by S E Zbasnik
Zet blinked, tempted, but smiled. "No, I shall save them for my children. Their father shall likely kill me for destroying their fast with such treats. Thank you for your attendance and please visit again."
The shop's door opened for the last time. The drone zipped out first buzzing about their heads, allowing the four to exit the copier shop straight into a ring of uniformed officers. Most of their faces were obscured by dark helmets pulled over the eyes, but the leader was almost hatless save for a micro one pulled back. Not a good sign, she didn't want anything accidentally recording her movements.
Monde shrunk behind with the other men as Variel took the lead. "I'm afraid I don't know how to locate the local donut shop."
The orc officer turned her head in the same confused tilt, then shifted her jaws, "A human joke. Humorous. I have been sent to escort you to the Prelate's office."
"Which of us?" Orn asked, hoping the answer didn't include him.
"All of you."
"When?" Variel asked, eyeing down the street trying to find a break.
"Now," the officer motioned to the others who fanned out engulfing their little group in darkness.
CHAPTER NINE
Their "escort egg" shuddered to an ovum cracking halt. The door opened to their new officer friend subtly nudging her weapon to invite everyone out. Variel hatched first, blinking into the literal heart of the city. Every orc town placed their, oh let's call it a government inside a building designed and painted to mimic that which beat inside every citizen's chest. It also put any other visiting species right off their lunch, which suited the orc's just fine.
The concrete steps led up to the main seat of their forum that housed this season's legislatures; the right, left and central ventricles. She cast a practiced eye over the other escort car disengaging the extra officers but they weren't in such strict form, prodding each other and laughing. Why worry about a couple of humans, a dwarf and a male, when they were trapped deep in the chest of their colony?
"This way, Sir," their lead officer said to Variel, holding her hand out towards the portal doors.
A few of the others climbed out of the egg, Orn glancing up at their destination and grumbling about how last time he saw one of those it was with a side of onions. Monde kept his face somehow buried in his bag. Finally, Segundo exited and soaked in his surroundings. Getting a face full of a disturbingly accurate representation of what thumped inside the thoracic cavity of most everyone around him, he spun and vomited his fried lunch all over the egg's floorboards.
The dwarf chuckled as he slapped Seggy on the back, "Way to show 'em. Mess with us and you'll get chunks spewed all over your shoes."
Variel ignored it, any show of weakness on her part could be certain pain later. Instead, she tipped her lightly to the officer and began to climb the steps, her knees crying in pain from the steeper incline than humans were used to. Orn would have cursed up a storm, having to scale it like a mountaineer, but one of the not quite security, no longer soldiers, hefted the puffing dwarf onto her shoulders and carted him up as if he were an errant child.
Most other dwarves would have grumbled, tossed the orc aside and made their own way. Orn grabbed onto her neck horns and kicked his legs onto her shoulders, "Faster, mawgy! Giddeup!"
Gods, Variel thought, I never should have taken him on that ancient carousel. As she approached the door, a massive red eye broke free from cover above the frame and scanned her entire body making note of and appreciation for whatever weapons she carried.
It blinked as it studied the data before offering up a green light and opening the door. The captain headed in, letting the rest of her crew suffer through the scan. Orn slithered down off his mount and reached into his pocket to find something sweet for a tip, as the scan tried to determine where his head started. After trying to scan the statue of a faceless warrior of justice, it finally reset to dwarf and flipped up the green light. Segundo was much easier, it noted the bits of bile and street food still clinging to the sides of the mouth and sent in a read of "Human: Male. Weaker than typical, and that's saying something."
Only Monde was left, his fingers still working through the snack Orn got him, he popped a bunch of sliced leaves into his cheek altering the landscape of his countenance. The scan passed over once, confused, then another, getting a combination of troll and water nymph. By the third scan, when the data kept insisting it must be some kind of bipedal sky rat, the scanner threw up the green light and waved it on. It wasn't paid enough to solve this mess.
