by Mary Gentle
“Now if that doesn’t convince them to vote for Herself,” the orc general Ashnak remarked, “then I’m a half-elf.”
Barashkukor picked himself up and dusted his combats down. He nodded smartly. “Very clever, sir. If they blame Amarynth and the Light, they’ll vote for us. And if they think it was done by the Dark, they’ll vote for us to stop it happening again. Sir, well done, sir!”
“And another advantage…” The large orc’s voice trailed off.
A singed and blackened figure shambled up the road towards the APC, green hide smoking, long olive-drab greatcoat hanging in smouldering rags, and wire-rimmed spectacles dangling smashed from one pointed ear.
Orc Political Commissar Razitshakra, swaying on her bandy legs, saluted up at Ashnak filling the hatch of the APC.
“Truly orcish, sir!” she enthused. “That’s what I call politically correct! Can I do the next mission too, sir?”
“How fortuitoush,” a voice remarked.
Barashkukor, turning, was startled to see a figure cowled in a patchwork leather robe. A dozen Ferenzi troopers in striped hose, carrying halberds, accompanied the figure. It slowly reached up and put the hood back from its head.
Level sunlight through the explosion’s dust shone on grey, black, and fish-belly-white skin. Ragged black hair surrounded a face now almost pleasant, by orc standards. Barashkukor had some difficulty in recognising the nameless necromancer.
“Sir,” the small orc acknowledged, startled, but nevertheless according him the respect of a soldier for an exemployer.
“General Ashnak!” the nameless necromancer cried, slobbering round the tusks that twisted his mouth awry. “You stand accushed of crimesh against peasch and humanity!”
The great orc frowned. “Accused of what?”
“Crimes against peace and humanity,” Major Barashkukor deciphered helpfully. He watched his commanding officer blush the colour of basalt.
“Thank you,” Ashnak said gruffly.
“It’sh a charge, not a commendation!” the nameless necromancer spluttered. “You’re under arresht!”
Barashkukor fingered his pistol in its belt holster and looked inquiringly at Razitshakra, who swayed, singed and cross-eyed, and then at Ashnak. The big orc rested his hand on the machinegun mounted by the APC’s hatch.
“Can’t say I’m impressed by magical firepower these days,” the orc general drawled. “Not even the nameless necromancer’s.”
The disfigured face twisted. It was several seconds before Barashkukor worked out that this orcishly handsome member of the Man race was smiling.
“But it ish not I who arresht you,” he said. “I hold the authority of another.”
“The Light?” Ashnak’s upper lip lifted over his fangs as he snarled at the Ferenzi guards.
Barashkukor pulled his cap straight between his drooping ears. His steel leg clicked and emitted a jet of steam as he stepped forward, positioning himself between the APC and the nameless necromancer’s escort of Ferenzi troopers.
“The Lords of Light have no military jurisdiction over the orc marines,” Barashkukor proclaimed primly, unfastening his pistol holster.
“But I do not shpeak for the Light,” the Man slurred.
Behind Barashkukor, Ashnak gave a guttural cough. “So who is trying to arrest me, if not the Light?”
The nameless necromancer drew his skin robe about his hunch-shouldered body, snuffling a little with triumph.
“Why,” he said, “General Ashnak, you are placshed under arrest now by the authority of the Dark Lord Hershelf.”
The silence of evacuated territory pervaded the root tunnels below the City of the Trees. Lieutenant Gilmuriel Hunt-Lord signalled Fireteam One of Starlight Squad to halt.
“Fourteen!” he called, voice squeaking with exhaustion.
“Nine!”
The challenge being a number over ten, and the correct response a number under it, the blond elf sighed in relief and advanced down the corridor.
Carved out of the thick roots of aeons-old trees, the polished tunnel walls gleamed gold in the near-darkness. Woodgrain swirled, looped, and waved. Faint light came up from under the circular tunnel floor, across which thinner roots had been trained and grown into walkway-gratings. Gilmuriel’s boots fell on pierced wood so ancient it rang hard as metal.
“Yo, L.t.!” A lean, green-skinned orc with corporal’s chevrons on his sleeve advanced to meet Gilmuriel. Several orc marines in mechanic’s overalls followed him.
“Corporal Hikz, your patrol’s overdue.”
