At the warboss’ feet, a twitching gretchin stood ready to run his errands.

  ‘You wot?’ Legmangla rumbled, a bubbling snarl that started deep in his chest. It echoed round the throne room’s crumbling panels like a rolling boulder.

  Words tripping over themselves, Grimdak tried to explain. ‘Dey… dey’s humies, boss, an’ dey gots all the armour. Shiny. Yeah, good. But dey was singin’…’

  He got no further. The warboss gave a rippling roar, the noise enough to make the gretchin cower and cover its ears. Grimdak gulped, but refused to let himself flinch. Good thing too, as the boss idly booted the smaller creature and sent it sailing into an upper support. It squeaked in protest, crunched with the impact and crashed to the floor. It didn’t move again.

  Stamping down three steps, Legmangla fixed Grimdak with a baleful, scarlet glower. ‘You runned away. You saw da humies, an’ you runned away.’ He bared his fangs, his breath reeking. ‘Is you an ork, or is you a stinkin’, snivellin’ grot?’

  ‘I is an ork, boss.’ Grimdak backed up another step. ‘I… I jus’ came to tells ya! Bring ya da newz. An’ I gots…’ With his best ingratiating grin, he grabbed a fistful of his captured swag, and held it out.

  The boss paused, eyeing the copper wire. On the floor between them, at the foot of his seat, lay his huge pile of scavenged booty – more bits of Space Marine and Dreadnought, the claws of a genestealer, the plume from an aeldari helm. The Apothecary’s narthecium, his proudest possession. It glinted like an evil grin.

  Legmangla eyed the wires, then the pile, then rumbled again, apparently thinking. Then he bellowed, loud enough to rattle the ancient glass screens.

  ‘Baz!’

  Grimdak backed up even further, smack into the ork behind him. He jumped, turned.

  And there was Bazruk da Stompa, ork nob, casually picking his fangs with a long and dirty spike. He leered down, grinning.

  ‘Awright, loota?’ His words were easy, dangerous. ‘Wot’s you done now?’

  ‘Nuffink,’ Grimdak said quickly, scrambling out of the way. Bazruk’s grin grew.

  Behind him, more orks tumbled into the chamber, nobz and boyz, weapons in hands. A scatter of gretchin came with them, darting between their feet and trying not to get stomped on. Bazruk snarled at the massed pack, and it scuffled and shoved to quiet, waiting.

  Legmangla eyed his troops. ‘Awright,’ he said. ‘Grimdak’s gots us somethin’ speshal.’ He grinned, a mouthful of knives. ‘Dere’s humies in da tunnels, an’ dey gots da good loot. An’ by the teefs of Gork an’ Mork, we’s gonna finds ’em an’ we’s gonna stamp on their ’eads. We’s gonna breaks dem outta dere shells, and squish all dere pink insides.’ The grin grew. ‘An’ I’s gonna gets meself a bran’ new prize.’ He threw a thumb over his shoulder, at the helm that topped the throne. ‘A li’l one, ta go by da big one.’

  Orks nudged each other, snickering.

  But Legmangla’s grin vanished. Fangs bared, his red gaze moved from ork to ork like a laser sight.

  It settled on Grimdak.

  ‘But,’ he said. ‘Before we gets stuck in, you tell me somethin’.’

  Greenskins eyed each other, their boots. Not one of them met the warboss’ gaze.

  Still glaring at Grimdak, he said, ‘Oo founds da relic?’

  Grimdak blinked. ‘Wot?’

  ‘Relic?’ Mutters and shuffles; each ork glared at his nearest neighbours. ‘Wot relic?’ Leaning casually on the nearest upright, Bazruk continued to pick his teeth.

  Greatly daring, Grimdak answered, ‘We ain’t gots no relics, boss.’ He pointed at the throne, the pile. ‘All da good stuff’s dere. No relics!’

  ‘Dem singin’ humies, dey always come afta da relics,’ Legmangla said, his tone spelling it out. He fixed Grimdak with a nasty stare, and Grimdak gulped. He had no idea if Legmangla could swallow the deffgun as well as the ork that carried it, and he didn’t want to find out.

  After all, look at what’d happened to ol’ Scarmush.

  Never mind that now.

  Bristling, Legmangla stomped down the last two steps. Still framed by the loot-encrusted throne-back, his pile of his swag at his boots, he made a swipe at where Grimdak was standing. The loota jumped out the way, but Legmangla’s grab had not been aimed at him.

