Note: Made some edits to reflect consistency with the airstrikes, added around 400 words.
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The night passed without incident, which was about the best Henry could ask for given the present company. He slept like a baby after his shift, waking up about as well-rested as one could be with six hours of sleep. The relative peace continued into the day, even after Lucan had gotten up and about.
Maren had taken over as the go-between at some point; Henry wasn’t sure exactly when, but by midmorning she was handling all the coordination between camps. They gave her a radio and showed her how to use it. She picked it up in about ten minutes, which was pretty impressive for someone who had never seen anything remotely similar.
She relayed logistics, smoothed over small frictions, and generally made herself indispensable in ways that Lucan either didn’t notice or couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge.
Henry was happy to let her. Every interaction that bypassed Lucan directly was an interaction that couldn’t spiral into a pissing contest, and Maren seemed to understand that calculus as well as he did.
They spent most of the morning prepping – checking all the gear, setting up berms along the ridge to hold the MRAPs. Only after lunch did they start moving into position.
Henry had Ron bring the MRAP up to the ridge so he could test the angle. The turret depressed fine; he could track the road without any dead zones. And if the convoy somehow got under them, well – Ron could just drive forward.
That settled the positioning.
Henry placed his MRAP here and Hayes’ about 1.2 klicks back, which should align well with a convoy presumably between two and three hundred meters long. That gave them both a five-hundred-meter engagement range on their respective ends – enough buffer that they wouldn’t be shooting toward each other.
Lucan’s team was the part he liked least.
Proper planning would have them in the center: midway between the MRAPs, able to cut right into the convoy. But that assumed Lucan would wait for the signal, and Henry wasn’t willing to bet on that. So he put them forward instead, off to the side of his own position – fifty meters out, tucked behind a rocky outcrop that would give them cover and keep the RWS from blowing out their eardrums.
That position would be close enough to coordinate and far enough that if Lucan jumped the gun, he’d at least be engaging the front of the convoy after Henry had already opened up. It wasn’t elegant, but it closed off one way for things to go sideways.
Surprisingly, Lucan had nothing to say about the positioning. Henry had half-expected an argument – something about being sidelined, most likely – but it never came. Maybe Maren had talked him down beforehand. Maybe he just didn’t care enough to fight over it. Either way, Henry wasn’t about to question the silence.
After they parked the MRAPs, Doc’s voice came up over the radio. “Drone’s up. Nothing on the route yet.”
Henry acknowledged and settled in. Nothing to do now but wait.
They spent the next two hours mostly debating enchanted rifles versus enchanted launchers. Sera was firmly in the rifle camp, for obvious reasons – she was the only one who could actually handle the recoil. Ron pushed for launchers, though his reasoning had less to do with practicality and more to do with ‘big boom good.’ He wasn’t wrong, technically, but Henry suspected he’d arrived at the right answer by accident.
Power armor came up as the next topic, but Doc’s voice cut in at 1655 before they could thoroughly explore that.
“I’ve eyes on the convoy, about four klicks out. Composition matches the ISR package; eighteen sledges, a hundred goblins, twenty hobs. Current pace puts them in the kill zone around 1710, maybe 1715.”
Henry checked the time. 1642. That wasn’t going to work – the whole point was to hit them right when Korth Varren went up, not fifteen minutes after, when they’d already had time to process and tighten up. He pulled up the drone feed and traced the convoy’s route against the ridge. The road curved along the basin for a good stretch before reaching their current position. If he moved about a klick northeast along the ridge, the convoy would be right underneath him at 1700.
“Ron, move us back. About a klick southwest, along the ridgeline.”
Ron started the engine and pulled the MRAP along the ridge, keeping below the crest. Henry radioed Hayes and Maren with the adjustment. They copied without comment. Doc kept the drone on the convoy, feeding updates as they repositioned.
They settled into the new position at 1651.
“All teams stand by,” Henry said. “Hold fire until the fireworks.”
He toggled the RWS to thermal, then back to optical. The convoy was visible now – distant, but there – crawling along the basin floor toward a fortress that had about nine minutes left.
The convoy emerged from the treeline at 1656, sledges in a loose column, hobs on crystallons riding the flanks, goblins sitting on cargo beds like wage slaves commuting to a job they hated. Eighteen vehicles stretched across maybe three hundred meters of road, moving at just over walking pace. The lead sledge was about two-thirds through the kill zone when Henry checked the time again.
One minute left.
