When I began to dream in Elvish, it was then I knew I could speak it. And it was when the orc horde overran one of the fighting positions along First Platoon’s sector on the east side of the island the Rangers were defending that I knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore. The US Army had sent us someplace no one had ever gone. And it was looking like the kind of place no one was ever coming back from either. Back then, we had no idea where we were. And by we, I mean all of us lowlies in the Ranger detachment tasked with defending the grounded C-17 and her complement of crew, Deep State, and science and tech personnel.
I was attached to the detachment, which was part of a larger element known as Joint Task Force Tarantino.
Also, I’ve never been to Kansas.
It was just after O3OO when the enemy came through our defenses along the west side of the big island in the middle of a river in a lush green valley. I was down close to First Platoon’s command position, or CP, just before the whole line of First’s fighting positions and foxholes got hit. Corporal Brocker, whose machine-gun team’s position anchored the north end of the hundred-and-fifty-meter line of the platoon’s fighting pits, had the tactical forethought to launch an IR pop flare well out in front of the line and a few hundred feet high. The comically small parachute attached to what could be described as a road flare came down in slow motion out over the sluggish river and off into the dreary wetlands on the other side. This had the effect of bathing the entire scene in soft light invisible to the naked eye, but as strong as direct sunlight inside the dual-tube night vision devices we all had mounted on our helmets.
Someone in our pit swore in the darkness. I think it was Tanner. Everyone else just hunkered there for a brief moment. Assessing the situation. Too stunned by what we were really seeing out there in the river and along the wetlands on the other side to react immediately.
What were we seeing? Sometimes, after long hours of using night vision, NVGs, IR light can play tricks on your eyes. But not like this.
Not. Even. Close.
A real live orc horde was storming across the river bottom, making for
our fighting pits along the shore. Coming straight for us.
Why do I call them orcs, you ask? Because that’s exactly what they looked like to us. Our patrols had spotted them in the days leading up to the attack, and we’d even seen them on the ISR feeds being pushed from the Raven drones we’d sent out. Hairy, misshapen brutes in ancient Bronze Age armor carrying swords, wicked-looking axes, and feather-laden spears. Fangs and eyes that seemed alive with menace in the ghostly night-vision feeds.
Now, along the river, in the shifting, almost supernatural glow of the falling IR pop flare, the orcs looked blue-black as they waved spears and swords, gave battle cries, and rushed for us. They looked to me like monsters. But a guy in our platoon—Kennedy—who knows about orcs and wizards, who loved all D&D and all that stuff, he said they were more like the orcs in Ralph Bakshi’s animated version of The Lord of the Rings than the ones in Peter Jackson’s mega-blockbuster epic. They moved fast and silent through the gentle river. If someone over in one of First Platoon’s forward observation posts hadn’t spotted them barely splashing as they entered the river, swords, scimitars, and spears ready to go… they would have been a lot closer before we opened fire on them. Things would’ve been much worse than they were about to get.
The weapons squad leader had been busy improving the fighting position that consisted of a two-man pit and a defensive berm. He worked like a man possessed in the middle of the night, but that was Sergeant Kurtz. Rangers are highly motivated as a rule, but they don’t like to dig. Kurtz, the heavy weapons squad leader, didn’t care what anyone liked.
Sergeant Kurtz swore at Private Watt for not spotting the orcs coming to kill us sooner. We were only running one active pair of NVGs to a fighting pit to conserve battery power. The Forge inside the C-17 back at the CP was busy cranking out as much ammo as it could gin up. Guys who understood the tech said we couldn’t use it to charge batteries at the same time. Go figure. It was made for the government.
We expected to get hit hard and no one knew how long we’d be in a fight. The Forge had been on ammo crank since the captain made the decision that this horde… yeah, he used that word specifically, and yes, everyone—you could just about feel it in the TOC—thought the usage was a little… grand. A little too geeky for the tactical operations center aboard
the grounded C-17. Call it whatever, but this horde was coming right for us, no doubt about it. The captain had overridden the Baroness and the Deep State guy and demanded we switch our Forge over to ammunition production.
