Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The Bloodletters clawed at the wreckage with a dozen hands and still could not free Skarbrand from the tangle of rebar. In the end it was Viktor, arriving late, who cut the steel away with proper tools.

"That Priest!" Skarbrand's lone eye burned with fury. "That damned thief! I want his name! I will grind every bone in his body to powder!"

Viktor did not dare defy the will of a Greater Daemon. He pulled the forge station's surveillance data and quickly identified the man who had cost the Exiled One so dearly.

The instant that face came up, his own pupils narrowed to slivers.

"My lord, that Priest's name is Lin."

Viktor's voice was a tangled thing; beneath his undisguised hatred ran a deep, wary dread of Lin. "He is the enemy of us all."

"Lin..."

The last time Skarbrand had heard that name was when Vashtorr mentioned the man would bring reinforcements. He had paid it no attention then. Now he had felt the cut of it in his own flesh.

He repeated the name under his breath, as though he meant to chew it apart and swallow it down. "Where is he now?"

Viktor shook his head helplessly.

"These cowards! Thieves! They stole my spoils and slipped away like rats!"

Skarbrand's rage rose again with nowhere to go. His great axe hacked into the wall beside him, and the thick metal plating tore like paper. Through the rent he glimpsed the corpses of the enhanced warriors he had butchered earlier.

His fury had found its target.

"If they had not stood in my way, I would have reached the production lines in time and stopped Lin's theft!"

He roared, and issued new orders to Viktor and to Sadistic Terror's daemon legions.

"Find the one pulling the strings behind those enhanced warriors. I will hack him into eight pieces!"

Cawl was in his private laboratory, sorting through the data gathered from the battle at his own unhurried pace.

As an Archmagos, he had determined easily enough that the daemons' objective was not him but the production lines inside the forge station. So he had not rushed to evacuate; he intended to run a preliminary analysis before quitting the station.

He was entirely absorbed in his work. "It seems the gene-sequence still needs further optimization. Perhaps increasing the load on the secondary heart..."

An alarm blared, cutting off his experiment. He frowned, irritated, and reached to silence it, but the image on the surveillance feed caught his eye before his hand got there, and he froze.

The corridor outside the laboratory was already choked with twisted ghouls and Bloodletters, and at their head stood Skarbrand, incandescent with rage.

They were supposed to be going after the production lines. Why were they here?

"Damn it." Cawl muttered the curse, shut down his data-slate and began gathering the critical materials in the lab. His research time was over, and he knew it.

The laboratory doors were split in two with a crash of the great axe, and Skarbrand came through wreathed in Warp-flame. His gaze fixed on Cawl and did not waver.

"You are Cawl? You are the one who loosed those meddling insects?"

Cawl regarded the Greater Daemon calmly. "Those warriors were merely my test subjects. How did they perform?"

"Perform? They wasted my time and let that pack of thieves steal my production lines!"

Skarbrand roared and brought the axe down on the workbench beside Cawl. "Cawl, you will pay for this!"

The bench was cloven in half, and the cogitator that had been uploading data, along with the disks holding the results of this experiment, went up as drifting ash in the blast.

Cawl had no time to mourn the loss. His hand darted out and snatched a gene-template from the bench even as he triggered his laboratory's emergency defenses.

Several automated turrets dropped from the ceiling, and a dense curtain of fire washed over Skarbrand.

To a Greater Daemon it was no more than an itch being scratched, but the seconds it bought were enough for Cawl to release another batch of half-finished enhanced warriors from the cryo-vaults.

Those warriors threw themselves fearlessly into the tide of Bloodletters, and two Kastelan-class servitors of Cawl's own joined the fight, choking the enemy's advance in the cramped space.

Only then could Cawl slip away down the escape tunnel.

So now he understood why a Greater Daemon of Sadistic Terror had come to vent its temper on him: the production lines were gone. But that raised a question. How could the production lines be gone?

They had been sitting right there. Was somebody supposed to have stolen them?

He had saved the Primal Blood Repository, and yet the day's losses still stung badly.

He had lost more than the data from this experiment. He had lost a hidden research base.

The work he could not let see daylight could only be done in bases he prepared in secret, and losing one to sheer accident was bound to hurt.

Fortunately, Cawl had the temperament to take a thing up and set it down again. He drew two breaths and steadied himself.

This Archmagos, who still carried half a body of flesh, kept his determination to push his experiments forward. He only had to work out where to continue them.

Anywhere under Mars's close surveillance was out of the question, and the looser places, like the Macarius Forge Station, were far too easy for Chaos forces to attack.

Cawl turned it over and over, and his gaze settled on the magnificent Star Fort in orbit.

The Shanzheng.

His mind was made up.

"The Ultimate Wall. Perhaps I can ask them for temporary shelter."

For all that it looked unshakeable from the surface, the interior of the Shanzheng had just weathered its own round of upheaval.

The Skitarii forces stationed in orbit had also received the order Augustus had forged in the Fabricator General's name.

Compared with the scrambled redeployments on the ground that had left units caught between two fronts, the order the five hundred thousand Skitarii in orbit received was far more extreme.

They were commanded to launch a boarding action against the Shanzheng and seize control of the fortress.

