The orks beat drums and pound their choppas on the dusty earth in a tribal fashion while the Warboss speaks.

“We sought em’ out lads! Dem Preachy girls came all da way here ta start trouble wit us! Boyz… der is bold and den der is stupid and all dem preachy girls is dumb as a grot drunk on fungus beer. We smartened em up though huh? We taught them a good lesson bout’ startin trouble in someone elses back yard. And another fing…”

The Warboss continues on with his thuggishly repetitive speech while at the outskirts of the crowd there is another smaller gathering. Several nobs and the bloated obese Ork Bloth the Beast all gather around the Warboss’ personal advisor Painboss Art’attack. The mechanized Ork speaks to the small assemblage in his low metallic tone.

“The master is pleased with your work here” he speaks to the huge ork. Bloth offers little interest in the accolades of the Painboss. He just grumbles in agreement to the praise as if it were fact. “As you know Hogoth Leadbelcher was killed while recovering information from our informant, the Sisterhood’s renegade priest Elias Conroy. While the human was killed by the Sisterhood’s strike force before anything truly valuable could be gathered from him what we were able to discover is the reason for their presence here. The human says they are seeking the bones and relics of a fallen hero of some kind. Though the priest could not tell us much before is untimely death he did tell us where the sisterhood is looking next.”

The nobs assembled look very confused. Bloth looks particularly bored but manages to answer the doc “So what? You want us ta go out der and rough em’ up er what?”

“No my simple minded associate. I want you to go there and take the shrine, capture the items of interest and bring them back to me. I want your best orks on this.”

Bloth nods in agreement “Right den, I’ll rustle up some trucks and looted tanks. I’ll put da Speed Freaks on dis.” 

The Painboss turns back to the hoard and its fanatic levels of hooting and hollering. Instinctively he feels the pull to join in. It wasn’t so long ago that he’d of been there with the rest screaming like a mad boy with the others but the Servitor bits in his head have dulled all those urges to the background of his mind. What occupies his thoughts are all the injured orks that have been trucked off to his Infirmary. The lure of severed limbs, failing organs and fresh running blood call to him as much as the prospects of how to fix each of those ailments. Buzzing blades, mechanical enhancements and lobotomies are just what the doctor ordered.  

They belong to a rogue trader vessel hidden in high orbit called The Intruder.  Its one of many such ships that ply the trade lanes of the Empire. The Rogue Traders are men and women that walk the fine line between privateer and pirate, straying where profitable and obeying Imperial Charter only when necessary.  Today Imperial Charter is being conveniently ignored.

The plains surround what was once a thriving city judging by its size. The name of that city is not the concern of the hushed and stealthy figures that move through its streets under the cover of darkness and brackish clouds.

The team of men enter into the toppled ruins of the Administratum building, one of there number removes his rebreather helm, the acrid air stinging his lungs but nothing he can’t handle. A stern face with heavy battle scaring and bald head surveys the room with one fleshy eye and another replaced with a bionic implant.

“Move quickly, assess the remains. Mark what can be salvaged for pick up by the servitor crew and move on. The green skins are dull beasts but we cannot expect to remain unnoticed for long. ” Surveyor Reins’ hand instinctively slides down to his holstered plasma pistol. A wonderful relic scavenged from the site of a Space Marine Massacre by Eldar Pirates.  He’s fought the Ork Before. They are a relentless creature. They do not fear death and would choose a violent end over flight every time. Not for the honorific reasons one of the Emporer’s Astartes would but simply for the joy of it, if there can be said to be joy in such a demise.

The other Surveyors acknowledge the order and move off. Their exploration and rummaging the only noise in the dead building. One of the surveyors calls over the expedition leader Tyrus Reins.

One of the surveyor team points to a still functioning data terminal with files already loaded filed ready to be viewed. Tyrus Reins notes the files were viewed several years ago long after the Orks defiled Cygnus Primaris.

“Play them” he commands

+++ Transmission Begins+++

To: Colonel Haverhill of the Cadian 7th                                                                                        From: The Offices of the Governor-Militant                                                                  Classification: Crimson
Colonel it has come to our attention that a force of renegades have made planet fall some two thousand miles south of your base command. Orbital pict captures have shown blasphemious runic configurations indictive of the Emperor’s Children. With the greatest possible expediency you are here by ordered to meet the forces of the traitor legion in battle and destroy them.

