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

//DIGISIG

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//MSG BEGIN

[07,

I have a candidate. She’s rough around the edges. A loose cannon. Not exactly what we were looking for in terms of suitable pilots for the HEMAWS project, psychologically. Her tactics are unconventional and highly aggressive. She has a tendency to overextend herself and take unnecessary risks in battle. Physically, however, she possesses the right attributes.

Our candidate pool is very limited due to the current parameters of the required augmentations, the aptitude requirements, and so on. However, after reviewing the candidate’s personnel file, her health records, and her combat recordings, I am confident that she’s the one we’re looking for. We should move her to Phase One immediately.

As you know, the program pushes pony physiology to the absolute limit and beyond. There have been washouts and career-ending injuries in the Phase Two inductees already, and that’s just in the test apparatuses. If we had more time, we could refine the testing protocols and their safety profiles and potentially lower the attrition rate.

Time is a luxury we do not have. It is with my deepest regret and utmost shame to say it, but we have already lost this war. An entire Confederate armada is headed towards Equestria. We won’t win this. No simulation gives us a chance of survival greater than three percent. In a matter of a few short weeks, there won’t be an Empire. We have nothing left but to make our enemy’s impending victory as costly and as excruciatingly painful for them as we possibly can.

Under the Continuity of Government plans outlined in the publicly redacted sections of Initiative-94, all Conclave and Oracle assets are to continue the program with any available resources even in the event of total societal collapse.

I entrust this duty to you, and I have full faith that you will carry it out to the best of your ability.

-RT]

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

Desert Storm

Without the slightest delay, Admiral Star Crusher marched straight up to me, accompanied by two MPs. The crowd parted for him as he approached. Pony and cleomanni alike were awed by his presence. Not a single thing about his uniform was out of place, nor was a speck of dirt to be seen on it. I reflexively saluted, but it did nothing for his temper. With his overbearing mien looming large, he looked down upon me with magenta eyes filled with the utmost of contempt.

He raised a hoof and pointed it straight at me. “Arrest her.”

The corners of my mouth fell, my jaw going slightly slack. The two stern-faced, helmeted unicorns beside the Admiral sprang into motion, slipping a suppressor cowl over my horn and cuffing me. My lips trembled, my despair ratcheting up with each passing moment, but I did not resist, nor did I make a fuss as I was led away in chains.

When Mardissa saw me, she was beside herself. “Sergeant? Ma’am!”

Ket had to hold her back to keep her from running to my side, lest she also provoke the MPs’ ire. “No, Mar. No.”

I hung my head low with shame as I walked before the crowd, my eyes fixed on the muddy earth. When I looked up, Quill was there, in the crowd, fiddling with her camera. She stepped closer and took a few snaps of me in my wretched state. This pissed off the MPs.

“Civilian, get back from the prisoner!” one shouted.

“I would, but some asshole broke my only telephoto lens,” Quill said. “I’m down to my shorty.”

The unicorn stallion swiftly whipped out a retractable baton, held it sideways in his levitation field, and used it to shove Quill Dipper back with considerable force, sending her right onto her ass.

“I’m a member of the press!” Quill said.

The MP shook his head. “If you approach the prisoner again, I will arrest you. Get. The fuck. Back.”

I followed the two stallions into a hangar where a sea of folding chairs had been set up. Admiral Crusher took a seat behind a card table in front of the empty seating arrangement. It looked about as official as bingo night in Dodge. The MPs brought me to a halt in front of Crusher’s table.

The Admiral leaned back and frowned at me, pausing as he regarded my sorry state. “Do you know who I am, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I believe we’ve met before. Five years back, at the parade.”

He stared off into space. “Oh yeah. I suppose we have, haven’t we? But we’re not here to reminisce.”

“I gathered that, sir,” I said.

The Admiral eyed me darkly, steepling his hooves. “Do you have any inkling of what you are being charged with?”

“Detonating a nuclear bomb without authorization, sir?” I said.

“ROE violations. Massacres. Murder. Am I getting through to you, Sergeant?” Crusher clapped his hooves together. “Does any of this ring a bell?”

I swallowed hard, the room turning a few degrees colder. This was not what I’d anticipated at all.

“Ah, there it is,” Crusher continued in a mocking singsong. “The wheels are turning. The gears are grinding in that gormless shit-sack you call a head.”

“But the investigation—"

“—is already concluded.” Crusher rose to his hooves. “I’m afraid it’s not looking good for you, Sergeant.”

The pace of my breathing quickened. The Admiral walked up to me, menace in his every step and genuine hate in his glare. The stallion towered over me, content to let me appreciate our difference in height for a few moments before he leaned down and spoke directly into my ear, his breath a foul wind covered up by cheap cologne. “I will not have criminals in my army. If, during your court-martial, you are found guilty of the charges that you stand accused of, I will see to it that you are promptly shot and thrown in a muddy ditch like the small-town hillbilly unicorn trash that I know you are.”

I had an icy knot of fear in my gut as he studied me with his piercing glare. He meant it. I sniffled softly and was immediately rewarded with a slap to the face by one of Crusher’s shod hooves. It left a welt, and it really hurt.

“I won’t have snivelers, either,” he said. “You will stand up straight and show proper discipline, or so help me, I will beat you into a coma. I hope you all enjoyed acting like hooligans and making fools of us this whole time, because now that I’m here, this anything-goes guerilla nonsense is over. Your days of fraternizing, habitually getting drunk and high, fucking like animals in the hallways, and acting like sloppy little sleazeballs are done. Finished. We are not a gang. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He nodded to the MPs. “Take her to her cell. Then, go arrest the others.”

I was escorted out of the hangar and to the landing pad outside. They had me board the Command Shuttle via its main ramp. The interior of the shuttle was sleek and luxurious, spotless white plating and black polyurethane leather everywhere. I was thrown in one of the four cramped cells in the ship’s brig. Damn near a dog kennel. There was barely enough space for me to stand up and turn around. A glowing purple magic energy barrier snapped into existence with a loud hum, blocking my exit. I let out a sigh as I settled down on my haunches, trying to take my mind off my fate.

“Can’t I at least have a fucking smoke?” I muttered.

It wasn’t long before Bellwether and Sierra were caged like I was. Sierra was far more uncooperative than me and Bell, struggling and letting off an unbroken stream of profanity as the MPs shoved her into her own cell and the energy field went up. I groaned at the prospect of having to hear Sierra’s muffled ranting through the bulkhead for hours on end. Once she started, she just couldn’t quit it. I curled up into a ball and sniffled softly as I covered my ears to block out Sierra’s ranting.

So much for being a hero.

// … // … // … // … // … //

Admiral Crusher didn’t want to delay the proceedings in the slightest. We were on borrowed time as it was without wasting any on the lead-up to what was basically a drumhead court-martial. I sat in silence before the court as legalese was read and oaths were made, Bellwether to my left and Sierra to my right. We had an audience consisting of what seemed like half of the ponies from Camp Crazy Horse, including Captain Garrida and the two cleomanni from my squad. Most of them looked bored out of their minds. They’d been sitting around doing absolutely nothing for the past couple hours.

We had been assigned a lawyer by the name of Muffin Top. One, between all three of us. A mousy looking mare with giant spectacles adorning her face. She fidgeted and fiddled with our documents nervously. Aside from mumbling under her breath, she didn’t say much. Damn near mute. Needless to say, I didn’t have much faith in her. Crusher was the judge, alongside a panel of five ponies I didn’t recognize; all were naval officers who leered down at me with hooded eyes like I was some manner of leprous zoo animal.

“Agent Bellwether, Sergeant Desert Storm, and Sergeant Sierra,” the Admiral said. “You are charged with the unauthorized detonation of a nuclear weapon. In addition to this charge, Sergeant Desert Storm in specific is also charged with the murder of civilians on three separate occasions. We will now bring forth the witnesses and record their testimony. The prosecution may cross-examine the witnesses.”

I tiredly rested my head on my hoof, trying to stifle a yawn, until I did a double take when I saw who they brought up to the stand. “No fucking way,” I whispered.

It was the unicorn filly from the Redheart General Hospital. A chill ran down my spine. If the panel heard the testimony of a little tiny kid, they could be emotionally swayed into finding me guilty. This wasn’t fair.

She sat down before a microphone, recited her oath before the judge, and introduced herself. “Your Honor, my name is Castanet. I’m a salvager, or I was. My mom and dad are dead, all because of the Liberation Front. All because of you!” The filly pointed her hoof accusatorily at me.

The prosecutor, a thin, hawk-eyed unicorn stallion named Silver Lining, walked up to the witness stand. “Describe your interactions with the accused.”

