//HOL CRY SWT
//CHECKSUM READ
//CHECKSUM FAIL
//ERROR – DATA CORRUPTED

//SCANREP EXT:\REC\

// … scanning and repairing files …

// … 2 corrupt file(s) found …

// … recovery record present …

// … repairing …

// … complete …

// … playback 01 …

// … error - unknown time stamp …

ERROR 0x1A

// … critical system error - unexpected end of file …

// … playback 02 …

Desert Storm

I trod carefully along the narrow desert path, following the tracks from the landing site. There were drops of blood alongside one set of hoof-marks. The tracks stopped and turned in upon themselves, going every which way. The blood droplets ceased at that point, too. As I recalled, one of the two surviving Percheron mercs was the medic I saw holding the line at the barricade. I surmised that she had dressed the wound somewhere near where the tracks had ended, whether it was on herself or her squadmate.

The tracks continued into a narrow slot canyon. I ran my hoof across the rock wall at the base of the gorge, worn smooth by millennia of erosion. I heard a noise like a foal’s shaker, accompanied by a menacing hiss. I looked down, and sure enough. I had almost stepped on a rattlesnake. I leapt back, my heart pounding in my chest.

I pointed an accusatory hoof at the venomous creature. “Don’t scare me like that, dammit.”

The snake’s tongue slithered threateningly, its head tracking me as I moved off. I didn’t have any antivenin on me. I needed to watch my step in case I ran into another. It had been a couple hours, but the sun hadn’t moved an inch since the crash. Our star wasn’t like other stars. It didn’t do its job automatically. No, it needed to be coaxed, and there weren’t any alicorns available to do the deed. The ambient temperature could only be described as blisteringly hot.

Eventually, the tracks faded to nothing as they transitioned from sand and dirt to a hard-packed dry riverbed. I knelt in the cracked, dried mud, panting, sweat dripping off my chin. I had traveled at least a good eight kilometers from the crash site, and now, I was out in the middle of scrubland with dry, dead plants as far as the eye could see.

I wasn’t quite lost, exactly. With the smoke on the horizon, I could have found my way back to the crash site and picked the wreckage clean more thoroughly or built a shelter in the hopes that the Commodore would find me. There was nothing fit for a pony to eat out here. No water, either. I had lost so much blood. My legs looked like shredded meat, and one cut was so deep I could’ve sworn I saw a flash of bone moving around in the wound. With the condition I was in, I shouldn’t have been able to walk. Only the neuro-salve made it possible.

I was overcome with anger at my predicament. “You fuckers left me,” I shouted, my voice echoing off the cliffs. “You left me to die out here!”

I heard a rattling noise. This time, it was the clamor that accompanied a different kind of snake. The two-legged kind. I dove behind a rock as a Confederate drone whizzed overhead, its contragravitic drives throttled up so high that their characteristic rattle was more like a continuous buzz. I steadied my breathing and inched backwards under a rock outcropping, hoping I hadn’t just been made. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. Footsteps approaching from the south. Small foot patrol, maybe four or five of them.

I reached out and dragged a small boulder in front of the opening, trying as best as I could to cover up my hiding spot. I stopped when I heard the footsteps draw uncomfortably close. They were practically right on top of me. I didn’t dare move a muscle.

“Ide fadzun ente, Kapa,” one of them said in a pleading tone.

I mulled over their words briefly before the meaning came to me. Just—disappeared—it? Oh crap, the tracking chip!

“Nev ansleif,” an older and gruffer individual barked.

The transponder chip had been implanted in my right foreleg, like the other captives. I stiffened up like a board, sweat beading on my brow. I could hear one guard—the drone operator, perhaps—fiddling with his slate just a few yards away, the device beeping annoyingly with each touchscreen input.

I knelt there, absolutely still. Minutes passed. The guards continued sweeping north in a search pattern. Ten minutes. Twenty. The coast was clear. I pushed the rock away from the outcropping and then took off at full gallop towards the south, exiting the other end of the ravine. I acted on the assumption that they had just reacquired the subdermal beacon and were doing a one-eighty and heading back in this direction. The smoke from the crash site rose from the east, casting shadows on the desert floor.

With my head swiveled over my shoulder to scan for pursuers, I’d almost ran straight into a lifeless and shriveled tree. As I swerved, the brace came loose and my injured leg gave with a sickening crunch, sending me skidding face-first through the dirt. The neuro-salve had started wearing off, and the pain had redoubled.

It hurt so much, I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but lay there, every muscle in my body tensed. I clenched my jaw so hard, it felt like I’d bite through my own enamel. I screamed through gritted teeth. I felt a sharp stinging sensation in my rump. I jerked my head around and looked over my shoulder, and of course, a rattlesnake was attached to my ass. It was pretty much the last thing any pony ever wanted to see.

“No, you motherfucker!” I grabbed the reptile’s tail with my teeth, ripped its fangs out of my flank and whipped my head around, beating its tiny noggin against the ground.

I stomped its head into paste with my good leg. “I. Have had. A bad. Enough. Day!”

I could feel my hindquarters starting to burn from the venom the snake had pumped into me. I slumped and rolled onto my back as I felt my remaining strength go out of me. My lowermost regions were overtaken by a pain worse than any I’d ever felt in my life. I lost control of my bladder. That was it. I was done. They’d find my corpse here, lying in a puddle of my own piss, my leg broken, my hooves covered in blood from one final act of revenge against the creature that killed me.

“Barleywine,” I mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

A fog entered the corners of my vision, a figure rising from the bushes and advancing upon my helpless form. So, what? Am I hallucinating, now? Is a vicious predator about to eat me? Is this some kind of circle-of-life thing?

The shape resolved into the face of a grizzled stallion with a gray coat and white beard, draped from head to hoof in tan camouflage netting. He pulled back the cloak he wore to reveal a wide-brimmed hat ringed with teeth of some kind.

“You’re too loud,” he said, his voice like raw iron. “It’s like you want to get caught.”

“Barll—wine?” I slurred incoherently, my mental faculties failing me. “Izzat you?”

“Never heard of a pony by that name.” He rolled me over to get a better look at my wounds. “I’ve seen worse. You’re lucky I found you when I did. This far east, you can’t trot five paces without stepping on a rattler. They’re all over the place.”

He pulled out a syringe, depressed the plunger slightly to bleed the air out, felt around for a vein, and then deftly pushed the needle under my skin. I felt a chill as the antidote entered my bloodstream, neutralizing the toxin. The old pony slung me over his shoulder like a pack, my legs hanging down on either side of him. My head throbbed. My broken leg hurt like hell. I was overcome by waves of nausea and projectile-vomited the entire contents of my stomach, which wasn’t much. Luckily, I’d turned my head aside just in time and managed to avoid getting any on my rescuer.