They wanted to “parley.” The Baroness’s word.
She’s a scientist, not an actual baroness. It’s just that the Rangers think she looks a lot like the villainess from the G.I. Joe cartoon they all grew up watching. The other guy, Deep State guy, who’s here as a “civilian adviser” actually said, “Slow down. Let’s just see what they want first before we start shooting at them.”
The captain ignored both Deep State and the Baroness and ordered his detachment to dig in and prepare to repel.
All of us who had boarded the C-17 were carrying a basic combat load of ammunition, plus some. And though I’d never been to war with the Rangers, nor combat at all, I was aware that every Ranger around me in the task force knew a basic combat load probably wasn’t gonna be enough to go properly medieval on what we were facing.
“Never is enough,” said the only guy in the detachment with a beard. The only tabbed Ranger who is generally tolerant of my non-Ranger presence. Everyone calls him Thor, and not just because it’s what’s on his issue nametag. The man could probably go to Hollywood and get cast playing Thor’s double in one of those super hero movies. That is, if he weren’t here with us about to die in the big mystery that is this bizarre place of orc hordes storming the sandy beaches along the riverbanks in the night. Now Thor is looking through his scope at the approaching horde. As far as Rangers go, Thor’s one of their best snipers. And that’s really saying something in sniper world.
One of Kurtz’s two-forty gunners opened up from their pit with tracers in the mix. A hot streak of 7.62 slammed into the forward line of the orcs coming across the water, cutting down a bunch of spear carriers at the front of the swelling mass. A tribal leader of some sort went down too. He had dangly teeth-necklaces and a big horned helm, and generally acted more elite than the rest of his command currently being ventilated by the two- forty’s traversing fire cutting across their front ranks. The light from the falling IR flare made the monsters suddenly, horribly, startlingly clear to everyone as the machine guns tore them to shreds right there in the middle
of the river.
Then as the flare fell over that first lot, we began to see really just how many orcs there were out there. There were hundreds, if not a thousand, coming straight at Bravo to our left. My mind didn’t want to accept a number like that. How could so many have moved swiftly and silently, en masse, right up on the elite fighting troops known as US Army Rangers?
That’s pro. It requires a certain amount of cunning.
That burst from the two-forty should have stopped their advance right there. Stopped ’em cold, in fact. Hajis in the third world who got caught like that out in the open would have scattered and ran. But. Big full-stop BUT here. These guys didn’t. All of a sudden, the rest of the swarming, snarling, bellowing pack of orcs forward of the main horde, which we didn’t quite see yet, surged at us, ululating horrible tribal war cries and waving their blackened scimitars as they came on.
Horns. Tribal battle horns rang out, I kid you not. UROOOO UROOO UROOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo.
That’s what it sounded like. I won’t lie. It was like the realest surreal thing that’s ever happened to me. Ever.
All that didn’t stop anyone in First Platoon from continuing to unload into the face of an oncoming flood of nightmares straight out of a nightmare’s nightmare rushing right at them. These are Rangers, after all. The opportunity to inflict hyper violence upon a determined enemy was not one any of these men would pass up. Ever. The machine gunners timed their individual bursts and “talked” their guns along the platoon’s defensive line, answering the enemy’s battle horn calls with their own staccato of unrelenting fire to teach our attackers the error of their ways. Fanged teeth gnashed while claws still holding cruel black-steel swords were shot away. Outgoing rounds slammed into tattered leather armor and faded gray cloaks, dropping foul bodies into the waters of the slow-moving river or blowing open misshapen skulls in sudden bloody sprays. By the time the IR pop burned out in the sky we could see more orcs entering the water from the far side of the river. Slinking out of the wetlands in the thin silver moonlight. Pushing through the silhouettes of the reeds along the far bank like predators coming out for the late-night hunt.
