by Ben Counter, Guy Haley, Joshua Reynolds, Cavan Scott (epub)
An uproarious buzzing surrounded Fat Mork, as hundreds of buggies, bikes and trakks held back to shelter behind the Stompas were released. They shot past, speed-crazed orks hanging from their backs with their tongues lolling out.
With a storm of fire coming from both sides of the river, the humie Stompas that came from the sea wised up enough to retreat.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ roared Uggrim. ‘Bozgat! All power to the feets. All ahead full!’ He had a little mechanical dial that he rammed backwards and forwards to ding a bell in the engine room.
Snikgob was getting frustrated. Buggies were running alongside the human walkers, volleying rocket and blasta fire at them. A lot died, but they were as numerous as biting flies, and their weight of fire was stupendous. ‘All the freeks are killing the humies! There’ll be none left for us! Get me lifta in range!’
‘We’ll get closer than that,’ said Uggrim. ‘Want to try out our new choppa, don’t we, lads?’
‘Yes, boss!’ shouted the orks.
Uggrim pushed his drive levers to full. Fat Mork picked up speed and barged the Gorkanauts out of the way. Uggrim ignored most of the complaints from the nob pilots, and yelled threats at the most persistent. Fat Mork’s new gut cannon thundered after the retreating Knights. They were dropping into the river, away from the boyz on foot and the buggy swarm; pretty sneaky, as Uggrim reckoned it, but not sneaky enough. The ork Stompas were getting closer. The Gorkanaut’s shells sparked off the humie Stompa’s shielding, and the cavalcade of light vehicles kept pace with the Knights along the bank, sending dozens of rockets screaming at them. Plumes of acid water erupted from the river, scalding anything they hit.
The Knights formed up into a box formation, their clever shields making a mobile castle wall of flickering light around them, and marched onwards at a steady pace. They traded weapons fire where they could, but their attention was on escape. The Knights were slowed by the acid stream dragging at their legs, allowing the lumbering ork walkers to gain. The buggy swarm had no trouble keeping pace, but the humies were outpacing the footsloggers on the eastern bank.
‘Get on! Get on!’ yelled Uggrim. Fat Mork groaned in progress. His short legs were moving so fast that the machine had taken on a pronounced wobble, and most of Talker’s shots missed. ‘We got only one kill! We can’t finish this battle with only one kill – what will the others say?’ asked Bozgat.
‘No worries, Boz,’ said Snikgob. ‘The humies are getting away, but at least we’re running ahead of that Grimgutz.’
Uggrim swung his periscope around. Sure enough, Grimgutz’s way forward was blocked by the smaller Gorkanauts. His engine lacked the power to allow him to bash his way past them, and he was steadily shrinking into the distance. The din of his wide metal gob got quieter and quieter the further they drew away from him.
‘Squig oil engines my green behind!’ crowed Uggrim. ‘Get yourself a proper reactor, Bad Moon!’ he yelled into the squawker. ‘Ha ha!’
Fat Mork waddled through the burning wreckage of ork light vehicles, caught up with the stragglers from the buggy swarm, and then they were into the main body of the buggies. The swarm had slowed to match pace with the humies in the river, the vehicles looping great big donuts in the desert to keep their speed up. Ork gunners hanging from pintle weapons made obscene gestures at Fat Mork as he got in the way. Snikgob chucked a couple in the river to teach them some manners, and they zoomed off ahead, black exhaust washing into Uggrim’s cockpit and making his eyes water.
‘Faster! They’re getting away! We need to go faster!’ shouted Bozgat. ‘I’m upping the juice.’
The Stompa lurched, his wobbling jog becoming violent. Gretchin squealed as they were flung from their posts. Uggrim grabbed his squigskin straps. The human island-ship loomed ahead of them. It was loads bigger than even the Wrath of Gork, and that had him thinking.
An uncomfortable thought crossed Uggrim’s mind. ‘Snik, how many guns do you reckon a big humie boat like that has?’
‘Not enough!’ shouted Snikgob.
‘Er, lots?’ said Frikk, who’d somehow got to a talky-tube.
Uggrim ignored this flagrant violation of Stompa rules and slammed his left stick backwards. ‘I’m turnin’ us round.’
Gretchin, junk and ammo slid everywhere as Fat Mork executed a high-speed pirouette.
