The first of the Zebra insurgents broke through one of our lines right before the first of the Guard artillery started landing. Fourth squad was already reeling, and when they got charged their defenses collapsed in on themselves and the stripes managed to get a hoof-hold in there, crawling belly to the ground in some places to keep out of the way of return fire.

I’d already trained my gun on them when the first shells struck, pulverizing a clutch of Zebras crawling out of a spider hole and rending them into a fine red mist and a few scraps of smoldering meat. The smell as strange but vaguely familiar, and it made my stomach flip to think about. I fired a few shots into the smoke trails and got a few yelps of pain in response, but in the confusion I’d no way of knowing if I’d gotten a Zebra or somepony from my own Company in the fire.

The artillery barrage was a welcome, awful, indiscriminate mess. If I hadn’t heard Bucking order it himself I would have assumed it was the Loonies opening up with a hidden battery to try and crush us before we got through their next lines. Fifth squad was hit directly across their center by the shells. Five ponies huddled together, bunkered down and killed all at once. I and a Privy found them when we were galloping for cover, throwing down right in the middle of it. The Private retched violently when he realized it, and I managed to choke down the bile and shake instead, pushing my head down towards my hoofs and trying to block as much of it out as I could.

It didn’t work, and I found myself firing into the wheat again not five seconds later, a Zebra stumbling into view with a wounded pony holding a scattergun between his muzzle behind him. She was covered in blood and mud and filth and if she didn’t have wings I’d have shot her for a Loonie in a heartbeat. Looking closer when she got down next to me and Privy, I noticed her nametag read Lance Corporal Shetlia, from Fourth Platoon, second squad. Hoofsers was behind us, knocking down anything trying to creep up on us in the brawl, and looking over his kill-box later I think he might have hit a few ponies. Wounded, thankfully, not killed, but all the same I didn’t bother bringing it up with him. It was no use shooting his nerves any further, he’d been through more than enough.

Shetlia didn’t say much, just hooked in with our firing positions and did her best suppressive fire with her own 7.62s, letting loose with cluster shots from an air-to-air flechette cannon strapped to her back, the shots meant for fighting griffons and dissident pegasi shredding wheat and zebras straight to hell and back, depositing the remains in bloody heaps here and there. It was terrifying and beautiful all at once, and I found myself fearing that gun’s damage more than even the insurgents erupting from the brush around us.

The speed of the ferocity was what made the ambush so bad. It wasn’t even that long an engagement. Five, maybe seven minutes tops from start to finish and then it was over. They burst up, fired off their shots, bucked us in the face and got shot down. I didn’t even notice it was over until Sergeant Bucking came up out of his own cover hollering for everypony to pull in. The artillery had ended and I’d been so wrapped up in firing at nothing that I didn’t even notice it until Shetlia was tapping on my helmet and getting up to trot back towards her own torn to hell squad forming up around their own Sergeant Dashler.

I mouthed “Thanks.” and she waved a hoof back at us, Hoofser smiling like an idiot and Privy matching the expression. When we trotted up to the rest of the Platoon, Bucking was already going around with his squad’s medic and checking to make sure everypony who’d made it through was in good shape. Bandages, poultices, wraps and sutures almost all around, and a good deal of autoinjector painkillers and antibacterials to boot. The dead numbered somewhere between five and six. Added to what we’d already lost and of the thirty two ponies of Third Platoon that had swooped down earlier in the day, only nineteen were left. Thirteen dead and we weren’t even near though the grinder yet.

Bucking had a look in his eyes that I’d never seen before when he finished the sound off. He looked sad, angry, violent and ready to break just like everypony else. He was a rock for all of us, an anchor point in the clouds that we could hook onto and save ourselves from collapsing with. When everypony else was freaking out and dying off, he was there to yell out to us and get us into shape, keep us together but most importantly to keep us sane. It was a lot to throw at his hoofs, but he shouldered it well and seeing him ready to break like that was almost more than I could handle myself.

