If war was chaos, Wrenn reflected, then being a Gryphon was the ultimate in bringing order to chaos. Fighting a roughly equal foe, like a trained Diamond Dog mercenary, was all about one opponent, or a small group, and the skill involved in anticipating your enemies tendencies, weak spots, and rhythm over the long term. Alot like blitz chess, with sharp edges and high octane kinesthetics.
Fighting in the chaos of a projectile based firefight was the antithesis; It was about the forest, not the trees. It was easier for Wrenn because it was already his native element, but he had a faster brain, sharper eyes, and very *very* sharp claws.
The secret to excelling against overwhelming numbers of enemies who were themselves individually weak, but posessing of deadly weapons, was quick planning and precise targeting.
The best way to accrue kills and accomplish an objective, was to think ahead. Plot out a route across the battlefield, mentally marking targets. Because those targets were slow compared to his own reflexes, Wrenn could plan all the kills well in advance, crafting them into a flow; A well connected sequence of high speed events.
Wrenn was ‘in command’ of a battalion of Earthgov Special Forces marines.
To his mind it was more like he was escorting them and advising their commander, but the overall result was the same.
The Gryphons had split up, Carradan travelling with Wrenn’s unit, deciding mutually that they were best used as force multipliers for existing squads rather than a single incredibly destructive unit.
An HLF hand-held mortar shell burst overhead, and a new group of the tan armored soldiers came marching through a side alley. Their steps seemed to cease, and the whole world paused as Wrenn inhaled, and his mind took the task head on.
Five hostiles.
Standard energy diffusion plating, kevlar nanopolymer vest overlay.
Heavy armor.
Advantage; resilient versus long range projectiles and knives.
Disadvantage; bulky and slow. Inflexible.
Weapons; KA-Bar survival combat knives, frag grenades, NSK-9 projectile based sidearms, RAC-5 rail rifles, and one enemy with a handheld mortar, single shell expended out of three in a standard clip.
Wrenn quickly plotted out the lines of fire, weaving his own maneuvers to take advantage of the positions and sight pictures of the enemy soldiers’ to force the maximum amount of movement and risk to each other in order to put him in their sights.
Then he fell to planning the kills.
Five hostiles, making avoidance of incoming fire easy.
Human compatriots; unable to avoid incoming fire quite as well, therefore kills must be accomplished quickly, and with flare in order to draw fire and attention.
First Kill; Close with mortar wielding soldier, seize weapon, twist one hundred and eighty degrees and relieve him of it.
Two broken arms, broken collar bone, dislocated shoulder, dazed.
Finish with back paw swipe as he falls; Slit jugular, fatal.
Second and third Kill; Fire mortar point-blank at vanguard position.
Deaths instantaneous by shrapnel and shockwave concussion.
Fourth kill; Backflip into rearmost enemy, whose sight picture will be disrupted by nature of being forced to shield herself from incoming shrapnel. Disoriented, easy kill. Snap neck two hundred and twelve degrees to line up sights with last enemy.
Final kill; Soldier may have regained some modicum of perception, distance will be too great to prevent him from dispatching a round, which could be easily avoided, but he may target a friendly, so kill must be swift.
Throw sword, tight arc, aim for small weakness in neck plating, follow up with final mortar shot if necessary, exhausting clip.
Total reckoning; Five kills, three point four seconds, forty six total rounds fired counting initial fire, no friendly casualties.
Wrenn exhaled.
Execute.
Wrenn flipped into the air, splaying his wings for a brief second to draw attention, then snapping them closed to protect them. He corkscrewed down his predetermined path as bullets whizzed around him, many coming close, but none a major risk. All the firing lines fell out exactly as he had known they would.
His corkscrew brought him down and right, allowing him to use his momentum to impact the mortar soldier. Before the trooper could even process what had happened, he twisted the weapon end over end, breaking every bone between the man’s fingers and neck on both sides instantly as he, quite literally, twisted his arms into a pretzel.
As the soldier fell, Wrenn swiped at his helmet with one back paw, dislodging it, and used the other to impale the enemy’s throat on his claws using gravity.
Simultaneously, he raised the mortar, sighted the two vanguard units, and pulled the trigger.
The two soldiers were only one quarter of the way through turning around to reestablish line of sight on him, and they didn’t even have time to process what hit them before they went up in a fireball.
Before the round was even halfway to target, Wrenn had pushed into a backflip, simultaneously shielding himself from any left over shrapnel with his backplate, and bringing him down towards his fourth kill. He landed directly behind the disoriented soldier, cupping his forelegs around her head in a grim parody of a hug, and snapping hard as soon as he hit the ground.
The human spine could be severed with sixty six force pounds of torque.
Inside the particular type of armor the HLF were wearing, this was elevated to one hundred and ninety eight force pounds.
A Gryphon could produce, with his or her forelegs, according to the measuring devices in the Bureau gym, roughly six hundred and seventy force pounds of instantaneous torque.
Under the pressure, the titanium neck plates of the enemy’s armor simply snapped loose as though they were over-cooked ceramic, and flew in all directions like frisbees. The maneuver placed Wrenn’s own sight picture firmly over the last soldier.
Or it should have.
During his backflip, Wrenn became aware that something was very wrong. The final soldier’s armor configuration had caught his eye as looking odd, at first, but there didn’t seem to be any appreciable external advantage to it, so he dismissed it. But the strange soldier didn’t seem phased by the mortar fire, and he had in fact begun to move towards Wrenn once he had a visual lock.
Now he was too close to use the mortar, which meant he was moving with a shocking, essentially impossible, level of speed for a human.
