The Scout planes we deployed from the solitary airfield were coming back with bullet holes and shrapnel from flak shells. Permittivity had told us that aircraft weren’t unheard of in their wars. The fact that they were usually at a disadvantage when it came to airpower was made up for with a large amount of anti-aircraft weaponry.

It wasn’t unexpected when the first plane failed to return after a frantic exchange with the intelligence of Paradise. The surprise was when the sounds of guns began to echo through the concrete and adobe buildings of the city. I had just gotten out of a meeting with my special committee. The air was salty but fresh, as it always had been in Paradise. The city itself felt empty without the normal throngs of ponies going about their business, or lack of business. That quiet ended with the downing of the last reconnaissance plane.

If I was the type of pony to pray, I would have at that moment. I didn’t think that the gods would appreciate a last minute conversion. Instead, I took a deep breath and ran towards my armor. The empty streets were anything but crowded, with most of the logistics ponies working near the harbor, fortifying our last line of defense and the final arrow in our quiver. My destination was near the front, a small building that had survived the first destruction of Paradise.

I arrived breathless, my undersuit half soaked in sweat. The mall had become the forward operating base of my command, Paradise, and the newly named Shield of Sall’han. I wasn’t sure if I liked the name all that much, it still had that feeling of superiority and militarism that I had grown to detest. But I knew it wasn’t my choice. I could work with them, but I had no illusions about ever being one of them again.

The sandbags piled over the once broad entrance of the building were a nice touch. There were a lot of sandbags in the city now. A desert city had access to one thing in great quantities. I saluted the six guards positioned at the head of the entrance. Two of them I knew well, an Arabian and an Imperial who had both joined me after the capture of the submarine. Their uniforms were new though. I saluted them with my right foreleg, and nodded at the other four guards.
The inside of the mall was the complete opposite of the city itself. Ponies were using their inside voices, but just barely. Ammunition, maps, and basic supplies were changing hooves at a brisk pace. Some of them looked at me, and some of those that did even seemed to like me. Normally I would’ve taken the time to talk to them, many of whom had never fought before, and none of them had ever fought a battle like this. Myself included.

When I opened the door to our little command center, I met the gaze of the one pony here who had fought a battle like this.

“You know, you didn’t have to run here,” Permittivity said with a laugh and a sardonic smile.

“The trolley isn’t running today, and I didn’t want to miss out on the last laughs,” I said with a lilt in my voice as I walked over to him, before pulling him close to me and giving him a nip on his neck. He had enough bearing to suppress his natural yelp.

“Before you ask, we haven’t received a peep from our ships or the rest of Danurr,” Ironsight said after my allotted three seconds of public affection ended. My face fell slack as I turned to face my friend and lieutenant.

“That fucking sucks, any good news?” I asked as I looked around the table. The high brass of Paradise had left for a compound near the harbor, a place I didn’t know about, other than it existing. I was left with Permittivity, Iron Sight, Frostbite, Zenji, Crescent Moon, and-

“None of the flights over the sea have seen any activity from the Ranger Navy, at least, that’s what the generals have told me,” My mother said from the other end of the table. She wasn’t looking at anyone in particular, her eyes were trained on a copy of a prewar map of the city, with a lot of fresh markings. The cigarette dangling from her muzzle, half burned already, told me that she was stressed. Which was saying something, considering her.

“I don’t know which of those generals deserve the title least,” Frostbite said acerbically.
“I get your point, and it’s really an open question, but like most open questions, it’s irrelevant at this point,” Talon shot back after a long draw from the cigarette.

“I’m just glad they’re out of harm’s way,” Zenji added lightly.

“Out of our way you mean,” Crescent said in a voice that was diplomatic considering her opinion of one of the generals. The one who happened to be self-proclaimed and newly promoted.

“Also true,” the zebra said diplomatically. By this point I had walked around the table and leaned down to look at the map. Not much had changed on it. The pencil marks showing the defense perimeter being the oldest marks of graphite on the paper. The new marks were the dotted lines showing where we would collapse buildings onto the streets for our fallback lines. Notably, the first of our fallback lines were well back from this mall.

“Give me one,” I asked Talon quietly. Where she kept her cigarettes was a mystery to everyone but her.

“I’ll disown you,” she said just as quietly.

“I’ll get a Vasectomy,” I whispered in her ear.

“That’s a low blow,” Talon said after a moment’s contemplation.

“I got it from somewhere,” I said before leaning over slightly and wrapping my right leg around her. “How far did you get on the training?” My eyes had shifted over to Crescent. Who had taken up the most dangerous assignment so far.

“They know what parts of a building really need to be there, and which ones are there for show,” Crescent replied with an edge of exasperation. “I don’t know which ones I’m more scared of: the ones who were smiling, or the ones who weren’t.”

“The latter,” Permittivity said before looking at Zenji. “Any eleventh hour success stories?”

“Out of all the volunteers, some of them seem to lack any sense of smell,” Zenji said before shrugging in the zebra fashion.

“That seems counterproductive for night fighters,” Crescent said before getting a quizzical look from Zenji.

“Normally, yes,” the zebra said before scrunching her nose at some recent memories. “Nightsoil fighters would be more accurate.” I watched Crescent Moon’s face go from confusion to disgust in the blink of an eye.