The expression was gone almost as soon as I noticed it, a mask of shaky resolve tossed up to hide it, but I knew what I’d seen and I was shaken. For the first time that day, I started to wonder if anypony was going to make it out of Little Horn alive. Most of my original squad had been shot up, same with my transfer in. I wondered, why was I still alive, when everypony else around me was taking a dirt nap already.

The rumble of the mechanized Guardspony column shook me out of my thoughts, and I noticed that the wheat was being crushed behind us under the tracked treads of the armor, the engine roar a dull roar all around us. Up ahead Bucking was already moving on point, threading his way through the crater-pocked, artillery-wrecked and dead-strewn field, trotting towards Little Horn proper. To our west the sounds of heavy artillery and light fighting was interspersed with a few fiery explosions of detpacks and blasting tubes telling the fate of the AA emplacements.

As the flak started to die off up in the air a few sections of heavy cloud were parted, scouting squads of Pegasi from the other Companies in the deployed 502nd starting to glide down and make visual confirmation that everything was clear. That sight more than anything else is what kept me trudging forward with Privates Hoofser and Privy behind me instead of ditching out and taking my chances at deserting. We had real support now, reinforcement. We might all still die but at least maybe it wouldn’t be in vain.

Maybe.

We managed to clear through the rest of the wheat without much incident, though Specialist Trundle in one of the support squads from Canter Company that had flown down to reinforce our push managed to trip into a spider hole and smash his radio to pieces. Nearly snapped a hoof while she was at it, but she managed to limp away with a sprain and a scowl but thankfully not much worse. Somepony called up a medic, but he just laughed at her and trotted back to Corporal Punishment’s squad behind Bucking’s pointponies. For the first time since we’d landed the platoon was deployed in numerical formation, first squad at the head and the tatters of fourth in the rear, bought up by the Canter Company fourth and fifth.

To our east, Fourth Platoon’s third squad was moving up, and First Platoon’s fifth squad brought up our western flank, the lines extending all the way to Second Platoon tossed over to the eastern fringes, and Fifth Platoon stalking on the fringe of the anti-air battery fields to the west, everypony pushing forward in a massive sweep to crush anything stupid enough to still be skunking around in the brush.

There were a few odd hazards spread out between us and Little Horn proper, a Loonie squad opening up fire from deep cover here, or a few scattered mines buried just beneath the dirt there, but for the most part it was an easy advance. A sniper opened up on Sergeant Bucking’s first squad from an old willow tree at one point, though the heavy weapons crew attached to his unit managed to blast it all to bits and pieces before they could even rack the bolt for a second shot, and the smoke and fire from the burning tree convinced another sniper lying under an overturned cart near where the fields opened up into pasture to toss his rifle down and throw his hooves up in surrender.

Somepony, I couldn’t tell who, peppered him with shots from a battle saddle and we marched past his corpse, splayed out with a 7.62 bolt action at his back, the same type of decades old surplus weapon I’d seen so many Lunar Republicans clutching in the trenches. We were back to fending off the fodder, and that put a lot of ponies nerves at ease, just a little bit. Once we started running into stolen automatics and higher end rifles we’d be in trouble again, but for now we were having a cupcake walk of a time.

The only real and honest attempt at resistance the Loonies made during the approach on their main line fortifications was at a small stable and half collapsed barn near what was probably once an apple orchard but was by then a small clear-cut field of stumps, rocks and bales of hay stacked up next to some old and broken down pull-carts. Sergeant Bucking, wary after the sniper, had pulled up the Platoon on him, ordered us to cover and to train weapons on the buildings. He seemed reluctant to order anypony to jump up and check it out for hostiles, so I threw my hoof in the air and volunteered third squad for the detail.

He had a look of relief on his face when he waved us on ahead, whispering out orders to the other squad leaders to track our advance and be ready to open up if anything turned awry. One of the medics from Canter Company’s reserves trotted up and followed us close, staying a little lower and moving a little more cautiously than myself or the Privates were. Ironically, or perhaps obviously given the big red cross on his helmet, he was the first one to get shot, a bullet cracking across his steel pot and making him spin around in shock and disorientation, dazed and confused and probably concussed from the blow but still mercifully alive and largely uninjured.

