Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Beyreuth looked at Veritus.

The Custodes cared nothing for the squabbles among the High Lords — just as Vangorich had needed to announce his own identity before they’d recognized him as the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, they simply didn’t care who sat in that seat.

Veritus was different. Even Beyreuth had heard the name of this Inquisitor.

Not the name Veritus, of course.

“Sindermann.” The Custodes Captain spoke. “Are you certain you want to do this?”

Vangorich had no idea who Sindermann was. Veritus answered simply: “I’m certain.”

Beyreuth muttered something — it might have been a sigh, or a curse.

He made a gesture, and the Custodes stepped back, yielding up the half-paralyzed Lhaerial.

“I hope you won’t do anything foolish enough to put us at odds.”

“I can promise that. If you’re willing, we could interrogate this Aeldari together.”

The Captain seemed tempted, but a Custodes rushing in with news changed his mind. The messenger leaned close and whispered in his ear:

“The Commander requests you return to the webway to join the fighting as soon as possible. The Aeldari who blew the webway are no longer holding off the Greater Daemons — Chaos has begun pouring into the webway.”

Beyreuth nodded and turned. “You have custody of this xenos now, but we won’t allow anyone else near the Golden Throne. Please leave — this place is about to enter a long lockdown.”

The Custodes issued their eviction order, tossing Lhaerial out of the antechamber before hurrying off.

Unaware of the webway crisis, Vangorich assumed the Custodes cared only for the Emperor and not for the Emperor’s Imperium. Their actions had already made clear they wouldn’t take part in the Beast War, and it left him disappointed.

Veritus, however, understood. “They won’t leave, and they can’t. Before Guilliman went into stasis, he set the Custodes an Edict of Restraint forbidding their deployment as an army beyond the Palace.”

Guilliman, again!

An inexplicable wave of irritation ran through Vangorich, and he changed the subject. “You showed up just in time, Veritus. I thought I wouldn’t get your help at all. But who is Sindermann?”

“I’ve never heard that name.”

“Hearing that only makes me feel like I live in a world ruled by idiots and liars.”

“At least the latter is necessary — the same way the Imperial Truth once was.”

Vangorich knew Veritus’s secret — the man had lived fifteen hundred years and was one of the founders of the Inquisition. He’d once believed he understood this fellow well, but that other name from the Custodes had stirred a new curiosity in him.

Was Sindermann one of his old aliases? Why had he never heard of it?

Combining that with Lin’s request that he keep Veritus around to help form a new Senatorum Imperialis, Vangorich found his suspicion of Veritus deepening.

But Veritus had already begun interrogating the Aeldari Harlequin, so he simply filed the thought away and moved to join the questioning.

“Why should we believe this proof of friendship you speak of?” Veritus asked.

“I carry a token. During your recent civil war, the Primarch Vulkan… er, gave it to our Farseer Ulthran.”

Lhaerial answered. Having taken a savage beating, none of his earlier arrogance remained, and he wasted no time producing a tooth.

Veritus took it and examined it closely. It was indeed the tooth of a Nocturne salamander, inlaid with fine ceremonial gold wire.

“A Nocturne salamander’s tooth. Just as you said. These creatures are only found on the lizardfolk’s homeworld. But how do I know this isn’t a prank — that it really was Vulkan who gave this to your master?”

“You are humanity’s only hope against the orks. We wouldn’t lie about this.”

Vangorich found the claim less than convincing, but Veritus seemed quite satisfied with it:

“Indeed. Only humanity can save this galaxy. There’s only one road to peace — every world bathed in the rule of the God-Emperor!”

Saying that while an Attack Moon still hung over Terra?

Lhaerial found it ironic but didn’t dare object, and went on to explain. “This tooth will guide you to the Emperor’s eighteenth son, Vulkan, Lord of Rathalos. Amid this ork crisis, he has already returned somewhere in the galaxy, and he will lead you through this calamity.”

A Primarch.

With every Primarch gone from the Imperium for one reason or another, news of a Primarch’s whereabouts was naturally compelling.

“How is this guidance to be used?” That was what Vangorich cared about more.

“I’ll deliver it into your Emperor’s hands myself.”

“Are you joking? He can’t even get up.”

“I can use psychic power to make contact with his mind — if you can only get me before the Golden Throne.”

Vangorich glanced back at the entrance to the Golden Throne, where the Custodes who had just forbidden anyone from approaching still stood guard. He knew it was impossible.

He pressed Lhaerial again, but the Aeldari insisted this was the only way.

Veritus shook his head regretfully. “I’m grateful for the intelligence on Vulkan — I’ll have the Inquisition begin searching for word of him. But your usefulness ends here.”

He waved for his men to execute Lhaerial, and Lhaerial hurriedly pulled a black stone dagger from inside his robes.

