//HOL CRY SWT
//CHECKSUM READ
//CHECKSUM GOOD

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

Desert Storm

I sat across from Barleywine in the troop bay of the Centaur, my hooves shaking with barely contained rage as I perused the documents retrieved from the safe. The Basement kept meticulous records. After the howl of Hexhead’s blowtorch had abated and we’d swung open the safe door, we found reams of paperwork and bags of gold. Twenty thousand bits in all. It was only a fraction of their ill-gotten gains, judging by the amount of product they were moving.

We confiscated everything. There was so much contraband that there wasn’t even any room for it in the Centaur. We contacted the Vanhoover resistance cell and had them bring in a cargo truck to load it all up. They also brought a flatbed for Koskas’ Palfrey. The damn thing had nearly burned to the ground. All the most valuable parts, like the control electronics, were still salvageable. It was in good enough condition to be rebuilt, just barely. Unfortunately, the engine bay and almost everything in it was toast.

I’d overheard Crookneck and Koskas muttering some things back and forth about the need for self-sealing fuel tanks and some armoring improvements to prevent catastrophic fires. They’d left about an hour ago. I hoped I’d see Sergeant Koskas again. The big furball had strangely started to grow on me. She was a damn good fighter.

I glanced down at the list of names, reflecting on the grim tally they represented, and then looked up at the swollen and battered face of my former fiancé.

“How fucking many?” I said.

“Storm, babe, I—”

“Don’t you ever babe me, you fuck. Just answer the fucking question. How many ponies did you fuckers kill to manufacture your fucking drugs?”

He sheepishly stared down at the cuffs holding his forelegs together. “I don’t know. Hundreds. Thousands. Five thousand, at least.”

My face hardened into a scowl. “You fucking vermin. I’ve fumigated better people than you, you son of a bitch.”

He huffed dismissively, a touch of evil creeping into his eyes. “So, you’re an imp-lover, now, huh? Oh, I get it.” He waved his cuffed hooves over at Mardissa. “You and her are fucking, aren’t you? Damn. I always knew you were a bulldyke, but I never knew you’d stoop to licking alien trench.”

I lit my horn, enveloping his heart in a body-seize spell and giving it a harsh squeeze. He gasped and doubled over, clutching at his chest and whimpering.

“I can and will make your fucking ticker implode if you piss me off,” I said. “You’re gonna keep your filthy trap shut unless I ask you a specific question. Where are the rest of your little Basement rats hiding?”

“Eat shit, bitch.”

“Wrong answer.”

I changed my target, since I didn’t want to kill him. However, this time, I put a little more force into the spell, making him wrench his own leg halfway out of its socket. Screams, now. Pitched like a mare’s. I wondered if his victims had sounded much the same when they were held down and slaughtered for their quintessence in that dingy hole. My companions kept their eyes averted. They knew who he was, to me. Who he’d been. They knew this was personal.

“Stop, stop!” he said. “You really hurt me, Dez. Fuck!”

“You hurt me worse. It hurts me to know that you’re a fucking murderer.”

“And you aren’t? We’re the same. You kill for the state, I kill for me, what’s the fucking difference?”

I tossed the intel aside, surged up out of my seat and slammed Barleywine against the inner hull of the Centaur, pressing my foreleg into his neck. “The difference is that I’m a trained professional, which means I’m better at it than you are. You should weigh the implications of that, and very carefully consider the next words that come out of your fucking mouth!”

Barleywine spat in my face. “Fuck you.”

I wiped his saliva off my cheek, and then I drove my hoof into his gut hard enough to make him double over in pain.

“I don’t get this,” I said. “It’s fucking absurd. Why is my old life stalking me around? Hoodoo’s dead. Windy’s been kidnapped. Briarwood’s on the run from the oligarchs of Tar Pan. My fucking shitbag fiancé is a serial killer. What next? Is my dad gonna erupt from the earth as a vengeful zombie? Is my mom gonna come screaming down from the heavens in an orbital drop pod? Who else is gonna show up for the party, huh? Who?!”

“Dez, I—”

Barley gagged as I wrapped my hooves around his neck. “You dumb bastard. You cocksucker. I already have all this fucking stress on me. Why do you have to fuck up my life? Why are you even here? Why do you exist?”

Prima snickered. “A couple of textbook narcissists going at it. You really are peas in a pod. Just do it. Just have sex already. Right here. In front of us.”

I turned to Prima, fixing a hateful glare on the cyborg as I turned my attention to her and her disrespect and away from the prisoner. “You are undermining my command. You may answer to Cicatrice, but I don’t answer to you. You’re BASKAF. You’re a fucking civilian. If you try and make a fool out of me in front of my unit, I don’t care what Bell’s instructions are or how many of those silly little daggers you have on you. I will make you regret it.”

“I didn’t have to do a single thing, scatterbrain. This scene you’re making? It’s all on you. You’re completely graceless. I wonder how long before Argent switches you from sertraline to olanzapine?”

I shoved Barleywine against the Centaur’s hull, tossed my helmet onto my seat, and muscled up towards Prima. “You. Me. Outside. Now.”

Prima’s eyes narrowed, her lips curling upward in a sadistic smile. “You really wanna dance with me? You’re braver than I thought.”

The Centaur’s ramp dropped and the two of us made our way onto the sidewalk outside. Me and Prima squared off beneath the twilit sky while the rest lined up to watch, hooting and hollering. Secunda was the only one among us cagey enough to keep her eyes on our surroundings. The city wasn’t exactly secure.

“Any rules for this bout?” Prima said.

“No weapons, no magic,” I said. “Hooves only.”

Prima glared at me. She didn’t like it that I’d negated many of her advantages. I briefly wondered if her augs alone were enough to surmount my adrenaline and rage.

My unit and the civilian were already making bets. Secunda, Hexhead, Haybale, Shooting Star, and Quill bet on Prima, it looked like, while the rest put their money on me. Barleywine was watching from the inside of the troop bay, cuffed to his seat and unable to escape.

“You’re gonna be a few points uglier when I’m done, bitch,” I muttered.

Prima flicked her ponytail mockingly. “Your overconfidence will one day be the end of you, Sergeant.”

The two of us circled each other, our eyes rigidly fixed on our opposite number. After a moment’s hesitation, the two of us surged towards each other. Prima aimed for a running clothesline, but I slipped under it and countered with a jab towards her muzzle. She caught my leg and put me in a leglock, supporting my knee to constrain the mobility of my joints. I delivered a well-timed headbutt, keeping her from following up with the downward hammer-blow that would have invariably broken my leg.

We locked horns briefly. I was treated to a display of overwhelming strength as Prima tackled me onto my back, knocking me onto the rough asphalt. There was cold hatred in her eyes. Without hesitation, she went for the choke, her forelegs wrapping around my neck like an anaconda. The power in her limbs was unnatural. It felt like I was trapped in vise. I couldn’t breathe.

Lucky for me, I didn’t need to. Prima’s expression slowly melted from grim determination into mild shock. She’d expected me to pass out by now. By all rights, I should have. I drove my hoof into her ribcage, levering myself out of her grasp. I grabbed her by the head and shimmied up far enough to lock my hind legs around her neck.

I squeezed with all of my strength, but she didn’t tap. Not even close. Instead, much to my chagrin, Prima stood up with me still latched around her neck, lifting my entire body weight with ease. With a great heave, she threw me several meters like a rag doll. I slammed into the corner of a brick building. Prima charged and I ducked just in time before she put her armored hoof through the brick wall, smashing it to dust as though it offered no more resistance than papier-mâché.

“Slippery slut,” Prima said. “Slipped out of my hooves like a bar of soap. You’ve been doing more running than fighting!”

“Bullshit,” I muttered. “You’re sweating. You didn’t think you could get your ass beat by a pony who’s still mostly meat, did you?”

It was a struggle just to stay one step ahead of her. In spite of my bravado, I had a sinking feeling in my gut that I’d made a terrible mistake by challenging her in the first place. Realistically, I had no way of winning this. Prima had so much titanium in her, her hooves thudded against the ground with the weight of a pony twice her size. She was swift and capable, endowed with speed, strength, and reflexes bordering on the preternatural.

She slammed one of her forehooves into my chest protector, knocking the wind out of me and sending me flying a couple meters from the force of the blow. I realized right then and there that she’d been holding back. If she really wanted to, she could’ve snapped my neck like a twig the moment I let her get a chokehold on me. Such was her irresistible might.

I slowly stood, my legs shaking like jello. I had to do something. This was pathetic. I glanced at the crowd. The ones who’d bet on Prima were cheering her on. My own supporters were booing me. All of them except Mardissa. Her pathetic little puppy-dog eyes as she watched her hero getting her ass beat were heart-wrenching.

Mar frowned, encircling her mouth with her hands to direct her voice. “Get her, Storm! Fuck her up!”

Prima led with a right hook. I batted her hoof away and countered with a blow that landed square on her jaw. I recoiled, my hoof throbbing in pain. It felt like hitting plate steel. Moreover, it didn’t even slow her down. We reared up and our forelegs went around each other’s necks as we wrestled for dominance. My heart hammered in my chest and my muscles strained. She was pushing me back. I smirked as a devious idea entered my mind.

I abruptly ceased all resistance, causing her to overbalance forwards. I rolled backwards underneath her as she dived over the top of me. I lashed out with both hind legs and delivered a blow straight to her lower abdomen, bucking her with enough force to lift her off the ground slightly. If her ovaries had been made out of titanium, everyone would’ve heard them clack against her spine.

Prima exhaled explosively, her muzzle dribbling drool. She crumpled like a wet noodle. I rose to my hooves, dusting myself off, bowing mockingly to the crowd. “Ladies and gentlecolts, please come again to the Storm Kicks Everyone’s Ass Show. Don’t forget to stop by the gift shop on your way out. We’re fresh out of fucks but we’ve still got wounded pride in stock.”

Though she frantically waved her arms in the air, I picked up on Mardissa’s warning too late. A pair of forelegs wrapped around my neck from behind, lifting me off the pavement and choking me with tremendous force. I couldn’t breathe or speak, only gurgle incoherently, lifting my forehooves shakily towards my neck.

“I could kill you, you little psycho,” Prima hissed into my ear. “Is that what you want? Huh? You want me to put you out of your misery?” Her grip tightened even further. “Go to sleep, skank!”

Garrida had put me out like a light with a choke before. I should’ve passed out seconds ago, but I didn’t. I didn’t understand what the hell was going on. I remained alert and conscious as the pressure on my neck became unbearable. I was being strangled by the weight of my own armor and gear, among other things. In spite of my struggles, there was no escaping this time. Me and my opponent both knew that. I reached back and gently tapped twice.

Prima let me go and I collapsed to the pavement, drawing in ragged breaths. I looked up at the disappointed faces of the ones who’d placed their bets on the underdog. Mardissa was crestfallen. Shooting Star, Haybale, and the rest of Prima’s little fan club were hugging each other and jumping for joy. Barleywine’s expression was unreadable in the shadowed interior of the Centaur’s troop bay.

Right then, the sky chose that moment to start pissing a thin trickle of rain on my head. I gave so little of a fuck, I didn’t even blink as the droplets landed in my eyes.

Fuck this year.

// … // … // … // … // … //

I scarfed down a dry oatmeal bar that clung to my aching throat, chasing it with a swig of water from my canteen. I sighed as I leaned back in my seat, trying to keep my food down as the Centaur’s bumpy ride made my guts pinch together. My whole body ached. Another hour had gone by and the rain had let up a little. Crookneck had rejoined the formation in his Palfrey, refueled, rearmed, and ready to go. His machine galloped along beside us as we made for the Port of Vanhoover. Our next objective.

Barleywine’s face looked like a cauliflower from how badly I’d beaten him. I felt a pang of regret as I gazed into his remorseful eyes. I deeply regretted ever knowing him. I regretted that I’d given him the chance to hurt me, or anyone else, so profoundly.

“So, Barley,” I said. “Were the gangs your only customers?”

“Ash far ash I know, yesh.” He struggled to speak with his lips so swollen.

“That’s not what our intel says.” I sighed and shook my head. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe they could scrounge up this much money just to get high. There’s something else going on, here.”

Barleywine laughed derisively, clearly unwilling to entertain this line of inquiry. “Ish it jush me, or were you alwaysh thish paranoid?”

“You never told me what the fucking organs were for, Barley. Who’d you sell ‘em to, huh?”

“You don’t—you don’t wanna know,” he said.

“Who?”

“They’re not—” He let out a string of agonized coughs. “They’re not good people, Dez.”

I raised a hoof threateningly. “Answer the fucking question, dipshit, or I’ll show you how I’m even worse!”

“I won’t!” There was defiance in his tone, soon turning to fear. “I can’t. They’ll kill me. I’m dead if I tell you anything.”

“Was it the Confederacy?”

“No, not the cleomanni.” Barleywine shook his head.

“Was it humans?” I said. “Huh?”

“What’sh a human? What are you talking about?”

“Like cleomanni, but no horns, no hooves, no tail. Flat feet, small ears. Ring any bells?”

Barleywine’s eyes widened, his face twisting into a mask of horror. “How do you know about them?”

“We’ve met.” I nodded. “The circumstances were far from pleasant.”

Barleywine was beside himself, his head sinking into his hooves. “No, no, no! Fuck, no!”

My muzzle curled into a hateful snarl. “So, it was them. You did business with the fucking Vargr.”

“It washn’t bushinesh! They never paid! They jush came by and took what they wanted. We had no ushe for the organs. We were being extorted. It wash either cut ‘em out and hoof ‘em over or die. It wash jush leftover medical waste. We’d put ‘em on ice, pile ‘em up at the drop-off point, and they’d come by to pick ‘em up.”

“What for?”

“Are you fucking kidding, Shtorm? They never told us a damn thing, other than bring organs.”

“When was your next drop-off supposed to be?”

“Tonight.”

“Barley, you’re gonna need to be a lot more specific than that.”

“Around nineteen hundred.”

I bit my lip. “Where?”

“In the city limitsh.”

I took a deep breath, exhaling my accumulated stress. “Fuck. Fuck this.” I turned and addressed my squad. “Revenant, listen up. We’re on borrowed time, here. We have hostiles incoming, and we don’t want to be here when they show up.”

“What’s a Vargr?” Cloverleaf said.

“Not now, Corporal.” I shook my head. “You will all be fully briefed when it becomes necessary to do so. Not a minute sooner. Just know that if I call out SILVER SCALPEL, we are dropping fucking everything and returning to base immediately.”

My squad looked uneasy, trading a few glances. Clearly, they were displeased with that answer. I was, too. What had happened at Pur Sang was partly because Cicatrice and Bellwether had withheld intel, in some cases deliberately lying about the extent of their knowledge about the Vargr. I didn’t want the same fate to befall my unit.

I bit my lip, sucking in a deep breath. The choice is mine to make, isn’t it? I glanced over and locked eyes with Prima. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she knew exactly what I was about to say. She was slowly shaking her head, patting the spot on her rig where she kept her daggers. I clenched my jaw. I didn’t have a choice after all. Cicatrice had seen to that.

Secunda brought us to a stop in the middle of a public park adjacent to the waterfront. Crookneck stood by in his Palfrey, weapons at the ready. I took a peek out the viewports, shaking my head. I didn’t like this spot.

“Nope,” I said. “Ghost Two, we need to reposition. We’re in the center of a fucking kill zone.”

“No choice,” Secunda said. “I need open air. The buildings attenuate signals too much.”

