Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The Ultimate Wall's actions on Mars plunged the Senatorum Imperialis into a fresh, endless round of mutual recriminations.

Previously they'd been able to follow the situation on Mars through Lansung's reports, but soon even Lansung stopped contacting them.

All they could observe from Terra was that the Solar Fleet had been folded into the Ultimate Wall's battle order, and when the fighting on Mars finally ceased, those grease-stained priests had somehow made their way aboard the Shanzheng as well.

The Astartes Chapters were an inseparable part of the Imperium, so an Astartes victory on Mars would naturally be seen as an Imperial victory on Mars.

—provided, of course, that the Astartes remained under their control.

The Astartes' success caught the High Lords off guard, and the reinforcements arriving from Cath Maximus threw them into outright panic.

Faced with a million-strong army still holding orbit above Mars, they feared the situation on the Throneworld had already slipped beyond their control.

Compared to the Attack Moon, which still hadn't launched an assault, they now feared the Ultimate Wall lingering in Mars orbit far more. So the finger-pointing turned once again toward Imperial Commander Udo.

"Udo, look what you've done! Calling the Ultimate Wall back was inviting the wolf into the house!"

Udo bristled at the accusation. He feared the Astartes just as much as the others, yet refused to admit the misjudgment had been his.

He wanted to boast that the situation remained firmly in hand, but in truth he no longer dared summon Koorland back and demand to know whether the man was still loyal to the Imperium and the High Lords.

They had, with their own hands, sent the entire Imperial Fists Chapter to its grave. If the balance of power favored them, that was one thing—but if it didn't, how could they dare face an Astartes coalition that might well hold a grudge against them?

Every day in the Senatorum Imperialis passed in endless, meaningless mudslinging. They could no longer produce a single decision of substance.

Their panic gave some ambitious opportunists an opening.

When an exhausted Udo returned to his office, he found a representative of the chartist fleets waiting outside his door.

"Imperial Commander Udo," Juskina Tull said with a slight bow, "I've been waiting for you."

The chartist fleets managed all trade and transport vessels within the Imperium apart from the rogue traders—fully eighty percent of the Imperium's ships were concentrated in their hands.

These ships had no combat capability, yet they were the veins and lifeblood of the entire Imperium.

But in the end, this Imperium spoke through force, and the chartist fleets—armed with nothing but their crews—held only an observer's seat and the right to speak in the Senate, never the voting power granted to the twelve High Lords.

"If you're here to blame my decisions for grounding the chartist fleets, you can turn around and leave right now."

Udo's tone toward Tull was unusually cold. He remembered that this representative had recently grown suspiciously close to Ecclesiarch Mesring, one of his rivals.

Tull paid no mind to his tone. Instead she stepped closer and said, mysteriously, "Quite the opposite. I've come to invite you into a plan that can save our great Imperium—and yourself along with it."

Udo's attention was caught, just as she'd hoped, and Tull seized the moment to pose a new question.

"What do you think of the Astartes?"

"...Their success is shaking the foundations of a nation that should be ruled by mortals."

He dressed his fear of the Astartes in fine words, wrapping his statement in the pretense of the Emperor's will.

Udo didn't believe they'd dare attack the High Lords on Terra—so long as the High Lords remained on Terra, they could rest easy.

But their mere presence diluted the Senatorum Imperialis's influence. Now that even Mars had tilted toward the Ultimate Wall, Udo didn't dare imagine what might come next.

Would these Astartes turn around and pressure them? Or would the High Lords' decrees fail to carry beyond Terra?

Tull's expression showed she'd expected as much. "You fear they'll seize political influence that was never meant to be theirs."

"Isn't it true? Even if they do nothing, simply remaining on Terra lets them sway every decision made here—doesn't that violate the Emperor's own decree that they never involve themselves in politics! They need to be taught a lesson, but now Terra needs them to solve this crisis of all things!"

"To me, that's no problem at all. We simply need to succeed more than they do. The influence the High Lords lost by relying on the Astartes will return on its own."

The logic was sound. The only question was how to win that success.

Udo looked at her, puzzled, and she explained: "The definition of success is ours to decide. We only need the Imperium's citizens to see that we won this fight without depending on the Astartes."

In the end, it still came down to a military victory, and Udo wondered if Tull had lost her mind. "There are only five million Astra Militarum on Terra."

"Wrong, Commander, wrong.

Tull raised two fingers.

"It's two hundred billion."

That was the number of civilians on Terra.

What do people do when faced with despair? Riot beyond even the Adeptus Arbites's control? Or devote everything they have to some so-called god, begging for a salvation they don't even understand?

