Oversized mega-cannons bristled from every flank of the Ork junk-ships. Their raw firepower was a cacophony that eclipsed even the Imperial fleet's opening salvos. The T'au vessels, already brittle by design, saw their fragile energy shielding shattered almost instantly under the erratic but overwhelming bombardment. Stripped of their technological aegis, the xenos hulls lay naked and vulnerable before the crude might of the Greenskin fleet.
But the Orks were never content with a mere exchange of broadsides.
Ramshackle boarding crafts, torpedoes, and heaps of junk hastily cobbled together from battlefield refuse, were vomited from the Ork fleet. These iron coffins slammed with thunderous violence into the T'au vessels, seeking out the towering silhouettes of the Custodian-class and Explorer-class Battleships.
"WAAAGH!"
With a bestial roar, the Orks surged from their boarding pods, their hearts pounding with the singular lust for a "propa krumpin'." Yet, the sight that met them within the corridors momentarily dampened their primitive enthusiasm.
The boarded ships were charnel houses. Blue, red, and green ichor slicked the decks in a macabre slurry. Scorched bulkheads and rent metal spoke of a prior, internal massacre. It looked as though a genocide had already taken place within the ship's gut.
The pause was short-lived. Automated T'au battlesuits, directed by the cold logic of the Sapient Machine, soon clashed with the Greenskin tide amidst the gore-stained wreckage.
Led by their Nobs, the Ork Boyz brandished choppas and sluggas, firing wildly at the mechanical sentinels. 'Ard Boyz, clad in heavy, jagged plates bolted on by Mekboyz, held up massive slabs of scavenged metal as makeshift tower shields, pushing into the teeth of the fire.
XV8 Crisis Battlesuits formed the primary defensive line, while XV86 Coldstar Battlesuits executed flanking maneuvers and aerial support within the cavernous bays. From the rear, XV88 Broadside Battlesuits provided heavy fire support, their railguns and missile pods turning Orks into red mist and broken bone.
But the Greenskins had brought more than just Boyz. Grot Bomm, Killa Kans, and squigs with high explosives clenched in their serrated maws soon retaliated against the T'au hardware. In the void, Ork Fighta-Bommers unleashed anarchy. Their pilots, utterly indifferent to flight paths or friendly fire, simply held down the triggers. These bloated fuselages, stuffed with as many guns and bomb-racks as the Meks could fit, possessed a devastating, if erratic, weight of fire.
The Sapient Machine intelligence cores scanned these Ork vessels, finding each one uniquely different. Their designs defied every law of aeronautical logic; they were crude, grotesque, and in several cases, the logic-engines determined the cockpits weren't even pressurized, leaking precious oxygen into the vacuum even as they flew.
To the Orks, however, reality was secondary. If the "Ladz" believed a heap of scrap could fly and fight, it did. Precision was a concept for "fancy-pants" Kommandos; for the rest, volume was king. Why fire one accurate shot when you could unleash a hundred-round curtain of lead? More guns, more explosions, and more noise meant a more "Waaagh!" fight.
Unlike the T'au, who preferred the clinical distance of long-range engagement, the Orks engaged in a space-faring version of a tavern brawl. Junk-ships burned their engines to the breaking point just to ram the T'au hulls. As for the Boyz inside the boarding pods, the Orks cared nothing for their survival. All that mattered was the fight. All that mattered was the "bash."
Several Ork Cruiser-class light cruisers and Savage-class gunships embedded themselves into an Explorer-class battleship. The Greenskins poured out like a green tide, crashing against the remote-controlled battlesuits. In response, the heavy KV128 Stormsurge and KV139 Ta'unar Supremacy Armour units within the hangars finally powered up.
The Orks had rammed the vessels precisely to deploy their heaviest assets. If it was too difficult to transport a Stompa or heavy walkers via traditional means, the Ork captains simply slammed the entire ship into the enemy to deliver them. The Greenskin captains harbored no fear of structural failure or hull breach. Their entire tactical existence was predicated on a single, shared delusion:
"I fink dis'll work."
Ork tanks rumbled from the shattered prows of the junk-ships, belching thick black soot as they ground over the jagged rents where the two vessels were fused. An Ork Nob threw back his head and roared with manic glee:
"Hahaha! Onward, ya gits! Fightin'! Killin'! WAAAGH!"
"WAAAGH! Follow da Boss! Smash dem gun-runnin' grots!"
The Orks charged into every corner of the ship. Some, after smashing a T'au battlesuit, immediately began brawling with their own kind over the scavenged heavy weaponry.
"I sed dis big shoota is my trophy!"
"I'm gonna be da Boss! Da big gun's mine, or I'll knock yer teef out!"
The battlefield was a theater of pure chaos. Against the brute strength and preternatural toughness of the Orks, the T'au equipment was being systematically dismantled. It was an inevitability of numbers. Though the Guardian-class vessels provided perfect tactical coordination, the battlesuits were a finite resource. Most T'au suits required a Fire Caste pilot to act as a core nervous system; the suit merely augmented strength and reflex. Only the XV8 series and above possessed the independent skeletal structure required for total remote autonomy, and even the T'au did not possess an infinite supply of such high-tier wargear.
The swarms of Drones had already been depleted during the earlier purge of the T'au personnel. Against the Orks, who could shatter a drone with a well-aimed lead pipe or a scavenged metal rod, the fragile machines stood little chance. The relentless curtain of lead from Ork "supa-shootas" was particularly lethal to the unarmored and delicate drone frames.
However, the Greenskins did not realize the trap they had walked into.
As the bulk of the Ork fleet committed to the boarding actions, the catastrophe was triggered. The two Guardian-class ships abruptly dropped their relative pitch and burned away from the engagement zone at maximum thrust. The Orks, preoccupied with the "shiny" capital ships, ignored the departing escorts.
A few Ork Hammer-class battlekroozers lazily fired several "z zap" beams at the Guardians before turning back to the T'au battleships. In the Ork mind, the biggest target was always the greatest prize.
Deep within the T'au hulls, the Slipstream Modules were being forcibly pushed into a state of catastrophic overload. Titanic energies coalesced, yet the propulsion vents remained sealed.
Searing flashes of white light erupted from the T'au battleships and cruisers. The Slipstream Modules buckled, collapsing the anti-matter field bubbles and leaving behind localized spatial singularities. The entangled Ork and T'au vessels were instantly consumed. Titanic gravitational forces shredded the nearby moon, pulling its crust into the maw of the collapsing space.
The Guardian-class vessels managed to tear open a warp rift and plunge inside, though even they did not escape unscathed, their hulls marred by massive tectonic cracks from the gravitational shear.
The singularities dissipated as quickly as they had formed. The void was left eerily empty, save for a few million tons of pulverized ship-fragments.
When the Guardians re-emerged from the warp near the orbit of Volkus, silver light shimmered across their hulls; by the time they reached the Imperial line, the cracks had already sealed themselves, the living metal whole once more.
The Imperial Navy stood frozen, stunned by the sheer, clinical coldness of the tactic. The only vessel showing any sign of activity was the Ark Mechanicus of the tax-fleet. Its sensor arrays were working at fever pitch, desperately trying to analyze what the Iron Man ships had just done.
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