Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

126 – Orky business

“Why are you following me?” I asked, glancing at the green mass of fungal muscle ambling after me with a silly grin on his ugly mug. 

The Ork shrugged, then panicked as he almost dropped one of his looted guns. 

"Ya'z good fer a humie. Might be sum good fightin' wiv ya." He said after a while. 

I hummed noncommittally, keeping a single mind core on him at all times. His eagerness was clear to see, not only in his aura, but on his face too. He was eager to fight, whether that was with me or against me again was uncertain though.

I didn’t doubt for a moment that if this numbskull thought he could shank me in the back, he would go for it. But he seemed just as happy to just follow along. Orks, what weird creatures you are.

Well, I wasn’t one to not make the most of the circumstances when possible, so I did some mental exercises. I opened up my mind and turned my Empathy up to eleven, drinking in the bloodthirsty glee this Ork — and the entirety damned ship to a lesser extent — radiated.

A handful of mind cores paid careful attention to my consciousness, noting how strands of thoughts and bursts of emotions shifted. 

Don't let it affect you. Feel the emotions, but don’t let them become your own. I told myself as I sank into a deeper focus. Right now, having been ‘infected’ by the Orks’ emotions wasn’t a problem, but if an Orkish WAAAGH mental field thingy could affect me, wouldn’t then mean chaotic influence also had an easy way in? Or even some Imperial bullshit.

Madness and mental degradation were a terrifying, but very real danger for me. 

I could end up as an Emperor-worshipping choirgirl if I stepped foot on a larger Shrine World with a few billion Emperor botherers. Or as a raving lunatic who got off on pain, extreme sounds, blood, death or something equally disturbing.

At that point, becoming a budget store Tyranid hive-mind with my emotions wiped clean might be the better alternative.

I’d rather stay as myself though, so I’ll have to practise. I thought the half a thousand different mental barriers and wards I wrapped my mind in would be enough but not if my stupid empathy opens up the backdoor for any mindrapist wannabe.

“You don’t mind that I plan on beating all of your fellow Orks and your boss into a paste I take it?”

"Hah! Good luck, humie! Dis gonna be fun to watch!"

“You plan on joining in?” I asked, finding myself somewhat curious about the strange way their minds worked. It was all so simple and illogical, but at the same time logical in their own entirely alien way.

"Oi, if dere's a scrap, ya bet I'll be in da middle of it!"

“On whose side?” I raised an eyebrow.

"We'll see who'z da toughest, den I'll decide!" He nodded sagely. 

“What if it's me?” I continued, a part of my mind wrestling my thoughts back into order as the raw Orkish emotions tried to bend them. It was so strange, yet simple. This strange effect was like a flame, needing fuel to burn. Or rather, the emotions coming through my empathy were the oil thrown on the embers of emotions I already had in me and turning those little flicks of flame into roaring infernos. The larger the embers, the larger the resulting flame. “What if you join me and I kill every other Ork on the ship? And just for the record, I will leave afterwards and leave you here. I won’t take an Ork with me where I’m going.”

"If ya leave me on da ship alone, den I'm da last Ork 'ere, meanin' I'm da biggest Ork and thus da boss." He said. "It'd take a bit to make new boyz, but in a bit we'd be back to headin' to a scrap."

“You could make new boys in this ship? Half destroyed as it is?”

"We'z Orks! We can make boyz outta scrap and spores! Dis ship's good enuff.” He gave me a strange look, like that much was obvious and he thought I was lacking in the brain department. An Ork thought me stupid. What a day. In the grimdark future of the 42nd millennium, each day is a mystery box of new and unexpected experiences. "Half-destroyed means half-built! Plenty of space for more boyz!"

I could see the flimsiest threads of logic there if I squint really hard and made sure to only use a single brain cell to think. Well, he does whatever makes him happy I guess. Unless he attacks me again or hurts Selene, he can live I guess. Could be fun to see what he’d get up to in the future with a crew of his own.

“What’s your name by the way?” I asked him offhandedly. “Mine’s Echidna, as of late.”

"Me name's Throgg." He nodded.

“No title yet? Or any fancy second name?” I asked curiously. I hardly remembered a single thing about Orks beyond the general stuff and things like their culture and naming conventions were well outside of my pool of knowledge. 

