High above the frozen lands of the Crystal Empire, the steel bulk of Stalwart Liberty loomed like the specter of war, casting a long shadow over the terrain. Once again, a blizzard had rolled around the mountains, making visibility near zero and blanketing the whole area in a deep layer of fresh powder.

"Jack, we're nearing the target zone." Captain Chord spoke lightly, but Jack heard him clearly as he hunched over the planning table, pouring over the tactical maps.

"I know," Jack murmured quietly, eyes still searching for any clue to the whereabouts of Doctor Forge's Factory of Horrors. Alentius had nearly died to get him that information, now all he had to do was make good on it. All he had to do, was find a needle in a haystack; only the haystack was untold thousands of acres of forest nestled into some of the most inhospitable terrain on Equis, and the needle itself was likely crawling with some of the most insane and deadly creatures in the whole world.

The Captain stood still and silent for a long moment, the only sound coming from the murmur of the bridge behind him, the soothing hum of the ship, and the ticking of the clock above the bulkhead door. "Anything?" Chord asked, keeping his voice low.

"No. Maybe an old crystal mine, but it's too small to hide a factory of the magnitude Forge would need..." Jack ran his hand down his features, dragging them out of place for a moment. "But, it's the best shot we have, so that's the first target."

"Have you a plan for JSOG?" Another quiet question, with an equally quiet answer. One he'd chewed down to the bone over the long flight out.

"Not really. Could wade in with a mask and get them loose, but then replay the last mission we had in this god forsaken place." Jack scowled softly, mind flicking back to the first time they'd encountered a Progeny Variant. Now there was more. A lot more, if he had to guess. Forge was as creative as he was sadistic, he had to give the man that. "Either that-" Jack said after a breath "-or I leave them unturned and try to get it at the end of the mission, making things more complicated on my end but with, hopefully, far less casualties than the first."

"If you free them first off we could run chariot teams down there and retrieve anyone who can't fly."

"Still using those?" Jack perked a brow slowly. "No X203's?"

"Yes. The helicopters we had were destroyed in the battle, or were damaged. There's word of a few being express ordered for the final leg of our operations, but-"

"But in the meantime we're back to square one." Jack finished for the captain, and received a curt nod in agreement.

"Yes. The chariots will work well enough, they're fast and silent, unlike the helicopters."

"True." Jack conceded that point easily. "But the choppers are faster, and they're more heavily armed and armoured." He was getting off topic and he knew it, there was no point in arguing over what was just semantics in the end. "Have two teams of your fastest ready to move on my signal. I'm going to hit the village first and free the soldiers there. Somebody may have a better idea where the factory is, which means we'll be spending minimal time in this cold shithole."

The Captain nodded curtly. "I'll inform the crew, though, I have to say it's not the cold I'm worried about."

He could only nod in agreement. "I know… Me too." Turning away from the maps, Jack activated his helmet, letting it unfurl from his armour and assemble over his head like a bug, where it sealed with a hiss of atmosphere. His armour still bore the scorch marks of the Battle for Canterlot, but the space aged coating was still a shining silver despite everything the world had thrown at him. He'd had a brief thought of painting it over with some ad-hoc form of camo, but… something about the gleaming silver just seemed right. It was like an unspoken challenge, a call for all eyes to be on him in the field, not his more fragile compatriots. Flitter had liked it as well, and that was more than enough reason for him to keep it.

Striding out of the tactical room behind Captain Chord, Jack left him to hail the crew and inform them of the plan. He was off to brief his own. As he walked the halls, he found himself sharing the halls with a great number of aeronaughts, though they hardly had to shuffle for room in the wide passageways. Pegasi glided by at head height, but he was still forced to duck through bulkheads. Thankfully the silver armour earned him a little respect, and most moved out of his way before shooting brief salutes. The mission had cast a quiet, excited pall over the ship, causing it to nearly buzz with anticipation. After a long and brutal siege, they were finally striking back against Carolus' forces in a meaningful way.

Jack found Maggie in the hangars beneath the flight deck, tooling about the battle scarred tank. "Mags!" He called across the bay as he approached, earning the temporary attention of all present, and the lasting focus of his tank operator. "Get some warm clothes on and get that tin can on the runway."

"I'm not coming down with you?" The woman wiped some grease from her forehead and lifted one of the straps on her stained workmans overalls to fix its position on her built shoulder. Her hair was tied in a loose ponytail, and capped with a hat that held the name of FFHWG, whatever that meant. She was shapely and pretty, on top of being strong and intelligent. The sort of woman he would have chased had life turned out differently.

"Negative." He shooed the thoughts away, giving off a faint mental growl at them. "It's a wasteland down there and you won't have infantry cover. You're anchoring to the flight deck and killing anything that gets close to the ship that ain't me."

"Artillery, huh? You know I wont be able to depress the barrel enough to cover you on the ground until you're neck deep in those woods, right? Not without the Captain tilting the deck, and that'll be a fuckshow."

Jack shook his head and waved a hand, as if the mere motion could dissuade her worries. "I'm not worried about what's on the ground. We saw fliers in the battle, I'm worried about them getting to the ship or hitting our flight crews. The two centimeters are the only thing we have that can reliably put them down."

Sighing quietly, Maggie nodded, and settled in the commander's cupola with arms crossed and chest resting on them. "Copy that, sir. I'll be your fly swatter."

"Disappointed?" He asked with a nearly wry grin. "The fly swatter's if everything goes well. That's why I want you mag-anchored to the deck, if shit really hits the fan then I'll have Captain Chord pull some slick moves to give you a bead for the cannon."

The woman grinned and shook her head. "No wonder Captain Falenas likes you so much, you sure know how to make a lady smile!" Maggie slipped back into the tank, closing the hatch. The tank rumbled to life after a brief pause, and swiftly began to rattle and rumble toward the lifts.

With a shake of his own head, Jack smiled faintly as he turned to collect his weaponry for the mission. Everyone would be waiting on him if he dallied any longer.

Bitterly cold wind lashed hard against the deck, whipping up eddies of dusty snow across the perfectly smooth metal deck. Maggie's tank formed a dark blob at the midship length, weapons slowly tracking across the sky, all but begging for something to shoot. On the back end, Jack ran one more check of his equipment, listening to Sammy intone his diagnostics in his ear and watching the code lines slide down across his visor. Everything was coming up green, so it was time to kick things off.

"This is Kessle, Captain Milani, are you there?" Milani was going to be observing the operation through satellite feeds, and informing him of large hostile movements, but she would likely be busy running tactical for Flitter's mission, so he made a mental note not to pester her too much. His own armour had a good satellite link, but hers was still far better.

"This is Milani, reading you loud and clear."

His eyes flicked to the second name. "Captain Chord, how copy?" Chord was running onsite tactical, though Jack doubted comms would remain clear with the storm pounding the valley. If Jack fucked things up, Chord and his crew would be the first to pay the price.

"Crystal, despite the weather."

"Maggie?"

"Ready and waiting!"

Jack nodded faintly. "Comms are clear. I will be running under callsign Pathfinder. Milani will be Watchdog, Chord is Homeplate, Maggie is Nova. Operation Blacksun is a go." He throttled his jumpjets and leapt off the deck, plunging headlong into the blizzard before the carrier. Wind currents buffeted him as they tried to blow him off course, but with his repulsor jets and heavy weight, he wasn't too worried.

