Hand Elect
Chris Wraight

 	He could walk again. He could raise his left arm. His blood circulated, his hearts beat.
 	Yet Jebez Aug was a shade, a weakened element in a Legion of weakened elements, and that was detestable. For many months he had been in the warleader’s shadow, impotent and unregarded, undergoing procedure after procedure to restore his ravaged flesh and broken iron. Despite his stated defiance after the Oqueth massacre, there had been nights when he had countenanced a darker outcome – that he might yet die of his wounds, or be rendered so weak that he would remain an encumbrance to an Iron Hands strike force that already carried too many walking wounded.
 	In the end, it had not been defiance that had carried him through.
 	It had been shame.
 	A burning, gnawing desire to make amends. There was still work to do, atrocities to be avenged, and so he lived, and he suffered the agonies of renewal.
 	And gradually, his physical capability returned. Slowly, his mind turned to what he was, and what he had been, and what he could yet be again.
 	Perhaps, in time, that process could have been completed on board the Iron Heart, but the shortage of... well, everything made it doubtful. Gorgonson was a competent Apothecary, but Aug’s needs went beyond mere flesh-matter and into that tangled, troubled interface with the machine. Once, the Legion could have met those needs easily, but now its remnants were forced to run from haven to haven, begging for what they couldn’t steal, swallowing down their pride lest it stick in their throats.
 	He looked up from his meal tray then – a slab loaded with tasteless void rations – to see the blackened-steel profile of Goran Gorgonson staring at him.
 	‘And?’ Aug asked.
 	‘We are in visual range of Lliax, lord Frater,’ Gorgonson said, bowing slightly. ‘I thought you would want to know.’
 	Aug nodded. The journey from Meduson’s side in the escort frigate Dannang had taken far longer than he had hoped. Then again, every journey took longer now as they clawed their way through the tormented mire of the warp, so it was indeed good to know that they had reached their destination safely. Such things could not be relied upon as they had been in the past.
 	‘Any signal from the magos?’ he murmured.
 	‘Not yet. We are hailing.’
 	Aug set his tray aside, placing it on the table next to his recliner couch. There was a time when addressing a battle-brother while seated would have been an unthinkable breach of decorum. Now it was just another petty humiliation. ‘You are still angry with me.’
 	Gorgonson only hesitated for a microsecond. ‘I do not know what you mean.’
 	‘You believe you could have repaired my flesh.’ Aug eased his shoulder in a half circle, feeling the steel ball-and-socket interface scrape. ‘And you believe that we should not have left the warleader’s side.’
 	‘He needs you, that is certain.’
 	‘He has his fourfold council. In any case, what use am I to him like this? An Iron Father is more than just a counsellor.’
 	Gorgonson didn’t reply. His helm – daubed night-black, its lenses bleeding a soft red glow – gave away nothing, but his exposed face would have been equally stony. For a Terran, the Apothecary was admirably unreadable.
 	‘You think I pursue my own aims over his,’ said Aug, shifting painfully in his recliner. ‘Not so. I must join him as Hand Elect again, and for that I must be restored. You could not have done it. And there is no shame in that, for you do not have the tools.’
 	‘But these... outsiders...’
 	‘They are no such thing. We have worked with them before. Fought with them before. They are among the last of our true allies.’
 	Gorgonson paused again, as if he was considering one final entreaty. Before he could speak, however, a click from his helm gave away a comm-burst from the bridge.
 	‘They have responded, lord Frater,’ the Apothecary reported. ‘Archmagos Dominus Pharmakos Lev Termadian bids you welcome to Lliax, and extends all hospitality protocols. He has been made aware of the reason for your mission and has instructed his staff to make preparations.’
 	If there was reproach lurking in those words, Gorgonson masked it well.
 	‘Good,’ said Aug, flexing the muscle-bundles of his partially disassembled right-leg augmetic. He would need to walk soon, and somehow hide the pain of it. ‘Send him thanks, and make preparations for planetfall. I have been a half-formed thing for too long. It is time for restoration.’