I scanned the rooftops, looking for signs of more recoilless gun nests or ATGM infantry. If either of those were to show up out of the blue, we were fucked.

“Dammit. Squad, disembark.” I donned my helmet and checked my casters. “Secure the perimeter.”

Earlier, Prima had backtracked to one of the recoilless rifle nests we’d neutralized and retrieved one of the fearsome weapons and a crate of ammo for it. She’d stowed it on the Centaur’s external equipment rack. The weapon was either a Confederate VB-105 or the unlicensed Imperial copy of it. I hadn’t bothered to check the markings. Both the Empire and the Confederacy made extensive use of this particular model during the war. The weapon used cartridges with perforations that released hot, expanding powder gases into a venturi tube, sending as much energy rearward as it sent downrange. Standing directly behind one when it fired was a guarantee of ruptured eardrums and rattled brains.

The 105mm shells packed a hefty explosive punch, enough to send spall flying around the interior of an armored vehicle or demolish a bunker. Recoilless guns this size were typically mounted on a tripod, but Prima levitated the weapon off the Centaur’s side hooks with ease, tilting the breechblock open and loading one of the giant cartridges like it was no more troublesome than loading a break-action shotgun. She levitated the entire ammo crate along with her.

“Sergeant,” Prima said. “I’m going to post up on a rooftop overlooking the port. Call for fire support when you need it.”

I nodded. “Much obliged. We need to narrow down where these assholes are. They’re gonna know we’re coming. I want a more exact fix on their location.” I keyed my radio. “Ghost Two, begin surveillance. Use the sensor mortar. Spearhead One, get into position.”

“Copy that,” Secunda said. “Sensor mortar, up.”

Crookneck was next. “Yes, Sergeant. Repositioning.”

While Prima and Crookneck’s Palfrey took off running at a good pace, my squad took a few steps back from the Centaur as a retractable small-caliber mortar tube rose from its stowage position on the Centaur’s roof. The turret rotated with an electric whine, adjusting elevation slightly. I covered my ears. Bang. Bang. Bang. After the last deafening report, the thin metal of the mortar tube briefly pinged like a tuning fork.

“Sensor mortars, out!” Secunda said.

The projectiles were away. Somewhere downrange, in the Port of Vanhoover, three unattended sensor stations blew their aerodynamic covers off, deployed their chutes, and slowly came to a rest on rooftops or on the ground, linking into the datasphere and extending our network area and sensor coverage.

I approached the rear of the Centaur, peering inside. Secunda was hard at work at the surveillance station, deploying the Centaur’s antenna boom and retracting the mortar. I gave Lucky a quick charge with my horn and sent him up to survey the area, slaving his video feed to my helmet’s display. Couldn’t quite see anything, as yet. We would have to get closer.

Secunda held her hoof to her headphones. The cups containing their drivers shone like obsidian over her ears, her face lit up in an eerie glow by the screens and oscilloscopes in front of her. “We have something that might be a hostile contact. We’re going to need to narrow it down. I’ve spoofed the enemy’s communications channels.” Secunda hoofed over a mic connected to her station by a long, coiled cable, nodding towards Barleywine.

Barleywine was barely coherent, his breathing labored, his expression miserable. It was clear he was in a lot of pain.

I held the mic out to him. “Barley, I’m gonna key this mic, and you’re gonna have those fuckers check in. You got me?

“Storm, no, pleash,” he said. “They’re my friendsh, Storm. They’re—”

I held out a hoof with a fentanyl snail in it. “See this? Fentanyl citrate. Painkillers. Every time you obey, you get one. Every time you don’t, I beat you black and blue. If you alert these fuckers to our presence prematurely, I’ll knock your head off.”

He slowly nodded with a defeated whimper. “Okay. Jush gimme the damn thing.”

He reached for the mic and I moved it just outside of his reach. “Cross me, Barley, and I’ll hit you so hard, your head will come out of your ass inside-out. Stop speaking like a mush-mouthed retard, too. They can hear that.”

Barleywine glared at me, sighing as he took the mic from my grasp. “Grinder, this is Dweller.”

For a few seconds, there was nothing but silence. I briefly gave up hope that we’d ever get the drop on these bastards.

“Go ahead, Dweller,” the radio rumbled with a stallion’s voice, rough as an iron rasp. “I heard there was trouble. Did you take care of it?”

“Situation’s under control. Just some drifters poking their noses where they shouldn’t have been.”

“You’re dicking me around, boy,” Grinder said. “I don’t like being dicked around. The boys tell me there were battlesuits in the city. Battlesuits that walk on four legs. If there’s one gang I hate more than any other, it’s the fucking Sparklers. So, tell me, boy. Is it Sparklers?”

I looked over to Secunda, who grinned and made a throat-slitting motion with the tip of her hoof. I smirked. We got ‘em.

I snatched the mic from Barley’s grip. “Yeah. It’s Sparklers.”

“Who is this?” The stallion on the other end grew perturbed, if his tone of voice was any indication.

“This is Sergeant Desert Storm of the Equestrian Liberation Front, and you just painted a bullseye on your ass, motherfucker.”

“You b—”

I switched the channel. “Ghost One, Spearhead One. Target is marked. Fire at will.”

I watched on Lucky’s feed as Prima and Crookneck let loose with a barrage of recoilless gun rounds and Tatzlwurm missiles, the muzzle flashes on the feed appearing slightly ahead of the sound due to the fact that they were several hundred meters away from us. Moments later, in the Port of Vanhoover, a warehouse was reduced to a skeleton, engulfed in a fireball that quickly gave way to a rising cloud of smoke. Shards of corrugated metal floated in the air like confetti.

“Good effect on target,” Prima spoke over the radio. “Whoa, that one had secondaries. Let us know if you want any more.”

“Ghost One, Spearhead One, hold fire and await further orders.” I switched to my Orbit’s datasphere link. “Lucky, search pattern, hundred-meter radius.”

The Juke 1300 spiraled outward from the center, giving a clear view of the target area. I relayed the feed from my helmet to Secunda’s console, and she ran it through a basic AI expert system. I glanced over her shoulder. Nothing on algorithmic. No pixels shifting around. There was nothing moving down there. Either they were dead, or they had decided to bunker down.

“Good. Just what I wanted to see.” I nodded and stepped out of the Centaur. “Squad, on me. We’re going in to secure the port. Neutralize all vandals and Basement members you encounter. No survivors.” I turned to Ketros, striking out my hoof towards him. “Ket, guard the prisoner. I don’t want this fucker slipping away while we’re occupied. He has a lot to answer for. Oh, and give him his pain candy.” I hoofed over the fentanyl.

“At once, ma’am.” Ketros unslung his flechette gun and stood guard across from Barleywine in the back of the Centaur.

We moved up along the street, watching the roofline for any signs of an ambush, sweeping the alleys as we maintained a loose formation. All was quiet, except for the far-off wailing of fire alarms in the port. A dozen gantries dominated the horizon, their ominous, hulking, pitch-black silhouettes barely visible against a twilit backdrop. Right in the midst of it all, a column of smoke and flame split the sky. We turned into the driveway leading into the Port of Vanhoover. This entrance had a closed and padlocked chain-link fence gate.

“Revenant Six, get that gate open,” I said.

“On it, ma’am.” Hexhead nodded.

I watched the big, gray unicorn pull a couple of combination wrenches out of her saddlebags with her levitation. She hovered them over and stuck the open ends into the padlock’s shackle. With just a bit of leverage, she was able to bust the shackle right off.

“Shitty lock,” she muttered.

She reared up and started pushing the gate open when I heard a supersonic snap and saw a puff of ballistic fiber from Hexhead’s vest. She stumbled back, cursing and groaning in pain.

“Cover!” I shouted. “Enemy sniper!”

We quickly lined up behind the concrete wall abutting the fence. I took Hexhead aside and checked her over real quick, eyeing the hole in her Bulwark armor’s chest protector.

“How’s it feel?” I said.

“Hurts.”

I unstrapped the front piece of her barding and swiveled it out of the way. There was a great deal of back face deformation, the plate bulging inwards a fair bit. No penetration, but it was certain to leave a big bruise. I sure was glad the Empire spared no expense on our gear.

“You’re good, Private.” I buttoned her back up. “Plate’s trashed. See the armorers for a new one, later.” I hustled back into cover and checked the feed from my Orbit. I increased the light-enhance setting, feeding the video back from my helmet to the Centaur and Secunda. “Ghost Two, we have an enemy sniper in our AO. I need intel support. What do you see on your sensors?”

“Gunshot locator’s got an approximate fix,” Secunda said. “Wait, I see him. Upper catwalks of the warehouse, one hundred meters west of your position.”

“Relay grid coordinates to the fire support elements.” As Secunda sent Prima and Crookneck their targets, I switched the channel. “Ghost Two’s sending over another grid reference. As soon as you have it, I want shells and missiles on that target yesterday.”

“Ready,” Prima said.

“I’ve got four more rounds, and then I’m out, Sergeant,” Crookneck said. “Ahh, I see it. Ready.”

“Revenant One to Ghost One and Spearhead One, you are cleared to engage,” I said. “Take ‘em out.”

Seconds later, a 105mm shell streaked over our heads. It demolished the catwalks and took a chunk out of the warehouse, engulfing the building in a huge explosion. Then, two Tatzlwurm ATGMs raced overhead, their engines aglow. The HESH CycloHex warheads ripped the steel siding of the warehouse to bits, caving in the supports holding up the roof. The whole building sagged, and then collapsed. The squad cheered at the carnage.

“Get some, motherfucker!” Haybale shouted, proving that he was, in fact, that one guy.

I switched to the radio channel used by the Basement. “To the kidnapping, murdering scumbags who’ve chosen to befoul one of Her Majesty’s seaports with their presence, surrender immediately, drop all your weapons, and come out, slowly. If you do, you will not be harmed. If you do not, hostages or not, I will level every fucking building in the Port of Vanhoover.

“I bet there are still some nasty petrochemicals down there. I would shed no tears if the whole shebang turned into a blazing inferno and you shitdicks all burned to death. Your lungs will be filled with toxic fumes and your skin will peel off like an onion. It’s a terrible way to die. Ten seconds!”

I switched the channel back, listening for an intel update. Several seconds elapsed. Nothing. At first, it seemed like they were choosing to do things the hard way.

Now or never. “Ghost One, you are—”

“Revenant One,” came Secunda’s voice over the radio. “I’m seeing lots of movement on the ground. They’re coming out of the buildings.”

A couple dozen Riggers and Basement members stumbled out into the open, sans armor or weapons. Some were visibly shaking in fear as they approached us.

The Rigger in the lead was practically broken by the whole affair. “They said come to the docks. They said we’d be safe. Instead, we got trapped here! Fuck, the ELF are gonna fuckin’ kill us!”

“Shut it, moron,” one of the Basement members said. “Do as they say.”

“Come over here, asshole!” I said. “I got your zip-ties right here.”

As my squad stood by, I secured the prisoners one by one, tying their forelegs and hind-legs together so they couldn’t get far. “Secunda, radio the Vanhoover cell. We have prisoners that need to be transported.”

“Grinder and his boys aren’t surrendering,” said one particularly scarred and rough-looking vandal mare with a cataracted eye and lips encrusted in dried blood. “You silly Sparkler cunts are in for one hell of a time if you think you can take the big boss.”

I knelt down towards her. “I don’t give a fuck. I’ll burn him down like all the rest. Just watch me.” I turned towards my squad. “Revenant Three and Four, guard the prisoners. The rest of you, on me.” I waved my forehoof in a circle. “We’re going in.”

Cloverleaf and Haybale nodded silently, standing by the heap of writhing wretches we’d detained. Me, Shooting Star, Jury Rig, Hexhead, and Mardissa moved in, fanning out and keeping an eye out for enemy movement. I recalled Lucky and had him come to a hover over my shoulder. I coughed sharply, covering my mouth. There was a lot of smoke around. Visibility was poor.

We came upon the jagged, flaming rubble of one of the warehouses. As I moved towards the blaze, shielding my eyes from the radiant heat, I saw something that chilled me to the bone. A small, kicking leg was sticking out from underneath a fallen concrete support beam.

“Oh shit,” I muttered. “Hey, guys, help me with this!”

The five of us reached up and planted our hooves on the beam, giving it a shove aided by my levitation. We quickly levered it off the filly trapped underneath. To my shock, I quickly recognized her as the one whose father I’d shot in the Redheart General Hospital when we were on the run from the Confederacy after the outpost raid went bad. Sometime between now and then, the Basement had taken her captive in order to harvest her quintessence, and then, we’d brought a whole building down on her head. She was bleeding, shrapnel-wounded and badly concussed.

“Damn, and just when I was starting to think I was the unluckiest girl in the universe!” I said.

At the sight of me, she began to cry out and struggle in fear. “Monster! You monster!”

“Calm down.” I quickly pulled my first aid kit from my saddlebags. “You’re making your injuries worse.”

She kept struggling, so I did the unthinkable. I used my body-seize spell to paralyze her muscles. Dark magic though it was, it took on an entirely different character when used with noble intentions. There was no blowback, as a result.

It wrenched my heart, seeing her look up at me with such fear in her teary eyes, her face marred with angry red wounds and flecks of blood. She shivered for a few moments, resisting my magic, until I allowed her to breathe again.

“Don’t move,” I said.

“Please don’t kill me.” She was trembling with fright. “Please don’t. Please, please, please.”

“I’m not. Now hold still. This is gonna sting.” I ran an antiseptic pad over her wounds, wiping the blood away and disinfecting them. I used Hemogel to seal the worst of them. “Can you get up?”

Slowly, shakily, she tried to stand. One of her hind legs was smashed. Broken from having the pillar fall on it, it looked like. She walked a couple meters with a pronounced limp before collapsing into a sobbing, whimpering mess.

“What the hell happened here?” I said.

“You,” she said, her voice laced with venom. “You happened. There were like fifty ponies in here, you bloodthirsty morons!”

I looked over at the burning rubble, my eyes widening with shock and dismay. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. “Fuck. Fuck!” I keyed the radio. “Ghost One, we have civilian casualties in the port. Shit. We need medical assistance from the Vanhoover cell. Whatever they can send us. Ghost Two, what the hell? I thought we had positive ID on the target.”

“We had positive ID on an enemy transmitter,” Secunda said. “You were the one who gave the order to fire.”

“Dammit,” I muttered. “Ghost One, Spearhead One, abandon those firing positions and get your asses down here. Fire support at a distance is no good. Too much collateral damage.”

I pulled my amulet out from under my chest protector. The pendant glowed red, vibrating and self-levitating like a thing possessed as I drew upon its monumental store of power.

“Hordettas, Imanas, Carraistur.”

With my magic’s glow tinted red by the power of my stored anger, I blasted forth a stream of cryokinesis magic at the blaze, sustaining the spell for several seconds as I swept back and forth over the flames. Though I was never particularly skilled at elementalism, the stored power of the amulet offset my weaknesses in that particular spectrum of magic. Several seconds later, the amulet was almost exhausted. My spell guttered out, but so did the fire.

Underneath lay the remnants of the holding pens, along with dozens of charred and broken bodies. Some had armor and weapons, either vandals or Basement members—it was impossible to tell which, given how mangled the corpses were. However, most of them were unarmed. Innocent ponies who’d been taken captive. Some of them, too small to be anything but foals. I soon found myself hyperventilating.

I heard the slow clapping of hooves behind me. All of us wheeled around to face the interloper. There stood before us an immense, brown-coated, yellow-eyed unicorn stallion, easily a half-again my height and covered from head to hoof in makeshift body armor composed of numerous scavenged bits and baubles. Most strikingly, he wore a chest plate adorned with a lamellar caparison fashioned from old grinder wheels.