“It’s a dirty job, but I’d rather have the tunnels under our control, than theirs,” I said with a squeeze of Zenji’s shoulder.

“I always thought the lack of sewer systems in Ranger settlements were because you were cheap, now I realize that you didn’t want to fight pitched battles in literal shitholes,” Crescent Moon said with a heavy sigh, and a glance at the three former Rangers in the room.

“It was both,” Iron replied after looking over from her radio and legal pad. Radio silence had been ordered until after the first barrage. I had made my way over to the chair on the other side of the table from my mom, a cigarette having mysteriously appeared in my shoulder pocket. I slumped into the chair, and put a hoof on the table while my other hoof found the slim tube of tobacco. When I pulled it out, Permittivity had gotten into the chair beside me.

Before I could say anything, he had picked up the cig in his magic and floated it to the tip of his horn. With a momentary flash of light, it was lit, and I had it in my muzzle a moment later. I winked at him and laid a hoof over his.

“What do we do now?” Crescent asked.

“The hardest thing. We wait,” Permittivity said in a voice stripped of any emotion.

The taste of recycled air being pulled through my muzzle was familiar. The feeling of alertness alongside the fear of a violent and near end was familiar too. The mass bombardment was something new. Hundreds of shells bursting in the air above our lines was something I had known to expect, and yet it sent pangs of terror through my body. Our hastily erected trenches were holding together better than I had expected. The other ponies beside me were in a similar state of fear. That was to be expected.

What I didn’t expect was to see Permittivity eyes shut, breathing deeply, and rifle safetied. His calm steadied me. The sun above us was setting, and with it was the advance of the enemy. Everyone had heard the briefings, everyone knew what would be upon us as soon as the artillery moved past us. The routes of escape were already laid and memorized, and the plan was simple. Keep them from the outer lines for as long as we could. The machine guns and mortars were primed and checked as many times as could be done.

The bombardment passed over us and our sandbag curtains held for the most part. We were in the middle of the outer defences. The rear was held with the greenest troops, with Rangers and our own forces sprinkled among them as rebar is added to concrete. That was the hope at least. I ran around the side to our forward trenches, before standing up and taking a look at the field before me. The sounds of the vanguards meeting, gunfire punctuated by louder explosions travelled by me and through me. The familiar weight of the machine gun on my right, and a newly installed grenade launcher on my left gave me teeth, and my armour was a shell that could make most of their shrapnel bounce off.

They moved in groups of less than a dozen, rifles swiping towards the foxholes and grenades hurled into them. I hadn’t seen a force so used to the charnel house, so well versed in mechanical violence. I bent down once more to avoid sight. I turned when I felt a bump on my shoulder. Permittivity, eyes narrowed and brow heavy with sweat managed a smile. He stomped a forehoof into the wall of the trench, before nodding upwards once. I returned the nod and glanced around the rough fortification. The other ponies were watching him as well, they knew that he had done this before.

We heard the crack of rifle shots nearer to us, about as far away as the nearest trench. Then a single ground shaking explosion. He stomped his hoof into the side wall, and we all rose together. The furtive eyes that stared back at us, about a hundred meters away burned into my mind like a flash from an old camera. It dissipated in the haze of aiming my guns. I fired a burst as Permittivity cracked off a series of shots at the nearest Imperial. The other ponies in our trench, conscripts from the city, with sights dialed in at one hundred meters fired rapidly. The group ahead of us fell without getting off more than a few shots. I ducked back down as did the rest.

Our ears rang with the percussion of our guns. Behind us, and to the right a pillbox unleashed a hail of bullets into an unlucky squad. Our own mortars began to sight in on the only places they could hide from our line of sight weapons. If anyone on our side had survived the push of their shock troops, they would be killed by the precisely aimed shells. The plan was three mortar shells in each of our forward foxholes. We had time for two before the counter battery fire erupted from their howitzers.

We were the new frontline, and the attacking troops swarmed forward in fireteams. I rose up without thinking, and fired bursts at the troops moving forward. Several Rangers were doing the same, and our breastplates rang with the cacophony of rifle rounds slamming into them. Our own mortars were putting out a trickle of shells, mostly missing the small fast moving packs. My breathing hitched as I spotted an anti-armour team launch a round into the chest of a Ranger in an adjacent trench. I dropped back behind the sandbag concealment.
Crawling in powered armour is odd, feeling the servos whine at half volume through the steel and composite surrounding me.

Perm stayed where he was as I moved to the end of our sandbag wall. I stood up just in time to see a trio of soldiers trying to flank our trench, one of them holding a grenade and pulling her hoof back to hurl it. My burst severed her leg and riddled her chest. The green soldier beside me fired a shot from his rifle before getting struck by a bullet from the two remaining soldiers. I turned a degree or two and felt the recoil from the gun at my side try to shift me backwards. My locked legs arrested the movement. Before the remaining soldier could be found in my sights, a series of shots dropped the soldier with barely a second between impact and their collapse. I turned to see Permittivity already moving backwards into our escape tunnel. I turned to follow and saw dozens of fireteams swarming forward, despite the mortars and machine guns. The rest of our troops were already moving through the passage.

