That Others May Live

by CptBrony

That Others May Live

That Others May Live

Duke and Aprotelese checked their gear again. During the flight, they both kept going through the full checklist, feeling satisfied, then going through it again because they had nothing else to do while they waited. Neither of them particularly wanted to talk.

Neither of them placed any blame on each other; it was more that they didn’t know what to say. Was Aprotelese supposed to say “Sorry my leader got your best friend killed”? Was Frost supposed to say he was sorry about Aprotelese’s team? Neither knew what exactly to talk about, and so remained in respectful silence.

They were flying up high in the carriage, and before Duke went into the fighting and violence, he wanted one last look at the landscape from up high. It really was a beautiful landscape. The vibrant colors, incredible variance, and vast expanse was something Duke had always loved about nature. Had things not gone the way they did, he might have considered coming here after retiring from the Air Force.

“About fifteen minutes until the drop zone!” the carriage puller announced.

Duke nodded and turned to Aprotelese, who nodded back. Duke prepared his parachute and set it on his back, tethering the rest of his gear to himself, and moved to the rear of the carriage. When they jumped, he would go first, followed by Aprotelese, who would be gliding down to the ground.

The landing zone was going to be a small ways away from the compound where OGA was being held. According to a dossier sent to Duke by Luna at the airstrip, it was a building built into the side of a cliff, although there were only artificial caves contained within. It wasn’t going to have the risk factor that the Dragon Lands had.

The plan was for Duke to enter from the bottom and fight up, while Aprotelese went through the top and closed off any escape routes. Once he was done with that, he would go back through the bottom and rejoin with Duke for the assault. If there was any chance of escape during the attack, OGA could be pulled away.

It was true, a team would have been better for this mission. But the issue was that Duke didn’t trust anyone the princesses may have sent his way. He only trusted Aprotelese and his team, and Aprotelese was the last operationally taskable individual from the group of two survivors. Duke knew that he would do his job, though.

“Five minutes!” the puller announced.

Duke looked down at his gear. He had decided to hang onto Frost’s rifle and weapons for this, and had his own MP7 and sidearm strapped to his back. He didn’t particularly plan to use them here, so they would serve as backups. It was easier than keeping the rifle as a backup because the MP7 was smaller and easier to keep out of the way on his back.

Frost’s knife hung on Duke’s vest, just under his left arm. Duke refused to allow any weapons to remain in the possession of the ponies, but this knife was different. It was Frost’s personal statement, so it only seemed right that Duke should carry it.

“One minute!” the puller shouted.

Duke readied himself mentally. This wasn’t going to be easy, and given that OGA was definitely there, this was guaranteed to be his last fight in Equestria. Unless the princesses had something else in mind.

“Let’s do this,” Aprotelese said.

“Into that wild blue yonder,” Duke said. A light on the side of the carriage turned on to a bright green hue.

“GO GO GO!” the puller shouted.

Duke flipped his Nightvision and ran out the back and leapt into the open air, the dark night sky on one side and the rough terrain of the AO below. With the NVGs, he could see the cliffside where the compound was, even if the building itself was too difficult to see from this distance.

After a couple of minutes of falling, Duke pulled his chute and glided down to the ground. They hadn’t been terribly high up when they flew overhead, so the journey down wasn’t nearly as long as a standard HAHO. The jump wouldn’t quite qualify as a HALO, but such strict definitions rarely applied in specialized missions.

When Duke hit the ground, he rolled as he was trained to do and got to his knees, scanning the area. Aprotelese was circling up above to provide cover and overwatch so Duke was able to reestablish himself and get all his equipment ready for the assault.

When Duke was ready, he keyed his mic and signaled for Aprotelese to come down. When the Nighthawk swooped in, Duke wasted no time explaining how it was all going to play out.

“We approach from the front,” Duke explained. “We can’t go from the sides because there’s no cover. On the way in we’ll use the occasional trees and large rocks or crevices to hide.”

“I saw some small spotlights on the roof of the building while we were dropping,” Aprotelese said. “They might make things a bit difficult for you.”

