Brrrrr—!
Suddenly, a deep horn echoed through the forest and reverberated off the trees as another wave of Orcs stormed into the fray.
Leading them was Jiak the SkullKrusher, towering above his warbands as his tusked face twisted in a brutal grin. With a signal from his massive hand, he unleashed his horde into a reckless charge with their melee weapons raised high while spraying their guns wildly, most end up missing their target as Orcs are bad at proper aiming.
"Dakka Dakka Dakka! Need more DAKKA!" one of the heavily armed Orc shouted his lungs out as he gleefully fired his slugga until it exploded in his hands. But this didn't stop other Orcs as they continued their assault with no concern for their own safety or show any battle tactic.
Bullets whizzed through the air, and though most shots missed their mark, the sheer volume of firepower began to take its toll as the Human soldiers started to have wounded, and casualties as a few of the lucky shots ended up hitting troops. Despite the mounting casualties, no one from the human side pulls back as each troop is an experienced soldier and veteran that went through the horrors of the New Year Tragedy.
With that war, every soldier who fought there was a battle-tested warrior, and retreat was not an option.
Lieutenant Colonel Ciaphas Cahyono watched the battle happening from within his Mobile Tank Fortress, the hulking vehicle offering a measure of protection against the Orc assault as he manned the heavy machine gun from the top hull. He didn't need to aim as the wave of Orcs was so dense, charging without any semblance of formation. His mounted weapon rattled off round after round, mowing down the oncoming horde like a scythe through tall grass.
He had never been fond of charging into battle, but the tank's armor provided a safeguard against the mayhem outside. More reassuring still were the Men of Stone on the battlefield gave him security as these Earth Golems were powerful enough to slaughter an army of Orcs by themselves.
But the true challenge for Cahyono wasn't just the battlefield or the Orcs, it was the Imam seated beside him inside the tank. The old man had insisted on joining the battle, claiming he wished to witness the slaughter of the Orcs firsthand. It was a strange sentiment for a religious figure, and Cahyono had found it unsettling.
The majority of the Imperial Majapahit army was primarily composed of Muslim soldiers, and their faith in Allah guided them through this alien invasion. Having the Imam present was meant to be a symbol of their divine mission. Yet, to Cahyono, it felt more like an added burden. Babysitting a religious leader in the middle of a warzone was not how he had envisioned this campaign.
However, the old man was full of surprises. He had mentioned once being a tank captain during World War 3, and when Cahyono saw him operating the tank's systems with the precision of a seasoned veteran, he couldn't help but be impressed. The Imam's hands moved across the controls with practiced ease with his old sharp focused eyes moved around the controls. It was as though the decades had slipped away, and he was back in command of an armored beast once more.
Cahyono, still cautious but slightly more at ease, glanced at the carnage outside. "I never thought I'd see the day an Imam ran a tank in the middle of an alien war."
The old man smiled as his weathered face betrayed no fear. "There are many ways to serve Allah, Colonel. Today, mine is through fire and steel."
"That sounds kinda—"
"Fire at will!"
Before Ciaphas could finish his sentence, he suddenly heard the Imam's commanding shout over the battle.
"Yes, sir." One of the tank crew members pulled the trigger, and the Mobile Tank Fortress let loose a thunderous shell.
The explosive round slammed into the frontlines of the Orcs, obliterating three entire ranks in a single strike.
Nearby, human soldiers wielding flamethrowers torched the battlefield to make sure that the deadly Orc spores couldn't take root and spread.
Meanwhile, dozens of AF-1 gunfire from the human soldiers echoed as the Men of Stone fired their magic cannons accurately at the larger Orcs that lurked within the horde. Meanwhile, the soldiers on the front lines held their ground and unloaded their regular guns into the rushing mass, while the artillery crews in the back set up their heavy weapons to provide covering fire.
