Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Augustus went downstairs. In a chapel carved out of the testing grounds specifically so that the cultists could pray to Vashtorr, he found the convert he had personally brought into the fold — the senior Magos Viktor.

Once the Deputy Forge Director of Cath Maximus, Viktor had served the great Vashtorr ever since his resurrection. As living proof of the Omnissiah's might, he stood preaching to the Priests beneath an eight-pointed star of Chaos wrought in the shape of a cogwheel.

Seeing Augustus approach, Viktor broke off his sermon.

"The plan is about to begin, Magos Viktor. This is the golden hour in which we end the false lies of Mars and the Emperor!"

His fate might already be bound to Vashtorr, but Viktor still harbored his doubts about the entity. "You honor me, Archmagos. What would you have me do?"

"You will travel to the Rust Wastes and bring our lord an army of millions."

The Rust Wastes were a desolate plain on Mars, close to the birthplace of the Servitors. On a world where every square meter was worth its weight in promethium, no factory had ever been raised there for one simple reason: it was the dumping ground for all of Mars' refuse.

For thousands of years, uncounted discarded implants and broken Servitors had been piled up in that place. Aside from the lowest of scavengers, no one considered that ground worth anything.

But to Vashtorr, who commanded the power of iron itself, all things were possible.

"Look at yourself, Viktor. Our lord's might flows through the body he restored to you. Vashtorr has anointed you the Herald of Machines, the Prophet of the Cog. You need only lift a finger and every abandoned Servitor will answer the call, marching under your command to fight for the true Omnissiah!"

Augustus' grand words did not go to Viktor's head. "But those Servitors were discarded for malfunctions and missing components. Sending them against the Skitarii of Mars would be asking far too much of them."

"Which is why we also need a little conflict inside the Imperium. The Officio Assassinorum will serve as an excellent catalyst. And as for the spark that sets it all off?"

Augustus swept a hand across the data-panel. The image that bloomed on its surface set Viktor trembling from head to foot.

"Lin!"

He no longer had any reason to refuse the plan.

Kubik received word not long after the attack on Magma City.

Infiltration and counter-infiltration were routine business within the Imperium. Just as Mars had sent Pavonis into the Inquisition, the Inquisition of course drove its own nails into Mars.

But today's situation was anything but routine. Not only had those nails reached the very core of the project — they had left Magma City alive!

Kubik summoned Augustus on an emergency writ. The Archmagos who had directed the ork project ever since his return from Cath Maximus now stood in humility before the Fabricator-General, waiting to be interrogated.

"Augustus, I have always trusted your work, because you have never once allowed an outsider to learn the true purpose of Mars."

Kubik appeared calm, but his logic circuits brimmed with fury he could no longer suppress. "So why does your work suffer a counter-espionage lapse at the single most critical moment? Is this the answer you offer in return for the resources Mars has poured into these projects?"

"Great King of Mars, forgive my inadequacy. But this infiltration introduced a variable beyond my control."

Augustus presented the recordings from earlier. The identities of the figures within them caught Kubik entirely off guard.

"The Officio Assassinorum?"

"Yes. It was they who broke through our defenses and caused this incident."

Augustus wove his words with delicate craft, steering Kubik's reasoning toward the appropriate conclusion. "There has never been a single recorded appearance of the Officio Assassinorum on Mars, so they fell entirely outside our watch parameters. Their accidental firefight with the Inquisition exposed their movements — and revealed to us the possibility that the aims of the Officio Assassinorum and the Inquisition are not aligned."

The inference was sound. If two organizations shared a common goal, they would have chosen cooperation over an exchange of fire.

Kubik's data-throne began to churn, feeding an endless stream of factors and probabilities into his logical analysis.

Under the weight of those factors, the likelihood that the Officio Assassinorum simply wanted to uncover Mars' purpose dropped away fast. Kubik's logic was pushed instead toward the conclusion that the assassins intended to kill some target on Mars.

There was no evidence to support that judgment. Just as Kubik moved to dismiss it, a segment of his wetware ran the numbers again and lifted the probability to an abnormal height.

The data-throne prompted him to include the personal operating style of the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum among the variables under consideration.

