He immediately realized something.
"Communications! Contact the fleet in orbit immediately! Ask whether they've detected any weapons of mass destruction, such as Cyclonic Torpedoes, or energy signatures associated with exterminatus!" he roared at the vox operator.
Moments later, the vox operator turned back with an expression as though he had seen a ghost. "Colonel! The fleet reports... no signs of any orbital strike! They say... they say that energy burst came entirely from the surface! Its explosive yield... by preliminary estimates, was equivalent to... a small-scale... exterminatus event."
The entire command post fell deathly silent.
Everyone understood.
This terrifying explosion, powerful enough to enter the history books and rival exterminatus, had not come from the Imperium's orbital fleet, nor from any known strategic weapon.
It had been created by the very unit they had believed was "on the verge of collapse," the 99th Regiment, the "Pride of Cadia," using their own lives and the enormous grain-processing plant beneath their feet.
They had perished together with the enemy.
Just then, the delayed roar, like ten thousand thunderclaps sounding at once, finally reached their positions.
RUMMMMMBLE-
A visible hurricane of dust, rubble, and unidentified burning debris swept straight toward them. The soldiers of Krieg immediately dropped flat, pressing their bodies tight against the ground. Even the Chimera armored vehicles, weighing dozens of tons, groaned under the strain and were shoved several meters backward by the gale.
The wind lasted a full three minutes.
When everything finally settled, Colonel Grimm struggled to lift his head from the dust.
He saw that the once dark-red sky had turned utterly black, like an endless night. Hundreds of millions of tons of dust and soot had been hurled into the upper atmosphere, creating a "nuclear winter" that blotted out the sky and sun.
The air was thick with the strange smell of sulfur and... roasted meat.
In the distance, the Iron Temple, which had once loomed like a mountain range of steel, had vanished completely from the horizon.
In its place lay an immense crater, like the scar of a meteor impact, its edges still collapsing and its center glimmering with the dark-red glow of magma.
"...It's over." Commissar Friedrich put his cap back on, his voice carrying a trace of indescribable exhaustion. "The Orks' Waaagh!, or at least their main ground force, has... ceased to exist."
"No, it isn't over yet, Commissar." Colonel Grimm rose and brushed the dust from his uniform. Behind his gas mask, his eyes became razor-sharp once more. "Sweep the battlefield. Search for survivors. I need a detailed after-action report. I want to know what kind of people, what kind of commander, could do something so... mad and magnificent."
"Advance," he ordered tersely.
The Death Korps of Krieg, an army that only ever moved forward, marched in silent lockstep into the apocalyptic wasteland that had just been scourged by hellfire.
They had no idea what kind of "miracle" they were about to witness.
In the now pitch-black orbit of Viridia Prime, the bridge of the Ork flagship Big Smash descended into unprecedented chaos and panic.
Only minutes earlier, they had been watching the monitors with gleeful anticipation as their boss, the great "Ironjaw" Bonecrusher Grak, prepared to crush that little human leader into pulp.
Then the screen had turned into a sheet of blinding white light.
Immediately afterward, the entire warship, cobbled together from space junk, shook so violently that it seemed about to fall apart. It was the terrifying shock wave from the planet's surface, powerful enough to affect low orbit.
"Wha... what's goin' on?!"
"Where's da boss?! I can't see da boss!"
"Waaagh!! What's dat thing?! Did... did a sun grow outta da ground?!"
For the first time, the Ork "bosses" on the bridge, creatures who had climbed to power through muscle and sheer volume alone, felt the emotion called "fear." Their simple brains were utterly incapable of processing the sight before them, something far beyond their understanding.
Their warlord, the symbol of their strength, the heart of their entire Waaagh!, had vanished from existence alongside hundreds of thousands of Boyz within that brilliant, enormous mushroom cloud.
The boss was gone.
That realization struck like the heaviest of hammers, shattering the Orks' fragile command structure, built on the simple logic of "obey whoever fights best."
"Da boss is dead! Run!" Some Gretchin was the first to let out a terrified shriek.
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!" A massive "boss" chopped off the head of another "boss" beside him with a single swing of his axe, trying to seize command.
"Rubbish! I'm da boss!" Another "boss," refusing to back down, immediately challenged him.
In barely a dozen seconds, the bridge of the Big Smash went from a military command center to a bloody arena where rivals slaughtered one another for the title of "boss."
The chaos swiftly spread to every Ork warship.
Without the supreme warlord to keep them in line, the unruly clan "bosses," who had been harboring their own schemes all along, immediately began fighting among themselves. Some wanted to seize the flagship and become the new warlord; others wanted to take their Boyz, escape this cursed star system as quickly as possible, and head home alive.
Having lost its unified command and purpose, the entire Ork fleet instantly degenerated from a vast, threatening military force into a heap of loose sand, a pack of space pirates each fighting for themselves.
And just then, the Imperial Navy battle group, composed of several Lunar-class cruisers and numerous escorts, which had been lurking on the outskirts of the system and waiting for the perfect moment, finally bared its fangs.
"All ships, target the enemy flagship! Open fire!"
The roar of Macro-cannons tore through the blackness of space. Lance beams, like divine judgment, struck with precision at the Ork warships, which were in such disarray from infighting that they had not even fully activated their shields.
An utterly one-sided slaughter, its outcome never in doubt, began in orbit above Viridia Prime.
This Ork Waaagh! of unprecedented scale, which had once made the entire subsector tremble, met its final, absurdly laughable end amid two very different displays of "fireworks," one on the ground and one in space, both equally savage and spectacular.