Helsreach Port lay to the west of Hades Hive and likewise faced the Orks' ferocious assault. But compared to the fighting at Hades Hive, the battle for Helsreach began somewhat later.
The nobles were still wrangling and shirking responsibility as usual, endlessly arguing while searching for every possible legal clause and loophole to win more benefits for their own families. They had never cared about the lives of the soldiers and residents below them, and they cared no more now.
But the Great Purge of Hades Hive had given the people of Helsreach Port a brilliantly shining example. They believed they could try Hades Hive's solution as well, repel the Ork invasion, and protect their homes.
For the first time, clear-minded figures within the military and the hive gangs joined forces. They purged the nobles, then organized the city's residents on a massive scale, ambushing Orks in every corner of the port. Yet under the Orks' savage offensive, they could not hold out for long. This was only a port city, not Hades Hive, with its many industrial districts to support it. This place was more of a hub where resources and commerce converged and flowed.
By now, through their stubborn defense, Helsreach had successfully evacuated the vast majority of its population. But someone always had to stay behind, and some people always wanted to die in their own homes. The soldiers defending near the evacuation docks were a lone army, a lone army marching toward death to find life.
Herbert was a diligent operator of a massive cargo crane—or rather, the job had been passed down through several generations, and Herbert was the crane's ninth-generation heir. He could still remember the bustling, deafening port that was never free from work, where he controlled the enormous crane with his own