“That’s fine; I can handle it. What do you think the odds are that you’ll be seen by them?” Duke asked.

“Not high. My armor is coated to look like the night sky, so it’ll look like I’m just a shadow in the light,” Aprotelese said. “I’m going to go in with a divebomb attack when you give the signal. They won’t be able to stop a vertical assault.”

“Good. Just try not to slam into the cliff wall,” Duke said. “I’m going to approach from the front like I said. You’ll attack first and get their attention, letting me slip in while they’re distracted. You’re only job is to make sure that any topside exists are taken care of.”

“Want me to collapse them?” Aprotelese asked.

“If it doesn’t compromise the mission, do whatever is the most effective,” Duke said. He checked the time. “Let’s go; we have a schedule to keep.”

“Roger that,” Aprotelese replied.

Aprotelese took off into the sky and Duke moved out on foot. The compound wasn’t too far, maybe a kilometer to the west, so it wouldn’t take long for Duke to get there. Aprotelese would be able to inform him of any troubles along the way, though Duke wasn’t expecting any.

As expected, Duke’s journey was uninterrupted and he could see the cliffside building before him. There were very few windows on the face of the building, just about one per floor, and it wasn’t likely that any led directly to OGA. That wouldn’t be a good idea, putting your highly trained spy prisoner in a room with a quick escape. Of course, the way this went, Duke had to question the value of this guy’s training.

Aprotelese was right about the spotlights, and they could make an approach a bit more difficult. Duke wanted to be about fifty yards out when he made the call to attack, but he was three times that distance away now. The spotlights moved rapidly from one side to the other, meaning that he wouldn’t likely get past them without being spotted.

No matter. No plan is perfect.

“Aprotelese,” Duke said. “Burn ‘em.”

“Copy that,” Aprotelese responded.

Duke looked up and just saw a shadow of a figure started a nose dive toward the compound form up high. When it was about halfway down, it launched several glowing balls, probably explosive orbs, straight at the roof of the compound. Before any gryphons had time to respond, the orbs detonated and sent gryphons and gryphon parts flying off the roof.

Aprotelese landed on the roof just as the alarm sounded. The spotlights went frantic for a moment, then disappeared, and Duke took his chance. While Aprotelese kept the gryphons up top busy and the whole compound’s attention in that general vicinity, Duke rushed to the door.

Of course, gryphons on the first floor were taking the quickest way out in the form of the double doors at ground level. As they came out, Duke unleashed bursts from Frost’s rifle at them, cutting them down and cratering the wall with the projectiles. There were only a few gryphons that came out the front door, though, so the other must have been going up.

Duke ran into the front door of the compound and did a quick sweep to make sure no one was around. To the right, down a hallway, he spotted movement, but it was just several gryphons frantically running up a staircase to get to the roof.

Duke didn’t follow just yet, as he had to clear the floor. Thankfully, while the building was of considerable size, it wasn’t particularly expansive or filled with halls. From the appearance, there were three hallways leading toward the cliff and two hallways adjacent to it, and rooms in each hallway.

Duke started by going left, away from where he saw the movement, keeping Frost’s rifle up and ready to engage. He encountered his first door and kicked it in, finding nothing but a bunch of empty beds inside. The next room was much the same, and he was at the bend in the hall leading hi toward the cliff.

Duke cleared these rooms much the same as the first two, simply kicking the door in and rushing in the sweep and clear. These rooms contained supplies, though, which were of similar worthlessness to Duke, and so he moved on. The next bend led him adjacent to the cliffside again, and these rooms were full of food, mostly hanging meat.

Duke cleared the next few hallways on the floor and found that they followed a pattern. The hallways leading toward the cliffside all had supplies and stockrooms, the first hallway he entered through was all residential, and the back hallway had food storage. He cursed the wasted time and went to the staircase he saw the gryphons ascending earlier, hoping he could find OGA soon.

Aprotelese landed hard, causing the entire roof to shake even after his explosive assault, and immediately pulled his blades and slashed at any gryphon still alive on the roof. There was still dust in the air, blocking any clear view of who was in front of him. It didn’t matter to him, though, as any living form at this point was an enemy combatant.