“Great,” he said. “Lose what little remaining moisture you have in your body. Excellent plan.”

“Feel sick.”

“Of course you do.”

We traveled for what felt like miles, with me only semi-conscious the entire time. The blue strands of my mane clung to me, matted with blood, sweat and puke. We stopped. The sound of contragravitic drives grew near, yet again. The stallion ducked and quickly drew his camouflage netting over both of us.

“How did they find us so quickly?” he said.

“Tracking chip,” I muttered.

“Oh, hell.” He set me down, rather roughly. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

For a moment, he looked ready to just leave me there, but he held his hoof out level to indicate that I should stay low before hurriedly slinking away. I peeked my head above the dead, dry bushes and scanned the horizon, catching a glimpse of the foes we faced. There were two mechanized squads supported by one Pursuer 6x6 wheeled armored car each, moving single file in a column, cresting a dune about a half-klick in front of us.

Ahriman Station was owned and operated by a private company under military supervision. The Confederate Security Force was an organization made up exclusively of cleomanni PMCs, like Javelin Security or Skylark Incorporated, that collectively operated under a contractual agreement with the Confederacy.

They were not affiliated with the Confederate government but were lent a measure of official-sounding legitimacy by government mandate nonetheless, like a sort of privatized militia. Not too different from our own mercs, except they all wore the same uniforms and worked as part of the same command structure and logistics chain. These were the same variety of corporate security goons as the ones we’d fought earlier in the morning, only better-equipped.

The stallion was pulling boxy objects from under his cloak and placing them on the ground in strategic locations a good thirty meters ahead of me. I recognized them immediately as captured F-56 directional anti-personnel mines of cleomanni design. He was going to use me and my subdermal tracking beacon as bait. I had to admit, it was pretty clever, even if I didn’t like it one bit. Then, he disappeared from view. He was an earth pony. How does he do that so easily without magic?

The first squad neared my position. They were heading straight for me, not expecting any resistance. The guardsman on point was messing around with his slate, trying to pin down my exact location. He pointed his gauntleted finger right at me. They closed to within fifty meters. From his concealed position, my savior triggered the directional mines, spewing thousands of steel ball bearings at the approaching hostiles. Three dismounted members of the lead squad simply fell where they stood, quite thoroughly dead. The other three writhed on the ground, too badly mangled to stand.

The machine gunner in the lead vehicle’s ring turret opened fire in my general direction. My ears were treated to the delightful supersonic symphony of snapping and cracking bullets passing overhead. The gunner in the vehicle behind them and the six dismounted guards who were still left standing after the mines detonated soon followed suit. Their flechettes pinged off the dirt just a few feet from my head. Any closer, and I was a dead mare.

After a few seconds, the machine gun on the vehicle in the back of the formation went silent. The rest of the guards ceased fire. I could hear a faint commotion erupt in their midst. When the rear vehicle’s crew-served weapon opened fire again, it was directed upon the lead vehicle. The armor-piercing incendiary rounds tore into the lightly armored scout car, setting it ablaze. The driver and gunner were almost certainly dead. The stallion swept the muzzle of the weapon over the remaining six dismounted guards. They returned fire, their flechettes pinging harmlessly off of his gun shield. Controlled bursts of fifty-cal fire liberated the cleomanni of their bodily extremities, sending limbs and heads flying. He then put a few rounds in the three injured guardsmen for good measure.

I simply lay there, perfectly still, my mouth agape as the stallion approached me, holding a knife in his jaws. He flicked the blood off the blade before wiping it dry and stowing it back in its sheath.

“Who—who are you?” I said.

“I’m nopony, and that’s what you’ll tell anyone who asks, got it?”

He tossed me onto his back as before, carting me over to the vacant six-by-six armored car. He loaded me into the vehicle like a knapsack, before spending roughly half an hour scavenging the guards’ weapons, armor and other supplies and stuffing them in the back of the vehicle with me. I had finally earned my freedom, but I was still little more than cargo. I could sense we were in motion. I peeked out the small armored window in the side hatch after a few minutes. The sun appeared to sink towards the horizon ever-so-slightly. We were heading west.

“Nopony isn’t a name,” I said.

Exhaustion crashed over me like a wave, and before long, sleep took me.

// … // … // … // … // … //

I slowly opened my eyes. My body felt like a hunk of lead. I glanced around the luxurious bedroom I was in. Mahogany wainscoting. Oil lamps. A grandfather clock that rang at the top of the hour. All sorts of trinkets and trophies hanging on the walls. The room smelled of cigar smoke and booze.

I looked out an open window to see a small town with taverns and markets dimly lit in the gloom by neon signs, the nightlife drifting listlessly from one block to the next, the ponies’ torsos bundled up in thick winter coats. Off in the distance, I saw the vague silhouettes of abandoned quarries and coal elevators dotting the hillsides. I hugged the blankets closer. This far towards the planet’s night side, it was cold. Damned cold.

I was in bed. A real bed, after three years of sleeping on a steel slab. An actual, comfortable mattress. I pulled the sheets down to examine myself. My broken leg had been set and put in a cast. I looked like a mummy with how many bandages I had on me. I could smell antiseptic and feel the dull ache of stitched skin.

In summary, my whole body felt like shit except for my spine, which felt wonderful.

I heard voices from an adjacent room, accompanied by bursts of static from what sounded like a radio set. I saw a unicorn mare trot into the room and levitate a pair of pliers with a small, bloody microchip in them, rotating it and gazing at it intently. She turned towards me and noticed that my eyes were open.

“Bellwether,” she said. “Bellwether, I think she’s stirring!”

“I told you not to use that name.” The old stallion who’d rescued me appeared in the doorway, pointing a hoof accusatorily at me. “You. Did you come from that prison starbase?”

“Yes,” I rasped, my throat dry and sticky.

I coughed a couple of times as I swallowed to try and lubricate my vocal apparatus. Bellwether regarded me suspiciously, scanning my features while scribbling something on a notepad with a pencil held in his mouth.

“Hmph,” he said through his teeth. “Where else?”

“Well, where the hell am I now?” I said.

“Tar Pan, at the Regence Hotel. Lots of coal and salt magnates used to stay here on business trips. The rest of the town ain’t nearly so opulent. The Confederate occupation forces are minimal to nonexistent in this region, but that may change at any time.” He frowned, striding across the room. “Will somepony close that damn window? It’s fucking freezing outside. Never mind, I got it.” He slammed it shut with a huff.

Tar Pan. An old mining town north of Vanhoover. I had family out here. Or used to.

“Do you know anypony around these parts by the name of Briarwood?”

“Yeah, I know that fruitcake,” Bellwether said, lighting a cigar and raising it to his lips. “Plays piano at the Wild Mustang when he isn’t sucking cock to support his opium habit.”

