Chapter 6 – Machine of War
One Month after the start of Total WAAGH!
Hills of scorched and smoking corpses surrounded a towering fortress covered in turrets. Ash, all that was left of ten thousand or more orks, filled the sky and choked the ground. This was easily the worst part of using heat lances as the main weapon for your army.
His fortress had stood strong and remained untouched by the Ork assaults for almost a month, yet that was all the territory he possessed on the surface of the main continent. When the Orks had realized he was starting to build up other positions elsewhere, they'd swarmed them before he could build up sufficient defenses to beat them back unless he was willing to engage them in a pitched battle by teleporting his army there. Even then, he never won without extreme losses and would just as often choose to pull back from that position as further assaults came soon. Of course, given his nature, such losses hardly mattered in the long run, but most of his resources were dedicated towards expanding his industrial base on the other worlds and moons of the system.
More annoying than anything else was just how damn adaptive the orks were getting. After their initial assaults in the first two weeks, he'd decided that his own discomfort was getting in the way of his ability to win, so he'd fully unleashed the Locusts. A massive swarm descended upon the Orks that attacked his fortress, disassembling nearly fifty thousand on a cellular level. It had been disgusting and their screams had been horrific and part of him was ashamed he had done what he had. The orks retreated for a while and seemed hard at work in their own camp. When they had emerged a few days later and attacked, he'd once more sent the swarm to deal with them.
He had overestimated the power of his swarms.
They'd built flamethrowers, tens of thousands of them. Bullets were all but useless against a swarm of Locusts, but flamethrowers? They were small, not sturdy or heat resistant, and they fell within moments of hitting the directed flames. He'd lost over ninety-five percent of the swarm and barely inflicted more than a few hundred casualties.
Since then, he'd only used the Locusts on isolated groups that had only a few flamers, or in ambush attacks where he spread the swarm across the ground and waited for the orks to come close. He returned to the tried and true tactic of drowning the sea of Orks in an even larger sea of bodies equipped with heat lances or in hit-and-run attacks with forces of speeders.
Most concerting was the fact that the Orks never seemed to decrease in numbers. There had been a time in the beginning after his initial use of the Locusts where it dipped, but since then the size of their attacks only ever increased. The spores were proving trickier to destroy than he'd suspected and a far larger problem than he'd hoped. New Orks were popping up every day all across the continent and they were getting larger by noticeable amounts as the battles became even more pitched and widespread. None showed up around the scorched areas of battle, which proved that the Heat Lances were working, but unless he decided to give the continent a plasma bath, he doubted he was going to manage to get rid of them permanently and he didn't want to use Halsey Engines to send a moon careening into the planet just yet.
He'd just build the engines as a back-up plan.
Two Months after the start of Total WAAAGH!
Git-Crusha couldn't be happier as he drove over another dozen of the tinnys, laughing as he reached down and grabbed another of them, bringing the git up to eye level. The tinny leveled its burn-shoota with his face and let loose a bolt of searing heat that tickled his nose and Git-Crusha laughed even harder as he squeezed and popped the head of the bot off before tossing away the motionless body.
These burn-shoota boyz were great, if a bit too small and weak to give him or the boyz a proper fight, 'specially not with choppas. The other tinnys though, the even littler ones with the choppas on their hands, they was a ton of fun! He could pick up a bunch with his hand and just crush'em like a bunch of snotlings! Not as much fun as actual snotlings, but still!
Even those clouds were alright, even if they didn't get krumped by shootas. The way they burned was great to watch, a cloud of sparks, like explosions. The best had been that big cloud at the beginning that had krumped a bunch of his Boyz all at once in the beginning. Git-Crusha had seen them go all screamy and he got so mad he forgot where the battle was and went in the opposite direction as fast as he could! And anyone who said different would get krumped! He'd had the mekboyz make a bunch of burn-shootas like the tinnys had and watched the flames burn the cloud. It was real pretty.
Those bikes though, they was no fun, and Git-Crusha scowled at the thought. Always ran away, the gits, never staying still enough for him to get his hands on one of 'em. Even Git-Crusha wasn't fast enough to keep up.
Now, Git-Crusha respected going fast as much as the next ork, but running away from a fight… Git-Crusha's blood boiled at the thought.
In his rage, he didn't notice the fight coming to an end as the last of the tinnys got krumped. Further annoyed that he didn't get to enjoy any more of it, he returned to his camp, got a snack (in the form of an unfortunate grot), and went to see his best Mekboy, the one who'd built Git-Crusha.
"BARUK, WHERE ARE YA, YA DUMB GIT!?! GET OUT 'ERE 'FORE I BASH YER SKULL IN!"
"Over 'ere, boss!"
The Mekboy in question was hard at work amidst a pile of the tinnys, tearing them apart and grabbing various bits of wires as he worked on something Git-Crusha didn't understand.
"OY, QUIT WORKING ON A NEW SHOOTA AND START WORKIN' ON GIT-CRUSHA!"
