NationStates Jolt Archive

Out-system space…
Kasraedan frowned in distaste. The construction around him was more disturbing than the crudities of humans, for while their vessels were typically ancient and rusted, or otherwise blocky and graceless, at least he could be confident that they worked. Not so with Ork vessels. These were held together by, well, delusion.

“Slay them all.” He said, “Save two…”

His black armour clad incubi advanced, their blades and flying-slivers beginning the brutal work of cutting down the Brute Ramship’s crew.


Two weeks later, Ork World of Nutbite…
It was a relatively normal day. Dungutz was supervising the grots, the runty, slave caste of ork society, as they toiled in a ramshackle, poorly designed field, forcing both native animals and lesser orkoid-forms to toil.

He was sitting back on a flat rock, wondering which grot to eat first. A line of fire appeared in the sky. He wondered what it could be. It was impressive, and then one of the grots worked it out.

“Boss! Some ship-crashin’! Maybe we can loot it for scrap!”

Then he realised that it was headed into his direction, pieces breaking off and flying apart, almost too small to see. It was a tough ship. It bounced off a mountain, exploding millions of tons of rock as it did so, barely deflected, and thumped into the ground, just over the horizon. The shock was bone-jarring, the sound, ear shredding. Everything was destroyed.

Picking himself up and looking around at the devastation, Dungutz and laughed, “Yeah!” he said, and picked up the nearest grot, munching on it thoughtfully as he began to trek in the direction of the action.


The Ramship had slewed over onto its side, and when Dungutz got there, with a bunch of other orks in a wide-wheeled truck, the fires that had been created by its hard landing had mostly gone out. Grabbing his trusty, or at least, his big, which was more important, ‘shoota’ rifle, he hurried out, eager to be the first to get to the ship, for the simple sake of wanting to be first.

He got there! Joy. Raising his gun, he let off a prolonged burst of fire that rattled the chain of bullets through the gun and created a loud echoing rat-tat-tat that bounced off the underside hull of the ship, and got laughs and whoops from the others.

“We’z gotta get up onna top!” he shouted, over the din, pointing the gun at where he guessed the way in would be, causing the bullets to spang off the thick armour.


It was a stiff climb, but ork ships were good for clambering on. The grots were terrible at getting the hull plates and pieces to sit flush with one another. Looking about, Dungutz frowned, trying to find an entrance.

The bad thing about ork ships was that there were lots of indentations in the hull that made working out which one actually led inside the ship difficult. Eventually, with many other orks pacing out the top of the ship, some forty in all, he was the one to find a way in. They’d missed the sign first time, because they were standing the wrong way up.


Navigating the inside of the ship was easier. Moving up and down the corridors was possible because of the many hand-holds in the walls. Meks rarely trusted the artificial gravity to work for too long.

Finding the bridge, near the top of the ship (same reason, but with optical systems rather than gravity) Dungutz grinned, kicking the door in.

There was a huge pile of heads and hands inside, almost filling the room. Ork heads, ork hands. He blinked, trying to think up something to say, and then shrugged, shooting the heap of severed appendages.

“Took yer time!” one of the heads said, waking up suddenly, “Now get me outa-dis!”

“Whad happened ‘ere?” Dungutz demanded.

“We was attacked by deze pointies. ‘Oo said that we was too nancy to attack da ‘umies, so we wasn’t ‘ard.”

“Wha?” Dungutz said, startled.

“Dey said if’n we was’n weak, we’d go an’ attack da ‘umies. Even gave direcshuns!”

With a cunning, and slightly painful thought, Dungutz grinned, “You gottem?”

“Yeah. Over ‘dere…”

“Good,” Dungutz said, looking at the captain, and then behind him. He pulled the trigger again, in a long, loud burst that made him laugh.

Turning slowly around, towards the others that had gathered, he hauled himself out of his usual slouch, “I is now the Keptan of this ‘ere ship. And we iz gonna teach some ‘umies a lesson wiv it!”

The Princess Cyriana of the House of Svard, heir to the throne of the Freethinker Commonwealth, bit her short fangs into her lower lip, crying inwardly at the fire that crept along every muscle and vain. She cursed her stupidity, her arrogance in choosing this, out of all options, to what was in retrospect an attempt far beyond necessary to prove herself. She hefted the rucksack further up her back, her shoulders rubbed raw from the weight and the sweat dripping off her, and she wondered how there still could be another twenty miles left on this godforsaken march through the foothills of the southern Whitestone mountains.

