“Orks” Just the name for those foul creatures put my teeth on edge. They rape, pillage, and enslave or kill everything and everyone in their path. They took away everything from me: my friends, family, and loved ones. But before we charge forward with my tale, let’s backtrack for a bit here and look at some history.
In the year 2234 humanity rejoiced. They had finally, after much trial and error, mastered the art of space travel. Through the development of the Wulfric pattern trans-dimensional engine, mankind took to the stars with abundance.
Dozens of colony worlds were chartered by all of the super powers on the planet. Earth became a massive trading hub. Thousands of ships dotted her atmosphere daily, hauling back the vast riches of the colonies.
Unfortunately, as with most things, human nature reeled its ugly head. In the year 2314 A massive war on all fronts broke out over colonization rites to a newly discovered system. This war, called the Scourge, lasted 10 long years and brought with it much death and devastation.
The war was brought to a screeching halt after the Middle Eastern Union launched an asteroid into a lush garden world, making it barren for the rest of its planetary life cycle.
All of the Nations on earth convened, and an agreement was struck. To avoid the rise of another colony war, it was sanctioned that a separate entity of rule would be created to govern all of humanities activities in space. Thus, The UCE (United Colonies of Earth) was born.
A relative time of peace and prosperity followed. For 50 years humanity could rest and recuperate among the stars.
Then in 2375 a new form of sapient and space-faring life was discovered. They were tall, green-skinned, bipedal, extremely muscular, and very aggressive. They called themselves “Orks”. A first contact team was sent to parlay with them. They were sent back to us in pieces. From this moment onwards humanity has not known peace.
200 years has passed from that fateful day, and there is no end to the fighting in sight. The war has gone back and forth over dozens of star clusters. It seemed for every Ork we put down or ship destroyed a dozen more would spring up to take its place. This was a war of numbers and they had more. Thousands of worlds have burned and humanity has been on the precipice of its existence. It is in this dark and war torn section of the galaxy that I was born and in it I thought I would pass on. Fate it seems had other ideas.
To this day I don’t know exactly what happened. It was supposed to be a routine drop. An Ork “Croozer” had settled itself above the capitol of Caspian. It was this little backwater colony world rich in rare earth metals. The Orks were using the ship as a command and control center for their slaving operation on the planet’s surface.
Somehow the green bastards had jumped right into the atmosphere, slipping right under the noses of the planets orbital defense systems. From there it was an easy campaign for them to decimate the guard forces on the planet, and establish the slaving ring within the year. With no nearby UCE patrols in the area they had free reign on the planet. It was a miracle in of itself that command even received the distress call.
The 3rd response flotilla was mobilized and me with them. I was part of the 25th Drop trooper regiment. The Elysian “Helldivers”. The plan was simple; Command wanted the ship intact to figure out how the blasted Greenskins had been able to jump into the atmosphere. Our mission objective was to drop from high orbit onto the ship, kill the crew, and disable all the major systems.
300 of us made that drop, not many made it back in one piece. Now if you want a detailed description of the fighting you’ll have to get me drunk. I’m only writing all this down to preserve what little sanity I have left since coming here.
The drop itself went without a hitch. Valkyrie assault ships brought us into the atmosphere and from there we made our jump. My squad and I landed on the stern end of the ship. From there we cut our way into the upper deck. Fighting was fierce, room to room, bulkhead to bulkhead, CQB at its worst. We took a couple casualties, but eventually we made it to bridge of the ship. From there it was a quick mop up of the crew and we had the ship under our control, or so we thought.
2nd squad was sent to secure the engine room had not reported in for a while. Captain Tedeski sent me and my guys to check it out.
We made it down to engineering without any contact, but to quote the age old hero, “My Spidey senses were tingling.” We found what was left of 2nd in the middle of the engine room. They went down swinging though, for every trooper I saw downed, there were at least 3 Orks surrounding him. There was one survivor. Before he bled out he told us that the Orks had sabotaged the engines. The ship was set to jump in 6 minutes. Now normally this wouldn’t be that bad. The flotilla could track the ship through slip-space and get us out within the week. But, unfortunately for us, all the systems had been forcibly disabled on the ship, including the shields.
Without shields the forces of slip-space would tear the ship asunder. We got Captain Tedeski on the link and told him about the forced jump about to be shoved up our asses. He quickly ordered a ship wide evacuation. Now this was a problem for us. Most of the fuel in our grave chutes had burned out so we couldn’t just jump to safety, and Ork ships were notorious for not having any escape measures. When an Ork ship goes down it goes down with all hands. The only way for us to get out was to have the Valkyries ferry us out. It wasn’t enough time. By the time my squad made it to our entry point our time was up.
I wasn’t giving up without a fight. I told my squad to jump for it and to hope our chutes had enough fuel to land us safely. It was suicidal and I knew it, but hell miracles happen right? I was the last to jump. Right as I made my exit the ship jumped.
All I remember before passing out was a bright light and then the feeling of flying.
My time in the war had come to a close, or so I thought. I was in for a big surprise when I woke up next.
From the War Journal of SGT Michael Durrant,
Formerly of the UCE 1st Bn 25th Drop Trooper Regiment
Wing Leader of the "Warhawks"