Henry kept his hand on Sera’s leg. “Stay inside. Save your ammo for the big one.”
“Aye, Captain.” She dropped through the hatch and pulled it shut behind her, already tending to her rifle.
He swung the RWS to the rear and zoomed the optic onto the cargo lane. Eight figures approached along it, about two hundred meters out. Six knights in full mithril plate led the formation, moving up wherever cover offered itself. Two mages kept to the center-rear in piss-poor – but still mithril – chainmail, clearly smart enough to let the knights take the danger first.
Now, all that sounded pretty scary until he broke down the enemy’s aggregate threat assessment. On paper, these guys were supposed to be Tier Eight. Strip away the mithril, though, and what remained? High Tier Seven, probably, give or take a few decimal points.
As a result, he could have erased them with the Switchblade and the TOWs without much trouble. He preferred not to waste them here, of course; those were for the real fight. For now, the fifty and grenades would do, with a TOW reserved in case things got dicey.
He keyed the radio. “Hayes, let’s wrap this up quick. How many TOWs you got?”
“Four in the box,” he responded.
“Alright. Stick to the fifty unless the mages get annoying.”
“Copy.”
Henry opened on the lead knight at roughly a hundred and fifty meters, the .50 striking sparks from the chestplate and doing little beyond marring the finish. Though it obviously failed to penetrate, the burst still staggered the goblin. Henry lowered the fire into the legs and kept it there until the knee gave way.
With the monster staggered, he switched to the Striker and placed the first forty-mil into the shield arm, tearing the shield from the goblin’s grip. The second reached the chest before he had recovered, driving him backward into an ore cart with enough force to put a dent in the metal.
He then swapped to the next target. Hayes had already pinned it against a loading platform with steady .50 fire that, while useless against the plate itself, left little room to move under the impacts.
Henry sent a short burst into the exposed flank and finished what Hayes had started.
“Two down,” Henry said.
The remaining six adapted fast. They stayed tighter to the ore carts and loading platforms now, unwilling to risk the larger gaps. Whenever they did need to move through open areas, the mages raised broad sheets of ice to obscure their advance. It was pretty smart of them, even if the walls took only a few rounds to take down.
With distance at a premium, though, Henry couldn’t let them keep this up. “Hayes, get the mages.”
“On it.”
He launched a TOW at a set of crates that the mages were using for cover.
The lead mage saw it coming and threw up a barrier across the lane. Too bad the spell formed several meters too far forward; the missile passed untouched into the ore crate he had chosen for cover. At that range, chainmail offered no serious objection to overpressure. When the blast cleared, nothing left of him looked capable of casting again.
The second mage, caught at the edge of the blast, got launched a good ten meters down the lane and landed badly against a warehouse wall. The goblin had somehow survived the landing, though not for long, as Henry finished the job with a well-placed burst.
“Mages down,” he confirmed.
The four remaining knights were essentially fucked now. Without mage support, they had no real way to cross two hundred meters of open lane under sustained fire, and they knew it.
Two of them committed immediately, kicking into an enhanced sprint. They broke from cover and angled toward the trucks, trying to shorten the run and complicate the lead. It was a smart enough idea, as far as goblin ideas went.
The other two stayed put behind the carts for another second, hesitant. Henry couldn’t blame them – stay where they were and get shot up in place, or make the run and see whether speed bought more than armor had. Their fates were sealed either way.
Maren radioed in just as Henry started opening fire on the charging hobgoblin knights. “Captain. Lucan yet lives – but not for the fight as he stands. Allow me five minutes, and I shall have him fit to return.”
“Copy,” Henry said. “We’ll hold the line.”
“Aye.”
Like the first hobgoblin, Henry went low on the lead charger and kept the .50 there until the legs failed. Once it stumbled, he hit it with the Striker before it could gather itself, before repeating the process on the second runner.
Hayes meanwhile had pinned the other two, preventing them from repositioning. At that point, all Henry needed to do was lob a few grenades around the corner and call it a day.
“That makes eight,” Hayes said.
“Yeah,” Henry responded. “Confirm the kills, then catch up. We’re gonna help the others.”
“Copy that.”
While Ron repositioned, Henry swung the RWS back toward the Goblin King fight and found the Chosen still holding, though not by much. Corrin had taken the worst of it: the rim of his shield was dented badly enough that he’d dropped into a lower stance and started taking the King’s swings on the angle, because catching them clean no longer looked like an option.
Vaela and Tancred didn’t look much better. Not only had their shoulders started to droop, but even their attacks looked light for Tier Nines. A wide scorch mark ran across the Goblin King’s cuirass, while shallow dents spotted the rest of the plate. Henry didn’t need long to wonder why. After all, a literal ton of mithril could make almost anybody’s best work look negotiable.
But negotiable didn’t mean inconsequential. The King showed the same signs of attrition as the Chosen – just not nearly to the same degree. Though his movements had visibly slowed, lacking their original snap, he still had far more left in the tank than anyone facing him.
The real problem remained time. Maren still needed at least four more minutes, and the Chosen, based on the evidence on the field, would probably last half that. Hopefully, reinforcements would buy back that missing time.
Henry faced Sera. “You’re up.”
She nodded and settled into the hatch, shouldering her M7. Meanwhile, Henry prepared the Switchblade for launch and radioed Hayes.
“Hayes, ETA?”
“Twenty seconds.”