  Bazruk cursed as the toothpick was snatched from his hand. ‘’Ere! Dat’s…!’

  The boss growled him to silence, examined the spike, then shook it, right in Bazruk’s face. ‘Wot’s dis, den?’ he roared. ‘Da ’and of bleedin’ Mork?’

  Faced by the boss, even Bazruk backed up. He looked around him for support, but every other ork in the room was studiously staring elsewhere.

  ‘I… Uh…’

  The boss shook it again. ‘Where’d ya gets dis?’

  ‘Dere was a coffin?’ Bazruk ventured. ‘Big stone fing? Out near da mouf–’

  With a roar, Legmangla lunged. He drove the toothpick, sharp end first, straight through the hollow of Baz’s throat.

  Bazruk gawked, startled, then went over backwards with a crash. He gagged, choked, kicked, and was still. Gore seeped out across the slatted metal floor. Orks chuckled and snorted; a few kicked at the downed body, just for good measure.

  But Legmangla was not laughing. With a bellow, he brought the boyz to stillness. ‘When you gets da loot, you brings it ’ere!’ One massive boot kicked the glinting pile. ‘You gots that? You don’ts use it ta picks ya teef!’

  Bazruk’s toothpick was now stuck straight up in the air like a monument, marking where the nob’s stupidity had ended. Its blunt end, Grimdak realised, was the familiar round hip joint of an ancient, humie thigh bone. And, while he couldn’t read them, the thing was engraved with words, all the way down.

  ‘Oops,’ he commented, when Legmangla couldn’t hear.

  ‘WAAAGH!’

  Bellowing, bristling with weapons, the boyz surged out of the airlock door, running straight for the main companionway. Grimdak had tried to sidle from the boss’ line of sight, but Legmangla grabbed him by one ear, and dragged him right up the front.

  ‘You found ’em,’ he said. ‘You go finds ’em again.’

  ‘Boss.’

  In the deffgun, he had a motion detector, of sorts. It was a bit twitchy – picked up the bilge rats sometimes – but it was enough. With Legmangla pounding beside him, and a surge of gleeful greenskins behind, he ran.

  We gonna krush dem humies good an’ propa!

  At first, however, the hulk seemed empty. Covered in the orks’ garish graffiti, it clanged and bashed and echoed to the sounds of their charge, creaking and groaning. Squeaky things scattered from the orks’ boots; they stamped at them, laughing. Junctions and ladders were daubed with colours and pictures and warnings, with the skull symbols of their tribe and with caricatures of its various members. In other places, old Skalagrog had sent up warnings, standing totems of bones and captured booty. Marking the parts of Legmangla’s territory, they said:

  Don’t mess wiv da orks!

  Skalagrog himself had joined them, though the rest of the tribe were giving him a wide berth. More than one ork had met a sizzle-fried end when ol’ Skalagrog got carried away. They sang as they ran:

  ‘Mash ’em, bash ’em!

  Crunch ’em, munch ’em!

  We da boyz, an’ we lives ’ere!

  Fite ’em, smite ’em!

  Beats ’em, eats ’em!

  We da boyz, we gots no fear!’

  As they chanted, they pushed and shoved, mocking and jostling. Bazruk’s demise had left a gap, and the biggest of the remaining orks were eager to fill it. At the back, a few voices started raggedly shouting, ‘’Ere we go, ’ere we go, ’ere we go!’

  Grimdak, however, didn’t join the fun. His feet bashed to the main rhythm, but he was watching the motion detector in his flip-down eyepiece.

  Nuffink.

  Occasional, scuttling blips – more rats, and a distance away; there was nothing big enough, or well-ordered enough, to be the force he’d seen. And he could feel the close, watchful rumble of Legmangla’s authority. It said: Don’t get dis wrong, loota.

  The tribe continued to chant:

  ‘Thump ’em, whump ’em!

  Crash ’em, bash ’em!

  We da boyz, an’ we’s awright!

  Tromp ’em, stomp ’em!

  Smack ’em, whack ’em!

  We da boyz, an’ we can fight!’

  Steadily, the companion-route led out into the main body of the hulk. The graffiti faded back to red and gnawing rust, and the lumens grew weaker, casting almost no light. Around them, the space soon opened out into a vast and looming darkness, and their boots rang hollow on the now suspended walkway.

