//------------------------------// // Into the Great Unknown, Part III // Story: A New World, A New Threat // by boredhooman //------------------------------// “You OK there, bud?”         The armored horse didn’t say anything.         Joseph Williams, gunner of Bravo Team, tried again from behind the driver seat. “You know you’re not a prisoner, right?”         The cargo, a small red horse-like thing with bird wings and bright golden armor sat slumped in the rear passenger seat, bound with rope. It gave a struggle during the raid, and the fireteam leader, Corporal Alex Jameson, deemed it necessary to tie it down to simplify future interactions. The creature turned an eye towards Joe, its glare staring straight through the young Marine. “Could have fooled me.”         “Right...” Joe said, “So are you going to drop the attitude or what? It’s a long ride back to the main force.”         “Excuse me. But if I am not a prisoner, then what am I?”         “An alien creature caught in the middle of a mess of a situation, making it even more complicated, who is being brought back so he, and his compatriots, can meet proper representatives of our country.”         The creature remained silent.         “What, you think we’re some evil conquerors taking over some peaceful place for the hell of it?” he asked.         The creature turned to him with an icy glare. “I was told all about America,” it spat. “I know what you’re up to.”         “What we’re up to?” Joe asked, suppressing a chuckle. “Who told you that? Your Syrian friends? Let me guess: Israel is this great satan that has infiltrated the entire western hemisphere and is using America, the biggest kid on the block, as its pawn to take over the world?”         “More or less.”         Holy shit, I was right. “They probably forgot to mention a little thing called the Holocaust, where six to seven million Jews, a.k.a. Israelis, were rounded up into labor camps and killed, or just killed, and then that the creation of the state of Israel is a reaction to that and an assurance it won’t happen again, and that all the other countries around them have tried to kick their asses for the last sixty years? Didn’t mention that, did they?”         The creature shrugged. At least, what Joe assumed was a shrug.         “Of course they didn’t.” Joe sighed and adjusted his IAR, checking the mounting on the Humvee’s window. “Now, I’m not saying Israel’s hands are spotless in this whole mess, but they’re hardly the bad guys in the big picture.”         The creature had by then returned to staring out the window to the horizon, and remained silent. Joe gave up. There wasn’t really any need to get the cargo ideologically aligned. At the very least he showed to the horse that there was a different perspective.         The radio clicked. Up front, Jameson grabbed the receiver from his place in the passenger seat and brought it to his ear. “Roger, Vulture Actual. This is Vulture One-One. Reading you clear, over.”         Williams heard a muffled Sergeant Meyers from the phone, but he couldn't make out exactly what was said.         “Copy. Proceeding to location now. Out,” Jameson finished before turning to the Humvee’s driver. “Change of plans, Lopez. Lead’s truck got ambushed and their tire’s fucked. I’ll show you where to go once I get the coordinates in this computer.”         As Lopez confirmed with a “Yes, sir.” Williams turned back towards the creature.         “I know you don’t have any reason to believe me over the other guys. I don’t really care if you do. You’re seeing my command in a bit and that’s all I care about.”                  “We were ambushed,” Beckett explained.         “I can see that,” said Lewis, whose gaze was directed at a trio of dead Syrian soldiers lying in the street. Their equipment had been stripped, placed in a pile with other captured munitions and weapons that was to later be burned to deny the enemy resources.         “We’ve got the spare wheel ready to go,” Beckett continued. “We just need you guys to be a look-out for any Syrians while we replace the damaged one. Especially for that tank.”         “Where the fuck did they find an ‘80 anyway? I thought it was all ‘72s,” Jameson commented.         Lewis scratched his chin in thought. “They have a shit-ton of ‘55s and ‘62s too. Like fifteen-hundred of each tank?”         “Probably a lot less now, right?” Jameson ventured with a small chuckle.         “Fuck, man. You’ve got me worrying,” Ronnie suddenly burst out. “The only local user is Egypt, and they’ve got like twenty. Russia’s got like, what, a few thousand of them gathering dust? Probably two thousand active by now?”         “I thought they were were caught up with us in Afghanistan?”         “The fuck you think why I’m shitting my pants right now?” * * * * *         Twilight watched the human soldiers as they fiddled with their motorized carriage, which were apparently called ‘Humvees’.         