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

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

// … error - operation timeout …

run holoptima#xap EXT:\

// … optimizing 44% …

// … optimizing 73% …

// … optimizing 98% …

// … done …

// … decoding …

Desert Storm

I experimentally tested my left foreleg, pressing my hoof against the concrete, putting more weight on it than I had since well over a month ago. It pinched a little bit, but it was functional. I held it out straight. No distortion of the bone, even after all I’d put my poor leg through.

“I guess that cleomanni bullshit really does work after all,” I muttered.

“Sergeant?”

I looked up at the voice’s source. It was Wind Shear, the pegasus technician who assisted in the recovery operation to retrieve Dust Devil from the mire. He looked a little unkempt, his fur stained the color of honey with hydraulic oil in various places.

“Do you have it?” I said.

“Of course, ma’am.”

He passed me a set of laminated, hole-punched printouts connected with binder rings. Crookneck’s list of repair parts for my Charger, with suspected grid coordinates where they might be found.

“Seventy-six-millimeter ammunition?” I frowned. “This doesn’t look like stuff for a Courser.”

“It’s not. You’re not our only Charger pilot. We need parts and consumables like these to keep the other Chargers running, too.”

“Right, Bell mentioned something about that,” I said. “So, who are the others? Anypony I know?”

“There are two other pilots in this resistance cell that I know of,” he said, looking a bit uneasy. “Corporal Sierra and Lieutenant Night Terror.”

All of a sudden, an icy lump formed in my throat. The pace of my breathing quickened. I narrowed my eyes at Wind Shear and he seemed to shrink away from my withering gaze.

“What did you just say?”

“The two pilots, Sierra and—”

“Night Terror.” I collapsed to my haunches, holding a hoof to my chest in the hopes it would still my madly beating heart. “That son of a bitch is still alive.”

My mind raced. Why did so many good ponies die, only for that fuckface to survive to the present?

“Look, he gives me the fucking creeps, too.” Wind Shear was looking more than a little bit worried.

“What else do you know about him?” I said.

“I’ve heard the rumors. Some say he fragged a superior officer for not letting him go on some killing spree against the general cleomanni population, or something along those lines. Made it look like an accident. Somehow, he avoided a court-martial. That sound about right?” Wind Shear fixed me with a glare that seemed to indicate that he considered me to be cut from the same cloth.

“He’s a fucking sick bastard,” I said, my face screwed up in anger. “He was only ever in it for himself and his twisted fantasies about making the battlefield into his own personal playground.”

“Honestly, it ain’t much different from what the rest of you Eighth Cavalry freaks were up to.”

“That’s bullshit!” I stamped my hoof. “We were just following orders. I make light of what I did sometimes because I’d go nuts if I didn’t. Night Terror is a monster, even among us volunteer pilots!”

“I don’t doubt it. Sierra, well—”

“Sierra?” I laughed. “You mean Hissy Fit?”

“She doesn’t like that name.”

“Too bad for her that she resembles it.”

“I haven’t worked with her, much, because she prefers to do—”

“Her own maintenance, I know,” I finished for him, rolling my eyes. “Let me guess. She’s still piloting that cobbled-together pile of junk Rouncey of hers, Scofflaw?”

“Yeah. What’s her deal?”

“Beats me. She’s a little bit touched in the head. Anyway, I’ll catch up with you later. Got some business to attend to.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, and let’s get something straight.” I narrowed my eyes. “You compare me to that son of a bitch again, I’m gonna slap your shit. You got me?”

Wind Shear sighed. “Yeah.”

I circled my Charger where it sat, legs folded, in one of the maintenance bays. The mud had been washed off and much of the ruined armor had been stripped from the hull. Over in the fab lab, the techs busied themselves scanning damaged armor pieces with a LIDAR wand so they could fabricate a suitable facsimile. Even while crouched, the titanium chassis of Dust Devil stood an imposing four meters, or half of its full, standing height.

Its stout equine limbs terminated in armored hooves. There were four pyrojet boosters on gimbaled mounts at the top of each leg joint that could vector thrust in any direction, as well as four heavy boosters that had a more limited range of motion but far greater thrust. Standard performance rating was a two-gee vertical ascent for up to thirty seconds before they needed some time to cool down. With proper timing and enough of a running start, a Courser like mine could jump-jet over a half-kilometer gap. The pyrojets could also manage six-gee-plus for very short bursts. Evasive burns.

If an incoming guided missile or shell was detected by radar, the whole damn thing was capable of propelling itself sideways a good hundred meters in the blink of an eye. Even without the pilot’s input, if the APS ran out of ammo or failed to neutralize an incoming munition, the Anima would react automatically within milliseconds to move the entire machine out of harm’s way. In spite of the walker’s size, it could quite literally dodge bullets.

The head was covered in angled plating with a single protruding camera in the center of its face, flanked by four multi-spectral sensors. Lower, to either side of its chin, sat the two 40mm automatic cannons, their feed mechanisms and magazines exposed by the removal of a good portion of the head armor. Projectile weapons were not uncommon in crew-served or vehicle-mounted configurations throughout the Imperial Army. Unlike Beamcasters, they were less vulnerable to atmospheric conditions, they had a nice and compact anti-armor punch to them, and they didn’t consume very much electrical power or require heavy or sophisticated cooling systems.

The forty-millimeter cased telescoped ammo was reverse-engineered Confederate tech and had been in continuous service in the Imperial Army for hundreds of years. The cartridges were light and compact enough that each of the helical magazines carried a hundred and sixteen of them, in a fifty-fifty mixture of alternating high-explosive multi-purpose and armor-piercing discarding-sabot rounds. The APDS rounds would pierce the rear armor of a Confederate tank, if you were lucky, but they were much more effective at wrecking armored cars and other lightly armored targets.

The HEMP rounds were like HEDP rounds on steroids. They had programmable electronic fuses and could be fused to airburst over infantry, detonate after penetrating a wall, or even take out aircraft with a gated proximity mode. The Mirage’s radar was more than capable of tracking low-flying jets or helicopters and providing accurate firing solutions. The twin forties weren’t for direct fire support alone; many Coursers also doubled as self-propelled anti-aircraft platforms. On the battlefield, there was always a need to defend oneself or one’s lance-mates against attack planes, gunships, cruise missiles, and drone swarms. The heavier Chargers tended to mount commensurately heavier ordnance that was ill-suited for tracking fast-moving targets. Coursers filled the gap in defense.

