Rose Thorn hadn’t asked to be drafted. Her cutie mark was a bush: her talent was gardening. She’d never asked to have a rifle put on her back, then a shovel, then a helmet on her head, then belts and belts of ammunition piled on top of her until she could barely stand. She didn’t ask to sleep in a dugout, counting herself to sleep by the regular rhythm of the shellfall.
But when fascist Wingbardy had invaded, the Red Army had called her up. She’d gone to the barricades in the March Revolution, and she’d thought she’d done her part. But now they needed more from her.
She lit a cigarette. It was vile, it tasted foul. She’d never been a smoker before. But the pony in the dugout with her, Ember Flash, had shared a cigarette with her one night when the shells had kept her awake, and she’d gotten to sleep. “Sleep is everything,” that’s what her mother used to say. And nowadays, the company commissar agreed.
The smoke started filling up the dugout. Ember Flash sighed contentedly, his namesake amber eyes fluttering open.
“Sorry comrade,” said Rose Thorn, not putting out her cigarette.
“Oh I wasn’t sleeping,” yawned the batpony, “There’s some kinda new shell they’re using this time. The ground is vibrating differently. Plus they’re closer this time. Too loud for these ears.”
Their trench, and the little dugout the pair had made within it, was on a reverse slope. That meant that any shell had to be very carefully aimed, and the Wingbardians had consistently missed their regiment. It was one of the things which had made their sector so quiet, compared to other sectors along the riverbank. Of course, the planes were another matter, but there weren’t nearly as many of those as there were guns.
“Closer, eh?”
“Yeah. A lot closer.”
They stopped speaking for a moment as another barrage started landing. Ember Flash closed his eyes, stuffing the cotton he was using as earplugs deeper in. He sneezed as soil from the top of their dugout sprinkled down on him while the barrage shook the earth. Rose Thorn looked out into the trench just outside their dugout, then ducked back in. That was dumb. She knew it. When the shells fell heavy, there was nothing to do but wait.
Rose lit another cigarette, throwing the old one into the puddle just outside their dugout. The burning end of it, the same colour as her squadmate’s eyes, quickly extinguished in the filthy water.
One minute, two, five. The volley petered out. They had a few minutes, probably, before the next one. Not safe to go outside into the wider trench, but they could just about hear each other.
“So, how close was that one?”
“I don’t know, really close.”
Ember Flash sneezed again, then lit up a cigarette of his own.
“I’m gonna be completely deaf by the end of this, I swear,” Ember said.
Rose nodded. Her own ears always rang a little these days; she didn’t want to know how much worse it was for her sharp-eared companion.
“Well then maybe I won’t have to listen to you anymore.”
“I don’t need to know what I’m saying to gab, you know that.”
Rose chuckled. She glanced over at their other companions in the dugout: the Whicker gun that was their charge, and the large box of ammunition needed to feed it. The big box carried 2 belts of ammunition, while a smaller box was attached to the gun and carried one more. The tripod, the water to refill the barrel cooling shroud and the rest of the ammunition were with their squadmates Cloudpeak and Ruby, who were sheltering in another dugout.
“I’m gonna check the belts,” Rose said.
“Why?”
“If water’s gotten into the box, they’ll swell and jam.”
“Well, if it jams we just retreat and tell the brass we told them so.”
Rose rolled her eyes and got to work.
“No but really, Rose, you wrote about the problem with the belts to that muckity-muck…”
“Commissar Sicklestroke, yes.”
“And she said she’d take it to the Party’s Central Commissariat of People’s Revolutionary Worker’s Committee for-”
Rose gave him a light kick. Sometimes it was hard to avoid kicking somepony in the dugout, it was so cramped, but this time it was deliberate.
Ember snickered. Rose finally got the box open and started checking the belts. It looked like it was okay, none of the ammunition had gotten jostled out of place, no water had gotten in the box, although the box itself was starting to rust.
“I’m sure they’ll switch to steel belts or at least find a way to waterproof these once the reports pile up enough.”
“If we’re still alive by then.”
Rose got quiet, sealing the box and leaning back against the dugout wall. She closed her eyes, thinking about her little brother back at home. She’d promised him she’d come back, but who knew when the war would end? The front kept getting more and more destructive, the barrages longer and longer, and more ponies kept getting called up. When would it end?
