Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Issaga noticed that the cheeks of these warriors were twitching ever so slightly.

Could it be that the warriors of the Imperial Fists now suffered, like the Castigators Chapter, from a defect in their ossified neural nodes?

Seeing Issaga's thoughts beginning to wander, Admidel had no choice but to step forward and accept his gratitude on the others' behalf.

"As brothers, this is only what we ought to do." His gaze slid toward Bohemond at his side. "I only wonder...?"

"The venerable High Marshal Bohemond—he has merely walked a little too far down the path of following the Emperor."

Issaga answered deftly: "But I believe that your heroic feat in saving your brothers would gladden even the Emperor himself."

These words tamped down the open antagonism between Bohemond and Admidel. Bohemond gave a cold snort and rose to his feet. Lancelot moved to support him, only to be flung off with a single jerk of his arm.

"You ought to be a little kinder to Brother Lancelot," Issaga counseled in a low voice. "He saved your life."

"You weren't even here. How would you know?"

"Some routine methods that a Librarian ought to have at his command."

"Ah, that loathsome witchery of the Warp! I suppose these Imperial Fists 'brothers' were led here by you as well?"

Bohemond jeered in a voice gone shrill with strain. He walked over to the battle standard Lancelot had cast aside earlier and, gritting through the pain, scooped it up from the floor with his dislocated hands.

Leaning on the standard for support, he avoided Lancelot's attempt to take the banner from his hands.

"You have no right to touch it any longer. As standard bearer, you have defiled the most precious honour of our Chapter. It is worth far, far more than our lives."

Lancelot froze where he stood, awkward and at a loss.

The atmosphere chilled once more. Admidel, narrowing his eyes, sized up the three of them and their discordant mood, then made a gesture, signaling the Felynes who had come down from the Hunter to pause in their work of recovering the corpses of the fallen Space Marines.

Valuing honour, loathing the psyker arts—Admidel would stake anything on it: if some 'xenos' were to lay hands on the corpses of the Black Templars, this High Marshal would absolutely come charging up to hiss in their faces at the first instant.

As a key link in the rescue operation, Admidel's assault squad had been fortunate enough to receive a psyker's guidance as they approached the Orks' battleship.

This Librarian, who called himself the Sanctum Lord of the Castigators Chapter, had pinpointed the Ork warlord's location, allowing Admidel—who had already intended to drive his ship straight in—to ram right up into the Ork warlord's face.

Though it had not been an outright kill, they had handily forced a great foe from the field.

Yet this High Marshal of the Black Templars was plainly ungrateful for their rescue.

This ingratitude was not aimed at the rescue itself, but at the elements within it that he found repugnant.

Admidel felt this was rather like picking bones out of an egg.

Although Lin had warned him beforehand that the Black Templars were a successor Chapter of the Imperial Fists that worshipped the Emperor as a god, only now, seeing it with his own eyes, did he truly grasp just how fanatically deranged today's Astartes could be.

Damn it all—how had the Space Marines ended up like this?

Still, this derangement had not run entirely rampant; at the very least, this Sanctum Lord of the Castigators Chapter was someone he could try to win over...

Issaga's attempt to reason with Bohemond ended, in the end, on unhappy terms as well.

The High Marshal still stubbornly kept the battle standard for himself. But the present situation was not wholly within his control, so all he could do was ask:

"And where is our Emperor's Champion?"

"Regrettably, his soul has already returned to the Golden Throne," Issaga answered. "But he gave his own life to pave the way for our coming action. I believe he was worthy of the name of Emperor's Champion."

Under Issaga's guidance, the group came to the corridor through which he had earlier entered the hall. The Emperor's Champion's body lay here.

His Armour of Faith was covered all over with claw-marks and blade-scars, but the truly fatal wound had come from a spear that had pierced clean through his eye-lens.

The spear had punched through his skull, pinning the exhausted Emperor's Champion to the wall. The gore that had run down the shaft of the spear had congealed into black clots upon the Armour of Faith.

The several hundred greenskin boyz' corpses strewn about bore witness to the Emperor's Champion's illustrious feats in life—yet they also laid bare to all a terrible truth.

Even a warrior blessed by a god could fall beneath the siege of the beasts.

These Orks were no ordinary foe.

One after another, the Black Templars who had been holding the rear earlier arrived at this place, facing the body of the Emperor's Champion pinned to the wall.

They knelt on one knee to show their respect for this brother. Only Bohemond's face betrayed grief, and he murmured to himself:

"There is no glory in this at all."

