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

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

// … decoding …

// … error - please re-enter password …

*************

// … password denied - 1 of 5 attempts used - please re-enter password …

*************

// … password denied - 2 of 5 attempts used - please re-enter password …

************

// … access granted …

Desert Storm

The barracks at Camp Crazy Horse was as sparse and dimly lit as could be. The bunks were as stiff and uncomfortable as the ones we’d slept in during basic. A few old propaganda posters, some scrawled over with mocking invective, littered the walls. Everypony had decorated their footlockers to set them apart. In the Army, that would’ve been a violation of regs, but in the ELF, such personalization was par for the course. A wireless speaker in the corner was playing some cheesy rock music.

“Hey, Sarge.” Corporal Shooting Star reclined on the bunk above mine, idly twirling a knife in her hooves. “What kind of parent names their kid ‘Night Terror’, anyway?”

I was mesmerized by her display of dexterity. She has a horn, why doesn’t she just levitate it?

“He changed it, I think,” I muttered, nervously running a hoof through my mane. “I dunno. Do I look like his mom to you?”

“No, ma’am. Just sayin’. Some o’ you Light Scouts’re mighty queer fellers.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on. Your accent isn’t thick enough for that Appleloosan hick shit, Corporal.”

A grin slowly split Shooting Star’s face. “Saw right through me, Sarge.”

I checked and re-checked my armor, finding everything satisfactory. I tacked up, securing my chest protector and its ballistic collar in place. I ran a cleaning cloth over the lenses of my beamcaster and snapped the dust covers shut before throwing the module over my withers and clipping the quick-release hooks on the harness together, making sure the emitters lined up correctly with the openings in the chest protector.

I looped the strap of my captured cleomanni flechette gun around my chest and slung the contraption over my back. Last, I lowered my helmet over my head and scanned left and right, allowing myself a satisfied smirk as the gimbals on the beamcaster silently tracked my head movements.

I glanced over my shoulder at the fiery-looking unicorn mare. “What do you think about the mission, Corporal?”

“Permission to speak freely?”

“Granted.”

“Mission,” Shooting Star huffed. “Babysitting you while you waltz directly into a cleomanni base and take whatever you want, you mean? Er, ma’am.”

“Hey, I can handle myself.”

“You wanna know what I think?” she said. “I think this is some special forces bullshit. Ordinarily, you’d send a few pegasus Dragoons to pull off something like this. Some dipshit is going to sneeze and wake the whole frickin’ barracks during the insertion phase, and then we’re all fucked.”

I winced. “Yeah, that sounds likely. It’d be nice if we had some heavy fire support, but we don’t. Our Chargers aren’t going to swing back around and make a beeline for us after hitting that convoy. They’re going to bug out and draw the enemy towards concealed SPAAG and SAM positions as soon as they’re done baiting enemy air cover. The main benefit of that is that it keeps their air assets occupied. The drawback is that if resistance ends up being heavier than expected, all we’ve got on our side is infantry.”

The Corporal shrugged. “That’s about the long and short of it.”

“Talk about harebrained schemes. Bellwether thought your plan to blow the train was crazy? Then what the hell are we doing intentionally drawing tank-busters towards our Chargers? That’s even nuttier. This whole thing is nuts. It’s like you said. If some idiot wakes the garrison, this is going to turn into a firefight, and then we are officially in the shit.”

“Geez, ma’am. Way to instill confidence.”

“Hey, you gave me your honest opinion, and I parroted it right back at you verbatim and now you disagree?” I shrugged. “Just shows the futility of wasting time jawing about it. Now let’s stop bitching and go get this shit done.”

I grabbed the rest of my gear, including the portable terminal I’d snatched from the corpse of the hacker who’d taken part in the ill-fated Ahriman Station raid. I checked the charge and flipped it around, inspecting it. Still had some battery left. Corporal Shooting Star saw it, a look of trepidation crossing her features.

“Hey, is that thing being tracked, ma’am?”

“I don’t know, Corporal. I don’t think so. Besides, it’s one of ours, not one of theirs.”

“You might want to show that to Cinderblock. We could be able to use it during this next raid, somehow.”

I levitated it over to Sergeant Cinderblock’s bunk. “Yo, Cinderblock. Portable terminal. What do you make of this thing? Could it help us get past these damn guard towers somehow?”

“Nope,” he said. “I went over that unit weeks ago. It had some stolen Confederate crypto on it, but they canceled the keys a couple hours after the Commodore’s team jacked that patrol boat.”

“Shit.” I put the portable terminal in my saddlebags. I’d find a use for it one way or another.

“I consider myself pretty damn good, but I don’t have the faintest idea how they spoofed the approach protocols to the station.” Cinderblock shrugged his massive shoulders. “I heard they had an elite hacker. What’s-her-face. Peach Cobbler. I’ve been meaning to get her number, if you get my drift.” He winked.

I shook my head. “Too late for that, buddy. She’s dead as a doornail. A bunch of cleomanni bioweapon critters got to her. Gored her right in the face through her helmet. Turned out to be a stroke of luck for me, since the only reason why I made it off that station alive is because I relieved her corpse of her EVA suit and found another dead pony with a breached suit but a still-intact helmet. I had to fucking spacewalk to make it to the patrol boat.”

Cinderblock frowned. “Motherfuckers. You serious?”

“Yes, I’m fucking serious. Didn’t Bellwether brief you assholes on the Karkadann? They’re the same damn things that broke my leg. Dude, you wouldn’t believe the mess they made of her. That fucking EVA suit was filled to the brim with Peach’s blood and brains. It was all squishy on the inside. I spent most of that prison break literally stewing in another pony’s juices while being chased by security guards and their pet monsters. It was the stuff of fucking nightmares.” I gestured towards my face. “In case you didn’t notice the bags under my eyes, Sergeant, I haven’t had a wink of sleep since I came off the meds. I’m all fucked up.”

“Is that gonna be a problem?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. You tell me. Do I look like the most sleep-deprived pony in the room?”

“You stow that bullshit right this minute,” Sergeant Sagebrush said, tromping over from his bunk and getting in my face. “Lemme make one thing perfectly clear; I don’t like you. Hell, half the squad thinks you’re a fuckin’ prima donna fuckin’ hotshot pilot piece of shit cunt. We’re sticking our neck out for you for a negligible gain in combat-readiness. We don’t need ponies like you to win wars. All you do is sit in that air-conditioned tin can and push an ‘I win’ button, and if that’s not good enough, you push another, bigger button labeled ‘Poison Gas’. My boys, the infantry, the tankers, we’re the ones who bleed and suffer. We’re the ones who make those incremental gains vital to the war effort. You assholes just drain the budget with your ornamental fucking wonder weapons.”

I clapped my hooves together in mock exultation. “Terrific! Another moron who doesn’t understand the first thing about Charger operations. It’s about psychological warfare. It’s about giving Equestria something to rally behind and the cleomanni something to fear. They have tanks, we have tanks. We all have tanks. I used to drive a fucking tank, myself. There’s nothing iconic about them. They’re as faceless as their operators. But if you’re a satyr and you see a dozen giant metal ponies come galloping over the next hill, well, that’s when it’s time to invest in a pair of brown pants.”

“Bullshit. We could’ve ordered a hundred Minotaur or thirty Basilisk tanks for what it costs to buy and maintain a single Courser like yours. Nothing puts the fear of Celestia in those assholes like seeing a wave of true Equestrian steel rumbling towards their position. D’you think you could take a hundred Minos in a stand-up fight with your silly, complicated, delicate walking machine? With its mile-high profile sticking out like a sore hoof on the battlefield? Please.”

I closed the gap between us. “Try two hundred.”

“The dick-waving must stop!” Sergeant Placid Gale interposed herself between us and shoved us apart with surprising force. “This is what those bastards want. The two-legged devils want ponykind divided and weak. Don’t do their job for them.”

Sagebrush glared at me, spitting his tobacco at the floor between my hooves, but he didn’t say another word as he turned and departed.

Cinderblock patted me on the withers. “Don’t worry, he’s like this to all the new blood.”

The great big unicorn and the other squad leaders followed Sagebrush out into the hall and towards the main cavern proper, leaving me alone with the pale pegasus, Placid Gale.

I sighed. “Let’s just go get those parts, okay? I don’t want this mission to turn into a bloodbath for our side, either. We do this clean and quick. No fuck-ups.”

“Easier said than done,” Gale said. “We’ve suffered some major defeats these past couple months. Lost a lot of good ponies. We need this to be a win, even if it means fighting dirty.”

I allowed myself a smirk. “You could say I know a thing or two about the art of dirty fighting.”

“Here,” Gale said, handing me a small metal vial with a cap on the end.

“What’s this?” I said.

“An autoinjector with one dose of Atropine. We’re passing them out to everypony on this mission. But just because you have the antidote, that doesn’t mean it’s safe to breathe the gas. I don’t have to tell you about what OA-13 does to people. I’m sure you already know. If the wind changes and blows the nerve gas towards your position and you think you might’ve accidentally inhaled some, don’t hesitate. Retrieve the injector, remove the cap and punch it into your neck where the fur’s the thinnest.”

“You know a lot about this sort of thing. Were you a medic?”

“I was,” Gale said. “Saw a lot of things I wish I could forget.”

“Medics don’t fight,” I scoffed.

Gale frowned. “Yeah, that’s why I had my specialization changed before the end of the war. Got beamcaster training and went infantry. I was sick of plugging holes in our guys. I wanted to make a few of my own, in the enemy. Even if that weren’t the case, this is an insurgency. We’re all grunts, now. Even you, if the need arises, pilot.”

“Fuck that noise.” I grinned. “Sounds to me like you should’ve gone pilot and joined up with us in the Eighth, instead. You’ve got the killer instinct. I can smell it on you. You’re not prey. You’re one of us. A predator. It’s a shame you’re a pegasus. Can’t quite work the controls of a Charger or sync up to its spell locus crystal without a horn. The Dragoons wouldn’t take you, either. I hear they train those freaks from birth. Test tube foals. I guess that leaves the Stormtroopers.”

“Negative.” Gale shook her head. “I want the enemy—the armed, uniformed enemy—to die. I don’t relish in the suffering of the innocent. Put me on the front lines, sure, but I want no part in any spec-ops skullduggery.”

“Well, see, that’s the thing you’re going to have understand one of these days,” I said. “No one’s innocent. Not in this war. We’re all pigs, dogs, and pig-dogs of some variety or another. This is a war for awful bastards, that’s what it is. The other bastards, the bigger bastards, they’re over there, smilin’ at us, watching us fail and fall. I intend to wipe that smug smirk off their faces and grind their heads face-down in a great big pile of horseapples, and I don’t care what anypony thinks of me for it. How about you, Gale? Do you think we’re heroes, yet? Because the way things are going, I just don’t fucking see it.”

There was a glint of insanity that shone in Gale’s eyes as she turned towards me, her gaze boring a hole into my very soul. A chill went down my spine. I almost regretted my words, right then.

“You think I don’t know that?” Sergeant Gale said. “You think me naïve? Some wide-eyed ingenue who doesn’t even know what sort of evil she’s fighting against?”

Placid Gale reared up and drew a hoof across her gut. That’s when I saw it. A great big jagged scar across her abdomen, where the fur had never grown back.

“What the hell?” My lips trembled.

“I was a prisoner, like you, held captive at one of the Confederacy’s terrestrial facilities. Some bunker out in the Badlands. The Liberation Front busted down the front door and rescued us, and then the Confederacy abandoned it. Did you know, Storm? Did you know that the Karkadann are too big to pass through a mare’s birth canal? Did you know that they have to cut them out of you surgically? Oh, but you wouldn’t know a thing about that, would you? I can see it in your eyes. You lucked out. They passed you up.”

