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Brutal Kunnin – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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A TEMP’RY ALLIANCE

It had been a weird trip through the warp.

Ufthak Blackhawk knew full well that there wasn’t such a thing as a normal trip through the warp, because Gork and Mork had their own senses of humour and liked to mess with the boyz every now and then. He still remembered that time he’d ended up seeing out of his own kneecaps for a while. Then there were all the interesting things you might encounter on a space hulk, like those bugeye wotsits with different numbers of arms that moved like a cyboar on nitrous. That was the great thing about space hulks – never a dull moment. Even when you thought you’d killed everything on board, you’d probably still missed a bit. And even if you hadn’t, odds were you’d still have some ladz with you to have a punch-up with if everything got too boring.

This journey, though, hadn’t been on a space hulk; it had been on a humie vessel, one that Ufthak and his boyz had boarded and taken, and on which Da Boffin had installed and then activated a device he’d called Da Warp Dekapitator. This had caused a katastroffic warp implosion – which was apparently a good thing, although Ufthak thought that ‘catastrophic’ sounded like something that should be happening to someone else – and it had dragged not only the humie ship but also all the ork ships around it into the warp and along the path of its last jump, to arrive back where it had come from.

(There was also the part where most of the bodies of the dead humie crew had merged together into a reanimated mass of flesh and steel that hungered for ork blood, and also the screaming humie faces that ran around on varying numbers of insectoid legs and spat poison, but the boyz had needed something to keep their spirits up on the way.)

Now they’d reached their destination, and had emerged from the warp again with nothing more than the sudden but quickly fading sensation that Ufthak’s skeleton wasn’t where it was supposed to be. And what a destination it was.

‘Dat planet,’ Mogrot Redtoof said, looking out of a viewport, ‘is made of metal.’

Ufthak nodded sagely. Back before they’d boarded the humie ship, he and Mogrot had been rivals – two warriors jockeying for position under the command of Badgit Snazzhammer. Thanks to a series of events involving a large robot, several fatalities and a head transplant courtesy of Dok Drozfang, Ufthak’s undamaged head had ended up on the decapitated Snazzhammer’s undamaged and significantly larger body. After a brief meeting of the minds via a headbutt, Mogrot had settled back into a role as Ufthak’s right-hand ork. That didn’t mean that Ufthak trusted him, of course, but at least he was fairly certain Mogrot wouldn’t try to shank him unless he was already wounded.

‘Looks like a humie mekboy place,’ Ufthak said. ‘Humie mekboy ship, coming from a humie mekboy planet. Makes sense to me.’

‘Why do dey do dat, anyway?’ Mogrot asked. ‘Make dere planets all shiny so ya know dey’ve got flashy stuff ya might want, and den when ya go to get it, dey get all annoyed an’ try to kill ya?’

‘Dat’s da problem wiv humies,’ Ufthak opined knowingly. ‘Dey ain’t logickal.’

‘Boss!’

The shout came from the other side of the bridge, where Ufthak and his ladz had taken up residence after they’d tossed out the corpses of the crew formerly stationed there. Ufthak clumped across the deck, absent-mindedly twirling the Snazzhammer as he went. It had been Badgit’s weapon, a two-handed affair as tall as a humie with its legs still attached, with an electrified hammer on one side of the head and a choppa blade on the other. He was starting to get used to the feel of it now, and couldn’t wait to krump a few more enemies with it.

‘Wot?’ he demanded, coming up alongside Deffrow. The other ork pointed with the few fingers that remained on his right hand, having blown most of them off by hitting a humie with a stikkbomb.

‘Look at dat, boss! Dat ain’t one of ours!’

Ufthak sucked his breath in through his teef as a jagged piece of darkness eclipsed the stars. The ships that made up the Waaagh! fleet of Da Meklord – Da Biggest Big Mek, and a warboss in his own right – were many and varied, but Ufthak was familiar with them, and Deffrow was correct: that wasn’t one of theirs. Impressive though Da Meklord’s flotilla was, none of them looked quite that… killy.

‘Dat’s Da Blacktoof,’ Ufthak said in something close to wonder, as the shape of it became clear. It was a monstrous kill kroozer, bristling with guns and ordnance. And there, leering down at them from under the prow, was a single, huge glyph: a monstrous, one-eyed ork skull, with crossed bones behind it. ‘Dat’s Kaptin Badrukk’s ship.’

The rest of his mob made suitably impressed noises. Badrukk was a legend across the galaxy, a freebooter of infamy and renown, and his presence here surely meant that Da Meklord’s own star was in the ascendancy.

Assuming, of course, that Badrukk was here because Da Meklord had arranged for him to be. If not…

‘Message from da boss!’ Da Boffin shouted, bursting into the bridge in a gust of fumes. At some point in the past, Da Meklord’s favourite spanner had, either due to injury or simple curiosity, replaced his legs with a gyro-stabilised monowheel, and as a result he was now both much faster than a normal boy, and spectacularly poor at navigating stairs. ‘All nobs are to get over to Mork’s Hammer right now!’

Mork’s Hammer was Da Meklord’s flagship, and Da Meklord only called his nobs and bosses together if he had something very important to say… or, alternatively, if he wanted to yell at them all. As a new nob, Ufthak had never attended one of these Waaagh! meets before. His chest swelled with new-found pride, and he slung the Snazzhammer over his shoulder as he turned on the spot.

‘Right den!’ He frowned, as a thought struck him. ‘Wait a minute. Do da ’Ullbreakers go backwards?’ He and his mob had arrived via boarding pods, which were still locked into the side of the humie ship after they’d broken through its ferrous hide.

Da Boffin shook his head. ‘Nah. Dey got just one gear – go.’

‘So how’re we s’posed to get back over dere, den?’ Ufthak demanded. What was the good in being a nob if you couldn’t go listen to your boss telling you what he wanted you to go and stomp?

Da Boffin shrugged. ‘Da humies have shuttles on dis fing. We’ll nick one.’

Ufthak frowned at him suspiciously. ‘You know how to fly one?’

‘Can’t be hard,’ Da Boffin grinned. ‘After all, humies can do it.’

The Waaagh! room of Mork’s Hammer was crowded with orks mashed in shoulder to shoulder. Ufthak saw many faces he recognised and many more that he didn’t, because every single ork of any authority under Da Meklord’s command was here. Surly, black-clad Goffs glowered at camouflaged Blood Axes and blue-painted Deathskulls, while the stench of fuel from the Evil Sunz was almost overpowered, but instead just sickeningly offset, by the smell of squig dung that accompanied the Snakebites. However, most numerous by far were the yellow and black colours of the Bad Moons, which wasn’t only Ufthak’s clan, but also that of Da Meklord himself. They were smartest, the richest and the flashest clan of all, and the reason why the Tekwaaagh! had risen so quickly and so unstoppably. Sure, the Evil Sunz might drive a bit faster, and the Blood Axes might be a bit sneakier, but if you wanted the ladz with the best guns, you wanted Bad Moons.

This many orks in such close proximity was a pretty good recipe for a massive fight, especially given the egos involved. Ufthak could see the huge, horned helm and multiple back banners of Drak Bigfang, the Goff warboss; the collection of junk and scavenged armour plates under which was Gurnak Six-Gunz, the self-proclaimed SupaLoota of the Deathskulls; and the fur-clad bulk of Da Viper, the Snakebite Overboss, whose gargantuan squiggoth was so large it allegedly had a hold all to itself in his kroozer. Any of these orks were capable of leading a Waaagh! in their own right, but no one was starting any trouble worse than jostling their neighbour a bit. No one wanted to end up like Oldfang Krumpthunda, who’d taken Da Meklord on one on one and had been… Well, no one was quite sure what he had been, other than it involved getting hit with Da Meklord’s shokkhammer and then ending up in lots of very small pieces in very different places. Some of the boyz said they were still finding bits of him in the stew, now and then.

Horns blared, a brassy note of challenge and conquest, and everyone shut their gobs and snapped their heads around to look at the dais built at the far end. Part of the wall behind it had been turned into a massive effigy of the face of Mork – or possibly Gork, but Ufthak reckoned it was Mork – and this was now yawning wider and wider as the mighty lower jaw dropped away. Steam and smoke gushed forth, obscuring the dais but accentuating the piercing red glare of the eyes lurking near the ceiling.

Then, first as a looming shadow in the murk, and then as a mighty figure resplendent in his yellow-and-black mega armour, Da Meklord emerged from the mouth of a god.

He was a titanic figure, and that wasn’t just down to the size of his armour. Ufthak’s new body was large enough that he was a head taller than most of the mob under his command, but Da Meklord would have towered over him had they stood next to each other. He made ordinary orks look like grots. His mega armour made him nearly as wide as he was tall, and the bosspole rising up above his head and carrying his personal glyphs and banners added another dimension of awe to his appearance. Half of the overlarge skull that housed his enormous brain was plated in metal; in his left hand he held the shokkhammer, and his right hand disappeared somewhere into the gigantic mess of barrels, ammo feeds and coolant pipes that formed his kustom supa-shoota.

‘ALRIGHT, LISSEN UP!’

The assembled nobs quietened down a bit more, each one intimidated into silence by his stentorian bellow. Ufthak stood as straight and tall as he could, to try and make sure his face was visible, even though he was standing quite far back and there were other, bigger orks with more impressive weapons and armour between him and his warboss. There was something intangible about Da Meklord that grabbed a lad by the throat, focused his attention and drove it home to him that this ork, this ork, was one who knew where he was going, and on whom glory and renown would be showered.

‘Da humies call dis world “Hephaesto”,’ Da Meklord rumbled. ‘Dere’s a lot of ’em down dere. Da red-robe types, da ones what look like Evil Sunz, but squishier.’

