Secondo: Shores of Zebrica

by Lil Penpusher

Songs of War

"Lay low, and for all that is holy, keep your voices down."

A harsh hail was striking the riverside that night. Everything seemed quiet except for the sound of the rain, though tension was palpable nonetheless.

Four hippogriffs were sitting or laying underneath a large camouflage net, the fake, interweaved leaves of the net now as wet as any of the real ones in the trees around and above. A medium-sized anti-tank gun was concealed underneath the net, the second half of the gun barrel poking out from the disguise, adorned with a sizeable muzzle brake at the end.

"Will you ever stop being such a bossy arse?"

The hippogriff who had spoken first glared at a comrade-in-arms. All of them wore olive drab uniforms on their bodies, the collars of each uniform depicting various insignias of rank. Three of the hippogriffs also wore simple, metal helmets which the rain was happy to use as musical instruments as rain drops drilled against them to create a most annoying dinging noise over and over.

"Will you shut the fuck up?" barked back the first griff, the one who wore a khaki peaked cap instead of the regular helmet, and whose collar depicted the insignia for Second Lieutenant. The cap was usually a nice tool to be identified as an officer in the field - less of a positive in direct combat when fired upon admittedly - but for postings like this, during weather like this, it was not fun at all. The once proud cap was soggy and wet and severely deflated upon the head of the teal-feathered avian. The army insignia could still be made out at the front just barely, at least: a musical note, behind which two swords crossed. Aria had not been very creative coming up with it, and she had refused to let Sonata know of her creative drought on the matter, knowing that the insignia would be some unfitting, comical iconography if the youngster had her way.

"Woah, ladies. Settle down, will you?" a third hippogriff butted in, turning his head.

"Don't tell me you're covering for our 'boss' now, Zephyr," the second griff returned with a roll of his eyes.

"I cover for myself when I ask you two idiots to just shut up and keep your petty insults confined to... well, as far away from me as possible, actually," Zephyr returned, the Sergeant's insignia on his collar, consisting of multiple chevrons, shining in both the moonlight and rain.

"Talk about unbearable, Zephyr," a female voice joined them, sounding tired as can be. "I would rather you, Windy and Hurricane desert and run back home so I can just be rid of you altogether. Your constant, incessant arguing is seriously messing with my head, and your voices alone are like drills going straight through my ears, at this point!"

The other three remained silent for a brief moment before Zephyr and Windy Blaze let out hearty chuckles.

"Hah! You call us annoying and incessant? Hahaha! What about-oof!"

Zephyr's next insult was cut short by a claw meeting the left side of his face, slapping him across it with great force and intent.

"Told you to shut the fuck up, idiot! Now quiet!" Hurricane Meadow, the officer of the crew, gave them a deadly glare which, against the odds, silenced them for the moment. "Gods only know what we'll encounter today up that road."

The Lieutenant pushed himself on his fours for a moment before looking through one of the pouches on his uniform. Revealing a pair of binoculars, he leaned onto the relatively small, certainly lackluster 'shield' of the gun the crew were meant to be operating. The glint of the magnifying glasses of the surveillance tool would be visible from afar, even in the dead of night and particularly to trained marksmen, so Hurricane ducked after a brief scouting of the area to their front.

In front of them was a large river and, more importantly, a rather old-looking stone bridge. Sturdy as it were, it was strong enough to support most modern hardware, which is why they were here to begin with... presumably.

"You mean encountering things like that tank column?"

"Yes, like that- what!?"

The Lieutenant perked up and snapped to find the origin of their only female comrade, Gusty Arrow. The dark-green hued avian appeared to be poking her head out off to the side of the gun's shield. She began to point ahead the moment she realised Hurricane was looking at her, and so he raised his binoculars once more.

"How the-"

"You really are bad at this, you know," Gusty interrupted as both of them looked at the approaching threat. A column of five tanks was driving down the road leading towards the bridge they were guarding, cresting the small hill ahead as they came into sight. Their booming engines were only faintly audible for now.

"Everybody, get ready!" Hurricane spoke back to all three of his supposed subordinates, speaking as loudly as he could without outright screaming.

There were moans and groans and hardly-concealed slurs headed his way in response, but the crew did as he asked in the end. Zephyr moved up towards the gunner's sight to the left of the gun breech, with Gusty Arrow positioning herself to the right of the same, both her front claws holding tightly onto a pair of cranks. She looked over her left shoulder as Windy Blaze pulled a lever to open the breech shaft. A few seconds later, he came up and heaved a considerably large piece of ammunition, dropping it as gently as he could and giving it a forceful shove to push it into the breech proper. He pushed the same lever as before, sealing the breech once more.