 	From low orbit, the forge world Lliax glowed like a star, swathed in a nimbus of dirty orange that turned and churned like plasma. Only once the lander had broken through the upper reaches of the atmosphere did it become apparent that the effect was created by planet-wide palls of heavy smog, lit from within and below by the ceaseless workings of continent-wide forge complexes.
 	Gorgonson stared out of the lander’s starboard viewport, watching the fiery vistas swell up towards him. Jets of bluish flame burst out from iron-capped wellheads, lost among remorseless kilometres of criss-crossed pipe lanes. Gases plumed from the crowns of dark chimney towers, each one marked with the Machina Opus emblem of old Mars. The seamy, humid air was filled with crawling atmos-haulers, plying their way through the murk like agri-harvesters scouring the nutrient fields.
 	Aug sat opposite him in the lander’s crew-bay, slumped against the inner wall, breathing with the snapping click of a damaged helm. The two of them were alone, bar the pilots and a skeleton honour guard of thralls in the bay below. Meduson had been able to spare none of his own warriors for the journey, a decision for which Gorgonson did not blame him. If Aug wished to make the perilous errand to the domains of the Mechanicum, whose loyalty to the Throne was now as suspect as any in a galaxy riven by treachery, the warleader had judged that it could not be allowed to risk the fragile strength of the clan-companies. 
 	Below them, rapidly growing in size and clarity, was the angular bulk of a command ziggurat, soaring over the iron forge-plains and crowned with a circlet of red halo-beams. Taghmata macro-lifters hung above it on smoky downdraughts like a shroud of vultures, their spewed effluent merging with the drifting carpets of filth below them. In orbit, now lost beyond the veils of glowing clouds, were command-arks, their arcane weaponry trained on the Dannang. Lliax, like all worlds of the known galaxy, was now on full war footing, cranking out greater volumes of weaponry with every passing day, gearing up for the inevitable impact of the Warmaster’s all-conquering battle-front.
 	The X Legion lander slowed, coming under the influence of the ziggurat’s grav-shunts. A cavernous hangar set two-thirds of the way up the leading slope opened. Gorgonson watched in silence as its interior swallowed them, marking the dim ranks of skitarii silently tracking them from flanking galleries.
 	The lander travelled along the entire length of the hangar, guided by the shunts, before roughly being set down. With some effort, Aug got to his feet, planting the heel of his staff against the deck to steady himself. Gorgonson waited, saying nothing, letting the Iron Father gather his strength. 
 	The blast doors opened. Clusters of robed tech-thralls waited for them, chattering in bird-like, semi-audible binaric cant. Beyond those stood static maniples of Thallax battle-automata, bronze-crowned, their photon thrusters trained with silent accuracy. In the distance, across the vast expanse of the ziggurat’s landing stage, greater constructs stalked awkwardly through a haze of red – Castellax monsters, accompanied by teams of cable-faced, arch-backed Myrmidon Secutors.
 	Before them all stood the lone figure of what had once been a mortal, robed in dun-red and with exposed skeletal fingers of tapered steel. From under its cowl, an insectoid cluster of lenses pulsed.
 	‘Be welcome to forge world Lliax, lords of Medusa,’ it said, in an emotionless husk of a voice. ‘Your mission is known to us. Your needs will be met.’
 	Aug bowed. The movement was fluid enough, and Gorgonson couldn’t help but be impressed by the Iron Father’s sheer willpower. ‘My thanks,’ said Aug. ‘How may we know you?’
 	‘I am designated Shaelecta. The magos dominus is expecting you. It will be efficient for you to join him now.’ The tech-priest turned to Gorgonson. ‘You are intact, but your armour is damaged. I can assist. It will be efficient for you to join me now.’
 	Gorgonson looked to Aug, who nodded his assent.