‘What? No! Uggs! No! Wanna do some crumpin’!’ roared Snikgob. He sent a lifta beam after the Knights, ripping up a linear burst of spray from the water. He stopped mid tirade. ‘Hang on a minute… Hang on a minute! Oh yeah, oh yeah!’ He became agitated as the threat sank in. ‘Er, don’t you reckon we should be goin’ faster?’
‘We were going faster,’ said Bozgat sulkily.
‘Stop your whinin’, Bozgat, and get us goin’ as fast as you can the other way. And get that humie shield pointin’ at our behind!’
‘Sure thing, boss,’ grumbled Bozgat. Uggrim checked his readouts and the telly-scope to make sure Bozgat was doing it right. They were cutting this very fine.
A few bikers and buggy boys caught on and screeched around to follow. Fat Mork was going a ferocious pace when it met the Gorkanauts. ‘Ye’re goin’ the wrong way!’ crowed Kaptin Blackfoot, one of the pilots. ‘Ye’re goin’ the wrong way!’
General hilarity from the nobs in the smaller walkers blasted out of the squawker, mixed with insults concerning oddboyz’ cowardice and Uggrim’s unnatural predilection for being pleasant. A massive explosion cut it short. One of the Gorkanauts detonated in a shower of red-hot iron fragments. A lot more followed.
‘Who’s goin’ the wrong way now, you dumb zoggers?’ shouted Uggrim, totally intoxicated by the fight. ‘Who’s laughin’ now?’
Mork alone – and perhaps Gork – knew how many guns there actually were on the humie island thing, but the rippling flashes that signalled each broadside suggested a great many indeed. The orks were engulfed in a firestorm. Buggies flipped end over end, bikers dug heels in to spin their mounts on the spot and flee. Trakks went into reverse, only to throw their tracks or be smashed apart by the dozen. The humie Stompas stopped firing altogether. They were wading as fast as they could through the stinky water. A giant ramp dropped down from the floating stronghold, and the humie Stompas made right for it.
Fat Mork juddered as it took a direct hit. Flames billowed around the Stompa, filling the telly-scope, the glass viewing eye and the periscope. The squawker was a din of screaming, howling orks being blown up or baked alive, Uggrim caught the high-pitched wittering of humies too. Over all that Uggrim could hear Grimgutz laughing it up in his Stompa.
Fat Mork strode from the fire storm. Big Mouth was waiting for them a few hundred metres away.
‘Wow! If it weren’t for that humie shield we’d be dead!’ said Bozgat.
Chapter 9
Big Mouth Versus Fat Mork
‘What you laughin’ at, Grimgutz?’ bellowed Uggrim into the squawker.
‘’Cause you nearly got your squig cooked. Evil Sunz is as Evil Sunz does – always goin’ faster, always falling right into a trap. Idiots,’ said Grimgutz, all cocky from the safety of Big Mouth.
‘Wasn’t just us, was it?’ yelled Uggrim. He squinted at his grot signallers, at the squawker and the talky-tubes. All he had to do was say the word and the big yellow fool would be as dead as dead.
‘Not talking about that trap, moron.’
‘Er, Uggs…’ said Snikgob.
Big Mouth levelled his gigshoota at Fat Mork. ‘You’re trouble, you are. Too ambitious, too clever by half, and you won’t share.’
‘You never asked,’ growled Uggrim. ‘You came pokin’ about into my Stompa like a grot sneak!’
‘Don’t know where you got that idea, pal. It was Mogrok behind it all.’
‘Really? Let me see,’ Uggrim tapped his chin with a nail. ‘Oh yeah, that grot was carryin’ your tooth…’
; ‘Don’t mean anything,’ Grimgutz said.
‘I think it means you reckon Fat Mork’s better than Big Mouth!’
Grimgutz snapped. ‘So what if I was interested? No, I didn’t ask. Mogrok did, and look where that got him! This is your last chance. Tell me how to make more of them little suns. I’ll be king of my own tribe in a week. I’ll be generous. Don’t tell me, and I’ll smash yer stupid red walker to bits right here and now.’
Uggrim was cunning. Uggrim was smart. Uggrim might, on a different day, have told Grimgutz that he would do exactly as he wanted, and later try to wriggle out of it. That was the way Mogrok would have played it.
But Uggrim was also an ork of action. The raw, red violence that dominated all his kind was a raging blaze in his forehead, stoked by Grimgutz’s impertinence.
‘Fire!’ he yelled.