“Hey,” said Ember, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. We’ll get through this, you and me. We’re smart, we’ll look out for each other. Remember, batpony hearing. At least until I go deaf and get discharged, no griffon’s gonna sneak up on us!”
“I’m sure that’ll help against shellfire.”
Ember closed his eyes, took a deep breath.
“Well,” he said, “For that… I’m just lucky. And as long as you stick with me you’ll be lucky too.”
Rose chuckled ruefully, but didn’t dispute it.
“Hey,” said Rose after a few more minutes, “I haven’t heard any shells in a while. You?”
“All quiet,” said Ember, “Time to get some sleep. We’ll see who’s dead in the morning. You know it kind of feels weird saying that as a batpony, you know?”
“You could always apply for night sentry duty.”
“I could, yeah. Actually I might do that, cuz then I could get medically discharged for insanity.”
“You got great confidence in that luck of yours.”
Ember grunted.
A moment passed, then another. Ember’s ears pricked up.
“Do you hear that?”
“No,” said Rose, “More shellfire further down the line?”
“No, it’s something else. It’s getting closer…”
Ember removed the cotton from one of his ears and stuck his head out into the trench for a few seconds.
“Oh no,” he said, “Oh no oh no oh no…”
“What?” asked Rose.
“Oh no it can’t be oh no oh no not that not that…”
“What did you hear?”
“It’s…” Ember swallowed, “It’s the whistle. They’re coming.”
Rose froze. Pulling the cotton out of her own ears, she could just barely hear the whistle going off, again and again.
Ember had just started to move. He was hitching the cart which carried the Whicker gun to himself, and Rose suddenly shook into motion as well.
“I’ll get that,” she insisted, deftly moving her hooves to secure the cart to her companion. Then she picked up the ammunition box and let Ember strap it to her saddle.
She slung her Lilac rifle onto her side, so that she could quickly transition to a firing stance if they met any Wingbardians. She almost forgot to load it, but managed to fumble a pair of stripper clips into the magazine, letting the clips fall into the mud.
Rose and Ember looked at each other. Rose was taller than Ember, so she couldn’t see much of his face under the brim of his helmet now that it was properly strapped on. But she could tell he was shaking. The whistle was getting closer and closer; she could hear it clearly now.
Just before they left, Ember stuffed the cotton back into his ears. If they were going to be firing the machinegun, he’d need all the protection he could get. Silently, they nodded and ran out into the trench. The wooden wheels of the machine gun cart rattled as they ran across the duckboards. Once, Rose had to help Ember get past a patch of open ground where the wheels started sinking into the mud, but they reached their machine gun nest in only two minutes.
Their machine gun nest was separate from their dugout, and with good reason. The nest had been hit by shellfire: there were sandbags strewn everywhere, and Rose sliced her boot open on a shell fragment half-buried in the ground. She barely noticed until she felt the water getting onto her right forehoof.
Ember helped detach the ammunition box from Rose, setting it down with a wet squelch on the muddy ground. The smell of filth invaded Rose’s nostrils as she unhitched the machinegun from Ember. Unlike the Stalliongrad models and some Equestrian ones, the cart their machinegun was transported on was only lightly constructed: it wasn’t stable for firing, so they had to mount it on a tripod.
They’d set this machine gun nest up last week, and they’d done a good job. It wasn’t a shell-proof pillbox, although they’d heard there might be some concrete coming in soon so perhaps it would be by the next attack, but it kept them nice and covered from any griffons while giving them a good field of fire. The shells had disrupted some of their setup and would have killed anypony and destroyed any machinegun inside, but the main position was still functional. It was when they were about to set up the gun that Rose realized something.
“Where are the others?” she asked, her voice sounding distant to herself.
“Shit,” cursed Ember, “I thought they’d be here by now.”
“They were closer than we were,” said Rose, “And they have the tripod.”
They looked at each other. They were in a machinegun nest, a high priority target for any enemy, with no way to effectively use their machinegun.
“I’ll get them,” declared Rose, and started running.
The whole trench was coming alive with action: she passed by several other machine gun teams, rifleponies, and even an officer all coming out of their dugouts to take up positions. She almost crashed into another ammunition-carrier on her way to her squadmates’ dugout. The thunder of hooves on duckboards, the squelch of hooves on mud, and more and more whistles blowing all across the line. They all blurred together into a continuous din.