Wrenn dropped the mortar, and engaged hand-to-claw, grabbing the man’s weapon as he squeezed the trigger, and avoiding the rounds by combination of twisting the weapon, and his own body, to stay out of the line of fire.
To his abject amazement, the man pushed back with nearly equal force, preventing Wrenn from doing much more than throwing off his aim. Wrenn had applied what *should* have been enough force to break every bone above the soldier’s belt line, through to the C3 vertebra.
Wrenn thought quickly, not questioning the ‘why,’ or even the ‘how;’ he focused on simply winning. He adapted his strategy, hanging onto the weapon and using his forelegs to vault upwards into another backflip. The soldier followed him, much more quickly than he expected, but it provided enough of an opening to land a punch.
Despite the man’s seeming increased strength speed and durability, Wrenn hit quite hard, and he was rewarded with a sickening crunch as armor plates impacted into bones, fracturing them badly, if not breaking them as spectacularly as Wrenn would have liked.
He used the half-second of time that bought him to draw his sword.
The enemy soldier was fast, but like a Diamond Dog, not fast on a Gryphon’s level. And he had nothing substantial to fend off Wrenn’s sword with.
The blade was monomolecular; Even dropping it accidentally produced enough force to cleave through any armor less than three inches thick. Wrenn was putting six hundred odd force pounds into his swing.
The blade passed through the soldier’s RAC-5 as though it was a hologram, and buried itself a foot into his neck, ending his life instantaneously via severance of the spinal column at the second vertebra.
The entire exchange, from the time Wrenn had first moved, had taken five seconds.
For the next five, not a single sound was heard beyond the distant rat-a-tat-tat and occasional thunderous boom of the battles raging around them.
Carradan finally spoke, “You know... I’m really glad I brought the high speed camera.”
The platoon commander followed up with a simple expletive expounding the consecration of excrement.
Wrenn yanked his sword free of the dead soldier, noting that his blood was discolored a sickly shade of burnt orange.
An orangish tint he recognized, but had never seen in such intensity.
Suddenly, everything made sense.
Horrifying, clear, disgusting, mortifying sense.
Once, after receiving his implants, Wrenn had taken minor head wounds from an exploding claymore. The cuts had bled more or less normally, but the blood was tinted slightly orange.
When he asked the field medic why, the man had informed him that it was a byproduct of implantation.
As Carradan and some of the marines came over to examine his handiwork, Wrenn slowly knelt and removed the soldier’s helmet. A second later, he deeply wished he hadn’t.
For the first time as a Gryphon, he felt the gag reflex.
The man, if he could still be called a man, barely had a recognizable face.
Wrenn refused, afterwards, to even try to describe the mutilation the cybernetic implantation had caused. The sight was haunting, and horrifying to the point of eliciting screams.
He didn’t even want to know, but from a tactical standpoint, the information was necessary; So Wrenn plunged a talon into the corpse’s arm. It came back covered in sickly orange, tinged with gray/green mechanical lubricant.
Wrenn peeled off one gauntlet, and his suspicions were confirmed; A layer of skin came with it, and the piece of armor remained attached by a series of small nanotubes.
Carradan stammered, “They.... they melded them with the armor. Grew it right in... I’m going to be sick...”
Wrenn glowered, “Unethical, crude, and unfortunately quite effective. He was equivalent to a Diamond Dog, if not slightly better off because of his intelligence.”
The platoon commander glowered, “Are you telling me he’s augmented? Cybernetics?”
Wrenn nodded, “Very much so. I’d guess, from what I’m seeing, that they replaced almost half his body with biomechanical substitutes, jacked in a whole new positronic nervous system, coated the bones in liquid metal, then grew his armor straight in for added protection.
They probably had to irradiate the pain and pleasure centers of his brain to keep him from living in agony twenty four seven.”
The marines began to mumble epithets, most of them decrying the legitimacy of the parentage of HLF soldiers and leaders.
Wrenn motioned to Carradan, “You want to do a story on implants? Show the world *this.* This is where their pro-humanist crusade has taken them.”
He spat the last words, his rage boiling up inside. He may have disliked his implants, but they had been a help to him, making him able to live and fight with a semblance of normality when he would have been otherwise permanently marred. Organs could not be stem-cell regrown after suffering bioplasmic taint.
Because of acts like the augmentation of the HLF soldier, humanity was afraid to use the technology for good, and was depriving itself of a great benefit.
Because of the fear instilled by a few, many suffered.
Wrenn grabbed the man’s neck and snapped it hard repeatedly until it separated, just for good measure. No telling what sort of potential regenerative properties his augmentation gave him.
Carradan groaned, “How do you *deal* with days like this?”
Wrenn’s ears twitched. He could make out the sounds of two PER troopers trying to ambush them. He growled, “I take out my frustration.”
The PER soldiers’ skulls then became intimately acquainted with the stocks of their own particle rifles.
Two hours later, Wrenn finally met up with the other Gryphons. The four warriors were, it seemed, the only commanders in the combat zone whose squads hadn’t lost men in the battle.
Some squadrons were carrying wounded, others were protecting ponies.
Some were soldiers who had been hit by PER weapons, some of whom were HLF; made obvious by their constant pleas for death.
Peoples fanaticism could be so great, that even the mind of a Pony couldn’t immediately begin to erode it.
General Lantry had informed them that the prisoner transports had escaped safely, and were already turning over custody of the captured Ponies and Humans at the nearest military installation.
Medivac still couldn’t enter the area. The Raleigh’s Scythes had managed to take down the HLF’s fighters in a messy close quarters battle, but both had sustained heavy damage because of the overwhelming odds, forcing them back to the ship.
