Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

An Alpha Legion warrior with a name of his own?

Lin found his chosen title amusing. "You never tell the truth, so you call yourself the Insubstantial One?"

"It's only that I know who deserves the truth. To make a living among a pack of traitors, you can't get by without a little cunning."

"And with us?"

"On the information that matters, I'll be absolutely transparent."

It was a clever way to put it. Lin narrowed his eyes and studied him. After a moment he turned to face the Inquisitor, Lena.

"Inquisitor, I think we're going to need a little privacy for what comes next."

The Inquisitor tilted her head and stared at Lin. She clearly hated the idea of secrets being kept right in front of her that she couldn't hear, but with the crowd of Astartes at Lin's side, she gave a nod in the end and withdrew from the room.

Thorne leaned in beside him, wary. "We can't trust them. This band of traitors isn't worth trusting."

"But they do happen to hold something I'm interested in."

Lin answered Thorne and turned back to Occam. "Let's start with the basics. First, how did you come by information about me?"

"Not all of it," the man replied. "I've been laying groundwork across the Solar Segmentum for a long time. To gather intelligence, I conceal my identity and offer raw technologies I've acquired, trading them with those willing to buy in exchange for benefit. In return, they become my unstable informants. On Cath Maximus, my informant was a Tech-Priest connected to the Titan Legion. She passed me word that you and the Imperial Fists had arrived on Cath Maximus. After that, though, I lost contact with her."

A Tech-Priest… Christina?

Lin recalled that peculiar technique of hers for easing mental strain. Now it seemed very likely that the technique had been born from something this Alpha had provided.

For a Priest who cared only about technology, buying knowledge off others was the most ordinary thing in the world. And this Alpha had clearly stated that not long after his own arrival—which should have been right after his own contact with Christina—Christina had stopped feeding him intelligence.

He didn't yet know whether the words were true, but it was enough to lift Lin's mood a little.

Still—groundwork over a long time?

Christina becoming colonel of the Titan Legion was not something that had happened within these last ten years, which meant this man's scheming may well have begun a full decade ago. Given that he had even lured an Inquisitor into corruption, the timeline might stretch back even further. But…

"And the final result of all your groundwork was letting them summon daemons at Port Sanctus?" Lin confirmed.

"No. What I laid the groundwork for is a plan to save the Imperium," Occam answered calmly.

His reply seemed to startle the Astartes on Lin's side. These sons of Dorn couldn't fathom what summoning daemons had to do with saving the Imperium.

Kurande did not hesitate to condemn him. "How could beings whose only desire is to seduce men into damnation ever save the Imperium? Discipline and principle are the wellspring of our strength. We never conspire with heretical, profane force!"

"There's a line between using and conspiring, Chapter Master. Can you truly not see how far this Imperium has already fallen into decay?"

Occam spread his hands. "The Beast rose more than twenty years ago. They overran sector after sector, yet the High Lords turned a blind eye. Only when the Beast united did they dispatch the Imperial Fists to resist—forgive me, I forget, that could hardly be called resistance. Uncertain how vast the ork's strength truly was, they used the orks merely as a means to purge those they disliked."

Kurande's eyes flew wide. He fixed Occam with a stare full of unspeakable shock and fury. "What are you saying…?"

"The literal meaning, Chapter Master Kurande. Those High Lords regarded the Beast as a minor threat—one capable of crippling the Imperial Fists but never of defeating the Imperial fleets. They meant to use it to weaken the Imperial Fists' influence on Terra, and only realized the disaster after the Imperial Fists were wiped out to the last man… and so the situation became the shape you see today."

Kurande did not answer. His pupils contracted, his nostrils flaring in sharp bursts. From the veins standing out at his temple, Lin could tell this survivor of the Imperial Fists was on the verge of erupting. All he could do was soothe him first. "Kurande, don't take a traitor's words to heart."

"I'm fine," Kurande answered in a low voice—though his hand had already clenched around the hilt of his Power Sword.

So he said, but as he calmed Kurande, Lin understood the man almost certainly wasn't lying. Contempt for the High Lords bled through every word Occam spoke. If he wanted to drive a wedge between the High Lords and the Imperial Fists, all he truly needed to do was lay out the truth.

