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Blazing Muzzles

by Blaze Spectrum

Chapters

Prologue

Blazing Muzzles

Prologue

By Blaze Spectrum

I always had a fire burning inside me, that would burn out of control to even me, at any possible second. The first time it happened was when I was when just a little filly. I was only seven years old, and I wanted to join Ralph's gang. They were the tyrants of the school, and I always wanted to know what it felt like to have power. (Something I only had over inanimate objects) They were called the Tyrants merely because they thought it sounded cool. They aren't really that strict, just if they ask you to do them a favour, you better be ready to run if you decline. All I wanted was a little control, and that was only a thing that I possessed over my toys and room. But things soon turned all around.

"Hey," I piped up to them,"Ya willing to accept me?" (Dammit, broke it to early)

They turned around, and all six of them, all males, pretty much got the hysterics, it appeared that their head would just pop off any second. I ruffled my messy dark blue mane, looked down at my yellow body, which happened to have a decent amount of dust on it. I was extremely agitated at their behavior, and I planned to respond harshly in return. I pulled a pebble from the ground. Despite not having a point, it would pack a real punch. I blew the dust off it. I hurled it directly at the leftmost member. It had very little arc, if any at all. It shot forth, with blinding speed, and after about only tenth of a second, it hit its target, square in the forehead. He instantly stopped laughing, and just fell the the ground, limp. Where I hit him had a lump roughly the size of a plum. In the center of it, a bloody trail slowly leaked downwards, and it probably wouldn't stop for another ten minutes. The only sign of life in him was a slow, steady pattern of breathing. The rest of the members, startled at the sudden assault, could do nothing else than stare right at my emerald green eyes full of malevolence and insanity as I punched the rightmost member at his cheek, knocking him back four metres. I galloped up to him, the other member backing off from me slightly of fear. I put my rear left foot over his face, and stomped on it. A distinctive cracking sound indicated that I had slightly cracked his skull, but at least he was still alive.

The rest of the members began to recover from the brutal assault, shaking their slightly disoriented heads and blindly charged at me. I smirked, this was exactly as I expected. And so, I grabbed the nearest one to me, and kicked him in the stomach, slapping his face with plenty of power. Just as the second nearest one was about to punch me I made the one in my hands take the hit, forcing his head to get into the way of the attack, and that was another one knocked out.

"Dude, friendly fire isn't cool," I taunted him.

He was stupid enough to take the bait, and threw a punch at my face, which I easily evaded my ducking and gave him a swift but powerful kick to the groin. He fell down with the force, and I knocked consciousness away from him with a final blow to the left temple. I grabbed the second last one, kneed him several times in the crouch, and threw him down a staircase that happened to be right behind me the whole time. Ralph was right in front of me, His red mane blowing in the wind, his menacing black eyes locked to mine. But I failed to find him frightening due to his light lavender body. Not to mention his wings were pretty small.

This time, I took the offence, and, using my raw strength thanks to being a earth pony, bucked him in the face. Both of his eyes were blacked, and below his right one, a steady stream of blood dribbled downwards. I could tell he was really ticked off, but I did not plan to lose, what I planned was to make Ralph's knocking out as painful as possible. And possibly cripple him for life. He charged at me crazily, while I stood there, cool and collected. As he was three metres from me, I batted him at the left cheek my left hoof, making him spit out a little dark red blood mixed with some of his saliva. I grabbed a pebble from the ground, this one happened to be a sharp one, and just as I was about to stab a hole through both of his wings...

"Joey Subtle!" shouted one of the teacher on duty,"What the hell are you doing?!" Her face flooded with even more horror when she saw the bodies, and their apparent absence of consciousness.

Right after she turned at them, I notice that I had gained my cutie mark. I don't really think you could call it a cutie mark, because It was a basically a blood splatter, with a tiny one below it.

Turning away from them and interrupting my good look at my cutie mark, she said the obvious,"Joey, report to Principal Snark's office, NOW!"

However, I didn't really care. I kept my cool as I walked through the door of his office.

"Oh, Joey, what did you do?"

I told him casually,"Well, just come over and see for yourself." I slowly walked out of his office, and of course he followed me.

By the time we were downstairs at the scene. His face flushed with a awkward mix of horror, anger, and depression. I also could have sworn his eyes were going crossed. He turned around to meet my horribly apathetic face and spoke the obvious:

"Ms. Joey Subtle, you, are expelled."

Did I even care? I don't think I did.

My parents ranted about what to do after that. And all the other schools declined after hearing just HOW I got expelled. So my parents had to resort to home schooling.

Even Princess Celestia herself took notice of the situation, but passed it off as minor. Fights had recently been happening more. She was too busy finding another talented unicorn to be her own personal student, for that Twilight Sparkle had passed away so long ago. And speaking of that, all of her friends, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity had all passed away, and no replacement for them was found yet. But I admired Applejack for her determination. I think were getting a little sidetracked now, so, getting back to the topic:

Right from that day, I knew my dream, to join the UPSN.

How wrong I was to discover that killing other sentient beings didn't feel so good after all.


Chapter One: Enlistment

Blazing Muzzles

Chapter One: Enlistment

By Blaze Spectrum

I've always hated orders, you know that?

I almost failed the entry exam for the UPSN for that reason.

On that day, I had just turned 18, and so, I was eligible for entry. The war with the AR had already started about a year ago. And since I wasn't old enough when I started, I had to regularly hide in bombing shelters, and the food in them is crap. But the Fillydelphia public bomb shelters at least had better food than those at Las Pegasus, I should have went for Ponyville as soon as I got my driver's lisence. It was pretty much the country so nopony would really want to bomb it.

First for the entry exam participants, we had to go to the UPSN outpost in our town. The Fillydelphia outpost took up only a quarter of its block, small enough to be a random department store, too big to be a corner shop. Once we had filed in the building's entrance for recruits, we were instantly adressed by a lieutenant, who checked us off to make sure we were all here. If we weren't there before 8 am sharp, then you were automatically dismissed.

After he finished, without explanation shouted,"Target practice stations now! Line up and grab ammunition!"

It was the kind of voice that was used to being obeyed.

Of course I obeyed, I was the first to spot the rather obvious sign that read "Target Practice". I dashed through the door, and was the first to grab a pistol with two clips. There was also a belt with ten magnetic spots. (Probably for holding clips) I stuck the spare clip into the weapon. Once I went to target range, I awaited for a command to start. He never said anything about it, but it was a good idea. Several then poured in the line behind me, in fact the one behind me told me to start shooting, but I told him to shut up.

"START!"

Those words caught me off guard, but I quickly got a grip on the current events. There was a timer with five seconds, probably for each shot. It took me two seconds to aim. I pulled the trigger, allowing the bullet to hit the 50 area. I was surprised by the recoil of the shot, it almost flew out of my hands. But I quickly put it back into position and blew a hole in the bulls eye. I did the same with the next shot, then the other. I got bulls eyes with the next five shots, then the others hit a 20 and 50.

After those eight shots, I noticed the timer go to ten, and now noticing that the clip was empty, I found a switch. We read a manual on reloading the HP Pistol in the registration form and I memorized it all. I slid the lock backwards, and the clip simply fell out. I wrenched the spare one from my belt and tried gently sliding it into the chamber. It stopped halfway, so I wrenched it out. And that, unfortunately made my hoof hit the young stallion in the face, he shot me a look of death my eyes simply stayed blank in response. So now, I shoved it into the chamber, that seemed to work. So I took aim and began using up my ammo on the target again.

By the time my clip was empty, a feminine voice said, "Turn over, next one starts in 5 seconds." I hated how the voice lacked any emotion. I sat down on one of the benches with a sign above them that said,"Finished participants here." I apparently had previously ignored the sign.

The rest didn't do great, one even had the pistol fly out of her hoof as soon as she fired. On closer observation, I noticed the    

target boards changed every time somepony finished. And a camera probably identifies which recruit wannabe was shooting. Of course there were standouts, and some were awesome, one even hit with every round a bulls eye.

The whole session took about twenty minutes, then, they got us ready for the next stations.

Next up, running.

The lieutenant took us to a large indoor running track. 400 metres long. Again, only giving a vague explanation, barked,"run ten laps on all fours, then five on your rear legs! Going below jogging speed will make your score ZERO!"

Well we all started as soon as he shouted that.

I began a trot down the track, apparently one mare got cocky and started with a sprint of forty miles per hour. as opposed to my speed which was roughly ten.

My hooves felt like they were stepping on tiny rubber spikes placed on random places. Well I WAS doing that but it left some marks on my hooves. I didn't feel the pain until the forth lap. My throat was burning, it had a cramped feeling just begging my legs to stop. My leg muscles were exhausted to the point where they felt like they were being burnt inside out. My lungs were pretty much being incinerated. They had this cramped feeling just crushing my chest. To put it simply, it was pure torture.

After what seemed like years I passed the tenth lap. The lieutenant shout clearly at us,"NO STOPPING LAZY SECOND HAND RECRUIT WANNABES!"

Well, that was insulting enough. I went up to my feet and began an awkward jog. This time, I was slowed down to half speed. And being drained of energy didn't help. I hated that feeling. I personally thought it made me feel vulnerable.

At this point, my front legs sighed in relief. In contrast my rear legs flared even more, probably due to the fact they were supporting my whole body weight. It was far worse than on all fours. But I guessed I'll have to get used to it because my front hooves were required when holding two handed guns or just firearms in general. The lieutenant seemed ignorant to our pain and suffering. In fact, he seemed to be just enjoying it. That sadistic thing.

After two whole kilometres of pain and suffering, I finally finished. I resisted the urge to just collapse onto the ground. It probably wouldn't make a good impression on the lieutenant. Panting? I tried to resist that but if you looked closely you could see me sucking in as much as oxygen as possible with my nose. At the corner of my eye, I could see a water fountain. Checking to see if nopony was looking, I made a run for it. They lieutenant was dozing.

Once I had reached it, I took just one sip. But it was instant relief. It soothed my throat. Although I was still thirsty, I had to get back to the group.

Once he woke up, he took one look at us, oblivious as ever to the recruits' pain. Finally, he ordered for us to be taken to receive our test scores.

The pass was 2000 points. I was almost shocked when I got over 1.5 times more than that. 3150 points. Half of them, unfortunately, failed. The pass for space marines was 3000, so that meant I wouldn't be a plain old marine.

I resisted the urge to yell out,"HELL YEAH!"

The ones who had passed, were brought over to the out post hanger. 121 had attended. 60 passed. And there was exactly four HPM-3 Dropships parked inside. Each one was 20 metres long. We were slit up into groups of twenty. And we were guided by who appeared to be the pilot of the dropship to the leftmost one. Walking under the 9 metre long tail, I noted that it was the shape of a airline's rear. He pressed a few switches on his left wrist and the rear door opened.

