Knight Maxim

Kayvaan nodded. "Now, let's divide the operational zones. We have eleven warriors here, split into six teams. I will operate alone. The rest of you remain in your existing squads. Areas will be assigned as follows: Candy Bread Team, you take Zone One. Chocolate Squad, Zone Two. Black Bread Squad, Zone Three. Marshmallow Squad, Zone Four. Cream Candy Squad, Zone Five. I will cover Zone Six myself." He glanced at his HUD, confirming their reconnaissance efforts so far. "We have gathered sufficient intelligence on the greenskins. You've adapted to the environment. Now, it's time to act. Our mission is simple: locate the ork warboss and either capture or kill him. Any questions?"

One of the warriors stepped forward. Maxim, captain of the Chocolate Squad. Kayvaan had expected him to speak. Maxim was half-local—his father from Connovar, his mother from Velmorian. He had grown up among the frontier militias before earning a place in the Imperial military. By the time he was sixteen, he had been accepted into the Ferrum Army Military Academy, excelling in every aspect of his training. Upon graduation, he was immediately recommended for special forkes selection. "Chapter master, which one should we pioritize? Is it to kill or capture?"

Maxim saw a massacre. He had always been an exceptional warrior, but his understanding of death and destruction had been shallow—limited to books, training records, and carefully orkhestrated funerals. Back on Reach, death was sanitized, wrapped in ceremony. The deceased were dressed in their finest, their faces painted with serene finality, giving their loved ones one last perfect memory before being laid to rest. Funerals could be sorrowful, or even celebratory, but they were never cruel. 

That illusion had shattered the moment he became a Knight of the Templars. He had taken lives before—mission after mission had demanded it—but killing a man and witnessing true war were not the same. He had never stood in the aftermath of real devastation. He had never seen an entire city stripped of life, its streets drowned in blood. War was not just battle. War was a monster, a monstrous gamble where one side took everything and the other lost it all.

For too long, the people of Ferrum had lived in peace. The soldiers in their armies no longer carried the instincts of warriors—they had become little more than glorified civil servants, men who treated war as a profession, a job. Civilians were even worse. Separated from hardship by the artificial safety of law and order, they had forgotten how to defend themselves. When danger came, they looked not to their own strength, but to authority—to the police, to the government. And so, when the greenskins came, they were wiped out.

Today, it was Velmorian that had suffered annihilation. But Maxim knew that had it been any other state, any other city, the result would have been the same. The losers lost everything. Their homes, their future, their lives. People always believed war was the concern of soldiers. It wasn't—war was the concern of all.

The orks did not recognize laws. They did not recognize the difference between soldier and civilian, between man and woman, between adult and child. They saw only the weak and the weaker.

The death of a single man was one thing. The eradication of an entire city was something else entirely. The two were identical in principle—only numbers separated them. But standing in the ruins of Little Rock, seeing it with his own eyes, Maxim understood that the scale of horror mattered.

The dead lined the streets, their bodies torn and defiled. Limbs and torsos were scattered across the ground like discarded refuse. Corpses hung from telephone poles, their empty eyes staring into the void, mouths frozen in silent screams. Spiked barriers that had once deterred looters were now adorned with severed heads. The vibrant colors of a thriving business district had been drowned in red. Blood pooled in the gutters, soaking into the cracked pavement. It was not just the people who had been slaughtered. The city itself had been killed.

Maxim had grown up here. He had walked these streets, lived in these buildings. Now, everything he had known was gone—razed, twisted beyond recognition. Rage burned in his chest.

Kayvaan studied the other knights. In their eyes, he saw the same fire that burned in Maxim. They all wanted vengeance. 'Good.' Better to hate the enemy than to pity them.

"Priority is meaningless," Kayvaan said, his voice calm despite the carnage around them. "You are the executors. The decision rests with you. In the moment, you will judge whether the warboss should be killed or taken alive. However..." He paused, ensuring they listened carefully. "From a tactical standpoint, capturing him is more valuable than killing him." He gestured toward the remains of the city. "A dead warboss will throw the orks into chaos. They will turn on each other in brutal infighting to determine a new leader, and by the time they're done, they'll be weakened when they return to fight us. That alone is a worthwhile outcome."

He tilted his head slightly. "But a captured warboss gives us options. We could interrogate him. We could manipulate the ork chain of command. We could use him to sow deeper discord. That said, capturing one alive is exponentially more difficult. The choice is yours."

Maxim frowned. "From what you've said, Captain, killing him seems like the best option. It destabilizes the enemy and weakens their strength without added risk."

Kayvaan inclined his head. "That's true. But it is also the simpler choice. A captured warboss is a weapon. If we are willing to take the risk, we can wield it against them. The rewards are greater, but so are the dangers. Weigh that risk carefully."

In truth, most of the time, capturing an ork warboss was impossible. Orks were tough. Their sheer resilience made them difficult to put down, let alone capture. Bullets that would rip a man in half barely scratched an ork warboss. Even if you broke through his defenses, he would never be alone—he would be surrounded by a veritable army, his most elite bodyguards ready to die at his side. A warboss wasn't just an individual. He was a fortress. 

Sir Tyget raised his hand. "I have a question."

Kayvaan turned to him, expression unreadable. "Speak."

Sir Tyget hesitated before speaking. "I don't know if this is the right time to ask, or even if it's an appropriate question..." He exhaled. "But I need to know—where did these orks come from? Reach has never had orks. Not a single one. So how are there suddenly so many of them? Did they arrive in ships from orbit, or did they appear through some... other means, like the Eldar?"