Before the war, before the wars, they called me Sky and left out the family name of Raider. When I joined up it seemed like that’s all they cared about, some of the others gushing or guffawing over it until I got my nickname. ‘Sturmpony’, because of how I handled the heavy guns during the mock-assaults during basic. The colt who coined it thought he was a mighty clever pony, but when it comes to that I can’t rightly disagree. It fits, but more importantly it stuck.

I didn’t find much use for it though until a while after I’d completed basic and been tossed into the 82nd “All Equestrian” Division of the Air Corps. After a bit of processing, filing, interviewing and coin tosses I found myself in the 502nd Air Assault Regiment, Apple Company, Third Platoon doing scut work at Equus Air Base in Canterlot and learning exactly what it felt like to be a green-wing amongst veterans. They gave me a battle saddle fitted with 7.62 machine rifles that weighed more and hit less than it ought to have, but I didn’t complain. It was better than having to lug around one of the heavy mortar pieces, or one of what should have been a fixed 20mm gun like someponies I knew.

I found myself drilling under Sergeant Bucking with the rest of the greens and some of the less than stable vets for a few months, easy enough but boring garrison work more than anything else when we weren't pretending to blast apart Lunar Republican dissidents and itching for a chance to do it for real. As it happened, luck, if you could even call it that, was on our side and it wasn’t long before I got my chance to spit lead at the worst of them.

I remember the first time, staring into the eyes of one of them. Eight and a half years ago, back before the ‘popular’ uprising was even being considered. The mare was still in the moon and the New Lunar Republic was anything but. It must have been fifteen, twenty years old at that point but only then starting to get back out in force after the crackdowns of ‘76. The 502nd pulled the short straw to support the mechanized assault at Littlehorn. The Equestrian Guard was there, and they even had some of those gold armored Royal Guardsponies with them to make sure that whatever punches we threw landed hard enough to put the NLR down for good.

At least, that’s what we hoped for. Some of the more fervently devoted amongst us, myself not included, offered up prayer to the Princess, the real Princess, that everything go off without a hitch but I guess Celestia must’ve been busy that day. We all knew it’d be a rough ride, but I don’t think anypony expected things to go just as badly as they did. We took off from Equus fields before the raising of the sun, a bad omen in and of itself but a necessary one to ensure we’d get there in time. Someponies were still laughing and joking, but the further west we flew and the further north we crawled they got quieter and quieter until we were cruising along in total silence.

It was about five hours later and six kilometers away from the rally point outside Littlehorn that Lieutenant Glider spoke up again. It was a navigations adjustment, changing the heading by a few degrees and starting a slow altitude drop until we were brushing against the tips of the cloud cover. He had a bit of strain in his voice, which should have been telling given how hard as nails he usually is but which went unnoticed at the time. I was still too wrapped up in my own thoughts to give it much heed. I was green as an alfalfa monster and fresh out of basic, still shaky with my wings enough that more than a few ponies had asked me if I’d rather been born an Earth Pony.

It was another half hour, maybe more, maybe less when we started to bank left, circling towards the target zone. Lt. Glider called out, said there’d been a slight change in plans and that Apple Company was going to break up and start the pre-assault recon runs while the rest of the 502nd kept orbit over the staging grounds. When we finally broke cover and cut down towards the ground it became frightfully apparent why everything had been jumped up a good two hours.

Somepony had been careless or seditious and the Loonies were already in the field, all over the place, dragging their bastard flanks out of whatever slit trenches they’d been mucking around in, pulling their Bickers and their field-mortars up with them. There were a few skirmishes breaking out already in the southern fringe where the first of the Guard were brushing against their ad hoc defensive line, but it wasn’t even a fraction as bad as it was going to get. Already our armored columns were pushing up, making double time to get there before the Lunar Republicans could trot the rest of their force and whatever reserves they could muster into place. Before I got too low for proper visuals I could see just over one of the hills, where the muck-suckers were setting up. Must have been a few hundred just in that cluster, which was a heck of a lot more than we’d been briefed on. Hay, we’d have been just as surprised to see more than three dozen in any one place, let alone the hordes they were fielidng.