Kubik complied. The wetware's calculations then laid out the very possibility he feared most.

He was still seated on the data-throne — but now there was a dagger hanging above his skull.

"Vangorich…!" The roar tore out of him.

This was exactly the possibility he had returned to Mars to hide from, sealing himself away behind closed doors.

Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum. He styled himself an Inquisitor of Truth; in truth he was a devil who killed without blinking. He saw nothing of the High Lords' devotion to the Imperium — only their corruption and incompetence, which he mocked with cold amusement.

When the Beast drew near to Terra, Vangorich had begun to stir. The private schemes he had spun to goad the High Lords into striking out had left Kubik deeply uneasy. That was why the Fabricator-General had returned to Mars and refused to leave it again.

And yet even here on Mars, that cold-blooded serpent had no intention of letting him be!

"Who does he think he is? The Emperor? Even the Emperor cannot meddle in the election of a Fabricator-General. Kill me, and the next Fabricator-General will never walk his road either!"

Kubik crushed the data-panel in his fist. Once the outburst had spent itself, he had no choice but to cool down and think the problem through.

It had taken him centuries to climb to the summit of power in the Mechanicus, and he had no wish whatsoever to die. If Vangorich's target was him, then he had to ask why the Officio Assassinorum had chosen to move now — and why their first strike had come at Magma City.

He knew perfectly well that his research into the ork teleportation device had already violated the compacts laid down between Mars and Terra. Within the Mechanicus that meant nothing, of course. But Vangorich might need precisely that pretext to remove him with a veneer of legitimacy.

The assassins' intelligence network was nowhere near as well-informed as the Inquisition's. If they were not working with the Inquisition, how had they aimed their blade at Magma City from the very start?

At his side, Augustus offered a timely reminder. "The only variable inside Magma City is that newly arrived Magos. Lin."

"You are suggesting Lin is the Officio Assassinorum's inside man?"

"I merely point out the facts."

"Surveillance on him has shown no anomalies."

"And yet we can find no other explanation."

Kubik shot a glance at Augustus, whose expression had not shifted at all.

He weighed the odds that Augustus was using this opportunity to settle a private grudge under an official seal. But he had to admit it: Lin was the most suspicious element by far.

This was a project that could decide the fate of Mars. To see it realized, Kubik would rather kill an innocent than let a traitor slip through.

But Lin's status was far too sensitive. Kubik had to account for how the Ultimate Wall would react.

"How much do you believe the Officio Assassinorum has learned?" he asked Augustus.

"They should know that we employed Warp Psychic power in the trial, but not how we used it, nor to what end."

Augustus lowered his voice. "This is the last chance. The Officio Assassinorum could obtain proof of the teleportation device at any moment. We must eliminate every possibility that could place Mars at a disadvantage before the objective is achieved."

That argument persuaded Kubik.

He set those risks on one pan of the scales and the Ultimate Wall — due to depart in three days at most — on the other, and realized that if they kept their hands clean enough, the Ultimate Wall would never learn of Lin's death before it left.

"Push the timing back. We move after the Ultimate Wall departs. This operation will be overseen by me… no. By you."

Kubik had intended to supervise it personally, but that abnormally elevated result from the data-throne worried him. The throne was the foundation of his very existence, and he had decided to audit every strand of wetware linked into it for faults.

"I will grant you authority to deploy the Skitarii. Do not disappoint me, Augustus."

"Of course. I will see that Lin dies without a sound."

Augustus straightened and saw the Fabricator-General out with every courtesy. Only when that vast bulk had passed completely from his sight did he allow the delight surging through his logic conduits to reach his face.

Baiting the Officio Assassinorum. Misdirecting the Inquisition. Laying a logic trap inside the mind of the Fabricator-General himself. He had been arranging these pieces for so long, and now the sweet reward was finally within reach.

That the Magos who had seized Cath Maximus under his own deliberate indulgence had turned up on Mars was genuinely more than Augustus had expected. But it changed nothing. However much Lin thrashed about, he was only a pawn — a medium through which Mars would be plunged into chaos.

He had never cared about Lin at all.

"Now — let us offer all of it up to the Omnissiah!"

