Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Three days after the Proletarian Crusade’s defeat, the Ultimate Wall’s fleet set sail from Mars orbit.

Lin wouldn’t have minded a little more preparation, but according to Occam’s reports, the Crusade forces still clinging to the surface were on the verge of total annihilation.

Occam had also passed along a rather interesting piece of intelligence: “The orks are evolving.”

“Evolving? What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. If you don’t want to land and find every single greenskin punching above weight like a boss unit, you’d better move fast.”

Just as Evil Sunz had said, the Attack Moon sitting idle was an insult to humanity.

When the impatient High Lords had rushed the Proletarian Crusade into the meat grinder, the orks’ success had been proven in human blood.

That set every ork howling with a deeply satisfying “WAAAGH!” Every greenskin mind sharpened with cunning, every muscle swelled with new strength — even the Gretchin could now trade a few blows with a grown man.

If the Crusade forces still tying down part of the orks’ attention were allowed to be wiped out, the Ultimate Wall would be left facing the full, empowered ork horde.

They had no choice but to strike now.

Occam had reached the surface by hiding inside a derelict hull, smuggled in among the ‘asteroid belt’ formed from destroyed merchant ships.

Clever as the method was, it offered no template for a large-scale operation.

No shortcut would work on a battlefield like this. They would have to meet the orks head-on, blade to blade.

Command of the fleet was handed to Matt Horner.

Since no one wanted to give command to Lansung, this young commander was the only officer on Lin’s side with real experience leading a battle fleet.

Not everyone got the honor of commanding the Phalanx, but Horner seemed perfectly calm about it.

Under his orders, the Ultimate Wall advanced in three waves — the Phalanx out front, shielding the whole fleet; the battleships forming the second line; and the transports of the third wave carrying the real objective of this assault.

The orks on the Attack Moon had no idea the Ultimate Wall was closing in, but the Phalanx’s sheer size guaranteed there would be no stealth to this attack.

Watching something nearly its own size bearing down on it, the Attack Moon — which had been contentedly dumping garbage onto Terra — jolted awake.

The orks aboard howled and swung their guns around, and the countless gun batteries covering the moon’s surface began concentrating fire on the incoming fleet.

Only a handful of those guns posed any real threat to the fleet. With the Phalanx out front, most of the incoming fire was intercepted by the ancient warship’s void shields.

The fleet returned fire in kind, but those shots were blocked by the orks’ bubble shield.

In this first exchange, neither the Ultimate Wall’s fleet nor the Attack Moon could do the other any real harm.

Lin had never intended to blow the moon apart with macrocannons and Lances alone. As the Ultimate Wall’s combined fleet traded fire, it also screened the Astra Militarum transports behind it, keeping them intact.

“When can we launch the landing force?” Koorland asked.

“That’s the problem, Lord Koorland. It’s not just the orks — we’re also fighting the wreckage field the Crusade left behind.”

Horner gestured, pulling up the image and zooming in on the merchant ships the orks had destroyed. Tens of thousands of wrecked hulls choked off the launch window for the landing fleet.

The Astra Militarum weren’t Astartes — their landing craft couldn’t punch through that graveyard of ships. But the tens of millions of orks on the Attack Moon had to be fought by the Astra Militarum.

That meant they had to cut a path through the debris field themselves.

“We advance,” Koorland said without hesitation, making the call.

Horner nodded, and the destroyer squadrons supplied by the Mechanicus moved out first.

Serving as escort vessels for the main fleet, they carried high-yield torpedoes — the plan was to blast the wreckage field into fine debris first, clearing a path for the fleet.

But what they faced wasn’t the crippled Attack Moon they’d fought over Port Sanctus. This one was fully intact, and it wasn’t about to let them approach its orbit that easily.

Realizing their gun batteries lacked the accuracy to destroy the fleet, the orks unleashed their real trump card.

Lin caught the anomaly on the Attack Moon: across its countless craters, several writhing ribbons of energy began to rise.

The clustered ork structures looked like they might be some kind of magnetic storm coils, but their attack wasn’t electromagnetic — it was gravitic.

Lin shouted a warning: “Gravity weapons! Watch for the gravity wells they’re releasing!”

An invisible force field closed around the human fleet like the claw of some great beast.