He spotted one gryphon trying to get up and rushed it, stabbing it through the back and yanking the blade out at an angle, ensuring death. When he turned away, he saw no other gryphons getting up and so went about his one job.

There were two exits up on the roof, one on each side, facing toward each other as doorways leading to staircases. Taking these down would be a bit more difficult, but Aprotelese would have to find a way if he wanted to join up with Duke inside the compound.

He still had several explosive orbs. He pulled out two, one for each stairwell entrance, and figured he’d take it one at a time. The plan was to go up to each doorway and drop the orb just inside so it would do enough damage to the structure that he could use a second orb to level it, and the rubble would prevent an escape.

When Aprotelese approached the first door, he got a nasty surprise when he opened it in the form of four gryphons responding to the assault. They hadn’t quite expected the door to fly open, so when Aprotelese yanked it wide, they all stumbled back a step. Aprotelese took his opportunity to toss the orb in and shut the door. He heard screaming, a loud boom, and then silence. The door had jolted a good bit, but he held it closed.

There were cracks in the wall already, and given that there would likely be gryphons coming through the other door in moments, Aprotelese took his opportunity to toss another orb in and leapt away when it went off. The entrance partially exploded behind him, the floor flying off, but the rest collapsed down, with some landing inside the stairwell. Aprotelese ran over and kicked whatever rubble he could into the stairwell, and when he checked after, it was enough to sufficiently block the exit.

Behind him, the other door exploded open and three armed gryphons rushed out to greet him. Aprotelese took to the sky right off the bat to use his superior speed to his advantage.

The gryphons took off to pursue, but Aprotelese was already turning back around for his attack. The first gryphon saw him coming and tried to go for a horizontal slash across Aprotelese’s face as he made his pass, but Aprotelese spun and blocked the blade away in one swift movement, dragging his own blade across the gryphon’s leg in the process.

Aprotelese flipped himself to turn around more quickly and went for the kill this time, slashing the gryphon right across the neck as he turned to face his adversary. His eyes shot wide as the blade struck him, and he fell to the roof in a heap of feathers and blood.

The other two gryphons were together in the air, figuring that two would be better than one for fighting a Nighthawk. Aprotelese was trained for this kind of fighting, though, and so easily dispatched them by flying in between them and stabbing both as they tried to defend. They weren’t willing to make big movement because they were so close to each other, and so Aprotelese was able to use his precision flight abilities to make their discomfort their undoing.

With the gryphons responding taken care of, Aprotelese went back to the roof and set about taking out the second entrance. It was the same matter as the first, throwing on orb in first, then another shortly thereafter to collapse it. When he finished kicking in some rubble, he checked on his work one last time and set about rejoining Duke down below.

Aprotelese flew off the roof and toward the ground, but stopped at about the third floor when he heard the fighting. There was only one window, and it was only just big enough for him to fit through, but through it, he spotted a gryphon with an explosive-tipped crossbow.

Aprotelese steeled himself and flew forth, ready for the most intense fight of his career with the humans.

Duke checked each direction as he exited the staircase up to the second floor. There were all kinds of clattering noises around, probably gryphons arming themselves. Duke wasn’t interested in being caught off guard, and so immediately set about searching the floor. H expected more of the same, given the amount of noise, but he had to be sure.

He ran down the hall to the first door and kicked it in, finding nothing at all in the room. It was totally empty, save for a bit of straw in the corner. The next room was the same, though this time, it had a pillow. Turns out, this floor was a little more rewarding than Duke expected.

“Where are you, OGA?” Duke asked himself aloud.

He kept kicking in doors and sweeping empty prison cells, growing more and more frustrated as he went. The entire left half of the building was empty cells. Some of them had hints that someone had been there recently, though it looked mostly to be pony prisoners and not OGA.

Duke made it to the right half of the building and found the source of all the noise. About five gryphons in the first room, donning their armor and grabbing their swords. Duke didn’t give them time to respond to his barging in and shot them all down like a bunch of skeet discs. There was no sign of OG here, so Duke moved on.

