The ceramite-clad lord of Clan Avernii, Caanok Var, is almost ready to deploy to a tabletop near you – but before he joins your Iron Hands in the field, there’s still time to hear a little of his exploits.
Iron Captain Caanok Var strode across no man’s land. Orkoid small arms fire cut the air around him, pinged from his armour or blew gobbets of mud into the air. Cogitational analysis from Cerebrex assured him none of the shots had a better than zero-point-three per cent chance of inflicting more than superficial damage to either himself or the Terminators stomping at his side. Var dismissed the incoming fire from a dispassionate tactical standpoint. At the same time, the brute presumption of the foe stoked the banked fires of anger caged deep within him.
‘First mark,’ he spoke into his vox-bead. The signal crackled across his strike force’s communications network, to the crews of the Whirlwind artillery tanks lurking behind the ruined refinery complex to Var’s rear. They let fly. Their crews, he knew, would be all too aware of how little he cared that the Ork hordes were still locked in battle with what remained of the Savlar infantry. Bleeding hearts might lament so brutal a reward for the Imperial Guardsmen’s efforts. Var considered that if the Savlar soldiery had fought harder, they would have already won this battle, and his efforts would not have been required at all. About the time the first warheads streaked down to detonate amongst the trenchlines, he dismissed the line of thought as a distracting irrelevance.
Humans and Orks alike were vapourised in the explosions. Burning corpses thumped to the ground for dozens of yards all around. Var and his veteran battle-brothers trod them into the mud, black-armoured Gladiator tanks and Heavy Intercessors moving up on their flanks. A Binharic analysis blurt from his servo-skull, Dextrum, informed the Iron Captain that incoming Ork fire had slackened forty-six per cent.
Var and his warriors crossed the burning trenches. They placed bolt rounds into the crania of any xenos who, despite their wounds and the flames eating them, still lurched forward to attack. Beyond the roiling smokescreen, a new vista opened up: tumbled ruins half buried in mud and wreckage and, precisely one mile to Var’s fore, the fortified shrine that was his objective. Barbaric banners and trophy poles rose above its ramparts. The barrels of crude artillery pieces could be seen jutting from its embrasures.
He felt, and crushed, a stab of irritation that the Astra Militarum had been so close to their target for almost five days, and yet had failed to advance even that short distance and finish the job. Now he and his battle-brothers were here. The shrine would be back in Imperial hands within the hour.
Some of the Orks’ big guns started firing, sending crackling orbs and salvoes of rokkits sailing over Var’s head. The shrine’s fortified gates swung wide, and a cavalcade of bikers roared forth, hurtling toward the Iron Hands with guns blazing. Var hefted his maul, Axiom, and rune-designated the first targets for his storm bolter. He neither slowed nor increased his stride as he prepared for battle.
‘Second mark,’ he commanded. Around him, with precision to shame the adepts of Mars, the Iron Hands opened fire.
