Iron Hearts

Chapter 2

Second Contact

****

Centaur III - Cloudsdale

Derpy yawned lightly as she soared through the air, her mail bag swinging behind her as she went about her daily route.

Her wings flapped more slowly than usual, and more than once she had felt herself nod off only to be awakened by smacking into the side of a house. Still, Derpy persevered, pushing onward toward the end of her route.

The "Welcome to Equestria, Alien Robot" party had run long last night, and there were more than a few ponies who would be getting a late start this morning. It had been fun, although the alien robot itself hadn't really taken center stage during the festivities. It mostly just stood next to Apple Bloom and said hello to ponies with that weird red beam. Eventually it had just become a normal party with an exotic decoration sitting in the middle.

Still, despite the early hour and her flagging consciousness, Derpy went about her daily tasks. The mail needed to be delivered, and would wait for nopony.

Luckily, her exhaustion didn't effect her accuracy much, which was still holding at well above seventy percent. At this rate she would be done by noon, and then get in a much-needed nap.

She had just finished delivering a batch of letters to Cloud-something-or-other (honestly, there were far too many pegasi named "Cloud" for her to do her job perfectly), when one of her misaligned eyes noticed something in the distance that gleamed in the rising sun.

Derpy halted, and a few other pegasi that were up this early for whatever reason likewise noticed.

Those others didn't catch sight of the object because of the minute flash of light against its body, though. It had only been there an instant, and peripheral vision was kind of Derpy's specialty.

No, they saw the descending object because it was Celestia-damned HUGE.

Despite the distance, which must have been several kilometers at least, the metal vessel making a slow descent into the atmosphere dominated the skyline out of sheer bulk. Small flares of light from all around the object marked the descent of craft that weren't the size of cities, and were thus almost invisible from this distance.

The winged ponies with the good fortune to see such a grand sight stared with jaws slack as the craft sunk beneath the cloud cover, the sheer size of the vessel punching a hole in the sky and incidentally setting the weather factory's schedule off by three hours due to changes in the wind currents from mass displacement.

Derpy scratched her head as the towers of the manufactorum colonization ship and its escorts sunk out of sight. Then, with a shrug, she went back to her route. Hopefully Pinkie wouldn't throw the new arrivals a party right away; a few more mornings like this one wouldn't be good for her health, much less her career.

****

Sweet Apple Acres

"No way! Nothin' doin'!"

Applejack had expected this. She had prepared for this. Everything was going exactly as planned.

"Ya can't make Crabapple leave! Ya just can't!"

Then why did she feel like she was losing?

Applejack rubbed her forehead with her hoof. "Bloom, Ah ain't gonna budge on this. We ain't keepin' the space doohickey."

"But why NOT?" Apple Bloom demanded, tears already crawling down her cheeks as she hugged the leg of the probe automata.

"Lotsa reasons! Fer starters, she ain't ours! She just happened ta crash on our land!"

"But she ain't Twilight's either! Ya said ya wanna give her over ta Twilight!" Apple Bloom protested, pointing a hoof at her older sister accusingly.

Applejack rolled her eyes, but steeled herself to continue. She had already resigned herself to this fight.

Really, it wouldn't be so bad if she had some kind of support, but nopony seemed inclined to help her talk her sister down. Twilight was staring closely at Crabapple's sensor array and silently taking notes, apparently oblivious to everything else. Big Macintosh was out doing their farmwork that had been delayed by Crabapple's arrival, but he wasn't that good at standing up to his baby sister anyway.

Granny Smith had just remarked that she didn't think they really needed one those newfangled trash compactors and then started on breakfast.

"Okay, then who's gonna take care of her?" Applejack asked, eyebrow raised.

"Ah could!" Apple Bloom said immediately.

"An how's that? Ya know what she eats? Or how ta take care o' her when she's injured?"

The youngest Apple hesitated, pausing to wipe the tears from her eyes. "Well, no, but nopony knows that!"

"Actually, the chances of it being 'injured' are pretty low," Twilight mumbled, apparently listening in as she wrote, "the metal plating acts as a sealed carapace, and even the joints are-"

"Thank ya Twi, ya can shut up now," Applejack deadpanned, "Bloom, even if ya COULD take care o' her, what if her owners come a-knockin'? They might not be too happy 'bout you filchin' one o' their toys, and Ah won't be too happy 'bout having MORE space gizmos on the farm."

"Well... can't we keep 'er until they show up?" Apple Bloom begged.

Crabapple blurted something in Binary, and Applejack spoke a mental prayer that the contraption would stop speaking. Not only was its language grating on the ears, but the timing of its "speech" suggested that it was trying to join in their discussion. She didn't really want to consider that the probe might get a say in this.

"If they show up, they might not be comin' to have a friendly chat, sugarcube," Applejack warned solemnly, "if they're gonna find Crabapple, Ah'd rather they find 'er being studied by Twilight, with all 'er magic and a direct line to Princess Celestia herself, not playing with mah baby sister."

"But that ain't FAIR!" Apple Bloom insisted, stamping her hoof.

Crabapple seemed to get agitated as well, and it spit out a discordant screech of scrapcode as it stamped a leg on the floor of the barn in imitation of its mistress.

Applejack had to fight to keep from bucking the blasted thing right out the barn doors. The more it complained, or whatever it was doing, the less it seemed like a foreign machine and more like a loyal pet, which was precisely the outcome Applejack was trying to avoid.

"Apple Bloom, what if I offered to bring it back?" Twilight said suddenly, causing Applejack to nearly collapse from a combination of relief and frustration.

Apple Bloom wiped her eyes and turned toward the alicorn. "What's that?"

Twilight was staring closely at the small break in the ground where the probe had stamped its leg. "I want to study this machine as much as possible, and that's going to be harder to do here. So why don't you let me take it... uhm, her, for a few days? If no other visitors come for her and I don't find any other reason that she might be dangerous, Applejack wouldn't have much reason to kick Crabapple out, would she?"

As Apple Bloom sniffled and considered the offer, Applejack stepped over to Twilight and lowered her voice so that her little sister couldn't hear.

"Twi, whose side are ya on, here?"

Twilight rolled her eyes, and didn't bother to whisper when she replied. "I'm on whatever side gets this worked out so I can get Crabapple to respond to my orders. If I can get it... HER to cooperate, that will make the experiments I have in mind much easier."

Apple Bloom looked up at Crabapple, looking sad but no longer crying. "Ya promise ya won't hurt her?"

"Of course!" Twilight assured the yellow filly, placing a hoof to her chest.

"Ya Pinkie Promise?" Applebloom asked.

This time Twilight winced. "Uh... Well, I would, but Pinkie isn't here, to, uhm, note the Promise, so..." she trailed off as both Applejack and Apple Bloom shifted their gazes slightly to something just off to the side.

"She's behind me, isn't she?" Twilight sighed.

The Apple sisters nodded.

"Pinkie, what are you still doing here?" Twilight asked. "I thought everypony else went home."

"Not quite! Me and Rainbow Dash slept in the loft!" Pinkie said brightly, looking quite chipper about it.

"Don't you have to work today?" the alicorn asked, determined to avoid the potential calamities of a Pinkie Promise. Sure, she wasn't PLANNING on hurting Crabapple, but accidents did happen sometimes... especially when magic was involved.

Pinkie Pie giggled, waving a hoof in the air. "It's fine! I get special time off work for saving Equestria!"

Twilight quirked an eyebrow. "But Equestria isn't in danger," she pointed out, before furrowing her brow and adding, "is it?"

"Nope! But I read the plot outline notes already, so I'm planning ahead!" the pink earth pony said, sticking out her tongue. "So you can go ahead and make that Pinkie Promise! I'm here to watch!"

Twilight didn't know what she was talking about, but that wasn't anything new. "Urgh... fine. Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye," Twilight recited, making the appropriate motions with her hooves, "there. Is that good enough?"

Apple Bloom nodded somberly, but then gazed up at Crabapple sadly. "Can she at least stay fer today? Ah wanna show Sweetie Bell and Scootaloo this afternoon."

Twilight grimaced. She certainly didn't want those three fussing over the extraterrestrial device in her library. "Is that okay, Applejack?"

"Fine, fine. Ah guess that's as good as it's gonna get," the orange pony agreed reluctantly, "but if we end up with aliens tromping all over the farm, yer gettin' the mother of all 'Ah told ya so's."