“Actually, I have another task. I need to deliver this dagger to someone.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. The Farseer said I’d understand once I reached the Attack Moon.”

“The Attack Moon? Hmph. Just an excuse to escape.”

Veritus remained unmoved, but Vangorich’s gaze had been drawn to the dagger.

He felt a faint pull toward it. He’d never believed in fate, but something told him this dagger would be the key to defeating the ork warlord on the Attack Moon.

“We should keep him alive,” he suggested.

“Vangorich, I’m the one who saved this Aeldari from the Custodes. His life is mine to dispose of.”

“I trust you don’t want to find yourself at odds with the Officio Assassinorum.”

Veritus shot him a startled look. He had his own plans for the whole Terra situation, and he realized Vangorich’s resolve went beyond what he’d expected.

He considered a moment, then handed Lhaerial over to the Grand Master.

“I hope we’ll be allies — provided you don’t do anything foolish.”

Vangorich didn’t answer. He simply took the Aeldari and left.

“Will you take me to the Attack Moon?” Lhaerial asked weakly.

“I will — but only after the Ultimate Wall launches its assault.”

The High Lords’ threats against the Ultimate Wall had collapsed on their own once the Proletarian Crusade failed.

All their grievances against the Astartes had been premised on the Proletarian Crusade successfully establishing a beachhead. But once the Crusade failed, it was the High Lords who found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place.

Some of the High Lords had already quietly reached out to the Ultimate Wall, begging them to march as soon as possible and resolve Terra’s crisis. They’d even offered up bargaining chips they thought precious.

Of course, Koorland had no use for such chips, but he too wanted the Siege of Terra ended quickly.

After all, the Imperial Fists’ duty was to defend Terra. Watching the High Lords hop about like clowns gave him a certain grim satisfaction, but he was more concerned that letting the Attack Moon linger would tarnish the honor passed down from their gene-father.

— though Dorn himself seemed in no hurry at all.

“This seems a bit different from fifteen hundred years ago, doesn’t it?”

“What I guarded was a Terra with my father in it.”

“And now?”

Dorn fell silent.

His silence didn’t surprise Lin.

This was the first exchange between them since Dorn had returned to the Phalanx.

After returning, Dorn had vanished from sight — not until the Attack Moon began its assault on Terra did he, wanting to speak with Lin, have the Phalanx guide Lin to meet him.

But Dorn truly wasn’t much for conversation; the exchange had barely begun before it went cold.

Fortunately, they still had plenty to discuss. Lin changed the subject. “Let’s talk about you. We ought to be a bit more open with each other by now, don’t you think?”

Khorne’s greed for Dorn had already given Lin some idea of what was going on.

Dorn no longer hid it, admitting frankly: “During the Battle of the Iron Cage, I lost something of myself… something more essential. That battle was a scheme Perturabo set in motion, but I had no choice but to answer it.”

“He can do that?” Lin was a bit surprised, but quickly recalled that Perturabo’s own Warp-essence had been stolen by Fulgrim. “Ah…”

No wonder — that shady bastard really does learn fast.

The Battle of the Iron Cage had been a duel between two Primarchs with a long-standing grudge, and also a mark of the Imperium’s rebirth after the Great Heresy.

Dorn had once been the Codex Astartes’s most powerful opponent. Once his Legion was gravely weakened, nothing stood in the way of Guilliman implementing the Codex.

“I waited many years. Every day of those years, I went to see my father once. But in the end, I realized I had to accept an entirely new Imperium — one without the Emperor, and even without us.”

Under those circumstances, even Dorn had to admit that Guilliman’s seemingly ambitious vision was best for the Imperium. But by then, he had already become the banner of the Codex’s opposition.

Just as, had Horus never been turned to pudding, the Astartes-Supremacists — resentful at being pushed out of the center of power — would still have risen in rebellion.

The conflict between the Codex’s supporters and opponents had long since become irreconcilable. Dorn had to personally break the opposition’s military backbone himself, or the Imperium would be dragged into a new civil war.

That was the true reason the Battle of the Iron Cage began.

“Even if that battle meant nothing, it was still better than letting our sons die in a new Imperial civil war.”

That would explain why Dorn had become what he was now.

The Codex Astartes might not be the sole one to blame, but it certainly shares plenty of the responsibility.

In the end, it was Guilliman’s fault after all.

A Primarch’s physiology lay far beyond ordinary comprehension; once wounded, conventional means couldn’t heal them.

But as long as they still possessed their Warp-essence, they would heal on their own — like the Lion, sleeping in the Rock and set to slumber for another nine thousand years yet.

Having lost his essence, Dorn could no longer do that.

He was still Dorn, but no longer a Primarch. When his body too was destroyed in a boarding action after the Iron Cage, he became forever bound within a sarcophagus.