Neatly piled was twenty black seats, 10 at each side. The total length of the troop bay was six metres. (clearly marked) Two defibrillators were at each side, near the pilot's seat. The pilot stepped in first, and walked up to his seat, which was in the middle of the front. I shrugged and went to the front left seat. The rest decided to copy me and soon everypony poured in. The seats had a velvet exterior, and it was pretty comfortable overall. Each was forty centimetres long, as clearly stated in a manual below every seat.

The pilot pressed a button, which closed the door. A small light went on it the middle of the troop bay as soon as the door closed, so we weren't in the dark. After that, the pilot literally stomped one of three pads on the floor.

The dropship shot upwards. I could feel the force against my head. After a few seconds, he flipped a lever forward and hit the accelerator. I barely had time to buckle my seat belt which was like backpack strips, but with a buckle in between.

The thing shot forward like a bullet. No exaggeration. After two seconds, I peered over to see the speedometer was already at 970 mph. It took only another second for it to be 1240. And it didn't seem to be going faster. A small sentence popped up saying that we had reached top atmosphere speed. The altitude chart said we were already ten miles in the air. It grew at roughly a mile a second.

Nopony said a word. It wasn't long before I could spot the glass getting hot. And I mean REALLY HOT. The outside temperature sign showed over a thousand degrees Celsius. However, after only ten seconds there was a sudden temperature drop outside. The speed almost doubled instantly. The pilot noticed this and released the accelerator and hit the brakes. I had no idea how to make brakes work in space but if I asked then I probably would just get a boring lecture in return.

Once we had slowed to only thirty miles per hour. We were roughly two miles from an absolutely gargantuan space station. The hanger door was already open. After a minute, we were much closer.

It wasn't until now I noticed how beautiful space was. As the glistening stars, the whole thing was pretty much indescribable with words itself. I snapped back into reality when the dropship turned to face the hanger. The thing was slowing down drastically. I could almost hear the landing gear pull down. We touched down with a soft thump. Well, it wasn't actually soft.  Cause it still shook me slightly. Apparently we were the last dropship to arrive. Cause the hanger door closed.

The rear door opened, allowing us to pour out. We were escorted by the pilot, of course, who brought us to a door. After swiping a tag he produced from one of the pouches embedded into his armour, the door slid open. We followed his every move. Until he arrived at a door labeled 'Armoury'. He led us in. Brought us over to the Space Marine armour area. He, explaining while slapping our armour on, said,"You got into the space marines, but there's a rapid response mission for you all. With next to no training, we are sending you down to Manehatten."

Long story short, he let us pick custom armour colours, and I picked dark blue. We got a boring lecture about how all UPSN weapons work and how to use them. How to use AR weapons in case of emergency, and how to do just about everything. But I listened to every word of it. I knew I would be needing this information or I could lose my life. I don't know why, but every single word was burnt into my head.  

If that was "right next to no training" then I shuddered about how long regular training would last.

We were told that we would all be going down there together, and we weren't even a proper squad. We were all given the same weapons, RFK3 Assault Rifle, SMR Battle Rifle, and a HP Pistol. No grenades. We were given very simple instructions, go to the drop pods, go inside, close the door, and press the drop button.

We went to the pods, the walk altogether took ten minutes, and we had to follow signs to find the pods. Easier said then

done. We never said a word, so we didn't get to know each other any better. It was almost creepy how we closed our doors in unison.

I took a deep breath and pressed 'drop'.

Chapter Two: Drop

Blazing Muzzles

Chapter Two

By Blaze Spectrum

At first, the pod stood still. But then, I heard a humming sound building up above the pod. Probably to launch me, after all, we WERE in space. After three seconds, the pod shot downwards, and making my head hit the roof of the pod. I expected to have a throbbing pain at my head, but instead, there a a soft bump. I slapped myself after realizing I was in armour. Of course, the slap, was barely noticeable beneath three centimetres of armour.

I felt the lack of gravity, it was, well awkward. The station had generated artificial gravity, so I never got to feel it totally. So, instinctively, I grabbed the handles. Looking through the ultra durable glass door, I found we were going near. I could feel a slight pull of gravity again. It gave slight relief but I was still admittedly frightened. I could see the heat building up from the window, and the feeling that the pod was going to incinerate every moment. After the heat disappeared, I could see the clouds, feel the normal gravity. I always enjoyed planes landing, but this, this was different. This was being inside of a small tube falling to ground at fatal speeds.

After a few minutes, I looked at the altitude bar, it read a kilometre.

"Only a kilometre left?!" I thought, this was gonna be a real rattler. I looked rather anxiously at the altitude bar.

900 m

700 m

500 m

300 m

100 m

"Yeah, a real rattler," I thought.

50 m

20 m

Suddenly, the whole world seemed to be suffering from a devastating earthquake. After about ten seconds of rattling, I noticed that I had drop down with the door facing the ground.

"Damn!" I shouted. I racked my brain for anything about an emergency, exit, and luckily, I recalled a rear exit.

Looking at the rear, I saw a button cover with glass which said 'Emergency Exit'. Most of the glass had been shattered, but it was still evident. So without hesitating, I smacked the button.

At first, there was a quiet hum, then, I noticed the rear come loose. I punched it open, I was out!

Looking up, I saw the other space marines, who had apparently waiting for me. Only four had landed near me. Put it simply, we all introduced ourselves to reduce confusion, the team was:

Stream

Doug

Charlotte (Prefers Char)

Maddie

After that, we simply moved out.

It wasn't until then I realized how ague our orders were. They simply told us to eliminate all hostiles. Simple enough.

Proceeding down a dark alley, I noticed something. The place was run down. Typical for a metropolis. A sign said we were on west 51st Street 8th Avenue. Peering out of the corner, saw nothing of interest. There was a place in front of us called Hampton Inn. Maybe it would provide decent cover. I passed a store which said something about 8G, and how it was 50 times faster then 3G. Blah blah blah.

I kicked the door. Only to find that it was a automatic door, it slid open just fine. I slapped my self again.

We all took cover behind furniture. After several minutes, an AR marine squad came in. I grabbed my Battle Rifle from my back. Aimed, it didn't have a scope but it wouldn't be much use in such close quarters. My HUD said that the BR holds up to ten bullets per clip, that would serve just fine. I put a bullet through the back of one of the marine's orange helmet. A surge of blood came from the wound and he fell down, with blood pouring out of his mouth, clearly dead. It didn't feel satisfying, it just felt, kind of neutral. I guessed the only thing that didn't make me feel guilty was that they weren't innocent.

Unfortunately, my weapon wasn't silenced, but it didn't matter anyways, they turned around to face me, one of them yelled out,"Fucking UPSN Space Marines!"

But he got killed by a three round RFK3 Burst, they turned away to face Char. Strange, isn't it? How when ever you kill someone everyone else begins facing you. Well that instinct cost them another marine, cause Stream jumped out of cover,

flying, and effectively killed another Marine with his RFK3. Doug killed another with a SMR round. Me, switching my SMR to my RFK3, forced him to the ground. Facing me he watched in horror as I shoved five armour piercing bullets down his throat.

After that, nopony said anything just reloaded their weapons. I did the same, we should be ready for what ever awaited us.

Well, we were right because another squad noticed the corpses on the ground. They stopped to check them. Big mistake. Maddie took on of there heads of, resulting in more blood and disturbing bits of head. Doug got another one with another one with six RFK3 round to the chest of one of them. In other word, they were helpless. The last one was out of sight. I rolled over to the area near the elevators. using the corner as cover. I looked at the elevators for a moment, but then I got tackled to the ground, I looked up to see a aggravated marine pointing his IURF2 at my visor. My allies raised their weapons, but soon, they found that they were jammed, and so, had to do some twitching with them. I looked up at the marine, that idiot had fallen for my counter trap.

"Any last words?" he asked me cockily. The 'words' were spat out of his mouth.

"Idiot," I responded.

"What?!"

"You IDIOT!" I said, almost laughing.

He looked down at his chest, to find a very particular combat knife sticking out of it. As soon as he looked up in horror, I wrenched the knife out, effectively killing him.

Well that was a close shave.

Almost immediately, several AR Space Marines stormed in. Their helmets had spikes at the back adorning the armour piece. Decals covered their armour of many different things. The first thing I did was snatch a grenade from the marine I had just stabbed. I threw it at the squad's center. That caused three to roll away, the two left who took too long to process what was happening were instantly reduced to a charred heap of flesh and metal. For some, reason, the sight almost made me want to vomit. I didn't resist it, but I didn't vomit anyways. I allowed my allies to do the rest.

Then, a space marine with a machine gun began to fire a hail of bullets. Doug, who was unfortunate enough to be charging, got his right leg pumped with lead. Crippled, he fell to the ground. His leg was torn off by the bullets. But again, he got shot there about twenty times. He was slowly bleeding out, and in a last ditch effort, grabbed his sidearm and eliminated another

unfortunate troop. I knew military issue defibrillators were infused with a complex magical spell which could mend even the most severe of wounds. But there wasn't one nearby, so I could only watch him slowly die a painful death.

I don't know what happened to sanity but I rolled out of cover, into the volley of twenty millimetre rounds. One bounced of my visor, leaving a crack an inch large. I opened hell on the machine gunner with my RFK3, three shots hit his head, the first one made a dent, the second made noticeable damage, and the third, after the damage sustained, was fatal. But once he died, three bullets that still haven't hit anything hit me in the chest. The health indicator, dropped to 120. The move had halved my health from full. While 240 may sound like a lot to be able to take, I don't know, the aspect of armour makes you feel more safe then you actually are. I saw a grenade roll in, which, rather ironically, charred up Char. I reloaded my RFK3, and holstered it onto my magnetic back's right side. I drew my combat knife from its sheath and slit another marine's throat. That idiot was stupid enough to approaching.

Doug, who was still dying, got his brains blasted out by a sniper rifle. Out of anger I threw the knife at the sniper.

You know, when you're mad. Normally, you tend to make mistakes a lot. Not in my case. It was the complete opposite. the knife slashed into her right side, allowing or her to drop down and slowly die. I walked right up to her, and to guarantee no more suffering for her, wrenched the blade out. I didn't even bother to even shake some blood off the blade before sheathing it.

"Yeah," I thought."Freaking terrific start, lost only three."

Then, I set my eyes on the Equestria State Building. I realised that they may very well be hiding in there. It must explain it all. The Equestria State Building. And now, despite not being the tallest building in Manehatten anymore, it was still important enough.

"Well," I asked Stream,"Can you fly us to the Equestria State Building?"

"No can do. I'm not the strongest flier and we're both in full armour."

"Come ON! The armour weighs only three kilograms! It's tinfoil and titanium fused together with magic to make something as light as if it was made of tinfoil! And strong as titanium!"

