'Towing in gallant fame, Scotland my mountain hame, High may your proud standards Gloriously wave.'

--

Two years ago in Chechnya, at an estate near Grozny.

The man died quietly, his last gasp of life stifled by the gloved hand clamped firmly over his mouth. The Kalashnikov rifle clutched firmly in his hands, slipped from nerveless fingers as he was lowered to the ground. Before his body was even cold it was pulled off the road and into the brush, hidden by the dense foliage. The man had been guarding a narrow, winding mountain road against intrusion. Now, several black clothed men moved quickly, unimpeded past his guard post. The operative known as Sabre 3 among them.

Chechen nationals had grabbed a bus full of Russian students doing an exchange in the region, taking them hostage and issuing a list of demands. They had been holed up in a theater building for the past four days with upwards of thirty hostages and an unknown number of gunmen. There had been sporadic communication between them and the police, with a devolving situation. Frustrated with a lack of progress, the Chechens had cut the finger off of one of the students and gave it to the police in an envelope to show that they meant business with threats to begin killing the hostages if their demands were not met. Even this, grisly as it was would not have warranted the attention of the elite GRU Sptesnaz, it was not their theater of operation. However, one of the students taken hostage was the only daughter of the widower Mikhail Lobov.

Now even the only child of a widower, while sad, would still not warrant the attention of the GRU branch. No, what warranted their attention was who the widower was. Mikhail Lobov was the secondhighest ranking military officer in the entirely of the Soviet Union. He was a General of the Army and a favorite to become the next Marshall of the Soviet Union. He was also a family man, who still grieved the loss of his late wife, never having remarried and he doted on his daughter lavishly, treasuring her above all else. So, with her life so threatened the man had flexed his great power and set loose men who were only ever supposed to be used outside of the Soviet Union. Men sometimes called Russia's pitbulls. On Lobov's word, men died.

Sabre 3 moved quietly and quickly, dressed all in black and armed with a special shortened Kalashnikov, but he was just one of many such men, no more than liquid shadows moving up the side of the mountain. There was no moon tonight, and the sky was overcast settling the mountain in a heavy blanket of inky blackness. The kind that you stare into trying to make out familiar sights from the day time, but are unable to see a man more than ten feet from you standing upright.

The reason that they were here was simple. They knew the identity of the leader of the gang of kidnappers and this was his home. He was a prominent man in the Chechen revolutionary world, with ties in old blood and new money. He and his men had taken hostages and shown that they meant business, so the GRU were going to do the same.

The villa was inspired off of old Russian Empire design, most likely constructed still in the time of the czars. It was a large two story affair, with tall curving arches and a flat roof with several domes. Ivy vines grew up the sides of the building and a garden with chipped and faded statues decorated the front yard. Lights were still visible from inside, as were men walking long circumferential routes around the estate grounds. They disappeared though. Every time they went behind a tall bush, or left the sight of the main house or went behind an outbuilding, the never reemerged. Quick applications of steel and wire was all it took.

Sabre 3 stacked up with the rest of his team at a set of doors leading into the kitchens. The sounds of voices in casual conversation and the scrape of cutlery and clatter of plates filtered in dimly from within. The leader of Sabre team, after confirming that the rest of teams were in place gave the signal to breach. Sabre 3 drew back his booted foot and with a mighty heave, kicked in the door.

With a splinter of wood, the doors flew inwards and surprised cooks and busboys dropped plates in surprise, the porcelain shattering against the tile floor as the GRU Spetsnaz rushed in.

"DOWN! EVERYONE DOWN NOW!"

The chefs and busboys were shoved down roughly, thrown in some cases out of the way and subdued violently. Sabre Lead and Sabre 3 were about to exit the kitchen into the main building when a flurry of automatic weapons fire punched through the doors like they were paper.

