Boss Slick had only given the order casually, but the Boyz, who had been cooped up for half a month, were far more excited.
Of the fifty thousand Ork warships, a third were Battleships equipped with Dimensional Rumble Cannons. Naturally, weapons that powerful had to fire first-the sooner they were used, the sooner they could cool down.
So many Ork warships activated their Dimensional Rumble Cannons at once that they shattered ordinary space like glass. Rifts advanced like ripples, tearing everything in their path to pieces.
Large numbers of ships in the Tyranid Fleet were caught and destroyed by those devastating ripples before they could scatter.
The chaotic spatial storm not only wiped out another thirty thousand ships of the Tyranid Swarm in an instant, but also created a deadly exclusion zone that divided the battlefield, preventing the Tyranid Fleet from counterattacking from every direction.
The advantage of the surprise attack paid off right from the start.
The Great Devourer hurriedly mustered its forces for a counterattack, then ordered its Norn Queens to swiftly cocoon themselves in preparation for evolving into World Devourers. World Devourers consumed too much to hatch in advance. Keeping the Norn Queens in their current form a little longer meant pumping out a few more troops.
The Octaria System was arranged as follows: from the outermost orbit inward, its five planets ran from Ork V to Euronia I.
Their orbital positions placed Ork V and Euronia II in the direction of Boss Slick's attack, making those two planets the frontline worlds.
Euronia I, III, and IV were separated from them by the star, on the other side of the system. Those three could be considered the rear worlds.
The forces on either side of the system were roughly equal, with 750,000 ships in each Tyranid Fleet.