Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Flee!

Get out of here!

With nothing but that single thought left in him, the Fabricator General severed his connection to the data-throne on the physical level and detonated the data-bomb buried inside it.

The self-destructive measure overloaded and burned out half the logic conduits in Kubik's body, but at least it tore him free of Vashtorr's grip for the moment.

He abandoned the teleportation device. He abandoned his Battle-Automata legion. He abandoned his dignity as Fabricator General, and fled Magma City with the handful of Battle-Automata still left to him.

The surviving Skitarii were still shooting, but Kubik was no longer the triumphant Fabricator General of a few hours ago.

Without the data-throne and without his Battle-Automata network, he could no longer sustain command over the legion, and the automata, robbed of their old razor edge, sank into a grinding, desperate melee.

Fortunately, Vashtorr was only a phantom image and could not give chase in person. At a terrible price, Kubik dragged his half-ruined body and his last few dozen Battle-Automata out of Magma City in disgrace.

———

Watching the Fabricator General flee in panic, Vashtorr was less than satisfied with his debut.

His own power was nowhere near enough to breach a Fabricator General's firewall that easily. The damage he had inflicted on Kubik rested entirely on the sleeper agents Augustus had planted inside the data-throne long before.

Those Vashtorr cultists, rendered down into wetware, were a back door left open in the data-throne, letting him slip through layer after layer of protection and strike the Fabricator General directly.

But he had laid those sleepers with such patience precisely in order to kill the Fabricator General. Merely crippling him fell well short of expectations.

"Hmph… the Mechanicus does have a few tricks after all. Certainly better than the Dark Mechanicum, who can only stuff a daemon inside and call it done."

As the demigod of inventors, engineers, scientists and artisans, Vashtorr's allure to the cogboys came from Slaanesh, and his grasp of schemes and plans came from Tzeentch.

As a demigod jointly funded by two of the great Warp powers, he was, in theory, endowed with a corrosive influence over machine-craft that ran beyond physical law.

But theory was only theory. In practice he was just a daemon, a feeble demigod with no domain and no army of his own.

Slaanesh and Tzeentch had given him curiosity and creativity, but not the actual power that ought to come with those domains. The concepts he held could find no extension in material things, and among the Greater Daemons his strength was frankly pitiable.

He had tried asking Slaanesh and Tzeentch for armies and forges. Slaanesh turned him down flat.

"If you've got the nerve to be a demigod, you've got the nerve to go get your own weapons. I don't manage anything, I don't ask about anything. If you can't handle it, come slurp hot dogs down on my Sixth Ring of Slaanesh!"

Tzeentch, by contrast, welcomed him with open arms. He likewise could offer nothing substantial, but he was more than willing to draw up a grand plan that would help Vashtorr seize the forges of Sadistic Terror.

Since part of his own power came from Tzeentch, Vashtorr knew exactly what that bird-headed schemer was like. He declined the "kindness" and set about drafting his own plan instead.

But there were simply no opportunities to be had in the Warp.

Compared to the material universe, so full of promise, the Warp with its five gods already installed was an overcrowded market with no blue ocean left. Sadistic Terror and Nurgle had the daemon engine production lines locked up between them, and even outside the five gods, in the free market beyond their reach, some Iron Warrior had set himself up as the general contractor.

Vashtorr had nothing but concepts, and could only stand and stare at other people's assembly lines. Since his birth he had managed nothing more than petty dabbling among the Dark Mechanicum, scavenging scrap here and there until he had cobbled together a single daemon Forge World of his own.

Naturally he was not content with that. Peering into the shifting futures, he had at last seized upon the opportunity of the War of the Beast.

Why build it yourself when it is so much easier to take what already exists?

His goal was no longer petty dabbling. His goal was all of Mars!

A pity the execution had not gone smoothly.

Had everything unfolded as he intended, the ork teleportation device he had personally corrupted would, upon activation, have dragged the whole of Mars into his own domain within the Warp.

But that blundering Fabricator General had exposed the plan early, and he had failed to bring his true body down onto Mars.

Vashtorr was not that bird-headed thing. Variables in a plan only ever made him furious.

Fortunately, Vashtorr had a contingency.

Even if he could not carry off all of Mars, corrupting its production lines and its Priests amid the chaos and packing them away would be an excellent return for a demigod who specialized in getting something for nothing.

Of course, there was still that escaped Fabricator General on Mars, a million Skitarii, and the Ultimate Wall hanging in orbit above.

All of them would obstruct his seizure of those production lines. To guarantee the outcome, he — whose true body had not yet descended upon Mars — would have to send his allies onto the stage first.

He turned, and looked upon his cultists.

