With the mech destroyed, the orks’ morale collapsed a second time.
Caught between the defenders and the players from both sides, they couldn’t cover front and back at once.
Any ork that got in the way of another’s charge or flight got an axe to the face for the trouble.
Some fled.
Some tore into each other.
The gretchin got trampled into paste.
Once their war machine had been beaten, the orks had no path back.
They were finished quickly.
Friendly fire accounted for the largest share of their casualties, by a wide margin.
*Bang Bang Bang*
Only scattered gunshots remained on the battlefield.
The decisive factor in this fight had been Aldric.
He had faced the Deff Dread alone and brought it down, and with it, the last of the orks’ will to resist.
“Holy crap, is the commander that strong?”
“The Commander is actually terrifying.”
“We won!” The captain was breathing hard, one hand pressed against the wound at his side, but the flush of battle still burned in his face.
His gaze drifted to the man standing on top of the Deff Dread.
The man who seemed to glow.
Everyone who looked at Aldric looked at him the same way.
It was as if he were their hope.
Like he was the man they carried in their hearts.
The man the entire Imperium worshipped.
The Modeling Optimization mod was doing its work.
The all-purpose filter was drawing out, in Aldric’s appearance, the faint shadow of the figure each of them held sacred.
Personal heroism was honestly not something Aldric put much stock in.
He broke the tension with a half-joking remark.
“You are the real heroes here.
Truthfully, I’ve always thought of myself as more of a desk officer.”
He wasn’t wrong.
His true strength lay in the commander system, directing warships across the breadth of interstellar warfare.
How many enemies could one person cut down alone?
As a fleet commander, a single order could bring orbital bombardment raining down and scrub all life from a planet without him lifting a finger.
No one in the Federation’s upper ranks would ever permit their fleet commander to get dragged into boarding actions and close-quarters brawls.
Even ordinary Federation citizens would have something to say about it.
“I am a Federation Commander.
I want to know which unit you belong to.”
Federation Commander?
He didn’t know what the Federation was, but he knew the weight those two words carried.
A commander of any military was not someone a company captain could afford to treat lightly.
Marcus straightened, his expression sharpening, and snapped to attention with a crisp salute.
“Sir.
Company Captain Marcus, 33rd Company, Planetary Defence Force.
Thank you for your support.”
Aldric paused for a moment at the salute.
That was their salute?
Both arms crossed over the chest, like the spread wings of a bird in flight.
He acknowledged it with a nod.
It wasn’t the Federation’s salute, and as a fleet commander his standing within the Federation was high enough that a return gesture wasn’t expected.
Planetary Defence Force.
The word “planetary” meant the humans on this world had already made contact with interstellar civilization.
They were a spacefaring people.
There was a possibility he was still within Federation territory.
This could be a Federation branch, or an Earth Federation branch.
The Earth Federation was more likely.
Tolerating orks’ presence was exactly the kind of thing those mongrels would do.
Under Federation management, it wouldn’t just be the orks.
Anything that didn’t look human enough would have been purged outright.
But why were the humans here living in such harsh conditions?
They were still using people as basic mine labor, by the looks of it.
The Federation had miners too, but it was different.
Automated mining equipment, specialized machinery, even some modified xenos mine-slaves where needed.
Federation citizens who weren’t conscripted lived comfortably.
Any planet brought under Federation rule, so long as its people were human, enjoyed a standard of living equivalent to a monthly income in the hundreds of thousands by Earth’s measure, adjusted for purchasing power.
Even the Earth Federation doesn’t suffer such hardship.
The Federation’s actual standard of living was the highest.
The Earth Federation’s theoretical standard was the highest on paper.
At worst, the Earth Federation sent you to a labor farm.
At least those filthy creatures had standards.
“You’re injured.”
Marcus had a deep gash across his side, the kind that went straight to bone.
The blood would not stop.
The flush of combat had drained out of his face, leaving only white.
Without treatment soon, his life was at risk.
“Medic!”
At Aldric’s call, a medic came to Marcus’s side.
Marcus watched with puzzled eyes as the medic produced a syringe and pressed it into his arm.
He let out a long breath.
He stared at the medic’s composed expression, barely able to believe what he was feeling.
The pain was gone.
A painkiller?
An actual painkiller?
God-Emperor above.
If he was being honest, he had never been given a painkiller in his life.
The medic got to work on the wound.
The field surgery was quick.
A row of staples closed the muscle, a pressure bandage went over it, and coagulant followed.
The bleeding stopped.
Marcus was out of danger.
“Damn.
Now that is a real medic.
The regiment’s sawbones can go treat the orks.
That’s about their level.”
The regiment’s medics didn’t give painkillers.
Frankly, not stabbing you with something that made the pain worse was considered an act of mercy on their part.
Seeing Marcus stabilized, Aldric spoke.
“Where are we?
Does this fall under the Federation or the Earth Federation?
Is there any connection?”
“Federation?
Earth Federation?” Marcus looked genuinely lost.
He had never heard either term.
