Da Red Gobbo Collection, page 7
‘Heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh-heh!’
He jumped up onto an ork body and danced along the length of it, cackling with glee. This was great! No orks to get angry and clobber him for bein’ cheeky. No other grots to tell the orks what he was up to, and get him into trouble so he got clobbered for bein’ cheeky…
Fingwit stopped his dancing and giggling as a concept occurred to him. His fellow grots… Well, they weren’t bad sorts really. Sure, Rattak was a pain, but you got gits like him everywhere, that was just one of the universal truths of Gork and Mork. Grots got into fights, and might shank each other over a particularly tasty squig, but that was mainly because the orks kept all the best food for themselves. If one grot wanted to cause trouble for another grot, they’d generally try to find some way of making that grot run afoul of an ork.
‘So wot if,’ Fingwit said to himself, slowly and carefully. ‘Wot if, dere were no orks?’
You couldn’t just get rid of orks, obviously: Gork and Mork’s boyz were going to take over the galaxy one day, and were making a fair job of it at the moment, what with the Arch-Arsonist of Charadon, the Great Tyrant of Jagga (all four of them), Da Meklord’s own TekWaaagh!, and of course, the Grand Warlord himself, Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka. All of the other gits – the humies, the pointy-earz, the tinheads, even those blue fishboyz with the fancy guns – were playing catch-up in a race they’d never had a hope of winning. The future was bright, and the future was green.
However, even given that, was it really so impossible to imagine that there might be some spaces without orks in? Spaces where a grot might be able to live a life free of being kicked because some big git was in a bad temper; free of constant expectations to fetch and carry; free of being shoved into the front line of a war to give the enemy some target practice before the orks got stuck in? What would it be like to live in a place where the greatest authority was not an ork, any ork, but… grots?
‘Eh, it’d never work,’ Fingwit muttered to himself, hopping down from his perch and continuing his trudge along the corridor. ‘It’d mean dis-obeying da orks, an’ grots don’t do dat.’
Yoo just did, his inner-Fingwit pointed out.
‘Well, yeah, but I woz only disobeyin’ him cos he woz gonna stop us from doin’ what Klaws said ta do, which is wot Da Meklord said ta do.’ Fingwit shook his head at the foolishness of orks.
Yeah, but he didn’t know dat, inner-Fingwit said. Yoo told him da troof, but he woz gonna rip yer arms off anyway.
‘Yeah? So orks are gits,’ Fingwit muttered. ‘Wot’s dat got ta do wiv anyfing?’
It means ya didn’t need dat ork ta believe wot ya woz sayin’ in order to disobey him. Yoo disobeyed him anyway. Even if Da Meklord had clobbered him afterwards for messin’ up da plan, an’ let’s face it, Da Meklord’s probably not gonna bovver clobberin’ an ork for killin’ a grot, dat wouldn’t ’ave helped yoo.
‘So wot’s yer point?’ Fingwit grumbled, wondering why inner-Fingwit was being so persistent about this.
Da point is, dat ya might as well’ve been tellin’ dat ork ta stick his slugga where Gork ‘n’ Mork don’t go lookin’. It don’t matter why ya didn’t do wot ’e wanted, wot matters is dat ya didn’t. An’ if ya can do dat ta one ork, even if he’ll scrag ya if he catches ya, cos he don’t care wot anuvver ork’s already told ya ta do…
‘Den wot’s stoppin’ me from disobeyin’ any ork!’ Fingwit finished out loud, then clapped a hand over his mouth guiltily. However, there was still no one around to take notice of what he’d said.
Well, ya needs ta be pretty sure ya can run away, but yeah, dat’s da genrul idea.
Fingwit stood there, stunned by the revelations thrown up from his own mind. It was true, though, when it came down to it – most orks wouldn’t care if you told them that you couldn’t do what they wanted because another ork had already told you to do something different. Either way, you’d end up disobeying one of them, and then would suffer the consequences, so why not just quit messing about and do what you wanted in the first place?
‘But wot do I wanna do?’ Fingwit asked himself miserably. ‘I mean, I fort I wanted ta take over da gunz an’ blow up some humie ships, but…’
Ya can! Ya don’t have to not do somefing fun just cos an ork told ya ta do it! But if dey tells ya ta do somefing ya don’t wanna, den maybe ya don’t ’ave to.
