On the equatorial plains, the first wave of surviving Ork drop pods slammed down like meteors, gouging scorched craters tens of meters deep.
Before the hatches had fully opened, the air was already torn apart by deafening "WAAAGH!!!" howls.
Behind a steel wall of more than two thousand Ultramarines, the orbital defense batteries were charging, pale blue ion light gathering at their muzzles.
"First contact!" the Scout's voice echoed across the tactical network.
On the command stood a company captain of the Ultramarines, the servos of his MKX power armor humming with a low thrum. He saw the first greenskin leap from the smoke—a steaming mad brute pounding its rusted cleaver against the metal skullcap on its head.
"Brothers! Open fire!"
Hundreds of boltguns roared like thunder. The first rank of Orks was shredded into gore by a storm of metal, yet more greenskins surged forward, trampling their comrades' corpses.
In the Ork language, there is no word for fear. The concept simply does not exist.
Among them rumbled converted Killa Kans—three-meter-tall war machines of crude make—swinging battleship-turned-mega-dakka guns and hosing the Imperial line with a rain of shells.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
An Ork shell exploded twenty meters to the left of the Ultramarines. Two Battle Sisters were flung away by the blast.
The Sisters immediately raised their flamers; sacred fire fanned out to cover fifty meters to their fore.
The air filled at once with the smell of roast meat. A dozen Orks capered and writhed in the inferno, turning into barbecued greenskins.
"For the Emperor!" the warriors of the Ultramarines' 3rd Company countercharged. Power swords and chainswords flashed with cold sunlight.
The Ultramarines slammed into the Ork vanguard. Limbs and blood flew. One Marine shattered an Ork's bones with his storm shield; another sawed a Killa Kan clean in half with his chainsword.
If it were Firstborn Astartes facing Ork Boyz, they would have some advantage in size, but nothing overwhelming.
If a Firstborn had to face a dozen Ork Boyz at once, he would likely be killed. But Primaris Space Marines are different.
These warriors are taller, stronger, faster, with sharper reflexes—far beyond what mere numbers can overrun.
The Orks were countless, but even so, the Ultramarines were a blue wall of steel, locking the green tide in place and forming an unbreakable cerulean bulwark.
Behind them, mortal Guardsmen and squads of Sisters brought their ranged weapons to bear, steadily mowing the Orks down.
Then more Ork rock-drop pods fell densely from the sky. Even with their main warships blasted apart, more gleeful greenskins were dropping to the surface.
"WAAAGH!!! WAAAGH!!! WAAAGH!!!"
"Second wave of drop pods incoming!" the Scout's voice tightened.
"Multiple Ork Wartrakks identified!"
The ground shook violently as dozens of ramshackle trakks burst from the smoke, each mounted with heavy dakka and crammed with howling greenskins.
At the front drove a one-eyed Ork boss. With a hook for a right hand, it raised a rusted chopper high. "Run down da tin humies!"
"Melta team!" the Ultramarines captain barked.
Three warriors shouldered massive meltaguns, dropped to one knee, and in a blink melted three trakks into rivers of slag.
But the remaining trakks had already slammed into the line. One Ultramarine took a frontal hit; his power armor twisted and buckled under tens of tons of force.
The fighting blazed white-hot. A Battle Sister vaulted onto a trakk and brought her eviscerator down, smashing the driver's head into his chest.
Behind her, Sisters formed mobile firepoints, sniping Orks trying to encircle them with precise bolt fire. Yet for every greenskin that fell, more crawled out of the pods.
The number of Orks on the ground grew by the minute. Some Warbosses even teleported to the surface via the Weirdboyz' sorcery.
Chopper-swinging melee Boyz were already among the Imperial mortal troops. They hadn't breached the Ultramarines' defense, but the wall of 2,000 Marines could not cover the entire front.
And all around, in every direction, there were Orks. This was a grand revel. Their flagship was down? Didn't matter. The Warboss dead? Also didn't matter. As long as there was war, a new boss would rise.
No guns? No cannons? The enemy brings them, or the junk heap does. Scavenge the pile, and soon you've got a working big shoota.
Grab some scrap, bang together a can, stuff a little grot inside.
