Editing Ice Wraiths Writefaggotry (section)

==The Tindalos Infiltration==
Battle Brother Kutkh Wagaash parried the blow with desperate urgency, the magos’ paired transonic blades sparking on his power blade’s field, their strange whine aeolating with the howling blizzard that raged around them, trying to avoid dwelling on just how wrong this had all gone.
Using the leverage from his sword, he knocked his opponents blades back, sidestepping the flailing mechadendrites, but with a machine whirr, a servo arm appeared from the mago’s billowing cloak, catching him square in the jaw and nearly knocking him flat.
Tindalos, he thought darkly. Tindalos.

From orbit, one would hardly guess that Tindalos was a forgeworld. Nowhere were the rad blasted industrial wastes or the kilometers high Manufactorum stacks. Instead, Tindalos is an orb of blues and greens. Brother Kutkh Wagaash, 8th Company, watched a storm rising in the equatorial seas and waited for the Mechanicum Legate 5-Imix Cipactli. Though the Forgeworld had long worked alongside the Ice Wraiths, Brother Wagaash chafed under the idea that his first official command role would be shared with some half-machine tech-adept. Wagaash had heard that most Mechanicum warleaders, if they even deserved the term, preferred to lead from orbit, and those that did descend to the planet below treated combat as some sort of abstracted exercise in mathematics, fighting the way a particularly slow child might recite the words of “Sword of Sanguinius”: technically correct in the details, but lacking the musicality that made the endeavor worthwhile. Still, Wagaash had seen the storm-cloud clad Skitarii deployed while still a scout and knew they fought well. Wagaash wondered idly whether the manufactorae were buried underground or if the trees were grown atop their roofs and why the mechanicum would tolerate such biogenic disorder. Then again, there were many things that didn't add up about these Magi of Tindalos.

This station, for example. The rooms were capacious, this chapel he was waiting was an exercise in open spaces. The walls were left bare, not in the minimalist efficiency of the machine, but so as to focus the view on the planet below and to draw attention to the few mechanicum sigils that did adorn the walls. Wagaash was also surprised to notice niches adorned with wall scrolls and the skulls of xenos beasts, not all that dissimilar to memory shrines of his own chapter. With a soft hiss, the doors opened and a figure robed in an iridescent blue-green entered, followed by a servo skull and a dictat-servitor. "Beautiful, is it not?" The voice was only incidentally mechanical. It was resonant, with the polyphonic quality of the wind in empty places.
Wagaash must have looked surprised, because the Magos continued:
"Did you not think that we appreciated such things? The Tindalan creed teaches us that there is elegance in such things and that this is a cosmic design principle of the Omnissiah. Elegance is in all things. In the world below us, in the fine design of the Astartes, and in war." The melodic tritone of the adept's voice struck Wagaash. That and the way those glowing diodes had peered from beneath the cowl, trimmed with pale brass. Wagaash had gotten the sense of laughter.

Laughter, which he now clearly heard as the Magos closed stance, moving nimbly on titanium feet. Wagaash saw the lunge just in time, slipping beneath the blow and lashed out with a leg, sweeping Cipactli off his feet. Or so he thought, but the magi barely stumbled before righting himself? herself? (one couldn't tell anymore) on servo arms and mechadendrites and sliding back into a defensive posture, daring Wagaash to come.

The plan 5-Imix Cipactli had proposed was audacious. With a force of barely two squads of marines and a Tindalan Maniple, they would wrest the Manufactorae on Veles from the heretics that had so recently claimed them.
It had all started so well, or as well as any plan that involves crashing a derelict freighter loaded with apex cryopredators and cryothermal weaponry into a planet can. The month in warp had been spent examining the topography minutely. Veles was a small world, a ball of inhospitable rock barely worthy of note except for its extensive mineral deposits and fortuitous placement near a stable warp route and a gas giant. The requisites of industry were at hand and transportation to Tindalos or Nixarteria was a simple matter. Ordinarily, reclaiming a world like this would have been top priority and at least a company assigned to the matter, but with the threat of Mi-Go as it was, Wagaash and his men were spared only because of Veles' importance to the war effort. Until Mi-Go was turned back, other worlds claimed by the Night Wolves, like Salwe and Yashtul would have to wait. They'd retrofitted the creaking hanger of the aged bulk freighter Makanyanikot to launch the Mechanicum lander during reentry, the din of the beasts echoing from the hold the whole while.

