//------------------------------//
// The Prize 
// Story: Summer of My Human Soldier 
// by KFDirector 
//------------------------------//

“I assure you, the defense of this city from the pony menace is absolutely my utmost priority.”  General John Tear straightened his tie on his uniform and looked into the camera.  “We know that the enemy possesses a ponykinesis capable of completely overcoming the will of man.  Therefore, the loss of an American city, even temporarily, to the enemy is completely unacceptable: they could create tens of thousands of fifth columnists to subvert our Republic.  So do not worry, Denver: this city will not fall to the ponies.  But we need your cooperation with all wartime measures.  I will summarize them briefly….”

“ ‘Better fried than foaled’,” someone behind the camera muttered, repeating Tear’s signature line.  This was edited out before the broadcast.





“Impossible,” Lightning Dust (Lieutenant Colonel, Second Cloudsdale Squadron, Shadowbolt Candidate School Graduate) whispered to herself as she flew over the valley.  She turned a tight arc for another flyby, looking closer; her hooves were just over the ground.  The path between the two rocky ridges was narrow and winding, cut by an ancient stream that was now little more than a creek after the spring runoff had faded, but it was there, and it was empty.  The enemy had been here, the tracks were obvious, but that unit had moved on—and nothing had yet replaced it.

“Hawk Four, report in,” was the call on her radio headset.  She was quick to reply.

“Command, this is Hawk Four.  Valley Seven-Four is empty.  No human defenders, no mines, nothing.”

“…are you sure, Colonel?”

“Positive.  Command, if we push through here now….”

“Understood.  Keep the area under surveillance; we’re moving some units up now!”

“Double-time, Command!  Opportunities like this don’t come twice!”





A radio operator confirmed what he was hearing, verifying the authentication of the sender, before shaking his head and sliding a marker out onto the large map table in the Denver Defense Command Headquarters.  “Contact report, major Papa unit, possibly division-size and growing, combined arms, at grid square T7-43.”

General Tear set down his handset, looking in horror.  “That’s inside our lines.  That’s…they’re out of Clear Creek Canyon!  That’s not possible!  Check-ins from all line units!”  He glared at the map board—all of his units were where they should have been; small pegasus units might have been able to fly over or around the defense lines but no major heavy unit could have possibly bypassed them unnoticed.

The radio operators hurriedly contacted the American units the map table said should have been handling the defense of all possible routes through the mountains in that sector.  After a few minutes of this, one of the operators used a long forked pole to move one of the American units from its place on the board to a location five klicks south.  “Navigational error; this combat brigade took the wrong exit on the highways and reinforced the wrong valley.”

The resulting hole in the lines made it very clear how so many ponies could have gotten such a large unit so far in.

“Goddammit!  Get a pocket around these assholes, we’ve got to keep this contained.”  He looked again at the map.  Too many of his forces were too dispersed, engaging other pony units at what had been the front line of battle—at least twenty klicks to the west—and couldn’t be safely pulled back to join the defense.  What he had left on the ground might be able to stop a combined arms division—if he could enough of it there in time.  

While his operators began to coordinate the defense, he strode quickly to his office, just down the hall, and opened the safe under his desk.  Checking his watch, he flipped through a certain unlabeled notebook from that safe; he checked his watch again, and scribbled a note on his desk.  The bomber will take forty-seven minutes to arrive.  It can be recalled at any moment, but for safety’s sake the abort code should be issued no less than forty minutes after the order is given.  If recalled, it can stay…, he paused, jotting more notes down on his desk, checking numbers.  …on station, ready to complete the attack run, for up to six more hours, by which point its relief will be airborne and available to make the attack run in its place.  That seemed, to him, like adequate time to get the measure of the defense and determine whether the most drastic action would actually be necessary.  He picked his desk handset up, and adjusted the dial.  “Flash.  Starling Command, this is Delta Hotel Quebec.  Transmit to Crane Two the following: Code Charlie Four Charlie, Foxtrot Golf Delta, One Three Five; I say again: Code Charlie Four Charlie, Foxtrot Golf Delta, One Three Five.”  He waited for confirmation, and set the handset down, closing his eyes for a moment.  “May God have mercy on our souls.”





