As the drop pods slammed into the scorched earth, their armored hulls hissed open with bursts of steam and fire. From within, the Black Templars surged forth, weapons at the ready, their zeal burning brighter than the flares of re-entry.
The Orks were already on the move.
Vox reports crackled in their helmets—intel confirmed a large mob of Biker Boyz closing in fast, their crude engines roaring across the battlefield. More were coming. The batle had begun.
The chosen landing zone was a ruined city—its skeletal spires and shattered buildings offering some semblance of cover. Whether it had been destroyed by the Orks or abandoned long before their arrival remained uncertain. Regardless, it was the most viable location for a beachhead. The rest of the planet was dominated by jagged mountain ranges and open plains, ill-suited for a fortified drop.
Fortunately for the Black Templars, the thunderous roar of descending Thunderhawks and Valkyries filled the ruined city just moments before the guttural growl of Ork engines reached their ears.
"Marshall Galren, we have secure the landing zone and are now preparing the defences with the mortals." One of the Castellans reported, his voice crackling through the vox.
"Good," Galren nodded, his tone firm. "Make sure all the preparation have completed. I shall not bring shame to the Crusade in our first battle."
"By your will," the Castellan replied with a resolute nod.
Around them, the thunder of engines echoed as Valkyries touched down and lifted off in rapid sequence, ferrying Guardsmen into position. At the eastern end of the ruined city, two massive Devourer dropships had landed on the reinforced landing pads—vast enough to bear their immense weight. Their ramps groaned open as waves of troops and armored transports disembarked, joining the growing Imperial presence.
Gun emplacements were being hastily erected, sandbags and prefabricated barricades stacked by mortal hands under the watchful eyes of Templars and Grenadiers. Vox operators shouted orders. Auspexes scanned the horizon.
From the north, the dust clouds were growing—signs of incoming Ork vehicles.
Galren's voice came over the command vox again, iron-hard and without fear.
"Knights of Dorn, move north! We shall face the Orks first! We shall fire the first shot!"
With a roar of affirmation, the Black Templars surged into motion. Chainswords revved, bolters were primed, and squads advanced in tight formation through the crumbling ruins of the city. The ground trembled beneath their ceramite boots as they marched with righteous fury, banners of the Crusade snapping in the wind.
Ahead, the growl of crude engines grew louder—Biker Boyz, dozens of them, closing the distance fast with roaring laughter and the deafening rev of engines. Their silhouettes began to emerge from the dust: spiked wheels, scrap armor, and oversized guns welded with reckless abandon.
Galren raised his sword high as he strode to the front, flanked by his Sword Brethren.
"Let them come! Let the first blood spilled be green!"
He pointed forward with the blade.
"Bolters! Ready!"
The Templars took firing positions among the ruins and sandbag emplacements, forming staggered kill zones.
"Fire!"
A split-second later, the battlefield erupted in thunder. Bolter rounds screamed through the air, punching through Ork armor and flesh. Several bikers veered off course, crashing in fireballs or tumbling across the cracked stone streets. But still, the mob charged on—undaunted, blood-hungry.
As the bolter fire continued to hammer the onrushing horde, the air was filled with the sharp crack of lasguns and the thundering roar of heavy bolters. Guard squads, entrenched behind shattered walls and makeshift barricades, added their firepower to the storm. Red streaks of las-fire lanced through the smoke, while heavy bolter shells tore through Ork ranks with explosive force.
Despite the withering barrage, the Orks pressed forward, their crude bikes bouncing over debris and corpses alike. For every Greenskin cut down, another surged in to take its place, driven by the savage hunger for battle. Their guttural war cries and revving engines merged into a chaotic symphony of violence.
Some of them made it through.
A half-dozen Biker Boyz smashed into the front defensive line, slamming into Guardsmen with brutal force. One trooper was caught mid-fire by a spiked wheel, his body thrown like a ragdoll. Another Ork leapt from his bike with twin cleavers in hand, hacking down a heavy weapons team before being blasted apart by a point-blank melta shot from a nearby Templar.
Across the line, multiple sergeants barked orders, rallying the Guardsmen around them. Bayonets were fixed, and the wounded were dragged behind cover as vox traffic screamed with calls for support. They could not allow the line to collapse—not here, not now.
The Orks pressed forward—until the Black Templars arrived.