Augustus and a whole company of Tech-Priests knelt prostrate on the ground. Their bodies trembled faintly under Vashtorr's gaze — not from fear, but from fanatical reverence.

"Great Vashtorr, Master of Iron and Flame, the true Omnissiah!" Augustus's voice carried an excitement and devotion he could not hide. "At last you have descended upon your loyal Mars!"

These fanatic Priests were part of Vashtorr's plan, but he was in no hurry to answer their prayers.

Mystery was the key to controlling Priests.

When Vashtorr said nothing, Augustus's expression shifted; he knew he had failed to satisfy the Omnissiah. He barked orders at his subordinates, and at his command several Priests hauled the data-throne the Fabricator General had abandoned and set it down before Vashtorr.

The old symbol of supreme power on Mars became their offering to a new god. "This is the symbol of Mars's master. We offer it to you. Forgive our incompetence, and grant us the chance to go on serving you!"

Vashtorr touched the data-throne. As the Fabricator General's possession, it held the authorization codes for most of Mars and the records of its hidden places.

Unfortunately, Kubik had detonated the data-bomb inside before cutting himself loose, and most of that information had been churned into unreadable code. Vashtorr searched it for anything concerning the Midnight Labyrinth beneath Mars, and found nothing at all.

Still, it was not a total loss.

The data-bomb's failsafes were enough to defeat the prying of most enemies, but with a power aligned exactly to his own specialty, Vashtorr reconstructed a portion of the data keys.

The energy regulation valves of Mars's production lines. The thermal shielding network that kept life possible. Mars's atmospheric circulation systems. And the Fabricator General's own authorization cipher.

He found nothing like deployment rights over the Titan Legion, or use-authorization for the forbidden weapons buried on Mars. But these basic systems alone were enough to ignite a catastrophe.

"Augustus." Vashtorr's voice sounded inside Augustus's mind, audible to him alone. "Your performance was… barely adequate. But you still have a chance to prove yourself. You must ensure the chaos on Mars keeps spreading, until no force remains that can stop my descent."

Augustus bowed his head. "Your will is my mission. I will drag Mars into deeper chaos. Only…"

He hesitated, as though there were something he dared not say. Vashtorr understood perfectly what these utility-minded, profit-driven cogboys were thinking.

He raised a hand slightly, and the source code of the Plague Scrapcode — reverse-engineered from the data within the data-throne — poured into Augustus's mind.

Augustus could feel what the scrapcode did. This Warp-born computational virus, blessed by Vashtorr's own hand, could effortlessly invade any system he had already parsed, twist the machine-spirit within it, and remake it into a thing of Chaos.

A miracle that could warp machine-craft and impose an entirely new reading upon it set Augustus trembling from head to foot. Whatever doubt he had held toward Vashtorr was gone.

"I will see all of Mars kneel before your might, great Omnissiah. I swear it!" he vowed aloud.

"Then offer me more slaughter. Our allies — they need more blood and more souls before they can descend upon this place."

The Priests naturally took this as divine revelation. Voicing their assent again and again, they went on singing Vashtorr's praises.

Vashtorr did not answer them further. Still needing to ensure his allies arrived on schedule, he faded away.

Augustus rose from his knees. Holding the Plague Scrapcode and the Fabricator General's identity cipher, he had already sketched out the rough shape of a plan.

"With the Fabricator General's own cipher, we can start by issuing contradictory orders across all of Mars in his name and drown the planet in confusion. And once they begin to recover their footing, we use the scrapcode to deliver the killing blow to those Priests…"

Still musing, Augustus waved over the Master Forger who served as his second. "How are Viktor's preparations coming along?"

"Very well. The derelict Servitors and abandoned engines he has taken control of with the scrapcode and Psychic power now number close to a million. They lie dormant in the Rust Wastes, awaiting your command."

"Good. The hour has come. Send Viktor his orders. Tell him I am about to misdirect the Skitarii in the name of the Fabricator General of Mars. His task is to lead his army of Cyberghouls into the confusion of that battlefield and offer the Omnissiah the slaughter he requires!"

The Master Forger took his orders and departed. Augustus turned back to the Priests around him, the ones he had led into the worship of Vashtorr.

Mars had branded them too deeply. Even believing in Vashtorr, they still balked at the thought of turning their guns on Mars itself.

Augustus resolved to burn away their hesitation with a speech.

"This was never what we wanted. We never dreamed of raising a rebellion on Mars. Together we unearthed the legacy of the Golden Age of Technology — and Mars betrayed us. Betrayed every one of us."

"They and the Emperor stole the power of the Omnissiah in the Omnissiah's own name, and lied to every Priest alive. The Mechanicus gets exactly one chance at rebirth. If the Fabricator General cannot seize it, then let us be the ones to finish it!"

