Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The cogitators of Macarius Forge-Station shrieked across the hall, their grating wail like an omen of something terrible.

This was not a warning — the forge-station's early-warning systems had been crippled long ago by some inexplicable interference. Magos Lawrence stood before the data-panels in the control room, trying to pull a single thread of sense out of the confusion.

"What is actually happening?" Lawrence muttered.

Mars's communications network seemed to have gone into some kind of paralysis. Every message came through in fragments, and certain data-streams carried uncanny binary hymns tangled into them.

Those hymns, which should have blessed the Skitarii in the name of the Omnissiah, now carried a blasphemous power that was eating its way through the entire system.

"Lord Magos!" A Priest came sprinting into the control room. "We've received an emergency transmission from Magma City, but the signal is badly unstable — only scattered fragments got through. They said… they said Magma City has fallen, the Fabricator General is missing, and the Skitarii there have been wiped out to the last!"

"Wiped out?" Lawrence drew a sharp breath. "You're certain you have that right?"

They all went by the name Skitarii, but there were grades among them. The Skitarii who marched under the Fabricator General's own banner counted as elite troops by the standards of all Mars. How could they have been broken in so short a time?

The Priest nodded. "And there's worse. They said a daemon host of Sadistic Terror is advancing in our direction!"

"A daemon host of Sadistic Terror?"

Lawrence might as well have been listening to a fable. "You're sure you didn't mishear? How could Sadistic Terror's daemons possibly be on Mars?"

"I… I'm not certain either, but the transmission definitely mentioned 'Bloodthirsters' and 'the Skull Throne'…"

Lawrence stood silent for a moment, then slammed his hand down on the emergency stud set into the console. The alarms across the forge-station climbed to a scream, and red warning lamps began strobing through the corridors and workshops.

"Initiate defence protocols! Every Priest and every Magos is to give up their Skitarii to the muster, or none of us lives through this!"

Archmagos Cawl, resident within the forge-station, refused the summons outright. Ever since arriving at Macarius Forge-Station this Archmagos had been buried in biological experiments of one kind or another, and he had no interest whatsoever in standing with them against the threat.

Lawrence had no authority to make an Archmagos obey him, and Cawl's flat act of self-preservation set off a scramble of imitators.

Only when Skarbrand's vanguard had stained the entire sky crimson did the sprawling forge-station finally assemble a few tens of thousands of armed Servitors and Skitarii.

Lawrence had no choice. This was the strength he would have to meet the enemy with.

"The Skitarii will hold them as long as they can. Everyone else, move the production lines, and be quick about it…"

He had believed the force would be enough to buy time, but Viktor was interfering with the execution of the Skitarii's orders. As the blasphemous hymn drew nearer, the movements of those half-machine soldiers grew sluggish, as though something were corroding their machine-spirits.

Dread settled through Lawrence like cold water.

He sent the Priests out with sacred oils and censers to contest the corruption. The purification worked well enough, but there were far too few Priests to cover every Skitarius.

With their overall combat efficiency collapsing, the daemon host in the distance closed on the forge-station without meeting any real resistance.

At its head, Skarbrand spread his ruined wings, swung his enormous axe, and loosed a deafening roar.

"You cannot hold back the Champion of the Blood God!"

In theory, that was the cue for cheering. Below him, the Bloodletters said nothing. Humiliated into a rage, Skarbrand hacked down several of them before he consented to move on.

"Hold!" Lawrence bellowed, knowing perfectly well it was a futile struggle.

"Lord Magos, reinforcements have appeared on our other flank! It's the Iron Hands — they've come to support us!"

Hope flared in Lawrence.

He knew a squad of Iron Hands was indeed stationed on Mars. They were exiled outsiders, but at a moment like this any reinforcement at all was a lifeline.

"I knew Mars hadn't abandoned us. Quickly, let them in!" Lawrence ordered, and threw open the forge-station's rear gate.

But when the Iron Hands finally came into his field of view, Lawrence felt his hope drain away again. Behind those Iron Hands marched a body of warriors he had never seen before.

Something was wrong, and Lawrence sensed it. "Who are you—"

He never finished. Kuber, Captain of the Iron Hands, had already crossed the distance and pressed a bolter to his forehead.

Lawrence went rigid with shock. "I came out here to welcome reinforcements! What do you think you're doing?"

"My apologies, Lord Magos," said Kuber coldly, a man now wholly committed to throwing in his lot with Lin, "but this forge-station belongs to us now."

