Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

200 – Who’s the Boss Now?

The answer for my previous question of ‘How many Orks do I need to slaughter for them to get bored with it? Turned out to be ‘about two-thirds of them’.

They seemed like they were ready to pull back after a third of them got brutally murdered without a single scratch on me to show for it, but then one of them pulled out some fucky Weirded gun and shot me with it. 

The gun tried to … teleport my head off my shoulders. 

It failed, my immensely psychoactive body that I filled to the brim with soul-energy the moment I felt the attack coming resisted it well enough. Sadly, the moment it had to try to tear my head off my shoulder while I wasn’t empowered with my psychic power was enough to give me the mother of all headaches. 

It took me all of half a second to banish it, healing it and nullifying the phantom pain away was easy enough. But it was too late.

The Orks smelled weakness; they had seen me stumble and groan in pain as I grabbed my temples. Like sharks smelling blood in the water, their fleeting bloodlust returned in full force and they seemed intent on burying me under a tide of green bodies if that was what it took to take me down. 

I was annoyed, frustrated that I had let a simple Ork with a toy hurt me, so I was only too happy to work those frustrations out by tearing a few more hundred Orks to shreds. 

They had tried the same trick again, other Orks wielding similar ‘enchanted’ weapons, but I was ready this time and didn’t actually just look into the open barrel curiously as they pulled the trigger. Avoiding them was easy enough, and I had a wash of soul energy bundled up in my body, ready to tear apart any opposing psychic attacks that sought to harm my body. 

Finally, they pulled back, though they didn’t leave entirely. A half-circle of Orks formed around me, their shoddy weaponry bared and ready, but I didn’t advance for a change. I stood there, sword lodged into the earth before me and my palms resting on its pommel as I waited for what I knew was coming. Just to keep them on their toes, I kept my floating hands summoned and had them circling me lazily. 

I cut for quite the awesome figure, like a holy paladin of light coming to deliver my righteous judgement on these savages. I’d only need to start shouting stuff like ‘BEHOLD THE LIGHT’S JUDGEMENT!’ and the picture would be perfect. 

They hadn’t managed to pierce my armour even once aside from that one Weird gun, but that didn't say much. Their weapons were not on the regular tech level, but more along the lines of shoddy hand-cannons, muskets and machetes. 

I had calibrated the strength of my armour just so it would withstand this level of firepower but not the Tau’s pulse weaponry. Again, I wanted to be seen as powerful but manageable, not as a threat. 

The mass of Orks right ahead split, giving way to a towering greenskin covered in scars and corded muscles. He would have barely reached up to Throgg’s shoulder even if he stood on the tops of his toes, but he still stood a head taller than the rest of this rabble.

The Warboss of this tribe — because that’s the only thing I could call them — finally made an appearance. He wielded an oversized machete in one hand that had serrated teeth instead of a proper edge while the other hand had been replaced by a metal prosthetic. A smaller hand-cannon and a claw in one, more surprisingly, the Warp and the power of this miniature WAAAGH! infused the prosthetic and coursed through the rest of the large Ork’s body.

If I was lucky, that thing was at least as powerful as some of the worst power-claws and would be enough to show the Tau that my armour was not impregnable. 

The Ork seemed ready to charge me, savage lust for battle and blood gleaming in his eyes as his chest swelled at the rest of his tribe chanting and cheering at him. 

“You will die here Ork,” I said, and like always they understood my words. I didn’t know how that worked, I was pretty sure I was not speaking Orkish, but they always understood me. Necrons, Orks, Humans and Eldar. Everyone understood me. 

I just wrote it off as another power I couldn’t understand and gave it the most ostentatious name I could: Allspeak.

To be understood by every sentient creature and understand them in turn. Quite the power, even if it paled in comparison to my other ones.

“I’LL RIP YER GUTS OUT AN’ TIE YER ROTTIN’ CORPSE TO DA TOTEM WIV ‘EM, HUMIE!” He responded without even a momentary surprise at a human speaking his tongue. I suppose Orks didn’t allow themselves to get stuck on meaningless things. Damn, that’s … a better quip than mine. 

“I’d like to see you try,” I said evenly, pulling my conjured sword out of the ground. Next, I made the armour around me swell in size until I could look the Warboss in the eye without having to tilt my head. 

His eyes widened, his primitive brain likely making the complicated logical leap of ‘humie bigger, humie stronger’ and ‘humie as big as me, humie pretty strong’.

He roared and charged, machete raised and metallic arm levelled at me as fire bloomed into existence in the depths of its barrel that extended from the middle of the palm. Curious design.

