Grunts

by Mary Gentle

  “It’s true, sir! It’s true! They’re going down! We’ve done it!”

  The great orc said grimly, “Now let’s put the real barrage down. Tech-Captain Ugarit!”

  Barashkukor, amazed, stood up and pushed his helmet back on his head. His long ears sprang upright. “No, sir, wait.”

  The small orc scrabbled down, lost his grip, and fell heavily on his commanding officer’s boots. He got to his feet, pointing excitedly towards the plain. “Sir, what’s that?”

  Far out on the plain, visible to technology-assisted eyes, a unit of thirty or forty Bugs clustered on high ground. Burning trees and buildings marked the hill as one of the outlying hamlets on the road from Ferenzia to the north. The yellow fog swirled about the foot of the rise, clinging to the low-lying earth below the one or two hovels left standing.

  None of the Bugs were firing their weapons.

  One Bug, taller than the rest, its exoskeleton a gleaming ebony, held something in its front claws. As Supreme Commander Ashnak stared through his field glasses, he recognised John Stryker’s pole and white pennant.

  The Bug raised its arms and frantically waved the white flag.

  “Cheeky bugger!” the orc major yelped. “Land the next barrage smack on that position, sir. Of all the nerve—offering to surrender to orcs.”

  Bio-tech-Captain Ugarit yelled, “Artillery group, depress elevation—”

  Ashnak brought his fist down on the top of Ugarit’s head. The skinny orc folded like a dropped brick. Ashnak rumbled, “All artillery units on stand-by. Repeat, on stand-by. No one fires without my order.”

  “But sir!” Barashkukor protested.

  Supreme Commander Ashnak surveyed the battlefield outside Ferenzia, the white flag, and the clouds of nerve gas even now dissolving on the slight easterly breeze.

  He picked up the radio handset.

  “All units—cease fire! Say again: cease fire. Commissar Razitshakra, I’m taking a unit out to grid reference ohseven-three nine-eight-zero. I’m going to accept the enemy’s surrender.”

  11

  The yellow-white Class G star seared down through the smoke of burning trees and native buildings. Two rotor-driven flying machines rested on the scorched fields. A cordon of indigenous life-forms surrounded the blitzed village on the hill, their curiously separable weapons pointed at the Jassik soldiers.

  Hive Commander Kah-Sissh regarded the hot, smelly, fleshly body of the nearest indigenous life-form—so suitable for incubating eggs—and clicked his mandibles in regret. His salivating hiss sounded above the surrussation of the wounded and the rotors of the natives’ flying machines:

  “I am Hive Commander Kah-Sissh.”

  “Supreme Commander Ashnak,” the life-form growled. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Fifty metres away a Jassik soldier rolled, black carapace shredding in the clinging yellow gas. Exoskeletal limbs sprouted, malformed, desperately attempted to re-grow. She finally dissolved into a metallic black sludge, self-repair mechanisms run wild.

  Hive Commander Kah-Sissh spat, “It is our dishonour to surrender ourselves to you, indigenous life-form!”

  The native scratched with taloned manipulators at the division of its bifurcated trunk.

  “That’s ‘orc’ to you.” Its tusked head lifted, staring up at the Jassik Hive Commander, and it jerked one of its opposable thumbs at the only native hovel left standing in the area. “Inside!”

  The translation device that the other native had carried burned against Kah-Sissh’s thorax. He understood. The novelty of studying these creatures other than to kill them momentarily took his interest.

  Hive Commander Kah-Sissh looked up at the three-story building, set like an island here where two major roads crossed: north-south and east-west. A creaking wooden panel suspended on the frontage bore a two-dimensional image—one of the native beasts of burden, portrayed as rearing in an anatomically unlikely manner.

  “I consent.” Hive Commander Kah-Sissh hissed an order. Thirty exoskeletal Jassik heels clicked down onto the dirt. The command escort’s lines straightened up smartly, their carapaced heads jutting forward in a uniform position, odorous slime dripping down and eating into the soil at their feet. Kah-Sissh’s thorax expanded with a desperate pride.

  “Battlemaster! Flightmaster! To me!”

  Two of the largest Jassik stepped out, black metal harnesses glittering on their articulated thoraxes, disruptor and blaster power cables growing from their backs. The raised marks grown into the chitin of their shoulders marked them as high-ranking officers, suitable to accompany Kah-Sissh into disgrace.

