Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

“Lin…”

Looking at the Magos before him, Kubik couldn’t tell whether the feeling running through his logic circuits was anticipation or bitterness.

Ever since he’d realized the teleportation plan had been set up by the dark Mechanicus, Kubik had known his ambitions were shattered — Mars would never reclaim the glory of the age before the Great Heresy under his leadership.

This was a mess of his own making, but Lin’s kicking him while he was down had pushed him into deeper and deeper error, until finally not just the teleportation plan but even his seat as Fabricator General had slipped from his grasp.

“I imagine you have a lot you want to discuss with me?” Lin asked.

“Indeed I do. But the most important thing is — why did you send people to bring me here?”

“Because we’re here to negotiate, aren’t we? We want to negotiate with the Fabricator General — not with a puppet controlled by the Forge Council.”

If it had only been implied before, now it was stated outright. Excitement stirred in Kubik, but he feared he might be harboring hope he had no right to.

“I no longer hold the authority of Fabricator General. That’s simply a fact.”

“Sometimes a title alone lets you do a great deal.”

Lin laid out the full list of a Forge Director’s powers, and picked out the clause stating that “when a Forge World is in a state of crisis, the Forge Director has the authority to issue calls for aid and mobilization to all Imperial forces,” and set it down in front of Kubik.

Kubik understood Lin’s meaning at once.

After his fall, he’d imagined many possibilities — he’d never expected the opportunity would come through Lin.

Perhaps out of some remnant of pride, he retorted stiffly: “Mars will never accept this condition.”

“But you will.”

“What good does it do if I accept? I no longer have any say over Mars’s decisions.”

“What if we add the Astartes and the Astra Militarum to the equation?”

Something stirred in Koorland, though it also struck him as absurd.

He, a Fabricator General, having to rely on outside strength just to reclaim his voice in the Forge Council?

And yet the approach seemed workable.

The thought made Kubik’s breathing quicken. Only a single doubt in his logic kept him from committing fully.

“Issuing a call for aid under crisis-state provisions doesn’t match the current situation. It’s not enough to convince the Forge Council…”

“Which is why those Priests who claimed to be escorting you but were really kidnapping you will be dealt with, won’t they? We don’t need common sense, and we don’t need to convince the Forge Council. All we need is a pretext — a way to make it a fait accompli.”

Lin produced materials he’d prepared in advance, and used them to “interpret” the situation on Mars for the Fabricator General.

“The effects of the Plague Scrapcode haven’t been fully purged. Mars won’t be able to resume normal production for a long time yet. For a holy site of the Omnissiah, how is that not a state of emergency? And the corrupted teleportation device is still unaccounted for — it might still be hidden somewhere on Mars right now. To prevent another attack, why shouldn’t you, in your own name, request that Astartes chapters and the Astra Militarum remain on Mars to help defend against a fresh wave of Chaos incursions?”

Lin drew closer to Kubik. In that moment, his words held more sway over Kubik than even the Four Peddlers.

“Think it through, Lord Kubik. Think carefully. The people once assigned to watch over you have already been cleared away, through the hand of the Officio Assassinorum. You’re the only one here now — who could possibly steal your right to interpret the law?”

Kubik’s thinking began to buckle, his logic unraveling.

Lin’s repeated emphasis on “Fabricator General” stirred up memories of the glory Kubik had once commanded as King of Mars. Given the chance, he would never give up that seat again.

His gaze passed over Lin, settling on Koorland and Hays, who stood silent, letting Lin do the talking.

“You — or rather, the Ultimate Wall and the Imperium — what is it you actually want?”

Koorland spoke: “We need an army. Well-equipped, well-supplied, ready at any moment to launch an assault on the Attack Moon.”

The Knight houses that had been destroyed had already become fodder for the Ironriders, and the remaining six hundred thousand Skitarii were still sitting in orbit — but that alone could no longer satisfy the appetite Lin and Koorland now had.

To resolve the crisis on Terra as quickly as possible, they needed Mars to commit far more to this war.

Kubik could hardly believe it. He’d assumed these people would demand some kind of leverage over Mars, or over himself personally. He hadn’t expected them to simply want troops.

Something this modest, in exchange for keeping his seat as Fabricator General?

His earlier misgivings evaporated. “I still have two million Skitarii directly under my command. I’ll keep only what’s needed to maintain order here — the rest will follow your orders and launch the assault on the Attack Moon.”

“When will these forces be ready?” Hays asked, confirming the terms.

“The moment things stabilize on Mars, they can depart with you whenever you like. If I can’t hold this position, the Forge Council will just carve up control of these Skitarii for themselves anyway.”

