The end

Though Orks did not seem particularly bright, that did not mean they knew no fear.

Faced with an enemy they could neither kill nor blast apart, one that slaughtered them with terrifying efficiency, even a fool knew it was time to retreat.

Word of what had happened in this area quickly spread through the Orks lucky enough to escape.

Soon, every Ork of the Red Mist Clan on the battlefield knew that an unbeatable enemy had appeared.

Under these circumstances, the Orks who had lost their Warboss almost immediately fell into panic and began retreating.

Some Orks even gave Iax a nickname: the Silver Machine Daemon.

Orks had an instinctive reverence for the strong. Faced with an enemy who had killed their Warboss, they showed even greater fear.

The two Dark Angels also worked out what had happened.

During the duels involving the two squads, the Orks had shouted their clan names.

Clearly, they were not a single Ork clan as initially assumed.

Instead, they were two clans that had somehow banded together.

The Warbosses of the Red Mist Clan and the Blood Axes were the two unusual Ork targets that had appeared on the battlefield.

One had been killed in a duel by Hubern of the Black Templars, while the other's duel had been interrupted by the Ancient Construct Iax, who had cleaved his head apart.

The Orks who had lost their Warbosses were fleeing the Space Station in panic. Some Ork Tinkerers were hurriedly gathering materials from its damaged sections to patch the breaches their reckless ramming had torn in their ships' hulls.

Watching the Orks work so hard to repair their ships, the two Dark Angels could not help feeling a little impressed.

If the Adeptus Mechanicus could work that efficiently, the wars across the galaxy might be much easier.

Watching the Orks flee frantically while constantly gathering "scrap metal" along the way, the Dark Angels immediately issued a combat briefing, ordering all Astra Militarum and Imperial Navy forces to advance slowly without becoming entangled in combat, allowing the Orks to return to their ships.

Once the Orks' junk ships left the Space Station, the Navy vessels waiting outside, which had long since trained their weapons on them, could finally act.

Were it not for the need to protect the Space Station itself, a single Lance shot could turn each of these junk ships into a pile of space debris.

As for the Orks aboard, they would have no chance of surviving.

Afterward, destroyers would only need to tow the wreckage near the closest star and let its momentum carry it into the star as fuel.

The only troublesome matters were repairing the compartment where a Melta Bomb had blasted through three layers of internal structure and dealing with hundreds of thousands of casualties. The several large holes rammed through the Space Station's dome were a minor issue by comparison.

None of these matters had much to do with Iax and the others, however.

The Adeptus Administratum would handle them.

Space Marines would not concern themselves with such things.

Everything went just as the Dark Angels had planned.

The Orks successfully withdrew to their junk ships, and the Tinkerers finished their crude hull repairs.

The junk ships quickly backed away, trying to put distance between themselves and the Space Station.

But the Imperial Navy had already surrounded them.

Once they were several kilometers from the Space Station, dozens of Lance beams shot from the Navy Fleet's broadsides, swiftly turning the Orks' junk ships into genuine piles of space debris.

The Black Templars and Dark Angels needed to meet the station cluster's superintendent and chief of defense. Iax had no interest in that.

Meanwhile, the two Adeptus Mechanicus Sages aboard the Resolute were already so excited they were practically spraying machine oil.

Through the feeds transmitted from the Astartes' Power Armour, they had witnessed Iax's combat capabilities firsthand.

When Iax had been struck by the Melta Bomb, they had briefly feared for Iax's safety.

Clearly, however, those fears had been unnecessary.

That silver body had easily torn every Ork apart and even demonstrated a capacity for ranged attacks.

The bright yellow beam that could so easily ignite organic bodies thrilled them.

The Imperium was not without Neutron Beam Weapons.

The two Sages had even identified the weapon type through observation alone.

But the Imperium could not achieve that combination of power and compact size.

A weapon small enough to integrate into a transforming mechanical arm, yet capable of immense destructive power.

It was as inconceivable as an ordinary Astra Militarum soldier trading shots with an Astartes while wielding a bolter.

To satisfy their curiosity, the two Sages specifically requested that a Thunderhawk Gunship immediately descend to bring Iax back.

Having no interest in this so-called socializing, Iax took the opportunity to return to the Resolute.

Apothecary Osen returned as well, along with Hubern, who had entered a state of suspended animation.

Osen had to return to the ship immediately and use its medical equipment to treat Hubern.

His extensive injuries had left Hubern in terrible condition.

The surgeries that transformed the Astartes made their internal organs completely different from those of ordinary humans, but one of Hubern's two hearts had already stopped functioning, and one lung had shut down completely. The reinforced bone plate formed by his fused ribs had shattered, and numerous bone fragments had pierced his organs.

Through the wound that had penetrated his Ceramite armour, shattered armour fragments could be seen embedded in his body, with the ruptured black carapace beneath his skin.

This implant covered the entire body and connected to the nervous system. It was one of the reasons the Astartes could wear heavy Ceramite Power Armour while remaining extraordinarily agile.

The armour's Electronic Muscle Bundles connected to the black carapace through neural interfaces, linking them to the body's nerves and allowing the heavy armour to fit like a second skin. Its artificial muscle bundles responded to the Space Marine's movements in sync with his own muscles.

Beneath the black carapace lay thick, slashed muscle and the ceramic-bearing bone plate of his ribs.

The rib structure of an Astartes was entirely different from that of a normal human. All the ribs expanded sideways and fused with one another, eventually forming a thick, resilient bone plate within the body.

Specialized organ modifications allowed them to absorb certain metallic substances.

Specially formulated Ceramite materials were even included as food additives in the high-energy meals made exclusively for Space Marines.

These materials were absorbed and eventually incorporated into bones throughout the body, greatly increasing the loads a Space Marine's body could withstand.

It was precisely these many modifications that had kept Hubern from being split open like the Ork Warboss despite such injuries.

As a warrior species created by the Old Ones, Orks possessed physical strength in no way inferior to these demigods of the Emperor. Ordinary Orks, however, were no match for Astartes clad in Ceramite Power Armour.

But an Ork Warboss was no ordinary Ork.

After the Orks had gone out of control, their frenzied collective thoughts had soon elicited a response from the Warp, forming two gods within it.

Gork and Mork.

The Orks had always referred to these two collectively as Gork and Mork.

The Orks believed that Gork embodied brutality but was exceedingly cunning, while Mork embodied cunning but was exceedingly brutal.

Gork always attacked head-on, while Mork always struck by surprise.

Yet the two Warp gods shared one trait: a love of battle.

This trait likewise came from the Orks' fanatical instinct for war.

Every Ork who survived a war would be influenced by Warp energy, becoming stronger and more cunning.

The Ork Warboss benefited the most from each war, which meant that Warbosses were almost always the strongest and most cunning Orks in their clans.