[Segment: Segmentum Tempestus]
[Sector: Chaos Nebula]
[Current Status: Executing Ork Containment Mission]
In the high orbit of Planet Three, the Argent warships had entered the gravitational sphere and commenced orbital drop operations.
Large drop-ships synchronized their orbits, the macro-lance arrays on their undersides aimed down at the planetary surface.
There were no enemies on the ground; the lances of these large drop-ships were fired not to kill, but to level the local topography, creating vast, flat LZ landing zones.
The warships discharged their lances—a brilliant blue-white illumination unlike any conventional strike, its plasma signature exceptionally pronounced.
The plasma arrays deployed on a massive scale by the Argent fleet burned far hotter and possessed far greater destructive force.
Discharged from a low orbit several hundred kilometers up, the blue-white beams pierced the thin atmosphere, slamming onto the desolate planetary surface to flash-melt the upper layers of rock and soil.
Planet Three was abnormally rich in mineral resources—so dense it was practically adamantium ore with a light sprinkling of dirt.
As the plasma lances struck, temperatures of hundreds of thousands of degrees vaporized and fused the terrain, leaving behind a semi-melted mineral crust over a hundred meters thick.
The entire upper half of a mountain range was sheared off, leaving behind an exceptionally dense, ultra-hard vitrified plateau.
With preliminary preparations complete, the orbital drop-ships released their LZ modules.
These drop-ships were specialized assault vessels—uniquely shaped craft designed expressly to seize beachheads under heavy enemy fire and deploy at maximum speed.
They carried almost no crew; the bridge was housed at the prow, while an exposed adamantium keel stretched along the spine down to the stern engines.
Flanking the adamantium keel, several mechanical ribs extended outward, clamping tightly onto a massive, rectangular pod that gave the ship the bulky look of a swollen, heavy beast.
Receiving the drop command, the landing craft initiated their descent immediately.
The captain struck the release toggle, and the mechanical ribs opened wide, unclasping the integrated landing module from their iron embrace.
The drop-ships fired their ventral thrusters at full capacity, fighting the planet's gravitational pull with maximum output.
The 8x8-kilometer integrated landing module, drawn down by gravity and suspended from dozens of heavy adamantium cables, was lowered rapidly toward the surface.
BOOM—
A heavy, dull thud awakened the sleeping mountain range as the gargantuan object hit the earth, its sheer mass threatening to crush the surrounding terrain.
The moment it touched down, hundreds of massive drill rigs extended from the base of the module, driving deep into the adamantium ore stratum to serve as deep foundations, stabilizing the superstructure above.
The adamantium-gold metallic module stood a thousand meters high—resembling a divine block dropped into the world by a deity, set squarely upon the mountain range as an imposing fixture upon the planet.
Crack~
Through the dead atmosphere, the surge of high-voltage currents and the hiss of pressurized hydraulics sounded with immense clarity, like industrial blood pumping into the veins of an iron leviathan.
As a tide of mechanical grinding gathered, the adamantium outer shell unbuckled, laying out flat across the terrain layer by layer as the landing module opened like a gift box.
It was a machine transformation of extreme complexity, utterly beyond standard human comprehension.
Within a mere fleeting second, hundreds of millions of mechanical reconfigurations occurred seamlessly in absolute silence; millions of kilometers of cabling re-routed automatically, and hundreds of thousands of individual subsystems began to assemble themselves.
Viewed from high orbit, the landing module blossomed like an iron lotus, reflecting a brilliant metallic sheen as it quietly unfolded across the frigid mountain range.
In a mere twenty minutes, the rectangular box had fully expanded, transforming into a sprawling military fortress covering over a hundred square kilometers.
The instant the fortress locked into its expanded state, its defense networks activated completely. Countless point-defense turrets rose along the battlements, and automated units poured out from the citadel, initiating patrols across the perimeter.
From releasing the landing module to establishing a fully operational fortress, the Strike Fleet had taken a mere half an hour.
[Fortress Deployment Complete. Commencing Troop Drop.]
Guided by the central artificial intelligence, the entire process unfolded silently yet with absolute order.
The module transport ships, now stripped down to their exposed iron rib-frames, retracted their heavy steel cables and pulled away from the vertical airspace directly above the fortress, clearing the vector for the Legion drop-ships.
Waiting Legion transport craft filled the void immediately, locking their ventral gravity wells onto the fortress to forge a high-speed gravitational transit corridor.
[Elite Legion Deployment Initiated.]
Holographic text lit up inside helms as, driven by the AI's directives, scores of transport pods detached from the carrier vessels, descending through the gravity corridor to touch down cleanly inside the fortress.
One hour later, three million soldiers of the Elite Legion were fully deployed on Planet Three, organized into a complete combat array.
