On Wings of Blood Read online

  ‘I have been engaged,’ said Atraxii. ‘I am making all speed to reach your location, and will arrive once the threat is neutralised.’

  ‘Do so quickly,’ Dektaan snarled. ‘We cannot afford to bide here while you tarry.’

  The vox-link closed with a snap of static. Atraxii flicked his eyes back to the auspex screen. The ork was entering weapons range. As if on cue, a volley of tracer rounds scythed over the canopy of the Stormraven. The turret-mounted lascannons swung around to target the fighter as Atraxii banked sharply.

  Atraxii looked through the perspective of the servitor gunner operating the turret, the feed beamed onto his left eye. The lascannons fired disciplined bursts, and Atraxii watched as the ork fighter deftly rolled and swayed aside of the deadly energy bolts. The vile creature within the junkyard fighter was a skilled pilot. Half a century of war had taught Atraxii that while he must hate the enemy, he should never underestimate them. Failure to respect the prowess of mankind’s enemies had sent more than one of Clan Kaargul to an ignominious end.

  Atraxii stomped down on the rudder pedal as he neared an intersection. The Stormraven veered to port, narrowly avoiding smashing into the towering structures filling the area. The force of the manoeuvre crushed Atraxii against the control throne with enough force to liquefy the organs of an unaugmented human. The ork fighter hurtled past, missing the turn. Atraxii made a snap turn to starboard, bringing the Stormraven back on course.

  The gunship raced between tall buildings resembling mechanical termite hives, approaching another broad intersection. Atraxii pushed forwards on the control stick as a rust-red blur screamed across his path. The Techmarine corkscrewed down around the ork aircraft as it hurtled past. The xenos pilot pushed his fighter into a steep dive, tipping the nose of the craft back towards the ground and rolling to starboard to bring it back behind the Stormraven.

  The gunship bucked around Atraxii, and alarm klaxons wailed as a volley of cannon fire struck the fuselage. He weaved the Stormraven through the maze of buildings, cutting as sharply as the bulky craft would allow in the hope that the erratic greenskin pilot would hesitate for an instant and smash against one of the monolithic towers.

  The ork fighter clung relentlessly to his tail. Rockets corkscrewed around Atraxii in contrails of dirty smoke, detonating against the facades of buildings and filling the air with smoke and clouds of obliterated rockcrete. The Techmarine jinked the gunship out of the path of another volley of missiles, hauling the Stormraven back out into the wide thoroughfare.

  The Stormraven rocked as cannon fire stitched across its port wing, and the lascannon turret responded with a direct hit against one of the ork fighter’s engines. The xenos craft became sluggish as the damaged turbine vomited a trail of smoke and flame behind it.

  Atraxii took the opportunity. He threw the Stormraven into a steep dive, simultaneously braking the main drives and firing the retro rockets in the gunship’s nose. Atraxii’s momentum hurled him forwards, snapping a strap of his crash webbing as the craft abruptly arrested its speed.

  The ork fighter slashed overhead. Atraxii fired the engines, pulling the gunship up behind the xenos. Smoke from its damaged engine buffeted the Stormraven, showering the cockpit canopy with soot and flecks of scorched engine oil.

  Atraxii activated the target designator for the Stormstrike missile pods mounted beneath the Stormraven’s wings. Scarlet brackets locked over the ork fighter. Atraxii depressed the firing rune, and a missile popped from the tube. Its internal engine screamed to life, hurling the missile at the xenos.

  With an engine damaged, the ork pilot failed to avoid the missile. The warhead smashed into the spine of the greenskin fighter, detonating the craft in a ball of red flame and greasy smoke and sending wreckage lancing down into the throngs of orks below.

  Atraxii chanted a prayer of thanksgiving to Vengeance of Santar’s spirit, and clicked open the vox-network.

  ‘Threat neutralised,’ said Atraxii. ‘Medusan Wing, I am inbound to your location.’

  Sergeant Voitek blew an ork apart with a burst of fire from his boltgun. The Ekfrasi rune for starved pulsed on his visor display in insistent amber. His bolter’s slide locked back, the chamber hollow and issuing twisting curls of fyceline smoke. The Space Marine let the weapon fall, its sling binding it to his side as he drew his bolt pistol.

  He fired twice. Two orks died, neat entry wounds creating horrific exits as the mass-reactive ammunition detonated within the xenos’ brainpans. A third ork bulled into him, smashing the bolt pistol aside with a spiked cudgel.

