//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: The Emergency 
// by Wheller 
//------------------------------//


The Emergency
Chapter 1


‘Well, I think it’s safe to say, we’re screwed’.

Summer had to agree there. The situation that she found herself in was certainly not a pleasant one. Despite the fact that she was here on a tropical island, the sun was shining over her head; there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and by all accounts it was a beautiful day in a theoretically ideal situation, there was just one, small, problem. The jungle that she was sitting was filled to the brim with communist guerrilla fighters, and she was stuck here in the middle of it with possibly the most inept group of ponies that one could possibly be around.

She was a unicorn, dandelion yellow coated, with a forest green mane, which was, oddly enough, very convenient considering her surroundings. She was lance corporal Summer Lightfall, first battalion, B Company, of the Fillydelphia Regiment of the Equestrian Republican Army, and she was a dead mare.

‘Still with me Summer?’ the voice to her left asked. Summer merely smiled and nodded her head. ‘I’m still here Cereal, just relax’, she said softly as she turned to look.

Corporal ‘Cereal’ Wheatly nodded his head in affirmation. He was an earth pony, his coat was the colour of barley, hence his nickname. His ordinarily chestnut mane was not visible to her thanks to the combat helmet upon his head. He smiled at her and raised a hoof to adjust the smart targeting goggles over his eyes. He pulled them off, allowing a better look at her without having to sort his way through the tactical information that they usually displayed. He turned his head back towards of the other end of the gun pit that they were sitting in and frowned. ‘Wolsey is going to get us killed’, he said with a lazy point towards the north.

Summer looked over to the other end of the gun pit, which contained its’ third and final occupant. Lieutenant Madeline Wolsey, their commanding officer who was, arguably, the only one of their platoon who had deserved to get shot. Unfortunately for them, she had made it to this gun pit without as much as a scratch on her.

Wolsey was a unicorn like Summer. Her coat was mauve in colour, and her mane was a bubblegum pink, and she was clutching her rifle like it was a newborn foal, almost as if it was the most precious thing she had in her life. This was all her fault, she had marched their platoon out here, she had walked right into a trap, because of her; they were down to less than half of an infantry section.

They were going to die on this damn island, and it was all Wolsey’s fault.

‘Come up with a plan yet? Lef-tenant?’ Cereal called out to her.

Wolsey jumped slightly and looked towards Cereal and Summer nervously, almost as if she had forgotten that they were there. ‘I’m thinking!’ Wolsey cried out, immediately rolling over onto her stomach and deploying the bipod mount on her E86 Light Support Weapon, using her telekinesis to aim the weapon off towards the north. ‘I... I don’t see anything out there’, Wolsey said, mumbling to herself.

Yep, Summer was most certainly a dead mare. She knew that while Wolsey may not have seen anything, she was relying on her smart targeting goggles to call out targets for her, and wasn’t really looking with her own eyes. That’s what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. The smart targeting goggles were useless in the jungle terrain; too many places for a communist to hide. They were out there, Summer knew it. Wolsey had gotten most of their platoon killed because she had relied too heavily upon her smart targeting. When they came under fire, the Lieutenant’s first words were, and to quote: ‘There are no targets!’

So here they were, stuck in this gun pit surrounded by every communist on the island, each of whom had an overwhelming desire to murder them dead, and possibly eat them after wards, one of the younger privates in their platoon had sworn to her that a buddy of his’ platoon had come under attack, and that the communist guerrillas hadn’t even waited for the equestrian troops to die before they started munching on them, though Summer was pretty sure that that wasn’t actually true. The only thing that could have made the situation they found themselves in worse was if they were running low on ammunition.

Oh wait, that’s right. That was going on too. When the communists had started shooting, Wolsey had frozen up, those that weren’t killed in the opening volley had tried to take cover and return fire, but when the platoon sergeant bit the dust, Wolsey ordered a retreat in a panic. Costing most of their extra supplies on the frenzied retreat to this poorly dug out gun pit.

So here they were, on some small island that Summer had forgotten the name in the middle of the Salay Archipelago, she was surrounded by possibly hundreds of angry communist guerrillas, and thanks to one inept officer; almost everyone who had been competent in her platoon was now dead. This is what her life had come to. She was a dead mare and she knew it.

What made it worse was the fact that this had been their first deployment. The Salayan Emergency, as it had been called, was the first military action the Equestrian Republic had taken since the so called ‘Great Patriotic War’ in Year 35 of the Republic, that had been sixty years ago. You could train all you want, but you never knew how well you were actually going to perform under fire. If anything, that was Wolsey’s problem. They had been trained to wait for their smart targeting goggles to call out targets for them, however, anyone with half a brain should have been able to adapt when they didn’t.

Summer’s head snapped to attention when she heard a rustle from the jungle, using her telekinesis, she levitated her weapon up and trained it on the spot, a fast moving target burst through the trees, causing a flash indicator to appear on her smart targeting goggles, a green targeting box appeared before her eyes, and she let out a sigh of relief. Green meant friendly.

There was a loud thump as the owner of the green targeting box dove into their gun pit, landing with expert grace. ‘G’day mates!’ he said with a smile.

Summer couldn’t help but smile back at the newcomer; here was another poor sod that had gotten himself in way over his head. ‘Walter’, Summer said with a nod.