But he could still use a Psycho-Frame to pilot a Gundam…

Lin had already confirmed that the Psycho-Frame depended on the size of its user’s projection in the Warp. Dorn’s ability proved he still had a projection there — even if that projection might hold nothing of his essence anymore, he remained a qualified vessel.

Perhaps, if he ever reclaimed his Warp-essence, he could become Primarch Dorn again.

But if he kept fighting, he was far more likely to be caught by Khorne before ever reclaiming his essence — forcibly stuffed with some Dog-Head’s Warp-concept and twisted into a Daemon Primarch of a different sort entirely.

Having worked out the whole chain of cause and effect, Lin felt a pang of regret. He knew that even if the Psycho-Frame could restore some of Dorn’s combat power, Dorn wouldn’t get the chance to keep fighting forever.

Khorne had never had any shame. If he truly got desperate and sent eighty-eight Khorne Greater Daemons down to snatch Dorn away, no Psycho-Frame would help.

It would take a certified proper god-mecha, or a Mazinger Z, to hold that kind of line.

Sadly, the latter had no chance of ever materializing in Warhammer.

Dorn seemed to have long since made peace with his own fate. Once Lin had digested all this, Dorn continued, “How do you plan to assault the Attack Moon without me?”

The question wasn’t idle.

In fact, ever since the Proletarian Crusade’s failure, the Phalanx had detected an anomalous surge in Waaagh! Energy on the Attack Moon.

The reason was unknown, but the orks on this Attack Moon were certainly far stronger than those on the one at Port Sanctus.

They had four million troops, but numbers meant little against orks who could manipulate terrain itself. Deploying forces on the Attack Moon for a grinding stalemate would never be enough, no matter how many lives were poured in.

“I won’t drag this into a stalemate on the Attack Moon. What’s left of the Proletarian Crusade is still fighting there, so the orks won’t be able to throw their full attention at us. Once the Phalanx leads the fleet in destroying enough of their anti-air defenses, our main force will land as a vanguard in the Attack Moon’s flatter frontier zones — terrain that’s harder for the orks to twist — to further split their attention.”

“But our real killing blow will be the Astartes. Your sons will serve as a decapitation force, striking deep into the Attack Moon while the rest of the army holds the orks’ attention, and taking the ork warlord’s head directly.”

The Attack Moon at Port Sanctus had already proven that the ork warlord was the key holding an Attack Moon together. Kill him, and this scientifically impossible armed satellite would collapse on its own.

“Warp teleportation won’t work on the Attack Moon.”

Dorn stated his objection bluntly, but Lin just confidently patted his own chest.

“Relax, I’ve got what it takes to pull this off.”

Over several days of research, he’d increasingly come to appreciate the subtle uses of the Void Dragon’s power.

Lin’s golden finger let him reproduce technology from other universes within Warhammer 40K, more or less through gut instinct and guesswork. But such technology often didn’t sit well here, hemmed in by this restriction or that.

The classic example was Lin’s Energy Shield. Its prototype came from the Protoss in StarCraft, where every unit carried a unique ion shield infused with its own psychic power.

Lin had reproduced the technology long ago, but he’d stalled once he brought it into Warhammer, unable to refine it any further.

The Void Dragon’s power gave him a fresh perspective and new understanding, letting him further adapt and optimize the technology in a way suited to Warhammer.

Psychic power wasn’t the Star God’s specialty, but the boost it offered still let Lin glimpse the possibility of improving — even upgrading — the technology.

The details still needed working out, but Lin could already do what a certain unnamed Bishop had once done: draw on psychic power stored within a soulstone to project shields remotely. He’d also hastened to refine the teleportation technology that had let him escape Magma City earlier.

Now, by channeling psychic power through a soulstone and setting up a few teleport beacons, he could use this safer teleportation to move a substantial number of troops to key positions, unaffected by the ork waaagh field.

Occam and his Excommunicated warband would scout out the path to the ork warlord, and with his help, the remaining Astartes of the Ultimate Wall would secure the success of the decapitation strike.

If all went well, they’d finish the campaign against the Attack Moon in short order, leaving the rest of their effort for putting Terra back in order.

Worth noting, as the Warp storms weakened, two more Chapters had arrived at Terra.

The first was called the Iron Knights, whose Chapter Master was Malfons. Though the Chapter had been founded during the Second Founding, it wasn’t a well-known one.

The second could hardly be called a Chapter at all — it was an expeditionary force of the Black Templars, led by Dreadnought Marshal Magneric.

He was an unusual Marshal, and it was precisely because of that unusual status that he’d refused High Marshal Bohemond’s call to muster, instead bringing his expeditionary force back to Terra and delivering the latest news of the Black Templars to the Ultimate Wall.

[Author’s Note: Even though the Lord Regent has gone off to cosplay Sleeping Beauty, legends of the Lord Regent are still everywhere out there.]