A bit less than five miles above sea level, near the border between South Dakota and the Wyoming territory, there flew a large aircraft.  Its crew called this class of aircraft a “Big Ugly Fat Fellow”, or words to that effect; they named this particular bird the “Lady Eunice”, after their old commander’s fiancé.

Captain Kubicki, the electronic warfare officer, glanced at the CRM-114, the readout of which was quickly flipping, settling on a received signal of C4C-FGD-135.  Coded orders over the CRM-114 were routine for a craft such as this; he checked the codebook for this entry.

The command prefix checked out for the day, which would authenticate the veracity of the orders; there was about a one in forty-six thousand chance of the enemy guessing the correct prefix, and the CRM-114 would have alerted if there were a rapid series of incorrect transmissions.  Captain Kubicki noted this and moved onto the mission code.

On seeing it, he dropped his pencil and swore.

“Major Heinz?  We’ve just got a message on the CRM-114.  It decodes as an attack run.”

After a few seconds, the reply came back on his headphones.  “Goddamn, Kubic, you sure?”

“Yes, Major.”

“Well, shit.  Looks like our war with Papa finally got hot enough.  What’s the target?”

“I don’t recognize the profile code, sir—135.”

“Shit, well that ain’t Canterlot or Salt Lick or nothing.  Hold on, I’ll be back to check.”





“This isn’t going to work, Colonel,” a golden unicorn said, shaking his head at Lightning Dust.  “We’ve been detected too early.”

They were out of the valley, spreading out onto a mesa that overlooked a substantial portion of the city, but were already under fire by human infantry—the emerging ponies and arriving human reinforcements had caught each other by surprise, and the long lines of both units were shooting at each other.

“You want the enemy to just give us victory, sir?” she asked him, annoyed.  He may have had the one star of a brigadier general, but it was for political reliability, not for guts, or for that which distinguished stallions from geldings.

“This is too risky—we’ve got to—”

And then he stopped complaining, a stray bullet which whizzed from the American lines removing the obvious physical distinction between unicorns and earth ponies; his consciousness and heartbeat as well were also rapidly removed.

There was, strictly speaking, a full rank between Lieutenant Colonel and Brigadier General, and Lightning Dust wasn’t even a particularly senior Lieutenant Colonel.

In the chaos of the battlefield, the opal pegasus found it difficult to care about these little details.

She screamed at the captains of two earth pony units nearby that didn’t seem to have caught on.  “B and C Company!  Push hard and get up close!  We’ve got the advantage at close range and they’ll call down fire missions on their own heads!”  She spun to a group of unicorn staffers.  “You four!  In about a minute there’s gonna be an artillery barrage and a lot of us are gonna die!  Triangulate the origin batteries if you survive!”

“Yes ma’am!” was the only reply.

Lightning Dust pulled down her headset microphone and pushed to talk.  “Baker Squadron, Oboe Squadron, Victor Squadron—you’re my fastest fliers.  In about a minute you’re gonna get triangulations on some origin batteries—when you do, you go after those damn guns, wherever they are!” 

“Acknowledged!”

She turned and galloped towards a rear unit just pulling up into the staging area.  Dozens of large earth ponies were pulling two-ton weapons—quadruple-barreled heavy machine guns—behind them.   “Get those ZPUs ready to fire!  Enemy air support is coming!”

The enlisted ponies nodded, and began shifting the levers—in thirty seconds the area was bristling with anti-aircraft guns.





Major Heinz had not liked the result the first time he checked the page he had pulled from the commander’s safe, so he placed a ruler on the grid and ran his finger down it again.

“Captain, you’re sure that was mission code Foxtrot, Golf, Delta?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well that doesn’t make any damn sense!  Don’t those idiots know what we’re carrying?”  He shook his head, swearing.  “Of course they do, that’s the mission code for our arsenal, all right.”

“Major Heinz, sir,” the navigator asked, “what’s the problem?  What’s our target?”

Heinz didn’t answer directly.  “Kubic, patch me through to SAC somehow.”





The mesa was rocked by blasts as American shells burst, and a few seconds later, large ghostly green arrows appeared in the air, gesturing towards distant targets.  Lightning Dust picked herself out of the dirt and smiled with satisfaction as her squadrons jumped into the air and zoomed off on swift wings to attack the human artillery.

