“Copy that!” roared Thor. “Snipers, Kill First, Die Last. Move and cover.”
The snipers had already been covering our six, two on each side of the corridor with Brumm anchoring from the left. Now Thor had them firing and moving in teams up the columns and right into the face of the enemy, covering and rapid-firing precise shots with their big rifles into the oncoming orcs. They weren’t gonna burn ammo staying and getting pinned down. Each round would buy a few more meters to reach the stairs we needed to get back to.
No, it wasn’t an ideal situation for snipers. They did not like to get cornered. But when they did, they went full honey badger.
The snipers didn’t just hold the corridor, they moved up, shooting as they went. Covering and reloading while the sniper to their rear stepped in and started sending rounds through the next wave of orcs. Big rifle rounds that ruined snarling orcs at near point-blank range and continued on to wreck the next beast in line. Smashed twisted faces and lumpy skulls exploded while other rounds landed center mass in smelly bulky bodies and sent them twisting away, only to be replaced by another even more vicious fiend with a gutful of nasty intentions.
Thor was running his team when Kurtz shouted, “Stairs ahead. Bravo. Use your secondaries!” That meant for us to let our low-ammo rifles hang by their slings and move to our sidearms to clear our way up and out. Which everyone had a lot of ammunition for. The truth was you rarely ever used your pistol.
“Except for going to the chow hall when you’re in the sandbox,” Tanner remarked later.
Or wasting Deep State noncontributors, I didn’t add.
Ahead of us, the snipers moved into position on the body-littered stairs looking out over the vast space of the tomb well. They would pivot left and control our rear while the assaulters, myself, Kennedy, Autumn, Jabba and the Lost Boys hustled up to the next level, still looking for a way out of this madhouse.
Bad news. There were a ton of orcs coming up the stairs from every level below us.
“We’re gonna get pushed from behind, Sar’nt, when we take the tower!” shouted Brumm as he covered the snipers who were now pulling back.
“Heads down!” shouted Kennedy, and sent a volley of magic missiles into a group of orcs firing more arrows at the snipers. The shooting stars streaked away with all kinds of light show pyrotechnics before ravaging those orcs, exploding them and setting fires down there.
Autumn turned and fired three fast arrows, nailing one of the bigger war leaders rallying his troops below for a big push against our rear. One arrow through his eye. Two stuck and quivering in his chest. The lesser orcs around him bellowed in rage and gnashed their teeth up at us.
Confusion reigned, and that bought us a few minutes. We were killing our way out of there, but we were definitely in trouble.
And then Kurtz made the top of the stairs and shouted, “I see daylight! This is the way!”
I felt myself wanting to run faster for the exit. We’d gained the top of the stairs and Kurtz was back, pushing the snipers into the final chamber ahead of us. I was in there a couple of seconds later and there were indeed wide stairs leading sharply up into what looked like very early morning light.
We’d made it.
The snipers went past us, getting quickly organized to take position in the tower above this basement. Kurtz was on the comm and trying to raise Captain Knife Hand. Our watches said we were late to the party. But just.
“No comm with Intruder!” shouted Kurtz.
“I can hear gunfire!” one of the snipers shouted from the bottom of the stairs. They were stacked there and waiting for the order to take the tower above once the weapons sergeant was satisfied with the situation.
“Now’s our turn, Sergente,” announced Soprano, almost excited to get the two-forty ready. They would set up on the ground floor while the snipers went higher into the ruined upper levels.
“Get a visual on the courtyard!” ordered Kurtz, and one of the snipers went off to take a peek. By the time he got back, the Uroo Uroo horns were sounding while ominous drums got walloped from down below where we’d just come. Over that, I could now hear the sound of distant gunfire from up in the fortress.
The attack was underway.
“Can’t tell what’s going on,” said the sniper when he got back from the scout, “but it looks like they’re moving against the secondary defenses and the defenders there are on the forward lines of defense. We get up there, it’ll be a shooting gallery, Sar’nt.”
