Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Kuber's eyes went wide. He looked at Lin, wanting it confirmed a second time.

"You're giving them to us?"

"Of course. The way I see it, you and these Titans are a Best Match."

Knights were augmented humans too, but their augmentation ran in a completely different direction from the Astartes.

Astartes generally possessed superhuman resolve and extraordinary endurance, but their Black Carapace interfaced only with power armour, which made them a poor fit for the cockpit of a Knight mech.

The Iron Hands were the exception.

As a Chapter that venerated iron and bionic limbs, the Iron Hands had long since replaced many of their major organs with something other than natural flesh. Beyond the iron hand itself, every warrior's spine had been swapped out for a "Furnace Chain."

It was a vertebral implant that threaded complex neural circuitry into the recipient's spinal cord. It symbolised imperfect humanity ascending toward the purity of the machine, and at the same time it let an Iron Hand's bionics run at far higher efficiency.

As an oddity among the Iron Hands, Captain Kuber had always been sparing in his use of bionics, and had never leaned much on that spine of steel.

With only minor adaptation, those lightly burdened Furnace Chains could serve as the interface for piloting a Titan, turning the Iron Hands into Titan pilots.

There were plenty of advantages to putting Astartes in an Atlas-class Titan. Their astonishing reflexes would wring every drop of agility out of the machines. There would be no need for a purpose-built armoured-core cockpit, which would speed up production of these smaller Titans considerably.

More importantly, they were formidable warriors in their own right. On the battlefield, Astartes and Titan together would add up to far more than the sum of their parts.

Lin envisioned a force equipped entirely with Titans — nimble enough to screen the flanks of the Thor legions, yet strong enough to fight independently.

For that, the pilots' own combat power and endurance were just as indispensable.

The Iron Hands, already skilled with code and with the handling of machinery, struck Lin as the perfect candidates.

"You'll link into these Titans through your Furnace Chains and become their pilots."

Lin spoke with a certainty that brooked no argument, but Kuber said nothing.

His gaze drifted back to the Titan, and something complicated stirred in him.

A rare hesitation crept into his voice. "This Titan is magnificent. But I'm not sure I'm worthy of it."

"What makes you think you're not?"

"We're castoffs of the Iron Hands — men left behind on the road that preaches the flesh is weak. The Chapter's extremism convinced us that path was wrong, but commanding iron demands coldness and efficiency. I don't believe we, as we are now, could keep a Knight's machine-spirit under control."

"Don't be so quick to write yourself off. Try it first."

Lin opened the Atlas-class Titan's cockpit and gestured for Kuber to climb in. Kuber hesitated, then did as he was asked.

He changed into a suit of power armour with a neural port left open at the back and stepped inside. The cockpit fit his frame exactly. Neural-link spines slid from behind the seat and drove into his Furnace Chain.

As the pilot's seating was confirmed, the dim cockpit brightened, and a synthesised voice spoke.

"Protocol One: Link to Pilot."

Kuber felt another life waking inside the Titan. He felt that machine-spirit's curiosity about him.

"Who are you?" The question was out before he thought about it.

"I am the Titan's auxiliary control system. You may call me BT."

Kuber wasn't sure what to make of that. This machine-spirit seemed a little too intelligent. He turned to Lin.

"What exactly is this machine-spirit?"

"I combined a machine-spirit with an auxiliary subroutine. Don't worry, it doesn't violate the Crimson Protocol. It just has a certain capacity for learning, so it can help you get more out of the Titan."

Past a certain point, machine-spirits and artificial intelligence really were hard to tell apart. By the terms of the Crimson Protocol that outlawed AI, the clearest distinction was whether the thing could update and teach itself.

Of course, the Adeptus Mechanicus itself fielded the Legio Cybernetica and warship "machine-spirits" clever enough to make anyone nervous — things that trod squarely on the line. Lin had no intention of being especially scrupulous about it.

The Titan he had built for Kuber carried a semi-intelligent core. In terms of function, it was simply a more powerful machine-spirit.