Sabre Lead took a full burst to the chest, shredding his combat webbing and pitching him to the floor. He was dead before he hit it. Sabre Three threw himself behind the door frame, Kalashnikov clutched close to his chest while the rest of Sabre Team took cover behind stoves, sinks, or whatever was most substantial. Many of the chefs and busboys were not so lucky, as most had been ushered up near the walls closest to the house interior and acted as human meat shields, soaking up the first outpouring of weapons fire. They fell bullet riddled corpses to the floor, soon turning the tiled floor of the kitchen red. The blood gurgled as it made its way to the drain set into the floor, not that it could be heard over the constant chatter of weapons fire.

There were too many of them here and too well armed for it to be a coincidence. It was supposed to be a family gathering tonight, but it seemed that they had been expecting something like this. Or been tipped off.

Sabre Three was shaking, bullets punching through the wall all around him, chips of masonry stinging his cheeks even through his balaclava and dust clogging his nose. To someone watching he would have appeared to be terrified, but if they would have seen his face, stripped of its black covering, they would have seen a feral grin of almost unrestrained glee. A low, almost manic chuckle covered by the rattle of weapons fire.

The swinging doors to the kitchen opened and a Chechen with an older model AK 47 walked through, barrel still wafting smoke. He died before he knew what he was facing, a burst of 7.62 cartridges removing a sizable portion of his skull, spattering the wall behind him.

The man behind him entered firing in the direction that Sabre three had fired from, but barely had time to register surprise as Sabre 3 came up from a crouch, batting his rifle to the side and driving his own hard into his stomach. As the Chechen doubled over, Sabre three wrapped the sling of his rifle around him, controlling his movements and exited the kitchen using the man as a human shield.

There were several more waiting in the vicinity directly outside of the kitchen, but they hesitated when they saw that their comrade was standing between them and the black clothed Spetsnaz. Just as Sabre 3 knew that they would and they paid for their hesitance. The first died while still contemplating what to do and the second as he resolved to shoot regardless. The third died doing his forced role of human shield and Saber three discarded him as the lifeless body fell to the ground, bullets passing by him close enough he could feel the air as they passed by, his own Kalashnikov answering in kind, except that Sabre 3 didn't miss.

He rolled behind a decorative column and gained a moments respite. Men were yelling loudly and there was weapons fire all over the villa as the other teams found similar welcoming parties.

The Chechens a few scant feet from Sabre three were yelling conflicting orders to each other, but were cut short as the rest of Sabre team emerged from the kitchen, taking down the now exposed Chechens with ease. They shot them once in the head as they passed each prone figure to ensure that they were dead and Sabre 3 joined them, flicking away his empty magazine as he loaded a new one.

They met resistance in every hallway and every room they went through. However, these were men with minimal training and experience that dealt mostly with shooting at the odd law enforcement officer or off duty reservists. Not Spetsnaz. Though there were a lot of them.

Radio chatter was saying that their target was trying to flee out the west entrance to get to the garage and to converge in that direction to cut them off.

Sabre 3 rolled through a half open doorway to avoid the fire from two more guards who had rather unexpectedly each sprung from either side of a T hallway after it had appeared that they had eliminated all of them. However, Saber 3 might have been better off to have stayed where he was.

He had rolled right into the middle of three Chechens, all of whom were armed. Sabre 3 rose, holding down the trigger as he did so, stitching a bloody zipper like trail up one of the mens body as he did so until the Kalashnikov clicked dry, then threw the empty rifle at the second Chechen, drawing his Makarov pistol as he did so. He shot the man twice in the head in a rapid double tap and watched him fall. The third however, proved to be a more difficult adversary.

He tacked Sabre 3 and they fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs, grunting and hitting each other, but with Sabre 3 unable to bring his pistol to bear. It discharged twice as the Chechen beat his hand against the floor until Sabre 3 let go of it. The man pinning him to the ground had a thick beard and was a good fifty pounds or more heavier than Sabre 3 was. His breath stank of cheese and he was in the process of trying to use his superior weight to force the knife into Spetsnaz's flesh.

Sabre 3 put every ounce of hard won strength into resisting the downward descent of the blade, but found it inexorable, his own strength insufficient to stop it. So instead of pitting brute force against brute force, he tried a different tactic.

