The morning the warband finally showed itself, Galves was quiet in that way only doomed places were quiet. The wind blew from the east, dry and tasting like stone. The sky was a pale, washed-out blue that made every shadow look twice as long. Soldiers murmured along the line, checking magazines, calibrating optics, adjusting helmets, chewing down nerves with routine.
Rus stood on the forward observation platform with a thermos of bitter coffee in one hand, Salvo sheathed against his right thigh, and his other hand resting on the rail. He didn't need binoculars. The QTE flickers that only he could see sharpened his vision when he wanted, subtle little HUD markers narrowing the distance like imaginary crosshairs.
But he lifted the binoculars anyway.
The first shapes emerged like a tide. No chaos. No scattered raiding parties. This was a formation. Ranks upon ranks. Columns. Shields. Banners made of bone, leather, and whatever they'd carved from the last thing they'd killed. Dust rose behind them in a sheet, a dirty veil that curled with every step of the warband.
They came over the ridge like the silhouette of an old story, dark, thick, and monstrously disciplined.
Stacy let out a low whisper behind him. "Holy shit."
Kate swallowed audibly. "That's… that's a lot."
Berta whistled through her teeth. "I was expecting a swarm. Didn't think they'd march like an army."
Rus didn't respond. He watched the warband crest another slope. More shapes appeared. More. More. The hillside behind them was black with bodies, tall, muscular, long-limbed orcs, all marked with bone piercings and crude armor hammered from scrap metal.
A familiar voice moved to his left. "Sightings confirmed. Hostile formation consistent with deep-warband doctrine."
That was Captain Leroux, one of the artillery officers. Clipboard in hand, rangefinder slung around his neck. He had the calm expression of a man who had done his math a thousand times and trusted the numbers more than his heartbeat.
Behind Leroux, his crew unfolded devices like laser rangefinders, spotter scopes, angle gauges. Even their muttering sounded like equations.
"Distance?" Rus asked, though he already had a rough read from the QTE's phantom indicators floating over the ridge.
"Three-point-seven kilometers from the first crest," Leroux reported. "The main body still occluded. We're estimating a depth of… hold on—" He adjusted his rangefinder. "—eight hundred meters at minimum. Could be a kilometer. Hard to tell until they break the slope."
Berta leaned forward. "Why aren't we shooting yet?"
"Because we don't waste ammo on theatrics," Leroux said flatly. "They're still at a staggered elevation. Our angle is shit from this distance. Best target density is below the saddle… right there."
He pointed to a natural choke between two broken mountain ridges ahead. A narrow basin that funneled the slope downward. The Death Zone's first threshold.
"They step into that," Leroux continued, "and we get full splash damage. Maximum fragmentation. Every shell counts. Every blast radius overlaps. You think Command wants us burning through high-explosive for fun?"
Berta scratched her cheek. "I mean, yeah."
Leroux ignored her.
Rus lowered his binoculars and let his eyes adjust. The warband marched with unsettling synchronization. No screaming. No random roar of intimidation like the lesser Gobbers did. These ones were quiet except for the rhythmic thudding of their march.
"Organized," Rus murmured.
"Extremely," Leroux agreed. "Structured host, like the reports said. They've got a chain of command. Someone's giving orders."
Foster muttered behind him, "Great. Smart orcs."
Dan elbowed him. "Shut up. Smart things aim their weapons. That's not smart. That's… coordinated stupidity on a biblical scale."
Gino squinted. "You think they see us?"
"They know we're here," Rus said. "No one marches that clean unless they're expecting a wall."
The squad fell quiet.
A runner jogged up to Leroux, handed him a slip. The captain scanned it, then nodded once.
"Battery One through Six loaded and standing by. All firing crews ready. Range confirmed. Waiting for green."
He stepped onto the fire, control console, a raised steel platform with a sun-shield and a linked comm. The officers around him murmured distances, wind speed, terrain drop-off. Rus watched their hands as they moved with precise gestures, monotone commands and do the math of killing.
The warband had reached the ridge. They were descending.
Leroux raised his voice, sharp enough to cut the tension.
"Hold fire until the forward body breaches the basin. We want density before splash."
Amiel, silent as ever, stared at the approaching horde. She didn't blink. "They're accelerating."
"Good," Leroux said. "Saves us time."
The first row of orcs stepped beyond the threshold.
The QTE flicker in Rus's vision pulsed red, like some sick confirmation message in a game he hadn't signed up to play.
Leroux stabbed a finger at the comm.
"Battery! Fire mission, fire for effect!"
