Blackacre

by Princess Woona

The Brothers Skim

11 December, Y.C. 969
Baltimare

“Sir?”

Werni glanced up to see a young pony peeking through the door flap. A few flakes drifted off his muzzle; it must be snowing again.

“Sir. Those two ponies you wanted to see are here.”

“Send them in,” he said with a nod, clearing off the makeshift desk. It took a few seconds to figure out where to put the papers; the tent was a bit larger than standard issue, but not by much.

Werni might be Field Marshall of the Royal Army, but he wouldn’t be much of a commander if he didn’t stick with his troops through thick and thin. No one had been thrilled about their deployment to Baltimare — it was a good ten degrees colder out here near the ocean, and the humidity made the cold all the worse — but morale had plummeted when they discovered that the old barracks hadn’t been maintained properly. He had the corps of engineers working on it, of course, but until they could replace the termite-infested beams, more than half of his company was sleeping outside in a little tent city.

He had joined them, of course, and had even rejected assistance in setting the damned tent up. It had been ages since he had had to assemble his own equipment, but it came back to him soon enough. Like a bicycle, really.

A slight commotion outside the tent caused him to frown slightly. As much as he liked to do everything for himself, he had been forced to take on a secrepony for correspondence; he couldn’t well dedicate five hours a day just to reading and responding. The fact that the letter from these two… gentlecolts… had filtered through to him, then, meant that there was some merit to it.

Which didn’t explain the argument outside.

“…necessary for the presentation!”

“I’m sure you understand, naturally.”

“I do, but this wasn’t part of the arrangement.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Could have sworn we put it in!”

“No matter. We’ll just wing it.”

“Oh, brother.”

“Brother!”

Werni slipped the canvas off its eyehook and the tent flap slid open, revealing a pair of ponies in mid-argument with a pony in uniform, backdropped by a cart draped in some sort of grey fabric. For a moment, all three were silent, trying to figure out what to do. Werni frowned slightly, and the two newcomers broke into broad smiles.

“General!”

“Sir!”

“So glad you got our letter.”

“So glad you could meet us!”

“You must be the Skim brothers,” said Werni neutrally. “I assume you have a good reason for not being inside my tent right now.” On cue, a ripple of goosebumps worked its way down his mane.

“It’s our sample, sir,” said one of the two — though which one, he couldn’t say; they both looked the same. For that matter, neither of them looked old enough to be out of school, much less have served during the Skirmishes as their letter had claimed.

“The good private here is refusing to let us show you our invention,” said the other.

“The whole reason for being here!” chimed the first.

“Corporal,” said Werni.

They blinked.

“Smith is a corporal,” he said again, and the uniformed pony straightened slightly, as much from having his rank corrected as his commanding officer remembering his name. “And, judging by your letter, you won’t need props to make your presentation. Your rhetoric was convincing enough to get you here.”

And to hoodwink my secrepony, he added to himself. No way these two were veterans, and that was usually the easiest of claims to verify.

They started to protest, but Werni simply turned back into his tent, leaving the flap open for them. After a few moments he heard a light crunching sound as the two newcomers crossed the few feet of snow to come into the tent, closing the flap up behind them.

As he settled down behind the desk, he realized that perhaps it was good that they didn’t have any props with them; there wouldn’t be much by way of room in here for them anyway.

“So,” he said after a moment. “You served in the Skirmishes.”

The ponies blinked at each other.

“Straight to the point, eh sir?”

“We like that, like that a lot.”

“Lets you know the kind of stallion you’re dealing with, yes sir it does.”

Werni waited patiently.

“We did,” said the first, after a moment.

“With distinction!” added the second.

Again he said nothing.

“We were, ah, colts at the time.”

“Fresh-foaled youngsters.”

“Not formally commissioned, as such.”

There it was.

“But,” cut in the second, before Werni had a chance to engage, “we did serve.”

“Served tables!” said the first proudly. “Third company, under Captain Delphino.”