Lancelot could not help recalling the words Travis had spoken when he sent him in.

What, in the end, was glory?

He was suddenly seized by confusion.

The Black Templars' Apothecary and tech-sergeant hurried over, and they removed the Armour of Faith from the Emperor's Champion.

The helmet, once lifted away, revealed Travis's serene face—he seemed to have felt no surprise at his own death.

But the work of recovering the Armour of Faith and the Black Sword met with an unexpected hitch.

The tech-sergeant turned and reported to Bohemond, whose hands were being reset with the Apothecary's help:

"The Black Sword is gone."

"What did you say?!"

Bohemond, still being treated, shot abruptly to his feet, and the other Black Templars warriors broke into a faint uproar as well.

The Black Sword was a special holy relic that only the Emperor's Champion was permitted to wield, and the Black Templars warriors firmly believed that this meticulously forged Power Sword bore the blessing of the Emperor himself.

There were only ten such weapons in the whole of the Black Templars, and at times, to recover a missing Black Sword, the Black Templars would even mount a dedicated crusade.

The Black Templars warriors were accustomed to binding their weapons to themselves with chains as they fought, which meant their weapons were rarely lost; but on occasion something like what had just happened with the High Marshal's sword—wrenched from the hand—could still occur. At first, not seeing the Black Sword, Bohemond had simply assumed the same had befallen the Emperor's Champion.

Who would have thought it was actually lost?

This was an Ork battleship; with scarcely a moment's thought, Bohemond fixed upon the object of his suspicion.

"It was those vile beasts who stole away our Black Sword!" he declared.

At once the Black Templars warriors found their rallying point.

They drew their weapons once more, ready to wrest the Black Sword that belonged to the Emperor's Champion back from the Orks. But Admidel stepped forward and expressed his objection without the slightest courtesy.

"My orders are to rescue you brothers who went blindly boarding, High Marshal Bohemond."

Admidel swallowed the word "fools" with some effort, not wanting to come across as too aggressive:

"We ought to break away from this battleship as soon as possible. It's nothing but a meaningless slaughterhouse."

Issaga added his own counsel from the side: "The boarding at the outset could be reckoned a desperate, do-or-die gambit with no retreat left to us, but I've already learned how matters stand from Brother Admidel of the Imperial Fists. They are now stationed at Cath Maximus; there we can rendezvous with the other brothers of the Ultimate Wall. There's no need to go on bleeding for nothing aboard this battleship."

"We do indeed have much to discuss, and we should indeed link up with the Ultimate Wall."

Bohemond said coldly: "But that will be after we have reclaimed the honour of the Black Templars."

"And you, Brother Lancelot." He turned to the former standard bearer. "You are stripped of your post. Join our ranks and begin again as a Neophyte. I will reassess whether you are fit to be a Black Templar."

Lancelot bowed his head; as a member of the Black Templars, he submitted to the High Marshal's decision. But those who were not Black Templars clearly held objections to this—chief among them Admidel.

"I will not let... the warriors of the Imperial Fists go to their deaths for your recklessness."

"That is the prerogative of you and the Imperial Fists, Brother Admidel. And ours is the same."

The High Marshal turned back, raised his High Marshal's sword once more, and cried out:

"Black Templars!"

The warriors answered as one: "We know no fear!"

Admidel hesitated a moment, then called over Deputy Aibo. The latter returned to the warship and hauled out crate after crate of their ammunition from the Hunter, setting them down before Bohemond.

Such aid was plainly read as support for the Black Templars' crusade to recover the Black Sword.

Bohemond's expression eased somewhat; he nodded toward Admidel and said in a low voice:

"If you come across other Black Templars warriors who have been separated from us, you may take them and withdraw ahead of us. If they refuse, you can tell them this is the High Marshal's order."

He clearly had no wish to see the Black Templars buried aboard this battleship either. It was only that, for him, there were things far more important than life—than even the survival of the Chapter.

"And what will you do?" asked Issaga from the side.

"Reclaim the Black Sword, or reclaim our honour. After that, we will return as a matter of course. Where is your point of extraction?"

"The lower deck," Admidel answered. "We'll refit the Ork weapons there and launch boarding torpedoes from it to make the return journey."

Bohemond raised an eyebrow; he suddenly felt that he and the Imperial Fists were not without common ground.

"We will reach that place. Or else, my High Marshal's sword will reach it."

The Black Templars warriors resupplied their ammunition of their own accord, and the hundred-odd warriors gathered here set off once more.

