Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Relief loosened Daenyathos's chest. He knew the Soulspear's properties intimately: since it had already parsed the Imperial Fists gene-seed, its strength-leeching effect needed only a wound on the target to activate.

Admidel was no longer a threat in his eyes. The only pity was that the spear tip bearing Thorne's blood was no longer in his grasp. Yet he made no attempt to reclaim the lost Soulspear. Instead he charged, headlong and heedless, toward the Predator's Eye.

The Ultimate Wall, the Soul Drinkers, the Soulspear — all of them were merely tools for achieving his purpose. Veterans of the Great Heresy were everywhere aboard this vessel now. He needed only to wound one of them at random to obtain the key that would unlock the Predator's Eye. Why cling to that one spear?

No man can fight four hands with two. Sergeant Arlo was locked in combat with three or more mutated Soul Drinkers. When Daenyathos hurled himself at the sergeant's back, Power Fist swinging, even Arlo — armed with a Sword and Shield — could barely react.

He struck Arlo down with contemptuous ease, his gauntlet slick with the blood that sprayed from the caved-in breastplate. Warriors bearing Lances and Switch Axes, weapons that turned shields into armaments, surged forward and dragged the wounded sergeant back. Daenyathos did not care. He had the blood. At his command every mutated Soul Drinker disengaged from the melee, and with the weight of their numbers they forged a road of flesh and bone that carried Daenyathos toward the Predator's Eye.

Once the Predator's Eye was reawakened, everyone aboard the Shanzheng would be nothing but lambs for the slaughter.

Victory in hand, Daenyathos came to stand before the Predator's Eye. Beyond the rift, something nameless churned and boiled, as though it had been waiting for him. The pulse deep in his blood quickened, and exhilaration flooded him.

"At last... at last, this moment has come! The rot and hypocrisy of the Imperium end here and now!"

He let Arlo's blood drip into the Predator's Eye and spread his arms wide, waiting for that great instant to arrive.

But the Predator's Eye drank Arlo's blood and opened no warp rift to the void beyond the galaxy. It only grew more agitated, as if rebuking Daenyathos for his incompetence.

"How can this be?"

Daenyathos stood frozen. He poured in every remaining drop of blood. Nothing he did drew any response from the Predator's Eye.

The mutated Soul Drinkers who had shielded his approach were being butchered in disciplined order by the warriors of the Second Legion. Between the silent warp rift and the screaming of his creations, sweat beaded on his brow.

He was not ready to give up, and would have tried again — but movement behind him made him turn his head.

Admidel stood there, the Soulspear leveled at him from across the deck.

"Your ambition ends here, Daenyathos."

Daenyathos's eyes went wide. He stared at Admidel in disbelief.

The Soulspear was a holy relic of the Second Legion. Only one of the Second Legion's bloodline could wield it. And Admidel commanded it as easily as breathing, which meant...

Of course he had considered the possibility that he was not the only descendant of the Second Legion. Ever since the daemons had taught him the history of the Second Legion's dissolution and absorption into the Seventh Legion, he had longed to find others who shared his cause.

But he had never imagined he would meet his kinsmen of the Second Legion here. And that they would be veterans returned from the days of the Great Heresy themselves.

No wonder their blood could not activate the Predator's Eye at all... But what had brought back a band of Second Legion veterans from the Great Heresy, warriors who might know the true history? And what did it mean that they had appeared aboard the Shanzheng alongside him?

He trembled from head to foot, so exhilarated he could barely contain himself.

"Join us, Admidel!" He flung the invitation at these veterans with desperate urgency. "We are the true saviors! We can lead humanity to real glory!"

Disgust flickered through Admidel's eyes. Those mutated Soul Drinkers dredged up memories of the Legion years he preferred never to revisit. But Lin had given him his instructions, so he kept his patience and drew the man out. "And what makes you so certain?"

"The Predator's Eye, of course. Our gene-father is gathering his strength somewhere beyond this galaxy. On the day he returns, the whole galaxy will greet its rightful master. But that day is too long in coming. We need only open this warp gate that reaches beyond the galaxy, and the moment will arrive that much sooner!"

"And then what? Turn everyone into monsters? Like the Soul Drinkers out there now?"

Admidel's retort drained the warmth from Daenyathos's face. He had assumed these warriors shared his plan to restore the Second Legion. Now it was plain they walked a different road.

