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Good Trooper Gilda

by Mitch H

Chapter 36: No Time For Sergeants

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"It really is a beautiful morning."

"Getting on towards noon. Might be afternoon already."

"No, no, see? The sun isn't that high yet."

"I think we've turned a bit, you're looking at it wrong, captain ma'am."

"No, I've got my bearings. The ship's yawed five points east of southeast."

"If you say so, captain ma'am. I never had any head for these naval matters. I was just as glad when we transferred to landside postings."

"It's simple geometry and calculation, Gilda. Look at that! I think the heather is pinking up?"

"I believe that's redtip, captain ma'am. And those are thickets, not heather."

"Listen to you! They'll make an earth pony of you yet, Gilda."

"Don't get any ideas, captain ma'am. I saw that book on transformations you had on your desk."

"I wouldn't start my experiments with a pony! Or a griffon. I have scruples!"

"Indeed, captain ma'am."

"Anyway, the orange exploded. I clearly was doing something wrong."

"Evidently. Couldn't you have used something less exotic? Oranges cost far too much."

"I prefer apples, anyways."

"They're cheaper, at least."

The two of them looked out into the deep blue spring sky, without a cloud to be seen. The world under them was cantered about fifteen degrees out of true, and above them in the sheets the workers and the crew were fighting with the envelope.

"Wind's turning," Gilda offered after a moment, as the horizon slowly crept back over the port side of the tilted ship.

"And picking up a bit. They're going to have to spread extra sails if they don't get the engine engaged in a few minutes. Drifting uncontrolled isn't a good look for the company's bottom line."

"Or yours, captain ma'am. How deeply did you say you were invested?"

"Had them sell off a third of the funds to buy up what I could of their debts and stock. And I still think I should have gone deeper. The end of the war will cause the funds to sink on Stall Street."

"And the same won't happen for a start-up building warships?"

"This doesn't have to be a warship! It will be sturdy enough for long haul shipping, have sufficient stowage for serious freighter work, and be fast enough to serve as a rich pony's yacht!"

"If they ever get the engine working properly. This is not confidence-building, captain ma'am."

"All new technologies have their teething problems, Gilda."

"We've been drifting for three hours now."

"And time well-spent! I've learned so much watching them work."

"You've been mostly out here staring over the side with me, captain ma'am."

"Well, earth ponies, you know. They were getting defensive about me hovering and looking over their shoulders."

"I don't think the engineers appreciated the 'unicorn perspective'."

"I almost got my mark in magic! I had valid points! And that thaumic coupling just needed the changes I told them they were ignoring. They should have listened!"

"It's designed to be operated by earth ponies, captain ma'am. The whole point of the thaumic conversion engine is that it doesn't need expensive hoof-holding by dedicated unicorn engineers."

"Well, you know us unicorns. Nopony wants to get all dirty and black-faced under the decks."

"Not even unicorns with engineer cutie marks like Cid, captain ma'am?"

"Cid doesn't count, I think he believes he's an earth pony. I mean, have you ever met a unicorn with an engineering cutie mark other than Cid, Gilda?"

"Captain ma'am, you were literally the first pony I met in my life. The unicorns I've met since then have been Cid, officers, or soldiers."

"And Rarity!"

"And Lady Rarity. Could you see her climbing around down there in that filthy mess they're making?"

"She'd look like- like-" Gleaming Shield broke up into giggling laughter, and Gilda allowed herself a smile. The captain had been sullen and strange ever since the former duchess's abdication, and the staffers pestering them about Gleaming's new commission hadn't helped matters. She was like a different pony up here in the sky.

Gilda looked out across the slightly less cockeyed Trottish countryside drifting below them, and grudgingly, silently conceded her unicorn's argument that this had been a better use of their time. This was less soul-destroying than sitting behind a desk in garrison pushing papers and arguing with junior officers about matters that none of them had control over. The section chiefs' chosen method for bullying Gleaming Shield into seeing things their way had been to set their juniors upon them, and Gilda and her captain had ever since then been subject to a sort of siege by subordinate. Harassment by junior officer was, apparently, how things were done at that level.

And so, in order to escape the investing force lurking outside their encampment in the royal apartments, Gleaming Shield jumped at an invitation by Cid Sawhorse to observe the test-launch of the first ship out of the new Trottingham air-yards. Gilda should have known it would be a cluster when none of the other investors or designers had shown up to take advantage of the first cruise of the Duchess Cadance.

Nogriff but Cid and his earth pony and griffon cronies had been there when the bat-hen and her captain arrived at the airship field. The laughter of the watching EUP crews as the new griffon-made ship had crawled slowly into the sky had been another clue. But at least the engine had been working on take-off, however inefficiently. But, an hour later, they lost all headway. The engineers had piled into the engine-room and, not long after, the shouting had started. An hour after that, they'd thrown their opinionated investor out of the engine-room and slammed the door in Gleaming Shield's face.

