Military movements, even in the Brotherhood of Nod, tended to be rather massive and noticeable collections of personnel and vehicles tasked with security and mobilization of assets and logistics. Even with the use of cloaking technology, prior to the arrival of the Scrin, GDI Intelligence would be able to hazard guesses as to where the Brotherhood might strike based on surveillance data regarding supply movements. In the same manner, Nod would always know where to strike or retreat based on their own information involving GDI’s supply situation.

When it came to changelings, all this flew out the window.

If the changeling race had an advantage over all others, it would be their ability to pass unseen even in the most obvious of environment unless their opposition was specifically scanning for them. Officers supplanted by operatives could request supplies to be moved somewhere sensible yet unimportant for the greater war effort, and troops themselves could either pass as civilians, other troops, or outright be undetectable by hiding themselves as the local fauna.

The Brotherhood’s decision to split up the old changeling swarm’s forces into smaller task forces or support elements for their main units could, in this manner, be considered to have been a foolish decision as it prevented the coordination and insertion of large formations within GDI lines. And yet, this had been done out of necessity.

Nod High Command had never been under any illusions regarding the political situation they found themselves in. While pony-based forces made up the bulk of their armed forces, the Brotherhood was not reliant on them at all and instead made use of all its diverse assets to the best of their abilities. The diamond dogs had had their underground realms practically annihilated by the subterranean growth of Tiberium, and as such were wholly dependent on the Brotherhood. Meanwhile, the buffalo were in it for revenge against a government that, as far as they were concerned, cared not for their well-being and left them to die. The same could also be said of the gryphons, their ancestral ally having essentially abandoned them to their fate while helping seemingly more ‘convenient’ friends across the world. The dragons for their part were in it for the promise of battle and glory, and little else.

So what of the changelings, quite possibly the only race on the planet to have not only benefited socially and economically but seemingly also improved biologically with the arrival of the Tib? At first glance, their association with the Brotherhood of Nod was a simple one. Self-defense against GDI, who sought to expunge Tiberium from the world as well as all the mutants it had brought forth. As far the changelings were concerned, that included them.

Yet within Nod, it was nowhere near as simple. All because of one member of the swarm.

Queen Chrysalis

From the start she had attempted to assert the Hive’s superior position both as a rising power and a nation with vast reserves of willing, dedicated, and sometimes fanatic drones. Allowing her to bully the other members of the Brotherhood into submission would have done little more than turning Nod into Chrysalis’ own personal army for world domination, an objective anathema to the Brotherhood’s ideals. As such a compromise was reached, granting the changelings entry into the Brotherhood on the condition that all represented species would hold an equal voice within High Command regardless of their individual power. The collective will of Nod came first, always. With this in place, the swarm’s contributions to the Brotherhood were splintered, never allowed to form changeling-only formations with the sole exception of deep-infiltration Shadow teams.

As the war progressed and the Scrin’s arrival shifted the balance of power significantly, the swarm began gathering its forces once more little by little. A replaced officer here, a quartermaster there, a Confessor over there, with time the swarm’s splintered units reformed into consolidated formations under the Brotherhood’s noses.

The movement of troop formations from frontline duties to second-line and even rearward positions to recuperate wasn’t a strange or outlandish one, particularly in the Brotherhood where new troop formations were constantly created to fill gaps, and the latest batch of rotations was no exception. On paper it was simply the movement of a few infantry, motorized, and mechanized battalions to the rear. Given the large variety of forces involved, Nod wasn’t in the habit of specifying the species composition of a unit unless the racial element involved played an important part such as dragons in a shock formation.

Likewise, given the often rag-tag nature of Nod’s militia-based military, it wasn’t unusual for troops to go missing for a while only to reappear drunk on salt, or knocked out after fighting themselves or other units. This did not change even within the forces stationed at GDI locations, making the sudden disappearance of various changeling militia elements go unnoticed for a while.

It had been almost a week since the Queen’s fateful encounter with the Overseer. Her demeanor upon her return to base had been a complete opposite from her departure, with her expression of perpetual bashfulness and arrogance replace with one of deep, almost sorrowful contemplation. It was upon her arrival that she gave her own chain of command their most challenging order yet.

“Climb the Peaks of Peril.”

