The bridge fell into a brief silence.
Every officer lowered their head in deep thought, weighing the pros and cons of the situation.
Dominic also remained quiet, his hand unconsciously covering his mouth as his mind simulated the outcomes of both tactics.
Right then, a Tech-Priest serving aboard the vessel stepped forward.
He wore a gold-trimmed crimson robe, his face entirely covered by cybernetic implants, and the cog mechanicus sacred icon on his chest glowed with a faint light.
Holding a data-slate, he bowed and presented it to Dominic, speaking in a voice laced with static and mechanical synthesis.
"My Lord, this contains the simulated outcomes of both a forced pursuit and local consolidation.
It calculates our combat losses, ammunition stocks, fleet status, and the Ork troop strength data on planet Dorido.
This is the Omnissiah's blessing granted to us; please review it." Dominic took the data-slate and studied it intently.
Lines of complex data and dynamic battle simulations materialized, clearly listing warship damage ratios, remaining ammunition reserves, combat readiness thresholds for the ground forces, and the tactical progression and final win-rates for both strategies.
The simulated results were stark.
A forced pursuit could destroy the remaining Ork warships within three days, but after landing on Dorido, the fleet's fire support continuity would experience a total breakdown by the third day.
By the fifteenth day, the ground forces would be cut off and encircled by the Ork hordes.
By the thirtieth day, they would face a pincer movement from a new Ork fleet built right on the planet.
The final success rate for the entire campaign was a mere 8.6%.
On the other hand, consolidating their position and waiting for supplies before launching the grand offensive would grant the Orks four days to catch their breath.
However, by leveraging absolute orbital fire superiority, they could instantly flatten the Orks' industrial structures and breeding grounds upon arrival, systematically squeezing their living space.
The final success rate was 89.2%.
Dominic stared at the data for a long time, remaining silent.
The Tech-Priest's cold, synthetic voice echoed again.
"The simulation indicates that the greatest variable in a forced pursuit lies in Ragnar's apparent immortality.
If Ragnar reappears during the surface campaign to manifest a larger Waaagh! field, our success rate drops below 1%."
This final piece of data acted as the last straw, completely shattering the lingering denial in Dominic's heart.
He handed the data-slate back, the tension on his face abruptly melting away before he suddenly burst into a loud, hearty laugh.
The laughter was genuine and sharp, wiping away his previous gloom and anger.
"Raynor von Carri..
no, Governor Raynor, you have truly made me look at you in a new light." Dominic clapped Raynor on the shoulder, his tone filled with genuine admiration.
"Ruling a single planet on the frontier, yet you possess the strategic vision of an entire sector, seeing right through the trap of this battle.
Compared to those high-born generals who only know how to wage war on paper in comfortable headquarters, you are a true soldier."
"You are entirely right; haste makes waste.
I was blinded by a fleeting victory and almost caused a catastrophic blunder.
I hereby cancel the pursuit.
I will immediately issue orders for the entire fleet to halt and consolidate right here at Karl II!" "We will establish an interplanetary supply corridor.
Once our logistics, warship repairs, and troop reorganizations are fully settled, we will mass our entire strength and launch a final, decisive assault on Dorido!" Seeing this, a relieved smile broke across Raynor's face, and he proactively extended his right hand.
During their initial meeting, Dominic had acted with the supreme arrogance of an Imperial Rear Admiral and Tithe Collector, looking down on him from a lofty position and dismissing him as a petty warlord of a backwater world.
But now, after surviving the crucible of battle and finding tactical common ground, Dominic genuinely respected his vision and capability, viewing him as a brother-in-arms worthy of standing beside.
Dominic looked at the extended hand, smiled warmly, and reached out to grip it firmly.
The moment their hands met, there was none of the superficial political maneuvering typical of high nobility—only the honest, mutual respect between soldiers and statesmen.
The overhead lights cast down upon them, stretching their shadows long across the deck.
Right at that moment, a system prompt quietly surfaced in Raynor's mind:
> [System Notice] > Target Dominic Ventria's favorability has broken out of negative values, formally unlocking a positive bond.
