//HOL CRY ADV
//CHECKSUM READ
//CHECKSUM GOOD

//DIGISIG

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//MSG BEGIN

[09,

If you’re reading this, you’ve taken receipt of the flowers I sent you. I’m sorry for your loss. My condolences to your family.

You caused quite a stir when you presented Colonel Glowheart’s findings from the Highwind and Minchir expeditions to the Conclave. I was in attendance at the time. Remotely, if you must know. I’m telling you right now, there are two things you need to do.

One, proceed no further. You have an inquisitive mind and a love for science, as do I. As do we all. You see a troublesome problem, and you want clear, immediate solutions. What you don’t realize is that the thread you’re tugging leads right off the edge of a cliff and into a bottomless abyss.

Two, you and I need to talk, in private, at the earliest opportunity. There are no channels secure enough for the things I am going to tell you.

This is a matter of national security. If the public knew how far the enemy’s reach was, they would abandon all hope of victory. If they possessed a dim awareness of the resources our foes have marshaled against us, their knees would quake and they’d grow faint from fear. If they had even the slightest inkling of the enemy’s intentions for us, they would find a rope and a sturdy beam in the ceiling.

No one outside the Conclave can know the truth.

Pray.

-RT]

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

Desert Storm

When Corporal Cloverleaf and I were finished working out, we were sore as hell. I was having second thoughts about having wasted so much energy right before the mission. I sighed as I stumbled towards the personnel carrier that was warming up its engine in the motor pool. The Centaur was outfitted for a SIGINT role, its roof studded with antennas. The retractable main antenna was in the stowed position, lying flat beside the roof, protruding slightly forward of the frontal ballistic viewports. Its asymmetry was almost like the refueling boom of a transport gyrodyne, or perhaps the tusk of a narwhal.

This was the surveillance vehicle that Cicatrice had permanently assigned to my team. During the war, Charger operations often involved the use of detached forward observer teams that utilized drones and mobile surveillance stations to pinpoint enemy radio transmissions, triangulate their position, and relay intel to Charger lances so we could go in and decapitate enemy command posts and raise hell. These operations typically employed elite light infantry in a supporting role, such as Airborne Pegasus Commando units, Dragoons, and other special forces like BASKAF’s SpecComSec.

I happened to be staring right at two such operators at that very moment in time. There were two solidly built unicorn mares flanking Bellwether as he approached. They didn’t even need to say anything. I could tell by the way they moved, the sunglasses that they wore in a pitch-black salt mine, and the slight bulges in their jackets suggesting a great deal of concealed armor and weaponry that these two were not to be fucked with under any circumstances. One of them wore her dark mane in a bob cut, and the other had a yellowish ponytail and was chewing on bubble gum, periodically blowing a bubble every now and then.

Bellwether turned to me as the three of them came to a halt a couple meters away. “Sergeant, these two don’t exist, just so you know.”

“Yep, already figured that out.” I nodded. “What else should I know about them?”

“Cicatrice is sending them with you. They’re tagging along and providing backup to your team, just to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “Great. Tourists.”

Blondie chose that moment to speak up. “If that’s what you wanna believe, you’re welcome to, Sergeant Smart Ass. Doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m Prima and this is Secunda. Not our actual names, but they’ll suffice for the sake of this particular operation. We’ve been detached to provide specialized support and to keep an eye on things.”

Secunda grinned creepily, flicking her hoof at her pitch-black mane. “You need somepony to run the surveillance truck. Too bad you couldn’t find or train up your own signals intelligence analyst in time for all this. That would be me. Prima mostly breaks things. And people. Maybe you, if you disappoint the Magister.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” I said. “I know my orders, and I know the operation plan.”

Prima took a few steps closer, her figure imposing. She was at least a head taller than I was, and she had a terrifying killer’s aura about her. “No plan ever survives contact with the enemy, Sergeant. The battlefield is chaos, and individuals like me and Secunda bring a modicum of order to that chaos.” She lowered her glasses with her magic, her green irises pitiless pools of poison.

I let out a chuckle. “Wow, lemme guess. Next, you’ll start speaking entirely in metaphors? You sure are talkative for someone who doesn’t exist.”

A chill ran down my spine as she began circling me like a hungry shark. “Sergeant Desert Storm, Charger pilot and former tank driver. Took part in numerous combat operations spanning several of the beleaguered inner colony worlds, as well as deep strikes into enemy-held territory. You’ve been from Meadowgleam, to Kabelaced III, all the way to pathetic shitholes like New Isfahan. Your combat record is impeccable, with many, many confirmed kills, but it is marred by episodes of alternating unnecessary aggression and gun-shy timidity.

“You have a reputation for innovative tactics, but a disobedient streak a mile wide. You were brought before a military tribunal in 2177 for failing to pursue and neutralize a stolen transport full of deserters but skated out on a technicality over the rules of engagement. You have severe ECAD, you recently suffered a battlefield trauma so extreme that your symptoms temporarily disqualified you from active duty, and your psych profile reads like the portrait of a deranged scatterbrain.” She stopped circling me, invading my personal space and pressing her chest up against mine as she craned her muzzle down towards my ear. “Well then, mental defective. What makes you think you’re qualified to lead this op?”

I took a reflexive step back, glaring at her. “I didn’t come here to be psychoanalyzed by a couple of spooks. I have a job to do, I’m going to do it.”

“Oh? As opposed to not doing it? Who do you think you’re trying to fool, here? You wrecked a perfectly good Destrier on that mountaintop. You’re washed up. We give you your Mirage back, what are you gonna do? Wreck it, too? If you don’t stop being a liability and start being an asset, well, I’ve seen what happens to ponies who cross Cicatrice. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

“I didn’t wreck jack shit.” I snarled. “I downed a type of dropship I’d never seen before, deployed by an enemy I’ve never fought before, in a situation that I was neither briefed nor adequately prepared for. We were lucky to salvage what we did. If me, Bell, and Sierra hadn’t acted, we wouldn’t have recovered anything from Pur Sang. The three of us would’ve been KIA and all the survivors at the base would’ve fucking died.”

Prima grinned unsettlingly wide. “Two of your team members are, themselves, cleomanni, one of whom happens to be both Salzaon’s daughter and the reason for the destruction of Camp Crazy Horse, due to her failure to disclose the presence of an implanted tracker. Captain Garrida and the Magister have been exceptionally lenient with them. If it had been me on that mountaintop, you know what I would’ve done?”

I shrugged. “Played pattycake?”

Prima ignited her horn and levitated a dozen objects from under her jacket, sheets of glimmering metal twirling through the air around her head until they raced forward and stopped, hovering right in front of my face. I took a reflexive step back from the arc of razor-sharp levdaggers. They were the type that unicorns used; handle-less, with a rhomboid blade that featured two diametrically opposed points. Part knife, part throwing star, the Triton Bicorn levdaggers were enchanted for better manipulation with magic. Nowhere for an enemy to grip, since it was all blade; that made it difficult for their users to be disarmed in close quarters.

Prima advanced towards me menacingly, her daggers tracking me as we moved. “I would’ve gutted her. Slowly. First, you cut the tendons so they can’t escape. Then, you slice the throat so they can’t scream. Do you think the average pony could manage that, Sergeant? Could just any mare off the street manage to slit a defenseless satyr’s throat without hesitation? No. Of course not. They let their emotions control them. Oxytocin floods into their head and they revert to being a stupid, kowtowing, neurotic little herd animal. Our enemies don’t have that problem. When they look at us, they don’t see a person. They see meat. Any damarkind would eat your liver and chase it with a tankard of beer and not even think twice.”

“You know, if this were the fucking Army, I’d have the MPs arrest you for brandishing a weapon and threatening personnel on base,” I said.

Prima ignored me. “What do you suppose the first step to true strength is, Sergeant? Fraternizing with a disgraced Dragoon like Layer Cake, who was once considered for the rank of Grand Commodore—one of the youngest to ever attain it—until she failed her advancement test and then went off on a profanity-laced tirade in the Council Chamber?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to get in shape,” I said. “Keeps the hormones in balance, y’know.”

Prima’s unblinking stare fell upon me. “No, Sergeant. True strength comes when you put aside the loathsome weakness that comes with your equinity. Every impulse in your brain, screaming at you to run, to flee, to avoid becoming prey, you have to ignore them. You have to become an all-kicking, all-stabbing bundle of death. You have to become the subject of your enemy’s worst nightmares. It’s not how many weights you lift, or how much you practice on the firing range. It’s a state of mind. You have to see the same thing in our enemies that they see in us. You need to see them as something to carve into a dozen pieces. Can you do that? When the time comes, will you hesitate, Sergeant?”

“Hesitation isn’t a problem that I have.”

“Obviously not, or you wouldn’t have ordered the slaughter of dozens of CSF civilian support staff in Dodge,” Secunda piped up. “We’re still not sure if Garrida’s orders called for that kinda carnage, but you sure did impress a few ponies with that stunt. All the wrong kinds of ponies.”

“You’re a weird little liar, you know that?” Prima smirked. “A weird little screwball fuckhead who tells some tall tales. I’ve read the after-action report from the Pur Sang mission a dozen times, and I’ve looked over the data recorder from your armor, and I still don’t get it. How does a mare put defib probes on herself without assistance? You should’ve been unconscious.”

She was backing me into a corner. If she wanted to end me, she probably could’ve done it in a split-second. Even the new tricks that Cicatrice had taught me might not have been enough. The Body Seize could’ve put her down quick, if my control of the spell was good enough. I was far from having mastered it, however, and I didn’t know if she knew a counterspell.

“I didn’t pass out,” I said. “I have no clue why, either. I felt like shit, but I was completely lucid and awake the entire time my heart monitor showed I was having a heart attack. So, there you go. It wasn’t a lie. It was a fact. I defibrillated myself.”

Prima levitated over a holoprojector which flared to life and displayed an image of a strange, spherical object. It had innumerable pores all over it, seeming like a grotesque blend of biology and technology in a single device.

“What is this?” I said.

Prima gave me a blank stare. “Doctor Tincture relayed her findings to us. This was in your blood.”

My eyes slowly widened. “How many?”

“Thousands of them. Millions. They’re a few microns in size. It’s not part of any approved nanite regime, and it’s dissimilar to anything else in your nanite colony. We’re not even sure what it is or what it does, yet. That’s why we’ve been assigned to watch you, and watch you close. We aren’t sure if you can be trusted, Sergeant.”

“First of all, couldn’t this have waited until after the mission was over? I’m already under enough pressure as it is without thinking about what kind of unidentifiable nanotech might be crawling around under my skin. Secondly, Cicatrice seems to trust me enough to send me on his errands, so how about you trust his judgment and back the fuck off?”

Prima gave me a deadly look, but she didn’t say another word. She stowed her knives, did an about-face, and joined Secunda in the Centaur. I swallowed nervously, breathing a sigh of relief.

BASKAF had a secretive elite division of their own, numbering a few hundred in all. Operatives drawn from the ranks of commando units and trained to be the most lethal a pony could possibly be. Dragoons were a force of nature on the battlefield, but the SpecComSec were each a living, breathing nightmare made flesh. They had augs that none of us had ever even heard of, and many of the unicorns among them supposedly knew spells that were once thought extinct.

“Sorry about Prima,” Bellwether said. “She can be a little tetchy. Most SpecComSec are.”

“Don’t say tetchy, Bell,” I said. “That word is totally not you. You coming with?”

“No. I’ve got some business of my own to attend to.”

“How’s Sierra holding up? I didn’t get a chance to check in on her. She doing okay?”

Bellwether’s expression turned grim. “She’s not taking Crookneck’s death very well. It took everything the nurses had to restrain her. She was going to fire up Scofflaw and go on a suicide run, which would’ve been completely pointless because—aw, fuck it. You’ll figure it out.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Didn’t say a word. Oh, and don’t fuck up this Centaur! It’s the only one we’ve got in this configuration.”

The rest of my unit showed up right on cue. Private Haybale looked agitated. He remembered my behavior in Dodge. How emotional I got. How I flew off the handle. He wasn’t sure if he trusted me, yet. I could tell. I had to win him back. I had to play it cool.

Jury Rig was a dark blue pegasus colt with a cutie mark of a roll of duct tape and a can of oil. He was the youngest of us, perhaps in the whole cell. I grimaced with distaste at the idea of the resistance using child soldiers. He had to be in his teens. He was bright-eyed and eager, full of a strange, youthful cheer that seemed to contrast our dismal surroundings. Whether it was naïveté or indifference, I couldn’t tell.

Hexhead was a big, silver-coated unicorn mare with a mane and tail the dull hue of bare steel. With the exception of her stern magenta eyes, she had a look like somepony forgot to color her in. Bell had that look about him, too. So did Cicatrice. Actually, a lot of resistance members were monochromatic and with dour personalities to match.

Cloverleaf was a little tired from our strength training but was otherwise mostly chipper. Shooting Star had that typical feisty look about her like she was annoyed at the lack of things to shoot in her immediate vicinity. She eyed the cleomanni pair dangerously. I hoped I could keep her insatiable bloodlust in check.

Private Granthis and Private Armagais had their armor fitted to their bodies a little bit better than before after a visit to the armorers. They wielded flechette guns in addition to their casters and had spare mags held in load-bearing chest rigs that had been modified to keep the straps clear of their beamcaster emitters. They were as alert and as ready as they’d ever be.

“Looking much better, you two.” I nodded at the cleomanni pair. “You don’t want your gear to snag on shit. That’ll really ruin your day. I suppose we need a name.” I huffed. “We’re a unit that doesn’t officially exist. That calls for some undead theme naming, don’t you think?”

“Phantasm?” Mar helpfully offered.

“Wisp?” Clover said.

“Zombie. Demilich.” Shooting Star shrugged. “Fuck it, may as well try ‘em all, right?”

“I know,” I said. “Revenant. Team Revenant. That should do it.” I scanned their faces and noted a mixture of approval and trepidation. None of us were eager to become vengeful spirits anytime soon. “Prima and Secunda are here on temporary assignment. They’ll be Ghost One and Ghost Two. Time is short. We’ll discuss the rest of your assignments along the way.” I waved my hoof in the direction of the Centaur. “Squad, board the vehicle. We’re moving out!”

Me and my unit filed into the armored car. I boarded last, setting my helmet aside with a sigh as the ramp’s hydraulics whined and the vehicle was buttoned up. Secunda took the driver’s seat and Prima sat next to her, operating the 30mm RWS on the roof of the vehicle.

“Here goes nothing,” Secunda muttered.

The Centaur’s synfuel engine roared to life as we rolled out of the motor pool and headed for the lift that would take us out of the mine.

// … // … // … // … // … //

Granthis and I sat across from each other in the Centaur’s cramped bay, trying not to knock our heads on the fancy monitors and surveillance equipment that took up the center of the troop bay as the vehicle ran over bumps in the road. She eyed me silently, a knowing look on her face. I was thinking about what Cicatrice had told me about Salzaon, about his little hunch. I just knew that Mar’s father was using her as a pawn in his schemes, even now. And yet, I couldn’t tell her, or the tapestry would start to unravel. It wasn’t fair. She had a right to know. She was going to kick my ass when she found out, and by that point, I’d deserve it.

I’d taken to wearing the knife used to murder Hoodoo on my shoulder as a grim memento. Shooting Star’s pyrokinesis had ruined the heat treat on it, so I’d given it to the techs to repair and sharpen up. After re-annealing, re-normalizing, re-quenching, and re-tempering the blade, they finally delivered the finished result of that arduous work. I used my levitation to pull it out of its sheath and examine the blade in the dim light of the Centaur’s compartment.

It was a monster of a knife. The blade had to be almost thirty centimeters long, with a straight edge and a tapered point. The knife had a sub-hilt that was of no use to a species without fingers and a pommel with a lanyard hole. It also had a full tang and the grip scales were made from horn.

With the faint magic signature that exuded from it and the spiral grooves that they bore, there was no mistaking it. Each grip scale was clearly made from bleached unicorn horn. A gruesome trophy that had been fashioned into a weapon. My levitation clung to it wistfully, as if in remembrance of the nameless pony who’d been killed to make it. The knife was exceptionally responsive to magic. Ironically, that made it the perfect weapon for a unicorn to wield, a feature that the blade’s smith had likely never taken into account, having crafted it with body parts taken from my species with nothing more than decorative intentions.

