He felt weightless, drifting, but not aimlessly. There was a direction, a purpose, which he could feel, but not understand.
A tall, regal figure—a pony, of course—alabaster in coat, mane flowing in at least four colors that he could count, with a tall pearl-white horn and vast-spread wings: this stood, or hung before him, in space.
He felt an urge to kneel, but suppressed it.
And then she spoke.
“Do you know who I am?”
He again suppressed the urge to kneel. He knew not from whence it came. But he did reply.
“You are Celestia. I don’t know what title to give you—Princess, Queen, Empress, Exile, Goddess—but you are Celestia.” Every mortal fiber quivering within his flesh was telling him to use the title Goddess, but his mind and spirit resisted: he had made his bets in that department, and she wasn’t part of them. “And what am I, that you would send for me?”
Her wings folded back, and she stepped forward. Her countenance became softer.
“You are the human I need.”
She did not wait for him to say that he didn’t understand. Instead, she spoke, and he listened.
Sergeant Meadow Song, Fifth Pegasus Recon, Easy Squadron. Formerly of the Equestrian Republican Guard, now of the New Lunar Republic Pony’s Army. Graduate of Shadowbolt Candidate School. Decorated for Merit in both the Fifth Griffin Rebellion and Gulf Corridor campaigns.
Defeated by Nebraska grass.
Meadow Song leaned forward, desperately gagging. Ponies, unlike most other equines, could vomit, but it was not by any means a natural or comfortable experience. His vision blurred, and he desperately willed that the poison leave his body, as he sprawled all the way out.
“Sarge...c’mon....” Thunder Lane rubbed Meadow Song’s back with his hoof. “You’ve gotta beat this. You’re not the only pony who got it.”
One of the last patches of grass—Meadow Song couldn’t be sure which one—had been poisoned. It made sense. Humans didn’t eat grass. Their livestock did, but the livestock could be taken inside and eat from silage. Easy Squadron didn’t have that option unless it wanted to lose the element of stealth.
“Must’ve...eaten...more.” He belched, which brought him no relief. “Wanted to save the supplies for the return leg. Aw hell.” He tried to get on his feet, and felt his hooves slip on the dirt. Weakness, not a lack of traction, he blamed. “Not like this. Not like this. Figured I’d die out here. Figured it’d be a bullet. Maybe eighty of them. Not like this. Not like a...like a Diamond Dog.”
“You’re not going to die, Sarge. The Republic needs you alive. We need you alive.”
But dying just seemed so much easier. “You ponies’ll do...fine...you know the mission.”
“Your kid needs you, Sarge. There’s a little orange filly in Ponyville waiting for her dad to come home.”
“I...don’t...have...custody.” Finally his gut heaved, and a few blades of grass came out. Not near enough.
“You think that matters, with her mom in the gulag? Come on, Sarge, you’re all she’s got, and she needs you to live, dammit!”
“I...” He closed his eyes, and awaited the icy grip of whatever next awaited.
After a minute or an hour, something sharp poked into his hide, a pain he was prepared to ignore, until his eyes peeled wide open. Nearly electric hyperawareness coursed through his nerves, and his muscles twitched. Uncomfortably energetic, he found himself back on his hooves, trotting in place.
“I think I’m going to live. The hell was that?” He focused his vision sharply on Thunder Lane, who was now pulling the syringe out with his mouth.
“The last of the Compound C. I can’t read most of the words on the ingredient list. Somepony said it could help.”
Meadow Song laughed long and loud; likely too much of both, as Thunder Lane winced. Finally, he spoke again. “Never mind! I’m still dead. Compound C can’t do horse apples for the poison. Just enough painkillers to ignore it and enough adrenalin to take down an Ursa Major before I check out.” He laughed again, continuously, until Thunder Lane stuck his hoof in Meadow’s mouth. The sergeant explained himself again, once his face was free: “Corporal, this is what Horse Power feels like all the time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!” Filled with chemical vigor, the sergeant turned to his concerned squadron. “All right, my little ponies! We’re thirty minutes out of Scotts Bluff, and I don’t expect to see another hour! We’re making a crater of that armory if it’s the last thing we do, and it probably will be! Saddle up!”
“Yeah!” was the hurrah from Easy Squadron.
“Yeah!” was the distant echo over the Nebraska prairie.
Goldengrape had to admit—there weren’t a lot of responses to his angry question of “who the hell are you and what are you doing in my office?” that would have satisfied him, but this one did the trick. The earth pony gulped and nodded, as the unicorn’s ponykinesis retrieved the Lunar Republican Party Membership Card from in front of Goldengrape’s face. Goldengrape summoned his courage and spoke.
“Commissar Blueblood—we certainly weren’t inspecting an official inspection of our facility!”
