The Marks of War

by DungeonMiner

Chapter IX

“Of all of the orkish vehicles, the so-called ‘Kroozer’ is perhaps the most dangerous.

“This is not because they have superior firepower, armor, or flight capabilities. Indeed such a thought is almost laughable were it not a blasphemy. Nay, but rather it is their gift for camouflage.

“While most ork vehicles are simply fragile salvage of our most venerable tanks and machines, most Kroozers are simply space hulks, captured and re-purposed for the foul work of these evil xenos.

“Little more than a floating mass of pitted rock and twisted metal, most ork Kroozers are easily mistaken for simply that, a harmless space hulk floating through the void. Yet report after report of our great, Imperial Navy facing surprise attacks and rams at every turn, has this disgusting mass of tech-heresy to blame.

“Thus I urge you, brothers and sisters of the Imperium, be ever vigilant in the far reaches of the void, and never let weariness force you to lower your guard. Never let a space hulk pass you by, for the bowles of it may contain the horrid taint of xenos, and if you turn your back to them, you may never have the honor to face the enemy of the Most Holy Emperor again.”

“Waaaaah!” The alarm sounded, and Scootaloo jumped to her hooves.

“Waaaaaah!” the gretchin continued to scream as it spun, strapped onto a red light, causing the room to flash red.

“Up and at’em, boyz!” she yelled as her three kommandos roused from their sleep.

Blooddagga was up first, grabbing his biggest stabby-choppa that he had, and holding his slugga at the ready. “Waaagh!” he roared.

“No lazin’!” Scoots yelled, before following Blooddagga out of the room.

She ran forward, through a massive corridor that had been cut through the otherwise labyrinthian corridors of the Kroozer.

She followed the corridor down to the bridge, with Hellspitta and Facehacka following close behind.

A hundred gretchin stood at half as many consoles, ordered by a few Mekboyz to keep them from blowing everything up. The bridge walls were covered in plasteel windows, most of which were actually covered by various rocks and walls of twisted metal. Those that remained open to the void of space, however, revealed the infinite depths being lit up by enormous explosions, and beyond those, a massive cathedral-shaped ship.

In the center of the bridge stood Nobgobba, a hulking ork only slightly smaller than Nabrot himself. Large, mechanized armor chugged and belched smoke as Nobgobba moved, and a massive, Big Choppa sat in his hand. “What’s goin’ on down dere?!” He roared, looking down a small catwalk balcony into the pit of consoles.

“We’z under attack, boss!” a Mekboy said, shouting over the sound of the grecthin siren.

“Ah can see dat, dum-dum!” Nobgobba yelled. “Who’z attackin’ us?”

“Itz da humies!” another Mekboy said, pointing at the ship outside the window.

“Da humies!?” Nobgobba yelled. “Don’t dey know who Ah am? I iz da chosen of Gork!”

“I thought it was Mork…” Scootaloo mumbled.

Nobgobba turned, and saw the three kommandos and their leader. “Whatcha doin’ here, Shootaloota?” he asked.

“Doing my job, whaddaya think, ya grot!” She said, as she walked up to the rail. “Oi! You! Spin us around!”

“Spin us around!?” Nogobba yelled. “We ain’t runnin’ nowhere!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Nobby,” she said. “Get the left and right big gunz on the line!”

A long pipe with a flared end was lowered down to the bridge floor by another team of gretchin. She grabbed it, and it sent a few of the small okanoids flying. “Alright boyz! Lissin’ up!” she said, yelling into the tube. “We have some humies that think they can out-fight an ork!”

She covered the flared tube and waited a moment. Sure enough, a large, rattling sound began to echo through hulk. She smirked. That got ‘em mad. She turned and gave Nobgobba a wink. “Are you gonna let that stand? Are you gonna let them say that?” she asked into the tube.

Another roar that caused the consoles in the bridge to rattle.

“So what does an ork do when Dakka isn't enough?” she asked.

Another, stronger rattle.

“What’s that? I can’t hear you!”

Another rattle, the words almost audible.

“One more time, boyz!”

“More Dakka!”

Scootaloo smiled as the ship began to turn, and then the entire port side opened fire, firing as much fully-automatic fire as it had.

Don’t ask how they got artillery cannons to have automatic fire. The Mekboyz aren’t even sure.

The hulk kept moving forward, now spinning as it flew forward in space towards their destination.

They had been flying through the warp for the past month and had even had a few tangles with a couple of daemons that had come on board. After a while, the looted warp engine in the hulk was beginning to die, so they had to exit and re-enter realspace.

They had come in about three weeks away from a new planet, which Nobgobba had decreed to be their new destination.