‘Dis is gettin’ more an’ more complicated,’ Fingwit told himself. ‘Are ya sure yer definitely me?’
Course I’m sure. ’Ow many fingers am I ’olding up?
Fingwit looked down at his hand. ‘Two.’
Dere ya go, den.
Fingwit shrugged. That seemed to make sense. ‘But I can’t take over da gunz wivout da rest of da ladz,’ he mused. ‘It needs more dan one grot ta do it. I’m gonna have ta go back an’ get ’em. But dat’s gonna mean facin’ down dat ork again, an’ how am I gonna convince da ladz to follow me? Dey’re just gonna be too scared. It’d need somefing inspirashunal ta snap ’em out of it.’
His wandering feet paused as he came upon a slick of red, humie blood that had spread across the corridor’s floor. There was no obvious way around without stepping in it, and it hadn’t dried yet, so it had a smooth, liquid surface that reflected the lights above. Fingwit leaned over it and looked down, and saw his own face staring back up at him. His own face, but tinted completely red.
‘Wait…’
Yes. Yes, dat’s brilliant! We’re a genius!
‘But Da Red Gobbo’s just a legend!’ Fingwit protested. ‘Da Red Gobbo ain’t real! Dere’s not actually a grot wot fights against orkish oppreshun, an’ frees uvver grots! Dere’s no Glorious Revolushun wot presides over a land of fairness an’ equal opportunity for da gretchin caste!’
First of all, ya don’t know dat, cos ya ain’t been everywhere. Second, if dere ain’t, den how did da legend start? And, second plus one, if dere ain’t…
Fingwit blinked slowly. The red Fingwit in the pool of blood did the same.
‘Den maybe dere should be.’
NUFFIN’ TA LOSE
(BUT YER ’EADS. AN’ YER LIMBS.)
Fingwit needed red. Lots of red.
He was wearing red anyway, of course. Even though no ork would ever admit or accept that Fingwit was an Evil Sun, he still made sure to wear his clan colours. However, his clothes were old, and patched, and faded. He needed something far better if he was going to become a hero for all grotkind, and there were a lot of dead Evil Sunz around, wearing clothes they no longer had any use for. Fingwit still had his knife, and the needles and threads he carried for when Klaws wanted a gash stitched up and couldn’t be bothered to wait for a painboy, or didn’t trust whichever one was hanging around (which was quite sensible, in Fingwit’s opinion, since painboyz had a habit of doing what they wanted rather than what you’d asked). Grots made most of the clothes for orks anyway, so it wasn’t like Fingwit didn’t know what he was doing. He’d just never made anything this fancy for himself before…
Well, he wasn’t really making it for himself. He was making it for Da Red Gobbo, and Da Red Gobbo deserved something fancy.
It was easy to make a big coat for yourself when an ork’s shirt was practically as long as you were tall. A quick bit of cloth butchery added a pair of sleeves, and Fingwit gave himself a hat as well, for the sake of it, to the front of which he pinned a metal star nicked from a humie uniform, to make himself look more important. A pair of boots nabbed from a grot who no longer needed them completed the look, and some hastily adjusted goggles from a deceased burna boy gave Fingwit some pleasing anonymity.
‘Right, den,’ he said to himself, hefting his shoota onto his shoulder. ‘Let’s do dis.’
He retraced his steps as far as he could, but the door through which he’d escaped the ork’s vengeance was stuck fast, and not even putting a shot into the control panel on his side with his blasta would shift it. However, he was (arguably) Da Red Gobbo, and he wasn’t going to let a door stop him. There were plenty of bodies around him, and many of them had stikkbombs – or the humie equivalent, which were considerably smaller, rounder, and less impressive-looking – that they’d not got around to using before they’d died. Sure, the door was pretty thick, but how many blasts could it take before he managed to blow a hole in it?
The answer turned out to be ‘more than he could count’, but Fingwit had certainly spent less pleasant times than hiding behind a crate and lobbing explosives at something that wasn’t fighting back. Once there was a twisted, smoking gap in it that was wide enough for him, he squeezed through (being careful not to snag his nice new coat on any of the sharp metal edges) and hurried off. The rest of Da Fingers needed him to come and save them before they got killed by being shoved into a fight they wanted no part of, simply because an ork thought that’s what they should be doing.
