Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Watching the Phalanx come into view, Vangorich felt a surge of emotion he couldn't quite put into words.

He told himself to relax, but the tension wouldn't leave him.

The thought that this meeting might decide the fate of the entire Imperium of Man was enough to shake even the composure of the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum.

The Phalanx, fresh from a battle of unprecedented scale, remained on high alert. Even though the vessel carrying Vangorich had been specially outfitted to evade detection, the Phalanx's auspex picked it out regardless.

As countless shipboard weapons locked onto them, the captain looked to Vangorich, waiting for a response.

"Send our identification codes. Tell them Grand Master Drakan Vangorich of the Officio Assassinorum has come to call. I want to meet with the leader of the Ultimate Wall right now."

The Phalanx's weapons disengaged, and Vangorich's ship was cleared to dock. When he stepped off the transport, he found a company of Imperial Fists already lined up and waiting.

The Ultimate Wall, it seemed, had already anticipated his arrival.

His visit was supposed to be secret—no one outside those aboard his own ship knew he was headed to the Phalanx. So how had they prepared in advance?

It wasn't hard to guess who'd leaked the information. Vangorich immediately thought of the former Inquisition representative.

"Veritus..."

Vangorich had to admit the Inquisitor saw further than he did. Back when the Ultimate Wall had still been holed up in Port Sanctus, Veritus had already spotted their potential and sent an Inquisitor to make contact.

If it came to reordering the Senatorum Imperialis, Veritus was probably better suited to the job than he was.

But what Vangorich despised was the man's inaction.

Ever since the Imperial Fists had been sacrificed, the entire Senatorum Imperialis had been racing headlong down the road of bad decisions. The Inquisition had the power to stop plenty of these problems, yet they chose to look away and let them fester.

What good were half-measures? Only ruthless action could sweep away these corrupt, incompetent High Lords—only then could the Imperium be reborn in blood and fire!

Vangorich knew his political skills weren't exceptional, but on Terra today, he was the only one willing to stand up and change things.

The Officio Assassinorum was a tool built by Regent Malcador the Sigillite to protect Imperial rule—nothing more than a blade.

Vangorich could purge the High Lords with ruthless force, but doing so would only plunge the Imperium into anarchic chaos.

He had to lay the groundwork for the future before he acted, so that once the High Lords had "shot themselves eight times in an apparent suicide," someone could step in immediately to take control of the Imperium.

The Ultimate Wall was a crucial piece of that plan.

Vangorich admired the Ultimate Wall's actions on Mars greatly. Even he found himself impressed by how keenly the Magos named Lin seized his opportunities.

His only complaint was that Lin had stopped his assassination of the Fabricator General—an act meant to be the signal for the Officio Assassinorum's operation to begin.

He guessed Lin had been swayed by the Inquisition—those pitiful moderates always wanted to leave themselves an exit.

Given that the Inquisition had tried to worm its influence into the Ultimate Wall as early as Port Sanctus, it seemed likely Lin's actions had been shaped by them.

But getting there first wasn't enough on its own. As the only man with the resolve to change the Imperium, Vangorich believed Koorland and the others wouldn't refuse him.

He'd stripped himself of every weapon he carried, a gesture of sincerity toward the Imperial Fists. But Thorne, who'd come to receive him, refused to allow it:

"Keep your weapons, Grand Master. A guardian of the Imperium should never lower their guard."

"You're not afraid of an assassin?" Vangorich asked, puzzled.

"I trust that our blades will only ever point at the enemies of mankind, together."

The answer brought a flicker of warmth even to the ever-cold Grand Master. He realized this meeting might go more smoothly than he'd expected.

Following Thorne's lead, he was brought into a reception room aboard the Phalanx, where he met Lin, Hays, and Koorland.

"Hays." He recognized the man who'd already been declared dead—the Lord Commander Militant of the Astra Militarum—at first glance. "I never expected to hear from you again, let alone on Mars."

"I'm guessing the High Lords weren't too pleased to hear it?" Hays said, needling him.

"Of course not. The High Lords only sent you out as a token gesture—they never expected you'd actually fight tooth and nail to save the Imperial Fists, let alone bring the Astra Militarum to stand beside the Ultimate Wall."

"If we only ever did what they expected of us, the Imperium really would be doomed."

Vangorich liked that answer. His gaze shifted to Koorland and Lin, and he greeted them with the courtesy of a commoner.

The gesture eased something in Koorland, who himself had been chosen from among the common folk to become an Astartes.

He held an almost instinctive dislike for anyone from the Officio Assassinorum.

In fact, Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists, had always been a staunch opponent of the Officio Assassinorum. His argument with Malcador the Sigillite over whether the organization should even exist hadn't ended until the Emperor personally sanctioned it.