The world inhaled then exhaled in thunder.
The first artillery salvo screamed overhead, a chorus of tearing metal and collapsing air. The shells arced high, sunlight flashing off their casings before they dipped and vanished beyond the ridge.
A half-second of silence.
Then the mountain erupted.
The impact shook the ground under Rus's boots. The ridge vanished behind a wall of exploding dirt, flame, and gore. Red mist geysered upward like violently blooming flowers. The sound hit next with this deep, concussive, rolling. The kind that punched the lungs.
Thousands of orcs disappeared in one instant.
Rus didn't flinch. He just watched.
The second volley came before the smoke cleared.
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—
The basin became hell. Pieces of bodies flew in arcs. A leg here. A spine there. Armor turned into shrapnel and shrapnel punched through more bodies, doubling the kill.
Leroux shouted more coordinates, faster now. "Shift fire fifteen degrees east! Elevation minus three! Battery Seven engage, the backline is bunching!"
More thunder. More smoke. The ridge dissolved again into a sea of pressure waves and ruptured earth. Rus's hair blew back. Sandbags rattled. Kate covered her ears. Stacy winced. Even Berta blinked once.
Only Rus and Amiel didn't move.
The third volley hit deeper like someone punching knuckles straight into the earth. Giant plumes of ash and blood blossomed upward. The horde was thick enough that every shell found meat.
The air smelled like burnt metal and pulverized bone.
One of the artillery techs, red-cheeked and sweating, glanced at the feed. "Impact confirms… three thousand dead on the first volley. Estimated additional two thousand on second and third."
Berta raised an eyebrow. "So that's five thousand? Damn. That's one way to reduce the gene pool."
Leroux didn't look impressed. "There are more."
He wasn't lying. Already more bodies poured over the ridge, new ranks replacing the ones turned to vapor. The warband stretched so far back the horizon looked alive.
Rus kept watching, face blank, eyes steady.
He'd seen death. He'd caused death. But this was scale.
This was numbers.
This was what war turned into when patience ran out.
The fourth volley fell.
The fifth.
The sixth.
The mountain burned.
After seven volleys, the ridge was nothing but smoking craters and red mud. What once had been a disciplined formation was now a field of scraps and limbs. But the warband still came.
Still marching.
Still organized.
Still filling the basin with bodies.
Foster whispered, "They don't stop."
"They won't," Rus said.
Leroux barked one more correction and raised his hand over the mic.
"Fire for saturation. Burn the entire basin."
The line of howitzers thundered like gods clearing their throats. Shells rained down without pause now becoming a mechanical rhythm, unrelenting, methodical.
The basin turned into a blender.
Rus watched the hillside collapse into haze. No fear. No awe. Just that same distant, muted processing he had whenever the QTE flickered in his vision. Attack. Defend. Evaluate. Continue.
Kate wiped sweat from her forehead. "Boss, doesn't this… bother you?"
Rus shook his head once, slowly. "It's war. This is how you kill numbers."
He took another sip from his thermos. The coffee had gone cold.
The artillery shook the earth again.
Bodies flew.
Smoke rose.
The warband died by the thousands.
And Rus just watched.
* * *
The shelling didn't stop, it only escalated.
Artillery pounded the ridge until the air turned into a vibrating wall of pressure. Every explosion folded into the next, a chain reaction of earth and fire. What the howitzers didn't obliterate, the mortars chewed apart. What the mortars missed, the automated turrets stitched into ribbon.
Then the sky screamed.
The first jets came in low like sleek, dark silhouettes slicing through the haze. Their engines howled, rattling teeth. Rus watched them bank in formation, each one tilting just enough for the sun to flare off their undersides.
The lead aircraft opened fire.
A solid line of 30mm shells tore across the scorched basin. The ground convulsed. Orc bodies disintegrated, some sliced clean in half, others turned to mist. The jet's nose-mounted camera beamed the feed to the commander's tent, a shaky stream of death, zooming in and out as the cannon stitched light through flesh.
Another pair of jets followed, dropping cluster munitions that burst midair, raining steel ball bearings the size of marbles, enough velocity to punch through an engine block, let alone muscle. The basin churned with the impact.
Helicopters thundered overhead next, rotors chopping the air into dust storms. Their side-mounted guns spun up with a whining roar. Minigun tracers drew burning lines across the dead zone, turning the surviving clusters of orcs into shuddering heaps.
Half the squad covered their ears. Rus didn't bother. He'd long since learned how to let noise pass through him like another kind of weather.
Then the bay responded.
