Herald of the Stars: Chapter Sixty-Nine (Patreon)

Many thanks to jacob hixson, Nathan Helkaa, Age Rich, bob johnson, Mathew Sidwell, Connor Stephen, and Charles handgis for purchasing arms and armour to repel the xeno threat of the week. Your support is greatly valued by the Magos.

Distant Sun flips and decelerates, taking six orbits over nine hours as it aligns with the shipyard. During this time Distant Sun engages with Solid Slug four times, including two more D-POT sorties.

Our attacks defang Solid Slug entirely, wrecking their hangar, and removing their engines. Without the control of their main thrusters, their velocity slings them out of Marwolv’s orbit and towards the gas giant. If they can’t alter their trajectory within the next eight days, I doubt we will see them again.

Distant Sun takes one bad hit during this time from Green Tick and one of our thrusters is wrecked, cutting our thrust capacity by fourteen percent for the remainder of the engagement.

Meanwhile, Green Tick’s crew recovers from its initial collision with the shipyard and Iron Crane. They send their first expeditions into the shipyard and Iron Crane but don’t get far as they do not discover any intact corridors into either locations as the collision crushed them all.

Ninety minutes into Distant Sun’s deceleration, the Green Tick orks change their tactics and try a new assault from the exterior hull, rather than cut new passageways. The yard only has two Solar Corps companies, each three hundred and thirty-six strong, and they will not be enough to repel the assault.

Tech-adepts and tech-priests can be incredibly destructive, even without dedicated weapons, but I don’t want to throw my highly trained workers into the grind, especially as most of them are yet to craft their own dragonscale power armour.

That leaves the construction servitors, who are only armed with machine tools, another last resort option, or dispatching heralds from Distant Sun.

I put Commander Muire on the job, who deploys two more companies in the first wave of reinforcements and joins up with the original garrison in deploying MOA barricades and rapid-curing ferrocrete fortifications around the seven ingress points to the yard and the other thirteen on the Iron Crane, all while under assault.

This won’t be anywhere near enough and I assign Thorfinn to gather arms for ten thousand construction servitors for a reserve force and deploy half of my kataphrons and their tech-adept controllers, a total force of five hundred and twenty-five individuals.

It will take some time to assemble the weapons and kataphrons and I can do nothing but observe the initial clashes across the tangled surface of these three titanic constructions.

Approximately five hundred orks break through in four places before more companies can be transported over. They are held back by thick bulkheads, but they have a lot of explosives and delight in using them. The orks slowly cut into the Iron Crane, where they have one breach, and the yard, where they have three.

One group of thirty orks, including two nobz in ‘eavy armour, break into a section of micro-factories on the Iron Crane through an unused material feed and start massacring construction servitors.

The micro-factories are stacked high and the whole area is stuffed with pipes and pallets, making it challenging for the supervisors to focus their numbers on the orks, who relish the close combat. They destroy two hundred and nine of construction servitors, as well as murder seventeen tech adepts and one tech-priest before the orks are all cut down.

The carnage unsettles me and I feel foolish for prioritising production capacity to finish the Iron Crane faster, rather than internal defences, armouries, and security drills.

Of the remaining groups, they are eventually taken out by tech-adepts with improvised explosives, mechanical traps, and mass quantities of industrial solvents before they can do more than destroy doors. A second assault on these positions will be challenging to repel at this time.

The senior tech-priests are happy to direct the carnage against the orks and continue to design and deploy traps at every possible ingress point and anywhere they believe the orks might tunnel through. If we can keep them away for long enough, the orks advantage should be shaved away.

Five hours into our deceleration, First Officer Eire Lobhdain is discharged from the medicae deck and takes over my command. She does not connect to the ship again. Instead, two tech-adepts join her, accessing the noosphere for additional details when she requests them, but otherwise Eire is restricted to Aruna’s summaries on the pict-viewers hanging in front of the command throne.

It isn’t ideal as it takes much longer to understand the data Eire needs to make decisions and she has a much weaker grasp of what the crew is doing. Fortunately our crew is loyal, if shaken, and the security risk is minimal.

With Eire in command of Distant Sun, I ask her to prepare a summary of our forces and assemble my forces to take the fight to the orks.

Kataphrons, weapons, and four more companies are deployed during hour six, reducing the forces on Distant Sun to eight companies. I observe the action while I organise personnel for a counter-assault.

With the kataphrons blasting away, the heralds are given enough space and time to rebuild their haphazard defences, resupply, and re-organise. Such is the kataphron’s ferocity, the ork assault stalls and they pull back, organising themselves for a new push.

I assign four of the remaining eight companies to my counter force along with the remaining five-hundred kataphrons and their twenty-five supporting tech-adepts.

While I will be the commander, I will still be under Commander Muire’s direction, if not direct orders, as I always am during Stellar Corps actions. I don’t like to override her unless I absolutely have to and rarely act without consulting her first.

These will be our last reinforcements as Thorfinn objected to removing more with the tau refugees on board. Our circumstances will have to get much worse on Marwolv or the shipyard before my other officers or myself are willing to argue otherwise.

Distant Sun finally synchronises with the yard ten kilometres away. My forces retreat from their positions while the Distant Sun’s CWIS turrets fire on the orc positions. With the beating our available class two D-POTs have taken, the four new companies are split between two class twos and twelve class ones, who advance with two wings of escorts towards the ork rok.

I take the thunderhawk in at the rear of the formation and all of us steer clear of Distant Sun’s main guns.

Distant Sun fires a full broadside. Fortunately Green Tick’s shields are offline or non-existent and Distant Sun obliterates half of Green Tick’s main gunz with the macro-cannons and cuts a path into the vessel with the lances near the Green Tick’s main thrusters.