She was scared of them. However, as an intellectual, she was fascinated by them. Unlike how her Royal Guard compatriots acted, she didn’t immediately come to hate these soldiers just from the word of the Syrians. She wasn’t taken in by the underdog routine. She simply studied the Syrian humans, and she was simply studying the Americans. The way they talked to each other, the way they acted around the ponies, she was taking it all in.         Once she calmed down and got her wits about her, it was no different with the Americans. Unlike her previous captors, they seemed driven. While the Syrians were confused and unsure of what to do with them, the Americans took a proactive role and in general had an idea of what they were doing.         The ponies were being kept away from each other; the other two ponies were being kept in the Humvees. The one she was riding in was being fixed, so she had been sitting down next to a large concrete structure while one of the American soldiers was watching over her, making sure she didn’t try to escape.         Of course, she easily could get away with her teleportation. However, even if she knew how to navigate the area and where to go, that would do nothing to advance her mission. Seeing how advanced their technology was, she was sure it would be a great benefit to Equestria if she could get them on her side. * * * * * Second Lieutenant Alex Clarkson raised the radio’s microphone up to his mouth for the third time in the past minute. “Vulture One, this is Vulture Actual. Requesting sitrep, over.”         Garbled yet understandable words blurted through the receiver in response.         Clarkson reached into his pocket for his pen and a notepad. “Understood. Say location again, over.”         As the grid coordinates came through, he wrote them down on the paper. He handed them to the nearby Gunnery Sergeant and asked him to plot it on a map, before turning his attention back to the radio.         “Interrogative. Do you require assistance, over?”         A negative response came back.         “Roger. Inform when oscar mike. Out.”         He leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. Fuck, he thought to himself. They were close. The unit was so close and then one of the vehicles had to get hit. Thankfully, none of his Marines or his cargo were taken out, and if they could get moving again, mission accomplished.         “Gunny!” he called. The Sergeant came jogging back to him. “First Squad’s having some trouble. I need you to talk to Skipper and see if he can get a bird over their position for eyes. We need them back in one piece.”         “You don’t want to send Vulture Two or Three for support?”         Clarkson shook his head. “I don’t want to get the area bogged up. I’ve looked at their troop placements. The area’s pretty empty and I don’t want to make the Syrians start paying attention if I don’t need to.”         “Understood, sir.”         He wasn’t sure exactly was going on, but it was big; big enough to take anyone who even knows about the creatures and relocate and isolate them entirely. * * * * * “Um, excuse me?” Boot looked down from his post on the Humvee’s M2 down below him on the street next to the truck, where the creature, whose name he learned was Twilight Sparkle, was standing. She, unlike her apparently unruly pony friends, was allowed out during the break to stretch her legs on the condition that she was watched by one of the Marines. A few yards away stood Mason, watching both her and the road.         “So,” she began, “you’re… Boot, right?”         He shook his head. “Nope. Just my nickname. Real name’s Eric.”         “Oh. Well, why aren’t you called that then?”         Boot shrugged. “‘Boot’ is the term for new guys who haven’t deployed. They lost a guy in another country a year back. I was their replacement and, since it was my first time outside a home base, that’s what they called me.”         Twilight cocked her head to the side, an action Boot found quite cute, in the same way a puppy just discovered another dog on a TV. “Still?”         He shrugged again. “Name stuck.” “Why are you here? In the military?” she asked. “Uh,” he stammered, trying to come up with a simple answer. “Family business, I guess.” “Huh?” “A few family were in the infantry like me. They were Army though.” “So you joined the military just because your family did?” Twilight stepped closer to the vehicle to get a better look at him. “Even though this is happening?” “That’s kind of what war is, just so you know. People kill each other.” “So you’re just conquerors then? Like I was told?” Boot sighed. “No. We’re actually helping more than harming, if you want to believe that,” he returned. “We didn’t start this damn war. We’re making sure it ends faster. That does a lot more to help.” “But how does this help?” she questioned, waving her