Madness and Greatness

He immediately realized something.

"Comms! Contact the fleet in orbit immediately! Ask whether they've detected any signals from weapons of mass destruction, such as Cyclonic Torpedoes or an Exterminatus!" he roared at the signalman.

A moment later, the signalman turned back with an expression as if he had seen a ghost. "Reporting, Colonel! The fleet replied... they haven't detected any signs of orbital bombardment! They said... they said that energy burst came entirely from the surface! Its explosive yield... preliminary estimates put it on par with... a small-scale... Exterminatus event."

The entire command post fell deathly silent.

Everyone understood.

This terrifying explosion, worthy of being recorded in history and comparable to an Exterminatus, had not come from the Imperium's orbital fleet, nor from any known strategic weapon.

It had been created with their own hands by the force they had deemed "on the verge of collapse"—the 99th Regiment, Cadian Pride—using their lives and the massive food-processing plant beneath their feet.

They had perished alongside the enemy.

At that moment, the delayed roar, like ten thousand bolts of thunder striking at once, finally reached their position.

Rumbleeeee—

A visible hurricane laden with dust, shattered stone, and all manner of unidentified burning debris came roaring toward them. The Krieg soldiers immediately threw themselves flat, pressing their bodies tightly against the ground. Even the Chimera armored vehicles, each weighing dozens of tons, groaned under the strain as the gale shoved them several meters backward.

The wind lasted a full three minutes.

When everything finally settled, Colonel Grim struggled to raise his head from the dust.

He saw that the formerly dark-red sky had become utterly black, like an eternal night. Billions of tons of dust and coal ash had been hurled into the upper atmosphere, creating a "nuclear winter" that blotted out the heavens.

The air was thick with a strange smell of sulfur and... roasted meat.

In the distance, the Steel Temple, once like a mountain range of iron, had completely vanished from the horizon.

In its place stood an enormous crater like the site of a meteor impact, its edges still constantly collapsing while dark-red magma glimmered at its center.

"...It's over." Commissar Friedrich put his cap back on, his voice carrying an indescribable weariness. "The Orks' Waaagh!, or at least their main ground force, has... ceased to exist."

"No, it's not over yet, Commissar." Colonel Grim rose to his feet and brushed the dust from himself. Behind his gas mask, his gaze became razor-sharp once more. "Clear the battlefield. Search for survivors. I want a detailed post-battle report. I want to know what kind of men, what kind of commander, could do something so... mad and great."

"Move out." He gave the concise order.

The Death Korps of Krieg, that army that forever marched forward, advanced in perfect formation and silent step into the apocalyptic scorched earth that had just been baptized in hellfire.

They did not know what kind of "miracle" they were about to witness.

In the now pitch-black orbit above Viridia Prime, the bridge of the Ork flagship Big Smashy had descended into unprecedented chaos and panic.

Just minutes ago, they had been joyfully watching through the monitors as their boss, the great Ironjaw Bonebreaker Grak, was about to crush that human little boss into meat paste.

Then the screen became a blinding sheet of white.

Immediately afterward, the entire warship, cobbled together from space junk, shook violently as though it were about to come apart. It was a terrifying shockwave from the planet's surface, powerful enough to affect low orbit.

"Wot... wot happened?!"

"Where's da boss?! I can't see da boss!"

"Waaagh!! Wot's that thing?! Did... did a sun grow outta da ground?!"

The Ork bosses on the bridge, brutes who had climbed to high positions through nothing but muscle and loud voices, felt the emotion known as fear for the first time. Their simple minds were utterly incapable of processing the scene before them, something beyond the limits of their understanding.

Their warlord, the symbol of their strength, the core of their entire Waaagh!, along with hundreds of thousands of Boyz, had vanished from the world within that magnificent, enormous mushroom cloud.

The boss was gone.

That realization was like the heaviest hammer blow, shattering the fragile command structure the Orks had built upon the simple logic that whoever fought best was obeyed.

"Da boss is dead! Run fer it!" Some Grot, no one knew which, was the first to let out a terrified scream.

Those words became the fuse that ignited the powder keg.

Panic spread through the entire Ork fleet like a plague.

"Da boss is dead! Now I'm da boss!" One enormous boss chopped off the head of another boss beside him with a single swing of his axe, trying to seize command.

"Bollocks! I'm da boss!" Another boss refused to yield and immediately challenged him.

In barely a dozen seconds, the bridge of Big Smashy went from a military command center to a bloody arena where contenders butchered one another for the title of boss.

And that chaos swiftly spread to every Ork warship.

With the supreme warlord no longer there to suppress them, the various clan bosses, already scheming and unruly, immediately began fighting among themselves. Some wanted to seize the flagship and become the new warlord; others wanted to take their Boyz and escape this cursed star system as quickly as possible to save their own skins.

Having lost unified command and purpose, the entire Ork fleet instantly devolved from a vast, threatening military force into a disorganized rabble of space pirates fighting on their own.

At that moment, the Imperial Navy battlegroup that had been lurking at the edge of the system, waiting for the perfect opportunity, finally bared its fangs. It consisted of several Lunar-class cruisers and a large number of frigates.

"All ships, target the enemy flagship! Fire!"

The roar of macro cannons tore through the blackness of space. Lance beams, like divine punishment, struck with precision against the Ork warships that had fallen into chaos from their infighting, some of which had not even fully raised their shields.

A one-sided slaughter with no suspense began in orbit above Viridia Prime.

This unprecedented Greenskin Waaagh!, which had once made the entire subsector tremble, met its absurd and laughable final end amid two utterly different yet equally brutal and spectacular displays of "fireworks," one on the ground and one in space.