“Rico!” bellowed Second Squad’s Alpha Team Leader. “Shift fire to support Third Squad’s holes! Make ’em talk!”
Specialist Rico, with the help of his assistant gunner, lifted the entire machine gun, tripod, and ammo bag, then settled it down reoriented on their new target.
“Gun Two up,” Rico called back while landing the machine gun’s sighting laser into the flank of the orc element that was attempting to mass directly in front of Third Squad’s holes.
“Engage!” was the sergeant’s only response.
Before the word had fully left the NCO’s lips, Rico was pouring cyclic fire into the group pushing through the water towards Third Squad’s position.
That should do it, I thought stupidly. Now the orcs were being hit by intersecting fire creating not only more death, but more confusion for the enemy as they tried to figure out which position was shooting at them.
Spears launched at short range volleyed into Third Squad’s pits, but it was hard to see if anyone got hit. No one screamed, at least.
A short burst from Specialist Rico, followed by a ka-thunk sound, signaled to all of us in the hole that Gun Two had just malfunctioned.
“Gun Two down!” erupted like a bitter indictment out of Rico’s Copenhagen-filled lip.
“Weak!” called out Tanner, who was already engaging with his MK18 carbine. Single fire. Good marksmanship. At the same moment Rico began to clear the malfunction, Sergeant Kurtz grabbed his M32O grenade launcher and began to fire into the mass of orcs now surging forward on Bravo.
Specialist Brumm, the SAW gunner supporting our position, came up and called out to Sergeant Kurtz, “Switching to on!” Then he unloaded with the devastating squad automatic weapon in short, staccato bursts as he kept the barrel down and made sure the damage was as brutal as it sounded to my ears.
I actually felt sorry for the orcs at that moment. Second and Third Squads were slaughtering them as they tried to cross the river. It was like, and this is a stupid thought I had in the middle of it all, but I think a lot, so excuse me, it was like the orcs didn’t realize they’d just stepped into a writhing pit full of deadly vipers and now they were getting taught a fatal lesson by the best in the business. To a Ranger assault platoon… what can I say? The ultimate truth is that they are the physical manifestation of the
First Horse of the Apocalypse as far as the enemy should be concerned. Sure, there may be some resistance, but those efforts will ultimately prove futile.
In hindsight, now that I’ve been afforded the time to think about it— I’m sure everyone else who survived thinks about it too—in that moment we should have been concerned. They were getting slaughtered. So why didn’t they break?
Brumm, crouching behind the berm at our rear for a better angle, continued dumping fire into the dark mass of orcs off to the left in front of Third. Rounds tore through the monsters and created sudden silver plumes in the river currents.
That was when Third Squad’s gunner, Corporal Brocker went black on ammo. That is to say, he used it all up and had nothing left with which to dissuade the orcs from continuing their onslaught. They were being overrun.
The orcs were now halfway across the dark river and pushing for the bank where our first line of defense along the eastern side of the island was set up. An M24O Bravo fires roughly six hundred rounds per minute from hundred-round belts that can be linked belt to belt. Basically, you’ve got two thousand rounds. More than enough for a few seconds of combat against insurgents in brush-fire conflicts.
Except in those first few seconds we didn’t realize this horde attack was something more than that. It was something ancient. Something dating as far back as Marathon and on through history. Gettysburg. World War I. Everywhere men had been fated to die in droves and bleed out in anonymity.
There were easily six hundred orcs in the water now. Probably more. Hard to say in the darkness and chaos of the sudden firefight. More still came out of the shadowy woods on the far side of the river.
We had no mines in place yet.
Space had been limited on the last flight out of Dodge. The Forge was supposed to pick up the slack once we were on the ground, wherever that happened to be. We’d only been here in the valley, wherever here was, for a little under three days.
