Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

After a few days of favorable treatment, the Astra Militarum sank once more into the kind of grinding, wretched warfare they knew all too well.

They spent lives holding back the orks’ advance, buying precious time for Lin. Meanwhile, the elite Deathless troops they’d been longing for had quietly returned aboard the Phalanx.

“Is the intel solid?” Lin asked Occam again, seeking confirmation.

“Of course. A good portion of their elites have already been pulled away to besiege the landing zone. But there are still plenty of them left here.”

The intelligence Occam sent back showed that there were no longer any ork Titans like Gargants around the ork palace.

But the clustered Killa Kans and the hulking, muscle-bound ork boyz were nothing to scoff at either. A conservative estimate put the ork elites gathered there at over fifty thousand.

Lin mused, “We need to gather enough elite forces to catch them off guard, and finish the decapitation strike while they’re still reeling…”

Looking at the assembled Deathless and the fifteen hundred Astartes behind him, Lin didn’t think that would be a problem.

He took out the soulstone in his hand, and the Librarians of each Chapter converged on him, understanding at once.

The reason a soulstone had to serve as the conduit was that the psychic energy within it was stable enough.

In Warhammer, so-called psykers were essentially valves opening onto the Warp; the magnitude of their psychic potential determined how much of that flow they could draw from it.

By the terminology of Lin’s homeland, these psykers were merely mediums borrowing psychic power from the great wellspring of the Warp. Aside from something like the orks’ localized network, nowhere in the entire Warhammer universe did psychic power arise purely from self-cultivation — there was no such thing as a small wellspring born from within oneself.

Training for psykers here was only about learning methods of using psychic power — pursuing more skillful and safer application of it — not, as in other settings, raising one’s overall ceiling through cultivation.

Without the great wellspring of the Warp, psykers in Warhammer would have nothing special about them at all.

The upside was that if you were lucky enough, you could naturally stir up phenomena beyond ordinary imagining from birth. The downside was that your safety hinged entirely on the wellspring itself — and when the Warp turned into enough of a cesspit, that gift stopped being luck and became a curse.

Still, Warhammer did have methods of purifying psychic power, and the soulstone was one of them.

The Aeldari were born psykers, their souls bound inseparably to the Warp. When Slaanesh set its sights on their souls, yet they still had to depend on the psychic power that connected them to the Warp, the soulstone was born of necessity.

This device, capable of blocking Slaanesh’s prying gaze, let the soul within it safely draw on a portion of its psychic power. The soulstone forming the main framework of an Eldar craftworld operated the same way.

The Aeldari reverently called them the Souls of the Ancestors. In Lin’s hands, though, they were nothing more than batteries.

Even someone with his constitution could tap the psychic power of the soul inside a soulstone through it — what an excellent medium it made.

But Lin had no intention of using the Aeldari soulstone that had nearly run dry during the great escape from Magma City. The one he meant to use now was a different one.

One belonging to Magos Viktor.

Say what you will, but Vashtorr truly was second to none when it came to swindling and counterfeiting shoddy goods.

Lin had tortured Viktor for hours trying to extract intelligence about Vashtorr, but the man had stubbornly kept his silence. In the end, Lin had to search him personally, and only then, on Viktor — whose synthetic vocal cords had long since been removed — did he find this Vashtorr-forged soulstone.

That explained how the Deputy Forge Director had managed to come back from the dead.

The Aeldari soulstone’s babbling, half-mad murmurs had bothered Lin quite a bit. With no time to sort out exactly what was going on with that Aeldari, he tested Vashtorr’s counterfeit soulstone and found its effect on teleportation nearly identical to the genuine article. So he set that Aeldari matter aside for now, planning to use Viktor’s soul to blaze the trail first.

Soulstone in hand, Lin stood at the center of the main force with the Librarians around him.

Gathered here were the Deathless elites, Urquidex who commanded the Death-Bound Warriors, and Koorland, Admidel, and Thorne — the forces who would enter the battlefield via Protoss teleportation.

Facing him was Issaga, Chapter Master of the Castigators. This Librarian, now clad in Terminator power armour, would not be taking part in Lin’s operation.

Because the first wave of teleported forces still had to enter through conventional Warp transit.

He shot Lin a questioning glance, and upon receiving a nod of confirmation, began channeling his psychic power.

Fighting against both the Warp’s surging tides and the orks’ power of ‘I reckon’ at once was no easy feat — fortunately, on the other end of the teleport beacon stood a Thousand Sons Sorcerer of exceptional skill.

The flare of psychic power the Sorcerer unleashed let him lock onto the teleport beacon Occam had planted deep within the ork palace, amid the sea of the Warp. He drew a deep breath and, with the aid of a Navigator and astropaths, wrapped his psychic power around the hundred unyielding Terminators beside him.

“Teleportation initiated!”

