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Good Trooper Gilda

by Mitch H

Chapter 13: Swinging For The Fences

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"They taking care of you in here, Gump?"

"They's doin' right by me, Cor'p'l Gilda. I's feelin' plenty fine." Gilda had never been able to figure out Gump and the way he talked, he didn't sound a thing like the rest of the rankers. He might look like a Trottish bird, but he didn't talk like one.

Gump had gotten fairly well kicked around in their first attempt at hijacking a hijacking crew. A broken wing, a broken skull, various lost feathers and contusions - he was in a ward with some of the less dangerous prisoners and a few loyal birds, wounded in the recent fighting. They were planning on emptying the rest of the prisoners out of that building with the next shipment out to the POW camp, but until then, there was an armed Territorial and an orderly from the medical squadron in the room to keep order.

"Bubba here is doin' fine by me. We're having ourselves a right old home week here in the ward, ain't we, Bubba?" The orderly in question was some sort of Baltimarian hick, whose accent was almost identical to Gump's.

"Shore is, Gump. You are a real breath of home, you is." Not almost, was identical; the forest-green pony's name wasn't Bubba, but he seemed to like it better than whatever they called him at roll call. Whatever he called home, it had to be a hole right next door to whatever bog Gump had crawled out of. Gilda marveled as the mystery of Gump unfolded in front of her eyes. The two of them, pony and griffon, were bonding tighter than pony-glue over their shared background.

Who knew they had griffons in Hayseed Swamp? Wherever that was.


Gilda did her best to put Gump and his swamp-rat buddy out of her croggled mind, because the next thing on her checklist was checking in on the lieutenant, who had been messing with some project the bat-hen hadn't understood, something to do with the books they'd liberated from that closet in Battery Garner. The lieutenant's swagger-stick was sitting on the crate they were using as a table in the lieutenant's cramped quarters in some tinker's attic, held in place by a set of medical clamps Gilda had stol- borrowed from Rat Line.The lieutenant herself was nowhere to be found.

Thirty minutes later, Gilda was sneaking up on a den of iniquity, looking for her missing lieutenant, whom she had been informed was visiting the doctors in their quarters. Gilda, as the lowliest of non-commissioned nobodies, was not supposed to trespass in officers' quarters which weren't Gleaming Shield. At least in theory.

In practice, Gilda got away with what she chose to get away with; she just didn't care to spend much time in the sketchily amorous company of Captain 'Roving' Eye.

Gilda didn't care to become another notch on the surgeon's cot.

Gleaming Shield, on the other hand, seemed oddly attracted to the weird-looking foreigner, and Gilda had been required to pry her unicorn out of the monkey grip of that oddball more than once. Gilda was more than a little concerned that the flirting might become a bit more.

The 'hippogriff' kept quarters with two of the other surgeons in a second-storey walkup above one of the kitchens they'd converted into surgical galleries. The 'Fens' would have stunk of chemical disinfectant and death if it weren't for the copious amounts of alcohol they produced out of the pocket still that the three medical officers shared their space with.

Instead, it just stank of gin.

In the end, Gilda didn't have to climb all the way up to Hawk Eye's eyrie, because the purple unicorn met her halfway, coming down.

"Hello, lieutenant ma'am. You have what you need?"

"I got what I came for."

"And no doubt a bit more than you wanted, I wager?"

"Oh, no," Gleaming Shield said, smiling on the stairs. "You don't understand the captain, Gilda. She only chases the ponies who run. If you just smiled and nodded at her, she'd have no idea what to do with you."

"Predator, you mean?"

"I would have expected you to have understood better than me."

"I'm better at predating than being prey, lieutenant ma'am."

"The secret is to not give them openings, Gilda. And turning to flee is hades' own mouth opening underneath your hooves."

As Gilda thought over this bit of wisdom, she was startled by a high-pitched shriek from behind her in her blind spot, "CHARIOTS!"

Gilda turned to meet the slit-eyed gaze of Ping staring creepily at her with his head stuck inside the front door of the rowhouse. She jerked back, startled by the 93/1st's resident batpony and office assistant to the squadron commander. A commotion behind her proved to be Gleaming Shield tumbling down the stairs just ahead of the inhabitants of the Fens.

Gilda dragged her lieutenant out of the way of the stampeding doctors, and scrambled herself to avoid being trampled by Hawk Eye, a rabbity-looking Burn Salve, and that Abyssinian whose name Gilda could never remember.