I blinked a few times, my face resolving into a scowl. “He’s my fucking cousin, you dickhead.”

“My condolences.”

I paused. “How did you find me?”

“Was doing recon for a joint recovery operation. Saw the smoke from the crash. Started tracking enemy movements. Stumbled across you entirely by accident.”

“Did you happen to see a couple mercenaries carrying a big, shiny metal cylinder?”

“Can’t say I have, no.”

“Alright then. What about a pegasus in an exosuit?”

He raised an eyebrow. “If that’s who I think it is, I’m sure she’ll turn up eventually. You mentioned something about a metal cylinder? What sort of cylinder is this, now?”

“It’s Ahriman Station’s AI core, Scheherazade.”

The stallion fell silent for a few moments.

“This might be the big break we need. You’re a soldier, right?”

“Sergeant Desert Storm, Light Scouts of the Eighth Cavalry Division.”

“Better and better.”

“Alright, now, who the hell are you?” I pointed my injured hoof at him, wincing in pain.

He huffed indignantly. “Before I trust you enough to tell you anything, I need to know you’re not a cleomanni spy. They do that, sometimes. Drug and brainwash ponies and turn them into deep cover agents.”

For some reason, I wished he hadn’t reminded me of that. The first time I’d heard of it while in training, I’d been paranoid about practically everyone I met. For weeks.

“They were hunting me down,” I said, waving a hoof dismissively. “They wouldn’t do that to a spy, would they?”

“They would. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. Make one of your own agents look like an escaped prisoner. Good cover story. Makes it easier for your targets to befriend them.”

“I’ll ask again,” I said. “Who the hell are you?”

“Like I said earlier, I’m nopony, and it’s gonna stay that way until I know you’re clean.”

“You’re not nopony,” I said. “You’re somepony. You’re former military intelligence, aren’t you? ORACLE, or some-such.”

He stiffened visibly. The Office of Reconnaissance, Advanced Concepts and Long-range Espionage—or, in Equestrian, the Bolea ut Atenlieue ia Sori Kaalo ia Anlios Fedabe, or BASKAF—was one of the most secretive groups in the Equestrian military, and with good reason. Nothing was off-limits for them, neither torture nor assassination, though they preferred to make use of long-winded euphemisms like 'enhanced interrogation' and 'high-value target neutralization' to describe such deeds. More syllables, less guilt.

“What makes you think that?” he said.

“It’s the subtle things, like the way you move, to the not-so-subtle things, like how you made taking out two whole squads of cleomanni guardsmen with a knife and some hand-me-down anti-personnel mines look easy.”

“That’s because it is easy, especially when they think that all they have to contend with is a wounded, unarmed prisoner with a tracking chip in her leg. When you’ve got some juicy bait like that, all you really have to do is reel them in.”

I grimaced. “Great, so I’m a worm on the end of a hook, now?”

Bellwether laughed. “Just this once, yeah.”

“I’ve seen plenty of spooks in my time,” I said. “Usually, they were debriefing my lance’s leader.”

“Of course you did,” he said. “After all, who do you think scoped out the targets for pilots like you to gas?”

I pressed my lips together, my face expressionless. I went over a mental checklist of the standard loadout for my Courser-class Charger. One Illusion-type spell locus. Four anti-personnel beamcasters. Two 40mm cased telescoped automatic cannons, 464 rounds total. Two back-mounted heavy beamcasters, forty-megajoule range. Eight vertical-launch missile tubes, each loaded with one Mark-76 surface-to-surface missile, each carrying hundreds of submunitions loaded with OA-13. An organophosphate-based binary nerve agent.

Pesticide. Across hundreds of covert missions, we killed thousands—no, tens of thousands—of civilian scientists, engineers, factory workers and various other high-value Confederate logistics personnel with what amounted to fucking pesticide. When we weren’t doing that, we often found ourselves hunting deserters and turncoats who couldn’t stomach what we were doing. That was the real mission of the Light Scouts. It was the reason we were hated and feared by our allies just as much as our enemies.

“I’d do it again, if I had to,” I said. “You know that.”

“Good.” Bellwether nodded. “You might have to, and very soon. While you were passed out in here, I had a talk with the Captain over the radio, and she says you’re free to join up with our cell as long as you’re clear of any cleomanni tracking devices and physically fit for duty.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Once we get you all sorted out, you’re free to become a member of the Equestrian Liberation Front.”

“No, I mean, with what?” I said. “You don’t expect me to start shoving cluster bomblets filled with nerve gas down some satyrs’ throats with my bare hooves, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, no, I don’t. We have a Charger, but no qualified pilots.”

My breath hitched in my throat. These insurgents actually had a functioning Charger at their disposal.

“What kind?”

“Courser-class. An advanced prototype model, the—”

I sat bolt upright. “Mirage two-zero-two?”

“That is correct. I take it you have some experience with this model?”

“More than a little. Our unit had four of them out of a low-rate initial production run of ten. They wanted to take mine back to the factory for some tuning and adjustments, but I insisted on keeping it. They agreed, but on one condition: that they could bring in an on-site team to take telemetry readings and oil samples from my machine round-the-clock and make adjustments as necessary, and we had to do double-duty as their bodyguards.”

He snickered. “That sounds like the Conclave all right.”

“Does it have any unusual identifying marks?”

“Yeah, now that you mention it.” He rubbed his chin. “Nose art of a little tornado, and the words—”

“Dust Devil,” I said, grinning. “That’s my Charger! Where did you find it?”

// … // … // … // … // … //

I sat on the steps to the armored car’s hatch, jaw hanging loose. Bellwether waved a hoof over the peat bog a few dozen klicks east of Vanhoover where my Charger had sunk, ass-end-first, its nose and the remains of its carbon composite reentry shield poking out of the muck. One could just barely see the massive machine’s five-camera head and the upper half of its neck in the perpetual dusk and gloom along the terminator. There was some manner of mossy growth drooping from the left autocannon’s muzzle. There were also bits of charred wreckage scattered about the mire that I assumed were what was left of the HMS Endless Summer, my unit’s transport ship. I shook my head in abject dismay.

“When you said you had a Charger,” I began, my tone even, “I thought you meant you had one sitting in a hangar, inspected and ready for combat.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers, now.” Bellwether snickered.

I turned towards him, my eyes narrowed. “Bullshit. When can we pull my baby out of there?”

“In due time. We need a boom truck, and maybe—”

“That machine weighs thirty-seven tons,” I said, turning tail, adjusting my saddlebags and limping back inside the armored personnel carrier. “It’s going to take more than a Celestia-fucking boom truck to lift her.”

