On Wings of Blood Page 7

  Klaxons wailed as an ork fighter closed behind Atraxii. He manoeuvred the belaboured gunship, evading the ribbons of tracer fire slashing over and around him. The superstructure rocked as cannon rounds struck the hull. One of the fuel lines was severed as a section of armour plating sheared away, leaving the tanks of promethium exposed to the maelstrom of flak scything through the air.

  The ork fighter exploded as a stream of assault cannon fire blasted it apart from above. Severus dived his Stormhawk through the explosion in an ebon blur, rolling to destroy another fighter with his interceptor’s las-talon.

  ‘Stay sharp, Atraxii,’ called out Severus. ‘We are nearly clear of–’

  The vox-link cut, and Severus’ biometric feedback vanished as the Stormhawk burst into a blinding ball of expanding flame.

  A brutish ork fighter rolled aside from the cloud of spinning wreckage that was all that remained of the Iron Hands fighter. Its rust-red hull was decorated with jagged tongues of orange and yellow paint in a crude depiction of flames, while the emblem of a fanged sun adorned the black stripe running down both wings. A series of rough gouges were scratched into the side of the fighter in uneven rows, announcing the number of kills committed by the pilot. It was the ork ace.

  ‘Severus is ended,’ called out Atraxii.

  ‘We are near the atmospheric boundary,’ barked Dektaan. ‘Accelerate to maximum – they cannot follow us into the void.’

  Atraxii pushed the rattling Stormraven harder as rockets and bombs exploded all around him. Dektaan shot down a pair of ork fighters and swept down above the rest of the Medusan Wing as they rocketed to the edge of Halitus IV.

  A strobing rune pulsed on Atraxii’s visor. Missile lock. The ork ace flashed behind the Stormraven and unleashed a pair of missiles, lancing through the clouds on billowing contrails of greasy smoke. Atraxii’s hands ran over his console as he fired countermeasures.

  The Stormraven discharged an arc of flares behind the gunship. One of the missiles curled towards the countermeasures and exploded. The second avoided the flares, its propulsion jets hurtling it unerringly towards Vengeance of Santar.

  Alarms filled the cockpit with their shrill overlapping cries. Atraxii felt the gunship shaking itself apart as it launched into the searing blaze of Halitus IV’s atmosphere.

  The ork missile trailing behind Atraxii was enveloped in the fire of the atmosphere and detonated. The greenskin fighters, not equipped for void war, were forced to peel away in frustration, their quarry denied to them. A handful barrelled on in reckless pursuit regardless. Their ships were vaporised as the heat of the planet’s thermosphere ignited their fuel tanks.

  Atraxii zeroed in on the bladed silhouette of the Corporeal Lament, hanging dark in the void as he left the last of Halitus IV’s atmosphere behind.

  -11.0-

  With a low hum of coursing power and clicking cogwork, the eye-lenses of Oblexus’ iron mask flickered to life. The Iron Father’s hands flexed and slowly drew into fists before flexing again. A faint growl scratched out from the vox-grille of Oblexus’ matte-black death mask.

  ‘How long?’ came the question from the prone Iron Hands commander.

  ‘Fifty-six hours, twenty-two minutes and eighteen seconds,’ replied Atraxii from where he stood over Oblexus. ‘Per the Terran standard. The damage to your internal augmentations was substantial. Were we on Medusa, it would have fallen to the Iron Council to consider interment.’

  ‘You effected these repairs?’ asked the Iron Father.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Atraxii. ‘Apothecary Tarthix is on the surface of the forge refinery. The majority of your wounds were to bionics, however, which I was able to repair, or replace.’

  Oblexus looked down at his left leg. It was no longer there. In its place was a lean segmented limb of dark iron, terminating in a broad claw at its base. He recalled the pain of its injury when Ironhawk had taken direct fire to its cockpit. Oblexus felt the chafe of raw flesh where the bionic meshed with his hip. He flexed the prosthetic, watching pistons and cogwork slide together in mimicry of a musculature to allow full range of motion. The design of the augmetic was familiar to him. He ran a brief self-diagnostic, satisfied with the functionality of his internal bionics and the extensive repairs Atraxii had made to them.

