Dat Orky Git

(This is a Warhammer flash fiction piece I wrote, it was meant to be for a Cold Open competition but didn’t quite fit the theme and not sure it’s good enough to win, but I’m quite happy with it. I love the Warhammer universes, and am nerding out big over them. I’m still fairly new to it all, so apologies for any mistakes/inaccuracies. Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think.)

Tupzin threw an elbow into his neighbour’s face and darted forward, scrapping a few more feet in the swirling scrum at the mob’s centre.

He’d been pushed forward at first, but had no interest in being first to face the humie guns, but the rear held the threat of Brazgot’s lashes and squig hounds. 

The best place to be was in the middle of the horde. Unfortunately, every other git knew this, and there was a mass of conniving cowardice at work.

It didn’t help that countless squabbles and grudges were getting settled in the ruck too.

Tupzin, hissing angrily, shoved off a grot who tried climbing over him.

That’s when he saw Loonza the Mad Grot.

                               *    *     *             

Loonza was angry, he’d wanted to get a place right at the front. 

They was fighting humies, and he wanted to get stuck in straight away.

He was sure if Gork or Mork saw him go down scrapping, they might let him come back as an ork or something, a proppa fighter!

He’d charged up his beloved laspistol, but when unplugging it from the frayed wires, he’d been zapped and woken up to find most of the other grots already scrapping.

Mad Grot. 

That’s what they called him, Loonza knew. But they were just as mad as him. Fighting for a few more moments of life.

Not him, though. 

Nope, he knew he’d die eventually, but he was gonna go down swinging and blasting.

He’d had to fight his way through a bit, but most grots, seeing his determined expression, cleared out. 

The eagerness for a fight and determination marked him out as different right away.

There were his clothes too, which were more warlike than the usual grot rags. He’s scrounged up plenty of blue, wanting the luck to kill some humies before they got ‘im.

And wedged on his head was a metal pot serving as a helmet. He had his laspistol in hand and a crude knife strapped across his back.

Loonza was ready for a fight.         

             *     *      *

Tupzin shrieked, running towards the human guns. 

He needed a place to hide! 

The ship had landed, or rather crashed, into the planet, and Brazgot had forced them into a charge.

Tupzin had been with hundreds of others but now ran with a small clutch of fellow grots. 

Hopefully, they’d catch any shots sent their way.

The gang ducked behind some rubble, jabbering nervously.

“I think Brazgot’s dead! We can just stay here.”

“If ‘e’s dead, his squigs loose! I ain’t gonna sit and wait to get eaten!”

There was a demented whoop, and Loonza rushed over to them.

Figures. All that blue makes ‘im lucky, Tupzin thought. Tho’ real luck woulda been not being a grot to start with.

                *     *      *           

Loonza had his pistol slung over his shoulder and his bloody knife in hand. He’d found a humie hiding in a tower with some fancy gun with a tellyscope on it.

Typical humie nonsense! Aiming was cheating, and took the fun outta the fight. Better to just blast away and let Gork and Mork sort it out, innit?

“Wot you lot doing? Fights over there.” He grinned, nodding towards the enemy.

“Get lost you daft snot!” Tupzin snapped. “We is using cover for tacti-kal vantage, ain’t we?”

“Youse is hiding!” Loonza cackled. “Well, not me, lads! Loonza’s gonna fight!”

 He ran off hooting and hollering.

“That mad git is gonna get ‘imself killed.” Tupzin sneered. “Shoulda stayed here, nice and sa-”

That’s when the shell hit.

               *      *       *

Loonza had swiped a grenade from a dead humie and now held it like a prize as he ran along a rubble wall that ran through the human lines.

Three humies were crouched behind a big shoota on three legs, blasting away at the orks attacking.

Loonza watched for a moment, mesmerised by the awesome firepower.

'Cor, what I wouldn’t give to have a shoota like that one day, Loonza thought, even though the gun was far bigger than him.

Well, if he couldn’t have it, why should they?

He armed the grenade and lobbed it into their little nest.

