125 – Limit Testing the New Tech
To say the arsenal of weaponry the Ork voidship brought to bear as we closed in on them was pathetic was underselling it by quite a bit. Over my weeks of warding off Necron ambushes I’d outfitted our ship with just about a hundred weapons arrayed to cover every single angle, every single potential attack and the sa went for the layered armour that now covered every inch of the ship.
This was a ship made to fight Necron Cruisers, and not just one of them. A single Orc ship just couldn’t compare. I could have turned the thing into Swiss cheese with a few salvos of bio-plasma, hell I doubted it could survive even just a dozen of them blasting holes into it.
But we aren’t here to win. I smirked as the ship closed in on the haphazardly built space junk the Orks called a ship. We are here to test our new toys, to train, and to get in so exercise.
The ship lengthened, the armour on its prow thickening up and forming into an arrow shape. I slowed our ship a bit more, if I crashed into them at anything close to full speed that thing would snap in half. If they were lucky.
The Ork ship attempted turning around, trying to put the comically large ram at its prow between us and it, but it was too slow. Maybe if they didn’t turn to have the many guns at the side of their log-shaped ship shoot at us, they could have put up so resistance. Maybe even dodged if they got lucky.
“Brace for impact,” I said calmly. “I’ll open up a tunnel leading to the prow of the ship that’ll lead into the enemy vessel. Anyone who needs air to survive, get your space suits ready … do you have space suits?”
Fae and Bob awkwardly shook their heads. I shrugged and had two tendrils reach down from the ceiling and wrap a skin-tight space suit around them. It only reached up to their necks right now though.
“Tap the neck when you want to deploy the helt,” I said. “Maybe the Orks have breathable air in there, though I think hopes and dreams are what they breathe in so don’t hold out hope.”
They gave nods, one resolved and one eager. I shrugged. I’d have to send a Lictor drone after them to make sure they didn’t get murdered too badly.
“To the rest of you,” I narrowed my eyes at Selene and Val. “I’m testing out this new design. It is much weaker than my previous Avatar, I think, so please don’t blow it up by accident. Also, make sure you don’t blast too many holes into that pile of garbage. I think it’s barely held together with glue and hope.”
The two nodded. Selene even looked sheepish, which I took to an she was planning to test out whatever heavy-hitting stuff she developed over the months. Then I rembered the last mber of our crew.
Zedev sat in a corner, blending in with the rest of the furniture. He even had so fur- mat draped over him. He remained in battery-saving mode. I’d have to check whether he was actually sleeping or just ran out of battery for real.
He was like 80% machine after all, if not more. All that couldn’t run on bio-electricity and regular food. Not that he ever ntioned needing sustenance so it’s probably fine. He ntioned wanting to delve into the finished templates I gave him. Maybe he just got caught up in his fun like I had.
With a shrug, I ignored him for now.
A few more ‘stuff’ hit us, bouncing off of the ship’s outer hull without leaving even a scratch. Though so left marks behind … wait, did they just shoot a Gretchin at us?
Actually, they shot a dozen of them, along with just about everything else with only a fifth of the projectiles being sothing I’d consider either a bullet or a missile.
Orks do Ork stuff I guess.
“Annnnnd 3 … 2 … 1,” I said, then the ship lurched, our abysmal remaining velocity halting as the prow-spike pierced into the Ork ship’s belly. “Get moving. Val and Selene first.”
The wall pulled to the side, and a tunnel opened up at my command. At the sa ti, the spike at the ship's prow shifted, its tip flowing back and forming giant side-facing claws that secured the ship to its target.
Selene and Val blasted forward, not wasting a mont and I could hear the lightning storm and Orks screeching a mont later.
“After you two,” I smiled at our newest additions and watched on as they activated their helts and cautiously moved out.
I quickly made a Lictor drone and sent it after them with the commands to help them only if they were going to die.
Then it was my turn, and I strolled out. I could have worn a helt, but keeping a human body alive with bio-energy barely cost a pittance, even in much more extre conditions than space, so I didn’t bother.
I followed after the two a few monts later, a little spring in my steps as I strode through the tunnel and stepped out into a scene of carnage. Pieces of Ork and scraps of tal littered what was probably a ss hall before we blasted ourselves into it.
Not a single thing was alive in the room, aside from and the two lingering lovebirds.
Poor Orks, we interrupted their lunch. I let out a smaller swarm of butterflies and put them on biomass collection duty. Orks were a step down from Tyranids in the density of energy they gave , but they were leagues above regular humans. I haven’t eaten any Tau yet, but I doubt they are all too nutritious, being as short-lived and spindly looking as they are.
One path leading into a large side tunnel was clearly marked with the telltale signs of Val’s passing: scorch marks. Another was covered in only blood, the Orky bits probably fuelling Selene’s rampage further down that way in the form of bio-energy and the two newbies were cautiously heading towards a smaller side door.
I chose a direction of my own at random and set off in a light jog. Letting the subdermal do most of the work, I let it carry most of my weight while my muscles relaxed. The distant sounds of battle, war cries, screams, and explosions played in my ears and I could feel my blood running hot in anticipation.
