The Great Flanking Maneuver

When the attack began, it came with sudden and utter brutality—not one village was invaded, nor a dozen, but dozens, even hundreds of villages, outposts, and farms.

The assault was so swift, coordinated, and savage that, to those far from the front lines, the only sign was silence.

It was as if entire regions had been gouged from the map of the Imperium. Death came so completely and suddenly that they could not even cry out to their neighbors for help in their final agony.

The doom that descended upon the rainforest-border regions of Glamatia Province was so swift that even after the war, the true scale of the attack could not be confirmed.

Little was known of the fate of the heavily defended Haro Sentry Base, the frontier colonies of Pat, Katri, and Bolu, the coastal city of Aritz, the ancient Aibonong University, and more than sixty other human settlements—except that the invaders had come, and then they had fallen silent.

The first warning came from a fishing boat called Iron Spoon.

It appeared off Tyre Port, burning from bow to stern as though it had been raked by a giant claw.

Those who saw the alarm were shocked and incredulous, but as the surviving fishermen reported the atrocities they had witnessed along the coast and the unfamiliar fleet cruising offshore, everything became clear.

The Orks had attacked from another direction, from a direction no one would ever have noticed.

To the west of Tyre, near the Vaka Rainforest, lay a region called the Salt Marsh, divided by countless rivers and tidal flats. Since ancient times, it had been regarded as the province's western barrier because it was unsuitable for large-scale marches.

So how had these Orks crossed that region?

No one knew the answer.

Local militias were mobilized,