He replied with,"How do you remember ALL those facts?!"

"You avoiding the subject?!"

"No, put it bluntly, fully grown earth ponies weigh a hundred and eight pounds! I weigh nearly HALF of that!"

Well, he did have a point there. He wasn't a machine. And he was built for flying, and I wasn't. He had hollow bones and more natural weight reductions. My structure was built with durability and strength and with all the biological operation of the body, I wouldn't be light at all.

Looked like we would have to walk there.

After a long hour of walking down seventeen blocks, we finally were at the entrance. Two marine guards were took down with swift SMR rounds to the head. One had an shotgun while the other had a ULR Silenced Sniper. Wouldn't hurt for me too exchange weapons.

Grabbing my SMR, I dropped it and my four spare clips on the ground. I grabbed the sniper and five clips. The AR's design for a standard issue sniper rifle was a silenced weapon, with four round per clip. Unfortunately to achieve this capacity they had to lower the speed of each bullet. Or maybe fortunately when used against you. Because you have a split second to evade. While few escape, some have to at least kill the sniper.

I hugged the wall when I was inside, couldn't risk an ambush. Grabbing the sniper, I noticed the ground floor was empty. I noticed that the second floor was rather heavily guarded with no cover but pillars with some television screens, which would blow up if enough damage is received. Perfect sniper practice. A large, open room with bad cover. Awesome.

I blew a space marine's head off. Better to take out the larger threats. The rifle barely made a whisper, true to what the lecture had told me. Blowing some more heads off, it wasn't long until I was down to two spare clips.

Oh, and by heavily guarded I mean by public standards, there was only two space marine squads, which I took out with three clips and a half. Five marine squads, and I got two more out of one squad. It was rather amusing, really, how you could blow heads off and have ponies scrambling for cover.

Well, now, time to stop being nice. We both charged out with our RFK3s, pumping whoever went in our way with lead. Until it was down to one. I had three clips left. I stuck it to my back's right side and unsheathed my combat knife. The blood that didn't get to escape was kind of rusted into the blade.

He didn't have weapons, but he was trying to reach for one. And so, he received a roundhouse kick to his chest. He surely would have been moaning if I didn't get him in the chest plate. Somehow, he maintained his balance, and so, I slid the knife just between his eyes and nose. Then, I slashed at his chest. He was already dying. So I kicked him at the window, which smashed, with him tumbling out of it.

Then, it hit me.

"What kind of sadistic bastard am I?!"

But I ignored it, passing it off as my temper. We needed all the attention we could need. We were going to clear the Equestria State Building of hostiles. And more importantly, Manehatten.

Chapter Three: Massacre

Blazing Muzzles

Chapter Three: Massacre

By Blaze Spectrum

I noticed something about my health bar. I didn't take any shots when I stormed the second floor, but I wasn't healing.

You see, space marine armour is infused with an extremely advanced system that heals you from zero to full in about six seconds. Not that it would actually heal you when you were dead but that was simply a measurement. Extremely advanced, if I asked how it worked I would probably end up sleeping. However, it was not as efficient as defibrillators. It could only heal you if you had more then twenty health left. How they all agreed on how to measure the units of health was almost unbelievable.

And my system wasn't healing me. Malfunction? Very unlikely. But still possible.

"DAMN!" I shouted, punching one of the TV screens. It broke, but of course I didn't get electrocuted. That was it. I had always believed that I had seriously crappy luck when I needed it. And if I was still ten, then I would have used it to say,"SEE?! EVERYTHING DOES HAPPEN TO ME!"

But I wasn't ten, so I decided to suck it up and proceed.

I grabbed my RFK3 and walked to the elevator there, a marine suddenly grabbed me by my neck, twisted me to face Stream, who had just processed what had happened. Before he could slit my throat though, I grabbed his hoof, twisted it so hard I heard a crack come from his wrist. The knife was facing him, and while he was still focused on the pain in his wrist. I shoved his own combat knife through hist throat. Wrenching it out. I had effectively killed him with his own weapon. Of course I wasn't about to mutilate his body. That would be crazy, a waste of time, and just really stupid. I never liked the concept of torturing somepony and then ultimately killing him or her. Just killing painlessly was more efficient and more kind.

After an uneventful elevator climb to the eightieth floor. When we came out, the floor was deserted. Except for a defibrillator. Which was exactly what I needed. Defibrillators only healed you so efficiently because they were infused with magic. Just begging to be released. Aiming it at my body, I squished my hoof to pull the lever while still gripping the handle. I flinched slightly as the at first painful jolt of magic shot into me. But apart from a brief sting, the places I got shot by the machine gun no longer hurt. (Apart from some dents which I could almost feel)

The elevator that led up to the top floor was out of service. How I could tell it wasn't a decoy was that it had the official logo of the Equestria State Building, and I doubted the AR would have carried a portable printer with them. I kicked the star access door open. Apparently it was weak enough to be kicked off its hinges.

After an uneventful climbing of six stairs to the not highest observation deck I opened the door rather cautiously, in contrast to how I opened it on the eightieth floor. There was a few snipers outside. Probably searching for random enemy reinforcements. Pulling out my silenced sniper. I pushed the door open. Surprisingly, despite how creaky the door was, they didn't turn their heads. They probably assumed that nopony could go through the defences on the lower floors. I went over to a corner for cover of what was going to happen. They were apparently the only ponies on the floor. Aiming the weapon at the rightmost one, I pulled the trigger, turning her head into a pile of mush and blood. Despite my weapon being silenced, they noticed their dead comrade right away. I blew the next one's brains out. Now, only two remained. One fired at my chest. After that, I rotated back into cover. The health bar read 40. The shot had come close to killing me. If it hit my head, then, well, you know what would have happened.

Reloading my weapon, I dropped it on the ground. I don't know why I reloaded it, but I just felt like. I pulled my RFK3 out. Blind firing at them, I unloaded a clip on spraying where ever they could be. Once my clip was empty, the system had healed me. It was almost miraculous. But getting back, I dared a look at them, and of course they were dead. So I simply walked up to their corpses, on the way reloading my weapon. now, I was running low on ammo. So I just snatched a IURF1 from one of their backs. The IURF1 was before the IURF2 came out. Had larger clip size, higher rate of fir, only thing improved in the next generation for the weapon was lowered recoil. It was too expensive to produce too much, so it was only issued to Space Marines.

Looking through the window, Stream was just standing there. The marines didn't notice him. The thing I disliked was he just stood by while I was being shot at, and DID in the chest by a sniper bullet.

Giving him a slightly indignant glare, we went up to the staircase again. It was uneventful as well, if you exclude a lot of panting.

By the time we reached the top floor, I allowed him a second to rest, then, with my stolen IURF1, I used the bayonet to bust the door open.

Looking inside, I saw a squad of marines looking shocked at me. They reached for their weapons. But before one could even touch one, I rolled a primed grenade into their center. They didn't have fast enough reflexes to roll away, and instead, looked at the grenade with a expression of horror. They only got to look for a second before the munition exploded, turning them all into a pile of charred flesh.

With a cocky grin I rolled over to the other side, there was one stallion. He had a cigar in his mouth, and a hat simply covered his head.

He noticed me instantly, and simply said to COM,"Sorry, but looks like somepony was dumb enough to interfere, Commander out."

He pulled out a revolver, and reloaded it as if he had all the time in the world. He aimed it at my head, I ducked, in time barely to avoid having a bullet put in my head.

Wrenching out my sidearm, I attempted to shoot his legs, and then his head, however, he jumped the last second. Apparently being high ranked did not mean he forgot what the battlefield was like.

"Damn!" I thought.

Just as I had aimed again, He did an unexpected maneuver, heading towards me. As soon as he hit the ground, he ducked, pulled out a combat knife, and jabbed at my heart. I avoided it, but barely. I had to go as far as falling on my back. He gave me a look that just screamed 'game over'.

Unfortunately for him, he forgot about Stream, who tackled him. Once I managed to figure out where they were, I saw Stream, with a insane look in his eyes. He had stabbed the commander in the stomach with his own knife. The commander, too lazy to make a final move of grabbing his pistol, he had been stabbed by his own knife, so he couldn't use it, due to the fact it was in him, so pulling it out would simply kill him.

I walked over to pull it out and end his misery, but Stream simply said,"No, leave him to die painfully, what he always deserved."

I shrugged, and just went with him. I looked out the window, several AR choppers were coming in and picked up troops. How often do you see the AR retreat for no reason? We had owned everypony in the building, so there was no way anypony could have called. It was just perplexing.

Well, either way, we had to get out of here.

Well, of course the elevators were automatic, but this one only went to the eightieth floor. It was automatically set to go there  no matter what. I exited the machine kind of pissed off. We could, of course, make the machine just drop down, but this wasn't a drop pod, it wasn't built for falling from extreme heights, and even then, drop pods still need to have a bit of propulsion to stop them from breaking apart.

I went to the staircase, then, I remembered something. Space Marine armour had an advanced system to absord half of the impact you receive, and the system? The armour.

With a cocky grin, I grabbed Stream, and told him,"Drag me down the stairs, no questions!"

The truth was, I suddenly felt like I was making him my slave. But he obeyed, while I grabbed his rear hooves, he dragged my down the stairs while flying. He wasn't actually lifting me so that reduced the stress for him a lot. I could say, by the time we reached the bottom, I would have been a mess of bruises and cuts, however, with armour, that was not the case. So after an exceptionally uneventful climb down the stairs, Stream finally let go. I allowed him a minute to rest. Then, we finally exited the grand building.

Well, just about immediately, I hit the button on a COM to the left of my helmet. I went to the option, 'request extraction'. However, the sight that awaited me was disappointing. No option for extraction was available.

I began swearing, used language I didn't even know I knew, and after a straight fifteen minutes, I turned to Stream, I said he could do what he wanted. He simply flew away, probably to some random UPSN outpost in the middle of nowhere so he could have a place to stay.

I spotted something at the corner of my eye.

And it wasn't anything bad. In fact, it was good to me.

An AR HS3C Transport helicopter perfect for hijacking. Apparently this one was an extra, and all the other troops had been extracted before it could get there. So its rotors began to spin again.

I was not missing this opportunity, Just as it rose two metres off the ground, I jumped and grabbed the handle to open the troop bay, the door opened from up to down, so it was much simpler to climb in. I slammed the hatch shut with a grin spread across my face.

It wasn't until now I noticed my armour, it was coated with dents and rust. Well, guess some maintenance would be required once I got back, provided I do.

Observing my surroundings, I noticed that the two doors were at the middle of the bay. There were two seats at each side next to the door. Two more were at the back, totaling up to ten passengers.

To the near front, there was a door, a defibrillator to the left side, to the right was a bag filled with ammo.

