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  Maranova landed on the rocky ledge beside Nazoya. She hurried to where her friend lay groaning and clutching her leg. Maranova pulled the tourniquet out and wrapped it around Nazoya’s thigh; when she pulled the pin it instantly inflated, immediately slowing the flow of blood.

  Maranova wrapped her arms around Nazoya’s body, clasping her in a tight bear hug. A second later the roaring engines of the Valkyrie increased in pitch. The rope between Maranova and the aircraft grew taut and, for a terrifying moment, the loops around her waist slid up before catching under her arms and hoisting her into the air by her armpits. Carrying the wounded Nazoya with her, Maranova silently prayed to the God-Emperor to protect them as burst cannon rounds flew past them. The Valkyrie turned, Maranova forcing her arms to stay clamped around Nazoya against the swinging pendulum motion of the rope as they retreated to the other side of the ravine and out of range of the firing t’au.

  Once beyond the edge of the battle Yakleva descended the Valkyrie until Maranova could get her feet on the ground. Undoing the rope from around her waist, she helped Nazoya up and into the troop compartment as Yakleva brought the Valkyrie into an even lower hover, before clambering up and in after her.

  The Valkyrie rose into the air but instead of turning directly for home, Yakleva turned towards the battle still raging between the Imperial and t’au ground forces.

  Maranova grabbed the vox-headset and slipped it back on. ‘Ma’am, what are you doing?’

  ‘There’s incoming enemy aircraft on the auspex,’ Yakleva replied.

  ‘You’re not in a Thunderbolt, ma’am, and we’ve got Nazoya, that’s what we came for.’

  ‘Yes,’ Yakleva replied, ‘but the Guard down there need some air support. We’ll hit them with a strafing run on our way out.’

  Maranova looked in the direction of the battle; it didn’t seem to be going well for the Astra Militarum. Guardsmen had disembarked from their Chimeras and were locked in a desperate fight with t’au fire warriors. Multiple Chimeras had been left as smoking wrecks and several Leman Russ tanks appeared disabled.

  ‘All right,’ Maranova said, positioning herself behind the heavy bolter in the door. ‘Let’s be reckless.’

  ‘All stations,’ Yakleva transmitted over the vox, ‘this is Squadron Leader Yakleva. I am piloting the unidentified Valkyrie. We have recovered the downed Night Shrieker pilot but Strike Force Defiance requires immediate air support. I am engaging t’au forces to assist and request immediate scramble of Thunderbolt fighters and Valkyrie gunships.’

  Yakleva flew over the friendly forces and then continued fast and low towards the enemy Hammerhead tanks. Yakleva picked out one tank and two Hellstrike missiles erupted from under the wings of her craft. They slammed into the hovering Hammerhead, penetrating the outer armour on initial impact before the high explosive warheads detonated. The front of the tank burst open in a spray of metallic debris and it ploughed into the ground.

  ‘They’ve got anti-air,’ Yakleva said over the vox. ‘We’re spiked.’

  Even from the back of the Valkyrie, Maranova could hear the scream of alarms as t’au Skyrays sitting in protection of the Hammerhead tanks locked on to the aircraft and loosed seeker missiles.

  Yakleva turned one way and then back the other, jinking the Valkyrie, but she could not shake the missiles. As the first drew in close, she punched the flare release and banked so hard that Maranova thought the aircraft was going to turn inside out. The spray of hot bright flares shot from the back of the aircraft and the first missile diligently followed, streaking away into the sky.

  The second missile stubbornly maintained lock on the Valkyrie and was rapidly gaining.

  ‘Hold on!’

  Yakleva pulled up hard and then nosed over in a stomach-lurching manoeuvre that sent them diving back down towards the ground. The Valkyrie plunged into the darkness of a canyon once again and, as it grew increasingly thin, Yakleva pulled up hard, each of the Valkyrie’s wing tips scraping the walls of the ravine. She turned hard into a branch off the main canyon and then pulled back up into the clear air. Below them, in the depths of the ravine, the missile exploded in a blast of flame and rock as it speared into the cliff wall. Yakleva turned for home.

  ‘Valkyrie, this is Strike Force Defiance, nice flying and thanks for the assist. Get your cargo home, we’ve word of incoming air support. We can hold out.’

  ‘Confirmed, Defiance, the Emperor protects,’ Yakleva replied.

  ‘The Emperor protects.’

  Maranova dropped to the floor of the Valkyrie, exhaling with adrenal exhaustion. Beside her, Nazoya was pale but her breathing was steady and the tourniquet was holding around her butchered leg.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ Maranova said as she unzipped her flight jacket and reached inside. She pulled out eight ration sticks. ‘Here, this is what I owe for not getting you home.’

  Nazoya smiled weakly at her friend. ‘Keep them,’ she said. ‘You might have taken your time, but you’ve kept your word.’

  Pilot Officer Marina Maranova sat in the cockpit of her Thunderbolt, ready to fly her first official combat mission following six weeks of disciplinary grounding. In the aircraft beside her was recently demoted Flight Lieutenant Nina Yakleva, also freshly restored to flight status. Considering Colonel Rathven had pushed for execution, six weeks grounded and a demotion for Yakleva was a minimal punishment for the pair. Someone had petitioned the high ranks of the Imperial Navy to step in and ensure the best pilots in the Night Shriekers could continue the fight in the skies over Raskova.

  ‘Lipka Tower, this is Shrieker Flight requesting take-off.’

  It had been more than a month since Imperial forces had narrowly prevented the t’au from capturing this airbase and today they launched the counter-offensive. Maranova looked over at Yakleva, who shot her a thumbs up. Maranova smiled and returned the signal. They would make the enemy fear the Night Shriekers.

  About the Author

  Justin Woolley hails from the bottom of the world in Tasmania, Australia and is an author of science fiction and fantasy. In his other life Justin has been an engineer, a teacher, and at one stage even a magician. A long-time fan of Warhammer 40,000, he looks forward to contributing to the grim darkness of the 41st millennium.

  An extract from On Wings of Blood.

  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 eigh
teen 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.’

  Click here to buy On Wings of Blood.

  A Black Library Publication

  First published in Great Britain in 2020.

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