Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 176
Less than a day to go, one more turning of the planet and the Orks would be at Coronam. The Greenskins mashed their jaws in anticipation and gunned their throttles, drawn to the prospect of violence by an instinct they could not name. To wage war was their racial imperative, to grind down any who dared stand against them and stomp upon the bones was their reason for existence. Walls could not stop them, guns and rockets were no obstacle. Not once in the millions of years of their existence had pleas for mercy stirred their hearts or impenetrable defences given them pause. The Orks were a force of nature, and they would have their way.
Orkamemnon tried to keep that in mind as he mounted the Maker's wagon. The machine was rumbling along in the heart of the horde, given a wide berth by all. Few Orks understood the purpose of this carriage, but Orkamemnon had ordered them to steer clear and so they did. He passed the crude gun nests arranged around the exterior and entered through a hatch. Inside it was uncomfortably cramped for his frame, the internal frames made for a merely human bulk. Yet it was oddly smooth, the suspension being far superior to typical Ork engineering. Noises were muted and the smell was antiseptic. Orkamemnon hated this place, hated what had been done to him here, but was bound to obey.
He ducked through a doorway and found himself in a laboritorum. Bubbling elixirs of strange chemicals glopped in convoluted glassic tubing, and logic engines thrummed in the corners as they digested gene-coding. Petri dishes were suspended under microscopes, the fungal spores within already threatening to spill out and grow madly. Refrigerators along the walls were packed with sample containers and long surgical slabs had Ork cadavers laid out, slit from neck to groin to expose vital organs. Diorkgenes was present, labouring over a table, his back to the door. He wasn't the Maker, but his natural Mad Dok instincts made him a decent assistant.
"Where iz he?" Orkamemnon growled.
"Hold ya yakking a mo'" Diorkgenes snapped.
"He wanna see me!"
"I'm busy!"
"Doin' wat?"
Diorkgenes half turned and revealed a fat-bellied live Squig that he'd tied down and painted green, proudly declaring, "Behold: a Grot!"
"Fekkin wackjob," Orkamemnon grunted as he shoved past and made his way to a door at the back. Beyond was a darker chamber, dimly lit and brooding in solemnity. For another being it would be an office, perhaps an apartment, but for this individual it was more museum. Ork skulls were arranged on high shelves, each one made bulbous and deformed by strange devices drilled into the bone. Tomes, data-crystals and info-wavers were stacked in cabinets, each one with an annotated slip of parchment. The other wall had a cryo-casket, within which canopic jars were presented for display. The far wall was a wide Glassic panel, revealing a hold beyond, within which rows of gestation-tubes stood upright, growing the next iteration of Black Orks. It was the abode of a mind consumed by mysteries and discovery, which marked the achievement of each secret unlocked but never rested in the quest for the next insight.
"I'm 'ere," Orkamemnon called.
"What of the Eldar?" Came the grating voice of an artificial vox-coder.
"Huh?"
"The Eldar, what do you make of them?!"
"Bunch of poxy knife-ears," Orkamemnon shrugged.
"Indeed: weak, fragile, slow to reproduce and yet for millions of years they dominated this galaxy. How did they achieve this, when Orks are as old as they and far more violent? What ancient battles did your two races fight, how did the cunning beat the brutal?"
"Dunno, dunt care," Orkamemnon grunted.
"Ah, an engaging conversationalist as always!"
From the corner the Maker appeared and he was an odd sight indeed. A hoomie of no impressive height or power. Short compared to an Ork warboss, weedy even. His slight frame was covered in a vermillion robe and under the hood metallic eyes glinted. His pace was measured and his bearing contemplative, but the artificial voice was energised. Orkamemnon could have squished the man with one fist, in theory, but in practice was incapable of harming his Maker, or disobeying. Magos Tvos had made sure his Cyborks were bound by harsh subservience protocols.
Tvos had his metal hands folded at his sternum as he mused, "Methuselah was right, don't you think?"
"Bout wat?" Orkamemnon sniffed.
"Conflict makes one stronger," Tvos claimed.
"Can't argue with dat," Orkamemnon shrugged.
"To feast on suffering, to devour pain and grow stronger, that is the path of true evolution. The Emperor understood this, in his various iterations of Transhuman, but Ork-kind embodies it. Truly you are the superior lifeform!"
"Yeh, and we..."
Tvos sighed loudly, "How simple your mind is, how unquestioning. I suppose it's my fault, I built you for fighting and barking orders, not to engage in reasoned debate, but do try to keep up."
Orkamemnon stabbed a thumb at the door, "We'ze a day from a proper scrap. No time for yakking."
"There's always time for discovery!" Tvos argued as a metal hand waved at an Ork skull on a shelf, "Platork and I were just discussing the next phase of our project, weren't we, my friend?"
"Bit chatty for a ded 'ead aint he?" Orkamemnon grunted.
Tvos waved him off, "Details, details! Platork was expounding the most ingenious idea about the Occulobe. If we can isolate the base gene-code we can improve the visual acuity of the Ork by seven percent!"
"Seven huh?" Orkamemnon grunted unimpressed.
Tvos ignored that as he called through the door, "Diorkgenes, is the next sequence codified yet?"
"It's on da boil!" the Mad Dok called back, "Make a nice cuppa it will!"
Tvos groaned, "Gene-codes you dolt, not beverages! Oh, I do miss Platork, he had untapped potential. I should never have tried to insert a Catalapsean node into his skull. What genius I lose with each failure, what untapped potential. Platork, Arisorktle, Pythagork, all failures, all dead on the table. If only I'd known then that the upgrades must be encoded from conception, not stitched in afterwards. All that remains from my early work is a drooling simpleton and a barking thug!"