Text and floral ornamentation had been engraved on both sides along the blade’s spine, as per my instructions. Akeo Sprenni Eiren Kator. Remember What They Stole.

I was the first to break the silence. “So, the yomgorin were the reason for the Concord’s collapse.”

“Still are,” Mar said. “They’re not actually called yomgorin; that’s an Ardunicization of the actual nemrin words, which, depending on dialect, are something like eo’maggrhin or yeomagrin. It means devourer. A fairly accurate descriptor. They spread like a virus. Every living thing they come in contact with, they infect and absorb. Plants, animals, people, everything.”

I cringed visibly. “Charming.”

“They’re still out there, you know. We run into pockets of them occasionally. Left over from the war thousands of years ago. Sometimes, a whole colony drops out of contact. Assimilated into a yomgor hive. That’s when the carpet-bombing begins. Thermobarics, usually. If that doesn’t work, the kinetics come out.” Mar held her fingertips a millimeter apart. “In the past hundred years, we’ve come this close to inadvertently letting them grow a bioskiff and hop worlds. Just our luck that most of the frontier colonies didn’t have enough sapient biomass for that to happen. If they reached a populated world, billions would die. If they so much as touch a biosphere, it’s ruined. It can take years—centuries, sometimes—before the infestation becomes apparent. The only way to fix it is to evacuate, nuke, scour, and re-terraform. Every last centimeter.”

I slowly shook my head. “Geez. The shit I learn every day. If they unleashed such horrors on the galaxy, why did the nemrin get a free pat on the ass while the Confederacy tried exterminating my kind? Isn’t that a little unfair?”

“Because they helped undo their mistake. I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

I stared at her unblinkingly. Complicated, she says. She doesn’t know what it’s like for her species to be bought and sold like commodities.

“So, how come I’ve never seen or heard of one of these devourer things before?” I eyed Mar with skepticism.

“You guys are on the wrong side of Confederate space, ma’am. Go out on the trailing frontier, out in the direction of Minchir. You’ll see some of the worst poverty imaginable, and more than a few things that go bump in the night.”

I let out a sigh. “No thanks. I’m good. Got plenty of shit on my plate right here.”

“Some call that region of space by the name Hydra, but that’s rather archaic. Sometimes, you hear rumors of the Makers out that way.”

My ears pricked up and my voice dropped to a whisper. “The Vargr?”

“No. Not Vargr. The Backlotters. Refugees from various armed conflicts over the centuries who banded together into a multi-species group of nomadic, rootless travelers.”

I grinned. “Private, you just said vagrant three times.”

“I know, right? Every now and then, you’ll hear whispers of weird cleomanni with short ears, no hooves, no tail, and no horns.” Mar gesticulated for emphasis, miming the lack of those features. “When we send people to investigate, there’s hardly a trace of them left, other than smoldering campfires, abandoned prefab structures, and the occasional discarded cigarette butt. They always leave behind a signature, however. A distinct genetic profile.”

“Humans,” I muttered. “The fucking boogeymen.”

“Pretty much. Good luck finding them. They don’t want to be found, either by us or the Vargr. They know better. They’ve prioritized their own survival above involvement in the rest of the galaxy’s affairs.”

“Cicatrice knows more than he’s telling us. A lot more. I can’t talk about it, but he’s shared some spicy intel.” I heaved a wearied sigh. “We’re going to cross paths with those Vargr assholes again, eventually. I’d much prefer it if things didn’t go like they did last time. That was fucking disgusting.”

Mar nodded. “The only tentacles I like are the ones in my Vostian Calamari, ma’am.”

“What’s the appeal of eating meat?” I said. “Don’t tell anyone this, Private, but I’ve tried it once. A long damn time ago, on a dare. Some kind of smoked fish? It was all greasy and gross.” I stuck my tongue out.

Mar leaned back and grinned, toothy and bestial, every bit the carnivore that she was. “It’s tasty. Don’t griffons eat meat? Pony rations suck. I’m getting really sick of instant oatmeal. When’s the Captain gonna cough up with some samples from her private stash?”

“Yeah, griffons had fisheries and stuff, but they didn’t keep sapient ungulates as livestock, obviously, unlike a certain other species I know.” I winked at a very uncomfortable-looking Mar.

The cleomanni woman scratched her chin, her brow knit in confusion. “Now that’s another thing that bugs me, ma’am. Before coming here, I had no idea that fucking deer could talk. Are ponies not the only sapient, hooved animals on this world?”

“There’s buffalo, sheep, cows, and plenty of others, too,” I said. “They just don’t have particularly high technology or civilization or anything like that. We kept them in reservations, pretty much.”

Mardissa smirked. “Well, I see there’s a dark side to your culture, too. What rationale would your kind have for not granting them citizenship?”

“They don’t have magic.” I shrugged. “You can’t really meaningfully participate in our society without some form of magic. Most of our advanced tech runs on it in some form or another. Griffons, minotaurs, and other species with advanced dexterity and institutional technical know-how are the exception.”

“What about the ponies without horns or wings? Earth ponies, right? Don’t they lack magic?”

“No. They’re strong, they make plants grow faster, and they have a natural affinity for the earth and for geology. They make excellent laborers, engineers, and sappers.”

“Weak,” Mar said. “You unicorns are the real scary fuckers. Nothing quite like watching a bunch of Gaffs stab themselves and each other to death ‘cause they went mad from being spelled. You never used any of your mind tricks on me, I hope.” Mardissa frowned.

“Not a single one.” I sighed. “Your mind is your own, Mar.”

“Good. I guess that settles that little conundrum, ma’am. So, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s it like?”

I eyed her warily. “What’s what like?”

“Ket told me. About your panic attacks. I was simply curious.”

My breath hitched in my throat. “Don’t talk about it. Thinking about it can set one off.”

“Really?” Mardissa frowned. “Is it really on a hair trigger like that?”

I reached into my saddlebags with a shaking hoof and popped out my pill bottles. “You see this? This one, right here, is the only thing holding up the bridge between me and sanity. And this other one? This is so I don’t turn into that fucking thing.”

Mardissa’s eyes slowly widened. “You’re infected?”

I drew in a long, slow breath, my chest growing tight with discomfort. “Yep. If this pill works, though, I won’t be.”

“That doesn’t—how?”

“Gene snipper. Don’t you cleomanni have pretty advanced genegineering skills? I’m surprised you’ve never heard of something like this.”

“Of course we do.” Mar waved a dismissive hand. “Like many of the guilds, Guild Marbo traces our lineage all the way back to the old consortiums of the Terran Concord. Thirty thousand of your years ago, MOREBO—one of the most powerful of the Makers’ corporations—was behind the big colonization push into the trailing expanse. Up until as recently as a few hundred years ago, we were still neck-deep in biotech and genegineering, but the guild has shuttered a lot of laboratories and opened more arms factories over the years. Business is booming, and the Army aren’t our only customers. Mercenaries and independent frontier worlds love our small arms, artillery, and aerospace products.”

I cocked a brow at her. “What the hell is a MOREBO?”

“It’s an acronym. Three ancient names; Monsanto, Remington, and Bosch. Agriculture, firearms, and tools. Everything one could conceivably need on the frontier.”

“Was there a point in that whole spiel, Private?”

Mardissa leaned in close. “My guild used to specialize in biotech, and I’ve never heard of a gene therapy pill that cures Gorblight. It’s incurable, to my knowledge.”

I began to sweat nervously, my heart racing. “Maybe this is something different. Maybe this is curable.”

“How can you be sure?”

The other occupants of the Centaur were giving us strange looks. Even with our hushed tones, I was afraid they’d hear something they weren’t supposed to. I signaled to Mar by jerking my head slightly towards the rest of them and scanning the crew compartment with my eyes. She got the hint immediately, responding with a quick nod.

“What’s first on the agenda, ma’am?” Corporal Shooting Star said.

“Quick stop in town. Somepony we need to talk to.”

I glanced out one of the Centaur’s viewports, just barely making out the outlines of Tar Pan’s mid-rise buildings silhouetted against a dark blue sky. This shitpit was one of the last free cities on the surface. A dark and dreary nest of old brick buildings and steel latticework holding up disused cranes and conveyors, polluted irreparably by decades of careless mining without any consideration over what to do with the tailings.

As we drove through town, the locals puttering around on the sidewalks regarded our conveyance with dark scowls. Nopony wanted us here. Harboring the Liberation Front meant trouble. It meant Confederate reprisals. These ponies wanted to live out what remained of their lives in relative peace. What they didn’t want was for a pack of armed and armored dimbulb mercenaries to rip through this place with a column of Ravagers, knocking down everything in sight with their windmilling dicks or whatever. I could sympathize.

“So, Corporal Cloverleaf, I’ve been meaning to ask you a question,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am?” The big green mare leaned forward in her seat so she could see around the pony sitting next to her.

“Where the hell do the ponies of Tar Pan get food? Electricity?”

“Same place the mine does.” Cloverleaf shrugged. “Sharecroppers run the hydroponics facilities, but the local oligarchs own ‘em. There’s a small fusion plant somewhere in town. There are also a few hydroelectric dams in the region that are still functional, kept running by a skeleton crew. It’s how the outlying farms get their irrigation water. They’re pretty self-sufficient out here. I should know. My dad used to live in these parts.”

I smiled. “Does he still live here?”

Cloverleaf shook her head, her eyes telling the whole story long before she opened her mouth. “Nope. He’s dead. Couple years ago. I was in his truck when we got stopped by a Confederate patrol. I was riding in the bed of the pickup, and there was a bunch of junk back there, and the Con-fed scum thought he was with the resistance and they straight-up shot him.” Cloverleaf shot a glare at Mardissa. “I hid under all that crap before they could spot me, but I heard everything that happened. They searched the vehicle afterward, but they didn’t search very well.”

It was hard for me to hold back tears. “That must’ve been very difficult, Corporal.”

“It was.” Clover focused all of her attention on Mardissa, next. “You know what they do to ponies out here, Imp? You know what fuckin’ dingoes do to us? Oh, I bet your daddy knows, Private Granthis. I bet he knows all about it.”

“Hey, ease off, Corporal,” I said. “She’s proven her loyalty to the cause.”

“Has she? Two satyrs walk into our lives, ma’am, and then the fucking president of all people shows up, and nopony sees anything suspicious about all this?”

Mar looked visibly hurt, her gaze fixed on the vehicle’s floor. It was clear that she wanted to fit in, but we were already off to a horrible start. Ket was completely ambivalent, as usual. He occupied himself by daydreaming and peering out a viewport and making it abundantly clear that he cared little for our bickering.

I narrowed my eyes at Clover. “Look, Corporal, I like you, so I’m going to break this to you gently. Most ponies, I’d tell them to shut their fucking yap and do as they’re told, but I’ll make an exception in this case. There are things going on here that you do not understand. Things that go beyond the war.”

“Like the thing from Pur Sang, ma’am? The thing everypony’s been talking about?”

My breath hitched in my throat. “What thing?”

“That weird wrecked alien ship nopony’s ever seen before. That thing.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh. That. Yeah, it was tough to bring down. One on its own, unsupported, was a major problem. If a few of those showed up in the middle of an actual battle, we’d have to withdraw at once.”

Cloverleaf frowned. “What about the stories from the survivors, of chromed up dimbulbs ripping through them like living buzzsaws? Fucking damarkinds are bad enough on their own. Now, those soulless Con-fed bastards are sending chromed damarkinds after us? Does their evil know no limits? What next? Dummykins with spiked metal cyberdicks that cum sulfuric acid?”

I grabbed Clover’s chest protector with a fetlock and dragged her close. “What did I fucking tell you, Corporal? There’ll be no more talk about what happened on that fucking mountain. None. Zero. Period. It’s fucking classified. You do it again, any of you, and I will personally slap your shit!”

Cloverleaf looked like she was on the verge of tears after I let go of her. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, I—”

“Corporal, we have enough shit to do without dwelling on the past. Ponies more capable than you and I are already on the job. Let Admiral Crusher’s people sort that shit out. Concentrate on the mission.”

Cloverleaf nodded meekly. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ket grinned like an idiot, chewing on an unlit cig and peering around at the vehicle’s interior. “Centaurs are pretty fuckin’ crazy, aye? I’ve read the specs. Twice as much power-to-weight ratio as they need, more fuel consumption than a Pursuer, and a much shorter maintenance interval. The Empress wasn’t much for pinching pennies, was she?”

“What’s a penny?” Jury Rig said.

“Fuck if I know.” Ket shrugged. “It’s just an old saying.”

“Quality hardware is an essential part of our doctrine,” I said. “Our stuff’s fast and tough and puts out gobs of firepower. We can pull off lightning raids no one else in the galaxy can manage. What’s not to like?”

“Yeah, you can.” Ket shook his head slowly. “By breaking the bank and putting your maintenance crews through literal torture. I can’t really picture what it’s like to undo an engine from its mount without fingers, but it doesn’t seem like it’d be a very pleasant experience.”

I scoffed at his naysaying. “They have robots for that.”

“Yeah? And who fixes the robots, ma’am?” Ket looked over at Hexhead. “I’m starting to get the feeling you poor bastards were sold a bill of goods. Am I wrong?”

Hexhead smirked lightly, since she had the emotional range of a brick and wasn’t the type to ever break into a full smile. “As somepony who’s spent all her life fixing broken government shit, from backup generators to toilets, you don’t know the half of it. If there’s one thing Equestria’s good at, it’s eating gold-dusted hayburgers and shitting gold-plated turds.”

“Hear, hear.” Haybale turned to Ket. “You know this bugger runs on synfuel, right? We take a bad hit, we’re all gonna burn to death. Seen it happen myself.”

“So how did a mechanic end up with the militia?” Mar said.

The big mare shifted a bit more upright in her seat so she could see Mardissa eye-to-eye. “They wanted me to fix Chargers. Fucking Chargers, of all the Celestia-cursed things. I said gimme a fucking caster and send me to the front.”

A cheer went up, either out of solidarity with her desire for simplicity, or out of a shared enmity for Chargers and their demands. Not an ideal attribute for a Charger support crew. Jury Rig was gazing at the seat next to me, his eyes shining like gemstones. He looked like a puppy dog eyeing a bag of treats.

“The fuck is it, Private?” I said.

“Is that a Juke thirteen-hundred?”

I looked down at the seat next to me, and sure enough. Lucky was sitting right there. I hadn’t recalled bringing the little bugger along, but he liked to show up out of nowhere, sometimes.

I beamed proudly. “It sure is, Private. Wanna take a look?”

I hoofed over the Orbit, and Jury Rig turned it over and over, utterly enraptured by it. “There’s a little trick with these things. Very few ponies know about it.”

He retrieved a tool set from his saddlebags, gripped some drivers in his wingtips, and went to work popping open the casing on my Orbit.

I blinked a few times, too shocked to act. “The fuck, Private? Did I say you could touch my shit?”

“Technically, you did,” Jury Rig said. “Just watch the master at work, ma’am.”

Everypony in the Centaur craned their necks over to take a look, watching with slack-jawed amazement as Jury Rig pulled a spare PF-27 from the rack, gutted it, and mounted the power module and gimbals in newly-opened recesses on my Orbit. He whipped out a soldering pen and a spool of solder. White smoke wafted from the Orbit’s logic board. The crew compartment smelled like lead, tin, and rosin. When he slapped the cover back on several minutes later, the caster’s radiator loop protruded through the top, and he adjusted the cover to make sure it fit perfectly.

“What do you think, Sarge?” Jury Rig hoofed Lucky back to me.

I turned my Orbit over, inspecting it. Lucky had a couple of brand-new additions to his face. Lethal ones. As I inspected them, the gimbals flicked from their parked position to active, the emitters facing forward. I reflexively ducked since I didn’t particularly like staring down the muzzles of a caster.

I could hardly believe my eyes. “Did you just arm my Orbit?”

“My uncle used to work for Juke.” Jury Rig scratched his head sheepishly. “There isn’t much difference between the Juke 1300 and the Juke MT-X. They’re the same thing, produced on the same assembly line, for ease of manufacturing. Strategic resources, and all that. No room for unnecessary luxuries like opening another line. You just gotta stuff the guts out of a PF-27 in it and solder it to the logic board, and then bridge a couple connections that are left unsoldered in the civilian version, and it basically converts from civilian to military in the blink of an eye.”

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. That looked so easy, I could’ve done it myself.”