Before I turned all the way and began my own escape, I fired a dozen grenades in a sweeping arc. The detonations of the small grenades shook the earth as I pushed through the small opening. Communication and escape trenches were an idea Permittivity gave us, and the rest of the Imperials agreed that they were a good idea.

The earth above me shook as our mortars started a desperate counter attack. When we made it to behind our next line, one with pillboxes and firing ports ready to be used. This was the moat. Behind it would be the outskirts of the city, and the real fighting would begin there. I shivered as I realized that our dozen had already been chewed down to nine.

The setting sun covered the flashes of guns. It did nothing for the slugs themselves. I stood in the ruins of a pillbox, the gun itself torn to shreds by a grenade hurled into it from the flank. The thrower had been broken by a punch of my sabaton. Their two friends had gotten dropped by Permittivity as we pushed back to the barricades. Whatever remained of their second wave had to be cleared out before the third arrived under the umbrella of artillery already shaking the earth a few hundred meters ahead of us.

“Pillbox seven is clear,” I barked into the command circuit. A few seconds later the other counter-attack teams said the same about their assignments. The barrage came nearer to us with each breath, each heartbeat. Permittivity was already low to the ground, waiting for the barrage to pass over the remains of the cover over our heads.
The counter-attack was a desperate measure, but it was a measure meant to make them waste as many soldiers as possible on the same line of fortifications. A large amount of our power armour and experienced troops were on the line. My radio crackled as the last report of the line being retaken reached my ears. And then, the shells overcame any other noise. Shells exploded just in front of the line, and then above us as the howitzers traded off minute changes in elevation. Our main saving grace was their limited ammunition. If they had access to a railway line to bring them shells, we would have been shredded. As it was, the casualties from the guns were mounting. A helmet could protect your most vulnerable parts from the steel rain, but ponies have a lot of body exposed to the sky.

The barrage moved past us with just enough time for us to get to the firing ports, and myself to reach the narrow slit of the pillbox. I could see another dispersed wave sprinting towards us. The thunk of the grenade launcher was followed a second later by bursts of light and screams of pain as the nearest group was torn apart. My magical tracking system had already been interpreted by my adrenaline warped brain. My machine gun fired and ripped through the soldier before the rest either hit the sand or were shot by my comrades.

But the disciplined sea of soldiers kept advancing on us. It felt helpless as I watched the positions to our flanks being swarmed and filled with concussions and light from grenades. I answered with another burst from my launcher. It tore through another group, but a section ahead of them fired a trio of rifle grenades at us from one of our fallback trenches. I was spinning around when the grenades chewed at the billbox and filled the air with pressure waves that would have burst my lungs had I not exhaled at the last second. My legs were moving on their own at this point, the fear and death having overwhelmed me.

As I ran down behind the cover of the pillbox towards the fortified houses that was our next line, I looked back to see Permittivity toss a grenade of his own down the nearest escape trench. He didn’t take a moment to watch its effects, he merely pulled his rifle in front of him with that icy blue magic of his before running with me. Maybe half of the soldiers we had attacked with were following our fighting retreat. A few others stood behind shrapnel peppered concealment, firing and reloading with mechanical efficiency. The few that stood to the side of the retreat trenches did much the same, with eyes that seemed only to see the enemy.

“We’re pulling back from the moat, over,” I said into the command frequency breathlessly. A moment later the gunfire to my rear picked up in intensity.

When I made it to the nearest fortified house, I turned around and watched as the surviving ponies sprinted towards us. The suppressing fire from our side kept the heads down of the Imperials who were reaching the edge of the moat. Perm cracked off a few remaining shots blindly, before reaching us and jumping behind our concealment.

When he looked up at me, the last tendrils of light caught on the sweat and scars across his face. I was reminded of the first time we had seen each other. It had been after a bloody battle. I had gotten the better of him at first, with him saving me from enemies hungry for my blood. He didn’t know it was me beneath the helmet.

He knew now. The crooked, forced smile he pushed onto his face was for me. My heart sung in spite of death around us. We had chosen this path, and it was ours to walk. Together.

That line was taken the next day. It was the pattern of things, it was what I had planned. The taste it left in my mouth was still foul. Their advance became more hesitant when the first building fell on them, but still they came. If they hadn’t been my enemy I would have been awed, even as a foe, I respected them.

I had always respected my enemies, that helped you stay alive…

“Fortieth & Resplendence is being shelled,” one of the officers in that area said between shell bursts above their heads. I could hear them through my own ears, and the shaking of the ground beneath my hooves.

The city was being taken, room by room, street by rubble filled street. Where they battered with artillery there was nothing we could do to stop them from occupying what was left in the shelled zones. But they couldn’t do it everywhere. There weren’t enough shells for that.

I was a few blocks away, at the intersection of Piety & thirty-ninth. It was a residential area, with shops interspersed where they had made sense to be placed. Now, it was a battle ground. Small patrols and probing thrusts were being sent our way. We were waiting in ambush, with a parallel group across the street from us. Of our group, one was a Knight who had come with Reflex, Gladius, now working with me. Along with him were an Imperial turncoat who had pledged loyalty to the cause back on the Island, and two dozen conscripts from the city.