The guns themselves had a combined fire rate of two thousand rounds per minute in alternating fire mode, or half that in linked-fire mode. They could put out ten 40mm shells in a fraction of a second. Short, disciplined bursts of fire were necessary to get the most out of them without returning to base to re-arm, but in any case, the fire rate could be dialed down to a more sedate two rounds a second if necessary. Otherwise, the magazines could be depleted in a mere seven seconds of sustained fire.

Usually, all you got was one reload from the torso magazines transferring their rounds to the drums on each side of a Mirage’s head, and then another seven seconds of sustained fire. Sometimes, we carried add-on ammo packs that could quadruple our reserve 40mm cartridge capacity, but usually, that meant leaving the twin heavy beamcasters behind for weight limit reasons.

Occasionally, in addition to the extra ammo, we used a frontal applique armor kit with reactive armor tiles equipped with thermal camouflage, converting the Mirage into what we called the Chameleon configuration, a defensive setup for dealing with incoming waves of enemy attack planes, gunships, drones, cruise missiles, and light armored vehicles. The only problem was that it raised the Mirage’s weight to a good sixty metric tons, severely limiting movement because of the added strain on the actuators. In case we needed to make a hasty escape, the armor panels could be severed with explosive bolts and full mobility regained.

For dealing with infantry without wasting rounds from the forties, Dust Devil’s head was equipped with four pulse-type and two stream-type beamcasters that had practically limitless ammunition, drawing their power from the walker’s polywell fusion reactor. The pulsecaster beams converged to a single point and were capable of killing power-armored Confederate commandos with even a momentary burst.

I circled around back, beaming with pride at what I saw. The Charger’s tail fauld—a long, pointed banner bearing the sword-in-horseshoe insignia of the Equestrian Armed Forces—was tattered, but still intact. I grimaced. None of the other weapons in my usual loadout were equipped. Not the back-mounted 40-megajoule heavy beamcasters that I’d frequently used to liberate main battle tanks of their turrets with explosive force, nor the missile launchers.

“Shit,” I muttered. “Shit, shit, shit. Half of my fucking loadout was strewn across the countryside when the Summer bought the farm. If I run headlong into an armored column while kitted out as pathetically as this, I’m fucked.”

As I approached the rear of the Charger, I spied the venerable Crookneck. He was wearing a stained lab coat and a pencil behind his ear, reading from his own personal copy of the spare parts manifest.

“Let’s see, we need twenty-three new electro-magical transducers, about eight tons of duostrand, a new fire control computer, four new radiators, three new main bearings, a new AESA radar, new auxiliary infrared imagers, a new echolocation pinger, new LIDAR sensors, new target designators, and the list goes on and on and on,” the engineer said.

“When will she be combat-ready?” I said.

“Up and about, I see. How’s the leg doing?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Oh, we don’t have all the parts,” he said, shrugging. “So, I’d say approximately never.”

My features sagged in exhaustion. “That’s what I was afraid of. So, where do we find the parts?”

“Some of them, we could make ourselves if we had the raw materials. Others, we’ll have to salvage. I’ve compiled a list of supply depots, storehouses, military bases and other locations that might be good places to look for the things we need. There’s also the possibility of using jury-rigged Confederate equipment, if we manage to recover enough of it.”

“What about the crashed patrol boat?” I said. “It might have some sensors and other things we can use.”

“Perhaps. If it’s convenient, we might go take a look. Enemy activity in that sector is high, however, so we tend to keep our distance.”

“Maybe we should spend less time running from those cocksuckers and more time killing them? I mean, I’m here. I’m ready. Let’s win this thing, already.”

“Oh, stop being such a sourpuss. If it were that easy, we’d have done it already, with or without you. You did a good job, by the way. Thanks to you, we’re one Charger richer. Don’t worry about the Bull Runner. I got the techs to cut out and replace the damaged bed section weeks ago. Try not to pull any more stunts like that if you can help it, though. Our resources are not infinite. Just so you know, I’ve passed my report on to Bellwether through the local datasphere. He’ll be here shortly. Oh, speak of the devil.”

A heavy hoof landed on my shoulder and I jumped, startled out of my wits. Bellwether was a very, very sneaky pony indeed.

“Alright, mech jockey,” he said. “You ready to pay back your debts to our medical team? Not to mention the Charger techs, who are already just about fed up with your shit.”

“I’m not gonna fuck them, if that’s what you had in mind.” I laughed.

“Nah, nothing like that. Just a little raid on some Confederate shitbags to stock up on medical supplies. You comin’ with?”

I sighed. “Sure, why not? It’s better than waiting around here with my hoof halfway up my ass. So, am I supposed to call you ‘sir’, or what?”

“You don’t have to.” Bellwether shrugged. “In this cell, a lot of us are technically civilians. We’re kind of a recon support and logistics group, not an attacker cell. But just the same, it’d be in your best interest to treat my word, or Crookneck’s, as law around here. At least until Captain Garrida gets back. We clear?”

“As crystal.”

“Good. Follow me.”

He led me to a security door, unlocking the retina scanner by sweeping his RFID-badged right foreleg over it before placing his face in the scanner for a few seconds. The blast-resistant door hissed open and we entered the yellow-lit room beyond. He powered on the diode lighting with a flick of his hoof and the room was bathed in an obscenely bright white. There were two rows of lockers, and on the far side of them, beamcaster rigs and armor lined the walls, all appearing in perfect working order. There were some more beamcasters and armor suits in varying states of disrepair on the shelves in the armory’s center, some appearing to have been cannibalized to repair the others.

I stopped in front of one rack at the end that Bellwether led me to. Resting on it was a pristine set of Bulwark-type medium body armor. It was your bog-standard infantry barding, only this was an upgraded model with an advanced communications set integrated into the helmet, typically worn by non-commissioned officers. Composite plates of sandwiched fiber-reinforced plastic, titanium and resin-impregnated synthetic spider silk covered all the vital regions of the body. This particular example had a cloth cover with a mottled desert camouflage pattern.

The suit was nothing even remotely like a powered exoskeleton, of course. The ponies around here qualified to operate an exosuit could be counted on both hooves. I briefly wondered where the Commodore and the mercs had ended up. We could’ve used them on an op like this. I shoved those thoughts to the back of my mind and continued taking stock of the equipment in the armory. Resting on the same rack as the armor was a beamcaster rig. Phoenix Fire PF-27. Standard pulse type. The emitters were so highly polished, I could see my reflection in them.