He tossed a broken antenna into the air, catching it in a fetlock and twirling it around. “Dumb Sparkler. Did you think I’d be stupid enough to mount my transmitter on top of my head? No. It goes on the building with the meatbags, for exactly this reason. I take it you caught that dumb little bitch Barleywine. I guess that’s it for the whole Basement act. Time to close up shop and get out of this shit town.”

“You must be Grinder,” I said.

Grinder reared up and spread his forelegs. “The one and only.”

“But you’re a Rigger,” Hexhead said. “Are you saying the Riggers and the Basement are one and the same?”

The stallion grinned. “Of course, you dumb fucks.”

Jury Rig was speechless for a couple seconds. “But what about the dead drops? The security measures?”

The vandal laughed. “That’s just bullshit to keep Sparklers like you distracted and to keep the other gangs from getting wise to the hustle and trying to take it over. I take it you’ve raided one of my gold stashes. You think we move a safe that size around every week? Hah! Fuck no! We just vary our routes to throw you off.”

I was shaking with rage. They’d completely fooled us. My amulet could barely keep up as it soaked in my overflowing emotions. “You sons of bitches have been murdering ponies and harvesting their quintessence.”

Grinder shrugged. “So fucking what? All the gangs love it. Quintessence is the true currency of this benighted age, and I aim to corner the market.”

“No.” I stepped forward. “This is over. You’re fucking done.”

“You walked right into my trap, Sparkler,” Grinder said. “When you go to meet her, give the Martyred Maiden my regards.”

I steeled myself as Grinder lit his horn. In a bright flash of yellow light, the stallion teleported away. The same magical signature I’d seen during our skirmish with the Riggers in Tar Pan. He sure got around. All around us, in the ruins of the port, Basement members rose up from hiding, their modified caster emitters flickering red. An ambush.

“Squad, get to cover!” I shouted. “Weapons free!”

The air hissed with red and green caster pulses as a firefight erupted. I used my levitation to depress the internal triggers of my Phoenix Fire as I ran to cover, sending streams of scintillating green spellpower downrange. Lucky swept precise sheets of suppressive fire over the enemy, keeping them pinned down. I had all of us tagged in the datasphere as friendlies; the onboard IFF systems tucked into my Juke 1300’s firmware did the rest.

We took cover behind the concrete rubble and crumpled metal siding of the destroyed warehouse, assailed on all sides. The filly we’d rescued was screaming and crying, covering her head as she pressed herself low to the ground, hoping not to get shot. I saw a live grenade land right next to her and Shooting Star. The Corporal, in spite of her famous reflexes, didn’t even notice.

“Grenade!” I shouted.

Having scarcely any time to react, I grabbed the thing in my levitation and hurled it skyward with as much force as I could muster. With a grunt of exertion, Shooting Star leapt on top of the filly and covered her with her body. The grenade detonated a good fifty meters into the air, raining fragments down on us from above. Ball bearings bounced off my helmet.

“Nice save, ma’am,” Shooting Star said.

I gritted my teeth and keyed my radio. “Fuck! Ghost One, Spearhead One, where is my fucking support?”

“We’re almost there, hang tight,” Crookneck radioed back.

The galloping of the Palfrey’s titanium hooves drew near, beating like a drum. Crookneck’s contraption burst onto the scene, giving our enemies quite the shock. The machine’s imposing presence drew a substantial portion of their caster fire, red caster beams bouncing uselessly off of its thick metal glacis. The Palfrey reared up onto its hind legs, converting into biped mode and unlimbering its autocannon. The staccato thumping of the 30mm heralded a string of grenade-yield explosions, knocking Basement members and Riggers off their hooves and sending them scattering. Some weren’t so lucky. I saw one stallion take a round to the neck, blowing his head clean off his shoulders and leaving a bloody crater in its place.

Crookneck grunted with displeasure, his voice relayed through the Palfrey’s external speakers. “Oh, that was nasty.”

Prima was next to arrive. Without hesitation, she teleported into the fray and started stabbing. One Rigger tried to take a swing at her with an old tire iron. She crossed two of her Levdaggers in front of her face, catching his weapon. A third dagger went straight for his eye, the point of the blade driving so deep it couldn’t have gone anywhere but his brain. The enemy’s attention had been diverted from me and the rest of my unit. This was our chance.

“Squad, assault the enemy positions!” I shouted.

We leapt out of cover and opened fire on the suppressed and disorganized vandals. When Mar’s flechette gun ran dry, she switched to her caster without missing a beat, sending beams downrange. One of the Riggers stepped out from behind cover directly in my path as I advanced. This stallion was armed a little differently than the others, seeing as he had a pressurized synfuel tank strapped to his back. The bastard grinned and chomped on a cigar, the pilot lights on his twin flamethrowers lit like a pair of eyes in the gloom.

“We’re havin’ roasted Sparkler for dinner, boys!” he said.

He gave the modified caster pull-rings on his weapons a yank, sending gouts of burning synfuel streaming straight at us. I had no time to dodge. The only way forward was through the inferno. A split-second after he triggered his weapons, I let loose a burst of cryokinesis magic from my horn. There was a brief tug-of-war between ice and fire, chilled crystals crackling and blazing heat rippling the air. I poured on the spellpower, extinguishing the flame and freezing the fuel into a solid gel all the way back to the flamethrowers themselves, clogging their nozzles and extinguishing their pilot lights.

The stallion was less than pleased. “Fuckin’ cheatin’ unicorn bitch!”

Mardissa had freshly reloaded her smoothbore flechette gun. Her weapon’s booming reports were an assault on the senses in close quarters. She put a few rounds in the vandal’s fuel reservoir, sending synfuel streaming all over him. Shooting Star hit the whole mess with a burst of pyrokinesis magic, setting the flamethrower operator ablaze. His bloodcurdling screams and the crackle of his peeling skin served as ample confirmation of the effectiveness of our combined-arms tactics.

Mardissa reached back, her hand upturned. “Put one here.” Me and Star slapped our hooves into her hand. Mar shook it out. “Ow, not so hard.”

I jerked a hoof over my shoulder. “Mar, get the civilian to safety, then form back up on me! We’re moving in!”

While Mardissa nodded and carried out my orders, running back to collect the survivor and take her to the front gate, me and the remainder of the squad advanced on one of the warehouses. Our enemies had just sealed off the entrances, having withdrawn inside the structure while covering their retreat with poorly aimed caster and machine gun fire.

Crookneck lined up his Palfrey with the warehouse’s roll-up door. “I am in position and ready to breach inside, Sergeant.”

I glanced at Prima as she took up position near us. I took a deep breath. “Not yet. Wait till Mar gets back.”

A tense two minutes passed in silence as we waited for Mardissa to hand off the survivor to Clover and Haybale. Soon, she linked back up with us, tapping me on the back as I kept my eyes focused in the direction of the threat.

“Hard to slice the pie with a beamcaster,” Mardissa said.

“What?” I glanced back at her.

“You have to fully commit because it’s attached to your torso, so you can’t peer around cover with it. Shit sucks. I can’t believe you use these as primary weapons. Handy sidearm, though.”

“We don’t have hands, Private. How do you suppose we’d hold a rifle and pivot around cover? With our mouths? Yeah, I bet my dentist would fucking love that.” I keyed my radio. “Ghost Two, status. How are we looking?”

“They’re concentrated in the structure dead ahead of you. I don’t see much movement anywhere else on my sensor grid.”

“Spearhead One, breach in!” I shouted.

Crook was too close for ATGMs, so he readied the autocannon, aimed low and to the left, and stitched a cutout pattern of 30mm rounds in the rollup door, his weapon deafening us with its full-auto report. Weakened by the string of holes perforating it, the rollup door offered no resistance as he broke into a sprint and shoulder-charged into it with a screech or tearing metal. We surged into the hole behind him, the Palfrey’s floodlights illuminating the dusty space beyond.

We scanned the space for threats as we carefully advanced, keeping our eyes on the catwalks above. The darkened interior of the warehouse was cluttered with abandoned goods and rusty mechanical detritus, vegetation creeping up through the concrete in places.

A deep cackle filled the air, reverberating through the cavernous space. We all searched in vain for the source. Mardissa swept her flechette gun high and low. There wasn’t a hostile in sight.

That was when a pair of headlights lit up in the gloom. We hadn’t seen the Confederate battlesuit, camouflaged as it was among the ruins of our civilization. The Rakshasa slowly stood to its full height, raising its autocannon.

Grinder was at the controls, as was soon made evident by his voice crackling through the machine’s external speakers. “Teeny tiny little Sparklers.”

“Rak!” I yelled. “Scatter!”

Me and my squad ran in all directions to escape imminent death. The booming of the Rak’s autocannon heralded the prompt arrival of explosive munitions. I was mildly concussed by the blasts going off all around us. I’d lost my kidneys last time. I wasn’t keen on losing any more organs and having them replaced with more chrome.

Crookneck’s floodlights fell upon the aggressor, and he let loose with his remaining Tats. Grinder fired the Rak’s disposable rocket bottles, sending his rig careening sideways. The Tatzlwurm missiles missed their target by a hair, streaked to the far end of the warehouse and detonated there, the shockwave rattling our teeth and sending shards of metal debris into the air. The Rak ejected its glowing maneuvering cartridges, their fuel spent. Grinder aimed his autocannon dead-center at Crookneck’s Palfrey and let loose a burst of rounds that detonated against the battlesuit’s front glacis, pockmarking its armor.

I leapt into a steel trash skip, just barely avoiding being gutted by shrapnel. I peeked over the rim of the sturdy metal enclosure. The rest of Revenant was hiding in cover. I could see Mardissa standing behind a support column, fixing a HEAT rifle grenade to the end of her weapon and silently debating whether or not to outflank the enemy battlesuit. Grinder’s Rakshasa and Crookneck’s Crook dueled briefly, charging at each other and grappling hoof-to-hand, the thudding of metal-on-metal reverberating through my chest. The air was tinged with a metallic odor as sparks flew.

“Squad, status!” I radioed, receiving only a soft crackle under the din of battle in response. “Guys? Fuck!”

I enabled my helmet’s scan view mode and checked the location of my squad’s nav markers in the local datasphere. They were all over the place. Mar was the closest one. Jury Rig and Hexhead had taken to the catwalks above. Shooting Star was pinned down in a firefight with stragglers halfway to the other end of the building, doing a damn fine job of holding them off all on her own. Rig and Hex were in a very questionable position.

“What the fuck are they doing?” I thought aloud. “They’re too exposed up there!”

I peeked over the edge of the garbage skip and watched, slack-jawed, as Jury Rig flapped his wings and jumped in the cab for the warehouse’s overhead gantry system. He yanked the joysticks, and with a squeal of unlubed bearings, the gantry began to move. He latched the spreader onto a shipping container, raising it into the air, and then began moving the gantry towards the dueling battlesuits.

“Yeah, that’s it,” I said. “Drop it on the fucker!”

Crookneck Squash, obviously sensing Jury Rig’s plan, grappled with the enemy Rak and pushed it back, its armored feet skidding across the concrete as artificial muscles vied for supremacy over hydraulics. Jury Rig unlatched the spreader from the container, letting gravity do the rest. Unfortunately, Grinder’s awareness proved superior; he fired his rocket boosters a second time, sending him skidding backwards. The container fell between the two battlesuits and crunched against the floor. Grinder took aim at the gantry’s exposed crew cab with his autocannon.

“What?” My eyes widened in horror as I realized what was about to happen. “Fuck! Revenant Five, fall back! Revenant Seven, enga—”

Grinder let off a single, precise shot from his autocannon, the round slamming into the thick glass of the gantry’s crew cab, the explosion denting it inward and punching a beer-can-sized hole in it. I could hear Jury Rig’s screams of agony from fifty meters away. I sucked in air through my gritted teeth, my eyes slowly squeezing shut.

After chambering a blank cartridge, Mardissa swung around the column and let loose with a HEAT grenade from the end of her flechette gun. The round struck the Rak’s autocannon dead-center, blowing a hole in the barrel and rendering it entirely useless. Grinder jettisoned the disabled cannon and drew a weapon stowed on his battlesuit’s back, breaking the straps that the vandals had used to secure it in place. Those Rigger maniacs had built a giant circular saw with a salvaged V12 Centaur engine as its power source. Grinder revved his weapon a couple times, its exhaust pipes howling and shooting flame.

“Nice suit you’ve got, Sparklers,” Grinder spoke through his Rak’s external speakers. “It’d be a shame to rip it to fucking pieces.”

“I’m going to try something,” Crookneck said. “Stand back!”

Crook’s Palfrey stowed its automatic cannon in its back-mounted rotary weapon carriage, equipping a rod in its manipulator hand that telescoped to a good several meters in length. Five salvaged Confederate plasma emitters at the tip of the gleaming metal staff roared to life, spraying conical fingers of bright-blue ionized gas. An electromagnetic sheath snapped around the plasma jets and a buzzing and warbling axe blade composed of raw energy crackled to life.

“Plasma Halberd, active!” Crookneck’s glee bordered on the maniacal as he raised his weapon high. “Always wanted to say that.”

The two battlesuits circled each other, adopting a fighting stance, their pilots searching for openings in the enemy’s defenses, their heavy footfalls shaking the ground and kicking up puffs of dust from the warehouse’s floor. Any sign of a gap, any sign of a weakness, and it was sure to be swiftly exploited. After a few moments, Grinder exposed his machine’s right side, leaving himself open.

“No, Crook, it’s a feint!” I whispered.

Crookneck lunged, bringing his Plasma Halberd down in a mighty swing. Grinder dodged to one side and swung his giant circular saw in a vicious reverse uppercut, scarring the Palfrey’s cockpit and sending sparks flying.

Staggering backwards, Crookneck unleashed a point-blank barrage from the Palfrey’s medium beamcasters, slagging bits of accessory armor that’d been welded onto Grinder’s Rak. When Grinder swung his fearsome weapon downwards in an overhand chop, Crookneck gracefully twisted away from it, spun like a ballerina, and cleaved the circular saw’s blade with his halberd. The sawblade, spinning at a few thousand revolutions per minute and containing a considerable amount of rotational energy, exploded with a deafening bang, pelting both machines with a shower of sparks and flying fragments.

Grinder did not break his stride or hesitate in the least. He let out an enraged roar as he discarded his destroyed weapon, grabbed the handle of Crook’s halberd, and laid into him with a big haymaker that shook the whole warehouse, parting Crook from his weapon. The blow tore the power cable connecting the Plasma Halberd to the Palfrey, the blade instantly winking out of existence. Grinder tossed the ruined weapon’s handle aside and charged headfirst into Crook’s Palfrey, their torsos slamming together. Crookneck was overbalanced by the impact and knocked flat on his ass. Grinder slammed his machine’s manipulator hands into the Palfrey’s cockpit over and over again, denting its armor, trying to pry open the cockpit and kill Crookneck.

“Ghost One!” I radioed. “Spearhead One needs assistance! Support!”

“Got it, Sergeant,” Prima said. “You just keep hiding in that garbage can right there where you belong, and I’ll take care of it.”

“Fucking bitch,” I whispered to myself.

Prima winked into existence on top of the Rakshasa with a flash of teleportation magic. She set about placing CycloHex charges on the Rakshasa’s upper surface, but she must have made too much noise. An electro-optical sensor turret on the Rak’s roof rotated to face her.