As an Imperial Fist through and through, honest and forthright, Koorland had little use for men who only ever worked in the shadows.

Vangorich's conduct shifted his opinion somewhat; he realized this Grand Master might not be so different from them after all.

With no further pleasantries, the meeting moved quickly to business.

"I am Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master and leader of the Officio Assassinorum. I've come to the Phalanx seeking change. The Ultimate Wall has become a decisive force—to bring about that change, I need your support."

"You're the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum. No one can stop you from acting," Koorland said.

"The question isn't how to act, but what we do afterward. The Imperium is like a rotten house—we have to tear part of it down before we can rebuild. Only then will it not come crashing down the moment a real threat arrives.

Vangorich laid out his thinking, then gestured between himself and Koorland.

"The people who can rebuild it are right here—you and I."

"It sounds like you're treating Terran politics as some kind of construction game."

"When the High Lords use the Emperor's name and the Imperium's authority only to serve their own interests, it's already a wretched game. But that's the whole point of the Officio Assassinorum's existence—we're gardeners founded by Regent Malcador the Sigillite. When things rot, we're the ones who prune back the High Lords' wild, overgrown branches."

He rose to his feet. His frame was slight even among mortals, but the ambition to remake the entire Imperium made him seem towering.

"Chapter Master Koorland, don't you want this too? I can see in your eyes that you're not satisfied with anything happening on Terra right now. You stand here to save Terra, yet you have to face the doubts of an entire rotten Senatorum Imperialis. Every one of them bears some responsibility for the deaths of your brothers, yet they turn around and blame you instead."

Vangorich truly was an assassin. He didn't need a blade to strike precisely at anyone's weak point.

Koorland fell silent. His resolve began to waver, but as one of the Loyalists from the Great Heresy, he still carried the doubts every Loyalist was bound to have.

"Astartes shouldn't meddle in politics. That's what the Emperor demands of us."

"I don't need you to meddle, and I don't need you to defy the Emperor's will. Your existence alone is a deterrent. If you'll simply agree with our plan and hold back at the critical moment, I guarantee you a renewed Terra—one that will fully support the Astartes in launching a crusade to end this ork crisis.

The Beast War won't end here and now. Orks capable of mass-producing Attack Moons must have a stronghold somewhere. Once the crisis on Terra is resolved, striking at the root of these beasts becomes essential.

But if the High Lords couldn't even agree on matters concerning Terra itself, how could Koorland expect them to fully back an expedition against the ork homeworld?

Perhaps, as Bohemond had said, under the High Lords' cowardly and contradictory orders, their delayed advance would leave them facing hundreds, even thousands, of Attack Moons.

He suddenly understood a little better why the High Marshal was reluctant to return to Terra.

That understanding turned into support for the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, and he was nearly ready to agree to Vangorich's plan. But Lin held him back.

"Forgive my bluntness, Grand Master Vangorich. Until we know exactly what you intend for Terra, we won't commit to any position."

Vangorich turned to look at Lin.

The first time he'd seen this man's name, it had been on Veritus's list. Back then, he'd never imagined a mere Tech-Priest could end up among the Ultimate Wall's decision-makers.

He admired this Magos, but he still held a grudge over the man having foiled his assassination.

"Was that also why you stopped me from assassinating the Fabricator General, Magos Lin?"

"Not entirely because I opposed you. I have other uses in mind for him."

From his tone, Vangorich judged that Lin wasn't opposed to the plan itself. "If you insist on knowing, very well. I've already gathered the personal biometric profiles of every High Lord—enough for Callidus assassins to impersonate them perfectly. I'll strike once you've broken the Attack Moons and the High Lords are forced to appear in public for the welcoming ritual. I'll replace the entire Senatorum Imperialis with assassins disguised as them."

"Where's the feasibility in that plan?"

"In the Senatorum Imperialis's own sloppiness, and their contempt for the Officio Assassinorum. The Senatorum is a slapdash outfit that started rotting only a thousand years after its founding—their statutes are riddled with loopholes, and that's exactly the space the Officio Assassinorum needs to infiltrate and strike."

Vangorich went on to explain, "We haven't moved against a target of real weight since the Great Heresy, over a thousand years now. The High Lords have no idea what the Officio Assassinorum, dormant for a millennium, is truly capable of. Most of them look down on us ever since we were kicked out of the High Twelve. As long as we strike suddenly enough, they'll have no defense."

"Wouldn't that just turn the entire Senatorum Imperialis into your own personal mouthpiece?" Lin countered.

"It's only a necessary trade-off during the Beast War. Your crusade needs the backing of an efficient Senatorum Imperialis. Once the time is right, we'll return to a proper electoral process, choose competent and reliable High Lords, and restore the Imperium to its old order."