“He was running short on ponies, so he offered a pair of short ponies the chance to run around for him.”

“Kitchen duty’s not combat duty, but we did our part.”

“Did all we could!”

Werni nodded. When he first saw them, he was expecting a lie, but that was plausible. Delphi had always had a soft spot for the young ones. Why foals were in a combat zone in the first place was a question worth asking, but if they were already there, Delphi would have put them to work.

“All right,” he said. “You have a proposal for me.”

“We do!” said one cheerily.

“We call it…” said the other, “the Skimmer.”

“Named after ourselves, right brother?”

“Of course, brother!”

“Fascinating,” said Werni, dismissing their enthusiasm. “What is it.”

“Well, in the kitchens, we saw how hard it was to get supplies to the front under fire.”

“Can’t send anything by pegasus when there are dragons around,” added the other with a knowing nod.

“And ground shipment is too slow — and exposes the supply train to attack. Carts go up in flame too easy.”

“I like roasted apples as much as the next pony, but that’s just too much.”

Werni nodded. He didn’t need a lecture on the difficulties of battlefield logistics. An army marched on its stomach, and while he favored risky strategies, there was a world of difference between a calculated risk and suicide, especially when it came to supply lines.

“Your proposal.”

“A supply… train!” beamed the first.

“This would be much more effective if we had props.”

“Oh, yes it would, brother, but we make do.”

“That we do.”

“Trains,” said Werni, cutting them off, “require tracks.”

The Equestrian train network had expanded by thirty percent since the Skirmishes — a fact that he didn’t quite feel like sharing at the moment — but the trains didn’t go everywhere. How could they? Trains worked best on flat and open terrain, exactly the kind of land that made for slow and brutal fighting, the kind he avoided at all costs. There would always be gaps between supply points and the front, especially if he had anything to say about it.

“Ours doesn’t.”

Despite himself, he raised an eyebrow. Many had tried off-rail logistics, of course, but the severe nature of most of Equestria’s countryside meant that it was just impractical; the contraptions he usually saw were half the size of a barn and required the better part of a platoon to operate. If these two had pulled it off….

“It’s a highly modified Forney-type locomotive. ”

“Pulled it straight out of a scrap heap outside Fillydelphia; can you imagine the things ponies throw out these days?”

“Back drive axle was shot, but it’s an oh-four-four configuration.”

“And we were going to take it out anyway!”

“Just expanded out the main wheels, took out the secondary drive shaft.”

“Had to do some real kajiggering to get the countermotion right, let me tell you!”

“Replaced the drive wheels with wooden ones; broader rim and they’re lighter too.”

“Gentlecolts,” said Werni, raising a hoof. Perhaps the term wasn’t exactly appropriate, but it shut them up. “What’s your point.”

“I knew we should have brought the props.”

“I know, brother, I know.”

“General,” said the first, in a tone that indicated that perhaps he was going to say something useful now, “with the drivetrain modifications and broader wheelbase, ol’ Skimmer can do cruising speed over at least thirty percent of Equestria.”

“Plus she can do walking speed or better over another thirty percent!”

“And,” added the other excitedly, “she has least five or six times the cargo capacity of your average pack pony.”

“Not to mention it’s fireproof.”

Werni raised an eyebrow.

“Well, most of it. Wood wheels aren’t.”

“But she’s fire-resistant, and she’ll pace dragons through forest.”

“With a big ol’ catcher on front to dig through whatever’s in the way!”

“It sounds,” said Werni, quieting them down, “like you’ve got quite the setup. I imagine the research and development teams would like to take a closer look at it.”

“I bet they would!” laughed one.

“They’ve turned us down often enough.”

“Oh?”

The first licked his lips quickly.

“Nothing serious.”

Werni leaned forward slightly. “Do go on.”

“It’s, ah.”

Almost in unison, they swallowed.

“Some nonsense about efficiency,” said one, snorting.

