Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Lin couldn't find a technical way to crack the palace gates open, so they had no choice but to gather up every melta bomb they had left and blast a breach in the palace's adamantium doors.

No elite orks came charging out with weapons raised, howling their waaagh as everyone had braced for. Instead, a torrent of the Warp's profane force gushed from the breach, and every man near it shuddered to his core.

The sensation was one the Astartes had felt many times down in the underhive, and they recognized at once what had taken root inside. "Corruption! Profane force!"

The fungus and plague, having finally found an outlet, coiled together into tendril after tendril. They gripped the edges of the breach and lashed out at the Astartes.

Trusting their reflexes to dodge the lethal blow, the Astartes fell back at once. On Lin's order, the warriors in the rear ranks carrying flamers pushed forward. The flamethrowers spat furious tongues of fire, and the holy flames devoured the tendrils whole.

Formed from countless tiny organisms, the tendrils shrieked in the blaze and recoiled swiftly into the palace. But Lin had no intention of letting them go. He swept his hand and gave the command. "Advance!"

The company pressed into the interior, firelight illuminating the path ahead. Yet the sight before them made every heart sink.

The palace within had been utterly corrupted by Nurgle. Thick fungus and rotting tumors crawled across the walls, and a nauseating stench of decay hung in the air. Countless viscous tendrils dangled from the ceiling, and the floor was coated in a heavy layer of green slime.

The outwardly magnificent ork palace had become a labyrinth of death and rot. Every step here felt like wading through a swamp.

"This place is corrupted through and through," Kurande said in a low voice, a trace of unease in his tone.

Lin understood that unease. Beyond expectation didn't cover it. This situation was beyond imagination.

A LAN-wiring species, and even they had been invaded by the Grandfather?

The warriors with flamers kept doing their best to sweep aside the tendrils that lashed at them without end. But having failed to anticipate anything like this, they hadn't brought nearly enough flamers. No matter how hard they worked, they could barely clear a patch of open ground large enough for everyone to stand on.

The promethium reserves plummeted under the ceaseless bursts of flame, yet Lin's counter reminded them they had advanced only a short stretch.

"What do we do now?" Thorne asked Lin. It was the question on everyone's mind.

Before Lin could answer, Occam cut in.

"If you ask me, we should be pulling out right now."

This Alpha, who had spent long years moving among traitors, had an utterly clear grasp of the situation. "Corruption this deep is beyond saving. Our only option is to dismantle every defense in orbit around this planet, then drop a Bipolar Cyclonic Torpedo on it."

That was hardly something the fleet-poor Astartes could pull off. And where would they even get a Bipolar Cyclonic Torpedo?

But going forward was no longer possible. A hard decision seemed to loom right in front of them.

"Admidel," Lin called out to his most trusted man. "You and I will go take a look ahead. The rest hold this position and wait for us to return."

Admidel understood at once and stepped out of the formation to walk shoulder to shoulder with Lin. His katana traced a ball of bursting flame, driving back every Nurgle tendril that came at them.

As they advanced, they quickly drew the "attention" of even more tendrils. Admidel alone couldn't hold back all of them, but Lin paid these pure creations of Nurgle no heed. The moment the tendrils touched him, they froze solid, then crumbled into a heap of pitch-black powder.

The others were well used to this by now. Only Occam, a believer in the Emperor, drew a sharp, quickening breath.

"Such might…!"

The profane force of Nurgle nesting in the palace had likewise sensed what made Lin different. It stopped entangling him with tendrils and instead sent out several orks corrupted by Nurgle.

No matter how resistant to corruption a thing was, it couldn't withstand a Horus-style anointing. Gazing at these orks covered in pustules and rotting wounds, Lin finally understood why no ork would go near this place.

But they were no obstacle either. The dragon sword Red Leaf cut these lumbering orks apart with ease, and the flame of the Rathalos burned them down to green pus.

Realizing it could not stop Lin, the profane force of Nurgle gave a shriek of vexation edged with dread. It withdrew from Lin's side, clearing the path into the depths of the palace.

There lay a vast hall corrupted far beyond anything they had seen before. Countless bones were heaped across the floor, some belonging to orks, some to Astartes.

At the far end of the hall, a great throne built from bones and rotting flesh stood upright, and an Ork warlord well over eight meters tall sat cross-legged upon it. Beneath his feet he trampled the corpse of a Chapter Master, and Lin could recognize it as Amikada.

