Kardan Stronos and his brothers lowered themselves to one knee. Awesome powered frames, ill-designed and ill-accustomed to that peculiar range of motion, whined in hardship as they clanked to the floor.

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The door was four metres high, half again as wide, but the ancient Dreadnought dominated it as he must have the battlefields of old. His sarcophagus was the perfect black of volcanic glass, edged in polished gunmetal iron fretwork

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Every square millimetre down to the knuckles of his power fist bore exquisite reliefs of his workings, as though by the living glory of the Omnissiah the ancient’s armour had been rendered opalescent to reveal the priceless thing beneath: a living, working, breathtaking manifestation of His blessed machine. Platinum nameplates bore the lesson of the living avatar with the inscription ARES, and shone under the dull light from every angle.

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That the Iron Hands were loath to adorn objects they saw as purely functional was not to say that they did not know worth when they saw it. And Stronos saw it in Iron Father Tubriik Ares

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‘Why do you kneel?’ the Dreadnought’s voice boomed. ‘Diminishing yourselves does no one honour.’

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Ares passed between the two magi at the head of the table without any overt indication that he had spared consideration to their presence, and then thrust an arm over the ironglass table. The power fist radially opened, the flowering of a mechanism that caused some mirror-unit within the table itself to click in response.

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A hum of power built within the table and the ironglass illuminated with a frosty white light. Vox-synth burrs of surprise passed through the Iron Hands as a riot of hololithic imagery flashed through the air above the table.

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Stronos gaped. For how many centuries had the lords of Clan Garrsak planned wars at this table without realising that it had possessed such a function?  Until ancient Dreadnought was awakened and show  how to access.  Even the two magi seemed taken aback though it was, as always, difficult to tell.

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‘Nine hundred years we have been left to rest,’ Ares rumbled, his image vague behind the hololith blur. He paused, as if to confirm his tally. Yes. ‘Nine hundred years… years of sleeplessness and nightmare. Too long.

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We have absorbed simulus inload of the period and it is clear that the decision to leave us in state was an error. Iron Hands do not make errors. The source will be found and eliminated.’ The Dreadnought made no show of ire, but the Iron Hands stared in awe as though he had pounded on the table and roared.

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‘An example will be made.’

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‘Lord Ares,’ said Fabricator-Locum Hyproxius Velt, bowing low, the scratch of his scrivener cherubs recording the precise angle of declination for the archives. ‘I would not wish to speak for the master of the forge, but your value to the Chapter is too great to risk to any mere skirmish.

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The revivification rituals themselves carry a small but not insignificant probability of irreparable system damage. Your restoration to command of this mission was an oversight of the deployment orders from Medusa.

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‘Iron Hands do not make that kind of mistake,’ Ares thundered, dismissively. ‘The Emperor built us to fight. With the blessing of the Omnissiah our brothers preserve us to fight. Left to dream we have no value. The function of servants is to obey. I will crush this uprising.’ thundered Ares.

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Book(Eye of Medusa)

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