For a planetary-scale conflict, this deployment speed had reached the absolute physical limit of orbital drop operations.
Yet while the human deployment was swift and surgical, the Orks represented the exact opposite extreme.
The greenskins' deployment speed was far from slow, though their methodology was enough to make one's skin crawl.
Brutal and terrifyingly efficient, they piloted their junk fleets directly into the planet's atmosphere, completing a global deployment in an astonishingly short window.
Within a few hours, over three hundred warships had crashed straight onto the planet, with the number climbing by the minute.
The planet's threat level spiked vertically. Through every conceivable means, the Orks had funneled over one hundred million troops onto Planet Three in an absurdly brief timeframe.
While that figure was staggering, for an Ork Waaagh! crusade, it was a mere drop in the bucket.
Their war zone was not confined to this single system.
The sheer rage of the Ork Warboss would recall greenskin elements raiding elsewhere, even prompting them to abandon their fronts against the xenos alliance.
As time progressed, the full, horrifying host of the Orks would converge on this system. Furthermore, Planet Three's extreme mineral wealth rendered it a fertile, inviting soil for the greenskins.
The air they exhaled, the dead skin they shed, and the blood spilled during their internal brawls were all seeds planted in this fertile ground, giving rise to brand-new crops of Orks.
A continuous cycle of birth and death; the greenskin forces would swell endlessly until they smothered every enemy in their path.
---
When Blazkowicz descended onto the fortress grounds, five hours had elapsed.
He raised his eyes to look upon the planet's projection, twitching the corner of his eye slightly as he watched the infection zone expand at a frantic pace.
Though he had prepared himself mentally, confronting the terrifying reproductive speed of the Orks anew still left him feeling a mix of helpless exasperation and profound awe.
The projection was a sea of blood-red; greenskins poured continuously out of the downed ships, their numbers having already hit three hundred million!
Ork spores, trailing in the wake of their boots, had already blanketed the entire planet, growing vigorously even within the thin atmosphere.
According to AI projections, fueled by the active Waaagh! field, the Ork gestation rate would accelerate exponentially; within a week, their total numbers would enter a secondary explosion.
When that happened—the entire planet would be crawling with greenskins.
Facing a green tide of this magnitude made even Blazkowicz's scalp tingle, a dull ache throbbing at the back of his jaw.
"Have the fleet prepare the macro-lances," he shook his head, drawing a wide circle around a blank zone on the tactical map. "Bombard these sectors to shape the terrain to our advantage."
"Command acknowledged."
A synthesized machine voice echoed from the void as the warship AI confirmed the order.
Shortly after, the plasma lances descended once more, blue-white beams of pure heat falling like a cascading waterfall that filled the entire horizon.
When the bombardment ceased, the topography surrounding the fortress was completely rewritten.
Concentrated macro-fire had erased the surrounding mountain ranges entirely, carving out a massive, sunken adamantium basin that enclosed the central fortress like an isolated island.
Gazing upon the final result, Blazkowicz nodded in satisfaction.
He would craft a sea of death for the Orks—one that would swallow countless lives and strip the green tide of its numerical momentum entirely.
"Continue," Blazkowicz raised his hand, tracing fine details across the holographic projection to construct a true "Annihilation Zone."
His fingers moved like a master chisel, carving precise tactical geometry directly into the light.
"Deploy the automated engineering units to begin trenching operations."
Deep within the fortress citadel, Blazkowicz carved a remarkably complex trench system directly onto the holographic display—one that, viewed from high above, resembled a dense, maze-like circuit board: "Prioritize external construction; complete the outer works of the 'Sea of Death' before the main green tide arrives."
"Deploy two additional matter converters to process surplus minerals and sustain our war consumption."
"Install two secondary continental-class void shields. Once the outer excavation is complete, continue digging downward and tap geothermal harvesters to supply the shield arrays."
A rapid cascade of commands echoed out; light and shadows flickered across the command bridge alongside the low-frequency hum of high-speed data exchanges.
The Legate Commanders of the Elite Legion had long since entered their neural command pods, directing their respective battle-groups to prepare for the coming clash.
Endless crates of materiel descended down the gravity wells as the citadel's automated machinery stirred to life, seizing this temporary window to deploy equipment and fortify positions.
The Ork greenskins were much like their worshipped deities, Gork and Mork: vicious yet cunning, and utterly ruthless beneath that cunning facade.
They possessed a degree of straightforwardness, but only a meager sliver.
Though the Orks had temporarily accepted the challenge for a ground-based decisive battle on Planet Three, their inherently treacherous nature remained unchanged; the moment the tide of battle shifted, they would inevitably revert to their lowest instincts, launching an all-out, unbridled assault.
Therefore, completing the defensive layout before the greenskins went entirely wild was the utmost imperative.