  “Awright, awright!” The native life-form did something to its dead-metal weapon that made it click. “I’m not running a goddamn party here. Get your Bug asses inside there, sharp!”

  The Battlemaster and Flightmaster followed Kah-Sissh into the low-beamed structure. The Jassik Hive Commander picked his way distastefully through the overturned chairs, tables, and broken glass of what was obviously a shell-battered civilian hostelry.

  “This will suffice for the Immolation of Disgrace,” Kah-Sissh announced, seating himself in the middle of the floor and gazing down at the fleshy bipeds.

  “Not in this here inn, you don’t!” a portly native of the Man variety announced, bustling out from behind the long bench that stretched the length of the room. “‘Scuse me, master orc, but are these…‘visitors’ with you?”

  Kah-Sissh watched Supreme Commander Ashnak draw himself up to his full height and glare round the interior of the inn. “This is where I’m holding our top-secret, highly confidential peace negotiations. Any objections?”

  There was a clink of glasses from seats in a niche by the chimney that Kah-Sissh took to be the local heating-source. Several much smaller natives, the curly hair on their pedal extremities grizzled and grey, raised button-black eyes to the orc.

  “Holding peace negotiations, is it?” one remarked.

  “‘Oo’s stopping you, boy?” another commented. “So long as us halflings gets a quiet drink, we doesn’t care. Does we, Walter?”

  “That us don’t, Matthew. That us don’t. Got better things to do than listen to orcs.” The more elderly of the halflings grumbled, sinking its mouth into a tankard. “By the Light! but it’s getting hard to find a good pint, what with the war an’ all. I recall as how you used to get a good pint at the Dog and Leggit—”

  Hive Commander Kah-Sissh tapped the translation device hanging from his thorax, and despite himself queried: “The Dog and Leggit?”

  “Ar,” the elderly halfling, Walter, replied. “Inn over at Bremetys, that were. Called that on account of you threw up over the dog and then you legged it.”

  Kah-Sissh eventually decoded the small natives’ hissing expirations as amusement.

  “Cider was better in the Dragon’s Nest,” the third halfling drinker remarked, from a seat at the back of the snug. “Whatever ’appened to the Dragon’s Nest?”

  “‘Undred and fifty-five millimetre, six rounds of,” Walter remarked dolefully. “Drink ain’t never been the same since this ’ere danged fighting.”

  The portly Man bustled across the inn floor and bowed to the orc commander, his gaze sliding sideways to Kah-Sissh. “If you gentlesirs will wait just one moment, I’ll set you up a table. Dick! Tom! Drat it, where have those lads gone?”

  Kah-Sissh watched as the portly innkeeper stomped into the back of the building. His keen hearing caught the Man’s muttering:

  “…don’t know what it’s all coming to; all we had to contend with in the old days was cloaked strangers in hoods, and sometimes a disappearing halfling or two; the odd black rider; t’isn’t like we had all these newfangled Bugs to put up with…”

  The outer door banged. A smaller uniformed orc entered and marched up to its commander. “Supreme Commander Ashnak, sir, you can’t agree to let these things surrender! We can wipe them out to a Bug, sir. Strategically it’s the only thing to do.”

  The small bipe
d lowered its voice, its eyes on Kah-Sissh. The Hive Commander noted how its spindly ears drooped, under the rim of its dead-metal helmet.

  “We’re orcs, sir,” it whispered. “We can’t go around sparing enemies. The grunts will never stand for it. We’ll never live it down!”

  Another of the orc-bipeds strode in, completely ignoring Kah-Sissh and the other Jassik. This one wore peaked headgear and a long olive-drag garment over battle-stained fatigues.

  “Barashkukor’s right, sir. It isn’t the Way of the Orc, sparing enemies. Why have you stopped the battle? We ought to massacre—”

  The large orc commander pointed his dead-metal weapon at the ceiling and pulled the trigger.

  FOOM!

  A proportion of the ceiling vapourised. Chunks of plaster drifted down, whitening the Hive Commander’s battle-scarred carapace. Kah-Sissh brushed himself clean. The halfling drinkers in the hearth-snug glanced up momentarily, then returned to a game they were playing with black-and-white spotted counters.

  “I protest!” Kah-Sissh hissed. “The dignity of these proceedings is severely impaired, Supreme Commander Ashnak, by your continued failure to observe the correct ceremonies.”

