Gargrazz' Day Out
or
Where does a two ton squiggoth sit down?
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Squigs are stupid creatures. Little should be expected of a quasi fungal life form that can be spontaneously created on any planet, any galaxy, in any environment. That's a tall order for a metabolism in and of itself, so it doesn't leave much room for think-bitz. This, however, should not detract from the sheer majestic glory of the massive and powerful squiggoth. Squiggoths are the genetic offshoot of squigs and can range in size from horse to house. Left to their own whiles, they are simple, content creatures that desire little more than a plot of shady ground and a thick pool of murky water. In the hands of the aggressive ork culture, the squiggoth is a deadly mass of shambling fury that could smash ceramite with its thick skull, or trample a line of heavy cavalry. More often than not, it is ork cavalry and ork ceramite...
  Gargrazz is not a patient ork. When he feels the Waugh stir inside of him, he tends to have little sympathy for life's obstacles. In fact, it was usually his practice to smash said obstacles at his earliest convenience. However, today's particular obstacle was one that could not be readily smashed. It was this reason alone that he was content to wait it out in painful drudgery-- after all, anything that Gargrazz could not dutifully smash himself was an awesome tool to use against his opponents.
That tool was the new snakebite squiggoth that had been captured and trained by Wortsnagga Runtznob. The training was rushed and tended to hinge on a system of half-hearted coercion and outright bribery, but it was enough to get the hodad built and the weapons installed. A team of ten gretchin assistants crawled over the surface of the massive beast as it swayed and staggered through the rough terrain outside the small Ooman settlement known as Goneril. Sharp cries of frustration screeched from the clap-trap structure each time the massive bulk of the squiggoth shifted to rest on its haunches. Once the ground crew of gretchin got the beast standing again, the procession continued forward. Large ork Skarboys cleared terrain with their axes as Badmoons doused the surrounding foliage with napalm in hopes of making the way easier for the obviously frustrated beast.
Goneril had been a staging ground for countless battles between Gargrazz and the local Imperial forces and most of it lay in ruin from previous skirmishes. The stalemate that had developed between the entrenched Guard and the dauntless orks had taken a terrible toll on the sector and Gargrazz had the feeling that the Oomans were tiring. If he could take this town, then the rest of the planet would be easy. The stubborn squiggoth was putting a cramp in those plans, however.
With little else to do but wait, Gargrazz sent his mekboy and Blood Axe Kommandos ahead to see what they could find out. Hopefully, they could flush out the forward lines and find the sniper nests. The much more cooperative sniffer squig that the mekboy had was usually very accurate, and helped Gargrazz avoid needless losses.
Suddenly, the giant squiggoth roared and whipped its head around. The metal ring that ran through its nose was attached to a heavy chain that 4 gretchin crewman clung to for dear life on the hodad sideboard. En masse, the four were yanked off their feet and thrown over the railing where they were deposited roughly under the hind legs of the squiggoth. With less than a squeak, one of the crew was crushed under a foot while the remaining three scrambled to clear it's path. With new found freedom, the squiggoth lurched forward and charged straight for the Ooman town of Goneril! Tiring of the wait, Gargrazz took the opportunity to heft his plasma gun high and order the raid on the human town. The unusually sluggish orks all suddenly sprung to life as the energy of encroaching battle flooded through the collective orkoid consciousness. Completely disregarding any thought of surprise or tactic, the orks immediately began to charge forward, firing off weapons and artillery into the air. Rokkits and sluggers were joined by battlecries of orkoid rage to clash in a cacophony of noise and confusion that shocked the waiting Guardsmen.
Wortsnagga was a bit concerned. With little more than his Urtz
prodda', he realized that he had absolutely no control over this
massive beast. He was standing atop a shambling squig goliath with a
rickety wood contraption on its back that was charging at breakneck
pace right for a large concrete structure. He had barely enough time
to shout "Stop!" before the creature impaled itself suddenly on a
massive column. The entire hut flew forward and strained against its
moorings before crashing back into place on the hairy back of the
squiggoth. Grot crewmen were flung far, weapon mounts sprawled
uselessly, and the runt's Urtz-prodda' flew out of his hand and landed
in some bushes twenty yards away.
Elsewhere, the mob of Badmoons were closing on a squad of tactical Guard, only to find that a Demolisher was laying down covering fire. The plasmaguns in the sponsons belched forth searing hot plasma as a thick beam lanced from the front of the tank. Dirt and debris sprayed the roaring orks as they charged forward. The lead boy was caught in a plasma blast and found himself disintegrating as he ran.
The rest of the mob snapped off boltpistols and primed their flamers, disregarding the sudden disappearance of a mate. Few tactical guardsmen fell to the scattered fire and only spurred them on towards the orks, confident that the Demolisher would break the morale of the orks before close combat was engaged. The great treads of the ceramite mammoth momentarily ground to a halt and the short barrel of the turret leveled on the orks. Smoke and fire poured from the gaping maw of the demolisher cannon as its ordinance was released. The tank lifted from its position with the recoil and smashed back down into the boggy earth. The massive slug rocketed past the running guardsmen and pounded into the badmoon mob. The detonation sent ork bodies flying. Green limbs and garish yellow flak armor was thrown in hundreds of directions. The orks that survived the blast, having underestimated the Ooman support, turned from the onslaught and broke for cover as the demolisher chugged forward spraying heavy weapons fire from its bristling surface.
The guardsman squad cheered as they over ran the terrified orks and leapt on them with renewed vigor. The orks, with little sanity left, hefted their axes in futile defensive gestures as the guardsmen brutally clubbed and garroted them with their las rifles.
