CHAPTER 26

   Lolita remembered the very first time that she heard about the staff weapons used by the Orc. She thought those guys were going to be toast. Having a magazine that only held one round seemed a bit primitive and she could never imagine that they would hold up in a firefight with real weapons. She would kick herself for ever thinking that if the flying debris were not doing that for her. The enemy ammunition was about the size of a twenty-five millimeter round and they never fired just one at a time. Lolita had seen what that could do to a human being but, out in the Hurt it was not quite the same. There were never this many Orcs in one place and time. She also learned that she need not worry about what it would do to her body. She had more problems worrying about what those volley fires would do to a building. Every Orc Infantry unit was practically it's own artillery and only a few volleys could lay a three story, stone, building flat.
That was enough to worry about but, unfortunately, it was not all the enemy had to bring to the party. They had what were loosely being called mortars. They operated much like the staff weapons only they had no axe head and were actually shorter. They also fired a much larger round and were capable of indirect fire. Then the Orc decided to pull out their real artillery, which, fired ammunition that was about the size of a small car and left craters bigger than a football field. The only good news there was that the air force was making it hard for them to use those guns. They had a horribly slow rate of fire when not being pounced by F-16's. They were, also, apparently, not very mobile. Of course, none of that helped if you were sitting where one of those huge shells landed.
Lolita wondered what the hell would be next and, she realized only too late, that she should have never thought that. Delta company was scattered among a couple of buildings that had a site advantage over the river. They were now mostly rubble but, as Lolita had discovered, that was actually good news. Everything about both buildings that could collapse, under enemy fire, already had. What was left was actually descent cover. Unfortunately, she knew that from first hand experience because hardened positions had not stopped the orcs from turning her big rocks into smaller ones. Lolita figured she could make them pay for trying but, unfortunately, battalion had other ideas on the matter.
That stupid fucker Hogan was running more than just operations right now. He was in practical command  of the entire five-oh-sixth and he specifically ordered everyone to hold their fire unless the enemy was trying to move forward. It was something that Lolita had not really thought the Orc would try here. They had spent most of their energies battering the hell out of the local militia which was situated to the east. Those guys were fighting with ancient bolt action rifles that Lolita wouldn't take on a human enemy with. They had guts, at least they did when they were trying to defend their homes but, in this kind of fight that only meant the enemy had a little more to rip out of you.
Their “allies,” along with the Hogan situation, were both topics of conversation with Lolita's new acting First Sergeant. He was one of the loaners from the 10th Mountain and, other than that, she could not find much at fault with the guy. He even had a set of jump wings or, at least, he would if they had any to slap on the velcro. Josh Hallowell also had that kind of demeanor that just said, “what the fuck.” Nothing seemed to bother guy and, sometimes that irritated Lolita just a little. Could he, at least, pretend to not like Hogan?
“We're low on ammo eltee,” was all he had to say about the order to hold their fire.
They both sat in what was jokingly called the company command post. It was barely big enough for two people and only distinguished from any other position by the fact that they had a land line run to it. The radios were still doing nothing but static and it was yet another frustration that Lolita had to deal with. She had always taken wifi for granted and, now, the first thing she would kiss when she got home was her router. At the moment, though, she didn't feel like kissing anybody, “bullshit top. We got plenty of goddamn ammo. I saw that shit they were stacking up back at brigade.”
“Maybe,” Josh replied in his easy going manner, “but that's all we got. When it runs out there ain't going to be no more. Did you notice the grenade problem with our last resupply?”
“Somebody shorted us,” Lolita snarled. Such things were not exactly unheard of.
“No,” Josh replied in a matter of fact way. “We got what they sent. They just didn't send enough. You know I was talking to Tonto and...”
Their cover had managed to stand up to everything the Orc had thrown their way but, nobody had said the enemy had an earthquake machine. Lolita watched Josh start to climb out of their cover but she stopped him and said, “better wait and find out what this is first.” The first sergeant thought about it and then he obviously agreed with her because he readied his weapon right along next to her. It was bad business, them being in the same place during a fight, and Josh had his own position but, right now, did it really matter? Then the phone rang!
“No shit,” Lolita told the caller, “thanks for nothing ass wipe.” She slammed the phone back in it's holder and then mumbled to Josh, “that was battalion telling us we were cleared to fire. Like we couldn't figure that out?”
“I'd be more worried eltee,” Josh replied, “as to why they thought they should call.”
