The boats were silent other than their outboard motors as they drove toward the sounds of shooting. Dan took in the murky afternoon light and the brackish swamp water as they wove through the cypress trees. He wasn’t exactly excited to go back into combat without a full resupply for the suits, but General Richard had been adamant. The Army of New Orleans was getting hit hard up and down their battle line, and they needed immediate relief.
Dan grudgingly agreed. His team was carrying about half of the fuel and ammunition he would have liked, but from the sound of things, supplies were starting to run low as well. Even the militia was being pressed into service as reinforcements for the actually trained guard troops. Beyond the rough sketch of the situation given to him by Major Champlain after the General hung up, they were going in blind.
The major didn’t even have proper orders for him. The constant fighting draped the entire front in the fog of war. Dan got the impression that the Army didn’t even know which unit was where. They just wanted all hands on deck to weather the onslaught of Orakh, and Dan’s team was the largest untapped force in the area.
He rapped Abe on the metal pauldron of his shoulder. The Army of New Orleans might not mind throwing his team at the Orakh like a bucket of water on a forest fire, but Dan did. If they were going to go in, he wanted to have a plan of some sort. The last couple hours proved the futility of the half-assed approach.
Humanity had plenty of advantages over the Orakh, namely that the toads couldn’t handle ranged combat nearly as well as the elves. Really, their only response was to try and charge fire teams, overwhelming them with sheer numbers. Up close, things weren’t as human-friendly. The average Orakh was built like a gorilla and could hack apart an unenhanced human fairly easily. Theoretically, a human could fight them off with a knife or an axe, but for the large part, once an Orakh was in melee range with a person, that person was lunch.
Until this point, outside of Dan’s team, battles had been a series of one-sided engagements. Humans dominated at range, gunning down large swaths of Orakh without any retaliation. Up close, the tables turned and battles would end in seconds as the Orakh simply slapped aside rifles and overpowered their human prey. Generally, that meant that you should aim your boat toward where you heard firing. If guns were shooting, it meant people were still alive and that the Orakh were probably at range. Probably.
Dan frowned, rapping his fist against Abe’s shoulder pauldron once again. This time, his fist bounced off with a dull ‘thonk,’ stinging his knuckles, but getting Abe’s attention. Abe shuffled slightly, careful to not tip the boat with his armor’s huge bulk and split his face plate.
“What’s up boss?” He cracked a brief smile. “I just got a little distracted taking in the scenery. I didn’t hear you if you were trying to talk to me.”
“I was just thinking, Abe.” Dan scratched at his chin where stubble was starting to grow in. He hadn’t had a chance to shave properly in the last couple of days, due to the constant training and runecrafting, and he had the scraggly and misshapen beginnings of a beard to show for his efforts. “It sounds like the plan from HQ is for us to set down on an island and shoot until our guns run dry, then hack things apart with melee weapons until we run out of fuel. If we’re lucky, the Orakh will run out of bodies before we run out of supplies.”
“You know,” Abe replied pensively, glancing out into the swamp. “I haven’t seen a whole lot of supply runs go by, lately. I think we’re running low on bullets, and that makes what you’re describing a shit plan.”
“I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on.” Dan grimaced. “That call with HQ undermined any trust I might have ever had in them. They’re just praying and throwing a Hail Mary right now, and I have a sinking feeling in my gut that we’re their last desperate attempt at actually solving this mess.”
“Well,” Abe glanced back at him, chewing at his upper lip. “Fuck.”
“I’m getting the feeling that things won’t get better unless we make them better.” Dan returned Abe’s unhappy look. “If we settle down on an island, waiting for the Orakh to bury us with their numbers, we’ll be sitting ducks. I think our only real bet here is to stay mobile. I’ll be able to drop Fireballs on the Orakh at a pretty good clip without wasting anything but mana, and at this point, that recharges fairly quickly.”
“That would take some pressure off of the other units.” Abe glanced out toward the sounds of gunfire in the encroaching gloom. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, though. Our boats aren’t exactly patrol ships. They can move, and they have guns on them, but behind that, I wouldn’t want to put them through quick maneuvers. We have too much metal piled on top of them that could easily tip into the bayou. As some of that metal, I’d prefer to avoid that possibility.”
Dan nodded. Abe had a point. The military had more specialized boats that could strafe the Orakh horde, and presumably they were doing that right now. Either that, or it wasn’t a good plan, and the ships were already hacked apart and resting at the bottom of the bayou.
“Do you think the Orakh are stretched thin right now?” he asked Abe, still mulling over his options.
“If they aren’t,” Abe said with a shrug, metal rubbing against metal on his armor, “we’re so fucked, it hardly matters, anyway. Theoretically, the crazies from Florida are attacking at the same time. We don’t have any idea what the Orakh numbers look like, but from the amount of gunfire I’m still hearing, I’d estimate we’ve put a pretty good dent in whatever that total number looks like.” Abe eyed him suspiciously. “Why? What are you thinking?”
