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Road Rage – Extract

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ROAD RAGE

Mike Brooks

The first indication Ufthak Blackhawk had that something was up was when Nizkwik sailed past him at head height.

‘Someone to see ya, boss!’ the grot wailed, before it collided with a pile of scrap in the corner. Ufthak straightened up from where he had been prodding at his shokk rifle – cautiously, because he wanted to keep all his limbs attached – and turned to face the cave mouth.

Caves. That was part of the problem. Ufthak’s arm of the Tekwaaagh! had landed on this planet in search of interesting gubbinz with which they could make things explode, and had found very little. There weren’t even any impressive, tall buildings: not that the Tekwaaagh! tended to leave much standing in its wake, but tall buildings were useful to take a look around and see what you wanted to stomp flat next. The low, sprawling temple complexes they had seen from orbit turned out to be annoyingly sparse on interesting tek or shiny loot, and somewhat overpopulated with useless frescos and surprisingly lethal traps. Ufthak had resorted to using a cave as his bunker, and newly minted big boss or not, it was hardly the sort of impressive surroundings that would convince the boyz of his right to command.

Especially not, it seemed, the group of orks doing their best to block out the light from the cave mouth. Other species in the galaxy might assume that orks were always threatening, and to be fair, so far as most other species in the galaxy were concerned, that was an accurate assumption. The only reason an ork didn’t want to scrag or blow someone up was if something else was currently a more interesting target.

Ufthak, being an ork himself, was more attuned to the niceties of orkish behaviour and body language. He was a big boss now, after all, one step down from Da Meklord himself. Da Meklord was the warlord of the Tekwaaagh! and possibly the greatest teknikal mind the orks had ever produced: at least, that was what he said, and no one seemed very interested in contradicting him. Ufthak now had a goodly chunk of Da Biggest Big Mek’s authority, and most orks knew better than to give him any lip lest he remove said lips for them, possibly along with their head.

Judging from the puffed chests, squared shoulders and bared fangs currently between him and the outside world, this group of orks were in the minority.

‘Wotcha want?’ Ufthak asked lazily. None of them were close to him in size, which surely meant they weren’t going to be foolish enough to challenge him to a fight. It was not always true that the biggest ork would win scraps over rank, but it was as near a certainty as made no difference. That was why any ork boss worth his name would keep an eye on whether any of his underlings were bulking up as their metabolisms went into overdrive to prepare them for a leadership challenge, and dish out a remedial beating before the upstart got, quite literally, too big for his boots.

‘Wot do we want? Oh ho,’ said the ork at the front, with a hollow laugh. Ufthak frowned. Sarcasm was a concept he had only recently discovered himself – since the bigger an ork got, the smarter he got – and he did not appreciate it being used in his presence when he was not quite sure of its target.

‘Dat’s wot I said,’ he declared, folding his arms and glowering. ‘Get on wiv it.’

‘Why? Are ya busy?’ the head ork sneered at him. He wore the yellow and black of a Bad Moon, but the zag-stripes and the goggles on his forehead marked him out as a Speed Freek. ‘’Cos we ain’t busy, an’ dat’s da problem!’

Ufthak shrugged. ‘Yeah, we killed all da skrawniez an’ dere big monsta-fings. Anuvver win for da boyz ain’t good enuff?’

‘Dat weren’t a win!’ the other ork declared hotly. ‘Dat was barely even a fight!’

The problem was, he had a point. Pointy-eared skrawniez rarely offered a decent fight in any case: the gits hit you and ran away again, possibly doing backflips at the same time, which was somehow more infuriating than an enemy who ran away without fighting at all. However, at least they could make it interesting, if razor-sharp slicey-discs that took your arm straight off, or screaming at you until your spine froze, counted as ‘interesting’.

The skrawniez on this planet, however, hadn’t had any of that fancy stuff. They’d mainly had simple guns, a lot of pointy sticks, and giant, scaly monsters, some of which were larger than even the biggest squiggoths Ufthak had ever seen. It had been a bit of a challenge at first, because your basic shoota wasn’t even going to dent one of those behemoths, but if there was one thing the Tekwaaagh! wasn’t short of, it was dakka. As Ufthak had observed, in a fight between dakka and monster, the monsters came off worse.

With their monsters blown up, out, and generally about, the skrawniez hadn’t stood a chance. There were probably still a few hiding out here and there, but the fighting had finished fairly quickly. That might have suited other species in the galaxy, who had a notion that you should be fighting for a reason, or that winning a fight should get you something in particular, but orks didn’t hold with that nonsense. The point of fighting was to have a fight. Winning was more of a bonus, providing it didn’t happen too quickly.

‘Da gitz here was weedy,’ Ufthak said. ‘It happens. Da next ones’ll be better.’

