After Warboss Redeye's impassioned speech—and a two-hour collective nap—the orks' stamina and WAAAGH! energy returned to their peak. Accompanied by earth-shaking roars, the green tide surged toward the players' defensive positions once more.
However, halfway through their advance, the orks were stunned to discover that the heavy weapon emplacements, which should have long since fallen silent, erupted back to life.
Heavy bolters spat streams of explosive rounds into the charging horde, each impact blasting apart bodies and scrap armor alike. Autocannons thundered rhythmically, their shells tearing through the largest and toughest orks with ruthless precision.
Why?
Because while the orks had been resting, the players' logistics corps had worked without pause. Transport trucks rolled to the front, unloading mountains of ammunition crates. Weapons that had jammed, overheated, or broken down were repaired by technical crews and restored to combat readiness. In truth, the resupply had taken far longer than anyone would have liked.
This time, however, the players had learned from experience.
As the surviving orks pushed through the artillery barrage, the riflemen held their fire. Ordinary rifle rounds had little effect against the thick-skinned Boarboyz, so there was no point wasting ammunition or stamina.
Instead, they waited.
The moment the ork horde crested the dunes, the players burst from their trenches with battle cries of their own. Formal battle lines vanished instantly as both sides crashed together in a frenzy of hacking, stabbing, and roaring steel.
Inside the regimental command post, Joker remained surprisingly calm.
He quietly tore open another energy bar and chewed expressionlessly. Unlike every other player, who could reset exhaustion and hunger simply by dying and respawning, Joker had only one life. If he wanted to stay alert, he had to eat.
"This thing tastes like shoe leather," he muttered between bites. "Any chance you can modify me so I don't have to eat anymore?"
Without looking away from the communications console, Archer replied,
"You'd better keep chewing your shoe leather."
To keep Joker functioning, the latest logistics convoy had delivered an entire month's supply of fresh water and energy bars. More impressively, Archer had even built him a private toilet with a crude recycling system beside the command bunker.
Come to think of it...
That was probably the greatest privilege on the entire battlefield.
Amid endless sand, explosions, and death, Joker alone possessed a private restroom.
"...I'd rather not have that kind of privilege," he mumbled.
"What was that?" Archer asked, glancing over.
"Nothing."
Joker immediately changed the subject.
"Any updates from the hive city?"
"I was just about to tell you."
Archer adjusted his headset.
"The two Astartes finished their 'easy cleanup' operation. They're already aboard a Valkyrie and heading here. Command says we only need to hold out for another hour."
"One hour..."
Joker looked toward the battlefield, where another massive melee had erupted.
"At this rate, those two piles of orks could keep chopping each other apart for another month and still have energy left."
Almost as if fate wanted to prove him wrong, the battlefield changed dramatically.
A deafening engine roar erupted behind the ork lines, drowning out every shout and explosion.
Dozens of ramshackle ork warbikes burst over the dunes like unleashed predators, trailing smoke and scrap as they charged straight into the players' formation.
The impact was immediate.
Players were launched into the air as speeding bikes smashed through the front ranks, scattering bodies in every direction.
These machines were nothing like the Boarboyz.
They were little more than piles of junk held together by sheer WAAAGH! energy—absurdly crude yet terrifyingly effective.
Even driving a weapon deep into one failed to stop its momentum.
As for players who had already been sent flying, accurately striking the wildly bouncing ork rider before hitting the ground was nearly impossible.
Within seconds, the players' melee line had been torn apart.
"Waaah!"
Joker nearly choked after stuffing the rest of his energy bar into his mouth.
"Get the heavy bolters and autocannons on those bikes! Now!"
The order was almost unnecessary.
The heavy weapon crews had already spotted the incoming threat.
Autocannon operators struggled to swing their massive weapons toward the fast-moving targets. Designed to engage armored vehicles and dense infantry formations, the cumbersome guns simply couldn't track the wildly weaving bikes.
The heavy bolters fared slightly better.
They unleashed torrents of fire, attempting to blanket the bikers' approach.
Unfortunately, ork driving defied every known principle of common sense.
The bikes lurched unpredictably—swerving left, veering right, accelerating without warning, then somehow turning even harder. Most of the incoming fire missed entirely.
The few bikes that took direct hits merely exploded into showers of sparks before coughing out thicker clouds of black smoke and continuing their mad charge.
Meanwhile, the heavy lumber-gun emplacements stood abandoned.
Their crews had long since grabbed entrenching tools and sidearms before charging into the second melee, roaring just as loudly as the orks themselves.
For a brief moment, the warbike mob rampaged almost unchecked, carving a path toward the players' first trench line.
Ironically, the worsening situation only made Joker calmer.
Instead of shouting into the radio again, he turned to Archer.
"The moment those bikes reach the first trench..."
He paused.
"Detonate the explosives."
Long before the second assault began, large quantities of remote-controlled demolition charges had been buried beneath every major defensive position.
Joker had come up with the idea during the orks' halftime break while watching logistics unload truck after truck of standard military explosives.
With tactical nuclear weapons available as the regiment's ultimate trump card, he couldn't think of many other useful applications for conventional explosives.
So he simply buried them under every defensive line.
At worst, they would become one final surprise for the enemy.
Besides...
What else was he supposed to do with that many explosives?
It wasn't as though he could bury a ring of them underneath his private toilet.