As the dust settled, the two of them peered out the door at the rushing doctors and nurses as they raced to meet the heavily-burdened pegasus-drawn chariots dropping out of the sky. As the chariots settled to the ground, the medicos swarmed the still figures on immobilization stretchers strapped to what seemed to be every horizontal surface of each vehicle. The intermittent madness which was the medical squadron at work was back in session.

Gleaming Shield pulled Gilda away from the front door of the rowhouse, and they headed for the converted kitchen and the door out into the back alley. A pair of orderlies were already slaving away, filling the air with mists of disinfectant and whirling white rags, preparing the operation tables strapped across the tables and counters in what had once been a place for making food.

As they stepped out into the alley Gleaming Shield looked pensive.

"They're going to be busy well into the night, looks like," Gilda offered.

"Looks like."

"We really need to get those ambulances."

"That we do."

"Are you ready, lieutenant ma'am?"

"No, no I am not."

"Did you at least get what you came for?"

The unicorn held up a flask of clear liquid in her horn-grip.

"Not quite, but this will do. I still have work. Go be a corporal for a while, Gilda. I don't need you underhoof."


Gilda took out her frustrations on the rankers, and pestered all of the guard-posts and tracked down the outer perimeter patrols, who were far easier to find than they ought to have been, and received Gilda's well-deserved chastisement.

The Fifth Territorial had let its actual standards slip, and Gilda was pissed. The old birds just smiled at the young hen and tried not to mock her rank to her beak.

A much calmer bat-hen returned to her lieutenant's attic, having purged her emotions in a safer manner than the angry rant she'd almost unleashed on her mistress. She found Gleaming Shield, swagger-stick in hoof, waiting impatiently.

"Gilda! Where have you been? Time's a wasting. Let's go be pirates!"

"What! What? WH-" Gilda shuddered, and ran a talon through her crest. "Yes, lieutenant ma'am, if you say so."

The lieutenant had decided to accept Gilda's plan, and her interpretation of that implementation was 'let's play dress-up'. When it came to dressing up, Rarity was, of course, the solution, and Rarity's costume finery provided the wardrobe. The Stinging Needle herself was present, to Gilda's considerable surprise. The fashionista had not been around much since the Crab Bucket had put an end to the crab-back marches. Gilda had almost expected to hear that the white unicorn had picked up stakes one day, and disappeared on the next airship to - Manehattan, or Fillydelphia, or winds knew where else.

But, instead, here she was, Rarity herself, helping Gleaming Shield into a sort of dress uniform, strapping the narrow-withered unicorn into something that emphasized her less filly-esque proportions.

"Honestly, lieutenant, you could stand to wear this sort of thing more often, it suits you. Not that I relish the occasion. Do you know, I actually was accosted twice on the way here from the fifth wardl guildhall? Me! Everygriff knows me."

"They didn't rob you, Lady Rarity?" asked Gleaming Shield just before the white unicorn pulled the stays on that decidedly non-regulation saddle, robbing the purple unicorn of her wind for a second.

"Oh, of course not, I know better than to carry bits around with me these days. Ruffians on every corner! The guilds are talking over the problem, you know. Some of them are even calling out the old block militias. Even though they're technically banned. It's like everypony has run mad at the same time. But something must be done, nothing can move in the streets right now. Every pony for themselves. Dreadful!"

The fashionista turned on Gilda, and smiled in a predatory manner that put a shiver down Gilda's spine. "What do you think, darlings? I'm thinking 'eyepatch'."

As the Stinging Needle worked and gossiped, that bottle of rot-gut Gleaming Shield got from the medicos came out, and she and Gilda took turns swapping it back and forth, swigging a bit at a time. The gin burned like Tartarus on the way down, and Gilda made sure to splash it around a bit, so that the smell stuck to her feathers, while she listened to Rarity chatter about guild matters.

"Now there, darlings. How's that look?" The fashion pony had them both looking in a small mirror mounted at one end of the attic opposite the stairs.

Shield's new outfit was suitably piratical, a supply officer's uniform cut to distinctly non-regulation standards, and looking just barely military enough to not get her brought up on charges for being out of uniform. Her swagger-stick stood out a bit, but she made it work as a sort of sleazy prop. Gilda got an eyepatch and her crest-dye washed out with some concoction that made her beak sting from the smell.

