Boom! Boom! Boom...
The thunder of artillery roared across the plains like war drums. Thick trails of black smoke rose slowly into the sky, staining the already dim heavens, darkened by the bloodshed of war, into a despairing gray haze.
Inside a trench piled high with corpses, a man wearing a patch-covered coat and an old navy cap held half a cigarette butt he had just picked up from the trench in his mouth, lazily blowing two streams of white smoke from his nostrils.
I'm probably going to die here...
That was what he thought.
The roars of those beasts crossed the crisscrossing battlefield and reached the man's ears, immediately making him want to cry.
If he had known there were green-skin mushrooms causing trouble on this mining world, he never would have landed in this rural area just to save a bit on docking fees...
"What are you afraid of?! Are you even a soldier?! Get up there and tear those green monsters apart with your loyalty and hot blood!"
A Commissar wearing a tall cap gripped a laspistol and glared furiously at the sighing man with fanatical violet eyes.
"This Commissar. I think you may have gotten two things wrong."
The man glanced at the Commissar, who was firing over the edge of the trench, rubbed his little mustache with his left hand, and spoke in an unhurried tone.
"First, is it possible that I'm not a soldier, but a free captain who wandered into a battlefield while trying to save money..."
Before he could finish, a huge figure suddenly leaped down through the storm of gunfire above the trench and landed squarely between them.
A fierce gust exploded outward, kicking up thick dust and smoke. The sight immediately made the Commissar's pupils shrink.
Just as he raised his left hand and tried to fire, he was startled to find that after he pulled the trigger, no laser shot came from the barrel at all.
"Waaagh! Stinky humie, take one of my choppas!"
Along with the shifting airflow, the massive form of the green monster burst out from the smoke, and its incomprehensible alien speech followed.
This terrifying alien species was called the Orks, horrifying creatures that had evolved purely for war. The Imperium of Man had once nearly been destroyed by them.
They reproduced and developed through individual spores. On any world invaded by Orks, beneath mushrooms growing in dark corners, there might be a young greenskin still growing.
These creatures not only possessed terrifying physical strength and astonishing talent for learning technology, but also wielded a psychic network-like field called the Waaagh! field, allowing them to use the powerful ability known as "I fink."
For example, just now, this Ork had been thinking:
I fink dat little shoota in da tall humie's hand don't make noise, so it can't hurt me.
Though most humans were unwilling to admit it, in some ways these greenskins, with nothing but fighting and killing in their heads, were one of the most evolutionarily successful species in the galaxy.
At that moment, the Ork roared. Its arms were as thick as an adult man's thigh, and it swung a brutally crude cleaver straight at the Commissar in front of it.
A determined light burst from the Commissar's pale violet eyes, and then he shouted without fear:
"For the Emperor!"
He threw aside the laspistol in his hand, sidestepped the Ork's heavy overhead slash, then smoothly drew the longsword at his waist and viciously thrust it into the alien's side.
The Ork let out a painful scream, then instantly flew into a greater rage.
With a speed utterly out of proportion to its size, it lunged forward, grabbed the Commissar's head in its huge green hand, and lifted him into the air.
Terrifying pressure came from that grip. Just as the Commissar was about to have his skull crushed alive, a sharp entrenching shovel sliced through the Ork's head as easily as cutting tofu.
Splut. As half the Ork's head fell to the ground, the Commissar immediately broke free from its hand and dropped onto the dirt with a thud.
Behind the slowly collapsing Ork corpse, the man casually shook the blood off the entrenching shovel he had picked up, then somewhat disdainfully tossed the spent cigarette butt into the trench.
After doing all that, he continued speaking in that same slow, distinct tone:
"Second, I'm not afraid of those things at all..."
"I just think they're troublesome."
After saying that, he extended his right hand toward the Commissar on the ground, smiling faintly as he met those somewhat astonished violet eyes.
The Commissar hesitated for a moment, but in the end still took his hand and stood up from the muddy trench.
Bending down to pick up the laspistol from the ground and briefly checking it, the Commissar looked at the man, gave him a military salute, and said formally:
"72nd Conscript Regiment, Commissar, Horne."
The man smiled, removed his navy cap, and gave an old-fashioned aristocratic salute, speaking with a hint of amusement:
"Free Captain Solomon Harlock."
The introductions eased the earlier awkwardness a little, but the battlefield itself was becoming even grimmer.
For some reason, the Orks who had originally hidden behind earth-and-stone cover, wildly firing their shootas and trying to kill the enemy through sheer noise, now all began roaring as they charged onto the front line.
They raised their weapons and bellowed toward the sky:
"WAAAAAAAGH!"
In the midst of that war cry, the human soldiers firing from the trench looked on in horror as a terrifying giant figure stepped out from behind the greenskins.
It was an enormous Ork clad in a huge ramshackle mech suit cobbled together by Mekboyz, and the savage crisscrossing scars all over its body were proud marks of honor.
The moment it appeared, the Ork boyz became even more frenzied.
This was one of the most dangerous kinds of Ork.
A Warboss.
These bosses were the biggest and greenest Orks, powerful beings evolved from the fiercest and most battle-hungry boyz. At the same time, they served as local network nodes in the greenskins' Waaagh! field.
At that moment, huge amounts of Waaagh! energy gathered around that Warboss, causing its already immense aura to surge, rise, and explode upward.
Looking at the boyz who could hardly contain themselves, the boss let out a deafening roar:
"Boyz, raise yer choppas and come krump da humies good and proper with me!"
The moment those words came out, the greenskins became even more excited.
In the air, the immense Waaagh! energy created violent psychic turbulence, making the soldiers defending that line turn pale with despair.
Normally, this kind of Waaagh! energy disturbance from the Orks was like tossing a small pebble into the calm surface of the Warp. It would create ripples, but nothing too serious.
But this time, a coincidence occurred.
Just as that pebble dropped into the Warp, a raging Warp storm happened to be passing through the area.
The pebble smashed open a breach in it.
At that moment, the immense Waaagh! field formed a vortex and dragged an object out of the storm...
The boss raised its head in confusion.
Why'z dere suddenly a shadow above me?
But before it could finish thinking, a cultivation chamber plummeting from the sky slammed directly into its head.
And so, the Warboss fell.
(End of Chapter)
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