by Ben Counter, Guy Haley, Joshua Reynolds, Cavan Scott (epub)
The sweep of the battle was revealed to Uggrim in full, and it was exhilarating. Ork boyz poured across the plain, thousands of them heading in a great stream towards the human fortifications. Hundreds of kans and trukks and trakks, and all the orky might of war went ahead of them. Other rust-ships dotted the plains in the distance, bubble fields flaring under fire, each disgorging its own green flood, although none were so big as the Wrath of Gork. Explosions were going up everywhere. A big kerfuffle to the south-east marked the point where some of the boyz had already broken through the defence line. The humans kept up a spirited rate of fire, cutting down hundreds of orks, and falling back where they were threatened with hand to hand combat.
These humies didn’t worry Uggrim. They were as weak as their weapons, unable to penetrate Fat Mork’s bubble field. Most of their guns were out of range in any case, which was, now Uggrim thought about it, as much a curse as a blessing.
Luckily for them all, the fight was coming to them. As promised, humie Stompas, Knights, were loping towards the horde – twenty of them at least, decked with flapping banners, all in different colours but variations on a single theme. They were hunched over like orks, their high carapaces rising over cockpits shaped like giant helmets. Each one had a massive gun for one arm and a big chainsword for the other. Polyphonic warhorns boomed as they ran; they were quick and closing fast. Uggrim caught some squeaky humie talk over his squawker. It sounded angry.
The Knights tore into the ork army, cannons spitting shells at an impressive rate of fire. They stamped a bloody channel through the horde, heading directly for Grukk’s drop-ship. A big group of Deff Dreads formed up in their way, and were promptly smashed down. Orks were hurrying to get clear, in a manner that, to Uggrim, looked suspiciously like running away.
Uggrim pressed his eye to his periscope. Looking through its magnifying lenses past the enclosing bubble field of the ship, things weren’t going too well. Orks were being blasted to pieces by the hundreds, caught by long-range artillery and the up-close repeater cannons of the humie Stompas. Burst cones of ork body parts and parched soil shot upwards. Battlewagons came apart in showers of scrap, buggies were lofted high into the air, but the orks ran onwards heedlessly. It was glorious. The Red Sunz laughed and cheered with excitement. Even the grots stopped snivelling. Fat Mork jolted as Talker opened fire with the gigashoota, sending a highly inaccurate fusillade at the Knights.
‘Oi, madboy – stop that!’ Uggrim shouted down the talky-tube. ‘We’re out of range.’
‘Well do something about it!’ Snikgob replied grumpily. ‘What we doing standing around here for?’
Snikgob had a point. Uggrim slammed the left lever forwards. Fat Mork waddled around, heading towards the encroaching phalanx of Knights. Most were approaching the ship’s mid-section, but a couple of them had scoped the two Stompas and altered their own course to intercept.
‘Hur hur,’ said Uggrim. ‘This’ll be a good fight!’
At that moment, Grukk chose to make his entrance. Four massive explosions tore through the side of the rust-ship a way down from the Red Sunz. A good chunk of the ship’s flank, where it was at its very fattest, fell outwards. Uggrim and his lads laughed to see the humie Stompas come to a halt and then go frantically running backwards as the metal bore down on them. A stripy orange one didn’t make it, and was flattened by the falling debris, its reactor making a pathetic phutting noise as it blew.
Dust washed outwards, covering a large part of the fight. A loud metallic ‘Waaagh!’ rolled out from the rust-ship, and Fist of Gork strode onto the battlefield. Nearly twice the size of Fat Mork, huge as an entire orktown, it bristled with cannons. Its iron hide was mostly the dark red of old blood, for that was the substance Grukk favoured as paint. Where it was not crusty red it was goff-black, covered in bulls’ heads and the neat, checked patterning of the discerning skarboy.
The orks answered the gargant’s cry with their own mighty ‘Waaagh!’. They lunged forwards again, swamping the first line of the humie defences across a broad front.
Uggrim salivated at the prospect of the fight. Knights encircled Fist of Gork, firing madly at it. Thinking it would be highly politic to get involved in this biggest of scraps, as well as loads of fun, Uggrim lined Fat Mork up with the foe and depressed his acceleration pedals.