“Where did you guys get all this stuff?” I said.

“We’ve spent the past three years scrounging up whatever we can,” Bellwether said. “Occasionally, you’ll run into an intact store of supplies that looters or vandals haven’t gotten to yet, but most of our stuff’s refurbished. Believe it or not, our techs cobbled that set you’re looking at together from about five different ruined suits of Bulwark armor and PF-27s.”

I stared at the suit of armor and the beamcaster, deep in thought.

“What’s our game plan, going forward?” I pawed at the floor absent-mindedly.

“Depends on who you ask, Sergeant.”

“Lay it out for me. What the hell are we doing out here, exactly? These past few weeks, I’ve kinda been all caught up in the excitement of getting my Charger back. I never even thought to ask who’s in charge of this cell, and what our mission is. Makes me wonder if the crash left me a little brain-damaged.”

“Enough with the hypochondria, kid. Your experience is typical of new recruits. They often drift in from parts unknown, still in a daze from their ordeals. I saw one mare who’d gone mute, and it took a whole year before she finally regained her speech. You’ve got nothing to worry about, ‘cept doing as you’re told.”

I knitted my brow. “They left me out there to die, you know. They didn’t even think to drag me out of the wreck. They ran off with our only good catch of the day, too.”

“Well, you’re still alive, so quit complainin’. And that was our patrol boat that you ponies wrecked, by the way. We captured it, and on Admiral Crusher’s orders, our leader had to hoof it over to the Commodore and her people, just so they could trash it. I don’t suppose you’d be up for helping us capture another?”

“Fuck outer space!” I said, raising my hooves for emphasis.

He doubled over laughing, seeming to share my opinion.

“You think that’s funny?” I tilted my head. “I was fucking vacuumed. Twice. In one day. If I go out there again, it’s gonna be aboard one of our ships, not some Confederate hunk of junk.”

“Oh, I’m right with you there, kid. You know, those Vigilance-class patrol boats are built crudely on purpose. Low-tech presence ships, for low-intensity warfare, picketing, surveillance, and so forth. Lowest-bidder stuff. Cheap and easy to maintain. Not a liability to them if captured by us, since all it takes to overwhelm one is two others, not a whole fleet.”

“Yeah, well, not to toot my own horn, or anything, but I think you ought to know that we fended off two enemy patrol boats on the way here.”

“Then you’re very lucky to be alive,” he chuckled. “Count your blessings, for they are many.”

“You still didn’t answer my question. Who’s in charge of this cell, and what are we doing? What’s our plan for taking the fight to those bastards?”

Bellwether frowned, as if he wasn’t sure whether he could trust me with the information he was about to reveal. But then, his expression softened.

“Captain Garrida’s in charge of this cell. But I can’t tell you what we’re up to until you do something first.”

“And that is?” I cocked an eyebrow at him.

“This.” Bellwether hoofed me a sheet of paper on a clipboard with a pen. “It’s already been filled out except for a couple boxes that have been highlighted. Just need you to sign it. I think you’ve more than proven your loyalty to the cause so far.”

The Equestrian Liberation Front had a sheet for recruits to fill out, compiling information like their age, height, weight, medical conditions, former military rank or job title for placement purposes, and various other details, ending with what was basically consent to indentured servitude. It was something along the lines of agreeing to be provided with room and board in lieu of monetary compensation, along with the promise of back pay remuneration in the event of the Empire’s restoration, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.

“Are you guys like, broke or something?” I said.

Bellwether huffed. “Damn near. Our ‘economy’, if you can call it that, is more of a barter and salvage thing, for the most part. What few bits we have are spent on mission-critical stuff. That said, we do get a stipend. It’s not much. About a hundred bits a month, per head. Not many opportunities to spend any of it, unless we’re on leave in Vanhoover and you want to hit the tavern or something. Ain’t no such thing as leave in this outfit, though. Shit can hit the fan at any time, in any place.”

With a heaving sigh, I took the pen up in my magic, filled in the missing data, and scribbled my signature on the line at the end before hoofing it back over to Bellwether. I had this sinking feeling in my gut the entire time. I wondered if this was a new beginning for me, or the same old shit repeating itself over and over again. I felt that same blend of nervousness and stark anticipation that I felt while sitting in front of a recruiter’s desk, years ago. This was it. There was no turning back. This was our last chance to turn this war around.

I smiled and huffed softly to myself. What sentimental nonsense. This was no fairytale. No epic poem. We were no brave heroes and there was no winning this fight. This whole rebellion was nothing more than the mad, desperate, bloodied thrashing of a beast in its death throes, and we would send as many cleomanni bastards to Tartarus as we could before breathing our last. In truth, it would take more than a ragtag group of rebels to save our species. We needed a miracle.

“Okay,” I said. “How about now?”

“We’re searching for Empress Sparkle.” Bellwether nodded. “We have reason to believe she ain’t quite dead after all.”

My breathing quickened, my heart nearly skipping a beat. Perhaps miracles did exist, after all.

“What’s your proof?”

“For the past few weeks, we’ve been intercepting encrypted communiques. Not local datasphere stuff. Long-range cleomanni data bursts containing strings of numbers in Ardun, read aloud real slow-like. You know how to count in Ardun, right?”

“Ev, deze, ton, renez, boal, shatire, fliaz, echt, onire, zet. Base-ten, right?”

“Your pronunciation’s a little off, but that is correct.”

Unlike the rest of the galaxy, which preferred base-ten, we ponies counted in base-four, using four basic numerals; lah, van, seh and koh, with numbers advancing by multiples of four until you reached sixteen, whereupon numbers were spoken as 'sixteen plus another number', like twenty-four, or imrah vakoh, which literally meant 'sixteen and two fours', continuing this pattern until you reached the fourth multiple of the last group, which constituted a new group of its own. Sixty-four, then two hundred and fifty-six, then a thousand and twenty-four and so on and so forth. For example, the number one-hundred-and-eight was pashna vaimrah seukoh, which, in base-ten, meant 'sixty-four and two sixteens and three fours'.

But there were deeper nuances and shades of meaning there. The Equestrian word for friend, nenlah, literally meant heart-close one. The word for friendship? Same as the word for oneness. When counting, you went clockwise, starting from your front-left leg, which was the leg closest to your heart, hence the slang term for a close buddy; heart-leg. Ardun, by contrast, lacked such subtle intricacies. It really was a boorish, mechanistic language, well-suited for conniving, grasping, cave-dwelling imbeciles who daily schemed of ways to deprive their neighbors of everything they ever held dear.