 	‘You have my thanks,’ the Iron Father said to Shaelecta. ‘Tell your master I am eager to begin.’
 	The interior of the ziggurat was honeycombed with a succession of huge chambers, all humming with the grind and crash of machinery. Skitarii were everywhere, overseeing companies of servitors, lesser automata and mortal forge-adepts. It was hot. Punishingly hot.
 	Gorgonson and Shaelecta traversed through the levels, borne above the tumult by chain-draped grav-platforms, surrounded at all times by sinuous Scyllax guardians, their skulls glinting in the firelit gloom and their mechadendrites snapping around them.
 	Goran Gorgonson was used to forges. His Medusan brothers had practically grown up amid the sparks and hammers of their home world’s hyper-industrial fortress cities, but even he, as a Terran, had seen plenty. Since the rediscovery of the primarch, the entire Legion had become a brotherhood of tech-wrights, delving ever deeper into the lore of the machine in order to hone their mastery of the many forms of battle.
 	So Lliax was not an entirely alien environment, but nor was it a familiar one. The air smelled strange – heavy with incense and ritual oils, as if spiced. The servitors were not merely lobotomised human stock, but bizarre fusions of neural conduits and brain-matter, some fused into the anvils they serviced, others stretched and warped into more strenuous amalgams of metal and flesh.
 	‘The war has not reached this world,’ Gorgonson observed, as they rose higher still, passing rows of metal presses stamping out boltgun casings.
 	‘Incorrect,’ said Shaelecta. ‘Seven attacks have been repelled from without, each one larger than the last. Magos Dominos Pharmakos calculates the next attempt will occur within four months, Martian-standard.’
 	‘And you have the means to defend yourselves?’
 	‘Look around you. We create a new maniple every seven hours. Pharmakos wishes to accelerate this.’
 	‘And... from within? Your own kind?’ This was a delicate question.
 	Shaelecta gave no indication of offence. ‘Elements within the lower grid were corrupted at the outset, before we knew what to look for. Purges have been thorough. You need have no doubt, Medusan – Lliax cleaves to the Omnissiah.’
 	More chambers swept by, dizzying in their number and variety. To Gorgonson’s eyes there seemed no pattern to the distribution of manufactoria, but every unit was operating at a furious tilt, depositing heaps of munitions in silos, or winching steaming armour plates from cooling vats and up towards the assembly chambers, or welding engine cases together as they trundled along conveyor belts to waiting vehicle shells.
 	It seemed infinite, inexhaustible. He knew that every facility on the planet would be working at a similar rate.
 	They reached a high arming chamber, as clogged with smoke and incense as all the others, windowless and deafening. Tilt-hammers swung down onto massive anvils, smashing out adamantium components in showers of sparks. Tech-priests with iron snouts protruding from charred cowls hovered over their creations, rejecting any imperfections and ceaselessly monitoring the output of hundreds of labouring forge-thralls.
 	Shaelecta and the Scyllax attendants came to a halt before a vast series of altarpieces, all studded with devotional tracts. Finished armour plates hung from thick chains above every surface, turning gently in the fervid air. Hundreds of broad pads, vambraces, sabatons and breastplates had been suspended over the altars, each one primed but unpainted. Teams of servitors, their pale flesh punched through with iron impulse-shackles, prostrated themselves before the rotating components, mumbling autoscreed through vox-emitters lodged in their throats and chests.
 	‘Your right pauldron and left greave are defective,’ said Shaelecta. ‘Allow us to rectify that.’
 	Gorgonson looked up at the rows of pristine armour pieces. Every conceivable mark was represented in that gallery across a number of variants, and he had no doubt that the artisans would be able to make it fit him perfectly.
 	Shaelecta was correct: his battleplate carried a number of long-running faults, none of which could be properly mended with the resources they had on the Iron Heart. And yet, this armour was the protection that had kept him alive on Isstvan, and which he had tended since, and which he had promised himself he would take to Medusa for refashioning one day.
