Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Kurande wore the look of a man wondering why she hadn't mentioned this sooner, and escorted the Inquisitor back to the Shanzheng.

There was no welcoming ritual. Vladilena followed Kurande into the ship's interior. They signaled to the Felyne standing at the mouth of the forge districts, and only after some time did Lin emerge alongside Dorn.

The Inquisitor paid her respects to the Dreadnought before turning to Lin. "Looks like you've made yourself quite at home aboard the Shanzheng."

"Mm-hm." Lin neither confirmed nor denied it. "I'm more interested in why you've come back looking for me."

"I need somewhere private to talk."

Dorn and Kurande, who still had to confer with the other Chapter Masters regarding the Soul Drinkers' rebellion, withdrew first. Lena craned her neck to peer into the forge districts, but Lin planted himself firmly in the doorway.

"Aren't you going to invite me inside to sit down and chat?"

Lin had no intention of showing her the secret weapon he and Dorn were tinkering with. "Right here suits me fine."

"Then perhaps you can tell me why there are battle scars all over the Shanzheng?"

"That one's easy. We ran an anti-boarding drill aboard the ship a while back."

Lena stared at him, thoroughly unimpressed by his refusal to cooperate. But her urgent need for this conversation cost her the standoff.

"I've come to brief you on the situation on Mars. As the man who provided the original lead, the Inquisition requires your professional opinion."

The fuse lit back at Port Sanctus had finally borne fruit. The Inquisition, which crept into every crack, had followed the thread of Mars intercepting ork teleportation technology and launched a deep investigation into the Red Planet's activities.

The anomalies uncovered by that investigation were now compiled in Lena's hands, ready for the questions she meant to put to Lin.

"Then I'm honored."

"Good." His cooperation on this point smoothed over her earlier irritation. She leafed through the files and jabbed a finger at one entry. "Mars is currently importing ork corpses without pause. The count has already passed a hundred thousand. What do you think they're doing?"

"I won't say it's definitely about ork teleportation, but at minimum they're studying ork technology. Mechanicus research is always metaphysical. When they can't grasp the principle behind a piece of xenos technology, they haul in the xenos who can actually use it and try to solve the problem that way."

"So the Magi of Forge World Huangquan VIII know a thing or two about this?"

"Not as much as Mars. At least Forge World Huangquan VIII hasn't produced that many Dark Mechanicum traitors."

"I hope you'll have the nerve to say that to the Martians' faces. Though speaking of the Dark Mechanicum..."

Lena drew out a picture and handed it to Lin.

"How much do you know about this Archmagos?"

Lin glanced at it. "Augustus?"

Of course he remembered the Archmagos who had served as Forge Director on Cath Maximus. After the Deputy Forge Director's failure, the man had gathered up the remaining Mechanicus personnel and left Cath Maximus without a backward glance.

Lin couldn't claim to know him well, but his own seizure of Cath Maximus had owed a great deal to that Archmagos's utter indifference toward the world.

"All I know is that he desperately wanted to return to Mars. Why? Has he stirred something up there?"

"As a matter of fact, it's his research that requires all those ork corpses. Combined with your answer just now, we have reason to believe Mars's study of ork technology is being directed by him — and that it will not bear the light of day."

"And your evidence?"

"Every Inquisitorial agent who tried to get close to his research program is dead. Not one survived."

Which meant the Inquisition had gathered precisely nothing about the experiment. Lin was hardly going to question the Inquisition's competence in this field, so the only explanation left was that Mars valued the project enough to pour enormous counter-intelligence resources into shielding it.

Even so, something didn't add up.

"Strange. Is Martian counter-intelligence really that good...?"

Forge Worlds enjoyed a natural advantage against infiltration thanks to their heavy use of Servitors and identity-verification systems. But this was, after all, Warhammer.

The information blackout written into the Imperium's very base code allowed genestealers — creatures that could have been identified by simple genetic screening — to nest inside hive worlds, Mars among them.

Compared to those sly things, the Inquisition's methods should in theory have been stronger, not weaker. For every last agent to be eliminated meant Mars was employing something well beyond the conventional.

"What's your next move?" Lin asked. He knew the Inquisition would never simply let this go.

"We need your assistance. The Ultimate Wall is about to depart for Mars to request aid. Given who you are, you'll reach the surface safely and sit down with Fabricator General Kubik. If you can drag those talks out long enough, a new batch of specially prepared agents will have the chance to slip into the depths of Mars and seize the secret of this experiment."