Fortunately, the Magos Dominus who had already prudently submitted to Kurande earlier did not obey the forged command. He held his five hundred thousand Skitarii in place, immovable as a mountain, and looked down from orbit on a Mars sinking into war.

Five hundred thousand Skitarii, boarding an ancient Star Fort nearly the size of a moon? Don't be absurd.

There weren't even enough of them to serve as kindling for the fortress's furnaces.

But his policy of standing immovable while comrades suffered did not speak for everyone. Set against these Magi with their private calculations, the Knight houses attached to Mars were far more loyal.

Unlike the Imperial Knights who answered to the Council of Terra, the Knight houses subordinate to the Martian Knight Council were absolute partisans of the Forge Worlds.

Every weapon in their hands came from the Forge Worlds, which tied the survival, honor and disgrace of their houses directly to Mars.

So when the order issued by "Kubik" reached the six Knight houses, four of the six stationed aboard the Shanzheng carried out the Fabricator General's command without a moment's hesitation and rose in revolt aboard the ship.

Heavy Knight mechs are butchery incarnate against infantry, and even for Astartes these miniature Titans make troublesome enemies.

But the Shanzheng was no feudal world ruled by Knights. Against Astartes who had prepared in advance, the Knights were troublesome and nothing more.

When the Fabricator General had granted Kurande command, Kurande had already split the six Knight houses apart and assigned them to different sectors of the Shanzheng.

So when four of those houses chose to follow the "Fabricator General's" order and rebel, their combined force of nearly three hundred Knights amounted to four isolated pockets of revolt with no infantry to screen them.

However vast the Shanzheng was, it could not compare with the endless plains of a planet. The zones Kurande had deliberately assigned them left the Knight houses no room to deploy in formation or pour out their firepower.

Hemmed in like that, the huge war machines were slow and clumsy.

The first to reach the front line was Colonel William. Facing war machines of that size, he felt his nerve waver.

Luckily, Evil Sun the Priest reached him first, and this Priest, whose identity William had never dared to work out, or perhaps had never wanted to, brought yet another of his unbelievable creations with him.

Several "armored vehicles" stacked together out of endless scrap steel and scrap iron.

They were armored vehicles in the most literal sense. Armor from top to bottom, and not a trace of a weapon anywhere on them.

"We're really going to fight Knights with these?" William asked, deeply skeptical.

"Nuffin' to be scared of!" Evil Sun bellowed at the top of his voice. "Dem big tin cans are just deliverin' us free scrap!"

At his urging, the Deathless used the hulls as cover and pushed slowly toward the Knights.

The Armiger-class and Cerastus-class Knights at the head of the line met the absurd vehicles first, only to discover that the autocannons and light melta guns carried by the smaller Knights could not punch through the infantry-screening hulls quickly enough.

Realizing that unless they broke this rolling fortress every Knight behind them would be bottled up in this stretch of corridor, the Armiger Knights drew their reaper chain-cleavers, meaning to smash the soldiers sheltering behind the cover in close combat.

"Now!" Evil Sun bellowed. "Neos, lad! Go rip 'em up!"

Melta bombs planted in the side-chamber walls blew them open, and Neos, driving an ork tin can, came out of the smoke.

"An ork tin can?!"

The Knights stared. They could not understand why such a thing was here, and understood even less why the cans were painted with the Imperial double-headed eagle.

The spike-covered hull clamped around a Knight's waist like a beast trap. Neos leapt out of it and, while the Knights busied themselves with the can, made it back to the Deathless line.

The Knight cut open the can pinning it with its reaper chain-cleaver, and found the interior packed full of greenskin-brewed meltas.

The Knight's face contorted in horror.

The corridor shook with a thunderous roar.

The melta bombs detonated, and in an instant the Knights became walking torches.

"Good lad!" Evil Sun laughed and clapped Neos on the shoulder. "Dat prize-in-every-can notion o' yours is proper mad! I got me eye on you!"

The others crowded around too, envy and curiosity written all over their faces.

"How do you even know how to pilot a mech?" Faraday asked. "Is there anything you can't do?"

"Of course there is. I don't know how to win."

William gave him an odd look. "What nonsense is that? We're about to win, aren't we?"

Neos smiled faintly and let it pass.

Knights without infantry to screen them had no answer at all to that suicidal style of attack.

Even knowing exactly how these men would come at them changed nothing. Shipboard engagement ranges left them little chance to deal with the exploding cans at distance, and the narrow corridors left the Knights no room to dodge, turning them into meat on the board.

The Deathless were not spared losses. Drivers nowhere near as skilled as Neos often had no choice but to stay in the cockpit and take a Knight with them.

But tin cans were cheap, and lives were cheaper still. Trading at that price for a Knight was victory, plain and complete.

With the Armiger-class Knights, the supporting greenery of the houses, cleanly disposed of by mortal troops, the larger Questoris-class and Castellan-class machines that remained became a spent force.

They fought with everything they had, and all they managed was serious damage to non-critical sections of the Shanzheng.

