Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Back and forth it went, until Hays and the Imperial Fists veterans had more or less come around to accepting Admidel's story — that he was a long-lost Imperial Fists veteran who had been stranded in the warp and had made contact with the Chapter again during the battle for Jingang.

They agreed to parley with Admidel. But when his vessel came into view — hull markings deliberately scraped away, engines and ram-prow shaped like something out of a daemon engine's fever dream — no sharp warning klaxon was needed. The ship's own machine-spirit nearly opened fire of its own accord.

By the Throne, what in the warp was that thing? How was it even flying through space?

The docking crew originally assigned to receive the vessel was hastily replaced by Imperial Fists veterans and Naval boarding squads standing in full combat readiness. But the feared firefight never came. The men who disembarked were oddly armed, true enough, but otherwise they proved reasonably easy to deal with.

They were a laconic bunch, every word rationed like ammunition. Even so, they gave a brief account of the situation on Jingang: a Greenskin invasion had all but destroyed the Imperial Fists Chapter; Chapter Master Molhan had fallen in battle; and Second Company Commander Kurande had assumed the position of Chapter Master.

Setting aside the veterans who had returned from the Great Heresy, the Imperial Fists who had set out on campaign had barely a dozen survivors left — and all of them were currently recuperating on Forge World Cath Maximus, the forge world nearest to Jingang.

Everyone had braced themselves for bad news, but hearing it confirmed still hit like a punch to the gut. Those with quicker minds immediately started asking why Admidel and his companions were here at all — but the only answer they could drag out of the Second Legion warriors was a flat: "Everything is proceeding according to Kurande's plan."

That left a crowd of Imperial Fists veterans exchanging deeply skeptical glances.

"Kurande? That clever?"

"I don't buy it. That boy had a head like a brick wall from the day he first entered training."

Regardless, one thing was beyond dispute: Admidel carried a contact code that only the Imperial Fists' own command echelon possessed.

They still couldn't bring themselves to fully trust these men who claimed to be Imperial Fists veterans returned from the Great Heresy. But compared to pressing on blindly with the original plan and forcing a landing on Jingang, the intelligence Admidel and his companions had brought gave them a far better option.

As a gesture of good faith, Admidel's group agreed to submit to a loose house arrest under Hays's authority — without surrendering their weapons. And so, the expedition fleet from Terra made its final decision: they would alter course for Cath Maximus.

Of course, not fully trusting Admidel, they had even prepared for the possibility of an ambush the moment they translated back out of the warp. That preparation was so thorough that when they actually emerged from the warp to find everything perfectly calm, they were left feeling vaguely unsettled by it.

Trusting Admidel had, it turned out, been the right call. Hays took a quiet measure of satisfaction in that — though it did not last long.

As the old saying goes, extremes beget their opposite. Too much calm is its own kind of omen.

And this system was dead silent. Eerily, unnervingly silent.

For a system that housed a Forge World, most of the other planets here fell under the Mechanicus's dominion. After translating in from the Mandeville Point, Hays's fleet detected a Mechanicus outpost on the outermost planet in the system.

Out of respect for Mechanicus sovereignty, Hays ordered his fleet to broadcast an open, unencrypted request for permission to proceed to Forge World Cath Maximus. They hailed the outpost again and again. Nothing. The place might as well have been derelict for all the response it gave.

And yet their instruments clearly showed the outpost was still operational.

The sheer wrongness of it set Hays on edge. He was no greenhorn. Before taking the rotating seat among the High Lords as the Astra Militarum's representative, he had led multiple campaigns and fought in more engagements than he could count. Enough dealings with the tech-priests over the years had given him a thorough understanding of their self-serving nature and their almost pathological sensitivity about territorial sovereignty.

In any normal circumstances, if an entire expedition fleet arrived in a Forge World's home system without prior notice, those supremely territorial tech-priests would be practically pressing their gun barrels against the fleet's nose, demanding to know its intentions.

And now? He couldn't even get a warning shot out of them.

Still, the mission to locate the Imperial Fists left him no choice. However strange it all felt, Hays ordered the fleet to press forward regardless. Imperial advanced chemical-drive engines brought them into orbit above Cath Maximus in roughly a day.

Throughout the journey they continued attempting to reach the Forge World. Every signal vanished without a trace.

Hays had entertained a few theories about the Forge World's silence — perhaps it had come under Greenskin attack, or perhaps the planet's Starwhisper relay station had suffered some catastrophic failure. Every theory collapsed the instant they drew near to Cath Maximus.

The sight of that vast Mechanicus fleet mustering in orbit above Cath Maximus drew a sharp, collective intake of breath from every soul on the bridge.

So the reason they weren't answering was because they were assembling a war fleet to come out and fight us?

What in the Throne's name had they stumbled into? It felt as though they'd been hurled back to the Age of Heresy — as if they were about to clash with some splinter sect of the Dark Mechanicus that had broken away from Mars.

Hays turned to Admidel, unable to stop himself. "You're certain the surviving Imperial Fists are on that planet?"

Admidel nodded without hesitation. But even with that certainty, Hays dared not make a rash move.

No one had any idea what these tech-priests were up to. If the fleet's actions were misread and provoked a confrontation, this would spiral into something far more than a military problem — it would become a political catastrophe.

Two arms of the Aquila, locked in civil war in the Phal System. Word of something like that would reach the High Lords' Council at maximum speed, where every faction with an agenda would seize on it to serve their own ends.

Hays suddenly found himself thinking that turning around and fighting the Greenskins might not actually be the worse option here.

He was only the Astra Militarum's interim representative in the High Lords' rotating seat — untangling political knots of this complexity was well above his station. All he could do was hold the fleet in place and watch.

Admidel, however, urged him to advance the fleet as quickly as possible, and assured him there would be no direct clash with the Forge World.

Admidel clearly knew something about why the tech-priests were behaving so abnormally. Hays was certain of it — but nothing was going to pry that information out of him.

In the meantime, reconnaissance during the brief wait delivered one more piece of intelligence: the vast majority of the Mechanicus fleet orbiting Cath Maximus was composed of transports.

Rather than gearing up for battle, these tech-priests looked more like they were preparing to evacuate.

____

________________________________________

If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)

👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