A burst of azure psychic light flared, and two hundred Terminators crossed the aether sea in a manner beyond description.

They descended upon the teleport beacon amid the reek of ozone and crackling arcs of electricity — landing right in front of an ork weirdboy who had sensed the psychic flare and come to investigate.

Though there were plenty of ion weapons and meltas to go around, the production lines for Terminators weren’t under the Fabricator General’s control. These hundred Terminators were the last of what the Sons of Dorn — who had suffered such heavy losses in the Beast War — could scrape together.

When these Terminators, painted in a riot of colors, appeared before the orks, even the thick-skulled greenskins couldn’t help but freeze for a moment.

“What humies? Since when!”

Before he could unleash his psychic power, the Terminators’ storm bolters had already spat out deadly tongues of fire.

Bolt rounds exploded amid the ork mob, splattering green flesh and blood. Issaga surged forward first, smashing an ork boy’s skull with his massive fist.

The Terminators followed close behind, power fists and bolters tearing open a bloody gap. Ork roars mingled with Terminator battle cries, and the palace corridor turned instantly into a maelstrom of slaughter.

The boyz here were quickly wiped out, but Issaga knew they couldn’t set up the special teleport beacon Lin had given them right here. The force about to be teleported in numbered in the thousands, and they needed to find somewhere more open.

He led the Terminators fighting their way out to a plaza on the outskirts.

The orks, sensing something was wrong, had already begun massing. Issaga frowned — these orks, who now understood what discipline meant, were reacting far faster than he’d expected.

“Deploy the special teleport beacon!” he ordered.

The teleportation device was set in place. Lin, drawing the beacon signal from the soulstone, joined with several Librarians to activate the teleport. Light enveloped every one of them — but it wasn’t finished instantly.

Protoss teleportation technology was safe, but it required shaping. It would take time yet before their physical anchoring was complete.

Issaga noticed faint, blurry silhouettes forming in the air. He knew they’d have to hold on a little longer.

“We must ensure the teleport completes smoothly — prepare to meet the enemy!”

His voice stayed calm, but his warriors could feel the pressure spike. Out in the open now, they faced not only the ork boyz but Killa Kans as well.

Bolter fire had limited effect against Killa Kans, while the Kans’ heavy weapons could tear straight through Terminator armor.

“Hold ten more seconds,” Lin told him over the comms.

Ten seconds.

Some Terminators, having emptied their bolter magazines, charged in for melee, but a Killa Kan swung its massive chainsaw blade and cleaved one Terminator trying to stop it clean in half.

Five seconds.

The Terminators providing fire support from behind were also assailed by an ork weirdboy. A bolt of psychic lightning crashed down, wrapping one Terminator in crackling arcs — the flesh inside his armor charred instantly. Still standing, he used the last of his strength to pull the bolter’s trigger, blasting the weirdboy’s head into fragments.

Three seconds.

Every Terminator had run dry of ammunition. With no time to reload, they had nothing left but their own flesh to hold the teleport beacon at all costs.

One second.

—Then, the world caught fire.

The psychic power within the soulstone poured forth alongside a burst of blue light, and Lin’s body abruptly solidified into being.

Behind him, five hundred Deathless marines, Chapter Librarians, and Astartes descended like a storm!

The whine of Astartes chainswords snapped the charging ork boyz to their senses, but a volley of bolt rounds sent them off to meet Gork and Mork before they could even react.

The Killa Kans tried to press their size advantage and rampage through the lines, but what met them instead was the shadow of a Tiantu-class Titan.

A height fully double their own left the howling Gretchin drivers inside frozen in shock.

Kuber gave them no time to react. He plucked a Kan straight off the ground, leveled the autocannon in his hand at its cockpit, and pulverized the driver along with the Kan itself in full view of every ork present.

The orks who’d been advancing recklessly behind the cover of their Kans suddenly sobered up.

Koorland drew his power sword, meaning to announce the start of the decapitation strike, but Lin stopped him.

“It’s time for your speech.”

After returning to the Phalanx, Lin had said he’d write Koorland a speech. That speech was now placed in Koorland’s hands.

“Now, of all times?”

Lin insisted, “It matters.”

“Fine.” Koorland drew a deep breath and turned to face all the Sons of Dorn.

“My brothers, hear me! Time is short. Beneath this moon lies everything our race and our civilization has managed to preserve through the fires of war! Trust one another, unite your wills, and let this battle be immortal — we will be remembered forever!”

Something called fighting spirit was kindled. The Black Templars were the first to be stirred, and Lancelot — who had stood at Koorland’s side all this while — was the first to surge forward.

He had once been the Black Templars representative Bohemond assigned to the Ultimate Wall, but after Magneric arrived with his expeditionary force, that role had become less important.

When he asked to join this boarding action as a common warrior, Koorland didn’t refuse.

