With the intense, fiery flashing of high-energy beams and plasma, more and more Ork scrap-ships were blown into metallic wreckage, drifting in the silent void of space.
The distant debris was flung toward the outer orbit by residual kinetic energy, while the closer wreckage was caught by the planet’s gravity, plunging into the atmosphere as a dense meteor shower that quickly burned into nothingness.
Even more scrap-ship wreckage, however, remained in the same orbit as the Seeker space station.
While the station’s firepower was undeniably formidable, as time passed, the Ork vessels emerging from the Warp grew increasingly numerous, and their sizes grew larger and larger.
At first, they were just nimble little gunboats and raiders, easily overwhelmed by a single coordinated volley.
But soon, larger destroyers began to appear—though whether those lopsided, ramshackle monstrosities could truly be called destroyers was highly debatable.
Initially, the web of fire woven by the Seeker could sink and submerge all the oncoming scrap-ships.
But as the approaching warships grew more numerous, larger, crazier, and increasingly *Waaagh!!!*, the pressure bearing down on the space station mounted sharply.
Howling in defiance of death, the Orks charged headlong into the sea of destruction before them, pitting their surging Green Tide against the searing plasma.
The Seeker space station’s advantage lay not only in firepower but also in range.
The Orks, of course, were not mere suicidal fools, but the cannons and guns mounted on their scrap-ships were vastly outranged by the station’s plasma cannons and large macro-cannons.
Often, before the Orks could even close to their weapons’ effective range, the Seeker’s gunfire was already upon them.
But this advantage was rapidly dwindling.
One after another, massive vessels emerged from the Warp, pressing forward against the torrential fire.
The larger ships possessed sturdier shields, thicker gun barrels, more boyz, and a grander *Waaagh!!!*!
The boyz piloting the light gunboats began to take cover behind the flanks or sterns of the larger ships, letting them absorb the fire as they steadily advanced.
To penetrate the defenses of these behemoths, the Seeker had to crank the firing rate of its batteries to the maximum.
This meant more frequent targeting adjustments, leaving less and less cooling time for the weapon systems, which multiplied the strain on them exponentially.
By this point, some Ork vessels were already managing to rush right into the space station’s face and fire off a shell before being blown to bits.
Though a single shell was harmless—little more than skipping a stone across the massive void shields covering the entire station—it was an ill omen.
The Orks were starting to hit them.
Gauss sat in the center of the main control room, the projection before him displaying a despair-inducing sight.
The Green Tide.
An endless, boundless Green Tide.
The Ork scrap-ships surged like ocean waves, appearing in every direction and sailing through every stretch of space. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Their ecstatic, frenzied war cries seemed to pierce the silent vacuum, echoing deafeningly in the depths of every technician’s soul.
The endless ocean of iron seemed to say to the Seeker:
“My boyz are infinite, but your energy depletes with every passing second!”
Normally, a space fortress of this caliber would be equipped with a substantial naval escort fleet to assist in battle.
But the Seeker had none.
This space fortress, hastily cobbled together from the entire inventory of the Adeptus Mechanicus, was the entirety of Faya’s naval strength.
By the standards of the Adeptus Mechanicus, they would have long since cut their losses and fled the planet behind them at the first sign of trouble.
But they could not do so now.
The hastily constructed Seeker space station was not even fitted with Warp engines of sufficient output or Gellar fields, making Warp travel utterly impossible.
Faced with the multicolored sea of Ork junk, the Seeker still maintained an absolute advantage in size and firepower suppression, but this advantage was rapidly crumbling.
Some scrap-ships had already begun using the wreckage of other vessels in orbit as cover, charging forward recklessly to break through the web of fire woven by the Seeker and plunge straight into Faya’s atmosphere.
The Tech-Priests were powerless to stop them and could only pray that the ground forces were brave enough.
Warp signals continued to ping one after another ahead.
More scrap-ships clawed their way out of the turbulent waves of the Sea of Souls, seemingly endless.
“Heavens, just how many of them are there…” Gauss felt his alloy-forged legs grow somewhat weak.
An emotion called despair eroded his artificial heart.
“Port-side main gun 133 has overheated! Requesting emergency cooling!”
“Port-side main gun 401 overloaded and short-circuited! We are doing our best to repair it!”
“Lost contact with the port-side ion cannon battery! It may have been sunk!”
Reports from various parts of the space station continued to flood the communicator in his ear.
Gauss sat in the main control room, looking around.
His field of vision was filled with the boundless Green Tide, stretching as far as the eye could see.
Yes.
“Warp signal detected on the starboard side! Signal strength… signal strength…” The technician’s report was laced with static and uncontrollable trembling.
“Th-this kind of signal strength… how is this possible…”
Gauss closed his eyes.
He already knew what had rendered the technician incoherent.
A signal strength of this magnitude meant only one thing.
A massive vessel—perhaps a battleship-class dreadnought—was emerging from the Warp.
There was no need for sensors, nor was there any need for psyker readings of Warp fluctuations.
At this moment, any ordinary human standing on Faya’s surface only had to look up to see a prominent, twisted blue-violet rift tearing through the atmosphere.
In the vastness of space, a giant maw spanning dozens of kilometers tore open.
It was a tear in reality, a Warp rift.
Countless distorted images swirled like ocean waves in the abyssal dimension on the other side of the rift.
A monumental colossus of iron cruised steadily through the turbulent currents, completely unyielding.
The grand dreadnought was densely bristling with countless cold, hard gun barrels and humming void shield generators.
Carrier craft continuously soared out of its open hangar bays—an insanely bellicose loadout that struck terror into the heart.
Yet, at first glance, Gauss’s attention was drawn not to these mechanical facilities filled with violent aesthetics, but to a cathedral-like structure situated at the ship’s bow.
It was a grand cathedral built atop a battleship, with a statue of the Emperor of Mankind standing atop its spire.
Gauss’s arm joints trembled.
He looked down and re-read the message sent by his technician.
The starting coordinates of that powerful Warp signal were located at…
the Mandeville point of the Faya system.
“That is our fleet!”
In an instant, everyone on the space station had their attention drawn to the distant Warp rift.
The massive fleet of the Imperium of Man was sailing out of it.