“Storm shot my father,” Castanet said. “He was trying to negotiate a price for salvage. Medical equipment that you rebels stole from our claim. She gunned him down in cold blood. As soon as the shooting started, the others shot my mom. I ran out, and I begged them to stop. They wouldn’t stop.” There were tears in the filly’s eyes and her voice was shaking as she recounted what happened from her perspective, but other than that, she was remarkably composed.

“Did the accused show any indication of hostility before the firefight began?” Silver Lining said.

“No. She was invisible. We didn’t even know she was there until the last second. It wasn’t a firefight. She ambushed us. One minute, my mom and dad were alive, and the next, they weren’t.”

The prosecutor set his jaw and glared at me. He looked like he was eyeing me for a coffin. “Describe the second, separate incident in Vanhoover.”

Castanet shifted uneasily in her seat. “The Riggers got us. Them and those—those red-armored kidnapper creeps of theirs. They were gonna cut open our heads and take our Quint.”

“Excuse me, could you repeat that?”

“Quintessence.” Castanet shrugged. “The gangs use it. Powder it up and snort it to get high. And maybe aliens, too. I don’t know. I overheard them saying something about selling it to off-worlders.”

Silver Lining looked very unsettled, as did a good portion of the audience. He adjusted his tie nervously. The quintessence in a unicorn’s brain was the most potent and magical form of the stuff, and that included his own. “Continue.”

“They had us caged up in a building by the docks, and suddenly, everything started exploding. The Liberation Front were shelling us. There were several dozen of us in there, and they blew us up! They buried us!” Castanet broke down crying.

The prosecutor gave her some time before pressing her again for more information. “Describe the relationship between this event and the accused, from your perspective.”

“She was there,” Castanet said, pointing at me. “Storm hit me with some kind of spell. It—it paralyzed me! It felt like my heart was gonna stop. I couldn’t breathe. I was so scared. I thought she was going to kill me to shut me up!”

I shook my head. I hadn’t intended to harm any of them. I made a call, and it was the wrong one, but it was the best I could do with the information I had at the time.

Admiral Crusher allowed Castanet to vacate the stand, before turning back to the audience. “The next witness is a cleomanni civilian. It is highly unorthodox to admit the testimony of a Confederate citizen, but the severity of the charges calls for it. He was very difficult to contact, and under the circumstances, it was equally difficult to assure him of his personal safety. He took a considerable risk coming here.”

The next witness to step forward was a severely maimed cleomanni. The wiry Zinsar man had an eyepatch and horrid burns on his face, and his empty right shirt sleeve billowed as he walked up to the stand with the assistance of a cane. He beheld me with a contemptuous glare. I squeezed my eyes shut. Not this. Not in front of Mar.

“My name is Renhart Rionnard. I am a civilian contractor in the employ of the Confederate Security Force. I am a data analyst, not a soldier. We weren’t even allowed to carry weapons. I was present in Sector Nineteen when the ELF raided our detention camp.” He pointed at me with his left hand. “That—uh, woman? Is that what they’re called?”

“Mare,” Crusher corrected him.

“Yes, that mare is a dangerous psychopath. There was no warning at all. She lined us up against a wall and had her squad open fire on us.” His voice was cracking with emotion. “All I remember was green light. Burning pain in my side. I went down, and others fell on top of me, dead. I must have passed out from the shock. When I woke up, they were gone, and so was most of my arm. I was blinded in one eye. I crawled out from under a pile of corpses. The wound must’ve been cauterized by the beam or something because I wasn’t bleeding that bad. I ripped up someone else’s shirt and used it to tie a tourniquet. I crawled into a janitorial closet and hid under a pile of stuff so they wouldn’t find me. I stayed there for hours, until you rebels moved on. It took a couple days for rescue teams to find me. I subsisted on my—on my dead coworker’s lunches, from a break room fridge.”

“Is that your testimony?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

I slowly looked over my shoulder at Mardissa. Even from this distance, I could see the trembling lips, the watery eyes threatening to spill tears. Her face told the whole story. She’d known what we’d done, but she didn’t know that I had played such a direct role in it. After a few seconds, she averted her gaze from mine, unable to maintain eye contact.

Sierra cackled madly. “You’re a motherfucking data analyst and you don’t even know what we’re fucking called?”

“I don’t know your language!” Renhart said. “That wasn’t my job. I worked with numbers!”

Crusher smacked his hoof against his desk. “Order! Sergeant Sierra, no more interruptions, or there will be consequences.” The Admiral thumped a stack of papers against his desk to line them up neatly. “We will now hear the defendants’ testimony, starting with Sergeant Desert Storm.”

I rose to my hooves, and I took a deep breath. This was my one chance. My life was hanging in the balance. I had to flip this narrative completely on its head. “Your Honor, Castanet’s parents were brandishing weapons. Confederate PolyBrens. During our ill-fated encounter, they adopted a threatening posture, holding Agent Bellwether at gunpoint while he attempted to negotiate with them. Sensing that negotiations were breaking down and that Agent Bellwether was in mortal danger, I made the call to open fire. At the time, I did not realize that a child was present, but even if I had, I doubt it would have affected my decision. We acted in self-defense.

“At the Dodge City detention camp, we received orders from Captain Garrida that indicated that all personnel at the facility were, and I quote, ‘discretionary targets’. We did not do anything that we were not ordered to do. We are insurgents. No one in the FTU recognizes us as lawful belligerents, and we are not bound by treaty to preserve prisoners alive. Technically speaking, our enemies do not even recognize us as people with personal autonomy. From the perspective of Confederate law, what we did constituted nothing more than a wild animal attack. There is no legal remedy for the plaintiff, unless the Confederacy is now in the habit of charging bears and sharks with a crime when they take bites out of people and I wasn’t informed.”

That got a laugh out of some ponies. Captain Garrida looked absolutely miserable, saying nothing as she sat hunched over her cane. Crusher wasn’t nearly as amused by the disruption, however.

The Admiral banged his hoof against the table. “Order! Sergeant Storm, the Confederacy are not charging you with a crime. We are. Do not introduce irrelevancies in your testimony. Continue.”

I nodded. “Our overall aim is to restore the Empire, and to do that, we must drive the Confederacy out. Damaging and degrading the enemy’s capacity to do harm to our surviving civilian populace is within the scope of our duties. During the war, the Light Scouts were frequently involved in special operations deep in enemy territory. Many of these operations involved saturating a target area with artillery rockets filled with OA-13 nerve agent submunitions. Over the course of my military service, while carrying out the lawful orders of my superior officers, I have personally been responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of scientists, engineers, factory workers, and other key personnel involved in Confederate infrastructure. This circumstance was no different. The target was entirely logical. By executing those enemy personnel, we prevented them from being reassigned to similar administrative duties elsewhere.

“Suffice it to say, if we allow the Confederacy to drag us all off to concentration camps in a systematic and well-organized manner, we won’t have enough ponies to replenish our population. In that scenario, there could be no reestablishment of our government at all, only total submission to the Confederacy, which is an unthinkable horror. We sent a firm message that what they were doing was completely unacceptable. Your Honor, Mr. Rionnard has not been forthright in his testimony. These people were not merely detaining ponies but kidnapping and trafficking us.” I pointed at the cleomanni survivor from Dodge. “That man, right there, stood idly by as ponies were slowly and sadistically butchered by damarkind mercenary scum, and I have the video evidence to prove it. He helped the Confederacy ship thousands of ponies off-world, where they were either sold into slavery or had their organs harvested for sick experiments. Your Honor, ending these people’s lives instantly and painlessly with caster fire was a kindness compared to what they did to us.

“In the incident in Vanhoover, I made the call to attack what appeared to be an enemy command post. Judging by the large numbers of sentries and the presence of advanced communications gear, I believed that the structure we engaged was a hub of enemy activity. Before I gave the order to begin the assault, we swept the area with Orbits and mortar-launched sensors. We did our due diligence to ensure that no civilians came to harm, and yet, due to the fog of war and enemy deception, they regrettably did. As soon as we realized what happened, we moved to render aid as quickly as possible, while under fire from hostiles. Castanet was present, partly pinned under rubble. We rescued her as fast as we could. While I was attempting to render first aid, she became visibly distressed when she recognized me. I partially paralyzed her with a body-seize spell for her own good, to prevent her from aggravating possible spinal injuries. That is all.”

When I sat back down, one could have heard a pin drop in the hangar. The court was in shock. One of the mares on the panel gaped at Admiral Crusher, who had a shell-shocked expression on his face and seemed to be shriveling into his uniform. This wasn’t going at all like he planned.

