Though his emotions were a volatile, convoluted vortex, the daemonic demigod Vashtorr had absolutely no intention of manifesting. The memories of being hunted like common prey by those relentless iron monstrosities remained entirely too vivid. Furthermore, the Arkifane could sense the lingering presence of other formidable powers.
The sheer, rapacious greed born of the Tech-Priests' desperate lust for forbidden knowledge was acting as a beacon, drawing the scrutinizing eyes of both Tzeentch and Slaanesh.
Tzeentch, in particular, remained the single greatest obstacle on Vashtorr's arduous path to godhood.
At the same time, another malignant Warp-borne force was shadowing the movements of the Orks.
Deep within the Immaterium, Gork and Mork chuckled and bellowed with continuous, booming laughter. They watched the greenskins' violent exploits, boisterously commentating on the carnage unfolding across the war zone.
Though they were the gods of the Orks, they were fundamentally distinct from the Ruinous Powers.
The Chaos Gods delighted in favoring chosen mortals, shaping vast legions of daemonic heralds, elevating their mortal champions into Daemon Princes or entities of supreme warp-power.
Yet, there had never been an Ork Daemon Prince.
No such blasphemous elevation existed within the greenskin paradigm.
In fact, one did not even need to be an Ork to receive the favor of the twin deities; so long as an individual's actions perfectly aligned with the greenskins' collective psyche and earned their respect, they would receive the unseen benediction of Gork and Mork.
The legendary Commissar Yarrick was the ultimate testament to this phenomenon.
When Orks died in battle, they were simply reborn to fight anew. Gork and Mork offered no grand proclamations, nor did they alter their divine nature because of it.
They extended their brutal favor equally to anyone who embodied the true, unyielding spirit of Ork warfare, completely indifferent to whether those warriors consciously worshiped them or not.
In the reality of the materium, Axion had already obliterated four of the Orks' planetary fortresses and was already advancing toward the next coordinates.
The makeshift vessels composed of Adaptive Combat Cores that had successfully completed their missions were returning in tactical wings of roughly a dozen ships each. They entered the massive Super-Mass Projector of the Heart of the Forge in continuous cycles, where they were systematically compressed into unique, compact spheres before being slotted securely into the hangar matrix.
Each time they arrived at a new destination, the Heart of the Forge would project these automated combat machines directly onto the beleaguered Imperial worlds below, efficiently purging the lingering greenskin infestation.
The colossal vessel would then immediately move to salvage the debris fields of the shattered planetary fortresses.
This overwhelming tactical efficiency had clearly transcended anything Zog Steeltoof could have possibly anticipated.
The "humies" possessed a destructive capability that defied his comprehension. In hindsight, their grand invasion now appeared reckless, even suicidal.
Yet, as an Ork Warboss, ordering a retreat was the supreme act of cowardice.
The continuous, staggering losses suffered in the recent engagements had allowed him to pinpoint the most perilous threat in the enemy fleet—that massive, undeniably WAAAAAGH! flagship.
If they could seize that behemoth for themselves, the Imperium would have no strength left to resist his conquest.
However, judging by the enemy's long-range engagements, the flagship would inevitably unleash its apocalyptic weaponry long before coming within teleportation range of his planetary fortresses.
Waiting for the enemy vessel to draw close before launching a surprise assault was entirely unfeasible.
Under Steeltoof's roaring commands, the Big Mek began frantically modifying the planetary warp-jump apparatus.
He was going to seize the initiative and launch an offensive.
The strategy was brutally simple: he would lead his gargantuan Ork horde in a massive, fleet-wide boarding action!
Among greenskins, before the strongest Warboss is decisively broken, any attempt to flee is viewed with utter disdain and condemned as cowardice. If the battle ultimately concludes in victory, those who fled are permanently branded with shame.
However, if the supreme Warboss is utterly crushed, fleeing suddenly becomes a mark of cunning.
The unique, circular logic of the Orks told them that this was the only correct way to wage war.
The sheer audacity of the Orks' maneuver caught Axion completely off guard.
Axion had calculated that the greenskins would eventually engage in a staggered fighting withdrawal before breaking into a full-scale rout.
Evidently, that calculation was flawed.
Enveloped in a sudden, blinding surge of green WAAAAGH! energy, the planetary fortress vanished into the void, completely evading the redirected planetary core that arrived at its position mere minutes later.