"Can you truly not see how magnificent they are, my brother? Those mortals who rule the Imperium today — they are weak, they are useless, they cannot even master their own fate! The Battle Moon closes on them step by step, and still they are bound by fear and ignorance, doomed to drown in Chaos and decay."

He pointed at the mutated Soul Drinkers. Those transfigured creatures were undeniably powerful — powerful enough to stand toe to toe with Second Legion veterans wielding Monster Hunter weapons.

"Look at them! They have unearthed the gift buried in our gene-seed! They are strong enough, pure enough, untouched even by Chaos! This is the road humanity must walk — cast off weakness, embrace evolution!"

Admidel shook his head and raised the Soulspear. Daenyathos understood then that this fight could no longer be avoided. "And here I thought we were both men who carried an ideal."

"My ideal? My ideal is to see the old Second Legion utterly destroyed!"

They clashed again. Disarmed, Daenyathos was no match for Admidel. This meticulously plotted rebellion seemed already lost, yet Daenyathos held on by sheer will, waiting for his final card.

At last, Zebyrean arrived from the outer perimeter.

He and the First Company of the Exemplary Fists relieved the immediate pressure on the inner ring. The Second Legion veterans held the advantage in the fighting, but they were genuinely short of numbers.

The Exemplary Fists began laying down disciplined fire support, while Zebyrean fixed his gaze on the duel between Admidel and Daenyathos.

Unlike certain warriors who held a duel to be sacred, Admidel had no objection whatsoever to another blade at his side. He knew a swift kill was the only way to keep things from spiraling further, and he called out to Zebyrean himself. "We'll finish him together!"

Zebyrean nodded, raised his chainsword and closed on Admidel.

Even a warrior of ordinary skill can be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Admidel thrust at Daenyathos again — and saw a strange smile curling at the corner of the man's mouth.

Alarms shrieked through Admidel's mind.

He shifted away from Zebyrean's approach on instinct, and by pure chance slipped clear of the shrieking teeth of the blade.

The abruptness of it stunned everyone present.

The First Company of the Exemplary Fists gaped along with the rest. One instant they had been covering the veterans' flanks; the next they stood utterly alone. They tried to close ranks with the Second Legion veterans again, only for the veterans to deliberately pull away.

The mutated Soul Drinkers did not abandon their assault on the First Company just because Zebyrean had turned his coat. The Exemplary Fists, who had come only to provide support, found themselves stranded without an ally in sight.

The company's adjutant could have wept. "We are not traitors!"

"Bullshit," Arlo answered, cold as void. "And how exactly do you intend to prove that?"

The sons of Dorn had never once imagined a day when others would interrogate them about their loyalty. Swallowing a bellyful of grievance, the adjutant rounded on Zebyrean. "Zebyrean! Have you lost your mind? Why would you betray us?"

Zebyrean laughed coldly, and long-suppressed fury rode his voice. "Betray? No. You are the traitors."

He thought of the Ultimate Wall's open defiance of the Codex. He thought of the humiliation of having his will dismissed by Thorne.

All that bitterness had pooled into a vast dark ocean inside him, and The Catechisms Martial had twisted that ocean into the rage that lifted the traitor's blade in his hands.

"The Codex Astartes is the bedrock of our war and the symbol of our unity! Lord Guilliman built order and discipline for us, and you would tear it down! Does the Ultimate Wall seize victory? No — it will only drag the Imperium into deeper chaos!"

The warriors of the First Company exchanged uncertain glances.

A large portion of the Exemplary Fists still supported the Codex, and Zebyrean's open betrayal left them wavering. "Even so — betrayal is not the answer..."

"It is not betrayal. It is salvation! Thorne, Kurande, and that Magos Lin — they are madmen, all of them, blinded by ambition! The Ultimate Wall is nothing but their instrument for challenging the established order! Guilliman's new order exists so that the Imperium can survive amid Chaos, and they have thrown all of it away for the sake of their own ambition! What looks like saving the Imperium will only push the Imperium into deeper ruin!"

A handful of Exemplary Fists wavered, then crossed over to Zebyrean's side. He pressed his advantage. "Brothers, join me! Together we will—"

Admidel's attack cut the words short, forcing Zebyrean to deal with him instead. Off to the side, Daenyathos began to laugh under his breath.

