Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Goldtooth felt he had never been in such a sorry state.

The black tinned shrimpies behind him were like greenskins whose teeth had been stolen, howling something about the Emperor as they hunted down the already gravely wounded Ork warlord. No matter how many of his boyz Goldtooth sent to bar their way, they would not retreat one step.

What in the world had set them off like this? It wasn't as if he'd stolen anything of theirs!

Gasping for breath, he pitched headlong onto the mad doctor's table. He could still hear the slaughter-cries of the shrimpies not far off, and the rumbling boom of cannon fire coming from the lower deck.

Sounds like that made him all the more irritable.

It was this very cannon fire that had lured away every one of his boyz who wanted a scrap! Now he barely had any boyz left to order around!

"Quick!" he barked hurriedly at the doctor. "Patch me up, now!"

The Painboss took a great chainsaw and split Goldtooth's belly open then and there. Goldtooth couldn't even feel any pain in his body, and the doctor only shook his head.

"Boss, I reckon ya'd best start sortin' out yer funeral arrangements early."

"Impossible!" Goldtooth roared, but his voice already sounded exceedingly feeble: "I'm the Chosen of Gork and Mork, the two brothers! How could I possibly die here?!"

He seized the Ork doctor in one hand: "There's no way ya can't have a fix! I want ya to reckon out a way, no matter what! Whatever it takes, there's gotta be a way! If ya can't reckon one out, then I'll use my way to send ya off to meet Gork and Mork!"

This was perhaps the most imposing case of medical extortion ever. The greenskin doc, with no choice, could only carry on operating on Goldtooth. But faced with Goldtooth's innards, already smashed into a pulpy mush, and half a cerebellum gone missing, he too was at his wit's end.

The shattered bones he could still reckon on fitting with a metal plate or two as prosthetics—but the stuff inside, what was he supposed to do about that?

He could only call in a weird boy to help him reckon it out together, but the moment this weird boy stepped in, his eyes began to roll back white. Green psychic energy rippled around him—plainly, he'd been possessed by something once again.

"Goldtooth." The Priest's presence came through the weird boy: "Looks like those shrimpies gave you a nasty drubbing?"

"That was the shrimpies pullin' a sneak attack! Ya said with yer own mouth that I'm the Chosen of Gork and Mork, the two brothers—now ya've gotta help me out!"

"I will, so long as you can meet my conditions."

"What right d'ya have to bargain terms with me?!"

"I mean to use the power of Gork and Mork, the two brothers, to save you—so this is the demand of Gork and Mork as well!"

"Uh..." Recalling that the other seemed able to commune with Gork and Mork, the two brothers, Goldtooth's tone softened a few degrees: "What do Gork and Mork want me to do?"

"Once the operation is done, you must go to the very bottom and tie down those shrimpies who are trying to leave."

"I wanna chop up the shrimpies chasin' me first!"

"Then Brother Mork won't provide the inspiration to save you!"

In the end Goldtooth could only submit. Squeezing his eyes shut, he hollered: "Whatever trick'll bring me back to life, throw the whole lot of it at me!"

The Priest nodded with satisfaction. He manipulated the weird boy to unleash psychic power, and a vast waaagh energy gathered upon the weird boy.

Only—why was there a faint tinge of blue within that green light?

But the Ork weird-doc and Goldtooth plainly cared nothing for that hint of blue light. As the weird boy shrieked in agony, a great quantity of the power of 'I reckon' was ceded over to the weird-doc.

In an instant all manner of mad inspirations burst forth at once within the weird-doc's mind. Battered by the flood of knowledge, his eyes too rolled white, yet his hand, of its own accord, took up a surgical knife that looked like a kitchen cleaver.

As a heap of water pumps and bioreactors clanked and churned, he poured all sorts of bizarre fluids willy-nilly into a Squig used as an IV bottle, then set up a drip for Goldtooth as though filling a water bottle.

After that, he hollowed out Goldtooth's innards, dragged over three boyz, stripped two hearts and three livers from their bodies, and crammed them all in in one go.

With the innards sorted, he recalled that he ought to add some thingamajig called black carapace or some such, but since he had no idea what that was, he simply found a couple of adamantium armour plates from the ship and stitched them straight in.

As for that missing half a cerebellum, the weird-doc thought it over, and simply snatched up the living Squig perched on the boss's shoulder and stuffed it in to fill the gap in his head.

Seemed like he'd done a pretty good job of it.

