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On Wings of Blood – Extract-

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A Black Library Publication

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The blackness of the void quivered as reality began to bleed. Pinpricks of tortured light winked into existence, pulsing and swelling as they coalesced. In a flash of weeping radiance, all the more eerie for its silence, the frothing knot of space ruptured. The wound in reality tore down its middle, a gash in the fabric of the material universe, suppurating with nightmarish illumination. A rift between the real and the unreal had been opened.

From the churning psychic miasma of the warp, a shape passed through the rift into reality. It was a slender blade, black against the roiling rift. Ribbons of disintegrating daemons, the ancient denizens of the warp, cleaved in vain to its hull as they burned at the sudden exposure to the reality beyond the chaos of their dominion. The ship was a city floating through deep space, though despite the tens of thousands of trained crew it bore, it was counted as one of the smaller of its sisters among the fleet. In the present instance, it plied the void alone.

The remainder of the vessel’s journey was brief, and it soon beheld its destination. As the ebon warship slipped closer to Medusa, hearth of the primarch Ferrus Manus and the bastion of the Iron Hands Chapter, a lone Space Marine returned to be reunited with his kindred.

Atraxii felt the changes rippling through the Corporeal Lament as it translated from the warp and entered real space. He understood it through the alteration of the vibrations in the deck plating beneath his boots, the deviation of the Gladius-class frigate’s reactor output as its protective Geller field was deactivated and real space plasma drives engaged, fluctuations of temperature and pressure, and exactly four hundred and eighteen other rapidly confirmable points of data.

A member of the Corporeal Lament’s mortal, unaugmented crew, or even Atraxii himself, in a past life, might have said that they had felt such a change occur. The conveyance of the information by such imprecise means rang hollow and inadequate to the Iron Hands Space Marine now, a frail attempt of the flesh to understand the world by means that paled in comparison to the boon of data collected by the machine.

Atraxii stood alone upon a rising lift platform, encased in thrumming power armour. Where his brethren marched to war in suits of matte-black, the curving ceramite plates of Atraxii’s wargear were lacquered in bright, arterial scarlet, gleaming from the worshipful application of lapping powder and sacred oils. In deference to the spirit that inhabited the armour, he still bore the deep midnight plate of the Chapter upon his left shoulder pauldron, bearing the laser-etched heraldry of the Iron Hands in the stark, uncluttered manner that so defined the sons of the Gorgon. Set in a disc of polished jet and pearl below his sternum was the cog and skull of the Machina Opus, the iconography of the Space Marines ordained as Techmarines by the Martian priesthood of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

From the bulk of the plasma cell generator mounted upon Atraxii’s back, a quartet of multi-jointed servo-arms gave him a spider-like appearance. The lower pair, folded beneath the arms of the Space Marine, ended in a grasping power claw and diamond-tipped industrial drill. Above his shoulders perched one armature tipped with a flamer, while the other mounted a plasma cutter, pulsing with the energy of a caged star.

Atraxii’s bare head was pale and hairless. Golden wire, finer than human hair, adorned his pallid skin, describing mechanical constellations across his face. His eyes, replaced by orbs of silver, gleamed with stark blue light.

Slowly, Atraxii lowered his helm over his head, sealing himself fully within his battleplate. The Space Marine’s retinal display linked with his bionic eyes, and panels of information leapt across his vision in screeds of pale blue. The vermillion brackets of targeting reticules flickered across the confines of the lift platform, tirelessly combing Atraxii’s surroundings for threats.

Taking a slow breath of the recycled air of the Adeptus Astartes warship, Atraxii flexed his grip upon the power axe held low across his hips – both a symbol of his sacred office and an exquisite killing implement. The Space Marine tightened his hold on its dark adamantium haft, feeling the energy of its spirit straining to be released in the form of its blistering power field. The name of the weapon, ‘Sufferentium’, was etched in silver across its cog-shaped ebon blade.

The vox-link in Atraxii’s helm chirruped as the lift neared its destination. He opened the link with a synaptic impulse, barely more than a reflex as he ignored the rumble of the machinery that echoed beyond the platform.

‘My lord,’ spoke a voice, a reed-thin and mechanical rasp.

‘I acknowledge,’ replied Atraxii to the human serf who served as the shipmaster of the Corporeal Lament.

‘High anchor has been achieved over sacred Medusa. Praise be.’