The sky was clear, but the HLF had set-up a perimeter, boxing the destroyed remnants of the PER forces, and the dazed but combat worthy Earthgov troops, inside Carrenton.
Some of their APCs were packing anti-air flak guns, others jammers, and supporting strike packages were still thirty minutes away.
In short; it would be up to the forces inside the town to get themselves out.
Wrenn, Carradan, Kephic, Varan, Sildinar, and the commanders of the remaining platoons, were gathered around a large backpack DaTab set up as an impromptu holotable.
The Earthgov forces had retreated to the PER command building, and setup makeshift trauma centers, prison cells, a command center, and defensive emplacements inside.
Squads were making periodic hit and run attacks to keep the HLF guessing, in hopes that a workable battle plan could be formed before their location was nailed down and pounded with artillery fire.
Wrenn had just finished briefing everyone on the new threat of HLF augmented troopers.
Lantry’s voice came over the holo-table’s speaker, “Gentlemen, you have three primary tangos. First, one prisoner didn’t quite make it to the APCs. The PER general you bagged has fallen into HLF hands. According to decrypted radio chatter, they’re bugging out with her in twenty minutes. Intercept that APC, take her back. At all costs.”
A circular flare pinged on the holotable’s surface, indicating satellite intel’s best guess at where the APC was currently stationed. Lantry continued, “Second problem; one of the F-35s that went down wasn’t completely destroyed. It was carrying a piece of heavy area-denial munitions, we don’t know exactly what, that they have now recovered and setup in the blast crater of the chemical plant. We have no idea what type of device this is, but according to their action plan, it’s going to put an end to the battle in short order. Defuse it, destroy it.”
Another icon popped up over the tear in the Earth that Wrenn and Kephic’s C4 had created.
“Finally, you need to eliminate anti-air and jamming APCs at these locations;”
More indicators came to life in a half-moon shape, “Once you do, we’ll dispatch a Spooky, bring the Raleigh’s railguns into this, and pound these suckers into the dirt until they have to be scraped out with a spatula.”
‘Spooky’ was the colloquial name for the gunship conversion of a large support airship.
The spiritual successor to the old AC-130 Specter, it could level six city blocks in as many seconds with its massive 160 millimeter Bofors-made gauss mortars, and high rate of fire precision 15 millimeter LADAR guided railguns. That wasn’t even taking into account the six ATGMs with multi-missile warheads, and the forty five pounds of AI driven vacuum bombs that came standard on every flight.
Sildinar nodded curtly to the holotable, despite the lack of visual connection, “We’ll make them regret the day they were born.”
Sildinar had become de-facto commander in chief on the ground, given that his military rank would equate to a combination of five star general, and Earthgov councilor, and he had the most combat experience and prowess of any person in the room by far.
Wrenn stared at the table, “I’ll take Kephic and Carradan and go for the bomb. We’ve already scoped out the area, and I’m the one of us with the most experience pertaining to human tech.”
Sildinar inclined his head, “Take a marine qualified in bomb diffusion.”
One of the commanders spoke up, “No one left alive is qualified in heavy munitions disposal.”
Sildinar sighed and glanced at Wrenn, “Well then. You’re it.”
He turned to Varan, “You and I will split. I will pursue the prisoner, you take a squad and provide... What were they called?”
“Beamriders” Wrenn supplied.
“Provide beamrider support to the Raleigh. Her guns can demolish those APC positions in short order, then she will have freedom of fire, which will prevent us from being decimated long enough for the gunship and medivac to arrive. If we all succeed, then victory is ours. If any of us fail...”
He cast meaningful glances around the room, “...then we suffer a major loss at best, and complete failure at worst. Good hunting.”
Carradan’s whispered voice grated in Wrenn’s ear, “Did it ever occur to you that dragging me into this could be classified as torture?”
Wrenn hissed, “Shut up. You’re doing fine.”
“Was that a compliment?”
Wrenn sighed, “Yes.”
Carradan snickered, “I made sure to get *that* on record.”
Wrenn rolled his eyes and tapped his earpiece, “Kephic. You ready?”
From their position hiding under a collapsed rotting porch, Wrenn’s telescopic eyes could easily make out Kephic in his hiding place atop a building opposite the crater.
Between them, two APCs and a whole battalion of HLF troops were gathered around a medium sized cylindrical object.
Wrenn grunted, “Dammit. It’s a MEADE bioweapon.”
Kephic’s voice came back over the speaker almost in synchronization with Carradan’s whispered query, “A what?”
“Microwave Emitting Area Denial. Its a radiation bomb. It puts out microwaves so strong they fry any electronics, and boil any liquid, within a two mile radius, including and especially water and blood. Its a slow, painful, gory way to die, and it's a big favorite of the HLF when they want to kill everyone rather than administer Pony-only biotoxins.”
Carradan turned green, “They do that?!”
Wrenn nodded, “Psyops. The toxins kill Ponies, slowly and with as much pain as could be engineered, but don’t even slightly affect humans. They leave the humans alive to, literally, go insane from what they’ve seen and spread fear and demoralization. It’s unthinkable”
Kephic’s voice crackled due to jammer interference, “But effective. Sadly.”
Carradan began furiously scribbling on a notepad, but Wrenn laid a claw on his arm, stopping him, “Hey... I can give you an interview and explain all this... *After* we get out of the soup. Ok?”
Carradan raised an eyebrow, “You? You’d do that?”
Wrenn shrugged, “You’re not as bad as I thought. You’ve held it together. You even bagged an assist today. That's worth a lot of respect in my book.”
Carradan grinned, Wrenn frowned, “Don’t let it go to your head Stan. I can still make a piñata out of you if you cross us.”
