Ashnak scowled. “What’s their armoured capability? What about airpower?”
The hefty black orc sergeant beside Gilmuriel stirred.
“Ain’t seen nothing else but infantry, sir,” Dakashnit said. “Their flight capability is jump-packs. No troop transporters. No ground vehicles, less’n they got some of ours. Hell, Commander, they don’t need ’em.”
“Well, we’ve had about all the time for rehearsals we’re going to get—” Ashnak swung round.
Dust-covered and sweating, the nameless necromancer stumbled into the tent and shambled into the circle of ores. “Talking? You orcs should be out there fighting! You shall pay for thish disobediensche.”
Ashnak took two swift paces forward and loomed over the necromancer. “Sit. Down.”
The nameless found himself sitting in one of the folding chairs.
“About bleeding time, too,” Ashnak growled. “My troops have moved out of the assembly areas to the forming-up points and startline. You, Lord Necromancer, can get the Light’s troops off their asses! I’m committing the Light to the attack in Ferenzia itself. Hold ’em as long as you can, then pull back.”
The necromancer glared. “That is a task for marines!”
“I’ve got more than enough problems,” the big combat-clad orc snarled, “without fighting through built-up areas. Get those lily-livered sons of bitches down there! Those Bugs are throwing fuck-knows-what against us! You’re gonna hold ’em up enough so’s we can take ’em on their way north out of the city, here on this line of hills. Any questions?”
There was silence in the command tent. The nameless necromancer slobbered and hissed, standing and drawing himself up to his full height.
“Sir?”
A hand went up at the back.
“Sergeant Stryker?” Ashnak said.
The blond Man stood. New combats and weaponry made him the very image of a marine. His muscular frame bulked as large as any there, except the largest orcs. The nameless necromancer sniffed suspiciously. That would be the Otherworld marine’s aura, Ashnak guessed. He gestured for the Man to continue.
“Well, it’s just this, sir.” John Stryker shifted his feet uncomfortably. His blue eyes met Ashnak’s.
“I know the Bugs are supposed to be these homicidal, mindless, alien psychopaths and killing-machines,” John Stryker said, “but has anyone ever tried just talking to them?”
Some thirty minutes later, at a forward gun position on the edge of the line of hills, the small orc major said, “It might work, sir.”
Ashnak ducked down behind the sandbag walls. “Are you out of your mind, Major?”
“Nossir!” Barashkukor protested. His cyborg-eye whirred, left its socket, and extended on a jointed steel rod. With some care the small orc extended it over the sandbags of the hillside gun emplacement.
Having chewed up the Light’s armoured infantry in the streets of Ferenzia and mangled the crack elf cavalry on the plain beyond, the Bug soldiers were just becoming visible through the haze. Walking towards them, carrying a white flag on a pole, Sergeant John H. Stryker of the U.S. Marine Corps strode down the track from the hills.
“A brave Man!” Barashkukor enthused. “A true marine! Don’t you think so, Supreme Commander?”
“I think the Dragon’s Curse has a lot to answer for.” Supreme Commander Ashnak lowered his binoculars and grunted, crouching over the orc marine with an RT backpack, phoneset in his other taloned hand. “At odds of fifteen to one against us, I’ll try anything. Let’s hope the Visible College’s translation talismans work, soldier.”
The distant figure of John Stryker reached his goal.
Barashkukor focused his extended eye.
“I see him, Supreme Commander! He’s…he’s talking to them!”
Heat haze jumbled the air. As if through running water, Major Barashkukor watched the blond crewcut Man sergeant.
The Man stood before a semicircle of Bugs, gathering around him. They towered over his six-foot height by eighteen inches or more. The sun gleamed blue from their black carapaces and dripping jaws. Dust stained their hard exoskeletons, and their black living-metal weapons were dull shapes of menace.
Stryker drove the pole of the truce flag into the dirt.
Barashkukor watched the Man wave his arms. Through the heat haze, it was visible how his lips moved. The great carapaced heads of the Bugs dipped and swayed. One extruded foot-long inner jaws and salivated.
The saliva burned holes in the earth.
“They’re not attacking him, sir! They’re listening to him!”
Barashkukor’s cyborg-eye tracked left and right. Through the dust, the light kept flashing back from harness, weapons, and chitin shells. The advance line of Bugs wavered, slowed…
“It’s working!” Barashkukor jumped up and down on the spot. His eye-stilt jerked to and fro.
The Supreme Commander (Dark and Light Forces) lifted his head from the radio set. “Mission successful, Major?”
In the sharply focussed view of Barashkukor’s metal eye, the Bugs around Sergeant John H. Stryker stepped towards the Man on their skeletal hind legs. Their shining heads rose up, and they raised their clawed forefeet patiently. Stryker turned. Even over the long distance Barashkukor could see the broad smile on the Man’s face.
The orc’s long ears perked up and his small tusks gleamed. “Supreme Commander, sir, mission successful!—oh.”
Stryker’s head exploded in a rain of meat.
The Bug who had impaled him on an extensible rigid tongue let the body drop. The other Bugs moved in, jaws dripping, feeding quickly and messily.
“Oh, well.” The small orc sighed. His eye whirred, sank down, and clicked home into its socket. “Not entirely successful, sir. They ate him. Incoming!”
CRAAAACK!
A wavering bolt of blue fire impacted on the hillside forty yards away. The explosion threw up dirt and bedrock. Two or three pieces of debris bounced off Barashkukor’s helmet as the small orc crouched in the corner of the emplacement.
“Time we got serious about this,” Supreme Commander Ashnak announced. “Command group moving back. Go, go, go!”
“I’ll drive, sir!” Barashkukor leaped lopsidedly into the jeep after the rest of the grunts and pushed his cyborg-foot down on the accelerator. The vehicle jolted down the far side of the hill, spraying showers of dirt and grit. Barashkukor whooped, one steel hand and one orc-hand wrestling with the wheel. Ashnak tightened the strap on his helmet.
“Forward unit engaged!” the orc marine radio operator yelped. She listened to the headset and added, “Captain Hashnabul reports a problem, Supreme Commander—the grunts keep stopping to invent suitable tortures for Bug prisoners.”
Ashnak’s helmet cracked against the rollbar. “Dammit, tell them they’re not supposed to be taking prisoners anyway!”
“Oh, they don’t have any prisoners yet, sir. They’re just inventing the tortures…”
Barashkukor spun the wheel and ran the jeep up an impossible slope. The vehicle’s wheels spun. The small orc reached out and seized a juniper stump with his cyborg-arm and pulled, and the jeep pivoted and came down on a path made by the tracks of tanks. One of the orc marine runners left the vehicle on the bounce, and Major Barashkukor somewhat reluctantly stopped to let her climb back on board before he gunned the engine and shot off again.
“Isn’t this thrilling, sir?”
“Thrilling,” Ashnak growled, recovering his cigar from the body of the jolting vehicle. He jammed it in the side of his mouth. “Dammit, Major, can’t you get any speed out of this thing?”