Preparing for the upcoming military campaign, where it was required to deal with representatives of one of the most widespread xenos species in the galaxy, I took care in advance to gather as much information as possible about such an unpleasant opponent, who now poses perhaps the main danger to all of humanity.
The Orks are an ancient enemy with whom we still haven’t managed to settle the score.
No one knows exactly when or where the first green-skinned barbarians appeared, and any reports obtained by humans claimed that they had simply always existed.
Even the most distant and ancient excavations showed pictures of huge, tusked beasts devouring children alive and amusing themselves with them in various ways.
And it didn’t matter whether they were turning them into their mutilated slave-toys or using them for horrifying experiments like swapping limbs, gouging out different areas of the brain to see how “amusingly” humans would behave, or the simplest genocide of entire nations — Orks know no morality, and only endless violence with the desire to drive the war forward by any means guides these creatures.
So far, the best theory was that the Orks are some form of sentient biological weapon or a failed experiment released into the wild by some mad scientists.
By nature, they are pure barbarian conquerors, driven by an endless desire to kill and believing that it is the strong who should rule the galaxy.
Their body, like mushrooms, can grow incredibly fast from spores released by other greenskins, which is why a single Ork can soon lead to the appearance of tens of thousands of his brethren, who also possessed genetic memories of how to wage war and how to create dangerous weapons from actual scrap.
In fact, a large biological analogue of “Grey Goo,” monsters capable of creating their own kind exponentially.
Their bodies and physical capabilities are also at the peak of what is physically permissible, allowing them to rival even the Astartes in their best power armor.
However, at the same time, they have fundamentally no limits on growth, which is why there is information about the existence of Orks three, four, or even five meters tall.
The so-called “Warbosses,” leading their horde for eternal war.
They possess incredible regeneration, allowing even a hacked-up pile of meat to fight again as soon as it is sewn together.
Their skin is impenetrable to small calibers, and their bodies can survive almost any disease or poison as if they never existed.
However, the most disgusting quality of these creatures is their natural connection to the warp.
All Orks have a semblance of a hive mind and a connection to a collective unconscious called the “Waaagh!”, which turns scattered armies and fleets into a multi-million-strong army led by the strongest and most skilled conqueror.
Instead of stupid savages and weak shamans, there appear organized warriors working together, as well as sorcerers capable of interfering with communications, teleporting hundreds of xenos, and simply destroying an entire army leadership with one large ritual.
And I haven’t even begun to go into the details of their bizarre technology, working on the collective faith of the Orks and their shared psyker abilities combined into something terrifying.
Armed asteroids, mass teleports, or mad genetic experiments — even in this regard, the Orks are impossibly diverse.
One only has to get acquainted with even this little, as thoughts immediately arise — how?
How can one even defeat someone like this, who has both numerical and qualitative superiority?
The main weakness of the Orks is their limited psychology and the weak mind of most representatives of their species.
Of course, they have quite smart scientists and leaders, but most greenskins are complete cretins who would rather rush at an enemy with a blade than decide to pick up a weapon and fire it.
But the thought of running away will appear in their heads only when most of their people die under the enemy’s fire.
And only because the cries of dying people amuse them, and blood seems like a quite tasty liquid, they may risk breaking through in any case.
Fighting them, it is necessary to forget about mercy ourselves, and burn out this infection to the last.
If you show even a drop of carelessness and let at least one spore remain, the world will have to be reconquered after a couple of decades.
And because of all this, you have to either work with surgical precision or not spare our stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
In the system where we arrived, there are six planets, but only on two of them is there life and civilization.
Orks, of course, can exist without any problems both in an icy wasteland without air and in a hellishly hot abyss, but even they won’t like it there, which is why they rarely stay on these worlds for long.
Making Orks sit still while a war is going on nearby is a difficult task even for the most powerful Warbosses, whom, fortunately, we are not dealing with now.
This is clear at least because millions of greenskin ships are not flying towards us.
And in that case, not I, but my father with a couple of my brothers would be moving here, for sure.
But now it’s my time to show myself, and let it not be a beautiful victory for a knight in white armor, but a total war with almost no restrictions, however, the Orks must be disposed of.
And so it’s time not only to test my nanites for the first time in a mass war of planetary proportions, but also a bunch of other technologies and ideas. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
In any case, beasts that know no mercy do not deserve it.
.
.
.
Li Wai gripped his lasgun, praying to all the gods he knew that on this day they would have mercy and save him.
A young man in his prime, only recently recruited from his home world and dressed in military uniform, he quickly looked out of the trench, trying to hold back his shaking.
And no one judged him now — everyone nearby understood that they had less than a few minutes to live, which was why there was no time for lectures or jokes.
How does an ordinary soldier feel when he sees a green wave of flesh and steel rushing at their trenches?
Obviously, he is afraid of death.
Fast or agonizingly long — it doesn’t matter, because the feeling is the same.
They don’t have a chance, everyone knows it and admits it, but no one is going to give up.
Of course, they have lasguns in their hands, and the enemy has only blunt blades and primitive flamethrowers with shotguns, but who cares when it comes to Orks?
They are capable of killing Astartes with these things, so what can be said about ordinary people?
And even the greenskins had something long-range, like a rifle whose bullet had just torn through their officer’s chest, but there were few such examples.
Blood flooded the face of the stricken guy, and a very nasty taste appeared in his mouth, which only by a miracle did not cause the soldier to let his breakfast out “into the fresh air.”
The Imperial Army had machine guns and rocket launchers, but their distance was also primitively small.
Although it would be enough to turn them all into a pile of mincemeat, that would still be a pleasant end.