They have moved their forces into the caves of Mt. Agrathor.

Thought for the Day: No man is innocent, there are only varying degrees of guilt

+++End Transmission+++

Reins watches as the second file begins to play. Its camera feeds from the small Vox mounted camera of Guardsmen. All it shows is the quiet darkness of bleak cave with many narrow cavern tunnels. the transmission captures the hushed whispers of a few guardsmen and their command officer quieting them all.

The next image thrown up is of an Imperial Colonel ordering his Basilisk to fire up a Flare shell to give them a brief bit of light. The shell flies high and ignights casting its grey glow down. The light washes away the dark replacing it with lines of traitor marines who all stood silent in the shadows and having used their millennium of experience to encroach on the Guard position. Instantly the Marines unleash a roar across their number and begin forward. The Camera captures perfectly the strange gargoyle faced guns they carry with the many tubes and cords that trail from them and into their bearers.

Another video begins playing, this one a frantic and short series of images that are blurred by the frantic movement of the carrier. Sound is impossible to hear, everything is downed out by horrible screaming. A wave of rippling air strikes a man near the camera bearer. His body quivers and bursts apart in a spray of bone and blood. Killed by a screaming weapon.

Another clip, a group of Storm Troopers emerging from the hiding of a rock cluster to open fire on a crawling crab like bit of infernal machinery. Their weapons lancing into its legs and shearing several off. They charge into the wounded thing and the image turns to static.

A few seconds of footage shows the Colonel and his officers dashing into a group of alluring succubi like temptresses and hacking them apart.

The camera bearer and his squad all shout and scream at a heavy weapons team who walk down a darkened tunnel rather then holding their position. The weapon’s team says they got a call over their Vox to fall back and this is the tunnel to fall back down and they make a mad dash down it. The camera bearer watches them leave through the tunnel and then tunnel walls shake, vibrated by those etheric anguished screams. Gore is flung from the tunnel.

“No command was given to fall back he shouts to his own squad. No one’s talking over the Vox Sir!  I don’t know what those men heard but they’re all dead!” The Camera Bearer shouts.

There is a brief few seconds of tape that shows a group of the enemy marines on a fortified position levying weapons toward one of the Imperial Battle Tanks. Their commander points toward the behemoth vehicle. “Let the roar of the missile be as a warcry unto the Gods!” One of the rockets finds it mark and the mighty machine is consumed ina ball of fire.

Only a few seconds of video shows a group of men falling back toward a figure that looks like the Colonel. When the men arrive the figure’s visage falls away like dry sand carried by a breeze to reveal a massive astartes in Terminator armor. He sweeps his blade across the men killing men.

“Fall back damn you! If you value your lives fall back!” the camera shows the Colonel and his men fighting the Terminator Magus. He turns to lead the retreat only to find a las pistol staring at him. The Colonel falls to his knees and then to the ground, his Commisar kills him and screams to the unsure soldiers “Hold your ground you worthless excuses for humanity. Did the Emperor turn and flee during the Siege of Terra! No! He did not abandon your souls to damnation that day! Now you must pay him your debt!”

“Tell me mortal…” A soft deep voice comes from the Terminator, made slightly mechanical by the vox system of its helm. “What do you know of souls?”

“I know that you have forfeit yours traitor! It pains me to even spill your unclean blood on His world but better that then suffer your presence here any longer.” The Comissar charges with sword raised high. THe Terminator beckons with his sword.

“Come to me Commissar, I can show you such pleasures…”

A final vid begins. The Camera Bearer zooms in on a group of guardsmen that open fire on something. A haze of pinkish fog obscures part of the view and the dimming flare above does not help any. The fog rolls into them. The flare above finally dies. everything gorws quiet in the caves. For a second the darkness is gone, where the pink fog was a rolling unnatural flickering light is born. In that light the camera picture captures something. Two massive sinewy creatures. Their long serpent like bodies adorned with rows of breasts and slick mauve skin. Long membranous frills rise from their backs. Their narrow heads cast out thin lash like tongues. Between the two beasts stands a woman dressed in very little aside from sheer silken black robe. Her long golden hair billows like a cloud around her. the shapes of the guardsmen are seen as well, their bodies falling dead on the spot and feint glimmers of light passing out of their eyes and mouth and into her. She can be seen briefly licking her fingers and lips and then all is dark again.

