//------------------------------//
// Chapter 42 
// Story: Hegira: Option Gamma 
// by Guardian_Gryphon 
//------------------------------//

Gryphons possessed a particularly deadly tactical advantage over the soldiers of almost any other race in terms of infiltration in a modern environ.  

They had almost no LADAR cross section.  

A Gryphon was even harder to spot than a micro-drone, given that their organic makeup was far lower in visibility on a LADAR scope than the titanium and steel construction of a robotic aircraft.

Fyrenn found himself sincerely hoping that advantage held true.  He, Kephic, Varan, and Neyla were circling just inside a bank of clouds, waiting for a microburst radio transmission.  The attack signal.

Far below, the Gryphons' eyes could make out their target in startling detail.

It was dusk, so Manhattan was well lit by the glow of millions of exterior halon, and interior fluorescent lights.

In theory, the strategy was simple.  The four Gryphons would land on the tower several floors above the warhead chamber, break in, and make their way down to the device.  It would have been easier still to simply infiltrate the chamber directly, or destroy the tower from afar, but closer examination had revealed that the 'windows' on the floors in question were actually false glass over highly reinforced armor plating.

Any attempt to infiltrate the chamber directly would be foiled by the plating, and any attempt to destroy the tower would require use of weapons so powerful that the collateral damage, and innocent death toll, would be completely unconscionable.

Trying to evacuate surrounding buildings in preparation for a railgun strike was a non-option.  The PER would notice, no matter how carefully it was done.

Considering all the variables, it had been decided that Fyrenn, Neyla, Kephic, and Varan would infiltrate the building from the top, disable the warhead, and then begin working their way down.

Once the warhead was rendered inoperable, the need for stealth would have passed.  At that stage, JRSF assault teams would breach the tower on the ground, and begin working their way up.

In theory, the two groups would meet in the middle, and the building would be clear of enemies.

Fyrenn, however, was a firm believer in the old maxim 'no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.'  He was fully expecting something to go wrong.  It almost invariably did on missions with so little preparation time.

His concerned musings were interrupted by a soft, short, staccato tone in his earpiece.
The operation had begun.

The four Gryphons formed up, tucked in their wings, and dropped like missiles towards the PER tower.  Kephic and Fyrenn were the leading edge of the delta formation, with Neyla and Varan to each side and several meters behind.

All four Gryphons, including Neyla, were encased in newly minted JRSF armor.

While the female Gryphon had been appreciative of the new equipment loan, she had opted to forgo a RAC and stick with her crossbow.  Nonetheless, Sildinar and Fyrenn had insisted she take a laser pistol and several fragmentation grenades to augment her small arsenal.

Varan had, true to his word, brought his grenade launcher to the fray.  Kephic and Fyrenn had decided to hold to more traditional, and precise, RAC-8s.

As the four Gryphons approached the two hundred mile an hour mark, Fyrenn began scoping out their target impact zone.  Now that he was looking for it, he could see the slight discontinuity between the floors that made up the warhead chamber, and the rest of the building.

The group was aiming to land one floor above the chamber.

In the interest of stealth, the plan was to pick one window each, impact, roll inside, and attempt to make the first kills without firing any weapons.

Fyrenn could see that the floor they were going to land on was mostly occupied by a perimeter hallway, rather than offices.  He could also see that there were several PER troopers, done up in their characteristic unmarked white armor.

Most of them were preoccupied with the interior of the building;  Checking doors, looking down stairwell access hatches... 
None of them even suspected the possibility of an external attack.
This oversight was their death sentence.

The air was whipping by so fast it was pinning Fyrenn's ears completely flat.
The tower loomed in his vision at what seemed like uncontrollable speeds.
He focused, and decelerated his perceptions accordingly.

An interesting side effect of his bid to control his descent more precisely was that as he hit the window, fisted talons first, he got a chance to see the results of a hard object impacting glass at over two hundred miles an hour.