I kept counting up into the teens. “Zetev, zeteze, zeton, zetren, zetoal, zetatire, zetiaz, zetcht, zetnire, de-”

“Enough!” Bellwether stamped his hoof. “By Celestia’s left teat, that shit grates on my ears. But yeah, very good.”

“Too bad I can’t read those weird scribbles they write it in, or I’d be all set.”

“Anyway, we picked up what seemed like random strings of these numbers. We set about decoding some of it, but it was no use. They were probably using one-time pads.”

“So how did you decrypt it?”

“We triangulated the source of one of the transmissions. I went in, and—”

“You chopped the radio operators up like the villain in a bad slasher movie and stole a freshly-used codebook before they could destroy it.” I grinned.

“See, that’s what we need more of in this outfit,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “Perceptive ponies like you, who can suss this sort of thing out very quickly.”

“What were you able to find out?”

“The radio transmissions mentioned an ‘Aubergine’. That’s Confederate military code for Twilight Sparkle. Everything else was in some kind of personal code on top of being encrypted. Stuff like, ‘The Narwhal jumped over the moon at the corner of Elm Street and Broad, and my pancakes were cold this morning—did the blubber have a nice catnap?’” His lips curled in disgust.

I could tell he hated it when they did that. Encrypted text could be broken, but the only way to understand a personal code was to grab the people who knew what it meant, shoot them up with truth serum and smack them upside the head with a pipe wrench until they gave it up.

“Any idea where these reports are originating from?”

“No clue. Trust me, we’ve looked.”

I paused, rubbing my chin with my hoof.

“Personal codes like those tend to be shared between—and understood by—only a very, very small number of people.”

“Yeah? What of it?

“What I’m saying is that this isn’t a message meant for just anyone’s ears, even within their own command structure. It’s from some head honcho to another. Those radio operators you gutted probably didn’t even know what it meant. They were just relaying it from elsewhere.”

“I think I have a feeling what you’re getting at, but please, continue.”

“Even if we don’t know where it came from, do we know who this communique might be addressed to? We’ve got to have a shortlist of possible matches for the identities of the sender and the intended recipient. For example, who’s in charge of this sector?”

“That would be Corrector Dieslan Veightnoch and his assistant, Ordinator Wertua Naimekhe.” Bellwether almost spat the words.

“Well, if we want to know where the Empress is, why don’t we simply ask them?”

“Can’t. Corrector Veightnoch is responsible for coordinating the Confederate Security Force units in our system. He only rarely leaves his flagship, a Vindicator-class frigate by the name of Grenlan’s Bounty. Ordinator Naimekhe is always under heavy armed guard, so no matter where she is, we’ve found it difficult to get close enough to snatch her.”

“Armed guards? You mean those Gafalze Arresgrippen cyborgs who follow that creepy bitch around?”

The GARG, or Special Assault Squadron, haunted the waking dreams of every Equestrian soldier. Fast, emotionless, lethal killing machines. Augmented spec-ops in powered armor. The first and last that a pony usually ever saw of them was a monomolecular blade headed straight for their throat at lightning speed. Only a Dragoon stood a chance in hell against one in single combat, and any time the Army encountered them, standard operating procedure was to bombard the whole area with airstrikes and artillery.

Bellwether was shocked. “You’ve ran into her before?”

“Yeah, she kneed me in the pussy so hard, I was just about ready to ask her if she wanted to get us a room.”

“Really?” Bellwether smirked and raised an eyebrow in mock interest.

I blushed fiercely when I realized what I’d just said. “Uhh, it’s long story. I thought Crookneck said we had warships?”

“Yes, and the cleomanni don’t know we have them. We’d like to keep it that way as long as possible. Bagging one high-value target isn’t enough to merit their use. It has to be something that causes some lasting damage before the Admiral would be willing to give the go-ahead to commit those ships to a combat operation, like knocking out an orbital shipyard or something of that nature. For that matter, you saw how our last boarding op went. Do you think we can afford a repeat of that so soon?”

“Point taken.” I sighed. “So, how about this: we lure the Corrector out. We’ll use his secretary as bait. Get him to show up, in person, on the surface. Then, we nab him.”

Bellwether chewed on an unlit cigar, deep in thought. “If we want to pull something like that off, we’re going to need more materiel and more personnel.”

“Why not ask Admiral Crusher for support?”

“We have, and he ain’t giving it to us. No way, no how. Especially not for something as crazy as this.”

“Then let’s round up some ponies who’d be willing to take up our cause. Let’s go recruiting.”

“Wow, you seem real invested in all this for somepony who’s only been a freedom fighter for all of five minutes.”

“I was born to fight.” I smiled. “There’s nothing else in the whole world I’d rather be doing right now.”

“So, three years trapped in a box hasn’t dulled your instincts? Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

The question ate away at my resolve. The skin on the back of my neck crawled.

“What do you mean?”

“Charger pilots need constant refresher courses and active combat duty to stay in top form. Three years out of the saddle is a long time.”

“You saw me recover the Mirage, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Damn near wrecked our only Bull Runner, too.”

“Excuse me?” I said, recoiling with disgust. “It was either that, or I would’ve sunk. Then, you would’ve lost me, my Charger, and one of your technicians.”

“You have a habit of breaking things, Sergeant Storm. I just wish you’d use that talent to break the enemy’s things instead of ours.”

Bellwether lifted the armor and the beamcaster off the rack, presenting them to me.

“Here, tack up.” He smirked. “I would say that this is worth more than you are, but at this juncture, skilled vehicle crews of any kind are getting to be too hard to come by.”

I stepped into the armor’s moisture-wicking undersuit, grabbing the zipper with my teeth and pulling it along my underbelly and up to my neck. I slipped on the Bulwark armor’s knee protectors and buckled the straps of the vest around my midsection, clearing my mane out of the way as I donned the helmet and lowered the integrated eyepiece and microphone into position. I shrugged my shoulders a bit and shook around to get accustomed to the weight and make sure there wasn’t any loose plating.

I tapped a control on my helmet and booted up its onboard computer. A few basic vital statistics appeared in my heads-up display in luminescent blue; heart rate, heading in degrees, time, and remaining battery charge. It had been a long time since I’d worn one of these. I preferred my old Syncsuit, because if I was wearing one, it usually meant that I was about to have a whole heck of a lot more plating surrounding me than some two-bit ballistic armor. I was a pilot, not a grunt.

Bellwether lowered the beamcaster onto my withers, locking the power supply and data link in place and aligning the emitters with the shoulder openings in the armor. A remaining shot count indicator displayed six hundred charges. Damn near running on fumes. I hoped I wouldn’t end up in a situation where I’d have to use all of them. I slung my captured flechette gun over my withers, double-checking how many spare mags I had in my saddlebags. Twelve box magazines; two hundred and forty rounds. At least they were relatively light.

“So, chief,” I said. “We get our hooves on Veightnoch. Then what? Where do we go from there?”

Bellwether clapped his hooves together forcefully. “Eir kartares as rotrkenna. Oskan ress plukki auas destena eiren ast utanas Harranftah Renleus Tika veerenschirkse.”

We interrogate the son of a whore. Make him spit out where they’re holding Empress Twilight Sparkle prisoner.

“And then?” I said, my voice low.

“We go in with everything we have and rescue her, of course.”

“And then we have a ragtag band of rebels plus one Empress. What will that accomplish?”

Bellwether scowled. “Freeing your sovereign and mine.”

“Bell, I look up to her more than most ponies do.” There was a tight knot of sadness in my chest. “She’s my idol. But let’s be realistic, here. What can we do with her that we can’t do without her? How does she change the game?”

Bellwether worked his jaw, a look of uncertainty creeping over his face as my words sunk in. “I—I don’t know. I’m sure she’ll think of something.”

I shook my head. “That’s not good enough. We have to find something Her Majesty can use. A trump card. Otherwise, she’ll be in the same boat as the rest of us.”

“Well, one would hope she’d use her razor-sharp intellect to come up with a ‘trump card’, as you put it.” Bellwether fiddled with his beamcaster.

“So, that’s it, then,” I said. “All of this hinges on getting her out alive. After that, there’s no plan. Just wing it. Terrific.”

“We’re gonna need you.” Bellwether fixed his gaze on me. “You and the Mirage. If we go and get her, we won’t be able to go in guns-blazing. They’d squash us like bugs. A cloaked Charger and its pilot might have a chance. Enough of that shit, though. Time’s a-wastin’.”

I sighed. “Which vehicle are we using?”

“The scout car I captured.”

“I thought we were nearly out of gas?”

“We keep a stock of that heavy petroleum distillate fuel the cleomanni like to use.”

“That’s some nasty stuff.” I helped Bellwether into his lightweight body armor with my magic. “I’ve seen those engines all apart on a workbench. All the carbon deposits, scoring and grit. Can you imagine what’s in the exhaust? They just pump that shit right into the atmosphere.”

The former agent snorted skeptically. “So says the chemical weapons user.” Bellwether grinned, tossing his trusty hat aside and donning his helmet.

I squinted at him. “Alright, you win this round.”

“Let’s get moving. We ain’t got all day. Or, actually, I guess we do, since the sun don’t move. But that’s no excuse to waste time. Neither of us are getting any younger.”

“Do we have a plan, or are we going in blind?”

“We have photos of the outpost, taken just last week.” He sent the images to the picture-in-picture view on my heads-up display through the local datasphere. “There’s a small garrison of about a couple dozen Confederate Security, a field hospital consisting of a few tents, a guard tower, a shelter for a couple armored cars, and a chain-link fence topped with razor wire around the whole kit and caboodle. The plan is simple, Sergeant Storm; you cloak us, we trot right in and take what we need. Maybe I slash a few throats, maybe I don’t. Then, we leave. Simple as that. You get your painkillers, and everyone’s happy.”

“I’m kind of amazed that you guys would be willing to go to such lengths just for my sake.” I fluttered my eyelashes at him mockingly.

“Don’t get too full of yourself, kiddo. We ain’t doin’ this for you. We’ve been running low on medical supplies for a while now. You just happened to need some right around the same time.”

“Oh.” I smirked. “Well, in that case, fuck you.”

“No, fuck you!” He grinned.

I nodded. “Let’s get this shit done.”

“Let’s.”

Bellwether set a plastic gas can full of sickly-sweet smelling diesel oil on his withers, and the two of us left the armory. After a few turns, we entered an underground tunnel dripping with condensation. I swore I saw a rat crawling around on the floor in the corner of my eye, but when I turned and looked, there was nothing. The tunnel led to a big steel hatch in the overhead that swung open with a metallic groan. As Bellwether beckoned me from outside the hatch, I climbed the rusted ladder to the top, peeking my head out the opening and finding myself right next to the base’s outdoor parking area.

I used my levitation to retrieve the yellow plastic gas can from the base of the ladder where Bellwether had left it, since there was no way either of us were carrying it and climbing at the same time. He took it from there, walking up to the armored car, unscrewing the gas cap, placing the nozzle in the filler and tilting the can up with the tips of his hooves until it was empty. I closed the hatch behind us, pulling the dirt-encrusted tarp back over it to conceal the entrance.

The two of us boarded the vehicle and Bellwether gunned the engine, making the tires scrape dirt. Along the way to our destination, about an hour out from Crazy Horse, we parked the armored car inside the collapsed facade of a ruined building for concealment, each of us catching a couple hours of shuteye, sleeping in shifts in case of Vandal activity.

I dreamt of my flight from the Confederacy’s clutches, but instead of boarding the captured patrol boat and escaping successfully, the events kept replaying in my head, each attempt ending in failure. In one iteration, their drones caught up to me and shocked me into submission with their electrolasers, before that bitch in the pencil skirt walked up with her armed guard in tow and calmly put a bullet in my head.

In the next, I was so close to making it out alive, but Commodore Cake failed to drive off the Karkadann in time, and the one I’d struggled with slashed my neck with its whip-like tail as I thrashed and screamed, my throat gurgling as it filled with blood. It kept on and on and on like this, the cycle repeating time and time again. In the last repetition, I’d crawled out of the crashed patrol boat on my knees, only to look up and face Driving Band’s wicked smile as he raised Scheherazade’s core above his head and brought it down upon my shocked countenance with a sickening thud.

When I woke with a start, I bumped my head on a protruding panel in the armored car’s cramped troop bay, cursing loudly. We were on the road again. I heard the sound of crumpling metal and breaking glass as the ten-ton 6x6 armored car smashed an abandoned sedan out of the way without even slowing down. My head throbbed, and the jarring sensation didn’t help. I removed a small translucent plastic bottle from a vest pouch and popped another painkiller. My headache and the stabbing pain in my leg began to dull.