"Hooray! Thanks sis!" Apple Bloom cheered, kicking up in the air before hugging one leg of the probe automata. "Ya hear that, Crabapple? We have another day to play!"

+Commander jubilation detected. Speech analysis has determined expectation of shared enthusiasm. Generating joy...... Complete. Wheeee.+

"Ugh, every time it says somethin' it sounds like a whole nest o' bees goin' mad or somethin'," Applejack grumbled, "Ah'm gonna go wake up Dash. Ah need somepony to complain to."

"Really AJ, you can relax," Twilight said as the farmpony stepped toward the barn exit, "even if we don't know the scope of the extra-terrestrial presence, it's quite unlikely that they're all going to converge on Sweet Apple Acres," the alicorn reasoned.

"Ah hope so, Twi," Applejack grumbled, "Ah sure hope so."

****

Sweet Apple Acres - Outskirts

*Target confirmed, Shas'el. We've detected the enemy unit within easy striking distance of this location. What are your orders?*

Deep within the Apple family's orchard, several Tau Fire Warriors stood around the scorch mark on the ground that marked the probe automata's landing site.

The creatures were quite near to human in form, if not stature. Each of the Fire Warriors was dressed in combat armor, a suit of poly-ceramic plates that gave ample protection to the torso and shoulders, and came complete with a crested helmet that boasted two vertically stacked optic sensors which fed into their visual displays. The alien warriors keeping guard all carried pulse rifles over their shoulders; powerful, accurate energy weapons that were almost as long as each of them were tall.

These Tau were painted in the colors of their command Sept: blue with black trim, and their squad leader had a communications hub mounted on his backpack.

*What has your recon team reported, Shas-ui?* crackled his communicator.

*The Kroot have discovered a facility on the edge of this forest. It is consistent with what I remember of gue'la agricultural structures, if not unusually primitive.*

*Strange...* the voice on the other end crackled, *this world was not supposed to be colonized by the gue'la already. It is far from the Damocles sector and their frontier systems.*

*And the freighter fleet we ambushed was not supposed to be well protected,* the squad leader said wryly, *such assumptions have cost us a great deal already. We must complete our mission here, and those probes are a crucial threat.*

*Agreed. Strike fast, and then round up the auxiliaries. Try to avoid collateral damage if you can. We haven't explored this world extensively, and we wish to conceal our presence as completely as possible.* With an irritated snort, the communication link went dead.

The squad leader took a deep breath as he hoisted his pulse carbine. He spoke lightly of the catastrophe in the Centaur system, but the loss had been devastating for them, not to mention quite rattling. The Imperium of Man (the gue'la, to the Tau), had never put much stock in the art of subtlety before, and they had taken the humans' lack of finesse for granted. As a result, now their entire mission was in danger.

But still, having Astartes hide in disguised freighters like pirates? Who DOES that?

*We move, shas'la. Check your weapons,* the team leader ordered, taking a large disk off of his backpack and pressing several buttons on the side. Within seconds the disk's antigravity engine came to life and it floated away from his hands as sensor fins unfolded from the drone.

*Approach in stealth, Fire Warriors. Our mission awaits.*

****

Sweet Apple Acres - fields

"I really don't see what the big deal is," Rainbow Dash admitted as she followed Applejack over the soil. The latter was planting seeds as she vented to the former, who was flying in lazy circles overhead. "If your sister wants to keep the space trash can, why not let her?"

"Of course ya don't see what the big deal is," Applejack grunted as she tamped down a spread of seeds, "jus' like Ah didn't think aliens were a big deal when Twilight was goin' nuts about 'em. When the blasted things start roamin' yer property, ya start ta see things differently."

Rainbow Dash did a barrel roll while hovering, looking bored. "Well, it didn't do any harm, did it?"

"It drilled mah tree!"

"Yeah, okay, fine, BESIDES that one tree," the pegasus rolled her eyes.

Applejack grimaced as she dropped another smattering of seeds to the earth.

"Ah just... Ah've got an awful bad feelin' about that thing. Ya know? Like something's just not right about it. Crabapple gives me the willies somethin' fierce. Even puttin' aside that 'she' is some kinda space toaster." She pushed some dirt over the seeds and then moved on to the next patch of land.

"Yeah, okay, I guess I understand that," Rainbow Dash allowed, "I kind of get the same feeling about the way it talks, you know? Like sometimes its tone changes to that really nasty grating sound, and it makes my fur crawl. But come on, your sister loves that thing. You could at least give it a chance."

"That's exactly what Ah'm doin'. Not that Ah had much say in it," the orange mare grunted as she spread the last of the seeds, "this was supposed to be Twilight's thing. All Ah want to do is work mah farm in peace."

Shaking her head, the earth pony walked back to the barn.

"Well, maybe a few days without her will let you calm down," Rainbow said with a smirk as she floated up next to her earthbound friend and patted her mane.

"Aw, whatever. 'Least Ah got mah barn back," Applejack mumbled as she approached the structure.

A growling noise stopped her short.

"Hey, what was that?" Rainbow Dash asked, her ears twitching. As both ponies halted, they could hear a series of soft grunting and tearing noises, followed by the occasional dull snapping sound.

"What in tarnation?" Applejack stared at the barn door and then stepped forward with a frown, pushing it open with her hoof. "Winona, is that you? What've you got yer paws on this time?"

It was not Winona.

The creature standing near the barn entrance was unlike anything Applejack had ever seen before. It was bipedal, tall, and had a leathery hide with small clusters of thick quills in place of hair. Its head sported a full crest of the quills, and had a large, serrated beak for a mouth that was dripping blood as the creature turned to stare at the newcomers.

Yes, blood. The alien was standing over a carcass, the kill still fresh and the gore streaked across the floor of the barn.

A soft, woolly carcass.

****

Sweet Apple Acres - orchard perimeter

*Target sighted. Upload drone visual feed, Shas'la.*

*Confirmed, Shas'ui. I see it.*

The Fire Warriors kept their backs pressed against the apple trees, staying completely out of sight of the farmstead as their recon drone peeked down at the scene from the boughs. Their helmets had their communications locked to each other, and even then they whispered to avoid any chance of detection.

*What are those things around it? Native fauna?*

*Those are horses, Shas'la. I saw a few of them when I faced the gue'la resistance on Devstille. The gue'la raise them and sometimes ride them into battle. Swift creatures, but they can't take a pulse round any better than their masters.* The squad leader hesitated. *Although those weren't so... colorful. And they were much larger. I assume these are local mutations of the genus.*

*Does that one have WINGS?*

*Very elaborate mutations, it would seem.*

*Are they talking to each other? They can talk?*

*Can we get on with this?*

One of the Fire Warriors raised his rifle. *Shas'ui, we strike on your order.*

*Wait for the Kroot to regroup. And avoid hitting the horses, if you can. No reason to agitate the locals.*

Several meters away, Twilight was scratching her head as Crabapple's sensor array started rotating wildly, followed by constant, and LOUD, bursts of Binary. Apple Bloom and Pinkie sat behind her, the former looking worried while the latter had her hooves over her ears.

"Twilight, what's wrong with 'er? Is she sick?" Apple Bloom asked sadly, standing up against the probe's leg.

+Multiple xeno bio-forms detected! Scans are consistent with Tau genus! Weapon signatures detected! Enemy drone energy signature detected! Contact imminent! Danger!+

Twilight shook her head. "As far as I can tell, she can't get 'sick'. I think she's just trying to tell us something."

"Well, can she tell us something without that awful noise?" Pinkie asked, gritting her teeth.

"Wait, can't ya understand her?" Apple Bloom asked.

"Of course not! I already told you, that would make no sense!" Pinkie replied.

"But-"

"Apple Bloom, stop trying to figure Pinkie out, it's hopeless," Twilight assured her, pointing a hoof toward Crabapple, "help me out with Crabapple before something bad happens. We need to-"

And then something bad happened.

"MAH SHEEEEEEEP!!!"

All three ponies jumped at the scream of rage, and they whirled around toward the barn, where the furious shout had originated.

A mere second later part of the barn wall exploded into splinters, and their eyes widened as an unfamiliar body went flying from the building before bouncing limply across the ground.

Twilight gaped as she stared at the bloodied corpse that now lay on the road next to the farmstead, noting the bizarre features of the creature and the deep hoofprints on its chest.

"Whoa! I think you broke it in half!" Rainbow Dash said, swooping down from over the barn.