His eyes flicked up to his holographic map, and just as he was about to shift his course, Captain Milani spoke in his ear. "Pathfinder adjust your course by twelve degrees east."

"Thanks, Watchdog." He tilted his body, working his jets to fix his angle.

"Satellite coverage is spotty with this weather, don't panic if you lose contact." Milani sounded calm and cool, but he could just barely pick up the faint stress she put into 'don't panic'. Running surveillance for one mission and operations on another was likely fraying her, though she was clearly too proud to let it on.

"Copy that. Don't worry too much about me, just watch my feed, Watchdog. Homeplate has me if things go sideways."

His words didn't reduce the sound of faint strain in her voice, but he hadn't expected it to. "Affirmative, Pathfinder."

His altitude was dropping fast, even with his jets on full. "The benefits of being a flying brick…" Jack mused to himself quietly as he swung his legs up and braced for impact. His boots struck frozen snow, and immediately sank. A wall of snow all but swallowed him as his momentum and weight sent him right to the permafrost.

Sammy's voice chimed in his ear after a moment. "For a brick, you flew pretty good."

"Haha, very funny." Jack squatted down and jumped, giving his jets a blast of power to send him on a good arch over the area. The moment he left the snow, tracers began lancing through the air, several spalling off his snow covered armour. "This is Pathfinder, I'm not certain but I think they've noticed me." He landed in a sprint on the hard packed road, sinking up to his knees in the fresh powder. The powder barely slowed him down as he plowed through it like a runaway train billowing snow, forming a cloud behind him. The probing rounds quickly grew laser accurate and plinked off his hardened hide like rain, with more than a few hitting his faceplate.

"Nine muzzle signatures detected. 7.62 impacts, no penetration." Sammy chimed in his ear as he brought forth the first bit of kit he'd dragged along for the fight. The heavy rounds ceased skipping off his armour, and began shattering against the heavy ablative plating of the ballistic shield. It was doubtful they'd do any damage but it was better safe than sorry. "Incoming!"

His little mental gymnastics were all but immediately vindicated when a recoilless rifle round smashed into the heavy shield, blowing a hole in it and spraying his armour with molten metal. The incessant vibration of the impact left his hand stinging faintly.

"Pathfinder, this is Homeplate, they have that road presighted, you need to move before they bring heavier weapons to bear "

"I should have figured they would." He grumbled as he changed course and swiftly trudged into hip deep snow, rounds splashing off his plating like so much hail. "I fuckin’ trained them to do that…" They were the best the empire had to offer, and he'd trained them himself in modern tactics. He couldn't pull punches here, not with so much on the line, because they sure as hell wouldn't be. They’d already be moving from their holes, repositioning to harass and bully him, like he’d trained them to.

His boosters fired with a howl, throwing up a blizzard snowscreen around him as he leapt forward, closing the distance to the abandoned village hundreds of meters at a time.

"This is Nova, picking up air targets." Maggy spoke with a cool and clipped voice, the sound of the tank's interior filtering in as background noise to her call. He could pick up the sound of the 20mm cannon gears turning.

"Size and bearing?" He stowed a mental growl as his eyes flicked to his radar and satellite uplink. Spotty, at best. He couldn't keep the air targets on for long, and they were moving erratically.

"Big and headed right for you."

That made things simpler. "Smoke ‘em." He hardly even glanced up as a wicked fast pulse of cerulean plasma bolts shot through the air, finding their target somewhere in the whiteout. His attention was much more focused on the ogre progeny charging him from the houses, giggling manically as it threw up great gouts of snow with every bounding step.

Rounds were still bouncing off his armour as he levelled one of his shoulder mounted weapons, and promptly separated the ogre's upper body from its lower. Jack's visor automatically darkened to protect him from the flash of plasma from the 10cm cannon, but even with the flare protection it was hot and bright, flash melting the snow along its path which formed a massive steam wall between him and the ogre.

As he began moving to use the steam as cover, the target of Maggie's fusilade slammed into the ground nearby, sending up a plume of snow. Whether it was properly dead remained to be seen, but he had bigger worries.

"Pathfinder this is Watchdog, satellite feed shows notable movement in the forest, though numbers are unknown. ETA to arrival, three minutes."

"...Affirmative." Jack ground his teeth momentarily, trying to find a way to snatch victory from the jaws of the Progeny. Unknown numbers of hostiles, tight time window, friends he can't shoot… "Nova, I need a barrage of twenties on the marked targets, as many as you can until they fuck off." Unless that just pissed them off and accelerated his time window.

"That's going to make for a lot of rounds, Pathfinder. They've got lots of cover." Trepidation coloured Maggie Dupont's voice, and he couldn't blame her. Those rounds were as valuable as solid gold now, with no means to reproduce them and a finite supply.

"Then give them a lot of rounds. Homeplate, get your recovery teams in the air, I'm moving on the center of the village. Nova you are weapons free, Homeplate, give her the angles she needs."

Worst case, hm?

A pair of affirmatives sounded in his ear, and nearly a minute later vibrant balls of plasma streaked through the air like comets, splashing down in the forest behind the small village. The howls of wounded progeny chorused against the sudden flare of violent fires and exploding trees. His worst case scenario had swiftly become the only case, and he didn't have long to act.

Moving from house to house, Jack made his way toward the center of town, where he would surely catch all of JSOG in the blast once the mask was destroyed. He hoped. Prayed. Any far roaming patrollers or guards inside the facility wouldn't be in range, and he'd be forced to kill them.

The little village showed signs of battle, specifically that of griffon on pony. Bits of Crystal Empire armour poked up from over the collected drifts, and broken weapons protruded on occasion. He didn't see any progeny corpses, or even those of griffons. If he was any guess, then it was likely the crystal empire had sent their reinforcements to the town as promised, but they likely didn't succeed in a full evacuation. The progeny had seen to that. The nature of the battle that had been fought here a mystery to him, but he could still hold out hope that all of the civilians had been evacuated to somewhere safe.

Exhaling sharply through his nose, Jack slipped between another pair of leaning cabins, ignoring the plink of rounds off his armour as former comrades harried him from the air. How long had it been since he was here last? How long had it been since Hard Tac had died? He didn't want to think about it. Couldn't. The past was a distraction he couldn't afford right now, so he locked it away and hid the key.

The center of town was a mess of broken carriages, burnt wood, and smashed homes. Snow had begun to pile up before the cabins and cottages, left to drift and deepen with nobody to remove it. The mayor's old home was partially dug out, with the front door and a side entrance uncovered. From the machine-gun nest in the upper window that opened up on Jack immediately, he could only assume that his former squadmates had set up their basecamp there. His proximity alarm blared, warning him of the recoilless rifle team coming up behind him. With a grunt of displeasure, Jack dove through the building next to him, avoiding the shot by a margin of inches. Shrapnel spalled against his armour as the weapon began reloading. Going through the other side, Jack muttered hotly as he searched himself for a nonlethal option. Coming up empty, his eyes went to the snow below.

"Homeplate, ETA on the rescue teams?" A round glanced off his helmet, temporarily fuzzing a dozen of the nanocams on the featureless helmet, before the onboard nanites repaired them. Turning the corner toward the recoilless rifle team, Jack hurled a snowball into the face of the gunner, blasting him off his paws and sending the second round sailing far off into the sunset. His partner followed him down with a compacted ball to the chest.

"Four minutes." Not bad, he could work with that.

"Watchdog, how's orbital look?"