The code was transmitted to all relevant field commanders.
____________

Contrary to popular belief, working the Sky Sentry surveillance network that GDI had put in place with its orbital defense grid was not some action-packed, constantly-tense assignment like the propaganda movies were already painting it as. There wasn’t some massive screen on a giant wall in some top-secret bunker in the middle of a Red Zone, nor was there a general or staff officer prancing about between rows of monitors as the war unfolded. Instead, the satellite hub that housed the world-wide spy network looked more like a hardware store.

Tiered rows of work stations circled a single conference room table that was usually either empty or had an unfinished game of cards on it for crews that arrived and were waiting to start their shift, or were playing friends on opposite time tables. Each station had a single pony behind the controls of their specific camera or drone, along with a trio of screens to give them feedback, status updates, and the video feed proper. EVA, for the most part, made sure that the cameras were looking where they were supposed to via micro-adjustments, but the Ponyville Raid had forever tainted GDI’s willingness to depend completely on AIs.

Because of this, life in Sky Sentry was almost, without fail, a tedious, boring assignment where the most exciting part of the day was clocking out and hitting your bunk. The only times where things seemed to be getting interesting were when someone on duty got to witness a war-changing event like the birds-eye-view of the Battle of Canterlot and the Scrin invasion, or watching the Nod-GDI joint strike force taking down the Rift Generator.

For Lieutenant Spearhead, it was just an average day on duty. He had been in Canterlot when the war hit home, and the fighting had crippled his wings permanently. Still wanting to fight, but with his medical treatment keeping him from the front lines, he was transferred up to Sky Sentry and, despite being rehabilitated, took a shining to his new assignment and stuck with it.

“Morning everypony.” he said as he found his way to his station. Each station was responsible for several hundred square kilometers of the planet, observing passively unless something flared up. Magical enhancements on surveillance technology meant they could zoom in on a parasprite if they wanted to, but unless an active conflict that wasn’t foreseen by GDI HIGHCOM flared up, everypony sitting at his desk spent their 8-hour shift staring at blips on a screen.

A few murmurs of reply came back by the time he finally relieved the pony from the shift prior to his, and by the time he sat down at least one pony had spilled coffee on their uniform.

“Pretty standard day, EVA?” he asked, chuckling at the sight of the stallion two tiers up from him frantically waving his wings to cool down the searing liquid.

“Affirmative. No anomalies reported from the previous user report. No current anomalies developi-.... Standby.”

“... standby?” he asked, leaning forward slightly.

“Situation developing, please adjust camera focus to Grid 9611.” EVA said, only for the EVAs of half the room to chime in with the same status update.

“What the hell…?” one of the other ponies managed to mutter, zooming in. Spearhead mouthed the same as he brought his own system to bear on the grid that his EVA brought attention to. He barely got a look at the situation on the ground before he was flagging down the reporting officer on duty and got her over to his station.

“Well I’ll be damned….” she whispered. Without hesitating, she galloped to every other station reporting an anomaly, her disbelief never quite disappearing even as she reached her own desk and rang up GDI High Command.

“War Room, what have you got for us?” one of Ironsides’ aides answered.

“I’m sending an encrypted report via the EVAs but I had to get this news to you as soon as possible. We’ve have confirmation that, in at least 30 separate grids, Nod forces are fighting each other.”
____________

Even in a clear-cut battle between GDI and Nod, the chaos of combat was enough to cause deadly levels of confusion among ground pounders. Usually the only way some soldiers could get their bearings once everything went pear-shaped was by seeing which way the tracers were coming from given that GDI refused to use laser weaponry.

Now that was thrown completely out the window as lasers lanced out to meet each other and the faithful of Kane and the Cult of Chrysalis spilled each others blood. Troubleshoes had managed to survive the first combat deployment of GDI’s Mammoth tanks, Dodge Junction, Canterlot, and even one of the nastier skirmishes after he was rebuilt. Now he wondered if it would be another member of the Brotherhood that finally managed to kill him.

“Gunny, what the hell do we do!?” one of the younger soldiers screamed as yet another violent salvo of laser fire slammed into the disabled Scorpion they were hiding behind.

“Pop grenades if you have them, then suppress and hope a unit next to us takes the opening.” the massive stallion ordered, sighing as he double checked his power packs, “If not, we’re dead anyway so we might as well take some of these traitors with us!”