“Warthogs coming in from south!” was the warning on her headset, and she turned to see the ugly, low-flying American guns with planes built around them.  The tracer fire from the anti-aircraft guns under her command danced against their approaching silhouettes…and as far as she could tell, did absolutely nothing, as the pair of planes flew past, leaving a sound of ripping, a cloud of dust, and untold numbers of her ponies so much dog food behind them.

“Those things are like tanks,” she muttered.  She jumped into the air, looking around on wing, surveying her options.  Finally, a least-worst appeared to her.  She dashed down to a small group of pegasus ponies—four of them.

“Ma’am?” they asked, saluting.

“You all ready to earn a Hero of the Lunar Republic?”

The honor vested in the HLR was great, greater still the pension.  The former attached to the awardee themselves; the latter, usually to the next of kin.

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Then each of you grab a mortar shell and save the lives of this whole division before those Warthogs come back.”

Lightning Dust held out her hoof expectantly.  Understanding came quickly, as the four ponies each nodded, removed their dog tags with their wings, and laid them across her forehoof.  She slid them in the front pocket of her uniform and saluted.  She hadn’t had time to check for their names or ranks, but between the four of them there weren’t more than five stripes.  It was still only their due that they be saluted for what they were about to do.

She watched them take off, each clenching a heavy mortar round between their legs, and she herself flew back towards her field command station—which was to say, where the former commander’s body was still lying and where some unicorn staffers were hastily performing battlefield calculations and monitoring enemy transmissions.  In her short flight she caught a glimpse of a row of approaching APCs, and diverted her course to the nearest artillery group she could find.

“We’ve got a line of Green Dragons coming up the highway—get some shells down on them before they roll us up!”  She tapped the side of her headset radio.  “Gimme a flyer up by the highway, need them spotting for…”—here Lightning Dust stopped to actually check which earth pony unit she was talking to—“…C Battery, that’s C as in Charlie.  This you, Parasol?  Great, stay alive out there.”

She stopped and looked up, as the earth ponies cranked their guns to wheel around into firing place.  She had been listening for the sound through the chaos, and thought that she heard—yes, the Warthogs were coming back.  And streaking towards them, flying as fast as they could manage with their loads—for three of them, barely faster than a Warthog’s stall speed; for the fourth, impressively near their cruise speed—were her heroes.

The first was in and in fast; an explosion blew apart the left engine of the left Warthog.  The realization of what was happening gave the other Warthog enough warning to get its gun firing at the approaching pegasus ponies, instead of at Lightning Dust’s ground troops—which was half her goal anyway—but the guns were not designed for air-to-air combat against targets like these.

Of course, it only took one bullet to take out one of her ponies, especially when that bullet was more than an inch wide, and the Warthogs could put more than a thousand of them out in twenty seconds.  One of her fliers disappeared into a blast of pink chunks and bloody feathers, leaving a falling mortar shell somewhere over enemy lines, and the last two—

Success.  Two more explosions cost one Warthog the last of its engines and the other its first.  The merely wounded Warthog shot past her unit, smoke trailing, and the other was coming down fast—very fast.  Lightning Dust cussed up a blue streak as the Warthog plowed straight into the ZPUs she had deployed a few minutes earlier, destroying the only anti-air cover she currently had and crushing the guns and their operators under twenty tons of airframe and unused ammo.  She slammed the headset of her radio.  “If that human’s still alive, somepony get him out of that cockpit and make sure he stays that way!  And get me some new AA ASAP!”





A radio crackled in a small, dimly-lit room in a non-descript building of Offutt Air Force Base, on the eastern edge of Nebraska.  Its designated user leaned forward, and turned up the volume.

“This is Major Heinz of the 843rd Bomb Group.  I need verification of an order.”

The operator frowned, flipping through his notebook.  “Major, stay in your chain of command.  We’ve got enough going on.”

“I’m looking at orders from my chain of command, and they look defective.  I need verification.”

“Do they authenticate?”  The operator found the listing for Heinz and the 843rd; his aircraft should currently be flying in the Rocky Mountain sector, which was in the midst of a major battle.

“Yes, they authenticate.”  The voice on the other end of the radio sounded irritated.  The other men in the room stood, looking on with interest, but not enough interest to set down their cups of coffee.