"Hostiles have fallen back due to plasma shelling but they are definitely chomping at the bit to get to you." Whether four minutes would be enough time remained to be seen, but he had to make it work.

Retrieving the mask of power from the hardcase on his leg, Jack tightened his fingers around the object, preparing to crush it with his hand. "How many masks do we have left?" The question was something that had been niggling at the back of his mind, chewing on his cortex. Why he asked it now was beyond him.

It was the point of no return, and had been for too long.

"...One, after yours." Captain Chord responded softly. The masks used prior had freed thousands of civilians, hundreds of soldiers. Did he really need to use it for eight or nine? Was it the morally right thing to do? The tactically right thing? As the thought wormed its way into his skull and caused a moment's hesitation, something fast and feathered slammed into his arm, snatching at the mask like a creature possessed.

Grunting a curse, Jack squeezed his fist shut, feeling the magical stone mask turn to powder, and the flesh under it splatter and pulp. The pulse of magical energy washed over him like a physical wave, hitting his chest harder than a sledge and forming eddies behind him. The culprit of the snatch was blown clear, trailing blood and feathers as the wave washed through the village faster than any could flee.

"Pulse is off, I need those Evac crews now. Tell them to double time it." Jack shook off the fuzz of the mask's destruction as he plodded over to the prone griffon. The offending paw was a complete write off, being a mess of pulverized bone, pulped muscle, and broken feathers. Turning the griffon over, Jack found that he did indeed recognize the face. Muttering a quiet apology, Jack ripped off a chunk of the downed griffon's uniform, tying a tourniquet above the damaged paw. Better he just lose it entirely than bleed out. "Okay, up you get." Jack muttered to himself as he pulled the griffon over his shoulder, and started into the open square. "FRONT AND CENTER, JSOG!"

Slowly but surely, dazed soldiers began to filter out of the village, coming to answer his call. Setting the wounded griffon down as best he could, Jack searched the faces for someone he recognized, and a rank to get answers from. He quickly found what he was looking for. "Titus, over here." He waved the trim sergeant over. "Where's the progeny factory?"

"Is… that you, sir?" Titus murmured quietly, holding his head. The griffons weren't looking their best, that was for certain. They'd need immediate medical care, and the only place they could get that was on the ship.

"In the flesh. Get your head on straight Titus, /where/ is the factory?" Jack's eyes flicked up to movement in the woods just as he received a proximity warning from Watchdog.

"It's.." Titus wobbled and fell onto his ass. "Deeper in… the mine."

"Rescue teams are inbound, stay there. Is this everyone? Are you missing anyone?" Jack's own eyes flicked over the cameras in his hud, but he couldn't tell who he was missing, not anymore.

"Yeah… yeah that's all that's left…" Titus laid fully in the snow as the wind blew more over him. "Where were you?" The question was softly spoken and weak, almost not requiring an answer.

It still felt like a spear through his heart. "I'm here now. I'm finishing this." Titus didn't respond, not that he had to as he began to fall asleep in the snow.

The shadows of the rescue crews flicked over the ground, causing Jack's eyes to momentarily flick upwards. "Pathfinder, hostiles inbound, north north east quadrant." He didn't bother looking fully up to the crews or responding to the message as he squared his shoulders and dug his feet into the snow. With one hand he held Titus down and covered his eyes, while he pushed the other hand up, clenched his fist, and then pulled it down.

"Hit the deck!" His speakers boomed over the blizzard as his shoulder mounted weapons tracked after his eyes, seeking the progeny as they crossed the forest line and entered the village. His boys, his JSOG, were fast to act even with their wits fried and their bodies suffering. Rifles popped and a machine-gun opened up, chasing the flitting shadows that moved to encircle them and rip them limb from bloody limb. They were wasting ammo, but it probably made them feel better, so Jack allowed them the moment. With the world moving that much slower before his eyes, Jack locked onto the first of his targets, a fast and lopping progeny that moved like a cat over the snow. The same kind that slaughtered Hard Tac in this very village. His rotary shoulder cannon spun up in a moment, and unleashed a fusillade of rail accelerated tungsten spikes that caught the beast like a gust of razor wind, lifting it off its feet and shredding it to little bloody bits.

The first target hadn't even hit the ground when his eyes locked onto the next target and he triggered the neural connection. His 10cm power cannon unleashed its payload, seeing the cerulean ball of plasma atomize the torso and head of the ogre progeny as it stampeded through town, leaving its legs to flop uselessly and drag it's arms about.

Over the raucous cacophony of gunfire and screeching death, Jack could hear the skidding of runners on snow, and the sound of two dozen sets of hooves making contact with land. Lifting up, Jack scooped up the wounded griffon and began to backpedal toward the rescue carriages. "JSOG, MOUNT UP! YOU ARE LEAVING!"

Two by two, his griffons stood and retreated back to the carriages, hauling themselves in as the crews prepared for a fast lift off. A streak of vibrant plasma cut through the blizzard, sending another airborne target to a flaming grave. His eyes flicked up periodically, checking his 360 cameras to see how many were left. Soon there was only one pair left, the MG team. Plowing through the snow, Jack picked up the prone griffons by their uniforms and began backpedalling toward the carriages as they both continued firing. "Prepare for liftoff!" He yelled back at the team leader, who gave nothing but a single nod before he began waving his team to bring the carriages around for a fast take off.

Unceremoniously dumping the gunner into one of the two carriages and chucking the loader over him, Jack made a sharp forward hand motion. "GO GO GO!" He wheeled away from the chariots, placing himself between the progeny and his fellow soldiers. The rescue teams were already galloping when he gave his first ‘go’, flapping hard against the crosswind that no doubt bit at them like a hail of icey razors.

A sudden warning chirp in his ear alerted him to a strange form in the snow, mere meters from the teams and moving fast for them. Alabaster white spines and undulating egg shell coloured leather skin made for perfect camouflage as the new progeny burrowed through the fresh powder, bursting forward with outstretched talons toward the rescue team leader. Beady black eyes glittering with hunger topped a predatory doglike snout filled with hypodermic needle teeth. He could see the team leader beginning to recoil in response, a deeply ingrained fear response to the unnatural trying in vain to save him from an exceptionally gruesome death.

There were a great many things Jack loathed Ernest Blackburn for, but the quality of his craft was never one of those things. Launching forward off of coiled muscles and roaring jumpjets, Jack slammed hands first into the progeny as it's talons bit into the pony's fur. Both he and the progeny crashed to the ground as the rescue carriages lifted off and sped into the air, leaving him behind with the beasts. The creature thrashed and snarled in anger that its prey had escaped it, claws and teeth flashing as it did. The snarl turned to a pained howl, then to gruesome gurgling as Jack's armoured digits shattered teeth and gripped it by the jaws. It's head cracked open like a wishbone as he wrenched on it, nearly splitting it down the center. The beast thrashed frantically in his hands, until his vorpal knife dug hard into its throat and neatly removed its ruined head from its spiney shoulders.

Drawing his Thanatos sized Magnum, Jack spun on his feet, drawing a bead on the flying progeny that was pursuing the teams as they slipped into the clouds. "AP." The pistol barked four times as he walked the recoil up the target's spine and into the back of its head. The progeny was sent spiralling to the ground, wings furling uselessly at its sides as it plunged headlong toward the ground.

