Chapter 5 - Total WAAAGH!
The ork hordes had united into a single, emerald-green tide. He'd quickly built a new air factory and sent a force of fireflies to scout the approaching horde, though he'd been forced to keep at a distance to prevent the horde from noticing and filling the sky will so much dakka that even their inaccurate weapons destroyed his aircraft. Even while keeping out of range, he'd counted nearly half a million ork boyz and tens of thousands of other kinds, many of which were even larger. That was more than there had been the last time he'd counted the disparate factions. Somehow, the orks had come out of their infighting with even more forces.
They were led from the front by an ork that stood nearly four meters tall, even with its slouched frame, towering over the boyz and nobz. The horde's boss given how he was shouting and yelling at the others from atop some kind of tank cobbled together out of various pieces of scrap. His fireflies were too far above him to hear what he was saying, but it was clear that he was galvanizing them as the orks roared and pushed even faster towards the ruined city at his words.
The weapons and vehicles of these orks were not very advanced, not compared to the dark eldar anyways. From what he could tell, they had relatively few vehicles and none were larger than the boss' tank, which was on par in size with a drukhari raider, if far bulkier and less elegant in appearance. No aircraft either that he could see, though he did see a few stormboyz with the rockets strapped to their backs flying, if it could be called that, above the horde at various times, occasionally followed by a small explosion upon landing.
They were probably heading to the city to find out what had caused the explosion and see if they could fight it. The dark eldar were long gone, but their path would take them through the forest where his base was located. They'd likely stop at the crater with said base as well if they were bothering to investigate the sites of the explosions.
Fucking orks…
He could run. Send an air fabricator to one of the nearby islands, build a portal, send his commander body through and close it behind him. Even better, he could find another celestial body and build up there instead. He didn't need to fight…
Except, he knew he did. Beyond just being in the 40k universe, the fundamental forces of which literally demanded bloodshed, these were orks. If he left, they'd probably keep growing in numbers until they got a proper WAAAGH going. He wasn't sure where or even when he was in the 40k galaxy, but he doubted it was anywhere with strong defenses if dark eldar were able to raid this world without worry. He'd been planning on either asking the city people or getting the information from a computer or something, but that… hadn't worked out.
Regardless, if he left these orks alone, they'd easily dominate this world and then start looking for people to fight in the greater galaxy. The closest of which would be him and he would be at an even greater disadvantage as the orks would continue to advance in teknology while he would be relying on whatever he could find and work with out in the greater galaxy, if he even found anything at all. He wouldn't be able to win in the long term if all he did was run. He'd still send his commander body to another planet as soon as was possible, but that was just common sense. That was in the future, however. For now, he would fight.
The orks would reach his base in a little over a day. He chuckled in his own head as he brought up a new design he'd been working on.
Those xenos bastards wouldn't know what hit them.
24 Hours Later
Warboss Git-Crusha laughed and shouted and bashed at the boyz around him, beating down any one of them that looked at him funny and more than a few that didn't. The boyz were tired, he knew, tired of not having anything to fight 'cept each other for the last month. Fighting orks was fun, but it wasn't as fun as getting all the boyz together for a WAAAGH with somebody else and he'd crush anyone who said different..
When the big 'splosion had happened, Git-Cruncha had just finished smashing in the skull of Skullstompa, his last rival Warboss. It had been a good fight, but his blood was still aching for more. It had been boiling ever since they'd krumped the humies and the pointies came and blasted away the old warboss, Defftoof, without even showing up. When he saw the flashy blast that had krumped the biggest ork he'd ever seen, he'd felt a yearning in him, a call to go to where that blast had come from and beat the living daylights out of whatever had sent it. He'd thought he was hungry so he ate a nearby snotling, but the feeling had remained. Then, a bunch of even bigger blasts had come and made the world all shaky for a bit. So, he gathered up all the Boyz and led them atop Git-Crusha, his personal battle wagon, towards the places where the blasts had struck.
He was a thinker and he'd realized that even if whatever had sent the blasts wasn't there, the thing that had been shot at probably was. And, AND if the size of those blasts was anything to go by, then whatever had been shot at was probably even bigger and badder than Defftoof!
He laughed and crushed the head of a nearby snotling at the thought. Oh, this was gonna be fun, he was sure of it.
The sound of a loud humming, growing louder by the second, drew him from his happy thoughts of battle.
Meanwhile
The dagger-class speeders were excellent designs, in his own humble opinion. Fast, sleek, nimble, and deadly. Based off the Drukhari jetbike he had stolen acquired, each one was equipped with a heat lance on par with the original. The lack of any pilot, at least that could be seen, made each one of them look essentially like a knife that sliced through the air, hence the name. Their tail fins doubled as mono-molecular blades, meaning they could slice through flesh as well.