Shifting his weight and bringing his legs up around the Chechen's neck, Sabre 3 reversed their positions with a mighty heave, but was unable to retrieve his sidearm. So instead he forced the Chechen's arm into a lock, breaking it before driving the knife down, sinking it to the hilt in the large mans chest. Then pulled it out and sheathed it in the mans neck for good measure. He took in a few more shallow breaths, but the river of crimson pulsing from his neck and his ruptured heart soon saw his gaping breaths end and he grew still. Before this though, Sabre 3 was already gone.

After the escapade in the kitchens, and encounters of servants with hidden guns, they shot everyone who wasn't their VIPs. Maids, servants, butlers, guests, guards. In turned into a slaughterhouse, hells own resort that had reserved these people their very own suite. In time, the screams faded and the rattle of gunfire subsided, with only the quiet sobbing of a trio of small children and the rebel leader's wife.

They bound and gagged them bundled them into a corner of the Villa where they took a picture of them from a colour Polaroid camera. Several in fact, and even some of the villa and the dead distant relatives and their guards, all except one.

She was a small girl with dark hair and eyes, one of the twins and her identical sister being bundled off with the rest of her family, but she had been left in the care of Sabre 3. Now the GRU are not nice men, they're trained to follow out their orders no matter what and be utterly loyal to the Union. To call them soldiers, would be inaccurate in a way. They are specialists, problem solvers without scruples that carry out the will of the Union, no matter their orders and their orders had been clear. The Chechen had sent a clear message that he was serious, so they were going to send a message that they were just as serious.

The girl was odd. Despite all the gunfire and violence, she merely stared at Sabre 3, even when the young Spetsnaz pulled out his knife.

The next day a box was placed in front of the theatre with a manilla envelope on top. Upon assurances that the rebels inside would not be fired upon, the door was opened and the box was brought inside.

The box was nondescript, sturdy, yet made of cheap, but thick cardboard and taped shut. The manilla envelope the kind that you could get in any post office in the Soviet Union. The manilla envelope, much to the horror of the Chechen leader, contained photos of his wife and children save one, bound and gagged as well as photos of his home, bullet riddled and blood stained. But beyond that, there were photos of family members of every man present in the envelope. Not bound and gagged, but taken as they were doing daily things. Going to school, working in the garden, hanging the laundry, even eating supper. There was also a note in the envelope.

"Know that if the hostages are not released immediately, a similar fate will happen to the rest. Look in the box." It was a short message, and ominous in its meaning.

With trembling hands, the man who had been waging a personal war secretly against the Soviet Union for the better part of his life, a rich man with loyalty of hundreds of fighters peeled back the tape and opened the nondescript box. His wail of grief is said to have penetrated the walls of the theatre, making the police present believe that someone was being murdered inside. For when he opened the box, he found his daughter's head, wrapped, almost mockingly in how delicately it was done.

The hostages were released shortly thereafter and Lobov got his daughter back, the police their terrorists, and the students got to go home. Publicly, no one knew why the Chechen's had given up so quickly, but privately the GRU units involved were given praise and promotion by Lobov himself. Among them a young man of promising potential and remarkable skill. Feliks Volkin was promoted and became a team leader for his part in the raid despite his age, discarding the call sign Sabre 3 for Sabre Lead.

--

"Do you think that these guys are a lot more advanced that us? I mean they're still using Phantoms," said Vitsin, the young blonde medic pointing to a distant airfield where several of the aircraft were parked.

"Aren't our MiGs wrecking them in Vietnam?" added Grekov. Grekov was about average height, but had the body of a runner with dark brown hair and gray eyes.

"Yeah," admitted Vitsin. The 21s are actually getting positive kill ratios. I've heard it's because the Americans took the guns off of their planes and their missiles aren't as accurate as people think. Though their new F15s have been knocking our planes out of the sky down there."

"That's just Vietnamese pilots though, not Russian ones," said Grekov dismissively.

"True," conceded Vitsin. "Still, their helmets look like it's made of the same kinda stuff our vests are, but better. And they've all got night vision goggles, or something that clips onto their helmet that they can put over their eyes. Though compared to Camp Zhukov, this place isn't very big. What do you think, about one division? Maybe two with all all their support stuff? Probably planning on expanding though. Hey! Farmboy! What do you think?"

