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Victory Hill

Tarkel Jungle

March 22, 1984 RE

Things had been very busy yesterday. I swear I have never seen anyone dig holes as fast as I saw these soldiers dig. And then they had fortified those holes before days end. While I was watching some soldiers dig, others just completely disappeared on me. My team was broken up into three groups that were being protected at various strong points on what the Colonel had decided to call Victory Hill. We were not spread that far apart because the Colonel did not have enough troops to keep splitting them up.

It was surprising how fast an ordinary hill could get turned into a fortress. Even I had a hard time finding all of the hidden little trenches and foxholes, one of which was occupied by an anthro fox, and I had been watching them get made. There were supposed to be five soldiers in my group guarding us but I only counted four. I walked over to Tracy who was another of our protectors. "Hey Tracy, are we missing somebody?" I asked.

She just looked around once and then her eyes lit up with comprehension. "Hey Taylor," she called out.

"Yo," a voice that seemed to emanate from a clump of vegetation in a tree responded to her.

"Dr. Sanders just wanted to make sure you were there. That's a good spot too. Even I nearly missed you." Tracy turned to me then and said, "Sergeant Taylor will be providing sniper support throughout the mission. And he is good. I've never seen a human with vision as good as his and I think he is natural born sniper if there ever was one."

Even when I was looking directly at Taylor it was nearly impossible for me to make out his form. A sniper like that would be a terror on the battlefield. "So, do you really expect them to get here today?"

Tracy just snorted at the question. "They should have been here yesterday. That's fine with me though. It gave us more time to prepare for them," Tracy said.

There had been some hectic preparations too. About half of Col. Miller's team was here on Victory Hill. There were two other smaller groups somewhere hidden in the jungle as well. They were supposed to be positioned to cut off the retreat of the SA forces when our little trap was sprung. The Colonel had said he made it so that any SA scouts in the area believed that all his troops were on this hill. Everything did depend on us being able to hold out on this hill, but the Colonel was confident that 50 of his troops were more than enough to hold out long enough to spring his trap.

I believed what Col. Miller told me, but I was still scared as hell. This would be my fist time in the middle of an actual battle. Sure I had encountered hostile primitive tribes on my travels, but they could normal be scared off with a few gunshots. This was something that was going to go on for a while and they were going to be fighting extra hard since the Colonel did not plan on letting them retreat. They were going to have to try and escape through one point in our lines and if they tried to break through were I was I could wind up getting killed. Col. Miller had split up my team into three groups because it might still be possible to complete the mission if we only had two of the groups survive this battle.

"Scared Larry," Tracy said.

She guessed that one awfully quick. "Yeah."

"I can smell it. Don't worry you'll be fine. I doubt the SA could push its way all the way up to here," Tracy said. Then she proceeded to explain to me how everything was supposed to work and I only followed some of it. I may be a pretty smart guy, but my field of work does not usually involve an opposing intelligent force actively trying to thwart my plans by killing or disabling me. That is a pretty big complication as far as I am concerned. It was also difficult for me to tell if Tracy was just trying to comfort me or if she really meant that the SA could not force its way up the hill.

It was still pretty early in the morning when a signal was passed along the soldiers. They indicated that we all needed to sit down and shut up. When we did so I noticed how eerily quiet it was. I had become used to the jungle noises and now that they were gone it was really uncomfortable. It was like the animals could sense there was a battle approaching. The sun was shinning as well as it was able to through the thick jungle foliage and there was a slight breeze blowing through the area. That breeze was a pleasant relief to the slightly humid day and I thought it was actually a pretty good day for a hike through the jungle. It seemed like it should have been a much more solemn day, like it normally was in the movies.

About two minutes after the order for silence occurred, I finally heard something. It was the crunching of leaves and branches beneath combat boots. The enemy was approaching. I could feel my heart rate increase and I could swear I saw one of Tracy's ears temporarily swivel in my direction. It might be possible for her to hear my heartbeat when things were as quiet as they were at that moment. I might ask her about it later. All of the soldiers seemed to tense up in anticipation of the attack until something else that I did not normally see in the movies occurred.

