Mary Gentle - Grunts

Barashkukor noted the way the elven reporter’s mouth hung open. Obviously impressed. He proudly puffed out his thin chest, clasping his hands behind his back.

“Watch this, ma’am.”

The doors of the Research and Development building crashed open. A team of heavily built orcs wheeled a wooden trailer out into the compound. Resting on it was what at first appeared to be a metal and glass statue of an orc, or possibly unusually full plate harness.

“Is that armour?” Perdita del Verro queried. “I don’t recognise the country of origin…”

Ugarit skipped up to the trailer, waving the other orc marines back. He scrambled up, opened panels in the metal casing, and climbed into the steel exoskeleton. The panels clicked shut.

Barashkukor called, “Corporal?”

The exoskeleton lay still. A high-pitched whine began to build. Several of the radar and satellite dishes now sprouting from the parapets began to turn. Ugarit, in the full body armour, sat up.

Metal plate and thick glass sheathed him from his skinny ears to his taloned feet. The powered armour whined, servo-mechanisms activating, put its heavy feet down on the snow-covered earth, and lurched upright. Ugarit’s face, where it was visible, was contorted with glee. His hands could be seen manipulating pressure pads in the heavy glass-and-steel gloves.

His mechanically amplified voice boomed out, “I’m invincible! I feel like a god! No one can get me now, Major, no one!”

Ugarit took one step forward.

The exoskeleton’s left foot came down on compacted snow and skidded forward. Servo-mechanisms shrieked and gyros whirred, compensating. Ugarit’s face, high up and small, could not be seen now, but a wail echoed down from the machine. The powered armour’s right leg lurched another step, came down in soft ice and lodged. The left leg jerked, attempting to pull the other free. Sparks shot from all the powered armour’s joints. The left leg crabbed itself around, beginning to circle faster.

“Help!”

Ugarit’s powered-armour suit swayed and began to pivot with increasing rapidity about its trapped right foot. Mechanisms sheared. Sparks flew. Two explosions sent sickly thick black smoke into the air.

“Aaaiieee!”

“Incoming!” Barashkukor threw himself flat. Fast as he was, the Warrior of Fortune reporter hit the dirt before he did. A solid loud crack! sounded. Panels of powered armour whipped across the compound, slamming into buildings. A choking, acrid smoke spread through the still, snowy air. Barashkukor buried his face in his arms while fragments hissed into the snow around him. Slush soaked through his combat trousers.

BOOM!-taka-taka-taka…click …

tkk!

“Is it safe?” Perdita del Verro whispered.

“Erm…Maybe. Yes. Of course!”

Orc marines picked themselves up out of the slush, brushing down green and brown combats and scratching their heads. The powered armour had apparently snapped at the waist, the top now hanging over upsidedown. It smoked gently.

“Uhhhnn…”

The Research and Development Department (Nin-Edin Marine Base) crawled out from under a collapsed shed. His combats steamed, and green blood dripped from rents in the camouflage cloth. Ugarit wiped his singed crest away from his blackened face, staggered to his feet, and aimed a cross-eyed salute several yards to Barashkukor’s left.

“Sorry about that, sir,” the tall orc corporal apologized, dazed. “I’ll take that one back to the planning stage.”

Barashkukor coughed and forced a sickly grin. The back of his neck burned with embarrassment at having the elf witness the failure. “We have enough weaponry to be going on with, Corporal. Put the rest of the stuff into production immediately.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Ugarit stared fixedly into the middle distance. “Permission to report sick, sir?”

“Permission granted,” Barashkukor sighed.

“Thank you, sir.” The tall, thin orc saluted, shut his eyes with his hand still raised, fell forward with his body unbending, and smacked face-first into the slush.

Perdita’s hand rested on Barashkukor’s thin, muscular shoulder; warm in the winter air. “Major, I see what you’re doing! Every strange new weapon you can throw at the besiegers stops them—for a day, or half a day, or a few hours—by sheer surprise. It’s a war of the mind. Psychological warfare.”

Barashkukor internally debated the wisdom of, in the first flush of his enthusiasm, having let the elf poke around in some of Dagurashibanipal’s miscellaneous crates.

The elf added softly, “But each time it gains you less respite. Major, you can’t go on like this forever. That’s a lot of army out there. What are you waiting for?”

The dawn of the siege’s eighth day coloured the eastern heavens lemon-bright above the Demonfest peaks.

A trebuchet thunked and whirred. A gelatinous sphere hurtled from its catapult-scoop on a rising trajectory and struck Nin-Edin’s walls just below the outer gate-house. The sticky substance clung and burst into sorcerous blue and gold flame, brilliant against the fresh snow.

The dwarvish engineer Kazra, hip-deep in snow, rubbed her small calloused palms together.

“Ah. I love the smell of Greek Fire in the morning…”

Another scoop of sorcerous fire sparked trails over the white landscape. Just visible on the walls, orcs scurried with gravel buckets. The sparks of hammer on steel flew from the armourers’ firepits, and their welcome clangour made music in her ears. She drew in a breath of frozen air and the scent of magic.

“My old friend and comrade.” Lord Commander Amarynth reached brown fingers down to touch the shoulder of her padded brigandine. “With magery’s help today we will winkle out these obstinate sinners— Lady of Light!”

The gilded ball on the peak of the main command tent dipped and went down as the central pole collapsed. Acres of snow-wet canvas billowed. An unearthly shriek split the morning. Men and elves ran through trampled slush, hurriedly pulling on pieces of armour, shouting. Kazra unshipped her war-axe from her back. A serpent uncoiled against the sky.

“War-elephant!” Kazra screamed. Orcs in black breast-plates and riding on wild mountain wolves reared up in front of her, out of the breached camp’s confusion, and she swung and missed, swung again and dented one breastplate.

“Ho, the dwarves!” Kazra hacked her way down to where Amarynth, blue cloak falling back from his silver armour, fought in the first blaze of dawn to touch the mountain’s lower slopes.

“Revenge!” cried the wolf-riding orcs. “Revenge for Samhain! Kill their commanding officers!”

Amarynth idly gestured a spell, inverting both wolves and riders.

Abruptly, dwarves, Men, and elves were all Kazra could see. No orcs that were not writhing masses of intestines. The war-elephant trampled out from the ruins of the command tent. High above, the rider coolly gestured, and the beast ponderously reared to crush.

Kazra cocked her arm, muttered an incantation, hurled her war-axe, and caught the elephant’s rider solidly on the helmet. The rider fell. The elephant, released, rampaged up the slope towards Nin-Edin, the Light’s warriors sprinting out of its path.

“For the Dark!”

Amarynth stepped past her at that cry, slender sword pointing towards the elephant’s rider. The rider scrambled to his feet, glaring out at the surrounding men-at-arms from under a dented horned helmet. His eyes, fiercely blue, glittered like the northern skies. Kazra forced her way into the front rank of the crowd and looked down at him.