Despite the humans' superior firepower and tactical advantage, the Orcs continued to push forward, with most of them giggling and smiling maniacally, seemingly immune to fear or pain. The Orc's primal instinct to fight and their thick brutish body's physical ability to absorb multiple wounds made them difficult to kill outright. While they lacked to possess more heavy equipment, advanced weaponry and had lesser vehicles, their sheer numbers and aggression were enough to keep pushing the humans and Earth Golems to their limits.
"Kill all 'umiez! All we need iz dere scraps!" Jiak gave his command as eight massive High Orcs, each armed with oversized choppas, began to walk forward. Before they get into the firing range, they grabbed smaller Orcs and Goblins up and used them as meat shields to block incoming fire.
"Focus all your fire on them!" Cahyono barked into his comms. "Those High Orcs are trouble!"
The tanks aimed their guns toward the advancing elites and fired a barrage of HEAT rounds. The explosions shredded the living shields apart and disintegrated the smaller Orcs, but the High Orcs themselves absorbed the brunt of the damage as their thick hide and raw strength allowing them to push on, barely slowed.
The Men of Stone, sensing the threat, switched to their melee weaponry to face the High Orcs in close combat. Armed with chainsword, the Men of Stones charge head-on as their chainsword engines roar in full power.
Soon enough, their blades met the hulking Orcs head-on.
The battlefield shook with the clash of titans from two sides, stone versus flesh, became the center of the battlefield as the skilled swordsmanship and the AI within the Earth Golems ripped into Orc's flesh into pieces with the Chainswords, while the High Orcs fought back with sheer brute strength, which cracked their magically enhanced stone bodies of the Golems and heavily injured them with their crude choppas.
The brutal melee combat eventually came to the point where some of the High Orcs grabbed nearby Goblins and threw them at the Golems with alarming speed, sending the smaller creatures flying like bullets. Meanwhile, the Men of Stone, showing their adaptability, dual-wielded their melee weapons and tried to gain any advantage they could against the overwhelming strength of their enemies.
The battle between the powerful Earth Golems and the Elite High Orcs didn't stop the main forces of both the Liberation Army, veterans of countless battles, fought with discipline and grit, and the Orc Horde, driven by bloodlust, threw themselves into the field and finally clashed in close combat.
"Prepare for close combat!" The senior member of the Platoon Captain gave the command, which was met with grim determination as the soldiers prepared to use their bayonets on their rifles, while those armed with magic guns increased their rate of fire, trying to thin the oncoming wave.
But when the two forces finally collided, the battle quickly devolved into a one-sided bloody slaughter as the disciplined lines of the Imperial soldiers crumbled under the brutality of the Orcs with their crude weapons hacking and slashing through human flesh.
Colonel Ciaphas Cahyono, witnessing the massacre from his vantage point, gritted his teeth.
"Fall back inside!" he barked at his crew and retreated into the relative safety of the Mobile Tank Fortress. Inside, the Imam sat calmly, while Cahyono quickly issued his next command. "Run them down! Crush any Orc in our path until we reach the Warlord! If we can beat that greenskin, we could reduce their momentum!"
With the tank's weapon systems at risk of friendly fire, Cahyono's only option was to use the dozen-ton behemoth itself as a battering ram.
The Mobile Fortress lurched forward with its massive treads chewing through the ground and anything unfortunate enough to stand in its way. Orcs barely had time to react before being ground into the dirt as their bodies were no match for the weight and momentum of the tank.
Still, despite the carnage, Cahyono's mind was fixed on a single goal, which was the Orc Warlord. If they could kill him, the horde would descend into chaos and tear themselves apart to take command, making them lose command structure once and for all.
But as they neared the middle of the Orc force, Cahyono's breath caught in his throat as he saw something that would soon make him wish he would never encounter again in his life.
Charging toward them was a single squig, a two-legged beast with a large mouth, with its entire body strapped with bombs and TNT.
It was a living suicide bomb as it sprinted straight for the Fortress and intended to blow itself up.
"God damn it!" Cahyono swung the machine gun around and fired in rapid bursts, seeing the barrel glowing red as he unloaded everything he had into the charging squig. "Come on, come on!" he muttered through gritted teeth, feeling his heart pounding as he continued to fire more rounds at the bomb-laden creature closing the distance.