Lin could only pick up the thread, pulling the situation back from Occam's control. "Let's assume everything you've said is true. What does any of that have to do with you inducing the summoning of daemons?"

"Simple. Make the daemons the orks' opponents. Orks crave battle. So long as there's a fight, they don't care who they fight. Rather than let humanity be threatened by the Beast while these profane things leer at them from the shadows, better to draw those profane things straight to the stage and make them a bulwark for mankind."

Set orks against daemons?

Even Lin had to admire this Alpha's ingenuity. In principle, orks—nearly impossible for Chaos to corrupt because of their own gestalt network—were indeed the ideal opponents for daemons.

The daemons couldn't draw power from a horde that only knew how to waaagh, but this ritual took the whole of Port Sanctus as its sacrificial ground, and until the humans left upon it were devoured clean, the daemons surely wouldn't abandon the place easily.

From a utilitarian standpoint, the battle was certain to bog the orks down for months on end, buying the Imperium precious time to regroup. And the price was merely a single world the Imperium had already resolved to abandon.

These people would be slaughtered by the orks even if they weren't offered to Chaos anyway—so why not?

But set aside pure utility?

He raised his Plasma Pistol. The Imperial Fists beside him lifted their weapons in unison, muzzles trained on the Expunged Warband.

"Occam, I have to admit your logic isn't entirely wrong. But what's the price? Every civilian in Port Sanctus, and the Imperial Fists who came to Port Sanctus? You schemed against us, and now you expect us to sit down and talk with you in perfect calm?"

"And what are you? A clown who fancies he can use Chaos? If the power of Chaos raises the stakes beyond your reckoning and turns this world into a daemon world, how will you answer for it then?"

Faced with Lin's accusation, Occam remained perfectly composed. "Just an ordinary man whose two hearts both beat for the Emperor."

This absurd claim clearly won no approval from the sons of Dorn. Lancelot had already advanced, blade drawn, meaning to duel this traitor who insulted the Emperor.

But at that moment the once-steady floor began to tremble faintly. Kurande and Thorne, who had felt this sensation before, grasped at once what had caused it. "The orks' Battle Moon has fired up its gravity weapons!"

Vladilena, who had withdrawn earlier, burst back in and warned, "The orks' Battle Moon has reached a dangerous distance. If we don't pull out soon, most of us are going down into the grave with Port Sanctus!"

They had already achieved their goal of keeping Port Sanctus from becoming a daemon world. All that remained was to withdraw.

It would take gravity weapons several days to fully wreck a planet's landscape, but Lin and his people still had a newly recruited underhive army to bring along, and time was pressing on them.

"Then don't get tangled up with them," Lin decided. "Just kill every last one of them!"

The clatter of bolters coming off their safeties was clearly audible. Even with a Night Lord and Alphas skilled at concealment among them, so many bolters firing at once would be enough to tear them all to shreds.

"Wait," Occam suddenly called out. "A moment ago you said you wanted to work with me!"

"I generally keep my promises. But a man who's nothing from head to toe but scheming, with no visible value, makes me feel there's no need to keep one."

Lin answered coldly, then pulled the trigger. The Space Marines behind him concentrated their fire with him—only to find they'd struck a mere afterimage.

"Koda!" cried Occam, who had bought his sliver of time with that small trick. "To show them our value—finish it!"

The sons of Dorn realized the deception and swung their muzzles around at once, but Koda—needing only a single motion to complete the alteration—was plainly faster than they were.

As the destination of the rift was rewritten, the bolt rounds fired at Koda were swallowed by the portal, and everyone present faintly heard, from the rift's other end, the anguished howls of orks struck by bolt rounds.

Clearly, this portal was not meant for escape.

"You may think me dangerous, but you cannot deny my value."

Occam, reappearing, pointed to the portal. "If you truly have the courage and loyalty you claim, then come with us to the Battle Moon. Together we'll behead the orks' Warboss!"

However composed he looked, Occam knew full well the initiative wasn't his.

From the moment this Tech-Priest, Lin, appeared at Port Sanctus, the plan he had painstakingly prepared had descended into chaos.

