Herald of the Stars: Chapter Eighty-Seven (Patreon)

A huge thanks to Merrybean, Kyung Hyun, Togashi, Filip Passeri, Igors Zvaigzne, NONAME 0, and John curtin for sponsoring Herald of the Stars. Many orks will be sacrificed in your name today.

Beneath the thunderous shadow of furious clouds looms a grand, lumbering tooth, three hundred metres tall and sixty metres wide. A crackling energy field projects from its point in a large, oval bubble two kilometres long and five hundred metres wide.

Sixteen squiggoths, mighty beasts of burden covered in armoured plates and lousy with gretchin, trudge through the muck hauling Ash behind them. Below its protective bubble of incomprehensible teknologee swarm over twenty thousand ork hovercraft and some three thousand heavier vehicles, putting them at four hundred thousand infantry minimum.

The orks swarm in and out of the shield as they have to drive slowly and close to each other beneath it and none of them are that patient.

I forward my observations to Lieutenant Moredeleg.

“We’re at a bit of a loss here, Magos. We have our orders, but we don’t have the right equipment or enough firepower to delay something like that, nor any way to get it.”

“I’ve already thought of four, Lieutenant. The problem is the shield, yes? Have a think about their limitations. Don’t let that education I paid for go to waste.”

“Yes, Magos! We know it draws enough power that Ash can’t hover and recharge the shield. Any strike at their power source, or the shield itself, would ground Ash or leave it vulnerable. We can’t teleport through the shield though, and there are too many orks to sneak in a group. D-POTs would never get through that much firepower to bomb them at close range either.”

“You’re still thinking like a soldier, Lieutenant. You have an engineered defence before you. Approach the problem like an engineer. You already plan to do some of what I’m thinking of. It’s just a matter of scale.”

After a couple more minutes of coaching, Moredeleg finally works out one of the ideas and once he understands what I’m trying to get across he quickly fills in the rest and adds a few of his own.

“Do you really think they’ll fall for it, Magos?”

“No idea. That’s why MacCrane is fortifying Ettinsmoor and why harrying them is still important. Wild plans are fun, but they aren’t reliable which is why the initial, more standard approach is still important. We also had to find out what the problem was in the first place too and it would be terrible to approach data gathering in a haphazard fashion.”

“Good to hear, Magos. I wouldn’t want all that education to be a waste either.”

I laugh, “Pass on my wisdom, Lieutenant. We’ll delay until it’s ready.”

“Yes, Magos. Moredeleg out.”

The original plan is still in place and the orks are getting close. I jog down the hill and join the special weapon teams, feeding my superior auspex data to their suits’ cogitators. Officers coordinate targets with the distant artillery. Three minutes later, the orks cross the five kilometre line and, even amid the sheeting rain, a moment of silence blankets the valley as time, for just a moment, seems to pause.

Violet beams cut through the darkness and twenty rockets hug the ground as they seek rusty battlewagons and looted tanks. Streams of heavy bolter fire follow in their wake, cutting sharp lines through the rain then hammering into hover trukks, mulching drivers and igniting fuel tanks.

Across the approaching front, sixty-four vehicles careen and crash into the stony ground or explode outright.

A bone shaking “Waaagh!” echoes through the valley and the thousands of vehicles pick up the pace and charge out from beneath the shields. The special weapon teams continue to fire, emptying everything they have in under ninety seconds.

Seeing no reason to hang about, the special weapon squads pull their dogs around and retreat. The line infantry are quick to follow and crawl from their fox holes, then board the IFVs while the mastiff company performs overwatch. Two minutes later, we depart, the dogs running alongside the chimeras and crassus at an impressive forty kilometres per hour. I, too, run alongside them, enjoying my powerful, effortless movement across the rough terrain.

Behind us, the orks swerve to avoid their charred, smoking kin. They don’t bunch up as much as I’d hoped, but they do slow down and their movement becomes more predictable.

The basilisks fire their first salvo. Eight shells scream through the air and explode just before they hit the ground, dispersing shrapnel in a scythe-like shriek of destruction that mulches ork and vehicle alike.

Shells fall every twenty seconds for six minutes, obliterating another seventy vehicles. It feels like an impressive achievement, but we’ve yet to destroy more than a rounding error of the ork forces. The artillery crews will need to rest and re-arm as well; those big shells are loaded by hand, something I really, really need to fix.

Three minutes later, the orks reach the fox holes and drive over hundreds of vehicle mines; they  lose another one hundred and fourteen vehicles. I’m a little surprised when the basilisks start firing again so soon and commend the crews for their efforts.

We complete this sequence two more times, destroying some six hundred light vehicles and forty three heavier ones, each cycle taking approximately thirty-five minutes.

As we retreat a third time, the colossal tooth’s exterior rumbles and a massive hatch recedes. From within the floating fortress, the orks haul out a void ship grade gun. Even from over ten kilometres away, I feel my teeth rattle and the horrendous hum of poorly shielded magnets and transformers pulses through the air as the massive gun charges.

The gun fires at a fraction of its usual power and strikes our previous position. Despite the distance, the shockwave knocks over dozens of dogs and even I am thrown from my feet. Our chimeras and crassus transports are peppered with tiny rocks that fall upon their hulls like hail, cutting through the sound of the rain with ominous plinks.

