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Da Cybork Menace Chapta 21 | |
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Chapta 21 |
In a flash of green light, the air was sucked from their lungs. Dazed by the teleport, it took Hazug a few moments to realise that he, along with his servants and Drazzok were now all beside his truck. Rhia and Sophie were both curled up on the ground, gasping for breath. “What happened?” Rhia gasped, looking at Hazug. “’Im,” Hazug replied, pointing to Drazzok, “of course it would be nice to get some warnin’ da next time ya is goin’ to telly-port us.” “Dare didn’t seem to be time,” Drazzok answered back. “Dats alright den,” Hazug said as he clambered into the back of his truck. “We’re not leaving are we?” Sophie asked,” What about the others?” “Master aint no coward like gits,” Ratish snapped at Sophie, “we aint goin’ is we master?” “Course we aint leavin’,” Hazug said, “I just reckon dat dis’ll ‘elp us out a bit,” and he pulled the cover from the machine gun mounted on top of his vehicle. Pointing the heavy automatic weapon towards the nearest of the dreadnoughts, Hazug aimed for the vision slit and fired. He held the trigger down as the stream of powerful rounds flew over the heads of the intervening orks and struck the dreadnought dead on. But unfortunately, Hazug’s aim was off and, rather than passing through the vulnerable vision slit and killing the ork inside, the bullets instead bounced off the shell of the armoured metal beast until the weapon suddenly stopped shooting. Looking down at the gun, Hazug saw that the last bullet case had not ejected properly and the weapon was jammed. He was about to try and clear the weapon when Sophie suddenly cried out. “Hazug! Look out!” she yelled, and Hazug looked up to see the dreadnought he had attacked had turned to face him and was lifting its own range weapon arms in his direction. Hazug jumped down behind the truck just as the dreadnought opened fire with its own pair of machine guns and he heard the bullets whizzing above him as his servants and Drazzok joined him behind the truck. “’Ere Hazug,” the weirdboy said, “when did ya start ya engine?” “Wot?” Hazug replied, “Me engine aint runnin’.” “Well where’s dat sound comin’ from den?” “’E’s right master,” Ratish added, “Ratish ‘ears a trukk an all.” “Da kans,” Hazug suggested. “No master, wrong way,” Ratish said, and he lifted his arm to point along the dock, “It’s comin’ form dat way.” Hazug looked in the direction Ratish was pointing in, and then he heard it too. There was definitely a vehicle approaching from further along the docks, but the noise of its engine was distorted somehow by the presence of another sound. As the sound grew louder Hazug realised that the distortion was caused by the means by which the vehicle travelled, it was on tracks, and the hard concrete surface of the docks was being torn up by its passage. “It’s Batrug!” Hazug shouted as the mekboy came into view through the darkness at the controls of the tracked flatbed vehicle he had recovered from outside his new workshop. As Batrug drove closer, Hazug saw that the vehicle had been extensively modified since he had last seen it, an incredible feat considering how much time Batrug had had to undertake the work. The open cargo area of the vehicle was now dominated by an enormous weapon mounted on a swivel mount, while a pair of fuel drums had been bolted to either side of the vehicle’s chassis and used as hard points for mounting heavy machine guns. All of the rapidly added on armaments were crewed by Batrug’s own gretchin servants. The gretchin in the cargo area pushed the larger weapon around until it faced towards the dreadnought still firing over Hazug’s head and then ducked. “Down!” Hazug bellowed, aware that most of the warband would not know about the approach of reinforcements, and a split second later there was a clap of thunder and a brilliant beam of light shot from the muzzle of Batrug’s heavy weapon. The energy beam hit the dreadnought directly and sliced straight through it. The machine’s destruction was confirmed when its volatile fuel and ammunition stores were ignited by the beam, and it exploded in a ball of flame. The orks of the warband cheered as pieces of the destroyed dreadnought fell from the air, landing all around them. “Again!” Hazug shouted towards Batrug’s approaching vehicle, “Dare’s still three more of ‘em!” and he saw the mekboy gesturing to his gunners. The next beam sheared off the upper arm of a dreadnought. The gun crew kept the weapon active and lowered the beam, slicing of the lower arm next, followed by the leg. The dreadnought fell, and as it did so the still active energy weapon sliced it and its pilot in half. The two remaining dreadnoughts had reached barricade behind which Two Heads and Gorrid were located, and they were smashing their way through it as the two orks fell back. The destruction of the other dreadnoughts suddenly made them stop and turn towards this new, greater, threat and each of then raised their ranged weapons. But Batrug’s gun crew was quicker off the mark, and before either of the dreadnoughts could fire the grecthin had pointed their weapon towards the dreadnoughts and unleashed another energy blast. The beam hit the leg of one the dreadnoughts causing it to fall just as it attempted