Monde slipped quickly into the opened portal, bumping into the frozen back of Segundo whose finger trailed across the inside of the inferior Vena Cava, striated thanks to alternating brick colors, into the vast opening of the Ventricle chambers. Stands of chairs, like risers for a choir, ringed the giant stage that hosted a chair so high most would suffer a nosebleed scaling it. But the building was so huge there was still a good ten stories of headspace above it. To fill of all that space was nothing, a giant echoey chamber to prove just how insignificant a single person was to the whole.
Most of the red lights were turned down, leaving only a light ring of blues circling the chamber, and the eternal white light upon the podium chair. The debates were not in session.
"So..." Orn started, glancing at the two security guards trying to talk the scanner out of going on break, "any ideas why we're here? Tour the local landmarks? Get a good grasp of orcish government? Sing the orc anthem, 'To hell with everyone!'"
A pair of shoes, heeled but in a secret fashion, clipped across the rosy stone floors. The huddled misfits turned at the noise and watched an orc descend from one of the looping ramps circling the chambers and ending where the aortas stored high ranking offices. She -- it was rare to find a male working in government unless they needed a token or two -- could easily crack her skull against the ceilings on the Elation. Almost as wide as Gene, her solid form was draped in a symbolic robe of ghastly mauve with sleeves drooping to the ground. A half cape dangled loosely from her left shoulder. The robe was finished in a vest coated in small medals engraved with a repetition of only four letters and a small name.
Variel, one to always forget a face, couldn't misplace this one. "Zila," she said, and bowed to the orc.
A smile of sorts took the orc's jaw as she looked over her handy work, glittering in the blue lights to bring out their scars. "Your face seems different since last we tumbled," the orc said, coming to the end of her descent and walking towards the human.
"Oh?" Variel tried to play it off, "must be a trick of the light."
Zila smiled and laughed softly, "Yes, and you humans all look so similar. But you cannot escape the mark," she pointed her gnarled fingers towards the scar and dragged down it.
Variel herself smiled, "I think it gives a bit of character."
The orc laughed uproariously at that, even the security guards joined in at the little joke. "Come, join me in my chambers away from this decaying wheelhouse of hot air." She motioned back up the ramp she just descended, rolling her arms to safely bundle the sleeves away from snagging feet.
Variel walked beside the woman had once tried to kill her. The human's own work from that day shone, though not as predominantly as the orc's, as Zila limped slightly when her right heel met the ground. That was a fight Variel frankly shouldn't have survived.
"When I heard my old adversary was in town I simply had to call her in. I hope the armed escort wasn't too showy."
"No," Variel waved it off as if it were all part of some pomp script she totally read before the night. "Last I heard you were a prelate on one of the Orc triangle worlds, Breaking Wind, I believe."
Orn snorted, "Honest? Swear to your mother and kiss the stone, Breaking Wind? Oh, you underbiters slay me." Zila failed to hear most of what the dwarf said thanks to the rocket Variel fired close but not quite close enough to her head.
Instead, the diplomat waved her arms to encircle the empty chambers beating silently. "We are forbidden to switch planets, u
nless a fresh set of claws are necessary in the government. After an unfortunate incident involving a bored prelate, a crate of lubricant, and a pile of rusting swords left at the bottom of this walkway, the colony voters requested me."
"Voting," Variel shook her head, "that's no way to run a country." A few molding history books talked of the human attempts at a democracy, some one man/one vote rubbish; but over time that noble ideal quickly turned from one dollar/one vote into lots of dollars/lots of votes and the whole thing exploded when a member of one party stabbed, mutilated, and trussed up a member of the other. Since then they'd gone back to kings with the occasional attempts at letting a parliament craft a few laws to keep them busy and off the streets. It'd been smooth sailing, if you ignored all the 'assassination/nearly constant war' rocks.
