. Reinforced ducts and fuel lines threaded the installation, bearing the refined promethium from processing facilities through to massive reservoir bladders and silo tanks. An enormous network of anti-grav arrays crowded beneath the entirety of the forge refinery, their cowlings flickering with chains of lightning from the supercharged veil of ozone and industrial pollution that surrounded them.

  As Atraxii drew closer, he saw that not all of the smoke billowing from the forge refinery was from fuel production. Fire ringed the fringes of the floating city, and the Techmarine could begin to make out tiny shapes weaving through the installation like flies over a corpse.

  Orks.

  Hatred, that all-too-human of emotions, boiled up in Atraxii’s heart at the sight of them. They had landed several war parties across the forge refinery city, which the Techmarine could just make out as they fought pitched battles against the Imperial defenders. There was no sign of the xenos warship that the aliens had issued forth from, but the skies were thick with their abominable, ramshackle aircraft diving through the sparking bursts of flak sent airborne by the facility’s defensive batteries.

  Atraxii hated the abused metal and tortured mechanical blasphemy that the greenskins might have called technology, had the vile savages been capable of stringing that many syllables together. Volatile and unstable, the fighters and bombers sowing destruction across Halitus IV were as much a threat to the xenos using them as they were to the Imperium. The ork war machines seemed to function solely out of spite for the perfect order of the Omnissiah’s designs, and Atraxii had to devote a significant portion of his will to suppress the furious instinct to break formation and tear them out of the air.

  The machine-spirit of the Stormraven sensed the ire emanating from Atraxii, feeding more fuel into the engines. It was an infinitesimal change, a nearly indiscernible increase in speed that would likely have gone unnoticed by Space Marines belonging to any other Chapter. Yet for a Techmarine of the Iron Hands, it was as apparent as the impatient growl of a leashed hound hunting beside its master.

  ‘Focus,’ Oblexus warned. Atraxii chastised himself – if he had noticed his lapse in discipline, then of course the Iron Father had as well. The communication was over a closed frequency, sparing Atraxii the shame of having his weakness exposed before all of the pilots of the Medusan Wing, though he was certain they had detected his imbalance just as Oblexus had.

  ‘By the Machine,’ voxed Severus. ‘Look!’

  Atraxii saw it. There was nothing else that could have eclipsed it.

  A chain of explosions rippled across a portion of the facility in a corridor of mushrooming flame. An entire segment of the forge refinery sagged. The lights went out in a wave across its sprawling maze of manufactorums and distribution centres. The anti-grav array keeping the section aloft shuddered and fell silent. In a deafening discordance of rending metal and snapping rockcrete, a fifth of the Adeptus Mechanicus city sheared away. Shrouded in a pall of dust and smoke, the island of disconnected cityscape tumbled down as if in slow motion, disappearing as it vanished within the clouds below.

  ‘Squad Voitek?’ asked Colnex.

  Atraxii was close enough to pick up the ident-runes of the Iron Hands Tactical squad on his enhanced visor display. The ten silver icons blinked steadily from their position in the refinery as the Iron Hands aircraft swept over them, the Tactical Marines spread in a crescent across the deployment line set by Oblexus’ orders.

  ‘Confirmed,’ replied Atraxii. ‘They were not in that section of the facility.’

  ‘Then it changes nothing,’ said Dektaan.

  ‘Affirmative,’ said Oblexus. ‘Maintain formation. Atraxii, prepare Squad Vladoc for combat drop.’

  -08.0-

  Assault Squad Vladoc rose as one from their restraint thrones as scarlet warning lights flashed on within the crew bay of Vengeance of Santar, their insistent glow staining the dark armour of the Space Marines the hue of clotted blood. They took up their weapons in calm, practised grips, forming a column facing the rear assault ramp. They had leapt into hundreds of battles across hundreds of worlds, descending on columns of fire upon the enemies of the Chapter like the fist of the Gorgon himself. They were a devastating weapon, honed to a razor’s edge and ready to slip from their sheath.

  Atraxii punched in adjustments across the Stormraven’s control panels as they neared the drop zone. He slowly bled power from the engines, slowing their approach as he edged the gunship down towards the industrial cityscape rushing up beneath him. He ran half a dozen diagnostics over various systems within the craft, ensuring that the array of weapon systems at his disposal were primed. The dorsal twin-linked lascannon turret behind Atraxii panned smoothly from side to side, the servitor hardwired within its cupola scanning the skies for inbound threats.

  Alarm klaxons rang in shrill tones within the cockpit as the Stormraven’s auspex detected hostile contacts.

  ‘Iron Father,’ voxed Atraxii over the squadron frequency. ‘Multiple contacts approaching on intercept vectors, fighter-class.’

