Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

"Huh?"

Lin had been stifling a yawn — meetings had always bored him — and now his mouth simply stayed open. He stared at Admir in disbelief, but the lieutenant's expression was iron-set, entirely sincere.

"Me? Repair a Dreadnought?" Lin pointed at himself. "Are you serious?"

Hang on — you lot are so destitute you can barely keep your chainblades running, and you're telling me you've actually got a Dreadnought squirrelled away somewhere? I just finished one chainsword. One. And now we're jumping straight to this?

Not that Lin's reaction mattered much here — he was an outsider, and this was hardly his place to be the most surprised person in the room. A Dreadnought was the last resort reserved for veterans whose lives were sliding toward an irreversible end. Being interred in one was a mark of singular honour within any Chapter — or, as these warriors apparently saw it, any Legion.

Though Admir had already resolved to work with Lin, a few hours of acquaintance was nowhere near enough for these Astartes to treat him as one of their own.

And so, the moment Admir announced his decision, he was met with immediate opposition from Lieutenant Vigan and Sergeant Arlo. Even Deputy Aibo — who normally backed Admir without hesitation — looked uncertain.

"Absolutely not." Lieutenant Vigan was clearly a traditionalist. "The interment and awakening of a Dreadnought has always been the exclusive responsibility of a Techmarine. Even Mechanicus Priests seconded from the Forge Worlds have no authority to participate in Dreadnought maintenance — let alone some stranger whose origins we know nothing about!"

Sergeant Arlo's objection was more practical.

"Would it even work? Our Captain has been in the sarcophagus for so long. While Heipa was still alive, he ran the awakening ritual every single day without getting so much as a flicker of response. Admir — do you really trust this outsider that much?"

"Trust has nothing to do with it. As I said — this is our only remaining chance."

Admir leaned forward, his gaze sweeping the room with quiet gravity.

"We have been stranded on this planet for nearly a thousand years. In all that time, this man is the only visitor we have seen from the wider Imperium. If we want any hope of escape, we must seize every possibility that presents itself.

"If we truly stand at a crossroads of fate — a moment that demands we stand united and make a decision together — then why not try to wake our Captain? If Brother Heipa poured years of effort into the awakening rituals and never received any response, then why not try something different?"

"What exactly has that Mechanicus Priest said to you to make you think he's some kind of new possibility? Even if he is trustworthy, how would his awakening ritual be any different from Heipa's?" Lieutenant Vigan's frustration was beginning to show.

"He doesn't chant the Canticles of the Omnissiah while he works," Admir answered.

A silence fell over the room. Lin — who had been quietly piecing together the situation from dropped keywords like "Captain" and "a thousand years" — suddenly found every pair of eyes in the chamber fixed on him.

He cleared his throat softly. He felt a mild need to defend his credentials. "I am a formally trained, officially certified Mechanicus Priest from Forge World Huangquan VIII. Second-tier classification. All documentation in order."

The looks he got in response became distinctly more complicated.

Lin felt a twinge of awkwardness. Forge World Huangquan VIII hadn't officially become the headquarters of the Mechanicus's heterodox faction until after the Horus Heresy — but even before the Heresy, the place had already developed something of a reputation. The veterans in this room had clearly heard of Huangquan VIII's rather notorious "fame," and it did nothing to bolster their already limited confidence in Lin's technical competence.

Fortunately, at that critical moment, Deputy Aibo stepped forward and broke the deadlock.

"Huangquan VIII is known for unconventional technical methods," he said. "Given that orthodox awakening rituals have failed to rouse the Dreadnought, perhaps an unorthodox approach is precisely what's needed to break the impasse."

He paused, then looked toward Admir. "But Admir — are you truly certain? The same chance that might wake our Captain could also cause us to lose him forever. Not one of us could bear that loss."

"My resolve depends entirely on whether the Mechanicus Priest chooses to take the task, Brother Aibo," Admir said. "If we are too afraid to even consider waking him, then we have already lost him."

Those words struck Deputy Aibo and Sergeant Arlo to the core. Lieutenant Vigan still objected, but with a majority in favour, they ultimately agreed to allow Lin access to the most revered of their predecessors — and the deepest secret their company held.

Lin, having taken in everything that had been said, had no intention of backing out. Setting aside the fact that he was stranded on this planet right alongside them and their fates were now thoroughly knotted together, the Astartes's apparent identity as relics lost from the Age of the Great Crusade was alone enough to make his pulse quicken.