As he left the room and entered the hallway, he saw movement to his left. When he turned, he could hardly believe it.

OGA was blindfolded and being dragged out of the next room by several gryphons.

“OGA!” Duke shouted.

The gryphons had already seen him, but now that they had been made, they double-timed it away. Duke couldn’t shoot yet with OGA right there, but when he was around the corner and two gryphons had yet to turn, Duke cut them down and spattered the wall with blood.

Duke reloaded the rifle as he sprinted after OGA and the gryphons. He couldn’t afford to let them get away. As he turned the hall to chase, he figured they had to be going for the stairs, and so just ran for that. Going backwards was faster for him given where he was.

He ran and just made it in time to see the gryphons dragging his fellow American upstairs. One gryphon spotted Duke and loosed an explosive crossbow bolt at him, which he just barely managed to dodge. The explosion was just behind him, but he was too driven and focused on his goal to let it stop him.

Duke fire doff three rounds at the gryphon and crumpled him, then gave chase. The next floor was likely to have more gryphons, but if he was lucky, he would be able to just keep going up after OGA.

As fate would have it, that was not what was destined to happen. The gryphon dragging OGA got off at the third floor and ran down the hall. Duke peeked out from the wall to see about seven gryphons down the hall with crossbow of varying types. As he turned to take cover, he spotted two other gryphons on the other side, trying to take him by surprise.

Duke waited a moment for them to get to him, then shot them dead in the blink of an eye. When the others gryphons saw their comrades fall, they opened fire on Duke’s position. At first, a few regular crossbow bolts clanged off the wall and flew to the end of the hall, but then the explosive bolts came. Duke had to take extra cover from those to avoid losing his ears.

When the fire ceased for just a moment, Duke leaned out to shoot. The gryphons were all reloading and failed to keep steady suppression on their foe, giving Duke the chance to open fire on full automatic and cut down every gryphon in the hallway.

When they all lay on the ground, Duke reloaded and stepped out of cover to advance. As he moved, though, another gryphon hopped out from his own cover behind a bend and fired a bolt at Duke. Duke just managed to dodge it and heard an explosion at the end of the hall.

The gryphon was reloading and so Duke rushed at him in an effort to kill him first. He could just make out the gryphon’s face in the light from the open window next to him, but he wasn’t able to make it in time. The gryphon had reloaded his shot and took aim right at Duke’s throat.

Just as the gryphon fired, Aprotelese came crashing through the window and slammed into the gryphon, sending the bolt into the ceiling. Dust and debris cascaded onto Duke while Aprotelese took care of the enemy who had nearly killed him. When Aprotelese was finished; a quick two punches and breaking of the neck; he moved over to Duke and helped him up.

“Thanks,” Duke said.

“Don’t mention it,” Aprotelese said.

“OGA is somewhere on this floor,” Duke said. “Did you take care of the roof?”

“All exits neutralized,” Aprotelese said.

“Then they have nowhere to run,” Duke said. “Pull security here by the stairs and window. I’ll grab OGA.”

“Roger that,” Aprotelese said. “Nice to know this is finally coming to an end.

Duke nodded in agreement and turned to check the floor. He didn’t need to run any more, not with the only ways out blocked. Even if they wanted to use a window, they would no doubt be unable to with OGA a hunk of dead weight. They’d either have to leave him behind; which worked fine for Duke; or stay and fight, in which case, they died.

Duke checked the rooms one at a time, finding nothing in the first or second hallway. The doors were all open, after the resident gryphons left them to join the fight. Either that or they ran. Duke didn’t notice a lot of gryphons in this particular compound.

At long last, Duke found what he was looking for; the only closed door left on the floor. There was only one reason this door would be closed. Duke topped off Frost’s rifle and checked the door for anything that might signify a trap. He was too close to the end of the game now to be tripped up by something small like that.