Prima briefly paused, realizing she’d been caught. “Oh fuck.”

Grinder reached up and grabbed her before cocking his arm back and hurling her through the air like a hoofball. Prima braced her forelegs in front of her face a split-second before she slammed straight through a concrete column, taking a chunk of it with her. The SpecComSec agent rolled across the floor of the warehouse and came to a stop a good fifty meters away. She struggled to rise to her hooves, but her legs wouldn’t obey her.

Grinder slow-marched in her direction. “You’re gonna die here, Sparkler. How does it feel, to know that you’re gonna die just like your useless Empress? It’s the law of the jungle, now. Bootlicks and whores like you are obsolete. You hear me? No one tells me what to fucking do. No one!”

I looked up and saw Hexhead trying to cut her way into the gantry’s ruined crew cab with her blowtorch, my eyes tracing down to Crookneck’s fallen machine. There was only one thing to do.

“Mar, follow me!” I shouted.

I vaulted out of the garbage skip and quickly crossed the open ground between it and the Palfrey, my heart hammering in my chest. Mardissa peeled out of cover and quickly caught up with me. Her nimbleness despite having only two legs was as surprising as always. I climbed onto the machine’s cockpit, looking for a release lever. Finding it, I pulled it and opened the cockpit hatch, the machine’s torso hinging open at the front to reveal Crookneck Squash’s battered and bloodied form. The old stallion had been knocked unconscious, his brow tricking blood from where he’d been smashed against the vehicle’s cramped interior.

I quickly undid his harness, put my forelegs under his, and lifted him out of his seat, hoofing him over to Mardissa. “Get him out of here. Evac him back to the main gate in one piece, you got it?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Mardissa nodded, toting Crookneck under her arm as though he weighed no more than a saddlebag and retreating as ordered.

I snickered a bit. I’d made the president’s daughter into my own Pony Express courier. I climbed into the Palfrey’s cockpit and dropped the hatch, clipping the harness into place over my chest, adjusting it a little to compensate for my armor. The Palfrey’s monitors, gauges, and readouts flared to life in front of me. I reached up and grabbed my head and cracked my neck from side to side, shaking the cobwebs out of my legs. I took a deep breath as I wrapped my hooves around the Palfrey’s controls.

The Crook’s cockpit was unadorned and primitive, constructed from bits of salvage and stitched together by hoof with exposed TIG welds hastily painted with primer to rustproof them. To call it a rough prototype would be an understatement, but it was still a surprisingly well-engineered product, given the harsh circumstances of its construction. The machine had no anima and was obviously designed to be piloted by any race of pony. The Palfrey clearly had no pyrojets, either. Its speed was limited by its duostrand muscles. All the controls were large and simple and placed within easy reach. No syncsuit was required at all to operate it. I slowly guided the Palfrey to a standing position. The machine’s responses to each of my control inputs were sluggish and imprecise compared to my Courser. I could balance a chicken egg on Black Devil’s outstretched hoof if I really wanted to.

I watched as Grinder raised one of his machine’s manipulator hands, preparing to crush Prima into a fine paste. I could’ve let him kill her. All I had to do was delay a few moments longer.

“Hey, motherfucker!” I shouted, my voice amplified through the Palfrey’s loudspeakers and echoing off the warehouse’s walls. “How ‘bout you try a real pilot on for size?”

I slammed the Palfrey’s manipulator hands together in a challenge. Grinder lowered his machine’s hand and turned away from Prima, stalking towards me. Now that I could see it more clearly through the Palfrey’s optics, it was clear that the Rakshasa had been modified to cater to its pilot’s tastes.

The thing had triangular sheet metal spikes welded to it here and there, razor wire strung around its torso to deter boarders. The Rak was painted in a garish industrial orange color scheme, like the rest of the Riggers’ gear. One could just barely make out the charred gray hull and yellow stripes of a spec-ops leader’s paint job underneath, through the gaps in the machine’s new livery.

I recognized the Rak’s underlying battle damage. It was the one whose Gafalze Arresgrippen pilot had taken out my kidneys with a well-placed autocannon salvo after the disastrous outpost raid. The Riggers had salvaged it and restored it to working order. I bared my teeth in rage. I was going to deep-six that infernal machine once and for all.

The two of us broke into a sprint, charging at one another. I pushed the pedals as far as they’d go, squeezing every ounce of speed out of my machine’s bipedal, loping gait. I looked up and to my left. There was a lever that had a couple pictograms hastily hoof-painted next to it; one of the battlesuit standing, and one of it on all fours. I slammed the lever forward, dropping onto my forelegs and picking up even more speed, the entire internal cockpit-pod rotating to keep me level.

I was traveling at a good sixty kilometers an hour when I rammed headfirst into the oncoming Rak. I grunted explosively as my chest slammed into my restraints, briefly seeing stars from the sudden deceleration. I flipped the lever and shifted back into bipedal mode, grappling with the Rak using the Palfrey’s forelegs. Grinder wound up and delivered a punch, his fist sailing towards my cockpit. I raised one of the palfrey’s forelimbs to intercept it, my manipulator hand automatically locking its fingers around his as the two slammed together. He tried an uppercut with his free arm. I caught that one, too.

I poured on the throttle, pressing the pedals as far as they’d go, my duostrand straining against his hydraulic actuators. His feet began to dig furrows into the concrete floor as I pushed him back, marching him towards the ruined and collapsed end of the warehouse and away from my comrades. A walk built into a run, one that he lacked the power to stop. Grinder fired his battlesuit’s rocket bottles, braking his rearward motion with the Rakshasa’s disposable chemical maneuvering thrusters. Gouts of bright orange rocket exhaust spewed from his machine’s shoulders. Our vicious tug-of-war came to a halt in the center of the warehouse. At that point, I wished I had pyrojets of my own. I made a mental note to remind Crookneck of that fact.

A few moments later, the Rak’s rocket boosters burned out and auto-jettisoned. The advantage went to me, yet again, the Confederate battlesuit helplessly sliding across the floor as my duostrand effortlessly overpowered it. I let out a war cry as I smashed Grinder’s Rak straight through the corrugated siding and wrecked girders at the warehouse’s rear with a reverberating boom. I pushed the son of a bitch out the back of the warehouse and all the way down the jetty, the sea undulating beside us in the dark, our floodlights cutting through the mist. I yanked the controls for the manipulators, pulling him towards me and headbutting his machine with my Palfrey’s cockpit. I rammed the Rakshasa off the end of the pier, watching it fall and splash in the ocean below, consigned to a cold, watery grave.

There was a flash of yellow magic as Grinder teleported from his doomed vehicle and back onto an adjacent pier. He let out a whistle, waving to his surviving underlings. A small group of wounded Riggers and Basement members, fleeing a losing battle with Corporal Shooting Star, joined Grinder on a speedboat beside the jetty, unmooring it from the cleats.

“Get back here, you motherfucker!” I shouted.

Grinder turned towards me, his face clearly visible through the Palfrey’s light-enhancing optics, grinning evilly and mock-saluting as he boarded his escape vehicle. They fired up the speedboat’s outboard motors and tore away from the pier, leaving a foamy white trail of disturbed water in their wake.

I panted from adrenaline as I fiddled with the Palfrey’s controls for a few moments, looking for a way to fire the medium casters. Finding the triggers recessed in the hoofcups, I pulled them, only to be greeted with an alarm and red warning boxes that flashed in my viewscreen. The caster emitters had been damaged in the melee and were inoperable. I tried cycling to the autocannon, but I received a warning that its ammo stores were empty. The Crook didn’t even bother pulling it from the carriage.

I slammed my hoof into the console. “Fucker! I won’t let you get away!” I keyed my radio. “Ghost Two, do you read me? We’ve got a hostile contact leaving the AO. Enemy speedboat. Is there any way you can see the son of a bitch from where you are? Get some thirty on him?”

“No dice, Sergeant,” Secunda said. “I see ‘em on our scopes, but there are intervening buildings in the way.”

“Can you reposition?”

“Wait one. Yes, there’s a good firing position a few hundred meters to the southeast, but by the time we get there, they’ll be out of range.”

I watched as the Riggers’ speedboat began to shrink on the horizon. “Fucking fucking-fuck!”

I took a deep breath, suppressing the fight-or-flight response that’d taken hold of me. I pulled my brass amulet out, letting it soak in my anger, sighing as a dull serenity took its place. As I stared out over the horizon, a row of evenly spaced floodlights several kilometers across winked into existence at the edge of Luna Bay. I watched through the Palfrey’s optics, zooming in on one of the distant contacts with a knob on the console, my eyes slowly widening and a chill running down my spine.

A dozen submarines breached the surface, several klicks out. First, their conning towers, and then, their angular bows. They were huge machines, easily the size of a supercarrier. What happened next made my blood run cold in my veins. Watertight doors in their decks slid open, lifts raising aircraft into place from within their bellies. I took a deep, shuddering breath as I watched two dozen of the contragravitic craft lift off and take to the skies. Their bulbous white fuselages, blended wings, and feathery wingtips—like a cross between a great seabird and a killer whale—were unmistakable.

“Orcas,” I whispered. “Vargr.”

Their spotlights looked like the accusatory eyes of a pack of predatory beasts, sizing us up and preparing to pounce on their prey. I broke out in a cold sweat and my guts tied themselves into knots. I grew nauseous. I was so sick with fear, I felt like I was about to spew all over the Palfrey’s cockpit. I could just barely keep it in.

I keyed the radio. “Revenant One to all squads, SILVER SCALPEL. I say again, SILVER SCALPEL in the AO. Get those civilians and prisoners to safety and then evac to the rendezvous point immediately. We are leaving.”

I did an about-face and put the Palfrey in quad-mode, building up speed as I retraced my path. I came to a stop as I saw Hexhead climb onto the overhead gantry’s wrecked crew cab and reach down into that mess to try and retrieve Jury Rig.

“Get him out of there, quick!” I spoke through the Palfrey’s external speakers.

“Ma’am, oh gosh.” Hexhead’s normally calm demeanor faltered. “He’s fucked up! I’m seeing a lot of blood and feathers in here!”

“Is he still breathing?”

“Yeah, but barely.”

“Then pull him out, Private,” I said. “We are out of time.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I brought up Lucky’s feed on my helmet’s display eyepiece. The enemy dropships weren’t moving. They were hovering in formation off the coast, providing aerial cover to the subs and tracking Grinder’s speedboat.

It had taken several fixed beamcaster turret installations and all of the HBCs on a Destrier for me to drop one of those things’ shields. With a Palfrey with depleted ATGMs and an empty 30mm automatic cannon, and a Centaur with similar armaments, it was impossible to scratch even one of them. There were dozens. The calculus wasn’t difficult to do in my head. We weren’t merely outgunned. We were completely at their mercy. Retreat was the only option.

I made my way towards the rubble pile that used to be the warehouse where the vandals kept their captives. Using the Palfrey’s manipulators as carefully as I could, I quickly lifted a few fallen girders and hunks of concrete to see if there were any survivors trapped underneath. I was greeted with more bodies, many of them mangled beyond all recognition. Just when I was about to give up hope, I found a cage that seemed mostly intact, its occupants groaning in pain. I reached down and ripped the cage door off. The eight survivors—three mares and five stallions—thanked me profusely, in spite of what I’d done to them. I pointed towards the main gate and they limped away to join the others. Sadly, even though I kept digging as quickly and cautiously as I could to keep the whole mess from shifting and killing anyone trapped below it, I didn’t see anypony else.

“Fuck it,” I said. “No time left.”

The Vanhoover cell had shown up with a number of cargo trucks. The ELF militia members collected the prisoners and survivors, escorting them into the backs of the trucks. Then, they rolled out. I kept a keen eye on the Centaur’s ramp and did a head count as the rest of Revenant quickly boarded the vehicle. Hex was holding Jury Rig aloft in her levitation. I couldn’t see him too well, but he looked like a mess.

“Where’s Prima?” I radioed the squad.

“I thought she was with you, ma’am,” Corporal Shooting Star replied.

I looked back towards the warehouse where we’d fought Grinder’s Rak. She had to be in there, still. I had to go back for her. I didn’t leave ponies behind, and I sure as fuck didn’t leave them to get taken by the fucking Vargr. I dropped onto all fours and my speed built to a gallop as I depressed the throttle pedals, running back to the warehouse. I quickly brought my machine to a halt and raised up into bipedal mode. If I hadn’t been looking for Prima on thermals, I might’ve run her over. The injured Special Commando Section agent had crawled all the way to the warehouse’s entrance, one of her forelegs smashed and broken.

She looked up at me, her expression forlorn. “Come to finish me off, Sergeant? Afraid I’ll report your fuck-up?”

“No.” I reached one of the Palfrey’s forelimbs down towards her. “Grab on.”

Prima looked surprised as I opened the cockpit and gingerly lifted her inside. I set her down on my lap, since there was nowhere else for her to go in the cramped space. I winced. She weighed a ton, what with all her chrome.

I scooped up the fallen Plasma Halberd and stowed it in the Palfrey’s weapon carriage. Then, I took off at a steady gallop, following the Centaur as we retreated west. It took almost everything I had just to steady my panicked breathing.

A fight was something I understood. A battle had rules. It had limits. Humans weren’t enemy combatants. They were a force of nature, as utterly irresistible as any tsunami or volcano. There was no glory to be had in fighting them. There was only absolute terror.

“You can’t outrun them,” Prima said. “You’ll fail.”

“I’m damn well going to try!” I growled.

We took a few sharp turns in the dusk, staying right on the Centaur’s tail as it navigated Vanhoover’s abandoned streets. As it turned out, the Vargr had not chosen to pursue us. Several minutes later, we reached the outskirts of the city, pulling into the gas station beside the highway. The Centaur pulled in ahead of us, rocking back and forth slightly as their suspension went over bumps in the pavement.

I shook my head, keying my radio. “Keep going, Ghost Two. Return to base. Don’t stop for anything. Don’t come back. If any of us get separated, attempt no rescue. Assume MIA and withdraw immediately.”

“Copy,” Secunda radioed back. “We’re heading back to Tar Pan.”

As the Centaur made a hard right turn and ran over the curb to pull back out of the lot, I let Prima scoot to one side as I unbuckled my harness. I caught a glimpse of her injuries in the process. Her foreleg was hanging loose, the armor around it torn to shreds by the impact. I could see the frayed duostrand and wiring within. It was quite artificial, through and through, just like Clover’s.

“How much chrome do you actually have?” I said.

Prima sighed. “All four legs fully bionic. Subdermal armor on the head and torso. Both eyes. Both ears. Small exocortex and nerve sheathing to boost memory and reaction times. Before you ask, yes, I—”

“Stepped on a landmine?”

“Yep.”

I scowled. “Fucking hell, you’re more metal than this battlesuit. You think you’re in good enough shape to drive?”

Prima raised her other foreleg. “I’ve still got three others that work.”

I opened the cockpit hatch and moved to hop out onto the pavement, but Prima put her hoof on my shoulder and stopped me.

I turned towards her. “Huh?”

Prima had a remorseful look on her face. “You didn’t have to come back. After the way I’ve treated you, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.” The weariness in those green eyes of hers was like a void in space, pulling me into her inner darkness. They shone with just the tiniest glimmer of equinity. “I’m just—I’m just fucking tired. You know? You know what I mean?”

I smiled and took her hoof in mine. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.”

I stepped out onto the asphalt, watching as Prima buttoned up the hatch and took control of the Palfrey.

“Stay safe, Sergeant,” her voice crackled through the machine’s external speakers.

