Chapter 296: The Bored Warboss
Forty-odd Ork Boys came thundering down the corridor, WAAAGH-ing at full volume, boots hammering the deck plating like a drumline.
Kian decided not to waste ammunition on them. Standard Boys with no significant armour didn't merit live rounds.
He racked the Heavy Stubber across his chest, freeing both hands, and began charging a psychic shockwave in his right palm. Psychic lightning crackled between his fingers as he compressed the energy for three full seconds.
He released it.
The shockwave spread in a wide cone down the corridor: lightning, concussive force, and tearing pressure all at once. The front rank of Boys came apart. The rank behind them went down stunned. The rank behind that scattered into confusion.
He raised his left forearm immediately and let the twin heavy-barrel lasrifles work through the chaos, alternating between targets with the calm precision that came from 255 points in marksmanship. Headshots. One after another. The Boys that recovered from the shockwave walked into las-fire and stopped.
When the smoke thinned, twenty Boys remained standing. He backed up slowly, still shooting, still accurate.
One Boy had a breastplate and face guard. Three shots to the head: the improvised iron helmet blackened and dented but held. The Boy reached him still on his feet, cleaver coming down.
Kian drew the power glaive and cut once to break the cleaver, once to remove the head.
Then he simply went through the rest of them.
Several seconds later the corridor floor was covered in cleanly sectioned Ork biology. He checked the mission counter: 43 of 1,000.
He kept moving.
He hadn't covered much ground before the noise came: a wall of it, WAAAGH-ing and shouting and the particular chaotic enthusiasm of Orks who had found something worth fighting.
"WAAAAAGH!!"
"SHRIMP!! BIG TIN-CAN SHRIMP!!"
"MINE MINE MINE!! THE HUMAN SHRIMP IS MINE!!"
He looked up the corridor.
A full combined-arms Ork warband was coming: Gretchin in the back screaming encouragement, Slugga Boys with cleavers, Shoota Boys with heavy firearms, and several Nobz at the front in thick improvised armour carrying axes and large-bore automatic weapons, all of them well over 2.5 metres tall.
The ones with guns opened fire while still running.
The calibre was larger than he'd expected. He threw himself around a corner as rounds the size of his fist tore through the space he'd occupied, and swung the Heavy Stubber out at waist height without looking.
The 20mm rotary opened up.
The muzzle report in a confined corridor was enormous. Shell casings the size of small bottles cascaded across the floor. The cone of fire swept back and forth across the width of the passage and didn't stop. Ork bodies were not designed to stop 20mm armour-piercing explosive rounds at close range regardless of size, and the Nobz in heavy plate went down alongside everyone else. The rounds punched through multiple bodies per shot in the packed corridor.
He held the trigger down until the mechanism locked open on an empty feed.
150 rounds. Gone.
He drew the power glaive and destroyed the empty Stubber before putting it down. An Ork would tinker with it and have it functional within minutes. He moved through the smoke.
One Nob was still moving: lower body gone, dragging itself forward on both arms, leaving a long trail, axe still in hand, still attempting to close distance.
Kian removed the arm holding the axe. Then the head. Silence returned to the corridor.
Mission counter: 257 of 1,000.
"A few more engagements and we're done."
Satisfied, he pressed deeper into the ship.
Deep in the warship's interior, past the mushroom fields and the bunkrooms and the improvised workshops, there was a fighting pit.
Two Nobz were going at each other in the centre. Around the pit, several thousand Orks watched with the specific expression of beings who had been doing this for too long and were no longer getting much out of it.
On a throne assembled from salvaged metal and broken weapons, a Warboss sat. Three metres tall. Improvised power armour cobbled together from a dozen different sources. He watched the two Nobz fight and yawned wide enough to show every tooth in his head.
"Booooooring. Not 'appy. Not 'appy at all!!"
He jumped into the pit, kicked one Nob into the wall hard enough to leave a dent, and punched the other one's jaw loose. Both of them went over the barrier and out of the pit.
The Warboss stood in the centre of the empty fighting ground and bellowed at no one in particular.
"NOT 'APPY!! BORED!! WANT A PROPER FIGHT!!"
The assembled Nobz picked their noses and agreed silently. Nobody had fought a real enemy in weeks. Beating each other up had lost its appeal. They all knew each other too well.
A Gretchin crept into the pit and picked up one of the knocked-out Nob's fallen teeth, giggling to itself.
The Warboss kicked it into the far wall without looking and turned back to the crowd.
"NOT 'APPY!! WANT TO KRUMP SOMETHING!!"
A thousand Nobz looked at each other.
Then they raised their weapons simultaneously and charged him from every direction, screaming.
The Warboss roared with something approaching joy and waded into all of them at once.
The pit became a general melee: a thousand Orks swinging at each other and at their Warboss, bellowing, cackling, taking hits and giving them back. The noise was extraordinary.
Then a Gretchin came sprinting in from outside, barely avoiding being trampled, screaming at the top of its lungs.
"SHRIMP!! SHRIMP IS HERE!! HUMAN SHRIMP INSIDE THE SHIP!!"
The fighting slowed. Hundreds of Ork faces turned toward the Gretchin.
The Warboss came through the crowd like a battering ram, scattering Nobz to both sides, and snatched the Gretchin off the ground.
Three metres of muscle and iron stared directly into its eyes.
"GRETCHIN!! WHERE'S THE SHRIMP!! WHERE IS IT!!"
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you