“Well, Sergeant, maybe you can levitate the damned thing out.” He doubled over with rasping guffaws.

“I’ve seen that movie a million times, and no, I’m not doing that.” I shook my head bemusedly. “I’m not the Empress, for crying out loud. Speaking of which, can we do something about this suppression ring? It’s giving me splitting headaches. Oh, and I like being able to lift beverage containers without spilling the contents all over myself, too.”

“How do you think we earth ponies do it?”

I flushed bright red. “Do you have something to remove a suppression ring, or not?”

The corners of his lips curled up into a smile, revealing rows of tobacco-stained teeth.

// … // … // … // … // … //

After driving another hundred kilometers, we descended into a deep canyon. The armored car’s primitive reciprocating internal combustion engine was running dangerously low on fuel, if the blinking light in the dash was any indication. We parked the vehicle next to an abandoned earth-mover. I stepped out and hobbled down the dirt road towards a large corrugated metal shanty, leaning with my injured foreleg across the stallion’s shoulder as he propped me upright.

The place had been built into a cliff face in the depths of Ghastly Gorge, hiding it from casual surveillance. It looked like it would collapse at any moment, but it held, for the time being. We stopped at the entrance. There were a pair of five-story-high hangar doors that rolled on tracks. They looked way more advanced than the rest of the structure, but they were still covered in thick layers of rust, just like everything else in the general vicinity. I squinted as I surveyed the place.

“What a dump.” I shook my head.

“It only looks that way on the outside,” Bellwether said.

He walked up to a dirt-encrusted control panel and swung the cover open. Underneath was a pushbutton, which he depressed with his hoof to the rhythm of Shave and a Mane-cut. After ten seconds, a hollow buzz sounded from the intercom’s tinny speaker.

“Flash.”

“Sentry,” Bellwether responded to the challenge.

My ears perked up as powerful electric motors whirred to life, and the steel hangar doors slowly parted to reveal the cavernous space beyond.

“Welcome to Camp Crazy Horse, one of the ELF’s last bastions.” Bellwether sighed as he led me through the hangar doors.

The interior of the place was quite pristine, in stark contrast to its dilapidated exterior. The back wall of the hangar was recessed into the canyon wall, a good hundred meters deep by roughly two hundred meters across. I was standing on nearly five acres of polished and spotlessly clean concrete. The space was ringed by workbenches with tool boards, tool chests, lathes, drill presses, welding machines, computer-controlled multi-axis milling machines, a machine I recognized as a specialized loom for twining artificial muscle strands, and additive manufacturing machines. They’d somehow even found space enough for a drop-forging hammer in one corner.

There were empty stalls with overhead hoists mounted on the ceiling high above. One corner had been partitioned off into a multi-story data center with rows of server racks and an upper level with monitoring stations. There were about a dozen ponies milling about, but otherwise, the place was deserted. A smile creased my lips. I knew a Charger lab when I saw one. I turned and found myself face-to-face with a rather unhinged-looking elderly fellow with a yellowish-cream coat, wispy white mane, and oversized spectacles with lenses that looked like pie plates. He started circling me, studying my features.

“Let me have a look at you,” the earth pony said, reaching out to touch my shoulders.

He paced around me some more, before giving my torso a good thwack with his hoof. I flinched and hissed in pain.

“No, no, she’s injured!” he said. “This will not do.”

I fixed him with a lidded gaze. “You couldn’t tell that from the cast on my leg, or the fact that there’s like a hundred stitches and fifty bandages all over my body?”

“Oh, yes, hmm,” he said, appearing deep in thought. “Oh, where are my manners? The name’s Crookneck. Crookneck Squash.”

And this poor bastard went his entire life without changing it. Right.

“Sergeant Desert Storm,” I said, shaking his proffered hoof. “I heard you guys need a pilot?”

“That’s correct. A Charger without a pilot is just a lump of titanium alloy and carbon nanotubes. A pilot without a Charger is a unicorn with a big head and an even bigger mouth. See, one completes the other. And in your condition, well—”

He trailed off when he noticed me glaring at him. As I prepared my retort, I pressed my hoof to his chest for emphasis.

“What Charger? You mean my Charger? You mean the one that sank in a bog, where it has sat for three years with no routine inspections or maintenance of any kind? It’s fucking ruined! FUBAR! Do you have any idea how fragile the internals on those things really are? How precisely-fit they have to be?”

“I do,” he said, taking off his glasses as his face adopted a more solemn expression. “I was a member of the Twilight Conclave, child. We built the damned things.”

I took a step back. “Is it just me, or have I been running into a lot of really interesting people these past few hours?”

Bellwether and Crookneck both snickered.

“Yeah, ‘course you have,” Bellwether said. “Everypony else wasn’t tough enough to make it through the apocalypse. That’s why they’re all dead.”

An awkward silence descended upon the three of us.

“So, umm,” I pointed to my horn with my hoof.

“A suppression ring?” Crookneck cocked his head. “I’ve got just the thing for that. Follow me.”

I hobbled after him as he led me over to a workbench. He plugged in a noisy old air compressor and started rummaging around underneath the workbench and through the drawers of the adjacent tool chests.

“Let’s see, where did I put that? Not here. Not there. Nope. Wait, I must be losing my mind. It’s always in the one second from the bottom. Ta-dah!”

He triumphantly raised a pneumatic tool in his hooves. A chill went down my spine as he connected the air hose with his teeth and revved it a few times to test it.

“That is a fucking die grinder!” Utterly aghast, I started slinking away from the wacky engineer out of fear for my precious horn. “I thought you people had some kind of plier thing that would take these off?”

“Oh, the ratcheting cup-and-pin pliers? No, no, those are for emergencies only. We never use those things around here. I saw a mare’s horn break in half, once. This way is much better. Now, hold still.”

Crookneck gave a knowing nod towards the stallion behind me. Bellwether looped his forelegs underneath mine and wrestled me over to a workbench with surprising quickness and force. I grunted and struggled a little as he held my head in place. Crookneck fitted a dust mask over my muzzle and a pair of goggles over my eyes, sweeping my mane back and out of the way.

“Safety first.” He grinned.

He held the grinder in his hooves, spinning it up to a shrill whine before bringing the cutting disc in contact with the metal band cinched tight around my horn. Sparks flew and I reflexively clenched my eyes shut. The glowing-hot grinder dust stung my cheeks. The vibration from the damned thing felt like it was shaking my brains loose.

“Ohh-h-h-h-h-h-h fuu-u-u-u-u-u-ck.” My voice sounded like someone was giving me a ten-thousand-revolution-per-minute back massage.

“Don’t move,” Bellwether said. “You don’t want your horn nicked. You’re no good to us if you can’t do magic.”

