Lu Jin sat on the throne on the command deck of the Judgement Day.
The Greatsword lay across his knees, its owner gazing down at it.
Lu Jin sat before the viewport, and beyond it, the Chapter fleets were bombarding the hive world from orbit.
There was no saving the hive world. Even if the allied Chapters deployed their forces there, they would struggle to exterminate the Greenskins before they developed spacefaring technology.
The world was beyond saving. The only option was to bombard it from orbit.
The orbital defense platforms around the hive world were also swarming with Greenskins. The fleet blasted them apart, sending their wreckage crashing down onto the planet.
"There are ten Ork kingdoms in the Maelstrom."
"We might as well make the most optimistic assumption: apart from Manros, the regions around the Maelstrom have been so ravaged by Greenskins that hardly anyone is left."
Varros stood before the star map, staring at the Maelstrom.
Kao and the other Chapter Masters gathered around the huge map, studying the various pieces of information displayed beside it.
"Under this most optimistic assumption, Manros's surface has once again fallen to the enemy, and people will have to retreat underground to resist them."
"If not for the Soul of Manros, Manros would have fallen completely much sooner, because it's the closest world to the Maelstrom."
As soon as Varros finished laying out his assessment, someone accused him of being too pessimistic.
But Lu Jin knew that Varros was actually being quite optimistic. There weren't just ten Ork kingdoms in the Maelstrom, but more than twenty.
The Maelstrom had once been the most stable and one of the largest Warp Rifts. There was no way the Red Corsairs could control the entire region.
Daemons, mutants, all manner of strange aliens, and