 	He looked down at the prostrate servitors, each still mumbling their benedictions, entirely unaware of his presence. Further down the line, out towards the far end of the arming chamber, a living thrall was being tied down to an obsidian block, stretched out under an array of mechadendrites extending from the smoke-thick ceiling. The man was mouthing some kind of litany from panicked lips, staring up at the needles hovering over his face as he was secured in position.
 	‘What is being done to him?’ asked Gorgonson.
 	Shaelecta’s voice was impassive. ‘He will serve better. He will be made passive, as the forges demand.’
 	Gorgonson looked away as the needle-thicket was lowered into place. Above him, the empty armour fragments hung amid their plumes of incense, ready for the application of Legion livery.
 	He looked back at Shaelecta. The tech-priest’s metal faceplate was hidden under its cowl, masked by both shadow and coarse fabric. The thrall’s screams were shrill, and went on, and on...
 	‘I thank you for the offer,’ Gorgonson said, turning away, ‘but I will attend the Iron Father now.’
 	Shaelecta cogitated that for a moment. In the distance, the sounds of agony slowly died away, replaced by throttled gurgles as nutrient tubes were inserted. A team of dull-eyed menials shuffled up to the obsidian slab bearing impulse shackles for the new servitor.
 	‘As you wish,’ said the tech-priest, sweeping round to follow the Apothecary. ‘I will locate him. I will guide you.’
 	Left alone, Aug waited for twenty-nine minutes and forty-seven seconds.
 	His Mechanicum guardians had melted away, chittering back into the gloom with their robes rustling dryly behind them, leaving him in the circular chamber to await the magos dominus.
 	The walls were blood-red, cloaked in shadow and marked with long binaric sequences. He studied some of them, but the code fragments were obscure, most likely obsolete. Perhaps this was a repository of old knowledge, buried in the heart of the pyramid, kept safe during the long years of turmoil. A reliquary, of sorts.
 	We were supposed to have put these religious trappings aside, Aug thought, flexing a pain-slug into his bloodstream. But who would tell the Martians that?
 	During the wait, his mind began to work, imagining the stature and form of his host. No doubt the magos would be some fused thing, his mortal-born body pulled and twisted into something more elevated and austere. And yet they had all been infants once, Aug reflected, these monsters of brass and lacquer. Once their pudgy fists had clenched and their soft cheeks blushed from bawling.
 	Then again, so had he been, in the long-forgotten past. 
 	As the eighth second of the thirtieth minute slid down his helm’s chrono, a panel in the chamber’s far wall finally creaked open, hissing as a gout of steam spilled from leaking pull-pistons. Aug turned slowly to face the aperture, and saw waiting a mirror image of himself – black armour, the pale tracery of Iron Hands combat markings, a pair of red lenses glaring back at him.
 	‘Iron Father,’ came a voice that was both alike and unlike to his own.
 	‘Iron Father,’ Aug replied, bowing painfully. ‘You might have given me some warning you were here.’
 	Frater Kernag, of Clan Garrsak, returned the bow. ‘Comms signals may be tracked. These things are better done in person.’
 	‘How did you know I would be here?’
 	‘Like I said – comms signals may be tracked.’
 	Aug regarded his opposite number. Kernag occupied a roughly equivalent rank to him in the old X Legion hierarchy. The Iron Fathers had always held an ambiguous role – part guardians of the Legion’s soul, part throwback to a pre-Imperial culture of machine mysticism. Now, though, who knew what their role was? The balance of power within such a scattered brotherhood had come to lie in mere force of will, or old pacts between souls, or little more than blind luck.
 	‘I take it,’ Aug ventured, ‘that the warleader did not send you.’
 	‘He does not govern our coming and our going. He never has. And that is why I am here, as you may already know.’
