The air of this world stank, a chemical reek mixed with ash and burned blood. To his knowledge, this world was nameless, at least to those outside the enigmatic cloisters of the Dark Mechanicum. His men were finishing their butcher's work, quick stabs to brain pans and hearts with already bloody combat blades.
The Astartes were spread out along the parapet of this Dark Mechanicum forge-fortress, the final defense of their mountain foundries. They had reaped a butcher's toll amongst the tech-troops of this world's rulers, but they had not come away unscathed. He could see Borus, of 3rd Squad, bandaging the stump of his left arm. It was gone from the elbow down due to enemy plasma fire, but his was not the worst. None of them had been killed, but it had been a close thing at numerous points.
He watched his warriors, his War Hounds. Eaters of Worlds no more, each one bore the scars of their ruination on their skull. Even their enhanced physiology could not hide the scars of the monstrosity their gene-father had foisted upon them. His own head and face were a mass of scar tissue and bionics, his left eye and most of the skull behind it were metal. He ran a gauntleted hand over his scarred scalp, once again silently thanking Harakhty for his assistance.
He inhaled the harsh air again, this time a new scent wafted over the acrid tang. He smelled the marginally sour odor that followed all the tech-priests of this nameless world, knowing it was his employer.
"Captain Leonydas, you have upheld your end of the bargain. Your warband will receive the payment agreed upon." His voice was a harsh screech of vox feedback that could barely be understood, but it matched the creature's willowy slightness and apparent lack of organics.
"Yes, Tech-Priest Fellgore, we have slain your rivals. Do you ask anything else of the War Hounds?" His voice was lower than a human could manage but held a sharp edge that warned of this warrior's capacity for slaughter.
"No, Captain. Our own forces will consolidate here, so you may gather your payment and leave if you so wish." Leonydas nodded, satisfied with the answer the Dark Mechanicum priest gave him.
"Farewell, honored adept." He turned back to his men, donning his battered Mark Three war helm. All his men were similarly adorned, clad in the blue power armor of their original Legion. Their dirty white pauldrons displayed the rampant crimson hound they had reclaimed.
He had fifty warriors in his warband, the majority coming with him from the Legion. A few were the cast offs of other Legions, and even chapters that had fallen long after the Great Heresy was only a faded memory. His second, Ashur, was one such cast off. His armor and sigil proclaimed his allegiance to Leonydas and the War Hounds, but the towering topknot above his pristine Mark Five helm revealed his cultural and genetic heritage.
"Ashur, rally everyone. We're leaving this accursed rock." Ashur nodded, taking a step before turning around to speak.
"Back to the Iris, then?" His voice, though distorted by the vox grille of his helm, was a gutter snarl of the kind you would hear after a stab in the back and a lifting of your purse. He groaned softly when Leonydas nodded but made no further complaint as he shouted at the ragged group of warriors to make themselves look like soldiers.
The War Hounds marched back towards their waiting Thunderhawks and the Devourer dropship they had retrofitted for hauling their spoils. The remains of Fellgore's rival army were being herded away from the fortress, towards the waiting landers of Fellgore's clan. Destined to be reborn into servitors, most likely.
The world this Dark Mechanicum outpost rested on was a nameless hell world within the Maelstrom, an abandoned world to perform their twisted experiments. The sky was a churning mass of reds and blues, purple lightning splitting the sky at regular intervals. Wind blew across the dry and cracked plains, driving sand and grit into the mountainside fortress being looted by the machine-hungry hordes of the Dark Mechanicum.
The Astartes marched the kilometer back to the dropship and the Thunderhawks. One of them was being carried between two others, his legs and armor a slagged ruin. Almost every one of them bore a wound or armor damage, but none were bowed. They had unshackled themselves from Angron and the Nails, and they were proud of that.
They approached their Thunderhawks, Perfect Hatred and Unruly Evil, as servitors and more twisted Mechanicum constructs they did not recognize unloaded massive crates from a supply dropship and carrying them to the Devourer, the War Hounds' rampant crimson hound sigil daubed on its flanks. Several of their slaves were helping as they could, all of them in fatigue coveralls with the sigil branded on their left cheek.
