Bart nearly dropped his spanna when a quiet voice interrupted his pounding on the engine block in front of him.
"Hey boss?"
He glared at the sheepish kommando, his red eyes narrowing to slits.
"Don't zoggin' sneak up on me, ya git! If I was workin' on a kustom shoota I coulda blasted yer zoggin' 'ead off."
The kommando shrugged.
"Sorry boss, wanted ta tell ya we found doze 'umies you was lookin' for."
The mek grinned ferally.
"Now dat's what I like ta hear. Did dey have dat big skinny fing on da roof?"
"Jus' like you said, boss."
"Good. Get da lads ready, you've got some krumpin ta do."
-----
The ork hunched low behind a stand of rocks, scrubby grass swaying in the warm nighttime breeze. His gaze was locked on the form of a sentry winding his way around the perimeter of a squat, sturdy structure with a blinking antenna atop it.
The sentry rounded a corner out of sight, and the kommando turned to the boyz assembled on the hardpacked dirt behind him.
"Arright, lads, 'dis is it. Time ta go, real quiet-like. First git who opens his mouf at 'deze 'umies is gettin' krumped by me."
He picked his way down a barely-visible path through the thorny chaparral, boys following dutifully in his wake. The lead ork had already confiscated a handful of noisy sluggas and replaced them with wicked shivs. Their midnight-purple forms roiled like matte smoke in the starlit darkness. To the naked eye, they were part of the darkened landscape.
To the sentries' auspex units they would be seen as clearly as if they marched in broad daylight, but by the time the sentry has worked his way around the building again they are out of sight.
He raised his auspex and put his eyes to the lens, scanning the hillside.
Lousy munitorum. Another week of work and they could have put the damn thing atop the hill and we'd just need an elevated observation platform. One bloke could watch the whole bloody perimeter.
Before he could finish his scan a massive hand clamped around his mouth and throat, and he didn't have time to struggle before his neck was wrung like a poultry hen.
Another sentry was grabbed as they passed by a stand of steel drums, a crude axe buried into their back. The third rounded a corner into a gaping jaw full of sturdy tusks. He tried to yelp, but his voice died in his throat as the ork bit his head off.
Inside the squat structure the slaughter is quick and brutish. Unarmed radio techs offered little resistance to the burly kommandos as they smashed their way through the building's interior.
"Good work lads, I don't fink dey 'eard a fing. Kroggy, you still got dat big bomb I gave ya?"
"Sure do boss! We gonna blow dis 'ere fing up?"
"Music ta my ears.
Not dis fing, da mek wants it in one piece. If ya break dis I'll krump ya good. 'e said ta find da jennies wot power it, so you lads start takin' bites outta da cables until we find da one dat zaps ya da 'ardest. Den we put da bomb on woteva dat cable goes to."
"Wot's a jenny look like?"
"I'll worry about dat. You lot jus' bite da cables and find da zappiest one."
Several arguments and one death by electrocution later, the kommandos congregated around a droning, fuming promethium generator. The bomb rested haphazardly on a small flat face of the rumbling Imperial device.
"Good work boyz, we'll pour a grog on the ground for ol' Gruftoof when we get back ta camp. 'e was a good lad, and a great conducta.
I'm proud of ya. Da mek didn' fink we could do it, but I proved 'im wrong by taking yer sluggas. Now ye can have 'em back, because after dat bomb goes off we gotta krump all da 'umies dat show up to figger out wot 'appened. Now watch out, because da mek is gonna come chargin' in wiv' 'is trukks when 'e 'ears dat bomb go off. Don't shoot at da trukks, and try not to get shot by dem coz we know dey ain't gonna be careful."
He took out a rough burlap sack full of heavy pistols and distributed them to the assembled boyz. The lads accepted the weapons eagerly. A yoof swung his around in excitement, and fired off a few test rounds. The lead kommando stared at him incredulously.
"I jus' finished tell- ah zog it, da mek was right. We gotta get outta 'ere, da 'umies sure 'eard dat and we need ta get clear to blow up da bomb. Leg it boys!"