The first and only daughter of the current King, she had been born into his first marriage, the first ghoul to even be in sight of the Freethinker throne. The rumours about her, her fiery nature, her tomboyish attitudes and an appearance, fangs and a momentary taste for weird Lolita gothic which quite frankly disturbed the rest of her family, and along with a string of short, sharp romances with the general ‘artistic eccentrics’ that made up Navarre’s vibrant arts scene she had been tabloid fodder, though it never really concern her at first, the notion that she will be the country’s de jure leader hit her hard as national service came and people started demanding she proved she was able and even fit to be the future Queen.

Teenage indignation had turned to self-anger, as she had embarked on a fitness regime that would have impressed an Olympic athlete in its intensity. She pushed herself, ghoul physiology well adapted to building on muscle and she soon found herself wishing to push herself more and more.

The her national service came up. And she choose the Royal Army, going in as enlisted. The papers collectively gasped.

There are two professional land forces in the Freethinkers under the direct command of the government, the Royal Army and the Ground Defence Force, one loyal to the monarchy first, the other to parliament, an ultimate balance of power so to speak. The Royal Army was smaller, more elite, and generally took on the role of specialised mobile infantry with the GDF providing the actual logistics and armoured back bone. Even getting in to the FRA was hard. The basic fitness requirements before entry alone shattered human world records by a significant margin.

But she made it.

Any ghoul above a certain percentage of vampiric heritage could be fit enough to get in with exercise (though Cyriana fell to the lower end of that scale), and what she soon discovered was that what she actually lacked something more psychological. Whereas ninety percent of her fellow enlistees were Outbackers, men and women from the deathworld like hinterland of the Mainland to whom hardship and being pushed to the limit was their entire life till this point, she had discovered her sheltered upbringing had left her unprepared for the harsh brutality of the Freethinker military.

Training in the Outback was, simply put, about as extreme an environment as one could exist in with outright dying. Soaring temperatures cooled to freezing in hours as cloudless day to desert night. Desert predators loomed large and frightening, capable of shrugging off their most powerful weapons without breaking stride. And the loneliness. Few places on earth could one stand upon the earth and be so far from civilization, so far from the nearest soul.

And in the terrifying conditions, day after day, she almost broke so many times.

Her foot caught in a jutting boulder, and she went down, black-brown, sweat-entangled hair splaying around as she hit the floor, first on her knees against the sharps stones, and then forward onto her hands as the weight of her kit brought her down. The man behind her yelled annoyed, bringing the rest of the platoon, marching in single file, to a grinding halt.

“DAMNIT SVARD!” Hefty footprints made themselves heard even in the sand and stone. At the edge of her peripheral vision a hefty, seven foot and twenty-five stone moving block of muscle and armour grabbed the back of her sack and lifted her to her knees, painfully catching the loosened hair that had fallen down from her desert headdress. She yelled in pain as blood poured from her knees.

“JESUS. YOU THINK BECAUSE YOU GODDAMN ROYAL YOU CAN TAKE A FUCKING LIE DOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING RUN?”

“No…Sergeant…” she muttered through gritted teeth, her head being pulled back with his grip.

“THIRTY MILES? THIRTY MILES AND YOU JUST CRAP OUT? WHAT KIND OF PIECE OF SHIT IS THAT? DID YOU FUCK YOUR RECRUITER TO GET IN OR SOMETHING PRINCESS?

“Don’t, argh, damnit, I just fell down Sergeant”.

“Just fell did ya? Huh, not looking where we going aye?” Cyriana saw her fellow enlistees looking away from her humiliation. This chief, Demort, was known well enough for his method of training. It was terrifying he was considered the best at what he did. “Well guess what twinkle toes…you aren’t in fucking Navarre with some goddamn pissant peasant to carry your weak-willed visited arse from here to fucking there. You fall down, you break your leg? With what lives out here on the fucking loose? Know how much danger you put your comrades in huh?”

The breaking he did caused half the recruits under his eye to fall out. The other half had an eighty percent pass rate for special forces training. Do or die. And right now death seemed welcoming.