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. A disgusted shiver ran through my bones. “That’s not something that anypony should ever have to endure.”

Gale had a faraway look in her eyes. “Those first few months of my newfound freedom, the resistance fighters kept a close watch on me while I healed from my ordeal. I tried to arm myself and sneak out. Go AWOL. They caught me and threw me in the brig. I was planning on heading straight back to the Badlands.

“There are some cleomanni freebooters with a settlement out there, where the Confederacy turns a blind eye to them and their violation of the blockade. They trade with ponies. They’ve got food, and our gold is as good as anyone else’s. I was going to steal into their tents and their prefab shelters and slit their throats while they were asleep.”

Well. “Yeah. I can see why. Can’t argue with that.”

“Every time I look in a mirror, I am reminded of what they did to me. How they used me. Storm, have you ever been ashamed of your own body? Have you ever spiraled so deep into the darkness that the only way out was over someone else’s corpse?”

“I can’t say that I have. Nope.”

“Me and Bellwether had a bit of a scuffle during my last escape attempt, a year ago. Put us both in the infirmary. The Resistance rehabilitated me. They taught me that I need to stay focused. No ponies, and no civilians. Only the enemy must die. If I didn’t have that sense of discipline, if I lost all self-control again, then I’d be of no use to the rebellion. If I went down that path? If I started? I’m not sure I could ever stop. I’d go join the Vandals, or just wither away in the wind and die.

“Let this be a warning to you, Storm. Don’t tempt me to unnecessary violence. I have more of it in me than you can possibly handle. I’m telling you this because I care about you.” She smiled wistfully, but there was deep wrongness in her eyes—a hollowness behind those shimmering pits. “You seem like a nice pony, and I don’t want you to get hurt on account of my problems.”

I backpedaled nervously. I had to get the hell out of here. Being alone with her didn’t feel even remotely safe at this juncture. “Right. Yeah. Sounds good.”

Gale shook her head, trembling softly, her eyes brimming with tears. “Storm, if only you knew. They’re trying to replace us. That’s what this war is all about. We’re not good enough for them the way we are. We never were. They will never stop, until we’re practically extinct and their twisted facsimiles are wearing our skins. It’s not about political power.”

“Then what is it about, Gale?” I whispered.

She was shaking like a leaf by this point. “They want our bodies. They want our souls. They want to dominate us from within and without! What did they do to me, Storm? How could a monster like that grow inside me? What else did they do? What did they twist and change?” She scratched and picked at herself with a hoof, anger seeping into her features. “I need out. I need out of this skin. It’s tainted. I’m tainted. How do I know that I’m not gonna turn into one of those things? Could I even have a normal foal anymore if I tried?”

This mare was fucking cracked. The Equestrian Liberation Front must’ve been pretty desperate if they were sending mental cases like her into combat, let alone giving her command of a squad. Upon reflection, it wasn’t so odd. In a way, we were all a little bit broken inside. This war had robbed us of everything. Our homes, our livelihoods, our essential dignity as a species. Maintaining one’s sanity under these conditions was a tall order. However, there was only so much trauma a pony could take, either mentally or bodily, before they were unfit for duty. She’d crossed that threshold long ago.

I rested a hoof on her withers, feeling her whole body jerk reflexively at my touch. “Sergeant, you went to medical school, right?” I smiled when I saw her nod in response. “Then you should know that’s impossible. Biology 101. Your genes are expressed, already. Your body is made up of adult cells that aren’t going to just shapeshift overnight. The only thing I know of that can do that is magic, and the satyrs don’t have that. You’re one hundred percent pony, and nothing will ever change that fact.”

Gale looked up at me, her teary, bloodshot eyes stricken with fear. “You don’t know that. Those filthy aliens. They’re killing us, Storm. This is a war of genocide. Our people have had so many losses these past months. So many dead. When is it enough? When will the Confederacy’s bloodthirst be sated? When we are all rotting in the ground?”

“A little fatalistic, don’t you think?” I said.

Gale ignored me. “Why couldn’t they just finish the job? Why didn’t they bombard our world into dust? It’s because they enjoy this. They’re toying with us. As soon as they’ve had their fill, they’ll deal the killing blow. In our place, they’ll raise ponies who don’t speak, don’t think, and don’t question them. Mindless abominations to do their bidding. What if our flesh is as malleable to them as clay? What if they discover some way to use our own latent magic against us? What are they planning to do with us?”

I drew the shaking mare into a hug, letting her sob pitifully into my shoulder. “You know, if you want to sit this one out, I’ll ask Bellwether and see if we can—”

With surprising strength, the pegasus reared up and slammed me into the wall, a cold rage in her eyes. In the blink of an eye, she had a piece of sharpened steel at my neck; an automatic knife, the kind that was built directly into a pair of spec-ops combat boots and flicked open like a deadly hind talon.

“You breathe a word of this to Bellwether, and I’ll slice you open from cunt to horn. Try me, Storm. Go on, do it. Go run your mouth in front of that fucking spook. I’ll feed you your eyelids, you little shit.”

I was quaking with fear. If I were back in the Army, a couple of MPs would’ve tackled her, and that would be the end of that. But this wasn’t the Army. “I won’t say a fucking word. Promise.”

Gale withdrew the knife and folded it into her boot. “That’s more like it.”

It was a very tense and awkward walk for the two of us as we linked up with the rest of the team out in the hangar. The Bull Runner pulled up alongside four neat lines of armed and body-armored resistance fighters, its turbine howling in the confined space, its fog lamps casting an uncomfortably bright pool of light. A few of the Raven team pegasi had heavy anti-tank missile launchers slung over their withers. Occasionally, they’d stretch their feathers and the twin Tatzlwurm launchers would extend like a second pair of wings, their twelve-centimeter bores yawning menacingly wide.

Bellwether clapped his hooves together. “Listen up. Eagle and Raven have twelve each. Eighteen each on Osprey and Magpie. They need the extra hooves to rig the train and sift salvage. We do this quick and clean, and everypony gets to come home alive. Let’s get a move on, people. Pile on!”

Those of us on Magpie and Osprey took up position in the extended cab, while Eagle and Raven elected to hang off both sides of the flatbed, their beamcasters at the ready. It wasn’t the most comfortable of personnel carriers, but it would do, in a pinch. We pulled the giant, multi-axled beast out of the hangar and past the motor pool. Eagle Team disembarked from the Bull Runner and then mounted up in the Pursuer, with Raven spreading out on the flatbed to take their place. Even though Bellwether was on Eagle, he was one of the few ponies in the formation qualified to operate the Bull Runner, so he stayed behind with us. The Pursuer was designed to transport eight cleomanni, but a dozen ponies could easily fit inside.

We drove along the canyon floor, Camp Crazy Horse fading off into the distance. One windblown rock face after another passed by the extended cab’s narrow viewing slits. Soon, we exited Ghastly Gorge and broke out onto level terrain, with the Pursuer in the lead. It would be hours of driving up pebble-strewn dirt roads, avoiding the highways, bypassing miles of ruined strip malls and depressingly dead forests before we finally approached the perimeter of Outpost 17. Bellwether switched the Bull Runner’s lights off as we neared the base, plunging us into the dusk.

“All squads, disembark,” Bellwether said.

I dismounted from the Bull Runner, following Corporal Star and the rest of Magpie as they filed out of the spacious rear cab. I checked my beamcaster again, just to be on the safe side. Bellwether had pulled us into a dense thicket, and Raven Team was already covering the giant vehicle in a camouflage tarp, four pegasi pulling the corners taut and setting it down over the entire truck in seconds with practiced zeal. It wouldn’t hide us from infrared during the exfiltration. We’d still need my magic to do that. I shook my head. This was a dangerous gambit.

Bellwether waved us forward, his beamcaster emitters following his gaze. “Eagle, Raven, form on me. Watch your spacing. Osprey, Magpie, form up on our six. Stay at least two hundred meters to our rear. Avoid contact with the enemy. Maintain radio silence unless directed otherwise. Move out!”

We stayed low, stalking like predators through the dried, decaying brush. We circled the ridge, keeping an eye out for enemy sentries or patrols. There was nothing. The forest was as silent and still as the grave. In time, we caught sight of the train tracks. Bellwether held up a hoof off in the distance, and Eagle and Raven came to a halt. Osprey and Magpie followed suit. That’s when I saw it. Confederate Security Forces. Three-man patrol, moving along the tracks, right towards our position.

We hunkered down low, remaining motionless. As soon as they were almost right on top of Bellwether’s position, a dozen ponies leapt from the bushes. The cleomanni fell like sacks of potatoes. Correction; they didn’t fall. They were dragged to the ground. With almost unnerving speed, Raven Team’s knives descended upon them. The struggle was brief and violent, and the satyrs didn’t even get off a shot. Aside from a couple strangled yelps of pain echoing across the scrubland, they barely made a peep. I saw a flash of white wings amidst the carnage, stained red moments later from a spray of arterial blood.

“I see Sergeant Gale’s getting some much-needed stress relief,” I muttered.

Raven Team swiftly dragged the bodies into the bushes, disappearing from sight. We got the signal to move up from Bellwether, lights flickering in our helmets’ heads-up displays. Our helmets had Aetheric Responders. They put out a superluminal magical signal that could not be intercepted or detected except by skilled unicorns with sensitive scientific apparatuses. However, they could only send a few bits of information at a time, enough for simple telegraphy. Voice transmission was out of the question.

We followed the tracks all the way to the perimeter of the base, circling the ridge until the fence came into view. The outpost had been constructed around an old, rural train station. We received the signal to hold position again. Bellwether signaled Osprey to move up and leave Magpie behind. We’d ran into a small snag. Motion sensors on the perimeter. I turned up the magnification on my helmet’s eyepiece, watching the scene unfold.

Placid Gale held up a hoof, signaling for Osprey to hold position until the guard in the tower turned their back. Cinderblock charged a grenade-sized device with his horn, before chucking it at the fence. There was a faint flash of light and a soft noise, static washing over my display briefly. It was a magic flux compression generator, a form of non-nuclear EMP device. I held my breath, waiting for any sign that we’d alerted the guards or triggered an alarm, but there was no response. Cinderblock deftly clipped through the chain-link fence with some wire cutters. A pair of mechanic pegasi in camo overalls peeled back part of the fence for the three squads to move through single file. Shortly after, we moved up and followed suit, careful not to get our uniforms caught on the ragged edges of the fence.

A spotlight swept over us and all four squads reflexively went prone, lying flat and perfectly still against the ground, our camouflage blending into the terrain. Still no alarm. So far, so good. As the dusk covered our movements yet again, we inched closer to the rail depot, where the Excelsior loomed in the darkness, venting puffs of steam like some manner of living, breathing creature. Placid and a few of Raven’s fleet-footed pegasi assaulters closed the distance to the first guard tower with alarming speed.

They wove their way up the core of the tower’s wooden supports, using their wings for a boost from ledge to ledge. It was almost surreal to watch. Then, they rounded the top of the railings and fell upon the two guards in the tower like a force of nature, kicking and stabbing them into puddles of reddish goo. Even from this distance, I could hear the wet thuds of their blades striking home and the soft patter of blood dripping through the floorboards. Osprey Team moved up and secured the train platform, fanning out and boarding the locomotive. There were a few muffled thuds and green flashes that could only be beamcaster fire inside the train, but it wasn’t loud or bright enough to draw any attention, or so I hoped.

