Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

To Daenyathos, an answer like that was naked mockery, but he had no strength left to argue. Pinned to the deck by the Soulspear, he had already been bled dry of power, and with his fall the scales of victory had tipped completely toward Lin.

"Don't celebrate too soon." His voice was thin as a thread as he delivered the warning. "The Soul Drinkers outnumber every other force aboard the Shanzheng. Once the brothers your army is holding off finish their fight, they will come. They will take up our purpose, and they will activate the Predator's Eye..."

The rough blare of a battle-truck's horn cut him short.

Lin glanced at a monitor and had a Servo-skull project the outer-ring feed directly across Daenyathos's eyes. "Looks like the weak mortals won."

"No. Our great work..."

Watching the Soul Drinker corpses crushed against the buckled nose of the truck, watching Ornis and his men celebrate beneath a snapped company banner, Daenyathos sank back against the deck in despair.

This son of the Second Legion had accepted his defeat.

"Anything else you want to say?" Lin asked.

"I failed, but I was not wrong. I am the true loyalist... I drew the truth of the Second Legion out of other men's memories, and I refused the offer of alliance from Chaos. I stayed loyal to our gene-father's vision, loyal to the future of mankind... and you. You carry the same Second Legion blood, and yet you are nothing but puppets of a rotting Imperium..."

Daenyathos's body had begun to shake. His life was draining out of him fast, but still he forced the words through. "Even if I die... my ideal... will not die with me... One day... someone will understand... everything I did was for... for—"

The sentence broke off unfinished. The light in Daenyathos's eyes dimmed, faded, and went out entirely.

Lin shook his head and turned to Admidel. "Dispose of the body."

By rights he should have kept the man alive on a thread and put him to the question, but letting him live meant he might leak what he knew about the Second Legion. The business with the Imperial Fists Dreadnought walking in on them was still unresolved, and Lin had no interest in creating fresh complications.

Admidel nodded, swung his katana, and reduced the corpse to ash with a burst of flame.

Strangely, one book survived the burning intact. Lin reached down and picked it up, and found a faint blue skin of warp-energy sheathing it in protection.

He opened the pages and recognized it at once: the volume Occam had mentioned earlier, the Catechisms Martial.

Lin skimmed through it. The bulk of the text was morale-raising rhetoric dressed up as doctrine, honeyed words designed to seduce.

It taught warriors to hang every intangible, insubstantial hope they had on their gene-father. And with that as the goal, it framed devouring corpses to harvest their gene-seed as the path by which a man made himself more exceptional, more worthy of that hope.

Lin shook his head, tightened his grip a fraction, and destroyed the book completely.

The Soul Drinkers' rebellion had come to its abrupt end, but Lin could read something complicated in Admidel's eyes.

"What is it? Does killing a son of the Second Legion with your own hand sit badly with you?"

"No. I'm only struck by how easily things turn." Admidel sighed. "If we had never seen our gene-father's true face, perhaps we would have ended up exactly like him."

A Primarch's pull on his own sons, his influence over them, was something beyond ordinary understanding. People liked to joke that barely half the Iron Warriors chose Perturabo during the Great Heresy, but turn it around: after a decimation, more than half a Legion still followed Perturabo. That alone proved how enormous a Primarch's gene-borne hold on his sons could be.

Lin could guess what had happened to Daenyathos.

The ugly spectacle of an Imperium driven to the brink by the orks had pushed them to look for new hope somewhere outside it, and at exactly that moment they "happened" to learn about their own past. Guided by certain interested parties, they began to pin that hope on a Primarch, believing that if they could only bring their gene-father home, a bright future would follow.

Warriors who had craved honor and their gene-father's approval even in the hopeful years of the Great Crusade needed those things far more now, as an anesthetic against a dark and unstable age.

Even without Chaos corruption, that kind of wishful thinking had turned them into pieces on someone else's board and driven them into this ridiculous rebellion.

What made the whole thing so hard to argue cleanly was that the Imperium really was as rotten as they claimed. It was only that the results of their methods usually came out worse than simply leaving the Imperium exactly as it was.

Especially this business of bringing the Second Legion's Primarch back...

Lin saw no real difference in kind between the people who pinned their hopes on the Emperor and the Soul Drinkers who pinned theirs on a Primarch none of them had ever met.

The practical difference was that the Emperor, bless the old man, was not getting up. A Primarch who might still be alive, and who was hostile to humanity, could genuinely become a major threat.

Looking at the Predator's Eye, which was supposedly a doorway to somewhere beyond the galaxy, Lin mused aloud. "Do you think this thing really leads to some Second Legion Primarch?"

"It smells more like a Chaos scheme. When a warp gate like this opens, isn't the most common thing to come out of it daemons?"

"Personally, I think it's worth a test."

The urgent business, though, was clearing the remaining mutant Soul Drinkers off the Shanzheng. Those warriors were barely distinguishable from xenos now, and with their Chapter Master dead they had gone fully feral.

