Warhammer 40K in a box

Chapter 318 Green Skins Like a Tide
On board the Herson III, the sea hare was in a bit of a mess.

The battle on the ice plains was far worse than he had anticipated—the green-skinned orcs awakening from the depths of the ice seemed endless, roaring and wielding crude but deadly weapons, displaying astonishing vitality in the extreme cold.

Chen Xi originally only put him in charge of managing this planet, mainly dealing with the treatment of the wounded; war was not within his scope of responsibility.

But now, with orcs pouring out from under the ice, he had no choice but to take the plunge and command his troops to fight the enemy.

Fortunately, he was using the chess piece of the Lord of Cadia Castle. Although he was not a famous general, he still had basic command abilities.

His tactical arrangements were not particularly ingenious, but at least they were conventional—the defensive lines advanced layer by layer, the firing points overlapped, and the fortifications were built to be sufficiently robust.

Although this tactic may seem rigid and even clumsy, it is precisely what the Imperial Star Force excels at.

The Astronautical Army was ridiculed for its outdated tactics, which were likened to using trench warfare from World War I to fight space-age wars.

But you have to admit that the empire survived ten thousand years of war by relying on this seemingly outdated tactical system.

When the enemy has to charge the Astronautical Army's defenses head-on, they will find that behind these "rigid" tactics lies an iron wall forged from countless flesh and blood.

Sea Hare is currently employing this tactic—building a deep defense by relying on the outer fortifications of the dome city.

Automatic artillery emplacements, laser cannon positions, and heavy machine gun firing points were all arranged meticulously according to the standard tactical manual.

If the greens want to break through such a defense, they must pave the way with corpses.

What the Astral Army fears least is this kind of head-on, attrition warfare.

This applies to facing the undead in space, and it also applies to facing these green-skinned creatures emerging from the ice.

Of course, the Greenskins have enough troops to fill the Astronauts' defenses, which is exactly what's causing Sea Gnatella's headache.

On the ice plains outside the dome, the number of green-skinned creatures is increasing at a visible rate.

They crawled out from the cracks in the ice, surging towards human defenses like a green tide.

The automatic turrets were consuming ammunition far faster than expected, and the soldiers' gun barrels were glowing red-hot, yet they still couldn't stop the advance of these savage creatures.

The greenskins in the Warhammer world are not like the orcs in other fantasy works; they need to reproduce through viviparity or other means.

These war machines, created by the ancient saints to fight the war in Heaven, are special creatures that are half plant and half animal. They reproduce by spores, and any living green-skinned creature is a huge source of spores.

Sea Hare stood in front of the observation window of the command room, watching the green-skinned creatures continuously scatter spores during the battle—when they scratched their bodies, tiny green particles would drift away with the wind; when they were injured and bleeding, countless spores would be mixed in with the splattered bodily fluids; even when they died, their corpses would quickly decompose, releasing the last batch of spores.

Just as a mushroom can produce a large number of fungal spores, a green-skinned creature can spread countless fungal spores by scratching its crotch or head, which then multiply into a massive number of green-skinned creatures.

How fast do these things reproduce? They can fight against the Tyranid swarm with sheer numbers, and they can even go toe-to-toe with them.

On the Sea Hare's tactical display screen, the curve representing the number of Greenskins rises almost vertically.

Areas cleared just yesterday will be teeming with new greenskin tribes today. What's even more terrifying is that these newborn greenskins seem to have inherited the combat experience of the slain greenskins, making each attack more cunning than the last.

Therefore, even though Chen Xi had already dispatched Blood Knights and a portion of the Astral Army to provide support, the Imperial garrison still suffered heavy losses.

The defenses are shrinking every day, and casualty reports are piling up on Hai Tu's desk.

Although the Blood Knights were brave, they began to suffer casualties when faced with the endless waves of greenskins.

As for ordinary Astronautical soldiers, a squad that held a position would often be reduced to only two or three men when they withdrew.

Fortunately, the dome itself was set up for medical purposes, and it has sufficiently complete medical facilities. As long as the soldiers did not die on the spot, they could basically be brought back to life with the medical level here.

It is precisely for this reason that the sea hare has been able to persevere until now.

But looking at the dwindling numbers on the supply reserve list, he knew this situation wouldn't last long.

Reinforcements must arrive as soon as possible, otherwise the collapse of the defense line will begin when the last dose of painkiller runs out.

The Blood Knights have attempted decapitation strikes, a tactic commonly used by the Empire against orcish attacks. This involves elite Astartes combat squads beheading greenskin warbosses to break their morale.

The reason for this tactic is that the Greenskins possess something called the WAR field, which is speculated to be some kind of psionic technology left behind by the ancient saints.

As long as enough greenskins gather together, the WAR field will take effect. It will not only allow the largest and strongest greenskin to grow rapidly and become even larger, but it will also make the various weapons that the greenskins concoct from junk work exactly as they want.

For example, if you weld a steel pipe and then "think" it's a gun that makes a banging sound, it will make a banging sound, and you don't even need to load bullets.

Arek, one of the three legendary commissars of the Empire, got himself a prosthetic eye that could fire red lasers because he heard that the orcs thought his eye could shoot red lasers and kill anyone who stared at him.

Then, this prosthetic eye, which could originally only fire lasers to light cigarettes, became a powerful weapon, even more powerful than the Astragalus Army's standard laser gun, capable of killing an orc boy with a single glare.

It seems quite idealistic.

This is why the Greenskins' weapons are all like they were cobbled together from a junkyard. And when they gather enough of them, a Warboss will always emerge to command all the Greenskins. With the blessing of the WAR field, the Warboss becomes bigger and stronger, and also more cunning and treacherous.

Of course, if the warboss dies, this group of greenskins will quickly lose the buff of the WAR field, and their morale will plummet, making them easily defeated.

The empire has used this tactic to carry out decapitation strikes on numerous occasions, often resulting in heavy losses but with remarkable effectiveness.

But now, the Blood Knights have tried several times but have failed to find the warboss from the greenskins' ranks, so a decapitation strike is out of the question.

After all, the sea slug has limited manpower and no ability to conduct fire reconnaissance to find the warboss.

However, the Blood Knights' raids were not without results. In addition to killing several orc warlords, they also discovered that the greenskins were excavating an ancient ruin beneath the ice, which seemed to be of considerable importance.

(End of this chapter)