This enormous tomb built for the Orks had, just as Yarrick had predicted, also become a tomb for humanity. Every day, the casualty reports and notices of wiped-out units arriving from every front tormented Yarrick's heart. He felt like a cruel butcher, endlessly giving good people hasty training before sending them into hopeless, despairing battlefields.
Turning the entire hive into a colossal fortress had successfully stopped the Orks' offensive, but this was not the end. The Orks had suffered such heavy losses within the city that they could no longer launch another assault of the same ferocity. To prevent them from wandering through the hive's complex structure and threatening the industrial districts in the middle and lower levels, Yarrick's forces had also launched several urban counterattacks.
Working alongside the street fortresses still holding out and the snipers roaming the streets and alleys, the soldiers of Hades had successfully driven the Ork army out. Now, they were establishing defensive lines around the hive's outskirts to resist the Orks' unplanned, smaller daily attacks.
The middle and lower levels of the hive under Domisilon's management had long begun rationing supplies and running production around the clock. Even so, it was difficult to meet the food demands of the hive's enormous population. This was an industrial world. This was a hive. Without food shipments from other agri-worlds, starvation was only a matter of time.
But at least they still had these Orks in front of them for company. At least once their corpses were thrown into the giant starch synthesizers, few people could tell what the stuff really was. Not having to eat their own people's corpses was good enough.
But a commissar of the Imperium could not afford weakness. As the strongest backbone of the Imperium's military, Yarrick could not fall like this.