"You do realize we're going to Mars to beg for reinforcements. If this blows up in our faces, you can't seriously think we'll still get them?"

"Do you actually believe Mars would help you out of the goodness of its heart?" Vladilena shot back. "Because if you did, why exactly are you moving an army over from Cath Maximus? Sightseeing on Terra?"

Lin wasn't about to admit he intended to strip a few things off Mars that he never planned to give back. He simply smacked his lips in regret.

"Besides the Inquisition, how many people know about the Cath Maximus business?"

Cath Maximus had no spaceport, so Lin's only means of shipping troops had been the civilian vessels Lena had requisitioned earlier on Inquisitorial authority. There was no hiding that from her order.

"The orks' WAAAGH! energy is blocking astropathic communication. Outside the Inquisition, nobody currently knows about your redeployment. So long as you don't raise a hand against the Imperium, I can guarantee that whatever you do will come as a complete surprise."

The Adeptus Mechanicus, one head of the double-headed eagle, was evidently not being counted as part of the Imperial "family" today.

"Then I suppose the plan has some feasibility." Lin neither agreed nor refused. "As long as your people are quick about it, I'll play it by ear."

Three million Astra Militarum troopers and one Titan Legion. That force was more than enough to storm a lightly armed second-tier Forge World. But Mars was the birthplace of the Machine Cult; its strength had long since escaped any Forge World rating.

Meeting the Skitarii of Mars head-on with that force on the planet's surface was a pipe dream. But losing a straight fight and having no troops at all were two very different problems.

If Mars proved reasonable, the army could simply be held in reserve. If Mars turned on them, that same force was enough to let him grab what he could under cover of surprise and run.

"So we have an agreement?" Lena confirmed.

"More or less. Though I still need to talk it over with some others."

Lin summoned two Astartes and had them "escort" the Inquisitor to a guest chamber for a good rest, then hurried off to where the Chapter Masters were holding their council.

The assembled Chapter Masters, in the middle of deciding the fate of the Ultimate Wall, admitted him. Lin found their discussion running rather smoothly.

"The Senatorum Imperialis isn't questioning the Ultimate Wall so much as it's questioning the concept of a Legion. We don't need to dissolve the Ultimate Wall. We only need to preserve the chapter names, and then be a Legion in all but title."

The proposal came from Issaga, who had read the High Lords' thinking down to the bone. But his solution met opposition from Thorne, who wanted the Exemplary Fists disbanded.

"They will find every possible way to break that arrangement apart. If they later issue different orders to different chapters in the name of the High Lords, how do we answer that? Without the title, we dissolve in fact."

"We have no choice. If we don't preserve the chapter names, it will be trivially easy for those nervous High Lords to uncover the truth — that the Soul Drinkers and part of the Exemplary Fists took part in a rebellion. And if they start saying 'ah, this is exactly like the Great Heresy,' then tell me, Chapter Master Thorne — how do we answer that?"

Thorne found it hard to swallow that his resolve to defend Terra was being questioned by the High Lords, but he could not deny that Issaga was simply stating facts.

To bury this rebellion, the Exemplary Fists could not be disbanded, and the Soul Drinkers — who had already shown their faces at Port Sanctus — had to continue to exist.

In this battle to shield Terra, the Seventh Legion had acquired a little secret no smaller than the Dark Angels'.

For Lin, however, this was pure profit. With the backing of the Dorn Dreadnought, the Chapter Masters jointly decided that the Soul Drinkers, who now had to keep existing, would be placed under Admidel's command.

Admidel would sift through the surrendered Soul Drinkers, pick out the reliable ones who showed genuine penitence, and fold them into the Second Legion. Kurande was already planning to found an entirely new chapter around these veterans once the campaign ended.

The original Soul Drinkers would "vanish" into the Warp at the campaign's conclusion, and after being declared destroyed, the Imperial Fists would step forward and erase every record of their existence.

In reality, those Soul Drinkers would be absorbed into the chapter headed by Admidel, becoming fresh strength for Lin.

Kurande felt genuinely guilty about asking those veterans to shoulder the Imperial Fists' dark secret — never guessing that Lin was privately grinning from ear to ear.

One little secret, and the foundation of the Second Legion had been handed to him free of charge. Chapter secrets really were the gift that kept giving.

Perhaps afterward he could go find another chapter with a little secret and fleece them too?

The chapters' fate settled, the first half of the council closed. The second half turned to the coming plan for Mars.

Every warrior who had come face to face with Pavonis aboard the Battle Moon carried a poor impression of Mars. Now that they had to go there begging for aid, their wariness was only natural.