He'd spent the day since his decision to fight building factories, fabricators, and nearly a thousand of these speeders. Not enough to fight that horde in a straight fight, but that was never the intention. He split the force in three, sending two to flank opposite sides of the ork horde to try and draw them away from the path to his crater-base and the third right up the middle. It wasn't likely to succeed, but if he could gain some breathing room by taking out their leader right off the bat, he wouldn't complain.
He had been, perhaps, just a bit too proud of the design and a bit too naïve about his chances.
His central force was completely demolished before it even reached the Warboss. The ranks of Ork boyz and nobz had roared and opened fire the moment they saw his speeders. Fast, sleek, nimble, and deadly perhaps, but sturdy? No.
The flanking speeders did much better, mainly because he wasn't making them perform kamikaze runs on the strongest. They swept in close enough to fire a few shots of their heat lances, before running away, much like what the dark eldar had done to him and his Wolffes.
The orks on the sides were smaller and had worse equipment than those in the center, who he assumed were the elites. Many only had choppas and other melee weapons. They feebly attempted to rush at his speeders, but their stubby legs were too short and too slow to catch up with aeldari designed hover engines. He lost a few daggers to the sporadic fire of the orks, but the few shootas meant there were less chances for a critical hit. When one of his speeders looked like it was about to fail, he sent them careening into groups of orks and overloaded their engines, causing explosions that often took more than a dozen out in one go.
Still, these were drops in the ocean of green. The attack was meant to get their attention and pull them away from his current economic center that was still being repaired and reinforced. He wanted a fortress to be built before they fell upon him, and it seemed like that was what he would get.
Orks weren't the most disciplined of warriors to begin with and his hit-and-run tactics were making their tempers run short. As the rest of the horde began to move back to deal with the speeders, he stepped up his attacks, moving along their flanks to their backs, away from his base. When the larger orks with more shootas came at his speeders, he'd quickly pull them back and attack somewhere else.
It was fun, in a strange way, seeing the tempers of the orks flare every time he pulled back only to explode into rage at his resumed attacks. The warboss in particular seemed livid at his refusal to engage in direct combat, his tank rushing back and forth along his lines in an attempt to keep up with his speedy daggers, more often than not crushing any unfortunate ork that got in the way.
When he felt like the orks were truly caught on the lure that were his speeders, around half of which were still active at this point, he began the second phase of his plan. Their hit-and-run attacks would now lead them further and further away from his crater, dipping in only to strike when he felt like he was losing their attention, occasionally sacrificing a few speeders in suicide attacks to make sure they didn't think it was pointless to keep chasing after their attackers.
That ought to keep them occupied for a few hours and he turned his focus to other endeavors. The islands surrounding the continent would be useful as he wouldn't need to expend resources defending the structures there unless the orks happened to discover them, so he would allocate the majority of his economic and industrial base there, leaving the central base as a decoy and something for them to focus on once it was prepared, with portals linking the factories on the islands to the inside of his fortress.
The main threat in the long term weren't actually the orks themselves ironically enough, but the spores they grew from. If he couldn't deal with those, he'd never get rid of them. From his memory of the lore, fire was the best method of dealing with them, so his forces would utilize heat lances heavily, with splinter rifle variations being dedicated to heavier weapons meant for dealing with vehicles and the like.
He also needed to start expanding from this single planet as soon as possible. Not only would that help if someone with planet-killing capabilities came and decided the galaxy would be better off without another threat like him in it, but it would allow him to more freely expand his industrial base as well. Hey, maybe he would even get lucky and find some technology he could 'acquire'.
To that end, he had an orbital launcher constructed at his central base and queued up a swarm of fabricators that were soon flung through the atmosphere into the stars above. The system he was in had around six planets in it, two gas giants, two solids including the world he was presently upon, and one ocean planet. The sixth world was so close to the blue star of the system that it was practically a second star and wouldn't be useable due to the heat. There were also around a dozen moons ranging in size from a few hundred kilometers wide to the size of the one which orbited his own planet, which had a diameter of nearly three thousand kilometers.
Not bad, not bad at all. He had a third of his fabricators begin constructing orbital factories around his world. Another third would go to other solid worlds and moons and begin establishing industrial bases there. The rest would go to the gas giants and spend half their time constructing more factories and half constructing jigs to further improve his economy.
Yes, he was going to show these orks the power that a Commander possessed.