We didn’t want to engage the patrol. Our plan was to allow them to pass by us without fighting them, to make them believe that this area was clear, other than a sniper two buildings away. The real target was the larger force that was sure to follow, the force that would occupy all of these buildings and move towards the more solid lines to our rear.

And so, we waited. Time always seemed to crawl by when you were waiting on an enemy, our positions were as concealed as we could get. A basement with the door covered by a stack of cabinets. Still we needed to be quiet. I had my internal radio linked up to a frequency being used by the observers hidden in several adjacent buildings-

The noise of a single shot rang out from above, hopefully striking one of the invaders. Several more answered it, that was the return fire from them. It was muffled from within the basement, but still very much audible.

“Is it time yet?” The most nervous looking of the conscripts whispered loudly. He hadn’t been involved in any of the fighting yet. Everyone else in the room had. The rest of the room glared at him, and he looked grave. I added a shake of my head, slower than the rest. I remembered what my first battle had been like. The stakes had been lower, a few wannabe rebels with makeshift firearms, powered by the trickle of cordite that could be smuggled out of our arms workshops.

The sound of gunfire in anger is different from that of training. Knowing that they’re fired to kill, potentially to kill you, it sets a mind to terror. I wished that he didn’t have to fight, or at least to be able to say some words of encouragement. But the needs of the plan came first.

Another few shots rang out, before dying away. Then the waiting continued, with tension slowly building in the faces and bodies of everyone in the room. I could feel it in my own. My haunches tightened, and my breathing quickened, the adrenaline already starting to release. That wasn’t helpful. Adrenaline wore a pony out, and I needed to be at my best when I did go out guns blazing.

“I know you Icepick, you know how to relieve stress when you’re not in the middle of it, and I love to help you with that when I can. But you’re going to be constantly in battle, recovering from it, or planning for it continuously. That builds up in a pony, and it’s going to hurt you. And I don’t want you to hurt,” Permittivity had said to me a few days before they arrived. I recalled it with a deep breath. “I learned an exercise that helps me when I’m feeling overwhelmed, when I’m feeling the animal reactions to stress. I start by tensing and relaxing the muscles in a leg, starting at a hoof, and moving slowly up-” I started with my right foreleg. Tightening and relaxing the muscles as best I could. Another leg followed, and then it became a rhythm. It took some time, but I couldn’t tell you how long. The blankness in my mind was new to me. Eventually I had worked all the way to my head. “-when you’re finished, open your eyes and let out a deep breath. You should feel better.”

My eyes opened with a twitch of muscles, and a wash of hot breath rebounded off of my helmet. I needed a mint. But aside from that little revelation, I felt better. The stallion of my dreams had helped me once again, even if he was off helping someone else right now. Whatever he had come here for, he was here to help now.

A few minutes later there were a pair of clicks from the radio. The time for waiting was over. I motioned the ponies around me with a wave of my hoof. Trying to make as little noise as we could, the other former Ranger and I pushed the heavy set of filing cabinets out of the way of the door. It was noisy, but hopefully not too noisy. We crept through the halls of the building, with the other armoured pony at the rear and myself at the front. It wasn’t a long march to the positions we had scouted out before barricading ourselves. A few of us went over to an adjacent building as quietly and quickly as could be managed.

I wasn’t one of them, my spot was an alley that connected to the street from a fire exit. I was the one who would start the ambush. That was the plan at least.

I had just gotten to the alleyway when the first shots rang out. Cursing in my head I sprinted towards the end of the alley, to throw myself around the corner. The Imperials had spotted one of us, and we weren’t in position yet. They were already leapfrogging forwards into the buildings, tossing grenades and covering each other with rifle fire. A scream echoed out right after another characteristic snap of their rifles. My ears registered a grenade blast in the building we had been hiding in.

Then I turned the corner and instantly lined up one of the covering Imperials in my sights. The bullets arched out and ripped through his torso and tore two of his legs from his body. There was confusion among their ranks at the new danger, with more of the unit scattering into the buildings being fought over.

The other half of the ambush then came into contact with the enemy now inside their building. Gunshots were popping off continually, filling the air with the sound of modern violence, and alerting anyone else nearby that there were enemies to be fought. It might have been heartening, if the number of soldiers we had to spare as reserves was more than a few fireteams. They still had body upon body to fight any significant resistance outside our main defensive line.

All combat was a risk, and my gamble was to catch them unawares and cause just a little more bleeding for them, without losing much in return. As I sprinted into the nearest doorway and caught a glimpse of what was inside, I felt my heart sink and blood boil. The small group of ponies l had been with were massacred by those grenade blasts, and finished off with rifle fire. The imperials had taken up positions around the room, mostly at the windows facing the adjacent building. Several heads turned to me with weapons gripped in their teeth. I was the bigger threat. They were right. The counterweighted rifles unleashed a volley at me. The Imperials were getting better at finding the weak points in powered armour, but these were panic shots aimed at center mass.

The seven rifle rounds struck my heavily armoured chest and either crumbled against it, or ricocheted off of it into the doorway around me. My comrades were dead already, and I wasn’t dreading shrapnel. I swept my body from the left to the right while shooting grenades as fast as the mechanism could pop them out. My ears were overwhelmed by the pressure waves bouncing off of the walls, the sound protection of the armour barely dampening the explosions.