And the news Lin brought raised that wariness several notches higher.

"An experiment on Mars that may involve xenos and the Dark Mechanicum?" Kurande confirmed.

"Correct. Worst case, we end up trading fire with Mars directly."

Kurande finally understood why Udin Macht Udo had insisted he take the Shanzheng to Mars for reinforcements. The Imperial Commander certainly didn't know the inside story the way the Inquisition did, but the instincts of a High Lord had clearly told him something was wrong with the Red Planet.

The Imperial Commander's orders, the Inquisition's proposed cooperation, and Mars's own problems left Kurande torn. He looked at Lin. "Your recommendation?"

"My recommendation is to do exactly what Udin Macht Udo said — park the Shanzheng in orbit over Mars as a deterrent. We need to make planetfall for the negotiations, but we prepare for open conflict at the same time."

Lin pulled up a schematic showing a rough comparison between the Shanzheng and Mars's orbital defenses. "We stall for time before we open contact with Mars. If everything goes smoothly, we ignore the arrangement with the Inquisition and go straight back to the ship."

"And if something stirs on Mars?"

"Then we'll already be cooperating with the Inquisition in fact. At that point, what we need to do is punch through Mars's orbital defenses with the Shanzheng and stall a little longer. Once the reinforcements from Cath Maximus arrive, we break the encirclement and return to the ship."

It was not the sort of choice the straight-backed sons of Dorn would have made on their own. But they trusted Lin more, and were inclined to follow his plan. That exploit-hunting logic of his led them to a decision they would never normally have reached.

"We'll do it this way."

At Kurande's command, the Shanzheng surged into motion. Admidel went to screen suitable Soul Drinkers, the other Chapter Masters began preparing for the landing operation, and Lin returned to the forge districts with the Dreadnought.

"I do not like your decisions," Dorn said abruptly. "Even though they are the most appropriate choices under present circumstances."

"I'd say it isn't the decisions you dislike. It's the Imperium that forces us to make them."

Lin answered lightly, slipping one concept neatly into place of another. "But such decisions are necessary. When the dream of the Great Crusade ended, what we were left facing was a shattered Imperium. No one can stand for the whole of it. Everyone represents a fragment, and they all wrestle with one another inside that bloated corpse."

"Those who want to give everything for the Imperium — most of them will die without ever working out which part of the Imperium they actually belong to. That's the Imperium we live in now. It can no longer make everyone believe, as it did during the Great Crusade, that we can pour ourselves into a single shared goal without a shred of doubt. That's precisely why choices like this have to be made."

"...You are eloquent. You have not convinced me."

Unlike the Imperial Fists who had been dealing with Lin since Cath Maximus, Dorn found the notion of a Magos from Forge World Huangquan VIII with designs on Mars deeply worrying. Knowing nothing of the strength Lin had quietly accumulated, he feared such a choice would drag the Ultimate Wall into an abyss it could never climb out of.

But the choice did not belong to the Imperial Fists, and Lin's course of action was at least better than sailing to Mars with no preparation at all.

"I'll prove through action that you won't regret trusting me."

Lin opened the great doors of the forge districts, and the secret weapon he had hidden from the Inquisitor stood revealed once more before him and Dorn.

It was a colossus of silver-white steel, its streamlined armor gleaming with a cold sheen in the light, the V-shaped fin on its head standing proud as a crown, the twin camera eyes glowing an icy blue.

The machine was not yet finished, yet the frigid presence radiating from it was enough to make anyone who laid eyes on it feel their heart stutter.

"Let's get back to work. I believe this will be our last trump card on Mars."

[Author's Note 1: If you've forgotten who Augustus is, go back and read Chapter 76, "Where It All Began."]

[Author's Note 2: Little secrets can feed you — or eat you.]

In one of the Dark Angels novels, there's a Magos who once oversaw the training of Dark Angels tech-sergeants and who learned the Dark Angels' little secret. He privately contacted a tech-sergeant who had once been his own student, hoping to cash in on that secret.

Naturally, it ended in the classic DA fashion.

Worth noting: the tech-sergeant hid the whole affair from his squadmates, because he knew that the moment they found out, they'd charge straight in and kill the Magos, and then the whole thing would blow up.

So he kept it from his brothers, played along to win the man's trust, and finally executed the Magos with his own hands. Only once it was all done did he confess everything to his brothers — but his squadmates decided that by acting this way he'd taken a little secret of his own, judged him no longer worthy of trust, and left him out in the cold.

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