Most of our mines are destroyed and the basilisks’ targeting is obscured too much by the mushroom cloud to risk wasting shells on lucky shots.

The leading orks are too close to the macro-shell and thirty-one vehicles are destroyed. The others bulldoze over our old possession without further trouble. My helmet picks up a massive, orky cheer and, as I help dogs and riders get to their feet, I glance back and see thousands of tracer rounds fire into the air.

It’s an impressive sight and the orks joy at such destruction is almost infectious, but I am far too frazzled from that near miss to appreciate it. We continue to the fourth line, eighty kilometres from where we started this madness and set up the next round.

If the ork gun crew are at a similar competence as the other roks we fought in orbit, it will take the orks at least forty-five minutes to fire again, so I’m not too worried. We do have to change up our plans a little though and organise an exchange of dogs with the forces assembling at Ettinsmoor as ours are tired and injured. If all goes according to plan, they’ll be waiting for us at the fifth line.

The fourth exchange starts as usual, but our artillery support never arrives. I vox Moredeleg and receive no response. We retreat immediately, hurrying to the next line as fast as we can.

As I run, my auspex picks up some weird readings. My minds cogitate on the data, but I am not fast enough. Two squads of orks blindside us, seemingly springing from the ground, freshly grown with gunz in their hands and a choppa clamped between their foul, pointed teeth.

The ork kommandos open fire with their sluggas, a rokkit launcha, and two big shootas, cutting down twenty mastiff riders and crippling a chimera. They charge at our column, firing as they run, and half of them hurl stikk bombs into our shocked lines.

As soon as they pass through our column we return fire, hitting most of them, but only six are slain outright by the massed lasfire streaming from the chimeras as they are too close to bring all our weapons to bear.

In the most un-orkish manoeuvre I’ve ever witnessed, the orks continue running away from us and into the darkness, somehow fading into the night and off my auspex. While we gather the wounded and the weapons of the dead, I pick up the faint growl of ork bikes rushing away.

“Magos, apologies for the delay,” voxes Mordeleg. “We just repelled four squads of ork kommandos. Most of them are dead, but so is our artillery. It will take an hour to replace them.”

“Very well. How is the gambit progressing?”

“It’s being deployed at the ninth line.”

“Acknowledged. Isengrund out.”

During our gradual retreat, the kommandos attack two more times before we wipe them out. Even when looking out for them, they are challenging to combat. After we finish them off, I sweep through their detritus while the column continues, trying to find out how they managed to hide so well and on one of the more intact bodies I discover a hefty syringe, with a needle thick enough I baulk at its girth.

A quick scan reveals dozens of compounds assembled in an ingenious timed release effect that should place an ork into hibernation, then revive them after a set length of time.

I pop the data into the research module and by the time I catch up to the column, I have a basic overview of the substance. An ork can take the compound then bury into the muck, and cool down enough to look like the native flora, releasing the expected scents and compounds from their skin in place of their shedding spores, becoming almost undetectable. It will also make them so high that I am honestly impressed they managed to run at us in a straight line, let alone hit anything with their guns.

So long as they're smart enough to do basic maths, a rarity among the orks, they can time it so they revive just as their target passes them by. I knew orks are cunning, idiot savants, but this reminder is most unwelcome. I keep telling myself not to take them lightly, adopting a maximum overkill and scorched earth policy, yet still they surprise me.

Their big gun takes a couple more shots at us, then focuses on the armoured companies hiding in the hills once they replace their basilisks, firing four rounds.

While they’re both near misses, we take fifty-five casualties from the bombardment and have to abandon a chimera when it gets flipped, one which I don’t even have time to booby trap.

The armoured companies are less fortunate and the impacts trigger a landslide, trapping half a squadron of leman russ and nine chimera. A few heralds managed to escape from their vehicles, but most were buried alive. Hopefully the orks won’t notice them and we can rescue them from their trapped vehicles once the enemy pass.

It is with great relief that we arrive at the ninth line, almost five hours into the battle. We swap dogs again and prepare to face the orks one last time.

The ork lines are fairly strung out by now, with a third of their forces out from under their energy shield. We’ve wiped out about two thousand vehicles so far and the light hover-trukks have started holding back, letting their more chonky brethren absorb the lascannon and missile fire.

I’m not sure what imperial depot they raided for them, but with their looted tanks and homebrew battlewagons taking the lead, our volley is much less effective. Some of the vehicles survive multiple hits from krak missiles and lascannons, and our heavy bolters are rendered almost impotent. It isn’t a complete disaster though a small handful explode from the lightest caress of imperial fire even while their sturdier companions keep on trucking through fire and fury.

At last we retreat, this time at maximum speed, managing a seven kilometre sprint at fifty-five kilometres per hour before we have to slow back to forty. We arrive at the tenth and final line, a substantial embankment and trench, and quickly hide behind it.

I poke my head over the top, trusting my armour to keep me safe.

With my fingers and mechadendrites crossed, I murmur a prayer to the machine god and wait.

The minutes tick by and the heralds hiding in the trenches start to fidget.

Boom?