Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

By the time Lin arrived at the battlefield, he was already clad in a three-metre-tall exoskeletal suit, with three Death-Bound Warriors at his side.

The Death-Bound Warriors were spoils Lin had taken earlier from the Deputy Forge Director. He had patched and stitched, and managed to repair three serviceable units, which he now brought onto the field as his personal guard.

As for the exoskeletal suit, it was something he had cobbled together in a hurry. A contraption stacked together from purely mature, off-the-shelf technology, there was nothing particularly remarkable about it.

Lin had named the suit "Sunfire Counter-Armour Landry, Mark I."

As a consumable, its combat efficacy was nowhere near that of those magi who took the knife directly to their own bodies. At best, it was just a substitute Lin used for fighting because he was unwilling to subject his own body to too much modification — in every respect, it could only be called perfectly average.

But Lin did not need much in the way of armament.

Against an abstract species that sustained its technology through the psychic force of "I reckon," Lin's own physical constitution was already the deadliest weapon of all.

This had already been borne out earlier upon the Azure Star; everything else was no more than a means of helping Lin reach the warlord himself.

Auxiliary though they were, this beast-like frame and the directly-commanded retinue at his side did match most people's fantasies of a Mechanicus magos's combat prowess. At the very least, when Lin came onto the field, no one raised much objection to his arrival.

But Maximus Sorn, who had been waiting here for some time, kept casting glances toward the Astartes led by Admidel.

As the armed force he trusted most, Lin had kept the Second Legion buried in his hand as a trump card. Now that Lin was to take the field in person, the Second Legion warriors who had been held back as his finishing stroke naturally appeared together with him.

This was their first open appearance since the Cath Maximus engagement. Clad in unfamiliar armour and bearing peculiar weapons, they naturally caught the eye of a warrior like Sorn, who had only recently joined them.

He had assumed Admidel was something of a special exception, but he had not expected every one of them to be turned out in the same fashion.

Sorn could not help but mutter inwardly.

Were they truly of the Imperial Fists' bloodline?

But now was not the time to debate such things. Kurande came up to meet Lin and laid the current state of the battlefield out before him.

The Orks had already surrounded the entire refining plant and were drawing near to the trap-belt they had laid out along its perimeter. And Christina's Warlord-class Titan lay concealed behind the towering structures of the refining plant.

There was nothing beyond expectation; Kurande was merely seeking final confirmation from Lin.

"We proceed according to plan?" he asked.

"Of course. The moment those greenskins step into the trap-belt, we launch the general assault," Lin answered. "Christina's Titan will hold off the Orks' Gargant; the Astra Militarum maintains the line; the troops of the Ultimate Wall are responsible for covering fire and for cutting the battlefield apart. Our own forces will serve as the main striking arm."

"And as for that Ork warlord…"

"Once the battlefield has been carved apart, I will lead these veteran Imperial Fists and deal with him myself."

Kurande nodded in profound agreement, though Sorn — who had never witnessed the combat prowess of the Second Legion warriors — was still somewhat doubtful. But Lin offered no further explanation. He merely clenched his fist and delivered the final speech before the battle.

"Brothers and sisters, let those greenskins who hold mankind in contempt see just why we are the rightful overlords of this universe!"

—

The host Gadda led had passed through a complex belt of traps.

The four-wheeled war-buggies at the head either plunged into pits in the ground or were paralysed by a kind of trap that discharged electric current. The greenskins had lost almost all of their mobile strength.

The Orks who came to a halt wanted to reckon out a way to fix things. But some sly cat-shaped creatures took the opportunity to detonate a sort of wooden barrel, and amidst the earth-shaking blast they sent the buggies and their tekkie boyz alike sky-high.

Sneaky shrimpies — they only knew how to use these underhanded tricks!

The greenskins howled in fury. They felt this kind of bloodless fighting was not very waaagh.

But the tremors set off by the powder-keg explosions had not yet ended. On the contrary, the shaking grew only more violent.

The Orks lifted their heads and gazed toward the refining plant not far off. Out of the dust thrown up by the earlier blasts, a massive silhouette was slowly taking shape.

It was a towering humanoid machine, fully thirty metres tall, its entire body sheathed in silver-gleaming armour, each step leaving deep imprints in the ground.

Mankind's God-Machine, here and now, stood astride the earth!

The greenskins immediately stirred into uproar — though that uproar was more excitement than alarm.

Who'd have figured the shrimpies had such a beefy big toy! Krumpin' this thing was sure gonna be waaagh!"

Gadda, being a Big Mek, had a positively drooling glint in his eye.

"Oi'm gonna nick that fing! With that I can build summink even more proppa beefy!"

He could not wait — he kicked the Gargant's driver aside and personally began to work the controls of this dozen-metre-tall steel behemoth.

The Warlord-class Titan raised the arm mounting its Vulcan Mega-Bolter and opened fire first.

Skull-sized bolts shot forth like rain. Standing nearly twice the Gargant's height, Christina could effortlessly cover every striking surface of the Gargant in bolts — but Gadda was not afraid.

"Oi reckon this firepower's a toy!"

With his reckoning, an almost imperceptible green energy laid itself over the Gargant's surface. The heavy bolts struck the Gargant's chest with pinpoint accuracy, but after the shower of sparks subsided, only a few shallow scratches were left on the Gargant's armour.