"The odds you thought you had were the card I was holding. How does it feel now, Admidel?"

Admidel did not answer. He concentrated on weaving between the two of them. Daenyathos, realizing he could not finish Admidel quickly, barked at Zebyrean. "Go and activate the Predator's Eye!"

Zebyrean shot him a look. The Catechisms Martial had warped his mind, but it had not stripped him of judgment entirely. "You are an ambitious man yourself."

Daenyathos neither confirmed nor denied it. "At the very least, we are on the same side right now. We both want the Ultimate Wall destroyed, root and branch."

He had never intended to take a wretch like Zebyrean under his command. In truth, Zebyrean had joined his plan of his own accord.

The man saw this battle as the chance for the Codex faction inside the Ultimate Wall to rise again. Daenyathos found such naivety laughable, but he would not refuse the help.

After all, the blood of Thorne staining Zebyrean's armor was the heaviest counterweight on this battlefield.

Screened by the Exemplary Fists who had defected to him, Zebyrean sprinted for the warp gate.

He was already calculating how he would steer the situation aboard the Shanzheng once the warp gate was open — how he would rally his brothers in the Codex's name and throw back whatever came through it.

But just as his fingers were about to brush the warp gate's control panel, a cold light flashed.

Zebyrean's body went rigid. He looked down. A razor-edged combat knife had already punched through his chest.

Blood ran down the blade and dripped away, and his strength drained with it. His legs buckled, and he dropped to his knees.

"You..."

Zebyrean forced his head around to look at the Exemplary Fist who had stabbed him in the back.

It was a warrior he knew better than almost any other, one of the brothers who had answered his call and followed at his shoulder. But the smile at the corner of that mouth now was a mocking thing, utterly unfamiliar.

Only then did he understand that this was not his brother at all.

"Who are you?" He spent the last of his strength on one final question.

"If it will make you feel better, you can call me Alpharius."

"You're the Alpha from Port Sanctus!" Zebyrean placed him at once, and glared at Occam with pure hatred. "So we have sunk to collaborating with traitors. The Ultimate Wall truly is—"

He wanted to say more, but the blood surging up his throat choked off the last of it. Occam pushed the combat knife deeper, personally sending on his way an Exemplary Fist who had never once believed himself in the wrong.

"Everyone thinks they're different, right up until they fall. And every one of them crosses the line between using and colluding without ever noticing."

Occam shrugged and left it at that.

He planted a concealed charge beneath Zebyrean's body, flashed an OK sign toward Lin in the shadows, and promptly erupted into a savage "battle" with Malik, Efron and Koda, who were likewise wearing Exemplary Fists colors.

Zebyrean's fate came to its full stop in an "internal feud" no outsider could hope to untangle.

Lin spared him no thought. A traitor whose mind had been shackled by the Codex Astartes, he had been nothing but a used pawn even in death, too stupid to see his own fate coming.

The single greatest contribution of his life was probably the effect his death by "infighting" would have on what came next.

Say what you like — beyond playing the classic Alpha Legion parlor game of "is he a loyalist disguised as a rebel, or a rebel disguising his loyalty as rebellion," an Alpha who could dress up outside intervention as an internal feud was ludicrously useful.

The sudden turn sent a storm crashing through Daenyathos. Cursing Zebyrean's incompetence, he accepted a wound to break free of Admidel's harassment.

And when he heaved Zebyrean's corpse aside to reclaim Thorne's blood, the charge buried beneath it gave him an enormous surprise.

A roar split the deck.

The blast wave shredded what remained of Zebyrean and hurled the too-eager Daenyathos through the air. Before he could rise, head still spinning, Admidel drove the spear clean through his body.

Lin stepped out of the shadows, having watched it all. He stood over the fallen Chapter Master of the Soul Drinkers and looked down at him, taking his measure.

Piece by piece the last hours reassembled themselves in Daenyathos's mind, and he understood that everything he had experienced had been arranged by the man standing above him.

"Stationing those mortal regiments near our quarters, the assassination of Zebyrean — all of that was your plan, Magos Lin?" he demanded. "You foresaw every bit of this?"

"Not every bit," Lin answered honestly. "Mostly you were all just very cooperative. And you have excellent timing."

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