The Surveyors look at each other and then at Reins. The gruff old vet seems unmoved by the display.

“Right then. Leave that behind.”

“Who do you guess was looking at those records sir. The origin date of the vids is hundreds of years ago. You think the orks would look for something like that?”

“No i don’t” Reins answers quickly the surveyor “But i don’t care who was. we have a job to do and quickly.”

Reins walks to the remnants of the buildings balcony to look out at the plains. Outside the building are the mercenaries his captain took on. They keep watch on the perimeter.  Just a bunch of thugs from House Van Saar. He can hear his surveyors working quickly and efficiently. He’s trained them well and good training in this line of work is all that stands between Imperial Credits and an early grave.

Something draws his bionic eye’s attention. A brief movement, something quick like a bird’s flutter. There are no birds here anymore. Something else moves in the opposite direction. More shapes in the dark. Then he catches it, dressed in crude camouflage, an ork crawling over a wrecked balcony above the Van Saar mercenaries. Before he can grab his vox from its belt clip the ork grabs a large sack off his back and dumps the contents down on the men. Small pumpkin sized balls of muscle teeth and tails all propelled by thick little legs. Attack Squigs latch on and bite anything that moves. The Mercenaries below die in a frenzy of teeth panicked gunfire and screams.

“Surveyors!” Reins turns to the team “Pack it up! we have ork Commandos in the ruins!”

The heavy blackish clouds that linger in the air. The setting sun is but an orange smear behind them. The damned smog chokes the life from the world and wards off almost all light from Cygnus’ warm star. The cloud wasn’t always there. It wasn’t a product of his garrison of the industry of Cygnus. No. Davis recalls the birth place of those clouds. The massive smoke stacks in what once was Kartha, the capital city of Cygnus. Sometimes it was just called Cygnus City. What a city it was with its huge docking system and titanic defense turrents with their exteriors decorate in Imperial livery. The Eccelisarchial church to the God-Emperor stood majestic above all and the statues of saints looked over the city and the open farm land and untamed willderness beyond. Then the End came to Cygnus.

Orks came.

Ferrel stares up at those clouds now with the same hate he had the first day they were born and poured into his perfect sky. He remembers standing here in Caspia and looking westward toward Kartha. The brave soldiers of the 101st had went in that direction only hours early and thunder boomed from the west for hours. He remebers when the booming stopped and with his binoculars he saw them, the smoke stacks being erected quickly and there was no counting their numbers. He remembers the blackness belching out their jagged open mouths and into his sky. Each puff was a warning and a threat, new war machines are coming.

The war machines of the 101st rose from the dead a few days later. Their battered and ramshackle frames and hulls pressed into service but now they carry new masters nd most sport crude weapons and thundering guns where once there was precise Imperial weapons. They were covered in spikes and blades and most sported a crude red paint job.

Ferrel was part of the counter-attack on the northern edge of the city. Orks had long since butchered their way through the city’s initial defense. Every man able to hold a gun became a guardsmen that day. Colonel Soradon gathered every man he could, including Ferrel, and mobilized every free tank not already track deep in greenskins and met the Northern lines of the Ork.

It was an ugly day and Ferrel Davis only permits himself brief thoughts of the battle. Half their lines fell almost instantly to the relentless advance of a tracked vehicle that looked like it ate Russes for breakfast. Orks followed in its wake and clogged up every street and ally. He remembers holding the other end of the Northern lines while the perimeter between him and the greenskins closed more and more every minute.

It remembers Saul Hallicut and the rest of his unit holding a section of a city block. They fired into the ork hoard and held fast as long as they could. There was a flash of light and an orkish howl from one of the building top and a flicker of power where Saul once was. He and his whole squad vanished without a trace.

Tank after tank was gut down by speeding green demons on smoke belching bikes or wheezing squeaking cans with cut arms and stomping legs the equal of any Astrartes Dreadnought.

There was this ork. Dressed in wild clothing and drapped in chains and tattered rags. He carried a crooked brass staff and all his clothing and chains slithered and flailed as the ork radiated with psychic energy. His eyes were empty sockets filled with violent energy. He remembers the Ork opening his mouth and vomiting a stream of energy that punched through one of the Grey knights leaving a smoldering hole.

