Slaughterhouse III.
The name itself was a brutal epitaph. On the Imperium's vast star map, it had once been a rich mining world, its mountains holding the adamantium and basalt that Forge Worlds desperately needed. Now it was nothing more than a slave concentration camp utterly engulfed by a green plague, a private slaughterhouse belonging to an Ork warlord.
The planet's sky was perpetually a murky yellow, obscured by spore clouds and the thick smoke belched out by countless crude factories. Aboveground stood the Orks' cities, filled with noise, violence, and chaos; belowground lay an endless purgatory for millions of human slaves.
Deep in the mines, the air reeked of sweat, rancid machine oil, the rot of unwashed wounds, and an omnipresent stench of damp fungal mold. There was no day or night here, only eternal darkness. The only illumination came from cheap glow-globes mounted on the rock walls, flickering and liable to go out at any moment, and the wavering searchlight beams on the Ork overseers' helmets.
Sarah's breathing was heavy and rapid as she swung her powered mining pick. She had repeated the same mechanical motions for more shifts than she could count. The pick's vibrations traveled up her slender arms into her swollen belly, making the little life within her tremble gently as well.
She was more than seven months pregnant.
In this hell on earth, pregnancy amounted to a double death sentence. Slave rations were already pitifully meager, and pregnant women could expect no extra care. The overseers' whips showed no mercy for the life growing inside them. Usually, pregnant slave women either miscarried under the increasingly heavy workload or died alongside their children during childbirth, beyond any hope of saving.
But Sarah was an exception.
The child within her was doing everything he could to