The sound of the rumble only got louder and the shaking only got worse. They watched a dust trail approach the river. It's source was covered by the buildings until they began to fall and make dust clouds of their own. The thick grayish cloud rolled over the river and, not long after, they heard splashing and crashing. Lolita was not about to admit it but, she was terrified. She did the one thing she could do to relieve that. She pulled out her flare gun and told Josh, “I ain't waiting to identify targets no more.” She sent up two flares and the Delta line began firing blindly into the rapidly approaching cloud. Then the Orcs fired back and, only then, did Lolita realize the mistake she had just made in her panic. They had fired too early and now the Orcs were counting their guns because they could obviously still see the far bank.
It was too late to clear up the mistake and, by the sounds of things, at least Delta company was hitting something. The air was filled with unearthly screams that were easily heard over all of the firepower. As Lolita unloaded her own weapon into the cloud it finally reached her. She stopped for a second to drop her goggles and pull a bandana over her mouth. She noticed that she was not the only one because the firing along the line slowed and became sporadic as, she figured, others were doing the same. At least it picked back up in a hurry and enemy fire had slowed to boot.
Lolita eased off for a moment and tried to make some sense out of what was going on. Unfortunately there was a complete lack of communications since the only working phone line they had was to battalion. She realized if she wanted to run a battle she was going to have to start doing things a different way. Running a  company was proving to be a lot more than it took to manage a platoon. The terrain difference was also working against her. Out in the bush, and patrolling, required an entirely different set of skills than the ones needed for the  fight she was not running here.
When the face showed up in the dust cloud, Lolita did not even fire. She hesitated and, only after a very close burst of fire from Hallowell's battle rifle, that nearly made her deaf, did she react. The first thing she did was slap Josh in the arm, “thanks a lot ass hole! That hurt!”
Josh pointed out to the big lump that was now blocking their zones of fire. It had an almost turtle like appearance but, had most definitely not been as slow as one. It also had a thick long tail with what looked like a wrecking ball on the end of it. Josh had split it's head in two and, fortunately, it killed the dinosaur like thing but, Lolita noted, the head shot was the only thing that wo0rked on it. It's back was spiked and armored and she could see scratches from where the large caliber rounds had just bounced right off. The worse part about this thing was that it was far from the only one. More were coming right behind it.
“Keep firing,” Lolita yelled at Josh.
Josh protested, “how, that thing is as big as a house and it's blocking my view!”
“Fucking air farce,” Lolita grumbled. How in the hell did they let a heard of things like this get into the city without blowing it to hell? That was a question for later. Right now, Lolita went for the most powerful weapon she had and that was the phone. She picked it up and yelled at the little dweeb up at battalion, “fire mission, tango romeo papa one, fire plan oscar!” Lolita could not see the spotting rounds coming in or where they hit. She basically lied when she called for a splash  and said, “fire for effect!” She just hoped like hell the packets got close to the target. Without GPS, the artillery was frustratingly bad. They had supposedly practiced not using that stuff before they deployed but, you could not convince Lolita of that.
This time, something seemed to have gone right. Battalion must have realized how serious their situation was because they dumped a lot on her target reference point and she could hear the small explosions rippling the far bank of the river. Delta company was still gunning down targets in the river and on their side but, after twenty minutes the firing began to slow down. When the Orc began their volley fires again, that told Lolita the attack was over.
Josh protested but, Lolita crawled out of her cover anyway. She had to see what was going on if she was going to run this company. Josh grunted and followed his commander to the gore spattered hulk of the creature they had killed at close range. They crawled up one side of it, using it as cover and, as the dust began to settle, Lolita was shocked by what she saw. The entire area looked nothing like it had. The most obvious difference was that it was littered with the stinking corpses of these armored creatures. They had transformed the landscape enough to make all of her firing zones worthless. Delta would have to make entirely knew positions if they wanted to hold this ground. That would not be easy considering they were under heavy fire.
It was Hallowell who pointed out the real problem. He slapped Lolita on the  side of the helmet and then pointed to the river. There was a mountain of animal corpses from one bank to the other. Josh spelled it out, “they made themselves a bridge.”
Lolita tried to be somewhat optimistic, “they still can't a get a full attack across that. We'll blow them to shit if they try.”
“Don't matter,” Josh grumbled, “it'll still be easier to get at us.” Then he tossed a thumb towards the east where the rumbling of battle had not died down, “besides that, why do I get the feeling we were just a side operation.”
He was right and Lolita knew it. The main attack was hitting the Two-Eleventh, the local human militia. The Orcs had already managed to cross the river in their sector so, it would make a stampede like this much more effective. If they got pushed out of the line, Lolita realized, then eventually First Brigade would too. It made Lolita grumble as they crawled back to their overhead cover, “cock sucking egg laying bastards.”
When Lolita heard the laughter from behind her she had to ask Josh what was so funny. He told her, “I heard tell the Orcs don't have no cocks.”
Lolita snarled, “well at least I got something in common with the fuckers.”