Though Galren had ordered the bulk of his forces to move north and engage the primary Ork force, several squads stationed in the southern sector had been delayed by debris-choked streets and scattered skirmishes. Now, they burst onto the field like vengeful angels, chainswords roaring, power swords crackling and storm shields raised.
Their arrival turned the tide.
With the Emperor's Champion at their head, the Black Templars slammed into the Ork horde like a thunderbolt.
Blood and oil flew in equal measure as the Templars tore through the xenos ranks, cutting down greenskins with brutal efficiency. Each blow was a sermon in steel, a declaration of holy vengeance. The Champion's Black Sword was a blur of motion—decapitating, impaling, cleaving—as he drove straight into the heart of the enemy mob. Where he walked, Orks died.
With their arrival, the line begin to stabilize.
Guardsmen surged back to the defensive line, some scrambled to weapon emplacements—reloading lascannons, unjamming autocannons, and resetting their lines of fire.
As the Black Templars and mortal defenders held the line, more platoons began to arrive from the rear lines. Chimera transports rumbled into the city ruins, positioning themselves at vulnerable sectors—exposed intersections, collapsed hab-blocks, or weakly fortified avenues. Their multilasers and heavy bolters barked into the encroaching green tide, laying down suppressive fire to cover disembarkation.
Guardsmen spilled from the Chimeras in practiced waves, fanning out and taking cover behind rubble, wreckage, or the very hulls of their transports. Sergeants shouted commands as squads formed firing lines or dashed forward to reinforce key sectors of the line.
As the battle raged on, the frontline began to stabilize further—especially with the arrival of two armored platoons. Leman Russ Battle Tanks rolled into position with thunderous authority, their turrets already turning to track targets. Among them, Punisher variants unleashed a devastating hail of fire, their rotary cannons shredding Ork mobs that dared get too close. The grinding advance of Imperial armor added a new, unrelenting weight to the defense, anchoring the line and turning what had threatened to become a rout into a hardpoint of Imperial might.
"Marshall Galren!" The vox suddenly crackle, catching the attention of Galren. "This is Chapter Mastar Cormarion! They are a large number of Orks vehicles are moving towards your position! And from what I can see, there are also multiple Battlewagons in that fleet!"
Galren's brow furrowed beneath his helm. He feared no death—only failure. And this, the first battle of their campaign, would not be a defeat.
"Hold the line!" Cormarion's voice snapped through the vox again, firm and commanding. "I'm en route to the surface. Just hold, Marshal. Reinforcements are coming."
Galren's gauntlet clenched around the hilt of his power sword, the edges of his temper restrained only by duty.
"We are the sons of Dorn. We do not break."
He turned to his Castellans.
"Prepare for armored assault. Form kill-zones. Let them come."
As the battle continue, multiple Thunderhawks begin their descend, there are also Thunderhawk transporters, each carrying two Baal Predators. Other the yellow Thunderhawks, there are also two Thunderhawks and two transporters from the Black Templars, carrying the most precious elements of their Crusade into battle.
Just before the Orks arrive, the Thunderhawks have landed at the front. From the yellow Thunderhawks, the Lamenters move out and take their position on places that lack Astarte presence. While the Baal Predators also prepare to meet the Orks.
From the looming black Thunderhawks of the Black Templars came the hammer of the Crusade itself. Four squads of Terminators strode onto the battlefield, clad in the thick, baroque plates of Cataphractii Terminator Armor. Behind them marched a Venerable Dreadnought, its ancient frame scarred by millennia of war, its heavy weapons trained forward.
The Thunderhawk transporters disgorged their deadliest payloads last—two massive Land Raiders, both of them the formidable Achilles variant.
Land Raider Achilles is develop during the Great Crusade by Imperial Fists and Archmagos Xan-Ebon when the Imperial Fists fight a pocket xeno-empire that used fearsomely potent energy weapons and was located far to the galactic south.
As a heavy siege tank, Achilles was fitted with a number of powerful weapons to break through the enemy's defences. Both sponson mounts are fitted with twin-linked Multi-meltas, while the centerline hull mount was originally fitted with a Viper
pattern quad-launcher, a rapid-firing four-barreled cannon which has
since been replaced in surviving models with a Thunderfire Cannon. While this impressive armament helps it break through a siege, it also decreases the vehicle's transportation capacity. Weapons are aimed with the help of a targeting array.