The greenskins scatter across the darkened camp, choosing hiding places using their most brootal kunnin'. The kommando eagerly squeezes the trigger on the detonator the mek entrusted to him, and the generator goes up in a plume of acrid smoke. The main lights sputter and die, and dim backups lend an unearthly glow to the facility grounds. An alarm begins to scream.
-----
Trooper Markham wasn't sure what had brought him into the dim half-conscious state of pre-wakefulness, but he banged his head immediately afterwards on the bunk above as a shrill klaxon sprang to life. Groaning, he carefully rolled out of bed. All around him his platoon was shaking themselves into alertness. The sergeant was somehow already up and fully dressed, cursing sternly at the groggy press of unwashed bodies.
God Emperor, we shouldn't have cracked that second bottle of amasec last night.
He looked blearily at his squadmates shimmying frantically into their combat gear. It was clear he wasn't the only one with a heavy head and a churning stomach. He tried not to sway too visibly as he stooped to reach for his helmet and the barracks began to spin.
"What in the blazes is going on, anyway?"
He saw real fear in corporal Stennett's eyes when the man turned to him.
"Something blew the camp's main generator."
"What, did the junior techpriest get a little handsy with it after all the amasec last night?"
Stennett shook his head, his expression unchanged.
"This is serious, Markham. We don't know what in the name of the Throne is going on. Didn't you hear the explosion before the lights went? Get your lasgun loaded and primed."
The trooper grabbed his rifle and slapped a power pack into the receptacle. He stuffed a handful of spares into his flak armour's tactical webbing.
"Surely it can't be the orks, can it? Those stupid bastards couldn't get within a few klicks of the place without shooting and shouting to high heaven."
The corporal shrugged at him.
"We don't know, Markham. Just get ready and get outside, the LT will have our orders."
-----
At least we aren't stationed on an iceball world Trooper Markham thought as the dusty breeze weaved around his unit's feet. He shook his head and tried to refocus on the forced calm of his lieutenant's voice.
"-no radio contact since G1 went down, so our objective is to secure the relay building and then reestablish long-range vox with headquarters. Short-range vox has been unable to reach any of the station's staff. Underwood's squad are going to accompany the stubbers on loan from Epsilon company, Stennett's lads will sweep the radio station exterior, and the rest of you will form our assault teams. The junior techpriest will accompany my squad, we'll come in after the assault teams sweep the building. Pass any questions or concerns along to your squad lead and they'll bring them to me. We move out in 3. Dismissed."
Markham's guts churned with pre-op anxiety. Compared to the monotonous dread of garrison duties, the threat of real violence in their own backyard was galling. The sentries had screwed up bad. The trooper thanked his lucky stars that he would share no part of the commissariat's wrath on that particular charge.
He thumbed the safety stud on his lasgun as the column of men set off towards the smoky plume at the edge of camp.
By the Emperor please let it be a hardware malfuntion the trooper pleaded silently as the noisy tread of standard-issue boots blended into a steady scuffle.
As they drew closer to their objective it became ever more clear that something was awry. One of their demolition-men stopped at a ruined scrap of metal and noted that it must have been a proper explosive to throw debris so far.
The backup lights cast a frightful aura over the camp, made worse by the dying flames licking hungrily at the wreckage of the generator. Visibility was poor and shadows menaced the guardsmen as they picked their way through the gloom.
Too poor for microbeads, the regiment relied on old-fashioned hand signals and disciplined vox technicians to maintain lines of communication in combat. The latter was useless at the small-unit level, and the former was hardly adequate in the night's sparse light conditions.
As a result Underwood's squad and the heavy stubbers milled about aimlessly while the assault teams took their time surrounding the building.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Stennett's men spread out along their pre-planned sweep vectors, with Markham taking the dreaded far-edge path.
He panned his lasgun along lines of sight with a dry mouth.
That's odd, where the hell is Underwood's squad? We're supposed to clear nests for them to set up the stubbers.
He was just about to signal to Trooper Bledel to get the corporal's attention when the first throaty gunshots rang out.