to launch a volley of rockets back at Batrug’s vehicle. The rockets instead slammed into the side of the other dreadnought and blew it to pieces, the flames from the explosion engulfed the stricken machine, pouring in through the vision slit and reducing the pilot inside to a charred hulk of meat. “I told ya I’d get it done I time!” mek Batrug shouted as he drove his vehicle onwards. Dok Gutstitch’s face fell, he had watched as the dreadnoughts had come so close to over running the positions of the orks on the docks. But now they had suddenly received unexpected reinforcements in the shape of a vehicle mounting an energy weapon powerful enough to destroy all of the dreadnoughts in such a short time. To make matters worse, the vehicle carrying this weapon was his, the very same one he had abandoned outside the mek’s workshop where he had acquired the dreadnoughts. He watched as the vehicle advanced and took up a position alongside the barricades behind which the orks were located. From his position on his barge Dok Gutstitch heard the rattle of small arms fire as the vehicle and the nearby orks turned their weapons on the cyborks attempting to close on them. Lacking any ranged weapons on their own, and not having the ability to operate them even they had possessed any anyway, the cyborks were being cut down by the concentrated fire. Flashes from energy weapons much smaller than the heavy weapon mounted on Dok Gutstitch’s old vehicle suggested that there were human among those firing on the cyborks, and Dok Gutstitch let out a scream of anger. While he certainly retained human servants, Kazkal Kromag did not employ them in any military capacity, so the force facing him wasn’t even a properly organised ork unit deployed by the warboss to protect the docks. Instead it was apparently a hastily improvised warband that had already destroyed most of the army he had spent so long, quite literally, putting together. “Wot do we do master?” the gretchin steering his barge asked as the vessel began to near the end of the pier. Dok Gutstitch took a moment to collect his thoughts. Most of his army was gone, either burned, drowned or shot, but he still had a pair of mega-dreadnoughts and twenty cyborks in mega armour. This was enough for him to be able to take over the warboss’s palace if he was able to bypass the force now facing him on the shore. “Keep on goin’,” he ordered, “don’t stop ‘ere, we’ll ‘ave to find somewhere else to get ashore.” The grecthin pilot nodded, then he carefully steered his vessel around the burning barge that still drifted in the river, putting it between him and the heavy weapon on the shore, and then increased his speed to take them away from here faster. Hazug rushed to recover his rifle before he joined in shooting at the cyborks who had disembarked from the barge after the now destroyed dreadnoughts. Though resilient, Hazug knew the cyborks were not impervious to attack, especially against a well-aimed shot to the head that would destroy the squig brain implanted there. Additionally the heavy firepower now provided by the weapons mounted on mek Batrug’s vehicle chewed through both organic and bionic parts, and the number of cyborks was rapidly decreasing. Then, over the gunfire, Hazug heard a scream coming from the direction of the river. He looked around, fearing that more cyborks and dreadnoughts were coming ashore. Instead he saw that the scream came from another barge that remained further out in the water. There, standing beside the much smaller gretchin pilot he saw an ork. Quickly, Hazug pulled the tau viewing device from his pocket and raised it to his eye for a better look. In its night vision mode the device turned the dark silhouette of the ork into a clear, if black and white, image of a painboy, his surgical tools adorning his body. This could only be the bad dok himself, now Hazug could finally put a face to his enemy. Hazug pressed the button that would store the image he now looked at, preserving Dok Gutstitch’s image for future use. “Where are they going?” Sophie asked, suddenly appearing beside Hazug along with Ratish and Rhia. “I dunno,” Hazug said as the barge disappeared behind a much larger ship moored at the next pier along and he lowered the viewing device, “but I reckon dat it would be best if we goes after ’em.” Hazug ran back towards his truck. “Everyone get on a wagon!” he shouted as he ran, “Gutstitch is getting’ away!” The remaining orks, most of them Evil Suns with a natural affinity for fighting from vehicles, picked up their weapons and wounded and carried them to the two vehicles present. Two Heads climbed onboard Hazug’s truck into the seat beside his. “Get on da gun
lad,” Two Heads said to Gorrid as he followed him aboard the
vehicle. Already familiar with such things from those he had used on Two Heads’ battlewagon, Gorrid stood behind the automatic weapon and began to make it ready for use once more. Hazug threw a glance behind him and, seeing that the back of the truck was now filled he drove off down the docks in the direction that Dok Gutstitch’s barge had gone. Behind Hazug’s truck, mek Batrug waited while the remaining orks got aboard his vehicle and then drove off after Hazug, sating simply “’Ang on lads,” as he put his foot down on the accelerator.
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