Grabba Hatemoof
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"The Orks are the pinnacle of creation. For them, the great struggle is won. They have evolved a society which knows no stress or angst. Who are we to judge them? We Eldar who have failed, or the Humans, on the road to ruin in their turn? And why? Because we sought answers to questions that an Ork wouldn't even bother to ask! We see a culture that is strong and despise it as crude."
-From Culture vs. Kultur: Thoughts on Orkish Society by Uthan the Perverse, a controversial Eldar Philosopher
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Private First Grade Orton Redpath was asleep when the alarm siren sounded. He startled and sat up. The siren wailed and yellow hazard lights flared. The barrack-sergeant hustled into the dormitory, wearing only his boots, hat, Guard issue underpants. He started yelling at the top of his ample voice. "This is not a drill! Move it! Move it!"
Redpath was not worried. The bunk-sarge always yelled the same thing. Also, they ran quick-reaction training every ten-days, so this was not unexpected. By now, he knew where he had to go, and how long it would take him. He yawned and swung his legs out of the bed. The others in the barracks did the same, while they moved quickly, no one rushed.
Why would they? Durram was nothing. About as common a world as you find in the Imperium.
He yawned again and pulled on his boots and loosely tied them, then trotted over to the row of tall lockers. He turned the handle and pulled out his trousers and shirt. He took hold of his lasgun, and grabbed his flak vest. It was heavy, and smelled funny, like old cheese. After a moment, he returned the body armor to the locker. He did not want to put it on, only to wear its twenty-two kilos of weight for a mere twenty minutes. He'd rather have his ear-chewed off by the sergeant.
He blew out his cheeks, slung his lasgun over his shoulder and trotted to the door.
The moment he stepped outside he knew everything was wrong. The night sky. It was on fire.
The sergeant had not been kidding. This was no drill.
Meteors, thousands of them. Failing to Durram. Someone slammed into him from behind and he stumbled to the ground, dropping his lasgun.
As he climbed to his feet, a huge explosion shook him and tossed him to the ground. A massive wall of smoke and fire blew over him. Two thousand meters away a meteor smashed into the base.
Redpath choked and screamed and scrabbled to knees, and eventually to his feet. With his loose boots flapped around his ankles he sprinted to the communication station.
The base existed to protect the huge, ancient array. The thick, dark metal of the tower was three hundred meters tall and ringed with dishes and receiver/transmitter pods. Redpath was a vox-technician and in the case of any emergency he was to report to the comm station.
It was six hundred and nine meters from the front steps of his barracks to the front door of the station; normally it was take him six to eight Imperial standard minutes to fast walk that distance. In his panic he covered the distance he less then two. Panting, he dashed through the main doors, down two flights of stairs, and turned left into the vox command room.
Soldiers of every rank and grade stood in the room. The officer-of-the-watch was Major Modo Quz. The overweight man was standing with his hands braced on a console, staring up at the wall of screens. His mouth hung open, and tears rolled down his cheeks.
Redpath ran up to him and said, "Sir! Redpath, reporting in!"
Quz did not react, he just kept staring at the screen.
"Sir?" Redpath asked again, touching the officer on the arm.
The man blinked rapidly and simply said, "Look."
Redpath turned to face the screens. They were full of the most terrible chaos. The local cams where mostly offline, just screens of black and white static. As were the ones showing the satellite feeds. Only the uploads from Durram City were still running. The city was is in a terrible way. The meteors had done massive damage to the building and surrounds suburbs. An animal panic could be seen as the tiny figures of his world-kin ran around, heedless and directionless.
In the distance there was a rapid whip-cracking sound. Then a retorting booming sound. He turned his head towards the door. As did every person in the room. Every soldier recognized the first sound as lasgun fire; the other sound was the boxy and loud. The sound of heavy caliber solid-shot weapons. They were under attack?
Redpath kept glancing from door to the screen, door to screen. A trooper fell through the doors, panting and covered in dirt. He looked around, spotting Quz he dashed over. He said, "Sir, the enemy."