So, grabbing my IURF1 from the left side of my back, I wrenched the door open, and stabbed an unsuspecting pilot's head with the bayonet.

Wrenching the now gory blade from the pilot's head, I effectively took control of the chopper.

So, now, I would be headed for the nearest UPSN outpost.

Grabbing the joystick and flooring the altitude, I went forward in excess of two hundred kilometres per hour, shooting down other helicopters, took them five being brought down to realize something was wrong. Hitting the button at the top of the joystick while the reticle was aimed at another chopper's tail, I effectively ripped it off after about twelve bullets. Without the balancing rotor, the enemy pilot could only look in horror as the lack of balance made the chopper spin in the same direction as the rotor. It crashed into the bridge, making for a good fireworks display. Aiming the chin-mounted gatling gun at another chopper's cockpit, it was only six bullets before it just began falling on it's own, apparently the glass wasn't THAT bulletproof. Snorting, I bashed another chopper's rear tail, ripping it off while only suffering mild damage myself. It suffered a similar fate as the first. Seven down, two to go.

This time, I broke the glass with my bayonet, and tossed a grenade at the two remaining. The were ridiculously close, so the munition blew up in the rotors, causing the same for the aircraft. The one next to it, suffered heavy damage. Its pilot probably tried to control the thing but failed, of course. It would be an slow death to die by drowning, provided the force of falling from an kilometre of altitude wouldn't kill him already.

"Get that weak shit off the sky!" I shouted before it crashed.

I chuckled, but that was cut short when it him me. The UPSN wouldn't recognize me in a hijacked vehicle. Well, better to take the risk then probably die from hunger.

---

I've been flying for about half an hour now. I could make out a building in the distance. Lowering altitude and hitting the zoom on my visor, I could make out UPSN. So, I guess I'll go.

But when I was only within a hundred metres from safety, I could see it, a rocket fired from a defence turret. It was getting closer, the craft wasn't maneuverable enough to avoid the tracking rocket. I could hear the violent boom as the rocket hit the tail, causing the chopper to fall towards the roof of the base, but it was clear that it was the structure that would hold, and not me. Without the tail, I could only watch helplessly as my chopper plummeted down.  

Chapter Four: Another Mission

Blazing Muzzles

Chapter Four: Another Mission

By Blaze Spectrum

I guess I had only one option. To get out.

Well, I might get cut up by the propellers.

I thought about it for a second, a precious second.

"Chopped up or blown up?"

Actually I'd rather die of old age. I kicked the door open and then the one at the side of the troop bay. I may die but I may live. Or at least much more likely then I would if I stayed in and waited for the damn thing to blow up. Once I was roughly forty metres from the roof, I slid down.

Well I didn't get chopped up by the propellers at least.

Now I had to absorb as much of the impact as possible. First, I landed with a bent left rear hoof. Then I rolled over till my body touched the ground. Then I had to use my front hooves to make me go into a front flip. Didn't actually hurt too much. Just slightly stung my left rear hoof. One of the advantages of full body armour. Standing up to my hind legs, I was greeted by a squad which decided to inspect the wreckage.

They immediately stopped. It was recognisable that I was wearing UPSN Space Marine Armour. Damaged but easily recognisable.

"Hold your fire," one of them whispered.

It wasn't long until they brought me in the base. They gave me a military issue credit card and gave me twenty bits to start with after I explained that I wasn't trained fully and was sent down. They were surprised, of course. I had survived a moderately dangerous mission, without physical training.  And with the lack of that training it was probably near suicide.

Twenty bits. That was our weekly salary. Not to much considering we only got a strictly fifteen by fifteen square centimetre sandwich with ham, cheese and salad. A pint of water was offered. That's all we got with one meal, and if we wanted extra, then we would have to buy it. The prices were outrageous, of course. And we probably needed it when getting stuff outside.

I went through all the things, you probably wouldn't have believed it was a military base if it weren't for the vehicles and weapons.

So after a very dull day, I collapsed on my bed in my bunker. It had a mattress that had EXTREMELY strong springs. It was as I was lying down on a sheet of fabric with metal behind it. Either way, the pillow was reasonably soft, at least. And apparently I was sleeping with another stallion. Two for every room. I would have been fine with it if he didn't snore so loud. And in darkness like this, I couldn't find my earplugs. But even if I found them, they wouldn't be much use. I never used earplugs much, even when there's a huge thunderstorm outside. And when i did use them, I never could insert them in properly, and in the end they were useless.

I could open the curtains to wake him up and give myself a chance to snooze but that was selfish. And I probably would end up in a fight. I turned my head the side facing the wall, and pulled my blanket upwards. But that didn't help. I t just made my breathing harder and it was much more stuffy. So in the end, I somehow fell asleep around two in the morning. But it wasn't long before I was woken up.

An earsplitting alarm went off. It woke me up and startled me of course. But I managed to get a grip. Unfortunately, the stallion wasn't so lucky. He woke up with a gasp of shock. But he rolled over to near the edge while he was sleeping. So he tumbled down with his blanket and a scream or two. Well maybe he was more lucky then I thought so.

He was sleeping with his armour on. So he was ready for the following announcement.

"All marines! To defensive positions! The enemy is charging!"

Damn. That meant I had to go to the armoury. Checking the time, it had only been half an hour. But that had got my adrenaline going. That along with the fact I'm normally hyperactive sucked up drowsiness altogether.

I dashed down the hallway on all fours. Just because I spent hours standing on my hind legs didn't mean I was totally used to it. Once my breath was pretty much drained. A sign which said "Armoury" got my attention.

I kicked the door open. And gave a grin to the weapons it revealed. Going to the "Armour" section, I slapped on my armour in about five minutes. I turned off the airtight feature. I wasn't going to be flat out in vacuum or under the surface of the sea. Or at least I hoped not.

I dashed out to the front guard system. I grabbed my LRR2 Designated Marksman Rifle. The charge was mostly of modified jeeps with two seats and a gunner with a weapon in the shotgun seat. And at the back was four seat in a roll cage. The driver and the gunner had doors, but not windows. Probably to shoot out of. And for me shoot in. I scoped in and blew a gunner with a rocket launcher right in the head. Then, I took out three passengers with swift headshots. Only one missed. I reloaded my weapon. Each clip had twelve bullets. And the most one could carry of a weapon was five spare clips, which is what I started with. So I still had plenty.

But that probably wasn't enough. There was infantry as well. So I manned the Nearest machine gun turret near me.

Much better.

First off, I could take out a jeep in twenty five shots. Five If I aimed at the driver. And the gun fired extremely quick. There was two rotating barrels side by side. There was some metal at the side to offer protection for the gunner. I had a sniper bullet miss my head and hit the protection.

There wasn't much to remember. It was mostly holding off infantry and blowing up jeeps. But they were making noticeable progress forward. And soon we were ordered back inside.

We were told to sit and watch. I didn't know why. Maybe they were gonna bomb them?

Well, it was answered soon.

A emotionless voice over the intercom said,"Minefield activated."

All of the hostiles were instantly blown up in a explosion that could have given somepony a seizure.

Then, the intercom said again, this time actually with emotion,"Now it's our turn to attack!"

Well, now, I was being brought over to a helicopter that didn't have anypony else to take.

But then, something very puzzling happened.

A huge bright flash went around the room. It even took half a minute for the smoke to clear.

And in it's place, was six mares.

'What the..." was my initial reaction. Where did these mares come from? And they suspiciously looked, as if the were the representatives of the Elements of Harmony. However, that was impossible for me to think of at the time.

The one with a lavender coat, and if I remember the tutor's struggling to teach me about history, was Twilight Sparkle. As they said, Princess Celestia had sent her to study about friendship. It didn't sound very chaotic back then, the average for a murder was only one kill every century. Now it was thousands everyday.

Yeah, she talked.

"What?! Where are we? What is that awkward thing with a rotor?" How far are we in the future?!"

Well, at that moment I assumed they were either insane, or got amnesia.

A marine which stayed behind to guard said,"I think we'll have to bring them back to the medical station for analysis of something wrong."

"No!" shouted the pony that was probably Twilight,"Just let me contact Princess Celestia?"

"No," the guard said bluntly.

"Please Please Please Please Please Please?"

"Okay, fine."

The rest of the mares didn't talk. But I could tell what they were like from their expressions. The orange one with a cowboy hat was reasonably paying attention to her surroundings, probably assuming she may be in hostile areas due to the marine's initial treatment. The butterscotch one with a flowing pink mane was clearly frightened out of her mind. The light sky blue one with a mane the shade of a rainbow was looking around, her messy mane going slightly shaking as she did so. Probably looking for a weak spot to knock out the marine once she had the chance and allow her friends an escape route. The pink one with a mane which resembled cotton candy was bouncing, oblivious to the situation. Finally, the white one with a very tidy purple mane was just looking around, probably disgusted by the lack of design on the walls. It was all on the faces.

I didn't really want to point a weapon at them, but I had to. I had an LRR2 aimed at the purple one's head. The marine had his pistol out.

Well, eventually, the rainbow one decided she was gonna bust them out. She kicked me in the side. And the fact she was in mid flight only made it hurt more. The orange one tried to stop her but didn't in time.

I attempted to make a grab for my LRR2 but I got my head forced down before I could get within a metre of it. She then bashed into the marine, who was trying to get a proper lock with his pistol.

"Come on!" she shouted."Lets get outta here!"

"Rainbow Dash, you're gonna get us all killed!" the orange southerner responded.

And that was the end of it. There was no more jokes. We brought them to the communication center. We went in front of one of the computers, and activated the webcam. We explained how it worked to Twilight. She's a quick learner, I can give her that.

It took four minutes for Celestia to even respond. But eventually she flashed on the screen. In a instant, her eyes widened, pupils shrank, and her jaw dropped.

"Twilight!" she shouted out."You're still alive?!"

"Sure am!"

"But, but... HOW?!"

"Somepony stupid enough to put a spell on us when we were all together. We were warped to whatever time that pony pleased.."

"Okay, where are you? I want to see you, now!"

She looked at me for a second, with wide open, pleading eyes. She was irresistable, even adorable. Eventually I said,"We're fifty miles from the west of Fillydelphia."

She resumed the conversation,"We're about fifty miles from the west of Fillydelphia."

"That's about a over two thousand kilometres from Canterlot!"

"I'm sure you have the strength to teleport here."

Apparently that was all Celestia needed to know. She galloped away, not even bothering to turn off her webcam. So I just clicked disconnect.

It was five minutes before she appeared thorough the door. Twilight charged forward to hug her so violently you would have thought she was assaulting her. Celestia joined the embrace, and giving her a noogie probably of affection.