Bellwether was the next to speak. He rose to his hooves, smirking at me out of the corner of his eye, before he returned his attention to Crusher and the panel. “Your Honor, we did not utilize a nuclear weapon without authorization.”

“Objection!” Silver Lining said. “The activation of an Imperial nuclear weapon requires the authorization of two or more officers exchanging aetherbits with the weapon’s operator and the use of a Secure Communication Interconnect Device, or SCID, to carry out the final arming procedure. We are not even certain how you managed to arm the weapon in the first place.”

Bellwether sat back and crossed his forelegs. “The manner in which I armed it is highly classified, top-secret information. It would compromise our security if I revealed it to this court in precise, technical detail. However, I can elucidate the purpose of it. Near the end of the war, BASKAF granted blanket authorization to our agents to make the executive decision to utilize any component of our nation’s nuclear arsenal as we saw fit. To that end, modifications were surreptitiously made to the arming mechanisms of every nuclear weapon in our stockpile.”

“Under whose authority was this done?” Admiral Crusher’s lips were quivering in disbelief.

“The authorization to do this came from the Twilight Conclave itself, Your Honor,” Bellwether said. “In the event of the Empire’s collapse and the destruction of the quantaetheric mainframes we utilized for encrypted superluminal communication, they feared that many components of our nuclear arsenal would become paperweights, unavailable for use by surviving military and intelligence assets. In the interest of causing as much damage as possible to the Confederacy, they decided that it would be expedient to allow lone agents to arm and detonate any nuclear weapons we could find, at our own personal discretion. Given that no orders for any specific uses of this protocol were delivered before the end of the war, I can only speculate as to their objectives. It was likely their intent that we would smuggle nuclear weapons deep into enemy territory and detonate them in population centers, inflicting millions of casualties and sowing terror.”

“Who would carry this out?” The prosecutor looked completely shocked.

“There are a significant number of BASKAF sleeper cells in Confederate space that were activated the moment they learned of our defeat. Many of these operatives are trained in long-term infiltration and mimicry of alien species. Some use transformation spells and glamors. Some are actual changelings and masters of disguise from birth. You’ll never find them, and neither will Mil-Int. They don’t exist. They appear as ordinary citizens of FTU member races living ordinary little lives. If any one of those operatives managed to secure a nuclear weapon of Imperial manufacture, they could use the same bypass technique that I did. They would then have full authorization from BASKAF and the Conclave to arm and detonate it at their own discretion, just as I did.”

“How many of these operatives are there?” Silver Lining said.

“That’s compartmented information, but based on rumors, I believe it’s somewhere between a hundred and a thousand,” Bellwether said.

Admiral Crusher slumped into his seat, utterly deflated, his eyes wide and filled with unremitting horror. He did not say a word, but I knew exactly what he was thinking. Bellwether had just told him that there were up to a thousand individual BASKAF assets who could not be contacted by any means, whose identities and locations were completely unknown, and who could, on their own accord, detonate a nuclear weapon anywhere, at any time, for any purpose that they deemed suitable. His worst nightmare had just become reality.

The Admiral slowly sat up, adjusting his microphone on his desk and clearing his throat. “We will go into a recess. There are some facts that we need to go over.”

Cicatrice chose that moment to step forth from the shadows, his baleful glare fixed on Crusher. “No, Admiral. These proceedings are over.”

Admiral Crusher sneered at him. “Do not interfere. This is a military matter. You don’t have the right.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, my boy.” Cicatrice walked up to him. “As a Magister of the Twilight Conclave, it is within my power to grant or revoke any rank or noble title. For the disrespect you just showed me, I could have you literally groveling at the hooves of the accused in an instant if I so desired. You lead the Liberation Front because I allow it. Had you convicted any of these three of a crime, you would have been overruled, in any case.”

“How so?”

“This is now an Initiative-94 matter,” Cicatrice said. “These three have been declared protected assets. As such, they have legal immunity according to I-94 Chapter 27, Subsection B. I can provide you with an unredacted copy if you so desire.”

“Initiative-94?” The Admiral leaned back in his chair and huffed derisively. “You mean the continuity of government plans? You mean the one where thousands of teachers, social workers, administrators, and other personnel stranded in Everfree City who were supposed to be in charge of crisis management instead raided the stockpiles of supplies meant for the citizenry and transformed themselves into a gang of crazed, drug-addled cannibals calling themselves the Ninety-Fours?”

“There are components of Initiative-94 that you are not presently aware of, extending to several of the Conclave’s most secretive projects. These projects are in need of specific personnel with specific training, experience, and other attributes which you are not privy to.” Cicatrice walked up and planted his hooves on Admiral Crusher’s desk. “Agent Bellwether, Sergeant Desert Storm, and Sergeant Sierra belong to me. Not you.”

Crusher was getting nervous; he turned his microphone off, but I could still hear him and his half-whisper with how close I was. “Your Excellency, I’m not sure you understand. This is politics. Heads need to roll over that nuke. We’ve had four whole cells desert the resistance because of the Confederacy’s more aggressive posture. Ponies are dying. I need a way to retain soldiers, and you’re leaving me with nothing. If I can’t have these three, then what do I give them?”

Cicatrice scowled at him, deliberately raising his voice so everyone could hear. “You mean to tell me you were looking to sentence three of our best to death over politics?”

Admiral Crusher got really quiet, his jaw working open and shut as he struggled to formulate an excuse. Finding none, he remained silent.

Cicatrice turned and addressed the audience. “With the assistance of Sergeant Storm and Sergeant Sierra, Agent Bellwether, acting according to the dictates of the Conclave, made expedient use of a nuclear weapon to drive off a Confederate assault. Had he not done so, the Confederacy would have crippled our forces, killed or kidnapped thousands of survivors that we’d only just rescued, and denied us highly valuable war materiel.”

“But—” Crusher started to interrupt him.

“I wasn’t finished, Admiral.” The Magister pointed a hoof at me. “Sergeant Desert Storm, one of the most adept and lethal Charger pilots to have ever served in the Corps, is personally responsible not just for inflicting a majority of enemy casualties in the defense of this city, but also for the capture of numerous high-value targets as well as multiple technological artifacts of unimaginable value to the Liberation Front. Sergeant Sierra showed great personal sacrifice, willing to pilot her own Charger in spite of the risk of turning her recent head injuries into chronic, life-changing neurological illness. All three of them are heroes of the Empire, and if the Empress were here right now, she would be pinning medals on their chests.” Cicatrice put both his hooves on the table and leaned down face-to-face with Admiral Crusher. “This farce is over. I will suffer it no longer. I do hope that I have made myself scintillatingly clear.”

The Admiral bowed his head in defeat. “Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Good. Report to me in my quarters. We have much to discuss, and it is urgent.”

Cicatrice turned and billowed his pitch-black caparison, letting it settle out over his withers before he departed with no particular haste. After all, running was for peons. Admiral Star Crusher was practically vibrating with anger. He glared at me unblinkingly for what felt like an eternity, before rising to his hooves and going after Cicatrice.

He paused for a moment, keeping his back turned. “You all heard the Magister. The charges are officially dropped. As you were.”

I let go of the breath I had been holding, leaning back and sagging into my chair. I played with my forehooves idly while thinking of what I’d say to Mar. After half a minute, I worked up the nerve to turn and look at her. She wasn’t there. Her seat was empty. Off to one side, Castanet and Renhart were discussing something with one of the MPs, looks of pure chagrin etched onto their faces. They kept stealing glances at me. Castanet’s face was contorted in rage and disgust.

Bellwether and Sierra headed off to get refreshments, filling cups from a water cooler in the far corner of the hangar. The rest of the audience were filing out of the building. With a heavy sigh, I rose to my hooves and made my way towards the exit.

“So, that’s it?” Castanet shouted after me. “After all this, you’re going to walk?”

Something in me snapped. I saw through the veil. An uncanny sensation of derealization came over me, like I was experiencing something I ought not to be. It was a rare moment of hyper-lucidity in a year dominated by the endless gray, pounding, migraine-like crashing waves of senseless violence I was called upon to create for others, replete in its dullness and inviting me to wallow in it behind the breakwaters. In an instant of profound spiritual awakening, life had rich color again. Things had meaningful descriptions again, other than guttural monosyllables like bash, crash, thud, blood. I could see, in my mind’s eye, innumerable realities set before me. Fractured, glistening. Like shards of glass.