“Right.”
Wrenn passed him an SMG, “Stay here, film, and if anyone gets too close... You’re already acquainted with your little friend. Bag some kills.”
Carradan gulped, and accepted the weapon tentatively, “You just... Come out in one piece ok?”
Wrenn smirked, “Developing a soft spot for your combat buddy?”
“Oh shuddup.”
Sildinar swooped low over the flatlands. The APC carrying General Piety had left five minutes previous, according to Lantry, and the Gryphon’s dead reckoning based on his understanding of the terrain, warrior’s instincts, and the average speed of a Mole Rat APC, which Wrenn had mentioned was sixty eight miles per hour; Led him to the spot.
Sure enough, his acute golden eyes spied a column of dust swiftly approaching from the south.
A moment later, he could see the APC in all its ugly detail, including the eyes of the pilot through the tiny slit that served as a reinforced front windshield.
Sildinar beat his wings in strong, steady, paced fashion, rising high above the ground, and out of sight range of the oncoming APC.
He was going to do what predatory avians did best; stoop, swoop, and smash.
“ATTENTION ASSHOLES!”
Wrenn shouted at the top of his lungs.
He stood at the rim of the crater, framed by the setting sun, cutting an imposing figure with his sword in one claw, and an SMG in the other.
Within half a second, every weapon in the crater, including the APC turrets, were trained on him.
He grinned, “SURRENDER NOW, IF YOU PLEASE. OTHERWISE, I WILL COME DOWN THERE, AND STUFF EVERY ONE OF YOUR WEAPONS THROUGH RANDOM ORIFICES IN YOUR BODIES, UNTIL YOU BEG TO DIE. THEN I WILL TOSS YOU INTO THE RUINS OF YOUR FANCY TRUCKS, AND SET YOUR PANTS ON FIRE.”
A single soldier, one of the three augmented ones in the group, fired one shot at Wrenn, which he easily dodged. “NO? OK THEN.” From deep in Wrenn’s chest, a battle cry, somewhere between the screech of an eagle and the roar of a lion, burst forth and echoed across the town.
Twin explosions rocked the crater, instantly immolating both APCs, killing nearly half the soldiers, and throwing the MEADE up against the crater wall. While Wrenn had drawn attention, Kephic had swooped in from directly above, and attached six C4 blocks, each meant for demolishing a small building on their own, to both APCs.
By the time the remaining soldiers picked themselves up, Wrenn and Kephic were already among them, and it was far too late for niceties, or escape.
Wrenn grabbed the first soldier he came across, “Sorry about this... Well no not really.” He picked up the wriggling soldier’s rifle, causing the man’s eyes to go wide with horror. At this range, Wrenn could see right through his reflective faceplate.
There was a loud squishing noise, followed by a scream.
Scratch one soldier.
Scratch one rifle.
Next.
Varan swooped low, did a barrel roll to avoid tracer fire, and skidded to an unceremonious halt behind cover, popping up to squeeze off three grenades from his launcher before turning to the soldiers cowering behind the overturned VTOL.
“Ready?”
The marines chorused, “Yes sir!”
Varan glanced over the wreck, “I’ll provide cover fire, you tag the targets.
Do not flinch. I have no desire to return home with a steel rod in my head. Clear?”
Without waiting for a response, the Gryphon simply stood up and began firing, screeching a blood chilling battle cry.
The marines, in unison, pivoted over the VTOL and aimed their beamrider attachments at various pre-chosen APCs.
The platoon commander tapped his headset, “Raleigh, Raleigh, do you copy? We have targets in the crosshairs, beamriders in two hundred frequency range. Bring the heavy thunder.”
“Understood, Tactical ship to shore railguns armed, targets designated bogey sierra one through sierra thirty. Authenticate for broadside.”
“Authentication Lambda seven five three seven. Let loose, no prisoners.”
“Authenticated, bringing the heavy thunder. Advise you stand *well* back.”
A railgun on an Earthgov Carolina class destroyer was capable of launching, from each gun, four projectiles a second. Each projectile was a 1.2 metric ton tungsten-steel-carbide spike, with a nickel jacket. The muzzle velocity for the shells was over 45,000 meters per second.
That meant that each round impacted with the kinetic force of a tactical nuclear device, concentrated precisely onto a point the size of a shoebox.
Known as ‘heavy thunder,’ a single broadside from a ship could lay waste to an entire defended facility in seconds if it chose to do so.
In this case, the strike was more precise, and slightly ‘reserved.’ But no less effective.
Miles away on the Mississippi, five massive weapons turned west, and elevated their firing angle with the whirr of hydraulic machinery. The weapons looked like traditional battleship guns, but with tine-like fins on either side that played host to the accelerator coils.
With no action, no spent casing, and no launch gasses to worry about, the guns could fire often without cleaning. With no expensive components in the shells, they were relatively cheap to fire, excepting the fact that more than five successive broadsides in a row could drain an entire fusion reactor.
The Raleigh’s guns produced a roar so loud, that windows as far as five miles away shattered.
For each of the thirty targets, five shells flew straight and true.
One hundred and fifty ‘ballistic missiles from God.’
The impact shockwave picked up nearby untargeted APCs and hurled them hundreds of yards in every direction, as if some manic beast the size of the sky itself had reached down and swatted them away.
The sound shattered the eardrums of half the beings in Carrenton, and left the other half deaf for ten full seconds. Every single window in the town atomized, and blew away as dust.
The light flashes temporarily blinded everyone looking directly at the impact points, save for Varan, whose eyes could stand direct contact with the sun if he desired.