-----
Kroggy smiled happily at the small cluster of flak-armoured soldiers arrayed before him. They had agreed with his assessment that this hiding place was an excellent vantage point from which to observe the radio station and its grounds. They immediately failed, by da boss' metrics at least, to do their due diligence in securing their vantage point from infiltrators.
One of the 'umies with a sword on his hip was chatting animatedly with his fellow as they laid a hefty gun, while a third companion had loaded the weapon and was lugging cartons of ammunition into a small pile near the weapon.
Kroggy waited for the ammo-mule to stray out of his comrades' peripheral vision, like da boss taught him, to step out and slam his rusty choppa into the man's torso with a wet, heavy THWUNK. The sturdy metal clove through the man's collarbone with buttery ease, and the bottom two-thirds of him were opened to the sky.
Before the other 'umies could respond, he wrenched the blade free and beheaded the heavy gunner. The sword-wielder cleared his weapon from its sheath with lightning speed and brandished it at the ork. The ork raised his slugga to the man's chest and blew ragged, bloody holes in the drab armour.
"Sorry boss, 'e looked pretty good."
A shout went up from nearby, and Kroggy looked out over the camp grounds to see a squad of guardsmen rapidly approaching his little nest. He looked thoughtfully at the gun the Imperials had been setting up.
"Now dat's a zoggin' shoota. Wonder how dat fing works, anyway."
One of his massive hands curled around the carry handle. The humans were much closer now.
He slapped at the back of the weapon. The 'umies didn't put a proppa handle on the damn thing, and he had no idea how to hold it or where the firing mechanism was. One of his slaps depressed the firing spoon and a cloud of hard rounds chewed the dirt at his feet.
"OH. Oh YEAH!"
Blood surged in the ork's veins as he came to grips with the sheer volume of dakka he now held in his hands. The 'umie shoota ate up its chains of ammunition so quickly the ork felt the need to keep firing in the core of his being. He grabbed clumsily for the firing spoon again, and the muzzle erupted in a stream of blazing violence. He swung the carry handle in the direction of the charging 'umies and watched a line of tracers kick dirt into the air as the steaming barrel described a glowing arc through the night.
The line crossed paths with the charging infantrymen and they went down in a spray of gore. The ork whooped with excitement and held the spoon down, reveling as the gun spat round after round downrange to spang off the radio station's walls.
Da boss was going to kill him for the racket he was making, and so Kroggy luxuriated in every moment of unrestrained violence he wreaked with his shiny new shoota. If he survived the beating when they got back to camp he was going to be the envy of his entire mob.
The ammo box quickly ran dry, and Kroggy's guts ached with a fleeting sense of loss. He looked down at the gun mournfully. He was never going to figure out how to reload the zoggin' thing.
He tore the empty box off of it, and saw rails where a replacement could slot in.
Well, da grots might be able ta figger it out...
He shrugged and began gathering as many of the boxes as he could carry.
Then he heard a sound that kindled the flames in his heart as fearsomely as any looted shoota, the roar of orky engines.
-----
Trooper Markham panned his rifle along hazy lines of sight, no longer able to fight the trembling of his hands.
Things had deteriorated rapidly once the shooting started. Markham had been fortunate enough to get the drop on an ork infiltrator, and silently slew it with his bayonet just in time to watch one of its comrades laterally bisect Trooper Bledel with an enormous axe.
He shot that ork down, and then watched in horror as things devolved into pure chaos.
A machinegun nest opened up on the radio station building, cutting down the entire second assault team. Markham couldn't see into the nest, but friendly fire was a shamefully common incident when guardsmen began to panic.
A pair of guardsmen were firing over their shoulders at something as they fled a darkened press of tents. Markham turned his head for a moment to look at a sound, and when he turned back they were gone.
Then the roar of crude engines suffused the muted cacaphony of the nighttime skirmish. Rudimentary halogen lamps made opaque clouds of the promethium smoke hanging in the air. Oversized slug-throwers noisily belched storms of lead at the faintest hint of a silhouette in the haze.
