Today was the day I realized that even a 50 caliber machine gun has limits. We had 3 of them trained on one of these demonic ogre looking things. The bullets clearly hit hard enough to override the damage resistance that they had. It looked like playing darts against a human target; it was potentially deadly if you hit the right spots, but otherwise was just painful and very fucking annoying. Forget about anything smaller caliber than that. It was like hoping a bunch of guys pissing at a concrete wall were going to secretly destroy integrity of actual fucking concrete with piss. Maybe in a decade or ten that would be effective, but in a gun fight, it felt really fucking frustrating.
The whole setup was fucked from the get-go. The first line of soldiers was still too close to the damn portal. We needed distance to grind them down under a hail of bullets. Anything less than a football field was kind of a waste. I know they were following standard protocol, but we needed to alter protocols drastically. With that in mind I rushed over to the command spot that looked to be set up in the strip mall surrounding the portal. Fortunately for us, the parking lot was enormous due to the Home Depot anchoring one end of the strip, which to be fair was much more of an L than a line.
There was also the unfortunate free standing Fuddruckers restaurant directly behind the portal. Though only rubble was left of the once great burger place. Crews had dug out some of the parking lot beneath the portal and in a wide cone emanating from its starting point. They hadn’t made it all that deep, essentially making the ground in front of the port just really difficult footing more than anything else. Upon entering the command spot, in a clothing store of all places I encountered absolute chaos. I hadn’t spent much time in a military command anything, but this seemed highly disorganized. I sensed some panic in voices, but mostly yelling. Lots of yelling that didn’t seem to directed anywhere. Who knows, maybe I’m just new to this stuff.
Colonel Smolders spotted me shortly after I entered and he shouted, “Captain Cassland, where the fuck have you been?”
“Sorry sir, I got here and then I had to organize and direct my troops. They are getting in place now to relieve some of your front forces.” The Colonel looked relieved that I came prepared, and he was about to respond when someone else interrupted.
“Just who do you think you are, coming in with a plan of your own? You’re a captain by courtesy, not by earned rank.” It was the captain from after the air strike. I didn’t bother learning his name then, and I kind of didn’t want to now. Though a quick scan of his uniform had shown a Hadley on the front. So, Captain Hadly maybe?
“Captain Hadley is it? Just so your aware, the last I checked, how someone comes to a position is irrelevant. It is how they use it. I am about to make your day a little bit easier.”
I pressed on my radio, “Kat, you ready?”
“I’m Puss-tastic!” She called back.
“Then its go time.” I didn’t get a response in terms of verbal, merely, her gunfire echoing amongst all the other gunfire. However, I turned to look and point to the closest of those giant ugly demons just as it’s head snapped to the side. A small chunk of it’s skull was blown off its head exposing brain and the stem of one of its horns. It was less than 200 ft from the command building, thanks to all the windows out front everyone saw the thing stumble. He screamed something unintelligible and turned to face Katnessa, which was far to our right flank. A second shot rang out, and a small chunk of skull flew out of the back of his head, suggesting the bullet went through his open mouth. The creature dropped to its knees with a look of bewilderment on it’s face. Somehow the missing bit of skull improved the look of his forehead. A Humvee mounted 50 caliber machine gun peppered the bewildered face, and the demon slumped to its side towards the portal.
The room erupted in brief cheers as that was one of 4 such demons out left on the field. The few others had been brought down previously, but looked to have taken a while to kill as evidenced by the destruction around them. The captain turned to me and just said, “How?”
“I’ll explain if we survive this, but first I think I have a few specialists who can help with the big ones. There only looks to be three of them left.”
Colonel Smolders stepped in, “If you can bring those three down, we can take care of the rest. You have to bring them down quickly. Each one of those monstrosities has killed over a dozen soldiers.”
“I’ll do what I can to eliminate those three then. However, after those three are down, we would still be happy to help thin down the orcs.”
“Then Get to it, Captain!” Smolders emphatically ended the discussion. I knew we could bring those three down, the question was could we do it quickly enough to make a difference. Timetables were always a bit tricky.
“Kat, can you get a shot on all the rest?”
“The last one is blocked by the portal, Sir. We’ll get started on the other two.”
“Good, start on those two.”
Shots rang out. Her rifle sounded different than others: deeper and louder. The same tactic worked on the first of the three, but after that is when everything went wrong. I didn’t think we would get all three with the same tactics, but I was hoping to get two. Unfortunately, the one that was very close to his friend that just went down turned towards Katnessa’s perch. She was across a major intersection from the shopping plaza we were in. She was on top of a Toys R’ Us store, using the R’ for cover. The giant demon leaned back lifting his left foot, the same side that held his giant mace, and then his whole body shifted as he leaned his body into throwing the mace. It looked like the wind up and pitch from a baseball pitcher, but doing it at an axe throwing bar instead of the mound. The mace flew out of our line of sight and a few seconds later we heard a horrible crashing sound.