The Stompa took one step, lifted his foot to take another, and came to a juddering halt. There was a noise like a farting squiggoth and a faint smell of burning, before Fat Mork tipped uncomfortably forwards to balance precariously on the toe of his upraised foot. The lights went out.
Uggrim looked around with disbelief. He toggled a couple of switches. He snarled, slammed his fists into his skull. He cast about, settling on a grot as a target for his anger.
‘No, boss, no… Oooof!’
The grot flew down the ladder well, dead.
‘What the zog’s going on? What the zog is going on!’ bellowed Uggrim.
‘We’ve stopped!’ shouted Snikgob. ‘Lost all power!’
‘I knows that! I know! I can see that, can’t I?’ Uggrim watched in dismay as Big Mouth ploughed on towards the human lines, racking up a very impressive kill count while Fat Mork stood there like a madboy picking flowers. ‘What the zog is going on?’
To make matters worse, a Knight was zeroing in on them.
‘Boss, boss! Humie Stompa coming in fast!’ shouted the lookout grot from the tower above.
‘I know, I know! I can see that as well!’ bawled Uggrim back up the talky-tube, too angry to be impressed the grot hadn’t run off. He rammed the drive levers back and forth. They had no effect, so he started slamming his gnarled fists into the dashboard over and over again. The Knight fired. Uggrim winced.
Chapter 5
The Big Scrap
‘What’s going on? Why aren’t we moving?’ shouted Talker, only now grasping the situation. Then, ‘I think I needs the drops. My tummy isn’t well.’
Fat Mork shuddered as a shell burst on his crackling shields.
‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ wailed Bozgat, down on the engine deck. He ran to and fro, clutching his head in his hands.
‘Well I’d zogging well find out, you useless squig turd!’ shouted Uggrim, his voice all hollow and tinny down the talky-tube. ‘Because that humie Stompa don’t look like he’s coming round for a cup of fungus beer and a nice chat.’
‘Ooooh! The emblems, the heraldry! The badges are nice!’ hooted Talker. ‘Pretty! Male line left, distaff right. Clever pinkies!’
Another of the enemy Stompa’s shells exploded harmlessly, absorbed by Fat Mork’s energy shield.
‘Oh, that’s pretty, that’s nice. At least that still works then,’ jabbered Talker. ‘A predictable outcome of a polarised muon deflection matrix.’ He belched loudly. ‘Well orky.’
‘Boss, boss!’ shouted Bozgat. ‘Reactor’s still on. I don’t understand!’
Uggrim’s mind was highly compartmentalised. On the one hand he was an ork, possessed of and possessed by all the unthinking rage that suggests. But the other part of his brain brimmed over with inherited knowledge, some of which was so complex it would have kept the assembled priesthood of a forge world occupied for a generation or two. As his subkind had been made to react in such situations so many aeons before, this part kicked in and took over, pushing his roaring orky aggression aside. He wanted to kill, but before he could kill, he had to fix. The red mist receded from his vision. Diagrams and charts and rotating schematics spilled dizzyingly into his mind’s eye, and his innate technical know-how spilled in its turn out from his fanged mouth.
‘Check the fuses, check the shunts! Initiate testing on the couplings. That’s got to be it!’
Bozgat pulled himself together, for a while. He swung under the criss-crossing pipes and bracing spars that webbed the periphery of the engine room like a great green ape, frantically grabbing at everything that c
onveyed power anywhere. His concentration didn’t last. Unable to find what was wrong in a time commensurate with his limited span of patience, he lost his temper, grabbed his biggest axe-spanner and started randomly hitting things very, very hard. Sparks and arcs of electricity shot out of the abused machinery, flashing on Bozgat’s teeth as they earthed through the Stompa’s metal deck. The little mek’s ears smoked, but he went on battering everything in sight. ‘I can’t do it! I can’t do it!’ he wailed.
Up top, Uggrim leaned back from Fat Mork’s periscope eye. The Imperial walker looked altogether too close through it. Fat Mork’s shield generators screamed as round after round pounded into them from the big cannon on its arm.
‘Bozgat! Bozgat! Bozgat! Fix it or we’re all dead!’
‘Waaagh!’ howled Bozgat, and not in a good way. He battered the casing of the reactor, putting shiny gouges into its paintwork. ‘I’m tryin’! I’m tryin’!’
