It is…. difficult, to explain exactly how the following hours proceeded. My mind was fully engaged in the task of repairing the jetpacks, and I lacked both the drive and willpower to self-analyze. Everything was extremely straightforward, and as natural as walking. Try thinking very carefully about how you walk, placing your feet precisely where and how you want, avoiding cracks, rocks, or any detritus might be around, all the while trying to consciously plot your future path with as much detail as possible. Do this, and you’ll get a glimpse of how it felt to reign in my natural instincts, and try to insert my human knowledge into the repairs. It was both irksome, and mostly pointless, as the subconscious can handle all that just fine by itself, and attempting to improve on the natural choices made by the subconscious is no easy feat. But try I did, taking extra care to do the repairs properly, at least as far as my human mind viewed it.

  The first order of business was fairly simple. I shaped and tempered the steel plates with ease, using the small forge in the stifling hut. These were hammered and cut into uniform bits by my wonderful new Grot assistants, which had been ‘recruited’ by my remaining band of slavers, who had the smarts to remember their new positions. Grikkle was strutting about the toiling Grots, giving actually good advice, and properly punishing those who bungled their batch of plates. Once the plates were ready, I carefully pulled out the ramshackle plates that made up the outer shell, replacing them with the new plates, welding them to the thick, wire-like frame that made up the inner shell.

  I left a quarter of the shell completely exposed, allowing easy access to the inner gubbinz. The small bit of human control wanted to test my skills, as well as warm them up before moving on to the more dangerous pieces. This turned out to not be necessary, and with barely a modicum of effort, I was able to swiftly replace fried wires, rusty cogs, and various other gizmos, using new parts I either made myself, or had my enforcers ‘borrow’ from the rest of the cave. In less than an hour, I had one rocket entirely refurbished, including a nice new coat of paint, a checkered blue on grey, with four golden lightning bolts on the sides, while the tip was naturally painted red, as all rockets necessitate.

  With a grin, I admired my handiwork, the clean, waxed surface, courtesy of the slave Grots, shone with a splendor that was a stark contrast to the surroundings. I stared at the harness, which I had purposefully left untouched, curiosity and a heavy desire to personally test the completed work warring with the worry of faulty controls or poor workmanship. But surely my newfound skills were more than enough to make the rockets operational. What harm could come from a little test drive?

  The sensible thinking bits quickly filled my head with visions of a smoking hull, collapsed over my prone form, head smashed in when it hit the ceiling too hard. Okay, maybe I wasn’t the best test operator. Maybe I could get another Ork to test it? No, if they wrecked it, the clients would blame me, and the Ork, if he survived, would want blood. Maybe a Grot? No, the rocket was too big. Hmmmmm…. I looked around the workplace, pondering my predicament, when my eyes alighted on the plentiful remaining materials. I looked at Grikkle, then back to the materials. A plan clicked into place, and I began work immediately. If I didn’t want to risk messing up the client’s rockets, why not make my own, smaller rocket to test my ability? That way, I’d be safe from any angry Orks, AND I could fulfill my promise to let Grikkle fly. Besides, the little chap was hardy enough, he’d survive a few knocks to the head if he crashed. And little things are naturally more tough, given the whole square/cubed law thing. Probably.

  I started crafting a whole bunch of random gizmos whose purpose I couldn’t quite determine, but knew they were vital to the operation. A sort of fuze box, filled with copper wiring, along with several fuel tanks, a pressure gauge, and LOTS of pumps, widgets, and moving parts. Only when I started to get a bit bored of making little parts did my more rational mind start taking charge. Why should I be making all these things, when the Grots are more than capable of doing the same thing, while I focused on more important details? And so I set my slaves to mass-producing the components I had already made. I could always use spares anyhow.

Stolen novel; please report.

  Once I made clear what specifically I wanted done, I sat down, and tried to envision the end product. A sleek, blue rocket, with four smaller, rotating rockets for stablized flight. Thoughts of hovering modes, allowing for careful aiming of weapons while midair seemed difficult, but highly valuable. Detecting gizmos would be needed to make sure to stay level, and lots of rotating thingamabobs to allow for the rotating rockets to properly align to account for recoil. A massive affair, but I wanted to shoot for the stars, especially with my first real work.

