Chapter 442: The Grot Workshops Encircle the War-Forge
"Reform Old Fart! Reform Old Fart! Reform Old Fart!"
The Gretchin were still cheering when a few Mekboys came stomping over from a distance, wrenches in hand, banging them against scrap metal as they bellowed:
"Wot da hell are you little runts doin'! Standin' around screamin' instead of scavengin', want a smack upside da head, do ya?!
Get movin', da Big Mek needs parts! He's buildin' da biggest, meanest walker ever, and if I gotta come back here again, I'll skin every last one of ya!"
With that, the Mekboy stomped off, still muttering curses. The Gretchin exchanged uneasy glances.
A few of them clustered around Reform Old Fart and asked, "Reform Old Fart, what do we do now?"
Reform Old Fart, standing at a positively terrifying 1.6 meters, had a gleam of wisdom in his eyes.
"Per Grot Marjack's teachings, in pursuit of Great Gretchin-ism, here is our arrangement.
Our most nimble-handed Gretchin will scavenge scrap. Half goes to the Big Mek. The other half we keep for ourselves, to build our own guns, our own cannons, our own booms.
Our sharpest-minded Gretchin will assist at the Big Mek's war-forge, watch closely how he builds his sluggas, his big booms, his walkers, and bring back what they learn so we can open our own Gretchin workshops!
We shall encircle the war-forge with a thousand Gretchin workshops!
Finally, those with a hand for farming and tending mushrooms will keep working the mushroom fields. When a Snotling or a Gretchin sprouts from the field, pull them straight into our ranks and teach them Great Gretchin-ism at once.
But if an Ork Boy sprouts instead, all Gretchin present will swarm him immediately, put him down, and plant him back in the ground."
The crowd of Gretchin were instantly fired up, and scattered off to their assigned tasks.
The Ork race, engineered ages ago by the Old Ones as a living weapon, had been built for war from the ground up, and so their entire social structure existed to serve that same purpose.
With Reform Old Fart leading the charge, the Gretchin quickly organized themselves into working cells.
Everyone knew their role and split off accordingly, each doing their part to undermine the Ork Boyz' reign of terror.
Reform Old Fart himself went straight to Three-Arm's war-forge, intending to learn the craft by watching from the inside.
He rigged up a scavenger's basket, had a few younger Gretchin haul over a pile of choice mechanical parts, and carried the basket right into Three-Arm's war-forge.
Three-Arm's war-forge was the largest on the entire planet, built into the ruins of a secondary hive city.
Before its fall, that hive had held a hundred million people. Once the Orks overran it, humanity had fired several high-yield nuclear warheads into the city, reducing it to rubble.
And buried beneath the collapsed superstructure, amid an endless field of shattered plasteel, marble, and twisted steel, sat Three-Arm's war-forge.
At that very moment, Three-Arm was hard at work beside two enormous mechanical skeletons.
Each frame stood over ten meters tall, built from thick alloy-steel tubing. It was hard to even imagine what these things would look like once finished.
Three-Arm made a few adjustments, bolting a mechanical component onto one of the frames.
Then he stepped back and gazed at the two skeletons with the misty-eyed pride of a father admiring his children.
"Look at dis. Look at dese big beautiful walkers. Once I get 'em both finished, I'm gonna be da most WAAAGH Big Mek dis whole world's ever seen!!
Ain't dat right?"
As he said it, he reached back and gave a light flick to the skull mounted on his back.
That skull belonged to Blackiron, who by now had been reduced to little more than a stump, and was slung across Three-Arm's back like a piece of gear.
A pair of devices resembling neural amplifier coils had been driven into Blackiron's skull, and thick cables ran from what remained of his severed limbs.
At this point, he looked less like a warlord and more like a CPU waiting to be plugged in, dangling off Three-Arm's back.
"I... I wanna fight. I wanna get my revenge. I wanna kill Old Fart Kian..."