One humie gave a little shriek, and then the gun and the three men vanished in a blast of flame, gore and smoke.

Loonza hopped down and ran along the humie line, occasionally finding a humie hunkered down in the mud.

They was all looking the other way, so he shot them in the back. Nuffin’ wrong with that.

Then he found a whole bunch of 'em all huddled together. Looking away and shooting at the charging greenskins off in the distance.

“Well, this’ll do! Hope yer watching, Mork! You too, Gork!” Loonza said cheerfully.

Then with a manic whoop, he charged them.

Diving down into the foxhole he unleashed a volley of lasblasts, scorching the air and catching two of the humies in the head and neck.

The humans yelled, spinning around at this surprise attack and firing in panic.

One humie’s shotgun cut down another, and the humie froze, staring at his dead mate, giving Loonza an easy target.

Then Loonza was thrown forward as a shot hit him in the back. He rolled over, dropping the humie who’d shot him, the last survivor in the place.

“Hope you enjoyed the show…” The grot muttered, before everything went black.

           *       *       *

Fixxbash looked at the towering metal form in front of him.

This was the mastapiece of kans, and he’d not wanted to waste it on another cowardly grot who’d still run even when inside his magnificent creation.

But Brazgot assured him this grot was different. They’d called him the Mad Grot, and the little git had killed a buncha humies before getting hisself shot.

“Plug him in.”

The grot he barked at hesitated a moment, saw Fixxbash’s heavy wrench and then obeyed, jabbing a wire in through the top of the Killa Kan.

There was a flash, the smell of burnt grot and then the machine roared into life, belching thick fumes from the exhausts.

From inside came a manic cackle, and the arms moved, testing the giant pincers on the left and inspecting the heavy gun on the right.

You do not understand

Most modern Ag operations don’t even have a proper A-Horizon. They’re too busy turning the earth every time they replant. The A-horizon is the Black Gold that makes Soil Soil. It’s a structurally complex soil horizon that must be built in place by the interactions of Plants and Fungi and Insects. It is The Thing that soaks up rain and holds onto it for plants. The A-Horizon is The Thing that builds up when you let a field sit fallow. The act of tilling creates fecundity by breaking up the A-horizon. On a really good Organic no-till farm you might find an A-horizon between 3-6 inches.

His A-horizon was 4 feet deep. 50 inches.

I-

I have no context. His farm was covered in a living skin thick enough for a child to stand in.

Gives me hope for what we could accomplish if we got our collective heads on straight, you know? Like. This was one guy. A brilliant man, who knew what he was up to, but. The thing about brilliant ideas is they can be shared.

Humus, or Humic Compounds, are a cryptic and poorly understood set of organic substances. As the final metabolic result of once-living things being digested first by macroscopic organisms, and then by microorganisms, they resist most forms of analysis, and have cryptic structures. A few that we have managed to isolate and study are the Humic & Fulvic Acids.

Humus has a number of remarkable tendencies. It is capable of retaining water far better than any raw mineral clay; it also retains electrically charged clay granules, which themselves retain mineral ions, all of which is essential to make a soil a high-quality resource for Plants to grow in.

A composter is a box that contains an environment that is conducive to the production of Humus, but the best way to produce it is in-place, by laying layers of organic material down over an unbroken earth and growing things out of that. The interaction of the plants rooting, the fungus weaving itself through everything, the bacteria and archaea metabolizing as they do, and inorganic weathering forces all combine to gradually build up the microscopic equivalent of a complex megastructure capable of retaining far more water, and containing far more nutrients, than any inorganic substrate.

This stuff is black gold. This is the stuff that determines whether or not a plot of land is going to be “productive.” The knowledge of how to make it, how to care for it, is an essential piece of wisdom that our civilization needs to remember.

Fortunately, folks seem to have the right response:

Farmers are more important to the continuity of civilization than administrators, no matter what the elitists say. This knowledge is important.

Like female focal/lead characters? Sure can. I won't list every single one, just the ones that stuck out to me as good/solid reading.