Granted, these were Rangers who’d fought in the Middle East, Venezuela, and a couple of hot spots in Latin America in recent years. But
no one, and I guarantee you now as I write this, no one in that early morning, halfway to dawn darkness, had ever faced a mass wave attack similar to something straight out of the Chosin Reservoir during the First Korean War. That’s what we were facing .
Except it was orcs instead of humans. On that we all agreed.
It was Tanner who’d first said it during the ops briefing after the initial recon drone footage came in. Of course it was Tanner. For a Ranger, he was actually pretty funny. And friendly.
Ever the low man on the totem in the detachment, the perpetually- serving-extra-duty PFC Kennedy counted Tanner as his only friend. Or at least the only Ranger who would talk to him. It was actually Kennedy who first said they were “probably orcs.” But it was Tanner who relayed that to the rest of us.
So, orcs it was.
“Get to work, Talker!” bellowed Sergeant Kurtz as the fight dialed up to desperate. Bellowing at me in the middle of the onslaught.
He meant for me to join the fight. Which wasn’t why I was there. At least not until that moment.
It’s true. I did have a rifle with me. And I had Ranger gear. Back at Fifty-One I’d been issued the RLCS kit. But a tricked-out MK18 and Ranger gear don’t make one a Ranger, as I’d told myself on more than one occasion. Yes, I’d done an abbreviated RASP just to get ready for this mission. Ranger Assessment and Selection Program. But the truth is, I’m just a linguist.
The scroll patch on our left shoulder that identifies us as Rangers still means something though, even for a just-a-linguist like a me. As Sergeant Thor put it to me the first day with the detachment, “The Ranger tab is just a leadership school. The scroll is a way of life.”
He had both a scroll and a tab.
I had been placed here as augment, really. So even though I had trained enough for this mission that on paper I was to be considered a Ranger, I had too much respect for what they did, what they’d earned, and how they lived it, to just assume I was one of them.
That’s why they call me Talker—because I do languages—instead of Walker. Which is my real name until I went through RASP.
I’m also only a PFC, and Kurtz is a real live staff sergeant weapons
squad leader. And in the Ranger batt that actually counts for something. Word is, Kurtz was some kind of scout sniper in the marines, except he got thrown out for being too violent and offensive for the marines. Or maybe he didn’t like the taste of crayons. That was another Tanner joke said only when Kurtz was nowhere to be seen.
I went prone next to Brumm, who yelled “Get some!” while spraying the orcs now surging up the bank onto and all over Third. At the same time Kurtz called for his team to shift fire back out into the river for fear of hitting the Third Squad guys in their now-overrun holes.
“Engage second wave coming into the water now.”
Specialist Rico said something about the situation being dumber than a bag of hammers.
“Steel Eight One, this is One Four. Request fire mission on TRP oh- eight-zero.” Kurtz was both calling in fire support and directing fire where he wants the two-forty to concentrate. “Say again…”
“Loading!” Brumm said calmly as he knelt and dragged a new drum of ammo for the SAW from over near the pit. Hot brass flew everywhere and I fired into the orcs, never really aiming for anyone. You didn’t have to. They were so thick you couldn’t miss. There was this surreal moment when it felt like I wasn’t actually doing anything to help. Because the orcs weren’t reacting to the 5.56 rounds coming from my rifle. But I still tried to hit them.
“Brumm, you’re with me,” yelled Kurtz. “We’re going QRF to relieve Third. Talker, you too, you worthless slag. Follow me and don’t shoot anyone dressed like us.”
I did Basic with a bunch of other support types. Fort Leonard Wood. Cooks. Truckers. Telephone repair specialists. But as the Army says, everyone’s a rifleman. And I was pretty good at it. So much so that I qual’d BRM first time through and ended up doing KP so that those who couldn’t shoot got some extra range time.
But when Kurtz told me we were forming a quick reaction force to relieve the pit next to ours along the riverbank, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. As the first mortar rounds from the top of the small hill at the northern tip of the island began to fall out there on the far side of the river, near the trees the orcs were swarming from, I at least had the presence of mind to put a new mag in my weapon. I pulled it from my chest carrier, and
the look of pure contempt Brumm gave me as he lugged the SAW up to get ready to counterattack—I guess my mag pull wasn’t slick enough for him— was palpable.