Augustus returned to Magma City. The only currents running beneath that city now were the ones he had set in motion himself.

At his direction, the Ruststalkers had already infiltrated the area around the forge where Lin worked, and heavy Servitors carrying heavy weapons had sealed every road out of Magma City. To guarantee Lin's death, the Fabricator-General had even assigned him several Datasmiths and a squad of precious Battle-Automata.

Caught in a net this fine, Lin appeared to have no way out at all.

But Augustus knew Lin would not die.

Not at first, anyway.

If the goal was to throw Mars into chaos, then naturally Augustus wanted the loudest possible commotion.

He had designed Lin's escape route with great care. When the Skitarii struck, those troops — apparently hounding him with everything they had — would leave one path open, and at the end of that path waited an Archaeopter flyer.

Everything was ready. Augustus waited in silence for the perfect moment to move.

The Ultimate Wall's launch had entered its final countdown. Contrary to the Fabricator-General's instruction to wait until after it departed, Augustus wanted news of Lin's death to reach the Ultimate Wall's ears before they left Mars.

At last, word came from the Hand of God Spaceport.

"The transport fleet is undergoing its final fuel loading. The Ultimate Wall will launch in three hours."

Augustus knew the moment had arrived.

"Begin," he ordered coldly.

The Ruststalker squad slipped into their designated positions through the dark. Transonic Blades raised, they hunted for the quarry called Lin — and the first few in the line were sheared clean in half by an Omnissian Axe before they ever registered his silhouette.

"Haven't swung one of these in a while," Lin remarked. "Handles better than I remembered."

The surviving Ruststalkers tried to swarm him, but the cramped space of the forge left them no room for their agility. Lin drove them back with the haft of the axe, drew his plasma pistol, and finished off the entire squad with a handful of aimed shots.

Lin's sudden explosion of violence left the Skitarii reeling. Before their logic engines could produce a judgment, he had already cut his way out of the forge.

"He knew we were coming?" The Ruststalker Alpha commanding the forward operation grasped the problem at once.

Alarms howled across Magma City. With the advantage of information on their side, the Skitarii reacquired Lin's position within moments.

They did not believe he could slip a net that covered an entire city. But this Magos and his anomalies filled them with an urgency they had not anticipated.

"Target moving toward Sector B. All units seal the exits immediately!"

The Skitarii set up heavy firepower in the corresponding corridors. When Lin appeared at the junction with the Omnissian Axe in his grip, heavy Servitors bearing heavy lasguns and Lightning Guns locked onto him at once.

No Magos, however formidable, walks away from a volley like that. Lin stopped in his tracks, seemingly searching for a structure that could shield him. Reading his intent, the Skitarii closed in fast and drew the encirclement tight.

Lin was a rat in a trap.

Which was also part of Lin's plan.

The instant the heavy Servitors hunting him drew close enough to those structures, Lin switched on his vox-amplifier.

"Occam! Time to move!"

The Astartes who had been hidden inside the buildings burst out.

Occam, Efron and Malik each picked their own prey. Dropping from above, they punched power weapons through the cores of the war-machines in the brief window before the Skitarii could react.

Blinding sparks erupted from their core sections as the heavy Servitors collapsed, and their massive wrecks made superb cover for the three Astartes. Having ridden out the first wave of fire, they squeezed the triggers of their bolters. Rangers went down in swathes under the bolt rounds, and a gap tore open in the encirclement.

"Not bad, eh?" Occam asked.

"Not bad at all!"

Lin was not stingy with his praise.

Calling in the Expunged Warband had been his own decision, and their performance had far outstripped anything he had expected.

The news Occam had brought him made it clear that Mars was tangled deep in Dark Mechanicum affairs, and Lin had understood immediately that he was standing at the center of the chaos.

He had his escape plan prepared. Exactly how he was going to get out of Magma City, though, still had to be tested in practice.

"How's my Solar-Powered Warblade?"

"I've already parked it a very long way from here."

"Good. Then let's play with them a little longer."

"Play? What are your requirements?"

Faced with Occam's question, Lin smiled and leveled the axe blade at the Skitarii still closing in on them.

"My only requirement is noise. The louder, the better!"

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