Colonel Soradon ran from his command post with his officers, each of them bathed in burning fuel and screaming until all was ash while Orks with fuel canisters and pressure hoses laughed at their good work and bellowed about “Da Burny Dance” as Sorodon flailed and faultered.

It was a blessing he thought when Brother-Captain Torgan and his Grey Knights entered the field. Sorodon always spoke highly of them. he always said that the Space Marines where the Emperor’s finest and the Grey Knights were the finest of the Emperor’s finest. The entered the field behind the Greenskins lines and were met with a tide of bullets and blasting shells from the rolling fortress. Before a retreat was called Torgon was wounded and almost half his Grey Knights lay dead or dying. The Grey Knights did not save the day, they did not turn the tide. They suffered along side us.

The Counter attack failed. Caspia fell. Cygnus became a hell world.

Ferrel Davis wonders who else survives. He’s all alone, has been for years now. Maybe others still live on the other continents. Maybe there is still a resistance of some sort. Maybe there is hope.

The smeared light of the sun sinks beneath the black curtain in the sky and behind that curtain all his much darker and the cold is unforgiving.

Game Details

Orks Vs Imperial Guard
2500 pts
Seek and Destroy mission.

Result: Solid Orkish Victory

Finally, a light on a table flickers into existence, throwing up the visage of Firebush battle-scared and disheveled.

“Canoness Preceptor Lovegood, I’m sorry for the late report. We did not expect to find Orks waiting for us. We were investigating the ruins as you have asked. They were there waiting for us. We took a building trying to hold it as we struggled to take the burial grounds. However, the Orks knew we were coming. They were waiting for us. They already had the grounds and were waiting. I don’t know how they knew. We fought the Green Menace with all the will of the Emperor. But, the Orks were just to numerous. We fought the Orks to a stalemate but we could not take the Mausoleum.”

Firebush seems breathless after her frantic rant. Lovegood waits patiently for her to catch her breath. She then draws in a long breath slowly releasing it before speaking

“You have failed me Firebush. We have to find this armor. This is a must. You need to redouble your efforts and find that armor. Seeing as that the Orks know of your existence, I will send you an army. However, I no longer feel that you can accomplish our goals. I have had increased pressure put on me by the Lord Inquisitor since your arrival on Cygnus. I will be sending an Inquisitor to help you with your… situation. I suggest that you take his advice.”

Firebush’s mouth drops at this news. She stammers momentarily at the news but quickly regains her composure.

“Yes, Canoness Preceptor. I will begin preparing for the inquistor’s arrival.”

+++ End Transmission +++

The Beast stands in the long hall, the stone room lit only by a few burning cauldrons and lantern carrying grot slaves. Beside the throne the Beast stares down the Sky Marshal’s personal physician and his personal nemesis Art’attack.

“Like i said Boss dem preechy girls was zippin round the ruins o’ Medras in da dark like a bunch a buzzasquigs and dey went fer some oomie rubble pile. Dey got shot and cut ta bits but…” The loud guttural voice of the Beast is silenced by the hollow and subdued tone of the Painboss.

“But you failed to secure their strong hold did you not? You also failed to secure this precious temple ruin that they sought. Taking their intended target would have given us understanding of their reason for coming here and securing their launch point would have given us valuable recon about their forced. All you managed to do was lose soldiers.”

“You da most grotty ork i eva seen. All dem oomie bitz in yer ead done zogged you good!” The Beast counters.

“Shut yer word holes both of ya!” Worldbreka demands and both surrender to him. “First off We said send ya good boyz to lead dis Bloth. Good boyz don’t mean a warphead nutter and dat madboy Big Mek Cuttha? I’m wonderin if all dat time wit da Squigs ain’t made ya think like one.”

“Beggin’ ta speak sir but i didn’t lose da field”

“No, ya just failed ta win it and not winnin is da same as losin’!” The Sky Marshal screams. “So now i want ya to gather up a big ole’ mess o boyz and jump da preechy girls. Find a nice big lot and get stuck in! Wipe em all over da field and make sure der preechy boss gets da message loud un clear. Cygnus belongs ta da Planet Smasha!”

“Fine, i’ll put Cutta and Mangla Rotgut on it.” The Beast turns, his great girth giggling as he does.

“Oh an Bloth…” The Sky Marshal says, rearing up in his throne “try and surprise me dis time, i’m gettin tired of all yourconsistency.