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Da Big Dakka – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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One

Ufthak Blackhawk’s head hurt, and he blamed the finkin’.

He’d never put much faith in finkin’ before; it was the sort of thing mekboyz did, or warbosses. He’d never had much time for it. He’d never needed to. He’d been a regular ork in Badgit Snazzhammer’s mob, going where his boss told him and stompin’ anyone who got in their way. Then he’d lost most of his body and Badgit had lost all of his head, and Dok Drozfang had stuck one on top of the other to give Ufthak a bigger body than he’d had before, and also the Snazzhammer which had given Badgit his name. Ufthak took over as boss, and then that scrap on Hephaesto happened and Da Meklord made Ufthak a big boss.

Ufthak had led his boyz through all sorts of fights since then, and they’d got bigger and tougher as they went. That was only natural – one of the weird things about humies and the like was that you couldn’t always tell which one was in charge, because most of them were about the same size – but as he’d got bigger, Ufthak had begun to notice other changes.

It was the finkin’. It was happening more often, sometimes when he didn’t even mean to do it. Snuck up on him, it did, like a sniffer squig stalking a grot. What was even worse was when he realised that he was finkin’ about finkin’. That was pure unnerving.

Right now, he was finkin’ about the planet he and his ladz were on. His part of the Tekwaaagh! had landed on it merrily enough, but they hadn’t found much. There were a bunch of scrawniez here, those skinny gits with pointy ears what stuck you with sharp things and then skipped away before you could get ’em a good walloping back, but these ones were unlike those Ufthak had encountered before. Their guns were less zippy, and they rode around on massive beasts the size of squiggoths instead of hovering whatnots. That had made for a few interesting fights, but there were nowhere near enough scrawniez to go round. The Waaagh! hadn’t explored the whole planet yet, but Ufthak had little hope of finding anything other than what they’d encountered so far – isolated communities of scrawniez that fought gamely enough in their weird way, but just got overwhelmed by weight of numbers. It wasn’t satisfying. The ladz were itching for a good scrap, but Ufthak was increasingly doubtful that they were going to find it here.

However, there was something intriguing about the planet. A small group of spikiez – which were like scrawniez but with, like, knives on their armour and more hooks and stuff – had shown up one day. Ufthak and his ladz clobbered ’em well enough, but the boyz in orbit swore to Gork and Mork that no ship had come or gone. Somehow, a whole mob of spikiez appeared on the planet for a scrap, then the ones the boyz didn’t manage to properly squish legged it again, all without a ship.

And then there was the grot. What was its name again…?

‘Boss!’

Ufthak looked up from where he’d been idly fiddling with the worky bits of the Snazzhammer while he did his finkin’. Nizkwik was practically vibrating with excitement, which presumably meant the grot had something important to tell him, or at least something it thought was important. Lurking behind Nizkwik was the other grot, the one they’d found… Snaggi! That was its name. Snaggi had been convinced that it arrived on this planet through a giant pale archway of something which looked a lot like scrawniez had made it, and that they only worked when a scrawnie was nearby. Unfortunately, Ufthak had not yet been able to keep a scrawnie alive long enough to get it to the archway and see for himself. He’d considered setting a bunch of ladz to watch the damned thing in case anything else came out of it – there was that finkin’ again, taking him by surprise – but orks would get bored and wander off, and grots couldn’t be trusted.

‘Wot?’ he demanded, hefting the Snazzhammer to remind Nizkwik of how readily a clobbering could be heading its way if he felt it was wasting his time. Or, to be fair, if he just felt like it.

‘Da Meklord’s shouty box is shouting, boss!’ Nizkwik reported, hopping from one foot to the other with excitement. ‘Da Boffin said so! Ya gotta come at once!’

Ufthak grunted, and stood up to his full height. There was quite a lot of that, now. The top of his head nearly brushed the ceiling of the old Gargant head he’d taken as his personal living space, and he’d outgrown the fancy beakie armour he’d nicked on Hephaesto to the point that it was more of a collection of plates strewn around his body these days. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was as big as Da Meklord now, but Da Biggest Big Mek had sent Ufthak and his ladz over to this bit of the galaxy to do a bit of stompin’ and find some shiny loot, so Ufthak hadn’t laid eyes on his warboss in a while.

He got to the doorway and lashed out with a steel-capped boot, connecting solidly with Nizkwik’s ribs. The grot flew backwards and then tumbled down the side of the hill on which Ufthak’s bunker sat, emitting amusing noises of pain as it did so.