Of course, the inhabitants, watching their doom approach three weeks in advance, did not take kindly to this, and called for help.

And that help was now firing large artillery shells into the ork’s space hulk.

As the hulk kept spinning, its starboard side suddenly came into view. A salvo of heavy ordnance slammed into the imperial balustrade.

Scootaloo turned to Nobgobba as explosions ripped through the imperial battlecruiser. “Now do I have to keep going or are you going to do your job?”

Nobgobba snarled, and glared at her, even as the kommandos smirked and smiled at her. “Oi! You grots!” he yelled into the pit below the bridge, and a few of the mekboyz turned up to face him. “Don’t just stand dere! Charge ‘em!”

The Meks smiled. “Charge ‘em, boyz!”

The grots went crazy at the controls, smiling, hooting, and hollering as every gun on the ship continued to fire. The engines behind the massive space hulk ignited to full thrust, catching the spinning ship and forcing it forward at a diagonal, collision-course to the cruiser.

The Imperial Navy saw it coming a second too late. They tried to pull away, but even with every engine firing at full thrust, they couldn’t escape the massive, heavily armored-prow of the ork kroozer.

The two slammed into each other, the Imperial ship exploding as the plasma fusion-generators went critical, running down the length of the ship in massive, brilliant blue clouds as the reactors erupted.

And the gunz kept firing. They kept firing even as the massive hulk began to enter the atmosphere of the planet below. And they continued to fire as it crashed into the ground.

They just kept firing.

The crater from the falling ships stretched twenty-eight miles long, and twelve miles wide. It had plowed through half of the port city, destroying three major buildings and the port spire itself, leaving the only way to get from the upper atmosphere to the surface in any large capability on the other side of the planet.

It should go without saying that the orks had a field day.

A door had to be cut out of the side of the space hulk, and the surviving crew (which happened to be most of them, considering the armor on the hulk) quickly made their way into the city, shooting and looting to their heart’s desire.

Massive, exploding shells ripped through men and buildings alike, and the orks began their Waaagh! in earnest.

“Dese humies can’t foight!” Facehacka said, sighting a civilian through his scope and quickly ending his life with a burst of full-auto fire.

“They’re not the ones you need to worry about,” Scootaloo said, as she eyed the wreckage of the Imperial cruiser. “It’s the ones that have guns that you need to worry about.”

“So where are dey, den?” Blooddagga asked as they stood on a hill of rubble, watching the line of orks swarm forward, the burna boyz leading with their flamers.

“They’re coming,” Scootaloo said. “What I’m worried about are the ones behind us.”

“Be’ind us?” Hellspitta said, turning his underslung flamer on a pile of wood and books. “Whatz gonna happen be’ind us?”

Scootaloo checked the wreck behind them and frowned.

“Let’s find out, follow me, boyz.”

The three kommandos made their way through the imperial cruiser, with Scootaloo at their head. She switched the fire rate on her Kustom Shootas from “Dakka” to “More Dakka” as they got deeper into the ship with tighter and tighter fighting space.

They had broken in through a breach into the aft of the rear of the imperial ship and were slowly making their way to the back. The kommandos, their purple paint making them harder to see (somehow) began blurring into the walls and pipes that ran along the corridors, while Scootaloo’s mane and tail began hiding her head and hind legs. They stuck to the walls, their night vision goggles revealing the darkness beyond.

“‘Ey boss!” Facehacka said, in the ork equivalent of a whisper. “Ah’m seein’ sumfin’!”

“What?” she asked.

“It looks dead…” the kommando said as Blooddagga moved forward. The large ork nudged the thing with his foot, before turning it over. A withered, human shape with two white glass beads for eyes stared back at him. It’s mouth a metal grate and legs a clunky, wheeled stand.

The eyes lit up red, and its voice sounded in a klaxon. “Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Intruders detected on level 123/B! Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Intruders detected on level 123/B!”

Blooddagga silenced him with a knife wound to the chest and ripping through to its neck. “It’s one of the humies’ people-bots,” he said, as he lifted his head to check the corridor.

Scootaloo shivered. She hated those things.

“Sh. Lissen!” Facehacka said.

The four of them went quiet, and Scootaloo’s ears perked as she began to caught whispers and mutterings from down the hall.

Scootaloo smiled, the barest hints of fangs showing. “We’s got some humies to fight. Form up and follow me boys, stick to the shadows. We’s gonna have some fun.”

XCIX was a slave.

He had always been a slave, he was born one. He didn’t even have a proper name, just a number, ninety-nine. The ninety-ninth on-board birth that had survived to the age of twelve.

