Alaric Prime had been a quiet, backwater mining colony on the edge of the Segmentum Tempestus, known mostly for its rich veins of adamantium and the stubborn resilience of its colonists. That was until the skies turned a belligerent shade of green, and the WAAAGH Eternal thundered into their atmosphere.
Governor Hiram Voss, a wiry man with a steel-gray mustache that quivered as much as his hands, stared up at the green-tinted skies from his command bunker. "They're here," he muttered to his aide, a young officer named Lieutenant Sara Killian, who was busily trying to coordinate the colony's pitiful excuse for a defense.
"Stars save us," Voss whispered, suddenly feeling every one of his fifty-seven years. "What are our options?"
Sara glanced at the digital map, displaying the advancing green icons with grim finality. "We hold them at the mining rigs. The choke points there might give us a chance."
And so, the defenders of Alaric Prime marshaled at the designated choke points, setting up emplacements and readying their meager arsenal. The Ork's arrival was anything but subtle.
First came the thunderous roar of engines as a squadron of Red's modified Ork Supa Dakkajets painted a lurid red screamed overhead, dropping bombs that turned defenders into fiery silhouettes. Then, the ground forces arrived, seeming to have come from nowhere. With them came the Goblins. The Ork Mobz opened fire but seemed to be letting the Goblins take the lead.
"Contact! East ridge!" shouted Sergeant Max Dalton, his voice barely carrying over the din as the first wave of Goblins breached their defenses. They weren't like the Grot fodder tales spoke of. These were bigger and meaner, and they knew how to use cover. Worse, the Orks who pushed in behind them moved in ordered ranks, and God Emperor, save them, was aiming.
"Fire at will!" Dalton ordered, unloading his shotgun into the nearest Goblin, which somersaulted backward from the impact, only to rise again, its submachine gun chattering death.
Killian, fighting alongside the militia, took down two Goblins with precise shots from her laspistol. "Keep your heads down!" she yelled, ducking as a spray of explosive rounds stitched the air where her head had been seconds earlier.
The fight was desperate, dirty, and brutal. The mining rigs provided some cover, but the Orks' superior numbers and firepower were overwhelming. Just as the situation seemed hopeless, the ground shook with an intensity that spoke of something large… something terrible.
"The Gargant! It's here!" someone screamed, terror writ large on his soot-stained face.
Governor Voss, observing from his bunker, felt a cold shiver run down his spine as the monstrosity known as the Warp Krusha Gargant appeared on the horizon, its Warp Cannon glowing ominously. Each step was an earthquake, each blast from its cannon a cataclysm.
"Emperor, preserve us," Voss breathed, watching as the Gargant unleashed devastation, transforming the battlefield into a charnel house. Resistance crumbled where it stood, the few remaining defenders scattering like leaves before a storm.
And then, as if the situation couldn't get any worse, the air rippled and tore, and a Warp Portal opened directly inside the mining complex. Out stepped Killkrumpa Weirdblitz, the warlord of the WAAAGH Eternal, flanked by Red in her towering Battlesuit.
"Time to have some fun, eh, Red?" Killkrumpa bellowed, his voice like the roar of a hurricane.
"Just try not to destroy everything," Red replied dryly, her voice modulated and amused, echoing strangely from her suit.