Throgg's eyes gleamed with a mixture of pride and anticipation. "Not yet, humie. But give it time. Soon I'll be Throgg da Skullkrumpa or Throgg da Warlord. Jus' need a few more good scraps to earn it proper-like." He grinned, revealing his sharp, yellowed teeth. "Or maybe sumthin' even better if I krump enough gits."

“You do you, big guy.” I shrugged and continued walking. Hallways, the bane of my existence. Why does every single building in this damned galaxy have to be some intricate maze of tight corridors and claustrophobia-inducing hallways? 

The only time I fought out in the open and not in a shitty tunnel like this one was back in the deserts of Baal, but even then I ended up battling the bugs down in that oversized anthill.

I’ll make sure any ships I make have nice big rooms where I can fight invaders freely. I thought, then slapped the malfunctioning ork-infected strand of thought into oblivion. My ships would be proper spaceships made for proper long-ranged void combat.

If the enemy can board me, I’d be seriously fucked by that point already. Though I suppose fate or whatever else is at play here might have other plans. What if it always makes sure braindead ramming and broadside barrages would always work? I’ll have to account for every possible scenario, especially adventure novel-worthy ones like a squad of Space Marines boarding my ship and blowing up its generator in a heroic sacrifice sorta way.

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t make sure I could blast any enemy into dust from beyond the galactic horizon with railguns or something like that. Take precautions, but hope for the best? Was that how the saying went? 

During the boring walk, I compiled a few dozen sketches for my future ship, one of which even graduated into the blueprint phase where my mind cores turned a shoddy mental illustration into a halfway workable framework.

Orks stumbled upon the happily humming me and the stomping Throgg just a minute later. The ten of them burst forth from a nearby room and threw themselves on us with little thought.

I didn’t back down, instead pouncing on them and slipping into their mist like a storm of metallic blades and whips. I used my speed and my slowly — painfully slowly — growing melee skills to eviscerate them. The large aliens had trouble doing much. The corridors were only about two Orks wide and there were ten of them.

They got in one or two good hits that had me healing up mulched organs as the blunt damage passed through the subdermal armour, but dicing up their lot took five minutes at most. It’s much easier when they don’t shoot exploding stuff at you.

I was breathing heavily as I observed the massacre. My head remained mostly clear throughout the fight. I could keep the cold and calculating side of me working even as the thrill of combat tried to ravage my mind. 

Getting better. I hummed, my gaze stopping on Throgg, a handful of large gashes seeping blood all over his body. He didn’t seem to care though as he jumped between the corpses and yanked their teeth out one after the other like a jittery schoolgirl. I suppose when I start acting like that is the point where I should consider a factory reset on my mind. 

I reviewed the battle, focusing on the moments I caught Throgg among the gaggle. A strike here, a few shots there. In all, I could attribute three of the ten corpses to his handiwork.

With a shrug, I sent a bolt of bio-energy at the large oaf, mending all his wounds before I set off again. He deserves that much for helping, even without prompting, I suppose. Let’s see how long he can stay alive.

******

The answer turned out to be more surprising than I initially thought. About two hours, and hundreds of dead Orks later, I watched on as a marginally larger Throgg blasted into a group of Orks on the side like a bulldozer. 

The cycle was simple. I fought, he fought along with me and I healed him up when he killed enough of our enemies to impress me. The bar was low, seeing as he was a grunt-level Ork, but again and again, he jumped over it effortlessly. Though he came close to dying about … 

[Answer: 98 times, 21 of which would have ended in his death only seconds later without your healing.]

I returned my focus to my own fight. We were in a much larger room, a hangar bay of sorts with smaller shoddy Orkish fighters around and an impressive amount of Orks gathered together. The reason for the latter stood before me: An Ork half again as tall as the rest.

He wasn’t the Warboss, I felt that one a few levels above me dancing around with Selene as Val’s presence watched over them. No, this one was the right hand at most, maybe a lesser commander. It’ll still be a sizable challenge in this body.

The Orks around us retreated and made a circle as I walked towards their boss, my slaughtering of a good tenth of their numbers in mere hours earning me that much respect from these blood-loving brutes. 