Lawrence kicked and struck out, fighting with everything he had. As the other warriors escorted Lin in through the gate, he gave a sudden roar, tore himself free of the Iron Hands' grip and hurled himself at Lin.

An azure beam punched through the Magos's skull. His corpse hit the deck with a crash.

Lin stowed his Plasma Pistol and turned to the Priests who had come out at Lawrence's side, asking with perfect good humour, "Anyone else have objections?"

Every Priest went as silent as a cicada in winter. At Lin's instruction they were marched off to lead him to the forge-station's production lines.

"Plasma engines for Thunderhawks, and a chassis line for Dunecrawlers."

"This line makes the core components for the Dunecrawler. All of it comes with us," Kuber said, pointing at a row of precision assembly stages in a tone that left no room for discussion.

"And the heavy bolter and las-weapon lines over there — those are Mars-pattern exclusives, don't leave them behind!" another Iron Hands warrior shouted.

"See that? That's what professionalism looks like," Lin said admiringly, then turned to the Soul Drinkers. "Remember, we're not here to fight. We're here to move house!"

The Soul Drinkers behind him split into three streams and poured toward different production lines. The veterans hacking open blast doors with chainswords looked less like Space Marines than like a greenskin looting party.

These transhuman warriors, who ought to have been burning bright on some battlefield, were instead applying their extraordinary combat power — under expert Iron Hands supervision — to the brutally efficient dismantling of factory equipment.

A Primarch had once wondered how the Astartes might be made useful somewhere other than the battlefield after the Great Crusade ended. Lin felt he had already made a lasting contribution to that particular line of inquiry.

Some distance from the production lines, Skarbrand split the last Skitarius in half.

No glorious blood bathed him. What ran down his hide was a mixture of machine oil and electrolyte fluid.

"What kind of offering is this?" he roared, kicking a half-carcass of machinery through the air. "They don't even plate their skulls in brass!"

He was not satisfied, but the work still had to be done. Skarbrand knew the Blood God was no brainless brute who wanted nothing but skulls; his master was also the one among the Four Chaos Gods who commanded the most daemon engines.

Skarbrand had already hewn off enough skulls to bury a planet without earning a fragment of the Blood God's forgiveness, and he had decided he could display a little "wisdom" in this direction and perhaps win his master's pardon.

He pressed on with his daemon host — and ran unexpectedly into another group barring the way.

They were a strange band of warriors. The marks of biological modification were obvious on them: mechanical implants half-visible beneath knotted muscle, and an aura not unlike that of the Astartes.

"For the Emperor!" their leader shouted, raising a Power Sword and charging Skarbrand.

Skarbrand cut the warrior in half at the waist with a casual swing. But the man refused to die. Some nameless power surged out of his chest and drove him on, so that the remaining half of him still hauled itself toward Skarbrand.

"Now that is interesting."

A savage grin split Skarbrand's mouth.

These warriors, he realised, were offerings of a far higher quality than any Skitarii.

The daemon host of Sadistic Terror crashed into them, and in a raw contest of strength the warriors actually had the better of the Bloodletters.

Moments later, though, the cables strung through the augmented warriors' tendons burst from overuse. Even with a final measure that burned them out entirely, they amounted to a cup of water against a burning cart.

Skarbrand laughed aloud. This was the most satisfying battle he'd had since coming to Mars.

Far off, Cawl passed no comment on the raving Greater Daemon of Sadistic Terror. The Archmagos simply collected the data his test subjects were transmitting back and evaluated their performance.

"Power output acceptable, but with pronounced self-destructive after-effects. Because they never underwent the full nineteen implantation surgeries, perhaps?"

He went on murmuring to himself. "The 'Furnace' runs stably, but its operation appears to over-stimulate them to the point where they can no longer distinguish friend from foe — though that may equally be daemonic influence…"

He put away his data-slate, not entirely satisfied with the trial's results.

"Muscle density and resistance to corruption both require further optimisation. But not here."

Archmagos of Mars though he was, Cawl had kept himself apart from the planet ever since the Great Heresy, pursuing plans no one else knew anything about.

He returned now and then to make sure his work was proceeding and to make adjustments, and this time he had walked directly into Chaos's invasion of Mars.

Cawl had no intention of contributing anything to this war. He did not believe Mars would fall, and his own plans were of far greater importance than whatever conspiracies were unfolding on it.

Having tested his creations against the daemon host of Sadistic Terror, he began working out his own withdrawal.