“Anyone can, if they know the trick to it. The civilian version has no ballistic plating, but with the crystal all juiced up from the caster’s power pack, it should be faster than an MT-X and have a much longer run time between charges than before. You won’t wear out your horn keeping this baby aloft.”

“Well, shit!” I said. “Nice job, Private. See that? The little fucking kid was the only one of us so far who not only hasn’t bitched and complained two seconds out of the base, he showed he can carry his own weight. Follow his example, and you’ll go far.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I could see the silent, contemptuous stares that were starkly juxtaposed with Jury Rig’s idiotic grin. I feared I’d just painted a target on his back.

The Centaur ground to a halt and the ramp dropped with a hydraulic whine. With the exception of Prima, Secunda, and the cleomanni duo, who stayed behind to keep tabs on the vehicle, the rest of us filed out.

I gave my freshly armed Orbit a charge before booting it up. “Lucky, on me.”

The rain had started pouring hard in the past few minutes. The locals were too busy sheltering from the elements to pay us much heed. I visored my eyes with a hoof as I gazed up at the glowing neon sign of the Wild Mustang saloon. Secunda drove onward, pulling the vehicle into a side alley and out of view. Me, Hay, Hex, Rig, Clover, and Star moved up in a loose formation.

“Move in, keep it casual. Don’t flash any weapons. Keep your casters under your longcoats. Hold your fire unless shit goes south. We’re here to see a contact, got it?”

They nodded and fell into formation. I pushed open the old-timey saloon doors. There were at least a couple dozen patrons inside. They all turned and stared, like a bunch of meerkats. So much for subtlety. There was a stallion playing piano in the corner. His singing was a little off-key, but his playing wasn’t bad at all. He looked over his shoulder at us and did a double take, his emerald green eyes widening. He stopped playing immediately, rising to his hooves and striding over to us. I gasped a little in surprise as he emerged from the darkened corner of the saloon and into the light, promptly throwing his forelegs around me in a hug.

“Cuz! Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this! You’re alive? You’re alive! Bell didn’t say anything about this.”

I leaned back, mildly stunned. “Briarwood? You’re our contact? Really? Never would’ve guessed.”

He looked around at the ruckus he’d raised and how all eyes were upon our group, more than a few of them sharpening with resentment. Everypony knew who we were. With the bulk of our gear, it was obvious.

Briarwood shook his head. “Not here, Dez. Upstairs.”

The seven of us ascended the old, creaking wooden staircase to the upper floors of the saloon, stealing glances around us to make sure we weren’t about to be ambushed.

“Nobody calls me fuckin’ Dez anymore,” I muttered.

“Yeah, I can imagine. So, how’s your new lease on life?”

“Been better.”

“How so?”

“Hoodoo’s dead, Bry. And they took Windy, too.”

Briarwood looked over his shoulder, his concern evident on his face. “Really? Who took her?”

I shuddered a little at the recollection. “Who do you think? Fucking dimbulbs.”

“Shit. It’s always them, isn’t it? You got any leads on where they took your sis?”

“A name. Gormos Ralfas.”

Briarwood drew in a long, hissing breath through his teeth. “Oh fuck.”

“What? What is it?”

“Literally the sickest fucker in the galaxy.”

I set my jaw as a discomfited tingle ran down my spine. “Great. Fuck. You think she’s still alive?”

“Don’t count on it,” he said.

When we reached the upstairs room, the seven of us shuffled inside its wood-paneled confines. Me and Briarwood took seats opposite each other while the rest elected to stand.

“Clover, Star, guard the door.” I gave them a stern look. “Anyone comes knocking, I wanna know yesterday.”

The two of them nodded and took up positions outside, gently shutting the door behind them with a click.

I eased back into my seat, trying to get comfortable in the rickety wooden chair. “So, I don’t imagine Cicatrice had us meet up just for a little family reunion. My orders indicated that our contact here in Tar Pan would have intel for us. That’s you, apparently. So, what’s the word?”

“Okay, this is big.” Briarwood gesticulated for emphasis with his forehooves, his features grave. “We’ve caught wind of an enemy trafficking operation. They call themselves the Basement.”

I snickered, looking over my shoulder at the rest of the squad. “Well, that doesn’t sound shady, or anything.”

Everyone had a laugh at that. All except for one. Briarwood’s face may as well have been chiseled from stone, for all the expressiveness his countenance bore.

“They sell drugs,” he said. “And they sell ponies. To off-worlders.”

I looked up at him with what must’ve been eyes like hot coals, judging by the way he recoiled. “Oh, gee. Fancy that. Looks like more motherfuckers who’ve got to die. Who is it? Cleomanni? Fucking damarkinds?”

“Well, that’s just it.” Briarwood scratched his head. “It’s not aliens. Best as we can tell, it’s ponies selling ponies.”

I felt a pang of dread. “Oh fuck. Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Now you know the reason for this cloak and dagger shit. These fuckers have become a real problem. Hundreds of ponies have been trafficked by this particular group. Thing is, we don’t know who these ponies are. We have some leads, but that’s all we’ve had so far. Leads. Until recently, that is.”

“What happened?”

Briarwood smirked. “They got sloppy. One of their captives picked her cuffs and escaped.”

“Where is she now?” I said. “That’s who we need to speak to.”

“She’d gone batshit, Dez.” Briarwood shook his head. “She attacked a rebel patrol with her bare hooves like a madmare. The Liberation Front hauled her in for questioning a couple weeks ago. That’s how we found out she’d been kidnapped by the Basement.”

I winced. “Did she say anything useful?”

“Not at first. Took quite a lot of persuasion, I hear. Finally, they questioned her on a day where she was lucid and coherent enough to start making a little sense. These bastards have their hidey-hole hidden behind a network of dead drops. Anyone who wants to drop off slaves needs a Confederate GPS receiver, since all our own satellites are down. They’re given a coordinate, and they’re expected to arrive there at a precise time to collect a spike cache containing the coordinate for the next cache, and so on.”

“For what purpose?”

“Presumably, the Basement have spotters or snipers set up to keep an eye on each cache. If they don’t like what they see—y’know, like, if they have suspicious customers on the way—apparently, they start jamming GPS signals to keep them from locating the next cache. Every now and then, they reposition the drop-off point and distribute new caches. Not a very high-tech or complicated setup, but very paranoid.”

“Not paranoid enough,” I said. “Jammers can be located very easily with the right gear.”

“I assume that’s where you guys come in. I wasn’t given any specifics, but I’m sure you’ve been properly equipped for the task at hoof.”

“Was there anything else?

Briarwood hoofed over a small holocrystal drive. “Use your Orbit to play this, first chance you get. Top secret. Your eyes only. Show it to absolutely no one else. Don’t ask how I got this. Don’t tell anyone where you got it. Everypony who’s supposed to see it already has, and they’re not going to discuss it with you, either.”

I stuffed it in my saddlebag, letting out a stressed sigh. “You gonna be okay? I saw the way ponies were looking at you. If they think you’re with us, then—”

I heard a knock on the door. Two stiff raps. Trouble. I immediately stood and went for the door, my Orbit following along. I opened it cautiously and peeked outside. There were some rather unpleasant looking characters down the hall, advancing on me, Clover, and Star. There were five earth ponies surrounding one unicorn stallion who wore a tacky striped suit. A bunch of street toughs and their boss, by the looks of them. They were all armed with casters.

“Briarwood!” the unicorn shouted. “Come on out, you dumb cocksucker!”

Their leader fidgeted angrily as he slicked his mane back with pomade while holding up a hoof mirror, but try as he might, he couldn’t take care of that one last stick-up. Judging by his growls of dismay, it really ticked him off.

“What stereotype even is that?” I muttered under my breath. “Oh well, just one more prick who needs to die.”

Briarwood dragged me inside the room. “Dez, listen to me! Don’t kill him!”

“And why not?” I shrugged off his hoof, almost too pissed off for words. “No motherfucker talks about my family that way. I blow their fucking heads off.”

“He answers directly to one of the guys who run this town. And he’s one of my clients. Or used to be.”

“Client? You don’t mean—”

Briarwood blushed fiercely. “Yes, I do. If you kill him, I’m dead. Deader than dead.”

“Couldn’t you just go into hiding with the resistance?” I said.

“Oh yeah, sure! That sounds like a great life! Hiding in a fucking cave from the Confederacy. No thanks.”

“Relax, I’ll handle this shit,” I said. “And I’ll try not to kill, uhh—”

“Cookie.” Briarwood sighed. “Cookie Crumble.”

“Wow.” I scratched my chin with a hoof. “Does—does he have a nice cream filling, at least?”

Briarwood groaned. “Dez, really not the fucking time!”

“Relax, cousin.” I snickered. “I got this.”

I marched out in the hall and fearlessly strode up to the six ponies who’d unwisely chosen to antagonize us, clearing my throat. “Hey, Cookie Crumbs or whatever the fuck your name is. Let’s talk. I need to make a few things very clear to you.”

“I ain’t jawin’ with no ELF cunt,” he said. “You shouldn’t even fucking be here. That little bitch in the room behind you knows better than to say anything to you assholes. We’ve warned him before.”

“That ‘little bitch’ is a relative of mine who I haven’t seen in years. This wasn’t official business. Just a family reunion.”

“A family reunion with you, five militia packing heat, and a fucking tank?” Cookie Crumble narrowed his eyes. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Yes, I do think you’re stupid, because you can’t tell a tank apart from an armored car, apparently. Your mouth is writing checks that your ass cannot cash. Do you think this is all of us? I could have this place surrounded in a split-second. If we don’t walk out of here alive and unmolested, what makes you think you will?”

“But—”

I advanced on him, the toughs surrounding him stiffening with apprehension and lining their casters up with me. “But nothing. If you don’t fuck off this instant, I’m going to ram my hoof so far down your neck, they’ll need the jaws of life to get us apart again. Get the fuck out of my sight before I make you.”

Cookie Crumble was frightened enough by the odds to back down, but he was clearly angered by my tone. “Nopony talks to me that way, you despicable whore. I hope the little fag was worth it, because I’m gonna find some way to run you fuckers out of town. Come on, boys. Let’s go.”

Him and his goons moseyed out of sight, stealing vengeful glances over their shoulders. I let out a sigh of relief as the confrontation came to an abrupt end.

Corporal Star came up and patted me on the shoulder. “Wow, ma’am. Your subtlety knows no bounds.”

“Shut it.” I was so mad, I was shaking. “I wanted to kill that son of a bitch so badly, I could taste it. We have what we need. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” I clapped my forehooves together. “Briarwood, you’re coming with us. I’m not gonna leave and risk them coming back and fucking with you, got it? We go together. I ain’t letting any more family out my sight.”

“Oh shit, oh shit!” Briarwood whimpered.

He was clearly distressed and exasperated. Disasperated? Extressed?

“You’ll be fine.” Star grinned unsettlingly wide. “We don’t bite.”

Briarwood smirked. “Easy for you to say. I’m seein’ way too much estrogen here.”

“Plenty of test back at base if that’s what you’re after,” Hexhead muttered.

“Bellwether’s a fucking asshole,” Briarwood said. “He’ll be so pissed if I can’t snoop around for him anymore because of this shit.”

“I think the utility of spies in this city is running out fast.” I let out a sigh. “Shit’s about to go down. Can’t you feel it? How about you guys? You feeling it, yet?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hexhead said. “Locals are getting antsy. Con-fed closing in. It’s only a matter of time.”

“We’d better move,” I said. “Time’s a-wasting. On to the next objective.”

The seven of us filed out of the Wild Mustang saloon, my Orbit bobbling along through the air beside me. The Centaur pulled up and dropped the ramp, and we climbed inside. With as many of us as there were, things were getting a little cramped.

Briarwood’s jaw slackened a bit when he saw the cleomanni pair. “Wha—wha—fu—fuckin’ what?”

“We picked up a tourist?” Mar said. “Really?”

As the Centaur pulled away from the curb and picked up speed, I elected to introduce Bry. “Private Granthis, Briarwood, my cousin. Briarwood? Private Granthis.”

“Granthis?” he said. “As in the Granthis?”

“Yep, that’s me,” she said.

“How the fuck did this happen?” He threw his hooves in the air in defeat.

“To make a long story short, I showed her the way the world really works.” I shrugged. “I don’t think most people in the Confederacy even know what the hell is going on down here. It’s enough to shock anyone.”

“We’re not going all the way to Vanhoover, I hope.”

I shook my head. “No, Bry. We’re not. We’re dropping you off at our new digs.”

Secunda turned around and shouted back into the troop bay. “We picked up a tail, Sergeant!”

I peeked out the rear viewport, and sure enough. Twin lights like a pair of accusatory eyes in the dark. We were being followed.

“Probably friends of that asshole back at the saloon.” I said. “We gotta shake ‘em. Punch it.”

Secunda stepped on the accelerator and the V12 roared in response, the electric motors on the front axles rising to a shrill whine. The headlights of our pursuers receded into the distance. I turned and opened my mouth to say something, but as we crossed the intersection, time seemed to slow as light filled the troop bay of the Centaur through the side viewports. With catlike reflexes honed from years of piloting Chargers, I had just enough time to dive out of my seat and tackle Briarwood to the floor, shielding his screaming form with my body.

The armored city bus struck the Centaur broadside, sending us careening into a brick building. The APC’s nose rammed through the outer wall of the structure, half-burying us in rubble. When I slowly stood, I was dazed and half-concussed, my ears ringing. The troop bay was filled with groans of pain. When I looked towards the nose of the vehicle, Prima was slumped to one side in her seat, her head dripping blood.

“Move, move, move!” I shouted. “Back us out, now! Squad, weapons free! Everyone on the fucking guns!”

I muscled up to the front of the vehicle as Secunda slammed us in reverse, the facade of the structure collapsing as we withdrew. I avoided moving Prima in case her spine was injured, crawling over her immobile form and seizing the control yoke for the Centaur’s RWS in my hooves. I swung the thirty-millimeter autocannon around, sighting in our attackers. The enemy contact was an ugly, jagged thing, all barbed wire, belt-fed machine guns, and corrugated siding welded onto a converted transit bus. Some real shadetree mechanic work.

Before I could squeeze one off, a yellow magic glow levitated a car into my line of fire, blocking the bus from view. I swore vociferously. They had a unicorn, one very skilled at levitation. The car would’ve pre-detonated the rounds, rendering them less than useful. I growled with frustration as I flicked the lever for the smart-feed system, switching from high-explosive to semi armor-piercing high-explosive incendiary rounds and listening for the action to cycle. When the bounding box appeared around the target and the arming light winked on, I pulled the triggers on the yoke and let a few rounds fly.

The Centaur shook as the autocannon thumped away. The 30mm SAPHEI projectiles punched holes in the roof of the old sedan, quickly igniting the upholstery and the gas tank and engulfing the armored bus’s floating shield in a raging fireball. The enemy vehicle reversed directly away from us, trying to hide behind the conflagration and reduce their visual profile. The rest of my unit, having shaken off the grogginess from the crash, quickly took up positions at the medium beamcaster stations, sighting in several targets closing in on us from all sides. Angry columns of green caster fire lanced out from the sides of the Centaur, suppressing the maniacs who charged at us, heedless of their own safety.

“Who the fuck are these ponies?” Mar had to shout to be heard over the din of caster fire, her weapon tucked into her shoulder as she stood in a half-crouch.

“Vandals!” Hexhead said. “Riggers, looks like. The Everfree gangs are all cannibal bastards. Show no mercy!”

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Ket muttered. “People-eating ponies?”

“Why are they so far from Everfree City?” Cloverleaf peeked through one of the viewports.

I switched from firing at the armored bus to aiding in the suppression of the foot-mobiles, turning more than a few of the vandals into sprays of gore with direct hits. I switched to IR and the hostiles were lit up as bright white silhouettes. Many of them were armed with chainsaws, concrete saws, and other improvised weapons. One of them cocked his foreleg back to lob a flaming synfuel bottle, and I was a split-second too late to cave the stallion’s chest in with a 30mm projo. The firebomb left his hoof and arced through the air, growing in my field of vision until it landed on the roof of the Centaur, engulfing the RWS in flames.

“Fuck! Fuck!” I wiped the sweat off my brow.

A couple of vandals clambered onto the hood of the Centaur. Secunda yanked on the hoofcups and pulled us into a J-turn to try and throw them off, our tires squealing as we spun hard. One of them slid off the hood, his makeshift hazard-yellow armor composed of industrial bits and baubles clanking as he rolled across the pavement. The other screamed a battle cry as he brought his gas-powered pavement saw down, sparks flying as he drove the ad-hoc weapon into the roof of our vehicle with all of his strength.