The half-a-Blackiron slurred, barely coherent.
Three-Arm let out a hearty laugh and pointed at the two towering frames in front of him.
"Don't ya worry. Once dese two beauties are done, da one with all da ranged firepower's mine, and da one built for close-in scrappin' is yours!
We'll climb inside our Gorkamorka Walkers and there won't be nothin' in dis galaxy dat can touch us!!"
Blackiron slurred back:
"Heh heh, I wanna drive a Gorkamorka Walker, I wanna drive a Gorkamorka Walker and kill Old Fart Kian..."
The Gorkamorka Walker was a colossal war-machine that showed up fairly often among Ork societies, built in honor of the twin Ork gods Gork and Mork.
Generally speaking, once an Ork society developed far enough, it would eventually produce a pair of these machines.
Right now, Three-Arm, as one of the most gifted Big Meks alive, seemed to have triggered some deep instinct in his blood, and had thrown himself into building a pair of Gorkamorka Walkers with manic obsession.
After admiring his handiwork, his expression suddenly darkened, and he bellowed out at everyone nearby:
"Where's my parts?! Get 'em over here now!
I can't wait no longer to finish my great work, and you useless gits still can't scrounge up enough parts for me. I oughta kiss every one of ya square in da arse with my boot!"
The Mekboys standing around didn't dare make a sound. That was when Reform Old Fart walked up.
He marched straight up to Three-Arm without a hint of hesitation, and dumped the entire contents of his scavenger's basket out at Three-Arm's feet.
Seeing that much scrap, and such choice pieces at that, Three-Arm's eyes lit right up.
The three-meter-tall Mek reached down, snatched Reform Old Fart up by the collar, and held him level with his own face.
"Wot da hell are you? A tall Gretchin or a runty Ork Boy?"
Reform Old Fart put on his most fawning expression.
"I'm a Gretchin, boss, da tallest, WAAAGH-est Gretchin dere is, and da best at findin' parts too, best in da whole lot!"
Three-Arm glanced down at the impressive haul on the ground, then back at Reform Old Fart, and burst out laughing.
"Fer a Gretchin, you got real guts. I like it. From now on, you're under my protection."
He then pointed a finger at the surrounding Mekboys, his tone turning threatening.
"I'm keepin' dis big Gretchin. He's mine now. Anyone lays a finger on 'im, tries to eat 'im, I'm shovin' you straight into a Dreadnought, you hear me?"
The Mekboys went pale at that. None of them wanted anything to do with a Dreadnought.
Ork Dreadnoughts worked much the same as the human variety, except where Astartes were only forced into one after catastrophic, irreparable injury, Orks did it the other way around, actively hacking a living Ork Boy down to a stump, cracking his skull open, and driving neural amplifier rods as thick as rebar straight into his brain.
Having finished threatening his own Mekboys, Three-Arm reached out and gave Reform Old Fart a friendly pat on the shoulder.
"Startin' today, you're my favorite Gretchin. I want you findin' me ten, no, a hundred parts every single day!
Bring me a thousand parts total and I'll build you your very own killa-can, big enough for a big Gretchin like you to pilot. Whaddya say?"
Reform Old Fart put on his most delighted expression and nodded eagerly.
"Yes, boss, yes! Deal's a deal, I'll get you a thousand parts, and you build me a Gretchin killa-can!"
Three-Arm said "of course" out loud, but privately he was already snickering to himself.
Every scrap of resource he had was going straight into the Gorkamorka Walkers. A little Gretchin like this? Easy enough to string along with empty promises.
But Reform Old Fart, the biggest and shrewdest Gretchin of them all, of course knew exactly what was going through Three-Arm's head.
Which was precisely why he had zero expectation of ever actually getting that killa-can. His only real purpose here was to win Three-Arm's favor, stay close by his side, learn how the Big Mek built his war-machines, and lay the groundwork for the Gretchin workshops to one day encircle the great war-forge itself.
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you