"APPLEJACK!" Twilight shouted, very nearly as angry as the orange mare stalking out of the new hole in her barn. "Do you HAVE to greet every single extraterrestrial by bucking its cranium in?"

"Now don't you gimme that, Twi," Applejack said through clenched teeth, "that rotten space varmint killed one o' mah sheep!"

"You didn't have to kill it back!" Twilight insisted, walking up to the earth pony and glaring at her. "It could have been a cultural misunderstanding!"

"The misunderstandin' was that it thought it could butcher mah animals and walk away in one piece!" Applejack was not backing down this time, Twilight's fascination with alien life-forms be damned.

"First impression of ponykind, Applejack!"

"And Ah want that impression ta be 'STAY OFF MAH FARM'!"

Surely their argument would escalated further, but a pair of pulse rifle discharges behind them startled the ponies out of their argument.

Of everypony - or rather, everything - in the area, only Crabapple was paying attention as a pair of Fire Warriors leaned out from behind the apple trees and fired, and it had long ago concluded that its master and her associates couldn't understand its Binary-speak (the pink one notwithstanding).

Desperate to protect its mistress, Crabapple quickly moved to shield Apple Bloom from the incoming shots, unaware that they had been aimed at it in the first place.

The first struck the outer plating of its leg, and the energy bolt cut a shallow streak into the adamantium outer shielding, inflicting no real damage.

The second, however, struck Crabapple's body, piercing the main plating before exploding into its main reactor cooling unit.

The ponies whirled around just in time to see the burst of sparks jet from the new hole in the probe's body, and Apple Bloom's eyes bugged out.

"Crabapple! Are you okay?" Apple Bloom demanded in a panic.

"The machine! No, no, NO!" Twilight cried, equally upset for completely different reasons.

Applejack wasn't really concerned about the probe, predictably, but the fur on the back of her neck stood on end as she caught sight of the blue-and-black armored figures pointing their weapons out from behind her apple trees.

Crabapple sputtered wildly, its legs shaking as shrieks of Binary came from its auditory projector.

+Negative. Critical damage sustained. Reactor shutdown imminent. Generating regrets... complete.+

The coolant unit finally blew out of the main body in a burst of flame and shattered plating, throwing the entire automata on its side and causing the ponies to flinch back.

"Crabapple! Crabapple, get up!" Apple Bloom cried, racing over to the probe and standing against its leg as smoke belched from the damaged reactor.

+Mission... failed...+ Crabapple said in stuttering Binary, its sensors beginning to dim. +Forgive... me... App... le... Bloooooooooooo...+

"CRABAPPLE!" the filly shouted as the lights went dark, tears streaming down her face as she screamed to the heavens. "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"

The Tau Fire Warriors stared at the uncomfortably dramatic scene wordlessly, steam still seeping from the barrels of their pulse rifles as they peeked out from behind the apple trees.

*Okay, this is getting weird,* one of the soldiers said, looking away from the bizarre sight.

*Should... Should I apologize?* asked the Fire Warrior who had scored the kill, glancing at the squad leader.

*Of course not. Fall back and prepare to regroup, Shas'la.*

Deactivating the link that allowed him to view the target area through the drone's eyes, the squad leader turned around and prepared to lead his team back into the orchard.

He froze almost immediately, staring into the narrowed eyes of a rather large, red pony.

*Gah! How'd that one get there?*

*It, uh, looks mad, Shas'ui.*

Big Macintosh snorted, saying nothing as he stepped forward with his eyes fixed on the squad leader.

Said soldier silently cursed his warriors for getting so caught up watching the horses that they had allowed themselves to be flanked. Thinking quickly, he tried to recall some of the lessons in Gothic he had learned while working with the humans, since it seemed that these strange mutant horses spoke the same language.

"Uh, it... was for... the Greater GUGH!"

His excuse was cut short as Big Mac rammed his head forward, plowing the Fire Warrior into a tree and very nearly crushing the veteran's torso under his armor. His pulse carbine bounced onto the ground, unused.

The other fire warriors started to react, bringing their guns to bear, but Macintosh was already among them, and much faster than the aliens.

One Tau was unlucky enough to catch Big Mac's back hooves to his chest plate, and his ribs didn't fare nearly as well as the squad leader's as he went flying back into another of his squadmates.

One soldier, trying to back away to a sane distance, tripped over a root and ended up discharging his rifle skyward, slashing through the branches overhead. Another tried to fire point-blank as Macintosh charged at him, but the red pony batted the rifle aside with his snout and it fired off to the side, nearly spearing another Fire Warrior with the missed shot.

*Back up! Back up!*

*Take firing positions! Stay away from it!*

The three Fire Warriors that could still move darted away to get some distance as their squadmate cried out in pain from being smashed into the ground repeatedly by Mac's front hooves.

On the fourth try of stamping the intruder's helmeted face, Big Mac felt the armored dome crack underneath him (possibly something else had cracked under his attack as well, but he didn't want to dwell on that just yet), and he promptly bolted away just before a streak of blue seared into the tree next to him.

One Fire Warrior stumbled out of the orchard toward the road, his weapon pointing toward the trees, and only realized that he was in full view of all the other ponies when some of them started shouting at him.

"Hey, jerk! What do you think you're doing?"

"Get 'em, big brother!"

"If you even think about shootin' at Mac Ah'm gonna lay ya out on the road next to that other one, ya hear?"

The Fire Warrior whirled around, his pulse rifle wavering from the multitude of colored ponies that were glaring at him.

*Stay back! Tell the big one to stand down!* the Tau shouted, his aim centering on the orange one with the rather silly hat. It was glaring at it the most obviously, and although he couldn't understand a word any of them were saying, he could swear her incoherent shouting sounded the most violent.

Twilight bit her lip, sweat starting to bead on her fur. This whole situation was coming undone very quickly, and if she didn't do something quickly somepony was going to get hurt. Hurt BADLY, judging by the hole in Crabapple's body. She didn't like the thought of something that could break through those metals hitting an unprotected pony.

"This has to be some kind of misunderstanding!" Twilight shouted, her horn starting to glow. "Put down your weapons, please!"

*What are you doing? Get down, now!* the fire warrior shouted. Where the blazes were the Kroot? Besides the one pasted on the road, anyway.

Twilight grimaced, deciding that she wasn't going to have much success yelling at the alien when it didn't understand her and had a weapon aimed at her friends.

She couldn't do much about the first problem, but the second was easy to fix. So she fixed it.

The Fire Warrior gaped from behind his helmet as his pulse rifle was suddenly surrounded by a soft purple glow and pulled upward into the air, out of his grasp.

The ponies started a new round of yelling at him, but he wasn't listening. He stared at his rifle, floating just out of reach, and then glanced dumbly at the purple winged pony whose horn glowed with an unnatural light.

And then he spoke. The word he spoke was Gothic, for the Tau had no word for, and barely any understanding of, this unnatural power within their own species. They had learned it from others, most notably the humans. And just as the humans had taught them their words for such power they had also taught them their fears when facing such powers on the battlefield.

"PSYKER!" the alien screamed, pointing his glove at the surprised alicorn. *Shas'la! Volley fire, now!*

"Psyker? What is a psy-WAUGH!" Twilight summoned her shield as the two other active Fire Warriors dashed from the orchard, already firing their pulse rifles wildly. Bolts of flaming blue spattered against the barrier and exploded into crackling electrical arcs, and Twilight winced as she felt the strain of her barrier absorbing the energy.

"Ooh, pretty!" Pinkie said as she stared at the energy flares, which frankly RUINED the heroic drama of the situation.

"All right, you alien freaks, that does it!" Rainbow Dash said, darting through the air at the Fire Warrior that had been magically disarmed.

The alien soldier had rushed for his pulse rifle as soon as Twilight's concentration broke, but no sooner had he placed a hand on it than the blue pegasus landed square on his back, smashing the Tau to the ground.

She was going to take off again and then dive at the next one when she saw Big Macintosh sprint out of the orchard. A few seconds later, she saw why: there were three of those other, taller aliens chasing him, and they screeched noisily in their nonsense language as they swung large bladed rifles at him.

"I gotcha, Mac!" the pegasus shouted, taking off to buzz the more naked aliens. She figured Twilight could handle herself for a little bit until she could double back to save her, too.

