Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Lin did not do as Kubik wished — relieving the pressure on the hive city's front line from the flank. Instead, he pushed deep into the outskirts.

Most of Mars's Skitarii were concentrated at the outermost perimeter, fighting there — and it was through the outskirts that they remained linked to the hive city's core district.

The Fabricator General had intended to redeploy troops to hold this ground once Lin eased the pressure on the front line, securing the supply route for the core district's Skitarii.

But Lin had moved first and seized it himself. Though this didn't technically violate the terms of relieving the Skitarii, it left Kubik with a nagging unease.

"What is he actually trying to do?"

Kubik studied the shifting situation and realized that after gathering up the outskirts' Skitarii, Lin's troop movements carried the unmistakable scent of an attempt to fold the entire outskirts under his own control.

His forces now sat squarely between the Skitarii and the core district. If he had other intentions, he could sever the link between the two at will.

Surely Lin wasn't planning to use this as an opportunity to strike at the core district?

The thought startled Kubik, but he quickly dismissed it as absurd.

The Fabricator General believed the price he'd offered was already more than generous — he doubted Lin could gain anything better by breaking their agreement than what he'd already promised. Besides...

"Even counting the Skitarii he's gathered up, the entire force in the outskirts numbers only a hundred thousand. Even if he wanted to launch a direct assault on the core district, what could he possibly accomplish?"

The core district's existing defenses, without Skitarii support, would genuinely struggle against Kubik's own million-strong army — but against a force this small, they'd have no trouble at all.

With the terrain advantage of the outskirts, Lin's forces might hold a defensive line well enough — but launching an offensive against the core district would be like throwing an egg against a stone.

Unless he was in league with Chaos, preparing some inside-and-out pincer maneuver — but that itself was impossible.

Kubik couldn't work out Lin's true intentions, but the Deputy Forge Director offered a theory.

"Perhaps he means to seize the Skitarii's supply lines and use the leverage to demand greater compensation?"

Kubik considered this for a moment, then nodded.

"That would certainly suit his reckless streak."

He turned to Pavonis at his side. "Go there again. Speak with Magos Lin and confirm his intentions. Whatever he demands, so long as it isn't excessive, I'll agree to it."

Pavonis still hesitated. "And if—"

"If his demands cross the line, I'll pull a detachment of Skitarii and deal with him personally."

Those words settled Pavonis's nerves, and he set out to carry out the Fabricator General's order. But as he picked his way through the shattered metal wreckage into the outskirts, what he saw made his chest tighten.

Mortal soldiers labored busily under the direction of the Exemplary Fists, building defensive lines.

Their movements were quick and orderly, as though rehearsed countless times before. Heavy sandbags were stacked into cover, metal plates welded into makeshift fortifications, and a few crude gun emplacements had even been raised on high ground.

These defenses did not face the Chaos forces beyond the city — they faced the Skitarii.

Pavonis was stunned.

What was Lin actually planning?!

Pavonis felt his power source's pump-rate quicken. He wanted to examine exactly how these defenses had been organized, but every time he drew near, the mortals who'd come with Lin fixed him with cold, indifferent stares.

There was none of the reverence for the Mechanicus that should have been in their eyes. Pavonis even noticed that a few soldiers had quietly rested their hands on their weapons, as if ready to strike at him at any moment.

"This isn't right..."

He quickened his pace, wanting nothing more now than to finish this and get away. But when he spotted Urquidex standing beside Lin, some of the tension drained out of him.

This subordinate, taken on from Port Sanctus, had previously been assigned as commander of a branch within the Skitarii.

Pavonis didn't particularly care whether the man lived or died, but if a commander of Mars's own Skitarii could still stand beside Lin, perhaps things weren't as dire as he'd feared.

"Magos Lin," he said, keeping his voice as level as he could, "I've come on the Fabricator General's order to learn your intentions. Why is your force building defenses along the perimeter? This appears to violate our agreement."

"How does it violate anything?" Lin countered.

"Our common enemy is supposed to be the daemons, yet your men have their weapons trained on the perimeter Skitarii. What is the meaning of this?"

"Just as the latter half of our agreement stated — I'm simply collecting my payment in my own way."

"What manner of payment requires aiming guns at Mars?!"

The words were out before Pavonis could stop himself, and he immediately regretted them. But Lin paid him no mind.

Lin's gaze shifted toward the doorway. Pavonis followed it and saw that Thorne, Chapter Master of the Exemplary Fists, had appeared there without his noticing.

"Everything's in place," he said to Lin.

In place. In place for what?

The sense of danger in Pavonis's chest surged to its peak. He took a step back, already gauging his path to the exit. "I won't intrude further. I'll be on my way."