  ‘Your skill is exemplary,’ said Oblexus as he swung his legs over the edge of the slab. ‘You have my thanks, brother.’

  ‘Your thanks should be to Brother Ibrov,’ replied Atraxii. ‘The iron which has restored you was taken from his stillform.’

  The Iron Father’s new bionic leg clanged against the medi­cae slab. ‘Ibrov is ended?’ he asked, and then was silent for a moment. A short growl, like gears slipping, issued from his mask. There was anger in the noise. Atraxii sensed it. Hatred, spiking with white-hot intensity but instantly subdued so as not to dull the Iron Father’s logic.

  ‘A grave loss to clan and Chapter. There was much iron in him.’

  Atraxii hesitated.

  ‘Speak,’ said Oblexus.

  ‘Severus has ended as well.’

  The Iron Father was silent once more, but for the overlapping thrum of his active power armour and bionics. Atraxii set about replacing the tools he had been using to repair Oblexus, his servo-arms placing complex probes and lascutters into cases spread about the chamber.

  ‘And Ironhawk?’

  ‘Recovered,’ replied Atraxii. ‘As I restored you, the pilots of the Medusan Wing labour to restore Ironhawk. It will soon be ready for you to take flight once more.’

  ‘No.’

  Atraxii stopped. He abandoned his labours, turning to Oblexus.

  ‘I do not understand.’

  Oblexus levelled the scarlet gaze of his death mask at Atraxii. ‘I will not pilot Ironhawk again.’

  A muscle in Atraxii’s face spasmed involuntarily, causing a single, nearly imperceptible twitch in his left eye. ‘My ignorance remains unchanged, Iron Father.’

  ‘I have failed,’ said Oblexus simply. ‘The weight of the ends of our brothers rests upon my shoulders. My stratagem was rigid, unaccommodating for the disorder of the conflict here. The irregular nature of the foe had been accounted for during the Calculum Rationale, and I executed tactics according to what was the most logical course of action. Yet against this foe, logic failed.’

  The Iron Father held Atraxii’s gaze. ‘It was you who spoke wisdom of the versatility of iron. In my intransigence, I refuted that wisdom, and now two brothers shall never witness the skies of Medusa again.

  ‘I speak not from melancholy or defeatism,’ said Oblexus. ‘We will prevail here. Our brothers shall be avenged. It is evident to me now that, when faced with an opponent that is by its very nature unpredictable, the most logical course is to be illogical. Where my logic failed, instinct may prevail, and my instincts tell me that it should be you, Atraxii, who pilots Ironhawk as the Medusan Wing returns to war.’

  Atraxii questioned for a moment whether there had been a malfunction in the auditory systems of his helmet. He ran a flash diagnostic, but found no deficiencies. The Techmarine reached up, unclasped the seals at his collar and pulled the helm free.

  ‘Iron Father,’ Atraxii said as he knelt against the cold white tile of the chamber. ‘I am not worthy of such an honour. Surely there are others more deserving.’

  Oblexus reached down and pulled Atraxii to his feet. ‘No. It must be you, brother. The Medusan Wing is broken, and you shall be the one to join with the others to mend it. Adversity does not call at the hour of our choosing, Atraxii, but it calls to you. And it calls now.’

  Atraxii struggled to comprehend the enormity of what was transpiring. Ironhawk, a Chapter relic revered beyond measure, passed to him. The mantle of the venerable Stormhawk, the legacy it held, the ferocious spirit which dwelt within it.

  Slowly, Atraxii lifted his eyes, meeting the lambent gaze of Oblexus’ deat
h mask.

  ‘What will you do, Iron Father?’

  Oblexus looked down at his bionic leg. ‘I will go to the surface, to our brothers fighting against the enemy there. I have a debt which I must repay.’

  Dektaan could not understand the illogic assailing him. The Iron Father had forsaken the Medusan Wing, the entire squadron he had forged over a century of elite combat. He had abandoned Ironhawk, passing the mantle of its mount to the Techmarine Atraxii, mere moments returned to clan and Chapter after his ordainment on Mars.