"BT is an auxiliary system only your mech will carry. It'll help you handle the Titan, read the situation, and feed you live status on the other Titans in your squad so you can make decisions in the field. And you don't need to worry about a machine-spirit rejecting you. Unlike an ordinary one, it adapts to you as it learns."

Kuber had no answer to that. But BT showed no sign of rejecting him at all, which meant he had linked successfully with the Titan and been accepted as its pilot.

He rapped a knuckle against the cockpit wall.

"Pilot?"

"Let me out."

BT complied and set him down outside. Kuber noticed that the Titan went on operating normally once he had left the cockpit. Its function did not depend on a pilot at all.

That autonomy, together with BT's degree of intelligence, left him uneasy.

"It's… a little too advanced." He groped for the right words. "I'm not certain that men like us, men who aren't ruthless enough, could keep a machine-spirit like this in check."

It was hardly unheard of for a machine-spirit with too much emotion or autonomy to turn its pilot into a puppet instead.

Plenty of Knight pilots ended up utterly changed in temperament. Years upon years in the cockpit let the machine-spirit bleed into them and reshape who they were.

Lin waved the objection away.

"You've got it backwards, Kuber. That's precisely what I value about you."

"Ruthlessness isn't strength. The harder you chase an inhuman perfection, the more tightly iron binds you. Stripping away emotion doesn't make a man iron's master, because iron is nothing but an extension of human will."

Kuber fell silent. The words had struck something deep. Then BT crouched down of its own accord and opened its cockpit to him again.

"Please board, Pilot."

Kuber glanced uncertainly at Lin. Lin nodded, encouraging him. "What it needs isn't a prisoner of iron. It needs a true partner."

"What keeps humanity fighting has never been cold logic. It's burning will. True miracles are made by those who can pilot iron."

Something clicked for Kuber. "Is that why they're called Pilots?"

"Exactly. That's what a Pilot is."

At Lin's confirmation the weight lifted from Kuber, and the cloud that had hung over him for so long finally broke open to the light.

He stopped thinking about the brothers who had denounced them as weak and preached that emotion led only to error. He laid his fingers against the Titan's armour plating. The metal was cold, and yet it felt as though he were touching something vast and surging.

It was the new future waiting for him and his brothers.

Perhaps they should follow Lin and found a new Chapter — one called the Pilots.

He didn't rush to board BT. Instead he drew Lin aside.

"Magos Lin, there's something I want to give you."

He produced a stone of fluorescent green and handed it over. Lin weighed it in his palm; it was cold to the touch, more metal than mineral.

"What is it?"

"A holy relic of our clan. We call it the Ironstone. Its origin can no longer be traced, but it sustains machine-spirits, and it lets machinery slowly repair itself. I once meant to trade it for a new future for me and my brothers. Now that we've been shown hope, I'd rather entrust it to you — in thanks for your tolerance and your help."

That kind of power sounded very much like something rooted in the Warp, and yet as Lin held it he felt no flicker of Psychic energy being smothered by his presence.

Lin raised an eyebrow, aware that this was no simple trinket. He didn't bother with polite refusals and accepted the relic outright.

"I'll make sure it's put to the use it deserves."

Kuber nodded and climbed into the Atlas-class Titan. He began to practice, and thanks to the Iron Hands' natural gifts he adapted fast. Within a few hours he and BT were performing difficult manoeuvres in perfect concert.

The Atlas-class Titan's superb handling, paired with Astartes reflexes, let the eight-metre machine brawl at close quarters exactly the way an Astartes himself would.

It was a level of agility the war machines of the Warhammer universe could not even dream of. Perhaps only the Eldar's Wraithknights or Revenant Titans could stand alongside it.

The Iron Hands were born to be Pilots, it seemed. Given enough Titans, they could become the backbone of any battlefield.

In Titanfall, the Titans weren't limited to the well-balanced Atlas-class. The basic chassis line also included the heavily armoured, heavily gunned Ogre-class and the close-combat Stryder-class.

