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  ‘Well met, Medusan Four.’ Enych’s vox transmission warbled with the interference of the debris between their Stormhawks.

  Atraxii snapped his head around, searching for the ork bombers. They were entering maximum range of Imperial lines.

  ‘Squadron lead,’ said Atraxii. ‘The bombers.’

  ‘Affirmative,’ replied Dektaan. ‘Go with Medusan Three and make your attack run. We will follow suit once these fighters are neutralised. Go.’

  Atraxii and Enych sent their affirmations to Dektaan, and rocketed towards the chain of bombers. Clouds of stubber fire zipped past and clanged off Ironhawk’s hull as the bombers’ defensive guns angled towards them. Atraxii felt resistance in the control sticks. The Stormhawk’s animus wanted to continue hunting the fighters, seeking more agile prey than the slow-moving craft now framed in its crosshairs.

  Atraxii dipped low, setting himself on an approach vector that placed him at an angle beneath the ork formation. He tagged a bomber for each missile he had at his disposal, targeting every other craft and transmitting the information in a databurst to Enych. Atraxii’s wingman reciprocated, locking on to the bombers between his own targets.

  ‘Missiles, then strafe the survivors with assault cannons,’ said Atraxii.

  ‘Affirmative,’ responded Enych.

  The pair of Stormhawks ate up the distance between them and the ork flyers. The targeting reticules blinked as they entered missile range.

  ‘Firing.’ Atraxii depressed a rune on his control stick. Six krak missiles screamed out from pods mounted on each side of Ironhawk’s fuselage on contrails of silver exhaust. The projectiles peeled off towards their targets as Enych’s barrage joined them, twisting and spiralling as they arrowed towards the greenskins.

  The bombers’ defensive guns clipped three of the missiles, their warheads detonating harmlessly in the air. The others found their targets. In a ripple of cacophonous explosions, a third of the bombers were vaporised. The others, alerted to the oncoming Stormhawks, began to dive and release their payloads.

  Streams of high-explosive munitions fell down upon the surface of the forge refinery, tumbling through the bursting clouds of flak thrown up by Imperial weapons emplacements and Hydra anti-air tanks. They landed like whips of fire along the surface of the forge refinery. Bombs exploded with thunderous detonations, sending smoke and dust mushrooming into the sky. The ork gunners had released their bombs too early, and as a result, the majority of them landed amongst the greenskins advancing upon the Imperial lines. Hordes of bellowing orks were obliterated as their fellows dropped indiscriminate death upon their heads.

  Those bombs that did reach the Imperial lines were equally devastating. Explosions blasted craters into crowded trenches, scattering waves of severed limbs and bits of flesh in all directions. One of the magazines storing shells for the artillery pieces was struck, annihilating everything within a three hundred-foot radius. Seeing their advantage, mobs of roaring orks punched through the smoke and ruin to exploit the freshly hewn gaps in the lines of the Vostroyan and skitarii defenders.

  ‘Prioritise the targets that have yet to begin their attack runs. Target their payloads,’ barked Atraxii, his veneer of logi­cal calm cracking as Imperial casualties mounted below. He opened fire with his assault cannons, raking his aim across the ventral arming racks of the ork bombers still clustered with munitions. High-velocity rounds shredded the unstable ordnance clutched beneath the ork craft, destroying the bombers in blossoming fireballs. Stuttering fire from his las-talon obliterated another of the bloated ork flyers, filling the air with smoke and twisting scrap.

  Atraxii broke off his strafing run, firing his engines in a quick burst to gain distance as stubber fire buzzed around him. He came about in a tight turn, the G-force compressing him against the control throne. Firing his las-talon, Atraxii sheared the wing off a bomber, and watched as the craft spun to the ground in cascading flame. The remaining ork bombers were peeling away after dropping their payloads, boosting towards the safety of their fighter squadrons.

  ‘Medusan Three and Four.’ Dektaan’s voice crackled with distortion over the vox. ‘Rally on my position. Priority target inbound.’

  Oblexus swung his cog-toothed axe into the ork’s face. The ancient weapon’s disrupter field flared as it made contact, liquefying the greenskin’s skull with concussive force as the honed blade carved clear through from cheek to temple. The top half of the alien’s head was gone, the lower half a fused stump of gurgling black fluid.

