Death rock

Out in space, Pex was chatting casually with the captain on the Guardian's bridge, sharing their experience in commanding cruisers.

"Commander, Pioneer Base is under attack by Orks while still under construction! They're pouring in from every direction like a tidal wave!" the bridge communications officer suddenly reported at the top of his voice.

"So soon?" Although he had anticipated an attack, its timing still caught Pex off guard.

Pex had expected the Orks to attack. After all, it was almost impossible for such a warlike race to suppress its instinct for battle.

In his original projections, Pex had expected to face a large-scale Ork assault only after the landing force reached around a hundred thousand troops and established preliminary defensive positions.

If the plan went smoothly, the landing force would use those positions to inflict heavy losses on the Orks. Pex would then keep sending reinforcements, committing the entire Expeditionary Force to rout the Orks' main army.

At that point, their chances of winning the campaign would rise to fifty percent. All that remained would be a steady, methodical sweep, clearing out every mushroom farm and Ork nest one by one.

He had never expected the very first step to go wrong. The defensive positions were unfinished, and only around fifty thousand troops had landed when the Orks launched their attack.

"Put the feed on my terminal," Pex ordered as he walked to his command station.

The holographic projection of the whole of Euronia IV began to zoom in, narrowing to an area centered on the landing site that encompassed the entire forward base and all the surrounding terrain.

The overhead view showed the entire battlefield, while more than a dozen smaller projections displayed where the Orks were emerging from, which units posed the greatest threat, and the directions of their main attacks.

Several key images caught Pex's attention. The first showed several holes in the ground, with Orks streaming endlessly out of them.

"No wonder they assembled so quickly and got so close without being detected. Did they dig tunnels underground?" Pex muttered to himself.

The second display consisted of a grid of several smaller images, each showing different kinds of Ork heavy equipment, some familiar and others entirely new.

This equipment included long-range heavy artillery, with all sorts of bizarre Big Booms; armored units, with looted troop transports and looted tanks, no two alike; infantry support weapons, with Bomm Boyz, Burner Boyz, and Slugga Boyz carrying Shootas; and heavy infantry formations, with Ardboys wielding Big Choppas and units of heavily equipped Ork Nobs.

This was unquestionably the Orks' main force! Pex felt he had underestimated both their rate of development and the quality of their equipment. In just five months, they had assembled an army this enormous and this well equipped.

Faced with such a terrifying green tide, Pioneer Base would be overrun in an instant!

"Launch the second wave of Expeditionary Force landings immediately! Send in every armored division! Tell the commander of Pioneer Base I don't want casualty figures! I just want him to hold for one hour!" Pex's bellowed orders thundered across the entire communications channel.

"Captain! I want the fleet in formation and ready for orbital bombardment as soon as possible."

The Guardian's captain nodded gravely at Pex's orders. "Commander, preparations will take at least an hour. Can Pioneer Base really hold that long?"

"They'll hold whether they can or not! These damned xenos are packed so tightly together that this is a perfect chance to cripple them. Soldiers of the Imperium ought to give their lives for it," Pex said ruthlessly.

After its first space battle, the Euronia System fleet had been expanded with support from the Departmento Munitorum: one Cobra-class Destroyer and six Star-class frigates. This was the most the Departmento Munitorum could offer.

That brought the fleet's total strength to one cruiser, two destroyers, and six frigates.

Before the expedition departed, Pex had equipped these warships with large quantities of orbital bombardment weaponry, both to kill vast numbers of Orks and to prepare for assaults on their fortresses. He simply had not expected to use it so soon.

While the human fleet overhead moved into bombardment formation, the Ork forces on the ground were having the time of their lives.

Leading the charge were the Speed Freeks, a mob of Orks fanatically obsessed with speed. They loved painting their bikes and vehicles red and cared nothing for reliability. They demanded only one thing: speed!

Lately, they had also developed a taste for rock music, and every one of their vehicles carried a speaker. "Power of the Horde," performed by Cheng Mingrui in the Warp, blared from those speakers, echoing across the battlefield like a symphony.

"Storm! Black out the sky!" Countless missiles and artillery pieces fired together, their rounds tearing across the sky toward the human positions. Explosions and screams rang out without end, while flames and flashes of white light lit up all of Pioneer Base.

"Earth! Hear our battle cry!" The Speed Freeks had already driven their vehicles into the human defensive lines. Until something stopped them, they unleashed all their firepower or smashed into whatever stood in their path. Otherwise, they would never stop.

The entire plain began to tremble beneath the endless green tide, as though an earthquake were underway.

The defending human Expeditionary Force had formed a makeshift defensive line from Chimera troop transports, Leman Russ Tanks, and heavy weapons positions. They barely held on, though their firepower inflicted considerable casualties on the charging Orks.

"Fire and lightning give us strength!"

A long "Waaaaaaaagh!" came howling down from the sky as hundreds of Rokkit Boyz with rocket packs on their backs descended amid flames.

Once they landed, they hurled Stikkbombs, blasting the humans' newly built defenses to pieces. Some, carried away by the Waaagh!, simply fired their rockets and rammed headfirst into tanks, blowing themselves and the turrets sky-high.

Several bolts of green lightning also fell from the sky, obliterating large numbers of heavy weapons positions. The Psyker Boys in the rear were unleashing their power.

The human troops truly were doing everything they could to hold. Transports kept descending from the sky to land inside Pioneer Base, bringing wave after wave of armored and elite reinforcements.

Yet the base's defensive lines remained on the verge of collapse, and only half an hour had passed...

At the most exposed point on the eastern side of the base, the Ork charge finally slammed into the outer defenses. The line held for just three minutes before it was breached.

Several enormous War Squigs, each ten meters tall, broke through the line and threw back their heads with furious roars.

"Death! That's a greeting from the Orks! Waaaagh!"