‘We don’t believe ya,’ the frontmost ork said bluntly. ‘Ya wouldn’t know a good fight if it walked up an’ slapped ya!’

Ufthak laughed despite himself. ‘Ha! Dat’s a good’un! D’ya know who yer talkin’ to, my lad? I’m Ufthak Blackhawk! Ufthak Gargantsmasha! I took down one of da humie Gargants wiv nuffin’ but me hammer an’ a squig!’ He pointed to where the Snazzhammer was resting in the corner, next to the large, red mound of sleeping flesh that was Princess the squig. Admittedly, Nizkwik the grot had been there as well, but it hadn’t been much help. And yes, Mogrot Redtoof had been with Ufthak too, but Mogrot wasn’t here right now, and what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him: which in Mogrot’s case meant he was probably pretty much invulnerable to anything the galaxy could throw at him.

‘Not just a hammer an’ a squig, was it?’ the ork said nastily. ‘Nah, ya had a dragsta too, didn’t ya? A shokkjump dragsta! Or are ya forgettin’ dat part?’

Ufthak blinked, nonplussed. ‘Is dere a reason yer so bovvered about da dragsta?’

The ork’s eyes went so wide Ufthak thought they might pop out of their own accord.

‘It was my zoggin’ dragsta, ya git!’

Ufthak tilted his head to one side and examined the furious Speed Freek. He vaguely remembered clobbering another ork with the Snazzhammer and stealing the shokkjump dragsta he and Mogrot had then used to jump through the Gargant’s force field, but he’d never really thought about it past that. Another ork had something that Ufthak wanted, so he’d taken it. That was how ork society worked.

‘Oi, Nizkwik!’ he bellowed, and was rewarded with a clattering noise as the grot managed to extricate itself from its landing site, where it had remained until now in order to avoid drawing any more unwelcome attention.

‘Yes, boss?’ Nizkwik puffed, hurrying up.

Ufthak pointed at the Speed Freek. ‘D’ya know dat ork?’

Nizkwik squinted, then nodded. ‘Yes, boss, dat’s Riptoof.’

‘Did I nick his dragsta?’

Nizkwik, whose job it had been to shoot the shokk rifle on that very same dragsta prior to Ufthak ripping it off and using it as his personal weapon, and who had stuck around with Ufthak ever since rather than go back to its former boss, nodded again. ‘Yes, boss. An’ a great bit of nickin’ it was too,’ it added loyally.

Ufthak sighed, and glared at Riptoof. ‘So I nicked ya dragsta, used it ta help kill a Gargant, an’ wot? Now ya fink ya gonna start trouble wiv me over it?’

‘Not over dat,’ Riptoof replied, although Ufthak reckoned he was lying. ‘I’m just da one wot’s got da gutz ta come talk to ya. Da boyz ain’t happy. Da Meklord never should’ve made ya big boss. Y’ain’t found us a proppa fight. Ya ain’t got respekt.’

Ufthak looked meaningfully at the Snazzhammer. ‘How about I knock yer head in? Would dat get ya respekt?’

‘Dere’s only one fing Speed Freeks respekt,’ Riptoof retorted, ‘an’ dat’s speed! Yoo an’ me, head-ter-head! Me new ride against da dragsta wot ya nicked!’

‘I ain’t got da dragsta no more,’ Ufthak told him. ‘It sorta fell off da Gargant an’ smashed. I fink,’ he added, ‘I was a bit busy killin’ da Gargant.’

‘Ain’t my problem,’ Riptoof sneered. ‘If ya want da boyz to follow yer orders, yoo’ll be ready to race when da sun comes up tomorrow.’

There were a few enthusiastic ‘Yeah!’s and ‘You tell ’im!’s from the other Speed Freeks, and then the whole posse turned around and left again.

Ufthak considered it. On the one hand, he could go after them and dish out a beating. Orks understood and respected violence. That should reinforce his right to be in charge.

On the other hand, the Kult of Speed made up a sizeable portion of the force under Ufthak’s command, and Speed Freeks were a bit, well, weird. Just knocking some heads together might look, to them, as though Ufthak was scared of taking up the challenge, and that would never do. Besides which, somewhere in the back of Ufthak’s brain was the notion that he had no intention of stopping at big boss. Da Meklord might have an accident one day, or if no convenient accidents occurred, one might have to be arranged; possibly involving a shokk rifle and the Snazzhammer. Accidents could look very deliberate, sometimes. And if, one way or the other, Da Meklord found himself headin’ off to see Gork and Mork before Ufthak did, it would be very useful if a lot of the Tekwaaagh! was already inclined to follow Ufthak’s orders.

And for that, he needed respekt.

‘Nizkwik,’ he said. ‘Go an’ find Da Boffin.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain 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 Alex Boyd.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-723-7

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