More shots rang out from the windows on the still standing side of the barn, and heavy fire stuttered out from somewhere unseen in the stable, the flashing strobe of muzzle fire obscured by the glare from the sun. Shots skittered close enough to make me neigh, and a glancing shot grazed my shin and got me hollering at Celestia to “Clop them with the sun!”, a bit of welcome blasphemy that Private Privy echoed when he got a sniper round through his saddle bag and across his flank.

The weapons crew in first and just about every other gun in the Platoon opened up all at once, pouring inordinate ordinance into the Loonie positions, a lucky Cheery Lake shot, likely from Bucking, hitting one of the remaining support spars on the second floor and sending the whole thing collapsing in on itself, burying whoever’d been shooting at us under a ton or two of moldy wood and leaky pipes. A medic for the medic came up, dragging the colt away, the sight and circumstance of which got me and Hoofser laughing so hard we started snorting while he did his best to patch up Privy and myself.

A pair of Loonie Unicorns broke cover from the stable about then, levitating up heavy 7.62 machine rifles sans saddle, trying some half-flanked attempt at a glorious charge before they got cut down to little bits a half second and a full chortle later.

Sergeant Bucking past us by, grim faced and still as determined not to lose quite so many ponies as he’d been, shooting me and my temporary squad a confused look that sobered us up right quick. We fell back into line after second squad had worked it’s way past, nodding to them and reloading our weapons as we inched ever closer to the real fight.

I could hear some of the members of fourth squad behind us complaining about having to hoof it through the mire like some run of the mill Guardsponies, flapping their wings in agitation and looking up at the sky and the 502nd’s other Companies making landings in the fields all around the fortified town, flying with relative impunity now that the flak was down for good, dodging only the occasional 88mm or sniper fire if they erred too close to the Loonies on the rooftops.

Personally, I was just happy we weren’t fighting for our lives anymore, at least not for a few more minutes. If that meant being grounded while doing it, that was fine by me.

We knew that as soon as we breached the perimeter and jumped the walls that Little Horn was going to be hell, but we didn’t expect the sort of ferocity we met even before we’d cleared the siege lines we’d drawn around the settlement. It was getting dark, only an hour or two left before the damned orb would be up and the Loonies would be in their twisted element, but even then the light burnt fierce, thrown up from the sheer volume of shells and muzzle blast and mortar rounds exploding across the sky and tearing into the ground. It seemed like all eyes and every gun was trained on us as soon as we kicked up from the temporary resupply and reinforcement camp, shots whistling past and some tearing into ponies in the center of the formation even before we’d gone out of sight of the Guardsponies’ armored columns.

Corporal Punishment got clipped in front of me, and I nearly caught a 20mm flak shell in the face, dodging only because I was trying to avoid crashing into some poor mare that had lost half her wing and was dropping fast. A medic on the ground was already moving towards her before she crashed, but we all knew that for her, it was over. You didn’t come back from an injury like that, not as the same pony, and almost never as a sane pony.

We were a few dozen feet in the air but already starting to scatter when the first Griffon opened up on us. They’d been perched high up in the clouds, higher than even the support companies had been holding station in, probably waiting to ambush any passing bomber squadrons or artillery support wings that might move into position there. They waited until we were in the perfect position before coming down too, near to the ground enough that we wouldn’t be able to maneuver out of the way and close enough to the wall that all they had to do was keep us pinned long enough for the anti-air guns to zero in on us.

They dropped down in dives, screeching bloody hell at us and firing those dual-mount 20mms they slung over their wings, claws stretched down to try and tear us out of the sky if they got close enough. They were on us before we could bring a single gun to bear, one of them slamming into Privy and knocking him down to the ground, rolling and tumbling in a mad and futile melee. I tried to aim my saddle down, to strafe them, but a Griffon wing caught me across the nose and sent me tumbling down as well, fumbling with my firing and reloading bits and training to level out before I crashed.

