Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

In quiet moments, Kurande often found himself drifting back to those months aboard the Shanzheng, to the day their Chapter Master, Cassius Molhan, had stood before them and announced a crusade of merely six weeks' travel. None of them could have imagined that this so-called 'crusade' would end with their Chapter on the brink of annihilation.

"A crusade only six weeks away? That barely deserves the name! There is no glory to be found in a battle like this!"

Kurande had questioned the Chapter Master's decision openly: "Those xenos could be exterminated by standard Imperial arms without breaking a sweat. And yet they send us alone? The High Lords' orders are naked calculation and insult — nothing more. I will not accept this."

"And yet we must go, my brother."

The man who answered him — Molhan — had led the Imperial Fists for over two hundred years. He was a fearless warrior, but equally a leader who thought before he acted.

After the Horus Heresy, the High Council — a governing body of twelve mortals — had wrested the rule of the Imperium from the Emperor upon His ascension to the Golden Throne. In the years that followed, the remnant military forces of Mankind had swept the space within the light of the Astronomican clean of any organised xenos threat. Within the vast territories of the Imperium, no alien enemy remained capable of mounting a coordinated campaign.

That was, of course, a cause for celebration. It was also a reason why certain military formations no longer had a war to fight. As the guardian of Terra since the later campaigns of the Great Crusade, the Imperial Fists had not encountered an enemy within the Solar System worth marching against in a very long time. That fact made their position on Terra increasingly… delicate.

As Chapter Master, Molhan held observer's rights in the High Council, but his ability to actually influence the High Lords' decisions was marginal at best. In an era when the Imperium stood unchallenged, even the necessity of keeping the Imperial Fists as wardens of Terra had been called into question by the High Lords themselves.

Molhan knew the High Lords distrusted his Chapter. Those fragile mortals feared any power beyond their control. But he would not allow his warriors to be leashed to the Council's whims, and he would not surrender the sacred mandate the Emperor had once entrusted to them — the defence of Terra. And so he endured, absorbing every slight and act of marginalisation the High Lords chose to inflict upon the Imperial Fists.

This six-week 'crusade' was merely the latest stone they had thrown.

The Chrombeasts — a multi-limbed insectoid species resembling spiders in general shape — were a hive-minded xenos race. They possessed a rudimentary social structure, but their technology and physical capabilities were primitive in the extreme. The Imperium had never once classified them as a genuine threat.

The report submitted to the High Council did show that tens of billions of Chrombeasts had suddenly appeared on the planet Jingang. But by conventional logic, even that was no cause for alarm. A preliminary orbital bombardment from the invincible Imperial fleet, followed by Astra Militarum forces landing to establish a beachhead, and those primitive xenos could be butchered in whatever numbers they arrived.

The problem, as ever, was internal.

Grand Admiral Lansong of the Imperial Navy — a permanent seat on the High Council — saw no reason to "make a great fuss" over a handful of xenos. Lord Commander Hays of the Astra Militarum, who was willing to commit forces, regretfully noted that his troops could not conduct a planetary landing on a world entirely overrun by xenos without orbital fire support.

With both supreme commanders of the Imperium's military arm declining to act, the problem was kicked around the chamber until Imperial Commander Udin Mahdo Udo booted it squarely at the feet of the Imperial Fists.

On Udo's proposal, the High Lords reached a unanimous conclusion: a Space Marine Chapter could conduct the planetary assault on Jingang unassisted, without orbital fire cover. Only they could achieve "maximum victory at minimum resource expenditure."

No supporting fleet. No meaningful Astra Militarum complement. And the bulk of the Imperial Fists pulled away from Terra.

Molhan knew perfectly well that the High Lords were trying to sideline him. He did not care. He was determined to silence every one of them with a brilliant victory — to prove to the entire Imperium that the Imperial Fists could still carry the honour of guarding the Throneworld.

After using his own authority and reputation to settle Kurande's objections, he gathered nearly the full strength of the Imperial Fists and set course for Jingang.

The early stages of the campaign went smoothly. The Imperial Fists deployed landing forces to Jingang. Though the Imperial Navy had provided not a single vessel, a handful of Astartes strike cruisers were more than enough to tear open a landing zone amid the Chrombeasts, who had no meaningful defensive firepower.

Captain Kurande of the Second Company led his warriors as the first boots on the ground. They established fortifications on the planet's surface by the book and began methodically sweeping it clean of xenos.

The aliens were so pitifully weak that the sweeping operation felt less like warfare and more like a slaughter.

Consumed by frustration and contempt, Kurande failed to notice the anomaly in the Chrombeasts' behaviour — that these creatures were not attacking with the aggression of invaders, but with the desperation of things being hunted. By the time he realised the Chrombeasts had not come to conquer but to flee, it was already too late.

Gravity fluctuated. The ground began to shake. The sudden, extreme gravitational disturbance caught every Imperial force on Jingang entirely off guard. Against a cataclysm of that magnitude, even a Space Marine was no more resilient than a mortal man.

Nearly half the Astartes, the Astra Militarum soldiers, and the Chrombeasts alike were ground to pulp in the geological catastrophe that followed. Kurande, one of the fortunate few who survived, finally understood who the true enemy of this war had always been.

He looked up. He could barely believe what he saw.

A moon — roughly Luna-sized, but hollowed out and heavily rebuilt from within — had appeared in the sky above Jingang.

Visible from the ground with the naked eye, enormous and grotesque Ork totems twisted across its surface.

Kurande was no stranger to Orks. He knew that the larger the totem, the larger the Waaagh! behind it. And it was precisely because he knew this that he could not bring himself to imagine what kind of green tide was waiting beneath a totem the size of a planet.

Fortunately, the Ork battle moon had not yet fully materialised. The gravitational shockwaves from its mere arrival had already dealt a catastrophic blow, but the moon had not yet fully translated through — which meant there was still a little time before the Orks truly came.

Grasping that slim margin, Kurande counted what survivors he could find. He led the remnants of the Second Company in a search across the shattered surface of Jingang for Chapter Master Molhan.

But the Chrombeasts — the very creatures who had fled into the Solar System to escape the Orks' slaughter — seemed to know that their end was near. They held nothing back. In a frenzy, they threw themselves at what remained of the Imperial Fists and the Astra Militarum.

The Imperial forces were few and scattered. The three pillars they had relied on — orbital bombardment, heavy artillery, and prepared fortifications — were all gone. They had no answer for the Chrombeasts' death-charge.

Kurande eventually found his Chapter Master. But when he found him, a Chrombeast had already driven its limb deep into Molhan's chest.

A single bolt round detonated the creature's skull. Kurande lunged forward and caught Molhan as he fell. He called for an Apothecary to treat the wound — and saw that the wound in his Chapter Master's chest had stopped bleeding entirely.

"There is no saving me, Kurande." Molhan already knew how this ended. "Perhaps you were right. This war was a conspiracy from the very beginning…"

With the last of his strength, he reached out and gripped Kurande's hand.

"Live, brother. Carry word of what happened here to the whole Imperium. The Imperial Fists — and the fate of Terra — I leave in your hands."

Kurande set down the body of Chapter Master Molhan and walked outside. He raised his eyes to the sky. Above him, the battle moon had completed its translation. Countless asteroids, each crammed with greenskins, trailed long blazing tails as they hammered into the surface of Jingang alongside the wreckage of burning Imperial warships.

There was no longer any way off Jingang.

Watching the green tide that had begun to spread across the horizon, Kurande felt with absolute certainty what fate awaited them.

The Beast Arises. It had begun.

PS: And this is the moment the Imperial Fists became a tabletop display piece. jpg

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