On the edge of the orchard, the Tau squad leader groaned as he pushed himself to his feet, one arm draped around his abdomen as his other retrieved his pulse carbine from the ground. He didn't know what was going on, but he had heard the cry of "psyker" and could hear the steady stream of pulse rifle fire along with a number of angry shouts from the strange talking horses.

He also heard something else. Something that worried him even more than the equine aliens currently attacking his troops. The sound of a heavy engine, the kind that propelled armored vehicles. It was disturbingly close, too; if his men weren't stuck in the middle of a firefight, he was sure they'd be bolting for the trees already.

Staggering out from behind the (slightly scorched) apple tree, the fire warrior veteran shouted his orders.

*Shas'la! Auxiliaries! Cease fire! Fall back!*

The Fire Warriors halted instantly, glancing back at their leader, but the Kroot were not so disciplined and continued chasing the large red pony across a tilled field. The blue flying one kept dive-bombing the carnivores and kicking at them with its hooves, and the mercenaries returned fire sporadically while spitting threats (both of them equally effective, as they stood almost no chance of shooting down something so fast).

*I said fall back!* he reiterated, waving his hand toward the trees. *We have gue'la armor incoming!*

Twilight breathed heavily as the two aliens that had been shooting at her stopped and made a break for the soldier that Rainbow Dash had beaten up, grabbing his arms to carry him away.

Her shield had held, but it had been a near thing; holding up a barrier against that much energy had given her a bad headache to go along with the disappointment of fighting the aliens as soon as they'd appeared.

"Hey, they're leavin'!" Apple Bloom shouted.

"Bye bye! I'll throw you guys a 'Please Stop Shooting at my Friends' party next time, okay?" Pinkie shouted, waving a hoof.

"They're runnin'! Let's finish 'em off!" Applejack growled, stepping forward. The freckled pony was very nearly in a frenzy, utterly furious about having to hide behind Twilight's shield as the extraterrestrials had poured fire on them.

"AJ, wait!" Twilight gasped. "Just let them go! It's too... what's that noise?"

Turning her head, Twilight was treated to the lovely sight of a brand new alien machine, which surely would have made her giddy under much different circumstances.

It was big, perhaps the size of a small room, and its brushed steel exterior and beaten gold trim gleamed brilliantly in the light as it turned the corner around the farmstead, making a straight line for the Tau. It was carried forward on treads rather than wheels, and on its front facing was painted the symbol of a grinning silver skull.

The same symbol painted on Crabapple's leg.

"Xenos! Open fire!" the gunner's hatch burst open as a human wearing a black hood and an optics visor took up the Rhino's combi-bolter, swiveling the turret to aim at the Fire Warriors carrying their dazed squadmate into the orchard.

He pulled the trigger, and the combi-bolter roared to life as it hammered the Fire Warriors with twin bursts of mass-reactive rounds. One of them folded almost instantly under the barrage as the shells broke apart his armor and pulverized his body, with the wounded Tau catching enough of the resulting shrapnel to finish the job that Rainbow had started.

The remaining soldier dropped the bloody remains of his squadmate and bolted for the trees, barely staying ahead of the next salvo of bolter shells.

"Fire! Fire!" the top hatch of the Rhino opened up, and more humans - all of them wearing hoods, masks, and rebreathers - aimed lasguns out at the Kroot who were chasing some kind of animals out in the field.

Two of the aliens dropped from the first shots, the humans having a perfect firing angle on them and the warriors themselves distracted. The last Kroot dashed away, abandoning his hunt and running behind the farmstead to get around the Rhino's line of fire.

*Down! Get down!* the veteran Fire Warrior shouted. There were four more Kroot arriving behind him, attracted by the noise of combat, and the only other remaining Fire Warrior had just reached the partial safety of the trees. Small arms fire wouldn't do much to an Imperial APC, however, and as bolter shells started to rip apart the apple trees, he tapped into his communicator.

*Shas'el! We have been sighted by a gue'la fire team! We have an enemy transport! We require extraction!*

*Fall back to the rendezvous point, Shas'ui. Your Devilfish will meet you there.*

*We won't make it!* he shouted into his helmet as streaks of hot red light started stabbing into the trees all around him and his remaining troops. *The enemy has us outnumbered and has a transport!*

*Support cannot reach you in time, Shas'ui. The Kroot have heavier support nearby, but I advise retreat.*

The veteran winced. When his commander started "advising" him to retreat in the face of overwhelming enemy firepower without giving an order, he was giving the Fire Warrior permission to make a last stand.

*Be advised, Shas'el, we have completed our mission here. The enemy probe is destroyed.* The volume of incoming lasfire had increased considerably, and he had to guess that the humans had disembarked to better spread their fire. The Kroot were firing back enthusiastically, but two had already died during his conversation with command, and the Rhino's combi-bolter was keeping his surviving squadmate pinned behind the trees.

*You have succeeded then, Shas'ui. The Greater Good thanks you.*

The link went dead just as his final squadmate took a lasbolt to the side of the helmet and keeled over backward.

The squad leader stepped to the side of the tree he was behind, immediately firing off a photon grenade into the midst of the squad of humans.

Even as his opponents flinched back from the stunning flare of lights, they continued firing forward blindly, and the wild spread of lasbolts scored two hits against his torso armor as he lined up his carbine. Not enough to break it, and as such, not enough to stop him.

Three shots fired, and three humans collapsed with smoking holes in their chests. As they fell, however, the veteran Tau couldn't help but dwell on their attire; very different from the standard Imperial armor, these humans were all wearing hoods, masks, and dark red overcoats that offered even less protection than the generally unreliable flak armor given to basic human infantry. Were they not military? Or was this some sort of militia force?

A thick streaming laser speared him through the bicep, and the Fire Warrior suppressed a scream as his arm went limp, nearly severed from his shoulder. His carbine fell onto the ground at his feet, and the Tau veteran joined it a moment later, clutching the wound.

*Mission complete... I have served my purpose for the Greater Good, Aun'va,* the Tau mumbled, his chest heaving as he sat on his rear.

He was expecting the humans to gun him down the moment they recovered their sight, but to his surprise they instead marched past him, taking cover amongst the trees and immediately forming a firing line. They were on guard against further enemy activity, and the Fire Warrior had to respect the act of basic tactical discipline.

As another pair of humans dragged the bodies of their dead to the Rhino, he saw a unique figure step up to observe him.

Robed in black rubber amongst the muddy red of her unit, and boasting a pair of augmetic limbs hanging over her shoulders, it was difficult to mistake the Techpriest for another mundane soldier. In her hands she hoisted a crackling power axe while a gilded plasma pistol was mag-locked to the thigh of her power armor.

The veteran recognized her type. The Imperium's bizarre engineer-cultists were well-known to the Tau Empire. But why was such a person attached to a band of militia or pirates?

"You, xeno. Do you speak Gothic?" Gaela asked, her green optics glaring down at the alien from her mask.

He spoke just enough to understand her, and also knew the phrase "I don't speak Gothic", which was vital for those that didn't intend to learn much else of the human language. He elected to remain silent, however.

"... I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and take that as a 'no'. But that excuse won't work during your interrogation," the Dark Acolyte said, turning toward a rifleman. "This one has rank markings. Bind it and take it into the Rhino." She leaned over and picked up the Tau's pulse carbine as he was led away, and then snorted under her mask.

Turning toward their objective, she walked over to a pair of soldiers looking over the automata.

"Looks like they got this one, too," one the men grunted, tapping the barrel of his lasgun against the hole in the probe's carapace plating.

"That's three so far," growled the other man, his voice heavily distorted by the heavy-duty rebreather over his mouth, "the xenos have been one step ahead of us at every turn."

"Well, half a step in this case, since we caught them before they could extract."

Gaela tilted her head to one side. Her sensors (and basic visual scrutiny) were picking up the telltale signs of pulse weapon impacts, but only in two spots: one in the coolant unit and another on the leg plating.

"They only shot the automata twice," Gaela said evenly.

"That's all it takes, right?" one of the soldiers asked. "These things aren't made to take fire."

"Nor are they equipped to fight off military units," Gaela agreed, turning to look into the forest. Through her optics she could see the ion static discharges hovering in the air, a particulate after-image of the Fire Warriors' fusillade. She could even see one of the men searching the body of a dead Tau whose limp body hadn't suffered any visible lasgun burns, much less bolter impacts.

"By my calculations, the automata didn't even get to defend itself before it was dispatched, as expected... but then... who were the xenos fighting before we arrived?"