The ships began firing heavy-caliber naval artillery that dwarfed everything inland. The first salvo sounded like the earth itself howling. The shells landed deep into the warband's backline, obliterating entire pockets of orcs still cresting the hill. The force of impact flattened trees and scattered boulders.
The second salvo hit harder.
The third carved a trench where hundreds once stood.
The fourth turned the hillside into a boiling crater.
For half a day the firing never truly stopped. Jet runs. Helicopter sweeps. Naval bombardments. Artillery barrages. Coordinated strikes. Precision hits. A storm of metal and fire so constant that even the sun dimmed behind the smoke.
By midday the ridge was no longer a ridge—it was a shaking pit of ash, pulverized stone, melted scraps of armor, and unrecognizable gore.
Still, the orcs came.
Some crawling.
Some dragging ruined limbs.
Some staggering upright in the face of hell.
And each one died before taking ten steps.
Eventually, the fire commands went quiet. Batteries reloaded. The sky cleared. The smell of cordite, burning flesh, and overturned soil rolled over the line like a toxic wave.
Only then did they hear the call:
"GREENHORNS MOVE FORWARD. AND CONFIRM KILLS."
Dozens of rookies, jumpy and pale, climbed over the trench walls. Some carried rifles too large for their shaky arms. Others poked bodies with bayonets to make sure no one twitched. A few retched into their masks. The sergeants berated them halfheartedly.
Rus watched the greenhorns climb over mounds of charred meat and shattered bone. Their boots sank halfway into the gore. Some of the bodies were intact enough to identify as orcs. Most were just shapes.
Berta groaned loudly.
"Goddammit. No blood left to spill. All mush."
She kicked at a clump of burned remains. It squelched, sending black ichor dripping down her boot.
"Half a day of this," Berta grumbled, hoisting her axe over her shoulder. "And for what? Not even a skull left. Not even a spine to crack."
Kate wrinkled her nose. "They're paste."
Stacy tried breathing through her shirt. "More like soup."
Berta leaned over, poking a scorched torso with the toe of her boot. The ribcage collapsed like wet cardboard. She recoiled and wiped the boot on a rock.
"This is bullshit," she announced. "I wanted a fight. Not… this damn porridge."
Rus didn't look away from the field. "Artillery doesn't leave leftovers."
"No shit," Berta muttered. "I wanted to split a few heads."
"You can be strong," Rus said, voice flat, "but can you outrun a hundred cannons, six batteries, two squadrons of jets, three helicopter wings, and a naval barrage?"
Berta snorted. "You make it sound like we're cheating."
Rus nodded once. "We are. And we win."
She stared at the cratered horizon and lowered her axe. "Yeah. Guess even freaks like them can't tank that much metal."
Foster trudged up, wiping sweat. "No one can. Not even a Counter."
Rus's eyes flicked over the dead zone—nothing moved now. No sound but the distant clatter of rookies gagging into their helmets.
"Exactly," he said quietly. "Mutations don't mean shit when the sky wants you dead."
Berta sighed, defeated. "Fine. Whatever. This day sucks."
She kicked another lump of gore, instantly regretted it and wiped her boot again with twice the disgust.
"Next warband," she muttered, "I'm cutting something. I don't care if it's already dead. I'll just find one that's mostly intact and—"
"Don't finish that sentence," Rus said.
She glared, but it was half-hearted. "You never let me have fun."
"Your fun is a war crime waiting to happen."
"Yeah, well," she muttered, waving a hand at the sizzling field, "this is boring."
Rus didn't disagree. He just kept watching as the rookies picked through the remains, stepping gingerly around the steaming puddles. Some took pictures. Some whispered nervously. One knelt to poke a burned skull and immediately fainted face-first into the muck.
Dan groaned. "That one's going to need therapy."
"No," Gino said. "He's going to need a shower."
"A priest," Foster added.
"A lobotomy," Berta said.
Rus inhaled the burning air. "They'll adapt."
Amiel, silent until now, stepped beside him. "They will," she murmured. "But they won't forget this."
Rus nodded. "Good. They shouldn't."
The ridge still smoldered. The smoke curled upward like dark offerings. The air was thick with soot and ash. No living orc remained in sight—just the memory of a formation erased in half a day.
Rus watched it all without blinking. Without softness. Without any surge of triumph or disgust.
Just another operation.
Another day of numbers.
Another proof that the only thing stronger than muscle was industrial violence.
"And that," Berta said, dropping her axe into the dirt with a thud, "is why armor with guns and artillery will always be the top dog."
Rus nodded once.
"Exactly."