"Oi! Ol' one eye! I sees ya Humie! Time fer ya ta get crumped!" Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka joyously yelled, his booming voice sounding even over the roar of lasguns, bolters and shootas as the Orks swarmed into the Imperial forces.
The Ork warlord rarely came so far forward into his battle lines, but he hadn't been able to resist fighting his old friend face to face after so many years away from him. After taking his boyz away from the war on Armageddon, he had drifted aimlessly, searching for a suitable place to begin the battle anew; the fighting on Armageddon had not been won yet, but it had reached a pleasant state of perpetuity that any good Ork word relish. As he searched for new worlds for his Waagh! to pitch into, he had been pleased to hear that his old nemesis had followed him, along with a full chapter of space marines and an imperial guard army. Whatever target he picked next in his quest to plunge the galaxy into a state of constant war (more so than it was already), he could be assured of a good fight from the one eyed commissar and the human super-warriors.
Seven years of searching, however, had yielded no suitable targets. While he and the boyz had crumped dozens of Imperial, Eldar, Chaos, Necron and Tau worlds and fleets, nothing had matched the glorious slaughter of Armageddon, and the Waagh! was running out of steam.
Finally, as the Warlord stopped his fleet to assault some insignificant backwater of a planet inhabited by an unknown, peaceful race of agrarian aliens, Yarrick had caught up to him. Thraka was on the ground when he witnessed the Imperial Navy warships and Space Marine battle barges engage his fleet of hulks and kill kroozas, while drop pods and landers poured into the atmosphere as the Imperial forces moved to engage on the planets surface. As the night sky had lit up with streaks of tracer fire and rokkit contrails, Ghazghkull Thraka had nearly jumped out of his power armor with glee; the first proper fight he had seen in seven years was at hand.
The battle quickly shaped up, with the Orks pulling back from the Imperial forces to allow them to form up in relative peace, except for the occasional Kommando raid or rogue green wave assault; the Beast of Armageddon knew he'd have to give the humans time to sort themselves out so they could give his Orks a good fight.
And then, as the boyz, trukks, battlewagons, bikes, stompas and gargants of the Warlords Waagh! had squared off with the guardsmen, marines, armored vehicles, tanks and Titans of Yarrick's army, the Warlord had choked up; it felt almost like his first war on Armageddon.
Both sides had fallen to it with a will.
As the slaughter of thousands of firefights, armored battles and artillery duels unfolded across an entire continent of the alien planet, the Orks rejoiced. They grinned enormously as they charged, shouting threats and greetings, into the ranks of their old enemies, while the humans shouted back with stalwart defiance as the veteran guardsman and marines recognized the standards, armor and even the faces of the same Orks they had been battling with righteous hatred for decades.
In this bizarrely familiar battle Ghazghkull had charged straight into the fray, ripping apart anyone, human or Ork, who was foolish enough to get in his way, intent on finding Yarrick, his oldest and dearest enemy.
Finally, he had found him.
The old commissar snarled in hatred as he saw Thraka, and brandished his powerclaw and charged in as the Ork warlord ripped through the humans command staff.
They found themselves face to face one again, and Thraka roared his challenge at the smaller human as the Commissar emptied his bolt pistol at him.
And then a crackling mass of plasma had slammed into the Commissars back, sending him sprawling to the ground.
"Wot?" Ghazghull shouted, looking around in confusion as the battlefield erupted into chaos around him.
All over the battle lines, the Ork and Imperial forces found themselves suddenly under assault by Tau fire warriors and Kroot mercenaries. They had come to defend the planet itself; the peaceful race of aliens that had inhabited it were Tau vassals, and their frantic calls for aid after the Orks had appeared in their system had brought a quick response from their overlords; the Tau relief fleet had smashed into the warring Ork and Human vessels above as its transports had poured their troops unto the planet below; embroiled in their own battles, the ground forces on the planet had barely noticed the intrusion as the Tau ground forces moved to protect the planets population, and, perhaps more importantly, the sustenance they provided half a dozen Tau worlds. As the army swarmed from above, a fast moving Pathfinder team had spotted Commisar Yarrick and identified him as the imperial commander.
A quick shot of their rail rifle, and the hero of the Imperium was dead at the feet of his greatest enemy.