Everything had gone smoothly at first. They had lured an Inquisitor onto the righteous path, and the Inquisitor had willingly sacrificed herself to help them arrange the ritual.

He had ambushed the vessel Port Sanctus's planetary governor took to flee, and with Malik's flaying and the aid of the Pavoni Cult Thousand Son sorcerer Koda, he had donned the governor's human skin, disguised himself as the planetary governor, and returned to Port Sanctus.

Under Occam's guidance, the Tzeentch cultist steward Ayash—who believed he controlled everything—used a guise of Nurgle cultists to lure the arriving Imperial Fists into helping them destroy the Nurgle cultists who served as the sacrifice.

Once the ritual was complete, the Tzeentchian Greater Daemon summoned from the Nurgle cultists would naturally slaughter the civilians, setting the stage for a ritual to drag the whole planet into the Warp.

—Yet with only a small hint dropped to the Imperial Fists, this partially sabotaged ritual would lack the profane force to drag the entire planet into the Warp, and could only turn it into a daemon world existing within the material realm.

That was precisely the effect he wanted.

But who could have foreseen that these Imperial Fists—whom he'd expected to be crippled—would beat back the underhive's Greater Daemon with unstoppable momentum, and even rally a great many underhivers to launch an assault on the hive city above?

He could only adjust his plan. Fortunately the Battle Moon was already close enough, and with a Thousand Son sorcerer well-versed in the Psychic arts, he could hand these Imperial Fists a temptation that was hard to refuse.

Boarding action against the Battle Moon!

A blaze of fierce light burst suddenly in Kurande's eyes. He looked toward that portal as if he saw the chance to avenge a great wrong. But Lin held him back, gesturing for Issaga to step forward. Koda naturally yielded his place for Issaga to verify.

"The destination is indeed the Battle Moon…" Issaga, having probed the situation with his own Psychic power, was a little startled. "How did you manage this?"

Ever since the boarding action from the Abhorrence, Issaga had understood that the orks' Waaagh energy would warp the Warp itself; without enough psykers to stabilize the transit corridor, any teleportation targeting an ork stronghold would be disrupted, even turned back on itself.

The Thousand Son sorcerer gave a low laugh. "A few tricks fools cannot comprehend, and a little of the sacrifice that's due."

So it was done by using the residual Psychic energy of the Tzeentch cultists…

Thinking that the Psychic energy the Tzeentch cultists had left behind from toying with those mortals now served as the aid for boarding the orks, Issaga shook his head without a word.

But he truly couldn't deny these traitors' ingenuity. "This is indeed one of the few chances to achieve a boarding action through psychic teleportation. If we miss it, we'll only have a shot at an orbital drop after clearing out the orks' orbital fleets."

The situation was confirmed. The choice returned once more to Lin.

Lin mulled it over. The earlier anomaly of the ork fleet encircling the Battle Moon and this boarding opportunity circled through his logic-processing core. The rising probability indices in his mind told him plainly that these three hundred Astartes—far too small a force on an open battlefield—did indeed have a chance, through this boarding action, to break the orks outright.

But he rarely made decisions with no line of retreat. "Where's the boarding point?"

"The damage the Battle Moon took earlier from the Star Fort. We can push through there deep into the orks' den," Occam answered.

"And our way back?"

This time it was the Thousand Son sorcerer Koda who answered. "I can reopen the transit corridor—only I can."

Lin understood the key to Occam's confidence. The value this Alpha could offer was indeed far greater than simply killing him.

As long as there was a way back, this would not be a fight to the death. Even if they couldn't slay the Ork warlord commanding the Battle Moon, they could treat this operation as a reconnaissance-in-force against it.

After all, they had no understanding whatsoever of the Battle Moon's structure.

"This truly is an opportunity… Occam, you've convinced me. But I won't lower the guard I ought to keep."

"If you did, I'd have to wonder whether my invitation to cooperate had been too presumptuous."

Having reached an understanding with this Alpha who claimed to act for the Emperor, Lin set about deploying with swift decisiveness.

"We can't all board the Battle Moon. The Thousand Son who reopens the corridor won't be coming with us, so Issaga has to stay behind to keep watch on this sorcerer."

