Pentious was declared to be officially back under human control with surprisingly little fanfare. Even as Rik had launched his one man assault on Forge Delta, the militant forces of the machine cult marched on the last remaining forge held by the greenskins in order to drive them out at long last. The assault wasn’t as one sided as the purge of Forge Delta, but human ingenuity, industry and cold, logical hatred of the ork invader and everything they stood for carried the day all the same.

The lack of fanfare could be attributed to a number of causes. Reclaiming both of the lost forges revealed the full extent of the damage that had been done and the sheer scale of the repairs that needed to be undertaken was daunting, if a duty to be taken with grim resolve all the same. Already the logistics for such work was being worked on with the dedication of the faithful restoring defiled but reclaimed holy sites.

Other hinderances towards what would have otherwise be a joyous day were related to the fact that the war with the orks wasn’t over yet. They had been driven from the forges, denying the greenskined wretches access to vast amounts of technology, industrial power and the strongest strongholds on the planet… but there was still plenty of tribes remaining on the planet. Pentious was still infested with orks, but now it was only a matter of time and effort to be rid of them for good.

Pentious was still at war. People were still going to die in the days to come. But for the first time since the orks had slammed themselves into the ground with their crudely repurposed asteroid ships, a true human victory was finally in view. An end of the war in which humanity remained as the dominant and only power on Pentious was starting to dawn, and while it wasn’t the time to celebrate yet, high morale surged through blood, wire and circuit all the same.