Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Orks are not stupid—indeed, they can be quite cunning—but "simple-minded" is truly their byword.

As a race that has endured in the Warhammer universe for tens of thousands of years, the greenskins can scarcely be called a civilization most of the time; they are more like a mobile calamity rampaging across the cosmos.

They can carve out a vast Ork interstellar empire through slaughter and conquest, yet their warlord-centered social structure also means that the death of an Ork warlord sends them collapsing apart in short order.

Were they any other hive-mind-like collective, they would surely shelter their progenitor behind layer upon layer of protection in the rear, just as the Tyranid swarm does.

But an Ork boss will instead actively seek out the mightiest foe to duel one-on-one, and in doing so make himself ever bigger and ever more waaagh.

This means that no matter what the Orks set out to do, in the end it all devolves into the duel right in front of them. Such a way of fighting leaves the Ork mind all but incapable of grasping the concept of "the long term." No matter how clever they are, these beasts will only squander their intellect on the killing and the waaagh right before their eyes.

But the mekboy before him now shattered the impression Lin had long held of greenskins, and made him think of that great warlord in ages to come—Bonebreaker—who claimed he could commune with Gork and Mork, and who laid out the strategic dispositions for three sieges of Armageddon.

He realized that these Orks here and now might genuinely have a few long-term plans of their own.

Lin strode briskly toward the bridge of the Hunter. Observing through the viewport, he saw that the battleship belonging to the Priest was still within range of his optical receptors.

It was still bombarding another battleship.

With the Ork warlord already dead, the residual power of "I reckon" was nowhere near enough to hold the other battleship together. Its detonating thrusters set the entire warship spinning in the vacuum, and as it spun, its armor plates began peeling away from the main body one sheet at a time.

Under the ravaging fire, its breached areas steadily widened, and fragments and components were flung clear of the hull—among them no small number of terrified Ork boyz.

Once the resistance aboard the warship was confirmed broken, the Priest's battleship loosed several of those same gravity weapons Lin had seen earlier on the battle moon. They pinned the other battleship in place, and a mob of boyz came charging gleefully aboard that already-crumbling battleship.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the remaining Ork cruisers were hauling a few of the larger wrecks left after the Abhorrence had scuttled itself over to this spot as well. Yet another mob of boyz came charging gleefully up to harvest the scrap they had been dreaming of.

On the whole the situation was rather leisurely, and Lin truly could not detect in it the slightest intention on the part of that last Ork warlord to pursue the Imperial fleet.

This meant that what the mekboy had said was very likely true.

Lin clicked his tongue.

The situation had veered off in a direction he had never anticipated.

This band of Orks no longer wanted to fight—instead they were about to start farming and building up their holdings!.

This development, contrary to all his projections, threw off the plan Lin had laid out earlier. Although it likewise meant that Cath Maximus should not come under threat again any time soon, Cath Maximus not being attacked was not necessarily a good thing.

Lin thought back to Sorn's earlier misgivings about leadership over the Ultimate Wall.

He had not been worried about this matter before, because the Ultimate Wall was now structured with Sorn obeying, Kurande leading, and Lin advising. By leveraging Kurande's respect for him, the three of them had effectively kept a firm grip on command of the allied force.

As the saying goes, wartime is no time for reform. If the fighting continued unabated from here on out, this command would have no chance of undergoing any major shake-up.

Even with the Black Templars newly joining, so long as they understood the present battle situation less well than Lin and his companions did, they could only choose to acknowledge Kurande's leadership—provided they considered the bigger picture.

By then, Lin would be able to gradually infiltrate his own influence into the Black Templars over the course of the campaign. Even if certain orders ran counter to the Black Templars' wishes, in the larger cause of fighting the greenskins they would grudgingly comply.

But what if there were no battles left to fight?

Power struggles are an unavoidable theme throughout human history, and that holds no less true for these transhumans, the Astartes.

It has nothing to do with whether those engaged in the struggle are vermin or not; even if everyone were a wholeheartedly devoted ascetic, disagreements would still arise among them over which course to choose.

This was especially so for the Black Templars, who venerated "attack, and attack again!", and the Imperial Fists, who were anxious to rush back and reinforce Terra....

So long as the Black Templars could sort out their thinking, Lin felt they would inevitably put forward some aggressive choice for the next direction of the Ultimate Wall allied force—and that choice would surely clash with the Imperial Fists' intentions.

And if each side believed that its own plan was the only correct one....

The more Lin thought about it, the more a creeping dread came over him.

Cath Maximus not being attacked any time soon was a good thing, but this good thing might instead leave an unbridgeable rift within the Ultimate Wall.

That Ork warlord over there, who had started farming and building up his holdings, could of course never have taken this layer of consequences into account... and yet this very outcome had emerged from the stacking up of factor upon factor.

Just what sort of variable was this supposed to be?

Lin found it rather hard to say, but he seemed to dimly glimpse the great hand of Tzeentch behind it.

Damn it all—this had to be a scheme of Tzeentch's!.

He had no idea that the great hand of Tzeentch had likewise been set spinning by the world-shaking intellect of that Ork warlord opposite, but in any case there was never any harm in cursing Tzeentch a couple of times.

Only, once he was done cursing, he still had to figure out how to deal with the impending mess.

Lin's original plan had been to mount a defense by leaning on the Ultimate Wall while developing Cath Maximus itself into his power base. But now that the external enemy had vanished, whatever the plans of the Black Templars or the Imperial Fists might be, they would surely be unwilling to linger long at Cath Maximus.

He had to make some new preparations.

The urgency of the matter left Lin with no desire to tarry here any longer, but it also let him see the extra value of this mekboy. He gave his orders:

"I'm heading to the surgery chamber first. You lot take this greenskin and wait for me outside. If anyone asks, say it's a test subject I had you capture and bring back."

Having given his orders, he made to leave the Hunter ahead of the others, but Admidel caught hold of Lin: "There's still one thing I haven't shown you."

"Time's tight—tell me as we walk."

Lin didn't turn his head; he hurried down off the Hunter. But the thing Admidel passed over to him made him spin around on the spot and scramble, stumbling and crawling, back up onto the Hunter.

Gazing at the Power Sword before him, jet-black from end to end, Lin gaped, the shock in his heart beyond all words.

"Holy crap, what in the world did you drag back here?!"

"I don't know." Admidel was as honest as ever. "We didn't even notice this sword at first. The Felyne was the one who picked it up; we've no idea what it is either. But it looks pretty impressive, and I figured you'd definitely be interested."

"Can you all stop hauling every single thing back home?!"

Lin seized Tom the cat—who had wanted to claim credit moments ago and now wanted to flee—and rapped a knuckle-knock down onto his head: "Admidel, you didn't let the Black Templars who came back with you see this thing, did you?"

"There shouldn't have been any."

"Just now, when I was about to head down, there weren't any Black Templars looking over our way, were there?"

"There... probably weren't, either."

"Good." Lin let out a breath of relief. "Because if there were, then we won't even need to worry about what to do when the Imperial Fists make us submit to a Gene-Seeds inspection afterward—we'll just gather up our valuables and bolt right now."

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