Da Cybork Menace

Chapta 16

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 Da Cybork Menace

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Behind his truck, Hazug fumbled with a rocket as he reloaded the under slung launcher on his rifle. He heard a hiss and felt the truck shift as gunfire from the dreadnoughts shredded the tyres on the side exposed to them.

“At least I got spares,” he said to himself and he jumped up to fire the freshly loaded rocket. The weapon struck one of the dreadnoughts, but it just clipped it rather than scoring a clean hit, and it bounced off before the warhead could detonate.

Hazug was about to duck for cover once more when he saw the dreadnoughts begin to turn. At first it was just the first one to have emerged, the one designed for a gretchin pilot. But the others soon began to follow its lead, and it was not long before the entire force of dreadnoughts was striding down the street, still firing as targets presented themselves.

“Dey is runnin’!” someone shouted.

Hazug ran into the road and aimed his rifle after the dreadnoughts. Switching the selector to the ‘turbo-dakka’ mode he rapidly emptied the magazine at the rearmost dreadnought in the hope that at least one of the bullets would penetrate the thinner armour to the machine’s rear, but the dreadnought kept on moving, oblivious to Hazug’s attack.

“Dey aint runnin’,” Hazug said as he lowered his rifle, “dey just got somewhere else to be.”

“Aint we goin’ after ‘em?” Two Heads asked as he ran up to Hazug.

“With wot?” Hazug responded waving his arm at the destruction wrought by the dreadnoughts as they had burst out of the workshop. Of the three vehicles they had bought with them two had been disabled while Maggort’s battlewagon had been wrecked, “Nah, we needs to check out da workshop,” and with that he began to sprint towards what remained of the workshop followed closely by his servants.

Compared to the destruction on the street outside, the workshop was in comparatively good order. The dreadnoughts had smashed through furniture and the main front wall on their way out, but at least nothing in here had exploded. Having been large enough to hold the entire force of dreadnoughts, the workshop was much larger than any Hazug had been in before, and a large portion of it appeared to have been used purely for storage. A handful of the smaller gretchin sized dreadnoughts, and one standard ork sized walking machine remained here, but the rest had been taken by Gutstitch’s cyborks.

“So where’s Gutstitch?” Two Heads asked as he followed Hazug into the workshop, “’E couldn’t ‘ave been in one of dem kans could ‘e?”

Hazug shook his head, “Dare’d be no one to wire ‘im in,” he responded, “and since ‘e don’t appear to be in ‘ere still, dare must be another way out.”

“Ya ‘eard ‘im lads,” Two Heads shouted to his remaining troops, plus the two orks of Maggort’s mob to have survived the battle in the street, “spread out and search dis place.”

“Oh great more lookin’,” one of Two Heads’ orks commented, “seems like all we is doin’ now is lookin’. When we goin’ to ‘ave a decent scrap.”

Two Heads hit the ork.

“’As ya brain gone soft or somethin’? Wot d’ya call wot just ‘appened out in da street?”

“Oh yeah,” the ork replied, his face brightening up, and he joined in the search of the workshop satisfied that his orkish desire for conflict was being met.

Hazug’s attention was suddenly caught by a tapping sound from the back of the workshop, where he saw a door. Unlike the massive front door, this one looked just big enough for an ork to use it to come and go. Beside the door was a small window through which was visible the face of one of the orks Maggort had sent around the back of the workshop to cut off any escape that way.

“Can we come in yet?” the ork shouted through the glass, “We is bored out ‘ere.”

“Hazug come quick!” Sophie suddenly shouted as she clambered over the ruined furniture with Rhia, “There’s a dead body here!”

Hazug moved as quickly as he could across the workshop, pushing both furniture and orks out of his way. He stopped when he saw what the two humans had found. The body had once been an ork, or possible more than one, it would take a painboy some time to put all of the bits back together to make sure of that.

“Is it the ork we came here for?” Rhia asked, holding her hand over her mouth.

“I don’t think so,” Hazug answered as he leant in for a closer look, “look dare’s bioink bits in wot’s left of ‘is ‘ead. I reckon dat dis wos da mek wot owned dis place before Gutstitch came ‘ere. ‘Is cyborks must ‘ave killed ‘im.”

“’Ere Hazug!” one of Two Heads suddenly shouted, “come and ‘ave a look at dis.”

Pushing his way through the debris again, Hazug made his way over to where Two Heads and several other orks were gathered around a large hole that had been dug in the floor.

“Well dat explains ‘ow ‘e got away without us seein’ ‘im,” Hazug said, staring down into the darkness of the hole, “I suppose dat we ‘ad better get after ‘im,” and he jumped down into the hole.

The orks in the workshop heard the sound of Hazug landing below them, and then some unintelligible muttering. Then there was silence.

“D’ya see anythin’?” Two Heads shouted into the hole.

“Nothin’,” Hazug shouted back up, “someone pass us a light down ‘ere would ya?”

Two Heads saw an oil lamp that had resisted being smashed on the floor nearby.

“Chuck dat down da ‘ole,” he said to one of his orks, pointing at the lamp, and the lamp was promptly thrown down to Hazug. Moments later there was a glow from the darkness below as Hazug caught and then lit the lamp.

Now able to see his surroundings more clearly, Hazug had a good look around. Unfortunately it appeared that Dok Gutstitch had left the workshop in the company of a number of gretchin, and while there were a couple of his footprints remaining directly below the hole, those he had made when he left the scene had been obscured by those of his gretchin, and with there also being many other tracks running in both directions, there was no way to tell in which direction the painboy had fled.