For the very first time, the apocalyptic strike of the Heart of the Forge had missed its mark.
The core, boiling with immense kinetic and thermal energy, hurtled through the void of the star system. It shattered a desolate, barren world before its trajectory violently careened off course, slamming directly into a nearby rocky planet.
In a cataclysmic instant, the entire rocky planet was transformed into a blazing, infernal fireball. Its crust split wide open with tectonic fissures as incandescent, white-hot magma flooded across the entire planetary surface.
Yet, even this deviation remained within the broad margins of Axion's contingency protocols.
Axion had long since simulated the probability of the Orks making a planetary fortress disappear. The firing vectors of the Heart of the Forge had been meticulously calculated across multiple branches; even if the planetary core missed its primary target, it would never strike an inhabited Imperial world.
As for the collateral destruction of the uninhabited planet, that could be resolved later by consulting with the Imperial authorities. Axion had no objections to directing the Heart of the Forge to act as a world-catcher, venturing beyond the fringes of the Imperium to pull a few rogue planets back to replenish the system's mass.
Simultaneously, the moment the Ork planetary fortress vanished, the mechanical fleet's sensors instantly registered a chaotic cascade of localized gravitational spikes.
The source data placed the anomaly directly along the projected flight path of the Heart of the Forge.
Following a violent flash of green light, the missing planetary fortress materialized directly ahead of the oncoming flagship.
The Heart of the Forge, barreling through space at relativistic sub-light speeds, could not decelerate easily.
This colossal vessel was structurally distinct from a ship like the Titan's Spear.
Its prow was not outfitted with the specialized, piercing lance apparatus characteristic of ancient Iron Men warships. Instead, the two gargantuan apertures dominating its massive bow served as the firing cowls for the Oblivion Cannons.
While the doomsday weapons themselves possessed incredible structural durability, the hull was fundamentally not engineered for a ramming engagement.
With a deafening, void-shaking impact, the massive planetary fortress collided directly with the high-speed flagship.
On the reverse side of the planetary fortress, amidst the violent structural tremors of the impact, the massive Ork vanguard and Zog Steeltoof himself vanished into a green flash of teleportation energy.
In their frenzied excitement, the greenskins failed to notice that the violent shaking had inflicted minor, catastrophic fractures upon the ramshackle, junk-built teleportation matrices.
Consequently, Zog Steeltoof and several thousand of his elite Ork mega-armored bodyguards were hurled blindly across the galaxy, materializing in an entirely different, unknown sector.
The overwhelming remainder of the Ork boarding host, however, materialized with terrifying accuracy directly inside the hull of the Heart of the Forge.
Executing a mass teleportation without precise telemetry beacons is an act of absolute madness.
But to the fanatical, battle-hungry Orks, danger was never a deterrent.
Tens of millions of greenskins, accompanied by vast arsenals of ramshackle armored walkers and scrap-iron war machines, suddenly flooded the vast corridors and strategic chambers of the Heart of the Forge.
Inevitably, hundreds of thousands of Orks were fused directly into the structural bulkheads, their crushed bodies transformed into grotesque, mechanical wall decorations.
Worse still, several unfortunate scrap-tanks and Stompas were teleported directly into the vessel's dark matter reactor cores.
The sudden, catastrophic spike in energy reactions almost triggered a total, cascading internal detonation within the Heart of the Forge.
It was a display of savage, unmitigated brutality that only the Orks could conceive.
Red tactical alarms blared in deafening sirens throughout every deck of the flagship.
[CRITICAL ALERT: HULL FAILURE RATE EXCEEDS 55%. AUTOMATIC POWER MATRIX EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN IMMINENT.]
[SEVERE DAMAGE DETECTED. ACTIVATING AUXILIARY POWER GRIDS. ENTERING FULL-SCALE AUTONOMOUS DIAGNOSTIC MODE.]
This reckless, suicidal boarding action had accomplished far more than any conventional Ork fleet engagement ever could.
The sudden introduction of displaced matter had severed nearly half of the flagship's primary control pathways, energy conduits, and power grids.
In one catastrophic instance, the power core of an unfortunate Destroyer-class heavy automaton became physically fused with an Ork Killa Kan. The overloaded core detonated instantly, tearing multiple reinforced sub-decks to absolute shreds.
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