Ferrus Manus: The Gorgon of Medusa by David Guymer

Author:David Guymer [Guymer, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Warhammer.Warhammer 30K
ISBN: 9781784966737
Google: Mh89swEACAAJ
Goodreads: 35297657
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2018-04-02T22:00:00+00:00

NINE

The Imperial ship was darker than he would have thought. It was cold too, the bitter kind that got into a man's skin, the glacial vastness of its inner spaces swirled with a dark ash that grated on the airways like frozen sand. It reminded Dekka of his secondment to the consulate on Undedmus. Shivering under artificial lights. Breathing artificial air. Waking each work cycle to the darkened neglect of an industrial winter. It took all his energy not to shiver now as he descended the hard metal ramp from the numbing power of the Oden Spear. Shivering only worsened the cold. And more than that, he did not want to look weak. It was only rarely desirable, to look weak, when one entered into negotiations, doubly so when one's position was weak. And if he had drawn anything from his interrogation of Moses Trurakk, and from his present company, then it was that the Imperials were profoundly intolerant of weakness.

A sonorous metallic boom reverberated through the deck, up the bulkheads, ruffled the flocking banners, and ran up Dekka's spine as five thousand armoured gods made a sharp right turn.

One impenetrable bloc parted along a previously unnoticed central plane to form a corridor, extending like a chasm from the foot of the ramp to the immense engraved arches at the far, far end of the hangar.

All thoughts of shivering fled as he focused instead on resisting the need to gawp.

The High Lords of Gardinaal valued nothing so highly as a military procession. Millions of men in precision blocks, standards fluttering. Then the armoured divisions, huge tanks bedecked with inspirational messages, superheavy tripod walkers so large that their footfalls had stirred the heart and brought power outages along the path of the procession. And then more men. Millions more. And the pride of the Gardinaal, the artillery, the atomic ballistari that had so devastated the first Imperial invaders, hauled by monstrous trucks to the cheers of a dutiful and ever-pliant populace. So vast were they that they could run for days. In fact, an understanding of the logistics involved in conducting a planet-circling procession made the display more impressive rather than less. When one considered that over the duration of the parade those millions upon millions of marching men would have been replaced by millions upon millions more, several times over.

As of that second it had lost all power to impress, crushed under the weight of five thousand armoured gods.

'Close your mouth, consul. Do not betray your years by drooling now.'

Dekka stiffened as High Lord Strachaan tramped down from the gunship.

The High Lord was no less formidable than the Imperials. Indeed, in his reliquary war suit, he was, by any objective measure, greater, but compared to their explicit perfection the exaggerated hydraulics and ossified armour of his tripedal armature seemed… crude. Every edge was hard, every quantum of energy produced sent a shudder through his scaffold, every adornment was functional. The moribund thing inside was smaller. He saw that now. The

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