With their cause lost, they posed no real threat. The Exemplary Fists, whose loyalty had been called into question after Zebyrean's betrayal, threw themselves into the front line against the freaks harder than anyone. But once the mutants in the inner ring were cleaned out, Lin still deliberately isolated them from the rest.

Thorne and Issaga, having wrapped up the outer defensive battle cleanly, came into the inner ring and were baffled by the strange tableau waiting for them.

Only after they learned what had actually happened did Thorne start pacing in fury.

"Zebyrean colluded with the Soul Drinkers at the critical moment, tried to overturn order aboard the Shanzheng, and then died in infighting inside the Exemplary Fists' First Company???"

He had plenty of grievances with that Codex-worshipping first-company captain, but he had never imagined the man would betray them outright over the Ultimate Wall.

Issaga stood off to one side, struck speechless by the news. He looked to Lin, hunting for more information in the other man's eyes, but Lin only gave a small nod: all of it was true.

"Perhaps we should look deeper into the circumstances behind this," Issaga suggested.

Thorne cut off the friendly proposal. "No. I trust Magos Lin. Zebyrean did betray us. He has shamed the entire Exemplary Fists!"

Thorne's face had gone iron-grey, his knuckles white with pressure. But his eyes were steady, like a man on the edge of a momentous decision.

"Zebyrean's betrayal is not merely one man's fall. It is a stain on our whole Chapter. As Chapter Master, I cannot allow that stain to remain!"

Issaga seemed to have guessed what was coming and stepped forward quickly to stop him. "Thorne, you can't do this! The Exemplary Fists have a long history and long traditions. You can't throw all of it away over a single betrayal!"

"Issaga, this isn't throwing it away. This is preserving the last of our honor! Look at the warriors standing behind me, not one of them able to hold his head up anymore. If the Exemplary Fists continue to exist, all we do is invite more men to question us, and question the loyalty of the Ultimate Wall itself. Disbanding the Chapter is our only road!"

There was sense in what Thorne said. The Ultimate Wall had never been welcome in the Imperium, and it could not afford to carry any more suspicion now.

The Soul Drinkers' revolt could at least be called settled by their destruction. But if the Exemplary Fists, who had taken part in the same rebellion, went on existing as though nothing had happened, that would hand a convenient angle of attack to anyone looking for one.

While the two Chapter Masters were still arguing over disbandment, Admidel quietly asked Lin, "Why do I get the feeling he's been planning to fold into the Imperial Fists for a while now?"

"I think we're better off not digging into that."

The Imperial Fists Dreadnought in charge of the sweep was the last to arrive, and his arrival settled the argument between Thorne and Issaga. He was not an Imperial Fists Chapter Master, but both men showed the old Dreadnought enough respect to want his ruling on the matter.

"I will not make Kurande's decisions for him. The men who are here now should make their own choices." The Dreadnought declined their invitation. "What matters is how we gather up the wreckage aboard the Shanzheng."

That they had been able to hold off a rebellion of eight hundred Soul Drinkers was not because the other Chapters vastly outclassed them in fighting strength. The problem lay with the Soul Drinkers themselves.

Perhaps out of concern for keeping the plan hidden, no one below the Chapter's leadership, the First and Second Companies chief among them, had known they were meant to raise a rebellion aboard the Shanzheng.

Most of them had simply been swept along the moment Daenyathos made his move, goaded by their Chapter Master's words and carried into the revolt by the men around them.

They had believed they stood on the side of justice. Then Daenyathos unleashed the mutant Soul Drinkers to break the defensive line, and doubt set in. Those freaks, so far removed from anything human, gutted their morale.

When Daenyathos left alone to activate the Predator's Eye, the resistance of Soul Drinkers who had begun to wonder what the point of this battle even was grew feeble.

The four hundred Soul Drinkers holding back the underhive army in the outer ring were overrun by battle-trucks. The unmutated Soul Drinkers attacking the Excoriators and Imperial Fists in the inner ring chose to surrender. When the last mutant fell, the rebellion was finished.

The Ultimate Wall's allied force had lost more than a hundred warriors in the upheaval, and the underhive army that took the brunt of the initial interception had suffered close to ten thousand casualties. The surrendered Soul Drinkers numbered around four hundred.

There was a great deal still to do. Sweeping every corner of the Shanzheng one section at a time to make sure no traitors lay hidden and no trace of Chaos corruption remained. Purging the machine-spirit daemons that had invaded the ship. Repairing the areas damaged during the fighting. And informing Kurande, still down on Terra, of everything that had happened.

The Ultimate Wall had been assembled to fight the orks, and it had barely returned to Terra before tearing itself open like this. Everyone in the discussion carried the weight of it.

The most outrageous of them, though, was Lin. As the talk of cleanup was winding down, he stepped forward on his own and asked a question.