He accepted the task without ceremony. Led by several of them, he followed deeper into the cave complex, until at its furthest reaches, he found it — an ancient Contemptor Dreadnought, resting in motionless silence.

The few remaining functional power packs had all been gathered here, their energy fed directly into the Dreadnought to barely sustain the most basic life-support systems within.

Seeing this, Lin finally understood why none of the Astartes had power packs on their armour.

But running a Dreadnought off salvaged power packs was never a long-term solution. When the last reserves ran dry, this Dreadnought that could not be awakened would reach the end of its life all the same.

Given how few working power packs remained, it was no wonder they'd dragged him here to attempt an awakening after watching him fix a single chainsword.

Not that Admir's leap of logic was entirely without basis. In theory, waking a Dreadnought only required initiating the awakening sequence while chanting the appropriate Omnissian canticles to soothe the machine spirit.

— In practice, the greatest difficulty of the job was making sure that the Dreadnought, upon waking up, didn't immediately flatten the Techmarine who'd forced it back onto the clock.

If a Dreadnought couldn't be woken, it was likely a mechanical fault in the awakening apparatus. When you stripped away the ritual theatre, it really wasn't so different from fixing a chainsword.

Simple in theory — but given that a trained Techmarine had spent years failing to manage it, Lin didn't let himself grow complacent.

He circled the Contemptor Dreadnought once, taking it in. He noticed that carvings had been etched across its surface — images that seemed to narrate the storied life of the veteran entombed within:

Recruited from Terra itself, becoming one of the very first Space Marines to march under the Emperor's personal command. Serving in the Great Crusade, earning undying glory in a war against a terrifying xenos species known for mimicry and a predilection for consuming brains, becoming a renowned expert in hunting monstrous alien creatures. Choosing self-imposed exile after falling out with his Primarch, leading the warriors loyal to him on an eternal crusade of xenos extermination. And finally, on a derelict space hulk, encountering an immense alien creature composed almost entirely of psychic energy and covered in blue feathers — and after slaying it with the last of his strength, being interred in the Dreadnought's sarcophagus...

The longer he looked, the more uneasy Lin felt.

He clicked his tongue, turned, and asked, "Who carved all this?"

"Sergeant Heipa," Admir said, invoking the Techmarine's name once more. "During his studies on Mars, he shared a dormitory with a Techmarine from the Emperor's Children. He picked up quite a few relevant skills there."

"That's not what I'm asking. I mean — why did he carve these things onto the Dreadnought? Just as a memorial?"

Admir shook his head. It was Deputy Aibo who answered instead: "At the time, he said the Dreadnought's machine spirit had become cunning and talkative. He believed that was the reason it couldn't be woken. So he was trying to increase the Dreadnought's sanctity through this method — to reshape its machine spirit."

"Though he thought the idea was too far-fetched himself. He only ever mentioned it to me in passing conversation. He never filed a formal report."

An alien creature composed almost entirely of psychic energy, covered in blue feathers. And a machine spirit that had become cunning and talkative.

"Whatever happens next — don't be alarmed, and do not intervene." Lin had a feeling he'd just identified the crux of the problem. He issued the warning specifically, then drew a data-cable from his person, plugged it directly into the Dreadnought, and injected a packet of his own code, probing the internal situation.

Unsurprisingly, the Dreadnought's awakening program was in a state of total chaos. Junk code had piled up to mountainous proportions inside it, and was still accumulating at speed.

Lin ran a rough estimate. If the program were left to run through all the junk code on its own before finally executing the startup sequence, the projected completion time was approximately nine thousand years from now.

Fantastic. Just in time for the Battle of Cadia.

Lin had no interest in picking through that much junk code line by line. He decided instead to go straight to the source — find whatever was generating it.

He deleted a token portion of the junk code. Sure enough, the blue data-stream responsible for producing it came rushing in the moment it noticed the deletions — and before it had even arrived, Lin was already receiving its message, broadcast in binary code:

"Heipa, you cannot save your Captain! Just as your Captain could not save your Primarch! Your fate was sealed long ago… Hm? Who are you?"

"Who I am doesn't matter to you. Dead men don't need to remember too many things."

Lin looked at the towering Greater Daemon before him — blue feathers and all — and smiled his most warm, benevolent smile.

"More to the point — can you see your own destruction coming today?"