In one of these realities, I marched up to Castanet and I berated her, calling her a pathetic little bum. Renhart charged me with a hidden blade he’d concealed on his person. A utility knife blade, sans handle. Concealed perfectly under a latex flap of false skin. I saw it coming, and I moved first. His elbow snapped like a twig from the forces my body could muster. Screams, shouting. The MPs broke up the fight.

Snapping back to the present, I saw the truth laid bare. We’d all hurt each other in the deepest, most profound way that a sapient being could hurt another. In continuance of the self-serving narrative that I’d presented in my testimony, I could have chosen to respond to their grief with callousness and empty narcissism rather than contrition, but in that moment, I chose something else. I chose a different reality, of my own free will.

I turned around, slowly, facing their dejected countenances with my own. I could see in their eyes the same primal recognition they undoubtedly saw in mine. They lusted after my blood, because they thought it would make them whole. I walked up to them, and against all their expectations, I knelt and prostrated myself before them, face to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Forgive me. I’m not perfect.”

I slowly rose to make eye contact with their very shocked faces. They were completely stunned into silence. Without waiting for their reply, I turned and made my way towards the hangar door.

“You manipulative bitch,” Castanet called after me. “Saying sorry won’t replace what you took from us!”

I hurried my pace. I didn’t want them, or anyone else, to relish in my tears.

// … // … // … // … // … //

I got back to my quarters in the base, swinging the heavy door shut behind me. All the Charger pilots had our own rooms. No more bunking with the rest of the militia units. I was still getting settled in, and the furnishings were incomplete. All my things were piled up against the far wall, including Lucky. The only thing I had on my nightstand next to the bed, other than a portable diode lantern, was a framed photo of me and my sisters, during happier times. With my back against the door, I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and trying to still my racing heart.

That was when I realized some of the breaths I was hearing were not my own. There was someone else in my quarters. My eyes flashed open and I jerked my head to my left. Mardissa was standing there, in the corner, her hair disheveled and her eyes red from crying.

“Mar, what—” I was shocked.

“Do you—do you care for me at all, Storm?” she said.

The question threw me for a loop. “I don’t—uh—what? Yes. Yes, I think I do.”

“And what of the rest of us? What about Ket? Be honest, ma’am.”

I didn’t know what to say. We were too close of friends for me to reprimand her for being insubordinate. The question touched something deep inside me. Something I’d been bottling up for a very long time. My eyes watered.

“I was afraid,” I said. “Until I met you, I’d always been afraid of your kind.”

Mar crawled over to me. “Are you afraid of me?”

“N—no, I—”

Mardissa did exactly what I expected the least. While kneeling in front of me, she took my face in her hands, and she locked her lips over mine. I gasped through my nostrils, shocked by the sudden and very intimate contact. Her smooth and hairless skin was as white as porcelain and as soft as a peach. It was the weirdest thing ever, in terms of texture. My heart was racing. This wasn’t a just little peck on the lips. She used her tongue, tiny as it was. A minty little spear of flesh, exploring my mouth. I had no idea what came over me, but I gave in. I kissed back. My much larger tongue quickly overpowered hers. Just as she’d given me a taste of her, I reluctantly returned the favor.

We melted together like that for what felt like an interminable length of time, inhaling each other’s scents. It felt strangely right. Neurotransmitters flowed like wine. Her mouth left me in a blissful opiate daze. I didn’t want this to stop, even though I knew it had to. All good things came to an end, eventually.

When we broke off the kiss, I sat there, completely stunned, my eyes blinking rapid-fire. “Holy fucking shit, Mar. Just, holy shit.”

Without a word, she began to undress. As she lifted her shirt, exposing her shockingly white bra, I put a hoof on her shoulder.

“No,” I said.

“Why not?” She looked hurt by my refusal; her features were tense, her lips drawn.

I averted my gaze, unable to maintain eye contact. “You know why.”

“Bell?”

I looked up at her. “Yeah. Plus, I’m your superior. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

Mardissa’s eyes darted around despairingly. “This was a mistake.”

“No, Mar,” I said. “Nothing’s a mistake, between us.”

I wrapped my forelegs around her and pulled her into a hug as she began to cry. We rested our heads on each other’s shoulders, her soft chest nestling into my unyielding equine sternum. We shared each other’s heartbeats. I gently rubbed her smooth back with my hoof as she sobbed into my shoulder. Her hands felt wonderful running over my ears and down the back of my neck. My mind dredged up an awful memory, comparing and contrasting it with the present. This was so much nicer than running away from her while she tried her best to chop me in half with a sword bigger than my entire body. Mardissa was a fearsome foe. She was also one of the sweetest friends I ever had.

I thought back to my life in Dodge, before I enlisted. All the messy breakups. All the ponies I knew from school and from work who tried to be my friend and then gave up on me. My sisters. My dad. My piece of shit fiancé. They all went away. I was repellent to other ponies, through no fault of my own. Just because of what I was. Just because of how my brain was put together, and the way that outwardly manifested itself. They always found something in my personality that creeped them out or ticked them off. My head was a closet full of fucking skeletons, and I was always trying desperately to nail that closet shut. I was anxious that Gneiss, one day, would come to hate me as well, once he saw the bones slipping out from under that bulging door. It was inevitable.

It took an alien, of a species I’d long despised, to offer me the kind of unconditional love I’d been yearning for, for all the years I’d been alive. Before I knew it, I was crying, too.

Mardissa freed herself from my embrace and hurriedly redressed in her fatigues, rising to her feet. Her gaze refused to meet mine, her teary eyes covered with her arm. She made for the door.

“Sorry!” she blurted out.

“Wait, Mar!” I ran to the doorway and gazed down the dark, concrete hall outside my quarters, but she was already long gone. “Mar. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

I briefly considered going after her, before slamming the door shut. I leaned my back against the door, running my hoof nervously through my mane. Banged the back of my head against that hard surface in anger. The whole self-destruction routine. All that was missing was a nice big flask of gin to seal the deal.

I immediately set about tidying and squaring away my things. I needed something to distract me from the taste of Mar’s damn tongue in my mouth. I folded my combat uniform neatly and placed it in my footlocker. I made my bed. I ironed my dress uniform and set it aside. I’d be needing it, soon. After I was done organizing, I climbed into bed and pulled the covers over myself.

“Lucky, set an alarm for five hours from now,” I said.

My Orbit beeped in the affirmative as it recognized the voice command. I closed my eyes and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

// … // … // … // … // … //

What felt like moments of subjective time later, my Orbit was beeping at me, rousing me from my slumber. I yawned while pandiculating.

“Lucky, alarm off.”

I slowly rose to my hooves, stretching my legs. I did the bare minimum to keep my personal hygiene in order. Big brush through my mane, small brush across my teeth. I donned my khaki dress uniform, smoothing out the wrinkles and adjusting my tie. I pulled my bomber jacket out of my footlocker and inspected the holes that Kaussas’s claws had made. There were three slash marks in one shoulder and three in the other. They were almost perfectly symmetrical, with one set slightly higher than the other. One could almost have been fooled into thinking that this was some kind of Canterlot haute couture thing. I shook my head, getting out a sewing kit with some needles, scissors, and thread. All I had was golden-yellow thread, for some reason. It would stand out against the brown of the jacket, but I didn’t care.

I set to work carefully cross-stitching the holes with a needle held in my levitation field. It took me several minutes to sew up each hole. Over the course of about half an hour, I stitched the gaping claw-marks shut. I held up my jacket and took another look at it. There were little golden stitch marks in neat rows of X-marks on the shoulders, now. It looked kinda nice, actually. It was almost as if they were always supposed to have been there, or at least that was what I told myself. Just as I tossed on my jacket and my beret, a voice came through on the base intercom.

“Sergeant Storm to the Magister’s quarters. I repeat, Sergeant Storm to the Magister’s quarters.”

Without hesitation, I made my way out, shutting and code-locking the door to my room. On my way, I passed by a couple other doors to the rooms beside mine. One had a nameplate that read LT. TERROR, and another read SGT. SIERRA. There was a third door that gave me pause. There was something new there that I hadn’t noticed before. A nameplate that read MAJ. SPRINGBLOSSOM.

I frowned. “She’s alive?”

I raised a forehoof and considered knocking on the door, but I had an urgent meeting with Cicatrice. It could wait. I picked up the pace a bit, cantering down the hall, past our new barracks, and out into the underground vaults that were host to over a dozen Minotaur tanks in varying states of repair. Cinderblock, Sagebrush, Placid Gale, and Shooting Star were standing around, shooting the shit.

Sagebrush smiled when he saw me, his eyes unreadable under the brim of his helmet as always. “Dodged the noose again, Storm. Lucky you. Lots of fightin’ left to do. Nopony gets an easy ticket out of it, you least of all.”

