That Others May Live

by CptBrony

Operation: Red Tail PT 2

Operation: Red Tail

Part Two

The SAR Team moved quietly through the first hallway of the large compound, moving in pairs; Malik and Hamid took the front, Duke and Frost took center, and Rashid and Aziz took the rear. Down the hallway, there were several doors on either side as well as entrances into other hallways. Excellent places to be ambushed.

“Eyes on our flanks,” Duke warned. “And keep your weapons ready.”

Duke and Frost had their weapons up and constantly scanned the halls, listening and watching for enemy movement. It was a little suspect, that there was so little movement inside, but given Nedal’s hillside assault, it wasn’t terribly surprising. Even so, they had to be on their guards.

They came upon a set of doors, one on the right and one on the left. Breaking into their two groups, Frost took Malik and Hamid and stacked onto the door on the right, while Duke took Rashid and Aziz on the left. The two humans checked the hall for any approaching hostiles, and when they saw no one, looked once to each other. After a quick nod, the humans turned back to the doors and tests the knobs. They were unlocked.

Swiftly and silently, the humans pushed the doors open and moved inside, followed immediately by their equine companions. On the left door, Duke and his stallions looked over the room and saw nothing. There were no hostiles, nor any sign of either OGA or this Blueblood character in the room. There were some cots, probably where some of the gryphons outside had been sleeping, but other than a few feathers on them, there was nothing else of interest.

On the left, Frost went in with his stallions and found a similar, but more occupied, room. Inside, he found himself face to face with a gryphon on a cot, holding a very small bird in its arms, looking terrified at him. As the stallions rushed, the presumably female gryphon held her baby much closer, fear of the stallions taking it away dominating her expression.

“Ma’am, stay quiet, we won’t-” Frost was interrupted by a shout from the side of the room.

“Who are you!?” a male voice boomed.

Frost turned around to see a very large, very angry-looking gryphon standing over another cot, this one with another small gryphon in it. Frost turned his weapon in his direction.

“Get down and stay down,” he ordered.

The gryphon looked horrified when Frost pointed his weapon at him, but suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, his face took on a twisted look of rage and, screaming, he lunged at the human.

Frost reacted quickly, lowering his stance and removing his finger from the trigger of his weapon. With one quick motion, he did a fast barrel strike, hitting the gryphon just under the beak. The gryphon fell back a little, stunned, and was immediately tackled to the floor by Malik and Hamid, landing just before the cot with the other small gryphon in it.

He attempted to struggle out, but his efforts were in vain. Frost ran up to him and knelt beside him.

“What do you want?!” the gryphon asked in a panic, looking back to his mate and chick on the other cot.

“We want Blueblood and a human, where are they?”

The gryphon was hyperventilating at this point, trying to reason with his foes. “I don’t know, they don’t keep me in the loop! I’m just here because I can read and write!”

Frost stood up and sighed. “Fine,” he said. “You take your wife and kids and leave, this is no place for civilians. And don’t tell your buddies out there that we’re in here.”

The stallions looked up at Frost with incredulity. “You cannot be serious, Frost!” Malik shouted. “He’s the enemy, we cannot just let him go!”

“He’s a civilian, and we don’t harm civilians!” Frost said back, a little angry that Malik said that. “Now get off of him and let him go.”

The stallions glanced at each other, and, grumbling, released their prisoner. The gryphon shot up and grabbed his chick off the bed, causing it to stir a little, then grabbed his wife and other chick.

“You have honor, human,” he said.

“Just get out of here.”

The gryphon nodded and ran of, family in two, leaving Frost with his two stallions in the room. They looked at him with uncertainty after the gryphon was gone, but Frost simply ignored it and looked around, finding nothing. He left the room to regroup with Duke.

Duke was standing in the doorway to his room, and Frost did the same. “Anything?” Duke asked.

“Yeah, but nothing good,” Frost said, drawing a frown from Duke. “They have civvies here, like the houses in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

“Shit,” Duke responded heavily.

“Yeah. So we’re gonna have to stick to what we learned in Close Quarters Defense; shooting is less than ideal.” The men learned to hone their reflexes in CQD training, to rapidly decide who earned a bullet and who earned a quick barrel strike to the face. Of course, with civilians present, they had to avoid the risk of shooting them, so it was mostly going to be melee combat. They had done it in Iraq, so they could do it here too.

The team continued through the first floor, encountering little of interest or danger. There were no gryphons on this floor, at least not any more. All they found were empty rooms and molted feathers. There were kitchens and storage rooms, but the storage on this floor was just food and water.