"You gonna need sum Yellow," Orkamemnon prodded.
"I hardly see what that's got to do with anything!"
"Dat's a yes," the warboss muttered.
"You are a nuisance. As it happens, yes, I do!"
"Try some dem, always get ya mood up."
Tvos shot an annoyed glare as he turned and made his way to a cabinet. He opened it and pulled out a syringe injector, inserting a yellow vial. Orkamemnon had a perfect view of the Maker's back, and a plethora of heavy implements to hand. It would be easy to pick one up and bash Tvos' brains in, but it was also utterly impossible. Orkamemnon couldn't touch the Magos, he knew, he'd tried. The rewiring of his brain prevented any possibility of him harming the Maker, his limbs would freeze solid if he attempted it.
A hiss of an injector betrayed Tvos' mainlining eldritch drugs, then he turned and declared, "The Oolitic Kidney is proving problematic but I am close to a breakthrough in the Betcher's Gland. Soon my new breed of Orks will be able to spit acid!"
"Handy," Orkamemnon jeered.
"Don't scoff," Tvos chided, "I have already introduced Black Carapace strands to my creations. The blending of Ork and Astartes genomes is fiendishly complex, but it can be done!"
"Yeh, bout dat..."
Tvos ignored the Ork as he moved to the Cryo-casket displaying Canopic jars, "The Emperor sought to enhance the human frame, but mankind is fragile and weak, inevitably succumbing to illness and age. Methuselah's genic arts taught me so much, but it was in the hidden secrets of Kharkul I found true inspiration! He revealed that Orks were created long ago as weapons for a forgotten war. Your kind is far better adapted to the grim darkness that is this galaxy, but the Orkoid has fallen! You used to be magnificent; you used to be great before it all went wrong! Was it errors in the original base-coding or did intelligence prove a liability in the struggle for survival. Did a more cunning foe interfere, did nature degrade the Ork, or perhaps the Eldar poisoned the well?"
"We'ze got a snag," Orkamemnon tried to interject.
Tvos overrode him, "Waaagh energy is the key! A gestalt psychic consciousness, similar to but separate from the Warp. Running through every Ork's head, feeding off them but energising too. The true power of your race! I speculate once your kind had complete mastery of it, but the psychic field grew beyond their control, becoming a tidal wave of unfettered power. Your intellects are suppressed by Waaagh energy, stunting your keen minds. Methuselah had the way of it, Pariah genetics is the key! A touch of Pariah gene in my creations, just a hint to dampen the effect, and they shall become keen of mind once again!"
"Marine Boyz are gonna try an' stop us!" Orkamemnon barked impatiently.
Tvos was shaken from his rant, "Space Marines?"
"Yeh, we'ze in for a proper scrap."
Tvos paused as he mused aloud, "Earlier than I projected, this planet isn't strategically important enough to warrant their intervention. I smell politics at play, the High Lords don't want their retirement garden razed to the bedrock, I suspect."
"We gonna have ta batter through dem," Orkamemnon pointed out.
"Yes, indeed," Tvos agreed.
"You'ze don't want us to sneak around?" Orkamemnon blinked in surprise.
"No, so long as I get what I need."
"Kay, you got it," Orkamemnon grinned, "Da Boyz need a proper fight to make dem big and strong."
Tvos' attention wandered again, "Yes, your kind needs conflict to grow. This is encoded into your genome. I've compensated for that with Ossmodula gene-strands, organs encouraged to grow naturally from conception rather than crudely stitched in, but that only goes so far. Whatever hand first wrought the Orks must have been engaged in wars beyond comprehension, the scale of their battles beyond our imagination. Perhaps that is why your species has degraded, there are no wars great enough to spur you to your true potential."
He was wandering off topic again and Orkamemnon prompted, "I betta hop to it den."
But Tvos was on one of his tangents and would not be stymied, "I weep for your kind! You are broken, discarded weapons, left by a creator race whose genius was extinguished. Yours is a tale of sorrow: abandoned to rage without purpose. No war in this age can come close to awakening your true potential. So you scrabble in the dirt, squabbling over pebbles. Only in brief fleeting glances do we see an echo of your former glory, hear the last gasp of the Krork. You cannot begin to understand what you have lost, but I will give it back to you, I will touch perfection!"
Orkamemnon rolled his one eye and said, "I gots places ta be, people ta gut."
But Tvos whirled around in frenetic zeal, "The Crown! I must have the Crown! I can reforge your bodies with Astartes gene-codes, I can restore your minds with Pariah genes, but none of that matters unless the Waaagh energy is tamed! Kharkul thought to replace it with warp essence but that was his mistake! Waaagh energy can be regulated, focused and directed, but I need the Crown to make it happen. Bring it to me! Bring me the Crown so I may complete my masterpiece!"
"Ya got it," Orkamemnon agreed as he hurried out the hatch and past Diorkgenes as he laboured over his work. Tvos didn't bother to watch him go, affectionately stroking the cryo-casket and its precious stores. His metal eyes rotated in their sockets to gaze at the gestation tubes in the next room, and their cargo of unborn Black Orks, and he whispered, "Amazing what one can accomplish with a set of stolen Progenoids and some Pariah Ova. Methuselah, Kharkul, the Emperor, all of them were fools. They wasted their genius on human flesh, but mankind is already doomed. No amount of upgrades can compensate for a fundamentally flawed design. The Ork is the superior lifeform and I will build upon this remarkable strength. Once I have the Crown I will bring them to the pinnacle of perfection!"