The whole of the left-hand side of his face was disfigured by bio-acid burns, giving it an almost skeletal appearance. This, married to the fact that the other half of his head was now made up of iron-plated augmetics, meant that Strake's face looked not unlike the Machina Opus cyborg-skull symbol of the mighty Adeptus Mechanicus.

As well as having his legs shorn off by a splinter of bone shrapnel from a tyranid spore mine, so great was the damage caused to his spine by the bio-acid that it would have been almost impossible to equip Strake with bionic legs. And besides, the itinerant captain did not feel that a pair of legs was the most practicable thing he needed as commander of an Astartes battleship. At his request techno-surgery had been performed to fit him with an anti-grav assembly, beneath his waist, not unlike those used in the manufacture of servo-skulls.

In Strake's mind the machine was the ideal, and if the physical was not good enough, why keep to the pattern set by inadequate biological forerunners? Whilst others were thrown about by shuddering impacts or the turbulence created by spatial anomalies, he was able to keep a clear grip on the situation, no longer in physical contact with the floor. No matter how much the Ajax might pitch or yaw he stayed forever upright.

Iron-Captain Strake certainly struck an imposing figure aboard the bridge of the strike cruiser, seeming more machine than man. He was a warrior Iron-Father Gdolkin had great respect for.

Behind Strake, Gdolkin could see the main view screen of the bridge, fully ten metres across and five high. It was currently displaying the view visible beyond the command turret of the Ajax.

The star field was tinged red by the flickering of a far distant nebula. In the bottom left-hand corner of the screen the yellow arc of Herod could be seen rotating lazily beneath the irradiating glare of its twin suns, currently astern of the Ajax.

Gdolkin remembered when he had seen the stars strewing the firmament above Medusa properly for the first time, and the awe and emotion that went with the experience. His homeworld was shrouded by dark clouds of pollution on an almost permanent basis and when there was a break in the billows, the view of the void beyond was so distorted by the chemical vapours, ever-present in the atmosphere, that the distant suns looked like blurred, discoloured smudges. The first time he had been aboard a Thunderhawk as it had breached the barrier of the planet's polluted atmosphere he had almost wept.

The only other objects visible of interest to Gdolkin were the prowed oblong shapes of the Tyrant-class cruiser Cardinal Turin and its escort squadron, seconded from Battlegroup Fortis, which had arrived after the Iron Hands had quelled the rebellion on the planet below. Commodore Foxx had apologised for their delay, citing that there had been a disturbance within the warp as his ships were making the jump back into real space. One had been lost and the others had found themselves several million kilometres off course, beyond the edge of the Herod system. The commodore had felt it too dangerous to re-enter the empyrean and so the squadron had completed its journey at sub-light speed, progressing more slowly through the relative safety of the void.