‘Try harder, you bleedin’ runt! Pull yourself together. You an ork or a grot?’ bawled Snikgob. He gave up, ramming the levers on his lifta-droppa backwards and forwards in frustration, and dropped from his chair, ran across the gun deck and slid down the ladder to the engine room with his feet on the rails. ‘Gork’s arse, you want something doing, do it yourself!’
Frikk, meanwhile, was scurrying about on his hands and knees, looking for things Bozgat might have missed. He had already soiled himself twice, and the mess of metal shavings, old screws and bones littering the place were cutting his palms and knees up something chronic. Bozgat was panicking, Snikgob was shouting, and there were a great many things outside that were trying their best to kill him. He tried to ignore the reality that he was, to all intents and purposes, inside a poorly constructed tin can with a fusion bomb in the middle. He failed.
There are few things that can be as physically terrified as a gretchin. Fear, however, is a friend to a rare number of them. There are grots that will die on the spot under the duress of such terror, but Frikk was of the other sort. Fear motivates this unusual breed like nothing else. Frikk’s small brain was in overdrive, his mean red eyes scanning every scrap of the engine room. Instinct drew his gaze downwards, round about Bozgat’s boot level where the ork would not think to look. In a small gap, close to the floor, he spotted something awry. A thick tube of fungus rubber had been hacked through, the bundle of wires inside cut. The metal that made them up had melted together.
He scrambled over to it, grabbing onto a scalding pipe as Fat Mork rocked back on his heels. ‘Argh!’ he wailed, sucking his fingers. ‘Bozgat! Bozgat!’
Frikk noticed a pair of glyphs scratched into the wall. His eyes widened with shock. He hastily scrubbed them out with dirt before the mek scrambled over and shoved him out of the way.
‘Sabotage!’ Bozgat snarled. He yelled over his shoulder at Snikgob. ‘We’ve been done!’ Bozgat pulled the ruined cables close to his face, flipping a magnifying lens down over his eye. ‘Been cut just enough to melt when stressed. Someone with the know-wots gone done this! I bet you it’s that bleedin’ glory hog Bad Moon. Frikk, Frikk! Get back here!’ Bozgat grabbed the gretchin by an ear and pulled him squealing into the hole. ‘You gotta help. We gotta join all these back up!’
‘But there’s loads of ’em!’ protested Frikk.
‘Best work fast then, lazy grot,’ said Bozgat, his own thick fingers already working with surprising dexterity, separating the melted strands and twisting the wires back together.
‘Lemme at it,’ shouted Snikgob, and he pulled roughly at Bozgat’s shoulder.
‘No room,’ said Bozgat, elbowing Snikgob hard.
‘Stop fighting and fix it!’ yelled Uggrim down the talky-tube. ‘Snikgob, get back on the gun deck. Don’t want Talker doing anything weird.’
Uggrim redirected his attention back outside. Seeing its shells had no effect, the Knight had pulled back and was circling the Stompa warily. Fat Mork was taking plenty of fire from all around, but luckily Gork’s Fist was attracting most of the humie Stompas’ attention.
Great, thought Uggrim. Means we only got the one to deal with.
The Knights ran round and round Gork’s Fist, blasting away at its iron hide. His bubble fields were out and his armour glowed hot with the impact of fusion weapons. Runnels of molten steel dribbled down the gargant’s broad skirt, flash-cooking boyz who got too close. But the Knights could not penetrate the thick plating. One of the humie walkers was doing some right fancy prancing, ducking this way and that. It got carried away, ran forwards and carved a gash into Gork’s Fist’s belly plates.
‘Ooh, that was pretty stupid,’ said Uggrim to himself.
The gargant reacted swiftly, taking the Knight off guard. Its shoulder weapons ratcheted down, sending a massive rocket straight into the humie Stompa’s chest. The explosion was huge, but the walker was only staggered. Uggrim narrowed his eyes at that.
Bubble field? He thought. Humie bubble field?
