Iron Hands

Author:Jonathan Green
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-09-08T13:08:08.336453+00:00

Jonathan Green «Iron Hands»

One day, as the God-Emperor is my witness, Gdolkin vowed, there will be such a reckoning between us that our encounter shall be spoken of by the Sons of Medusa in the centuries to come.

Gdolkin turned and followed his men as they made their escape from the cavernous cathedral space.

THE FIRST OF the Iron Hands, the warriors of Assault Squad Dagan, were only just emerging from the fissure in the mesa's side into the blinding light of noon when, at the heart of the cave complex behind them, the artefact detonated. The Space Marines heard and felt the blast like an underground atomic explosion.

'Get down!' Gdolkin yelled, anticipating what would happen next. 'Keep the rock behind you!'

The Iron Hands obeyed, Iron-Father Gdolkin and his two bodyguard slave-machines being the last to escape and throw themselves clear of the cave mouth.

The energy-wave of the artefact's apocalyptic destruction swept through the cave, reducing the remaining cultists' bodies to wind blown cinders. Barely two seconds after Gdolkin made it out of the caves, ripples of coruscating, emerald light blasted out of the fissure, battering the waiting Iron Eagle The bombardment threatened to turn the craft over and the Thunderhawk's servitor-pilot was only able to hold its position by activating its thrasters. The eldritch warp blast continued out into the featureless desert beyond.

The Iron Hands watched as the Shockwave from the explosion passed through the bedrock of the planet, a rippling tidal wave of sand sweeping out across the wilderness.

But the tremors continued. With a crashing roar that was so loud it was almost too thundrous to even register on the human scale of hearing as anything more than the ringing tinnitus of white noise, a section of the mesa plateau collapsed inwards. The cliff-face above Iron-Father Gdolkin shook, great slabs of sandstone breaking loose and falling towards the Iron Hands in massive chunks. The Space Marines didn't need to be given the order to move.

'Into the Iron Eagle!' Gdolkin commanded.

The twenty-seven survivors of the artefact's destruction - Brother Zorian having been flattened beneath a falling slab of tunnel roof -

piled into the Thunderhawk and as soon as they all were in, before the boarding ramp had even been raised, the Iron Eagle took off, before it too was crushed under the collapsing face of the mesa.

'What now, Iron-Father?' Gdolkin heard Brother Yergen ask over the comm.

'We head back to Antipax. I believe that Magos Thule will no longer have any reason to remain on Herod, now that the Bei'bul Stone has been destroyed.'

THE EARTHQUAKE LASTED for a total duration of three minutes thirty-three seconds. The tremors were felt even back in Antipax half a continent away, but at the quake's epicentre the face of Herod was changed irrevocably, a massive sinkhole forty kilometres wide spreading out across the desert, to a depth of five hundred metres.

The effects of the Bei'bul Stone's destruction did not stop there. The rippling energy-wave of its detonation passed through the atmosphere, continuing out into space; onward, ever onward, unceasing.

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