 	Aug softly ran a threat-scan of the chamber. No other life-readings were within range. Kernag held no weapon. ‘No, Frater,’ he said, ‘I do not. Enlighten me.’
 	Kernag drew close, in a gesture reminiscent of old-Earth conspiracies. The movement was surely futile, as every chamber in this place was likely studded with dozens of Mechanicum listening devices, but still he did it, as if for courtesy’s sake. 
 	‘How fares the warleader?’ he asked quietly.
 	‘He endures,’ said Aug. ‘Dwell was a setback, but the war continues.’
 	‘And his greater task?’
 	‘More join us every hour. He is pulling what remains of the Legion to his banner, just as we asked him to.’
 	‘I never asked him to.’
 	Aug thought carefully before replying. ‘But even you can see the victories he has brought us.’
 	‘I see a future for the Legion even without the clan-fathers, that much is certain.’ Kernag turned away from him, casting his gaze over the binaric engravings. ‘Yet you did not consult us, before you passed Shadrak Meduson the mantle of leadership.’
 	‘I cannot believe–’
 	‘That we would not welcome it?’ Kernag shook his head. ‘What do you think Meduson can achieve, in truth? A few strikes on a greater enemy, buying a little more time for those who failed to aid us and creating a larger target for the enemy to locate and destroy. If you had come to me, and asked my counsel, I would have told you this.’
 	Aug regarded his counterpart cautiously. ‘You have spoken favourably of him before.’
 	‘Biding our time. We did not prevent any who wished to serve under his banner from going to him, but we always told them – a true council will come. We will return to Medusa, and we will decide our Legion’s future there. That has not changed.’
 	‘And so, what of the war?’
 	‘What of it?’ Kernag reached out to trace an armoured finger along the lines of nonsensical algorithms. ‘We cannot end it. We cannot alter its course. Our only task is to survive it.’
 	Aug scoffed. ‘Little good being alive, without honour.’
 	‘No doubt, but do not equate honour with weakness. We owe no one, we are owed by no one.’ He turned away from the binaric inscriptions and looked at Aug squarely. ‘Here is the thesis, one that you know but will not admit – we were destroyed by the primarch. He was the single point of failure, the one that brought down the machine. He was not of Medusa, not truly. You know this, and it cost us all. And now, what are we doing in his wake? We retread history, and set up a figurehead, a cult of personality. We create a new single point, weaker than the old, and again born of Terra. A kind of insanity, you might say.’
 	‘Ah, then you need say no more,’ sighed Aug. ‘I know what follows. You will convene your council on Medusa. The Iron Fathers will take up command of the Legion, just as the clan-fathers tried to.’
 	‘That was always our way.’
 	‘Until Ferrus.’
 	‘Quite so.’
 	Aug rounded on Kernag then. ‘And you would never have spoken thus, were he still alive! Now you tell this story of weakness, but you never gave it voice before.’
 	Kernag shrugged. ‘We cannot change the past.’
 	‘Meduson is not the primarch.’
 	‘No. It is one of his few merits.’
 	Aug felt his anger flare up hotter, hard to quell, and had to prevent himself reaching for his blade. ‘You have wasted your time,’ he said. ‘You have wasted the effort to track me here, and you have misjudged my mind in this. When I am restored, I will be his Hand Elect. If we are doomed to die, then so be it – but we shall do so with weapons in our hands.’
 	Kernag drew in a long, thin breath. ‘I came to show you the path of reason, my brother. You are still an Iron Father. You would be among us, guiding the Legion.’
 	‘No. Meduson is giving them hope again. I will not see you take that away.’
 	Regretfully, Kernag held his gaze, but said nothing in reply. Aug kept his gauntlet close to the handle of his short chainaxe, and tried to judge how quickly he could reach for it in his weakened state. The air between the two of them seemed to thicken, as if charged with static.