I mentally swore everything under the sun, in both Equestrian and Ardun. The cleomanni had this one word, javalakhra, which somehow condensed the meaning of mucus-covered penis-worm into half as many syllables. It was their most vile insult, reserved for the lowest of the low.

Me and the squaddies used to make a game out of how many alien curse words we could memorize. The brothers Blitz—Barrage Blitz and Barricade Blitz were their names—were the undisputed champs, having mastered a litany of swears in the languages of over eleven Free Trade Union member and associate races.

Just when I thought it was all over, he started making a cut on the other side, and my internal monologue resumed its intense profanity.

“Alright, here we go,” Crookneck said, setting the die grinder aside, letting it spin down on the workbench.

He took a big pair of needle-nose pliers and yanked off the ruined cleomanni device with a guttural growl. Bellwether let go of me so I could scoot off the workbench and stand up. I rubbed my aching head, wincing a little. I looked at the tool board, my eyes settling on one particularly large adjustable wrench. I reached out with my mind and wrapped it in the orange glow of my levitation magic, slowly lifting it off the pegs that kept it in place. After moving it a few inches, my head began throbbing. The magic envelope collapsed and the tool clattered onto the workbench’s surface.

“Don’t strain yourself,” Bellwether said. “If you haven’t done it for a few years, it always takes time to get back into the groove. The mare that patched you up, Argent Tincture, took months to relearn things as basic as lifting utensils to feed herself after her ring was removed.”

“Yeah, well, she’s not me.” I felt my horn with my hoof and there wasn’t a scratch on it, so I was glad for that, at least. “So, Squash, when’s the soonest we can extract my Charger?”

“Your Charger, you say?” He frowned. “I’ll have you know, that particular model was reserved specifically for—”

“The very best of the Light Scouts,” I said, concluding his sentence for him. “The Mirage A202, production serial number 009. Dust Devil. My Charger.”

Crookneck Squash adjusted his glasses, his face taking on a grave expression. “That one went to the Eighth Cav. Are you saying you’re formerly of their ranks?”

“Yeah. Probably the last one who ain’t pushing up daisies by now.”

“What’s your service number? None of the telemetry data we received at the Conclave had a name assigned to it, only a number. If it does not match, young lady, I will be rather irate with you.”

“Kolah-Kovan-Kovan-Vakoh-Van-Koh-Lah-Seh-Koh, Seredo Imrah Vakoseh.”

In other words, 5-6682-4131, Legion 27. At its peak, centuries ago, out of a population of over a hundred and twenty billion spread out over ninety-four worlds, the Empire had over five hundred million active-duty soldiers organized into fifty Legions numbering ten million each, and organized planetary militias that numbered triple that. When I served, we only numbered seventeen million in all, down to a paltry three hundred and forty thousand per Legion.

“That was you?” His eyes widened. “Celestia’s hide, you were a legend among the testing team! We were always wondering what crazy maneuvers and harebrained tactics four-one-three-one would attempt next. Hell, on some slow nights, we’d make popcorn and watch the black box recordings on a projector screen in one of the conference rooms. There was a betting pool on how long it’d be before you went too far and bought the farm.”

“Sounds to me like our taxes were well-spent.” I rolled my eyes.

“We could have made a pretty penny licensing the footage to some movie studio, if it weren’t classified top-secret.”

I giggled nervously. “If it was top-secret, then what were you all doing watching it together in a conference room?”

His grin faded. “Oh, uh, not to worry. The facility I worked in was a bunker, with all kinds of special magtech to keep sound and electromagnetic emissions from leaking out to the surface. Heh, four-one-three-one. In the flesh. Never thought I’d see the day.”

I rolled my eyes. I’d risked life and limb to escape a prison starbase presided over by a malevolent AI that reduced ponies to numbers and stuffed them in shipping containers, and now that I was free, even my own species wanted to refer to me by four digits instead of my real name. At that point, I briefly wondered what kind of fucked-up life I was leading.

“You still didn’t answer my question,” I said. “How the hell are we getting my Mirage out of the mire?”

“Follow me, kid,” Bellwether said.

In one corner of the hangar was a massive vehicle covered in a tarp. Bellwether and Crookneck walked around the back of it, grabbed the cover between their hooves and dragged it away. The tarp unfurled like the cloak of a weary traveler, slowly revealing the enormous thirty-meter-long cab-over truck underneath. Twelve axles. An articulating chassis. A massive bed with eyelets for tiedown cables. Recovery booms with high-power winches. A loading ramp. A pair of metal protrusions from the cab that looked like horns but held fog lamps.

I’d seen many of these machines during my military career. They were a feat of Equestrian engineering and a Charger pilot’s second-best friend, next to their own walking engine of destruction. They could transport everything from forty-ton Coursers to hundred-ton Destriers. They could even carry up to two fully loaded main battle tanks, if necessary.

“If you have a Bull Runner, then why haven’t you recovered the Mirage already?” I said.

“We tried,” Crookneck said. “Tires broke loose in the mud every time. The winches were pulling us towards the Charger, not the opposite. We need somepony to climb into the Charger’s cockpit somehow and see if they can start it up and provide a little extra tractive effort.”

I stared at them, my jaw working silently in shock. “That will fucking ruin it.”

“We know,” Bellwether said. “Why do you think we’ve got so much equipment and so many technicians trotting around with nothing to do? Whatever the damage is, we’ll fix it.”

I paused. “When’s the soonest we can initiate the extraction?”

“As soon as your leg’s healed enough to walk,” Crookneck said. “We can’t have you hurting yourself any more than you already have. You’re too valuable to the Resistance.”

“That might take a while,” I said.

“Indeed, it might.” The aged pony pushed his glasses up. “You never mentioned how you broke it in the first place. Care to share?”

“There were these things on the station that attacked us and tried to prevent our escape.”

Bellwether frowned. “What do you mean by ‘things’, Sergeant? What did they look like?”

“Four eyes, slithering tongue, sharp teeth, sharp tail and covered from head to toe in chrome armor and bionics. The Dragoon who rescued us, Commodore Cake, called them Karkadann. Ring any bells?”

Crookneck Squash blanched visibly right through his coat. Even the normally cool and collected Bellwether seemed nervous, his eyes scanning the room as though some hidden enemy might strike from the shadows at any moment.

“They’re clones,” Crookneck said.

Well, that was underwhelming. “That’s it? Clones?”

“You are aware that, pound-for-pound, we are some of the strongest and hardiest creatures in the galaxy, correct? Our genetic code is a highly valuable black-market commodity, right up there with our magtech.”

