Chapter 458: Grot Marjack Points the Way
"AWOOGA! Run, run, absolutely do NOT let the shrimp-tin-cans catch us!!"
Aboard the scrap-cobbled Gretchin wagon, several dozen Gretchin shrieked in a panicked chorus.
"Whatever the third-class Orks got, our Great Gretchin-ism's gotta have too, just gotta make it to the place..."
The Gretchin chattered on, practically welding the throttle straight into the fuel tank.
The vehicle they were driving had once been some kind of human engineering rig, patched back together with an assortment of scavenged junk. The human-sized cockpit was a poor fit for their diminutive frames, so it had ended up crammed with multiple Gretchin at once.
One Gretchin gripped the steering wheel, another worked the throttle, a third handled the brake, and the rest just piled into the cargo bed as hype squad, shrieking and cheering.
Truth was, this group of Gretchin was thoroughly lost. Nothing but open desert in every direction, and they had absolutely no idea which way they'd originally come from.
Add in the earlier run-in with Kian's forces back at the substation city, which had scared them half to death with human cannon fire and sent them fleeing the city in a blind panic, and they'd lost their bearings entirely.
But lost or not, some part of them kept driving forward on pure instinct, because they absolutely had to get that transformer back home!
They had no idea what the Ork Boyz actually wanted the thing for, but whatever the Orks got, Great Gretchin-ism had to have too!
So they'd dug one out of the concrete themselves, loaded it into the wagon bed, and set off to bring it back for study.
"Are you lost?" the co-driver Gretchin asked the driver.
"Shove it up yer spiral exhaust pipe! I ain't lost, how could I be lost!"
"You're lyin', you're totally lost!!"
"I am NOT lost, quit messin' with me!!"
"Prove it! Swear it on Grot Marjack! If you're lost, may Old Fart Kian squish you to death with his buttocks!!"
The driver didn't dare swear that oath, and the co-driver, furious, lunged for the steering wheel.
The two Gretchin wrestled violently over the wheel, and the Gretchin in the cargo bed erupted into their own chorus of shrieking.
The vehicle, tearing through the desert at high speed, swerved wildly left and right, the cylindrical transformer rolling loose in the cargo bed, back and forth, crushing several unlucky Gretchin who couldn't dodge out of the way in time.
The Gretchin in the bed were basically playing a real-life game of chicken with the rolling transformer, darting left and right to dodge it.
All while also trying not to get thrown clean off the wagon whenever it hit a rock or a pothole at speed.
Eventually, unable to dodge any longer, the surviving Gretchin all crowded up against the front of the cargo bed, pressed flat against the cockpit wall for shelter.
Meanwhile, inside the cockpit, the two drivers were still fighting over the wheel, blissfully unaware their scrap-built wagon was about to shake itself apart entirely.
But right then, a voice every single Gretchin present knew by heart rang out.
"Ohh-ho! My dear little Gretchin, still so full of energy today~"
The two Gretchin fighting over the wheel froze, then broke into delighted grins. The driver shouted:
"Brake! Hit the brake, quick!"
The Gretchin in the cockpit slammed the brake, and the speeding wagon lurched to a sudden stop.
The transformer in the cargo bed, carried forward by pure momentum, slammed into the huddle of Gretchin sheltering by the cockpit wall, flattening every last one of them into paste.
The wagon came to a halt, its cockpit door kicked open, and four or five surviving Gretchin leapt out and rushed to kneel before a nearby boulder.
"Grot Marjack! Grot Marjack has appeared before us!!"
There stood Kian, decked out in green-painted power armour, a pair of plastic wings jutting from his back, a wire-frame wand in hand.
"Ohh-ho! My dear little Gretchin, I have heard your call!
Tell me, what troubles have you run into? Your happy magic monkey is here to see you through!"
The Gretchin immediately launched into a chattering, chaotic explanation, the gist of which boiled down to: they were lost.
Kian pulled up the map on his power armour's built-in optics, then pointed his wand off in a particular direction.
"My dear little Gretchin, drive your wagon straight that way, and you shall find your way home!"
The Gretchin lit up with joy, but the driver and co-driver immediately started arguing again.
"I TOLD you you were lost, and you kept arguing with me!"
"Nonsense, I was never lost!"
"You just got told to drive that direction by Grot Marjack himself, which means you WERE lost. Either that, or you're doubting Grot Marjack!
Answer me! Are you doubting Grot Marjack? Doubting Reform Old Fart? Doubting Great Gretchin-ism?
Were you trying to deliberately drive us the wrong way, so we'd lose the transformer, so our military strength would fall behind the Ork Boyz, so we Gretchin would stay oppressed forever?!"
Buried under that avalanche of accusations, the driver felt himself edging closer to a firing squad by the second, stammering and unable to get a single word out.
Fortunately, that was when Kian stepped in.
"Now, now, let's not go slapping labels on our fellow comrades of Great Gretchin-ism. Wherever there are Gretchin, there is home, home is the root, and the root is home!
Right now, we Gretchin stand at a great historic turning point. No infighting! If you must fight, go fight the Ork Boyz instead!
Oh, and by the way, do any of you know why the Ork Boyz were so eager to steal the shrimp-tin-cans' transformers?"
The Gretchin, effectively distracted, launched one after another into whatever intel they had.
"It's Three-Arm! Three-Arm's the one who wanted the transformers!"
"He said his Gorkamorka Walker's nearly finished, but he still needs transformers to convert the power supply!"
"So on account of, whatever da Ork Boyz got, Great Gretchin-ism's gotta have too, we ran off and grabbed one for ourselves to bring back!"
Kian's expression shifted to genuine surprise. He hadn't expected Three-Arm to actually be close to finishing a Gorkamorka Walker already.
Among Ork war-machines, a Gorkamorka Walker was roughly on par with a Knight suit over ten meters tall.
And it was far more than just an ordinary war-machine. Its very design was modeled after the Orks' twin gods, Gork and Mork.
If the Orks actually finished building it, it could very well become a spiritual totem for every greenskin on the planet, and their combat effectiveness would jump another whole tier as a result.
He couldn't let the Orks finish that thing. He needed to find a way to destroy it.
Kian asked, "Do you know where Three-Arm is building this Gorkamorka Walker?"
He'd already decided, the moment he learned Three-Arm's location, he was going to give the man a firsthand demonstration of what "today's forecast calls for scattered artillery fire, with a chance of mushroom clouds" actually meant.
The Gretchin chattered out an answer:
"Three-Arm's war-forge is under one of da shrimp-tin-cans' big fancy buildings! Under da ruins!
Dat's where he's buildin' da Gorkamorka Walker, real big, real strong, real WAAAGH machine!"
Kian tried to press for a more specific location, but there was only so much detail these tiny brains could actually track, and they just stammered and mumbled, unable to produce anything more concrete.
"Alright, alright, off you go now. Remember, trust in the magic monkey, and the magic monkey shall watch over your journey home!"
He hadn't gotten an exact location, but he had gotten a general direction: a destroyed human hive city.
Back at base, he'd just go through them one by one, process of elimination. Drop a few nukes on each ruined hive, and see how long it took to find Three-Arm.
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