He kept his reticle on the lead driver and waited. Sixty seconds out from the biggest fireworks show any goblin had ever seen, and the poor bastard was just sitting there, hunched against the cold, driving his sledge to a fortress that was about to stop existing.
And right on cue, Korth Varren went up in flames.
The first flash lit the northeast horizon and Henry felt his grin before he could stop it – a devastating blast punching through the fortress walls, followed a second later by the sound: a deep, concussive crack that rolled through the valley like thunder. Then another. Then three more, rapid fire, each one stacking on the last until the whole thing blended into a single sustained roar that vibrated through the MRAP’s chassis and straight into his sternum.
Secondary explosions ripped through whatever the goblins had been storing inside – munitions, alchemical supplies, whatever – sending a column of black smoke high enough to catch the orange sunlight. Kimball’s birds had just turned a thousand-year-old fortress into rubble, exactly as promised.
God bless the United States Air Force.
Turning his attention back to the monitor, Henry saw that the convoy had frozen – every goblin staring northeast, hobs reining in their crystallons. Not a single one of them so much as glanced at the ridge.
Henry would’ve paid good money to see Lucan’s face right about now. Too bad he’d have to settle for catching it at Korth Varren, assuming there was enough of the place left to visit.
Henry aligned the reticle on the lead vehicle and opened fire.
A burst of rounds from the .50 flew at the driver, eviscerating him and a portion of the cargo behind.
The sledge lurched as the dradaks lost their shit and veered hard, tipping onto its side and spilling crates and goblins across the road. The goblins scrambled to their feet, heads whipping around, trying to find something to fight – but there was nothing to see, just road and ridge and their own people dying.
The second sledge plowed into the wreckage before the driver could react, dradaks screaming as the vehicle jackknifed and threw goblins off the cargo bed. The third sledge managed to stop in time, but the fourth rear-ended it, and within about three seconds the front of the convoy had become a clusterfuck.
Henry shifted to the hobs.
Three hobs had spurred their crystallons forward, probably trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened to their convoy. Henry put the reticle on the lead rider and squeezed, and the .50 punched through his chest and into the crystallon’s neck in front of him – two for one, both down in a tangle of limbs. The second hob tried to wheel his mount, but Henry was already on him; he dropped mid-turn. The third one made a break for the treeline and got maybe ten meters before Henry put a burst across his back.
The goblins from the wrecked sledges had started to scatter – maybe a dozen of them bolting in every direction, some toward the rear, some toward the basin’s edge, some just away, like distance alone would save them. Henry toggled to the Striker.
Five of them had bunched up behind an overturned crate, probably thinking it counted as cover. It didn’t. He put the reticle on the cluster and sent a round, which landed a meter left of center and detonated in a burst of wood and flesh. Three stopped moving, and the other two staggered upright with blood running from their ears, just in time for Henry to put a second round between them.
“Good shit,” Ron said.
Henry spared a glance toward the rear of the convoy, where Hayes engaged.
He was far enough out that Henry couldn’t spot him, but both the drone feed and the light show in the distance made his work obvious – the tail end of the convoy coming apart sledge by sledge. The last sledge took a burst through the driver and veered into the drainage ditch as the dradaks bolted. The one in front of it just exploded when Hayes walked rounds through whatever alchemical shit they’d been hauling.
A few hobs at the rear tried to rally around some big bastard who’d dismounted and drawn steel, but Hayes put a burst into the cluster before they could form up, and that was the end of that.
Henry went back to lining up the next target when he noticed that Lucan and Corrin had already reached the convoy.
He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t just watched it happen – five hundred meters of open ground and a cliff face, covered in the thirty seconds or so since the ambush kicked off. When the fuck had they even started moving? Either they’d left the outcrop before Henry fired his first shot, or Tier Nines and up were basically speedsters – and he’d underestimated the hell out of them.
Then again, he did have an existing frame of reference. Sera had moved like that in Hardale, when she saved his ass from getting decapitated by a cloaked Nobian. She wasn’t quite speedster level, but well past anything human.
Yeah, Henry probably should have seen this coming. Didn’t matter now, though. Half his engagement area had just become a no-fire zone because Sir Dickhead wanted to play hero.
And play hero he did.
Lucan cut through the fifth sledge in a clean, fluid strike and reappeared at the seventh a heartbeat later, his blade carving through whatever was still standing.
Henry tried to track him on the monitor – tried being the operative word, because the fucker moved like a glitch in the feed, there and gone and somewhere else before Henry could even think about lining up a shot. It looked less like movement and more like frames missing from the feed.