The soldier to the right of Tracy, the lion we were bunking with, Corporal Reilly, began to grow. Every member of my team just stared at him and somebody even muttered the word "fascinating" before a vicious stare from Tracy and Reilly silenced any further comments from us. It was a good thing his clothes were growing with him because he was already nine feet tall before he started growing. The only person with clothes for someone taller than that was Col. Miller. I managed to tear my eyes away from Reilly long enough to look to my left and see that my other bunkmate, the dragon named Corporal Lee, was also growing. They were trying their best to stay concealed and not make any noise as they just kept growing. That was not an easy thing for them to do since they just kept steadily growing until they reached a good 13 or 14 feet in height.

Just as that little growth spurt came to an end a gunshot echoed through the air. I nearly jumped right out of my socks as that single shot was followed up by close to 50 more less than a second later. It might have been nice if I could see what was going on, but I was under orders to keep my head down. I could see return gunfire causing little plums of dirt to shoot into the air a little further up the hill and I was in no rush to disobey orders and put my head in the path of one of those bullets. Occasionally I could hear the sound of someone crying out in pain only to be quickly silenced by the sound of even more gunfire or the person's death. With literally hundreds of weapons going off all at once it sounded like I was in the middle of an especially bad thunderstorm. And then, somehow, things managed to get even louder. The trap had been sprung.

I could hear panicked yelling coming from the direction of the SA forces and then the sound of gunfire started moving closer to my position. That was the cause of a few silent curses within my little hideout. I threw in a few choice curses of my own. There were fewer and fewer weapons being fired from the direction of the SA forces, but they were not being silenced fast enough. It looked like our soldiers were not going to be able to kill them all before they reached our position after all.

A little metal ball was thrown into the trench I was in and landed right at my feet. By the time it took my mind to register that I was looking at an actual grenade that was going to explode Tracy was already running in my direction screaming, "Grenade!" To me she was just an orange and green blur of motion. She ran into me and threw herself over me while grabbing the grenade and throwing it back over the trench. Now, Tracy is over seven feet tall and she ran into me as fast as she could. It did not matter that she was covered in a nice soft layer of fur because she was wearing a nice hard combat jacket and all of that was covering over 200 pounds worth of muscle. I almost wished the grenade had exploded right next to me instead of taking having to take a hit from Tracy. There was no chance I was ever going to play any contact sport with her.

Just as soon as the grenade exploded she was back on her feet and contributing to the fight once more. The SA forces had taken advantage of the brief lull in the gunfire and rushed our position though. One soldier actually jumped right into my trench and next to Corporal Reilly. The corporal kept firing his oversized weapon with one hand at someone else while using his other hand to pick up and toss that soldier against a tree, a tree that happened to be over 30 feet away. I could not really hear the soldier hit the tree and I am happy for that. Most of the felines are, pound for pound, stronger than a human and lions are one of the more powerfully built felines, especially the males. To get picked up and thrown against a tree by a 14 foot tall lion is not something a person is likely to get up and walk away from ever again.

That was not the only SA soldier to force his way into our trench either. I could tell not a single one of them had been expecting to encounter anything more than nine feet tall. At Reilly and Lee's size all it took to kill a man was the casual swipe of a hand paw. I found out that they were being gentle with the soldiers that jumped into our trench for our benefit. The bloodiest deaths came from bullet wounds when they were not within arms reach of those two killing machines. There was one noticeable exception though. One SA soldier had jumped in the trench almost directly behind Lee and was bring up his weapon to fire into my group. Lee reacted fast and swiped at the man's head so fast and with so much force that he was able to tear his head clean of his shoulders. The heart kept trying to pump blood to a section of the body that was no longer there and about half of my team could no longer stomach their morning meal. Lee just went back to fighting.