“How close are we?” I said, leaning my head into the cab.

“Another fifty kilometers,” Bellwether said.

My lips curled back. I felt an itch in the back of my mind. An eagerness to kill, bubbling up from beneath the doldrums. If there wasn’t any cleomanni cannon fodder around, then there was no reason for me to even be up and about.

I rolled back over, sighing exasperatedly. “Wake me when we get there.”

It felt like I’d closed my eyes for not more than two seconds before I was roused by the staccato sound of gunfire and flechettes pinging off the troop carrier’s angular hull.

“Contact!” Bellwether said. “Confederate patrol, ten o’clock, distance six hundred meters!”

I surged up from my seat, throwing open the hatch and grasping the fifty-cal’s spade grips in my hooves as I stood awkwardly on my hind legs. I brought the gun around and depressed the trigger with my magic. Click. Nothing. I reached forward and pulled on the charging handle, ejecting the dud round, before taking aim at the foot patrol and depressing the trigger again. The big gun’s reports reverberated through my chest as it spat hot lead, spent brass and links clattering over the armored car’s roof all the while. Motes of dust were kicked up on the far hill as the rounds dug into the dirt. Dead trees turned to splinters before my withering suppressive fire.

I got off about six or seven utterly deafening five-round bursts before the weapon ran dry. Panting from adrenaline, I ducked below the turret ring, levitated up another belt, flipped up the machine gun’s top cover, placed the belt in the feed tray, lowered the top cover and racked the charging handle. By that time, the enemy squad had already dug in and we were taking accurate fire.

I heard the supersonic crack of a round whizzing past my head. “Fuck!” I yelped and ducked into the vehicle’s armored interior.

I felt a burning, stinging sensation and something wet on the side of my head. I ran my hoof across it. It came back covered in blood.

“I’m hit!” I shrieked, my heart pounding and my ears ringing.

I gulped down the lump that had formed in my throat, taking in a deep breath through my nostrils. I broke out in a cold sweat as an overwhelming sense of dread came over me. Bellwether turned around in his seat momentarily and glanced at me before returning his eyes to the road.

“Iz a grz whrr yr righ ur eet yur ed. Yur fai.”

His voice was muffled, like someone had stuffed gauze in my ears.

“What?” I said.

“It’s a graze where your right ear meets your head!” he repeated at the top of his lungs. “It only nicked you. When you’re on the gun, stay low. And for the love of fuck, put your helmet back on!”

I nodded, grunting in pain as I reached up and brought the gun around again, keeping my head behind the receiver as I aimed blindly. The incoming fire began to slacken. I dared a peek over the top of the weapon, only to see a distant golden flash and a tiny black blur streak across my vision. I reflexively ducked, an action that probably saved my life. There was a Doppler-shifted scream of whistling fins of death, followed by a loud bang that shook my teeth. It all happened in a split-second.

“Rocket!” I screamed.

I stood up through the hatch and scanned the terrain momentarily. The round had impacted an earthen berm on the other side of the dirt road, kicking up a plume of dust that quickly faded into the distance behind us. The incoming fire petered out as the distance between us and our attackers grew. We’d lucked out. If I’d been standing up, the fragmentation alone might have killed me. If the rocket had found its mark, we’d both be charred skeletons in a burning steel coffin.

“So much for stealth,” Bellwether said. “Now, every patrol within thirty kilometers knows we’re coming.”

“How far is the objective?”

“Three klicks.”

I shook my head. “Shit, by the time we get there, they’ll be vectoring in on our position from everywhere.”

“More or less. Let’s get in and get out.”

“Isn’t this a bit risky?”

“It always is.”

“Shouldn’t we bail? RTB and re-assess the situation?”

“After coming all the way out here? Fuck no. Get your gear ready. We’re close.”

I levitated my helmet from the bench seat and set it atop my head, fastening the chin strap hastily. I had removed it because it didn’t make for a very good pillow. Though the burning sensation in my ear had subsided slightly and the flow of blood had stopped, I was regretting that decision.

The vehicle came to a halt well outside the perimeter. “We’re here. Let’s bounce before they come down on us like a sack of bricks.”

I checked and re-checked my flechette gun and beamcaster. The flechette gun wasn’t compatible with my helmet’s heads-up display, so I couldn’t keep tabs on how many rounds I had remaining, nor could I get a picture-in-picture view from its scope or a reticule overlaid in my display. I was going to have to aim the weapon and keep track of its remaining ammo the old-fashioned way.

I frowned, pondering something that I probably should have mentioned before. “Just so you know, sir, my invisibility’s only good for thirteen non-consecutive minutes a day. No longer. After that, I need to rest my horn for a while.”

“Let’s not push it,” Bellwether said, tossing me a large duffel bag. “Eight minutes, Sergeant. No more. We stick together like glue the whole time. Grab anything useful that you can see, but remember what we came for. Medical supplies. Suturing thread, bandages, meds, disinfectant, surgical tools. You get the idea.”

“I hear you.”

“I’ve got us parked in a spot where the vehicle will serve as a distraction. They’ll come out and search it, and that’s when we slip inside. Do not open fire unless we’re detected or fired upon.”

“Alright, I’ll cloak us,” I said. “Hold on to me, this is gonna get a little weird.”

As Bellwether put his hoof on my shoulder, I concentrated, enveloping both of us in my magic field.

“I can’t see a damned thing,” Bellwether said. “It’s pitch-black. How do you see where you’re going, Sergeant?”

“I can feel out the environment with levitation and echolocation magic. Unless somepony came up with a spell that redirects light around your eyeballs while still letting you see the redirected light and they neglected to inform me, this is how every unicorn’s invisibility magic works.”

“Good grief, kid. You could’ve told me this before.”

“You're some super-spy, and you seriously didn't know? When the coast is clear, I’ll uncloak us so we can see what we’re stealing.”

“Looks like we don’t really have much of a choice.”

Using my magic, I felt for the armored car’s side hatch and opened it. We filed out of the vehicle quickly before taking cover near what I assumed was the fence around the outpost. When I reached out with my levitation, I could tell immediately that we weren’t alone. I pinged the environment once, then twice, getting a better picture of our surroundings.

I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Shh, don’t move. Enemy patrol to our rear, approaching the vehicle from the hill. It’s like you said, they’re searching it.”

They were pretty stupid to just walk straight towards it. It could’ve been rigged with explosives, or the occupants may have been preparing to engage them with the crew-served weapon, for all they knew. I paused for a moment, holding my breath. I heard a gate swing open and the voice of some NCO barking orders in Ardun.