"I know," Quz said. "Orks."
Redpath felt warm piss run down his leg. He was about to run when his world exploded.
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"WAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" endlessly screamed the hundreds and hundreds of orks. They stomped and stamped their heavy, metal-shod boots. Deep chest chanting and clashing of metal rang. Others fired their shoota's into the hard-rock ceiling. Ricochets wounded some, even killed a few of the huge greenskin aliens.
The noise roared, bounced, echoed, and rebounded off the huge chamber they stood in. It was a punishing assault on anyone's audio-capacities. One Ork did not roar like the others. A relatively small, mean-looking Ork at the back of the chamber. The towering, brutish creatures had small brains and powerful muscles, their tiny red eyes glimmered with nothing but bloodlust. The little Ork was not like them, not like them at all.
Grabba Hatemoof stood, glaring hatefully, if intelligently, about him. They avoided him, even though he was half the size of the larger orks, comparatively skinny and gaunt. The other orks would not make eye contact. As they should, he thought, as they should.
He could feel the throbbing in his brain, and the pressure was building and building. It would not be long now; he needed to release some of the pressure. He held a heavy copper staff topped with a heavy, ugly-faced moon. Grabba slammed the staff's spiked-tipped end onto the hard rock between his large green feet. A great shower of sparks and small electric bolts exploded as the staff grounded, the pressure in his mind diminished slightly.
The orks nearly him stopped their roaring and turned to snarl. In return he growled nastily, raised the staff higher, and slammed it down harder, creating a huge shower of sparks and electric bolts to spit out of the entire staff. The nearest orks got electrocuted and burned. Some tried to leap back, to distance themselves from the Ork Weirdboy.
Others turned aggressive. A particularly large ork with a huge choppa raised it high.
Looking up at the choppa, Grabba heard a loud click deep in his brain, as if the universe had snapped it's fingers.
He closed his eyes, turned his face upwards, and opened his arms wide.
The massive ork spotted the opening and bellowing, swung down. His blow missed.
The entire compartment of ork slammed forward by uncontrollable force. The orks at the front were crushed to paste by the tons of green flesh and iron weapons smashing into them.
For a few seconds after the impact, there was a rare time when there was almost no noise. Grabba relished it. However, after a few moments the stunned orks began to right themselves; climbing over each other or instinctively stomping the wounded to death. Grabba, who had thoughtfully placed himself at the back of the chamber had braced himself on the backs of this kin.
The orks nearest the weirdboy thought it was Grabba, using his unworldly powers. Grabba knew it was gravity. The chamber they stood it was the hollowed out center of a small roc, the orkish equivalent of drop ship. And they had just smashed into the ground. Grabba had sensed the impact a moment before it had happened.
Still, the impact had been brutal and he had to shake his head clear. After a moment, Grabba slowly being roaring, "Wagh. Waaaagh. Waaaaagh. WaaaaAAAGH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
As he screamed, the other orks took up the chant. They joined in. The pressure in Grabba's brain turned from a knife-like pain, to burning like acid. He felt that his head was going to explode. Thrusting the bad-moon head of his staff up and away from him a huge bolt of green/orange energy blasted out of Grabba's mouth and slammed into the roc wall. The explosion killed a dozen orks and maimed twice as many. However, a large hole was knocked through the thick, dense wall.
Once the mob of orks recovered from this second blast, they rallied and rushed out the hole, like a green river running down a dirty drain pipe.
Grabba waited until he was the last one, then he stumbled over burnt and broken ork bodies and stepped to the steaming hole. He emerged from wall of steam and jumped down the ground of this new world. He felt dirt crunch underfoot and smelled the stink of another Humie planet. His staff clicked as walked forward. The nearby fires revealed his un-orkisly thin chest and narrow shoulders, long sinewy arms. Below his massive toofs his chin sported a black, pointy, and indescribably filthy beard. He wore only yellow and blue striped trousers and a heavy belt studded with copper and cobalt bolts. From the belt hung with skulls and bones. A massive choppa swung from a think chain at his side.