It's armor are created with ancient electromagnetic incantations and ferromantic computational algorithms were etched at a molecular level at each and every layer of its fabrication. Mainly made out of reinforced adamantine/ceramite, every centimeter of the surface of an Achilles is etched with the most secret runes of the techno-magi, and the sigils inlay with meta-conducting zirconium. The resulting tank is almost impossible to harm with any sort of projected energy weapon and only a massive kinetic impact is perhaps guaranteed to destroy it.
In the end, Achilles didn't went into the production as it's build specifically to deal with that specific Xenos, and the resources and time needed to build it mean that it's not suitable for mass production like the other Land Raiders.
Only the Imperial Fists still have a sizable stockpile of Achilles, and after the Second Founding, most of those Successor Chapters also gain a portion of said stockpile.
But over the years, the knowledge to build or fully repair the Achilles was lost. Now, the Chapters that still have one keep them deep in their armories, stored in stasis fields, only used in the most important or desperate battles.
Though the Black Templars also have succeed a small portion of Achilles, all of them stay within the Eternal Crusade, only used under the direct permission from the High Marshall. Because of this, many Marshals don't even know their Crusade has one, having only heard old tales of these legendary machines used by their forebears.
Now, Marshal Galren not only had the rare chance to see an Achilles with his own eyes—he was using it in battle. Even though some of the Techmarines in his Crusade protested, claiming the machine was too sacred and too rare to risk.
But the moment he saw both Achilles hold off the Ork advance almost singlehandedly—destroying multiple Battlewagons, blasting apart Warbuggies, and shrugging off everything the greenskins threw at them—he knew the truth.
This was not a relic to be hidden away.
This was a weapon made for war.
===============================
"The Lamenters moved earlier than planned." Said Delros, Master of the 8th Company, his voice tight with disapproval.
"If they hadn't," Replied Valerio, Master of the 9th. "the first wave might've been overrun. You know how they are. With everything we've learned about them, this shouldn't come as a surprise."
"What are your orders, my lord?" asked a Space Marine clad in Mk VIII power armor, his helm forged in the likeness of a noble knight.
Atharion turned to him. "You will lead the Paladins, Galahad." He said. "Take them straight into the heart of the Ork formation—and slay the Boss leading the attack."
"By your will." Galahad replied, offering a sharp nod. Without another word, he turned and left the chamber, two other Astartes in matching, knightly-pattern Mk VIII armor following at his heels like silent shadows.
A beat of silence followed their departure.
"Finally," Sevran muttered, arms crossed over his chest. "We'll see what they're truly capable of. With all the resources and time we've invested in them… I hope they won't be a disappointment."
===============================
A Stormbird tore through the clouds, its hull marked by a proud heraldry—a downturned sword wreathed in an Imperial laurel, the emblem of the Paladins.
Inside the hold, eleven Astartes stood in silence, their forms unmoving despite the thunderous roar of the engines and the turbulence of atmospheric descent. Clad in shining, knight-pattern Mk VIII armor, each warrior bore their own personal heraldry upon one pauldron, and the Chapter sigil on the other.
"This is it, brothers." Galahad said, his voice calm and resonant. "The Ork Boss is our quarry. We strike at the head—cut it off, and their attacks will fall into confusion."
Across the hold, helmets locked into place. Bolters were checked one last time. Power swords hummed to life. One by one, each Paladin responded with the same vow:
"In the Emperor's name."
As the Stormbird closing in the ruins, the Orks already broke the defense line and now are fighting inside the ruins.
Even though the northern line have successfully in holding off the Orks attack, the other three lines hasn't been so successfully. As with most the Astarte elements are on the northern line, the other three lines are each reinforce by one company from Lamenters.
The Stormbird circled above the ruins, its machine spirit roaring as its weapons tore through Ork vehicles and mobs below. Gouts of flame and shrapnel marked its wake as it carved a path through the greenskin advance. Inside, Galahad scanned the ground, frustration building. The warboss had yet to reveal himself, and they couldn't afford to waste time.
Just as Galahad prepared to order a ground deployment to begin the search on foot, the vox crackled.
"I have eyes on the Boss." The pilot announced. "East quadrant—he's surrounded by at least twenty Nobz. Looks like he's directing the assault from atop a wrecked Baneblade hull."
"Coordinates." Galahad barked.
A set of glowing red runes marked the target zone on his HUD.
He nodded. "Bring us in low. Open the ramp."
He turned to the Paladins. "The beast shows itself. Form up. Its time to prove our worth to the Chapter, and to the Supreme Grand Master."
With a hiss of hydraulics, the Stormbird began its descent.