Prima took off at a trot that quickly built to a gallop, the Palfrey disappearing into the twilit haze. I went to the rear of the parking lot and ripped the tarp off my motorcycle, sticking the key in the ignition and starting my Stampeder up. I recalled Lucky over my headset, and after a few tense minutes, my Orbit finally showed up. I powered it down and strapped it to my back. I scanned my surroundings. Neither the Centaur nor the Crook were anywhere in sight. I clicked my tongue softly with disappointment at having fallen so far behind them, giving the throttle a twist and heading back out onto the highway.

Several minutes passed as I rode through the cold and dark. There were no lights on in any of the buildings as I drove on by. Not a soul in sight. It came on slowly. First, with soft hiccups every now and then. After the ten-minute mark, this had degenerated into full-blown messy crying. I struggled to keep control of my bike as I sobbed and shuddered.

“Barley.”

The rain had picked up again, showering me from head to hoof and slashing visibility. I spent the next few minutes of the ride home crying messily and sniffing snot that threatened to dribble from my muzzle. I’d been holding it in for hours. I didn’t want my unit to see me like this. I needed them to respect my command. This needed to work, or I was useless to the rebellion.

As I blinked away tears, I failed to spot the oily puddle in a depression in the roadway. I barely had time to gasp before I skidded, lost directional control, and low-sided my bike. Me and the motorcycle went our separate ways and I tumbled down the highway, finally coming to a stop when my back smashed into a parked car, my body armor denting the bumper. A spill like that would’ve crippled or killed the average cleomanni. Instead, with my pony constitution, I was awake and alert with no broken bones, albeit sporting a rapidly swelling contusion over my spine. I sat there and curled up, burying my face in my hooves as I sobbed endlessly. My very soul hurt.

Every little inconsistency in our relationship stood out in sharp relief. I couldn’t help but recall every time Barleywine had spent a little longer than usual out and about in the wee hours of the morning, or the little brown paper bags he often carried around. I was willing to overlook his flaws, all for the sake of love. He took my loyalty and forbearance, and he spat on it. There weren’t words for the loneliness I felt.

I stared out at the night in silence. I rocked back and forth, my eyes fixed on the darkness. Everything I’d experienced since escaping captivity kept replaying itself in my head. Every miserable second of it. This was my future. This was all I had to look forward to. More of this. It all added up to one thing.

“It’s too much,” I whispered. “It’s just too much.”

I retrieved one of the Confederate painkiller dispensers from my saddlebags, eyeing it intently. The dispenser was of hardened steel construction and could have easily survived being run over by an armored car or dropped from a hundred-story building. However, it had its limits. There were dozens of tablets inside. All it would’ve taken to get at all of them was the application of considerable torsional force from my telekinesis.

It wouldn’t have taken many. A small hoofful, and respiratory depression was guaranteed. I smiled softly, my eyes clouded with tears. It would be the ultimate act of selfishness. My comrades, abandoned. My tale, concluded. All I had to do was swallow a lethal dose of fentanyl citrate, and I’d slip off into a blissful, eternal sleep. My struggle would finally be over. My smile fell. Paralyzing my diaphragm wouldn’t be enough to kill me. There was something in my blood. Something that kept me from needing to breathe. I looked down at my abdomen, where I knew the stigma was. I rubbed the place over my womb where I’d been branded by a harbinger of the blackest evil in the universe.

The Seneschal’s words reverberated through my mind. You will spend the rest of your days in dread, fearing the end, because you know that in the moment your heart stops beating, you will belong to me. And your children. And your children’s children. Forever.

Even death offered no escape. When I died, my soul was destined for that rotting hell. That cold, dark, and oily expanse that smelled of low tide. I would become yet another plaything for the Archons. Up here, I was still a Charger pilot. Down there, I was fast food. A meal and a toy.

It was inevitable. Sooner or later, I was going to die. Either violently, in war, or peacefully, in my bed. And then, they would have me.

I started breathing faster and faster, until I was hyperventilating. I swallowed the lump in my throat. My ears began to ring. I couldn’t stop it. A panic attack was like being mauled by an invisible predator. My body was responding to a threat that wasn’t even there. I began to whimper and pace back and forth, my vision narrowing into a tunnel as my mind was assaulted with adrenaline. While I tried to calm myself, I stuffed the fentanyl back in my saddlebag and retrieved the sertraline and the gene snipper pills. My saddlebags were becoming like a miniature pharmacy, reflecting the wretched state I found myself in.

I popped the two pills into my hoof, and then tossed them in my mouth, tilted my head back, and swallowed them both without any water. That simple act was enough to terminate the attack. The medication was reassuring on its own, even before it had a chance to kick in. My eyes remained fixed on the sky as a strange rumble shook the pavement under my hooves. I gasped in fright and my ears went flat against my skull as an Orca uncloaked a hundred meters directly above me in a stationary hover.

“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no!”

I reflexively used my levitation to yank the ignition key from my motorcycle where it sat on its side several meters away, killing the engine and the lights. I immediately crawled under the abandoned car, utterly chagrined as I watched them bathe my motorcycle in the glow of their spotlights.

“No, no, fuck you!” I hissed. “Go away! Just go the fuck away!”

The spotlight went out and I breathed a sigh of relief, only to sharply inhale and hold my breath when I heard the warble of a contragrav repulsor and the thump of something heavy landing close by. My jaw trembled as I looked through the small gap between the vehicle’s undercarriage and the highway, watching as a pair of shiny, armored boots paced towards my motorcycle, the footfalls making the pavement quake due to the mass of their owner. I heard heavy breathing, rasping and mechanical, the human’s footsteps thumping into the pavement with the clink of heavy power armor sabatons.

The Vargr paced over to my motorcycle and gave the gas tank a light kick. “Leattle broetheri,” he said, his voice a mocking singsong. “Dokon ar ye hiddin’, ye nimby-pimby?”

I held my hooves over my mouth, my eyes wide as saucers, trying not to breathe or make a sound of any kind. If they found me, it was over. I had to fight the urge to light my horn and cloak myself with invisibility magic. Against the Vargr, that didn’t work. They had the ability to detect magic. Not only was I not rendered invisible to them, using spells actually increased my signature, allowing them to see me through solid objects. The only way to win was to hide, and the only way to hide was the old-fashioned way, with camouflage or concealment. This hiding spot was no good. He was seconds from detecting me. All he had to do was look under the car, and I was fucked. When the rumble of the dropship overhead subsided as it moved off, I slowly inched away from him, crawling out from under the vehicle on the opposite side. With my back against the vehicle’s passenger side door, I looked at the concrete barrier.

I was in the shoulder on an overpass. Running down the highway in either direction wasn’t an option. I’d be spotted and killed in seconds. Instead, I quietly mounted the barrier and climbed over, hanging off the edge. I looked down. A drop of about one story down onto the roadway below. This was going to hurt. I steeled myself, clenched my jaw shut, and then let go. A couple seconds later, I landed on my back on the hard pavement, the impact knocking the wind out of me. I exhaled through my nose to muffle the sound. I scrambled to my hooves and quickly ran beneath the overpass so I wouldn’t be spotted, in case he chose to investigate the noise.

There was a drainage ditch nearby with a culvert under the road. Not one of the nice, big concrete ones, but one of the small, corrugated polyethylene ones. There was a stream of rainwater running through it. I tried crawling inside, only to bump my helmet and shoulders into the edges of the culvert. The opening was about as wide as I was. My armor kept me from squeezing through.

“Bullshit,” I whispered. “This is complete bullshit.”

I’d have to strip my armor off. I recalled what happened the last time I went naked while being hunted by the Vargr. I involuntarily began to shake. I bit my lip, stilling my shivers. After snapping the dust covers shut on my PF-27’s emitters, I initiated the process of methodically removing my barding, starting with my helmet and the pieces on my legs and finishing by unstrapping my chest rig and torso armor, letting my caster and Orbit fall into the ditch.

I crawled into the culvert and pulled all of my gear in behind me, shuffling backwards on my belly and using my teeth to drag my stuff so I didn’t give off a magical signature. It was wet and cold, and my fur quickly dampened with muddy water. I crawled a good ten meters from the drain culvert’s opening, propping up my armor and saddlebags in front of me as a blind to hide my thermal signature, in case anyone peeked into the entrance.

The rainfall seemed to intensify outside. I hoped I didn’t get washed out, but there was nowhere else for me to go. If they were going to find me here, they were going to find me, and there was nothing I could do about it. I hoped they hadn’t spotted me on thermals. I leaned my head against one of my saddlebags and resolved to try and get some much-needed shuteye, closing my eyes and sighing heavily with exhaustion.

My dreams were far from pleasant. The horrors I relived in them were not worth recounting. Through the night, I awoke twice from my slumber and glanced over my shoulder to ensure that my hiding place wasn’t disturbed. The culvert was too narrow to turn around in, practically hugging my body. My gear had dammed up one end of it and left me practically bathing in cold rainwater. I was freezing, shivering violently. I packed my saddlebag underneath myself to lift me up out of the water and act as bedding. It was far from comfortable, but it would keep me warm.

After a couple more hours of restless sleep in my hiding place, I slowly leaned up and pushed my gear out of the culvert and out into the ditch. I crawled out of the opening in the corrugated plastic pipe, trying not to fuck myself up on its sharp edges. I took a few nervous glances up and down the roadway. The coast was clear, or so it seemed. Hard to tell, what with how easily those fuckers could cloak. I threw on my armor and my caster and shrugged on my saddlebags, slinging Lucky over my shoulder and donning my helmet. Once I’d finished putting on my muddy and soggy gear, double-checking to make sure all the electronics were still in working order, I looked up at the elevated highway section that I’d jumped off last night.

I set my jaw, “Now, to get back up to my bike.”

Energized by my rest, I took off at a gallop towards the off-ramp, heading back up to the highway. To my relief, my motorcycle was still there. I ran over to it and gave it a look-over, scouring every inch of it for any oddities. Nothing wrong with the engine or the frame. The side of the tank was a little scratched up from the fall and had a small dent from where it’d been kicked. When I looked under the gas tank, however, I spotted a tiny, disc-shaped object adhered to the underside.

“The fuck is that?”

I plucked it off the gas tank with my levitation magic, turning it over and inspecting it. Whatever it was, it looked like a tiny refrigerator magnet. I gave it a twist in my magic’s aura and broke it in half. The inside had a circuit board and a small transceiver coil. A tracker of some kind. I sneered and tossed it over the edge of the highway.

“Nice try, fuckers.”

I took a look around myself. They had to have been tracing its location. The destruction of an active beacon would’ve gotten their attention. This area was no longer safe. In fact, all they had to do to catch me at this point was set an ambush further east along the highway, which was likely what they were doing at that very moment. This was a horrifying cat and mouse game. It felt almost personal, as if they knew who I was. My paranoia was kicked into high gear.

“They want me alive. Well, then. Come and get me.”

I stuck the key in the ignition and started my Stampeder up, the parallel-twin rumbling to life. I twisted the throttle and did a burnout to pull a one-eighty and head back to the off-ramp. Once off the highway, I hooked south, headed for the open plains. I could see the Unicorn Range to the east, way off on the horizon. Tar Pan lay in that direction. I’d have to take the long way home. The last thing I wanted was to lead the Vargr right to our doorstep. I rode on through the ruins of small-town northern Equestria. The desolation was universal, as always. Not a single pony to be seen. No other traffic on the road. All that greeted me were miles and miles of abandoned cars and derelict homes. It was hard not to get a little choked up at the sight.

I shook my head. “Where did we all go?”

I curved back towards the east, and then north, keeping to the rural two-lane roads, checking and re-checking my map through my helmet’s eyepiece now and then just to make sure I wasn’t getting off track. With all our GPS satellites down, I was stuck using TERCOM, or terrain contour matching. My command helmet’s built-in scanner was constantly receiving a low-resolution fix from the surrounding terrain using a tiny diagrammatic engine firing off imperceptible, low-energy pulses of levitation magic out to a few hundred meters. Solid objects resisted the spell ever-so-slightly, allowing the system to gather point cloud data from the surrounding space. Unlike my own magic, it wasn’t sensitive enough to detect infantry with any specificity. Nevertheless, the contours it picked up were checked against a database of satellite maps stored in the helmet’s onboard computer, allowing me to navigate decently enough.

Before long, I cruised into Tar Pan from the south, having circumvented the cloaked Vargr air patrols entirely. There was a tension in the air. It had me on edge. I didn’t like it one bit. I eased back on the throttle when I heard the cries of an assembled throng. As I approached the entrance to the mine, I brought my motorcycle to a complete stop, my jaw agape at what I saw. There had to be a thousand ponies congregating in front of the main gate, chanting repetitiously and waving protest signs.

The Riggers had withdrawn from the city, judging by how the fighting had died down. They had bigger fish to fry, and scarcely any reason to try and dislodge us now that their quintessence-harvesting operation in Vanhoover was destroyed. Instead, the Oligarchs of Tar Pan had their representatives front and center in their pinstriped suits, spurring a revolt against the Liberation Front and our presence. As the last remaining representatives of the Equestrian government, we were a threat to their power. As I shut off my engine, dismounted, and slowly wheeled my bike closer to the crowd, their rhythmic chants became frenzied.

“Tonnanen Harredo, sev aduene!” The great crowd of ponies screamed in unison.

Equestrian Empire, go home!

It was a slap in the face. They spat on everything we’d tried to accomplish. Me and my comrades’ pain and suffering on their behalf meant nothing to them. They wanted an easy life, and that meant keeping out of the Confederacy’s baleful eye. The Liberation Front spoiled all that. We drew too much attention of the unwanted sort. As I approached the crowd, they formed a line to stop me.

“Please let me through,” I said.

A rough-looking stallion with a couple missing teeth and shabby clothes became belligerent. “Get fucked, ELF bitch!”

I raised my voice. “I have wounded ponies to attend to. Clear out, or I’ll make you clear out!”

I pressed onward towards the line of protesters, pushing into and through the crowd. They reluctantly parted in my path, booing and jeering as I wheeled my motorcycle between them. I was nervous as hell. I knew it wasn’t long before this went completely pear-shaped. My fears were confirmed a few seconds later, when I got hit in the eyes with a bright red shot of pepper spray.

I reflexively jerked away, my helmet’s visor catching most of it. The rest took that as an invitation to pounce. I wasn’t even sure what happened, but moments later, I was sprawled out on the road, having dropped my bike. I covered my helmeted head as I was assailed on all sides by a flurry of savage blows, the crowd taking turns kicking and stomping me to satisfy their sheer contempt.

“Get the fuck out, Imperial trash!” one mare shouted in my ear.

I couldn’t see a damn thing. My eyes burned and watered, my eyelids refusing to part as I lay on the ground, whimpering in pain. It was when they started hurling objects at my head, fully intent on stoning me to death, that I decided I’d had enough. I lit my horn.

Laus, Iastowa, Bankina.

I could see every blood vessel in the backs of my eyelids. The crowd was blinded by a burst of light that was orders of magnitude brighter than magnesium flash powder, recoiling from my prone form. Blinking away tears, I raised my bike off the ground and kept wheeling it forward as the crowd dispersed in front of me. I just had to make it to the gate. The front wheel of my motorcycle banged against the chain-link fence. A bunch of forelegs wrapped around my neck as I writhed and struggled against the crowd. I shook like a dog shedding some fleas, tossing one mare off my back. Others immediately took her place, trying to wrestle me to the ground.

I desperately beat on the gate with my hooves. “Guys! Let me the fuck in!”