One of Fellgore's acolytes approached Leonydas as the Astartes made their way towards the ancient Thunderhawks. Like his master he was also clad in sickly yellow robes, but he was more baseline human in form and function.
"Captain, I trust you would like to inspect the goods?" His voice was soft and sibilant, almost inaudible over the wind. Leonydas nodded and followed the acolyte as he strode towards the crates. With hiss of machine speech from an unseen vox speaker, the acolyte stopped two of the mutant servitors and opened the crate between them.
Inside were dozens of oiled bolters, of the newer Godwyn Mark Vb pattern, resting softly in padded racks, each of them manufactured on a forge world of the Imperium. The War Hounds refused to touch tainted weaponry, ever wary of the descent into slavery to the Ruinous Powers.
"Adequate, tech-priest. What about the others?" Leonydas motioned towards the other crates. The acolyte pulled an archaic data slate from beneath his billowing robes and began matching serial numbers on the crates to ones on the slate. There were many more weapons, from heavy bolters to a few plasma guns. Several suits of power armor, including a partial Terminator suit. Ammunition, provisions, bionics, and fuel made up the list as well, with the acolyte explaining that the heavier items including ammunition for the ships weapons and a Dreadnought chassis were being loaded in orbit as they spoke.
Leonydas oversaw the rest of the transfer operation as the acolyte turned back to his slate, occasionally ordering the servitors with screeching machine speech. Ashur ambled back out of Perfect Hatred, his captain's ship, and strode towards Leonydas.
"What's our next job, Leonydas?" His gutter killer voice purred into Leonydas' ears through the vox link, as Leonydas recalled the communication he had received before they had made planetfall several days ago.
"A Rouge Trader contacted me; they want to meet just off the Iris. He was very vague on the details, but I think he's going somewhere that the Imperium wouldn't approve of, and he wants Astartes bodyguards that won't offer him as a sacrifice on a lark." Ashur nodded.
"Our reputation precedes us, it seems." He chuckled, knowing the sort of Astartes that could usually be found aboard the Iris were not the kind you wanted watching your back, especially if you were a mortal.
They stood in amicable silence as the acolyte's servitors finished loading the Devourer dropship, and they silently trod onto the Perfect Hatred. Leonydas spoke into his microbead to Scyles, the pilot.
"Scyles, cycle it up, we're leaving." As they sat down in the thrones of the venerable gunship, other Astartes climbed the ramp. The hold never filled, with other squads choosing to fly aboard Unruly Evil, and five drawing guard duty with the materiel aboard the Devourer.
"Yes, Captain. Acknowledged." Scyles slowly awakened the machine spirit in the ancient gunship, warming its engines slowly but surely. Scyles took exceptionally good care of his gunship, and it took good care of the Astartes. The Devourer across from them followed suit as did Unruly Evil beside them, with Scyles speaking across the vox link to its pilot, a survivor of the unfortunate Tiger Claws named Sanga. They slowly ascended through the tortured atmosphere of the nameless world, leisurely slipping into the silent void.
Their ship, Unto the Cruel, was a Slaughter-class cruiser they had liberated from its former pirate owners when they had docked at the Iris. In need of a ship, and not in the mood for bartering with mutant pirate princes with delusions of grandeur, Leonydas and his War Hounds butchered the lordling and his cronies. He had purchased many slaves from the Blackheart, soothing any hard feelings about a massacre he had not sanctioned. Most of these were what untainted humans he could find, crew of merchant and Navy vessels alike.
The ship itself was a thing of murderous beauty, its spires adorned with cathedral-like crenellations. Built for speed, the ship itself was still bristling with weaponry, with lance turrets and Destructor Cannon batteries growing from its faded blue and white painted hide. It hung close to one of the monstrous Dark Mechanicum vessels, a wholly original design by the shipwrights of one of their hell-forge worlds. Cargo fliers moved back and forth in the void between the two vessels, while titanic fuel lines had been hauled amidships to accommodate their deal.
