Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

In just the patch of ground before Lin, tens of thousands of orks were locked together in a brawl. The dull thud of tusks slamming against iron armor mixed with the ragged crackle of gunfire, bursting across a battlefield built from corpses and scrap.

There was no doubt about it — the orks were fighting a civil war.

Even though he'd already made some guesses when he first saw the ork fleet's strange movements, Lin had never imagined the orks were in the middle of a civil war.

He glanced at Occam beside him, who wore the same surprised look. "So this caught you off guard too?"

"I have to admit it did."

Massive free-for-alls among orks weren't rare — these greenskins never lacked for a fight, and when there was no outside enemy they'd turn their blades on their own kin.

But right now the Battle Moon hung over Port Sanctus. By any measure, these orks were hardly short of enemies at the moment.

So what had driven them to this?

Various factors turned over in Lin's mind, and gradually he formed his own guess about the situation. "Something's probably happened to the Warboss."

"How do you know that?" Occam asked.

"I've got no proof, but the odds are high."

With the teleport complete, the three hundred-odd Astartes clustered on the Battle Moon's plain stood out sharply. The orks, mid-civil-war, eventually noticed this band of yellow-armored intruders who so plainly didn't belong.

"Shrimpz! Shrimpz snuck into our nest!"

At the bellow of some ork boy or other, the brawling orks turned their heads as one, their bloodred eyes fixing on Lin. The orks nearest him broke off their infighting and charged toward Lin's group, howling.

"Looks like the welcome ritual's begun."

Occam said it as he drew his bolter.

He dropped several Ork boyz but deliberately let one ork boss slip through.

The ork boss made a point of steering clear of Occam, who looked like trouble, and came barreling toward Lin, hollering, "Outta da way, outta da way! Da shrimp's head is mine! Anyone who grabs it gets a claw!"

Lin, who'd long since read the creature through his data-stream analysis, paid no mind to Occam's little scheme. As the ork boss raised his choppa high, Lin's Servo-arm clamped down hard on its throat.

As the mechanical joints contracted, the crisp snap of the greenskin's neck breaking was swallowed by the roar that erupted around them.

"As welcome rituals go, just this bunch isn't lively enough," he replied.

That only this batch had come, rather than every ork, indirectly confirmed Lin's guess. But the ease with which he'd killed the ork boss clearly stirred the fighting spirit of more greenskins.

The surviving greenskins broke off their infighting one after another and surged toward the Space Marines like a tide. It seemed they'd finally remembered who the real enemy was.

"Kurande!" Lin called out the Chapter Master's name.

Kurande understood at once and led the Imperial Fists forward first. The dense hail of bolt rounds tore most of the Ork boyz to pieces. A handful of ork bosses pushed through the storm and charged the Space Marines' line, but the veterans of the Second Legion quickly dispatched them cleanly with their Monster Hunter weapons.

An ork's strength was supposed to grow with their numbers, yet the orks on this Battle Moon fought no better than the ones on Cath Maximus.

But the advantage was only temporary — this was, after all, the orks' lair.

Scanning the battlefield, Lin saw a pack of Gretchin, driven on by the orks, hauling several Squig-Hurlers into position, while a formation of ork bommers droned toward them across the sky.

"Ork heavy guns and bombers!" He warned all the warriors again to find cover, then turned to the ever-scheming Occam beside him. "We can't fight these heavily armed orks head-on out on the surface. Where's the way down?"

"This is my first time here too. You've got to give me some room to scout. Keeping me leashed to your side the whole time isn't a wise decision."

The Alpha had a point. Lin thought for a moment, then reached back and hoisted up Tom the cat, who'd been swapping out his magazines. "Take it with you."

"Is this a surveillance tool?"

"No, it's the best assistant you could ask for."

Occam and the Expunged Warband disappeared from Lin's sight. They melted into the vast fissure behind him — the one the Star Fort's guns had blasted across the surface of the Battle Moon.

The thick smoke still pouring from the fissure gave the sons of Dorn cover. The ork bommers lost their aim in the haze on several diving runs, and a few even plowed straight into the ground, becoming twisted heaps of scrap.

Lin had never expected that the well-meaning tip he'd once given the Star Fort's commander would become the key to this assault. After about half an hour of holding the line, he received Occam's report.

"I've found the way down. Just follow the markers your assistant left behind."

The Space Marines began a fighting retreat. The torn-open fissure of the Battle Moon revealed metal structures that even the tech-sergeant couldn't make sense of. But following the beacon's guidance, they managed to leave the surface orks behind and found a path deeper inside through the still-burning metal.

The metal passage trembled, thick with the acrid stench of welding smoke. Lin, having analyzed the air as toxic, signaled everyone to don their helmets. He pressed on and finally came upon Occam beside a corroded pipe.