hoof around the street, towards the bodies, towards the weapons, towards the smoke in the skyline. “What are we supposed to do? They’re invading other countries. They have to be stopped somehow.” “But I’m sure you could aid them somehow? So that they don’t need to in the first place.” “What are we supposed to do?” Boot asked. “These dictators starve their own people. I don’t think they can be reasoned with.” “Well, I’m sure you could at least send in extra money or food,” she suggested. “You can’t just give them more money,” he explained. “They’ll just spend it on their military. You can’t give them checks for food either, they’ll just use money they would have spent on food and use it instead for their military. And not actual food, medical supplies, or whatever. Same problem. The only thing you can give dictators like this are a bullet to the head.” “That’s brutal!” she burst out, stepping back a few steps. Boot shrugged. “So is what they do to everyone around them.” “But does that give you the right to interfere with other sovereign nations?” “If you saw your neighbor beating his wife, what would you do?” “Get the police, the people who should be dealing with an issue like that,” Twilight responded in a matter-of-fact tone. “And if there aren’t any police?” He didn’t receive a response from her. “Vigilantism isn’t pretty, I know, but it’s not like the UN’s doing anything about this. Someone has to step up.”         “Vanhoover Province is acting up again, Your Majesty.”         Celestia watched the visitor as he stepped into her outer chambers, where she often worked during the day. The large, determined pony clad in exquisite Royal Guard armor placed a finely-made scroll on her desk before stepping back. “Thank you, Captain,” she replied. “I’ll look at the reports when I’m done with another issue. I trust you can handle the matters yourself in my absence?”         “Yes, Your Majesty,” came the curt reply.         He’s certainly different than Shining, she thought to herself. While she was certainly confident in Stormbreaker, the new Captain of the Royal Guard, she occasionally missed Shining’s amiable demeanor. She would need to write again some time soon. She waved him off. “You are dismissed, Captain.”         Her thoughts turned sourly towards the Vanhoover province. Over a thousand Equestrian Infantry lives had been lost only a few years before in their attempted secession, and hundreds during the subsequent pacification period. Since then, there had been several border skirmishes that had taken a few dozen of her ponies. In each engagement more secessionists had died, but they remained determined and dangerous.         But then they began playing dirty.         Fertilizer bombs on roads hit troops when they weren’t expecting it. Night raids killed them in their sleep and destroyed their food. Ungathered corpses would be left near the pass as a warning. When she had gotten reports the day before about possible secessionist movements in other towns, her stomach had turned cold. She didn’t need this, especially not now.         This problem would need to be finished soon.         “Infantry spotted,” Walker announced. He trained his IAR on the patrolling squad as they carefully moved down the street. From his vantage point in the upper floor of an old street corner apartment, he could see a football field and a half in either direction. “IFV-supported.”         Griffin nodded. “Acknowledged.” He then activated his radio and announced the enemy positions to Meyers, who was at Alpha team’s location half a klick to the north.         “BMP eighty yards south-east. Second squad fifty yards further, BMP included. Hundred-thirty yards total.”         From the other side of the room peering out of the south-west windows, Lopez had similar findings. “I’ve got one BMP squad seventy out.” He took his eyes away from his binoculars and said, “They’re heading west.”         “Must be looking for us,” Walker guessed. “That or setting up a FOB. Either way, we don’t wanna stick around.” * * * * *         “This is Mobius One to Vulture Actual, over.”         Clarkson hurriedly grappled the receiver and brought it to his ear. “This is Vulture Actual. Sitrep, over.”         “Reporting a large Syrian formation to Vulture One’s south. Advise, over.”         “Maintain distance,” Clarkson ordered. He had gotten the information earlier from Vulture One’s own eyes, of course, but a second, bigger-picture view never hurt. “Interrogative. What is the approximate distance, over?”         “I’d say, uh, 45 to 140 meters. Over.” “Understood,” Clarkson answered. “Unless directly ordered, or Vulture One is under fire, do not engage. Maintain current mission, over.”         “Roger. Out.” The aircraft’s radio clicked silent. * * * * *         Griffin rubbed his eyes and adjusted the focus on his binoculars. “Guys, I don’t think those are Syrians.”