When the debris clinked against my armour, and the dust had settled a bit I turned my body and looked on at the room. Bloody chunks of pony and a red haze of blood filled the air. The remains of enemy and ally alike had turned into the same mix of hellish gore.

I took a deep breath of my cold, recycled air and dashed through a hole in the formerly intact wall. Small pops of gunfire echoed from the building across from me, and in the adjacent building where the Ranger and two others had supposed to have been in the ambush plan. Only the faintest shadows of noise came through my battered ears. Even through the adrenaline haze my head and body ached from the pressure waves that had passed through me.

If the room had been just a bit smaller I would have been gore sealed in a can, not that different from the rest of them. It was a stupid thing to do, impulsive and suicidal. A bit of the old me, the husk of a mare too scared to care about herself. I keyed in a med injection, painkiller and a diluted healing potion all in one syringe. If there was a pinch in my shoulder, I couldn’t feel it around the aura of pain that surrounded me.

And then I was through the busted storefront window of the opposite building. One of the imperials had seen me and fired a shot into the side of my barrel. The bullet impacted just beside one of the hinge sections of the armour. A few centimeters higher and he would have sunk steel filings into my body. The lone sentry left to guard the rear. I spun ninety degrees on my hooves and charged at him. He fired another shot, this one deflecting off my angled neck with only a spark of contact and another sharp noise reverberating up through my battered body. It was the only shot he made before I slammed into him, barely slowed from the impact before he was crushed between me and the wall behind him. I couldn’t hear the noise from it, but several things broke inside his body. His eyes registered shock, then pain, as I backed up a few paces. I hadn’t broken his neck, because he managed to turn his head up at me from the floor where he had fallen.

There was fear and pain in his eyes, a pleading in them that I had seen so many times before. Even if he could surrender, even if we could save his life, I didn’t have the soldiers to guard him or the time. My foreleg raised above his head. I looked away, there was barely resistance as I stomped down through his skull. Magic servos, the heft of steel, body and armament, a bit of flesh and bone stood no chance.

My eyes watching the deeper building spotted three more ponies turn from the hallway they had been spitting fire down, and towards me. This time I let my machine gun work on them, a burst for each of them, suddenly caught by the crossfire I had wanted from the beginning.

The shooting around me had stopped, for now. Between the bodies in the street, and the ones in the other building, we had killed a platoon. We had lost at least a dozen, almost all of my side of the ambush. I approached the survivors of our opposite number. They were better off, with only a few dead, and a few wounded.

The healing potion had gotten my ears working halfway again, even if there was an ever present ringing in them now. My body ached as the other ambush team got their ponies moving, wounded carried on the backs of the shell shocked but healthy comrades. We did need to move.

As I stepped into the street, to cover the retreat of fleeing ambushers, I spotted a pair of ponies step through their own doorway. Gladius, the other Ranger carried a wounded conscript on his back. It was the stallion who had spoken nervously before the ambush. There was a steady trickle of blood from a foreleg that had been shot. In his eyes were pain and the early stages of shock.

He was a lot better than the average from this little skirmish. I shook my head and blinked away incipient tears. There would be time for those later, time for the survivors to heal, time for it all to be forgotten, not even a footnote in the retelling of it all. An insignificant street, just an opportunity to draw just another drop of blood from a monster composed of thousands.

“We’re breaking them, blunting their attacks and exhausting them,” I said from the end of the table. My voice sounded weary, and my body ached from combat, little rest, and the weight of my decisions. The war council was being conducted from an underground bunker in the naval base section of the dockyards.

“How do you figure that?” Brass Belle said from the other end of the table. She looked even worse than me, which considering she had spent the whole battle thus far in the bunker we were meeting in was impressive. Her eyes had a burning anger in them, and little else.

“They’re slowing down, in the beginning it was an outright mass attack from all directions. Now they’re being more conservative, and concentrating their forces in a smaller area. We’re still in control of about forty percent of the city, and a few blocks from our final defensive line. That should hold them up for the last stages of the plan to work,” I replied, my muddled mind trying to keep the latest reports all together.

“The final stage of the plan, the double envelopment using the best equipment and troops that we have,” Bright Dawn, the general for Paradise said with an acidic tone. “All while we get churned into meat by them.”

“I’ve seen the hospitals,” Brass added. The haunted look in her eyes made sense now. A terrible, terrible sense. We’ve been bled out as badly as they have, maybe worse.

“I know,” I replied quietly. “If I were to guess the ratio of our attrition, it would be something like 3:2. They’re getting better at defeating our power armoured infantry too. At the beginning, we were nearly invincible against them. They’ve learned our weaknesses. Bringing a building down on us, or keeping a rifle loaded with a grenade ready with every fireteam will take us out. That and overwhelming fire small arms fire against our less armoured sections. But that’s why the reserves are key. If we look like we’re on our last legs, and desperate they’ll be more likely to push harder against us. The more they throw their strength at us, the weaker they’ll be when we counter attack,” my words seemed to mollify Brass. She respected me more than the other commanders. Bright really hadn’t left this bunker, and Phalanx had stayed well behind the front lines.

“How has the special training been going?” Brass asked with a turn towards Phalanx.