Duke took a step back and breathed in deep. As he exhaled slowly, time seemed to slow down, and he launched forward and thrust his foot into the door, crashing it open. Just on the other side, there was a single gryphon with a knife, charging at him. Duke didn’t want to risk shooting OGA, so he parried the knife to the side and pointed the rifle upward into the gryphon’s gut and fired two bursts.

With one gryphon down, Duke ran into the room. He spotted OGA as he entered and lowered his rifle to avoid accidentally shooting him or scaring the living hell out of him.

That was a mistake, though, as there was still one gryphon in the room. The gryphon slammed his talons down on the rifle and sent it to the floor, causing Duke to stumble and trip into the room. Duke recovered quickly and pulled his sidearm to fight back.

The gryphon swiped the pistol away and went to slash at Duke’s face. Duke evaded the slashes and rolled away, pulling out Frost’s FE9 as he came up. The gryphon followed him and went for more frantic slashes, each one easy to dodge and tiring the gryphon out.

Duke wasn’t about to let this drag out like it was some kind of movie. He kept on dodging until the opportunity presented itself to take the kill. Eventually, the gryphon grew tired, and his slashes were slower and further from their target. The chance had come.

When the gryphon went for another slash, Duke spun out to the side and slashed up with the knife to the side, connecting perfectly with the gryphon’s claw and severing it cleanly. The claw fell to the floor silently, and the gryphon stumbled backwards from the pain.

When the gryphon recovered, it looked at the cleanly cut stump of what was once it’s claw, then attacked with the other, which Duke cut off with just as much efficiency. With both claws gone, the gryphon could only try to peck at Duke. When it went for it, Duke grabbed it by the beak and pushed its head back and into the wall, then followed through with a thrust of the knife into its gut.

“Bye,” Duke said coldly as the gryphon went limp. He pulled out the knife and let the bird fall to the floor.

Duke observed his handiwork for a moment, then turned to OGA, the object of his entire reason for being here. At least, he wished. There was another reason he was here, another reason Frost had been killed. While OGA was a representation of what drove them in this whole mission, Duke couldn’t help but remember what Amel had told him. All of this, because of some guy from way back when… One man dead, two effectively held captive in a world of magical talking animals.

If only anyone could believe it, it would be quite the tale.

Duke pulled the blindfold off of OGA.

“Wha-“ the man said. He looked at Duke. “You… you’re a human…” he said.

“I’m an American,” Duke said. “I’m here to get you home.”

OGA blinked, and Duke offered his hand. OGA took it and stood up, a bit shaky but otherwise fine.

“I didn’t think anyone was coming,” OGA said.

“No one knew what was going on,” Duke said.

With OGA in American custody and safety again, and his mission complete, Duke was able to walk out with his charge and finally go home. He would have to think up quite a story for this, but he’d manage it in the coming hours before going home.

For now, though, he was just glad to have another human with him. Being alone wasn’t an experience he wanted to have again.

Comments

[Bazing]

Was Frost supposed to say he was sorry about Aprotelese’s team?

Yeah so should probably fix this.

Duke fire doff three rounds at the gryphon and crumpled him

Should be fired off

“Pull security here byt eh stairs and window. I’ll grab OGA.”

I don't even need to tell you what's wrong with this haha

“Nice to know this is finally coming to an end.

Needs end quotation mark.

[Ink_25]

Yay, new chapter!
Some random stuff I stumbled upon this awesome journey...

It was the same matter as the first, throwing on orb in first,

*an orb

he spotted a gryphon with an explosive-tipped crossbow

I think it's a bit exaggerated that he knows that the crossbow is loaded with an explosive bolt.

H expected more of the same, given the amount of noise,

*He

There was no sign of OG here,

*OGA, and double space before the sentence.

down the hall with crossbow of varying types

*crossbows

When Aprotelese was finished; a quick two punches and breaking of the neck;

*When Aprotelese was finished, a quick two punches and breaking of the neck; - I'm not very sure if this is a mistake or just stylistic choice.

of what was once it’s claw, then attacked

*its - This one will eventually happen to everyone once in a while.

If only anyone could believe it, it would be quite the tale.

Does anybody here not believe this?!

...on to the next chapter!