  A cold and empty wind began to pluck at them, teasing. It stank of dead stuff.

  Here, Grimdak wanted to slow down. He was smart, right; he knew the hulk better than his mates, and he knew that they were heading for the central hub, for the point where the vast ships all collided. He’d seen it many times, all the tunnels that led up and out and away, and at impossibly bonkers angles that just hurt your brain…

  And out there, in the middle of it all, was the thing that Legmangla had called the ‘mouf’. It was ever-hungry, the place where everything twisted, round and round, pulling everything down into itself. Grimdak didn’t know where the stuff went, though Razgog had once tried to explain to him. He did know, though, that more than one ork had got too close, trying to prove how scared he wasn’t, and had gone bawling over the railings.

  It wasn’t long before they all felt the change, the charge, the sucking greed in the air.

  ‘Fink you’s big, wiv all dat noize?

  Gots news for youz, ’cause we’s DA BOYZ!’

  The chant reached its end, bled out into the open darkness. The air was full of sounds: phantom yells, cries that they couldn’t quite hear, the creak and grind of unsettled metal. The orks turned grim, stamping fast and focused, their faces furrowed, fangs bared.

  Yeah, Grimdak thought, as they closed on the location of the vortex. Mouf or no mouf, dey wuz ready.

  The ambush hit them hard.

  Grimdak had not seen motion; there was only the sudden flare of muzzle flash, the boom of heavy weapons, the rip and roar of carbide fusion rounds, cutting through air and flesh and metal.

  And singing, the sort of powerful, humie tunes that could only mean one thing.

  The loota bellowed a warning, but the noise was lost in the racket. Cries, shrieks, shouts. Detonations, sudden splotches of exploding warmth. Flying flesh. Tumbling bodies. Orks cursing and colliding, the confused bang of their boots and the screeches of crushed gretchin. The whoosh of a handheld flamer. Burning boyz, stumbling into each other or from the walkway’s edge. Falling, flailing sideways as the vortex took them and gobbled them down. The spang of a snapped cable and the walkway lurching, knocking boyz from their feet…

  Grimdak stayed upright, his legs splayed apart, riding the slewing metal with knees like gimbals; his motion detector was blipping, movement ahead and behind.

  Two, four, six dots.

  Six? Dat was all?

  But the ambush had been well placed. Here, the bridge was curving through a right angle, avoiding the sick, dark whirl of the mouf, and the boyz were straggled out, all around the curve. Illuminated only by erratic flashes of gunfire, Grimdak could just make out the attackers, a distance back. Three at the front, their ceramite armour gleaming darkly scarlet, their cloaks in black and white, and flapping in the vortex’s wind.

  ‘WAAAGH!’

  Legmangla bawled the command.

  Howling, the orks attacked. The bark and roar of weapons fire, the flash of axes in the half-light. Right at the front, Grimdak targeted the deffgun. The boss thundered past him, claw champing, his captured tech-priest choppa ready in his other hand.

  With a yell of his own, the loota opened fire.

  The weapon boomed, the noise incredible; it crashed back from the metalwork like some vast, steel drumbeat. The red-clad figure in front of him was smaller than the others; he could see the distinctive pattern of its helmet, its bolter held hard in both hands.

  His suppression went over the humie as it dropped neatly sideways, then rolled back up, still shooting. Behind it, explosions blossomed, the flames sucked away by the vortex’s pull. The walkway shivered, quaked again. The whirl sucked and crackled and spat. Eager. Starving.

  Grimdak roared, bared his teeth. ‘We iz da orks!’

  In the bad light, it was almost impossible to see. There were bodies everywhere, orks shooting back, orks falling down. Bolter rounds struck the loota and spanged, repelled by the deffgun’s shoulder-mount. He juddered at the impacts, but he didn’t go over. Sparks burned his cheek.

  Shouts were rising now, boots crashing in an upsurge of defiance.

  ‘We owns da hulk!’

  ‘We’s gonna krush!’

  ‘Stompin’ an’ shootin’! Stompin’ an’ shootin’!’

  Ahead of Grimdak, Legmangla hurled his full body weight at the central armoured figure, bigger than the other two.