"Loaded!" Windy called out quietly.

"Wait for my signal."

The three crewgriffs looked to their officer, who was now crouched in more or less the same position Gusty had seconds earlier, poking his head and binoculars out from the right of the small gun shield they had to hide behind.

"Gusty." The named hippogriff turned her head to her gunner, who gave her a series of signals using his talons. She nodded, and proceeded to pull and push the cranks in front of her. The gun moved in accordance to her actions, aiming a little further to the right, and a little bit higher.

The rain continued to fall, the hail even increasing it felt like. The four hippogriffs remained almost entirely inert underneath their soaked net, feeling as increasingly large splats of water dinged against the metal tin cans they wore for helmets. Zephyr briefly pulled back from his sight and rubbed his eyes, then doing the same to the sight, before leaning forward to peer through it once again.

"Little more... liiittle more..."

Hurricane's mumbled voice was hardly audible, the rain drowning it out. He began to slowly raise his left front claw for all to see while still holding onto the binoculars with the right one. Gusty placed a claw of her own on a lever, eyeing the officer intently.

"What are we waiting for...?" Windy Breeze whispered, leaning onto a second shell for the gun, ready for the imminent reload.

"Boss is being a pus-"

"FIRE!"

The Lieutenant's claw slashed downward, and Gusty Arrow pushed the lever she'd been holding. The others tried to cover their ears and turn away before the gun barrel burst into action, the shell escaping out to the front as the breech recoiled backwards.

Even without the binoculars Hurricane had, the others could see the sky light up in the distance, just across the bridge, as a loud, metallic 'DING' rang out, the armour-piercing shell of their gun penetrating the flat, frontal armour of the lead tank of the small formation of light tanks. A loud combustion followed as the commander's hatch atop the turret was sent flying, ripped off as the inside of the vehicle vaporised into a mess of fire and explosions.

"That's one down," Zephyr commented as he looked at the scene through his gunnery sight, seeing a large pillar of fire spew out from the now opened hatch. It looked like somecreature was firing out of the tank with a large flamethrower.

"Reload!" Hurricane ordered, and Windy Breeze jumped into motion. He opened the breech once more, allowing the now emptied casing to be ejected before pushing in a second round.

"Ready!" he shouted as he closed the breech.

Gusty quickly used the two ranks to move the gun barrel to the left, as Zephyr had instructed her. Then, she pulled the trigger via lever once more.

Another boom from the gun as the breech recoiled, but no effect on target this time as the shell dug into the grassy grounds ahead, missing the tank they were aiming for.

"Reload!" Hurricane shouted once again, before docking behind the shield as a tank shell exploded only a few meters ahead of the now not-so concealed gun. "Reload, dammit!"

Another casing jumped out of the breech as Windy carried up another one of the heavy shells and dropped it onto the breech rail. "You owe us for this crap, asshole..." he cursed before pushing the shell in.

"Cover!" Everyone looked up as they heard a whizzing noise for but a splinter of a second. The world around them lit up, their ears briefly ringing from the explosion before everything went quiet for good.

---

"Go on, General."

Aria's voice was nearly drowned out by the choir of voices and sounds all around her. Hippogriffs and, for the first time now, zebras 'recruited' from Zumidia, were manning radio posts and answering requests from all the way down the line, while others were relaying orders directly. Others again sorted or wrote paperwork. Aria was new to all of this, that much she knew, but she felt oddly fine with this new style of warfare. Sure rounding up peasants back in the day to charge at a castle was fun, but it was only so for a few times before it got boring. The purple siren wasn't much of a people person, but when everycreature in the room had to obey her - spell or not - then she was much more keen on social interactions. Not least because this new era of warfare was an interesting new way for her to put her cunning to use, a cunning that usually went to great waste because of playing second fiddle to Adagio.

Of course, and this much she was aware of, she couldn't get too high and mighty. She was new to modern warfare, and new to this world of modern technology overall. She was going to be fighting creatures who have grown up in this environment from birth, and who have gone through rigorous training and exercise for years, not to mention personal experience and veterancy.

Luckily for her, then, that Colthage was primarily propped up and defended by mercenaries, whose commanders - while experienced - were more in it for the money than the nation. They may not have been giving it their all so far, and Aria was more than glad to accept that fact for the time being.