The Prelate laughed at the human's cryptic words. She seemed to be doing that a lot more than Variel remembered. There was mostly screaming, threatening, pithy one-lining, and then the floor collapsed. It bothered a lot of other humans when they'd meet the ones trying to kill them off the battlefield; to see orcs playing with their children, enjoying drinks beside a bar, or stopping to investigate olfactory scent releasers in the gardens. Humans carried grudges, orcs truly believed in live and let live. Granted, they also fully believed in kill and let kill, which was half the reason they spent most of their time on the galactic scene under some form of demilitarization or embargo. But it never slowed them down long. They'd just find a new species to work out their bottled up aggressions on, except for the dwarves. Not even a bred-for-battle orc would call for war against their creditors.
"My personal reflecting chambers are through here," Zila said, motioning through the first large door they passed.
"Right next to the thoroughfare. You're either very important or worth saddling next to the ice machine," Orn said inspecting the plaque above the door. The lettering, pure orc and like trying to decipher a bowl of noodles, was done in a crimson probably meant to mimic blood. Hopefully, only mimic. The other option probably increased job opportunities in the rotunda while taking a heavy hit to morale.
Zila turned her head, dislodging the dwarf's not quite silent enough words, her plumed headdress scraping the doorframe as she entered her office. "Malir, this is an old friend of sorts," she called to her secretary who was tossed over his desk routing for something underneath it. At his bosses words, Malir snapped up and stood to attention.
"Friend?" Variel asked. She'd never heard that exact designation employed by an orc before, especially one she'd been ordered to eliminate.
"We did shed blood together," Zila said. "Is that not the human term for such an arrangement?"
"Kinda..." the captain wasn't prepared to get into the intricacies of human familiarity, namely that the shedding of blood was typically from those on the same side and not because of the other.Perhaps orcs recently learned of "Friendly Fire."
"What brings you to this forgotten berg of the galaxy?"
"Part exchange, bits of my ship got a little nicked in a small collision and I'd prefer fixing them up before attempting a pinch," she lied as if she were back on duty, covering for someone who thought it'd be a great laugh to toss the commander's tea set into the grav chamber.
Zila eyed her over, sensing the lie, but uncertain what to do with it. That was the trick, give just enough useless information you bog the other mind down, then skip out before they can reconvene. "That sounds like a very full day, you must require nourishment and respite," she gestured to a tray full of food far too soft for an orc's liking. Just how long had they been pinged?
"Actually..." Variel was about to explain her stomach full of street food that was about to go nuclear when one of the helmeted guards knocked on the open door.
"Madam, we have discovered a criminal amongst your guests."
Zila frowned but Variel smiled smoothly, "It's all right, I can keep the dwarf under lock and key until we get back."
"Hey! Those charges were dropped...eventually."
"Madam Prelate?"
Zila rose to full height and said crisply, "These aliens are guests of mine."
"It isn't the alien, Madam," the soldier said, pointing his head towards the paling Monde. "It's the orc. He's wanted for infanticide."
"There must be some kind of mistake," the doomed words were out of Variel's mouth before she could stop them. She quickly slapped on, "He's served upon my ship, far away from any infants, for nearly two years."
"I know you fairer sex orcs love the stomping and killing, but doc here can't hurt a fly," Orn defended. "Seriously. I watched him once in the cargo bay after the containment broke. It took hours."
The soldier passed over to the prelate a pad rotating through the warrant for some infant stomping orc's arrest. "From the prime Late Sun. It is clearly him, the countenance scan confirmed it."
As Zila searched through the words, her heavy brow buckling like a tectonic shift, Variel glanced about the room and nudged Orn. The dwarf, who was patting a shellshocked Monde on the back, followed her push and smirked. He'd always wanted to play with one of those.
All but whistling nonchalantly he crab slid to the corner and grabbed one of the ceremonial battle axes, probably the one that did the number to Variel's face. She slipped her hand into her pocket switching on the pistol, hoping the damn safety ding was silenced by her clothing, and breaking about thirty different Crest violations.
The prelate lowered the warrant and, for the first time, looked at the smaller male all but drained of blood as he stood helpless before his fate. "It is accurate. I am sorry." She passed the pad back to the guard.
