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. Next Chapter: Chapter Seven: Hijack Estimated time remaining: 19 Minutes