am-books Chapter 35: Greenskins
Chapter 35: Greenskins
Arcturus frowned when he noticed that they were exiting the hyperdrive in the unknown space because this wasn't anything good. Red Queen immediately activated the sensor systems and started scanning the entire star system, though she didn't really need to use that.
The enormous space hulks that were floating all around were more than enough to tell him that he probably ended up in some sort of battlefield or spaceship graveyard.
However, what caught his attention was a peculiar spaceship that was floating in the middle of the star system, mainly due to its appearance and architecture.
A space hulk is a term given by the Space Exploration Association to the wreckage of a starship or a mangled twist of various starships and artificial debris found drifting through the vacuum of the known Universe without apparent direction.
But this one looked rather peculiar even among the other kinds of space hulks because it was ramshackled together, patched up in various grotesque ways, that it almost appeared ridiculous at first sight.
Even though, Arcturus wasn't living in this new reality, he knew that this belonged to the Orks.
"This one should belong to the Orks, right?"
He looked at the space hulk, that was painted in red and green colors, with white skulls that were on the hulls of the ship. It looked like a vessel belonging to some kind of criminal organization or, rather, to some gangsters.
"Do... full power ahead, unleash the full power of the Obscurus onto the space hulk."
Even during the orbital bombardment of Helios IV. during the siege of the Solar Cult, he didn't order Red Queen Alice to use the full power of the Obsucurus during the orbital bombardment; this time, he was going to order a total overload of the canons.
Red Queen was already controlling the droids to the engines and carrying out supportive operations onto the engines and weapon systems to prevent them from malfunctioning, as overloading the weapons was dangerous.
He had one advantage in form of the super-advanced Artificial Intellignece of the Red Queen who was able to perfectly control and coordinate every single aspect of the spaceship, which unleashed the most powerful barrage of laser weaponry on the space hulk that belonged to the Greenskins.
Instantly, the previously silent and quiet Star System was awoken and turned into a hell of lasfire and deafening sounds of artillery shooting, which was cleaving away the space hulk part by part.
From the windows of his master chambers atop the Obscurus, Arcturus was able to observe the hell on the Star System, as previously huge space hulk was right now, smaller at least by one half because most of it was destroyed entirely by the barrage of the Obscurus.
It seemed that the choice to focus on the overwhelming firepower was right now because, just in a few moments, he managed to destroy a large part of the hostile ship because Red Queen began evasive maneuvers.
Just as the space hulk or at least the remaining half was about to crash into the Obsucurus, the ship went into full drive as the sublight engines roared into life and dodged into the side, completely avoiding the clash of the Orkish space hulk.
"Activate the secondary weapon system, target the remaining auxiliary engines of the space hulk and render it immobile. Aim the main cannons on the central area and destroy it, use the remaining firepower to target the parts of the ship with the largest population."
The Orkish ships were peculiar in one aspect, in a way where they housed large part of their population. Contrary to the other spacefaring species, one Orkish ship could house tens of thousands of greenskins at least.
The bigger the ship was, more Orks it could house, reaching the staggering heights of the world ships, that could house population of entire worlds, numbering in billions of greenskins that were ready for war.