  Voitek’s heart rate did not alter. In a single smooth motion, he pulled the combat blade from his hip, pushed it across his body and punched it up in a reverse grip through the ork’s jaw. The monomolecular edge lanced into the creature’s brain, bifurcating the pulsing grey matter into ruin. Voitek withdrew the blade as the hulking greenskin sank convulsing to its knees. He smoothly spun the stinking alien blood from the combat blade, returned it to the mag-lock hard point on his waist and slapped a fresh magazine into his bolter.

  Voitek had responded to the Medusan Wing’s distress beacon, pulling two of his line brothers away from securing the perimeter to strike out towards the crash site with him. They had progressed efficiently, navigating through the forge refinery, only engaging the enemy when necessary and being swift in the extermination of the orks when they did.

  The trio of Iron Hands arrived at the source of the beacon, moving silently through the ruins of the Adeptus Mechanicus city towards the crashed form of Ironhawk. The Iron Father had managed to bring the Stormhawk down in a controlled manner, and aside from a destroyed engine and the damage riddling its cockpit, the venerable fighter remained intact.

  The Tactical Marines formed a triangular perimeter around the downed fighter. Voitek moved to the Stormhawk and pulled the Iron Father clear. Their commander was alive. His left leg was gone, much of the bionics in his torso were inoperable and the trauma of his flesh had driven him into sus-an stasis. The sergeant hauled Oblexus behind the cover of a mound of wreckage, feeling silent disdain that the noble Iron Father’s flesh had so subdued him. He made note to conduct penance for such insubordinate thought and returned to securing the perimeter around Ironhawk. That was when the orks came.

  The greenskin advance was slight at first, nearby bands of roaming xenos happening upon their location as they tore through the streets. Voitek and his brothers dispatched them quickly, but now the small city square was beginning to fill with the obscene creatures. Second by second, the ring of greenskins surrounding the Iron Hands grew tighter and tighter.

  The skies above Voitek burned with fire and wreckage as the Medusan Wing encircled their fallen commander. The Stormhawk squadron had driven off the xenos in the air, and Voitek hunkered down into cover as they awaited Vengeance of Santar to extract Oblexus and Ironhawk from the crash site.

  Voitek snapped off single shots from his bolter, taking care to conserve his remaining ammunition. He pivoted behind the slab of rockcrete he was using as cover as a whistling rocket exploded against it, wreathing him in sparking smoke and dust. He pivoted back out and killed the ork who had fired the missile with a clean shot that tore its head from its shoulders in a puff of blood and skull fragments.

  Gunfire stitched up Voitek’s side, throwing him off balance. He recovered, killing the pair of orks who had rounded on his flank. He saw Ibrov’s ident-rune blink amber, and then scarlet. The warrior’s biometric read-out flatlined on Voitek’s retinal display. He opened a vox-link to Kuurox, his remaining brother.

  ‘Ibrov has ended,’ said Voitek flatly. ‘Adjust formation primary, retrieval of his stillform secondary.’

  Kuurox’s ident-rune blinked once as the warrior acknowledged the command, shifting his alignment to cover the one hundred and eighty degrees directly across from Voitek. The sergeant lobbed a frag grenade into a knot of charging orks, the blast scything
down the aliens and rending their bodies into oozing chunks of broken flesh.

  More took their place.

  The machine is perfect, thought Voitek, but here, the flesh will soon see me ended.

  -10.0-

  Atraxii slowed Vengeance of Santar as it approached the Medusan Wing, and his eyes confirmed what his mind could not comprehend. Ironhawk had been brought low. The venerable Stormhawk interceptor had carved a furrow in the rockcrete of a square courtyard. A trio of ident-runes flickered around it, among them the Iron Father. Oblexus yet lived.

  The Stormraven strafed over the closing mobs of orks assaulting the crash site. Mass-reactive death roared out from the barrels of its hurricane bolters. Atraxii squeezed a withering deluge of fire from his heavy bolters, blasting the hordes of xenos apart. The orks returned fire, but their junkyard firearms were incapable of piercing the gunship’s ebon hull. Their rust-armoured tide broke against the Techmarine’s wrath, and rolled back as the war parties began to break from the square or died where they stood.

  Atraxii brought the Stormraven down in a hover, opening the forward assault ramp beneath his cockpit. He threw off his restraint harness and extracted himself from the spinal link with a series of deep clicks.