So after all of that, we explained everything to Twilight. She was horrified. But actually decided she wanted to join. To contribute. As for Pinkie, her mane seemed to deflate entirely. Rainbow Dash's interest was piqued, Applejack probably was thinking about it. Rarity looked at Twilight with a disapproving glare. As for Fluttershy, she was just curled up more compact then I thought possible, shivering. It didn't take a genius to figure out if it was because she was cold or scared.

Well, now that I had finally got Twilight to practice, she didn't cooperate. First off, we had ultra realistic wax statues with real grenades on them. I told Twilight to aim for the head.

She took five seconds to load the bullet in. And twice as long to aim. Now that she did aim, she was hesitant to pull the trigger. I have to give her though, she's really good at magic. I couldn't see the sniper rifle shake even once.

"Come on, Twilight," I assured her with a raised voice,"They're fake."

She pulled the trigger.

The head of one of the statues got blown right off, leaving pieces of fake brain, eyes, bone, and lots of blood splatters. Twilight cringed as soon as she saw that. I told her they were to simulate what would really happen, but she still didn't want to carry on. It took ten minutes to coax her again.

She slid another bullet in. This time, I told her,"For a better effect, aim for the grenades. you know, those green circular things with a tiny cylinder above it?"

"Okay," she responded.

There was the loud crack of the shot, the rifle recoiling. Wow, she was a crack shot. She hit a grenade and blew up all of the wax squad. Nothing was left except for a pile of fake gore.

Twilight cringed at the remains.

"You want to contribute, you gotta be able to suck up gore. It isn't a good feeling to be blowing heads off. But it feels good to be fighting for what is right," I told her.

Well, It wouldn't be easy to deal with the others.

Next up the line was Applejack. She signed up for close quarters combat. So I had to give her some lectures.

"The shotgun is an very effective weapon at close quarters. It's just plain lethal around three metres. From longer distances, it isn't as effective, because it sprays bullets. But from that range you can harm multiple hostiles. The combat knife, is great for point blank encounters. I recommend aiming for the heart or neck. Don't try the head unless you're pretty damn strong."

Well, the first thing she did after that lecture was walk up to the statues, and kicked their heads clean off. The fake gore went wild. It wasn't as insane the damage a sniper bullet did, but it was pretty gruesome nevertheless. Applejack was obviously disgusted but tried to hide it. After that, she finally grabbed a shotgun. I had to show her how to use it. The recoil was a bit of a shocker for her at first but she adapted. She was shocked by the sheer force of these "new crazy gun or what you call its".

"Um..." she told me, as if she were spitting something out,"I'm not sure if I wanna contribute in this war, Joey."

"You want to sit by and watch innocent heads get blown off while you sit and watch?!"

That got her.

Apparently that was all I needed to do. More staff came to give them basic training. Night passed by as a drag. I couldn't sleep.

But a voice went over the COM again. And guess what?

Another mission for me.

Chapter Five: Test Mission

Blazing Muzzles

Chapter Five: Test Mission

By Blaze Spectrum

Annoyed, I grabbed my weapons from the desk next to me. There was an LRR2 as my primary, the RFK3 as my secondary. Grabbing my final weapon, my sidearm, I loaded a clip into it. I already had my ammo on the belt. I only one hour of sleep in the past twenty four hours. It was only two in the morning. I had to do a rather simple mission, to give Twilight and her friends an idea of the nature of the battlefield.

I bet they must have been pretty ticked off at the early call. By the time we had gone together in the hanger, I could see the look on their faces. Twilight's mane was slightly messier than usual, she probably had a few seconds to comb it but that wasn't enough. Fluttershy's mane was perfect, and she was shivering. I had to put on her space marine helmet myself. Applejack, for some reason still wore her stetson over her helmet. Rainbow Dash's face had aggravation written all over it. She probably liked her sleep. Her mane seemed more or less normal, probably because it was usually messy. I had to help her get her helmet on despite her protests. She must have a pretty large ego. Pinkie had pulled her helmet out of nowhere and put it on. Rarity was the last to arrive, probably due to the fact she found it hard to put her armour on and was whining about it being a crime to fashion. She had no time to comb her mane, and I was sure she would like it less once she took her helmet off.

I glared at them."Stop bickering and get on the damn dropship!"

I had put so much force into the last word that even Rainbow obeyed.

Once we were inside, we had plenty of room. It was designed to be able to carry twenty, but we were seven. I knew what was going to happen but they didn't. And I bet it took them by surprise.

The vertical thrust activated. We went upwards quickly. Even under armour it was quite a jolt to the six mares. We only went up a metre though. And that's when the pilot went for full thrust. We shot forward, like an arrow from a crossbow. I actually had my seat belt on, so I didn't get pulled back. But the six mares nearly fell off their seats. But it wasn't long for them to get organised. I had to tell them how to get the seat belt on though.

We basically shot across the sky at 2000 kilometres per hour for half an hour. Then, after an uneventful trip, we had arrived.

It was Ponyville. While from the outside, it hasn't seemed to change at all from the past multiple centuries. But the inside was  equipped with the luxuries of today. We had been informed that the AR would be headed for Ponyville. I don't know why, but probably because it was the closest town to Canterlot.

First, I needed to get them ready. Applejack had a gatling gun along with her primary and secondary. She wouldn't be able to carry a spare drum, however, I had personally modified it to have five hundred custom cartilage 30 mm bullets opposed to the usual two hundred. The custom cartilages were modified for insanely increased accuracy and range. She should be intelligent enough to use the reticle to aim.

Pinkie had a rocket launcher that could unleash twice as big as a explosion as before. Rainbow Dash was equipped with a grenade launcher that would second Pinkie's anti vehicle capability. Rarity, had a normal load out and she seemed to prefer levitating her combat knife. Twilight had her sniper, and Fluttershy, had dual SMGs.

First off, we had to dig a trench. It was old but we had no sandbags. And we couldn't just be out in the open.

Twilight, who didn't put on her helmet yet, said,"Um... I'm not so sure I want to do this..."

At the same time, her horn seemed to be gathering up energy, which I twanged to stop.

"You're staying her whether you like it or not."

First, there was a helicopter coming in. Pinkie shot a rocket at it. She didn't even wait for it to lock on so it missed. Frustrated she pulled her helmet off, grabbed her combat knife and charged. Her mane was completely deflated, and she was quite the opposite of what she was.

She grabbed on to the handle of the troop bay door, sliding it open. She forced the blade through the first pony to react's throat. Priming a grenade, she rolled it in and jumped off, putting her helmet back on and sheathing her knife.

The whole thing went boom.

But then, a few squads began rolling over the horizon, which was easily mowed down with Applejack's gatling gun. But more came, until I realised it wasn't a few squads.

A whole army was headed our way.

And Applejack didn't seem to be able to stand the sight of bodies being torn apart by a ultra lethal killing machine. Twilight winced every time she blew a head off. Rainbow Dash didn't flinch as much but it was the recoil that shocked her.

I had a feeling that we weren't going to hold off a horde with amateurs.

I told Twilight to only target the space marines, Rarity to sneak up to higher ranking ponies and assassinate them. And Applejack to destroy everything that wasn't us. But despite all of it, the army was still gaining ground.

I was killing plenty with my DMR. Almost every shot I took was a headshot. And so, why I love the LRR2. But we were running out of ammunition was well. Apple jack just dropped her ailing gun due to no more ammo, and I only had two spare clips. We may have to turn this into war in the town.

Well, they were only rapidly gaining ground. It wasn't long before they had forced us all the way back to Ponyville, where some civilians were panicking, some were waiting with ammo belts, armour vests and AK47s. They were open to civilians but AK47s are awfully outdated. They take ten shots to kill a marine, and 14 to kill a space marine. But it was too expensive to supply them with state of art weaponry. So they started making their own. Crossbow sniper rifles, are an example. But the crossbows were awfully effective. Even if they hit you in the body when you're a space marine, it goes right through you.

"At least we have some back up," I thought.

As son as the first squad came in, they found an arrow piercing right through the leader, going through the one behind him and mortally wounding one more.

"Seems like the civilians aren't gonna let up their home turf anytime soon," I muttered under my breath.

Applejack began to man one of the examples of civilian creativity, a machine gun turret with two rotating barrels on the side and a grenade launcher in between them. The grenade launcher took out the remains of the first squad.  She began mercilessly mowing down the rest with a flurry of rapid fire and artillery. That alone wasn't enough to hold them off. But with the combined help, we were capable of keeping them away. But of course we ran out of ammunition. So while the civilians were holing them off we made a run for ammo. I grabbed an RPG-7 which I used to obliterate a dropship haphazardly attempting to drop off troops in a area too hot.

I grabbed an AK47 from the ground. While I still had my empty weapons on my back the thing still helped me kill a marine stupid enough to try to kill everything with a knife. I grabbed a crossbow sniper from the ground. I only had one shot that I took from a public ammunition cache. An explosive arrow. I aimed it at a space marine's head. That particular one was on a roll. Killing all civilians who dared charge her. An entire squad was around her as well. It was perfect.

I pulled the trigger. I could feel the twang as the bow almost instantly found its target's head. It wasn't that sharp, so it merely stuck out of the head. But a second later, it went boom. Killing everything within ten metres of her.

But Twilight and her friends were in trouble too. They were being charged by a horde. And they apparently were to fazed to pull a few grenades into the obvious grenade bait. But then, a dropship began looming over head. I wasn't facing the troop bay but the main six were. And they must have gotten a signal because they retreated back. The AR, had their attention diverted to the dropship, which simply dropped a bomb on them. It took out a whole block.

I heard a voice over my COM,"Come on! This is Dropship-09673, come aboard!"

I shouted back,"But what about Ponyville?"

The answer was harsh,"STFU and come aboard! Screw them! Let them deal with it themselves!"

"Fine," I muttered.

But of course, this wasn't it. A rocket was headed towards one of the wings.

It hit it. The wing was blown of immediately from the blast and the small ship came crashing down into a random pony's house.

The poor guy would lose his house. But the ones on board the dropship were in bigger trouble. In fact, they were dead. Probably not much apart from a few burning corpses. Even I was disgusted by what they might look like.

"No," I thought,"Bad mind! Don't think like that!"

But at least I didn't have to worry about one of the hordes. I took a three minute walk to regroup with the main six. I walked up to the wreckage. While we may have not been extracted, there was still something good. A chest full of ammo.

I quickly opened the box. Jackpot. It had every single clip we needed. It even had a gatling gun, but unmodified. I guessed it would do. This time, I grabbed the killing machine. In fact, it wasn't until that moment I realised the potential of the thing I was holding. It was a murder machine, a delivery system for death. It was a weapon. Well, it felt good having ammo again and not  having to constantly salvage the remains of war.

The first place Twilight told us to go was inside her library, despite all my protests that it was basically a giant tree. It was an ancient structure alright. The windows haven't been cleaned in a century, the books were perfectly normal though.

