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Both sides looked simultaneously at the blade leveled at their own vitals, then wordlessly lowered their weapons.
“You’re stronger than I expected, Lorgar.” Guilliman sheathed the blade.
“Likewise.” Lorgar put away his weapon.
They looked at each other and smiled.
“I hope we’ll have the chance to fight side by side again, Lorgar.” “We will — after the Great Crusade is over.” Lorgar smiled as he answered.
They exchanged a few more words, and then Lorgar watched Guilliman leave.
……………
83rd Expeditionary Fleet Commander: Chapter Master of the Word Bearers Legion 2nd Chapter, Krass Noda.
Chapter Master Krass stood on the bridge of the fleet flagship Glorious Crusade.
Their expedition was pushing in the exact opposite direction from the Primarch’s, and it was at this moment that word reached them of the victory Lorgar had won in his first campaign.
“My Lord of the Legion…” Krass was barely able to contain the excitement.
As a Gene-son, there was nothing more joyful than witnessing one’s own Gene-father grow stronger.
“My lord, we’ve received a distress call.
A greenskin Ork fleet has invaded Dawn III.” The Orks are the most comfortable-living race in the entire Warhammer setting, and the reason is simple enough.
They don’t care about death.
They don’t care about the future, or destiny, or the meaning of their existence, why waste a thought on any of that?
Just do it.
They laugh their way across the vast sea of stars, beating everything they run into.
To the Orks, all of it is just a violent game.
Unfortunately for everyone else, they are the only race that sees the universe that way.
So even though Orks often play the comic-relief role in the grand narrative, from the perspective of humanity or any other race, they remain a genuinely terrifying force.
Orks are also the most evolutionarily successful species in the entire galaxy.
They’ve never received any systematic education or training, yet they seem to possess an innate mastery of technology across multiple fields.
They can cobble together scrap and produce everything from basic firearms to voidcraft, and what they build works surprisingly well.
This can be explained by the Orks’ origins.
A very, very long time ago, the Old Ones created a warrior race called the Krork — the ancestors of the Orks — and pre-encoded vast amounts of technological knowledge and learning modules directly into their genes.
The hope was that this species born for war would help them win the War in Heaven.
But before the control systems could be installed, the Old Ones went extinct.
In other words, the Old Ones had built an intelligent war engine capable of fighting any enemy, at any technological level, at any time and place, and never got around to fitting it with an off switch.
The rampaging Krork went to war against the Aeldari Empire at the height of its power and posed a grave threat to it.
To this day, the last surviving Krork in the entire galaxy is sealed away in the museum of Necron Overlord Trazyn the Infinite.
It stands over twelve meters tall, clad in power armour more advanced than anything an Astartes wears.
And now, in the 30th Millennium, one of the Imperium’s greatest enemies is the Ork Empire of Ullanor.
This was one such reminder of that fact, a hive world, ambushed by an Ork fleet.
It had started when Dawn III was struck by a meteor shower.
For an ordinary Imperial hive world, that would have been nothing more than a mundane natural disaster.
What the planet’s defenders did not know was that the meteor shower was a disguise.
A fleet of Orks numbering in the millions had used the cover of the meteors to arrive with staggering speed.
Within hours, the Imperial star fortress in orbit was overrun.
Vast numbers of Orks came crashing down on the planet’s surface like falling meteors themselves.
The Imperial forces on the ground had no choice but to mount a desperate resistance behind the hive walls.
Facing a greenskin tide numbering close to ten million strong, they had no capacity to counterattack.
They hunkered down inside the hive and held on.
“The 4th Chapter requests this mission.
We will complete the engagement within 100 Terran days.” The speaker was Alan Corrin, Chapter Master of the 4th Chapter, stepping forward to take the reinforcement assignment voluntarily.
“May the Emperor’s light guide you, Chapter Master Corrin.” Krass offered a salute.
……………
“They’re coming!
They’re coming!” Countless Orks surged like a tide toward the Hive Forest of Dawn III.
The Imperial Army troops holding the hive shouted themselves raw.
An endless torrent of Orks howled.
Cannons cobbled together from scrap were being hauled to the front lines in a relentless stream, and shells fashioned from meteorite fragments, tank wreckage, building rubble, and even civilian corpses hammered without pause against the hive’s void shields.
At this point in history, the mortal forces had not yet been named the Astra Militarum.
Their name then was the Imperial Army.
The Imperial Army, also called the Imperial Auxilia, was the single largest military force maintained by the early Imperium of Man.
It existed to provide sufficient manpower to the Astartes Legions during the early stages of the Great Crusade.
Its duties included but were not limited to colonial defence, siege warfare, and large-scale invasion operations.
During the Great Crusade, the Imperial Fleet was a subordinate branch of the Imperial Army and fell under its jurisdiction.
Both were simultaneously subject to direct command from the Astartes command structure.
Among the Imperial Army’s elite formations, the Solar Auxilia were particularly renowned.
Even at the conclusion of the Great Crusade, the Solar Auxilia still accounted for twenty to twenty-five percent of the entire Auxilia corps.
In addition, the Imperial Army also maintained a force known as the Imperial Militia.
The concept of the Imperial Army did not begin with the formal founding of the Imperium.
In fact, as far back as the Age of Strife on Terra, certain mortal forces had been operating with the Emperor of Mankind’s tacit approval, serving in that capacity right up until the conclusion of the Unification Wars.