"My Lord."
As fortress construction proceeded at a feverish pace, the diamond-shaped holographic projection of Alpha flickered into view, relaying a transmission from the fleet: "All required supplies and machinery have been successfully landed. The fleet will now vacate planetary orbit to pull clear of the Ork scrap fleet."
"We have left behind a reconnaissance probe set to stealth mode, which will continuously stream orbital intelligence directly to the citadel."
"Permission granted," Blazkowicz nodded; the fleet's departure was entirely part of the plan.
Rather than trying to contest a compromised sky, it was far wiser to withdraw decisively and preserve their void assets before the Orks' patience broke its threshold.
The citadel possessed a fully self-sustaining ecosystem that generated its own supplies via the matter converters, rendering it entirely independent of fleet resupply.
As the holographic projection faded, Blazkowicz stood before the command dais, continuing his review of the incoming data metrics to ensure no tactical oversight had slipped through.
With Li Tang absent, every detail of command and deployment rested squarely on his shoulders.
Chime~~
A crisp notification chime broke Blazkowicz's deep focus as the orbital probe transmitted a new alert.
"Massive Ork movement detected."
The calm, synthesized voice of the citadel AI resonated through the room as the holographic feed shifted to reveal real-time optical tracking.
The Orks were on the move!
Nine hours after making landfall—even as they established crude industrial camps around their downed ship hulls—the greenskins had coalesced into vast, green rivers, surging toward the mountain ranges.
Blazkowicz's eyes narrowed slightly, his augmented brain immediately analyzing the lead elements of the greenskin vanguard to calculate time-to-contact.
With the citadel anchored deep within the mountains, the Orks had to traverse complex, broken terrain; the main force was still two hours away from initial engagement.
That was not enough time.
Streams of data flashed through Blazkowicz's mind: at their current build rate, the outer defensive perimeter would remain unfinished before the Orks arrived.
Semi-vitrified adamantium was impossible for conventional cutters to carve; only heavy industrial rigs equipped with dimensional beam-blades could pare it back.
The citadel's stock of heavy excavation gear was finite; though they had rigged temporary units, the sheer volume of material to move was daunting.
"Archduke."
After a brief pause, Blazkowicz summoned his guard captain.
"Your orders, my Lord?" Astelan stepped forward, standing tall with a straight spine, one hand resting on his polearm and the other planted on his hip. His pitch-black armor shimmered with a subtle, dark sheen, cutting an imposing figure.
"Take a look," Blazkowicz nodded, gesturing toward the tactical map.
He swept his right hand across the holographic projection, shifting all automated engineering assets to the front lines of the citadel to concentrate their build efforts, while completely halting excavation along the rear of the sunken basin.
Pointing to the valley corridor directly ahead of the citadel, Blazkowicz turned his head slightly: "Interested in a little high-speed drive?"
Astelan glanced at the map and grasped the Primarch's intent instantly.
With a mind evolved to superhuman heights, a single glance was all it took to read volumes of unspoken tactical intent.
The rear semi-circular sector of the citadel was flanked by far more treacherous mountain terrain; the greenskin vanguards there would take at least six hours to reach the basin, rendering that axis temporarily secure.
The threat directly ahead, however, was rapidly closing in.
"I shall lead our battle-brothers out immediately."
He offered a crisp nod, knowing precisely what was required.
"I am assigning you three hundred Legion warriors," Blazkowicz's fingers danced across the control panel, plotting a series of strike vectors. "Mount up on anti-gravity combat vehicles and split into sixty independent strike-teams. Execute rapid interdiction tactics within the valley to delay the Orks for two hours."
"Orbital surveillance will provide real-time targeting telemetry, and medium-yield fire support will be available on demand."
Astelan brought a fist to his chest in a formal warrior's salute, his steady voice devoid of the slightest tremor: "It shall be done, my Lord!"
With those words, he turned and led the Primarch's honor guard out of the bridge, heading toward the vehicle bay to requisition their assault craft.
Blazkowicz offered no further words, withdrawing his gaze to refocus entirely on the greenskin movements.
Since the citadel's deployment, the Orks' scattered drop-sites had gained a clear focal point, descending with increasing frequency within a five-hundred-kilometer radius of the fortress.
Variables could erupt at any moment, which was why he had retained two hundred warriors as a central reserve.
Three hundred Legionaries, however, was already a formidable force.
With focused gravity, he addressed the citadel AI: "Proceed with the current excavation layout. Keep tight surveillance on greenskin concentration points and calculate their movement vectors."
"Understood," the AI replied, its voice accompanied by a fresh notification chime: "Incoming external signal detected."
"Hmph," Blazkowicz let out a low snort through his nose. He didn't even need to process the data to know that the Ork Warbosses were growing restless and looking to flex their muscles.