Rose reached a pile of dirt and debris, collapsed onto the trench floor by shellfire. She stopped. Their dugout would be just on the other side of it. So that would mean…
She heard a whimpering sound. Numbly, Rose slowly ascended the dirt pile. Just on the other side of it, she saw the dugout where her squadmates Ruby and Cloudpeak were supposed to be.
Sticking her head into the dugout, she saw the two pegasi cradled together, Ruby holding Cloudpeak’s mane and staring into his glassy eyes. Cloudpeak’s ivory fur had been stained a bright red, and there was a steady trickle coming from his neck down onto Ruby’s hooves and then dripping onto the ground.
Ruby didn’t look up at Rose. She was whispering something to Cloudpeak’s lifeless body. Theri equipment lay scattered in the dugout. Rose walked up to them, standing frozen above them for a moment.
“Ruby,” she said. No response.
“Ruby!” louder this time. Ruby didn’t even look up.
She got down, forcing herself into Ruby’s field of view.
“Ruby! The enemy is coming, we need to get ready.”
Still no response. She didn’t even seem to register Rose was there. Cloudpeak's body spasmed one last time, Ruby holding him tighter and hushing him as though they were both trying to sleep.
Rose reached around Ruby, finding the tripod and the water can these two were supposed to carry. She didn’t have enough in her to also bring the extra ammunition in the dugout with them. Rose got up, looking down at the dead and shell-shocked ponies.
After a moment of stillness, she reached past them. Ruby didn’t react at all as she pulled the bulky metal tripod out of the dugout and slung it over her own back, nor when she heaved the large water can out of the dugout too.
Then she left them. There was no time to do anything else. She clambered back over the dirt pile, straining under the weight of the water and the tripod. They were meant to be carried by two ponies, alongside more ammunition, but Rose was just barely strong enough to move them by herself. The water sloshed about as she slid down the dirt pile, then trudged as quickly as she could through the mud, onto the duckboards, and finally back into the machine gun nest.
Ember was poking his head over the top when she arrived.
“Get down,” Rose hissed, and Ember immediately dropped back.
“They’re creating a smokescreen,” said Ember, “Shelling the area between the ridge and the trenchline with mortars. The smoke is getting dense; they’ll attack any minute and we won’t be able to see them.”
Rose nodded.
“Where’s Ruby and Cloudpeak?”
Rose shook her head. Ember blinked in confusion, then looked down.
“Oh,” was all he said. Rose unfolded the tripod and slammed it down. The boards underneath it rattled. Ember shook himself, then got to work. They still had a job to do.
Within two minutes, the gun was set up. Ember moved a couple sandbags onto the tripod’s feet to secure them in place, Rose mounted the gun onto it, then Ember fed the first round into the chamber. Now it was Rose’s job to make sure the ammunition kept coming, as long as it lasted.
Seeing a pony running past, Rose called out to her.
“Hey, you! Our ammo runner’s K.I.A.. Tell your S.L. that M.G. nest 14 needs extra .303 belts.”
The riflemare saluted and ran off. Machine gun teams were given priority in assault situations, so if she wasn’t needed in one, she could get out of bayonet fighting by running more ammunition belts back and forth from the armoury-bunker in the third line up to their machine gun nest.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Ember Flash muttered, “Can’t see a thing with all this smoke.”
Rose grunted. Normally they’d have at least two other squadmates in the nest with them, trying to spot targets, engaging them with riflefire, running extra ammunition when it ran out…
Cloudpeak had been a baker. His cutie mark was a muffin. Rose had never seen him bake anything; all she’d seen was him digging, and hauling, and cleaning his rifle, and marching, and playing endless games of cards with the rest of the section. Nopony ever knew where he got the cards, or how he kept them in immaculate condition. He was a good soldier, did everything right. Kept his head down, followed orders. And he’d died without ever seeing the enemy.
The “crack!” of rifle-fire shook Rose out of her thoughts. Somewhere close, somewhere on their side, somepony had fired a shot. Then another, then another, then the sound of explosions, yelling, screaming, the harsh screech of an attacking griffon. She couldn’t see any of it. From her position, Rose could barely see anything. Smoke had started to fill the machine gun nest itself.