He wanted to ask Occam what the situation was, but Occam made a shushing gesture at him. A moment later, Lin received the visual feed relayed back by Tom, who'd gone ahead to scout.

A hundred meters off, a ruptured pipe hissed out green steam, and a goggle-wearing Mekboy snatched up a wrench and swung it at his own comrade.

"Bolt-brain! I said plug da leak first! Fetch dat scrap we nicked off da shrimp ship last month!"

The battered ork spat out half a broken tooth and jabbed back with a crackling, sparking welding torch. "Rubbish! We weld first! Gotta make da boss see it's flashy enuff!"

"You still expectin' da boss to do sumfink? I ain't seen 'im since da Star Fort blasted our big ball! Maybe he already went off ta meet Gork and Mork!"

A knot of orks shoved and squabbled, and only after a long argument did they settle on a final solution. But the moment the half-set patching compound was smeared over the crack, the pipe — barely lumped into shape — burst through it again. Steam turned the patching fluid into a corrosive dark-green sludge that came gushing out with a sputtering hiss.

The Ork boyz below scattered in a panic. Their escape route led straight toward Lin's group, and when they rounded the corner and saw Lin — the ferocious tin-cans standing before them — they nearly jumped out of their skins.

"Shrimpz? When did—!"

Lin dealt with the few greenskins cleanly. He walked over to the spot the orks had been patching and studied the repair marks on the failed pipe closely.

"They've been at this for at least half a month, and made no progress at all." Lin murmured, and a realization struck him.

The orks' Waaagh! Field, on this Battle Moon, seemed to be losing its potency.

Ork Waaagh! Energy used its warlord as its nexus. Though every ork was a natural Psychic, a single warlord's Psychic power accounted for more than half of that nexus.

This was why Evil Sun alone could churn out hundreds of thousands of usable weapons — one reason being that under Lin's tutelage the workings of these weapons had become more scientific. But the greater reason was that, as a Big Mek, even without any underlings, he himself had enough of the power of "I reckon" to keep those hundreds of thousands of weapons running properly.

And a weapon blowing up while you were using it was, to an ork, just a normal part of the deal.

Of course, the bigger the ork construct, the more of the power of "I reckon" it required. The gap between a Battle Moon and a few hundred thousand weapons was a difference of heaven and earth.

Driving a colossus like this couldn't rely on the sheer number of greenskin boyz or the strength of the Ork warlord alone; the relationship between the two was one where neither could be missing.

So if this bunch of Ork boyz now struggled even to repair the Battle Moon?

Then it could only mean one of those two links had gone wrong. Tying it to what he'd seen earlier, Lin was utterly certain that something had happened to this Ork warlord.

"We have to figure out where their core is as fast as possible — the location of the Ork warlord's throne, say, or this Battle Moon's power core."

Lin made his judgment. Admidel stepped forward knowingly, scooped out a bit of ork brain matter and tasted it, trying to glean some useful information through his gene-detection nerves.

But the Old Ones' core encryption was clearly not something even the genetically specialized Second Legion could crack. As Admidel raised his head, Lin could see an eerie green glow in his eyes.

"I reckon it's a no-go," Admidel said.

Lin sighed. The crucial task of scouting fell to Occam once again.

"The Battle Moon's structure is complicated." Occam made no promises. "Even with your absolute trust, I can't say when I'll find the place you want."

The shoving, jostling clamor of orks began to rise behind them — clearly the surface orks had chased their way down. Whatever came next, they had to move.

"Whatever the outcome." Lin didn't hesitate. "Go do it!"

A flicker of surprise crossed Occam's eyes. Though he'd already known this sage — the one who'd seized Cath Maximus and driven off a Greater Daemon — was no ordinary man, only after meeting him in person did he truly feel the power radiating from him.

It was a kind of charisma that inspired confidence.

He stopped thinking about a way out and threw himself fully into the operation. "Give me a few more Felynes, and I guarantee I'll have your answer within two hours."

The fighting in the passage was fierce and bloody.

The orks seemed hesitant to harm the already-wounded Battle Moon — unable to work out how to repair it, they were also unwilling to use any high-powered weapons that might damage its structure further. This meant most of the fighting here was close-quarters grappling.

Fighting up close in the cramped terrain limited the orks' numbers as much as possible, yet their numerical advantage remained overwhelming.

The Astartes force had already lost more than thirty men, and the orks had even used their familiarity with the terrain to set up a pocket trap.

To avoid being fully encircled, Lin kept driving the force forward. He hadn't even had time to wipe the ork blood off his bionic eye before a burst of muzzle flashes erupted at a corner thirty meters ahead, seizing all his attention.

