Kommandoz (I)

The soldiers cautiously entered the village, first passing through the burning barn.

The air was thick with the stench of blood, decay, smoke, and death. The scorched grain gave off a smell that could make one weep.

Beneath all these surface signs, Grana could uncover the most important clue from countless traces: savage violence.

The enemy was here. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

The warriors spent the next ten minutes in silence, communicating only through gestures and body language.

As the most elite Green Devil scouts on the front line, every squad knew the others well, and every soldier had to cover his brothers.

Through long years of infiltration and counter-infiltration warfare, the New California Republic had forged a corps of elite special soldiers. They were experts in squad combat, and every one of them had fought Orks more than once.

Their primary task was to eliminate the small numbers of Orks that slipped through gaps in the defenses and, when necessary, cross the river to carry out sabotage missions.

This time, they had received reports that a squad of Orks had swum across the river at dawn.

They all knew that few Orks could swim, but those who could were bound to be the toughest bastards—learning to swim seemed harder for an Ork than dying.

Yet so far, there had been no sign of an enemy attack, despite survivors reporting that they had seen multiple enemies.

Ragnar found several tunnels.

"The Greenskins ran..."

He muttered in a low growl, recalling the stories in the newspapers of Duke Yushikin in the east defeating the Greenskins.

When surrounded, rather than sit and wait for death, his forces had used pipes and tunnels to ambush the Greenskins. New California had copied the idea and built some