To his high speed, high tolerance optic nerves, the bombardment was a beautiful symphony of destruction. He could actually see the APCs breaking apart, their surfaces phase changing from solid to gas, as the kinetic energy of the rounds instantly dissolved their atomic bonds in order to dissipate.
The attack registered as a level two seismic event for the state of Kansas.
The HLF took more casualties, in men and tech, in two seconds than it had for the entire year combined.
When the marines with Varan finally opened their eyes, they beheld nothing but a twenty foot deep, seven hundred yard long crescent shaped smoking tear in the Earth’s surface.
Husks of vehicles, and the shredded corpses of enemies littered the edge of the depression, which had pushed up into a sort of embankment as the ground had liquefied for several microseconds.
Varan smiled, his expression almost as terrifying as the weapons he was saluting,
When Sildinar hit the top of the HLF APC, the driver instantly swerved, trying to dislodge him.
It did little good.
His talons had already dug directly into the metal.
He screeched, and ripped the gunner’s hatch completely off, tossing a flash-bang grenade into the aperture. The sound and light did very little to disorient him, but it knock the driver clear into unconsciousness.
His feet slammed, reflexively, into two of the vehicle’s poorly designed six pedals, causing it to enter an untenable turn, and begin to roll.
Sildinar disengaged, hovering, and watched, impassively, as the vehicle rolled a total of twelve times before coming to a stop upside down.
When the APC was finally stable, he ambled over to the rear hatch, readied his sword, and dug in his talons.
In the distance, a thunderous explosion attested to the destruction of the HLF blockade.
Sildinar allowed himself a single instant of triumph, then turned to the task at claw.
The railgun bombardment left most of the remaining HLF soldiers in the reactor crater so dazed they couldn’t even stand. Their condition got them no mercy from Wrenn and Kephic, who fell to efficiently and quickly sniping them with their RACs.
As the last enemies fell, Wrenn turned to the MEADE.
Kephic scratched his head, “Is it armed?”
Wrenn knelt down and examined the weapon’s controls.
It was designed to be dropped as a bomb from an F-35, but it had an auxiliary control panel under the release clamps for improvisational situations.
The display was counting down from one minute.
“Ahhhh. Yeah. It's armed. High yield. Everyone within two or three miles.”
He didn’t have to say anything more. Kephic lapsed into silence, allowing him to concentrate.
The control panel had a simple five digit code, but even five digits, from a ten digit keypad, with repetitions, could yield over ten thousand possible codes. And the device would likely auto-detonate after even one incorrect entry.
It took Wrenn a good twenty seconds to remove the entire mounting assembly, thus accessing the detonation controls proper. He scowled, “Oooooh... Hell no,” and launched into a stream of expletives, mostly admonishing some nameless person to do biologically untenable things to themselves.
Kephic cocked his head, “What’s the trouble?”
Wrenn jerked a talon at the tangle of wires and circuits, “Red wire, green wire, and purple wire. Heck if I know which to snip.”
The timer beeped a thirty second warning.
Wrenn inhaled, accelerated his brain, and tried to think critically.
He could visually trace all the wires, and even the circuit paths.
That was easy.
The problem was, he had no experience with WMD munitions like a MEADE, and the device was exclusive to the HLF, meaning even an experienced H-EoD tech wouldn’t fully understand it.
Wrenn was just an amateur at best, his primary explosives training revolved around creating or disarming improvised munitions of the type special forces, or terrorist operatives might use.
He tried every line of reasoning he could imagine, but in the end, there was nothing for it.
He would have to take a chance.
Wrenn said a quick prayer, steeled himself, and made an instant purely gut decision; trusting to God, destiny, and Gryphon instinct.
Snip.
Sildinar tore the entire back door off of the APC.
Inside, the pilot was dead, having busted his head open when the vehicle rolled.
He hadn’t been wearing a safety harness.
General Piety was bound and gagged between four HLF soldiers, three of whom were conscious and just beginning to collect themselves. Sildinar didn’t wait for them to finish.
With three quick connected strokes, he beheaded them all, stabbing the unconscious one non-lethally to sever his spinal nerve at the base of the neck for good measure. He didn't need anything below his mouth to be useful anymore.
The more prisoners the better.
He was about to administer another blow to General Piety in order to transport her back to the landing zone, when he heard a loud click.
Piety slowly raised both hands, revealing she had managed to work them free sometime during her incarceration. One hand was empty, but the other held a small silver cylinder with blinking purple lights.
She smiled, and threw the device to the floor between herself and Sildinar.
“Be reborn in light, filthy monster.”
Sildinar rolled his eyes, as the device began to whine, building up to Potion dispersion.
“You know, perhaps the Ponies are right. Perhaps problems can be solved with a little love. Would you like a hug?”
Without waiting for an answer, Sildinar smothered General piety in his wings, administering a knockout blow by headbutting her with his beak in the same smooth motion.
When the Spooky and medivacs arrived, they found Earthgov forces triumphantly preparing to pull out of the battered, burning, shattered husk of Carrenton.
Wrenn, Kephic, and Varan were all lying draped over various parts of an idling tank, soaking up heat from the engine and radiator, nursing a plethora of bruises, cuts, and sprains.
Carradan lounged in the gunner’s turret, examining footage on his camera.
Sildinar alighted in front of the vehicle, his back and wings still caked in potion, which had also accrued a great deal of dust and dirt, and tossed two limp human forms to the ground, one of which was recognizable as General Piety.
Wrenn smirked, “What took you so long?”
Sildinar raised an eyebrow, “I take it you were successful?”
Kephic guffawed, “Only by providence. He had to guess.”
Sildinar and Varan both perked up, “Guess?”
Wrenn nodded, “Three wires, twenty seconds, no H-EoD experience. I went with my gut.”
