Freeboota Outpost "Dat Rok"
0200 hours standard local time
Doom came on crimson and white wings.
Death came with black and green sails.
Devastation came with the searing Star-light and iron fist of Gravity Itself made a weapon.
And the universe was reminded once more: to rouse the ire of the Aeldari is folly.
There are no clever stratagems.
No posturing.
No careful dance of maneuver and counter-maneuver.
The Host of the Aeldari fall upon the Ork like the Wailing Doom itself.
Orks being orks—even Freebootas—they charge anyway. Fleet and deadly, the ships of Zahr-Tann take the lead, crude Ork shells splattering off their shields. Their return fire is invisible: fists of gravity reach out, and ramshackle escorts simply implode, crushed under the merciless power of combi-grav bombards. Behind them the battle-line of Vau-Vulkesh reaps terrible harvest, for there are no exotic defenses here to thwart them, and starlances stutter as each ship sweeps its fire-cone back and forth in a complex interleaving that ensures at any moment at least one ship can bring its weapon against any arc. More than twenty score ships there might have been here, yet most were mere Lite Kroozas at worst, and the combined fleet simply sweeps them aside, leaving crushed and burning hulks behind.
The station attempts to fight as the fleets close, but any gun able to actually harm a voidship is swiftly silenced by Lance or bomb. Squadrons of crude orkish fighter-craft stream forth, clouds of choking black in their wake, and the Bright Eagles of Vau-Vulkesh stoop upon them, lance and lascannon flashing, fast, wheeling passes that rely on speed and the supreme skill of an Aeldari pilot to thread the needle between death and life. In their wake the larger, slower Crossbow of Zahr-Tann smashes what remains, the short-lined stars of plasma warheads and their own lascannons methodically eliminating the disarrayed swarms. In nearly no time at all, the station is helpless, as the combined fleet forms up outside the range of what few weapons remain to it. Boarding swiftly follows, and it is no less deadly: gunlines of Vulkeshi Hearthguards shelter behind the literal shield-wall of Zahr-Tann's close-action specialists, Fatecaster Rifles firing over and around their allies to leave Orks dead with wraithbone spines neatly severing key nerve-junctions, whilst the roar and glare of plascasters leaves entire compartments half-molten ruin behind them. There are casualties—there always are, when fighting the Ork in such intimate confines as a boarding action—yet none fatal, none serious.
A moment to breath is taken as wounds are healed, and then the final chapter begins.
It begins with rain:
Deadly.
Searing.
Red and silver-blue spears fall from the sky, and blasted ruin is left in their wake—strongpoints, muster-grounds, ramshackle barracks and forts, reduced to burning rubble and shocked survivors in an instant.
Then further alarms sound—dozens of flyer-craft descend from the heavens, and a second rain falls—this of bombs. Less powerful, perhaps, yet with the shock of the previous barrage the Orks can barely muster any response, and what few emplacements are not silenced by the falling ordinance are swiftly so by wheeling fighters, missiles, lasblasts and the strobing fire of Starlances blasting and burning.
Only
then do the hosts of the Aeldari appear, erupting from hidden gates near the settlement. Wheeling, swooping formations of open-topped transports laden with infantry and tanks smash any attempt to form into order—as much as the Ork ever is, anyway—while jetbikes and skimmers seek out lesser pockets and harry them to death in short order. As is the way of the Aeldari, the battle was won from the beginning, the enemy dead already and merely needing to be informed.
The fleet will linger here for perhaps another five years or so, to search through untouched orkish treasure-hordes for anything of actual value and catch any straggling survivors that were away from the base at the time of its destruction, but this task is effectively over.
Please Stand By…