As they finished up searching the last remaining room on the first floor, Duke got to thinking. If OGA or Blueblood were here at any point, who was to say that they hadn't already been evacuated from the compound? Why would they even still be here, given the assault, unless the gryphons were certain they could win the battle outside?

“This is bad,” Duke realized with dread. There were two major possibilities here; their targets weren’t here anymore, or Nedal was going to find himself in a battle far worse than they had imagined.

“Boss,” Frost said, walking up and tapping Duke’s shoulder. “What’s up?”

Duke brushed his hand off. “We need to move faster,” he replied. “Let’s find the next floor and get moving.” Frost looked concerned at him, but nodded and called over the stallions.

They exited the room and took a right, down the only hall they had yet to take. It was a short hall with no features, save for a door at the very end. It made the team uncomfortable, being in such an enclosed space with no way out on either side. They rushed through this last hall to the door, which Hamid ran up to and kicked in.

Malik was the first through the door, followed by Duke and then Hamid. They were in a stairwell now, with one flight going up and another going down. Duke took a position watching the stairs going up while the rest of the team filed in.

Frost came in and took in the situation. “Which way?” he asked.

“Up,” Duke replied quickly. “We need to clear the building first.”

The team moved back into their formation and went up the stairs, eyes watching every angle of exposure. Duke had always hated stairwells like this, where someone could take you from surprised from either the top or the bottom. There was no tactical advantage here, and everyone was set on edge.

They went up one flight and found the door to the second floor. “Frost,” Duke called quietly.

“Yeah?”

“You take your team and check this floor,” Duke ordered. “I’ll take my guys and we’ll secure the top floor. Try not to take longer than five minutes.”

“Rog’.” Frost clicked his tongue at Malik and Hamid, and they fell in behind him as he started up the stairs.

Duke watched them go for a moment, then turned to Rashid and Aziz. “We’re gonna move quick and clean and get out of this as fast as possible,” he said. “I’ll take center, Rashid takes the front. Aziz, rear guard.”

“Yes sir,” Aziz replied dutifully, moving to the back.

Once in their little formation, Rashid turned around and prepared to buck the door. When Duke nodded to him, Rashid reared up his hind legs and blasted them back out with tremendous force, sending the door flying open. Duke rushed in past Rashid, weapon up, and scanned the area. There were no hostiles present.

“Clear,” he announced, moving forward to allow room for his stallions to come in.

This floor was distinctly different from the first; it was a training room. It looked a lot like the training center in that camp in Afghanistan, Darunta, if Duke remembered correctly. There was plywood serving as walls all over the place, creating a maze for which the gryphons could train for close combat.

“Let’s do this quick,” Duke ordered, moving forward. “I don’t think we’re gonna find much.”

This time, the human took the lead, letting the two stallions file in behind him as he entered the plywood maze. The maze was much worse than Duke was expecting; the halls were a maximum of three meters long, and every break was a four-way intersection. The only places where it wasn’t were when the maze went up against the wall of the building itself.

At one of those walls, there was a window, looking out over the yard and up to the mountainside. As they passed by, Duke took a moment to stop and look outside.

“Oh, no...”

He could just see the battle in the darkness of the night, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. There were wounded gryphons down at the base of the mountain, nursing their wounds or being taken away because their injuries were too severe. Duke could count two stallions lying there as well, bloodied and broken from the roll down. As his eyes followed the mountainside up, he could see a mass of gryphons up around Nedal and his assault troops. They wouldn’t last long.

Without warning the stallions, Duke ran forward through the maze, eager to get through it as quickly as possible. He figured there wouldn’t be any hostiles here, not when they could be in actual combat, so he kept his weapon lower but pointing forward as he ran.

“Duke, wait!” Rashid shouted from behind. His words fell on deaf ears.

Duke continued forward until he found a plywood door. Uninterested in waiting, he raised his weapon and kicked the door down, remaining in his place afterward to make sure he could shoot any gryphons before they got to him. Inside, though, there was nothing but an empty chair and a piece of clothing on the ground.

The clothing caught Duke’s attention. Cautiously, now, he walked forward and knelt beside it. With the barrel of his gun, he prodded at it to make sure there were no explosives under it. Once he concluded it was safe, he lifted it up to get a better look at what it was.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said in a whisper. In his hands, he was holding a jacket. A human jacket.

Rashid and Aziz finally caught up to him, panting, and looked at what he was holding.

“What is that?” Rashid asked.

Duke stuffed the jacket under his plates. “Intel,” he replied. He pressed his finger to his ear. “Frost?”

There was a crackle of static. “Yeah boss?”

“OGA was here; I got a jacket that was definitely his.”

“Awesome.”

“Yeah,” Duke replied. “We’re done here, moving to the stairwell. Meet you there.”