"Patch it through."
As the holographic feed materialized, the resolution was far sharper than the long-range void transmissions had been—rendering the projection of the Ork boss clearer, fuller, and immeasurably more grotesque.
"I'M IRON-FIST SALO!" the Ork boss roared with brutal glee, spraying spit as a savage glint flared in his blood-red eyes. "I'M GONNA TWIST YER HEAD RIGHT OFF!"
Declaring his intent, Salo casually raised his right arm to show off an absurdly oversized, rust-red power klaw.
He swung the projection around wildly, flaunting his smoke-belching vessel and the winding green "river" surging through the canyon below.
Amidst that endless host numbering in the millions, the Orks seemed to sense the feed, turning their heads one after another to flash cruel, jagged grins.
"BY GORK AN' MORK!" Salo raised his iron fist, his bloodshot eyes bulging wide as he let out a thunderous, unbridled roar:
"Waaaaaagh!!!"
The roar dripped with wild fury, his glare toward the human giant growing increasingly venomous.
"Waaaaaagh!!!"
"Waaaaaagh!!!"
The greenskins were getting rowdy, thrusting their crude scrap weapons and shootas into the air as they screeched.
The cascading Waaagh! roars echoed through the canyon with thunderous force, shattering the wind and echoing endlessly down the mountain passes.
Blazkowicz's expression remained utterly unbothered; to him, the brutal war cries of the greenskins were nothing more than a passing breeze, incapable of ruffling him in the slightest.
He had bested ancient Krorks and crossed blades with gods; this meager display of bravado was laughably weak.
Under Salo's triumphant gaze, Blazkowicz looked upon him with the quiet pity reserved for an utter fool. Raising his right hand into a loose fist, he slowly extended his middle finger.
Salo had no grasp of the gesture's precise cultural origin, yet the moment he locked eyes on that raised finger, an inexplicable surge of rage boiled up in his chest—a sudden, overwhelming instinct that he was being insulted in every conceivable way.
Blazkowicz offered a subtle nod, his eyes dropping slightly to inspect Salo's mouth full of rotten, jagged tusks, his brows knitting in slight exasperation: "A mouthful of decayed tusks... not even worth collecting as a trophy."
"Go get your teeth fixed first, then come back and beg me to take them."
Without waiting for a response, he severed the transmission on the spot.
Inside the command bridge, Blazkowicz flashed a line of immaculate, brilliant white teeth and let out a satisfied chuckle, the slight edge of tension in his chest easing considerably.
Sometimes, messing with Orks was indeed a fine way to lift one's spirits.
---
Tens of kilometers away, aboard a floating scrap barge, Salo's iron fist ground together with deafening crunches as furious roars tore continuously from his throat: "DAT STINKIN' BIG HUMIE!"
BOOM!!
The absurdly massive iron klaw slammed down, collapsing his hastily assembled throne of scrap into metal splinters: "I'M GONNA TEAR HIS HEAD OFF AN' USE IT AS A PISS-POT EVERY SINGLE DAY TO SHAME 'IM!"
Yet seeing their boss get openly humiliated by the human giant, the surrounding Ork boyz trembled, their shoulders twitching as they tried to suppress quiet giggles. A few even clapped hands over their traps, their eyes darting around wildly for fear of letting out an audible laugh.
"YOU!" Salo's rage boiled over completely. Reaching out, he snatched up one of his elite Meganob guards, extending his iron-shod middle finger to demand: "WHAT'S DIS MEAN AMONG DA HUMIES?!"
Standing at seven meters tall, his physical presence was intensely suffocating, making the bulky Meganob look like a helpless squig in his shadow.
"I... I DON'T KNOW..."
Before it could even finish, it caught the increasingly murderous glint in its boss's eyes. A sudden spark of inspiration struck its green brain—the power of Ork belief kicking in—and it slapped its own head, exclaiming with bright delight: "MAYBE IT'S SOME KIND OF BLESSIN'?"
It reckoned it had hit the nail on the head, looking up at its boss with eyes full of earnest, hopeful anticipation for a reward.
"GO CATCH SOME FRESH AIR AN' STOP RECKONIN'!"
Salo tossed his arm casually, flinging the subordinate straight off the floating platform. Listening to the pleasant, fading shriek as it plummeted, the fire in his chest cooled just a fraction.
Though he lacked any understanding of human etiquette, the moment he had locked eyes on that infuriating gesture, he knew with absolute certainty that it was anything but a blessing.
As he pondered, he tried extending his own middle finger, making the gesture back and forth at his boyz—and immediately felt a whole lot better.
Activity hummed endlessly across the adamantium basin.
Engineering machinery operated like worker ants, their efficiency maximized under the unified coordination of the central artificial intelligence. Cutting teeth flashed with dimensional light-blades, carving the semi-vitrified adamantium into a labyrinth of trenches.