Only a few of the recon squads were on the ground when the anti-air opened up. Hidden in the apple orchards and wheat-fields in the west and the north, we never even saw them in the early low altitude fly-bys and there’d been no reference to them in the intelligence reports, not that we weren’t expecting them, but like the numbers of bodies on the ground we never suspected they’d have quite that many barrels ready. There were probably a dozen units, a few 88s but quads for the most part. It was light out already and they had a perfect line of sight to draw a bead on us. Must have cut down a dozen pegasi before the first wave scattered well enough that they were dropping at a slightly less alarming rate. At the very least most of us had survived, but with the flak filling the air there was no way the rest of the battalion, let along the rest of the regiment, was going to be able to drop below the bits of cloud cover we’d pushed into place until the guns were knocked out, which thankfully wasn’t my mission. First Platoon got called up for that and I thought, just a bit guiltily, that I was glad it was them and not me. Pegasi and anti-air don’t mix well, you see.

I and the rest of Third Platoon were moving up towards the artillery keeping some of the Guardsponies flanks down, recon temporarily forgotten while we worked on the air control problem. We’d gotten radio communication with the mechanized thanks to Sergeant Bucking, and word was that Captain Gallopson was down there with us running the show and leading from the front. There was still a lot of confusion on the line though, so we were more or less going in dark. Sgt. Bucking asked for volunteers to take point, and I threw my hoof up right away. I don’t rightly regret it, but in retrospect it wasn’t the best decisions of my life. I found myself a few minutes later up at the front with a scattergun between my muzzle and some 7.62s strapped to my sides to replace the thirty cal I’d been lugging around. I’d tried to get the firing bits for both in place but after nearly choking to death I realized that it wasn’t working and I decided I’d rather have the scatter in case things got hairy up close, which given the lay of the land was more likely than not.

Like I’d said before, that AA was intense and all over the place and it seemed from down there like they had just about every angle you could imagine pre-sighted and filled with fire. Not wanting to catch sudden and ignominious deaths, were forced to buck it through the muck like good and proper ground pounders, but such is the lot of Air Assault a good nine times out of ten. We had the benefit of coming down within their fairly broken line though, so they weren’t expecting us quite as badly as they might have, but that didn’t seem to lessen their response or slow their reaction when they finally did notice us. I was in one of the trenches when the first of them came up hollering and spitting piss and vinegar at us from some poorly dug cross-line.

She was a dark grey coated mare, light brown hair and a cutie mark like a moon with some diamonds around it. Her eyes were greenish but not vibrantly so, and her muzzle was snarling around a 5.56, tongue pulling at the trigger. She was scared, surprised, pissed and probable jacked up on Moon Dust and her shot went mercifully wide though it damn near gave me a heart attack and offed me nonetheless. She’d had the drop on me, and only by the grace of the Goddess had she missed me. I thought that maybe Celestia was looking on us after all, right up until the point my training kicked in and I pulled my tongue against the trigger.

There was a flash, my head snapped up hard. I could feel a dull pain in my neck and I wondered for a while whether the scattergun might have been a bad choice without a better integrated harnass. I’d closed my eyes without realizing it, but when I opened them I saw that I’d gotten on target with exactly the sort of accuracy the Loonie had mericuflly lacked and… She’d dropped, just like that, like she wasn’t even a pony, just a ill-balanced sack of apples or a bale of hay tumbling down from the rafters. One second she was alive and charging and the next she was... Gone, half her face splattered across a dirt wall and the rest leaking out into the mud. I stared at it, for a lot longer than anypony ought to have stared at it, just trying to catch my bearings and figure out exactly what I’d just done.

The rest of first squad shuffled past me while I was dazed and laid out on my haunches. Usually just hanging back and switching off point ponies would have gotten more than a few complains or sly jabs, but they knew I was going through something rough and that I needed whatever time, however short, I could get. I hate to say that there was a time I was as green and fresh to the corps as that, but we’ve all been there and it’s one of those definitive moments we all have to bash through alone. There were quite a few others that day, though most got the comfort of never having to get that close to their targets, afforded the relative niceties of long distance sniping or impersonal blankets of fire.

After about a minute Sergeant Bucking came up and hoofed my shoulder, patting my helmet and helping haul me back onto my hooves. We trotted up together, neither of us saying a word until second squad linked back up with us near a fork in one of the trench networks. Overhead the flak was still bursting pretty heavily, and we could feel the tremors and hear the dull roars from the artillery nests we were creeping up on. Resistance was surprisingly light, with hardly a single patrol between us and the target. Third squad had run into something small at some point, but they didn’t lose anypony and they managed to clear things up on their end quick enough there was a chance the Lunar Republican troops didn’t hear over the sound of their guns firing at the armor. A chance, but not a very likely one.