“For the Emperor!” he bellowed, swinging his chainsword down onto an ork and drawing back the curtain on this boarding-and-decapitation assault.

“For Dorn, for the Emperor!”

Even though the orks holding this position were elites, the Astartes — fired up and superbly equipped — were far more than they could handle.

As the second and third waves of teleportation arrived one after another, the decapitation force — the gathered elite of the entire Ultimate Wall — smashed the ork formation apart and seized the entrance to the ork palace.

With the nearby anti-air defenses cleared out, even larger reinforcements could now join the battle by airdrop, beyond just teleportation.

Was it really humie troops fighting beneath the palace’s colossal archway now?

The greenskins exchanged glances — even they felt something like humiliation and absurdity at the sight.

The ork bosses roared orders, pulling in forces from elsewhere on the Attack Moon, determined to retake the very heart of their moon.

But the Deathless who’d dropped in were already on the move. These newly arrived forces didn’t all mass at the palace — instead, they formed blocking lines on the outskirts, tying down the orks rushing to reinforce and keeping the greenskins from throwing everything at once into the assault.

The marines at the palace quickly seized the raised platforms on either side, and a web of fire from gauss rifles and heavy gauss cannons sealed off any greenskin who tried to approach.

Siege tanks deployed their stabilizing legs at the palace entrance, heavy hydraulic limbs slamming into the ground with a resounding clang. Their barrels rose slowly, calibrating aim on the surging green tide in the distance.

Ahead of them, the Imperial Fists were piling up scattered wreckage into makeshift cover.

Titans equipped with ion shields, alongside the Death-Bound Warriors under Urquidex’s command, held the very front, screening all the forces behind them and keeping overall casualties to a minimum.

Even with seemingly endless numbers, the ork offensive was ground to a halt against this ironclad wall of defense.

Having sent every Gargant and bomber to fight at the landing zone assault, they had nothing heavier left to throw at this new crisis. The boss in charge of the attack found himself, for the moment, at a loss.

The greenskins began to hesitate. Eager as they were for battle, none of them wanted to be the ones getting slaughtered. Their charges grew disorganized, and some boyz even started shoving each other, trying to push their mates to the front to die first.

If they could keep up supply lines and reinforcements, Lin figured they could hold this position until the end of time.

But their ultimate goal was still decapitation.

Against greenskins, if you couldn’t take the head, it wasn’t really a victory.

As some orks streamed out from inside the palace to attack the defending forces, everyone understood that the greatest threat was still the massive ork warlord who had never once shown himself within the palace.

These orks, grown clever, had their own kind of pride — they didn’t come charging in for a duel the way an ordinary ork boss might. But regardless, that colossal thing lurking deep in the palace would never simply sit by while its fortress fell.

“The real fight is only just beginning.”

Lin summoned the Chapter Masters present and began discussing with them how to assemble the decapitation team.

The simplest solution, naturally, would be to teleport in a big bomb and blow the entire palace sky-high, but that wouldn’t guarantee the ork warlord’s death.

Given how closely tied the ork warlord was to the Attack Moon, they had to be certain of its death.

Most of the forces who’d arrived via teleport still needed to stay outside, holding the gate against ork reinforcements.

Lin could only, while ensuring the perimeter forces stayed sufficient, assemble a decapitation team limited in number but elite enough to have a real chance of success.

Thorne, still weighing on Zebyrean’s earlier betrayal, said, “I’ll stay here. I’ll give up the glory of fighting the ork warlord and count it as the Exemplary Fists’ atonement.”

So command of the perimeter defense forces went to Thorne and Urquidex.

Koorland, leader of the Ultimate Wall, and Librarian Issaga would both bring their First Companies into the decapitation strike. Lancelot of the Black Templars, though he was only one man, was included as well.

Admidel went without saying — while the rank-and-file Soul Drinkers and some of the Felynes stayed behind to hold the line, the veterans of the Second Legion would of course stick to Lin’s side without fail, ensuring his safety.

Beyond them, Lin called out one more man and one beast: “Neos, Evil Sunz!”

Neos brought a squad of marines over. Lin instructed him, “Your job is to mop up the rank-and-file orks and make sure our decapitation operation isn’t interfered with. Can you do that?”

“Of course,” Neos assured him.

“As for Evil Sunz… you’re with me. Your familiarity with them might come in handy.”

Without letting the perimeter line collapse, over three hundred Astartes and more than five hundred marines were pulled out and sent deep into the palace.

Lin stepped through the palace entrance with Evil Sunz. Even though he himself had no reaction to psychic energy, he could still sense the palace pulsing rhythmically, like some living thing.

They were about to face the Beast’s heart.

[Author’s Note: Chapter 76 mentioned that the Deputy Forge Director was revived using a soulstone — if you’re interested, feel free to go back and check.]

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