"Aren't any of you curious about what's on the other side of the Predator's Eye?"

The Chapter Masters exchanged a look, and each of them saw the curiosity kindling in the others.

The rebellion was still shrouded in fog for them. It was hard not to wonder about the Soul Drinkers' true objective, and about Astartes who had mutated so grotesquely and yet showed no trace of Chaos taint.

They had assumed Lin had learned some answers during the fighting and were waiting for his interpretation. Instead, Lin dropped a bomb straight into the room.

"Why don't we open the Predator's Eye and see what's actually behind it?"

"...What?"

The proposal jolted every man there.

Their eyes fixed on Lin, as if checking whether this was a joke meant to lighten the mood. But Lin's expression was perfectly serious, with nothing false in it.

Issaga spoke slowly. "That proposal is... genuinely thought-provoking. But we must weigh the risks the Predator's Eye could bring. The situation aboard the Shanzheng is not fully stable yet. Do we truly need to take this gamble?"

"I'd call it an opportunity we can't afford to miss." Lin gestured for them all to look at the Predator's Eye, still flickering. Its state showed that something unknown was waiting on the far side of that door.

"If we want to stop anything like the Soul Drinkers' rebellion from happening again, we need to understand what drove them to such madness. Miss this chance and we may never learn what secret hides behind that door."

"We do not need to know every secret," Thorne said, still opposed.

"There are other benefits, of course. For instance, once it's open, I have the means to shut it permanently."

No explanation was necessary. Every man there thought immediately of Lin's near-miraculous performance at Port Sanctus. But the Shanzheng was the Imperial Fists' flagship, and no one could make the Imperial Fists' decision for them.

They were all calculating how to talk Lin down politely, or at least stall until Kurande returned to judge the matter. Then the Imperial Fists Dreadnought stepped forward, and on this one question he made the decision in Kurande's place.

"If it solves the problem once and for all, then I will support the decision."

Lin noticed that as the Dreadnought spoke, his viewing ports were angled toward Admidel. His attention was plainly on the Soulspear Admidel had taken as a trophy, the weapon that could only be wielded by the blood of the Second Legion.

This Dreadnought knew a little too much.

But he had not exposed Admidel and the others as Second Legion, and he had pushed Lin's idea through besides. With his approval, the sons of Dorn went to work.

They stripped the surrendered Soul Drinkers of their weapons and marched them to the Shanzheng's brig. The remaining warriors mustered near the Predator's Eye, and every vehicle and heavy weapon on the ship that could be brought to that deck was assembled there, in case anything went wrong while the warp gate was opening.

When everything was ready, Lin performed the activation himself.

It required little from him. The moment blood dripped into the Predator's Eye's control mechanism, the ring of energy erupted in blinding light.

Blood was the key that turned the lock. The power to sustain it was supplied by whatever waited, impatient, on the other side.

A black vortex began to spin violently, like an eye opening. Space warped around it, and the Second Legion veterans, still some distance away, all felt a touch of wrongness.

"It's like something is whispering inside our skulls." Admidel reported their condition to Lin over the comm channel, while the Imperial Fists beside them showed nothing at all. "Does this gate really lead to—"

"Hold yourselves together. Don't let anything show."

Lin's warning went out on a private channel. Inside his own head, a Servo-skull relay was feeding him a view of the Soul Drinkers. The prisoners being escorted to the brig by the Imperial Fists had agony written across their faces, as though they were seeing some terrible vision.

"No. No, please..." one Soul Drinker muttered, both hands clamped around his head as if resisting an invisible intrusion. "I see them... they're devouring everything..."

Those Soul Drinkers were much further away, yet their reactions were more violent than the Second Legion veterans'. It seemed the Azure Star's gene-work on the old guard had been a real success.

Lin waited patiently for the first monster to come through from the other side.

A powerful surge of energy was pouring out of the gate. Then, without warning, a taloned claw thrust out of the black vortex, and a savage creature came scrambling through, all teeth and claws.

Its shape made the skin crawl. Its body was armored in purple chitin, its head fitted with razored mandibles and eyes that gave off a cold, hard light. It was not large, but its bone-white limbs were thick with strength, and its tail rode high, the venomous barb at the tip glittering with a lethal chill.

Lin knew this creature. His pupils shrank to points.

"A Lictor?"

[Author's Note: The Predator's Eye comes from the Soul Drinkers novels; its existence here is based on the original canon. In the source material, the ending has Daenyathos actually opening this warp gate (though he is stopped by the Soul Drinkers who, mutated as they are, remain loyal. Realizing the whole thing was a complete deception, they shut the Predator's Eye down and destroy themselves along with Daenyathos in the turbulence of the Warp). In the original, however, this happens several thousand years later, and what comes out is not bugs but very traditional Chaos daemons. That change, along with the Soul Drinkers being descendants of the Second Legion, is this novel's own invention. Please take note, and bear with me.]

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