  ‘I see them,’ replied Oblexus. Atraxii looked to the dark form of Ironhawk ahead of him, its hull haloed in heat haze from its turbine engines. ‘Medusan Five, hold course and remain with the gunship. Link with us once you have escorted them to the drop zone. Medusan Two, Three, Four – with me.’

  Affirmation runes blinked across Atraxii’s visor as the pilots of the Medusan Wing acknowledged their leader’s commands. Ironhawk dip
ped its starboard wing, peeling off towards the inbound contacts in a blast of engine flare. Three of its kindred broke off to join it, leaving a single Stormhawk interceptor holding the gunship’s flank.

  A rune pulsed at the edge of Atraxii’s visor, displaying the Ekfrasi symbol for stormfall.

  ‘We have reached the drop zone,’ Atraxii voxed to Vladoc down in the gunship’s crew bay.

  ‘Affirmative,’ the sergeant replied, the fingers of his bionic hand clicking against the haft of his power axe. ‘Squad Vladoc is ready to destroy the enemy.’

  Atraxii punched a command into a runeboard on his control panel. Runes lit up across the display as the rear assault ramp lowered on groaning hydraulics, and the warning lights in the crew bay shifted from scarlet to green.

  ‘You are clear to disembark,’ said the Techmarine.

  ‘Affirmative,’ came the sergeant’s calm reply.

  The Assault Marines marched to the edge of the ramp in synchronised order, stepping off at intervals with the gunship fifteen thousand feet above the installation. A stream of black figures trailed out from behind Vengeance of Santar as Atraxii delivered his kindred to the war beneath.

  Assault Squad Vladoc hurtled through the gritty toxic smog shrouding the forge refinery. The sergeant’s brethren analysed the industrial labyrinth that spilled out below them, the tactical data uploaded to their minds from the simulus chamber highlighting key junctions and choke points from which the Assault Marines would focus their efforts to fragment the xenos assault and prevent a massed attack. The Iron Hands transmitted amongst their squad, identifying individual assignments and ensuring that their sectors overlapped to provide support to one another if necessary.

  The refinery below rushed up to greet the Space Marines. The ground was alive with greenskins, thronging the streets and thoroughfares of the installation in their hulking, roaring masses. They whooped and fired their amalgamated junk firearms into the air as they watched the Iron Hands fall towards them, revelling in the violence sure to come.

  The squad hit like an artillery barrage. Firing their jump packs moments before impact, they ploughed into the braying mobs of orks like an ebon whirlwind of spinning blades and precision boltgun fire. The Iron Hands butchered the ferocious xenos in silence and spilled their foul gore over the paved streets.

  A massive ork bellowed a challenge to Vladoc from a handful of paces away as the sergeant wrenched his axe free from the skull of a convulsing greenskin. Its smaller kin backed away as the hulking monster beat its axe against its barrel-chest and snapped at the Space Marine in an obscene collection of the guttural barks that passed for its mongrel tongue.

  ‘Sergeant,’ Atraxii’s voice crackled within Vladoc’s helm, ‘are you clear?’

  The ork howled as it made ready to charge. Its thick lips rippled around its yellowed broken teeth, and Vladoc could smell the stink radiating off the xenos even from a distance. He drew his plasma pistol, snapped it up and fired. A miniature sun lanced into the ork’s face, reducing its head to a steaming glut of greasy ash that cascaded across its twitching shoulders as its headless body toppled back and crashed to the ground.

  ‘The squad has made contact with the enemy,’ Vladoc replied, his even tone sounding almost bored. ‘We are proceeding to secure our objectives.’

  Atraxii toggled Vladoc’s vox-link to standby and banked the Stormraven in an arc as Severus broke from his flank to link back with the rest of the Medusan Wing. The control stick rattled in his hand as small-arms fire pinged from the gunship’s hull. Atraxii passed over a wide avenue choked with rampaging orks. Mobs of the brutish aliens were charging into a network of barricades. Walls of las-fire snapped out over the kill-zone from platoons of entrenched Guardsmen, and the streets were becoming carpeted with xenos dead.

  Atraxii picked out the blocky forms of ork tanks rumbling towards the Imperial bulwark and angled the Stormraven down the avenue. He dipped the gunship low, and snapped a pair of switches over his head. Targeting reticules solidified over his visor display, tracking from the interface spikes linked to his helm and the ports that lined his spinal column. He popped the cover off the firing rune on his control stick with his thumb and punched down on it.

  A withering stream of mass-reactive death slashed down onto the ork war party from the twin-linked heavy bolters mounted in the nose of the Stormraven. The pair of hurricane bolters mounted on each side of the fuselage fired, making a noise like thick paper tearing as twelve linked barrels fired in perfect unity. Spears of migraine-bright energy lanced from over Atraxii’s head as the lascannon turret targeted the greenskin armour.