Carradan shook his head, “I swear, you guys are gonna be the death of me yet.”
Sildinar chuckled, “I just spoke with Lantry and Skye, transports will be here within the hour.”
Wrenn smiled, “Good! I need a shower. Carrenton dirt is nasty.”
Kephic snorted, “Agreed. Shower and coffee.”
Varan chipped in, “Shower, coffee, and something freshly killed with fat on the bones.”
Wrenn laughed, “Amen to that.”
He laid his head on his foreclaws and allowed the heat from the tank’s idling engine to soak into his sore muscles.
It was over.
Battle was satisfying, and Victory tasted ever so sweet.
The conclusion to the battle, and the next to last action sequence on Earth before the Equestria journey!
Did I say enjoy the fireworks before? I totally meant HOWITZERS.
744894
As seen in this chapter, and perhaps in future as well.
744921
746781
I hope the conclusion is a worthy completion to the first full scale military showdown between the three biggest military powers on Earth.
Very Nice chapter. Updates come fast on this one :D.
Those are the aforementioned Rods from God? I was hoping for something orbital.
750782
Those are, and quote 'Ballistic Missles from God'
'Rods from God' will indeed be either in this story, or the sequel, and they will get used, and shazz will hit the fazz **major bigtime** when they do, because Earthgov sure aren't the guys pulling the trigger.
It will be Biblical.
750630
Moments like these are why I love this fic. Plus, Wrenn's bullet time... did I detect traces of Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes?
750830
Guilty as charged.
Its a good technique, and very well suited to portraying a Gryphon's analytic, high speed, predatory combat viewpoint.
I've wanted to write a scene like that for, literally, several years now.
DUDE! Your description of those wickedly awesome kinetic energy weapons was....for lack of a better phrase, fantastically awesomesauce!
The heavily augmented HLF(?) soldier made me for a bit. When Wrenn finally did him in, I was like , then I was all like .
Awesome work as always. I don't know how you can keep pumping out chapters of this quality every few days, and frankly, I don't care because I want more.
There augmentation that helps people with problems like bionic legs or eyes, Then there is what they did, were you litteraly tear a person apart and add stuff.
750847 LOL! Thinking the exact same thing as him. Had stopped for a moment, but then dismissed it going: "naaahhhh."
750847
Oh, it's good, no doubt. I usually imagine his voice as something along the lines of Garrus from Mass Effect, but as soon as he started his analysis, it shifted to Robert Downey Jr's voice, which was both cool and slightly disconcerting.
There's quite a bit of Mary-Sue lather building up around the griffin characters. At no point did I feel an ounce of suspense as to what would happen to them. I know there's plenty of headcanon at work here (e.g. you gave griffins ears), but let's review what you've established and reestablished:
● griffins are roughly three times larger than canon
● griffins are crazy fast, even on foot
● griffins are crazy strong
● griffins have crazy good eyesight
● griffins have crazy good reflexes
● griffins can go into bullet time
● griffins can look directly at the sun
● griffins have near-perfect night vision
● griffins can perform complex calculations and process extensive, nuanced information in the blink of an eye
● griffins do not easily sustain injury
● griffins are not prone to fear, panic, second-guessing, or insecurity
● griffins have stronger, better intuition
● griffins are instant naturals with unfamiliar human weaponry
● griffins are not susceptible to low-pressure, high-altitude environments, including extreme cold
● griffin bodies can somehow metabolize and create water molecules from a nitrogen-rich environment
That list is not the result of extensive rereading; that's just what I personally remembered as I was typing this up. Please do not take this as snark. I'm raising my concerns because, while you write well, there is a lot of potential I feel is being passed over by clouded characterization. Your descriptions are very strong, and your dialogue is good for the most part, but the actual content of a lot of the scenes so far have been marbled with wank. There's been lots of celebration of griffin awesomeness at the expense of story. Both the narrative and the interaction between characters thus far supports this claim.
So what, right? Griffins are awesome, and that's the way it is in this story/headcanon. Sure, maybe, but please consider what it's doing to the story. The griffin characters are unapproachable and unrelatable. As I stated in the first paragraph, I never once thought "gee, maybe Wrenn/Sildinar/Varan/Kephic won't get out of this alive!" It just wasn't set up to happen. So far my mental list entitled "What Can Kill an Option-Gamma Griffin" contains three items:
● a cheap shot
● another griffin I guess
● I don't know like a fully adult dragon or something
The griffin characterization as you've presented it thus far just isn't set up to possibly properly lose at something, and at this point, with the setup given, such a loss would have to be masterfully plotted not to seem tacked on. You even state in an earlier chapter that the four griffins could probably have taken care of the whole operation themselves, given enough time and ammunition.
Now for the technical phase of my critique!
"A lot" is always two words. It's not a question of style, or context, or even opinion. It is objectively correct.
I recommend you use italics for emphasis and not the old plain-text flanking-asterisks trick (like *this*).
I've noticed that you like to separate the sentence's subject from its verb with a comma when that sentence has a complex or compound subject. "The man who had held up the bank, was long gone when the police arrived." That's just something I came up with right here on the spot, but it illustrates that that comma shouldn't be there. "The man who had held up the bank," while long, is still technically all acting as the subject, and as such should be treated the same as a single-word subject: "The man was long gone when the police arrived."
You will also occasionally have a comma separate the verb from its object. Here's an example from your own writing: "The problem was, he had no experience with large munitions like a MEADE [...]." This can be tricky because the object here is the fact that he had no experience with large munitions. The wording of the sentence is correct, but you treated the text after "was" like a clause rather than an object, and you do indeed separate clauses with commas.