 	Then, slowly, Kernag relaxed. As he did so, another panel in the far wall of the chamber slid open. On the far side loomed a huge mass of bronze coils and mechadendrites and claws, all draped over and underneath a golden mask, then heaped with thick robes of deepest crimson. With a shuffle of segmented metal and a hiss of opening rebreather apertures, the magos dominus slid into the chamber, accompanied by floating censers and a swarm of nano-drones.
 	‘My lords,’ intoned Pharmakos, as emptily as Shaelecta had done before. ‘I regret the intrusion, but all is in readiness for the procedure. I trust you might conclude your business speedily?’
 	‘We have nothing more to say to one another,’ said Aug, turning away from Kernag to bow to the magos. 
 	‘He will not take you back into his confidence,’ said Kernag, still speaking to Aug. ‘He has his own advisors now, just as Ferrus did. The Hand Elect is an empty title, bestowed to keep you leashed to him. Heal your wounds, I implore you… But it will not bring you what you wish for.’
 	But Aug was no longer listening. From beyond the magos he could see another chamber opening up, ringed with flesh-carvers and metal scourers. In the midst of it all he could see a medicae slab, held ready for the opening up of his battered mortal frame. There would be pain on that table, but also restitution.
 	‘I have endured enough,’ said Aug, limping towards the chamber. ‘But no more – start the procedure.’
 	Pharmakos looked up as Aug passed him, his empty golden eyes alighting upon Kernag. For a moment, the Iron Father of Garrsak did not respond. Then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.
 	Pharmakos returned a fractional bow and swung around, his robes sliding over the polished metal floor.
 	‘As you will it, Medusan,’ the magos said. ‘All now stands ready.’
 	Gorgonson reached out to pull Shaelecta back. The tech-priest, stalking just a pace ahead of the Space Marine, stiffened at the touch.
 	‘We did not come this way,’ Gorgonson snarled.
 	‘That is correct.’
 	‘I told you to take me to the Iron Father.’
 	‘I am doing so.’
 	‘By the fastest path.’
 	The two of them were on a suspension bridge high above a churning pit of fizzing calderae. The air boiled with spark-lit smoke, tumbling from the open maws of refinery vats. Hanging chains swayed and clanked, poised to be fastened to heavy iron castings by the teams of thralls labouring below.
 	Shaelecta turned to face the legionary, its lens-lights blurred in the smoky gloom. ‘You did not specify. The fastest path may not be the most efficie–’
 	Gorgonson wrenched the tech-priest to one side, nearly sending it crashing through the nearside walkway barrier. Then he began to run, his heavy tread making the bridge sway under the impacts.
 	‘Medusan,’ came Shaelecta’s cry. ‘Do not proceed unaccompanied. There is peril ahead.’
 	Gorgonson ignored the priest and broke into a sprint. He knew when he was being stalled. The two of them had proceeded through chamber after chamber, each filled with the arcane wonders of the Martian priesthood, as though the occupants of the ziggurat had wished to demonstrate their power in some bizarre cavalcade of grotesquery. In every hall and forge, he had seen more of them – cranium-dulled slaves, their minds and bodies fused to mechanical shackles, their wills gone. That was what this place was built upon: thousands upon thousands of these meat-puppets, a churn of superfluous flesh sacrificed on the altar of blind servility. That was what they did, the lords of Lliax, enslaving minds to the will of the machine in order to preserve them against the coming storm.
 	Dulling the senses, crushing the soul.
 	And he had let them take Aug.
 	Gorgonson reached a pair of bronze-plated doors and barrelled through them. Galleries extended away before him, high-vaulted and clogged with blundering automata. He smelled the foul stink of scorched gears and heard the drumbeat rhythm of forge-hammers. Tunnel entrances gaped, dozens of them, each twisting away further into the heart of the fortress. He saw servitors shamble through, watched over by troops of tech-guard. Further up, a detachment of Thallaxii turned their faceless heads towards the intruder in their midst.