Osprey stayed behind with the locomotive and kept their beamcasters trained to the north. Eagle went left, and Raven went right, clearing the checkpoints and guard towers. We moved right up the middle. Nervous tingles crept up my spine. Every instinct was screaming at me that we had to turn back, or we were going to be discovered. Still, we pressed on. After a few moments, we got pinged on our Aetheric Responders. The last of the guard towers had fallen and our own lookouts were occupying them instead. This was going close to plan. Too close.

Then, we all halted in our tracks as we received a few rapid pings. Incoming. Ground vehicles. Eight. Eight incoming ground vehicles. Armored cars and supply trucks, most likely. I heard the sound of approaching engines and started to panic.

One of the mechanics looped his legs around me and dragged me into a gap between the buildings. Headlights swept across the base, casting long shadows behind the prefab structures. I dared a peek around the corner of the nearest building. The vehicles had stopped at the western entrance, where Bellwether’s team was. My blood ran cold. That wasn’t a supply convoy. It was six armored cars and two tracked APCs. Power armor carriers.

“Oh fuck,” I whispered.

The checkpoint was out of action, having already been cleared out by Eagle Team. There was no one standing watch to open the gate. The lead vehicle began honking their horn. The alarm would be raised, and soon. It was now or never. There were a series of pings on the responder, the signal for all teams to go loud and for the Charger Lance to spring their distant ambush on the convoy. We were compromised.

There was a loud bang and a bright orange flash as an explosive charge took the roof off the command post, along with its communications aerials. A pair of guided Tatzlwurm missiles streaked from the western guard towers and impacted the lead vehicles in the convoy, leaving behind smoking craters.

Bellwether’s voice came in loud and frantic over the radio. “Eagle One to all units, weapons hot! I repeat, fire at will!”

Everything was going pear-shaped. The gas-masked pegasi of Raven Team swooped in low, dropping nerve gas grenades in the front and rear of the barracks buildings. They planted their hooves and flapped their wings, manipulating the air currents to draw a steady downdraft through the growing plumes of lethal gas and straight into the openings in the prefab structures. They fired their beamcasters, punching holes into the structure to make it easier for the gas to get inside.

A half-dressed cleomanni soldier stumbled out of the building, coughing and wheezing and waving his pistol around aimlessly, only to be cut down in a split-second. There weren’t many nerve gas-afflicted soldiers stumbling from the barracks buildings, nor was there anyone shooting from them, and that was, in itself, a snag, because it meant the buildings were practically unoccupied.

“Something’s not right,” I said. “Where are the enemy troops that were supposed to be in the barracks?” I tried moving towards the warehouse, but Corporal Shooting Star dragged me back.

“Wait, ma’am. It’s not safe! We haven’t received the all-clear from Bellwether to move up, yet!”

“Fuck it!” I said. “I’m going to get what I came for, come hell or high water!”

Against my own better judgment, I ran out into the open. The supersonic crackle of flechettes snapped through the air, right past my head, pockmarking the ground at my beating hooves. I broke into a dead sprint, galloping the last thirty yards to the warehouse. I turned and delivered a heavy buck with both rear hooves to the side door, busting the latch. A cleomanni soldier rounded the corner of the warehouse, leveling a long arm. I dropped low and drilled him in the knees with my beamcaster. The emitters realigned and locked on as he stumbled and fell, and I triggered another shot, piercing his torso center-mass. He went down hard, his armor filled with smoking holes.

Another of them took cover at the same corner of the building, crouching low and centering me in his sights. I gasped, rolling through the open doorway to my right in the very same instant that he opened fire, the deadly projectiles chipping holes in the doorjamb. The interior of the structure was hardly any safer. A cleomanni maintenance worker hefting a pipe wrench charged me while letting loose with a throaty war cry, fully intent on braining me with his makeshift weapon.

I charged my horn, quickly going invisible. I couldn’t see him, but he couldn’t see me, either. He let out a bewildered yelp, tripping and landing flat on his face. I dispelled my invisibility and pounced on his prone form. The guardsman outside had repositioned to the open doorway. I looped my forelegs under the mechanic’s arms and rolled such that I was using him as a living shield.

“Bidu aspare, maridnaehurridneken!” I screamed, the filthiest of language crossing my tongue.

It was just enough to make the guardsman hesitate. That was all I needed. I quickly looped a fetlock behind my back and around the pistol grip of my captured Confederate VB-10. I swung the hefty weapon around, safety off, then I squeezed a couple times. The smoothbore barked twice, bucking in my grip. I had cut the trigger guard off with a die grinder the day before to make it easier to manipulate without fingers. It worked like a charm. The bastard went down like a sack of potatoes as the sintered bimetal flechettes pierced his body armor and exploded in his flesh.

“Nighty night!” I stomped the cleomanni technician’s temple until he was very much unconscious, and then I stood and double-tapped him just to be sure he’d never be getting up again.

I checked my ammo. Sixteen rounds left in the flechette gun. There were still a few mags to spare, as well. My casters read ninety-five percent functional. It wouldn’t need servicing until it dropped below sixty percent, which could’ve been after thousands of cycles. Sophisticated self-diagnostic monitoring systems kept track of every aspect of a beamcaster’s condition, and if it sustained damage in combat that could lead to a catastrophic failure, it would warn the user before they attempted to fire the weapon and potentially harm themselves. A damaged beamcaster was basically a small bomb resting on your back.

“Barracks, clear!” Raven team radioed. “We’re moving to reinforce the western gate!”

I looked around at the interior of the warehouse, but it was empty. There wasn’t a single piece of patrol boat wreckage in sight. I had a feeling in my gut like I’d swallowed a lead sinker. This was not going according to plan.

“All squads, fall back to the train platform!” came Bellwether’s panicked voice over the radio. “I repeat, fall back towards the south immediately! Do you copy?”

“Copy that, on my way to the platform now,” I muttered into the radio. “Our intel was bad. The warehouse is empty. No salvage in sight.”

Upon closer inspection, it wasn’t empty. Stacked at the far end, in a dimly lit corner, were dozens, no, hundreds of cages. They appeared to be brand new, large enough to fit six stallions packed in like sardines, and of sufficiently sturdy stainless-steel construction that a pony could never break their way out. There was something eerie about it, like they were stockpiling for something in the near future.

“Magpie Two, haul ass out of that building right now! She’s—fuck. You’ve got hostiles coming in hot, and you don’t want to be there when they arrive!”

Bellwether sounded spooked. The staccato chatter of the firefight outside hadn’t abated, either. I wanted to comply with the order to retreat, but I wasn’t sure if it was safe to rush outside and cross the gap to the next structure over. As a matter of fact, I was positive that if I left the concealment of this building, I’d be cut down in very short order. I was going to have to go invisible, but I had to make sure not to waste my magic in case we needed it for the extraction.

“Understood, sir. I’m pulling back now.”

Bellwether radioed the other teams. “Raven Team, uh—Sergeant Gale, I’ve got eyes on Captain Granthis.”

Granthis. The name alone sent a chill down my spine. There was only one other Granthis I knew of, and he was the bastard chiefly responsible for the near extermination of all ponykind.

“Are you sure it’s her, Bell?” Placid’s voice over my earpiece trembled with nervousness.

“It’s her, all right. It’s the fucking president’s daughter! She’s headed right for Sergeant Storm’s position! Celestia’s tits, this was a fucking trap!”

I heard a loud bang that shook me to my core. Across the empty warehouse, a midnight-black blade, its edge aglow with blue plasmatic flame, split a metal fire door nearly in two, before a heavy, jack-booted stomp sent what was left of it flying inward.

I was frozen with fear at the clanking armored form that strutted through the open doorway, wielding a four-barreled shotgun with an integral plasma bayonet that ran down its entire length. The massive weapon was half artillery piece, half greatsword. As she marched inside and the dust around her settled, we made eye contact. The Dochnast woman was youthful-looking and pale as porcelain, her albino-white hair hanging in a pair of pigtails that bobbed about her neck. Her horns were polished to such an extent that they almost seemed to shine.

With the exception of her unhelmeted head, every part of her body was covered in a suit of heavy, obsidian-black power armor; it was like what GARG troopers wore, but far more decorative. Segmented faulds as black as midnight ran down to her knees, and under those faulds hung black tassels embroidered with elaborate designs in silver thread. From the spiky black sabatons all the way up to the spiky black vambraces, the whole ensemble was as knightly looking as it was gaudy, like something that belonged in a museum rather than stalking a modern battlefield. Every feature on it was chosen for intimidation over practicality and range of motion. However, as anachronistic as her armor seemed, underneath it all was the same force-amplifying technology you’d find in any exosuit, and that meant that I was outmatched in all respects.

Captain Granthis grinned, baring her sharp canines, her wide and hungry eyes filled with an all-consuming madness. “I spy with my little eye, something that begins with a dead pony slut, and ends with my boot halfway up your taxidermized ass!”

I yelped and did a stage dive off the concrete platform where I stood, just before a burst of explosive slugs pockmarked the corrugated metal siding of the wall behind me, blowing hoof-sized holes in them. That gun. It wasn’t just some break-action shotgun. It was a stacked-projectile volley gun. A Marbo Eliminator. Each of those four tubes had ten disc-shaped 23mm explosive slugs with an electrically ignited interstitial gunpowder charge between each one.

It wasn’t just four barrels and done. The damn thing could fire forty explosive slugs as fast as the operator could pull the trigger, or four simultaneously, or even spew all forty of them near-instantaneously with an adjustable fully-automatic rate of fire up to three thousand rounds per minute; a lethal spray of micro-grenades with a concomitant extreme recoil that could easily break a cleomanni’s arm and send the weapon flying over their shoulder. That is, if they weren’t wearing power armor.

“Shit!” I screamed. “Shit oh fuck!”

I rolled and stumbled to my hooves as the Captain’s Eliminator roared, sending chips and fragments of concrete into my legs. I leapt to one side as the floor exploded under my hooves, my limbs trailing smoke. The blast had knocked the wind out of me. She was toying with me. Deliberately aiming just off the mark.

“Dance, little pony!” she screamed. “Fucking dance, meat!”

I shivered, covering my face with my forelegs. I spat blood. A lump of flying flooring material had smacked me right in the jaw. I looked up to see the satyr hefting her weapon above her head, enemy troops streaming into the building behind her. She triggered a mechanism in the handle of her Eliminator’s massive plasma blade. The weapon flashed to life, its edge glowing blue and buzzing with a steady hum like an electric arc.

“Blue hair.” She could barely contain her glee. “I like. Your head is gonna look great on the wall of my daddy’s villa, pony!”

I cloaked myself, diving out of the way just in time as she brought the plasma sword down. I wished I could’ve seen the expression on her face, but all I heard was the clang of steel against concrete and her subsequent growl of disappointment. I brought my VB-10 around and let loose with a volley of flechettes to the general vicinity of her head, but my magic sonar indicated that she’d raised some sort of heavily armored bracer to cover her face.

“Face me, Equestrian coward!” she bellowed.

Granthis charged straight for my flechette gun’s muzzle flash. Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t standing anywhere near my gun anymore. I let the VB-10 clatter to the floor and I struck an overloaded shelf full of very heavy spare parts with a burst of levitation magic, knocking it over right onto her. I grinned as I heard a pained screech.

While peering out from behind a rolling tool cart, I dropped the camouflage to see what I’d done, scooping up my captured flechette gun with my levitation and slinging it over my back. She had been buried under a bunch of gears and pistons. Spare diesel engine parts. When she shakily rose to her hooves, shoving the cardboard boxes and plastic bins full of heavy cast and forged metal components aside with augmented strength, she was bleeding profusely from a head wound, her expression filled with venom.

