Goged III was a thoroughly barren world.
Its atmosphere was thin, its sparse soil gave way to thick rock beneath, and there was hardly a mineral deposit worth mentioning, a forsaken place that would make even a dog shake its head and walk away.
Then, recently, Goged III changed.
It was no longer home only to lifeless rock.
Green mushrooms had begun sprouting across its surface, alongside enormous heaps of garbage.
If anyone from the Inquisition had seen this, they would have twitched in revulsion and issued an Exterminatus without a second thought, eradicating every last bacterium on the planet.
In short.
Goged III had an Ork problem.
Gakkas had killed a few Ork pirates who refused to acknowledge Gakkas as boss, hacked them to pieces, and dumped the remains on Goged III.
Orks, strictly speaking, are not “animals.” They are a kind of motile fungus, and every individual constantly sheds spores into the surrounding environment.
Hack an Ork to pieces and fail to follow up with a thorough Promethium flamer treatment, and a massive cloud of spores will eventually take root, differentiating into Orks, Gretchin, and Squigs, the foundational units of greenskin society.
Through prolonged internal fighting, one of these Orks will eventually rise as a Warboss, leading the greenskins to cobble together junk heaps capable of flying into space so they can go looking for one fight after another.
The Orks on Goged III, however, had been seeded with Bonar’s full authorization.
To ensure the small rebellious domain he led wouldn’t be casually wiped out, Bonar hadn’t hesitated to make use of these brutal and warlike xenos.
He had even ordered the vast quantities of refuse left behind from the Hive City demolition dumped directly onto Goged III, to help the Orks evolve as quickly as possible.
Thanks to the Waaagh!
Field, a psychic resonance field, Orks can band together and fight with extraordinary collective will, while simultaneously using whatever junk is at hand to cobble together weapons and spacecraft that outright defy the laws of physics.
In other words.
A wooden stick can kill a Terminator simply because the Ork holding it believes “dis stick can kill ‘im.” A wooden spaceship can fly without falling apart simply because they believe it can fly.
Right now, Horus was busy wrapping things up.
A large Ork lay wailing on the ground, a great gash torn open across its chest, blood pouring out in a steady stream.
The enraged Ork let out one final roar.
“WAGHHHHH!
—”
Then its head lolled to one side, and it went completely still.
Horus shook the xenos blood from his power claw and surveyed the crowd with satisfaction.
“So.
What do you say, Orks?”
“By your own rules — I am your boss now.”
The nearby Orks were a little dazed.
They stood clutching their assorted cobbled-together weapons, brains clearly beginning to overheat.
A Gretchin leaped up.
“You ain’t an Ork!
We can’t make you our boss!”
The lads around it immediately chimed in. Get faster updates on g.com.
“QUIET!”
One savage roar from Horus brought the whole mob back under control.
“There is no rule that says a Warboss has to be an Ork.”
“By your own rules, I beat your boss, so you all answer to me now.”
“I am the strongest, the biggest, the most Waaagh!
thing here!”
The collective Ork brainpower began churning furiously.
The whole lot of them fell into deep, ponderous thought.
After a good while, they seemed to spot a problem.
It seemed like…
This big Humie was right?
“So, big Humie — why should we follow you?”
“Because I can give you the Waaagh!
you want!”
Horus clenched his claw.
“You stupid fools have been sitting on this rock killing each other all day, wasting your lives.”
“Out beyond this planet there are countless worlds, and wars happening that you cannot even imagine, a Waaagh!
bigger and more Waaagh!
than anything going on here.”
“My boss is called the Emperor of Mankind, the strongest, most Waaagh!
boss in this entire galaxy.
Every day, billions of his lads are out there Waaagh!-ing away.”
“If you want to join this mega-Waaagh!
party, then do exactly as I say.”
Behind Horus, several massive screens erected by Tech-Priests flickered to life, playing footage rendered from his own account.
Enormous warships traded cannon fire across the void, battled, launched Boarding Actions.
The Imperial eagle and the Ork mug were visibly smashing into each other so hard their brains were nearly flying out.
Then a Cruiser accelerated and rammed an Escort head-on, blowing it apart on the spot and turning it into a brilliant firework in the void.
Every Ork present who had never seen such a thing let out a collective, electrified Waaagh!
On the ground, masses of human tin cans and Orks tore into each other, while God-Machines and Gargants traded cannon fire across hundreds of kilometers.
That sight sent many Orks into a state of absolute ecstasy.
And then came the figure, that Waaagh!-to-the-point-of-explosion, super-mega, super-incredible, super-Waaagh!
figure.
Its body was the size of a house, mounted with enormous cannons and sporting tremendous tusks.
Good God.
This kind of impossibly massive, impossibly Waaagh!
Ork Nob, they had never seen anything like it.
“Dat fing is huge, huge and well Waaagh!”
The Orks exclaimed in awe, and quite a few of them immediately wanted to go Waaagh!
alongside this massive creature.
But then a towering figure flashed across the screen.
An enormous Humie radiating golden light cut that Waaagh!-thing down with a single sword stroke.
The Orks went silent.
WAAAGH!
Goged III erupted into a cacophony of Waaagh!
cries.
The Orks suddenly found staying on this planet about as appealing as a cold bowl of gruel.
Even the great Ork brawl they had been enjoying just moments ago lost all its appeal, it now looked as boring as a bunch of little Gretchin playing house.
Horus looked at the mob standing there slack-jawed and nodded with satisfaction.
“Now we are going to launch a massive Waaagh!
We are only taking the toughest and most ferocious lads.
The rest of you sorry runts can stay behind and spare us the embarrassment.”
The Orks stared at him blankly.
Then, without a moment’s hesitation, they grabbed every weapon within reach and started beating on each other.
A tremendous brawl erupted across Goged III once again.
The winners strutted aboard the “Waaagh!
ships” with great swagger, while those who had been beaten bloody could only stand outside seething with resentment.
As for those so-called “Waaagh!
ships”, they were, in fact, the enormous Boarding Torpedo factories built by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
The small rebellious domain led by Bonar had neither the brave officers who had graduated from Imperial military academies nor the one-in-ten-thousand Astra Militarum warriors.
Even the current naval backbone was composed of undisciplined pirates and unfortunates thrown into the Penitent Crusade by the Imperium to atone for their sins.
Counting on them to defeat the Imperial Navy, renowned for blood and iron, was nothing short of a dream.
So the only option was this sacrilegious method, one that, from the Imperium’s perspective, would warrant burning an entire fleet’s command staff alive, just to claw back a fraction of the odds.
Once the Orks entered the factory, gas released from hidden chambers knocked them unconscious.
After basic processing, they were stuffed into specially modified Boarding Torpedoes.
These Ork Boarding Torpedoes continuously lowered their internal temperature to suppress the Orks’ activity, while simple piping steadily pumped sedatives through the hull, keeping the Orks in a sustained unconscious state.
When a Torpedo was fired and the Melta Warhead at its tip burned through a warship’s armour, the resulting stimulation would trigger the Orks to wake up.
These Ork Boarding Torpedoes had been prepared specifically for the naval engagements that might break out ahead.
Since it was already clear that the fleet was outmatched in both firepower and discipline compared to the Imperial Navy, why not go for Boarding Actions?
As long as the Imperial Navy’s firepower wasn’t strong enough to rapidly destroy the fleet under Admiral Spire’s command, Boarding Torpedoes stuffed full of Orks would give the Imperial Navy more than enough to choke on.
Beyond that, there were also Ork drop pods, Ork giant boulders, and a whole range of other sacrilegious contraptions in the same vein, essentially treating Orks as living bombs across the board.