“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.
“About our deal,” the seated orc commander, Ashnak, said through a mouthful of dead, cooked flesh.
Hive Commander Kah-Sissh’s faceted eyes glimmered. “Our Swarm Master perished, but there are other Hive Commanders such as myself, and they, be assured, will dance the Immolation of Disgrace and burn your paltry continent down to the bedrock!”
“Nerve gas,” the orc reminded him. “We can dust off every one of your divisions, son.”
Kah-Sissh froze.
The orc smiled. “I like a Bug that’s susceptible to rational argument.”
“Peasants—Qweep!” Hive Commander Kah-Sissh gathered the remnants of his dignity and rose from the floor, folding his exoskeletal limbs so that he seated himself again before the negotiating table. “Rest assured, we ssshall not live to be your ssslaves.”
“Now who said anything about slavery?” The orc’s beetling brows raised affably. He leaned both elbows on the table and smiled toothily up at the Jassik warrior. “Access to the Inland Sea could be one of the terms of your surrender. If you want to grow your ‘ship-egg’ and get your Bug asses off my world, then I sure as hell won’t object.”
“In return,” Kah-Sissh said sharply, “for what?”
“Ah. Yes. Believe it or not,” the big orc purred, “there is something that you Bugs can do for me and the lads…”
The G-type star declined as the planet turned. Shadows lengthened.
Outside, Jassik warriors waiting at attention accepted with comradely gratitude the beverages offered by the local military life-forms.
Before long, Jassik warrior songs hissed up to the stars.
Under them sounded the deep rumble of armoured divisions pulling back, of infantry regrouping, of air support patrolling the neutral ground between the two waiting armies, and of the occasional interchange of friendly fire.
12
“Hard a-starboard!” Supreme Commander Ashnak bellowed. “Hard a-port! Lower the jib! Man the tops’l! Pull, ye lubbers, pull!”
The quinquireme S.S. Gibbet and Spigot out of Graagryk heeled into the wind. Massed ranks of orc rowers in DPM battledress trousers and steel helmets heaved on the oars, sweating under the cloudless, windless blue sky.
Ashnak paced up and down the central walkway of the ship, cracking his oiled leather whip. “You’re meant to be marines, aren’t you? Pull!”
He strode aft, past the glistening muscled backs of orcs stripped down to combat trousers and boots. The galley’s drummer kept a rhythmic oar-stroke, to which Ashnak had been attempting to encourage the marines to sing sea-shanties. As a result, the portside grunts were giving a spirited rendition of “How Much Is That Shoggoth in the Window?”, loudly challenged by the starboard-side rowers chorusing “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Balrog.” The quinquireme wavered on a somewhat indirect course across the limpid waters of the Inland Sea.