Red Talons - Vengeance of the Red Talon: Among the Iron Hands Legion, many Astartes had been driven to stark madness by witnessing their gene father's end on Istvaan V and threw themselves wholesale into the crucible of war as if to absolve this terrible loss with their own deaths.Yet a substantial number of Iron Hands Legionaries had extricated themselves from the massacre, and while few had made it off the surface of Istvaan V, many more had survived the calamitous void ambush of the Legion's fleet, breaking away and scattering across the stars. Some would form isolationist bands, fighting their own private wars against the Traitors, such as the infamous "Red Talons" of Autek Mor.One of this warband's more notable campaigns took place in the Coronid Deeps within the Gethsamaine System. The first great blow struck against Traitor control of the Coronid Deeps came from the outer darkness of the Grail Abyss.More than a standard year previously, in 005.M31, the Gethsamaine System had submitted to Horus without resistance and this obeisance had spared them the worst of the war's deprivations. The system's only inhabited world, Gethsamaine Colonus, had been forced to suffer newly imposed overlords in the shape of Tithe Acquisitors bearing the serpent's eye of Horus for a Dark Compliance action, where once they had displayed the raptor-headed Seal of Terra.Under their directions, the industries of Gethsamaine now laboured, and the planet's vast rain forests were being clear-cut to provide fodder for off-world export, but other than the Acquisitors' harsh quotas, little in truth had changed for the people of Gethsamaine.But just as the unexpected arrival of a lone survivor from the Istvaan System in 006.M31 had gone on to herald the dawning of the terrible war that was to follow, so a second survivor of that great treachery heralded a new wave of conflict.When the ill-starred Warp route from the haunted Grail Abyss tore open once more, the vessel that cut into realspace with dreadful purpose was no derelict outfitted in Emperor's Children purple as that first survivor-ship had been, but a jagged and scar-hulled killer in black and crimson.It was the Red Talon, the ship of the Iron Hands Clan Morragul, and its master, Autek Mor. Gethsamaine had been stripped of much of its void defences in the Traitors' passing and now it stood all but naked before this spectre of the Imperium's grim retribution.The few remaining orbital gun platforms which protected Gethsamaine Colonus were quickly swept away by the attacking grand cruiser, and a ruthless bombardment of the planet from low orbit immediately commenced as preparation for a ground assault. Then came the grim sons of Medusa to enact the Emperor's judgement.Any resistance to the Iron Hands was swiftly obliterated, and an entire cohort of planetary militia and their Horusite overseers were crushed beneath the treads of Clan Morragul's armour in less than a solar hour. This resulted in a general rout for the defenders.Wasting no time, the world's seats of government were blasted to rubble, and those in positions of power that had aided the Traitors or sided with their cause were methodically hunted down and executed, save for a select number of prisoners deemed to have potentially useful information, who were dragged screaming back to the Red Talon's gunships.As the Iron Hands Thunderhawks blasted off from the surface, the bulk of the civilian population, which had fled into hiding during the sudden assault, nervously rejoiced and came forth, little knowing what would come next. In each of the five major cities of Gethsamaine, the Iron Hands had left behind an improvised atomantic device fashioned by the bloody hand of their Iron Father, each bomb sheathed in layer upon layer of radioactive material designed to enrich and multiply the fallout generated by its detonation a hundred-fold.The Red Talon broke orbit just as the cities bloomed into nuclear fire; sentence had been passed on both the Traitors and those who had knelt before them, and notice served that there could be no bystanders in this terrible civil war, no civilians to be given quarter, only Loyalists and Traitors to the death.