Buzz~~
Anti-gravity craft flashed past like lightning, leaving behind trails of scorching heat that tore through the thin, blue-violet atmosphere before plunging straight into the canyoned mountain range.
The fast-attack squads were grouped in teams of five: one scout rider, two heavy gun-bike skimmers, and one speeder gunship.
The scout rider was blisteringly fast, pushing thirty kilometers ahead of the main element to act as the eyes and ears of the raiding team.
Weaving through the winding canyon, the bike reached speeds of Mach 10, trailing a streak of pitch-black light along the twisting rock faces.
The Stone Men had brought not only new power armor, but an entire suite of tactical war gear, including anti-gravity bikes and assault speeders.
The power armor linked directly to the bike's interface, unifying processing power through its neural chip. Combined with a Doom Marine's superhuman reflexes, the bike's maneuverability was elevated to a terrifying degree.
In that synthesis of superhuman neural capacity and supreme computational power, tens of thousands of tactical decisions could be processed in a single second—granting even a degree of predictive foresight.
Cruising three hundred meters above the ground, the bike hurtled through the middle stratum of the canyon.
Canyon breezes, laced with weathered gravel, pinged against the black power armor, leaving faint, microscopic scuffs upon its surface.
The warrior riding the scout bike remained cool and detached. His eyes held none of the thrill or adrenaline typical of extreme speeds; instead, they remained locked onto the evolving contours of the canyon walls.
Through the planet's razor-thin atmosphere at Mach 10, the bike covered nearly four thousand meters every single second.
The canyon terrain was brutally complex. At its narrowest, it bottlenecked like a throat, barely a hundred meters across; at its widest, where the mountain slopes softened, it stretched no more than a thousand meters.
Hurtling through such treacherous geography at such velocity meant that a single misstep would end in total obliteration.
[Predictive Engagement Point Reached]
[Reconnaissance Pod Activated]
[Mapping Strike Vectors]
In moments like these, a unit like a "second" was far too long, and sound far too sluggish. Only nanosecond-level exchanges between superhuman minds and neural chips took place at high speed.
[Reconnaissance Pod Processing]
A burst of electronic feedback registered in his neural link. The bike beneath him vibrated slightly as current status diagnostics lit up across his helm visor.
The rider lowered his posture smoothly, hauling back on the controls with a sudden, sharp pull. The bike banked hard to the right, sweeping past a sheer cliff face that lunged out from a sharp bend.
[Enemies Contacted!]
The automated system reported instantly.
Executing a series of tight, violent banking maneuvers, the bike roared past the sudden turn with a howl of compressed air—and popped into an entirely different world.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
The warning chimes rang out in rapid succession. The electronic pulses sent by the recon pod intercepted tens of thousands of hostile contact signatures in a matter of microseconds.
The pulse swept down the mountain passes of the canyon, mapping the terrain in stark blue lines and highlighting enemy units in vivid red.
The instant he cleared the hawk-beak rocky outcrop, the scout rider of the First Raiding Team slammed right into the main Ork host!
"Target parameters confirmed. Rendering strike matrix."
His mind registered not a single ripple. The roaring green river below dripped with raw, violent malice, yet it could not shake the inner composure of the Doom Marine in the slightest.
"Waaaaaagh!!!"
The Orks spotted the high-altitude contact and erupted into savage roars. Their eyes instantly bloodshot, surging into a state of extreme combat frenzy.
They felt intensely annoyed.
That sudden shadow bursting out from the canyon radiated a nauseating, suffocating aura of dominance, momentarily dampening even the raw thrill of their Waaagh!
Without even waiting to get a clear visual on the target, the Orks raised their crude weapons skyward and pulled the triggers without a second thought.
In an instant, the canyon erupted in a chorus of gunfire and artillery, all manner of solid shot and explosive rounds bursting across the sky.
The scout rider didn't slow down by a single knot. Making no attempt to linger, he rocketed out of the Ork staging zone at maximum speed, acting as though he hadn't even noticed the massive army below.
"HUMIE! IT'S A BIG HUMIE!"
It was only after the skimmer bike completed another hard bank and vanished past the canyon fold that the Ork boyz finally realized what had just transpired.
They had put on a grand fireworks show whose echoes rebounded endlessly through the canyon walls, yet achieved absolutely nothing.
"KEEP MARCHIN'!" A burly Ork boy sneered at the humie's vanishing line, landing a swift kick on a nearby Grot before roaring at the marching column: "Humie scouts are here! Dat means a proper, bloody fight ain't far off!"
"Waaaaaagh!!!"
The Orks let out pumped-up roars, putting their heads down to forge ahead once more.
As for the human scout, they couldn't care less.
