Contents

Cover

A Lesson in Iron – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

A Lesson in Iron

David Guymer

The ork kill-kroozer shook hard, shuddering off vast quantities of its ramshackle superstructure as it boosted for the malformed abscess of an event horizon.

The anomalous region was a smear of abused reality a million kilometres across, compressed by hideous internal forces to a fraction of that in height and a depth that auspex read, impossibly, as zero. Sensor readings terminated there. The universe ceased to exist at that point. There were half a dozen known warp rifts in the growing Imperium. In a region of space containing ten billion stars, that made them about a million times less abundant than black holes. The standing edict of the Navis Nobilite and the Naval academies of Terra was to give them a wide berth and, a handful of apocryphal tales from rogue traders aside, no one had ever dared venture this close.

The Venom-class destroyer Strontium Wave broke off pursuit almost immediately as ether distortions began to smoke her void shields.

The kill-kroozer plunged on, heedless, chasing after the two equally massive junk ships that were already dissolving into the bent reality at the eye of the anomaly, its drive stacks sun-hot, its crude shields spasming under the unnatural onslaught.

It was not the Strontium Wave they fled.

Darkening the void to their stern came the Fist of Iron. A Gloriana-class battleship. The most advanced ship of the line to be launched from the yards of Luna since the death of Old Night. Flagship of the Gorgon.

For her to be committed with only a single escort was not uncommon, for Ferrus Manus understood war and its instruments in a way that the wolves of Russ and Horus never would. The Fist of Iron, unique amongst the warships of the recently warranted 52nd Expedition Fleet and the newfound primarch’s command, had the firepower to win this alone.

It was an efficient use of his resources.

The primarch sat upon a throne of black iron and Karaashi basalt, following the flicker-flash of the bridge’s main oculus as metal debris from the kill-kroozer burned up on the navigational shields or before the fury of the point-defence guns. He was a rugged, brutal giant, carved in stone, slabbed in plates of blackened ceramite and hung with heavy mail. His eyes glittered like empty silver vessels as they beheld the pyrotechnics.

‘That’s more than far enough,’ said Harik Morn, veteran sergeant of the Avernii Clan’s First Order, eyeing the stained oculus view as though it left a sour taste in his mouth.

‘The orks seem to think it can be done,’ said Santar, grinning across at the tanned old Terran from the left hand of Ferrus’ throne. Ferrus’ gene-seed imparted little beauty, and joviality still less, and none in the Legion typified the absence of those traits like Sergeant Gabriel Santar. His grin was like a tectonic fracture.

With the first captain that Ferrus had inherited from Amadeus DuCaine and the era of the Storm Walkers falling in battle to the alien gorge, it would be one of Morn or Santar who bore the mantle next. Both of them knew it, but Ferrus was in no hurry to make that decision.

He wanted to see them prove their worth, knowing there was another ready to claim the honour should they fail.

‘Well-known thinkers, orks,’ said Morn, dryly, arms folded over the elaborate design of his antique breastplate. ‘Never an edge they wouldn’t leap off. You want to follow them in…?’ He inclined his head towards the oculus.

There was a devil in them, Ferrus’ children: they were independent, prone to rash action, ruled by emotion and pride. It was Medusans like Santar in whom the flaw was most pronounced, but they strove to control that fire with the same objectivity and logic that Ferrus had learned on the same harsh parent world.

A parallel spectrum of colours bled through the oculus as the lead ork cruiser vanished into the rift. The mortal crew groaned in dismay and averted their faces from the vivisected rainbow that radiated off the event horizon. Even Santar stuck out his lower lip.

The display glinted off Ferrus’ eyes, impermeable as mirrors.

‘Warning,’ Xanthus chittered. The Mechanicum representative to the 52nd was a bent figure in a frayed scarlet cloak, standing with the aid of a copper-inlaid metal staff in a specifically modified operations pulpit. One metal-scaled hand was clamped to a hub augur display. A febrile mass of manipulator arms whipped from slits in his robes to attack a myriad of haptic controls even as he turned towards Ferrus and his legionaries. ‘I have no data with which to predict conditions within a warp anomaly.’

‘Then we will be the first,’ said Ferrus.

‘Lords!’

The battleship’s mortal commander, Laeric, was a thickset man, already balding in his thirties. The sweat on his scalp was stained purple and green by the distortions in the oculus, as if by oil, his hands gripping the safety rail that surrounded the five unequal figures on the bridge’s command platform, eyes filled with terror.

But Ferrus did not know terror. He feared neither death nor failure.

Only being outshone.

‘Dismantling the Rust empire was our responsibility. Even if the Seraphina Offensive was waged before my leadership I will not have my Legion’s most famous victory tarnished by the existence of survivors. After them, shipmaster. Ahead full.’

Click here to buy A Lesson in Iron.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Black Library Events Anthology 2017/2018 in Great Britain in 2017.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Diana Martinez.

A Lesson in Iron © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. A Lesson in Iron, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78030-747-3

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.