"Me?" asked the young marksman Davydov, pointing to himself rather dumbly. He was a short man, still a kid really at 17. He weighed maybe a hundred and thirty five pounds soaking wet, but fit from a life of farm work and surprisingly strong for his size and his dark blue eyes never seemed to miss anything.

"Yeah, what do you think about all of this?"

"Well I don't know about their gear, but I think that this place is as big as it's gonna get once their little fortress is finished honestly."

"How do you figure that?" asked Grekov

"Well, when I was fifteen I helped my dad make a little extra money by doing some survey work. Mostly I'd just put down these wooden stakes wherever they told me to and carry stuff. You know, mark stuff out so that the work crews that came in would know where they could build or cut down trees and stuff."

"Oh yeah, we drove past a lot of those when we were leaving Zhukov," said Vitsin. "Kinda embarrassing really, didn't know what they were."

"Yeah, and when you look out there, you don't see any of them," said Davydov, gesturing beyond the wire mesh fence."

"Huh. Well at least there's more of us over here anyways. That's at least kind of reassuring."

"What would be more reassuring would be if I had my Kalashnikov back," grumbled Belikov, sitting at a picnic table playing cards.

"What would you need your Kalashnikov for Belikov?" demanded Vitsin.

"Makes me feel better. Good to have it around."

"He just wants it, because he almost got eaten by a damned Dragon when we went and smashed that army first week we got sent it," said Grekov laughing.

"Shut up, it wasn't funny," said Belikov sourly.

"It kind of was though, damn thing chased you half way around the camp and you got away by crawling under a T-55. Damn, that was something though. That dragon just exploded when that 105 hit it at point blank range. Pieces went everywhere," laughed Averin, which ended up sparking an argument.

Vitsin left it to them to sort out, and sat close to the wire mesh fence looking out over the low rolling hills leading to the camp. There was a town of sorts growing outside of the base about a mile or so away and patches of trees beyond. There were scars of a battle that had taken place though, craters and broken pieces of armor still littered the fields leading up to Alnus hill. The Japanese were messier than the Soviets though, they hadn't made an effort to clean up their mess. Or maybe they had left the remains of the armies sent against them as a warning?

Whatever the reason, it couldn't be helped that they were all starting to get a little agitated. They had been here three days and hadn't seen the Lieutenant in the past two. Their weapons and radios had been confiscated and they weren't being told what was going on. They were given quarters and food, but they weren't allowed to leave their little area which was only adding to the agitation.

The little town that the Japanese had set up of cheery looking wood building actually extended into the base itself, albeit with a checkpoint before it got into the base itself. However.

Vitsin squinted, seeing trucks a large puff of dust and dirt fly into the air.

"Hey. Hey you guys, come take a look at this!" called Vitsin.

"What?" asked Belikov.

"Something's happening over there. Look!" True to his words, another explosion of dirt flew up into the air and the sound, like a small bomb going off reached them moments later.

"Are they under attack?" pondered Belikov aloud.

"I don't think so, I don't hear any gunfire," said Davydov, ever preceptive.

"The Imps don't have guns idiot," chided Averin.

"I meant the SDF's guns. There isn't any shooting."

"Oh yeah."

"Hey, hey guards! There's something going on in the town down there," called out Vitsin to their marine guards. But, either not understanding them, steadfastly just ignoring them, or both, they never twitched a muscle.

"Hey don't ignore me. Hey Jarheads!" said Vitsin, now getting offended. "There. Is. Something. Happening. In. The. Town!" enunciated the medic, slowly and loudly like he was talking to very dull or very slow children. Frustrated, he picked up a small rock and threw it at the Marines, which bounced off the mans helmet. Very slowly, the marine, the size of a small truck turned around and he was the biggest, blackest man that Vitsin had ever seen and he did not look pleased in the slightest.

"Oh hell."

--

AN: Also checkout my new story where the German won WW2 and get transported to Arknight world idk here: 

https://www.wattpad.com/story/381071705-terran-war-arknight-x-tno-last-days-of-europe