  With the basic thoughts complete, I settled on getting the chassis sorted. I trotted over to Grikkle, and gave him my spiel. “Grikkle. I’z gonna build you a Rokket.” The goblin’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, and he couldn’t help but do a tiny jig, even as he tried desperately to stand at attention, much to my amusement. I knew I kept the Grot around for something. “I’z want you to get dah outtah fings done up while I getz dah movin’ bits workin’. ‘Eres ‘ow I want it done. An’ don’t forget, itz you whoze gonna fly it, so if’n it turns out shite, you’z gonna be dah one dat pays. ” I gave a brief outline of a very basic chassis, involving eight steel bars arcing to meet at the rocket tip, with three bands of steel connecting them at three different lateral points. I’d weld thick plates that stretched between each band, making a perfectly smooth outer finish. The greenskin hopped to work so fast, he practically blurred, quickly harassing his minions into getting a few more slaves, and forcing the stupider ones into starting the chassis.

  With the easy task put into reasonably good hands, I let myself fall back into the Orky haze of making, doing my best to lightly guide its motions towards the general theme I had set. With a haste that would set any factory to shame, I pumped out gizmo after gizmo, tossing them into a growing pile of tidbits. Wires, ball bearings, cogs, rolling tracks, hinges, pumps, gauges, you name it, it got dumped in the pile. Two hours straight of pumping out various nicknacks followed, making sure to make a dozen copies of each piece, allowing for repairs, and giving the human me the chance to see if there were any qualitative differences between copies, to assure the most high quality work Orky me could make.

  Grikkle grabbed my attention as I was working on making a little machine that would help make creating wires easier, informing me that the chassis was complete. The results were…. Mixed. They had done as I’d asked, but the bars weren’t perfectly spaced, which would weaken the integrity. But like I’d told Grikkle, he’d be the one to pay the price. I shifted gears, organizing the effort to repurpose the remaining steel sheets to fit the new, slightly varying dimensions. I’d be damned if I let a slight variance in length lead to a less than smooth finish.

  Once that got going, I made a few more steel bars of various lengths, eyeballing what I thought would be the right length for each rotating thruster. Different lengths for each would cause lots of trouble for any attempt at proper stabilization. Though how exactly that could be accomplished with what I’d made so far, only Orky me knew, and he wasn’t in a sharing mood. I did some more measuring with my thumb, which lead to the realization that my right thumb was slightly longer than the other, an annoying tidbit that stuck in my head the entire project. I welded and riveted the new bars on the corners of the rocket, then attached the bits that would let the rotational rockets to, well, rotate. I added the smaller rocket chassis next, fitted in the fuzes, wires, and fuel tanks. A small pipe for additional fuel was slipped between the extended bars, along with some wires. Next was to add the bits to tie them in.

  I slipped inside the larger chassis, and started adding a few interior bars for a sturdier inside, then added the larger fuel tanks, and some ugly looking sensor gubbinz. I fixed the rotating rocket pipes to these larger tanks, and the wires to the sensors, as well as a nice black box I’d welded in near the center. The box had lots of shiny wires, spinning bits, and even a nice blue stone for good luck, and part of me knew it would, don’t ask me how, handle keeping the rocket stable when activated.

  The rest was pretty simple. Plates on the outside, filling the fuel tanks with the extract of a particularly ugly squig, and cutting down one of the more raggedy harnesses from the damaged rockets, wrapping and wiring it to the side. Finally, I wired up four triggers and a little wheel to the two metal handles on the harness, attaching the wires to the black box through a new hole I drilled behind the harness. What the triggers and wheel were for, I only had the vaguest sense that they’d handle the steering.

  I stepped back, and admired the absolute masterpiece I’d created. I circled the construction, giving it a few taps to check for flaws and weaknesses. I grunted in satisfaction at the lack of faults, a satisfied smile splitting my face. It was time for a test run.