He was one of the thousands of slaves that had lived on the Ferrum Tumba, the exalted ship that had taken them across the galaxy. He was one of the proud members that would help load the ship’s massive guns. He and a hundred other slaves would run and work together to move the massive, car-sized shells into place.

And now, his whole life, his purpose, had become meaningless. He was born on this ship, he had lived on this ship, and he had planned to die on the ship. But now the ship had died before him, and he had nothing left.

The others, they had something. Almost forgotten memories of planets and homes they had lost. Even his parents had a home they could remember, but not XCIX. He had nothing.

That only made leading the small army of survivors slaves feel all the more alien. He held up a small autopistol, taken from the dead Gun captain in charge of his artillery weapon. “This way!” he shouted, his voice a whisper to his ears, made deaf by the report of the massive gun.

They pushed their way forward, moving through the familiar hallways of their ruined home. “Come on! We need to get out of here!”

The ship was dying. He could hear the machine spirit of the ancient vessel groan and whine in pain. Their home was about to die.

Leaving was their only chance.

“I don’t think you humies are going anywhere.”

XCIX looked up and saw a creature he had never seen before.

Scootaloo stood in the middle of the hallway, a smile on her face and the knuckles on one hoof out and ready.

The hall shook as a massive ork landed behind them, a flamer lit and ready to envelop them, and another ork stood behind them, seeming to materialize from out of the walls.

XCIX raised his autopistol, aiming directly for the orange xeno, only for a choppa blade to go straight through his arm.

XCIX screamed in pain as the massive knife blade almost removed his arm, and he found himself staring into the green face of death.

“Now, now…” Scoots said, “let’s not be hasty. It may surprise you after all, but we aren’t really interested in killing you. You’re not much of a fight, after all.”

XCIX dropped back, his arm ruined.

“No we’re here for something else. The gunz, specifically.”

“The guns?” XCIX asked, before using his free hand to stuff his mouth.

“You know the ones,” Scootaloo said with a smile. “The big ones, with the really big bullets. We want those.”

XCIX spat at her. “You’ll never take them from us.”

She shrugged. “Alright. If that’s what you want,” she said before stepping aside, “then go ahead and go.”

XCIX blinked, before looking back at the others.

The slaves all looked between themselves before looking to the orks, who, oddly enough seemed fine with letting the slaves go.

A few took a cautious step forward.

The orks did nothing.

Another step.

Still nothing.

They all made a break for it.

XCIX lead the pack, as they began running through the hall, away from the four aliens.

And then their world became awash with flame.

And so, XCIX, the man who was born as a slave and lived as a slave, died as a slave.

“Waaaaaagh!” Nobgobba cried as he led his orks forward.

Bolts of lightning shot from the staves of weirdboyz and as gouts of flame shot from the flamers of the Burnaboyz. Shootaboyz fired their shootas, picking their targets and striking true.

Or missing.

Mostly missing.

Luckily the Flashgitz, the orks with the biggest, baddest, most expensive guns covered the area in so much heavy suppressing fire that the human Planetary Defense Force couldn’t even poke their heads out of cover to get a shot in.

And this gave the Sluggaboyz, the ork forces armed with small sluggas and much larger choppas, all the opportunity they needed to get in close.

A heavily armored Nob pushed forward, his power Klaw humming with electricity as he brought it down on the PDF ranks, ripping through the human’s armor as though it wasn’t even there.

“Dat’s it boyz! We’z got ‘em on da run now!” Nobgobba laughed.

A team of grots moved forward, dragging a cannon-sized gun behind them. It took a moment, just a moment to get it set up, before the grots fired, launching an angry red beam down to the PDF line, and shocking the Zzap gun operator within an inch of his life.

The Meks began to move forward, guns firing and buzzsaws spinning, and Nobgobba could hear the cries of fear at the sight of them.

He laughed.

This was a good day. “For da glory of Gork!” he cried, standing atop a collapsed, ruined building.

Suddenly, a massive explosion shook the world, and Nogobba looked up to see a wave of incoming armor.

Tanks upon tanks came rolling in on the horizon, and a few mortar artillery vehicles were firing down at the line of orks.

Nobgobba smirked. “Finally a good fioght! Let’s get ‘em boyz!”

Another explosion rocked the ground, killing hundreds of orks with a single strike.

But Nobgobba wasn’t worried.

He had the blessing of Mork.

Nothing could stop him.

Scootaloo and the kommandos finally found their target. A fully functional, and loaded, Stygies Pattern Bombardment Cannon. A weapon capable of leveling planetary defenses from space.

