Hunter crouched low, her hoof poised to strike the soldier before her, a minion of Hoofwork. Hunter was not her real name, but there was no record of the name that she previously had. Hunter wasn’t her alias now, it was her life. She was from the old, rich part of Canterlot, where the unicorn school was housed. Even though she was a unicorn, she wasn’t accepted into the university, and she didn’t really want it anyways. She was always more interested in gadgets and technology, something Third Echelon prized in its office workers. But now I am in the field, she thought.

Her hoof connected hard with the guards face, opening up his side for a quick buck to the ribs, his weapon flying off his hoof in the confusion. Hunter quickly pulled her 5-7 and ended the stallions suffering. She then whispered over the magical link to her comrade, a one Pegasus named Falcon. She didn’t know his real name, and never bothered to ask. “Left hallway is clear. How is your sector?”

A gruff voice came over the radio. “Right has been clear for a while, waiting on you. Damn office clerks need to get out more.”

“Har, har, har. I created the weapon you’re using, Falco.” She approached a set of double doors, light emanating from the cracks in the doorway. Inside would be the explosive she was supposed to disarm, according to intel. The two pony special ops team was to go inside and attempt to disarm, without raising any alarms. “I am entering… now.” She slowly opened one of the doors, seeing that most of the security guards had held up around the objective.

“I got you,” The voice whispered. “Go dark?”

“Synch.”

“5.” The mare magicked from her saddlebag a small electronic square. It was a detonator.

“4.”

“3.”

“2.”

“1. Echo.”

Boom! The lighting inside the bomb room winked off with the explosion, which had come from under the mare. Glad we set that up before getting up here, she thought to herself. C4 is fun. She slowly and quietly made her way through the large area that housed the megaspell explosive, a magically charged atomic nuke. It wasn’t that big, and Hunter thought it should be bigger, but understood that magic could make anything smaller. If the princess hadn’t given the job to her herself, she would be doubting. But Princess Luna was worthy of trust, who, since returning, had taken over as the leader of Third Echelon.

She extracted a screwdriver from her side-bag, guiding it toward the console on the explosive. She pried open the panel, revealing a jumble of wires of varying sizes and colors. She fumbled with her magic, bringing out her combat knife. She cut open a wire and crossed it with another, rerouting the circuitry. She did this a few more times, attempting different combinations to find the desired effect. “You got a patrol coming. Finish it up and get out,” Falcon said over the magical link.

“You can’t really rush this kind of work, Falcon.” She crossed one more circuit. “Almost…”

BOOM! Hunter flew, her body disintegrating. The bombs explosion vaporized the remaining security detail and Falcon. It enveloped the warehouse, and grew. It ate up a couple buildings, then more, and more, all in a blink of an eye. The mushroom cloud and orange glow were the only things left of what was Stalliongrad. No pony escaped.

On most nights in Canterlot, one can see the stars clearly. Tonight should have been especially perfect, except for that sudden glow in the east. Telescopes of stargazers turned, horrified, to the second sun rising.

All but one. She knew what had happened, and definitely didn’t need to investigate to understand. She kept her telescope to the sky, and marveled in its beauty, for she knew that the glow was nothing to worry about. It wouldn’t reach past the hills, much less hurt any unintended pony. She smiled, for she realized, if she couldn’t win through magic, then she could win through technology. She could feel her retribution for those years coming soon.

And the Night Princess smiled.

A mareine in the back brought it to my attention. “It’s morning already?”

I looked at my hoof, and realized they had taken my watch. Another mareine answered. “Its Two. No way is it day time yet.”

“Celestia rising early today?” Another interjected.

“Dawn?! But its 2 AM!” I looked out the window, and saw the soft orange glow for myself. It looked similar to the sun rising, but the sky didn’t change with it. The orange wasn’t natural either, almost… magical. “That’s not the sun. Brace yourselves for an Electro Magical Pulse, mareines,” I said, trying to get footing set up so that I wouldn’t fly out the back of the chariot.

