Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Several months had passed since Lin and his companions boarded their self-built vessel, the Hunter, and set course through the Warp. Beyond the turbulence they'd punched through leaving the Azure Star at the outset, the journey had been remarkably uneventful.

Lin spent a little time each day conducting Warp observations to hold their heading. Everyone else had absolutely nothing to do.

Starved of entertainment, the Astartes had taken to sparring against each other in the ship's training cage to burn the hours. Lin, for his part, was perfectly happy to wander down and watch this increasingly ridiculous parade of musclebound warriors beating each other half to death.

After all, watching a pack of hunters go at each other with a full arsenal was a rare sight — far more interesting than a group of people taking turns whacking damage numbers into a monster standing still like a practice dummy.

What surprised Lin, though, was how well the sword-and-shield users and the dual-blade wielders were faring in the rankings. He turned it over in his mind and concluded it was probably because flexible weapons held an edge against non-monster opponents, where mobility mattered more than raw stopping power.

That gave him a few ideas about future weapon loadouts — ideas that would have to wait until he had materials to work with.

He'd been planning to source some materials once they reached the Solar System and hammer them into new weapons. But the Warp, as ever, had no intention of letting him have his way.

Just as the light of the Astronomican was growing brighter ahead of them, the ship shuddered — as though something enormous had reached out and grabbed it by the hull.

"Gravity wave readings anomalous! Gravitational anomaly detected! Geller Field anomaly!"

The cogitator system they'd stripped from the space hulk screamed its alerts. Lin, who had been elbow-deep in grease in the workshop, sprinted to the bridge. Lieutenant Admir, who had sensed something was wrong, was already there.

"The hull's shaking. What's happening?" Admir asked.

"No idea." Lin snatched the cogitator's report from Tom the Felyne helmsman. "Let me look—"

He didn't need to look far. The readout was so saturated with red warning text it was practically bleeding off the screen. Even Admir, standing at Lin's shoulder with no technical knowledge whatsoever, could feel the urgency radiating from it.

Lin stared at the report, his brow twisting into a knot. He set it down and addressed the cogitator system directly.

"What systems do we still have running normally?"

The cogitator's screen flickered. It displayed: the air conditioning.

"Right." Lin shrugged. "At least we won't be sweating through our helmets in a panic."

"I deeply admire your ability to make jokes at a time like this, Magos Lin. But before the punchlines, I'd like to understand what we're actually dealing with. If the Geller Field is failing, should my brothers and I be preparing to repel boarders?"

"No. That won't be necessary."

Lin shook his head, having already pieced together a working theory from the cascading alerts. "These warnings aren't coming from inside the ship. There's a powerful gravitational source outside it, pulling at us. The hull simply can't take the stress, which is why everything is going sideways at once."

Admir exhaled. "So it's not a critical situation?"

"Actually, it's worse. Internal problems we can deal with ourselves. An external problem? That's not ours to decide."

Lin glanced at Admir. "The reason I'm not telling you to prepare for boarders is because it wouldn't help. The moment the Geller Field collapses, that gravitational source out there will tear this little ship apart."

"..."

Lin observed Admir's speechlessness with quiet satisfaction. Years of transmigrating into the role of a tech-priest had slowly taught him the particular pleasure of weaponising knowledge against people.

That said, nobody wanted to be shredded in the Warp — Lin least of all. So the priority, clearly, was dealing with the emergency.

He pressed his face to a viewport and tried to peer outside. The Warp offered no visibility worth speaking of.

A Navigator would be handy right now. Pity there isn't one.

The Adeptus Mechanicus — one head of the Imperium's twin-headed eagle, powerful enough to operate almost as a sovereign entity unto itself — possessed Warp navigation technology that operated entirely independently of the Navigator Houses. They also maintained exhaustive charts of every safe Mandeville Point in every star system. Between those two assets, Mechanicus vessels could conduct Warp transit without a Navigator at all. That independence was, in no small part, the secret of the Mechanicus's ability to stand apart from the rest of the Imperium.

As a Magos of the Mechanicus, Lin had naturally mastered that same technology. It was the foundation of his confidence in undertaking Warp travel without a Navigator aboard.

But rigid instruments could never fully account for sudden change. Without a psyker to improvise observations in real time, he had no direct way of knowing what was happening outside the hull.

After dismissing the several daemons currently clinging to the increasingly strained Geller Field and making faces at him through the viewport, Lin could only work through the situation by inference.

The data said the ship was being affected by an external gravitational source. But how? This was the Warp. The physical laws of realspace didn't apply here. There was no realistic mechanism by which a massive object could gravitationally capture their vessel—

Unless they were at a point where the Warp and realspace overlapped. A place where the physical laws of reality had begun bleeding backwards into the Warp itself.

The only places where that could theoretically happen were the Eye of Terror… or a tear in the veil between realspace and the Warp, ripped open by a Warp Drive.

Then it clicked.

Lin clapped his hands together and began issuing orders to the Felyne crew, who had been milling about in helpless confusion.

"Everyone to your stations! Ship-wide broadcast — all hands, prepare for Warp exit!"

The Felynes, finally having someone to follow, scattered into action. Only Admir stood rooted in barely concealed shock. He understood nothing of the technical particulars, but he knew perfectly well that blundering in and out of the Warp at random was a death sentence.

He voiced his confusion to Lin. Lin, busy feeding calculations into the cogitator for the Warp exit, could only answer him in clipped sentences.

"If we hold our original course to the Solar System, we'll be torn apart by that gravity source before we even get there!"

"But punching out of the Warp cold isn't any better! Even I know that opening a random Warp exit is suicide!"

"Not this time — because something that isn't us has already opened one for us!"

Lin gave no further explanation. He turned to the Felynes.

"Cut the Warp Drive. Feed the Aetheric Phase Engine everything it can take. Full speed ahead!"

The Felynes hauled every reserve ration aboard to the engine bay and tipped them into the biological interface of the Aetheric Phase Engine.

Flooded with an enormous surge of biotic energy, the engine belched a torrent of crimson exhaust flame. The acceleration that followed confirmed what Lin had suspected — the local Warp had already merged with realspace.

The Hunter fought its way forward through the Warp, armour plates groaning under the grinding pressure of competing gravitational forces from bow to stern.

But the ship's machine spirit — born from a space hulk, and deeply unwilling to become a space hulk again — strained every faculty it possessed to hold the vessel together, buying the crew just enough grace to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Before long, they could all see it: a wound torn through the Warp into realspace, already beginning to close. But at over three thousand kilometres long, the gash was still an enormity compared to their modest little ship.

Even with an exit large enough to fly through with room to spare, Lin allowed himself not a single breath of relief. The instant the Hunter passed through the Warp breach someone else had torn open, he snapped out his second order.

"Maintain full engine power! Hard to port! Get us clear of this gravity well!"

Back in realspace, the gravitational pull didn't ease — it intensified. Everyone aboard felt the weight settle onto their bodies like a physical thing.

But Lin's order had come in time. The ship hauled itself around by sheer mechanical willpower and, miraculously, survived the gravitational punishment. Only once the crushing pressure began to ease did anyone dare look back to see what had caused all of this.

One look was all it took. Admir's jaw dropped and did not close again.

"By the Imperial Truth…"

He stared, unable to process what he was seeing, at the celestial body drifting slowly behind them. "What in the name of — what is that?!"

It was a moon — roughly the size of Luna, but clearly artificial, rebuilt from the inside out. Green tide surged across its surface, churning together into leering Ork totems.

Even a single glance was enough to brand the image into your memory forever.

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