The Boss had said it himself: airborne targets were the job of the Deffkopta boyz and the Flyboyz. If they couldn't catch up, it just proved how useless those gits were.
Meanwhile, high up in the narrow air corridor of the canyon, a new contest had already begun.
"You mud-munchers down there, stop shootin' wild! You're messin' up our humie hunt!"
A Flyboy spat in disgust, pulling up his Deffkopta to lead the intercept against the humie.
The Orks' "Deffkopta" was conceptually similar to a human skimmer bike, but vastly more crude and wild—cobbled together entirely from battlefield scrap.
The front section featured an open, exposed cockpit, topped by spinning helicopter blades in the middle, and driven by a ramshackle jet engine at the rear.
It looked precariously unstable—to human or alien eyes, it was nothing more than a hazardous heap of flying junk that fell far short of airworthiness standards.
Yet under the influence of Ork belief, the Deffkopta somehow actually flew, and it flew terrifyingly fast.
Deffkoptas possessed no aerodynamic design whatsoever. The Flyboy wore a crude flight suit and a pair of goggles, using his bare green hide to withstand the biting wind as he pushed the machine to a terrifying speed of Mach 3.
A human body would have been stripped down to a bare skeleton by the wind pressure alone.
But these were Ork greenskins. Powered by the ambient Waaagh! field, as long as a Flyboy believed he could pull it off, reality twisted to accommodate the miracle.
They slammed the throttles wide open. Engines roared with excited sputters, spewing thick columns of black smoke as they gave chase to the humie.
"Waaaaaagh!!!"
Yet that bloodthirsty roar didn't last long before faltering into silence.
The Flyboyz executed their turn, only to stare in dumbfounded shock as the humie bike banked at an impossible angle and vanished into thin air.
The Flyboyz had given chase, but they simply couldn't catch up.
The scout rider was gone in the blink of an eye. Even with the Flyboyz pinning their throttles to the stop, the Deffkoptas couldn't close the gap.
The flying humie was simply too fast. Even as the Deffkoptas' rotor engines started smoking from overheating, the distance only grew wider and wider.
After giving chase for a few useless seconds, the Flyboyz felt the fun drain away. Gloomily, they veered back toward the main column, wondering how on earth humans could move so fast.
Boooo~~
The terrible performance of the Deffkoptas drew a chorus of boos and sheer contempt from the Ork boyz on the ground.
Shame twisted the Flyboyz' green faces red with rage; they slammed their fists violently against their crude flight panels in frustration.
Being mocked by ground-grunts was an unbearable humiliation for the noble Flyboyz, yet they had no way to deny what had happened.
Over ten thousand pairs of eyes had just witnessed it—they couldn't even silence the witnesses if they tried.
But in the very next second, the Flyboyz got excited all over again.
The main strike element of the Doom Marine raiding team descended like black grim reapers. Accompanied by the deafening scream of anti-grav engines, they swung a harvesting scythe of total death down upon the canyon.
"Target coordinates received from scout rider. Reducing speed to assume attack formation. Commence carpet bombardment down the canyon axis!"
Upon Astelan's command, he gripped the steering column and led the First Raiding Team into a formation shift, assuming an attack pattern as their speed throttled down to Mach 3.
A gunship's firepower proved far more lethal over sustained passes; lowering their speed served to maximize carnage along the kill corridor.
The speeder gunship pushed to the fore, becoming the first to clear the hawk-beak rocky bend. The missile bay beneath its fuselage snapped open, and every wing-mounted and broadside weapon primed for discharge.
"Targeting parameters confirmed." In the co-pilot's seat, a Legion brother leaned back into his neural-link harness, his power armor interfacing directly with the fire-control suite to execute the attack matrix.
His thought processes moved faster than any voice comms. Displayed before him was the real-time telemetry transmitted by the scout rider, allowing the targeting system to compute precise strike vectors down to the millimeter.
"Executing optimized strike sequence."
Beneath the speeder gunship's belly, ten missiles dropped clear of the bay, dragging tail-flames before slamming into the dense Ork column to detonate in a cascade of fierce, expanding fireballs.
The surprise attack was brutally abrupt; the Orks' armored vehicles had no time to deploy countermeasures, instantly reduced to burning heaps of scrap.
"Probing strike telemetry retrieved: Atmosphere extremely thin; blast shockwaves exhibit severe power degradation. Attack impact yielded lower than baseline expectations."
"Halting further missile strikes; preserving ordnance for defensive contingencies," the fire-control operator reported in a calm, flat tone, showing no hint of surprise.
"Deploying viral agents to carve out a isolation corridor."
Beneath the speeder's short wings and broadsides, heavy laser cannons discharged in unison like divine retribution, carving a line of absolute fire directly through the sprawling Ork column.