We were flying over Hoofington, which I later discovered was just outside the blast zone, and heading towards where Twilight had said the next base was. It was just a barracks, she had said, and we were to eliminate anypony who did not give up immediately. Then the EMP wave hit us.

The EMP shorted out our chariots magical weight assist, and Rainbow Dash could not keep us in the air for long. We plummeted to the ground, and hit hard. Lucky for us, the chariot didn’t explode on contact with the ground, it just bounced and crashed into a building. We tumbled out and sprawled across the gravel and soot.

I felt a tug, and I was pulled back to reality. My ears rung and my body ached, but from what I could tell, we were being shot at. My 5-7 had been thrown free of me and all I wore was the standard mareine barding, designed to stop knives and not much else. So, being the wise old mare I was, ran into the fray, kicking and hoofing several of our enemies. The soldiers that had attacked us were obviously Hoofwork minions, and they went down quickly enough. I brought back the soldiers weapons to the mareines, now totaling two, and equipped myself with a MEG as well.

While I was off fighting, the two mareines had pulled Rainbow Dash, who was still breathing, from her place at the front. Her wing was broken, and she was unconscious, but I thanked Celestia that she was alive. We pulled her out of the crash area and secured a small residential house, where we could collect ourselves and the wounded. Two mareines dead, another was MIA, and two were wounded, Dash and Sergeant Haze.

“Radio’s are down,” one of the mareines said. “If you are going to leave, remember the number combination is 12. Hoorah?”

“Hoorah,” the other mareine responded, and I felt myself sharing their pessimism.

“So, we can’t call out, we can’t get out. Maybe someone doesn’t WANT us out. Maybe we shouldn’t get out,” I found myself thinking aloud to the congregation, elaborating on what we could do. “We need to assault that base my coordinator was talking about. Their tech seems to be working, so maybe they have a radio to call out with.”

They were staring at me, all of them. Dash had awoken while I was sidetracked, and was looking at me with an indescribable face. One of the mareines spoke first. “That’s insane.”

“They always tell me that,” I chuckle. “I am going alone, in any case.”

“No, your not,” a week voice interjected. I turned with a surprise look to Sergeant Haze, who was now sitting up and, apparently, readying for departure. “I know how you eche gals work. Better to have someone at your back.”

“I am coming to,” one of the mareines interjected, and soon, we had almost everyponies hoof in the pot. Dash even raised her’s to join.

“Alright. Here’s the plan.”

“Spitfire, I am getting Hoofwork transmissions in Hoofington. They detail a group of mareines and a pink civilian. Intel believes it might be Priest and Rainboom. Wonderbolts are to investigate.” Twilight Sparkle’s voice came over the mental network, her magic being the only thing that was working correctly after the megaspell explosion.

“Roger that, Base. Moving to azimuth two-five-niner.” Spitfire turned, and the rest of the formation followed. “Wonder’s, we are going into hostile air space. Arm AIM-11 Sidewinders and GAU-8 AP.”

“Thunder copies. Arming.” Thunderbird turned with Spitfire, who was her wingmare. Every Pegasus in the Wonderbolts had a wingmare, someone she could count on to watch her back. It insured the safety of those on patrol.

“Soarin’ copies, arming now.” Soarin’ came up on Spitfire’s right, followed by a small black maned, grey furred mare. Mustang was a newer addition to the group, but was usually silent, only saying what she had to.

“Mustang copies, arming weapons and returning to formation.” Each of the pegasi clicked a button on the missile carriage of their battle-saddles and a button on their hoof mounted machineguns. They readied for a dogfight, something they had only dreamed of. Aerial tricks weren’t the only thing they practiced, just the majority. They could almost certainly outfly any enemy, but could they outgun them?

They would have to find out, it seems. “Bogies, two pegasi interceptors,” Thunder said.

“Soarin’, Mustang, your targets. Thunder, with me. We need to find Priest.”

“Roger, peeling off.”

