An omake about Danaan survivors
Part 1.
Part 2.
A Road Home part 1
An old trick.
Lieutenant Lugh Nepeivoda looked on his reflection in the nearby puddle. Loose, adhoc, ugly clothing with a couple of armour plates making his silhouette more ork-like. His flak vest underneath and a rather muscular constitution helped too. On his head an even more ugly helmet with one broken horn conceals his face. All visible skin painted green. In the twilight, from a distance, for inattentive observer, he would pass for a smaller, somewhat pathetic ork.
In theory. "The ancestors are watching..." – muttered the human and shrugged. Within next three minutes he ate raw a couple of big mushrooms (surprisingly tasty for an orkoid lifeform) growing nearby and finished his remaining water.
Soldier broke the mirror of water, refilling the flask. Within about an hour, the tablet affixed to the bottom would kill the germs, making water inside drinkable.
Lugh began to move through the forest, fast but cautiously, it would be rather embarrassing to get eaten by a squig after successful escaping from the ork city. The situation was grim, even more so than usual. Separated from his team, the lone scout would have some problems with survival in infested wilderness. Therefore, it was the time to to do the logical thing and take a bigger risk.
Finally, he reached the road and began to move alongside it. It was an old human road, with some damage from old battles. It seemed that greenskins bothered to fill some craters with broken stone and garbage at some point. After walking for about an hour, Lugh got lucky - this section of the road wound into a small, densely forested valley which was straight and fully visible for a couple kilometres on each side.
The soldier began to work with his choppa, taking a break and hiding every time orks moved too close. Soon, two trees growing near the road had been hacked enough, so shots to the weakened parts would break them. The scout began to wait for a good prey. Lugh had felt a little pang of guilt - the valley seemed almost uninfested yet, and soon he would release spores from some greenskins.
A half an hour later, he found what he wanted - a teknikul made of an old police car crewed by two boyz, a driver and a gunner, seemingly tough enough to survive an impact, and no other vehicles in sight. It was moving in the right direction too, so no need to worry about greenskins deciding to check why a car that had passed nearby returns with a new driver. The innocent, childish smile of a serial murderer came to Lugh's face.
Fortunately, to the human ambush went with little fun in the bad sense of the word. One of the oldest tricks in the book worked almost as intended, quickly and effectively. A shot to the first tree to stop the orks. A couple shots to the chest of staggered by impact gunner, a shot to another tree, to cut off the way to retreat, a careful shot to the driver's head, a couple shots in the back of a previously unnoticed gobbo trying to escape to the forest. Yes, this was a damn fine shoota, caliber of about 10 millimeters, made with parts of human autoguns and a bolter, and therefore unorkily accurate. For a moment, Lugh was almost grateful to the late nob who involuntarily donated it.
Immediately, the saboteur began to move. As he had estimated his time before the next orks would arrive and "politely" ask what happened to their comrades in a couple of minutes. He turned off the car, still struggling on the reverse against the second fallen tree and checked the dead gretchin. He wasn't visible from road and seemed to be dead enough - a lucky bullet through the spine gave the little bugger the ability to bend back at almost a 180 degree angle. Then Lugh took gunner's shoota before emptying the clip at two points of the tree in front of the car at point blank range. "Move over, it's my turn" said Lugh to the dead ork before pushing the corpse of the driver's seat. He had rammed the car in between the weak points, breaking the tree, before he switched to the low gear and pushed the chunk out of his way.
A couple hundreds meters later, Lugh turned off-road onto a small overgrown bypath, which he used to get rid of the bodies and check spoils of war without haste. Lugh expected that when orks would find the site of ambush, but they wouldn't be too interested, as it looked like some vehicle drove off some ferals, dead a gretchin would only help the illusion.
So, to the winner went the spoils. The gunner had three grenades, and while ork explosives are not very safe, beggars cannot be choosers. Driver's shoota luckily utilized the same ammo as his own gun. The car was an old human off-roader with cut off roof, ram shield and a couple of spikes with some gretchin heads on top. The tripod mounted a big shoota, and a belt-fed shoota was installed in forward of driver, allowing to shoot with one hand and drive with another if one was sufficiently orky. And a big Red Button was installed behind the steering wheel. Maybe it turned on afterburner, maybe it activated self-destruct mechanism, maybe it was meant to activate afterburner but resulted in self-destruction. Lieutenant suspected that pressing it was not a good idea. The original seats were long torn away, leaving place to store some junk and some ugly contraption for driver to sit on instead. A closer look at the half-erased emblem showed that a long time ago the jeep belonged to the Kozelsk Police Force Forest Oversight Service.
But as always, universe showed that nothing goes entirely as planned. Suddenly snapping and guttural noises began to move in his direction. "Wonderful..." sighed Lugh.
