Mary Gentle - Grunts

“…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 biped 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.”