Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Leading his Frateris Militia, the Deputy Forge Director arrived at the entrance to the underground factory.

His original plan had been a multi-pronged assault — divide Lin's forces, stretch them thin, and wait for the moment Lin was forced to commit the Titan to plug the gaps in his line. That would be the moment to use numerical superiority to seize it in one decisive blow.

But the approaching Imperial Navy fleet left him no such luxury. He had no choice but to attack without counting the cost.

The enemy resistance on the surface, spearheaded by the Imperial Fists, had been ferocious. Even with the Vox-priests' assistance allowing him to construct a command network spanning thousands of troops — letting him personally oversee the movements of every militiaman within range and guide every individual shot — the lack of heavy weapons had left him stymied. The enemy had thrown up fortifications that were crude yet utterly impregnable.

In the end, he had called down lance fire from both cruisers to systematically reduce the surface bunkers one by one, and with that orbital support, swept the resistance from the upper structures entirely.

But that decision had given the enemy time to relocate the Titan deep underground before he could prevent it.

Now he finally stood at the entrance to the underground factory where the Titan was hidden — with barely nine hours remaining before the Solar fleet reached Cath Maximus.

He knew the layout of this underground factory intimately. He also understood exactly what casualties a converted underground fortress like this could inflict on Frateris Militia pushing through its depths, even without resorting to weapons of mass destruction. But it was precisely because he had already paid such a terrible price that his hunger for the Titan buried beneath the rock had only grown more consuming.

"As long as I can have that Titan..." the Deputy Forge Director murmured.

It had become an obsession lodged immovably in his logic-circuits.

He stepped forward personally and began cracking the locked entrance to the underground factory. Perhaps detecting the intrusion, the identification data-panel beside the factory door flickered to life — and resolved into an image of Lin.

In the feed, Lin sat before the very Warlord-class Titan the Deputy Forge Director so desperately craved. His back was to the camera. His back was to the Deputy Forge Director.

"Archmagos of Forge World Huangquan VIII — your days of playing war games with me are over," the Deputy Forge Director said, his voice flat and cold. "Hand over the Warlord-class Titan."

"If you want it," Lin said, rising to his feet and turning to face the Deputy Forge Director, "you'll have to come and take it yourself."

"That's always been the way of the Mechanicus. You knew that long before I did."

"That Titan belongs to Cath Maximus!"

"Does it? The way I see it, there are only two futures for that machine — either it gets painted in Martian red, or it takes my family name." Lin tilted his head toward the Felynes currently using the Titan as a climbing frame. "Personally, I get the impression it prefers the latter."

Rage ignited in the Deputy Forge Director's mind. Lin clapped his hands together and lit the blade of his Solar-Powered Warblade.

"Let's end this, Deputy Forge Director. One clean finish."

The data-panel screen went dark. Lin's image vanished from it. The doors of the underground factory ground slowly open — a wordless invitation extended to the Deputy Forge Director.

His Servo-skulls calculated and warned him: with every rapid transit route inside the factory sealed, reaching the Titan's location at the deepest level would take a minimum of five hours — even if he encountered no resistance at all.

But there was no road back for him anymore.

For the sake of his future, he had been driven into an absolute dead end. He had no choice but to stake everything he had left on this one throw.

A Mechanicus transport lander swept in and disgorged nine fully mechanically-converted warriors. Though each still retained a human brain, their skulls were encased in black faceplates, rendering their bodies entirely devoid of any visible trace of humanity.

Nothing but metal. These were the Death-Bound Warriors.

They were cyborg soldiers reduced to little more than a brain — yet their fully mechanized bodies allowed them to house far more complex and efficient power systems, enabling them to wield individual weapons of terrifying destructive force. The extent of their augmentation danced on the very edge of the Mechanicus's prohibited lines, and in return it granted them individual combat power on par with a Space Marine. They were the Deputy Forge Director's private soldiers — each one a holy machine-spirit made flesh, far beyond the rank of mere expendable troops.

In truth, many of their augmentations shared components with Space Marine Power Armour, and their all-metal construction made them even more resilient than a standard Astartes. In squad-scale engagements, these mechanical Astartes were capable of surpassing even true Space Marines.

