Chapter 481: The Battle for Refinery City
The Ork super-missiles arced skyward and streaked straight toward Inquisitor Trasolh's fleet.
Some were destroyed mid-flight by the fleet's point-defense systems, but there were simply too many of them, and a handful broke through, striking home.
Ships equipped with void shields absorbed the blasts. But some of the fleet's armed merchant vessels had no such protection, and a single hit from an Ork super-missile left them crippled outright.
Trasolh's fleet traded fire with the Gargant's battlegroup for over half an hour, and it was the fleet that broke first, choosing to withdraw.
Aboard the command center, Trasolh reached out to the Governor.
"It's no good. Their void shield is behaving strangely, we simply cannot break through it. And their missiles hit hard. We can't hold this position. We need to maneuver clear."
With that, Trasolh pulled his fleet back entirely, showing no intention of pushing further.
The Governor felt his heart sink. Even a full battle fleet couldn't take this monstrosity down?
"We need experts! Someone who actually knows how to deal with this abomination!!"
He shouted.
Ten-odd minutes later, the command hall's projector flickered to life, displaying Magos Ferrocore's mechanical face. This was the expert they'd summoned.
The Governor asked: "Magos, do you have any solution for dealing with these damned greenskins?"
Ferrocore's mechanical face betrayed no expression whatsoever, but his tone dripped with contempt.
"A pack of feeble carbon-based lifeforms, and you can't even solve a problem this basic?
That massive, hideous, wicked xenos construct is holding a void shield, a ten-kilometer diameter dome it's been sustaining continuously.
If it were running off a conventional power source, your fleet's bombardment would have broken it already. Since it hasn't, that proves it's drawing on some specialized energy source."
Ferrocore projected an image, showing the Gargant at its center, a large circle representing the void shield's coverage, and inside that boundary, hundreds of thousands of densely packed Ork armoured units.
He pointed at the Ork forces.
"These xenos are feeding their own psychic energy directly into the shield. Send troops inside the shield's radius, and eliminate the xenos directly.
Once their numbers thin enough, the shield will lose its psychic power source and collapse on its own."
With that, Ferrocore, apparently deciding conversing with these small fleshy creatures was a waste of his time, terminated the connection unceremoniously.
Silence returned to the command center, everyone exchanging uneasy glances, until every gaze eventually settled on the satellite feed.
The towering Gargant, void shield raised overhead, an endless column of tanks and armoured vehicles trailing beneath it, advancing forward like a rolling, mobile mountain range.
One Marshal swallowed hard.
"An enemy on this scale, how are we even supposed to eliminate it?"
The Governor's eyes went red, and he slammed a fist onto the console.
"Regardless of how, we must destroy the xenos. We cannot let them advance any further.
Mobilize every idle force we have left, form a dedicated strike legion, push into the shield radius, kill every xenos inside, and once the shield breaks, call in the fleet for orbital bombardment!!"
At the Governor's order, ten thousand tanks, tens of thousands of other armoured vehicles, and a mechanized infantry force nearly a million strong were assembled into a full steel tide, driving straight for the Ork mountain range.
What followed was an apocalyptic clash of steel. Because of the greenskins' void shield, the Astra Militarum had no choice but to drive their tanks directly inside the shield's radius to have any chance of effectively engaging the Ork armour.
The Ork units, entrenched and waiting, kept every gun, large and small, trained squarely on the shield's boundary line.
The instant a human armoured unit crossed inside, it was met with immediate, devastating Ork fire.
Blackiron had grown remarkably skilled at manipulating the shield. Periodically, without warning, he'd order the entire force to drop it entirely.
The next instant, tens of thousands of guns across the mobile mountain range would open fire in unison, tearing devastating losses into the human ranks.
By the time humanity reacted and tried to return fire, Blackiron would raise the shield again, and every human shell would simply detonate harmlessly against it, wasted.
Thanks to the void shield, the Orks retained complete control over the tempo of exchange throughout.
The two sides ground away at each other for three full days straight, and by the end, humanity's ten-thousand-plus tanks and nearly ten thousand other armoured vehicles had been almost entirely wiped out.
Across a battlefield spanning dozens of kilometers, the ground was scarred with shell craters and littered with wrecked tanks and armoured vehicles as far as the eye could see.
Mekboys from the mobile mountain range moved through the wreckage, tools in hand, cannibalizing parts from one wreck to patch another.
In remarkably short order, they'd assembled over five thousand functional tanks and armoured vehicles out of the salvage.
