Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

That one experiment made everyone understand exactly what this rotting Psychic power was born from.

It also gave Lin a rough guess as to why this band of plague-worshippers hadn't run rampant.

Though the Grandfather's might still required plague and virus as a medium in the material realm, the key that made these viruses so extraordinary lay in the Warp-tainted power clinging to the pestilence. Without Nurgle's Psychic force, no matter how virulent, these viruses would be nothing more than comprehensible things of the material universe, lacking that inconceivable corruptive quality.

"The dark power in these rotting cultists gets siphoned away after they die—drawn off by that thing we don't yet understand." Lin made his judgment. "That's why they can't spread plague on a massive scale."

The vanguard of Nurgle's plagues had always been the Plague Zombie. But even the shambling plague-dead were monsters created by combining Chaos infection with physiological disease.

Ordinarily, Nurgle's dark power would cling to the infected, puppeteering these man-eating walking corpses. If such a corpse died, the dark power within it would not vanish—instead it would seek out the next host to inhabit. As the plague-tide infected more and more people, this spread could even feed back and strengthen Nurgle's dark power, allowing his cultists to summon daemons, or even to conduct corruption rituals that dragged an entire world into Nurgle's Garden.

But what if this snowballing could never even begin?

Then Nurgle's cultists would have no choice but to abandon the biological warfare they so loved, and use the might the Grandfather had granted them far more cautiously.

No wonder this pack of Nurgle worshippers had to dupe refugees into joining with food and water...

Lin's reasoning won Issaga's agreement, but a new question was born at the same time.

"Who set up the array that absorbs the dark power leaking from Nurgle cultists after they die?" Issaga voiced the doubt in everyone's heart. "And what is his purpose?"

"No idea." Lin shrugged. "Can you use the flow of Psychic energy to pinpoint where that ritual is located?"

Issaga closed his eyes and continued to feel carefully. After a moment, he shook his head with regret.

"I can't. The current of the Psychic energy is very strange. The death of this handful of Chaos cultists alone isn't enough to fix a direction. I'd need far more Chaos cultists to die before I get a chance to locate it."

"So it seems we still need the Nurgle cultists to die en masse..."

Lin fell into thought.

Lin didn't believe that the Nurgle worshippers, masters of large-scale plague-spreading, would cut off their own arm while dispensing their "blessings." So this limitation—the siphoning of Psychic energy upon death—was most likely nothing to do with this band of Chaos cultists. They ought to have noticed something from the plague's failure to spread, but they probably had no idea who was behind it, or had simply been deceived.

This crippled group of Nurgle cultists seemed to be a medium—merely a tool used by someone else to achieve a specific goal.

So just who had engineered this situation was well worth digging into.

To extract the souls and Psychic energy of Chaos cultists right out of Nurgle's grasp would surely require a complete Psychic Array. Who would do such a thing? Who would do such a thing?

That traitor Inquisitor? Or a Chaos Warband?

But what could they want with dead Nurgle cultists?

To get to the bottom of this question, a field investigation was unavoidable. They had to figure out where that array siphoning Nurgle's dark power actually was.

Though the deaths of Nurgle cultists would most likely bring the hidden mastermind closer to achieving his goal, this was, for now, the only method Lin and his people had.

That said, Lin had no intention of altering his withdrawal plan.

Charging into the Nurgle cultists' nest with the main force right now was certainly feasible, but those long-entrenched cultists, fighting on their home ground, were no pushovers that would collapse at the first touch.

Their dark power might be unable to spread far and wide through plague, but within an already-corrupted nest, using it would surely come with no such limits.

Lin's side had no means to counter Psychic attacks. Even if he himself could remain unaffected, he had no wish to trade the lives of dozens of warriors for a single chance to confirm the array's location.

These Nurgle cultists were merely pawns manipulated by another. He wasn't foolish enough to swap his own trump card for the enemy's rabble.

"Let these people go bite it out with the gangs first, dog against dog." Lin waved a hand and made his decision. "These Chaos cultists, wary of spreading plague on a large scale, won't find it so easy to defeat those underhive gangs."

Kurande, however, disagreed with the idea. "In the end they'll still be beaten by the Chaos cultists. If we don't step into the battlefield, the situation will surely spin out of our control."

"It doesn't matter... we can fight a proxy war."