 	The Apothecary did not stop. He picked up a locator signal at last. It was close.
 	Shaelecta might have been slothful, but it had been taking him in roughly the right direction. The Iron Hands legionary vaulted up a long stairway, his boots cracking the marble. He pushed through more doors, shoving blinded thralls aside in his haste.
 	As he neared the signal’s source, he drew his bolter, still running. The corridor was barely lit and smelled of copper. He closed on the target – an iron portal bearing the sigil of Mars – and Scyllax guardians unfurled to meet him, their skull-faces lit an eerie green. He picked off the first with a single shot, exploding its metal carcass and sending it shrieking back into the shadows. The others rushed him, tentacles grasping and vox-emitters babbling machine nonsense. He felt claws rake his pauldrons, and augers pierce the outer skin of his breastplate.
 	Roaring now, Gorgonson threw them all off, smashing their carapaces with a hail of bolt-rounds. More came to take their place, slithering up out of the murk, but by then he had reached the portal.
 	He seized the joint between the clam-shell door halves. With an almighty heave, he wrenched them open. The portal’s locks snapped, showering sparks across the deck, and Gorgonson crouched down, ready to leap through the breach.
 	On the far side was a small chamber, a cross between a medicae station and a machine-lab. Several dozen tech-priests stood before him, each one bearing a different instrument of excruciation. They did not seem surprised to see him.
 	He aimed his bolter at the nearest, but never fired.
 	The tech-priests parted, revealing a long table in their midst. Aug was half raised on it, his helm removed and his upper armour gone. Long tubes coiled around his muscles, bubbling with fluids. The Iron Father’s expression was groggy, as if dulled by powerful analgesics, and blood and oil ran in rivulets from the table’s edges.
 	But he was conscious, and he was alive.
 	‘Brother Gorgonson,’ said Jebez Aug, sternly. ‘What madness is this? Put away your weapon. Do you not see me? I am restored.’
 	It took another week for the deep wounds to heal. Pharmakos had remade Aug down to the marrow, replacing sinew with wire and bone with adamantium. After that his armour was returned to him, also renewed and strengthened, its livery picked out in dazzlingly fresh white-on-black.
 	Shaelecta repeated the offer made to Gorgonson earlier, and again it was declined. 
 	Then Aug offered his final thanks to the magos dominus, and pledges of mutual allegiance were affirmed.
 	Gorgonson and the Iron Father returned to their lander, and thence to the Dannang, and thence back to the warp. Guided by Meduson’s forward tactical data, left for them strategically in inter-cell blind drops, it took them another month to locate the Iron Heart.
 	Once returned to the flagship, Aug sought out the warleader. His movements, though still tight with pain, were more fluid than they had been in a long time. When he entered Shadrak Meduson’s strategium, he walked tall, just as he had done on the eve of Isstvan.
 	The warleader came to greet him, cracking a rare smile. ‘Lord Frater,’ he said, reaching out to grasp him by the hand. ‘Your return gladdens me.’
 	‘Brother, how goes the war?’ Aug was eager for knowledge now. There were things he could do. ‘How have you hurt them?’
 	Meduson’s gaze flickered a little. His blunt features bore fresh scars, laced over pallid flesh. ‘It becomes harder. But they know my name now.’ He smiled, dryly. ‘They are speaking it across the sector and beyond, so we have done what we said we would.’
 	Aug felt like laughing. ‘So we have. And wounds may heal, making us stronger yet.’
 	He had expected Meduson to agree with that, to give some sign of affirmation. Instead, the warleader let go of his wrist. ‘Then you are yourself again.’
 	‘Just as I was before Oqueth. Stronger, if anything.’
 	Meduson nodded. ‘And their price, for this service?’
 	‘We are their allies,’ said Aug. ‘It was as I told you – they always honour their word. A Martian pact is a strong thing.’