  The large orc ignored Kah-Sissh, rounding on his underlings. “If I say these are peace negotiations, these are peace negotiations. Are you receiving me, marines?”

  “Sir, yes sir!”

  “Good…” The orc bared his teeth as more be-weaponed orcs entered the inn, taking up covering positions at the hostelry’s windows. They had an encouragingly exoskeletal appearance—but it was not, the Jassik Hive Commander noted with regret, natural to the species.

  “We have not surrendered to an honourable enemy,” Kah-Sissh announced to the Battlemaster and Flightmaster.

  “No, Hive Commander.” The Flightmaster extended her jaws, acid saliva etching the hostelry’s wooden floor. “Are they are of sufficient honour even to witness the Immolation of Disgrace?”

  Before Hive Commander Kah-Sissh could express his opinion, the large orc stomped across the floor towards the Jassik. He pulled out a chair from the table a young Man had just set upright and covered with a white cloth, and seated himself; throwing one booted hind limb over the chair’s arm, his battle-stained peaked cap shading his deep-set eyes.

  “Welcome to the peace talks,” he announced jovially.

  “My Swarm Commander is damaged,” Kah-Sissh mourned. “Regretfully, therefore, we cannot treat with you, orc commander.”

  “No kidding?” The Supreme Commander grinned, a not particularly reassuring sight. “I’ve got an orc here who’s just aching to try out our full range of biological and chemical warfare devices on your other Bug divisions. Isn’t that right, Bio-tech-Captain Ugarit?”

  A muffled “Yessir!” came through the glass face plate of a breathing-mask worn by a skinny green biped.

  The Supreme Commander frowned. “Ugarit, you’re certain that nerve gas out there is harmless to orcs?”

  “Oh, yes, Supreme Commander! Completely and utterly sure, Supreme Commander! Absolutely and totally—awk!”

  The big orc regarded the breathing mask that he now held in his large paw, sniffed at it, and slung it over his shoulder. It bounced off a sleeping quadruped in the corner, which fled, yelping. The skinny green orc clasped its fingers over its mouth, enormous eyes staring at Kah-Sissh.

  “I’m sure you’ll see your way clear to negotiating,” Supreme Commander Ashnak surmised.

  “Excuse me, gentlesirs.” The portly Man innkeeper looked out from a door behind the bar. “Times is hard, master orc. All we has on the menu is pony stew, and none too fresh, either.”

  “Pony stew? My favourite. Serve up, innkeeper!”

  The Battlemaster looked across at Kah-Sissh from where she sat with one exoskeletal arm about the shoulders of the Flightmaster.

  “You want my opinion,” she said crisply, “the Immolation of Disgrace is out. Waste of time with these ‘orcs,’ Hive Commander. Wouldn’t make any impression on them at all.”

  Kah-Sissh rattled his jaws in a sigh. “I refuse to accept that, Battlemaster, until it is proven beyond all doubt.”

  The orc commander took a container from the approaching young Man servant and drained it, slopping half the contents down his splotch-patterned battle gear. To Kah-Sissh’s complete confusion the orc then took out a roll of dried vegetable matter, set fire to one end of the cylinder, put it between his jaws, and inhaled the smoke. The Hive Commander’s metal-enhanced jaws sensed alcohol and toxins; a possibly flammable mixture.

  “It’s like this.” The orc exhaled a plume of smoke. “You guys can quit fighting now and we can come to an agreement. A mutually beneficial agreement. Or else my grunts abandon the truce, carry on fighting, and you’re fucked. Do I make myself plain?—URP!”

  The weight of the translation device on Kah-Sissh’s thorax was negligible now. The language of the orc came to him almost naturally. With a sigh, bowing to the inevitable, the Hive Commander expanded all the plates of his thorax, drawing in the oxy-nitrogen atmosphere, and copied the orc’s ceremonial eructation:

  “URRRRP!”

  The orc commander picked himself up off the floorboards and set his chair upright again. The smaller orc rushed up with a brush and whisked it down his commander’s battledress, recovered the peaked cap, and handed it to the big orc.

  “Okay…” the orc Supreme Commander beamed. “You’re getting the hang of this. Let’s talk.”

  Kah-Sissh inclined his carapaced head. “I do not understand, Commander. You have sent a hive-sibling of yours out to me, to teach me your manner of surrender. You have killed my hive-kin. What else is there to discuss except our extermination at your hands?”

  The Flightmaster added, “The Jassik are never defeated!”

