Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The battle-cry of other survivors stirred Kurande to his core.

Three days had passed since the Ork invasion began. In those three days of relentless fighting, they had first lost Chapter Master Molhan, and then the captains of First and Third Companies — who had managed to link up with them — had fallen to the combined assault of the chrome-beasts and the greenskins. Kurande had led his remaining brothers to finally exterminate every last chrome-beast, but that was all they had managed.

He still carried Molhan's dying words close to his heart — that final command to uncover the truth. But he had long since abandoned any hope of escaping this planet, which had become nothing more than a prison.

He had led the surviving Imperial Fists in a desperate game of hide-and-seek across the greenskin-infested landscape, searching as they went, but found not a single other Imperial Fist anywhere.

Their operational range had been squeezed smaller and smaller with each successive Ork sweep, until they had almost no room left to breathe.

Kurande knew with perfect clarity: the Imperial Fists had been pushed to the very edge of annihilation.

Their remaining numbers weren't even enough to mount an assault on the crashed cruiser — and even if they had tried, they had no idea whether the wreck held anything that could help them escape.

But he would not give up. The sons of Dorn did not give up.

He had endured on this planet, and now, the battle-cry of other survivors was the finest possible reward for that endurance. He stopped hiding in the shadows beneath the greenskins' noses, drew his Power Sword instead, and fixed his gaze on the handful of Imperial Fists still standing at his side.

"Sons of Dorn," he said, eyes burning, "we will never let our brothers fight alone!"

"Imperial Fists!"

He issued what might have been his last order: "Advance!"

The stoic sons of Dorn let out a roar. Battered and bleeding as every one of them was, they raised their bolt rifles and erupted like a volcano breaking its long silence — pouring every round they had left into the greenskins with all the fury they had bottled up for three days.

The greenskins converging on the Strike Cruiser's wreck were caught completely off-guard by the attack from behind. The moment they tried to turn, they were knocked flat by a hail of bolts and trampled without mercy beneath the Astartes' boots.

The crack of bolt fire naturally drew Lin's attention as well.

The sound alone was enough for him to identify it as the MK IV Maximus-pattern bolt rifle, now the standard weapon of Astartes Chapters across the Imperium. He realised in an instant that the source was surviving Astartes still alive on this planet.

Lin turned toward the direction of the sound and made out, in the distance, a cluster of yellow-armoured warriors cresting a hilltop. From their movements, they were clearly charging at the Strike Cruiser's wreck without a shred of hesitation.

Wait — yellow armour?

Lin suddenly felt something wasn't quite right.

He squinted at those distant yellow-armoured figures, then glanced over at Admir beside him — whom he had painted yellow. The similarity in colour sent an uncomfortable possibility forming in his mind.

He drew a sharp breath.

Oh no. Please tell me we haven't been playing dress-up and stumbled straight into the real thing.

Then again, it wasn't necessarily so. The Second Founding had split the Imperial Fists into a number of successor Chapters, several of which also wore yellow power armour — just with the fist symbol rendered in different colours...

Lin's thoughts raced. But standing by while those warriors charging toward him were swallowed by the green tide was obviously not an option either.

Unlike Lin's own group — all veterans of a thousand years' service, each carrying specialist weapons — that band of a few dozen Astartes survivors was already buckling under the greenskin onslaught. Whether they lived or died rested entirely on Lin's next decision.

"Lieutenant Admir!" Lin's voice rang out sharp and decisive. "Get them out!"

Admir understood immediately. The ten-man squad that had been holding the Strike Cruiser's wreck shifted into a wedge formation: Astartes with heavy melee weapons took the lead to carve a path, while those behind laid down bolt fire for support. The combination cut through the Orks like a blade through rotten wood, and they closed the distance to the exhausted yellow-armoured Astartes with startling speed.

At this range, Lin and his group could see the livery on their armour clearly. The unmistakable Imperial Fists insignia on their shoulder plates drew a quiet sigh from Lin.

This was getting complicated.

But not without solutions.

Whatever the case, rescuing these Imperial Fists was the immediate priority. Lin could only close the distance and figure out what to say when the time came.

But Lin wasn't the only one doing the thinking. On the other side, the Imperial Fists were scrutinising Lin's group with a great deal of suspicion of their own.

Kurande could swear on his gene-seed that he had never laid eyes on any of these warriors in their Imperial Fists power armour.

Other Chapters sometimes had the situation where a company returning from a long campaign failed to recognise newer recruits. But that did not apply to the Imperial Fists, who had been garrisoned in orbit above Terra for generations.