One of the militia stallions guarding the gate spotted me, his eyes widening in shock. “Oh shit, it’s the Sergeant! Someone get me the fucking tear gas grenades!”

The militia shuffled around a bit as they looked for their supplies. A few seconds later, a pair of gas grenades releasing noxious plumes of riot control agents were emplaced at the gate. Relative to other species in the galaxy, ponies were impossible to control with blunt force. Riot sticks were useless. However, we had large eyes and sensitive nerves. Electroshock weapons and lachrymators were highly effective. As it so happened, that included me, since I didn’t happen to be wearing a gas mask at the time. As the crowd fled from the CS gas, I coughed and spluttered, squeezing my tormented eyes shut. The main gate was wheeled open and a pair of forelegs wrapped around my neck, dragging me inside.

“Lemme go!” I said. “I need my fucking bike! I’m not letting these sons-of-bitches steal it or burn it in effigy or whatever the fuck they were planning to do with it!”

I broke free from the militia stallion trying to rescue me, raising my Stampeder back onto its wheels and dragging it into the base. The gate was shut and chained behind me. I collapsed to the ground with exhaustion, my muscles burning. For a good thirty seconds, I lay on my back, staring out at the starry skies above and gasping for breath.

A militia stallion offered to help me up, but I batted him away and slowly rose to my hooves. “I’m fine. Where’s the rest of Revenant?”

“They got back several hours ago, ma’am,” he said. “They thought you were a goner for sure.”

“I’m fine. Got separated on the way back, is all. My own stupid fault. Thanks for the assist.”

I spent a couple minutes taking a breather and letting my eyes and my lungs recover from the tear gas and pepper spray. I got back on my motorcycle, started the engine, and drove down into the mine’s gaping black maw. I parked on the cargo lift and hit the lever, sending it down. I paced back and forth across the lift’s sizable surface as it descended into the mine shaft. One could’ve almost played a hoofball game on it, it was so unreasonably large. I wondered what manner of salt mine needed such a big lift in the first place.

When the lift hit the stops at the bottom, I wheeled my bike off and parked it in the motor pool. The Centaur and the Palfrey were both there, as well. Silent sentinels in the shadows. I breathed a sigh of relief. My unit had indeed made it back in one piece. I knew where some of them would be. I took off and sprinted towards the infirmary.

I ran right into a crowd of ponies gathered outside our makeshift medical facilities. “Where’s Revenant? Where the fuck is Private Jury Rig?”

One of the militia mares wordlessly pointed inside one of the caverns we’d repurposed into a medical ward. I made my way inside, watching as doctors and nurses swarmed around a figure on a cot. I heard incoherent cries of pain echoing across the room. I quickly developed a sinking sensation in my gut.

“Private?” I said.

As I muscled my way through, Gauze Patch tried stopping me, pushing on my armored chest with her hooves. “No, ma’am! He’s not in any condition to be seen!”

I tossed the nurse aside like a rag doll. “Get out of my fucking way! Rig!”

I made my way to his bedside, and I honestly wished I hadn’t. The boy’s wings were ruined, their dressed stumps sticking to his sheets. His muzzle was pockmarked with shrapnel and they were still plucking bits of broken glass out of him hours later. When Grinder had turned his autocannon on the gantry’s cab, Jury Rig had shielded his face at the last moment with his wings, and it had probably saved his life. Still, it wasn’t enough to stop the high-velocity ball bearings completely. His eyes were gone. The bridge of his nose was mangled, both of his eye sockets joined into a single reddish pit of gore.

“Ma’am!” Jury Rig shouted. He writhed on the bed, gulping a wad of bloody spit with some difficulty. “Is that you, Sarge? Ma’am, help me! I can’t see! Why can’t I see? Why can’t—” He broke down in a coughing fit. “Why can’t I feel my wings? Help me! Please!”

My lips trembled in horror. “What the fuck is going on here? Why isn’t he sedated?”

Argent Tincture gave me a guilty look from the other side of Rig’s bed. “I—our stocks are running l—”

I cut her off, grabbing her lab coat’s collar in my magic. “You get some fucking morphine in him, right now, or I’ll knock your fucking head off!”

Argent’s eyes flashed with resentment, and she gave me a good, long stare before silently going about digging through her supplies for an IV bag, hanging it on the stand and lining it up with Rig’s catheter. I held the colt’s hoof in my forelegs as he shivered and shrieked in pain.

“It’s gonna be alright, kid. You’re gonna be okay. I’m here.”

I stayed with him until the medication took hold and he passed into blissful unawareness. I watched as Rig’s chest rose and fell, his pained grimace turning peaceful. I looked up at Argent, fixing her with a cold glare.

“I don’t want to see one of mine suffering like that again, doc. Do you understand me?”

“We’ll do what we can, Sergeant,” Argent Tincture said. “We’ve been running low on supplies again, ever since we evacuated from Camp Crazy Horse.”

“I don’t care. Never again. It’s not acceptable.”

“I also had some other concerns, beyond the shortages.” Argent shrugged. “He’s in a bad way. There may be some cranial injury, and the sedatives might do more harm than good. Damn, sure have been saying that a lot, lately, haven’t I? You all ought to take better care of your noggins. I haven’t been able to evaluate his brain because I don’t have the right imaging equipment here.”

“He seems alert and conscious to me,” I said. “Did those sound like the words of a brain-damaged patient to you?”

Argent winced. “No, I suppose not. Still, that kind of injury can hide.”

I looked Jury Rig over, marveling at how he survived his terrible wounds. “What are you gonna do for him? Is he out of the fight?”

“No.” Argent smiled wistfully. “We have prosthetics that can fix this.”

I nodded. “Finally, some good news. Will he regain the ability to fly?”

Argent Tincture shook her head. “No, he will not. At least not for now. We don’t have the right bionics for that. We’re fresh out of spare wings. The Stormtroopers go through ‘em like candy. He’s getting these.”

Argent motioned me over to a table with a pair of polymer hard cases, one bright orange and the other bright blue, marked with all sorts of warning decals and seals assuring their sterility. She took a utility knife and sliced through the seals, flicking the latches and swinging open the cases. The smaller case contained a device that looked like a head-mounted visor, with a single, horizontal slit for a lens.

“What’s that? A head-mounted display?” I said.

“It’s not an HMD,” Argent said, lifting the bulky device out of the case. “Argus Type-22 Panopticon. This thing is his new eyes. All of this gets semi-permanently attached to his skull and wired into the visual center of his brain. I’ll spare you the technical details, but suffice it to say, he’ll be able to see all sorts of things with this.” She placed the bionic visor back into its case and then retrieved what looked like a pair of manipulator arms ending in three-fingered robotic claws from the other one. “Tantalus Technologies’ most popular piece of chrome. The Hecatoncheires. Only a pegasus can use ‘em. They get installed—”

I cut her off. “Implanted. They get implanted. He’s not a fucking robot.”

Argent nodded. “Right. They get implanted where the wings usually go and tie into the same motor nerves. You give up flight, but you get a couple of strong and dexterous hands.”

I’d seen this particular aug before, among Charger technicians who’d lost their wings. Very few pegasi preferred having hands over being able to fly, but the grizzled souls who made that sacrifice and willingly had manipulator arms implanted on their backs instead of bionic wings were some of the best damn mechanics I knew.

I let out a stressed sigh. “Has he consented to the procedure?”

“Not yet. We’re going to need to talk him into it, but I don’t think he’ll need much convincing. He wants to be functional, and I want him up and about and healthy as soon as possible.”

I hung my head, my ears drooping low. Our first mission as Revenant, and a member of my unit was already crippled. The nicest, youngest, most talented, and least deserving of us, to boot. I’d fucked up. I’d let him down. My whole job was to maintain the formation and keep the squad from overextending themselves. Without that, we weren’t a cohesive team; we were individuals, scattered, alone, and vulnerable.

“How soon will he recover?” I said.

“No activity for at least two weeks.” Argent put the prosthetics back and closed up both cases. “I’d much rather that he not have any activity for a month, and then at least four to six months of physical therapy, but we don’t have that kind of time, not in this outfit.”

Two weeks. I shook my head. He deserved more time to recuperate than that. I didn’t want him sustaining lifelong debility beyond what he’d already suffered. “Take good care of him, doc. I’ve got some shit to do, but I’ll be back to check in on him every now and then, if that’s okay with you.”

“Well, I’d rather the patient have his privacy, but it’s not like that’s stopped you before.”

I turned and glared at her. Her rebuke had stung. I felt like I owed it to Jury Rig to be there for him. “Schedule him to see Weathervane once he’s well enough. This isn’t just physical trauma. This is mental. He just lost some important parts of his anatomy. He’s going to need all the help he can get.”

“Will do,” Argent said. “Good call.”

“Later, doc.”

With a dejected sigh, I made my way out of the infirmary. Crookneck and Prima were sitting outside on a bench, the former with an ice pack on his head from where he’d been concussed, and the latter tweaking a replacement foreleg with a screwdriver held aloft in her levitation. Crookneck was wearing a rather flimsy disguise of a wig and makeup that washed away the wrinkles and made him look thirty years younger. At ten paces, he passed for someone else well enough, but close up, it was obvious who he was. I hoped the mole hadn’t spotted him.

Crookneck shot up from his seat. “Sergeant!” He groaned a bit and then sat back down. “Damn, stood up too quick. Still hurts a bit.” He sounded gruff.

“Are you really doing a voice and everything?” I laughed.

“Yes, of course.”

“You better hope that fucker doesn’t see you.”

“Oh, they won’t. Me and my Palfrey will be out of here as soon as the crowd clears.”

“You can’t go back to Vanhoover,” I said.

“Yeah, about that.” Crookneck looked up at me with concern in his eyes. “I woke up halfway back to the base. Why did we withdraw so quickly?”

“Are you cleared for SILVER SCALPEL?”

Prima looked up at me and fixed me with a deadly stare, as if she was planning to incapacitate or kill me depending on what came out of my mouth in the next few seconds.

Crookneck scratched his head. “Silver what, now?”

“Then I can’t tell you. Not yet.” I nodded to Prima and she stood down, though she was still a little anxious by the looks of her. I sat down on the bench with them. “By the way, I have some possible improvements I’d like to discuss, for the next version of the Palfrey. I like it, but it has some issues.”

“Such as?” Crookneck said.

“Like you told Koskas earlier, it needs self-sealing fuel tanks so it doesn’t cook the pilot alive. You almost fried her, dude.”

“Hard to get. The ones we have are hoof-fabricated from sheet metal and are not crash or bullet-resistant cells.”

“No ballistic liner, even?”

“Nothing.” Crookneck shook his head. “They’re prototypes.”

“Yeah, that needs fixing, pronto. Also, the interior needs some padding, or it needs to stand off from the pilot a bit more. I almost banged my head as bad as you did.”

“That’s on the list, too.”

“And pyrojets.” I nodded.

“Extravagant. Hard to find ones that are the right size, but theoretically doable. Maybe as an elite model.”

“Also, the caster emitters need to be recessed more.”

“You busted them up, I saw.” Crookneck Squash frowned. “How did you do that, Storm?”

“Headbutted that Rak off a pier and into the drink.”

Crookneck looked almost miffed that I’d put his creation through so much abuse, but this soon turned to a contemplative expression as the gears started turning in his head. “Definitely not within my design parameters. If you want to ram things, the whole front glacis needs reinforcing. The armor isn’t that thick, nor is there any Mithrium in the Palfrey’s construction. In a serious collision, it’ll crush inward, and any recessing of the caster emitters will be rendered pointless. Recess them too far, and your firing arc narrows. I don’t think you realize how primitive my latest creation is. There’s no LAMIBLESS except over the joints. The rest is welded steel. It’s heavy for its size, and that works against you.”

“How so? Sure pummeled that Rak good.”

“It works both ways. More mass means your crashes have higher kinetic energy, Sergeant. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Mounting an apple on the front of a bicycle and running into a brick wall has a much different effect than mounting a pumpkin on the front of a train and running into a concrete wall.”

I chuckled. “That’s a really, really weird analogy, but I get it. By the way, where are the others? Where’s Quill?”

Crook pointed his hoof down one of the tunnels. “Mess hall. Getting some chow, I presume. Quill got off the Centaur and went into town. Haven’t seen her since.”

“Shit, I’m hungry, too,” I said. “Did you two want anything?”

Prima shook her head. “We’re fine, Sergeant. We ate. Besides, it’s not a good idea for our mutual friend here to mingle with anyone at the base.”

“Right. See you two later, then. I’m going to go get something to eat.”

I stood up and walked down the tunnel towards our mess hall, which was basically a camp stove and a few benches in a cave, with a smoke ejector fan with a long extension cord so we wouldn’t get carbon monoxide poisoning. We sure had the whole insurgent lifestyle down pat.

Secunda and the rest of Revenant were sitting at two of the tables, and they were startled at the sight of me. Mardissa’s despondent look soon turned to a beaming smile. She stood up from her seat to greet me.

“Ma’am, you made it! What happened?”

I looked her squarely in the eyes. “Them. They happened.”

By the unblinking stare she gave me and the way the corners of her lips fell, I could tell that she immediately understood what I meant. She quickly dropped the subject. I spooned out a bowl of whatever the beet stew slop they were eating was, and I sat down next to them and started digging in.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Needs salt. Bland as shit.”

Though I’d sat down between Mar and Hex, Hexhead didn’t look at me. She stared down into her own bowl of barely edible slop, sighing frustratedly.

“Private Rig’s fucked up, ma’am,” Hexhead said.

“I saw,” I said. “Eh, don’t worry about it. Argent will fix him up good.”

“Fix him up?” Hexhead frowned. “Grinder blew his fucking face and his wings off. Even if they replace what was lost with chrome, you don’t come back from that the same person you were before.”

I looked down into my bowl, gritting my teeth. As if I didn’t know that. “Private, I’m trying to eat. I have a long and very awkward debrief ahead of me that sounds something like ‘aw yeah, I blew some civvies into enough mincemeat to feed a good-sized pack of wild dogs, and then me and my bike got lost in a rainstorm’, and I’m dreading it. If you’re feeling like shit over what you saw, then go see Weathervane over it. I have enough problems on my plate.” When I saw the look that my unit was giving me, I decided to amend that. “Okay, look. We’ll talk about it later, guys. Just not right now. We need to rest up, first. Your time is your own. Do whatever you like for the next several hours.”

We spent the rest of our time eating in silence, before one by one, my unit filtered out. Eventually, I was left alone, the disgusting meal like a lead weight in my gut. There were no refreshments to be had, here. Just more burdens to carry.

// … // … // … // … // … //

I gave Bellwether my report to the best of my ability. He sat across the table from me in his makeshift office, nodding at every detail I related. His room was sparse, with the only other furnishings consisting of a bed made from old, rolled up air filter material and whatever passed for some blankets, and a terminal with a chair for him to do his intel work, all lit by hanging LED rope lights.

“So, let me get this straight,” Bellwether said. “The Vargr showed up with a dozen submersible aircraft carriers. Then, when you decided to withdraw, you got tracked down by one of their dropships and had to lay low until the threat passed. Does that sound about right?”

“Yeah, that’s basically it.”

“Wow. You did a great job, all things considered.”

“I didn’t rescue as many of the civilians as I would’ve liked. I fucked up real bad, there.”

The look on Bellwether’s face was grave. “Did you have every reason to believe you were looking at enemy contacts on your scope, and not civilians?”

“Yeah?”