Issaga nodded to show he understood. Lin then turned to Vladilena—the Inquisitor who had used her report on the Battle Moon's gravity weapons as an excuse to come back inside, and was now pricking up her ears to eavesdrop on their conversation.

He named her without ceremony. "Inquisitor, I need you to organize the evacuation."

"Why can't I go to the Battle Moon with you?"

"Because you're the most important link among us. Besides the civilians evacuating on other vessels, I intend to pull the underhive army and both psykers back to our warship first. After that, success or failure, we'll return straight to the warship. How to organize the evacuation of so many people while preventing those with ill intent from slipping in is your specialty. Your work concerns the safety of every one of us."

The Inquisitor looked far from pleased, but she accepted the task all the same. "I can't do it on my own."

And so her gaze fell on Kurande.

Lin could set the broad direction, but the authority for specific assignments clearly still rested with Kurande. Kurande in turn looked to Thorne. Thorne pondered a moment, then named his first-company captain.

"Zebyrean, you'll lead the First Company back to the fleet and assist the Inquisitor's work."

Zebyrean's eyes went wide. He looked at Thorne in disbelief. "Is this a punishment?"

"No. Your punishment for disobeying orders on Cath Maximus ended long ago. This is simply an ordinary assignment."

"Then why strip me of the glory of battle!? I and the First Company should shoulder a more glorious duty!"

"As the Sage Lin just told the Inquisitor—this task of securing our line of retreat is even more important than boarding the Battle Moon."

That clearly failed to persuade Zebyrean. He removed his helmet, and Lin could see his lips pressed into a hard, rigid line. But in the end he accepted the order. "Your will, Chapter Master."

The Exemplary Fists' First Company had, back when they were still on the Chapter homeworld, been led by their Chapter Master of the time, Alamida, to board this very Battle Moon.

But they had failed, losing their Chapter Master and their most elite veteran company. The newly rebuilt First Company now numbered barely thirty men—the perfect fit to assist the evacuation and keep watch on the Expunged Warband.

Still, Lin was more concerned with this Zebyrean. The warrior's grievances against the Ultimate Wall seemed to be mounting, and he would have to give serious thought to how to bring this first-company captain to heel.

Deal with him quietly, or give the disgruntled man a chance to make his own mistake. Exactly which, he would decide after this raid on the Battle Moon was over.

Until then, Lin quietly reminded the others staying aboard the warship to keep the necessary vigilance toward this first-company captain.

The preparations for the raid on the Battle Moon were ready. No order was needed; everyone was already moving.

"Shall we depart?" Occam asked Lin for a final confirmation.

"Of course." Lin seized him with his Servo-arm. "But you're coming through the transit rift together with me."

"I like your caution."

In the interval of passing through the portal with Occam, Lin still worried a little about whether his own constitution might have some effect on the portal.

Fortunately, the situation was the same as when he'd been in the underhive and couldn't fully suppress that ritual: so long as it wasn't direct contact with his body or with the media extending from him, his constitution would have no effect on Warp teleportation.

After a brief span of bizarre, kaleidoscopic distortion, Lin felt solid reality again. The Battle Moon was not large, yet the gravity Lin sensed was heavier than on Port Sanctus. As the real things around him sharpened once more, Lin's auditory capture array was first to catch the roaring waaagh cries of orks.

Strange—there were no enemies on the Battle Moon. Just who were these orks fighting?

There was no time for Lin to think it through. As they formally descended onto the orks' Battle Moon, a deafening roar came rushing at them, wrapped in the reek of blood.

This was no ork ambush lying in wait beyond the transit rift. Lin lifted his eyes, and his visual sensors, confronted with a scene as chaotic as a shattered hive of bees, automatically adjusted to dynamic-capture mode.

"Great Throne…" Occam murmured softly beside him.

What filled their eyes was a battlefield of orks locked in a vast melee against one another.

[Author's Note 1: Members of the Pavoni Cult can use their psychic generation ability to manipulate flesh, whether of allies or of enemies. A skilled Pavoni can express this ability as control over their own appearance, or manipulate their own flesh to emit bio-lightning. Their powers are also frequently used for battlefield healing.]

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