On top of that, every single one of them was wearing MK II Crusade-pattern power armour. Setting aside those bizarre non-standard weapons they were carrying — within the modern Imperial Fists, that pattern of armour was reserved exclusively as an honour badge worn by veteran guardians of the Palace walls. It wasn't issued to just anyone.

So how in Dorn's name had this entire group come to be equipped with one apiece?

And then there was the Tech-Adept carrying the company banner — the banner itself did bear the Imperial Fists Chapter emblem, stitched cleanly at its centre, but Kurande could find no marking on it that indicated which company the bearer belonged to.

The strangeness of it all dampened Kurande's initial surge of excitement, and he slowed his pace, wanting to observe this odd group a little longer. But an urgent shout from a brother at his side yanked him back to reality.

"Captain Kurande — greenskin, watch out!"

While Kurande had been intent on studying those peculiar "Imperial Fists," an Ork noticeably larger and broader than any of the others had come barrelling straight at them.

Unlike the others who swung crude cleavers or iron bars, this one had actually thought to armour itself in a patchwork of scavenged plates.

It was swinging a power hammer seized from somewhere, and in the blink of an eye it had hammered two Imperial Fists warriors to the ground who had tried to stop it. It had carved in from the flank with one goal in mind: Kurande, the commander.

Kurande had let his attention wander, and he had no time to dodge. The Ork used its sheer bulk to crash into him and send him sprawling. Standing over the fallen Kurande, the hammer-wielding greenskin grinned with savage delight and raised its weapon high.

"WAAAAGH! You're the top tin-can around here! Kill ya and strip ya and every boy in this whole place'll answer to me!"

There was no time for regret over his lapse in focus. Kurande barely managed to raise his sword in a defensive parry, already bracing himself to take the blow and come out badly wounded. He was even calculating in his head who he should hand command to once he was down.

But then — completely unexpectedly — a shield shaped like an axe-head thrust itself in front of him, and caught the full force of that crushing blow.

Kurande blinked. He looked up and found that the group of "Imperial Fists" carrying those specialist weapons had already reached them. The Astartes who had intercepted the hammer blow drove forward with his shield, sending the Ork stumbling back a step.

The greenskin roared and backhanded a blow at the shield. But the warrior named Veneto held his ground — his shield flat, hard, and utterly smooth, without a single groove or protrusion — and turned every blow aside.

The shield pulsed with a faint red glow. Veneto didn't hesitate. He folded the sword in his other hand into the shield, merging blade and buckler into a single axe, and then brought it down in a devastating chop with irresistible force.

"Switch Axe — release!"

With Veneto's battle-cry still ringing in the air, the razor-sharp axe blade swept downward in one clean vertical stroke and split the Ork — this one who had been on the verge of becoming a proper Ork boss — straight down the middle.

The greenskin's blood drenched Kurande where he lay on the ground, but Kurande had no attention to spare for that. He stared fixedly at this "Imperial Fist" before him, his mind reeling.

Such pure, overwhelming strength…!

For a moment Kurande even felt as though he were seeing the legendary Sigismund — the greatest champion the Imperial Fists had ever produced — reborn in the warrior before him.

But even a warrior of such power was not spared a sharp rebuke from another who came hurrying up behind him, bearing a one-handed sword and a buckler:

"You could have just cut him down, couldn't you? Did you really have to break out the Switch Axe form for that?"

"Reporting to Instructor Arlo: I'll absolutely do it again, sir!"

Kurande's emotions were in complete turmoil. He was shaken by the display of strength that rivalled a Chapter Champion, he wanted to thank this Imperial Fists brother — a stranger to him — who had just saved his life, and at the same time he desperately needed to understand who these people actually were.

His mind was so crowded with questions that he momentarily forgot to stand up from the ground.

It was Lin who reached down and gave him a hand. Kurande clambered to his feet, dusty and dishevelled.

"I am Kurande, Captain of Second Company, Imperial Fists. You have my gratitude." Kurande offered his thanks with an awkward formality, but his eyes had drifted to Lin — the one holding the company banner. "But why would an Imperial Fists company banner be in the hands of a Tech-Adept…"

Before Kurande could finish the question, Lin stepped forward and took control of the exchange. He fixed Kurande with an intense stare — an expression that held both urgency and a flicker of desperate hope.

Lin asked him, one word at a time, each syllable deliberate: "Tell me, brother of the Imperial Fists."

"What is the situation on Terra?"

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