The Kult of Speed had arrived.
Thankfully his current foxhole kept him out of sight of the ork cavalry for the most part.
He switched his lasgun to full-auto and hosed glaring red beams vengefully at an onrushing wartrakk, the only target in his field of fire. He was gratified to see the driver slump over the handlebars before a bump caused the trakk to slew wildly, sending them tumbling from their perch.
The vehicle's magazine of rokkits touched off in the crash, and the blast knocked Markham flat.
He lay on the ground, ears ringing louder than a titan's war-horn, and asked the God-Emperor why he had allowed Platoon 3 of Delta Company to get after the amasec the night prior. They were God-fearing soldiers.
Sure, some of them missed time with the battalion's chaplain more often than the Ecclesiarchy would prefer. Some of them got up to extracurriculars and leisure activities that were not strictly approved of by the Guard. Some of them were simply mean, unpleasant bastards. By the Emperor though, they were good soldiers! They did their job with the minimum mandatory amount of grumbling as dictated by The Unspoken Code of Enlisted Men. They mostly paid attention when the commissars howled at them. They even went to great lengths to ensure their enthusiastic junior tech-priest committed as little techno-heresy as possible in the maintenance of their equipment.
They deserved better than to die rolling in the dirt, with a pounding headache and churning guts.
His sulking was interrupted by the hopeful face of Corporal Stennett looming into his field of vision. The man offered a helping hand and pulled the dazed trooper to his feet with a wary grin.
"Glad I'm not the only one left. We've got to get out of here, someone has to tell the company vox officer to notify com-"
Before he could finish his sentence the corporal's grinning face vanished in a puff of red mist, stolen away by some improbably large projectile.
It was the spark that ignited the slow, bubbling panic that had been building in Markham's chest like a gas leak.
His gun fell from numb fingers to slap against the dirt. A stricken, wordless sound caught in his throat over and over, like an engine trying and failing to start. He fled the corporal's headless corpse as it slumped over, blood gushing into a viscous pool.
Pallets of gear and scrubby vegetation streamed by in his peripheral vision as he ran, ran, ran blindly away from the perceived danger. He didn't realize, but he was running in the direction of the barracks, of the warm safety his bunk represented.
He ran right into the hulking form of an ork kommando, looted heavy stubber slung across its considerable shoulders.
-----
Kroggy blinked at the 'umie in surprise. Normally it took a tremendous effort to corner the Imperials into a fight, and twice today they'd stumbled into his lap.
Taken alongside the divine providence his gigantic new shoota represented, he was starting to think he'd done something to earn the favour of Gork and Mork.
-----
The thing barked at him in its brutish tongue, and to his astonishment Trooper Markham picked up garbled Gothic loanwords.
"Oi 'umie, gorka murg live barga die?"
It took a moment to process the gravelly baritone, but then comprehension dawned on the trooper's face.
"I want to live!"
"Live?"
The soldier nodded vigorously at the greenskin. It scratched its chin thoughtfully, looking vaguely disappointed. It gestured at a nearby stack of stubber ammo boxes, and pantomimed lifting them. It pointed at him.
"Grab dakka dakka."
"Me?"
The ork looked around, as if to say If not then who else? and the trooper managed to feel foolish somewhere beneath their mind-blanking fear.
"I can't carry all that!"
The ork scowled at him.
"Krump ya!"
It brandished its bloody blade at him and he winced as scraps of his comrades' flesh flapped in the breeze. To punctuate its threat it slammed the hefty chunk of metal clean through a sturdy steel drum waiting to be unloaded from its pallet. God-Emperor, but these things were strong.
He raised his hands in placation.
"Alright, alright! Let me think for a second."
"Grab da zoggin' dakka barga krump ya!"
"Just wait, I have an idea!"
The soldier kept his hands in the air as he nervously edged towards a powered-down grav-jack. Bless the damnfool munitorum labourer who forgot it here at the end of their shift! The ork babbled angrily, but stayed its killing blow. He nudged the jack with his foot and looked at the ork encouragingly.
"Watch this."
