“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.”
“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.