We were even closer when the shooting started.
“Use your secondaries!” shouted Kurtz as we breached the final level beneath the sprawling dome. We’d just ascended a line of twisting stairs that took us up through the last levels of the well, areas that seemed to be set aside for storage and construction. Lots of skulls, mummies, tools, and dead candles. The place reeked of something unholy.
And believe me, I’m usually a rational person of science. But some things are just wrong. And this whole place felt like one big that.
Somewhere, far down below, in some system of hidden rooms, secret tunnels, or unfound halls we’d never gotten close to accessing, lay the final resting places of the Ilner. The operators. But that discovery would have to wait for another day. Right now, we were in a running firefight and trying to make our way out and up into the tower in order to make our hit time.
The clock wasn’t burning. It had burnt. Kurtz was no longer reminding us of that. He was just a desperate man doing his best to get us where we needed to be. His Rangers needed Team Rogue to be where it needed to be when the attack went down. And we weren’t.
That was unacceptable. This was as close to mission failure as one of Kurtz’s elements had ever been. The only positive was that at this point we were keeping the enemy tied up with us, which meant keeping at least some of them off the main gate.
The snipers were engaging teams of orcs trying to push us from the rear as the firefight made its way through the upper catacombs. Incoming crow-feathered arrows streaked through the shadows and firelight to land among us, striking walls and gear. Sergeant Thor had been hit, but it wasn’t bad. Or so he said. Kurtz, Tanner, and Brumm were clearing the path forward. We’d hit dead ends twice and had barely gotten out of there as the enemy tried to close its forces about our necks like a noose you didn’t want to get caught in.
It wasn’t the dark and deep that made you feel claustrophobia’s creep. It was the enemy. And for some reason that made you angry. Like all you wanted was a clear path to kill your way through and breathe some fresh air if there was any left in this ruined old world we ended up in.
At the last dead end we almost became just that. Dead. Suddenly going hand-to-hand as a group of orcs dressed in gray rags, probably six of them, came with knives from out of a secret door we hadn’t spotted there in the nowhere-to-go space.
That was a common thing in Kennedy’s games, according to the wizardly PFC. Secret doors. They were hidden and you could find them.
Kurtz and company were down to last mags. We’d need those for the fight in the fortress to keep the perimeter clear for the snipers to work once the attack started. So suddenly the Rangers and I were hacking at the orcs who’d come out of the secret door with our newly acquired “weapons of renown” we’d taken off the floor of the crypt far below. The crypt full of the wights who’d once been Ice Kings in the long-ago Ages of Forgotten Ruin.
Last of Autumn had told us the weapons were of Dragon Elf make. Shining and beautiful, broad, curved, leaf-shaped blades. They were light to handle, incredibly sharp, and hit with more force than they should have. That was the magic, apparently.
We’d just eluded a team of orcs following us up the last set of stairs and had come down this dark hall only to find a sudden torchlit dead end. I noticed our weapons beginning to glow with a soft blue cold light. The Dragon Elf weapons.
“Orcs!” shouted Last of Autumn in the little English she’d managed to pick up. Except it sounded like “Oaks!”
“Here they come,” shouted Brumm. “We makin’ a last stand here, Sar’nt.” He was talking about the orcs to our rear, the ones who’d tracked us and followed us down this dead end.
Rico and Soprano wanted to use the two-forty to clear our way back to the stairs. But Sergeant Kurtz was trying to save the last two drums we had for the defense of the tower above. With the death machine that was a two- forty working inside the inner courtyard of the castle, we could keep the tower clear and work over the defenders forward of our position. Burning ammo now meant the snipers had to do all the work while the tower was vulnerable to counterattack. And that could get real messy.
It was a question of asset management. How best to employ combat assets given the current tactical situation.
That was when a seam in the rune-covered wall, those strange
Egyptian hieroglyphics that were everywhere, just opened up, and out slipped these orc ninjas, because that’s what I’ll call them.
Orc ninjas.
They wore flowing dirty grey rags, even over their faces. All that could be seen were their glowering eyes and fangs. They moved silently, barefooted, and came swinging at us all at once. It was clearly a suicide attack. One of them whispered loud enough that I could hear and translate.
Effectively he said to his brother attackers, “My life for the Nether.” And they all whispered back a reply in orc that I didn’t understand.
Kurtz got his MK18 up and blocked a slash from the leader just in time. Then he kicked the thing in its balls, and apparently orcs had them because it went down groaning like a giant with severe intestinal distress. Kurtz fell back two steps, pulled the Dragon Elf blade he’d commandeered from out of his carrier where he’d stuck it, and jammed it right through the chest of the next fierce orc that decided to attack him. It was like the orc just impaled itself on Kurtz’s new sword, it went in so smooth and effortlessly. The stunned orc gasped and died, and Kurtz pulled his blade back out just as easily.
The rest of the orcs came at the rest of us. Tanner fired once and drilled one right in the head, then shifted and fired again, nailing another right between its beady little eyes.
His shooting, like everyone else’s, was on point. A polish of Hunters’ Fellowship had been added to the skills honed in Chief Rapp’s gunfighter school, resulting in some weird Matrix-level shooting even the Rangers were frankly amazed at.
“Hope it sticks,” Tanner remarked.
“No luck. All skill. But don’t jinx it,” Brumm muttered.
Now we were fighting. Including the Lost Boys with their bows. And I was in it whether I liked it or not. I’d decided not to shoot unless I had to so I could redistribute my mags to the real killers if needed. Have I mentioned I just came along on this ride to do languages? I think I’d carried my weight. So, I already had the interesting little elven dagger out and ready to contribute in order to spare ammo. Again, not thinking I’d actually need to use it. The blade wasn’t long. More on the order of a Roman gladius. And like I said, it felt light but when you swung it, it got heavier with increased momentum over the arc of the swing, or strike. Some kind of relativistic
effect that counted as magic here in the Ruin.
I was near the dead end when the whispering orcs came for us out of secret door with their wicked daggers. Without thinking, I slashed the first one that got close to me and took off the side of its scalp just like that, cutting into brain and bone and then thin air.
That doesn’t happen with regular knives and blades. Those have a tendency to bounce or just stick in cuts that deep.
But these were magic weapons.
The six orcs were dealt with in seconds, Kurtz getting two, Tanner two, me one, and I think Soprano shot one with his rifle. A couple had Lost Boy arrows in them, too. It all happened pretty quickly. And violently.
“These bad!” shouted Jabba as he cowered behind his ruck. This was his usual position when there was a fight going on. “Dark slayers. Not good. Not good.” The little goblin shouted in his pidgin Ranger English and Turkic when he didn’t have the right word. Jumping around and pointing as he did. “These from the Land of Nothing.”
He said that last part in Arabic.
“What’s he saying?” shouted Kurtz as more orcs came at us from the rear. The sergeant was looking to me for any kind of intel as to why the little gob was freaking out. But Land of Nothing had no context, sounded crazy, and didn’t contribute to the immediate threat. So I went with, “He says we’re in trouble.”
“No shit, Talker.” Kurtz then shouted at Thor. “Clear us a way back to the stairs. We gotta backtrack our way out of here.”
Two snipers had died on the way in. One from a… curse. The other from a fall. That left four. What happened next was amazing because as I turned away from the bloody remains of the orcs we’d just hacked to death, adrenaline surging through my body and making me feel like I was going to have a heart attack, fall into a pit I’d never get out of, or win some incredible prize, still hard to tell which, I could see dozens of orcs running down the dark, column-lined hall that had led us to the dead end.
“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.
