This is a 40k battle report featuring my Bad Moons Ork army versus Mike’s Adeptus Mechanicus force, and used an opportunity to start fiddling with an effects filter app. Enjoy!
The last transmission from the staff of the inter-system missile silo on Eomycot Secundus had been in status “filed but awaiting review” for two years before the logician got to it. There was nothing special in the transmission itself: a list of maintenance duties being performed on the tiny planet’s sole missile defense base. It was routine stuff: repairs from dust storms, a particularly resilient fungus in the subterranean levels, and other housekeeping tasks. Yet the next update was almost a year overdue. The logician flagged a inquiry, and in-system transmissions began to attempt connection. When no response was received for 10 iterations, a dispatch inquiry was sent to the closest Tech Priest Dominus with a request to investigate.
After a month of space transit away from the main exploration fleet in a Falchion escort, the Dominus arrived at Eomycot Secundus. An initial dispatch of scans showed that the settlement that surrounded the missile silo on the small planet was in complete ruins, but the silo was intact (complete with missiles ready in tubes). A servitor-piloted lander released a host of inspection servo-skulls, and the picts relayed back showed a disturbing sight: Orks and Gretchin were moving about the planet. With the missile silo in Ork hands, no fleets were safe passing by–yet the missiles had not been launched at their Escort, so the Dominus had to take a gamble. He detailed a personal guard to help him capture the silo.
As the Mechanicus landers made their way to the surface and began unloading troops, the Orks began to rally together. Long range picts displayed the Orks emerging from the silo itself, using the old imperial defense network as their own bastion for defense. Meanwhile Trukks, bikes, and more screamed toward where the Dominus’ force was deploying. At the center of the silo, literally perched amid the missile warheads, was a strange Ork shaman. Green power flowed from two bones he clashed together, and that seemed to energize the Ork forces. The Dominus wondered if the superstitious Ork perhaps thought of the missiles as a kind of standing stones of sacred technological ground, the way that the beast moved to defend them.
The first wave of Orks rushed from their ramshackle Trukks and into the Mechanicus lines. The Skitarii Rangers opened fire, and while the Ork numbers were thinned, the Ork assault still hit the Mechanicus lines hard. Slowly the heavier elements of the force–two Dunecrawlers–blasted their way through the Ork lines, the Orks who had so easily cut the Skitarii down until only two remained withered under the stubber fire. A rampaging Warboss tried to engage after jumping out of a Trukk, but one of the Dunecrawlers’ Neutron Lasers managed to zero in on him as he charged, turning the Ork leader into a smoking crater.
The Dominius himself had to engage the bothersome Ork Trukks that were tying up his Dunecrawlers and stalling the advance on the silo. One with a massive wrecking ball was finally felled by supporting fire, while the Dominus engaged another in combat. Firing up the energy field of his massive Ominissian Axe, the broad swipes eventually managed to cleave the engine of the Trukk in twain as it raced around him. A massive squig in the vehicle managed to chew some of his wires and dendrites, but the self-repair process allowed him to triumph.
The Orks delayed the Mechanicum heavy forces, but not quite long enough. While only the Dominus, two Dunecrawlers (one reasonably damaged and one intact), and two somewhat shell-shocked Skitarii rangers survived, they managed to clear out the complex of the primary Ork defenders. Despite the Orks ravaging the buildings all around the facility, the missile silo site was oddly untouched and undamaged. The usual Ork looting of such a technological place wasn’t even evident. The Dominus reviewed the evidence from the silo’s last transmissions, and it seemed to be utter silence. Two years ago the staff had been going down into the depths of the silo to clear out a spread of mildew, and two years later a strange Ork shaman was protecting the place like some strange holy site, almost a perverse parody of praising Terra for being the origin of mankind.
The Dominus shrugged. Xenos oddities were not his foray, and the vile greenskins had been eradicated. He requisitioned a replacement staff, who would arrive in a year’s time to the remote planet. He thought for a moment, and tagged an additional item on their task list for when they arrived: tunnel mildew. It wouldn’t do for them to refrain from cleaning the Omnissiah’s carefully constructed facilities when they arrived.
The Dark Muse 