Stuff a few Ork drivers inside, and those five thousand-plus vehicles were combat-ready again, the mobile steel mountain range growing even larger than before.
In the Governor's command center, one Marshal drew his revolver, pressed it beneath his chin, and pulled the trigger.
A single gunshot rang out, his brains splattered across the ceiling, unmistakably, permanently dead.
The nearly ten thousand Leman Russ tanks and roughly twenty thousand other armoured vehicles wiped out by the Orks had constituted this armour Marshal's entire fighting force.
With his forces annihilated, he saw no further reason to exist as a Marshal, and chose suicide without hesitation.
The Governor gave the dead Marshal's corpse a passing glance, waved a hand for it to be removed, and turned to the remaining Marshals.
"By the Emperor, someone tell me what we do now. Is this planet even salvageable?"
At that, an infantry Marshal stepped forward, adjusted a display on the console, and pulled up a map.
He pointed at it and said:
"Everyone, look here. The xenos battlegroup's current heading points directly at our Refinery City!
Refinery City is one of our smaller hive settlements, population only twenty million, most of the city built at surface level, housing an enormous quantity of oil-refining infrastructure.
The Orks have assaulted Refinery City multiple times before, hungry for our fuel reserves. This mechanized Ork force is almost certainly even more desperate for fuel now, and will absolutely head there.
Given the Ork battlegroup's slow pace of advance, we have roughly half a month to prepare.
Half a month is more than enough time to convert Refinery City into a massive fortress!"
The Governor, eyes bloodshot, asked: "How many men do you need?"
"Fifty million!!"
The assembled officers drew a collective sharp breath. Fifty million. A full fifty million people.
The Governor was equally stunned.
"Fifty million. Do you understand what you're asking?
Our total military strength, combined across the entire planet, is barely a billion, and it's already spread thin across every front, with every combat zone crying out for reinforcements.
If we pull fifty million troops for your position, every other front will collapse."
The infantry Marshal roared back:
"Then let them collapse! We don't have the luxury of caring about that right now!
If the xenos take Refinery City, the very next step is our total annihilation."
He jabbed a finger at the holographic map.
"Look here. Three hundred kilometers directly south of Refinery City sits our current main hive, where we're standing right now!
That main hive holds twelve billion people, the core industrial workforce of this entire world!
If those twelve billion die, this entire planet dies with them!
And if the Ork battlegroup instead veers southwest, two hundred kilometers that direction sits the Titan Temple!
If those damned xenos ever get their hands on a Titan, we'll be facing TWO mechanical monstrosities instead of one!!"
That silenced the room entirely. He was right. With an extinction-level xenos force bearing down on humanity's core territory, did it even matter anymore whether the other fronts held?
Faced with all of that, the Governor had no choice but to give the order:
"Very well. There's nothing more to discuss.
All Astra Militarum forces, planet-wide, pull back and consolidate defenses immediately. Abandon every reclaimed territory. Fall back and dig in on our core holdings.
Mobilize fifty million elite veterans and send them to fortify Refinery City."
The Governor had, at this point, become a full-blown gambler. If these fifty million couldn't stop the Orks' advancing steel mountain range, everything was over.
He turned his bloodshot eyes on the infantry Marshal.
"If this plan fails, I will personally send you to the stake.
So tell me right now, whatever else you need, name it immediately!!"
The infantry Marshal's eyes burned with resolve.
"I need explosives. Endless explosives.
Ideally, give every single infantryman a melta charge, and let them charge straight into the greenskins, taking them down together."
A logistics Marshal objected: "Impossible. Even if we handed over the entire army's stockpile of melta charges, it wouldn't be enough."
The infantry Marshal shouted back: "Then if we're short on melta charges, convert standard explosives into improvised satchel charges instead! Every single infantryman needs anti-armour capability, full stop!!"
Another Marshal frowned.
"You're asking soldiers to carry out suicide attacks. What reason would they have to actually do that?"
The infantry Marshal's gaze was steel.
"Because Forge World Primo-496a is their HOME!!
If they don't fight, bleed, and die to hold the line at Refinery City, the twelve billion people in the main hive behind it will all die too. Their families are there."
He struck a fist against his own chest, eyes unwavering.
"My own officer corps and I will carry the charges ourselves. If the line breaks, I will personally charge into the greenskins and detonate myself alongside them!!"
A few days later, at Refinery City, an industrial settlement with a resident population of only twenty million, the most basic, embryonic form of what would one day become a full hive.
The city's surface level was dotted with high-rise buildings, with five or six subterranean levels below.