“This crazy’ fucker’s trying to cut his way inside!” I yelled.

Prima stirred beneath me as she regained consciousness. In the process of getting on the gun, I’d ended up hunched over on the edge of the seat, sitting in her lap like a foal. The awkwardness of our close contact had only just made itself apparent. I turned and looked back at her. She was seeing red.

“Sergeant. What. The. Hell?”

“Vandals, lots of ‘em! They’re all over us!”

As the cutting wheel pierced our roof, showering us with sparks and rainwater, Prima’s muzzle warped into a hateful scowl, punctuated by the angry red streak of blood tracing its way down the middle of her face. Without a word, she ignited her horn and teleported right out from underneath me, leaving me scrambling to steady myself. Something in the corner of my vision caught my eye. There was a dent in the edge of the Centaur’s heavy-gauge metal dashboard. A dent that happened to be shaped exactly like a pony’s forehead. I reached out and touched it with a hoof, quickly finding my frog coated with specks of what was presumably Prima’s blood.

“Holy fuck.”

Through the remote weapon station’s gun sight, framed in flickering flames, I saw Prima pop into existence in a flash of green magic and wrap her foreleg around the Rigger’s muzzle, drawing his head up and away to expose the soft flesh of his neck. He let go of the pavement saw, leaving it embedded in the Centaur’s roof as he pawed defensively at his throat. As her opponent struggled in her anaconda-like grip, one of Prima’s levdaggers zipped out from under her longcoat, quickly joined by a second and a third. The three blades rhythmically pumped into the Rigger’s neck, coating his chest in a spray of arterial blood. With a savage cry, the SpecComSec agent threw her opponent from the roof of the moving Centaur, her balance unaffected by the vehicle’s motion.

Without even looking inside the vehicle, Prima teleported a fire extinguisher from the Centaur’s interior, hefting it in her levitation and spraying down the roof of the vehicle with a blast of halon. The flames guttered out and I regained an unobstructed field of view. Prima flinched as she took a round to her armor from a unicorn on a street corner hefting a belt-fed machine gun. She quickly sighted in the offender and sent three of her daggers sailing towards his head. As he leapt out of the way and rolled to his hooves, the guided levdaggers curved through the air and struck him in the spine, where his armor was the thinnest. Paralyzed from the waist down, the vandal screamed in fury as he abandoned his weapon and dragged his front half across the pavement with his forelegs. Prima teleported above and behind him, pumping her blades into the back of his neck and swiftly decapitating him.

A pair of ambushers appeared on the roof of a nearby building, taking aim with rocket launchers at Prima’s position. With the IR on the RWS, I was able to detect and engage them before they became a problem. I pulled the triggers and the 30mm thumped and sent more explosive projectiles downrange, blasting away the roofline of the structure. The vandals scrambled back, injured by fragments of flying masonry. They would not soon repeat that mistake.

Prima teleported atop the Riggers’ armored bus, pulled four grenades out from under her longcoat with her levitation, pulled the pins, and then teleported the grenades inside with a flash of magic. She dismounted the bus with a backflip, landing gracefully on the street and crouching low, pressing herself flat against the pavement. The grenades went off seconds later with a bright orange flash that blew out all of the bus’s windows, shredding its interior with frag. Prima promptly teleported inside the ruined vehicle and presumably went about the sordid business of using her daggers to dispatch every vandal inside it who was still alive.

“Fuck me.” I looked over my shoulder. “Are you guys seeing what I’m seeing?”

Mar’s wide eyes were fixed on one of the Centaur’s viewports as she took in the carnage that Prima had wrought. “How could a species so cute be so fucking terrifying?”

Another wave of Riggers moved in on the downed bus. A whole swarm of them. An angry yellow mob of hollering earth ponies, hefting chainsaws. A couple of them towed chariots with belt-fed machine guns that peppered the bus with sheets of staccato fire. When the incoming rounds slackened, Prima got on one of the bus’s own machine guns and opened fire on the mob, but there were too many of them. Her rounds pinged uselessly off their heavy body armor, only felling a couple of them when they found chinks near their necks or their joints.

“Shit. Prima’s in trouble. Private Armagais, you take the gun!” I muscled out of my seat and into the crew compartment. “Squad, disembark!”

Longcoats were shed, and with them, any pretense of discretion. Ket slipped past me on his way to the front of the vehicle as he moved to trade places with me. The Centaur came to a screeching halt, the ramp dropped, and hell poured from within its bowels, me and my Orbit in tow.

I cast my hoof out at the hostiles. “Contact, dead ahead, one hundred meters! Squad, engage!”

Mardissa’s flechette gun rattled away as she opened fire on the vandals, soon joined by a swarm of green beamcaster fire. We slowly moved up the street in a loose formation, pouring forth an unending stream of walking fire while we still had the upper hoof. The rain seemed to let up at that point, as if the skies themselves feared our charge.

“Lucky, fuck ‘em up!” I yelled.

My Orbit carved through the enemy formation like a scythe, methodically sweeping deadly arcs of beamcaster fire over them. It wasn’t the way a pony would use it, focusing on one target at a time. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Left, right, left, right. It looked like a little ol’ lady casually watering her flowers with a garden hose. It was like a 3D printer that printed death.

Corporal Shooting Star was very precise with her caster, landing one shot to the vitals after another. The enemy’s equine wave attack was blunted by our surprise counter-offensive. The survivors got wise, turning their attention from the bus to me and my squad. Supersonic snaps of machine gun fire rang in my ears and I reflexively ducked.

I had to react before the tide turned against us. “Revenant Two, take Four and Seven and move up on the left. Revenant Three, you and the rest are on me. Go!”

Corporal Star, Private Haybale, and Private Granthis crossed the street and took the left flank as ordered, while Corporal Cloverleaf and the remainder stayed with me. We moved up the street in a bounding overwatch, one half of the squad laying down covering fire for the other as we advanced. The Centaur slowly shadowed us, letting off a few explosive rounds every now and then to keep the enemy thoroughly pinned. I caught a flicker of movement to my left. Hostiles moving along the roofline. Another ambush. The vandals revved their chainsaws as they leapt from the roof and landed on the awning over the bus stop, right next to Star and the others.

“Mar!” I shouted across the street. “Above you!”

With surprising quickness and discipline, Mardissa turned, aimed high and engaged the first attacker with a few well-placed shots. At close range, the effect of the sintered metal flechettes was devastating. The vandal’s head burst like a melon, showering the roof of the bus stop with blood and brains. The bolt on Mar’s weapon locked open as her magazine ran dry, and there was still one ambusher left. The maddened earth pony stallion leapt from the awning of the bus stop, revving the chainsaw he held in his mouth for a downward slash as he fell. Shooting Star turned around, a shocked expression on her face as her eyes traced upward, following the two-stroke roar. Haybale leapt back with surprise. It all happened so quickly.

Mardissa parried the enemy’s swing with her flechette gun, slapping her weapon into the chainsaw’s bar as she rolled away from the blow and slipped behind her attacker. She snaked a finger into one of the pull-rings for her caster and unleashed a volley right into the back of his head. The vandal’s braincase was reduced to a steaming heap of cooked flesh. He stumbled forward a few paces, his eyes wide and expressionless, before he collapsed face-first on the sidewalk in a mess of death spasms.

Mar gave a quick thumbs-up and swapped mags, continuing to advance. The incoming fire began to slacken. Most of the main wave was dead or fleeing for their lives.

“Squad, regroup and form on me,” I said.

We moved up on the bus. The thing had all kinds of odds and ends welded or lashed to it. A hellacious mishmash of road signs, I-beams, cut up tires, and all sorts of ad-hoc armor. The doors were heavily damaged and bulging outward because of Prima’s grenades. I wrapped them in the orange glow of my levitation and tried wrenching them open, but they were jammed tight. Trying to apply a torque to an object with levitation was more difficult than lifting by far. I pulled out the locus pendant that Cicatrice had given me, retrieving some of the stored energies inside and lacing them into my spells. My old, congealed anger augmented the force of my levitation, tinging my magic red. The sliding doors tore open with a screech of metal on metal. Prima was lying on her back on the floor of the bus, her breathing shallow.

“Shit. Ghost One, report! Are you injured?” When I got closer, I could plainly see the small bullet hole in her neck, right above the line of her chest protector. It wasn’t bleeding very much, however, and there were strange, raised grayish fibers underneath. “The fuck?”

“I’m fine,” Prima said. “Took a bad hit. Subdermal armor stopped it. Just taking a breather. Really fucking hurts. Got any morphine?”

“Nope, but I’ve got some fent.” I hoofed over a Confederate snail dispenser.

“It’ll do.” She popped one of the sublingual tablets out and placed it under her tongue with a long, painful sigh before she returned the dispenser. “You’re gonna have to help me walk, Sergeant.”

Prima hissed in pain when I dragged her up to her hooves and rested her right foreleg over my withers, acting as a crutch for her. As we left the destroyed bus, I saw Mardissa and Prima share a knowing look; an unspoken rapport between the two killer cyborgs. They lived in a different world from the rest of us. I felt an itch under the plate on my back, silently praying that I didn’t end up like them. I liked my equinity right where it was.

The Centaur dropped its ramp and me and my squad hurriedly boarded the vehicle, with Mar covering us until she was the last one to jump in. I gingerly set Prima down on the floor, checking her over. I grabbed the medic bag and applied some disinfectant and a dressing, but it didn’t look like she needed it. She wasn’t even bleeding at all.

Prima grinned. “Jealous?”

“Hardly,” I said. “I already have plenty enough metal in me, thank you very much.” I put a hoof next to my muzzle to amplify my voice so our driver could hear. “Ghost Two, we are withdrawing from the area, right the fuck now. Mission’s on hold until further notice. Get us back to base, pronto.”

Briarwood was jumpy as hell, hyperventilating as he peered out the viewports. “Oh my fuck, cuz! Oh fuck. You just killed those ponies!”

“Them or us, Bry.”

After a few minutes spent at full throttle, with Secunda peering through her mirrors every now and then to keep an eye out for more hostiles, we arrived back at base without further incident. We hurtled through the checkpoint the militia had set up at the entrance to the mine, descending into the tunnel network. We came to a halt fifteen meters away from a gaggle of gawking ponies. As we exited the vehicle, Bellwether came waltzing up to us, a smug look on his face as he surveyed the damage to the Centaur. The thing still had a small pile of bricks sitting on the hood and a hole in the roof from where a vandal had literally tried sawing through it.

Bellwether let out a low whistle. “Wow, great job. Fuck Up Our Only Signals Wagon, speedrun, any percent.”

I shook my head. “Vandals. In town. Lots of them. There may be some heading this way.”

Bellwether frowned. “Fuck. Really? This complicates things. The fuck did you guys do?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Nothing, as far as I know. You don’t think the locals would call in vandals to give us trouble, do you?”

“Not likely. They hate the pony-eaters as much as we do. Usually. Stand by for further instructions, Sergeant. I’ll get a repair crew up here to look over the Centaur and see what needs patching up. Maybe you lucked out. Maybe the surveillance equipment is still mostly intact.”

I rubbed my head sheepishly, my eyes darting around. “Knock on wood.”

As Bellwether left to summon the technicians and a few squads of sentries scrambled to defend the mine entrance from any incursions, some nervous-looking militia members led an earth pony mare past me, deeper into the mine, her hooves in cuffs. It was the prisoner with the stringy white mane who I’d seen in the brig at Camp Crazy Horse. Our eyes made contact as she approached. She let out a low, mad chuckle as she snaked her neck towards me, whispering in my ear as she passed.

Her voice was as soft as velvet when she spoke. “Ndras Thuax.”

I froze in place, my eyes widening in shock as I stared straight ahead. “What?” I turned around and marched up to her, grabbing her withers and turning her to face me. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

One of the militia stallions was agitated that I’d accosted their prisoner. “Hey!”

I waved him off. “I need some answers, right now. Where did you hear those words?”

“You mean you still don’t understand?” The mare smiled creepily, her eyes glassy and psychotic and devoid of anything that could even remotely be called a soul. “We are but divers in the world of flesh. Sooner or later, we all come up for air, one last time. And when we do, he and his mighty host await us.”

This mare had been touched by them, somehow. I could just feel it. There was an overwhelming aura of wrongness that radiated from her, and it made me sick to my stomach. Most ponies—most people—had an intangible quality, a je ne sais quoi, a presence that one could feel. This mare had nothing. It was like I had been confronted by a walking, talking corpse. It was as if a volume of what felt like empty space inexplicably had a pony centered in it.

“Who the hell are you?” I said.

Her lips split in an unsettling grin. “There is no escape. There is no way out of this rotten world, this entropic prison. You have to shed your body, and with it, all of your lingering attachments. Only then will you be free. Or you would be, if you weren’t already someone’s property.” The crazed mare reached under me and touched her hoof to the invisible stigma on my abdomen. “Eu scandlei. Feska sendes wroe, ia feska sendes bidue!”

How fitting. A slave in life, and a slave in death!

I decked her, lashing out with a hoof to her muzzle. As she fell, I kept raining blows on her, my rage beyond my ability to control. Even as I bloodied her muzzle, she just kept laughing the entire time. The militia stallions quickly moved to restrain me before I could do her any serious harm, wrapping their forelegs around me and dragging me off of her while I did my best to try and brain her with my hooves.

“Let go of me!” I yelled. “She’s dangerous! She’s a threat to everyone here!”

While the stallions let go of me and quickly escorted the still-cackling prisoner beyond my reach, Cicatrice chose that moment to rear his ugly mug, stepping forth from the shadows and into the light, his midnight-black caparison draped around his legs.

“What’s going on, here?” he said. “Having another of your fits, Sergeant?”

“That prisoner, she’s—”

“A recipient of the Archons’ Kiss? No.” Cicatrice shook his head. “This is something different entirely. While I understand your trepidation and your aggressive reaction to her presence, she is a valuable article of study and I’d rather you not damage her. Rest assured, we have her under control.”

“You didn’t tell me about the Yomgorin,” I said. “The Devourers.”

Cicatrice scowled. “Where did you hear about that?” His expression softened. “Oh. Mardissa. Of course.”

To say I was crestfallen would be an understatement. This was something that had significant ramifications for all ponykind, and it had been omitted from the curriculum entirely. Another censored topic.

“What the fuck? Why weren’t we told? These fucking things are crawling all over a whole region of space, and we’ve never even heard of them?”

“That’s quite deliberate,” Cicatrice said. “Devourers are an O-11 topic. PSWD. Prevention of Species-Wide Demoralization. Expressly forbidden from academic or journalistic dissemination. There used to be BASKAF Anima agents on the datasphere that would sever or scramble public nodes that even made mention of the topic. Even in the Confederacy, only the wealthy families and those most directly affected by Devourer infestations even know much about it. The rest of the public is fed a cover story about people coming back from the colonies needing to be quarantined and tested for diseases. Sergeant, how much did Mardissa tell you?”

“She said they consumed living things, somehow.” I scratched my head. “I don’t know.”

Cicatrice sighed. “The Devourers are ancient constructs both of advanced genegineering and incredibly twisted void magic. If one was standing in front of you right now, it would not hesitate to slit your belly, crawl inside you, and puppeteer you from the inside out. How do you think most ponies would react if they knew those things were out there? Isn’t the Confederacy bad enough as it is?”

I winced, bowing my head in defeat. “Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’. This isn’t a game, Storm. Billions of lives are at stake, here. There are compartmentalized operations happening right now that you will never know about.”

I raised a brow. “How many?”

Cicatrice shook his head. “I can’t even tell you the number. All I can tell you is what our enemies already know. Archon-worshipers have infiltrated Confederate Military Intelligence. We are in contact with a friendly splinter faction. The good guys are losing. They need our help. If the cultists win, well, you’ve met an Archon yourself. What do you think?”

“Not good. Unbelievably bad, in fact.” I looked over my shoulder at the way the prisoner had gone, before jerking my hoof in that direction and lowering my voice to a half-whisper. “So, who the hell is she?”

“She won’t tell us. Her cutie mark and DNA profile don’t show up in any of our databases, either. We rescued her from the Basement. Or to be more precise, she attacked one of our patrols while foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog, and then later admitted to escaping from their grasp after she’d regained some measure of lucidity.”

“Oh. So that’s the one Briarwood was talking about.”