A snarling roar drew Jack's attention back to the village, where the progeny were slowly encircling him. Now he was the only target they could reach, and they had him thirty to one. Rolling his shoulders, Jack willed a form into the magical knife, gripping it with two hands as its blade lengthened and thickened. "Come on then, I haven't got all fuckin' day."

Electrical currents ran across the carapace coating of Jack's armour, lifting off the blood that had spattered across his visor. Around him motes of steam coiled upwards like crooked fingers from the blood and offal scattered about. With his vision cleared again, Jack willed his knife to shrink, before gently sliding it back into its sheath. His combat shield was discarded into the snow, having been completely shredded by the frenetic close combat.

"All targets vanquished." Sammy chirped in his ear with vocal pleasure. Despite her words, he still slowly scanned the area, almost willing more targets to come forward. Satisfied after a minute, Jack relaxed and stood tall.

"This is Pathfinder, I am moving on the factory now." A quiet chorus of affirmatives echoed him as he reentered the village and began moving for the forest.

"Rescue teams have landed, all hooves accounted for." Captain Chord intoned lightly, sounding all too relieved. He'd likely been holding his breath the whole time. "Good work everyone."

The trees of the forest began overtaking Jack as he pushed inside, keeping to a slower pace so as to not miss his target. The snow here was hip deep, but had been disturbed by the rush of progeny moving into the town. His sharp senses probed the area, searching for anything foolish enough to be hostile.

The area was becoming painfully familiar, drawing up memories he didn't want.

He had been lighter then. Full of piss and vinegar and hope that things would work out. He closed his eyes for a moment, his features tightening as the emotions washed over him. It had been the first time since the research facility that he had run into another Progeny, and he'd been immediately dragged back to that awful place. All that anger, fear, the confusion… The torture, the deaths, the abuse… He could hear himself screaming, even though his lips now were screwed shut. It had all just come rushing back to him then, just as it was now. He could almost smell the sterility of the facility, feel the chill of the air on his skin. He wanted to screw his eyes shut tighter, he wanted to block out the world that demanded his attention. What if he opened his eyes and he was back there?

He'd lost his shit the first time he’d been in this spot. Had he cost Hard Tac his life because of it? Maybe if he'd been on the ball, he'd have killed the progeny in the woods instead of having it follow his trail back to the village. He’d let the weight of the past bring him to his knees, he’d let his fear control his reactions.

"Pathfinder, you seem to have stopped moving," Milani spoke into his ear, concern gently lacing her voice.

Slowly opening his eyes, Jack took a slow breath in through his nose, before releasing it out through his mouth. The air in his helmet tasted tangy with sweat and heavily recycled air, just the way he liked it. "Just getting my bearings." He began moving again, following the trails in the snow toward the mine. He didn't know whether he was really at fault for Hardy's death, but he did know he was about to ruin the day of the one man who truly was responsible. The thought gave him a sense of deepening determination, and angry excitement.

The past could wait, it was payback time.

The burnline of the plasma shelling became instantly apparent as he neared it, finding flash boiled snow refrozen into perfect half circles, trees burst open and still aflame. Chunks of burning Progeny littered the area, half a torso here, reaching out with charred fingers, an atomized corpse there that still twitched despite it's fused skeleton. His magnum hung loose at his hip, ready to draw at a moment to put down any target his searching shoulder mounted weapons didn't.

"Good effect on target, Nova. I'll owe you a drink for this." Jack praised his artillery piece lightly as he walked, crushing cooked bone and splintering burnt wood wherever he stepped.

"Hah, happy to hear it, Pathfinder. Problem is, I'm sitting with a dozen plates left in the main mag. That drink better be big." He could hear the grin in her voice, though it was hindered by the nervousness at her low ammo. It had been a big, costly gamble for all of two minutes of breathing room.

"Area appears clear, I don't think I'll need any more shelling. Just keep the twenty mills loaded and the tri barrel hunting. If it moves and it ain't me, you give it all you got. Nothing gets out of here alive." He shoved aside a corpse, eyes hunting for any clue to the entrance of the mine. He froze in place and silenced his comms, ears pricked to the wind. "Could have swore…" The faint tinkling laughter of a child rode upon the wind as it pushed against his face. "I wonder-" He paused for a moment, an idea percolating in his mind. The progeny were monsters without a single doubt remaining of that truth, but the childish giggling…

Cranking his audio output, Jack licked his lips and stood stock still. "PROOGENNYY, COME OUT TO PLAAY!~” He belted out the taunt, and swiftly fell silent afterwards as he listened intently.

A giggle responded, excited and frantic. It was to his east, upwind. He began treading toward the sound, a wicked little grin crossing his previously grim and stoney features. "PROOOOGENYYYY, COOME OOUT TOO PLAAAAYY!!~”

Another childish squeal, to his north now. He began to pick up the pace as the responding volume only increased as he got closer. He was grinning like a maniac now, hunting the progeny down like animals. His voice was beginning to take a manic edge, all of his hate for the creatures and their creator coming to a head as he abused a weakness he'd never realized until now. "PROOOOOGENYYYYY, COOOME OOOUT TOOO PLAAAYAAAAAAY!!!~~"

He didn't need to hear the response as his eyes locked onto a shadowed entrance, half buried in fresh powder that had been pushed aside by thirty something rancid bodies only minutes prior. He barreled into the entrance, finding at least half a dozen badly wounded progeny there. One was half cooked, laying on the floor, giggling in response to the funny creature calling out to it. His autocannon had already spooled, and the moment he saw their beady little eyes in the dark he opened fire with a hellish grin.

They deserved no mercy, and he gave them none.

Thirteen seconds in, his cannon spun to a halt and steamed, his blade slowly sliding out if the skull of the cooked progeny. "Found you~"

The entrance to the mine was cramped and squalid, hardly the image of a massive monster factory. Forced to duck to push into the entrance, Jack slipped inside and activated his lowlight visor. The mine looked abandoned at first glance, with rough hewn walls and pools of moisture had frozen across both wall and floor, reflecting small shafts of light at oblique angles. However, despite the initial appearance of the mine, Jack could see the telltale signs of heavy traffic, most of which had big claws that left deep furrows in the stone.

Retracting his shoulder mounted weapons so as to avoid scraping them across the low roof, Jack held his magnum at low ready as his eyes slowly scanned the area. The main entrance of the shaft quickly splintered and spread off in a dozen directions, making for a veritable maze of potential routes and pitfalls.

"Sammy. Prepare a sonar pulse." He squared himself for a moment, squatting down on the uneven stone floor, straddling rusted tracks.

"Pulse ready." The little symbol blipped to life on his HUD, prompting him to look at his map.

"Mark." The pulse went off with a fizzle, nearly silent and completely invisible to the naked eye, sending the subsonic frequency echoing deep into the caves and mine shafts. A wireframe map quickly formed on his HUD, revealing potential routes. Most of the shafts were short, ending in rough plugs. However, one such shaft went further than the others, and ended abruptly at a flat wall. Without a moment of hesitation, he set off again, following the side shaft. The walls of the mine were cut with tools and magic, and braced with heavy timbers. Halfway into his chosen shaft however, the telltale toolmarks fell away to rough, scratched out forms. "Progeny dug it out, of course…"

He felt a little ridiculous upon the realization, of course Forge had made the ugly bastards dig him out something. The likelihood of the mine being the main factory was growing with every step.

It was all but completely confirmed when Jack reached the end of the shaft, and came across a large steel door.

He didn't bother knocking.

