An Imperial Sentinel walker.
Or rather, half of one.
Its leg assembly was still basically intact.
But everything above the waist had been completely mangled beyond recognition.
The original cockpit had been ripped out.
In front of the standard weapon hardpoint where the cockpit had once sat, a huge rotating gun mount had been welded on.
Even more absurd, a massive iron plate had been welded onto the front of the operator's platform, with a grinning Ork face crudely carved into it. The two eye sockets had been hollowed out into viewing ports.
The walker had only been converted about halfway.
Good stuff, Lawson thought.
But good stuff was always guarded by things that were hard to deal with.
At least thirty gretchin were bustling around inside the workshop.
They hauled parts, passed tools, got beaten, got kicked across the room, climbed back up, and kept hauling. That was everyday life for gretchin in a greenskin workshop.
Around the outer edge of the gretchin swarm stood eight fully armed Ork boyz acting as guards.
Their equipment was clearly a cut above that of ordinary patrol Ork boyz. Their armor coverage was heavier, and two of them were even carrying brutally modified Imperial heavy bolters.
These were the Mekboy's personal guards.
In greenskin ecology, a Mekboy might not be the best fighter, but the weapons it built were enough to make tougher Orks willing to serve as bodyguards.
At the largest workbench in the center of the workshop stood a greenskin almost half a head shorter than the rest.
The Mekboy itself.
Its build was nothing remarkable by Ork standards, but its head was noticeably bigger than those of its kin.
That oversized skull wore a bizarre helmet cobbled together from scrap iron and lenses, with no fewer than six retractable mechanical arms extending from it. Each ended in a different tool.
A welding torch.
A screwdriver.
Clamps.
A hammer.
It was hunched over, making some sort of adjustment to the power conduits of the half-finished walker.
Every few seconds, it would snatch up a part from the workbench, glance at it, and either jam it into the machinery or use it to bash the unlucky gretchin beside it for handing over the wrong tool.
Lawson withdrew his focus from the Shared Awareness feed.
The value of the Mekboy workshop was undeniable, but its defenses were nothing to sneeze at either.
He spent roughly twenty minutes formulating an attack plan.
Four squads.
Alpha and Beta would strike from the front and draw fire.
Gamma would swing around through the right-side maintenance passage.
Delta would infiltrate through the ceiling ventilation system and descend over the workshop.
Lawson himself moved with Alpha, personally directing the frontal assault.
Fifteen minutes later.
All squads were in position.
"Begin."
Alpha and Beta attacked from both sides of the workshop's main entrance at the same time.
Number One was the first to lean out from behind cover. He aimed his boltgun at the gretchin gunner dozing behind the left-side firing platform.
Boom!
The gunner's head burst into a cloud of green vapor under the impact of the bolt round.
But the gunner at the right-side firing platform was jolted awake by the gunshot.
It let out a shriek and mashed both skinny green claws down on the trigger of the heavy autocannon.
Dakka-dakka-dakka-dakka-dakka!
The crude shells sprayed wildly toward the entrance in a completely unstable pattern.
The Deathsworn of Alpha and Beta were pinned behind cover on either side of the entryway.
At the same time, the rotating turret activated.
Its spring-driven base began to turn slowly, and the multi-barreled rotary gun let out a scalp-crawling mechanical whine.
Dakka-dakka... dakka-dakka... dakka-dakka...
As the stream of bullets swept across the entrance, several rounds slammed into the metal barricade beside Number One, punching finger-thick holes in the steel plate.
But the hail of fire swept across the workshop interior as well.
Two unlucky gretchin happened to be standing in the turret's line of fire and were riddled by their own side's gunfire.
"Eek!"
"Get down! That iron thing's spraying wild again!"
The gretchin throughout the workshop erupted into overlapping shrieks, clutching their heads and scrambling for cover in every direction.
The Ork boy guard squad reacted fast, though.
"Waaagh! Humies! Brothers, get 'em!"
The eight Ork boyz raised their weapons and charged toward the entrance.
Behind cover, Lawson counted the firing rhythm of the rotating turret.
"One full sweep takes about twelve seconds. It covers the entrance for about two of those seconds. That leaves a ten-second safe window."
"Alpha, wait for the turret to pass!"
The instant the turret's barrels swept past the entrance and began turning toward the left side of the workshop, Alpha's five Deathsworn burst out from behind cover and concentrated fire on the charging Ork boyz.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Three bolts hit the Ork boy at the front.
It staggered two steps, but did not fall.
With a roar, it raised the modified Imperial heavy bolter in its hands.
Number One's second bolt landed first, smashing into its face.
The Ork's head exploded.
"Back!"
The turret was about to sweep the entrance again, and Alpha dropped back behind cover.
Dakka-dakka-dakka...
The bullets screamed past the edge of the barricade.
At the exact same time the frontal assault was drawing every eye in the workshop, Gamma had already slipped into the outer edge of the workshop through a maintenance passage on the right.
"Delta, move."
Up above, Delta's five Deathsworn had been crawling through the ventilation ducts for more than twenty minutes.
Squad leader Number Eleven peered down through a grille in the bottom of the duct at the turret still rotating and firing below.
All five men dropped from the duct at once.
The sound of their landing was completely drowned out by the turret's own noise.
At the instant he hit the ground, Number Eleven pulled the pin on a standard Imperial fragmentation grenade and shoved it precisely into the gap between the turret base and its rotation assembly.
Boom!
The grenade detonated inside the turret's core mechanism.
The rotating base was blasted into three pieces. The barrels of the rotary gun bent and warped in every direction, and the spring-driven firing system was completely destroyed.
The turret finally shut up.
With the suppressive fire from the rotating turret gone, Alpha and Beta at the front no longer had to worry about timing their movement to the firing windows.
Ten Deathsworn charged out from behind cover together and unleashed full suppressive fire into the Ork boy guard squad inside the workshop.
At the same time, Delta surged in from the ruins of the turret and hit the guards from behind.
Front and rear, caught in a vice.
The eight Ork boy guards were wiped out in less than thirty seconds.
The gretchin had already run off in every direction.
Only one greenskin was still standing in the middle of the workshop.
The Mekboy watched as its guard squad was butchered in less than half a minute. The six mechanical arms on its oversized head all sprang upright at once, making it look like some kind of startled metal hedgehog.
Then it did something Lawson had not expected at all.
It did not run.
It charged toward the half-finished walker.
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