“Yes. That’s the one. Run along now, Sergeant. You have a mission to carry out.”

“What about the vandals? We just gonna let them take over Tar Pan without a fight?”

“We have others working the problem right now. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. Your mission takes priority. Carry out your orders as instructed. Quickly. We’re running out of time.” Cicatrice turned to leave, facing his back to me.

“You know more.” My voice was low and dark. “You know more, and you’re not telling me.”

The Magister turned to face me, his glare threatening as he advanced on me. “You’re not ready to hear it. No one here is. If you did, you would lose the will to go on living, much less fight. I’ve only relinquished as much as I have because you, Sergeant, are to be groomed into my own personal instrument. The scythe with which I shall reap. You know the threat we face. You know what’s at stake. You already walk on the razor’s edge between sanity and madness. You would be of no use to me if you were demoralized any further. Do not ask questions of me that you are not prepared to hear the answer to, is that clear?”

Cicatrice’s muzzle practically touched my own. I stumbled back and collapsed to my haunches, staring numbly at the floor of the mine. “Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

As Cicatrice slipped into the darkness of the mine and disappeared, I ruminated on his and Mardissa’s words. The world in which I lived grew more unpleasant by the day. It made my skin crawl, thinking about the Archons and the nemrin cultists who had furnished them with bodies. I’d never even heard of the Devourers in all the time I’d been alive. More state secrets. More skullduggery. More hideous truths that had been kept from the public’s awareness so they remained comfortably numb instead of a panicked mess.

A Lesser Archon on its own was a mortal threat, capable of slaying a Dragoon in the blink of an eye. To think, at one time, an army of things like that had roamed the galaxy. Mardissa had casually tossed around words like ‘biomass’, as if sapient beings were merely a resource to these creatures. Images of vile parasitism accompanied by screams and sprays of blood formed in my mind. Absorption. Replication. An orgy of scabrous and twisted flesh.

I silently prayed to Celestia that I’d never meet such a fate.

While the technicians gave the Centaur a once-over, I slipped away from my unit with my Orbit and found a dark, unoccupied corner of the mine. I glanced around a little to make sure nopony was headed this way. Satisfied that I was alone, I took the holocrystal that Briarwood had given me and slotted it into my Orbit’s drive.

“Lucky, playback mode, directional audio on me. Let’s see what’s on this sucker.”

My Orbit featured a directional speaker for private listening, one of the Juke 1300’s nicer features. The holoprojected image was grainy at first, slowly resolving into clear video footage. I saw the panicked face of a helmeted stallion, scanning the terrain around himself nervously, panting, out of breath. The camera turned away from his face and slowly peered out of an alleyway and around a corner. I recognized the street. Onager Avenue, in Baltimare. I’d moseyed down this way after screwing the pooch in a job interview, once.

“Look,” he whispered. “There they are. Son of a bitch.”

What I saw next made me gasp in shock. Hovertanks. Vargr troops. Humans. Not just a few of them, either. Dozens of them marched in neat rows, accompanied by sleek and deadly-looking wedge-shaped armored vehicles that glided over the pavement, as predatory and sinister as everything else I’d seen of their arsenal. There was a break in the convoy, and it soon became clear what they were escorting.

I had to cover my muzzle to avoid audibly yelping in terror. Three Lesser Archons of Thuax slithered across the camera’s field of view, their tentacles whipping every which way. Three avatars of pure evil. Each of them was visually identical. Any one of them could have been the Seneschal. The stallion rolling footage was clearly frightened by their appearance in broad daylight, if the shaking of the camera was any indication. One of the Archons stopped, slowly turning towards the stallion’s hiding place.

The camera immediately pulled a one-eighty as he turned tail and ran deeper into the alleyway. “Oh shit, oh fuck!”

His panting soon gave way to anguished cries as positron beam weaponry practically demolished the walls of the alley around him. With seconds to spare, he managed to hurl his camera into a dumpster, plunging the video feed into darkness. They must have caught up to him soon after, if the screams on the recording were any indication.

“Haiksunta es broetheri!” one of the humans barked. “Kille sza froektaygr!”

Broetheri. Cicatrice had told me what it meant. Breather. Or, more literally, one who wastes a ship’s oxygen. It was what they called lesser species. I could hear the stallion begging for his life, shrieking as they descended on him. Though his exact fate was uncertain, whatever it was, his cries of agony were mercifully cut short.

If the timestamps were any indication, a few hours of blank footage had been clipped out of the video. A few seconds later, an earth pony militia mare retrieved the still-rolling camera from the dumpster, obviously following a datasphere location tag. She turned the camera to face herself. She looked haggard, her mane dangling in her bloodshot eyes.

“This is Sergeant Caltrop, of the Horseshoe Bay cell of the Liberation Front. We are under attack by unidentified hostiles. These bastards came out of nowhere and we’re sustaining heavy casualties. They’re slaughtering us. They have a weapon—something we’ve never—” Her whole body tensed. She dry-heaved a little. “Oh Celestia. Oh no. Not me. Please, no!”

Something was crawling underneath her skin, hollowing out her cheek. There was a wet sloughing noise and a chunk of her muzzle fell off, revealing the rows of her teeth and a dark gray slurry underneath. She let out a bloodcurdling scream, touching her exposed jaw, only for her hoof to start dissolving, too.

“No! By the Martyred Maiden, no!”

Her final action was to wirelessly send a copy of the video through the local datasphere and back to her commanders. The video froze on a still-frame of her ruined, terrified face. The playback ended there and Lucky’s holoprojector went into sleep mode.

I caught myself hyperventilating as I fumbled with my pill bottles, whimpering softly.

First, the sertraline. Then, the gene snipper.

// … // … // … // … // … //

A few hours later, the Centaur was patched up and ready to go. None of the surveillance equipment was seriously damaged in the crash, except for one oscilloscope with cracked display glass. The techs had it swapped out and all the equipment re-tested in a matter of minutes.

We were on the road again. I’d left Briarwood behind at the base. He wasn’t particularly keen on coming with, and I wasn’t keen on risking his life, either. I’d lost enough family already. Prima was fine. Blunt contusion only, no broken bones. They’d extracted the crushed bullet and patched up her subdermal armor with a special titanium filler, slapped a dressing on it, gave her some painkillers to chug, and sent her on her merry way to rejoin my unit. I elected to ride my Stampeder 650 instead of sitting in the Centaur, with Lucky strapped to my back and my saddlebags full of my gear at my sides. I needed time alone to think.

Three Archons. There were at least three of those disgusting things on this planet. Maybe more. Not to mention, the Vargr weren’t just skulking around anymore. There was an active front in the war against them. They’d set up shop in Baltimare. They had something that turned ponies into goo from the inside out. I felt deeply nauseous in the pit of my stomach. The dark cloud hanging over my head was big enough at this point that I manifested physical symptoms. Headaches, mostly. Dulled senses and slight forgetfulness, too. I had to make paper lists or have Lucky give me reminders. I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t handle it. I had to take the edge off somehow. After this mission was over, I was going to buy us all a round of drinks. Fuck drug interactions. I didn’t care at this point. I needed to be numb.

The Centaur followed relatively close behind. I looked over my shoulder and scanned the skyline. Tracer rounds and caster beams laced the sky over Tar Pan, punctuated by the crackle of far-off gunfire. The Oligarchs and the Vandals were having it out. We were situated way off to the northwest of Everfree City, and there were a fair number of townships and small villages in-between. They’d come all the way out here for a reason, and I was probably going to find out why, sooner or later.

We veered off onto the highway out of town, slaloming around abandoned cars as we went. The plains gave way to coniferous forests, the rumble of my bike’s engine echoing through the trees. Soon, the ruins of Vanhoover loomed on the horizon. There was a fine mist in the cold, moist air. Not quite a true rainfall.

I eased up on the throttle and pulled alongside the Centaur. Some technician had stenciled the word Blockbuster on the side of the vehicle’s nose, as well as a surprisingly detailed airbrushed rendition of a brick.

I shook my head in disbelief at the audacity of it. “Cheeky fuckers.”

We pulled into an abandoned gas station that had been marked as a rally point in the operation plan. I dropped the kickstand and shut off the motor. My squad disembarked and we camouflaged the Centaur and my bike under a tarp. I used my magic to levitate bits of vegetation to cover them up with. We were to hold here and wait for no more than twenty-four hours before proceeding with the next phase of the mission.

We took stock of the interior of the synfuel station’s convenience store. A fine dust hung in the air, pierced by our flashlight beams. The place’s windows were smashed and the shelves were empty. Everything had been looted years ago. We set up camp in the back. I assigned two members of the team to guard the entrances in shifts. Those who weren’t on the perimeter amused themselves by sitting around, playing card games and telling each other their best war stories.

I was startled from my reverie by the sound of a honking car horn. While the rest stood by, their weapons at the ready, me, Ket, and Hexhead joined Corporal Star at the front of the store, peering through the windows at the interloper. An absolutely filthy sedan was stopped on the street outside. The vehicle had a few pieces of steel flat bar screwed into the body over the rear side windows. The thing looked like it was held together with more duct tape than actual fasteners. A cream-colored pegasus stallion with a bandanna of the old Kingdom of Equestria’s flag on his head was sitting in the driver’s seat, smoking a cigarette. In fact, he had several more lit cigarettes held in each of his feathers on one outstretched wing.

When he spoke, he yelled in our general direction with a voice like churned gravel. “Fillyrapers! Ya’ fuckin’ fillyrapers!”

After issuing forth a few more incoherent grunts of meth-addled rage, he put his ramshackle conveyance into gear and sped off.

“The fuck was that?” I muttered.

Ket smiled, puffing on his own cig. “My kinda guy.”

It would be another three hours before our next customer arrived, one much more threatening than the last. A quadruped battlesuit of some type galloped out of the mist; a headless horse with one glowing offset eye embedded in its torso. I was on guard duty this time, and I tensed up at the sight of it. The thing reared up onto its hind legs, its forelegs hanging down at its sides like a biped. Its forehooves split and retracted to form gauntleted hands. A rotating weapon carriage on its back spat an automatic cannon into its manipulators and it strode several steps closer, its transducers whining, an electro-optical turret on its roof scanning the area. Missile launcher tubes on its back deployed, swiveling upright to face us with an octet of menacing holes. Caster gimbals on its roof swiveled back and forth, glowing menacingly.

“What the fuck is that?” I said. “Squad, get in formation, we’ve got company. Unknown contact, coming right at us.”

We scrambled into a defensive position, eyeing the four-meter-tall battlesuit warily. The machine took a knee, its visual sensor going dark and its cockpit hinging open. A pony cloaked in a hood stepped out of the saddle and landed on the pavement, approaching our hiding place.

“Just say the word, ma’am.” Mardissa trained her flechette gun on the pony.

“Hold your fire,” I said. “Flash!”

“Sentry!” the newcomer replied to the challenge, the voice clearly that of a stallion.

We breathed a sigh of relief, moving away from the windows and motioning the cloaked pony over. He nonchalantly walked inside the convenience store and approached me and my squad.

“Now, who in the hell are you?” I said.

The stallion reached up with a forehoof and threw back his hood to reveal the yellowish coat and shit-eating grin of none other than Crookneck Squash. Some traded looks of surprise, while others gasped in shock.

I did neither of those things. I ran up and threw my forelegs around him in a tearful hug, nearly knocking him off-balance in my haste. “We thought you were dead!”

“Only one hoof in the grave, Sergeant. Still got the other three on solid ground. Besides, I can’t let you young’uns ruin my legacy by building my masterpiece without my supervision, can I?”

“Is that it?” Hexhead said, nodding towards the hulking machine kneeling in the gas station’s parking lot.

“Correct. Feast your eyes on the Crook, the first-ever Palfrey. Our answer to the Confederacy’s battlesuits. Much cheaper to build and maintain than a Courser, and very handy in urban combat, in theory. The ability to transition from quadruped to biped motion allows it to change its operational profile in a very deceptive manner. The basic systems are so simple, we can practically cobble these things together from scrap. We have plans in motion to construct a dozen of them.”

Hexhead nodded with approval. “Finally, a Charger I wouldn’t mind working on.”

“How the hell did you manage to build that thing so fast?” I said.

“The Vanhoover cell has the necessary resources,” Crookneck said. “I’ve been sending them data and parts shipments for the past few weeks and they did most of the work in my absence. They were swift and efficient. They only needed me for the finishing touches.”

“What about your mangled body?” I said. “I was sure that was you. Hell, Garrida practically held a funeral for you.”

Crookneck grinned. “Sergeant, if anyone had bothered to taste me, they would have noticed that I was delicious and made of cookie dough, food coloring, and corn syrup. Did I ever tell you I won a baking contest, once?”

I snickered at his choice of words. “The only baking I thought you ever did was when you got baked.”

“What, did you think I spent all my time on Chargers? Much too depressing. I have hobbies. I have a life, you know! It’s only mostly Chargers.”

“But why? Why the whole charade of faking your own death? Did you tell Sierra?”

The old stallion’s expression darkened. “Not yet.”

“Why not? Come on. You’re putting her through hell, dude.”

“We have a mole.”

There were murmurs of unease among my unit, everyone giving each other fearful glances. No one liked the idea of a traitor in our midst.

I narrowed my eyes. “Cicatrice told me. Who is it?”

“We don’t know,” Crookneck said. “Someone’s been passing information to the vandals. The Riggers have been foalnapping ponies from areas that we’ve liberated and smuggling them to the Basement. Also, our patrols have come under attack from Confederate Security Force units that seemingly knew our routes in advance. We have a plan for dealing with the traitor, and it involves taking down their associates. The Basement may be in direct contact with them.”

“Fuck,” Shooting Star said. “Well, that explains the vandal attack.”

“The what?” Crookneck cocked an eyebrow.

“Riggers,” I said. “They’re trying to take over Tar Pan. They haven’t made it all the way to the mines, yet, but they probably will, and soon.”

There was a nervousness that crept into Crookneck’s body language as he paced the room, deep in thought.

“I’d venture that’s probably the work of our mole. The Riggers won’t be too keen on losing their cash cow. The Basement runs a very lucrative business. We’ve got to move, right now. I’m one of the very few who’s trained on this new Charger’s systems, so I’ll be piloting this Palfrey.”

“You sure you’re up to it, you old fart?” Corporal Star grinned. “I always wanted to take a crack at piloting.”

“Nonsense,” Ket said. “The Sergeant and I are the only real pilots here, everyone knows that.”

“The controls on this one won’t fit your physiology, Armagais,” Crookneck said. “Unless you’d like to try shoving your hands into hoofcups and curling into a pretzel. No, I’m piloting it. Sergeant, we managed to assemble two Palfreys with the materials we had. There’s another one operated by the Vanhoover cell. That one’s a custom order, specifically for that pilot. Not at liberty to say who, I’m afraid. Here’s the plan. All three of our rigs—the Centaur and the two Palfreys—are fitted with signals intelligence gear. We’re going to triangulate the exact position of the Basement’s sentries, and then, we’re going to tail them back to their base.”

“How do we know if they’re even transmitting at all?” Secunda said.

“We’ve picked up their comm chatter before, so we know they’re out there. We just don’t know where, exactly. The timing for this has to be exact. There’s a slaver convoy coming through tonight. We’re going to be shadowing them. Subtlety is the name of the game. If they know the jig’s up, they’ll radio home, and then, we’ll have a lot heavier and more prepared resistance to deal with.”

“Crookneck, are you okay with shooting ponies?” I said. “You aren’t exactly a soldier.”

“I’ll manage. There are ways to contribute to a battle without causing casualties directly. The Tatzlwurm missiles on my Palfrey are fitted with HESH warheads. High Explosive Squash Head.”

“Soft CycloHex plastique in a thin metal shell. Spreads out after impact. Good for knocking down structures.” I nodded. “So, you’re planning on helping us breach in?”

“That’s the general idea, yes.”

“When are the slave traders coming through?”

“About five hours, Sergeant.”

“Okay, people.” I turned to my squad. “You heard him. We’re repositioning and establishing surveillance, pronto. Let’s move!”

I left my bike camouflaged at the gas station and mounted up on the Centaur, while Crookneck waved to us as he jumped into his contraption, sealed the cockpit, and fired it up, galloping off to the next rally point. We rolled out, navigating the abandoned and gray streets of Vanhoover for several kilometers before pulling off-road. The Centaur brushed the dead foliage aside like it wasn’t even there, the bushes scraping against the armored car’s hull.