Rose just had to hope that Ember’s vision would be keen enough to spot movement in the smoke. She rested her rifle on a sandbag so it wouldn’t get in the way, then got to work. She opened the top of the Whicker gun’s receiver, and inserted the feeding tab for the belt. She closed the receiver, and Ember cocked the gun, giving her a little nod and then sitting down behind it. His slit eyes narrowed, and he let out a slow breath. Ember ws in his element.
From now on, it was her job to make sure Ember could do his. She’d keep the ammunition coming, make sure it ran smooth, and if she had any spare attention she’d try and keep a look out for enemies. She just had to-
“TAKTAKTAKTAKTAK!” rattled the machine gun. The sound rang in Rose’s ears as she monitored the belt. She hadn’t even seen what Ember was shooting at. Tracers flew off into the darkness and smoke. Ember adjusted his aim.
“TAKTAKTAK!” he fired again. Ember snarled, and fired off another burst. The wind started to pick up, and the smoke started dispersing. Still, Rose could barely see a thing. And kept her head down anyways.
Another burst, then another, then another. Rose wondered how many poor Wingbardians Ember had killed in the last two minutes.
There was a tiny, wet explosion of mud just beside Ember, then another, then another. He swore, looking around for whoever was shooting at them. Rose glanced up, seeing a tiny flash in the smoke, far off. She saw the sandbags in front of Ember shift slightly as bullets pattered onto them. Rose gave Ember a little kick to get his attention, and pointed in the direction of the muzzle flash she’d seen.
Growling, Ember brought the machinegun to bare. Rose ducked her head down to focus on the belt again, just as Ember let fly with a long, continuous burst. Rose gently guided the belt through the gun, the canvas spooling into a puddle on the other side of it. Suddenly the burst stopped and Ember swore again. The belt had jammed.
Without thinking, Rose manually cycled the bolt, clearing the jam in under three seconds. Ember muttered something Rose couldn’t understand, and kept firing for another few seconds.
“Last yard!” Rose called, getting ready to feed the next belt. The sound of grenades drowned her out. The smoke had properly cleared now, and grenades, rifle-fire, machinegun fire and screeches grew louder and louder, becoming a cacophony.
Ember fired his last round, and Rose immediately started feeding the next belt. There was no time to attach the new ammunition box to the gun, but that didn't matter. As long as Rose was here, the belts would feed. In a moment between bursts, she opened one of the large ammo boxes. Then she saw that somepony had dropped another large box next to her. She hadn’t seen or heard the runner coming, and she hadn’t noticed her going.
Rose and Ember kept up their silent routine. Ember scanning for enemies and firing off bursts at them, either to keep them down or kill them outright. Rose changing the belts, fixing malfunctions. They couldn’t hear each other over the sounds of the violence, but they didn’t have to.
After what felt like hours, there was a moment of rest. They were down to their last belt, but the Wingbardians hadn’t stormed their position. Not yet, at least. Rose looked up at Ember, the latter panting heavily. Blood was running down one of his wings, but he didn’t seem to notice.
Blood. Ember had been hit. It took a moment for Rose to realize it, and then the terrible awareness came over her. Where was the nearest medic? Did they even have time to dress his wound? Would he ever fly again? What if it became infected? He didn’t even realize it, but Ember might not live to see another day.
Rose started laughing. How ridiculous! For the last however long they’d been fighting, grenades had been going off all around them. Rose herself had felt a piece of shrapnel glance off her helmet at one point. They’d been seconds from death this whole time, and Rose was only thinking about it now!
Ember looked quizzically at her. Then he tackled her.
Rose’s world spun. She was completely disoriented as Ember forced her into the mud, digging her face into a sandbag. Then, a “BANG!” so loud that it drowned out the omnipresent ringing filled her ears.
At once, Ember’s weight was off her. She scrambled to her hooves, wobbling slightly as she came to. Looking up at Ember, she saw him stand up, draw his pistol, and then stumble to the ground. His helmet had been knocked off, and he had a bloody gash across his forehead which was dripping blood into his eyes. Bits of shrapnel had embedded themselves into the sandbags all around them, and Rose realized what that “BANG!” was.
