Flight Above The Forge

 Flight Above The Forge

The fuselage of the Hell Talon rattled and shook as the aircraft behind it exploded, slain by the flak cannons below. Soaring above a military installation adjacent to the materiel forge, the aircraft zigzagged to avoid the anti-air barrages spewing upwards at it. His escort peeled off, scattering in different directions to draw fire away.

“01101000 01101111 01101100 01100100”

Hastor funnelled commands to his two servitor co-pilots via their hardwired craniums. He felt at optimum when gurgling in the machine tongue. The Hell Talon swerved and dived, the inhuman crew locking onto a Thunderbolt fighter below.

“01100110 01101001 01110010 01100101”

The twin lascannons erupted with light, barking bright beams at the Imperial fighter, chewing it up and igniting something within. Its pilot perished instantly in a ball of flame. A second fighter emerged from the cloud line, on a heading straight for Hastor’s fighter-bomber. Autocannon fire sprayed from its nozzle, a few stray rounds clipping the Hell Talon, gouging deep holes into the aircraft. Hastor coldly and deliberately overrode the servitor controls, guiding his craft into a series of rolls and banks, defensively manoeuvring away from the second Thunderbolt’s line of attack.

The Thunderbolt gave chase, peeling off its flight course to pursue the Talon, letting off bursts of autocannon and lascannon fire, hoping for a hit. Hastor’s craft continued straight for a moment, foxing his opponent into chasing him along the same path. With preternatural precision the Chaos flyer tightly performed an Immelmann turn, pulling upwards until it faced the opposite direction and then yawing back right side up. Immediately Hastor let off the lascannons again. The first round missed, but the second made contact with the tail of the Thunderbolt, blasting it apart.

As the Imperial pilot plummeted to his death, Hastor returned control to his cybernetic slaves. The servitors returned to a heading towards the forge. The sky now was buzzing with unnatural life, great insectoid things skittered around below whilst techno-organic drones propelled themselves in the air.

“01110000 01110010 01101111 01100011 01100101 01100101 01100100”

Hastor himself was no great servant of Nurgle. He was a follower of the Undivided power of the Dark Gods, and a high ranking Warpsmith sworn to Drakul and his Black League. However upon hearing that Skabyris and his Rotfleet were to invade the forge world of Hephaestus IV, Hastor knew he could not miss the chance to examine and evaluate the manufactorums here.

Careening across the skies, he cast his eye again upon the forge. A titanic complex, parts of it were still in motion, attempting to assemble tanks and planes for immediate service. In the centre was a gigantic warehouse, tall enough to house a titan, or at least that was what Hastor was hoping. Or rather, estimating. Calculating. Analysing.

Just beyond the factories lay a sprawling hab-block, housing for the thousands upon thousands of workers, and their families.

“01101100 01101111 01100011 01101011”

The fighter-bomber started to pass over the forge, below it, thousands of metres down, was a large storage yard. Hundreds of semi-assembled vehicles sat, ready to be finished by workers who in a few hours will be no doubt dead, or worse. Ahead laid an assembly plant, where dozens of Leman Russ tanks were rolling straight off the production line ready for shakedown before combat. Hundreds of workers were spread out below Hastor, desperately trying to finish every armoured vehicle before the ground forces of Chaos reached them.

“01110000 01110010 01101001 01101101 01100101”

The bombs affixed to the bottom of the Hell Talon lowered slightly as the servitors primed them remotely. A usual Hell Talon crew would consist of three of these mindless automatons, but Hastor himself acted as crew commander in lieu of a servitor or daemon. He also had armed it with an exotic payload, ready to annihilate the Imperial’s manufacturing capability. The Hell-Talon soared over the yard and reached the plant.

“01101000 01101111 01101100 01100100”

Hastor’s gaze remained fixed ahead. The workers below began to scatter, running for cover as they saw the aircraft far above. The air raid sirens had been wailing for hours upon hours, but nothing had made it past the AA guns until now. Even though a kilometre separated him from the ground, Hastor could note the paths of the fleeing workers into their makeshift shelters. The fighter-bomber reached the apex point of a perfect bombing run, ready to obliterate the factory.

“01101000 01101111 01101100 01100100”

And it flew over it harmlessly. Behind it, the workers began to peek out from their hidey holes. Hastor’s gazed remained fixed ahead. The gigantic warehouse loomed in front of him, its highest point towering above even his current altitude. His mind rendered images of it, nestling something great within like a gargantuan steel womb. Scanning commands to his crew again, the flyer began to tilt upwards.

“01100011 01101100 01101001 01101101 01100010 00001010”

As the warehouse grew closer and closer he passed over another few storage yards and another factory. Judging from the activity below he judged it to be an engine mill. Ignoring it, he looked up again at the monolithic building in his path. The servitors had now plotted a course to fly over it. As the aircraft pitched towards the sky, the sun shone into the murky cockpit. Hastor’s silver and black armour shone in the bright haze, before roils of cloud shaded him once again. Within the nimbus a number of daemonic fly-things catapulted around, dropping out of the mist to terrorise the surface.

By now the Hell Talon had begun to descend again, flying over the mile of warehouse before clearing the other side. The hab-blocks were now only moments away. Hastor stared coldly at the residential district, calculating his course. Feeding it to his co-pilots, he also scanned around for any more Imperial defenders. In the distance he spied a number of Hell Blade interceptors shooting down a squadron of Thunderbolts, his escorts doing their job. The hab-blocks were now almost directly below him.

“01100001 01110111 01100001 01111001”

All eight bombs began to drop off from the fuselage, falling two by two into the homes of the Imperial workers below. Moments passed and they hit the ground, but no explosions followed. With a ground-breaking thud they smashed into the earth, and from each one a skin-crawling, deafening buzz sounded. Out of the payload spewed thousands of thumb-sized flies, a plague of chitin and wings and disease.

The materiel forge would fall to the forces of Chaos, but not by the invader’s hand, but to the labourers and their loved ones, just as they fell to the daemonic plague Hastor had just released amongst them. Hastor had taken no objection to Agutha Hollowcorpse’s demand that the bombs be filled with Nurgle’s Rot, for it played straight into the Warpsmith’s own desires. A mindless, obedient workforce already there, waiting to serve. He opened the communications frequency to report back.

“01001101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100001 01100011 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01101100 01101001 01110011 01101000 01100101 01100100 00101110 00100000 01010010 01100101 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100001 01110011 01100101 00101110”

Realising he had screeched and stuttered the entire message in the machine tongue, he took a moment to shift mind set, focusing on talking to humans and not to servitors. Thumbing the vox network again, his vocal chords strained and gagged as he translated his message into Low Gothic to relay mission command,

“Mission accomplished. Returning to base.”

He turned to regard the warehouse once more. He once again permitted himself to envision the image of a great steel womb. Rumbling with a low, staccato laughter he spoke aloud to himself.

“01000001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110111 01101111 01101101 01100010 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110011 01101000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00101110”

And what a womb it shall be.