“LISTEN TO ME YOU GODDAMN PIECE OF BLUEBLOOD INBRED TRASH.” Please stop. “DO THIS STUPID SHIT AGAIN AND I WILL TEAR YOUR FUCKING LEG OFF MYSELF. UNDERSTAND? YOU DO NOT ENDANGER YOUR COMRADES AND YOU SURE AS HELL DO NOT ENDANGER ME, GET THAT?”

“Yeah…Sergeant…” The pain was becoming unbearable with the weight of the pack pushing down on her knees. He pushed her forward onto the ground again. More cuts, more bruises.

“Goddamn human…” Demort muttered as he stepped over her, spitting black into the sand.

The next thing Cyriana remembered was grabbing his ankle and twisting it in a sheet of blind rage. Calling a ghoul human was about as big an insult as was possible to manage, its connotations of weakness and pity demeaning beyond anything. Demort gave a shout and fell forward himself.

The stupidity of the move struck Cyriana about the same time as the Sergeant’s boot connected and broke her nose and one of her front teeth. She reeled back, blood spewing across her vision, as Demort turned and grabbed her by the throat and lifted her, in one hand, pack, armour and rifle in all, up a foot into the air, tore off the gear and slammed her back onto the rocky outcropping that formed a wall to the path.

Cyriana screamed and flailed, her wrists wrapping around the Sergeants own, as thick as her neck, which felt like warm steel and as immobile as granite. She was helpless and terrified as she looked up to see him red in face with anger, black eyelids drawn and fangs bared in a horrifying sight, almost demonic in its abject fury. She choked as the grip tightened, gasping, struggling for breathe. She screamed, gurgling the sound came out but he did not stop.

The nearest enlistees took a step back, fearful for their own safety. Only as her eyes rolled back into her head did the fingers loosened and she fell to the floor, swallowing the air as she lay again on the rocky floor, blood pouring anew. But even as she looked up the metal capped boot connected with the sternum and lifted her into the air again, her whole body twisting so she fell onto her back in the same position as before, heading knocking against the floor of the path and her ribs exploding in pain as she heard a couple of them crack. The boot came down on her chest, more excruciating agony, and all she could do was whimper.

The rage had gone at the sight of her blood for Demort, and the trainer looked down at Cyriana with a suddenly calm expression that was even more terrifying than the rageful incarnation.

“If you…ever…pull that shit again, I will tear out your eyes, I will strap you bare to the rocks, and I will leave you to your fate out here. Accidents happen to this platoon all the time. Don’t become one of them.”

He turned and left, walking back to the head of the formation, as the enlistees closed ranks behind him. Two of them, a lanky-by-ghoul-standards good natured guy named Daylion and a small, stocky, black haired female nicknamed Daisy for her pre-army days haircut, stepped forward and helped to her feet, giving reassuring grips but saying nothing. The column moved up as Cyriana hastily bandaged the wound from torn off strips of her desert overrobes, the crimson liquid now smeared over most of her gear as well as her.

“Just be glad,” muttered Daylion, out of earshot of everyone else, “you didn’t make him bleed. Apparently he keeps the eyeball collection under his bunk back at Carlson.”

“I don’t doubt it” she whispered, every word painful. She spat out the small reservoir of blood that had formed in her mouth, and moved up after the platoon, pulling the sack back over her raw shoulders. "I fucking love this job."

“Work Fasta’ ya slov’y grots!” Kanbang the Mekboy hit a grot with a hammer, sending it hurtling off the table with his ale, “We’s gonna’ be left a-hind if you don’ go fasta!”

He frowned, and went back to looking at them assembling the engine. Soon the Rok would be able to move, and they’d be able to join the big Waaagh that the new warboss had called.

They’d built a grand battleship, too, and beyond a haphazardly bolted-on window, Kanbang could see it drifting on its side, fighta-bommers practicing runs against it.

They had almost fifty ships, in all, mostly small, ranging wildly in size and design, from a few hundred meters to three kilometres. The best organized warbands had herded thousands of gretchin and built themselves ‘Kroozers’ the less so, various attack ships, and the least prosperous had simply bolted engines onto large chunks of metal, or even asteroids, making brute ramships or Roks.