The destroyer squadrons out front took the worst of it — most of them twisted and buckled under the unseen tearing force, their armor plating peeling away like fragile tinfoil, until they came apart in silent explosions.

The battleships behind them fared little better; even the Phalanx began listing slightly to one side.

Horner had no choice but to order the fleet to adjust engine output on both flanks to maintain balance, but that sacrifice in maneuverability meant it would be much harder to dodge ork fire from here on out.

Yet the fleet didn’t retreat — it pressed forward. Horner, who had known the orks had this trick up their sleeve, called out loudly: “Give them more pressure!”

A handful of cruisers, barely able to withstand the gravitic pull, pushed ahead. These ships had already been earmarked as sacrifices in the plan, crewed only by enough hands to keep them limping forward.

The orks clearly had no idea. Their attention locked onto the charging cruisers, which they now judged the greater threat, and they ramped up the output of their gravity weapons.

The gravity beams became whips, lashing across the cruisers’ midsections. Their void shields failed instantly, bow and stern folding like paper before a horrific chain of secondary explosions tore through them.

The destruction shook everyone who watched it, but Horner had already gotten what he wanted from those ships’ sacrifice.

“Their overuse of the gravity weapons has dropped their shield output. We push now, all at once! Phalanx, ready the guns!”

The Phalanx, silent until now, had spent this whole time channeling every scrap of energy into its main batteries. At Horner’s command, the Nova Cannon finally found its outlet.

“Fire! Let’s grind them to dust and burn everything to ash!”

Whatever conventional firepower the poorly-maintained Phalanx lacked, the Nova Cannon more than made up for in this moment.

A blazing, massive beam of light tore through the void, streaking straight for the Attack Moon. The light was so intense that people on Terra swore they’d seen a second sun.

A moment later, the beam struck the orks’ bubble shield.

At first, the ork void shield rippled like a pond hit by a thrown stone — but the Nova Cannon’s tremendous energy quickly turned those ripples into a boiling vortex.

Greenskin technicians howled as they dumped more ‘fuel’ into the energy core, but it did nothing to help.

As the bubble shield collapsed inward for an instant, a blinding ring of energy pulse swept out across the entire Attack Moon along with the shattered shield.

“The ork void shield has overloaded,” Lin announced to everyone.

Only overloaded — not destroyed. The shield generator was intact. Taking advantage of the window while the orks rebooted their shield, the larger ships used their Lances to bombard the Attack Moon from a safer distance.

But with the bubble shield down, the orks could pour everything into their gravity weapons without restraint. Even without closing the distance further, the gravitic force soon grew unbearable for the battleships.

At this range, human accuracy wasn’t much better than the orks’. After two rounds of coordinated volleys, Horner realized they had no chance of destroying the greenskins’ gravity weapons before the bubble shield came back online.

He turned to Lin with a look asking for help.

Lin gave a slight nod and gave the order: “As planned. Send the Iron Knights and the Black Templars in first.”

The Dreadclaw that had once landed on Mars would see action once again.

At this range, launching Dreadclaw was technically beyond their effective range — but they didn’t need engines. The orks’ own gravity weapons would drag the pods straight toward the Attack Moon.

The drop pods’ propulsion only needed to make minor course corrections, ensuring they’d come down close to the gravity weapon emplacements.

The heavy armor of the Anvillus-pattern Dreadclaw and their melta cutters blasted open the last breach in the wreckage field.

Covered by a swarm of decoy pods, most of the Dreadclaw punched through the orks’ orbital defenses and touched down on the surface.

Orks already waiting on the ground swarmed in and surrounded the Dreadclaw.

But the Dreadclaw’ advantage over standard drop pods was their capacity to deliver heavier weapons.

The pod’s hatch dropped open — and the orks, hoping for a good brawl with the tin cans they loved so much, instead found themselves staring down the cold barrel of a siege tank. High-explosive shells launched by electromagnetic rail sent brilliant sparks blooming through the ork horde.

Boom!

The weight-reduced siege tanks could now be dropped alongside the Dreadclaw’ large-scale pods.

Paired with the Dreadclaw’ own Deathwind weapon systems, they carved out a clear patch of ground, letting the Astartes land safely on the surface of the Attack Moon.

“They’re no threat! Even greenskins will tremble before our assault!”

Magneric leapt out of the first wave of landing pods.

This veteran had volunteered for the mission himself. With his power claw, he churned a string of ork boyz into green pulp. “Attack! Bring the Emperor’s punishment down on these xenos filth! Brothers, kill every last one of them!”

Koorland found it hard to believe he and these men shared the same gene-father in the Sons of Dorn. But their zealotry proved its worth in this fight.

The siege tanks, able to keep pace with the Astartes’ rapid assault, became the greatest asset of the entire push. The siege-savvy Iron Knights leaned on their firepower to organize an assault toward the gravity weapon emplacements, quickly punching through a gap.

The Black Templars poured through that gap with a fervor that outstripped even the orks’ own WAAAGH!, cutting down ork technicians and gravity towers alike with their hungry chainswords.

The gravity towers nearest the Ultimate Wall’s side of the field went silent, and the intensity of the gravity field dropped sharply. The Ultimate Wall fleet could finally breathe a little easier.

Not content with just the gravity weapons, the Black Templars and the Iron Knights together threw themselves at the nearby ork anti-air batteries. As those ground-based guns were destroyed, anti-air fire in the region dropped off sharply as well.

The Tech-Priests commanding the Skitarii, led by Urquidex, began assessing the situation.

“Gravity index down forty percent. Anti-air fire reduced. Assessment: conditions met for release of Skitarii drop pods.”

The half-mechanized Skitarii could withstand extreme conditions far better than the Astra Militarum. The Mechanicus fleet Kubik had promised to Lin moved forward and fired off a string of landing torpedoes.

Unlike the Astartes, whose goal was to destroy the gravity weapons, the Mechanicus were aiming for a more open stretch of ground suitable for establishing a beachhead.

These specially-made Mechanicus torpedoes were packed full of Murder Servitors — mindless, purpose-built killing machines. The Tech-Priests had programmed them with a single directive: slaughter every living thing in sight.

Servitors with steam venting from their joints and crimson light burning in their eyes crawled out of the torpedoes and surged toward the nearest orks.

Their combat effectiveness was far below that of the Astartes, and the orks naturally held the upper hand in the fighting.

Lin didn’t care about troops that Mars would want back even if they weren’t lost — that was the arrangement he’d insisted on. Expendable as they were, the Servitors seized the strategic initiative.

They pushed forward, sweeping the ground clear, aiming to carve out a landing zone.

The orks finally sensed something was wrong. What had been a horde simply enjoying the fight now rallied to deal with these machines that clearly had a purpose.

The Gretchin leveled their heavy anti-air guns, and volleys of dakka gunfire tore through the ranks of Servitors. When the last Servitor was cleaved in two by an ork boss’s axe, the ground was already carpeted with metal and gore.

But the Servitors, wiped out to the last unit, had completed their mission — a path to the surface of the Attack Moon now lay open.

With the Black Templars further suppressing anti-air fire around the landing zone, the Astra Militarum’s landing became possible.

“Landing zone established. Astra Militarum may begin deployment.”

The transport ships, previously kept shielded at the rear, now moved forward. Their hatches opened, releasing the first wave of Astra Militarum landing craft. The craft punched through the membrane of the bubble shield, heading straight for the oil-soaked landing zone.

The Attack Moon hadn’t lost its ability to fight back — quite the opposite, it had been enraged.

Though rebooting the void shield and losing part of its gravity weapons had reduced its overall offensive strength, dense swarms of scrap gunboats and previously captured merchant ships surged off the Attack Moon like a hive of angry insects.

These ships were packed with ork boyz, eager to board the Ultimate Wall’s fleet for a close and personal encounter with the tin cans.

Colonel William, commanding the first wave of landing troops, leaned over the side rail of his landing craft. He could even hear the beasts’ excited howls of “WAAAGH!”

That was good news, since orks who boarded the fleet wouldn’t be able to come back down and become obstacles on the ground.

But it was also bad news — he knew they wouldn’t get any further support until the fleet finished clearing out these boarders.

“Our landing zone is at a spot the Crusade landed before! There should still be remnants of Crusade forces nearby!”

He repeated Lin’s intelligence to the Deathless one final time, at full volume, and turned to emphasize it to Neos:

“We need to establish a defensive line immediately, to lay the groundwork for the troops landing after us! Neos, go gather up those Crusade stragglers. We don’t have the numbers — if we’re going to succeed, we need to fold them into our force!”

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