Exploiting external conflict to strike at another party was a most common practice in an Imperium so loose and never short of open feuds and hidden schemes. With a plan already forming in his heart, Lin turned his head and instructed Admidel: "Head back to the fleet shortly. Have the Forge Ship organize mass production of Macro-element Flamers, food, and medicine. Oh—and bring that ork called Evil Sun down here too."

If the gangs couldn't do it, then he'd prop them up so they could achieve their goal.

He led the Astartes back to the defensive line they had built earlier. With Thorne at the center, Lin also organized several squads to search for traces of the Night Lords. Before they moved against the Nurgle cultists in person, they would keep hunting for the trail of those traitor Astartes.

The rest of the men Lin assigned to recover the junk scattered across the battlefield.

Junk it was called, but in truth it was the wreckage of all manner of weapons and equipment. Once these unusable scraps of broken metal had been gathered up by the Astartes, Admidel brought the ork called Evil Sun up to the surface.

This was the first time Evil Sun had come out of the cage that held him. Though two veterans of the Second Legion watched his every move at all times, Evil Sun—who had no other designs to begin with—didn't care about that.

Seeing Lin waiting for him beside a heap of scrap, Evil Sun felt that his waiting was finally about to be rewarded.

Facing Evil Sun, whose eyes seemed to glow with light, Lin picked up a firearm that had already been scrapped. His mechanical arm, as if performing a magic trick, took this hunk of scrap apart into piece after piece of components, then presented these parts before Evil Sun.

One piece of junk could actually become this much little junk?

Evil Sun held his breath, his expression growing excited. "Me wanna learn dis, me wanna learn dis!"

"And your promise is?"

"Me'll be yer 'prentice!" Evil Sun jumped and hopped about. "You're me boss! You say one, me never say two!"

It was hard to say just how trustworthy an ork's guarantee was, but at least for now Lin had no intention of giving up this free labor brimming with enthusiasm. He nodded and pushed a portion of the scrap toward Evil Sun.

"Then let's begin our first lesson... The first thing I'm going to teach you is called science."

Lin was planning his proxy war, and so too were the great figures upon Terra.

Compared to Lin, who acted on a spur-of-the-moment whim, these people—weighing gains and losses amid the treacherous currents of politics—were the ones who truly needed proxies to exert their influence.

The High Lord's ward occupied the entire top floor of the hospital, its floor-to-ceiling glass walls on all sides taking in a panoramic view of the city.

Veritus lay on the sickbed. This ward, reserved for the High Lords, held the finest medical equipment in all the Imperium. Yet none of it was running—the former representative of the Inquisition, feigning illness, simply lay in bed, gazing down at the hive city beyond the window.

Grand Master of Assassins Drakan Vangorich dismissed the Biologis priest who tried to bar him at the door, walked into the ward, and looked at Veritus lounging at his leisure on the sickbed.

"You don't seem surprised," Veritus said.

"Of course I'm not surprised. A High Lord who was truly ill would hardly seek treatment here. In fact, everyone can guess you're putting on an act."

For a moment, neither spoke. Vangorich sat down beside Veritus, sizing up this former representative of the Inquisition back and forth with sinister eyes. After a long while, he finally asked:

"What are you looking at?"

"The scenery of Terra, of course," Veritus answered.

The dull, grey sky hung above the city like a filthy rag, and scarcely any sunlight could pierce through that murk. Looking down from the high tower, the entire hive city seemed steeped in yellow-brown water. The blackened outer walls of Gothic architecture towered upward, like the tombstones of this world.

Though it was the Imperium's most important sacred place, Terra had never been any kind of paradise. The Throneworld, its resources long since exhausted, was like a rotting corpse at the heart of the Imperium, sustained in barely-living state only by resources pumped in from all directions.

Just like Veritus himself, kept barely alive to this day by life-sustaining drugs.

"I don't see what's worth looking at."

"The scenery each person sees is always different, Vangorich. Just what is it that you can see?"

"Dark clouds—the dark clouds blanketing the skies of Terra."

Vangorich leaned forward and fixed his gaze on Veritus. "What exactly is your Inquisition scheming?"

"That is a question you should not be asking me." Veritus waved a hand. "I am no longer the representative of the Inquisition—that post is now held by Marguerethe Wienand."