“Damn straight,” Shooting Star said.

“No time for chitchat,” I said. “The Magister needs me.”

“Well, drop by on your way back.” Placid idly inspected one of her boot knives. “We’ll be here.”

I passed them on by. The walls of the mine had been sealed over with quick-curing graphenated instacrete. There were many different brands of the stuff, but CompoCrete was the most common, ubiquitous in military usage. The material was so strong on its own, it needed no rebar of any kind when used in general civil engineering, but ours had steel for added strength. Some tunnels and facilities were still under construction, with workers positioning towering robots that did a great deal of the work for them.

First, a decoiling machine spooled out and straightened coils of rebar, cut them to size, laid them out on the tunnel walls, and tied them with wire. A second step applied even layers of instacrete to the rebar through spray nozzles attached to robot arms. There was another machine that followed behind, using a diagrammatic engine generating powerful levitation fields to trowel the walls flat for a nice, smooth finish. With these machines, it was possible to erect large concrete structures and fortifications in mere hours and have them cured and ready to go in a matter of days instead of weeks, without any weird internal stresses or cracking.

At the end of a long, arched tunnel stood the double doors to the Magister’s quarters. As I made my way towards the end of the hall, one of those doors opened and Admiral Crusher stepped out, looking very flustered.

He eyed me darkly as he passed me by. “Sergeant, you had better be grateful that the Magister has your back.”

Without another word, he kept on walking, leaving me to take deep, controlled breaths to try and relieve built-up stress. I raised a hoof, giving one of the large and imposing doors two quick knocks.

“Come in,” Cicatrice spoke through the intercom.

I gently swung open the door, making my way into the dimly lit space beyond. It was definitely a dark magician’s room. Many of the mine’s natural edifices had been left intact, beautiful alcoves of banded salt framed in instacrete and used as shelves. There were lit candles, ritual circles, locus gems, and old tomes stacked up on an even older wooden bureau. I was about to inquire about the rather obvious pony skull when Cicatrice, hunched over his desk, cleared his throat. He was writing something with a quill and inkwell, of all things.

“In case you’re wondering why I do it like this, it’s because it’s good for coordination and stimulates the brain,” he said. “In my old age, I can’t afford to do things the lazy way. I’d be a fucking drooler in a matter of weeks.”

“Really?” I said. “For a minute there, I thought you did it to make an impression on your guests.”

Cicatrice turned around in his chair and smiled. “That too, my dear.” The Magister set down his writing instruments, resting his chin on his hoof and sizing me up. “Do you know why I’ve called you here?”

“Your Excellency, does this have something to do with my court-martial?”

Cicatrice waved a hoof dismissively. “No, not at all. You can put all that business behind you. The Admiral and I had a nice, long talk. You’re not on the hook for anything. I made sure of that.”

I took a deep breath, relaxing my posture. “Thank you.”

The Magister chuckled. “Don’t thank me so soon. You don’t know what I need you for, yet.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What’s this I’m hearing about Initiative-94?”

“A very, very old bill that codifies our Continuity of Government plans and provides ongoing funding for them.” Cicatrice nodded. “Every now and then, new appropriations frameworks used to be appended to it. These were for programs deemed so important to the war effort, it was expected that they would be continued with whatever resources were available to whatever Equestrian rump state remained in the wake of our defeat, all in the interest of causing continued damage to the Confederacy and deterring them from their goal of making our species into chattels. Some of these programs are very hush-hush, such as the Next-Generation Charger Program, or NGCP. You and your Mirage were a part of that program.”

I frowned, my breath hitching in my throat. This was the first I’d heard of this. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean you were one of a few pilots hoof-selected by the Empress herself, Storm.”

“Hoof-selected for what? How come I was never told?”

“That was just the nature of the program,” Cicatrice said. “It was kept a secret even from the participants. Phase-Ones like you weren’t told a damn thing. Not until you were moved to Phase Two, at least.”

I really, really didn’t like the sound of that. “So, you’re saying we were an experiment?”

“Yes, you were,” Cicatrice said. “As a matter of fact, the Light Scouts were created essentially as a filter. A pool of pilots we could draw from for the NGCP, due to their unique physical and mental makeup. You made the cut.”

“How so?”

Cicatrice sighed. “Storm, you are not normal. No Charger pilot is normal by pony standards, but you? You’re highly abnormal.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said. “So, what the hell were we picked for? What’s the NGCP about?”

“In due time, Sergeant,” Cicatrice said. “It’s not ready, and neither are you.”

I rubbed my face exasperatedly with a hoof. “I don’t get it. I don’t understand any of this. Can you take it from the top, please?”

The elderly stallion leaned forward, shaking his head. “Two decades ago, the Conclave commissioned a Charger simulator, billed as the most realistic to date. It had a full cockpit that simulated a rather standard Lancer-type Rouncey and all of its controls. It even had a sync arm and an enclosed cab mounted on hydraulic struts to simulate the forces, like a fighter craft simulator. We took the engine from that simulator, and we adapted it into a slightly less sophisticated enclosed arcade pod, and we tweaked the graphics a bit. We made it a tad gorier, to reflect reality. If you stepped on a Cleomanni, he’d burst in a shower of blood from fifty tons of armored walker crushing him flat. Sometimes, if you set a vehicle on fire in just the right way, the occupants would leap out while screaming and on fire. All things you’ve seen before, I’m sure.”

“And? So what? I think I played that once. Yeah, pretty sure I did.” I shrugged.

“This ‘game’ was presented as the product of a front company of ours and delivered to a few shopping malls throughout mainland Equestria, in Baltimare, Manehattan, Vanhoover, and Everfree City.” Cicatrice chuckled. “Because of the visuals, there was a minimum age limit. Each machine had an attendant and ponies were instructed to sign waivers before playing. The whole thing was an unannounced and highly unethical psychological experiment.”

“Obviously.”

“We wanted to know why we were having so many problems with recruitment. We spent years observing the players and their reactions. The pods were rigged with vital sign monitors. Pupil constriction, heart rate, blood pressure. We even made players wear an EEG neuromesh helmet, with the excuse that it was used for certain functions in the game, which was true. You could trigger certain functions with your mind, just like a real Charger, but without any of the feedback. However, it also monitored the participants’ brainwaves. Very few read the fine print in the waiver, which also waived certain medical privacy rights. We ran these machines for many, many years. The results were conclusive, Sergeant. Less than one in one hundred ponies has the characteristics to make for an acceptable frontline Charger pilot. Perhaps one in a thousand could become more than decent at it.”

I blinked a few times, slowly grinning. “Wow. So, you’re saying I’m special?”

“Not special,” Cicatrice said. “Deviant. You and all the other Charger pilots. Six out of every ten players are immediately turned off by the imagery they’re presented with. We had full-time janitors to scoop the vomit out of the pods. The other four, those with stronger stomachs, stick with it for a bit to see if it gets any less revolting. Three of them quit halfway through. One in ten played to the end, but many of them were violently ill, either from motion sickness or from the visuals. Many protested loudly. Some tried to cause a scene. We had to pay a lot of bits in hush money to shut up those few who protested the pods’ very existence, or even petitioned the cities that hosted them. Only one percent of all participants were completely unaffected—or even invigorated—by the experience.”

“Oh. Damn.”

“The margins for the Infantry aren’t much better. Why do you think we use Beamcasters instead of firearms? They don’t necessarily perform better than guns. In fact, their armor and barrier penetration can be lacking. That’s not why we use them. We use them because, one, the ergonomics are easier than trying to aim a gun. Guns are long. Receiver, barrel, everything. It’s an irreducible length. If you strap them to your sides, you must turn your whole body to aim, and you’re completely exposed to enemy fire. Only us unicorns can levitate guns however we like. Fire them blind around corners. Steal an enemy’s weapon and turn it on him. Shit like that. You know the drill.

“Beamcasters, with their auto-targeting emitters housed in spherical gimbals, minimize our issues with manual dexterity. This, I’m sure you already know. The other reason, the one not often touched upon, is because at longer ranges, against armored opponents, they leave a smoking hole and not much else. No mist of blood, nothing like that. At close range, against an unarmored target, it’s a different story. They flash-boil the target’s insides and cause these little steam explosions that are incredibly violent. Our doctrine tends to avoid close combat for regular infantry for a good reason. It makes ponies go loopy. Why do you think we only issue boot knives to Stormtroopers?”

I raised a brow. “Are you saying we use casters because they kill clean, and the psychological impact is lessened?”

