Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The Deputy Forge Director who oversaw the Frateris Militia had lately felt a persistent, gnawing unease — a sense that he had overlooked something critical.

Strictly speaking, he no longer possessed a 'heart' in any anatomical sense. Yet that anxious feeling of having missed something simply could not be faked.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and searched through his data logs, trying to identify what he had forgotten. After a moment, he turned to the servo-skull hovering at his side and asked:

"What's the status of those Imperial Fists Astartes?"

The servo-skull projected the surveillance footage it had on record:

"From the moment they were assigned to the minor forge, the Sage Lin from Forge World Huangquan VIII has been occupied with cultivating organs and restoring the Astartes' combat effectiveness. He has used his Felyne creations to barter for supplies from other priests, but aside from one meeting with Sage Lifar, he has no logged excursions. Summary: no anomalies detected."

"That sage from Huangquan VIII turns out to be surprisingly well-behaved," the Deputy Forge Director remarked.

It was not quite a compliment, but it matched his current state of mind. As the one who had first raised the possibility, during a conversation with the Forge Director, that those Astartes might prove a liability, he had never actually wanted to be proven right.

But even after confirming the situation with Lin and the Astartes, he still could not settle his nerves. He turned it over for a moment longer, then finally rose to his feet and made his way to where the Master Forger worked.

The senior tech-priest who oversaw manufacturing greeted him with the same sour expression as always: "You didn't schedule an appointment."

"Since when do we stand on ceremony?" the Deputy Forge Director shot back.

Aside from the Forge Director Augustus — a full Archmagos — the two of them were the only senior tech-priests on this planet. Their domains were different, but between them there had long simmered an unspoken rivalry.

Exchanging binary greetings in the Forge Council was the most mundane of pleasantries for men like them. Marshalling their subordinates for open confrontations on the Forge World was closer to a proper warm-up.

Had the Forge Director — who took almost no interest in the day-to-day running of the planet — not made 'no open internal conflict' his one non-negotiable demand, this world might well have been torn apart in a civil war of their own making.

The Ork invasion, however, had arrived with jarring abruptness. When the Forge Director received word from Mars and told them both about the Ork space hulk, the two senior tech-priests had no choice but to convert their carefully balanced antagonism into equally carefully balanced cooperation.

How much sincerity that cooperation contained was anyone's guess. But at minimum neither would sabotage the other, and having received advance warning of the green tide's approach to Jingang before the invasion even began, the two had been quietly shipping their most prized assets offworld, shipload by shipload, under a variety of pretexts.

The further the evacuation progressed, however, the more critical each remaining stage became — particularly for the Deputy Forge Director.

The production lines, data archives, and raw resources already evacuated were largely what the Master Forger required.

For the Deputy Forge Director, whose most valuable holdings were bound up in the Frateris Militia, it was the Titan Legion — explicitly requested by Mars itself — that represented his true stake in their future.

When they arrived at Mars after departing Maximus, these assets would determine exactly where each of them stood in the Martian hierarchy.

The Master Forger gave a contemptuous snort: "So the senior tech-priest who commands our military forces has come to visit the humble fabricator who merely produces weapons on his behalf. To what do I owe the honour?"

"I'm simply here to confirm that your side of the preparations is complete. Beyond the critical production lines we're taking with us, everything else is to be destroyed. I have no intention of letting the Greenskins occupy the Omnissiah's sacred facilities and use them against us."

"Relax — it's done."

The Master Forger waved a dismissive hand. "In addition to the self-destruct protocols, I've placed explosive charges beneath every production line we can't take with us. The moment the Titan Legion's transfer is complete, I'll trigger them. I guarantee the Greenskins won't be able to press together so much as a steel plate when it's over."

"Good to hear. And the Titan Legion itself?"

"Ha. Five days ago she had the Titan perform a cold-start on its own initiative. Based on my analysis, the probability that she was using it to express her dissatisfaction sits at approximately eighty-four percent."

"Another cold-start without any activation rites? Her command over that Titan is genuinely unsettling."

"Perhaps. But what good does it do her?"

The Master Forger rose and looked out through the window.

The Forge World was unusually lively today. As planned, the Titan Legion was set to formally 'march out' on this very day, and a great many off-duty Mechanicus priests had gathered to watch, eager to witness the awe-inspiring spectacle of the God-Machines in motion — a sight rarely granted to ordinary eyes.

This show of defiance — this demonstration of her control over the Titan — was as feeble and ineffectual as the rumours that had lately begun to spread across the Forge World: that the planet was about to be abandoned.

The Master Forger said with disdain: "They may have grasped a fragment of the truth, but actions that produce no real effect cannot change that truth in any meaningful way."

"She may already know that the Warlord-class Titan is to be transferred back to Mars," the Deputy Forge Director reasoned. "At that point, Mars will certainly assign a crew of their own choosing to pilot it. In that scenario, do you think there's any possibility she'd attempt open defiance?"

"Not as long as she remains a servant of the Mechanicus. If she simply complies, she can at least evacuate to Mars alongside the Titan Legion. Even stripped of command over the Warlord, she keeps her life. If she chooses to stay behind for the sake of the Titan — what does she have to stand against the Ork horde bearing down on her?"

The Master Forger's tone was certain. In truth, the Deputy Forge Director agreed with that logic entirely.

The Titans were among the mightiest weapons the Cult Mechanicus possessed, and they occupied a transcendent station within the Mechanicus as a whole. On the battlefield, that station could even allow their crews to operate outside the Mechanicus chain of command.

To minimise that risk, Forge Directors typically assigned crews loyal to themselves as Titan pilots.

But genuine aptitude for the role of Titan captain was rare. On a world like Maximus, incapable of training qualified Titan crews at scale, it was almost inevitable that the Titan Congregation would answer to itself rather than to the Forge Council.

The Forge Director Augustus — transferred in from Mars — had never cared much about the power struggles on Maximus in the first place. As the two 'senior tech-priests' elevated by Director Augustus to serve as figureheads, their actual capabilities, while superior to ordinary tech-priests, still fell well short of the threshold demanded by their rank in any meaningful sense.

That awkward middle ground left them in a chronically disadvantaged position whenever they attempted to wrest authority from the Titan Congregation.

Though they had each secured the allegiance of a handful of minor Titan crews, when it came to facing the Warlord's captain — Christina, Legion Commander of the Titan Congregation — they had always been forced to make concessions.

But that was how things used to be.

The old quarrel had centred on control over Titan deployment. Now that it had been decided to deliver the Titans to Mars as a token of fealty, the Titan Congregation's opinion simply no longer mattered.

As long as the Titan Congregation had no intention of starting a civil war, they could hand the Titans over to Mars when the time came and wash their hands of the whole affair.

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