“Then carry them out, Major.”  The operator took a long sip of his own bitter drink.

“Look, I’m about to go drop twenty-five megatons here, so maybe you can take twenty-five seconds to verify my goddamn orders!”

Of course the coffee was sprayed across the room, though fortunately, not into the radio or the notebook.  “What the hell are you talking about, twenty-five megatons?!”

“We’ve got an order on the CRM-114, decodes as a nuclear attack run using my primary on the city of Denver!  Now, take a few seconds and tell me whether I’m really supposed to go kill half a million people, most of them still Americans!”

“NO!” he croaked into the microphone, as the other men in the room quickly scrambled to check their files, radios, and teletype machines.  “That is not, I say again, not a valid order!  What code did you get?”  He flipped open his notebook to the command codes, locating those that would be valid for the bombing group in question.

“Charlie Four Charlie, Foxtrot Golf Delta, One Three Five.”

“MotherFU—” he cut himself off.  “Major, bring your bird into Offutt, we’re gonna have a technician check your CRM-114.”  He turned to the other men in the room.  “No orders from up there, right?”  Shaken heads were his response.  “We’ve got a goddamn unicorn playing games on our radio….”

“Games, nothing!” his superior replied, approaching from his desk.  “They’re into our nuclear command and control network.  Where could that order have originated?”

“On a CRM-114?”  The operator grabbed a compass and scribed a quick circle on his map.  “…half the transmitters in the Central Rocky Mountains or High Plains sectors.”

“Goddamnit.  Until a tech can look at that CRM-114 to source the order—shit.  What’s the ETA on that?”

The operator pushed to talk.  “Major Heinz, what’s your ETA to Offutt?”

“Forty-four minutes.”

The senior winced.  “There’s nothing for it.  Until we can narrow down the rogue operator, we’ve got to impose E-EMCON.  I’ll get the warning to NACOM—the President’s got to know this.”





“Sir, one of the A-10s is out an engine and most of his wing and making an emergency landing at Buckley.  His wingman went down in a pegasus suicide attack.”

Tear’s scowl did not lift.  “Really needed more than one pass out of them.”

Another radio operator had slightly better news.  “Ground spotter reports that the A-10 pilot managed to bring his plane right down onto Papa’s mobile AA.”

This did the trick, at least briefly, for the general’s expression.  “Then we can get the gunships on them while the rest of the A-10s get refueled, reloaded, and sortied.  Call up all available Cobras and—” He stopped short, as his operators all flinched in unison.  “What?  What’s wrong?”  He pulled up one of the headsets to listen.

“—we say again, radio silence is being imposed throughout this sector.  Emergency Emissions Control protocols are in effect.”  The announcement ended, replaced with a high-pitched squeal.

General Tear’s eyes widened.  “Every frequency?”

The dials on the radio controls were already being spun by his staffers.   “SAC is completely jamming us, sir.  We’re blind, deaf, and mute.”





Lightning Dust narrowed her eyes.  While the infantry were still fighting her ponies hard, if she didn’t know better she would almost say that the artillery seemed to be stepping down—“Colonel!” one of her unicorn staffers cried.  “The enemy’s being jammed!”

“What?”  She dashed over to her magical intel unit, a group of unicorn specialists who did things she could never comprehend with their horns.  “What’s happening?”

“Broad spectrum, full jam, all of their frequencies.  A lot of ours, too, except the magically shielded ones.”

“Just this area?”

“No, ma’am.  Sounds like region-wide.  I think they think we’re in their system, giving bogus orders.”

Lightning Dust bit her lip.  “Are we?”

“Not that I know of, ma’am.”

She turned around, back towards the enemy lines.  “No radio means no more fire missions, unless the enemy has line of sight or is going to just keep shooting at our last-known.”

“We could withdraw to more defensible positions in complete safety, ma’am,” a very senior, and therefore confident, unicorn staffer offered.

“Yes, yes we could.”  She smiled.  “Or we could win.”

“Ma’am?”

“Get the order out on our shielded frequencies.”



 

The static of the radios, the pacing of his guards on the roof above him, and the humming of the air conditioner—these things General Tear knew he heard.  The drone of large aircraft overhead he only thought he heard.