“That is precisely what I’m saying, Storm. But even then, it isn’t enough. Some of my predecessors took things a step further.” Cicatrice pulled out an infantry commander’s helmet. My own, in fact. The one with the upgraded radio and intel package. “Were you wearing this in Dodge?”

“Yeah, I was.”

“Storm, have you ever noticed how ponies seem to panic when in combat without one?”

“Well, anyone would be creeped out by their head being exposed when flechettes start flying. What’s the deal?”

“Storm, what I’m about to tell you is beyond classified information. It’s compartmented. In order to learn anything about it, you had to be given access to a secure facility with all records kept completely isolated from the datasphere. No copies were allowed to leave the facility, and in fact, they used to confiscate all personal electronic devices when you entered and returned them when you left.”

I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going. I felt a pang of dread deep in my gut. “Go on.”

He rotated the helmet to show me the inside. “There’s a field generator in this thing. It’s hidden in the lining of every infantry helmet, in fact. We’ve been using them for the past few hundred years, in fact, with great success. Transcranial electromagnetic stimulators. They subtly alter the function of your amygdala and prefrontal cortex.”

“What?” My hunch was right. I was thoroughly spooked, now. “What are you—what are you saying?”

“These helmets subtly suppress anxiety and empathy and slightly increase certain kinds of impulsivity. In a normal pony, it basically makes them behave a lot more like the Cleomanni do on the battlefield. It heightens aggression, dampens fear, and boosts self-confidence. It makes a jumpy, hyper-empathetic, herd-dwelling equine into something slightly more like, well, the aliens we face.” He set the helmet down and set his hoof on top of it. “Let me make one thing clear. These were not designed for you, or any other Charger pilot, to wear. Ever. You already have those alien-like structural differences in your brain naturally. This only accentuates them further. It can help make a pony into a soldier, yes, but under circumstances of extreme emotional stress, it can also potentially help make a Charger pilot into a bloodthirsty killer.”

The implications were clear, and I didn’t like them. Not one bit. I glared at him. “Why? Why would you ever?”

He nodded. “I’ll tell you why, and I’ll be one hundred percent honest and forthright with you. Ponies are mentally incapable of carrying out the duties required of us by the rigors of modern interstellar warfare. Physically, we are more than capable of breaking open most other aliens’ heads like a piñata; it’s what’s happening inside our own heads when we do it that’s the problem. As a species, we score higher on empathy and neuroticism than the Cleomanni by three hundred percent, and compared to a damarkind, the difference is an order of fucking magnitude. Our thresholds for psychopathy are different, due to intrinsic differences in our neurochemistry. What we would consider a psychopath among our own kind, a Cleomanni would consider normal. What a Cleomanni would consider a psychopath among theirs, we would regard as a one-in-a-million monster among our own. These thresholds hold true for most other species, except for the Linnaltans, who score much closer to being as prosocial as we do than any other species we know of, but still fall short by half.”

“So, you’re saying that we’re nicer than most species?”

“No. Nature does not care about who or what is nice. It only cares if you have the adaptations necessary to survive adverse pressures. Ponies suffer from hyper-empathy due to our physiology. Our hormones, our magic gestalt, and our inborn neurological makeup all contribute to the problem. I don’t think you understand the implications, so let me drive the point home. Hurting others hurts us back. Killing sentient beings inevitably makes ponies sick. It makes us mentally ill. During the war, our military had the highest rates of mental health crises, psychotropic drug prescriptions, substance abuse, and suicide in the entire galaxy. You are no exception to this. You’re on sertraline and you have debilitating anxiety attacks due to advanced ECAD, but we still put you at the controls of multi-million-bit war equipment because we have no choice.

“You’re one of the lucky ones. Your condition is manageable with medication. Many others either fall into extreme alcoholism and opiate abuse, or they end up taking their own lives. In any case, suppressing it with antidepressants—and, in some cases, antipsychotics—is only a stopgap measure. When a damarkind kills one of us, he does not feel doubt, insecurity, nausea, anxiety, or guilt. He feels no fear of ostracization from his own kind. He feels only one thing, and that’s intense euphoria. The sight of blood and the screams of one’s dying victims are a bane to us, but an elixir to them. I’m sure you can see how that would be a problem for us.”

“Bullshit,” I spat. “I’ve killed them before. I’ve killed them with my bare fucking hooves. It’s not that hard.”

“You don’t even understand why,” Cicatrice said. “You are different from other ponies.” Cicatrice pointed to his head. “If I had lab techs do functional MRI imaging of your brain, and then I did the same for a cleomanni, you would be more similar to each other than the rest of ponykind in terms of which brain regions are more highly activated when exposed to the same stimuli. Every fight is won inside your skull before it is won anywhere else. You can kill them because, for one thing, you know the limits of your own strength. For another, you have no compunctions against killing. Lastly, you have the confidence to unite those two things with lethal results. Sergeant, our physical and magical powers mean nothing unless we can muster up the will to harm other living beings.

“Do you know what happens when the average mare—not a battle-hardened soldier, but the average civilian—encounters a damarkind? They’re two meters of bulging sinew and ripping claws topped off by a mouth with fangs the size of kitchen knives. The mere sight of such a thing makes the average mare either faint dead away or topple onto her ass in fright. Then, if her bladder’s full, she wets herself. This makes everything substantially worse. See, a damarkind’s sense of smell is extremely acute. They can pick up the pheromones in your sweat and other secretions, and it arouses them greatly. I don’t need to tell you the rest. You already know.”

“Yeah, unfortunately, I do.” I cringed visibly, his remarks hitting a little too close to home for my liking.

“Members of our species are magnets for cruelty,” Cicatrice said. “We have far more acute touch sensation than just about any other sapient species we know of. A pony can feel a gnat land on our ass and subconsciously swat it away with our tail in milliseconds. Our fucking skin is as sensitive all over as a Cleomanni is on the tips of their fingers. The rest of their bodies are lidocaine-numb compared to ours. When we feel, we feel more acutely, in every possible way. We feel more pleasure from a massage or from sexual intercourse than practically any other species. When pain is inflicted upon us, it is objectively more painful, and we know this from skin conductance tests to measure nociceptors and their activity. Can you imagine how many ponies are in captivity right now, being exposed to physical abuse or sexual sadism to satisfy their intrinsically psychopathic alien captors and their perverse tastes?”

I took a deep, shuddering breath. I knew of one. “Yeah. I can.”

“The Empress knew this. She’d known for centuries what the terrible price of defeat was. It drove her half-mad.” Cicatrice leaned back and crossed his forelegs. “We have extensive files on Twilight Sparkle, even ones she didn’t know about. Her psychological profile. Celestia’s journals. Her friends’ journals. Everything was meticulously preserved and studied. To hear them tell it, in her youth, she was one of the smartest and kindest ponies in Equestria. What do you suppose drove a pony like that to make your Mirage? Like numerous other Chargers throughout history, Twilight practically designed it all by herself. She was an engineering savant. She came up with the complete initial drafts of the damn CAD drawings, knowing full well that her creation would be used by pilots like you to kill thousands upon thousands of people very, very messily. What would possess her to do that?”

“I don’t know.” I crossed my forelegs. “You tell me.”

“I knew her, personally,” Cicatrice said. “I’ve seen a side of her that the public does not know. When it came time to deliver the worst news imaginable, the lot fell on me. When I told her—”

// … // … // … // … // … //

Cicatrice

The Empress’s penthouse in the Twilight Tower was the very height of opulence. It was rare that I ever visited it. The dark and nearly featureless elevator was whisper-quiet as it came to a stop at the five-hundred-and-fortieth floor, a red monochrome display illuminating with that intimidating number to indicate that I’d arrived. The doors hissed open, and I stepped out into a room lavishly adorned with checkered floor tiles of silvery platinum and pitch-black laminated graphene. There were a pair of polyurethane leather couches and a glass coffee table. I’d entered the foyer to the penthouse level. At the far end of the room sat a desk, behind which sat the Empress’s secretary; a mare named Duality, whose mane had been braided into two buns and dyed such that it was half white on one side, and half black on the other.

As I approached, she nodded to me. “Magister Cicatrice, Your Excellency. You are expected. I’ll buzz you in.”

The two elite Dragoon Star Crosses in gleaming white armor moved their crossed lances aside, unblocking the doorway at the end of the room that led to the penthouse proper. I walked between them without so much as a word. If I’d been a Confederate assassin, I would have been efficiently slain and zipped up in a body bag in milliseconds, before I even had a chance to bleed on the floor properly.