  The Iron Father barged the dead xenos aside, bearing down on another ork encased in primitive power armour. A pneumatic claw locked around Oblexus’ forearm, halting the downswing of his axe. The Iron Father primed his plasma pistol and jammed it into the claw’s elbow joint.

  The blast sheared the limb in half in a sapphire sunburst that scorched the lacquer of Oblexus’ armour down to the bare ceramite. His arm came free, still clutched by the severed ork claw. As the greenskin howled in shock and pain, the Iron Father tore the claw loose and smashed it into the ork’s face. The alien crashed to the ground, and Oblexus struck it again and again until the scrap metal claw shattered. He dropped the broken tangle of metal beside the equally broken skull of the ork it had struck.

  Chaos reigned all around Oblexus. He saw Vostroyan infantry valiantly holding strongpoints in the line. They blasted mobs of greenskins to ribbons of stinking meat, and then charged screaming into the throng with bayonets fixed or wielding lasrifles like cudgels once they exhausted their ammunition. Skitarii units performed coordinated manoeuvres orchestrated by neural commands from their primes and princeps, forming red-cloaked islands around Onager Dunecrawlers. The hulking walkers fired their eradication beamers into the ochre-green mass. Corridors were seared into the greenskin tide as whole swathes of the xenos simply ceased to be. The gaps were filled almost instantaneously, as more and more of the orks crushed their wounded to death in their blood-maddened desire to close with their enemy.

  An ident-rune vanished on Oblexus’ retinal display. Another warrior lost. His command shrank to twelve, twelve remaining from twenty. Assault Squad Vladoc had borne the brunt of the casualties, smashing down like mailed fists into the densest knots of resistance before blasting back out again. The Assault Marines were reduced to half-strength.

  Sergeant Voitek shouldered a rocket launcher, emptying the tube into the base of a nearby tower. The rocket’s blast set off the explosives the Tactical Marines had planted at the foundation of the structure prior to the battle. Smoke boiled out from the bottom of the tower as the building began to list.

  A titanic groaning howl of rending metal filled the air as support columns snapped under the strain. The greenskins packed closer as they fought to reach the front line, oblivious to the leaning spire looming over their heads. The spine of the tower broke, and thousands of tons of rockcrete and metal came crashing down into the greenskin host.

  The dust cloud from the collapsing tower blocked out the sky, and tremors shook the ground like an earthquake. Humans and orks were thrown from their feet, or disappeared into the gaping fissures that split out from the site of the crash. A wall of crushed rockcrete now separated the orks from the Imperial lines.

  The Imperials seized the advantage, turning their guns upon the mobs of dazed greenskins trapped between them and the ruined tower. Heavy weapons fire mowed the xenos down, while precision barrages from siege mortars and short-range artillery pieces slaughtered the rest in exploding geysers of alien gore.

  ‘Rearm,’ ordered the Iron Father, receiving a chain of acknow­ledgement runes from his remaining brethren. He watched their ident-runes shift across his retinal display, consolidating on the ammunition caches he had dropped from Vengeance of Santar. Setting off towards the nearest cache, Oblexus whipped his axe through the air, shaking loose the ork blood cooking off on its power field. He thumbed the release on his plasma pistol’s exhaust vane
, which shrieked as the weapon bled out the accumulated heat generated by sustained fire.

  Voitek sat upon an ammo crate as Oblexus arrived, slotting bolter rounds into magazines.

  ‘Well met, sergeant,’ said the Iron Father, reaching for a bandolier of krak grenades. ‘That manoeuvre will stall their advance and give the mortals time to consolidate.’

  Voitek inclined his head, accepting the praise in silence. The air was filled with the stench of spilled fuel and charred flesh, saturated by the ever-present reek of the greenskins.

  Oblexus turned his head, hearing a low rumble in the distance. Voitek got to his feet, taking a step forwards to stand beside the Iron Father.

  Thin columns of black smog began to snake up from behind the fallen tower as the rumbling grew louder.

  ‘Get back to your positions,’ Oblexus ordered over the vox-net. He blink-clicked a rune on his retinal display.

  ‘Colonel Dionaki.’

  Static filled the channel for a handful of seconds, before the interference-laden voice of the Vostroyan officer replied.

