After Pell seized the starport, dozens of tugboats immediately sped toward it.
Void-lock clamps locked tightly onto stress points calculated by the techmarines, and the tugs followed their planned vectors, chains stretched taut.
The massive starport was wrenched apart by pulling forces from four different directions.
The tugboats plunged into the black atmosphere of the second planet, outside the range of Ork anti-air fire, and released their clamps.
Four mountain-sized chunks of wreckage plummeted toward the surface.
The Mekboyz pulled stolen human telescopes over their heads and stared wide-eyed.
Through the blinding glow of re-entry they glimpsed steel components within.
One Death Skull Mekboy leapt up and shouted to the Grot scavengers:
"Stuff's fallin'! Da sky's droppin' stuff!"
"Gork and Mork sent it ta me!"
"Follow me, ya runts! Don't let da greedy gitz nick it, only I deserve it!"
The scavenger Grots howled in excitement, scrambling after him toward the falling junk-mountains.
The wreckage broke apart further during descent, raining fragments across the Orks below.
Shards of every size slammed into unlucky Death Skulls, but not a single Ork ran. For them, falling scrap was treasure worth dying for.
Different bosses, even Mekboyz serving the same boss, turned on one another mercilessly.
The clashes escalated quickly. Within days, five warbosses had personally joined the brawl with their mobs.
More and more tribes surged into the frenzy, reveling in the great scrap.
Nareth did not attack immediately. He monitored the life-sign densities in the conflict zone.
Only on the twenty-fifth day of the melee did he give the order: attack as planned.
The fleet opened orbital bombardment around the battlefield, targeting Ork flak sites. While fire rained down, Wilshire stood on the embarkation deck, addressing the assembled Honor Guard.
"Since the day I joined the legion, I have heard the whispers!" he began, his voice a low growl that cut through the silence. "The name we murmur in the dark. The title we bear like a shroud."
"I ask you now... WHAT ARE WE CALLED?"
"The Shadow of Order!" Five hundred voices erupted, a single, thunderous wave of sound that hammered against the steel decks.
Wilshire's face was unmoved, unsatisfied, he demanded more.
"WHAT ARE WE?" he roared, his voice tearing through the echo of their cry.
"THE SHADOW OF ORDER!" they bellowed again, a deafening roar.
"YES!" he conceded, the word a whip-crack. "But we are more than a shadow! A shadow is a phantom! A memory! We… are the living blade! We are the Honor Guard!"
Cheers erupted, raw and powerful, but Wilshire silenced them with a slashing gesture.
"Never... in all the annals of our glory... have you borne the weight you bear today! Never again will you fight as you fight now! Not as soldiers... not as warriors... but as AVENGERS!"
"No duty is greater! No glory is truer!"
"We are the Honor Guard of the Monarch! And today... TODAY... we will carve our legend not in stone, but into the flesh of every greenskin we slay!"
"WILL YOU STAND WITH ME?"
The cheer that answered a shockwave that shook the very air.
"WILL YOU STAND WITH ME?" he shouted again, his voice breaking with the force of his fury.
A furious, wordless roar answered him, the sound of five hundred souls igniting.
"SONS OF THE MONARCH!" he cried, his voice climbing to a fever pitch. "We are the sons of Lord Nareth! His will is our steel! His wrath is our fire!"
"And these beasts... these ORKS... they dare to seize our cities? They dare to profane our worlds?"
"A THOUSAND TIMES, NO!"
"The final dawn is upon them! Not a sunrise, but a sunset... the last they will ever see! We will grind their bodies to dust! We will scatter their ashes to the void!"
Wilshire slammed his fist onto a rune. With a crackle of raw energy, his thunder hammer erupted to life. Blue light glowed across his sharp features, his black hair streaming in the electric wind.
"LOOK UPON ME!" he commanded. "SEE YOUR FURY REFLECTED IN MY EYES!"
"WE ARE THE SHADOW OF ORDER! WE ARE THE HONOR GUARD!"
"NOW SAY IT! SHOUT IT! SCREAM IT UNTIL YOUR VOICES ARE TORN FROM YOUR THROATS! LOUD ENOUGH FOR THESE VERMIN TO HEAR!"
The response was a wall of pure, undiluted wrath.
"WE ARE THE SHADOW OF ORDER! WE ARE THE HONOR GUARD!"
Their fervor rose like a storm, feeding one another's rage until they were aflame with zeal.
Wilshire felt it, their fanaticism for Legion and Primarch alike, and he roared in satisfaction:
"FOR THE SHADOW OF ORDER! FOR THE HONOR GUARD! FOR THE MONARCH!"
They echoed him, a tsunami of sound.
"FOR THE SHADOW OF ORDER! FOR THE HONOR GUARD! FOR THE MONARCH!"
"LOUDER!" he shrieked, his voice surpassing its limits. "THEY CANNOT HEAR YOU, BROTHERS! FOR THE MONARCH!"
The final cry was not a word, but a promise of extinction, a sonic boom of absolute violence that shook the heavens.
"FOR THE MONARCH!"
Wilshire cut the rune, his final shout booming:
"CLEANSE THE GREENSKIN FILTH! ONWARD TO VICTORY!"
He flung out his arm, and the Honor Guard surged into the drop-pods in a frenzy.
Nareth observed it all. His senses told him even those Honor Guard not directly addressed by Wilshire were swept up, their blood afire, dozens even joining in the chant.
He thought silently:
'Wilshire is a natural preacher. Perfectly aligned with the Sun Pathway… he has the qualities of a Bard, a Light Suppliant, perhaps even a Solar High Priest. Shame I still lack the main ingredient for the Bard potion, the Golden Sunflower. Who knows when I'll find one.'
With a wave of his hand, the Honor Guard filed into their pods.
Black capsules screamed downward, slamming into the Ork hordes.
Wilshire was the first Shadow of Order to set foot on the second planet. He roared:
"FOR THE MONARCH!"
The Honor Guard erupted after him, their cry echoing his.
They advanced in perfect rhythm, step, fire, reload, mowing greenskins like wheat before the scythe.
But then came the bellow.
A massive Ork boss charged, his left eye blazing red, body tattooed blue, mechanical grafts entwined across his back and right arm.
"WAAAGH!" he roared, and the horde roared with him.
Bolters thundered. Orks fell in heaps.
The Warboss was torn and bleeding, but still he came, swinging a crimson choppa at Wilshire.
Wilshire donned the War Mask, drew strength from fury, and swung his hammer.
The impact was titanic.
The Warboss hurled him aside, sending his bolt pistol flying.
The brute smashed into the Guard, his choppa splitting helmets and skulls, scattering warriors like ragdolls.
Wilshire staggered up. He knew he must kill this Ork now, or the Honor Guard's faith would falter.
He charged, black eyes locked on the towering beast.
'Father taught us, every foe has a weakness.'
Two strides away, his eyes went wholly black, whites consumed.
He saw it, beneath the cybernetics on the Ork's right flank, a hand-sized wound.
He dodged aside, swung his hammer with both arms.
The crackling field tore open the wound, the Ork crashing down.
Wilshire hammered his skull again and again until it burst.
Panting, he muttered:
"Just now… did I use Father's gift of Warp Insight?"
...
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
[email protected]/DaoistJinzu