Gorshush did what came naturally to them – they shushed the other lads with a long talon covered in blood.

This was the kind of constant redirection it took to keep Da Snazzblagga Ladz on point. They were good fighters, and well-sneaky, but the Kommando team were still a work-in-progress; an unfinished canvas; a half-grown squig, if you like.

That was where Gorshush (sometimes called ‘da Shusha’) came in. They were a proper Blood Axe, the kind most Orks would quickly step away from if not punch outright on basic principle. Gorshush had been hired by the organizer of this whole affair, a Bigmek called Hrukka Snazzblagga, to get the lads in line and make them into a fit force ready to pinch whatever needed pinching.

Gorshush had just lost most of his former squad in an unfortunate boarding action and, otherwise being out of a job and alone in the galaxy, agreed to help the ambitious ork mek once the pay was settled upon.

Three standard months hence and Snazzblagga’s Ladz were here, inside a small and unimportant lunar installation the T’au used as a listening post. But it wasn’t unimportant. Not to the boss.

“Shusha, me old son,” they’d said, “You is goin’ in there and you is goin’ to nick as much as you can. But there’s one gubbin as must be nicked.”

Snazzblagga had the gone on a bit of tangent in mek talk, which Gorshush barely understood. Something about a “gyro-manifest gennyrater” what could “glow up propa orange when the blinky bits interfaced with the dorsal beryllium compactor.” And that was what the kommando nob committed to their rather limited, but effective, memory: an orange glowy and/or blinky thing that a mek would want.

The crew was assembled and quiet on the little landing craft the boss gave them. Engines were cut so the thing drifted in quiet from Da Throne Pincha, a massive battleship and their base of operations, to the T’au base. Gorshush looked each of their would-be kommandos over.

Nuskrug, the dead-eyed sniper, was motionless in the shadowy hold. Mugkutta, whose own mug hid behind a blast mask, poured fresh fuel in their burna. Zugga da Voice already had the comms equipment fine-tuned and ready for reporting. The rest had names, no doubt, but Gorshush could wait and learn the ones that survived. A few grots were there, which was odd, but the boss had insisted they could do the business, in addition to another handful of hopeful candidates. Some looked comfortable in their sneaking gear while others, the ones Gorshush knew would die a moment after they realized that quiet was required, chafed and fussed with their straps. Not every greenskin had what it took to sneak in and steal an eating squig from a runtherd, fewer still could become genuine kommandos.

Testing time came sooner rather than later as the landing craft lurched and shook, gently bouncing to a stop in the lighter atmosphere of the small celestial body.

“Not a word,” Gorshush lisped, “or I’ll snik ya before these fishboyz can.”

“Yus boss,” blurted out one of the boyz. Then they slumped to the ground, a severed head gasping and groaning in spite of the relative distance from its lungs. Then Gorshush gave the rest of them a look that said something, See? I told ya and slid night vision goggles over their eyes.

It was time for some proper kunnin’.