Gilda took another swig from the bottle to kill the stench of the dye removal. Then Gleaming Shield took one more drink for luck, and used her magic to spritz them both with enough gin that they smelled like a distillery with loose joints.

As the lieutenant climbed down the narrow stairwell beneath her attic, Rarity leaned in to whisper to Gilda.

"Don't worry too much about your tinkers and tinsmiths, lance corporal. They're big birds, they'll find work anywhere they land. The guilds take care of their own. And big, strapping griffersmiths will definitely find a use."

"That's what I'm worried about," Gilda muttered back.

"Relax, darling. Unionists are first, foremost, and always for the union. Any union," Rarity said, looking arch. "They'll be good colts. I'll look out for them while you're off saving the Princess's honor."

Gilda followed her lieutenant down the stairs.

"Have fun stealing them blind, darlings!" waved Rarity from the top of the stairwell as Gleaming Shield and her escort of cosplaying griffons strapped into the Territorial battalion's best heavy-lifter. Gilda had argued in favor of bringing that rattletrap dungcart they'd taken off the last bunch of hijackers, but she’d been over-ruled.

They'd be bringing prime product for the fences.


The fences worked out of a business on the north end on the pony side of the city, far from the fighting in Griffish Trottingham. It looked like a prosperous carriage repair shop, with a half-dozen work-bays and a warehouse full of military-style haulage carts, assault chariots, and even two commanders' gigs. One of the gigs and two assault chariots were in the bays, and earth ponies were swarming over them, putting them back together from obvious battle-damage.

"Working business," observed Gilda from the side of her beak as they pulled their best cart into the warehouse where they'd been directed by a greasy-maned unicorn.

"Easier to move vehicles while they're in company," argued Gleaming Shield, trying not to move her lips as she dismounted from the heavy cart and helped Gilda un-hitch herself from the traces.

"Or else we got sold a bill of goods by that bandit."

"Well, if that's the case, we'll cut bait when they ask for the cart's papers." Gleaming Shield laid her swagger-stick on the pavement inside the garage to free up her horn-glow as she fussed with the apparently stubborn buckles on Gilda's hitch.

"Then they can call the MPs on us."

"I'm pretty sure I can talk my way out of that one." The lieutenant bent down to pick up her swagger-stick with her fore-leg, holding it like an earth pony.

"Yes, lieutenant ma'am, but can you argue the rest of us out of it? We're pretty far from the Griffish neighborhoods here if this goes sour." Gilda eyed the lieutenant as she spotted a bit of horn-glow around the swagger-stick's head, which had a fresh layer of something that looked less like brass, and more like a bit of gold paint. Why was the lieutenant fussing with that damn thing?

A prosperous looking earth pony with a sort of pink and yellow color scheme came bustling out of a side-door, and trotted quickly around their shiny heavy lifter. The carriage was the pride and joy of the Fifth Griffish Territorial, and after they put work into it, it barely smelled like fish at all.

"Oi like it!" the mare said. "The unit blazons aren't great, but oi've got ponies who can buff that off in 'alf a minute. Shake, bake, an' we can turn this mule around inside of a couple days, easy. Oi like it a lot."

She turned around, eyes blazing. "You, oi don't like at all, you fookin' screw'eaded 'inny cunt! Oo fookin' sent you?"

Gleaming Shield looked - Gilda had expected her to be put on her back hoof, with an aggressive mare in her face. Instead, she'd managed to look dead-eyed and bored. The only move she made was to turn her eye to her bat-hen in her pirate's gear. Then she ever so slightly raised her eyebrow.

At least she'd stopped playing with that damn swagger-stick

Right.

"OK, you stroppy bitch, you can step right back off the lieutenant ma'am, or I see how your insides look on the outsides." Gilda didn't normally carry weaponry, but she knew how to hide throwing-blades between her primaries, and two were suddenly right where they needed to be - pointed about an inch and a half in front of the rude whorse's left eye. "You got a name you want put on your gravestone before we tie it to you and drop the both of ya into the outer harbor?"

"Huh," said the fence. "That's a strong move for griffons on the wrong side of the blue line. You, oi like. 'er oi'm not sure about yet. Oi'm Chop Shop. That's me name on the sign outside. And those are me boys with the slug-throwers over there between those assault carriers in the corner. Say 'ello to the 'en with the pointy bits 'ere, boys."

