“Never been in combat?” Ashnak’s ridged brows lifted in astonishment. “But you’re a marine! Ah. I know how it must have been—you’re a newly trained elite soldier, and you accidentally discovered a way through from your world to here, and your superior officers sent you to recce. Happens all the time. Right?”
“Hell, no!” Sergeant John H. Stryker wiped the sweat pouring down his strong, regular features, sprawled on his backside on the deck. “I haven’t had my hands on a gun in twenty years, and that was in basic training. I’m a clerk. I shift army gear and personnel. This gang of asshole kids jumped me. They totalled my jeep and they were gonna total me. I was gonna get the hell out, and then something happened—”
“You ran away from a brawl?” The orc commissar shuddered.
“Shit, there were dozens of the little bastards! For all I know they were carrying knives; of course I’m outta there! Look,” the Man’s tenor voice protested plaintively, “so far I’ve been kidnapped and dumped in the fucking jungle, for God’s sake, seeing things I never thought to see outside of a trip. If I don’t get back to base I’m AWOL and they’re gonna have my ass. And there’s a load of Tornado spares that I got to get shipped through.”
“Support services,” Razitshakra remarked. “Rear echelon.”
Ashnak snarled. “We have the first real proof that there’s a world where Dagurashibanipal’s marines exist! Where you can get the weapons systems we only dream about. A heroes’ world! And what do we get? We get this.”
Leather-winged birds gibbered and yawped over the estuary. Razitshakra unholstered a Desert Eagle automatic pistol, thumbed back the hammer, and placed the cold metal muzzle in Stryker’s ear. “I say we waste him, General, right now. He’s useless.”
“Aw, why not—fuck.”
A cloaked figure with bodyguards paced up the gangplank.
Ashnak came smartly to attention and performed a parade-perfect salute. The Man chewed his large-knuckled fist, smothering a high-pitched giggle.
Razitshakra kept the muzzle of the Desert Eagle automatic pistol pointed at his head. The Man flinched each time the circle of darkness lined up on him.
“Yes, indeed,” Ashnak rumbled, “I’m attempting to ascertain that very thing myself, your Dark Magnificence, how perspicacious of you to mention it. I believe this to be a marine from Dagurashibanipal’s collection. One of my NCOs in Thyrion found it. Said it cracked up at the first sight of the enemy.”
Razitshakra muttered, “Definitely ideologically unsound!”
The hooded figure lifted pale hands and put the cowl back from its face. At this point Sergeant John H. Stryker of the U.S. Marine Corps understood that he really should have read the $4.95 fantasy hack-and-slay paperbacks that turned up in the mess. Or at least watched more of the videos. Thriller, beaver, and private eye don’t teach you rules for survival where orcs carry M16s. Or where women have glowing neon-orange eyes.
The air dirtied as if a cloud had passed across the dawn. Only She shone. Her gaunt face had shadows of the palest blue lining hollow cheeks and eye-sockets. A great starburst of white-blonde hair cascaded back from Her smooth forehead. Smothered in heavy black robes, fragile, She gazed down at Stryker where he sprawled on the barge’s deck.
Her voice like bells said, “Curious and interesting.”
“Yes, Dread Lord.” Ashnak pointed at the barge fleet, the grunts crewing it, and the confusion apparent on most of the vessels. “It appears to be a logistics expert, Ma’am. I thought we might see what it can do. Or we could try eating it.”
“No!” Sergeant Stryker added, as a confused afterthought, “Sir!”
The Dark Lord said, “You may accompany Me below, My Ashnak. Bring that with you.”
Ashnak saluted, gestured to the commissar, and set off down into the bowels of the Faex River barge. Under the prow cables hummed, strung up through beams and hooks to a portable generator. An acrid smell hung in the air. Ashnak moved forward to the laboratory benches.
“What have you got here, Technician?”
Behind Ashnak, the Man whimpered. He shot a glare at Razitshakra, who put her taloned hand firmly over the Man’s mouth. Blue eyes bugged, staring—so far as Ashnak could make out—at Tech-Captain Ugarit.
“Sir, General Ashnak, sir! Look at these babies!” Green spittle trailed down Ugarit’s chin. The skinny orc’s white laboratory coat pockets clinked with scalpels as he danced in place, head bobbing between Ashnak and the silent figure of the Dark Lord.
Ashnak supposed that, if you weren’t used to it, Ugarit’s habit of piercing his pointed ears with feathers and studs might be a little startling. The tall, skinny orc wiped his hands down his bloodstained coat, eyes and fangs glinting in the light of naked bulbs, giggling and saluting. As he moved aside, Ashnak saw the dissected carapace of a Bug resting on the makeshift laboratory table. Sticky fluids flowed down onto the deck.
The Man whimpered, even through Razitshakra’s muffling hand.
“Acid blood!” Ugarit enthused. “Regeneration of parts! Tiny brains! They’re perfect killing machines, your Dark Magnificence, perfect. Oh I do envy them so…”
The skinny orc dribbled again. Ashnak momentarily debated the wisdom of having moved Captain Ugarit from technical development to biological research.
“This,” the Dark Lord pointed, “this is not flesh…”
Ugarit reached a heavily gloved hand into the mess on the bench and extracted what looked to Ashnak like a steel mechanism.
“They secrete me-muhh-uhn-uhn-uhn—!”
Ashnak stepped forward and punched Ugarit firmly in the face. The orc’s head bounced off one of the barge’s beams. A daffy grin spread itself across his thin green features.
“They secrete metal,” he repeated, slightly more in control. “They replace parts of their bodies with it. O Great Mistress, I think they can grow their own weapons. I think they can grow our weapons, now they’ve captured some to copy. Mistress, imagine if I could harness their growth mechanism, we could grow our own armaments!”
Ugarit reached back and rested fond gloved claws on the Bug’s sticky shell.
“I always wanted to do cybernetic research,” the skinny orc murmured dreamily. “Grafting parts. Inserting bits. This organic mechanism is so much simpler. Cyber-mech. That’s it. Cyber-mech weapons systems…”
Ashnak looked at the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord’s cowl turned in the general direction of Ashnak. She rested Her hand on Ugarit’s bowed head. The sound of Her soft voice brought small rodents scurrying from the hold, spiders crawling from the beams, and Darknesses to scurry about the orcs’ feet:
“He is most ingenious, My Ugarit, is he not? Perhaps We should let him dismantle your captive marine. We might learn much from that.”
Ashnak ignored the snivelling from the Man behind him.
“Good idea, Dread Lord,” he said brightly. “Thing’s a disgrace to the marines anyway.”
“Look,” Sergeant John H. Stryker protested, “I’ve seen a few videos, I remember how this is supposed to work! I come here, you train me, you make me into a warrior, I beat the shit out of your enemies; all that crap. Sir, I’ve seen those things fight. Never happen, sir.”
“Damn right,” Ashnak sniffed. “Fancy you with a garlic sauce, myself. Very tasty, Man and garlic. Dread Lord, it’s a pure waste of good meat to let the captain here have him.” He brightened. “Unless we could have what’s left over afterwards?”