The Thunderhawks slipped into the hangar, Scyles and Sanga settling them down into their respective docking cradles. A maintenance crew of his slaves slipped from their otherwise menial tasks and began going over the gunships as they did after every combat mission. The Devourer set down in a nearby cradle, as the Cruel's chief Tech-Priest ordered its gang of slaves and servitors to begin the unloading process from its overlooking workstation. The gunship hatches had lowered and the Astartes had begun filing out, several going to their quarters or the training pits, and some lounging about to watch the unloading process themselves and maybe pick out some choice gear.
Leonydas walked towards his Tech-Priest's workstation, where the tall and lanky thing clad in blue robes marked with the War Hounds' sigil, and the crest of the Dark Mechanicum stood. He was not sure if the being had been male or female originally, so far had it moved past the state of baseline human. Opaque, red-lensed goggles stared at the War Hounds' captain as he approached, the rest of its face covered by a vox grille wrought into the shape of a slavering hound.
"Captain Leonydas, welcome back." It said as it looked down at the Astartes, its voice something between a dog's growl and shotgun blast. Leonydas looked up at the towering being, something akin to weariness is his eyes, if such a thing was possible for the post-human warriors.
"Hail, Honored Dysonius. How's the transfer going?" The Tech-Priest paused as it accessed its cogitator console and began to quickly process the raw data that scrolled by.
"Refueling is at eighty-seven percent, reloading of munitions is at ninety-three percent. Unloading of the dropships in Hangar Alpha and Hangar Beta are at sixty-eight percent. Estimated time to completion is thus: one standard hour." The words ground out of Dysonius' grille mouth, leaving Leonydas to nod in satisfaction.
"Very well, Tech-Priest. If you need me, I'll be on the bridge." With a growl of power armor servos, the captain of the War Hounds made his way to the lift, followed by Ashur and his Thunderhawk pilots. Scyles was one of his own, raised into the Legion on Terra. A faded raptor imperialis decorated his right shoulder plate, the engraved eagle head and lightning bolts signifying his service alongside the Emperor himself during the Unification Wars. He was older than Leonydas, his age showing as he removed his helm, flecks of gray in the close-cropped haircut.
Next to him Sanga was barely older than a child, his removed helm showing a chestnut complexion with shaved pate and flowing black mustache. He rested his hand easily on the hilt of his strange khanda sword. It was the only clue to his past, the blunt pointed weapon resting in a scabbard covered with the striped hide of a predatory felind.
"Nice work, Sanga. On the wall." The relatively young Astartes nodded his head at his Captain, acknowledging the praise. He had felled a particularly tough combat servitor made from the abhuman bulk of an ogryn, his swordsmanship easily slaughtering the lumbering machine-beast.
"Thank you, Captain." His accent was lyrical and soft, a vast difference from the harsh tank-tread growl most of Hounds exhibited. Scyles chuckled and slapped his junior on the shoulder pad.
"Don't be so blasted modest, Sanga. What the Captain means, is we'll make a fine Hound out of you yet." Since they had slipped the fetters of the Nails and the shadow of their gene-father, most of the original legionaries had become most exuberant. It was disconcerting to the enemy when your slayer was roaring with laughter. A similar tactic had been used by the sons of the Great Khan when they rode to war.
His chuckling stopped when the old doors of the lift opened onto the command bridge. They were on the lower floor; a second floor of gantries ringed the bridge, full of blinking cogitators and archaic servitors hardwired into their stations. Mortal officers came to attention as their Astartes masters walked onto the deck.
Sitting on a command throne modified for his gene-enhanced bulk and power armor, was Leonydas' shipmaster Andronikos. He alone still wore the armor of his own gene-father, the Hammer of Olympia, and the steel death's head of the Iron Warriors shone dully on his pauldron. He had been saved by Leonydas' only remaining apothecary before the Nails were gone, fighting alongside the World Eaters on some nameless daemon world in one of the petty wars they fought so often in the accursed Eye.
"Captain Leonydas, welcome back." His accent was clipped and cold, but his blue-grey eyes held a hint of warmth for his friend.
"Shipmaster, thank you." He removed his helm and moved to stand beside the son of Perturabo on the raised dais of the command throne. Scyles and Sanga saluted them both, before taking their leave of the bridge.