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe Crookneck could do this to Sierra. She thought he was dead. It had really fucked her up. However, I saw the logic in the plan. He was a blind spot in the mole’s vision, now. A hidden asset. Cicatrice had roped him into this, without a doubt.

We pulled into a lightly forested clearing astride an old apartment complex. The Centaur’s radio mast went up, tilting upright and telescoping to its full height. We disembarked the vehicle, standing in a loose circle.

“Ket and Secunda stay with the vehicle. The rest of you, on me.” I donned my communications helmet and had Lucky project a map of the area around us so everyone could see our location in relation to our support assets. I pointed my hoof at the green markers on the map that formed an equilateral triangle with our position. “There are two Crooks out there, meshed with the Centaur in the datasphere and scanning for enemy transmissions. Once we narrow down their location, we move in quiet and keep eyes on those hostiles. Do not fire unless fired upon. We don’t want them to know we’re even here. Maintain radio silence unless instructed otherwise.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Revenant Team sounded out.

I smiled. We were always in the shit. The Riggers were knocking on our front door. The Vargr were attacking Baltimare. We had a spy on the inside in the resistance, feeding the enemy intel. Somehow, in spite of it all, I had a strange sense of ardor. A giddiness. The warmth of camaraderie I’d thought lost. The steel of resolve I’d thought broken. We’d be alright. We had to be. We were Equestria’s last hope.

Me and the rest of Revenant moved to our overwatch position, filing into an abandoned apartment block. All around us lay strewn the remnants of Equestrian life as it once was. A sorrowful look crossed Mardissa’s face, her eyes tracing an abandoned teddy bear left in a hallway in the mad scramble of the city’s evacuation. We reached the suite with the best view, which had been marked by our scouts days earlier. I turned my back and busted down the door with a well-placed buck and we moved inside.

Turned out, this unit was occupied. An earth pony mare in the far corner of the room jumped to her hooves, startled by our presence.

“What do you want?” she said. “Don’t you have the sense to knock?”

Her eyes went wide as dinner plates as they settled on Mardissa. She gasped and bolted for the door, trying to slip past us.

“Mar, secure her!” I yelled.

This mare was no soldier. She wasn’t trained for the rigors of combat like us. She made it all of a few paces before Mardissa effortlessly wrestled her to the floor and zip-tied her legs. She started screaming, babbling, begging incoherently for her freedom. She was going to give away our position.

“Gag her, too,” I said.

Mar nodded and grabbed the first strip of cloth she could find in the room, yanked it between the mare’s jaws, and tied it behind her head with a tired sigh. “Sorry about this.”

I advanced on the mare’s prone, shaking form. There were tears in her eyes as she looked up at us. We must’ve looked very intimidating from her perspective, armed to the teeth and wearing our heavy longcoats over our armor. I knelt down and put a hoof on her shoulder.

“Listen to me very carefully,” I said. “We’re with the Liberation Front. The satyr, too. We’re not here to foalnap you. It’s the exact opposite. We’re stopping the bastards who’ve been snatching ponies off the streets. We just need this room for a bit to keep an eye on them, okay? Nod if you understand.”

The olive-coated mare nodded in the affirmative with considerable eagerness.

“If you agree to be quiet and stay out of our fucking way, the gag and the zip-ties come off. It you don’t, they stay on until we leave. Got it?”

Another nod.

With a deep breath, I used my levitation to undo her gag, and then her binds. The mare rubbed the sore spots on her legs as she looked up at Mardissa with fear in her eyes.

“Imps?” she said. “In the resistance?”

“Yes,” Mardissa said. “That’s right. Imps.”

The mare narrowed her eyes. “Since when?”

“Look, I know how it looks, but she’s on our side, trust me,” I said.

“They took everything from us,” she said. “I lost my husband. I lost my daughter. We got separated in the evacuation and I never saw them again. I came back, and—and all their things were still here. It’s all I have left to remember them by. Why?” There were tears in her eyes. “Why would you bring one of those monsters into my home? How could you?”

Anger boiled up within me. Maybe it was the events of the past few days, or maybe it was the nature of our mission. I didn’t know. Something about the tone of her voice made me defensive of Mardissa. It pushed me over the edge. I’d spent years of my life killing cleomanni in every manner that it was possible to kill someone. I’d thought them all irredeemably evil and worthy only of death. For years, I’d hoped for a sign, for something that would give me reason to believe otherwise. That sign now stood at my side.

I put a hoof on the mare’s shoulder, fixing her with a glare. “You don’t know what a real monster looks like. I do. You wanna come and see? You wanna find out what they’re like? Go ahead. Fuck around. Fuck around and find out!”

It was when Mardissa put her hand on my own shoulder that I was shocked to my senses and noticed that I’d reduced the mare to a crying ball, rolled up in the fetal position on the floor.

Mar shook her head. “Let me handle this, ma’am.”

I took a few steps back and touched my hoof to the ruby and brass pendant hanging from my neck, channeling my anger into it. I felt the rage seep out of me, replaced by a soothing calm. The gemstone in the middle of it glowed bright red. Plenty enough energy for a sizable spell. I watched as Mardissa knelt down and gently ran her hand through the mare’s mane.

“Do you have a name?” Mar said.

The gesture of affection promptly backfired. Too familiar. Too hasty.

The mare looked up at Mardissa, her teary eyes glowing with hate. “What if I didn’t? Were you going to name me? Maybe set out a pint-sized bale of hay for me to eat? Maldes rotrkenna! Don’t ever pet my head, you fucking cunt!”

“She can’t help it.” Shooting Star idly chewed a compressed ration bar. “She thinks we’re cute.”

“You can always eat me.” Haybale grinned.

I groaned at the awful pun. “Shut up, Haybale.”

“Still didn’t catch the name.” Mar put a hand to one of her ears expectantly.

The mare pointed to her cutie mark of an inkwell and feather quill. “Quill Dipper. I used to write articles for the Vanhoover Post. Now, I spend all day moping around in the wreckage of my old life.”

I stole glances at her over my shoulder as I helped the others set up a spotting scope. “A journalist? Really?”

“Yeah, what did you expect? Some doomsday prepper nut?”

“There can’t be much to eat out here,” I muttered.

“I try and find canned food every now and then. Whatever the looters haven’t gotten their hooves on already.”

“How many ponies would you say live here, in the ruins?”

“Can’t be more than a few hundred.”

“Why haven’t you tried moving on to greener pastures?”

“Why would I?” Quill waved her hoof dismissively. “There’s nothing for me out there.”

“You sure about that? Maybe we could find a place for you in the resistance.”

“Oh great.” Quill let out a dismissive huff. “You want me to help fix the mess we’re in by acting tough and killing people. Fuck you. You’re just another gang. You can’t bring back the Empire. You have nothing. We’re finished. The noose is around all our necks, and every day, the knot grows tighter. I won’t bloody my hooves for your misguided ambitions.” She turned towards Mardissa. “And you. I know who you are. No self-respecting political analyst wouldn’t. Mardissa Granthis. What’s the matter? Did daddy’s ranch and flower gardens get to be too boring for you? Was our misery too dull and flavorless on the holo? You actually decided to come slum it with us? Or were you compelled to? Whose dog did you fuck on the dinner table? Tell me, did he at least get you off, honey?”

Mardissa clenched her hands into fists. “I’m trying to make things right.”

“Right. You’re going to fix everything. All you have to do is shoot the right people at the right time, and it’ll all fall into place. Someone else will come patch the bullet holes, paint over the scorch marks, and drag away the corpses. Admit it. This is live-action roleplaying, not statecraft. You ponies want to salvage your pride, and your Imp friend here wants to experience something exotic. The reality is that the Confederacy has armadas with thousands of ships, fighters, tanks, and walkers and millions upon millions of soldiers. Equestria has nothing. The smartest thing for us to do at this juncture is to get down on our knees and beg for mercy. It’s the only rational choice. All else is folly.”

“Is that right?” I said. “Well, I’m going to show you something different.”

Quill paced closer. “Like what?”

I climbed behind the spotting scope set up on a table and peered down at the dead drop site in the courtyard below the apartment block. “You’re a journalist. Follow us and find out. Maybe you’ll have enough material for a story. I’ve already got a subject for your first article. One where the ELF takes down some fucking pony-smugglers.”

“You’re going after the slavers?” Quill had a haunted look on her face. “Those bastards took my friend Lancet a few days ago. Snatched him right off the fucking sidewalk.”

“So, you already know.” Corporal Star nodded. “Good. That’ll make things even easier. What else do you know?”

“They’ve been taking ponies by the dozens,” Quill said. “You can’t be out at certain times, or they’ll grab you, and that’s the last anyone ever sees of you. The vandals bring caravans with even more slaves, sometimes. One should be passing through today. Oh, I see. You wanna catch ‘em in the act.”

“Correct,” I said. “Should be a few more hours. We’re all set up and ready. Now, we wait.”

Quill stood by with rapt attention as my team posted by the windows. For hours, we waited, not making a sound. I could hear birds outside, but not much else. Finally, our customers arrived. A few Riggers leading a string of ponies bound in chains. Mares, mostly. A few fillies, too.

“There they are.” Lying prone on the table, I brought the spotting scope into focus. “Fuck. Got eyes on children. Son of a bitch.”

I clicked the aetheric responder a few times to wake up our support assets and have them keep track of enemy transmissions. One of the Riggers raised a hoof and brought the group to a halt, looking around warily to make sure the coast was clear. Then, he rooted around in the ground and pulled out a spike. He withdrew a data chip from the spike and slotted it into his GPS receiver to retrieve the next coordinate. When I took my eye off the spotting scope’s eyepiece, I saw movement on the rooftop in my peripheral vision, nine o’clock. Same building as us. Different wing. I panned the scope upwards and caught sight of the Basement’s spotters packing up their gear and repositioning. One of them fiddled briefly with a radio. Shortly thereafter, Secunda zeroed in on the transmission and sent me a ping over the aetheric.

“There they are.” I sent a few pings back to instruct the Centaur and the Palfreys to reposition if necessary, to continue tracking them. “Let’s move, now!”

After we hastily packed up our gear, we all filed out of the room, made our way to the stairwell, and exited onto the street. Quill was following us, even though she didn’t have any armor or weapons. Clearly, we’d piqued her curiosity.

“Nuh-uh.” I pointed a hoof to my right as we moved north. “Quill, there’s a Centaur three hundred meters east of here, in the woods. If this comes down to a firefight, I’m not gonna have you getting hit and bleeding all over the place. Mar, escort her there, and then rejoin the squad.”

The two of them peeled off from us. It was down to me, my Orbit, Ghost One, and the rest of Revenant to keep shadowing our targets.

Prima chose this moment to speak up, keeping her voice low. “Do you trust her?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Then you’re an idiot. She could be working for the Basement. She sure seems to live pretty cozily out here.”

“I think I’ve had enough BASKAF paranoia to last me a lifetime, thank you.”

“Our enemies are ponies, this time. Can’t readily tell friend from foe at a glance like you can when it’s xeno uglies. Embrace the paranoia, Sergeant. Embrace it.”

We turned into an alley and the squad came to a halt. I had Lucky project a map for us. The Palfreys had deployed drones of their own and were visually tracking the two groups of hostiles. I couldn’t see or hear anything in the sky. The drones were too small and at too high of altitude. Our cordon moved north to keep pace with them as they moved deeper into the city, towards the downtown core. About a minute later, Mar caught up to us, only slightly out of breath. She had her smoothbore flechette gun unslung and was scanning her environment warily.

We kept pace with the hostile contacts, staying out of sight. On my helmet’s display, I watched through the drone feed as the vandals retrieved another drop. The spotter team from the Basement was nowhere in sight. The leader of the slavers motioned for the rest to follow. One mare was reluctant, her head hanging low as she wept. She was rewarded with a savage blow to the hind legs from an electrified stun prod. The mare slowly rose to her hooves as she was urged onward by her captors.

“Motherfuckers.” I bit my lip. “This is going to turn into a hostage situation if we make the wrong move.”

I was a moment too late to realize that I’d just jinxed us with those words. There was movement on the drone feed near the second Palfrey as it moved up a side street. I zoomed in on it and watched in open-mouthed horror as a camouflage tarp was pulled off of a recoilless rifle nest on the roof of a commercial building. And then, another. Then, a third.

I made the decision to break radio silence. “Spearhead Two, ambush! Anti-tank on the roof!”

One of the recoilless gun positions flashed on the feed as they opened fire, striking the Palfrey with an explosive shell.

The rough yet slightly feminine voice on the other end was garbled by the rumble of gunfire. “H—Huertges mere!”

“What? Spearhead Two, say again?”

“Copy! Enemy contact!”

The slavers double-timed it into a subway entrance, checking their six for pursuers before disappearing from sight.

“Dammit, they’re getting away!” I said. “Spearhead One, Ghost Two, you are cleared to engage. Converge on Spearhead Two’s position and back them up. We’re on our way.”

The Centaur dropped its antenna boom and went mobile. Crookneck veered off to assist the other Palfrey. Our quarry would have to wait.

“The fuck tipped them off?” I said.

“I dunno, maybe the great big battlesuits, ma’am?” Haybale laughed. “Just sayin’.”

“Can it, Private. Revenant, we’re moving west to counter the hostiles attacking Spearhead Two. Keep your eyes open and move. Go!”

We dog-legged away from our quarry moving north and shifted towards Spearhead Two’s position. The sounds of gunfire and caster beams filled the air, growing louder as we approached. One of the stores had a loading dock in the back alley. I planted a CH charge on the fire exit next to the roll-up door and we breached in. It wasn’t subtle. We checked our corners as we moved into the darkened structure. There were two well-armed and armored earth pony stallions guarding the ground floor of the furniture store, their purloined Bulwark armor adorned with streaks of red paint. When they caught sight of us, they scrambled for cover.

“Light ‘em up!” I yelled.

So much fire poured forth from Lucky and my squad, everything above floor height was scorched or had holes punched into it. Sofas were lit aflame from the heat of the caster beams. Their cover had proven useless. The two slavers crawled from behind the furniture, moaning and bleeding, the floor growing slick under their hooves with their vital fluids.

“Squad, put out that fire! We don’t wanna burn down the whole block.”

Hexhead grabbed a fire extinguisher in her mouth and raced over to put out the burning upholstery. I could hear the characteristic thumping of the Centaur’s autocannon as it joined the fight outside. Through the front windows of the building, I caught a glimpse of Spearhead Two, transformed into biped mode, blasting away with their own autocannon and letting loose with a Tatzlwurm missile. I didn’t have to see the blast to know it took off the face of whatever structure it hit. The loud bang and the sound of falling rubble was enough of a clue. One of the anti-tank nests was probably swallowed up by the blast.

We double-timed it up the stairwell before busting out onto the roof. The enemy anti-tank team was caught with their hooves on their proverbial dicks. They had barely enough time to acknowledge our presence before the combined caster and flechette gun fire mowed them down. Prima, not to be outdone, took things a step further. As soon as we ceased fire, she teleported into their midst and dispatched the survivors with her blades. She ripped the 105mm recoilless rifle off of its tripod with levitation, swinging open the breech and loading a fresh cartridge from the ammo crate nearby. She walked to the edge of the building with the weapon held aloft. She took aim at another recoilless gun nest that was scrambling to reload their weapon and bring it to bear upon her.

“Fire in the hole!” Prima shouted.

We all pressed ourselves flat to the roof and covered our ears to avoid the backblast as she let loose with a thunderous report that shook our teeth, sending a 105mm high-explosive shell hurtling into the enemy’s midst. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left of them. They were practically vaporized.

I peeked over the edge of the structure at the junction below. This gun nest had covered a long stretch of city blocks. To my nine o’clock, I spotted Spearhead Two, on fire and limping.

I gritted my teeth. “Shit. Shit!”

I double-timed it back down the stairs with my squad in tow, exiting onto the street. The hostiles were neutralized or on the run, with Ghost Two and Spearhead One hot on their tail. In any case, the coast was clear, for the time being. That left the matter of the burning Palfrey. I broke into a gallop down the sidewalk as the small Charger slumped over, too damaged to go on. The fire increased in intensity. The thing’s gas turbine sputtered and died. It ran on synfuel instead of using a reactor. The fucking thing was a flaming coffin.

