The deployment of several thousand personnel was executed with practiced speed under the barked commands of Company officers and the watchful gaze of the Commissars.
This cruiser, primarily tasked with the transport of Ultramarines, was never intended for heavy ground assault; its armory lacked the heavy materiel of a dedicated frontline carrier. Consequently, the mortal soldiers currently disembarking were little more than Imperial Navy armsmen pressed into service, masquerading as the Astra Militarum. Their defensive kits and offensive engines were embarrassingly sparse, with the only heavy assets available being a handful of Taurus Venators.
The sole tactical advantage lay in the total obliteration of the Ork encampment's cover. Provided they navigated the cyclopean craters hollowed out by the macro-cannons, the path was clear to the war-factory, which now shimmered with a molten, warped sheen.
None of the transport craft or Thunderhawks returned to the void once their boots hit the ground. They hovered or secured landing zones, waiting. The moment the ground forces secured the war-factory, the Tech-Priests embedded within the ranks would begin an immediate harvest of raw materials. To these disciples of the Machine God, simply finding enough scrap to patch the lower hull and restore the Geller Field to functional status would constitute a completed mission.
Forming disciplined ranks behind the Taurus Venators, the Ultramarines began their push. The naval armsmen followed cautiously in their wake; it had been a long time since many of them had fought in such a vast, open killing field. Guided by standard tactical protocols, the advance was orderly, save for the occasional unlucky soul who lost their footing in the shifting, superheated soil of a bombardment crater and vanished into the steam.
The Taurus Venators proved their worth. With the shockwaves having leveled most obstacles, the vehicles sped forward with predatory grace. The slagged remains of the metal perimeter walls, though still radiating blistering heat, offered little resistance as the vehicles plunged through the molten gaps.
Pintle-mounted grenade launchers spat a rhythmic cadence of death, scattering the surviving Orks into bloody mist. The Taurus drivers, caught in the adrenaline of the charge, utilized their superior handling to weave through the debris in a series of bone-jarring maneuvers. Whether the mortal passengers in the rear compartments could stomach such erratic driving was of no concern to the pilots in their state of battle-high.
Trailing the armor, the Ultramarines plunged into a grueling engagement. Though a hundred Astartes had made planetfall, they were beset by thousands of greenskins. These hulking xenos sprayed crude ammunition with reckless abandon; when their magazines ran dry, they charged with rusted choppas or used their heavy rifles as clubs, howling their primitive war cries.
While a common Ork was no match for an Adeptus Astartes, this was no mere settlement—it was a war-factory.
The facility's towering smokestacks had been fractured by the orbital strike, leaving the exterior a jagged ruin of twisted iron. Yet, the black heart of the factory still beat. Furnaces roared, pistons slammed, and the Big Meks and Gretchin within remained frantically industrious.
As the greenskin casualties outside mounted into the thousands, a hastily assembled Killa Kan lurched into the breach of a collapsed workshop. A particularly "lucky" Gretchin had been hard-wired into the pilot's seat. Within seconds, a second followed, then a third, and a fourth.
A solitary Gretchin in a Killa Kan is a nuisance; however, the cowardly but pack-oriented nature of the Grots means that when they have "krumper" company, they become insufferably bold. Driven by the resentment of their low status, the Grots entombed within these iron cans were particularly spiteful and sadistic.
As the four Killa Kans stumbled out of the factory, their first act was to snap their massive power shears, bisecting several of their own Ork Shoota Boyz who were standing in their way. These walkers were nightmares of jury-rigged engineering—sporting power shears, massive klaws, and an assortment of "burnas" and "kustom mega-sluggas." They looked like oversized tin cans grafted onto mechanical legs, their chassis encrusted with jagged scrap, yet their lethality was undeniable.
One Taurus Venator, attempting a high-speed strafing run, was suddenly converted into an "open-top" variant by a single swipe of a power shear. The spectacle served as a grim lesson for the other drivers: they were piloting Tauruses, not Leman Russ Battle Tanks. Abandoning their reckless solo charges, the drivers fell back to their intended roles, transporting infantry to the front and providing disciplined fire support during disembarkation.
The Ultramarines quickly moved to silence the rampaging walkers. A Multi-melta provided a swift, absolute solution. These ramshackle machines fared no better against plasma fire; three well-placed plasma bolts or a single melta blast turned the walkers into volatile bombs.
Ork "tek" was as impressive as it was terrifying, not just in theory, but in its physical manifestation. When a Kan "popped," it became a colossal fragmentation mine. The explosion didn't just liquefy the Grot pilot; it sent shards of jagged metal screaming through the air, shredding any nearby Orks and pulping any unfortunate soul caught in the radius.
As the greenskin numbers dwindled and more mortal reinforcements arrived to hold the perimeter, the Ultramarines began their breach of the war-factory interior. They had no intention of letting the Big Meks inside finish whatever "big project" they were undoubtedly cobbling together.
Axion moved with the breach team. His objective was distinct: he wanted to witness the xenos' mechanical methodology firsthand. Observing the haphazard construction and the bizarre, salvaged machinery, he was plagued by a singular question: How can these brutes manipulate the remnants of lost technologies?
As the Astartes swept through the industrial gloom, the factory's Gretchin and Big Meks launched their counter-ambush. Heavy flamers, "big shootas" with the stopping power of heavy bolters, and "supa-shootas" that traded accuracy for an ocean of lead filled the air. Each weapon forced the Astartes to advance with calculated aggression, especially after a stray, high-caliber round took the leg off one of their battle-brothers.
The Boyz who rose to the rank of Mek were not without a cruel, low intelligence. To them, these "blue cans" were a formidable threat. Their logic was simple: We can't krum 'em head-on.
Greenskin cunning manifested in the most treacherous ways. They handed off erratic, unstable weapons to the Gretchin, using the smaller creatures as bait to lure the Ultramarines into pre-set kill zones. Overjoyed to finally hold weapons that symbolized "power," the Grots rushed forward with manic glee, only to find their "kustom" guns disintegrating into scrap under the relentless return fire of Imperial bolters.
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