The door squealed as metal twisted and rent, the hydraulics that controlled the door hissing as they were forced to fail. Then, with a bang, the door failed completely and was flung wide open to crash against the opposing wall. Pale lights hung from metal sockets, swinging gently to illuminate sterile halls made of tile and steel.

"Welcome back, 4859."

The voice that crackled through nearby speakers sent a hard shiver up his spine. The halls were all too familiar in construction to him, plucking at his memories in an almost taunting way, threatening to send him back to DRMSI.

"Doctor Forge." He rumbled back, sneering in his helmet. Jack didn't stop moving, he wasn't willing to let the past bind him down and let the man responsible escape like how Carolus had.

"What do you think you're doing down here, 4859?" Every time Forge spoke through the speakers, it caused the magical brand on his arm to burn angrily, as if the doctor himself were needling at his flesh again.

"Committing genocide." Jack lifted his magnum as a progeny came barrelling down one of the halls, putting an end to its charge before it had made it four steps toward him.

A deep, musical chuckle echoed through the halls as Jack passed under buzzing lights. "Go right ahead." His brow furrowed as he passed into an intersection, finding it suspiciously empty. "They have served their purpose, now that my great work is nearly complete." The smugness dripped from every syllable of every word the doctor spoke, as if he were just toying with a child.

Jack fired off another sonar pulse as he began to tread faster, hunting through the facility. Doctor Forge must have been safe wherever he was if he felt like chatting, but if he got spooked… there was no doubt the doctor had an exit strategy. Jack just had to keep him from it.

Make him talk. Let him prattle as you hunt.

Without hesitation Jack opened his mouth. "So all of this? What, a science project to see if you could do it?" He licked his lips, wetting them. They felt cracked and dry, like the oppressive weight of this place were sapping the life from him through sheer presence alone.

"As quaint a comparison that is, yes, I suppose so. A test, and a… an example, of my abilities. To earn approval for the great work."

Clearing room after room, Jack grit his teeth in annoyance. Each room was full of magical medical technology, and it was all stained with blood. He never found any bodies, only blood. The hum of the overhead lights was swiftly grating on his senses, pushing his temper back up from the place he'd soothed it into. "You should have stuck with baking soda volcanos, Forge. Your halfbreeds are already out of date."

The doctor chuckled gently into the mic, before sighing. "Perhaps. You've done an excellent job ridding me of my rejects. They were enough to placate the Pretend Emperor, and earn his support for my work, but they're little better than biological refuse." There was a long pause as Jack swept a hallway with his muzzle, growing far more concerned with the lack of targets than anything else. "4859, would you like to know a secret of mine?"

Jack paused momentarily, lips curled upwards in disgust and brows perked in curiosity. "...Sure, why the fuck not. Air out your dirty laundry."

"I took the concept from you. The idea for the original progeny, that is. You see, I've always found myself interested in biology and genetic codes, mainly due to my own condition as a hippogriff. I'd been trapped in the Equestrian Condition and unable to move forward, until I saw you." A sharp chill and down Jack's spine, and he checked his comms. Surely enough, no signal.

"Shitfire…" He murmured into his helmet, not letting the curse escape his speakers.

"You see, 4859, I had a stroke of genius when I saw you working with the others. Until that point, I had always seen humans as nothing more than an evolutionary dead end, filthy things hardly worth being used as lab rats. At that moment, however, I saw how humans could be so much more, if I could combine my condition with your kind. Humans, as it would be, have a very stable genetic signature, unlike ponies, griffons, or any other properly sapient being. A stable enough signature to be tweaked, manipulated, and made into something grand. Two parts human, one part anything else. Of course, this has made some rather… intriguing combinations, but overall it has helped my work to flourish."

Another shiver ran its course through Jack's body, though now it was made purely of anger. He'd always had his suspicions, but now everything was coming together. "And the childish laughter? What, some kind of psychological warfare?"

"No, of course not. While that is certainly a side effect, it was not the main purpose. You see, that is where the two parts human comes in. One large adult human to act as the frame of the body, and one child to act as the brain for indoctrination. The minds of the young were just so much easier to train and mold, it was the most intelligent choice."

He stumbled slightly, catching himself against the wall as his features twisted in horror. Every progeny he'd killed so far, every last one, had truly been a child. A baby, even.

No.

Not anymore.

They weren't children when Forge had finished with them. Not anymore.

His fist clenched hard, and slammed into one of the walls, causing the panel to buckle. Ahead lay a pair of massive double doors that appeared as solid as they were large. With an angry snarl, Jack leapt forward and impacted them shoulder first, driving his silver pauldron hard into the center. The doors blew inwards, banging loudly off the walls of the next room. "I must be going now, 4859, but don't think I'll leave you alone. Hmhm~ No, it's been a little pet project of mine to see which of my Progeny would be the one to kill you."

The room before Jack was gargantuan, easily the length and width of several football fields laid end to end, and filled entirely with huge glass tubes and twisting machinery. Each tube of the hundreds present was filled with a viscous blue liquid, and contained a different strain of progeny. At one end of the room lay a truly huge tank more akin to a crude oil silo than a tank of any kind, though that one was comprised entirely of metal. Miles of pipe and wire formed a maze within the huge underground room, and at least two dozen mind controlled griffons and ponies milled about, checking readouts and working panels. Above it all near the far side, was a long observation window. Inside the observation window, Jack watched as Forge slipped into a teleporter much like the one at Hunter's Perch he'd destroyed a lifetime ago.

His thrusters were already screaming hot as magic wrapped around Forge's body, his outstretched hands were smashing through the observation window as the smiling hippogriff vanished with a snap.

Too damn slow.

His momentum carried him into the teleporter, shattering it to pieces under his massive armoured bulk. The device exploded around him as titanium and weight blew apart the sensitive arcane apertures and runes.

Too damn hasty.

Jack snapped and snarled in pure unbridled fury as he rolled off the pile and sprung up to his feet. His bloody oath could have made his many past selves blush, and bordered near manic.

Then, the tubes below began to open. One at a time, then two by two, then half a dozen, a dozen, then whole rows. A thousand progeny, at least half nearly fully grown, and all of them looking right at him. "Oh for the love of- FUCK YOU, GOD, LAY OFF MY ASS FOR ONCE!" Jack keyed his comms and still found them dead. "Sammy, estimated depth!"

"Twenty point nine meters."

"Fuck it, it'll have to do." He snarled as he lifted his arm up, and primed the double barrel bio force-feedback gun. The blistering hot shot boiled through the metal and stone above, letting molten slag pour down into the observation room as it bored a way all the way out. The lights in the room winked out the moment he had fired, but moments later a shaft of sunlight poured down into the underground facility.

"Pathfinder, we just picked your signal back-"

"I NEED A ROD AT MY COORDINATES, NOW! THIS PLACE CRAWLS!" He began lasing video feed out through the hole to the over head satellite as he unfurled his guns and opened fire on the progeny. They began to pour out of their tanks, forming a veritable wave of sickening flesh and childish minds focused solely on ripping him apart. He didn't have enough damn ammo for them all, even if he spared each only a single round. "Micro Neutronium, full rack!" He forced his emotions down, forced down the anger, hate, and fear. The salvo of rockets ripped out of his armour, detonating amid the field of tubes and pipes. Everything they touched simply ceased to be, and each micromissile had cost thirty eight million dollars. All told, he unleashed half a billion dollars in ordnance in one single second, and it only served to stem the tide for a moment or two.