  The figure let off a shot with the bolter, then stepped from the warboss’ path. With a tidy throw-and-catch, it reversed its grip on its weapon and slammed the butt sideways into the ork’s face. Snarling, Legmangla lashed out with the choppa, simultaneously slamming the claw into the figure’s chestplate, then opening it out to gouge a screaming hole in the metal. In the flashes, Grimdak could make out the third figure, a flamer in its gauntleted hands.

  The singing continued, like knives in Grimdak’s brain.

  ‘Down!’ he yelled, and the warboss ducked.

  The flamer’s gout missed him, and torched the two orks behind. A detonation of ammunition was sucked away by the mouf.

  But Grimdak only glanced; he didn’t have time to waste. He heard shouts, crashing, smashing, roaring, shooting, pandemonium. Another cable spanged, the walkway lurched again. He could hear Skalagrog chanting, feel the flicker and flash of his gathering power, fed by the other orks.

  Mork alone knew what good that would do…

  ‘Grim!’ The boss’ command was a bark. ‘Go gets da big shoota!’

  ‘Boss!’

  Understanding, Grimdak dropped back towards the corner. In front of him, Legmangla executed his signature move, stamping sideways on his enemy’s knee, and snapping it clean, armour and all. The figure went over, but still managed to reverse its grip, again, on the weapon and shoot upwards at the boss’ head.

  It missed.

  The flamer roared again, the wash of its heat enough to crisp the hairs in Grimdak’s nose. The flames, like everything else, were sucked sideways and away. Then a roaring gaggle of boyz broke past him, heading for the attackers, and he was abruptly caught in the centre of the mêlée.

  And Mork’s teef, it was a mess.

  There were orks everywhere, getting in his way, tripping him over as he tried to move. They were confused, some injured, some dying; the pull of the air was tugging them all towards the walkway’s now-dangling edge. In some places, they fought back, bawling defiance; in others they struggled with the fall, or with each other. Gretchin scampered here and there, some of them trying to fight, others chortling gleefully and looting their downed comrades. One squeaked protest as the hulk’s mouf took him; he was a thrashing silhouette, and then he was gone. Somewhere, Grimdak could hear the roar and whip-crack of their herder, demanding that they ‘Attack da humies!’ Somewhere else, there was still Skalagrog, crackling like a bared wire, now, and ready to throw his bright and unstable energy in all directions…

  But hey, it meant that Grimdak could see. Kicking at a grabbing green hand, he turned the corner fully.

  And found turmoil.

  Three more figures were standing at the back of the ambushed tribe, one with a running chainsword, another with a heavy bolter, aimed from the hip, and all covered in shiny symbols. One part of his brain jumped up and down at the find, desperately wanting to grab the things and get them back to the workshop – the stuffs that Razgog could make! – but the other part was smarter, and could see the devastation that the weapon had made.

  Even as he looked, there was a bellow, and four of the biggest nobz charged straight at the attackers.

  The one with the heavy weapon dropped back, still firing, then clunked to a halt. The figure swore. The first two orks were caught by the suppression; they shuddered at repeated impacts, skidding to the floor. Another went down to the third figure, a shot going clean through his forehead.

  Ragbad, unhurt, surged forwards. But the figure with the chainsword came to meet him, and Grimdak stopped.

  Though not as big as the one Legmangla had charged, it moved like pure, tight hostility, smooth and furious. Sneering, Ragbad raised his forearm to block, and the blade just carved straight through, shrieking briefly as it cut the bone. Rag screeched like failing steel, but kept going, trying to leap on the figure and bear it to the ground.

  ‘Yaaaa! I don’t needs me arm anyhowz!’

  The figure stepped back, bringing the chainsword up, two-handed, and cutting him almost clear in half, armour and all.

  For a split second, Grimdak stopped, gawking. But Legmangla was still up, still bellowing ‘WAAAGH!’

  Belatedly, the loota opened fire; hit all three figures with a full suppression. The heavy weapon was down, changing magazine; he saw his own rounds spark from the thing, flashes of violent orange. They chewed a line across the user’s armour, throwing it backwards.

  It screamed at him, savage, rolling back to its feet. ‘Domine! Libra Nos!’

  He bellowed back, ‘I iz da bestest ork! Da loota wiv da shoota!’

  With a cry like pure rage, the figure with the chainsword came forwards, the weapon still running, sending flicks of Rag’s gore to spatter against the metalwork. Grimdak lowered the muzzle of the deffgun and hit it with a full, directed burst–

 

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