“Then I have succeeded in making it a surprise inspection, Comrade.” The unicorn’s magic threw a set of files across Goldengrape’s desk. “Strike one is having no one present in the office of the camp warden. Imagine if I had been a traitor? Every detail of the operation of the Baltimare Human Detention Camp would have been available to me.”
“Well—ah—” Goldengrape stammered.
“Strike two is the sorry state of these files. A list of the names of prisoners, and nothing else. How is this record-keeping? If I had intelligence that a human prisoner from a specific unit posed a security risk, these directories would be useless.”
“We have—in other files—”
“You know what strike three means, Comrade. For both our sakes—for I never relish the paperwork involved with the gulag—see to it that the rest of the inspection proceeds flawlessly. Now, let me pose a hypothetical. If I had information that several humans from an American light infantry unit trained for mountain combat possessed critical intelligence which we required, how would I go about quickly and accurately learning their identities with this mess of a file system?”
Now that it was time for the attack run, Easy Squadron was moving forward at full speed—at least, the fastest it could go and still remain a cohesive unit, which was significantly less than the top speeds of some of its members—sweeping quickly over the last few miles of Nebraska prairie.
The pegasi fanned out to a wide formation as the armory came into view—less aerodynamic, better munitions saturation—as their Battle Saddles unfolded their mini-missile launchers.
“All fliers: Golf One!” was Sergeant Meadow Song's voice over the headset radio, and Thunder Lane clamped his jaw on the left side of the bit in his mouth.
With shrieking cries and a trail of sparks in the night, twenty-two mini-missiles shot forth from the advancing Easy Squadron towards the American base.
Before the missiles were ten yards out of their launchers, the base's defense sirens came to life, wailing in the night, as did the defenders' miniguns, filling the sky with tracers.
Even before the next orders came, Thunder Lane dropped his altitude, jinking out of his prior flight path.
“Did they know we were coming?” somepony asked over the radio. Thunder Lane didn't waste his breath responding—the answer seemed obvious.
“All fliers: stagger formation, wait for effect—”
The rumbles of thunder and the flashes of flame pounced forth as the warheads detonated against the row of buildings in the night. At this range, the extent of the damage was not yet apparent, but—
“Cobras! Nine o'clock!” somepony screamed.
“Three o'clock too!”
Flanked between American attack helicopters on their north and south, with active defenders on their east, the unit followed its training and scattered. Thunder Lane pulled in an arc to his left, wanting to get a look at the Cobra helicopters nearer him—shooting buildings when he wasn't sure what was in them seemed like a waste of his last missile at this point, when he could be absolutely certain that an attack helicopter was a worthy target. He jerked his jaw and grabbed a control bit just to the left, flipping a set of sights down in front of his eyes—and, if the Soviet-designed technology all worked properly, switching his last mini-missile from dumbfire to optical guidance.
He tried not to notice the screams from his comrades as the deadly fusillade worked its way through Easy Squadron, but he could not miss seeing his wingman auger in right before his eyes. He pulled up instinctively to dodge the spray of earth, and attempted to get the Cobra helicopter in his sights.
Over the clatter of gunfire from both sides, he heard another series of great shrieks in the night—he cast his glance to his left, towards the enemy base, and saw a row of slow-moving rockets coming the way of his squadron. With their low speed, he easily dodged over their flight path—in fact, he thought for a moment, he might have been able to shoot them out of the sky if he had thought to try and had had his machine guns out instead of his missile.
“Hah, what was that?” Somepony asked over the radio.
Thunder Lane smiled, and got the Cobra in his sights. “Golf Three,” he muttered into the radio, and clamped the left side of the main bit. His second, last, mini-missile launched, and he jinked, though still trying to keep the enemy vehicle in his crosshairs.
His nose twitched involuntarily as he lowered altitude, into the flight path that the slow enemy rockets had taken.
“Gas?” he muttered.
He glanced to the side, merely shifting his eyes to the right, not moving his head as the guided missile continued its path to its target—and he saw the rockets, having reached the end of some predetermined fuse, begin to burst in the air.
It was impossible for him to have seen the approaching fuel-air blast quickly enough to react—that he did indeed dive downwards could have been a testament to some raw prescience on his part, as a shock wave rumbled through the sky.
He felt the air leave his lungs and his eyes bend in ways they were never meant to, and he fell limply towards the ground. His ears ringing from the explosion, he did not hear his mini-missile strike the earth harmlessly away from his target as his head and the attached sights lolled wildly during his descent.
Nor, after he hit the ground and let himself give way to darkness, did he hear the triumphant cry of a single white pegasus, still airborne as it streaked in from the south:
“Yeeeaaaaaah!”