So, firstly you have Danie Ware's Sister Augusta series, which follows the long career and exploits of Sister Augusta Santorus of the Order of the Bloody Rose. I would suggest first reading the compendium of short stories contained within The Rose At War, then the novel The Rose in Darkness. I'm of the opinion that Danie is probably THE Sororitas author for Black Library, so you won't go wrong here. She's also written the standalone novel Triumph of Saint Katherine, and has another coming out this year in Aestred Thurga: Pyre of Faith, which I will definitely be reading.

Carrying on with the Sororitas, I also recommend Requiem Infernal by Peter Fehervari. Now, it is a horror story, so if that's not your thing, be mindful of that, but it's a good, sometimes weird read that explores an isolationist order of Sororitas who suddenly have to host a group of Militarum who've been attacked by a xenos creature.

I would be remiss, when going over female-led novels, to not recommend Honourbound, by Rachel Harrison. It, and its prequel short stories (Execution, Fire and Thunder, Darkling Hours) follow Commissar Severina Raine and her regiment, the 11th Antari Rifles, as they participate in a crusade against a chaos cult. Exceedingly solid and enjoyable astra militarum antics on display in these.

Deathworlder by Victoria Hayward is about a squad of Catachan fighters sent on a secret mission in the last hours of a planet doomed to Tyranids. It is an excellent novel that features THE BEST DEPICTION OF TYRANIDS TO DATE, as well as a badass lady Catachan major and at least one scene of a huge woman tearing a gargoyle in half. Seriously read this.

To dip briefly into xenos content, Tomb World, by Jonathan D. Beer is a solid Necron novel about a disgraced triarch praetorian named Khemet who needs to earn her honour back by helping a soggy little shit of a lord retake a Necron world from the Imperium. It's a fun time, especially if you like seeing humans utterly unequipped to deal with aliens, and Necrons being huge assholes to each other.

One of the main characters of Elemental Council (by Noah Van Nguyen) is an earth caste engineer who loves building and tweaking shit she probably shouldn't, who forms part of an "A-Team" of T'au that are to deal with a human insurgency orchestrated by the Imperium. Really, you should just read this one for the novel experience of reading an actually good T'au book.

If you like Sisters of Silence, one of the focal characters of the Watchers of the Throne series (Emperor's Legion, Regent's Shadow, by Chris Wraight) is a super snarky and badass Sister of Silence named Aleya who participates in wider plots involving the Cicatrix Maledictum, the invasion of Terra in the wake of Cadia's fall, and the Hexarchy Crisis following Guilliman's return.

Finally, because this is getting wordier than I intended, I'm going to recommend Steel Tread and its sequel, Demolisher, by Andy Clark. The stories follow the tank commander Hadeya Etsul and her dual responsibilities of leading a tank against the enemies of the Imperium and getting a crew of disparate people to play nicely with each other. It also looks at the toxicity of Cadian pride a bit, which is nice.

Not sure what you want to do but you want to help? ACLU has actions you can take broken down into time intensity:

Got 15 minutes to call your representative, senators and governor? 5Calls has hundreds of scripts you can read off and will auto connect you! (It genuinely takes less than 15 mins for all of them and frequently you get a voicemail so you don’t even have to talk to them!)

Wanna get out and protest? Mobilize has thousands of events across the country listed at all times!

The day is won through thousands of individual acts of resistance hitting them on all sides! These resources are just a drop in the bucket, I guarantee there is something you can do to help!

Collective action is endangering their personal comfort and well-being and the things some of them have been working for for decades. They're puffing up REAL BIG. It's fluff. They're lashing out HURTING AND KILLING people. That's real. That's also what they were going to do anyway, eventually, even if they weren't desperate. It is real harm--AND it is showing real weakness, on their part.

Don't fall for the illusion. This is the time to act, to push, to stand together. If you don't know how, check those links.

Cousins, if someone ever edits your photo with Al or Photoshop to create a nude photo, then you go to www.stopncii.org/and submit the original photo and the edited photo, then they will remove the edited photo from all the places on the Internet. You don't need to talk directly to anyone for this and your identity will remain confidential

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