Like most mega-skyscraper windows, the PER tower was equipped with thick safety-plexiglass.
The reinforced material could offer no resistance whatsoever to the immense forces it was being  so mercilessly subjected to.  

The panes went from spotless solid transparent wafers, to a multimillion piece jigsaw puzzles instantaneously, even to Fyrenn's vastly accelerated perceptions.  He watched, fascinated, as they each acquired their own trajectory based on the impact angle of his fists, spiraling away on a thousand disparate paths, like flecks of ice from a glacier.

Fyrenn quickly switched focus to the PER trooper nearest him, who had reflexively begun to duck as his senses told him he was under assault.  Fyrenn carefully timed his rolling action to come up right in front of the surprised man.

Before the enemy soldier could even finish lowering his hands, Fyrenn put the last of his momentum behind his claws, splaying them out.  The razor sharp talons pierced the man's helmet, and forced the entire assembly, head and all, away from his shoulders.

By the time Fyrenn finished extricating his claws from the shattered mess, the other three Gryphons had already dealt with their own targets in similarly forceful ways.

Fyrenn spared a moment to evaluate his surroundings.  The hallway the group was now firmly ensconced in wrapped around two thirds of the floor in a vaguely horseshoe shape, with periodically placed doors to access inner offices and a central chamber.

According to the layouts they had studied, the elevator access on their floor would be in the central atrium.

Kephic pointed a claw and nodded at a door which would let out onto the atrium via a hallway.
He moved to the left side, Varan to the right.  Fyrenn took dead center of the door, with Neyla directly behind him, resting her crossbow on his shoulder to provide cover fire.

Varan gave Kephic a thumbs up, Kephic tapped Neyla on the shoulder, she in turn did the same to Fyrenn.

The red Gryphon lent the door a kick that would have shattered it wholesale, were it not for the carbon fiber bracings along its inner surface.  While the door itself was fairly sturdy, the frame was flimsy.  The whole apparatus flew inward, clearing the first few feet of the hallway with its sheer weight and momentum.

Fyrenn heard the telltale 'click and snick' of Neyla's crossbow, and watched as a bolt flew past his head, hitting the first enemy with such force that he staggered back several paces.
Their new opponents were, however, Diamond Dogs.

Fyrenn had time to empty a RAC clip into the second one, just barely managing a kill, before the third one and the first, who had managed to extract the crossbow bolt from his right eye, and was now charging one-eyed and streaming blood, were upon them.

Fyrenn drew his sword with his left claw, while using the stock of the RAC, still clutched in his right, as a bludgeon.  The momentary distraction worked, and he was able to use his blade to clear enough space to let Kephic and Varan into the hallway.

The Gryphons were disadvantaged by the tight space, but they outnumbered the Diamond Dogs two to one.  Consequently, it was a short fight.  Fyrenn and Kephic forced the two enemy warriors back, while Neyla kept them dodging with her crossbow.

When they had reached the end of the hall, Kephic and Fyrenn beat a hasty retreat, much to their enemies' surprise.  By the time the two Trolls figured out why their Gryphon adversaries had been so eager to exit the conflict, it was too late.

Varan's grenade launcher made a dull 'thud' followed by a cacophonous 'BANG' as the round impacted, sending chips of roast-Diamond-Dog no bigger than the size of Fyrenn's talons all over the end of the hall.

The other three Gryphons stared appreciatively as Varan cycled the weapon.
He allowed himself a small smirk, "Jealous?"

Fyrenn smiled, "Only a little."

The group pressed on, reaching the floor's main atrium with very little trouble.
It looked as if the PER had no idea an assault was coming.

The atrium seemed to be an antechamber and workspace, with a hallway on the opposite end leading back to the outer ring, a door in one wall for the elevator, and a door in the other leading to the main office suite on the floor.