I was too low though, and I wound up hitting a hay bale, pain cracking across my wing but the impact softened enough that it didn’t shattered like I’d feared it would. Up ahead a few feet the Griffon that had knocked Privy out was already tearing his saddle off, shredding the barrels with just a flick of it’s claws. I was winded, disoriented and shaky hoofed but I managed to line up the sight and buck fire into it’s beak, stitching rounds up across it’s feathered breast and pulping it before it could sink it’s talons in and finish the job.

It fell and so did I, bowled over by the impact of the second Griffon that had hit me, it’s 20mm barrels raking across and cutting my cheek and chest, the weapons hot from firing so recently. I did my best to get onto my back and buck, but it rolled me over and fired down, the shell impacting and detonating next to my hoof, burying into the ground instead of my chest. Privy was on him in an instant though, knocking his hooves against it’s back and tail while it tried to deal with both of us at the same time, giving me enough time to jump up and bite down on it’s neck, thrashing hard to try and snap it.

I heard a crack, but it was from Privy, his barrel chest caving in under one of those damned thick Griffon feet, sending him flying backwards and coughing up blood into the dirt. The bird’s beak was pecking at me, trying to gouge out one of my eyes while it’s claws did their best to dig into my barding, cracking against the steel plates and leaving long, jagged rents through the plates and cloth. It was screeching and roaring at the same time, thrashing all around as I beat my hoofs against it, still straining to try and crack it’s neck when it went limp on top of me, gurgling and vomiting thick blood onto my face, making me nearly retch as the corpse slid away, a desperate looking Private Hoofser standing with a long fighting blade in his mouth, dripping with Griffon blood and trailing a few sticky feathers.

I nodded at him in thanks, gesturing over to dying Privy and shaking my head. We both knew he wasn’t going to pull through, not from something like two collapsed lungs and who knew how many crushed internals. We cantered up to him, doing our best not to put him through any other pain, Hoofser sticking him with a syrette of morphine. Under any other circumstance I would have said something, anything, to try and comfort him but I did’t. I was so burnt out from the fighting, from the dying, from the sudden and violent nature of everything that I couldn’t even feel his death. I put a hoof on Hoofser’s back, looked up and jumped back into the sky and he followed, leaving a brave and faithful soldier to his death. I still think about it, sometimes. Even after Zebrea it’s still the worst thing I’ve ever done, and I know that to this day Celestia won’t forgive me for that.

Back in the air things weren’t any better, the battle raging ever fiercer as the fighting climbed ever higher, darting and dashing aerial combat, back mounted guns firing off in the middle of sidewinder duels, everypony doing their best not to get caught by the Griffons in vertical motion. We couldn’t outrun them, we couldn’t out climb them and we certainly couldn’t out dive them, but the one thing we had was that we were damned speedy with our corners and we could dash around a curve better than anything else in the sky.

The Griffons were thinning out, but at a tremendous price. I counted at least five of them in the air, all around, probably more but maybe even less. They’d already decimated my squad, they’d obliterated two squads in Fourth Platoon and they were working their way through the rest of us in single combat, racking up well in excess of fifteen kills and showing little signs of slowing down when we finally managed to get the upper hand. I think it surprised all of us even more than it did the Griffons, Lt. Glider and his personal retinue streaking down into the middle of the fray, hopping mad and burning fast on some kind of madness that nopony could quite understand, appearing like a flash with a streaking trail of crackling thunder and coiling smoke behind him and his troop, biting down hard on the bits of those frightfully powerful flechette cannons, bursting the first bird they saw into a fine cloud of bone, feathers, blood and grit and flying on straight through.

I stopped, in the middle of an engagement with a Griffon that had pulled towards me when I’d come back up, saved during my shocked paralysis only by another shot from one of Lt. Glider’s troop’s cannon. The air combat was still going on, the Earth Ponies and Unicorns were still tearing each other to pieces below, the sky was still filled with flak and we were still being bled dry by the sheer fanatical force of will of the Loonies, but for a second there none of that mattered.

A living legend, a living saint of Celestia herself was in the middle of it all, killing everything that so much as dared look our way.