“Roger, we’ll be there soon.” The mics went silent, and Duke took his team back to the staircase.

Frost stood before the door, ready for the breach. It was a big door this time, one that looked like it might need a couple of bucks to take down. Whatever was on the other side of it, it was something that they weren’t supposed to see.

When they went through the door to this floor, they were met with a beautiful sight; documents everywhere, on desks, on the floor, and some of it was even in English. He had forgotten to ask the gryphon from earlier how he could speak English, or Equish, whatever, but it didn’t seem important at the time. Nonetheless, he snagged whatever documents he could understand and stuffed them under his plates for later.

Malik was standing before the door, waiting for the order to smash it down. “Ready, Frost?” he asked, anxiousness in his voice.

Frost nodded. “Do it.”

Malik pulled his legs as close to himself as possible, then shot them back out toward the large door. When he struck, the door budged, almost opening enough for them to see inside, but not quite enough. Frustrated, Malik reared up again and sent one more driving charge at the door, knocking it clear off its hinges.

Frost ran inside, rifle up, and scanned the room.

He stopped not half a meter into the room; there were over a dozen gryphons inside, in the process of gearing up for battle. Some wore plated armor, while some went skins. They all had vicious looking blades on them, some of them serrated, and wore war paint all over their bodies. When Frost ran in, they just looked in his direction, shocked at the sudden entry.

Frost turned around and went back through the door.

“RUN!”

He bolted back toward the stairwell, followed closely by his stallions, the gryphons shouting and chasing after them. Frost made it to the doorway to the stairwell and turned around, taking his firing stance and firing a couple of bursts over the heads of his stallions. The stallions ducked, letting the bullets fly past them, and several screams sounded out from that way.

Once the stallions were there, they leapt through the door and shut it behind them, taking jumping steps down the stairs.

Duke and his stallions were there, on the second level, looking up with confusion.

“Frost, what’s-”

“Just run!” Frost shouted at his partner, running past him down the stairs.

Duke looked up and saw the gryphons coming through the door, looking down at them with twisted rage on their faces.

“Aw crap,” he said, turning tail and following Frost.

The team ran down the stairs, trying to make it to the bottom of the stairwell, but they didn’t make it before the gryphons were upon them. The gryphons dropped from the top, avoiding the stairs, and landed right next to them. Before the men could bring their guns around, a pair of gryphons swiped them away, sending them down the stairwell.

In response, the men drew their blades and slashed at their foes, both of them drawing blood. Frost was able to bring up his left arm and stuff the gryphon’s arm, then sent his FE9 through the opening and into the gryphon’s chest, then pulled it out and slashed at the gryphon’s neck. Duke maneuvered his knife quickly, getting it up into the neck of his opponent.

The stallions were handling the rest of the gryphons who were on them, bucking and punching wildly. Malik was able to buck a gryphon into the railing next to the stairs, breaking its back and sending it over. Rashid and Aziz took on a group of three, bucking one into another so that they could take the third alone. They were able to daze him with a punch, then buck him in the face, twisting his neck and breaking it. Turning their attention to the other two, they pulled out their blades and rushed them, stabbing them in their guts and ripping their blades to the sides, opening them wide.

Hamid fought off one by letting it grab him and then writhing out of it to get it in a headlock. Once there, he held it as tightly as possible for several seconds, causing it to pass out, then stomped on its neck.

The remaining few were up above, about to jump down. “Shit, we got more-”

Suddenly, the building began to shake violently, sending everyone stumbling about the stairwell. The gryphons held onto the railing, keeping themselves in place, while Hamid and Malik went stumbling down the stairs and the rest of the SAR Team tried to steady themselves on the ground.

“What the hell was that?” Rashid asked.

Duke felt something hit the top of his helmet. When he looked up, he saw massive cracks in the ceiling above him and in the walls of the stairwell. Slowly, the building was shifting, the cracks getting larger and bigger pieces of it falling down.

Duke yanked his stallions off the ground and grabbed Frost. “Go, go, get to the basement!”

Above them, the gryphons were screeching, but the sounds were quickly drowned out by the loud rumble of the building. The team ran down the stairs, spotting Hamid and Malik at the bottom at the start of a long hall. When the two stallions saw them and the crumbling building behind them, they turned around and fled for the safety of the hall behind them.

Right as they reached the base of the stairs, a loud, continuous crash came from behind them, followed by a wave of dust and debris following them down the hall. The ground beneath them shook especially violently now, sending everyone to the ground and scrambling to get away from the doomed building.

The rumbling slowed to a stop as they crawled, eliciting them to stand up and look back. Unfortunately, they couldn’t see a thing in the pure darkness.

