Darkness hung and dripped from the underside of the barge deck, the electric bulbs spawned sepia and blue shadows, and a constant rustling of invisible homage sounded around the Dark Lord’s bare robed feet.
Stryker gabbled, “You’re the ranking officer here, right, Ma’am?”
Her narrow lips twitched up at the corners.
The Man stumbled on. “And You’ve got a conflict situation here? And a presidential election? That takes planning. I can plan! I’m shit hot, Ma’am. What I can do is make sure You and every other unit gets where they’re meant to be, when they’re meant to be there. Really, Ma’am.”
“It is intelligent enough to eavesdrop. Well.” The Lord of Darkness wrapped Her thick black robes closer about Her body. The hold’s smell of spices was overlain with a thicker scent. “One might delay dissection, I suppose…”
“Yes, Dread Lord.” Ashnak resentfully ignored his rumbling gut.
The Heart of Evil shook back the pale hair from Her face, that seemed childlike amongst the heavy robes, and She smiled, holding out one of Her long-boned hands in front of Her and turning it from side to side in examination.
“It is strange,” She said, “to inhabit a female body, after so many aeons.”
The arcing electric bulbs in the hold illuminated Her gull-wing brows, delicate tiny ears, and shapely mouth.
“There must be many things One can do with a female body,” the Dark Lord said. Her speculative gaze lingered on General Ashnak, who came to attention and a terrified eyes-front, then passed to Biotech-Captain Ugarit, who giggled, Razitshakra (obliviously reciting cantos from the Way of the Orc to herself), and finally fixed on John H. Stryker. She smiled.
“Have that boy washed,” She ordered, “and sent to My cabin.”
“Yes, Dread Lord!” Ashnak remained with his head bowed until She had departed for Her quarters. “Commissar Razitshakra, you heard the Dark Lord. While you’re doing that, interrogate the Man carefully. You may cause it pain, but don’t damage it. Dismiss!”
Biotech-Captain Ugarit followed Ashnak back up onto the deck. Ashnak’s despairing gaze travelled across the orc marine barge fleet, still not ready to cast off and direct their prows up the River Faex—up the river, through all the townships and cities and the capitals of the Southern Kingdoms, on the last and heaviest stages of the Dark Lord’s election campaign. And only seven more days…
“Sir,” Ugarit pleaded, “may I have him, sir? Just a tiny bit, sir?”
“Well, I suppose She wouldn’t miss a toe or a finger, or one of the smaller organs,” Ashnak mused. “On the other hand, we—”
“General, what’s that?” Ugarit, his dirty white laboratory coat flapping around his ankles in the river breeze, suddenly snickered, whinnied, and pointed.
“Don’t interrupt me, you puking excuse for an orc ma—” Ashnak stopped, speechless. “Pits!”
A cloud of dust rose up over the bank of the River Faex. Delta mud, dry as a bone in this summer season, kicked up sky high. Following the plume down to its base led Ashnak’s eyes to a black blob, travelling at high speed towards the moored barge fleet.
“That’s an armoured vehicle.” Ashnak’s nostrils flared, failing to catch the scent of any magic. “That’s one of our armoured vehicles.”
Ugarit removed from his lab coat pocket a miniaturised radiocom, held it to his skinny ear, and shook it. “Sir, they can’t get it to identify, General, sir!”
Ashnak vaulted the poop deck rail, landing heavily and squarely on the lower deck. He strode to the barge rail nearest to the quay. “Perimeter guards!”
A racheting roar shook the earth and sky. The plume of dust switched direction, turning towards the river, trailing clouds of black exhaust. Juddering at its top speed of 30 mph, swaying, gun dipping and rising in a vain attempt to compensate for the terrain, a T54 Main Battle Tank swung down onto the quayside.
Before Ashnak could bellow a warning over the comlink, and with orc marines leaping into the water out of its way, the speeding tank rocketed down the bank, onto the wooden jetty in front of the barge, ground up a spray of timbers in its treads, and shuddered to a halt, its metal casing three feet from where Ashnak stood at the barge rail.
The wooden piles of the quay groaned, cracked, and sank two yards with a sudden jolt.
Ashnak surveyed the banks of the River Faex. Dockworkers fled the wooden quay as the whole length of it swayed. Orc marines who had plummeted off the side swam, in full kit, back towards their own barges. Anxious signals jammed the radio frequencies, coming from farther down the fleet.
“Get me artillery support!”
“Yessir!” Ugarit squeaked.
Ashnak leaned his horn-skinned elbow on the rail of the barge, and rested his massive-jawed chin on his hand. The steel hatch of the T54 flipped open. Ashnak raised his free hand, holding his .44 Magnum officer’s pistol.
A small figure stood up in the hull hatch of the T54 Main Battle Tank. The wooden beams and pilings of the quay creaked, snapped, and sank another foot, tilting the tank’s nose towards the swirling black waters of the Faex. The figure ignored this. It saluted snappily and gave a joyous cry.
“Sir, General Ashnak, sir!”
Ashnak suspiciously narrowed his deep tilted eyes.
The helmeted figure, visible from the waist up, saluted again, and cried shrilly over the noise of the river birds, “Sir, General Ashnak, sir. Major Barashkukor reporting back for duty, sir!”
Ashnak’s you-can’t-fool-me-dickhead-I’m-a-marine expression vanished. “What?!”
“Sir, it is me, sir. Honest, sir!”
The orc standing in the T54’s hatch pulled off its helmet. Long, hairless ears sprang momentarily upright, then drooped in the heat. A broad grin spread itself over only-too-familiar features.
Ashnak stared.
The small orc wore the remnants of a desert camouflage jacket and one glove only. His other hand and arm seemed covered in shiny silver—no, were made of silver metal. And his eye…
The small orc’s right eye had been replaced by a metal socket and zoom-lens, which whirred as he focussed in on his general and flashed in the dawn sun of Port Mirandus.
Ashnak thumbed back the hammer of the pistol he held. “You sure as hell don’t look like any kind of orc to me, boy.”
The small orc cyborg’s face brightened. Both his ears perked up. “Sir, the major can explain that to the general, sir!”
“You’d damn well better be able to!”
As Ashnak drew a bead on the figure in the tank, the dock timbers groaned and gave further way. The back of the tank dropped a yard. The upper casing of the Main Battle Tank was now below Ashnak, the gun swivelling to aim straight between the large orc’s eyes.
“And don’t point that thing at me, you dumbass excuse for a marine!”
“Sir, yes sir!” Barashkukor exclaimed happily. He hitched himself further up out of the T54’s hatch, by the mounted machinegun. “Sir, it was a terrible experience, sir.” The small orc watched Ashnak out of the corner of his one eye. “Worth a medal, sir, do you think?”
“Get on with it!”
“Yessir! Well, it was like this, sir. In attempting to immolate myself and the hostile Bug, I omitted to remember that petrol evaporates.” The small orc, unmistakably Barashkukor despite alterations, sighed wistfully. “There was a flash-burn, not much else. So I expected them to tear me to pieces, sir, same as they did my corporal, but I guess it was having the corporal to practise with gave them ideas, sir, and they more or less put me back together. Not altogether correctly, I have to say, but I think I was an experiment—”