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Da Gobbo's Revenge – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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MEKKIN’ TROUBLE

Death was everywhere, and it was going boom a lot.

Fingwit cowered down and whimpered as a full mob of orks pounded past him, howling with glee at the prospect of a decent scrap, and firing off their sluggas more out of delight than any real attempt to hit the enemy. A shell ricocheted off a wall and screamed over Fingwit’s skull before he even realised he should be ducking, so close to his skin that it felt like it had carved a furrow right over the top of his head. He drew in a reflexive breath to shout in outrage, but the syllables died before they reached his throat. There was no chance of the ork hearing him, and if it did, it would likely just kick him back down the corridor. Grots didn’t talk back to orks, at least not if they wanted to keep all their limbs attached.

‘Alright, Fingers, lissen up!’ a gargantuan voice bellowed, and Fingwit flinched as Klaws’ thumping steps heralded the arrival of the scarred, towering ork himself. Klaws was an Evil Sunz mek, and had been a thumping good one until an accident involving an overcharged kustom mega-blasta saw him lose both his hands. He had replaced them with a power klaw on each wrist, which made him a terrifying opponent for enemies – such as the humies whose ship they had just boarded – but left him unable to do anything involving digital dexterity, which when you were a mek, was quite a lot of what you were expected to do.

Which was where Da Fingers came in.

Fingwit was the nominal boss of this crew of grots, inasmuch as Klaws blamed him if the others did something wrong. Then there was Grubba, who kept a colony of hair squigs on his chin in imitation of Klaws, and because he thought it made him look good; Duzzik, who was small even for a grot, and useful for squeezing (or being shoved unwillingly) into tight spaces to get things unjammed; Swikk and Flish, who looked so much alike that they had their own names written on their forearms so they could remember which one they were, and who were fascinated by shiny objects; and Rattak, whose nimble digits were perfect for fine wiring, but were more often put to use stealing someone else’s food.

Between them, they theoretically made up for Klaws’ lack of hands by doing what he told them. However, as the mek himself had often declared, the difference between theory and results was a zogload of swearing.

‘Dese humies fort dey could lay a trap for Da Meklord’s fleet, but dey weren’t expectin’ us ta board ’em!’ Klaws growled, as each Finger stood as straight as he could. ‘Now, Da Meklord wants dis ship under ’is control, an’ he don’t like bein’ kept waitin’. Da boyz’ll take care o’ dat – not like yoo’d be any use dere!’ He guffawed a laugh, and Fingwit smiled obediently, and a little nervously. Klaws seemed to be in a good mood, but that mood could turn faster than a cyboar on nitrous.

‘Nah, our job is ta take control of da gunz,’ Klaws said, with a grin that exposed his plentiful, large teeth. ‘Den when we got ’em, we’re ta shoot da uvver humie ships wiv ’em.’

‘Dat’s brilliant!’ Rattak piped up. ‘Dey’ll never expect ta be shot by dere own gunz!’

‘Course it’s brilliant, ya little git!’ Klaws snarled, all traces of his good mood instantly evaporating. ‘It’s Da Meklord’s plan, an’ Da Meklord is da greatest brain da orks ’ave ever had!’ He jabbed at Rattak’s chest with one of the prongs of his right power klaw, causing the grot to jerk back against to wall to avoid being casually impaled on it. ‘Did I ask yer opinion of Da Meklord’s plan? Well? Did I?’

‘Nah, boss!’ Rattak squeaked, shaking his head so desperately that his ears flopped back and forth across his face, and one hit him in the eye. Fingwit could not suppress a snigger as his fellow grot yelped in pain, but luckily for him Klaws found it funny as well. The mek threw his head back and laughed, the red-clad bulk of his chest and stomach heaving as he did so.

‘Didn’t fink so!’ He sobered as abruptly as he had begun to laugh, and glowered down at them all, then reached up to scratch the bushy mass of white hair squigs that completely obscured his jawline. ‘Follow me, den! If ya don’t mess dis up, dere’s extra lunch in it for ya!’

‘An’ wot if we do mess it up, boss?’ Duzzik asked in a small voice.

‘Den yoo’ll be lunch,’ Klaws said, beaming nastily.

A trio of meganobz Fingwit recognised as Ruggaz’s Destroyaz clanked past behind Klaws, clad in metal plating as thick as Fingwit’s chest was deep, and belching smoke from the whining power generators on their backs. Fingwit watched awestruck as the giant shapes strode onwards, bedecked with massive gun barrels and bristling with explosive rokkits, their sizzling power klaws and spinning killsaws powering up, ready to deliver messy evisceration and truly obscene amounts of dakka to the luckless humies who were trying to defend their ship, somewhere a bend or two farther on down the corridor. He had never wanted to be a humie, but right at this moment Fingwit was even more grateful to Gork and Mork that he wasn’t one. Being a grot was a tough life, given that an ork might at any moment decide to use you as a slave, target practice, or, in a pinch, a meal, but being a humie had to be worse.