I laughed. “Maybe next time, you’ll remember to wear a helmet instead of showing off those cute locks of yours, you silly bitch!”

Granthis flicked the Eliminator at me, aiming straight for me this time. “Die!”

Her weapon clicked on empty, and she screeched with dissatisfaction as she began the lengthy reload process. Her troops formed a firing line to take me out, their patience with their leader’s silly games having worn thin, but I was long gone. Cloaked and right out the side door of the warehouse, galloping harder than I ever had in my life.

Cleomanni society was plutocratic by nature. Each Guild not only oversaw all matters of commerce, industry and finance, but they also functioned as political parties. Every decade, they held one of their sham elections. The current reigning party was Guild Marbo, and the candidate they elected several years ago was Salzaon Granthis, a wealthy industrialist and renowned sportsman. An interplanetary hunter of dangerous game. The guy was a real playboy. He had rustic lodges on planets all over the Free Trade Union’s sphere, and those private retreats had numerous preserved and stuffed creatures on display. He used such apex-predator trappings to intimidate his guests during meetings. Again, ponies were never hunter-gatherers. Our culture could scarcely comprehend such obsessions.

Members of the high-ranking Guild families could, at any time, invoke the privilege of Guild Right, and after the councilors reviewed the applicant’s CV and cast their ballots, a promising young prospect could be sponsored as a champion of their respective guild. They would be allowed to bring their own sizable wealth to bear on the battlefield, wielding non-standard-issue weapons and armor. In exchange, they relinquished to their guild the right to use their likeness for propaganda and advertising purposes. It was a business deal, like everything else in their society. The process was inherently nepotistic, and very few of the so-called champions had prior military experience or were qualified to even be on a battlefield in the first place.

The power-armored freak that had come a hair’s breadth from cutting me down was the Guild Marbo champion. Mardissa Mavali Taffalstriak Granthis, Salzaon’s own daughter. A psychotic little runt who bought her way into the Confederate Army with daddy’s money. They called her the Demon-breaker, because that was the literal meaning of Taffalstriak, not because she was exceptionally experienced or deadly in combat. It was a thinly veiled insult.

Nevertheless, she had millions of credits worth of augmentations and power armor, and though she was no GARG trooper, she was a tangible threat to any infantry who crossed her path, provided that she could resist the urge to give her enemies a sporting chance. She was a hunter like her father, not a soldier. The Confederate Army barely tolerated her presence. Her lack of discipline was a detriment to unit cohesion.

I knew all this because, naturally, as special forces Charger pilots, we had been routinely briefed on all the major cleomanni high-value targets, and what to do when we encountered them. Back when I was still in the Army, ORACLE had come up with a deck of fifty-two playing cards with the Confederacy’s HVTs represented by the four different suits; Spades for the big-shots and their immediate family, Clubs for the bureaucrats, Hearts for important military brass, and Diamonds for the Mil-Int spooks and technologists. Salzaon himself was the Ace of Spades, and his daughter was the Queen of Spades.

Mardissa Granthis was on the capture-alive-if-possible list, as well. The possibility of a ransom or cease-fire conditional on her life was appealing. Contrariwise, her hypothetical death might have triggered punitive raids. Capture and interrogate, yes. Martyr her, no. Absolutely not. Whether or not that moratorium still applied when she was literally chasing after me with an energy sword with a shotgun mounted to it, I had absolutely no idea. I’d cross that bridge when I got there.

Far more worrying was the presence of the Confederate Army in general. That convoy wasn’t CSF. We were now engaged in a firefight with a regular Army platoon of equal or greater size to our own forces, and we were an irregular militia with a mixture of former military personnel and ill-trained civilian volunteers. In short, we were beyond fucked. We were mega-fucked. Ultra-fucked. In fact, there was no limit to how hyperbolic of an expression was appropriate to the degree of fuckedness we were now experiencing. If there was a dimension that consisted of nothing but glory holes and endless rows of turgid cocks waiting anxiously to enter them, we and our unfortunate orifices had just been flung headfirst into this blighted realm.

I had an idea—a half-formed, desperate plan. “Magpie Two to Eagle One, is there any way we could take Granthis alive?”

When Bellwether’s strained voice came over the radio, it was accompanied by the unmistakable sound of guns and beamcasters trading fire. As I neared the platform, the reports I could hear with my own ears began mirroring the ones in my headset. “Negative, negative! Are you fucking crazy? No! You have your orders, Sergeant. Fall back.”

“Sir, she’s wounded. I got her good! With her as a hostage, we could make a clean break.”

“Is she still up? Still moving?”

“That’s affirmative.”

“Then she’s not fucking wounded enough!” Bellwether was furious. “Do not play lone fucking wolf unless you want the last thing that goes into your cunt to be the flechette that runs straight up your barrel and blows your head up like an overripe watermelon! Get your ass back to the fucking train platform, pilot, or I’ll break your fucking neck myself, out!”

I quickened my pace, my muscles burning with exertion as I closed in on the train platform and the chatter of an intense firefight. I ducked low to avoid the crossfire, beamcaster fire snapping noisily right over my head as the air in the path of each beam was decomposed into a plasma by rapid heating. I sent out a magic sonar ping. Five enemy soldiers taking cover by the leaking 55-gallon drums. I had their flank, in more ways than one.

I retrieved a frag grenade from my vest, pulled the pin, and took cover by a prefab barracks, cooking the grenade for a couple seconds and cloaking it with my invisibility magic before slowly passing it their way with my levitation. They didn’t even notice as the damn thing went off in mid-air, right next to their heads. Five soldiers became three corpses and two floppers. I seized my flechette gun’s heat shield in my magic and whacked the two survivors in the head the same way a Yak would club a baby seal. They ceased their flopping.

I closed the last few meters to the firing line and leapt over the barricade, uncloaking myself. Bellwether was huddled behind the stack of crates, and he was so startled, he nearly fell over. “Fuck’s sake! Warn me next time before you do that. I almost shot your ass!”

“Sorry!”

“Nice job with the grenade, by the way. Shit, more of the bastards incoming!”

“Why aren’t they falling back?” One rebel militia mare stood up from her cover, only for the top of her head to be taken clean off by a flechette, her helmet clattering to the ground with frayed fibers where the round had punched all the way through both sides.

It hadn’t killed her. A stomach-churning scene unfolded as she stood, screaming, the top of her skull shattered by the flechette fragments, blood waterfalling down her cheeks. She let loose a burst of aimless beamcaster fire and stumbled towards the hostile contacts, before a couple more flechette salvos struck her in the neck. Her head flopped over, half-decapitated, hanging from a string of flesh, remnants of her cervical spine standing erect like a stalagmite in its place. She promptly collapsed in a twitching ball of death spasms.

I winced. “Yep, gonna have those good nightmares tonight. The ones where you wake up sweating, and—”

“All squads, keep your heads down and return fire!” Bellwether screamed over the radio.

The order was an oxymoron. Beamcaster emitters were shoulder-mounted. The only way to return fire was to expose one’s head and neck over the top of one’s cover. I, on the other hoof, had a flechette gun of my own, and as the Liberation Front members opened fire, I raised it above the barricade and blindly pelted the enemy with flechettes.

“Fire in the fucking hole!” I pulled a pin and chucked a frag with my levitation magic.

The Confederate troops yelled commands and scattered as they tried to flee. I rolled out of cover, staying low to the ground. I nailed two of them in the legs with a pair of accurate beamcaster bursts. They went down hard, clutching their knees and screeching in agony. I rolled back just in time before the grenade loosed a deadly spray of fragments, mulching anyone who couldn’t escape the kill radius in time.

Six ponies took this as an opportunity to charge straight from cover, picking off stragglers as they went.

“Eagle One to all squads, stay in fucking formation!” Bellwether shouted, his voice laced with desperation.

It was too late. A dozen Confederate soldiers and a very pissed-off Captain Granthis rounded the buildings at the end, firing as they advanced. The rebels were caught flat-footed. I watched a stallion become mist as a salvo of 23mm micro-grenades caught him dead center in the torso. Four others fell just as quickly to flechette fire, before the satyrs descended on them with bayonets, stabbing the life out of them. The last mare crawled backwards, dragging an injured hind leg, screaming and raising her forelegs above her head as Granthis brought her hissing plasma sword down like an executioner’s axe. The savage blow cleaved the mare into two steaming halves, body armor and all.

“We’re dropping like fucking flies!” I said. “These motherfuckers just keep coming!”

Bellwether shook his head. “I know. I know! We’ll get out of this alive, one way or another. While you were fucking around in that warehouse, you’d probably be pleased to know that Osprey got a lock on the shit we’re looking for. It’s on the train after all, organized all nice and neat.”

“What?” I was flabbergasted.

“Eagle, this is Osprey One. We are go for extraction!”

“Perfect timing,” Bellwether said, keying his mic. “All squads, pop smoke, fall back and board the train! Fucking double-time it!”

Right on cue, a half-dozen smoke grenades were tossed from behind the barricades and outbuildings closer to the platform. Bellwether tapped me on the shoulder, and the both of us made a run for it, flechettes snapping over our head as we dived into the obscurant smoke.

The stallion outpaced me with his big strides, disappearing into the gray murk. When I broke out of the cloud on the other side, he was hanging off the side of a freight car, frantically waving ponies over. A couple dozen of us filed inside as quickly as we could.

Bellwether slid the door shut right as a hail of enemy projectiles slammed into the far wall of the freight car. We shared the cramped space with some assorted materiel from the shipwreck, all stacked up in plastic bins. It seemed like they already did the hard work of sifting the wreckage for us, and then loaded the stuff back up on the train. Our intel was old and shoddy.

I did a quick head count; twenty-four. Judging by the moans and whimpers of pain, at least a third of them had some kind of injury. They weren’t the only ones, either. I tasted copper. I felt my swollen jaw, licking at all my teeth to make sure they were still there.

“I don’t see anyone from Raven or Osprey,” I said. “This is just plain fucked.”

“Osprey Team is up in the locomotive,” Bellwether said. “Last I saw Raven, they were still fucking engaged, by the guard towers on the western end of the base. Won’t respond on radio.”

“We just going to leave them behind, sir?” Corporal Shooting Star muttered.

“Get down!” Sergeant Sagebrush shouted.

Everypony pressed themselves flat against the floor of the rail car as a salvo of flechettes stapled their way across the thin sheet metal, the artificial lighting from the base casting rays through the bullet holes. There was a rising commotion outside as the Confederate troops shouted and advanced through the smoke. The rebels huddled together for protection, some clearly scared out of their wits. My breathing quickened. This was starting to get to me, too.

“They had the most pegasi out of the two assault teams,” Bellwether said. “Hell, they should just fly their asses over here. Shit, I’ll try them again.” Bellwether keyed his mic. “Raven Team, this is your last fucking chance. The rest of the teams are south of your position. Withdraw to the train immediately! I repeat, withdraw towards the south and board the locomotive. We are leaving. Do you copy?”

“Help us,” the radio crackled. “We’ve been engaged. We’ve got wounded! There are two GARG heavies on the perimeter! Rak suits! Oh fuck, incoming!”

I peered out one of the bullet holes in the side of the car and focused my vision on the guard towers a couple hundred meters away, just in time to catch the fearsome sight of a three-meter-tall suit of battleship-grey Rakshasa power armor leaping over three stories into the air and tackling the side of a guard tower with such force that the structure’s supports were uprooted and it tipped over and fell like timber.

Two pegasi scattered and took flight as the tower dropped from under their hooves, only to be immediately rendered into paste by airbursting autocannon fire from the second battlesuit, bits of them raining down like red confetti. Bellwether and I shared a look of terror.

