The Age of Technology: Rise of Man

Captain Josa Diaz checked the internal readouts of his Standard Template Constuct designed and built Mark X powered armor one more time before turning to address his command squad and the whole company through their shared noospheric uplink that connected all the men under his command everything looks good, time to dance thought Diaz.

"All right men, word has come down from the brass. They want Abel Company to advance just ahead of the main push and provide cover on our entire brigade's right flank. We're doing a downhill sweep to provide a solid anchor and enfilade on damn greenskinned bastards .Then we meet up with the Legio Mortis in the center of Green Plains where we will cut off their warlord in encirclement, from there we crush them. Today we push those away from Baal City and back into the badlands. The 7th Mechanized Brigade has never failed the Federation! We're going to make these Xenos pay for daring to attack a jewel of the Federation. Think of all the men, women, and children these Xenos have slaughtered before we got here! We are the protectors of Humanity, the shield of man! Now let's go kill some damn Orks!"

The men cheered, and Diaz grinned behind his helm's visor. He was a well-liked officer, the men he led respected him for his own personal valor and the compassion he showed his troops. He was on the up-and –up, being mentored by none other than Marshal William Tiberius Smith, commander of the Federation of Terra's venerated 1st Army, and elite corps that had seen service since the dawn of the Federation and been in many of its most valiant and bloody battles, from the Macragge Pacification to the Rim Uprisings. These barbarian Orks didn't stand a chance. True, they had threated to take Baal city and had overrun the moon of Ball Secundus. But that was before The Federation's 212th Naval Battle group had picked up the distress beacon sent by Baal's astropathic choir and showed up to relive the local garrison forces

The 212th had been patrolling the Rim territories for insurgents linked to the United Colonial Alliance; The Federation's main rival for who would control the destiny of mankind .The war with them was of the utmost importance to the Terran Federation, for they matched the Federals in terms of technology. They were powerful, but they lacked control of Old Earth, mankind's political center for millennia. And they didn't have as many Navigators, bizarre mutants that could read the tides of the Warp and guide ships through it, that strange dimension that made faster-than-light travel possible. They were also lacking in manpower and resources. One area where they shone was psykers, the emergent phenomena of humans with the in-born ability to access the warp and use it, though it was incredibly dangerous to do without years of training or warding.

But nevertheless, the Federation would win that war, as it would all others. They were mankind's destiny, reunifying the old colonial worlds spread throughout the cosmos, funding expeditions to found new ones and making technological breakthroughs. They were prosperous, with a large military and a motivated populace. The Federation also maintained several vassal states, smaller alien empires that had been conquered early on as well as non-aggression pacts and alliances with several of the larger Xenos states that could be worked with for mutual benefit. Species that were hostile, like the Orks he and his men were about to crush, were wiped out when possible, or made into client races. The Age of Man beckoned and Captain Josa Diaz of the Federation of Terra's 1st Army, 7th Mechanized Brigade, Abel Company would see it through.

His men began to advance rapidly under the cover of Firebird fighter-bombers, who strafed the Ork lines and engaged in aerial dogfights with their primitive scap fighters, several of which exploded in midair or came plummeting to the ground in massive explosions after taking a hit from the plasma missiles or pinpoint accurate lascannons of the Firebirds. His men made such fast travel dues to the servo-motors of their smooth, streamlined white-colored Mark X armor.

Most of them cradled plasma carbines and rifles, well-suited for dispatching the notoriously resilient greenskins, while others had heavier suits which carried mounted hyper-velocity autocannons , interchangeable missile launchers and heavy bolters in addition to lascannons. A few were snipers, who were furnished in less-armored variants of the Mark 10 armor system, with integrated cloaking devices.

All along the line, the rest of the 7th mechanized began to advance, supported by several variants of Knights, bipedal war machines that often function in a support role as well Fellblade, Shadowsword, and Baneblade super heavy tanks, which began firing their ordnance at the Xenos fortifications all along their avenue of advance, bursting open bunkers and shattering pillboxes, seeing showed of severed limbs and ork bodies meters into the air.

Diaz check his in-suit sensors, he was detecting thousands of enemy-life sigs up ahead. Suddenly, a great roar went up among the enemy ranks a warcy as old as the greenskins themselves, and they charged the Federals en mass. Hundreds of thousands of them. All along the Terran line, weapons opened up, suit-mounter autocannons, heavybolters, missile launchers carved into the sea of orks pressing down on them, hundreds of orks were felled in the first second of the barrage and it didn't let up, Next the army troopers fired rapid streams of plasma fire into the greenskin ranks, adding hundred more to their tally. Snipers picked off the larger orks where they could, sowing confusion among the aliens.

Firebirds staffed the enemy positions with plasma bombs, incinerating swaths of the savage aliens. But they were still closing. The greenskins had been firing back the whole time, most of their shots being deflected and absorbed by the in-built shielding system of the men and women's Mark 10 power armor. But the orks loved heavy-caliber ammunition, and a few slugs got through here and their tearing into the power armor and into the flesh beneath. Dozens of his soldiers were down, either wounded or dead. Once the orks closed ranks, and they would there was no doubt of that, the real fight would begin, for now all the men and women of the Terran Federation could do was to thin the enemy ranks with brutal salvos of fire.

Diaz cored one ork after another with his plasma rifle, bringing down the enemy but not necessarily always scoring a kill. Many wounded orks continued to charge all along the line, their savage war cries toned down by his suits audio-dampeners

Abruptly the orks were among them, chain-axes whirring and crude cleavers swinging. The Federals fired from point-blank ranger or drew melee-weapons, force swords and war hammers surrounded by crackling disruption field while the officers drew plasma blades, brilliant beams of blue plasma springing to life in seconds. Diaz drew his plasma blade in one hand, volkite serpenta pistol in the other. Diaz had enough room to get off a shot with his serpent, the weapon reducing one bellowing ork who was rushing him into ash. Then he closed ranks with the nearest greenskin and swept his plasma blade through its chest, bringing it down, where he finished it by stomping his power-assisted boot through its skull. Behind his visor, Josa grimaced. Things were getting interesting now.