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Before I begin, I will say I wrote this a while back, and reading through it, I might have subconsciously riffed on quite a bit of the 2nd edition Ork Codex. However, it must be said, this isn't 40k fiction. Thank you.

“What’s going on down there?!” gargled Hakspittle, his namesake spluttering from his mouth. There was a sudden flurry of activity in the dugout as technicians hastily hollered into microphones, jotting down coordinates in dirtied and soiled notebooks, and stumbled about as they tried to assemble a collected response. After a minute or so of pure clerical chaos, head technician Blakphlegm produced a badly organised, recently formed dossier, and handed it to Hakspittle.

“Sir,” Blakphlegm began, “the Purebreeds have captured Fort Null in the mountains, and they are grinding through the western outposts as we speak. Captain Yellowtooth is gathering a force to hold the Purebreeds off while the refugees reach our citadels. We lost contact a while ago.”

Hakspittle looked up from the dossier and around at the crew of technicians in the dugout. All were Dregs, the sub-species of man, devolved and mutated by solar radiation and humanity’s craving to expand to the stars and beyond. They, as a race, were slaves no more. At first, the rebellion had been promising. Huge tracts of humanity’s stellar empire had been overthrown by Dreg slaves, and equality laws had been acted on and passed. But Man’s counterattack had broken them.

Now, the last Dreg rebels had holed up on some no-name backwater planet and turned it into a worldwide fortress. And here they were, prepared to fight and die to the last man.

“Sub-man, really,” Hakspittle mused, as he observed his compatriots filter through the barrages of radio traffic. Another dreg citadel had fallen. Another Purebreed airstrike had killed thousands of refugees. Another, and another, a tide of woe that all but drowned the technicians ears in lapping waves of suffering.

“Sir! Sir! It’s Yellowtooth!” One of the technicians broke Hakspittle’s reverie. “His radio’s active! I think he switched it on by mistake! We can hear everything going on over there!”

Surely enough, as Hakspittle pressed his ear to the headphones, he could hear the whip-crack of man’s caseless ammunition, the scraping metallic bang of Dreg solid slug guns, and the dull ‘Whump! Whump!’ of nearby explosions. Yellowtooth’s roaring, if lisped, voice pierced through the sounds of battle.

“Thteady men!” Yellowtooth bellowed, “They can’t get uth from here! Redwelt, aim straight! You won’t kill anything when you’re holding your gun like that! Helpox! Get up! Shut it, Redwelt! He’th not dead, he’th jutht… erm…. Oh well! I never liked him anywayth! Never polished his bootth!”

“Bloody idiot,” slithered Blakphlegm, “he’s holding the Bjunje River. The Purebreed artillery at Narkhol Point is easily in range. He’s doomed.”

Hakspittle silenced him with a wave of his malformed hand, and listened intently to Yellowtooth as he made his last stand.

“Here they come boyth! Yellowtooth cried, “Thtop them!” Yellowtooth’s voice began to crack under the intense pressure of battle of the one-sided battle. “Eat thith Purebreed! Hahahaha! Notchskull, thtop crying! It’th only an arm you lotht, get over it! Hahaha! Die die die! Redwelt, there’th plenty of ammo, like on Helpox’ corpthe! Never thurrender! For the Dregth! For the Goddamn dregth! For the-.”

An explosion boomed, and the radio fell silent. The mood in the dugout became sombre, the frantic activity dying down as the technicians acknowledged the death of one of the few dreg war heroes. Hakspittle took a deep breath, put on a brave smile, and spoke.

“Well, it looks like Yellowtooth bit the bullet then, didn’t he?”

The technicians nodded solemnly, some weakly grinned. Yellowtooth had been a good leader and friend to the dregs, and he would be missed.

Hakspittle looked up, and saw something on the horizon. He grabbed a pair of binoculars from a passing technician and focused them. His jaw dropped.

Rank upon rank of human troopers marched forwards, their steel armour glinting in the light of the sun. Beside them strode mighty panzermechs, armoured tanks that walked like men. There were too many.

“We need to get out.” Hakspittle thought.
“Run!!” he yelled, his breath drawn ragged in his lungs, “Get out! Purebreeds! Purebreeds incoming!”

The technicians grabbed handfuls of watermarked and muddy files, falling over each other to hurry out. Blakphlegm grabbed a bunch of handheld computers and stuffed them into the hands of another technician, before unslinging the rocket launcher on his back and firing at the Purebreeds.

Blakphegm’s rocket tore the leg off the lead panzermech, toppling it, scoring a kill as its ammunition detonated in a spectacular chain reaction. The explosion scattered the humans, but the other panzermechs carried on regardless, striding over the wreckage of their fallen comrade. Hakspittle drew a rusty, antique revolver out of its holster and pulled himself up in front of the dugout. He turned to face Blakphlegm.

“I’m going to hold them off! Go!!”

“I’m afraid not sir.” Blakphlegm pulled himself up next to Hakspittle. “If you’re going to hold off that lot, you’ll need me on the case, and I’m not leaving.”

Hakspittle sighed. He knew that there was no moving the stubborn head technician. He nodded his approval, and faced the Purebreed army advancing menacingly towards them.

“This is our world, Purebreeds,” he spat with contempt, “and no matter how hard you try, it will always be our world. Until the last Dreg falls, that is how it shall remain.”

Blakphlegm roared. Not out of despair, but out of anger, like a cry of rage that all Dregs had welling up inside them, being let out in a torrent of hatred by one being. Hakspittle joined in the roar as the first shells began to fall around the pair. They both began firing their weapons at the horde bearing down on them, howling with rage as the dust and smoke consumed them.