The central floor of the atrium was mostly filled with workstations, all dark and unoccupied.
Structural pillars stood in a ring around the workspace, with ensconced lights, toggled to low power after-hours settings.

The group carefully worked its way across the room.
Fyrenn was beginning to wonder if the PER had run short of personnel, or perhaps evacuated the building in preparation for the bomb detonation.

Suddenly, without warning or preclude, the lights in the atrium snapped up to full brightness.
At the same moment, a low crackling hum filled the chamber, and a bluish purplish hued cylinder of energy snapped into existence between the lighting pillars.

Kephic, Fyrenn, and Varan immediately lowered their weapons and engaged the safeties.  
A ricochet from any of the powerful guns would have the potential to injure or kill one or more of them if the barrier was as solid as it looked.

Neyla cautiously tapped the energy field with a talon, "It looks magical...  But not quite..."

Varan nodded, "It looks artificial."

Fyrenn looked up, then pointed to the roof, "It also runs between us and the ceiling.  I'm willing to bet it runs under the floor as well."

The group's observations, and deductive reasoning were interrupted by the slow, steady sound of clapping.

A voice followed the sound, emanating from the shadows at the end of the second access hallway, "Very good. Very observant.  You are of course, correct all of you.  The field is an artificial Thaumatic shield.  It is encasing you in a perfect cylinder, at the cost of magical energy drained from no less than seven Thaumatic batteries.  Which is excessive, but worth it to contain all of you so perfectly."

Kephic growled, "You are Tiro Vanberg?"

The voice, accompanied by a shadowy figure, moved closer, down the hallway, "Yes.  That is one of my many false names.  I have to admit though, when I received word that Prince Blueblood had been compromised, I never expected the nom de guerre I had used to speak with him to ever be traced back to this tower.  You all did a fine, if predictable, job."

Fyrenn cocked his head.  The voice was disturbing, as if from a dream.  It tripped some instinctual nerve that brought on a deep seated sense of impending worry.

"You said fake name...  So you feel it's important to protect your real one?  The only conceivable reason for someone like you to maintain their legal name at all is that it affords them some use.  
So, while I wasn't present for the GS Corp sting, I have read the file.  And I'm guessing *you* are the illegitimate son of Roland Gavin.  Hence the need to maintain proof of your name to manipulate Mr. Gavin, and the need to protect that information so you couldn't be traced."

There was a moment of silence, then the voice's tone changed to one of subtly mixed emotion;  Respect, and perhaps a little edgy disdain, "Very good Isaac.  I'm impressed you deduced that.  But it's disappointing that this information, in conjunction with your memory, has not served to reveal the *whole* truth to you."

Neyla hissed, "Speak plainly.  I'm losing patience, and I have no doubt this barrier has a time limit on it.  When it comes down, I will test the flight characteristics of Human beings by pitching you out one of your own windows."

The voice resumed a more jovial nonchalance, as the figure continued to advance, "Tsk tsk, where are my manners?  One can't expect guests to behave well if the host does not.  Very well, masks off at last.  Welcome to my humble abode."

The figure finally stepped forward into the light, and Fyrenn froze, his brain unable and unwilling to process the information his eyes were giving it.

The now-illumined figure, Roland Gavin's illegitimate son, the man known as Tiro Vanberg, spoke once more.

"I think the name best used for this occasion is the one that one of you already knows me by.
Please allow me to reintroduce myself.  My name is Robert Gilchrist."





Sildinar raced across the rooftop a mere few inches from the insulated gravelly material of the surface, ground effect between his wings and the asphalt lending him unearthly speed.

He was being followed by a large squad of Human JRSF troopers, a Pony medic, and two Ordnance Disposal technicians.

He could see the numbers on the large white cylinder ahead, and he knew there was no time to wait for the technicians.  It was all on his shoulders.

The large roan Gryphon skidded to a stop, in a spray of pebbles, and ripped the faceplate off the timer assembly without any preamble.  Sildinar wasn't intimately familiar with Human detonator assemblies, but he had memorized a basic EOD guide.