But Thorne stood squarely in the doorway, blocking any hope of leaving. Lin — who moments ago had ignored him entirely — walked up and clapped him amiably on the shoulder.

"You've come all this way — won't you leave something behind before you go?"

"...Leave what?"

"Your life."

Lin's tone was perfectly ordinary, as though he were mentioning something utterly trivial.

Pavonis, snapping to his senses, tried to fight back, but before he could even draw his Omnissian Axe, Thorne — already prepared — reached out and wrenched it away.

He tried to reach for his sidearm instead, but that was time enough for Lin to press his own Plasma Pistol against Pavonis's forehead.

"Urquidex!" His only hope left was his own subordinate. "Please! I'll take you as my personal apprentice — you can't just stand there and watch me die!"

The Priest, utterly disillusioned with Mars's greed and incompetence, only shook his head.

Pavonis's last shred of hope died. He turned to Lin and, trembling, spat out his final curse.

"The Fabricator General will never tolerate your betrayal of Mars, Lin. Your soul will burn in the fires of the Omnissiah for all eternity, and the entire Ultimate Wall will be buried alongside you for your recklessness!"

"Before any of that happens, news of your death will be the finest gift I could give Kubik."

An ion beam punched through Pavonis's skull. The Inquisitor-Magos who had once been so insufferably arrogant on Port Sanctus crumpled to the ground, his life at an end.

Urquidex sighed, understanding that things had finally arrived at open opposition with Mars.

Thorne then continued his report. "The expeditionary fleet from Cath Maximus is closing on Mars now, led by Hays and Matt Horner. Our reinforcements will arrive soon.

"Kubik will get word of Pavonis's death before then. We'll need to hold this ground with what little we have until they arrive. Thorne — confident?"

"We'll hold."

The Exemplary Fists' Chapter Master's answer was short and resolute, his eyes burning with the same fire from an age long past.

"I will finish what we failed to accomplish fifteen hundred years ago!"

When Kubik saw Pavonis's corpse, sent back by a Servitor Lin had dispatched, everyone present could see the half of his face still covered in flesh turn a sickly blue.

"Lin...! He dared murder my envoy! He dared betray Mars!"

The worry he had dismissed earlier had now become reality. The Fabricator General's roar nearly exceeded the limits of his vox-array. "How dare he! Where does he get the nerve?! Mobilize the Skitarii — I want that madman to pay, now!"

"But we don't know what's giving him that confidence, and the front lines are still under strain..."

The Deputy Forge Director thought this move was too reckless.

The Titan Legion hadn't been defeated, but it hadn't gained any advantage against Skarbrand either.

The daemons kept attacking without tiring, while the Titans and Skitarii needed to resupply ammunition and undergo maintenance.

The dead Pavonis couldn't personally deliver news that Lin harbored ulterior motives. Even after Lin killed him and sent the body back as a humiliation, the Magi present assumed it was merely a falling-out between Lin and Pavonis — that Lin meant only to break with Kubik.

After all, with so few men under his command, would he really dare stand against the whole of Mars?

Even if he gained some advantage, could he actually escape Mars afterward?

No one understood Lin's true motives, but the Magi — who no longer held much respect for their Fabricator General — didn't see the conflict between Lin and Kubik as a conflict between Lin and Mars itself.

Conventional logic led everyone but Kubik to believe there was still a chance to bring Lin back under control.

Kubik did not agree.

He too found it difficult to work out Lin's true intentions, but Lin was reinforcement he himself had summoned — if anything went wrong, the blame would fall on him.

If he let Lin's betrayal go unchecked, then forget dealing with the impeachment to come — even his current command would hang by a thread.

"Even if it means abandoning part of the defensive line, I want him to pay for this — now!"

He fixed the Magi present — those who clearly already harbored doubts about him — with a blood-red glare and snapped, "Do it now!"

Under his order, the Skitarii mobilized. They began pulling back their lines, abandoning the outermost production facilities to free up troops to march on the outskirts.

To their surprise, the daemon horde didn't seize the opportunity to attack and claim the abandoned factories' production lines. Aside from Skarbrand, still bellowing away on the battlefield, Vashtorr too was redirecting his forces toward the outskirts.

His goal was to recover the wreckage of the Tiantu-class Titans — though Mars's Skitarii had no idea of this.

Not long after the Skitarii slammed headlong into the defensive line formed jointly by the Exemplary Fists and the Deathless, ghouls and daemons surging up from behind them drove them into what they took to be a pincer attack from both directions.

Vashtorr had no interest whatsoever in the Skitarii, but the Priests — convinced they were surrounded — couldn't help themselves and ordered the Skitarii to open fire first.

The Bloodletters, who had only grudgingly obeyed Vashtorr's orders until now, roared with delight the instant the enemy struck first and charged in without hesitation.