A bubble of laughter ran through the assembled nobs, save for the Evil Sunz present, who were doing their best to look like they weren’t glowering.

‘Dey’ve prob’ly got a lot of interestin’ tek, cos dose humies tend to,’ Da Meklord continued. ‘An’ normally, I’d be sendin’ all you down dere to get it, and kill ’em all. But dere’s a little snag.’

Ufthak glanced sideways, and saw his own confusion mirrored on the other green-skinned faces around him. What could possibly be a snag to a Waaagh! as mighty as this one? Unless…

‘See, some uvver gitz got ’ere first,’ Da Meklord said. ‘An’ we could fight dem too, dat could be a good larf, but while we woz doing dat, da humies might get away, an’ dat would just be a waste.’

Heads nodded. Humies weren’t exactly a scarce resource, but you couldn’t always rely on some being about when you wanted a scrap, so it made sense to use the ones that were here.

‘I talked to–’

The temperature in the Waaagh! room plummeted. Ufthak could see his breath in front of his face, and faint tendrils of frost began to creep along the walls. Orks readied their weapons, unsure what was going on but ready to fight it, or, if no better options presented themselves, each other.

The air pressure increased rapidly, from unnoticeable to the point where Ufthak felt like something was pressing in on his eardrums. He shook his head and growled, trying to clear the sensation, but it persisted until–

Vorp!

A bubble of energy washed out from the other end of the dais to where Da Meklord was standing, sending the smoke of his entrance billowing, and incidentally knocking the fumes aside to give every ork in the room a clear view of…

Kaptin Badrukk.

The mightiest freebooter kaptin who’d ever lived. The hero of the War of Dakka, the Breaker of the Grand Guard, and the Plunderer of Tanhotep. He stood resplendent in his lead-lined greatcoat, his bald head crowned by his mighty bicorn, which was as tall as a well-fed grot and dripping with medals taken from the corpses of humie commanders. He was leaning casually on his longblade choppa, and had Da Rippa, a gun so radioactive its simple presence in a room practically constituted an aggressive act, tucked under his arm. He was flanked by three more Flash Gitz, each one imitating him so far as possible in their mode of dress and armament, but not coming close to rivalling his sheer ostentatiousness and utter gaudy magnificence. Lurking behind them all was an ork that had to be Badmek Mogrok, another Bad Moons big mek, who fought under Badrukk’s banner and was undoubtedly the source of his teknologickal advances.

For the first time in his life, Ufthak Blackhawk laid eyes on an ork who might just be as impressive as Da Meklord.

‘Ta-daaa!’ Badrukk bellowed, as though he hadn’t just tellyported into the middle of his rival’s command structure, on his rival’s warship. The sheer guts of the git was jaw-dropping.

Da Meklord turned towards Badrukk with a clank of metal and a hiss of pistons. He looked thoroughly unimpressed, but he hadn’t powered up his supa-shoota or sent the triple heads of his shokkhammer whirling around each other, so violence wasn’t imminent.

‘Kaptin,’ Da Meklord growled. ‘I woz just telling da ladz about how we woz going to be havin’… a friendly kompetition.’

‘Dat’s right!’ Badrukk beamed, showing more teef than it should have been possible to fit into one gob. ‘Plenty of loot to go round down dere, I reckon. Of course, my ladz’ve had a bit of a head start, but dat should just help ya out! Cleared a few obstacles out da way, dat sort of fing.’

‘So we’re all gonna stomp da humies, an’ take dere tek,’ Da Meklord said. ‘An’ your boyz ain’t gonna be shootin’ mine in da back, right?’

‘So long as yours don’t shoot mine first,’ Badrukk leered back at him. ‘Dat would be a shame, when dere’s so many humies to go round.’

‘My forts exactly,’ Da Meklord agreed. ‘So we got a deal, den?’

‘We got a deal,’ Kaptin Badrukk said, nodding. ‘Last one to da gubbinz mucks out da squiggoffs!’ He clicked his fingers, and Mogrok did something. A moment later the temperature dropped again, crackling energy surrounded the freebooterz for a second, and then they were gone once more, as abruptly as they’d arrived.

Da Meklord turned towards his assembled nobs.

‘Get down dere, and wotever ya do, don’t let dat git’s boyz get to da good stuff before ya!’ His face broke into a grin every bit as toofy and menacing as the one that had graced the freebooter kaptin’s. ‘I fink dere’s gonna be a few “accidents” before we’re done ’ere, so make sure yer aiming at Badrukk’s ladz whenever ya fink yer gun might go off by mistake, like when dey’z between you and da best loot. Got it?’

Ufthak joined his voice to the others in a roar of assent to assure their warboss that they had indeed got it.

‘Good!’ Da Meklord drew himself up to his full, magnificent height, and filled his lungs.

‘Now get down dere, an’ get fightin’!’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Grzegorz Przybyś.

Brutal Kunnin © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Brutal Kunnin, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78999-373-8

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