The Meat Grinder

"Ha! These little runts are tougher than they look!"

At the rear command tower—a mobile fortress cobbled together from several enormous mining vehicles—Warlord Grak watched the battle through a massive telescope with great interest.

His most elite cannon fodder had failed to even reach the enemy walls. That surprised him a little, but thrilled him even more.

"Send in the Ironhide Cans! Smash open their turtle shells for me!" Grak roared.

At his command, rows upon rows of enormous, lumbering Ironhide Cans rolled out from the Ork rear lines, like moving heaps of scrap. They were the Ork version of Dreadnoughts, welded together from the thickest iron plates and battlefield loot, armed with massive Power Klaws and machine guns belching black smoke.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The steel beasts marched forward with heavy steps, advancing steadily through the human bombardment. Lasgun fire could do no more than scatter feeble sparks across their thick armor. Even heavy Bolters only left a few insignificant dents.

"Targets! Ironhide Cans!" Sergeant Orik's voice rang out over the command channel. "Rocket teams! Give them something hard!"

The rocket teams concealed behind cover immediately poked their heads out. Rockets trailing flames shrieked toward the steel beasts.

Boom! Boom!

Several Ironhide Cans were hit directly. Their chest armor was blasted open, spewing thick smoke before they crashed to the ground. Yet even more Ironhide Cans successfully charged up to the defensive line.

They swung their massive Power Klaws like demolition hammers, smashing them brutally into the barricades hastily erected by the 99th Regiment.

Boom!

The barricades of metal and concrete were like papier-mâché before them, easily ripped open into a massive breach.

"They're in!!"

Beyond the breach stood Kasrkin veterans who had long been waiting, Chainswords and shotguns in hand.

"For the Emperor!" Orik was the first to charge—and the fastest.

His Chainsword let out a piercing roar. With an agility utterly at odds with his massive build, he dodged the downward swipe of an Ironhide Can's huge claw, then slid beneath it and drove his Chainsword upward with all his strength into its relatively vulnerable leg joint.

Amid a screech of grinding metal, sparks flew everywhere.

The Ironhide Can released a beastlike roar of pain. One of its legs had been completely crippled, and its enormous body slowly tipped to one side as it lost balance.

The other soldiers followed Orik's tactics—or rather, threw themselves at the steel beasts in ways even crazier and more suicidal than his.

After emptying his shotgun, one soldier pulled the pins from every grenade on his body, roared, and hurled himself beneath an Ironhide Can.

The violent explosion blasted both him and the Ironhide Can's lower leg into parts that rained through the air.

A former Hive City gang criminal used his nimble body to climb up an Ironhide Can's arm like an ape. Reaching its shoulder, he thrust a sharpened entrenching shovel through the narrow viewing slit of its cockpit with every ounce of strength he had.

A brief, muffled scream came from inside the cockpit.

The meat grinder had fully started.

After every Ironhide Can had been destroyed, the outer perimeter of the defense line finally fell. Endless Ork Boyz surged in from all directions like floodwaters bursting through a dam, pouring into the maze-like interior of the Steel Temple.

The battle instantly shifted from positional warfare to the cruelest, bloodiest street fighting and close-quarters combat.

In narrow passages, dark workshops, and atop crisscrossing conveyor belts, the most primal life-or-death struggles erupted everywhere.

There were no tactics here, no formations. Only courage and madness.

A squad of Astra Militarum soldiers used a firing position at a corner to mow down more than a dozen charging Orks with intersecting fire. Before they could catch their breath, a crude Ork grenade wrapped in nails was tossed around the corner.

Boom!

After the explosion, the entire squad and their position became an indistinct mass of blood and flesh.

Elsewhere, an Ork boss had just cleaved an Astra Militarum soldier and his gun in half with its huge choppa. The next second, a soldier carrying bundled explosives leaped down from an overhead maintenance passage and perished with him.

Blood stained the golden grain red. Entrails hung from the cold machinery.

Death played out in every corner. Lives vanished every moment.

Colonel Valeus stood on the central command platform, his eyes bloodshot as he stared fixedly at the green dots on the tactical display that represented his soldiers and kept disappearing.

His heart bled.

This was no longer war. This was a slaughter of terrifying efficiency. His soldiers were being consumed at an appalling rate.

Yet at the same time, he was shocked to discover that their defense line was still holding.

Though it kept falling back and being compressed, it had never collapsed. Every position fought to its last man. Every soldier used his death to buy the entire line even one more second.

They were like fanatics who had been thoroughly brainwashed, fulfilling their most sacred promise to the Emperor with their flesh and blood.

"Colonel!" Alexander's voice suddenly sounded beside him.

"The defense line in the southern grain warehouse district is about to be breached! The Orks are massing their forces, trying to punch straight through to our core zone from there!"

Without looking back, Colonel Valeus roared, "I need reserves! Give me your damned Flame Core! I need to plug that breach!"

"No, Colonel." Alexander shook his head. "We're not plugging it."

"What?!" Colonel Valeus spun around and stared at him in disbelief. "Have you lost your mind?! Once the core zone is breached, we're finished!"

"Quite the opposite, Colonel." A cold smile curled Alexander's lips. "We're not going to stop them. We're going to... invite them into the trap."

He pointed at the enormous grain warehouse on the tactical map that the Orks were attacking frantically, designated Number 7.

"Remember? That's where we planted the most 'gifts.'"

"The real show is only just beginning."