“Osprey team,” Bellwether said over the radio. “Eagle and Magpie are aboard. Get this fucking train moving, pronto.”

“So, looks like we ended up doing the great rail heist after all, eh?” Shooting Star snickered.

“Stow it, Corporal,” I muttered.

“Eagle, this is Osprey,” the radio crackled. “We can’t just leave the other assault team behind, can we? What about Placid? We just gonna leave them to be captured by those bastards?”

“We don’t have a choice!” Bellwether was livid, foamy spittle flying from his mouth. “I shouldn’t have to fucking explain the purpose of your orders, but just in case you need a little additional motivation, two Rakshasas are moving in from the western entrance of the base. In about sixty seconds, we’re all going to die. If you don’t get this thing moving, so help me, I’ll come up there and find a way to drive this train by putting your mouth on the throttle and fucking you in the ass!”

There was a pause before Osprey came back in, sounding more than a little dismayed at the prospect of abandoning a whole squad. “Affirmative. Throttling up now.”

Bellwether keyed the long-range transmitter. “Eagle One to Falcon One Actual. We are being pursued by enemy forces. We’ve captured the loco and are heading west, speed approximately sixty, soon to be over a hundred. You are to ignore your previous orders and immediately divert course to our position and assist in clearing out these hostiles, over!”

I could hear Night Terror’s mocking sigh crackle through my earpiece. “Copy that, Eagle One. Our objectives are complete. The convoy is neutralized, and the ruse worked. Ack-ack boys bagged two drones, two gunships and a fast mover before the rest got wise and bugged out. We are diverting south as ordered. Will intercept your projected course in approximately forty minutes. Stay alive, boys and girls.”

Bellwether shook his head. “That fucking slow-ass Destrier of his. If the rest of those fucking gunships swing back around and hit the train or the tracks ahead of us before they go bingo fuel, we could all be dead in the next ten minutes!”

The loco’s giant steam turbine built to a steady hum as our conveyance cruised along the tracks, smooth as butter. I could scarcely believe it. We were actually doing this. We were liberating a locomotive from the enemy’s clutches. It would only be a temporary victory. As Bellwether intimated, all it’d take would be one airstrike on the tracks ahead of us, and we’d be stuck, or derailed.

“You were right,” I said. “This was a fucking trap.”

Bellwether shook his head. “It’s not that simple. We have a mole. Someone talked. Only way they could’ve known.”

“Fucking why?” My ears drooped. “Why would anypony sell us out to those pricks?”

“Brainwashed.” Bellwether nodded. “Or spiteful. Or just plain stupid. You can count greedy out. The Confederacy never honors a deal with a traitor, and most ponies are smart enough to know that.”

Bellwether’s sapphire eyes locked with mine, and I didn’t like the look in them. The way he studied me intently.

“Uhh, no,” I said. “I would never. Never fucking ever!”

“In retrospect, it’s a little strange how you walked away from that crash site to begin with.” Bellwether set his jaw. “Even stranger how you survived direct contact with a Guild Champion wielding a fucking Eliminator. Why would Captain Granthis, of all people, let you leave that hangar in anything other than a body bag?”

As the locomotive picked up speed, an unnerving silence descended over the rail car, punctuated by the rising hum of the heavy traction motors. All eyes were on me. Some bore fearful looks. Most looked like they wanted to kill me, especially Sagebrush.

“I’m not a fucking spy! I am loyal to Her Majesty, the Empress, and I am completely devoted to the cause of restoring the Empire and returning Twilight Sparkle to the throne!”

“That’s a pretty big turnaround from somepony who seemed so disinterested when we first picked her up,” Sagebrush said. “But I guess a mole would say just about anything to save their ass.”

My mouth opened and closed with shock as I scooted backwards while several members of Eagle Team advanced on me like they were fixing to beat me to a pulp.

“Guys, I killed over half a dozen of those sons of bitches!”

“You strayed from formation, disobeyed orders, went off on your fucking own, and you survived a confrontation with a power-armored goon that you should not have.” Bellwether rubbed his forehead. “You know very well how bad that looks, Sergeant.”

“She was toying with me,” I said. “She had me dead to rights. That sadistic freak deliberately shot wide, just to watch me squirm.”

“Wait, stop!” Shooting Star leaped between me and the advancing ponies. “I saw the Sergeant fighting. She’s one of us.” Shooting Star circled around behind me, putting a foreleg on my withers. “Now, I don’t mean to be insubordinate, but if you’re not one of us, pilot, if you’re working for the cocksuckin’ satyrs, I’m gonna stick my hoof all the way up your fuckin’ ass and your last moments will be spent as my own personal meat puppet, ma’am. We clear?”

I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. “Yes, Corporal.”

“Good,” she said. “Well, I guess that settles that, for now.”

The rest backed off, but they kept glaring unblinkingly at me. This was going to be a long, tense ride, and we weren’t even out of the woods yet.

Bellwether shook his head, biting his hoof in concentration. “If it’s not Storm, then it has to be somepony else. This isn’t over. I’m going to be running a full investigation after we return to base. If we make it back alive.”

I wasn’t too keen on Bellwether’s mole theory, anyhow. It could’ve been that the Confederacy simply noticed a pattern of raids and decided to use the salvage and the train as bait. The satyrs may have been assholes of the highest caliber, but they weren’t completely and utterly brain-dead.

“The radome from the ship,” I said. “Where is it?”

“A few cars back.” Bellwether pointed aft. “A few members of Magpie are already retrieving the Bull Runner. We’re gonna transfer it over, probably while on the move, and then get off this damn train.”

Bellwether threw open the far door to the freight car. The landscape whizzed by at over a hundred kilometers an hour, the base vanishing into the background. I saw something incoming. Pegasus mid-flight, a thousand yards behind us. The Raks were in hot pursuit, their legs in wheel-mode.

“Cinder, slow us down a bit!” Bellwether shouted over the radio.

He leaned out of the cab and yelled back at us. “What?”

“Just do it!”

As the Rakshasas and what appeared to be the leader of the ill-fated Raven Team closed in, I could see that it wasn’t just one pegasus, but three, and the Raks were firing on them. My jaw dropped. Sergeant Gale was carrying two wounded pegasi while dodging and weaving, flapping her wings hard. One was on her back and the other was cradled in her legs. That mare’s willowy appearance was deceptive. She had to be as strong as an ox. Another member of Eagle team threw open the other freight car door. There were a couple Pursuer armored cars trying to keep pace with the train, up on the ridge above the railway.

We took cover as machine gun fire tore through the center of the freight car, returning fire with our beamcasters. I let off a burst of pencil-thin green beams, watching as they bounced off of the armored car to no effect. I dived for cover as I was rewarded with a burst of heavy machine gun rounds.

“We need those fucking armored cars gone!” I screamed.

“We’re all out of missiles,” one stallion chimed in.

“Squad, set Casters to dispersion zero-seven-zero, full-power shots,” Sagebrush said. “Aim for the tires! Burn ‘em!”

Thick columns of green light lashed out at the APCs’ running gear, heating their tires until they bubbled up, melted and failed catastrophically, turning to whipping strands of rubber wrapped around a steel rim. Then, the run-flat cores disintegrated from the heat. The enemy vehicles promptly veered off the road and into a ditch.

“Yeah, get some, bitches!” Sagebrush hollered.

There was a blue glow at the back of one of the wrecked APCs, which soon took to the air. I peered through the eyepiece of my flechette gun’s ballistic computer, zooming in to get a better look. It was Captain Granthis, her armor suspended from a contragrav harness, its four emitters lit up and rattling like tin cans.

“Wait, she can fucking fly?” My jaw dropped. “That’s fucked up!”

“Who’s flying?” Bellwether said. “What are you talking about?

Corporal Star peeked out one of the freight car doors. “It’s Granthis! She’s pursuin’ us, alone!”

Bellwether was chagrined. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! We’re fish in a barrel!”

“Open fire on ‘er! Don’t let her close the distance!” Sagebrush waved the others to the freight car door.

Half a dozen beamcasters discharged skyward. The beams were too thick and unfocused to get the job done, only succeeding in ablating a millimeter of armor off the target’s exoskeleton with sparks and puffs of smoke.

“You idiots!” Sagebrush hollered. “Do I have to tell you how to do everything? Set beamcasters back to normal anti-infantry settings! You’ll burn up your fuckin’ emitters like that!”

They complied, but it was already too late. The power-armored cleomanni nutcase had already changed her flight path such that she was directly above the rail cars, outside our firing arcs. There was a loud bang and a flash of light, and then another. The sheet metal on the far end of the rail car peeled open like tinfoil as one explosive slug after another slammed into the roof.

“Send them to hell, my pretties!” came the Captain’s muffled voice from atop the rail car.

Four spider-bombs dropped in through the roof of the freight car, scurrying towards us, very much intent on latching onto our faces and turning us into puddles of mulched flesh and bone. Grown mares and stallions flailed and screeched in terror.

Shooting Star leapt between us and the skittering bots, scooping them up in her levitation. Their tiny legs kicked uselessly as they were suspended in mid-air. She crushed them all into a tight ball with her magic, casually walking up to the gaping rents in the roof of the freight car.

“Hey Confederate bitch, I got a present for you!”

She passed the compacted spider-bomb ball up through one of the holes, before frying it with pyrokinesis until it blew.

I dared a peek out the side, catching a glimpse of the Guild Marbo champion tumbling end over end and sending up great big rooster tails in the dirt, her contragrav harness wrecked by the sheer force of the impact. A cry of applause reverberated through the rail car.

“Yeah, Star!” one stallion hooted. “You did it! You got her!”

“So long, fuckface!” I shouted amidst nervous laughter from the others.

Before I knew it, I was face-to-face with Placid Gale, who’d flown in through the other rail car door. She was livid. After setting down the casualties, the pegasus mare turned and marched up to Bellwether before hauling off and socking him right in the snoot.

“Cocksucking spook, we pulled your asses out of the fire, and you fucking left us to die!” Placid rained blow after blow on him.

He caught one of her punches and reversed it, slipping behind her and putting her in a sleeper hold, her screams of rage giving way to alarmed choking noises. “Knock it the fuck off, Gale! It was either that, or let the Raks wreck the train, destroy the cargo we came for, and turn all of us into fucking chum! It was a tough decision, and I hate the outcome as much as you do, but it was better than the alternative. Now, ease up or I’m gonna put you to sleep.”

Gale stopped struggling and stood, flicking her tail and flaring her nostrils angrily. “I had to leave behind three wounded mares. They begged me to shoot them so they wouldn’t be taken alive, but I didn’t have the heart to do it.” She glared at me. “This shit we’re stealing for Storm’s Charger had better be fucking worth it. As in, you owe me a hundred dead satyrs for this, Storm. If you don’t pay up as soon as your machine’s fixed, I’m going to beat your ass, Sergeant.”

“No, no,” I said. “You don’t have anything to worry about from me. As soon as Dust Devil’s back in working order, I’ll be exceeding that number by an order of magnitude or more.”

Placid’s lips peeled back in a mirthless smile. “Good. Very good.”

I ran a hoof through my mane, lingering on my wounded jaw. I was tired of being threatened by my new crew. I had newfound resolve. I needed to get my Mirage up and running as soon as possible. That would give me some real value to the ELF and put all doubts about my allegiance to rest.

Sagebrush peered out the side. “Those Raks are getting closer. Can we speed this thing up?”

Bellwether keyed his mic. “Osprey, throttle up. The wounded members of Raven are aboard.”

The train shook with heavy thumps as autocannon rounds struck the rearmost cars, blowing them apart.