“Well…” Dan shrugged sheepishly. “When things got rough in Brazil, Jennifer and I just kinda pushed through enemy lines.”
“What?” Abe’s eyes widened. “Do you know how many of those things are out there? Of course you don’t! No one does. I’ve already decided how I’m going to die, and it involves a heart attack during a threesome at the age of ninety three. Getting eaten by space frogs after I stupidly stuck my head down their metaphorical throats is not part of the plan.”
“Come on, Abe,” Dan wheedled, a hint of a smile on his face. “If we set up shop on an island, we’re just waiting to be overwhelmed. We might as well push through the front and get to the Orakh landing craft. Most of the Orakh are probably still swarming the battle line. If we push through them, they probably won’t be able to catch up with us. We’ll be able to hit the landing craft and do some serious damage before withdrawing. It might even be enough to get us through this mess.”
“You sound like every dumb lieutenant on his first posting combined into one person right now, Thrush,” Abe replied, his eyes closed. “Seriously man, it’s uncanny. You can probably monetize that ability to make a fortune. Somewhere else. Where you aren’t leading me on a suicide mission.”
“Give me another choice then, Abe,” Dan probed. “It’s not my favorite plan, but the other options are to turn tail, likely letting New Orleans get wiped out after the army falls, or we stand and fight and probably get wiped out with the Army. Not the best options in my book, so I figured we should try and Kobayashi Maru this.”
“As much as I want to call you a nerd for that…” Abe opened his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t think I have any better options for you. It could work, so long as we don’t run into a big cluster of them. We haven’t been able to find any long-distance communication enchantments or spells so far. Doesn’t mean they don’t have it, but I doubt they’ll be able to radio for help in time. We’ll probably be able to beat word back to the landing craft that we’re on our way.”
“There’s that optimism I expect from you.” Dan chuckled, slapping his open palm against the suit.
“I’m still not happy about this,” Abe grumbled, flashing a hint of a smile. “It doesn’t help that you’re right about everything. I just expect that’ll make you all the more insufferable later.”
Dan smiled as Abe began using his suit radio to coordinate the change in plans. As much as William wanted to be his second in command, Abe was the one that actually knew what he was doing. He’d organized and coordinated small units for years, and Dan suspected that Abe knew more about tactics than he’d ever manage to learn. As for Jennifer, she was like Dan: good at killing things, not planning things.
The ships slightly changed course as Abe pushed his way to the front of the ship, motioning for the gunner on the .50 caliber to step aside. Even through his suit, Dan could see Abe flexing and relaxing his hands. It was sort of refreshing, actually, to see someone with as much experience as Abe getting pre-battle jitters. He was always collected, ready to break the mood with some stupid pun or dark joke. Watching him psych himself up for a tough stretch of combat humanized him to Dan in a way he had never realized he needed.
Before long, muzzle flashes cut through the murky light. The Army held out on a ragged string of islands, firing at the Orakh swarming toward them through the water. Periodically, the hulking shadow of an Orakh would make landfall, only to be torn apart with gunfire from a squad-operated weapon.
Individually, the New Orleans’ Army’s M-16s didn’t do much against the Orakh, the small, fast bullets knocking them around but frequently failing to do fatal damage. But, in large numbers, they did the job adequately. More effective were the larger squad-operated automatic weapons that occasionally stuttered, bringing down a handful of their opponents as they sawed through their numbers in a quick burst. Despite the weapons’ effectiveness, most of the fire coming from the islands was from the M-16s set to single shot. Without rifles of their own, the Army didn’t need to focus on suppressing Orakh return fire and instead opted to conserve ammunition.
Dan couldn’t quite make out how many soldiers were on each island, somewhere between a platoon and a company. Their boats sped by, raking the Orakh forces with heavy machine gun fire. Not to be outdone, Dan threw a trio of Fireballs, one after another, into the masses of Orakh preparing to dive into the waters of the swamp. He never saw how much damage their fusilade did to the cluster of Orakh, but he felt the trickle of mana that indicated something, at least, had died from his spells.
Just before the sun set, they made out the shape of the landing craft, a jagged spire of metal and rock sticking up almost thirty feet from the swamp. Given the vessel’s shape, size, and weight, Dan was willing to bet the mission’s payout that the ship extended almost as far underground as well. It glowed in the darkness, torches, and bonfires littering its outside and illuminating the milling swarm of Orakh that had eluded them on their trip past the battle line.
Dan blew out a quick breath to steady himself as he began preparing another Fireball. Abe glanced back at him, his face concealed by the heavy metal of his power armor’s mask, and gave Dan a thumbs up before turning back to the machine gun and chambering a round. They were about to charge the city of New Orleans an exorbitant amount of money. It was time to prove they were worth the expense.