"Good god…" Milani whispered in his ear, fear lacing her own voice as she no doubt stared through his feed.

"Milani I need that Rod! I can't let any of these fuckers get out or we'll be here all fucking year hunting them down!"

There was only a brief pause before the captain stowed her own emotions and responded in a crisp, cool demeanor. "What about you? You're underground, you won't escape the blast radius in time."

"This ain't my first GodRod rodeo, Milani, I'll figure-... something... out?" He found himself staring at the far silo as it bulged and buckled, spilling out thousands of liters of the thick blue liquid. So much liquid washed out, that it simply swept away the controlled staff and several under developed progeny. "Oh." Jack murmured as the occupant of the tank clawed its way out.

Milani squawked faintly in his ear, letting him feel a moment of relief in knowing he wasn't the only one frozen in place."Is… that a dragon?"

"Mm." He responded quietly, his guns silent for a moment. "Yeah it'd look like it, wouldn't it?"

The dragon shook itself side to side, sloping off thick sheaths of some form of biological gunk, a writhing mass of sickening flesh that quivered as it hit the ground. While its wings touched the room from side to side, it's scales looked thicker than tank armour, and it's claws were easily as long as he was tall, the one thing that stood out clear as day to Jack was it's colour, a sickening off white alabaster that tinged a faint yellow.

The colour all progeny shared.

"Pathfinder, this is Homeplate. Describe the dragon to me, does it look like it is capable of flight?" How Chord sounded so calm was beyond Jack, as he mentally blanked for a moment.

The dragon snapped each of its wings, the whipcrack like that of a massive sonic boom. The remaining glass of the observation window exploded inward, showered Jack in shrapnel and blowing the papers within into a maelstrom.

"Yeah, yeah I definitely think so! I think it's stuck down here though-" As if divine providence had cursed his words to damn him, the dragon lifted it's head back, and unleashed an unholy keen that crackled off his armour visibly from the raw magic it carried. The roof above seemed to respond to the noise, lifting itself away as magic poured forth from the dragon's maw. "IT IS NOT STUCK DOWN HERE, WHERE'S THAT FUCKING ROD!?"

"Eta is two minutes and twenty eight seconds, Pathfinder!"

"Not fast enough- GOD DAMN ME!" Jack bolted for the blown open observation window, legs pumping hard as he leapt forward, firing his thrusters. The dragon's wings cracked again, almost immediately arresting his forward momentum. No longer anchored to the ground, Jack was sent tumbling to the ground below, smashing through a dozen meters of pipe and a trio of tanks, which saw the underdeveloped progeny within pasted under his bulk. Scrambling up onto his feet as the horde of released progeny bore down on him, Jack began mantling the pipes and tanks, launching himself at the dragon again as it prepared to take off.

As it brought its wings up a third time, and tilted it's head upwards, Jack lunged for its neck, attempting to strike it with his outstretched knife. The dragon's wings cracked again, and the resulting lift was so great that it all but vanished before Jack's eyes as he fell toward the floor.

He'd missed. Again.

As he began opening his mouth to bellow in anger, a massive, meaty limb struck him in his midsection, and began hauling him upwards as if we were nothing but a gnat. The tail of the Progeny Dragon whipped forward, nearly hurling him headfirst into the roof as it gained altitude, climbing faster than anything it's size had any right to move.

"Eta is two minutes-" Jack didn't hear the rest as he yelled, grabbing onto scales and digging his knife in between to avoid being thrown free.

"Canterlot, this is Stalwart Liberty, come in Canterlot." Captain Chord spoke calmly into his mic. Jack was forced to cling for dear life as the dragon climbed and climbed.

"This is Canterlot, what is your situation?"

"We appear to have a Greater Wyrm under Order control, how copy?"

"S-say again, a Greater Wyrm?"

"Affirmative."

Jack screamed as the dragon barreled through the clouds, subjecting him to a reverse orbital drop that strained every muscle in his body to simply hold on.

"Pathfinder, you appear to be rising with the Wyrm, you're not-" Chord was cut off as Jack yelled into his mic.

"ROXY!" He tried in vain to bring his guns to bear, the rotary cannon letting off a brief belch of rounds before it ran dry, having spent it's drum earlier on progeny. The wyrm roared in response as the rounds skipped off it's thick scales and punched a hole in it's thick leathery wing. The 10cm power cannon found the heat resistant scales of a dragon to be too tough to crack, though the impact clearly pissed it off.

"Y-yeah? I'm just going through refit right no-"

"JUST GET YOUR METAL ASS IN THE AIR, ROXY!" He lunged forward, grabbing a scale as he forced himself to climb higher upon the dragon's body.

Tossing down her hand of cards, Roxy turned her spiderform away from the poker table and began skittering for the tarmac where her Talon sat, undergoing refit and rearm. Her Wonderbolt poker buddies yelled in complaint, only getting a jerky manipulator wave from the pilot as she activated the retrieval arms on the underbelly of the craft. The human techs in charge of refitting her craft with a mix of munitions for the upcoming operation were already disconnecting the feeds and wheeling away. The crew chief shot her a brief salute as she skittered by, ensuring his team was out of the way.

Her spindly body was grabbed by the inbuilt anchor points and yanked upwards into the Talon's belly. Her brainbox was swiftly disconnected, leaving her in perfect darkness for only the briefest moment. Without her body she had no connection to the outside world, and thus was stuck in a very tiny isolation tank until the automated process plugged her into the control center of the Talon. It should have been six seconds, but it always felt like years to her.

She'd never done well with the dark, and now she had no eyes in which to shut against it.

With an electric buzz and a deep thrum, the Talon's systems connected to her brainbox, sending in all of it's collective data as an avalanche. Some pilots hated the influx of data, but Roxy loved it. It was just another reminder that everything had worked, and she wasn't trapped inside the internal workings of the Talon. She picked out the data she needed as she initiated an emergency checklist, priming the engines once they clicked by as green.

Seven seconds had passed.

She had a quarter of her compliment of anti ship missiles, and twelve seconds worth of 30mm caseless.

She was two thousand three hundred and six kilometers from her target zone.

She had a clear runway.

"Canterlot tower, this is Buzzsaw, am I green for takeoff?" She wanted to drum her fingers in anticipation, eager to be in the air again but anxious over the sound of Jack's voice over the radio.

"This is tower, you are clear for takeoff, Buzzsaw. Sisters guide you." She didn't wait for their wish of good luck, already wheeling the Northrop Grumman F/A 37 Talon around onto the runway. Her hypersonic engines keened low as she taxied forward, just as eager as she was to get in the air and go pick a fight somewhere.

As the checklist showed a full green thirty seconds in, she straightened her nose, and fed those huge double barrel jets power. The craft lurched forward, engines whining loudly. The shapes of the silver fishbed jets passed her by as the other pilots watched her go, waving her on. The engine cowlings tightened as she fed in more power, picking up speed until the air currents lifted at her outstretched variable wings. The end of the runway rushed up, signalling a hundred meter sheer drop to the ground below at the end.