A grenade had just gone off inside their nest. Which meant…
Rose dove for her rifle. Ember was in no shape to fight, and he knew it. Shakily, he crawled into the tiny alcove within their machine gun nest. That would protect him at least a little bit if they threw in another grenade.
Which they did. This one landed in a deep puddle of mud, and Rose saw it land clearly enough that she was able to hide behind the ammo boxes when it went off. She’d piled the spent boxes on top of each other, resting them on a sandbag without really thinking about it, but she now realized she’d inadvertently made herself a piece of cover. Seconds after it went off, Rose popped back up, resting her rifle on the box and looking down the sights at the one, narrow entrance to the machine gun nest.
She saw a submachine gun poking into the entrance, and ducked down again as the griffon wildly sprayed into the nest. They weren’t exposing anything to Rose, but they clearly weren’t aiming either. Rose felt the ammo boxes shift as a bullet or two slammed into them. They were hollow, but the metal was just barely thick enough that the bullets wouldn’t get through both sides of it.
The griffon was just a little too confident. Two grenades, a magazine worth of bullets, plus all the shelling these positions had suffered: Rose admitted that she was lucky to be alive. This griffon seemed to not have considered the possibility that his enemies were just luckier than him. As he glanced into the nest, Rose put a bullet into his beak.
The griffon screamed and fell backwards. Rose cycled the bolt, not even blinking as the griffon rolled around, grasping his ruined face and writing in pain. She fired again at a blur of motion she thought she saw, then cycled the bolt again. The wounded griffon’s comrade, just out of sight, dragged him back out of the nest.
Rose heaved in air. Ember was saying something, but she couldn’t make it out. He said it again, louder. Then a third time:
“Duck!”
She did as she was told, as Ember himself hurled a grenade just outside of the nest to catch the regrouping griffons. He missed, and the grenade landed right next to Rose. She stared at it for a paralyzed moment.
She still had another two seconds at least. Moving faster than she ever had before, she let go of her rifle and let it dangle from its sling. Grabbing the nearest sandbag, she slammed it down on the grenade. She had no idea if that would be enough.
One second, two seconds… no, it had taken her at least two seconds to pull that stunt. The grenade didn’t go off.
Rose glanced at Ember, who was staring in wide-eyed horror. More of his own blood got into his eyes, and he had to blink and wipe it off again.
Rose started laughing. This time, Ember joined her. A dud grenade had just saved her life. They laughed and laughed and laughed, holding their sides and forgetting about all the carnage around them.
Their machine gun’s water jacket had been perforated by fragmentation from one of the grenades, and the spare was with their dead comrade, but they kept laughing. Rose had just shot somegriff and that griff’s squadmate could still be right outside their nest, but she couldn’t stop laughing. Ember laughed until he started to cough, blood trickling into his mouth.
There was a series of low, rumbling roars just outside their nest. A blue-grey unicorn wearing a comissar’s cap peered in.
“Well," she declared, “You two seem to have seen a lot.”
She entered, accompanied by a pegasus and two griffons, all wearing the uniform of the shock troops and carrying an assortment of submachine guns and trench shotguns.
“Alright,” she said, “You two are to retreat to the rear on my orders. Commissar Sicklestroke. You’ve done your duty, but we need fresh troops to hold this line.”
One of the griffons hitched the cart which once carried the Whicker gun to Rose. As Rose stood there in a daze, they strapped Ember down to it and told her to get him to a field hospital back on the fourth line.
The exhaustion set in as Rose walked back. Her muscles ached. She passed the bodies of the griffons who’d attacked her position. She didn’t look down at them. They were dead, that was what mattered, either by her hoof or by the shock troops’.
The cart creaked and groaned under Ember’s weight. He was saying something, either bragging or apologizing. She couldn’t tell; he wasn’t making any sense and her ears were still ringing.
She passed through the communications trench, weaving past bodies of friend and foe alike, or else brute-forcing the cart over them. She thought of Ruby, paralyzed in her dugout. Was she already dead? Had the Wingbardians killed her, or had they just not found her? Or maybe they’d taken mercy, if fascists were capable of that.
She was able to make out one thing Ember Flash said as they reached the third line, and the sounds of battle at the first line started up again:
“Hey Rose, do you think they’ll let me go home now?”
“I don’t know Ember,” she answered, “I hope not. Don’t think I’d last too long without your luck.”