Chapter 305: The Old Bull, Part 2
The Warboss's complexion shifted, visibly, from green to a deep furious red. His fists clenched so hard the knuckles cracked. Veins stood out thick across his forehead like cables.
There's a saying about truth being the cruelest weapon. It applied here perfectly.
Back on the Forge World, the Coward Fleet had been having a perfectly good war against the local humans — right up until a different Warboss, a genuinely massive specimen, had come crashing in and put the entire warband on the ground in about thirty seconds. The message afterward had been simple:
"You're all cowards. I don't want you fightin' next to me. Get off my planet, or I'll knock your teeth out personally."
The current Warboss had been humiliated by this. There'd been no way to argue. Tail between the legs, ship loaded, off the planet, gone.
So Kian's words landed precisely where they hurt most.
A newly-spawned Boy elbowed the Nob standing next to him, genuinely confused.
"Are we really da Coward Fleet? Are we really dat cowardly? Are we really da worst of da worst?"
The Nob's hand twitched toward a backhand. Then he saw the kid's face — genuinely asking, no idea what was happening — and the hand came back down.
If Kian had been watching through the Immaterium right then, he'd have seen the WAAAGH-field around the entire warband, which had been building nicely for the last day and a half, start to deflate again.
He grinned, stood up, and delivered the finishing blow.
"Honestly, the whole reason I came out here was to find the biggest, strongest, most badass Ork in the galaxy and have a proper fight with him.
Guess that's not happening here." He sighed theatrically, clicked his tongue, shook his head with the air of a man profoundly let down.
"There's not a single legitimately tough Nob on this whole ship. Just a bunch of losers."
The Warboss stamped both feet.
"I AIN'T NO LOSER!! I AIN'T NO LOSER!! GET DOWN HERE AND FIGHT ME, I'LL PROVE IT!!"
Kian gave him a look. A specific, withering, deeply unimpressed look, and let it sit there like a blade through the chest.
"You're telling me you're not a loser? You can't even run without falling over. I'm almost embarrassed for you."
The Warboss's face went a shade redder. He was, despite himself, remembering the exact moment he'd tripped over an invisible field while charging full speed and gotten trampled flat by his own Nobz.
Every Nob in the chamber turned and looked at him with open contempt.
It was true. Nobody knew why their boss had just face-planted mid-charge for no visible reason, but a leader who couldn't walk without falling down was, by any Ork standard, deeply embarrassing.
Wait. If this guy's our boss... does that mean we really are losers? Are our cowardice stats actually maxed out?
Kian brushed dust off his armour, sniffed, every inch the disappointed connoisseur.
"Anyway. You've all been a massive letdown. Fighting you people isn't tough, isn't badass, isn't anything.
You said you came from the Forge World next door, right? I bet that place has some genuinely tough, badass, properly intense Orks. I love fighting Orks like that.
We could trade shoota fire at sunrise and chopper duels at sunset. He crushes my skull with his biceps, I snap his neck with my glutes — honestly, the thought alone gets me going.
Anyway. I'm off to go find some tall, handsome, properly masculine Orks to fight. You lot are way too boring for me.
Later. Don't bother calling. Absolute scrubs, the whole bunch of you."
He turned and walked off into the dark corridor without looking back.
The chamber erupted. The Warboss emptied his rotary shoota straight up into the ceiling, screaming the whole time.
"DON'T GO!! DON'T YOU GO!! FIGHT ME!! I'M A TOUGH, BADASS, PROPER ORK, I SWEAR IT!!"
Mid-tirade, the shoota's barrel detonated. Shrapnel sprayed in every direction. The Warboss screamed in genuine agony, looked down, and found that his right hand was simply gone — blown clean off at the wrist, blood pumping freely from the stump.
The other Orks watched this happen and felt their contempt deepen even further. This was the guy in charge of them?
The newly-spawned Boyz, meanwhile, were sliding into something closer to despair. They'd been alive for maybe an hour, hadn't inherited much beyond basic instinct, and had assumed — reasonably — that they were ordinary Orks born into an ordinary warband.
Instead: the Coward Fleet. The bottom of the barrel. Born losers.
It wasn't WAAAGH. It wasn't anything close to WAAAGH. If anything, several of them were actively contemplating whether existing was worth the trouble.
In the unseen layer of the Immaterium, the green field wrapped around every single Ork on the hulk was collapsing, fast. Collectively. Warboss to Nob to the smallest Gretchin — every one of them sinking into shame, doubt, and a profound, species-wide identity crisis.
In the mushroom fields, the embryos that had been gestating new Boyz at speed simply began to die. No more spawns coming. The remaining spores shrivelled, dry and useless, like mushrooms left out in the sun for two weeks straight.
The Warboss screamed, clutching his ruined wrist, and bellowed at the mob.
"GO AFTER HIM!! STOP HIM!! WE AIN'T LOSERS!! WE'LL PROVE IT TO HIM!!"
The Orks snapped out of their spiral and surged after Kian, trying to cut him off before he reached the hull breach.
They got there too late. Through the viewport, all they saw was his shuttle, already well clear of the ship and accelerating away.
The shuttle's running lights blinked twice on the way out — almost deliberately, almost mockingly — and then it punched into the dark and was gone.
The Warboss stood frozen at the viewport, completely lost. The older Nobz around him were sinking visibly, their field collapsing fast enough that their bodies were physically shrinking in real time.
If they couldn't catch this insufferable human and beat some respect into him, their entire existence as a warband was, by Ork logic, a confirmed failure.
The old guard sank into despair.
The new guard went somewhere much worse.
No. I refuse. I am NOT a loser-Ork. I am tough and badass and proper. Why should I pay for the failures of these washed-up old gits?
Nobody could say afterward which Ork struck first. A chopper went into a Nob's kidney from behind.
The Nob howled and put his elbow through the attacker's skull on reflex.
After that, it was everyone, all at once.
It should have felt incredible — a proper brawl, real violence, exactly the thing that fed the field. Instead it was just bitter. Resentful. Personal in a way Ork fights almost never were.
And no matter how viciously they tore into each other, the collapsing field didn't recover.
It just kept sinking.
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