I dodged to the side, though only far enough that when the weapon spat out a glob of plasma it nicked my shoulder. It tore away a head sized chunk of my armour but only the heat reached my skin, which I easily converted into bio-energy and absorbed. My skin still might not be as effective as proper composite carapace armour, but I had infused it with some of its properties.

The properties of the enhanced Ambull carapace among them, though it didn’t work as well on soft skin as it did on hard carapace. Oh well, it just meant I shouldn’t be taking lava baths naked. This much heat was nothing.

The Warboss reached me and swung his machete, which I decided to parry with my own sword. He was strong, but not stronger than me, even in my current nerfed self.

When he noticed that he was not winning a contest of pure strength, his claw snapped out with its tips aimed to skewer the body hiding beneath this armour of light. I parried it with a forearm, but the claws were sharp and the cut deep, rending skin and flesh beneath inches of conjured armour. 

I grunted in apparent ‘pain’ as blood flew through the air, drawing a dramatic crescent as it flew while my forearm hung limp. The Ork grinned, tightening his claws and I only had just enough time to get my arm out of his grasp in the nick of time. I peered at him, but my ears were on the conversation of my Tau onlookers, who I was primarily putting this show on. 

“The hard-light armour’s integrity and defensive capabilities seems lesser than standard Space Marine Power Armour, but it might be on the same level as the average Battle-Suit.”

“It enhances her strength to superhuman levels, her speed rivals that of Space Marines and her resilience does too. A Tau would have lost an arm from parrying that last attack with their forearms.”

“The conjured weaponry seems potent, though its powers seems to lay more in its versatility and maneuverability than sheer power. Orks aren’t the toughest things to cut up like that, a molecular blade could probably manage the same.”

“Should we assist her? It does not seem like she’ll be able to handle the big one.”

“No,” Aun’Saal said, finally answering his chattering guards. “Observe for now. I see no hesitance or fear in her posture. She has more tricks up her sleeve yet, ones that lend her enough confidence to face that creature without fear.”

Just what I was hoping for. I grinned, making a conscious effort to keep pretending like my left arm was disabled and still injured. I had to consciously turn a chunk of my flesh to regular human tissue to allow that claw to even just scratch my skin, and healing it afterwards barely took a thought. At least the armour keeps it concealed, so I don’t have to leave it bleeding.

I jumped back, tearing my blade from the lock it had with the machete as I called a pair of my idly circling light-hands to me. They came with fingers spread and ending in those wicked claws, which I aimed at the Ork’s neck and knee as he moved to follow my retreat. One moment he seemed gleeful at his impending victory, machete raised high for a powerful rending strike that would have split a human in half, then his face morph in shock. He tried to dodge, some instinct likely screaming at him to do so, but he only managed to twist his body enough to avoid getting his leg torn off and neck torn open. 

I could have corrected the flying hands’ flight, but I didn’t and left them on their previous trajectory, which still had them tearing bloody chunks out of the Ork. Three deep gashes ran horizontally on his left thigh while a long and deep wound went from shoulder to hip on his chest. 

With a twist of my wrist, I called the two hands back and hand them float about my shoulders.

The Ork looked on warily, not attempting to counterattack, and he eyed the two clawed hands of light. His gaze went from the two, to the deep wounds on his body, then to the other ten conjured hands still circling us, daring the other Orks to interrupt our duel. 

“Not so confident now, are we?” I asked and didn’t even try to conceal my dark amusement. 

“Reevaluate the potency of those weapons!” One of the Tau barked back on the shuttle, and another answered calmly. “Impossible to tell with the only victims of it being Orks. Their toughness does not seem to follow conventional science, and it cannot be measured from this distance.”

Keep guessing. 

"Yer pretty stompy fer a humie,” the Ork said, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders in a needless show of trying to make it look like only now was he going to take our fight seriously. “But yer weedy magiks ain’t gonna save ya from me choppa! I’ll gut ya, nick yer flyin’ cart, bash it up fer bitz, an’ make proppa dakka outta it! Den dem puny gitz in da nearby tribes won’t stand a chance ‘gainst da might o’ me Tribe!”

“So there are others … free spirited ‘tribes’ like yours around?” I asked conversationally, standing with a relaxed posture with my sword held in a loose grip. “I had been under the impression this planet was under the control of a Warboss named Throgg. Did you somehow manage to kill him?”

“Nah, Throgg’s too big ta get squished, but ‘e’s weak in da spirit! I heard of ‘im grovelin’ like a runt to some puny humie, callin’ ‘em ‘boss’!” He sniffed in disgust, spitting to the side as he drew in a deep breath. “WOT A JOKE! Ain’t no proppa Ork gonna follow a snivellin’ git like dat, so we left ta find a real scrap! Maybe after I krump you an’ nick yer shiny bitz, I’LL be da one ta bash da Tribes together an’ show dat weakling ‘ow it’s done!”

