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Desert Storm

The massive hulk of the overturned Landcruiser loomed over us. Confederate soldiers and CSF were scurrying off the thing like rats fleeing a sinking ship. I watched more than a few of them take a ride down the heavily inclined deck and crack their skulls like a raw egg on the way down.

“WIDOWMAKER to all squads,” Lieutenant Night Terror spoke over the radio. “We are moving in to secure the downed Landcruiser. Regroup and check your gear. Climbing equipment will be necessary. Out.”

I’d left my syncsuit aboard my Charger and retrieved some medical supplies from my bins, stowing them in my borrowed saddlebags. I also pulled out a few grenades I’d stashed in my bins and clipped them to my vest. A little insurance, in case I was downed, surrounded, and on the verge of capture, and I needed a way to take a few dingoes out of this world with me. I was told they were better than cyanide pills. That a frag was a quicker, more painless death. I didn’t doubt it. In the meantime, another Centaur had shown up with Bellwether, Placid Gale, and the troops directly under their command. Layer Cake flew in wearing her Dragoon exosuit, accompanied by two whole squads of Airborne Pegasus Commandos equipped with heavy assault armor and Mark-14 casters.

I knew Crookneck was in the head of the Palfrey formation, because of his conspicuous plasma halberd, of which there seemed to be only one in existence. However, he did not announce his presence, for obvious reasons. One of the Palfreys loped towards us and took a knee, its cockpit hinging open to reveal none other than Sergeant Teirro Koskas. None of the troops from Vanhoover were particularly shocked by the damarkind, having long been acclimated to her presence, but some of the Crazy Horse personnel shared uneasy looks.

“We need grapple!” She pointed up towards the Bannerman’s tilted bridge island with one of her wickedly sharp claws. “I launch. You clip on cable. We all go, yes?”

I nodded. “Aye. Let me go over this shit with my squad for a second.”

Mardissa had brought Lucky along with her; I took it from her grasp and gave the Orbit a charge with my horn, and then, I linked it into the intel feed from my Charger while I approached the other members of Revenant.

“Mares and gentlecolts, gather ‘round,” I said. “We need a huddle before this one.”

Most of the other infantry squads were being separately briefed by their own leaders. I had the attention of Revenant, as well as Bell, Placid, and their squads. We all hunkered down in an artillery crater as I began the briefing. Haybale looked nervous, constantly leaning up to look over the rim of the crater at the ominous wreck and the thick clouds of black smoke that spewed from it. Hexhead and Shooting Star were calm and collected, inspecting each other’s casters, giving the emitters, heat sinks, and power sources a once-over. Each of them tapped the other on the shoulder when everything checked out.

“I’ve got a couple Parasprite recon drones out there scanning this big son of a bitch. We now have data on the internal layout of the decks.” I powered on Lucky’s holoprojector, forming a glowing blue three-dimensional representation of the overturned Landcruiser. “The fucker’s on its side. Getting inside will be a bitch and a half. It’s also on fire. The bridge is a no-go. There will be flame and asphyxiation hazards to deal with as we navigate the space. Don’t go into the areas marked orange, or you’ll die. Fully involved fires. You open those spaces, there’s a chance of backdraft, and even if there isn’t, they’re still full of smoke and the steel’s blazing hot. You’ll melt your boots to the deck, and then, you’ll pass out and die of smoke inhalation.”

“Where’s our objective, ma’am?” Corporal Shooting Star said.

“We want Ordinator Naimekhe. She’s our best chance at nabbing Veightnoch. He’s the asshole that runs the CSF in this sector. He’s also our best lead for finding Empress Sparkle.”

Shocked gasps and furtive murmurs abounded. Only Bellwether and the other squad leaders had any inkling of how important it was that we captured this HVT alive. The rest had only just begun to appreciate the enormity of the task at hoof.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “We don’t know exactly where the target individual is located. She could be practically anywhere. In a locker. Under a bunk. A maintenance access tunnel. A duct. Anywhere. We’re going to have to comb this thing from top to bottom to find her. Lieutenant Terror and Sergeant Sierra’s Chargers and the rest of these vehicles are going to form a cordon around the Landcruiser. No one gets in unless it’s our reinforcements. No one gets out without going with their wrists zip-tied or in a bodybag. Questions?”

“Do we even have a clue where to start looking?” Corporal Cloverleaf said.

“Wertua always travels with a couple Gaffs, so if we see them, we know she’s close.” This remark garnered more than a few apprehensive looks from my squad, so I decided to elaborate a bit. “Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking. ‘See Gaffs? In close quarters? Has the Sergeant gone nuts?’ Well, that’s just it. We’ve got a Dragoon and some Stormtroopers with us, and we oughta make use of them. You see something you can’t fight on your own, pass it to them.”

“What do we do if everything goes tits-up, ma’am?” Private Haybale said.

“We fall back the way we came in, here.” I pointed to the entrance to the superstructure on the deck. “We don’t wanna get cut off by fire or hostiles. We need to secure each space as we advance. There will be fighting, but there will also be those who will want to surrender immediately. There’ll be many injured crew in there. If you have to barricade a door, do not trap anyone—friendly or neutral, since hostiles can get fucked—in spaces with fire. If an area is clear of hostiles, then search for and evacuate the wounded. We don’t need this to be any messier than it already is. Alright, let’s fucking do this.”

There was a grunt of affirmation from everyone in the squad. I didn’t tell them the whole truth. I was thinking ahead. If we wanted to hold Tar Pan, we needed hostages. Lots of them. Something to dissuade the Confederacy from using kinetic strikes or strategic bombers and simply flattening the whole city. They would also be valuable sources of intel, if we could get them to cave under questioning.

I climbed towards the edge of the crater, my boots scraping against the upturned soil, and I peeked over the rim. I watched as Koskas’ Palfrey picked up a large, gleaming chrome piton launcher with a long reel of steel cable. She took aim and fired a fin-stabilized piton at the superstructure of the fallen Landcruiser. The cable spool whined as the cable reeled out, the piton sailing through the air and striking an overhang in the cruiser’s superstructure. The bang of a small blank charge reverberated across the field as it drove the piton’s tungsten carbide tip right through the massive vehicle’s plating.

Using her battlesuit’s hands, Koskas put some tension on the line and then staked it in the dirt, waving us over with her Palfrey’s manipulator arm. She opened the cockpit of her Crook and dismounted from the vehicle. She got out some motorized cable ascenders from a big duffel bag and clipped them to the cable as we approached.

“Everyone is ready?” Koskas made a toothy grin. “We no going back without prisoner.”

“We’re ready to make entry,” I said. “Squad, clip on. We go up ten at a time, and we’ll send the ascenders back for the next ten, and so on.”

There were a series of clicks as we clipped the carabiners on the ascenders onto the loops in our armor. I climbed up and wrapped my hooves around the cable, electing to hang inverted. I looked up at the burning superstructure of the Landcruiser, and then, I fired up the ascender. The cable ascender’s motor let out a steady hum. I could feel the radiant heat from the fire as I approached.