  It was not covetousness that motivated his ire. Nothing so lowly and organic as petulant envy. Dektaan had been given command of the Medusan Wing by Oblexus, as was his right, but he had no desire to pilot Ironhawk. He had spent decades in union with his own Stormhawk, and the bond he had forged with the fighter’s spirit was something he would not break away from.

  No, it was not envy. It was duty.

  A commander did not abandon his post. He did not step down when challenged in battle. A commander fought, and continued to do so until he was victorious or dead upon the field of battle. For all of the countless oaths Dektaan had sworn in service to the Iron Father, to follow him into the darkest reaches and carry out his orders without question, doubt had etched itself into his mind, and would not be dislodged.

  Had the Iron Father fallen to the weakness of his flesh?

  Dektaan allowed logic to sweep over his mind in calming tides. If the Iron Father was indeed compromised, then it was efficient that he assume command. If Oblexus were to survive this campaign, Dektaan would see that he stood before the Iron Council and accounted for the decisions he had made. It was not treachery, not in any overt sense, but it was counter to logic. It was weakness, and for the sons of the Gorgon, such a thing could be held as a betrayal.

  But that eventuality must not dominate his focus at the expense of the moment, over which he could exert control. Succumbing to distractions that were beyond his influence was weakness. Dektaan stepped back from the gleaming hull of Ironhawk, repaired and eager to carve through the skies once more. The actions of the Iron Father could not deter him from the prosecution of this war. As logic’s soothing influence focused Dektaan’s mind to a razor’s edge, the Iron Hands Techmarine resolved that it would not.

  -12.0-

  Atraxii clambered up into the cockpit and lowered himself down into the control throne. He experienced an abrupt fluttering sensation which, if queried, he would have most accurately described as unease. The discomfort was not a response to physical stimuli – there were no defects in the dense padding and gel layers of the throne which cradled him against the crushing gravitational force that would assail him during flight, and it had been designed specifically to accommodate the bulkier power pack of his Techmarine armour.

  The sensation, to his shame, was purely a fabrication of his mind. He breathed deeply, marshalling the will to banish the psychosomatic shivers that crept down his spine. Atraxii was sitting in Ironhawk for the first time, and the Space Marine made himself ready for his initial communion with the Stormhawk interceptor’s machine-spirit. It was another sort of gravity that beset the Techmarine, one which no amount of crash padding could alleviate.

  Atraxii struggled to settle his mind as he secured his crash webbing. The cockpit was an utterly dark sphere with the control throne at its centre. As he aligned his armour with the interface sockets of the throne, Atraxii sensed the spirit of Ironhawk stirring.

  The venerable Stormhawk had scarcely been brought up to efficient functionality when the command had come to scramble. Transmissions from Squads Voitek and Vladoc on the surface of Halitus IV had confirmed sightings of ork bombers massing towards the forge refinery. Dektaan, now bearing the silver of squadron leadership upon his own Stormhawk, had ordered the squadron to make ready for immediate launch. While the Iron Father would travel in Vengeance of Santar to join the surface forces, the Medusan Wing would intercept and destroy the xenos bombing raid before it could reach its target.

  Atraxii had followed his brother’s orders without question. He had wanted more time to ease the transition of Ironhawk’s animus from union with Oblexus to union with himself before taking the fighter into combat. He had scarcely begun the prescribed litany of rituals to ease the burgeoning joining, and with their launch imminent, he had been forced to abandon the process before its completion. The Techmarine brushed aside the frustration of leaving a task unfinished, sealing it away beneath the implacable iron of his trained resolve. He knew that Dektaan did not approve of his elevation to the Medusan Wing, and viewed him as an outsider. Atraxii would not compound that view by challenging his authority during his first operation.

  With a wave of icy clicks, the interface needles connected along Atraxii’s spine. He experienced Ironhawk awaken, a furnace heat of leashed rage that was powerful enough to be confused with physical sensation. It had been the same fiery spirit he had experienced for an instant when last he had made contact with the Stormhawk, but of a far greater magnitude. He sensed its anger at his intrusion curdling their union, but also, buried deep within the machine-spirit’s tides of rage, there was shame.

  Shame at defeat. Shame at leaving the air in failure and being stripped of the silver lacquer that had signified its stature as alpha. Shame at glorious triumph, denied to it for the first time.