“Then don’t worry about it.” Bellwether leaned back in his seat. “In case you haven’t noticed, we play it pretty fast and loose with the rules of engagement around here. We’re technically unlawful combatants and not legally required to do, well, anything. We just don’t like killing civilians because it harms the cause. And, well, those are our people. Every single one we rescue is a potential recruit. Just be more careful, next time. I mean it. I’ve already got Garrida breathing down my neck enough as it is.”

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered.

“You did good. You stopped those sick bastards and their Quint harvesting, and you got your unit away from the Vargr in one piece before they surrounded, engaged, and killed all of you. That’s success by any measure, regardless of the stain on it. You also brought back a prisoner who’s proven himself quite a useful source of intel. He cracked pretty much instantly once I went to work on him. If it’s any consolation, he’s a little blacker and bluer, now.”

I took a big swig from the bottle of juniper-flavored gin in my hooves, enjoying the burn as it went down. “Sure doesn’t feel like success.”

“Is it ‘cause of your boyf—”

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t say a word about Barley. Me and him are through. If I’d known he was such a useless prick, I would’ve fucked you like, a month ago.”

It took me a moment to realize what I’d just said, and the two of us stared wide-eyed at each other for several seconds. Bellwether blushed bright red.

“Well, uh, do you still want to?” he said.

I smiled and crawled up onto the table, swaying my hips, liquid courage guiding my movements. Bellwether recoiled a little in surprise at the sultry display. I draped my forelegs over his shoulders and looked him straight in those pretty sapphire eyes of his.

“What do you think?” I said.

Bell blinked a few times, reaching for the bottle of gin and snatching it from my grasp. “Shit,” he muttered. He took a few swigs of his own. He knew from prior experience that he was going to need the added fortitude. Soon, he’d polished off the bottle, dropping it as I climbed onto him and overbalanced his chair backwards, sending both of us toppling to the floor.

“Oh shit, careful,” Bell said, though neither of us were exactly hurt. It took much more than that to harm a pony.

Consumed by lust after such a long dry spell, I dove for his lips, sinking my tongue into his mouth. He responded to the kiss eagerly, his thick tongue dancing with mine. I could’ve said that he had the flavor of raw iron and masculinity, or something sappy like that, but the reality was indescribable. Whatever it was, it drugged my senses. As I broke off the kiss, I could see that whatever he tasted in me, he craved it as much as I craved him.

“We’d better get out of these,” I said.

“Yeah.” Bellwether grinned.

I started undoing my uniform, baring my chest. I nuzzled in close with him as we writhed together on the floor, my mane slick with sweat. I wanted him. I wanted him so badly, I damn near could’ve ripped every shred of cloth off his body and taken him right there. We took it slow at first, inhaling each other’s scents and cuddling fiercely. Bellwether stood suddenly, and I whined with incipient need as we parted.

“One sec, baby,” he said. “I gotta get myself ready, here.”

“Same here.”

I kept stripping off, removing my BDU and my boots, folding them up, and setting them aside. I’d had plenty of experience in the realm of fucking. I wasn’t some doe-eyed virgin. It still felt strange doing it with a stallion so much older than I. Somehow illicit and pornographic. No puppy love was this. It was a hasty encounter between two jaded adults for the sole purpose of mutual ravishment.

“Should I use a rubber?” Bell asked.

I shook my head. “No need. I’ve been infertile for the past several years. Shrapnel wound. Got me right in the foal furnace.” I turned to look at him and the incredulous stare he was giving me. “I—”

After a brief pause spent in mild shock, I nervously bit my lip at the sight of his throbbing stallionhood. He was so much bigger than my punk fiancé. Just thinking of Barley’s name almost killed my arousal right then and there.

“Damn, Bellwether.” I snickered. “You sure aren’t anything like your namesake.”

“It’s a codename.” Bell sheepishly rubbed the back of his head.

“Oh yeah? What’s your real name, stud? Thundercock?”

“Gneiss.”

“Hell yeah you are.”

“It’s my name. Gneiss Pie.”

I perked an eyebrow. “Like, the Pie Brothers? The quarrying company?”

Bell smirked. “The very same. My great-granddaddy’s business. Used to blast holes in mountainsides when I was a kid. That’s kinda why I ended up as a sapper. Then, they made me a spy when I saw too much. Fuckin’ Karks.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I thought he was at full stiffness but he kept getting more engorged. It was almost comically big. A uniformly grayish fuck-truncheon. He wasn’t kidding about the fifth leg.

I let out a soft chuckle. “So, these holes in these mountainsides. I take it you mounted those poor, helpless mountains and punched divots in them that way?”

I could tell by his bemused and slightly annoyed expression that he was tiring of my witticisms, which weren’t all that witty to begin with.

“Wanna find out?” he said.

We looked each other in the eyes, and no further words were necessary. It was like the signal to go, right at the start of a race. The slowest race in the world. The one where you could take all the time you needed. The one where you could dream about living forever, against all common sense.

We practically lunged at each other, our bodies desperate with need, pirouetting onto the rickety bed, which proved to have far too much give as our weight sank into it. We planted kisses on each other over and over again with throaty groans. I’d never done it like this, before. It had never been so animalistic and sweaty and raw. I hadn’t even bathed yet since I got back, and I still smelled like a muddy drainage ditch. When I was younger, every boyfriend I’d been with had insisted on some stupid candlelit dinner. Then, we fucked in the dark afterward, fumbling for each other’s genitals like some dumb scavenger hunt. This was different. Infinitely sexier. In the sterile white light, I could see all of Bell, and he could see all of me. He was pure Daddy material. All hairy and musky and aged like a fine vintage. This wasn’t Barleywine. This was a step up. Pinot Noir.

There was no additional foreplay necessary. I was already fucking drenched just from kissing him. I felt horny as hell and I loved every second of it. My ass, tail, and dock were positively soaked in juices, my nether lips puffy and ready for the deed. Somehow, the advantage in the kissing contest had gone to him, and he rolled me onto my back with that gentle but overwhelming Earth Pony strength. Face to face. So dirty. So scandalous.

He wasted no time. His lips were locked with mine and his tongue was exploring my mouth as his massive prick pushed against me, stabbing a couple times against the inside of my thigh before finding its mark. When he brushed against my nether lips, my hips jerked with trepidation. I hadn’t had a stallion in years. My whole body was tense with excitement. He guided his hips forward and started to part my petals. A flood of pleasure surged into my consciousness. They kept parting and parting so far, it felt like it’d never end.

Waves of ecstasy coursed up my spine. I was completely lost in him like a maze, and he hadn’t even truly begun. His tip, that meaty cockhead of his, wasn’t even fully inside my entrance. A strange sense of panic descended over me as the pressure between us mounted. I closed my eyes. In that warm, liquid space between our bodies, it felt like my very ego would be swept away. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I saw a flicker. A figment of the Seneschal’s orange, slitted eye. My heart squeezed in my chest with fear, my eyes flickering open to banish the hallucination.

“Bell, ahh!” I squeaked.

He stopped immediately, a look of concern on his face. “You good, Storm?” he said. “We can stop if this ain’t the right time.”

I frowned. I wasn’t about to let the apparition of some alien shitbag get in the way of a good fuck. “Look, it’s sweet that you’re all worried for me and stuff, but did I say stop? Gosh, I need it! Fuck me, you cute hunk! Just fuck me and don’t think twice!”

That was all the permission he needed, because a split-second later, Bell pushed the full length and girth of his cock into my body in one steady stroke. He moaned with a throaty rumble as he penetrated me. I wasn’t even sure what sound it was that I’d made in response. My mind had gone white. I’d never had a stallion so thick before. I was so stretched. So full. So satisfied. I could feel his heartbeat right through his hard, velvety cock. My pussy winked as I convulsed over and over again, gripping him like a vise.

As he made his first retraction, dragging my pussy lips along with him, I kept gasping and moaning over and over again. Bell shuddered with deep, baritone groans of pleasure, the rumble reverberating through my chest as he half-collapsed atop me, our breastbones rubbing together in total communion.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered. “You’re so fuckin’ tight. Geez, it feels like I’m fucking a foal. Almost fuckin’ hurts. Those limp-dicked little boys you had before me must’ve really neglected you.”

It didn’t know if I should be insulted, but the way he said it with that husky, judgmental voice of his, it sounded so ridiculously hot that it drove me absolutely nuts. “I love it when you talk dirty.”

He began issuing thrusts with increasing intensity and I lifted my hips and pushed my greedy cunt against his pounding meat, losing myself in the incredible feelings that coursed through my whole body. I wasn’t about to let him do all the work. I gyrated my rear half, gripping his lovely ass by wrapping my hind legs around each cheek. I pulled him into me, like prey trapped in a spider’s web. I wanted him more than anything at that very moment. Him, and nothing else. The whole world could burn for all I cared. I was finally happy.

I was happy, for once. So why am I sniffling and crying?

Bell noticed the tears falling down my cheeks as I trembled in his grasp, stopping his movements and looking me straight in the eye. “What’s wrong, Storm?”

“You’re not gonna abandon me, too, are you, Bell? This isn’t just some fling, is it? Do you—do you fucking love me?” I sobbed. “I don’t want to be alone. Oh, Celestia, I don’t want to be alone. I drove through a town, and everyone was gone. Why’s everyone gone, Bell? Why? Why’s everypony gone? Dust. Dust and shadows! They walked into the fire and they didn’t walk out!”

He softly shushed me, rubbing a foreleg over my head. “It’s okay, baby. I’m not going anywhere. Promise. Oh, you darling girl. I’m here for you.”

I hugged him, laughing and crying. “Have I ever told you that you make me feel wanted? In ways that so many others haven’t? Everypony thinks I’m a freak because of what I had to do for my country. None of us real Charger pilots will ever be thought of as heroes. We’ll be lucky to have a memorial when we’re all gone. If it were the Confederacy, if we were their people, they’d celebrate all of us. Immortalize us. I’m too different from the rest of ponykind. I’m too fucking different for anyone to accept that this who I am. I’ll probably just end up hurting you, too. Just like all the other bridges I’ve burned.”

Bellwether put a hoof to my jaw, gently nudging me into looking straight at him. “Storm, darling, I care for you in a way that’s unlike any mare I’ve met before. You’re different, but that’s what I like about you. The fact that you smell like a killer, the way you cuss and strut around just a little butch the way you do—it doesn’t bother me at all. It fucking turns me on. Fuck, you make me so hard, it hurts. I’ve fucked so many fake, empty, vapid little bitches. They had no presence, no vitality, no will. Nothing. You? You’re larger than life itself. You are so real, so present, so vital, you make me quake inside. You’re not a freak. You’re the perfect mare, sent by Celestia herself.”

I let out a deep belly-laugh, wiping the tears from my eyes. “That’s a funny way to say ‘I love you’. Kinda chauvinist, too. We gotta work on that.”

Bellwether smiled. “For you, anything.”

After a brief pause, we locked lips and resumed fucking, even harder than before. He’d aroused something predatory in me. He’d teased out that famed aggression of mine. I groaned into his mouth in utter ecstasy as my muscles worked against his, and when I sensed a moment of weakness from him, that was when I seized the opportunity. I overpowered him, rolling him onto his back on the bed, forcing my tongue deep into his mouth, swirling his tongue around with mine as we kept fucking. I sensed his surprise and I broke the kiss and giggled at him, my tongue slithering over my lips like a snake’s as I stared down at him with the same slitted gaze I gave alien bastards when I was about to kill them.

“Oh, wow,” he muttered, his eyes wide.

I had transformed from that gibbering little crybaby cunt into someone else. I had become the mare he said he cared for so much. Storm, the Virago. I could be that mare for him, if that was what he wanted so badly. If he wanted me to devour him like the dragon in pony skin that I was, he could have just asked. I gyrated my hips in a circle and rode him forcefully, grunting and snorting all deep and bassy as I engulfed his shaft. The sounds and smells of frenzied, animal copulation drifted through the air. Sloppy and salty, just the way I liked it.

“Silly boy,” I said. “You shouldn’t tease bad mares like me.”

He squeaked and moaned underneath me, his hips quivering as he went over the edge. With just a little flick of a switch from sub to dom on my part, Bellwether had gone and blown his load in me. He shot rope after rope of his seed against the gateway to my womb, his cock flaring and throbbing, filling me with wetness and pressure. I shuddered and sighed. It was a big one. Perhaps the biggest wad of spunk I’d ever taken in my life. I settled onto him, my loins still throbbing with need as I worked my hips back and forth atop his prick, enjoying the sensation of pressure and warmth in my guts from his trapped cum and the way his warm, twitching balls nestled against my asshole.

I clicked my tongue. “Did I say you were done? Did I say you could come? I haven’t come yet, so that means we still have some work to do, motherfucker!”

“Oh, shit!” He let out a little squeak of terror.

“Shit is right. I’m gonna fuck the shit out of you, Gneiss Pie! I’m gonna make you shit for me! The only ‘pie’ you’re gonna know is the kind that begins with cream and ends in my holes, penis! Yeah, you think mares are ‘bitches’, little boy? You’re just a cock with legs. You were born to please me!”

“Are you doing this for me?” he muttered.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving a hoof dismissively. “Just roll with it. I mean, unless you’re not cool with it. We can go more vanilla or quit if you’re not, dude. You down for butt stuff?”

“Sure. Do we have a safeword?”

My eyes widened. “Oh. Damn. Hadn’t thought that far ahead. How ‘bout something like, uhh, penicillin?”

Bellwether grinned. “You just like that because it sounds like penis.”

“Just so.” I smiled.

“Then penicillin it is.”

“Okay, where were we?” I said. “Oh, right. Do you clean your ass?”

“What?” Bell mumbled, resuming the frightened little sissy persona.

“Simple question! Do you clean your ass or not?”

“I—I—”

“Fuck it, I have a spell for that. You’ve been a naughty boy, Bell. You’re gonna clean this mess out of my pussy with your tongue while I eat your ass!”

I dismounted from him, his copious quantities of jism streaming down the inside of my thighs like I should give a shit. I’d claimed this stallion for my own. For the next few minutes, he was my property. My own personal living squirt gun. I levitated Bell into the air and flipped him around so his ass faced me. It wasn’t quite a 69. I wasn’t positioned to suck him off. I wanted his ass. I needed his ass. While he moaned pathetically and slurped at my pussy with his sloppy tongue, I ran a wipe of levitation magic over his perfect little cornhole, removing any trace of ass-sweat or unwanted debris.

I thought of all the times I sadistically hunted the vermin that plagued our race. The way I laughed as I made them go pop with weapons of unfathomable power. I channeled that predator’s spirit into my search for Bell’s prostate. I panted huskily. My meal had arrived. I tongued Bell’s musty old balls, eliciting a squeal of pleasure from him as I ran my tongue up his taint and the crack of his ass. I took my time, working my way up to his meaty ringpiece and then thrusting my tongue inside him. The flavor was of the most questionable sort, but I was too horny to give a damn, and I loved the way he squirmed as I feverishly tongued his quivering asshole.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I was crazy for his ass. While he continued to eat me out, whimpering in pleasure all the while, I withdrew my tongue.

“I hope you’re ready for this, butt-slut!” I said.

I dipped my head down and pushed my horn into his ass. Inch after inch of my cranial appendage disappeared into him. He moaned girlishly from my cold, hard horn penetrating his spasming boy-cunt. I could feel his walls around my horn with surprising tactility, my ears flicking about from the stimulation. I lit my horn and pushed into Bell’s passage with a levitation field, eliciting a shriek of mixed pleasure and surprise from him. I’d penetrated him with a nice big glowcock, like the kind I used sometimes when my hooves weren’t enough to get me off. I thrust my magic back and forth, poking his guts over and over. I rutted his insides with a magic dick.

