The Valkyrie struggled through the atmosphere, its hull accosted by the friction flares swirling around it. The engines were dead, as the planet's gravity well was enough to pull it down, and in the free fall, the only sound in the compartment was that of howling wind and the creaking of stressed steel.
Inquisitor Alexander Tripe stood behind the pilots in his armor, a blackened hulk of two tons of otherworldly neo-steel and weaponry, his cloak spilling down around his legs. His domed helmet was shut as he watched the turbulence beyond the plate glass of the cockpit window. The pilots were praying. Tripe ignored them.
His HUD overlaid the transponder signals of the craft around them on a strategic map of the area outlined with landing zone strips. In all, the force consisted of four heavy troopships and twelve Valkyries, representing forces from two full regiments of Alterian Brigadiers, all on course.
Tripe smiled. His orders were being followed to the letter. This was good.
With a series of blinks, Tripe linked his suit's transcom system to the Alterian inter-regiment voxnet and opened a channel. "Colonel Phellan," he said, "this is Inquisitor Tripe. Do you read me?"
"Yes, Inquisitor. I read you."
Phellan's voice, even tinged by the metallic vox crackle, was strong and confident. It was the voice of a man who had dropped into hell on more than a few occasions, and who wasn't afraid of death. Hopefully, what Tripe told him would be understood.
"Phellan, I didn't want to tell you this until we were heading planetside, but I'll need your men to hold their fire when we hit dirt."
There was a pause. "Come again, lord?"
"I said your men are ordered to keep their weapons slung, Colonel. We'll be meeting some friends groundside and I don't want your boys filling them with unnecessary pockmarks. I don't need them riled."
"Riled?" Phellan sounded on the verge of laughing. "With respect, sir, my men don't 'rile' anyone. We kill, plain and simple, and there is nothing that can stand in our way."
Tripe sighed just below what the audio pickups could detect. Phellan was Alterian, alright, right down to his arrogant core. If there had been more time, Tripe would have procured a better force for this, but as it stood, everything else in the sector was engaged. He had tried the Dogs of War—a unit of armored crusaders Tripe had himself helped to found—but the Battle Saint's Equerry had told him to shove off, so he was left with these two regiments. The Alterians were good, but Phellan's boasts were far from the truth. They were able bodies who could shoot straight, and that's all Tripe needed.
"Who are your contacts, anyway?" the Colonel asked.
"Orks."
There was another pause. When Phellan spoke again, his voice had lost its humor. "I fear there has been some interference. Could you repeat that?"
Beyond the front window, the atmosphere fell away, revealing to Tripe the world below in all its battered, besieged glory. Pyres of smoke from burning hive cities filtered up to meet them, forming banks of clouds that skirted the troposphere and shrouded the deserts connecting the civilized areas with stretches of inky shadow. Directly below, the landing area was clear.
"Orks, Colonel," Tripe said. "Our contacts are orks."
Green is Best
Chapter One: Sylvann IX
Sylvann IX's troubles began six months prior, when the plague that had accosted the five other populated worlds in the system finally made its way through the blockade and into circulation in the planet's cities. Men started to fall to the plague, and as they did, it became apparent that the nature of the malady was chaotic with a capital 'C'. The Fell Powers took root on Sylvann IX, and the world burned.
The elements of the world's militia untainted by the plague committed a self-extermination of hives Uurkor and Sanus with atomic weapons, but the attacks did little. What survived was horribly mutated by the radiation, and the decaying undead populations festering in the cities only grew stronger with their new leader caste.
Those additionally mutated were labeled Chosen by their kind. Their loyalist name went unknown, as soon there were no more loyalists left to speak it. The last militia stronghold fell two months prior. After that, the decayed formed up and began to work to make it off-world using the cargo ships docked in the orbiting stations.
Before they could leave, however, the docks were smashed by an incoming meteor, a meteor that landed in the wastes between Uurkor and Targg hives. What came out of the meteor was something new, and something that for the past month and a half had proven virtually unkillable to the plagued children of Nugle that made their homes on Sylvaan IX.
()
The Green Marauders watched the Alterian troopships set down in the desert, unseen behind their sand canvas covers and shaded magnoculars. They watched as the Alterians assembled outside their vessels, and as the regiments' tanks and transports rumbled out onto the hardpan, they held steady. None of them would move without express orders from above. They were trained well.
Tripe watched them from alongside Colonel Phellan. With sensors greater than some frigates' augury arrays, Tripe could make out the telltale signs of the Marauders' presence; a toppled rock here, a thermal scent oozing from the dirt, the distinct stench of week-old poo crusting under the sun.
"So, where are your xenos?" Phellan asked. There was clear venom in his voice, but at least he hadn't tried to order the death of a perceived heretic.
Tripe was thankful for that. He rather liked Phellan, despite his arrogance, and it would have been a shame to be forced to kill the man.
"They're here, Colonel." Tripe gestured to the dunes around the landing site. "They're all around us, in fact."