General Tear checked his watch and paled.  “Goddammit!  Aren’t we back in contact yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, get the EW boys together and patch me through some kind of landline to SAC.  If this doesn’t lift we’re all dead.”

“Sir?”  His most senior staffer hesitated.  “If SAC imposed radio silence, there’s got to be a good reason.”

“Landline doesn’t break radio silence.  Look, Major, if this silence doesn’t lift in the next eight minutes we’re dust, and in the meantime our boys are getting their asses kicked.”

This statement demanded an explanation, the major thought, but the explanation could probably wait, given the strictness of the deadline.





Lightning Dust hooted in delight as more screams arose from the American lines, and the rifle fire became more erratic—the quick panicked spray-and-prays of infantrymen trying to hold off charging earth ponies at point-blank range.

“Command, this is Victor Squadron.”  She smiled again, that being the last of her three artillery-chasing squadrons she was waiting to report in.  “Target neutralized; we’ve got four guns still functional.”

“Anypony know how to work them?”

“No ma’am.”

“No worries, we’ll get a prize crew up there ASAP.”  She laughed, flush with victory.  “Good work, Victor.  Stand by for further orders.”  She quickly surveyed her surroundings.  So far, all she’d managed to do today was slip most of a combined arms division past the enemy’s main line of defense, down a Warthog, and annihilate one or two human infantry battalions.  It was a good day for the war…but it had the chance to be a great day, if she acted quickly and decisively.  

She set her frequency, and pushed to talk.  “All units.  The enemy remains on radio silence.  We are going to break with tradition a little here and actually win something that matters.”  A more discreet pony—or even Lightning Dust herself, when a little less drunk with success—would normally not have dared to say such things.  “I want the 14th, 15th, and 17th groups giving me an assault on Buckley.  Get me fuel depots and munitions bunkers.  You see a chance to keep any aircraft on the ground, take it.  13th, 16th, and anything left of the 18th, same thing, do it to Lowry.  Second brigade, you’re going north.  Give me Boulder if you get that far.  Third brigade, finish killing those bastards and get going east—put half your survivors on Buckley and the rest on Lowry, the pegasus ponies aren’t going to be able to actually hold that ground for long.  Fourth brigade, you’re galloping double-time after me and the 19th group.”  She took a deep breath, let it out, and grinned, before finishing her order.  “19th group, we’re going downtown.”





“I say again, this is General John Tear of the Denver Defense Command, and I need you to end this goddamn jamming!  You have my authentication!”  Sweat rolled down his face as he checked his watch again.  Death, by his measure, was already thirty seconds late.

“I’ve got your authentication, General,” the voice on the other end replied, unimpressed.  “Emergency emissions control will be lifted when our situation is resolved.”

“What ‘situation’ is worth the defense of an American city?”

“Papa running amok in our nuclear command and control, General.”

Tear blinked.  “What the hell are you talking about?”

“One of our nuclear-armed bombers received a coded order to make an attack run on Denver.  Until we can determine the source of that order, we must suppress all communications in your sector.”

That explained, at least, why he wasn’t dead.  “That order was legitimate.”

“What.”

“I placed that order so that, in the event the city fell, it would stay out of the enemy’s hands.  If the defense was still ongoing I was going to order a standby!”

There was a new voice on the other end of the line.  He knew that voice, and knew its owner had one more star on each of its shoulders than he did.  “John, you ordered a nuclear attack on an American city?  How did you even—that is beyond your authority—how did you even get the codes?”

“I extrapolated.  I’m in the group with command codes for a nuclear reprisal in the event of a decapitation strike, and it wasn’t hard to work out the profile code for Denver.”  There was no reply on the other end.  “Look, I’ll answer for my actions later—but if you don’t lift E-EMCON, we’re losing this city!”

There was another long pause.  “John, if you had nuclear attack codes—and the situation was that desperate—why didn’t you at least order an attack on Papa himself?”

“Shit, I didn’t want the Russkies getting in on this.”

The pause was shorter.  “Lifting E-EMCON.”

General Tear hung up on the handset, and looked to his radio operators.

“How bad?”

Before his operators could reply, the rattle of machine gun fire on the roof of his headquarters gave some hint of the answer.