“You think I’m as tight as a filly?” I laughed. “Putting my horn in you’s like threading a fucking needle. If your ass were any tighter, I’d just about break my damn horn clean off in it.”

“M—mercy,” he sputtered.

“Did I hear you speak? That means you’re not eating cunt as ordered, meat! Put your tongue back to its proper use!”

I used my levitation to guide his head back towards my pussy, which he obediently lapped at like the dog he was, whimpering all the while. As I worked my magic into his insides, stimulating him from within, I could feel him stiffening against my chest. He was about to come again.

“Nuh-uh!” I said. “That jizz is mine!”

I pulled my horn out of him with a wet pop like a wine bottle coming uncorked and dispelled the magic I’d conjured up. I flipped him over with a strength and eagerness that surprised even me, eyeing his cock standing proud at full mast. His tasty, tasty cock. I engulfed him with my hungry lips as he moaned and squirmed. I suckled at his ridge and swirled my tongue around him, trying to coax him to shoot in my mouth. I had full control over his body. Everything he experienced was only because I willed it. It was like piloting, in a way. Every part of him was mine to command.

With a shudder and a groan of pleasure, he started to come for the second time that night. As he pulsed and pulsed between my lips, I clamped my muzzle around his big, floppy flare and drank every single gulp, not letting even a single drop get away. Bell’s tongue lolled out of his head with insane pleasure. It wasn’t enough. I hadn’t yet achieved my own release. I needed more. I threw my head back and licked my lips with delight after tasting his delectable old stallion spunk. Fuck, it wasn’t enough. I wanted to ravish him. I was a slavering beast, drooling with hunger. He was the prey. My mind was consumed with raw, aggressive sexuality.

I lapped at his softening length to work him back up to a nice, full erection. It’d be minutes before he’d be ready to fuck again, so I elected to grind my winking clit against his warm sheath and mash my pussy against his wrinkly old balls while I rubbed the soft frogs of my hooves up and down his floppy shaft, jerking his cock back into action.

He was ready to go again in what felt like no time at all. I climbed up onto him, panting like a beast as I lowered my wanton cunt onto his pole, letting out a passionate sigh as I engulfed him with my eager marehood. I rode his whimpering, squeaking form like a squeaky old bike in need of my mare-oil. I fucked myself with him. I masturbated with his dick.

“Fuck, I’m gonna come,” I muttered, panting hard. “Fuck. Fuck!”

My orgasm shot like lightning from the base of my spine all the way to my brain. I threw my head back and screamed with pleasure, my hips convulsing again and again, the space between us growing wetter by the second. I gripped onto his cock over and over, my insides tightening around every inch of his glorious length. His sheath and his fur became a swamp underneath me. I squirted so hard, some of it went as high as his navel. Lovemaking? Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense. Where I come from, we fuck. We fuck and we fuck. With each quiver of my flesh around his, I let out a soft little whimper of sheer enjoyment as I rode out my orgasm.

With a gasping croak, Bell climaxed for a third time, his cock throbbing as he blasted into me with ounce after ounce of his cream. I sighed with satisfaction as my sopping wet insides drank him in, rolling my hips around as I milked every drop of seed from his weighty balls. I spent half a minute snuggling up to him and enjoying how full I felt. When I pulled off of him with a wet plop, what felt like a liter of his cum spurted from my ass end, my legs quivering with delight at the feeling of it running down the inside of my thighs.

I shouldn’t have known the spell I was about to use. It was pretty much illegal to use on other ponies, and with good reason. I’d delved into certain aspects of dark magic and curses perhaps a bit too enthusiastically when Cicatrice tutored us. Until recently, I’d forgotten much of it, but there was one particularly perverted one I’d always remembered, because I occasionally used it on myself.

My horn flared purplish-black. A void that swallowed the light. Shining darkness. With a crackle of raw eldritch energy, I planted a mark that etched itself into Bellwether’s soft, exposed belly. The lines of the sigil glowed with irrepressible magic power.

“The contract is fucking sealed,” I said. “You’re not to fuck other cunts. You’re not to rub one out without my permission. You’re gonna give me all your seed from now on, penis. The only place you’re gonna finish is in me. You understand?”

“What the hell was that spell?”

I clamped his jaws shut with levitation. “That’s no way to talk to your mistress, but since you were so curious, I’ll humor you, fuckmeat. That’s an orgasm denial curse. The effects are permanent until I dispel it. You’ll try beating your meat, and you’ll get close to the edge, but you’ll never actually come. If you keep going, you’ll get the blue balls something fierce. You’re gonna save every single drop of that cum for my cunt. I’ll make you go days, even weeks, until you’re so pent up you go off like a cannon.”

Bellwether sighed. “Penicillin.”

My eyes widened. “Oh, okay.” With a flash of magic, I dispelled it right away. “I respect other ponies’ boundaries, dude. I’m not gonna do anything you’re not cool with, I promise you that.”

Bellwether smiled. “And that kind of integrity is commendable indeed, Storm. Seriously, though, that was kinda fuckin’ messed up, baby. Do you have any idea how vile that shit is? I’m surprised and a little bit dismayed you even know how to do that!”

“I know, I know. Sometimes, I use it on myself so I can edge for a really, really long time without climaxing, and then let it all go at once like sploosh. I’m kinda fucked up, aren’t I?”

“You’re unbelievably perverse, yes. But that’s not the same thing as actually being evil, just so you know.”

“Wanna go again?” I said, grinning slightly. “More vanilla this time?”

Bellwether smiled. Our muzzles slowly moved together, we closed our eyes, and we briefly locked lips. I heard a muffled grunt of displeasure from him, and so, I opened my eyes to see what was wrong. I could see by the look of despair on his face that he could taste at least a faint trace of his ass on my tongue. We withdrew from that configuration after a moment, staring at each other with mild shock.

“Oops,” I said.

// … // … // … // … // … //

By the time we were done, I was smoking a cig and enjoying the afterglow. Bell was completely wrung out. He looked deflated, like a party balloon that had been stamped on over and over again until it was a sad, flaccid little pile of rubber.

“Yer fuckin’ crazy,” he said. “You’re a damn succubus, you know that?”

I let out a chuckle at that. “Do tell.”

“I had no fucking idea what I was signing up for, and now that I’ve done it, I don’t know what to feel. When you asked if I was okay with butt stuff, I didn’t know exactly whose butt you were talking about, but now, I know the answer all too intimately. My dignity and my lechery are in a tug-of-war, and I can’t decide if I was the fucker or fuckee or what the hell just happened, but my balls are emptier than they’ve ever been. It actually kinda hurts.” He whined a little. “I’m an old stallion, you gotta be careful with me, darlin’.”

“That’s the way we pilots fuck.” I grinned, holding out my cig and letting it smolder. “The crazy way.”

“For our first time, I didn’t think we’d—y’know—do it like that.”

I snorted. “Bell, I’ve done it the other way plenty of times. It’s boring and not all that fun. Seriously. Mounted in the dark by some dumbass, and he’s like ‘I can’t find it’ and I’m like ‘that’s my ass, retard’, and then I basically just lie still while he snorts and thrusts away and then my OCD hits and I wonder if I left my bike’s keys in the ignition or thought to bring them in and put them on the coffee table so some dipshit doesn’t run off with it. I’m so done with having sex like that. I’m all about the wild fucking, now.”

“Shit,” he said. “You got that right.”

I stared at the floor of the mine, deep in thought. “Y’know, Bell, I know we haven’t always gotten along. I’ve done some stupid shit since joining the rebellion. Shit I now regret.” I looked up at him with a smile. “But I don’t regret this. Not even for a second.”

He smiled back. “Me neither, darlin’. Me neither. I know I’m an old fart, and I might not have much time left, but, to tell you the truth, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend the last of my years with than you.”

I grinned. “You’re a sweetie pie.”

I stood up from the bed and surveyed myself. I was a mess, to put it bluntly. Some days, I envied the cleomanni. They had patches of fur, but they weren’t hairy all over like we were. Gobs of dried cum had started to stiffen my coat in places. Just the thought that I was filled and covered with bits of Bell almost made me horny all over again, but I was pretty sure if I jumped his bones at this juncture, the poor bastard would turn into a dried-up husk and blow away in the wind like a tumbleweed.

Well, I wanted this, I told myself. Comes with the territory.

“I’m gonna go get myself washed up,” I said. “You good?”

“Fine as I’ll ever be,” Bell said.

I smiled softly at him before turning and heading out. In one of the dark corners of the mine, I retrieved a bucket and filled it with water, and then grabbed some soap and a sponge and gave myself a sponge bath. We were rationing water due to our situation. Long, hot showers were out of the question, unless it was on Cicatrice’s transport.

Just when I’d gotten the bulk of the filth off, the base’s alarm rang, the klaxon echoing through the salt mine’s tunnels. I tossed the sponge aside, watching intently as militia ponies ran every which way in a panic. Something was going on.

“Dammit,” I said. “It’s always gotta be something.”

I merged with the crowd and joined them in the main room, looking up in awe at my Charger. The twin heavy beamcasters had passed their range test checklists, after having been fired down one of the disused mine tunnels the night before, and they were securely mounted on their retractable erector arms hinged at my Charger’s shoulders. Captain Garrida was standing before my machine, holding herself up shakily with her rifle, still receiving a drip of intravenous fluids from a bag on a stand right next to her. She had a haunted look in her reddened eyes that immediately put me on edge. There was a commotion all around me as ponies openly speculated on what could possibly be the matter.

Garrida brought her rifle’s barrel down three times on the hastily poured concrete slab the technicians were using as a work surface, the clank of its muzzle echoing through the mine. Everyone went silent.

“Ponies!” Captain Garrida called out with a resounding shout that needed no artificial amplification. “Liberation Front members. Soldiers and brave patriots of Equestria. I give you terrible news. Corrector Dieslan Veightnoch intends to wipe all of us out. To that end, he has sent a combined division of Confederate Security Forces and Confederate Army soldiers, led by Colonel Aurman Ravetaff, to raze Tar Pan to the ground. This is not a hypothetical thing. They are right at our doorstep. Our scouts report that they are two hours away from entering the city and breaching the perimeter of this, our final bastion.

“We have a tiny handful of tanks and artillery. They have hundreds. We have two Chargers. They have dozens and dozens of Goliaths. Their soldiers are a teeming, numberless horde, and they have a detachment of mercenaries augmenting them. I won’t tell you the odds. All I will tell you is that you must win. We are cornered. There is nowhere left to retreat. If we do not fend off this attack, we will be destroyed.

“The survivors have the worst fates imaginable to look forward to. Those living will wish that they were dead. For the sake of the Empire, you must fight. You must fight to your dying breath and bring Empress Twilight Sparkle’s burning hot wrath upon the invaders! You will punish them for all that they’ve done, for every life that they’ve taken, for every planet they’ve stolen, and for every one of us they’ve enslaved and tormented!” Garrida’s eyes swept over us as she raised her fist into the air. “Long live Empress Twilight Sparkle! Long live the Equestrian Empire!”

“Hedsza wroe Harranftah Renleus Tika! Hedsza wroe Tonnanen Harredo!” the crowd echoed.

Not a single one of us budged from our place. None of us ran or showed cowardice. Mardissa was there, in the midst of the assembled crowd, and I could see the look on her face; her horror at our desperation in the face of total annihilation by her people, and how humbled she was by our dedication to our cause.

“Sergeant Desert Storm, Private Mardissa Granthis, step forward now,” Captain Garrida said. “All others, go to your stations at once and prepare to defend the base.”

As the militia dispersed and the two of us approached Captain Garrida, we could see the miserable state she was in.

“You okay, sir?” I said.

Garrida glared at me. “Do not inquire about my health ever again, Sergeant. Is that clear?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Sergeant Storm, your Charger is complete, fully functional, and fully rearmed. We’re short on officers. I want you at the front of our formation, leading an element of our counter-offensive. You have my permission to give these Confederate bastards a guided tour of hell.”

I snapped off a salute. “Yes, sir!”

Captain Garrida turned to Mardissa. “Private Granthis. In the short time I’ve known you, you’ve proven a remarkably reliable ally to our cause. It is difficult indeed to turn against one’s own people, one’s own blood, all for the sake of one’s ideals. However, you saw our grave need, and you could not stand by while ponies were driven to the edge of extinction by the actions of your race. You are a credit to your kind. It is regrettable that so few of you have opened your eyes to our suffering. I still believe that, in the fullness of time, we have much to offer each other. If I die, I charge you with the sacred duty of carrying that dream into the future.”

Private Granthis stood ramrod straight as she saluted. “Yes, sir!”

Captain Garrida sat down in her wheelchair and offered her Grover to Private Granthis. “I want you to have this.”

Mardissa was flabbergasted. “Y—you’re giving me Thumper?”

Garrida’s beak formed into a flat, derisive line. “No, I’m giving you my walking stick. Of course I’m giving you my damn rifle, idiot.”

Mardissa reached out and gingerly grabbed the giant weapon, her arms sagging under its weight. She was grinning from ear to ear like a kid in a candy store. “Wow!”

Garrida grunted her assent. “I have no use for it in my condition, and I can’t think of anyone else who can wield it with your degree of skill. Learn it, respect it. Don’t let it out of your sight. I ain’t got any more. They don’t make ‘em anymore.” The Captain sighed, rubbing her claws together. “Briefing’s in five. Be there.”

// … // … // … // … // … //

“Fuck,” I whispered. “Don’t even know what else to say. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck. Maybe shit? Maybe a tarnation and hellfire, too? Now look what they’ve done. They’ve got me speaking hick.”

I adjusted my syncsuit, trying to relax as the sync arm latched onto my back and a sharp tingle ran from my spine down to the tips of my hooves. I settled into Black Devil’s pilot seat and placed my hooves in the stirrups.

The briefing had been the stuff of nightmares. It was like Pur Sang all over again. There were two Confederate divisions bearing down on Tar Pan from the east and the southeast. Cicatrice’s Stormtroopers were whipping up an actual batch of severe inclement weather ahead of both of them, trying to wash out roadways, form tornadoes, and turn the land into wind-beaten muck. Standard practice when on defense. That would buy us another hour or two at the most.

I knew that outside the mine, the militias were towing fixed AA gun emplacements up onto the hillside and search radar units were being hastily emplaced to watch the sky for enemy gunships. I flicked on the forward viewscreen and viewed the local datasphere map feed being relayed down into the mine, little colored dots marching around. Our self-propelled guns were taking up their positions near the mine. They’d be wiped out by counter-battery fire if they opened up on the enemy now.

Garrida had fibbed a bit to motivate everyone. The enemy had no intention of razing Tar Pan flat. If they did, they would have used fighter-bombers or orbital bombardment and not a messy, inefficient ground invasion. They wanted the city. More specifically, they wanted what was in the city. Ponies. Living product. Thousands upon thousands of soon-to-be slaves.

The rest of Revenant was already topside, using the Centaur’s sensor mortar to set up a cordon. The first enemy contacts crawled into my scope. One, then four, then a dozen, and then hundreds of red dots.

My nose wrinkled in disgust as I cracked my pasterns and settled my forehooves back on the stirrups, my eyes tracing over to the polywell fusion reactor’s unlit status indicators.

I had someone worth defending with my life, and I wasn’t about to let these bastards take him from me.

“Black Devil, initiate startup sequence.”

// … end transmission …

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