“No, L.t.,” Dakashnit’s laconic voice answered Lieutenant Gilmuriel. “’Course not. Think of it as ‘advancing to the rear.’”
Without looking, Supreme Commander Ashnak snapped his talons for the handset. “Ashnak to command post, Ashnak to command post. Commissar Razitshakra—keep pulling ’em back. Get ’em out of there. Over.”
“I copy, Commander.” Razitshakra’s voice crackled. “Command post to all units, repeat, command post to all units. Fall back. Repeat, fall back now!”
Orc gun crews pounded past Barashkukor to their stations but did not fire. Bio-tech-Captain Ugarit emerged from the back of one of several Bedford trucks parked under the camouflage netting. The skinny orc spotted Barashkukor, stared fixedly at the major’s metal arm and leg, and began to drool.
“Tech-Captain!”
Bio-tech-Captain Ugarit sidled past Barashkukor and approached Ashnak. Dust, oil, and less recognisable stains covered his long white coat and the uniform beneath. A succession of studs, chains, and feathers dangled from his pierced, pointed ears.
“Sir!” The skinny orc tugged at Ashnak’s sleeve. The Supreme Commander lowered his field glasses. Ugarit grabbed, “May I try it, sir, please may I; never get another chance like this, sir, please?”
“Wait.” Ashnak lifted his field glasses again, studying the plain.
The roiling dust began to clear now, a light breeze blowing from the east. Thin lines of light seared crisscross. The woodpecker-rattle of automatic fire sounded incessantly. Cordite stung. The heavy cough of artillery rang out further down the line of hills.
Sixteen thousand Bugs advanced towards the orc marine defensive positions.
Supreme Commander Ashnak regarded the battle.
“Captain Ugarit, are we loaded up?”
The skinny orc saluted with the wrong hand. “Yes, Lord General!”
Ashnak lifted the radio orc’s handset to his tusked mouth. “Artillery crew, on my mark—fire!”
A thunderous barrage broke out over Barashkukor’s head. The small orc rapidly retrieved the chunks of cotton wool from his uniform jacket and stuffed them into his ears. The gun muzzles recoiled, carriages jolting; and the suck and concussion of the air beat at him, the noise resounding in his torso and testicles.
WHOMMMMPH!
The bright afternoon shook. Barashkukor staggered to the forward observation post and peered through the gaps between the sandbags.
At first the battlefield appeared so different. Then, from the craters of the artillery strikes, Barashkukor noticed a yellow mist drifting across the plain.
Helicopter gunships whipped overhead, rocket motors spurting from the missiles they fired. Barashkukor followed their tracks to the earth below. More sluggish and low-lying yellow fog caught the breeze and drifted away from the missile strike areas.
“Ranging shots are good.” Supreme Commander Ashnak’s voice approved. “Bio-tech-Captain Ugarit, continue to target according to previous strikes.”
“You got it, Commander!”
Barashkukor stared at Ashnak. The big orc leaned his elbows on the sandbags and turned his glasses on the uneven ground between Ferenzia and the hills. The sun, hardly an hour past noon, filtered in beams through the slowly drifting mists.
The small orc thumbed his helmet radio. “Sir, what is that, sir?”
“That, Major,” Ashnak’s voice crackled over the radio, in Barashkukor’s cotton-blocked ear, “is chemical warfare. Mustard and nerve gas. That over there is sarin and tabun, mostly, with some lewisite, and a little anthrax for entertainment value.”
WHOMPH! FOOM! WHOMMPH!
“Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Took it from Dagurashibanipal’s hoard, I did. Adapted it! Lots of lovely dead Bugs to play with. I’ve genetically tailored it for them and not us, we’re safe, but they’re not!”
Filled with irresistible emotion, Major Barashkukor seized the gibbering Ugarit’s hand and shook it firmly. “Oh, well done!”
“Thank you…” Ugarit retained a vicelike grip on Barashkukor’s metal hand, whipped out a magnifying glass, and began to subject it to close scrutiny. Barashkukor wrenched it away.
“Commander Ashnak to command post—give me the field units’ situation reports.”
Commissar Razitshakra’s deep orcish tones over the open channel broke with emotion. “Commander, the Bugs are dropping right, left, and centre!”
The small orc major leaped for the sandbagged wall, his cyborg-leg propelling him smartly upwards. Clinging to the top of the emplacement, Barashkukor focussed his long-distance sight on the battlefield.
“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: