February, 1882.
En route to the Samarkand gap. HMS Umbra. Princess Luna’s state-room.

The quill wanders across the page, moving slowly under its own volition as it scratches idly across the lined paper. The flowing script slowly takes shape into words, the Princess of the Night’s handwriting flawlessly etching upon the sheet of paper. The princess silently paces back and forth across the bare floor of her sparsely furnished stateroom. She clasps her gloved hands behind her back as she stops every so often to gaze up at the map affixed upon one wall.

Pins are stuck in the map, in an exact replica of the map in the command centre just down the corridor. Divisions and battalions, fleets and batteries, platoons and squadrons all lining up along the long and porous border, pins in red and blue facing each other to mark out known and suspected positions. Long ribbons of supply trains flow back and forth, marking lines of supply and reinforcement.

Luna huffs out a sharp breath, coming to a halt in front of her dressing table. She gazes into the mirror, her blank mask gazing back at her… and that one hateful blue eye, burning vivid and bright, shining like a star.

“I’ve done everything that I can,” Luna ruminates to the mirror. “There is nothing more that I can do now to fortify the border, short of crossing it to secure it permanently.”

The eye flashes, narrowing, and Luna’s mouth curls down beneath the mask. One hand balls into a fist. “I’ve been given my orders. My sister told me to fortify the border and I’ve done that. I cannot physically do more. Tomorrow, the last pieces will come into place, and the gesture will be complete… as my sister wants.”

Her mouth curls beneath her mask, and her visible eye narrows. Luna’s head sinks slightly, her chin lowering. “But maybe… it is patently ridiculous to think that this gesture will work. The Khans only respect force, the application thereof. We’ve moved past the point where gestures are supposed to do anything at all. They decided to push us… and my sister won’t push back.” Luna’s hand comes up to cup her lowered chin. Her wings flick fitfully.

“However, a war will be immensely destructive. It will leave thousands, hundreds of thousands of Equestrians dead or wounded. My sister’s aims are noble; she wants to prevent that war from starting.” She whirls on her heel and stalks over to the map. The words sound trite and hollow, even to her.

“But a quick, sharp thrust across the border right when this had all started would have run into minimal opposition. We’d be across the desert in five days, and into the mountains in ten… Now we’re facing prepared lines of resistance… prepared lines that my sister’s prevarication has allowed to form!” Luna’s voice comes out in a savage cloth-tearing snarl. Her finger jabs at the Samarkand Gap.

“Fifteen days! Eight divisions, with twenty five batteries in support!” Luna’s hair snaps and furls like a banner caught in a breeze, the stars spangled through her flowing hair blazing bright as her anger runs its course into exasperation. “This is just to deal with the forces we know about. Sister, you do not make my life easy!”

Luna sighs angrily, a short sharp hiss of sound as her gloved hands come up to run through her hair whilst she tries to think. These sessions are necessary; these moments to let out the angers and anguishes of the day. She needs to let them out here, now, in the privacy of her own quarters rather than in front of her staff officers. The idea, the very notion of a breach between her and her sister is not one for mooting anywhere.

War has changed in her… absence. Now there’s so much more talking and planning to do, so much more to consider and think about. Previously, it was just enough to make sure your men had enough food to eat along the way, or make sure their marching routes carried them along routes that could provide farmland, herds of cattle or plentiful hunting country. Make sure horses had enough shoes, that the quivers were well-stocked with arrows. Back when armies in the thousands faced each other. Simple things.

Now it’s a massive dance, a huge undertaking as forces in the hundreds of thousands, with the power to wipe out tens or hundreds of men at a time just by holding down the triggers of their maxim guns. Now the archers can put apples out of trees at eight hundred metres or more, and every man carries a bow. Hundreds of men are dedicated to nothing but the provision and movement of supplies! Administrators, clerks and REMFs, Rear Echelon Minor Functionaries, whose sole function is to keep the myriad supplies and equipment and men moving in the direction that they need to be.

The amount of supplies involved is positively mind-boggling. Each man needs to receive three thousand calories per day, whether or not he is fighting, and there are over ninety six thousand men just going forward. Once they do go forward, the fighting men will need to receive five thousand calories per day. That equates to over fifty six thousand tonnes of supplies of food and ammunition per day, not including fodder for horses, spare parts for machines... and once they hit the desert, they’re all going to need water and additional lubricants too.

Luna takes a deep breath as the numbers wash over her. Never let it be said that war is a simple undertaking... she thinks. But this would be so much simpler Celestia, if you let me handle this my way. War is devastating, it is destructive, it is something that the human condition cannot tolerate overlong… far better that it be short and swift. All this diplomatic parry and counterparry is just giving the enemy time to dig in and prepare. Each day they talk, accomplishing nothing, is costing me a foot of ground.

She looks along the frontier, her gaze scouring it for weak points. She has to give Tariq Aznan, the commander of the entire Khan army, his dues as a commander. Luna wanders over to another table, and she gazes down at the photos and drawings made of the front lines. Her finger traces the lines of forward trenches… rear trenches… communication trenches connecting them. Emplaced anti-aircraft guns every few hundred yards to ward off the Imperial Navy… About all that’s missing are the armament factories and the elephants.

Certainly, Aznan knows his business, and he knows that right now, the balance of movement favours him. Aware of the relative size and capability differences of their forces, just as she is, he’s moved into a defensive posture, where his largely untrained conscript army will have to do little more than shoot from prepared positions and absorb her first punches; blunt her first thrusts so that he can bring up his professional, well trained units once she’s past his first line and out into the open country beyond.