Satisfied, he began stitching the boss's body back up, and the power of 'I reckon' upon him was gradually ceded over to Goldtooth. The eyes-closed Goldtooth felt as though he could see Brother Gork bellowing waaaagh at him—but on the other side, Brother Mork...

What did it mean, that everything was going according to plan?

The blue psychic energy twisted left and right inside Goldtooth's body, yet could never find a way in.

Goldtooth found this thing terribly annoying. But the very instant that thought was born, he saw Brother Gork raise his palm, and that blue Brother Mork was sent spinning across the ground by that one slap, scattering bird-feathers all over the floor.

Something about this seemed a bit off, but Goldtooth's body had, in solid fact, recovered. Lively and spry, he sprang down from the table and let out a thunderous, full-throated roar.

"I'm gonna go grind that pack of shrimpies to bits right now!"

"Don't forget your promise."

The Priest, still manipulating the weird boy, reminded him: "I've already done away with one of the shrimpies' big ships, and it's drawing near to your side now. When the time comes, I'll block them from outside while you attack them from the ground—understand my meaning?"

"What's there not to understand? Ya block 'em outside, an' I give their backsides a good hard kick from inside! The two of us workin' together, just like Brother Gork an' Brother Mork!"

Goldtooth gave a sly chuckle: "Ya may be small in size, lad, but yer help to me ain't small at all. When I become the great warlord, I'll make ya my second-in-command for sure!"

"I'll look forward to it..."

The Priest's words carried a deeper meaning, but Goldtooth tasted nothing of it within them. He was still excitedly savoring the throb of his two hearts and three lungs, and the power surging ceaselessly out of his body made him howl up at the heavens.

"Waaaagh!!!"

This howl was like an intangible signal; even though, on the purely physical level, none of them had actually heard the warlord's war-cry, every greenskin aboard the entire battleship was already stirred into a frenzy by it.

But those a little closer—such as the Black Templars squad hunting the warlord—they had, in solid fact, heard this war-cry.

"That's a din only an Ork warlord could make." The Apothecary accompanying the squad was quite certain.

"The source is some three hundred metres off, with a trace psychic reading."

The tech-sergeant, gripping a specially-made augur, reported to Bohemond: "The decibels are very high—it doesn't sound like something a gravely wounded Ork warlord could produce."

Could he have already recovered? In so short a span of time?

Every warrior thought of this, but by tacit understanding none of them mentioned it. This expedition was to reclaim the Black Sword; no matter what obstacle they faced, they could not flinch.

The honour that only the Emperor's Champion may hold cannot be defiled by filthy xenos!

As for why they were chasing the warlord?

Even if he wasn't the one who stole it, giving him a beating certainly couldn't be wrong!

Problems divide into those that can be solved through fighting and those that cannot, but so long as the means are right, most problems that cannot be solved through combat can likewise be converted into problems that can be solved through combat.

This was the Black Templars' way of thinking. Perhaps in this respect they had a fair amount in common with the greenskins.

Of course, in battle they were rather more cunning than most Orks.

Bohemond made the gesture for a stealthy advance, and the other warriors understood at once. In their search for the Black Sword, they had already slaughtered the scant few greenskin boyz here. Now the warship's corridors were almost free of obstruction, and they could indeed manage to advance under cover.

Supporting one another front and rear in battle formation, they swiftly rushed toward the corridor from which the roar had issued. At the corridor's end was a gloomy compartment; the compartment stood open, and three Ork corpses with their innards gouged out had been flung outside it.

A Black Templars warrior hurled a grenade inside, and Lancelot, together with another brother, volunteered to charge in at the very front.

Timing the instant after the grenade's blast, they slipped into the chamber and unleashed a merciless saturating barrage across the room with their bolters.

But all that greeted them was Goldtooth's excited bellow.

"Ya've been had, shrimpies!"

The bolters had indeed struck him, but beneath his split-open flesh was revealed an adamantium armour plate. The bolts clanged and rattled against it, unable to punch through; instead it was the weird boy held in Goldtooth's hand who came to grief.

As the Priest withdrew from the weird boy's body, the weird boy slumped limp, eyes rolled white—plainly burnt into an idiot by the enormous sum of the power of 'I reckon' from before.

But that power of 'I reckon' still lingered as a residue within the weird boy's body. Goldtooth hefted the weird boy, weighing him in his hand, and reckoned this thing wasn't half bad.

I reckon he can be used as a bomb!

The bolts tore apart the weird boy's body, and also destroyed the vessel storing the waaagh energy. The residual power of 'I reckon', losing its bindings, began to swell rapidly, and even though he had already become an idiot, the weird boy still opened his mouth and shrieked in agony.