“Your troops have taken well to working with the Armoured units, and their ability to fit twice as many in one APC is going to make the difference I think. They’re aching to join the fight though, as are the rest of our reserve. They’ve talked to the units that have fought at the front. They know what to expect, and their ready for whenever we give them the order,” he finished before scratching his chin with the tip of a bronze wing. “I have a suggestion, and it isn’t just because you all believe I’m trying to keep my forces unbloodied.”

“I don’t think that,” I said diplomatically. “You’ve been losing armoured ponies to keep them at bay.”

Bright snorted derisively. She had her own ideas about what was going on.

“The self propelled guns should be used to create a killing field behind their line of retreat when we let them push through the final line, they have enough armour to work as bulwarks, and a heavy machine gun as a support armament,” he said before I interrupted.

“We pull them into a v shaped formation along where they’re likely to push, and make changes as necessary. Using them as pillboxes and as a way to cause maximum disorder and casualties when the counter attack starts,” I smiled at him.

“It’s a risk,” he said, “but I’ll be putting all my skin in the game at the end anyhow. Attacks are always bloody affairs, even against enemies that shouldn’t be able to bite back,” his gaze drifted over to Crescent Moon, quiet for the meeting so far. “Speaking of which, how many have your guerilla sappers taken down?”

“The tunnels beneath the city are contested, they learned that lesson after we turned the mall into a mess of rebar and concrete dust,” it had been occupied by the imperial forces a day after it had been taken. The sewer line that ran beneath it had been lined with a few hundred pounds of explosives and detonated.

“Have we received any reports from the flotilla?” Brass asked a pensive looking Commodore Pear.

“A radio transmission, garbled,” Pear replied. “We couldn’t make much out from it. It means they’re getting closer though.”

“That’s an improvement,” I said. “I want our ships back here.”

“We all do,” Brass said with a momentary glare at Phalanx. It was unstated, but having our ships was a counterweight to him. As he lacked any ships, and having our ships here would be some kind of defense against another attack by the Ranger fleet. That would be the end.

“Is there anything else to be discussed?” Brass asked. Her body slackened at these words. Meetings, reports and endless sources of effort had drained her already. A different administration would have given up at the start, or capitulated already. If she won there would be statues of her erected in the city, if we lost, she’d be wiped away from history like so many other conquered leaders. Unfortunately I had to put a horrifying prospect in front of her, and ask her for help with it.

“We can’t rest after this is over,” I said bluntly. “If we give them another chance, they will send another army at the city. We’ll have no chance of stopping them a second time.”

“What do you propose to do about it then? Why did you even ask us to fight them then-” Brass began, anger and raw fear ringing in every word.

“We go to Sombra and sever the link,” I said. My voice was firm, it had all the command I could muster. All the lives lost here, they had to have a reason. The ponies I had killed, enemy or ally, it couldn’t just be worthless bloodletting. I wouldn’t let it be. “The moment we can, we rush up towards the complex.”

A silence fell across the room. Bright scowled at me, Crescent gaped wide eyed, Phalanx smiled coldly, and Brass was unreadable.

“Just how do you intend to slay him?” Phalanx asked in the pregnant silence.

“Through disenchantment,” I met his smile with one of my own.

“You are a mad one,” he said with a harsh bark of laughter. “Are you going to tell him that he's been a very bad pony, and that he needs to sit in the corner?”

“He isn’t a pony. He’s a magical artefact. We’re going to wipe him like a spell matrix next to a spark grenade. Just because we dismantled the balefire bomb doesn’t mean all the pieces just disappeared,” I stopped speaking and watched Phalanx go white, while Brass did much the same.

“You’re still mad, but it does take a kind of madness to stand against a god,” Phalanx said before nodding at me in an attempt at grace. “If that’s the only chance to rid ourselves of him, then how can I refuse.”

“Your suggestion is noted. However, we have a city to retake, don’t we ponies,” Brass said brusquely, wheels already turning in her mind. She knew the stakes as well as anyone. She also felt the risks in her bones. The leader of a ravaged city had more than enough concerns at the moment.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Permittivity said quietly. He stood beside the cooking flame, a pot of something hanging above it. He stirred the pot with his magic. I just looked into the flame, the occasional cracks and pops of the wood music to my ears. The fact that we were cooking outside, in a mostly desolate corner of the harbor district, burning up the remains of a broken table didn’t faze me. It was just nice to be with them.

“She’ll come around, you’re right after all,” Rosetta said in a voice that broadcasted confidence. I had a feeling it was mostly for my benefit. He sat on a blanket underneath the overhang of an awning. The building was untouched so far, but the gas lines had been destroyed, hence the open flame. There were many other cooking fires blazing away within eyesight, but there was still enough space behind the lines for privacy. I had insisted on rotating soldiers off the front after a day or two of combat, if it was possible. Fresh soldiers fought better. Exhausted, shell shocked soldiers broke down.

“I hate being the one bringing bad news, it fucking sucks,” I said in an exasperated voice.

“I wouldn’t know how that feels,” Permittivity said sardonically. I rolled my eyes at him, but not without smiling at him. He was exhausted, I was exhausted, and Rosetta was on the brink of breakdown. At the moment though, Perm had decided to cook, while Rosetta laid on his back, languidly drinking from a bottle of spirits. “It’s almost done, I think.” I saw him tap something inside the pot with the ladle. A shrug passed through his withers. Cooking wasn’t something he excelled at.

