“WAAAAAAAAAGH!” Gragoth ignored the roaring Orks.
He turned around.
“I’ve finished explaining da rules.
Now—” He rested the massive axe on his shoulder again.
“Move out!” The moment those words left his mouth, the camp descended into even greater chaos than before.
Roars surged over the camp walls as dozens of war vehicles started their engines at once.
Black smoke poured from exhaust pipes.
The morning light, which had still been relatively clear, was quickly churned into a grey-black haze of smoke and dust.
The air filled with the smell of partially burned engine oil and the scorched stench of heated rust.
The Orks scrambled over one another to climb aboard the vehicles.
An open-topped war vehicle that was only supposed to hold five or six Boyz somehow had nearly twenty hanging off it.
Some stood along the edge of the cargo bed, some crouched on the roof, while others chained themselves to the armour plates on the sides so they wouldn’t get thrown off.
“Where’s my ride?!” An Ork wandered around the open ground with a gun in his hands.
“It was right here!” “Who da hell stole my tyre?!” Another Ork lay beside a pickup truck with only three wheels, roaring at the empty axle.
“It’s fine!
I fink it’ll still drive with one tyre missing!” A third Ork jumped into the driver’s seat.
The engine started, and the entire vehicle shook in place for more than ten seconds before suddenly lurching forward and smashing straight through a row of empty oil drums.
The drums toppled over and rolled far across the ground, spilling the remaining waste oil inside them everywhere.
The Ork driving leaned his head out of the cab, his oil-smeared face filled with excitement.
“Told ya it could move!” More and more vehicles rolled out of the camp.
There were war vehicles.
There were tanks.
There were things that no one could quite tell were war vehicles or tractors.
Large numbers of Gretchin also sprang into action.
The small green creatures swarmed out from behind the camp.
Some carried ammunition crates, some had fuel drums strapped to their backs, while groups of two or three pushed carts loaded with parts as they ran behind the Ork convoy.
Gragoth climbed aboard his largest war vehicle.
When his four-metre-tall power armour stepped onto the rear platform, the entire vehicle sank downward, and the suspension creaked under the strain.
The driver glanced back from the cab, then slapped the steering wheel hard.
The engine roared and blasted out a cloud of black smoke that shot seven or eight metres from the exhaust pipe.
Standing on top of the vehicle, Gragoth pointed his massive axe forward.
“Big Smokestack District!” “Let’s smash Blastfurnace!” “WAAAAAAAAAGH!” Several hundred Orks raised their weapons at once.
Then engines, gunfire, and roaring drowned out the entire camp as the convoy began moving, surging into the ruined city streets with a long trail of Gretchin following behind.
After passing through two abandoned industrial zones, Gragoth could already see that a huge section of the distant sky had turned black.
More than a dozen enormous smokestacks rose from the centre of the city ruins.
The tallest nearly disappeared into the low-hanging clouds, each one continuously spewing thick smoke and leaving more than a dozen parallel black trails across the morning sky.
The outskirts of Big Smokestack District had once been a vast industrial zone during the age of human rule.
Now its original appearance was completely unrecognizable.
Huge pipelines ran through the outer walls of buildings.
Layer upon layer of steel walkways stretched between factories, stacked from ground level to more than ten metres in the air.
Meks and Gretchin moved along them.
Conveyor belts crossed over the streets, their rusted metal rollers still turning slowly.
The mechanical arm of a crane extended from the smoke, with half a tank hanging from its hook.
Most of the tank’s hull had already been stripped apart, and its turret hung crookedly to one side.
Even though the convoy had already appeared on the outer streets, the welding sparks hadn’t stopped.
There were still Meks crouched over workbenches repairing things without even looking up.
Gragoth sat on the edge of the vehicle’s platform and stared for quite a while.
This damn place was going to be his arms factory.
He stood up on the roof.
“Listen up!” His amplifier carried his voice over the engines and the hammering of metal, reaching the long convoy behind him.
The Orks who had been cursing at one another, fighting over space, and shooting at nearby buildings gradually quieted down.
Heads poked out from vehicle roofs, cargo beds, and trailers as they looked toward him.
“I’m only saying this one more time!” Gragoth raised his axe and pointed toward Big Smokestack District.
“Don’t kill da Meks!
And don’t blow up all da factories!
Otherwise, you’re disqualified!” The axe blade flashed in the morning light.
The Orks looked at one another.
Some nodded.
Some grinned.
Some shifted the guns they had been aiming at factory windows slightly to the side.
“WAAAGH!” The convoy continued forward.
The factory walls on both sides of the street drew closer, while the metal walkways overhead became denser.
Big Smokestack District’s first defensive line had already appeared ahead.
Blastfurnace had known for quite some time that Gragoth was coming.
In fact, almost as soon as Gragoth’s convoy left camp, an Ork on a motorcycle had already raced into Big Smokestack District.
“Boss!” The messenger jumped off the bike, rolled across the ground, and only then managed to stand.
His helmet hung crookedly to one side, exposing half a green face covered in sweat.
“Gragoth’s coming to smash us!” At the time, Blastfurnace was lying underneath an enormous engine.
Only his left prosthetic leg was visible, completely mechanical from the knee down, with an anti-slip steel plate welded beneath the foot.
A few seconds later, Blastfurnace crawled out from beneath the engine.
His broad green face was covered in oil.
The three mechanical lenses over his right eye rotated one after another.
The first, a white fogged lens, retracted.
The second, a black shaded lens, flipped upward.
The final red filter locked into place over his eye.
“How many Boyz?” “Loads!” “How many’s loads?” The messenger counted on his fingers.
After using all ten, he looked down at his feet.
He’d run out of fingers.
Blastfurnace raised his mechanical arm and slapped him aside.
The hydraulically powered iron palm struck the messenger across the face, spinning him halfway around before sending him rolling three times across the ground.
His back crashed into a heap of scrap metal with a loud clatter.
“Useless.” The messenger crawled out of the scrap pile and hurried back in front of Blastfurnace.
“Loads, anyway!
Blackfang’s with ’em too!” Blastfurnace rubbed his chin.
The fingertips of his mechanical hand scraped across his green skin with a sound like sandpaper.
“Heard Blackfang got beaten half to death and then went over to their side?” The messenger nodded.
“Yeah!” Blastfurnace lowered his mechanical arm, resting the iron hand against the ring of tools at his waist.
“Pathetic.” He turned toward the inside of the factory.
His mechanical foot struck the steel floor with a heavy metallic clang.
Dozens of Meks throughout the factory looked up at once.
Some still held welding torches.
Some had half-disassembled engines in their arms.
Others were welding additional armour plates onto the chassis of a war vehicle.
Blastfurnace raised his mechanical arm, holding a sheet of metal that he had apparently ripped off from somewhere.
He threw it straight into the open area in the middle of the factory.
The sheet hit the floor and bounced twice.
“Stop hammering!
Gragoth’s coming to take our territory!” He pointed toward the outside of the factory, the pressure from the movement of his mechanical arm sweeping across the faces of the nearest Meks.
“Turn on all da guns.
Bring out every vehicle.
And that thing I finished yesterday—” The expressions of several nearby Meks changed at once.
“Which one?” one Mek asked.
Blastfurnace grinned.
Black oil showed between his tusks, while the red lens over his right eye reflected the sparse lights hanging from the factory ceiling.
“Da biggest one.” ————————————————————
It really helps the fic grow!