Elsewhere, Shatterjaw had been beaten black and blue by two Meks.
He’d charged through a side entrance of the factory full of confidence, only to run straight into two Meks carrying oversized welding torches.
The two Meks weren’t interested in fighting him head-on at all.
One hurled an electrified cable that wrapped around Shatterjaw’s ankle, while the other swung his welding torch into the iron armour on his shoulder.
The current made Shatterjaw’s entire body jerk.
He howled and jumped aside, then pulled out his iron club and started trading blows with them.
He didn’t dare use his gun.
All he had was the iron club with part of it already broken off, and he could only brace himself and block left and right.
The two Meks grew more comfortable the longer they fought.
One of their mechanical claws had already peeled up part of the edge of Shatterjaw’s pauldron.
Shatterjaw kept backing away as he shouted, “Don’t push me!
If I don’t get into First Company, neither of you are getting away!” Three Orks charged in from the side behind him.
Each one was carrying something they’d apparently ripped off from somewhere—a sheet of metal, an iron bar, and half a red brick.
The Ork carrying the metal sheet charged first and smashed it straight into the face of the Mek with the welding torch, knocking both Mek and torch to the ground.
The second Ork jabbed his iron bar into the back of the other Mek’s knee.
The Mek’s leg buckled and he dropped to his knees.
The third Ork raised the half-brick and smashed it into the back of the Mek’s head.
The brick shattered.
So did the Mek’s resistance.
The Ork with the metal sheet looked down at the two unconscious Meks, tossed the sheet onto the floor, then turned toward Shatterjaw with a grin.
“Haha!
These two Meks are mine!” Dull impacts immediately began echoing throughout the factory.
Bang—bang, bang—bang!
One Mek after another was brought down in all kinds of positions.
Some were dragged off machinery.
Some were cornered around walkway turns.
Others were pulled out from underneath workbenches.
The Orks doing the beating varied in how hard they hit, but every one of them took an extra glance at the number of tools hanging from their opponent’s belt before starting.
The Gretchin flatbed carts already had two layers of Meks piled on them.
The uppermost Mek had half his body hanging over the edge, his mechanical fingers still opening and closing unconsciously.
More and more factories were taken.
From the first building on the outer edge to several connected workshops farther inside, the battle line steadily pushed deeper into Big Smokestack District.
Gragoth continued advancing toward the deepest part of the district.
Blastfurnace’s outer defenders had begun retreating inward.
Occasional gunshots and metallic impacts still came from windows along the sides, but the fighting was nowhere near as intense as before.
Then the entire ground suddenly shook.
Thud.
Several loose nuts beside Gragoth’s feet jumped at the same time, bounced twice across the floor, then settled.
The Orks fighting nearby all froze for half a beat.
They looked at one another, their expressions changing.
A second impact followed immediately.
Thud!
This one was closer.
The vibration travelled all the way up their lower legs.
An old pipe overhead shook hard enough to shed rust, and several flakes struck an Ork’s pauldron.
Blackfang ran out of another factory.
Several fresh scratches marked the breastplate of his First Company Captain’s power armour, and a piece of metal along the edge of his left pauldron had been bent upward.
He was dragging an unconscious Mek behind him, an iron chain tied around the Mek’s ankle scraping across the ground.
Blackfang glanced toward the source of the noise, then looked at Gragoth.
“What’s that?” Gragoth didn’t answer.
He looked toward the deepest part of Big Smokestack District.
The thick smoke was spreading apart, revealing a large open area behind the main factory that had previously been hidden by the haze.
Behind the largest building in the distance, six enormous exhaust pipes slowly rose into view.
Their openings tilted toward the sky as they began spewing black smoke at the same time, six columns twisting together overhead.
The next second, an iron wall more than ten metres tall rose from behind the building.
No.
That wasn’t a wall.
Gragoth narrowed his eyes.
Beneath the iron wall, two massive mechanical legs welded together from assorted construction machinery parts stepped forward.
The left leg alone had four hydraulic pistons.
Thick oil hoses ran from the knee joint all the way to the waist, reinforced steel plates welded over the surface.
Oil was still dripping from several of the hose connections.
The right leg was clearly asymmetrical.
It had only three hydraulic structures, and an entire section of track had been welded onto the outside, its crooked tread plates slowly turning.
The track plates ground noisily whenever the foot came down.
The two legs weren’t even the same length, causing the entire machine to lean left with every step before correcting itself to the right.
Boom!
One mechanical foot came down.
A huge section of the steel-plated floor caved in immediately.
Rivets popped free from their mounting holes and rolled across the ground with a series of metallic clinks.
The smoke cleared.
The machine finally emerged completely from behind the factory.
Its massive body stood nearly ten metres tall.
A rotating turret had been mounted on each shoulder, their gun barrels absurdly thick.
The welding seams around their bases were crude, but solid.
Its left arm was an enormous three-fingered hydraulic claw.
Each finger was thicker than an Ork, with serrated tips.
Its right arm was simply a Lobba mortar, the barrel stretching from the shoulder down to the elbow.
A safety pin was still sticking out of the muzzle.
A whole row of engines had been crammed into its chest, one stacked on top of another.
Exhaust pipes crossed over each other, while thick electrical cables had simply been wrapped around the outside of the casing.
Blue sparks jumped from several of the connections.
The most eye-catching part of the entire machine was the huge Ork grin painted across its front in red paint.
Two tusks stretched from the corners of the mouth all the way to the edges of the breastplate, while the eyes had been painted as two crosses, making the entire mech look as though it were laughing wildly.
At the very top, a steel plate slowly opened apart.
A cockpit was revealed inside.
Blastfurnace stood in the middle of the controls.
The power unit on his back was still crackling with electricity, blue arcs jumping from the copper-wire connections to the control panel behind him.
One mechanical hand gripped a control lever.
The other held a large megaphone pointed downward.
“Gragoth!” His voice came down from the loudspeaker mounted atop the machine.
The enormous mech itself acted like a giant resonance chamber.
Blastfurnace’s heavy voice made the windows of the nearby factories rattle, sending shards of broken glass falling from their frames to shatter into even smaller pieces on the ground.
“Heard you like wearing iron shells?!” ————————————————————
It really helps the fic grow!