Imposing as he looked, Lin doubted the warlord was even still alive.

From the warlord's frame he could tell the creature's body had once been mountainous. But now the right half of him was charred black as coal, as if struck head-on by some powerful weapon, and threads of black smoke still curled from the wound.

His left arm hung limp at his side. The weapon in that hand, a massive power claw, had already snapped, leaving only a few twisted shards of metal.

Lin and Admidel approached the unmoving warlord warily. Only when they reached the side of the throne did Lin realize the Ork warlord was in fact still alive.

His chest rose and fell faintly, each breath accompanied by a low, faint groan. The profane force of Nurgle clung to the warlord's wounds like maggots to bone, sustaining the last flicker of life in a body that should have expired long ago.

"Truly vicious," Admidel said.

For a life unwilling to accept the profane force of Nurgle, being kept dangling this way was the purest form of torment.

Nurgle's cultists were always fond of preaching loving-kindness, but to force another to accept the love of Nurgle, they had no qualms about making that other first experience pain far beyond the ordinary.

The profane force of Nurgle had not yet fully corrupted this desperately resisting Ork warlord, but that was only a matter of time.

"Admidel, you keep watch. I'm going to examine his condition."

Lin gave the order and drew close to the Ork warlord. Upon examination, he discovered that the throne this warlord sat on was actually a special Psychic device.

More than a throne, it resembled an instrument of torture. It drew out the endless power of "I reckon" from within the Ork warlord's body, then pumped it along the pipes beneath the throne throughout the entire Battle Moon, keeping the whole Battle Moon running.

A Battle Moon in its normal state would have no need for this thing. This was likely a stopgap measure to keep the Battle Moon functioning after the Star Fort crippled it in that one blow, before the repairs could be completed.

Lin pieced his thoughts together. The Star Fort's final strike before its collapse had clearly dealt heavy damage to both the Battle Moon and the Ork warlord. To keep the Battle Moon operating normally, the warlord had taken the throne, sustaining the situation with his own power of "I reckon."

But profane force of Nurgle from who knew where had seized the opening, trying to corrupt the crippled warlord.

Forced to fend off the corruption, the warlord could no longer sustain the entire Battle Moon. Starved of the power of "I reckon," the moon could never be fully repaired. And the orks, inferring from the weakening of that power that their warlord might already be gone, had fallen into civil war over who would claim the vacant warlord's seat…

Why did this feel so familiar?

Perhaps the prodding of the examination roused the half-comatose ork. The warlord slowly lifted his head, his cloudy eyes fixing on Lin.

"Shrimp," the Ork warlord said with difficulty, his voice thick with the gurgle of pus. "Yer too late…"

He seemed to regret that he no longer had the strength to fight the humans who had cut their way to him. Lin gave no reply. He simply raised his Plasma Pistol and aimed it at the Ork warlord's skull.

"Your suffering ends here."

He pulled the trigger. In the instant the plasma beam bored through the warlord's skull, Lin saw a flicker of relief in the depths of his eyes.

"Little human… ya done… good… I can finally… get some rest…"

This torment, which not even a xenos should have endured, came to its end.

The profane force of Nurgle surged across the Ork warlord's body, as if it meant to seize the corpse and turn it into its own puppet. But Lin moved first, touching the warlord's body before the corruption was complete.

The corpse, already claimed for the most part by Nurgle, disintegrated at Lin's touch and crumbled to ash. The profane force of Nurgle withdrew in resentment, and the power of "I reckon" that flowed through the bone throne was likewise cut off by Lin. In an instant, robbed of the warlord's power of "I reckon," the Battle Moon began to quake and heave.

As the corruption of Nurgle started to ease, Kurande's group, once trapped, was able to advance. They rushed up to Lin, deep confusion in their eyes.

"What's going on here? Where's the Ork warlord?"

"I'll explain when we're back!" Lin had no wish to linger. "Let's get out of here first. Occam!"

This Alpha had his own lines of contact, but after a brief exchange with the Thousand Son sorcerer, he brought everyone bad news.

"The Psychic currents here are too chaotic. The extraction passage can't be opened in this place!"

"Then where do we go?!"

"At the very least, back to the surface!"

The withdrawal brooked not a moment's delay, yet Lin still called out to Gamas and the tech-sergeants under him.

