Chapter 445: Small Gretchin, Great Wisdom, Part 3
"Move it, move it, all you useless gits, hurry it up!
Grab yourselves a nice soft juicy Gretchin and run, don't let the Big Mek catch ya, or he'll be kissin' your backside with his iron boot!!"
An Ork Nob, 2.5 meters tall and decked out in power armour, came bounding into the scrap heaps with a dozen or so Ork Boyz under two meters in tow, all here to hunt down some Gretchin for dinner.
Technically, greenskins could survive on photosynthesis alone, but they had appetites too, and cravings for something tastier now and then.
For a greenskin, the two finest delicacies in existence were, first, mushroom brew, fermented from the mushrooms grown in the fields, usually brewed by Gretchin.
The second was roasted Snotling.
Snotlings, sometimes called Grots-that-hop, generally looked like a legged ball of flesh with an oversized mouth, and were, oddly enough, kind of adorable.
Snotlings were an inseparable part of greenskin society, and they came in a huge range of varieties.
The clever ones made decent pets, providing companionship to their Ork owners. The tastier ones ended up as food.
Some grew to the size of a Knight-class war-machine, and those super-sized specimens were used as war-mounts.
And some produced a substance from their bodies resembling fuel oil, which greenskin war-machines could run on whenever they were short on proper fuel.
On this planet, nearly all greenskin fuel came from the coking-oil plants beneath the Deathmine. But Kian had nuked that facility, and the underground coal seams were now burning with a deep, permanent fire that had consumed the coking-oil equipment entirely.
With no choice left, the Ork Warboss and his Big Meks had issued an order banning the eating of Snotlings entirely.
Every Snotling was to be rounded up and farmed for fuel production, to get the war-machines running again as fast as possible.
With tasty Snotling off the menu, the greenskins' cravings had shifted, inevitably, to the Gretchin.
The greedy Ork Nob and his dozen-plus Ork Boyz crept quietly into the scrap heaps.
This was Gretchin territory, home to an uncountable number of them scavenging for parts.
Snatch a few quietly, roast them up fast, and as long as they moved quick enough, the Big Mek would never even notice.
"Listen up, all of you, two Gretchin apiece, no more, no less.
Once we've got 'em, we run, and if a Big Mek catches us, don't none of you rat me out, or I'll gut ya myself!"
The Ork Nob crept forward through the scrap heaps, his dozen-plus Ork Boyz sneaking along behind him.
All of them decked out in power armour, moving with an exaggeratedly cautious, almost comical stealth.
Just then, around the corner of a scrap pile ahead, a Gretchin emerged.
He had his arms full of scavenged parts, and froze the moment he spotted the sneaking Orks.
The hungry Orks froze too, then let out a whooping roar and all charged forward at once, trying to pin the Gretchin down!
"AAAAAAH!!"
The Gretchin very nearly wet himself in terror, flung the parts aside, and bolted deep into the scrap heaps!
"Get back here, ya little runt, I'm gonna roast your bones till they're crispy and golden and drippin' with grease!"
The Ork Nob thundered after him, and at 2.5 meters plus power armour, he was a genuinely fearsome sight, the ground shaking with every stride.
The little Gretchin, hearing that thunderous pursuit closing in behind him, shrieked in terror and dove into a gap between two scrap piles, still scrambling forward.
The Ork Nob and his Boyz, for all their raw strength, simply weren't built for navigating terrain this cramped and complicated.
The Ork Nob came within a hair of catching the Gretchin several times, but every time, the little runt would squeeze into some crevice in the junk and slip free of his grasp.
Furious, roaring, the Ork Nob turned into a raging bull, smashing straight through everything in his path, scrap heaps and obstacles alike shattering under his charge.
"You little runt, I'm gonna catch you, and when I roast you I'm brushin' you with coolant and engine oil, then sprinklin' a handful of nails on top for seasonin'!"
He kept charging forward, plowing through everything, and when he finally smashed through a sheet-metal door, he burst suddenly into a wide open space.
It was a clearing roughly the size of half a football field, the ground dotted with freshly sprouted mushrooms, evidently a mushroom field that had only recently been cultivated.
This circular field was ringed on all sides by towering scrap heaps, standing like a wall enclosing the whole space.
Right then, the Ork Nob and his Boyz found themselves standing dead center of that open ground.
Every alarm bell in the Ork Nob's head went off at once. Growing to his size meant he'd survived plenty of fights, and his combat instincts were screaming.
He spun around immediately to look back the way he'd come, and that instant, two thunderous explosions rang out.
The two towering scrap heaps flanking the passage he'd charged through erupted in massive blasts.
The explosions toppled both heaps, and the falling debris sealed off the way he'd come.
The next moment, a chorus of shrieking war cries rose up from the ring of scrap heaps, and a row of banners, stitched together from scavenged rags, rose into view, each painted with the white silhouette of a winged Gretchin.
Then over three hundred Grot Big Guns were hoisted up by the Gretchin, each crewed with one Gretchin bracing the barrel on his shoulder while another gripped the trigger and took aim.
The ring of scrap heaps was packed solid with Gretchin and their Grot Big Guns.
Below, the targeted Ork Nob and his Boyz had no idea what was happening, shrieking in alarm.
That was when Reform Old Fart stepped forward and swept his hand down.
"Today! We fire the first shot for Great Gretchin-ism! FIRE!!"
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!!!
Hundreds of Grot Big Guns opened fire at once, oversized rounds raining down on the Orks below like a hailstorm.
Bullets slammed into the Orks' power armour from every direction, drawing a chorus of pained screams.
Ork power armour, like a tank's, was thicker in front and thinner behind.
The rounds striking the armoured Orks head-on mostly deflected off their chest plates.
But with fire coming from every direction at once, there was nowhere for them to hide. Their weaker back plating gave way easily, rounds punching straight through into flesh, shattering organs and bone.
A single volley alone dropped half the Ork Boyz below to their knees. The other half, still standing, were wounded and howling on the ground.
The Gretchin paid a price of their own, though: over three hundred Grot Big Guns fired meant three hundred Gretchin lost in that single volley.
Every one of those three hundred gunners had their rib cage shattered by the recoil, and now lay writhing on the ground, screaming, a mix of agony and something close to exhilaration in their voices.
Seeing there were still Orks standing below, Reform Old Fart swept his hand down again.
"Reload. Continue firing!"
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