“Paradise is caught between two wolves. Even if we slay one, we’ll be weakened, bleeding, and ready to be finished off by the other. We’ve already been bloodied, our city half ruined. The granaries and stocks might not hold out until we get the hydroponics and fields running again. We went from a position of being the only power in our part of the world, to a city fighting for it’s life,” Rosetta mused before taking another mouthful of liquor down his throat.

“It’s an apocalypse,” Perm said before quenching the fire with a bucket of sea water. The embers sizzled loudly for a moment, before dying, the only remnant being a scent of ashy, salty water in the air.

“I wouldn’t say that-” I started to say.

“The ancient pegasi created that word, but its meaning has shifted. It meant a revelation. Something that couldn’t have been known before, but impossible to unknow afterwards. That’s the shock of the century to Paradise, but now it knows what’s out there. It won’t be caught unprepared again,” Permittivity finished before lifting the pot up, and starting to fill the bowls he had pulled from his bag.

“It really means we need to slay one wolf, and defang the other,” I said with steel in my voice.

“Those are both easier said than done,” Permittivity said wistfully. He took the bowls carefully in his magic, each with a spoon already set into the steaming stew, before trotting over to us. He sat down beside me, and looked Rosetta in the eyes. “You need to eat, especially after drinking that poison.”

“I’m the doctor here,” Rosetta said in mild annoyance.

“It’s still self-medication, besides you’re looking thin,” Permittivity said in a kind voice.

“He’s right, and we both like your ass the way it was,” I said slyly.

“Oh no, a pair of horny ponies right next to me, and I’m sitting here drunk and defenseless!” Rosetta said before laughing harshly. “Getting fucked by life is my thing, I think.”

“Your thing? It’s our thing,” I barked out a laugh. “I’ve been fucked by life, my whole life. Perm watched his world crumble, friends die, and got his brain broken by the idea that what happened here, would happen there.”

“Such is life,” Permittivity said softly. Far off fires, a bit of hornlight from them, and a half moon cast light over us.

“We’re still here though, and that gives us a chance,” I replied. In the near darkness, with gunshots going off a dozen or so blocks away, my words felt like hollow platitude.

“A chance for absolution,” Perm said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“A chance to set the world right, no matter the cost,” Rosetta said before laughing like the damned.

“No, someone is going to get a happy ending out of this. It’s a chance for it to be us,” I said with a shake of my head. A chill passed through me at their words. I pressed against Perm, feeling his solidity, his warmth against me.

“The light of hope burns within you. You’re my light Icepick,” Permittivity said. I kissed him softly, as the sound of snoring started from a meter away. I felt tears begin to well up in the corners of my eye. “I’m just a fatalist with a conscience.”

“That light is a fire. Before I met you, before I had my own apocalypse, I was going to burn the whole world. It still feels like it’s going that way. A world of corpses, soaked in blood. All I’ve ever done is kill and destroy. At least before I was ordered to do it-” I was letting it all rush out. The words kept spilling from my mouth as my tears began to fall.
“I know what you’re going to say, and it’s wrong. You aren’t a monster, you’re just a mare doing her best. Even the best doesn’t feel like enough. Even a victory is going to leave a bitter taste in your mouth. It’s still better than the alternative. Remember, you aren’t just fighting to save Sal’han, you’re fighting to stop a real monster from killing hundreds of millions,” he went from pressing a hoof gently against my muzzle, to holding me with his other leg. His tail wrapped around mine.

“Fatalist with a conscience is really underselling yourself,” I said a while later. He had just sat there with me, holding me tightly.

“Then it’s good I’ve already sold myself to you,” he said confidently. I looked at him for a moment.

“It was a close thing for a while, I was either gonna fuck you or kill you,” I replied a moment later.

“Oh, I knew,” he said with a grin. “It made the sex even better.” I couldn’t figure out what to say to that, and simply rammed my body against his. When he flipped over, I was already on my hooves. I stood above him. I leered at him. He only rolled his eyes. I leaned down and kissed him softly, my body came to rest on his. A tingle of electricity down my spine and a lighting of his horn told me he was feeling feisty tonight.

There was a crackle of static on the radio, before the voices of the line ahead of me reported the assault. I stood there, behind some hastily prepared sandbags, with a group of ponies beside one of the self-propelled guns. It had its cannon aimed nearly horizontally. There was canister shot loaded right now and airburst ammunition for later. It was a nice touch that Bright had given us.

We were laid out at the intersection of a street a few blocks behind the defensive line we planned to let fall. We were the center of the V-shape. In front of us was the center of the defense line. Slightly ahead of us and to the flanks were setups like ours. An SPG and a group of ponies. The docks were a few minutes trot behind us. There really was no falling back from this position.

We wouldn’t fall back from this one, we’d push forward. Behind us, the sounds of powerful diesel engines turning over could be heard against the still somewhat distant gunfire. As the intensity of the gunfire picked up, I looked over at the pony beside me. He had seen the results of combat, and he had killed a Steel Ranger personally. But he hadn’t been in a battle himself before.