“Frost, drop your nods,” Duke ordered.

Frost pulled down his night-vision from his helmet and looked around, letting his eyes adjust for a moment. Once they did, he could see a sea of green over everything, and a bright shine in the eyes of his comrades who looked at him. Duke was already wearing his night-vision, checking to make sure everything was working, and sighed.

“What the hell was that?” Aziz asked anxiously.

“I don’t know, but I would bet that it has to do with everything outside,” Duke replied, turning to see the hall. It wasn’t actually a hall after approximately twenty meters, more of a long cavern. It must have lead into the mountains. “And I also bet it doesn’t matter.”

“We still have a job to do,” Frost said authoritatively. “Let’s go in there and do it.”

The two humans grabbed their stallions and held them by their manes, leading them through the darkness to whatever hostility lurked in the caves ahead.

***************************************************************************

Nedal picked up the gryphon before him and threw it to the ground, knocking the wind out of its lungs, then stomped on its throat to silence it permanently. He was standing in the middle of the battle, bruised and bloodied, though much of the blood wasn’t his. Around him, the battle raged, screams of pain, rage, and warfare ringing perpetually ringing out.

He and his troops were in a bad way up here; the enemy numbers were seemingly unending, and he had already lost ten of his troops. With only fifteen left, it was questionable whether or not he would be able to take the compound.

Of course, he couldn’t even begin to think that. “Push on, stallions!” he bellowed. “Not much farther!”

They were almost at the bottom of the hill, just before the perimeter wall of the compound. It wasn’t too tall, a wall they could easily jump over, but it was what lay on the other side that could cause trouble. There could be anything; more gryphons, waiting for them, traps, or worse, new obstacles placed there since the battle started.

Nedal pushed forward, his assault troops following as quickly as they could through the hail of enemies. It took a great effort, but soon, he and his troops were at the wall, though they were pinned up against it by the mass of gryphons on them. The stallions did their best to fight them off, but the enemy numbers were quickly becoming overwhelming.

Nedal could see this coming. “Over the wall!” he ordered.

From where they were, they wouldn’t be able to jump over the wall, so they had to form up steps out of their bodies. Three stallions pressed themselves into the walls to make the steps, while the remaining twelve took turns climbing up and jumping over. As their own numbers on this side of the wall dwindled, the force of the gryphons seemed to grow stronger and stronger.

Nedal leapt up onto the back of a stallion and jumped over. He should have been the first one over, something he would be incredibly sore about later, but that didn’t matter at the moment. He was one of the last three over the wall, so in a way, he was holding off the enemy for the rest of his team.

Right as he jumped over, he could hear the screams of one of his stallions from that side of the wall pierce the air, followed by two more. Those three soldiers would not die in vain.

This side of the wall offered little reprieve. While there were fewer gryphons here, the mass of them could just fly over the wall and attack from above. There were very possibly more in the compound, but Nedal wasn’t worried about them; they were Duke and Frost’s problem.

Nedal and his assault troops ran from the wall, eager to get away from where they had previously been pinned, and formed up a circle. The twelve stallions drew their blades, some even pulled out a few explosives from the river compound, and waited. Thee gryphons from this side of the wall were slowly approaching them, seemingly unsure, while an eerie silence beckoned from the other side of the wall.

“Sir,” a voice said.

“Yes, lieutenant?” Nedal replied, in no mood to talk right now. “I wasn’t sure you made it.”

“I’m not that easy to kill,” the lieutenant replied. “But sir, I think we may want to move soon.”

“Why would we need to-”

Suddenly, a vehement screech rang through the air, deafening the soldiers and catching the attention of the gryphons around them. Everyone looked toward the source, the other side of the wall. Some began to shake.

“That would be why,” the lieutenant said.

Nedal was about to give the order for everyone to move toward the building when the gryphons at the wall flew up into the air, beaks bloodied and animalistic looks in their eyes. Nedal had never seen anything look this bloodthirsty, this ready to kill whatever they could. It was the first time he ever felt real fear.

They rose up as high as they could, and, with incredible speed, they flew down, dive-bombing at the soldiers with no regard to their own safety. Nedal shouted for his soldiers to tighten the circle and brace for the impact, preparing himself for a fight to the death.

But before the gryphons were upon them once again, a glowing orange orb flew through the air in their general direction. The gryphons didn’t seem to notice the item, not stopping, and flew right into it, resulting in a massive explosion that shook the entire area. Bodies and parts of bodies were scattered about by the force of the bomb, and sending the remaining dive-bombers in random directions, many straight into the ground.

