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An Unggoy Life: Chapter 18: Space Battles Suck
Posted By: CrazyGrunt<thomas-hoskins@comcast.net>
Date: 26 August 2005, 8:33 pm
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Gorka and Morka, Bridge
"I must protest, sir," Orkimedes said as he and Ghazghkull walked back onto the bridge, "If we are going to conquer Sangheil, we must not…"
"ENOUGH!" Ghazghkull roared in anger, "This armada is too large to be a single fleet. It must be made of at least five fleets. Correct, Zagdakka?"
"Aye," Zagdakka agreed, "I'd wager the whole UWSC Navy has come into this chaos."
"See," Ghazghkull said blunty, "The Sangheil fleet is probably a part of that juggernaut anyway. So lets go ahead and blow it up."
The blast door for the Underside Hangar opened, and the shields deactivated. The Gorka and Morka turned toward the UWSC fleet, and sped straight at them, its twenty-four Super MAC cannons firing the opening salvo, followed by the thirty standard MAC guns, and its three hundred plasma turrets unleashing a tidal wave of plasma. The UWSC, who thought they had the advantage in this situation, didn't expect this tactic at all.
The farthest ship from the fleet was blown in two as the Gorka and Morka's plasma turrets melted the Covenant ship's reactor, causing the ship to explode, sending debris outward, which crashed into Covenant ships that had been too close to the ship when it blew.
The Gorka and Morka continued through the fleet, its guns raining a deadly hail of fire at anything in its way. By this time, the rest of the Ork fleet had broken contact with the Earth fleet and had joined the assault on the UWSC fleet.
"Attention all Ork vessels,"Ghazghkull said over the Comm, "Take out as many ships as you can, then head for Charadon. We're going to use the Destroyer Nuke."
The captains of the Ork ships' heard the transmission, and began to assist in the destruction of UWSC ships front of the Gorka and Morka. The UWSC fleet realized what was happening, they began launching fighters to try and intercept it. But the Gorka and Morka had 10,000 Fighta Bommerz ready for space combat. Zagdakka ordered all the Fighta bommerz, causing mass mayhem among the fleet.
As the it reached the center of the fleet formation, it released the Destroyer Nuke, and then when full throttle away from the fleet.
"All remaining Fighta Bommerz rendezvous with the nearest Terror Ship. We will not activate the Destroyer Nuke until all of the fleet is clear of the blast zone!"
The remaining ships in the fleet broke all contact with the UWSC fleet, and headed toward the Gorka and Morka's position. A Kill Kroozer strayed too close to the orbital platforms, and the Super MAC guns tore it to pieces in seconds.
Most of his fleet had arrived, but Ghazghkull saw the UWSC's fleet begin to bring their guns to bear on the Gorka and Morka.
"Orkimedes," Ghazghkull ordered as the last Onslaught attack ship reached the rendezous point, "Activate the Destroyer Nuke."
"Yes, Warlord," Orkimedes grumbled, his bloodred eyes boring into Ghazghkulls back, and pressed the detonator.
KABOOM.
Everyone on the bridge of the Pillar of Autumn II fell to the deck as the Destroyer Nuke exploded. For about five minutes they lay on the steel floor of the bridge, stunned. Then the Master Chief slowly got to his feet and looked at the holoboard, and saw something that shocked him.
The fleet was gone. Vaporized. Out of the five hundred ships that had arrived insystem to combat the Orks, only twenty remained ready to fight, but their engines were dead.
The Ork fleet was waiting outside the blast zone, as if to make sure that they had seriously damaged the fleet. Apparently satisfied, the Ork fleet jumped into slipspace. Now if the Orks wanted to raid a planet, the planet's army would have to hold out until the UWSC fleet arrived.
Miranda Keyes was the second to recover from the explosion. She quickly evaluated the circumstances. The huge armada she had gathered was in tatters, the Earth fleet wasn't in the greatest shape either.
"Get Admiral Hood on the Comm," she ordered the Sangheili Comm officer.
Two minutes later, Admiral Hood appeared on screen.
"I see your alive, Admiral Keyes," Admiral Hood said, "From the data we were receiving on the Cairo, we thought that armada you gathered was annihilated, along with the Pillar of Autumn II.
"The armada was annihilated compared to what the damge that Ork fleet took," Cortana said as her hologram appeared, "The battle's kill ratio was one Ork cruiser to four-hundred-ninety UWSC spacecraft. This ratio is worse than the entire Holy War."
"We need to regroup and figure out how to divide the remaining naval forces among the colonies," Hood ordered.