On Terra, at least, where the Imperial Creed had put down deep roots, the latter was the overwhelming majority.

The Imperial Creed had spent the weeks since the Attack Moon appeared overhead—without launching an assault—amassing enormous wealth. Its most fervent zealots had even approached the chartist fleets, hoping to trade that fortune for transport ships, so they could raise a crusade army in the Creed's name to strike back at the orks.

Tull had sharp instincts, and she recognized the opportunity at once.

After striking a deal with the Ecclesiarchy Pontiff, she wasted no time seeking out Udo, hoping to bring the Imperial Commander into the fold.

"You have the authority to order Terra's armories opened. Give them each a gun, and they'll become the Emperor's finest soldiers."

With her words, she painted Udo a glorious picture: the crusade army would valiantly carve out a landing zone on the Attack Moon, and afterward they'd use that momentum to demand the Astartes join the fight, claiming it was the perfect opportunity.

Once victory was won, Pontiff Mesring would put his silver tongue to work, dressing the whole campaign up as a triumph achieved through the High Lords' decisive action.

"Just imagine it—by then, you'll be a hero of the entire Imperium. No one will dare openly defy your will. Even the Astartes will bow before you!"

Under Tull's passionate persuasion, Udo's mind began to turn.

It was an invitation impossible to refuse.

Udo didn't regard the Attack Moon—silent for two full months without launching any assault—as a real threat.

To him, these crude, backward orks had simply exploited a window when the Imperium was busy with a new campaign and its home defenses were thin.

Their threat was temporary, solvable with sufficient force. But the Astartes, who might seize the High Lords' authority, posed a long-term danger that could shake his very foundations.

The Senatorum Imperialis had only existed for a thousand years. They needed to constantly reinforce the High Lords' authority, rooting their rule into every vein of this Imperium reborn after the Great Heresy.

From that perspective, these savage greenskins were, in Udo's eyes, far less threatening than the Ultimate Wall, which had just scored a major victory on Mars.

What he needed to consider was how to gather forces capable of defeating the orks under his own banner, bringing victory to the Imperium in his name. Tull's proposal fit his ambitions perfectly.

If the Astartes joined the fight, things would unfold exactly as she'd described.

If the Astartes didn't join, they could condemn them for squandering the opportunity, stripping away their influence instead.

Most importantly, he hadn't seen Drakan Vangorich in a long while. With the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum no longer lurking at his side, Udo felt he finally had room to act.

Juskina Tull.

This woman saw the crisis as a stepping stone upward. She'd tied her fate to the Ecclesiarchy Pontiff's, and if the operation succeeded, both she and the Creed would undoubtedly rise further within the Senatorum Imperialis.

But then, wasn't that a win for everyone involved?

"Those propertyless masses will pave our victory with their blood.

"The Imperium's victory," Udo corrected.

The two of them shared a knowing smile, and the order to muster the crusade army went out across Terra through Mesring.

"The Emperor's holy light shall shield every soul who marches to death! Your sacrifice will kindle Terra's dawn!"

"The cowardly fall forever into the void, but the souls of martyrs shall rise to the Golden Throne!"

Imperial Creed Priests stood in every square on Terra, their voices booming through massive vox-amplifiers, echoing between the crowded slums and the spires of the hive cities.

Burning incense and chanted litanies mingled into a suffocating wave of fervor. Ragged civilians looked up at the priests, their eyes lit with nothing but faith-fueled madness.

At Udo's order, the armories within the hive cities were thrown open, and countless civilians poured in to seize the weapons stored there.

The moment their hands closed around lasguns, their fear of the orks transformed into a strange new confidence.

"For the Emperor!"

The record-keepers didn't even bother to write down their names. Here, a life was just a meaningless number.

By rough count, roughly thirty million joined the crusade army. Had ship numbers not been limited, there would have been even more.

Udo pulled a handful of Astra Militarum veterans in to command them, while order within the crusade army was maintained by Imperial Creed Priests and the soldiers' own faith in the Emperor.

They were packed into the spaceport like sardines. There, the chartist ships that had sat idle above Terra due to the war finally, after so long, opened their cargo bays and swallowed the civilians whole.

Ships once meant for hauling grain and ore had been crudely refitted into troop transports. No void shields. No gravity stabilizers. No blast bulkheads. Thirty million people crammed into depressurized tin cans, hauled like cargo.

Their bodies pressed against one another, enduring thick, metal-tasting air. Their only comfort was the hollow promise the Priests broadcast to every soul through the vox-array:

"The Emperor shields you! Your deaths shall be pure! Your souls shall find eternity beside the Golden Throne!"