  The effect was devastating. Ork warriors were shredded, reduced to twitching ribbons of stinking flesh-mulch by the fusillade of bolter fire. Tanks split and detonated in mushrooming explosions as the las-bolts tore through their armour plating. The Stormraven carved corridors of ruin through the mob of howling xenos, the ship’s hull sparking with the erratic impacts of greenskin small-arms fire. The Guardsmen took the brief reprieve to bring up mortar teams and began shelling the disoriented orks with lethal barrages of airburst ordnance.

  Atraxii brought up the Stormraven’s nose and banked to make another pass. His vox chirruped with a hail coming from the bunker network below.

  ‘That xenos armour was pushing for a breakthrough that would have lost us the city centre,’ a voice said, heavily distorted by the turbulent atmosphere and the volume of flak in the air. ‘In the name of the Omnissiah, you have our thanks, my lord.’

  ‘Identify yourself,’ Atraxii said flatly.

  ‘Colonel Galina Dionaki of the Vostroyan 498th Fusiliers,’ the voice replied. ‘Commander of the Remnant of Fire, indentured in service to the noble lords of Mars and guardians of Halitus Four.’

  ‘How did the xenos destroy an entire section of the installation?’ demanded Atraxii.

  ‘They didn’t,’ answered Dionaki bluntly. ‘We destroyed it.’

  Atraxii blinked. He ran his targeting reticule over the cityscape, searching for the Vostroyan commander’s position. ‘Explain the wilful destruction of the installation under your province to safeguard.’

  To her credit, Dionaki did not hesitate to answer. She kept her tone measured and cold, despite the apprehension she might have felt addressing one of the Emperor’s angels of death directly.

  ‘The sector was in imminent jeopardy of being compromised, my lord. Six platoons were deployed to hold it and draw the xenos to them while our sappers rigged key junctions with melta charges. Thousands of the enemy fell with my men when we cut it away, consolidated onto a region our forces would have inevitably ceded to their advance.’

  Atraxii heard the deep breath pushed through Dionaki’s teeth as the colonel fought the fear assailing her composure. ‘When a limb becomes infected and draws risk to the body as a whole, we will not shrink from our duty, my lord. It is to be amputated.’

  Atraxii was silent for a moment. Perhaps the Iron Hands’ prior estimation of the ineffectiveness of the local defences had been premature. Ident-runes representing the Vostroyan units were moving in disciplined order, conducting counter-offensives and holding key sectors with grim conviction. There simply were not enough of them to counter the swarms of orks smashing against them. He could not identify any elements of the planet’s skitarii legions anywhere near his vicinity.

  ‘Colonel, where are the skitarii maniples?’ asked Atraxii.

  ‘We have been requesting combined arms support from the skitarii for weeks,’ came Dionaki’s reply, tinged with bitterness. ‘They have not responded and have pulled their forces back around the primary forge temple.’

  The Adeptus Mechanicus is concealing something of great value to them, thought Atraxii. Valuable enough to petition us and leave the Vostroyans to battle the orks alone to protect it. The Techmarine stored the thought in his memory for the debriefing aboard the Corporeal Lament once the oper
ation had concluded, and focused on the task in front of him.

  ‘Keep your units clear, colonel,’ ordered Atraxii. ‘I am coming around for another pass.’

  Atraxii’s vox pinged urgently. The Techmarine snapped a switch on his comms-unit.

  ‘Consolidate upon the Medusan Wing’s position at once,’ Dektaan growled, his voice distorted with interference and edged with anger and distraction. ‘Ready your magna-grapple. The Iron Father is down.’

  -09.0-

  Monolithic factories and smokestacks passed by Atraxii in a blur as he pushed the engines to their limits. Gauges flashed crimson as the systems they monitored ticked past acceptable tolerances. Continued output at the current level would result in catastrophic overload of the port engine at a probability of ninety-nine point zero-eight per cent. The probability of the starboard engine detonating and reducing Vengeance of Santar to a cloud of twisting fragments was even higher than that.

  Atraxii uttered a prayer to the Stormraven’s spirit, beseeching the ancient consciousness of the gunship to hold a little longer. He bled power from any systems not immediately essential and fed it into the engines and their coolant modules. The fuselage rattled around him as the gunship tore through the industrial city towards the location of the Medusan Wing.

  The Iron Father is down.

  The very notion was unthinkable. It refuted statistical logic. Atraxii could not fathom a scenario where events would unfold in such a way. Oblexus was a veteran champion, a pilot without peer. Ironhawk was inviolate.

  What could have arisen that would bring his master low?

  Atraxii’s eyes snapped to his auspex as the augur display blared an alert. Inbound contact. A xenos fighter was closing behind him, an angular smudge ticking closer to him with each refresh of the auspex.

  A sharp Ekfrasi invective hissed from the Space Marine as he opened a vox-channel to the Medusan Wing.