That fungal idiot. He didn’t say a damned thing about losing control of so many damned Orks! Did he think I wouldn’t find out? … Or is he plotting something to save himself from punishment, thinking I’d kill his for this failure?

That was a mystery for later though, and the only thing I bothered to make sure of at the moment was that there was not a single space-capable Ork construction on the planet. There was nothing even close, though it seemed like some of the disparate tribes were trying their damndest to scrap together something space worthy.

Not that I thought any of them would succeed anytime soon, but I didn’t want to give Orkish fate-bending bullshit a chance to work its magic, so I had few mind-cores get to work. In a few hours, all the settlements where they were trying to build spaceships would fall under a tide of vicious wildlife. For some of the bigger camps, I even roused a few of my Dragons and had them tunneling up to the surface with a tidal-wave of magma following in their wake. 

I hadn’t given many orders to Throgg, but two of those few were ‘keep them under some semblance of control’ and ‘don’t build anything space-capable or powerful enough to make trouble for my capital’. 

That was a two out of two fuck-up on the big green fucker’s part. Maybe he was right to fear my punishment, if that was truly why he’d conveniently forgotten to report this to me. This was not on me this time. I had given clear orders and didn’t just expect Throgg to figure out what I’d wanted. That probably had to do with how I expected Valenith to be smart enough to do so, while Throgg … well, he was an Ork. There were no such expectations.

Seeing me momentarily distracted, the Ork Boss charged with a bellowing roar that would have given away his ‘ambush’ either way. I suppose he hoped to frighten me into stillness for long enough to cleave my head in two.

I sidestepped the simple overhead slash, letting the blade pass by the chest of my armour by mere inches. I spun about, and countered with a backhanded swing, my hissing blade of light digging deep into his metallic arm. The floating hand over my shoulder rushed down, melding into my gauntlet and then forming a long spike at the end of my fist, which I drove into the Ork’s gut. 

The gut-punch made him gasp, the breath knocked out of his lungs and forcing him back a step. The pike had been smooth and simple, just a conical construct of psychic power but now I grew dozens of curling, serrated teeth along its length just before I tore it out while twisting my wrist for added effect. 

His intestines followed my fist out of his body, along with a spurt of oily blood. 

"But da arm... I broke it. ’Ow?!” He grunted in pain, his pair of quickly reddening eyes focused on the previously limp arm I’d used in disbelief. Before I could make some dramatic quip, he roared again, his voice filled with pain, rage and defiance. He practically fell on me with claw and sword slashing wildly, knowing he was dead already but wanting to make me pay before he truly perished. 

"Oi, DIE, HUMIE! I’LL SEND YA TA GORK AN’ MORK BEFORE I GO DOWN!"

Spittly flying everywhere and green muscles bulging beyond belief, he struck out, and I backpedalled in apparent panic. I kept my blade close to my body, even pulling my circling hands back and used everything to defend myself from his wild flurry of attacks falling on me from all sides. 

I kept myself defensive, not attacking once despite seeing many opportunities. People usually couldn’t think entirely tactically while busy trying to survive a berserk Ork Boss, and I wanted to make it known I was no different. I was no tranquil Ethereal who could remain calm even in the centre of a chaotic battlefield. 

It took half a minute for the play to come to an end. For the last ten seconds, the strikes had been losing power, the gap between them growing and the Ork’s breathing growing more and more ragged.

Finally, his arms wouldn’t obey him, leaving him standing there on trembling legs with arms hanging limply by his side as his guts and blood poured out of his stomach. He glared at me hatefully, rage still burning in his eyes but now dimmed by weariness. 

"Can’t believe … I’z gonna get krumped by a … humie..."

His machete slipped from his grasp, his eyes went distant, glassy and then he tilted forward. The dead body of the towering Ork Boss hit the earth with a heavy thud, kicking up dust as it landed and leaving behind a thick silence. His tribe watched on in shock, mouth hanging open and eyes wide as I stood above their fallen leader. 

Well, that was kinda fun. I thought, then hopped onto the Ork’s back and slowly looked around at the circle of Orks. “Any of you fuckwits wants to try me too? If not, then I am your new boss and you will gather your heavy green asses and haul them back over to Throgg. I will be hearing any objections you might have now.”

That said, I flicked my sword, making it hiss loudly as it burned the very air around it. Hopefully, that made it very clear what I’d do to anyone who had objections; humans might work reasonably well in a sham democracy, but Orks did not. The only way they would behave was when they knew their place firmly under my boot and were crushed under my heel. 

I wonder what is going through those silly Taus’ heads right about now. They had been awfully quiet during my duel.