‘Keep yer ’eads down if ya wanna keep ’em on yer shoulders!’ Klaws boomed jovially, and set off in the wake of the hulking meganobz. Da Fingers scuttled after him, bunched up so close together that Fingwit almost felt like he was part of a single organism with six heads, twelve legs, twelve arms, and insufficient firepower. He had also been jostled to the front. Again.

He quickly checked the chambers of his blasta as they hurried along on Klaws’ heels. It was a simple weapon, but then again, what grot weapon wasn’t? Fingwit had built it himself, painstakingly putting the bits together until it no longer blew up in Duzzik’s hand when Fingwit made him test-fire it. It had eight chambers, each one loaded, and he had various spare rounds secreted away, since past experience had taught him that Swikk and Flish’s obsession with shiny objects extended to stealing other grots’ ammo if they could see it. It was good enough, he supposed – it would put a hole in a humie, so long as they weren’t one of the cowards who wore armour – but Fingwit dreamed of a proper gun.

Oh, how glorious that would be! A kustom mega-blasta, like the one that had blown up and taken Klaws’ hands off (well, not exactly like that one – preferably one that didn’t explode), which fired a blinding beam of energy that could melt through even the toughest metal plating! A rokkit launcher, which could blow up and take other people’s hands off from a safe distance (safe for you, anyway, at least most of the time)! A big shoota, which could spit out more slugs than Fingwit’s entire blasta held, in the time it would take him to sneeze! Fingwit had few long-term aims in his life, since he was mainly concerned about the short-term considerations – like not getting squished in whatever piece of machinery Klaws had him fixing, or stepped on and squashed flat by a Deff Dread – but he really, really wanted a gun so big that the recoil when he fired it would knock him off his feet.

It would never happen, though. No one would waste a gun like that on a grot. Not unless he managed to end up on the crew of one of the big mek guns, but that would never happen while Klaws was still around. Besides, it still wouldn’t be his gun: it would belong to whatever mek had built it, and Fingwit would be operating it with half a dozen other grots to boot. No, the only way a grot would get a decent gun would be if he was wired into a Killa Kan, and that was a one-way trip. It might be worth it, but it would still rely on Klaws letting Fingwit leave his service for any reason other than the sudden onset of death.

As it was, Fingwit’s only real option was to hurry along after Klaws, hope that the meganobz would deal with any humies that might take shots at them, and be ready to shove one of the other Fingers in front of him in case it looked like that wasn’t going to be the case.

The floor was suddenly softer and rather more squishy than Fingwit was expecting, and his foot slipped from beneath him, sending him into the wall. The rest, pressed up close behind him, stumbled in their turn, and then Fingwit was in a flailing mass of arms, all trying to latch on to something to remain upright.

‘Wot da zog are yoo lot up to?’ Klaws bellowed, as Fingwit managed to keep his feet by dint of grabbing Flish. The other grot ended up face-planting, but the momentary support was enough for Fingwit not to fall, and he took a look downwards at what had caused all the problems.

‘I got git on me foot, boss,’ he reported. He hadn’t seen the mangled humie remains before he trod in it, and now his right foot was tracking red smears around. There were more bodies in the upcoming corridor section, he saw now: clearly, this was where the defenders’ first doomed stand had taken place, only to be smashed apart by whichever mob of ladz had been first out of the ’Ullbreakers.

‘Keep up, or yoo’ll ’ave one less foot ta go stickin’ in fings,’ the big mek growled, and Fingwit hurried to obey. He could hear the thump and krump and dakka of explosions and gunfire coming from ahead of them now, and while those were not normally sounds towards which he would hurry, given orks’ tendencies to use grots as bullet shields and his own decidedly inadequate firepower, if he had to enter such a battle then there was no better way to do it than behind three meganobz.

Also, he wanted to keep both his feet. When you were a mek’s ‘assistant’, you might have a better chance than the average grot of receiving a prosthetic leg, even one more advanced than a simple wooden peg, but there was absolutely no guarantee that it wasn’t going to be an experimental contraption that could maim you in some other interesting way. Meks sometimes liked to test their ideas for such things before they risked fitting them to powerful individuals like nobz, and grots were the perfect candidates. Tazzag Rokkitfoot could have told anyone that, had his replacement leg not propelled him into the side of a Gargant with lethal force.

The corridors were showing greater signs of battle now, with massive holes where ork shells had missed their intended target and detonated, and huge flowers of sooty darkness where skorchas had incinerated everything in their path. There were ork corpses, those boyz who had been shot enough times that even their hardy constitutions could no longer drive them onwards, and Fingwit cast a longing glance at a dropped slugga: a simple gun by ork standards, but still much bigger and more powerful than the one he clutched between his sweating palms. However, the humies were by far the more numerous bodies littering the floor, blown apart by gunfire or carved up by choppas, and leaking everywhere. There was no way to avoid getting git on his feet now.

‘Fingwit?’ Rattak hissed.