There was no sign of the ork or his captives on the other side of the door, but Fingwit hadn’t expected them to stick around: the ork had clearly been in a hurry, and trying to gather whatever reinforcements he could muster. However, there were some clues as to where they might have gone. The corridor floors were a mess, but it was still possible to make out grot footprints here and there, heading away from him, and sometimes overlaid with the far larger, heavy tread of an ork’s boots as the big git herded his charges along in front of him. And was that a shiny medal torn from a humie tunic, but lying some distance away from the humie in question? Such as might be the case if Swikk had paused to tear it free, and then been swatted by the ork so hard it flew from his grip? Fingwit was on the right track, he knew it.
He hurried on, always taking the larger route where there was a choice, or heading further into the ship’s interior. The ork was looking for a fight, and there was a better chance of running into defenders in big spaces, or closer to the middle. It was the antithesis of what Fingwit was used to, but Da Red Gobbo could not afford to crawl into a corner and hide. Da Fingers were counting on him; or at least, they would have been, if they’d known he was coming. He couldn’t let them down. He couldn’t let himself down.
It was the ork’s slugga that finally allowed Fingwit to pinpoint them. The hollow booming of it was faint, but distinctive against the faint hisses and hums which were all the noises that the ship around him was making. The fainter, higher-pitched chatter of grot blastas confirmed it, and Fingwit hurried towards the noises as fast as his legs could carry him, with the tail of his coat streaming out behind him. Somewhere not too far away, one ork and a few grots were shooting at something.
The corridor reached a large space that was thick with the stale odours of what the humies used as food, overlaid with the more recent, sharper scent of hot metal and gun smoke. Rows of metal tables bolted to the floor – sensible thinking, Fingwit noted, since it would prevent anyone from stealing them easily – confirmed his suspicions that this was where the humies went to eat. He slipped in through the open doorway, then ducked down behind one of the tables as the massive shape of the ork kicked a stool in apparent frustration, sending it clattering across the room.
‘Gah!’ the ork bellowed. ‘Dese humies got any decent grog?’
‘Can’t see any, boss,’ came Grubba’s voice from somewhere behind a long metal counter.
‘Two zoggin’ humies ain’t even a proppa fight, and dey don’t ’ave any grog ’ere eever?’ the ork grumbled.
‘Don’t look like it, boss,’ Rattak said. Fingwit crept closer, bent double to keep the tabletops between him and the ork’s line of sight. He could see two huge legs stomping back and forth, occasionally kicking at things.
‘If dere’s no good fightin’ ta be had, why don’t we go back to da ’Ullbreakers?’ Swikk suggested brightly. ‘Maybe we could–’
‘Shurrit!’ the ork thundered. ‘Zagnab’s mob don’t go nowhere until all da enemy’s been killed, ya got dat?’
Ain’t much of a mob, Fingwit thought to himself as he shuffled along. One ork and four grots? But dis ork obviously finks of himself as a nob. He needed to make his move now, while they were still fairly spread out, before the ork got his makeshift mob together again and bullied them into the next corridor.
Fingwit hopped up onto a stool, and from there into full view on a tabletop, with his brightly coloured coat swirling around him. He knew he looked impressive, and that was confirmed by the awestruck faces that turned towards him. Even Zagnab looked stunned.
‘Zagnab!’ Fingwit declared forcefully. ‘Let my–’
The ork raised his slugga and fired.
‘Oh, zog!’
Fingwit hastily threw himself back off the table again, crashing painfully down onto the floor, as the slugga shells roared overhead and detonated in the wall behind him. So much for that plan, then.
‘Wot in da name of Gork’s green grin is goin’ on?’ Zagnab raged. ‘Come out ’ere, ya fancy-pants little git!’
‘No!’ Fingwit shouted back. ‘Not until ya let dese grots go! Dey ain’t yoors ta boss about no more!’
Zagnab actually laughed, and fired off another shot, apparently at random. ‘Oh yeah? Ya gonna make me, a runty little grot like yoo? Yoo an’ whose Waaagh!?’
Fingwit’s chest suddenly burned with fervour, and he hefted his shoota. ‘I ain’t a runty grot, I’m Da Red Gobbo! An’ I don’t need a Waaagh!, when I got Da Glorious Revolushun!’