If so, it did little good. Gork’s Fist smashed the humie Stompa down to the ground with its battleship-sized chainblade, then finished it off with a gut barge, bashing the smaller war machine into scrap. Uggrim would have laughed, but suddenly he found himself rather preoccupied. While he was watching the fight, the nearest humie Stompa started to charge right at them, massive chainsword arm raised. He only looked back at it when its warhorns wailed a terrible cry that, quite frankly, gave Uggrim the fear. He banged away at his useless fire controls. He howled with annoyance, bashing and beating everything he could get his hands on. The lookout grot screamed as it fell past his viewing slot, deciding to jump from the spotting tower rather than risk the Knight’s wrath. Uggrim covered his face with his arms.
The humie Stompa swung hard at his cockpit. The chainsword teeth spun wildly. Lightning crackled all across Fat Mork’s front, but the shield held.
‘Get on with it! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it!’ roared Uggrim. He was enraged. The enemy were all around them and he could not fight them. ‘What a shambles. This is pathetic. Pathetic!’
‘Almost there, boss!’ came Bozgat’s shout.
Almost there was no good. ‘No good at all!’ he said aloud. His hand groped for his custom super blasta. ‘Right,’ he bawled. ‘That’s it!’ he grasped the lever of the hatch above him, swung it open with a bang, and heaved himself out the top.
Up on top of Fat Mork’s head he had a wider view. The battle was swinging back in the orks’ favour. The boyz had learned their lesson, parting around the humie Stompas’ advance, then flooding in behind them again. Those ranged about Gork’s Fist were in danger of being cut off, but they ignored their worsening situation, doggedly harassing Grukk’s gargant. Big Mouth had marched ahead right into the defence line and was happily pulverising humie bunkers with its cannon, the enormously loud ‘Waaaghs!’ coming out of its mouth speakers audible even so far away.
The Knight attacking Fat Mork retreated for another run and angled its chainsword for another strike. Streams of tracer bullets from a big shoota in its shoulder smacked into the pulsing energy field of Fat Mork only a couple of metres from Uggrim’s face. Their momentum arrested, the slugs fell from the air.
‘Right, you!’ he shouted at the Knight, levelling his pistol directly at its helm plate. ‘Leave my zoggin’ ride alone!’
His gun was small for an ork weapon – small as in the size of a human torso – but packed quite the punch. He squeezed the trigger. Gubbins whirred all over it. The charging chamber flickered a satisfying shade of electric green. A searing line of energy belted from the muzzle. Fat Mork’s shields were configured to keep things out, not in, and the beam passed through without hindrance. It splashed on the Knight’s own energy shield and dissipated harmlessly.
‘Oh ho ho!’ shouted Uggrim. ‘What’s this? What’s this? So you do got your own bubble, do you? That’s why you’re such tough nuts, eh? Well, well, we’ll see about that.’
Uggrim
twisted a couple of knobs on the side of his gun, amping up the power to the max. ‘Eat this, pink git!’ he hollered. He fired again. This time when the beam intersected with the Knight’s field it flared brightly and some of its force got through. The humie Stompa rolled adroitly as the beam connected with its helm, blackening one of the eye lenses and blistering the thing’s paint.
‘Ha ha! Ha ha!’ bellowed Uggrim. ‘Ha ha ha!’
Fat Mork lurched, banging Uggrim into his hatch rim so hard he dropped his gun. It clattered down the front of Fat Mork.
‘Now I’m angry,’ he growled. ‘That was me favourite blasta!’
‘We got power, we got power!’ shouted Snikgob from below. Fat Mork’s arms came up. Talker opened fire without waiting.
‘Right then,’ said Uggrim, looking the Stompa dead in its clear eye lens. He pointed to where he assumed the pilot was. ‘You’re dead, mate.’
He dropped back down into the hatch, and slammed the drive levers forwards. Fat Mork’s upraised foot shifted, fighting the earth and the weight forced on it by his awkward poise. Fat Mork shuddered, metal squealing. Centimetre by centimetre, he pushed himself back into an upright position. With a lurch he was in motion. The few orks in front of him wisely got out of his way.
‘Let’s see how you like this!’ roared Uggrim. He depressed the big red button that activated Fat Mork’s gaze. A beam of energy much like that emitted by his pistol, only many hundreds of times bigger, spat from the Stompa’s killy eye. It splashed onto the humie Stompa’s shield like a torrent of water hitting a bucket. Uggrim blinked afterimages from his vision and sniffed the ozone in the air appreciatively.