Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The Silver Rathalos died without a sound.

The Dragon Ascent — a strike no one had seen coming — landed squarely on the neck already shattered by the Hunter Dreadnought's explosive rounds. The wound had begun to knit itself shut during the Silver Rathalos's evolution, but the ferocious cleaving arc of the blade proved to be the final weight that broke him.

The dragon sword Red Leaf split his neck clean in two. His body still convulsed, but the severed head had already gone dark — and because the neck was cut through, he wasn't even granted the dignity of a final cry.

But the Silver Rathalos was not the only one to fall. Admir came down with him.

After landing from the Dragon Ascent, he tried to brace himself with the blade — but his hand had nothing left in it. He couldn't even grip the hilt. He meant to drop to one knee, but the half of his body that had been melted refused to obey. The will that had been holding him upright finally gave out, and he collapsed to the ground with a dull thud, his life hanging by a thread.

"Lieutenant Vigan, take your squad and reinforce Sergeant Arlo — stop the dragon spawn that broke through." Lin issued his orders. "Deputy Aibo, bring the Felynes and come with me. Let's see how Admir is doing."

"Don't forget about me!" The Hunter Dreadnought — now nothing but a sarcophagus — bellowed from the side. "I don't have legs anymore!"

Out of respect for his elders, Deputy Aibo had no choice but to take the Felynes and haul the sarcophagus along as best they could. Lin, impatient with their pace, rushed ahead and reached Admir first. He crouched down to assess the damage.

Admir's face was more or less intact. Everything below the neck was another story entirely.

The pauldron on his right side — the side he had driven forward into the flames — had been melted away by the inferno. Lin traced downward from where the pauldron had been and found that the flesh beneath hadn't merely been burned. It had been vaporized by the heat, like ice cream dissolving, and what remained had been sealed inside a cage of iron by the molten metal of the powered suit flowing over it.

Twisted flesh and liquid metal had merged together, dripping down onto the black carapace implanted beneath the skin during the Astartes augmentation surgeries and congealing there. The tracery of blood vessels had fused into the solidified metal, a sight that was equal parts astonishing and nauseating.

Continuing downward, the legs had fared somewhat better — but when Lin cut open the armor plating he found that the same side had carbonized completely. He could not find a single scrap of living tissue on the entire leg.

If the legs, which had never been directly exposed to the fire, looked like this — then the upper body couldn't have simply suffered vaporized flesh and nothing more.

A cold weight settled in Lin's chest. He cut open Admir's black carapace and found exactly what he had feared. Protected as they were by the carapace, the internal organs still held their shape on the surface — but a closer look made it immediately clear that every organ on his right side had simply stopped functioning.

The powered suit's cooling system had long since collapsed. Rather than venting heat outward, it had turned the entire suit into an oven, slow-roasting everything inside.

Of Admir's two hearts and three lungs, one heart and two lungs had turned the dull grey of cooked pig liver. The Oolitic Kidney was likewise gone. The one remaining heart and lung were beating and working only faintly, and looked as though they could fail at any moment.

His Sus-an Membrane had not activated — but even three Sus-an Membranes couldn't have held onto a life in this condition.

By Lin's judgment as a biological sage, Admir's current state amounted, in plain terms, to unsalvageable. The only hope — a slim one — was to perform the surgery to inter him in a Dreadnought sarcophagus right now, before the last ember went out.

He stood up and turned to face the group arriving with the sarcophagus in tow. Deputy Aibo immediately asked about Admir's condition. All Lin could do was shake his head.

"The injuries are too severe — or perhaps 'barely not dead yet' is the kinder way to put it. While there's still a sliver of life in him, we could theoretically start preparing him for interment in a Dreadnought — but where are we going to find a sarcophagus?"

The veteran still inside the only available sarcophagus spoke up. "Don't write him off just yet. Move aside — let me have a look."

Everyone stepped back from the dragged-over Hunter Dreadnought without needing to be told twice, giving him a clear view to examine Admir's condition.

The Dreadnought veteran was silent for a long moment. Just when everyone was bracing for him to pronounce Admir's death sentence as well, the Dreadnought erupted instead:

"Will someone stand me upright?! You drag me all the way here and then just leave me lying on the ground? My observation slit is inside this immovable sarcophagus — all I can see from down here is sky, you lot!"

Lin rubbed his nose. He felt he was beginning to understand why veterans who had been interred in Dreadnoughts were, as a rule, not particularly pleasant to be around.

Everyone pitched in to haul the Dreadnought upright. With the observation slit now aligned toward Admir, the Hunter Dreadnought studied him carefully for a moment, then announced: "The stomach sac and the glands are undamaged. There's still a way."

"How?" Lin asked, genuinely startled.

"Brother Aibo — grip his remaining heart and keep it beating manually. Chaplain Lin — go cut out the Silver Rathalos's heart. I'll also need several chunks of meat, rich in genetic material and nutrients. Move!"

Everyone sprang into action under the Dreadnought's barked orders. Shortly afterward, Lin and the Felynes returned, having carved open the Silver Rathalos's carcass, bearing the heart and several cuts of flesh.

Lin asked the veteran how these materials were supposed to save an Admir who was very nearly dead already. The answer he received was bloody and outlandish.

"Open his stomach sac and put the meat inside — let him digest it," the veteran said. "As for the heart — I only need part of the cardiac muscle. Cut a section from the Silver Rathalos's heart muscle, implant a mechanical ventricle and atrium into it, and fashion it into a cybernetic artificial heart. Use it to replace the one that's no longer working. You can do that, Chaplain Lin?"

"I really don't see how a heart the size of a man is going to save anyone."

"Just do it!"

Lin dearly wanted to invoke his expert biological knowledge to question whether any of this would actually work — but on reflection, at least it wasn't some bizarre resurrection ritual using flesh and blood as raw materials.

Fitting a turbine and a power pump to a piece of muscle was straightforward enough. With the attitude of trying anything when the patient was already as good as dead, he followed the veteran's instructions to the letter. But when he cut out the cooked and ruined heart and sutured the dragon's heart in its place, it lay utterly still — clearly incompatible with a human body.

"I believe this isn't working," Lin observed, putting it diplomatically.

"Wait." The veteran was unperturbed. "Look at the stomach sac."

Lin looked toward the opened stomach sac and found that the chunks of Silver Rathalos flesh he had placed inside had already been digested — at some point while he wasn't watching. Before he could even register his surprise that a body this devastated still retained any digestive function, something far more astonishing happened.

The dragon's heart that had been forcibly sutured into Admir's chest — began, slowly, to beat.

Lin stared at it in stunned silence. Then he looked at the stomach sac. He connected the two facts together, and his head snapped up. His eyes locked, unblinking, onto the Hunter Dreadnought.

"He digested the Silver Rathalos's genes — and drove the Silver Rathalos's organs to function inside his own body!"

Lin enunciated each word with the weight of a stone hitting water: "Is this the true nature of your Legion?"

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