It was late at night. This fortress city, once occupied by Chaos forces, had already been utterly dilapidated. But after the Ultramarines of the Imperium of Man had arrived to purge the rebels, several rounds of chaotic fighting had left it even more desolate and ruined.
Especially in the areas already taken by the Imperium, more than half the buildings on both sides had long since collapsed under days of bombardment and battle. All that remained were crooked skeletons and pitch-black, shattered windows, like rows of vicious, silent mouths staring mutely at the empty streets.
Rubble and broken glass covered the road, crunching beneath their feet. Every step made a considerable amount of noise.
The air was thick with the faint smells of gunpowder, fuel, and blood. There was Chaos's black, tainted blood; the Imperium's reddish-brown blood crusts; and the pungent green fluid of the Orks, like the juice of rotting plants.
Clearly, a major battle had erupted here not long ago, and all three sides had bled here!
Of course, none of that mattered. What mattered was this: at this very moment, fifty Ork players had arrived here and were crouching motionlessly behind a pile of rubble in the middle of the street.
They were a standard fifty-man Ork player combat team. Like the vast majority of player teams, most of them no longer had CMC Powered Combat Suits. Only a small number wore makeshift protection fashioned from rusty iron sheets, damaged ceramic ballistic plates, and wire bindings.
A few Ork players still wore intact CMC Power Armor, but the dark red paint was covered in pockmarks from bullets and sword slashes. It was not hard to imagine what they had been through recently, or how brutal the fighting had been.
Fortunately, these Ork players did not seem to