Chapter Text
EDITORIAL PREFACE
EDITED BY INQUISITOR AMBERLEY VAIL, ORDO XENOS
The following account was reconstructed from an Ork vox-recording intercepted by Imperial listening stations following the [CAMPAIGN REDACTED]. Its original speaker was subsequently identified as Warboss Grubnob, whose description of events proved surprisingly consistent with surviving Imperial military records.
I say surprisingly advisedly.
Scribe Helena was responsible for the initial transcription.
H: You told me to flag anything mentioning Steve.
A: I did.
H: This mentioned Steve.
A: Repeatedly.
H: Very loudly.
A: Orks generally do.
For the sake of readability and the sanity of the reader, the original recording - which consisted of overlapping shouting, crude Ork dialects, and frequent background industrial noise - has been transcribed into coherent High Gothic, while preserving the narrator's distinctive perspective. -A.V.
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Of all da stupid ways to die on a backwater rock, gettin' squished by a tank driven by your own Mek wasn't even in my top five. But it was definitely on da list.
"Watch it, ya squig-brained gits!" I bellowed, my voice easily booming over da roar of da engines as I ducked low. A looted Leman Russ went clattering past, its rusted treads chewing up dirt and spitting gravel right into my face. "Keep shooting at da humies, not da landscape! I'm da Warboss, and I say we krump 'em properly!"
We were in da middle of a perfectly good scrap. Over da last few days we'd already smashed most of their listening posts, knocked a few shiny satellites out of da sky, and blown up something Krimp reckoned was an orbital communications relay. I didn't know what it communicated with, but it had exploded nicely.
Now da rest of da humies - some red-coated PDF lads and a handful of proper green-armored Guardsmen - were dug into a low trench line across da gully, popping off las-shots that stung like angry wasps. We had 'em pinned. We had da high ground. It was shaping up to be a brilliant afternoon.
Then da sky turned purple. [1]
It didn't go dark like night. It went thick and nasty, like somebody had spilled old engine oil across da clouds. A second later, da noise hit us - not da boom of artillery or da roar of a Burna, but an awful, wet, clicking screech that made my back teeth ache right down into my jaw.
"Boss!" shouted Krimp, one of my Yoofs, pointing a trembling, clawed finger up at da ridge behind da humies. "Look at da big spiders!"
I cuffed him across da side of his helmet hard enough to rattle his teeth. "Dem ain't spiders, ya grog-head. Dem's bugs."
They came over da crest in a wave of clicking legs, sharp scythes, and dripping chittering jaws. Hundreds of 'em. Maybe thousands. Purestrain Genestealers and Hormagaunts, spilling down da rock face like a landslide of teeth and claw.
And they weren't just charging us. They were charging da humies too. In fact, they were dropping right into da middle of us, cutting off our flank and driving both mobs toward da same tight choke point: an old, reinforced plasteel manufactorum gate at da end of da gully.
"Right!" I roared, racking da bolt on my Kombi-Shoota. "New plan! Shoot da big bugs, then shoot da little bugs, then..."
Before I could finish, a giant, bone-bladed Hormagaunt leaped off a boulder right toward my face. I brought my Shoota up, smashed it across da bug's ugly snout, and crushed its skull under my iron boot. But three more were already leaping down, trying to overwhelm my armor by sheer weight.
Then something heavy smashed into da gully beside us with da sound of a falling anvil.
It wasn't an Ork. It looked like a humie, mostly. Seven feet tall or thereabouts, standing stiff and straight in a battered Imperial flak jacket that fitted him badly in all da wrong places. Too narrow for an Ogryn, too big for an ordinary humie, and something about da way he moved made my teeth itch. Thick leather mittens covered his hands, and he carried a heavy hydraulic lever loose at his side like it weighed nothing at all.
The giant humie didn't shoot. Metal-face grabbed one of da bugs by da tail and battered two more with it, cracking 'em against da rocky wall. I stopped shooting for a second. Now that was interesting.
He didn't scream a war cry. He didn't yell "For da Emperor!" like da rest of his soft-skinned mates. He just stood there, towering over da swarm, his green eye-lenses glowing dull beneath a leather-wrapped visor. A leaping Genestealer tried its luck next, but da giant humie simply caught it mid-air by the neck and punched it flat back into da rock face with an iron crunch.
He turned toward me, his eye-lenses target-tracking my war-gear.
"WE REQUIRE A TEMPORARY CEASEFIRE," da giant humie bellowed. His voice sounded like two iron plates grinding together in a rock crusher.
I spat a gob of green spit onto a dead bug. "Why?"
"TO KILL THE TYRANIDS."
"Then what?"
"WE RESUME HOSTILITIES."
I considered this. It was simple. It was sensible. And it meant I got to kill da bugs now, and test just how hard this giant humie could punch later.
"Yeah, awright," I grunted, cracking my neck.
"CURRENT OPERATIONAL ORDERS ARE TO RETREAT BEHIND THE PRIMARY BLAST DOORS," da humie added flatly, his voice echoing out of his chest like a loudspeaker. "MOVE YOUR MOB."
"Don't push it, metal-face," I growled, but I turned to my Boyz anyway. "LISTEN UP, YA GITS! DON'T SHOOT DA HUMIES YET! WE KRUMP DA BUGS FIRST!"
Krimp blinked, looking confused. "Boss, ain't dem humies?"
"Yeah."
"Ain't we supposed ta kill humies?"
"Later."
"Oh." Krimp considered this for half a second, his grin widening. "Can we kill da bugs now?"
"Yeah."
"WAAAGH!"
And just like that, without a treaty, without a handshake, and without a single piece of paper, da ceasefire was on.
Footnotes
1. Subsequent Naval analysis identified the attacking organisms as elements of a severely depleted Tyranid splinter, most likely driven from the remnants of a larger hive fleet during Imperial clearance operations elsewhere in the subsector. There was no known Genestealer Cult activity on the planet and no evidence that the world had been selected for consumption in advance. The encounter appears to have been almost entirely accidental.
Unfortunately, by this point Warboss Grubnob's forces had destroyed or disabled most of the planet's orbital early-warning network, considerably reducing the amount of warning anyone received regarding this unexpected visitor.
H: Did the Orks know what the satellites were for?
A: Almost certainly.
H: Then why destroy them?
A: Because they were there.