Current Favorability: 1 > > Achievement Unlocked: Ventrian Ally > Reward Granted: Imperial Reputation +50.
When leading human armies in battle, troop morale increases by 10%. With that, the Karl II space station officially transitioned into a state of comprehensive reinforcement and repair.
--- At the orbital shipyard, lights flickered continuously through day and night.
Several damaged Imperial warships were docked in their berths, with Tech-Priests and naval engineers in power armor crawling across the massive hulls.
Welding sparks illuminated the dark void like a sea of stars.
Massive gantry cranes lifted thick plates of adamantium armor onto the prow of the Gemstone, replacing the sections pulverized during the collision.
On the station, high-ranking officers held overnight meetings to map out secure transportation routes running from the Brevis planetary port straight to Karl II.
Colossal bulk transports, laden with macro-shells, components, rations, and fresh conscripts, began pouring into the temporary docks of Karl II in a steady, unbroken stream.
The ground forces reorganized their units while simultaneously repairing the defensive works shattered by the fighting, establishing rotating guard watches and conducting specialized anti-Ork tactical drills.
Dominic threw himself completely into the grueling military bureaucracy.
As the supreme commander of the combined fleet, he had to oversee the route mechanics, resource distribution, fleet deployments, and the formulation of the final siege tactics.
The mountains of paperwork grew by the hour, swallowing every second of his free time.
Over those two days, he often sat at the bridge command console for over ten hours straight, eating and sleeping right there.
Raynor voluntarily joined the logistical and strategic planning teams.
Relying on his administrative experience governing Brevis and aided covertly by Sarah, he helped streamline the chaotic supply distribution system, coordinated the maintenance rotations between the distinct fleets, and perfected the defensive perimeters of the supply nodes, lifting more than half the administrative burden off Dominic's shoulders.
The relentless paperwork filled Dominic's waking hours, but even as he buried himself in casualty reports and starcharts, a strange emptiness lingered deep in his chest.
Whenever he found a rare moment of solitude, he would pull open a concealed compartment in his desk drawer and retrieve a black face mask.
It was the piece left behind by the silver-haired Inquisitor during the chaotic melee on the bridge.
His fingers gently traced the fine, smooth material of the mask, his nose catching a faint, lingering trace of a cool, crisp scent.
Involuntarily, her image would flash through his mind.
That cold, breathtakingly beautiful face; those ruby-like eyes; her silver hair flowing wildly amidst the flames of battle.
And, above all, the absolute decisiveness with which she had lunged forward to shield him in his hour of peril.
He often stood alone by the viewscreen of the bridge, staring out into the pitch-black void, wondering to himself.
Why had that mysterious Inquisitor from the Ordo Hereticus stepped in to save him? Was it because she respected his duty as an Imperial Rear Admiral, standing his ground to protect the civilians of the sector? Did she recognize his noble blood and resolve, refusing to abandon his men even in the face of death?
Or was she merely executing a classified Inquisition directive and saved him purely by coincidence? The more he pondered, the more a subtle, indescribable feeling bloomed in his chest, causing a faint smile to play on his lips.
For a man whose life had previously been entirely consumed by naval doctrine and family glory, this was the first time he felt a profound attachment to someone he barely knew
He began making discreet inquiries about the Ordo Hereticus among his staff, hoping to catch even the slightest thread of information regarding the silver-haired agent.
But the Inquisition moved in absolute secrecy; no one knew her origins, and no one knew where she had vanished to.
Deep down, a quiet expectation began to take root.
He fervently hoped that their paths would cross again, if only to thank her face-to-face—even if it meant exchanging just a single word.
As the consolidation efforts at Karl II progressed smoothly and systematically, the battle in this corner of the sector fell into a temporary lull.
Meanwhile, across the vast depths of open space, the battered Ork fleet limped back along the warp route, crawling toward the planet Dorido. The flotilla bore heavy, jagged scars left behind by macro-cannon fire; hulls were patched upon crude patches, and ships cobbled together from rusted scrap metal and salvaged debris were everywhere to be seen. Many vessels had black smoke billowing from their engines, their speeds reduced to a snail's crawl.
