The meat grinder

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

At the command tower in the rear-a Mobile Fortress cobbled together from several enormous mining vehicles-Warlord Grak watched the battle through a huge telescope with keen interest.

His finest cannon fodder could not even reach the enemy's walls. That surprised him a little, but excited him far more.

"Send in the Tin Cans! Smash their turtle shell open for me!" Grak roared.

At his command, rows of massive, lumbering Tin Cans emerged from the Orks' rear lines, looking like mobile rubbish heaps. These were the Orks' version of Dreadnoughts, welded together from the thickest iron plates and looted trophies, armed with enormous Power Claws and machine guns belching black smoke.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

These steel behemoths advanced steadily with heavy strides, braving the humans' gunfire. Lasgun shots struck their thick armor and raised nothing but showers of feeble sparks. Even Heavy Bolters could only leave a few insignificant dents.

"Targets! Tin Cans!" Sergeant Orik's voice rang out over the command channel. "Rocket Launcher Squad! Hit them hard!"

The Rocket Launcher Squad hiding behind cover immediately popped up. Rockets trailing flames screamed toward the steel behemoths.

Boom! Boom!

Several Tin Cans took direct hits. Their chest armor blew open, pouring out thick smoke, before they crashed to the ground. But more of them made it to the front of the defensive positions.

They swung their enormous Power Claws like demolition hammers, smashing them into the barricades the 99th Regiment had hastily erected.

Boom!

The barricades of metal and concrete might as well have been paper. The machines tore a huge breach through them with ease.

"They're through!!"

Beyond the breach waited Kasrkin veterans armed with Chainswords and shotguns, who had long been ready for this moment.

"For the Emperor!" Orik was the first to meet them, and the fastest.

The Chainsword in his hand gave a shrill roar. With agility utterly at odds with his burly frame, he dodged a Tin Can's descending claw, then slid feetfirst beneath it. He drove his Chainsword upward, plunging it hard into the machine's relatively vulnerable leg joint.

Sparks flew amid the screech of grinding metal.

The Tin Can let out an agonized roar like a wild beast. One of its legs was completely crippled, and its enormous body lost its balance, slowly toppling to one side.

The other soldiers followed Orik's tactics-or hurled themselves at the steel behemoths in their own even more reckless, suicidal ways.

After emptying his shotgun, one soldier actually primed every grenade on his body and threw himself beneath a Tin Can's feet with a roar.

The violent explosion blasted both him and the Tin Can's lower leg into fragments that flew in every direction.

A criminal from a former Hive City gang used his nimble skills to scramble up a Tin Can's arm like an ape and climb onto its shoulder. Then, with all his strength, he thrust a sharpened Entrenching Tool through the cockpit's narrow vision slit.

A short, muffled scream came from inside the cockpit.

The meat grinder was now running at full speed.

After every Tin Can had been destroyed, the outer defenses fell completely. Endless Ork Boyz poured into the maze-like interior of the Iron Temple from every direction, like floodwaters bursting through a dam.

In an instant, the battle shifted from positional warfare to the most brutal, bloodiest street fighting and room-to-room combat.

In narrow passages, in dark factory halls, and on crisscrossing conveyor belts, savage struggles to the death raged everywhere.

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

A squad of Astra Militarum soldiers held a firing position at a corner and had just cut down more than a dozen charging Orks with crossfire. Before they could catch their breath, a crude Ork "grenade" wrapped in nails came flying around the corner.

Boom!

After the explosion, the entire squad and their position had become a mangled mass of flesh and blood.

Elsewhere, an Ork boss had just cleaved an Astra Militarum soldier and his gun in two with his enormous cleaver. A moment later, a soldier clutching a bundle of explosives leaped down from the maintenance passage above his head, taking the Ork with him in death.

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

Death played out in every corner. Lives were lost every moment.

Colonel Valeus stood on the Central Command Platform, his eyes bloodshot as he stared fixedly at the green dots on the tactical screen that represented his soldiers, watching them vanish one after another.

His heart bled.

This was no longer war. It was a slaughter... carried out with staggering efficiency. His soldiers were being consumed at a terrifying rate.

Yet at the same time, he discovered to his astonishment that their defensive line still held.

Though it kept retreating and being compressed, it never collapsed. Every position fought down to the last man. Every soldier used his own death to buy the entire defensive line even one more second.

They were like a band of thoroughly brainwashed fanatics, fulfilling their most sacred promise to the Emperor with their own flesh and blood.

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

"The defenses in the southern granary sector are about to be breached! The Orks are massing troops there, trying to punch straight through into our core area!"

Without turning, Colonel Valeus shouted, "I need reserves! Give me that damned Flame Core of yours! I need to plug that breach!"

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

"What?!" Colonel Valeus whipped around and stared at him in disbelief. "Have you gone mad?! If they breach the core area, we're all 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 granary marked "No. 7" on the tactical map, which the Orks were attacking furiously.

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

"The real show has only just begun."