Brumm spat from his position guarding the narrow hall to our rear that gave access to the stairs below. Where the horns and drums were getting louder. “They’re comin’, Sar’nt Kurtz.”
The look in his eyes wasn’t fear. But it was serious. And that was saying something for the SAW gunner who’d looked a charging giant in the eyes and fired a Carl G.
“How much you got, Brumm?” asked Kurtz.
Brumm tilted his weapon and studied it.
“Hunnert-fifty rounds, a grenade, my elf knife, and a half can of Copenhagen. I can hold ’em… Sergeant.”
Kurtz made a face. A sick face. And then there was some look between them that passed, and I had no idea what it meant. But later, I would.
“Go, Sar’nt,” said Brumm, nodding to his sergeant. “I got this. Switching to on.”
Kurtz hesitated and then nodded back as he gave the order for Team Rogue to take the tower of the Lost Library and bring fire against the rear of the enemy. But not before unslinging his MK18 and leaving it with its last mag for Specialist Brumm. Leaning it against the wall. Then Team Rogue got the order to move.
We were in the game now.
Snipers. Autumn, her eyes fierce with revenge. Kennedy serene but breathing deeply through his nose like he was trying to draw in oxygen—or arcane power. Rico and Soprano, hustling workmanlike to get their beast into play now that the order had been given. Kurtz had already gone, and I could hear the sound of his Rampage slam-firing to clear someone unlucky enough to happen to be where the angry Rangers wanted to go next.
Kurtz had gone first. Because Rangers lead the way.
I pulled my remaining magazines. Two left. And handed them to Brumm.
“You want me to stay?” I asked.
Brumm shook his head. He was intently watching the hall he had been left to secure. Not ready to go for the high score like Thor might. That wasn’t the look in his eyes. I could read that there. But because his brother Rangers needed him to hold the line down here where it was thin and most needed. And so the rest could save the others out there pinned down at the gatehouse and trying to move forward under fire and against overwhelming odds.
“Thanks, Talk,” he croaked dryly at me. “Get up there now… help Kurtz. Gonna be crazy. Take care of him.”
He took the mags and then I was gone.
Things looked bad from the moment I saw the whole battle going down just after dawn. Up there and underway with both sides doing their best to annihilate the other side. But now the Rangers were about to do what they did best. Which was to be exactly where you didn’t want them to be.
Chapter Sixty
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Things were a mess once I made it up out of the ruined tower basement and into the actual battle for the fortress. But apparently things were even worse for the Rangers pinned down at the gatehouse. Worse and getting worse by the second.
The Rangers could not move forward across the first courtyard and into the next line of defenses. Arrow fire from the Black Hawk Orc archers was finding its way into the gatehouse and keeping several Rangers stuck inside. The Black Hawks were excellent and relentless marksmen. Or marks-orcs. Vandahar had unleashed a powerful lightning bolt against the next gate in the second line, but so
me kind of magical warding had caused the bolt to reflect and dart off into the morning sky with a sudden thunderclap.
“Hmm,” the indignant old hedge wizard was reported to have murmured as he hunkered with the assaulters under heavy incoming. “That doesn’t bode well.”
The assault teams were down to trying the Carl Gustaf and the last 84mm round the detachment was carrying. The sergeant major and his group were looking for an opening in the gatehouse to fire from where they wouldn’t get nailed by the monkish archers King Triton was throwing against them.
And there was a problem with that last round itself. It was an FFV441 HE round. Or an airburst round used as anti-personnel munition. Fire it into a group of enemies, or their positions, just above their heads, and it exploded steel balls in every direction. It could be devastating against lightly armored personnel, but chances were, it wasn’t going to do much against structures like the wall of the next line of defenses within the fortress where the Rangers needed to create a breach.