The Skitarii troopers, Thallakes, and automata had spoken little, the Skitarii spending their time drilling or in prayer.
The Automata and Thallakes stayed in their niches, understandable in the case of the Automata, but the Thallakes were an order of magnitude stranger than anything Wagaash had seen before. Servitors were a common sight in the Imperium, but the minds of the Thallax were not shattered and vivisected like a Servitor's, nor did they have the human behavior of the Skitarii. Instead they waited, blank-faced helms unmoving. And yet they wore trophy skulls of xenos predators. Then again, so did the Automata-- the Magi of Tindalos seemed to treat their Cybernetica almost as beloved hounds.

The magi, led by 5-Imix Cipactli's example had been every bit as open as their minions silent, sparring with the marines. Wagaash grimmaced now, at the thought of it. This duel was nothing like their sparring matches. The base outline was the same, but Wagaash could see now that Cipactli had always kept use of the servo-harness to a minimum. Some sort of concept of fairness, Wagaash supposed. Here, Cipactli stood, robes flowing with the wind driven snow, a sabre in each of his four hands, welding ends of mechadendrites and laser cutters sparking. Wagaash grimaced. As much as the duel thrilled him, this was a waste of time and energy, a sign of just how far things had gone astray. They'd transited from the warp less than a day from Veles in a shatter of machine parts and bleeding fuel, broadcasting a garbled distress signal. The Makanyanikot appeared to be nothing more than a ghost ship, drifting with the strange and foul moods of the immaterium.

The Night Wolves, pillagers that they were, didn't bother to intercept it and the Makanyanikot had been allowed to fall into Veles' gravity well. As the heat built and the failing hull shuddered with reentry, the mechanicum drop ship had been launched, even as the ship began to break up, leaking cryothermals into the atmosphere.
The chaff of metallic dust had shielded their ship from any sensors that might have stopped to examine the falling bulk transport and they'd made a hard planetfall. Sections of the Makanyanikot fell across the rocky plains in burning ruin, hiding the landing pods with their meteoric brilliance. 
These landing pods were loaded with the cryopredators, but didn't open upon impact. Instead they waited for what would come. Minutes after the cargo hauler impacted, the sky darkened. The temperature plummeted overnight. Dawn never came and the sky curdled, snow and hail falling in thick sheets. What precisely the Night Wolves made of this mattered little. While there were enough of them to prevent capture by anything less than anything less than a Marine Company, there weren't enough of them to effectively patrol Veles' industrial heart. This fell to their bonded cultists and serfs and, as the temperature fell, so too did they. Others, bundled in environmental gear, never returned. Their bones, cracked by predator's jaws, would be found by the next patrol, if at all. Bit by bit, the patrols ceased. Wagaash and Cipactli had watched all this with pleasure as they sabotaged the machinery and disabled those Night Wolves' vehicles that remained operational in the cold. Capturing a subject for interrogation had likewise been easy, soldiers and even Traitor Astartes were going missing each day and one more would not be missed. But this is where things had gone awry.

The Astarte was pale and spoke with a crude Low-Gothic accent, as if trying to deny his Imperial past. He spat defiance at his captors. Wagaash had to commend him. He'd maintained his composure, even when Wagaash had allowed the dim light of the cell to fall upon his Librarian's hood. The Night Wolf stared at him with hard, empty eyes. "Witch. Afraid to get your hands dirty with the blood of a real warrior?"
For a moment, Wagaash considered punching him across the smug face, or telling him that he didn't deign to draw the blood of one so lowly. What honor was there to be gained from one so pathetic, but Wagaash smiled and closed his eyes calmly. The traitor would be in pain soon enough. Wagaash reached out with his mind, prying into the Night Wolf's dense skull. And there, he supposed, had been the source of the problem. Wagaash learned that slaves had taken the opportunity afforded by the onset of the arctic night to rebel. They'd slaughtered their human guards and declared an intent to liberate the world. The Night Wolves were assembling to crush and make an example of them. Wagaash, and indeed all the Wraiths, had wanted to go join the fray. These slaves had become true warriors and drew the blood of their foes with nothing more than mining implements. If the Night Wolves slew them, then who would chant their names and their glories? How could one warrior abandon a brother who knew the blood-joy? Cipactli argued that these humans did not share in the blood drinking rituals of the Wraiths and were not battle brothers. He argued that going to their aid would tip their hand. With such an ill-timed attack, the task force would reveal themselves and even if they saved the rebels, they'd hardly be able to hold the mine against Night Wolf reprisals.