I didn't make this huge post to vent. I made it because there's very strong writing here and I think it's worth the time investment to go in-depth with critique.
Another great chapter. Looking forward to the next part. Additionally, you've already said there's no intentional Gryphon/Turian similarity in the story, but the augmented HLF soldiers reminded me heavily of the indoctrinated Cerberus Troopers in Mass Effect 3. Also:
"six pedals"
I see what you did there.
751451
Thanks for the feedback!
The commas I use like salt; way too much.
My last experience with creative writing (a class) was focused on the story structure, and characters, and world-building.
Its been years and years since I had any educational experience with punctuation mechanics, so as embarrassing as it is, I've forgotten much of what I once knew, and the problem is further compounded by my ill advised love of complex sentence structures.
I tend to end up throwing in the commas based on rhythm; IE where I would put beats if I was reading the story aloud.
I used to have a bad habit of indenting sentences with every beat though, so it could be worse....
I'll make use of what you've noted, hopefully I can find a happy comma medium....
As for Gryphons, I suppose the main problem here is that they haven't been faced with a sufficiently bad situation yet.
I thought I'd made it clear they weren't invincible, just lucky, because of how close Varan came to loosing his head to a grenade, earlier, and how close Wrenn came to dying, twice, in this last chapter.
Its my fault for not playing up the danger enough, but to be clear; the intention was for it to come off that they're only alive because of the luck main characters seem to posses in liberal amounts, and I'm not just referring to the incident with the MEADE.
Varan would be dead right now if that grenade, in the potion vault, had hit in a different spot, or at a different angle.
He had no defense against it.
Human ingenuity by way of a grenade launcher, and a well placed shot.
That's all it would have taken.
He's probably only alive because they under-loaded the grenade to avoid killing him, truth be told.
They needed him alive.
Wrenn would be dead twice over (since his Conversion) if he didn't have existing experience as a soldier which he, as a person, was able to finagle into useful advantages in the clutch.
To summarize some other species;
Diamond Dogs;
*have near perfect pack communication that can take place in near-bullet time.
*have more raw strength and durability than a Gryphon
*can probably process minerals as food, making it impossible to ever starve them, anywhere but space, if that.
*can dig through almost any material
Dragons;
*are large enough to count as a force of nature
*are virtually invulnerable to small arms and armaments
*breathe fire
*wield magic
*are strong enough to demolish large buildings with a tail swipe
*can probably process minerals as food, making it impossible to ever starve them, anywhere but space, if that.
*can breathe at any altitude
*live thousands of years
Ponies;
*are either so strong they can raze small buildings with their back legs, and can survive the equivalent of being bombed
*or able to cast various and sundry magic spells which can do anything from transmuting elements to teleportation to mind alteration
*or are able to fly faster than the speed of sound and weaponize weather and breathe at any altitude and lighten other things they touch
*do not need to process meat to live
All that said; yes. I probably MS Gryphons, and its absolutely magnified by the in depth descriptive lengths I'm going to in order to try and give the reader a feel for being one.
Its already hard to write a predator species without elevating them too high, worse because I love this particular species.
This is my kryptonite.
(Though, it should be noted, that the other Gryphons are only familiar with humans weapons because they've been learning them for the last year straight. Wrenn is familiar because he's been a human soldier for years, and that experience isn't just going to evaporate upon Conversion. Its also safe to assume that all Equestrian species have stronger better intuition because they're all based on more instinctive creatures.)
As a fun exercise; What could kill an Option Gamma Gryphon?
*A Dragon. Dragons are deadlier, that's just a fact.
In my mind, they pay for that in other ways.
Doesn't mean a lone Gryphon couldn't kill one, but you're talking about an incredibly good Gryphon among Gryphons using a combination of luck, skill, and his environment to net a once in a million years kill.
* Diamond Dogs; assuming experienced full grown Diamond Dogs, its reasonable to think two or more could kill a Gryphon by using their pack communication to avoid getting killed and eventually wear him/her down and gain a kill-shot.
*Augmented Human; assuming major cybernetic advantages, and an environment that plays to their strengths such as an indoor corridor that hampers a Gryphon's natural outdoors advantages, and makes explosive weapons that much worse. You still need two or more, to again counter the bullet time.
*Human Weapon; a fighter jet, a railgun, an orbital strike.... what do they have in common? No living thing, not even a Dragon, can survive getting hit by any of the above head on. Humans build very very VERY deadly weapons. The key is getting off the right shot at the right time.
The more the HLF and PER gain experience with Gryphons, the more you will see them tailor their weapons and training to answer that threat.
*Changeling; assuming they didn't stick around long enough to cue in the Gryphon, with a slip-up, that they weren't who they claimed to be, then they're free to choose their battle and plan their kill to be picture perfect.
An appreciable part of the Gryphons' advantage, so far, has been the element of surprise.
The enemies have treated them like glorified clawed pegasi so far, and that's their huge mistake, which they are swiftly learning to rectify.
Hence the appearance of Diamond Dogs and augmented troopers. Escalation.
Gryphon weaknesses;
*Over-emotional. We haven't gotten to see this yet because the fight hasn't turned personal enough.
Believe me, it will turn personal, that will lead to loss of control, and it will cost some of the main chars alot of pain.
*Large. They're slightly-smaller-than-Celestia sized when fully grown, so indoor combat is bad for them if the attacker has the element of surprise and/or spread/explosive weapons.
*Metabolism; again we haven't been faced with this yet, but depriving a Gryphon of meat for periods in excess of a day makes them *very* weak.
Their metabolism burns though food like nobody's business.
