As the silhouettes of the Kommandos bobbed and weaved through the dust-choked hills, the pursuit squad quickly outpaced the range of Axion's enhanced visual augurs.
To these demigods of the Imperium, a distance of several kilometers could be crossed in mere minutes. However, the undulating terrain and jagged outcroppings of rock offered enough concealment to hinder their progress. Exploiting their familiarity with the landscape, the agile Orks vanished after a few expert leaps over the ridges.
After a brief chase, the assault squad returned, unable to achieve total eradication.
"Sir, aside from the Orks slain by the ancient construct at the onset, we only eliminated a few stragglers. We can confirm that at least two Greenskins escaped into the wastes," reported the squad sergeant, his gaze dipping toward Calanthus in a display of professional shame.
Calanthus did not offer a rebuke. In an alien theater of war against such cunning foes, demanding a perfect purge was an exercise in vanity.
"Everyone, rally. We move now. The Orks will discover our presence soon; we must displace immediately."
Nearby, the soldiers of the Astra Militarum, busy assisting one another in extracting bullet fragments from their flak armor, looked up with hesitant eyes.
"Sir... what about us?" one asked.
"May the Emperor protect you," Calanthus replied. He did not look back as he led his unit out.
Had these men remained combat-capable, he would have commanded them to follow and support without hesitation. But these soldiers were mere mortals, their bodies held together only by the temporary, violent stimulation of combat stimms.
And the stimms were failing.
To bring a group of mortally wounded mortals would be a strategic liability, useless weight that would compromise the mission.
Beside him, Axion refreshed the tactical display of the current surface conditions. He marked a sector not far away with a Daemonic icon and traced the Orks' retreat with a Greenskin rune. On his map, the Astronomican marker, situated within an unmapped zone, seemed to lie directly on an extension of the frontline between these two warring factions.
Recalling the Aeldari heads mounted upon the massive altar earlier, Axion placed a questioning glyph over the unexplored region ahead. No one knew what other horrors awaited in that direction, but they were compelled to advance toward it. Stripped of reliable intelligence, they were forced to adapt one step at a time.
Ignoring the despairing gazes of the mortal soldiers, Calanthus followed the route plotted by Axion, leading the squad as they vanished rapidly into the hills.
They marched for dozens of kilometers without incident. No Orks, no Daemons, nothing but the relentless, swirling dust. As the hills began to level out into a plain, the path forward became noticeably easier to traverse.
This world, drifting far from its sun, should have been plunged into eternal darkness. Instead, the luminescence bleeding from the atmospheric camouflage shrouded the surface in a state of perpetual, dim twilight. While the light was low, reminiscent of a gloomy dusk, it provided more than enough illumination for their low-light pict-captors to render a clear field of vision.
Upon cresting the final ridge, a vast plain stretched out before them. In the center of this expanse stood a soaring spire, looking violently out of place.
The lonely tower was drenched in gore. Thousands of corpses lay scattered across the surrounding earth.
Leveraging the advantages of optical zoom in the open terrain, Axion easily identified the dead. They were Orks, every last one of them. The bodies were piled in thick, ragged mounds, most facing the same direction, indicating they had died fighting a common foe.
Given the sheer scale of the carnage, the enemy could not have escaped unscathed. Yet, the total absence of other remains was a chilling anomaly.
Recalling that Daemons are banished back to the Warp upon their "death," Calanthus formed a logical hypothesis: the Orks and the Daemons had engaged in a localized, apocalyptic "scrap." In the end, the Daemons had been broken and banished, leaving the Greenskins to rot in the dirt.
As for why the Orks had claimed victory? The answer was simple: the heads were still on the corpses. Furthermore, there were no desecrated altars left standing in the aftermath.
Instead, there was the spire.
Even Axion's logic-driven mind struggled to comprehend the Ork aesthetic. It was called a "spire" only because its summit ended in a crude, triangular point. In every other respect, it bore no resemblance to a tower. It was a ramshackle assembly of scaffolding and temporary construction, a haphazard stack of metallic scrap and "kustom" supports that looked as though a stiff breeze might topple it.
The battlefield was unnervingly quiet. Ordinarily, Orks do not bury their dead, but it was common to see survivors scavenging the field or pausing to gnaw on a fallen comrade for sport. On a post-battle field, the Gretchin are usually the main workforce, scrounging for discarded weapons, scrap metal, or any bit of "gubbinz" to weld into some ramshackle, high-yield tool of destruction. Nearby, Ork Boyz would usually be found bullying the Grots for any "shiny" treasures they uncovered.
But this place was silent. A dead silence so profound it made Calanthus wonder if the Orks and Daemons had managed to annihilate one another entirely.
BOOM!
A sudden explosion and a flash of light in the distance caught their attention.
Cautiously treading onto the blood-soaked plain, Calanthus continuously cross-referenced the Astronomican coordinates provided by the Navigator. But when the squad reached the base of the tower, Calanthus fell into a stunned silence.
He stared at the ugly, doorless Ork structure, repeatedly checking his data-slate in disbelief.
Was this hideous Ork tower the source of the "Astronomican" signal?
A ludicrous, yet terrifyingly plausible thought surfaced in Calanthus's mind: Had the Orks somehow used a Weirdboy to... "ignite" a Greater Daemon?
The psychic potency of a Greater Daemon was immense. If an "enterprising" Ork psyker had found a way to set one ablaze with "Waaagh!" energy, it wasn't impossible for a Navigator to mistake that psychic flare for the Emperor's Light. The Astropath had mentioned seeing an evil soul banished back to the Immaterium; perhaps she had simply failed to mention it was engulfed in psychic flames?
Unable to find a clear cause or any immediate means to repair their ship, Calanthus was forced to split his forces. One detachment would investigate the distant combat, while the other sought out the Ork "Mek-shops" or war factories.
If possible, they would call for reinforcements to seize the facility, allowing the ship's Tech-Priests to descend to the surface. By scavenging whatever materials they could find, they might effect crude, "battlefield" repairs to the ship while still in orbit.
It was a gambit fraught with extreme risk. However, with the cruiser's weapon systems still operational in low orbit to provide fire support, Calanthus believed his Battle-Brothers could buy the Omnissiah's servants the time they needed.