The cockpit hatch had popped open partway but was jammed from loss of hydraulic power. I ran towards the flames, heedless of my own safety, using my levitation to wrench it the rest of the way open. I climbed up onto the nose of the machine. Through the smoke, I could faintly see the pilot struggling to remove their restraints. I pulled out my Leathermare and flipped the saw blade open, cutting through the harness as quick as I could. Then, I seized the surprisingly hefty and furry pilot in my forelegs and dragged them out, stumbling back as I pulled both of us into the street. The two of us lay still for a few seconds, unable to do anything but cough from smoke inhalation. When we turned and faced each other, I was greeted by sharp teeth, sharp claws, pointed ears, and predatory eyes.

I reflexively scrambled back at the sight of one of ponykind’s most repulsive foes. “A fuckin’ dingo!”

“That rude,” the pilot spoke in broken Equestrian with a thick accent. “Damarkind not dog. Is rodent.”

I held a hoof to my chest to still my breathing as I realized that the feminine-sounding voice on the other end of the radio belonged to the pilot. “Oh, thank goodness. You don’t have a cock. Wait, you—what?” I appraised the pilot’s slight build, drinking in her unusual features and the angry expression she wore. “A girl? Well, that’s fucking new. Rodent, you say? Not sure being a rat is much better, but hey, you do you.”

She glared at me, shaking her head. “Wow. My savior is asshole. Come. Move from bonfire.”

The damarkind stood up, rising to her full height. She was thin compared to one of the males, but still much taller and thicker than a pony. She wore an odd robe and loincloth that looked like it had been made from Equestrian BDUs that had been cut up and sewn back together. She wordlessly reached into the Palfrey’s cockpit and pulled a belt-fed machine gun of damarkind make from its stowage position inside, slinging it over her shoulder as she approached me.

“Lead way, rude one.” She grinned mischievously, baring her unsettling fangs.

The two of us left the destroyed Palfrey behind and rejoined the squad. The rest of Revenant were similarly shocked and dismayed by the pilot’s appearance, adopting a defensive stance. Mar leveled her weapon at us briefly until she recognized that we were on the same side.

“Stand down, Revenant,” I said. “It’s Spearhead Two.”

Though the others relaxed their posture, Corporal Star and Corporal Cloverleaf were still tightly wound as if ready to pounce. I didn’t blame them.

“Spearhead Two?” Cloverleaf said. “It’s a fucking dick!”

The damarkind touched a fist to her chest. “I Sergeant Teirro Koskas, Vanhoover resistance. We on same side.”

“Well, this is awkward,” Haybale said. “Looks like you ladies have some things to sort out, so I’ll leave you be.”

“Shut up, Haybale,” me, Star, and Cloverleaf chorused.

“So, this is what it’s come to,” Shooting Star said. “Fighting alongside fucking dimbulbs. Nice going with the vehicle. Waltzed right into an ambush and fucked it up good.”

“Corporal, you are being insubordinate,” I said. “You will treat the Sergeant with the same respect that you treat me. We may not be of the same blood, but she fights for Equestria, and that makes her our sister. That is all that is necessary. Consider this matter closed for discussion.”

We received a few glares from the more disgruntled members of the squad as they walked past us towards the Centaur and mounted up. No one liked her species. Not after the things they’d done to us. I had some reservations, myself, but I couldn’t afford to let interpersonal conflict interfere with the mission. I had to nip it in the bud right away.

Crookneck was desperately trying to put out the fire with an extinguisher mounted on the end of a utility arm on his own Palfrey, his voice amplified by a hidden loudspeaker mounted in the Charger’s torso. “Oh no, oh no, my baby!”

“I hope most of it’s intact enough to salvage.” I took my seat on the Centaur with a sigh.

The ramp went up as the last of us boarded. After I set a waypoint on the subway entrance to the north, we rolled out. Sergeant Koskas elected to kneel in the cramped space, gripping a hoof-strap on the ceiling.

Quill was immediately sent into a tizzy at the sight of a damarkind, scrambling away from the new arrival. “Oh fuck! Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!”

“I not scary,” Koskas said. “Calm. Be tranquil.”

“That’s twice today!” Quill adjusted the collar of her dress shirt. “Twice you fuckers made my ticker nearly explode. Where’s a fuckin’ aspirin?”

“You’ve got a head start if you wanted to join the militia,” Jury Rig said. “You definitely cuss enough to be one of us.”

“Not happening. I don’t kill people. My weapon is the pen.” Quill pulled out her journal and stress-sighed, scribbling a few notes. “The ELF is surprisingly diverse.”

Prima scoffed at this. “Not exactly. In fact, I’d say about a third of the aliens in the whole rebellion are in this armored car as we speak. Helping Equestria get back on our hooves is certainly not in vogue in most of civilized space. They’re as afraid of us as we are of them. The linnaltans are an exception. We have numerous contacts among them.”

“So, what’s your story?” Quill said, peering over at the newcomer.

Koskas rubbed her fingers together, a faraway look on her face. “My papa was heretic. He raise me to be like boy. Give boy name.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Female, no politics. No power. Vow of silence. If break vow, well.” Koskas stuck out her tongue and made a snipping gesture with her fingers, as if to suggest a pair of scissors.

The conversation ground to a halt. We were all stunned into silence, more than a few of us bearing expressions of varying degrees of shock and disgust. I fixed her with wide, unblinking eyes. I’d hoped that I’d misheard her. I’d hoped that I didn’t just hear that they mutilated their own kind on purpose.

“You mean literally?” I said. “They cut their tongues out?”

“Yes.” Koskas nodded.

“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered. “Is this whole fucking galaxy fucked in the head?”

“How’d you end up with the rebels?” Quill said.

“They catch papa. They learn truth. I run away.”

“What happened to your father?”

The damarkind balled up her fist. I’d never seen one of her kind express any feelings other than berserk rage. They were scary even when they were sad.

“Dead.” Sergeant Koskas’ voice wavered with emotion. “Price of heresy, death.”

I would have told Cloverleaf something along the lines of see, she lost her daddy too, now you have something to bond over, but I’d exceeded my asshole quota for the day already.

“Well, sounds to me like if most of the galaxy treated their ladies better, they wouldn’t have ended up runnin’ off to join our little circus,” Haybale said. “No offense, Ket.”

Ket puffed on one of his cigs. “None taken.”

Koskas laughed, wiping away a tear. “Accurate.”

The brakes squealed as the Centaur rolled to a halt near the subway entrance. I stood from my seat and double-checked my gear, electing to grab a couple smoke grenades from a locker and clip them to my rig.

“Alright, these fuckers know we’re coming,” I said. “They’ve got hostages. There will almost certainly be booby traps and other nasty surprises on the way in. We need to do this quick and clean. We take out the slavers and rescue the captives. Don’t get separated. Lucky, on me.”

We double-checked our weapons. I swiped a cleaning cloth over my casters’ emitters and inspected the alignment. We were good to go. The Centaur’s ramp dropped and we spilled into the street, scanning the environment for threats. Secunda, Ket, and Quill stayed with the vehicle, and the rest of the team formed up on my lead.

“Squad, move in. Check your corners, keep an eye out for ambushes.”

We marched down the stairs and descended into Vanhoover’s subway system. It was pitch-black inside, the off-white tile walls of the subway station plastered in apocalyptic graffiti. There were hundreds of tags, mostly of the doomsaying variety, but many of them expressing resentment towards the authorities for what the tagger must have perceived as their own abandonment. A common theme. Our helmet lights swept away the darkness. There was a ruined subway car on the platform, all its windows smashed out. Even from here, my nose could pick up the coppery tinge in the air.

“Ah, shit,” I whispered.

We moved to the edge of the platform and I peered inside the car. The vandals had left the slaves behind so they wouldn’t slow them down. Unfortunately, they didn’t spare their lives. Every last one of them, including the foals, lay dead in the subway car, their throats slit and their blood pooling on the floor.

“Fuckers,” I muttered. “Motherfuckers. Found the captives. No survivors.”

Jury Rig made the mistake of taking a peek, as well. “Fucking animals.”

“Squad, keep moving,” I said. “We’re gonna find these pieces of shit. They can’t hide. These vandal pussies are good at one thing and one thing only, and it’s murdering defenseless children. One pops their head out, waste ‘em. Do ‘em quick. No mercy!”

I waved the squad onward. We hustled down the subway tracks, heading into the tunnels. Only way they could’ve gone. We moved about a hundred meters before Sergeant Koskas grabbed my shoulder.

“No!” she said. “Look!”

Sure enough. A silvery glint in the dark. I’d been mere centimeters from setting off a tripwire. They’d emplaced makeshift landmines between the tracks. A row of pipe bombs. They were probably filled with ball bearings and nails and whatever explosive materials they could scrounge up.

I nodded. “Good eye.”

They’d placed the tripwire at neck-height, and the easiest way through was to crawl underneath. Or, in the case of the pegasus on our squad, flying over it. There was a corrugated metal barricade off in the distance. It appeared deserted, at first, but as we approached, there was a flash and a loud report that echoed through the tunnel. I was punched hard in the chest and I went down with a groan.

“Contact, front!” I yelled. “Engage!”

As my squad opened up on the barricade, I coughed a few times and checked my chest protector with my hoof. No penetration. The round had splattered across my armor and left a dent, the lead fragments digging into my chin. My muzzle bled a little and I had a big bruise forming underneath my rig, but I was fine.

“You hit, ma’am?” Cloverleaf said.

“I’m fine, Corporal. Focus on the enemy.”

Sergeant Koskas fell into a low crouch as she swept the barricade with her machine gun. Mar took careful, aimed shots at the openings. The suppressive caster fire from me, my Orbit, and the rest of the squad kept the enemy’s heads down. Koskas took a hit in her shoulder from a rifle round, sending her staggering back. This only seemed to enrage her.

With a roar, she slung her machine gun over her shoulder and pulled a knife, charging the barricade. “Drokoi, seszlag, diho!”

“Stay in formation!” I shouted. “Fuck!”

Koskas leapt over the top of the barricade and came down right in the middle of them, furiously hacking and stabbing away with grunts of exertion. Wet, gurgling screams echoed down the tunnel.

“Well, she’s definitely a dingo,” Shooting Star muttered. “I suppose there are some benefits to allying ourselves with stab-happy savages.”

“Give her a break, Star,” I said. “We use knives, too. Prima uses knives, Placid uses knives, the Stormtroopers use knives. Everyone uses knives. Just because she’s more than twice our height and weight, that doesn’t make it any different.”

“You clear!” Koskas said. “Move up!”

We advanced to the barricade. It was difficult to tell what species the hostiles had been, what with the piles of gore they’d been reduced to. Blood dripped down the damarkind’s arm. She held her shoulder with her other hand to try and put pressure on the wound.

“You’re hurt,” I said.

“No time bleed,” she said. “Only time for win.”

“Bullshit, come here.” I whipped out my first aid kit and retrieved a pair of pliers, disinfectant, and a Hemogel syringe.

There was no exit wound, so that meant the bullet was still stuck in her. I levitated the pliers over to her shoulder, brushing her fur aside with my magic and gripping around in the wound until I found the chunk of copper and lead inside, yanking it out. Koskas did not protest at all, even without any anesthetic. If anything, she seemed mildly bemused. I ran the disinfectant sponge around inside the wound, and then put the tip of the Hemogel applicator in it and depressed the plunger, filling the cavity with a quick-hardening, biocompatible patch that would encourage clotting.

“You treat good,” Koskas said. “Doctor?”

“No. I’m Sergeant Desert Storm. Pilot, like you. I get fucked up a lot, so I’ve picked up some tips and tricks from the pros.”

The damarkind narrowed her eyes at me. “Bad vibe around you. Bad spirits. I teach ritual for cleanse spirits.” Koskas stood with her legs together and clapped her hands together over her chest. “Omukan!”

“What does that do?” I said.

“Banish spirits. Damark is hunting ground of spirits. Much life, much death. Before hunt, drive away bad spirit. He trip you. Stumble you. When enemy take your meat, he want feed on half they don’t take. He feed on soul. Parasite.”

“Does anyone from your world worship the evil spirits?”

Koskas frowned. “Yes. Some worship Night Princes. The bad ones. Live like mad beast in woods. Some forest, never go alone. If alone, get taken by warlock. Sacrificed. Worse.”

I let out a derisive huff. “Worse than being sacrificed?”

“Warlock make familiar. Break bone. Twist limb. Tie to tree. Feed poison berry. After many day, he untie. Rokoga is complete.”

I blinked a few times, my eyes wide with horror. “The fuck is a Rokoga?”

“Pony tongue lack proper word. To maim, to—uhh—”

“Mangle?”

“Yes! Mangle-er. Mangler. No longer son of Damark. Mind is gone.” She tapped a claw against the side of her head. “Poison.”

I felt a chill run down my spine as I recalled Celestia’s words. The Night Princes. The Great Devourers. The Lords of Matter. The Archons corrupt and pervert everything they touch!

There were Archon-worshipers on Damark, too. Their filthy tendrils reached everywhere.

Koskas grunted with disapproval. “No good. Bad spirit cling to you. You marked one.” She wagged a finger. “Unlucky. Must spend whole life flee from fate.”

“You can sense them, can’t you?” I said. “How? I thought damarkinds couldn’t do magic.”

The damarkind sighed as she reached under her collar and showed me the bone necklace she wore. “Is not magic. Is truth of world. Spirits bind all things together. Close eyes. Don’t think. Feel. They all around you. Modern people think wise with book. Build false rock over soil. Sever life from spirits. They not wise. They bring self to ruin for have temporary material gain. Many of my kind, lost to all reason.”

Koskas unslung her machine gun and took point, sweeping the area ahead of us.

Corporal Star gave me a look of bitter mirth as she passed by. “Unga-bunga voodoo-juju,” she whispered.

I shook my head. We were all going to have to reconcile our differences eventually. I couldn’t let the squad fall apart because of this. I’d grown strangely accustomed to working with the aliens and embracing their unique talents, even though I would’ve thought nothing of killing them mere months before.

After we negotiated a few twists and turns in the darkness, the tunnel opened into an underground maintenance depot. Subway cars littered the area in varying states of disrepair. The cavernous space was dimly lit by scattered work lights. A few ponies converged on the catwalks above us, their weapons lowered. The one in the middle, presumably their leader, wore a caster rig with red pinstripes and a mask fashioned in the shape of a pony skull. These weren’t the vandals we were after. These were actual Basement members, like the bastards operating the recoilless rifle nests.

“Look who decided to show up,” he said. “ELF, poking their noses where they don’t belong.”

“And the first thing to greet us is a walking, talking cliché,” I said. “Even said it all singsong-like. ‘Look who decided to show up’. We don’t live in a teen high school drama, you fuck. You’re selling ponies. That puts you on our shit list. Take off the mask, you pussy!”

“The Cellar Dweller never takes off his mask!” He crowed. “International stallion of mystery, babe. Them’s the rules.”

He certainly had the theatrics down pat. He’d mounted a voice changer of some kind in his skull-helm to make him sound more menacing, but the end result was more goofy than scary.

“I don’t give a flying fuck what you are.” I took my helmet off, shaking my mane out as I walked into the beam of one of the floodlights they’d set up. “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you, motherfucker. Take. It. Off.”

Something about my appearance set him off. “What the fuck? Oh fuck. Oh fuck! Kill her! Kill her, now!”

I rolled to the side and donned my helmet as a mounted machine gun nest opened fire on the floor where I’d been standing moments before.

“Light ‘em up!” I shouted.

Lucky zipped several meters into the air to get a better vantage point over the hostiles before sweeping them with caster beams. The rest of my squad poured forth a sheet of caster pulses and gunfire, a combination I had started to grow fond of. The Cellar Dweller, or whatever the fuck he called himself, stumbled back onto his ass as his compatriots were practically vaporized, before turning and running down the catwalk, whimpering all the while, the steel ringing with his panicked hoofbeats.

“Your ass is grass!” he whined. “Guys, guys! Get your asses up! Intruders!”

I ran deeper into the maintenance facility with my squad close behind, angling around the abandoned subway cars. Two slavers emerged from behind one of the cars, right in my path. I drew out the damarkind knife I wore, pulling from the reservoir of rage in my ruby locus. I hated using my sister’s murder weapon in combat. Cicatrice had told me that was a good thing. He instructed me to harness my hate. To empower my magic with it.