Infantry combat was very different from being cocooned in the cockpit of my Mirage. The sights, sounds, smells, and other sensory experiences of the battlefield were all in evidence. Being in the cockpit of a Charger was like having a full-body condom between oneself and the stark reality of warfare. The narrow field of view of the forward viewscreen encouraged a kind of tunnel vision that would be quite hazardous were it not for all the other little cues that Charger pilots received through our sync with the Anima system.

I climbed onto the side of the Landcruiser’s superstructure, unclipping my carabiner from the ascender. The vessel’s flight deck loomed over us, blotting out a good portion of the horizon. I could feel the heat and smell the acrid smoke from the flame-engulfed bridge. The rest of Revenant showed up one after another, sending the ascenders back down the line for the rest to use. Then, Koskas and her squad showed up, then Bell and his team, and then Placid and her fliers, who elected to use their wings instead of the contraptions Koskas had rigged up. Commodore Cake and the Stormtroopers landed in unison, securing the area. Bell and I exchanged glances and nods, but little else.

Mardissa was the last one from Revenant, bringing up the rear as she unslung Thumper from her back. Ket was with her, sweeping the area with a flechette gun. I eyed the anti-materiel rifle skeptically; Garrida’s gun would be very unpleasant to use in close quarters. Mar would be limited to her beamcaster in most circumstances. Still, the unwieldy weapon offered some advantages that I could not easily discount, armor penetration and barrier penetration being two of them.

There was an open hatch in the side of the superstructure, but because the Landcruiser was on its side, the entrance was horizontal, opening into the space beneath us with a sheer drop. There was a commotion in the compartment beyond. Cleomanni desperately clambering over each other in the dark, trying to get to the extension ladder they’d set up at the hatch.

Normally, I would’ve tossed in a frag grenade, and that would’ve been that. However, I made a promise to Celestia. An unrealistic promise, given our circumstances. I had nothing to lose, though. If I pissed her off, I was back to square one. I let out an exasperated sigh as I thought of the words in Ardun that I would have to use to persuade them to come out without fighting.

“Shikret kized,” I said. “Nev kradr adon han.”

Outside come. You shoot not we.

The word order in Ardun was the reverse of what one would expect. To speak like a cleomanni, one had to think backwards. I wondered if it affected their psychology, somehow.

Mardissa’s eyes lit up with surprise. “I didn’t know you knew how to speak Ardun like that, ma’am.”

“Well, when you’re all cooped up in a shipping container for a few years with nothing to do, you may as well pick up a new language. Besides, I’ve been practicing.”

A pair of trembling paws poked up through the hatch. A cleomanni woman with a bloodied face, her black uniform torn in a couple places, slowly ascended the ladder, her hands raised in surrender.

“Please, don’t shoot!” she said.

Mardissa grabbed her arm and pulled her up. “Are there any others?”

The officer dusted herself off. “Yes, almost the whole bridge crew, in the compartment below us.” The Dochnast woman had a pale complexion and long, straight, black hair that sprouted from under her cap and ran down her shoulders, seeming to almost blend into her equally black uniform top.

I walked up to her. “Where’s Wertua?”

The bridge officer eyed me fearfully, shaking. “I—I—“

“Focus! I’m Sergeant Storm. What’s your name and rank?”

She seemed to calm down a bit. “I’m Lieutenant Kriste Sawal. What do you monsters want with Miss Naimekhe? What does it have to do with me?”

Cloverleaf was incensed by this. “Monsters? We are fighting for our lives against you psychos! Do you have any idea what your pet mercs have been doing to us? If not, then you have no business running your mouth, bitch!”

Haybale nodded. “That’s right. We just wanna live, and you keep comin’ for us. You won’t leave us be!”

Lieutenant Sawal was looking increasingly perturbed with each passing moment. “You’re not—you’re not synthetics?”

I burst out laughing. I felt like I was going mad. These fuckers lived in an alternate reality. “Nope.”

The corners of Sawal’s mouth fell. She slowly turned to Mardissa, gesticulating as if demanding an explanation. “What? What?”

“They’re wholly sapient,” Mardissa said. “I’ve spoken with them extensively, and I can’t see any evidence to the contrary. They’re not bioroids and most certainly not on autopilot upstairs. They have free will.”

“Oh.” Sawal started shaking again. “Oh gods.”

“Pretty common reaction,” I muttered.

“No, you don’t understand. Naimekhe keeps one of you as a pet—I—oh, gods!” The Lieutenant put a hand to her mouth in shock.

“You mean a slave.” I marched up to her, fixing her with an angry glare. “She keeps a pony slave.”

The cleomanni woman slowly crumpled to the deck, sobbing and holding her head in her hands, her complicity finally dawning on her. With everything else she’d just experienced, she’d hit her limit. She was bawling like a baby. There was snot involved. This went on for a while, to the point where it became really awkward. Mar and Ket traded a worried look. After a few moments of careful deliberation, I closed the distance, putting my forelegs over her shoulders and drawing her into a hug.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said.

The Lieutenant slowly, tentatively returned the gesture. “You’re not—you’re not going to hurt us?”

I drew my lips into a grimace. In Dodge, blinded by rage at the kidnapping of my sisters, I’d ordered my squad to summarily execute dozens of CSF civilian support personnel. Before I’d acquainted myself with Mardissa and Ket, cleomanni weren’t even people to me, but living obstacles. Weird, animate sacks of flesh who’d denied us a future. They saw us the same way. Don’t fraternize. Don’t acknowledge each other’s personhood. Just attack. Attack, attack, attack. For a thousand years. Quill was right, in a way. This wasn’t living. We needed to find a solution to all of this, or there’d be nothing left for any of us.

What we’d lost in this war was incalculable. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what our society would have looked like if things had been different, and we’d been allowed to pour our resources into more peaceful ends. A faint oasis lay at the edge of my consciousness. Not even a daydream. A figment. Gleaming cities, rich culture, and bounteous wealth. We could have been the envy of the whole universe. Instead, we wallowed in filth. It was hard not to feel deeply resentful over that fact.

“We’re not gonna hurt you,” I said. “Promise.”

“Thank goodness.” Her relief was palpable. “Thank goodness!”

“You’ll be detained with the others, but I promise you’ll be treated well. I need you to do something for me, however. I’m going to try and rescue as many as I can from this coffin, but I’d rather not get in a firefight with Naimekhe’s bodyguards with surrendering personnel caught in the crossfire. Furthermore, I want you to convince as many as possible to evacuate immediately. Can you do that?”

Lieutenant Sawal slowly nodded, sniffling a little and clearing her mussed hair out from in front of her eyes. “I’ll try.”

I stood by and watched as she shakily climbed back down the ladder. I could hear them muttering amongst themselves down below. The conversation got heated in places as they deliberated on whether to trust us at our word. After all, we did just push their shit in, and I played a significant role in that. After a few minutes, the Lieutenant ascended the ladder, shaking her head.

“What is it?” I said. “No good?”

“No, they’ll come,” she said. “But they’re not happy about it.”

“Understandable.” I nodded. “If I were in their shoes, I wouldn’t be, either.”

“You promise that no harm will come to them?”

“I have limited authority,” I said. “I will do what I can to make sure they are treated fairly.”

