Austronesia People's Empire, Imperial Maharlika, New Guinea, Guna, Near the Beach Shore.
1st Year of the New Age, Monday, 3rd Week, 3rd Month of Abraham.
Dozens of military trucks rumbled down the road near Guna with their engines roaring as they came to a halt in front of a beach.
The rear tailgates dropped, and soldiers in digital camo swiftly disembarked, hopping out and forming up in the fields. Once their cargo had been dumped, the trucks rolled out and returned to fetch the next batch of soldiers.
"Alright you maggots, listen up!" a Corporal yelled over the crashing waves and pointed toward a rise overlooking the sea. "Grab your entrenching tools and start digging! I want proper firing foxholes here, here, and here!"
"Yes, Corporal!" the recruits shouted in unison as they grabbed their tools and began digging.
"Come on, chop chop!" The Corporal yelled as he strolled among the recruits digging foxholes. "Your lives depend on the foxholes you're digging! You'll fight in them, take cover in them, sleep in them, even shit in them! So make sure you dig them nice and deep!"
"The enemy is coming!" He continued as he yelled encouragement to the frantically digging recruits. "This is no longer a drill! This is real action!" He pointed toward the sea. "Hundreds, maybe thousands, of green-skinned scum are heading our way to kill and rape us! But don't worry, today is a great day to purge these aliens!"
"The sky is clear, we got a nice breeze here, and a great view of the sea," he stood over the rise watching his platoon of recruits, "It's practically a perfect shooting range built for us here!"
"HOORAH!" The recruits roared as they dug faster with renewed energy, piling sand and soil over the sides of the holes.
"You boys will hold this stretch of the beach," the Corporal continued, "Platoon 1 will be on your left flank and Platoon 3 on your right! We will defend this beach with everything you got!"
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As Delta Company began making defenses of the beach, one of the recruits stood in the trench he had dug, eyeing the ocean through the narrow firing slits. He carefully dropped some gun oil onto his bolt carrier and gave it a good wipe, before reassembling it back into his rifle.
He cycled the bolt, making sure the action was smooth and squeezed the trigger, then dry-fired the new AF-1 Rifle, making sure the mechanism was working.
Carefully, he pulled the bolt back and loaded two five-round stripper clips one after another into the open chamber before closing the bolt and setting the weapon to safety.
"Sarge," he called to the sergeant, who was resting against the sandy wall with his eyes closed. "Think we can win?"
"Of course," the Third Sergeant replied without hesitation. "We've fought larger numbers before. Plus, we've got these new rifles, fresh off the drawing board. We'll be the first to use them."
Standing up, he turned around and faced the ocean, where he looked at the sun dipping low on the horizon, minutes from setting, the same moment their enemy would arrive.
"And lucky for us," he added as a grim smile formed on his face, "we already have our target practice coming our way."
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Lieutenant Colonel Ciaphas Cahyono stood beside the jeep while scanning the horizon with his binoculars, trying to spot the enemy fleet. Overhead, two Thunderwings roared past over his head, racing toward the distant sky.
Lowering his binoculars, Cahyono glanced up at the fading dark shapes in the sky with a frown deepening across his face.
"The Admiral says the enemy fleet bypassed the Navy using teleportation and is now cloaked?" Cahyono asked, turning to Specialist Sergeant Dice, who leaned casually against the jeep with a pair of shades.
"Yup," Dice replied with a nod. "Our naval strategy didn't pan out, but their cloaking spell should be temporary. We can spot them in the infrared or wait until the magic wears off."
Cahyono raised his binoculars once more, following the Thunderwings as they shrank into the horizon. "It's almost time. Is everything in place?"
"Yes, sir," Dice confirmed. "All four recruit companies are dug in, and Delta Company is standing by as the reserve. The big question is whether the Orcs will scatter their fleet or hit the beach in one concentrated strike."
Suddenly, bright flashes lit up the horizon, casting an eerie glow over the purplish sky. A short while later, distant rumbles of thunder rolled in.
"Looks like the Air Force has engaged them. Let's hope they can take out as many ships as possible," Cahyono remarked.
Dice smirked. "Good chance to test the recruits. Nothing like live fire training for them. Plus, it'll give us a chance to see how these new Magic Guns perform in combat."
"How's the artillery setup coming along?" Cahyono asked, lowering his binoculars again.