“We can fix that,” added the other quickly. “It’s just a matter of —”

“And what,” asked Werni, ignoring him entirely, “is the power source.”

“Steam,” nodded one of the brothers.

“Just steam.”

“And a magic primer,” said the other, tapping his horn.

“Not much; just to get it started.”

“I see.” Werni leaned back. He had a pretty good idea of where this was going. “And just what did R&D tell you the first time around?”

“They, uh.”

“Some sort of nonsense about magical efficiency,” cut in the second with a broad smile. “Nothing major.”

“I see,” he said again.

For a moment, he said nothing.

“And what do you want me to do with your project?”

“We just need a good word,” said the first pony quickly, almost with a trace of relief. “All we need is someone respectable —”

“— such as yourself, sir! —”

“— someone respectable to vouch for us. That’s all!”

“Honest!”

“I think I understand,” said Werni with a slow nod. “Tell me: why do you want this project to get the go-ahead? I imagine you’d have a number of potential civilian applications.”

“We do,” conceded one.

“To be honest, though, it’s because we’re true to our roots.” The other adopted a wistful expression. “We started off in the Royal Army, and we want you to make the best use of it.”

“There are too many problems out there,” said the first, shaking his head slowly. “The faster we can get supplies to our boys in white, the faster we can kill the monsters who want to kill us and go home!”

“And do you agree with that sentiment?” Werni asked the other, keeping his face carefully neutral.

“Of course I do,” he agreed without hesitation. “Any enemy of the Princess is an enemy of mine, and the faster we can deal with them all the better!”

“All right.”

A pause. The brothers Skim glanced at each other.

“Does that mean…?”

“It means,” said Werni, his tone as cold as the wind whipping by outside, “that you can take your plans, your projects, and your props, burn them, and go do something productive with your life.”

They gaped.

“You read the R&D report. You’re trying to hoodwink the Army into funding an infinite efficiency machine. That’s just not how magic works.”

“But —”

“Steam —”

“I’m no expert on trains,” he pressed, “but I know when someone’s trying to fleece me.”

“But —!”

“But,” he continued, ignoring the ponies entirely, “that’s not the worst of it. You talk to me of killing the enemies of the Princess, of monsters, of getting what they deserve?” He shook his head. “That’s not how it works.”

“Of course it is!”

“And if you think that, then you’re as young as you look.” He glared at them. “They’re ponies — or wolves, or dragons, or bears — just like us, and the only difference between them and us is that they happen to have been born on the wrong side of a line. The moment you start thinking them worthy of any less respect for it is the moment you stop deserving to ‘win,’ as you call it.”

He pushed back from the desk, rising smoothly. They were young, yes, but not perhaps too much shorter than he was — and yet somehow he managed to tower over them.

“Get out of my tent.”

The brothers glanced at each other, put on nervous grins, and dipped their heads in unison.

“Well, brother, it looks like our services aren’t required here.”

“Next time, we should work up a better presentation.”

“Maybe a song?”

“Or a dance!”

“All right, mister —”

“General.”

His voice was ice.

They swallowed again.

“All right,” said one nervously.

“General Pommel,” added the other.

Then, in unison: “Sir!”

They stood and skittered towards the door, gone in a flash with nothing but a few stray flakes creeping in through the loose tent flap.
Werni shook his head. By rights, he should have them arrested, but decided against it. They were in it for the long con, and not even a day in the stocks would knock that out of them. Someday, they’d manage to pull one over on an innocent citizen — but not today, and not on him.

Pulling out a chart, he got back to the much more important business of figuring out how, exactly, to deal with an invasion. One never planned for dragons… but only an idiot wouldn’t try.

Comments

[D-Bence35]

Did those brothers just invent the primordial ancestor of the automobile?

[Princess Woona]

3468446

Sure looks like it... though, given how they tried to fleece Pommel (who doesn't take no guff from nopony) I wouldn't be surprised if they had, uh, borrowed the notion from someone else.