"As you wish, ma'am," came the eventual response from a yellow-feathered hippogriff in olive drab uniform. Her collar depicted a musical note surrounded by a laurel wreath, sowed onto a purple patch which itself was sowed onto the uniform. "The 52nd and 67th have held firm so far. The 44th has suffered some minor territorial losses, but they've already been instructed to harass the enemy and push them back across the border."

Aria studied a map laid out in front of her and the hippogriff, depicting the warzone with Colthage. Not much had changed since before the start of the war a week ago as the hippogriff defences had largely stood firm, with some small exceptions where Colthage had broken through across the river which served as the natural boundary between Zumidia and Colthage for much of the frontier. There were a lot of coloured arrows pointed into Colthage for future offensives, as well as written text to denote the names of individual brigades and divisions.

"So our line is holding," Aria concluded.

"For the most part," the general replied simply.

"We'll have to be ready for them to improve their efforts. Zalathel won't like that he isn't making progress so he - or his factional rivals anyway - will push the military into trying again and again until progress is made."

"Agreed."

"Let's bleed them dry for the rest of the month, Duskfeather," the siren theorised, "by then our marines should be ready for Operation Alaudia."

The siren studied the map some more, moving a hoof to the northern coast of Colthage which bordered on the Alaudian Sea there - the namesake of the upcoming undertaking. She heard a grumbling though, and looked to the blue-haired officer instead, who scrunched her small beak at the thought.

"What's the matter?" Aria asked.

"Oh- I... nothing. Sorry, ma'am."

"I'm not stupid, you know. That's Sonata's job," the siren replied, clearly unconvinced. "Spit it out."

"Err... well, I just thought that Alaudia may be too risky, ma'am. Sure Colthage is reliant on mercenaries but I doubt they would lack the reserves to respond to our naval landings. And if they do respond in force..."

"Right. I get you, I get you, don't go on," Aria cut her off. "I've heard it all before. However, consider that us frontally assaulting them at the border would probably cause more damage to us than them. It's the same scenario for us as it is for them, right now. That's probably a worse prospect than Operation Alaudia is."

"That's true... though I'm still not sure if that justifies such a risky move."

Aria crossed her hooves.

"And here I thought you were one of the more daring generals from before we returned. That you were willing to take risks?"

The hippogriff shivered visibly as she looked up at the creature before her. "N-No, I mean... yes! I mean... I'm sorry."

"You should be. I demoted a lot of useless idiots and promoted useful idiots when I came in to rearrange the armed forces. You should count yourself lucky I'm keeping you on such a loose leash, miss Duskfeather."

"I-I am! I swear to you, I am!" the avian quickly returned. "I just- argh...!"

Duskfeather flinched and moved a claw to her head.

"My head... gah..."

She shook her head as if trying to regain her senses, but to no avail. She swayed back and forth, left and right, almost as if in rythm to something given the regular intervals of said swaying. Her pupils shrank noticeably.

Aria grinned as her gen shone dimly before the light extinguished. The general's senses quickly returned as quickly as she'd lost them. She shook her head again.

"Let that be a useful reminder to know your place. You stand here because I want you to stand here, and for no other reason," Aria threatened. "I need creatures who are intelligent, skilled and willing to take a chance, because if all you do is whince at every threat, then I could just be doing all of this myself!"

Aria calmed herself down a little as the hippogriff, still half-dazed from her brief loss of control, cowered and covered her face. Uninentionally, she had spouted at her the fact that she was afraid of making mistakes and not being willing to take a chance... which was the exact reason for her delegating so much in practice, and having griffs like Duskfeather around to do it for her. She wasn't confident enough to do it herself, and even if she was her calculating nature probably would cause it to take far too long in practice, but... she was fine delegating those decisions when possible, to those who knew their craft well. Lucy Duskfeather, a young but usually confident officer, had been a rising star before their takeover, so she had assumed the young woman would have been a good fit. Perhaps so, or perhaps not.

"You're dismissed. You know what to do."

The hippogriff shot back onto all fours and saluted her superior.

"Y-Yes, ma'am! I'll send orders down the line right away!"

The officer had rushed out of the room after that so quickly that Aria had no time to say anything further. She returned to studying the map laid out in front of her. She pondered. Was her move too daring, indeed? Maybe she should ask her general staff for input... in which case her outburst at Duskfeather seemed rather stupid.

She sighed and rubbed her right eye, turning away from the map. She would definitely need a night's rest to think about this properly.

Comments

[shining paladin]

awesome chapter mate keep it up cant wait for the next chapter