"DOWN! NOW!"  He shouted with all the might his lungs could muster, and took off in the opposite direction, returning the way he had come at an impressive lope.

He continued to yell until he reached his now confused squad, even pushing one man to the ground forcefully, before pinning himself to the roof, as flat as he possibly could.

Sildinar watched as understanding finally dawned on the members of the squad, and they unanimously scrambled for cover.  He just barely had time to cover a Pony, and another human, with his armored wings, before the bomb went off.

The blast wave sent several human members of the squad flying into standing vents and stanchions, and tore a five yard by six yard hole in the building's roof, raining fiery debris down over the entire area.

When the last of the shrapnel had fallen, Sildinar dared to raise his head and survey the damage.
His ears were still ringing from the detonation, but he could tell the medtech was shouting by the way her muzzle was moving.  He swept his gaze further afield, and grimly noted the presence of several other fireballs in the distance.

He murmured to himself as he rushed to the side of a fallen squadmate, "Well played you sorry fools.  But I'm not done *yet.*"





Fyrenn gaped, "You...  I put a bullet in your *brain!* You can NOT be alive, they told me you were dead on arrival!"

Gilchrist nodded, and glowered, "Oh yes Isaac.  Your round did indeed go directly into my occipital lobe, causing instant death.  It was, I believe, a nine millimeter sabot jacketed hollowpoint anti-personnel round.  Designed to shred inside my body and do maximum collateral damage.  Well...  Celestia protected me.  The shell did not shred, as it was supposed to."

Fyrenn shook his head, "Doesn't matter.  That level of trauma should have put you in a pine box.  Permanently."

"You would think so.  Luckily, despite your treachery, despite the fact that the med techs declared me dead...  I was not entirely abandoned.  I had a savior."

A new, distinctly feminine, voice echoed from behind the group, causing all the Gryphons, with the exception of Fyrenn, to turn and verify its source, "It was a near thing too.  Your macabre Human weapons do a great deal of damage.  I was nearly unable to repair his brain tissue, and jumpstart his vital functions again.  It didn't help that I couldn't access him for several hours after the incident.  But I prevailed."

Fyrenn continued to stare down Robert, "Ahh Veritas.  So nice to see your influence on his life hasn't diminished at all.  Tell me, how bad has his psychosis become under your 'ministrations?'  Do you have him swallowing the Celestia worship yet?  It certainly sounds like it.  Has he started in on a messiah complex?"

Veritas walked around the perimeter of the field to stand demurely beside Gilchrist, the deep violet unicorn tossed her sparkling mane dismissively, "I see your Human sarcasm has only been aggravated by your change of species Wrenn.  Such a shame."

Fyrenn chuckled darkly, "Its Fyrenn now actually.  I felt the change in name was a worthy commemoration of my adoption."

Gilchrist stiffened, Fyrenn smirked, "Oh you didn't know? I have real brothers now.  
My only regret is how deluded I was when I first knew you...  Perhaps earlier intervention could have lead to a better ending.  Still, I'll settle for the way this ends.  I came to terms with your death a long time back...  It shouldn't be *too* hard to repeat history.  For good this time."

Fyrenn strode up to the edge of the field, pressing his beak close, "And if it makes you feel better, you can keep calling me Isaac, if you like.  I don't mind the old name, its my grandfather's and I'll wear it just as proudly as the new one.
It is after all often prudent to humor delusional psychopaths, and allow them some feeling of power.  
It makes their passing more painless."

Gilchrist glowered, "You know I don't regret what I did to you either.  You endorsed that cowardly worm Korvan's positions by refusing to help me stop him...  *My* only regret is that I can't see you reborn into Light, finally shown the error of your ways, because you finally made as much a physical monster of yourself as you are mentally.  So I'll settle for the way this ends.  I am going to do to you what you did to me.  I'll leave you for dead."