The intensive metal augmentation did carry a drawback — the enraged machine-spirits dwelling within the metal would lash back at the wetware brains housed inside, steadily eroding the wetware mind. But an Archmagos could jack directly into the Death-Bound Warriors' signal feeds and seize total control of them, which made the problem a non-problem.

Unlike the Frateris Militia procured through official Forge World channels, these nine Death-Bound Warriors had transcended the rank of expendable materiel — they were the finest elite warriors the Mechanicus could field, worthy of being called holy machine-spirits made flesh.

On Cath Maximus — a backwater that lacked any complete Space Marine Power Armour production line and existed only to fulfill basic Astra Militarum equipment contracts — the Deputy Forge Director had stripped himself to the bone to scrape these nine private soldiers together.

This was his final wager.

He jacked into the Death-Bound Warriors' signal feeds, confirmed his absolute dominion over them, then issued a cold, flat order to every militiaman at his back:

"Advance."

The vast host of Frateris Militia poured into the factory — and walked straight into an ambush, exactly as expected.

The shriek of bolter-rounds tore through the silence. Laser beams rained down like a monsoon. In an instant, the Frateris Militia formations were blown apart, shrapnel and wreckage spraying in all directions. Yet in that same instant, the gaps torn open were filled by the troops pressing up from behind. The Omnissiah's warriors of steel executed their advance orders without hesitation, returning fire with whatever weapons they held.

The width of the battlefield could not accommodate the full Frateris Militia force pushing into the underground factory simultaneously — but the endless stream of reserves ensured that the militia kept hammering the enemy positions at maximum intensity every moment of every minute.

That was the elegance of a penny-packet assault. The problem was that grinding an enemy down this way required enormous amounts of time — and time was the one thing the Deputy Forge Director had least of.

The Deputy Forge Director stepped onto the battlefield. He paid no attention to the Frateris Militia still locked in their grinding struggle with the enemy. Instead, he led his Death-Bound Warriors and began pushing deeper.

The refractor field generators mounted on his modified Servitors ensured that no stray shot could get anywhere close to the Deputy Forge Director, while the Death-Bound Warriors' efficient slaughter cut down every enemy foolish enough to plant themselves in his path.

Only Space Marines could have hoped to stop the Deputy Forge Director and his private soldiers — but this was a choice with trade-offs. Pulling the Astartes away to intercept the Deputy Forge Director would leave the main line dangerously exposed to a militia breakthrough. But if no one intercepted him, they could only watch as he led his squad deeper and deeper underground.

Lin chose the latter. He actively ordered his troops to open a corridor and let the Deputy Forge Director descend, using nothing but a scattering of traps to slow him down.

His intent: to separate the Deputy Forge Director from the Frateris Militia entirely.

It was a gamble. But Lin was confident the Deputy Forge Director could not resist the invitation.

An Archmagos is a silicon-based creature that feeds on logic and probability.

If he committed to commanding the Frateris Militia's assault, the Deputy Forge Director's calculations would almost certainly show that nine hours was not enough — the deadline would pass before the factory fell. But if he pushed in alone, seizing control of the factory from the inside, he could swiftly unravel the resistance within and reclaim the Titan.

This, too, was a choice Lin had laid before the Deputy Forge Director — a problem the Forge Director's logic and calculated probabilities had to weigh and resolve. But as long as the Deputy Forge Director believed he could win against Lin in a direct confrontation, he would always choose to go it alone.

And so it proved.

As he descended deeper underground, the Deputy Forge Director's connection to the Frateris Militia grew progressively weaker. Without his unified command, the militia's assault lost its former razor-sharp edge. They still pushed forward on the weight of their numbers alone, but the Astartes — now freed from any need to intercept the Deputy Forge Director — threw themselves into a grinding layered defence. In the confined tunnels, close-quarters combat was exactly where the Astartes excelled, and the militia's rate of advance could be described only as glacial.

The situation on the main front had been stabilized. The only remaining question was Lin.

By the time the Deputy Forge Director — scorched and reeking of gunsmoke, accompanied by the five Death-Bound Warriors still on their feet — finally located Lin, Lin had just finished the last meticulous preparations of his chosen battlefield.

Standing beneath the Titan, he looked back at the Deputy Forge Director, and knew at a glance that the bolter barrels and paralysis traps the Felynes had laid out had done their job — at least somewhat. Even so, the Deputy Forge Director's personal combat capability had not been diminished by much. This was still going to be a brutal fight.

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