There was a loud thwack-boom! from the Stompa’s gut. The shell piled right into Big Mouth’s chest, wreathing the yellow machine in fire. Green lightning crackled around it as his power fields absorbed the energy. Big Mouth took a sharp swerve to the left, and a second shell sailed past him.
‘You’ll have to do better than that!’ crowed Grimgutz over the squawker.
The volume of Big Mouth’s music increased, so loud it was almost a weapon in itself. Bellowing metallic Waaaghs!, the machine stumped around Fat Mork in a wide circle, its turn of speed taking the Red Sunz meks by surprise.
‘Track it with the humie shield,’ ordered Uggrim.
‘I’m trying, I’m trying, b–’
Another deafening report from their new belly gun. Uggrim’s ears rang. ‘Need to overload the shields, bring ’em down!’ he shouted. ‘Snikgob, get ready with the lifta.’
‘On it, Uggs,’ said Snikgob. Indeed he was. One of the buggies fleeing from the battle was snatched from the ground by a delicate movement of the lifta arm. Uggrim pressed his eye close to his periscope so he could catch the surprised looks on the crew’s faces as their ride was smashed into Big Mouth’s shield. ‘Hur hur hur. Funny that!’ Uggrim said. ‘But wait till I give the say so next time – got to hit it all at once!’
Big Mouth’s head swivelled to track his opponent. A checked rocket shot off his shoulder, corkscrewing madly before the grot in the nose cone got it under control; unfortunately for Grimgutz, ‘under control’ meant a straight line three hundred metres wide of Fat Mork.
Talker was firing again, not a bad shot this time, his shell raising a burst of earth near Big Mouth’s foot.
‘Wait for my orders, you maniac!’ shouted Uggrim.
Big Mouth’s gigashoota arm could not rotate far enough out from his body to target Fat Mork. It didn’t stop the gunner trying, and a spray of incandescent streaks spat from the weapon. The bullets were so off target that Uggrim ignored them. He pressed his eye to the periscope. He twiddled knobs, calibrating Fat Mork’s death-eye to the energy frequency he reckoned Grimgutz had set his shields to. ‘High’ was his guess. More was always more with Bad Moons. Biggest, best, loudest, brightest, fanciest… They lived in a world of superlatives, the yellow clan. It was their weakness. Gits.
Fat Mork’s eye thrummed next to Uggrim. The Stompa wobbled slightly as Snikgob panned his lifta arm out to the far left, looking for a good piece of scrap to lob.
This was the situation: the battle was virtually over. The humans were flooding away from their defences. Orks from both sides of the river were running after them, reinforced by the boyz of Blacktoof’s and Dok Killa’s crews spilling out of the newly arrived rust-ship, Steeljaw, to the south. Squawker chatter had it that more and more of the ork ships were coming in from orbit. Reports were also getting to Uggrim that Grukk had indeed survived and was in a terrible temper, his skin bleached by the acidic river. He would carry the sulphurous stink of it with him until his none-too-distant demise.
Only to the south, where the river joined the sea, were the humies holding the upper hand. There, orks were streaming away from the humie island. Those that didn’t were being methodically obliterated.
‘Pulling back! Just getting our breath – we’ll be back for more! We’ll show ’em!’ shouted nobs over the squawkers, but it was plain to see that they were all pegging it as hard as they could. When ork morale fails, it fails spectacularly.
As one battle came to a close, another was beginning. A touch outside the extreme range of the humie island guns, Fat Mork and Big Mouth danced slowly around one another. Big Mouth went in a circle at the centre of which was Fat Mork. On the straight, Fat Mork was more than a match for Big Mouth, but Big Mouth was going slightly too quickly for Fat Mork, stomping round on the spot with a somewhat comical shuffling motion, to catch. The belly gun had a clear shot, and then it didn’t. When it did, the killy eye next to Uggrim’s command seat hadn’t. If both could get him, Sniks couldn’t get a good throw for the burning Gorkanaut body he’d spotted on the ground. And so on.
Uggrim held off, waiting for the killy eye to charge to maximum. Talker banged off the odd shot, but it had percolated even his mad mind that each one only exploded – admittedly excitingly – on the rival Stompa’s bubble field, and so he orkfully managed to restrain himself and not fire off all his ammo. This wound him up terribly, and his stream of nonsense reverberated around the Stompa when the din of his cannon didn’t. Big Mouth, on the other hand, continued wobbling past, unable to shoot any of his weapons at all. Trouble was for Grimgutz, Fat Mork outgunned his own Big Mouth significantly. Uggrim knew Grimgutz knew it.