He shuffled along, behind the swarm of greenskins. Deep in his mind, he heard the click again. He spun around ready to fight, eyes glowing flame-green. A block of dark metal flashed from a cloud of steam, and knocked Grabba to the ground. Before he could rise he was booted in the throat and pinned to the ground by a foot nearly as large as his chest.
Grabba looked up and gurgled, "Oy Boss! Dar you is."
"Das right, Weirdy. I'm da Boss and I'm right 'ere! And youz do what I sayz you do. O'ight?" said Warboss Big-Gunz. Like his namesake, he had overly massive kustom shoota in one hand. Grabba's blood now stained the barrel where Big-Gunz had pistol-whipped him. The big warboss leveled the massive barrel right between Grabba's eyes. He asked again loudly, "O'ight?"
Grabba choked out, "Yah, Boss! Sure, Boss!"
Big-Gunz pushed down slightly with his foot and stepped off Grabba. Big-Gunz waved his huge weapon and called to the orks nearest him, towering creatures with huge weapons, "Right, you Flash Gitz! Let's kill us some humies!" They ran off, shooting wildly into the air.
"And you, Grabba, you wif me." Big-Gunz reached down and pulled Grabba up. "I want youz to talkz to da talky-humie."
"Sure, boss. Yeah, boss!"
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Big-Gunz took him to the tower-station. They climbed over broken walls and blasted bodies. Grabba saw Mekboyz already beginning to cannibalize what they could. MadDoks worked on wounded orks. Mobs of Boyz brutalized the corpse of dead humies, or hung the live ones from shards of rubble or metal spikes. Grotz ran everywhere, getting underfoot. One stumbled in front of Big-Gunz, who turned his huge gun on the stunted creature and yelled, "Ahhh! Dakka Dakka!" and obliterated the thing. They were the usual occurrences after an ork battle, and none of it really caught his attention.
What did catch his attention was the tower. It was tall and dark, like a needle, and pulsed with power. Grabba approved. He was led deep into the station. In a large chamber there were rows of mek-stations and half the room was the hard-gravelly exterior of an Ork roc. It seemed one the landin'-rocs had landed right on the control station. Orks filled the room, grunting and laughing. In the center, a mob of Flash Gitz stood protectively over a pack of broken humies. The humies looked utterly beaten and terrified.
"O'ight?" asked Big-Gunz to the Gitz's 'Nob. The brute grunted and kicked one of the humies.
Big-Gunz turned to Grabba and said, "Get'em talkin'. Not enough humies 'ere to fight. You get them to call der boss. Get'em to send more humies. Maybe, maybe 'day send some o' those big 'ard 'uns!" He laughed and his Gitz guffawed.
Grabba looked at the humies cowering on the floor. There were ten of them. The weak things cried, actually cried. Grabba was tempted to smash open their skulls. He looked back and Big-Gunz returned the look with a hard glare. He waggled his huge firearm encouragingly.
The weirdboy examined each humie. They had symbols on their uniforms. They meant things; they indicated that these humie were oddboyz. The specialized in doing things other humies could not. He had to figure out which one did the talky-talk.
He gasped each one in turn, snatching at uniform patches, staring hard with his faintly glowing green eyes. When grabbed, the humnies cried out and squirmed. Gabba had to punch a few be to still. One patch he found resembled the tower outside, he grunted and grabbed the humie by the neck and wretched him up. Grabba might have been skinny and weak for an Ork, but he still far stronger than any humies. He gave the man a good shake and grunted at him in his finest Humie speak, "Oy."
Redpath kept his eyes closed and muttered what he could remember of the Imperial Hymn of Protection from Xenos.
Grabba roared in his face, "OOOOOYYYYY!"