Gilda, adding up those hours, did the sums in her head, and cursed. "Captain ma'am, it has to be after noon now."

"It certainly is, Gilda."

"We had afternoon meetings."

"With Bureau's herd of yes-mares? Yes, we certainly did."

"We're not going to make those meetings, captain ma'am."

"Such a shame!"

"You didn't want to go."

"I certainly did not. And now I don't have to! I'm stuck on this experimental airship. Unavoidable. So sorry!"

"You can't keep putting them off forever."

"I wanted… one more day." The captain sat there, staring down into the great airy void under their drifting airship.

Little clumps of white here and there on the plains below marked the winter coats of hardy Trottish sheep. Gilda could barely make out the little grey and blue flecks which must have been the griffon shepherds trailing their herds.

"The war's over," Gleaming Shield said after several minutes. "Don't get me wrong, there's still some griffons out there that haven't made their bow, still haven't come in to beg for terms. But they're cold and hungry and starving. It's just a matter of time. Look at that out there!" She waved vaguely at the pristine horizon, unsmirched by the slightest taint of black smoke - well, aside from the thick black clots of smog pouring out of the back of the ship, from the malfunctioning engine.

"You can't see the burned-out districts from here, captain ma'am. Also, that's Haymarket in that direction. They're all ponies on that side of the island."

"You know what I mean! The Dragoons aren't even burning anything anymore."

"There isn't really anything left to burn, captain ma'am."

"Zippo Raid must be so disappointed. No more worlds to burn."

Gilda couldn't help it. She snickered.

And then Gleaming Shield's stone face cracked, and the pony snorted.

And then they both laughed and laughed.

"Stop it! St-stop it! It isn't funny, Gilda! Zippo's a madpony! And those were atrocities! We should- sho- hahahaha!"

"Better huts than griffons, captain ma'am. And those dweebs tormented Trottingham for a decade. And before that - the clangriffons were a bunch of assholes. They got what they deserved, the lot of them. It's just too bad that Colonel Pie isn't around to throw them their surrender parties."

"Oh, yeah. I saw the note. Sent back to Equestria?"

"So they claimed. You notice that Flagg Staff hasn't been around since they shipped the colonel home to the funny farm?"

"You have no proof that he had anything to do with it, Gilda."

"You used to think he was a figment of my imagination, captain ma'am."

"Not everything is a conspiracy orchestrated by secret agents of the Peytral!"

"No, some things are plots by piratical madponies."

Gleaming Shield's eyes lit up at Gilda's successful change of topic. "Cadance and the Sisters say that Princess Celestia used to have a student named Sunset Shimmer," she confided in a tone just low enough to be drowned out by the laboring engine for any eavesdroppers who might be listening to their conversation.

"Really? How have they kept that out of the papers?" Gilda asked in that same soft tone. "She even named her ship after the princess."

"Nopony knew the name of the mystery ship or her mistress until the raid on Gould's Jetty," Gleaming continued in a loud whisper. "Anyways, Princess Celestia keeps her students out of the Equestrian newspapers. You never read about Moondancer, right? The local censors must be leaning on the Trottish papers."

"The censors didn't keep the damn Beak and Bone from calling me a bloody 'Royal bat-hen'," Gilda snapped, abandoning the confidential whispering. "Repeatedly! In print!"

"They didn't name you at all, Gilda. That's how they get around the censors."

"It's libel!"

"That's what they used to call the papers, you know. 'The libels'."

"I've read the same book you have, captain ma'am."

"Well, it was just sitting there on the shelf."

"Why don't they pester you?" Gilda demanded, too exasperated to maintain her usual civility.

"I'm not the one who was waving around her sword beside Cadance and being all dramatic in front of a crowd. You're a spectacle, Gilda. Get used to it, if you're going to act up in public."

"I'm not the duchess's military advisor. They should be stalking you."

"Then you're doing your job by distracting them from harassing me, so - good job, Corporal!"

Still agitated, Gilda glared down at a busy road as they drifted overhead, tiny figures in the distance hauling carts here and there. The wind was pushing the ship back towards the city.

"Did I ever tell you that I volunteered for the Territorials?" Gleaming Shield asked, out of nowhere.

Gilda looked back up at her captain, feeling a bit more composed. "No, ma'am, but someone must have mentioned it, because I was aware that this was true."

"I had my pick of posts. Top of my class. Not bragging, just the plain truth. Might have been top of the Princess's School if I'd chosen to go there, too. I didn't choose."

Gilda grunted, not sure where her captain was going with this.

"I wanted- I don't remember what I wanted now. I needed to prove something, to myself, to my family, to the world. Did I ever tell you about my brother?"

"No, captain ma'am, but people talk. I've gotten the gist." More than once. And she'd never, ever wanted to talk with her unicorn about that martyred, sainted brother of hers. Gilda knew it was treacherous ground.

"Shining really was something. In time, he would have been a general, or the Princess's Captain of the Guard. The real Guard, the Royal Guard. He… his name suited him. He shone."

The unicorn tried to stare at the sun, but, blinking, turned her dazzled eyes towards Gilda instead.

"I was very, very angry for a long time after Shining died. And I blamed you. The griffons, I mean. I wanted to see the war at the cutting edge. I wanted the - I think I wanted blood, heavens help me. Carve out the vengeance myself, personally. And so… the battalion. The ranks full of Celestia-be-damned griffons, and we'd be… griffons killing griffons. It seemed right. Proper. No matter what happened, if we won, if we lost - justice being done. In retrospect, it's amazing things didn't go very, very badly. I would have deserved it, even if you all wouldn't have.

"Because I'd have spent you all like water. But I don't know if they knew it, or it was just an accident, but they kept the Fifth away from the front lines, from the real killing work. And - nopony keeps up a killing hatred patrolling a hundred nautical miles of empty ocean."

"And then you pulled me out of that water," Gilda said. She wasn't sure what else she could have said to her captain's strange not-precisely-a-confession. It was none of it a surprise to her - only that the captain had finally spoken of it. "You did well enough in the battalion. After a while. And by the time we got to Trottingham, you hardly even bothered to glare. But we haven't seen the battalion in weeks, captain ma'am."

"More like months," Gleaming Shield laughed.

"What I mean is, captain ma'am, we've not been working with the battalion for a while now."

"That point has been made to me. Repeatedly. Which is why we're up here, in the air, Gilda. Because the moment my hoof touches the earth again, I'm going to have to sign the papers and acknowledge that my time in the Territorials is over. The paperwork was sitting on your desk when we left this morning."

"What does that mean?" Gilda asked, uncertain, starting to feel a strange sort of bubbling anxiety under her uniform. They weren't wearing their armor today. Just undress, and nothing else. It was a bit chilly up here, the warm spring sun warring with the strengthening breeze.

"They're removing me from the battalion rolls. No Guards officers seconded to foreign regiments, and that's final."

"Does that mean that- an Equestrian Guards officer can't have a bat-hen from a foreign regiment, either."

"Funniest damn thing, Gilda. I looked at the working rolls, and you weren't on them. Did you never notice that you weren't drawing pay?"

"What?" Gilda squawked. "I- what? WHAT? That bastard Grippe said they were garnishing my wages because of the whole prisoner-of-war thing!"

"Well, apparently, Grippe is in the hooves of the MPs. Nopony noticed she was grifting her way through the job. You were one of about thirty imaginary griffons on the official, doctored rolls."

"I'm not imaginary!"

"But you were on fraudulent rolls. And never actually drew pay. Corporal Grippe was pocketing your portion, along with all those others. She'll be transported for sure."

"Well, damn. Ain't that a kick in the beak? So I was never-"

"Never actually a trooper in the Territorials, no. Technically you've been a prisoner of war for over a year now."

"Over a- has it been that long?"

"Yep. Fished you out of the drink a year ago last Tuesday."

"I was promoted! Twice!"

"That's something nopony wants to admit happened. You're now an official embarrassment. Technically, I think that makes you a civilian, Gilda."

"Uh. OK. What does… what does that mean? Do they put me into one of the internment camps, or onto a ship for the territories?"

"Gilda, you've been my bat-hen for almost a year. Barely anypony even remembers you were captured trying to sneak into the duchy.You're not getting transported. It's just… we have to make our working relationship - we have to settle matters. Set it on a regular basis."

Gilda looked down at the freshly turned fields outside of the city walls, and the little colored dots that must have been earth ponies preparing the soil for the year's plantings.

"What do you have in mind, ma'am?" Gilda finally asked.

"Gilda, I just told you you're a free hen. You can call me by my name, you know."

"I… don't think I can… captain ma'am. I'm not that fledgeling you pulled out of the sea last year." Looking into the distance, across the slate-grey city, Gilda could barely glimpse the blue sparkle of the harbor's waters glittering in the distance.

"And I certainly am not that angry, bigoted ensign who pulled you out of the sea, either."

The unicorn pulled a sheath of paper out of one of her saddlebags. "I've got a form here. A whole ream of forms, actually. Apparently when you draw enlistment papers from supply, they only give you the whole packet. Not sure what I'll do with the rest of them."

Gilda took the enlistment packet from Gleaming Shield's horn-glow. The top form had been filled out with Gilda's information, and details. She hadn't realized that the captain had been listening the one time Gilda had let slip her mother's name. There it was, filled out for 'next of kin'.