‘Yeah?’

‘Ya know ’ow red wunz go faster?’

‘Yeah?’ Fingwit replied, wondering where in the name of Gork’s grin Rattak was going with this.

‘D’ya s’pose dat’s why humies bleed so easy?’ Rattak asked, as Swikk paused for a moment to yank something small and shiny and winged off a dead humie’s hat. ‘Dere blood’s dat really bright red, an’ dere skins ain’t tough, so when dey get cut, it all runs out real quick?’

‘Never really fort about it,’ Fingwit said non-committally. Everyone knew that red ones went faster, of course: Klaws was an Evil Sun, so all the Fingers were too – even if they’d never say so where an ork could hear them, because orks didn’t like grots ‘gettin’ ideas above ’emselves’ – and nothing went faster than an Evil Sun, because Evil Sunz wore red. Goffs might think they were meaner, and Snakebites might think they were tougher; Bad Moons might think they had the better guns, Deathskulls might think they were luckier, and Blood Axes might think they were sneakier – and they undoubtedly were sneakier, because sneaky was nothing to be proud of in an ork, and a Blood Axe grot could slap you in the face and steal your teef while he was there – but the Evil Sunz left the other clans in the dust when it came to actually getting somewhere first. It was no good being meaner or tougher if someone else had killed all the enemy gits before you caught up.

Even so, Fingwit was unsure if the same logic applied to humies and their strange ways. They sort of seemed to have clans, in that humies in one place dressed differently to humies in another place, and might even fight a bit differently, but as for their blood moving more quickly just because it was red…

‘Nah, reckon they’re just a bit crap,’ he concluded, after a little more rumination on the subject. Something exploded ahead of him, rather more loudly than had occurred so far, and he flinched. ‘Arrrgh!’

Ruggaz’s Destroyaz, who had been clumping along at the steady pace of orks who knew they weren’t going to get anywhere first, but were equally sure that the fight would still be going on by the time they arrived, suddenly accelerated. Built-in shoutaz in their armour amplified their already deep, powerful voices as they bellowed war cries, and they thundered ahead through a large hole in a wall. Fingwit thought it had probably held a door at one point, at least twice the height of an ork and easily more than that across, but judging by the shreds of torn and twisted metal around the edges, said door had been incapable of standing up to the TekWaaagh!’s advance.

‘Now remember,’ Klaws growled, ‘we only fight da gits we meet when we’ve gotta go froo dem, got it? Our job is ta get to da gunz, den blow da uvver humie ships up wiv ’em. Dat’s gonna be much more fun dan killin’ a few humies here,’ he added, obviously trying to convince himself. As a mek, the opportunity to mess around with humie guns would be a huge draw, and one of the very few reasons why an ork would pass up the chance for a decent scrap here and now. For other, less technology-oriented orks, it was no contest.

So far as Da Fingers were concerned, any battle they couldn’t avoid outright was best sneaked through with no one taking any notice of them, so this was music to their pointed green ears. However, they still did their best to look suitably chagrined, as though it was only Klaws’ stern words that were preventing them from charging at the humies with blastas and shanks drawn, and the names of Gork and Mork on their lips. It was always good to make an ork think you wanted to fight the enemy, so long as that didn’t mean you actually had to fight the enemy. Although, if you did have to fight the enemy, it was still advisable to look like you wanted to, since the enemy was probably less scary than the ork ordering you to fight, might actually be more scared than you, and could possibly be prompted into running away before you reached them if you looked suitably enthusiastic about the whole situation.

‘Get movin’, den!’ Klaws bellowed, and set off at a dead run without waiting to see if they responded to his yell. Fingwit was, as ever, seized by the momentary temptation to run in the other direction: to abandon his position as head of Da Fingers, and try to find a better life for himself. The trouble was, he had no idea where such a better life might be found. Besides, although obeying Klaws’ yelled instructions and taking a kicking when he got something wrong was far from ideal, at least Fingwit wasn’t one of the masses of grots thrown ahead of ork lines in combat, to get whatever gits they were fighting properly warmed up by the time the boyz got to them.

Anyway, the others would only snitch on him the first chance they got, and then Klaws would come and track him down. Fingwit did not much care for the mental images conjured up by that possibility, so he put his head down, ran as fast as he could after his master’s receding, red-clad bulk, and prayed to both Gork and Mork that nothing would shoot him.

It’s not like I’m askin’ for no one ta get shot, dat wouldn’t be right, an’ I know neither of ya would stand for it. I’m just sayin’ dat dere’s others wot would like it better’n I would. Dose megaboyz, f’rexample, dey like gettin’ shot, cos dey can larf when it bounces off, an’ da gits wot shot ’em get scared…

Fingwit ran through the mangled remains of the door, out of the corridor, and into war.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2021.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Daz Tibbles.

Da Gobbo’s Revenge © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. Da Gobbo’s Revenge, 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: 978-1-80026-724-4

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For everyone who wanted more ork shenanigans:
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