We regrouped, first three squads on the left flank towards the AA, the last two squads taking the right towards the wheat fields. I found myself on point with first squad again, scattergun in mouth and heavy rifles on my side. Somepony had handed me a satchel of pineapple grenades that hung off my saddlebags but I questioned the need for them if ‘stealth’ was still the name of the game. Up there, at the tip of the spear just waiting to stumble into the first machine gunner with a line of sight on your head is enough to put anypony’s nerves on edge, and I was nervously stopping and throwing a hoof up in warning every so often, taking long and unnecessary moments to screw my eyes up and try to take in all the details of our barren surroundings. There was mud underhoof, some dirt to either side and branching forks every so often, and that was it.

Well, that was it until the Loonies got wise. Somepony must have spotted us the closer we crept in, and the Corporal leading second squad is the one they ran into. They’d snuck up on us after we’d cleared and crossed an intersection, hitting the center of our formation and tearing a swathe straight through them with explosive charges and scything fire before we even had a chance to respond. Corporal Neighlson took a couple rounds to the hoof and at least one to the flank, while his weapons pony got a face full of buck shot that sent pieces of him going every which way. Somepony else that had transferred into Apple Company a few days before from the reserves was clutching a grenade they’d tossed in, holding it to his chest and neighing like a madpony. Bless his heart, but he rushed them with it outstretched when he realized he was done for, like some mad dash suicide run. I winced and turned away, bringing my scatter gun up to bear on them while the rest of the squad turned to face the attackers.

By the extended grace of Celestia though, he tripped on a rock and the grenade flew out of his hands and hit one of the Loonies square in the eye about a half second before it burst. Pulped him straight to the moon and took a chunk out of either of the mares to the sides of him, which left two or three more for the rest of the platoon to clear up. Corporal Neighlson, despite his wounds, hauled the reservist up and shook his hoof, the two supporting each other as they pulled back towards the medics near the rear. Apparently the grenade had sent some shrapnel into his head, but I heard that he’d pulled through and went on to keep fighting the rest of the day. Normally good news, but after something like that he should have gotten to head back to the reach echelon and rest for a spell, not tossed right back into the grinder before his wounds had properly closed up.

That’s the way of war though. Underponied and overtaxed, that’s how the PAC was. We did our best though, so don’t let anypony say otherwise. It’s just… I wished that maybe they’d toss some of the work we did over to the Equestrian Guard, let the Earth Ponies or the Unicorns take some of the rough stuff for a while. Sure they had all sorts of hell on their own, but the Air Corps always seemed to be the ones leading the charge. There are all sorts of rhymes and nicknames about the trend to. “Dire Flyers” or “If you fly you’re first to die.” Morbid, right?

Anyway, there we were, creeping through the trenches again, wings itching to unfurl and get us back on track but stuck slogging dirt to free up the mechanized elements. We were under real fire for the first time, the Loonies knew where we were and for a while at least they had us outnumbered three to one. Bad odds, but we were willing to take them. The ambush had just been a probing attack, it turned out. Squad after squad started to rush us at irregular intervals, a hodge podge of ponies trying to gun us down from randomly fixed positions. Given what we were used to facing this was a joke, like they weren’t even trying. We were wading our way through greenhorns and raw recruits, not the hardened pony killers that usually made up the New Lunar Republic elites like the Shadowbolts or those Goddess damned Knightmares.

Mostly Earth Pony mares, with a few higher ranking looking Unicorns but not a single pegasus yet. What was even stranger, to the point of Sgt. Bucking pointing it out, was that we’d only been fighting ponies that far. That in and of itself was worryingly strange, since the Loonies loved to pull other species into their fold. Griffons and Zebras mostly, though I’d heard tell of Buffalo turned to their cause and even the old war stores and legends about dragons coming down and burning up whole airborne divisions in their barracks on the eve of big assaults. I heard a lot of that went down in places like Burning Vales and Riot’s Ravine but I never personally knew anypony to come out of those postings alive. It was less a station and more an execution as some of the less pleased among them said.

Everything about the op was… Unsettling, I guess. If I’d had my say we probably would have pulled back and waited a while until more loyalist forces could be drummed up to put the place under siege, but Apple Company had a mission and we weren’t going to just pack up and leave halfway through. Lance Corporals also never got their say, but that’s secondary.