‘Praise be,’ Atraxii echoed, as the lift shuddered to a halt. The bulkhead parted, exposing a crowded corridor leading to a wide chamber. Robed adepts tending to machines genuflected as he strode between them and the hardwired servitors manipulating banks of keys and brass dials that lined the walls.

‘All is in readiness,’ said the shipmaster. ‘The rites and consecrations have been completed in preparation for your arrival.’

Atraxii said nothing. Such a statement was a redundancy he would not contribute to with reiteration. He had himself performed the blessings on the craft which he now beheld.

‘You are prepared, lord?’ the serf asked.

‘Affirmative,’ answered Atraxii. Mist rolled and coiled around his boots as the Techmarine approached the imposing avian form of a Stormraven gunship. Serfs scurried away from the Space Marine drop-ship, disconnecting fuel lines and applying sacred unguents to its weapons arrays. The Stormraven’s thrusters flexed and fired bursts of bright azure flame, sending tremors rippling through air that smelled richly of ozone and burning fuel.

‘Blessings of the Machine be upon you, lord.’ Atraxii could hardly hear the shipmaster’s voice, relegated to the outskirts of his focus as the Stormraven’s assault ramp rumbled down to admit him.

‘Medusa hails the return of its son.’

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Atraxii had travelled via Stormraven gunship on two hundred and eighty-six occasions previous to this instance. His studied understanding of the sacred technology of the craft removed any mystery it might once have held as it bore him from the Corporeal Lament down to the surface of Medusa. Experience maintained his stoic calm as the drop-ship vanished into the churning tempests that veiled the planet. Minor turbulence shivered through the deck beneath his boots as he passed through the storm-ravaged skies of his home world. He had travelled between vast starships, onto exotic worlds and into the centre of raging warzones heaped with the dead and dying. Yet this, this single brief journey from orbit to surface, stirred something within the Iron Hands Space Marine. He experienced it fractionally, an unexpected caress lasting half of the time required for his hearts to beat. He spent another heartbeat in analysis to attain recognition.

Atraxii’s mind confirmed his suspicion in an instant. An elevated triggering of neurochemicals, brought about by accumulated memory and predictive stimuli, had resulted in the peculiar sensation.

He had experienced pride.

The momentous nature of his return was the likeliest provocation for it. He had departed from Medusa bound for the prized vaults and sacred forges of Holy Mars. He had stood upon the rust of its soil for thirty revolutions about the light of Sol, in apprenticeship to the priesthood of the Cult Mechanicus. Atraxii had been exposed to some of the most powerful teachings of the Omnissiah, harnessing the power to mend and appease the spirit that dwelt within the machine.

Atraxii returned now to Medusa to stand before his Chapter kindred, changed. He wore the crimson of Mars, upon which he bore the Machina Opus. He held secrets known only to a handful of souls across the entirety of the galaxy.

He was now ordained Frater Astrotechnicus. Techmarine. Among a Chapter who so venerated the machine, assuming such a mantle was prestigious indeed. Those who had taken the crimson were heavily represented on the Iron Council – the assembly of commanders and Iron Fathers from the clan companies who dictated the future of the Chapter. It was a destiny that might yet lie before Atraxii, should he prove worthy of it.

The prideful sensation evaporated as soon as it arrived. Atraxii was intrigued that his mind would incur something so quaintly biological.

Atraxii stepped down from the platform, looking across the pitted surface of the landing pad. A vast plate of dark iron stretched out around him, rumbling with the beating hearts of titanic engines that carried the fortress across the ever-shifting landscape of Medusa. Atraxii noted an icon of a white cogwheel etched into the walls, simple and without embellishment, encircling a white disc upon a field of black. It was the symbol of Clan Kaargul, the same symbol Atraxii bore as an electoo over his throat.

The mobile fortress of Atraxii’s clan was based upon the same schematics as the land engines that had roamed the surface of Medusa since the earliest eras of its history, raised to the scale required for a Space Marine clan company. Navigating the unstable environment of Medusa, where mountain ranges and oceans were abruptly birthed only to collapse again in an endless cycle of tectonic flux, the planet’s inhabitants were perpetually on the move. Even the Emperor’s superhuman warriors were subject to Medusa’s chaotic whims, which they weathered within the sprawling fortresses possessed by each of the ten clan companies.