Wai had heard rumors about those abandoned by the gods whom the Orks caught alive.
And there was nothing good in those stories.
Unable to stand it, Li closed his eyes and tried to lower his head to the side, but their roar continued to drive him crazy, as did the noticeable vibration from the movement of hundreds of thousands of feet.
And after all, behind the horde, their vehicles like mad machines or giant pot-bellied robots called Gargants and controlled by a team of greenskins from the inside were definitely supposed to move.
Only behind such a horde, even such machines were lost from sight.
Wai squeezed his whole body, trying to close himself in and not pay attention to the cruel world around him, which was why he didn’t immediately make out the cries of the xenos, who had changed their tone.
They no longer wanted to tear the humans apart and taste their skulls, instead stopping and beginning to scream furiously in the other direction.
And only after opening his eyes did he understand why.
The fact is that the horde was now directing its weapons upwards and trying to hit some invisible object that at the same time managed to strike them.
And not with simple shells, but with real balls of flame, flashing on the surface and causing entire oceans of fire.
Orks, of course, were a fairly tough species, but their eyes were also a weak spot, as was the head with the brain.
And therefore, high enough temperatures can deal even with Orks once and for all.
However, if it were all that simple, then Orks would not be a threat to trillions of souls.
Even considering that the charges were somehow sent by objects invisible to the naked eye, while clearly flying at a height judging by the movement of the projectiles, the Ork shamans miraculously hit them.
They emitted green radiation and whole myriads of lightning bolts around them, killing even their brethren, but some charges successfully hit the Imperium’s equipment as well.
One of these things simply flashed in a white flash, after which some gray box fell to the ground, causing the xenos to laugh.
However, they did not laugh for long.
Wai himself did not understand what was happening at first and why they were all shooting at the point where the machine fell, but after a few minutes everything became clearer — gray slime, devouring everything around, spread in all directions, absolutely not sparing the greenskins.
Be it steel blades, grenade launchers, their cannons, or simply the flesh of Orks screaming in pain — the silvery slime devoured everything around. This chapter was copied from novelping(.)com without permission.
Silver liquid covered the Orks, after which their silhouettes quickly disintegrated into pieces.
And even a giant barrel a dozen meters tall, which became visible after the rapid death of the eaten Orks, was consumed by this slime, while only managing to fall and crush several dozen more xenos.
The greenskins clearly did not understand what was happening, which was why they simply stuck to their usual tactics of destroying everything and everyone, only this brought absolutely no benefit now.
The only hope remained the greenskin shamans, but they also behaved surprisingly strangely — screaming in terror so loudly that even in the trenches the wild speech of the xenos was audible.
Wai saw such a thing for the first time in his life, and, apparently, the Orks were also surprised by the fact that they could even experience fear.
Since after the death of half of their army, they suddenly forgot about their thirst for war and began to run in different directions.
Not everyone managed to, and some died from the continued bombardment from the heavens and attacks from their trench, but a third still survived.
In any case, this is a fantastic victory that saved them from a horrifying fate.
True, they themselves soon had to retreat when the slime reached them and even managed to consume several unlucky ones, but Li didn’t care about them at all — the gods heard him, and he survived.
Only this mattered.
.
.
.
Sitting in my chair and sorting through the results of our first battle, I analyzed the fight and took into account what needed to be corrected and what should be finally removed.
On the edge of perception was also a tactical map with all the hotbeds of confrontation, where my drones and people noticed a concentration of Ork forces.
In each of these zones, a new means of fighting xenos will be tried, after which I will compare the efficiency and choose the most effective means.
However, there were already two favorites.
Napalm in any form and with any method of application cannot be called a humane weapon, but our war was outside such categories.
And its first use with the help of stealth drones equipped with my personal cloaking technology showed themselves excellently — the Orks do not have a developed system of sensors and air defense, which is why such attacks from the air for many of them turned out to be fatal.
Both for them and for their spores.
The militarized use of nanites also showed itself perfectly.
Of course, so far it hasn’t been possible to get rid of the drawback that it was required to send well-protected fusion reactors with a batch of machines to supply them with energy, but as long as the enemies didn’t know about it, there were no problems.
The nanites still have orders to bury the reactor as deep into the ground as possible, surrounding it with meters of metal, so only a serious bombardment could damage it.
And even if the nuclear reactor—equipped with several of my modifications—were damaged, the enemies would quickly become nothing but scorched shadows after a colossal explosion; the idea of our technologies falling into enemy hands was that unacceptable.
The third and most promising specimen was my first version of a psychic energy blocker, created by me during the last month of travel.
So far, I have only managed to create the most primitive Blackstone resonator, instilling animalistic fear in all psykers within a certain radius, but since even the Ork shamans fled in terror, the effect is quite good.
And there will be even more “test subjects” from the xenos race to help me further improve this weapon.
Because immediately after the battle, my people took samples of Ork spores, which will also go toward my experiments.
The war was only beginning, and whether on the ground or in the void of space, victory will definitely be on our side.
* As you might guess, in this fic, Orks will be presented not as typical football fans and jokers from memes, but as some of the most cruel and bloodthirsty maniacs the galaxy has ever seen.
Not only are they rarely shown this way in fics, but it is especially true for the era of the Great Crusade, when they—not Chaos—were the primary threat in the galaxy.
I’m not sure how logical this number is rather than a blunt exaggeration by authors, but Ghazghkull’s first armada that attacked Armageddon consisted of five million ships.
Honestly, I can’t even visualize such numbers, nor do I know the exact size of these Ork ships, but it still seems excessive.