"Take this throne apart and bring it with us. I reckon this thing'll come in handy somewhere down the line."

The Battle Moon's anomaly showed not only within it. The ork fleet in space could likewise see its crust beginning to tremble.

Grand Admiral Lansong of the Navy woke precisely at the sixth hour of Terran standard time. Attended by his chamberlain, he made his way to his private dining room for his meal.

Even on a supply-strained front, his breakfast came with a standard cut of Grox steak paired with Quaddis wine. Just as he was savoring his breakfast in comfort to the melody of the Hymn of the Emperor, an adjutant burst in and spoiled the mood of his meal.

He furrowed his brow, ready to reproach the adjutant, but the report the man handed over brought him sharply to his feet.

"The ork fleet is showing unusual movement?"

Fearing the orks were plotting something against his own fleet, he hurried to the bridge, only to find upon arrival that this movement was not aimed at humanity.

"Astropath, report the situation," he ordered.

"The ork Battle Moon reached orbit above Port Sanctus twelve standard Terran hours ago. We detected a gravity weapons reaction five hours back, but at only twenty-three percent of the output from when it struck the Star Fort. Just now, the greenskin fleet that had been arrayed above the Battle Moon began to shift. They are moving toward the Battle Moon and deploying single-crewed craft and boarding troops onto it…"

What kind of situation was this?

Lansong couldn't puzzle it out at first, but the staff officers aboard all believed this was an opportunity to be seized.

"Perhaps the orks have fallen into infighting, Admiral Lansong. This chance can't be missed!"

But Lansong merely waved a hand, unwilling to make any reckless move. "Tell me, what is the purpose of this sortie of ours?"

The staff officers exchanged glances. One of them, following the briefing the Imperial Navy had issued before departure, ventured tentatively, "To fight the orks…?"

"No. It is to make the people on Terra believe they are under the protection of the Imperial Navy."

This sortie was nothing more than a response to the pressure the council of High Lords had brought to bear on the Imperial Navy.

The Imperial Navy, as the standing military force, was in truth subject to the authority of Udin Macht Udo, who had risen from Grand Admiral to Imperial Commander. As the current Grand Admiral, Lansong played more the role of Udo's follower within the council of High Lords.

Originally, on Imperial Commander Udo's advice, most of the High Lords had agreed to the plan of holding fast to Terra. But the Ecclesiarchy Pontiff, for reasons no one could fathom, had inexplicably rallied several other High Lords to begin denouncing the Imperial Navy's inaction.

They demanded that the Imperial Navy commit its full main strength and wage a decisive battle against the orks' Battle Moon at the naval stronghold of Port Sanctus.

Pressuring Lansong was, at its heart, a provocation against the Imperial Commander's authority. Such a demand had nearly driven the council of High Lords to schism. Fortunately, through the covert maneuvering of the Inquisition's representative Veritus, the High Lords barely reached the decision to let Lansong lead half the fleet to Port Sanctus for a probing action.

Veritus had privately told Lansong to prioritize preserving the fleet's strength and to conduct only a symbolic engagement at Port Sanctus. Wholly in agreement, Lansong resolved to carry it out even more thoroughly. He would avoid the ork forces outright and attempt no engagement at all.

Whatever had happened within Port Sanctus, his resolve on this point would not waver in the slightest!

But his firm resolve was soon tempted by the steadily deteriorating Battle Moon. The Battle Moon coming apart bit by bit made Lansong realize this truly was a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

If he seized this opportunity, then upon returning to Terra he wouldn't even need to organize that decisive battle that was bound to come. He could simply bring back the tidings of triumph.

At the thought of how much such an opportunity could do for his personal standing, the Grand Admiral of the Navy felt his breath quicken.

In the end he betrayed his earlier vow never to engage. "Close in on the ork fleet at high speed. Use a torpedo salvo to break up the ork formation first, and clear the way for our main fleet!"

The fleet began to move at his command. But just as the fleet's engines finished pre-heating, a squadron of three cruisers swung across the front of Lansong's fleet from the flank.

"Halt your advance!"

Zebyrean, serving for the moment as the Chapter's representative, opened a channel and warned off the admiral's fleet, whose intent was all too obvious.

"Our Chapter is fighting on the Battle Moon. Any assault you make on the Battle Moon will be treated as a hostile act against the Imperial Fists and the Exemplary Fists!"

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