"What happens now? Do you take him off to jail or a trial?"
"The punishment for knowingly terminating a pre-infant is ten years hard labor," the guard took a long pause giving the captain time to calculate just how they could infiltrate an orc chain gang. "But, for every year he evaded capture and failed to confess his crime another ten years is added. Therefore he shall be executed immediately."
Zila shrugged her shoulders, not in the mood to have the mess leeching into her carpet. The last time this happened it took the cleaners days to scrub up her meditating waterfall. But the law was the law, and in theory that was why she accepted this position in the third place.
The guard drew out a long tube, filled with a quick acting poison. Monde whimpered as the woman in black ordered him onto his knees. He dropped with a hand pinching the meat of his shoulder. His gamble finally came to a pathetic end as the house won. He wondered if the little time he'd eked out after his turn of crime really mattered to the balance of things. The elves always talked as if every decision you made was planned far in advance, by some god or spirits plucking at the tapestry, but looking down the twelve gauge needle of the end he wanted to shout in their faces how useless it all was.
Approaching behind him, the guard slipped her gloved hand around his throat, trying to find the uncovered spot on his neck. As he mumbled an old prayer to the heroes in the hall, a bang perforated the air. The guard stumbled, blood dripping down her leg.
Variel removed the pistol from her jacket -- now sporting an exit wound sized hole -- and fired again, knocking the guard back. Zila reared up, about to attack her "friend" but Orn swung her own battleaxe wide, catching her in the knee Variel shot up so many years ago. The prelate went down with a scream, but wasn't about to stop fighting. That was the problem with orcs, killing them was like trying to take out a nest of cockroaches by stomping them one roach at a time.
"Orn!"
"Aye!" he swung the axe wide, getting close to the old prelate's head but she still had some moves in her.
"Get the doc and the kid out of here," Variel peered over the side of the aorta watching the guards scatter at the sound of battle.
"Pray tell how?"
Variel dodged her pilot's wide arm and grabbed it before it could get her on the backswing. Grinning into his face she said, "Waterslide."
He smiled, he hadn't been able to do
this since their last visit to the sheet metal factory. Grabbing onto Seggy's hand, he thrust it into the rising doc's and said, "Hang onto him and don't let go." Both nodded, uncertain who he was talking to. "And follow behind me, this is gonna be fun."
From years of piloting, the ass in Orn's pants were rubbed to such a smooth sheen it was a wonder he could sit down without sliding to the floor. Grinning like this was the happiest place in the galaxy, Orn sat down on the top of the giant stone slide. He situated the battle axe right at stomach piercing height and glanced towards his captain firing warning shots at the orc that invited them for tea. "Now?"
"Not yet." She could barely watch behind her, but the longer they waited the easier their escape would be. Variel fired another bullet near the prelate's head, missing partly on purpose she told herself, but startling the poor secretary into a deeper cower beside his filing cabinets.
"Now?"
Zila, forced back to the corner, staggered but came up with something heavy in her hands. Close combat with an orc was a death sentence. Variel yanked her "just in case" out of her pocket and shouted, "NOW!"
Orn slid his ass up and down to build momentum, called out "One, two, better not sue," and tossed himself down the twisting slide. Survival taking over the panic, Monde dragged the kid with him after Orn. Variel backed out into the hall. Just as Zila was rearing up, she tossed her handheld light grenade into the room and ran after the others.
The blinding flash knocked her face mutilator off her feet and straight into her little pond. Orc eyes were bred for fighting in dark corners and incredibly sensitive to light. She wasn't going to be seeing much of anything for a few days.
Calling out like he was in an action flick, Orn shouted, "Take that!" as his axe bit into the stomach of the first guard rushing up the incline. That guard tumbled to the side, rolling down a ten story drop and probably never getting up again. "Point for me!" The momentum of his drop was building. As the orcs realized what was happening they tried to turn, scurrying away from the armed toddler on the slide, but they were too slow.