Trooper Walter Berger was a kangaroo, a tank driver for the King’s Own South Island Dragoons regiment, and a native of Swan City, South Island. An island nation in itself, the South Island Army was naturally in an excellent position in deploying their forces in Salaya. Kangaroos had experience fighting in the jungles, far more than the Equestrian Army did. They were pretty much right next door, after all. The archipelago itself was situated between South Island, and another island nation known as New Seeland. Both nations had been the first on the scene. Walter’s tank had gotten separated from the rest of their troop while bulldozing over the jungle terrain, and his tank had hit an improvised explosive and knocked out the tracks, Summer didn’t know what happened to the rest of Walter’s crew, but she figured that she also didn’t need to ask, there weren’t many possibilities for what could have possibly happened.

‘Tell me you’ve got some good news here Walter’, Cereal said, glancing over to Wolsey, who had not even noticed the kangaroo’s return.

‘Oh I’ve news! Good news and bad news, which would you like to hear first?’ Walter asked as he offered the equestrians a smile.

‘Let’s have the bad news first’, Cereal said with a frown.

‘Ah, well the bad news is we’re surrounded by sixty or so communist guerrillas... and they looked kind of hungry’, Walter said with a shrug.

Summer frowned, that was bad for them. Considering that the natives were meat eaters, the guerrillas were of a race called the harimau, which in their language meant ‘tiger’. ‘What’s the good news Walter?’ Summer asked, hoping that it was damn good news.

‘The good news is: I managed to steal some of their guns!’ Walter said with a smirk. ‘Bad news is that they’re Præsidium made KV74s and KVS-74Us which means we can’t use their ammunition to feed our own guns, and that they won’t link to your smart targeting goggles’.

Summer frowned as she used her telekinesis to pull her own rifle up to inspect it. Her E85 Rifle was among the second generation of equestrian smart weapons, lacking anything but standard iron sights for back up. Weapons were linked to a soldier’s smart targeting goggles which would regularly call out targets by indicating them as red boxes. It wasn’t perfect though. Good camouflage in a jungle setting was enough to fool the targeting array into showing that nothing was there, to say nothing of the thermal and infrared view modes, too much background noise to be useful. These new weapons, while rugged and dependable, were dumb, in the sense that they didn’t include any smart targeting features at all. These weapons came from the Unified Præsidium of Socialist Republics, the long time informal enemy of the Equestrian Republic. They mass produced these weapons cheaply, for use in their own army, and to export to poorer nations around the world, a lot of people in the more civilised world refused to touch them, seeing them as inferior to their own. Summer knew better though, as fancy as her E85 was, it was still a gun that shot a bullet. The KVS-74U too, was a gun that shot a bullet, out here in the jungles of Salaya, there was no difference. 

Walter tossed one of the 74Us over to Summer, who caught it in her telekinesis. There were times when it paid to be a unicorn. She looked over to Cereal who fumbled with one of the regular 74s to clip it into his storm harness. While a unicorn pony could use their telekinesis to wield weapons like these, earth ponies and pegasi weren’t so lucky. They were forced to use the specialised harness in order to fire their weapons. Guns were fired by biting down on a control yoke with their teeth. Fortunately for Cereal, the storm harness came equipped with its’ own back up iron sight with an adjustable zeroing point, though in the dense jungle of Selaya, anything above the closest setting of one hundred metres was going to be useless.

Summer glanced over to Wolsey, who was still aiming her E86 down range and mumbling to herself. She was most definitely not getting a new weapon; she was liable to shoot them on accident before hitting a communist guerrilla.

There was a growl out in the distance. Summer turned her head towards the south and pulled her smart targeting goggles off of her eyes. They were useless with these Præsidium weapons, so why even bother?

Wolsey jumped at the growl, pulling her E86 up and shifting over to the south.

‘What’s the plan, Lef-tenant?’ Cereal asked her as he shifted to face the south alongside her.

‘Shut up! I’m thinking!’ Wolsey cried out in a hoarse whisper.

‘Gee, you think the Lef-tenant is nervous or something?’ Summer asked sarcastically. Wolsey was too frightened to hear her.

‘Understatement of the year, lance-corporal’, Cereal said with a frown.

‘Wolsey isn’t cut out for this Cereal, what the hell is she even doing out here?’ Summer asked.

‘Way I heard? She didn’t have much of a choice, considering who her grandmother was...’ Cereal said with a shrug, his voice trailing off as he scanned his eyes down range looking for trouble.

‘Who was her grandmother?’ Summer asked, raising an eyebrow at the earth pony.

‘Field Marshal Trixie’, Cereal said plainly.

Summer’s mouth dropped open. ‘No way’, she added in disbelief. She couldn’t believe that. Wolsey? A direct descendant of Trixie, The Trixie? Next thing Cereal was going to tell her was that Wolsey also happened to be carrying The Gun That Killed Three Princesses.

Summer’s ear twitched, there was a loud pop, and before she knew what hit her, a bright white hot flash filled her vision. She raised her forelegs to shield her eyes, knowing what was coming next. With a loud crash her ears began to ring. She knew what was coming, and when the light faded, she would be fighting for her life.