  “You see, sir?” The small orc, Major Barashkukor, appeared again at the table. A white cloth was draped over his arm, and he pushed a wheeled trolley on which sat porcelain bowls and a container of steaming liquid. “Marines are marines, sir, even if they are Bugs. One lump or two?”

  Kah-Sissh watched the orc pour yellow liquid from the container into the bowls, add a white liquid (that the Hive Commander’s sensors informed him was mammal-derived) and two small crystalline lumps. The orc major placed the bowl onto a second, much shallower bowl and extended it towards Kah-Sissh.

  “Allow me, Hive Commander.” The Battlemaster took the two bowls in her front claws, picked up one, her smallest claw jutting out, and sipped. Lights flickered across her living-metal battle harness. “Non-toxic. Mmm…”

  The orc Supreme Commander reached across to a glass container on the trolley. “I’ll have something stronger.”

  Supreme Commander Ashnak knocked the top of the container off in a shower of shards, and tipped a darker brown liquid down his throat. Hive Commander Kah-Sissh watched the orc for a moment to see if another ceremonial eructation was required. It apparently was not.

  Kah-Sissh took his own set of bowls from Major Barashkukor, and sipped delicately. “There is nothing to discuss except the manner of the Jassik’s extermination.”

  “Now that’s where you’re wrong, son.”

  Kah-Sissh hesitated. His metal-assisted mandibles twitched on the air. Lights flickered on his body harness and he touched the devices with the tip of one claw. He lowered his shining black head until his faceted eyes were on a level with Supreme Commander Ashnak’s face. “Wonderful beverage…what issh it that you call it?”

  The orc stared at Kah-Sissh, who beamed back at him. The small orc major interrupted the silence.

  “Tea, Hive Commander, sir. It’s called tea.”

  “Marvellous.” Kah-Sissh extended his dripping jaws in pleasure. His faceted eyes glimmered. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Our honour requires us to perish, now, at our own hands. Each and every one of us. Qweep!”

  The big orc scratched at his bald head and peaked ears, and drew on the smoking vegetable-matter again.

  “I’ve been watching you
boys,” Ashnak said affably, “on satellite. You’re not from around these parts, are you, son? I coordinated reports from my combat units and plotted the directions you guys have been coming in from. Well, some of you came out of Thyrion, and some of you from Gyzrathrani, and some from the Antarctic Icelands. But that’s not the interesting part.”

  Hive Commander Kah-Sissh extruded his dripping jaws slightly, then retracted them. “I will sssay nothing more than is required by the honour of war. Qweep!”

  “That’s our commander!” The Battlemaster waved her own tea-dish in an extravagant claw. “Perish at the height of military glory! No prisoners! Qweeeep!”

  “Riiight…” The orc commander looked somewhat askance at Kah-Sissh, picked up the tea bowl, and sniffed at it. The small orc major and the skinny orc technician looked at each other, looked at the bowls, shrugged, and shook their heads.

  Kah-Sissh beamed at the Battlemaster and the empty space beside her. Momentarily sobered, he looked for the Flightmaster.

  A female orc voice explained, “That’s called double top…”

  The Jassik Flightmaster, her carapaced head bent so as to avoid the plastered ceiling, stood beside the squat orc in the long coat and spectacles. Both faced the wall of the inn, where a small concentric-ringed target hung. The orc pointed, lifted another tiny fletched arrow, and hurled it at the target.

  “Qweep! I see, I see!” the Flightmaster exclaimed excitedly. She extruded from her chitinous underparts a large black living-metal weapon, hefted it up onto her shoulder, aimed, and pulled its trigger.

  HHZAAAKKKK!

  The hanging target vanished, as did a sizable chunk of the wall.

  “Game!” the Flightmaster exclaimed sibilantly.

  Kah-Sissh saw the orc commander glance over his shoulder, catch the eye of the female orc, and murmur, “Let the Jassik win,” before turning back to the conference table.

  “As I was saying.” Ashnak’s voice rumbled deep enough to vibrate through Kah-Sissh’s thorax. His dark eyes gleamed. “You Bugs are coming in from the four corners of the earth. I want the answer to one question. My orcs have plotted you and those six other Bug divisions on the map-table, extending your lines of advance to see where they intersect and what your objective is. Now answer me one thing, Hive Commander—why is it that all your forces, without exception, are headed straight for the middle of the Inland Sea?”