The 19th Pegasus Group was dividing—the downtown area of Denver had at least four convenient buildings Lightning Dust wanted, and three of them were on the same block.  While one detachment had split off to take the city’s police headquarters, the rest of the unit came down into Civic Center Park and headed off in three directions—some for the state capital building, some for the city hall, and the bulk, including the Lieutenant Colonel herself, for the office building that had been appropriated and reinforced for use as the headquarters for Denver Defense Command.

“Don’t care about anyone with a rifle,” she said over her headset as her group of forty-odd pegasus ponies bore in for a first strafing run to clear out the defenders on the roof and the building’s front, “but if they’re only shooting back with a pistol, think about taking them alive.”  She looked back at the end of the first strafing run—she’d lost maybe seven flyers, and in exchange had emptied the roof of living souls.  The headquarters building, as she’d guessed, was comparatively lightly defended—without radio contact they hadn’t been able to divert any other forces for their own protection.

“No more preliminaries, fillies.  We’re storming it!”





Now windows were breaking, and he was hearing gunfire inside the building.  Inside!

General Tear opened his safe, and set an incendiary grenade inside there.  He didn’t pull the pin yet.  He set another such grenade inside the file cabinet of his office; he didn’t pull that pin yet, either.  He checked his Colt M15 General Officers’ pistol—seven rounds, plus one in the chamber.  He set the dial on his radio, and spoke into the microphone.

“All stations, this is Delta Hotel Quebec, I say again, Denver HQ.  General John Tear speaking.  Papa is overrunning our position, I say again, Papa is overrunning the Denver HQ.  We will not be able to destroy all of our files and codes.  All units must therefore assume that the enemy is going to have our codes.  Until trust can be properly reestablished, I am devolving command authority onto local units which can operate without use of radio.  No remote fire missions should be carried out until trust can be reestablished.  Local commanders have full discretion: you may continue to engage Papa as you currently are, you may join up with other commands, or you may break off and assist the civilian populace in resisting the enemy.”  He blinked, refusing to acknowledge any wetness in his eyes.  “I’m so sorry, boys.  Denver HQ signing off.”

He pulled the pin on one grenade, and shut the safe; he pulled the pin on the other, and closed the cabinet, and drew his gun to the sound of hoof beats approaching down the hall.  As white hot flames began to burn, he opened fire at the first head to pop into view—a red-maned green-coated thing.  One, two, three, and the pegasus was sprawled, its head a bloody mess.  Another figure dove through the door frame, and he squeezed the trigger.  Four, five.  Though wounded, it lifted itself up, training its battle-saddle on him—Six, seven.  It fell, its purple mane and coat now as bloodstained as the other.

More hoof beats approached, from both directions down the hallway. 

General Tear raised his gun a little higher.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw his name engraved on the walnut grip, but then it was no longer in sight, even in his peripheral vision.  One more pony popped into view, this one with a fiery mane and an opal coat.

Plus one.





“Coward!” Lightning Dust muttered as the human fell to the floor, the left side of his head sprayed across the far wall.  She sniffed the air, and looked towards the growing flames—incendiaries.  Not worth finding a fire extinguisher for the files being destroyed; nothing could put them out that she knew of.  But if she acted quickly—she grabbed the file cabinet, which looked a lot lighter than the safe, and pushed it away from its neighbors.  The safe might’ve been a lost cause, but it didn’t look like the fire would spread to the desk.  She fluttered to the desk, looking for documents, anything she could use.

No, no, nothing…oh.  She smiled.

This she could use.





“We are live in three, two, one…”  The pegasus pony waved her wing, while another began rolling the camera.  This was really more a unicorn’s work, but they weren’t here…yet.

Lightning Dust looked solemn, as she sat at General Tear’s press desk with her fore hooves pressed together.  “Attention, people of Denver.  I am Colonel Lightning Dust of the New Lunar Republic Pony’s Army.  This city has fallen.”

Outside, flights of pegasus ponies were moving to the flagpoles of the major civic buildings—including the four that they had just captured.  In moments, the forty stars and thirteen stripes of the American flags were hitting the ground, while the three stars and crescent moon of the New Lunar Republic began to rise in their place.

