The cathedral-bearing battleship was the first to sail out of the Warp as the flagship, returning to reality.
Countless cruisers, destroyers, armored transport ships…
a vast sea of vessels accompanied it on both sides, grandly advancing toward Faya’s upper atmosphere.
Immediately upon exiting the Warp, the flagship’s pre-charged main batteries launched a devastating strike at the Ork fleet.
Its range was so vast it nearly crossed the entire diameter of Planet Faya.
High-energy particles slammed into the multicolored sea of Ork junk, triggering a chain of violent explosions.
Seeing this, the Tech-Priests and low-level technicians on the space station could not help but rejoice.
The space station they had worked so hard to build, along with the ancient Titans housed in its hangars, were saved.
A puzzle that had perplexed them for a long time was also solved at this moment.
Even Orks were rarely mad enough to blind-jump directly into a star system while completely disregarding celestial gravity.
Their previous behavior of blindly charging headlong toward Faya with absolutely no strategy had also seemed highly disorganized.
Contrary to popular intuition, while Ork brains were indeed usually lacking, a large greenskin tribe of sufficient size would produce certain intellectuals, as well as powerful and cunning leader individuals.
The scale of the Green Tide encountered by the Seeker space station had already surpassed that threshold.
A greenskin fleet of this magnitude should not have been a mere collection of ragtag freaks who only knew how to charge brainlessly.
They should have had a commander and at least basic discipline.
It made no sense.
With the arrival of the Imperium’s massive fleet over Faya, the reason behind these anomalies became clear to Gauss and the other Tech-Priests.
They were certain these filthy greenskins had been chased all the way here by the human fleet, fleeing in utter panic!
Every low-level technician and Tech-Priest rejoiced.
In this moment of joy, no one noticed that in Faya’s outer orbit, along with the arrival of the Imperial fleet, the Grey Tempest mothership that had been anchored behind the First Moon silently and stealthily vanished.
The fierce fire of the Imperial fleet efficiently slaughtered the Ork warships continuously emerging from the Warp, greatly relieving the pressure on the cogboys.
Soon, the first transmission from the flagship was successfully routed into the Seeker space station.
The transmission read:
“I am Milach, Chapter Master of the Fire of Penance. Thank you for your brave and fearless stand, which held out until our arrival. Loyal defenders of the Imperium, I now command you, in my capacity as Supreme Commander of the Martyrs Legion, to join our advance. The Imperium needs your strength! For the Emperor!”
Members of the Adeptus Mechanicus were somewhat resistant to slogans like “For the Emperor.” Upon reading this transmission, two distinct emotions quickly flashed through Gauss’s mind. Get faster updates on NovelPing.
First was confusion.
From what he could see, the Martyrs Legion that had jumped from the Mandeville point completely outmatched the Ork fleet before them in both sheer size and advanced armaments.
Then came shock.
He quickly realized that even with their overwhelming superiority in strength, the Martyrs Legion was still requesting assistance from the Seeker space station.
This meant that the scrap-ships he currently saw were not the full strength of the Orks.
The main greenskin force had yet to arrive…
Gauss immediately ordered the technicians to make the most of their time, maintaining systems and cooling down weapons.
They needed to restore the space station to its optimal state as quickly as possible during the window when the Martyrs Legion was dispersing the Ork fleet.
Because after this, there would be a grueling battle to fight.
The Martyrs Legion fleet did not approach the Seeker space station.
Instead, they dispersed their formation to conduct long-range strikes, leveraging the superior range of their main guns.
The terrifying aspect of greenskin Orks lay in their formidable close-quarters firepower, so kiting them from a distance was a tried-and-true tactic.
However, the Orks’ scattered fleeing did not last long.
As if receiving a unified order, the scattered vessels of various sizes quickly regrouped.
Braving the heavy fire of the Martyrs Legion, they sailed toward a single direction—the vicinity of the Second Moon, the second satellite orbiting Faya’s outer ring.
It was at this precise moment that an inexplicable spatial distortion occurred.
A spherical titan of colossal proportions appeared out of thin air above the Second Moon, as if by magic.
Gauss could not believe his eyes.
“Is that… a Battle Moon?”
A Battle Moon—officially designated a battle satellite—was modified from an entire, intact planetary moon.
It was, in itself, a celestial-class weapon.
This was the greatest known masterpiece of the Ork Big Mek—bigger, badder, and infinitely more *Waaagh!!!*.
Its volume was so immense that its mere appearance over the Second Moon made Faya’s satellite look scrawny and insignificant.
The immense mass of the Battle Moon dragged the Second Moon right out of its proper orbit, like a massive Ork swinging a lasso to choke the neck of a wild stallion.
On one side was the grand Imperial fleet.
On the other side was the Ork clan’s War Moon.
The scene in space was so surreal that Gauss began to doubt whether this day he was experiencing was even real.
Faya was but a barren border world located in the Halo Zone.
How did it ever deserve to witness such a grand spectacle?
An endless stream of Ork boyz, howling and piloting cobbled-together vessels, continuously took off from the surface of the Battle Moon, gleefully joining the fray to partake in this joyous space brawl.
Ranging in all sizes and shapes, various junk-ships of completely mismatched hulls gathered in dense swarms like a plague of locusts that blocked out the sun, almost casting a faint shadow over Faya by blotting out the star’s light.
And in the deep space beyond Faya, yet another Warp rift was tearing open.
Another vast fleet sailed through the volatile Warp currents, arriving in this barren star system that had been peaceful for hundreds of years.
Unlike the highly standardized Martyrs Legion, the composition of this arriving fleet was extremely eclectic.
Among them, one could see specialized retrofitted civilian merchant vessels, research vessels and transport ships of the Adeptus Mechanicus—the style Gauss was most familiar with—Skitarii ships, and vessels of the Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard adorned with golden skulls.
Though it lacked a massive battleship-class flagship like the *Fire of Penance*, was not as neatly organized as the Martyrs Legion, and its equipment and firepower were not on the same level…
…if one were to look strictly at the sheer number of conventional ships, this fleet’s scale was several times larger than even that of the Martyrs Legion.
Gauss learned from the communications that this second fleet was temporarily dubbed the “Pilgrim” Fleet.
Martyrs, pilgrims…
No one on the Seeker space station had ever witnessed an Imperial naval force of this scale.
In their memories, even some of the most famous crusades in distant history had not been conducted with such grand fanfare.
But…
even with an Imperial naval force as unprecedented in this current age as this, was it truly qualified to chase an Ork clan possessing a War Moon all the way to Faya—into the Halo Zone at the very edge of the galaxy?