Chapter 16: "Kukka, You Can Do It"

"WAAAGH!" Smartnog launched his power-claw, the heavy mechanical fist hurtling forward to smash into the base of a salvaged turret, twisting the Imperial steel into a heap of useless scrap.

With a sharp metallic clang, he engaged the mag-tethers, reeling the claw back and locking it onto his arm. "Ya puny humies! I'ze gunna smash ya ta bitz! Smash ya ta bitz!"

Bang-bang-bang! Jappard seized the split-second opening as the claw retracted, pumping bolt rounds into the flickering amber barrier. The heavy shells detonated against the field, unable to breach the masterfully crafted Orkish power armor beneath.

"Silence, beast!" Jappard roared back, his voice cutting through the cacophony of war. "By the Emperor's will, this is where you fall!"

As the Commissar spoke, a searing lance of white heat, a melta-beam, slammed into Smartnog's yellow kustom-forcefield. The intensity of the thermal blast, reflecting the Commissar's own righteous fury, forced the massive Ork back several steps.

"Fall back! Hold the primary line! I'll handle the beast!" Jappard commanded, waving off the Astra Militarum squads attempting to reinforce him. The forward breach was just as precarious; he needed every gun on the barricades.

The Commissar advanced alone, his bolt pistol barking rhythmic fire against the shimmering shield, his stride steady and implacable as he closed the distance with Smartnog.

To cover their officer, the Kasrkin executed a flawless suppression pattern. Their high-intensity hellgun fire forced the Ork to crouch low, pinned by the sheer volume of las-bolts, unable to find an opening to swing his power-claw.

Meanwhile, at the mouth of the transit corridor, the roar of renewed combat erupted. The Orks had launched their main assault on the barricades, exactly as Jappard had predicted. Given the strength of the remaining defenses, the line should have held.

But fate in the 41st Millennium is rarely so kind.

The feinting force had been obliterated, but it had served its purpose. Darrius now knew the exact placement of the Imperial heavy bolters.

He knelt, bringing himself eye-to-eye with the twitching Weirdboy, Kukka. In a tone of mock-solemnity, he began his "theological" indoctrination.

"Kukka, you'ze da messenger of Gork an' Mork. Yer brain-power is yuj! If ya fink it, it 'appens!"

"I'ze... da messenger of Gork an' Mork...?" Kukka repeated, his eyes glazed with psychic static.

"Yeah! Ya hear dem whisperin' in yer ear, dunt ya? Dey say: 'Kukka, ya can do it! You'ze da best!'" Darrius coaxed him like a seasoned cult leader.

Confidence flared in Kukka's fractured mind. "Yeah... I 'ear fings. I'ze da messenger! I ain't a weirdo, I'ze special! I'ze more special dan any ovva boy!"

Viscous green Waaagh! energy began to pool in Kukka's eyes like thick bile. The air around him began to crackle and warp.

"Dem humies in da tunnel are bad gitz," Darrius whispered, pointing toward the Imperial line. "Gork an' Mork want us to krump 'em, an' you'ze strong enuff ta send us right on top of 'em!"

This was Darrius's gamble. A powerful enough psyker could tear the veil of reality, facilitating short-range "jumps." If Kukka could surpass his usual erratic performance and teleport Darrius and twenty mega-armoured Nobz behind the Imperial line, it would turn the defense into a slaughterhouse.

It wasn't a blind hope. On the march here, Darrius had seen Kukka accidentally teleport an Ork Boy into the deck plating for calling him a freak. The poor wretch had ended up fused with the floor, screaming until someone ended his misery. No one called Kukka a freak anymore.

"I feel da powa! I'ze strong! I'ze WAAAGH!" Kukka shrieked. "Gork an'd Mork say da humies are gunna get smashed!"

A violent sphere of green light enveloped Darrius and his heavy hitters. Darrius turned to shout a final order to the remaining Boyz to charge the tunnel once they disappeared, but his words were cut short. Reality buckled, and Darrius only had time to bark a single "Holy—!" before he was gone.

On the Imperial side, the guardsmen watched in horror as several massive, armored shapes were spat out of the warp like cannonballs. They slammed into the machine-gun nests and sandbagged fortifications with the force of meteors, pulverizing everything in their path.

The "iron lumps" then sprouted limbs and lifted confused, massive green heads.

The teleportation had worked, albeit in a literal, physical "lobbing" fashion. The psychological impact was devastating as the Orks had turned themselves into living artillery.

As the Meganobz stood up, they revealed themselves as terrifying engines of murder. Encased in thick slabs of salvage and shielded by buzzing generators, they were nearly invincible in the close-quarters chaos of the trenches.

Darrius, clutching his kombi-weapon, cursed Kukka's name as he opened fire. Rockets and plasma bolts tore through the Imperial ranks, turning the orderly defense into a charnel house of screams and scorched flesh.

The disciplined Kasrkin tried to pivot and form a new perimeter, but their hearts sank as a green tide of regular Ork Boyz, seeing the opening, came screaming through the tunnel to join their leaders.

Back at the duel, Smartnog sensed the shift in the battle. Reinvigorated, he manipulated his amber forcefield to draw in piles of scrap and jagged metal from the surroundings, spinning them in a magnetic vortex. With a roar, he unleashed the "junk-storm."

The magnetically accelerated shrapnel shredded everything in its path. Smartnog was certain this display of Orkish "teknology" would finish the puny humies.

Suddenly, a streak of silver-white light, a power sword's blade, pierced the junk-storm, finding a gap in the weakened amber field. The crackling edge sought Smartnog's throat.

At the last microsecond, Smartnog's combat instincts saved him. He jerked his head aside, the blade missing his neck but carving a glowing furrow across his cheek.

The blade didn't stop. With a fluid, expert twist, Jappard brought the power sword down in a punishing arc. Smartnog's remaining "flesh" arm was severed at the shoulder. The cut was cauterized and clean, smelling of burnt meat. Smartnog's bellow of agony shook the corridor.

Jappard, his Power Sword wreathed in a lethal disruption field, didn't let up. His next strike bit into the generator pack on Smartnog's back. The amber shield sputtered and died.

"How dare ya! Ya filthy humie!" Smartnog's fury was a physical weight, his eyes wide with disbelief.

"For the Emperor! Die, beast!" Jappard's eyes were cold, pits of absolute murderous intent that made even the savage Ork feel a flicker of primal dread.

Their weapons locked, the massive power-claw against the slender power sword. The disruption fields hissed and spat as they ground against one another.

In the shadows behind them, a wounded melta-gunner, missing an arm and a leg, dragged his mangled body across the deck. With a trembling hand, he reached for the trigger of his multi-melta, lining up the shot on the massive Ork.

"For the Throne..." he wheezed.