That was good enough. “Ready a TOW,” Henry said. “We’re stacking everything.”
“On it.”
Henry triggered the Switchblade as Ron approached, slowing down about a hundred meters from Corrin. The launcher coughed outside, the munition rising on a brief plume before leveling into a broad orbit overhead.
“Sera,” he said as the drone stabilized, “hit that helmet.”
She answered with a burst. Rounds cracked against the great helm below the eye slits, sparks shearing off the faceplate in bright sprays. Not every round landed clean, but the ones that hit the mark struck hard enough to jolt the King’s head sideways.
Granted, any one impact probably amounted to little more than a slap. But add all those up, and the cumulative effect would inevitably result in a concussion.
With the King occupied by the steady hammering on its helmet, Corrin finally found room to disengage. He gave ground a few steps, reset his footing, and stole the first clean breath he had managed in several seconds.
Henry let him have it. Keeping the Switchblade high until the last possible moment, he waited for the King to raise its bracer against Sera’s gunfire, then guided the munition down out of its orbit and into the great helm just as her magazine ran dry.
The warhead detonated against the crown in a flash that washed out the optic for half a second. When the picture returned, the King had reeled back two full steps before its knees gave way, dropping it onto the dirt hard enough to gouge a trench. It clutched its head with its left arm, maintaining a half-hearted guard with the sword in its right hand.
It tried pushing back up off its right elbow, only to get beaten back down by a TOW missile that flew in from left field. The impact slammed it flat against the ground with enough force to crack the stone below.
Sera opened up again on the downed King, but it blocked the shots with magic. A wall of packed earth rose up between them and the target, swallowing the rounds.
“Cease fire. Owens, go other lane, get an angle.”
Ron yanked the wheel and cut hard as Sera held position at the hatch. Behind them, the Chosen took full advantage of the lull by downing copious amounts of potions.
By the time they got an angle on the King, it had gotten back up again, a chunk of masonry already cocked in its hand. It launched it right at them – a giant boulder larger than the carts. Ron cut the wheel hard; the rock cleared the roof by less than a yard before pulverizing a section of warehouse facade behind them.
Sera picked up where she’d left off, working the helm hard enough to keep the King’s head pivoting away from the others.
Tancred made good use of the opportunity, shooting an arrow that caught the King flush across the bridge of the helm with a crack. The dirt under its right foot fell away in the same instant – Vaela’s work, opening a pit clean beneath the foot at exactly the moment it lost its balance. It crashed to the ground again, vulnerable. Hayes had a TOW in the air before the dust had even risen, the missile riding straight into the monster’s noggin.
It detonated dramatically, forcing it down further. But even that failed to finish it off. The armor held through everything they had thrown at it, with little more to show than dents, scrapes, and scorch marks. The whole scenario was a bit discouraging, honestly, until Henry noticed it curling into a ball.
However stubborn the plate remained, enough force had already gone through it to leave the thing worried about blunt force trauma. Respecting that, the Goblin King brought its knees up, bracer wrapped over the helm, every adjustment optimizing for cranial defense over offensive capability.
Of course, it would have been a lot tougher to break through now that the bastard had shelled up, but Henry pressed the advantage anyway. Even behind the guard, every hit still counted. If the armor refused to crack, then the body inside it could still bruise, swell, and edge one strike closer to hemorrhaging.
Unfortunately, their ammunition was finite. The Goblin King didn’t take long to realize it once Hayes spent the final TOW, at which point it abandoned the curl and came off the ground. Sera tried suppressing it, but it tanked the shots with its bracer and rushed after the Chosen.
Corrin set his stance and brought the shield up to meet it. But the King didn’t swing. A few strides short of contact, it stopped and drove one armored foot down into the road, and the impact kicked up a torrent of dirt and snow that washed across the entire engagement in a blinding sheet.
The King drew itself to full height, the sword coming up in both hands as its back arched under the gathered weight of the blow. Once it had fully wound up, it slammed the blade down in a thunderous two-handed smash.
Corrin barely managed to block it with his shield. Though narrowly avoiding getting split in half, he took the full force of the impact. The force punched him into the ground like a hammer against a nail, violent enough to crack the ground under him and sink him into a shallow crater.
The resulting shockwave rocked the MRAP, carrying with it a clang so loud it bypassed both the chassis and Henry’s earpro.
The King wound up again, raising the sword high before bringing it down in another overhead arc. But for some reason, the ground beneath its feet lurched backward mid-swing. Deprived of footing, the creature toppled backward, the blade scything harmlessly through the air. Simultaneously, the crater itself slid rearward and bore Corrin to safety.
Before the King even hit the ground, another shape tore through the air and crashed into the beast from the side like a literal missile – Lucan.
He struck hard enough to drive the Goblin King into the ground, cratering it with more force than Corrin had taken. But instead of sinking as Corrin had, the bastard bounced like a basketball. Dust blasted from the crater in a rising sheet, followed by yet another MRAP-rattling shockwave.
Through the settling dust, Henry barely made out Lucan atop the Goblin King’s chest, bringing his blade down again and again. He just kept bludgeoning the helmet, shouting through every strike, any semblance of form long since abandoned. He kept going at it for at least another minute, each blow driving the King lower and widening the crater around them.
The Goblin King had probably died somewhere in the middle of that, though Lucan either failed to notice or care. When he finally stopped, he tore the helmet free and drove his blade into the skull in a final coup de grâce.