He was only a company captain, after all.
“We are located in Mine Pit Three, Garun Star Mining City, within the Imperium.”
Garun Star?
Aldric pulled up his commander access and ran a search.
No results for any planet by that name.
“The Imperium?”
“The Imperium of men!
We answer to the Imperium!” Marcus said it with complete seriousness.
Aldric went still.
That explained why he couldn’t reach the Federation.
He had been thrown into a human faction with no record in any Federation database.
The Imperium?
Or perhaps a variant that had branched off from the Federation?
The Federation’s full name was the Human Federation, but in structure it had always been imperial, autocratic and deeply isolationist.
If a section of Federation territory had been cut off and left to develop on its own, it was entirely plausible it would eventually take the shape of a human imperium.
“It seems we don’t share a chain of command.”
Marcus’s eyes narrowed.
He stepped back without thinking.
Rebels?
Or heretics?
“But we likely share the same roots.
We are both human.
Facing these bastards together, standing on the same side, that much is beyond question.”
If this planet’s civilization was human, cooperation was possible.
With their help, the energy gap for the spatial anchor could be closed quickly.
“We arrived here by accident, in the middle of a campaign against xenos.”
“Our Federation holds goodwill toward all humans.”
“Since you are facing a xenos threat, we will offer what support we can.”
“Starting with the medics.
They will see to your wounded.”
Marcus felt the tension leave his shoulders.
A force that had been fighting xenos and ended up here by accident.
That made Aldric an ally.
The power this unit had displayed was overwhelming.
Of course he had been on edge.
“I cannot thank you enough!”
The Imperium had countless subordinate factions under its banner.
Some planets had their rebel forces behead a governor one week and get conscripted into the Imperial war effort the next, fighting for the Imperium as if nothing had happened.
Simply put: everyone within the Imperium’s reach was an Imperial subject.
And as for what counted as the Imperium’s reach, any world with humans on it counted, colonies included.
As for rebels, you were only a rebels if you lost.
Win, pay your tithes, and you were the most loyal governor the Imperium had ever seen.
Under that framework, Marcus concluded that Aldric’s people were a human splinter faction from some other Imperial world.
Aldric concluded that Marcus’s people were a variant branch that had diverged from the Federation.
Marcus concluded that Aldric’s people were a variant branch of the Imperium.
Both sides reached the same handshake through entirely different reasoning.
And so the connection was made.
Aldric’s Federation ground forces were classified by Marcus as reinforcements.
Marcus’s people were classified by Aldric as poor relatives in need of Federation assistance.
“Thank you for your support.
May our alliance endure.
What can we do for you?”
Aldric laid out his request.
“We will handle the bodies.
We also need to collect energy supplies, and whatever weapons and ammunition can be salvaged.”
“The bodies are yours.
We have no energy to spare, but the salvage is yours to take.
There should be energy supplies back at the mining city, and once we return I will petition the Colonel to arrange a proper allocation for you.”
Marcus didn’t refuse.
The bodies were worthless to them, and ork weapons were too unstable to use reliably.
Fighting orks almost never yielded anything worth keeping.
The orks’ gear was crude, but the scrap could be melted down for energy, fuel, and raw materials.
“Agreed.”
“Septimus, let’s bring up ten more clones for now.
That should be enough.”
“Posting the task: transport the bodies!”
Aldric had Septimus activate ten more clones.
Ten players plus thirty clones made forty in total.
“Do you need us to help?” Marcus watched his new allies moving the bodies and figured his own people could lend a hand.
The defensive line at this outpost still had over a hundred men.
Originally two companies combined, plus several hundred miners.
Now barely a hundred remained.
Aldric shook his head.
“You have fought long enough for humanity.
Leave this to us.”
The location of the ecological command ship needed to stay out of sight for now.
Until the spatial anchor was ready, that was his base of operations.
“Now, why are the players working harder than the clones?”
It was genuinely baffling.
As players, they were throwing themselves into body disposal with more energy than the clone soldiers.
They appeared to be competing.
“Vrekk, you absolute menace, touch my corpse one more time and see what happens.”
“Drool, what do you mean your corpse?
First one to grab it, it’s theirs.”
“Bruceus , put that down right now, I killed that one!”
“The Vrekk speaks truth.
Whoever carries it, it’s theirs.”
Ten players, most of them streamers, most of them already acquainted.
Vrekk and Bruceus were both gaming content creators.
Each body brought back counted as one contribution point, equivalent to one energy unit.
Killing an ork during the mission earned an additional three points.
“Two versions in and players are still the most cost-effective labor available.”
From what Marcus had told him, the ground beneath his feet was a mining world.
The settlement ran on mine labor.
The brother and sister he had saved were miners themselves.
Many of the soldiers had started as miners too.
This planet’s cities were built underground.
The surface was brutal: radiation, contamination, and orks roaming freely.
Marcus held out a box.
“Eat something.”
It was a grey ration tin.
Stamped on the lid in plain text were four characters: Premium Starch Product.
Premium.
Starch.