The canyon's natural bottleneck allowed the speeder gunship to greedily rake the ground below, unlocking the absolute limit of its destructive potential.
The once-silent canyon descended into complete chaos. The endless echoes of explosions overlaid one another in a deafening crescendo, sweeping down the gorge like crashing waves that left the greenskins completely unable to discern real targets from shadows.
The roars of the heavy Ork Nobz were buried beneath the roar of explosions, and the ground devolved into absolute panic.
Yet despite the chaos, the Orks never once abandoned their resistance. Surviving anti-aircraft buggies locked their crude mounts onto the sky as the boyz grinned savagely, leading their targets before slamming their heavy triggers home.
"Maintain attack posture."
Astelan didn't even move his hands; his consciousness sank deep into the synesthetic neural control array, rendering a 3D tactical grid directly into his mind's eye.
Within the speeder's sensor sphere, every incoming trajectory of enemy fire was mapped out in real time. With a single thought, he executed a tight barrel roll, sweeping the craft past a volley of crude, oncoming rockets.
Under his command, the speeder gunship danced through the sky like an elegant fish, tumbling through the air to evade wave after wave of ground fire.
Moreover, as the craft flipped and rolled, its weapon systems were pushed to their absolute lethal limits.
Heavy laser cannons, dimensional slicing rays, and arc-caster arrays utilized the chassis rotations to complete rapid cooling cycles, pouring down a relentless stream of heavy firepower to harvest greenskin lives without pause.
In an instant, the valley floor was transformed into a living hell. The thunder of heavy ordnance, the shrieks of dying xenos, and the furious roars of Ork Nobz echoed incessantly, causing the canyon cliffs to vibrate with deep, resonant groans.
"HUMIES!"
A Flyboy bellowed in rage, his heavy shoota chattering wildly as his Deffkopta surged upward in a suicidal head-on charge.
He intended to turn his own craft into a living missile, ramming straight into the human skimmer!
"On the next roll, clear out these flies."
Inside the speeder's cockpit, because their neural links were patched directly into the control interfaces, the pilot and fire-control operator shared a single consciousness, communicating with the seamless synchronization of a single mind.
"Acknowledged."
Under the horrified gaze of the Ork Flyboy, as the skimmer flipped to evade, its belly turned skyward for a fraction of a second. The missile bay snapped open once more, flicking a salvo of short-range rockets directly into his path.
"Waaaaaagh!!!" An excited, hysterical shriek tore from the Flyboy's trap right before he slammed his control stick forward—only to be completely swallowed by the incoming missiles.
A gorgeous fireball blossomed across the sky, raining a cascade of burning, twisted scrap down into the canyon like a shower of falling stars.
It all transpired in the blink of an eye.
Before the Orks on the ground could even finish cursing the Flyboyz for their incompetence, a second phase of the strike hit them with horrifying precision.
Two heavy gun-bikes ignited their twin dimensional light-blades, dropping their altitude like a pair of red-hot scalpels slicing clean through a slab of greenskin butter.
Crackling disruption arcs wrapped around the prows of the heavy bikes; their ramming spurs were utterly indestructible as they dragged twin glowing blades through the horde, bisecting anything in their path to carve a crimson road of sheer gore.
Flanking the heavy bikes as they wreaked havoc, the riders activated not only their slicing rays, but also parallel overcharged laser cannons.
They operated like a pair of broadside line-of-battle ships, pouring flat-trajectory fire directly into the dense Ork ranks on either side.
Slaughter rippled down the valley floor; blood flowed like rivers in a scene of raw, apocalyptic butchery.
Caught completely off guard by the ambush, the Orks suffered atrocious casualties, yet their resistance never collapsed—if anything, it grew increasingly ferocious.
The sight of flying limbs and the metallic tang of blood only served to awaken the primal killing instincts of the engineered warrior-race, working the Orks into a state of wild thrill.
"Waaaaaagh!!!"
Ork Warbikers let out cruel, guttural cackles, pinning their throttles as their jagged tires crushed through bone and debris, roaring parallel just beyond the blinding glare of the humies' heavy bikes.
"HUMIES! HUMIES!" the Warbikers growled, raising crude choppas high while laying down suppression fire with their side-mounted dakkaguns.
Ork weapons were notoriously inaccurate, but with dozens of bikes firing simultaneously, sheer probability dictated that a few rounds scored hits, causing the skimmers' void shields to flare with bright ripples of light.
Seeing their attacks make an impact, the Warbikers grew even more hyperactive, completely unconcerned by how many of their own grunts they flattened underfoot along the way.
The Doom Marines sped forward without slowing down, ignoring the incoming fire as their vehicles' automated counter-strike systems snapped online.
Along the forward platform of each heavy bike, streamlined armor plates slid back to expose a pair of rotating electromagnetic turret mounts.