If Troubleshoes had given the order just a few seconds earlier, it might have succeeded. Instead, those under his impromptu command were cut down as soon after they popped up out of cover. A Venom had been passing over, strafing the position on its way to hunt down its former brothers in arms in the air. Before it could fully pull away though, it exploded violently as flak tore into the barely-armored fuselage. Shortly after, the cracks of railguns joined the grim symphony that was being made on this battlefield and Troubleshoes could see Zone Troopers jumping in and hitting Chrysalis Loyalist forces.

Never had Troubleshoes been so happy to see a GDI Kodiak Escort Group hit a battlefield, though his thanks didn’t last long. Moments after his once-mortal enemies had started pouring fire into the traitors, he got to his hooves and joined in, and laser once again met laser on the battlefield.
____________

“It’s happening all over the planet. Anywhere that Chrysalis personally had changeling troops stationed… they’ve all sided with her. Plenty of the changelings have stayed loyal to you, or at least the Ladybugs leading them, but… it’s a nightmare out there right now.” Twilight stated, scowling almost as hard at the holographic map laid out before her as the other two in the room were. Kane and Luna were not happy at this turn of events and both wore it plainly on their muzzles.

“And the source of her newfound confidence? She was brought to heel shortly after Canterlot and even she wouldn’t be stupid enough to pull a stunt like this without a trump card.” Luna demanded.

“We think she joined forces with the Visitors. In some of the areas where the traitors completely overwhelmed loyalist forces, Scrin units made landfall within seconds of them declaring victory and didn’t slaughter Chrysalis’ forces.”

“She found a new master. Worms like her always need one, whether they want to admit it or not.” Kane growled, “She’ll be found, and she’ll be punished accordingly.”

“How bad?” Twilight asked.

“She may have just lost the entire war for the Brotherhood.” Kane replied bluntly, “We could have bided our time, let GDI take on the Visitors and wear themselves out before rising again from the grave to cleanse our enemies in a holy crusade… now… that entire contingency is in jeopardy.”

“We had plans for her betraying us, for a splintering of the Brotherhood… but to go against her own planet… that was not expected.” Luna added.

“We need the Redeemer operational as soon as possible, Twilight. How soon?”

Kane’s questions usually got a stern, almost scolding response from the Princess of Friendship. Despite his status, and that of Queen Luna, she was still their ace in the hole in regards to staying ahead of GDI in technology and they all knew it. While she never imagined that they’d match what she let loose on the planet with techno-magic hybrids, she still felt a bit of pride at maintaining the technology for an army that was mostly full of non-unicorns.

This time however, she wore a wide smile that Kane hadn’t seen since she had gotten her hooves on a working Kodiak.

“A few days at most… in the morning at best. The last kinks to work out have been… rectified since the last experiment.”

“You didn’t run out of Sirens, did you?” Luna asked as the schematics for the massive walker appeared.

“No, no… I mean, not really. Only one is left clinically alive, but that’s all we need. If Sonata was left conscious, she might try interfacing into the Redeemer’s systems from the inside and the last thing we need is a Siren at the helm of that… beautiful creation.”

“She was the last one to be tested?”

“She’s the only one I left alive. Aria and Adagio were too strong-willed, and their neural paths didn’t sync up well enough to the Rage Inducer. Sonata on the other hoof, had only a mere 2% deviation compared to the 35% dev-”

“In the morning, we test it.” Kane interrupted, “Field testing. I expect Chrysalis will be making a move on Temple Prime with her new friends soon enough, I want the one project she didn’t have at least some access to waiting for her.”

“And what about a pilot?” Luna inquired, looking at the schematics that Twilight had brought up on the table.

“I have someone in mind.” Twilight answered, “More accurately, I have someone in mind, and a mind in mind. LEGION, if you would.”

“Of course, Twiley.” the AI replied, bringing his chosen physical form up next to the Redeemer hologram. Despite being the mind of Shining Armor, his avatar was that of a Black Hand Zealot, armor and all.

“Your AI program…” Luna whispered in shock.

“A pleasure to finally meet the both of you in ‘person’. I’ve been busy helping keep the Marked of Kane effective in the field, but as of roughly 37 days ago, I’ve been helping my sister optimize the Redeemer Prototype. Sadly, the prototype will be the flagship of the line, as well as the final model. There’s not enough time, nor are there enough supplies that haven’t been compromised to start mass production.”

“Chrysalis?” Kane asked despite already knowing the answer, and the AI simply nodded in reply.

“For now, we have to assume that the only assets we have that are not compromised are ones where we have the planet surface secure and cloaked.” LEGION added, “Unless of course, the three of you have a different set of requirements to apply to my analysis.”

“That won’t be necessary, LEGION.” Kane told him, “Get that prototype ready for combat, the sooner the better. Twilight, if you have any other pet projects or prototypes to throw at that traitorous hag, now is the time to prepare them. Temple Prime is going to be ground zero for the end of this war, whether Chrysalis knows it or not.”

“Might I ask how you deduced this?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s where I would make a statement if I were a showy tart like Chrysalis, and if GDI has any brains about them, they’ll try to finish us off once the would-be queen is fully contained.”
____________

In all her life Chrysalis had never felt more alive than she did this day. The Overseer had granted her powers beyond those of a mere Changeling Queen, and her followers were similarly enhanced as the fighting had spilled from the ground into the air. Her swarms had overwhelmed the outer defenses quite easily, but she was pleasantly surprised to find the crew of the GDA Hope were putting up a fight. After all, what good are enhanced abilities if you never get to truly use them?

Tiberium shards burst from her shoulders down the hallway towards the GDI fireteam stalling her personal guard in the hallway. Though she no longer considered them her personal guard. She barely had a sense of self other than pride and wanting to advance her people’s future.

All other thoughts were of perpetuating the Scrin Empire.

One of the ponies holding the line took a shard to the neck, dying before she hit the floor and thankfully unable to scream as the crystal started changing her body. Her squadmates replied with renewed fire, cutting down as many drones as they could in hopes that they could stall the boarding parties long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

They never did, and eventually Chrysalis threw enough bodies into the carapace-grinder to overwhelm the team that had delayed her. One did leave her a parting gift though, a live grenade thrown just as the pony lobbing it lost a significant portion of his barrel. The detonation threw Chrysalis and her guards into and through the ceiling, causing her to land hard on the floor one deck below the hallway she had just been fighting in.

With a sickening crack, she returned to her hooves, casually looked over the cracks in her exoskeleton, noted that some of her carapace was missing in certain places, and shrugged as she flew back up through the blast crater.

“My Queen, we’ve breached the door they were guarding… it’s of little importance, a mere supply area.” one of the surviving drones stated.

“Arms? Ammunition? Armor?” Chrysalis asked, attempting to quirk up a brow before noticing that it was missing.

“Laundry detergent, they were fighting tooth and nail over a hallway that leads to the barracks, which are now empty, and a laundry supply closet.”

“Trying to throw us off by putting up a last stand at every turn…” the Changeling queen trilled, “Admirable, but a wasted effort. Move up the hole in the ceiling that these lesser beings were kind enough to make for us, we’ll continue fighting until this ship drops on top of those fools still loyal to Kane.”
____________

“It’s hard to believe but we have Changeling forces, no longer loyal to Kane, fighting with the Scrin against us and the Brotherhood.” Fancy Pants stated from his position at the War Room conference table. He was rarely there, and despite Canterlot being a half-infested tiberium field, ICB was still located in the capitol. However, he made the rare visit when things of a world-changing nature were about to happen or were in progress.

“And the Scrin?” Ironsides asked.

“From the looks of it, collecting scraps. Sky Sentry shows them mostly on cleanup duty. It’s as if our excursion into the Red Zone was more costly than they let on… it’s possible hitting the Rift Generator caused more damage than was expected. They were pushing hard in the immediate aftermath, but it’s looking like that was a bluff until they could get Chrysalis and her little rebellion up and going.”

“And now they’re using her to regain lost ground… or possibly cover a retreat.” the older stallion muttered, “How’s the Brotherhood faring?”

“Badly. Changelings were, against Kane’s better judgement, one of the backbones of the Brotherhood, and now with a civil war focused mostly within his own faction, he’ll be lucky if he can conduct a war after he puts down the would-be queen.” the Intelligence Director replied.

“And our troops in cooperative theaters?”

“Holding. Chrysalis is mostly focusing on pure Nod units but she’s not shying away from hitting our troops. Three Kodiaks have already repelled boarders with the Hope working on kicking them off the deck.” Spitfire replied, though her position at the table was fulfilled by a magical projection of her still onboard the Crystal Fury.

“We’re also containing what few outbreaks in our own territory have happened.” Stalwart Shield added, “Looks like Chrysalis was more concerned with a successful coup than taking the fight to us this time around, though it would appear she sees any joint operation as a fair target for her aggressive outbreak.”

“We’re looking at the Brotherhood fracturing in ways we never thought possible, sir… we may need to consider that now, as the Scrin and Kane are on the backhoof, is the time to end both threats once and for all.” Fancy Pants chimed in, though once he was done saying his piece, the room went silent as Ironsides looked from his personal datapad, to the feeds all around him, to the collected branch commanders, and back to his datapad.

This ritual happened three times, each time showing steady, calculated motions that he was notorious for since he was Lieutenant Ironsides all those many decades ago.

“All of our troops in the field are to disengage… pull back from Nod zones. Hit Scrin targets hard, but leave the Brotherhood to fight its own civil war. I want Sky Sentry to get a bead on every Nod missile silo and have Ion cannons ready to target them, and I want Scrin units in the open wiped out via orbital strikes as well.” Ironsides finally said, coldly, “When the smoke clears and a winner in the Nod Civil War is declared… we turn the survivor to ash. Chuck.”

“Yes sir?” General Stampede answered.

“Deploy the Titans… all of them.”
____________

It had been five days since Ironsides had first ordered the Titans out of the factories and to frontline units. They had reached their units in four, but remained inactive until needed. Ironsides had agreed with Applejack and Big Mac about keeping them from facing Nod or the Scrin until the time was right. Every Titan crew was standing by upon arrival, and most expected at least a few weeks, or in some cases a few months, until they could put their machines through their baptism by fire.

The fact that the call came in less than 48 hours after arrival was beyond all of their expectations.

All across the GDI lines, the same scene was played out dozens of times over as a collective battalion of Titan Walkers prepared to do their duty. Ponies galloped at full speed to their walkers, others were making sure ammunition and rations were properly loaded. Tank crews that were to support the mechs were topping off ordinance, making sure spark chambers were still in good condition, and in some cases making sure their hull paint was properly dried.

One by one, unit by unit, the newest weapon in the GDI arsenal went active and stood proud amongst its treaded brothers-in-armor, declaring to the world with a simple affirmation that war for Equestria had once again changed forever.

“Titan ready!”
____________

A few hundred miles away in Mareajevo, a similar, yet completely different, scene was playing out. Twilight had done her work and done it well. Kane had asked and now he was to receive, and he was watching the whole thing in person.

In the same bay that he had seen the advent of the Marked of Kane, a whole new weapon of conquest had been prepared to bring his wrath to the world. While Avatars were shaped vaguely like dragons, this new walker was much more utilitarian in design. No head to speak of, just a large torso seated on four massive, identical legs. Its arms were bulky, armored, and shared a similar design doctrine as the Black Hand’s personal armor, with the right arm housing a massive array of three Obelisk-class lasers.

While Luna questioned the need of having the left arm house a claw for manipulating items, Twilight assured her it was a necessary design function just in case the pilot wanted to start throwing Predators at GDI formations.

The pilot in question had been hoof-picked, trained, and selected for this task well ahead of the building of the Redeemer. He had been refined through battle, and sent into the most difficult places in the War with few exceptions. And now, he was smiling inside of this monster, operating a metal behemoth with LEGION interfacing directly with his brain.

Spike smiled as the scaffolding fell away, fuel lines and ammunition conveyors pulling back as he booted up the massive mech’s systems. Despite being so large, the cockpit was surprisingly claustrophobic, though he didn’t mind. His helmet gave him all the external information that he needed to be appraised of, and Sonata Dusk in a stasis tank directly behind him, had her brain wired directly into the Redeemer’s relevant systems but kept well in check by LEGION. His gauntlets, belt, and boots fed movement data to his new command center, and before long, Kane, Luna, and Twilight were greeted with the sight of a walker twice the size of any Avatar shaking off the dust from manufacturing and giving a boast that made even Kane feel goosebumps.

“The Redeemer Has Risen.”