The Ork fleet currently battling humanity was bloated in scale, its ship count far, far exceeding the combined strength of the Martyrs and Pilgrims fleets.
Yet even a fleet of this size seemed almost mismatched when placed alongside the colossal Battle Moon behind them.
After the Seeker charged right into the Battle Moon’s face, Grey Wind did not forget to release nanite sensors to scan the construction data of this celestial weapon while managing the battle.
She ultimately concluded that the thing was a thoroughbred war factory.
Grey Wind calculated that as long as materials and time permitted, the Ork armories buried deep beneath the iron plates of the Battle Moon’s surface could easily assemble vast quantities of Battle Barges and large destroyers.
Its production capacity was comparable to a mega-dockyard plus.
An astronomical-scale space arsenal like this should have had a much larger escort fleet.
But that was not the case; while the Ork fleet was not small, it was practically pitiful compared to the industrial capacity of the Battle Moon.
What had caused this massive disconnect between the Ork fleet’s size and its productivity?
Perhaps their previous blind jump directly into the Faya system, bypassing the Mandeville point, had caused them to lose the vast majority of their combat vessels in the turbulent Warp?
This was indeed a plausible explanation, but Grey Wind doubted it.
The attrition rate would have been far too high.
However, the increasingly dire state of the battle required more of her immediate attention.
“Based on the battlefield data I currently possess, the greenskin Orks hold an absolute advantage in this void battle. Although the human fleet can use various tactical maneuvers and advanced weapons to close the gap in military strength, the disparity is too vast—vast enough to be irrecoverable. They cannot win…”
In fact, the most absurd part of this was that an Ork fleet with such an absolute advantage in power had been chased all the way here by the Imperium of Man.
Since when did the strong get chased and beaten by the weak?
Then, she watched as over a dozen Space Marine Strike Cruisers forced their way through the Ork defensive line under the cover of friendly fire, dropping a rain-like density of drop pods onto the Battle Moon’s surface.
The armored transport ships of the Adeptus Mechanicus arrived at their designated positions at the same time.
Their hangars opened, and Tech-Adepts scattered across the system operated in synchronization to activate the short-range teleportation devices built into the hulls.
With a distortion of space, a colossal armored giant, equipped with a massive plasma cannon and a giant chainsword, materialized behind the Cybrex Warform units via teleportation.
Warlord-class Titan: “Monarch of Night”.
Combat formations of Reaver-class and Warhound-class Titans followed closely behind, spreading out in a battle formation behind the Monarch of Night.
They began unleashing torrents of fire from various weapons upon the surrounding green tide, absorbing the Orks’ counterattacks with their massive void shields as they rumbled forward through the hail of gunfire.
Grey Wind found these humans utterly incomprehensible.
The void battle was still undecided.
Deploying ground forces to the Battle Moon while the human side was at a massive disadvantage was essentially sending soldiers to their deaths.
Once the Orks successfully redirected their defenses, an overwhelming orbital bombardment would surely wipe out the human landing forces completely.
Orks were not the type to hold back for fear of harming their own.
She was doing this to cover the Grand Marshal, but what were the humans doing it for?
Just as Grey Wind was wondering, a transmission connected to the Seeker station.
The communication came from the cockpit of the Monarch of Night.
A Tech-Sage from the Forge World of Muspel had personally piloted this precious Warlord-class Titan to the lunar surface.
While clearing the obstacles in front of him with astonishing efficiency, he praised the Machine Spirit in a near-manic tone over the communication channel, leaving Grey Wind completely dumbfounded.
However, thanks to Russell’s education during this time, she knew how to handle the situation.
She took the same rhetoric Russell had used to swindle the Faya locals and used it to bamboozle the Tech-Sage—recounting tales of inheritance, legacy, and the spirit of the Golden Age.
Upon learning that the massive warforms ahead were indeed great relics from the Dark Age of Technology, Grey Wind faintly heard what sounded like bouts of weeping from the other end of the communication channel.
Though it was off-putting, the battle took priority.
Grey Wind transmitted the operational parameters of the Cybrex Warforms to the Adeptus Mechanicus’s Titan Legion, allowing them to coordinate their combat efforts more effectively.
Sure enough, after learning of the Cybrex Warforms’ superior firepower and weaker armor, the Titan Legion immediately adjusted their combat strategy.
The heavily armored Imperial Titans charged to the absolute front of the formation, raising their void shields to absorb the dense hail of bullets and shells for the Warforms behind them. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Granted a brief respite, the Cybrex Warforms had no more reservations.
They began returning the favor, blanketing the enemy with even more precise and efficient firepower under the protection of the Imperial Titans.
This heroic act of sacrificing themselves to protect their allies deeply moved Grey Wind, who didn’t suspect in the slightest that these cogboys were simply salivating over the bodies of the Cybrex Warforms.
Amidst the storm of gunfire, the agile silhouettes of Thunderhawk Gunships darted back and forth, fiercely contesting air superiority with the smoking, ramshackle Ork fighter jets.
Meanwhile, a joint force of Space Marines compiled from several different Chapters quickly deployed into the buffer zone cleared by the Titan units.
Various modified models of Rhino APCs and “Mastodon” heavy assault transports converged into an unstoppable torrent of iron.
Under the feet of the Titan Legion, they covered the heavily armed Astartes as they surged forward, initiating an armored clash against the Orks’ battle fortresses and looted wagons.
The warriors loyal to the Emperor fought bloodily on a battlefield saturated with Waaagh! energy.
The Imperium of Man showed not a shred of mercy or compromise to the xenos; the only universal language in the galaxy was iron and fire.
During a lull in the fighting, Grey Wind engaged in a brief and efficient tactical exchange with the Imperial fleet command aboard the battleship Fire of Penance, thereby learning of the Imperium’s tactical deployment.
It was a highly conventional decapitation strike.
Their true target was the Warboss hiding deep within the Battle Moon.
As long as they killed that largest, greenest, strongest, most brutal, and most Waaagh!-capable Ork giant, the collective Ork psyche of the entire greenskin empire would collapse.
The unbreakable Waaagh! field would subsequently dissipate, and the scrapheap ships that relied solely on the power of “I fink it works” to stay intact would instantly fall apart.
But would this decapitation strike really go that smoothly?
Through the nanite sensors scattered in every corner of the battlefield, Grey Wind could feel a restless stirring buried deep beneath the lunar surface.
In addition to the endless stream of iron pouring from bunkers and underground tunnels, and the Deffkoptas attempting to ambush the Titan Legion, there was something even larger and more devastating rumbling and clanking its way toward the battlefield.