To protect these precious machines and their own research, the Adeptus Mechanicus deployed nearly every heavy macro-cannon they possessed onto the station.
Russell also transferred six independent ion cannon platforms to the facility.
Armed with formidable overlapping fields of fire, thick armor plating, and massive void shield generators, the *Seeker* space station had transformed into a ponderous, deadly fortress of war.
As the warforms were guided one by one into the hangars, Gauss and the other Tech-Priests could not wait to lead their tech-adepts to the site to begin their research.
Ah…
those sharp, efficient metallic edges; those clean, elegant power conduits; that immense sense of weight and power humming within the mechanical joints…
Ah…
The massive expenditure of resources and months of grueling labor received the sweetest reward at this very moment.
It was all worth it.
Yet, before they could truly savor this intoxicating joy, a sudden crisis struck just a few days later.
On that day, the station’s psychic sensors suddenly detected a bizarre warp signature—the “ripples” produced when a vessel was about to “surface” from the Warp into realspace.
The rippling waters heralded the onset of an impending tempest.
The signature was deemed bizarre because its point of origin defied all reason.
Starships generally utilized Warp drives to bypass vast distances of realspace, achieving functional faster-than-light travel.
However, the Sea of Souls was never calm.
Coupled with the gravitational pull of stellar bodies disrupting the Warp, vessels usually had to navigate to a system’s Mandeville point before translation.
This was the minimum safe distance required to transition between the Warp and a destination stellar system.
To bypass the Mandeville point and translate directly into a stellar system—making a blind jump—meant braving the turbulent currents of the Warp, navigation calculation errors, and stellar gravity.
The consequences of such interference were almost always catastrophic.
It was no exaggeration to say that only the maddest of lunatics would choose to execute a Warp jump without utilizing a Mandeville point.
And yet, it was precisely such a mad, anomalous signal that now flickered on the *Seeker*’s sensors.
Soon, the confusion gripping the Tech-Priests aboard the station vanished, replaced by sheer horror and fury.
Vessels that looked utterly decrepit, seemingly cobbled together from space debris, erupted from the Warp like a swarm of locusts, hurtling clumsily toward Faya.
It was a scrap fleet that seemed on the verge of falling apart at any second, yet somehow remained whole.
It was hard to imagine what kind of creature could sail the stars in such jerry-rigged contraptions.
The good news was that humanity did not need to imagine what kind of creature crewed these vessels.
The bad news was that they were Orks. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Across the silent vacuum of space, a roar echoed from the depths of the soul, reverberating through the boundless void:
“Waaagh!!!”
“Waaaaaagh!!!”
“Wa-oh~ Wa-oh~”
On the planet below, inside the Governor’s manor, Grey Wind leaned close to Russell’s ear and mimicked the cry, screaming, “Grand Marshal, the Orks are here! Wa-oh~”
“Imitating an Ork’s Waaagh!!! isn’t going to make you look cute,” Russell said, pushing his paperwork to the corner of the desk.
He looked out the window at the clear blue sky.
“That was close. The star fortress was only finished a few days ago, and they’ve already arrived.”
They had almost missed the deadline.
“But we made it. With the *Seeker* in place, the Adeptus Mechanicus should have no trouble wiping out the Ork vanguard fleet.”
Grey Wind dropped her playful demeanor, stopped her mimicking, and adopted a serious, professional posture.
“We can proceed to the next phase of the plan, Grand Marshal.”
Russell nodded.
He unbuttoned his elegant but restrictive formal uniform and took it off.
“Let’s go.”
Meanwhile, in low orbit, a brutal battle was raging.
The void of space was dead silent, save for the flashing of lance batteries and the flare of energy beams.
Calling it a war was somewhat inaccurate; it was more akin to a one-sided slaughter.
The crude vessels the Orks cobbled together from space junk possessed no structural integrity to speak of and would shatter upon impact.
Most of the time, they relied on a metaphysical phenomenon known as the Waaagh!!!
field to keep from disintegrating.
The Waaagh!!!
field was, in some ways, highly similar to the psychic power known to humanity.
It could be crudely understood that every Ork was a minor psyker.
While their individual power level was negligible, when a massive horde of greenskins gathered into clans and empires, their collective psychic energy—their “Waaagh!!!”—coalesced into an exceptionally terrifying force. You are reading on novelping dot com, the official source.
This potent Waaagh!!!
field, projected onto their junk-assembled and theoretically inoperable machinery, allowed them to traverse the stars and even withstand heavy bombardments.
It also made the greenskins larger and stronger, enabling them to charge forward with joyous, howling abandon, impervious to pain and casualties, eager to tear their enemies to shreds.
There were generally three ways to counter a Waaagh!!!
field:
First, by deploying Sisters of Silence or other psychic-nullifying methods to disrupt the psychic nature of the Waaagh!!!
from within.
Second, by executing a decapitation strike on the Ork leader, known as a Warboss, who anchored the Waaagh!!!
of the entire tribe, thereby shattering their social structure and fracturing them.
Third, by unleashing overwhelming, relentless firepower, overcoming the field through sheer brute force.
The Adeptus Mechanicus was currently employing the third option.
A relentless swarm of Orks in scrap ships continued to translate out of the Warp, charging mindlessly toward Faya, while the stationary *Seeker* space station continuously saturated the void with volley after volley of macro-cannon fire.
Under the interference of the Waaagh!!!
field, high-energy beams that would normally tear through minor void shields struggled to sink even a single scrap skiff piloted by Ork Boyz.
But that did not matter.
If one shot failed to penetrate, they would fire a hundred.
Every functional module of the *Seeker* space station was originally an entire Adeptus Mechanicus vessel.
Whether exploratory or transport, each ship possessed its own complete weapon systems.
Rather than being dismantled during assembly, these armaments were integrated directly into the *Seeker*’s central power grid, turning them into tireless, death-spitting engines of war.
The sheer volume of vessels translated to a staggering array of gun ports.
Combined with the ion cannon platforms orbiting the station, a torrential sea of fire continuously blasted the intruding scrap heaps into actual space debris.
Such sustained, prolonged bombardment usually risked power grid overload and hardware overheating.
However, the *Seeker*’s massive size mitigated this issue to a certain extent:
Possessing formidable, omnidirectional overlapping fire vectors, the station could rotate its massive frame at any time to shift its facing, allowing overheated gun barrels to rotate away to cool down while fresh batteries took their place.
Salvo after salvo, it maintained a continuous, gapless blanket of fire.