He didn’t wait to see whether that pronouncement was greeted with astonishment or simply further mirth, because he’d slunk along to the edge of another table, and now he threw himself into the open. Zagnab turned towards him, raising his slugga with the lazy, incongruously graceful reflexes of a creature evolved for nothing but combat. However, Fingwit was neither lazy, nor graceful. He was an entire grot’s worth of panicked aggression, and while he might have lacked his larger cousin’s reflexes, he had considerably better aim.
He pulled the trigger, and a veritable fusillade of shells thundered out of the shoota and tore its way up the ork’s torso.
Orks were tough. They could take a hit that would kill a humie outright, get back up, clobber whatever had hit them, and then have a laugh about it afterwards. They could be stitched back up with little care or attention, and heal with nothing more than some impressive scarring. They were virtually immune to infection. An ork that could still walk was probably going to survive whatever injuries he had, because anything that didn’t kill an ork outright was probably not going to kill him at all.
However, orks didn’t just fight the rest of the galaxy. They also – in fact, perhaps mainly – fought each other, which meant that an ork didn’t consider something a proper weapon unless it was killy enough to despatch another ork. While that led to hilarious levels of overkill when they went up against humies, it also meant that a few good shoota hits would put even an ork down, and Fingwit had landed more than just a few.
Zagnab keeled over backwards with his entire ribcage blasted open, and his head split in half. Not even an ork was going to get up from that, at least not without some sort of direct intervention from Gork and Mork themselves. Fingwit managed to unclamp his finger from the shoota’s trigger before the weapon jolted itself clean out of his grip, and took a few deep, shuddering breaths.
Grot heads peeked out from where they’d taken cover, eyes wide in wonder and horror.
‘Alright, ladz?’ Fingwit said, trying to act nonchalant. He rested the shoota’s back end on the floor and leant casually on the barrel, then hurriedly jerked his arm away when he registered how hot it was. ‘Ow! Um. Fort you might wanna hand.’
‘Fingwit?’ Rattak said incredulously, peering at him. ‘Dat you?’
‘Well, sorta,’ Fingwit said, brushing his coat down ostentatiously. ‘But I’m also Da Red Gobbo now.’
‘Da Red Gobbo ain’t real!’ Grubba objected.
‘Yes ’e is,’ Fingwit said firmly. ‘An’ ’e just rescued ya, so dat proves it.’
‘Oo, where’d ya get da coat?’ Duzzik squeaked, scurrying forward to grab at the sleeve. Fingwit went to swat him away, then thought better of it, and settled for pulling his arm out of Duzzik’s reach. Hitting someone because they were smaller than him was what an ork would do, after all.
‘Made it,’ he said smugly. ‘Just knocked it up from wot I found lyin’ about. But I couldn’t leave Da Fingers ta get kicked around by an ork, could I? Fort I’d betta come find ya. Yoo ladz are gonna be da beginnin’ of Da Glorious Revolushun. If ya wanna be,’ he added.
Da Fingers looked at each other, and then at Fingwit.
‘Does dat mean we get ta go back?’ Rattak asked hopefully.
‘Weeeell,’ Fingwit said, rocking one hand back and forth. ‘I sorta had anuvver idea…’
ABOVE AN’ BEYOND
‘Dis ain’t da gun deck,’ Rattak whispered hoarsely. They had come up several levels, but their surroundings still showed evidence of hard fighting, not to mention hard dying. Fingwit had to hand it to the humies; they’d given da boyz one heck of a fight. Da Fingers were advancing through the evidence of warfare, with piles of bodies marking where stand after stand had been made, and finally broken by the green tide.
‘I know,’ Fingwit replied. ‘We ain’t goin’ for da gunz any more.’
The green tide was not inexhaustible, he noticed, or at least not in this context. As his little group got closer to their destination, the evidence was becoming clearer. There were always more boyz in the galaxy, always, but that didn’t mean that there were always enough in the right place. The main thrust of the ork advance into the ship had come this way, heading for the tightest, fiercest knots of humies, with unerring orky instinct for finding the best possible fight. The early stands of defenders had been overwhelmed with virtually no ork losses, the sheer weight of numbers sweeping the humies aside before they could bring down more than a couple of their attackers.