A mob of Ork boyz came pouring out of a blasted-open hole, wreathed in welding smoke and iron slag, the roar of the ork boss behind them nearly shaking the rusted flakes loose from the ceiling. "Don't let da shrimpz get any further!"

Admidel, Lin's honor guard, led the men forward to meet them. But this pack of orks was only the first wave of a long-planned assault.

"Left!" Kurande's shout was almost drowned by an explosion.

An ork demolition boy leapt down from a ventilation duct, red lights flashing wildly on a belt strung with grenades. Luckily, the ever-watchful Thorne heard Kurande's warning. He darted forward, and in the instant his Power Sword split the greenskin's chest open, he flicked away the explosive charge just before it could detonate.

The spraying shrapnel knocked down a wide swath of orks, but the rest still pressed forward, howling. Just as the situation was on the verge of collapse, Occam's voice finally came through Lin's comm channel.

"Push forward a hundred meters and I'll link up with you."

The ork boss still roaring up ahead in the passage was assassinated by a shadow that crept up in silence. Malik used his one remaining lightning claw to sever the ork's spine with ease. Even with the redundant biological organs inside an ork's body, they couldn't function once the spine was cut.

The ork boss died utterly, without ever knowing what hit him, and the orks, robbed of their leader's command, fell into a brief stall. Though they soon recovered and resumed the chase, Lin's force had already used that window to open up the distance between them.

And so Efron, hidden beneath the passage, detonated the melta charges he'd long since planted.

With a thunderous roar—

The entire five-meter stretch of passage vanished as if gnawed away by some great beast, exposing a boiling pool of molten slag beneath. Two Mekboys, unable to stop in time, shrieked as they plunged into the molten steel, the fuel tanks on their backs setting off a chain of explosions. The splashing molten metal drenched the nearby greenskins into burning torches.

"Gork and Mork! Da shrimpz can wreck da whole place!"

The surviving orks shoved and jostled, milling about amid the guts and gears strewn across the floor. Though some orks quickly realized they ought to reroute and keep up the chase, that wasn't something they could manage in a moment.

Lin blasted down the last remaining ork ahead of him in passing, and after an hour and a half of fighting, he finally earned a rare moment of quiet.

"Where's the destination?" Lin asked the Night Lord waiting for them.

"Just ahead." Malik's voice was as cold as ever. He turned and began leading the way, gesturing for Lin's group to follow.

His attitude was poor, but the role he played was crucial.

Neither the Second Legion nor the sons of Dorn under Lin's command excelled at operating behind enemy lines or at assassination, so if he wanted to broaden his tactical range...

That matter would keep for now. Led by the Night Lord, the whole force advanced swiftly. The Ork boyz behind them soon caught up, but on seeing which way they were headed, they hesitated and broke off the pursuit.

"Dose shrimpz are mad — dey're runnin' straight for da boss! Da boss's place ain't no spot for an ork right now!"

"I ain't goin' in! Maybe dem shrimpz'll even scout out how da boss is doin' for us..."

The orks chasing Lin ground to a halt, and the whole force was able to enter a broader hall without trouble.

This structure, purpose-built within the Battle Moon, exuded a grand and magnificent air — even the Imperial Fists, no strangers to construction work themselves, drew a sharp breath.

The metal construct spanning the far end of the hall was a crude, ork-style palace, but what drew the eye most was the enormous triumphal arch standing before it.

Its dome was held up by seven massive steel girders driven in at angles, and the dome itself was the dismantled wreck of a Strike Cruiser.

The orks had stripped the wreck of every useful part to make weapons, and what remained was raised here like an exhibit. To the warriors of the Exemplary Fists, a construct like this was more staggering than the Lion's Gate on Terra.

"Amikada..." Thorne murmured the name of the former Chapter Master. From the cruiser's faded markings he'd recognized where it came from. "This is our Strike Cruiser."

The others fell silent, unsure how to comfort the veteran.

Though they'd learned of the fate of the Exemplary Fists' former Chapter Master back when contact was first lost, seeing their Chapter Master's valiant boarding action — bought at the cost of an entire Strike Cruiser — now flaunted by the orks as a trophy still filled every warrior of the Exemplary Fists with an indescribable grief.

Occam approached from the side, Tom the cat perched on his shoulder.

In just a few hours, the Alpha had already grown close with the Felynes. "I don't think I need to introduce it, do I?"

No introduction needed, of course. Lin was certain the Ork warlord who commanded the entire Battle Moon was inside. His question lay elsewhere. "Why didn't that mob of orks follow us in?"

"Who knows." The Alpha shrugged. "But the answer clearly isn't out here."

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