Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

'We cannot abandon Cath Maximus.'

Lin rejected Sorn's proposal outright.

Sorn looked to Kurande, hoping the Chapter Master would dismiss this absurd idea. But Kurande showed no intention of interrupting Lin whatsoever.

Unable to hold his tongue, Sorn pressed him: 'Kurande, as Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, can you not see how utterly fanciful this plan is?'

'I trust Archmagos Lin.' Kurande sat in his seat, immovable as a mountain.

Sorn suddenly felt that swearing his oath to Kurande so early might not have been such a wise idea after all. He had no choice but to turn back to Lin and hope he could produce a reason capable of convincing him.

'Though our enemy numbers thirty million Orks, they are not a unified whole.'

Lin pulled up the reconnaissance footage captured earlier by Hays's fleet. It displayed three battleship-sized heaps of debris that looked as though they had been cobbled together from scrap:

'In fact, these three battleships belong to three different greenskin tribes from Jingang. With wreckage to work from, Orks develop their technology with alarming speed — so much so that they reached for the stars before any single tribe had consolidated dominance over the others. And between tribes, there is simply no concept of coordinated warfare.'

'So we only need to contend with one Ork tribe at a time?'

'Probability: no lower than 85.13%.'

'But even ten million Orks would be more than our current strength can handle.' Sorn remained unconvinced.

'Which is why I intend to execute a decapitation strike.'

'Impossible.'

Lin had proposed a tactic that was thoroughly Astartes in character — only to have it dismissed by an Astartes.

Sorn had of course considered this tactic himself. But when he had, he had assumed the Imperial Fists' numbers were at least comparable to those of the Exemplary Fists, which would have given them the manpower to resolve matters through a decapitation strike.

The reality was that all three Astartes forces on this world combined could barely muster half a full Codex Chapter. Expecting that strength to defeat ten million Orks who had already achieved spacefaring capability was nothing short of throwing eggs at a stone wall.

Lin did not bristle at Sorn's dismissal. He simply opened a gap in the mining district's defensive line on the deployment map. In his demonstration, wave after wave of greenskins poured through the breach — but then, swiftly, the gap was sealed shut again. The Orks who had surged through were encircled, trapped like fish in a barrel.

'We will strike here,' he said, pointing to the greenskins caught within the encirclement, 'and kill the Ork Warboss leading the charge.'

Everyone present understood what Lin was proposing.

The tactic itself was not especially clever. Its difficulty lay entirely in the execution.

Executed well, it was a perfect encirclement. Executed poorly, it was a breakthrough that gutted your own lines from the inside out.

Sealing a deliberately opened breach back up again was no small feat — it demanded no little strength.

Sorn studied Lin with a skeptical eye, wanting to know what gave him such confidence. Lin answered by pointing to the only woman in the room.

'Captain Christina commands a Warlord-class Titan. She will be our greatest asset in this plan.'

'A Warlord-class Titan…'

Sorn ran the numbers. He had to concede the plan did have a measure of viability: 'But the risk remains enormous.'

This was a battle that staked the lives of every soul on this planet. He did not believe they had been driven to the same desperate extremity as the Siege of Terra — that point of absolute last resort where everything had to be wagered.

What had summoned him to the Ultimate Wall was the call to defend Terra. Cath Maximus, Sorn felt, was not worth making them bear this magnitude of risk.

But Lin, reading his thoughts, turned the argument around and settled it.

'Cath Maximus is the last lifeline. If we withdraw from Cath Maximus, the greenskins will run rampant across every gateway system connecting the outer reaches to the Throneworld. Even if other Chapters respond to the call of the Ultimate Wall in time, they will be bottled up outside the Solar System, unable to advance a single step.'

'With only the strength we have now, how are we supposed to save Terra?'

Lin turned the challenge back on Sorn. Kurande nodded emphatically at his side. Sorn understood then — Kurande had almost certainly been persuaded by this exact same argument.

It was supposed to be the operational council of the Ultimate Wall — yet the entire pace of the meeting had been dictated by an Archmagos of the Mechanicus.

Sorn found the situation faintly absurd. But the sons of Dorn had always been men of their word. Since Lin had genuinely persuaded him, he would act in accordance with Lin's plan.

'The Exemplary Fists will operate under the orders of the Imperial Fists, as the plan dictates.' He rendered his final verdict. 'Archmagos Lin, I hope you will not prove unworthy of the sacrifice made by the sons of Dorn.'

Lin narrowed his eyes. He caught the deliberate emphasis his counterpart had placed on the words 'Imperial Fists.'

But he did not concern himself with it.

'I will do everything in my power.'

In the original timeline, it was precisely the Orks' stranglehold on the transit lanes that had reduced the Ultimate Wall — heralded as a reunification of the Legion — to a muster of barely four thousand Astartes.

That number would probably have made even the Dark Angels laugh; after all, they could assemble more than that just to hunt the Fallen.

Those four thousand Astartes had, through some miracle, bled themselves dry and saved a Throneworld on the brink of collapse. But now that the lineage of the Imperial Fists could serve as a true asset, Lin had no intention of allowing his 'allies' to suffer losses anywhere near that catastrophic.

Since he had already seized a Forge World, he believed he was in a position to attempt something better.

—

Roughly a week had passed since the war council.

The retooled production lines were now running in smooth, orderly fashion, and the Mechanicus priests, who were defending their own assets, threw themselves into the work with considerable enthusiasm.

The warriors of the Imperial Fists had dispersed to positions across the defensive line. Before the greenskins arrived, they would personally demonstrate to the Astra Militarum troopers and Servitors manning the line exactly what constituted a miracle of field engineering.

Regrettably, no fresh reinforcements ever came. When the signals of the Ork fleet registered at the edge of the system, every one of them understood: this battle would be won or lost on their own.

The Ork fleet that surged into the battlespace first was unlike its kin. While their warships still bore the unmistakable hallmark of Ork improvisation, the piping and plating were at least relatively tidy — they were not, quite, fully-fledged moving space junkyards.

Leading this fleet was the Ork Mekboss Gadda. More technically gifted than any of his peers, he had cobbled together this fleet, which arrived a step ahead of every other greenskin force.

And that technical edge also meant he could perceive things his fellow Orks could not. As the fringe observation stations tracked the Ork fleet's every reading and relayed the data back to Cath Maximus, Gadda fixed his own gaze squarely on those same observation stations.

'Smash dat fing dat keeps bleepin' at Gadda!'

The Ork Warlord's order rippled down the chain. The Gretchin responsible for working the guns scrambled frantically to swing the barrels around, taking aim at the Mechanicus observation station built at the edge of the system. Several shots followed — all of them flew wildly off course, not so much as grazing the edge of the Mechanicus station.

Gadda, encased in his massive walking battle-suit, erupted from the cockpit in fury. He dealt the wailing Gretchin a thunderous backhanded slap, sending it spinning like a top.

Having vented his rage on the Gretchin, he stomped over to the cannon himself.

It was one of his proudest creations — a weapon he had built with his own hands, forged by lashing together the lance arrays salvaged from the wreckage of a Strike Cruiser into a single, supreme, invincible, ultimate 'Armblasta' Revolving Laser Kannon.

He had been looking forward to showing it off. But one look at the cannon's current condition told him that, even with his own personal 'I Reckon' buff applied, the thing was far from stable — and so he abandoned the idea.

'I reckon a proppa killy weapon like dis should be saved for last!'

He shoved the Gretchin aside and took personal command of the gun it had just been fumbling with.

He stuffed a large lump of iron into the crude breech, then yanked the firing cord with all his might.

'I reckon dis one's gonna hit!'

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