Second Siege of Agratha – Aftermath Part 4

Gorblud awoke to a blurry image of a sky filled with dust and thick black smoke. As his vision swam in to focus he slowly sat up, noticing pangs of pain all over his body. He could hear some distant sounds of gunfire but upon looking around he didn't appear to be in any imminent danger.

Gorblud saw that he was lying at the foot of wrecked tank and a thin smile appeared on his face as he remembered tearing the turret off it and killing all the humans inside with blazes from his shoota (and a few stikkbombs for good measure). From quick observation it appeared his armour was burnt, broken and split all over - his power klaw a ruin of fused metal. It would take his meks a long while to fix it once he got it back to camp.

He pulled himself out of his armour, deciding it would be easier to drag back to his wagon than to try and walk in it without the hydraulics working. It was only then that he noticed the large crater in the side of his chest oozing dark blood. It appeared to be a mostly cauterised plasma burn - he should probably get the Docs to have a look at that.

As he strolled through the mounds of dead - some piled higher than his head, others shredded so that it was difficult to tell what body parts they had originally - he took note that both sides had taken heavy losses. Gorblud also realised he had quite a few more injuries that he hadn't initially noticed. For starters his left eye definitely wasn't working - when he reached up to check if it was still there all he could feel was a bloody crater in the side of his skull. He also appeared to have a hole straight through one of his thighs (probably a lascannon he thought) and even he was surprised he could still walk on it.

After a while of dragging his armour through rubble, corpses and miscellaneous vehicle parts he eventually reached his wagon. He was pleased to see that the grot crew were finished repairing the broken track that had made him abandon the vehicle mid-battle, however many hours ago it was now.

"What's the plan boss?" one of the crew asked in his high pitched sqeak as he entered the cabin.

"Back to the camp - we's got work to do!" Gorblud replied.

"But what about the city? Didn't we win the battle?" screeched the grot.

"Ha! You call this winning?" Gorblud reprimanded. "Leave Braindead to celebrate his ruin - there's nothing for us here. I came here for Winterborne, and the bugger didn't even show his face on the front lines! Send word to gather the boyz and our stuff - we're leaving!"

"Erm, sir..." one of the grotz said hesitantly, "the... the Stompa... the humans sabotaged it... there's nothing left..."

Gorblud just stared at the grot - fury building behind his one remaining eye.

"Er... and it also appears that... that the Deathskulls, they... they stole your Skulhamma..."

While deep in a moment of utter fury, Gorblud still managed a tiny moment of pleasure as he saw the grot sail clear over a ruined wartrakk and land in the burning wreck of a wagon - it was definitely one of his finer kicks he thought. The moment was quickly over though, and he glared at the remaining gretchin who were now literally cowering behind whatever meagre shelter was closest to them.

"GET US BACK TO THE CAMP NOW!" he roared "we'ze got some serious building to do!"

It would be a while before his army was back to strength he thought, but he knew he had the teef and the power to recover from this. He'd build a better Stompa and a better Skulhamma. He might even build one of them flying jets the kult of speed had used - that had caused loads of chaos before the humies shot it out of the sky.

He wasn't finished. He just needed a bit of time to gather some more boyz. And maybe get some more of those force field things - those would be useful against that human artillery.

Just a little more time... then Winterborne would get what was coming to him!