Kurtz was in front of us as we pushed out of our fighting position, hunkering low as if we were flanking jihadis in Honduras. The orcs were frightening, hairy beasts bristling with fangs, claws, leather armor wrapped in dark rags, and literally wicked-looking scimitars they tried to slash us with. But swords as deadly as they appeared, couldn’t shoot back at us. They didn’t have AK-47s or PKMs. So we had that going for our three-man counterattack to relieve Third.
Then the arrows started to fall and Brumm took one right in the plate carrier. I heard it land with a loud THOCK. Not a Thunk. But a THOCK. I don’t think it penetrated because Brumm started to laugh and just snapped it off. Yeah, we were wearing full battle rattle. Plate carrier. Knee pads. Combat helmet. But there were a lot of places an arrow that big, and it was huge and dark in the half-light provided by the falling explosions out there on the far riverbank, could find a home in a body.
I wasn’t scared.
I gotta make that clear, because I’d been worried for a long time leading up to this that I was going to be afraid when I actually got into combat. When does a linguist ever see combat was a phrase I couldn’t get out of my head. Sure, I knew that someday-probably-never, combat might go down somewhere in my general vicinity on some garbage-littered third world street against jihadis or Chinese irregulars. But orcs? Nah. I hadn’t planned for that. Who would’ve?
And yet there I was. Supporting Sergeant Kurtz with live rounds. Arrows rained down through the willows and slammed into the muddy bank all around us, but Kurtz kept us moving forward. Then one went right through his forearm and he swore once. Violently.
Not a blue streak. Just once.
He snapped it off and moved on Bravo’s pit. The orcs were in there and one of the Rangers was fighting hand-to-hand, swinging a rifle like a club. I noticed another one on the bank, hammering a tomahawk straight into the chest of a prone orc he was straddling. His helmet was missing.
“Push right, Brumm. Clear forward!” shouted Kurtz and then started
firing his rifle into the orcs in the pit with blood streaming down his arm and onto the overturned earth we were crossing.
I raised my rifle and drilled an orc warrior with bright eyes like some twisted devil in the dark. Eyes gleaming cold malice. He wanted me dead. I shot him twice in the chest and he just backed up along the pit, snarling and taking the rounds. Gnashing his broken teeth at me. Not sure what to do or why this was happening, but enraged that it was. Slick as a snake he flung a black dagger that came from out of nowhere right at me. The aim was true, but I twisted out of the way at the last second. When I turned back, Kurtz had blown that one’s head off and was heading down into the pit to retrieve the two-forty.
The surge from across the river had abated as mortar strikes rained down along the far bank. Tanner was probably adjusting fire from our fighting position.
“Find out who’s still alive!” shouted Sergeant Kurtz raggedly as he dragged an ammo can up next to the pit’s two-forty and fed a belt into the receiving tray.
Brumm swore.
Swore to the effect of What in the hell is that?
I looked up from the bodies in the pit. Side note. It’s impossible to tell if someone has a pulse when yours is firing like a jackhammer. I had no idea who was dead or alive in there. But there was a lot of blood and there were dead orcs bleeding down there among our guys too. They don’t bleed green or black, if that’s what you’re thinking. In the dark it was red as near as I could tell. And it was all one big bloody mess of limbs and arms. Plus, the orcs stank.
Here’s what I was doing. And this is my account of the Battle for Ranger Alamo. I was basically asking the bodies of Rangers on the ground, “You okay, buddy?”
Pathetic.
But I was doing my best.
Did I mention I speak eight languages? I can get by in a lot of others,
too.