With the way clear, the D-POTs land three hundred metres, prowards from the lance strike, in a circle. Their secondary weapons sway back and forth as they pick off any orks who stick their heads up.

We are in a hurry and Distant Sun turns, ready for tow cables to be deployed. There won’t be time for a second salvo, but it is unlikely Green Tick’s remaining gunz will be able to target the light cruiser.

I strategize with Commander Muire and Officer Lobhdain as I disembark and we agree to send the D-POTs after the remaining gunz once we finish deploying to the rok.

With the main barrage over, the first and second waves of heralds return to their positions.

Fifteen minutes later, sixteen tow cables are launched at the shipyard and drill into the hollow asteroid.

Three companies and half the kataphrons secure the anchor points. One company guards the lance strike borehole into Green Tick and I, with two hundred and fifty kataphrons and ten tech-adepts advance into Green Tick with as many explosives as we can carry.

I get little support for my actions as it is a needless risk for me to take, but I’m not about to tell my crew I have to kill sentient beings for power and this is a great excuse to butchers as many orks as possible while poking the beehive enough the orks will be too busy to target the tow anchors, or cut into Iron Crane and the shipyard.

Mr Cygnus is the most vocal objector, insisting it accompanies us down the fifteen metre hole. There is enough clearance for it, barely, but I can’t permit it as just because the machine is a flying tank, doesn’t mean I should let it take hits so easily. The whole point of a tank is that its mobile armour, not a fixed weapons platform.

The machine-spirit relents when I ask it to hover above the hole and give us covering fire. I think the idea of assaulting an ork vessel without killing at least a hundred orks offends it deeply, as if it is not performing one its prime directives. It’s always hard to tell with Mr Cygnus though as it uses dances, honks, and images to convey its thoughts.

As the anchor and rear guard companies move into position, they come under fire. The D-POTs are retasked and distract the orks with an attack run, forcing the orks back into their holes.

The D-POTs complete another pass then move onto the main gunz. With the air clear, the few rear CWIS turrets on Distant Sun resume covering fire, peppering the orks and discouraging their advance.

After ten minutes of this, the orks get fed up and muster a large assault across Green Tick’s surface, focusing on getting into Iron Crane. Our delaying actions, however, were effective and all companies are in position.

As we descend into Green Tick, the ork advance is stalled by withering fire. The lasguns aren’t particularly effective as the orks can withstand the cauterising wounds unless they’re hit somewhere sensitive or crippling, like a limb or eye. Even headshots don’t always put them down.

Supporting heavy fire from heavy bolters and lascannons is much more effective, cutting orks off at the knees or burning great holes in their tough bodies and heavy spacesuits.

The heavy weapon teams, with their plasma guns, grenade launchers, join in and almost turn them back, but it isn’t until the flamers hit that the ork assault breaks.

The moment the flames cut off, dozens of gretchin, two short to hit with the standard volleys, pour towards the lines causing significant chaos and minor casualties, but there aren’t enough orks left to follow up on our disrupted defences.

Three of the gretchin are in odd costumes, including fancy hats. I have an excellent idea of who’s crew they belong to.

With kataphrons leading the way, and Mr Cygnus hovering above, our descent is unopposed. Gravity is low at zero point two gravities imparted by the yard’s decaying orbit.

Iron Crane is yet to successfully ignite its engines.

The bore hole is still hot. Metal and rock drip slowly through the vacuum, slowly radiating heat. While hazardous, our armour is up to the task, though I am a little concerned the MOA, carapace based, void armour the tech-adepts are wearing is at risk of a breach if they are pinned against any of the hazards.

We fall into the vessel passing twisted corridors and cavernous rooms filled with dead orks and sparking machinery. Four hundred and thirty metres in, we reach the end of the hole, a squig pen stuffed full organic, chemical slurry burning fiercely, despite the near vacuum.

Five kataphrons are immediately set upon by the surviving members of the herd who have endured the harsh environment where the orks did not. Twenty-six squigs are cut down before they can cause more than superficial damage.

“E-SIM, please tell me the five largest energy signatures on Green Tick, their directions, and distance.”

++There is one source three hundred and seventy metres below us and four sources prowward, two in the keel and two in the spine. These are two hundred and twenty metres, six hundred and fifty metres, eight hundred and ten metres and one thousand one hundred metres. All measurements are approximate and actual travel distance, given the labyrinthine construction is entirely unknown.++

“Not ideal, not impossible either, neither do we have to hit something important, I just want to. We’re just here to distract them and I don’t want to travel too far from the exit. How about large cavities filled with liquids?”

++There is one two hundred metres from you, sternward on the starboard side. It might be reachable if you travel back up the bore hole. A second is another eighty metres from here, along the centre line in Q4, our current quarter.++

“Perfect. Thanks E-SIM. We’ll try the second one you listed first, then go for the one near the exit if we can, then we’ll leave. I know I need kills, but I don’t want to be on the other end of it either. There’s grasping an opportunity and then there’s wallowing in it. I’ve no intention of doing the latter.”

++Acknowledged Aldrich. Would you like me to pass on the information to Commander Muire and First Officer Lobhdain?++

“Please do. I will inform the tech-adepts of our path. This will likely be our last possible communication until we return to the borehole.”

I do so, then double check all the tech-adepts have a functioning teleporter beacon. They do and they direct the kataphrons down our best guess route.

We follow in the centre of the formation, a rather strung out attempt at cohesion as the corridors are narrow, and reach the next room. The doors open before we get there and small, naked orcs charge towards us.

I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I have a pretty good idea.

Waaagh!