Titanfall 2 added second-generation refinements — the Ion, the Ronin, the Northstar, the Legion — as well as the third-generation "Vanguard-class" Titan everyone knew by heart: BT-7274.

But a meal had to be eaten one bite at a time. As with the Thor, Lin had no intention of perfecting the Titan right now.

The situation on Mars demanded that they turn out as many ready-made Atlas-class units as possible, along with Pilot-issue equipment like the Data Knife.

With a heap of Knight wreckage as raw stock, Lin estimated he could convert around fifty of them.

The number matched a small Knight house, but Lin had no Armiger-class Knights padding out his roster. With Astartes at the controls, he was confident they would field combat power far beyond that of an ordinary Knight house.

At his word, the Moravec Forge Station threw itself into another feverish round of production.

The steady stream of Tech-Priests coming over to him accelerated the Atlas-class assembly lines considerably; the Pilots' appearance on the next battlefield was a settled thing. Lin turned his attention to strengthening the Deathless under his command.

He hauled out the Dunecrawler production line he'd captured earlier and started working out how to rework it into something more versatile.

"Way I figure it, this thing's got a bit of the walker mechs from Red Alert 3 about it…"

He was still mulling it over when an unexpected visitor interrupted his work.

"Neos? What is it?"

The knock at the door belonged to Neos. With Mars's life-support systems wrecked, the Deathless — lacking power armour and fully sealed vehicles alike — could hardly venture outside at all.

For now their duties were training alongside the Exemplary Fists in how to build defensive lines, and handling surveillance and patrols inside the forge station.

"A Magos has arrived at our forge station," Neos reported.

It was the first time anyone above the rank of Priest had come over to Lin's side, but Lin was too absorbed in reworking the production line to care. "Show him in and keep an eye on him. I'll see him when I have time."

"I think you should meet him now."

"?" Lin turned and looked back at Neos.

Lin himself paid no mind to differences of rank, but rank ran bone-deep in the Imperium of Man. However approachable he made himself, few dared put a suggestion to him that boldly.

Neos, though, was perfectly composed. He met Lin's gaze and explained as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "That Magos seemed out of the ordinary to me."

"How out of the ordinary?" Lin's interest sharpened.

"He says his name is Belisarius Cawl."

"Hsss… all right, that is very out of the ordinary."

Lin drew in a sharp breath, then started rummaging around for a bucket of blue paint.

"What are you doing?"

"Just going to paint myself blue before I meet him. And rough myself up a bit while I'm at it. Do that, and the Archmagos will keep pulling good gear out for me forever."

"?"

The humour was several millennia out of Neos's reach, and Lin didn't mind. He had Neos help him gather up the design papers scattered all over the floor, and while doing so Neos caught sight of the sketches for the improved Dunecrawler. A flicker of surprise showed in his eyes.

"These designs… they look interesting."

"You can read them?"

"Only a little."

"Then maybe you've got the makings of a Tech-Priest. I'll teach you a few things later."

Lin had been meaning to build Neos into a rallying symbol for the mortals — ideally one who could lead an army in person.

But after a stretch of fighting together, Lin had found that although the man was fearless in the front line, he had little talent for soldiering at the command level. Put in charge of troops, he could handle a regiment at most.

Lin knew such things couldn't be forced. If Neos had gifts outside the military sphere, so much the better — and Lin could use an assistant other than Evil Sun.

Once the papers were in order, Neos led Lin off to meet Cawl. The Archmagos had not obediently waited where he'd been put. He was standing beside the assembly line, clicking his tongue in wonder at the Atlas-class Titan taking shape on it.

He sensed Lin's arrival and turned to face him. Every inch the stereotypical researcher, he skipped the polite greetings altogether and fired his curiosity at Lin as a flat demand.

"Completing an entirely new creation out of existing technology — how did you do it?"

He had seen through to the "essence" of Lin's creation at a glance, and pressed on. "Have you discovered an entirely new STC for a Knight mech?"

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