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I ran outside to see if Katnessa even survived. The toy store had a giant hole in the front of it now. The R’ was gone, as well as some of the roof, much of the front area of the store. The battlefield almost seemed to pause in light of the show of ferocity and destruction, but Katnessa’s voice rang out, “Missed me, Mother Fucker!” With those words sound came roaring back to the battlefield. Gunfire and the shouted words of people collided to drown almost everything else out. Time moved again, bodies colliding, and people dying.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I spotted Nora running along the store fronts towards me. She stopped about 50 feet from me, pulled the familiar wand of force bolt out and blasted at the giant demon. I distinctly heard a ‘pelotudo’ in there somewhere. The bolts, or darts to be more precise, slammed into the creature’s back, causing him to stumble. Stumbling wouldn’t normally be a big issue, but when the creature is probably twelve to fifteen feet tall that stumble causes him to crush an orc under his knee. The orcs were big creatures, but they were only a little taller than the waist of these giants. I still thought the creature was outside of my assess range, but that could wait until after it died. I moved forward a few feet and got behind the hood of a Humvee parked sideways in front of the building. I needed to help end this quickly. I pulled my rifle up and used my predictive aim to focus on a good head shot while the creature was scrounging around for something on the ground.
The images wouldn’t focus into one right away this time. I didn’t really know why, but I was having a hard time for the image to coalesce like it had previously. I waited for several seconds as different translucent potentialities disappeared. It was maddening watching multiples of an already ugly creature slowly slide together as the correct spot to aim at. Finally, after what felt like forever, but was probably only about 20 seconds or so, the images merged and I fired right into one of his eyes as he lifted the mace from his fallen brethren triumphantly aloft. His head snapped back and to the right, but not nearly as far as I would have like it to.
His head snapped quickly back to where it was before, and he looked right at me. I nearly pissed myself. That was awful lot of malice and hate contained in one face. Maybe shooting him in the face wasn’t the best decision. I was using enchanted ammo, so I hoped it would do some significant damage. His was mostly gone, and blood was flowing down his face. It was something, at least. Force bolts hit him again, in the shoulder this time, leaving a gaping hole where his arms socket was moments before. Said arm dangled precariously from its spot. He still had the mace in the other arm, but that became immaterial as he slumped over on top of his buddy demon.
With three of the four big guys down, the entire momentum of the battlefield started to shift. To my right I saw Frank and all of the third Fenton squad armed with riot shields bash their way into the corner of the orc assault. This sudden action, coupled with the loss of some heavy hitters startled the orc infantry. The majority of first squad was right behind frank and shield team as I just now mentally dubbed them. Whenever there was a break in the shields they fired into those gaps. Many of them had enchanted ammo already, so those bullets slammed into the orcs much harder than regular ammo. The for a clip or two per person firing, the orcs fell like normal mortals. They were big guys, and they had muscle mass, but the instant that damage resistance was not a factor bullets shredded them. The exchange was scarily efficient and effective.
Other orcs picked up on the shift at the corner of their line. Panic blew through them like a spring breeze, not enough to make them crumble, but enough to shake their confidence. Light anti-tank missiles started hitting various orcs, as they no longer were needed against the giant ones. The spring breeze was not just a spring breeze anymore, and Missouri was definitely in tornado country. A line of claymores went off in the middle of the orc lines, though no one knew why such a thing didn’t go off earlier. The morale deteriorated. The fierce wind of broken orc morale spread quickly.
As if to add insult to injury shots rang out from the road. I looked over to see Joe on the roof of his SUV firing from a shiny rifle. Bullets firing from it looked like they had purple lines flowing behind them. These bullets started hitting the final extra big boy, and the creatures reaction was almost comical. It did not like getting hit by bullets that bypassed his resistances, so he turned and bolted for the portal shouting something in their language. I think the translation would have been, “Fuck you guys, I’m outta here!”
Thus, the orc surge collapsed on itself. These orcs clearly liked having the big guys soaking up a lot of the damage. Seeing ammo with traces of mana around and behind it signaled to them that this was not such a soft target anymore. We killed many in their panic, but far more got back through the portal. As if to add an endcap to the proceedings a HIMARS rocket landed right at the entrance to the gate scattering orc body parts everywhere. Damage resistance or not, massive explosive damage still ripped bodies into pieces.
I slumped against the hood of the Humvee I was up against. That looked easy enough, but it definitely wasn’t. I still didn’t know the full status of Katnessa or any of the other sharp shooters we put up there with her. I still had to figure out where Natalie went. I figured she was safe, but fear of her being injured nagged at me.
First up, I picked up the radio and pressed the talk button, “Katnessa, what’s your situation?”
She groaned over the radio, “Just Catsy purrfection,” before groaning again.
“Seriously?”
“Fuck No! I nearly got turned into mashed kitty! We lost one guy on the roof and at least one more down on the ground. The fucking sign I ran to fell on me. I think my leg is broken. Did you get the fucker at least?”
Man, when she starts cussing, she really lets loose. “Yes, you can thank Nora mostly. I got a shot in there, but she should get most of the credit.”
“Tell her I owe her a kitten.”
“Will do. We’ll have people over there to help you.”
It took the better part of an hour, for fear of the roof collapsing, but Katnessa and the rest of the survivors from the roof were returned safely to the ground. She wasn’t wrong on the death toll. One Oakland guy up top, and a Sunset Hills woman below. Natalie showed up just after the conversation and hugged me. I don’t mind public displays of affection, but the amount of “ooohs” was disturbing. I guess I forgot that the military and frat house behavior went hand in hand.
Next up I was going to have to explain a few things to the Colonel about some of our technological improvements, and somehow I wasn’t entirely ready for it.