Having suffered a crushing defeat at Karl II, the Ork Boyz were struggling with bottomed-out morale, their usual boisterous, roaring enthusiasm largely drained away. They slumped their heads, leaning against the bulkheads of their ships, listlessly wiping down their choppas and shootas.
Deep inside the vessels, the Bosses of the Goff, Deathskulls, and Bad Moons clans harbored their own dark thoughts. Gathering in secret within their respective quarters, they whispered among themselves, a rebellious urge to reject their current leadership quietly taking root. They had all witnessed Ragnar's humiliated retreat and had felt the sharp decline of the Waaagh! field.
In the fundamental logic of the Orks, a Warboss who flees before a fight is fully finished has no right to remain the Boss. If it wasn't for the fact that Ragnar's terrifying reputation had been beaten into their minds through countless brutal displays in the past, a mutiny would have erupted already.
Ragnar could naturally feel the seething resentment among his subordinates. Standing on the bridge of the Big Flatbread Wrap, he paced back and forth in a fit of agitation. He had shrunk back down to roughly three meters in height—his physical stature far inferior to before—though his belly remained comically and massively bloated.
This time, however, the giant maw on his stomach remained tightly sealed, no longer snapping open and shut. His skin had taken on a sickly, waxen yellow hue, and his body radiated a dense, roasted meat aroma.
The catastrophic loss at Karl II, where a full third of his fleet had been vaporized, had caused his reputation among the tribes to plummet. What unsettled him even more was that the "God of Savory Stuffing"—the entity that had salvaged him from the brink of absolute destruction during the psychic collapse—seemed to have fallen into a deep slumber after overextending its source essence. The massive mouth on his abdomen lay completely silent, no longer transmitting those familiar telepathic responses. Without the divine amplification of his patron god's power, his wounds healed at a crawl, and his bizarre, immortal resilience had dropped drastically.
"Damned purple humie! Damned bugs!" Ragnar roared, smashing his fist into the bulkhead and leaving a deep indentation in the metal plating.
His angry shout echoed through the hollow bridge, but the subordinate Bosses merely kept their heads lowered, remaining silent while their eyes flashed with dismissive contempt.
Looking at them, Ragnar grew increasingly frantic. He knew that if he couldn't win a major battle quickly to recombine a sufficient Waaagh! field, it wouldn't be long before these untamable Bosses banded together to hack him apart and fight over his throne. Without the protection of his patron god, he wasn't entirely confident he could beat down every single challenger at once.
Right now, he only wanted to return to his stronghold on Dorido as fast as possible, hole up in his deep underground fortress, nurse his wounds, and wait for his god to wake up.
Just as the fleet navigated into the nebula tracks on the outer fringes of Dorido and prepared to enter the planet's gravitational pull, three colossal silhouettes slowly materialized out of the dazzling, blinding mists of the nebula.
They were three massive space hulks, completely alien to both Imperial and Ork naval architecture. Their scale was breathtakingly vast; the volume of the largest hulk could easily rival half of the Karl II space station. The ship hulls completely lacked clean armor plating or weapon turrets, covered instead by a thick, slimy layer of dark-green mold. Thick, yellowish pus oozed slowly down the deep trenches of the bulkheads, dripping off into the void of space to form floating globules that radiated an ominous aura.
Coiling around the frames of the ships were countless mutated, hyper-grown clusters of flesh. Flesh tumors the size of fists were stacked upon one another, constantly writhing and shifting, rupturing to spill out even more foul fluid. Twisted tentacles of corrupted meat waved through the void like venomous serpents, their tips ending in dripping, tooth-lined orifices. The entire space hulk resembled a gargantuan, living monster drifting through space, oozing the distinct filth and malice of the Warp.
A primal, instinctive wave of revulsion instantly washed over Ragnar. His muscles locked up tight, and the dormant, giant maw on his abdomen violently twitched, letting out a low, guttural wheeze as it registered a deep rejection.
The energy signature ahead was alien, yet carried a familiar trace of warping, warp-born power—bizarre, rotting, and thoroughly saturated with a malice that sought to pollute all living life. It made his entire body feel intensely uncomfortable, as though he had swallowed a batch of putrid, spoiled stuffing.