When I could stop staring at the headless body the battle was still going on. I took a tentative look around the trench and found that Tracy, Lee, and Reilly all had their backs to me as they fired down the hill. I caught a little movement out the corner of my eye. When I looked over I spotted that one of the dead SA soldiers was not entirely dead. He was also struggling to bring his weapon to bear on Tracy. Not knowing if I would be heard over the sound of all the gunfire I just grabbed a gun from one of the fallen soldiers while shouting a warning. No one reacted at all to my warning and I had to fire on the soldier myself. I am not used to firing military grade weaponry, but my accuracy was good enough to do the job. Unfortunately it was not enough to kill the man and he was angry about being shot in both legs by me.

The clip in my gun was empty and his was pointing at me. Just as he was about to pull the trigger another shot echoed out from where Tracy was standing. There was a new whole in the SA soldier's head, but his finger still tensed around the trigger and his weapon fired. I felt a searing pain in my arm and I fell down screaming. Tracy was next to me in the blink of an eye. She had my arm in her paws and was inspecting my wound. When I saw her smile at me I realized the wound was not nearly as bad as I thought it was. "It's just a scratch isn't it Tracy?"

"Sure is, but I could still kiss it for you to make you feel better later if you want me to," she said as she returned to her position. Even though she said it was just a scratch it still hurt. I had taken my fair share of injuries before, but bullet injuries are different. A bullet is basically something that explodes out of a tube and is thus superheated by the time it hits a person. Then it is traveling so fast that even though it is relatively smooth it is able to tear flesh with ease. I don't care what anybody says; when you get hit by a bullet it warrants at least a little scream.

One of the other soldiers protecting my group took a couple of bullets to the chest and was unable to so as much as scream before collapsing on the ground. Someone checked for a pulse to see if they could do anything for him but just shook her head and closed his eyes. The death of yet another of my protectors right in front of me was even less pleasant than seeing someone get decapitated. It is one of those images that seers itself into the back of your mind and visits you in your dreams for the rest of your life.

The gun fire was starting to grow sparse. It sounded like the Colonel's trap was working pretty well. And then I felt something cold and metallic against the side of my head. "Hello again Dr. Sanders."

"How many times are you going to find it necessary to point a gun at me Lockwood?"

"I am going to have to keep doing it as long as you keep working with those abominations," Lockwood sneered, "Now if you will just come along with me I'm in need of a hostage to get out of this little debacle. I can't believe that idiot walked right into this trap even after I warned him that his scouts only got a look at your camp because that filthy cat leader of yours let him get a look at it. It'll serve him right if these beasts serve him on a silver platter for their meal tonight." A lot of people from nations that hate anthros believe in some pretty crazy rumors about them. One of the more popular ones is that anthros eat humans. There was a little truth in that one since whatever transformed the anthros did cause some of them to go insane and many of them would eat a human if given the chance. And then there was the occasional serial killer. Whether human or anthro, murderers could come up with some pretty sick ways to kill a person.

The gunfire came to a sudden stop and Tracy turned around to say, "You haven't bleed to death on me yet have...you...Larry." She stumbled on her words when she noticed Lockwood with a gun pointed to my head. The other soldiers in the trench noticed Tracy's odd speech and turned around to see what was going on.

"All of you monsters can stay right were you are. The three of you aren't going to come a step closer as me and Dr. Sander's here take a little stroll. Come on now doctor, we have to leave now," Lockwood said as he motioned for me to start walking along with him. Before he could take two steps there was a single gunshot and Lockwood went down with a grunt of pain. I was a little upset that he did not scream despite the bullet hole in his right shoulder. It was like he wanted to make me look bad.

"I didn't take a step just like you said 'professor,'" Taylor said from his hiding place in the trees.

"Good shot sergeant," Tracy said as she rushed over to Lockwood and kicked his gun away from where he had dropped it. She was none too gentle in restraining him and he still only grunted despite the still bleeding wound in his shoulder. It was like he did not want to show any weakness around the anthros. His tough façade did slip when we all received a bit of a surprise. Walking through the jungle with a rather loud prisoner in one paw was a 20 foot tall Colonel Miller. I was the first one to recover from the sight since I had already had first hand experience with a much larger and very hostile battle dragon.