Nearly ten thousand chartist ships that had lingered above Terra began to depart. Their overtaxed engines roared, and they slowly broke orbit, heading toward the Attack Moon looming above.

It was the first offensive humanity had attempted since the Attack Moon appeared above Terra nearly two months earlier.

The Attack Moon seemed to have been waiting for this very moment—it stirred for the first time, trembling.

Moments later, ork gunfire tore through the silent void, streams of green energy pouring down like a violent storm, all aimed at the chartist ships.

Ork gunnery was notoriously poor, but landing troops meant advancing straight into it regardless.

When human tactics themselves compensated for the orks' bad aim, the landing turned, without question, into a massacre.

The leading chartist ships were torn apart by ork fire, bursting open like overripe fruit and spilling whole shiploads of crusaders into the void.

The chartist ships had no way to fight back, but sheer numbers were their only ally.

Urged on by the Priests, the remaining transports plowed through frozen corpses and twisted metal wreckage drifting in the void, plunging without hesitation toward the Attack Moon's surface.

In the end, only a third of the transports managed to land.

Survivors staggered out of the ships, only to be greeted not by the Emperor's glory, but by a deafening ork war cry.

"WAAAGH!!!"

The Green Tide surged in from every direction. The civilians froze, their hands trembling around their guns, their earlier fervor curdling back into hesitation.

Fortunately, the Astra Militarum officers Udo had assigned earned their keep. Facing the wavering civilians, they began shouting simple commands.

"Raise! Load! Aim! Fire!"

As more and more voices took up the chant, the mechanical repetition cut through the chaos.

A million arms rose as one, fingers pulling triggers, the whine of lasguns merging into a crimson downpour that cut down the foremost orks.

Seeing the orks fall reignited the civilians' morale. They found their courage again and kept firing.

These young greenskins, lacking heavy fire support and having charged in eagerly just for a scrap, took the brunt of it and were soon wiped out entirely by the crusade army.

The civilians understood nothing of tactics, and had no idea the orks were even now bringing up far more terrifying weapons.

They began to cheer, seduced into believing the orks could be crushed easily by their devout faith. The Priests seized the moment to issue a new round of orders.

"Do not think, do not pause—the Emperor's will is to advance! Hesitation is blasphemy! Delay is treason!"

Fear dissolved in the fever of zealotry, and the crowd became a torrent of madness.

They had no formation, no tactics, but a wave of ten million bodies overwhelmed the orks through sheer numbers on this stretch of the battlefield. Wave after wave surged forward, and for a moment they actually routed the greenskins.

The anti-air defenses over this stretch of sky began to weaken, purchased with the crusade army's sacrifice, and the Astra Militarum troops Udo had folded in even managed to land some Leman Russ tanks and Chimera transports on the Attack Moon.

With armored reinforcements bolstering the assault, the crusaders seemed unstoppable.

Given the circumstances, even the most hard-bitten officers grew optimistic about the outcome.

The Astra Militarum officer Udo had ordered to lead the army, previously grim-faced, now beamed as he transmitted his report back to Terra.

"My unit advances unopposed. Repeat, my unit advances unopposed!"

Udo's fist slammed against the observation deck's railing, his knuckles white with excitement.

The situation on the Attack Moon was clear enough. Though the crusade army's advance cost tens of thousands of casualties every minute, the momentum, at least, genuinely belonged to them.

The Ultimate Wall needed only a little over a day to reach Terra from Mars—the crusade army could easily hold out until the Astartes arrived.

Udo hadn't expected the battle on the Attack Moon to go this smoothly, but he knew exactly what to do next.

"Get me a channel to the Ultimate Wall immediately! Tell those arrogant Astartes—either march now and claim the victory, or bear the shame of cowardice forever!"

A choir of astropaths carried the message to the Ultimate Wall at once. It was finally laid before the reconvened Ultimate Wall leadership—and before Vangorich.

Vangorich, already furious over the raising of the crusade army, was near the end of his patience. He turned to Lin, wanting to know what the Ultimate Wall would choose to do.

The crusade army's success was only temporary. Without the Ultimate Wall's support, their defeat was merely a matter of time.

But the civilians who'd soon be torn apart by orks had already become the High Lords' perfect bargaining chip.

If the Ultimate Wall refused to attack, it would mean standing by while the Emperor's flock died for nothing; if it joined the fight, the laurels of victory would end up on the heads of the High Lords of Terra regardless.

Even Koorland recognized the awful position they were in, and he too turned to Lin—who, for his part, looked entirely at ease.

"My suggestion is that the Ultimate Wall does not move."

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