"Understood," Keyes acknowledged, "By the way, I thought Admiral Harper was in charge of the Earth fleet."
"The New York was gutted by a Super MAC round after the New Tokyo and it's entire battle cluster were obliterated by that huge space hulk."
"Pity," Keyes said in a careful tone, "He was a good man. Preparing to dock with the Cairo."
Charadon was a volcanic world. About twice the size of Earth, there was barely enough atmosphere to cover the planet, and that atmosphere had been polluted by the ash clouds from the millions of active volcanoes that were spread across its surface. The planet was mostly populated by Orks, their leader being the Arch Arsonist of what the UWSC called Epsilon sector. Everyone there, since Charadon didn't have any native lifeforms, was an immigrant.
Strangely enough, this was where Ghazghkull's client had his command base. Ghazghkull had figured that if anyone wanted to build their command base here, they must be either crazy or brilliant. Charadon's constant eruptions provided perfect cover from nosy electronic sensors trying to scan the surface. The system had binary suns, making it very hard to get the radar in range with the constant solar flares emitting from the suns' surface. These features made Charadon the ultimate hideaway.
Ghazghkull shifted uneasily as the Gorka and Morka dropped out of slipspace about three klicks from Charadon. His client had wanted two things. One, that the UWSC fleet around the planet Sangheil was destroyed, and two, that all commerical shipping to the colony New Unggo was to be stopped. The first objective had been achieved, and the second objective would be completed very soon.
Ghazghkull stepped into the transport shuttle, standing at his full height, which was fifteen feet, and wearing his finest mega-armour bearing the Goff clan decal, stripes of black and white checkerboard patterns painted in various spots on his otherwise silver-gray armor. He was followed by Mad Dok Grotsnik the Painboss, Boss Snikrot of the Redskull Kommandos, Orkimedes, and Boss Zagstruk of the Vulchas, a Stormboyz mob.
Stormboyz strapped rockets to their backs to blast them to the enemy, which was what Zagstruk had strapped to his back at the moment, along with the traditional Ork garb of a sleeveless Ork jumpsuit made of yellowish-brown leather, black steel-toed combat boots, with metal plating of the jumpsuit on the front bearing the symbol of a Shoota, identifying him as a Nob.
Snikrot looked entirely different from Zagstruk. He wore a sleeveless Ork jumpsuit made of black leather and mud-covered combat boots. His arms had many stitches in them, his right arm bearing a tattoo of a red skull. A chain of ammunition was draped over his left shoulder, and a long, wicked-looking knife-shaped Choppa was sheathed in its scabbard, secured by a strap fastened to his right shoulder. His eyes glowed a evil-looking red. A bosspole that was fasten to his jumpsuit identified him as a Ork Nob.
Grotsnik looked extremely different from anyone else. His obsession of perfecting his method of "serjery" had led to preforming experiments on himself. The result was that he became hunchbacked, exchanged his left arm for a bionik arm sporting a skorcha, a two-fingered power claw that extended all the way to his right shoulder, a cybernetic right eye, a metal skull, a Iron Jaw, mechanical organs, and a fuel tank on his back for the Skorcha. What was left of his skin was covered in stitches. He wore black steel-toed combat boots like Zagstruk's. He wore a pair of black Ork combat pants, and a bloodstained doctor's apron.
Orkimedes, unlike everyone else aboard, was dressed in a brown, leather cloak with a hood that hid his face. His reasonably Ork-sized arms were folded on his chest in a very human-like position. Ghazghkull knew that under his cloak was his entire assortment of Mekboy's tools.
"We've gotten to your client's base," The shuttle's Ork pilot called from the front of the shuttle, "Prepare to disembark."
The landing ramp opened, and Ghazghkull exited the shuttle, followed by his retinue of leaders. They looked for the entrance to the base, but couldn't see it.
At first glance, the landing pad looked like part of a ship's hull that had crashed into a extinct volcano. But it was meant to look like that. The majority of the base was underground, to remain hidden from prying eyes.
Ghazghkull was about to return to the shuttle when a pair of hidden doors in the side of the volcano opened. The group waited as the doors opened.
Two dark blue Super Battle Droids walked out onto the landing pad, followed by a figure as tall as Ghazghkull himself. The figure wore a white cloak that was only showed his foot-long neck and a metallic face that glowed with pure evil. The being walked up to Ghazghkull and stared straight into his cybernetic eye and organic one, a thing few lifeforms dared to do, because a low ranked being would end up dead if they looked him in the eye. Only Ghazghkull's most trusted comrades or high ranking Orks ever looked him straight in the face.
"Welcome to Charadon," Lord Grievous announced.
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