“You will, of course, remain the eternal King of Mars.”

At Lin’s signal, Kuber walked in from outside. This Iron Hands Captain, who not long ago had come seeking Mars’s aid, had become one of Lin’s most loyal followers.

Three hundred Iron Hands and their Titans had already formed ranks outside the door, ready to escort Kubik back to the Forge Council.

“Fabricator General, the transport is ready.”

Lin’s arrangements left Kubik equal parts alarmed and satisfied. He even felt a certain relief that this time he hadn’t ended up standing against Lin.

After all, one failure, even two, weren’t so terrible.

Whether or not his goals had been met this time hardly mattered — so long as he could keep moving forward, the road he was leading the Mechanicus down toward glory would keep stretching on…!

The brief but highly effective negotiation came to an end. Kubik followed Kuber out, hoping to return to the Forge Council as quickly as possible. But on his way out, he found a knot of Priests with Skitarii already blocking the exit.

“We want the Fabricator General back! You dragged him in here by force!”

“What kind of talk is that?” Issaga, stationed at the door to turn people away, shot back. “Wasn’t the Fabricator General supposed to come here to negotiate in the first place?”

“That’s true — but not quite.”

The Priests demanding his return found themselves at a loss for words. They worried that the Fabricator General, having gone in alone, might slip beyond their control. While they were still arguing over what to do next, they suddenly noticed Kubik was already standing right in front of them.

He’d shaken off all trace of his earlier decline, his stride once again brisk and full of vigor.

More importantly, he now had Astartes and Knight mechs accompanying him. The Priests stared at the Fabricator General before them in shock, realizing matters had already gone beyond anything they could control.

“We’ve finished our talks. Return to the Forge Council,” he commanded, brooking no argument.

A few of the Priests wanted to press further, but the sight of the Astartes’ leveled weapons and the shadow cast by the Tiantu-class Titan convinced them to wisely hold their tongues.

The Skitarii who’d come to demand an accounting were swept up instead, becoming part of the Fabricator General’s own escort as they marched, en masse, back toward the Forge Council.

“Aren’t we asking for too little?” Watching the Fabricator General stride off in high spirits, Hays asked Lin.

This High Lord took the longer view. “At bottom, this still leaves him owing you a grudge. He won’t feel grateful for the help — once he claws his way out of Mars’s power struggles, he’ll spare no effort making trouble for you.”

Lin shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. By then I won’t even be on Terra anymore.”

Lin understood perfectly well why the negotiations had gone so smoothly: mostly because Kubik wanted to keep his position, and also because Mars still hadn’t recovered from Vashtorr’s assault, and the other Magi on Mars had no appetite for open bloodshed either.

They didn’t have the strength to bring Mars to its knees outright — this whole operation had simply ridden the coattails of Vashtorr’s attack.

Even if they’d wrung some empty promise out of the situation, given the reliability of the oil priests, they’d tear it up the moment they recovered their footing.

That was exactly why Lin had wanted to keep the Fabricator General in his seat. Had someone else handled the negotiation, Mars might not have parted with a single soldier.

Mars’s willingness to negotiate at all rested entirely on their reluctance to lose anything more. If their shared interests were threatened, the normally fractious oil priests would bind together in an instant.

Never mind that something was buried beneath Mars that even the oil priests couldn’t fully understand — just the sight of the untouched Titan Legion alone meant Lin could never afford to truly break with Mars.

“That’s enough. We just need to wait and let this negotiation bear fruit.”

A brief clash of arms echoed from the direction of the Omnissiah’s temple, then quickly faded to nothing. The Ironriders’ forceful arrival had, on the surface at least, silenced every Magos bold enough to openly object.

Kubik moved swiftly to seize control of the situation, issuing a call for aid to the Ultimate Wall and the Astra Militarum before the Magi could even react.

The Astra Militarum, already primed and ready, immediately rolled their siege tanks forward to the outskirts of several Forge hive cities to back Kubik up. Most of the Priests on Mars, utterly bewildered, found themselves “welcoming the royal army.”

Once the fait accompli was set, the fence-sitters who had abandoned Kubik swung back to his side with remarkable speed.

Thanks to how recent Kubik’s fall had been, the Magi hadn’t yet finished stripping away his influence, and his rule reasserted itself quickly along familiar channels.

Unfortunately, the strength lent by the Astra Militarum and the Astartes still couldn’t compare to what Kubik had once commanded from his data-throne, ruling over the Legio Cybernetica.