At this stage, it didn't yet resemble a true hive, but given a few hundred or a thousand more years of development, those surface towers would eventually be filled solid with plasteel, converted into structural support columns. The five or six underground levels would expand into hundreds more, becoming a genuine, fully developed sump.
Now, this settlement, home to a mere twenty million residents, found itself suddenly flooded with fifty million Astra Militarum troops.
These soldiers spread across every street in the city and the vast surrounding desert beyond its walls.
Everywhere the eye could see, they were digging trenches, foxholes, and communication lines.
The desert was torn open, hardened roadways blasted apart, and several hundred-meter-tall towers, chosen for their strategic position, were deliberately demolished and used as rubble roadblocks.
The infantry Marshal, along with his officer corps, personally inspected the trench construction throughout the city.
He and every officer under his command shared the same distinctive look: a melta charge strapped to their chest.
The charge itself was disc-shaped, resembling something like the magnetic mines from a certain war-themed video game, primed for detonation with a simple pull-ring.
Seeing their infantry Marshal and generals with multiple stars on their shoulders walking around wearing self-destruct packs left the ordinary soldiers more than a little unnerved.
In one still-under-construction trench, several dozen Astra Militarum soldiers were sweating through their labor, shoveling frantically, trying to deepen the trench beneath them as fast as possible.
One soldier glanced up, spotted the distant infantry Marshal, and let out a bitter, mocking laugh.
"A melta pack on his chest, who's he foolin'. Soon as the shooting starts, officers like him will be the first ones running."
Another soldier chimed in with an equally bitter jab.
"Just went back to camp a minute ago. The bastards handed me a twenty-kilogram bomb pack.
The commissar told me not to think, just strap it on and charge the xenos when the fighting starts, said I'd earn my seat back at the Golden Throne that way.
Damn commissar. If he really tries to send me off to die like that, I'll put a bullet in his back myself before I go."
Half a month passed in the blink of an eye, and the infantry Marshal's assessment proved correct.
The Gargant and its Ork battlegroup were, indeed, marching straight for Refinery City.
The entire Ork force, an endless, terrifying mountain range of steel, rolled forward like a storm surge crashing against a crumbling shore, straight toward the trembling city.
While still far off in the distance, the Gargant and its escort of massive tanks and artillery vehicles opened fire.
Wave after wave of world-shattering cannon fire rained down, an avalanche of shells slamming into Refinery City, blasting apart fortification after fortification in clouds of smoke and dust.
Then, breaking off from the mobile mountain range, Ork infantry, armoured vehicles, and mechs surged forward into the city itself, initiating brutal, close-quarters urban combat.
With nearly every Mekboy on the entire planet now consolidated into this force, and with humanity having already lost nearly its entire stock of tanks and armour beforehand, the Ork armoured units here were of exceptionally high quality, the first time in this entire war that Ork equipment had genuinely outclassed humanity's own gear across the board.
In the trenches inside and around Refinery City, millions upon millions of Astra Militarum soldiers peered out at the surging Ork armoured tide bearing down on them, dread creeping visibly into their eyes.
Against an enemy of this caliber, their lasrifles could do little more than scuff the paint on Ork armour. The only weapons truly capable of hurting them were the bomb packs strapped to their chests and backs.
The better-equipped soldiers carried genuine melta charges. The rest made do with a few high-explosive mortar shells lashed together into a crude satchel bomb.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!"
The Orks let out a thunderous war cry, every one of them clad in heavy power armour, tanks and mechs rolling alongside them, an unstoppable tide surging toward Refinery City.
In the trenches, the dread in the Astra Militarum soldiers' eyes deepened toward outright despair, until a commissar stood up.
He straightened his peaked cap, climbed out of the trench, a bolt pistol in one hand and a chainsword in the other, a massive melta charge strapped across his chest.
He turned back once, looking at the soldiers still huddled in the trench, thousands of terrified eyes fixed on him.
Under ordinary circumstances, this commissar would have held that bolt pistol to their heads to force them to march to their deaths. But right now, he felt there was no longer any need for that.
He flicked the switch on his chainsword, the weapon roaring to life, and bellowed:
"FOR THE EMPEROR!!!"
Then he charged, alone, straight into the surging tide of Ork forces, wrapping his arms around an enemy Mekboy and detonating the melta charge, taking them both down together.
The terrified soldiers exchanged glances, let out an even more terrified collective scream, and then, as one, surged out of the trench themselves, charging headlong into the Ork armoured tide.
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