One of the slavers held a piece of plumbing pipe in his jaws and swung it at me, intending to clobber me in the head. He never struck his mark. I lit my horn and channeled a body-seize into his nerves before the blow could land. He tripped and practically fell into my blade, right through his neck. When I turned my gaze to the other one, my magic fell upon him in his turn.

I summoned the image of the murdered foals in the subway car. My anger empowered me. I wanted to crush them all. I wanted to make these pricks beg for their lives. I gritted my teeth and let out a low growl as I channeled the hatred from my amulet and my magic surged into him. I could feel his heart beating in his chest. I directed his own musculature against him. I squeezed, like trying to pop a balloon, and I was rewarded with a rushing sensation, like something tore inside him. He collapsed and rolled onto his back, screaming and convulsing.

I was suddenly struck by a splitting headache. A sick euphoria washed over me. Feelings of invincibility and other grandiose imaginings wormed their way into my consciousness. A little voice in my head began to whisper. Yes. That’s it. Just like that. You are a unicorn. You are a being so far above them, you may as well be an alien race next to the rest of ponykind. Assert dominance.

“Dammit,” I muttered. “Went too far. Blowback.”

Injuring or slaying someone directly with dark magic always had consequences. It wasn’t like striking someone with an arcane blast or smushing someone with a levitated heavy object. It was a far more intimate connection than that. Soul to soul. Nerve to nerve. Flesh to flesh. Such power warped the mind. I mercy-killed him with a quick thrust from my blade, putting him out of his misery. I flicked the blood off to keep the weapon from rusting.

Koskas ran up and dove into cover next to me, her massive frame thudding against one of the subway cars. She wore an enthusiastic look on her face. “That knife! That is Saggor! Look!”

She pointed to one of the inscriptions on the blade, a few angled lines that looked like claw-marks.

I shrugged. “I can’t read damarkind.”

“Saggor Tuvas. Master bladesmith. Is legend among contractors.”

“You mean the Condottieri?” I said.

Koskas glared at me. “Foreigner word. There are good and wise Seg’Jakha and their warriors. There are also exile, bandit, heretic, disgrace. Many Seg’Jakha in space seek reclaim lost honor. Bring trophy. Bring treasure. Kneel to Elders. Give offering. If Elder say worthy, he regain honor. Erase guilt.”

“So, when one of your kind commits a crime or a slight of some kind, and he is of high status, his punishment is that he and his tribe go questing to clear his name?”

“No. Not punishment. Duty. Bring treasure. Pay price of crime. Honor his blood.”

“Sergeant, are you aware that your kind makes sport of hunting, murdering, and raping mine?”

Koskas leaned out from behind the corner of the subway car and popped off a few suppressive rounds before ducking back into cover. “Yes. I know.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Why would it? Life is struggle. If lose to male, he take meat, enjoy spoils. Is way of things. If you win, he no take. I get tired explain pony who ask same silly question many time. Lose, be eat, be fuck. Win, you eat, you fuck. Simple.”

I stared off into space, haunted by the pure savagery of it. Their morals, though easy to comprehend, were as bizarre and alien as they were. Ponies could be brutal to each other at our worst, but we never rationalized it away as somehow moral for the victor of a fight to completely possess the life of the defeated and have right of final disposition over them. Hunter, hunted. Predator, prey. Their law was the law of the Jungle. Raw evolutionary fitness. No mercy for the weak. Neither charity nor remorse. What we would consider dangerously antisocial behavior, they took for granted as the natural order.

My eyes watered at the sheer barbarity of it. They had no idea they were doing anything wrong. They had no guilt for their actions whatsoever.

“Sergeant,” I said. “Do you think I’m becoming like one of you? A predator?”

Koskas fixed me with a momentary stare before she burst out in rough and hearty laughter. “If you were prey, would not have that blade as trophy. Keep winning, little pony. Find own truth.”

The damarkind let off a long string of rounds from her belt-fed machine gun, sweeping the enemy’s position. With our foes sufficiently suppressed, the two of us rushed from cover and moved to the next subway car. At that moment, a heavy machine gun at the far end of the row of cars opened up, peppering the air with fifty-caliber rounds. The two of us dove back into cover. The rest of my squad was either pinned down further back or trying to get around to a flanking position.

“Tossing smoke. Stand by!” I unclipped a smoke grenade from my harness, pulled the pin, and hurled it around the corner with my levitation. “Smoke, out!”

The grenade’s pyrotechnic reaction released gray clouds of obscurant smoke, blocking the enemy machine gunner’s vision. Prima seized upon this opportunity and charged into the fray, using the smoke screen to get close enough to teleport. Though I couldn’t see it, I knew that she’d popped out of thin air right in the enemy’s midst, hacking and slashing away with her levdaggers. Teleportation was a very advanced spell. Only the best of the best knew how to do it. It would make my life a whole lot easier if I could convince her to teach me. I made a mental note of this and filed it away.

“We’re clear!” Prima shouted. “Move up!”

As we continued our relentless advance, I spotted the Basement leader in the skull mask, beating a hasty retreat into a side passage. I immediately accelerated to a gallop, chasing after him.

“He’s getting away!” I yelled.

“Sergeant, wait!” Prima tried getting my attention, but I ignored her.

I chased him into the darkness, my rig illuminating the space before me. I found myself in an old storeroom that had been converted for the Basement’s purposes. The air stank of blood and viscera. My pace slowed as I scanned around, washing the darkness away with my headlamp beams. My Orbit soon caught up with me, adding its own illumination to the scene. There were stainless steel tables, cots, oxygen bottles, scalpels, and other medical equipment. Several of the tables were covered in blood.

“What the hell? Lucky, hold your fire. Start recording. Get every-fucking-thing.”

One of the tables had a reflective orange tarp with a lump under it. I approached it, hesitantly seized the tarp in my levitation, and then uncovered what lay beneath. The stench of death was intolerable. I reflexively covered my muzzle with a foreleg. It was a young unicorn mare. What was left of her, anyway. She was lying face-down and her back had been flayed open to access her kidneys. Incisions had also been made in the back of her head. Pieces of her skull were missing. It looked like they’d dug into her brain with a sharp instrument. I let go of the tarp, trying to banish what I saw from memory.

“Organs. They’re harvesting organs.”

It didn’t make sense. With our nation in ruins, there were few who could afford a transplant if they needed one, and I was pretty sure the Confederacy preferred live, intact specimens of our species, in any case. The room led to a hallway that opened into another space that they’d converted into their quarters, filthy sleeping bags lying around everywhere. Dead end. I’d backed skull-face into a corner. He was sniveling and panicking, his head darting around as he looked for an exit.

The Cellar Dweller collapsed to his haunches in defeat. “Shit. I just fucked myself! Did I really end up here?”

“Yeah, you did, you sick fuck,” I said.

“This is what you want, huh?” He turned towards me. “You think you’re my fucking karma, is that it? Why do you have to ruin what’s left of my life? Why didn’t you just die like all the rest, you fucking bitch?”

He pulled something from his chest rig with his fetlock and threw it at my face. A small plastic baggie smacked into my muzzle and spewed a glittery powder everywhere. I inadvertently inhaled some. The effect was immediate. The colors in the room seemed to blur and stretch, the dim amber lights pulling taut. There was a black void in the center of my perception, sucking in all the light like a shower drain before it suddenly unfurled and burst into a rainbow spray. I felt memories that weren’t mine. There welled up within me an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for what came before, for what we lost. I heard a scream that seemed to emanate from the dawn of time. I couldn’t tell if it heralded the beginning of one life or the beginning of all life. Reality shimmered, warped. I was having sex. No, she was having sex. Who was she? Who had she been?

Dark tendrils reached out from the void and pulled the sweet memories away. A voice rumbled in the dark, within the confines of my own head. Yes, that is the way, little one. Come closer. Bring your longings with you.

I gripped my head in both my hooves and let out an earsplitting scream. My conscious awareness snapped back to reality. I was behind a stack of metal crates, surrounded by caster scorch marks. My full faculties had not yet returned, but my eyesight was mostly back to normal.

I was still drugged out of my mind. I was stimmed like I was on cocaine, but with a razor-sharpness and a tickle in my skull that I found deeply unsettling. “You wanna play? Huh? You wanna play games with me, you son of a bitch?”

I peeked my head out and a red caster beam sizzled through the air, missing me by inches. I unclipped my last smoke grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it over the top of my cover, towards the center of the room. As smoke began to fill the space, I fired off a volley of suppressive caster pulses from one side of the stack of crates, and then I turned and darted out from behind the crates on the other side, cloaking myself. I let off a few magic echolocation pings until I found something that felt like the outline of a stallion.

I galloped straight towards him through the plume of smoke and tackled him from the side, smashing his head into a metal tanker desk. As I uncloaked, I saw his caster gimbals try and lock on to my face. I slammed both of my hooves into them, busting the emitters. A hard-driven hoof connected with my muzzle, splitting my lip. He tackled me onto my back, trying to use his size to his advantage.

“Just another little cunt, eh?” he said. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, but you leave me no choice. Buh-bye, sweet cheeks.”

He flicked open a boot knife and tried bringing it down on my neck, but I crossed my forelegs and diverted the blow. The blade bounced off of one of my shoulder protectors. I kicked him in the throat with one of my forehooves, punching right into the meaty part of his larynx. As he gasped and wheezed, I applied what I knew from my CQC training and swept his hind legs out from under him by applying leverage to his stifles with my own. We rolled across the floor and I took the top mount position, laying into him with my hooves. The smoke had begun to dissipate, drawn away by what passed for ventilation in this place.

“I told you to take off the mask, you fuck,” I said. “You didn’t listen. Now I’m gonna take it off of you. The whole world’s gonna know who you fuckers are and what you’re doing down here!”

With a vicious uppercut, I smashed the skull mask off of his face. I reared back to deliver the blow that would’ve knocked his lights out, but as my headlamps illuminated his face, my whole body froze. Nothing I’d seen since I’d escaped captivity had sobered me up so quickly, nor filled me with such a sense of dread. All of a sudden, his choice of alias made sense, and it all clicked into place. I had a suspicion before, but I’d chosen to ignore the little voice in my head. It couldn’t be true. All the strength was sapped from from my body as I stared down at the bloodied face of my fiancé.

My lips trembled, almost refusing to work. “Barleywine?”

“Desert Storm,” he said. “Long time no see. Thought you died. You probably thought the same of me, eh?”

I gripped him by the collar in my fetlocks. “What was in the fucking plastic bag? What did you drug me with? Huh? Who the fuck are you really? Answer me, you fucking turd!”

“It’s called Quint. The vandal gangs love it. We pay them for ponies. They pay us for the drugs. Great deal, until you came along and ruined everything. And no, the high doesn’t last that long. You’re seein’ fine, Storm. It’s me. You happy now?”

“Quint?” I looked around at the clear plastic tubs in the back of the room. There had to be hundreds of the little baggies filled with the glittery powder. Each one was individually marked and labeled with its own name, with the symbols for male or female on them. Each one represented a life that was taken for the sole purpose of getting somepony else high. I glared down at him, a sinking feeling in my guts. “You’ve been—I can’t—you mean to tell me you’ve been harvesting quintessence and selling it as a drug?”

“Now you get it, you dumb cunt. The vandals use it because the trip’s like no other. You get to live another pony’s life. You get away from the present and get immersed in the past. Back when things were still good. A nice little escape, all for the tidy little sum of five hundred bits a bag. Lasts a long while if you stretch it out.”

I shook my head. “No, fuck this. Fuck this! Not you! Dammit, no!”

“Yeah. Me.”

“I can’t believe I—I can’t believe I ever loved you. I can’t believe I was going to fucking marry you. You scum. All this time, I saved myself for you, out of a vain hope I’d see you again, and I find you doing shit like this. I remained faithful!”

He smirked a little, chuckling darkly. “I didn’t. Wow, you’ve gone without a good fucking for the past few years? That’s funny. No wonder you’re so pent up. You always were a dumb, naïve, titty waitress bitch. I got my dick wet with like a dozen mares while you were on deployment.”

I recoiled as if struck. What he’d just brazenly uttered to my face was the proverbial final piece of straw. My blood pressure shot through the roof as I snarled down at the contemptible animal underneath me.

“You motherfucker!” I spat.

I brought my hoof down on his face. I kept hitting him, beating him to a pulp. I couldn’t stop myself. I tried putting my hoof through his head into the floor. Just a few more. A few more blows, and he’d be dead. Firm hands seized around my withers, pulling me off of him. I flailed and struggled as Sergeant Koskas dragged me off of Barleywine’s limp body.

“Let go of me, you dingo furball! I’m gonna kill him! I’m gonna kill you, you fucking son of a bitch!”

“No, Sergeant,” Koskas said. “You lose control. Be calm. Must question. Must interrogate.”

Prima grinned as she caught sight of Barleywine moaning and writhing on the floor. “Ah, and there he is. The loverboy. We’ve had eyes on him since before the end of the war, Sergeant. Underworld connections. Fentanyl smuggling. Tax audits came back dirty. He wasn’t reporting his profits. Now look what he’s gotten himself into. Gee, you sure know how to pick ‘em, Storm. I hope the sex was good, at least.”

I watched, transfixed, as Prima unceremoniously zip-tied my fiancé and dragged him off like a sack of potatoes. I pulled out the amulet that Cicatrice had given me and channeled my anger into it. The ruby locus glowed bright enough to fill the room with red light. The damn thing was so close to capacity, it nearly burst from the energy I poured into it. When I was done, the anger was gone, and I felt sick and sad. My eyes welled with tears as the wretchedness of everything I’d experienced up until this point came crashing down on my head in waves of self-pity. Even though we were the victors, I was utterly defeated. All of my sweetest memories with the love of my life were slipping away from me, crumbling to dust right before my eyes.

“It’s not right,” I muttered. “It’s not fair!”

Koskas hugged me close to her chest, wrapping her arms around my sobbing form with surprising gentleness. “World is not fair, pony. World belong to darkness. We must make right. We must be strong and make right together.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” I said.

“You’re not alone.” Mardissa strode up to us. “We’re here for you, ma’am. Take a minute. Just breathe. Relax.”

I felt fragile in Koskas’ hands, like a broken toy doll. I did one of the breathing exercises Weathervane had taught me. In through the nose, out through the mouth. My heart rate came down. Slowly, the stress seeped out of me, replaced by cold rationality. My unit needed me. I needed to be a leader. I wiped the tears from my eyes as Koskas set me down on the floor. It was unnerving just how strong she was. I had no doubt that she could tote me around in one hand if she wanted to.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “We need to keep moving. We need to get Hexhead in here with that blowtorch of hers and crack that safe in the corner. We should gather up all the evidence we can and get it back to the Centaur.”

I stumbled out of the room and into the hall, all eyes on me as I passed, except for one pair of peepers. Jury Rig was hunched over, his outstretched hooves against a wall as he threw up on the floor over and over. He’d probably taken an ill-advised peek under the tarp, too. I had half a mind to join him, though my own nausea stemmed from a different source.

Nothing made sense anymore. It was too much, too fast. The world I’d stepped out into was completely different from the one I’d just vacated. The context of my actions had been altered irrevocably. Before, I’d been clamoring for the chance to see Barleywine one last time. Now, I hoped never to see that rat-bastard’s face ever again. It was humiliating. I had no idea what could’ve made him like this. I couldn’t believe that he thought so little of our relationship that he’d stoop so low in my absence. After this, I felt like I’d have a hard time trusting anyone ever again.

“Revenant, form up,” I said.

My squad assembled before me, their faces sullen. Many of them had never imagined that ponies could be capable of doing this sort of thing to other ponies. Their foundations had been shaken almost as badly as mine.

I had Lucky project a map of Vanhoover with objective markers overlaid on it. “This was just one site. One single hub of trafficking activity. The Basement and the Riggers aren’t finished yet. There are several other locations in this city where our scouts have picked up on suspicious activity. We are not going to give these bastards a millimeter. We are going to rescue any still-living captives of theirs and we are going to seize all of the proceeds of their criminal enterprise. We are going to root them out wherever they hide, and we are going to bring them to justice. For the Empire!”

“For the Empire!”

The cheer rang hollow. None of us would walk away from this nightmare unchanged. Even though it felt like I was breaking, even though my heart trembled in my chest at Barleywine’s betrayal, I had to keep it together. It was up to me to make sure that this didn’t become another fiasco like Pur Sang.

Celestia help us all.

// … end transmission …

Next Chapter: Record 19//Heartbreak Estimated time remaining: 10 Hours, 18 Minutes