The outskirts abruptly became a new central battleground. Around the entrance fortified by the Exemplary Fists, all three sides collided in a chaotic, unrelenting melee.

Of the three, it was the Skitarii, caught in the middle, who suffered the worst losses.

The Plague Scrapcode that Vashtorr had crafted meant the Priests — who should have only needed to direct matters from behind the lines — now had to personally step onto the field to resist its corruption.

The Skitarii, whose losses had once meant little to the Priests, now mattered a great deal once the Priests themselves were forced into the fray. Every casualty taken in the crossfire felt to them like death tolling its bell.

If fighting daemons had at least carried the weight of righteous cause, being ordered now to attack an outskirts already firmly held struck them as utterly senseless.

"We're taking losses we don't need to take! By the Omnissiah, how did our Fabricator General turn into such a lunatic!"

Kubik, who considered Lin the madman, had no idea that his own Priests had begun to think it was him.

Resentment spread among the Priests, who blamed these losses squarely on the Fabricator General's misguided orders.

Between their halfhearted fighting and mutual sabotage, neither Mars nor Vashtorr could break through the layered defenses the Exemplary Fists had established.

Seasoned Thorne held off both sides with the limited forces at hand, buying precious time for the reinforcements now sailing toward Mars.

Though the advance was slower than expected, to Kubik — determined to see Lin dead — it looked like nothing more than a dying struggle. Still, Kubik didn't believe Lin was without further tricks up his sleeve.

He ordered more troops sent to the outskirts, even as his mind turned to the traitor Augustus.

That traitor had, back when he'd first arrived on Mars, described to him in detail everything Lin had done on Cath Maximus.

Lin's seizure of Cath Maximus had begun with inciting the Priests and the Titan Legion, but what had ultimately mattered most was the explorator fleet brought by Astra Militarum commander Hays.

That explorator fleet?

The Fabricator General began weighing this variable.

He knew Hays hadn't arrived at Port Sanctus alongside Lin's group — perhaps he'd never come at all, or perhaps a Warp storm had scattered them along the way.

As a researcher of Warp technology himself, the Fabricator General knew perfectly well this Warp storm was anything but ordinary.

Even Mars's own explorator fleet, equipped with the finest Warp-observation instruments in the entire Imperium, had been scattered and cut off, unable to make it home. Whatever the case, that expeditionary fleet could not possibly reach Mars now, not while the Warp storm still raged beyond.

But setting that fleet aside, there was still the Solar Fleet and the Shanzheng in orbit above Mars.

"Give me a status report on the orbital defense array," he ordered.

The orbital situation appeared before him in real time.

After all these days, even a corpse lying dormant in orbit should have noticed something was wrong on Mars.

Kubik could see that the Solar Fleet's two remaining battleships had deliberately pulled away from Mars's orbital defense array — but the Shanzheng alone hadn't budged, and had in fact drawn closer to the array.

Kubik understood at once. He believed he'd already anticipated Lin's intentions — and those of the entire Ultimate Wall.

He envied the Shanzheng's existence, same as every other tech-priest, but he also understood the sorry state this ancient Star Fort was actually in.

This ancient, long-neglected Star Fort had lost nine-tenths of its fighting strength or more. It might still manage against some stray fleet in open space, but going head-to-head with an orbital defense system — especially that of a Forge World — Kubik didn't think they stood a chance.

Even with Mars's power shortages and production stoppages preventing the orbital defenses from firing at full strength, what could the Shanzheng possibly accomplish now that he'd seen through its plan?

"Either way, the numbers favor us — the whole of Mars's orbital defense against the Shanzheng and a single battle barge. The advantage is mine!"

He issued the order to the orbital defense forces, and the system swiftly moved to combat readiness.

A small escort fleet also launched from Mars's spaceport — composed mainly of frigates and destroyers, it began maneuvering into advantageous position even before formal engagement, ready to fire torpedoes at the Shanzheng's weak points the instant battle began.

Win or lose, Kubik was confident that the Shanzheng, at the very least, could not break through to Mars anytime soon.

Satisfied, he left the specifics of the orbital engagement to others and turned his full attention back to the battlefield, focused on how best to destroy Lin.

But before long, a Priest bearing the latest news from orbit came rushing in, his face pale as paper.

"General! An emergency! The Exemplary Fists' Shanzheng is breaking through our orbital defense system!"

"That's exactly what I expected. Why the panic?" Kubik waved a hand. "Carry out the counterattack plan I laid out beforehand."

"It's not what you expected, sir! That plan no longer applies!"

Kubik lifted his head, a foreboding sensation coiling through his conduits.

"What do you mean?"

"Judging by the keel identification codes — it includes Hays's Sol Expeditionary Fleet!"

In that instant, Kubik felt his logic circuits spinning at a speed he had never experienced before.

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