He raised both hands high and roared with everything he had:

"Let Mars burn!"

———

Under the Priests' urging, Captain Kuber launched another attack on the Soul Drinkers.

Their earlier failure had convinced the Priests of Mars that supplying them with Land Raiders and Rhinos was pure waste. The Priests loathed nothing more than inefficiency, so the Iron Hands now went without any vehicle support at all, spreading into a skirmish line and advancing on the Soul Drinkers' defences on foot.

Unlike the last sortie, this time there were fewer brothers at Kuber's side.

They had died in the previous battle.

A true son of the Iron Hands would have called it nothing more than natural selection, the survival of the fittest. Kuber, who still carried feeling in him, grieved for his brothers.

He did not blame the Soul Drinkers.

In that last assault he had seen how they aimed away from the vital points, and how they gave his men time to bail out of their transports.

Not one of the withdrawing Iron Hands had died on the field. But Mars, displeased with them, had deliberately delayed the delivery of medical supplies and bionic implants. Several of the badly wounded had returned their souls to the Golden Throne because of it.

Kuber understood it as a warning from Mars, and he did not dare voice the anger he felt.

Their survival depended on Mars's goodwill. What else could he do?

The other Iron Hands understood it too. Like Kuber, they swallowed the fact in silence. But hatred for Mars had begun to spread among these low-spirited warriors.

"Hold formation. Advance steadily," Kuber ordered through the comm channel, his voice flat and mechanical.

The Iron Hands raised their weapons and sighted on the Soul Drinkers' position. Their fire was perfunctory, going through the motions, as though completing a task that simply had to be completed.

This battle was nothing but a farce staged in the standoff between Mars and the Ultimate Wall. Neither side meant to kill.

The Soul Drinkers' return fire was just as sparse. Now and then a round shrieked past and cracked against Iron Hands power armour with a bright metallic ring, doing no real harm.

"They have no will to fight," Admidel said to Lin. "If we want the Ultimate Wall to gain the upper hand in this standoff, we should take the opportunity to destroy them. Let Mars understand that unless it takes the field itself, we cannot be beaten."

"No need to rush. We don't have to win our advantage that way. Besides…"

His gaze travelled over the Iron Hands whom Mars had pressed into service, and the restrained, disciplined mechanical augmentation on their bodies pleased him more the longer he looked.

"I have an eye for talent."

The battle dragged on in unspoken mutual understanding, until Captain Kuber could stand it no longer and ordered the withdrawal. He would not waste any more of his brothers' lives on a fight that meant nothing.

"Fall back to our lines. There's no reason to bleed for the Martians."

The Iron Hands pulled back slowly, bolter fire tapering off until it stopped altogether. They retreated toward the positions held by the Skitarii behind them — and on the way they saw the once-orderly line beginning to churn. Squad after squad of Skitarii was being redeployed, and mixed in among it came the crack of las-fire and galvanic charge.

"What's happening?" Kuber frowned.

Had Mars's commissar detachments noticed their half-hearted fighting and decided to clean house?

He signalled his tech-sergeant to pull anything useful off the Martian comm channels. All the tech-sergeant found were the panicked, broken shouts of Priests.

"Out of control — they're out of control!"

What was out of control?

Kuber had no idea, until one sharp-eyed Iron Hand spotted the problem.

"Captain, look over there!"

Kuber followed his gesture and saw a black tide of figures surging in from the direction of the Rust Wastes.

The shapes were twisted and wrong, bodies of interwoven metal and flesh flickering in and out of the dust, grinding out a shrill mechanical screech and a low, guttural snarl.

Every Iron Hand readied himself for battle on instinct — though none of them yet knew what they were about to face. The company's tech-sergeant studied the sight for a long moment before saying, uncertainly:

"Those look like… malfunctioning Servitors?"

[Author's Note: The real-world source event — 979.M34, the Cog Prophet.]

[Author's Note: The long-standing hostility between Mars's northern and southern poles escalated into open war. As the Martian civil war intensified, both sides came under attack by malfunctioning feral Servitors and scorched war engines roaming the wasteland deserts.]

[Author's Note: The war reached a horrifying conclusion when a figure calling himself the Prophet of Cogs broadcast a hymn of control, and millions of long-derelict Servitors flocked to his banner. All of Mars was forced to face an army group of Cyberghouls.]

[Author's Note: The horrified northern and southern armies, at grievous cost, worked together to drive them off the surface of the red planet. Rumour holds that even as late as M41, the Cog Prophet who commands those ghouls still wanders the Alpha Centauri system.]

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