Magtech. Products of the fusion of magic and technology. At one time, they had permeated almost every level of our society. With the aid of magic, you could make machines of superior quality. Military equipment was one obvious use of the principle, but magic could also be found in mundane household objects. Even an Equestrian coffee maker was prized over its cleomanni-made counterpart, because instead of the burnt, electrical taste of a beverage heated by resistance coils, you got a smooth, evenly heated brew with the application of a little artificial pyrokinesis. To date, no other species had been able to perfectly replicate our technology because it relied on unicorn enchantments and alchemical principles unknown to alien scientists.

“Yes, I’m well aware,” I said. “Even if you put aside the overwhelming advantage of our magic, the average pony can beat a cleomanni to death with our bare hooves in the span of seconds. The reverse is not easily accomplished. A barroom brawl that a pony would walk away from would put most other species in the hospital, or the morgue. It’s part of the reason why the rest of the galaxy treats us like dangerous animals. But what does that have to do with anything?”

“To make the Karkadann, the cleomanni took pony DNA, modified it, and created hybrid organisms based on our own best attributes, especially our muscle and bone density. Their nervous tissue is modified to be highly receptive to external stimuli, allowing them to be precisely controlled by the electrode meshes and fiber-optics that wend their way through their minds.” Crookneck tapped his head for emphasis. “They’re networked together so they share sensory information with both each other and the rest of the cleomanni military datasphere. They may seem mindless, but in reality, they act together as one collective intelligence, coordinating and converging on their targets with lethal precision.”

“So, you’re saying they’re mind-controlled ponies?” My eyes widened in shock. “How come nopony was told about this?”

“Because you weren’t supposed to know.” Crookneck shook his head sadly. “Their existence has been kept under wraps for a very, very long time. It helps that there are few who survive direct encounters with them. The damn things maintain their own secrecy well enough. Those few personnel who have come into contact with them and lived to tell the tale were always either pressed into the intelligence community or special forces, or otherwise submitted to memory erasure therapy. With the effective dissolution of our government, that is no longer our policy, of course. Cat’s out of the bag, now.”

“That’s how I ended up becoming an ORACLE agent,” Bellwether said. “I was a Combat Engineer, but I saw something I shouldn’t have. A bunch of somethings that wiped out my team. Coincidentally, ORACLE needed saboteurs, and that was that.”

“Is there any way to release them from their slavery?” I said.

Bellwether scoffed at this. “The only way I know of is by shooting them dead. The Karkadann have atrophied frontal lobes that have been largely replaced and augmented by machinery. Their intellect is far more rudimentary than ours. Their general physiology is different, too, as if the four eyes and sharp teeth didn’t tip you off. They’re not sapient. Not like us, anyway. They’re hyper-aggressive animals, goaded into attacking targets by the microchips planted in their heads.”

“Now, just wait a fucking minute,” I pressed, as if what I’d just heard wasn’t bad enough. “This doesn’t make any sense. How do they grow these things?”

Bellwether and Crookneck looked at each other nervously, before the latter shrugged. “How do you think?”

I drew a blank for a few seconds as I stood there, blinking. I already knew the answer, but I didn’t want it to be true.

“No,” I murmured. “Not that. Oh fuck, no.”

Crookneck sighed. “Yes, Sergeant. They implant the modified embryos into captive mares.”

It felt like the room had gotten a few degrees colder. A chill of horror washed over me. My eyes began to water. I felt weak in the knees. I thought of all the prisoners who’d been taken beyond the Blue Door in Ahriman Station, never to be seen again. Always mares. Never stallions.

My mind raced over my own medical records. I’d received a shrapnel wound due to spalling, inflicted by a tank round that had penetrated my Charger’s cockpit five years ago. I was infertile. If one tiny sliver of metal had been a few millimeters off its mark, or if I’d gone for magic healing therapy like I’d planned to when my tour was up, they could’ve dragged me behind that door.

My face twisted up in anger. “Disgusting!”

“Indeed, it is,” Crookneck said. “They’re the reason why this whole war started in the first place, so many centuries ago.”

“How come they don’t teach this shit in school?” I said. “Our history textbooks make no mention of any of this.”

“Those books are wrong.” Crookneck stamped his hoof angrily. “The existence of these creatures has been deliberately erased from our publicly-available historical records. Vetted and redacted by the highest offices in the land. How do you feel after learning the truth?”

A thousand years. The cleomanni had been doing this shit to ponies for over a thousand years, and nopony except a select few with the highest clearances knew about it. As if their extermination campaigns weren’t bad enough, they were harvesting us. Using us to breed monsters. There was a tightness like a band of iron in my chest. I felt lightheaded, like the world around me had somehow become airy and unreal.

“I feel like I wanna puke,” I said. “Those sick fucking bastards.”

He nodded, a grim expression on his face. “The Karkadann are on a list of banned topics for that specific reason. That is, to keep our entire species from feeling the same way that you do right now.”

“This shit’s beyond the pale.” I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. “Why cover it all up? We could’ve spread evidence of this far and wide. Used the uproar to our advantage.”

“Maybe you feel like you’re stronger with this knowledge than you are without it, Sergeant,” Bellwether nodded. “But let’s get real. How many ponies think like you do? How many would be angry enough to kill over this, and how many would collapse into a useless pile of self-pity? Order 11: Prevention of Species-Wide Demoralization. It’s been there since the very beginning, by decree of the Empress herself. This material was deemed too sensitive for wide dissemination, because studies showed that it would’ve led to a crippling uptick in the prevalence of various psychiatric disorders.”

“We ran extensive tests,” Crookneck said. “Several decades back, the Conclave ran one study with a thousand participants—mostly young college students—who agreed to extreme confidentiality, to the point of basically being kept under house arrest for the rest of their lives.

“Half of the subjects were given a detailed description of the Karkadann creation process and what they were intended for. The other half was a control group. The group exposed to the Karkadann data experienced a nearly threefold increase in the incidence of clinical depression and suicide. Heck, out of the five hundred who learned the truth, more than half of us were so disgusted, we went on to join the Conclave in lieu of being prisoners in our own homes.”

My jaw dropped. “No way. You?”

Crookneck grinned and thumped his chest. “Yes, indeed. I was one of the ponies from that group. Like Bellwether, in a twist of fate, I ended up serving my country differently from most. They made accommodations for us, just like anyone else who’d learned the horrible truth of the matter. They continued our schooling and allowed us to finish our degrees, and then they lined us up for jobs with high security clearances where they could keep a close eye on us. I went into weapons engineering. I wanted to make stuff to blow those Confederate bastards sky-high. Made a damn good career out of it.” He laughed.

I blinked a few times. “Huh, sounds like it’d be great for a recruitment drive. Perfect propaganda material.”