“Sorry, sir.” The lean orc corporal saluted. “Sir, nothing much to report. The sq— the inhabitants have all cleared out of the city. The place is practically deserted.”
“Practically?”
“We discovered a small Man-child last night, sir.” Orc Corporal Hikz gestured at the corridor’s walkway root flooring. “Under those gratings. Plucky little yellow-haired thing she was, sir. Obviously in hiding from the Bugs.”
Gilmuriel looked at the five or six orcs behind Hikz. “And what have you and your orcs done with the Man-child, Corporal?”
“We ate her, sir.”
“What!”
“And very tasty she was too, thank you, sir.”
“Well done, that orc!” Sergeant Dakashnit appeared silently in their midst from a side corridor, showing all her tusks in a grin. As Gilmuriel belatedly turned to give the challenge, Fireteam Two of Starlight Squad limped into view.
“Tried taking the radio up to treetop level,” Dakashnit jerked a gnarled thumb at marine radio operator Silkentress. “Can’t raise the rest of the platoon, or the company. All the firebases east of the river have been overrun. Saw Bugs in at least battalion strength—they’re across the city perimeter and headed this way fast.” The female orc removed her steel helmet and wiped her shaven head. “This is what we in the marines call a target-rich environment.”
Gilmuriel frowned. “Target-rich environment, Sergeant?”
Corporal Hikz said, “Overwhelming enemy forces, sir!”
Sssssssssssssssszakkk!
Gilmuriel’s pointed ears pricked at the sound of firing. He looked swiftly from side to side.
“That lateral corridor leads to the supply rooms,” he said crisply. “Down this way is the Plant Room. I’m assuming that will be one of their objectives. Corporal Hikz, I think it’s time for you to deploy your experimental weaponry here. The rest of the squad will set up an ambush from the supply rooms.”
With every impression of being amazed by his decisiveness, Gunnery Sergeant Dakashnit saluted. “Corporal Blackrose, recce the supply rooms and access tunnels.” She paused. “Corporal Hikz—that wouldn’t by any chance be Tech-Captain Ugarit’s experimental weaponry, would it?”
“Yur,” Hikz said laconically.
“Oh, shit…”
HHHHSSSSSSSH-ZK-FOOM!
Over the bustle of the squad reconnoitering the nearby tunnels, and Hikz’s mechanic orcs cracking open the crates they carried and rapidly assembling machinery, Lieutenant Gilmuriel Hunt-Lord heard the sound of the Bugs’ incomprehensible weapons firing.
“Move it!” he fluted. “Hikz, what is this new weapon?”
The lean corporal emerged from under a stout steel tripod, brandishing a spanner. “Tech-Captain Ugarit calls it a smart weapons system. Basically a heavy machinegun, sir. Marine Karakingat!”
Hikz scrambled up onto his feet, kicking the large mechanic orcs out of his way. A rather smaller orc in a desert camo forage cap staggered down the tunnel from the direction of the Plant Room, draped in heavy belts of ammunition, which he slung around his thin neck, over his arms, elbows, and around his waist, and still managed to trail on the ground.
“Sir, smart ammo, sir!” Karakingat saluted, dropping the belts on the wooden grating at Gilmuriel’s feet.
Gilmuriel squatted down. The belts of ammunition gleamed gold, catching the tiny amount of light elf eyes need for vision.
“The gun.” Hikz slapped
the heavy machinegun on its tripod. It reeked of oil. “Got laser sensors, sir, that’s what the tech-captain calls ’em. It’ll lock on to anything that comes within its range, acquire a target, and blow the fuck out it. On its own—no operator. Called a smart gun, sir. This is the ammo for it. That can track a target after it’s been fired, sir. Karakingat, start bringing up the rest of it!”
The ammunition appeared bulkier than Gilmuriel was used to. A small panel set into the side of each round glowed with a liquid crystal display of targeting calculations.
The LCD blinked, shifting from numerals to letters.
…46-453-56…SIR, SHOOT ME AT THE BASTARDS NOW, SIR…647-3…
“Smart ammo,” the elf lieutenant commented.
He glanced up the corridor. From somewhere far above, in the outbuildings that clung to trunks two hundred feet above the forest floor, the sound of firing echoed. The Bugs would be entering the vast goldentree trunks whose chambers and grottos had been a city since the Sea’s withdrawal, unaccounted ages past.
