Chapter 444: Small Gretchin, Great Wisdom, Part 2
Afterward, the Gretchin brought Reform Old Fart to see their hidden stashes.
One Gretchin lifted up a sheet of scrap metal, revealing several thousand parts stored underneath.
The Gretchin said, practically vibrating with excitement:
"Reform Old Fart, Reform Old Fart, look at this, this super-straight steel pipe, perfect for building a slugga! And this super-hard sheet metal, great for a choppa! And this super-slick engine, that's gotta be good for a tank!
These are ours! Gretchin property! Nobody's ever gonna take it away from us!!"
The Gretchin gathered around let out excited shouts. Ever since they'd awakened to Great Gretchin-ism, they'd started squirreling away caches of their own.
They had thousands of little stockpiles like this one, scattered across scrap heaps and mushroom fields, findable only by fellow Gretchin, and belonging collectively to all Gretchin-kind.
In the old days, every valuable part they found had gone straight to the Big Mek, who always promised them killa-cans in return and never once delivered.
Now they had wealth of their own, and that sense of having something real, something to hold onto, was a feeling none of them had ever experienced before.
Reform Old Fart said:
"Good. Keep gathering parts. We need to keep stockpiling until the day comes.
But don't forget, half of every haul still goes to the Big Meks, to keep them complacent!
The longer we can stretch this out, the stronger we'll become!"
Just then, the sound of gunfire and screaming rang out from somewhere across the scrap heaps. Reform Old Fart immediately led his Gretchin followers into cover atop a mound of junk, watching the source of the noise with wary eyes.
Off in the distance, a few Ork Boyz with guns were opening fire on a group of Gretchin scavengers.
Several Gretchin dropped after taking hits, and the Ork Boyz charged over, scooped them up, and burst out laughing with delight.
"Roast Gretchin, roast Gretchin, ever tasted somethin' this good~ ever felt dat spicy kick~
I love me some roast Gretchin! C'mon, let's find somewhere to start a fire!"
The Ork Boyz slung the wounded Gretchin over their shoulders and went off to find a place to build a fire, and the sight left the watching Gretchin both terrified and furious.
Reform Old Fart frowned and asked:
"Didn't the Big Mek say no Ork Boyz were allowed to grab and eat scavenging Gretchin? All scavenging Gretchin were supposed to be under the Big Mek's protection!"
One Gretchin, tears and snot streaming down his face from fright, sobbed his answer:
"The Ork Boyz are greedy, they don't care about none of that.
There's a lot of Gretchin around the scrap heaps, and there's always some Ork Boy who ain't scared of the Big Mek's threats, comes runnin' over to grab us and roast us anyway, wahhhhh..."
The Gretchin wailed and sobbed. Standing barely over a meter tall, they sat at the very bottom of Ork society.
Normally stuck doing all the grunt work and logistics, and in a pinch, hunted down by the Ork Boyz as food. It was genuinely miserable.
Reform Old Fart let out a furious roar:
"This isn't right, this can't go on, we can't just let those Ork Boyz keep grabbing us for dinner!
We Gretchin need our own armed force! Gretchin protecting Gretchin, with Gretchin weapons!!"
The gathered Gretchin crowded in close, eyes wide with excitement.
"Reform Old Fart, Reform Old Fart, what do we do?"
Reform Old Fart thought it over and said:
"Sort through your stockpiled parts. Anything good for building a slugga goes in one pile. Anything good for a choppa goes in another. Anything good for power armour goes in a third.
We're going to organize by category. We'll build identical sluggas, identical choppas, identical suits of power armour!"
Reform Old Fart had already tried, once before, getting the Gretchin to build their own weapons and gear, but what they'd produced had been shoddy junk.
Some of it hadn't even worked at all, and nobody could figure out why.
But after that conversation with Three-Arm, Reform Old Fart finally understood.
Their WAAAGH energy output was probably weaker than what an Ork Mekboy could generate.
And the weapons the Gretchin were building were far too crude, meaning their limited WAAAGH energy couldn't possibly bridge that much of a physical tolerance gap.
The solution, then, was obvious: build things more precisely. Shrink the tolerances.
In other words, standardize the process.
But another Gretchin spoke up with a problem:
"Reform Old Fart, Reform Old Fart, but we don't have any tools!"
Reform Old Fart said:
"If we don't have tools, we build our own. Build our own files, our own hammers. Whatever we can't build ourselves, we find a way to steal from the Big Meks' war-forges.
Bottom line, we need our own armed force, right now. We can't keep letting the Ork Boyz treat us like a food supply!"
The excited Gretchin sprang into action, and maybe it was the fact they were finally working for themselves, but their output was remarkable.
Within just a few days, through building and outright theft, they'd assembled a substantial haul of tools and gotten straight to work manufacturing weapons and gear.
For the sake of standardization, and to keep any single raid from wiping out his entire operation, Reform Old Fart opened several thousand Gretchin workshops all at once.
These thousands of workshops were scattered across the world. The larger ones held several hundred Gretchin; the smaller ones, just two or three.
Their division of labor was precise. The smallest workshops handled nothing but scraping rust off gun barrels.
Larger ones, using drills stolen from the Big Meks, cut rifling into those barrels.
And a separate cadre of Gretchin worked nights, moving unseen between workshops, ferrying finished parts from site to site.
This whole elaborate supply chain, operating under the Orks' peculiar social structure and buoyed by the spiritual conviction of Great Gretchin-ism, somehow ran with flawless efficiency.
Ten days after Reform Old Fart set out to organize the Gretchin's own armed force, the first batch of Gretchin weapons rolled off the line.
The Grot Big Gun!!
This was the first-generation Gretchin weapon, personally designed by Reform Old Fart himself.
In essence, it was a two-meter length of water pipe fashioned into a rifle, boasting a terrifying 25mm caliber. Fire a shot, work the bolt, load another oversized round, and fire again.
The Grot Big Gun required a full crew of ten Gretchin to operate. One Gretchin served as the gun mount, hoisting the thick, heavy barrel onto his own shoulder, while the other nine took turns firing.
Each Gretchin carried exactly one round for the Grot Big Gun, because each Gretchin could only fire it once.
After a single shot, the recoil would shatter the shooter's bones outright, and he'd have to go lie in the sun and recover while photosynthesis knit his bones back together before he could fire a second time.
Since every shot consumed one Gretchin gunner, and a standard Grot Big Gun crew ran ten Gretchin strong, that meant, in theory, nine shots per engagement, a design philosophy that fit the greenskins' manic approach to warfare perfectly.
And did this absurd-looking weapon actually work? A chance to find out arrived almost immediately.
Once again, Reform Old Fart had just left Three-Arm's war-forge, heading over to check in on the Gretchin Council's progress.
The moment he arrived, his appointed Grot Field Marshal came rushing over, frantic, calling out to him.
"Reform Old Fart, Reform Old Fart! Big trouble, big trouble! More greedy Ork Boyz showed up to grab Gretchin for roasting!!"
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