Medusan Wings (Review)

 

Medusan Wings by Matt Westbrook. 

'We embark, brothers,' said Oblexus, 'Our sworn allies of the Martian priesthood have called for our aid to overcome the xenos who have defiled the holy works of these machines, and we have answered their call. We shall honour the covenant made between the red planet and the blessed primarch. The Medusan Wing shall purge these greenskins and the obscenities they have built to oppose us. Their creations are abominations, affront against the perfection of the Omnissiah. In the name of the Emperor and the Gorgon, let us visit annihilation upon all of their misbegotten kind. With Wings of iron!"

The Medusan Wing is an elite squadron of Iron Hand Space Marines who pilot Stormhawk Interceptors. The pilots of the Medusan Wing are: 

Iron Father Oblexus leading from his Stormhawk

Ironhawk. 

Techmarine Dektaan in Medusan Two.

The longest serving member of Medusan Wing, Colnex in Medusan Three.

Techmarine Enych in Medusan Four.

The most recent Techmarine to join the squadron is Severus in Medusan Five. 

And Atraxii, piloting Vengeance of Santar, a Stormraven gunship. It is Atraxii whose point of view we are following in this tale. Having spent the past 30 years studying on Mars with the Adeptus Mechanicus, he has just come back to the home word of Medussa, the Chapter base of the Iron Hands. 

His arrival is soon followed by the arrival of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Adept Wyn has arrived to petition the Iron Hands to stop an ork assault on their refinery complex that is suspended in the clouds of Halitus IV. A good chunk of this story is spent dealing with the Adeptus Mechanicus and their appeal to the Iron Hands for aid and their mustering to provide it. 

However once we get to Halitus IV, the action begins and hardly ever stops.  Westbrook does a fine job showing the details of the steps that the Iron Hands perform in working out and executing their plans. I found the whole decision making process that they go through to be interesting. However, as a casual reader might suspect, when Atraxii's suggestion regarding the how to handle the orks is brushed aside in lieu of the plan determined by the algorithm, we know things are about to go seriously wrong. And they do. 

Iron Father Oblexus is wounded when Ironhawk is shot down by an Ork Ace (an apparent anomaly among orks as far as the Iron Hands are concerned). The scenes where Atraxii uses the Stormraven to retrieve Ironhawk is very interesting. It kind of had a Blackhawk Down kind of vibe as two Tactical Marines defend the crash site from the approaching orks. After his rescue, Oblexus is forced to concede that Atraxii did have foresight into the situation that the algorithm failed to determine and has Atraxii take his place in Ironhawk. 

The rest of book divides into two plot paths: the Iron Wing continuing the air defense, and Oblexus joining up with the Iron Hands and the Vostroyan regiment of Imperial Guard, led by the impressive Colonel Donati, in the defense of the Adeptus Mechanicus Temple. It becomes clear to Oblexus that Adept Wynn and the Adeptus Mechanicus are hiding something of great value on Halitus IV. Their Skitarii forces are kept back until practically the last minute, as the orks are almost about to overwhelm the temple and indeed the whole installation.

It becomes clear to the Iron Hands that what the orks are after is simple: fuel. A massive ork terror ship has been hiding out in the clouds awaiting it's moment to strike. Needless to say, the fight that ensues is crazy in it's epicness,and although a few of their members don't survive this tale, they are ultimately triumphant. 

It is revealed in the end what the Adeptus Mechanicus are hiding in their temple. I shall not spoil it here despite my underwhelming opinion of it and my belief that it didn't really serve the story to have it here at all, other than to cause tension between the Space Marine and Ad Mech leaders. 

This story is also available in the anthology On Wings of Blood.  

• Did I like it? Yes, although I felt it took a good while to get going.
• Was it hard to put down? The first 3rd of the book was a bit dry, but once the story got going it was a heck of a ride and difficult to detach one's self from it.  
• Could I care about the characters? For the most part, Iron Hands characters ate difficult to emotionally invest in. They are cold and mechanical people who eschew things like emotions and human frailties. Indeed, they seek to evolve close to machines much like the Adeptus Mechanicus, whom they have a sort of kinship. One of the most intriguing characters in this story appears in the beginning chapters and that is Venerable Lochaar, a dreadnought. This guy is a bad-ass and I hope to see a model of him one day. The two main characters, Atraxii and Oblexus are the characters you invest in as you read this tale and despite their nature as a reader I found myself definitely invested in their survival and success upon the conclusion of the book . 
• Did the writer truly grasp how the 'world' of the 41st millennium works in the sense that it doesn't betray or retcon previously established (as I know it) lore? Matt Westbrook has done a fine job with story and he nailed the essence of the Iron Hands well. I like how he wrote the personality of the machine spirit of Ironhawk. This would be a challenge for most new writers to 40k fiction but he handled it well.
• Was I being talked down too? I didn't think so at all. In fact I found the tone to somewhat refreshing compares to the  last Warhammer 40,000 story I read. 
• How predictable is this story? This felt like an expanded Inferno short story. I thought it was obvious that the most of the Medusan Wing were going to make it through the tale, that they would be victorious, etc. But it was different enough that it kept me excited with the story. Not having a clearly defined villain (just faceless and nameless orks) leads one to root for the protagonists by default. 
• Do I recommend this book? It's a good short read which requires no previous knowledge to pick up and get into. And sometimes that's the perfect criteria for picking up a short story to escape away a few hours of bolter filled fun.