“Load it up!” he ordered.
“Yessir!” The orc corporal fed one belt into the heavy machinegun and hooked up the next belt for automatic reload. “Marine Karakingat, prepare for weapons-test!”
“Sir, yes sir!” The small orc perked up his ears, rolled up the sleeves of his combat jacket, and began to flick triggers, bolts, and carriers back and forth.
“Checklist correct, sir!” Marine Karakingat peered down the cluster-barrels of the weapon. “Ready to go—”
Dakka-dakka-dakka-FOOM!
“Arrrgh!” Karakingat vanished. Green spatters splashed the far end of the root corridor.
“He’s been fired,” one of the large mechanic orcs remarked.
“Ah…” Corporal Hikz sighed. “We’ll never find another orc of his calibre.”
Hikz’s ridged brows furrowed as he looked down at the second ammunition belt in his hands. “Sir…”
Gilmuriel looked over the orc’s uniformed shoulder. The LCD display on the next rounds ticked past:
…08-97-6…HELL NO WE WONT GO…WE SHALL OVERCOME WE SHALL…
“Even smarter ammunition,” the elf lord commented. “Do what you can, Corporal. Sergeant! Do we have a KZ set up?”
“We can make this corridor a killing zone, L.t., and fall back through the supply rooms to the water-pumps.”
“Then let’s roll!”
HHHHSSSSSSSH-ZK-FOOM!
“Contact!”
Chunks of wood ricocheted. A line of brilliance opened, as if the world had cracked apart to show the sun. Blue-white, it seared down the corridor and impacted.
FOOM!
“Targets twelve o’clock, fifty metres low, down corridor!”
“Seen!”
“Seen!”
“Seen!”
“How many?”
“Thirty-plus!”
“Fall back by fire and movement!”
“Grenade!”
FOOM!
“Contact six o’clock! Thirty metres. They’re behind us!”
“ERV! Go, go, go!”
“One elf down!”
“Mother of Forests, carry him! Move out! Go, go, go!”
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
“Hostiles fifty-plus!
“Team Two pull back!”
“Arrrgghhhh!”
“Go go GO!”
Lieutenant Gilmuriel pounded across a lateral corridor, the back-flashes of weapons lighting the gnarled walls and the pierced gratings. The deep roar of the smart gun hammered at his ears. Elves ran past and fell into the shelter of sideturnings, waited until the next team ran past, and gave covering fire.
Gilmuriel slammed into the cover of the Plant Room doors. Elven combat boots thudded past him. The crouching elf, sweat-stained woodland camo bandanna tied behind his pointed ears, cradled his automatic pistol and stared back up the smoke-filled corridor. His elf marine squad hugged the scant cover of wall niches. Orcs in overalls and BDUs shambled back out of the haze.
The hefty bulk of orc sergeant Dakashnit slammed in beside Gilmuriel, her M16 stinking of hot metal. Ejected ammunition cases rattled across the gratings. She looked up and down the corridor, and then at the wooden-gated Plant Room beside her.
“If we close these doors, L.t., will they hold?”
“Not against those weapons. What are they?”
“Fuck knows, L.t.!”
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM—–
The hammering fire of the smart gun abruptly cut off. Gilmuriel peered through the haze. Torch-beams cut the smoke, dazzling him until his elvish sight adjusted.
The beams dipped, crossed, jabbed towards the Plant Room. Sharp hisses of command echoed down the corridor. The first glint of a blue-black carapace brought Gilmuriel’s pistol up. Dakashnit closed her large, taloned hand on his arm.
“L.t.” The orc had a strange expression. “Look at that. It’s a textbook advance…”
Gilmuriel looked down the wood-walled corridor at the twelve or fifteen insectoids tactically advancing, bulgebarreled weapons held at the ready, hugging their hard exoskeletons into every piece of cover. Rapid commands passed between them. They advanced down the hundred metres of exposed corridor with frightening speed.
The elf lieutenant shook the orc’s hand off. “Sergeant, pull yourself together! Those Bugs are history!”
Dakashnit protested, “But look, L.t., they ain’t no different from us. They’re soldiers.”
Gilmuriel bared his teeth in a maniacal grin, sighting his pistol. “Okay, so they’re military history!”
FOOM!