A few hundred meters from the massacre, a massive ork dreadnought was jerking its way across the charred streets of Goneril. It had reestablished contact with the forward mob of Blood Axe Kommandos and learned that they had pinned down a deadly Ooman sniper that had taken up position in one of the broken husks of a building. With single- minded electronic devotion, it pushed forward destroying any obstacles that got in its way with its lascannon and the steady cadence of its heavy bolter.
As the dreadnought rounded a corner, it caught sight of the red and blue camouflaged flak of the Kommandos, who were whooping and hollering as they poured fire from a fortified bridge position. Their boltpistols snapped and flashed with puffs of acrid black smoke and boltshells screamed across the open terrain to impact against the cover that hid the assassin. The dread, with little concern for its own safety, rushed the position. It watched as the skinny little wisp of an Ooman leveled its massive rifle, ignoring a gaping boltpistol wound, and dropped a shell into the chamber. He coolly drew a bead straight for the lumbering dread and pulled the trigger. The shell whistled and cracked right into the hull of the steel war robot. Pistons whined and gears screamed. The dread staggered a moment and missed a step, but absorbed the shot. It closed the last few meters and let fly with a massive cloud of flame from its heavy flamer. Napalm and super-heated oil drenched the entire area and caught the diving assassin full in the torso. He screamed as the dread gleefully pulped the flaming body with its heavy bolter. Massive rokkit shells from the weapon tore into the assassin and flayed him into a dozen bits. The sight was enough to send the Blood Axes into fits of glee.
As they danced and took happy whacks at the bridge masonry with their poweraxes, a hellhound rounded the corner and instantly vaporized four of them with a collumn of inferno cannon fire. The hull mounted heavy bolter began to rattle off with its string of fire. The kommandos, caught completely off guard, turned tail and fled the bridge. The hellhound raced forward, plowing through rubble in pursuit of the orks. The dread, hoping to halt the slaughter, lanced out with its lascannon and tried to pierce the tough hull of the tank. Unfortunately, the shot was absorbed and failed to damage more than the tank's paint job, which was already scarred and damaged from too much use.
So far, Gargrazz was holding back. However, his mega armor had already dosed him with its squig-syringe of "Doc's Speshul" and he was already beginning to feel the red hot hatred rush through his green veins. Six long spikes sprung from his powerfist and wickedly gleamed in the sunlight as his long, telescopic legs quickly carried him towards the highest concentration of carnage. He bellowed at the top of his lungs and fought the heady euphoria that was washing over him. DNA matrices and complex chemical processes long programmed into the core of his being served as the instinctual bent that made him the single most efficient fighting organism to ever heft a weapon.
Gargrazz grinned wickedly and closed the last few meters with a mighty leap that plunged him into the heart of a crowd of hand to hand combat between a unit of guardsmen and a mob of his Snakebite boarboyz. His powerfist flashed and flew in the mass like it was a rapier. He quickly cut a bloody swath through the crowd that led him to a massive, battle scarred Ooman wearing a black leather trench coat and jump pack. The Ooman Commissar stopped as he removed his sword from a fallen boarboy and looked up to find Gargrazz coming at him full tilt. With a thin smile, he brought his powerfist around in a wide arc, and caught the frothing warboss with a backhand. Gargrazz went sprawling, but unhurt. In a fraction of a second, he was already on his feet and launching himself straight at the offending Commissar. The two collided with the force of freight trains. They rolled in the bloody turf, locked in an unheroic tussle that was little more than flailing limbs and clattering wargear. The commissar jump pack snapped off and his sword went wild. Gargrazz' plasma gun was forgotten a few feet away. Finally, Gargrazz found himself on top of the pinned commissar. The brave soldier grinned into the green visage and snarled, "Get the hell off me, greenskin!" Gargrazz smashed his brow into the commissar silencing him with a head butt. He then hefted the broken body and tossed it at a wall. The commissar slumped to the ground unconscious. Gargrazz finished him off with a sharp snap of his spikes and impaled the broken officer on them.
By the time it was over, the snakebites had disposed of the guard unit and were already charging headlong into heavy weapons fire, hoping to get a chainsword into the throat of the crewmen behind a ravaged section of wall. Their cybernetic boars dodged and weaved through the terrain at an unnatural speed. The riders sat low in the seat with their mugs hugged down low to the nape of their mounts. Flak and tracers whistled by them as bovine hooves churned up dirt and grit. Gargrazz cheered them forward in his battle reverie and fired plasma blasts at random fleeing guardsmen. This town would be his soon, the entire planet would soon follow.
Even orks have a vague sense of irony. The unbeatable squiggoth
was destroyed by its own stupidity. Wortsnagga's charge was fading.
He could tell, despite the creature's undeniably slow thought
processes, that it was now starting to realize it was already dead.
Wort's crew had long since given up the hope of steering the beast and
just made broad efforts to fire as much artillery before the whole
hodad was smashed under the weight of the collapsing squiggoth.
Wortsnogga barked orders to his grot crewmen and took on the task of
loading the battlecannon himself.
Finally, with a sickening crunch, the entire hut crashed to the ground and the hut was smashed into a tangle of splintering wood and twisted metal. Whatever survivors remained were trapped in the tangle of debris. When the artillery detonated, it was a moot point.
The battle lasted just under a few hours. The last echoes of
gunfire were replaced by the roar of the ork warband as it plundered
the Ooman wargear. The last hangers on of the Guard were flushed out
of their hiding places, chased down by gleeful orks, and forced into
cruel games of torture and mayhem. The docboyz soon learned that
Oomans don't quite have the constitution and durability of the simple
ork metabolism and were disappointed to find that their experiments on
the weedy Ooman bodies were dismal failures.
End. |
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