By the time Henry and the others had settled into position behind the rear formations, the lead phalanxes had begun to close on the breaches.
Lucan’s Chosen arrived about a minute later, filing in on their dradak elites. Or at least, that’s what they had to be, since Henry hadn’t seen dradaks look this big and mean before. The regular ones were quadrupedal reptiles, built low and wide – kinda like Komodo dragons, except with longer legs. And while these were obviously still of the same species, they looked more like a cross between an alligator and a velociraptor.
They settled into position behind the second MRAP, completing what had to be the most eclectic combined arms element ever fielded in the history of organized warfare.
Henry would’ve loved to just sit there and really enjoy the moment, but he needed to focus on the battle. He keyed the radio. “Doc, send up a drone and share the feed with us.”
“Copy. Give me a minute.”
There wasn’t much to see from ground level, since the MRAPs sat low enough behind the rear formations that Henry’s view consisted mostly of dwarven helmets and the haze of dust still hanging over the fortress. But even if he couldn’t see the assault, he sure as hell could hear it. The dwarves were louder than he expected, their war cries probably hitting the decibel level of a rock concert.
The feed resolved on his IVAS right when the lead phalanx emerged from the breach, encountering functionally no resistance at all. Usually, this was the part where defenders dumped boiling oil and everything else they had onto the attackers funneling through the gap, since it was the one place they were guaranteed to come through. Casualty rates during breach assaults could run as high as fifty percent, depending on how well the defenders had prepared the kill zone behind the wall.
Fortunately for the dwarves, American airpower had eliminated that concern entirely.
The formation fanned out as it cleared the breach, front rank shields locked while the second rank angled to cover the flanking streets. It was pretty close to a Roman echelon, which was what the legions of antiquity used to employ for urban clearing.
The first sign of organized resistance showed up about two blocks past the breach, when a volley of arrows came down from the upper floors of a building overlooking the main avenue. The angle suggested plunging fire, which meant someone on the goblin side had at least gotten the basics right.
Right as the volley reached the formation, a translucent dome shimmered into existence over the phalanx – curved and faintly blue, like something straight out of Star Wars. Four dwarven mages behind the second rank held it in place, evenly spaced along the column’s length. The weak-ass arrows struck the surface and snapped on contact, each one deflecting without leaving so much as a mark. The barrier being impervious as it was, the goblins abandoned the attempt and switched to fireballs.
Like an RPG out of a side street, the first one hit the barrier before Henry could even track where it came from. The dome flared to a washed-out pale blue on impact, bright enough to wash out the drone feed for a second. The mages staggered, and for about half a second it seemed like the shield might actually drop. They caught it just in time, the dome snapping back to full opacity as the front rank tightened up around them.
And of course, wherever there was one RPG, there was always more. A second fireball flew out from the same rooftop, only to be met with a wall of snow that had suddenly darted upward from the streets. The collision threw up enough steam to white out the feed for a moment.
It was basically a magical Trophy system – neat, albeit not very useful against anything traveling faster than the speed of sound.
Before the steam had even cleared, a barrage of ice shards punched straight through the cloud and into the rooftop. The structure caved after a few hits, taking the hobgoblin mage with it.
Without arrows or spells getting through, the goblins’ only remaining play was to charge through the barrier on foot. The ones that tried ran straight into the second rank’s pikes, while the ones that, by some miracle, avoided them crashed into an obdurate shield wall.
The same story pretty much repeated itself everywhere else. Of course, not every engagement was a carbon copy. Most skirmishes ended within a minute, but there were a few bands of enemies that managed to hold out a bit longer than the others, mostly where hobgoblin units had concentrated in greater numbers. Even then, it didn’t matter much. Against the dwarves’ might, discipline, and initiative, the goblins couldn’t do shit.
Henry radioed the other MRAP. “Doc, let’s check how the adventurers are doing on that gate.”
“Copy.”
The feed swung east and picked up three adventurer parties moving along the wide road that ran inside the wall, heading for the gatehouse after having split off from the main force at the nearest breach. The goblins they ran into along the way were mostly stragglers who’d come down from the wall after the bombing – disoriented, scattered, and about as effective as potholes.
The lead party covered the distance to the gatehouse in a few minutes, with the second and third trailing in support and picking off what little the lead group had bypassed.
That left the gatehouse itself, which would normally be quite the challenge. Henry knew the layout well enough from his coursework: a gate passage through the base of the wall, guard chambers flanking it, and a winch room above with the portcullis mechanism, all connected by a narrow spiral stairway designed to make attackers’ lives miserable.
But would it really be so bad? The goblins didn’t have much reason to defend it at this point. With the enemy already pouring through multiple breaches, holding a gate that had already been bypassed was about as useful as locking the front door after someone had driven a truck through the living room wall. And sure enough, most of the garrison had already pulled off to reinforce the breaches, leaving whatever skeleton crew remained to deal with three adventurer parties who outclassed them in every way that mattered.