On the battleship, Dungutz reflected on the fights he’d had working up to this one. They’d been really good. He’d beaten the boss of Blackteef of the big hills by looting the guns from the ramship and then he’d taken them on, and swept down and captured Nutbite’s only, evacuated, human colony city. That’d been long, bloody and good. Lots of bosses there hadn’t believed in his cause, but he’d taken them on one by one with Gargal the Speed Freak boss, and proclaimed himself Big Boss, and set about laying into the other country tribes.

They’d fallen in line with the Kroosade in the end, and started building his ships.
He was bored, though. He leaned forwards to grasp the speaker tube in the corner of his chair. “Right. Dat Iz It! We’re goin’ right now! All Krew to Stashuns! If any of youze grots mess up, I’ll eat ya!” he tossed it aside, and smiled at the stamping noises that could be heard all around as the surprised crew ran hither and tither to find their posts.


Kanbang growled, grabbing a gretchin and biting his head off in fury. He wasn’t ready. They were going, and their Rok wasn’t ready. They might miss all the good killing. “Fire up da engin!” he growled.

“Boss! It’s not ready!” a gretchin protested, and he kicked the little creature.

“Now!” he growled.

They pulled a lever, and the whole room shook. The cylindrical shape of the engine trembled and wobbled in its mounting. With a soundless blast, it exploded.

The last thing through Kanbang’s mind was a piece of engine housing the size of his fist.


As one, or rather, as fifty one, over about an hour, (quite an achievement, all told) the ork ships disappeared into warp-space

The Ork fleet, most of the fifty ships, arrived well off the travelled routes of the Sol System, high from the plane of the system, they appeared four days away from the primary planet, and over five days. So, the first ships to arrive, perhaps not by coincidence, but certainly not by conscious design, were a pair of Roks, known to more literate races as Rock-Fortresses, these agglomerations were like miles-wide mixtures of space debris and asteroids. Rock, as one would expect, was a major component of the ships.

One was simple, ordinary, direct, a flying fortress of the stars. Dungutz, who’d made sure it was occupied by the most cunning of his followers and mek-boyz, smaller, had constructed the other, just for this task. He’d a special plan in mind for this, and had even gone to the remarkable length of briefing and supervising the meks. They’d built a Rok that was smaller than all the others, slower, and had only one engine, and hardly any crew, weapons, or defences.

At first, this ship would hurtle inward at great speed, but then, it would slow down, and try to sneak past the natives, pretending to be an ordinary space rock, on an unthreatening trajectory. Dungutz had been inspired by the way the ship had crashed near him. But rather than making it faster, he thought, he could make it slower, and then no one would expect anything unusual until they fired up the special technology inside the Rok. That in itself would take about five days until it got there.

By which time, Dungutz planned the first Rok (packed with all the warbands who he liked least) would be busily keeping the ‘umies distracted.

Of course, he’d other ideas for his nebulous concept of revenge, and far outside the system, another warlord watched as the ork ships arrived. This figure was one of Kasraedan’s more junior followers. Exiled to keep watch, in the smallest ship available. His name, though he rarely used it, was Morantha.


Arch-Uber-Boss Gundork had no idea about the new, upstart warboss’s designs for his massive, sprawling mile wide fortress, nor precisely any reason why the diminutive rok behind them was trailing them as though its punyness had broken off his own vessel’s magnificence.

He was of course, so drunk that he had to cling on to the ground to keep from falling over, for most of the trip. Which didn’t give him much time to think about it, but even so, he was thrilled to be the first one to get there, and get to blow up the ‘umies.

He wondered if he’d get to board them. Space combat was fun, but it was only really good when you could either ram something, or board it. In the window before him, with a sparking box of magnifying machines with big lenses, he could see the planet looming closer; they’d slowed down to enter orbit, but those incompetant grots on the other Rok were apparently falling toward the planet on a straight trajectory that’d make them land in a big desert.

With a grunt of derision, Gundork altered course to land in the same area as the grot-Rok. A lens showed him a space station ahead; so maybe the runts had the right idea. He looked at the big red button on his chair, with big fat cables snaking from it, labelled with a big pictograph meaning ‘explosion’ if he was lucky, it’d make the enemy explode.

He pushed it, hard, firmly convinced that the harder he did so, the more fire would hit the target.

He was rewarded with the shudder of thousands of guns firing toward the space station. Nothing happened. He’d not thought to check that they were in range.