The stink of his mouth, rotten meat and burnt metal, made Redpath gag and spit up spew.
"I'm Grabba Hatemoof," the weirdboy said, "and I wantz you to talk to your big boss. Eh! I wantz you to talk to 'em."
Redpath sputtered, "What?"
Grabba slammed him down onto a console unit, face-first. Redpath howled as his nose broke.
"You. Talk. To. Your. Big. Boss. Noow." Grabba said slowly and clearly.
"You want me to vox Command?" Redpath sputtered, confused
Grabba nodded in affirmation, and punched Redpath in the stomach. The Guardsmen heaved and would have collapsed had Grabba not been holding him tightly.
The ork turned the man to face the various technical stations. Most were shattered beyond repair. "Which un letz you talk to the Humie big boss?" Grabba asked.
Redpath whimpered and waved his hand to a relatively intact station.
Grabba dragged the man to the station, righted the fallen chair, and plopped the man down into the seat. He gently rolled Redpath to the keyboard.
"Get to talkin'," Grabba said, stabbing at the desk-top with one blunt finger.
Redpath took a few calming breathes, wiped the tears and blood from his face with his sleeve, and stared at the unit's screen. It was cracked, and the image flickered, but it still functioned. He ran his hands over the keys, turned a few dials, and pulled down the microphone next to the screen.
"To all points. To all points. This is Skylight. This is Skylight. Anyone receiving?"
The audio transmitter crackled and scratched. Redpath could feel Grabba lurking behind him, his faintly green glowing eyes watching his every move.
One minute passed. Then two. Redpath sent the message again.
Three minutes . Four. The orks at the back of the room, especially the huge one with the massive gun started grumbling angrily. Redpath looked back and swallowed nervously. Grabba nudged him, and pointed to the unit.
After five minutes a sound clipped through, choppy and unintelligible. But definitely a voice.
With one hand Redpath grabbed the microphone, and with the other used the dial to try and zero in on the frequency. He said, "This is Skylight, Skylight. Who's there?"
"… Strawberry Ten. Calling Skylight. Who's that? What's happening?"
Strawberry Ten was a relay station a few thousand kilometers away. He thought about it and realized the sun must be just raising for them. The thought made him want to cry.
Suddenly, Grabba clutched Redpath's shoulder, his iron hard fingers vise-like. "Tell dem," Grabba paused for a moment and glanced back at the Warboss. The brute was not paying attention. He was too busy showing his Flash Gitz the proper way to pistol-whip somebody – two of the humans lay bleeding and writhing on the ground. Grabba grinned.
He said in a low, sinister voice, "Tell dem, everything. Who we is. Who 'e is. Tell dem to bring lotz of boyz to fight us. Lotz and lotz. A good scrape is what we'z need. Is what I needz. O'ight?"
Redpath winced in pain from Grabba's finger but managed to nod. Grabba released his shoulder.
Redpath spoke softly, "Skylight receiving. God-Emperor it's good to hear from you! We've been attacked … and …"
Strawberry Ten's voice crackled, "Say again Skylight? Your last was lost."
"We've been attacked! And overrun! God-Emperor, they're standing right here … next to me!"
The silent static over the audio was deafening. The voice was incredulous, "Say again, Skylight? Say again. Who's there with you?"
"The enemy is right here." He turned and looked at Grabba. "Watching me. Orks, Strawberry Ten. Orks. Thousands of them."
"Your last is acknowledged," there was a long pause before another voice, deep and more authoritative spoke. "Skylight, is there anything you can do?"
"Negative. It's all over here."
"Emperor be with you, Skylight."
"Emperor be wit…" Redpath never finished what he was going to say. Grabba grasped his head, twisted it round and snapped his neck. He pushed the lifeless body off the chair and kick-stomped the mech-station, driving his calloused heel deep into the screen, shattering the unit.
The weirdboy turned to Big-Gunz and called out, "O'ight Boss! More humies on the way!" He gave a toothy smile and big thumbs up.