He made no sound, because this shriek was on the level of the soul; the green power of 'I reckon', like a tidal wave, washed over every warrior present.

Every Black Templars warrior felt a violent stab of headache, as though their brains were being pierced through by countless steel needles all at once.

Their movements visibly stalled, and this reaction was led by Lancelot, who had charged at the very front; a powerful surge of nausea forced him to his knees, and as he vainly tried to grip his weapon, he found that his fingers could no longer line up with the trigger.

This was the psychic attack the Black Templars loathed most!

Most terrifying of all, this psychic attack didn't even distinguish friend from foe!

The greenskins suffered no effect whatsoever under this psychic attack; the power of 'I reckon' that washed over them would only make them more excited.

The Ork warlord, cackling wildly, tossed aside the weird boy that had burst open like a flower in his hand. With a casual swipe he knocked down the two tinned shrimpies charging at the very front, and—adamantium armour plates built into him—he barreled toward the doorway like a dump truck.

The only one still clear-headed was High Marshal Bohemond, whose arcane defensive circuits on his armour had cancelled out most of the psychic shock. The High Marshal's sword in his hand also forcibly compelled him to stay lucid.

He swung his blade to bar Goldtooth's way, but the reborn Goldtooth no longer cared about this opponent who had earlier nearly been beaten to his knees by him. He didn't even bother to answer the High Marshal's attack, and simply let the High Marshal's sword hack down upon his body.

The Power Sword sliced open the Ork's flesh, but Bohemond didn't even see any blood—it left only a shallow sword-scar upon the adamantium plate.

This sensation left Goldtooth intoxicated.

As a fellow with a grand plan, he was no longer in any hurry to defeat these shrimpies outright.

"I'm headin' to the lower deck." A cruel light glinted in his eyes as he smugly proclaimed his purpose to all: "By then not one of you shrimpies'll get away—the whole lot of ya'll stay on my ship an' play a nice round of beasts-catchin'-shrimpies with me, yoshi!"

He lingered no longer, smashing his way out of the place all along the route. He left behind only an Ork weird-doc still capering and waving his arms about over there.

"A masterpiece….! Under the guidance of the second brother, my most perfect masterpiece!"

"Bang!"

Bohemond, his face cold, gunned down the weird-doc, and the Astartes around him slowly regained their lucidity as well.

"Stop standing there dazed—keep chasing!"

At the High Marshal's command, the party once again wheeled about and continued their pursuit of that inexplicably enhanced Ork warlord.

Having set out on the chase with a resolve to die, by sheer crossed-wire chance they actually circled all the way back to the lower deck that served as the extraction point. Only, the present situation was already far from optimistic.

If they couldn't deal with that Ork warlord, they might all have to die here!

The gun-ports of the lower deck had already been seized by Admidel and his party.

Although Orks were still surging endlessly toward this place, the narrowness of the warship's passages had already limited the number of Orks that could pour in at any one time, and with two tanks holding these key chokepoints, no matter how many boyz poured in, they could rout them all.

But the greenskins, born for war, would not flinch on account of death; on the contrary, their mental state grew all the more fanatical.

Every boy pressed forward over the fallen, charging in howling to their deaths. The greenskins' corpses piled up layer upon layer, and astonishingly really did form a wall of flesh and blood that not even the 180mm high-explosive shells could punch through.

The shield-bearing Second Legion warriors held the very front; in their other hand they carried spears or swords, forming the first line of defense against the greenskin onslaught.

"How much longer can you hold out?" Admidel, organizing the extraction at the rear, called out loudly.

"The pressure's not great! We can hold until the extraction is complete!"

Dimius Gale answered. This Second Legion warrior gripped an experimental cannon-gun that Lin had only recently knocked together. Using the gun as a staff, he swept it across in a wide arc, clearing out a stretch of space. Then he thrust his body forward in a straight stab, hoisting an Ork boss amid the horde high into the air.

The boss struggled in a panic, trying to wrench himself free of the spear-tip that had pierced through him.

But Gale gave him no such chance. He twisted the knob on the gun's grip, and a searing directed beam of thermal energy instantly scoured the Ork boss into a charred black fragment. This surging energy even pierced clean through the boss's chest, felling a great swath of Orks behind him.

—Combining a melta weapon with a cannon-gun: this was the new line of thinking Lin had worked out for individual infantry weapons after restoring part of the melta production on Cath Maximus. The pity was that its ammunition capacity wasn't very large, and only seasoned warriors could make every single shot deliver its maximum effect.

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