They'd be outnumbered and killed.
And so it had been an issue of honor and the duel begun.
Wagaash feinted right and darted left, his blade held low. He cut for the mechadendrites Cipactli stood on, but Cipactli blocked with a sound of plasteel on plasteel and a hiss of powerfields. Wagaash ducked the servo arm that swung out at him, stepping in to Cipactli's guard, and slamming his fist into the Magos' carapace, knocking Cipactli back, leaving furrows in the snow. The Magos leapt at him, but Wagaash intercepted him in midair, seizing his metallic limbs and throwing him as the shadow of an idea scratched at the back of his mind. Cipactli regained his balance in moments, a fluid blur of blue-green robes and spinning power-blades and came at Wagaash, each blow a fluid motion, so unlike the stereotype of the Machine God's warriors.
Cipactli had explained it to him one day, while sparring. "Combat is a space where only the essential is permitted. That which is wasteful and rash is stripped away. In this way, it is elegance. It is where the theory of angles and forces meets the practical realities of material strength and the chance of the moment. In this way, it is a microcosm. It is a reply and an elaboration on every battle that we have fought before, but each blow is only itself, a single moment in whihc we are immersed and dare not stray from. In this way it seeks perfection. In battle, we find ourselves pushed to seek the Omnissiah within, and we innovate according to the divine path. I believe your own Riddick espoused such notions."
And that was it. Wagaash slid out of the line of Cipactli's advance, took an arm in a lock, and with a deep breath, raised his other hand and blasted Cipactli with a telekinetic blow.
"We're wasting time!" 
"If wasting time is the only way to keep you from bringing about the failure of our mission with misplaced notions of honor, then so be it!"

"No, no. You're right. To go and fight the Nigh Wolves head at the mine on would be foolish. But I have a better idea, one that advances the mission and honors those who know the joy of battle."

Kasmirisav Chekis swore as the Rhino lurched again. Blizzard or no blizzard, Chekis had been on smoother warp flights than this. Probably that fool Iron Warrior, Chachka, driving. He said as much, warming to the insults as he continued:
"I xave seen Flesh Getz and Sped Freks with soother rides than this."
This was true, despite their reputation, Orkz actually peferred smooth rides. Better for the dakka, they claimed when anyone asked.
"Iron Warrior, eez the tesk of motion too mach for you? I thought reason you never retreat was because of stubbornness, but now I see is because cannot drive."
The Rhino lurched fiercely at this one, almost unseating Chekis. Chekis smirked, he'd deserved that one.
"We take road because is smoother ride. Smooth, Chachka, smooth!"
Chekis thought he heard Chachka grunt. Chekis hoped he'd respond-- if Chachka retorted on the way to massacring the slaves, then Chekis would win the pool his brotherhood had started.
Silence.
Even by Iron Warrior standards Chachka was a dour one.
Or so Checkis thought, but he became uncertain as the Rhino veered, hitting the metallic rails along the manufactorae pipes and making a grinding squeal. Checkis reddened. He'd spent how long on the Rhino's paint? He'd kill Chachka.
And then there was a strange percussive sound, less a bang, than a thud of falling sacks and the Rhino rose off the ground.
In the long second as the rhino flipped over, Checkis knew that something had gone wrong.

Through the greens of the networked omniscopes routed to his helm, Wagaash saw the Skitarii line up the arquebus shot and take the driver of the lead rhino through the right eye-lense of his helm. Seconds later, a second shot lobbed a grenade directly beneath the left tread.

Wagaash had never seen anything like it. The fog was so thick that even with his Power Armor's Auto-Senses, the flashes of detonation were barely visible.
Even by the mechanicum djinn-sight, the rhino had been little more than series of blurry grey outlines.

As the rhino spiraled through the air, Wagaash turned to nod appreciatively to Cipactli, but Cipactli was already dismantling the ad hoc targeting neural net the Magos had created by wiring together several Skitarii into a single targeting cogitator bank, dedicated to getting that single shot perfect.

Checkis bellowed into his vox-uplink, trying to figure out what had just happened, but beyond the vox contact with his squad, and the screech of bikes and rhinos swerving on the road he had nothing. It was bad enough for the blizzard to interfere with communications, but the crash must have crushed the long distance vox hailer.
Furious, he kicked open the side hatch and led his men out of the stricken vehicle just in time to see a radiant bolt lance out from the fog shrouded industrial maze and pick off the vox arrays on the other rhino.
His anger at Chachka vanished, replaced with fury at these unknown assailants.
A trap? He'd show these fog shrouded cowards just what Iron Within meant.