For a moment silence hung in the air between the irate commander of the Iron Hands and the resentful tech-priest. A snowstorm of static continued to wash through the emerald orb of the holosphere projection.

'Then it would appear that there is only one course of action open to us,' Gdolkin said, his tone calmer than before but still heavy with the inevitably of the situation.

'And what would that be, Iron-Father?' Brother-Initiate Fundare asked.

'We are wasting our time here. We go to the heart of this battle for the planet. We must go to the Argentum Mountains and locate Ordinatus Gehenna. We shall quash the armies of the insurrectionists and find our errant Mechanicus magos. We will then hunt down Omega Thule. The Iron Eagle leaves within the hour.'

Gdolkin turned on his heel and made to exit the bunker, leaving the other occupants of the command bunker as stunned and surprised as they had been by the Space Marines' angry arrival, and at what had happened in the matter of minutes since.

The rest of the Iron Hands followed in the Iron-Father's wake as he cut his way through the startled onlookers.

'It would appear that we are to be Magos Thule's salvation.’ said Gdolkin.

FIVE

MORBUS EX MACHINA

The Foothills of the Argentum Mountains

The Iron Eagle soared over the tattered, fractured landscape, scuds of ochre cloud passing beneath the Thunderhawk like a shoal of sand rays in the southern oceans of Medusa, the homeworld the Iron Hands had been forced to leave behind.

Gdolkin felt his anger still as hot within him as when the elders of the great clan council had told him his place in this unholy war was not fighting to keep the enemy from the threshold of his precious mother-world but on some distant planet where many of the weak-willed populace had already succumbed to the honeyed lies of Chaos. He would never be found lacking in such a pitiful way. As far as Iron-Father Gdolkin was concerned, there was only one fate much of the population of Fornax Orbis Majoris deserved and he would happily administer it himself with his thrice-blessed bolt pistol, if Ferrus Manus answered his prayers; but only after he had vented his wrath on the vile traitors who had once dared consider themselves kin to the loyal Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes.

'ETA to target position t-minus three minutes.’ the pilot's monotone voice reverberated over Gdolkin's helmet vox.

The Iron-Father cast his eyes around the dimly lit interior of the Thunderhawk. The ruddy glow of the hazard illuminators made it seem as though all the occupants were shrouded in a pall the colour of dried blood. He took in each of the Iron Hands in turn.

He had fought with all of them before apart from Brother Yergen, but the recently inducted Space Marine had made such an impression on his tutors for the dedication he had shown towards the Vurgaan clan and the Chapter as a whole that Gdolkin had marked him from the outset to join his hand picked force. Yergen had already survived his baptism of fire, purging the ruinous Death Guard from the tank manufactory. The battles to come would grant the young battle-brother much valuable experience, as long as he remained strong.