Straggling buggies roared past these duelling metal godlings, eager to get out of the way. Orks on foot steered well clear – a couple of mobs that didn’t got stomped.
‘This is stupid!’ said Snikgob.
‘And boring!’ said Bozgat.
Uggrim put his hand over his squawker microphone, then leaned into the talky-tube and spoke conspiratorially. Well, as conspiratorially as one can bellow down a metal pipe embedded in the guts of a noisy war engine.
‘We just got to wait him out! Either he’ll break down, or he’ll lose his cool. Then we can nail ’im.’
Snikgob sniffed disgustedly. ‘That ain’t very orky.’
‘Mebbe,’ said Uggrim. ‘But winning is.’
‘What happens if we break down?’ asked Bozgat.
Shocked silence greeted his words. Fat Mork’s engine seemed to grumble less loudly. It was quiet enough to hear the grots whimpering for a second.
‘You what? You what?’ shouted Snikgob.
Uggrim roared furiously. ‘None of us stuff never, ever, breaks down. You got that! We is the Red Sunz meks!’
‘Except for last time,’ said Bozgat.
‘Sabotage!’ protested Uggrim.
‘What about all the other last times?’
‘Shut it, you!’
‘Just sayin’,’ said Bozgat.
‘Bleep,’ said Talker.
Evidently Grimgutz did get bored. As Big Mouth was almost in the rear arc of Fat Mork, where his armour was thinnest, Big Mouth pivoted and came right at them.
‘Fi–!’ began Uggrim, but he stopped and pressed his eye harder against his periscope. He upped the magnification. ‘Oh, that’s new,’ he said.
Big Mouth had been modified more extensively than Uggrim had suspected. His motion brought into view a weapon the meks had not seen before. A panel in Big Mouth’s right side below the gigashoota swung open. Held up by chains, in the manner of a drawbridge, this dropped hatch allowed a rack of rockets to extend outwards. Not your usual fat, short-bodied rockets, but sleek, deadly, and more importantly accurate looking rockets. They were the business.
I am not the only sneaky one, Uggrim thought. I am not the only sneaky one.
Big Mouth let out a deafening roar, and all the rockets whooshed off their rack to streak at Fat Mork. The Red Sunz’ Stompa was turning as the shoal of missiles hit it. Bozgat had got the narrow-arc
humie shield to cover some of the threatened area, but not all. Six of the rockets exploded harmlessly on the looted energy field, another three on Fat Mork’s bubble field. Two got through, armour-piercing heads smacking into the side of the Stompa. The steel core of each warhead was instantly melted and squirted forwards by the explosions, drilling through the layered plates of Fat Mork’s side. Grots screamed as they were splashed with molten metal. There was a massive bang and screeching. The acrid smell of burning filled Uggrim’s cockpit and made his eyes water. A bell clanged – not the same bell that had rung when Urdgrub’s grots had opened the reactor, because Fat Mork had a lot of bells, but equally loud and equally alarming.
‘Fire! Fire!’ wailed a grot.
‘You don’t give the orders, runt!’ shouted Uggrim, wrestling with the drive sticks to bring Fat Mork back under control.
‘No, boss, no! We is burning! Burning!’
On the gun deck, a second bell, this one a hand bell, was rung: the bell to summon all the grots to fire-fighting duty. Uggrim’s eyes widened at the smoke coming up from below. He looked over his shoulder down the ladder well to the middle deck. Gretchin were passing buckets of sand to each other. They were dappled by the light of flames.
Big Mouth’s rubbish gunner had finally drawn a bead on the rival Stompa, and massive bullets were smacking into the Red Sunz’ own protective bubble field. Bozgat swung the stolen ion shield to cover the weakened area, just in case.
‘Bozgat!’ Uggrim called.
‘Still going, boss – reactor’s fine.’
‘Snikgob!’
‘Just waiting for the word,’ replied the other.
‘Talker!’
Talker made a noise like a squig being trodden on. Uggrim took that for a yes.
‘Fire!’ shouted Uggrim.
‘I know!’ yelled Frikk. ‘I’m on it, boss!’
‘No! Fire the guns – all of ’em!’
‘Right you are,’ said Snikgob. ‘Now?’