Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The Deputy Forge Director was beyond comprehension. All that remained in him now was a consuming, venomous hatred for the decision he had once made — the decision to grant those Astartes even the most basic of supplies.

At the time, the gesture had served two purposes: to placate the Imperial Fists Chapter, and to signal to the Forge World's Mechanicus priests — men who knew greenskins lurked beyond the walls but had no grasp of their true scale — that their masters had no intention of abandoning them. He had wanted to project that reassurance at minimal cost.

Neither purpose had been achieved. Worse, those very supplies had become the cudgel with which these Astartes now beat his Frateris Militia half to death.

Without those thirty-odd sets of Mark V powered suits, the Imperial Fists would never have been able to field a fully-armored force — and his Frateris Militia would not now be pinned down so completely they couldn't even lift their heads. The Rustseekers he had spent so long and so much to amass would not be facing impossible odds.

But the past was the past. Continuing to grind his forces against these Astartes in a straight-up slugfest was pointless. Leveraging the numerical advantage his Rustseeker squad still held, the Deputy Forge Director pivoted his thinking with cold efficiency.

He pulled the main assault off Lin and the other Astartes entirely. A small detachment of Rustseekers was left behind, using their superior agility in concert with the covering fire of the Rangers and Vanguard to keep that group pinned and occupied. The rest of the Rustseekers he drove forward like a blade — punching through both flanks of the defensive line held by the Mechanicus priests.

Cath Maximus was a Tier Three Forge World, a facility that handled low-end production contracts. Its priests were less scholars of the Omnissiah and more glorified assembly-line technicians. Their craftsmanship was undeniably fine, but in the domains of data-warfare and close combat, they fell far short of the priests produced by any proper Forge World.

Against Rustseekers bred for speed and evasion, priests who lacked any means of data-intrusion were almost entirely helpless.

The Rustseekers' armor had been thinned down to preserve their agility, leaving them vulnerable to anything above a lasgun shot. But against priests who crumpled like parchment before a Sonic Blade, they were wolves among sheep.

Blades rose and fell. The priests' defensive line broke.

Though the priests' private soldiers and their converted combat Servitors were already reinforcing the position, it no longer mattered. For the Deputy Forge Director's Frateris Militia, the road to the Titan now lay open.

This was what he had planned. This was the path to final victory that his calculations had traced out.

Whatever Lin's scheme was, he didn't care. As long as the Titan could be extracted, this would all end in his victory.

The harassing detachment he had left behind couldn't hold Lin occupied for long. The Deputy Forge Director moved quickly, consolidating his full Frateris Militia strength behind a Rustseeker vanguard, and marched the combined force in good order toward the Titan.

He noted that the group of Imperial Fists he had split off earlier — led by the Chapter's sergeant — was still engaged in a firefight with the Titan's guard at the machine's feet.

"Firefight" was generous. It was more like a one-sided pummeling. Yet the Titan Guard were heavily augmented soldiers with "Pater Solidus"-pattern Refractor Field generators integrated directly into their chest cavities and ribcages. When the Titan Guard formed a phalanx, these generators could synchronize with one another, their fields resonating together to merge and interweave into a single reinforced barrier far stronger than any single shield.

And so, despite everything the priests and Imperial Fists threw at them — every scrap of firepower they could muster — the Guard's defense held. The Titan remained inviolate.

Seeing that the assault had failed to breach the Titan and that the attackers were still trading fire with the Guard, something that might have been satisfaction flickered through the Deputy Forge Director's emotional regulators.

He was now quite certain that Lin's objective had always included this Warlord-class Titan. But the enemy's reckless gamble had not won them what they sought.

The Titan Guard had sealed those rebels and Astartes outside the perimeter. His Frateris Militia needed only to link up with the Guard from the outside — an inside-outside hammer blow — and the rebels would be crushed. The probability of reclaiming the Titan climbed to one hundred percent.

Even through layers of cybernetic modification, the taste of victory was intoxicating.

The intoxication was not merely that of a battle won. It was the deeper satisfaction of a man who had proven himself right through data and cold logic — whose command, built on probability and reason, had outmaneuvered the madman from Forge World Huangquan VIII.

The enemy had caught him off-guard at the outset, yes. But that was where it ended.

He fixed his attention on the base of the Titan, directing his Frateris Militia to concentrate fire on the enemies besieging it. The priests and Astartes could not hold their line under that pressure. They were forced to abandon the assault and scatter to whatever cover they could find. The Deputy Forge Director watched with no small amount of satisfaction as he directed his Frateris Militia to link up with the Guard at the Titan's feet.

Just reach that position.

And this farcical war would be over.

But before his Frateris Militia's forces could arrive — the long-silent Warlord-class Titan began to move.

Slowly, its legs stirred. Its weapons rose to level. Whatever fault Lin had induced to disable it appeared to have been cleared. Simultaneously, the Forge Archmagos at the Deputy Forge Director's side delivered the news:

"Communication systems are back online. We have reestablished contact with Captain Christina."

The repair had come frustratingly late — had it happened even a little sooner, the Deputy Forge Director would never have needed to commit his Rustseekers at all. Even so, the restoration of the Warlord-class Titan, despite the price he had paid to get here, left him satisfied.

At the very least, he would not need to keep entangling himself with Lin's faction while waiting for the Titan to be brought back online. The rebels' uprising was already a cornered animal — the Deputy Forge Director had no desire to spend another drop of strength on them.

"Inform Captain Christina," he ordered. "Request that she sweep the rebel elements below, then proceed independently to the spaceport."

He continued: "Let these insignificant vermin see just how laughable their little rebellion looks before the might of the God-Machines."

On the other end of the channel, Christina offered no reply. But the Volcano Cannon in the Titan's arm was already building its charge.

The Deputy Forge Director prepared to savor the despair and screaming of the rebels as the God-Machine's terrible power descended upon them.

But his logic-processor nagged at him again. Something in the scene ahead was subtly, wrongly off.

For sweeping light infantry targets on open ground, the twin-linked Vulcan Mega-Bolters were the obvious choice. Christina might not have been a battle-hardened captain by any measure — she was, after all, the Legio commander of the Maximus Titan Cohort — but she was surely not ignorant of something so elementary.

Then why was the laser weapon — the Volcano Cannon — the one building charge?

A terrible realization bloomed in the Deputy Forge Director's mind. He didn't even have time to warn the Forge Archmagos beside him. He lunged to seize the detonation controls for the production line directly from the Master Forger's hands.

But it was too late.

The Warlord-class Titan wrenched its barrel around with sudden violence. A surge of unstoppable energy erupted from the fully-charged muzzle of the Volcano Cannon.

The laser's target was unmistakable.

It was aimed squarely at the nerve center of the Forge Council.

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