  ‘We hear it too.’

  ‘Get your weapon crews ready immediately,’ said the Iron Father as the first blocky red shape leapt from the fallen tower on thick, screaming wheels.

  ‘Ork bikes are incoming.’

  -15.0-

  Atraxii rolled aside from the cluster of rockets that ripped past mere yards from Ironhawk’s hull. He banked, setting the Stormhawk on its starboard wing as the aircraft turned tightly. The ork fighter tailing the Space Marine followed suit, pulling the same manoeuvre and spraying at the Space Marine with cannon fire.

  With chains of flickering tracer fire filling the air around him, Atraxii increased speed, tightening the loop as the two fighters spun around each other. Atraxii’s opponent, flying a craft that was larger and less manoeuvrable than his agile Stormhawk, began to lag behind, unable to keep the pace in its ramshackle scrap-iron fighter. The distance between the prow of the ork and Atraxii’s tail grew, and slowly Atraxii began to edge closer to pulling behind his assailant.

  Whether it realised the attack was imminent or was operating under some bestial instinct, the ork pilot blasted out of the loop in a spray of fumes. Atraxii levelled out behind the greenskin flyer, and took aim with his assault cannons. The twin-linked weapons screamed as they spun, drowning the ork in a fusillade of high-velocity shells. Rounds perforated the wings of the xenos fighter. Twitching and fighting to stay airborne, the ork ship bucked as a volley lanced through the oversized ramjet that comprised its fuselage.

  The chassis of the ork fighter glowed with internal detonations, and a broad tongue of dirty fire sprayed out from its nose, as though it were some mythical firedrake. The body of the aircraft peeled apart into a storm of fragments, which Atraxii dodged as he rolled beneath the explosion.

  Warmth flooded Atraxii’s mind. He flinched, resisting the ferocious influence of Ironhawk’s machine-spirit. The fighter’s animus slavered for combat, pushing the Stormhawk beyond its mechanical tolerances to achieve victory. It savoured each sprinting blast of its thrusters, each defiant roar of its weapons systems, the acrid musk of a shattered foe as the Space Marine fighter soared through the fires of its prey’s demise.

  Ironhawk loved this. It seeped into Atraxii’s mind, little by little. It manifested subtly at first, as his lips peeling back over his silver teeth. The Techmarine’s vision narrowed to the enemy in his crosshairs, blocking out all distractions. A feeling of savage triumph pulsed from his hearts and swept through his bloodstream as he left another xenos aircraft as wreckage tumbling from the sky.

  No.

  Atraxii gritted his teeth. He defied the obscene impulses of his biology, the anathema of the cold constancy of logic. He was in control, not Ironhawk’s primeval intelligence.

  Yet, Atraxii’s mind expressed doubt. Not from his union with the volatile Stormhawk, but from experience. Logic alone had failed the Iron Father against these vile xenos. Oblexus had espoused that Atraxii rely on his instincts – not in place of his logic, but rather alloyed with it. It rankled the Techmarine, going against the doctrines of his clan, his Chapter, and the decades of rigorous training on Mars. How could he reconcile that which seemed so disparate?

  A spike of adrenaline flashed up Atraxii’s spine. He wrenched the control sticks to starboard, narrowly avoiding the blazing wreck of an ork bomber as it tumbled into the forge refinery below. Miniscule beads of perspiration bloomed on the Techmarine’s brow as the sharp sensation withdrew.

  Perhaps there was a place for instinct.

  The greenskin bikes packed the narrow streets with their dishevelled bulk as they charged, throwing up curtains of dust and smoke in their wake. Their riders whooped and hollered in their croaking tongue, while gunners straddling buggies behind them opened fire with junk cannons and sent rockets corkscrewing into the air to fall well ahead of the Imperial lines they surged towards. More of the garish vehicles leapt down from the crumbling ridgeline formed by the collapsed tower, and bands of infantry began to pick their way through the rubble behind them.

  Oblexus divided his remaining brethren across the front, stationing them where they would face the sternest attack and anchor the resolve of the mortals around them. Laden with grenades and ammunition bandoliers, the Iron Hands acknowledged the command of the Iron Father and marched to their positions.