‘I don’t “gotta” do anyfing!’ Ufthak shouted after it. ‘Yoo just remember dat!’ He squinted down at Snaggi, who had the sharp-toothed grin of any grot that had just seen punishment dealt out to someone or something else. ‘Oi. Is it true?’

‘Yes, boss,’ Snaggi said, its grin disappearing as it looked up at him. Ufthak grunted. Snaggi bothered him, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. It was tempting to smash the little git anyway, just to be sure, but if Ufthak were to smash every grot that bothered him then they soon wouldn’t have any grots left, and then who would do all the boring stuff?

He whistled instead, and a high-pitched squeal that rapidly descended, in height if not in tone, announced the arrival of his pet squig, Princess, as it hopped down from where it had been sunning itself on top of the bunker. Snaggi – a fast learner in at least some respects – immediately took off as fast as its little legs would carry it, with Princess bounding along behind making the happy noises of a squig that had a friend to play with, or possibly lunch. Ufthak picked up his shokk rifle, clamped the Snazzhammer to the sticky-metal backplate Da Boffin had made for him and sauntered along behind, covering the same distance with one casual stride as Snaggi did with half a dozen panicked ones.

Da Boffin was buzzing around on the single wheel with which he’d replaced his legs, and tinkering with a trukk of some sort amidst the piles of scrap and apparent junk that served as his workshop. Ufthak recognised the glyph that denoted the trukk as belonging to Skumdreg, and without him even asking, his brain threw up how many boyz Skumdreg bossed and what weapons they’d had the last time Ufthak had seen them. He grunted in irritation at the unwanted cranial intrusion, and the mekboy looked up.

‘Boss!’ he said excitedly, throwing the still-whirling handheld buzzsaw casually over his shoulder. One of his grots ran desperately to catch it with the despairing expression of one who had taken too many kickings for being insufficiently attentive, and lost an arm as the blade sliced through flesh and bone with ease. The grot stifled a high-pitched squeal of agony, managed to shut the saw down and place it within easy reach of its master, then fainted.

‘Da shouty box is shoutin’?’ Ufthak asked.

‘Dat’s right,’ Da Boffin said eagerly. ‘C’mon, I’ll show ya.’ He buzzed away, leaving Ufthak to follow him deeper into the mess of his workshop. They passed what had once been – or possibly was going to be – a Killa Kan, heaps of old shootas, and what looked to Ufthak suspiciously like the head of a tinhead. He glared at it distrustfully, but it showed no sign of either fading away or regrowing its body and trying to kill him, so he reluctantly assumed that Da Boffin knew what he was doing.

Da Meklord’s shouty box was right at the back. Ufthak had always wondered whether he should have kept it with him, since he was the big boss after all, but the thing made him uncomfortable in a way that little else did. Anyway, at the end of the day it was a mekboy’s invention, so it seemed only right that a mekboy should look after it.

It was a metal effigy of an ork’s head, hooked up to all manner of wires and things that bubbled and went blip at irregular intervals. That in itself wasn’t too disturbing; what bothered him was the fact that inside the metal skull was half a weirdboy brain. The other half was still in what was left of the weirdboy, who was kicking around on Da Meklord’s ship – Da Meklord having learned about the humie practice of talking across the galaxy by having one of their weirdboyz shout with its brain to another one in a different place, and figuring that having one weirdboy in two places was more efficient. After all, that way it was the same brain just talking to itself, wasn’t it?

Da Boffin flicked a switch, and the speaker that took up the metal mouth crackled into life and began disgorging a familiar deep voice.

‘Ufthak! Get yer ladz togevva an’ get back ’ere! We’ve found a proppa good scrap – we’re near a star wot’s all big an’ red wiv a smaller one dat’s a bit more yellowy, ya can’t miss it. Also,’ Da Meklord’s voice continued, in a slightly more menacing tone, ‘make sure yoo bring all da loot yoo’ve nicked wiv ya. Yoo’ve been away for a long time, I wanna see wotcha got.’

The speaker crackled again, and fell silent. Ufthak looked at Da Boffin. ‘Dat’s it?’

‘Dat’s it,’ Da Boffin confirmed. ‘I can make it say it again, but it don’t say nuffin’ else.’