Nedal looked to his left; his lieutenant had thrown the bomb. After throwing it, he turned around and faced the majority of the gryphons behind them, blade drawn and one explosive left in his pouch.

Nedal turned with him. “Go go go!” he shouted.

His soldiers bellowed and ran forward into the group of gryphons, at least forty strong, and the gryphons charged right back. When the twelve stallions collided with the forty gryphons, all hell broke loose.

The sound of clattering metal, sword on sword, sword on armor, all of it, took over the air. There was no room to use explosives here, it would kill too many of Nedal’s own troops. They were forced to fight in close, exhausted, battered and bloody, and they were looking like they would lose.

Nedal spotted a space next to the building that looked like it would be highly defensible. With a dash of energy and speed, he ran from the major battle and checked it out. It was a generator room, and the generator used highly flammable, pressurized propane gas, and it was massive. If the generator were hit, it would be capable of taking down a four story building.

“Damn,” Nedal muttered to himself. He kept a note of it and ran back to the battle; it was no defensible location.

He didn’t need to go far; his stallions followed him, along with the battle, and they were right on the generator room. Nedal went to run forward when a curved blade sliced down through the air just before his face, giving him just enough time to respond to it by jumping sideways and stuffing his blade into the chest of the gryphon responsible. With a loud scream, the gryphon fell back and onto the ground, never to move again.

Nedal pushed his way through the battle to the center, where he saw his lieutenant fighting a group of three gryphons. It looked like one had managed to get a shot on him, as there was blood coming from under his armor on his side, and they were about to overpower him and kill him. Not one to let his officers die, Nedal rushed in.

He came in from behind the gryphons and shoved his blade into the neck of one, severing the brain stem and causing a quick death. The other two had yet to notice, so he quickly dispatched one while his lieutenant charged the other and reared around for a buck. As Nedal cut the throat of his gryphon, his lieutenant’s buck drew a sickening snap from the gryphon, sending it flying backwards and onto the ground.

Nedal moved to be flank-to-flank with his officer. “How goes your battle?” he asked, panting.

“Well enough,” the lieutenant replied. “Though I am worrying.”

“About what?” Nedal asked. He didn’t like the sound of that; his soldiers weren’t allowed to worry.

“That.” His lieutenant was only looking one way, so Nedal turned around to see what it was.

It was a small army of gryphons approaching their position from the valley, the area where the SAR Team approached. There must have been another area in the valley where there were gryphons, because numbers like this were never even conceived in the war room. The approaching gryphons all shined in the moonlight, indicating the presence of armor, and they were closing fast. They could be here in a matter of minutes, possibly less.

Nedal had to think now or he wouldn’t get to think again. There was no way his no longer twelve, beaten, and exhausted stallions could fight off this force, even he could admit that. But that was where his soldiers were better; they were more efficient, smarter. They could think of unorthodox solutions to standard problems to come out of them as unscathed as possible.

“That’s it!” Nedal shouted.

“What’s it, sir?”

“Give me your last bomb!” Nedal ordered, sticking his hoof out. Nervously, his lieutenant gave him the bomb, treating it gingerly, like a child, and Nedal snatched it from his hoof.

He new exactly what he had to do. The battle was winding down here, but soon, the army of gryphons would be upon them. Maybe twenty seconds. He moved about the battlefield, running over the bodies of his foes and comrades, getting into a good position to throw the bomb exactly where he needed to. If he did this wrong, it could be catastrophic to his troops’ chances of surviving this ordeal.

“More gryphons incoming!” one of his soldiers yelled. The gryphons were just over them now, ready to swoop down and finish what their dead friends started. Nedal waited, it had to be just right before he could throw.

And the gryphons descended on the stallions, almost all at once.

“Goodbye, you fowl sons of bitches!”

Nedal threw the bomb into the generator room.

There was a massive explosion, throwing Nedal away from the building and over thirty meters toward the wall, where he smashed into it with a loud crack, and everything went black.

Comments

[D48]

Well, Nedal is still an idiot. I really hope a gryphon gets to him before he wakes up.

[cellum95]

Well, I saw this, but I didn't comment, so that others may have a chance to comment. Okay, here's the thing. Saddle Arabian ponies under that command of Frost and Duke are now perfect in rescue missions and could breach anything. But for Nedal, his a dumb-witted guy who thinks honor is everything, and will go head-on to fight the enemy, and doesn't care about the civvies. However, there is one piece of advise left for him, don't go head-on, it would be suicide. Try to formulate your own Rules of Engagement(RoE) and change his game plan.

That's all for now

-cellum95-

[CptBrony]

3682190
Thank you! And no, no one's done any art for this story.

[SirLlamaIII]

I called it.