The squig's form seemed to be larger in the Colonel's sights as its slavering jaws stuffed with explosives ready to blow them all to pieces. Cahyono fired again and again with desperation mounting as he uttered a hurried prayer.
"If you're real, Allah, Yahweh, God, or whoever your name is, please give me a miracle to survive all this shit!"
And then, by some stroke of fate, one of his rounds finally hit the bullseye as the well-aimed shot struck the TNT inside the squig's mouth, igniting it in a spectacular explosion, which tore the squig apart mid-charge and sent a shockwave that obliterated scores of nearby Orcs in a fiery inferno.
"Yes!" Cahyono shouted, feeling his heart racing with adrenaline when he escaped from certain death. But his celebration was cut short as another explosion rocked the tank from the opposite side.
Before Cahyono could react, the Fortress was lifted off the ground and flipped a full 180 degrees in a deafening crash. Inside, the world turned upside down as the crew was thrown about violently as the tank came to rest on its roof with smoke and sparks flying as its systems flickered and failed.
It wasn't until the dust began to settle that Cahyono realized what had happened. While he had been focused on the first squig, a second bomb squig had slipped around the flank, detonating just beneath the tank and leaving it immobilized, which now became a sitting duck behind enemy lines.
"Dammit!" Cahyono cursed with blood trickling down his forehead from a cut sustained in the impact. They were trapped, pinned in the heart of the Orc horde, with no backup in sight.
As Cahyono regained his composure, he reached down to pick up his fallen hat, still dazed from the explosion, which had knocked the wind from him, but it wasn't enough to keep him or the Imam out of the fight. Now, a sharp tingling ran through Cahyono's palm as he scanned around him, searching for his aide.
"Old man, you alright? We need to move!" he called, stepping towards the Imam. But before he could take another step, the main hatch burst open, and an Orc, armed with a shoota, leveled his weapon at Cahyono. Due to the injury from the explosion, Cahyono couldn't react fast enough to draw his pistol. The Orc's finger tightened on the trigger, and at that moment, Cahyono was about to accept his death.
Bang!
Then, gunfire rang out, and the Orc collapsed with two clean shots in its head.
"Apologies, young man," the Imam said as he lowered his smoking AF-1. "Seems Allah's protection didn't extend to the tank this time."
Cahyono forced a smile. "It's fine. I'm sure the techs can scrape together enough parts to fix it after all this."
With a quick nod, Cahyono drew his pistol and turned his focus back to the battlefield. He wasn't the best marksman, nor did he possess any superhuman abilities, but his survival instinct had never failed him, and today would be no different in the New World.
"Let's get out before more of them show up and cause problems," he said to the Imam and approached the open hatch. Just as he was about to pop his head outside, a heavy thud shook the ground beneath them, making the already battered Fortress Tank shudder.
"What in the world...?" Cahyono muttered and stepped outside, using the tank's side as cover since the hatch faced the Liberation forces, but the tank's bottom was now exposed to the Orcs' main assault.
He cautiously peeked around the corner, and his heart swelled with hope when he spotted one of the Men of Stones engaged the Orc rear rank of Warbands alone.
This time, this Stone Golem was equipped with a cannon to rival the "ALN Teuku Umar" and a flamethrower capable of obliterating anything in its path.
And the Colonel had witnessed the Men of Stone unleashed the most devastating firepower from its weaponry while none of the Orc weapons could scratch its impenetrable armor.
Above, two Thunderwing airborne attack helicopters swooped down, releasing a rain of rockets while three TA-7 Transport Helicopters deployed 300 Imperial soldiers. Reinforcements from Alpha Company arrived as well, flanking the battlefield with Pahlwan and TZ-99 Tanks, crushing Orcs beneath their treads.
Seeing the tide turning, Cahyono activated his comms and gave hopeful words to encourage the remaining troops and pull them from despair.
"Forward my fellow brothers and sisters of the Liberation Army! Glory to the People's Empire!"