“It really wasn’t.” Crookneck shook his head sadly. “Many of us went on to have poor psychological outcomes even in our new line of work. I can’t begin to tell you how many of my own colleagues I’ve lost over the years. There were other things they learned. Deeper, darker secrets which the Karkadann were only a gateway to. They simply could not live with the truth. Have you ever tried to open the door to a unisex restroom and found it blocked by a dead mare’s body after she deliberately overdosed? I have. Not the best way to start your morning, I’ll tell you that.”

“There has to be something in the Stellar Code that makes this pony experimentation shit illegal, whether we’re recognized as sapients or not,” I said.

“Nope,” Bellwether said. “Perfectly legal animal testing.”

“Unbelievable,” I whispered. “Fucking unbelievable.”

“Call it what you want, Storm, but it’s the truth,” Bellwether said. “Unpleasant, I know, but it’s a reality we’re going to have to live with. Our enemies see us as things, not people, and we all know where that kind of thinking leads.”

“You said the war started because of these Karkadann things, Squash,” I said. “I thought the war began over eleven centuries ago, when three of the Old Kingdom’s princesses visited cleomanni space on a diplomatic mission, and only one returned alive?”

“That was a dark day in our ancient history, Sergeant,” Bellwether said. “But it’s not the whole story. There’s more to it than that.”

“Like what?”

“No one really knows the nitty-gritty details,” Bellwether said. “Not even us agents. The old records were sealed away, and for a good reason. Don’t know if those archives survived the bombardment or not. BASKAF investigated the matter, and we turned up evidence that there were efforts to resurrect the Karkadann project from data recovered from a ruined research facility years before any attempts at diplomatic contact even took place, which would put our first contact with the cleomanni perhaps a decade earlier than previously thought. The rest has been lost to time.”

Talk of the Karkadann was making me increasingly ill with each passing moment. I had to change the subject. I had to get my mind off of it.

“What happened to Her Imperial Majesty, at the end of the war?” I said. “Where is Empress Sparkle?”

“You know as much as we do.” Crookneck shrugged. “It’d be nice to have her back. Her understanding of magtech is unparalleled.”

“Who leads us now?”

“Admiral Star Crusher is in command of what remains of the ELF. There are about forty thousand of us left, scattered across multiple systems.” Crookneck Squash paced around the front of the truck as he explained how grave the situation was. “A little over an eighth of that number constitutes the resistance cells here on Equestria. We have a few warships, but they’re under-crewed and short on supplies, and we’ve tried to avoid resorting to acts of piracy against the civilizations of the galaxy who are unaffiliated with the Confederacy to obtain the stores we need. Admiral Crusher commands the Luna Tear, likely the last Nightmare-class battleship left in the whole universe.”

“The Admiral’s still alive? That’s good news. He’s a skilled leader.”

“He’s a blithering idiot,” Bellwether said. “He’s sacrificed too many good soldiers for any pony in their right mind to think otherwise.”

“My platoon served in his fleet for years.” I frowned at the bearded stallion. “I always thought highly of him. I think you’d do well to show him the respect that his rank commands.”

He grunted in disapproval. “A naval officer leading ground troops around by the snout. That’s your problem right there.”

“Well, yeah. The Army had to be wherever the orbital strikes weren’t. It was a good thing we coordinated with our eyes in the sky, Bell.”

“During the war, I knew a few fellow agents from other branches who lost their lives due to collateral damage from strikes that he ordered because he panicked and couldn't trust the ground teams to do their jobs. Just between you and me, he was a nutcase back then and he’s a burnout now.”

“The pot’s calling the kettle black,” I said. “That rescue attempt on the station? You guys fucking blew it. Most of the boarding party was lost and you only managed to rescue two soldiers. Me and one other guy. The rest? Spaced, as far as I know. Heck, there could still be survivors up there, and those freaks might be executing them as we speak. Or worse.”

“Oh, we know,” Bellwether said. “That wasn’t our cell, though. That was Commodore Cake’s. Crusher’s little protégé. They did a consultation with us, but completely ignored our recommendations. We told ‘em it was too early. They hadn’t put together an elite enough crew to attempt that op, and the patrol boat we stole for them wouldn’t hold more than a few hundred personnel crammed in there like sardines.”

“Well, that was obviously never going to work.” I rolled my eyes.

“They probably expected to commandeer additional transports when they got there, but without the proper intel, they had no way to know if there would be any transports present in the station's docks at the planned time of the attack, during a security hole in the regular patrols. They went through with it anyway, and boy, we were fortunate to get away with what we did. A Charger pilot and a cleomanni AI. Speaking of which, why hasn’t that AI core turned up yet? Can’t wait to skullfuck that thing.” Bellwether reared up and did a hip-thrusting motion that was as awkward as it was disturbing to watch.

“I don’t know.” I frowned. “The Percheron mercs must have galloped off with it. It wasn’t with me in the wreckage from the ship. Last I saw Lieutenant Band and Commodore Cake, they were sucked out of a breach in the hull. They could be anywhere by now. The mercs ran off and left me for dead. I tried making my way out of the desert when those Confederate bastards started following the signal from my tracking chip. I made a break for it, but my jury-rigged leg brace gave up the ghost and a rattler bit me right on my ass. That’s when you showed up.”

Bellwether stood still as a statue, blinking his eyes, his jaw slightly agape. “Wow. What a shitshow.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “How many Chargers do we have? For that matter, how many Dragoons?”

“Three in this resistance cell,” Bellwether said. “Two Rounceys and a Destrier. Well, one Rouncey that’s been cannibalized for parts to keep the other one running, and a Destrier. So, two active Chargers. Before you ask, yes, they’re already taken. We can’t use ‘em often because they attract too much attention. We’ve been in need of a Courser and a recon pilot for a while, now.”

“And the Dragoons?”

“What about them, Sergeant?”

“How many are still kicking?”

Bellwether huffed. “We have nine Dragoons in the rebellion, for what little good that does us. I asked Layer if she knew of any other pegasus Dragoon survivors, and she completely stonewalled me. I think she’s hiding something.”

“Dame Cake has a pretty good head on her shoulders,” Crookneck said, using the honorific for a knightess. “She usually doesn’t tolerate failures of this magnitude. They must be getting desperate over on her end.”

“It’s Crusher,” Bellwether grunted. “I’m telling you, he’s the one who put her crew up to this. Assaulting Ahriman Station with one fucking patrol boat. Geez.”

“Enough of this bickering nonsense,” I said. “Let’s go get my Charger. Not tomorrow. Not the week after. Now.”

“But your leg,” Crookneck said, looking increasingly worried. “Will you be okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, Sergeant, you’re not,” Bellwether said. “You’ve got a nasty fracture. If you put too much strain on it, you’re gonna put yourself out of commission for months.”

“I said I’m fine!” I glared at him.

“Your funeral, kid.” Bellwether clapped his hooves together, waving over the Runner’s crew. “Alright, let’s go! Get your asses in gear, come on!”