*Flexibility; not a weakness, but to take advantage of this biological advantage, they can't wear anything above the lightest grade of medium armor.
Diamond Dogs, or Dragons, on the other hand, have alot of natural armor and can afford to wear a load of heavy armor on top of that.
Again, the feedback is much appreciated.
I need it to help me avoid pitfalls, especially since my pre-readers (apparently) gave up trying to keep pace with the speed of my writing, or fell prey to the other demands of real life. (curse you real world)
751118
Wrenn's voice is probably a bit younger and less world weary than Garrus'.
I haven't found a good actor meld for him yet... I'll mention it somewhere in a blog post when I do...
751854
The biggest inspiration moment was actually playing Crysis 2. When they talked about the nanosuit growing into Alcatraz to keep him alive, I immediately wondered what would happen if he tried to take it off, and that Lovecraftian horror thought lead to the domino chain that ended with augmented HLF troopers.
As for the pedals... I'm sorry... I could *not* resist.
My explanation; two for the piloting, two for the pneumatic digging fins, two to rotate the turret.
751451
I realized that despite this story being notionally set in the future, it in fact belongs to the Ancient Heroic Myth genre, and within it, moral realism applies. Gryphons here are OP precisely because they're Incorruptible Lawful Good.
11463879
Got it in one! At least, from a thematic standpoint. Let's be honest; Jedi, X-Wing pilots, ships named Enterprise, Master Chief, the mythic lone rider in many westerns, Samurai in many stories, all fall under a similar kind of (though I hate the term) plot armor.
So begins an interesting and long speculation on my part, looking back on a decade of writing this trilogy in restrospect:
For the most part, most people don't ever complain about the Master Chief or The Arbiter being OP, but there's a gamut of responses to Gryphons in my stories ranging from 'they seem a little OP' (fine, noted, no arguments there, don't care, that was the idea) to 'GARRR RARR YOU STUPID BAD WRITER, GRYPHONS EVIL! HUMANS BEST' (the ramblings of morons).
I think this story, like many TCB stories, strikes a unique chord in people because the protagonists are mostly non-Humans in a world that's also full of Humans.
There is a peculiar sort of subculture surrounding an (I think unhealthy) adoration of Humanity that permeates those who get argumentative about Conversion Bureau stories. These are often the same folks who idolize characters like Colonel Quaritch (Avatar) or Commander Rourke (Atlantis) to a degree I'm not entirely comfy with. Are those guys badass? Yes. Are they often extremely cool in some ways? Yes. Do they make great villains? Yes. Do I like them, or want to *emulate* them? Oh hell no. They're white-supremacist assholes who get what they deserve.
This intensely pro-Human phenomenon runs the gamut from folks who just seem to like Humans and want to see them get some love (and that's fine), all the way to the kind of sad dipshits who have nothing better to do with their time than follow Chatoyance (as one example) around the site and downvote every comment she makes (I mean, how useless of a waste of oxygen does someone have to be to go to that effort? picking one's toenails is a better use of one's time.)
In some cases, especially the milder/more civil ones, I think that it's just people projecting - they dislike (but can't always articulate why) the idea of the power fantasy applying to someone or something alien with which they don't as easily identify.
You see the same reaction sometimes to badass women in fiction - male readers sometimes get hoisted by our own biases in that regard. Same thing happens when the protagonist of a story comes from an ethnic minority, and is fighting for a cause/country/etc that is strongly opposed to traditional cishet white western values - you see white, often male, cishet readers complaining about someone being 'OP' when those same people have zero complaints about Luke Skywalker, Master Chief, or Jim Kirk.
All in all, some readers identify with non-Humans more easily than others.
But with some folks, around TCB in particular, it crosses way over into a weird fascist/white-nationalist kind of sub-culture. They like that I (perhaps too much) fetishize the weapons, tactics, and jargon of war, and become invested in the story because Humanity is portrayed as fairly badass, but then lose their flapjacks when the tables turn and it turns out that all that technical power is a candle compared to the raging sun of even a sufficiently angry Pony, let alone a Gryphon.
The subtlety here is that Gryphons can not act in an intentionally evil fashion. Gryphons can make mistakes, and Gryphons can be merciless - can fail to show grace, can elevate that 'lawful' part well beyond where it ought be to the tune that the 'good' is pushed to its morally gray limits.
Thinking back, it's also not yet nearly apparent enough by this point (one of my chief failings with these three books, this one in particular) but really it's less that Gryphons alone are OP on their own, more like Humans are massively outmatched by all Equestrian species.
My chief failing in structuring this story, and what I intend to do differently next time I write in the Ancient Heroic Myth genre, was that I failed to learn the good lessons of Halo, and Star Wars. The Jedi, and Master Chief, are introduced as responses to horrors and evils that are far beyond the pale of mere average Humans to handle. The peril is shown first, and then the hero comes in and curb-stomps smaller 'minions' who each were unassailable enemies to an average world inhabitant, and struggle mightily with their counterpart villains, clinching the win in the end.
In Hegira, I didn't do a particularly good job of setting up peril first. It gets there, but takes its sweet time.
Read long enough and it becomes apparent that Gryphons only have the razor thinnest advantages over Changelings and Diamond Dogs, have a fight on our claws with some of the HLF's later offerings, and are in no way capable of fighting adult Dragons one-to-one without technological aid.
There is a very good reason for this (the overall massive gulf between Humans and Equestrians), but one has to either figure it out in the journey, or wait until later in book 3 where all will be revealed.
And next time I write in this sort of genre, I'll remember to ramp the tension in a way that makes it more apparent that while Gryphons are the DM's favorite, so to speak, their OP-ness is a small advantage, not an impossible one.