Gadda burst into smug laughter.

Over the vox-link with Lin, Christina's astonished voice came through:

"How are they doing that?"

"They believe they can do it, so they can do it," Lin replied. "Stop using bolts that lack the penetrating power — try the Volcano Cannon!"

"He still needs a little time to charge!"

Unlike Imperial weapons, which required meticulous preparation, the cackling Gadda recklessly fired up the Super Zzap Gun mounted on the Gargant's arm.

He cranked the output of this unreliable energy weapon to its maximum; the blue arcs of lightning crackling along its conduits even leapt back and electrocuted several Gretchin who were maintaining the generator.

Yet the energy beam that lanced forth never even touched the Titan. As it neared, it was halted by a barrier; the only effect achieved was to set ripples of a pale violet light dancing across that barrier.

This was Warhammer — don't anyone go calling out cheats.

Just no telling which luckless daemon was going to be served that feast, shunted into the Warp.

Seeing that the energy weapon had taken no effect, Gadda immediately worked the Klonk Kannon mounted on the other arm. This great gun, which fired solid shells, finally managed to deliver an armour-piercing round to the Titan's body. But faced with armour wrought of adamantium, the result was just the same as the bolts a moment before — it scraped off a little paint.

But the Titan's Volcano Cannon had finished charging!

The Gargant's crew compartment was vast, while the Volcano Cannon's searing beam was a piercing weapon by nature, unable to cover any large area of impact. Unable to discern just where in the cockpit to strike for a killing blow, Christina took aim with the Volcano Cannon at the Gargant's arm joint, intending to first cripple its weapons.

A crimson laser blazed forth from the Volcano Cannon's muzzle, and in the blink of an eye it bored straight through the Gargant's arm. A charred, blackened hollow was left in the Gargant's body.

The strike left the punctured arm of the Gargant swaying precariously — it looked as if it were only a hair's breadth from being severed entirely.

But the Ork warlord in the cockpit roared: "Listen up, you weedy little shrimpies! This big iron lump is the most proppa, shiniest new toy us tek-boyz have ever made! The scrap iron up 'ere is harder than a war-boar's skull!"

His voice carried through loudspeakers to every greenskin on the field: "This 'ere is the very peak of our greenskin tek! Crazier than a Gretchin's noggin! Hotter than a Mek's weldin' torch! Harder than a Warboss's fist! Anyone don't like it, come and try me — Oi guarantee not a scrap of you'll be left, 'cept maybe the bits we can use to grease up the mek!"

His words sent every Ork boy on the field into a frenzy. They looked toward the Gargant with worshipful eyes, and the tekkie boyz proudly held aloft the wrenches in their hands and joined this carnival of their tek-genius: "WAAAGH!"

And so, before Christina's incredulous gaze, this Gargant — whose arm had clearly been crippled — began to function again as though nothing had happened at all. The near-severed arm rose once more, and the Klonk Kannon mounted upon it kept on thundering without pause!

"I can't take down this greenskin junk-heap in the short term." Christina was no longer her usual confident self; there was a heavy note of frustration in her voice.

But this situation did not catch Lin off guard. He merely instructed: "Keeping it pinned down will be enough."

A Warlord-class Titan could not, of course, lose to a Gargant. But in the face of the cheat-like waaagh energy field sustained by these Orks numbering in the tens of millions, even destroying the Gargant without taking damage in turn would take considerable effort.

This ancient Titan, transferred from Mars over to Cath Maximus, had been forged specifically for Imperial civil war. Had it been mounting a Conversion Beamer — purpose-built against heavy armour, capable of collapsing matter itself — this battle would not have been so arduous.

But Lin had no choice. Let alone refitting it with another weapon — Cath Maximus at present lacked even the means to maintain this Titan.

So all he asked of the Titan was to pin the enemy down.

Perhaps a few risky manoeuvres might let the Titan exploit its advantages and destroy this Gargant more swiftly. But Lin was unwilling to bear the risk of seeing this God-Machine damaged.

Coldly put, a Warlord-class Titan's value to the overall battlefield far outweighed a hundred thousand Astra Militarum, or even several hundred Astartes. If such a sacrifice could buy a Titan to be brought into one's own service, intact and unscathed, surely no commander would hesitate.

The Titan's Volcano Cannon still needed several minutes to cool down. Until then, the two great machines would only be scraping at one another with solid shells.

But so long as the firepower of these massive solid rounds could be drawn off, the Astartes would have the space to close in and grapple with the greenskins.

Gadda realised that a war of attrition like this would inevitably end with his own — and the Gargant's — defeat. So his eyes rolled, and he bellowed loudly to his boyz.

"For Gork and Mork — krump these shrimpies good an' proper!"

"WAAAGH!"

The greenskins, dragging their iron cans along with them, charged in with savage ferocity, clearly intending to crush the Astra Militarum entrenched around the refining plant and lay siege to Christina's God-Machine.

But this kind of dispatching the troops off on their own was precisely what Lin wanted. Bringing the Astartes with him, he hurled himself in a sudden sortie against the flank of these intruding Orks.

"For humanity — counter-attack!"

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