Though their goal had shifted from the earlier do-or-die resolve to recovering the Black Sword, their odds of success remained next to nil.

Their departure left the place desolate; apart from the Black Templars' Apothecary, who had been left behind to recover the remains and Gene-Seeds of the fallen brothers, all that remained here were Admidel's boarding party and Issaga.

Watching Bohemond's retreating back, Issaga gave a helpless shrug.

"I am already over seven hundred years old, but in my entire career as a Priest, he is the most troublesome of the lot."

"I suppose we can only respect his decision. But Chapter Master Kurande and Chapter Master Sorn may not be so accommodating."

"Kurande and Sorn? I know them—they were the second-company captains of the Imperial Fists and the Exemplary Fists. Have they become Chapter Masters now?"

Issaga sought confirmation, and receiving Admidel's affirmation, he could only sigh: "It seems the sons of Dorn have all suffered heavy blows from the greenskins..."

"That is precisely why we must unite here. But High Marshal Bohemond—I don't think he'll join us. He seems just a little too set in his own opinions."

"Do you think he'll come back alive, Brother Admidel?"

"He will, because from here on it is we who will bear the brunt of the Ork assault."

The battle-hungry Orks would surely move to thwart any attempt of theirs to leave this battleship—Admidel saw that clearly. What was more, the Ork warlord had not truly been dealt with, and there was no telling when he might appear again to become an obstacle to their extraction.

Issaga seemed to have thought of this as well, and he was somewhat troubled: "Perhaps we should have kept Bohemond with us just now—that way, at least, we could have concentrated the ammunition."

Ranged firearms were a vital means of fighting the Orks; if one could only engage them in close combat, then even the most elite warrior would, like the Emperor's Champion, have his stamina drained dry and be defeated in the end.

"It's no matter, because the true killing weapon is still in our hands," Admidel replied.

Amid a rumbling tremor of the ground, Issaga watched in astonishment as two Leman Russ Besiegers were unloaded from the Hunter.

"These are the true mainstay of our defense of the extraction point."

"But the warship is far too cramped—there are many places a tank simply can't pass through..."

The Leman Russ abruptly opened fire; its 180mm shell, driven by electromagnetic force, blasted apart the Orks' rubbish heaps and the armoured plating that partitioned off the corridor space, carving out a road wide enough for the Leman Russ to advance.

Issaga was struck speechless on the spot.

"With this we'll gather up the Black Templars along the way and finally reach the extraction point. So long as we hold out for a while, we'll be able to refit the Ork weapons into launch pods for the boarding torpedoes."

Looking at the stunned Black Templars Apothecary and Issaga, Admidel reached out and hauled them up onto the tank.

"No need to wait around here any longer—let's move out!"

The extraction operation naturally brooked no delay, but there were still some other goings-on in this place.

Only after the whole party had left did Tom, crouched low, sneak his way up and out of the rubbish heap where he'd been hiding. The thing he'd been lying on top of now stood out all the more conspicuously.

It was a Power Sword, black from end to end.

He let out a cry, and soon several other Felynes came down from the Hunter; in a flurry of hands they hoisted up this Black Sword and carried it back to the Hunter.

The rest of the Felynes aboard the ship, meanwhile, were calibrating the equipment.

Although ramming straight into the battleship had left this vessel gravely damaged, it had not lost its capacity for flight; with only a little adjustment, it could still break free of the battleship and return once more to the void of space.

But here, besides the Felynes, there was also a tech-boy whom everyone had forgotten.

Earlier he had brought Goldtooth word of the boarding, only to be beaten black and blue by a Goldtooth venting his temper on him. He had picked out the battle site for Goldtooth, and in the end had been tossed aside like trash by Goldtooth.

In all the chaos, no one paid the slightest attention to such a little boy, which, by sheer fluke, allowed him to witness the whole of what had just happened. Especially that final scene of the Hunter gunning its engines and ramming straight in—that, to him, was particularly soul-shaking for an Ork.

When he closed his eyes, he could almost still see that red dragon-head ram that had sent Goldtooth flying outright. That streak of red swelled ever larger in his mind, becoming a dazzling figure he could not shake from his heart.

There could be nothing more waaaagh than this ship and this colour! By Gork and Mork above, absolutely nothing!

"I reckon red makes us go real fast..."

Seeing no one around, he stealthily slipped his way aboard the Hunter.

"So long as I stick with this ship, I'm sure to become the smartest, most waaaagh Big Mek of all!"

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