A Legacy of Iron

[Iron Warrior]

In the vast darkness of the void drifts a large Iron and Steel mass of metal. Its angular corners glean in the small hints of sunlight that begin to crest from the edge of the planet is drifts above. Its hull is devoid any iconolgy or color save for a Silver, Iron Skull and in ancient gothic "Storm of Iron" on its angular prow.

Its side decks and forward observatories are amass with several large ordnance and defense guns, silent in the cold darkness of space. Its bare hull a dull metallic color in the sun light. The huge vessel slowly spins on an axis as if pushes forward past the planet below. This vessel has seen many battle in 10,000 years. Its hull showing signs of war fare and disrepair.

Suddenly, without warning the massive guns burst into action, all swinging and raising to the starboard side. There they stay waiting for something to cross their path. Other guns and missile arrays also swivel in that direction. Apparently something has been seen near the planet.

The Bridge of the Storm of Iron is a dark room with green and red flashing buttons, pict screens and imagifiers. Servitors are built or grown rather into the hull of the ship. Six large view ports show the darkness of the space outside the vessel along with millions of other stars. The Bridge is moving with mechanical and robotic motion and seemingly in a chaotic order. Data slates are passed from dregs to officers to Large warriors in ancient suits of silver and yellow power armor.

Near the back of the room elevated like a throne chair sits a giant of a warrior. He is as ancient as he is methodical and deadly. His darkened silver terminator armor makes up most of his bulk. Servos whirr and whine as he moves his hands with incredible speed across a holographic interface map. The map shines a red hue upon this giant warrior. At the end of each finger is a deadly talon of steel, Lighting Claws that have been integrated into what little flesh is left of this warrior. He is more machine than man anymore. 90% of his body has already been replaced with bio-mechanical augmentations to increase speed, strength and capacity. All thats really left of this warrior is an encased brain inside his steel embellished helmet. You can faintly hear the hissing of his respirator over the bridge noise, his lungs having been long ago replaced by a re-breather integrated into his circulatory system.

The icons the warrior is touching and magnifying is that of another vessel. Its course seems to be intercepting his own ship as seen by the blinking dotted line on the holographic map in front of him. With a taloned finger he taps on an icon and it brings up range to ship, simultaneously with another taloned figure he taps an icon on the opposite side of the map and it brings up a display of his largest guns range. He then drags the two figures together and the icon changes to a lock on target icon. He drags the icon to the other ship and double taps the ship. The target icon blinks and a prompt blinks into existence..."Execute" His taloned finger hovers above the icon.

The warrior looks up from the holographic map at one of his men standing beside him with a data slate. "Speak, Lieutenant" He said in a monotone electrical vox voice.

The Lt. speaks. "Lord Hellforge, the ship is of pre heretical make, a despoiler class battleship"

Lord Hellforge glances back at the map..."This Far out? Is it imperial?"

"No sir, however we cannot see any markings on the ship, it is however on an intercept course with us. I would advise caution. After Medusa many of the Chaos legions you rallied have broken with you. It could be a trap."

From the darkness behind the throne comes a voice. "I do not sense any hostility...let them come, they wish to speak not make war"

"When I want your council sorcerer I will ask for it" spat Lord Hellforge not looking behind him to see his sniveling sorcerer cower behind the throne command chair in which he sat. "Lt, stay on course if you see anything unusual, open fire.

With that order the Lt. bows and leaves to join the jumble of servitors and Iron Warriors on the deck of the bridge. Lord Hellforge taps two buttons on his holo map and its disappears and reappears on one of the large view screens near the front of the bridge of to the side. "Execute" still blinking on the screen.

"Initiate external optical surveillance on center view screen" with the command a picture of the huge battleship appears on the screen. However at this distance it was hard to make any details out.

"Enhance forward targeting array with optical surveillance and magnify imiagifier by factor 5"

The image blinks large but still no details are seen. The ship is angular like the Storm of Iron and the ship shows no signs of external images. The outline of the ship does indicate it as a Despoiler class battle ship, a much larger ship than Lord Hellforge's Murder Class Cruiser.

"Enhance magnification, factor 10"

"Locale 23 by 52...center and magnify by factor 15"

A Silence fell over the bridge as the picture cleared and magnified. It was clear as day now, the icon was there. The crew turned their heads to look at Lord Hellforge. He glared at the screen in front of him in the center front of the bridge. The sun caught the icon and it light up brightly now so it was apparent even more so. A Silver Skull on a red field, the Icon of the Iron Warriors, his own legion, has finally come for him.

"So our brothers have found us." Says Lord Asteroth Hellforge, Warsmith of the 13th Grand Company of Iron Warriors. He rises from his throne chair and awaits the inevitable communication relay to announce thier wishes to speak with the Warsmith.

TBC...

[Iron Warrior]

The front view pict magnifier flickers into life before the bridge. First static then the image clears. The bridge all gasp as they see the image, well all but one person gasps. Lord Hellforge stands just looking into the pict screen suspiciously. The form of another Lord clad in the same make of terminator armor as his own, the same helmet, the same size, the same red glowing eyes from beneath the steely visor, even the same hissing of the re-breather. There is one difference. This Lord has no Lighting claws, instead two large gauntleted hands resting on the arm rests of his throne chair. Its as If Lord Hellforge was looking into a mirror.

"Identify yourself!" Speaks Lord Hellforge in a monotone mechanical voice.