"We've got six batteries of 120mm mortars on stand-by. Each battery has three mortars, spread out behind the companies for fire support," Dice reported. "The problem is, we don't have enough ammo for prolonged engagement. Each gun has only roughly 60 mortar bombs, but we've got plenty of starburst shells to light up the night sky for the troops to see."
"The mortarmen may need to relocate the mortars depending on where the Orcs land," Dice added. "So, I went ahead and attached some trucks and jeeps to their batteries, just in case."
Cahyono nodded in approval before snapping his binoculars back up. "There! They came out of hiding behind their magic."
Dice quickly raised his own binoculars and frown as he spotted the mass of black dots against the horizon, silhouetted by fire and smoke.
"Damn," he uttered. "We really need to figure out that cloaking spell and invent technology out of them. It'd be a damn game changer."
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"Fasta!" Jiak roared over the crashing waves, "Land kan be seen! Once we have landed, we will no longa be at 'da mercy uv dose fly'n monstaz!"
"Warmasta!" One of his bodyguards called out, pointing upward, "More fly'n monstaz!"
Jiak snarled and turned to the shaman standing beside him. "Shaman! Use all yer powaz an' blow da fleet ta shore now! If not, our Boyz will all die ere!"
The shaman nodded resignedly and muttered into his crystal orb. Before long, a sickly green glow enveloped the ships, and they lurched forward, accelerating unnaturally toward the distant shoreline. One by one, the Shamans throughout the fleet began collapsing from mana burn with blood steaming from their noses and ears as they burned through their life force.
The leading galleys glided up the sandy beach with bone-crunching force, sending unsecured warriors crashing into each other, shattering limbs. The ships behind, being slower to steer away, rammed into the ships already breached on shores, creating chaos and causing more casualties among the Orc crew.
Soon every ship settled down on shore, and cries of the dying could be heard over the waves.
Jiak grinned, baring his tusks. "We made it! Now, get off da ships!"
But before the command could fully sink in, several whistling sounds could be heard over the waves, growing louder and louder. Jiak frowned, glancing up in confusion just as something shrieked past his head.
BANG!
In an instant, half of his skull throne behind him exploded, sending splinters and bone fragments showered over his head.
"Wot iz dis?" He roared, glancing up from over the wooden railings of his ship.
The sun had set, yet despite that, the area around the beach where Jiak's fleet had landed was brightly illuminated in an unnatural light by mage fire or balls of glowing orbs hanging in the sky.
He did not expect to encounter any resistance on the shore and now his shamans were mana drained and made useless by the spell used to cloak the fleet.
"How did da Soft Skins know we were kom'n?" Jiak snarled in disbelief. "Kould 'da attacks from 'da fly'n monstaz be part uv their trick?"
His rage boiled over. "Charge! Attack da Soft Skins!" He leapt from his ship and slapped the flat of his blade against the bewildered Orcs. "Get off 'da ships! FOR DA HORRRDE!!"
The Orcs around him, emboldened by his fury, rallied and charged up the beach, shrieking their war cries that echoed across the beach.
"WAGHHHH!"
"WAGGGHHHHHH!"
"WAAAAAGGGHHH!"
The magical lights overhead lit their path, but with each step, the distant flashes of gunfire grew closer.
Soon, a buzzing whizzing sound filled the air like a swarm of angry bees.
One by one, Orcs fell silently to the ground, as if their lives had been snuffed out in an instant. Others screamed in agony as limbs and torsos were ripped apart by unseen forces.
A louder whistle cut through the chaos, followed by an explosion of flame and sand erupted in the area Jiak stood. The shockwave hit him like a battering ram, bowling him off his feet and to the ground.
Spitting sand from his mouth, Jiak stumbled to his feet and shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears. He turned to rally his troops, only to be consumed by another massive explosion.
When Jiak came to, he found himself in the center of a smoking crater. All around him, his warriors were shredded, lifeless. One Orc at his feet was still barely alive and a shriek escaped him as his bloody guts spilled from the gaping wound where half his body had once been.
Jiak stared at the carnage, his mind numb, before the area around him erupted in flames and explosions once more.
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"Watch your front! Make your shots count!" The commanding officer yelled over the deafening roar of AF-1 rifles. His throat burned from inhaling the thick, acrid blue smoke that clung to the air. "Aim low, aim low!"
