Kyle stood over the captured spy. He was in full power armor for it’s intimidation value. The man was bloodied, and his hands had to be amputated due to the damage Kyle had dealt. A huge cut ran down the side of his face from where he had been knocked out.

  “Alright. Tell me what I want to know, and we might make your death quick.” A few guards who’d volunteered stood by the door. They tried their best to look menacing, but in truth, neither Kyle nor any of the guards had any kind of interrogation experience.

  “Heh… amateurs. Kill me now, as I won’t tell you anything.” Kyle may not have had the skills, but he certainly had the tools. A guard wheeled in a cart on top of which sat a box with two clamps on wires dangling from it. Kyle took the clamps and bit them down on the skin of the man’s exposed arms where his suit had torn. “Hhh… that hurt, but surely there’s more than a little pinching?”

  Smile for the camera… with the flick of a switch, 40 milliamps of electricity flowed through the man’s body. After a few seconds, Kyle turned it off. “How many more of those can you handle? Just talk now and make it easier for us, why don’t you?” Gasping for air, the man replied, “N… Never…” “So be it.”

  It only took two minutes to break him.

  “Ahh! I-I’ll tell you whatever you want… no more, please…” The man seemed barely able to speak. “Fine. Who sent you?” “The… Maraco Rubio, head of… the Southern Empire's intelligence.” “Interesting. Tell me about this intelligence agency.”

  The questioning continued for nearly two hours, and Kyle had gotten all he needed out of the man. “I’ve decided to spare your life. You can go work in the mines until I decide what to… do with you.”

  The spy gave Kyle a look of hopelessness through his bloodshot eyes and hair damp with sweat. “Barislav, get him out of my sight. I have things to do.” Doing his best to look cold and calculating, Kyle strode out of the room, while the elderly guard and an assistant walked in to take the spy away.

  ———-

  Kyle and his 8,000 man army watched the orcs camp on the mountainside from their defensive lines. Trenches, barbed wire, funnels made from stakes and ditches, and an actual palisade fortress at the center of the line. Kyle’s men were no longer wielding single-shot muskets. Most had basic bolt action rifles, although heavy were interspersed among them.

  Kyle’s machine gun-which he decided to simply name the Mark One-wasn’t anything to write home about. It was gravity fed through a box and funnel, and fired 12 mm rounds at 150 per minute. It would certainly tear through a magical barrier or a charging horde, but against single targets it would struggle. It was a squat and ugly thing that couldn’t be moved on its own and needed to be towed.

  50 of them were spread out across the long line facing the horde. They would help, but they weren’t the real showstopper on the field. That would be the mortars. 300 crew-operated early mortars, firing shrapnel, high explosive, or a variety of chemical shells. Kyle’s men were not exactly experienced with the things, and could only shoot 2 times a minute. Still, across 300 mortars and with a lot of ground to cover for the orcs, the damage would be incalculable.

  Signaling through his built in radio, Kyle gave the single beep that meant “fire”. As one, the mortars let loose their volley. With a maximum range of 1900 meters, they could probably get some 8-10 volleys off before friendly fire became an issue. In the distant mass of fur tents and campfires, explosions erupted.

  ————

  Mountain Orcs were a simple race. They cared only for looting and fighting. When they camped, their armies became temporary settlements that sprawled across landscapes. Brecket was exemplary of his race. He was a huge specimen clad in stolen enchanted gear wielding a massive dwarven-forged zweihander covered in runes.

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  He had risen through the social ranks due to his natural skill for fighting and size. He’d challenged the old War Chief and won, and had gone on to create a horde like the world had never seen. Actually, hundreds if not thousands of much greater orcish warlords had come and gone, but Brecket would never learn of them.

  He sat inside his larger tent, gnawing on the leg of some large animal. In a normal warlord tent, dozens of orcish women would be present, but Brecket had never found any allure in relationships with anyone. Something strange even for orcs, he was totally dedicated to the cause of having a good fight.

  As one of his hobgoblin advisors gave him an estimate of his forces, he laid back and started to zone out, thinking of pigs running in circles around a table covered with more pigs, except roasted. As his thoughts drifted towards talking weapons holding a funeral, the tent was consumed in fire.

  ————

  “That seemed to rile ‘em up.” Carkh had matured into an actual general over the months. Wearing the green officer uniform that Kyle had designed, he watched the distant flaming camp through binoculars.

  Kyle and other officers also watched the orcs gather towards their lines.

  Eventually, after 5 minutes and 7 volleys of explosive mortar shells, the orcs organised themselves and started moving down the slope towards the army. “Signal the switch to shrapnel rounds.” The radio trooper nodded and turned to his mobile workstation.

  The next volley detonated above the orcish mass, and blanketed huge areas in bullets. Shrapnel shells were canisters with a segment packed with small bullets in the front and an explosive charge in the back. Using a timed fuse, the charge would detonate midair above enemy soldiers and pepper them with bullets.

  The effect was undeniable among the orcs. For every shell, at least twenty orcs were cut or bloody ribbons. Kyle was following Orion League doctrine to a t. No complicated tactics or grand battle plan, just sheer firepower in a big line facing the enemy. Once the orcs crossed about the 1000 meter mark, the MGs along the line started firing in bursts. Along the front of the line, orcs started dying en masse.

  Unlike humans, where a single shot could usually kill, each orc either needed a hit in a critical area or multiple shots to the body to take them out of commission. Despite this, their lack of ranged firepower made them easy targets.

  A few hundred meters later, the riflemen came into range.

  ———

  Brecket had been furious when he crawled out of the ruined tent. His anger only grew when he saw his camp ablaze and orcs running around looking for the source of the attack. “Fools! Grab your axes, it’s the humans! Everyone, head down the mountainside!” Orcs may have been single minded creatures, but they weren’t truly stupid. With some leadership, they could destroy entire kingdoms.

  As one, the orcs fled their camp towards the distant humans. Most used the traditional orcish weapon, the axe, but a few with more experience used huge and jagged poleswords. Orcs could run slower than most humans, but they could run for longer.

  The green tide flowed down the mountainside, Brecket at their front. The explosions that had torn through his troops hadn’t stopped that whole time. Every 40 seconds or so, another wave would kill hundreds of orcs across the mass. The explosions changed later on.

  Instead of detonating amongst his men, they would explode above, and something would cut down anyone below. “FASTER! We have to get close to them!”

  The order spread through the horde, and the orcs picked up their sprint. However, a new weapon revealed itself to the orcs. Still 1000 meters from the line, small points of fire erupted across it. The orcs along the front of the line started falling to the ground or jerking backwards as if struck.

  Still, the orcs persisted. They were known across Lindus for their totally unshakeable morale when in large groups.

  —————

  Kyle stepped forward. If the orcs managed to close, he was ready to use his remaining antimatter grenades to break up their charge. However, once the thousands of riflemen and tens of MGs started firing, the orcs seemed to lose steam. The bodies started piling up at the front, which stopped their momentum.

  Kyle would have used chemical weapons, but he didn’t have anything on hand that actually acted instantly. Hydrogen Cyanide would have been nice, but his base of industrial chemistry was still weak. Still, sheer firepower had seemed to stop the orcs in their tracks.