Sawal sighed, dusting her knees off. She approached the cable we’d rigged up, tugging on it a couple times to make sure it would hold her weight. The troops from Vanhoover assisted her, making her wear a fall-protection harness meant for ponies and adjusting it so the straps would hold her. They clipped her to one of the cable ascenders and sent her down.

I watched as, one by one, the stranded bridge crew of the Bannerman climbed up the ladder and out the hatch. Some were scared out of their minds, glancing at us fearfully as they passed. Others fixed us with resentful glares.

One marched up to me, snarling and balling up his fists. “Animal!”

My ears drooped and my jaw went a little slack as I watched the Stormtroopers goad him onward, their casters glowing threateningly. He joined the rest, donning a harness without any further complaints. Placid Gale and her small team of pegasi stationed themselves at the cable, making round-trips to deliver the limited set of harnesses back to the top so they could be reused. It was grueling work. I could already tell that the evacuation was going to take a long damn time. Meanwhile, there were still enemy personnel inside who had not surrendered. Dozens, possibly hundreds. A firefight inside the cruiser was guaranteed to be a hellish experience. I swallowed the lump of fear that had formed in my throat.

Once the compartment was clear, I waved up Revenant. “Squad, push inside!”

We descended the ladder one by one, sweeping the compartment with our casters. Everything was sideways. The floor was what used to be a bulkhead mere minutes before. One of the walls was actually the deck. Furniture and loose items had piled up to one side. It was hard to tell what the compartment might have been used for. It looked almost like a lounge of some kind. Passageways that crossed the vessel transversely were now sheer drops into a black void. Emergency lights and red strobes flickered in the dark, alarms blaring from one end of the Landcruiser to the other. It was maddening and disorienting at the same time.

Commodore Cake and the Stormtroopers poured through the hatch, their wings giving them a distinct advantage as they traversed the space. We flicked on our helmet lights, scanning around for survivors. There was smoke hanging in the air, but the passage to the bridge itself had been sealed off. The awful reality of what had happened when we tipped the Landcruiser on its side was evident in the blood stains on the bulkheads. As I’d suspected, some of the vessel’s crew had busted their heads open like a watermelon when they went skating sideways across the near-vertical deck. I saw bodies. More than a few of ‘em.

“Shit,” I whispered.

I could hear sobbing in one of the far alcoves. I turned my head towards the source. There was a crewman cradling one of the deceased in his arms and rocking back and forth, a pistol in his hand.

“Drop the weapon!” I shouted.

When he saw me, he pushed his buddy’s corpse aside and stood up, pressing his pistol to his temple. “Don’t you fucking come any closer, I’ll fucking do it! This, I swear!”

“Do you think your pal there would’ve wanted you to do that?” I said.

“Shut up! I don’t know what you things do to captives, but I’m not about to find out!”

“What’s your name?”

“What?” His grip on his pistol relaxed, as I’d anticipated. “E—Ensign Valkour.”

“I’ll tell you what we do.” I seized his weapon in an orange levitation field and yanked it out of his grasp. “We’ll give you a hot meal, and a bed, and plenty of time to think about what you’ve done wrong. Now, get the hell off this thing and go catch a breath of fresh air.”

One of the Stormtroopers escorted him towards the ladder. Before he made the ascent to go join the other detainees, he looked back at us, bewildered. This wasn’t what he’d been expecting at all. This wasn’t what he’d trained for. I checked the magazine on the pistol, finding it fully loaded with 10mm Auto. There was, in fact, a round in the chamber and the safety was off. I put the magazine back in, clicked the safety on, and threw it in a saddlebag. It could come in handy, later.

“Smooth, ma’am,” Ket said. “Glad you didn’t have to, well, you know.”

“Yeah, well, looks like Storm the Slayer has turned over a new leaf,” I muttered.

I wasn’t about to tell them about Celestia, just yet. They wouldn’t have taken it well if I’d told them I was experiencing vivid hallucinations of a dead goddess who arbitrarily bestowed her blessings upon me. Placid would’ve just about gone off the deep end if word of my visions spread around and reached her ears. I wasn’t quite ready to be her own personal fucking messiah.

I didn’t even know what the hell any of it meant, or why, to my knowledge, Celestia hadn’t shown herself to anypony else in the thousand years she’d been gone. One thing was certain; I had to tell Cicatrice and BD about it, at the very least. It was a conversation I was beginning to dread, but one that was absolutely necessary. Once may have been tiredness and trauma taking its toll. Twice was something supernatural. It had to be. The altered enchantment on my Charger’s spell locus was proof positive of divine intervention. I had to get it back to the techs in one piece.

I couldn’t allow my mind to wander. I had to stay focused. The interior of the overturned Landcruiser was hazardous in the extreme. I almost tripped a few times as I walked across the now-horizontal bulkheads and their many wire conduits, light fixtures, and other protrusions in the dark. As we came upon an entrance to a passageway, I gazed straight down into the void. There was a piece of broken glass next to me. I picked it up in my levitation and tossed it down the shaft. Over the din of the alarms, I could barely hear it clink at the bottom a second or two later.

Hexhead peered over my shoulder. “About a fifteen-meter drop, at least.”

“Rope,” I said. “There’s a stairwell down there. We’re climbing down.”

Private Haybale tied off a rope to a sturdy drainpipe, and I clipped on with the descender integrated into my armor’s chest piece. I stepped off into the darkness, rappelling down several meters, swinging back and forth in the flickering red abyss. I swept my helmet light around a bit, soon finding the stairwell.

“It’s halfway down!” I yelled up to the rest. “Gonna have to swing myself over there.”

I tensed my abdominal muscles and used my hind legs to give me some momentum, trying to swing into the stairwell. After a few swings, I reached out and wrapped my leg around one of the railings, pulling myself towards it. I tied off the rope at the bottom, knotting it around the handrail.

“Why didn’t you just send one of us?” one of the Stormtroopers shouted down.

“Because I’m not a big fucking baby, that’s why!” I yelled back.

I gritted my teeth. My abdomen was still sore from my shrapnel wound surgery. I had to take it easy. After policing the slack carefully, I waved the others down. One by one, the other members of Revenant rappelled down, climbing into the stairwell.

“How much rope we got?” Hexhead said. “We’ve got a lot of climbing to do.”

Private Haybale rifled around in his saddlebags. “Plenty.”

I went down the stairs, which was a very odd experience, given that they were now aligned vertically. I had to carefully mount the rail, climb over, and shimmy down. The weight of my armor made me realize just how tired I felt. I’d been running on fumes since before the battle began. I’d barely had any rest after getting back from Vanhoover. Pretty much the only real sleep I had was hiding from the Vargr in a culvert full of rainwater. Even though I was completely exhausted, I was climbing around like a fucking monkey.

I smirked a little as a funny thought crossed my mind. I wondered if this was how the oh-so-enigmatic and dangerous humans amused themselves in their spare time. Perhaps they climbed trees or scaled fake cliffs in the pristine, astroturfed luxury habs they probably lived in. I dropped into the section of stairwell below. Blue plasma streaked past my face, singeing my muzzle.