"So, I have a new theory as to the particulars of the alien presence in Equestria," Twilight said to her friends as they huddled behind a window sill in Applejack's home.

"Oh, DO TELL," Applejack replied, her sarcasm as heavy as her accent. They were all peeking over the sill, trying to get a good look at the unfolding catastrophe without attracting the attention of the new arrivals. Big Macintosh seemed less interested, and was in the kitchen wiping a shallow gash behind his shoulder.

Granny Smith was baking a pie, mumbling about foals these days playing with their noisy toys and causing a ruckus. Nopony paid her any mind.

Twilight sighed. "If I'm right, that means that this was a misunderstanding, just like I said. The aliens in the blue and black suits and the ones with beaks seem to have come here to attack Crabapple, and didn't mean to pick a fight with us. The other aliens have the same marking on their vehicle that Crabapple has on her leg, so they're probably the owners. They came to retrieve her, and then attacked the other aliens that shot her."

"So yer sayin' that all of 'em are shootin' up mah farm 'cause o' that alien garbage tin?" Applejack asked.

"Well, yes, but-"

"Which means Ah was right all along," the orange mare said dryly.

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Okay, yes. Fine. You were right. But you and Big Mac didn't have to attack them like that."

"Ya go explain that ta the rest o' mah sheep if ya care so much about these space creeps," Applejack said without a shred of remorse, "now where's Apple Bloom? Ah owe her an ear fulla 'Ah told ya so'."

"So, what I don't get is why we're hiding," Rainbow Dash said, glancing at Twilight, "I mean, aren't these aliens on our side?"

"No, because we're not on a 'side'!" Twilight said firmly. "That entire fight just now was an accident!"

"It didn't look like they were trying to shoot you by accident to me," the pegasus said with an angry snort.

"That's not-! Okay, look, we can't just jump into the middle of a war between two species we've just met! Or whatever is going on here! The only thing we know about either of these races is that one of them seems to speak our language!" Twilight paused, furrowing her brow. "Which is really weird, now that I think about it."

"Sounds like a pretty good start to being on the same side to me," Rainbow said with a shrug.

"Okay, seriously, WHERE is Apple Bloom?" Applejack demanded, twisting her head back and forth.

"Oh, she's over there!" Pinkie said, jumping on top of Twilight's back and pointing a hoof out the window at an angle the other ponies couldn't easily see. "It looks like she wants to talk to those aliens who are totally on our side but not really!"

Applejack's eyes bugged out even as Twilight tried to shake Pinkie off of her.

"BLOOOOM!!"

Gaela whirled around at the shout, snapping up the plasma pistol from her thigh as her optics array locked onto the window.

Four riflemen took up position at her sides, their lasguns at the ready as she scanned the building.

"Life signs. Xeno." Gaela frowned as her optics switched to thermal view, showing her several red and yellow blobs shifting around behind the wall.

"Not Tau..." she lowered the pistol. Her mission was in serious danger of failure, and she didn't have the time or ammunition to waste on fighting random aliens that seemed intent on hiding from her.

She turned back toward the probe, and then the Dark Acolyte froze in her tracks.

Standing on the edge of the automata, with its tiny front hooves placed atop the machine's unmoving leg, was what she could swear was a tiny yellow horse. It had a dark red mane that was tied up with a bow, and was staring directly into the neon-green glare of her optics array as it sniffled.

"Do ya think ya can help her, Mr. Alien?"

It also spoke Gothic, apparently. Because, really, why not.

The riflemen all stopped aiming their guns at the farmstead to stare at the pony, no one moving or speaking for a good twenty seconds as Apple Bloom wiped away a stray tear with her hoof. Even the ones that had been holding a firing line on the edge of the orchard abandoned their military discipline and turned to watch.

Finally, one of the men next to Gaela turned toward his squadmate. "You know, I always figured that when all the Warp exposure and daemonic corruption finally caught up with me and drove me insane that it would be pretty awful." He turned his head back and stared down at the pony. "This is actually kinda nice."

"You're not hallucinating," Gaela deadpanned as her optics did a complete close-range scan of the yellow creature, "yet."

"Mr. Alien?" Apple Bloom asked with wide, glistening eyes. "Is she gonna be okay?"

Gaela dropped down to one knee to stare at the pony more closely, and the servo arm over her shoulder started to shift. The hydraulic claw clanked shut briefly, and then surged forward.

The series of gasps from the farmhouse would have been entirely audible to the gunmen if any of them were paying even the slightest attention. Instead the masked men all stared intently at the unfolding encounter, deeply curious.

Gaela's servo arm rose up into the air, clamped tight around Apple Bloom's ribbon and lifting the filly along with it.

"Are ya gonna fix her?" Apple Bloom asked again, waving a hoof at Crabapple and apparently not terribly bothered by being hoisted by a terrifying metal claw.

After several more seconds of staring, Gaela finally replied.

"No. Go away."

There was a soft whir as the servo arm's vise rotated, turning Apple Bloom around before dropping her onto the ground.

"Also, not that I particularly care, but it's Miss, not Mister."

As Apple Bloom made the most piteous face Gaela had ever seen on a living creature, one of the soldiers walked over and rubbed at the scorched hole on the automata's body.

"So you really can't fix it? You need some special parts or something?"

Gaela snorted behind her expressionless mask. "I need the time to do it, not special parts. There are still two more automata that we just might find before the Tau do. We need to make haste to the next target."

"But you COULD fix it later, then," another soldier concluded.

Gaela didn't really like the way the yellow xeno lit up when her subordinate brought up the possibility. "I'm not fixing anything! If it doesn't have a recoverable memory coil, then it might as well be scrap as far as our mission is concerned! A mission which is endangered more every minute we stand about entertaining the whims of random xenos!"

"Well, it's not REALLY a xeno. It's a horse," another one countered.

"It's a TALKING horse," Gaela corrected.

"Ah'm a pony," Apple Bloom corrected again.

"Shut up, talking horse," Gaela snapped, "either way, I'm not doing it."

One of the masked soldiers scratched his chin. "Are you sure you can't get anything out of the coil, though? It doesn't look that badly damaged."

"For iron's sake, people!" Gaela's servo arm seized one of Crabapple's legs and hoisted it upright. "Look, do any of you even know the difference between a cogitator engine and plasma-flux cycler?"

One of the soldiers raised his hand.

"Rhetorical question, put your hand down." Her multi-tool augment shifted into melta cutter mode, and it swiveled about to curl under Gaela's arm. "My point is that I'm far and away the most technologically literate, to say nothing of my four years of combat experience against the Tau specifically." The cutter went to work carving a circle around the top of the probe's body, the hiss of pressurized gases seeping from the nozzle. "Tau pulse weapons use low-energy plasmas, which release magnetic bursts on impact due to the sudden depressurization of ionized gas and the collapse of the electron containment lattice." The melta cutter finished its circuit around the probe's body. "This wreaks HAVOC with memory coils and cogitator engines that aren't properly shielded against it. It only takes ONE shot against the body to scramble a probe automata's data core, even if it doesn't inflict much real damage. Which this one did." She grabbed the sensor dish and pulled open the top of the probe. "So that's how I'm quite sure that this probe is completely...... okay, that's not normal."

Gaela stared into the writhing nest of wires, her optics displays struggling to get any coherent readings as entire circuit boards shifted within the mass like pieces of debris floating in a barrel of water.

The cogitator engine also had grown an eye, which was staring at her through the squirming wires. Definitely not standard pattern.

"All right Twi, Ah think the one in black is distracted," Applejack whispered, her eyes narrowed as she stared out the window, "what's the plan? We gotta get Apple Bloom outta there."

"Just a minute," Twilight mumbled, her horn aglow as she wrote down notes as fast as she could.

"Twi!" Applejack hissed.

"Hush! Busy! ... Depressurization of ionized gas... damages cogitator engines..."

"What's wrong?" one of the soldiers asked as Gaela stared at the automata's innards.

"I think the probe achieved daemonic sentience," the Acolyte responded.

"Is that a bad thing?"

Gaela looked up at him, the green light of her helmet's optics meeting the dark red of his goggles. "Not necessarily. Though as a rule, most people don't want their tools to have free will."

Apple Bloom sat nearby quietly, not understanding any of what they said.

"Although... if the unit has turned into a daemon engine, then there's a good chance that it could withstand the magnetic pulse... but I don't know if I can get the coil out without destroying it. Or without it biting off my hand." She flexed the fingers of her bionic limb. "I have spares, of course, but they're all back on the Harvest."