  The crimson-armoured Techmarine stomped down the ramp, Sufferentium grasped in his fists. His servo-arms unfolded, twitching with Atraxii’s anger as they sought flesh to destroy. The scent of promethium in all stages of processing filled his nostrils from the surrounding refineries. The ochre sky of Halitus IV cast everything in a rusted orange hue. Targets resolved around him, his retinal display bracketing orks in haloes of dark scarlet.

  Sufferentium swept out in a blistering arc. Three orks died, riven in half by the artificer-wrought cog axe. The weapon’s power generator flared as it carved through their vile flesh, the blood coating its edge popping as it cooked off the toothed blade. Atraxii felled another ork, splitting it from shoulder to groin. The xenos’ entrails slopped onto the broken rockcrete of the square, crushed under ­Atraxii’s boots. His servo-arms lashed out as extensions of his hatred. His claw collapsed ork skulls into pulp. Swathes of the howling brutes were immolated by his flamer or bisected by his plasma torch. His drill cored through alien heads and torsos, its mechanisms gumming with rancid xenos gore.

  Sergeant Voitek approached, carrying Oblexus’ inert form upright with one arm and firing his bolt pistol with his free hand. A second of his squad, Kuurox, dragged a fallen brother behind him by the high collar of his Mark VIII armour. Atraxii recognised the ended battle-brother as Ibrov. A jagged hole pierced the warrior’s left eye-lens, and the back of his helm was blown out, the ceramite cracked and curled outwards like a broken flower in bloom.

  Kuurox dropped Ibrov’s corpse with a dull clang as a pair of orks rounded on him. A burst of bolter rounds tore the legs from the first, and Kuurox raised his knee to deliver a brutal front kick to the chest of the second. The ork’s ribcage collapsed, pulping its internal organs and dropping it face first onto the ground without a noise. He took hold of Ibrov’s collar once more as the first ork seized hold of his boot with grasping claws. Kuurox levelled his bolter at the greenskin, shot it once in the head and carried on towards the Stormraven.

  Voitek passed Atraxii, hauling Oblexus up the assault ramp and into the gunship’s crew bay. Kuurox did the same with Ibrov’s corpse. The Tactical Marine stripped the body of ammunition and grenades, and marched without ceremony back out onto the square.

  Atraxii met Voitek at the foot of the assault ramp as the sergeant descended, while Kuurox took up a kneeling overwatch position nearby, his bolter panning for targets.

  ‘The Iron Father is in sus-an stasis,’ said Voitek over the percussive bang of Kuurox’s bolter. ‘Engage your magna-grapple and extract Ironhawk back to the Corporeal Lament.’

  ‘It will be done,’ replied Atraxii. ‘What of you and Kuurox?’

  Voitek caught a fresh magazine from Kuurox and locked it into his bolter. ‘We will return to the squad, do not be concerned.’

  Atraxii heard the strained rasp in the sergeant’s voice. He was unaccustomed to speaking so frequently.

  ‘Ibrov has ended,’ said Voitek. ‘See to it that his bionics are salvaged and his gene-seed extracted once you return to the Corporeal Lament. Do not dishonour his end by meeting your own getting there.’

  Voitek did not wait for Atraxii to reply, turning away towards the heart of the forge city. Kuurox rose as his sergeant passed him, and the pair trotted away into the smoke until they were lost from sight.

  Atraxii turned and hurried back up the assault ramp. As the ramp rumbled up behind him, the Techmarine spared a glance towards Oblexus, lying motionless on the deck of the crew bay. Atraxii ran a rapid diagnostic over the wounded Iron Father. The sus-an coma had stabilised him when the bionics that had replaced many of his internal organs had been crippled. An unwelcome thought materialised in ­Atraxii’s mind as he watched – it was Oblexus’ flesh that was keeping him alive.

  A resounding detonation just beyond the Stormraven jarred Atraxii from his reflection. The Techmarine climbed up into the gunship’s cockpit and secured his crash webbing. He primed Vengeance of Santar’s engines as the spinal interface spikes snicked back into place. He raised the gunship up, bringing it to a hover over the prone Ironhawk. Atraxii lowered the Stormraven, just inches from the interceptor’s hull, and engaged the magna-grapple.

  A marrow-deep thrum rippled through the Stormraven. The polished silver of Atraxii’s teeth ground together and his gums ached from the powerful magnetic field being generated. Ironhawk began to tremble, shaking the dust and debris from its hull. There was a sonorous groan of protesting metal, then the interceptor locked to the magna-grapple with a heavy thunk.

