Hold the Line

The scraping of metal plates dragging across the ground came from the pitch-black passageway, making the soldiers wonder whether these daemons had torn up the ship's plating to use as shields.

It was not until a massive wall of metal, wrapped in flesh and slowly writhing toward the Astra Militarum lines, appeared that the soldiers realized their imaginations had been far too limited.

The devoured armor plates clung to the mass of flesh like shattered glass. Through the visible gaps, the flesh showed a vivid, living red. Thick blood vessels and utterly black eyes surged and shifted beneath the plates. Anyone trying to see what lay beneath would have their vision disrupted by that chaotic, dense movement, left with only an incomprehensible phantom shadow in their eyes.

But worse still, there was more than one such wall. Amid deafening scraping and showers of sparks from grinding metal, wall after wall squeezed out of the shadows, followed by large numbers of slow-moving but thick-skinned daemons.

The second battle began once more after the brief ceasefire.

A web of Lasgun fire and bullets surged toward the daemons again, pouring the Emperor's wrath upon them. Unfortunately, this barrage did not achieve the same results as the first battle.

Leman Russ tank shells flew straight at those vast, writhing walls. Explosions, fire, and smoke instantly engulfed them. The armor plates on the front of the walls shattered and melted, embedding themselves in the disgusting bodies made of flesh and bone.

Leman Russ Annihilator, with different turret armaments for different tank variants.

But after a burst of high-frequency trembling, the metal fragments embedded in the flesh emerged again. Like ingredients bubbling up in a pot of boiling soup, they continuously gurgled to the surface. The fragments reassembled into a fine layer of armor, blocking attacks from every direction.

"Keep firing! Keep firing! Thirty-Ninth Tank Company, focus fire on that damned thing at the front!"

Under the tank commander's hoarse orders, four or five Leman Russ tanks slowly adjusted their barrels. Once their autoloaders had done their work, the company-wide internal comms carried the commander's order to fire in unison.

The brilliant flashes and thunderous blasts from the firing cannons made the soldiers beside them immediately clutch their helmets and open their mouths wide, protecting their fragile ears from rupturing under the close-range shockwaves.

A chain of dazzling explosions erupted across the foremost writhing wall. The immense impact of the shells even halted the giant construct's advance, making it creak and groan like the old wooden door back home, long fallen into disrepair and forever squealing in the wind.

The tank commander had no intention of waiting for the smoke to clear. Another volley slammed into the wall. The continuous dense barrage left the seemingly sturdy barrier on the verge of collapse within the clouds of explosions. Only after nearly twenty armor-piercing shells and ten incendiary high-explosive rounds had been unleashed did the commander order the tanks to cease fire over the comms.

Every soldier held their breath and watched the wall's damage. The slow daemons were all advancing behind the enormous barrier. They moved slowly, yet pressed forward toward the soldiers' lines with an unstoppable momentum.

If tank shells could not stop these damned things, then the Lasguns in their hands had even less chance.

A great mass of scalding blood gushed from the smoke, extinguishing the surrounding flames. The smoke mixed with the bloody wash, and pools of bright red, streaked with gray-black, spread across the sturdy Adamantium deck like tree roots.

At a bizarre speed visible to the naked eye, the blood rapidly took shape, becoming slender blood vessels that clung to the floor. The wall, once like shattered glass, had become scorched and mangled. Several holes had been blasted through it by molten metal jets, making it look like a huge, trembling slab of fleshy cheese. And from those cheese-like wounds, torrents of blood spurted forth.

"Looking at that thing's killed my appetite. That is disgusting."

Old Jock, manning a heavy bolter, made no effort to hide his revulsion.

"Is it trying to absorb new armor plates?" Damian offered his opinion. Those dense blood vessels did not look normal in any way.

Despite their fragile appearance, those fine vessels displayed tremendous strength. They violently pried up plate after plate from the floor, leaving square, sunken pits in the metal, then drew the removed metal back into their bodies, preparing to piece together new armor and continue forward.

But the Astra Militarum officers were not fools who would simply stand there and watch the flesh walls freely absorb those metal plates. The temporary ceasefire had only been to assess the damage, allowing them to achieve better results with less firepower. There were simply too many daemons and walls emerging, while their tank shells were far too few.

The instant the flesh walls used their blood vessels to tear up the metal, the officers in charge of heavy weapons along every line ordered their soldiers to turn their guns and unleash concentrated volleys against the now-unprotected walls of flesh.

A rain of bullets smashed directly into the bodies of the flesh walls, sending even more blood bursting from the holes. Under the barrage, the severely wounded wall collapsed with a crash. The massive thing that had shielded the entire daemon horde behind it sprawled across the ground like a boneless lump of fat.

The officers at the front, closely watching the effectiveness of the attack, followed suit. They ordered the tanks to pour shells into the remaining writhing walls, crippling them all and forcing them to stop and absorb metal, before the Imperium's loyal guardsmen delivered the final blow.

The passage before C0 Gate had become a Slaughterhouse. The sight of shredded flesh and clots of blood, broken bones and melted metal, was enough to frighten any weak-willed mortal to death. The daemons trudged through the blood toward them step by step, their howls growing louder and the view through the sights becoming clearer. With tanks and heavy weapon teams attacking without regard for ammunition expenditure, they finally killed those massive flesh walls outside the defensive line. But against the greater daemon army lurking behind them, they were becoming powerless.

The barrels of the Lasguns, fired at high power for too long, had turned red-hot. The air heated by those burning barrels made accurate shooting a distant luxury. But the overwhelming flood of daemons hardly required much aiming. Even firing roughly from the hip could leave many daemons missing arms and legs.

Autoturrets fell silent one after another due to damage and lack of ammunition. Heavy weapon teams also exhausted every magazine, drawing their personal sidearms and joining the firing line. The thunder of tank cannons had not sounded across the battlefield for a long while.

More and more soldiers raised their bayonets with despair on their faces, silently reciting the Emperor's sacred words.