Her tail hardly dipped as she punched the throttle, forcing the nose of the Talon up hard and fast. The fighter was just as hungry for sky as she was, greedily eating up the power and using it to claw at the vast blue void. Huge thrusters taxed the oversized zero point reactor as she throttled them up smooth and fast, pushing herself up higher and higher. Her altimeter climbed thousands of meters a second, punching through cloud layer after cloud later like a dark grey dart. Variable wings folded inwards as she hit super sonic, and clawed into hypersonic. Warning signals lit in her hud as she slipped by the mesosphere and bellied into the thermosphere 90 kilometers up, swiftly shutting off once the stress on the airframe had subsided. Settling into her line of approach, Roxy gunned her engines and settled in, letting her brainbox protect her as she rode the knife's edge between atmospheres.

"This is Buzzsaw, Pathfinder, I'm two and a half minutes out. Hang tight."

As she began accessing local tactical data, Roxy winced as Jack yelled in her ear again, wind howling by his helmet.

"Hanging here is about all I can do!"

"The hell is he doing-" Roxy murmured to herself quietly as she glanced over the data, before gawking mentally. Her shock swiftly bled into bloodthirsty excitement, and she began wishing she could push her Talon even faster.

She was about to become the only modern human to ever kill a dragon.

"Pathfinder, I can't draw a bead with you dangling on that thing, the splash of the big gun will cook you!"

"I AM WELL AWARE!"

Jack bellowed into his mic as the dragon rolled again, attempting to dislodge him. His feet lifted free, leaving only his hands to anchor him as they clung to whatever handhold they could find. His muscles tensed and his bones ground together in protest as he was subjected to a nine G turn while stuck in a half pull-up. As the massive progeny beast pulled out of the roll, The two scales Jack was using for handholds broke free, seeing him slide five feet back across the ridged spines of the dragon's back.

"Rod impact in five, four, three-"

Jack grit his teeth as he forced himself to tighten around the back of the dragon's spine, clamping his thighs down and grasping scales with his fat fingers. "I am so fucking through with this sh-"

The blow struck him in the chest like a sledge, driving the air from his lungs as the sky split open. The envelope of explosive concussive force cracked like a bullwhip in his ear, annihilating the blizzard that had settled over the area.

As he drew in a sharp gasp of air, the dragon lost its equilibrium, and was sent into a violently uncontrolled spiralling dive. The G's ripped at his features as he clung to the dragon's hide out of pure desperation, his hips sliding across the scales with little purchase to keep him in place.

"This is Buzzsaw, I have arrived!" The raw excitement in Roxy's modulated voice was clear as day, though he certainly didn't share it. "I see the target… cannot get a lock for missiles."

The dragon leveled out, once again abusing its rider with powerful G's and a rough impact as Jack's floating hips slammed home on it's spine. It roared into the air, headed straight for the Stalwart Liberty. Arcs of AA fire streaked by, skipping off thick scales and pinging off Jack's armour.

"Not- Happening!" Jack yelled at the dragon, knowing it couldn't hear him. Lunging forward, he clamped his hands around the huge base of one wing, and wrenched it back with all his strength. It was like trying to pull a train with his pinky finger, but all he had to do was move it a little. The dragon's angle changed sharply as the gusting wind caught its wing and sent it into an awkward roll. Jack grunted in exertion as the belly of the carrier skimmed by his face.

Chord's voice was calm, but the strain was evident as the sound of rattling windows bled into the mic. "Keep doing whatever you're doing up there, Pathfinder, if that Wyrm gets one good run on us, who knows what kind of damage it'll do."

Releasing the wing as the dragon pulled up, Jack clamped back down and grunted his response. "Right!"

Roxy's voice practically came in riding the tail of his own. "I'm on your ass, going guns!"

Jack cast a suddenly worried look over his shoulder as the Talon rolled into line behind the swooping dragon, and its nose cap sprang open to reveal the massive mouth if the 30mm rail gatling. "Please don't hit-"

The cannon ripped open the sky, spewing a deluge of rounds at its target. The rounds bit hard into the dense scales, some finding purchase, while others either shattered on impact or skipped off completely. Pain lanced through Jack's arm as one such round slammed into his shoulder pauldron. The round had lost most of its power, causing it to fail in penetrating his armour, but the raw energy behind it was still enough to dislocate his shoulder and send a blare of warning alarms off in his helmet. "FUCK! ROXY DON'T FUCKING HIT ME! FUCK!"

"Sorry boss, sorry!" Roxy squeaked into her mic as the dragon roared and twirled on its axis, diving hard.

"HIT ME AGAIN AND I'LL USE YOUR CHARGE PORT AS AN ONAHOOOOOOLLLLEEE!" Jack bellowed as the dragon dove, forcing him to cling for dear life. His dislocated shoulder screamed in his head as his hand clamped down on hard scales, finding only the slightest purchase.

"I need to hit it with a King Fisher, but I can't get a lock! It's dead cold!" Roxy sent her craft dancing through the air, deftly avoiding a crag of rocks as the dragon flew into the mountains. Looming towers of stone, ice, and snow blitzed by his head as the dragon spun and rolled through the twisting valleys between jagged mountains. As if aiming to blow Jack off it's back, the dragon raked it's spine against the mountain edge, shattering stone and ice. The barrage pelted it's displeased passenger, earning another colourfully worded retort as he jammed his knife between scales and hunkered down.

"Sammy-" Jack grunted as he settled in. "I need you to use the armour lock and relocate my shoulder. One the count of three. One. Two. Thre-" He bit down hard, growling in pain as his shoulder was roughly shoved back into the socket. It was the same one he'd landed on storming the dreadnought, no doubt he'd gone and done something to it. He had to stow the pain and bite back his anger, neither would help him win the day here. "Roxy, you still back there?"

"Yeah! I'm close to my stall limit though, this fucker's slow as hell!" Her craft jinked aside another barrage of ice and rock, trailing lines through the air.

"I'm going to try and set a beacon on it for you to target. Please, do not fucking shoot at me until I tell you to."

"...Copy that."

He reaffirmed his grip as he made the second call. "Watchdog, this is Pathfinder, what is my current heading?"

There was a brief pause, before Milani spoke. "It appears that the dragon is circling the mountain, and will likely make another attack run on the Stalwart Liberty. I hope there's a method to your madness right now."

"Not-" He drove his knife in again, using it as an anchor point to draw himself further up. It wasn't getting to the muscle beneath the scales, but it was enough to keep him in place. "-really! Sort of just a-" Hauling himself hand over hand, Jack grunted in exertion. "-pile of bad choices made into a person!" As he settled between the dragon's huge wings, he began attempting to cut away scales as best he could. "Where the fuck is the human in this thing anyways!?"

The floating bulk of Stalwart Liberty appeared all too quickly as the dragon coiled around the mountain, unleashing an unholy keen that rattled his brains inside his helmet. “Come on, come-” A gasp began to emanate from his lungs as the dragon flared it’s wings, arresting it’s forward momentum. With his hands preoccupied, he had little chance to grab hold of something as he was launched forward and into the air. His world became a maelstrom of gnashing teeth, howling wind, and yelling as the dragon caught him in it’s mouth and began doing its best to devour him.

“ROXY! KILL IT!”

The grinding rip of the 30mm cannon was muted as the massive wyrm roared in his face, feral magic spewing around his armour. His whole world turned upside down violently as the massive beast rolled, attempting to avoid Roxy's chasing fire. A cascade of hearty thumps sounded as rounds struck home, earning a roar that set Jack's ears to ringing. All too quickly the world rolled again and the abusive slap of hard impact tore Jack from the beast's gaping maw. Unable to catch his bearings, he twirled gracelessly through the air before smacking against Stalwart's flight deck, bouncing and rolling before coming to a stop some few meters away.

