Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The opening engagement was almost uneventful.

The daemon horde launched only probing attacks. Vashtorr meant for these skirmishes to yield at least some results — but the defenses Kubik had labored so hard to erect were not so fragile.

The Skitarii's defensive line stretched around the hive city's perimeter like a great wall of steel, and the heavy gun emplacements they had set up beat back every one of these probing attacks.

Yet in the back-and-forth of these clashes, Vashtorr also mapped out the Skitarii's firepower deployment.

"Firepower's still thin," he mused. "Looks like the hive city's production is a long way from full recovery."

Vashtorr was satisfied with the result. With theatrical mystique, he stamped the next phase of the plan directly into Viktor's mind. Feeling as though he had just received a blessing from the Omnissiah himself, Viktor understood exactly how to proceed.

Under his command, Vashtorr's army of ghouls mustered once more.

This time, their numbers far exceeded before.

These outpost forces, animated by Chaos code, had no tactics to speak of. They simply pressed forward mechanically, trading their bodies for the Skitarii's ammunition and trampling flat the traps Mars had laid before them.

Realizing his enemy was seeking a decisive engagement, Kubik held nothing back either.

He committed the entirety of his Skitarii forces, and every class of heavy weapon roared to life at once. Amid the thunder of gunfire, the ghouls in the front ranks were either melted into molten slag or torn to pieces.

But the one thing the ghoul horde born of the Rust Wastes never lacked was numbers. No matter how many the Skitarii destroyed, more rogue Servitors always waited behind, climbing over the wreckage of their own kind to keep charging.

Having used sheer numbers to absorb the terrifying initial barrage, Viktor successfully led his rogue Servitors in a flanking maneuver toward the weakest points in the defensive line.

In this sector, the Skitarii's fire network began to falter.

Kubik frowned, working through the data streaming back from the front lines.

"Over a million casualties just to close on the line? What are they actually trying to do?"

Even if rogue Servitors were worthless, this wasn't how you spent them. Watching his enemy's movements, Kubik realized what they wanted wasn't victory at all.

Their tactics looked like they only wanted to smash headlong into the hive city and loot what they could before the Skitarii could reorganize — not to actually conquer the hive and turn it into a staging ground for spreading further across Mars.

From this pattern, he could glimpse his enemy's lack of staying power. Even if he simply let them run their course, ultimate victory would still belong to Mars.

But a victory for Mars wasn't necessarily a victory for the Fabricator General. Kubik couldn't accept a win like that.

If he let the enemy pillage the hive city unchecked, this battle would count as nothing but failure for him personally.

Some Magos would inevitably step forward, cite his failed defense as proof of incompetence, and kick him off his already-unstable seat as Fabricator General like a stray dog into the gutter.

From the start of the teleportation project until now, Kubik had already poured too much of his own strength into it.

His resources had become fodder for summoning the daemon named Vashtorr. His Legio Cybernetica had become his enemy's puppets. The Knight house he had dispatched to the Ultimate Wall had vanished without a trace. And his Skitarii were being ground down endlessly on the front line against Vashtorr.

If this battle wasn't won cleanly enough — decisively enough to justify keeping his seat as Fabricator General — he wouldn't have the strength left to survive Mars's next round of internal "academic exchanges."

So he had to keep the hive city from falling — or at least ensure the core production zones didn't suffer too much damage.

The thought doubled the pressure weighing on him.

Without his data-throne, he could only let his subordinates act on their own initiative — but Skitarii deprived of data support were clearly no match for a ghoul horde that fought without regard for losses.

With the three-million-strong Skitarii line under strain in multiple sectors, Kubik had no choice but to play his biggest card.

"Deploy the Fire Wasps Legion!"

Obeying the Fabricator General's order, Warlord-class and Warhound-class Titans emerged slowly from among the hive city's towering structures.

Three Warlord-class Titans and six Warhound-class Titans formed three squads in a one-to-two arrangement, and under Kubik's orders, they dispersed toward three different battlefronts.

The march of the Omnissiah's sacred engines made the very ground tremble faintly. Facing the endless tide of ghouls, these proud God-Machines were building toward their fury.

"Fire!"

At the Warlord-class Titan captain's command, the Gatling Blast Cannons — refitted specifically for this battle — spat tongues of flame. A rain of steel shredded the ghouls into sieves that would never move again.

On another flank, a Plasma Annihilator, charged and ready after its long capacitor buildup, finally discharged. Heat in the tens of thousands of degrees vaporized every enemy within range into black, roiling smoke.