Sure, it was annoying as hell from a fire-coordination standpoint, but he had to admit the man was putting in work. Goblins dropped in twos and threes wherever Lucan passed, most of them dead before they’d even registered the threat.
Corrin, on the other hand, was almost refreshingly comprehensible. He lumbered in after him at a relatively sane speed, his hammer pulping the goblins’ pathetic attempt at a shield wall. Even out of formation, with nothing to anchor or guard, he still fought like the line existed around him – an entire front held in one pair of hands.
Henry managed to get a probably clear shot on one of the sledges at some point, but he let it be. ‘Probably clear’ wasn’t good enough to put a .50 cal downrange toward a friendly, even a friendly he wanted to strangle.
So he worked the margins instead, starting with a sledge driver who’d abandoned his vehicle and made a break for the basin’s edge – Henry dropped him with a burst from the fifty. Another one tried to turn his sledge around, like he could just drive back through the wreckage and pretend none of this was happening, so Henry shot the dradaks and let the sledge grind to a halt on its own.
Things were going smoothly enough when six crystallon riders broke from the convoy’s center, hauling ass toward the southern slope. Henry considered their trajectory and target, halfway through the mental math as a TOW made it irrelevant.
The TOW streaked across the monitor, contrail burning a line through the feed, and hit the center of the formation. The blast swallowed all six riders, all six crystallons, the two sledges nearby, and about a dozen goblins who’d picked the worst possible spot to stand. Secondary fires bloomed where the sledges had been – more alchemical shit cooking off.
“Holy fuck!” Ron banged the dashboard. “Tear shit up, Hayes! Woo!”
Henry checked the drone feed. The crater smoked, nothing in or near it moving.
He shifted back to his sector.
Despite Lucan chaotically turning the convoy into his personal blender, the ridge team had their shit together.
Vaela stepped out from the outcrop and dropped lightning on a group of surviving goblins fleeing the TOW blast – because apparently they thought running from the crater was going to help.
A heartbeat later, Tancred loosed from somewhere to Henry’s left – a glowing blue arrow ripping across five hundred meters in about a second and hitting a sledge near the convoy’s center like a mortar round. The vehicle came apart, goblins scattering around the crater where the cargo bed used to be.
Maren hung back, staff pulsing every few seconds, layers of something shimmering over Lucan and Corrin on the monitor. Buffs, wards – Henry couldn’t tell the difference, but whatever she did made Lucan move faster every time her staff flared. She wasn’t flashy, but she did exactly what a support caster was supposed to do: make the people who killed things kill things harder.
Between the MRAPs chewing the ends, the casters firing from elevation, and Sir Dickhead’s clusterfuck in the middle, the convoy never stood a chance. The goblins didn’t have anywhere to run, anywhere to hide, or anyone who could save them.
Before long, they’d reduced the entire convoy to a smoldering ruin.
Henry scanned the basin and took stock. Wreckage lay everywhere – sledges overturned at bad angles, dradaks dead in their harnesses or bolted into the open. Bodies were piled at the front where the clusterfuck had started, scattered through the middle where Lucan had carved his path, and clustered at the rear where Hayes had taken them apart piece by piece.
Small fires continued to burn where the alchemical supplies had cooked off, but nothing else moved except Lucan’s team, picking through what was left.
“Clear,” Doc reported. “No movement. Road’s empty two klicks each way.”
Henry looked at the time, which blared an anticlimactic 1720.
Huh. The whole fight had lasted no more than a few minutes. A hundred goblins, twenty hobs, eighteen sledges of supplies that would never reach Korth Varren – all of it gone before he’d even had time to get properly amped up.
Well, any op this clean was perfectly fine by him. “All teams, hold position. Sweep in five.”
He leaned back and let his hands rest on his thighs.
The plan had worked. Not the way he’d drawn it up, but it had worked. The only surprising thing was the fact that Lucan hadn’t caused problems. Henry had spent two days expecting him to – the positioning arguments, the carriage, the campfire, having to coordinate through Maren just to avoid a pissing contest.
Lucan was still an asshole – Henry wouldn’t argue that – but he had to admit the man was a professional asshole. It wasn’t ideal, but he’d sure as hell take an irritant over a liability.
Ron exhaled, long and slow, eyes still on the windshield. “Ain’t gonna lie. Dude’s kind of a motherfucker.”
Much as Henry wanted to disagree, he couldn’t. “Yeah. Unfortunately, he is.”
He turned back to the monitor, watching Lucan’s team pick through what was left, and let his mind shift to what came next. Ron’s bulgogi was going to hit different tonight.