Fyrenn shook his head, "Rob...  You can't just go off half cocked with an act of terrorism because a *fairly* elected government, representing the *people* did something you didn't like!  
That's why we have courts, and elections, and votes for!  Someone with your IQ should know better!  Anarchy and terrorism aren't 'rebirth.'  They're a power trip;  You claiming you know how best to run things for eight billion people."

"And what if I do?  I think my intelligence alone qualifies me.  Clearly none of you can match me, you even failed to notice my little prank.  Tiro Vanberg?"

Neyla sighed, "Of course.  It's an anagram, for---"

Gilchrist nodded, "Yes.  Robert Gavin.  My true name, if my bastard father were ever courageous enough to admit to siring me.  So yes, in short, I feel I am not only capable of wielding power, I am owed it."

Varan snorted, "Humans have a wise saying;  Power Corrupts.  You have become living proof."

Kephic growled, "I once told Fyrenn I would kill you if I got the chance.  You may as well sign and seal your will, because now I'm going to make good on that."

Neyla shook her head, "Not if I get to him first you won't.  I guarantee you an Arbalest bolt will do the job properly."

Veritas chuckled, "Such *loyalty* to each other.  It's sad that it's all so misplaced."

Fyrenn shrugged, "Lower the field, and I'll demonstrate misplaced.  I'll misplace some of you over here, some of you over there, and some of you waaaay out there through the window."

Veritas's horn glowed faintly, "I doubt you could, even if we gave you the chance."

"You'll never know if you're too afraid to try."

Gilchrist patted Veritas on the head and smirked, "You're trying to switch 'common sense' for 'fear.'  There is no sense in risking you harming us, even if we are confident in our other defensive mechanisms.  I'm not the sort who's easily baited."

Fyrenn chuckled dryly, "I see...  So a guy who walks into a governmental chamber with a grenade, and throws it at an elected official and his one true friend, because a law was passed that didn't sit well with him...  Isn't easily baited?  You're very astute in your self analysis Rob.  As ever.  Veritas help you reason all that out?"

Gilchrist glared, "I'm tired of your vapid deprecations.  You leave her out of this, understand?"

Fyrenn scoffed, "I think I'll do away with *her* first.  She was always the force behind your problems, maybe there's some hope for you yet once I've spattered her pretty purple Pony guts all over the---"

Gilchrist lunged at the field, the impact of his fists sending sparks up from its surface, "SHE is my one, true friend, and my beloved.  SHE saved me, when YOU abandoned me.  SHE showed me the true path to joy, SHE has supported me all these years, and SHE is a worthwhile reason to throw a grenade at two low life scumbag Humans with no sense of morals or direction."

Varan raised an eyebrow, and shot a glance at Fyrenn, "I see what you mean about him being hard to bait.  He is very reserved.  Very much in control.  The picture of resilient silence.  Do you think he would be willing to offer me some pointers?"

Veritas shook her head adamantly, "Enough of this nonsense.  We are on a schedule.  It is time to arm the device."

Gilchrist nodded, "I agree."  He spared a last glance for Fyrenn, "Enjoy these last minutes Isaac.  Savor them.  When the warhead goes off, the entire top of this tower is going to pancake like a dropped jenga set, taking you and your new 'family' with it.  Turnabout is fair play, after all."

With that, Robert Gilchrist, the head of the PER, turned his back and marched towards the lift doors ensconced in the back wall.

Once Gilchrist and Veritas had entered the elevator, metal plates began to iris down around the Thaumatic shield, including plating that stretched over the top of the artificial energy cylinder.
Judging by the noise, plating was also being deployed under the floor.

Once the plates were all in place, the Thaumatic field winked out, leaving the group encased in overlapping, tightly bound, three foot thick alloy plating, with only a clawfull of minutes to escape, and prevent the largest disaster in the history of New York.