  The skitarii detachment fanned out in orderly firing lines above the trenches, clustered in crescent formations moored around their Dunecrawlers. Dust rattled from the vibrating hulls of the walkers as they continued to fire. The red-robed warriors of the skitarii Vanguard knelt in ready silence, plasma calivers and galvanic rifles locked to shoulders. From elevated perches, rangers steadied the long barrels of transuranic arquebuses on spikes sunk into the broken rockcrete, taking aim through the optics of the heavy, radiation-soaked rifles.

  The Vostroyans slammed down against the walls of their trenches, taking aim with battered lasrifles. Blood and ash caked their faces. Men and women who had recently lost limbs still gripped laspistols, knives and grenades, dire resolve sketched across their weathered features. The Remnant of Fire had all died once before – they would not shrink from their duty with its return.

  Oblexus leapt up onto the rampart, in full view of the Imperial forces spread around him. His scarlet gaze swept over the storm of xenos vehicles closing upon them, then across the patchwork of allies waiting to repel it.

  ‘Stand ready!’ the Iron Father roared, levelling his axe at the charging greenskins. ‘Reload and prime weapons. Maintain proper spacing. Consolidate overlapping fields of enfilading fire to ensure optimum kill-ratios.’

  The ragged ranks of the Remnant of Fire readied themselves, grim resolve etched upon their weathered and soot-blackened faces. Hands of dark metal clicked against clutched lasguns. Bionic limbs ground and wept trails of sparks from damaged servos.

  ‘The Emperor does not issue salvation to those who forsake their duty,’ continued Oblexus. ‘Fight and survive, fight and die. Duty is the imperative. Nothing less is acceptable.’

  The remaining Iron Hands, spread along the front line, stood upon the ramparts in union with the Iron Father. The skitarii remained silent, though Oblexus’ visor display blinked with affirmations from the Adeptus Mechanicus force’s princeps and primes conveying their readiness.

  Oblexus thumbed the activation rune of his power axe, throwing a halo of stark illumination into the wan, dusty air as lightning shivered across its relic blade.

  ‘Fire!’

  The air filled with the whistling hiss of artillery as the Imperials shelled the oncoming xenos. Bikes were upended as high explosives struck, spinning them end over end through the air before smashing down onto their fellows. Eradication beamers fired from the Dunecrawlers swept across their rumbling ranks, erasing the greenskin bikers in balls of fragmented light.

 
‘Bring those guns to bear, now!’ barked Oblexus to the crew of a Hydra flak tank.

  The Hydra’s chassis groaned as its crew directed the vehicle’s quad autocannons down from targeting the skies to ground level. Vostroyan infantry scattered as the tank’s guns opened fire in a deafening roar. Brass casings the length of a man’s forearm streamed from the Hydra to clatter in a spread around it, while robed tech-priests swung incense over its pitted hull, oblivious to the din.

  The Hydra sowed red ruin through the charging orks. Clouds of blood and smoke filled the path of the autocannons as the flak tank’s crew dragged their fire across the greenskin advance. Bikes were blown apart, their crews shredded. More vehicles took their place, bikes and four-wheeled buggies that were little more than iron cages studded with oversized weapons. The ork riders, their faces daubed in scarlet paint, roared with wild laughter amidst the pandemonium as they increased their speed.

  Oblexus glowered at the xenos’ glee as they approached. This was the epitome of life to a greenskin, a savage melee with a hardened foe to fight, a sublime and rapturous act committed almost as worship to their heathen deities. ­Riding upon their godless, abominable machines, they were the antithesis of everything the Iron Father represented – uncontrolled, illogical and obscenely biological. The sting of combat stimulants flooded Oblexus’ remaining flesh, and his bionic fists clicked as he tightened his grip on his axe and plasma pistol.

  By the Gorgon, he would savour their extermination.

  -16.0-

  From above and below, the central forge refinery of Halitus IV was a warzone. Aircraft twisted and dived through shrouds of smog and exploding flak, the defeated raining down broken onto the heads of the warriors wading through the churning melee beneath them. Vast stores of refined promethium burned in towering infernos, drowning the installation in caustic, combustible rain. Detonations ripped through entire sectors of the floating structure as storage facilities exploded. The banks of anti-grav arrays supporting the forge refinery laboured to keep it afloat, tilting the installation haphazardly as the immense plasma drives faltered and stuttered intermittently.