The AF-1 rifles, powered by magical propellant, had a punishing recoil far stronger than the modern chemical-based firearms. During trials of the guns, it was found that the force of the recoil tends to kick the muzzle up slightly. Therefore during training, the instructors drilled into the recruits to fire low to compensate for the powerful recoil.
The officer pressed the stock of his Magic Rifle against his shoulder and peered through the sights, waiting for the strange magical smoke to clear. He adjusted his aim slightly, leading his sights on an Orc attempting to dash across the beach. He aimed at where he expected the creature to be within seconds.
As the smoke thinned, he locked onto his target and squeezed the trigger, and was rewarded immediately with a painful kick in his shoulder followed by a thunderous crack split the air, and a dense cloud of magical smoke billowed out as the 8.25 mm steel-jacketed Mithril bullet, weighing 13.3 grams, ripped through the darkness like a red laser.
It took almost a second to traverse the 300 meters between the rifle and kiss the upper torso of the charging Orc he fired at.
If it had been a standard 7.62 mm round, it might have barely scratched the Orc's stone-tough hide. But their thick hide proofed no resistance against the spinning bullet made out of a magical steel from another world as they pierced through the creature's chest wall and shattered its upper ribs, before the projectile mushrooming and fragmenting into pieces upon impact, sending one shard spiraling downward, punching through the back and leaving a gaping fist-sized exit wound.
The other shard continued on at a slight angle and ricocheted upward, ripping into the left lung before lodging in the scapula.
The Orc toppled backward with a cut-off warcry, collapsing into the sand with a wet gurgle. The spent fragment exited his back and struck another Orc behind him, bruising its abdomen before both of them went down in a tangle of bodies.
Momentarily dazed, the second Orc sat up and rubbed the impact point on his body where the spent bullet had hit him, rose to his feet, and let loose a furious roar. Before he could charge again, another bullet struck and obliterated half of his right arm, leaving it dangling by the threads of his bicep muscle and skin.
Howling in anger and pain, the Orc staggered back and crashed into the sand. He picked up a discarded saber and slashed off the remnants of his crippled arm.
Gritting its teeth, the Orc growled and continued his charge, albeit slower than before, while leaking blackish blood from the open wound. But the Orc ignored his injury as he joined the rest of the horde in rushing toward the human defensive lines.
The maze-like barbed wire barricades funneled the Orcs into a killing zone as they tried to navigate through. Some of the Orcs attempted to climb over the razor-sharp wires, only to get caught and tangled, while others hacked and slashed at the barriers.
The defenders made good use of this situation and poured fire into the amassed Orcs, pinning them down. Soon, a small mound of bodies formed around the barb wires, where some Orcs took over under the fallen bodies of their own kin.
At the rear of the Orc forces, dozens of crude looking catapults were heaved into position, and massive stones were hurled through the air, though most missed their mark, crashing down on the heads of their own warriors. A few found human targets, killing them instantly, but the majority of the stones fell short, causing chaos in the Orc ranks.
Standing on top of a boulder for a better view of the battle, Jiak the SkullKrusher growled in frustration. Despite their overwhelming numbers, the Orcs had made no progress and couldn't break those soft skins defenses!
"Has Elda discovered wot spells dose tri-cursed Soft Skins are us'n?" Jiak snarled as he turned his furious gaze on the Elder Shaman beside him, who was covered in a hooded cloak made of animal skins. Mysterious symbols were painted with blood adorned all over the cloak while chaotic tattoos that make eyes crawl could be seen on the shaman exposed hands.
But what made the Elder Shaman appear more strange is that he seemed shorter and more slender than an Orc, yet larger than a Goblin, as if a humanoid was underneath the large hooded cloak.
"Warbearer Jiak," The Elder Shaman raised his palm in a greeting with a low raspy voice, "Elda have no idea wot powa or magic da Soft Skins wield. Da spirits... are konfused."
"Konfused?" Jiak leaped down from the boulder, landing with a heavy thud that cracked the ground beneath him. "Jiak dinks ya betta talk ta 'da spirits more. Dose 'booms booms' are stomp'n' our clansman by da dousands an' yet clansman kouldn't even reach 'da 'umiez!"
BOOM!
Suddenly, an explosion erupted nearby, tearing through the surrounding Orcs. But Jiak stood firm as his thick hide protected him from the blast, while the Elder Shaman remained unscathed as he was protected beneath a magical barrier that covered his whole body.
"...I'll try ma best, Warmasta."