{oOo}
If there was one species in the entire galaxy that Serenity could be said to hate it was Orks.
The great scimitar swept through the haft of an axe and cut the foe a head shorter in an instant.
She was on record as having failed to find a single redeeming feature in the their society, culture or general psychology. Given that she was unquestionably the most accomplished diplomat in the Imperium, any hopes of engaging in any form of co-operation with Orks had been allowed to die at that point.
Rounds of lead and crude iron sparked and disintegrated as they struck the psychic field that surrounded her.
Serenity didn't look down on Orks because their lives were nasty, brutal and short. Her deep dislike for them rested upon their nasty tendency to make human lives nasty, brutal and short just by sheer association.
Raising one hand, she created a great light that turned night into day. Eyes watering to the point of blindness, the foe fell like wheat before a reaper.
A race that attacked humanity was awful.
A race that preyed upon humanity was terrible.
A race that willfully suborned humanity into barbarity was unspeakable.
A champion stepped forth, bragging of how he would defile her body once he had brought her down. She hurled the scimitar, sending it whirling through the air to cut his hand from his wrist before the weapon returned to her hand. Then she beckoned imperiously for him to step forwards to perish.
The planet Kussar's Redoubt, named for the Ork Warboss whose Waagh had seized it centuries before, was a case in point. There had been a substantial human population before the invasion and even now their numbers were smaller but perfectly viable. Unfortunately, the population was not only enslaved by the Orks but also integrated with them, existing alongside the servitor subspecies known as Gretchin. Reports suggested that the highest aspiration of any human on the planet was to be large enough and mean enough to be treated like an Ork.
Where she fought, the men and women stood straighter, pain and fatigue flowing away from them. That was merely her presence. In brief intervals between attacks she walked through the infirmary and where she went, the wounded rose hale to fight once more.
Serenity was supposed to wait for her Father and Brother to arrive with an expeditionary fleet to carry out the invasion. But that would have taken weeks.
Terrified but more afraid of the masters behind them than of one lone woman, slave soldiers charged at her by the hundred. She stood upon their heaped bodies, raised higher by her own height before they fled her, an indestructible goddess of war.
Military doctrine called for orbital bombardment to precede a landing. But that would have killed thousands of humans alongside the orks.
Shamans chanted and danced, calling upon their rude deities to give witness to their courage and grant them victory. She erupted in their presence like a newborn star and sent them squealing from her presence as she cast down their idols.
Instead she had identified a defensive position within a day's march of the largest Ork settlement on the planet, brazenly landed there with her guards and defied the Orks to remove her. Predictably, the result had been a swarm of Orks (and Gretchin and humans) towards the position, intent on 'Avin A Go, as their language put it.
A night attack. Standing shoulder to shoulder with towering giants and grim amazons. Less skill than butchery, the attackers gunned down in the dozens, night no shield against augmented vision, whether mechanical or inborn.
The Orks were armed with crude stubguns and axes for the most part. Serenity's Custodes and Seraphim wore power armour and advanced boltguns. The latter ran out of ammunition days before Orks ran out of bodies.
The ramparts that had been built now were buried in the dead. Survivors dug out their friends, heaping the enemy dead in new fortifications. Even the soles of her boots were unstained, but every glance at the fallen stabbed at her soul.
The gold armour of the Custodes and the silver armour of the Seraphim were stained black with blood. Only Serenity remained pristine. Untouched.
Six hulking foes surrounded her. Three cuts that would have made her arms-teachers curse and her brother laugh brought down half of them and then she plunged her blade into the ground before raising her voice in a crescendo that sent the others reeling in agony.
For every human life lost as they threw themselves against the barricades, heedless of risk in their obsession to fight along their greenskin brethren, she shed a single sparkling tear.
Her sword hurtled down only to pause an inch from the flesh of a half-naked boy half her age who was rushing her with no more than a dagger. Before he could realize he had been spared, Serenity reversed her blade and struck a stunning blow to his temple with the flat.
For the Orks she cried not at all.
{oOo}
AN: Possible backing music for this piece is Sono Namida mo Kanashimi mo ~ Tsudoe, Hoshi no Kagayaki, from the Nanoha StrikerS OST, available on Youtube.