"So what are you going to do?" asked a gunman.

The Dark Acolyte sighed. "I'm going to fix the automata."

"YAY!" Apple Bloom cheered, bouncing from hoof to hoof.

"D'aaawwww," went several gunmen, having now completely abandoned any pretense they were in a combat zone.

"Stop that, all of you," Gaela commanded, her servo tools clambering over the probe's carapace in earnest as she sought out the damaged coolant unit.

"Okay, how about now?" Applejack asked, now getting increasingly frustrated as Twilight rolled up her parchment. "Can ya get Apple Bloom outta there?"

"Huh? Oh. Yeah, sure." Twilight stood up on the window sill and focused on Apple Bloom, intending to levitate her away from the aliens and into the farmstead.

Unfortunately, one of the aliens in question chose that moment to step between the window and the filly, breaking her line of sight.

"So you got a name, kiddo?" asked the gunman. His face was covered with bandage wrappings, save for a rebreather and an optics visor.

"Ah'm Apple Bloom!" the filly said brightly. "Nice ta meetcha! This here's mah family's apple farm!"

Gaela grunted a short expletive in Binary as she drew the damaged coolant unit out of the automata, staring down at the scorched hunk of useless metal.

"And what were a bunch of Tau soldiers doing on your farm, Apple Bloom?" asked a different soldier.

"A bunch o' what?"

"Tau. The particular xeno coalition that we attacked here," Gaela said as she broke the pulse carbine's casing open with her servo arm and started searching through the parts. "The puny, worthless sapients in blue and black, and their half-wit lackeys with the thick, spiky hair."

"Oh, them!" Apple Bloom scowled. Adorably. "They showed up outta nowhere and shot at us! An' Ah think mah sis said they even got one o' our sheep!"

"Man, what a bunch of jerks," one gunman said, kicking the corpse of a Fire Warrior.

"All right, seriously, stop bonding with the alien," Gaela demanded, finding the right part from the pulse carbine. Worm-like mechadendrites seeped from her bionic fingers and dug into the small ceramic cylinder, and then her servo tool curled down over her shoulder to go to work.

"Aw, come on Acolyte! This is awesome!" said the man stooped over Apple Bloom. "A pony that speaks Low Gothic way out here! How insane is that?"

"Not as insane as you'd be inclined to think," Gaela replied as she finished making adjustments to the Tau heat dispersal node, "Gothic is the single most widely spoken language in the known galaxy. Fluency would probably be a standard requirement for even the Tau soldiers if humans had discovered them earlier. Assuming that they survived the encounter, of course." Needless to say, Apple Bloom didn't understand a thing she said despite the lack of a language barrier.

"Okay, but... why can the horses talk?" another soldier asked.

"The Warp did it," grunted the Acolyte as her servo tool went to work on the probe's body cavity.

"That's your reason for everything when you don't feel like explaining something," complained the soldier in front of Apple Bloom.

"Well, usually it's right," Gaela said as she inserted the new coolant unit.

"You told me that's why plasma weapons overheat."

"And when you figure out the real reason, maybe you'll make Aspirant," Gaela snapped, her laser welder going to work to fix the breaks and seams on the automata, "until then, stop chatting up the wildlife and cover an approach vector, gun monkey."

As the man grumbled and did as he was told, Gaela's augments poked and crawled over the automata's carapace, sparks pouring from the points of contact.

After nearly a minute of this, Gaela stood up and laid her metal and metal-sheathed hands on the probe's body. Her servo limbs folded back into their waiting positions, and the Dark Acolyte spoke a prayer of activation in Binaric Cant.

+Awaken, daemon within iron, and share with us your darkness. Grow, spark of the machine mind, and share with us your light. To the dark gods do I dedicate this nascent cybernetic soul, and by their will does it rise again.+

Crabapple's leg twitched.

"Ah! She's alive! She's okay!" Apple Bloom cheered, jumping up again.

"There, see? That took, like, five minutes," a soldier offered, clapping the Acolyte on her armored shoulder as Crabapple's sensor arrays flickered to life.

"Take your hand off me before I lop off your arm," Gaela deadpanned, picking up her axe. The man backed off immediately.

The other soldiers were watching as Apple Bloom nuzzled the probe's leg. It was adorable, obviously, but also just slightly creepy watching the enthusiastic affection for a debased machine.

But then, they were soldiers in the service of Chaos. Creepy was a daily encounter for them.

"That was amazing! It looks like she really fixed her!" Twilight said, her eyes gleaming as she stared at the alien in the black robe.

"Okay, so now they fought off those other creeps AND fixed Crabapple. So now we're on their side, right?" Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight was actually quite tempted to agree, if only so that she'd have a reason to try to befriend the armored alien and start asking questions, but she knew that the situation was still too dangerous and too unknowable for them to make such a decision.

"No, Rainbow, that still isn't enough for us to get involved in some kind of intergalactic war. As much as I'd love to make friends with these aliens, I'm not ready to commit myself to attacking the other ones." Then her eyes narrowed as she looked back at Applejack. "Unlike SOME ponies."

"Yeah, you just keep playin' the pacifist," Applejack grumbled as she sat on her haunches behind the alicorn, "if Bloom hadn't talked me inta keepin' Crabapple around fer one more day, they'd be shootin' up yer library. Love ta see how diplomatic ya'll are then."

"Well, maybe it wouldn't REACH that point in the first place if we tried to understand each other!" Twilight countered, though visibly upset at the thought of her books being riddled with laser burns like many of Applejack's trees were.

"Ah understood 'em just fine when they were all tryin' ta blast ya in the face with their fancy space guns," the farmpony said with a snort, "whatever. Ah just want 'em to move on before some other freak shows up ta start a fight."

Behind the arguing mares, Big Macintosh had finished dressing his wounds and was pouring himself a glass of apple juice, a bit thirsty from caving in alien rib cages and fending off carnivores.

He was worried about Apple Bloom, but figured that between Twilight, his sister, and Rainbow Dash keeping watch, she was about as well-protected as she could be considering she had decided to stay outside with all the strange bipedal creatures carrying guns.

He put the juice jug away, and then turned back to his drink.

The surface of the juice rippled.

The red stallion paused, staring as the surface of his juice trembled repeatedly, disturbed by some force he couldn't quite feel or hear.

"Ooh! I remember this scene!" Pinkie said suddenly, standing up on the other side of the table and grinning at the shaking beverage. "It was from that movie Draconic Park! Did you see it? It was a classic!"

"Nnope," Big Mac answered, looking up at the pink earth pony.

"Oh, well, in the movie there was this really big dragon that escaped its pen, and whenever it would show up any pools of water would start shaking! It was a good movie, but not Steven Spielbuck's best, if you ask me! There was this other one that was about a giant fish that ate ponies and I thought that..."

Big Macintosh wasn't really listening anymore, his attention focused on the water. If he concentrated (and ignored Pinkie Pie), he could just barely pick up a rhythmic pounding noise from out in the fields - specifically the fields on the opposite side of the house from the road - that just about matched the shaking of his juice.

He grimaced, his ears falling flat against his head.

+System reactivation complete,+ buzzed Crabapple as it clambered upright, Apple Bloom practically dancing at its feet, +beginning protocol seven-eight-+

+Override code three-three-one, priority primarus,+ Gaela interrupted, surprising Apple Bloom as her vox grill spat out very similar noises to the ones Crabapple made, +initiate data upload, data cache nine-two-tertius and six-six-tertius to my personal memory coil, noosphere link one-zero-nine-one.+

Gaela waited patiently as the automata turned its sensors toward her, but to her surprise, rather than initiating a noosphere link it did a ray-scan of her, the red span of its scanner sweeping up her armored toes all the way to the top of her black rubber hood.

+Data access denied,+ Crabapple blurted after briefly processing the scan, +unit Acolyte Gaela does not possess access clearance.+

+Of course I do,+ Gaela replied, pounding the haft of her power axe onto the ground, +are your bytes scrambled or something?+

+Unit Acolyte Gaela is also very rude. Generating petulance... complete.+

The probe turned its optics sensors around to face away from her. +Hmph.+

Gaela's shoulders slumped, and she had to try very hard to resist blasting the probe with her plasma pistol. She had just finished fixing it, after all.