Skarbrand never noticed Cawl's presence at all. His goal had always been the production lines, and he regarded these skirmishes as no more than a brief interlude on the way to seizing Mars's manufacturing capacity. With the last resistance dealt with, he charged for the forge-station's core.

But when he reached the halls where the production lines stood, the sight in front of him drove him into a fury.

A band of Astartes was working along the lines, crating up vast quantities of STC data and factory equipment. They were plainly stealing spoils he had already claimed for himself.

"You ants dare to steal the property of the Blood God!"

"What do you mean, property of the Blood God? Does it have your name on it?"

Skarbrand swung his rage toward the mortal who dared to answer back, and found himself looking at a Magos of the Mechanicus.

Facing down the furious exile, Lin was relaxed enough to spread his hands.

"Then again, I forgot — even with your name on it, it still wouldn't be the Blood God's property. You looked like a beaten dog when Sadistic Terror kicked you out of his daemon realm, and a stray with no master can carve his name into whatever he likes. It doesn't count for anything."

Skarbrand, who was very clearly no scholar, was left reeling by this sudden airing of his private history. For a moment he couldn't even assemble a retort.

It took several seconds of a stalled brain before he remembered that he could simply attack instead.

"Foul-mouthed wretch, I'll see you dead!"

He raised his great axe, its edge wreathed in Warp-flame, and brought it sweeping down at Lin.

Lin threw himself into a roll and the blow passed over him. The Astartes beside him seized the opening, shouldering ion and las cannons stripped fresh off the assembly line and hammering the Greater Daemon with them.

With that fire aimed squarely at his joints, the Greater Daemon lifted his ruined wings as a shield and threw himself into a berserk charge, plainly intending to take the Magos who had insulted him apart at close quarters.

Which was exactly what Lin had been counting on.

"Now!" Lin called to the Felynes who had been waiting up in the dome all along.

Twelve bolt barrels buried among the load-bearing pillars detonated as one, and the dome's shattered metal trusses came down like spears of divine judgement.

Alarm shot through Skarbrand. He managed to shear through two of the steel beams, but the third punched straight through his ruined bat-wing and pinned him down into a boiling coolant pool.

An attack like that could hardly cripple a Greater Daemon renowned for battle, but it was enough to hold him in place for a while. All Skarbrand could do was watch as the Astartes carried on with total impunity, hauling away the production lines he had set his heart on right in front of his eyes.

They didn't even leave him the coolant piping.

"Cowards! Thieves!" The daemon's roar set the assembly lines shuddering. "You don't even have the courage to face the Champion of the Blood God—"

"The Champion of the Blood God who isn't allowed within sight of the Brass Throne?"

Skarbrand's rawest nerve, whipped over and over, sent him thrashing like a man in a seizure.

He tore madly at the beams pinning him, and cracks spread through his brass armour under the force of his frenzy. "Silence! Silence! Silence! The Blood God will restore my name to me!"

The Astartes had finished crating the last of what they wanted. Loaded down with bundles and boxes, they hurried out of the forge-station. Only Lin lingered a moment longer, giving the wretched creature another appraising look.

"I left you a refrigeration-unit line for the Dunecrawlers," he offered helpfully. "Copper conducts heat rather well, and your master sits on the stuff all day long — it must get warm. Haul this back and rig it up as air conditioning, and perhaps he'll finally notice how devoted you are."

"Vile lump of iron, I will cram your soul into—"

"Into the Brass Throne you'll never get back to?"

Kuber pulled up in a commandeered transport to collect Lin, and Lin threw one last shot over his shoulder as the hatch swung shut. "My advice is to go borrow a matching pair of wings from Tzeentch first. Even the Bloodletters are snickering at the look you've got going."

Skarbrand froze. He turned to look back at the daemon host of Sadistic Terror behind him, and found the Bloodletters all studying either the sky or the ground.

Not one daemon dared to venture an opinion on the subject, but Skarbrand had already tasted exactly what they thought.

"I will cut you apart, split you open, hack you to pieces!!!"

The transport tore away from the forge-station. Lin looked back and saw the entire facility caving in under Skarbrand's rage. His fury erupted as a pillar of blood that climbed into the sky, staining the sand for a good distance around it a dark red.

But what did any of that have to do with Lin?

He shrugged and issued fresh orders to his troops.

"Get hold of Kurande. Tell him to send some transport ships down to move all this — and don't forget to mention that I only want the largest ones he has."

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