Aboard the Iron Blood, within the command bridge.
The air itself seemed to have completely frozen. Crushingly low pressure blanketed this Gloriana-class Battleship. The ship was utterly silent, save for the beeping of cogitators and the stiff footsteps of Servitors.
No one dared breathe too loudly, fearing they might draw attention to themselves and provoke the source of that oppressive storm—the Lord of Iron, standing before the bridge's command platform.
Because of Perturabo's particular philosophy of war, the Iron Blood was the only one among her sister ships without portholes.
He believed portholes created structural weaknesses in a warship, and he had no need for such primitive, inefficient methods as direct visual observation.
The Iron Blood's exterior was covered in precision sensors. The processing system personally refined by Perturabo could render the data they gathered into visible images and project them onto screens.
Six Iron Circle robots, personally crafted by Perturabo, surrounded him. Their metal skulls housed cloned biological tissue from the Lord of Iron himself.
With those wetware components, the Iron Circle robots could connect directly to the signal emitter upon Perturabo's head and be personally controlled by the Lord of Iron in battle.
The Primarch had become completely disappointed in his sons. He trusted the Iron Circle robots he had built more, for they knew no fear, possessed absolute loyalty, fulfilled their duties, and never tired.
Beyond the Iron Circle robots stood the upper ranks of the Iron Warriors Legion, including the Trident and the Warsmiths. Their status within the Legion was even lower than those robots'.
But now, the Iron Warriors had no mind to complain about their Primarch favoring the Iron Circle. With those machines present, at least they did not have to stand beside Perturabo.
Who knew whether the Primarch might shove every one of