Shove a grot into a bomb from a junker plane, and you've got a self-guiding grot-bomb.
Those grots just have to fly their little bomb-planes at the enemy. Mission accomplished.
"Third Regiment, report your casualties!" a mortal commander shouted.
"Kars Squad requests support!"
"East line has been breached!"
Calls overlapped on the vox. An Ultramarine split an onrushing Nob in two, then looked up to see the sky glowing red with yet more drop pod exhaust.
Just then, a golden sigil flashed across his tac-visor—an incoming transmission from the Revelation-class battleship in orbit: Calgar.
"Ground forces, hold the line.
The Ork main fleet has been routed. Our ground units will be making planetfall shortly.
Hold a little longer and victory will be ours. I am dispatching King Joe automatons to support you and will commence bombardment of the Ork horde. Hold until we arrive," said the voice of Calgar's hologram.
The King Joe automaton is now the mainline Titan unit of the Imperium—high performance, with a division capability.
One King Joe can split into four independent combat units to saturate targets with concentrated bombardment.
Tokas immediately opened company-wide vox. "All units, heads up! High-altitude bombardment imminent."
His warning was drowned by earthshaking thunder. Ten King Joe units streaked into the battlespace, split into fours, formed a bombing array, and swooped toward the Ork masses.
Their Pedanium beam cannons pre-detonated at five hundred meters altitude, blanketing the field in a storm of flame. The King Joe strike was ferocious.
The sky turned a blinding electric blue. Thousands of Orks ionized to ash. The Ultramarines, braced in advance, avoided being flung by the shockwave, but the exposed plates of their armor still glowed red-hot.
When the light faded, the plain looked as if a god had plowed it with a colossal share.
Two-thirds of the Ork force had been annihilated. The remainder reeled in brief confusion—exactly the opportunity Tokas had awaited.
"Counterattack across the line! For Macragge! For the Emperor!"
The Ultramarines surged from their fortifications like a tide. Bolters thundered, chainswords screamed. Sister Celestine led Purifier squads straight into the enemy heart; flamers turned surviving trakks into rolling fireballs. The Ork bosses tried to rally a counterattack, but without their numbers, the greenskins were swiftly isolated and encircled.
At the center, Tokas met the final resistance—five well-equipped Ork bosses guarding a massive Ork war mech.
The mech was clearly cobbled together from multiple Imperial Knights' wrecks, plus parts of an old Imperial Titan.
Its left arm was a rusted power claw; its right, an absurd rotary cannon—pure Ork style.
"I'm Big Bone-Smasher!" the Ork warlord bellowed through loudspeakers. "Let's 'ave a propa scrap!"
Before him, four King Joe bodies swooped in, combined into a towering golden automaton, leveled its Pedanium beam gun at the ramshackle mech—and fired.
The backfiring gun tore the Ork's right arm apart. The junk mech detonated—boom! boom! boom! The hapless warlord inside didn't even react before he was blown to pieces. The freshly arrived war mech was obliterated in an instant.
The remaining King Joe completed their combinations across the field, becoming a host of golden giants that waded into the Ork horde.
With their warlord down, the Orks finally broke. But Second Company Captain Tokas knew this was far from over—the Ork spores buried in the soil would soon spawn more greenskins. He looked toward the drop pods still falling in the distance and tightened his power sword, slick with green blood.
"Clean the field. Burn every corpse," he ordered over comms. "Do not allow these filthy greenskins to sprout again.
They breed fast. Every Ork body must be cleared. All land tainted by Orks must be purified."
The clouds above were stained dark red by war, as if foretelling more bloodshed to come.
At the muddy edge of the battlefield, a tiny Ork spore began to sprout—only to be incinerated at once by Imperial flamers. The Imperium would give the greenskins no second chance; the Imperium and the Orks are old enemies.
With orbital troops landing, the battle's outcome was no longer in doubt.
Twenty-odd hours later, the last Ork warship was reduced to dust under Imperial fleet pursuit, and all mobile greenskins on the planet's surface were purged by ground forces.
Calgar stood on the bridge, gazing over the now-settling battlespace. This war belonged to the Ultramarines.