And at the top of the form, the regiment blank had been filled in Gleaming Shield's fussily precise horn-writing, Sixth Guards Regiment, First Battalion. As well as the intaking rank.

"You see, I want to make something of the Crystal Guard. It's an imaginary unit. A nonsense-unit. The echo of some mythical empire that nopony other than Princess Celestia remembers as anything other than a cautionary tale about tyrants and power. But now, after all of these centuries… there's me. I'm not a regiment by myself. An officer by herself is just an opinionated, armed lunatic. It takes a sergeant to make an officer."

Gilda looked up at her unicorn. "I didn't think that you could enlist as a sergeant, captain ma'am. Shouldn't I be a private or a ranker or a legionary or something like that?"

"If an officer without a sergeant is a lunatic, then a soldier without a sergeant is a thug. The reason that the Griffish Territorials work so well is because of their corporals, Gilda. The best that the Trottish griffons have to offer, forced to work as NCOs. The Territorials may very well have the best corporals in the world."

"They have to, captain ma'am, because they were never allowed sergeants. We had to pick up the slack. But the Crystal Guard is supposed to be a pony regiment, isn't it?"

"Says who? It's an EUP regiment, but associated on the books with a nonexistent sovereign state that I can't even get a straight answer from anypony about whether the Crystal Empire ever was part of Equestria. If I'm the first and only officer in the regiment, I think I get to say what exactly the Crystal Guard will be. And I say… the regiment will take griffons. And ponies. And hippogriffs and Abyssinians and anything else we can lure to the colors.

"But I can't do it alone. Right now, I'm an armed lunatic with a signed and sealed paper saying I'm an officer. I won't actually be an officer until I have a sergeant."

"I was never a sergeant, captain ma'am. I was - there is no such rank as 'sergeant' in the Territorials."

"If you sign that, neither of us will be in the Territorial Corps, Gilda. This isn't the Territorials anymore. The war's over. Isn't it time to move on?"

Gilda sniffed, and then forced her features into the appropriately fierce, greedy grimace that the occasion warranted.

"I'm going to expect a full year's back-pay, captain ma'am. The Territorials might have been a corrupted, disreputable colonial embarrassment, but if the Sixth Guards are to be an honorable, upright regiment with a tradition of honesty and probity, then they bloody well will pay their griffons their back-wages!"

"At sergeant's wages, Gilda, I promise," Gleaming Shield said.

Gilda quickly, messily signed the form, tore it off of the fresh pad of forms, and threw it at her unicorn.

The captain grabbed it in her horn-glow, and gently handed it back to Gilda.

"Sergeant, I need you to file this form. We'll open a file for recruits when we get back. And look! We're coming to a stop. I guess they figured out how to land this drifting boondoggle."


The engineers and the crew eventually grounded the ship; it landed in the middle of Gilbert Square, with half the city crowding around to marvel at the spectacle.

Gilda convinced Gleaming Shield to cast the crystal-glamour-uniform spell on her newly-minted sergeant, and then on herself. The sparkling sergeant marched flashily about, booming broadly to the fascinated crowd of young griffons and ponies who milled around the stylish, sleek air-ship. Gilda told them bombastic breezie-tales of the glories of the service, the honor of the Guard, and the splendors of the soldier's life. She promised them adventure, excitement, and wonder. She promised them the world.

She lied shamelessly.

Gleaming Shield just stood there, letting Gilda do all the talking. The Guards captain glittered in the sun, looked impressive, talked up the prospects of the shipworks' new vessel, and took the occasional filled-out enlistment form.

They had a dozen recruits by nightfall. A third of the recruits were adventurous ponies from the other side of the city, slumming it in the blue zone, some of them for the first time in their lives. The rest of them were griffons eager to escape the griffish slums and see the world under a crystal banner.

Sergeant Gilda made a note to talk to Rarity about having a crystal banner made. Then she made a note about making up a regimental budget. And where they'd get their funding from - the captain was personally wealthy, and could afford Gilda's wages easily. But an entire platoon's worth of wages? Or more?

The list will only keep growing, Gilda thought, looking at her captain as Gleaming Shield pointed out some technical detail on the grounded airship to one of the enthusiastic recruits.

It was a good thing her unicorn loved lists.

Author's Notes:

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

And that's a wrap. I don't think this will be the end of Gilda and Gleaming Shield's adventures; almost certainly it is not. But it is the end of Good Trooper Gilda. And so, as she flies the blue lady of the skies into the sunset, we say 'aloha, Good Trooper Gilda', and return to our duties. Let me remind you that Fimfiction is open 24 hours a day for your dining and dancing pleasure.

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Good Trooper Gilda

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