"See this? This is why we don't want our tools to have self-determination. It's ANNOYING," the Acolyte growled.

"Uh... is there anythin' Ah can do ta help?" Apple Bloom asked timidly.

"Yes. Take a cue from your equine ancestors and stop talking," Gaela snapped. Then she glared at the probe through her optics before making another request in Gothic. "Automata designation C-98381, upload system diagnostics and command directives."

The probe swiveled its sensors back around, and then beeped something back to the Acolyte.

Gaela recoiled, and then she whirled around, causing her escort to flinch back.

"All right, who's the cretin who changed the probe's system designation to 'Crabapple'?"

Apple Bloom winced, her ears pinned against her head as she ducked down.

Before she could begin interrogating her men - none of whom had any kind of access to the automata or any clue what she was talking about - Crabapple's sensor array started to spin around crazily, and it trumpeted bursts of noisy Binary.

"NOW what's wrong with it?" one of the gunmen asked.

"Sensor intercept. Passive mode, too, so it must be big," Gaela said, immediately gripping her axe and checking good positions for firing lines.

"Xeno armor? I thought we were only supposed to be facing light resistance," another man grunted. The soldiers were back in form in an instant, their lasguns searching for targets as they dashed into cover.

"We were. It's probably just their transport, or-" she halted as Crabapple blasted another string of Binary. "Wait. Seismic readings? Tau heavy units are all anti-grav."

"Uh... Acolyte?" the men could now hear the sound of heavy footsteps approaching from behind the farmstead, and they aimed their rifles at either side of the building.

A heavy crash set the men on edge, and the soldiers of Chaos were none too happy to see the barn behind the farmstead collapse, its roof shaking and disappearing behind the closer building.

Almost at the same time, the front door to the farmhouse burst open, and the nervous gunmen very nearly opened fire as five ponies of various bright colors dashed out.

The orange one with the hat snatched up Apple Bloom as they ran between the assembled humans and into the orchard, but said humans were in no position to worry about the aliens.

Gaela stepped back as the farmstead shook violently, something enormous having entered one wall of the building with the full intention of walking right out through another.

"Back up!" Gaela shouted, herself breaking into a run deeper into the orchard. "GNARLOC!!"

The Apple family home exploded outwards, disgorging forty tons of angry muscle along with a good bit of debris. The Greater Gnarloc was a reptilian giant, bigger than a main battle tank, with the same quill-like hair, hooked claws, and serrated beak as their Kroot cousins. The entire weight of the monster rested on two massive rear legs, while the stunted front arms hung just above the ground. A thick, short tail made up the rear section of the beast, while a pair of Kroot hunters sat on top in a shaky-looking shooting platform made with loose scrap plating.

The Gnarloc shook itself to rid its leathery hide of the last bits of Applejack's home, growling as the human forces opened fire all at once.

Numerous darts of bright red splashed against the head of the alien monstrosity like hot rain, and with about as much effect. The rhino unleashed its combi-bolter against the beast's flank, the mass-reactive rounds blowing tiny craters in the Gnarloc's leathery hide, but even the heaviest of small arms didn't seem to especially bother the beast.

Granny Smith hummed to herself as she checked on her pie. Then she shuddered slightly, her back turned to the massive furrow that had been carved through the farmstead.

"Applejack, be a dear and close the window, would ya? Ah think there's a draft in here."

The Gnarloc snarled as it stomped toward the nearest human, the Kroot on its back firing wildly into the orchard.

The gunman promptly slipped behind the tree he had been using as cover, holding his lasgun tight against his chest as he prepared to dodge away based on which side of the tree the monster approached from.

The Gnarloc elected to skip such games, and the snapping of bones briefly followed the snapping of wood as it crushed the tree and the man behind it in its jaws. The top of the tree toppled over, apples rolling across the ground and trailing blood across the dirt.

The Gnarloc turned toward the next meal/target when the whining discharge of a plasma pistol came from its flank.

Pain bloomed across the Gnarloc's side as a green bolt of plasma stabbed into its torso, and flesh and fat blistered along its chest as the projectile cooked its way into the Gnarloc's core.

Steam wafted from Gaela's plasma pistol as the Gnarloc swung about in a rage, its tail uprooting trees in its path and knocking down one gunman that had been slow to flee.

"Damn it... legs! Shoot out its legs!" the Acolyte screamed through her vox-grill as the alien beast started moving forward, its body slipping around trees with surprising agility (and simply plowing over the trees that it couldn't avoid).

Gaela fired another shot from her plasma pistol, and this time the Gnarloc shifted in time for the bolt to draw a line across its side, boiling away flesh but failing to do the critical organ damage to stop the beast.

Gaela turned and started running full-tilt, her servo tool powering up a streaming laser that fired backward as she ran with only slightly more effect than any of the standard lasguns.

The Greater Gnarloc bore down on her, and its beak opened to snap the Dark Acolyte in half even as a noisy rumble came from its side.

The Rhino smashed into the side of the Greater Gnarloc with a tremendous crash, the spikes mounted on the front stabbing deep gouges into the rampaging beast. One of the Kroot, who had been aiming to try and shoot Gaela and slow her down, was thrown from the firing platform and bounced across the ground. It was promptly targeted and killed by half a dozen human gunmen, eager for a vulnerable target now that the Carnivore was no longer protected behind the platform.

The Gnarloc roared, throwing its head up as its momentum stalled, and the monstrous beast turned sharply and slammed its head against the Rhino like a sledgehammer, throwing the vehicle up over end and pasting two soldiers as it came down on its roof.

The Gnarloc then focused its attention entirely on the Rhino as its training took over. The Kroot typically used the beasts to hunt armored tanks and enemy walkers, as the mercenaries otherwise lacked any anti-vehicle weapons to bring against the Tau's enemies. A vehicle was a good kill, while the tiny creature with a particularly dangerous weapon could be ignored for later.

The Greater Gnarloc seized the front of the right tread in its beak, slamming one back leg atop the rhino to brace itself before it pulled. Bolts popped out of place and welded seams broke apart as the entire right side of the APC was ripped free of the body, and with snarl and a tug the Gnarloc tossed the tread and adjoined access hatch off into the orchard, nearly crushing another Chaos soldier.

"You know, there are a lot of physiological similarities between that 'Gnarloc' and those smaller aliens on its back. I think they may belong to the same genus. It seems unlikely due to the sheer difference in size alone, but once you get past the mass difference, really, they're surprisingly similar."

Twilight knew she was babbling, but she just felt like she had to say SOMETHING to fill the awful silence that she and her friends had suffered through after watching Applejack's house come apart. Applejack had been glowering wordlessly ever since, and even Crabapple had ceased its hopeless attempts at communication after it had joined the ponies outside the battle.

The human in black fired another bolt of green at the Gnarloc, and it screeched angrily as it started thrashing about through the trees, uprooting them one after another and flattening any human that didn't run fast enough.

"That weapon is very impressive! I mean, all the other aliens in red coats have larger ones, but those hardly even-"

"Twilight." Applejack's voice was a perfect deadpan, and her eyes looked hollow as they tracked the Gnarloc's path through her orchard.

"Y-Yes?" the alicorn asked, her mane standing on end.

Applejack calmly raised a hoof to the back of her head and pushed her hat forward so that the rim cut across her eye level. "Ah'm takin' sides in this here space war."

Twilight winced. "Applejack, wait! Listen, I know you're upset about your house being destroyed, and it certainly doesn't help that the Gnarloc has uprooted nearly a dozen... no, make that a full dozen of your apple trees. And you must be angry about your barn, which I can see from here was demolished right before your house. Not to mention that given the path of the Gnarloc, it must have come through the western fields to get to us, and something that size definitely would have destroyed the crops that you-"

"MAC! RAINBOW! Back me up!" Applejack said, practically glowing with fury as she dashed toward the battle.

"Eeyup," Big Macintosh answered, spitting out the wheat stalk in his mouth before galloping after his sister.

"Well, it's about time!" Rainbow Dash agreed, taking off into the air above them.

"Applejack, wait! I'm not done calming you down yet!" Twilight shouted, reaching out a hoof for the enraged earth pony.

Gaela cursed in binary as her latest plasma shot went wide, the Gnarloc turning at an unfortunate moment and the pistol at the edge of its effective range. It was also starting to eject steam from its flex-sheathing at an uncomfortable rate; the Dark Acolyte knew the weapon was only one or two shots away from overheating. While losing her remaining biological arm was hardly any great loss to her, she didn't really want to deal that now, with a Greater Gnarloc bearing down on them.