Ufthak grunted. Something about this wasn’t sitting quite right with him, and although he distrusted finkin’, it had its benefits on occasion. Da Meklord had sent him out here – pointed him at a patch of sky and told him to find out what was there – and he’d barely discovered anything worth fighting, let alone anything worth nicking. Scrawniez usually had quite fancy tech, although it tended to be a bit flimsy, but these ones were like the Snakebites of their kind – all monsters and sharp sticks, and not a lot of zoomy dakka. Da Meklord was one of the smartest orks around, and he’d always been good at leading the Tekwaaagh! to the right places for good fights and good loot, but for some reason he’d sent Ufthak off to a nearly empty part of the galaxy. Now he was calling Ufthak back and making a big deal about the loot he was expecting as a result, even though there was none to be had. It was almost as if Da Meklord wanted to make Ufthak look bad…

‘So, we goin’?’ Da Boffin asked. Ufthak opened his mouth to give an affirmative, because of course they were goin’, Da Meklord was the warboss and he was calling them back for an almighty scrap, but he was interrupted by a new and far more interesting sound.

Ork camps didn’t have sirens like humie ones did, which started blaring as soon as they saw an ork to make sure that the humies inside were all properly panicking by the time the boyz arrived. For an ork, anything worthy of note was greeted with dakka – either shooting at it, or just shooting into the air on the reasonable assumption that other orks would come over to find out what was going on – and it was this that erupted from outside Da Boffin’s workshop. Ufthak raced out into the open, with Da Boffin keeping pace with him on his wheel.

Overhead, the sun was blotted out, not by one of the mighty storms that rolled across the camp from time to time, but by sleek, narrow shapes screaming from the sky. Ufthak recognised them even before they started spitting flecks of toxic crystal, even before the rappelling lines rained down and lithe, sharp-edged shapes in red and silver began to descend with notably un-orkish grace.

Ufthak grinned. The spikiez were back.

He flicked the whirly bits of his shokk rifle with his finger to make sure they still whirled properly, then activated it. The weapon powered up with a pleasing whine, and Ufthak fired it upwards. He didn’t aim it as such, but quite a lot of the sky was filled with spikiez, and a pointy-helmeted figure disintegrated very entertainingly, along with the line it had been holding on to. The four figures that had been dangling beneath it suddenly found themselves dropping unexpectedly to the ground; being spikiez, they landed on their feet with sickening agility, but Ufthak had already stowed the shokk rifle and started moving.

It was the only way to deal with them, really. Many an ork had tried to out-dakka a spikie, but the gits were good at shooting and although their guns were disgustingly quiet and the ammunition didn’t even explode when it hit something, they could still bring an ork down in short order. Spikiez didn’t like to hang out miles and miles away and drop enormous shells on you, like humies did. Nor did they want to get close up and in your face, like the bugeyes. Spikiez liked to move fast and hit hard, staying just out of range of retaliation, because they really didn’t like it when you hit back.

Ufthak crashed into these four like a smasha squig that had just been zapped by an electro-prod, and began laying about him with the Snazzhammer.

He broke one in half with his first swing, and sent it flying. The others drew long thin knives, but Ufthak could practically smell their panic; they’d intended to dangle from their lines and dakka his ladz from above, and now they were on the ground facing an angry ork. Scrawniez in general always seemed to think they were so much better than everyone and everything else, but that usually only lasted until you could lay a hand on them. He grabbed one by the head; it tried unsuccessfully to twist away from his grasp, and did manage to stab him in the arm. Ufthak hurled it into a third one, and they both went down in a heap. The last one turned to run, but Ufthak clobbered it from behind with the Snazzhammer, then set about pasting the other two.

Spikiez were annoyingly fragile, and Ufthak’s little scrap was over in seconds, but battle had been joined in earnest around him now. One of the floating trukks abruptly lurched downwards and crashed as a traktor kannon’s beam latched on to it and hauled it groundwards, and another one began to veer as a couple of rokkits from a mob of tankbustas struck it more or less centrally (most of the rokkits in the fusillade missed, naturally, but given there were many more floating trukks beyond the initial target, it was fairer to say that they were only temporary misses). His ladz weren’t having it all their own way, of course – he caught sight of half a mob getting raked with fire from the spikiez’ pointy rifles, then falling over foaming at the mouth within seconds – but neither were the spikiez.

Ufthak grinned. He’d been dying for a proper scrap, and at last it seemed as though the galaxy was going to oblige him.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2024.
This eBook edition published in 2024 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Chris Campbell.

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