[High-Threat Targets Locked]
The automated targeting system took over instantly. The multi-barrel electro-magnetic cannons spun up, locking onto the Ork bikes pursuing along the broadsides.
Zip~ Zip~
The electro-magnetic cannons crackled with arcs of blue energy. Hyper-velocity projectiles traced vivid blue streaks through the air, striking the Ork bikes with surgical precision and obliterating them under sheer kinetic impact.
Blue streaks flickered without pause as the targeting AI predicted the erratic movement vectors of the Ork bikes, executing systematic, point-blank liquidations.
Screaming Warbikers were reduced to one fiery ball after another, yet the losses did nothing to shake their suicidal resolve.
The Ork host surged like a rising tide. More bikes closed in from behind, pouring on an increasingly dense wall of fire that caused the skimmers' shields to flicker precariously.
"Shields!"
"Shields!"
While the automated systems handled counter-battery fire, both riders gripped their throttles, chanting Words of Creation under their breath to weave protective wards over their craft and themselves.
Their kill count was staggering—slaughtering Orks by the thousands and sending the survivors fleeing in panic—yet they had also driven themselves into the most perilous position on the field.
Along the path of destruction, the savage firearms of the Orks never ceased firing. The forward view of the heavy bikes was obscured by continuous explosions, and their dimensional shields flickered without pause, rendering visual navigation via the naked eye completely impossible.
"UP!"
The two heavy bikes executed a perfectly synchronized maneuver, leaping clear of the green river like a pair of great leviathans breaching the waves.
Only now was it clear: the forward hulls of the bikes and the chest plates of their riders were completely caked in Ork blood and internal organs, draped in dripping chunks of shredded flesh.
Taking advantage of the brief mid-air leap, the riders raised their gauntlets with lightning speed, wiping away the slurry of meat blinding their helm viewports.
Over the comms array came the calm command of their squad leader: "Disengage immediately; proceed to secondary strike target."
"Acknowledged." The engines of the heavy bikes roared with brilliant light as they pitched upward sharply, boosting their speed back to its absolute limit and leaving behind two long streaks of light across the sky.
A ten-second strike had left behind a field of ten thousand Ork corpses—a monumental victory.
The main Ork host could only let out helpless, furious roars, watching with sheer indignation as the human skimmers streaked away into the horizon.
"Dem humies are gonna come back!" the Ork boyz shouted in sheer fury, pointing and cursing at the Flyboyz who had failed to catch the skimmers: "Why ain't you gits keepin' a proper look-out?!"
Had the Deffkoptas not been slacking off, how could the human strike have been so brutally swift?
The Flyboyz felt the blood boil in their veins from pure anger: You think dis is our fault?!
The humies' super-fast bikes had been lurking deep within the canyon shadows—invisible to the naked eye, undetectable by scanner sweeps, and moving at speed that defied reason.
Fierce as fire, swift as the wind.
Forget about mere Flyboyz; even if a Boss Flyboy had been here, there was nothing anyone could have done!
Yet they had no choice; the Nob who had barked at them was bigger, stronger, and held favor with the Warboss.
Swallowing their outrage, the Flyboyz pulled back on their control sticks, climbing higher into the atmosphere to maintain a high-altitude screen for the marching columns.
As their altitude climbed higher and higher, the horizon opened up dramatically. A faint glint of dark satisfaction flickered in the Flyboy's eyes beneath his flight goggles.
He saw it now: across all the surrounding valleys and gorges, towering plumes of fire and smoke billowed into the sky. The humies had launched a simultaneous, wide-front strike across every axis!
The Flyboy suddenly felt a whole lot better.
Failing on your own was frustrating, but seeing everyone else suffer the exact same disaster was deeply comforting.
With a smug grin, he raised his crude spyglass, scanning the terrain to enjoy the widespread mayhem unfolding across the mountain range.
'Wait!'
Just as he was about to let out a chuckle, a row of bright pinpricks of light caught his eye through the glass.
Had he not been paying close attention, he would have missed them entirely—the light specs were cleverly masked against the backdrop of the blue-violet sky.
He narrowed his eyes to take a closer look, finally discerning what the light sources were.
The Flyboy nearly lost his soul on the spot. The spyglass slipped from his grip as a blood-curdling shriek tore from his throat: "MISSILES INCOMIN'!"
The canyon below was still in total disarray; the Ork boyz didn't hear him clearly, throwing their heads back to bellow in confusion: "WHAT'S DAT?!"
The Flyboy didn't answer—because there was no time left!
Over a thousand missiles swooped down along the contours of the canyon. Plumes of fire shot skyward as expanding thermal shockwaves compressed the thin atmosphere, surging violently out through the mouth of the gorge.