“Contact!” I ducked low against the bulkhead, pressing myself into cover.

I waved away the others, who were about to climb down to get me. One of the Landcruiser’s crew members was shooting a pulsegun up the vertically inclined passageway from the cover of an open hatch. I slowly pulled a grenade from my vest. That was when I heard it. The cries of protest from below.

“Stop shooting at them, Kastie!” The voice was whiny and male. “They’re gonna kill us!”

“I’m not givin’ up the cruiser to these fucking animals!” The second to speak was a gruff-sounding woman, obviously the shooter. “Do you hear me, you fucking four-legged freak?”

I stared at the grenade in my hoof. A standard Imperial Type-Four with 200 grams of CycloHex fill and a ball bearing frag liner. If I pulled the pin and tossed it down there, they’d both die, or be grievously wounded at the very least. I had no idea how many cleomanni down there were neutral rather than hostile.

Celestia’s words resonated in my head. If you kill defenseless people again, I shall strip my boons from you.

I bit my lip. “Shit. Shit!”

I clipped the frag back to my vest. I drew in a deep breath, trying to think of the alien words I’d have to use. The exact sequence of consonants and vowels that would have to cross my tongue.

“We’re not after your lives,” I spoke in Ardun. “We only want Ordinator Naimekhe. Turn her over to us.”

“In your dreams, creature!” the woman shouted back. “If you things even have dreams.”

I grinned wide, measuring my words carefully. “Akapta nev, kontestametz nev wes Taffal fru vak Naurud? Kaunuos meg dos nev kovate boma iave adon vor? Kaunuos meg dos nev hostarra awul-setz, kro henmo arvuna kitas, meg dussas-maggeol miktas adon vor?”

Realize you, contest you with Devil of the North? Think make what you another nuke have not I? Think make what you pathetic trash-heap, and soul every inside, make smoking-crater into not I?

I had to remind myself to think backwards. I could hear Ket snickering above me, and I briefly wondered if I’d got my grammar wrong.

“The—the Devil of—“ I could hear the hesitation creeping into the woman’s voice. “Oh lords above. You—you’re the one?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said. “I take bad little imps, and I nuke them. No mercy. Just nukes. Be nice, or be next.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Ditch that fucking gun and climb out of there, or you’re gonna find out.”

“Okay. Okay! You win! Fuck!” I heard the clatter of a pulsegun being tossed aside. “Fuckin’ psychos.”

Maybe it was my delivery, or maybe it was something about the context of those specific words in their language that differed from ours, but somehow, I almost always rolled a twenty on my intimidation check. I missed playing tabletop with the guys on the Endless Summer. I wondered if I could cajole my new squad into a game of Ogres & Oubliettes, sometime.

I was banking on most of the Landcruiser’s crew being too banged up and frightened to refuse the possibility of rescue. It was starting to look like I was right. The show was mostly over, at least on this deck. They rightly considered themselves to be in distress. The woman struggled to climb up the passageway, grabbing on to the protrusions that lined it.

I crawled over the edge and reached a foreleg down towards her. “Grab my hoof.”

She paused for a moment, unsure if she should take my offer, before her hand clasped around my armored boot. I would have used levitation to pull her out, but my horn was almost completely exhausted, and I was saving what little spellpower I had left, in case I really needed it. Her eyes widened a bit with surprise when I hauled her up with just one leg.

“Damn, you’re strong!” she said. “What do they feed you things?”

“First off, I’m not a thing,” I said. “Second, I’m not a farm animal. I can feed my-fucking-self.”

The red-headed Zinsar woman had her hair drawn into a neat bun. She sat across from me and looked me up and down, a bemused smirk playing its way across her face. “You’re the Devil of the North?”

I shrugged. “As far as I can tell, yeah.”

“But, you’re so small. And so orange. I thought you’d be scarier. You’re fucking adorable!”

“Oh, right.” I rolled my eyes. “I bet you expected me to have fangs down to my chin and glowing red eyes or some shit. Nope. Sorry to disappoint.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of mech pilot or something?” There was a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. She shoved my shoulder. “That was you out there, wasn’t it? You pushed us over!”

“Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“How did they make you so person-like?” she said.

I blinked a few times. “Excuse me? Okay, first off, who the fuck are they?”

“Your creators. You’re obviously manufactured to be visually pleasing. I mean, why would a species evolve naturally to be every color of the rainbow? Fur coloration is for camouflage against predators. This world’s grass and dirt are completely normal colors. So, like, why are you bright orange?”

“I’m not fucking orange! I’m saffron!”

“Right. Saffron. That shows up against everything!”

“No, it doesn’t!” I said. “In a desert, at sunset, it’s perfectly good camouflage.”

The cleomanni rolled her eyes and snickered. “Right. In that very specific use case, sure.”

“Sandstone?”

“That’s stretching it a little.”

I had no idea why I was so offended by her line of argumentation. It may have been that I liked to think I was good at sneaking around, and here, someone was telling me I stuck out like a sore hoof.

“Well, Devil of the North.” She offered her hand. “Hekkasten Arboka. I’m one of the engineers on this old shit-heap.”

I took her proffered hand. “Desert Storm. I’d love to chat, but we're running short on time. Our target could be getting away. Here, I’ll give you a boost.”

I cupped my forehooves together and she placed one of her hooves atop mine, putting her hands on my shoulders for stability. I lifted her high enough for Mar and Ket to reach over the railing, grab her, and pull her up the rest of the way.

“Who’s the target?” Hekkasten said.

“Wertua Naimekhe, an Ordinator in the CSF,” Mardissa said.

“Oh, that prancing cunt?” The engineer frowned. “Never did like her. I think she’s in the Citadel. Armored combat information center, down below and amidships, between the two engine rooms fore and aft. They retrofitted the officer’s lounge there into her own personal quarters.”

“I take it that wasn’t a very popular decision,” Corporal Cloverleaf said.

Hekkasten shook her head. “Not popular at all. The orders to do so came from way up high. She got the officers all heated, and then, they started taking it out on us. If you see my lads down there, don’t shoot at them, please. Tell them who you’re after. They’re about ready to serve her head up on a silver platter to anyone who asks nicely.”

“Hey, listen,” I said. “We’re trying to evacuate everypo—excuse me, everyone—that we can from this damn thing. Is there anything else we should know?”

“There’s a bunch of crew holed up on the Gallery Deck, just below us.” The fire-headed woman leaned over the railing. “They won’t know your intentions if they see you. Some of ‘em are armed. We pulled those fancy new pulseguns from the armory. I could get on the PA system. Make a few calls, if you want.”

“Can you confine it to the Gallery Deck?” I shouted up at her. “I don't wanna let Wertua know we're coming. I owe her some payback after all that bullshit on Ahriman Station.”

“Can do. Wait one.” Hekkasten wandered out of sight and made her way to what was presumably an intercom station. The next time I heard her voice, it was through the overhead PA speakers. “Engineman Arboka to the Gallery Deck. There are Equestrians incoming from the bridge. Do not open fire on them. They're attempting to evac everyone.”