In the same voice the other Lord Speaks "There is no need for identification, you already know who I am.....I am you"

Lord Hellforge tilts he head forward and glares at the image of himself on the screen, through his bionic eyes. "Enough Games, who are you?!"

The Image replies, "I have already answered that....I am you, Or rather, You were once me, to be more precise. I am Lord Asteroth Hellforge, Warsmith of the 13th Grand Company of Iron Warriors."

Hellforge shakes his head "Your games I grow tired of, I had better get some explanations or I will open fire upon your ship" A meager threat. The Despoiler class battleship could turn his Cruiser into scrap metal before he launched any of his melta torpedo's.

The Image stands up from his Throne command chair and looks at Hellforge. "I would not expect you to know what I am talking about because it is infarct quite by mistake that I have come to gather this knowledge myself. I will attempt to explain this to you."
The image of Hellforge crosses he hands over his chest and begins to pace his bridge.

"The Name Asteroth Hellforge has been around for nearly 13,000 years, thats before the Horus heresy. You came to power by Killing your last Warsmith and took his position. Then and there you realized how easy and mortal we are all. Infact you went through some measure to insure our...or my immortality, so to speak. As members of the Iron Warriors Legion we all have inherited special gifts from our beloved Father, Perturabo. Our gift was Bio-Mechanical engineering, Robotics, Cybernetics and Reproduction of Bio Electrical beings such as you and I."

Asteroth watches the image and tries to acknowledge what it is saying. It is true there are files upon files of that information in his data banks and store in the virtual memory as well as the biological memory. But these are natural occurrences for each Iron Warrior Lord.

The Image continues in the mono tone voice "Your ambition drove you to seek out an aspiring apothecary of the Emporers Children's Legion. With his aid you were able to create us, the Clone Lords." The image continues to pace the floor of his bridge as he speaks.
"With his knowledge of Cloning and Ours of Bio-Electrical reproduction you were able to create clones of yourself. You are the 3rd incarnation of Lord Hellforge and I am the 4th. We are geniuses! Now we can live through out time and truly be immortal."

Lord Hellforge shakes his head and replies "And what about the memories and actions of the previous Clone Lords, How do we come to have their knowledge? Its not possible for you to have my memories or of me to have prior memories of the last Clone lord. I don't see how that is possible. What deception are you weaving, impostor?!

The image speaks again. "Your right, there is a slight problem with the previous memories, but at the time all of us were implanted with the original Warsmiths memories. Which is why we needed another to help us with this. We needed an outsider that could record from inside your council...."

Immediately Hellforge turns around behind him and sees the image of the Ipexx blink out of existence. As he turns to the image again Ipexx is standing behind the Image of the Lord. "Traitor!!"

The image yells "OH! But on the contrary, he is doing exactly as you have told him to do." He takes a small cube like structure from Ipexx and holds it up. "Your memories are all here and all I need to do is Download them."

"How is it that I had no prior knowledge of this? How is it that you knew of this yet I did not?" Asks Hellforge.

The image stops at a console and looks down at it. "Good observation, I see our cognitive reasoning is still in tact. As with our beloved Father, we are all psychically attuned to the warp and the flow of chaos. Recently there has been a titanic change in the warp flow, you felt it...and when I was sleeping so did I. It awakened me...early. I saw where we are kept, built and stored. Imagine a planet with nothing but fortress, bunkers, trench's, Artillery batters, defense lasers, anti aircraft guns, tank manafactoriums, Titans, everything that makes us the Iron Warriors Legion on one planet. It is a glorious World. I woke in the incubation chamber still connected to the sleeper nodes. I saw the rest of the sleeper cells...all of us. The servitors tried to put me back to sleep but I resisted them easily and escaped the chamber to learn who or what I really was. I must admit we are clever. Either way, I also learned something else interesting. Did you know that we installed a fail safe program into our bodies if two of use were accidentally awakened at the same time? We made sure that there was only ever one of us awake at the same time. I managed to delay your death..."

What!? My Death? I will not die, I have had enough of your lies...Bridge, train all guns on their bridge, "Yelled Asteroth.

"hehehe, a typical response and I expected such.? The image touches a series of buttons on the console and then looks up at Lord Hellforge. "Take refuge in the thought that I will live on in our glorious name. Lord Asteroth Hellforge..."

Before Lord Hellforge could say Open Fire a searing pain over took his chest and he stumbled and fell to his knees. The Bridge was then covered in fire, smoke and shrapnel as the chest of Asteroth Hellforge burst open from belt to neck from an internal melta explosion. The empty flaming carcass fell over on its side and layed still. The bridge crew all in shock and stunned form wounds or amazement as what had just conspired. Lord Hellforge was dead...atleast this one was.....

The Image spoke once more before flickering out..."Open Fire!!"

Lance strikes opened up and tore holes in the Murder Class cruiser "Storm of Iron", Torpedo detonations off the hull followed seconds later and the hull broke in two. It was followed by secondary and tertiary explosions of the reactor core and ammo depot which tore the ship further apart. The debris caught in the planets gravitational pull began to fall into orbit and igniting the shards of Iron on fire. The planet was covered literally in a Storm of Molten Iron.

The Huge Despoiler class battle ship slowly turned in orbit and made for a nearby moon to wait for an opportune time....underneath the Iron Warriors Icon on the hull was the name of the ship "Legacy of Iron"