Private Horse Power, one might say, was created rather than born—though he certainly had parents, they had little to do with the state in which he found himself now: his brain swimming in a vat of hormones tailored for aggression, bulky muscles layered upon still bulkier muscles, bits of his commanding officer's flesh between his teeth, and a burning desire for battle brewing in his belly.
So, naturally, he flew straight into the first thing he considered a target.
The human pilot screamed in a way the sadistic part of him—a tinier part than one might imagine, as the chemicals ruling him did little to permit so subtle a trait as sadism to dwell in his mind—found amusing, as Horse Power continued to force his way through the canopy and into the pilot's cabin. He flexed muscles along his sides, and the canopy shattered completely, enabling him to step directly onto the human pilot. It struggled for a moment, so he head-butted it, and it ceased to be a problem.
Shouts of human profanity came from a few feet further forward, as the side-gunner realized what was happening and drew a sidearm to fire at him.
The bullet hurt, he supposed, in a far-off way. He stepped forward, and found himself pinned between the seats. He flexed again, but the seats had more give than the glass canopy, and they didn't instantly break apart as he would like.
The next bullet hurt, too, and he was tired of these seats getting in his way. He clamped his jaw, hard, on the main bit, directing it to fire both of his machine guns. He ripped his jaw upwards, the main bit coming with it, leaving those guns locked in the firing position. Possibly permanently.
This was not the effect he intended, but he did not have a great deal of time to comprehend this. Hundreds of bullets fired in seconds, some sticking in leather, some in metal, some in flesh, and many ricocheting everywhere. Some of them hit him, too, but that was not the reason he lacked time to comprehend—mere bullets were unlikely to kill him quickly enough for him to realize that he was, in fact, dead.
He struggled forward, out of time only when the helicopter, auto-rotating from a very low altitude, struck earth and exploded.
“..oo...kay...rdner?”
Dexter tried to focus his eyes, finding the rotating lights of the disco ball to be far from helpful for this purpose. The voice repeated itself.
“You okay, partner?”
The orange earth pony's face, upside down, looking into his with concern. Dexter squinted.
“...guess so.”
He pushed himself off the ground to a seated position. The purple unicorn was nearby. He glared slightly at her.
“Don't ever do that to me again.”
“I'm—I'm sorry—” Twilight Sparkle stammered. “But did you see—”
“I saw what you wanted me to see. But don't ever do that to me again.” He rubbed his forehead.
“Twilight Sparkle! What did you do to him?!” Applejack demanded, pressing her face into the unicorn's. “He's my responsibility, you hear? And he's a—he's protected! International law! What're you thinking, using magic on him like that?”
“Well,” Twilight began, taking a step back. “I was just—” She looked around the room, seeing all eyes on her. “—I mean—” She looked back towards Dexter, but found Applejack interposed between them. “—I'm sorry!” she cried, running towards the exit without another word but with a few tears.
There was a silence following, and those who were not simply confused felt awkward, so it could have been reasonably called an awkward silence.
“Honestly,” Applejack snorted. “I don't understand that unicorn.” She looked back at Dexter, who now was on his feet. “I think we need to get going. I'm real sorry, everypony. Maybe another time, we can do this up right. Sorry, Pinkie Pie.”
Thunder Lane's eyes did not heed his directions to open, even as his hearing recovered. There was no more gunfire, only chatter and the sound of engines.
Footsteps—human—drew near him. He felt a cold metal point poke into his side. He wheezed, but could do nothing else.
“Another live one, Sarge.”
“That's what we get for using 'humane' weapons. Alright, get 'em on the truck.”
Three pairs of footsteps, he thought. One approaching his front legs, one his hind, and the third—
He heard a pistol cock.
“I don't know if you can hear me, little pony, but by all means—gimme an excuse to blow your brains out.”
Thunder Lane elected to remain perfectly limp.
Rough human hands grabbed his legs, lifting him slightly, and dragged him across the wet Nebraska grass. With a muttered heave-ho, he was risen up again, and then his flank and shoulder slammed onto a cold hard metal surface.
He slipped away into the blackness, his body having deciding it was not yet ready to be conscious again after all.
Dexter and the Apples found themselves out shuffling in the summer night.
Applejack nudged Dexter with her head as they walked down the dirt trails. “You sure you're okay? I've never really had much unicorn magic done to me, but—it ain't natural, is all.”
“Not gonna argue with you, ma'am. My head is—swimming. Still, went better than my last encounter with the stuff.”
“You reckon?”
“I can still speak and swallow food, so yeah, I reckon.”
tap tap tap...tap tap tap.
Michael Kurier (United States Army, Corporal) listened for further taps through the cell wall, but that was the end of the message. He tapped the center square of the five by five grid he had drawn on the dirt floor of his cell, decoding it as the letter 'n'. Filling in for the missing letters and expanding the abbreviations—
Senior Ranking Officer in isolation, still looking for next in line.