Then the Imperial Fists ordered the two houses that had not joined the revolt into the fight, rolled the anti-Titan Shadowsword tanks out of the holds for target practice, and finally sent Astartes special-operations squads in close with melta guns against Knights with no cover and no room to maneuver. The twenty-odd Questoris and four Castellan Knights were split apart and destroyed one by one.

On a planetary battlefield those Knights might have crushed an ordinary Chapter. But the deep reserves of a parent Chapter are not something a few small Knight houses can bluff their way past, still less a parent Chapter that had been expecting their revolt.

Four Mechanicus Knight houses were wiped out, and the ill-timed rebellion was settled without difficulty.

The Magos commanding the Skitarii congratulated himself on having ignored the Fabricator General's order, and once again declared to Kurande his loyalty and his complete lack of any connection to Mars.

Kurande accepted the overture from this suitably pragmatic Magos. As the Ultimate Wall began clearing the battlefield, word from Lin reached the Shanzheng.

"Arrange transport ships, and send part of the army down as well?"

News that Lin was safe brought Kurande a joy he had not felt in a long time, but the request left him puzzled.

Even before the Knight houses rebelled, the Shanzheng had picked up signs of unrest on Mars. Now that the comms blackout had been broken, the fortress was certain that Mars had lost control of the situation.

Kurande understood this was an opportunity, but he could not yet decide what stance he ought to take in the upheaval. He went to the bridge to discuss it with the other Chapter Masters, and only Thorne saw what Lin was really after.

"He wants to carve out a fief of his own."

Thorne remembered the Great Heresy, when more than ten thousand of their Astartes, led by first-company captain Sigismund, had cut their way into Magma City on Mars and held it.

In the end they had been driven out by the siege of the traitor Titan Legion, the Death's Heads, but while they held Magma City they had scraped a great deal of precious materiel and no small number of production lines off Mars.

To be more precise, the production lines for the Land Speeders and Predator tanks Lin had been using were exactly what they had lifted back then.

He still remembered what Lin had said aboard the Attack Moon, that there might yet be a chance to pull another job. The thought of doing something that could call back the glory of those days set him trembling with excitement.

"I'll be the first to Mars!"

No one refused the old veteran with his blood up. A force headed by the Exemplary Fists and the mortal armies was packed into transport ships and set out. The holds were crammed with supplies and munitions, and with the Knight wreckage Evil Sun had loudly insisted on bringing along.

"Reckon dis stuff'll be right useful to da Big Mek!"

The transports probed their way into Martian orbit, and the orbital defense forces, under orders to stand watch against the Ultimate Wall fleet, had no idea what to make of it.

They tried to contact the Fabricator General. But Mars was already in chaos, and with no instructions forthcoming they finally classified the movement as non-hostile and let these small detachments come and go as they pleased.

They would never know what those transports would be carrying away from their Mars.

The transports passed into the atmosphere without trouble and reached the site Lin had marked.

A forge station called Moravec.

Mars seemed fond of naming these small forge stations after people, and the name was precisely why Lin had taken a liking to this one.

Moravec: one of the earliest tech-priests, and the guide who raised the Priests' primitive faith in machines into the Omnissiah.

He had been a man of Terra living before the Unification Wars, who fled to Mars to escape persecution by the Pan-Pacific warlords, and who left behind on that world a great deal of dark technology with profound influence on the ages that followed.

Lin had no idea what those things actually were, but he knew the theory that Moravec had been the Emperor. In a Warhammer universe where the mystical was simply science, part of his reason for seizing this forge station was to court a little good fortune from the name.

In any case, the Emperor on his toilet certainly wouldn't mind.

Under the warm hospitality of the Soul Drinkers and the Iron Hands, this place, much like the Macarius Forge Station, gladly laid down its weapons, and the Priests inside, together with their production lines, accepted Lin's benevolent protection.

Lin intended to make it his temporary base on Mars for the duration of the upheaval, and to see just how much he could scrape out of a world in turmoil.

The arrival of the Exemplary Fists and the Deathless came as no surprise to him, but the mounds of Knight wreckage Evil Sun had brought did.

"Big Mek!"

Riding high on his new scrap, Evil Sun slapped the pile of Knight wreckage with delight.

"Me an' young Neos went to a lot o' trouble to get dese iron lumps! You give it a good long fink, you'll cook up summat new fer sure!"

"Knight wreckage, is it..."

Lin was not particularly excited by the stuff.

Back on Cath Maximus he had already built the Thunder God based on Titan designs, and for the cockpit he had drawn on Armored Core, which was more advanced than existing Knight technology.

The wreckage was intact enough and covered enough patterns that he could certainly use his golden finger to parse the manufacturing methods for Knights out of it.

But the requirements placed on a Knight pilot were steep. To use one, you needed the approval of some ancestral Knight's machine-spirit. Lin did not think such a precious toy would do much for him.

He went through the wreckage in a perfunctory way, mostly to keep Evil Sun happy. But when he examined the unusual structures inside a Knight cockpit, the technology that surfaced in his mind left him standing there for a moment.

Evil Sun crowded in at once, his face full of expectation. "Well? Big Mek Lin, we got summat?"

"I still need to run the numbers... But Evil Sun, have you ever heard of Pilots?"

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