  ‘Medusan Wing,’ said Atraxii as he powered the engines to begin lifting the gunship. ‘I have Ironhawk and the Iron Father aboard. I require escort bearing them back to the Corporeal Lament.’

  The vox clicked. ‘You shall have it,’ came Dektaan’s reply. ‘Medusan Wing, form up around Vengeance of Santar. Engage attack pattern Fortitude.’

  The four Stormhawks of the Medusan Wing formed a box around the Stormraven. Atraxii struggled against the controls, fighting to keep the gunship from listing. The magna-grapple was designed to transport Dreadnought walkers and smaller armoured vehicles to and from warzones. Ironhawk’s weight was significantly higher, and the Stormraven’s superstructure groaned under the strain.

  Atraxii lifted the gunship into formation, and the Iron Hands blasted towards the horizon. They passed through the dense bursts of flak thrown up by the forge refinery’s defences.

  ‘Brother Dektaan,’ Atraxii voxed on a direct channel. ‘What happened?’

  ‘The stratagem failed,’ growled Dektaan, his voice bitter and tinged with shame. ‘Their attack was erratic, unbound by logic even for the greenskins. They outnumbered us, and we came close to depleting our ammunition keeping the swarms from crashing into us. Their numbers and suicidal tactics broke our formation and scattered us. There was an ork pilot, one of their elite by the graffiti covering its fighter. While its cohorts attempted to ram our interceptors, it separated the Iron Father from us and defeated him.’

  Atraxii had never known of an ork pilot in possession of such skill. An incredible thought presented itself. Could a greenskin be an ace?

  ‘Auspex return!’ called out Severus from the rear port corner of the formation. ‘Multiple contacts inbound on an intercept vector.’

  Blips appeared at the top corner of Atraxii’s auspex, closing rapidly. How could they get in front of us?

  ‘Brother,’ voxed Colnex to Dektaan. ‘Their alpha is leading the formation.’

  Atraxii detected the tense resolve rolling off the voice of the Medusan Wing’s de facto leader as he responded.

  ‘Vengeance of Santar, maintain course and speed to rendezvous with the Corporeal Lam
ent,’ commanded Dektaan. ‘Medusan Three and Four, realign to attack pattern Vigilance. Medusan Five, with me.’

  A chorus of affirmations rippled across Atraxii’s vox as the Techmarine pilots followed Dektaan’s orders. Colnex and Enych guided their Stormhawks to the forward port and rear starboard of Atraxii, while Dektaan and Severus accelerated away from the formation towards the oncoming ork fighters.

  ‘Weapons range in eighty seconds,’ said Colnex. Atraxii did not have visual of the ork squadron, still concealed by the lightning-riven clouds of Halitus IV.

  ‘Weapons range in twenty seconds,’ said Colnex. Dektaan and Severus’ Stormhawks plunged into the storm clouds and disappeared from sight.

  ‘Weapons range in three seconds,’ said Colnex. ‘Two seconds. One. Engage.’

  The two Stormhawks unleashed volleys of fire from their wing-mounted assault cannons into the wall of seething cloud. Erratic chains of tracer fire slashed out towards them. Atraxii swung the Stormraven aside, narrowly dodging a salvo of cannon fire aimed for his cockpit, and opened up with the heavy bolters in the gunship’s nose.

  The jagged red shapes of ork fighters breached the storm bank like deep-sea predators leaping from an ocean’s murky depths. Enych’s las-talon slashed out with a blinding energy beam. An ork fighter exploded, and shrapnel plinked against Atraxii’s canopy as he hurtled through the fireball.

  The converging fighters rolled and weaved past each other at breakneck speed. Colnex and Enych held their formation around Atraxii, straying just far enough to fend off xenos pilots moving to attack the gunship. Atraxii pushed the engines to their limits, and sensed Vengeance of Santar’s spirit snarl as it fought to bear Ironhawk’s weight. He whispered a benediction to placate the weary animus and watched as a blast from the Stormraven’s lascannon turret split a greenskin fighter into a pair of fiery detonations haloed in oily smoke.

  An ork rocket exploded just behind the Stormraven. Atraxii was thrown forwards in his control throne. The interface spikes ground against the ports in his spine, combining with the sympathetic pain he experienced while in union with the gunship’s machine-spirit. Atraxii snarled, hissing an ancient Ekfrasi prayer beseeching the Gorgon to grant him strength.