The blast carved a five-hundred-meter corridor of fire across the hills of Olympia.

Skitarii morale surged at the sight.

As God-Machines capable of turning the tide of an entire battle, the Titans announced themselves with combat power beyond challenge.

With the three Warlord-class Titans as their anchor, the Skitarii lines stabilized once more, holding the ghoul horde at bay with galvanic guns and radium carbines.

But how could Vashtorr not have anticipated this move?

Facing the Fabricator General who had flipped the table first, Vashtorr merely turned calmly to his side.

Beside him, sparks hissing from his nostrils, Skarbrand surveyed the battlefield with his reddened, bloodthirsty eyes, looking as if he could barely wait.

"Skarbrand, that's your opponent."

The Bloodthirster, already eager for battle, had been about to cheer at the chance to finally unleash his killing nature — until he saw where Vashtorr was pointing: a Warhound-class Titan striding through the ghoul swarm. He froze.

"I'm fighting a Titan? Are you serious?"

Vashtorr didn't deny it. Skarbrand exploded with fury.

"You mongrel — you're using me as cannon fodder!"

"You're already used to it, aren't you? I hear the Blood God's favored champion can cut down several Emperor-class Titans single-handedly. My ghouls have already tied up the Warlord-classes' firepower. Surely the greatest daemon under Sadistic Terror can handle one Warhound?"

Skarbrand stiffened, retorting on reflex: "Of course I can!"

He regretted it the moment the words left his mouth, but having signed the contract, he had little room to maneuver anyway.

However reluctant, the former great daemon of Sadistic Terror was pushed to the very front of the battlefield along with his daemon legion.

Their nature as creatures of Sadistic Terror gave them astonishing resistance to ranged attacks. The Skitarii's fire wasn't entirely useless against them, but holding the lines being struck by the daemon legion now cost several times the ammunition it had before.

The Skitarii's already-scarce energy and ammunition reserves plummeted further.

Thanks to the Priests' efforts, part of the hive city's life-support systems had been repaired, but a hive city barely limping back into operation couldn't sustain consumption on this terrifying scale.

A Warlord-class Titan was a weapon capable of deciding a battle involving hundreds of thousands — but on this daemon-haunted field, even it felt inadequate. The firepower of three Warlord-class Titans could never cover a chaotic melee spanning millions of combatants.

As the daemon legions of Sadistic Terror advanced slowly but relentlessly, Kubik realized the battle was about to be dragged inexorably into close combat.

The ghoul horde pressed into the outskirts of Olympia hive city, and a hymn glorifying Vashtorr began to echo in the Skitarii's ears.

The Priests directing the Skitarii were forced to divert part of their attention to having their troops chant hymns to the Omnissiah, countering the corruption's effect on their machine-spirits.

This unavoidable division of attention further degraded the Skitarii's combat efficiency. In the chaos outside the hive city, the Skitarii performed little better than the crudely made ghouls they faced.

Kubik realized that at this rate, it would exhaust every last bit of fighting potential from a Skitarii force that was already unable to fight at full strength. He had no choice but to order a withdrawal to the city's outer districts, where the complexity of the terrain among the buildings could be used to keep contesting Vashtorr's horde.

By the second day of the offensive, the daemon horde had already pushed tendrils into the hive city itself. It was far from a full breakthrough, but Vashtorr had gained the crucial turning point he wanted.

"They want to use the buildings to hold us off? Then let's give them exactly that."

He waved a hand, playing the second card in his hand.

"Send in the Chaos Knight houses! Let those Skitarii learn exactly who the uncrowned kings of fighting in complex terrain really are."

At his command, dark-green corrupted Knight mechs made their appearance. To the Magos — for whom the Great Heresy still felt recent — this Knight house that once hailed from Mars left a deep and vivid impression.

"It's House Vyktrix!"

Remembering how much devastation that house had once wrought on Mars, the Magos, sensing they had no answer for it, stirred in a brief moment of panic.

As once-loyal servants of the Death's Heads, when that Titan Legion betrayed Mars and pledged themselves to Chaos, this Knight house followed their masters without hesitation, falling into Chaos's embrace alongside them.

Unlike the small houses of today, fielding only a few dozen Knights apiece, House Trix during the era of the Great Crusade had been a full, proper Knight legion. If they arrived at full strength, the only conventional force on present-day Mars capable of standing against them would be the entire Titan Legion, deployed all at once.

Fortunately, House Trix hadn't sent that many Knights — or perhaps Vashtorr simply lacked the power to teleport so many Knight mechs across.