The hulk had a couple, but they didn’t work properly, and they had maybe one shell.

But this…

This was going to be fun.

“Facehacka!” Scootaloo ordered. “Open up a window for us.”

“Youz got it boss!” he said, as he began to climb the wall up to the end of the cannon and began ripping into the metal with one of his many choppas.

“So whadda we doin’ boss?” Hellspitta asked.

“What? Don’t you want to shoot this gun?” she asked.

Hellspitta looked at the gun, then nodded. “Ya got a point dere, Boss.”

“And besides,” Scootaloo said, “if we shoot it, then they can’t.”

“Wow, Boss. Dat’s cunnin’,” Bloodagga said.

“An’ its just in tiome! Facehacka said. “We’z got a buncha humies in tanks comin’ dis way!”

Scootaloo smiled. “Facehacka, point us in the right direction! Blooddagga, Hellspitta, help me shoot this thing! Alright boyz, let’s have some fun!”

Commissar Julius Nepos Ertelt stood proud in the hatch of his Leman Russ tank. He gave a wolfish smile as he watched the green tide fall under his perfectly executed killing field, and took great pride in the thought that these horridly stupid creatures could not even begin to comprehend what had just happened to them.

These brain-dead creatures were beneath him. They were brute force without any sort of tactical sense, and far too easy to manipulate. All it had taken was one hundred men of the PDF to lure these monsters forward to their death at his hand.

Their sacrifice would be remembered.

The killing field was a stroke of genius if he did say so himself. With the Costea 301st’s fourth company focus on artillery, it was almost the obvious thing to do when dealing with this xeno scum.

Of course, he did not mention that to General Clementina Hussian when he pointed out its strategic value. She took his suggestion readily, and, if this went well, Julius might be finding himself promoted to Captain-Commissar, with an actual rank to add to his title.

“Yes…” he thought, his thoughts interrupted by the earth-shaking thundering of the Vanaheim Pattern Basilisk Artillery Guns that blew the ork line to pieces. “This will prove most beneficial to my career.”

The Basilisks, almost ten miles away, sounded blast after blast as they fired, echoing in the commissar’s ears as they fired their 84-pound shells at the stupid, and hopelessly moronic orks below.

“They’ll murder themselves before they crest the hill,” he said to himself with a smirk.

Yes, with only a hundred deaths, this battle would be considered one of the most successful defenses in the history of the Imperium. His career was secured for the next century at least.

He sipped at his flask of Amasec. An early victory celebration for himself. He had earned it after all.

Then the earth quaked, and his tank nearly capsized.

He glanced up, and just barely caught the sight of a trail of light disappearing into the sky.

“W-what was that?!” he wondered. “Wa-was that from the wreckage?! Did they just fire one of the ship's guns?! But-but they’re orks! They’re too dumb to work—!”

And then the world exploded into light, sound, and heat.

Scootaloo, Blooddagga, Facehacka, and Hellspitta all wandered out of the wreckage of the imperial ship. Their ears had been ringing ever since they had woken up in the ruins of the cruiser about twenty minutes ago, and they all had the biggest smiles on their face as they made their way out.

Firing that gun was the best decision she had ever made.

Even if the actual atmosphere made the gun louder and more deadly in terms of concussive air pressure.

Blooddagga said something that Scootaloo didn’t hear, but probably went along the lines of “Dat was da best fing evah!”

She kept smiling as she began walking down to the orky hut that had apparently been erected while they were out cold.

A picket line saw her and began waving her down.

“What!? I can’t hear you!” she yelled.

One of the orks began running up to her, his mouth moving.

“What!?” she shouted.

He got up close, speaking again.

“I seriously can’t hear you!” she said.

The ork blinked, before reaching into his belt and pulling out some squig hide parchment. He quickly wrote something down before handing it to Scoots.

“Shootaloota,” it read.

“Da Boss sayz dat if ya lived he wanted ta say dat ya did a good job. Got dose humies running scared. He sayz ta keep it up.”

Scootaloo smiled. “That’s more like it. Getting paid to have some fun.” She looked back up at the messenger and yelled. “Tell Nobgobba I plan on it!”

“Be courageous and bold, be humble before your masters, lead with valor! These things above all others will be of use when your time comes to die.” —Imperial Thought of the Day

Alright, guys! Next time we’re back with Apple Bloom and the Blood Ravens. I hope you guys enjoyed this one though.

“You have too much fun with the orks sometimes, don’t you?”

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Breaking the laws of physics and logic aren’t that fun...

“Sure. I believe that.”

Oh hush.

“Anyways, we’ll see you guys next time, alright?”

Bye!