One by one the alarms going off in his helmet shut off as he either toggled them, or the nanites fixed the issues. "Okay… fuck this…" Jack muttered quietly as he rolled to his feet, ears still ringing like air raid klaxons. His visor suddenly darkened without warning, the wash of a 20cm plasma blast washing over him like an oven being opened, setting off proximity alarms as the massive beast charged him. "Shit." He managed before the dragon was upon him again, bowling him off his feet like a toy as it tried to split him in half with its massive swordlike teeth. The only thing between him and certain death was the massive hydraulic system the suit contained, and his own burning muscles.

Maggie cursed and swore as she rotated the turrets around, trying to draw a bead on the dragon as it crashed into the deck with Jack in tow. The inside of the old tank was thick with acrid smoke and the stench of melted plastic mixing with her sweat, its air filtration system struggling to keep up with the firefight. As the air inside grew too difficult to breath, Maggie ripped open the emergency kit and yanked out the mask sitting inside it. The rubber bit into her face as she cinched down the straps hard with one hand, while twirling the oxygen feed valve with the other. Positive air pressure flooded the mask, giving her an hour of clean air but at the cost of having to wrestle around the air hose.

Bringing her hands back to the guns after wiping grimy sweat away with the back of her hand, Maggie drew a bead on the mammoth beast, just as it swallowed Jack whole. Shock froze her in place for only a brief moment, before her brows furrowed hard and her hands squeezed the gunner's sticks. The old tank's full compliment immediately opened up, unloading a withering barrage of munitions into the Dragon's backside. The 20cm main cannon melted a furrow in the launch deck as round after round exited the barrel, setting off heat alarms inside the turret. Above in the cupola, the remote control tri-barrel was focusing on the same spot, acting like a probe as the twin 20mm cannons belched forward round after round. The glare of the main cannon was so painful that even with the flare reduction of the gunners sight, she couldn't make out anything but dancing spots.

That made the following impact against the tank's hull all the more jarring, as it rang the inside like a gong and slid the whole bulk of the magnetically anchored tank toward the edge of the deck. "No way!" Maggie gasped into her mask as the front end of the tank began to dip toward a kilometer long fall. The main gun chimed empty as the body of the tank lurched hard, driving her face into the scope.

Panic swiftly gripped her body as a kilometer long drop in a multi-tonne coffin loomed over Maggie's head. Scrambling upward, she disengaged the magnetic seal on the cupola hatch, triggering the automatic opening. The foul, acrid air filling the tank swiftly began to billow out as she grabbed the bailout kit, hauling herself through the cloud of smoke and into the frigid blizzard outside.

Tossing the bag to the deck below, Maggie looked up as she prepared to jump. Only then did she see what had hit her, just as it came in for a second blow. The dragon's meaty tail slammed into the side of the tank, booming like a cannon shot as the magnetic transport clamps spewed up fountains of sparks. The impact simultaneously hurled Maggie off her feet, and sent the tank skidding another foot across the deck, causing it to tip further over the edge. Tumbling off the tank, Maggie only managed a muffled curse into her mask before the short airline yanked her back onto her ass.

With her world spinning and blood pouring into her eyes from a bad cut just under her hairline, Maggie felt honest fear for the first time in a long time. The airline tugged her backwards as the tank continued to slide, promising to take her with it over the edge. Training kicked in as her fingers went to the hose fitting on the side of the mask, only to find it stuck fast from swiftly freezing condensate.

"Piece of shit!" She screamed as she was slowly dragged closer and closer to the edge, her fingers now digging at the straps of the mask. Her face was growing swiftly numb from the blistering cold, but her frantic digging earned lances of stinging pain regardless. Wrenching herself free gracelessly, Maggie rolled away and scrambled for the bag laying on the launch deck. Inside was the only shot they had at killing the Dragon, though at this range, it was likely to kill her too.

Roxy watched the situation below swiftly grow dire as she swept her craft around, coming in for another attack round. The low ammo counter on her HUD blinked slow, reading out only two and a half seconds of guns left. Her missiles sat unused, each needing a heat signature or IR beacon to lock onto. "Come on come on… give me something!" Ripping around out of the 16g turn, Roxy leveled off and drew her bead on the dragon. "Come on you overgrown lizard, just die already!"

As she dove in on the friendly carrier, guiding her gunsights onto the very unfriendly dragon squatting on it's bow, an IR beacon grenade went sailing through the air, before splatting against the dragon's hide. The glue on the sticky grenade would harden fast, leaving the perfect target for her missiles. The only problem she had, was that she was two seconds deep into a supersonic attack run and swiftly running out of arming distance. There was also the issue of over-penetrating with the ship killer missiles, and to make matters worse, the dragon was turning it's attention back toward the teetering tank it shared the bow with.

She had to act fast.

"Oh no you don't!" Roxy yelled as she sharply twisted her craft sideways, showing her belly to the ship as she swept in low and fast. Alarms and warning flashed across her HUD as the airframe suffered under the strain. "EAT THIS!"

The King Fisher missile leapt free from the open weapons pod tucked into her belly, its repulsor cutting a jagged contrail through the air as it slashed toward its target like a knife. The dragon's head snapped back to attention, and all too late it began to rear back it's wings to take off again. The missile struck it hard in the side, punching through hardened scales as it arced in at a ninety degree angle.. The dragon proved too soft a target to see the munition detonate inside it, but the resulting hole was more than good enough for Roxy as she blitzed by, clawing her way into hypersonic. The faster she turned around, the faster she could put more rounds on it.

The concussive blast of the missile exploding off the port bow sent Maggie sprawling to her hands and knees, gasping for air that had been stolen from her so abruptly. The dragon reeled from the blow, bellowing in pain as it began to thrash about.

"How… are you still… ALIVE!?" She cried out in anger as huge hate filled eyes locked onto her. Lifting her service pistol, she began dumping the magazine into the dragon's face. The gargantuan thing opened its maw to blast her to bits with magic, only to seemingly pause with its mouth open wide. A horrific jerky shudder passed through the great beast, before it fell to the deck, unmoving. As Maggie's pistol chimed empty, a twisted, human shaped lump came spilling out the ragged hole blown in the dragon's side.

Following the thing out, Jack peeled himself out of the dragon's guts, coated head to toe in blood, steaming offal, and stomach acid.

"...found the human…" He muttered, waving passively to the shrivelled thing slowly freezing to the deck.

"Are…" Maggie stood stock still, her brain trying in vain to find something to say. "Are you alright?"

Jack slowly tilted his head toward her, and stayed silent for a long moment. "No. No I am not."

Response teams began flooding down the deck, as Roxy blitzed by at super sonic. The wind had started to die down, but the temperature was still unpleasantly low. Maggie shivered as adrenaline bled away, leaving her standing covered in frosted over sweat in a tank top and overalls. Jack stood still beside her for another long moment, before exhaling deeply and gesturing toward the carrier's superstructure. "Let's get the fuck out of here. I need to find someone with a hose. And alcohol. I need a fucking drink…"

Despite herself, Maggie let out a shiver-filled chuckle. "Lead the way, Pathfinder."

Author's Notes:

Come hell or high water I am finishing this fucking story.

Even if it kills me.

EDIT: Say what you want about jumping the shark, but none of this shit is out of line for Ballad. While there /is/ a dragon, we have not jumped it, so eat my ass.