As before, I could hear a commotion below us as they deliberated over what to do. That deliberation again turned to argumentation. Another crewman began to make the ascent to my position. I watched him plant his hoof on a rounded light fixture.

“Wait, that's not safe!” I said.

Predictably, he slipped. I tried to reach out with my magic to catch him, but it was too late. I heard him cry out briefly as he fell several meters before grunting explosively as his back slammed into the bulkhead with a sickening crunch. His shocked cries quickly turned to agonized screams.

“Fuck! Fuck!” He flailed around helplessly, his lower half paralyzed from the waist down. “I think I broke my back! Help! Gods, no!”

I keyed my helmet radio. “Revenant One to Goshawk One.”

Commodore Layer Cake’s voice came in loud and clear from the other end. “Go ahead, Revenant One.”

“We have an injured member of the Landcruiser’s crew here who needs immediate evac. Spinal injury. Bring a stretcher.”

With a bright flash of magic, Prima teleported in next to me in the stairwell, nearly giving me a small heart attack. I took a few deep breaths to steady myself. “Fuck, call me up on the radio next time!”

“Having fun, yet?” Prima said.

“This is turning into a fucking slog, and we aren’t even two compartments in, yet,” I muttered. “We need ladders. Rope. Cutting torches. Fire extinguishers. More climbing equipment. Now.”

“Your wish is my command.” Prima clapped her forehooves together and grinned wide, before she teleported back out. My own personal genie in a bottle.

The rest of Revenant started their descent. Two Stormtroopers flew past them with a foldable stretcher. They were beside the casualty in a flash, loading him onto it with the utmost care as he looked up at them and their faceless helmet visors with a mixture of fear and awe. Over the din of the vessel’s own klaxons, I could faintly hear another, more distant set of sirens through its hull.

My helmet radio picked up some chatter from Placid. “Raven One to all ground teams, Tar Pan’s fire department have arrived on the scene. They’re waiting for the all-clear to move up to the cruiser and start tackling the blaze, but they want to know the area’s secure and their guys aren’t gonna get shot.”

“Wait one.” I radioed back. I checked my drone feeds from the Parasprite drones for any movement, any heat signatures, anything on the terahertz scanners. Nothing. “No hostile contacts in the immediate vicinity of the cruiser. Tell them to stay away from any lower openings. Tell the boys from Vanhoover to send a Gargoyle in and cover them, dammit.”

“Raven One to WIDOWMAKER, did you get that? I need confirmation of the Sergeant’s orders.”

Lieutenant Terror was the next to check in. “That’s affirmative, Sergeant Gale. We need the base of the cruiser completely cordoned off. No one leaves without being detained. Have the TPFD guys escorted in.”

Over my drone feed, I watched as the fire trucks moved up, deployed their booms, and began spraying thick, white jets of firefighting foam all over the Landcruiser’s flame-engulfed bridge. I snickered softly. “Yeah, that’s it. Give her a nice facial.” I squinted closer at the feed. “Hold on a sec, why are they using foam? Don’t they need to cool the steel down?”

We tied off more rope and descended through the fallen Bannerman’s upturned corridors. I could hear the wails of the trapped and the injured all around me. The darkness was claustrophobic and disorienting. If not for the inexorable pull of gravity, it would be difficult to tell which way was up. This wasn’t combat. This was caving, in a big steel cave that was on fire. We must have been insane.

Smoke was rising from one of the compartments further below. The cancerous stink of an electrical fire stung my nostrils. As I rappelled down, I encountered a gaggle of Confederate crewmen all huddled together in a corner. They didn’t reach for any weapons or make any sudden moves. I ignored the looks they gave me and made my way over to a hatch in the bulkhead-turned-deck and placed my hoof on it. It was hot to the touch. There were thin wisps of smoke coming up through the gaps. Not good.

“Don’t go in there!” one of the cleomanni said. “Fire!”

“I can see that.” I glanced at the feed in my eyepiece to check my position in the cruiser relative to the Parasprites and their scans, carefully marking the compartment beyond, and then, I keyed my radio. “Revenant One to Raven One. Be advised, we’ve got an air-starved fire in a—“ I turned back towards the cleomanni. “What kind of room is this?”

One of the crewmen stood a little straighter, eyeing me curiously. “Electrical panel room. I think that’s why most of the lights are out.”

“What do you think the source of ignition was?” I said.

He sheepishly scratched at the back of his neck. “Well, I think there were some cans of solvent stacked in there.”

I raised a brow. That shit would never have flown on the transport ships I used to ride on. “Why? Why didn’t you put them in a compartment with built-in fire suppression?”

“The paint locker’s too far of a walk,” one of them finally admitted.

I snickered at their idiocy, basking in the sense of superiority that I felt at that moment. “That’s retarded. You’re retar—”

There was a loud bang that reverberated through the compartment. A bullet slammed into my spine armor, knocking the wind out of me. I cried out from shock as I tumbled to the deck. Someone had shot me from behind. My adrenaline ratcheted up as I twisted upright and located the source. A woman charged at me, screaming, madness in her eyes, the 10mm autopistol in her hand barking over and over. A second round smashed into my chest protector. A third went in the gap between my plate and my pauldron, digging into my flesh. My vision narrowed to a tunnel as I suddenly found myself fighting for my life.

The rest of Revenant were still climbing down after me. Flashes of insight into my situation raced through my consciousness. Why are they moving so slow? How come no one’s covering me? Did I overextend myself and not realize it? I raised a barrier in the nick of time, a bullet flattening into a copper and lead pancake against the orange sphere of magic that surrounded me. The fourth round would’ve gone through my neck.

I hit my assailant with a body-seize spell. I panicked. Used too much magic power. Her own spasming muscles hyperextended and dislocated her right elbow with a sickening pop, her sidearm flying out of her hand and clattering to the deck. The weapon skidded towards me and I pinned it to the deck with my hoof. My attacker’s mad dash ended with her tumbling to the floor in a screaming heap, her broken arm held high, the baleful effects of my magic in full evidence. Seeing this, the group behind me, which I had assumed had surrendered, sprang into action. Arms went around my neck and around my flanks. Two of them, the strongest and burliest, tried pulling me backwards off my hooves.

My eyes went wide as dinner plates, my heart flopping like a fish in my chest from adrenaline. In the darkness of the felled cruiser, with nothing for visual reference, the way their arms and fingers wriggled as they seized me reminded me of the Seneschal’s oily, black tentacles. With a panicked cry, I swung my left foreleg behind myself aimlessly. A jaw was crushed. Teeth flew. My right hind leg lashed out with a powerful buck, almost on pure reflex; a primeval twitch of my muscles very nearly beyond my control. A knee caved. There were now three flopping, screaming cleomanni on the deck, grievously injured. The remaining three were about to make their move, but I wheeled on them, my caster emitters glowing.

“On the floor, face down, now!” I shouted.

At least one of them was hesitant. “Fucking witch!”

“I’m not fucking around with you. Get on the fucking deck, hands behind your head, or I will fucking shoot you!”