Several of Mars’s more powerful Archmagi retreated to their own hive cities, and nearly two-thirds of Mars no longer answered to the Fabricator General’s orders.

The situation on Mars looked much like the early days of the Great Heresy — every hive city showing faint signs of asserting independence. A civil war over the coming power struggle seemed all but inevitable in the foreseeable future.

But none of that was Lin’s concern.

Kubik was busy mobilizing Skitarii from within his remaining sphere of control; one million of them began gathering at the orbital transport fleet.

Compared to the five hundred thousand from before, this time Kubik also had to guarantee, at no cost, the logistics for the Skitarii and indeed the entire allied force.

Though these Skitarii would return to Mars once the assault on the Attack Moon was finished, Mars would have no right to question their casualties or command during the campaign.

Combined with the forces already committed, Mars had now contributed one and a half million Skitarii in total, plus two Knight houses.

Together with the strength already held by the Ultimate Wall, this amounted to one thousand five hundred Astartes, four million ground combat troops, two Knight houses, and one small Titan Legion.

Whatever this force amounted to against the orks, it was easily the largest organized military body currently assembled anywhere on the Throneworld.

Add to that the logistical stockpiles brought by Cath Maximus, along with Mars’s gradually recovering production capacity, and the Ultimate Wall could now launch its campaign against the orks entirely free of the High Lords’ constraints.

With every piece now in place, Lin and Kubik had no intention of lingering on Mars any longer. Using the Shanzheng as their foundation, they would move swiftly to assault the Attack Moon and lift the Siege of Terra as quickly as possible.

The fleet began refueling, and Lin made his final farewells to Dalia on Mars.

“Won’t you come see the sights with us? We won’t be straying too far from Mars.”

Dalia turned down the invitation. “Watching over the Void Dragon is my duty. Being active even here on Mars is already the limit of what I can manage.”

Though he’d known it was unlikely, Lin still felt a pang of regret. Dalia offered him some comfort instead: “You’ve already gathered a… strange but useful group of people around you. Even without me, you can accomplish plenty.”

Whether it was his imagination or not, Lin always felt her gaze toward Neos looked rather odd.

But when he followed her line of sight and saw Evil Sun, Neos, and Occam over there shooting the breeze, he decided her strange look made perfect sense.

“Do you have any advice on how I should use the Akashic Reader?”

“My only advice is to use it however you see fit. It’s dangerous, and Lady Koriel Zeth doesn’t have the ability to refine it further. How much potential the instrument holds is entirely up to you to discover.”

“Sounds like I should be careful.”

“Will you be?”

Dalia shot back, and Lin could only shrug, a little awkwardly.

“But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Under the Warp’s influence, anyone who wants to accomplish something has to become a gambler. The only difference is what they bet on — some bet on the Imperium, some on Chaos, and you…”

She lifted her eyes, fixing Lin with a stare of ghostly green light. “You should bet on yourself.”

Lin fell into thought.

He’d wrung out just about everything worth taking from the area around Terra. Now that he’d found the key to the treasury of the stars, whether he moved cautiously or boldly from here, his stage would no longer be Terra.

Perhaps once the Attack Moon was dealt with, he ought to find fertile new ground elsewhere and focus on building his own power.

But doing that would inevitably involve the High Lords of Terra, and that Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, Drakan Vangorich, who was so fixated on assassinating the High Lords.

He thanked the Guardian of the Dragon; she merely waved him off in farewell. With nothing left to hold him on Mars, Lin boarded the Shanzheng with his people.

He’d meant to go find Koorland, but Inquisitor Vladilena, whom he’d rescued earlier, found him first, blocking his path.

“What exactly happened beneath Magma City?” she demanded.

“I pulled you up out of the depths. Nothing else happened. Honestly, I’d like to know how you tracked your way down there in the first place.”

“That’s it? Just that simple?”

“Asking too many questions isn’t wise. At least Mars’s betrayal of the Imperium has been resolved, hasn’t it? I’d think that satisfies the Inquisition’s purposes.”

Lena still remembered something of the one who’d knocked her out. That ghostly green energy, combined with the forbidden texts she’d studied within the Inquisition, gave her a rough guess. But Lin wasn’t willing to elaborate, and she couldn’t pry anything further out of him.

She could only privately raise Lin’s importance in her estimation another notch, then get to the actual point of this visit.

“The Inquisition believes the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, Drakan Vangorich, will pay a secret visit to the Shanzheng. Whatever he says to you, I hope you’ll keep your guard up.”

[Author’s Note: The Inquisition knows there really is a god beneath Mars, but doesn’t know who it is, nor what this “star god” actually is.]

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