“They’re not gonna let us go,” I said. “We’re never gonna be able to make the fucking cargo transfer with two Raks on our tail. They’re gonna derail th—”

There was a loud boom and a grinding noise as the whole train lurched.

“Well, they did it.” I peeked out the side and saw sparks shooting from the trucks of the last rail car. “We’re dragging that last car behind us.”

“Our speed’s dropping fast!” Cinderblock radioed.

“Fuck it, I’m going,” Placid said.

Bellwether put a hoof on her withers. “What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna detach that last car,” Placid turned and eyed the rest of us disdainfully. “The rest of you oh-so-special hornskulls and mudponies can stay here and let the expendable pegasus do her fucking job.”

There were a few gasps at her choice of language, but I ignored the slurs, approaching her without hesitation. “I saw you lift those casualties. Take me with you.”

“What?” Placid narrowed her eyes. “Why the fuck would I do that? You’ll just slow me down.”

“If you gimme a lift, I can make you invisible,” I deadpanned. “You can’t dodge an electronically-fused airbursting round. All they have to do is set it to gated proximity mode, lock you, let loose a few rounds, and then scrape what’s left of you off those tracks and toss it in the stew pot. The guns on those things can be used to bring down gyrodynes. To them, you’re nothing but a tiny helicopter made of flesh and bone. So, what’s it gonna be, meat helicopter?”

I could see her doing the mental arithmetic, her eyes darting around before settling on me. “Deal. Let’s go.”

She crouched down by an open rail car door and I jumped onto her back, hugging her neck with my forelegs. With a burst of wingpower, we were propelled out the side of the car with surprising force, heading skyward at an alarming rate. I looked down and could see the two Rakshasas far below us, trundling alongside the tracks. The rearmost of a good twenty freight cars was in pieces, its damaged trucks shooting sparks.

“This is gonna be a little weird!” I yelled over the howling slipstream.

“What?” Placid said.

I cloaked us, and I could feel Sergeant Gale squirm and panic beneath me.

“What the fuck? Storm, I can’t see! I’m fucking blind!”

“Relax, that’s just how the spell works. I’m bending the light around us so we look transparent, but as a side effect, it can’t reach our eyes, either.”

“Well, how the hell do you see whenever you cloak?”

“With magic,” I said. “I’m gonna grab your ears for a sec. If I pull your right ear up, it means go right. Left ear up, go left. Both ears up and down means ascend and descend, respectively. Follow the sound of the train, and for the love of Celestia, don’t hit the fucking dirt.”

I steered my pegasus steed towards the moving rail cars, pinging our landing zone continuously with my magic. She obeyed my ear-inputs with surprising alacrity, which was a good thing, because if she didn’t, we’d both be pasted across the landscape.

“This is fucking humiliating!” Placid yelled. “I’d rather let those Raks blow me to fucking pieces than let you ride on my back and fly me like a hang glider.”

“Quit bitching, alright?” I said. “Slow down! We’re coming up on the second-to-last car.”

I had her pull a quick one-eighty, accelerate to match the train’s speed, and then set down. The squeal of the damaged trucks was deafening.

“Okay,” she said. “Detach the car, and let’s get out of here.”

“I can’t.”

“What the hell, Storm? What do you mean ‘I can’t?’ Can’t you just levitate that thing loose?”

“It’s too much force and too complex of an action. I can’t concentrate on keeping us cloaked and uncouple the car at the same time.”

“Figures,” Placid muttered. “Fucking hornheads, man.”

“Whatever you say, turkey.” I could feel Placid ruffle her feathers in aggravation at the insult. “Just because I’m a unicorn, that doesn’t mean that I’m omnipotent, nor does it mean that I’m the second coming of Starswirl the Bearded. I’m just doing the best I can, okay? Now, go. I’ll keep you invisible with my magic. Just get the fuck down there and decouple the car before we all fucking die.”

“They were my friends, and I had to leave them behind,” Placid said, her voice quavering. “I left them to be captured and experimented on by those sick motherfuckers!”

The Raks had sophisticated acoustic detection suites. If it weren’t for the squealing of the damaged car grinding against the tracks, we would’ve already been picked up on their scopes because of her emotional display. It was cynical of me, but I had to convince her to be quit of her unprofessional behavior and focus on the mission.

“No, Gale,” I said. “You’re stronger than this. You can do this.”

She sniffed, rubbing her muzzle with her forehoof. “Yeah, I know. I’m going. Cover me.”

Placid held a hoof out, walking blind towards the edge of the car while I gave her directions.

“Ladder, one meter ahead.”

The pegasus swung her legs over the edge with practiced ease, gripping the rails with her fetlocks and sliding down the ladder.

“Cut lever’s to your right!” I said. “Give it a yank, and the coupling should let go.”

Placid felt for the lever, grasping and groping in the pitch-black darkness of the invisibility cloak, finding it after several seconds and kicking it with all her might. Her grunts of exertion increased in pitch and forcefulness as she struck it a second time, then a third. Nothing. It wouldn’t budge.

“It won’t decouple!”

I keyed the mic on my headset. “Bellwether, we’re trying to decouple the car, but no dice. It won’t let go.”

“You have to take tension off, first!” Bellwether said.

“If we slow down, the Raks will get us!” I said. “I know what to do. Hold on to your asses, people, ‘cause here goes nothing.”

I felt for the rail car with my magic. The whole thing was a lot lighter than I expected, after the Raks had hosed it down with gunfire and taken chunks out of it, but it was by no means light. The trucks and the bed of the car were many metric tons, and my lifting capacity was a fraction of that.

I wrapped the entire thing in a levitation field, gritting my teeth as I strained to concentrate. There was no way I could’ve lifted the rail car. It was much too heavy. For the Empress, it would’ve been child’s play, but it was impossible for me. However, I could pull it towards the moving train just enough to slacken the coupling.

My invisibility magic guttered out, and I found myself practically face-to-face with two Confederate spec-ops mech-suits bearing the insignia of a black wolf with a yellow lightning bolt on its forehead. My heart skipped a beat. It was the mark of the Gafalze Arresgrippen. The Special Assault Squadron. The Confederacy’s lethal, emotionless, half-lobotomized killers.

“Gale, hit it!” I shouted.

The pegasus slammed her hoof into the cut lever, before pressing her whole body against the car she was standing on to avoid getting crushed. With a shriek of torn metal, the damaged car veered off the rails and rolled end over end with astounding violence. It caught one of the Rakshasas dead-center, sending it tumbling away and quite probably knocking the pilot unconscious.

The other dodged the oncoming car with an evasive sidelong burst of thrust from its deafeningly loud vectored rocket boosters. The expendable solid-fuel rocket canisters, little red cylinders on a rotary gimbal, ejected over the bipedal machine’s shoulders with a shower of sparks before new ones rotated into place.

I eyed the Rakshasa with more than a little envy, pulling the technical specs from memory. Three meters high, eight metric tons. A shrieking gas turbine powerplant with over five hundred kilowatts output, coupled to a reduction gear and hydraulic pump. It carried a twenty-five-millimeter linkless-feed autocannon in the right hand, and a plasma sword in the left for hacking away like a machete at tank traps and other obstacles. They were like an Ifrit, but less than half the size and a fraction the weight.

There were two autoloading mortars on the back for withering indirect fire support, which could be exchanged with four anti-tank guided missiles for when greater anti-armor punch was needed. The Rak was a broad-shouldered, headless beast of a power suit. I even liked the color. Bluish gray with bold yellow diagonal stripes.

Exoskeletons this size weren’t classified as a Stridsgrippen, or Assault Walker. The cleomanni called them Battlesuits. It was regrettable that the Conclave never developed a Charger-like exoskeleton in that size envelope. It would have been cheap and practical.

It was easy to admire such a fine piece of engineering, in spite of its origins. Except this thing and its remorseless operator were going to slaughter me, or Gale, in about two seconds.

After shaking myself out of my reverie, I turned and bolted with a fearful whimper. Two concussive thuds slammed into my body. My ears rang. Everything burned. I briefly saw white. When I regained awareness, it felt like my skin was on fire. I collapsed to my haunches, screaming my lungs out. There were droplets of blood pitter-pattering on the roof of the rail car underneath me. My blood.

It hurt just to inhale, but I drew in a ragged breath nonetheless. “Gale! Help me! Fucking help! Medic!”

After a moment’s delay, I felt a pair of warm, strong forelegs cradle me. Through the haze of my spiraling double-vision, the very concerned face of a pale pegasus resolved in my field of view.

“I got you, Storm! Hang on!”

Holding me in her forelegs, Placid Gale took flight, evading incoming fire with an array of aerobatic maneuvers and quick dodges. Dizziness and motion-sickness overtook me. I gagged, and then turned my head and unleashed a torrent of frothy, bloody puke that spiraled away in the slipstream. Not my proudest moment.

I sharply inhaled, releasing my breath with a moan. I did this over and over again. Nothing seemed to dull the pain in my back that came on in waves. It felt like somepony had taken a jackhammer to my spine.

I blinked and must’ve lost some time, because before I knew it, I was in the rail car with the rest, less my helmet, and Sergeant Gale was stripping my armor off with the help of trauma shears held in her wingtips while another medic tried to stabilize me. Bellwether was yelling over the radio for Cinderblock to speed up the train. Some of the other soldiers celebrated and shouted taunts out the side of the car as they watched the remaining Rakshasa recede into the distance, unable to keep up with Equestrian steel.

I let out a low, pained groan. “Ohohohoho fuck!”

“Quit whining, you baby,” Sagebrush snorted.

“Naw, Sage,” one of the medic stallions said. “She’s actually taking this pretty well. Looks like a wad of ball bearings took out her right fucking kidney, and I’m not sure about the other one. She needs to go on dialysis like, as soon as possible. May be some shrapnel in her right lung, too.”

“Wh—what?” I whined. “Where the fuck am I gonna get new kidneys?!”

I had bits of metal in my vital organs. It wasn’t the first time I’d been hit by fragments, but by Celestia, I wished it was the last. I wasn’t looking forward to pissing blood, either.

Bellwether stared at me unblinkingly. “New mission, people. We’re gonna have to find Storm a fresh pair of kidneys.”

“Are you kidding me?” Sagebrush roared, his expression unreadable below the brim of his helmet. “This prima donna bitch is gonna be the end of us, Bell! I say we cut our losses and quit trying to restore a fucking Courser that will only marginally add to the lethality of our cell.”

“Now, you listen here you son of a whore.” Bellwether got in Sagebrush’s face. “Placid and that quote unquote ‘prima donna bitch’ just saved all of us from becoming fish food, you donkey-fucking hillbilly prick! Sky down, son!”

Sagebrush sat down hard, looking slightly deflated, but he still had enough piss and vinegar in him to keep up with his posturing. “Don’t you Son me, Bell. You’re only what, five years older than me? You’re just jealous because I’m one hundred percent pure animal. Raw, uncut, Equestrian majesty, in the prime of my fuckin’ life. And you’re what, like two years from being just as creaky as ol’ Crook? Yeah, you got real quiet there, boss. I thought so. Can see your gray hairs from here.”

“Here we fucking go again.” Placid facehooved with both hooves.

“Oh fuck, oh no.” Every breath I drew was agony. “Celestia’s sake, this fucking hurts. My saddlebag. The terminal. Grab it. Quick.”

“What for?” the medic stallion said.

“Cable. Neck port. Neuro-salve. Please.”

He reached into my ruined saddlebags and pulled out the terminal. The stallion let out a low whistle, giggling a bit as he showed me the terminal. What was left of it, anyway. The whole thing was crumpled in half and filled with ball bearing frag. The damn thing had probably saved my life. The armor coverage in the saddle area of Bulwark suits was notoriously poor. If I’d taken that hit full-on without the portable terminal to absorb part of it, it would have obliterated my insides. My last moments would’ve been spent drowning in my own blood. If I hadn’t brought the stupid thing along, I’d be dead.