Its piggy little eyes narrowed suspiciously.
He grabbed a pair of ammo boxes and tossed them on the jack. If the bloody commissars could see me now he thought sardonically as he hustled to stack the whole pile of boxes neatly on the jack's waiting arms. The ork began to babble again, and Markham cut it off.
"This is it, the moment of truth."
He prayed to the Emperor, the Omnissiah, and even offered a secret shameful side-prayer to whatever Gods the orks follow for a little extra luck, before slapping the activation rune with far greater enthusiasm than his techpriests would have deemed germane.
With a hum the jack rose up above his ankles.
A noise of unrestrained delight issued from over his shoulder. The trooper turned just in time to see the ork hop into the air, waving its weapons joyfully.
Markham wondered if the ork realized how happy he was that he wouldn't need to cart the ammo by hand.
The ork turned with what looked like it might have been a frown, and a moment later the human heard the growing roar of a massive engine. It shoved him hard toward a cluster of crates, fear and confusion washing out the glow of his prior success. Then, as he peered out from his cover, he understood.
A ramshackle truck roared up to the greenskin.
One of its gunners whooped and opened fire on a distant stand of red barrels. To Markham's amazement they exploded. He was almost certain the oil they contained wasn't that volatile.
A large ork with a mostly-metal face poked its head out of a viewport and looked at Markham's captor. After a brief shouting exchange the pedestrian scratched its head pensively. It turned and pointed in the direction of the radio building. The metal ork nodded, then withdrew into the port. The truck tore off through the camp, crushing tents as it went.
The ork sprinted towards his cover. Upon seeing him still there, it grabbed him and tossed him in the direction of the grav lift, barking its command again.
It was going to be a long day.
-----
"You asked for me boss?"
Bart banged his head on the underside of a metal panel and dropped his bulky soldering iron with a curse. It crushed a gretchin assistant as it clanged to the floor.
"Zog it, that was my favourite grot you sneaky git! I put a clanger by the zoggin' door, jus' ring it next time!"
"Sorry boss. Did you need somefing?"
"I did. 'ow many of yer boys survived yer raid on the 'umie camp?"
"Lost a few but we's mostly arright, why?"
"Come wiv me, yer gonna like this."
A few minutes of stomping and ranting later, the mek lead the kommando to a scrapmetal shack with the battered 'umie antenna atop it. The lights no longer blinked of their own accord, but the mek had stationed gretchin with coloured lamps in little crow's nests attached to the pole in case they performed some essential function.
The mek hauled the door open impatiently, nearly tearing it from its crude hinges. He gestured impatiently to the kommando, who followed him inside.
Dominating the space was a labrynthine snarl of modifications jury-rigged to the looted 'umie radio receiver. They blinked and sparked a hypnotic quickstep across the patina of rust that garbed the unmistakeably orky device.
"Issa nice lookin' wotsit, boss."
The mek scoffed.
"Not dat you'd know much about dat. We've been workin' together for a long time, innit?"
"Yeh, nearly 'slong as I been alive, boss."
"Yer clever, so'z I keep ya 'round, even if y'are a troublesome sneaky git."
The kommando looked thoughtful.
"Dat's true. Yer a better boss than most, I reckon. You got a point, boss?"
"Well, ya might 'ave noticed I asked yer boys to krump dat camp so we could loot it. A slower nob than you'd already be askin' me why even bovver wiv' a camp dat 'as no big guns or 'umie tanks, but mefinks you know I 'ave an angle."
"I'm 'opin' you'll jus' tell me, boss. I know ya do but I'll be zogged if I fink I know wot it is."
The mek grinned widely, a disturbing sight given the extensive modifications to his face and jaw. His cybork arm's pneumatics hissed as he reached out, waving his gauntleted hand to indicate the contraption dominating the room.
"Dis 'ere is called a radio. It's gonna let us listen to da 'umies' bosses givin' 'em orders. You fink you can cause some 'eadaches wiv' it?"
It was the kommando's turn to scoff. He returned the mek's grin savagely.
"You know wot, boss? I fink I jus' might."
-----