Under normal circumstances, deploying Titan-class units requires the mothership to provide sufficient fighter escort squadrons and ground-support fire to prevent the Titans from being focused down and damaged during the landing process.
However, the Seeker had no such luxuries.
The conditions simply did not allow for it.
Grey Wind merely opened the hangar doors and dropped the Cybrex Warforms one by one.
Lacking escort fighters, these massive, conspicuous targets naturally drew intense anti-aircraft fire from the Battle Moon’s surface the moment they cleared the launch bays.
While the firepower packed by a Cybrex Warform far exceeded that of an Imperial Titan of comparable size, its armor defense was correspondingly lower.
Countless physical rounds, shells, and high-energy beams poured like rain from defensive emplacements scattered across the moon’s surface, sending wave after wave of ripples across the silver-white surfaces of the Warforms.
Unlike the void shields commonly used by the Imperium, the shield systems equipped on the Cybrex Warforms possessed excellent resistance to energy weapons, but their defense against kinetic munitions was highly limited.
In a sense, the Orks’ seemingly crude machine guns and cannons actually posed a greater threat to the Warforms than their flashy high-energy lasers and thermal rays.
Energy shields were inherently ill-suited for defending against kinetic rounds, and the Orks’ Battle Moon was a tireless engine of war.
Dense thickets of weapon emplacements spat lethal tongues of flame without pause, while small fighter craft constantly scrambled to launch bombs at the Titans raiding their home turf.
Within a dozen minutes, the silver-white armor on the Warforms had sustained varying degrees of damage.
Fortunately, there was no atmosphere on the Battle Moon, allowing the Warforms to descend rapidly.
Finally, before the Orkish artillery could cause structural damage severe enough to impair movement, the first steel giant successfully set foot on the moon’s surface.
With this, the awkward predicament of passive defense was brought to an end.
As the Warforms landed, vast swarms of greenskins—the Orks who had been lurking beneath the moon’s surface—emerged.
They drove flashy vehicles cobbled together from scrap metal, piloted rickety, high-speed fighters, or simply howled at the top of their lungs, brandishing their weapons as they charged joyfully toward the giant iron constructs.
Their numbers were unbelievably vast.
This all-out charge actually caused the metal-covered surface of the moon to visibly “green” under the naked eye…
Countless machine guns and artillery pieces, mounted in fortresses and atop heaps of junk, continued to fire furiously.
The dense interlocking fire, combined with the madly charging green tide, formed a terrifying offensive.
Many Orks were even gunned down by stray bullets from their own gunners.
But what welcomed them was a tempestuous, devastating bombardment. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
If an Imperial tank was like a spear thrusting forward, then a Cybrex Warform was a sea urchin bristling with spines.
Its sole purpose of existence was to attack.
Every inch of its hull was a weapon, and any part of its body capable of offence was packed with terrible firepower.
Its insane design philosophy squeezed the power core’s performance to its absolute limit; the weapon systems overloaded to the max every single second, relentlessly unleashing devastating, apocalyptic destruction in all directions.
Melta bombs burned through the continental plates of solid iron, plunging down toward the planetary core and triggering violent earthquakes across the moon’s surface.
Railguns continuously hurled high-velocity, spinning kinetic projectiles into the surroundings, grinding flesh and bone into fine dust.
Even more prevalent were the arcs of electricity and plasma.
Operating at full power, these war machines were so frenzied that even two Warforms dared not get too close to one another.
The frequency of weapons firing non-stop was so high that even the most advanced combat computers and precise guidance systems struggled to keep up, unable to guarantee they wouldn’t accidentally hit friendly units.
Yet, this was by no means a one-sided slaughter.
Even as they unleashed overwhelming firepower, the Cybrex Warforms endured relentless strafing and bombardment from all directions.
More scars appeared on their once-pristine, beautiful silver-white armor every passing second.
However, these wounds were slowly repairing themselves at a visible rate.
Were it not for the constant influx of new damage, a severely battered Cybrex Warform could have simply stood in place and restored itself to pristine condition.
If a Tech-Priest were to observe the armor surface under a microscope at this moment, they would see countless tiny nanites writhing over those wounds.
It was these microscopic machines that tirelessly ensured the continuous operation of the entire chassis, repairing damage, maintaining systems, and even serving as ammunition in times of need.
This was the solution Russell had prepared to cover the Warforms’ weakness against kinetic munitions—the Nanite Repair System.
Indeed, aside from Grey Wind who hailed from the L-Cluster, the tech tree of the Commonwealth of Man itself possessed highly mature nanotechnologies.
All eighteen Warforms were equipped with self-repairing Nanite Repair Systems.
Organized into combat teams of three, they used their overwhelming firepower to forcefully tear through the seemingly endless green tide on the moon’s surface.
Stepping over pulverized bones, they rumbled toward the Ork fortress situated not far from the landing zone. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
That was where the Ork leader resided.
Their objective lay right there.
While the battle on the ground seemed to lean heavily in their favor, an unprecedented crisis was brewing in orbit.
At the command console of the Seeker, Grey Wind stood on her tiptoes to monitor the enemy signals surrounding them.
Frowning, she steered the faltering space station to evade incoming fire while launching limited counterattacks.
The situation was deteriorating.
The greenskin fleet in space had already realized that their Battle Moon was being raided.
They were doing everything they could to break away from the Pilgrims’ harassment and return to defend it.
This was dangerous.
No matter how powerful a Cybrex Warform was individually, it was ultimately just a ground force.
Orbital bombardment from space warships was a form of dimensional reduction strike to ground troops—all the more so when dealing with Orks, creatures that defied all reason.
If they successfully returned to defend, the eighteen Warforms Russell had spent four years building would likely all be lost here.
“The Grand Marshal really gave me… such a difficult task.” Grey Wind grumbled about Russell not treating her like a human, then paused to think—well, she really wasn’t human after all.
At this point, Grey Wind was much shorter than when she had first appeared, standing only about a meter tall.
She had regressed from an adult woman into a tiny, young girl, and her hip-length silver-white hair had shortened into a bob.
This was because she had disassembled most of her physical form into nanites, dispersing them throughout the space station to maintain systems and repair damage.
Otherwise, this space station would have likely been sunk long ago.
Yet, despite Grey Wind’s desperate efforts, relying on a single space station to match an astronomical number of Ork warships was nothing short of a pipe dream.
“The Grand Marshal really is inhuman…” she muttered.