“You think this is funny, motherfucker?” I said.

“No, not all. Just, yeah. Obviously, we’re not doing the neuro-salve.” He tossed the ruined terminal out the side of the train.

“Hold still!” Placid said as she jammed a needle into my foreleg. “Here, some morphine.”

“Oh shit, oh fuck, oh—” Slowly, bit by bit, the pain melted away, and I regained a small measure of cogency.

Bellwether glanced at me, and then Placid. “Keep her alert and talking.”

“Roger, roger.” Placid saluted.

“Placid,” I began, swallowing the lump in my throat. “There were cages. Stacked two stories high.”

“What are you talking about? Stay with us, Sergeant. We’re losing you!”

“In the warehouse. Cages, everywhere. They’re gonn—” I yelped as a pang of agony shot through my back. “They’re gonna start rounding ponies up. They’re gonna use the continental rail network. They’re gonna start collecting us, and all they need is to clear those last few strands of red tape. We’re completely screwed!”

“Fuckin’ drama queen,” Sagebrush muttered. “They’ve tried building concentration camps. We’ve sabotaged their efforts before, and we’ll do it again.”

Bellwether tapped a forehoof to his chin. “Storm’s intel matches what some resistance cells already know. We’re going to have to up the operational tempo. The Liberation Front is reliant on popular support, on the logistics side of things. If they cut our legs out from under us by rounding up civilians, we’re as good as done.”

The sound of squealing brakes filled my ears as the rail cars lurched under hard deceleration. The reverberations from head to hoof made my back ache and my stomach turn.

Bellwether keyed his mic. “What the fuck is going on, Cinder? Why are we stopping?”

“Pegasus scouts say the track ahead is out!”

“We’re out of time.” Bellwether shook his head. “The gunships have swung back around. And now, that other Rak is going to catch up.”

Sagebrush was on edge. “Well, when the fuck are Night Terror and Sierra gonna regroup on our position?”

Bellwether checked his watch. “It’s only been ten minutes since I ordered them to link up with us, so another half-hour. Which we don’t fucking have.”

“Well, shit,” Sagebrush said. “The hell do we do now?”

I could hear the whine of approaching motors, and the rest of the squad ducked behind the walls of the rail car. The second Rak screeched to a halt beside the train, leveling its gun straight at us. I was lying prone, in full view of the thing and its pilot, covering my head and whimpering.

A tinny voice blared from its chest-mounted speaker. “Anzala Ekkestreuni! Arume Konfed hentet! Zis-tain nev hentet! Shikret kized, adzen nevmetze!”

He said we’d be unharmed if we came quietly. Somehow, I doubted his honesty, and the others mirrored my distrust.

“He’s just waiting for us to come out into the open so he can gun us down.” Sagebrush spat a wad of tobacco.

“Wait, you guys hear that?” Bellwether said.

There was a loud and obnoxious whine of a gas turbine coming from the field behind the Confederate mech. A pair of pegasi burst from the bushes, looping a steel cable around the Rak’s legs and pulling it tight, before diving back into the cover of the dead, dry foliage. The Rak turned and tracked them, its autocannon booming as it fired into the gloam of the twilit field.

The cable pulled taut as the Bull Runner’s winch reeled in. The Rak was jerked off its feet and dragged across the ground face-down as the recovery vehicle reversed and twelve motorized axles applied gargantuan torque. The Confederate power suit dug a furrow in the dirt as it was hauled across the field, kicking up dust in its wake, its legs twirling end over end like a leek dropped in a garbage disposal.

There were whoops and hollers from the injured militia ponies all around me, as well as every variation of Get some, motherfuckers! possible in our tongue. The crew on the Bull Runner brought the giant recovery vehicle to a halt. The two pegasi from earlier, one of whom I recognized as Wind Shear, performed quick, swooping passes, dropping bricks of what looked like plastic explosive charges. I closed my eyes and covered my ears, for what little good that did me.

There were two deafening bangs and a brief fireball as the charges were touched off manually, the shockwave kicking up dust and obscuring the Rakshasa from view. My ears rang, my hearing muffled like I had my head wrapped in cotton gauze. A few of the militia ponies swore, shaking off their disorientation.

When I peeked up at the burnt carcass of the Rak, surrounded by bits of debris, its deadly autocannon a shattered husk, I let a small grin split my face. My jubilation soon turned to horror, however, as the mailed fist of an obsidian-black exoskeleton punched the Rak’s access hatch off from the inside with augmented strength.

“Oh fuck, no,” I whispered. “No!”

The GARG Trooper’s motions were unnaturally sinuous as he extricated himself from the ruined Rak’s cockpit with a deftness that belied the sheer bulk of his armor. The faceless mask of his helmet had no visible visor, cameras or eye slits of any kind. The armored covers for his twin horns made him appear like some manner of demon from the depths of Tartarus. His armor was as black as the night, except for a thin yellow band on his left pauldron that designated his rank as a spec-ops leader.

Without hesitation, he yanked one of their trademark heavy riot shields from its stowage position behind the pilot’s seat and drew out his monomolecular saber, advancing on us menacingly with his near-impenetrable wall of energy-reflective metal held out in front of him.

My fur stood on end. This was no mere Guild Champion. This was a crack soldier who knew how to get the most out of his augs and armor. I was uncomfortable facing GARG troopers even with the protection of my Charger’s armor, active protection system and comprehensive sensor suite. Wounded and stripped of my body armor, I was literally naked before him.

“Shoot the son of a bitch!” Sagebrush roared.

Needle-thin lances of green beamcaster fire fell upon the GARG trooper in an angry barrage, but he wasn’t there. He’d stood in our field of fire for a split-second, the first few beams visibly reflecting off his shield. The next, he was gone. His motions were a blur, his speed preternatural. He charged the rail car, sword in hand, his armored boots kicking up puffs of dirt.

I couldn’t take it. I clamped my eyes shut. We were going to die. We had nothing that could reliably kill a GARG trooper short of an anti-tank missile, and not only were we fresh out of those, even if we had one, he would never stand still and take that hit. A GARG trooper was a fast-moving target that was difficult even for a Charger’s sophisticated fire control system to track. Doing it with hooves was impossible. We were finished. In seconds, he’d be on us, hacking away, dicing us up into griffon cuisine.

There was a loud metallic clang. I opened my eyes, and my jaw slackened with disbelief at the scene that unfolded before me. The GARG trooper stood stock-still, weapon at the ready. Opposite him, the object of his undivided attention, was one of Her Majesty’s esteemed Dragoons, her unblemished white armor seeming to promise the imminent banishment of evil. The heraldry was unmistakable.

“Commodore Cake!” I whispered.

The two super-soldiers began to circle each other, their faceless helmets hiding their expressions. The militia members all around me held their fire, trembling in their boots. Sagebrush looked between us and the field with the two combatants, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to give the order to back up the Commodore, or to hold fire and avoid drawing attention.

The GARG trooper and the Dragoon charged at each other. Charged was the wrong word, really. Even lunged or catapulted seemed insufficient to describe the absurdity of what I witnessed. They shot at each other like each of them had been fired out of a cannon, their visages reduced to a wispy blur, punctuated by an earth-shaking boom as the Commodore’s lance clashed with the GARG trooper’s shield.

The impact released a bright flash and a shockwave that made the dust rise for ten meters in all directions, and then, without any fanfare or struggle, they parted just as quickly, returning to their original positions, slowly circling each other.

My heart pounded in abject fear, my breathing quickening, heedless of the pain shooting through my injured lung. The entire clash had taken no longer than a second, in spite of the good twenty meters between them. It had happened faster than anyone unaugmented could reasonably react. Some hundreds of milliseconds, bang, then some more hundreds of milliseconds, and they were back where they started.

It looked less like combat, and more like a stroboscopic image of an internal combustion engine in cross-section. Like a piston traveling from the top of a cylinder to the bottom and back. They didn’t so much move as they flickered from one place to the next. Impossible for the eye to follow, much less comprehend.

The tip of the Dragoon’s lance and the shield held at the ready by the GARG trooper both smoked as if heated by the impact to the point where they might’ve welded together, but neither had even a scratch on them. The forces involved would have reduced any ordinary pony to a pile of mush in an instant.

The two combatants kept circling each other, sizing each other up, looking for any holes in their opponent’s defenses that they could exploit, shifting their guard, feinting in anticipation of an incoming attack. Even with the sizable gap between them, their sheer speed meant they were basically face-to-face.

That was when the actual duel began in earnest. I could scarcely even describe what I saw, it happened so quickly. The two fighters closed the distance, their attacks blurred with impossible speed. Thrust, dodge, riposte, it all seemed to happen simultaneously, accompanied by the ferocious clanging of indestructible weapons and impregnable armor. The Dragoon’s lance missed the GARG trooper’s head by inches as he ducked, its pure white tip brushing across one of his gleaming black pauldrons. He tried swatting her away with the shield, only for her to backpedal as he advanced, cleaving the air with three mighty swings of his blade in less than a second.

The Commodore backflipped several times, twisted in mid-air with the help of her wings and landed on all four hooves with impossible grace, firing a blinding purple-white pulse from her overdriven beamcasters. The GARG trooper swatted it away with his shield, the deflected beam igniting a dried and dead shrub and setting it ablaze. Far overhead, I could hear the scream of jet engines and whirring rotors from a primitive gyrodyne gunship circling the combat zone.

“What in Tartarus are you doing, Bell?” Commodore Cake’s voice crackled over the radio, though she didn’t take her eyes off her opponent for a second. “That gunship is heading around for another pass. I can bring it down, but not if I’m busy occupying a bloody Gaff so he doesn’t chop you all to bits! You need to get the train moving, now! Have your boys mend the tracks while I keep this ponce busy.”

Bellwether nodded. “Osprey team, you heard the lady. Get that damn track fixed!”

A couple unicorns and an earth pony hefting a shovel jumped off the locomotive and ran out onto the tracks ahead of us at full tilt. The actual break in the track was a few hundred meters ahead of where the loco sat immobile. The GARG trooper could see what we were doing, and he moved to intercept the repair ponies, but the Dragoon impeded his path. The cleomanni super-soldier’s motions became more erratic and aggressive, as though he were perturbed by the prospect of us making a successful escape.

“Ekkestreuni besti matol!” he growled in a display of hatred that was rare for his kind.

Like the hairy spines of some terrible insect, micro-missile launchers stood erect on the back of his suit and spat dozens of guided explosive projectiles at the Dragoon. They detonated harmlessly against her armor’s enchanted bubble shield, shimmering off-white. She used the dust kicked up by the exploding micro-missiles as a distraction and lunged with a burst of wingpower, her lance striking the GARG trooper in the midsection. He went tumbling end over end, leaping to his feet after regaining control in mid-air, recovering from the crushing blow as though it had never happened.

The trooper staggered a bit, clearly wounded. The impact probably broke a few ribs. While maintaining his guard with the shield, he sheathed his sword, pulled a small white cylinder full of combat drugs from his vest, popped the cap off with his thumb and injected the contents into a port in the side of his neck, before casually discarding the vial. He leaned his head from side to side, cracking his neck, before drawing his sword, his movements showing renewed vigor.

“Bell!” Cinderblock shouted back at the rail car. “My guys say they’ve filled in the crater and paired up the track ahead. We’re gonna go slow, okay?”