The alien beast had started chasing another rifleman through the trees when Gaela heard the rapid pounding of hooves against the dirt approaching. Two ponies, one orange and the other red, galloped through the orchard directly toward the rampaging Gnarloc, bearing down on the creature with surprising purpose.

"Yer goin' down, ya ugly excuse fer a space dragon!" the one with the hat shouted as the ponies each ran along a different side of the beast.

The remaining Kroot gunman started to take aim at the new opponents over the side of his mount, but suddenly found himself disarmed as a blue pony with wings dive-bombed him and kicked away his rifle.

"All right y'all, let's give 'im the ol' one-two-three!" Applejack shouted, darting just ahead of the Gnarloc.

The beast caught sight of the brightly colored pony as she sped past, and it turned its head slightly to watch the curious new snack that had wandered in front of it.

Said "snack" promptly dug her front hooves in while bunching up her back legs, and then she slammed her back hooves into the Gnarloc's maw.

"ONE!" Applejack shouted as the beast's head snapped to the other side.

Big Macintosh was already in position, though he elected not to shout anything as his back hooves struck the Gnarloc's beak like a lightning bolt.

The Gnarloc went reeling, its jaw fracturing and its gait starting to stagger as a blue streak plummeted down on its much-abused skull.

"TWO!" Rainbow Dash shouted, landing hard on the alien's cranium and smashing it into the ground. She immediately bounced off and back into the air as the Gnarloc started to tilt to the side, and the beast slowly teetered over to land on the ground with a crash.

"Wait... three! I was three, wasn't I? Dang it, Mac, you're supposed to call out your number! I messed up!" Rainbow Dash complained, hovering over the dazed alien.

Applejack snorted. "Ya did fine, sugarcube." Big Macintosh just shrugged quietly.

The Gnarloc shifted and growled, blood seeping from the cracks in its beak and its jaw hanging at an unusual angle. Its remaining rider, which had clung to the firing platform as his mount had toppled over (hardly a rare incident), spurred the beast on as it rose, dazed and hurt but hardly broken.

"Yeah, that's right! You get back up, and Ah'll put ya right back down again!" Applejack snarled, impressing many of the human soldiers that had finally given up peppering the beast with their lasguns.

Macintosh wasn't so sure of himself, being considerably more aware of how the alien monstrosity completely dwarfed them. He started to back away as the Gnarloc got to its feet, and turned to run as the beast pushed forward.

Either because his red coat attracted the most attention, he was the first to run, or because he was the bigger pony between him and his sister, the Gnarloc turned to chase after him, ignoring the orange pony yelling threats at it.

"Hey! Don't ya turn yer back on me, you low-down YEEP!" Applejack ducked as the Gnarloc's tail swung at her, nearly pulverizing the earth pony.

As the ponies harassed the Gnarloc, a single haggard figure in blue and black armor rolled out of the gaping hole in the side of the Rhino, his hands bound and his helmet removed.

The Fire Warrior didn't have a complete idea of what was happening; he had just heard a lot of shooting and then a heavy impact before the Rhino had been ripped open. He knew that now was likely to be his only chance to escape captivity, however, and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to take it.

Crawling across the ground, he had barely gotten a few feet from the wreckage when he noticed a lasgun laying near some tree roots; probably the property of one of the streaks of gore under the APC.

He took up the weapon with his good arm without hesitation. Human weapons tended to be crude, unsophisticated, and unnecessarily heavy. But he was lucky enough to have stumbled upon one so easily.

Or at least, it seemed that way at the time. Had he not stopped to arm himself, he probably wouldn't have been standing still long enough for the bolter round that took his head off.

Pushing aside ruined metal plating, a second body emerged from the vehicle wreckage. This one was much larger than the humans that had been packed into the rhino and manned its guns, and was clad from head to toe in heavy powered armor.

Although Gaela's dispatch was otherwise composed of the human soldiers that supplemented the 38th Company's combat forces, such men were not allowed to pilot the Iron Warriors' vehicles. In part because the Astartes did not trust the mortals to handle them correctly, and in part because they were convinced the weaker humans might desert and steal them, only a Chaos Space Marine was ever allowed to drive the legion's combat vehicles designed for Space Marine crew.

And it was only due to this rule that there happened to be an Astartes among Gaela's unit.

The Iron Warrior Dest glanced at the headless Tau corpse next to his gutted Rhino, and then at the twisted shell of the Rhino itself.

Then the Chaos Space Marine turned toward the roaring Gnarloc, the glare from his red helmets lenses flaring.

"Iron within, iron without," Dest declared solemnly, moving to join the battle.

Big Mac turned around a tree and then leapt over a wheelbarrow left out in the orchard, concentrating on the path ahead of him and not the constant pounding noises following close behind. The sound of a tree being shattered and his wheelbarrow crumpling against the ground made him consider that it probably wasn't a good use of energy navigating obstacles that the Gnarloc simply mowed through with sheer mass, and resolved to focus on sprinting forward.

Suddenly the pounding halted, and Big Mac heard the alien beast bellow furiously at the interruption.

Glancing back, the farmer could see the glow of magic manifested in thick, translucent vines that were holding the Gnarloc's feet to the ground, and Twilight was standing nearby with obvious strain on her features.

"It's about time, Twi!" Applejack said, racing up to the pinned alien and giving it a solid buck to its side. The attack didn't do nearly as much harm as a strike to the beast's face, but she didn't really want to be anywhere near its mouth right now.

"For the record, I still think this is a BAD idea!" the alicorn shouted, sweat starting to run down her cheeks as the Gnarloc fought her spell.

"Fall, xeno filth!" came the static-heavy shout from an Astartes vox grill, and Applejack flinched back as a series of small explosions stitched across the side of the struggling Gnarloc.

The ponies could see at a glance that this alien was different from the others, clad in bulkier metal armor than the one in black and holding a weapon about twice the size of the others' laser rifles. He moved forward purposefully as he covered the Gnarloc in mass-reactive fire, and the humans in red that were left formed up behind him into a firing line, adding their near-useless firepower to his.

Gaela made some swift calculations, her hand reaching to her belt. The battle had turned unexpectedly - she hadn't been expecting the aid of their Rhino driver, much less pony psykers - but she would take any help she could get to put down the Gnarloc.

Withdrawing a bulky pill-shaped container with a handle grip on one end, she tapped into the short-range vox connection between her and the driver. Luckily, the wavelength was still strong enough to overcome the pervasive jamming signal in the atmosphere at their current distance.

"My lord! Use this!" she insisted, hurling the melta bomb toward the Astartes.

Dest snapped his bolter against his thigh and then snatched the bomb out of the air with the same hand, his blood-red gaze going over the Gnarloc's massive body and gauging best where the weapon could be placed as he clipped it onto his own munitions belt.

Said Gnarloc finally ripped free from Twilight's magic with an enraged roar, and it turned immediately to the silver-armored warrior, ignoring the ponies that had briefly distracted it from its rampage.

The human gunmen scattered as soon as the Gnarloc began its approach, operating under the survival strategy of forcing the beast to choose a single target and chase him rather than letting it stomp all over the rest of the unit at once.

Dest had a different strategy in mind.

As the Gnarloc approached within a grenade's toss of him, the post-human dove to the side, moving much faster than anything that size and wearing that much metal had a right to.

The Gnarloc's beak followed him, snapping closed just millimeters away from the protruding exhaust vents of his backpack. After that the laws of inertia carried the beast out of range, and Dest was back on his feet.

The Astartes driver jumped onto the Gnarloc's leg, his hands gripping the spine-quills as he pulled his considerable bulk up the alien's flank.

The remaining rider leaned over to knock him off, but Dest grabbed his arm with his freed hand, twisted sharply to dislocate the limb, and then pulled the shrieking alien off his perch and flung him to the ground.

Unprotected, unarmed, and wounded. A worthy target for human soldiers. Dest started placing the melta bomb between the firing platform and the Gnarloc's back.

In a few moments the weapon was placed and armed, and the Greater Gnarloc was thrashing about trying to dislodge its new passenger.

Dest leapt off of the beast, landing flat on his feet with his bolter back in his hands.

The Gnarloc felt the weight on its back shift and immediately pivoted on one foot, its beak darting forward to crush the Chaos marine before he could escape.

And then the melta bomb exploded.