When Zug Bigteef stood atop the fortress built from countless heaps of scrap on Orkutar, the primary world of Octarius, and looked down, the sight stirred something close to awe in the Ork warboss, who stood over five meters tall and had a body like a mobile fortress. Of course, for an Ork, that feeling soon turned into the purest, seething fury.
The sky was gone.
Densely packed Tyranid flying beasts-things like Gargoyles and Harpies-formed a shifting, living canopy of carapaces and membranous wings, blotting out the planet's dull yellow sunlight completely. Their piercing screeches merged into a soul-rending cacophony that made even the towering spikes on the fortress hum under the strain.
On the ground, things were even more hopeless.
As far as the eye could see, not a trace of bare earth remained along the horizon stretching for hundreds of miles. It was a churning ocean of billions of bugs of every kind. Like a tide, they crashed against Zug Bigteef's already crumbling defenses, wave after wave. Every impact saw hundreds or thousands of Ork Boyz torn apart by sharp claws, fangs, and corrosive acid, then greedily devoured by still more bugs.
Farther away, at the edge of the horizon, several mountain-sized shapes advanced slowly but inexorably. These were the Tyranids' titan-class bio-behemoths, the ultimate weapons of destruction the Hive Mind had deployed on this planet. Around them swarmed more monsters, slightly smaller but just as deadly-Carnifexes, Tyrants, and war machines brandishing enormous bone scythes. They were the spearhead of this ocean of bugs, ceaselessly and mercilessly tearing into the Orks' last line of defense.
"WAAAGH!!!"
Zug Bigteef roared in utter fury. He slammed his cooking-pot-sized fist into the thick armor plating of the battlement before him, leaving a clear dent. He did not care about the Ork