It sounded well thought out. But as far as Lin knew, what would follow wouldn't turn out nearly as well as Vangorich described.

Vangorich—Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, and eventually, dictator of the entire Imperium.

In the original course of history, he wouldn't have acted this soon.

Only after Terra's crisis had passed and Vulkan, Lord of the Rathalos, had been found would Vangorich purge the Senatorum Imperialis—when neither the Imperial Fists nor Vulkan showed any interest in reforming it themselves—and turn it into his own mouthpiece exactly as he'd just described.

At first, he genuinely tried to select suitable candidates to fill the High Lords' seats, but the more he searched, the more he found every single one harbored some private agenda.

From then on, he decided, rashly, that he alone served the Imperium with a pure heart, and so his dictatorship continued. But taking every burden onto himself alone meant being crushed—and driven mad—by the weight of running an entire empire.

Under his dictatorship, the Imperium ran with great efficiency for eighty years. But in the final twenty years, as Vangorich spiraled into madness, the Imperium suffered losses far greater than the Beast War itself had ever caused.

The damage grew so severe that Thorne, then Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, cut short his campaign to mop up the last greenskins and rushed back to Terra. At the cost of nearly annihilating the rebuilt Imperial Fists all over again, he personally put an end to Vangorich's madness.

Left to run its original course, the Beast War would have had no winners at all.

Perhaps because the Ultimate Wall had returned to Terra far faster than before, and had shown enough strength on Mars, this Grand Master hadn't chosen to act alone this time—instead pinning part of his hopes on the Ultimate Wall.

But Lin wasn't sold on his request, or his methods.

The Imperium itself was a loose coalition of competing interests. The High Lords, each representing their own faction, at least kept this corpse of a state twitching along a while longer.

So long as no major crisis loomed, the High Lords tugging against one another actually helped preserve the Imperium's delicate balance, rather than letting it spiral swiftly toward ruin under a single man's madness.

In that respect, Lin agreed with Vladilena—or rather, with the Inquisition's broader view: the High Lords needed to exist.

But this also wasn't peacetime, a time to let the High Lords freely display their "talents."

With the Beast rampaging across the galaxy and bearing straight down on Terra's core, these High Lords, still unable to unite, truly did need some proper "reordering."

Lin intended to place certain constraints on Vangorich's actions—at the very least, to keep Terra's situation from collapsing into one man's dictatorship.

"You can't kill every High Lord, Master Vangorich. Not all of them are our enemies, after all."

Lin said this while looking toward Hays, who belatedly pointed at himself.

"Me?"

"That's right. Maybe the office of Imperial Commander would suit you?"

"Uh... I thought I was just coming back to face a court-martial."

"A man's fate depends on both his own struggle and the tide of the times. At the very least, I think you're a far better fit than Udin Mahdo Udo.

Lin turned to look at the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, who seemed lost in thought. Vangorich frowned, realizing the reorganized Senatorum Imperialis surely wouldn't consist of just Hays alone.

"Who else are you bringing in?"

"Lord High Admiral Lansung, Inquisition representative Veritus, and Fabricator General Kubik."

Lansung, newly "reformed"; Veritus, who was friendly toward the Ultimate Wall but not fully devoted to them; and Kubik, mired deep in the troubles of Mars.

These representatives of the Imperium's key factions, though not as fully aligned with the Ultimate Wall as Hays, could still help keep the Senatorum Imperialis from falling entirely into Vangorich's dictatorship—and ensure he never spiraled into the madness of the old timeline.

Vangorich finally understood why Lin had spared Kubik. But he couldn't grasp why Lin would use his own hand to bring a former rival into the reorganized Senatorum Imperialis.

What was he so worried about?

Vangorich couldn't puzzle out Lin's thinking. He looked to Koorland, hoping to find some clue in the Astartes's expression, only to find the man just as baffled.

The trust forged since Cath Maximus meant Koorland backed Lin completely. Even without any prior coordination, the two of them remained an unshakable bond of shared fate.

Vangorich realized he'd have to get past Lin first. "I'll need to think this over carefully..."

Lin made a gesture inviting him to do just that.

The meeting drew to a close for now, and Vangorich was shown to a lounge. He meant to summon his deputy to discuss matters, but the moment his deputy walked in, he dropped a bombshell.

"The High Lords have made their move—they've requisitioned over a thousand civilian vessels!"

This move left Vangorich baffled in an entirely different way. All he could manage was: "What are they trying to do?"

"They've packed the transports full of civilians and ordered them to launch an assault on the Attack Moons!"

The Grand Master's jaw dropped.

[Author's Note: When the Imperial Fists returned to put an end to Vangorich, the exchange ratio between his assassins and the century-old veterans was 4 to 1.]

[Author's Note: Thorne led three companies in. In the end, he was the only one who came out alive.]

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