While the Astartes were deploying their operation, the battle in the lower sections of the Space Station was growing intense.
Compared to conventional ground warfare, the close-quarters fighting within the Orbital Station was highly suitable for the Imperial Navy.
In fact, it was arguably more suitable than for the conventional Astra Militarum.
Naval Boarding Teams were experts at fighting in these confined, labyrinthine corridors.
The passageways were narrow and the objectives were clear.
Each squad moved in rigid formation, sealing off the entire corridor. The foremost troopers carried massive boarding shields, sheltering the rest of the team behind the heavy plasteel.
The others opened fire with various light weapons, continuously blasting the Orks, whose bulk nearly filled the corridors.
Whenever an Ork attempted to shoot, realized its fire was ineffective, and then charged forward to engage in melee, the trooper at the front would calmly brace his Boarding Shotgun on the shield and open fire.
The Boarding Gun was a solid-slug projectile weapon, essentially a powerful shotgun, but with a denser cluster of pellets and greater stopping power.
The heavy boarding shields could easily deflect the primitive laser blasts and slugs fired by the Orks.
Compared to their usual foes, the quality of this particular batch of Orks was remarkably low.
Their weapons were crude and weak, not nearly as exaggeratedly dangerous as those of other Ork factions rampaging across the Imperium.
Nor were they as well-armed and physically agile as Imperial Traitors or Chaos Warbands.
What they possessed was sheer, overwhelming numbers.
However, in the unique terrain of the Space Station, these Orks found it difficult to leverage their numbers effectively.
It took over two hours of combat before the Imperial Navy, which had relieved the original garrison, suffered its first loss.
An Ork Mek, rummaging through the battlefield wreckage, "I finked" a powerful improvised grenade that successfully vaporised an entire Boarding Team squad occupying a corridor.
The blast shattered the boarding shields and, simultaneously, vaporised the corridor itself.
The fractured Space Station passageway was violently torn into two segments and exposed to the vacuum of space.
Dozens of Imperial Navy personnel and several Orks were abruptly sucked into the void, becoming frozen debris.
The Space Station's Machine Spirit reacted in time, sealing off a section of the corridor.
The breach on the Ork side of the passage, however, was blocked by a makeshift barricade of piled-up Ork corpses.
It was hard to say what brilliant mind conceived of using a pile of corpses to seal the breach in the Space Station's hull. Nevertheless, the one-man-wide corridor was indeed easily jammed by the more massive Ork bodies.
As the Orks saw the enemy suffer casualties, a new wave of intense frenzy surged through them.
After all, no one enjoys simply taking a beating.
For the Orks, they hadn't even registered any difference between the enemies currently fighting them and the Astra Militarum previously stationed in the Space Station.
Or perhaps they did notice the change, but they simply did not care.
The battle-crazed Orks brandished their weapons and continued to charge.
Numerous Gretchin, using their diminutive stature to advantage, occasionally landed a painful blow on a distracted or cornered Navy trooper.
Modified grenades and explosives detonated among the Imperial ranks. The Navy troopers and the few remaining Astra Militarum soldiers were soon forced to retreat to more open compartments, where they began building barricades and engaging in a pointless war of attrition.
And every hour or two, the Orks' weaponry would become marginally more sophisticated.
The weapons of the fallen Imperial soldiers in the captured areas were immediately fought over by the Orks. An ordinary Ork Boy who managed to grab a weapon would try to pull the trigger, and upon finding it unresponsive, would often discard it and look for the next piece of scrap.
But some of the more inventive ones would carry the unresponsive weapon back to an Ork Mek.
Most Imperial weapons utilized a gene-lock safety mechanism, which obviously could not be activated by Ork DNA.
However, for a clever Ork Mek, this was a simple challenge.
Wielding hammers and wrenches, adding some scrap metal, making simple modifications, and a thorough beating—all concluded with the phrase, "I finks dis bit o' junk should work now!"—the weapon was then tossed back to the Ork Boyz.
The Ork Boy receiving the weapon would instantly handle it as if born to its use, quickly mastering the firearm and becoming a glorious Shoota Boy.
These weapons, crudely modified into scrap-metal versions, possessed both immense firepower and appalling inaccuracy.
But this was the absolute limit for an average Ork Mek.
If an Ork happened to find a slightly more capable, wandering Big Mek who was scouting the battlefield for scrap, the results could be far more spectacular.
It wasn't impossible for a standard Lasgun to be hammered into a volatile Plasma Rifle.
As the power of the enemy's weaponry escalated, the already sparse Navy troopers and the few remaining Astra Militarum soldiers grew increasingly desperate.
Initially, their opponent was merely numerous.
Now, their opponent was both numerous and heavily armed.
In the section of the Space Station where the Orks first made planetfall, the two Astartes squads looked at the scene before them in silence.
When the two Ork Warbosses reappeared in their sight, they were surrounded by a large throng of Orks. These Orks were arming themselves with the aid of Ork Meks, each one clutching crude rocket launchers and massive guns of unknown origin, roaring in chaotic excitement.
Faced with such numbers, even the Astartes had to reconsider their plan. Their enemy was the Orks, after all.
These creatures, even without mechanical assistance, could perceive the actions of the Astartes. Their racial traits allowed them to wield their weapons and engage the Astartes Brothers in brutal melee.
Mortal armies facing Orks, whose bodies were nearly as large as an Astartes, typically relied on dedicated ranged fire.
Melee combat, unless you were a legendary Commissar, was suicide.
However, the logic circuits of the Black Templars differed somewhat from everyone else's.
After a quick assessment of the situation below, the Black Templars in both squads conceived of a daring, yet glorious, idea.
To challenge the Ork Warbosses to a duel!
The two Dark Angels warriors simultaneously felt a spasm of headache at this suggestion.
"Brothers, this course of action is suicidal. While I do not deny that some of you might win the duel, the probability of surviving after killing an Ork Warboss in this environment is extremely low. This is a plan of utmost recklessness."
The Black Templars warriors looked at the two Dark Angels with a hint of disdain.
"We are the Sons of Dorn! We shall bring glory to the Emperor! Brother of the Dark Angels, you may question our decision, but we shall never retreat. A Son of Dorn knows no regret."
Hearing the Black Templar warriors invoke their Gene-Father, Rogal Dorn, the Dark Angels were forced to respect their decision, knowing full well that Black Templars were often regarded as reckless hotheads.
"We will assist you as much as possible during the fight. Once the abnormal targets are eliminated, you must immediately withdraw. We suspect more difficult fighting awaits us once we locate the true Warlord."
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