"You don't do these little growth spurts in half measures, do you Col. Miller?" I asked.

"With so many of my other subordinates doing the same thing I could not let myself be outdone. I am the leader and thus I'm supposed to be the best at everything," Col. Miller said with a completely straight face. The man in his grasp was a few inches taller than me but he looked ridiculously small next to the Colonel. He also looked completely ridiculous with a little handkerchief covering his nose as if there was a bad smell in the air.

The prisoner's eyes locked with mine and he lowered his handkerchief before saying, "Ah, finally another human within this zoo." For some reason this person seemed like he was the leader of the SA forces in the area. There was just nothing about him that said foot soldier. He had a haughty demeanor, even while being dangled in the air by the Colonel.

The Colonel just threw him on the ground in front of me and said, "He's all yours. And don't worry, he's even less dangerous than you are. Maybe you can get something useful out of him before one of my soldiers beats him to death."

It only took ten minutes with the man to figure out what the Colonel meant. This man showed absolutely no fear of any of the anthros. There was no chance anyone would mistake his behavior for bravery. He was a complete and utter fool that was in denial about his situation. It came as a relief that the Colonel only wanted me to watch over the man temporarily until his own soldiers had finished checking the area for any other survivors. I had never met a person as unbearable as him and I really think he would be in danger of having one of the anthros beat him to death if they were not all so disciplined. When someone came to relieve me of the arrogant fool I was not happy to hear I really was supposed to help with the interrogation when there was time to do so.

We ended up taking about on about 20 other prisoners, but 15 of them were so badly wounded that we did not expect them to survive. The casualty rate was so high for them because many of them refused to be taken captive. Anthros in the Caressean military happened to be like bogeymen for the people of the Southern Alliance. Many of them would rather commit suicide than be captured by anthros. That means if an anthro wants to take one captive they have to be quick and quiet about it. Or, the person has to be so badly injured that he or she cannot commit suicide. Since we had just been in the middle of a battle there were not many of them that were getting caught off guard. That meant we were getting the injured ones and we did not have the best medical equipment available to us in the middle of a jungle.

By the time we had set up camp for the night we were already down to ten captives. The uninjured ones were secured in a tent that was going to be watched over by one of the dragons plus one other soldier at all times of the night. It would have been alright to leave them alone with a dragon since it was unheard of for just five humans to beat a dragon in a fight with nothing but their bare hands, but the Colonel just wanted to make sure nothing happened. I had no idea how the remaining injured prisoners were going to do since our best doctor was a spotted dear that they were scared to death of and they refused to be treated by him.

That meant our doctor was concentrating on our own injured. We managed to come out of the battle in pretty good condition, but the SA forces had managed to bloody us. Five of the Colonels men had been killed and ten had been injured. All but one of the injured was expected to survive. The Colonel was technically among the injured. He had taken a shot to his left leg from a pistol. At his size the pistol had done very little actual damage to the massive feline. The bullet had just barely managed to penetrate his hide.

They also made me go in for a check up just to make sure my wound was not infected and because my bruises from where Tracy hit me were now very visible. I was embarrassed to be taking up anybodies time with my little scratch. Fortunately, it was a quick in and out visit. Tracy was waiting to escort me back to our tent. I was just happy to have her around. Now that I had some time to settle down I was dwelling on the day's event and she was a comforting presence. We had the tent to ourselves now. The Colonel was way to large to fit inside with anyone other than himself and the Colonel wanted me inside. Reilly and Lee were on watch duty and only one of them could fit in the tent with us at a time so they decided to stay outside with the Colonel instead.

When we were alone in the tent Tracy actually did kiss my scratch and giggled about it. Looking at her now it was hard to believe she had just taken part in slaughtering any enemy unit. She was just a cute slightly large tigress that was batting her eyes playfully at me. If we made it through all of this I hoped she would still be interested in me. And that was the thought I kept with me as I drifted off to sleep that night just before noticing that Tracy was sleeping a little closer to me than she really needed to.