Twilight opened up a random book. And said,"These books are exactly the same as before!" she said while dusting off a few centuries of dust.

But of course, we called for extraction. They would be her in half an hour if we headed for the Everfree Forest.

"T-The Everfree Forest?!" shouted the main six.

"Hey," I replied,"Don't lose it. We're space marines, remember?"

Once we were outside I punched the glass open of a car near the library. A SUV. should hold us all.

"Sorry anonymous owner," I thought as I found the keys right in the ignition.

Once I got the main six inside, the layout was pretty simple. Twilight in the shotgun seat, with the window opening for shooting outside. Fluttershy and Rarity were in the back seats. Basically additional gunners. In the back was Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and Applejack. With the rear window broken from a few forceful kicks, they would get those on our tail.

I had my and on the handbrake. This was an automatic gear shift vehicle so holding the brake would reverse. I revved the engine up. I released the handbrake, launching us forward at high speed. Withing seven seconds, we were at a hundred kilometres per hour. I drove the vehicle to charge through the crowded streets. The civilians retreated, but the AR didn't react fast enough. A majority of them were killed or just spattered by the force. Half of them who survived the spatter were gunned down by the main six.

We were speeding down the dirt roads at an average of just over 120 kph. We had exited Ponyville in only a few minutes, and were running the AR over like nopony's business. Of course it was only twenty minutes once we arrived at a clearing in the Everfree Forest.

A HPM-3 Dropship was waiting for us. I was about to jam on the brakes when the vehicle suddenly spun out of control. I looked at the dashboard, which said that the traction control was off. It had been off just a few seconds ago, and Twilight probably was curious what it would do.

We flipped over to my right side, and the SUV, within seconds, was crushed to a fifth of its original size. It didn't blow up at least. So it was perfectly safe for us to get out.

I shot Twilight a dirty look but she probably never saw it because of my heavily tinted visor. At least we were unharmed though. I climbed onto the dropship and decided that they had enough.

So again, the flight was remarkably uneventful. Nothing tried to shoot us down, nothing bothered to hijack us. Just me sitting down with six other mares bored out of their minds. After a while I decided wearing my helmet was too stuffy and took it off. But that was when Rainbow Dash decided she wanted to fly all the way. At first I thought she was crazy but soon I saw what she meant. She could easily keep up with us. Despite the obvious fact that no pegasus in the last eight or ten centuries was able to break the sound barrier, much less pull off a Sonic Rainboom. Then, I remembered a long forgotten history class about the main six, which clearly stated Rainbow Dash was able to pull off a Sonic Rainboom, and had mastered it after a few years. While they also mentioned she was capable of turning it into a huge explosion if she hit the ground, that wasn't really necessary to keep up with us.

Once we were there, I eagerly jumped off when we were still a few metres from the hanger floor. I wanted to get out of that thing. It was quite the same for the others. I guessed it was safe to call it a day and go rest. After all, this wasn't much of a test mission for Twilight and her friends. It was more like defending from a full scale assault.

Now I guess the next challenge for them to deal with was rations. I bet the food back then was gourmet cuisine compared to the field rations. The food in the bases wasn't that bad but it wasn't really good either. But who knows? We might as well as get another mission.

Chapter Six: A Soldier Gets No Free Time

Blazing Muzzles

Chapter 6: Coping With Rations

By Blaze Spectrum

I knew my day was off to a bad start as soon as I heard the loud sound of pots banging and a particular stallion giving me the look of death shouting,"Wake up!"

I looked at the time. It was already one in the afternoon. Typical for me to get little sleep, be perfectly active during the day, and then the next night sleep like a log. Simply how my body works.

I went up to the mirror. My mane was uneven at one side. I don't give a damn about that part though. Whenever I look in a mirror, I see a maniac staring back. After that, just out of the sake to look presentable I combed the side down, but I didn't go farther than that. I ever make my mane flat and not the messy nest it is right now I'll end up looking like a completely different pony.

I grabbed my body armour. Sliding by body in it from above, and simultaneously putting my legs through the holes they were supposed to fit through. It did take about half a minute to jam my damn body inside the suit. I grabbed the rear leg armour and slid them in. I did the same for my forelegs. At least they were much easy to put on than the body armour.  

I grabbed my load out. Overnight, the UPSN had done enough with their prototypes for the next generation for the RFK and LRR. The RFK4 and LRR3. They each looked awesome. The RFK4 looked much more futuristic, equipped with a clip with 40 rounds. The iron sights of the weapon were down a tunnel of some sort with a tiny ammo indicator on top. I picked it up and found it was actually lighter than the RFK3. I honestly expected a twenty pound thing but this weighed half. It must have cost a fortune to make it. The LRR3, in a somewhat contrast to the RFK4, had a design that looked more like an actual DMR. Not a rifle with a five centimetre clip going straight down with a scope. This was more like a longer assault rifle with a scope attached. The clip had fifteen rounds, same power while now being 20 mm. Not 40 mm. No cartilages would fall of it when it was fired.

Anyways, I was gonna ask the production facility why it was so sudden.

I kicked the door open, I walked to my left for about a hundred metres and kicked the production facility door open.despite the obvious Authorised Personnel Only sign. And asked the first pony I saw the obvious,"Why was the release so sudden?!"

She didn't even flinch at my harsh voice,"We wanted it to be a surprise."

"WHAT?!"

"Hey, we spent fifty years on those. We just decided to give a little kick, alright?"

"Still sounds kind of like a lame explanation."

"That's my actually true excuse and I'm sticking to it.'

With that I slammed the door in her face.

I decided I didn't need my helmet right now so, slapping myself, walked back into my room. I threw it at a random direction. I didn't care where it went as long as it went inside.

Now I would tend to Twilight and her friends. And that wouldn't be easy, seeing as they came from a completely time period.

It wasn't long before I caught sight of the lavender unicorn and her friends. She wasn't wearing anything, and wasn't carrying anything. Fine with me. Not my fault if we get invaded and she's not ready.

Just to see her reaction, I said,"Hey Twilight, remember yesterday?"

With that her face suddenly turned green, and her pupils shrank. She probably was holding back it back at the battlefield but now she was off guard. Eventually she managed a quiet,"Don't remind me..."

"Come on," I told her,"Now that nothing's going on how about you do something at least."

My eyes hovered over the Rocket Racing section. Sure, they did get a few lectures but those stuff were downright dangerous. Before, The Rocket Racing League planes could only reach up to about 1000 kph. But now they were perfectly capable of mach 3. And those planes flew in such close quarters that in every major event at least half the competitors crash. While they don't necessarily die due to a advanced eject system if they do crash at the cockpit then't they're screwed. How it hasn't been banned or the speed of them lowered is a mystery.

Looking at the arcade, it would be awfully difficult to teach them how to use the stuff.

The most we could do was play checkers.

I was up against Twilight. I don't know but she must have been some strategic genius. She never misses a good opportunity to get my checkers out. In other words, she basically swept me.

Rainbow Dash wasn't as hard but she was obviously determined to win. In fact, when I was about to get rid of two checkers in a row, even though she still had plenty more, she cheated to give her two turns.

I glared at her,"Dirty Cheater."

But even when she wasn't cheating she still beat me. Eventually I just gave up and let them play among themselves. They were three games going on at once. Although we did try us all in one game that didn't work at all.

After a while, I got bored of watching their games. But guess what?

"Joey Subtle, please go to the hanger for a new mission."

I sighed. Some marines have went months without one mission. And I got one daily when I wasn't in for even a week. Just all the explosions, the running, the dodging while returning fire. All that was enough to wear me down even.

I grumbled. Loud enough for the marine above me to wake up and tell me,"Shut up!"

Ignoring him, I grabbed my helmet. Slid it on, and activated the HUD.

I was bored enough. The main six were coming too, apparently they didn't receive a message for everypony to hear. I finally arrived at the hanger after a long three minutes of walking.

There, we received our instructions.

"You're going on a mission to hijack a AR ship. Then, we're gonna get you back and give you another mission.

Two missions right after the other. Great.

They had seven Falcon-class star fighters in the hanger. From there on, I knew I was gonna end up flying them. Me and Twilight's friends had received instructions of how to work them, but I doubted I would be able to use them too well.

I simply opened the cockpit. The window flipped forward. There was some level of reinforcing but none was blocking my view. The seat was sown together with tough thread and the material appeared to be velvet. Marked onto the area in front of the window was some iron sights, There was one chin mounted machine gun described to shoot at ten rounds per second. Once I closed the cockpit the interior electronics turned right on. The small, 10 cm by 10 cm screen in front of me informed the vehicle's condition. The right was a speedometer. The left was for altitude.

Knowing what to do, but never doing so, I cautiously put down the leftmost pedal down a centimetre. The vertical thrust activated and I began slowly rising off the ground. The main six was fine, except for Rainbow Dash who slammed down on the pedal and nearly hit the roof. I then, floored the rightmost pedal.

Apparently everypony else had done the same. We all accelerated forward, reaching the speed of sound in a few seconds. And soon hypersonic speed. It couldn't go faster but we would be in space in no time. The speedometer was bailing out at 6150 kph. Slightly decreasing and rising at the same time.

"Meh, I could do double of this. On the end of hypersonic or the start of high hypersonic," Rainbow Dash bragged.

I rolled my eyes but decided to ignore her. To hijack a AR cruiser was our objective, not mindlessly arguing among ourselves.

I stomped down. We were accelerating forward at reentry speeds. We passed through the atmosphere in just a few seconds, so I barely got to see the craft heating up.

I flicked on a switch to turn on where the objective was. A small blip appeared on my HUD telling which direction it was and how far. I forced the pedal downwards to propel me towards the ship over a kilometre long that happened to be about a couple hundred kilometres. Luckily, the fighter was perfectly fine with double of reentry speeds.

But once we were there, we faced a problem. The ship was guarded by several dropships and dozens of star fighters. And the hanger door in one of the bays were open, perfectly capable of backing them up, and shooting us down if we try to board them.

To start with, I launched two slightly homing missiles at a dropship. One hit the tail and the other hit the cabin, resulting in a large explosion.

Luckily we had shields on our fighters. Because, if not, then we would have suffered damage that would last the whole mission. The explosion had attracted everypony's attention, and we barely managed to make it into a safe spot. The shields really weren't that complicated. Just electric magnets sending off pulses. The stuff already existed centuries ago.

I waited for it to recharge, and once it had, I went out, the machine gun blazing. I did destroy a few but we were against lots, not few. In the end, a rocket exploded near me, and it was near the others, at close range. My window shattered at the force of it. I barely had enough time to turn on airtight mode.

And our engines had received reasonable damage, it was about time we boarded the ship.

I gave out orders to fire missiles at a closed hanger door, and that was enough to make a hole. Luckily this one was nearly empty. Probably one for spacecraft to board.

I didn't open the cockpit, enough highly toughened glass was broken for me to just crawl out. But apparently the crew detected something wrong because about four ponies came out of a door that was just opened. They were the maintenance crew apparently, they had vacuum sealed equipment but they had no weapons, the closest thing they had to a weapon was a wrench. So even though they had jet packs to direct where they were going, they could do just about nothing to us. I pulled out my combat knife, and stuck it in one of their throats. The feeling of tendons being severed, muscles ripped, flesh penetrated and the unmistakable feeling of piercing through bone. Wrenching it out, she was effectively dead.

Another one, trying to go back inside, was stabbed at his back spine, breaking the spinal cord and killing him. I sheathed the weapon and took my RFK4 from my back, shooting three round bursts into the remaining ones. There was absolutely no sound as I did the task. Silently thanking the fact that sound is required to go through air, I reloaded the weapon. We had killed a few members silently.

I looked at the airlock beyond the door. we could open that and let the air out, killing eveypony that wasn't a space marine or maintenance. But our air would only last for twenty minutes, and I doubt we would be able to kill them all in such short time. So I signaled for Twilight's friends to go inside. But our breaching was interrupted by Pinkie.

"Why didn't you try to talk them out of the war?" she asked.

"Pinkie, we did, but the pony we sent was sent back with a bullet in her head."

"Okie dokey lokie..." she said slowly," as if she was depressed.

I closed the door behind me and opened the one in front of me. We were in! I turned off airtight mode and welcomed actual air that didn't taste like petrol. There was a gravity generator as well. While it was fine and all being weightless it felt good being normal.

I gave a glance at the stairs. A squad was just walking down from there right then. Best to kill it before it kills us. Luckily they were about a hundred metres away. Twilight already was down on her underside, aiming with her UL7.

"Here goes nothing," she murmured.

The shot wasn't as loud as a normal sniper but it wasn't silenced either. The shot was enough to alert them. Although somepony's head being blown off was noticeable enough.

"Come on," I told Twilight,"If you can, always move when you take a shot. If not then they'll shoot you."

With that, she hid behind a new source of cover. A steel boxlike thing with plants growing out of the dirt. She winced at the thought of having to take another shot.

She slid back a small switch, a 50 mm cartilage dropped out. It automatically slid back, giving room for the new shot that she loaded in rather quickly.

She blew another head off.

But at this time, Rainbow Dash probably thought,"Screw sniping," and flew forward at about a a couple hundred kilometres per hour. She probably left a grenade in between them, because once she had returned, a explosion killed the squad and broke the bridge they were standing on.

And we weren't even a tenth of the way in.

Chapter Seven: Hijack

Blazing Muzzles

Chapter Seven: HIjack

By Blaze Spectrum

The bridge collapsing down like it was made of cardboard and not concrete and wood. It should have easily raised the alarm. But it didn't for some reason. But no doubt that somepony was gonna check.

But apparently the number of those who did notice was very high.

Suddenly, marines were popping out of corners out of nowhere. They must have noticed the disruptions and hid. Anonymous and hidden when they needed to be, they were everywhere. So I went back to the nearest decent piece of cover I could find. Well, it wasn't actually cover, it was running.

I stuck my LRR3 to my back and began sprinting down the hall on all fours. At first I stumbled a bit but it wasn't long before I got the hang of it. For a better portion of my life I was moving on all fours anyways. I could only hope that they went with me as well.

But when I risked a glance back, they weren't running. They had their hooves held up high. And they were taking them away. Looked like I needed to do some rescuing.

In front of me was a large circle shaped opening. But there was a fence blocking the way down the hole that went downwards. Luckily, the inside was more suited for luxury than battle. Because they were made of glass with steel above them.

Looking to the left and right, there were troops everywhere. Some had weapons, some had snipers, some had rocket launchers. All on the floor above me. So I did the only thing I could do.

I charged straight for the fence. I used my front hooves to grab the top and throw my rear legs forward and over the fence. They were beginning to take aim. I needed to go faster. So I smashed my rear legs on the glass. Breaking it and propelling me forward very quickly. Now, they were firing. I could almost see 20 mm rounds passing, the small disruption in the air as missed sniper bullets went by, and the unmistakable rocket shells passing by and causing damage. I had fell two floors when I grabbed the metal top of the fence and used my momentum to smash through the glass and push me to safety. It really kind of hurt, but I had it easy. If I wasn't wearing armour I would have cuts practically decorating my body.

I got up to make sure I wouldn't have more fire under way to me, Kicking the nearest door open, I ran through the hallway that it lead to.I just needed to get away from the fire. Just as I expected, a rocket exploded where I was five seconds ago, totally obliterating the chunk of the floor. Going back would be suicide, as to simply make sure I wouldn't escape back, they fired two more rockets, destroying the two floors below me. If I jumped, than if I didn't land correctly. I would die. If I landed correctly, then the time taken to recover would give a sniper enough time to blow my head off.

So to go that far they must have set an ambush for me across the hall. If there was anything I knew about the AR was that they acted fast. By calling themselves Alliance of Rebels they really do work together really well. And that's exactly why their troops happen to have a higher success rate on missions.

All I knew was that I should be ready for it, but before I could even prepare for it a space marine turned from the corner and began spraying me with lead.

Luckily turning around like that with two weapons wouldn't allow for proper aiming, so just about all of the bullets missed, only the misfired ones hit.

I did the only thing I could do. As the basic instructions from the lecture I got as a substitute for training told me to never hesitate, unless I was thinking of a plan. But in the middle of a firefight, no. So I grabbed my pistol from my left rear leg and shot off three rounds.

I wasn't aiming properly too though, so two completely missed but one hit right between the eyes.

I stood, still slightly startled from the ambush. I was breathing heavily, and the status of me read critical. I would heal but I needed to be on guard from then. I grabbed my RFK4 from my back. I was sure it would be more useful in close quarters than a DMR of course. While the tension levels should have been extremely high I felt no need to hug the walls. Something told me that I wasn't near anything but my logic told me there should be more beyond the right turn. But for once I trusted my gut, and walked forward normally.

Once I turned around the corner, I couldn't find any troops at all, seemed very much like I was right. But I still had my weapon in my hooves. Glancing through the window of a random door marked: Access to main cannon. It lead outside and There were ladder rungs required to go up. If I let go then I probably never would get back, but it seemed interesting enough, so I activated the airtight setting andopened the door.

Just as expected, it was an airlock, so I closed the door, leaving me in a claustrophobic, dark room. However, it didn't take long for me to find the opening. The lock was well oiled and spun easily. I shoved it open. The air escaped and I was left in the vacuum of space. Using the door to carefully guide myself, I closed it and used the opening lock to propell myself up half a foot to the first rung. This wasn't any ladder, it went up for two hundred metres, all the way to the top off the gargantuan ship. And it would be a miracle if a pilot on a fighter or dropship didn't see me.

Since I was basically weightless, it barely took any effort at all to drag my self upwards. I could go several rungs at once, and if I went off a bit I would be slowly attracted back to the ship. Everything that had mass had gravity. so it was only a few minutes until I finally got to the top of the ship.

But I wasn't interested in the cannon. I was going to run about half a kilometre to where the UPSN instructors said where the brig was. The AR naturally acted fast so they should have been there by then.

It took a lot of jumping and running but I would slowly be attracted back to the ship, until I finally found one weakness.

A hatch at the top that lead to the reactors. They were near the brig, but I wasn't interested in blowing the ship up, they said only if necessary.

Again, it was an air lock, once I opened the bottom hatch I found several rungs leaving to the ground, where the reactor loudly purred. I simply jumped down.

Once I was in, I looked at the three doors in front of me, until my eyes rested on a sign that said the hallway lead to the brig.

I kicked through the door and went through the hallway, until I stopped at the sign that lead to the brig. I put my hoof on the handle. It was locked. While it may have ruined my chances of stealth it was pretty much the only way. I pulled the pin of a grenade that I pulled from my leg. It landed right in front of the door, bounced for a second, then violently exploded.

I risked a glance at the door. It was unlocked! I flipped inside, looking for any hostiles nearby. My eyes came to rest on a startled marine recovering from the blast. Just as she was heating up her machine gun I put three 20 mm rounds through her head. While it may have not been necessary, I took the clip out and replaced it with a fresh one. There were two doors with force fields blocking them. Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and Rarity were all there. Apparently the ship was more of meant for battle and only had room for few in the brig. Taking a glance at the small calculator like thing at the end of the room, right between the cells. It demanded a four digit code. I tried a few, they were all denied, in the end, I smashed the screen, and surprisingly, the shield doors disappeared!

Apparently the generator was inside it, so smashing it destroyed the generator.

Their armour and weapons were kept at the side, so they would put it on. After a minute of me impatiently waiting for them to slap it all one, We jumped through what was left of the door.

I grabbed my assault rifle from my back, it would be pretty good, although a shotgun would be better.

But I didn't have time to think about it when a squad of marines came in from all sides.

The reaction was instant, we turned around, three on one side, four on the other.

I put my eyes level with my sights. Aiming down them, I burnt through a whole clip, not bothering to stop when switching targets. Probably why I burnt through my clip so quickly there wasn't a reset button in real life. I pulled the switch back for releasing a clip and let gravity drop it onto the ground. I quickly grabbed a new one from my ammo belt and more forced it into the breech than slid. Only using my armour's in built targeting system I began sweeping again. It honestly baffled me to how much trouble they would go to to eliminate a simple seven space marines. But again, we were the only hostile on the ship so they might just want us out as soon as possible. For all I knew, I wasn't about to let them get rid of us. They weren't looking for serious damage. They plain wanted to remove us.

Once my next clip was empty, I dropped it out as well, grabbing a new one and sliding it in to connect with the breech. Since I was replacing an empty clip I had to grab the cocking handle and slide it back, then forward again.This time, I didn't feel like using anymore of what little ammunition I had, so I primed a grenade and threw it at where I guessed the next few squads would be in a second. I was correct. I reduced about ten of them to a pile of gore with a simple, well placed explosive.

By then, we had gotten rid of enough reckless marines charging at us. I had no idea how we were supposed to clear the whole ship. It would have a minimum crew of 300, and a max of about a thousand.

I decided to toggle through my HUD's radio signal to message that if we could destroy it.

The response was almost immediate. While our call may have been intercepted, it didn't matter we were putting a flare up for some troops to charge at us and turn us all into a pile of gore. Because the response was relieving.

"You may destroy it. Hijacking it would require a lot of work to make sure we don't get mistaken for hostiles. Also, land at Fillydelphia Airport. Our base is under siege and we'll send inform you once it's safe to come back."

After that, we began heading for the reactor.