 	The warleader nodded again, moving away. ‘So it would seem. You asked of the war. We will strike them again in two days, and my plans are near complete. Hamart Three is being used as a supply dump, and is lightly defended. We can take it, the others agree. Can you fight yet? I would welcome it, if you would join us.’
 	Aug let his hand drop. ‘Surely,’ he said. ‘I will reap them as if newforged, and you shall see blood flow again. But what then? There will be other worlds to plunder.’
 	‘Of course.’
 	‘Then tell me of them.’
 	Meduson looked up at him. ‘In time. I have yet to consult with my council.’
 	Aug felt words forming upon his lips. 
 	You need no council now. You have the Hand Elect.
 	But he could not speak those words, for that would be too much like begging, and the promise had already been made.
 	‘Then what shall I do, here?’ he asked, eventually. 
 	‘What do you mean?’
 	‘My wounds are healed. We spoke of this. I wish to serve.’
 	Meduson’s gaze moved away. ‘You do not serve, Iron Father. Never that. You are our guide and our inspiration. Just as before.’
 	Our guide. Our inspiration. What words were these? Where had they come from?
 	Aug stood there, stiffly. Meduson said nothing more, and now held himself just as awkwardly. The silence grew between them, as thick as the forge-smog of Lliax.
 	‘Hamart Three, then,’ said the Iron Father at last. ‘That is the next target.’
 	‘It is. I would have you fight at my side then, if you will it.’
 	‘Thus it shall be.’ Aug knew then that there would be no more than that, at least not now. ‘Shadrak, is all–’
 	‘We have two days,’ said Meduson, forcing a final smile. ‘You will need time to prepare. We will talk again, before the attack, but it is good to see you again, lord Frater. I did not know if I would ever do so, but you were right. The Martians keep their oaths.’
 	Aug nearly recoiled from that, only catching himself at the last moment.
 	‘As must we all,’ he said, numbly.
 	He returned to his chambers after that, alone, shadowed only by Legion serfs who dared say nothing to him. The ship was busy, filled with the sounds of impending combat. Most of the legionaries were of the Iron Tenth, going about their business with grim fortitude. Gorgonson had gone to join them, his battered armour blending well with theirs. The Iron Father stood out now, like a polished dagger amid a clutch of rusted knives.
 	He closed the doors behind him, then locked them.
 	He paced back and forth, turning over the events of his return in his mind.
 	Kernag’s words would not leave him.
 	The Hand Elect is an empty title, bestowed to keep you leashed to him.
 	It will not bring you what you wish for...
 	Aug flexed his new muscles, feeling a tight interface with the new augmetic structures. He was far stronger than he had been, flesh-spare, rebuilt from the core. Was that what made Meduson cold to him now? Was he envious? Or did he see something else there, something that had not existed until Lliax?
 	Aug ran a scan of his internal systems, some of them housed within his armour, some in the augmetic nodes that peppered his skin. It was only then that he noticed the new relay indicator on his helm, buried deep within overlapping layers of tactical read-outs. It was insignificant, really – a tiny adjustment, gifting him a single new rune amid the screeds of them offered by his auto-sensory display.
 	He pondered it for a moment. The threat of it was obvious, as was the opportunity. Being manipulated was almost as anathema to him as weakness in combat, and both led to the same outcome. He should have seen it earlier, of course. Perhaps he should have seen many things earlier.
 	Aug withdrew to the inner sanctum of his chambers, to where the scanner baffles were complete and his new gift would be safe to use.
 	He remembered his own words on Lliax, as proud and defiant as they had been.
 	But then he had seen Meduson again, and something had changed.
 	Aug activated the aether-link, and for a moment his aural nodes filled with nothing but static as the connection flickered from one hidden system node to another.
 	They cleared, and Kernag’s disembodied voice crackled across the void.
 	‘Iron Father,’ he said. ‘You have something to report?’
 	‘You were telling me of your plans for Medusa,’ said Aug, turning away from the light. ‘Tell me more.’