They slowly, reluctantly complied. As the rest of my squad finally finished climbing down after me, I went up to the crewmen and zip-tied their wrists one by one. I was panting, my heart still racing. The adrenaline gave way to a throbbing pain in my shoulder. I rolled back onto my haunches and leaned up against a wall. I started stripping off the armor over my right foreleg, pulling my chest protector back so I could see the wound. I groaned in pain. There was a hole in my shoulder that was leaking a small river of blood down my leg, my fur stained red. No exit wound out the back. A hollow-point round. 10mm ball would’ve gone right through both sides of me.

Clover approached with a first aid kit, grimacing. “Damn, that looks bad.”

I felt around inside the gunshot wound with my levitation. The bullet had stopped in my bone, right at the point of my humerus where it joined my shoulder. I bit my lip to stifle a scream as I yanked out the hunk of deformed metal with a small spray of blood.

I pointed to the wound. “Hemo. Now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Cloverleaf went to work, and though she was far from being a trained medic, she managed to pack the wound sufficiently to get a nice plug of hemogel in there. I winced as its enchantment activated and it heated and hardened.

“The fuck took you guys so long?” I said.

“We’re moving as fast as we can, ma’am,” Haybale said.

“Don’t give me that shit. Stick close. Check your corners. Move up and clear the space. They wanna do this the hard way, we do it the hard way.” I looked down at the struggling, zip-tied cleomanni. “Dammit, I’m trying to help you people. Stop trying to make me fucking kill you.”

I stood and gathered myself. My shoulder burned. It hurt to walk. I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I stifled a whimper and forced myself to power through. It would be very difficult for me to climb in this condition. I had to slow down. At least that would give the others time to catch up.

The rest of Revenant seemed to have lost their bearings. They’d never trained for a situation like this. The alien ship had tall, imposing passageways meant for bipeds. The light seemed to fade into the dark corners of the steel corridors. The black voids at the end of them would seem like gaping maws were it not for the periodic flicker of emergency lighting beyond them that suddenly brought their true length into stark relief. Most of us were in no condition for chitchat. We were all tired as fuck. I watched Cloverleaf stifle a yawn, futilely blinking the dryness out of her eyes. Both Mar and Ket had noticeable bags under theirs.

“Bring up your overlays. There’s a fire in this panel room, here.” I pointed to the closed hatch. “That way’s a dead end, anyway.” I switched to the frequency used by the Commodore and her team. “This is Revenant One. Commodore Cake, ma’am, we’re moving down towards the CIC. We’re going after the HVT before they have a chance to bug out. We would be very grateful if your team could secure the gallery deck and keep the vessel’s crew off our backs. Some of the crew are neutral, but there are still pockets of hostile activity. There’s an out-of-control fire of improperly stored materials in a distribution panel room that has knocked out the lighting. It’s a shitshow.”

A few seconds later, I got a response from Commodore Cake. “Affirmative, Sergeant. We’ll secure the gallery deck. Give us a shout if you run into trouble further on.”

I switched frequency. “Revenant One to Raven One. Gale, you there?”

“Raven One here, go ahead.”

“Are the TPFD planning to make entry to the upper levels of the cruiser?” I could hear the far-off sound of firefighting foam sweeping over the Landcruiser’s hull. It sounded like riding through an automatic car wash.

“Wait one.” There was a brief silence as Placid conversed with what was presumably the fire chief. “They’re saying, and I quote, ‘not just no, but fuck no’. They’re not doing jack shit until the rest of the cruiser is secure. There was a miscommunication. They asked for water, not foam, but the Oligarchs sent a couple of airport fire trucks they had in their stockpile, thinking they’d be better because they were fancier or something.”

“That’s because they’re complete dipshits,” I said. “Foam has less cooling capacity than water. They use it at airports because planes are full of fuel and you need something to blanket and smother it if it leaks all over the tarmac. Get those guys unfucked, pronto. We need water on this thing, now!”

“Working on it.”

Corporal Shooting Star pounded on a hatch in the deck a few times with her hoof. “Come on out, fuckin’ cockroaches!”

She rotated the handle and swung open the hatch. Gunfire boomed from the other side, rounds pinging and ricocheting in the cruiser’s cavernous steel hull. Shooting Star braced herself in cover, pulled the pin from a grenade with her teeth, and dropped it down the hatch. There was a loud bang. Screaming and coughing. Pleas of surrender from frag-wounded enemy personnel.

“How do you feel about tryin’ shit now?” Star shouted down the hatch. “How you like them new holes?”

This was some shit, and we’d stepped in it with all four hooves. Business as usual. Despite Hekkasten’s entreaties, it seemed that doing this part of the operation nice and clean was too much to hope for.

Commodore Cake and the Stormtroopers moved in. They outgunned the enemy by an order of magnitude, to such a degree that the first few compartments they cleared weren't even a battle at all. What I saw, and heard, was faceless pegasi shock troopers swooping in like birds of prey, no-selling 10mm Auto rounds to their chest armor and helmets and tackling noncompliant cleomanni with bone-crunching force. Koskas and her team moved down, next. The damarkind was grinning and licking a nine-inch fixed-blade knife like it was a fucking lollipop. I shuddered to think of the brutality she’d visit upon the Landcruiser’s crew if they did not capitulate.

I shook my head. Koskas was a friend. I hated feeling narrow-minded about someone who’d more than demonstrated her allegiance to our cause, but the fact remained that she was a two-meter-tall, couple-hundred kilo carnivore with sharp teeth and big claws. Even the friendliest damarkind was unsettling as fuck to have in close proximity. Something ancient and primal tickled the inside of my brain, urging me to run in the opposite direction. It was only my experience and conditioning that permitted me to hold my ground when in her presence.

“Squad, we're moving down to the CIC and engineering,” I said. “Sergeant Koskas and the Commodore have this deck. Let's go.”

For what felt like hours, we scaled the cruiser’s upturned interior, tying off ropes and making our way further down. The lower reaches of the cruiser were dark and grimy, laced with rust and soot. We found ourselves in an upturned storeroom with bearings and tubing and all sorts of little parts strewn all over next to empty storage racks that protruded from a deck that was now a bulkhead. The air stank of diesel, old grease, and lube oils.

We moved through the space, taking care not to trip on the spare parts scattered all over the deck. I unslung Lucky from my back and powered him up, giving him a charge with my horn. “Lucky, sentry mode. Follow, close.”

The Orbit beeped a few times as it acknowledged my commands, sweeping its casters back and forth. We advanced carefully, scanning for signs of movement or any hostile activity. There was none. We didn’t see any of the crew. This area of the cruiser was eerily deserted.

I heard a strange, far-off clicking noise. An inequine howl echoed through the cruiser’s hull, muffled by distance and intervening walls.

Haybale looked nervous. “Ma’am? I’ve got a—“

Shooting Star punched his shoulder. “Don't even say it, you jinxing motherfucker.”

“Orders, ma’am?” Mardissa tightly gripped her shouldered anti-material rifle, eyes fixed forward.

I lifted a hoof, gesturing for the squad to hold. I took a few deep breaths, quietly inhaling and exhaling through my nostrils. My worst fear had been realized.

“Karkadann,” I whispered.