That was where Team Rogue was supposed to come in. We were supposed to be hitting the enemy defenses from behind and causing them to pull enough assets away from the main defenses to deal with us, thus allowing the assaulters at the front gate to start moving up through the lines of defense.
But, as I’ve said, we were late to the party.
The Rangers were pinned and doing their best just to avoid being turned into pincushions by incoming arrow fire. They were down to one mag for primaries and firing back when they could get a shot on the shadowy orc defenders. Wounded men were being dragged out from under fire, arrows embedded in their bodies where the ESAPI plates hadn’t protected them, clinging to the hope that the poison they’d been warned about wasn’t as bad as they’d heard. A few mags for their secondaries and then the found weapons they’d scoured from the battlefield back at Ranger Alamo was what was coming next.
“This is it, boys,” the sergeant major was heard to say as he moved among the hunkering teams who were just moments from being given the order to assault across open ground and try to get under the next wall, scale it, and overcome the defenders regardless of a secondary attack that wasn’t going off as planned. No diversion, follow the plan because that was all that was left. And of course heavy arrow fire was everywhere. Streaking in through the breaches and windows. Whistling into the furniture and architecture. Thudding and snapping on plate carriers. Sinking into flesh as Rangers swore and returned fire with their dwindling ammo.
Someone opened up with a half a pouch on their SAW, all they had left, and ruined a cluster of archers who’d gotten a good angle into the gatehouse and had already shot several Rangers.
“That’ll learn ’em,” the Ranger said, tossing aside the two-four-nine and pulling out his tomahawk. He was one of the true believers. And it seemed he’d been waiting for this moment all his life whether he’d known it or not.
It would be a massacre. Crossing open ground under fire. No two ways about it. But if they got against the wall on the other side of the open ground kill zone, then there were a few breaching charges left, and someone might get in.
“That Valhalla y’all are always on about is callin’, Rangers,” the sergeant major muttered as he moved from cover to cover inside the ruined gatehouse. Organizing who could go forward and who had too many arrows sticking out of ’em.
“One way or the other,” finished the sergeant major. Now they were just waiting on the captain’s final order to move.
Near the main assault point out of the gatehouse, the scouts and Captain Knife Hand’s security team were set to go first and lead the charge across open ground. Sergeant Hardt chanced a glance at the commander and saw that his captain didn’t look too good. One of the scouts told me later, “Hell, Talk. Looked like he was gonna be sick all over the place right there.”
But no one thought that Knife Hand was looking horrible due to fear. That wasn’t even considered. Everyone knew he’d been sick with some kind of bug none of the rest had picked up.
“We was all scared, Talk,” continued the scout. “I’ll admit that right here. Ain’t no shame. But when you Ranger, you still do it and all whether the fear’s there or it ain’t. Ain’t nothin’ if the Knife Hand was scared. He’d still go even if he was. But he wasn’t. He was just real sick. Like he had bad food poisoning or something. And now, at the worst possible time, he was real sick like he was just gonna die right there, Talk.”
But that’s not what happened.
Knife Hand was sick. He did look like he was going to hurl everywhere, and according to those close to him he was sweating like a pig and looked pale to the point of gray.
“He was mad and getting angrier by the second because everything was going wrong inside the gatehouse,” said the scout. “His team sergeant had taken an arrow right in the throat. Man was down and probably dying but Chief was all bloody and trying to save the team leader. It was bad, Talker. Really bad in there.
“Then Captain says, just to himself like, ‘I’m gonna be sick.’ But it don’t sound like him at all. It’s like… I don’t know. Like a growl and all. Like an animal that ain’t so happy. I turned around to find the XO because he was probably gonna have to take us out across that kill zone where we were all gonna die in a few seconds, and when I look back at the captain, who’d stumbled off to find a corner to get sick in, I’m looking at a damn werewolf, Talker!