“I have with me the governor of Colorado, the mayor of Denver, the chief of the Denver Police, and the adjutant to the general of your failed defense command.”  She let the camera shift focus, revealing the four men in the background, standing behind her, their hands on their heads.  The camera did not reveal the pegasus ponies just to their left and right, battle saddles aimed and ready to fire, but it hardly needed to do so.  “Your legislators and city councilmen are also under my control, but they would not fit into this studio.  I am presently cooperating with all of these men to ensure a safe and peaceful end to the chaos in your city.  As long as I continue to get this cooperation, utilities and emergency services will function and fires will be put out.”

Miles south, flames burned unchecked on Buckley Air Force Base while all personnel took up defensive positions, firing on the advancing earth pony attack force.  Artillery shells exploded nearby, as their own captured guns were being turned on them, the bursts walking closer and closer to their munitions bunkers.

“I assure you, I have no intention of interfering with your way of life.  I am a soldier, not a political officer.  My priorities are: the safety of the ponies under my command, the safety and security of all humans within the confines of the new military government, and adherence to the laws of war such as are recognized by all civilized peoples.”

On the bank of Clear Creek, far downstream of where the original breakthrough had happened, two police officers had taken up positions behind their car and were unloading everything they had.  The shotgun was already out of rounds, having taken only three ponies down, and now they were down to their pistols.  As they continued firing, a red ponykinetic field appeared around one of the cops, and he struggled.  The magic pressed, harder and harder, and he found his gun arm pointing at the back of his own partner’s head.  A moment later, after his finger had twitched despite his will, he was made to look into the barrel of his own gun.

“And, I must admit, those priorities are in that order.  But as long as you comply with all directives of the military government, no harm will come to you, and those directives will be strictly confined to ensuring the safety and security of all people, equine and human alike.  I urge all civilians to stay indoors and continue to monitor this station.  There is for the time being a mandatory curfew from sunset to sunrise for all humans, and for all ponies of American citizenship, except for on-duty emergency services workers.”

Lightning Dust wasn’t sure that any such ponies were present in Denver—it seemed foolish for the enemy to let them live so near the front—but it couldn’t help to plant the seeds that maybe such ponies existed.  There would be a resistance, and she might as well make suppressing it easier on her successor.

“And I must beg all emergency service personnel, police officers especially, to please stand down at once.  If you resist, you will be killed, and then you will be unable to provide the essential, life-saving services your fellow Americans are counting on.”

The people of the downtown area who had not gotten the message screamed and ran as a long column of earth ponies marched up Colfax Avenue, just behind four Patton tanks—American tanks, yes, but American tanks with armed ponies riding atop them and unicorns at the helms, even if their new operators had not yet had time to paint out the American flags on their sides.  Some scattered citizens drew what weapons they carried in their day-to-day lives—primarily handguns, here in the urban core—and took up firing positions behind dumpsters or the corners of brick buildings.  Response volleys of superior firepower left the alleyways and side streets strewn with blood and debris, and the survivors of a mind to bide their time.

“I know that you’re frightened.  These are strange and confusing times.  The path forward, the light at the end of the tunnel, the road to a safe and happy ending for you and your loved ones, is this: cooperation.  We have no intention of holding this city forever.”

Just south of downtown, heavier earth pony and unicorn units began to make fortifications out of whatever they could—which, given unicorn magic, was quite a bit, including chunks of buildings whose current occupants rather mistakenly thought were still theirs to use.  Large guns, for anti-personnel and anti-tank and anti-aircraft purposes, were towed into position against the expected counter-offensive from the American military bases at Colorado Springs.

“When your leaders come to their senses and meet us in peace at the negotiating table, this war will be over.  And those of you who stayed calm and cool and rational will be alive and well to see that day.”

The commander of the Second Brigade trotted towards the barricades at the perimeter of the city of Boulder, where a human military officer seemed to be lying, dead or seriously wounded, and a human civilian standing just behind him was waving a white flag.  The other defenders all seemed to be civilian militia, with no uniforms to speak of and irregular armaments—but, strangely, the commander thought, they all seemed happy to see him.

“I look forward to speaking with you again.  This is Colonel Lightning Dust of the New Lunar Republic, Military Government of the Denver Region, signing off.”