Battle of Heglas Gate

After withdrawing as many troops as possible behind Heglas Hive's massive alloy gates, they could no longer spare any concern for the fate of the abandoned soldiers left at the positions. The turrets mounted atop the heavy walls surrounding the hive city also turned their barrels around.

The enormous cannons embedded within the thick walls no longer cared about friendly-fire casualties. They fired at the densest concentrations of green, figuring that as long as they killed more enemies than allies, it was worth it.

The Orks shifted their artillery toward the Planetary Defense Force's old positions. Against walls of pure metal hundreds of meters high, the Dakkaguns in their hands were clearly not enough.

A rocket painted with an Ork grin was loaded onto a launch rack by a scrawny Gretchin. Without even waiting for the nearby Mekboyz's orders, it eagerly ignited the rocket's engine. Like a skyrocket fired during ancient Terra's New Year celebrations, it shot out with a hiss, wobbling crookedly through the air before landing on an assembled Ork tank.

Mekboyz

The Mekboyz, seeing the Gretchin's handiwork, screeched in fury. His huge iron boot, stained with oil, sent the brainless little goblin flying with one kick. "Look at that sorry mug of yours! Pathetic, gutless, no-ambition runt! How'd ya even manage to miss yourself?!"

The other Gretchin, having witnessed their coworker's fate, were so frightened that they no longer dared tamper with the rockets. After stacking them onto the rack, they waited for the Mekboyz to light them personally.

"Watch close, ya snot-eating bunch of useless gits! This is how ya make a rocket proper!"

As he spoke, he used the tape in his hands to bind that huge bundle of rockets together again and again. Then, with his bloodstained hammer, he began pounding away. From a human perspective, the Mekboyz had merely hammered the rocket tails inward, turning them into enormous mushrooms—wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.

"Me thinks this'll work!" With that, he used the rack to secure the Bandage Rockets he had invented through such painstaking effort, then fired them toward Heglas's massive walls.

The massive cluster of rockets launched successfully, then ignited its engines in midair. The thing was simply enormous. Its noise was ugly and deafening, and the black smoke it spewed was thicker than that from an exploded ammunition depot on the battlefield. The Hydra Quad Anti-Aircraft Guns mounted on the walls swiftly locked onto the threat and unleashed a barrage of bullets.

The instant the bullets struck, they detonated the crude contraption.

Watching the rocket explode in the air, a Gretchin giggled. "Heehee, yours ain't any good either. What a flop!"

The Mekboyz grabbed the Gretchin's head in one massive hand—a hand strong enough to crush a Planetary Defense Force soldier's skull—and lifted it as easily as if he were holding a wrench. "Open them eyes of yours and take another look!"

The rocket exploded after being hit by the bullets, but the blast did not set off the other rockets. Instead, like a cluster bomb, it blew them apart in midair. The separated rocket bombs rained down across the wall, each explosion leaving behind a deep crater that was difficult to repair. Several Earthshaker Cannons mounted on the walls were also destroyed by the rockets flying wildly in every direction.

The other Mekboyz on the battlefield saw this and slapped their foreheads. "Me thought it was somethin' special. Me could cobble together this junk easy!" Inspired by that rocket, the Mekboyz all began binding their hoarded bombs and rockets together with bandages and welding torches before launching them out.

The Imperium did not know whether to shoot these cluster rockets or not. Shooting them would scatter their destructive power across the entire wall fortress, but if they did not shoot, who knew what kind of damage those terrifyingly huge rocket lumps would cause?

But they soon found out. A rocket lump with an erratic trajectory and astonishing speed bade farewell to the Mekboyz who had made it, slipped through the anti-aircraft net woven by the Hydra cannon emplacements, and plunged straight toward Heglas's already-closed main gate.

The blinding flash of the explosion instantly overwhelmed every other burst of fire on the battlefield. Tremors like an earthquake—yet even more terrifying—swept through the entire city. The blast, louder than the Orks' Waaagh!, echoed across the battlefield, and once it finally faded, the previously uproarious war became as silent as a vacuum.

Heglas's gate had its left half and the mechanical structure within it blown apart by the rocket lump. This colossal structure, which relied on gears and cranes to be raised, toppled outward from the hive city before the disbelieving eyes of Planetary Defense Force soldiers and hive residents.

"Bang!" The massive metal slab crashed into the ground under its own weight, triggering another small earthquake. Some soldiers near the gate had their eardrums ruptured by the deafening impact, while the dust thrown into the air engulfed the entire entrance.

"Waaagh!!!! Now that's proper! Proper!"

Having witnessed such a soul-shaking explosion and enjoyed such thunderous noise, the Orks pounded their chests and roared at the top of their lungs. Nothing was more exhilarating than seeing a huge explosion. If there was, it was two huge explosions!

Their morale completely ignited by the blast and the fallen gate, the Orks became even fiercer and more fearless of death. They wanted only to charge through the gate as quickly as possible, find those humies, and give them a proper beating! Then they would haul back enough scrap to build bigger, meaner rocket lumps to fire for fun!

"We're finished." The generals and nobles of Heglas Hive watched in despair as the demoralized Planetary Defense Force fled deeper into the hive, crawling and scrambling in panic. The commissars trying desperately to stop the cowardice could not execute them fast enough, wielding Chainswords in one hand and firing pistols with the other as they hacked down the fleeing soldiers.

But at that point, the Planetary Defense Force no longer cared about the commissars' authority or the honor of the Imperium's armies. After gunning down the commissars and blocking detachments from their own regiments in the chaos, they only cursed their mothers for not giving them two more legs to run with.

The unstoppable tide of Orks flooded into the hive city, bringing their passion for destruction and brute strength, along with endless pain and torment for the hive's residents.

Three months later, Heglas Hive fell completely. The remaining Imperium forces retreated into the lower-level labyrinths and sewers, relying on the complicated terrain to wage bloody, grueling street battles and guerrilla warfare against the Orks.

The Orks nearly stripped the hive bare. Metal and machinery, vehicles and ammunition—all of it was hauled away to their scrap factories for further processing, where they welded on more iron plates, more Dakkaguns, and, of course, the indispensable super-invincible, ultra-cool rocket lumps.

The factory boys grinned from ear to ear. Every day brought in piles upon piles of teeth, and they could command their Gretchin to deliver huge quantities of iron plates to build their own insanely powerful Deffguns and big iron cans. No entertainment was more interesting than fighting. In this glorious siege, the Orks did not care about those unlucky bastards. They only cared whether they had a good fight.