There was a pregnant pause. Everyone had heard the rumors. What little remained of the secrecy surrounding the existence of the Karkadann had faded when they took part in the attack on Camp Crazy Horse and just about everyone had a good look at the things. It took a few seconds for the grim reality of the situation to sink in.

“Oh fuck,” Haybale said. “Oh fuck!”

“Quiet.” I got on the radio. “Ghost One, reinforce our position. We’ve got Karks.”

A couple seconds later, Prima teleported in with a flash of green magic, her expression grave. “Where?”

“No contact,” I said. “Can hear ‘em, though.”

“Fuck. Not good.” Prima pointed at the ductwork. “Keep your eyes on the vents. Any openings big enough for a pony to fit through.”

We took it slow, advancing cautiously in the dark, listening for the scratching of hind-talons against metal and the digital chittering and warbling that the monsters made. The sirens and flashing emergency lights disoriented us and impeded our senses. I checked the map. The path to the engine room was above us, through a bulkhead that had become a ceiling. Prima teleported up to it, tied off rope, and tossed the other end down to us.

I clipped on and climbed up, my legs burning with exertion. Every last strand of muscle in my body protested, begging me to lighten my load, either by stripping off my saddlebags or pieces of my armor. I did neither.

One by one, we pulled ourselves up into the passageway outside the storeroom. The corridor was long. Over fifty meters, at least. Long enough that the emergency lights undulating along its length made me briefly wobble on my legs, deeply disoriented. My Orbit hovered close by my shoulder, scanning for targets. No movement. No hostile contacts in sight. Prima took point, holding up a few of her blades in her levitation magic.

I checked the terahertz feed from my drones outside. There were small movement pings everywhere. Not particularly useful. It looked like noise. It could’ve been anything, even interference from the Landcruiser’s electrical cabling. Scanning through metal with terahertz sensors was basically a non-starter. Was worth a try, though.

There was a palpable tension in the air. I took deep breaths to steady myself, scanning around, my helmet’s headlamps casting pools of light on the bulkheads, revealing small details that otherwise faded into the dark. Light fixtures, fire extinguishers, wireways, plumbing, and switches. The gray monotony of it was mind-numbing enough to send one into a trance. I had to remind myself to stay focused.

There was an inequine howl that brought me and my squad to a halt. Banging and rattling of gnarled hooves against thin metal. Every hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Definitely Karks.” Prima turned and looked back at us, a worried look on her face. “Close, too. Was beginning to think you were off your rocker, Sergeant.”

“Naw, we all heard it,” Haybale said.

We advanced a few more meters. Then, there was a loud clang behind us. A vent grating tore free from a duct and a dozen Karks flooded out, hissing and chittering. There wasn’t enough time to regroup and form a base of fire. They were right on top of us. It was every one of us for our-fucking-selves.

Mardissa tried bringing Thumper to bear, but the Karkadann was too fast, brushing the barrel of her rifle aside. The weapon boomed, the muzzle blast absolutely deafening in the close quarters, practically rattling my brain inside my skull. A miss. The bionically augmented creature tackled her to the deck. She screamed as she tried pushing its snapping jaws away from her face, but even with her augs, it was too strong for her. I broke into a gallop and rammed into the Kark’s side, sending both of us skidding across the bulkhead that was now a deck.

I wrapped my forelegs around the Kark’s cold, armor-plated barrel, wrestling with it as it writhed in my iron grip. There wasn’t a hint of fear or recognition in any of the beast’s four expressionless eyes as I drew the 10mm Auto from my saddlebag with my levitation, jammed it into the Karkadann’s mouth with the bore angled upwards, and swiftly emptied the entire mag straight into its brain. The thing collapsed in a heap, gunpowder smoke drifting from its bloody maw.

There was no time to dwell on my victory. There were still several more of the damnable things. Prima was doing things I’d never seen any pony do before. She tripled up her blades in her levitation field, making a steel claw that she drove into the underside of a Kark’s neck in an uppercut powerful enough to send it flipping end-over-end. One took a swipe at her with its fetlock-talons, but she parried, twisted, and rammed her bionic forehoof into the Karkadann’s side, denting its armor and sending it flying. Yep, she’d definitely been holding back when we’d fought back in Vanhoover.

I heard Haybale screaming. “Get off! Get it offa me!”

Hex, Clover, Lucky, and Star were blasting away with their casters, thin green beams of energy lashing out from their emitters and scorching the walls. The few shots that actually connected often deflected off the Karks’ armor. There was a flurry of movement at the rear of our formation, and as my headlamps fell upon it, I could see a Kark swiping and slashing at Haybale with its hooves and its bladed tail. Through the beam of my headlamps, I saw a glint of blood-slicked metal. Mardissa rose into a crouch, taking a knee and leveling her weapon. Thumper shook my chest.

The 30mm round punched a hoof-sized hole straight through the side of the Kark’s barrel, sending it rolling off Haybale, flailing its legs in its death throes. Chrome met chrome as Cloverleaf clotheslined one of the creatures with the mass of her bionic foreleg, following up by stomping the grounded Kark repeatedly with wet thuds and desperate cries of exertion until it fell unconscious. Another Karkadann pounced at Shooting Star. She tucked and rolled backwards and it sailed past her, its gangly forelegs sweeping through empty air.

“How convenient!” Shooting Star said. “They put metal in you!”

The Corporal lit her horn and channeled her pyrokinesis into the Karkadann’s armor, heating it so rapidly that the whole thing glowed cherry-red, its flesh soon smoking beneath its implants. The cries of gut-wrenching agony the creature made were unlike anything I’d ever heard in my life. They didn’t last long, however. The thing’s implants were more than skin-deep. Smoke was trailing from its nostrils when it finally collapsed and went still. The other Karks, their heads whipping like a wet dog in what looked almost like fear or pain as they shared in the unwanted stimuli transmitted by their fallen brethren, immediately withdrew from the battle, clambering towards the vent that they’d assaulted us from.

Mardissa refused to let them escape. Her rifle issued three deafening reports, my ears ringing and muffled as if stuffed with cotton gauze. All three rounds landed center-mass. Three of the Karks tumbled to the floor, freedom just beyond their grasp. The last two got away, the ducts shaking and rattling as they fled. I could see the unfettered rage on Mar’s face. This was personal to her. She knew where these things came from. How they were made. Each and every one represented an unspeakable crime.

An agonized scream split the air. I quickly made my way over to the source. Haybale was lying on his back on the deck. He was covered from head to hoof in cuts and lacerations, some inches deep. His helmet was off, a deep gash having split his left eye open like a hard-boiled egg. One of his carotid arteries had been chewed open and was spilling blood all over the deck. Red was pooling around him. In his one remaining eye, I could see only one thing. Absolute terror.

“Oh shit,” I muttered. “Oh, fuck. Hemo. Get me the fucking Hemo, now!”

I dived in as quick as I could to apply pressure to the worst of his wounds, trying to pinch off the artery in his neck. I saw an ice hockey player get his throat slit open by a skate on live holovision, once. His trainer was ex-military and saved his life by immediately running out onto the ice and pinching his jugular vein off with his magic. I probed around inside Haybale’s neck with my levitation and found the severed artery, squeezing the ends shut as tight as I could.