The space beyond was decorated even more decadently. The walls were hoof-carved mahogany inlaid in gold and draped in places with purple silk. The hardwood parquet flooring was of the finest grade. There was a circle of bookcases at the far end of the room, in the middle of which was a broad wooden study desk with a large computer monitor of exquisite quality atop it.

Behind it sat none other than Her. Great Leader. To our foes, she was either referred to by her longstanding Confederate Mil-Int codename of Aubergine, or derogatorily as Cyclops, or that one-eyed bitch. To me, she was—

“Twilight,” I said.

The large, imposing Alicorn looked up from her screen. She had no glamor spells on, and her disfigurement was immediately apparent. One of her eyes was tired and reddened, her lids dark and puffy. Her other eye wasn’t an eye at all. The Oculocycle—a primitive bionic implant from the dawn of cybernetics, as much a product of minotaur artificers as it was of our own scientists—rotated and aligned its visible-spectrum lens with me. She kept chording on her hoofboard without even looking at the screen, typing out letters with quick directional inputs on two large sliding pads. A soft and wary smile crept onto her face.

“Cicatrice,” Twilight spoke. “I hope you have something for me. I’ve been awake for going on thirty-six hours and I’m going cross-eyed here. I can’t make sense of these intel reports. I think the Secretary of Defense has been holding out on me in meetings. So, what is it? What do you have?”

I winced a little, knowing full well what was about to happen. What needed to happen. A reckoning with the truth, as awful as it was. “Your Majesty, I am sorry. We won’t last the month.”

Her smile drooped a little. Confusion crept into her eye. I’d never seen her look so forlorn.

“What?” she half-whispered, enunciating the word in as drawn-out a manner as possible. “What are you saying? We have a naval task force assigned to—”

“Admiral Crusher was not able to turn the tide at New Isfahan. We sustained heavy losses in space. Some ground assets are still resisting enemy occupation, but they’re completely cut off. It’s only a matter of time before the Confederate Navy is on our doorstep. We are pulling back to defensive positions, but we are still heavily outnumbered. The projections are grim.”

The Empress’s lips trembled, her eye unblinking, as if she couldn’t figure out how to respond to that statement. She drew a sharp breath, but then let it go, staring off into space wistfully. I walked up and gingerly dropped an envelope on her desk. Her neck slowly craned down towards it, her lidded eye tracing back and forth. Her expression would have been unreadable to most, but I’d known her long enough to pick up on the subtlest of cues from her. She dreaded to know what was inside. Twilight unsealed it with her magic and levitated out a few sheets of programmable electronic-ink paper, casualty figures dancing in her view as she swiped her hooves across the interactive documents, her expression growing more miserable with each passing moment. Her breathing quickened as she fumbled with a holocrystal card buried under the stack of papers, inserting it into a slot in her desk. The simulation results that flared to life on her monitor told her everything she needed to know. There was no denying it any longer.

Twilight Sparkle planted her hooves on her desk, her lips drawing into a grimace. First disgust, and then rage played across her features. Boundless, unfettered rage.

“Your Majesty, please,” I began. “I know you’re upset, but—”

“Upset?” Twilight spat. “Cicatrice, upset is when you find out the tomato plants in the backyard have wilted. This. Is. Fury!”

“Oh no.” I slowly backed away, eyes wide.

The Alicorn got up out of her chair, her sinews flexing. In her time period, going nude was the norm in pony society. While in the comfort of her own room, she had chosen not to wear any of her usual regalia. Her coat was bare, her hooves unshod, and neither her crown nor her visored officer’s cap were adorning the top of her head. As such, her scarred and well-muscled body was in full evidence. Twilight Sparkle was not a soft-limbed, sedentary jellyfish of a leader. In addition to her prodigious and downright fearsome intellectual and magical might, she was a trained martial artist with centuries of experience.

I watched in open-mouthed horror as she raised her fifty-pound faux-leather office chair into the air with her forelegs. With a roar of incipient rage, she hurled it through her monitor, embedding the casters and the legs all the way into it and sending it toppling off her desk and onto the floor. Twilight teleported before me with a flash of purple magic, causing me to fall flat on my rump with shock. She gripped my collar in her fetlocks and hauled me up in front of her as she reared up. My hind legs were dangling in the air. I was too stunned by the rapidity of her assault to even think of mustering a defense.

“Why did they send you, huh?” Her sneering face was practically pressed against mine. “The rest of the Magisters too pussy? Why are you laying this shit on me right now, you miserable fuck? You walk in here, and you’re all like, ‘Hey Twilight, I know you’ve been wide awake for the past two days doing nothing of any importance at all, but you know that war you’ve been fighting for a millennium? Sorry, you lose. We are all the Confederacy’s property, now.’ What in the world made you think that would be a good idea? Are you stupid? Do you really think this couldn’t have been postponed until I had some fucking sleep?!”

“I drew the short straw!” I said.

That only made her angrier. “Cicatrice, do you understand what those sick motherfuckers are going to do to us?” She dropped me, and I scrambled across the floor, trying to get away from the unhinged mare. She looked out a panoramic window at the glowing lights of Everfree City, hundreds of stories below us, her eye welling with tears. “They don’t know. They don’t know what’s coming. I can’t—we can’t—can’t let them take everything. We can’t let them have us. Please, no. No!”

Twilight was reduced to a sobbing mess as she knelt on the floor. She was sobbing and screaming. The Empress lit her horn and teleported again. This time, beyond the confines of her room.

“Oh shit,” I whispered, swallowing hard and trying to catch my breath. “Oh shit, oh shit.”

She’d handled it far worse than any of us had anticipated. I heard a loud crash somewhere in an adjacent room. I ran back out into the foyer.

“Where is she?” I shouted.

The answer came in the form of animalistic growls and screeches and the clatter of furniture. I ran into a lounge for her guards that sat adjacent to the foyer. The room was a maelstrom of flying chairs, and at the center of it was the Empress. She wasn’t even using her magic. She was picking up and chucking chairs, one after another, with her legs. A hoofful of Palace Security at the end of the room stood mouths-agape, not sure how to even begin to put a stop to our sovereign’s rampage. One enterprising pegasus stallion launched himself at the alicorn, wrapping his limbs around her barrel and trying to restrain her. Big mistake.

“Your Majesty, please!” he said. “Calm down!”

“Little fuck!” Twilight shouted. “You little fuck!”

The Empress had decades of wrestling practice to draw on that he did not. Her forelegs snaked around his neck and she got him in a chokehold, twisting him to the floor. She squeezed like an anaconda and his eyes rolled back into his head. As I stood there, shell-shocked, four Dragoons wearing exosuits charged past me and into the room. After slapping a suppression ring on her horn, each of them seized one of her limbs and tried wrestling her to the floor.

Twilight roared with frenzied rage, trying to shake the augmented pegasi off of her like four little fleas. It was surreal to watch her hurl a fully armored Dragoon across the room with her physical strength alone. The other three, applying a bit of leverage from their power armor, finally managed to subdue her. The Empress squirmed and howled and frothed like a mad dog as two white-garbed medics rushed in. A needle full of phenobarbital went into her neck, and a measured dose was delivered. Her screams turned to whimpers, and her whimpers soon turned to sedated groans.

As they wheeled in a stretcher and lifted her sizable, half-asleep form onto it, I blinked a few times, still in mild shock. “Is this an approved technique?” I said.

As the stretcher was wheeled past me, one of the Dragoons stopped on the way out of the room, eyeing me with her faceless visor. “What do you think? She wrote the protocol herself.”

I adjusted my uniform, nervously watching them cart the Empress off to the nearest aid station, her groans receding down the hall.

// … // … // … // … // … //

Desert Storm

My jaw fell open in shock. “Cicatrice, are you trying to tell me she was completely mental, or what?”

“Twilight was—she is a very complicated pony,” Cicatrice said. “A genius, to be sure. A peerless and tortured intellect. She watched us rise to glory, and she beheld our fall. She is among the last beings alive who remember what Equestria was like before alien influence took hold. A primitive society, yes, but also pure and uncorrupted. A utopian idyll free of crime and pollution and poverty and disease, where magical wonders and universal fraternity abounded. Imagine having lived there, once, and having that paradise stolen from you. Imagine being told that the fate of your species was slavery, dissection, and gruesome death, in spite of all you had done over the course of a thousand years to avert this. How would you feel?”

“Well, I guess I’d be pretty pissed, too.”