Then I t my first adversaries, a group of five Orks, probably catching the whiff of blood in the ss hall and rushing to check out what was up. I grinned at them as they slowed, their big dumb mugs projecting confusion.
"A humie, 'ere?" The first asked, looking up and down like I was an especially nice looking stick.
"Wot's it doin' 'ere?" Another piped up, stepping over to and staring down at .
I just stayed still, a slight grin on my face. I was the incarnation of non-threatening, being two heads shorter than the shortest green giant and dressed in what looked like a simple robe.
The only thing even remotely looking like a weapon on was my glinting tal hand, but I hid that behind my back for now. The Orks continued to observe , like they were solving so elaborate puzzle.
"It ain't lookin' scared, ya think it's zogged in da head?"
There were so profound nods and murmurs exchanged at that note, but the largest of them stepped forward, looking ready to splatter across the wall.
"Stop muckin' about, dere's fightin' to be 'ad in da ss." With that said, it launched a fist the size of my head at my torso.
"Rog, rog," I saw the rest ready their weapons and looking eager.
This green fuck called touched in the head, didn’t it? I thought as my grin went from playful to promising pain. I’ll kill it last.
The Ork moved slowly; I think I could have dodged its punch even if I had neither the Necrodermis to move my muscles faster than any human reflex nor a tiny strain of bio-energy to speed up my cognitive speed just a bit. It would have been extrely la, after all, if I could move my body faster than a human, but my mind couldn’t keep up.
I slipped under his punch, bending my knees lightly and half-spin as my tallic right hand shifted into a blade. Slashing up, the mono-molecular edge cut through the Ork’s bare biceps like a knife through butter.
The arm that would have struck separated from his body, blood bursting out like a fountain and splattering with a shower’s worth of it. A flimsy psychic shield — about the best I could do with a shoddy human body as my conduit — saved my hair and head from the crimson liquid while whatever fell on my robes rolled down from it without staining it.
I kicked out as I slid past the bumbling alien, striking the back of its knee with my heel. The Ork let out a pained cry, then fell to its knees from my kick, but before it could turn my blade-arm struck again and its tip slid into his back just a bit below the neck.
The alien slumped forward like a puppet with its strings cut. Seems like getting your spine broken at the neck is just as deliberating to an Ork as it is for a human.
I shifted my attention to the other four Orks. Humans might have hesitated, panicked at seeing their strongest fighter butchered like that. They would have been afraid.
Not Orks though. The passive empathy field of my aura practically tasted as their simple emotions shifted from surprised, to confused and finally to brimming with gleeful childish excitent. After all, they were headed to the ss to get so good krumpin’ going, but now soone strong enough to fight their strongest conveniently ca to them.
It was like a free, hand-delivered fight that ca to them and the Orks were all for that shit.
The first ork let out a roar and swung his gun(?) — it looked sort of like a gun, but made by a toddler with a pile of scrap and a bottle of glue — at like a club. Two others raised their own and I could see their excited grins as their fingers twitched on the triggers while the last one heaved and lifted a gigantic hamr for an overhead strike.
No psychic or biotic bullshit. At most, so healing and ntal enhancent. Nothing physical or offensive. I set down the ground rules for myself, my excited gaze taking in the movent of my four foes. I giggled a bit, feeling an ecstatic thrill run down my spine.
My left, fleshy arm snapped forward to parry the makeshift cudgel, and I slid my right heel to the side for so extra support. My right hand, anwhile, shifted into an oval shield as tall as and as thin as a strand of hair.
The next mont the first Ork’s strike connected and the skin covering my subdermal basically evaporated from my lower arm, furthermore I could feel myself slide away a few tres from the force of the strike just as the first round of bullets smashed into my living tal shield. It held, for now, the bullets only making dents that barely took the blink of an eye for the tal to repair.
If I didn’t brace, I’d have been sent tumbling like a rag-doll. Necrodermis was a light tal, not unnaturally so, but much more so than steel. I only weighed around seventy kilos, maybe eighty, with the subdermal and the tal arm put together with my fleshy bits. These Orks probably took shits heavier than . A contest of strength without leverage is out of the question. Quick, dirty, and lethal, it is.
I kicked off again, the subdermal pushing my body beyond the limits of my muscles. I slid up before the hamr-wielding Ork that just reoriented himself with that goofy hamr of his. Slipping close to him, too close to strike with his hamr, I put his body between him and the shooty orks as I remade the tal shield into a clawed hand and slashed out at the tendons in his elbows.
The ork growled as I tore through his — its? Do these bipedal mushrooms count as male? They don’t have any of the dangly bits, but otherwise look male. Eh, whatever. — arm. His hold faltered as the injured limb went limp.
Then the raised hamr ca crashing down on its other shoulder, the green giant incapable of supporting its weight with one hand.
Before he collapsed, I slipped through between his legs and launched myself at the two gunners. Then a bullet slamd into my stomach, quickly followed by one in my thigh and a third in my shoulder.
I was sent flying, slamming back into the poor mangled hamr-wielding Ork who himself looked much worse for wear. Orks couldn’t aim for shit, and friendly fire wasn’t in their vocabulary. 80% of the shot bullets hit the poor sod instead of .