"Isn't that something you planned single-handedly? Whether it's Lord High Admiral Lansong, or the Inquisitors you dispatched to Port Sanctus—Veritus, the intelligence in my hands is clear enough. Every arrow points to you. You are the one who orchestrated all of this from behind the scenes!"

"And what about you, Vangorich? You've been busy pulling strings behind the curtain too, haven't you?"

The Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum fell silent. But it was not that he had nothing to say in reply—rather, he was gathering his fury.

Earlier he had plotted the poisoning of the Ecclesiarchy's Pontifex, Erekart Mesring, using it to coerce the Ecclesiarchy's representative into pressuring the Lord High Admiral Lansong—a fellow High Lord—into forcing Lansong, who had been drawing all fleets back to Terra, to march instead toward Port Sanctus, which the Battle Moon was bearing down upon.

He had been certain his plan was all but successful, but the abruptly-replaced representative of the Inquisition had thrust a foot in the door, causing a whole host of voting High Lords to defect at the critical moment. Though after a series of maneuvers Lansong did in the end personally lead more than half the fleet to reinforce Port Sanctus, such an outcome was still one Vangorich could not accept.

Every one of them knew full well how great the threat of the orks was. Even under the influence of the Warp storms, the fleets that could gather at Terra were few to begin with. If they didn't commit the entire force, what chance did they truly stand against those beasts?

The Imperium of Man was already tottering in the storm, yet this crowd still sat upon Terra, playing their tedious political games!

"Lansong's mustering of the fleet at Terra was not entirely of his own will—behind him lies the guidance of the Imperial Commander, Udin Macht Udo." Veritus saw through Vangorich's fury, and explained without haste: "The Imperium is a fragile confederation. To force a deployment of troops is to set yourself against more than half the High Lords. Have you not noticed the Fabricator General Kubik, who has returned to Mars and no longer ventures out? Your actions would plunge the whole Imperium into division."

"That is still better than letting the Imperium be trampled by the beasts." Vangorich said coldly: "Resistance without absoluteness is absolutely no resistance. I would think the Ordo Malleus understands this principle better than I do."

"This is precisely why the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum is no longer a High Lord. Fortunately, the High Lords still need you as their sharp dagger, so you won't be sent off to die like the Imperial Fists—dispatched to their doom even as the High Lords knew full well the greenskins were closing in."

"I serve only the Imperium as a whole."

"But an assassination by the Officio Assassinorum requires the consent of eight of the twelve on the Council to be carried out, does it not?"

Veritus at last turned around. This former representative of the Inquisition—often suspected of being over a thousand years old—regarded Vangorich with eyes that were aged yet still keen.

"The Officio Assassinorum is the blade the the Emperor holds suspended above the twelve councillors, but that does not mean you may act however you please. Vangorich, believing you can command everything is a very dangerous notion. No one can truly grasp the whole picture—not even the the Emperor."

Vangorich let out a low, mocking chuckle. "That's hardly something the Inquisition should be saying."

"At least I entrust certain matters to subordinates I trust."

Veritus picked up a data-slate, its surface displaying information on the two Inquisitors he had dispatched to Port Sanctus: Pavonis and Vladilena.

"Vladilena is my agent. Originally I only intended to send her alone to Port Sanctus, but Mars perhaps had some other intention, so they slipped a Mechanicus adept who sits on the Inquisition into my party. Still, it's of no consequence—after all, apart from the official duty of hunting the traitor within the Inquisition, my true purpose has never once been exposed to the outside."

He swiped the slate, displaying the information of the next person. Vangorich furrowed his brow and asked in puzzlement: "The adept of Forge World Huangquan VIII?"

"You should have heard of him too, though you probably took him for nothing more than an ambitious opportunist. The Magos Biologis who seized control of the Cath Maximus Forge Worlds amid the chaos—Lin."

"What's so special about him?"

"The allied forces of the Ultimate Wall have already assembled, and he arrived at Port Sanctus together with the Ultimate Wall's troops—though they now number only three hundred. But whatever the case, this adept's aim is surely more than a single Forge World. I've already had my agent make some contact with him. His conduct, and the situation that unfolds at Port Sanctus next, will decide how we act."

"Hmph. So even you don't understand him."

"Pay attention to the details, Vangorich. Compared to a man exhausting every scheme to plot the entire situation, sometimes a single inconspicuous hidden piece can overturn the whole world. If you can grasp this principle, perhaps we could become very fine allies."

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