“’Cept it ain’t no werewolf, man. It’s like a… a weretiger. Like if a man suddenly became a tiger. Orange stripes, white fur. Tiger face. Big white fangs. But walking like a man with huge claws. And I swear he’s comin’ straight at me and he’s got pure murder eyes like one of them big cats. So things just got worse and we’re done. Then the captain just takes off running right straight through the breach regardless of the incoming, right where we were about to go through, moving faster than anything I’ve ever seen, and he’s up on the wall of the next defenses in a bound or two. Moving like a cat and a man at the same time, using his claws to gain the top o’ the defenses where the orcs are shooting from. He just goes straight up the wall like a cat. You ever seen ’em do it? I have. And guess what, the orcs, they’re as surprised as I am and the rest of us, as suddenly the captain, and I know it’s still him because there’s shreds of his gear hanging off all over his new tiger body, is just ripping them to shreds like Wolverine in the X-Men. Claws and jaws and everything.
“He just goes Cro-Mag on them like some running back who cannot, I repeat cannot, be stopped. Not that I ever got one o’ them on my fantasy team, mind. He’s slashing their throats with these big-ass claws, bites a guy’s head off. I mean an orc. And one time, right there in all that chaos as he’s just ruining their defensive line, I seen him pick up two swords and just start running at some of the orcs and then straight through them up there like he’s a spinning top. Except with two really sharp swords because there’s blood spray and I tell you… he’s takin’ limbs off with one slice.
“Everybody’s like… y’know, ‘what the…’ and that’s when the sergeant major keys his mike and sends out, ‘Net call, all elements, assault, assault, assault.’
“Then it was really on. Assault teams breached the next wall no problem because the orcs with bows and arrows are either trying to shoot the captain now, impossible, or save their asses by getting out of the way. So we had enough time to get over the wall and in among them. After that I lost sight of the captain ’cause we were fighting room to room, but I heard the orcs in other parts of the defended wall screaming for their lives.
“It was awesome, Talk. Barely heard their screams over the tiger roaring and growling, which, honestly, is just about the scariest thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life. Ain’t like at the zoo when it’s behind a cage. Ain’t like that at all. When you’re out there in the jungle with it, and there ain’t no wire, Talker, it’s real scary as real gets, man.”
Chapter Sixty-One
&nbs
p; Once I got out of the basement of the ruined tower that was the Lost Library, the snipers were already working over the orc archers and staged infantry within the fortress, and Sergeant Thor was working Mjölnir. Shooting steadily in a target-rich environment. The poor dumb savage orcs had no idea what was happening to them as their heads began to explode.
One of their war chiefs finally figured out what was going on and ordered a massed charge of the staged orc infantry, some force lying in reserve to support the forward defenses, against the Lost Library adjacent to the rising dark spike that was the formidable Barad Nulla itself. That charge ended badly when Rico and Soprano methodically cut down the entire element. It was a machine-gun team’s dream engagement scenario. Organized groups with little to no maneuver space and almost no cover, giving the team the perfect chance to do search and traverse fire, maximizing the machine guns’ capability. It was literally what machine guns are made for.
Kennedy fired a volley of magic missiles at orc archers attempting to target our snipers in the upper reaches of the Lost Library, which like the other “towers,” Dark Spire excluded, was little more than a ruined shell open to the sun and sky. Those archers caught fire and burned, flaming and trailing black smoke as they fell from their perch. Kennedy moved to support Rico and Soprano on the ground level.
Another orc charge was coming now as Uroo Uroo horns bellowed out and orc captains rallied their lessers to the attack once more. Soprano and Rico were in the middle of a barrel change, having fired heavily to wipe out the first charge, and something went wrong as they did so, allowing a large group of orcs to make the edges and openings of the tower. Kurtz and Tanner were fighting from the entrance arch just to keep them back. Exchanging firing positions as they tried to hold the perimeter and give whatever malfunction had plagued the two-forty the time it needed to be corrected.
Forgotten Ruin: An Epic Military Fantasy Thriller Page 49
