Chapter 25: Keeping the Little Wrench
Rosen switched to Number 4's perspective.
Against the wall on the far right side of the workshop, in a dark corner, something was shaking.
A length of heavy iron chain had one end welded directly to the wall. The other end was looped around a small green neck.
A Gretchin.
But not quite like any Gretchin Rosen had seen before.
This one was smaller than standard — roughly three quarters the size of a normal Gretchin. Its skin was a lighter yellow-green rather than the deep green of typical greenskins.
The most noticeable thing about it was its hands.
Those hands were longer and more articulate than any Gretchin's hands had any right to be. Slender fingers with defined knuckles, every one of them marked with a different pattern of calluses and burn scars.
Around its neck, alongside the chain, it wore a collar twisted from iron wire. Several small metal tags hung from it, marked with crude greenskin script.
A Mekboy's thrall-worker. One of those occasional individuals within the Gretchin population who were born with a faint echo of the Mekboy's mechanical intuition — nowhere near the real thing, but enough to tell a wrench from a screwdriver. Mekboyz chained them into the workshop and used them as living tools.
When this thrall-worker saw Rosen and the Death Warriors walking toward it, it began to shake.
It had watched the Mekboy die from start to finish.
Under normal circumstances, a Gretchin living inside a greenskin warband would never submit to a human. The Waaagh energy field that permeated greenskin society meant they deferred only to whoever was bigger, greener, and capable of hitting harder than they were.
But this Gretchin's circumstances were not normal.
It had been chained in the corner of this workshop for an unknown number of standard days. It belonged to no warband. It participated in no Waaagh. It had no kin to shelter behind. The other Gretchin in the workshop wouldn't even speak to it.
Extended isolation from its species had thinned the Waaagh energy field around it to almost nothing.
It was simply a domesticated thrall.
Whoever held the chain was its master.
The Mekboy was dead. The chain was still there. The person standing at the other end had changed.
And beyond that, the survival instinct of a Gretchin was written into its bones.
Faced with a group of armed humans who had just killed eight Ork Boyz in thirty seconds, any Gretchin — even the most committed Waaagh believer — had exactly one intelligent option available.
So the thrall-worker did the thing that was completely logical given its situation.
It knelt.
Two green knees hit the metal deck.
Its yellow-green head dropped as low as it would go. Its large ears nearly touched the floor.
"Don't kill! Useful! Can work! Can hand things! Can turn screws! Can clean guns! Can do anything!"
"Please don't kill! Beg big humie not to kill!"
Rosen looked down at the small, shaking thing kneeling on the floor.
Number 4's Catachan Fang was already raised.
"Hold on."
Rosen crouched down and looked at the thrall-worker closely for a few seconds.
Those hands had spent a long time doing fine mechanical work.
There was a fundamental gap between human engineering logic and greenskin engineering logic. A human engineer looking at a greenskin machine would ask how this possibly functions. A greenskin thrall-worker would instinctively know which part to kick to make it start and which screw to tighten to keep it from exploding.
That kind of instinctive, built-in knowledge had practical value.
"Keep it."
Number 4 lowered his knife.
Rosen unclipped a two-metre length of monofilament cord from his webbing and tied one end firmly around the thrall-worker's neck in place of the heavy iron chain.
He handed the other end to Number 1.
"Tie it to your belt. If it runs or causes problems, that's on you."
Number 1 looped the cord through his webbing without any change of expression.
Rosen looked at the thrall-worker still kneeling on the floor.
"What are you called?"
The thrall-worker blinked.
In the lower strata of greenskin society, Gretchin generally didn't need names. They were called "idiot," or "oi," or "that useless piece of scrap."
But Mekboy thrall-workers were occasionally given a functional label.
"Boss... they call me... Little Wrench."
"Little Wrench." Rosen repeated the name once.
After the workshop sweep was complete, Rosen led everyone back to the base.
The next two days were dedicated to large-scale expansion.
Refined Steel reserves were substantial. Life Points accumulated steadily through continuous hunting operations.
The Death Warrior count climbed rapidly from thirty — one batch, then another, then a third.
Until the base was packed with Catachans.
Sixty-one, including Number 6.
Six ten-man squads, each led by the most combat-experienced Death Warrior in the group.
Eight hundred square metres of maintenance dock was getting crowded, but Rosen had no intention of relocating yet. The defensive advantages of the position and the surrounding trap network were worth considerably more than additional floor space.
Then came the first rest period after the expansion was complete.
In one corner of the base, a small scene was playing out.
Little Wrench was crouched next to a pile of scrap metal, shaking slightly, watching the Death Warriors around it eating.
The off-duty squad of ten Death Warriors was squatting on the floor using their Catachan Fangs to cut portions from a cooked Ork haunch. The smell of roasted Ork meat filled the maintenance dock. The Death Warriors chewed in silence, the sound of their knives working through the tough meat carrying clearly through the quiet base.
Little Wrench's large eyes were wide open.
Its body was shaking. It didn't dare make a sound.
The monofilament cord around its neck was a constant reminder that anything that displeased the boss could result in its head separating from its body.
Rosen noticed its reaction.
He took a fist-sized piece of roasted Ork meat from one of the Death Warriors and tossed it onto the floor in front of Little Wrench.
"Eat."
Little Wrench looked at the meat. Then it looked at Rosen. Then back at the meat.
It was shaking harder.
Rosen looked at the miserable, half-tearful expression on its face and a thought occurred to him.
He opened the system interface and shifted his attention to the Scrapyard.
The Waaagh energy residue that had been stripped from greenskin souls and accumulating there.
He extracted a small amount — roughly fingernail-sized — of the green energy residue.
It condensed in his hand into a tiny green pellet.
He pressed the pellet into the surface of the roasted Ork meat.
For any greenskin, Waaagh energy was close to a life force. For a Gretchin that had been chained up, isolated, and kept half-starved, contact with pure Waaagh energy residue was like water to someone who had gone three days without a drink in a desert.
Little Wrench's large nose twitched twice.
"Aaagh!"
The sound it made was completely different from its previous pitiful whimpering.
It lunged forward, both green hands grabbing the piece of roasted Ork meat coated in Waaagh energy residue. Its small teeth drove into the tough meat with a force that had no business coming from that small body. The Waaagh energy residue coated it like a layer of seasoning, turning a piece of its own species' flesh into something that went beyond the meaning of food entirely.
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