Mary Gentle - Grunts

“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?”

“Ah, the Sssssea…” Hive Commander Kah-Sissh sighed. He was peripherally aware of the small orc major’s refilling his tea bowl. He lowered his mandibles and drank, finally lifting his shining head to survey the orc Supreme Commander.

“Your ssseas are too deep,” Kah-Sissh explained, careful with a speech that seemed to contain entirely too many sibilants. “And your lakess are too cold. We need a ssufficiently ssshallow, warm, and large body of water.”

All the orcs gathered behind their commander, the squat female peering through her wire-rimmed lenses, the skinny technician and the small major gazing wide-eyed at the Jassik.

“What in the name of the Dark do you need a sea for?” the orc commander demanded.

Expansive in the admiration of his new friends, Kah-Sissh waved a claw and elaborated.

“This is a cold world, Commander, and I find it ssuch a trial to be continually breathing oxygen! Had our starship not broken up in your star’s gravitational field, we should not have ssset claw upon your pathetic little world. But we fell in our escape pods as our great ship broke up and burned…”

The skinny orc leaped from foot to foot and bent to whisper something in Supreme Commander Ashnak’s pointed ear. Kah-Sissh hummed pleasurably to himself. The Battlemaster slumped against his chitinous shoulder, half-full tea bowl slopping from her claw as she buzzed in deep slumber.

“So why,” the orc persisted, “head for the Inland Sea?”

Kah-Sissh shrugged. “It is most suitable for incubating a ship-egg.”

“A ship -egg?” the orc said. “A ship- egg? ”

“A starship-egg.”

“Yo!” The skinny orc technician slavered in an almost civilised fashion. “They can grow weapons! They can grow star-travelling ships! Wonderful!”

“There is the difficult matter of finding a beast large enough to serve as host.” Kah-Sissh inhaled again the warm, pungent smell of the orc bipeds. “Then it is merely a matter of subduing this paltry planet while we wait for the ship to grow, then off again to the stars and further worlds to conquer for the Hive!”

A low buzzing sounded from the other side of the inn room. Kah-Sissh looked across the expanse of overturned chairs and broken window glass. The Flightmaster, audibly asleep, had curled up under a table with the four-footed furry quadruped sleeping on her thorax.

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh took a coldly oxygen-scented breath, compressed his thorax-plates, and began to wail a Jassik drinking medley.

“Hive Commander—I say, Hive Commander! ” The big orc stood, glaring up into Kah-Sissh’s mandibles as the Jassik beat time with one waving claw. “Now don’t you fade out on me, boy!”

A dose of cold air shocked Kah-Sissh back into coordination. He rattled his mandibles sulkily at orc Major Barashkukor, who had opened a window.

“We ssshall not perform the Immolation of Disgrace,” Kah-Sissh remarked, his tone petulant. “It would be wasted on such savages. We are the Jassik, proud and noble warriors!”

The orc major and technician simultaneously muttered something that sounded to Kah-Sissh very like, “Psychopathic mindless alien killing-machines!”

“So tell me,” the orc commander demanded, “if all you needed to do was get from your crash-sites to the Inland Sea, why butcher your way through from there to here?”

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh, hurt, protested, “We like killing things.”

Supreme Commander Ashnak and Major Barashkukor exchanged glances.

“I can identify with that, sir,” the small orc remarked.

The big orc sat down at the table and put his head in his hands, sitting up only when the Man landlord emerged from the kitchens with a bowl of burned muscle-tissue, steaming odourously.

“Pony stew?” Supreme Commander Ashnak offered.

Kah-Sissh hissed a nauseous moan. In order to bring dignity to the proceedings the Jassik Hive Commander rose onto his hind limbs, clicked his claws, and began the delicate movements of the Dance of Lesser Victory Concealed in Overwhelming Defeat. The Battlemaster fell over, snoring. Kah-Sissh caught his foot in one of the drinkers at the bar (halfling and tray going flying) and sat down in a clatter of living-metal weaponry. He raised his great head to find himself surrounded and covered by the dead-metal implements of the orc marine guard.