A circular iris in the deck of the fortress spun smoothly open fifty yards from where Atraxii stood. As the metal plates slid back, a wide lift platform ground to the surface. Standing upon the platform in neat ranks was a squad of ten Iron Hands, bolters held tightly across their armoured chests. Their armour was bereft of ornamentation, save for the gauntlet icon of the Chapter upon their left pauldron, and the cog symbol of Clan Kaargul on their right. At their fore, striding from the platform at an even, metronomic gait, was an Iron Father.

The giant warrior paused half of the distance between his squad and Atraxii. He slowly spun the head of his double-bladed power axe to the ground, resting it against the weather-stripped deck plating with a dull clang. Segmented power cables hung from the haft of the weapon, linking it to his power pack, where a single thick servo-arm was poised like a serpent ready to strike. The eye-lenses of the Space Marine’s snarling helm glowed like smouldering coals, matching those of the squad standing behind him.

For a few moments, silence hung between them, interrupted only by the lashing howl of Medusan winds. When the words came, they issued low and solemn. The voice was clipped, altered by a bionic throat and rendered even more mechanical when heard via the warrior’s vox-grille. It was the voice of one who had embraced the machine, but who still carried a zealous fury that had reduced cities to ruin and scoured entire worlds of life.

‘Hail, Brother Atraxii,’ the Iron Father intoned, cutting through the gale of Medusa’s endless storms without effort. ‘You have returned to clan and Chapter with honour, a keeper of the secrets of the machine ordained on the soil of sacred Mars.’

The Iron Hands commander spoke in Ekfrasi, the blunt, economical dialect of the Medusan language spoken by Clan Kaargul. For the second time in as many minutes, Atraxii allowed himself a sensation of warmth.

‘Oblexus.’ Atraxii inclined his head. ‘Iron Father.’

Oblexus stepped forwards, and the two Iron Hands brought their fists to their chests in salute. The silver of their bionic left hands gleamed as they thudded against the ceramite of their armour. The Iron Father turned to walk with Atraxii back to the waiting squad of Iron Hands.

‘Your translation from sacred Mars?’ asked Oblexus.

‘Efficient,’ replied Atraxii.

‘The ascension has changed you, brother.’

Atraxii turned his head to regard the Iron Father, noting the elevated ratio of bionic augmentations to his form since he had last encountered him. ‘You are changed as well. The years have been laborious?’

Oblexus nodded, the armour of his collar purring with the motion of its fibre bundle musculature. ‘There have been many campaigns. Many have called for the blades of Medusa to aid in their strife. Flesh has been replaced with steel, brothers have departed. Brother Irimas fell seven years ago, Terran standard, in battle against the Archenemy.’

‘Interred?’ asked Atraxii, his thoughts lingering upon his deceased squad brother.

‘Negative,’ replied Oblexus. ‘He succumbed to the weakness of his flesh, and ended. His progenoids are to be implanted in neophytes within the next cycle.’

The Iron Father’s grim revelation did not break Atraxii’s stride. Amongst all of his squad kindred, Irimas had most yearned for interment within the hallowed sarcophagus of a Dreadnought, to experience the heightened union with the machine that came with such entombment. It was an aspiration of nearly all Iron Hands to one day commit themselves to the transformation, to join with such a relic of the Chapter.

That Irimas had lost the battle waged by each of the sons of Manus against the imperfections of the flesh disappointed Atraxii, but the Techmarine cast the thought aside as an irrelevancy.

The silent squad of Iron Hands parted for Atraxii and Oblexus, forming a ring around the perimeter of the platform as it lowered into the fortress.

‘Let us go, now,’ said Oblexus as the wan light of Medusa disappeared from over their heads. ‘The castellan would look upon you.’

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A Black Library Publication

‘Raptor Down’ first published in Words of Blood in 2002.
‘Wings of Bone’ first published in Inferno! #40 in 2004.
‘Acceptable Losses’ first published in Let the Galaxy Burn in 2006.
‘Ancient History’ first published digitally in 2012.
‘Doom Flight’ first published digitally in 2013.
‘Wraithflight’ and ‘The Emperor’s Grace’ first published digitally in 2014.
Medusan Wings first published in 2016.
‘Stormseeker’, ‘In Service Eternal’ and ‘Wraithbound’ first published digitally in 2016.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Adam Tooby.

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