“We got two guys coming out of the compound,” I said. “Let’s move.”

We slipped inside unseen before they shut the gate in the chain-link fence behind us. There was a building straight ahead. Though I couldn’t tell without seeing it directly, based on the intel of the outpost’s layout, I surmised that it was the barracks. I kept feeling around until my magic pressed up against what felt suspiciously like waterproofed canvas. That had to be one of the medical tents.

“We’re in business.” I moved towards one of the tents and brushed the simple fabric flap of a door aside. I felt around with my magic. No casualties on the stretchers. No one sitting or standing inside the tent, as far as I could tell. I uncloaked us.

“Alright, kid,” Bellwether whispered. “Grab everything. Keep an eye out for that stuff we used on your leg. It’s handy to have.”

I searched the field hospital, scanning the storage racks, rummaging through drawers and lockers as quickly and quietly as I could. I used my levitation to float everything that looked useful into my duffel bag, while Bellwether scooped hooffuls of gauze, bandages and peroxide into his. I searched through drawer after drawer, until finally, I happened upon a set of syringes and IV bags that looked suspiciously like what had been used to mend my wounded leg, with pictograms of bone breaks alongside cleomanni gibberish. I carefully wrapped them up and tossed them in, as well.

That was when all hell broke loose. I turned just in time to see a rifle brush aside the opening to the tent.

“Anzala Ekkestreun!” the cleomanni guardsman shouted.

I quickly centered him in my field of view and used my levitation to trigger my beamcaster. The twin ball-turrets on my shoulders swiveled, locked and fired a pair of piercing emerald beams that drilled through the guard’s helmet. He collapsed in a heap, thin wisps of smoke rising from the charred holes in his facepiece. Shortly thereafter, we could hear the characteristic accusatory howling of the base’s siren.

“Oh shit,” I muttered.

Bellwether pulled his knife from his shoulder sheath with his mouth and ripped an improvised side exit into the tent with one big slash. I quickly followed him through it. We darted around the perimeter, between the rear of the barracks and the fence, while the guards responded to the commotion in the tent. I cloaked us and we went straight to the motor pool. I followed the smell of diesel and soot, feeling around until my magic touched what felt like off-road tires. We surreptitiously boarded one of the armored cars, finding its hatch unlocked and the coast relatively clear.

Once we were inside the vehicle, I uncloaked us again. The armored car’s white livery and interior configuration seemed to suggest that it was a medevac vehicle, but otherwise, it was similar to the other Pursuer we’d captured, minus the crew-served gun. While I stowed our bags, Bellwether reached under the armored car’s console and ripped out a colorful bundle of wires, hotwiring it faster than I could say nipple twister. I was almost stunned at how dexterous he was with his hooves, teeth and tongue. It sent a slight thrill down my spine, thinking of their other possible uses. Then I remembered he was kind of a dickhead and my enthusiasm waned.

“Now we’ve got two Pursuer six-by-sixes,” Bellwether said. “If you’re up for sneaking back over and driving the other one, that is.”

“Yes, sir!”

“That’s the spirit.”

I hauled ass out of the armored car, immediately finding myself face-to-face with two very alarmed Confederate guardsmen armed with pulse rifles. The sleek Confederate pulseguns were a newer development, part of a gradual phase-out of flechette weapons and their eventual replacement with miniaturized plasma pulse technology; a modernization plan that stalled due to cost overruns and disappointing field trials that revealed the weapons’ maintenance-heavy nature. They worked by subliming metastable metallic hydrogen into a gas, heating and ionizing it before projecting it as a focused stream of energy with magnetic fields.

The guardsmen shouted angrily in Ardun, raising their weapons and moving for cover. I cursed and launched myself into a rolling dive as hot blue streaks of plasma singed my flank. They’d taken cover behind another of the armored cars, taking blind potshots at me. I levitated out the flechette gun and cloaked it, slipping it past their cover and blasting them from behind with a full-auto spray of flechettes. They panicked and stumbled out from behind the vehicle, one of them bleeding from a wound to the leg.

I dashed out into the open and put beams into both of them. One fell to the ground, dead. The other crawled across the dirt, leveling his gun at me. With a shove of my levitation, I pushed the muzzle of his weapon aside before he could let loose with a volley of plasma that would’ve cooked my face off. I quickly closed the distance. Without hesitation, I brought my armored boots down upon the guardsman’s head with a sickening crunch. He wouldn’t be getting back up for a while, if ever.

I heard shouting from a distant corner of the base, prompting me to go invisible again. I only had about a minute or two of invisibility left. Moving this quickly while maintaining the spell strained my concentration faster than normal. When I arrived at the vehicle we’d abandoned, I was fortunate to find that the cleomanni had left it unguarded in their haste. I imagined the enemy racing on foot through the camp to try and find those damnable pony intruders who were in the process of making themselves some medical supplies and one armored car richer.

I boarded the crew cab of the armed Pursuer, squirming into the oversized driver’s seat as I uncloaked. My hind legs couldn’t reach the pedals. I tried scooting down so my hooves just barely brushed them, but then, I couldn’t see over the dashboard.

“How in the fuck does Bellwether drive this thing?”

I returned to a more upright position and resigned myself to using my magic. I turned the key, put the vehicle into gear and worked the throttle with my levitation magic, bringing the wheel around and accelerating directly away from the compound. That got their attention. It wasn’t long before dozens of Flechettes rang the vehicle’s hull like a gong.

Through the armored viewports, I could see Bellwether approaching from the rear, similarly assailed from all sides. There were bright pinpricks of light from muzzle flashes in the midst of the dust kicked up by his tires. Bellwether veered right and rammed his vehicle through the wooden supports of a guard tower, sending the machine gun nest and its screaming occupant toppling to the ground.

After he smashed through the front gate, I watched him turn and run over one unfortunate cleomanni guardsman. Even from within my own Pursuer’s armored hull, I could hear the crunch of bone and body armor beneath his wheels. I laughed like a madmare. There was no stopping us, now. My elation turned to panic when I heard a rattling cacophony overhead. A large contragrav drone whizzed over us, appearing briefly as a white blur in my front viewport.

“Enemy air,” I shouted over my helmet’s radio. “They’re coming around for another pass!”