The Priests, anxiously scanning the battlefield, found no trace of Death's Heads Titans, and that let them breathe a little easier.

But over three hundred Knight mechs were still a terrifying enough force. Present-day Mars had nothing that could match it.

There had once been such a force — but Kubik had already thrown all of it away.

Wrapped in a screen of ghouls, the Knight mechs surged toward the breach opened in the outer districts.

The Warlord-class Titans swung their guns to try to stop the breakthrough, but the ghouls paved the way to the gap with their own bodies, ensuring most of the Knights made it onto the field unhindered.

The remnants of the Skitarii staggered back through the ruins of the outer districts, their crimson robes stained black by gunsmoke, Servo-skulls circling overhead and shrieking alarms.

The Fabricator General's orders looped on repeat across the encrypted channel: "Establish a ring defense anchored on Forge Temple No. 12. Prevent the daemon horde from breaking through the outer districts into the inner city. Concentrate all melta weapons at the intersection—"

Before the order finished, a plasma shell screamed in from a spire three kilometers away, vaporizing the rear-guard Skitarii formation into a spreading pool of boiling metal.

The shockwave of the blast knocked Urquidex off his feet, and he sprawled behind a half-collapsed wall.

His mechanical eyes caught a grim silhouette not far off among the distant buildings: a Knight Errant, sweeping through the Skitarii of Mars with its retinue in tow, utterly unchecked.

"By the Omnissiah's bloody cogs, how did it come to this?!"

Just two days ago he'd still been trembling over Mars's teleportation project, never imagining the situation would suddenly spiral into a firefight against daemons and Chaos Knights.

There had been a time he was grateful just to have escaped the orks and Port Sanctus — but now, he almost wished he'd never left Port Sanctus at all.

Even waiting to die alone in his own shipyard would have beaten this!

Complaints aside, Urquidex — with no wish to die — scrambled to reorganize the defensive line.

He redeployed his Skitarii to scrape together a new line, concentrating what heavy firepower he had against the Knights still closing in.

But even with the advantage of holding good ground beforehand, this so-called heavy firepower still counted for almost nothing against Knights blessed by Chaos.

The Knight Desecrator (formerly Knight Errant) carried Radiant Shield technology, long since lost to the present age — a piece of forbidden tech built on ion principles but functioning much like void shields, capable of absorbing energy-weapon fire and providing full, all-around, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree protection.

The Skitarii lying in ambush among the buildings couldn't find any blind spot to exploit, and frontal galvanic guns and low-yield ion weapons weren't enough to overload the Knight's shields.

Sending Skitarii in close to detonate melta bombs did achieve something — but at best it only made the Knight stumble, no longer able to advance at full speed.

The Imperium's redundancy-based design philosophy showed itself fully in this Desecrator-class Knight. No matter what Urquidex tried, he couldn't stop the Chaos Knight from crushing everything in its path like some great beast.

Despair welled up in him. "There's no way we can hold this!"

His plight was just one snapshot among countless Skitarii facing the same. Unlike the earlier annihilation of the Knight house aboard the Shanzheng, when their firepower proved insufficient to handle the Knights here, the cramped terrain only made it easier for the Knights to slaughter them.

Under the Knight mechs' guns, the Skitarii's defensive line proved as flimsy as paper — every barrage sent another stretch of their position crumbling.

"We can't stop them!"

The Deputy Forge Director, fully aware of the battlefield situation, watched his Skitarii falling in droves and felt as if his own reactor were leaking oil. "Our forces are completely cut off! Lord Fabricator General, please give the order to retreat!"

"No!"

Kubik refused his plea.

The outer districts were already the last line of defense. If this was breached, all that remained behind it were the outlying urban zones and, past those, the true core district.

Falling back into the core zone to redeploy defenses was certainly an option — the gun emplacements already built into the production district during its construction would offer a solid anchor.

But letting the fighting reach the core zone this early would mean everything the Fabricator General had worked for was wasted.

He said, with an air that brooked no argument: "Hold firm. There's still a way through."

The Deputy Forge Director had no choice but to keep carrying out the order.

The Fabricator General appeared calm and composed — but only Kubik himself knew how far that was from the truth.

"What is Pavonis even doing? Why hasn't he arrived with the Ultimate Wall's reinforcements yet?"

If they didn't come, Mars itself would be fine — but he was about to be offered up to the Omnissiah as a sacrifice.

What Kubik didn't know was that Pavonis was equally helpless.

"Lin! The hive city's outer perimeter is collapsing! How much longer are you going to wait?"

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