Spitfire and Thunderbird flew low over the city of Hoofington. It wasn’t a large city, like Canterlot or Manehatten, but its tall buildings and steel walls definitely indicated its political and economic sovereignty. Spitfire navigated between the skyscrapers, Thunderbird on her right. It was dark, and, without the magic vision goggles, allowing her to see in the dark and through walls, would have been impossible to fly. How the Hoofwork pegasi managed to stay airborne in the darkness, Spitfire didn’t know.

An explosion from back the way they came took the pegasi’s attention away from her front. One of the bogies just went down, his corpse a bloody mess of frailty. The ratattattat of machinegun fire followed, and she watched, horrified, as Soarin’ was forced into a dive, avoiding bullets. He wasn’t able to pull up in time, and slammed into a crashed sky chariot. A resounding ‘BUCK’ over the comms told Spitfire that he was still alive, if a little bit pissed. Tracers raced out from the crashed Pegasus, lacing into the other tangoes wings, hurling him into the ground below.

Soarin’ hurled himself from cover, running to the fallen Hoofwork stallion, who was now only barely getting up. Wide-eyed, the stallion attempted to raise his weapon, only to be struck by a quickly landing Spitfire. She spun, sending the weapon out of his grasp, and catching him underneath the chin. He reeled, blood pouring from his lips and wing, falling onto the ground with a thump.

Spitfire was on him in an instant, keeping her hoof over his neck, pressing down only slightly as a threat. As Mustang came down, she noticed that the Hoofwork stallion wasn’t grey coated, but grey body-suited. She whispered her revelation to Spitfire, who nodded. “Soarin’, take up interrogation. Mustang, stay with Soarin’ and make sure that they are safe. Meanwhile, me and Bird will look for Rainbow Dash and Pinkie. Make sure he sings, Soarin’,” Spitfire said, running off with Thunder trailing behind her through the air.

Specialist Vain Weatherly, the MIA mareine from the downed wagon, had been thrown out onto the top of the skyscraper, several floors up. Being tossed out the back of the wagon and through a glass pane of the offices had not helped her mood at all. She ached all over and was surprised that she was not being mobbed by strange ponies looking to help her up.

Not that she would have accepted the helping hoof, but it hurt her that not one of the office ponies thought to get up and help a pony who had just bowled through their levels picturesque windows. She finally got herself to her hooves, looking around. What she saw were dead ponies, recently shot bodies in stalls and slumped over one another. Monsters, she thought, wrapping her wounds and jabbing morphine into her bloodstream. It would ease the pain and harden her soul enough that she could get through the slaughter house.

She, amazingly, still had her 5-7 on her hoof, and made a stealthy exit of the level. She went down one level, and entered. It was like the upstairs, massacred at work. Except that there were ponies in here, armed ponies, wearing uniforms of dark black. They turned to her, hearing the door open. Wide-eyed, she dove behind a desk as gunfire erupted around her.

She aimed her gun to fire back, hitting one of the ponies in the head. The other sprayed his gun at her, punching through her cover and lashing across her barding. She risked one more peek, firing her pistol at the gun wielding psychopath. He went down in a pool of his own blood. She ran up to his body, looking for the customary dog-tags of soldiers, but found none.

Vain looked at the bodysuit of the soldier, and noticed that is wasn’t a dark black but a very dark shade of blue. She also noticed that on the flank of the suit was an outstretched claw, a talon of some kind in a circle. Third Echelon? The mare guessed, looking more confused than any pony could have guessed. She heard the soldier’s buddies run up the stairs, having heard the commotion. She quickly grabbed the pony’s rifle in her teeth, and ran for the window.

She shot with her hoof-mounted weapon, firing directly into the glass pane. It broke, and she took her chances and leapt. A contrail of black smoke grabbed up the falling mareine, keeping her from a quick death below.

Weatherly looked at the smiling orange Pegasus with the fiery mane. Vain recognized her from one of the posters in Canterlot. She was a Wonderbolt.

What in Celestia’s mane was she doing here?