—which was not as responsive an answer to 'who is in charge here' as he would have hoped, but it was good nonetheless to know that the tap code was in use here and that there was some kind of organization among the captives, even in the heart of enemy territory.
He rubbed his head. Ponykinesis had apparently patched a crack in his skull, left there by a pony bullet when his platoon was overrun, and that had been all the medical care the ponies had deemed necessary before packing him onto another train with dozens of other soldiers who had held to the Code of Conduct and given only their names, rank, and serial numbers.
”If you do not answer my questions, I will be forced to classify you as a high risk prisoner. The conditions of your confinement...will not be uplifting.”
Yeah, right. Answer their shrink's questions and get next in line for brainwashing. He had offered the doctor the answer it deserved: the bird.
The food had been—well, from what he had heard in training, definitely better than non-collaborating American POWs had eaten since 1945. The dishes were completely vegetarian, of course, but there was at least enough of it. And compared to Fort Jackson, the climate was comfortable—a dry heat, at least, and he was in the shade of a tin roof.
Small kindnesses next to forced isolation, or at least the enemy's best attempt at it. Still, he expected, this was part of the brainwashing effort: let prisoners taste the carrot, before brandishing the stick.
Unable to sleep, Michael began to repeat to himself again the Code of Conduct. “I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense....”
He jumped with a start as the door to his cell burst open. There was barely room to lie down; that an earth pony could insert himself as well was a bit tricky to comprehend.
Enforced silence? Now that's a bit—
“Prisoner Kurier Michael 457-55-5462,” the pony said, dripping with menace, “you have an appointment.”
Michael supposed that he might have been able to wrestle the pony in front of him—in this tiny space the guard couldn't effectively deliver a rear buck—but he spied another guard in the hallway behind him, with a locked and loaded Battle Saddle.
This, then, did not count as an instance in which an escape attempt was reasonable. At least, not yet.
A pair of shackles were dropped on his wrists—he pressed as he could to get space to work within them, but didn't think that was effective—and the guard led him out to the corridor.
Quiet, as it reasonably would be in the dead of night. A string of lights provided little illumination of the thin metal walls and dirt floor as guards and prisoner trotted along. After a hundred feet, the party turned into a much nicer part of the facility—wood floors, even—and then Michael Kurier was pushed into a small room—still much larger than his cell—facing a mirror.
Presumably, one-way.
A voice from a speaker indicated that he had correctly presumed.
“Michael Kurier, United States Army.”
Michael himself continued: “Corporal, 457-55-5462.”
“Captured in the Rocky Mountain Theater of Operations, just west of the Continental Divide. Wearing the uniform of and in the presence of soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division. Shot in the head by the proud earth pony soldiers of the 23rd Stalliongrad, who informally estimated that they were only returning the favor for three of their own. Survived medical treatment at the Salt Lick Processing Center, refused psychological screening, and transferred to the Baltimare Human Detention Facility.”
The corporal didn't answer, as he didn't hear a question in there. He remained silent, standing, staring straight at the mirror.
“You're just a regular American hero, aren't you?”
You're not going to break me, you pony bastard, so don't even—
“Shame that you're not going to be fighting in this war ever again. No one can escape from this camp. Even if you did, you're a human in a nation of quadrupeds. You'd be recaptured instantly. And even if you evaded recapture for a few days, you're hundreds of miles from American soil and nowhere near any interesting targets for monkey warfare.”
The corporal snickered, speaking to his captor for the first time. “'Guerrilla' warfare, you pompous ass.”
“Monkey, gorilla, baboon, you can't expect me to keep all your ancestors straight. No, Corporal Michael Kurier is done fighting in this war as long as he stays here in Baltimare. Of course, if he were to be transferred much farther north, say, to Fillydelphia, well, there'd be all sorts of opportunities for him to escape even before his arrival—with Discord's own luck, he might even be able to escape within a few miles of the capital. Who knows what kind of trouble he could get up to there?”
Michael kept a stoic look on his face, while his mind swam. SERE didn't cover this—at least not the levels I took—when does the torture start? Or the humiliation? Or the propaganda? Is this ego-feeding, a lead-up to something else, or...?
“And even more hypothetically, if he were to be transferred in the company of other surviving members of his platoon, just one car in front of captured human weaponry and a cache of classified intelligence—can you imagine the kind of havoc they might wreak?”
This was too good to be true— And yet he could not resist from replying: “Yes, I can.”
“Superlative,” came the voice from the mirror. The light behind it shifted, rendering the mirror transparent and allowing the corporal to look at his 'interrogator'—a white unicorn stallion with a long blond mane and a smug grin. He looked every bit like a romance novel cover model—assuming an equine audience—and certainly not a hardened interrogator.
“You are the human I need.”