“Nervous?” I asked Rosetta as he fiddled with the rifle he had been given. It was one of the service carbines from the Paradise stockpile, with a short barrel and a thirty round magazine. The pink pony looked odd in a set of fatigues and armed to the teeth with magazines and a basic fiber vest. That hoof cannon of a revolver bulged out of the holster on his leg. It had a mouthgrip but I couldn’t imagine actually using it that way.

“Among other things,” he said tersely. The ponies beside us were a ragged mix of Ranger auxiliaries, Paradise conscripts, and the occasional Steel Ranger. “How long do you think it will be.” The attack had commenced at noon, and it had just been a few moments.

“Give it half an hour,” I said while wondering that question myself. The ponies at the line were supposed to inflict as many casualties as possible, before falling back- The sound of artillery booming in the distance, massed volleys of steel rain made me reconsider. “Hopefully.”

“Why can’t we shoot back?” He asked, anger and bemusement filling his voice.

“We need to save the surprise for the attack,” I said. It sounded weak. We might have been able to smash a lot of their guns, and blunt a lot of their attacks if we had shown our hoof earlier. But no, we had to strike when they were confident in victory. When the line that had held them back for a day and a half finally broke in disarray. Turning their triumph around was the way to win the day.

The next few minutes passed as I listened to the radio. We had let the line fall in the center, and our little pockets of resistance were letting our ponies retreat without being massacred. Gunfire drew closer, and I watched as Rosetta’s breath hitched. Ponies began to filter in from the front, breathing hard and wide eyed. The rolling bombardment ended. Our pockets of resistance were falling back too, if they could. When the fleeing ponies came to our lines, we told them to catch their breath and get ready.

And then they came. A wash of soldiers suddenly made aware that there were more than a few pockets in front of them. Our gunfire felled the majority of the first wave, before they began to advance through alleyways and fire at us from behind buildings. When the second group started to add pressure against us, using the same urban tactics they had gotten used to from the continuous battle, we finally showed our hand. Rocket launchers, heavy machine guns, mortars, and those Self-Propelled Guns opened up against them. The buildings they had been hiding behind were blown away. Blown away like so many of Paradise’s other buildings before them. After the first fusilade ended, me and the majority of our soldiers bolted forward over our defenses, running full bore at the shelled shocked enemies. The self-propelled guns were raising their barrels up and readying to hit the enemy howitzers.

I was less worried about that than the remaining Imperials who began to desperately fire at us. I felt a heavy rifle bullet glance off my breastplate. The pony who had shot me was taken down by a soldier slightly to my rear. The regular ponies had learned to take cover behind Rangers whenever possible, and let us do the running. Another set of cracks along our line announced the firing of the self-propelled guns. We wouldn’t have any idea whether they were hitting the mark. It was imperative that we pushed past the area where we had fought them. That area was going to get shelled hard.

As if the universe was reading my thoughts, the booming of their howitzers started up. The shattered Imperial infantry weren’t nearly as scary as their artillery. I ran as fast as my armour could propel me, servos whining as my body lurched from step to step. I couldn’t look behind me, even if I had wanted to. The explosions began to fill the air with shrapnel, and my ears ached from the shells bursting above and behind me. Their third wave was caught between orders to push onwards, and the very reasonable desire to hunker down. I ran past an apartment building, on the corner of the next intersection. A group of Imperials, their heads on a swivel, being screamed at by an officer as they waited behind the building. I was as surprised as they were. The half dozen ponies tried to swivel their bodies to hit my flank. I turned my body while running, managing to only take one bullet on my flank, and the rest on my frontal armour. The moment that one was aligned with my gun, I fired a burst. It was the same with the rest. Burst, aim, burst, aim, and then the last pony had started to run away, making it halfway through the doorway of the building.

She stayed halfway through it. When it was over, I leaned around the corner to see groups of ponies running up the street. Ranger at the front, the unarmoured lagging behind. I didn’t have time to run a tally, but it looked like most of the assault force had managed to get through the barrage. My eyes widened as I saw Rosetta running down the street with three ponies lifted in his magic, their wounds weeping blood onto the street beneath him.

When the other ponies had moved past me, I had time to realize that our guns hadn’t stopped firing. They were laying down a heavy barrage, a near continuous chorus of reverberating booms. I lifted a hoof in the air, and turned the transmission on my radio on.

“Go go go!” My words were hoarse, less of a command, and more of a plea for the rest of the plan to go on. We only had one shot at it. I was the distraction this time. The anvil to someone else’s hammer.

“Armor is rolling out!” A strained voice said between a brief pause in our artillery going off. I pushed my hoof back into the debris strewn street. The sabaton crashed into the pavement. The sun glinted off of the other armoured ponies, rushing forward. I joined them. Defense was never my forte. It felt right to be on the attack again.

But, I knew who I was really aiming for. I wouldn’t stop until he was shattered.

Author's Notes:

Three months instead of eight! That's an improvement right there. Well, I hope you like this chapter. It's been hard writing a battle on this scale, without retreating to a larger scale depiction. This story is all about the pain and suffering of those in war, so I hope the focus of the chapter feels right for the story.

Chapter 27, I've come a long way. I hope you all follow me to the finish. It's not far off now.

That fact scares me and exhilarates me in equal measure.