Once the adventurers arrived, they stacked behind their heavy-plated tanks and pushed in. Barely a minute passed before the portcullis ground upward and locked into position.
“Doc, zoom out,” Henry said.
The feed widened, showing the full overhead picture of Velkrath.
By this point, the lead phalanx had pushed about a third of the way down the main avenue, with the trailing formations stacked behind at regular intervals. Pockets of resistance still flared up here and there along the side streets, but nothing that lasted more than a minute. Meanwhile, adventurer parties had fanned out into the surrounding blocks behind the phalanxes, mopping up whatever the main force hadn’t bothered with.
With the gate open and the road secured, it was now their time to shine.
Henry radioed Sinclair. “Baseplate Actual, Alpha Actual. Gate’s open, main avenue is secured past the second intersection. Any visual of the Goblin King?”
“Copy, Alpha Actual. Negative on visual; last confirmed sighting was the rune structure, but that was pre-strike. You might have to draw it out.”
“Understood. Alpha out.”
Henry then swapped to the team frequency. “Alright. All elements, the gate’s open. We’re moving up.” He glanced over his shoulder at Lucan’s Chosen through the rear window. “Owens, take us through. Doc, keep that drone overhead.”
Ron pulled the MRAP onto the road and picked up speed toward the gate. The dradaks kept pace without any trouble, loping alongside Yen’s vehicle in a loose wedge formation like a proper cavalry screen.
Past the portcullis, Henry got his first real look at what the JDAMs had done up close. Of course, it wasn’t like the drone footage hadn’t captured any of it; rather, it had seriously undersold the scale. All around them lay the scars of battle: craters deep enough to swallow a building, entire sections of wall reduced to gravel piles, and the not-so-cherry on top – goblin viscera everywhere. Some of them were more or less intact, but most of them weren’t – especially not the ones closest to the impact sites. All that remained of those were smears.
They kept moving, the avenue opening up once they cleared the worst of the damage. Contrary to what Henry might’ve expected for a medieval road, this one was wide enough for both MRAPs to fit abreast with room to spare. It probably had something to do with Dwarven heavy industry, but whatever.
Henry split his attention between the RWS and the drone feed. With the lead phalanx still engaged half a klick ahead, there was no point crawling behind them. “Owens, let’s hit the side roads.”
The side streets weren’t as spacious as the main avenue, but they’d get them where they needed to go. After a few minutes of navigation and picking off the occasional goblin or fenwyrm, Sinclair radioed in.
“Alpha Actual, Baseplate Actual. The Goblin King just left the rune structure, heading south toward the lead phalanx. You’ve got two minutes before it makes contact. No sign of the Honor Guard with it.”
Well, that was good to know. If the escorts weren’t with the King, they were probably still sitting on the rune structure – a problem Henry would get to soon enough. “Copy, Baseplate. We’re almost there. Alpha out.”
They came out of the side streets a few seconds later. The cargo lane ahead was about as wide as the main avenue, with cart tracks running down the center and raised loading platforms sticking out from the warehouse walls every fifty meters or so. Most of the buildings flanking the road had long been shuttered, but a few had their heavy doors open, apparently in use by the goblins’ industry.
Ore carts and stacked crates lined the edges of the lane like parked cars on a residential street, leaving enough room down the center for the MRAPs to get through without much trouble. The lane itself ran straight for a good three hundred meters before doglegging east.
Henry spotted the Goblin King a good four hundred meters to their left, lumbering south along an intersecting road toward the lead phalanx. Fifteen feet of mithril plate made it hard to miss, especially considering the monster was taller than most of the buildings around it. The Guild’s sketches had given him a rough idea of what a Goblin King looked like, but rough sketches didn’t convey scale, and, for that matter, neither did any amount of goblin fodder.
Ideally, Henry would’ve preferred not to piss off a Tier Nine without the firepower to back it up, but with the lead phalanx two minutes from contact, he didn’t have much of a choice. If nothing else, a TOW ought to pull it from the dwarves.
“Hayes, send a TOW.”
The missile rushed forward, threading past a toppled crane and the remains of a freight wagon before catching the Goblin King square in the nape. The detonation sent it stumbling forward into a stack of ore crates, where it dropped to a knee.
True to its threat rating, the creature shook it off and got back up within seconds. The settling dust told Henry why – though dented to hell and fractured around the impact site, the mithril had soaked up most of the blast. From there, figuring out the source of the hit wasn’t rocket science. It turned and immediately locked its gaze on them, brows steeper than the cliff they’d jumped off a few days ago.
The Goblin King broke into a sprint, smashing through the ore carts between them like traffic cones. Four hundred meters of breathing room started disappearing fast.
“Owens, go, go, go!” Henry got on the radio. “Maren, we’re pulling it to the clearing by the rune structure. Tell Lucan that’s where he engages.”
Ron floored it. Henry trained the RWS on the King and took aim with the Striker 40. Forty-mil grenades against a Tier Nine in full mithril weren’t exactly ideal, but hey – at least it wasn’t a Gigolith.