“See ‘ought yet?” Two Heads shouted into the hole.

“Nah,” Hazug shouted back up from the tunnel below, “dare’s too much other crap down ‘ere for me to be able to anythin’ out. ‘E could ‘ave gone either way from ‘ere. Chuck us down a rope and I’ll come back up.”

Hazug climbed up the lowered rope and out of the hole just in time to hear his name being called from the direction of the massive hole in the workshop’s front wall.

“Hazug? Hazug is ya in ’ere?” Mek Batrug called out, “I saw ya truck outside with dat bleedin’ weirdo sleepin’ next to it.”

“’E’s ‘ere Batrug,” one of Two Heads shouted back as he helped Hazug out of the hole, “Wot d’ya want?”

“Wot’s goin’ on ‘ere?” Batrug asked as he made his way through the wreckage of the workshop.

“Da dok makin’ da cyborks killed da mek ‘ere and nicked most of ‘is kans,” Hazug replied.

“So ya mean dat dare’s no one’s usin’ dis place now den?”

“Dat’s right.”

“Good,” Batrug answered before he turned to one his own gretchin assistants, “Get a move on grots,” he shouted at them, “I wants me new workshop ready and dis ‘ole aint goin’ to fix itself!”

 

Stoggi laughed as he made his way through the city. He had spent his entire life dodging out of the way of orks, but now things were different. The process to implant him into his dreadnought had been unpleasant to say the least, and all of his future meals would be consumed with the use of a straw poked trough his vision slit, not to mention that the interior had smelt bad even before he had been wired into it, but he now had a body larger and tougher than any ork could aspire to have without also being implanted into a dreadnought. So he was making the most of it.

Instead of keeping to the edges of streets and the tunnels that ran beneath them, Stoggi was striding straight down the middle of the busy streets and it was orks that were being forced to get out of his way for once. Some didn’t move quickly or far enough away of course, and Stoggi delighted in swinging the massive pincer-tipped arm he now possessed at them. The deadly limb was capable of tearing even the biggest of orks in half, and more than one ork had now been reduced to a collection of bloody parts scattered behind him.

On his own, Stoggi was formidable enough, but sooner or later he would run into an ork carrying something heavier than a pistol or rifle and they would be able to harm him even inside his dreadnought, fortunately for Stoggi he wasn’t alone. Behind him marched a small army of dreadnoughts piloted by his master’s squig-brained warriors that advanced without any fear for their own safety. All they cared about was following the orders of his master, and he had ordered them to follow and protect Stoggi. The crude intelligence of the squig brains implanted into the orks allowed them to quantify threats posed to them based on their size and the amount of noise they made, while the weapons they carried did not require the same hand eye coordination that had prevented his master from teaching them to use basic small arms. Instead the weapons of the dreadnoughts were extensions of the pilot’s own body. Extensions that they were making good use of.

The force of dreadnoughts smashed its way through a row of stalls and the lightweight vehicles down each side of the street Stoggi had lead them to without slowing down at all, and this gave Stoggi an idea. So far he had thought the same way as he had always done when selecting a route to follow through the streets of the city, following the roads laid out and selecting the best option when he came to junctions. But it suddenly occurred to him that with the strength and resilience given to him by his dreadnought, and those of the orks following him, he didn’t need to worry about where the roads were, he could just make his own where he needed them. Stoggi stopped his dreadnought and considered his location. Behind him the other dreadnoughts also halted, and Stoggi could hear the sound of their weapons firing at any orks who had not yet been able to flee from the street. Stoggi figured out where he thought he was in relation to Dok Gutstitch’s camp and turned to face in that direction, then he just ran forwards as fast as the machine he was piloting would allow him.

The wall ahead of Stoggi gave way as he charged headlong into it. The orks inside the building began to scatter as Stoggi came through their wall, laughing as he did, but the larger dreadnoughts that followed Stoggi, making their own larger holes as they did so, left them with no where to run, and they were trampled beneath the rampaging mechanical monstrosities.

Battering their way through one building after another appealed to the primal instincts of the squig-brained orks, and rather than just following behind Stoggi’s dreadnought they began to charge ahead on their own. This didn’t concern Stoggi so long as they remained travelling in the same direction, and fortunately the squig brains lacked the imagination to consider changing course away from the one that Stoggi had set them on. So Stoggi was only too happy to let the other dreadnoughts continue to run ahead of him, after all they were bigger, stronger and more heavily armed than he was so it seemed a sensible idea if they were the first to run into any trouble.

The rampage continued uninterrupted until the dreadnoughts reached the outer reaches of the city, there they came upon one of the crude shantytowns populated by gretchin. Stoggi halted when he saw these simple hovels, more reluctant to crush his fellow gretchin that the orks he was subservient to. The other dreadnoughts however, continued to rush ahead, scattering panic stricken gretchin in all directions.

Fortunately for the smaller creatures, smashing apart their tiny homes did not excite the squig brains implanted into the dreadnought pilots as much as smashing their way through the much larger and better built ork structures had done, and they soon realised that Stoggi was no longer leading them. The dreadnoughts halted their charge almost as one before they tried to find Stoggi. The gretchin moved his dreadnought through the path of destroyed homes until he reached the other dreadnoughts, and then began to carefully pick his way through the remaining shacks and lean-tos of the shantytown. The dreadnoughts followed him, not caring about the buildings they crushed as they did so, but at least now they were moving slowly enough that their occupants had enough time to escape.

Stoggi continued to lead the dreadnoughts in this manner until he was sure that the last of them was clear of the shanty town, where he once more broke into a run towards the camp.

 

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