White streaks from rocket pods scarred the horizon. There were a succession of bright flashes and a fireball off in the distance, followed by a series of muffled explosive thuds. The gunship had engaged and destroyed the Bull Runner. In an open field, the heat of their engine plainly visible on infrared, there had been nowhere for them to hide and camouflage themselves. I shook my head. So much for leaving the train. We were as good as married to the thing, now.

“I don’t care how slow you have to go,” Bellwether said, his tone verging on pleading. “Just get us the hell out of here!”

One of the pegasus mechanics from the Bull Runner, one of the ones who’d disabled the Rakshasa, leapt from the bushes, took wing and dived towards the GARG trooper, a brick of plastic explosive held in his mouth. The black-armored cleomanni super-soldier sprang into the air and sliced the unlucky pegasus stallion in half, the two chunks of what were once a pony tumbling away in two different directions, his entrails painting the side of a moving rail car.

The GARG trooper flicked the blood from his monomolecular blade, raising his shield and launching himself at the Dragoon with augmented speed. She raised her lance to block a vicious downward slash. He followed up by planting a hard-driven kick in her chest, and she rocketed away, her armored form tumbling across the dirt. The Dragoon and her lance parted ways. She fell in a heap, unmoving.

The train slowly started to pick up speed. The obsidian-armored monster lunged for the open door of the freight car, hauling himself through the opening until he stood right before me. Not a single pony in the car moved a muscle against him. Some raised their hooves in surrender. I was almost certain I smelled, and heard, one of our number fear-pissing. Could have been me, even. I couldn’t tell. I had lost most of my feeling from the midpoint of my barrel to my ass. I was utterly defenseless as he touched the tip of his sword to my chin.

“You were the one who helped your little winged friend decouple the car right in my squadmate’s face,” he said. “You fought with honor.” He drew back his sword. “Unlike the rest of these wretches who are destined for the cages, you’ve earned the right to a quick death.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating the end. Then, I heard a loud snap. I cracked an eye open and looked up. The Commodore’s forelegs were wrapped around the GARG trooper’s neck, his head bent at an unnatural angle. He dropped his weapon and shield and they thudded heavily against the deck, his shaking hands rising towards his neck.

The Dragoon simply wrenched harder, until there was a sickening crack that reverberated through the cramped space. She didn’t stop there, either. She reached around the other side of his head and twisted in the opposite direction with a wet popping noise, just to make sure his cervical spine was well and truly broken in more than one place. She tossed his corpse into the back of the freight car like it was a bag of garbage, before falling into a sitting position, her hind legs dangling off the edge of the moving rail car, her lance couched by her side.

A few of the stragglers from Magpie showed up, too. What was left of them. Wind Shear cradled a gravely wounded pegasus. Probably a survivor from the Runner. One of the medics attended to them in the back of the rail car.

The Commodore’s helmet split and retracted. Her mane was mussed and she was breathing heavily, her muzzle speckled with blood. She coughed a few times, wiping away the bloody sputum with an armored foreleg, scanning the terrain with her unfocused gaze. Seeing her so rattled was somehow unnerving in and of itself. The Dragoons represented the unshakable will of the Empress herself. I never wanted to make the acquaintance of anything or anyone that could actually hurt one of them in a fight.

“My Lady.” I tried sitting up to offer a bow of respect, but the Commodore shook her head.

“Don’t lean up,” she said. “You’re too gravely injured.”

To be a Commodore in the Dragoons was not a military rank. It meant that one was a commander in a chivalric order. Their ranks ran from Chevalier, to Officer, to Commodore, to Grand Commodore, to Star Cross, each more experienced and deadlier than the last. As knights, each and every one of them, from the lowliest to the greatest of them, possessed a noble title and technically outranked even a General in the army if said General was a commoner, but the less senior of the Dragoons knew better than to challenge the authority of an army officer with more experience.

They rode dragons, too. Cyberdragons, in fact. Over two stories tall and armed and armored to the teeth, their scales overlapped with titanium and composite plating permanently anchored into their flesh, their leathery wings fitted with rows of overdriven beamcasters and other nasty toys.

Once a Dragoon had demonstrated their worthiness through their deeds, they would be bonded to a dragon under a magical oath, sworn to protect each other until one or the other fell in battle. The first time I saw one riding their cyberdragon, I was too gobsmacked to do anything but stare, jaw hanging loose. It was like the age of ancient pony myths and legends had come alive before my very eyes.

“Say, Commodore,” I muttered, half-delirious. “Where’s your dragon?”

She frowned sharply, as if she detested hearing the topic brought up. “She was badly wounded during the fall of the capital. I released Obsidian from her oath and bid that she live among her own kind once more.”

“You make it look so easy,” Sagebrush said. “How do you fight a guy who doesn’t know fear? A soldier who shrugs off beamcaster fire like it’s nothing?”

“Lacking the capacity to experience strong emotions such as fear can be a disadvantage,” the Commodore muttered. “Fear begets caution, like the sort of healthy fear that keeps one from ignoring a Dragoon just because they assume they’re incapacitated. Some soldiers prevail in spite of their terror. I won because I’ve mastered mine.”

“Where have you been these past few weeks, Layer?” Bellwether said. “We could’ve used your help, earlier.”

“I was tying up some loose ends and securing valuable intel.”

“What sort of intel are we talking about, here?”

Layer Cake sighed heavily. “Scheherazade’s AI core has been placed in the custody of our top infotechs and we’re interrogating it right now. Our scouting parties have new updates for us, as well. The Confederacy has a new concentration camp in Dodge City. They’re processing thousands of us there and shipping us off-world, to be sold to their citizens and trading partners as pets, laborers, and livestock, or worse.”

“Why haven’t we moved to take it out?” Placid frowned.

“Expensive, in terms of ponies and materiel. The camp is also guarded by damarkind mercenaries, and we’ve intercepted and decoded reports stating that a few prisoners have disappeared over the past few days under dubious circumstances. If we want to save as many as we can, we need to move quickly on that objective, but we haven’t been able to drum up the necessary assets.”

I winced. Damarkinds were thoroughly disgusting creatures. Though they were not as much of a threat as a GARG trooper in a fight, they were still far more physically imposing than the average cleomanni. Much like the Vandals, they had no compunctions against devouring the meat of sentients.

If captive ponies were disappearing on their watch, that meant the damarkinds were eating, fucking, or killing them. Probably all of the above, and hopefully not in that specific order. The horrified looks on my compatriots’ faces showed that they understood this just as well as I did. One mare broke down in a fit of sobbing, burying her face in her shaking forehooves, while another looped a foreleg over the first one’s withers and hugged her close to her chest in response.

“Let’s see them try and put me on their dinner table,” Sagebrush said, spitting a wad of tobacco. “Gonna make myself extra bitter for them.” He opened another can of chew, chuckling darkly all the while.

“How are you holding up, Sergeant?” Layer said, ignoring Sagebrush’s remarks.

Placid returned to holding a blood-soaked compress against my back, while a unicorn medic started stitching me up with a needle and surgical thread after a quick once-over to make sure they didn’t leave any obvious shrapnel buried inside.

“Where’s Driving Band?” I said.

“I think he was captured by the enemy,” Layer said. “We got separated after the crash. I investigated the crash site, but you’d already moved on, and the AI core wasn’t there. I heard you’d been taken in by the Crazy Horse cell, but you didn’t have the core with you.

“So, I went plain-clothes and followed some leads on the Equestrian mercenaries who accompanied us to the surface, and while I was chatting with one of my contacts, describing the mercs and what the AI core looked like, she pointed behind me. I turned around and saw the damn thing for sale in an open-air market, just sitting on a table right there, with some bug-headed xicare git propping his elbows next to it. Three hundred gold bits. I haggled him down to two-fifty.”

“Uhh, the Bull Runner’s gone, ma’am,” I mumbled. “What are we gonna fucking do?”

“That’s our third this year,” she said. “We’ll manage. We have to. Our nation’s survival depends on us.”

“What about the fucking Pursuer?”

“The six-by-six?” Bellwether said. “Are you kidding, Storm? The whole area’s swarming with hostiles. It’s as good as theirs.”

The landscape around us was mostly a blur. We passed the charred remnants of a small town. There was an abandoned railway station covered in apocalyptic graffiti. In response to what the Commodore said, I couldn’t help but think What nation? However, I didn’t actually vocalize it. The Dragoon spread her wings and took flight, taking up position on the locomotive where she’d have a better vantage point to spot incoming gunships.

As for the gunship that impeded our progress earlier, it was likely that they’d simply run too low on fuel to continue their CAS mission, so they bugged out. Given that we had a Dragoon on our side, this was smart, since it would be trivial for her—or any Dragoon, really—to intercept a gyrodyne, kick through the canopy, rip the pilot out of his seat and feed him headfirst into his own rotors. Perhaps he’d spotted her and made the decision to immediately return to base right then and there. A wise decision.

The rail car doors were slid closed. Twenty minutes later, the Chargers linked up with us, announcing their presence by the unmistakable sound of whirring duostrand muscles and pumping hydraulics. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear and feel them. The engineers slowed the loco a bit so Night Terror’s great big Destrier could keep up. I was fading in and out of consciousness. I had lost so much blood. The pounding metal hooves of the Chargers made me feel safe, like a security blanket would for a foal. Placid Gale held me in her hooves, shaking me awake if she thought I was going to pass out.

I looked up at Placid. “I see you and Bell and the rest fighting and arguing a lot. Have you people ever got along?”

“Not particularly.” Placid Gale set her jaw. “I mean, I just had to leave three of my only real friends in this outfit to die, and this is what I’m left with? This sucks.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For saving me. You could’ve just run, but you took a big risk to bring me back.”

Placid looked a little bit shocked at the compliment, and I thought I detected a hint of red in her cheeks. She smirked and ruffled my mane with her forehoof.

“Nah, I didn’t save you, kid. You see this, all around us? This is hell, and we’re all just waiting to wake up and walk the Summer Fields.”

I felt a warm tear drip from my eye. “You believe in the afterlife?”

“Of course I do.” She nodded. “I believe we’ll all be reunited with the Martyred Maiden in the great beyond. It’s what keeps me going. What the hell do I have to look forward to, otherwise?”

The Martyred Maiden. A spiritual aspect of Princess Celestia worshipped by the Star Cult. Some sects saw their grim iconography as blasphemous in nature. Their houses of worship were frequently adorned with images of the long-deceased alicorn princess weeping tears of blood, or holding her own heart in her hooves, or both.

“Oh gee,” I said, chuckling softly. “I didn’t take you for a Starrie.”

“Well, I didn’t take you for a faithless heathen, either.” Placid laughed as she applied a fresh dressing to my wounds.

“Placid?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m scared.” A wave of fresh, hot tears rolled down my face. “I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not the only one, Sergeant,” Sagebrush said. “We’re all scared. We all had something or someone we left behind. Suck it up.”

I saw Placid give him a nasty look, as if she were sizing him up for a coffin.

“I miss my family,” I said. “I miss my squadmates. My fiancé’s probably dead. I was going to get fucking married! We scrimped and bought a dress and everything. It’s all ashes, now. Everything I do feels like a waste without my friends and loved ones around to share the future with. I know, in my heart, that I’m never gonna see them again. What the fuck are we still fighting for? The right to feel lonely in peace? If that’s all we have to look forward to, then maybe we’re better off dead.”

Placid chuckled in that strange, clinking martini glass way of hers. “That’s silly. Everypony dies someday. How you die is what makes it count.” Placid reached down and caressed my cheek with a hoof. “And you’re only alone because you choose to be.”

// … end transmission …

Next Chapter: Record 08//Detour Estimated time remaining: 24 Hours, 38 Minutes