“Ma’am,” he began to speak. This immediately broke in a fit of hacking and sputtering.

We all knew that casualties were likely, but this was the kind of thing that nightmares were made of. I could see the looks on the rest of Revenant’s faces. We were in the worst possible environment to fight Karks. Close quarters, low light. Getting away with just one of us being WIA or KIA per engagement was actually a favorable outcome. One slip-up, and the whole squad would be wiped out. Cloverleaf was frozen in place, her legs trembling. She was being less than cooperative.

“Clover, the fucking Hemogel!” I snapped.

She shook her head. “Ma’am, he’s—he’s not—“

While maintaining my spell, I wheeled and marched up to Cloverleaf, slamming my blood-smeared hooves down on her shoulders. “I gave you an order! A fucking order!”

Clover shakily deposited the requested medical supplies in my hooves, and I ran back to the casualty. I opened the applicator with my teeth, which, in retrospect, wasn’t the most hygienic thing. At this point, it no longer mattered. Haybale was in visible distress and on the verge of passing out. I jammed the syringe into the hole in his neck, filling the gap with Hemo, waiting for it to set and harden while I quickly went after as many of his wounds as I could see. He had so many. Right through Armor, BDU, skin, fat, muscle, tendons, and right down to the fucking bone. I could see white in many of them.

“Ma’am,” Haybale sobbed. “Help. Help me. Please. I don’t wanna—I don’t—“

He couldn’t even bring himself to say it. He broke down in pained sobs, flailing his limbs desperately as the light slipped away from him. I cradled him in my forelegs, holding him close.

“Stay with me, dude,” I said. “Come on.”

After another half-minute, his struggling stilled. I put an ear to his chest. No breathing. He was going into cardiac arrest. I took off my helmet and tossed it aside. With a great heave, I ripped Haybale’s chest protector off, placing my hooves on his breastbone and beginning CPR. Thirty compressions, two rescue breaths. His mouth tasted like blood. I was about to begin compressions again when Corporal Shooting Star put her hoof on my shoulder.

“Ma’am, he’s gone!” she said. “CPR’s a waste of time.”

I shrugged off her touch and slammed my hooves into the deck, the metal ringing and reverberating beneath us. “You don’t think I know that? Fuck. Fucking motherfuckers!”

Haybale’s face was frozen in a mask of terror. After taking a few sharp, angry breaths through my nostrils, I willed myself to calm down. I ran a hoof over Haybale’s intact eye to shut it for the last time. I wrapped my forelegs around him and hugged him tight, my legs shaking. My chin touched his forehead.

“I’ll see you again, soldier,” I whispered in his ear.

It was a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep, what with the curse threatening to drag my soul down into the Archons’ domain. I rose to my hooves, taking a deep, shuddering breath and sniffling the snot that threatened to dribble down my muzzle. I was exhausted in body and soul. This day just wouldn’t fucking end. I let out a sigh as I pulled Haybale’s tags and gathered up the extra climbing equipment he carried and stuffed them in my saddlebag.

I turned and faced the rest of my unit. I was responsible for all of their lives. I was the one who’d led us here. Haybale paid the ultimate price for it. Soldiers die in the line of duty, all the time. All of us had seen death more times than we could count. It was different when it was someone you’d come to see as a brother. As a friend.

He’d always crack stupid jokes and make pithy remarks, and we’d always tell him to shut up, even though we didn’t mean it. We liked the levity, and we liked having him around. The reason I was so choked up was because, for a moment, I wondered if anyone ever actually sat down, invited him to speak, and listened to him. I’d seen him sitting alone more than a few times, working up the nerve to fight a coming battle. Once, I’d seen him crying, alone. I’d meant to talk to him about it, but I’d never quite crossed that threshold. It was as if there was always tomorrow.

Yeah. Shut up, Haybale. Like he was never even fucking there.

We didn’t even need to say it. We were all thinking the same thing. If one of us said it, then none of us would be in any shape to fight.

Mardissa couldn’t meet my eyes. Her expression was grim. Miserable, even. She felt guilty for what her kind had done, and continued to do, to mine.

I was struggling to keep my cool. Bellwether was up there, somewhere, in this mess. We hadn’t even said anything to each other. If loverboy ate shit on this run, I would be fixing to just about fucking kill myself.

“Private Granthis, can you spare me some ten-millimeter mags?” I said.

“I’ve got some, ma’am.” Ket tossed me a couple extras he carried for his own pistol.

I pulled the empty mag out of the 10mm Auto and stowed it in my saddlebags before swapping in a fresh one.

“I’m not one for eulogies,” I said. “You all know what I’d say, because it’s what you’d say. That’s how tight of a team we are. All I’ll say is this. You see this?” I pointed to Haybale’s body. “That’s ten more bruises we’re putting on Wertua when we find that bitch and beat her black and blue. We are Equestrians. They look down on us, and with their height advantage as bipeds, that’s quite literal. Sorry, Mar, Ket, but it’s true. It dawned on me, one day, what it’s like to see a pony through the eyes of the average cleomanni.” I smirked. “We’re not even real fucking people to them. If this were a theme park, we’d be the mascots, and they’d be the spoiled brats who run around, shitting on everything and kicking the poor, underpaid carnies in the shins while they stumble around in a daze suffering from heatstroke due to the cutesy costumes they’re forced to wear. Except there is one crucial difference.” I pulled on my cheek with my levitation. “You see this? You see it? I can’t take this off. It’s not a costume. It’s my fucking body.”

Mar and Ket’s shoulders heaved with what I immediately identified as shame and contrition. They knew what I meant. There was nothing quite like abusing a species to the point that they began to resent their own flesh. All of us had wondered what it’d be like to be treated like an actual person by non-Equestrians. Many of us had gone as far as to daydream, at one point or another, about what life would’ve been like for us if we’d been born on the other side. Safe. Secure. Our livelihoods and families intact. Out of all the thoughts that ran through our heads on any given day, those were the most painful ones of all.

I didn’t pull any punches as I continued my tirade. “You know what they think, don’t you? They think, ‘oh, look at the cute little colorful horsies. They’re so small and fluffy and adorable, I’d like one in my house, or in my front yard, or stuffed and mounted on the wall.’ Not people. Not livestock. Not even pets. Worse. They see us as fucking toys. And, of course, since we look like harmless teddy bears to them, it stands to reason that we will tolerate the most heinous abuses imaginable, like any other inanimate object. That we will simply grin and bear any evil they can dream up. This is manifestly false. We will not be fucked with. We will not be humiliated and reduced to chattels. You know how I plan on dying? I plan on dying with my hoof completely broken off in someone’s ass. We’re going headlong into a meat grinder. You know it. I know it. You don’t have to come. Anyone who’s with me, step forward now.”

Prima and every member of Revenant remained silent as they all took one step forward without hesitation.

I turned and faced down the long stretch of passageway that lay ahead of us. I hit the release and let the slide on my purloined pistol fly home, stripping a round from the magazine and loading it in the chamber. “Let’s fuck ‘em up.”

// … end transmission …

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