Phellan's body tensed ever so slightly. He was good at hiding it, but his hand still dropped to the laspistol holstered on his thigh. "Well, why don't they come out?" he asked.
Up on one of the nearest dunes, something moved and glinted in the sunlight.
"They will," Tripe replied, deciding to leave the Colonel in ignorance of the sniper targeting his head. "When I give them the signal and they're good and ready."
"Why don't you?"
"Your men are still jumpy. Calm them down and I'll give the all clear."
Phellan's eyes narrowed, but he got to work. "Callan? Vox."
As the Colonel took to the pack on his vox man's back, Tripe busied himself with comparing the Alterian and Marauder deployments. The regiments were arrayed carefully, in a standard deployment pattern designed for flexibility in a sudden attack. The Marauders were in perfect ambush positions, and if a firefight were to break out, the Alterians would be slaughtered.
"Alright, Inquisitor, our weapons are down. Call out your people."
"Thank you, Colonel," Tripe said.
Drawing his rifle, the Inquisitor fired a single shot, sending a spike into the air at hypersonic velocity. The rip-tear of the weapon's report echoed across the dunes.
Two thousand orks stood from surrounding dunes in perfect unison. They looked down on the human interlopers, eyes hidden behind red-tinted visors and goggles. In their hands, the aliens clutched an assortment of bolters and chain-weapons, with the larger totting lascannons and multi-barreled autocannons.
Sand and dirt sloughed from their bodies in great splashes, revealing red and black plates of heavy armor, held together by carapace weaving not unlike that worn by the Alterians. On their chests was a symbol of their allegiance: a double-headed eagle.
Phellan uttered a string of curses in his native Alterian, capping off the soliloquy with a heartfelt 'by the Emperor', before finally addressing Tripe. "They wear the Aquilla! These xenos wear the Aquilla!"
"Yes."
"Why are we not killing them?"
Tripe looked back at the Colonel. "Well, for one, you can't. They would tear you apart in minutes, and leave your men dead on the field. And for another, they are allies. They have killed more than enough of the Emperor's enemies to earn those Aquillas, more even than your proud regiments. Besides, these orks fight for the same reason you do."
"And what reason is that?" Phellan asked, his eyes narrowed.
Tripe smiled and fired another shot into the sky.
The orks answered him with a unified battle cry.
"For the Emperor!"
()
Of course, the Green Marauders were no more wild-born orks than Tripe was an eldar farseer. They had not begun their lives as forest-raised sludge, and had not grown up normally in the company of a rampaging Waaagh! Not one of them had ever served a Warboss in their life, and never once had they killed Imperial citizens in the name of some pantheon of pagan xenos gods.
Instead, the orks of the Marauders had experienced a different kind of life path, one that began in gene-vats far below the surface of Mars in a laboratory of the Adeptus Biologis, the offspring of Project Vanguard.
Their ork genes had been twisted, giving birth to a saner, stabilized strain of orkoids that shared a communal link and firm instinct to fight mankind's enemies.
Of course, the project had been shut down with only two thousand working models to show for, but that did not preclude them from seeing combat.
Their natural ork stubbornness, lack of fear, genetic faith in the Emperor, and newly ingrained regenerative healing factor made them too good an asset to pass up, and thanks to Tripe, the project's products had been assembled into the Marauders under the leadership of an earlier prototype of their unique genus.
That prototype was named Gort Malog Gragnatz da Humie Luva.
()
It was Gort that greeted Tripe on Sylvann IX, his grubby hands and arms of coil-strength muscles catching the Inquisitor in a ferocious bear hug.
"Boss!" Gort rumbled with happiness. He picked Tripe up, the strength of his embrace putting enough stress on Tripe's armor to make it creak as he was swung around by the gleeful ork. "Gooda see ya, Boss! Gooda see ya, gooda see ya, gooda see ya!"
"Likewise, Gort," Tripe grunted. "Please set me down."
"Sure fing, Boss."
Gort dropped Tripe, and the Inquisitor caught himself on Phellan, using the Colonel's shoulders as handholds. Phellan didn't look happy about it, but then again, he wasn't happy about any of this.
Tripe ignored him and looked up at Gort. "Allysn's injections must be taking hold," he said. "You've grown at least another two feet."
"Yeaher." Gort shrugged arms as large as tank cannons, and his huge helmet wobbled on his head.
At nine feet, seven inches, Gort was a titan made of green flesh and super-hardened bone. He wore nothing save greaves and boots of tough metal, and the Aquilla was burned into the flesh of his chest—seared on by plasma to counteract his healing ability.
"How's me mum?" Gort asked.
Tripe realized too late that he had used Allysn's name, and had to change topics quickly. He wasn't about to let this degenerate into one of Gort's mother's boy tangents. There was work to be done.
"She says hello. How have things gone here on Sylvann?"
"Can ya tell'er I says 'ey back?"
"Yes, Gort, I can." Tripe snapped his fingers in front of the massive ork's nose. "Now focus. I need a situation report. Now."
And so Gort picked his nose and gave his report while chewing what he slurped off his finger.