Chapter 446: Small Gretchin, Great Wisdom, Part 4
BANG BANG BANG!!
BANG BANG BANG!!
The Grot Big Guns kept firing in wave after wave. Behind each gun crew stood another dozen or so Gretchin, each cradling an oversized round in their arms.
The moment the current shooter fired, took the recoil, and collapsed off to the side with shattered bones, the next in line would rush up excitedly, work the bolt, load the round, take aim at the target below, and squeeze the trigger.
BANG BANG BANG!!
BANG BANG BANG!!
Several hundred Grot Big Guns fired volley after volley, and eventually, even the thickest-armoured Ork Nob couldn't hold on any longer.
He collapsed into a spreading pool of his own blood, eyes wide with fury, glaring up at the wall of Gretchin still firing down on him from above.
Once it looked like the fight was won, Reform Old Fart called a halt.
The Grot Big Guns fell silent one by one, and the dense mass of Gretchin lining the top of the scrap heaps looked down at the pile of Ork corpses they'd just brought down, and erupted into cheers.
"VICTORY!!!"
Reform Old Fart shouted:
"From this day forward, we Gretchin stand up! Never again will we let the Ork Boyz push us around!!
We're going to build more Grot Big Guns, organize more armed forces, and hold this scrap heap and these mushroom fields as our own!!"
An excited Gretchin bounced up and down, shouting:
"We should take down the Big Mek too! No more parts for the Big Meks, we keep everything for ourselves!"
Reform Old Fart shook his head.
"Not yet. We won a small victory today, but don't get complacent. We're still weak. We still need to build up our strength!
Grot Big Guns alone won't be enough to achieve Great Gretchin-ism. We'll need big tanks, big booms, big walkers too!"
He pointed down at the more than a dozen Ork corpses at the base of the scrap heap.
"Salvage first. Strip these suits!"
The Gretchin immediately swarmed down the heap, tools in hand, and in no time had the Ork power armour stripped down to bare parts.
As for the Ork bodies, they buried those right where they lay. It wouldn't be long before the soil there sprouted big, plump mushrooms.
Meanwhile, Reform Old Fart gathered his technical team, several hundred wrench-wielding Gretchin, and set to work tinkering with the power armour they'd recovered.
Adding a few things here, stripping a few things away there, it took a few days, but they converted ten sets into fully custom Grot-suits.
At a glance, a Grot-suit looked more or less like a regular Ork Boy's frame, but a closer look revealed something was off.
For one, these Grot-suits were built directly off standard Ork power armour. A single set of Ork power armour was originally sized for one Ork Boy, a properly standardized single-pilot suit of protection.
But Gretchin were tiny, barely over a meter tall, so to them, an Ork's single-pilot armour was practically a multi-crew war-machine.
So they'd converted the Ork power armour into Grot-suits accordingly.
The legs were controlled by one Gretchin, whose whole job was managing the two legs, since his tiny brain couldn't handle much more than that.
They cut a viewport into the abdomen, so the leg-pilot could actually see outside.
The upper body was handled by a second Gretchin, whose main job was operating the two mechanical arms and their weapons.
That second Gretchin literally stood on the first pilot's shoulders inside the suit, which made for a genuinely bizarre sight.
Say what you will, but this crew of small-brained Gretchin, working two at a time, actually managed to get an Ork Boy's power armour up and walking, and walking competently, no less.
Even more impressive was what they did with the Ork Nob's suit. At 2.5 meters, the Nob's armour was massive, well beyond anything standard.
A suit that large put a huge strain on the neural interface, far too much for a single Gretchin's small brain to handle.
So they added even more crew. The two legs still went to one pilot, same as before.
Standing on that pilot's shoulders was a second Gretchin serving as commander, who could see out through the Ork Nob's original helmet.
Where the Nob's head had originally been, they mounted a machine gun instead, which the Gretchin commander could operate directly, while also twisting at the waist to steer the suit's turning.
Then there were the two massive mechanical arms, each controlled by its own dedicated weapons operator.
They'd modified the arms into fully articulated, 360-degree rotating limbs, each fitted with an assortment of bizarre weaponry, everything from oversized sluggas to flame projectors.
All told, this string of jury-rigged modifications gave Reform Old Fart's forces fifteen dual-pilot Grot-suits and one quad-pilot Grot-suit.
Sure, these weren't quite on the level of a four-meter killa-can, but piloting a two-meter-plus suit of their own was nothing to scoff at.
And more importantly, these were suits the Gretchin had designed and built themselves, tangible and real, unlike the Big Meks, who only ever strung them along with promises of killa-cans that never actually arrived.
"If you're Gretchin, you drive a Grot-suit and nothing else! I ain't drivin' nothin' that ain't a Grot-suit!"
The Gretchin chattered excitedly, every single one of them wanting a turn in a Grot-suit.
Reform Old Fart stepped forward and said:
"Now that we can build our own war-machines, two or three Gretchin working a Grot-suit together can go toe-to-toe with a single Ork Boy!
We need to get every single Gretchin into a Grot-suit. Only then will our fighting strength stand equal to the Ork Boyz'!"
The Gretchin asked eagerly:
"Reform Old Fart, what do we do?"
Reform Old Fart laid out his instructions:
"First, we build ourselves some Grot recovery trucks, driven out onto the battlefield by our sharpest lads.
Every time an Ork Warboss launches an assault, the human shrimp-tin-cans hit our rear with big booms from orbit, and plenty of unlucky Boyz end up dead in the crossfire.
Send the recovery trucks out to drag those abandoned suits back, and we convert them into Grot-suits.
Of course, if a Big Mek catches you at it and wants the armour, don't fight him for it. Hand it right over. The battlefield's huge, there's treasure scattered everywhere, just go scavenge somewhere else."
With that point covered, he moved to the second:
"But most of the power armour we scavenge off the battlefield is too badly damaged, too hard to convert. So we need a way to get our hands on suits that are still intact.
Who here knows how to brew?"
A Gretchin with a pitted, bulbous nose stepped forward.
"I know how to brew, I know how to brew, I'm Rummy-Nose, I've known how to brew mushroom booze since the day I was born, my brew is the best there is!"
Reform Old Fart said:
"Rummy-Nose, get brewing right away. Brew something strong enough that the Ork Boyz can't resist, strong enough to knock them flat drunk.
Once the Ork Boyz are good and drunk, we quietly finish them off and drag them away. That gets us intact suits, easy pickings for our next batch of Grot-suits!"
With the order given, the Gretchin threw themselves into a whirlwind of activity, farming mushrooms, brewing liquor, building guns and suits.
In the middle of all that furious construction, two large portraits were raised atop the tallest scrap heap.
Two massive rectangular metal plates were hoisted up by hundreds of Gretchin working a crane, and welded into place at the summit.
The plate on the left bore the painted image of Grot Marjack, gazing up at a forty-five-degree angle, mouth curled into a sly, knowing smirk.
The plate on the right bore the painted image of Reform Old Fart, in the exact same pose, gazing skyward at forty-five degrees, mouth curled into the same cunning grin.
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