That’s what Luna would do in his place at any rate. It’s a strategy as old as the hills and it’s that old because it works. However… Luna’s gaze drifts back to the mirror.

We have new weapons now. Weapons that can render all this fussing about trenches obsolete.

Luna’s mind drifts to the afternoon she’d spent at Birch Ranges. Watching from the hardened bunker as the shells had landed downwind of the field of sheep. Black smoke bubbling from the shells and flowing inexorably toward the sheep.

Luna closes her eyes as she remembers the agonized shrieking animals, their shrieking fading into wet bubbling as their throats dissolved. At least two of her accompanying officers, both hardened men with combat experience, had been reduced to tearful wrecks, no doubt considering the efficacy of such agents on their own troops.

Still, war is an ugly business, and anything that shortens its length is all to the good as far as Luna sees it. Such a weapon is as caustic to morale as it is to flesh, if not more so. Moving with the wind, inexorable, silent and guaranteeing an ugly, agonized death. Enemy forces that surrender or flee are enemy forces that she does not have to waste men killing. Still… such a weapon is also caustic to public opinion, and any claim Equestria has to the moral high ground would vanish with the use of the Black Smoke.

But Luna is not paid to worry about concepts like Moral High Grounds. In her estimation, such matters are better left to qualified personnel, which she does not consider herself to be. She would much rather leave the business of prettying things up to her sister. Celestia’s good at political things, Luna thinks, and her note is somewhat forced.

Politics leave a sour taste in her mouth. Political things leave a sour taste in her mouth. The feeling of being restrained like this makes her feel positively nauseous. Trying to resist the urge to spit, she turns, holding her elbows, and finds her steps leading away. She looks up, and continues walking, heading toward a marble statue, half-hidden in darkness.

The statue is one of Luna’s favourites, from the Constantine period, it is one of the few surviving relics of the pre-banishment era. A beautiful pair of angels standing back to back. Both stark naked with spread wings, constructed in the Roaman style. Luna stands in front of the statue for a long moment, drinking in the alabaster smooth curves and flowing lines. Luna is fond of this style, the modern shallow imitations of which are precisely that. On a slightly more vainglorious note, Luna likes the way they captured her figure, maybe added a little to the breasts and hips but that’s an artist’s license, and not something Luna would be entirely opposed to.

One is holding a hammer raised in challenge, the other is holding a staff that could be a shepherd's crook or it could be a poleaxe, butt down in one hand, the other clasping a book. The hammer is raised to strike, and the stave is prepared to block. The statue is two parts of a whole; an artist’s tribute to the sisters’ compassionate yet strong rule of Equestria. Both trusting the other, implicitly.
Luna sighs, a hint of lament colouring her voice as her eyes drift over the statue.

Two angels, back to back; absolute trust in one another. Strength in unity; power in compassion.

Luna’s hand reaches out, laying a long lingering caress upon the wrist of the angel with the poleaxe. Luna’s eyes close and her head bows as the relic suffuses her with its memory, a memory of a happier time. How things have changed now. Life was so much simpler back then. They drank and fought and caroused up and down the continent, dragon-slayers supreme… back when there were more dragons of course. Before everything changed. Now, there’s an undefinable edge between Luna and Celestia, a subtle wall. On one side, Celestia, Cadance and Twilight. Politician, mother, scholar.

On the other side, Luna. Luna the soldier, the protector…

Her gaze hardens slightly.

Luna’s eyes drift downward to the inscription at the base of the statue: Lex Dei Iustitia, Justice is the Law of God.

Princess Luna sighs, her eyes sweeping over the contoured features as her thoughts turn back to the matter of her sister.

God, Celestia, if only you could see what I’m seeing on this, our border… If only you could know what’s being done in your name. If only you could know the lives you’re squandering with this folly, this futile endeavour. You once understood this fact. You once understood compassion could only be carried so far. Once, the lives of your citizens mattered to you.

Luna gazes up at the statue for one last lingering moment, and then as the grip of her hands around her elbows tightens, she starts to walk toward her dresser, her mind clouded by doubts.

Once, we were together, you and I. We understood one another. We protected one another. Now your compassion is going to kill my soldiers.

Why have you changed sister? Why must you change still?

“But change…” Luna’s voice is slightly rusty as it returns to her. “Change is immutable, as is the law. We are Equestrians, and we are bound to the rule of the law. We are a civilized people, and what is civilization but the law? We may not like it but we are beholden to it. That is the Equestrian way. We have the law, and it protects our people.”

Luna’s jaw clenches slightly.

How can it protect our people when our leader is squandering their lives?

Once more she’s staring into the mirror, one gleaming eye burning bright.

The eye narrows into an angry slit of blue fire.

Luna wrings her gloved hands, her mind a maelstrom of confusion and doubt.

Should we extend to an opponent the courtesy that will not be extended to us?

Luna’s hands suddenly stop washing themselves, their uncontrolled motion stilling in a heartbeat.

The Khans… the Khans cannot be trusted. They are a supercilious race who do not respect the law. They will only respect strength, and withholding our strength will be seen as weakness. That is what we are doing Celestia, what you are doing, and what I am going to have to spend umpteen thousand lives to fix.

The eye gleaming in the mirror becomes suddenly triumphant as another crack spiderwebs across the surface of the mask.

Next Chapter: Chapter 14: Hangover Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 9 Minutes