And when Brumm expressed some sort of dark wonder at what he was
seeing off to our right out across the river, punctuated by the fact that the normally trigger-happy SAW gunner, who preferred the music of gunfire to
anything else found on his iPhone, had suddenly stopped firing, I involuntarily looked up to see what had captured the Ranger’s attention.
Even hard-core Sergeant Kurtz paused. And this is what we saw.
Walking through the night mist and clearing smoke of the mortar strike, striding across the field and heading toward the dark river and straight for us… was a real live giant.
A goliath. Easily twelve feet tall but built like it was hewn from a mountain. Thick and wide. All muscle.
Later, PFC Kennedy, who plays a lot of D&D, would say that it was maybe a hill giant, and then he added a bunch of other geek stuff no one could stand to listen to.
At that moment, as it tromped across the river shallows toward us, it didn’t look like one of those friendly giants in Disney cartoons. Or even the sort of misshapen cave trolls from the Jackson films.
“Talker! Inside the pit! Brumm, find me the Carl Gustaf!” Then Sergeant Kurtz ran a line of bright fire up the torso of the menacing giant in the flowing dirty gray kaftan with an iron cap across its head. The rounds spat out and streaked across the water as Kurtz tried to find his range. The giant wasn’t lumbering, and it carried a massive spiked mace. From its wrists dangled heavy chains. It began to laugh, bellowing angrily as it came on at a smooth, fast stride that would have it all over us in seconds.
That was the scary part. How fast it moved.
The 7.62 from the M24O just made it angry. I knew that because it began to charge across the river, raising a massive mace over its head with both of its fat swollen fists, river water gushing to get out of its way. I was in no doubt that the mace would crush us in a single blow within the next few seconds.
I may have said, “I think you made it mad!” while Specialist Brumm called out at the same time, “Loading HE!”
Sergeant Kurtz ignored me and silently burned through an entire belt of ammo, teeth gritted, as he tried to kill a thing that would not die. On the other hand, if looks could’ve killed, Kurtz’s glare would have done the job easily. That man is pure hate.
You always know where you stand with him. He just hates you.
I find that refreshing. It’s one of the reasons I walked away from my old life and chose the military. I like people who don’t play games. And yeah, I asked for a chance to become a Ranger, but all they would guarantee me when I signed up was linguist and Airborne. Also, my recruiter said there was no way in hell he was letting me join the infantry with an ASVAB score like mine. And wasn’t I “good at languages or something” the big E-6 Samoan had asked intently on the day I walked back into the recruiter’s office. Now that I think about it, there must’ve been some kind of bonus in it for him if I was.
Yeah. Eight languages plus some usable pick-up lines in a dozen more, buddy. Maxed the DLAB. And that’s just a made-up language.
So anyway, I’d just said “I think you made it mad” to Brumm. Which I hope I really said, because from a screenwriting point of view that’s perfect for what happened next. I want to be a writer someday on the other side of this.
I think you made it angry.
That’s what I said.
And then without missing a beat or even looking over at me, Brumm shouted “Firing HE!” and fired a round out of the Carl Gustaf launcher. A recoilless, direct-fire, 84mm weapon that is for all intents and purposes a miniature shoulder-fired artillery piece. It took off like an invisible hornet that was late for a drive-by.
It wasn’t an explosion. There was no kick that I saw. Just Brumm rocking back a bit as the round disappeared from the Gustaf. My ears were already ringing from the gunfire, but somehow the low whooomp of the weapon rose above the blare of gunfire and the battle cries of the orcs swarming in the river.
The round went straight through the looming giant and out its back, tearing away guts and bone in the half-light of the battle. I would find out later that the round was anti-personnel and that after ripping a hole in the giant it shotgunned eight hundred tungsten pellets through the giant’s back, effectively shredding the behemoth’s insides. It was like making a shotgun explode inside him.
The giant twisted, groaning titanically, and fell back toward the far shore, hitting the water with a terrific splash and crushing a bunch of his buddies.
In the darkness and sudden quiet Brumm muttered, “Carl Gustaf don’t care.”