After about two minutes of walking, we finally arrived. But one marine was guarding. She looked startled when she first saw me but before she could draw a weapon I had already forced my combat knife through her throat. I sheathed it and without hesitating grabbed hers, and jammed it into the reactor.

I could hear the humming get louder, the machine getting more critical.

We weren't required to talk to each other, we made a mad dash for the hanger.

Despite the fact we were sprinting, we felt no fatigue. We were fueled with the desire to leave this slag heap behind, shooting everypony in our way. After a lot of sprinting, we got to the airlock. We turned on airtight and opened the door, shut it with us in between, and opened the door leading to one of the hangers, where our fighters lay. I opened the cockpit, and as soon as we were all inside our fighters I went off.

Once we were outside, there was plenty of fighters outside. Within seconds of coming out they began to fire at us. A few hit my engines and some hit the body. Since the engines aren't shielded or else the fighter will constantly pushing against it's own shields. My thrust was hindered because of that.

Finally, after what was thirty seconds but was more like a hour or two I looked back, to see the massive vessel blow apart near the rear, then that part continued to split from the rest of the ship. A few mini explosions tore the whole thing apart and in a flash enough to give one a seizure, it was nothing but a few over sized scraps of metal in space.

But now, I had a different concern. My windshield was shattered. And after all this time I might as well as be burnt in the atmosphere! I had to make a few adjustments to make the bottom side go through. Although it was as aerodynamic as a house brick it was better then being roasted by friction.

Once we had entered the normal skies I waited for a minute and switched off pressurisation. Within a few minutes we were nearing Fillydelphia Airport. While it may be rude to barge into a public airport with a star fighter it was better than being shot down.

I tested the vertical thrust to find it didn't work.

"Damn!" Apparently some stray bullets hit my vertical thrust.

I would have to do a landing with a landing gear complete with wheels. Only meant for an emergency and also some jumbo jet style landing thrust controls.

I was at the back of the pack, going at a couple hundred miles per hour. Once I had touched the solid ground I grabbed the left bar for the left thrust and set it to idle, then reverse.

However, the craft just slowed then sped up. I looked down at the right one. I had forgot to set it to reverse! I grabbed it, no luck, it was jammed there.

Suddenly, as if the fighter had a mind of its own, it veered left. I forced down on the brakes as hard as possible. But then it snapped. Hydraulic failure. And it was happening when the last thing I wanted was it.

In a last ditch effort, I shut the fighter down, It sent a little more before stopping when it crashed into the fence at ten kilometres per hour.

At least I was safe, for the time's being.

Chapter Eight: The Heart of the Enemy

Blazing Muzzles

Chapter Eight: The Heart of the Enemy

By Blaze Spectrum

I opened the cockpit, despite being battered, the hinges of the cockpit still opened with little to no effort. I pulled my left hoof over the side, then my left. After that, I used my front hooves to force my butt off the fighter. I fell a metre and then made contact with the grass. It really looked like a nice day. The birds were chirping, the sun was out and the sky was clear of clouds. The only sign that a war was occurring in the first place was a few trails of smoke coming from downed fighters that were there for months. Probably because nopony even bothered to extract what was a eight metre long scrap of burnt metal.

Heading towards the airport, I saw Twilight and her friends again, they were infinitely more lucky then me and had their fighters docked down.

Right at that point, I received a COM message,"You receiving? We've cleared the hostiles. Sending HLAS2 Gunship to your position."

I stopped walking by that point. HLAS2 Gunships were for some of the longest and highest risk operations. They were when a dropship wasn't big enough and din't have enough firepower, but when a destroyer or frigate were far too extreme. They were 50 m long, perfectly fine with carrying several smaller vehicles, equipped with two rocket launchers at each side that could rotate and move around to every point on its side. It had two heavy machine guns that were both at the sides, about as powerful as a starfighter's, but there was two of them, and their ammo reserves had 2400 rounds for each cannon, when a starfighter only has 1800 rounds in its huge ammo barrel. If it was to be compared to a fighter then the ratio would roughly be 30:1. One really powerful thing.

Afterwards, I looked up after having my third cup of coffee in the terminal in a row, I could see a gunship landing. I may have attracted many eyes with my titanium armour and guns magnetically stuck to me, but I didn't care. I could enjoy coffee that costed half of what they did in UPSN bases.

I put my helmet back on; then I dashed straight into a jumbo jet's portable bridge or whatever it is and jumped off an exit side. Despite how rude my actions were, I couldn't care much less. The main six were taking a more proper, but more long way to exit.

I sprinted about a hundred metres until I reached the gunship. The side doors were open, so I jumped right in. A minute later Twilight's friends joined in.

The doors at the side slowly closed, and while they were closing we already took off. I looked around. There were ten seats at the port and starboard of the ship. A table was in the middle and dead bolted to the floor so that it wouldn't disrupt the survival of the crew when under fire. There was a 40 inch television, although it was as thin as possible. It was partially bent on attack and partially bent on keeping the crew entertained. Like a small ship. Of which it was.

To the back of the living quarters was bunkers, twenty metres, with twenty at each side, one on top of the other. So it added up to forty troops in the long run, fifty if it's a shorter one.

"We're headed all the way for the Smoky Mountains!" the pilot shouted."Turning on to fuel conservation."

Smoky Mountains? It was at the other side of the country. A good three thousand five hundred kilometres. With fuel conservation on we would be going at 700 kph. Might as well as go to bed.

I hurled myself onto a bunk, put my weapons on the magnetic part on the wall. Wasn't long before I dozed off.

I heard a crash. It woke me from my slumber. I grabbed my weapons, but I couldn't put them on all at once so they ended up in a pile on my chest. I groaned and put them on one by one.

"What the hell happened anyways?" I asked.

"We're being boarded," the pilot looked desperate.

"Really?"

"They should wrench open the side doors any minute."

"How long was I out?"

"Four hours and three quarters. We've just entered the enemy airspace too. Seems like like their really serious about defending this place. Luckily, a few dropships and gunships went with us."

"We have more? It'll give us a fighting chance."

I dumped my LRR3 and picked up an AP4 Shotgun. The thing had its cocking barrels concealed, while still having space for the pump action handle. It seemed to be loaded from the top and didn't have a removable magazine. You could say semi automatic shotguns were better, I say they suck. They're unreliable as heck when compared to pump action. Many ponies have reported more jamming issues, more everything. I wouldn't go for full auto even. I'm up for a reliable weapon, not one to beat the heck out of everything. If you manage to combine those two though, then I'll take it.

I stared at it for another second, until another crash rattled the ship. I walked in between the doors and was ready to camp. Twilight was ready to assist me, judging by the way she was holding her UL8 Sniper Rifle which she just got. Rainbow Dash, was ready to storm whoever came on board. She was permitted from using explosives, for obvious reasons.

The doors ripped open. I turned around and fired my weapon from the hip, only my reticle guiding me. The shot split into twelve pellets, and most of them hit the an unfortunate marine boarding. The shot would have done tons of damage to her delicate balance of organs, but that didn't matter. She was ripped in half and her top half flew over me and hit a marine behind me. Taking note of that marine, I turned around while cocking the handle back and blew his head off. Gore splattered around the inside and even more spattered on my already reasonably bloodstained armour.

Another one jumped in. His eyes had lightning in them. He was just begging to slide his combat knife in my throat. He unsheathed it and charged at me.

I cocked my weapon, the cartilage falling out. Before I could shoot, Twilight blew his head off, the headless body heading right at me. I didn't have enough time to react and pulled the trigger anyways, blowing the body which was torn in half a few metres away. I wasted ammo but saved myself from being tackled by a headless corpse. I cocked it again.

The boarding squads weren't about to give up, and still sent more. The first marine on was killed with a few RFK4 shots from Rainbow Dash. Another one had a shotgun, and pulled the trigger while my back was turned.

The blast threw me back a few metres. I wasn't dead, but I would have been if the marine shot me at point blank range. I turned around, and while he was still cocking the weapon I shot him in his left lower leg.

The shell split, and quite a few pellets dug into his leg, ripping it off. I kicked him in the chest, making him fall from the sky. Had the gap between the boarding craft been any shorter, then he wouldn't have fallen down.

"Wait," shouted the pilot above the noise."I think I can use the rotating rocket launchers to take down the boarding crafts!"

The next thing I heard was two loud explosions around me. The boarding crafts quickly lost altitude and hit the ground, splitting into a huge fireworks display.

"Are we at our destination?" I asked the pilot. I wanted to get off the thing right now and begin breaching in what would be the end of the war.

"Almost," he replied."They have a huge shield protecting the fortress. Virtually impervious to fire, but you could just go straight through them."

I looked out the left side. The base really was huge. I was told that it was 150 metres tall, 450 metres wide, 1250 metres long. And four hundred fifty metres was under ground! It was pretty obvious to see why destroying this structure could be the key to winning the war.

After looking out, I saw a rocket headed towards our ship's hull. It looked like it was gonna hit me but instead hit several metres to my left. The blast knocked me off my feet and made me slide a few metres back. If I was at the opposite door than I would have been forced straight off. A few bullets to the hull followed.

"Status?" I asked the pilot.

"Hull integrity compromised."

"Drop us off. Now."

He weakened the vertical thrust so that the ship could land on the ground softly. We all jumped off, onto the dirt and soil. I heard the mushing sound as we got off. I pulled my LRR3 off my back. It was an open area for when we were outside. While the RFK4 could effectively kill at 500 metres it's just pretty hard to aim at that range without a scope.

I looked through the scope. A marine with a rocket launcher was at the battlements. He must have tried once or twice to blow up a ship or two. I aimed at his head and pulled the trigger. Almost instantly he fell down onto a shocked comrade of his. While the marine stared down at his dead ally I shot him as well. By then, a sniper grasped what was going on and aimed her rifle at me. She was taken out with a swift bullet to the chest and neck.

By then, the rest of the dropships came down. Chin mounted machine guns sprayed the AR. We couldn't go without losing something. A marine fired rocket, before being taken out by a sniper. The rocket hit a dropship that collided with another on its descent. All our COMs were tied together so we all heard the desperate cries of the pilots. Luckily, the two downed vehicles crashed down onto the battlements.

I grabbed my RFK4 from my back, swapping it for my LRR3. I sprinted forward. I had to stop several times due to the length to the base being a few hundred metres. I wondered if I should have run practice laps after all.

I wasn't really much time to gripe. Dozens of UPSN squads charged the guards of the front battlements. After a universal command to throw a grenade. I took one from my left leg, pulled the cap off,(like taking the cap off a pen so you could prime one with a single hoof) and threw it as far as I could into the battlements. There was several simultaneous explosions and explosions that set off more grenades. A massacre that could be seen for miles.

After we were sure there were no more grenades about to go off, we charged forward. The last thing we wanted was to be set back to square one and have the AR come back to the battlements.

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