Cicatrice paced the room, reminiscing at length. “Twilight Sparkle had no work-life balance. She had no lovers, no friends. Isolated in her darkened ritual chambers and specialized fabrication laboratories, she tried pulling us back from the brink, spending many sleepless nights high on caffeine and amphetamines, her bloodshot eyes locked on one glowing computer monitor, one fizzing flask, and one whiteboard covered in magical formulae after another. In spite of all she personally sacrificed, she failed. Her anger was understandable. And we’re all paying the price, even now. Look at what they do to us, Storm. It’s unbearable.”

I shook my head, furrowing my brow. “These aliens are all sapient. They know right from wrong. They should be able to control their vile urges.”

“Incorrect!” Cicatrice said. “We’re used to talking about morals as if they’re actual things that exist, but they aren’t. They’re a fucking illusion. Concepts like morality and justice are sweet little lies that our emotions tell us about the universe and how it works. Morals are vapid and trivial. Who decides what constitutes rightness and wrongness, anyway? If it can’t be quantified, then what is it? Where does it reside? Inside the brain, or outside of reality? Say you witnessed a stallion pushing a little old grandma off the sidewalk and into traffic. Are you telling me you have a Wrong-O-Meter that you can whip out that will start pinging the moment this happens?”

“I do have one such meter, and it’s called disgust,” I said. “I would be disgusted.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Cicatrice became very animated and angry, gesticulating with his hooves. I’d clearly hit a sore spot. “You’ve done worse. You’d feel nothing. Feelings are not a barometer for anything. They are completely relative and vacuous. What is not relative nor vacuous is what objectively, logically happens when you come in contact with the enemy. You, alone, are a system. You, plus an enemy, is another, different system. These systems are deterministic. Their components and the workings of those components can be clearly and concisely defined. The answer is always the same. Our neurological and genetic makeup are working against us. Making us into victims. Into meat for these monsters. We need to tip the scales, somehow. Reinvent the wheel.”

“If the universe is reducible to the absurd actions of chemicals, then what are we even fighting for?” I said. “The right to be the chemical on top of the pile? Being safe and secure makes us feel good. Without feelings, without values, there is no reason to do anything.”

“Ah, yes. ‘I want more serotonin and oxytocin, I want it desperately, and I want it now’, says the selfish clump of endorphin-addicted proteins and DNA with the calcium frame inside, blowing her lungs like a bellows to state this ridiculous request, as if the universe should somehow accede to your demand without any effort on your part at all. This, I assure you, is how the Archons see you. It’s how they see all of us. To them, you’re a mistake of nature. A soul trapped in fallible meat. An ugly cancer on the purity of creation. And yet, they need sustenance, too. You’re a weed to them, but a perfectly edible one, like fennel.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I raised my voice.

Cicatrice stamped his hoof angrily, the sound ringing out through the cavernous space. I was taken aback by this, my whole body tensing as I recoiled in shock.

“I’m old, Storm!” he said, his voice quavering. “I won’t always be—I won’t always be there to protect you when you make mistakes. I spent all my life researching how to cheat death, and I’ve found nothing that satisfies. I know what happens to souls when we go, and I’m scared. Celestia preserve me, I’m scared sick. Those things are out there. They’re coming for us. To feast on us. Damn it all. I wasted my life. I accomplished nothing. We’re not safe from them. No one is. It’s not fair. We have civilization. We have culture. What do they have to offer us, except rot and despair? Nothing. They’re so proud and arrogant, and yet, they have not a damn thing to show for it!”

I never expected an outburst of emotion like this from him, especially not after he’d just gone on a rant about how meaningless emotions are. All I knew was that his words chilled me to the bone. He was the last pony I expected to lose his cool.

“We really are up shit creek, aren’t we?” I said.

Cicatrice chuckled softly, wiping away the little tears that threatened to spill from the corners of his eyes. “Indeed, we are, Sergeant.”

“Why would you guys give me a Bulwark suit or any of the rest of these if—if they—”

“They didn’t know,” Cicatrice said. “We never expected Charger pilots to wear them, but in the Liberation Front, pilots have done double-duty as infantry. The side effects are unknown, and possibly severe.”

“Does Crusher know?”

“He does, now.”

“Are you saying he didn’t, before?” I said.

“None of the brass did. It was Conclave-only. Damn near Magisters-only. The companies that made the electronics for these helmets only made bits and pieces. Compartmentalization. We assembled the rest on a fully automated line. Only a few outsiders ever figured it out, in all this time. BASKAF made them disappear.”

I recoiled. “They killed them?”

“Worse. Extraordinary rendition and indefinite detention in solitary confinement for the rest of their natural lifespan.”

“Why’d you do it in the first place? Why tell ponies this now?”

“We wanted something that would enhance aggression without making permanent alterations to pony physiology. We wanted these soldiers to come home and live normal lives after their tours were done. I am revealing this information because I believe it is time for disclosure and reconciliation. Should the Empire rise from the ashes, we should be doing a lot of things very differently. This is going to sound hypocritical coming from me, but manipulating the minds of our soldiers without their consent is something that needs to stop. Everypony should know exactly what they’re signing up for and why.”

“How sweet of you.” My tone was acidic.

“Wrong again,” Cicatrice said. “It had nothing to do with kindness. The default neurological makeup of ponies results in beings who build high-trust societies, are pliant, and are avoidant of unnecessary risk. Making these cognitive alterations permanent was deemed to be too dangerous for social cohesion. It would have undermined the Empress’s ability to maintain order.”

I shook my head slowly, fixing Cicatrice with a glare. “You know, some days, I wonder just what the hell it is that I’ve been fighting to protect all this time. You’re not helping with that.”

“Our species,” Cicatrice said without hesitation. “You’re fighting to protect the future of our species. Yes, we have done unethical things in service of that goal. Yes, we have been hard and cruel, both to our enemies and to our own. I don’t expect you to understand the reasons for every single thing that we did, nor do I expect you to agree with it on a moral, political, or philosophical basis or even be remotely comfortable with any of it.

“As practitioners of dark magic, you and I both know what it means to take away someone’s agency and to twist their very souls in service of our goals. However, magic is not the only way that is accomplished. Propaganda, torture, medicine, and technology have all been pursued as means of manipulating minds throughout galactic history. Not just by us, but by our enemies as well. They use such things casually, even flippantly. Your friend and subordinate, Private Granthis, has a full endocrine suite and can tune her emotions as she likes. Normally, she’s a rather decent person, but with just a little tweak to her augs, she can voluntarily go into a berserker rage. Have you ever considered the societal consequences of such technology seeing widespread use?”

I shrugged. “Well, the Confederacy seem to do just fine.”

Cicatrice gave me a lidded stare. “The Cleomanni Confederacy is an oligarchy made up of a ruling class of cutthroats and racketeers attended to by billions upon billions of corporate serfs. The way they keep their society in check is by calculated deprivation. Upward mobility is a pipe dream for most, and for those rare few who attain some measure of wealth and stature without having inherited it, the process is a litmus test for raw psychopathy. Most of the people who can afford augs are exactly the sort of people who shouldn’t have them, but their wealth also means they have something to lose should they publicly cross the line. Is that what you want for Equestria? Leagues of helpless cattle overseen by paranoid and greedy demigods?”

“Well, when you put it that way, I suppose not.”

Cicatrice nodded towards me. “You look nice, by the way. Did you do that yourself?”

“What?”

“The thing with the shoulders. The stitching on your jacket. I like it. You look like a damn Yak warrior from olden times.”

I looked down at my jacket. “They used to cross-stitch their worn garments?”

“Oh yes. With lighter or darker thread that contrasted with the material, so it would show off.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m just fucking with you.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Cicatrice gave me a damn noogie, levitating my beret off and rubbing his hoof over the top of my head.

“Stop, not my mane!” I said. “Dammit, you’re like a little fucking kid, sometimes.”

“One of the perks of being old,” Cicatrice explained. “You get a second childhood. You’ll figure it out when you get there. Run along now, Sergeant. I heard Tiamat has something important for you to do.”

I nodded. “Right, the spares. She wants us to go for Wolfhound parts so we can fix up the rest.”

“Tall order,” Cicatrice said. “Those don’t grow on trees.”

“It was nice talking, Your Excellency.” I bowed lightly. “Thank you again, by the way.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I made my way out of Cicatrice’s room. I had some buddies to catch up with and some stories to share with them.

// … // … // … // … // … //

Cicatrice

As I closely examined the circuitry in Storm’s helmet using terahertz spectroscopy, one thing immediately became apparent. It was just as I’d suspected. The Aggressor Circuits had been dead for years. Component failure.

Whatever Sergeant Storm did in Dodge that day, that was all her.

I leaned back in my chair with a sigh, putting away my scanner. “Oh, Storm.”

// … end transmission …

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