The Mekboy glanced up at him, shaking his head, holding up the device.
"But boss! This ain't a shoota, it's a rocket for-!"
He was cut off by Git-Crusha's fist bashing his head, sending the Mekboy tumbling across the ground.
"WHAT'D YOU SAY?!? IF I SAY IT'S A SHOOTA, IT'S A SHOOTA!"
"Yes, boss!" Baruk nodded so fast Git-Crusha thought it might pop off like that tinny earlier. "I'll get to work on Git-Crusha!"
"I DIDN'T ASK YOU TO WORK ON ME! GET TO WORK ON GIT-CRUSHA, YA GIT, OR I'LL CRUSHA YA!"
"Yes, boss! Sorry, boss!" The Mekboy turned to sprint away, but Git-Crusha grabbed him by his head and picked him up off the ground. Baruk cowered in his grasp, but couldn't run and certainly couldn't fight.
"YA GIT, I AVEN'T SAID WHAT I WANTED YA TO DO YET!" He bellowed even as Baruk continued to struggle. "MAKE IT GO FASTA! FASTA THAN THOSE CHOPPA-BIKES THE TINNYS USE!"
The Mekboy tried to nod, but given Git-Crusha's grip on his head, he could only shout, "Yes, boss!"
"THEN WHAT ARE YA WAITING AROUND FOR, GET GOIN!" Git-Crusha shouted before tossing the Mekboy aside, watching as he scurried away, slowing only to pick up various parts off the ground and a bucket of red paint.
Dumb git.
Three Months after the start of Total WAAAGH!
The orks had bikes now.
When had that happened?
For a while, the fastest thing they'd had was that battle wagon their Warboss drove around on that had no business moving almost as quickly as his speeders. And yet, now they had hundreds of red-painted bikes that equaled his fastest hover units in speed, if not in maneuverability. The hit-and-run attacks were suddenly far less effective as his units spent more time being chased away than turning and attacking.
More than that, he'd found that the orks were using his own destroyed units as scrap to build their machines and weapons. Where before only some orks had shootas, now all of them had at least one and some kind of cobbled together armor.
Orks got stronger and more advanced the longer and more they fought, he'd known this from his knowledge of the lore, but he hadn't expected it to happen this fast and to such a relatively small group of orks.
He'd had the decided advantage at least in the defensive battles, being able to hold them at a distance until they fell under concentrated heat rifle fire or to the blades of his Wolffes. Now he realized just how much of a mistake that had been. They had been advancing and growing, while he had allowed himself to stagnate. He had limited himself to a mere three to four units to fight the majority of his battles, while the Orks had been able to bring increasingly more diverse and varied units to the field.
He'd grown complacent with his superior industrial might.
He would correct that immediately. Even as his forces engaged in a dozen battles all across the continent, he opened his design files and began work upon a range of new units. He'd stuck to infantry and light speeders for too long, he needed something heavier.
And where better to start than the same universe that had inspired his troops?
The Tactical Enforcer was a blatant rip-off of the Clone Wars vehicle of the almost identical name, just like the Riflemen. With no one in this universe knowing what Star Wars was, who was going to call him on it? Certainly not Disney, unless they were really daemons or something (which, admittedly, would not be that much of a surprise). In place of the six laser cannons the walker should have possessed, he gave them six heat rifles even stronger than those on the speeders. The main cannon on top of the walker would be an upscaled splinter rifle capable of taking out tanks in a single shot. He didn't have the technology to allow the walker to scale sheer cliffs like those from Star Wars, yet, but it was still capable of crawling over most terrain with relative ease. Since the interior was almost entirely empty, he'd considered adding a fabrication unit to allow it to build new units on the battlefield itself. Then, he realized he could do even better and instead added a portal frame that could drop units to the ground from any of his numerous factories. It wouldn't fit many things larger than a dagger-class speeder through it, but it was acceptable since all of his other combat units were on par or even smaller.
The Scanner was based loosely off the AT-RT also from the Clone Wars. Small, two-legged, and fairly quick with a heavy heat rifle fixed to its chin. The hum of the speeders was too loud and easily heard from afar which made them inadequate as scouts, but these could fulfill a middle-ground between cavalry, scout, and ambush unit with their much quieter servos. It had excellent sensors as well.
Then, finally, was the Shock-class Gunship. It used both the deldar hover engine and the regular engines used by his aircraft, making it faster than either at its top speed. He also equipped it with a pair of twin rotary splinter rifles, a design he'd been toying with, giving it a fair bit of range. The main purpose of the gunship wasn't for combat, however, it was to ferry his army to and from the battle. It had a teleport frame of similar size to the one on the Enforcer, but the main method of transport was by latching onto and carrying Tactical Enforcers into battle, another idea he'd blatantly stolen from the Clone Wars.
If he couldn't be put in the galaxy of the Star Wars universe, he'd damn well put the Star Wars universe in this galaxy!