Bite the Stars - Volume Two - Chapter Twenty-Two - What Does the Ork Say? (Patreon)

Volume Two - Chapter Twenty-Two - What Does the Ork Say?

"You... acquired the items... from the storage closet?" her brother in the worship of the Omnissiah asked.

"Yes," Alexis replied.

"And these dataslates were there as well?" the other asked.

"Yup."

"And these contain..."

"Production information for knight-related items. Looks like mostly stuff for armigers? But I can't read it all. I'm only a mere tech acolyte and my ability to break through encryptions is limited. You'll have to work out the greater secrets on your own."

The two of them slowly turned to regard one another. Then they returned their focus onto her. "Understood."

She nodded.

They nodded back.

There was a mutually beneficial understanding going on. It was ruined when the lieutenant stomped over and saluted quickly. "Status? Have the lights been restored?"

One of the tech priests bowed slightly. "Indeed. By the grace of the Omnissia, the lighting systems are capable of being brought back to partial functionality. However, the damage they have accrued is significant, and the lack of maintenance and the corruption brought by the presence of xenos may mean that even this level of functionality is temporary."

Alexis chewed on her lower lip, then sighed. "It's better than nothing. Pull the breaker. We're going to be able to move faster with more light around, and maybe it'll confuse the orks a little."

"As you wish," the priest said. He very carefully slid the dataslate she had given him into his robes, then moved to one of the control mechanisms. There was a large lever that he grabbed onto with a mechanical hand, then he pulled it down with a great heave.

The entire facility clunked. The lights in the corridor flickered, then they lit up. One in three of the lumen strips failed, and perhaps one in ten simply exploded, sending a shower of sparks and glass raining down onto the floor.

A few of the voidsmen cursed, but it didn't matter, even with only a quarter of the lumen working as they should, the passage was still properly lit, likely for the first time in ages.

"Let's keep moving," Alexis said. "We need to make it to the main control room. From there, we'll see if we can't operate the lifts. Vox, any reports from the second team?"

The vox-operator nodded. "We've been sending reports back and receiving them every five minutes, ma'am. The other team has made it to the workship and are fighting a great number of orks."

So, Octavia was having fun? Good for her! "Let's get moving, we have to climb four floors."

She had her servitor friends go first. They had new equipment to test, after all. KYS darted ahead, mostly because she seemed the most excited to find enemies to test her new skills on. It was kind of terrifying, seeing her run by without hearing a single sound.

Then Alexis felt it through her MIU as, after they found and climbed a staircase, KYS discovered some enemies.

The laughter of children echoed down from around a bend and the entire strike team froze on the spot.

Soon, the sound was joined by the screams of gretchin and orks, and the occasional thump-thump of an ork gun being fired. The laughter never stopped.

Alexis was somewhat comforted by the feeling of glee coming from her servitor, which was a good sign that she wasn't hurt, and then the update from Vyper a few minutes later.

Kills Confirmed: 4x Orks
9x Gretchin
New Point Total: 1476

They had to cross that corridor, since the stairwells were built as switch-backs, requiring anyone trying to climb through the keep to constantly move across entire floors. It wasn't long that they discovered the space where KYS had tested her new weapons.

They discovered a small gretchin nest. An office space that had once held paper reams with reports and such had been turned into rough housing for the smaller ork monsters. The walls were currently painted in arterial sprays and the ground was littered with small gretchin bodies and the dismembered form of larger orks.

A giggle came from above before KYS landed next to Alexis with a slight flex of her knees.

Several Voidsmen started to pray to the God Emperor.

"Well done. But next time, try not to get too dirty. We haven't installed water faucets in the workshop yet, it'll be difficult to clean you."

KYS shrugged.

The noise--despite KYS' own quietness--may have alerted some of the others, because as they made it to the next stairwell up to floor E, they could pick out the sounds of plenty of orks moving.

According to her maps of the keep, that floor in particular was mostly storage. It had an armoury and storage for perishables. It was also the space with the largest kitchen and canteen in the base, so she was expecting relatively large, wide rooms.

They pushed open the door into the next room and came face-to-face with an entire ork army.

The room had been converted into a massive space for the orks to store their weapons. There were areas that were separated by tarps hanging from the ceilings, and corrugated tin walls had been put up where other walls had been blown out. The entire space was filled with at least a hundred orks.

Some were plain old greenskins, but a good number of them were dressed in military uniforms, with camo painted over their skin. Commandos.

"K84-321," Alexis said calmly even as the orks started to turn towards them. "Shields."

The ion shield snapped into place just in time to catch a missile an ork had fired from the far end of the room.

The explosion shook the floor, and the wash of fire caught several orks and gretchin near the entrance in its blast.

K84-321 raised both of his new hands, the ends poking through the shield he was projecting. Then he opened fire with the two rivet guns built into his arms.

They thumped repeatedly while flinging foot-long metal rods into orkish flesh.

"Lieutenant, smoke!" Alexis called back.

Three of the voidsmen ripped smoke grenades from bandoleers and tossed them ahead. They easily flew through the shield and clattered on the floor, then started to fill the room with a constant hiss.

CS-3-2/11 stomped up, then she levelled her guns forward. Alexis received a sort of query over her MIU, asking for permission to fire.

"Granted! Fire at will!"

The miniature Castigator Rotor Cannon revved up, then roared. Bullet casings clinked on the ground as a small flood.

Then the Vorax-class Battle Servitor opened up with her plasma spear and the twin mining laser array bolted to the top of her chassis.

Coherent lasers cut across the room while bolts of plasma fire rammed into the largest of the orks.

A rocket rammed into the wall next to them, and the entire stairwell shook. Then a second struck the floor and the shield flickered for a moment.

"We can't stay here!" the lieutenant shouted.

"Darn," Alexis muttered. But he was probably right. "Move in!" she said. "Slow and steady!"

K84-321 stomped forwards. His heavy flamer snapped to the side and bathed a sneaky ork that had been running at them with a melta mine up. He screamed before the mine went off and there was a powerful wave of heat that scoured across Alexis' side, drying the skin of her face instantly.

The melta charge was enough to snap the ion shield. It wasn't enough to stop her friends.

The smoke provided them more cover than it hindered. The strike group moved into it, lasrifled raised to their shoulders, then they opened fire on anything that moved.

Alexis couldn't help but be impressed by their professionalism, though she still winced when one of them went down to a stray shot from an ork.

Unfortunately, the orks were rallying. A big one, in a suit of mechanized armour, shouted a roar so loud it drowned out the gunfire for a moment, then he pointed a large axe their way. "Krump 'em!"

"KYS, assassinate," she said.

The servitor nodded, then sprinted across the battlefield in a straight line while staying extremely low to the ground. She met the ork with a flip over his swinging axe arm. Sparks flew as her sonic sword clashed off of thick armour.

Alexis left her to it. She couldn't just stand there and look pretty, she had to help herself. So she raised both of her mechadendrites and started to fire her laspistols into the fray, even if she wasn't sure her aim was quite good enough to guarantee any kills.

She felt like they were doing a pretty good job. The enemy were going down, and a volley of grenades from the Voidsmen sent more of them scattering in little bits. Her servitor's concentrated fire was more than enough to kill any of the more tenacious enemies. And K84-321's shield was rebooted, providing protection from the front once more.

Then she heard stomping coming from behind.

A second group of orks was climbing the stairs, and they were about to be surrounded.

***