A groan slipped through my lips as I pulled up another shield while I crawled to my feet. My robes were bloody tatters, the three bullets having pulped large swathes of skin as they exploded.
Cudgel Ork pounced on from behind, bouncing over the gory remains of his kin. In the small hallway with bullet fire in one direction, a mangled corpse in another, and a flying Ork coming at from above, I did the only thing I could.
The path of least resistance. Which I decided was cudgel Ork.
I bent my knees and jumped, tallic fake muscles straining as I pushed them to the limit. My shield reford into a long, thin blade and arched upwards to bisect the pouncing orc before he could slam into .
Getting crushed between the floor and an Ork doesn’t sound fun.
The Ork kicked out, proving to be a quick thinker despite his smooth fungal brain telling another story. I swung my leg one way, making my body spin slightly mid-air and giving an extra flick to the blade as it finally reached the alien mushroom.
It managed to raise its cudgel/gun, but the blade’s edge was monomolecular for a reason. That was the sort of thing Harlequin lee weapons were known for. It tore right through with only a little pushback, then it reached soft flesh.
It only cut halfway through its torso when the Ork collided with , his shoulder slamming into the side of my stomach and sending spinning.
A lucky shot nicked in the head, making the slight dizziness from all the spinning worse before it turned into a full-blown headache as my poor squishy human brain got mulched when I smashed face-first into a wall.
Bio-energy surged and healed before I even hit the floor, leaving only my pride bruised as I landed with a loud thud. Then Cudgel Ork slamd down with a loud squelch.
"Why da humie made of tal?"
"Maybe it's one o' dem k humies."
"Makes sense."
"It dead?"
"Fink so."
“h,” said one gunner as I huffed and sat up with a groan. Getting your brain splattered against the side of your skull is not a fun experience. Noted. "Seems not. Humie can scrap."
He pulled the trigger, but I was ready. I shifted to the side just enough for it to miss . I slashed towards them, my blade-arm lengthening and thinning, it snapped out like a whip as thin as a thread at the tip and tore right through one orc from hip to shoulder then continued to decapitate the other.
Once their bodies flopped to the ground, everything suddenly went silent. With the faint background noise of machinery grinding away in the distance, my ragged breaths sounded deafening as I ca down from my adrenaline high.
Skin flowed over my uncovered subdermal armour as my right hand retracted and reford into a tallic hand. I stumbled to my feet, my legs feeling a bit weak from the strain I put them through.
“That was fun,” I said, wheezing for breath.
I let myself enjoy the feeling for a bit more before I banished the fatigue with a slight infusion of bio-energy.
My body ached for more, the Ork’s excitent proving infectious. Even if I protected my mind from manipulation, just feeling the glee in the five of them as they fought and died made mirror so of those feelings unconsciously. It resonated with a primal part of .
Five down. But there is still a ship’s worth more to go.
I heard a gasping wheeze behind and noticed the first Ork twisting its neck to look at . He looked pained, with his unresponsive body and heavily bleeding stump.
I stared at him. I sort of forgot him, didn’t I?
The promise I made to Selene about not torturing people needlessly ca back to at that mont. Does this count as torture? I just left him for last and just sort of forgot about him.
I humd thoughtfully. I don’t even feel annoyed at him anymore. His pals gave a good fight.
My finger lengthened into a wire-thin whip, but I stopped myself a mont before striking out with it to deliver the kill. This would sort of be a rcy kill, wouldn’t it? But an Ork could survive as a damned head in one of the books I think. Plus I borderline accidentally tortured him. A bit. Maybe. Sort of.
I felt bad for the fungus. He just wanted to fight sothing. It was an unfortunate and extrely unlucky twist of fate for him to et .
“You know what, big guy?” I squatted down next to him. “Since I’m feeling bad about leaving you like this, and made a promise to not inflict undue suffering on people, I have an offer for you.”
He grunted. Having his spine broken probably made it hard to speak. I poked him in the cheek and sent a slight surge of healing bio-energy into him.
Not enough to have him move much just yet, but enough to let him talk.
“So,” I continued. “I am going to heal you back up so you can do all the fighting eting has robbed you of, and in return, you will forgive for having been a bit aner than I should have been.”
“Awrite,” the ork said in a gruff wheeze, blinking up at in confusion.
“Say it,” I poked him with a cold, but blunt tal finger. “‘I forgive you’”
“I forgiv ya?” he mumbled, not quite understanding what was going on. Eh, good enough. It’s not like I did anything all that bad to him, or anything other Orks wouldn’t have done to him.
“Thanks,” I grinned, then poked him again.
Not five seconds later, the Ork was back on his feet, befuddled eyes staring at his hands as he clenched and unclenched them.
Another five seconds later, he was busy looting his departed friend’s remains with a feral grin, stacking guns under an armpit and snapping the teeth out of their jaws.
I left him to it, setting out again to see how much I could improve on my close-quarters combat before the others fully cleared out the ship.
The Ork I healed up would probably die in a few hours when he t with another one of us, but maybe he could kick the bucket after a bit more fulfilling last battle than the one I just gave him.
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