Unfortunately for the both of us, they would not be getting much of a fight. Selene was fighting the Warboss, and I really wanted to watch that instead of butting heads with this overgrown fungus. 

Which meant I’d be lifting my self-imposed handicaps to get this shit over with quickly. 

I didn’t change the necrodermis, but my eldritch tendrils, thinned to microscopic threads, reformed the bland human form surrounding it onto my trusty Psyker form — minus the Soulbone skeleton, but I wouldn’t be needing that to deal with a measly Ork.

“Sorry about this,” I said to the hulking behemoth as I stared into his one working eye. “But my girlfriend is fighting up above and I need to get going so I’ll make this quick.”

The Ork threw back his head and let out a booming laugh. "Hah! You'z got guts, humie! I likes dat! But if ya think ya can krump me quick, you'z in fer a good scrap! Let's see if ya'z tough enuff to save yer girl and walk away in one piece!"

He pounded on his chest with his massive fists like some gorilla, a move which was soon echoed by the Orks making up the circle surrounding us. A hundred fists thundered on Orkish chests in an echoing rhythm that would have got even a corpse’s blood boiling.

I felt my now much-enhanced heart beat out of rhythm, picking up pace as a grin tugged at my lips. Then I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the smell of blood, gore, and death, suffusing the entire room before letting it out in a huff.

Well, fuck. I’ll cheat then. I drew on my pool of soul energy, guiding the otherworldly power over my mind and letting it wash away my unwanted emotions. Being so close to so many fired-up Orks was proving to be a bit much to handle without a bit of cheating. Still, that I remained mostly clear-headed until now was a sign of my mental fortitude improving.

The next breath drew on bio-energy instead, collecting a glob of the energy in the base of my skull from the eldritch flesh residing within my skull. As I softly released the breath, the energy surged through my body and seeped into bones, muscles, and ligaments, empowering my body with strength, speed, and endurance.

My necrodermis arm, which had been replaced by a flesh and blood arm that was in no way inferior, split in two and formed into two sleek short swords which I gripped one of in each hand. 

“Do you have customs for how you start a duel?” I asked, tilting my head curiously as I watched the Ork’s muscles twitch this way and that. He was alert, muscles coiled and tightened to cords, ready to unleash his strength at a moment’s notice.

The Ork grinned, showing off a row of jagged teeth. "Heh, customs, ya say? Ain't much fer fancy stuff, but we got one rule: Start when yer ready to die!" He let out a deep rumbling chuckle, raising his massive axe-thing high. "I give da first hit, den we see who'z still standin'! Ready, humie? Let’s see if ya got da guts to face me!"

With that, the Ork lowered into a fighting stance, waiting for the slightest sign that the duel had begun.

Well, your loss mate. I shrugged inwardly as I watched his body moving in extremely slow motion. My body was the one that fought a Norn Emissary. Even if I wasn’t pushing it to the very limit like back then, the Ork was fucked in every single future I could predict. Let’s get this over with.

I moved, feet kicking off the ground with a simple flick that set my body into motion, racing through the air faster than most bullets. Then I was behind him. I didn’t slow even a bit as both of my swords flashed out, one piercing him through the skull and exiting through his mouth and the other going right through his heart.

I tore my swords to the sides, leaving the towering Ork with two wounds as lethal as a swim in the sun.

He stumbled, one foot stepping forward as his body swung around wildly. The axe thing tore through the air and flew at me with the force of a freight train, but I just held up one of my swords and dug my heels into the metal floor.

The floor tore up under my feet, unable to handle the force of the blow while my body held it effortlessly. His one eye stared at me, holding faint traces of life quickly disappearing, but in them, I only saw admiration as a last smirk graced his mouth before death finally claimed him.

As he fell, I stared in mild bewilderment. Mushed brain, a shredded heart, and a half-split skull, and he still forced out one final attack. He went down fighting, even against an opponent he had no hope of defeating. 

“Orks,” I murmured with a strange look. When the rest, the hundreds having made a circle around the two of us, broke out in cheers and screamed in joy at my victory, I just chuckled. “What a strange species.”

Then they rushed me.