A sharp explosion and a twanging sound heralded the discharge of one of those damn new sluggers. The bullet buried itself into a target-bale that someone had set up between the gates Gilda's griffons had come through just a few minutes earlier.

Things were perhaps a bit more heightened than they had bargained for. These crooks were better-armed, better-organized, and deeper into their defensive social network than Gilda and Gleaming Shield had war-gamed. This wasn't a position they could take with the muscle they had available, or any they could afford to bring to bear.

Gilda put away her throwing-knives, and raised her wings in acquiescence. "No harm, no foul, right?"

"No oi bluddy don' think so, you overgrown squab. What unit did you say you was with?"

"The 38/11th, on detached duty."

"The Territorial Division, roight, roight. Why am oi looking at this mare oi hain't ever laid peepers on before, and not Longshanks?" First Sergeant Longshanks wasn't the senior non-com with the squadron which handled the Third Brigade's resupply, but he was the one you dealt with if you didn't want problems. This gangster was familiar with Longshanks?

"Longshanks," Gilda essayed, spinning the prompt into a quick turnabout, "He's not kicking back like he used to, you know? We wanted to cut our own deal. One that's all upfront, no more backside, you know?"

"Cuttin' deals outside of channels, that's 'ow ponies end up wit' cinderblocks around their 'ooves and their 'eads 'alf a fathom deep in a cistern somewheres. Hain't nopony sensible-like disposes of bodies in the main bluddy 'arbour, that's a mugs game, it is. The bottom of shitters, that's the ticket." The evil-eyed earth pony gave them all the stink-eye.

"But Longshanks," the pony continued, after a long moment, "'e's been shortin' more than 'is own, and that's the naked 'onest truth. Bring me Longshanks' 'ead wit' the next load, and oi am interested. Show me 'ow you operate, and oi will make allowances, I will.

"Because oi look at you, and that pretty piece of officer meat in that 'orse costume, and oi think you, me 'en, is the pony to be talking to in the Territorials. The city is changing, it is. Alliances shiftin', rules bein' re-written. And maybe oi want a griffon to do griffish business with, oi do."

Gilda, the lieutenant, and their useless guards left Chop Shop's 'legitimate business' less one exceedingly precious vehicle, but considerably heavier in the purse than they had been when they came in, and nogriff got perforated in the process.

Call it a win.

Gleaming Shield looked at her bat-hen, as they walked towards the nearest boulevard and the long road back onto the griffish side of the blue line, and sighed.

"What now, Don Gilda? We seem to have gone into the gangster trade."

"Well, you know what they say, lieutenant ma'am. It's always good to have friends in tight places. And there isn't nogriff as friendly as mobsters looking for new friends."

"It's when friends fall to squabbling that things get difficult, isn't it?" The lieutenant cast a privacy shield around the two of them as they moved quickly down the mostly-empty boulevard, followed by their two stone-faced rankers.

"What gets me, is that we're down a vehicle, and I don't see how we're getting any more out of this lunatic. She wants us for purchasing, not sales."

"It is always harder," sighed Gleaming Shield, "to push a load uphill, than to just let it slide to the bottom of the hill."

"Maybe we need to get a running start," Gilda said as she thought, furiously. "Can we fake a pony's decapitated head?"

"That, Lance Corporal Gilda, sounds like a spectacularly bad plan in the offing. Maybe this might be more useful?" Gleaming Shield used her magic to turn the head of her swagger-stick, and suddenly…

"-over it with a fine tooth comb, Slantwise. Oi want to know what spells is on it, any taint at all. Oi knows the Argosian Manticore as wells as any school filly, oi won't be fooled by no jumped-up royal-lookin' Old Stoner-" The lieutenant turned the head of the swagger-stick to its original position, and smiled, slyly.

"Not everything is about threats and bluster, Lance Corporal. Would a decent remote surveillance cantrip be of use?"

"Cor, blimey, lieutenant mum, you bugged 'em. Oi tink it just might!"

"Celestia's flowing tail extensions, Gilda, don't do that. I swear, your Trottish is worse than Bob's."

Author's Notes:

Thanks for editing and pre-reading help to Shrink Laureate, Oliver, and the general Company.

Next Chapter: Kidnapping And Official Cover Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 54 Minutes
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Good Trooper Gilda

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