A dozen unicorn and pegasus technicians threw on their saddlebag toolboxes and bandoliers filled with wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers before boarding the back of the massive truck’s equally sizable crew cab. A few of them chose to ride outside on the flatbed. Me, Bellwether and Crookneck piled into the front of the cab. Bellwether took the driver’s seat while Crookneck sat in the passenger seat. I got the middle of the bench, struggling with a tangled-up lap belt that took a few tugs and a few curses under my breath to straighten it out before I could secure it around my waist.

“Just so you understand,” Bellwether began, “you don’t really have any fucking say in this, Storm. The only reason why we’re doing this now is because this might be our last chance. Confederate patrols near the salvage site have been getting heavier, lately, and they could be tracking our movements. For all we know, that hulk of yours in the swamp might be carted off or scuttled tomorrow. If we had any other options, you would be in bed and healing up right now. Do I make myself clear?”

I sighed. “Perfectly, sir.”

I wasn’t sure why I’d used the honorific; he was a spy, not a soldier. I figured it was because he spoke with sufficient authority to trigger my knee-jerk boot-licking reflex. I wasn’t sure if I liked that. Bellwether nodded silently and turned the ignition key to activate the vehicle’s electrical system. The instrument cluster lit up and a menagerie of green, yellow and red diodes in the truck’s dashboard flickered to life. He deftly flicked a few toggle switches with the tips of his hooves, and I could hear the truck’s auxiliary power unit come online in response. He pushed the ignition button and the starter motor began spinning up the three thousand horsepower gas turbine. The synfuel-powered turbine’s soft hiss rapidly turned to a high-RPM howl.

The alternator’s bus synchronized at sixty cycles automatically, ready to take up the load from the electric motors that drove each of the sixty-ton truck’s twenty-four massive wheels. The lights in the dash winked green. The Bull Runner was ready to move. Bellwether pushed the throttle cluster forward, steering the vehicle by slewing the hoof-cups mounted on the control yoke. We rolled through the hangar in the giant truck at a leisurely pace. The rest of the Charger technicians and crew who stayed behind were waving and cheering as we went on by. As we passed through the hangar doors, they slowly sealed shut behind us.

“Ever ridden in a Bull Runner before, Storm?” Crookneck said.

“Are you kidding? Plenty of times. If a Charger breaks down or is disabled by landmines, drones or enemy weapons fire, the pilot’s gonna need a way to get back to base. Very often, that meant hitching a ride on the recovery vehicle, if air transport could not be secured.”

“How did that go?”

“Badly. Bull Runners are deathtraps. Barely any armor on these things, slow as fuck, and, of course, the coal or algae-based synfuel that most of our vehicles run on is pretty much ordinary petrol by composition and therefore incredibly flammable. You know, if enemy armor or air support so much as farts in our direction on the way over there, we’re pony barbecue.”

“My thoughts exactly.” The old stallion nodded.

“I mean, look at this,” I said, waving a hoof at the rock walls of the gorge as they drifted by at a brisk forty kilometers an hour. “I can get out and run faster than this.”

“A Charger ain’t much faster,” Bellwether said.

“You’re thinking of Rounceys and Destriers,” I said. “My Mirage could do a hundred. Three hundred kilometers an hour with the boosters on.”

“Oh yeah? Well, right now, it’s doing zero, and it’s going to keep doing zero until we can pull it from that swamp.”

The giant vehicle lumbered out of the dry riverbed and into the dusty remnants of what was once a meadow, rounding the edge of the Everfree Forest. Or what used to be a forest, anyway. The few trees I could see were shriveled, dead things. In the perpetual twilight of the terminator, there wasn’t enough sunlight to sustain plant life. We drove off the dirt road and onto a highway eerily devoid of traffic. I gazed out the window at the faraway ruins of Everfree City.

It was the first time I’d seen the capital since the end of the war. The sprawling metropolis once covered the entire valley. Now, most of its towers were rubble. There were deep craters from kinetic bombardment that covered multiple city blocks, each filled with glistening shards of metal and concrete slag. The eastern half of the city was bathed in a perpetual dim morning light, while the western half resided in darkness. The pinnacle of one skyscraper, nearly twice as high as all the rest, reflected a ray of sunlight, shining across the valley like a beacon. The Twilight Tower.

Bellwether grumbled as he took a detour off-road into a bumpy field of dirt and dead grass. I soon saw why. The cloverleaf ahead of us at the city’s outskirts was packed with abandoned, rusting cars. When we passed by the scorched steel husks with their blown-out windows and body panels riddled with fragments and bullet holes, I shook with anger as I saw the pony skeletons inside them. Adults in the front seat, foals in the back. None were spared the terrible destruction that was visited upon our species. Youthful vigor was no shield against the armaments traditionally used in interstellar warfare. Once we were past Everfree City, we got back on the road and continued our journey at the previous pace. A half-hour passed. The sky darkened and the air grew colder. Bellwether switched the truck’s fog lamps on to pierce the veil of dusk. He also turned the heater on, so we wouldn’t freeze our flanks off.

“How far west are we?” I said.

“Getting closer to the coast,” Crookneck said.

“The commandeered patrol boat came down way out in the Northeast, west of Manehattan.” Bellwether didn’t take his eyes off the highway. “Everything out in that direction is a sunbaked desert, now. Well, actually, it’s more like a steppe environment. Arid, but with good soil.”

I looked out the window at the abandoned malls, fast food restaurants, barber shops and synfuel stations. There wasn’t a lit neon sign or fluorescent light in sight. No artificial light at all, aside from an occasional oil lamp hanging in a window, indicating perhaps that squatters had taken refuge there. All was still and quiet, save for the screech of the Bull Runner’s turbine and the rumble of its tires. A few ponies along the sidewalk huddled around a fire in a 55-gallon drum for warmth, craning their necks at us as we passed them by. I gritted my teeth at the jarring impact of the Runner’s bull bars knocking a wrecked vehicle aside without so much as slowing down.

“How many of us are left?” I said. “Not the Resistance, I mean us. Ponies.”

“Do I look like I’ve taken a census, lately?” Bellwether sneered. “I don’t know. Probably some hundreds of thousands. Could be a few million at the most.”

My ears drooped and I shuddered. Equestria was once home to billions of ponies. There was no coming back from a defeat like this. Even if we did somehow manage to retaliate against the Confederacy, there were next to no ponies left to rescue from their relentless onslaught. We were fighting with weapons that we no longer had the equipment to manufacture on a large scale. Nothing but salvage and scraps. Our defeat had set us back over a thousand years.

// … end transmission …

Next Chapter: Record 04//Recovery Estimated time remaining: 28 Hours, 12 Minutes