Narrow beams spattered across the hardwood ceiling and seared down into the walkways underfoot, hissing and sparking electric-blue down their lengths. A dozen more hostiles appeared through the smoke from slowly smouldering goldentree roots.
“Pull out!” Gilmuriel bawled. “GO!”
BOOM! BOOM!
Grenades covered their escape. At the next RV point, Gilmuriel sank panting against the wall of a six-corridor intersection. Marines Aradmel Brightblade and Ravenharp the White sprinted into the open space, the twisting, screaming body of an elf carried between them, and laid her down. The lieutenant stepped over debris to stare at Byrna Silkentress. A beam of spitting light had caught her directly across one cheek, bubbling her dark skin. Another shot had glanced across her belly, not deep enough to sever her body in two, but deep enough to split the peritoneum wall beyond repair.
The wounded elf writhed, bulges of flesh pressing out between her slick fingers as she tried to hold her intestines inside her body cavity. Blood soaked her combats sopping wet.
“Shit!” Aradmel Brightblade moaned. “Oh, shit, man, I told her to run through.”
“Brightblade!” Gilmuriel snapped. “On guard, that corridor, now!”
Marine Ravenharp the White knelt down by Byrna’s side, his hand going to touch the dogtags fused into the flesh of her neck by the blast. “I used to be a healer-mage…”
“Magery won’t work for marines.” Gilmuriel dragged another word from his increasing marine vocabulary, appealing back over his shoulder to Dakashnit. “Medic!”
The orc sergeant looked at him blankly. “What’s a ‘medic’?”
“Please!” Byrna Silkentress screamed. “Please!”
Gilmuriel’s hand slipped, wet with the ropes of her spilling intestines. He wiped his fingers on his combat trousers and drew his automatic pistol. With one hand he turned her head away. He placed the muzzle of his automatic pistol on her skull at the base of her neck and squeezed the trigger. A slew of blood and bone punched out her skull from eyes to crown, splattering the corridor wall with red tissue. Byrna’s body relaxed.
“Marine Starharp.” Gilmuriel swallowed bile. “Take over radio duties.”
“Yes, sir.” Removing the rig from Byrna’s body, Belluriel’s long-fingered musician’s hands shook.
“Enemy seen?” Dakashnit questioned the squad harshly. “Come on, assholes! I’m gonna get the res
t of you out of here alive if it kills me. Enemy seen?”
“Not seen.”
“Not seen.”
“Not seen!”
Eighteen hours later, Lieutenant Gilmuriel and the elf marine squad patrolled from the lower to the upper levels of the root tunnels. Nerves stretched, ears pricked, hands slick on rifles.
“If it were an ambush we’d have hit the kay-zee by now,” Dakashnit advised. “L.t., I think the Bugs did a sweep through the area and that was it. They haven’t occupied the city at all. They’re gone.”
“Leaving hostile forces behind them?”
“Uh-huh.” The orc looked thoughtfully at Marine Starharp. “See if you can raise HQ now, L.t. Send a despatch.”
“Saying what?” Gilmuriel Hunt-Lord stood aching, weary, and filthy in the city of the Elven Lords. Above him vast ancient canopies reached for the sun; capillary action drank up moisture from the roots; but the whorled chambers and high platforms of the City of the Trees lay deserted, blood-spattered, home only to bodies and the circling carrion eagles. A persistent smell of burning stung his eyes: the slow fires that, once begun, would smoulder for decades before finally burning the city to the ground.
“They’re not holding territory,” Dakashnit said.
“They’re not holding this territory, Gunnery Sergeant…” Without turning, Gilmuriel spoke to Belluriel Starharp. “Raise HQ, marine. Advise them to plot the Bugs’ advance—use satellite observation to find out exactly where they are. Inform them there’s a possibility the Bugs may have a specific objective to which they are advancing.”
9
“Certain irregularities have come to light,” the Dark Lord stated, “about your conduct in the late war. And your administration of My election campaign.”
“Must be some mistake, Ma’am.” Ashnak shifted his massive weight from foot to foot, now bare of combat boots. The chains fettered to his wrists and ankles clinked.
The black canvas walls of the Dark Lord’s Night Pavilion flapped in the night wind. Silver embroidered sigils of Evil glinted in the electric light. The outside generator hummed.