Bellwether acknowledged by clicking his mic twice, sending bursts of static. Then, there was a tremendous thumping noise that reverberated through the vehicle’s hull. I yanked the wheel hard. Dust and falling debris obscured my viewport as a string of high-explosive automatic cannon shells kicked up dirt on the edge of the road. They were strafing us. I had to think fast. After a few seconds, I decided on a plan. I was only going to get one shot at this.

“Bellwether, bring your vehicle into direct contact with mine!” I yelled into my microphone.

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

I hit the brakes, bringing the armored car to a halt. I felt the vehicle jerk forward as his bullbars impacted the rear bumper. Using what little remained of my willpower, I reached out and extended my magic field to encompass both of our vehicles. We were plunged into pitch-darkness as I redirected the photons around us. Both of our vehicles winked out of view. The drone settled into a hover directly in front of us, its operator no doubt somewhat confused as to how two armored scout cars could have simply vanished. Neither of us could see it, but we could certainly hear it.

Holding a hoof out in front of me and navigating by feel, I crawled back to the crew-served gun, lining up my sights with the source of the rattling noise. Just in time, too. There was a thunderclap of pain in my head as my spell field collapsed, exposing us. However, the failure of my magic allowed me to see the drone and quickly line it up in my sights. Lacking the magic to use my levitation, I depressed the trigger with one hoof while holding a spade grip in the other.

“Die, motherfucker!” I shouted.

The fifty-caliber armor-piercing incendiary rounds shattered the drone’s lightweight composite armor. One of the spars holding a contragrav drive split like balsa wood and the drone plummeted to the ground. It pancaked into the terrain approximately a hundred meters ahead of us, kicking up puffs of smoke and tossing fragments of fiber-reinforced plastic everywhere as it thrashed madly on the ground like a thing possessed, its other three drives unbalanced for the lack of a fourth.

“Good work, Sergeant,” Bellwether spoke over the radio.

I crawled back to the driver’s seat, settling in for the long haul. It was then that I realized that I’d burnt out my horn. I lacked the strength to perform levitation magic, which was necessary for me to even drive the Pursuer at all.

I tapped the push-to-talk button on the side of my helmet. “Sir, this is going to sound like a stupid question,” I said.

“Go ahead, Sergeant Storm,” he responded over the radio.

“How do you reach the controls on these things?”

Bellwether cackled. “It helps if you have a fifth leg.”

It took a moment for me to fully process what he said. “Seriously?”

“No. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m just plain bigger than you are and have more reach. What’s the matter? Hornskull lost her magic?”

“This is no time for wisecracks. They’re right on our tail!”

“That didn’t answer my question, Sergeant.”

“You’re right. I can’t do magic right now.”

Bellwether let out a long, static-filled sigh over the radio, before dismounting from the medevac APC with the captured supplies slung over his withers. We had to abandon the second armored car, and it was all because of me. My shoulders slumped dejectedly. As Bellwether took his place behind the wheel, I scooted back to the crew-served weapon, opening the belt box to see how many rounds I had left before I’d have to reload it again. It wasn’t nearly as many as I would have liked.

Bellwether brought the vehicle to a stop near the wreckage of the drone. “Grab that piece of shit and toss it in here, Sergeant. We ain’t goin’ home empty-hooved.”

“Yes, sir.”

I stepped out of the armored car’s side hatch, looking over the wreckage of the drone. It was once a surgical white in color with some Confederate-blue accents, now caked with dirt and grime after its fight to the death with the ground. I wrapped my hooves around the central fuselage of the drone, and, with some effort, started dragging it, digging furrows in the dirt road. Every inch felt like a mile. Sweat beaded on my brow. The thing easily weighed half a ton, even in pieces. By any reasonable measure, this was earth pony-grade grunt work that strained my slender unicorn frame.

“Sir, this cocksucker’s too heavy. And too big. I don’t know if I can get it through the hatch.”

“Break it down. Take the micro-fusion reactor and the repulsors. And grab that cannon, too. Leave the rest of that shit behind.”

It was time to put that legendary pony strength to use. I did as instructed, seizing one of spars that held the contragrav drives in my hooves and snapping the hollow composite monocoque frame clean apart with a hearty tug. Even though it’d been a month, and even though I’d had the best treatment available, my leg still hurt like hell. I was beginning to wonder if I’d have to live out the rest of my years like this.

“I’m still healing from my injuries, y’know!” I said.

“Don’t be a big crybaby, Storm,” Bellwether muttered. “Just do it.”

After breaking the other two spars, I braced myself and pulled free the 20mm automatic cannon with a throaty grunt, tearing it right from its gimbaled mount by pulling the heads of eight hardened steel retaining bolts right through the thin sheet metal they were secured to. The Confederacy sure didn’t build these things to Equestrian standards of robustness.

That made the central fuselage section a lot lighter, down to about a hundred and fifty kilos for both pieces. Reasonable enough. I picked up the fuselage with the reactor—along with the cannon plus its loading mechanism and ammo magazine—and stuffed them into the APC’s cramped troop bay as best as I could. Then, I grabbed the drone’s contragrav repulsors and tossed them next to the rest of the junk before mounting back up on the turret.

“I’ve loaded what useful bits of wreckage will fit into the APC,” I said. “Are you sure this is a good idea? What about the transponder?”

“We’re gonna meet up with some of the techs on the way back. They’ll take care of it.”

“Whatever you say, chief.” I shrugged.

I brought the gun around. The other Pursuer, the one we’d left behind at the base’s motor pool, was chasing us. A couple cleomanni guardsmen were hanging off the sides, firing their guns wildly in our direction. I laughed at the spectacle, before opening fire right at their grille. After a few short bursts of fifty-caliber fire, their engine belched a roiling gout of flame as the incendiary rounds smashed through the block. The armored car swerved, veering off the road and into a ditch, whereupon it promptly rolled over, crushing the unfortunate guardsmen on the outside.

“I thought these things were supposed to be armored!” I yelled.

“Yeah, against ponies throwing rocks,” Bellwether said.

I felt less safe knowing that my conveyance was, yet again, cleomanni trash made by the lowest bidder. I scanned the terrain, firing suppressive bursts at the muzzle flashes I spotted in the dust cloud behind us. Eventually, the snap-crackle of incoming fire faded over the churning roar of the Pursuer’s diesel, with columns of smoke from the short and violent engagement left hanging off in the distance. I released a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding the entire time, slumping back in the turret ring.

// … end transmission …

Next Chapter: Record 06//Recognition Estimated time remaining: 26 Hours, 38 Minutes