  The sphere around Atraxii flickered to life as banks of view­screens came online. Viewed from the banks of sensor node clusters throughout the Stormhawk, the hangar of the Corporeal Lament materialised around him, as if the control throne were hanging inert in the air above the deck. He saw the powerful plasma turbine engines on either side of him, and the short bent wings tipped with assault cannons. The fighter’s underslung las-talon protruded beneath him, like the lance of an ancient knight levelled to charge.

  Atraxii’s console pulsed to readiness, auspex, fire control, and the myriad other systems monitored and subject to his touch. His visor refreshed, adding relevant diagnostics and vox frequencies to his retinal display in panels of transparent ice-blue. Engine read-outs glowed steady and green as the turbines spooled up.

  ‘Brothers.’ Dektaan’s voice carried the weight of command with ease as he addressed the Medusan Wing. ‘Be in readiness. Our brothers have called for us to cleanse the skies of the xenos filth encroaching upon them. We strike the abominable greenskins, who believe they will stop us, that our iron cannot withstand their repulsive plague upon the Imperium. Let us punish them for that error. Convey your readiness.’

  ‘Medusan Two, affirmative,’ reported Colnex.

  ‘Medusan Three stands ready, brother,’ Enych replied.

  Atraxii gripped the twin control sticks of Ironhawk. ‘Medusan Four, in readiness.’

  ‘Let us bring down the retribution of Medusa upon this blight,’ said Dektaan. ‘With blades of iron!’

  ‘No weakness shall bar us from our course!’ chorused the Medusan Wing.

  The hangar bay doors of the Corporeal Lament ground open and the Medusan Wing blasted out to descend upon Halitus IV once more.

  Oblexus watched as the Medusan Wing launched into battle. The biological components remaining to him, scarce as they were, experienced a pang of forlorn sensation for a brief instant. The Iron Father guided Vengeance of Santar beyond the Corporeal Lament, streaking like a comet through the atmosphere of Halitus IV. He watched the ident-runes of the Medusan Wing blink off his retinal display as they passed beyond the grasp of his sensors.

  As the Stormraven cleared the fires of re-entry, Oblexus rocketed down towards the Adeptus Mechanicus forge refinery. The vast floating monolith was shrouded in smog and lit by the brief flashes of exploding flak from the installation’s defence platforms and gun towers.

  Oblexus zeroed in on the crescent of ident-runes representing the Iron Hands ground forces. They had established a perimeter outside of the primary Adeptus Mechanicus facilities, but as he drew close
r, the Iron Father could see the hordes of xenos massing against their lines like a swelling tide of ochre-green flesh. There were fewer active ident-runes than before Oblexus had crashed. Both Squad Voitek and Squad Vladoc had sustained casualties. The Iron Father’s bionic leg ticked as he absently ground its broad claw into the deck plating of the cockpit.

  With a significant effort, Oblexus passed over the lines of his brothers, quickly leaving them to shrink into the distance behind him. Atraxii had spoken with the Iron Father of the efficiency of the indentured Vostroyan units in combat against the xenos, and how the combat maniples of the forge refinery’s skitarii legions had withdrawn to around the forge temple primus and denied any support to their allies without pretence.

  As the cyclopean shape of the Adeptus Mechanicus temple swelled in his view like a vast insect hive, the Iron Father made ready to seek out Adept Wyn. The Martian priesthood was hiding something of great value on Halitus IV, and if such secrets impacted the parameters of defeating the xenos, Oblexus intended to discover what they were.

  The halls of the temple shivered with humming machinery. Silent queues of tech-priests padded to and fro in silent prayer, while techno-cherubs flitted about the rafters, filling the air with sugary incense from censer orbs held in tiny, consumptive hands.

  The skitarii ranger strode down the centre of the hall, her boots clicking against the polished stone floor. Her robes rippled over her battleplate, torn and singed by a thousand wars upon a thousand worlds. The long, slender barrel of her galvanic rifle was held low across her chest in an easy, yet vigilant grip.

  A bulkhead rumbled open before her as she was admitted into the chamber. The ranger looked up through the tinted goggles of her augmetic mask, through eyes that would never be closed, upon her master.