The formations that survived that period were known as the Old Hundred, and in the very earliest stages of the Great Crusade they formed the core of humanity’s armed strength.
When the Great Crusade formally got underway and the Emperor of Mankind departed Terra, an armed force was needed to protect the populations of conquered worlds and to deal with internal rebellions and external invasions alike.
The same role the Planetary Defence Forces would fill in the 41st Millennium.
That was the original purpose and mandate of the Imperial Army.
But as the Great Crusade advanced rapidly, they too stepped out into the void as a fully-fledged fighting force.
Now, in the gun emplacements of the Hive Forest atop the hive walls, the Imperial Army crews manning the Heavy Laser Cannons held their ground without yielding.
Red laser beams lanced downward from the emplacements.
More than a dozen Orks that had tried to assault the mortal soldiers on the walls were reduced to clouds of bloody mist.
The Orks surged on like a tide that knew no ebb.
Not one of the Imperial Army troops stepped back.
Not only because of their loyalty to the Emperor of Mankind.
But because of the weight of what stood behind them, their families, their homes.
They had nowhere left to retreat to.
During the Great Crusade, most eyes were fixed on the glorious battle honours of the Astartes Legions.
Very few ever knew the battle record of the Imperial Army, equally one of the cornerstones of the Imperium.
………………
Dawn III Hive Forest This megacity had once stood as a symbol of human glory.
Now it had become a furnace of steel and blood.
The outer face of its soaring walls was buried under crude Ork graffiti and the countless impact scars of a thousand different projectiles.
On the inner face stood the Imperial Army’s last line of defence, the final refuge for tens of millions of souls, and the grave where Colonel Theodore Wright and the 894th Infantry Regiment were destined to fight to the last.
The air across the entire planet had turned scorching and foul.
Explosions erupted everywhere without pause.
Ozone, gunpowder smoke, molten metal, the charred stench of seared flesh, and a nauseating savage body odour unique to the greenskins, all of it hung thick in the air.
And beneath it all, the howl of that boundless green tide rolling beyond the walls.
A sound with no visible end.
Countless Ork Boyz, Stormboyz, and even larger war machines hurled themselves against the hive’s massive alloy gates and towering walls with every weapon they could find or build.
“Waaagh!” That battle cry hit like something physical, again and again, battering the eardrums and nerves of every defender on the walls.
The shriek of bolters.
The thunderous boom of heavy bolters.
The heavy, rhythmic staccato of autocannons.
The sharp hissing crack of Lasgun arrays firing in massed volleys.
The deep concussive roar of the artillery batteries behind the walls trying to lay down suppressive fire.
Every sound wove together into a symphony of destruction.
Any individual cry drowned in it utterly.
“The enemy’s fire is too heavy!
Damn it!
Vox-operator!
Tell the artillery observers in the rear to correct their trajectory!
Hit those clusters of green filth!
Stop wasting shells chewing on those iron hulks — minimal effect, do you hear me?
Almost useless!” The officer lunged up from behind the reinforced merlon.
The prominent colonel’s insignia on the power armour shoulder guard immediately drew a dense burst of crude solid-shot fire, and merlon fragments sprayed in all directions.
A quick duck back.
Bloodshot eyes locked onto the soldier beside him clutching the large vox-set.
Colonel Wright belonged to the Imperial Army, and at this moment was wearing the standard Imperial Army Legion officer’s power armour.
The armour was covered in battle-worn scratches and dents.
The original dark green paintwork had been largely buried under gunsmoke and grime.
Only the rank insignia and the badge of the 894th Infantry Regiment — a roaring iron bear standing atop a shattered planet, had been carefully polished and remained clearly visible.
The helmet was tucked under one arm, exposing a weathered, angular face.
Sweat and filth converged at the chin, dripped onto the chest plate, and were evaporated almost instantly by the heat.
The command post was situated in a reinforced bunker behind a critical section of the wall, a relatively clear vantage point that allowed coverage of the defensive lines on both flanks.
Through the great observation windows and the hololithic tactical table, the hellish spectacle of the battlefield lay in plain view.
Outside the hive, across the ruins of what had once been a thriving city and across the open ground, the greenskin host stretched to the horizon.
Their equipment was chaotic, their numbers staggering.
Ork Boyz brandishing crude cleavers and firing solid-shot weapons with no accuracy but tremendous stopping power surged forward in a green tide, wave after wave.
Further back, abnormally large Ork Nobz and Warbosses equipped with oversized heavy weaponry pounded the walls with massive guns and rocket launchers.
Among them, armoured vehicles and walking walkers crudely modified by Big Meks ground forward, belching tongues of fire and filling the air with grating noise.
They had no discipline.
But they had near-inexhaustible brute strength and a fanatical enthusiasm for war, and by sheer primal destructive will alone they formed a terrifying assault capable of swallowing everything in its path.
On the hive walls, the soldiers of the Imperial Army held against it with astonishing courage and discipline.
The soldiers of the 894th Infantry Regiment wore standard-issue Carapace Armour, organized in squads, and formed tight firing lines under the hoarse, screaming orders of their Sergeants.
Each squad typically consisted of ten warriors and one Sergeant.
The Sergeant was the backbone of the unit, usually equipped with superior weapons, perhaps a Melta Gun or Plasma Gun, along with a Power Weapon or Bolt Pistol as a mark of authority.
They held the line with experience and sheer force of will, allocating fire, suppressing the most threatening targets, and refusing to break.
➤ Next: Blood Battle at the Hive City