"Boss! Der's sumfin' up ahead! Real big sumfin'!" an Ork Lookout yelled in terror, nearly dropping his spyglass onto the deck.
However, the fleet was traveling at an extreme speed, and a lightweight Ork escort ship at the very front of the formation was completely unable to swerve out of the way in time. Its steering engines had been crippled in the previous battle, and its control systems glitched out entirely, causing it to smash directly into the foremost giant space hulk.
BOOM!!!
Following a deafening explosion, the flash of the impact instantly lit up the pitch-black nebula.
Yet before the fire could even dissipate, the dark-green mold covering the surface of the space hulk suddenly split open into countless fissures, resembling a swarm of gaping mouths. A dense, teeming sea of plague zombies and flesh-warped abominations came pouring out of the structural cracks like a tidal wave.
These monsters possessed no self-awareness, no intellect, and no sanity; they merely let out low, hollow, groaning wails as they threw themselves toward the colliding Ork vessel, driven solely by the instinct to hunt down the essence of living beings.
The plague zombies had ulcerated, leaking skin that exposed stark white bone underneath. Their limbs were stiff yet untiring; even when their arms and legs were hacked off, they continued to crawl relentlessly across the deck. The flesh-warped abominations were twisted in shape, covered in pulsing tumors, their razor-sharp talons glinting with a sickly green sheen as corrosive saliva dripped continuously from their jaws.
The moment they boarded, they began a wholesale slaughter inside the ship. The stronger warp-monsters were almost completely immune to physical trauma. The choppas of the Ork Boyz hacked into them, only slicing open wounds that oozed thick pus without slowing them down. Even when their corrupted bodies were blown to pieces, the scattered chunks of meat would reanimate on the spot, growing into smaller, twitching horrors.
"Wot are dese gross fings?! Dis is proper nasty!"
Inside the ship, the Ork Boyz bellowed as they raised their shootas and swung their choppas to fight back, but they quickly realized to their horror that these monsters simply could not be killed off. Furthermore, whenever the plagued pus splattered onto an Ork's open wounds, it triggered instant necrosis and rot, causing disgusting mold and tumors to sprout from the lacerations. While not immediately fatal, it severely degraded the Boyz' fighting strength.
Ragnar, who had already been harboring a belly full of frustrated rage, was completely pushed over the edge by this sight.
The humiliating defeat at Karl II, the loss of his fleet, his plunging reputation, and the slumber of his god—this consecutive chain of disasters had left him completely frantic, with no outlet to unleash his boiling frustration. Now, three bizarre space hulks were blocking his front door, spawning an endless horde of rotten freaks out of nowhere.
But for a creature like Ragnar, this was actually excellent news.
After all, to an Ork, the only thing that ever truly mattered was the fight itself—not who they were fighting! As long as there was a scrap to be had, as long as there was slaughter, they would become excited, ecstatic, and fanatical. The Waaagh! field would instantly begin surging back together!
"Youse rotten pieces of garbage tink you can block my way?!" Ragnar bellowed from the bridge of his flagship, his immense, flabby frame shaking with rage.
The lingering remnants of the Waaagh! field around him suddenly churned, and a brilliant green light ignited across his skin.
"All ships, get in a line! Charge dem gits, smash 'em up good, and chop every single piece of dat rotten meat to bits!"
"WAAAAAAAUGH!"
The previously demoralized Ork Boyz were instantly set ablaze by the call to war, a fanatical light reigniting in their eyes. Roaring at the top of their lungs, they raised their weapons and forced their vessels to swing their guns around.
One by one, the Ork warships roared with a violent thrum of their engines, launching a savage, headlong charge toward the three space hulks.
In the cold void of space, Ork macro-cannons thundered, warped abominations shrieked and howled, and the brutal green energy of the Waaagh! clashed violently against the sickly yellow-green waves of plague energy.
A brutal, catastrophic melee between the Ork clans and the mutated bioweapons of Nurgle had officially exploded in the low orbit of Dorido.