Some great imagery in your story. The only thing that took me out of it was this line "
Orc Marauders had descended on a human agricultural colony, rendering them combat ineffective within a matter of hours." For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why farmers being unable to fight would matter to this guy. Was he expecting the farmers to be effective combatants in the first place? Maybe it's some type of jargon I'm unfamiliar with.
Still, I enjoyed the overall piece!