We approached the enemy barracks, guarded by the darkness, the light inside our only beacon. I waved a hoof for the mareines to stop. We were getting close to the building, and I signaled them to get into position. Haze moved up, her squad of 3, including herself, taking positions around the target building. Me and Dash, however, did not join them.

Dash had a broken wing and couldn’t fly, which would have been useful for the assault we were about to pull. She could move on her own, but had a definite inability to maneuver through the air. She was armed with a captured Hoofwork pistol and followed me as I approached the entrance.

I glanced around, finding a pipe along the outer wall that would bring me up to the top of the building. I spring on it, my hooves wedging in between the pipe and the wall, making me stick. I shimmy up a ways, hearing Dash climb on behind me. She was clumsy at first, but was making progress, and I was able to pull him up onto the roof in no time.

The roof was as slate-grey as the rest of the complex; it’s boxy and military like appearance stemming from being, probably, the Royal Guard outpost for Hoofington. A stairwell opened up into the night air, and we could hear the sound of clattering hooves and pots. Breakfast time, I thought, judging that it was about seven in the morning. “Remember, when I give the signal, tell them to attack,” I said, turning to Dash.

She saluted, “Yes ma’am, Third Echelon, Ma’am.” Her smile plastered across her face at being in her first real battle. Since decommissioning, I thought, pointedly. I started my quiet trot over to the stairwell, getting my first peek inside.

It was a madhouse. I was looking into the ops room, judging from the amount of officer uniforms and running ponies. Computers and monitors lined the wall, and I could tell, if we were able to seize it before they managed to destroy it, we would have all the Intel we would need to turn this war around. I couldn’t scout the other areas from my opening, but the sound echoed. Ponies were eating, somewhere towards the front. Snores came from a room just outside the command hooch and several of the officers were excusing themselves to go shave.

I told Dash to get the Mareines to start the attack. She ran off, yelled to Haze, then came back. We both jumped inside the command den, hidden and masked by the deafening sound that the distraction made from outside. Dash covered me as I made a quick call.

“All Equestrian Legions in Hoofington Sector, this is Priest, Clearance Delta-E, requesting assistance at location 5-DELTA-OSPREY-NINER-NOVEMBER.” It was Pinkie! Spitfire thought, glee filled smile creeping up her lips. She heard my request for help over her magical link with Twilight, and realized that she couldn’t call back. She turned abruptly with the Mareine she had caught, causing her prize to wretch a little.

“Wonder’s, all Wonder’s, move in on 5DO9N, how copy?”

“Soarin’ is moving. I got that bastard to talk to me, if you’re interested.”

“Thud is on your tail, Spitfire.”

Mustang just grunted. Spitfire continued, undeterred. “Good job, Soarin’, I want to hear all about it after we save Pinkie.”

The black contrails erupted across the sky overhead, red streams of gunfire erupting from their battle-saddle’s. The bullets punched into the defending Hoofwork line, killing some and wounding the rest. The three mareines gave a hoot to the timely arrival of the Wonderbolts, having just about lost all will to fight.

The mareines ran from their positions, getting ready to push inside. Spitfire dropped the mareine she had in her grasp, then landed herself. One of the mareines approached her, smiling. “Celestia above, are we glad to see you, ma’am. Pinkie and Dash are inside, grabbing Intel. I am Sergeant Haze, Mareines, I was with the crashed wagon. Thanks for finding Specialist Weatherly for us.”

“No problem,” Spitfire nonchalantly replied. “We need to get you guys out of the hot zone.” She paused for a second. “Hold on, Twilight is patching you through.”

Static erupted into Haze’s ear, and she flinched. The static died and a mare’s voice came over the new connection. “I am Twilight, Coordinator for Third Echelon. We need your help getting Pinkie out of there, now. Do your duty, mareine.” Twilight stopped talking into her ear and the Earth Pony found it easier to think, all of a sudden.

“Let’s go, Mareines!” Haze said, charging into the fray.